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15-Volume Combined Edition
Fifteen Hundred and Ten
Plot-Stories and Essay-Reviews
from the
Worlds Fine Literature
Edited by
FRANK N. MAGILL
Story Editor
Dayton Kohler
SALEM PRESS
INCORPORATED
NEW YORK

Copyright©, 1949, 1952,1953, 1954, 1960, 1964,
by Frank N. Magill
All rights in this book are reserved. No part of the
book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the
copyright owner except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address the publishers, Salem Press,
Inc., 475 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, N. Y.
This work also appears under the title of
MASTERPIECES OF WORLD LITERATURE IN DIGEST FORM
Sale of this book restricted to the
United States of America
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE
The array of literature represented in this fifteen-volume set is drawn
from the vast reservoir of literary achievements which has been
accumulating since the legendary beginnings of Western civilizations. All the
great literature is not here; perhaps all that is here is not great. But these
works are representative of the places and the times from which they
sprang and they have helped to tint the fabric which makes up the
composite imprint of our culture. Romance and adventure, laughter and
illusion, dreams and desperate hopes, fear and angry resentment — these
things have prodded men's minds as they walked toward our century.
Their insight is our heritage.
Along with this heritage, our generation has fallen heir to a Busy
Age. Never in history has there been so much competition for the
attention of the average individual. But although ours is a Busy Age,
unparalleled technological advancements have made it an age in which the
chances for enlightenment and cultural development, at all levels, have
never before been approached even remotely. Out of this increased
"exposure" must surely come a more intellectually alert society. From
such a society we may reasonably expect an acceleration of our cultural
development. It is in the light of all these circumstances that a work
such as Masterplots can have a place and a purpose.
The fifteen-volume Combined Edition of Masterplots comprises a
collection of digests and essay-reviews covering 1,510 titles from world
literature. This work is not an anthology or a collection of "reprints!' The
two million words of material it contains were newly written expressly
for this set. Two styles are employed: the synopsis and the essay-review.
1,287 of the entries are handled as synopses, 223 as essay-reviews. Most
of the essays are devoted to poetry, philosophy, and other types of
literature that have no plots to summarize.
Designed primarily for reference, the format of Masterplots is
styled and standardized to afford maximum information in the quickest
V

PREFACE
time. Each of the digests is preceded by carefully checked, concisely
stated reference data which furnish at a glance the type of work,
authorship, type of plot, time of plot, locale, and first publication date.
Following this will be found a list of principal characters and their relationships,
often a highly useful feature. Next is the Critique, a short, incisive critical
analysis of the original book. Finally there is the plot-summary, given
as a well-rounded story and devoid of quotations from the original work.
Editorial comments having been confined to the Critique, the reader is
afforded an uninterrupted opportunity to study the action,
characterizations, and development of the theme as the plot-story progresses. For
clarity, a character is usually referred to by one designated name
throughout the digest. Stories are arranged alphabetically by title. They
average twelve to fifteen hundred words in length, though some exceed
twenty-five hundred words.
In contrast to the plot-summaries, the 223 essay-reviews sometimes
include quotations from the original works to illustrate salient points.
This is especially true of those critical articles dealing with poetry. It
will be noted that some novels and plays are handled as essay-reviews
instead of plot-summaries. Sometimes such a procedure was followed
so that a general discussion of the author's other work could be included
in the article dealing with a specific title. In a few cases the essay-review
method was employed in compliance with the wishes expressed by
authors or copyright owners who preferred to be represented in essay-
reviews rather than plot-summaries.
A total of 753 authors are presented in the fifteen-volume Combined
Edition of Masterplots. The range is from Homer and Hesiod to the
present day and such wide author representation assures the reference
value of Masterplots. In keeping with the interest ratio, however, later
writers predominate. More than one-third of the authors included were
active in the twentieth century. Forty-one are winners of the Nobel Prize
in Literature. A complete Author Index appears at the end of Volume
Fifteen.
Of primary importance from the beginning was the selection of titles
intended for inclusion in Masterplots. Interests and requirements vary,
but almost any worth-while literary work will influence in some measure
the writings that follow it and for this reason a number of titles of
historical significance were chosen regardless of whether they still enjoy a
VI

PREFACE
wide audience today. In almost every case living authors were consulted
about their own books which were under consideration. Because the
relative merit of contemporary writing is likely to be a subject of some
controversy, the assistance of authors themselves concerning their own
works was valuable.
Consultations with specialists here and abroad have resulted in the
inclusion of titles which are important but which are often overlooked
when standard book lists are compiled. For example, a number of
excellent but little-known Spanish and Latin American works are represented,
some of which have been translated into English only recently. We have
also drawn, to a small degree, on the vast reservoir of Oriental literature,
an area of world culture long neglected by Western readers. However,
we are now in an age of world-wide cultural intercourse, a force that
— happily — transcends temporary political considerations, and as the
wisdom, the humanity, the delights of Oriental literature come to the
attention of the mass Western audience, interest in this field is
sure to widen.
Actual preparation of this work required an enormous amount of
active assistance from a carefully selected staff that included scores of
English Faculty associates chosen from dozens of universities and
colleges throughout the United States. I wish to express my appreciation
for the able and cheerful assistance received from these staff members,
some of whom have been active in the project continuously since its
inception.
Throughout the preparation of this work the cooperation of authors,
publishers, agents, and literary trustees has been solicited and I wish
to acknowledge the assistance received from these sources.
Copyright notices and credit lines appear as footnotes accompanying the
appropriate titles.
This Preface would be incomplete without special reference to Story
Editor Dayton Kohler's masterful survey of world literature entitled
"Books and Reading" which appears on pages xxxi-lxi in the front part
of this volume. Professor Kohler's brief, lucid treatment of his subject is
superior to any we have seen. It is "must" reading for all those who are
interested in a concise, erudite guide to the major currents of world
literature from Homer to the most recent Nobel Prize winner.
vu

PREFACE
Some will find in the pages of Masterplots a pleasant renewal of an
old acquaintance, a chance meeting with an almost forgotten literary
friend. Others may wish to pursue further an interest encountered here
for the first time. In either case, this work will have served its purpose.
Frank N. Magill
vm

COMPLETE LIST
OF CONTENTS
AbW Constantine, The — HaUvy
Abe Lincoln in Illinois — Sherwood
Abraham and Isaac — Unknown
Abraham Lincoln — Sandburg
V Absalom, Absalom! — Faulkner
Absalom and Achitophel — Dryden
Absentee, The — Edgeworth
Acharnians, The — Aristophanes
Adam Bede-G. Eliot
Addresses — Lincoln
Admirable Crichton, The — Barrie
Adolphe — Constant
* Aeneid, The -Virgil
Aesop's Fables — Aesop
Against the Grain — Huysmans
Age of Innocence, The — Wharton
Agnes Grey—A. Bronte
Ajax — Sophocles
Al filo del agua— Ydnez
Alcestis — Euripides
Alchemist, The — )onson
Aleck Maury, Sportsman — Gordon
Alice Adams—Tarkington
' Alice in Wonderland — Carroll
All Fools — Chapman
All for Love — Dryden
All Men Are Brothers — Shih Nai-an
t All Quiet on the Western Front—
Remarque
'All the King's Men—Warren
/All's Well That Ends Well-
Shakespeare
Almayer's Folly — Conrad
Amadis de Gaul — Loheira
Ambassadors, The — H. James
Amelia — Fielding
American, The —H. James
/ American Tragedy, An — Dreiser
Amphitryon — Plautus
Amphitryon 38 — Giraudoux
Anabasis — Perse
Anabasis, The — Xenophon
Anatomy of Melancholy, The — Burton
And Quiet Flows the Don — Sholokhov
/Andersen's Fairy Tales—Andersen
Andria—Terence
Andromache — Euripides
Andromache — Racine
Angel Guerra—Pirez Galdds
Anna Christie — O'Neill
Anna Karenina—Tolstoy
Anna of the Five Towns — Bennett
Annals of Tacitus, The — Tacitus
Annals of the Parish —Gait
Annals of the Roman People — Livy
Anthony Adverse — Allen
Antigone — Sophocles
Antiquary, The — Scott
Antony and Cleopatra — Shakespeare
Apologia pro Vita Sua — Newman
Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber,
Comedian, An — Cibber
Apostle, The — Asch
Apple of the Eye, The — Wescott
Appointment in Samarra — O'Hara
Arabian Nights' Entertainments, The
— Unknown
Arbitration, The — Menander
Arcadia — Sidney
Argenis — Barclay
Arme Heinrich, Der
— Hartmann von Aue
Ame — Bjornson
Arrowsmith — S. Lewis
Ars Poetica — Horace
| Artamene — ScudSry

MASTERPLOTS CO!
Artamonov Business, The — Gorky
X As I Lay Dying — Faulkner
; As You Like It — Shakespeare
Ash Wednesday —T. S. Eliot
Ashes — Zeromski
At the Sign of the Reine P&Iauque
— France
Atala — Chateaubriand
Atalanta in Calydon — Swinburne
Aucassin and Nicolette — Unknown
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,
The — Franklin
Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini,
The — Cellini
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, The
— Holmes
Awakening of Spring, The — Wedekind
Axe, The — Undset
Babbitt — S. Lewis
Bacchae, The — Euripides
Back to Methuselah — Shaw
Bambi — Salten
J Barabbas — Lagerkvist
Barber of Seville, The — Beaumarchais
Barchester Towers — Trollope
Barnaby Rudge — Dickens
Baron Munchausen's Narrative — Raspe
Barren Ground — Glasgow
Barry Lyndon — Thackeray
Bartholomew Fair — Jonson
Batouala — Maran
Bay of Silence, The — Mallea
Beach of Falesd, The — Stevenson
Beauchamp's Career — Meredith
Beaux' Stratagem, The — Farquhar
Beaver Coat, The — Hauptmann
Beggars' Bush, The — Fletcher and
Massinger
Beggar's Opera, The — Gay
Bel-Ami — Maupassant
Bell for Adano, A — Hersey
' Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ
— Wallace
MBINED EDITION
Benito Cereno — Melville
Beowulf — Unknown
Berenice — Racine
Betrothed, The — Manzoni
Between the Acts — Woolf
Bevis of Hampton — Unknown
Beyond Good and Evil — Nietzsche
Beyond Human Power, II — Bjornson
Big Sky, The - Guthrie
Biglow Papers, The — Lowell
Billy Budd - Melville
Birds, The — Aristophanes
Black Arrow, The — Stevenson
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon —R. West
Black Valley - Wast
Bleak House — Dickens
Blithedale Romance, The — Hawthorne
Blood Wedding — Garcia Lorca
Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A — R. Browning
Bohemians of the Latin Quarter, The
— Murger
Bondman, The — Massinger
Bonds of Interest, The — Benavente
Book of Songs — Heine
Boris Godunov — Pushkin
Bourgeois Gentleman, The — Molikre
Bouvard and P^cuchet — Flaubert
Bracknels, The — Reid
Braggart Soldier, The — Plautus
Brand — Ibsen
Brave New World — A. Huxley
Bread and Wine — Silone
Bride of Lammermoor, The — Scott
Brideshead Revisited — Waugh
Bridge, The — Crane
I Bridge of San Luis Rey, The — Wilder
Britannicus — Racine
Broad and Alien Is the World — Alegria
Broken Jug, The — Kleist
Brothers, The— Terence
Brothers Ashkenazi, The — Singer
Brothers Karamazov, The — Dostoevski
Brushwood Boy, The — Kipling
Brut, The — Layamon

COMPLETE LIST
Buddenbrooks — Mann
Bulwark, The — Dreiser
Bussy D'Ambois — Chapman
Cabala, The - Wilder
Cabin, The — Blasco lbdnez
Cadmus — Folk tradition
Caesar and Cleopatra — Shaw
Caesar or Nothing — Baroja
Cain — Byron
Cakes and Ale — Maugham
Caleb Williams — Godwin
?Call of the Wild, The - London
Camille — Dumas, fils
Campaspe — Lyly
Candida — Shaw
Candide — Voltaire
/Canterbury Tales, The — Chaucer
Cantos — Pound
Captain Horatio Hbrnblower — Forester
Captain Singleton — Defoe
f Captains Courageous — Kipling
Captain's Daughter, The — Pushkin
Captives, The — Plautus
Carmen — Merimie
Carmina — Catullus
Case of Sergeant Grischa, The — Zweig
Cass Timberlane — S. Lewis
Caste — Robertson
Castle, The - Kafka
Castle of Fratta, The— Nievo
Castle of Otranto, The
— Horace Walpole
Castle Rackrent — Edgeworth
Casuals of the Sea — McFee
Catiline — Jonson
Cavalleria Rusticana — Verga
Cawdor — Jeffers
Cecilia — Burney
Celestina — Rojas
Cenci, The - P. B. Shelley
Cesar Birotteau — Balzac
Chainbearer, The — Cooper
OF CONTENTS
Changeling, The — Middleton and
Rowley
Charles Demailly — The Goncourts
Charles O'Malley — Lever
Charterhouse of Parma, The — Stendhal
Chaste Maid in Cheapside, A
— Middleton
Ch£ri — Colette
Cherry Orchard, The — Chekhov
Chevalier of the Maison Rouge, The
— Dumas, pere
Children of God — Fisher
Children of Herakles, The — Euripides
Children of the Ghetto — Zangwill
Chita — Hearn
Chousans, The — Balzac
Christmas Carol, A — Dickens
Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, A
— Irving
Chronicles of Froissart — Froissart
Cicero's Orations — Cicero
rfCid, The — Corneille
Cinna — Corneille
Cinq-Mars — Vigny
Circle of Chalk, The — Unknown
Clarissa Harlowe — S. Richardson
Claudius the God — Graves
Clayhanger Trilogy, The — Bennett
Clig£s — Chretien de Troyes
Cloister and the Hearth, The — Reade
Closed Garden, The — /. Green
Clouds, The — Aristophanes
Cocktail Party, The-T. S. Eliot
Collected Poems — de la Mare
Collected Poems, 1934-1952 -Thomas
Collegians, The — Griffin
Colomba — Mirimee
Comedy of Errors, The — Shakespeare
Commentaries — Caesar
Compleat Angler, The — Walton
Comrades — Strindberg
Comus — Milton
Confessions — Augustine
Confessions — Rousseau

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
— De Quincey
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence
Man — Mann
Confidence Man, The — Melville
Coningsby — Disraeli
Conjure Woman, The — Chesnutt
/Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's
Court, A —Twain
Conquistador — MacLeish
Conscious Lovers, The — Steele
Consolation of Philosophy, The
— Boethius
Consuelo — Sand
Copperhead, The — Frederic
Coriolanus — Shakespeare
Corsican Brothers, The — Dumas, pere
Cossacks, The — Tolstoy
/ Count of Monte-Cristo, The —
Dumas, pere
Counterfeiters, The — Gide
Countess of Charny, The —
Dumas, pere
Country Doctor, A — Jewett
Country Doctor, The — Balzac
Country House, The — Galsworthy
Country of the Pointed Firs, The —
Jewett
Country Wife, The — Wycherley
Courtesan, The — Aretino
Courtship of Miles Standish, The —
Longfellow
Cousin Bette — Balzac
Cousin Pons — Balzac
Coxcomb, The — Beaumont and Fletcher
Cradle Song, The — Martinez Sierra
Cranford — Gaskell
Cream of the Jest, The — Cabell
Crime and Punishment — Dostoevski
Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, The —
France
Crisis, The — W. Churchill
Crisis, The — Paine
Critic, The — Sheridan
Critique of Pure Reason — Kant
Crock of Gold, The — Stephens
Crome Yellow — A. Huxley
Crotchet Castle — Peacock
Cruise of the Cachalot, The — Bullen
Cry, The Beloved Country — Paton
Cudjo's Cave — Trowbridge
Cupid and Psyche — Folk tradition
Custom of the Country, The — Wharton
Cyclops, The — Euripides
Cymbeline — Shakespeare
Cyrano de Bergerac — Rostand
Daisy Miller — H. James
Dame Care — Sudermann
Damnation of Theron Ware, The —
Frederic
Dance of Death, The — Strindberg
Dangerous Acquaintances — haclos
Daniel Deronda — G. Eliot
Daphnis and Chloe — Longus
Dark Journey, The — J. Green
Dark Laughter — S. Anderson
Darkness at Noon — Koestler
^David Copperfield — Dickens
David Harum — Westcott
De rerum natura — Lucretius
Dead Fires — Lins do Rigo
Dead Souls — Gogol
Dear Brutus — Barrie
Death Comes for the Archbishop —
Gather
Death in Venice — Mann
Death of a Hero — Aldington
/Death of a Salesman — Miller
Death of Ivan Ilyich, The — Tolstoy
Death of the Gods, The — Merejkowski
Death of the Heart, The — Bowen
Death of Virgil, The — Broch
Debit and Credit — Freytag
Decameron, The — Boccaccio
Decline and Fall — Waugh
Deephaven — Jewett
'Deerslayer, The — Cooper

COMPLETE
Defense of the Constitutions, A —
/. Adams
Deirdre — Stephens
Deirdre of the Sorrows — Synge
Delphine — Stael
Delta Wedding — Welty
Desire Under the Elms — O'Neill
Destiny Bay — Byrne
Devil's Elixir, The — Hoffmann
Devotion of the Cross, The — Calderon
Diable boiteau, Le — he Sage
Dialogue des h6ros de roman —
Boileau-Despreaux
Dialogues of Plato, The — Plato
Diana of the Crossways — Meredith
Diary — Evelyn
Diary — Pepys
Diary of a Country Priest, The —
Bernanos
Digby Grand — Whyte-Melville
Disciple, The — Bourget
Divan, The — Hapz
• Divine Comedy, The — Dante
Divine Fire, The — M. Sinclair
Divine Love and Wisdom — Swedenhorg
Doctor Faustus — Mann
Doctor Faustus — Marlowe
Doctor in Spite of Himself, The —
Moliere
/ Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — Stevenson
Doctor Pascal — Zola
Doctor Thome — Trollope
Dodsworth — S. Lewis
Doll's House, A — Ibsen
Dombey and Son — Dickens
Dominique — Fromentin
Don Carlos — Schiller
Don Flows Home to the Sea, The —
Sholokhov
Don Juan — Byron
Don Juan — Molikre
Don Juan Tenorio — Zorilla
Don Quixote de la Mancha — Cervantes
Don Segundo Sombra — Guiraldes
LIST OF CONTENTS
Dona Barbara — Gallegos
Doha. Perfecta — Pirez Galdos
Double-Dealer, The — Congreve
Down There — Huysmans
Downfall, The — Zola
Dracula — Stoker
Dragon Seed — Buck
Dream of the Red Chamber —
Tsao Hsueh-chin
Drink — Zola
Drums — Boyd
Drums Along the Mohawk — Edmonds
Duchess of Main, The — Webster
Duino Elegies — Rilke
Dunciad, The — Pope
Dynasts, The — Hardy
Earth — Zola
East of Eden — Steinbeck
Eastward Ho! — Chapman with Jonson
Ebony and Ivory — L. Powys
Ecclesiazusae, The — Aristophanes
Edmund Campion — Waugh
Education of Henry Adams, The —
H. Adams
Edward the Second — Marlowe
Effi Briest — Fontane
Egmont — Goethe
Egoist, The — Meredith
Elective Affinities — Goethe
Electra — Euripides
Emigrants, The — Bojer
Emigrants of Ahadarra, The — Carleton
Emile — Rousseau
Emilia Galotti — Lessing
Eminent Victorians — Strachey
Emma — Austen
Emperor Jones, The — O'Neill
Endymion — Lyly
Enemy of the People, An — Ibsen
Enoch Arden — Tennyson
Enormous Room, The — Cummings
Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding, An — Hume

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
Epic of Gilgamesh, The — Unknown
Epigrams of Martial — Martial
Epinicia, The — Pindar
Epitaph of a Small Winner —
Machado de Assis
Erec and Enide — Chrdtien de Troyes
Erewhon — Butler
Essais — Montaigne
Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, An — Locke
Essays — Bacon
Essays: First and Second Series —
Emerson
Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia —
Lamb
Esther Waters — G. Moore
Ethan Frome — Wharton
Ethics — Sfnnoza
Eugene Aram — Bulwer-Lytton
Eugene Onegin — Pushkin
Eugenie Grandet — Balzac
Eunuch, The — Terence
Euphues and His England — Lyly
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit — Lyly
Evan Harrington — Meredith
Evangeline — Longfellow
Eve of St. Agnes, The — Keats
Evelina — Burney
Every Man in His Humour — ]onson
Every Man out of His Humour — Jonson
Everyman — Unknown
Exemplary Novels — Cervantes
Exiles — ]oyce
% Fable, A — Faulkner
Fables — La Fontaine
Faerie Queene, The — Spenser
Fair Maid of Perth, The — Scott
Faithful Shepherdess, The — Fletcher
Fall of the House of Usher, The — Poe
Family at Gilje, The — Lie
Family Reunion, The — T. S. Eliot
Far Away and Long Ago — Hudson
Far From the Madding Crowd — Hardy
Farewell to Arms, A — Hemingway
Father, The — Strindberg
Father Goriot — Balzac
Fathers and Sons — Turgenev
Faust — Goethe
Federalist, The —
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay
Felix Holt, Radical - G. Eliot
F&tes Galantes and Other Poems —
Verlaine
Fields, The — Richter
File No. 113 — Gaboriau
Financier, The — Dreiser
Finn Cycle, The— Unknown
Finnegans Wake — Joyce
Fisher Maiden, The — Bjornson
Five Women Who Loved Love —
Ibara Saikaku
Flowers of Evil — Baudelaire
Foma Gordyeeff — Gorky
Fool of Quality, The — Brooke
/ For Whom the Bell Tolls — Hemingway
Forsyte Saga, The — Galsworthy
Fortitude — Hugh Walpole
Fortress, The — Hugh Walpole
Fortunata and Jacinta — Pirez Galdds
Fortunes of Nigel, The — Scott
Fortunes of Richard Mahony, The —
H.H. Richardson
Forty Days of Musa Dagh, The — W erf el
Four Quartets — T. S. Eliot
Framley Parsonage — Trollope
Frankenstein — M. Shelley
Fraternity — Galsworthy
French Revolution, The — Carlyle
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay—R. Greene
FrithioFs Saga — Tegnir
Frogs, The — Aristophanes
Fruit of the Tree, The — Wharton
Funeral, The — Steele
Gambler, The — Dostoevski
Garden, The — Strong
Gardener's Dog, The — Vega

COMPLETE LIST OF CONTENTS
Gargantua and Pantagruel — Rabelais
Gaucho: Martin Fierro, The —
Hernandez
"Genius," The — Dreiser
Gentleman Dancing Master, The —
Wycherley
Gentleman Usher, The — Chapman
Georgia Scenes — Longstreet
Germinal — Zola
Germinie Lacerteux — The Goncourts
Gettysburg — Singmaster
Ghosts — Ibsen
Giants in the Earth —Rolvaag
Gil Bias of Santillane — he Sage
Gilded Age, The — Twain and Warner
Glass Key, The — Hammett
''Glass Menagerie, The — T. Williams
Goat Song — W erf el
Gods Are Athirst, The — Trance
Gold Bug, The - Poe
Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius, The —
Apuleius
Golden Bowl, The — H. James
Golden Boy — Odets
Gondoliers, The — Gilbert
Gone With the Wind — M. Mitchell
Good Companions, The — Priestley
fGood Earth, The - Buck
f Goodbye, Mr. Chips — Hilton
Gorboduc — Norton and Sackville
Grand Hotel — Baum
Grandissimes, The —Cable
Grandmothers, The — Wescott
/Grapes of Wrath, The — Steinbeck
/ Great Expectations — Dickens
Great Galeoto, The — Echegaray
Great Gatsby, The — Fitzgerald
Great Meadow, The — Roberts
Great Testament, The — Villon
Great Valley, The — Johnston
Green Bay Tree, The — Brompeld
Green Grow the Lilacs — Riggs
/Green Mansions — Hudson
Green Mountain Boys, The — Thompson
Grettir the Strong — Unknown
Gringa, La — Sanchez
Growth of the Soil — Hamsun
Grime Heinrich, Der — Keller
Guard of Honor — Cozzens
Guest the One-Eyed — Gunnarsson
Gulliver's Travels — Swift
Guy Mannering — Scott
Guy of Warwick — Unknown
Guzman de Alfarache — Alemdn
Hajji Baba of Ispahan — Morier
Hakluyt's Voyages — Hakluyt
l^Hamlet, The — Faulkner
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark —
Shakespeare
Handful of Dust, A — Waugh
Handley Cross — Surtees
Handy Andy — Lover
Hangman's House — Byrne
Hard Times — Dickens
Harmonium — W. Stevens
Harp of a Thousand Strings — Davis
Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, The —
Millay
Havelok the Dane — Unknown
Hazard of New Fortunes, A — Howells
Headlong Hall — Peacock
Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The —
McCullers
Heart of Darkness — Conrad
Heart of Midlothian, The — Scott
Heart of the Matter, The — G. Greene
Heartbreak House — Shaw
Heat of the Day, The — Bowen
Heaven's My Destination — Wilder
Hedda Gabler — Ibsen
Heimskringla, The — Sturluson
Helen — Euripides
Henry Esmond — Thackeray
/Henry the Eighth — Shakespeare
Henry the Fifth — Shakespeare
Henry the Fourth, Part One —
Shakespeare

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
Henry the Fouth, Part Two —
Shakespeare
Henry the Sixth, Part One —
Shakespeare
Henry the Sixth, Part Two —
Shakespeare
Henry the Sixth, Part Three —
Shakespeare
Herakles Mad — Euripides
Hercules and His Twelve Labors —
Folk tradition
Hereward the Wake — C. Kingsley
Hero of Our Time, A — Lermontov
Herself Surprised — Cary
Hesperides — Herrick
High Wind Rising, A — Singmaster
Hill of Dreams, The — Machen
Hillingdon Hall — Surtees
Hippolytus — Euripides
Historia calamitatum — Abelard
History of Colonel Jacque, The — Defoe
History of England, The — Macaulay
History of Mr. Polly, The - Wells
History of New York, By Diedrich
Knickerbocker, A — Irving
History of the Conquest of Mexico —
Prescott
History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, The — Gihhon
History of the Peloponnesian War —
Thucydides
J History of the Persian Wars, The —
Herodotus
Hiza-Kurige — Jippensha Ikku
H. M. S. Pinafore -Gilbert
Holy Terrors, The — Cocteau
Honest Whore, Part One, The — Dekker
Honest Whore, Part Two, The — Dekker
Honey in the Horn — Davis
Hoosier Schoolmaster, The — Eggleston
Horace — Comeille
Horse's Mouth, The — Cary
Horseshoe Robinson — Kennedy
House by the Churchyard, The —
Le Fanu
House by the Medlar Tree, The — Verga
House in Paris, The — Bowen
/House of Atreus, The — Aeschylus
House of Gentlefolk, A — Turgenev
House of Mirth, The — Wharton
4 House of the Seven Gables, The —
Hawthorne
House With the Green Shutters, The —
G. Douglas
i How Green Was My Valley — Llewellyn
Howards End — Forster
Huasipungo — Icaza
^Huckleberry Finn — Twain
Hudibras — Butler
Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker —
S. W. Mitchell
Human Comedy, The — Saroyan
Humphry Clinker — Smollett
/-Hunchback of Notre Dame, The — Hugo
Hunger — Hamsun
Huon de Bordeaux — Unknown
Hyde Park - Shirley
Hypatia — C. Kingsley
Hypochondriac, The — Moliire
I, Claudius — Graves
I Speak for Thaddeus Stevens —
Singmaster
Iceland Fisherman, An — Loti
fides of March, The — Wilder
Idiot, The — Dostoevski
Idylls of the King, The — Tennyson,
If Winter Comes — Hutchinson
* Iliad, The — Homer
Imaginary Conversations — Landor
Imitation of Christ, The —
Thomas a Kempis
Importance of Being Earnest, The —
Wilde
In Dubious Battle — Steinbeck
In the Wilderness — Undset
Inazuma-by6shi — Santd Kydden

COMPLETE LIST OF CONTENTS
Independent People — Laxness
Indian Summer — Howells
Indiana — Sand
In&s de Castro — Ferreira
Informer, The — O'Flaherty
Innocent Voyage, The — R. Hughes
Inspector General, The — Gogol
Interpretation of Dreams, The — Freud
^Intruder in the Dust — Faulkner
Invisible Man, The — Wells
Iolanthe — Gilbert
Ion — Euripides
Iphigenia in Aulis — Euripides
Iphigenia in Tauris — Euripides
Israel Potter — Melville
It Is Better than It Was — Calderdn
It Is Worse than It Was — Calderdn
Italian, The — Radcliffe
Itching Parrot, The —
Fernandez de Lizardi
/ Ivanhoe — Scott
Jack of Newberry — Deloney
Jack Sheppard — Ainsworth
Jalna — dela Roche
Jane Eyre — C. Bronte
, Jason and the Golden Fleece —
Folk tradition
Java Head — Hergesheimer
Jean-Christophe — Rolland
Jennie Gerhardt — Dreiser
Jerusalem Delivered — Tasso
Jew of Malta, The — Marlowe
Jewess of Toledo, The — Grillparzer
Joanna Godden — Kaye-Smith
John Brown's Body — Benit
John Halifax, Gentleman — Mulock
John Inglesant — Shorthouse
Jonathan Wild — Fielding
Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities — Surtees
Joseph Andrews — Fielding
Joseph Vance — De Morgan
Journey to the End of the Night —
Cdline
I Journey's End — Sherriff
I Jovial Crew, A — Brome
I Jude the Obscure — Hardy
Judith Paris — Hugh Walpole
I Julius Caesar — Shakespeare
I Jungle, The— U. Sinclair
I Jungle Books, The — Kipling
I Juno and the Paycock — O'Casey
I Jurgen — Cabell
I Justice — Galsworthy
I Kalevala, The — Lonnrot
I Kapital, Das —Mane
I Kate Fennigate — Tarkington
I Kenilworth — Scott
I,/Kidnapped — Stevenson
/Kim — Kipling
I King and No King, A —
I Beaumont and Fletcher
I King John — Bale
I King John — Shakespeare
|yKing Lear — Shakespeare
King of the Golden River, The — Ruskin
King of the Mountains, The — About
I King Paradox — Baroja
L King Solomon's Mines — Haggard
King, the Greatest Alcalde, The — Vega
I Kingdom of God, The — Martinez Sierra
I Kings in Exile — Daudet
b( King's Row — Bellamann
Kipps-Wells
I Knight of the Burning Pestle, The —
I Beaumont
I Knights, The — Aristophanes
I Kreutzer Sonata, The — Tolstoy
I Kristin Lavransdatter — Undset
I Lady from the Sea, The — Ibsen
I Lady into Fox — Garnett
I Lady of the Lake, The — Scott
I Lady Windermere's Fan — Wilde
I Lady's Not for Burning, The — Fry
I L'Aiglon — Rostand
I Lalla Rookh — T. Moore
xvii

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
L'Amorosa Fiammetta — Boccaccio
Last Athenian, The — Rydberg
Last Chronicle of Barset, The — Trollope
Last Days of Pompeii, The —
Bulwer-Lytton
Last of Summer, The — O'Brien
Last of the Barons, The — Bulwer-Lytton
/ Last of the Mohicans, The — Cooper
Last of the Vikings, The — Bojer
Last Puritan, The — Santayana
Last Tycoon, The — Fitzgerald
Late George Apley, The — Marquand
Late Mattia Pascal, The — Pirandello
Lavengro — Borrow
Lay of the Last Minstrel, The — Scott
Lazarillo de Tormes — Unknown
Leaves of Grass — Whitman
Legend of Good Women, The — Chaucer
/ Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The — Irving
Legend of the Moor's Legacy — Irving
Legend of Tyl Ulenspiegel, The — Coster
Letters from an American Farmer —
Crevecozur
Letters from the Underworld —
Dostoevski
Letters of Walpole, The —
Horace Walpole
Letters to His Son — Chesterfield
Leviathan — Hobbes
Liber Amoris — Hazlitt
Lieh Kuo Chih — Feng Meng-lung
Life and Death of Mr. Badman, The —
Bunyan
Life in London — Egan
Life Is a Dream — Calderon
Life of Nelson — Southey
Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., The —
Boswell
i Life on the Mississippi — Twain
Life With Father - C. Day
Ligeia — Poe
^ Light in August — Faulkner
Liliom — Molnar
Link, The — Strindberg
Lion of Flanders, The — Conscience
Little Clay Cart, The — Shudraka
Little Dorrit — Dickens
Little Foxes, The — Hellman
Little Minister, The — Barrie
Little Women — Alcott
Lives of the Caesars — Suetonius
Liza of Lambeth — Maugham
Long Journey, The — Jensen
Long Night, The — Lytle
Longest Journey, The — Forster
1/ Look Homeward, Angel — Wolfe
'Looking Backward — Bellamy
/Lord Jim — Conrad
/ Lorna Doone — Blackmore
\f Lost Horizon — Hilton
Lost Illusions — Balzac
Lost Lady, A — Cather
Lost Weekend, The — Jackson
Love for Love — Congreve
Love in a Wood — Wycherley
Love's Labour's Lost — Shakespeare
Loving — H. Green
Lower Depths, The — Gorky
Loyalties — Galsworthy
Lucien Leuwen — Stendhal
Luck of Roaring Camp, The — Harte
Lusiad, The — Camoens
Lysistrata — Aristophanes
Mabinogion, The — Unknown
Macbeth — Shakespeare
McTeague — Norris
Madame Bovary — Flaubert
Mademoiselle de Maupin — Gautier
Madras House, The — Granville-Barker
Madwoman of Chaillot, The —
Giraudoux
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets — Crane
Magic Mountain, The — Mann
Magnalia Christi Americana — Mather
i Magnificent Obsession, The —
L. C. Douglas
Mahabharata, The — Unknown

COMPLETE
Maid of Honour, The — Massinger
Maid's Tragedy, The —
Beaumont and Fletcher
* Main Street — S. Lewis
Main-Travelled Roads — Garland
Major Barbara — Shaw
Malcontent, The — Marston
Maltese Falcon, The — Hammett
Man Against the Sky, The — Robinson
Man and Superman — Shaw
Man of Feeling, The — Mackenzie
Man of Mode, The — Etherege
Man Who Was Thursday, The —
Chesterton
Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow — Stuart
Man Without a Country, The — Hale
Manette Salomon — The Goncourts
Manfred — Byron
Manhattan Transfer — Dos Passos
Manon Lescaut — Privost
Man's Fate — Malraux
Mansfield Park — Austen
Marble Faun, The — Hawthorne
Marching On — Boyd
Mardi — Melville
Maria Chapdelaine — Himon
Maria Magdalena — Hehhel
Marianne — Marivaux
Marius the Epicurean — Pater
Market Harborough — Whyte-Melville
Marmion — Scott
Marriage a la Mode — Dryden
Marriage of Figaro, The — Beaumarchais
Marse Chan — Page
Martin Chuzzlewit — Dickens
Master Builder, The — Ihsen
Master of Ballantrae, The — Stevenson
Mastro-don Gesualdo — Verga
Max Havelaar — Multatuli
Maxims, The — La Rochefoucauld
Mayor of Casterbridge, The — Hardy
Mayor of Zalamea, The — Calderdn
Measure for Measure — Shakespeare
f Medea — Euripides
LIST OF CONTENTS
| Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
I Meek Heritage — Sillanpad
I Melmoth the Wanderer — Maturin
Member of the Wedding, The —
McCullers
Memoirs — Casanova
Memoirs of a Cavalier, The — Defoe
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting man —
Sassoon
Memoirs of a Midget -de la Mare
Memoirs of a Physician — Dumas, pere
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer — Sassoon
Menaechmi, The — Plautus
Menteur, Le — Corneille
# Merchant of Venice, The — Shakespeare
Merry Wives of Windsor, The —
Shakespeare
Messer Marco Polo — Byrne
Metamorphoses, The — Ovid
Micah Clarke — Doyle
Michael and His Lost Angel — Jones
Mid-Channel — Pinero
Middlemarch — G. Eliot
Y Midsummer Night's Dream, A —
Shakespeare
Mikado, The -Gilbert
Y Mill on the Floss, The — G. Eliot
Mill on the Po, The - Bacchelli
I Ministry of Fear, The — G. Greene
I Minna von Barnhelm — Lessing
Mirror for Witches, A — Forbes
Misanthrope, The — Moliire
Miscellanies — Cowley
I Miser, The — Moliire
UMiserables, Les — Hugo
I Miss Julie — Strindberg
Miss Lonelyhearts — N. West
Miss Ravenel's Conversion — De Forest
Mr. Britling Sees It Through — Wells
Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds — Surtees
I Mr. Midshipman Easy — Marryat
•Mister Roberts — Heggen
Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour — Surtees
I Mr. Weston's Good Wine —T. F. Powys

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
Mrs. Dalloway — Woolf
Mrs. Dane's Defence — Jones
Mistress of the Inn, The — Goldoni
Mithridate — Racine
J Moby Dick — Melville
Mock Astrologer, The — Calderon
Modern Chivalry — Brackenridge
Modern Comedy, A — Galsworthy
Modern Instance, A — Howells
Modern Midas, A — Jdkai
Moll Flanders — Defoe
Monk, The — M. G. Lewis
Monkey— Wu Ch'eng-en
Monsieur Beaucaire — Tarkington
Monsieur d'Olive — Chapman
Monsieur Lecoq — Gaboriau
Mont-Oriol — Maupassant
Month in the Country, A— Turgenev
Moon and Sixpence, The — Maugjham
Moonstone, The — Collins
Morte d'Arthur, Le — Malory
Mother, The - Deledda
Mother — Gorky
Mourning Becomes Electra — O'Neill
Much Ado About Nothing — Shakespeare
Murder in the Cathedral — T. S. Eliot
Mutiny on the Bounty —
Nordhoff and Hall
My Antonia — Cather
My Life and Hard Times — Thurber
Mysteries of Paris, The — Sue
Mysteries of Udolpho, The — Radcliffe
/^Mysterious Island, The — Verne
Mystery of Edwin Drood, The — Dickens
Naked Year, The — Pilnyak
Nana — Zola
Napoleon of Notting Hill, The —
Chesterton
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, The —
Poe
Narrative of the Life of David
Crockett, A — Crockett
Nathan the Wise — Lessing
Native Son — Wright
Nausea — Sartre
Nazarene, The — Asch
Nest of Simple Folk, A - O'Faoldin
New Atlantis — Bacon
New Grub Street, The — Gissing
New Heloise, The — Rousseau
New Way to Pay Old Debts, A-
Massinger
Newcomes, The — Thackeray
Nibelungenlied, The — Unknown
Nicholas Nickleby — Dickens
Nick of the Woods— Bird
Niels Lyhne — Jacobsen
e Nigger of the Narcissus, The — Conrad
Night Flight — Saint-Exupiry
Night in the Luxembourg, A —
Gourmont
Nightmare Abbey — Peacock
Nineteen Eighty-Four — Orwell
No Name — Collins
No Trifling With Love — Musset
Nocturne — Swinnerton
Northanger Abbey — Austen
Northern Lass, The — Brome
Nostromo — Conrad
Notes on the State of Virginia—Jefferson
O Pioneers! — Cather
Oblomov — Goncharov
Ode to Aphrodite — Sappho
I^Ddyssey, The — Homer
Oedipus at Colonus — Sophocles
Oedipus Tyrannus — Sophocles
>Of Human Bondage — Maugham
/Of Mice and Men — Steinbeck
Of Time and the River—Wolfe
Old and the Young, The — Pirandello
Old Bachelor, The — Congreve
Old Curiosity Shop, The — Dickens
Old Fortunatus — Dekker
Old Maid, The - Wharton
Y Old Man and the Sea, The —
Hemingway

COMPLETE LIST OF CONTENTS
Old Mortality - K. A. Porter
Old Mortality - Scott
Old St. Paul's - Ainsworth
Old Wives' Tale, The - Bennett
Old Wives' Tale, The - Peele
Oldtown Folks — Stowe
Oliver Twist — Dickens
Omoo — Melville
On Liberty — Mill
On the Origin of Species —' Darwin
Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The —
Meredith
Oregon Trail, The — Parkman
Orfeo — Politian
Orlando -Woolf
Orlando Furioso — Ariosto
Orlando Innamorato — Boiardo
Orley Farm — Trollope
Oroonoko — Behn
Orphan, The — Otway
Orpheus and Eurydice — Folk tradition
/Othello — Shakespeare
Other One, The — Colette
/ Our Mutual Friend — Dickens
Our Town — Wilder
Our Village — Mitford
Overcoat, The — Gogol
Ox-Bow Incident, The — Clark
Pamela —S. Richardson
Parade's End — F.M. Ford
Paradise Lost — Milton
Paradise Regained — Milton
f Parallel Lives — Plutarch
Parliament of Fowls, The — Chaucer
Parzival — Wolfram von Eschenbach
Passage to India, A — Forster
Passion Flower, The — Benavente
Paterson— W. C. Williams
Path to Rome, The — Belloc
I Pathfinder, The — Cooper
Patience — Gilbert
Patrician, The — Galsworthy
Patriot, The — Fogazzaro
lyPaul Bunyan — J. Stevens
Peace, The — Aristophanes
Peasants, The — Reymont
Peder Victorious — Rblvaag
Pedro Sdnchez — Pereda
Peer Gynt — Ibsen
Peg Woflfington — Reade
Pelle the Conqueror — Neoco
P6U6as and Melisande — Maeterlinck
Penas Arriba — Pereda
Pendennis — Thackeray
Penguin Island — France
Pens^es — Pascal
People of Juvik, The — Duun
People, Yes, The — Sandburg
Pepita Jimenez — Valera
Peregrine Pickle — Smollett
Pericles, Prince of Tyre — Shakespeare
Persian Letters — Montesquieu
Persians, The — Aeschylus
Persuasion — Austen
Peter Ibbetson — G.du Maurier
Peter Pan — Barrie
Peter Simple — Marry at
Peter Whiffle — Van Vechten
Phedre — Racine
Philaster — Beaumont and Fletcher
Philippics, The — Demosthenes
I Philoctetes — Sophocles
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica — Newton
Philosophy of Art — Taine
Phineas Finn — Trollope
Phineas Redux — Trollope
Phoenician Women, The — Euripides
I Phormio — Terence
Physical Basis of Life, The —
T. H. Huxley
Pickwick Papers — Dickens
Picture of Dorian Gray, The —Wilde
Pierre — Melville
I Pilgrimage — D. Richardson
I Pilgrimage of Charlemagne, The —
| Unknown
xxi

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
Pilgrim's Progress, The — Bunyan
Pillars of Society, The — Ibsen
Pilot, The - Cooper
Pioneers, The — Cooper
Pirates of Penzance, The — Gilbert
Pit, The - Norris
Plague, The — Camus
Plaideurs, Les — Racine
Plain Dealer, The — Wycherley
Platero and I — Jiminez
Playboy of the Western World, The —
Synge
Plough and the Stars, The — O'Casey
Plumed Serpent, The —D. H. Lawrence
Plutus — Aristophanes
Poem of the Cid — Unknown
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect —
Burns
Poetical Works of Edward Taylor, The —
Taylor
Poetics, The — Aristotle
Poetry of Auden, The — Auden
Poetry of Bash6, The - Bashd
Poetry of Blake, The - Blake
Poetry of Bryant, The — Bryant
Poetry of Carducci, The — Carducci
Poetry of Christina Rossetti, The —
C. Rossetti
Poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The —
D. G. Rossetti
Poetry of Donne, The — Donne
Poetry of Drayton, The — Drayton
• Poetry of Emily Dickinson, The —
Dickinson
* Poetry of Freneau, The — Freneau
* Poetry of Frost, The — Frost
Poetry of Gray, The — Gray
Poetry of Hopkins, The — Hopkins
/ Poetry of Horace, The — Horace
Poetry of Lanier, The — Lanier
Poetry of Lewis, The — C. D. Lewis
Poetry of Lindsay, The — Lindsay
Poetry of Lovelace, The — Lovelace
Poetry of Mallarmi, The — Mallanni
Poetry of Marvell, The — Marvell
Poetry of Ronsard, The — Ronsard
Poetry of Spender, The — Spender
Poetry of Stefan George, The — George
Poetry of Theocritus, The — Theocritus
Poetry of Yeats, The - Yeats
Point Counter Point — A. Huxley
Polyeucte — Corneille
Poor People — Dostoevski
Poor White — S. Anderson
Porgy — Heyward
Portrait of a Lady, The — H. James
Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, A — Joyce
Possessed, The — Dostoevski
Pot of Gold, The - Plautus
Power — Feuchtwanger
Power and the Glory, The — G. Greene
Power of Darkness, The — Tolstoy
Pragmatism — W. James
Prairie, The — Cooper
Praise of Folly, The — Erasmus
Precious Bane — Webb —-^
Prejudices: Six Series — Mencken
Prelude, The — Wordsworth
/Pride and Prejudice — Austen
Prince, The — Machiavelli
Prince and the Pauper, The— Twain
Prince of Homburg, The — Kleist
Princess of Cleves, The — Lafayette
Prisoner of Zenda, The — Hope
Private Life of the Master Race, The —
Brecht
Private Lives — Coward
Private Papers of Henry Reycroft, The —
Gissing
Professor, The — C. Bronte
Professor's House, The — Gather
Prometheus Bound — Aeschylus
Prometheus Unbound — P. B. Shelley
Promised Land, The — Pontoppidan
Proserpine and Ceres — Folk tradition
Purple Dust — O'Casey
Purple Land, The — Hudson
xxii

COMPLETE LIS!
/ Pygmalion — Shaw
Quality Street — Barrie
Queen's Necklace, The — Dumas, pere
Quentin Durward — Scott
Quo Vadis? — Sienkiewicz
OF CONTENTS
Right You Are - If You Think So -
Pirandello
Rime of Petrarch, Le — Petrarch
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The —
Coleridge
Ring and the Book, The — R. Browning
Ring Round the Moon — Anouilh
L Rip Van Winkle — Irving
Rise of Silas Lapham, The — Howells
Rivals, The — Sheridan
River of Earth — Still
Rivet in Grandfather's Neck, The —
Cahell
Roan Stallion — ]effers
Rob Roy — Scott
* Robin Hood's Adventures — Unknown
/^Robinson Crusoe — Defoe
Roderick Random — Smollett
Rogue Hemes — Hugh Walpole
Roman Actor, The — Massinger
Romance of a Schoolmaster, The —
Amicis
Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, The —
Merejkowski
Romance of the Forest, The — Radcliffe
Romance of the Three Kingdoms —
ho Kuan-chung
Romantic Comedians, The — Glasgow
Romantic Ladies, The — Molikre
Romany Rye, The — Borrow
Rome Haul — Edmonds
/Romeo and Juliet — Shakespeare
Romola — G. Eliot
Room With a View, A — Forster
Rory O'More — Lover
Rosmersholm — Ibsen
Roughing It — Twain
Roxana — Defoe
Rub&ydt of Omar Khayydm, The —
FitzGerald
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife — Fletcher
R. U. R. - Capek
Saint, The — Fogazzaro
Rainbow, The — D.H. Lawrence
Raintree County — Lockridge
Ralph Roister Doister — Udall
Ramayana, The — Valmiki
Rameau's Nephew — Diderot
Rape of Lucrece, The — Shakespeare
Rape of the Lock, The — Pope
Rasselas — ]ohnson
Ravenshoe — H. Kingsley
Rebecca — D. du Maurier
Rebel Generation, The — Ammers-Kuller
Recruiting Officer, The — Farquhar
Red and the Black, The — Stendhal
/ Red Badge of Courage, The — Crane
Red Room, The — Strindberg
Red Rover, The — Cooper
Redburn — Melville
Redskins, The — Cooper
Relapse, The — Vanbrugh
R. E. Lee — Freeman
Remembrance of Things Past — Proust
Remembrance Rock — Sandburg
Ren£e Mauperin — The Goncourts
/ Republic, The - Plato
Resurrection — Tolstoy
Return, The -de la Mare
Return of the Native, The — Hardy
Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, The —
Chapman
Revenger's Tragedy, The — Tourneur
Revolt of the Angels, The — France
Revolt of the Masses, The — Ortega
Reynard the Fox — Unknown
Rhadamistus and Zenobia — Cribillon
Riceyman Steps — Bennett
Richard the Second — Shakespeare
Richard the Third — Shakespeare

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
Saint Joan —Shaw
St. Peter s Umbrella — Mikszdth
St. Ronan's Well- Scott
Sakuntala — Kalidasa
Salammb6 — Flaubert
Samson Agonistes — Milton
> Sanctuary — Faulkner
Sandford and Merton — T. Day
Sanine -*- Artsybashev
Sappho — Daudet
Sappho — Grillparzer
Saragossa — Perez Galdos
Sartor Resartus — Carlyle
Satanstoe — Cooper
Satires — Juvenal
Satiromastix — Dekker
Satyricon, The — Petronius
s Scarlet Letter, The — Hawthorne
Scepticism and Animal Faith —
Santayana
School for Husbands, The — Moliere
School for Scandal, The — Sheridan
School for Wives, The — Moliire
Scornful Lady, The —
Beaumont and Fletcher
Scottish Chiefs, The - /. Porter
Sea and the Jungle, The —Tomlinson
Sea of Grass, The — Richter
Sea Wolf, The — London
Seagull, The — Chekhov
Season in Hell, A — Rimbaud
Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The — Pinero
Second Shepherds' Play, The —
Unknown
Second World War, The —
W. S. Churchill
Secret Agent, The — Conrad
Sejanus — Jonson
Selected Poems — Ransom
Self-Tormentor, The — Terence
Sense and Sensibility — Austen
Sentimental Education, A — Flaubert
Sentimental Journey, A — Sterne
Seven Against Thebes — Aeschylus
Seven Gothic Tales — Dinesen
Seven Pillars of Wisdom —
T. E. Lawrence
Seven Short Plays — Gregory
Seven Who Fled, The — Prokosch
Seven Who Were Hanged, The —
Andreyev
Seventeen —Tarkington
Shadows on the Rock — Gather
She — Haggard
She Stoops to Conquer — Goldsmith
Sheep Well, The -Vega
Sheltered Life, The — Glasgow
Shih Ching, The — Confucius
Shirley — C. Bronte
Shoemaker's Holiday, The — Dekker
Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield —
Mansfield
t Short Stories of O. Henry — Henry
Shropshire Lad, A — Housman
Sickness unto Death, The — Kierkegaard
Siege of Rhodes, The — Davenant
Sign of Four, The — Doyle
>Silas Marner — G. Eliot
Silent Woman, The — Jonson
Simplicissimus the Vagabond —
Grimmelshausen
Sir Charles Grandison — S. Richardson
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight —
Unknown
Sir John van Olden Barnavelt —
Fletcher and Massinger
Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, The —
Addison, Steele, and Budgell
Sister Carrie — Dreiser
Sister Philomene — The Goncourts
Six Characters in Search of an Author —
Pirandello
Skin of Our Teeth, The -Wilder
Sleepwalkers, The — Broch
Slipknot, The - Plautus
Small House at Allington, The —
Trollope
Small Souls — Cowperus
xxiv

COMPLETE LIST OF CONTENTS
Smoke — Turgenev
Snake Pit, The - Undset
Snow-Bound — Whittier
So Red the Rose — Young
Sohrab and Rustum — Arnold
Soldier's Fortune, The — Otway
Son Avenger, The — Undset
Sonezaki Shinju —
Chikamatsu Monzaemon
Song of Bernadette, The — W erf el
/ Song of Hiawatha, The — Longfellow
Song of Roland, The — Unknown
Song of Songs, The — Sudennann
Song of the Lark, The — Cather
Song of the World — Giono
Sonnets from the Portuguese —
E. B. Browning
Sons and Lovers — D.H. Lawrence
Sorrows of Young Werther, The —
Goethe
Sotileza — Pereda
<j} Sound and the Fury, The — Faulkner
South Wind — N. Douglas
Spanish Friar, The — Dryden
Spanish Gipsy, The — Middleton
Spanish Tragedy, The — Kyd
Spoilers, The — Beach
Spoils of Poynton, The — H. James
Spoon River Anthology — Masters
Spy, The — Cooper
Star of Seville, The — Unknown
A State Fair — Stong
Steppenwolf — Hesse
Stoic, The — Dreiser
Stone Desert — Wast
Story of a Bad Boy, The — Aldrich
Story of a Country Town, The — Howe
Story of an African Farm, The —
Schreiner
Story of Burnt Njal, The — Unknown
Story of Gosta Berling, The — Lagerlof
Story of the Guitar — Kao Tse-ch'eng
Strange Interlude — O'Neill
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio —
Fu Sung-ling
Street Scene — Rice
Strife — Galsworthy
Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy — Farrell
Study in Scarlet, A — Doyle
Study of History, A — Toynbee
Summa Theologica — Aquinas
Sun Also Rises, The — Hemingway
Sunken Bell, The — Hauptmann
Suppliants, The — Aeschylus
Suppliants, The — Euripides
Suppositi, I — Ariosto
Surry of Eagle's-Nest — Cooke
Swallow Barn — Kennedy
/Swiss Family Robinson, The — Wyss
Tale of Genji, The — Murasaki
/Tale of Two Cities, A — Dickens
Tales of Ise — Ankara no Narihira
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians — Bierce
Tales of Uncle Remus — Harris
Talisman, The — Scott
Tamar — Jeffers
Tamburlaine the Great — Marlowe
/Taming of the Shrew, The —
Shakespeare
Taps for Private Tussie — Stuart
Taras Bulba — Gogol
Tarr — W. Lewis
Tartarin of Tarascon — Daudet
Tartuffe — Moli&re
Task, The — Cowper
Tempest, The — Shakespeare
Temple, The — Herbert
Temple Beau, The — Fielding
Temptation of Saint Anthony, The —
Flaubert
Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The -
A. Bronte
Tender Is the Night — Fitzgerald
Tess of the d'Urbervilles — Hardy
Thaddeus of Warsaw — /. Porter
Thebais, The — Statius

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
There Are Crimes and Crimes —
Strindberg
Th&rese — MauHac
Thin Man, The — Hammett
Thirty-Nine Steps, The — Buchan
This Above All - Knight
Three Black Pennys, The —
Hergesheimer
Three-Cornered Hat, The — Alarcon
Three Men in a Boat — Jerome
/ Three Musketeers, The — Dumas, pere
Three Sisters, The — Chekhov
Three Soldiers — Dos Passos
Through the Looking Glass — Carroll
Thus Spake Zarathustra — Nietzsche
Thyestes — Seneca
/Time Machine, The — Wells
Time of Man, The — Roberts
Timon of Athens — Shakespeare
Tis Pity She's a Whore - J. Ford
Titan, The — Dreiser
Titus Andronicus — Shakespeare
To Be a Pilgrim — Cary
To the Lighthouse — Woolf
Tobacco Road — Caldwell
Toilers of the Sea, The — Hugo
Tom Brown's School Days — T. Hughes
Tom Burke of Ours — Lever
Tom Cringle's Log — M. Scott
/Tom Jones — Fielding
/Tom Sawyer — Twain
Tom Thumb the Great — Fielding
Tono-Bungay — Wells
Tower of London, The — Ainsworth
*"jTown, The — Faulkner
Town, The — Richter
Track of the Cat, The — Clark
Traitor, The — Shirley
Travels in Arabia Deserta — Doughty
Travels of Marco Polo, The — Polo
Travels With a Donkey — Stevenson
/Treasure Island — Stevenson
Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A — B. Smith
Tree of the Folkungs, The — Heidenstam
Trees, The — Richter
Trial, The — Kafka
Trial by Jury — Gilbert
Trick to Catch the Old One, A —
Middleton
Trickster, The — Plautus
Trilby — G.du Maurier
Tristan and Isolde —
Gottfried von Strassburg
Tristram — Robinson
Tristram Shandy — Sterne
Triumph of Death, The — D'Annunzio
Troilus and Cressida — Shakespeare
Troilus and Criseyde — Chaucer
Trojan Women, The — Euripides
True History, The — Lucian
Truth Suspected — Ruiz de Alarcon
Turcaret — he Sage
/Turn of the Screw, The — H. ]ames
f Twelfth Night — Shakespeare
^Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea — Verne
Twenty Years After — Dumas, pere
Two Gentlemen of Verona — Shakespeare
Two Noble Kinsmen, The — Shakespeare
Two Years Before the Mast — Dana
Typee — Melville
Ugly Duchess, The— Feuchtwanger
Ulysses — Joyce
Unbearable Bassington, The — Saki
Uncle Silas — he Fanu
AJncle Tom's Cabin — Stowe
Uncle Vanya — Chekhov
Under Fire — Barbusse
Under the Greenwood Tree — Hardy
Under the Yoke — Vazov
Under Two Flags — Ouida
Under Western Eyes — Conrad
Underdogs, The — Azuela
Undine — La Motte-Fouque*
Unfortunate Traveller, The — Nash
U. S. A. - Dos Passos
/Utopia — More

COMPLETE
Vanessa — Hugh Walpole
Vanity Fair — Thackeray
Vathek — Beckford
Venetian Glass Nephew, The — Wylie
Venice Preserved — Otway
Venus and Adonis — Shakespeare
Vicar of Bullhampton, The — Trollope
Vicar of Wakefield, The — Goldsmith
Vicomte de Bragelonne, The —
Dumas, pere
Victory — Conrad
Vile Bodies — Waugh
Village, The — Bunin
Village, The — Crabbe
Villette — C. Bronte
Vindication of Natural Society, A —
Burke
Violent Land, The — Amado
Virgin Soil — Turgenev
Virginia Comedians, The — Cooke
Virginian, The — Wister
Virginians, The — Thackeray
Visi6n de Andhuac — Reyes
Vision of William, Concerning Piers the
Plowman, The — Langland
Vita Nuova, The — Dante
Vivian Grey — Disraeli
Volpone — )onson
Volupt£ — Sainte-Beuve
Voyage of the Beagle, The — Darwin
Waiting for Godot — Beckett
Walden — Thoreau
Wallenstein — Schiller
Wanderer, The — Alain-Fournier
Wandering Jew, The — Sue
Wandering Scholar from Paradise, The —
Sachs
*War and Peace — Tolstoy
War of the Worlds, The -Wells
Warden, The — Trollope
Washington Square — H. James
Wasps, The — Aristophanes
Waste Land, The-T. S. Eliot
7 OF CONTENTS
I Waverley — Scott
Waves, The — Woolf
Way of All Flesh, The - Butler
Way of the World, The — Congreve
Wealth of Nations, The — A. Smith
Weavers, The — Hawptmann
Web and the Rock, The -Wolfe
/Westward Ho! — C. Kingsley
What Every Woman Knows — Barrie
What Maisie Knew — H. James
When the Mountain Fell — Ramuz
When We Dead Awaken — Ibsen
Where Angels Fear to Tread— Forster
White Company, The — Doyle
White Devil, The-Webster
White-Jacket — Melville
Wickford Point — Marquand
Wieland — Brown
Wild Ass's Skin, The — Balzac
Wild Duck, The - Ibsen
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship —
Goethe
Wilhelm Meister's Travels — Goethe
William Tell -Schiller
Wind in the Willows, The — Grahame
Windsor Castle — Ainsworth
Winesburg, Ohio — S. Anderson
Wings of the Dove, The — H. James
Winter's Tale, The — Shakespeare
Winterset — M. Anderson
With Fire and Sword — Sienkiewicz
Within the Gates — O'Casey
Wolf Solent-/. C. Powys
Woman Hater, The —
Beaumont and Fletcher
Woman in White, The — Collins
Woman Killed With Kindness, A —
Heywood
Woman of Rome, The — Moravia
Woman's Life, A — Maupassant
Woman's Prize, The — Fletcher
Women Beware Women — Middleton
Women of Trachis, The — Sophocles
I Woodlanders, The — Hardy

MASTERPLOTS COMBINED EDITION
Woodstock — Scott
Works and Days — Hesiod
Works of Jonathan Edwards — Edwards
World as Will and Idea, The —
Schopenhauer
World Enough and Time — Warren
World of the Thibaults, The -
Martin du Gard
World's Illusion, The — Wassermann
Woyzeck — Biichner
Wreck of the Grosvenor, The — Russell
^Wuthering Heights — E. Bronte
/Yearling, The — Rawlings
Years, The -Woolf
Yemassee, The — Simms
You Can't Go Home Again —Wolfe
You Know Me Al — Lardner
Youma — Hearn
Yvain — Chretien de Troyes
Zadig — Voltaire
Zaire — Voltaire
Zarco, El — Altamirano
Zuleika Dobson — Beerbohm
xxvui

Books and Reading
A Survey of World Literature
by
DAYTON KOHLER
Story Editor of
MASTERPLOTS

I
AN INTRODUCTION TO READING
"Each of us, then, makes his own illusion of the world—illusion poetic, sentimental, joyous,
melancholy, foul, or dismal—according to his nature. And the writer has no mission other
than to reproduce faithfully this illusion, with all the processes of art he has learned."
Gut db Maupassant
There are many roads into the world
of books, but the way of fiction is
probably the most common. The reason is
plain. The novel and the short story come
closer to the experience of the modern
reader than any other form of
contemporary writing. They are to us what epic
poetry was to the Greeks and Romans,
what stage drama was to the Elizabethans.
Then, too, the appeal of the story,
whether told as poem, play, history,
biography, or novel, is primitive and strong.
Mankind's delight in stories has never
been limited to any period or place. It is
as timeless and universal as the art of the
storyteller, which stretches in an
unbroken line back to the unrecorded oral
beginnings of literary history. Men and
women of earlier times were moved by
the same impulse that makes us, before
we turn the page, anticipate the next
chapter of a good novel. The
craftsmanship of structure, realistic character
portrayal, evocation of atmosphere and
setting, and the writers' strategy with symbol
and language can add much to our
appreciation of the art of fiction, but always
it is the story, a time sequence of events
relating fiction to life, which first
captures our interest and then compels a
sense of recognition and belief.
But the appeal of fiction may go deeper.
We all live, perhaps more intensely than
we realize, in our imaginings and
emotions. Aware of our own difficulties in
the uncertain business of living, we are
all the more interested in other men and
their problems, and stories provide a sort
of life extension course by which we try
to vary or lengthen our own lives.
We begin a story with the hope that
it will be faithful, in Hawthorne's words,
"not merely to the possible, but to the
probable and ordinary in man's
experience." When the writer adds perspective
and meaning to that experience and gives
it beauty of form, his story becomes a
record of human interest and permanent
value. And what is true of the story is
true of all other types of literature as
well. Lyric poetry, the essay, philosophy,
each in its own way, touch our
imagination and emotions and satisfy our sense of
belief.
The aim of all literature is truth. There
are, however, two kinds of truth. One we
call factual. It is the material of the daily
newspaper, a scientific treatise, history,
biography. Many able novelists, from
Daniel Defoe to John Dos Passos, have
reshaped this body of observed and proved
fact into the form of fiction. The other is
inner or imaginative truth. It, too, is
grounded in the physical world, but its
vision is inward and downward, not
outward. Less concerned with the
appearances of things than it is with deeper
realities of human personality and
conduct, this is the kind of truth we find in
literature that we call creative. It is more
than the thing which seems true merely
because it conforms to our knowledge of
the world. We do not need to believe in
men six inches tall, for example, in order
to understand Swift's criticism of human
society in Gulliver's Travels. In the same
way, modern disbelief in ghosts and
witches takes away nothing from our
appreciation of Hamlet and Macbeth.
Whether realistic or romantic, imaginative
truth penetrates deeply into the
experience of the individual or the race. The
result is a fuller interpretation of life as
we know it.
Books which continue to gratify our
sense of truth over a long period ot time
xxxi

we call classics. The name is unfortunate,
suggesting classroom lectures and dusty
library shelves, but we have no other.
Age, however, does not make a classic, for
time quickly sends to the rubbish pile the
outdated books of every literature. A
book is a classic because it tells us
something so undeniably true that it becomes
part of our experience as we read, because
it presents a character who seems to
embody in one person a significant phase of
human personality or fate. Ulysses is
immortal as the far-seeking wanderer.
Chaucer's Wife of Bath has the earthy
vitality of life itself. Hamlet is for all time
the tragic hero broken under a load of duty
too heavy for the spirit to sustain. Don
Quixote will ride forever as the romantic
idealist tilting against windmills. Jean
Valjean is society's outcast who shows
man's inhumanity to man. Huck Finn's
adventures reveal a boy's world, the
restless energy of a young nation, the
goodness and shoddiness of human nature.
Books can do no more than vary timeless
themes of birth and striving, endurance
and death, but they can make life more
real, more understandable. Although the
conditions of men change, man does not,
and so the classic is capable of renewing
its meaning for each generation.
We read for a variety of reasons: for
relief from boredom, for information, for
culture, for pleasure. All of these aims are
in some measure justified by the
pressures and necessities of the world we live
in today. But, as W. Somerset Maugham
has pointed out, no reading is of lasting
value unless it gives us pleasure. Many
people, unfortunately, think of
pleasurable reading in terms of "light" fiction,
escapist books which offer only temporary
release from daily routine or
commonplace surroundings. The enjoyment we
get from good reading is a quality more
positive than simple diversion, for which
there is nowadays no need of books at
all. Reading for information serves a
practical but limited purpose. All on one
factual level, it adds to our store of
information without enriching personality.
Much so-called cultural reading is no
more than genteel snobbery. Culture is
for use; its ends are goodness and truth.
There are no absolute values in literature,
and the only real meaning a book can have
is the meaning it holds for its reader. We
should read our books as we eat a good
dinner, with appreciation and zest, not
take them in prescribed doses, like a tonic.
Reading for pleasure is an exercise which
enables us to live with our whole bodies
as well as our minds.
In one of his essays Robert Louis
Stevenson describes his experience when
he read Dumas' Vicomte de Bragelonne
for the first time: "I carried the thread of
that epic into my slumbers, I woke with
it unbroken, I rejoiced to plunge into the
book at breakfast, it was with a pang that
I must lay it down and turn to my own
labors; for no part of the world has ever
seemed to me so charming as these pages,
and not even my friends are quite so real,
perhaps quite so dear, as D'Artagnan."
This is what we mean by the true
magic of reading. Not all of us are so
temperamentally constituted that we can
read with the same thoroughgoing gusto,
but every reader comes, at one time or
another, upon some book which in
substance or style seems written for his
particular delight. No one can say what this
book will be. For one it may be the essays
of Montaigne, who has been called the
first modern man, for another the
passionate search for truth and beauty in the
poetry of John Keats, for still another one
of the great novels—Pickwick Papers,
Father Goriot, Moby Dick, War and
Peace, Wuthering Heights, No matter
what the starting point, the world of books
will never again be a dreary, uncharted
wasteland. A few lines of type, a chance
reference, and we are off with Tom Jones
on the highroad to London, riding with
D'Artagnan to save the honor of a queen,
at our ease with Hazlitt over a supper of
bread, cheese, and ale in an old English
inn, or embarking with Ishmael on the
bedlam voyage of the Pequod.
Books can never be a substitute for life.
XXXll

They can, as we have already seen, add
much to our knowledge of the world and
the people in it. For instance, we may be
certain that a neighbor's wife is carrying
on a secret love affair with the golf
professional at the country club, but we can
never understand her motives and
feelings as clearly as we know those of Emma
Bovary. Or a poem like Edwin Arlington
Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy" may give us
better insight into the true nature of an
impractical, tippling, day-dreaming friend.
In real life our knowledge of people is
usually limited to what they say and do;
we can only guess at the vital inner life
which lies, like the submerged portion
of an iceberg, below the surface. The
novelist and the poet, however, go
beneath externals of speech and action to
show life at its source, in the hidden
world of thought and feeling.
Reading makes us citizens of the world
at large. Sam Weller, Soames Forsyte,
Becky Sharp, Emma Bovary, Raskolnikov,
Mrs. Proudie, and a thousand other
figures from the world's literature belong
to all ages and all countries. like
Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims and the
boarders in Balzac's Pension Vauquer, they are
a part of all humanity. To know them is
to cross national and racial boundaries
and to shed our complacency and
provincialism at the same time.
Great books not only record and
interpret life for us but also console our griefs,
expose our vices, redeem our weaknesses.
When we read wisely, we are always in
the process of becoming. No one could
read Thoreau's Walden and remain
insensible to his own natural environment.
Poetry shows us that in our daily lives
we think in imagery and talk in figurative
language. Books teach us how to live
more completely within ourselves. Proust's
Remembrance of Things Past contains
a revealing episode. There the narrator, a
grown man, dips a small cake into a cup
of tea. The taste of this morsel brings
back childhood memories of a
tea-moistened cake his aunt had given him years
before at Combray, and with this
recollection ail the impressions of that time
return. "In that moment all the flowers
in our garden and in M. Swann's park,
and the water lilies on the Vivonne, and
the good people of the village and their
little dwellings and the church and all
Combray and its surroundings, came into
being, both town and gardens, from my
cup of tea."
We are all like Proust's narrator, but
we may need the example of a discerning
writer before we can realize our own
resources of memory and imagination.
The trivial writer offers entertainment
and asks litde except our time in return.
The serious writer, on the other hand,
may make greater demands on his readers.
Although some poems and novels must be
read with disciplined, attentive minds,
the qualities which make for hard or easy
reading are no test of literary value. The
final test for any book is what we get out
of it, according to our tastes and
capacities. One of the greatest pleasures in
reading is the discovery of the unexpected or
purposeful in a work we once took for
granted. Sometimes a book leads us into
strange bypaths. Browning's The Ring
and the Book, for example, is on one level
a murder melodrama laid in seventeenth-
century Italy. So complex is his poem,
however, so rich and varied its
background, that if we were to follow all the
threads of interest in his story we would
find ourselves reading many volumes on
painting, literature, science, religion,
history, psychology, law, architecture, and
costume. To master such a work gives us
a feeling of power as well as pleasure.
Since there are no absolute values in
literature, it follows that all reading must
be selective. But the what of reading is
often as perplexing as the why and how.
No one can read everything. It has been
estimated that one would have to read
more than twenty volumes a day to keep
up with books published each year. Even
Dr. Bookworm could not exhaust the
shelves of a fair-sized library in a normal
lifetime. For most readers some kind of
guide is necessary; without a sense of
xxxm

direction we flounder among books past
or present and are likely to fall back on
whatever is currently popular.
We should learn at the outset to
distrust the book whose chief
recommendation is its popularity. Public favor is too
fickle to mark any book for survival, as
the forgotten, unread titles on the best
seller lists of the last fifty years will show.
If we cannot rely on our own judgment,
mistrust the enthusiasms of our friends,
and rebel against the dictates of our
teachers, there are other aids for our
guidance. Reviews in newspapers and
magazines will keep us informed on new
books as they appear. There are also
scholarly lists of many kinds—Ten Books
to Take to a Desert Island, the Twenty
Best Novels, One Hundred Great Books,
all compiled as if some virtue existed in
round numbers. We need only consult
these lists, however, to discover how
widely literary experts disagree, and their
differences of critical opinion may throw
us back upon our own resources.
Probably the best course for the reader
who has some half-defined idea of what
he wants to read, or thinks he should read,
would be to examine a comprehensive
book of literary synopses. If the
condensed versions are presented objectively
along with some background information
on the book and its writer, they become
an excellent basis for appraisal and
selection. From such a book pick out a group of
titles which in substance and treatment
seem to suit your taste or mood. Then
sample. Since tastes differ, there is little
point in reading a book which does not
promise an adequate return for your
effort.
Perhaps a preference for humor and
the oddities of human character has led
you to the novels of Charles Dickens, but
on closer inspection you find bis
sentimentality and melodramatic plots
distasteful. Try Thackeray, whose satire may be
a proper corrective, or Jane Austen. If you
tire of the novel of manners, read
Wuthering Heights, a story of human
passion as wild and bleak as its Yorkshire
moorland setting. From Tennyson's
lyricism turn to the philosophical poems of
Wordsworth or the psychological portraits
of Browning. If you prefer something
more modern, you may find what you are
looking for in Hemingway, who in The
Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms
expresses the violence and despair of his
generation. Somewhere along the line you
will find those books which make reading
a true pleasure, and your literary
perspectives will have widened considerably in
the meantime. An adventure story like
Treasure Island may lead you to Melville
or Conrad. Conrad may take you to the
French novelists whom he acknowledged
as his masters or to Henry James, his
contemporary, who in turn may carry us back
to Hawthorne, another writer concerned
with man's moral problems. Stephen
Vincent Benet's fine narrative poem of the
Civil War, John Brown's Body, may send
us to Sandburg's biography of Lincoln or
Freeman's life of Lee. Eugene O'NeuTs
Mourning Becomes Electra may stir our
curiosity about the plays of Aeschylus.
Literary paths cross and recross and we
are free to choose our reading wherever
they may lead.
The brief survey of reading that
follows is selective as well. There has been
no attempt to make a complete outline of
world literature and much has necessarily
been omitted. This survey is intended
only to relate certain literary works to
their periods and to indicate whenever
possible why they have stirred the
imaginations and emotions of their readers.
xxxiv

II
A SURVEY OF READING
GREECE AND BOMB
Life in ancient Greece must have been
Intensely absorbing and rewarding, for on
that small, rocky peninsula at the edge of
a continent the Greeks made for
themselves a place of many beginnings.
Surrounded by barbarian tribes, they came
into history with the assets of every
civilized people: inquiring, imaginative
minds and a beautiful and precise
language. Knowing nothing of the past, they
created an enduring body of folk
tradition. Ignorant of geography, they sailed
their ships into the unknown
Mediterranean. They loved games and relished
learning. Their gods they made in
their own image—expedient, quarrelsome,
witty, wise. Their small city states were
models of government upon which our
own is based.
The time, the place, and the people
were right for a great civilization. During
the Age of Pericles, for example, more
men of genius lived in Athens than the
world has seen since in any other place at
one time. There the Greeks brought to
perfection a literature and a style of
architecture which have left deep
imprints on the arts for more than two
thousand years. They discovered principles
and invented systems, and so laid the
foundations of philosophy, natural
science, mathematics, medicine. It has been
truly said that the Western world goes
back to Greece for everything but its
religious faith.
The Greeks were a practical, realistic
people, never mystics. In their need to
understand the world they lived in they
created myths to account for origins of
things and to explain why life must be as
it is. Stories like those of Pandora's box,
Cupid and Psyche, Orpheus and Euryd-
ice, Icarus, goat-footed Pan, the rape of
Proserpine, are never childish; they are
filled with beauty and wisdom. Also in
the oral tradition were later tales of
legendary heroes and tribal history, such as
the labors of Hercules, the expedition of
the seven against Thebes, the quest of the
Argonauts, Theseus and the killing of the
Minotaur. Out of this background of
myth and heroic legend came the two
great Homeric epics, the Iliad and the
Odyssey.
Whether Homer was one man or ten is
a secret lost in the shadowy past. What is
more important, the two stories told in his
name survive, as fresh and vivid as they
were thousands of years ago. To citizens
of Greek towns that had lcnown assault
and siege the Iliad was a great poem of
battles. Beginning in the tenth year of the
war with Troy, it tells of Achilles' terrible
wrath and the death of Hector. It is a tale
of violence and doom, compassion and
grief, the earthly and the divine, for
Homer is one of the few writers capable
of making the gods seem at home in the
human world, at the same time lifting
men almost to the stature of gods.
The Iliad is the tragic epic of man's
ambition for conquest and glory. The
Odyssey is romantic comedy dealing with
his desire for peace and home. Crafty
Ulysses is a hero who emerges triumphant
over every disastrous circumstance during
his ten years of wandering after the fall of
Troy, and his reward at the end is the
comfort of his own hearth and the love of
Penelope, his faithful spouse.
The Greeks prized their other poets—
Hesiod, Sappho, Pindar, Theocritus, and
all the singers of the Greek Anthology-*
but Homer was their master writer. To
them his poems were more than heroic
epics richly told. They were a storehouse
of literature, history, religious tradition,
social custom, moral instruction. Because
he touched on whatever is universal in
human thought and deed, Homer remains
a poet for all moods and all ages.
Aeschylus, first of the Greek writers of
tragedy, called his plays "morsels from
XXXV

the banquet of Homer," but this
statement we must credit in part to the
patriotic feelings of an Athenian who wished
to be remembered only as one who had
fought at Marathon. His work is filled
with pride of country, poetic grandeur,
tragic insight. Of his seven surviving
plays the most interesting are the three
relating to the descendants of Atreus.
Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, and
The Furies tell on one level a story of
faithlessness, murder, revenge, and
expiation. On another level this trilogy is a
tremendous fable of a moral order
overthrown and then reestablished. Equally
powerful is Prometheus Bound, the story
of the titan who stole fire from the gocLs
and gave it to mankind.
These plays have a bold and austere
quality we do not find in the work of his
successor and rival, Sophocles. A superior
craftsman, especially in Oedipus the
King, Electra, and Antigone, Sophocles is
more restrained in his treatment of the
problem of evil and divine retribution. He
is the humanist* among Greek
playwrights. Even mocking Aristophanes paid
him high tribute when he showed
Sophocles in the underworld, as gentle
among the shades as he had been in
life.
Euripides, third of the tragic
dramatists, lived in a later age. Faith in the gods
was waning in his day, and skepticism
and speculative philosophy had begun to
weaken traditional morality. Lacking the
religious fervor of Aeschylus and the
moral serenity of Sophocles, he came
closer to realistic studies of personality.
Alcestis and The Trojan Women are
stories of devoted, suffering womanhood.
In Medea and The Bacchae he made fatal
flaws of character the secret of man's
tragic destiny.
Behind all of these plays is deep
concern with the fate that pursues mankind,
a subject of perennial interest to writers of
all periods. Thomas Hardy, William
Butler Yeats, Eugene O'Neill, and Robinson
Jeffers are among modern writers who have
found in Greek drama the themes and
symbols of their own novels, poetry, and
plays.
The lighter side of Greek nature found
expression in comedy. Aristophanes is
a master of irreverence and satire.
Demagogues and political quackery are
nothing new under the sun, and it is not
necessary to know Athenian politics in
order to enjoy his plays. Whether he is
ridiculing politics in The Knights and
Lysistrata, philosophy in The Clouds, or
artistic rivalry in The Frogs, there is a
serious purpose beneath his hilarity and
bite. He is pleading for a return to the
private and public morality of the earlier
democracy.
Among the glories of Greece were the
great minds it produced, thinkers and
philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle. Our knowledge of Socrates we
get chiefly from the writings of Plato, his
pupil and friend. What we owe most to
Socrates is his method of teaching, the
dialogue of questions and answers going
deeply into the heart of a problem. Plato
gave form to abstract thought. His
conception of the ideal state, as outlined in
The Republic, may seem outdated in our
day of conflicting ideologies, but his views
on love, friendship, and ethics are among
the world's permanent possessions. A good
beginning for the interested reader would
be The Apology and Phaedo, dialogues
dealing with the trial and death of
Socrates.
Aristotle has been called "the master of
those who know." No abstract speculator,
he broke with Plato's idealism and
translated thought into action. Churchmen
and scholars of the Middle Ages called
him "The Philosopher" and found in his
writings not only the wisdom of a way of
life but also the principles of Christian
conduct. From him the modern world has
inherited theology, logic, biology,
rhetoric, politics, literary criticism, and even
the terms that philosophers use today.
The Greeks, vitally interested in every
form of human activity, found their first
historian in Herodotus. His history of the
wars between Greeks and Persians is more
xxxvi

than a chronicle of events, for he was a
student of mankind who poured into his
books a flood of informative detail,
anecdote, and hearsay, bringing life and drama
to his pages. He is the great storyteller
among historians, and his picture of the
Greek state against a wider background of
world culture gives us history in its proper
perspective. Thucydides was a more
sober, and at times sounder, writer. His
History of the Peloyonnesian War is
largely an eyewitness account of the
struggles between Athens and Sparta.
Xenophon wrote also as a participant in
the events he describes. He was a general
in the famous army of ten thousand
Greeks during their retreat from Persia, as
told in his Anabasis.
If Herodotus is the father of history,
then Plutarch stands in the same
relationship to biography. Living in a world
dominated by the Roman Empire, he was
able to make comparisons between great
men of both civilizations. His method in
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
was to place two figures side by side-
Alexander and Caesar, Alcibiades and
Coriolanus, Demosthenes and Cicero—
and then subject them to the tests of
Greek philosophy. Modern scholars may
deplore his carelessness with dates and
scientific detail, but our knowledge of
many of his subjects remains almost as he
presented them. Plutarch, in fact,
answered his later critics when he wrote:
"Nay, a slight thing, like a phrase or a
jest, often makes a greater revelation of
character than battles where thousands
fall." The Lives is still one of the great
source books in history and literature.
Shakespeare is only one of many writers
who have borrowed from the first and one
of the best of biographers.
Although Greek literature was to
supply Latin writers with their best
models, no two peoples were ever less
alike than the Greeks and the Romans.
The Greek genius was for the arts of
beauty and daily living, that of the
Romans for conquest, law, and
engineering. One aspect of the Latin character is
clearly revealed in Caesar's Gallic War,
once the property of every schoolboy. The
book is more than an account of military
campaigns and the administration of
conquered tribes; it is a classic example of
forceful, incisive prose. In Caesar, as in
many Roman writers, the style reflects the
energy and practicality of the race.
The history of Greece began with
Homer, but Rome had known more than
five hundred years of history before her
first writers appeared. Then, at the end of
the third century B.C., Plautus and
Terence wrote comedies adapted chiefly from
Menander, a Greek comic poet, just as
Seneca, several hundred years later,
imitated the tragic drama of Athens.
Certainly Romans had no literature they
could call their own until the period of
Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, and
Lucretius, in the first century B.C.
Vergil wished for his country a
literature as great as that of Greece. Toward
this end he wrote the Aeneid, its theme
borrowed in part from the Homeric
epics. His story of the wanderings of
Aeneas and the founding of Rome shows
deep reverence for the past. But Vergil
was a gentle poet who also loved country
life and rustic virtues, as he described
them in his Eclogues and the Georgics,
and his epic lacks the stirring clash of
arms and vivid pageantry we find in the
Iliad. Perhaps the autumnal serenity of
his verse made him all the more loved by
the Romans. He was one of the few pagan
writers esteemed by scholars and
churchmen of the Middle Ages.
Horace is another beloved classic poet.
Urbane, temperate, humorous, he
expresses the spirit of Roman society in its
Golden Age. At the other extreme from
his gentle philosophy are Martial's caustic
wit and Juvenal's savage pessimism and
satire. Among Latin poets, however,
Lucretius fills a place of his own. On the
Nature of Things is a long philosophical
poem unlike anything else in classic
literature. In it he examines natural
phenomena, religion, science, philosophy, and in
the process he anticipates several scien-
XXXV11

tific discoveries of the past hundred years.
A man centuries ahead of his time, he has
gained in our own day the recognition he
deserves.
Cicero survives as the most famous of
Latin prose writers. Lawyer, politician,
and a master of eloquence, he shaped a
lasting prose style which even in
translation is powerful in clarity and rhythm.
Fifty-seven of his speeches have been
preserved, along with fragments of many
others. His treatises on friendship and old
age and his collection of letters have
influenced many later writers, among them
Montaigne, Sir Francis Bacon, Jonathan
Swift.
The leading historians of the Roman
Empire were Livy and Tacitus. Livy
wrote the history of Rome from its
founding to the fall of Carthage. Much of his
material he drew from Polybius, a Greek
historian who had lived through the
period of the Punic Wars. The effectiveness
of Tacitus as the historian of his own age
lies in his powers of analysis, his excellent
character sketches, and his lucid, ironic
style. Suetonius presents a different and
more scandalous picture of Roman history
and life in his Lives of the Twelve
Caesars. His account is one of imperial
baseness and intrigue.
What Suetonius did with historical
characters, Petronius, friend of the
Emperor Nero, did in prose fiction. His
Satyricon is a sly, unvarnished tale of
magnificence and vice, a shameless
comedy of manners laying bare a decadent
society that had lost all sense of shame.
Several generations later Lucius Apuleius
wrote The Golden Ass, a satirical story of
witchcraft and picaresque adventure.
Daphnis and Chloe belongs to the same
period, a romantic idyl of pastoral life and
young love attributed to Longus, a Greek
writer of the Hellenistic revival.
Under happier circumstances these
tales might have speeded the development
of the novel, but by the second century
Roman culture had grown stagnant and
the empire was crumbling from within.
Only two other literary works stand out in
the closing centuries of Roman rule and
the long twilight of Greek culture. One of
these is the Meditations of Marcus
Aurelius, an emperor influenced by the
Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. Written in
Greek, the Meditations reveals the inner
thoughts of a wise and humane ruler who
believed that virtue is its own reward and
that the ways of the gods, inscrutable to
man, are just. The other is On the
Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius, who
has been called the last Roman writer.
This work, which bridges the gap
between pagan philosophy and Christian
belief, was a favorite book among scholars
and writers of the Middle Ages.
Through the writings of St. Jerome,
St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and others,
Latin survived as the language of the
medieval Church. But in the centuries
which followed the fall of Rome the great
Greek and Latin classics were to have
litde influence on literature or thought.
Their revival came only with the
beginning of the Italian Renaissance in the
fifteenth century.
It would be impossible to pass from the
classic world without some consideration
of the Bible as a literary work. For the
Bible is an anthology of fine literature-
myth, history, biography, poetry, short
stories, letters, prophecy—as well as a
tremendous religious document. In Joseph
and His Brothers, Thomas Mann has
shown that the Joseph story is the outline
of a novel perfect in construction. Milton
went directly to the Bible for his subject
in Paradise Lost. Certainly no other book
has had a more profound or far-reaching
influence on human conduct and belief.
Here again we are partly indebted to
Greece and Rome. At Alexandria, in the
second century B.C., Jewish scholars
began the Greek translation of the Old
Testament known as the Septuagint. The
New Testament was written entirely in
Hellenistic Greek. When St. Jerome
prepared the Latin translation of the Bible—
the Vulgate—he worked with Greek texts
as well as Hebrew and Aramaic
manuscripts. WyclifTs translation was made
XXXVlll

from the Vulgate. The Authorized, or
King James, Version was prepared from
Hebrew and Greek texts. Published in
1611, it has in large measure determined
English prose style. So the Bible as most
of us know it today is a religious and
literary heritage transmitted through the
great cultures of the past.
THE MIDDLE AGES
The Middle Ages is the name
historians gave to the period between the pillage
of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 and the
fall of Constantinople in 1453. These
dates are convenient but hardly accurate,
for we know that the return to barbarism
began with the recall of the Roman
legions and that the Renaissance had its
roots planted deeply in the feudal system
which replaced the authority of Rome.
The Middle Ages were the Dark Ages.
The period was one of wars, famine,
pestilence, and gross superstition. Aside
from the monasteries, there was no place
where a writer could work, and there were
few men who would have been capable
of reading his manuscript. But the age
was not as benighted as was once
supposed. In the Arab universities at
Damascus, Cairo, and Cordova the Greek
philosophers and scientists were studied
as carefully as the Koran. It is said that the
tutor of St. Thomas Aquinas was a Moor,
and in the second half of the Middle Ages
many French and English scholars
studied in the Moorish schools. In England
and Ireland, less ravaged by turmoil after
the collapse of Rome, there were famous
scholars like the Venerable Bede or the
Irish monks Charlemagne summoned to
his court when he planned to revive the
schools. The Benedictine monks collected
classic manuscripts and preserved them in
their libraries. Medieval scholasticism, dry
and schematic as it was, did more than
keep learning alive. The schools produced
both a Friar Bacon and a Francois Villon.
The period was also one of great faith
which gave meaning and dignity to men's
lives. During the Middle Ages man's hope
of forgiveness and salvation inspired the
building of magnificent cathedrals and
sent knightly Europe on crusades to
reclaim Jerusalem from the Saracens. It was
only natural that this same faith should
find expression in literature. St.
Augustine was both a father of the Church and
a profound thinker. In his Confessions he
wrote an intimate and revealing
autobiography. The City of God, written to
refute the charge that the sack of Rome
was punishment by the gods because of
the spread of Christianity, is a religious
treatise over which theologians have been
disputing ever since. In it he wrote: "The
greatest city in the world has fallen in
ruin, but the City of God abideth for
ever." His argument established the
tradition of spiritual and temporal power for
the medieval Church. Although St.
Augustine lived in the fifth century, he is as
much a citizen of the Middle Ages as St.
Francis of Assisi, St. Bonaventure, and St.
Thomas Aquinas.
Meanwhile, out of the pine forests and
frost-rimed harbors of the North, a new
type of literature was emerging, tales of
Germanic tribal heroes that come down to
us in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf and
the German Nihelungenlied, stories of
heroic adventure, enchantments and
strange monsters, bloody family feuds.
From the same sources at a later date
came the Scandinavian eddas and sagas,
long chronicles in verse or prose of
legendary Viking days and the early history of
Iceland and Norway.
As the ideals of the chivalric code
began to change the old, rough feudal
life, metrical romances dealing with King
Arthur and other chivalric heroes
followed the primitive, vigorous Germanic
stories of the earlier period. In France
troubadours sang graceful poems in praise
of their loves and created the knighdy
cult of woman-worship. Most famous of
the French romances were The Song of
Roland and Aucassin and Nicolette.
By the thirteenth century medieval
society was almost as formalized in its
literature as it was in its social structure. For
the knight and his lady there were the
XXXIX

courtly romances sung by minstrels and
troubadours; for the churchman, stories of
saints and martyrs and collections of
moral tales like those in the Gesta
Romanorum; for the artisan and peasant,
folk ballads and beast fables in which
they satirized the clergy and nobility; for
scholars, chronicles like those of Froissart
and Cbmmines.
The figure of Dante towers high above
all other writers of the fourteenth century.
The Divine Comedy—in Dante's day it
was simply the Commedia, a story with a
happy ending—is his master work, a long
poem revealing the whole mind and spirit
of the Middle Ages. In it the poet records
the splendor and faith of the medieval
Church, the idealism of chivalry, the
scope of philosophy and science in his
day. The framework of the story is simple.
Dante, lost in the darkness of a deep
wood, is rescued by Vergil, who guides
the younger poet through Hell,
Purgatory, and Heaven. The poem may be read
for story, for poetic imagery, for
allegorical interpretation. No other literary work
has the scope and depth of Dante's
narrative poem, and no other writer has ever
expressed so vividly man's need for
wisdom and spiritual guidance.
Geoffrey Chaucer is the great figure in
English literature of the Middle Ages.
The Canterbury Tales is a work of realism
and humor that has not staled with time.
Troilus and Criseyde, although written in
verse, is our earliest example of the
psychological novel. When Chaucer
assembled his thirty-two pilgrims at the
Tabard Inn at Southwark and set them
on their way with gaiety and gusto, he
was representing almost the whole of
medieval society. But his people are never
types. They are as strongly individualized
as the stories they tell. And what stories!
Chaucer is worth knowing. If the Middle
English in which he wrote confuses you,
read him in one of the excellent modern
versions now available. There is no better
introduction to English literature than the
characters and tales of the Canterbury
pilgrims.
Some of his stories Chaucer borrowed
from Boccaccio, his Italian contemporary.
Boccaccio lived and wrote in the Middle
Ages, but his work points unmistakably
toward the Renaissance. Author of
various books, including a biography of
Dante, he is best known for The
Decameron, a collection of one hundred
court and tavern tales retold in his
graceful, lively prose. The stories range from
the bawdy and the grotesque to the poetic
and the pathetic. They are told,
supposedly, by young men and women who
have retired to a country villa to escape a
plague. In The Decameron, however, the
writer directs our interest to the stories
and not, as Chaucer does, to their tellers.
The collection demonstrated for
Boccaccio's time the possibilities of fiction in
prose. He is one of the forerunners of the
modern novel.
Sir Thomas Malory performed the
same service in English literature when
he collected all the stories of King Arthur
and his knights of the Round Table and
retold them in Le Morte d!Arthur.
Malory's tales, written in quaint, simple
prose, still mean for most readers the
romantic side of medieval life. The book
is historically important, as it was one of
the first printed by Caxton on his press at
Westminster.
One last figure, and the most
picturesque of all, stands between the old
medieval world and the new. He is
Francois Villon, scholar, poet, tosspot,
gallows bait, associate of thieves and
drabs. In his poetry he paints a realistic
1)icture of the Paris underworld of vio-
ence and sin. His work also reveals his
touching devotion to his aged mother and
his adoration of the Virgin. Medieval and
modern, he is the spiritual ancestor of
Baudelaire. It has been said with
justification for the claim that Villon, Rabelais,
and Montaigne shaped French literature
between them.
THE RENAISSANCE
The Renaissance was a period of
rebirth, in art, science, and literature.
xl

Again the change had come more
slowly than men realized at the time.
Artists of the Renaissance knew the
earlier paintings of Cimabue and Giotto.
Writers had before them the
examples of Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and
Petrarch's sonnets. Medieval alchemists
had never changed lead into gold, but
they had made other discoveries adding
to man's knowledge of his world. Coster
in Holland and Gutenberg in Germany
had invented the printing press and
ended forever the slow process of copying
books by hand. Marco Polo had traveled
to Cathay and returned to Venice to stir
men's imaginations with accounts of
strange lands beyond the boundaries of
Europe. And everywhere men were
growing restless under the feudal domination
of Church and state.
Perhaps the deciding impulse came
(when Constantinople fell to the Turks in
1453. Greek scholars, taking with them
to Italy a knowledge of classic literature
that Western Europe had almost
forgotten, gave medieval man a new sense of
continuity with the past. Suddenly, it
seemed, a new age was dawning. It was
Shakespeare's "brave new world," in
which anything was possible.
Columbus, Vasco da Gama, the Cabots,
Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, and all the
great navigators and freebooting captains
of the age widened men's physical
horizon and claimed new lands beyond the
seas for their sovereigns. Meanwhile men
were exploring new frontiers of the mind
as well as unknown continents. Galileo
invented the telescope and Copernicus
changed man's conception of the world
when he viewed the earth as only one
small dot in a universe of stars and
planets. Painters learned from Greek
sculpture the singleness of body and spirit.
Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and
Titian were pioneers and masters in the
greatest period of painting the world has
ever known. Men began also to assert the
right to worship as they pleased. Martin
Luther and the Reformation are as much
a part of the Renaissance as
Michelangelo's Last Judgment or Shakespeare's
plays.
It is against this larger background that
the literature of the period must be
viewed, for to the Renaissance man
scholarship, art, science, statecraft, poetry,
and philosophy were one unit of human
thought and activity, not divided into
separate departments as we know them
today. Da Vinci was, among other things,
a painter, musician, inventor, architect,
mathematician, chemist, and botanist.
Michelangelo wrote beautiful sonnets.
Spenser, Sidney, and Raleigh were poets
as well as soldiers. Benvenuto Cellini,
sculptor and goldsmith, painted indelibly
his own swaggering portrait in his Auto-
biography, in which he showed the age
more vividly alive than Vasari revealed it
in Lives of the Painters.
Italy, having inherited the relics of
Greek and Roman civilizations, was the
first country to feel the stirrings of the
new age. At Florence, Lorenzo de Medici,
patron of poets and artists, gathered about
him a notable group of writers. There
Machiavelli, Florentine diplomat, studied
the career of the Medici and as the result
of his observations wrote The Prince, a
realistic treatise on statecraft. Ludo-
vico Ariosto, at Ferrara, wrote Orlando
Furioso, based on the French Song of
Roland. In the same court Torquato Tasso
completed his heroic poem, Jerusalem
Delivered, a story of the Crusades.
In 1494 there was born at Chinon,
France, a writer whose name is
inseparably connected with the Renaissance
spirit. Francois Rabelais, scholar and
physician, poured his deep wisdom and
racy humor into his two tales, Gargantua
and Pantagruel. These books are a blend
of seriousness and ribald laughter, and
their humor still rings true after four
centuries. A lusty rebel against medieval
asceticism and scholastic dogma, Rabelais
wrote in such fashion that the phrase
"Rabelaisian wit" has passed into common
usage.
A very different writer, but typical in
his own fashion, is Michel de Montaigne,
xli

who tried to express in his essays what
he felt as a man. "I am my book," he
declared, and his writing covers a wide
segment of human experience, all
recorded with critical skepticism and
complete intellectual honesty. His gifts to
French literature are the frankness and
irony of the Gallic spirit.
In England the Renaissance reached
its peak during the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. The sixteenth century was an age
of great names and titles—Sir Thomas
More's Utopia, Sidney's Astroyhel and
Stella, Spenser's The Shepherd's
Calendar and The Faerie Queene, Bacon's
essays, the plays of Christopher Marlowe,
master of the resounding line—but
Shakespeare stands far above his
contemporaries. Like Homer and Dante, he is the
poet of his own place and of all the world
as well. It would require a book to analyze
the many aspects of his genius. We read
him for the entertaining stories he tells.
Most of them, we know, were borrowed
from other sources, from playwrights of
his own day, from Holinshed's
Chronicles, from Plutarch's Lives, but we can
still admire the creative skill of a writer
able to take a slight or threadbare story
and shape it into a work of art. We read
him for his matchless poetry, the sheer
beauty of language we find even in his
poorer plays. We read him for characters
who seem as various as life
itself—braggart Falstaff, noble Othello, perplexed
Hamlet, ambitious Macbeth, tragic Lear,
Malvolio, Prospero, Brutus, Dogberry,
Pistol, Romeo, Shylock, Rosalind. The
list is almost endless. We read him
because he brings history dramatically
before us, for the sweeping range of his
thought, for the lyrics scattered through
his plays. He stands at the center of
Elizabethan England, but, as Ben Jonson
wrote of him, "He was not of an age,
but for all time."
While Shakespeare was at work on his
tragedies, Miguel de Cervantes, an old
Spanish soldier imprisoned for debt, began
to write the first part of Don Quixote,
published in 1605. This novel is more
than the great book of the Spanish
Renaissance—it is universal. The old Don is
noble in his illusions, dignified in disaster.
Beside him in his quest for adventure
rides his lazy, shrewd, devoted squire.
They are among the immortal characters
of fiction. Perhaps Cervantes began his
book, as some critics assert, with the
intention of laughing antiquated chivalry
out of Spain. Whatever his purpose, he
produced a work which is both realistic
and romantic and our one great example
of the comic novel. The two parts of
Don Quixote and the plays of Lope de
Vega and Calder6n mark the Golden Age
of Spanish literature.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
When Shakespeare died in 1616, his
laurels passed to Ben Jonson, whom the
next generation ranked as the better
playwright. One of Jonson's contributions to
the theater was his revival of classical
tragedy. More pleasing to modern taste,
however, are his great comedies of humors
—Every Man in His Humour, The Silent
Woman, Volfone, The
Alchemist—satires on the men and foolish foibles of
his day. In Jonson's time the English stage
seemed as brilliant as ever, but we know
now that its light was little more than the
afterglow of the bright Elizabethan day.
The romances and tragi-comedies of
Beaumont and Fletcher and the poetic
violence of Webster are good, but the
thinning vitality runs out in the
sentimental melancholy of Ford and Shirley's
artificiality. The closing of the theaters Dy
law in 1642 ended officially the great
decades of Elizabethan drama.
The translators of the Bible and Sir
Francis Bacon wrote the most notable
prose of the period. Bacon, like
Montaigne, made all knowledge his province
and natural experience his guide in the
study of mankind. His essays he called
"certain brief notes, set down curiously
rather than significantly" on a wide range
of topics. Many of his pithy sentences
have passed into proverbial usage: 'To
choose time is to save time." "Silence is
xlii

the virtue of fools." "Hope is a good
breakfast, but it is a bad supper." A voluminous
writer, he made his most important
contributions to scientific thought in his
Advancement of Learning and Novum
Organum, in which he set forth his theory
of inductive reasoning.
In the seventeenth century, an age of
religious controversy and wars all over
Europe, England was to reap the bitter
fruits of the Reformation. Expansion of
trade during the Renaissance had created
a new, prosperous middle class.
Industrious, thrifty, tenacious of rights,
dissenting in religious views, this class owed
nothing to the tradition of the medieval
Church and little to the spirit of
Renaissance humanism. In England the
rebellion that began in 1642 was social,
political, and rehgious warfare—middle class
against the nobility, Parliamentarian
against Royalist, Puritan against
Established Church.
Today we see that the confusion and
strife of the period were signs of painful
readjustment to forces and drifts set in
motion by Renaissance individualism.
But to men of that time it seemed, as
John Donne wrote, as if the world were
"all in peeces, all cohearance gone, All
just supply, and all relation." Few
writers of the period escaped being swept
along by the cross-currents of the time.
Among prose writers, Milton's Areo-
pagiHca, Hobbes' Leviathan, Taylor's
Holy Living and Holy Dying, Dryden's
Absalom and Achitophel, Fuller's Holy
and Profane States, and Locke's Of Civil
Government reflect the religious and
political sentiments of the age. Herrick,
Lovelace, Suckling, and Waller were
Royalist poets.
In John Milton, Puritanism found its
great spokesman. Time has drained away
much of the Puritan dogma from Paradise
Lost; what remains in this greatest of
English epics is spiritual exhaltation that
dramatizes the conscience of a man and
the conscience of his century. Writing to
"justify the ways of God to man," Milton's
majestic poem is a testament to faith and
the same austere but sublime certainties
in man's struggle between good and evil
that we find in the work of Aeschylus and
Sophocles. Pagan and Puritan were
moved alike by the spectacle of divine
redress redeeming man* rind.
John Bunyan stands out as the great
amateur among English storytellers.
Setting out to write a simple parable of
human life and Christian conduct, he
produced a fervent allegory whose
worldwide appeal is indicated by its translation
into more than one hundred languages
and dialects. This tinker and unlicensed
preacher who learned the art of writing
from his Bible is a master of eloquent
prose. Pilgrim's Progress is a pious tale,
an adventure story, a realistic novel.
Many readers will De entertained also by
the naiveti and disarming simplicity of
Bunyan's autobiography, Grace
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.
With the Restoration of Charles II in
1660 the English stage had a brief but
brilliant revival. Restoration comedy is
witty and artificial, often shocking in its
lack of moral taste. Written to please
dissolute courtiers of a profligate court, it has
had little popularity or influence beyond
its own period. William Wycherley's The
Country Wife and A Plain Dealer and
William Congreve's The Way of the
World are far superior to other plays of
the time.
A Restoration work certain to find
many readers in the long future is Samuel
Pepys' Diary. Pepys is one of the truth
tellers of our literature, and the diary he
kept from 1660 to 1669 gives us our
most intimate picture of men, manners,
and morals in the days of the Merry
Monarch.
The seventeenth century was rich in
scientific writing. Descartes published An
Essay on Method; Kepler formulated his
mathematical laws of astronomy, and
Newton in his Princifna outlined his
findings in physics, including the law of
gravitation.
While English drama was declining,
the French theater was entering its classic
xliii

age. French drama was an outgrowth of
the luxury and magnificence of the court
during the long reign of Louis XIV,
whose "L'£tat, c'est moi" created mon-
archial absolutism and prepared the way
for the French Revolution. Pierre Cor-
neille and Jean Racine wrote notable plays
which have had a continued popularity
in France, where the neo-classical
elements of their dramas seem to satisfy
Gallic passion for precision and form. A
playwright more universal in his appeal is
Moliere, whose Tartuffe, and The
Misanthrope are comedies of rich fun and good-
natured satire. He has been called the
Cervantes among playwrights.
When we look back on the seventeenth
century, we are most likely to be attracted
to its minor works: Donne's
metaphysical poems, Herrick's lovely lyrics, La
Fontaine's Fables, Madame de S£vign£'s
Letters, La Rochefoucauld's ironic
Reflections, and Walton's Compleat Angler,
the best book ever written on the
"Contemplative Man's Recreation." These
writers often seem closer to the true spirit
of the age than the major figures who
voiced its confusion and fury.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The eighteenth century was an age of
great prose. This is not to say that its
poetry was inferior—only that its poets
were few. Early in the period Alexander
Pope polished the heroic couplet to
epigrammatic perfection and in The Rape of
the Lock and his Essay on Man made
poetry a vehicle for social criticism and
Shilosophic speculation. In the closing
ecades of the century Robert Burns
brought poetry back to the simplicity of
common things when he wrote of the
sorrows, joys, and loves of the Scottish
peasant.
But prose is the language of thought,
and the eighteenth century has been aptly
called the Age of Reason. It was a time
when many men believed a perfect social
order possible by systematizing all
knowledge, thought, and activity. If science
could be explained rationally, they argued,
the same laws could be extended to
society, government, religion, and the arts.
Deism became the characteristic religious
tendency, its essence the attempt to
rationalize faith by reason and evidence.
Constitutionalism became the ideal
principle of government and laissez faire the
dominant theory in trade and industry.
To understand the underlying temper of
the time, read its philosophers and
scientists—Montesquieu's The Spirit of the
Laws, Voltaire's treatises and his
devastating satire in Candide, Rousseau's The
Social Contract, Adam Smith's An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations—and you will see why
the typical figures of the century are
Franldin, Jefferson, Thomas Paine,
Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson. The age
was trying to give order and meaning to
what the Renaissance had promised and
the seventeenth century had preserved.
The literature of the age reflects that
common-sense point of view which sets
a premium on truth. "The value of any
biography depends on its being true,"
declared Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Bos-
well's biography of the great lexicographer
is for all time a model of the factual and
the real. Johnson's essays and his novel,
Rasselas, are little read today, his
dictionary is no more than a literary
landmark; but the man himself, burly,
slovenly, opinionated, yet great in spirit and
revealingly human, lives in Boswell's
work. The same deep and informed
passion for truth makes Edward Gibbon's
The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire one of the greatest histories of all
time.
Their purpose "to expose the false arts
of life, to pull off the disguises of
cunning, vanity, and affectation," Richard
Steele and Joseph Addison reclaimed the
essay from philosophy and science, gave
it characters and the interests of the
everyday world, made it familiar and
entertaining as a picture of life. Good-humored,
they stand at the opposite pole from
Jonathan Swift, for whom the way to
truth was the method of satire. Gulliver's
xliv

Travels is a classic of fantastic adventure
and a savage indictment of civilized
society, a story to entertain children and a
moral lesson for older readers. It can be
two different books in one because Swift
masked his unpleasant truths about man,
his pettiness, grossness, stupidity, and
appalling animalism, within a framework
or travel adventure in strange lands.
The development of the English novel,
in fact, grew out of the truth-telling
impulse of its creators. For most of us,
probably, the first novel compelling our sense
of belief is one we read in childhood—
Robinson Crusoe. Daniel Defoe was a
citizen of the country called by the
derisive French a nation of shopkeepers,
and his middle-class practicality and
interest in factual detail are apparent in
all of his books. Moll Flanders and The
Journal of the Plague Year have one
quality in common: both are fiction. His
use of real names and places, his
autobiographical method, even his stripped
clarity of style, are devices to convince us
of the truth of his narratives.
What Defoe did for the seamier side
of human character, Samuel Richardson
did for its virtues. His intention being
"to promote the cause of religion and
virtue," he told in Pamela and Clarissa
Harlowe stories of high-minded and good
young women. But he was less successful
in portraying a noble young man in Sir
Charles Grandison. His novels are
awkward in their letter form and heavy with
analysis of character, but they are models
for sentimental fiction from his day to
the vogue of the latest serial queen.
Henry Fielding, lawyer and
playwright, believed that Richardson's moral
views were conventional and shallow. In
protest, he began a burlesque of Pamela
in his own Joseph Andrews, but he forgot
his fun-making purpose when Parson
Adams walked into the pages of his novel.
Fielding's masterpiece is Tom Jones, the
realistic story of a hearty, vigorous young
man of eighteenth-century England. This
Work is one of the world's great novels,
filled as it is with the writer's robust
humor and deep, mellow philosophy of
life. Fielding's novels have the realism
and shrewd insights we find in Hogarth's
paintings.
A writer similar in material but without
Fielding's warm sympathies is Tobias
Smollett. His humor is crude and
boisterous, his view of life critical and coarse.
For all that, Roderick Random, Peregrine
Pickle, and Humphry Clinker present a
clear picture of the social life of the
time.
Lawrence Sterne is a unique figure in
the history of the novel. In one sense
Tristram Shandy is not a novel at all but
an elaborate cock-and-bull story in which
Sterne allows his foibles and whimsical
nature to lead him into all kinds of
digressions on any topic that comes into his
head. His biographical novel becomes a
picaresque of the mind, wayward, witty,
with flashes of sly sentiment and deep
feeling. But his characters live. Uncle
Toby, Corporal Trim, Mr. Shandy, and
Parson Yorick are as real as Parson Adams
and Tom Jones. A Sentimental Journey
is in the same vein, a narrative unlike any
other travel book ever written,
entertaining because it reflects Sterne's own delight
in the oddities of human character and
experience.
Like the previous age, the eighteenth
century has its literary residues, lesser
works that still provide entertainment.
Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer and
Sheridan's The Rivals and The School for
Scandal are delightful comedies. Ren£ Le
Sage's Gil Bias is one of the earliest and
best of picaresque novels; it is difficult to
explain why it is not more widely known
today. Then there are the comedies of
Beaumarchais on which popular operas
have been based—The Barber of Seville
and The Marriage of Figaro. Fanny Bur-
ney's Evelina is dated now, but
Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield still holds
its cheerful sentiment for many readers.
Mention must also be made of John Gay's
The Beggar's Opera, forerunner of the
buoyant merriment of Gilbert and
Sullivan.
xlv

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
A literary colossus, Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe stands astride the neo-clas-
sicism of the eighteenth-century and
nineteenth-century romanticism.
Emerging from the Storm and Stress period of
German literature, he became our last
example of the universal mind. His
influence began in 1774, when The
Sorrows of Young Weriher infected a whole
generation with pleasurable melancholy.
He wrote plays as popular as those of
Schiller, his friend and contemporary,
and lyrics as lovely as those of Heine. His
Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship is one
of the great novels. But the true measure
of his genius is Faust, the story of man's
thirst for all knowledge and all power,
reckless of consequences, regardless of
moral and religious law. Perhaps the
widespread interest which in 1949 attended his
two hundredth anniversary will reclaim
Goethe from awe-stricken neglect. He is
the only modern writer to challenge the
statures of Shakespeare, Dante, and
Homer.
In general, the literary history of the
nineteenth century is the story of
romanticism in retreat and the triumph of the
commonplace. The literature of the age
we view in clearer perspective, for its
great names were those we studied in high
school and college, its titles the books we
found on library shelves when we were
children. Closer to these writers in time,
we have a better understanding of their
problems and achievements.
The age, which began with the
Napoleonic Wars as an aftermath of the
French Revolution, saw the peace
muddled by the Congress of Vienna, knew
disillusionment, and lived through financial
Eanics, has more than surface resem-
lances to our own cycle of World Wars,
the Russian Revolution, the Treaty of
Versailles, dictators, depression, and
spiritual bankruptcy. Today we know that
the writers of the Romantic Age were not
always romantic and that the great
Victorians were not as full of sweetness and
light as they seemed to their readers.
But for a time, at least, English
romanticism spoke in its poets:
Wordsworth, who found intimations of
immortality in the beauty of nature and the
heart of man; Coleridge, poet of
imagination and dream; visionary Shelley; Byron,
eternity's pilgrim and society's critic;
Keats, who found life's joys and sorrows
in the world of the senses.
It spoke also in the essays of Charles
Lamb and Thomas De Quincey, and in
that strange offshoot, the Gothic romance.
Horace Walpole in The Castle of Otranto
and Mrs. Radcliffe in The Mysteries of
Udolpho created a literary fashion, a
spine-tingling fiction of ghosts,
sleepwalkers, ruined castles, dismal crypts,
birds of ill omen, plots of abduction and
murder. This literature was to cross the
Atlantic and reach its final flowering in
Edgar Allan Poe's poems and his Tales
of the Grotesque and Arabesque.
In a Hampshire village a quiet spinster
turned her back on terror and stormy
passion and in Pride and Prejudice brought
the novel of manners to a point of
perfection it has not achieved since. Perhaps
Emma, or Persuasion, is a better novel in
construction and detail, but her story of
the five Bennett sisters will always hold
first place among Jane Austen's readers.
For her the materials of fiction were not
the clash of events in that uncertain time.
She took her subjects from provincial
society, the only life she knew. A country
dance or a strawberry tea was to her an
occasion filled with dramatic possibilities,
but she created great effects with her
small cast and single scene. Her shrewd
observations of life, ironic wit, and
agreeable good sense make her a writer whose
popularity is not likely to fade.
At the same time Sir Walter Scott was
creating the historical novel, perhaps the
most lasting contribution of English
romanticism to world literature. Scott's
style seems awkward to us now and his
fiction weighted with excessive detail,
but he has never been surpassed in sheer
storytelling ability or the variety of
characters we find in his books. Pick any six
xlvi

titles from his long list of novels—Guy
Mannering, The Heart of Midlothian, Old
Mortality, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, Quentin
Durward. Each is an invitation to renew
old pleasures in Scott's stirring pictures of
the past.
Tennyson and Browning began their
careers as romantics; they ended them as
chief poetic spokesmen of the Victorian
Age. Tennyson summed up its
indecisions, hopes, and fears when he published
In Memoriam in 1850. Browning's master
work did not appear until 1868. The
Ring and the Book is a long narrative
poem pointing toward the modern
psychological novel. Poetry interpreted the age;
the essay criticized it in the work of
Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Thomas Car-
lyle.
The parade of books which were to
affect the contemporary world began in
mid-century. John Stuart Mill published
his Principles of Political Economy in
1848, the year in which Marx and Engels
issued their Communist Manifesto.
Charles Darwin's Origin of Species
appeared in 1859, The Descent of Man in
1871. Marx spoke out again with the first
volume of Das Kapital in 1867. In the
next year Huxley's The Physical Basis of
Life disturbed many readers. The next
decade brought Henry George's Progress
and Poverty. The 1880's saw the
publication of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zara-
thustra and Beyond Good and Evil. By
1890 only the writings of William James,
Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and
Albert Einstein were needed to complete
seasonal changes in the intellectual
climate of our time.
The lasting effects of these world
movers were still hidden in the future,
however, when Charles Dickens published
Pickwick Papers in 1836. This early work
contains all the qualities we continue to
associate with his name: the vivid
characterizations, droll humor, pathos, a
mastery of scene and situation. Today we
know that his books sin against almost
every canon of the novel, but we still read
him because he carries us forward with
a creative vitality that seldom loosens his
hold upon our sense of belief. Again we
can piclc our titles at random—David Cop-
perpeld, the immortal Pickwick, A Tale
of Two Cities, Great Expectations. In
them Dickens remains the most popular
of nineteenth-century writers.
Thackeray's Vanity Fair we read for
the character of Becky Sharp in a novel
which has unfortunately overshadowed
the greater art of his historical
masterpiece, Henry Esmond. Of George Eliot
we are no longer quite so sure. Adam
Bede, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and
Romola are impressive monuments to her
fame, but we miss in her moral
seriousness and critical point of view the saving
grace of humor which redeems Dickens'
melodrama and sentimentality. Yet
Middlemarch remains, as Virginia Woolf has
pointed out, one of the tew novels ever
written for adult minds.
A writer more to the modern taste is
Anthony Trollope, restored to popularity
after several decades of neglect. Trollope
is another of the great truth tellers. With
reckless haste that paid little heed to
niceties of style he turned out scene after
scene of English provincial life, and as a
result the social and cultural picture of
his age stands before us today as
meaningful and whole as it was when the ink
dried on his page. Because he hurried to
get everything in, his Barchester is
nineteenth-century England. In novels like
The Warden and Barchester Towers we
recognize it for what it was, a very real
and self-contained world.
Trollope presents his Slopes and Proud-
ies with keen awareness of their social
and moral values but without mocking
irony. For that we go to George
Meredith s The Ordeal of Richard Veverel and
The Egoist. Meredith asks much of his
readers, who must realize that his poised
humor and subtle, figurative style are a
comic mask over a view of life that was
essentially tragic.
From art as discipline we turn to the
world of the Brontes, where everything
is natural and free. The heroine of Char-
xlvii

lotte Bronte's Jane Eyre owes nothing to
the conventions of Victorian society as she
tells her own story with frankness and
passion that brought new insights into
English fiction. Wuthering Heights, by
Emily Brontg, is a work of pure genius.
Charlotte called her sister's novel a "wild"
book, and it is that. HeathclifiF and
Catherine Earnshaw are human beings in
speech and form, but their natures are as
wild and stormy as nature itself. The
brooding spirit of the Yorkshire moors
sweeps into Emily Bronte's prose, filling
it with harsh poetry. The result is a book
that stands high among the world's great
novels.
On the continent, meanwhile, novelists
had carried realism to a point where no
English writer of the time dared venture.
The realists had not won their place
without a struggle. Victor Hugo's Les Mis-
erables and The Hunchback of Notre
Dame keep alive the romantic spirit of his
work. Few characters in fiction are as
well known as D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos
and Aramis, the gallant heroes Alexandre
Dumas immortalized in The Three
Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The
Vicomte de Bragelone. Stendhal, author
of The Charterhouse of Parma and The
Red and the Black, is another writer
marked for survival. Realism came into
its own, however, when Gustave Flaubert
wrote Madame Bovary and A Sentimental
Education. Honor6 de Balzac, most fertile
of French novelists, wrote more than
ninety novels and tales in his tremendous
Human Comedy. Here, again, we pick
our titles at random—Father Goriot,
Cousin Bette, Eugenie Grandet. Guy de
Maupassant, master of the short story, is the
connecting link between Flaubert's
realism and the naturalism of Emile Zola,
who in Nana, The Downfall, and The
Land carried realism to its farthest edge
in his attempt to make fiction an exact
transcription of life.
Nikolai Gogol, author of Dead Souls,
is one of the fathers of the Russian novel,
which reached its peak in the work of
Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevski, and
Count Leo Tolstoy. Turgenev is the great
critic of his society in Smoke and Fathers
and Sons, a master of form and a writer
of deep humanitarian spirit. Dostoevski's
province is the black night of the human
soul in the world of the outcast and the
oppressed. In Crime and Punishment,
The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov
he plumbs the depths of man's shame and
guilt. Tolstoy brought his passion for
reform into much of his fiction. War and
Peace stands far above his other novels,
just as it towers over all fiction of the
past or present. A story of the Napoleonic
Wars, its vast enclosures of time and
space seem to hold the whole of human
experience within its pages. Anton
Chekhov is the fourth of the great nineteenth-
century Russians. Best known for his
short stories, he wrote in The Cherry
Orchard and The Seagull plays which
convey the same terse, impressionistic
pictures of Russian life.
Neither Robert Louis Stevenson's
revival of romance in Treasure Island and
Kidnapped nor Rudyard Kipling's
brilliantly vigorous short stories—good as
these writers are—measure up to
European literature at the end of the
nineteenth century. The only English writer to
stand beside his continental
contemporaries is Thomas Hardy. In novels like
The Return of the Native, The Mayor of
Casterbridge, and Tcss of the d'Urber-
villes he explored tragic relationships
between character and environment. The
individual, good or bad, against the vast,
imponderable forces of the universe is
Hardy's vision of life, and this spectacle
he treats with detached awareness of the
parts played by tragic circumstance and
the irony of fate in the lives of men. In
his work we feel that an Aeschylus or
Sophocles has been reborn in a modern
writer.
The nineteenth century in Europe
closed with a revival of dramatic
literature. Henrik Ibsen brought realism and
social problems into the theater in The
DolVs House and Ghosts, plays which
prepared the way for George Bernard
xlviii

Shaw and John Galsworthy. Bitterness
and pessimism also marked the plays of
August Strindberg. Maxim Gorky
dramatized sheer human misery in The Lower
Depths. The novel, the short story, and
the drama were now realistic. Europe had
entered the twentieth century.
More important to American readers,
however, is the fact that the nineteenth
century saw the development of our
national literature. The early beginnings
had been tentative and far apart.
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, written
without thought of publication, has
become one of our permanent possessions,
but it is an exception. The writings of
Thomas Paine and Philip Freneau belong
only to the period of the Revolution; the
Connecticut wits are as dated as Michael
Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom; the
novels of Charles Brockden Brown are no
more than titles in literary histories. But
if William Cullen Bryant had written
nothing but "Thanatopsis" and 'To a
Waterfowl" he would still be
remembered, for he was our first true poet,
finding food for moral reflection in the woods
and fields of the American landscape.
Washington Irving wrote the folklore of
a new continent in "Rip Van Winkle"
and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
Lover of legend and tradition, a writer
perfect in the short flight, he bridged the
gap between the old world and the new
in The Sketch Book and Bracebridge
Hall
James Fenimore Cooper brought into
American fiction a knowledge of rivers
and woods and the wild, free life of the
frontier. He wrote our best novel of the
Revolutionary War in The Spy and our
first true sea novel in The Pilot, but his
fame is even more secure in the Leather-
stocking Tales—The Deerslayer, The Last
of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, Tfce
Pioneers, and The Prairie. The figure of
the lone hunter in the American
wilderness possessed Cooper's imagination, and
in his novels, carelessly written as they are,
he gives us our heroic picture of pioneer
life. There was a time when Cooper was
read chiefly for his thrilling stories of
escape and pursuit. Nowadays we know that
his values run deeper. There is almost a
prophetic quality in his writing; long
before the actual frontier disappeared he
dramatized the fate of the Indian and the
frontiersman in that short interval
between wilderness life and an expanding
industrial society. Beneath their blood-
and-thunder plots the Leatherstocking
Tales reflect Cooper's interest in the
westward movement and the social tensions it
created.
The American renaissance came
suddenly in New England. For a good
picture of that spacious time read Van Wyck
Brooks' The Flowering of New England,
a book neither biography, chronicle, nor
analysis, but a mixture of all three. The
opening chapters on Ticknor and Everett,
scholars of genius who gave the age its
taste for learning, and the closing chapters
on Holmes and Lowell—the lesser men
of the period—enclose the book in a frame
of reference. Everywhere else is the
passionate stir of a new day. The background
is of two parts: first the clear New
England landscape of hills and meadows,
quiet villages, orchards, and dark sea, a
region marked by the trades and traits
of its people; then the indoor world of the
library, where men studied the
philosophies of Greece and the Orient and poets
discovered in lays of the troubadours and
roaring sagas the literature of a romantic
past. Against this background the great
writers come to life, and as they move-
Longfellow, Prescott, Emerson,
Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whittier, Holmes,
Lowell, and many others—through an age that
begins in Gilbert Stuart's Boston and ends
in Concord with the death of Thoreau,
Brooks distills into flowing, luminous
prose the essence of their work.
Something in the keen, bracing atmos-
Ehere of Concord seemed for a time to
ft men above themselves. There Ralph
Waldo Emerson, social rebel and ethical
thinker, wrote his poems and essays to
set forth his doctrine of self-knowledge
and self-reliance. He preached no formal
xlix

philosophy, only a transcendental belief
in the possible in man, but he brought the
democratic ideal into our intellectual and
moral life. There Henry David Thoreau
went into the woods in quiet protest
against growing materialism in the society
about him, and the record of his
experience he wrote in Walden has become
twentieth-century man's text in essential
living. Nathaniel Hawthorne was never
far from Concord in spirit. Working in
solitude, he explored his regional and
ancestral past. Out of his brooding
concern for the Puritan spirit and the
problem of evil came The Scarlet Letter and
The House of the Seven Gables as well
as the allegorical short stories, all works of
quiet but sure art.
At Cambridge, meanwhile,
Longfellow and Lowell lived in a mellower,
more scholarly atmosphere. Evangeline
and The Courtship of Miles Standish
have the same academic echoes we hear in
The Vision of Sir Launfal and The Big-
low Papers. Oliver Wendell Holmes was
a Boston wit. At Amesbury, not far off,
Whittier preserved in Snow-Bound and
other poems a nostalgic picture of rural
New England already passing.
There were other great figures in
America's Golden Day. In the South, Edgar
Allan Poe had expressed in musical verse
the mysteries of love and death, and he
had brought the short story to its finished
form in his tales of imagination and the
supernatural. West of Boston, Herman
Melville, having written Typee and
Omoo among other books of seafaring
adventure, was ready to publish Moby Dick.
His own generation read Moby Dick for
information and romance. Today we read
it as a fable of man's self-destroying
pursuit of natural evil in the world, the
white whale a symbol of all the forces
creating rage and hatred in man's long
history. The novel is a reflection of America's
unquiet mind, its magnificent hopes,
despair, and defiance.
Walt Whitman published the first
edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855. The
decade was already one of stress when he
spoke out bravely in the face of the
gathering storm. Many of his poems are
weakened by bombast and fustian, but at
his best his work is filled with eloquence
and beauty. It is a saddening commentary
on our way of life to say that Whitman
is our only great poet of democratic beliefs
and institutions, a writer who spoke for
himself, his country, and his time. Only
Carl Sandburg in The People, Yes has
echoed Whitman's vision of the greatness
and simple dignity possible in the life of
Western Man.
Mark Twain was in many ways
Whitman's common, democratic man. He was
born at the end of an era, and in his best
books—Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer,
Life on the Mississippi—he looked back to
a place and a way of life the Civil War
had ended forever. The Mark Twain who
looked toward the future was the tired,
disgusted pessimist of The Man That
Corrupted Hadleyburg and The
Mysterious Stranger. His Hannibal is a place of
idyl and myth, the enchanted world of
boyhood in a young nation, between the
forest and the river. All the life of
America moved up and down the Mississippi
in those years; Huck Finn and Nigger Jim
are only a part of its restless humanity.
Although the river offered tranquillity and
freedom, its currents sometimes flowed
into violence or into backwaters where a
clear-eyed boy could see whatever was
shoddy or soiled in human character.
Twain was a curiously uneven writer.
Much of his clowning as a public
entertainer has already worn thin, but the
virility and hearty laughter and sane
pessimism are in the durable American
grain, the drawling voice of the frontier
in protest against mediocrity and
conformity.
William Dean Howells, Twain's
contemporary and friend, had the even
temperament Twain lacked, but he was not
sufficiently a rebel to break with the
genteel tradition of most American writing
after the Civil War. Admirer of Balzac
and Zola, he created in his own novels
only a domestic realism which has been
1

called "the romance of the commonplace."
The Rise of Silas Lapham is his most
representative book.
On this side of the Atlantic the new
realism first made itself heard in the
novels of Stephen Crane and Frank
Norris. Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
was the shocking book of the mauve
decade, a novel Howells thought "too honest"
for readers of the 90's. Crane's great book
is The Red Badge of Courage, a vividly
realistic story of war from the point of
view of a soldier in the ranks. Norris, a
more somber writer, wrote McTeague and
in The Octoyus and The Pit completed
two novels of a planned trilogy on
American economic fife, before his death at
thirty-two.
Henry James, who wrote at the end of
the nineteenth century and the beginning
of the twentieth, belongs to British
literature as well as American. An expatriate
almost all of his life, he wrote on English
and European society from the viewpoint
of a sensitive American. His themes are
the artist in a materialistic society and the
American who is always a pilgrim to old
world tradition and sometimes its victim.
James* craftsmanship is so scrupulous and
exquisite in detail that he has become one
of the great influences on the technique of
the novel, so that his fame, at least as a
writer's writer, seems assured. The
Portrait of a Lady is the best novel of his early
Eeriod. The Wings of the Dove, The Am-
assadors, and The Golden Bowl, written
shortly after the turn of the century, are
more complex in structure but more
revealing as art. His novelette, The Turn of
the Screw, is one of the great
psychological horror stories in the language.
A few more names and we finish with
the nineteenth century. These include
Emily Dickinson, who wrote distilled
lyrics on love, death, immortality, in the
hidden privacy of her Amherst garden;
Sidney Lanier, belated romantic; Bret
Harte, whose tales of the gold rush created
the vogue of the local color story; and
Sarah Orne Jewett, who in The Country
of the Pointed Firs re-created a picture of
New England life after its great days had
passed.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
When twentieth-century science
invented the atomic bomb, it made fate
more planetary than personal; otherwise
our cares and concerns seem very much as
they were a generation ago. Our attitudes
toward our problems change more quickly
—that is all. We have had the boob-baiting
satire of the generation represented by
H. L. Mencken in the essay and by
Sinclair Lewis in the novel, the private
anguish of Hemingway and others of the
lost generation, and the proletarian
dialectics of John Dos Passos and James T. Far-
rell in the depression 30's. Nowadays we
are told that ours is the Age of Anxiety,
but the telling has a familiar sound. Most
of it was said, and more emphatically, by
the major prophets of the Victorian Age.
So while we wait to learn the mid-century
Zeitgeist, the voices to whom we listen are
mostly those from the recent past.
Looking back to the beginning of the
century, for example, we know that Henry
Adams and Theodore Dreiser speak to us
more truly than Booth Tarkington and
Winston Churchill, the popular writers of
the period. The Education of Henry
Adams is more than one man's
examination of himself in relation to his
background and his age. Adams viewed with
detached appraisal a modern society which
"ran in every conceivable and
inconceivable direction," but without ethical
purpose or significance. His importance is
historical if nothing else, for he was the
first serious writer to consider
philosophically the relationship between modern
man and the mechanical symbols of his
civilization.
When Stuart Sherman complained that
Dreiser "has chosen only to illustrate the
unrestricted flow of temperament," he
was pointing unknowingly to the trait
which makes Dreiser a modern. There is a
primitive, monolithic quality in his
writing, "something grey and bleak and
hurtful, that has been in the world perhaps
li

forever," as Sherwood Anderson once
wrote. Into his long, unwieldy novels and
cumbersome short stories he poured all the
accumulated facts resulting from his
patient brooding over the activities and
psychology of the animal man. In his world
the divine fury of Aeschylus becomes the
inward compulsions of nature and the
external drives of a competitive society.
Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, The
Financier, and The Titan brought the
American novel close to Balzac's achievement in
his Human Comedy. An American
Tragedy is documentary analysis of social
morality. If The Bulwark and The Stoic,
published after Dreiser's death, are less
powerful than his earlier fiction, they gain
serenity as the last words of a writer who
dedicated his art to a search for truth
concerning human behavior. There are no
tricks in his novels; his artlessness is the
secret of his simple and often terrifying
sincerity.
Edith Wharton maintained for the
novel its last hold upon a traditional
society. Born into a Jamesian world of
wealth and culture, she arrived on the
scene too late to sustain its values and so
became the historian of its disintegration
as the old aristocracy of dignity and
breeding was giving way to a new plutocracy of
easy money and vulgar display. Having
known what the traditional society once
stood for, she let her characters stand or
fall by its old-fashioned but recognizable
standards. Her titles (The House of
Mirth, The Age of Innocence) reveal the
ironic temper of her art. Critic of the
society she knew best, she made few
excursions beyond her own fashionable world.
One of these is Ethan Vrome, a starkly
realistic, almost timeless tragedy of New
England life.
These three writers stand out among
the literary cross-currents of the time.
Local color, carrying over from the
nineteenth century a minor art based
on landscape, created effects as diverse
as Owen Wister's sagebrush stereotype
("When you call me that, smile.")
and brisk tales in which O. Henry
recreated New York as Baghdad-on-the-
Subway. Regionalism took on firmer
outlines in Ellen Glasgow's novels. 'What
the South needs," she declared, "is blood
and irony." Barren Ground, The
Romantic Comedians, and The Sheltered Life
are among the social chronicles and novels
of manners that grew out of her
determination to write about the South not
sentimentally, as a stricken province, but as a
part of the larger world. But writers were
not satisfied to get America stated; they
also wanted to remake it. When Upton
Sinclair exposed the evils of the
meatpacking industry in The "fungjie, he
assumed leadership of a group of writers
who stood for political, social, and
economic reforms. James Branch Cabell took
the way of evasion and mockery. His
romances of mythical Poictesme are
escapes into ironic fantasy and nose-
thumbing gestures toward Comstockery
and Mrs. Grundy.
Suddenly America was reading its new
poets: the psychological portraiture of
Edwin Arlington Robinson's character
studies; the pastoral meditations and
narratives of Robert Frost, Yankee farmer and
poet-sage; Carl Sandburg's American
scene of prairie wheat fields, Chicago,
steel mills, and the laboring life; Vachel
Lindsay's chants of salvation in ragtime.
These writers were already well
established when T. S. Eliot published The
Waste Land in 1922. Most influential
poem of its period, The Waste Land
presents in historical and literary image a
contrast between the heroic past and an
ignoble present.
Revolt from the village had already
begun. In Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood
Anderson viewed with poetic perception
the quiet bravery and longings of
repressed, inarticulate lives. Edgar Lee
Masters wrote as a poet in Spoon River
Anthology, but his brief chronicles of
drabness and disillusionment belong to
the tradition of prose rather than to
poetry.
The country roads of village fiction led
inevitably to Main Street. Sinclair Lewis
lii

gave us an America of small-town
smugness, stupidity, and sham, of billboards,
realtors' conventions, adding machines,
corner drug stores, filling stations,
telephone operators, the movies, suburbia,
high-pressure salesmanship, pepped-up
religion, boosters' clubs, commercialized
medicine. Critics might protest that the
strident tones and confusion of his novels
showed no depths of wisdom and repose,
but we read Main Street and Babbitt as
soon as they appeared. Lewis' people were
two-dimensional caricatures, paper-thin,
but they were close enough to the real to
let us see ourselves and our neighbors.
Although we realize now that Lewis loved
best what he satirized most, he did
succeed in doing perfectly what Mark Twain
had attempted in The Gilded Age. His
novels show America talking loud and
acting big to conceal the poverty of spirit
beneath its gadget-minded civilization.
One true artist of the period stood apart
from literary cliques and fashions. Willa
Cather was the last of a generation of
writers who lived through lie passing of
the frontier, who saw the land of the
homesteader transformed into a
countryside of tidy farms and cramped, ugly
towns; and she found in pioneer virtues
her own values as an artist. Her first
important novels—O Pioneersl, The Song of
the Lark, My Antonio—enclosed vast
areas of prairie, hills, and sky in a world
rich and sustaining with homely realism.
A Lost Lady belongs to a later period. Its
theme, like that of The Professors House,
is decay, the spectacle of a way of life that
was once great and spacious giving place
to a new way that is paltry and crude.
Having written the elegy of the frontier,
Miss Cather found in more traditional
societies realities of the spirit which have
been almost overwhelmed in the
complexities and confusion of the present. Death
Comes for the Archbishop, a story of the
Southwest, is an American masterpiece
reclaiming a significant segment of our
national past.
But Willa Cather's concern for lasting
values offered little comfort, in the period
between the wars, to young writers facing
realities of disaster from want and
destruction by war. By that time the Jamesian
pilgrim had become the drifter, a rootless
generation looking for emotional release
in Paris night life or in the hot violence of
Spain. To the young expatriates who drift
between Left Bank cafes and Spanish
fiestas in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also
Rises, life has become the physical
sensations of drink, sport, lovemaking, and the
bullfight. The tragic love story and the
disastrous retreat from Caporetto in A
Farewell to Anns told us how the old
values had been lost. The sense of
retrieval which Hemingway expressed in an
inferior novel, To Have and Have Not,
found complete affirmation in For Whom
the Bell Tolls, a novel of the Spanish civil
war. Master of a stripped prose style that
conveys the immediate realities of
experience, Hemingway is important as the
spokesman and technical innovator of his
generation. His short stories, ranging from
Familiar anthology pieces like "The
Killers" to the less familiar but more
impressive "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," are
probably the best being written today.
The 1930's gave us John Dos Passos,
James T. Farrell, Thomas Wolfe, John
Steinbeck, and William Faulkner. Dos
Passos' best-known work is U.S.A., a
trilogy made up of The 42nd Parallel, 1919,
and The Big Money. This novel attempts
to show, through the experiences of a
dozen or so representative characters, the
vast and complicated structure of
American life between 1900 and 1930 and to
trace the slow cleavage of its social and
economic system, which by the depression
years had created a nation divided
between the possessors and the dispossessed.
The note of social protest is loud in
everything Dos Passos has written between
Manhattan Transfer, a kaleidoscopic
picture of New York life, and his recent
novels of the New Deal era. To create the
effect of contemporary life in U.S.A., he
hit upon three time-fixing devices: News-
reel, The Camera Eye, and a series of
impressionistic biographies. Farrell is a
liii

realist more in the tradition of Zola. His
Studs Lonigan trilogy and the series of
novels dealing with Danny O'Neill are
purely objective studies of life on
Chicago's mean streets.
Thomas Wolfe's four novels— Look
Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the
River, The Weh and the Rock and You
Can't Go Home Again—present in the
experiences of two different heroes a thinly
disguised autobiography of Wolfe
himself. Whether the hero s name is Eugene
Gant or George Webber, he is the same
undisciplined personality, a reflecting
screen for his author's exuberance and
confusion and despair. Wolfe's virtues as
a writer are as great as his faults: on one
side an unsurpassed realism of sense
impressions, an expert command of
language, the dream of lost time, the
marvelous reporting, the vivid character
sketches; on the other his failure to
achieve form, the impassioned rhetoric
and hymns to death and time that stand
outside the framework of the novels, the
overpowering egoism. His books make life
seem the thing he said it was, a common
haze of loneliness and groping shot
through with private fantasy and furious
outbreak against a materialistic society.
Wolfe's novels, diffuse in form, are in
spirit all of one piece. Steinbeck is a more
uneven writer. He has veered from
primitive mysticism to the issues of class
conflict, from sentimental exploitation of
Whitman's dear love of comrades to
quaintly humorous idealization of the
simple life. His one really fine
performance is The Grapes of Wrath, a bitter saga
of migration and hardship in the
experiences of a dispossessed dustbowl family
lured to California during the depression
and there betrayed by economic
exploitation.
William Faulkner is another writer who
has followed his own course. His subject is
the destruction of the old order in the South
and the further corruption of the
descendants of that order by a ruthless and
competitive industrial society; and his novels,
experimental in form, poetic in style, are
haunted alike by the beginnings of
Southern culture and the threat of its extinction.
Most of his fiction has for background
imaginary Yoknapatawpha County in
Mississippi. The Yoknapatawpha novels—
The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying,
Light in August, Absalom, Absaloml, and
Intruder in the Dust are among the best-
elaborate a tremendous myth of Southern
life and history. The Sound and the Fury
tells of social and moral decay in a family
of gone-to-seed aristocrats. Light in
August and Intruder in the Dust reflect racial
problems. Absalom, Absaloml, key novel
of the series, brings together all of
Faulkner's themes: the old order in the South,
chattel slavery and the evils it engendered,
the poor white, miscegenation,
fratricide, community shame and guilt, social
decay.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is a writer whose
posthumous reputation has added greatly
to his stature. During the 1920's he
created three fashions in fiction: the
younger generation novel, the college
novel, and the gangster novel. This Side
of Paradise has the wit and brilliance of a
rebellious talent. The Great Gatsby,
mature in theme and construction, is the
story of one man's education in the
emotional erosion and waste the boom period
imposed upon the human spirit. Tender
Is the Night is another picture of the lost
generation, grown older and sadder but
little wiser, and still lost.
In spite of recent vulgarization,
regional and historical novels make up an
interesting and varied body of work: the
blend of realism and folk poetry in Tfec
Time of Man and The Great Meadow, by
Elizabeth Madox Roberts of Kentucky;
Glenway Wescott's stories of rural life in
Wisconsin in The Affle of the TLye and
The Grandmothers; Walter D. Edmonds*
re-creation of Erie Canal days in Rome
Haul; Elsie Singmaster's stories of the
Pennsylvania German country; novels of
the West by H. L. Davis, Vardis Fisher,
Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and A. B.
Guthrie; Conrad Richter's remarkable
trilogy of pioneer life in The Trees, The
liv

Fields, and The Town; Carl Sandburg's
panorama of American history in
Remembrance Rock. A list of books out of the
ordinary in theme or treatment would
include E. E. Cummings' The Enormous
Room, a story of life in a French military
prison; Pearl Buck's The Good Earth;
Elinor Wylie's The Venetian Glass
Nephew; Katherine Anne Porter's Pale
Horse, Pale Rider and her short stories in
Flowering Judas; Thornton Wilder's The
Bridge of San Luis Rey, and Erskine
Caldwell's tall-story exaggeration in Tobacco
Road.
The vitality and techniques of the
American novel have greatly influenced
contemporary world literature. In
England, on the other hand, the century has
seen a decline in the tradition of the novel.
Signs of change are most apparent in the
work of H. G. Wells, who made the novel
a literary packsack in which to peddle his
views on science, education, religion,
history, politics, and war. He began his
career as a writer of pseudo-scientific
romances like The Time Machine and
The War of the Worlds, both still
readable, and he ended it with didactic studies
excellent for social and political analysis
but of little value as fiction. Tono-
Bungay, a satire on modern business
practices, and Mr. Britling Sees It Through, a
study of a rational, liberal-minded
Englishman in wartime, will probably be read
after his Utopian novels have been
forgotten.
Polish-born Joseph Conrad was un-
equaled in his generation for technical
and aesthetic effects which are only now
being properly evaluated. He has been
called a novelist of the sea, a romanticist,
a realist, a writer of atmosphere, and a
philosopher in fiction. His own
experiences as a sailor provided many of the
plots and exotic settings of his novels, but
he is more than a writer of sea stories in
the Marryat tradition, for his novels take
shape around the moral issues of courage,
love, fidelity, honor. Man he saw in
conflict with powers of evil—savagery in
Almayer's Folly, cowardice in Lord Jim,
greed in Nostromo, lawlessness in Victory,
madness in Heart of Darkness. To him, as
he showed in The Nigger of the
Narcissus, the sea was the testing ground of
human character and action. He stated his
literary creed in his preface to the same
novel, when he wrote: "My task which I
am trying to achieve is, by the power of
the written word, to make you hear, to
make you feel—it is, before all, to make
you see."
John Galsworthy's deep humanitarian
sympathies and impartial realism set the
pattern for his novels and plays. What he
did, quite simply, was ask the English
upper middle class to re-examine its social
structure and morality. In his novels the
forces of conflict are always social,
between the conservative group to whom
property means goods acquired and
possessed, a symbol of class responsibility and
position, and the rebellious artist or lover
of beauty. The three novels of The
Forsyte Saga—The Man of Property, In
Chancery and To Let—present a family
whose collective life is dominated by
things. This trilogy is both family
chronicle and a social history of English life
between the Victorian Age and the period
immediately following World War I, in
which Galsworthy analyzes with patient,
scrupulous detail not only the acquisitive
instincts of his ruling class but also its
dannishness, stubborn pride, inverted
sentimentalism, and indifference to the
arts. A Modern Comedy, made up of The
White Monkey, The Silver Spoon, and
Swan Song, continues the story of the
Forsytes in order to show postwar forces at
work among the younger generation.
Soames Forsyte, the man of property, is
the central character giving unity to the
whole work, a frank materialist whose life
is nevertheless touched with greatness
because he stands for order and recognized
values in a world drifting toward no
values whatever. He became so real to
Galsworthy's readers that when Swan
Song was published a London newspaper
appeared with the heading, "Death of
Soames Forsyte."
lv

Although Arnold Bennett wrote a
number of novels about the
manufacturing district he called the Five Towns, The
Old Wives' Tale is his greatest
achievement in fiction. Time is the real theme of
this novel, which relates the life stories of
two sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines.
Everything contributes to a sense of time
passing. It condemns Constance to meek
endurance of provincial routine and
tedium. It carries Sophia to Paris and a
precarious existence there, as well as to the
accumulation of a modest fortune. In the
end she goes back to the town of her birth,
where the sisters end their days together
as time rounds out its circle. The Old
Wives' Tale is a cleanly built, powerfully
reahstic novel giving the impression of
life itself. The Clayhanger tetrology and
Riceyman Steps are other fine novels by
Bennett, each as detailed and
painstakingly reahstic as a painting of the Dutch
school.
The contemporary British novel reflects
a variety of aims and means if not a great
tradition. D. H. Lawrence wrote as a
social prophet who wished to bring back to
everyday existence a closer relationship
between man and nature, an
understanding of life less of the intellect than of the
five senses. Sons and Lovers, a study of
human personality thwarted by possessive
mother love, is a powerful psychological
novel written in vigorous, poetic prose.
The Rainbow and Women in Love
uncover subconscious tensions in sexual
relationships to show that many moderns
are lost in the confusion of their own
emotions. W. Somerset Maugham is an
unsparing realist and expert craftsman whose
best novel, Of Human Bondage, is the
partly autobiographical story of a young
man who learns through disillusionment
and hardship the limitations of his nature
and talent. The Moon and Sixpence
provides an exotic South Seas background for
a grimly reahstic study of self-centered
genius in a novel based on the life of Paul
Gauguin. Cakes and Ale is a wickedly
satirical portrait of literary genius in shirt
sleeves. Hugh Walpole was a more
traditional writer. Fortitude is a modern
version of David Copperpeld. The Hemes
Chronicle, his most ambitious work,
carries an English family through more than
two hundred years of social and political
history. Virginia Woolf experimented
daringly with technique in her attempt to
convey the true nature of reality. In prose
as delicate and impressionistic as that of
Katherine Mansfield in her short stories,
Mrs. Woolf went even beyond Joyce in
her use of symbols to make objects in the
outer world correspond to inward states of
thought and feeling. In Mrs. Dalloway
and To the Lighthouse she was most
successful in piercing the "luminous halo" of
experience to show the fleeting,
fragmentary interior life of her people. Orlando is
fantasy on themes of English history and
literature. The Waves, most intricate of
her novels, attempts to record impressions
of memory and sensation simultaneously
in the lives of six different characters.
Like Wells, Aldous Huxley has used the
novel as a vehicle of ideas. Unlike Wells,
however, he has no faith in science as a
cure for mankind's ills. In Brave New
World he satirizes with the savagery of a
modern Swift all concepts of a scientific
Utopia. Crome Yellow and Point Counter
Point show modern man divided between
the sensualism of his animal impulses and
the frustration of his intellectual processes.
The wisdom and insight of E. M. Forster
are illustrated in A Passage to India, a
study of racial tensions. Memoirs of a
Midget, by Walter de la Mare, combines
poetic fantasy and realistic social criticism.
One of the most remarkable and
influential novels of modern times is James
Joyce's Ulysses, a novel that records the
events of a single day in the lives of a
small group of Dubliners. In telling his
story* Joyce has given his stream-of-
consciousness technique a kind of order
by superimposing his characters and the
events of their day upon a structure of
Homeric myth. Thus Ulysses, beneath its
confusion of incident and subjective prob-
ings, parallels the story of the Odyssey, so
that Leopold Bloom, frustrated advertis-
lvi

ing salesman, is recognizable as Ulysses,
his earthy wife Molly as Penelope, and
Stephen Dedalus, a young writer, as
Telemachus. Joyce's bewildering system
of cross-references, parodies, and parallels
makes a first reading of this novel a
bewildering experience for the uninitiated,
for his purpose is not only to reproduce
the sights, sounds, and smells of his scene
but also to reveal the memories, desires,
and emotions of his people. Standing, as
it does, between his more objective
and beautifully written autobiographical
novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, and the later, nightmare
dreamworld of Finnegaris Wake, Ulysses
considerably enlarged the technical resources
and scope of the novel. There are only a
few contemporary novelists who have not
borrowed either directly or indirectly from
Joyce's symbolism and technique.
Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene
are the outstanding figures among younger
novelists. Waugh at his best has powers
of comic invention and satire reminiscent
of a younger and less didactic Shaw.
Under his hilarious improvisations in
Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies,
however, a serious writer is at work, whose
theme is the shoddiness of fashionable
Mayfair and the vicious frivolity of over-
civilized society. A Handful of Dust shows
class and country on the brim of a moral
abyss. From these not-so-funny comedies
of morals Waugh has turned in Brides-
head Revisited and later novels to themes
just as devastating but leavened by an
undercurrent of religious significance.
Graham Greene, who has written entertaining
melodramas in Stamboul Train, The
Ministry of Fear, and It's a Battlefield,
and more realistic novels in Brighton
Rock, The Power and the Glory, and The
Heart of the Matter, carries an almost
militant Christianity into the themes and
style of his books. He writes always with
an acute sense of surrounding evil and
man's eternal conflict with a malignant
universe.
In the drama George Bernard Shaw
looms above all other playwrights of his
own and later generations, just as Eugene
O'Neill occupies the foremost place in the
American theater. Shaw's wit and moral
fury in such plays as Candida, Man and
Superman, Back to Methuselah, Heartr
break House, and Saint Joan have lifted
doctrine to the level of art and stripped
away sentimentality and bourgeois
morality from the English stage. Ireland's
William Butler Yeats is still the giant among
English poets of the last half century. The
Sitwells—Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell
—represent aesthetic trends of the present
time, and W. H. Auden and Stephen
Spender speak for a more intellectual and
critical school of poets trying to express in
their verse the anxiety and turmoil of our
industrial civilization.
Except for a few writers whose work
holds immediate, topical interest, as in the
case of the French Resistance group or the
current Existentialists, the continental
writers with whom we are most familiar
are those whose established reputations
make them available in excellent
translations. The number of good books out of
Europe seems all the more remarkable
when we consider the wars, putsches, and
purges which have ravaged the continent
for more than two generations.
From France we have had the
sophisticated satires of the writer who signed his
country's name to his novels. Although
Anatole France began his career in the
1880's, he did not publish Penguin
Island, The Gods Are Athirst, and The
Revolt of the Angels until the early
decades of the present century. Roger Martin
du Gard gave us an important domestic
chronicle in The Thibaults. Andre* Gide,
eminent stylist and neo-classicist, is the
author of The Counterfeiters. Mans Fate
and Man's Hope, by Andr6 Malraux,
reflect modern ideological issues. Francois
Mauriac, author of Ther&se, is a deeply
religious writer. Jules Romains presents a
panoramic view of modern history in the
series of novels called Men of Good Will.
Albert Camus has brought new
techniques into French fiction. Antoine de
Saint-Exup&y has given us our only clas-
lvii

sic examples of the literature of flight in
Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.
There is also American-born Julian
Green, whose somber work, particularly
in The Closed Garden and The Dark
Journey, is Gallic in theme and treatment
as well as language.
The most important writer in modern
French literature, however, is Marcel
Proust. His Remembrance of Things Past
traces with subjective realism and
profound psychological analysis the decay of
French bourgeois society. In form
Remembrance of Things Past is a novel without
plot or crisis, unfolding with every lavish
detail that Proust could invoke. From the
dream-trance reverie which introduces
Proust's themes and characters to that
long last sentence with its slow echoes of
the word time, the novel is art distilled out
of the processes of memory and time itself,
the structure being dictated entirely by
the movement of memory and the illusion
of the way time passes, or seems to pass,
recurs, or seems to recur. The story begins
against the idyllic setting of Combray,
when the narrator was a child. It ends
with a scene in which Proust collects his
corrupt and aging people for the last time
at a reception in the Faubourg Saint-
Germain, and shows us a death's-head in
every chair. It is an indecent spectacle of
the end of an age, the will to death of an
effete society, as revealed by an
introspective storyteller whose observations and
perceptions we follow from childhood to
disillusioned middle age.
Close to Proust in stature stands
Thomas Mann, German author who has
now become an American citizen, a writer
whom many regard as the greatest man of
letters in the world today. Mann's
international reputation rests chiefly upon his
four great novels. Buddenbrooks,
published in 1901, preceded The Forsyte
Saga as a novel carrying the story of a
single family through several generations.
In this book the author traces the decline
and dissolution of a wealthy mercantile
family of Liibeck, where he himself had
been bom into the society he describes.
The Magic Mountain is a symbolic and
philosophical novel that attempts to take
in the whole range of contemporary
thought. To a sanatorium high in the
Alps come diseased people from many
countries. They are the citizens of a sick
world, and their stories reflect the ills of
an age and a continent. Joseph and His
Brothers is an ambitious retelling of the
Bible story in the light of anthropology,
modern psychology, and historical
perspectives. Doctor Faustus is another novel
of modern Europe, in which a German
musician symbolically sells his soul to the
devil in return for two decades of creative
genius. It is an allegory of moral and
political crisis told with smoky medieval
overtones of doom and damnation.
Franz Kafka is another writer who has
imposed his vision of illusion and reality
upon the twentieth-century consciousness.
The Castle is a strange fable of spiritual
quest, an inverted Pilgrim's Progress
through the modern world in which
science has established everything except the
guideposts leading to human salvation.
The Trial reads more like a modern Book
of Job, for in it divine justice is as
inscrutable and difficult to fathom as divine
grace.
Norwegian literature has given us two
novelists of wide range and power. Knut
Hamsun is best known for Growth of the
Soil, the story of a peasant farmer around
whose land a small community grows, its
growth paralleling the development of
civilization itself. In Kristin Lavransdatter
and The Master of Hestviken, Sigrid
Undset created against the background of
the past a fictional world of solid reality,
so that these historical novels make the
remote medieval age as real as the present.
Her men and women live in a violent and
picturesque time, yet they are true to the
everyday experiences of life which have
been common to men in all ages. When
Sigrid Undset brought realism and
modern psychology into the historical novel,
she made the first important contribution
to this form since the days of Scott.
Another outstanding woman novelist was
lviii

Selma Lagerlof of Sweden. Her most
popular book, The Story of Gosta Berling,
appeared at the end of the nineteenth
century, but she did important work, in
Jerusalem and The Ring of the Lowen-
skolds, during the present period. Her
contemporary, Verner von Heidenstam,
was a poet and novelist of strongly
romantic and nationalistic temperament.
Another Swedish writer who has achieved
a world reputation in recent years is Par
Lagerkvist, a poet, dramatist, and novelist
concerned with the problem of faith in a
world of cosmic malevolence and human
guilt. Special mention should also be made
of Johan Bojer and Olav Duun,
Norwegian novelists whose work had deep roots
in peasant life; Johannes V. Jensen, author
of The Long Journey, and Isak Dinesen, a
writer in the Gothic tradition, of
Denmark, and Halld6r Laxness and Gunnar
Gunnarsson, Icelandic novelists. The
promising career of Kaj Munk, Danish
playwright, was cut short when he was
killed by the Nazis in 1944.
Under the Soviet regime the
tremendous scope and vitality of Russian
literature in the nineteenth century has been
curbed by the masters in the Kremlin.
Maxim Gorky continues to hold his place
of importance among Russian writers
whose careers began before the Red
Revolution. Of the novelists who have received
official approval, the best known outside
Russia are Boris Pilnyak, Konstantin
Fedin, Leonid Leonov, Ilya Ehrenburg,
and Mikhail Sholokhov, and of these Sho-
lokhov is the only writer who approaches
the stature of the generation of Turgenev,
Dostoevski, and Tolstoy. His epic work is
The Silent Don, which, ironically enough,
deals with counter-revolutionary activities
of stubbornly independent Cossacks in the
period between 1912 and 1922. A rather
special work is Vladimir Dudintsev's Not
hy Bread Alone. Published during the
brief period of seeming liberalism in 1957,
this novel aroused considerable excitement
both inside Russia and abroad when it
appeared. An even greater furor arose over
Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago in 1958.
The only long work of fiction by one of
the leading Russian poets of the century,
this novel in the great moral tradition of
Russian literature presents a vivid picture
of a disordered revolutionary age which,
through loneliness, violence, cruelty, and
fear, involves a whole society in the
common ruin. The impact of this novel
outside Russia has led to the translation of
Pasternak's poems and also to interest in
two other poets of the early revolutionary
period, Sergey Esenin and Vladimir Maya-
kovsky.
In Italy the collapse of Fascist
dictatorship was marked by a tremendous
resurgence of literary activity. During the
period of political domination of the arts
only Riccardo Bacchelli achieved a critical
stature matching that of the older
generation of writers represented by Giovanni
Verga, Luigi Pirandello, and Grazia
Deledda. Although Fontamara had
established the international reputation of
Ignazio Silone, that bitter indictment of
man's inhumanity to man had been
written in exile; at home, Alberto Moravia had
been the object of official censorship. But
after the war a new generation of writers
in the realistic tradition made their
influence felt in such works as Moravia's The
Woman of Rome, Two Adolescents,
Conjugal Love, and The Conformist; Elsa
Morante's House of Liars; Vasco Prato-
lini's A Tale of Poor Lovers and A Hero
of Our Time; Giuseppe Berto's The Sky
Is Red and The Brigand; Elio Vittorini's
In Sicily and The Twilight of the
Elephant; and Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at
Eboli. These writers in no sense comprised
a school or another Italian Renaissance,
but in these books and later ones they
continue to attract the attention of readers
abroad. Meanwhile the older classics have
not been neglected. Alessandro Manzoni's
The Betrothed has appeared in a new
translation for English-speaking readers,
and Le Confessioni di un ottuagenario;
Ippolito Nievo's long chronicle of the
struggle for Italian independence, is now
available under a new title, The Castle
of Fratta. The same theme of national
lix

freedom serves as the framework of The
Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. This
story of the rise of Garibaldi and the
unification of Italy was hailed as a masterpiece
when it appeared in 1959. In the same
year Salvatore Quasimodo, a controversial
figure among modern Italian poets, was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
Greece is another nation now in the
process of an active literary revival. The
leading figures of the movement were
Kostis Palamis and Cons tan tine Kavafis in
poetry and Nikos Kazantzakis in prose.
Three of Kazantzakis* novels — Zorba the
Greek, The Greek Passion, and Freedom
or Death, as well as his epic retelling of
the Odyssey — have been widely
translated. Other novelists who have found an
English-speaking audience are Stratis
Myrivalis and Elias Venezis.
In Spain, on the other hand, the deaths
of Jacinto Benavente y Martinez, Jos6
Ortega y Gasset, Pio Baroja y Nessi, and
Juan Ramon Jimenez have left no figures
of comparable stature in the fields of
drama, philosophy, fiction, and poetry.
Among the younger novelists Camilo Jos£
Cela, author of The Hive, and ]os6 Maria
Gironella, who has written a trilogy of the
Spanish Civil War, are the most
outstanding.
The situation is quite different in Latin
America, where in the past three decades
Spanish American literature, having shed
much of the revolutionary concerns of
Mariano Azuela and Martin Luis Guzman,
the Parnassianism of Rub£n Dario, and
the provincialism of such writers as ]os6
Hernandez, R6mulo Gallegos, Ricardo
Palma, and Hugo Wast, has come of age.
Two important influences on this new
literature were Gabriela Mistral, Chilean
poet and Nobel Prize winner, and Alfonso
Reyes, Mexican poet, critic, essayist, and
short story writer, who by their examples
and their work helped to realign Hispano-
American letters with the cultural
tradition of the past and the rich, meaningful
resources of the present beyond the limits
of the national experience. Writers of the
new generation have added the techniques
of Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Eliot
to their own native materials and models.
The result is writing that is experimental,
fresh, and indigenous without being
provincial: in Argentina the novels and tales
of Eduardo Mallea and Jorge Luis Borges;
in Chile the poetry of Pablo Neruda; in
Ecuador the novels and plays of Jorge
Icaza; in Peru the novels of Ciro Alegria;
in Mexico the verse of Octavio Paz and
Ali Chumacero, the short stories of
Francisco Rojas Gonzdlez, and Juan Jos£
Arreola, and the novels of Agustfn Ydnez,
Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, and Jorge
Lopez Paez. The late Xavier Villarrutia
still remains an important figure in the
Mexican theater, as does Florenzio
Sanchez in Argentina and Uruguay. Eunice
Odio, born in Costa Rica, is a poet of
individual temperament and great talent.
Although contemporary Brazilian
literature has not produced a writer of the
stature of Joaquim Maria Machado de
Assis, Manuel Bandeira and Carlos
Drummond de Andrade in poetry, Nelson
Rodrigues in drama, and Jorge Amado and
Jos£ Lins do Rego in the novel have made
important contributions to the national
literary tradition.
In Japan, since the end of World War
II, a new literary tradition seems to be
taking shape, a grafting of Western
techniques and influences upon the older
forms of Japanese literature. In present-
day Japan the Kabuki theater and the
classical Noh dramas still flourish; the
change is most apparent in poetry and
fiction. Both forms reveal a fusion of native
and Western traditions. Of the novelists
now known outside Japan, Junichiro
Tanizaki is possibly the least affected by
Occidental influences. His Some Prefer
Nettles is regarded as a modern classic,
and The Makioka Sisters is a beautifully
presented study of the old merchant
culture destroyed by the war. One of the most
popular of contemporary writers is Yukio
Mishima, whose Confessions of a Mask,
The Sound of Waves, and The Temple
of the Golden Pavilion, as well as a
collection of his plays, are now available in
Ix

translation. His range includes both the
pastoral and the deeply psychological. Like
Osamu Dazai and Jiro Osaragi, he also
reflects in some of his novels the cultural
tensions of a nation trapped by history
between the power of the past and the
processes of change. Another traditionalist
is Yasunari Kawabata, author of Snow
Country. Fires on the Plain, by Shohei
Ooka, is a tragically compelling novel
dealing with Japanese resistance in the
Philippines during World War II. In The
Heike Story, Eiji Yoshikawa turned away
from the confusion of the present to give
an account of twelfth century history in
his chronicle of the warring Genji and
Heik£ clans. The novel suggests Lady
Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji in
theme and treatment, but in Yoshikawa's
work the events of the medieval past are
viewed through the modern sensibility.
China, wracked by internal strife, war
with Japan, and ideological domination
throughout the present century, has
produced no writing of any real significance;
however, a number of the celebrated
Chinese classics have recently been
translated. These include Shih Nai-an's Shui
Hu Chuan (All Men Are Brothers), Tsao
Hsueh-chin's Hung Lou Meng (Dream of
the Red Chamber), and the Chin P'ing
Met, now attributed to Hsu Wei.
In India another active literary
movement, partly nationalistic, partly regional,
partly social, is now in progress, and the
time has passed when the native literature
spoke to Western readers chiefly through
the poems of Rabindranath Tagore and
Mohammed Iqbal. Although E. M. For-
ster's A Passage to India remains the
dominant image of Anglo-Indian life, writers in
all fifteen major languages of Indian and
in English are now attempting to create
their own image of that vast and varied
land. In some ways the situation is like
that which existed in Ireland at the turn
of the century, for many of the new Indian
writers, particularly in the field of the
novel, are engaged in creating a national
literature in English. Of the novelists,
R. K. Narayan has almost achieved classic
dimensions. His fictional world is Mal-
gudi, an imaginary town in South India,
and within this setting, as in The Guide,
Swami and Friends, The Financial Expert,
and The Man-Eater of Malgudi, he shows
himself a master of themes and moods
that range from the tragic to the farcical.
A writer of completely somber effect is
Kamala Markandaya, whose Nectar in a
Sieve presents dramatically the poverty,
ignorance, and squalor of millions of
Indian peasants. Another novel, Some
Inner Fury, deals with the more familiar
theme of Anglo-Indian relationships. The
background picture of India's struggle for
power, especially the influence of Gandhi
on ideals of leadership, makes Anand
Lall's The House at Adampur an
impressive first novel. Politics is again the theme
of Nayantara Sahgal's A Time to Be
Happy. R. Prawer Jhabvala, although not
a native Indian, is able through marriage
and association to present with intimate
knowledge the witty yet sympathetic
pictures of Indian social life shown in Amrita
and The Nature of Passion.
When we read or discuss these writers
of our time, we are on more familiar but
less certain ground. Contemporary
judgments are likely to be more contemporary
than final, however, and it is impossible
to tell which books of the past sixty years
speak only for a generation and which are
the classics of the future.
To tell completely the story of the
world's literature would require a book of
many pages. This survey, as was stated at
the beginning, is no more than tentative,
an attempt to indicate the pleasurable
reading of various literary ages. There
have been many omissions, as the reader
undoubtedly discovered for himself. But
since every reader must eventually revise
any reading list according to his own
findings, this brief survey is not aimed at
completeness or finality. Its usefulness is
therefore limited to its stated purpose—an
introduction to reading.
bri

THE ABBE CONSTANTIN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ludovic Halevy (1834-1908)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: 1881
Locale: France
First published: 1882
Principal characters:
Abbe Constantin, a French priest
Jean Reynaud, his godson
Mrs. Scott, an American
Miss Percival, her sister
Critique:
This tale has long been a favorite book
for use in French classes. The story is
full of pleasant places and pleasant
people. There is little if any conflict; the
one character who might possibly be
considered the villain is too polite to
offer much resistance to the plans of the
hero and heroine. The novel was
crowned by the French Academy.
The Story:
The kindly old cure, Abbe Constantin,
stopped before the chateau of Longue-
val to look at posters which proclaimed
that the chateau and its surroundings
were to be sold at auction either in
four pieces, or as a unit. The abbe, like
the rest of the neighborhood, smiled at
the idea that anyone might be able to
buy the entire estate; more than two
million francs was too large a sum for
anyone to have. As he walked along by
the old estate, he thought of all the
delightful days he had spent with the old
marchioness and her family. He dreaded
the thought of a new owner who might
not ask him to dinner twice a week, who
might not contribute generously to the
poor, who might not attend all the
services of his little church. The abb£ was
too old to desire a change.
Me walked on to the little house where
Madame de Lavardens lived with her
son Paul. Paul had not turned out well.
His mother gave him a generous
allowance to spend every year. After
spending his money within three months in
Paris, he stayed the rest of the year with
his mother in the country. At the de
Lavardens home, the abbe learned that
Madame de Lavardens was hoping that
her agent had secured at least one part
of the estate for her. She was awaiting
news of the auction, and she invited the
abb£ to wait with her and her son to
hear what had happened.
When the agent arrived, he informed
them that Mrs. Scott, a wealthy
American, had bought the whole estate. The
abbess heart sank. An American! She
would be a Protestant—no doubt a
heretic. His hopes for his little church grew
weak. No longer would the hothouses
of the estate keep his altar full of flowers;
no longer would the poor be relieved
by the charity of the chateau. With a
1

gloomy heart he went home to supper.
Jean Reynaud, the abbess godson, was
his guest at supper that night. Jean's
father had been an officer in the same
regiment in which the abbe- had been
chaplain, and the two had been the best
of friends. When Jean's father had been
killed, the abbe- had taken care of Jean
as if he were his own son. The boy
had insisted on following his father in a
military career. Jean's kindness was well-
known in the area. He gave a yearly
income to the destitute families of two
men who had been killed on the same
day as his father, and he was always
doing charitable deeds for the abbess
poor.
On his arrival Jean set about cutting
garden greens for the salad. He was
startled when he looked up and saw two
beautifully but simply dressed young
women who asked to see the abbe\ They
introduced themselves as Mrs. Scott and
Miss Percival, her sister. In a flurry of
excitement the old abbe came out to meet
his unexpected guests, and to his great
pleasure they announced that they were
Catholics of French-Canadian blood.
When each of the women gave the abb6
a thousand francs to give to the poor,
the happy man almost burst into tears.
The inhabitants of the chateau were still
to be a blessing for the town.
Jean, overcome by the beauty of the
two women, could not decide who was
the more handsome. Miss Percival was
the younger and more vivacious, but the
serene charm of Mrs. Scott was equally
attractive. The women told the abb£ the
story of their lives; of their poverty as
children, of the lawsuit which their
dying father had made them promise never
to give up, and of the final success of the
suit and the millions that became theirs
because of it. Mrs. Scott said that she
and heT husband intended to spend much
time in France at their new home. When
the ladies left, the abbe* and Jean were
profuse in their praise.
This meeting was the first of many.
The ladies had grown tired of social
gaiety during their stay in Paris, and
Miss Percival had become disgusted with
the great number of men, thirty-four in
all, who had proposed marriage to her,
for she knew that it was her money, not
herself, they were after. The women
hoped to spend a quiet few weeks in the
chateau, with the abbe* and Jean as their
only visitors. During the visits Jean fell
in love with Miss Percival. He was up
set when Paul de Lavardens insisted on
being introduced.
Miss Percival knew at once that Paul's
proposal would be number thirty-five.
He was polite and made conversation
easily, but he did not have the qualities
she had come to admire in Jean. The
mote she saw of Jean the more she liked
him, and it was not long before she
realized that she was in love with the young
officer.
At the first ball held at the chateau,
Jean's manner showed Miss Percival that
he loved her. But he said nothing, for
he believed that army life would not be
a happy one for her. As he had neither
social graces nor the wealth which could
be substituted for them, he did not
dare to dance with her at the ball for
fear he would blurt out his love. When
she approached him to ask for a dance,
he left abruptly.
Jean's regiment went away for twenty
days. When he returned, he realized that
he loved Miss Percival more than ever.
Finally he decided that his only course
was to be transferred to a regiment
stationed in another area. On the night he
was to leave he sent his excuses to the
chateau and went to explain his actions
to the abbe\ who listened to his story with
deep interest. Suddenly there was a
knock on the door and Miss Percival
walked in. She apologized for her
intrusion, but said that she had come to
confess to the abbe\ She asked Jean not to
leave, but to stay and hear her.
She announced that she loved Jean
and felt sure that he loved her. Jean
had to admit that it was true. She said
she knew he had not dared to ask her
2

to marry him because of her wealth.
Consequently she was forced to ask him to
marry her. The abb£ commending her
action, they became engaged.
When the marriage ceremony for the
happy couple was performed in the little
church, a fine new organ played I i e
music for the service. It was Miss Perci-
val's marriage gift to the church. The
abb£ was happy; the sale of the old
chateau had brought more good to the
town than it had known before.
3

ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS
Tyfe of work: Drama
Author: Robert E. Sherwood (1896-1955)
Type of flot: Historical chronicle
Time of flot: 1831-1861
Locale: New Salem and Springfield, Illinois
First presented: 1938
Principal characters:
Mentor Graham, a schoolmaster
Abb Lincoln
Ann Rutledgb, Abe's early love
Judge Bowling Green, Justice of the Peace
Ninian Edwards, a politician
Joshua Speed, a merchant
William Herndon, Abe's law clerk
Mary Todd, Abe's wife
Stephen A. Douglas, Abe's political opponent
Sbth Gale, Abe's friend
Jimmie Gale, Seth's young son
Critique:
Robert Sherwood saw in the struggles
of Abe Lincoln a symbol of democracy
in action. The playwright was able to
stick fairly close to the facts of Lincoln's
life in working out his allegory of the
growth of the democratic spirit, but
in several scenes he was forced to invent
fictitious characters or incidents to make
his point. Whether the play be viewed
as history or allegory, it remains as
authentically American as its leading
character.
The Story:
In the summer of 1831, when Abe
Lincoln was twenty-two years old, he
arrived in New Salem, Illinois, at that
time a frontier village of fifteen log
cabins. Shortly afterward the lanky
young man opened a general store in
partnership with a friend named Berry.
Their stock included whiskey. Berry
continued to tap the keg until he drank
up all their liquid assets, and the store
went bankrupt. Abe voluntarily assumed
all the obligations for the partnership
and went into debt for about fifteen
hundred dollars.
At that time Abe boarded with Mentor
Graham, the neighborhood schoolmaster,
who began the task of teaching the young
backwoodsman the rudiments of grammar.
He awakened in Abe an interest in great
oratory as well as a love for poetry.
Graham sensed his pupil's extreme
melancholy and preoccupation with death
as well as his marked disinclination to
do anything which required much effort.
He advised Abe to go into politics,
declaring wryly that there were only two
professions open to a man who had
failed at everything else—schoolteaching
and politics.
Abe's opportunity came a year later
while he held the job of local
postmaster. A young politician, Ninian
Edwards, a vigorous opponent of
President Jackson, appeared at the Rudedge
tavern in New Salem. He was looking
for a possible candidate for the State
Assembly. Edwards so much admired
Abe's deft handling of several
quarrelsome Jackson supporters that he offered
Abe the candidacy.
In making his offer he was supported
by Abe's two loyal and influential friends
in Salem, Joshua Speed, a merchant, and
Judge Bowling Green, the justice of the
peace. But Abe, who had been
considering going farther west, refused. Then
several circumstances arose to change his
mind. Seth Gale, the friend with whom
ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS by Robert E. Sherwood. By permission of the author and the publishers, Charles
Scribner's Sons. Copyright. 1937, 1938, 1939, by Robert Emmet Sherwood.
4

Abe had planned to make the trip,
received news that his father was sick and
he had to return to his native state of
Maryland at once. And Ann Rutledge,
daughter of the local tavernkeeper, with
whom Abe had been secretly in love,
received a letter from New York State
to the effect that a young man named
McNeil, with whom Ann had been in
love, would not be able to return to
New Salem. When Abe declared his
devotion, Ann, disillusioned with her
former lover, encouraged him. As a
consequence, Abe sent word by his friend
Judge Bowling Green that he would be
a candidate for the State Assembly.
Fate brought about another, more
disastrous, turn in Abe's fortunes. Ann
Rutledge fell suddenly ill of a fever,
and nothing that the doctor or Abe did
could save her. After Ann's death, Abe
became completely obsessed by a feeling
of melancholia from which none of his
friends could rouse him. He opened a
Springfield law office with his friend,
Judge Stuart, but he refused to take
much interest in politics, in spite of the
urgings of his clerk, William Herndon,
who was a firebrand Abolitionist.
Although Abe disliked slavery, he failed
to see that the Abolitionists were helping
their cause by threatening to split the
country.
Knowing that something must be done
to pull Abe out of his lethargy, his old
political mentor, Ninian Edwards,
introduced him to his ambitious sister-in-
law, Mary Todd. Mary saw immediately
that Lincoln was a man she could inspire
to great things. Her aristocratic sister,
Elizabeth, could not understand what
Mary saw in this raw-boned
frontiersman, but Mary saw in him the
satisfaction of her own frustrated yearnings.
They became engaged.
But Abe had not forgotten Ann
Rutledge. On the day of his wedding to
Mary Todd, he pleaded with his friend,
Joshua Speed, to deliver to Mary a letter
he had written to tell her that he did
not love her. Speed insisted that Abe
go to Mary himself and explain that he
was afraid of her, of the demands she
would make upon him. After he had
humiliated Mary Todd with his
explanation, Abe drifted back to the prairie
frontier once more.
One day he encountered his old
friend, Seth Gale, with whom he had
once planned to go west. Seth had set
out from Maryland with his wife and
child, and was headed for Oregon. But
his child, Jimmie, was ill, and Seth felt
that if his son died neither he nor his
wife would have the courage to continue
the journey. In a flash of insight, Abe
saw in his friend's predicament a symbol
of the plight of the country as a whole.
The Dred Scott Decision had made it
possible to extend slavery in the West,
a circumstance that would be fatal to
those who, like Seth Gale, were trying
to build a new country there. That vision
crystallized Abe's purpose in life; and
when he offered up a prayer to the
Almighty for the life of little Jimmie,
he was thinking of the country as a
whole. Filled with a new purpose, he
pocketed his pride and went back to
Mary Todd. Still believing in him, she
accepted Abe without a moment's
hesitation.
From that day on his career followed
one straight line, culminating in his
nomination for the presidency. There
were his debates with Stephen A.
Douglas, who was to be his opponent in the
election that followed. Within his own
party there were political considerations
which Lincoln handled with dignity and
tact. But most important of all, there
was his own life with Mary Todd. In
the years since their marriage she had
borne him four sons, one of whom had
died, and through those years she had
grown more tense and irritable, until
the home life of the Lincolns became
almost intolerable. Abe patiently endured
her tirades in their own home, but when
Mary began criticizing him in public, he
resisted. On the night of his election
she had one of her tantrums, and Abe
was forced to send her home on the very
eve of her triumph.
5

With his election to the highest office
in the land, Lincoln's troubles increased.
The old melancholia returned, the old
preoccupation with death. On an
eventful day in 1861, standing on the rear
platform of the train which was to take
him from Springfield to Washington, he
tried to express to his old neighbors and
friends his ideals for the future of
America. As the presidential train pulled
out he could hear his well-wishers
singing the last strains of "John Brown's
Body"—"His soul goes marching onl"
6

ABRAHAM AND ISAAC
Type of work: Drama
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Biblical story
Time of plot: Biblical antiquity
Locale: Beersheba
First presented: Fifteenth century
Principal characters:
Abraham
Isaac, his son
Deus, God
Angelus, the Angel
The Doctor, a commentator
Critique:
One of the fifteenth-century mystery
plays performed by guild members in
various towns in England, Abraham and
Isaac tells the biblical story of Abraham's
willingness to sacrifice his son. The
Brome version is distinguished from
others by its greater length and its fuller
development of the characters of
Abraham and Isaac. The mystery plays,
although often simple in both plot and
design, helped to provide the background
and tradition from which Elizabethan
drama later emerged. The play is in verse,
sometimes written in five-line stanzas
rhyming ahaah and sometimes in eight-
line stanzas with alternate rhymes, these
stanzas often ending in a shortened line.
At other times the poetry conforms to no
clear rhyming or stanzaic pattern. It is
difficult to determine whether the play
was originally written in a more careful
poetic pattern, now lost through
successive copyings and oral repetition, or
whether it was originally written in a
form close to the present version.
The Story:
Abraham, offering a prayer of
Thanksgiving to God, counted his blessings—
his land, his peaceful life, his children—
and told of his delight in his favorite
child, Isaac. He stood, while praying, in
a field near his home in Beersheba. After
the prayer he called to Isaac to return to
their home.
God, in Heaven, summoned an Angel
and told him that He intended to test
Abraham's steadfastness by asking him to
sacrifice Isaac, and he ordered the Angel
to announce his wish to Abraham.
Meanwhile, Abraham prayed again, asking
God what gift or offering might please
Him most. The Angel then appeared and
told Abraham that God had commanded
the sacrifice of Isaac as an indication of
Abraham's love for the Lord.
Abraham immediately experienced
great inward conflict. He kept repeating
that Isaac was the most loved of all his
children, that he would rather sacrifice
anything else of his, including his own
life, than to offer up Isaac. At the same
time he was aware that God's will must
be obeyed and that the sacrifice, no
matter how painful, must be made. Abraham
then called Isaac, who had been praying,
and told him that they must perform a
sacrifice for the Lord. Isaac declared his
willingness to help. Abraham felt his
heart breaking as they walked toward
Mount Vision to make the sacrifice.
On their arrival at the mount, Isaac
asked why Abraham seemed so concerned.
The boy began to quake at the sight of
the sharp sword in his father's hand
because, aware of his father's acute misery,
he guessed that he was to be the offering
in the sacrifice to the Lord. Abraham
then tried to explain to Isaac that they
must follow God's commandment, having
no other choice. But Isaac prayed to his
father, asking him to spare his life and
wishing his mother were there to
intercede for him. Isaac also wondered what
7

crimes he had committed that his life
should be demanded by God. Abraham,
in his misery, explained that God's will
must simply be obeyed. At last Isaac
understood and yielded to God's will. He
asked, however, that Abraham not tell
his mother he had been killed. Instead,
she was to believe that he had gone into
another land.
Resigning himself to death, Isaac asked
for his father's blessing, Abraham gave
his blessing, lamented further, and
proceeded to bind Isaac's hands. Abraham
then repeated his hope that he could be
sacrificed in Isaac's place, but the brave
Isaac reminded him that God must be
obeyed and asked that the killing be done
quickly. Abraham covered Isaac's face
with a cloth and made ready to lift his
sword.
But just as he was about to strike Isaac,
the Angel appeared and took the sword
from his upraised hand. The Angel said
that Abraham had proved his willingness
to obey God's command, an act which
fully displayed Abraham's mind and
heart. Therefore, the Angel continued,
Abraham would not be compelled to
sacrifice his son, but might substitute a
young ram, tied nearby, for the offering.
Abraham was overjoyed and after the
Angel's departure gave thanks to God for
Isaac's deliverance. Isaac, too, welcomed
his reprieve, but only did so after
Abraham had assured him that God would
regard the ram as a worthy substitute.
Isaac, at his father's bidding, ran to bring
the ram. Returning with it, Isaac
expressed his happiness that the beast,
rather than he, was to be sacrificed.
When Abraham offered up the ram, Isaac
still showed a great fear of Abraham's
sword and did not wish to look at it.
After the sacrifice, God again spoke to
Abraham, acknowledging his goodness
and promising that his family would
multiply. Abraham then returned with Isaac
to their home, recounting on the way his
pleasure that his favorite child had been
spared. Isaac was also grateful, but
realistically he mentioned his fear and stated
that he never wanted to see the hill
again. Both thanked God and both
showed great relief to be returning home
together. Abraham praised the gentleness
and understanding of his young son.
(At that point the Doctor appeared on
the scene to make the moral of this
happening explicit. The Doctor brought out
the fact that the story showed how one
should follow God's commandments
without quarreling. The Doctor asked how
many would be willing to smite their
children if God so commanded. He
thought that several might do so, though
their women would wail and protest.
But, the Doctor continued, God would
mend everything for those truly willing
to follow his commandments, for those
who served God faithfully would be
certain to benefit from their loyalty.)
8

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Type of work: Biography
Author: Carl Sandburg (1878- )
Time: 1809-1865
Locale: Kentucky, Illinois, Washington, D. C, and areas of the Civil War campaigns
First published: The Prairie Years, 1926; The War Years, 1939
Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln is a
monumental work on a monumental
theme, the life, works, and times of a
symbolic American of history and
legend. There is nothing of its kind, ancient
or modern, with which it may adequately
be compared. Among Civil War
biographies its closest counterpart is Douglas
Southall Freeman's R. E. Lee (q.v.), but
even on this common ground point of
view and the use of salient detail create
vastly different effects of organization and
presentation. In the Freeman biography
Lee holds the center of the stage at all
times, and the background panorama of
people and events, even the battles and
campaigns of the war, are shown only as
they throw light on Lee's personality and
labors. Sandburg, on the other hand, sets
Lincoln against a tremendous movement
of history as he tells simultaneously, on
different levels, the story of a man, a war,
an age, and a people. In the end the
qualities which set this work apart seem
appropriate and significant. Lincoln, that
ungainly, complex, humorous,
melancholy, and sadly serene man, was also
one of the great solitaries.
When The War Years appeared in
1939, more than one reviewer commented
on the happy conjunction of the perfect
writer and the perfect subject. In
Sandburg's case there is more truth in this
critical generalization than in most, for
he brought to his tremendous task a
greater familiarity with the regional and
folk aspects of Lincoln's life than anyone
had possessed since Lincoln's own day.
In the late nineteenth century there was
still no wide gap between Sandburg's
boyhood in Galesburg, Illinois, and
Lincoln's growing years in the Sangamon
River country. Familiar with New Salem,
Vandalia, Springfield, and other
landmarks of Lincoln's early life, the Swedish
immigrant's son had known the men and
women of Lincoln's day and had listened
to their stories. Poet, fabulist, folklorist,
and singer of the American dream,
Sandburg felt in time that the Lincoln story
had become a part of himself, not in the
sense of blind hero worship but as
evidence of the believable reality and
fulfilled promise of American life.
More than thirty years of preparation,
research, and writing went into the two
divisions of Abraham Lincoln. At first
Sandburg had in mind a story of Lincoln
as the prairie lawyer and politician, but
as his investigations continued he realized
that his book was outgrowing its
projected length and purpose. His increasing
desire to tell all the facts of Lincoln's life
as they existed in books already
published, documentary records, or in the
memories of men and women finally led
him to divide his material into two parts,
the first the story of the country boy and
lawyer-politician, the second an account
of Lincoln in the White House.
The Prairie Years was published in
1926. In these two volumes Sandburg
deals with the more legendary aspects of
the Lincoln story: boyhood days and
backwoods life; a young man's journeys
down the Mississippi; a masculine
schooling, mostly self-taught, in grammar,
mathematics, surveying, debate, and law;
the years of clerking in grocery stores
and working at odd jobs; military service
in the Black Hawk War; his relations
with Ann Rutledge, Mary Owens, Mary
Todd; his law practice, and his early
political career. This material is presented
with a wealth of anecdote—stories about
Lincoln and by him—so that it resembles
at times an anthology of Lincoln lore.
This period of Lincoln's life lends itself
at times to fabulous or lyric treatment of
which Sandburg the poet takes full ad-
9

vantage. There are passages that read like
poetry, sentences and paragraphs that
celebrate the beauty of nature and the
mystery and wonder of life. Yet these
occasional flights of poetic fancy are held
firmly within bounds by realistic
portrayal and strict regard for fact. In these
volumes Sandburg's Lincoln emerges as a
man of the people but no hero in the
ordinary senss. Circumstances had shaped
him into a man of vision and resource,
but he was also a troubled, threatened,
doubted man when he left Springfield in
1861 on the eve of his inauguration as
President of the United States.
The War Years was published in four
volumes thirteen years later. In the
meantime Sandburg had traveled widely to
gather material from every available
source, read extensively in histories,
biographies, newspapers, pamphlets, diaries,
letters, and handbills, looked at pictures
and cartoons, collected memorabilia of
every sort, and written steadily while he
studied, pondered, and re-created—in
effect, relived—Lincoln's life during the
Civil War period. The result, in the
opinion of historians and critics, is a
biography not likely soon to be surpassed
of a man linked inseparably to his
country's history and the folk imagination of
all time.
Sandburg makes no attempt to gloss
over the dark years of 1861-1862.
Lincoln, who had incurred ridicule by
arriving in Washington in a military cape and
a Scotch plaid cap—in disguise, his
enemies jeered—found himself hated in the
South, handicapped by his Cabinet and
the Congress, and faced with the crisis of
Fort Sumter. Having taken over the
leadership which William Henry Seward,
Secretary of State, had tried at first to
withhold from the chief executive,
Lincoln then proceeded to display a
temporizing attitude which history finds
hard to explain. His declaration at the
end of 1862—"Fellow-citizens, we cannot
escape history."—is open to various
interpretations. But Lincoln was to ride out of
the storm of public disfavor. The
Emancipation Proclamation, the turn of the
tide at Gettysburg, the appointment of
Ulysses S. Grant to the high command,
and the Gettysburg Address mark what
Sandburg calls the "Storm Center" of the
war years. Although the mid-term
elections of 1863 were against Lincoln and
his own party was prepared to abandon
him for the sake of political expediency,
he won the campaign of 1864 in the face
of the bitterest opposition of his enemies
and the apathy of his party. From this
time on Sandburg shows the tide in full
flood—the aggressive final phase of the
war, Sherman's march to the sea, the
passing of the Thirteenth Amendment,
the surrender at Appomattox, and the
night at Ford's Theater on April 14,
1865. The end of the story is starkly,
movingly, eloquently told with a poet's
power of words and the historian's
respect for truth.
In handling the massive reportage of
Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg never
pretends to be more than a storyteller, a
recorder. Ever since the publication of
The Prairie Years critics had tried to find
a term to describe his method as a
biographer, since his work could not be
judged by any of the accepted schools
from Herodotus to Lytton Strachey. The
War Years, with all its vast accumulation
of fact piled on fact, detail on detail, gave
them the answer. Sandburg's method is
the way of the old chronicles and sagas
in telling the stories of folk and tribal
heroes. This biography is a work which
expands within the consciousness of the
reader because of its continuous addition
and multiplication of concrete and
evocative details—battle summaries, character
sketches, anecdotes, letters, quotations of
every kind—all presented without
analysis or interpretation so that in the end
they shape themselves to their own
pattern and carry their own weight of
meaning.
Nothing is too vast or too commonly
known to be glossed over without patient
attention to every living detail; nothing
is too trivial to be included. Never has
there been such a summoning of
witnesses to testify to a man and his age.
10

Foreign diplomats, members of the
Cabinet and the Congress, military men of
the North and the South, Tolstoy, Ibsen,
Hawthorne, Mrs. Mary Chesnut, that
shrewd, ardent Secessionist, and
hundreds of obscure men and women
appear briefly, make their gesture or have
their say, and then disappear. His
enemies make their insults and accusations;
his detractors voice their ridicule; his
friends speak in his praise. All leave
behind them something that adds to our
understanding of Lincoln, something
more important than the opinions of
politicians or the decisive outcomes of
battles and accounts of military
campaigns in creating the illusion of life
itself.
These details, great and small, are the
background setting against which
Lincoln looms with increasing stature as his
story unfolds. Against this backdrop of
history he appears as a man all too
human in his weaknesses and failures, just
as he appears greater than other men in
the strength, wisdom, and sad serenity of
his last months. "Unfathomable" is the
adjective Sandburg most frequently
applies to him. Many writers have tried to
analyze Lincoln. It remained for
Sandburg simply to show the man, letting
him speak and act for himself. This also
was the method of the anonymous writers
of the ancient sagas.
The War Years, more somber in tone,
offers less opportunity than The Prairie
Years for bardic song. Occasionally,
however, the poet breaks in on the biographer
and historian. One such passage occurs
after the account of the Gettysburg
Address when Lincoln, a wet towel over his
tired eyes, was on his way back to
Washington, and a moonlit hush had fallen
over the battlefield and the new-made
graves. Then in Whitmanesque measures
Sandburg speaks his requiem for the
buried dead in the silent cemetery as he
looks out over the land and into the
homes where the son, the husband, or
the father is missing from his familiar
place and the clocks of time and destiny
tick on. Again, at the beginning of the
chapter titled "The Calendar Says Good
Friday," he employs another poetic
passage to set the mood for coming tragedy.
Nowhere, however, is he more moving
than in the solemn intensity of the three
simple sentences that bring the Lincoln
story to its irrevocable close.
Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln is the
biography of an American whose true
story lends itself to the spirit of legend, a
pageant of history, a poet's dream, a
national myth. It is a story that is vast,
implicative, at times contradictory. It is
the stubborn, time-defying stuff of life
itself, a story in which Sandburg finds
in Lincoln's life the meaning of all
America. But it is a poet's biography only in
the sense that every true poet is a
biographer providing insights to human
experience. Unfortunately, not all biographers
are poets. Carl Sandburg, to our
enrichment, is the rare writer who is both. If
America has an epic, it is this story of a
national hero re-created from the
testimony of the men and women of
Lincoln's time.
11

ABSALOM, ABSALOM!
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Mississippi
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Thomas Sutpen, owner of Sutpen's Hundred
Ellen Coldfield Sutpen, his wife
Henry, and
Judith, their children
Rosa Coldfield, Ellen's younger sister
Goodhue Coldfield, Ellen's and Rosa's father
Charles Bon, Thomas Sutpen's son by his first marriage
Quentin Compson, Rosa Coldfield's young friend
Shreve McCannon, Quentin's roommate at Harvard
Critique:
This novel is the most involved of
William Faulkner's works, for the
narrative is revealed by recollections years
after the events described have taken
place. Experience is related at its fullest
expression; its initial import is recollected
and its significance years thereafter is
faithfully recorded. The conventional
method of story-telling has been
discarded. Through his special method
Faulkner is able to re-create human action
and human emotion in its own setting.
Sensory impressions gained at the
moment, family traditions as powerful
stimuli, the tragic impulses—these focus
truly in the reader's mind so that a
tremendous picture of the
nineteenth-century South, vivid down to the most
minute detail, grows slowly in the reader's
imagination. Absalom, Ahsaloml is a
novel of tremendous and tragic import.
The Story:
In the summer of 1910, when Quentin
Compson was preparing to go to
Harvard, old Rosa Coldfield insisted upon
telling him the whole infamous story
of Thomas Sutpen, whom she called a
demon. According to Miss Rosa, he
had brought terror and tragedy to all
who had dealings with him.
In 1833 Thomas Sutpen had come to
Jefferson, Mississippi, with a fine horse
and two pistols and no known past. He
had lived mysteriously for a while among
people at the hotel, and after a short
time he disappeared. Town gossip was
that he had bought one hundred square
miles of uncleared land from the Chicka-
saws and was planning to turn it into a
plantation.
When he returned with a wagon load
of wild-looking Negroes, a French
architect, and a few tools and wagons, he
was as uncommunicative as ever. At once
he set about clearing land and building
a mansion. For two years he labored
and during all that time he hardly ever
saw or visited his acquaintances in
Jefferson. People wondered about the source
of his money. Some claimed that he had
stolen it somewhere in his mysterious
comings and goings. Then for three
years his house remained unfinished,
without windowpanes or furnishings,
while Thomas Sutpen busied himself
with his crops. Occasionally he invited
Jefferson men to his plantation to hunt,
entertaining them with liquor, cards,
and savage combats between his giant
slaves—combats in which he himself
sometimes joined for the sport.
At last he disappeared once more, and
when he returned he had furniture and
ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner. By permission of the author and the publishers, Random House,
Inc. Copyright, 1936, by William Faulkner.
12

furnishings elaborate and fine enough
to make his great house a splendid show-
place. Because of his mysterious actions,
sentiment in the village turned against
him. But this hostility subsided
somewhat when Sutpen married Ellen Cold-
field, daughter of the highly respected
Goodhue Coldfield.
Miss Rosa and Quentin's father shared
some of Sutpen's revelations. Because
Quentin was away in college many of
the things he knew about Sutpen's
Hundred had come to him in letters from
home. Other details he had learned
during talks with his father.
He learned of Ellen Sutpen's life as
mistress of the strange mansion in the
wilderness. He learned how she
discovered her husband fighting savagely
with one of his slaves. Young Henry
Sutpen fainted, but Judith, the daughter,
watched from the haymow with interest
and delight. Ellen thereafter refused to
reveal her true feelings and ignored the
village gossip about Sutpen's Hundred.
The children grew up. Young Henry,
so unlike his father, attended the
university at Oxford, Mississippi, and there
he met Charles Bon, a rich planter's
grandson. Unknown to Henry, Charles
was his half-brother, Sutpen's son by his
first marriage. Unknown to all of
Jefferson, Sutpen had got his money as the
dowry of his earlier marriage to Charles
Bon's West Indian mother, a wife he
discarded when he learned she was partly
of Negro blood.
Charles Bon became engaged to Judith
Sutpen but the engagement was suddenly
broken off for a probation period of four
years. In the meantime the Civil War
began. Charles and Henry served
together. Thomas Sutpen became a
colonel.
Goodhue Coldfield took a disdainful
stand against the war. He barricaded
himself in his attic and his daughter,
Rosa, was forced to put his food in a
basket let down by a long rope. His
store was looted by Confederate soldiers.
One night, alone in his attic, he died.
Judith, in the meanwhile, had waited
patiently for her lover. She carried
his letter, written at the end of the
four-year period, to Quentin's
grandmother. About a week later Wash Jones,
the handyman on the Sutpen plantation,
came to Miss Rosa's door with the
crude announcement that Charles Bon
was dead, killed at the gate of the
plantation by his half-brother and former
friend. Henry fled. Judith buried her
lover in the Sutpen family plot on the
plantation. Rosa, whose mother had died
when she was born, went to Sutpen's
Hundred to live with her niece. Ellen
was already dead. It was Rosa's
conviction that she could help Judith.
Colonel Thomas Sutpen returned. His
slaves had been taken away, and he
was burdened with new taxes on his
overrun land and ruined buildings. He
planned to marry Rosa Coldfield, more
than ever desiring an heir now that
Judith had vowed spinsterhood and
Henry had become a fugitive. His son,
Charles Bon, whom he might, in
desperation, have permitted to marry his
daughter, was dead.
Rosa, insulted when she understood
the true nature of his proposal, returned
to her father's ruined house in the village.
She was to spend the rest of her
miserable life pondering the fearful intensity
of Thomas Sutpen, whose nature, in her
outraged belief, seemed to partake of the
devil himself.
Quentin, during his last vacation,
had learned more of the Sutpen tragedy.
He now revealed much of the story to
Shreve McCannon, his roommate, who
listened with all of a Northerner's
misunderstanding and indifference.
Quentin and his father had visited
the Sutpen graveyard, where they saw
a litde path and a hole leading into
Ellen Sutpen's grave. Generations of
opossums lived there. Over her tomb and
that of her husband stood a marble
monument from Italy. Sutpen himself
had died in 1869. In 1867 he had taken
young Milly Jones, Wash Jones' grand-
13

daughter When she bore a child, a girl,
Wash Jones had killed Thomas Sutpen.
Judith and Charles Bon's son, his child
by an octoroon woman who had brought
her child to Sutpen's Hundred when he
was eleven years old, died in 1884 of
smallpox. Before he died the boy had
married a Negro woman an J they had
had an idiot son, Jim Bond. Rosa
Coldfield had placed headstones on their
graves and on Judith's she had caused to
be inscribed a fearful message.
In that summer of 1910 Rosa Coldfield
confided to Quentin that she felt there
was still someone living at Sutpen's
Hundred. Together the two had gone
out there at night, and had discovered
Clytie, the aged daughter of Thomas
Sutpen and a Negro slave. More
important, they discovered Henry Sutpen
himself hiding in the ruined old house.
He had returned, he told them, four years
before; he had come back to die. The
idiot, Charles Bon, watched Rosa and
Quentin as they departed. Rosa
returned to her home and Quentin went
back to college.
Quentin's father wrote to tell him the
tragic ending of the Sutpen story.
Months later, Rosa sent an ambulance
out to the ruined plantation house, for
she had finally determined to bring her
nephew Henry into the village to live
with her, so that he could get decent
care. Clytie, seeing the ambulance, was
afraid that Henry was to be arrested
for the murder of Charles Bon many years
before. In desperation she set fire to
the old house, burning herself and
Henry Sutpen to death. Only the idiot,
Charles Bon, the last surviving
descendant of Thomas Sutpen, escaped. No
one knew where he went, for he was
never seen again. Miss Rosa took to her
bed and there died soon afterward, in
the winter of 1910.
Quentin told the story to his
roommate because it seemed to him,
somehow, to be the story of the whole South,
a tale of deep passions, tragedy, ruin,
and decay.
14

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL
Type of work: Poem
Author: John Dryden (1631-1700)
Time: Late seventeenth century
Locale: London
First published: 1681
Principal characters:
David, King of Israel
Absalom, his illegitimate son
Achitophel, chief of the rebels
Dryden claimed that Absalom and
Achitophel was carefully planned to
promote political reform. To gain this end,
Dryden used satire, the true aim of which
he defined as "the amendment of vices
by correction." The particular vices he
wanted corrected were those of the Whigs
of his day, who were seeking to secure
the succession of the Duke of
Monmouth, illegitimate son of Charles II, to
his father's throne. Second, realizing that
direct satire might defeat its purpose by
incurring resentment, Dryden chose to
attack the Whigs by casting them as
characters in the Biblical story of Absalom's
revolt against David. Third, to dull the
edge of the satire even more and thus
increase its effectiveness proportionately, he
cast it in verse, "for there's a sweetness
in good verse, which tickles even while
it hurts."
The poem is loosely organized, but
several main divisions can be noted. The
first of these, an account of the political
situation in Israel (England), opens with
a joking reference to David's (Charles
IPs) virility, which though wasted on a
barren queen, produced a host of
illegitimate progeny, of which by far the
fairest and noblest was Absalom (Duke of
Monmouth). David's kingly virtues were
equally strong but unappreciated by a
great number of Jews (Whigs), who
because of a perverse native temperament
wanted to rebel. Although David had
provided no cause for rebellion, as the
wiser Jews (Tories) pointed out, a cause
was found in the alleged Jebusite
(Catholic) plot to convert the nation to the
Egyptian (French) religion. The plot
miscarried, but it did create factions
whose leaders were jealous of David and
opposed his reign.
The second section consists of a
portrait of Achitophel, the chief of these
leaders (the Earl of Shaftesbury, leader of
the Whigs), and an account of his efforts
to persuade Absalom to seize the throne.
Dryden characterized Achitophel as a
brilliant wit touched by the madness of
ambition. Unwilling to be remembered
only for his distinguished career as a
judge, he "Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the
State," using the king's alleged sympathy
for the Jebusites as an excuse for
rebellion. Achitophel first used flattery to win
over Absalom, proclaiming that the
nation was clamoring for him—a "second
Moses." At first Absalom resisted,
pointing out that David was a wise and just
king, and that David's brother (the Duke
of York) was the legal heir. These
halfhearted objections Achitophel met with
sophistry. David's mildness, he claimed,
had deteriorated into weakness; the
public good demanded Absalom's strength;
the rightful heir was planning to murder
Absalom; David himself secretly wanted
Absalom to be king and would support
his claim as heir to the throne. To these
specious arguments Absalom succumbed,
whereupon Achitophel proceeded to
organize all the Jewish malcontents into a
single seditious party.
The third section of the poem lists
the motives of these misguided patriots,
opportunists, republicans, and religious
fanatics. In a series of satiric character
studies Dryden ridiculed their chieftains.
In the character of Zimri, which Dryden
considered "worth the whole poem," he
poked fun at the fickleness and
"extremity" of Buckingham, Shaftesbury's
lieutenant in the Whig Party. Shimei repre-
15

sented the Sheriff of London, who had
betrayed the king's interests, and Corah,
the notorious Titus Oates, who had
fabricated many of the details of the Catholic
plot.
The next section of the poem describes
Absalom's nation-wide tour, planned by
Achitophel to gauge the extent of the
people's support for their plan to exclude
the legal heir from the throne and to
establish Absalom's right to the
succession by law. Traveling up and down the
land, Absalom craftily represented
himself as the people's friend, opposed to
Egyptian domination, the Jebusite plot,
and a senile king, but powerless to act
because of his loyalty to the crown and
the lawful succession. The Jews, always
easy to delude, proclaimed Absalom a
new messiah.
A long tirade follows in which Dryden
attacked the Jews' naive support of
Absalom and their willingness to overthrow
legally instituted authority. Though not
a believer in absolute monarchy, Dryden
was a conservative who upheld the
supremacy of established law over the voice
of the people. He feared that the
government would quickly deteriorate into
anarchy if the people were given the power
to make and break kings at will by
changing the order of the succession. Dryden,
like all the conservatives of his time,
feared the judgment of the people, and,
therefore, any movement toward
democracy.
In the next section Dryden sketched
portraits of David's supporters—the Tory
leaders. Here, of course, there was no
satiric intent. Barzillai (the Duke of Or-
mond) was lavishly praised as the noblest
adherent to David's cause and one of
Israel's true heroes. Two members of the
clergy, namely Zadoc (the Archbishop of
Canterbury) and the Sagan of Jerusalem
(the Bishop of London), were
commended for their services to the crown.
Other loyalists, praised for their services
in Sanhedrin (Parliament), include Adri-
el (the Earl of Mulgrave), Jotham (the
Marquis of Halifax), Hushai (Laurence
Hvde), and Amiel (Edward Sevmour).
These loyal chieftains who defied the
powerful rebel faction ultimately
convinced David that concessions to the
people would but feed their leaders'
ambition, and that Absalom was being used
as a tool by the treacherous Achitophel.
The last section of the poem consists
of a long speech in which David finally
reasserted the royal prerogative. Realizing
that his enemies had been scoffing at his
moderation and clemency as a sign of
weakness and fear, he resolved to show
his strength. David, regretting that
Absalom would be compelled to suffer,
expressed his willingness to forgive at the
sign of repentance, but he refused to
condone disloyalty. The Sanhedrin's attempt
to change the line of succession he
denounced, scorning their deceitful claim
that they were trying to protect him from
a scheming brother. Finally, he stated his
reluctance to resort to force but declared
his readiness to use it to defend the
supremacy of established law over both
Sanhedrin and king. In the last lines of
the poem, heaven clapped its thunder in
approval of David's words and the new
era which they heralded.
Absalom and Achitophel failed, of
course, to reform the Whigs; their
attempts to put the Duke of Monmouth
rather than the Duke of York on the
throne were defeated only some fifteen
years after the publication of the poem,
which is remembered for its literary, not
historical, significance.
16

THE ABSENTEE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England and Ireland
First published: 1812
Principal characters:
Lord Clonbrony, an absentee landlord
Lady Clonbrony, his affected, ambitious wife
Lord Colambre, their son
Grace Nugent, a cousin
Miss Broadhurst, an heiress
Arthur Berryl, Lord Colambre's friend
Count O'Halloran, an Irish gentleman
Sir Terence O'Fay, an impecunious nobleman
Lady Dashfort, a designing noblewoman
Lady Isabel, her daughter
Mr. Mordicai, one of Lord Clonbronys creditors
Mr. Burke, an honest estate agent
Nicholas Garraghty, a dishonest estate agent
Critique:
The Absentee, published in the second
series of Miss Edgeworth's "Tales of
Fashionable Life," is a novel of protest
against the system of landlordism under
which the owners of Irish estates
disported themselves in fashionable London
society while their tenants lived in misery
and squalor, at the mercy of agents who
were often unscrupulous and concerned
only with their own interests. The Irish
scenes of this novel are as fresh and vivid
as those in the earlier Castle Rackrent,
and the picture of London society, a
world of thriftless absentees, wealthy
snobs, fortune hunters, and
match-making mothers, is excellent in critical and
satirical detail. In this work the writer
displayed a talent for caricature as well
as deep regional feeling. Her vulgar Lady
Clonbrony, Nicholas Garraghty, the
dishonest agent, and Sir Terence OTay, an
impecunious sponger, suggest later
figures in the work of Surtees and Dickens.
The Story:
Lord Clonbrony was an absentee
landlord. The owner of large but
encumbered Irish estates, he lived in England
because Lady Clonbrony, an extravagant,
ambitious woman, would have nothing to
do with Ireland or the Irish. People of
wealth and position laughed at her and
the silly determination with which she
aped English manners and speech. Lord
Clonbrony they ignored. A respected
peer in Dublin and a good landlord when
he had lived on his own estates, he was
a nobody in his wife's fashionable world,
and so he associated with questionable
and dissipated companions like Sir
Terence OTay. Little was known about
Lord Colambre, the Clonbrony heir,
except that he was a student at Cambridge
and a young man of considerable
expectations from a distant relative. A cousin,
Grace Nugent, was well thought of
because of her beauty and good manners.
Lady Clonbrony was anxious to have
her son marry Miss Broadhurst, a young
woman of much sense and large fortune.
Although Lady Clonbrony and Mrs.
Broadhurst did their best to promote the
match, the young people, while friendly,
were not drawn to each other, Lord
Colambre because he was too much
attracted by Grace's amiability and charm, Miss
Broadhurst because she respected his
feelings for his cousin.
In execution of a commission for
Arthur Berryl, a Cambridge friend, Lord
17

Colambre went to the establishment of
Mr. Mordicai, a coachmaker and
moneylender. There he overheard some talk
which revealed that his father's financial
affairs were not in good order.
Questioned, Lord Clonbrony admitted that his
situation was grave but that he relied on
Sir Terence, often his intermediary with
his creditors, to prevent legal action
against him. The father reflected with
some bitterness that there would be no
need for such expediency if landowners
would live on their own estates and kill
their own mutton.
Lord Colambre saw for himself the
results of reckless borrowing when Sir John
Berryl, the father of his friend, was taken
suddenly ill. Mordicai, demanding
immediate payment of a large debt, attempted
to have the sick man arrested and thrown
into prison. Only Lord Colambre's
presence and firm words of rebuff kept the
money-lender from carrying out his
intention. Mordicai left with threats that
Lord Colambre would someday regret
his insults. Sir John Berryl died that
night, leaving his family almost
penniless.
Deeply concerned for his own family's
welfare, Lord Colambre decided to visit
Ireland and see for himself the state of
his father's affairs. Lady Clonbrony used
every possible argument to dissuade her
son, and Sir Terence suggested that the
young man could best help his father by
marrying a woman as wealthy as Miss
Broadhurst. When Lord Colambre left
suddenly for Ireland, his mother, refusing
to give up her matrimonial plans for her
son, allowed her friends to believe that
he had gone to attend to private business
in connection with his marriage
settlement. Since many people expected him
to marry Miss Broadhurst, that story
satisfied the Clonbrony creditors for the
time being.
Arriving in Dublin, Lord Colambre
met Sir James Brooke, a British official
well informed on Irish affairs, and the
two men became good friends. The young
nobleman, pleased with everything he
heard and saw, was unable to understand
his mother's detestation of the Irish. He
tried to meet Nicholas Garraghty, his
father's agent, but the man was away on
business. Instead, he was entertained by
the agent's sister, a silly, affected woman
named Mrs. Raffarty.
He also met Lady Dashfort, who saw
in him a possible husband for her
widowed daughter, Lady Isabel. Although he
heard no good reports of Lady Dashfort
or her daughter, he became a frequent
visitor in their home. At last, interested
in securing an alliance for her daughter,
Lady Dashfort proposed that he
accompany her to Killpatrickstown, where she
was going to visit Lord and Lady Killpat-
rick. It was her intention to show him
Irish life at its worst, so that he would
have no desire to live on the Clonbrony
estates after his marriage to Lady Isabel.
Aware of his affection for Grace, Lady
Dashfort arranged matters so that Lady
Killpatrick asked her to exhibit her
genealogical table, which had been prepared
as evidence in a lawsuit. She did so with
seeming reluctance, on the grounds that
she was ashamed of her remote
connection with the scandalous St. Omars. She
then revealed that Grace's mother had
been a St. Omar.
Lord Colambre wrote to his mother to
ask the truth. She replied that the girl's
mother had been a St. Omar but that she
had taken the name Reynolds after an
affair with a gentleman of that name.
When the Reynolds family refused to
acknowledge her child, she had married a
Mr. Nugent, who had generously given
the daughter his own name. The young
man realized that this disclosure put a
bar between Grace and himself.
Through the Killpatricks, Lord
Colambre met Count O'Halloran, regarded by
his neighbors as an oddity because of his
learning, his fondness for animals, and
his liking for the Irish. When the count
returned the visit, Lady Dashfort took
issue with him because he criticized the
improper conduct of an English officer
with whom both were acquainted. Lady
18

Dash fort's lack of good manners and
moral sense, and the further revelation
of Lady Isabel as a malicious flirt, showed
the two women to Lord Colambre in
their true light. He decided to leave the
Dashforts and continue his tour alone.
Count O'Halloran prevailed upon him,
however, to accompany that gentleman
to Oranmore. There Lord Colambre
found a family of taste and breeding,
interested in affairs of the day and the
welfare of their tenants. Stimulated by
the example of Lord and Lady
Oranmore, he planned to go immediately to
his father's estate, but incognito, so that
he could observe more accurately the
conditions of the tenantry and the conduct
of the estate agents.
He found the village of Colambre neat
and prosperous, well looked after by Mr.
Burke, the agent. After a dinner with the
Burkes, the agent showed him over the
estate with evident pride in all he had
accomplished. He regretted, however, that
the absentee owner took no interest in
the land or the tenants, aside from the
revenues derived from them. Burke's fears
that Lord Clonbrony was displeased with
his management were confirmed by the
arrival of a letter in which his lordship
dismissed the agent and directed him to
turn over his accounts to Nicholas
Garraghty.
Lord Colambre went next to
Clonbrony. From a driver he learned that the
tenants hated and feared Nicholas
Garraghty, the factor, and Dennis Garraghty,
his brother and assistant. The carriage
breaking down, Lord Colambre spent the
night with Mrs. O'Neill, a widow whose
niece had been named after Grace
Nugent. The next day the young nobleman
was present when Dennis Garraghty
refused to renew a lease promised to Mrs.
O'Neill's son Brian. The arrival of Mrs.
Raffarty and her identification of Lord
Colambre caused Garraghty quickly to
change his mind. Disgusted by the man's
methods of doing business and by the
unkempt, poverty-stricken appearance of
the village, Lord Colambre wrote to his
father and asked him to have no further
dealings with the Garraghtys.
During the voyage back to England
Lord Colambre's ship was delayed by a
storm, so that the Garraghtys arrived in
London ahead of him. He returned,
however, in time to confront the agent and
his brother with a report on their
transactions. Hearing his son's story, Lord
Clonbrony would have dismissed them on
the spot if he had possessed the cash
necessary to settle their entangled accounts.
Lord Colambre then asked his father and
Sir Terence for a full accounting of the
distressed nobleman's obligations. In
return, he proposed to settle the debt with
the inheritance he would receive when
he came of age, a date only a few days
off, if his father would end all business
relations with the Garraghtys and go to
Ireland to live. Lord Clonbrony
welcomed the proposal, but his wife, when
she heard of it, treated the idea with
scorn. She was already displeased with
her son because he had not pressed his
suit upon Miss Broadhurst and the
heiress was to marry his friend, Sir Arthur
Berryl. When Lord Colambre expressed
pleasure over his friend's good fortune,
Lady Clonbrony retired in disgust.
Under persuasion by every member of
her family, Lady Clonbrony at last
ungraciously agreed to return to Ireland.
Meanwhile Lord Colambre, busy with
his father's accounts, discovered that
many of the London bills had been
deliberately overcharged and that Nicholas
Garraghty was in reality his lordship's
debtor, not his creditor, as the agent had
claimed. With some ready money sent
by Lady Berryl, the former Miss
Broadhurst, through her husband, Lord
Colambre was able to setde his father's most
pressing debts and Sir Terence was able
to reclaim Mordicai's bond at a discount.
Garraghty having been dismissed in
disgrace, Mr. Burke was appointed agent of
the Colambre and Clonbrony estates.
On the day he came of age Lord
Colambre's first duty was to execute a bond
for five thousand pounds in Grace's name,
19

that amount of her own inheritance
having been lent to her guardian years
before. The young man's secret regret was
that he could not offer his heart with his
cousin's restored property.
Count O'Halloran, arriving in London,
called on Lord Colambre. When the
young nobleman confided his true
feelings for Grace and told his friend
something of her story, the count recalled a
Captain Reynolds whom he had known
in Austria. Dying, the officer had told
of his secret marriage with a Miss St.
Omar and had entrusted to the count a
packet of private papers, among them a
marriage certificate. The count had given
the papers to the English ambassador and
they had passed in turn into the keeping
of Sir James Brooke, the executor of the
ambassador's estate. Acting on this
information, Lord Colambre went to Sir
James and obtained the papers, which
had never been carefully examined.
When he presented them to the dead
officer's father, old Mr. Reynolds accepted
with delight the proof of his
granddaughter's legitimacy and declared his
intention to make her his heiress. Because
Grace had never known of the shadow
cast on her birth, Lady Berryl was
delegated to tell her the whole story, a task
which that friendly young woman
performed with great delicacy and tact.
Acquainted with the true state of
affairs, Lady Clonbrony offered no
objections to her son's marriage with Grace.
Lord Clonbrony and his wife returned
to Ireland and there, in due time, Grace
became Viscountess Colambre, much to
the satisfaction of Lady Clonbrony, who
saw so happily fulfilled her hopes that
her son would marry an heiress.
20

THE ACHARNIANS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c 448-c. 385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: The time of the Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 425 B.C.
Principal characters:
Dicaeopolis, a peace-loving citizen
Amphitheus, his friend
Euripides, the playwright
Lamachus, a general
Ambassadors to the Allies of Athens
The Acharnians, a chorus of charcoal burners
Critique:
The Acharnians is the earliest known
comedy of Aristophanes and, deservedly,
his first prize-winner. Thematically, it is
the most inclusive of his plays; in it we
find his powerful wit and satire against
militarism and war, his contempt for
[>etty politicians and informers, his de-
ight in earthy sex play, and his spirited
spoofing of Euripides—qualities which
make it the most personal of
Aristophanes' works. When Dicaeopolis speaks
directly to the audience in the parabasis,
he does so with the voice of
Aristophanes eloquently asserting his
intellectual honesty and independence and
declaring that he will always fight for the
cause of peace and justice in his
comedies.
The Story:
Dicaeopolis, waiting for the assembly
to convene, sat musing, making figures in
the dust, pulling out his loose hairs, and
longing for peace. He was fully prepared
to harass and abuse the speakers if they
talked of anything but peace with Sparta.
Immediately after the citizens had
gathered, his friend Amphitheus began to
complain of hunger because of the
wartime diet. He was saved from arrest only
by the intervention of Dicaeopolis.
The assembly then listened to a series
of fantastic claims made by the pompous
ambassadors to Athens' allies, each speech
punctuated by a scoffing aside from
Dicaeopolis, who knew full well that the
entire alliance was wasting away from
the effects of the Peloponnesian War.
The high point of absurdity was reached
when the last of the ambassadors ushered
in a few scraggly, miserably dressed
troops, introducing them as a Thracian
host sent to assist in the war. Dicaeopolis,
knowing of the assembly's willingness to
adjourn upon the slightest provocation,
then brought about the end of the session
by claiming to have felt a drop of rain.
Finding himself unable to bring about
the end of the war, Dicaeopolis
determined to effect a personal, separate peace.
Amphitheus, his own ambassador,
returned from the enemy with three bottles
of wine—the first five years old, the
second ten years old, and the third thirty
years old. The first two tasted vile, but
the last was rich with a bouquet of
nectar and ambrosia. Drinking it down,
Dicaeopolis personally accepted and ratified
a thirty-year peace. The Acharnians,
whose vineyards had been ravaged by the
enemy, having got wind of this traitorous
act, arrived in pursuit of Amphitheus just
as Dicaeopolis was leaving his house to
offer up a ritual prayer to Bacchus in
thanks for the peace that allowed him to
resume once more a normal existence
with his wife. Upon hearing his prayer,
the Acharnians began to stone him as he
tried in vain to persuade them that peace
was good. Threatened with further vio-
21

lence, Dicaeopolis seized a covered basket
of coals and announced that it was an
Acharnian child, a hostage, which he
would disembowel if he were not
permitted to plead his cause. When the
Acharnians agreed, he asked further to
be allowed to dress properly for the
occasion.
Dicaeopolis then went to the house of
Euripides to borrow the costume of Tele-
phus, the most unfortunate and pathetic
of all the heroes of Euripides' tragedies.
The great playwright, in the midst of
composing a new tragedy, was hardly in
the mood to be disturbed, but
Dicaeopolis could not resist the opportunity to
tease him about his wretched heroes and
about the fact that his mother had sold
vegetables. Finally the irate Euripides
gave him the miserable costume and
turned him out.
The eloquent plea for peace that
Dicaeopolis delivered to the Acharnians was
so moving that the chorus was divided on
the issue. At that moment Lamachus, a
general dressed in full armor, arrived on
the scene. He declared that nothing
could dissuade him from eternal war on
the Spartans and their allies. Dicaeopolis
countered with a proclamation that his
markets were henceforth open to all the
enemies of Athens, but not to Lamachus.
Shortly thereafter a starving Megarian
appeared in Dicaeopolis' market place
with his two daughters, who had agreed
with their father that it would be better
to be sold than to die of hunger. After
disguising them as pigs by fitting them
with hoofs and snouts, the Megarian
stuffed them into a sack and offered them
to Dicaeopolis as the finest sows he could
possibly offer to Aphrodite. Dicaeopolis,
aware of the deception, nevertheless
accepted them in exchange for a supply of
garlic and salt. The next trader was a
fat, thriving Boeotian with a tremendous
supply of game birds, animals, and fish.
All he asked in exchange was some item
of Athenian produce not available in
Boeotia. Careful bargaining revealed,
however, that the only such item was an
informer—a vessel useful for holding all
foul things, a mortar for grinding out
lawsuits, a light for looking into other
people's accounts. At last the bargain was
made, and the next meddling informer to
enter the market place and threaten
Dicaeopolis with exposure to the authorities
was seized, bound, and carefully packed
in hay for the Boeotian to carry home.
Suddenly General Lamachus was
ordered to take his battalions to guard the
borders against invasion during the
forthcoming Feast of the Cups. At the same
time the priest of Bacchus ordered
Dicaeopolis to prepare for joyous
participation in the feast. The chorus wished them
both joy as Lamachus donned his heavy
armor and Dicaeopolis dressed in festival
clothes, as Lamachus unhooked his spear
and Dicaeopolis unhooked a sausage.
After the feast Lamachus was carried in,
hurt in a fall in a ditch before
encountering the enemy; and Dicaeopolis entered,
hilariously drunk and supported by two
voluptuous courtesans. The blessings of
peace were emphasized by the fact that,
in the end, Lamachus the militarist was
carried off to the surgeon while
Dicaeopolis was conducted before the judges ta
be awarded the wineskin of victory.
22

ADAM BEDE
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: 1799
Locale: England
First published: 1859
Principal characters:
Adam Bede, a carpenter
Seth Bede, his brother
Martin Poyser, proprietor of Hall Farm
Mrs. Poyser, his wife
Dinah Morris, her niece, a Methodist preacher
Hetty Sorrel, another niece
Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire
Critique:
This novel of English pastoral life
probably shows George Eliot's quality as
a novelist better than any other of her
works, with the possible exception of
Middlemarch. When George Eliot was
writing of the peasants, the artisans, the
yeomen, the clergy, and the squires of
Warwickshire, she was writing out of
memories of her own childhood, and her
characters come to life as people she had
known. Moreover, she superimposes upon
them an awareness of fate, not majestic
as in Hardy, but growing out of her
convictions that there is a cause and effect
relationship in human behavior as there
is in the rest of nature.
The Story:
In the village of Hayslope at the close
of the eighteenth century, there lived a
young carpenter named Adam Bede. Tall
and muscular, Adam was respected by
everyone as a good workman and an
honest and upright man. Even the young
squire, Captain Arthur Donnithorne,
knew Adam and liked him, and Adam in
turn regarded the squire as his best
friend.
Adam was, in fact, so good a workman
that his employer, Mr. Jonathan Burge,
the builder, would have welcomed him as
his son-in-law and partner. But Adam
had no eyes for Mary Burge; his only
thoughts were of distractingly pretty
Hetty Sorrell, niece of Mrs. Poyser,
whose husband, Martin, ran the Hail
Farm. Hetty, however, cared nothing for
Adam. She was interested only in
Captain Donnithorne, whom she had met
one day in her aunt's dairy.
No one in Hayslope thought Hetty
would make Adam a good wife, least of
all Adam's mother, Lisbeth, who would
have disapproved of any girl who
threatened to take her favorite son from her.
Her feelings of dependence upon Adam
were intensified after her husband,
Matthias Bede, drowned in Willow Brook
while on his way home from the village
inn.
In the meantime, Adam's brother Seth
had fallen in love with the young
Methodist preacher, Dinah Morris. Dinah was
another niece of Mrs. Poyser, as unlike
her cousin Hetty as Adam was unlike
Seth. Hetty resembled nothing so much
as a soft, helpless kitten, but Dinah was
firm and serious in all things. One
evening while she and Seth were walking
home together from the village green,
he had proposed marriage. Dinah sadly
declined, saying she had dedicated her
life to preaching the gospel.
When funeral services for Matthias
Bede were held in Hayslope Church on
the following Sunday, the thoughts of
the congregation were on many things
other than the solemn occasion they were
attending. Adam's thoughts of Hetty
blended with memories of his father.
23

Hetty's thoughts were all of Captain
Donnithome, who had promised to make
his appearance. She was disappointed,
however, for Donnithome had already
departed with his regiment. When he
returned on leave, the young squire
celebrated his twenty-first birthday with a
great feast to which nearly all of Hay-
slope was invited. Adam was singled out
as a special guest to sit at Donnithorne's
table. Adam's mother was both proud
and jealous lest her son be getting more
and more out of her reach.
One August night, exactly three weeks
after the Donnithome party, Adam was
returning home from his work on the
Donnithome estate when he saw two
figures in close embrace. They were
Donnithome and Hetty Sorrel. When
Adam's dog barked, Hetty hurried away.
Donnithome, embarrassed, tried to
explain that he had met the girl by chance
and had stolen a kiss. Adam called his
friend a scoundrel and a coward. They
came to blows, and Donnithome was
knocked senseless. Adam, frightened
that he might have killed the young
squire in his rage, revived him and helped
him to a nearby summerhouse. There
he demanded that Donnithome write a
letter to Hetty telling her that he would
not see her again.
The next day Donnithome sent the
letter to Hetty in Adam's care, thus
placing the responsibility for its possible
effect upon Adam himself. Adam gave
her the letter while they were walking
the following Sunday. When, in the
privacy of her bedchamber, she read the
letter, Hetty was in despair. Her dreams
shattered, she thought only of finding
some way out of her misery. Then in
November Adam was offered a
partnership in Mr. Burge's business, and he
proposed to Hetty. Mr. and Mrs. Poyser
were delighted to find that their niece
was to marry the man they so much
admired.
But the wedding had to be delayed
until two new rooms could be added to
the Bede house. In February, Hetty told
her aunt she was going to visit Dinah
Morris at Snowfield. Actually, however,
she was determined to find Donnithome.
When she arrived at Windsor, where he
was supposed to be stationed, she found
that his regiment had been transferred
to Ireland. Now in complete despair
Hetty roamed about until in a strange
village, and in the house of a widow
named Sarah Stone, her child by
Donnithome was born. Frightened, Hetty
wandered on, leaving her baby to die
in a wood. Later, tortured by her
conscience, she returned to find the child
gone.
When his grandfather died,
Donnithome returned to Hayslope to discover
that Hetty was in prison, charged with
the murder of her child. He did
everything in his power to free her, and Dinah
Morris came to her prison cell and
prayed with her to open up her heart
and tell the truth. Finally poor Hetty
broke down and confessed everything
that had happened since she left
Hayslope. She had not intended to kill her
baby; in fact, she had not actually killed
the child. She had considered taking her
own life. Two days later, Donnithome,
filled with shame and remorse, brought
a reprieve. Hetty's sentence was
committed to deportation. A few years later
she died on her way home. Donnithome
went to Spain.
Dinah Morris stayed with the Poysers
often now, and gradually she and Adam
were drawn to each other. But Dinah's
heart was still set on her preaching. She
left Hall Farm and went back to Snow-
field. Adam Bede found his only
satisfaction toiling at his workbench. Then
one day his mother spoke again of Dinah
and her gentle ways. Adam could wail
no longer. He went to find her.
24

ADDRESSES
Type of work: Formal speeches
Author: Abraham Lincoln CI809-1865)
First delivered: 1838-1865
Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President
of the United States and author of the
Gettysburg Address, has come to be
recognized as a creative speaker with an
individual and appealing style. He had a
perceptive sense of humor and an
awareness of human dignity and of the tragedy
which occurs with the loss of it. His
arguments were logically respectable and
responsive to the problems of his times.
Although he always retained a directness of
statement and feeling which reflected the
conditions of his boyhood in Kentucky
and Indiana, he was by no means a
merely homespun speaker or writer; his
poetic phrasing and imagery, Biblical
allusions, and rhetorical devices all testify
to the fact that he was a well-educated
and intelligent man who could speak to
any kind of audience in a manner and
with the diction appropriate to the
occasion.
But Lincoln was not perfect. If it is
relevant to state the fact of his
imperfection, the reason is that Lincoln's
compassion and understanding and his
contribution to the creation of American
democracy as we know it have so
impressed his fellow citizens that sometimes
romantic legends lead us to believe that
he never spoke without winning assent
and admiration from those whom he
addressed. But since he was human and to
err is human, and since he was sometimes
called upon to speak when there was no
great problem to resolve or attack, he was
on occasion ineffective in what he said.
Once the legend of Lincoln's
perfection is dispelled, the fact of his greatness
as a man, a President, and a speaker
emerges. The Gettysburg Address of
1863 was no isolated phenomenon; the
ideas, the sentiments, the clear eloquence
had all been heard before, but never with
such economy and depth.
"The Perpetuation of Our Political
Institutions/' one of the earliest of
Lincoln's speeches, was an address given to
the Young Men's Lyceum of Sprinofield,
Illinois, on January 27, 1838. Lincoln
began by recalling the political and
social legacy bequeathed the American
people of the nineteenth century by their
fathers, and he asked how the task of
maintaining the liberties transmitted to
them might best be performed. He
argued that the danger of loss came not
from abroad but only from Americans
themselves: "If destruction be our lot,
we must ourselves be its author and
finisher." Lincoln then referred to several
violent instances of mob action and
argued that such disregard for law could
result in the loss of the legacy of freedom.
Although the passion of revolution had
helped Americans achieve their liberty,
it was necessary to let reason and a
reverence for law prevail.
In this early speech there is ample
evidence of Lincoln's power, a power
partly literary and partly spiritual. The
young speaker reflected his sense of his
role, as a citizen, to transmit the
American heritage. Like his contemporaries, he
placed his faith in reason, law, the
orderly processes of government, and a
sense of human dignity; but he added to
this conventional faith his own clear
conviction and commitment, applying the
principles of democracy to the immediate
danger he found about him. His
philosophy of government was conservative; he
did not speak for abolition—but what he
conserved were the principles needed in
critical times. His character, not the
particular strain of his politics, was already
the most persuasive element in his
addresses; the demands of the Presidency in
a time of civil war were to realize the
nobility of that character.
At the close of the Republican State
Convention at Springfield, Illinois, on

June 16, 1858, Lincoln delivered an
acceptance of the senatorial nomination.
This speech marked the beginning of the
campaign that was to involve him in the
series of debates with Stephen A.
Douglas. After referring to the increase in
slavery agitation, Lincoln declared:
In my opinion, it will not cease,
until a crisis shall have been reached, and
passed—
"A house divided against itself
cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot
endure, permanently half slave and half
free.
I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved—I do not expect the house to
fall—but I do expect it will cease to be
divided.
It will become all one thing, or all
the other.
Lincoln went on to discuss the
Nebraska Bill, which allowed the people of
any state or territory to determine
whether slavery was to be allowed in
their state or territory, the Dred Scott
Decision, and the opinions of Senator
Douglas. Lincoln maintained that
Douglas cared nothing about halting the
advance of slavery, and he implied that
Douglas* policy tended to divide the
Union.
In the first Lincoln-Douglas debate at
Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858,
Douglas referred to Lincoln's acceptance
speech and quoted Lincoln's remarks
concerning the "house divided against
itself." He argued that the founders of
the nation had believed it possible for the
union to exist with both free and slave
states, and he suggested that Lincoln
could hardly disagree with such men as
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and
Hamilton. He endorsed the Dred Scott
Decision, declaring that if Lincoln's
opinions prevailed "black settlements" would
"cover your prairies." "I am in favor of
confining citizenship to white men, men
of European birth and descent," Douglas
asserted, "instead of conferring it upon
Negroes, Indians, and other inferior
races."
Lincoln replied by correcting a
number of misrepresentations made by
Senator Douglas, and in order to counter the
charge that he was an abolitionist he
quoted from a speech he had made at
Peoria, Illinois, in 1854. Although he
stated that he had no intention of
introducing political and social equality
between the white and the black races, he
added that "notwithstanding, all this,
there is no reason in the world why the
Negro is not entitled to all the natural
rights enumerated in the Declaration of
Independence—the right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness." Even
when, for the sake of politics, Lincoln
agreed with Douglas that the black man
was not his equal, he qualified his
admission: "I agree with Judge Douglas
that he [the Negro] is not my equal in
many respects—certainly not in color,
perhaps not in moral or intellectual
endowment." Then, although the "perhaps"
made a world of difference, Lincoln
closed that particular subject: "But in the
right to eat the bread, without the leave
of anybody else, which his own hand
earns, he is my equal, and the equal of
Judge Douglas, and the equal of every
living man."
Even now, more than a hundred years
after the debates, the speeches by
Douglas and Lincoln bring the living man
before the imagination. Douglas is the
clever, urbane debater; but Lincoln is
at least as clever, and he has the words
to reach all minds and to express
sentiments which make up the American
ideal. In debate, Lincoln was as
relentless as his opponent in the attempt to win
his points, but he was never vicious, even
when he was not as candid as a man
could be. His homely sense of humor
remained an invaluable instrument in his
bag of rhetorical devices. Immediately
after considering Douglas' charge that he
was an abolitionist, Lincoln passed on
to the question of whether he had ever
been a grocery-keeper. He said, "I don't
know that it would be a great sin if I
had been; but he is mistaken. Lincoln
never kept a grocery anywhere in the
26

world. It is true that Lincoln did work
the latter part of one winter in a little
still-house up at the head of a hollow."
At Springfield, Illinois, in his last
speech of the campaign of 1858,
Lincoln repeated that he admitted the right
of the South to reclaim its fugitives and
that he denied the right of Congress to
interfere with the states. He declared
that he had found the campaign painful,
particularly because former friends
accused him of wishing to destroy the
union. Then he concluded that some had
charged him with ambition, but that he
would gladly withdraw if he could be
assured of "unyielding hostility" to the
spread of slavery. The candor and
intensity of this brief speech make it one of
Lincoln's most moving addresses.
Lincoln's courage became most
evident with his address at Cooper Union in
New York on February 27, 1860. He
took issue with Douglas* claim that the
authors of the Constitution understood
the "question" as well as the men of his
own day. He agreed with Douglas that
the fathers of the Constitution
understood the issue, but he disagreed with
Douglas' assertion that they sided with
Douglas' view that the Constitution
forbids federal control of slavery. Lincoln
argued strongly against any
interpretation of the Constitution which would
have permitted the extension of slavery
to the Free States and the territories. He
referred to the secessionist threat to
destroy the union if a Republican president
were elected, and he urged that the
Republicans do their part to maintain peace.
He concluded, "Let us have faith that
right makes might, and in that faith, let
us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
understand it."
Later in the year, in May, Lincoln
was nominated for the office of President
by the Republican Party; although he
had been defeated in his senatorial
campaign against Douglas, his speeches had
brought him into national prominence.
In February, 1861, after having been
elected to the Presidency in November of
the preceding year, Lincoln said farewell
to the people of Springfield, Illinois, with
a few poignant sentences in which he
asked for the assistance of "that Divine
Being" who had attended Washington.
The Civil War began in April.
Lincoln's inaugural addresses, his
message to Congress on July 4, 1861, and his
annual messages to Congress presented
the facts of the national crisis with
clarity and compassion. The Gettysburg
Address of November 19, 1863, brought all
of Lincoln's sincere idealism into focus
and related it to the grief of a nation. His
addresses will continue to remain a
cherished part of the American heritage and
a significant segment of the world's
literature.
27

THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON
Type of work: Drama
Author: James M. Barrie (1860-1937)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Loam House, Mayfair; a desert island
First presented: 1903
Principal characters:
The Earl of Loam
Lady Mary,
Lady Catherine, and
Lady Agatha, his daughters
The Hon. Ernest Wooixey, his nephew
William Crichton, his buder
Critique:
One of the best of Barrie's comedies,
The Admirable Crichton contains a more
definite theme than Barrie generally put
into his plays. His satirical portrait of
an English aristocrat with liberal ideas
is the most skillful that has been done
on the subject. Lord Loam, like many
liberals, is a kind of social Jekyll and
Hyde, accepting the doctrine of the rights
of man in theory, but holding tightly to
his vested interests in practice.
The Story:
Once every month, the philanthropic
Earl of Loam gave expression to his
views on human equality by forcing his
servants to have tea with him and his
family in the great hall of Loam House
in Mayfair. It was a disagreeable
experience for everyone concerned,
especially for his butler, Crichton, who
did not share his master's liberal views.
Lord Loam alone enjoyed the occasion,
for he was the only one who remained
completely himself. He ordered his
daughters and his nephew about and
treated them exactly as he treated his
servants on the remaining days of the
month.
Lady Mary, his oldest daughter, was a
spirited young woman who resented her
father's high-handed methods with his
family. Her indignation reached a
climax one day when Lord Loam
announced that his three daughters were
to have but one maid among them on a
yachting trip on which the family was
about to embark. Lady Mary was furious,
but she assumed that her maid, Fisher,
would go along. When Fisher learned
that she was expected to look after the
two younger sisters in addition to Lady
Mary, she promptly resigned, and the
two maids attending Catherine and
Agatha followed suit. Lord Loam was
left without any servants for his
projected cruise, for his valet also resigned.
Although it hurt his pride deeply,
Crichton finally agreed, out of loyalty to
his master, to act as his valet on the trip.
Moreover, he persuaded Tweeny, the
housemaid upon whom he had cast a
favorable eye, to go along as maid to
Lord Loam's daughters.
The cruise ended unhappily when the
yacht was pounded to pieces during a
violent storm in the Pacific, and the
party was cast away on a tropical island.
All reached shore except Lord Loam. The
other survivors had watched him throw
away his life in a frantic but vain
attempt to get into the lifeboat first.
On the island all tried to preserve as
much as possible the class distinction
which had prevailed in England. But
the attempt was unsuccessful. Crichton
THt ADMIRABLE CRICHTON by James M. Barrie. from THE PLAYS OF JAMES M. BARRIE. By
permission oi i he publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. CoDvrieht, 1914. by Charles Scribner's Son*. 1918, 1928,
by J. M. Barrie.
28

alone knew exactly what he was doing,
and it was upon him that the others
had to depend. So Crichton, the servant,
became on the island the natural leader,
and he ruled his former superiors with
a gentle but a firm hand. For example,
he found the epigrams of the Hon.
Ernest, which had seemed so brilliant
in England, a bit trying; as a
consequence, Crichton adopted the policy of
submitting Ernest to a severe ducking
whenever he came forth with an epigram.
The aristocrats worried over the rising
authority of their former butler and the
decline in their own prestige. When
Lord Loam finally appeared, after
washing ashore with some wreckage, they
urged him to take a stand of authority.
Lord Loam's only recourse was to remove
his little party to another section of the
island apart from Crichton. But hunger,
which the aristocrats by their own efforts
could not assuage, brought them meekly
back. Crichton became the acknowledged
leader of them all.
Crichton took full advantage of his
newly acquired authority. Having none of
the earl's ideas about equality, he found
no necessity for pretending that on the
island his former betters were his equals
in any sense. Each was kept in his place
and required to do his own work
according to the needs of the camp.
Under Crichton's rule the aristocrats
were happy for perhaps the first time
in their lives. The hard physical labor
made something approaching a man out
of Ernest, and the task of helping to
prepare Crichton's food and waiting on
him at the table turned Lord Loam's
snobbish daughters into attractive and
useful women. Lord Loam, dressed in
animal skins, was merely a harmless and
rather genial old man with no particular
talents, whom everyone called Daddy.
But the greatest change occurred in Lady
Mary. She alone realized that in any
environment Crichton was superior to
them all, and that only the conventions
of so-called civilized society had obscured
that fact. Consequently she fell in love
with the butler and did everything in
her power to make herself his favorite.
Crichton, attracted to the beautiful Lady
Mary, considered making her his consort
on the island. He indulged in the fancy
that in some past existence he had been
a king and she a Christian slave. But
when a ship appeared on the horizon,
Crichton realized that his dreams were
romantic nonsense. On their return to
England he again would be a butler, and
she would be Lady Mary.
It was as Crichton had expected. After
the rescue Lord Loam and his family
returned to their old habits of thought
and behavior. Crichton was again the
butler. The Hon. Ernest wrote a book
about their experiences on the island
and made himself the hero of their
exploits. Crichton was barely mentioned.
Lady Mary reluctantly renewed her
engagement to the rather asinine Lord
Brocklehurst, whose mother was greatly
worried over what had happened on the
island and not sure that a daughter of
Lord Loam was a fit wife for her son.
But Lady Mary still recognized
Crichton's superiority, and told him so frankly.
Crichton was shocked. Her views might
have been acceptable on the island, he
said, but not in England. When she
expressed the radical view that something
might be wrong with England, Crichton
told her that not even from her would
he listen to a word of criticism against
England or English ways.
29

ADOLPHE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Benjamin Constant (1767-1830)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
Locale: Germany and Poland
First published: 1815
Principal characters:
Adolphe, the narrator
Ellenorh, his mistress
Critique:
From one point of view it may be said
that the modern psychological novel
sprang full-blown from the brain of
Benjamin Constant; from other points of
view, however, Adolphe is too much of a
sport in nineteenth-century literature to
shed much light on the historical
development of the novel. The work might
be described as a little
seventeenth-century tragedy written in lucid eighteenth-
century prose about a nineteenth-century
situation by a twentieth-century analytical
consciousness. The brevity and the
apparently effortless progression of the story
result in a deceptive simplicity.
Ostensibly about an unhappy love affair—from
the first fixation of an abundant and
unattached vitality, through the luminous
point of love, to the final disillusionment,
or dissolution—Adolphe represents a
remorseless survey of a familiar modern
interior waste land whose most marked
characteristic is gradual emotional
atrophy.
The Story:
Having creditably completed his
studies at Gottingen in spite of a somewhat
dissipated life, Adolphe was expected, after
a preliminary period of travel, to take his
place in the governmental department of
which his father was the head. The hopes
entertained by his father, the minister
of a German Electorate, inclined him to
leniency regarding his son's indiscretions,
but because of an inherent timidity
shared by father and son—a timidity
combined, on the part of the father, with
a defensive outward coldness—no real
sympathy was possible between the two.
The constraint generated by this
relationship had a considerable effect on Ad-
olphe's character, as did a period he spent
as the protige" of a woman much older
than he whose strong and unconventional
opinions made on him an indelible
impression. This period, spent in long,
passionately analytical conversations,
culminated with the woman's death.
On leaving the university, Adolphe
went to the small German principality
of D . At first he was welcomed at
court, but eventually he attracted to
himself the malicious judgments of those who
resented the mannered frivolity,
alternating with scathing frankness, which
stemmed from his profound indifference
to the available society. The woman who
had formed his mind had bequeathed to
him an ardent dislike of mediocrity and
all its expressions, and he found it
difficult to reconcile himself with the
artificiality of society and the necessity for
arbitrary convention. Moreover, his only
interest at that time was indulgence in
passionate feelings which lead to
contempt for the ordinary world.
One thing which did impress him was
the spectacle of a friend's joy at making
a conquest of one of the less mediocre
women of the court. His friend's
reaction not only developed in Adolphe the
regrets connected with piqued vanity, but
also other, more confused emotions
related to newly discovered aspects of his
desire to be loved. He could discover in
himself no marked tastes, but on making the
acquaintance of Count P , Adolphe
soon determined to attempt establishing
a liaison with the woman who had shared
30

the count's life for ten years and whose
two illegitimate children had been
acknowledged by their father. Ellenore was
a spirited woman who came from a good
Polish family ruined in her childhood by
political troubles. Her history was one of
untiring devotion to the count and
constant conflict between her respectable
sentiments and her position in society—
a position which had gradually become
sanctioned, however, through the
influence of her lover.
Adolphe did not think of himself as
being in love, but as fulfilling
obligations to his self-esteem; yet he found his
thoughts increasingly occupied with Elle-
nore's person as well as his project and,
unable to make a verbal declaration, he
finally wrote to her. His inner agitation
and the conviction he sought to express
rebounded, however, and his imagination
became wholly entangled when Ellenore
refused to receive him. Becoming
perfectly convinced of his love, he finally
succeeded in overcoming her resistance to
his suit. When the count was called away
on urgent business, Adolphe and E116nore
basked for a few weeks in the charm of
love and mutual gratitude. But Adolphe
began almost immediately to be annoyed
at the new constraint imposed on his life
by this attachment, rewarding though he
found it. The idea that it could not last
calmed his fears, and he wrote to his
father upon Ellenore's importunings,
asking permission to postpone his return for
six months. When his father gave the
desired consent, Adolphe was
immediately confronted again by all the
drawbacks involved in his remaining at D .
He was irritated at the prospect of
prolonging the deceptions required by his
affair; of continuing the profitless life he
led under Ellenore's exacting domination;
above all, of making her suffer by
compromising her position, for the count had
become suspicious on his return.
Adolphe's resentment led to a quarrel
with Ellenore in which were made the
first irreparable statements that once
spoken, cannot be recalled. The quarrel
and the forced intimacy which followed
it only increased Ellenore's anxiety and
ardor, and she decided to break with
Count P when he ordered her not to
see Adolphe. Adolphe could not summon
the courage to reject her sacrifice, even
though it caused him great anguish and
destroyed in a moment the social respect
which Ellenore had acquired through
years of effort. His sense of duty
increasing as his love weakened, he was willing
to fight a duel at the slightest disparaging
remark about her; yet he himself wronged
her in inconsequential social
conversation. When the time came for him to
leave, he promised to return, fearing her
violent grief. Moreover, he discovered
that the arrival of the break he had
longed for filled him with keen regret,
almost with terror. He wrote regular
letters to her, each begun with the
intention of indicating his coldness, but
always ended with words calculated to
restore her confidence in his passion.
Meanwhile, he relished his independence.
Having understood from Adolphe's
letters that it would be difficult for him to
leave his father, Ellenore decided to join
him. He wrote advising her to postpone
her coming, with the consequence that
her indignation was aroused and her
arrival hastened. Adolphe had resolved to
meet her with a show of joy, concealing
his real feelings, but she sensed the
deception immediately and reproached him,
putting his weakness in such a miserable
light that he became enraged. Finally,
the two turned on each other in a violent
scene.
On returning to his father's house,
Adolphe learned that his father had been
informed of Ellenore's arrival and had
taken steps to force her to leave the town.
His father's concern with Adolphe's
future was undoubtedly genuine, but it
unfortunately took the form of adherence
to the standard values of a corrupt
society and could only have the effect of
strengthening the bond between the
lovers. Adolphe made hurried arrangements
and carried Ellenore off precipitately,
smothering her with passion. Always
astute, she detected contradictions in his
31

actions and told him that he was moved
by pity rather than by love—thereby
revealing something which he would have
preferred not to know and giving him a
new preoccupation to conceal.
When the two reached the frontier,
Adolphe wrote to his father with some
bitterness, holding him responsible for
the course he had been forced to take.
His father's reply was notable for its
generosity; he repeated everything Adolphe
had said and ended by saying that
although Adolphe was wasting his life, he
would be allowed complete freedom. In
the absence of the necessity to defend
Ellenore, Adolphe's impatience with the
tie became even more pronounced.
The two settled for a time in Bohemia
where Adolphe, having accepted the
responsibility for Ellenore's fate, made
every effort to restrain himself from
causing her suffering. He assumed an
artificial gaiety and with the passing of time
once again came intermittently to feel
some of his feigned sentiment. When
alone, however, his old unrest gripped
him and he made vague plans to flee
from his attachment.
At this point Adolphe learned of a
fresh sacrifice which Ellenore had made,
the refusal of an offer from Count P
to settle her again in suitable
circumstances. Adolphe, grasping at this
opportunity, told her that he no longer loved
her, but at the sight of her violent grief
he pretended that his attitude was all
a ruse. Another possibility of escape
occurred after Ellenore's father had been
reinstated in his property in Poland: she
was notified that he had died and that
she had been made the sole heir. Because
the will was being contested, Ellenore
persuaded Adolphe to accompany her to
Poland. Meanwhile, their relationship
continued to deteriorate.
Letters came from Adolphe's father
asserting that since Adolphe could no
longer be considered Ellenore's protector
there was no longer any excuse for the
life he was leading. The father had
recommended Adolphe, the letters said, to
Baron T (a friend of the father's and
the minister from their country to
Poland) and wished Adolphe to call on him.
When the young man did so, Baron
T assumed the father's role and
attempted to separate Adolphe and
Ellenore. Adolphe spent a night wandering
in the country, engaged in confused
meditations in which he told himself that his
mind was recovering from a long
degradation.
Ellenore made another futile effort to
penetrate the closed sanctuary of his
mind, but a new alignment of forces
emerged as Adolphe succumbed more and
more to the influence of Baron T .
He continued to procrastinate in putting
a definite end to the relationship, but he
wrote incriminating letters which the
baron forwarded to Ellenore. At last she
became fatally ill. Adolphe was finally
freed by her death, which produced in
him a feeling of great desolation.
32

THE AENEID
Type of work: Poem
Author: Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 B.C.)
Type of plot: Heroic epic
Time of plot: The period immediately following the Trojan War
Locale: The Mediterranean region
First transcribed: Augustan manuscript
Principal characters:
Aeneas, Trojan hero destined to found the Roman race
Dido, Queen of Carthage, in love with Aeneas
Anna, her sister
Ascanius, son of Aeneas
Anchises, father of Aeneas
Venus, goddess of love and beauty, mother of Aeneas
Juno, queen of the gods and enemy of the Trojans
Cumaean Sibyl, prophetess who leads Aeneas to Hades
Lattnus, king of the Latins, whom Aeneas defeats in battle
Lavtnia, his daughter
Turnus, Latin hero ambitious for the Latin throne and hand of Lavinia
Evander, Arcadian king, ally of Aeneas
Pallas, his son
Critiqtie:
This poem is the distinguished Latin
epic which celebrates the glory of Rome
in great poetry. It records the traditional
story of the establishment of the Roman
race and thus traces the lineage of the
Romans back to Aeneas and Troy. It
has already stood the test of time and will
go down in history as one of the world's
great epics.
The Story:
Aeneas, driven by storm to the shores
of Libya, was welcomed gladly by the
people of Carthage. Because Carthage
was the favorite city of Juno, divine
enemy of Aeneas, Venus had Cupid take
the form of Ascanius, son of Aeneas, so
that the young god of love might warm
the heart of proud Dido and Aeneas
come to no harm in her land. At the
close of a welcoming feast Aeneas was
prevailed upon to recount his adventures.
He described the fall of his native
Troy at the hands of the Greeks after a
ten-year siege, telling how the armed
Greeks had entered the city in the belly
of a great wooden horse and how the
Trojans had fled from their burning city,
among them Aeneas with his father
Anchises and young Ascanius. Not long
afterward, Anchises had advised setting
sail for distant lands. Blown by varying
winds, the Trojans had at length reached
Buthrotum, where had been foretold a
long and arduous journey before Aeneas
would reach Italy. Having set sail once
more, they had reached Sicily. There
Anchises, who had been his son's sage
counselor, had died and had been buried.
Forced to leave Sicily, Aeneas had been
blown by stormy winds to the coast of
Libya. Here he ended his tale, and Dido,
influenced by Cupid disguised as
Ascanius, felt pity and admiration for the
Trojan hero.
The next day Dido continued her
entertainment for Aeneas. During a royal
hunt a great storm drove Dido and
Aeneas to the same cave for refuge.
There they succumbed to the passion of
love. Aeneas spent the winter in
Carthage and enjoyed the devotion of the
queen. But in the spring he felt the need
to continue his destined course. When
he set sail, the sorrowing Dido killed
herself. The light of her funeral pyre
was seen far out at sea.
Again on the shores of Sicily, Aeneas
bade his men refresh themselves with
food, drink, and games. First of all there
33

was a boat race in which Cloanthus was
the victor. The second event was a foot
race, won by Euryalus. Entellus engaged
Dares in a boxing match, which Aeneas
stopped before the obviously superior
Entellus achieved a knock-out. The final
contest was with bow and arrow. Eury-
tion and Acestes made spectacular
showings and to each was awarded a
handsome prize. Following the contests, As-
canius and the other young boys rode
out to engage in war games. Meanwhile,
the women were grieving the lost
guidance of Anchises, and at the instigation
of Juno set fire to the ships. Aeneas,
sustained by the gods, bade his people repair
the damage. Once more the Trojans set
sail.
Finally, they reached the shores of
Italy, at Cumae, famous for its sibyl.
The sibyl granted Aeneas the privilege of
visiting his father in the underworld.
After due sacrifice, the two of them
began their descent into Hades. At length
they reached the river Styx and
persuaded the boatman Charon to row them
across. Aeneas saw the spirits of many
people he had known in life, including
the ill-fated Dido. Then they came to the
beginning of a forked road. One path
fed to the regions of the damned; the
other led to the land of the blessed.
Following this latter road, they came at last
to Anchises, who showed Aeneas in
marvelous fashion all the future history of
Rome, and commanded him to found his
kingdom at the place where he would
eat his tables. On his return to the upper
regions Aeneas revisited his men and
proceeded to his own abode.
Again the Trojans set sail up the coast
of Italy, to the ancient state of Latium,
ruled over by Latinus. On the shore
they prepared a meal, laying bread under
their meat. As they were eating, Asca-
nius jokingly observed that in eating
their bread they were eating their tables.
This remark told Aeneas that here was
the place Anchises had foretold. Next day
the Trojans came to the city of King
Latinus on the Tiber. Latinus had been
warned by an oracle not to give his
daughter Lavinia in marriage to any
native man, but to wait for an alien,
who would come to establish a great
people. He welcomed Aeneas as that
man of destiny.
A Latin hero, Turnus, became jealous
of the favor Latinus showed Aeneas, and
stirred up revolt among the people. Juno,
hating Aeneas, aided Turnus. One day
Ascanius killed a stag, not knowing that
it was the tame favorite of a native
family. There grew from the incident such
a feud that Latinus shut himself up in
his house and ceased to control his
subjects. Meanwhile Aeneas made
preparations for batde with the Latins under
Turnus.
In a dream he was advised to seek the
help of Evander, whose kingdom on the
Seven Hills would become the site of
mighty Rome. Evander agreed to join
forces with Aeneas against the armies of
Turnus and to enlist troops from nearby
territories as well. Now Venus presented
Aeneas with a fabulous shield made by
Vulcan, for she feared for the safety of
her son.
When Turnus learned that Aeneas
was with Evander, he and his troops
besieged the Trojan camp. One night
Nisus and Euryalus, two Trojan youthj,
entered the camp of the sleeping Latins
and slaughtered a great many of them
before they were discovered and put to
death. The enraged Latins advanced on
the Trojans with fire and sword and
forced them into open battle. When the
Trojans seemed about to beat back their
attackers, Turnus entered the fray and
put them to flight. But the thought of
Aeneas inspired the Trojans to such
bravery that they drove Turnus into the
river.
Aeneas, warned in a dream of this
batde, returned and landed with his
allies on the shore near the battlefield,
where he encountered Turnus and his
armies. Evander's troops were being
routed when Pallas, Evander's beloved
son, began to urge them on and himself
rushed into the fight, killing many of the
enemy before he was slain in combat with
34

Turnus. Aeneas sought to take the life
of Turnus, who escaped through the
intervention of Juno.
Aeneas decreed that the body of Pallas
should be sent back to his father with
appropriate pomp during a twelve-day
truce. The gods had watched the
conflict from afar; now Juno relented at
Jupiter's command, but insisted that the
Trojans must take the Latin speech and
garb before their city could rule the
world.
Turnus led his band of followers
against Aeneas in spite of a treaty made
by Latinus. An arrow from an unknown
source wounded Aeneas, but his wound
was miraculously healed. The Trojan
hero reentered the battle, was again
wounded, but was able to engage Turnus
in personal combat and strike him down.
Aeneas killed his enemy in the name of
Pallas and sacrificed his body to the
shade of his dead ally. No longer
opposed by Turnus, Aeneas was now free
to marry Lavinia and establish his long-
promised new nation. This was Rome,
the mistress of the ancient world.
35

AESOP'S FABLES
Type of work: Didactic fiction
Author: Aesop (fl. sixth century B.C.?)
First published in English: 1484
A mid-nineteenth-century French
lawyer, M. L. Hervieux, wanting his
daughters to know something of Roman
literature, decided to translate some of the
animal stories which had been put into
Latin verse by Phaedrus, a Macedonian
servant freed by Emperor Augustus. The
trouble was to find a definitive edition of
the work. Years later, after visiting most
of the important libraries of Europe, M.
Hervieux published Les fabulistes latins
in two volumes and fifteen hundred
pages, attributing only sixty-seven fables
to this Greek who translated into Latin
verse the Greek prose of Demetrius Pha-
lereus of the third century B.C. In the
third century of the Christian era,
Valerius Babrius, Latin tutor to the son of
Emperor Alexander Severus, had also put
into Greek verse the fables in Latin prose
by Nicostratus, a hanger-on at the court
of Marcus Aurelius. Three quarters of
the fables set down by Nicostratus were
attributed to Aesop.
Some scholars believe that Aesop was
as much a fable as his fables. Of course,
there is a Life of Aesop, written by a
certain Planudes Maximus, a thirteenth-
century Byzantine monk who prefaced
his collection of fables in Latin prose
with what he claimed was a true
biography of their author. According to the
Byzantine monk, Aesop was a slave born
in. Samos and killed in Delphi in the
sixth century B.C. One statue shows him
as deformed and animal-like as the
characters of his tales.
History does provide a few details.
There is reference to a "noble statue" of
him that once existed in Athens, the
work of Lysippus, but that may have
been as much a creation of the
imagination as the sturdy, brown-clad figure in
Velazquez* painting. Herodotus, writing
less than a century after Aesop was
supposed to have flourished, in describing
the lovely courtesan Rhodopis, who lived
about 550 B.C., mentioned (11,134) the
fact that the girl was a slave of Iadmon
of Samos, and added: "Aesop, the maker
of fables, was a fellow slave." Also,
Herodotus recorded the payment of an
indemnity paid by the Delphians to the
grandson of Iadmon for the murder of
Aesop, supposedly because some fable
symbolizing the misdeeds of one citizen
had angered the others.
Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, II, xx, is the
authority for Aesop's use of a fable in
oratory, as he defended a demagogue
accused of embezzling. The slave told of a
fox who was infested by fleas but refused
to let a hedgehog remove them: "These
have already taken their fill of me and do
not continue to suck my blood. If you
remove them, others less satiated will
come to extract what blood I have left."
The story was a hint to the Samians to
let his client continue in office, since he
had already made his fortune.
Also tagged with Aesop's name is the
story of the frogs who asked for a king
and were sent a stork who gobbled them
up, a fable intended to dissuade the
citizens of Athens from deposing Pisistratus.
But when researchers seek in Greek
manuscripts other fables that can definitely
be attributed to Aesop, they find hardly
a dozen, of which that of the nightingale
is the oldest. True, seven collections were
ascribed to Aesop, but without proof, and
usually their content goes still farther
back into antiquity, to early Indian tellers
of tales or even to Egyptian poets of the
fourteenth century B.C.
One explanation of the infrequent
references to the Greek beast-fables is
that they were so well known that
nobody bothered to mention them. The
interesting thing is that Aesop has been
called "Father of the Animal Fable,"
even though the form had existed cen-

turies before his assumed time.
Seventy years ago, Joseph Jacobs, an
English investigator engaged in
cataloguing fables attributed to Aesop, gave
as good an answer as any. Before the
time of Aesop, these stories, regarded as
jokes, were told for amusement. Aesop,
by his use of them, as Aristotle
acknowledged, raised them in dignity to the ranks
of serious oratorical material, worthy of
use when a life was at stake and, if
deductions about the cause of his death be
correct, taken seriously enough to cause
the death of their author.
Ninety-seven of the fables attributed
to Aesop composed the first book printed
in English with initial letters, printed by
William Caxton at Westminster in 1484.
Only one perfect copy remains, in the
possession of the Queen of England.
Others, damaged, are found in the
Bodleian Library and the British Museum.
The rest were probably as popular as
Aesop's fables today and were read to
pieces. The tales were equally popular in
other lands. In 1496, the Infante
Henrique made a Spanish translation that
inspired Tomas Iriarte (1750-1791) and
his contemporary Samaniego to versify
fables memorized by every Spanish school
child. Marie de France, at the beginning
of the thirteenth century, put more than
a hundred of them into French,
antedating what has probably been the most
elegant form in which they have ever
appeared, the twelve books of Fables
written in verse by Jean de La Fontaine
(1668-1694).
"Esope, man of Greece," explained
William Caxton in 1484, "subtyll and
ingenyous, techeth in his fables how men
ought to kepe and rewle them well. And
to thende that he shold shewe the lyf and
customes of al maner of men, he induceth
the byrdes, the trees, and the bestes
spekynge to thende that the men may
know wherfore the fables were found
. . . the whiche yf thou rede them, they
shalle aguyse and sharpe thy wytte and
shal gyve to thee Cause of Joye." Then
follow the fables, in their crude Gothic
type and quaint spelling, each illustrated
by a grotesque woodcut.
First comes the fable of the cock and
the precious stone, in which the bird,
discovering a diamond in the filth, saw no
possible use for it. The fable writer ends
with the implication that those who see
no wisdom in "this fayre and playsaint
book," are as stupid as the cock. The
second tells of the wolf who accused the
lamb of enough crimes for an excuse to
eat him. The fifth deals with the greedy
dog crossing the stream with meat in his
mouth and trying to snap up also the
piece he saw reflected in the water.
Part II begins with the famous fable of
the frogs who asked Jupiter for a king
and ends with the story of the frog who
tried to swell up to equal the size of the
ox. Book III contains the fable of the
nightingale to whose nest the "spere-
hawk" came with the demand that the
songster entertain him; otherwise, he
would eat one of the little birds. But a
hunter came by and caught the
marauder. This story follows a set form. It
begins: "He that oppresseth the
Innocent shalle have an evyle end, whereof
Esope reherceth to us such a fable." At
the end the story restates the moral:
"And therefore he that doth harm and
letteth the Innocent is worthy to dye of
evylle dethe, as Cayn dyd which slewe
his broder Abel."
This is the formula of all the fables
in this ancient volume, the forerunner of
so many editions that have appeared
throughout the centuries with or without
their morals stated, to delight readers who
know nothing about Aesop himself and
care even less.
37

AGAINST THE GRAIN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joris Karl Huysmans (Charles Marie Georges Huysmans, 1848-1907)
Type of plot: Exotic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1884
Principal character:
Jean Des Esseintes, an aesthete
Critique:
Huysmans, profoundly influenced by
Baudelaire and Mallarm6, is perhaps the
outstanding prose writer of the decadent
school. His writing has the
characteristics of the movement: detailed,
sensuous description and precise, erudite
vocabulary. Against the Grain (A Reborns')
is a novel in which almost nothing
happens; what one learns of the action is
through retrospect. Most of the book is
concerned with the hero's library, his
taste in interior decoration, his illusions,
and the complete decadence which stems
directly from his conception of
Catholicism.
The Story:
The Des Esseintes were an old
family. In the Chateau de Lourps the
portraits of the ancestors were those of
rugged troopers and stern cavalry men.
But the family had followed a familiar
pattern; through two hundred years of
intermarriage and soft indulgence the
men had become increasingly effeminate.
Now the only remaining Des Esseintes
was Jean, a man of thirty. By a kind of
atavism, Jean resembled in looks his first
grandsire. The resemblance was in looks
only.
Jean had had an unhappy childhood.
His father, living in Paris most of the
time, visited Jean briefly at school once
in a while when he wished to give moral
counsel. Occasionally he went to see his
wife at the chateau. Jean was always
present at those hushed interviews in
which his mother took little interest.
Jean's mother had a strange dread of
light. Passing her days in her shaded
boudoir, she avoided contact with the
world.
At the Jesuit school Jean became a
precocious student of Latin and acquired
a fair knowledge of theology. At the
same time he was a stubborn, withdrawn
child who refused all discipline. The
patient fathers let him follow his own bent,
for there was little else they could do.
Both his parents died while he was
young; at his majority he came into
complete control of his inheritance.
In his contacts with the world Jean
went through two phases. At first he
lived a wild, dissolute life. For a time he
was content with ordinary mistresses. His
first love was Miss Urania, an American
acrobat. Because she was strong and
healthy Jean yearned for her as an
anemic young girl might long for a
Hercules. But Miss Urania was quite
feminine, even prudish in her embraces.
Their liaison prematurely hastened his
impotence.
Another mistress was a brunette
ventriloquist. One day he purchased a tiny
black sphinx and a chimera of
polychrome clay. Bringing them into the
bedchamber, he prevailed on her to imitate
Flaubert's famous dialogue between the
Sphinx and the Chimera. His mistress,
however, was sulky at having to perform
offstage.
After that phase Jean began to be
disgusted with people. He saw that men
brought up in parochial schools, as he
was, were timid and boring. Men who
had been educated in the public schools
were more courageous but even more
boring. In a frantic effort to find
companionship, he wildly sought out the
38

most carnal pastimes and the most
perverted pleasures.
Jean had never been strong, and from
childhood he had been afflicted with
scrofula. Now his nerves grew weaker. The
back of his neck always pained him; his
hand trembled when he lifted a light
object. In a burst of despairing
eccentricity he gave a farewell dinner to his
lost virility. The meal was served on a
black table to the sound of funeral
marches. The waitresses were nude
Negresses. The plates were edged in black;
the menu included dark bread, meat
with licorice sauce, and wine served in
dark glasses.
At thirty Jean decided to withdraw
from the world. Having concluded that
artistry was much superior to nature, he
vowed that in his retreat he would be
completely artificial. He found a suitable
house in a remote suburb of Paris and
made elaborate preparations for his
retirement.
The upper floor was given over to his
two elderly servants, who had to wear
felt coverings on their shoes at all times.
The downstairs he reserved for himself.
The walls were paneled in leather like
book binding, and the only color for
ceilings and trim was deep orange. In his
dining-room he simulated a ship's cabin
and installed aquariums in front of the
windows. The study was lined with
precious books. With great art he
contrived a luxurious bedroom which looked
monastically simple.
Among his paintings Jean treasured
two works of Moreau which depicted
Salom£ and the head of John the
Baptist. He pondered long over the meaning
of the scenes. History being silent on the
personality of Salome^ Jean decided that
Moreau had recreated her perfectly. To
him she was the incarnation of woman.
His library was his chief concern.
Among the Latin writers he had no love
for the classicists: Vergil, for example,
he found incredibly dull. But he took
great delight in Petronius, who had
brought to life Roman decadence under
Nero. He loved ardently a few of the
French sensualists, Verlaine and
Baudelaire among them. He had also a small
collection of obscure Catholic writers
whose refinement and disdain for the
world suited his own temperament.
For months his life was regular and
satisfying. He breakfasted at five and
dined at eleven. About dawn he had his
supper and went to bed. Because of his
weak stomach he was most abstemious
in his diet.
After a time his old ailments came
back to plague him. He could eat or
drink very little and his nerves pained
him. After weeks of torture he fainted.
When his servants found him, they
called a neighborhood doctor who could
do little for him. At last Jean seemed to
recover, and he scolded the servants for
having been so concerned. With sudden
energy he made plans to take a trip to
England.
His luggage having been packed, he
took a cab into Paris. To while away the
hours before train time, he visited a wine
cellar frequented by English tourists and
had dinner at an English restaurant.
Realizing afresh that the pleasure of travel
lies only in the anticipation, he had
himself driven home that same evening and
thus avoided the banality of actually
going somewhere.
At one stage of his life Jean had loved
artificial flowers. Now he came to see
that it would be more satisfying to have
real flowers that looked artificial. He
promptly amassed a collection of
misshapen, coarse plants that satisfied his
aesthetic needs.
But Jean's energy soon dissipated. His
hands trembled, his neck pained him,
and his stomach refused food. For weeks
he dreamed away his days in a half-
stupor. Thinking of his past, he was
shocked to realize that his wish to
withdraw from the world was a vestige of his
education under the Jesuits. Finally he
became prey to hallucinations. He
smelled unaccountable odors, and strange
women kept him company.
39

One day he was horrified to look into
his mirror. His wasted face seemed that
of a stranger. He sent for a doctor from
Paris. After the physician had given him
injections of peptone, Jean returned to
something like normal. Gradually the
doctor began injecting cod liver oil and
other nourishing food into his veins. For
a while Jean was entranced with the
notion of getting all his sustenance through
injections. One more activity would thus
be unnecessary.
Then the doctor sent his little artificial
world crashing; he ordered Jean to leave
his retreat and go live a normal social
life in Paris. Otherwise his patient would
be in danger of death or at least of a
protracted illness with tuberculosis. Jean,
more afraid of his illness than he was of
the stupid world, gave the necessary
orders and glumly watched the movers
begin their work.
40

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: New York City
First published: 1920
Principal characters:
Newland Archer, a young attorney
May Welland, his fiancee
Countess Ellen Olenska, her cousin
Critique:
This novel is an incisive but oblique
attack on the intricate and tyrannous
tribal customs of a highly stratified New
York society with which the author
herself was familiar. Her psychological
probing of the meaning and motivation
behind the apparent facade of her
characters' social behavior shows her to be
a true disciple of Henry James. The
method is indeed that of James, but
Edith Wharton's style is clearer and less
involved. Here is a well-made novel, the
work of a craftsman for whom form and
method are perfectly welded, and the
action results inevitably from the natures
of the characters themselves.
The Story:
Newland Archer, a handsome and
eligible young attorney engaged to lovely
May Welland, learned that the
engagement would be announced at a party to
welcome his fiancee's cousin, Countess
Ellen Olenska. This reception for Ellen
constituted a heroic sacrifice on the part
of the many Welland connections, for
her marriage to a ne'er-do-well Polish
count had not improved her position so
far as rigorous and straight-laced New
York society was concerned. The fact
that she contemplated a divorce action
also made her suspect, and, to cap it all,
her rather bohemian way of living did
not conform to what her family expected
of a woman who had made an
unsuccessful marriage.
Newland Archer's engagement to May
was announced. At the same party
Archer was greatly attracted to Ellen.
Before long, with the excuse that he
was making the cousin of his betrothed
feel at home, he began to send her flowers
and call on her. To him she seemed a
woman who offered sensitivity, beauty,
the promise of a life quite different from
that he could expect after his marriage
to May.
He found himself defending Ellen
when the rest of society was attacking
her contemplated divorce action. He
did not, however, consider breaking his
engagement to May, but constandy
sought reasons for justifying what was
to the rest of his group an excellent
union. With Ellen often in his thoughts,
May Welland's cool beauty and correct
but unexciting personality began to
suffer in Archer's estimation.
Although the clan defended her against
all outsiders, Ellen was often treated
as a pariah. Her family kept check on
her, trying to prevent her from indulging
in too many bohemianisms, such as her
strange desire to rent a house in a
socially unacceptable part of town. The
women of the clan also recognized her
as a dangerous rival, and ruthless Julius
Beaufort, whose secret dissipations were
known by all, including his wife, paid
her marked attention. Archer found
himself hating Julius Beaufort very much.
Convincing himself that he was
seeing too much of Ellen, Archer went to
St. Augustine to visit May, who was
vacationing there with her mother and
her hypochondriac father. In spite of
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton. By permission of the publisher, Appleton-Century-Croftt.
lac. Copyright, 1920. by D. Appleton & Co. Renewed, 1947, by Frederic King.
41

her cool and conventional welcome and
her gentle rebuffs to his wooing, her
beauty reawakened in him a kind of
affection, and he pleaded with her to
advance the date of their wedding. May
and her parents refused because their
elaborate preparations could not be
completed in time.
Archer returned to New York. There,
with the aid of the family matriarch,
Mrs. Manson Mingott, he achieved his
purpose, and the wedding date was
advanced. This news came to him in a
telegram sent by May to Ellen, which
Ellen read to him just as he was
attempting to advance the intimacy of their
relationship. Archer left Ellen's house
and found a similar telegram from May
to himself. Telling his sister Janey that
the wedding would take place within a
month, he suddenly realized that he was
now protected against Ellen and
himself.
The ornate wedding, the conventional
European honeymoon which followed,
and May's assumption of the role of the
proper wife, soon disillusioned Archer.
He realized that he was trapped, that
the mores of his society, helped by his
own lack of courage, had prepared him,
like a smooth ritual, for a rigid and
codified life. There was enough intelligence
and insight in Archer, however, to make
him resent the trap.
On his return to New York, he
continued to see Ellen. The uselessness of
his work as junior attorney in an ancient
law firm, the stale regimen of his social
life, and the passive sweetness of May
did not satisfy that part of Archer which
set him apart from the rest of his clan.
He proposed to Ellen that they go
away together, but Ellen, wise and
kind, showed him that such an escape
would not be a pleasant one, and she
indicated that they could love each other
only as long as he did not press for a
consummation. Archer agreed. He
further capitulated when, urged by her
family, he advised Ellen, as her attorney
and as a relative, not to get a divorce
from Count Olenski. She agreed, and
Archer again blamed his own cowardice
for his action.
The family faced another crisis when
Julius Beaufort's firm, built upon a
framework of shady financial transactions,
failed, ruining him and his duped
customers. The blow caused elderly Mrs.
Mingott to have a stroke, and the family
rallied around her. She summoned
Ellen, a favorite of hers, to her side, and
Ellen, who had been living in
Washington, D. C, returned to the Mingott house
to stay. Archer, who had not met Ellen
since he advised her against a divorce,
began seeing her again, and certain
remarks by Archer's male acquaintances
along with a strained and martyrlike
attitude which May had adopted,
indicated to him that his intimacy with Ellen
was known among his family and friends.
The affair came to an end, however,
when Ellen left for Paris, after learning
that May was to have a baby. It was
obvious to all that May had triumphed,
and Archer was treated by his family
as a prodigal returned. The rebel was
conquered. Archer made his peace with
society.
Years passed. Archer dabbled in
liberal politics, interested himself in civic
reforms. His children, Mary and Dallas,
were properly reared. May died when
Archer was in his fifties. He lamented
her passing with genuine grief. He
watched society changing, and saw the
old conservative order give way, accepting
and rationalizing innovations of a
younger, more liberal generation.
One day his son Dallas, about to be
married, phoned him and proposed a
European tour, their last trip together.
In Paris, Dallas revealed to his father that
he knew all about Ellen Olenska and had
arranged a visit to her apartment. But
when they arrived, Archer sent his son
ahead, to pay his respects, while he
remained on a park bench outside. A
romantic to the end, incapable of acting
in any situation which made demands
on his emotional resources, he sat and
watched the lights in Ellen's apartment
until a servant appeared on the balcony
42

and closed the shutters. Then he walked the past; the present was secure,
slowly back to his hotel. The past was

AGNES GREY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anne Bronte (1820-1849)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1847
Principal characters:
Agnes Grey, a young governess
Edward Weston, a curate, later Agnes' husband
Mary Grey, Agnes' sister
Richard Grey, Agnes' father
Mrs. Grey, Agnes' mother
Mrs. Murray, owner of Horton Lodge, Agnes' second employer
Rosalie Murray, her older daughter
Matilda Murray, her younger daughter
Mr. Hatfield, Rector at Horton, Rosalie's suitor
Sir Thomas Ashby, later Rosalie's husband
Harry Meltham, and
Mr. Green, Rosalie's other suitors
Nancy Brown, an old widow at Horton
Mrs. Bloomfield, owner of Well wood, Agnes' first employer
Tom Bloomfield, her oldest child
Mary Ann Bloomfield, her older daughter
Fanny Bloomfield, her younger daughter
Uncle Robson, Mrs. Bloomfield's brother
Critique:
This novel, written in the first person,
is the account of the tribulations of a
poor governess trying to achieve
respectability and independence in nineteenth-
century England. Agnes Grey, a
governess because of economic necessity, finds
the people among whom she works either
bleak or frivolous representatives of the
upper classes. They are neither
understanding nor helpful, and Agnes, saddled
with impossibly arrogant charges, is not a
great success as a governess. Fortified by
a loving though poor family and by an
irreproachable character, she eventually
marries the sterling and attractive
clergyman. Agnes is the sentimental heroine,
and the plot is not to be distinguished
from that of the conventional sentimental
romance. The good and the true
ultimately triumph; the evil and the
frivolous are ultimately unhappy. In spite of
Agnes' pious sentiments, however, the
novel is marked by sharp observations of
contemporary life and a gentle and
penetrating sarcasm in some of Agnes'
comments on her employers. Anne Bronte
never became an important novelist, but
this novel suggests her ability lay more
in the direction of Jane Austen than in
that of her sister Emily.
The Story:
Mrs. Grey, a squire's daughter, had
offended her family by marrying for love
a poor parson in the north of England.
She bore him six children, but only two,
Mary and Agnes, survived. Nevertheless,
the Greys were happy with their humble,
educated, pious life in their small house
and garden.
Mr. Grey, never wholly at his ease
because his wife had been forced to give
up carriages and fine clothes in order to
marry him, attempted to improve their
fortunes by speculating and investing his
patrimony in a merchant's sea voyage.
But the vessel was wrecked, everything
was lost, and the Greys were soon left
penniless. In addition, Mr. Grey's health,
never robust, began to fail more percep-
44

tibly under the strain of his guilt for
bringing his family close to ruin. Mary
and Agnes, reared in the sheltered
atmosphere of a clergyman's household, had
spent their time reading, studying, and
working in the garden. When the family
situation became desperate, however,
Mary began to try to sell her drawings to
help with the household expenses, and
Agnes, the younger daughter, decided to
become a governess.
Overcoming the qualms her family felt
at the idea of her leaving home, Agnes
found a situation and, on a bleak and
windy autumn day, arrived at Wellwood,
the home of the Bloomfield family. She
was received rather coldly by Mrs. Bloom-
field and told that her charges, especially
Tom, a seven-year-old boy, were noble
and splendid children. She soon found
that the reverse was true. Tom was an
arrogant and disobedient little monster
whose particular delight was to pull the
legs and wings off young sparrows. Mary
Ann, his six-year-old sister, was given to
tantrums of temper and refusal to do her
lessons. The children were frightened of
their father, a peevish and stern
disciplinarian, and the father, in turn, blamed
Agnes when the children, as frequently
happened, got out of control.
Agnes found it impossible to teach the
children anything because all her efforts
to discipline them were undermined by
Mrs. Bloomfield, who felt that her
angels must always be right. Even four-
year-old Fanny lied consistently and was
fond of spitting in people's faces. For a
time, Agnes was heartened by Mr.
Bloomfield's mother's visit, but the pious
old lady turned out to be a hypocrite who
sympathized with Agnes verbally and
then turned on her behind her back.
Matters became a great deal worse
with the visit of Uncle Robson, Mrs.
Bloomfield's brother, who encouraged
young Tom to torture small animals. One
day, after he had collected a whole brood
of young birds for Tom to torture, Agnes
crushed them with a large stone, choosing
to kill them quickly rather than to see
them suffer a slow, cruel death. The
family felt she had deprived Tom of his
normal, spirited pleasure. Shortly after
this incident she was told that her
services would no longer be required; the
Bloomfields felt that she had not
disciplined the children properly or taught
them very much.
Agnes spent a few months with her
family at home before taking up her next
post. She found the Murrays, the owners
of Horton Lodge, more sophisticated,
wealthier, and less bleak and cruel than
the owners of Wellwood; but they were
still hardly the happy, pious, warm
family that Agnes had hoped to encounter.
Her older charge, Rosalie, was sixteen,
very pretty, interested only in flirting and
in eventually making the most suitable
marriage possible; her younger charge,
Matilda, fourteen, was interested only in
horses and stables. Although they treated
her with politeness, neither girl had any
respect for the learning and piety that
Agnes had to offer. If Agnes' work was
less unpleasant than it had been at Well-
wood, it was equally futile.
After living at Horton Lodge for nearly
a year, Agnes returned home for a month
for her sister's wedding. During this
time, the Murrays had given Rosalie a
coming-out ball, after which she began
to exercise her charms on the young men
at Horton. Agnes was shocked, when she
returned, to find Rosalie flirting with all
the men and summarizing the marital
possibilities of each with such a hardened
and materialistic eye. In the meantime a
new curate had come to Horton. Edward
Weston was a sober and sincere
churchman, neither climbing nor pompous like
the rector, Mr. Hatfield. Edward Weston
and Agnes, attracted to each other, found
many opportunities to meet in their
sympathetic visits to Nancy Brown, an old
widow who was almost blind. At first
Rosalie found Weston both dogmatic and
dull, but Agnes found him representative
of the true piety and goodness which she
believed were the qualities of a clergyman.
Rosalie, continuing to play the coquette,
conquered first the unctuous rector, Mr.
Hatfield, and then after Mr. Hatfield had
45

proposed and been quickly rejected,
turned her charms on Mr. Weston.
Although Agnes was fiercely jealous of
Rosalie's flirtation, she never really
acknowledged her own growing love. Finally,
Rosalie accepted Sir Thomas Ashby; his
home, Ashby Park, and his fortune were
the largest in the vicinity of Hoiton.
Shortly after Rosalie's marriage, before
Agnes had the opportunity to see much
of Edward Weston, she was called home
by the death of her father. She and her
mother decided to start a school for young
ladies in the fashionable watering place
of A . Although Agnes returned to
Horton Lodge for another month, she
did not see Weston before she resignedly
left to rejoin her mother. Although the
school began to prosper after a few
months, Agnes still seemed weary and
depressed, and she welcomed an
invitation from Rosalie, now Ladv Ashby, to
visit Ashby Park. She found Rosalie
disappointed in her marriage to a grumbling,
boorish man who ignored her and who,
after a honeymoon on the Continent,
had forbidden her the frivolous pleasures
of London and European society. Agnes
also learned from Rosalie that Weston
had left Horton a short time before.
A few days after Agnes returned to
her mother and the school, she was
walking along the water front one morning
when she was surprised by Weston. He
had secured a living in a nearby village.
He promptly began calling on Agnes and
her mother and as time passed gained
Agnes' love and her mother's esteem.
One day, while walking with Agnes to
the top of a high hill, he proposed. As
husband, father, cler<*vman, and manager
of a limited income, he was in after years
the perfect mate for virtuous and worthy
Agnes.
46

AJAX
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sophocles (495r-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: The Trojan War
Locale: Phrygia, before Troy
First presented: c. 440 B.C.
Principal characters:
Ajax, a Greek warrior
Odysseus, a Greek leader
Tecmessa, Ajax's female captive
Teucer, Ajax's half-brother
Eurysaces, son of Ajax and Tecmessa
Critique:
The age-old problem of individual
versus group prerogative is masterfully
presented in this play. One finds it
tempting to sympathize with Ajax for his
devotion to his consort and his son, the love
and admiration he commands from his
followers, and the courage he displays before
the walls of Troy. It is inevitable,
however, that his ungovernable pride should
bring about his ruin. His downfall, the
tragic hero's dissolution as a man because
of unbearable humiliation and shame, is
one of the most touching and disturbing
in literature. Sophocles achieved this
terrible spectacle by unusual cogency of
action, a remarkable delineation of
character, and a judicious point of view.
The Story:
Odysseus, chosen by Greek leaders in
the Trojan War to replace the dead
Achilles as the chief warrior of the Greek
forces, paced up and down before the tent
of Ajax, who had been slighted by
the selection of Odysseus. The goddess
Athena, appearing above the tent, told
Odysseus that Ajax, covered with blood,
was in his tent. Her words confirmed
Odysseus' suspicions that it had indeed
been Ajax who had slaughtered all of the
Greeks' livestock and their shepherd dogs.
Athena explained that she had cast a spell
over Ajax, who, in his hurt pride, had
vowed to murder Menelaus and
Agamemnon, the Greek commanders, as well as
Odysseus. Under her spell Ajax had
committed the horrible slaughter in the belief
that the animals he slew were the hated
leaders who had opposed his election to
the place of the late Achilles.
When Tecmessa, Ajax's Phrygian
captive, revealed to his followers what the
great warrior had done, they lamented his
downfall and questioned the dark
purposes of the gods. Certain that Ajax would
be condemned to die for his
transgressions, his warriors prepared to retire to
their ships and return to Salamis, their
homeland.
Ajax, recovered from the spell, emerged
from his tent and clearly revealed to his
friends that he was a shamed and broken
man. Sick in mind at the thought of the
taunts of Odysseus, he wished only to die.
Even in his abject misery, however, he
was sure that had Achilles personally
chosen his successor he would have named
Ajax. The despairing man tried to find
some means of escape from the conse-
uences of his deed. The alternative to
eath was to return to Salamis and his
noble father, Telamon; but he knew that
he could never shame Telamon by facing
him. His friends, alarmed at his deep
gloom and sensing tragedy, advised him
to reflect; Tecmessa urged him to live for
her sake and for the sake of their little
son, Eurysaces. At the mention of the
name of his beloved son, Ajax called for
the boy. Solemnly he gave Eurysaces his
great shield and directed that the child be
taken to Salamis, so that he might grow
up to avenge his father's disgrace. After
dismissing Tecmessa and his son, he
remained in his tent alone to clear his
troubled thoughts. His followers, mean-
47

while, resumed their lament over their
disgraced leader.
Apparently reconciled to his fate, Ajax
emerged at last from his tent and declared
that he was ready to recognize authority,
to revere the gods, and to bury his sword
with which he had brought disgrace and
dishonor upon himself. His decision, he
said, had been dictated by his affection for
Tecmessa and Eurysaces. This apparent
change brought forth cheers of rejoicing
from his countrymen; they thanked the
gods for what appeared to be Ajax's
salvation.
In the meantime the Greeks taunted
Teucer, Ajax's half-brother, for his
kinship with one demented. Calchas, the
Greek prophet, warned Teucer that unless
Ajax were kept in his tent a full day, no
one would again see Ajax alive, since the
proud warrior had twice offended the
goddess Athena in the past. But Ajax had
already left his tent in order to bury his
sword. Teucer and the men of Salamis, in
alarm, hastened in search of their leader.
Ajax planted his sword, a gift from
Hector, the great Trojan warrior, hilt-
down in the earth. After he had asked the
gods to inform Teucer of his whereabouts
so that he might receive a proper burial,
he fell upon his sword. Heavy underbrush
partly concealed his body where it lay.
Tecmessa was the first to discover her
dead lord; in sorrow she covered him with
her mantle. Teucer was summoned.
Tecmessa and the men of Salamis could
not refrain from mentioning the dire part
played by Athena in the tragedy of Ajax
and the pleasure Menelaus and
Agamemnon would feel when they heard of Ajax's
death. Fearing foul play, Teucer ordered
Tecmessa to bring Eurysaces immediately.
Teucer himself was in a dilemma. He
knew that the Greeks detested him
because of his kinship with Ajax. He feared
also that Telamon would suspect him of
being responsible for Ajax's death, so that
he might be Telamon's heir.
While Teucer pondered his own fate,
Menelaus appeared and told him that
Ajax could not receive proper burial
because he had been a rebel, offensive to the
gods. Teucer maintained that Ajax had
not been subject to Spartan Menelaus,
nor to anyone else, for he had come to
Troy voluntarily at the head of his own
men from Salamis; therefore he deserved
burial. Seeing that Teucer held firm,
Menelaus went away. Teucer dug a grave
while Tecmessa and Eurysaces stood vigil
over the body. The men of Salamis sang a
dirge over their dead leader.
Agamemnon, King of Mycenae,
appeared and rebuked Teucer, the son of a
slave, for his audacity in defying the will
of Menelaus. Agamemnon insulted the
memory of Ajax by saying that he had
been stronger than he was wise. Teucer,
bitterly recalling Ajax's many heroic
deeds in behalf of the Greek cause,
reminded Agamemnon of the many blots on
the escutcheon of the Atridae,
Agamemnon's royal house. Teucer defended his
own blood by pointing out that although
his mother, Hesione, was a captive, she
was nevertheless of noble birth.
Odysseus resolved the dispute by
declaring that no Greek warrior should be
denied burial. He himself had hated
Ajax, but he admitted that Ajax had been
both noble and courageous. He shook
hands with Teucer in friendship, but
Teucer, lest the gods be offended, refused
his offer to assist in the burial. Thus Ajax,
whose pride had brought him to an early
death, received proper burial and the
death ceremonies of a warrior hero.
48

AL FILO DEL AGUA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Agustfn Yinez (1904- )
Time: Spring, 1909-spring, 1910
Locale: Near Guadalajara, Mexico
First published: 1947
Principal characters:
Don Diontsio, the parish priest
Maria, and
Marta, his nieces
Padre Islas, and
Padre Reyes, assistant priests
D^mian Ltmon, a young man who had been to the United States
Micaela RodrIguez, a spoiled girl
Victoria, a young widow, visiting from Guadalajara
Gabriel, a young man reared by Don Dionisio
Luis Gonzaga Perez, a seminary student
Mercedes Toledo, another young girl
Lucas Mac!as, a soothsayer
Al filo del agua is a Spanish phrase
with two meanings, one literal, the other
figurative. Literally, it signifies the
moment that the rain begins. However, it is
in its figurative sense that it takes on
meaning as the title of this book: the
imminence of something that is about to
happen. The event about to take place
was brought on by a growing
dissatisfaction with the political situation and
the unnaturalness of the environment
imposed by the Church as reflected by
life in a small town in Mexico.
In 1910, Porfirio Diaz had been
dictator of Mexico for more than thirty
years. He had ruled with an iron hand
and only now had the dream of political
freedom and social improvement begun
to filter through to the many semi-isolated
towns of Mexico. The same few families
had always been the social leaders and
political bosses in the communities and
Diaz* thirty-odd years of rule had done
nothing to lessen this strangle hold or to
improve the lot of the common man.
Education was nonexistent except for the
privileged few, and superstition was
rampant.
Another force which held the people
in its grip was the Church, a
circumstance especially true in rural areas where
the long arm of Juarez' 1859 Reform
Laws seldom reached. These laws had
greatly reduced the political power of the
Church, and such things as processions
and public religious festivities were
forbidden. In the small towns, however,
with the ever-present threat of arrest
hanging over their heads, the priests often
continued their regular clerical activities
in spite of the law.
Agustin Yafiez has painted against this
background a series of character studies
portraying the effects of a narrow and
rigid as well as dull and conventional life
on people of different ages, with varying
degrees of education and exposure to
outside influences. (These influences, being
outside ones and therefore bad, make up
a long and varied list, and include such
things as Free Masonry, bright clothing,
strangers, uncensored written material,
fun, spiritualists, people who had been to
the United States; the list could go on
and on.) Ydnez creates a sense of
monotonous semi-gloom with the sure hand of
an artist who has experienced this kind of
life himself at one time or another. The
fictitious, but very typical, town in which
the action takes place is set in the state
of Jalisco, of which the author is a native.
Each morning the church bells in this
town call the people out of their beds as
early as four o'clock to begin another
dreary, quiet, prayerful day. Life is very
serious. The women wear dark somber
49

colors and do not leave the house except
to go to church or to do necessary
errands. There is no visiting except in the
case of extreme illness or a death in the
house of a neighbor. There is little
laughter, dancing, or singing. Strangers and
strangeness are not only suspect, but
already condemned. Nonconformity, even
in small things, starts tongues wagging.
At the end of each unvarying day, the
church bells send the people to bed, an
act which for many means the onset of
sleepless hours or wrestling with guilty
consciences and with wondering when
and in what form God's wrath will be
brought down upon their heads.
With this daily pattern providing the
atmosphere, broken only by funerals,
special fiesta days, and an occasional scandal,
the action in the story begins as the
people are preparing for their Lenten and
Easter activities. The panorama of people
and events proceeds on through the year,
displaying the special religious days of
June, the expected deaths, illnesses, and
bad luck of August, the celebration of
patriotic holidays in September, the
scandalous pranks of the students home for
vacation in November, the Christmas
season with its festivities, and continues
on into the New Year, at which time the
people are awaiting the appearance of
Halley's Comet. This event is being
anticipated so intently by Lucas Macias, the
soothsayer, that the rest of the people do
well to prepare for trouble, for Lucas has
from the start associated the appearance
of this comet with the stepping onto the
scene of Francisco Madero, the man who
is to lead the revolution against the
tyranny of Diaz.
The person who can most nearly be
described as the main character is Don
Dionisio, the stern and upright, but just
and compassionate parish priest. He alone
touches in some way upon the lives of all
the other characters in the book. His
main ecclesiastical help comes from two
assistant priests who present a vivid
contrast to each other, one, Padre Reyes,
being liberal and forward-looking, the other,
Padre Islas, narrow and conservative
beyond belief. Although Padre Reyes is
much more likable, it is Padre Islas,
scurrying along the street from church to home
so as to avoid meeting his parishioners
on a personal basis, who wields more
influence on the lives of the townspeople,
for it is he who directs the organization
to which all the unmarried girls belong.
Into their minds he instills the urgent
need to stay pure by remaining single,
and he imbues them with a sense of guilt
for even thinking wholesome thoughts
connected with the opposite sex. This
narrow man will never use the chapel of
the Holy Family, but always the chapel
of the Virgin Mary, and Padre Reyes,
the other assistant, is not above teasing
him by asking if he thinks Maria and
Juan will make a nice couple, or if he is
aware that Mercedes is just about ready
to make someone a good wife. These
questions are calculated to enrage Padre
Islas. Padre Reyes, with his modern ideas
about such things as life insurance—too
far removed from the imaginations of the
people to be noticed—is largely ignored,
while Padre Islas is revered as a saint
beyond the temptations and afflictions of
ordinary man. Great is the
disillusionment when the good Father Islas is found
collapsed on the floor of the church in a
fit of epilepsy, which results in his
having to be removed permanently from the
priesthood. The archbishop had chosen
wisely when Don Dionisio was made
head priest, with the authority for
making final decisions, for he approaches the
problems of his parishioners with the best
elements of the philosophies of his two
assistants—an urgent sense of
responsibility for their souls accompanied by a
forgiving and understanding heart.
Two other personalities who present a
study in contrasts are Maria and Marta,
the orphaned nieces of Don Dionisio,
who has reared them since they were
very small. At the time the story begins,
they are in their twenties, unmarried, and
on the verge of taking opposite paths in
life. Marta, the contented, with her love
for children, her work in the hospital,
and other gentle occupations, is the ideal
50

end product of the social and religious
forces at work in her environment. Maria,
the rebellious, who has always read
forbidden literature (The Three Musketeers
and newspapers from the capital} behind
her uncle's back, and who finally runs
away with a woman of very questionable
reputation to follow the revolutionary
army, is a creature of reaction against this
unnatural environment.
What happened to Maria happens,
with variations, to nearly all the young
people who have had contact in any way
with the outside world. Luis Gonzaga
Perez, a young and talented seminary
student, is unable to reconcile his
inhibitions concerning the opposite sex with
his natural desires, and at the end of the
novel he is drawing lewd pictures on the
walls of his room in the insane asylum.
D ami an Lim6n, young son of a fairly
prosperous landowner, leaves home, like
the prodigal son, and goes to the United
States to work. Upon his return home,
when criticized for going to such a sinful
place where Mexicans are treated like
dogs, he counters by stating that at least
they are paid in money instead of in
promises, as in Mexico. Damian becomes
scandalously involved in a flagrant love
affair and kills the girl, after having just
caused his father to have a fatal heart
attack over an argument about his father's
will. A corrupt political boss has a
disgracefully light sentence placed upon him
and, at the end of the story, he rides
away to join the ranks of the
revolutionaries.
The parents of Micaela Rodriguez, a
spoiled only child, make the mistake of
taking her to Mexico City for a few
months. There she sees the parties, pretty
clothes, and merriment of the capital's
young people. Never again is she
satisfied to stay in her dreary home town and,
failing to force her parents to move away
to a gayer place, she threatens vengeance
on the environment that binds her and
shocks the town to its roots with her
shameless flirting and indecent dress. She
ends up being stabbed by a jealous lover,
but dies forgiving him and putting the
blame for her death on her own actions.
Doubt seems to be the villain that
causes the downfall of these unfortunate
young people. They have tasted of the
world, compared it with their narrow
surroundings, and found them wanting.
Being few in number, these unlucky ones
have fallen under the weight of a
relentless social system that brooks no
questioning.
But the time is near at hand when
many doubters will join together with
enough force to make a crack in this
teetering wall of hypocrisy, a crack which
will ever become wider as education and
enlightenment seep through. And in this
thought is captured the essence of the
title, Al filo del agua.
Agustin Yaiiez has given us an
unprejudiced and intricately detailed view
of life in a Mexican town just after the
turn of the century. The purpose of the
book is not a call to arms to reform, but
to present an understanding, not
necessarily sympathetic, but always touching
story.
51

ALCESTIS
Type of worh Drama
Author: Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Pnerae, in ancient Greece
First presented: 438 B.C.
Principal characters:
Apollo, god of the sun
Admetus, King of Pherae
Alcestis, his wife
Thanatos, Death
Hercules, son of Zeus and friend to Admetus
Critique:
Composed by Euripides as the fourth
play of a tragic tetrology performed at
the Feast of Dionysius in 438 B.C.,
Alcestis has characteristics of both the
tragedy and the satyr play. Although this
was a rare but not unique form among
Attic playwrights, Alcestis is the only
surviving example. Consistent with Eu-
ripidean technique, the conclusion of the
drama results from the intervention of
a heavenly power that resolves the
conflict, in tnis case the character of
Hercules.
The Story:
Phoebus Apollo had a son, Asclepius,
who in time became a god of medicine
and healing. Asclepius transgressed
divine law by raising a mortal, Hippolytus,
from the dead, and Zeus, in anger, killed
Apollo's son with a thunderbolt forged
by the Cyclops. Apollo then slew the
Cyclops, a deed for which he was
condemned by Zeus to leave Olympus and
to serve tor one year as herdsman to
Admetus, King of rherae in Thessaly.
Some time after Apollo had completed
his term of service, Admetus married
Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, King of Iol-
cus. But on his wedding day he offended
the goddess Artemis and so was doomed
to die. Apollo, grateful for the kindness
Admetus had shown him in the past,
Erevailed upon the Fates to spare the
ing on the condition that when his hour
of death should come, they should
accept in ransom the life of whoever would
consent to die in his place.
None of Admetus' kin, however, cared
to offer themselves in his place. Then
Alcestis, in wifely devotion, pledged
herself to die for her husband. Finally the
day arrived when she must give up her
life.
Concerned for the wife of his mortal
friend, Apollo appealed to Thanatos, who
had come to take Alcestis to the
underworld. But Thanatos rejected his pleas,
warning the god not to transgress against
eternal judgment or the will of the
Fates. Apollo declared that there was
one powerful enough to defy the Fates
who was even then on his way to the
palace of Admetus. Meanwhile Alcestis
prepared for her approaching death. On
the day she was to die she dressed
herself in her rich funeral robes and prayed
before the hearth fire to Vesta, goddess
of the hearth, asking her to be a mother
to the two children she was leaving
behind, to find a helpmate for the boy, a
gentle lord for the girl, and not to let
them follow their mother's example and
die before their time. After her prayers,
she placed garlands of myrtle on each
altar of the house and at each shrine prayed
tearlessly, knowing that death was
coming. Then in her own chamber she wept
as she remembered the happy years she
and Admetus had lived togetner. There
her children found her, and she said her
farewells to them. The house was filled
also with the sound of weeping servants,
grieving for the mistress they loved.
Admetus also wept bitterly, begging Alcestis
not to leave him. But the condition im-
52

osed by the Fates had to be met. While
e watched, her breath grew fainter, and
her cold hand fell languidly. Before she
died, she asked him to promise that he
would always care tenderly for their
children and that he would never marry
again.
At that moment Hercules arrived at
the palace of Admetus, on his way to slay
the wild horses of Diomedes in Thrace
as the eighth of his twelve labors.
Admetus concealed from Hercules the news
of Alcestis' death so that he might keep
the son of Zeus as a guest and carry out
the proper rites of hospitality. Hercules,
ignorant of what had taken place before
his arrival in Pherae, spent the night
carousing, drinking wine, and singing,
only to awaken in the morning and
discover that Alcestis had died hours before
he came and that his host had purposely
deluded him in order to make his stay
in Pherae as comfortable as possible. In
gratitude for Admetus' thoughtfulness
and in remorse for having reveled while
the home of his friend was deep in
sorrow, he determined to ambush Thana-
tos and bring Alcestis back from the
dead.
Since no labor was too arduous for the
hero, he set out after Thanatos and
Alcestis. Overtaking them, he wresded with
Thanatos and forced him to give up his
victim. Then he brought Alcestis, heavily
veiled, into the presence of sorrowing
Admetus, and asked the king to protect
her until Hercules returned from Thrace.
When Admetus refused, Hercules
insisted that the king at least peer beneath
the woman's veil. Great was the joy of
Admetus and his household when they
learned that the woman was Alcestis,
miraculously returned from the grave.
Pleased with his efforts, doughty
Hercules set out once more to face the
perilous eighth labor which awaited him in
Thrace, firm in the knowledge that with
him went the undying gratitude of
Admetus and the gentle Alcestis.
53

THE ALCHEMIST
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ben Jonson (1572M673)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of flot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1610
Principal characters;
Face, a butler
Subtle, a swindler posing as an alchemist
Dol Common, their partner '
Lovewit, owner of the house and Face's master
Sir Epicure Mammon, a greedy knight
Dame Pliant, a young widow
Critique:
The Alchemist marked the peak of Ben
Jonson's artistic career. Despite a
somewhat huddled denouement, the play is a
masterpiece of construction. As far as is
known, the plot—which Samuel Taylor
Coleridge declared one of the three most
perfect in existence, the other two being
Sophocles' Oedipus the King and
Fielding's Tom Jones—was original with
Jonson. In this play, Jonson, the artist
superseded Jonson the moralist: as a
highly entertaining and dramatic satire on
human greed, The Alchemist displays
none of the sermonizing which marks,
more or less, Jonson's other plays.
Tfec Story:
Master Lovewit having left the city
because of plague, his butler, Jeremy,
known as £ace to his friends of the
underworld, invited Subtle, a swindler posing
as an alchemist, and Dol Common, a
prostitute, to join him in using the house
as a base of operations for their rascally
activities. Matters fared well for the three
until a dispute arose between Face and
Subtle over authority. Dol, seeing their
moneymaking projects doomed if this
strife continued, rebuked the two men
and cajoled them back to their senses.
No sooner had Face and Subtle become
reconciled than Dapper, a gullible
lawyer's clerk given to gambling, called, by
previous arrangement with Face, to learn
from the eminent astrologer, Doctor
Subtle, how to win at all games of chance.
Dapper, in the hands of the two merciless
rascals, was relieved of all his ready cash,
in return for which Subtle predicted that
Dapper would have good luck at the
gaming tables. In order to gull Dapper further,
Subtle told him to return later to confer
with the Queen of Fairy, a mysterious
benefactress who could promote Dapper's
worldly success.
Abel Drugger, an ambitious young
druggist who had been led on by Face,
was the next victim to enter the house. To
his delight, he learned from Subde, who
spoke in incomprehensible
pharmaceutical and astrological jargon, that he would
have a rich future.
Next arrived Sir Epicure Mammon, a
greedy and lecherous knight, with his
friend Pertinax Surly, a man versed in the
ways of London confidence men. Having
been promised the philosopher's stone by
Subtle, Mammon had wild visions of
transforming all of his possessions into
gold and silver, but he was completely
taken in by the duplicities of Subtle and
Face. Subtle further aroused
Mammon's greed by describing at length,
in the pseudo-scientific gibberish of the
alchemist-confidence man, the processes
which led to his approximate achievement
of the mythical philosopher's stone. Surly,
quick to see what was afoot, scoffed at
Subtle and at the folly of Mammon.
During the interview Mammon caught
sight of Dol, who appeared inadvertently,
and was fascinated. Thinking quickly,
54

Face told Mammon that Dol was an
aristocratic lady who, being mad, was
under the care of Doctor Subtle but who
in her moments of sanity was most affable.
Before he left the house Mammon
promised to send to the unprincipled Subtle
certain of his household objects of base
metal for the purpose of having them
transmuted into gold.
The parade of victims continued.
Elder Ananias of the Amsterdam
community of extreme Protestants came to
negotiate for his group with Subtle for the
philosopher's stone. Subtle, with Face as
his assistant, repeated his extravagant
jargon to the impressionable Ananias,
who, in his greed, declared that the
brethren were impatient with the slowness of
the experiment. Subtle, feigning
professional indignation, frightened Ananias
with a threat to put out forever his
alchemist's fire.
Drugger reappeared to be duped
further. Subtle and Face were delighted
when he told them that a wealthy young
widow had taken lodgings near his and
that her brother, just come into an
inheritance, had journeyed to London to
learn how to quarrel in rakish fashion.
The two knaves plotted eagerly to get
brother and sister into their clutches.
Ananias returned with his pastor,
Tribulation Wholesome. Both Puritans
managed to wink at moral considerations as
Subtle glowingly described the near
completion of the philosopher's stone.
Prepared to go to any ends to procure the
stone, Ananias and Tribulation
contracted to purchase Mammon's household
articles, which, Subtle explained, he
needed for the experiment; the proceeds
of the sale would go toward the care of
orphans for whom Subde said he was
responsible.
Subtle and Face also plotted to sell
these same household articles to the young
widow, who, having just moved to
London, was probably in need of such items.
In the meantime Face met in the streets a
Spanish Don—Surly in clever disguise—
who expressed a desire to confer with
Subtle on matters of business and health.
Dapper returned to meet the Queen of
Fairy. At the same time Drugger brought
to the house Master Kastril, the angry
young man who would learn to quarrel.
Kastril was completely taken in. Subtle,
promising to make him a perfect London
gallant, arranged to have him instructed
by Face, who posed as a city captain.
Kastril was so pleased with his new
acquaintances that he sent Drugger to bring
his sister to the house.
Kastril having departed, Dol, Subtle,
and Face relieved Dapper of all of his
money in a ridiculous ritual in which
Dapper was to see and talk to the Queen
of Fairy. During the shameless
proceedings Mammon knocked. Dapper, who had
been blindfolded, was gagged and hastily
put into a water closet at the rear of the
house. Mammon entered and began to
woo Dol, whom he believed to be a
distracted aristocratic lady. Face and Subtle,
in order to have the front part of the house
clear for further swindles, shunted the
amorous pair to another part of the house.
Young Kastril returned with his
widowed sister, Dame Pliant; both were
deeply impressed by Subtle's manner and
by his rhetoric. When the Spanish Don
arrived, Subtle escorted Kastril and Dame
Pliant to inspect his laboratory. By that
time both Subtle and Face were
determined to wed Dame Pliant.
Face introduced the Spaniard to Dame
Pliant, who, in spite of her objections to
Spaniards in general, consented to walk in
the garden with the Don.
Meanwhile, in another part of the
house, Dol assumed madness. Subtle,
discovering the distraught Mammon with
her, declared that Mammon's moral laxity
would surely delay completion of the
philosopher's stone. Following a loud
explosion, Face reported that the laboratory
was a shambles. Mammon despondently
left the house, and Subde simulated a
fainting spell.
In the garden Surly revealed his true
identity to Dame Pliant and warned the
young widow against the swindlers.
When, as Surly, he confronted the two
rogues, Face, in desperation, told Kastril
55

that Surly was an impostor who was
trying to steal Dame Pliant away. Drugger
entered and, being Face's creature,
insisted that he knew Surly to be a
scoundrel. Then Ananias came to the house and
all but wrecked Subtle's plot by talking
indiscreetly of making counterfeit money.
Unable to cope with the wily rascals,
Surly departed, followed by Kastril.
Glad to be rid of his callers, Subtle
placed Dame Pliant in Dol's care. But
they were once more thrown into
confusion when Love wit, owner of the house,
made an untimely appearance. Face,
quickly reverting to his normal role of
Jeremy, the butler, went to the door in an
attempt to detain his master long enough
to permit Subtle and Dol to escape.
Although warned by his butler that the
house was infested, Love wit suspected
that something was amiss when Mammon
and Surly returned to expose Subtle and
Face. Kastril, Ananias, and Tribulation
confirmed their account. Dapper, having
managed to get rid of his gag, cried out
inside the house. Deciding that honesty
was the only policy, Face confessed
everything to his master and promised to
provide him with a wealthy young widow as
his wife, if Lovewit would have mercy on
his servant.
In the house, meanwhile, Subtle
concluded the gulling of Dapper and sent the
young clerk on his way, filled with the
belief that he would win at all games of
chance. Subtle and Dol then tried to
abscond with the threesome's loot, but
Face, back in Love wit's good graces,
thwarted them in their attempt. They
were forced to escape empty-handed by
the back gate.
Lovewit won the hand of Dame Pliant
and in his good humor forgave his crafty
butler. When those who had been
swindled demanded retribution, they
were finally convinced that they had been
mulcted as a result of their own
selfishness and greed.
56

ALECK MAURY, SPORTSMAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Caroline Gordon (1895- )
Type of plot: Fictional biography
Time of plot: Late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries
Locale: Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri
First published: 1934
'Principal characters:
Aleck Maury, a Southern sportsman
James Morris, his uncle
Victoria, his aunt
Julian, his cousin
Mr. Fayerlee, owner of Merry Point
Mrs. Fayerlee, his wife
Molly Fayerlee, their daughter, Aleck's wife
Richard, and
Sarah (Sally), Aleck's and Molly's children
Steve, Sarah's husband
Critique:
This novel tells of Aleck Maury, who
devoted his life to his twin enthusiasms
for gun and rod. To him, hunting and
fishing were the very breath of life;
everything else was secondary, including
his career as a teacher of Latin and Greek.
The book is a series of incidents
which, when put together, describe
Aleck Maury and make him seem real.
The Story:
Aleck Maury's love for hunting and
fishing began in childhood. At the age
of eight, Rafe, a Negro handyman at the
Maury household, took Aleck coon
hunting. Not long after, a mill owner named
Jones took the boy fishing and encouraged
his lifelong love for that sport. Aleck
was always happiest when he was out
in the fields. One of five children, he was
reared by his oldest sister after his mother
died. Until he was ten years old, he was
educated at home by his father, who
put great stress upon the classics and
taught his children nothing else.
At the age of ten, Aleck went to live
at Grassdale with his Uncle James and
Aunt Victoria Morris and their son,
Julian. There his education was to be
broadened under the tutelage of Aunt
Victoria, who was a learned woman.
Aleck's life at Grassdale was pleasant,
centering chiefly about sport.
When Aleck was graduated from the
University of Virginia, he had a classical
education but no plans for making a
living. He tried several jobs. He cleared
out a dogwood thicket for a set sum of
money, worked on a construction project
on the Missouri River, in the city
engineer's office in Seattle, and as a day
laborer on a ranch in California. While
working at the ranch, he contracted
typhoid fever and was sent back east as
far as Kansas City, to stay with some
relatives there. At last through the
efforts of his family Aleck became a
tutor at Merry Point, the home of Mr.
Fayerlee, near Gloversville, Tennessee.
Aleck, living with the Fayerlees,
became the local schoolmaster for the
children of most of the landowners in the
area. Aleck's first interest, however,
was not in the school or the students he
taught, but in the possibilities for
fishing and hunting.
During his stay with the Fayerlees,
Aleck fell in love with Molly Fayerlee,
and in 1890 they were married. They
continued to live on with the Fayerlees
and Aleck continued to teach school.
During his first year of marriage Aleck
acquired the pup Gyges, a small but
thoroughbred bird dog. He trained Gy
ALECK MAURY, SPORTSMAN by Caroline Gordon. By permission of the author and the publishers, Charles
Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1934, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
57

from a pup and became greatly attached
to him. The next fall Aleck's son Richard
was born. Two years later a daughter
Sarah, nicknamed Sally, was born. They
all continued to live at Merry Point.
When Richard was seven, Aleck was
offered the presidency of a small
seminary in Mississippi, and over the
protestations of the Fayerlee family the Maurys
left Merry Point. On the way, while
spending the night in Cairo, Aleck lost
Gy. The dog was never heard of again.
They continued their journey to
Oakland and the seminary. When Aleck
arrived, he found that the school was
running smoothly under the able
direction of Harry Morrow, his young
assistant, who was interested in
administration rather than teaching. A few
months after arriving at Oakland, Aleck
acquired an untrained two-year-old
pointer named Trecho from his friend,
William Mason. Once again Aleck
started the slow, arduous training of a
good hunting dog.
When Richard was fifteen, Aleck
tried to interest him in the joys of his
own life, hunting and fishing, but his
son, although he was a splendid swimmer
and wrestler, had little interest in his
father's fondness for field and stream.
That summer Richard, while swimming
in the river with a group of his
companions, was drowned. The boy had been
Molly's favorite and his loss was almost
more than she could bear. Aleck thought
it would be best for all concerned to
leave for different surroundings.
He decided after some correspondence
with friends that he would start a school
in Gloversville, and the family moved
back there. Settled in the small
Tennessee town, Aleck found much time for
fishing and hunting. He met Colonel
Wyndham and from him learned a great
deal about casting, flies, and the
techniques to be used for catching various
fish. Finally he began to grow tired of
the same pools and the same river, and
it was with pleasure that he accepted
Harry Morrow's offer of a job on the
faculty of Rodman College at Poplar
Bluff, Missouri, of which Morrow had
just been made president.
Aleck's main reason for accepting the
position was the possibility it offered
for fishing in the Black River. Thus
once again, after ten years in Gloversville,
the Maury family was on the move to
newer fishing grounds. Sally, however,
did not accompany them, but went to a
girls' school in Nashville. The faithful
Trecho was also left behind, for he had
been destroyed at the age of twelve
because of his rheumatism.
At Rodman Aleck had only morning
classes, a schedule which left him free
to fish every afternoon. This pleasant
life—teaching in the morning, fishing in
the afternoon—continued for seven years.
Then Molly died after an emergency
operation. Mrs. Fayerlee and Sally
arrived too late to see her alive. The
three of them took her back to be buried
in the family plot at Merry Point.
Aleck returned to Poplar Bluff and
continued teaching there for a few years,
but at last he resigned his position and
went to live at Jim Buford's, near
Gloversville, where he spent the next two years
restocking Jim's lakes with bream and
bass. Later he decided to go to Lake
Harris in Florida to try the fishing; but
he found it disappointing because of the
eel grass which kept the fish from putting
up a fight. About that time he received
a letter from Sally, who had married
and gone touring abroad with her
husband. The letter informed him that she
and her husband were soon to return
home and that they hoped to find a quiet
place in the country on some good
fishing water, where Aleck would go
to live with them. Aleck wrote and
suggested that they start their search
for a house near Elk River.
Four weeks later he meet Sally and
Steve at Tullahoma, only to learn that
Steve and Sally, who had arrived the
day before, had already discovered the
place they would like to have. They told
him it was the old Potter house, close
to the river. When Aleck saw the big,
clapboard house, however, all his dreams
58

about a white cottage disappeared, and
when he looked at the river he decided
that it would probably be muddy about
half the year. Seeing his
disappointment, Steve and Sally promised to
continue their attempt to find a more ideal
house, but at the end of the day's search
they decided that they still liked the old
Potter house the best. That night Aleck
boarded a bus bound for Caney Fork, the
place where he really wanted to live, and
he went to stay at a small inn located
there. The fishing was always good at
Caney Fork.
59

ALICE ADAMS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Booth Tarkington (1869-1946)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Jjocale: A small Midwestern town
First published: 1921
Principal characters:
Alice Adams, a small-town girl
Virgil Adams, her father
Mrs. Adams, his wife
Walter Adams, his son
Mildred Palmer, Alice's friend
Arthur Russell, the Palmers' relative
Mr. Lamb, of Lamb and Company
Critique:
Alice Adams is a rather simply told
story containing one plot and concerning
itself with one central character. The
novel is the vehicle through which
Tarkington expounds his philosophy of life
and his gende satire on small town
manners and morals.
The Story:
Alice Adams had been reared in a
town in which each person's business
was everybody's business, sooner or later.
Her father, Virgil Adams, worked for
Lamb and Company, a wholesale drug
factory in the town, where he also
obtained a job for his son Walter. Alice
had been one of the town's young smart
set while she was in high school, but
when the others of the group had gone
to college Alice had remained behind
because of economic reasons. As time
passed she felt increasingly out of things.
To compensate for a lack of attention,
Alice often attracted notice to herself
by affected mannerisms.
Alice had been invited to a dance
given by Mildred Palmer, who, according
to Alice, was her best friend. Walter had
also been invited so as to provide her
with an escort. Getting Walter to go
out with Alice, however, was a process
which took all the coaxing and cajoling
that Mrs. Adams could muster. On the
night of the dance Alice departed in a
made-over formal, carrying a homemade
bouquet of wild violets, and with an
unwilling escort who was driving a
borrowed flivver. The party itself turned
out no better than its inauspicious
beginning. Alice was very much a
wallflower except for the attentions of Frank
Dowling, a fat, unpopular boy. Toward
the end of the evening Mildred Palmer
introduced Alice to a new young man,
Arthur Russell, a distant relative of the
Palmers. It was rumored that Mildred
and Arthur would become engaged in
the near future. Alice asked Arthur to
find her brother, whom she had not
seen since the second dance. When
Arthur found Walter shooting dice with
the Negro waiters in the cloakroom, Alice
was mortified.
A week later Alice accidently met
Arthur Russell and he walked home
with her. During their walk Alice
learned that Arthur had asked for an
introduction to her at the dance.
Flattered, Alice built up for herself a
background which did not exist. Arthur
asked for permission to call on her.
But Arthur failed to appear the next
evening. Several nights later, after Alice
had helped with the dishes, she was
sitting on the front porch when Arthur
finally came to call. To hold his in-
ALICE ADAMS by Booth Tarkington. By permission of Brandt & Brandt and the publishers, Doubleday & Co.,
Inc. Copyright, 1921, by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1949, by R. Susannah Tarkington.
60

terest, Alice asked him to promise not to
listen to any gossip about her. As time
went on, she repeated her fear that
someone would talk about her. Her
protestations were something Arthur could
not understand.
For many years Mrs. Adams had been
trying to convince her husband to leave
his job at Lamb and Company and go
into business for himself. Her idea was
that he could start a factory to
manufacture glue from a formula he and
another young man at Lamb and
Company had discovered years before.
Meanwhile the other man had died and the
only people who knew the formula were
Mr. Lamb and Mr. Adams. Mr. Lamb
had lost interest in the formula. Mr.
Adams felt that his wife's scheme was
dishonest, and in spite of her nagging
he refused to do as she wished. But
after Mr. Lamb's granddaughter failed
to invite Alice to a dinner party she was
giving, Mrs. Adams convinced her
husband that the true reason was their
own poor economic status. In that way
she finally won his grudging agreement
to her plan.
Without delay, Mr. Adams began to
organize his new business. Walter
refused to join him because Mr. Adams
would not give him three hundred
dollars immediately. But Mr. Adams needed
all his money for his new project. He
sent Mr. Lamb a letter of resignation,
telling of his intention to start a glue
factory. He expected some sort of action
or at least an outburst on Mr. Lamb's
part when he read the letter, but nothing
was forthcoming. He went ahead with
his arrangements and began to
manufacture his glue.
Alice's mother decided the time had
come to invite Arthur to dinner, and
Alice agreed with great reluctance. An
elaborate rrieal was prepared; a maid
was hired to serve, and Mr. Adams was
forced into his dress suit. But the
dinner was a dismal failure, and
everyone, including Arthur, was extremely
uncomfortable. Arthur had more reason
than the rest for being so, for he had
heard Mr. Adam's venture discussed in
the most unfavorable light. He had also
heard some uncomplimentary remarks
about Alice. Before dinner was over, a
friend named Charley Lohr came to
speak to Mr. Adams. When both her
mother and father failed to return to the
table, Alice and Arthur went out to the
porch. She soon dismissed him,
knowing that something had come between
them. When she went into the house,
Charley Lohr informed her that her
brother had been caught short in his
accounts and had skipped town.
Mr. Adams decided to get a loan from
the bank the first thing in the morning in
order to pay back what Walter had taken.
However, when he went to his factory
in the morning, he discovered that the
building which had been erected across
the street from his was in reality another
glue factory, one started by Mr. Lamb.
His hopes of obtaining money on his
factoiy were shattered. Then Mr. Lamb
rode up to gloat over his retaliation. Mr.
Adams angrily accused Mr. Lamb of
waiting until Walter got into trouble
before announcing his new factory and
thereby making Mr. Adams' property
practically worthless. He worked himself
into such a state that he had a stroke.
Mr. Lamb, feeling sorry for Mr.
Adams, offered to buy him out, and Mr.
Adams was forced to agree. Now there
was no income in the family. Mrs.
Adams decided to take in boarders, and
Alice finally made up her mind to enroll
in Frincke's Business College. She had
lost more than Arthur Russell; she had
lost her daydreams as well.
61

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Type of work: Imaginative tale
Author: Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Victorian England
Locale: The dream world of an imaginative child
First published: 1865
Principal characters:
Alice
The White Rabbit
The Duchess
The Queen of Hearts
Critique:
Adults will view this book as a gende
satire on education, politics, literature,
and Victorian life in general, seen
through the eyes of Alice, a child who
is the product of a confusing
environment. The book is written with
charming simplicity. There are poetic
parodies on Wordsworth and Southey which
9re amusing to the point of hilarity, as
Well as ingenuous observations on the
status of powerful female rulers. Through
all her puzzling adventures in the dream
world, Alice remains the very essence
of little girlhood. Children read this
book with delight, finding in Alice a
heroine who aptly represents their own
thoughts and feelings about growing up.
The Story:
Alice was quietly reading over her
sister's shoulder when she saw a White
Rabbit dash across the lawn and
disappear into its hole. She jumped up to rush
after him and found herself falling down
the rabbit hole. At the bottom she saw
the White Rabbit hurrying along a
corridor ahead of her and murmuring that
he would be late. He disappeared
around a corner, leaving Alice standing
in front of several locked doors.
On a glass table she found a tiny
golden key which unlocked a little door
hidden behind a curtain. The door
opened upon a lovely miniature garden,
but she could not get through the
doorway because it was too small. She sadly
replaced the key on the table. A little
bottle mysteriously appeared. Alice drank
the contents and immediately began to
grow smaller, so much so that she could
no longer reach the key on the table.
Next, she ate a piece of cake she found
nearby and soon she began to grow to
such enormous size that she could only
squint through the door. In despair, she
began to weep tears as big as raindrops.
As she sat there crying, the White
Rabbit appeared, bewailing the fact that the
Duchess would be angry if he kept her
waiting.
The White Rabbit dropped his fan
and gloves. Alice picked them up and
as she did so she began to grow smaller.
Again she rushed to the garden door,
but she found it shut and the golden
key once more on the table out of reach.
Then she fell into a pool of her own
tears! Splashing along, she encountered
a mouse who had stumbled into the
pool. Alice tactlessly began a
conversation about her cat Dinah, and the mouse
became speechless with terror. Soon the
pool of tears was filled with living
creatures, birds and animals of all kinds.
An old Dodo suggested that they run a
Caucus Race to get dry. Having asked
what a Caucus Race was, Alice was told
that the best way to explain it was to do
it. Whereupon the animals ran
themselves quite breathless and finally became
dry.
Afterwards, the mouse told a "Tail" to
match its own appendage. Alice was
asked to tell something, but the only
thing she could think of was her cat
Dinah. Frightened, the other creatures
went away, and Alice was left alone.
The White Rabbit appeared once
62

more, this time hunting for his gloves and
fan. Catching sight of Alice, he sent
her to his home to get him a fresh pair
of gloves and another fan. In the
Rabbit's house she found the fan and gloves
and also took a drink from a bottle.
Instantly she grew to a giant size, and was
forcea to put her leg up the chimney
and her elbow out of the window in
order to keep from being squeezed to
death.
She managed to eat a little cake and
shrink herself again. As soon as she was
small enough to get through the door,
she ran into a nearby wood where she
found a caterpillar sitting on a
mushroom. The caterpillar was very rude to
Alice and he scornfully asked her to
prove her worth by reciting "You Are
Old, Father William." Alice did so, but
the words sounded very strange.
Disgusted, he left her after giving her some
valuable information about increasing or
decreasing her size. She broke off pieces
of the mushroom and found to her
delight that by eating from the piece in her
left hand she could become taller, and
from the piece in her right hand, smaller.
She came to a little house among the
trees. There a footman, who looked very
much like a fish, presented to another
footman, who closely remembled a frog,
an invitation for the Duchess to play
croquet with the Queen. The two
amphibians bowed to each other with great
formality, tangling their wigs together.
Alice opened the door and found herself
in the chaotic house of the Duchess. The
cook was stirring a large pot of soup and
pouring plenty of pepper into the
mixture. Everyone was sneezing except the
cook and a Cheshire cat which sat on
the hearth grinning. The Duchess
herself held a sneezing, squalling baby, and
sang to it a blaring lullaby. Alice, in
sympathy with the poor child, picked
it up and carried it out into the fresh
air, whereupon the baby turned slowly
into a pig, squirmed out of her arms, and
waddled into the forest.
Standing in bewilderment, Alice saw
the grinning Cheshire cat sitting in a
tree. He was able to appear and
disappear at will, and after exercising his
talents, he advised Alice to go to a tea
party given by the Mad Hatter. The cat
vanished, all but the grin. Finally that,
too, disappeared, and Alice left for the
party.
There Alice found she had to deal with
the strangest people she had ever seen—
a March Hare, a Mad Hatter, and a
sleepy Dormouse. All were too lazy to
set the table properly; dirty dishes were
everywhere. The Dormouse fell asleep
in its teacup; the Mad Hatter told Alice
her hair needed cutting; the March Hare
offered her wine and then told her there
was none. They asked her foolish riddles
that had no answers. Then, worse, they
ignored her completely and carried on a
ridiculous conversation among
themselves. She escaped after the Dormouse
fell asleep in the middle of a story ho
was telling.
Next she found herself in a garden of
talking flowers. Just as the conversation
was beginning, some gardeners appeared
with paint brushes and began to splash
red paint on a rose bush. Alice learned
that the Queen had ordered a red bush
to be placed in that spot, and the
gardeners had made a mistake and planted
a white one. Now they were busily
and fearfully trying to cover their error
before the Queen arrived. But the poor
gardeners were not swift enough. The
Queen caught them in the act, and the
wretched gardeners were led off to be
decapitated. Alice saved them by
shoving them down into a large flower pot,
out of sight of the dreadful Queen.
A croquet game began. The mallets
were live flamingoes, and the balls were
hedgehogs which thought nothing of
uncurling themselves and running rapidly
over the field. The Duchess cornered
Alice and led her away to the seaside to
introduce her to the Mock Turtle and the
Gryphon.
While engaged in a Lobster Quadrille,
they heard the news of a trial. A thief
had stolen some tarts. Rushing to the
courtroom where a trial by jury was al-
63

ready in session, Alice was called upon
to act as a witness before the King and
Queen of Hearts. But the excited child
upset the jury box and spilled out all
its occupants. After replacing all the
animals in the box, Alice said she knew
nothing of the matter. Her speech
infuriated the Queen, who ordered that
Alice's head be cut off. The whole court
rushed at her, and Alice defiantly called
them nothing but a pack of cards. She
awoke from her dream as her sister
brushed away some dead leaves blowing
over her face.
64

ALL FOOLS
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Chapman (c. 1559-1634)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Italy
First presented: c. 1604
Principal characters:
Rinaldo, a young gentleman
Valerio, his friend
Gostanzo, Valerio's father
Marc Antonio, Rinaldo's father
Fortunio, Rinaldo's brother
Cornelio, a jealous husband
Gratiana, Valerio's wife
Bellanora, Valerio's sister, loved by Fortunio
Gazetta, Cornelio's wife
Critique:
All Fools is one of Chapman's best
comedies. A successful adaptation to the
English stage of material from two Te-
rentian comedies, it lacks the weakness in
plot construction that mars several of his
plays. Delightful comic situations are
developed through his deft handling of the
complicated intrigue. The major
characters, although based on traditional
types, are individualized; and their
actions, except in the final act, are skillfully
motivated.
The Story:
Gostanzo fancied himself a man of true
worldly wisdom. He loved money, relished
his neighbor's misfortunes, and was
unhampered by any petty scruples about
honesty. Aware of the temptations that
might lead a young man to become a
waster, he had taken great care in rearing
his son Valerio. He had lectured the boy
on the importance of thrift and, to teach
him responsibility, made him an overseer.
But Valerio was also a man of worldly
wisdom. Although he put on the
appearance of industry and innocence in front
of his father, he was well acquainted
with the gentlemanly activities of dicing,
drinking, and wencning. He had, as the
result of these pursuits, accumulated a
respectable number of debts. To cap his
sins, he had now married Gratiana, a girl
with beauty but no dowry.
Fortunio was a young man of quite
different character. Without parading his
virtue, he led an upright life and was a
dutiful son. In love with Valerio's sister
Bellanora, he was not permitted to court
her because Gostanzo was seeking a
wealthier son-in-law. Fortunio's brother
Rinaldo, having experienced the
fickleness of women, was through with love
and now devoted himself exclusively to
cozenage of others.
One day, when Rinaldo, Fortunio,
Valerio, and Gratiana were together talking,
they sighted Gostanzo coming their way,
and all but Rinaldo rushed off. In
answer to Gostanzo's questions, Rinaldo said
that Gratiana was the wife of Fortunio,
who dared not tell his father of the
marriage; Gostanzo believed the lie.
Although he promised to keep it secret, he
nevertheless revealed it the minute he
was alone with Marc Antonio, the father
of Fortunio and Rinaldo. Acting fin
Rinaldo's suggestion, Gostanzo
recommended that Fortunio and Gratiana be
installed in his home. Marc Antonio
accepted this offer, not because he was
angry with his son, but because Gostanzo
had convinced him that Fortunio was in
danger of falling victim to greater evils.
With the restraining influence of the
strict Gostanzo and the good example of
Valerio, he might still be saved.
Rinaldo's scheming thus enabled
Valerio and his wife to live in the same
house, and it also gave Fortunio a chance
65

to pursue his courtship of Bellanora.
When Gratiana was brought to Gostan-
zo's home, the old man told Valerio to
kiss her, but the crafty youth feigned
shyness. The father, gratified by this
manifestation of a strict upbringing,
congratulated himself on being a much better
parent than the easy-going Marc Antonio.
Later, however, Gostanzo found
Valerio embracing and kissing Gratiana.
The old man, still not suspecting the true
state of affairs, thought merely that his
son was a fast learner. He decided that,
to avoid mischief, Gratiana and Forrunio
would have to leave his house. When he
told Rinaldo of this development, Ri-
naldo suggested that his father be told
that Gratiana was really Valerio's wife
and that Marc Antonio now take her
into his house. Rinaldo further advised
that, in order to make the ruse effective,
Valerio be permitted to visit her there.
He plan met with the ready assent of
Gostanzo, who, being innocently gulled,
was happy in the thought that ne would
be gulling Marc Antonio.
Meanwhile, Rinaldo, encouraged by
his success in this project, had been
directing his genius to a new endeavor, a
plan intended to gull Cornelio, an
inordinately jealous husband who was an
easy mark for a trickster and whose wife
Gazetta complained that he brought
home gallants and then upbraided her for
being in their company. Rinaldo's
accomplice in his scheme was Valerio, who
had been angered at Cornelio for making
fun of his singing. Valerio had litde
difficulty in awakening the jealousy in
Cornelio. With the help of a page who
defended Gazetta on the grounds that
women's wantonness was a result of
weakness and not design, he so infuriated
Cornelio that the jealous husband
attacked and wounded his wife's supposed
lover.
When Marc Antonio was told that
Valerio, not Fortunio, was married to
Gratiana, he made merry with Gostanzo
for his blind pride. The latter, unable to
tolerate gloating other than his own,
declared that the plot had been contrived
for entertainment. When they met
Valerio, Gostanzo feigned extreme anger
with him and threatened to disown his
son. Valerio, playing the penitent,
protested his devotion to his father and
avowed his love of Gratiana. Gostanzo,
believing the whole affair a joke,
dissembled an appearance of being softened
and gave his blessing to the match.
Cornelio, meanwhile, had procured a
notary and was proceeding with the
divorce of his wife. A nosebleed, which he
took as an omen, caused him to suspend
action just as he was preparing to sign
the final papers. After the notary left, a
friend explained to him that he had been
tricked into his jealousy by Rinaldo and
Valerio. Cornelio resolved to repay them
with a deception of his own.
When Cornelio found Rinaldo, he told
this master trickster that Valerio had
been arrested for debts. Since Valerio had
been dodging the officials for some time,
Rinaldo believed the lie and, having gone
on bond for Valerio, he felt that some
immediate action was unnecessary. At
Cornelio's suggestion, he took Gostanzo
with him to the Half Moon Tavern,
where Cornelio said Valerio was being
held before being taken to prison. Valerio
was at the tavern, but not as a captive.
Instead, he was engaged in his usual
pursuits of drinking and playing dice.
When Gostanzo saw his son's true
nature and also learned that Valerio really
was married to Gratiana, he threatened*
this time in earnest, to disown the boy
and to settle his estate on his daughter.
But this plan was rejected when he
discovered that Bellanora had married
Fortunio. The old man, frustrated in his
efforts to control events, decided to accept
them. Finally, when Cornelio revealed
that his jealousy had been feigned in
order to restrain his wife's high spirits, the
reconciliations were complete and
happiness reigned in the Half Moon Tavern.
66

ALL FOR LOVE
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Dryden (1631-1700)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: First century B.C.
Locale: Alexandria, Egypt
First presented: 1677
Principal characters:
Mark Antony, one of the Roman triumvirate
Ventidius, his faithful general
Dolabella, Antony's friend
Octavia, Antony's wife
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
Alexas, Cleopatra's eunuch
Critique:
Having written rhymed heroic
dramatic verse with great success, Dryden
turned to a study of Shakespeare and
other great playwrights of the English
Renaissance. He had only admiration for
Shakespeare's great tragedies, but,
influenced by the French neo-classicists, he felt
that the Elizabethan playwrights had not
shown sufficient discipline in
construction or in the observance of the classical
unities of time, place, and action. All for
Love, Or, The World Well Lost, his
answer as it were to these shortcomings, is
an adaptation in the neo-classic manner—
but not uncomfortably so—of
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Dryden's
Antony occasionally slips into pompous
rhetoric, however, and his Cleopatra never
becomes the exciting personality of
Shakespeare's Egyptian queen. Unity of action,
unity of place, dignity of expression, and
well-conceived characters especially mark
this play as a great piece of dramatic
literature. The difference between All for
Love and Antony and Cleopatra is not
simply the difference between Dryden
and Shakespeare; Dryden excelled
himself here.
Tfee Story:
After his humiliating defeat at Actium,
Mark Antony retired to Alexandria,
Egypt, where he remained in seclusion for
some time in the temple of Isis. He
avoided meeting his mistress, Cleopatra,
the Queen of Egypt, whose cowardice had
largely caused the defeat. Meanwhile the
Romans, under Octavius, Maecenas, and
Agrippa, had invaded Egypt, where,
having laid siege to Alexandria, they calmly
awaited Antony's next move.
Serapion, a patriot and a priest of Isis,
became alarmed at a sudden rising of the
Nile and by prodigious disturbances
among the royal tombs; these events
seemed to presage disaster for Egypt.
Ventidius, Antony's trusted and highly
successful general in the Middle East,
came at this time to Alexandria to aid his
commander. Serapion and Alexas,
Cleopatra's loyal, scheming eunuch, tried to
encourage citizens and troops with a
splendid birthday festival in Antony's
honor. Ventidius, in Roman fashion,
scorned the celebration. He told Antony's
Roman soldiers not to rejoice, but to
prepare to defend Antony in his peril.
Antony, clearly a ruined man, at last
came out of his seclusion. While he
cursed his fate and lamented the day that
he was born, Ventidius, in concealment,
overheard the pitiful words of his
emperor. Revealing his presence, he
attempted to console Antony. Both men
wept; Antony marveled that Ventidius
could remain faithful to a leader who had
brought a large part of the Roman Empire
to ruin through his love for Cleopatra.
Ventidius offered to Antony his twelve
legions, which were stationed in Lower
Syria, but his stipulation that these
legions would not fight for Cleopatra
67

plunged doting Antony into renewed
gloom. When Ventidius mentioned the
name of Cleopatra lightly, Antony took
offense and cursed the general as a traitor.
After this insult Antony, his mind filled
with misgivings, guilt, and indecision,
hastened to assure Ventidius of his love
for him. He promised to leave Cleopatra
to join the legions in Syria.
The word that Antony was preparing to
desert her left Cleopatra in a mood of
anger and despair. Meanwhile Charmion,
her maid, went to Antony and begged the
Roman to say farewell to her mistress.
Antony refused, saying that he did not dare
trust himself in Cleopatra's presence.
Not daunted by Antony's refusal,
Alexas then intercepted him as he
marched out of Alexandria. The eunuch
flattered the Romans and presented them
with rich jewels from Cleopatra. As
Antony was with difficulty clasping a
bracelet around his arm, Cleopatra made
her prepared appearance. Antony bitterly
accused her of falseness and of being the
cause of his downfall. The two argued. In
desperation, Cleopatra told Antony that as
her friend he must go to Syria, Dut that
as her lover he must stay in Alexandria to
share her fate. Antony wavered in his
determination to leave when Cleopatra told
him that she had spurned Octavius* offer
of all Egypt and Syria if she would join
his forces, and he elected to stay when she
represented herself as a weak woman left
to the mercy of the cruel invaders. Antony
declared, in surrendering again to
Cleopatra's charms, that Octavius could have
the world as long as he had Cleopatra's
love. Ventidius was overcome with shame
and pity at Antony's submission.
Cleopatra was triumphant in her
renewed power over Antony, and Antony
himself seemed to have recovered some of
his former magnificence when he was
successful in minor engagements against the
troops of Octavius. While Octavius,
biding his time, held his main forces in
check, Ventidius, still hopeful of saving
Antony, suggested that a compromise
might be arranged with Maecenas or with
Agrippa.
Dolabella, the friend whom Antony
had banished because he feared that
Cleopatra might grow to love the young
Roman, came from Octavius' camp to
remind Antony that he had obligations
toward his wife and two daughters. Then
Octavia and her two young daughters
were brought before Antony, Octavia, in
spite of Antony's desertion, still hoping
for reconciliation with her husband.
When Antony accused her of bargaining
with her brother Octavius, Octavia,
undismayed, admitted that Octavius was
prepared to withdraw from Egypt at the news
that a reconciliation had been effected
between his sister and Antony. Octavia's
calm dignity affected Antony greatly, and
when his two small daughters embraced
him, he declared himself ready to submit
to the will of Octavia. Cleopatra, entering
upon this family reunion, exchanged
insults with the momentarily triumphant
Octavia.
Still afraid to face Cleopatra for the last
time, Antony prevailed upon Dolabella
to speak his farewell to Cleopatra.
Dolabella, aspiring to Cleopatra's favors,
accepted the mission with pleasure. But
Alexas, knowing of Dolabella's weakness
and ever solicitous of the welfare of
Egypt, advised Cleopatra to excite
Antony's jealousy by pretending to be
interested in Dolabella. After Ventidius and
Octavia had secredy overheard the
conversation between Dolabella and
Cleopatra, Ventidius, now unwittingly a tool
of Alexas, reported to Antony Cleopatra's
apparent interest in the young Dolabella.
Octavia confirmed his report, and Alexas
suggested to the raging Antony that
Cleopatra was capable of perfidy. Antony's
passionate reaction to this information
convinced Octavia that her mission was a
failure and she returned to the Roman
camp. Antony meanwhile, accused
Cleopatra and Dolabella of treachery. Ignoring
their earnest denials, he banished them
from his presence.
Cleopatra, cursing the eunuch's ill
advice, attempted unsuccessfully to take her
68

own life with a dagger. Antony ascended
a tower in Alexandria harbor to watch an
impending naval engagement between
the Egyptian and Roman fleets. To his
horror he saw the two fleets join and the
entire force advance to attack the city.
Antony realized now that his end was
near; furthermore, his heart was broken
by the belief that Cleopatra was
responsible for the treachery of the Egyptian fleet.
When Alexas brought false word that
Cleopatra had retired to her tomb and had
taken her life, Antony, no longer desiring
to live, fell on his own sword. The faithful
Ventidius killed himself. Cleopatra came
to the dying Antony and convinced him,
before he died, that she had remained
steadfast in her love for him. Then, to
cheat Octavius of a final triumph, she
dressed herself in her royal robes and
permitted herself to be bitten by a poisonous
asp. Her maids, Iras and Charmion, killed
themselves in the same manner. Serapion
entered to find that Cleopatra had joined
her Antony in death.
69

ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Shih Nai-an (fl. fourteenth century)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Thirteenth century or earlier
Locale: China
First transcribed: Possibly the fourteenth or fifteenth century
Principal characters:
Shih Chin, The Nine Dragoned
Lu Ta, later Lu Chi Shen, The Tattooed Priest
Ling Ch'ung, The Leopard Headed
Ch'ai Chin, The Little Whirlwind
Yang Chi, The Blue-Faced Beast
Chu T'ung, The Beautiful Bearded
Lei Heng, The Winged Tiger
Ch'ao Kai, The Heavenly King
Wu Yung, The Great Intelligence
Kung Sun Sheng, Dragon in the Clouds
Sung Chiang, The Opportune Rain
Wu Sung, The Hairy Priest
Wang The Dwarf Tiger
Tai Chung, The Magic Messenger
Li K'uei, The Black Whirlwind
Lu Chun I, The Jade Ch' Lin
Critique:
All Men Are Brothers translated by
Pearl Buck, was published in the United
States in 1933. She supplied the present
English title, which is a translation of
a saying by Confucius because she felt
that the Chinese title, the Shui Hu
Chuan (literally, "water margins novel"),
conveyed little meaning. The stories
which make up the plot originated many
years before the novel as a whole was
composed and probably have some basis
in fact. The version chosen by the
translator is the shortest, omitting the spurious
chapters telling of the robbers' downfall.
It runs to well over 1,200 eventful
pages, and the reader is likely to be
appalled by the enormous number of
characters he must keep in mind; 108
named chieftains form the band at the
close of the book. The plot outline which
follows can convey very little of the
extraordinary bloodthirstiness of these
"good fellows," who slaughter entire
households of their enemies, who
occasionally indulge in cannibalism, and
whose reasons for becoming outlaws are
not always noble. But the characters are
vividly portrayed; the story is always
interesting, and all is presented with the
greatest realism and vigor. Long
attributed to Shih Nai-an, many scholars now
claim that Lo Kuan-chung may well be
the author, or that the real author is
unknown.
The Story:
To escape the persecution of evil
Commander Kao, a military instructor fled to
the borders. On the way he instructed
a village lord's son, Shih Chin, in
warlike skills. Later Shih Chin became
friendly with the robbers of Little Hua
Mountain. Discovery of this alliance
forced Shih Chin to flee.
He fell in with Captain Lu Ta and Li
Chung. Lu Ta, after killing a pig butcher
who was persecuting a girl, escaped
capture by becoming priest Lu Chi Shen.
But his violence and intemperance forced
the abbot to send him to another temple.
ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS by Shih Nai-an. Translated by Pearl S. Buck. By permission of the pub-
lishers, The John Day Co., Inc. Copyright, 1933, 1937, by Pearl S. Buck.
70

On the way he made peace between a
village lord and the robbers of Peach
Blossom Mountain, now led by Li Chung.
Shih Chin joined the robbers of Little
Hua Mountain. Lu Chi Shen went on
to his temple, where he became a friend
of military instructor Ling Ch'ung.
Because Commander Kao's son lusted for
Ling Ch'ung's wife, Ling Ch'ung was
falsely accused of murder, branded, and
exiled to Ch'ang Chou. His guards were
prevented by Lu Chi Shen from
carrying out their secret orders to kill Ling
Ch'ung. Again on his way, Ling Ch'ung
was hospitably received by Lord Ch'ai
Chin.
In Ch'ang Chou, Ling Ch'ung
accidentally escaped a death trap and killed
his three would-be assassins. Again he
encountered Ch'ai Chin, who sent him to
take refuge in Liang Shan P'o, a robbers'
lair headed by ungracious Wang Lun.
Warrior Yang Chi, after killing a bully,
was branded and sent to be a border
guard. His skill delighted Governor Liang
of Peking, who kept and promoted him
and even selected him to transport rich
birthday gifts to Liang's father-in-law.
To rid the way of robbers, Chu T'ung
and Lei Heng were sent out ahead of the
party carrying the treasures. Lei Heng
captured drunken Liu T'ang and took
him to Lord Ch'ao Kai, but the lord
arranged his release on privately
discovering that Lei Heng had come to seek him;
Lei Heng brought the news of the
birthday gifts, which he, Ch'ao Kai and a
teacher, Wu Yung, then plotted to steal.
Magician Kung Sun Sheng and the three
Juan brothers joined them.
The plotters cleverly drugged Yang
Chi and his disguised soldiers and stole
the treasure. Yang Chi in despair left the
others, who resolved to throw the guilt
on him. Yang Chi fell in with Lu Chi
Shen; they went to Double Dragon
Mountain and, overcoming the robber
chief who refused to admit them, became
the leaders of the band.
When Ch'ao Kai was discovered to
have been one of the robbers, plans were
made to catch him; but with the aid of
scribe Sung Chiang and of rqbber-catcher
Chu T'ung, Ch'ao Kai and the others
escaped to Liang Shan P'o. Ling Ch'ung
killed the ungracious Wang Lun, and
Ch'ao Kai was made the chief. Ling
Ch'ung discovered that his wife had
killed herself to escape the advances of
Commander Kao's son. The robbers
vanquished two groups sent against them.
Sung Chiang's connection with the
robbers was discovered by his unfaithful
mistress. Enraged at her blackmail threats,
he killed her and escaped to Ch'ai Chin's
village. There he met Wu Sung, who was
on his way to see his older brother after
a long absence.
Wu Sung killed a tiger and was
greatly feted. He was of heroic size; his
brother was puny and small. The latter's
wife tried unsuccessfully to seduce Wu
Sung. In Wu Sung's absence, she took
a lover and with his help killed her
husband. Wu Sung returned, and killed the
pair. Though generally pitied, he was
branded and exiled.
After an eventful journey, Wu Sung
defended his jailer's son against a usurper
and so offended the tyrant that he plotted
with General Chang to accuse Wu Sung
falsely of a crime. Wu Sung killed the
plotters and joined those at Double
Dragon Mountain.
Sung Chiang, going to visit a military
magistrate, Hua Yung, was captured by
the robbers of the Mountain of Clear
Winds, but they recognized and
welcomed him. One of them, lustful Wang
The Dwarf Tiger, captured the wife of
a civil magistrate, Liu Kao. Thinking to
please Hua Yung, Sung Chiang
persuaded Wang to release her. Later the
woman, a troublemaker, identified Sung
Chiang as one of the robbers. Sung
Chiang and Hua Yung escaped to the
Mountain of Clear Winds, and Liu Kao was
killed.
General Ch'ing Ming came against
these robbers and was captured. Their
plot to force him to join their band was
successful. Liu Kao's wife, recaptured,
was executed. Sung Chiang promised to
get a wife for the disappointed Wang
71

The Dwarf Tiger. The whole band
decided to join those at Liang Shan P'o,
but Sung Chiang was summoned home
for the burial of his father. The report
of his father's death turned out to be,
however, a trick to keep Sung Chiang
from turning outlaw. Persuaded to stand
trial for his mistress' murder, he was
branded and exiled. The trip was very
eventful, involving many near escapes
in encounters with robbers who later
proved friendly. At his destination Sung
Chiang became a friend of his gaoler,
Tai Chung, who possessed magic
enabling him to walk three hundred miles
a day. Another friend, violent but loyal
Li K'uei, caused much trouble which
Sung Chiang was able to smooth over.
One day Sung Chiang became drunk
and wrote revolutionary verses on a wall.
Tai Chung, sent to a distant city to get
execution orders, went instead to Liang
Shan P'o, where a letter was forged,
freeing Sung Chiang. But a mistake
made in the seal resulted in Tai Chung's
death sentence also. Both were freed from
the execution grounds by the robbers.
All went back to Liang Shan P'o,
enlarging their group with additional robbers
recruited along the way.
Sung Chiang set out to bring his
father and brother to the robbers' lair.
He was miraculously saved from capture
by a temple goddess who gave great
prophecies. The robbers took the Sung
family to the lair. Kung Sun Sheng and
Li K'uei went out to get their old
mothers.
On his journey Li K'uei killed a false
robber who pretended to be himself, but
the impostor's wife escaped. Li K'uei's
mother, on the return journey, was killed
by tigers. Li K'uei killed the tigers but
when he went to receive the reward
money, the impostor's wife identified him
and he was captured. Another of the
band freed him, however, and they
returned to Liang Shan P'o.
Shih Hsiu opened a meat shop with
the help of Official Yang Hsiung. Shih
Hsiu discovered adultery between Yang
Hsiung's wife and a priest. They killed
the adulterers and escaped. Later they
fell in with a thief, Shih Ch'ien, who
caused a row and was captured in the
village of Chu. In Liang Shan P'o the
robbers planned warfare against the Chu
village; the others were at last victorious.
Li K'uei, ignoring a pact between the
robbers and the Hu village, killed all the
members of the Hu household except the
female warrior, The Ten-Foot Green
Snake, who had previously been
captured by the robbers. Later she joined
the robbers and married Wang The
Dwarf Tiger.
Robber-catcher Lei Heng, after killing
a courtesan, was allowed to escape to
Liang Shan P'o by Robber-catcher Chu
T'ung, who was, consequently, exiled.
However, he pleased the maeistrate, who
liked to have Chu T'uno look affer his
little son. Bv killing the little boy the
robbers forced Chu T'uno to join them.
Li K'uei and Ch'ai Chin went to right
a wrong; Ch'ai Chin was captured and
the robbers attempting to free him were
repelled by their enemies' magic. Kung
Sun Sheng, now a hermit, was sent for;
his magic finally enabled the robbers to
overcome the enemy and free Ch'ai Chin.
A fresh advance planned by
Commander Kao aaainst the robbers resulted
in many useful additions to Liang Shan
P'o when enemy leaders were captured
and persuaded to change allegiance. The
robbers of Double Dragon, Peach
Blossom, and Little Hua Mountains, after
some difficulties of capture and escape,
joined those at Liang Shan P'o.
A stolen horse intended for Sung
Chiang had been stolen again by the
Chun family. Instructor Shi Wen Kung,
now possessor of the horse, boasted that
he would desToy the robbers. Chief
Ch'ao Kai, while leading his men, was
mortally wounded. Dying, he asked that
whoever should capture Shi Wen Kung
be named the new chief. A long period
of mourning followed.
Rich and respected Lu Chun I was
enticed to Liang Shan P'o in hopes that
he would join them. Returning, he was
arrested and imprisoned as a robber. His
72

steward, now in possession of his wife
and goods, plotted to have Lu Chiin I
killed. Many events followed, including
the near death of Sung Chiang, but
finally the city was taken. The prisoners
were freed and the adulterers killed. Lu
Chiin I refused Sung Chiang's offer to
make him the chief.
The robbers captured additional
soldiers sent against them and added many
of the leaders to their ranks. Ch'ao Kai's
death was finally avenged in the
conquest of the Chun family and of Shi
Wen Kung, whose actual captor was Lu
Chiin I, who still refused to become the
chief. Since all the robbers wished Sung
Chiang to remain the leader, he prepared
a test. He and Lu Chiin I each led a
group against one of the two cities
remaining to be taken. The first to take his
city would be the chief. After some
reverses, Sung Chiang was successful. He
then went to the aid of Lu Chiin I, who
had been twice vanquished by warrior
Chang Ch'ing. This general, finally
overcome, was persuaded to join the outlaws.
Sung Chiang received a heavenly
message in the form of a miraculous stone
tablet which listed all thirty-six greater
and seventy-two lesser chieftains who
made up the robber band. All swore
undying loyalty, wishing to be united
forever, life after life.
73

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Erich Maria Remarque (1897-
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: World War I
Locale: Germany and France
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Paul Baumer,
Albert Kropp,
Muller,
Tjaden,
Haie Westhus, and
Stanislaus Katcztnsky
Critique:
All Quiet on the Western Front is a
powerful novel reflecting the
disillusionment that followed World War I. Written
in the first person with short, simple
sentences, this outstanding book makes clear
the common soldier's reactions to shell-
fire, hunger, fear, sickness, and danger.
There is no show of heroism in the story.
Yet the hero, Paul Baumer, engenders the
essence of heroism. He is symbolic of
any boy who must become a soldier.
The Story:
Just out of school, little more than
nineteen years old, Paul Baumer and his
companions were in the front lines of
the army. Albert Kropp, Muller, Leer,
Tjaden, Haie Westhus, the farmer Det-
ering, and Stanislaus Katczinsky, called
Kat, the forty-year-old food plunderer,
were part of the second company in the
front lines, where Corporal Himmelstoss
contrived cruel and inhuman assignments
and punishments for his men. Tjaden
hated him a little more than the others
did. Kemmerich had his leg shot off.
When he died, Muller got his boots.
The boys wanted to get back at
Himmelstoss, but they knew that it would do
them no good to complain about him.
One night, when they caught
Himmelstoss alone, they threw a sheet over his
head and gave him a sound thrashing.
Tjaden never forgot his own satisfaction
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT by
By permission of the author. Copyright, 1929, by Li
(Kat), German soldiers
in that accomplishment.
During the bombardments Paul saw
men cry like babies or do other things for
which they were later ashamed. When
the trenches were quiet the men sat in
groups talking about what they would
do when the war ended. Paul always felt
bewildered during such discussions
because, having been drafted so young, he
had no occupation to which he could
return.
Himmelstoss was reprimanded for his
treatment of the men, and they knew
about it. They could not directly disobey
him because that would be
insubordination, but they could jeer at him and
insult him. Tjaden was called before a
court-martial for his insults, and given a
three-day open confinement. He thought
his punishment worth the pleasure of
insulting the corporal.
The company moved closer to the
front. At first the men sat in the trench
and waited, fighting rats and playing
cards. The recruits were frightened, and
Paul and the old-timers kept an eye on
them. One young recruit went mad and
climbed out of the trench; he had to be
tied down to keep him from committing
suicide. There was a retreat and then
another attack, with the trenches nearly
flattened under the bombardment. After
one attack a man lay dying somewhere
on the field. They could hear his cries
ich Maria Remarque. Translated by A. W. Wheen.
:, Brown & Co.
74

but could not find him. When the
second company was relieved, there were
only thirty-two men left from the original
company of two hundred.
Relief came to Paul and the others.
Good food and rest was all they needed.
They met some friendly French girls. At
night they took food with them for a
bribe and sneaked across the river to the
girls' house. The girls helped them to
forget the war.
Paul was given a fourteen-day leave.
He went home to see his sister Erna and
his mother, who was sick in bed. His
mother had saved from her own small
rations his favorite food. He felt strange
there in his home. Erna told him that
their mother had cancer. One day he met
in the street an officer who demanded a
salute. Paul went home and took off his
uniform. People asked too many
questions about the war, questions which he
could not answer.
At the end of his leave Paul went to
a training camp for four weeks. On his
last Sunday in the camp Paul's father
and sister came to see him. They told
him that his mother was in the hospital.
Finding his old company, Paul
anxiously looked for his comrades. He found
Kat, Tjaden, and Kropp. Haie had been
killed. Paul shared with his friends the
moldy cake he had brought from home.
The men were given new uniforms.
They had periods of extra drill. It was
rumored that they were going to Russia.
Then they heard that the kaiser was
coming. After he inspected them and had
watched a review, the new uniforms were
taken from the men.
During an attack Paul found himself
alone in a shell hole. Panicky and lonely,
he crawled out of the hole to find his
friends. Caught by machine-gun fire, he
crawled into another hole. When a
French, soldier leaped into the hole, Paul
stabbed hirrn. After what seemed many
hours Paul noticed that the man was still
alive. He tried to relieve the dying man's
pain. After the man died, Paul's
conscience tormented him. When he was
able to crawl from the shell hole, he
found Muller and Kat, who fed him and
comforted him by telling him that he had
committed no crime.
Paul, Kat, Muller, Albert, and Tjaden
were detailed to guard a heavily
bombarded village where an important supply
dump was located. They spent three
weeks eating, drinking, and wandering
about. Enemy fire continued to molest
them. Albert and Paul were wounded.
In the hospital they bribed a doctor to
let them stay together. They were taken
to a Catholic hospital, where the
cleanliness almost made Paul sick. His broken
leg refused to heal. Albert lost his leg.
After a while Paul was able to hobble
around on crutches, but he could not
bear Albert's jealous gaze. Paul recovered
and went home for a short while. His
mother was still living. Soon he returned
to his company.
The war dragged on. Muller was killed
and Paul inherited Kemmerich's boots.
Dysentery, typhus, influenza, and violent
death dogged them constantly. Kat was
wounded while he and Paul were in a
trench together. Paul carried his friend
through the lines. Just as he brought him
to safety, Kat was killed when a piece
of shrapnel struck him in the head.
The summer of 1918 passed. Paul was
lonely and philosophical. He stayed in a
convalescent ward after he had been
slightly gassed. The meaning of the war
loomed dismally before him. No one will
ever know, he thought, what the war had
done to him and the other soldiers.
In October, 1918, on a day when the
army communique* reported that all was
quiet on the western front, a stray bullet
hit Paul, and he died.
75

ALL THE KING'S MEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Penn Warren (1905- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late 1920's and early 1930's
Locale: Southern U.S.A.
First published: 1946
Principal characters:
Jack Burden, a journalist and political lackey
Willie Stark, a political boss
Sadie Burke, his mistress
Anne Stanton, a social worker
Adam Stanton, her brother
Judge Irwin
Critique:
All the King's Men, after a sluggish
beginning, races smoothly to its inevitable
ending. Warren's literary style is
excellent. It is so good that the reader is likely
to regret reaching the final pages of the
book. Although the rise of Willie Stark
is ostensibly the theme of the novel, the
real issue is the character of Jack Burden,
a caustic-tongued, brilliant journalist,
whose self-examination becomes a symbol
of the era that is treated in the book. From
the opening description of Sugar Boy's
drive through the country highway until
the last pages when Jack Burden realizes
his self-destruction and, phoenix-like, rises
from the ruins of his past to make a new
life with Anne Stanton, the plot is
gripping and real.
The Story:
When Governor Willie Stark tried to
intimidate old Judge Irwin of Burden's
Landing, the judge stood firm against the
demagogue's threats. As a result, Willie
ordered Jack Burden to find some scandal
in the judge's past that could ruin the
elderly man.
Jack had met Willie back in 1922,
when Willie, the county treasurer, and
Lucy Stark, his schoolteacher wife, were
fighting against a corrupt building
contractor who was constructing the new
schoolhouse. Sent by his newspaper, the
Chronicle, to investigate, Jack found
Willie and Lucy both out of jobs but
still fighting against graft. Two years later
the fire escape of the school collapsed
during a fire drill and Willie became a
hero.
Willie then ran in the Democratic
primary race for governoi. There were
two factions, those of Harrison and Mac-
Murfee. Because it was to be a close
election, someone proposed that Willie be
used as a dummy candidate to split the
rural MacMurfee followers. Tiny Duffy
and some other men convinced Willie
that he could save the state. By then Willie
had become a lawyer and politically
ambitious man. Jack covered the campaign.
Aiding Willie was Sadie Burke, a
clever, energetic woman with political
skill. Inadvertently she revealed
Harrison's plan to Willie. Crushed and gloomy
at this news, Willie rallied his spirits and
offered to campaign for MacMurfee, who
was elected.
Willie practiced law for a few years
until 1930 when he ran for governor with
the assistance of Sadie Burke, who
became his mistress, and Tiny Duffy, who
was Willie's political jackal.
Meanwhile Jack had quit his job on
the Chronicle. Reared by a mother who
had remarried since Ellis Burden had
deserted her, Jack had become a faithless,
homeless cynic whose journalism career
meant nothing to him as an ideal. He had,
ALL THE KING'S JJEN by Robert Penn Warren. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace and
Co., Inc. Copyright, 1946, by Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc.
76

in his youth, played with Anne and Adam
Stanton. Adam was now a famous
surgeon, and Anne, still unmarried, had
become a welfare worker.
Jack was in love with Anne, but time
had placed a barrier between him and the
girl with whom he had fallen in love
during the summer after he had come home
to Burden's Landing from college. He had
been twenty-one then, she seventeen. But
Jack's youthful cynicism, which later
took possession of him completely, spoiled
him in Anne's eyes.
When Jack went to work for Governor
Willie Stark, Jack's mother was deeply
pained and Judge Irwin was disgusted, but
Jack cared little for their opinions.
By 1933 Willie was on the verge of
losing his wife, who could not stand her
husband's political maneuvers and his
treatment of their son Tom. Willie assured
Jack that Lucy knew nothing about Sadie
Burke. Lucy remained with Willie
through his reelection in 1934 and then
retired to her sister's farm. She appeared
with Willie in public only for the sake of
his reputation.
Jack began to dig into Judge Irwin's
past. Delving into the judge's financial
transactions during the time when he was
attorney general under Governor
Stanton, Jack learned that a power company
had been sued by the government for a
large sum. As a bribe to the attorney
general the company fired one of its men to
give a highly paid job to Irwin. Later this
man, Littlepaugh, committed suicide after
writing the facts in a letter to his sister.
Still living, Miss Littlepaugh told Jack the
story.
The issue of the Willie Stark six-million-
dollar hospital demanded use of this
scandal which Jack had uncovered. Willie
told Jack that he wanted Adam Stanton
to head the new hospital. It would, Jack
knew, be a ridiculous offer to the aloof
and unworldly young doctor, but he made
an effort to convince Adam to take the
post. Adam flatly refused. A few days later
Anne sent for Jack. She wanted Adam to
take the position. Jack showed Anne the
documents proving Judge Irwin's
acceptance of a bribe and Governor
Stanton's attempt to cover up for his friend.
Knowing that Adam would want to
protect his father's good name, Anne showed
the evidence to him. He then said he
would head the hospital. Later Jack
wondered how Anne had known about the
plans for the hospital because neither he
nor Adam had told her.
Jack's suspicions were confirmed when
Sadie Burke, in a torrent of rage, told him
that Willie had been betraying her. Jack
knew then that Anne Stanton was the
cause.
Disillusioned, he packed a suitcase and
drove to California. This journey to the
West and back completed, Jack, his
torment under control, went back to work
for Willie.
One of MacMurfee's men tried to bribe
Adam to use influence in selecting a man
named Larson as the builder of the
medical center. When Adam, outraged,
decided to resign, Anne phoned Jack for the
first time since he had learned of her affair
with Willie. Anne and Jack decided to get
Adam to sign a warrant against the man
who had tried to bribe him. Jack also
warned Anne that as a witness she would
be subject to public scrutiny of her
relationship with Willie, but she said she did
not care. Jack asked her why she was
associating with Willie. She said that after
what Jack had told her about Governor
Stanton's dishonesty in the past she did
not care what happened to her. Later,
Jack persuaded Adam not to bring suit.
After Willie's political enemy, Mac-
Murfee, tried to blackmail him because of
a scandal concerning Tom Stark, Willie
ordered Jack to use his knowledge to make
Judge Irwin throw his weight against
MacMurfee's blackmail attempt. When
Jack went to Burden's Landing to
confront Judge Irwin with the evidence that
Jack had obtained from Miss Littlepaugh,
the old man shot himself.
In the excitement following the suicide,
Jack's mother told him that he had caused
his father's death. Belatedly, Jack
discovered the reason for Ellis Burden's
desertion. In his will Judge Irwin left his
77

estate to his son, Jack Burden.
Only one way seemed left to handle
MacMurfee. Willie decided to give the
building contract for the hospital to Mac-
Murfee's man, Larson, who in turn would
suppress the scandal about Tom. Duffy
made the arrangements.
Tom Stark was a football hero. One
Saturday during a game his neck was
broken. Adam reported that Tom would
remain paralyzed. This news had its effect
on Willie. He told Duffy that the hospital
deal was off. Turning to Lucy once more,
he dismissed Sadie Burke and Anne
Stanton.
Duffy, driven too far by Willie, phoned
Adam and told him that Anne had been
responsible for his appointment. Adam,
having known nothing of his sister's
relationship with the governor, went to her
apartment to denounce her. Then, in the
hall of the state building, Adam shot
Willie and was killed immediately afterward
by Willie's bodyguard.
Piece by piece the tangled mess of Jack's
life began to take new meaning. He
separated himself from every particle of
his past with the exception of two people:
his mother, whose devotion to Judge Irwin
over all the years had given her a new
personality in Jack's eyes, and Anne
Stanton, whom he married.
78

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: France and Italy
First presented: c. 1602
Principal characters:
The King of France
Bertram, Count of Rousillon
The Countess of Rousillon, his mother
Helena, the Countess* ward
Parolles, a scoundrel, Bertram's follower
A Widow of Florence
Diana, her daughter
Critiqtie:
More serious and dramatic than most
of the Shakespearian comedies, All's Well
That Ends Well is thought to have been
revised several times before its first
publication in the Folio of 1623. It is not a
smooth piece of work. Parts of it are
farce-comedy; other parts are marked by
a seriousness of insight that is not always
compatible with the general tone.
Shakespeare's purpose was to portray the
blindness brought about by prejudices
formed without reason. Yet he gave
sound basis for Bertram's refusal to see
the good in Helena. Twice she
humiliated him and forced him into unwanted
situations. It took all of Shakespeare's
skill to bring about a happy ending in
the face of such odds.
The Story:
Bertram, the Count of Rousillon, had
been called to the court to serve the
King of France, who was ill of a disease
that all the royal physicians had failed
to cure. In the entire country the only
doctor who might have cured the
king was now dead. On his deathbed he
had bequeathed to his daughter Helena
his books and papers describing cures
for all common and rare diseases, among
them the one suffered by the king.
Helena was now the ward of the
Countess of Rousillon, who thought of
her as a daughter. Helena loved young
Count Bertram and wanted him for a
husband, not a brother. Bertram
considered Helena only slighdy above a
servant, however, and would not
consider her for a wife. Through her
knowledge of the king's illness, Helena at
last hit upon a plot to gain the spoiled
young man for her mate, in such
fashion as to leave him no choice in the
decision. She journeyed to the court and,
offering her life as forfeit if she failed,
gained the king's consent to try her
father's cure on him. If she won, the
young lord of her choice was to be given
to her in marriage.
Her sincerity won the king's
confidence. She cured him by means of her
father's prescription and as her boon
asked for Bertram for her husband. That
young man protested to the king, but
the ruler kept his promise, not only
because he had given his word but also
because Helena had won him over
completely.
When the king ordered the marriage
to be performed at once, Bertram,
although bowing to the king's will, would
not have Helena for a wife in any but
a legal way. Pleading the excuse of
urgent business elsewhere, he deserted
her after the ceremony and sent messages
to her and to his mother saying he
would never belong to a wife forced
upon him. He told Helena that she
79

would not really be his wife until she
wore on her finger a ring he now wore
on his and carried in her body a child
that was his. And these two things
would never come to pass, for he would
never see Helena again. He was
encouraged in his hatred for Helena by
his follower, Parolles, a scoundrel and
a coward who would as soon betray one
person as another. Helena had
reproached him for his vulgar ways and
he wanted vengeance on her.
Helena returned to the Countess of
Rousillon, as Bertram had commanded.
The countess heard of her son's actions
with horror, and when she read the letter
he had written her, restating his hatred
for Helena, she disowned her son, for
she loved Helena like her own child.
When Helena learned that Bertram had
said he would never return to France
until he no longer had a wife there,
she sadly decided to leave the home of
her benefactress. Loving Bertram, she
vowed that she would not keep him from
his home.
Disguising herself as a religious
pilgrim, Helena followed Bertram to Italy,
where he had gone to fight for the
Duke of Florence. While lodging with
a widow and her daughter, a beautiful
young girl named Diana, Helena learned
that Bertram had seduced a number of
young Florentine girls. Lately he had
turned his attention to Diana, but she,
a pure and virtuous girl, would not
accept his attentions. Then Helena told
the widow and Diana that she was
Bertram's wife, and by bribery and a
show of friendliness she persuaded them
to join her in a plot against Bertram.
Diana listened again to his vows of
love for her and agreed to let him come
to her rooms, provided he first gave her
a ring from his finger to prove the
constancy of his love. Bertram, overcome
with passion, gave her the ring, and
that night, as he kept the appointment
in her room, the girl he thought Diana
slipped a ring on his finger as they
lay in bed together.
News came to the countess in France
and to Bertram in Italy that Helena
had died of grief and love for Bertram.
Bertram returned to France to face his
mother's and the king's displeasure, but
first he discovered that Parolles was the
knave everyone else knew him to be.
When Bertram held him up to public
ridicule, Parolles vowed he would be
revenged on his former benefactor.
When the king visited the Countess
of Rousillon, she begged him to restore
her son to favor. Bertram protested that
he really loved Helena, though he had
not recognized that love until after he
had lost her forever through death. His
humility so pleased the king that his
confession of love, coupled with his
exploits in the Italian wars, won him a
royal pardon for his offense against his
wife. Then the king, about to betroth
him to another wife, the lovely and
wealthy daughter of a favorite lord,
noticed the ring Bertram was wearing.
It was the ring given to him the night
he went to Diana's rooms; the king in
turn recognized it as a jewel he had
given to Helena. Bertram tried to
pretend that it had been thrown to him
in Florence by a high-born lady who
loved him. He said that he had told
the lady he was not free to wed, but
that she had refused to take back her
gift.
At that moment Diana appeared as a
petitioner to the king and demanded
that Bertram fulfill his pledge to
recognize her as his wife. When Bertram
tried to pretend that she was no more
than a prostitute he had visited, she
produced the ring he had given her. That
ring convinced everyone present,
especially his mother, that Diana was really
Bertram's wife. Parolles added to the
evidence against Bertram by testifying
that he had heard his former master
promise to marry the girl. Bertram
persisted in his denials. Diana then asked
for the ring she had given to him, the
ring which the king thought to be
He! lena's. The king asked Diana where
80

she had gotten the ring. When she
refused to tell on penalty of her life, he
ordered her taken to prison. Diana then
declared that she would send for her
bail. Her bail was Helena, now carrying
Bertram's child within her, for it was
she, of course, who had received him in
Diana's rooms that fateful night. To
her Diana gave the ring. The two
requirements for becoming his real wife
being now fulfilled, Bertram promised
to love Helena as a true and faithful
husband. Diana received from the king
a promise to give her any young man of
her choice for her husband, the king to
provide the dowry. And so the bitter
events of the past made sweeter the
happiness of all.
81

ALMAYER'S FOLLY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Conrad (Teodor J6zef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-1924)
Type of plot: Romantic realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Dutch East Indies
First published: 1895
Principal characters:
Almayer, an unsuccessful trader of Dutch ancestry
Mrs. Almayer, his Malay wife
Nina, his half-caste daughter
Datn Maroola, Nina's Malay lover
Lakamba, Rajah of Sambir, Almayer's enemy
Critique:
Almayer's Folly is a good example of
Conrad's carefully constructed stories.
Laid in the Far East, as many of his novels
are, the story is played out against the
inscrutable mystery of nature. The theme
of the meeting of East and West has long
found varied treatment in English
literature.
The Story:
By marrying Lingard's adopted
daughter, a Malay, Almayer had inherited that
prosperous merchant's business and his
plans for amassing a huge fortune in gold
from rich mines up the Pantai River.
Almayer and his wife had one daughter,
Nina, a beautiful girl, who had been sent
to Singapore, where for ten years she was
educated as a European. She returned
home to Sambir unexpectedly at the end
of that time, for she could not bear to be
treated as a half-caste in a white
community. Unsuccessful in business, Almayer
nursed dim hopes that he could find a
gold mine and, his fortune made, take
Nina to Amsterdam to spend his last days
in prosperous retirement.
News that the English were to have
control of the Pantai River caused
Almayer to start building a new house in
his compound, not far removed from the
one in which he was living. He wanted a
house fine enough to receive the British.
When the project was abandoned and the
Dutch were left in nominal power,
Almayer stopped work on his new house. A
company of Dutch seamen christened the
structure "Almayer's Folly."
The native rajah, named Lakamba, had
a compound across the river from
Almayer's home. There he lived with his
women and his slaves and his principal
aide, Babalatchi. Lakamba kept close
watch on Almayer when he would leave
for several days at a time with a few of
his men. But Almayer gave up his trips
after a time and settled down to empty
daydreams on his rotten wharf. His native
wife despised him.
Nina's presence in Sambir offered
another problem for Almayer, for the young
men of the settlement were eyeing her
with interest.
One day the handsome son of a
Malayan rajah came sailing up the river in
a brig and wanted to trade with Almayer.
His name was Dain Maroola. At length,
after conversations with Lakamba and
long conferences with Almayer, Dain got
what he was after, gunpowder.
Meanwhile he had fallen passionately in love
with Nina. One night she came into the
women's room in her father's house and
discovered he* mother counting out the
money Dain had been giving her in
payment for Nina. Mrs. Almayer had been
arranging meetings between Nina and
Dain, and giving them warning at the
approach of Almayer. Mrs. Almayer
wished her daughter to remain native.
She had a deep distrust of white men
and their ways.
Dain went away, promising that he
would return to help Almayer in
locating the hidden gold mine. When he did
return, he saw Almayer for just a mo-
82

ment and then hurried to see Lakamba.
He told the rajah that his brig had
fallen into the hands of the Dutch and
that he had narrowly escaped with one
slave. Most of his men had been killed.
And in a day or two the Dutch would
be up the Pantai looking for him.
After this interview Lakamba told
Babalatchi he must poison Almayer
before the Dutch arrived. Now that Dain
knew where the gold treasure was,
Almayer was no longer needed. If allowed
to live, he might reveal his secret to the
white men.
Next morning the body of a Malay
was found floating in the river. The
head was smashed beyond recognition,
but it wore an anklet and a ring that
had belonged to Dain. Almayer was
overcome with grief, for Dain was his last
hope of finding the gold. The Dutch
officers who came looking for Dain told
how he had escaped from his brig and
how, as the Dutch approached it, the
gunpowder it carried ignited and blew
up the boat, killing two of the Dutch.
Almayer promised his visitors that after
they had dined he would deliver Dain
into their hands.
Meanwhile Babalatchi was telling
Lakamba the true story of Dain. Nina had
been waiting for the young Malay on
the night of his conference with LaKam-
ba, and she had taken him to a secluded
clearing farther up the river. There he
was now hiding. The corpse that had
floated down the river was that of his
slave, who had died when the canoe
overturned. Mrs. Almayer had suggested
that Dain put his anklet and ring on
the body and let it float down the river.
Lakamba and Babalatchi planned Dain's
escape from his Dutch enemies.
Knowing that Dain would not leave without
Nina, Babalatchi and Mrs. Almayer
plotted to get her away from Almayer,
who was drinking with the Dutch. After
some persuasion Almayer did lead his
guests to the grave of the man recovered
from the river. The Dutch took the
anklet and ring as proof that Dain was
dead. Then they left for the night.
Nina, willing to go with Dain, felt
an urge to see her father once more
before she left, but her mother would
not let her go into the house where her
father lay in a drunken sleep. Nina
went to the clearing where Dain was
hiding. Soon afterward a slave girl
awakened Almayer and told him where Nina
was. Almayer was panic-stricken. He
traced Nina to Dain's enclosure and
begged her to come back to him, but she
would not. She did not want to run the
risk of insults from white people. With
Dain she would be a ranee, and she
would be married to a Malay, a brave
warrior, not a lying, cowardly white
man. Almayer threatened to send his
servant to tell the Dutch where Dain
was.
While they argued, Babalatchi came
up and cried out that the slave girl had
revealed Dain's hiding place to the
Dutch, who were now on their way to
capture the young Malay. Babalatchi,
astounded when Dain announced that he
would stay with Nina, left them to their
fate. After he had gone, Almayer said
he would never forgive Nina, but he
offered to take the two to the mouth of
the river. So in heavy darkness the
fugitive lovers escaped their pursuers.
On an island at the mouth of the river
Dain, Nina, and Almayer awaited the
canoe that would take the lovers to
Lakamba 's hidden boat. After the two had
gone, Almayer covered up Nina's
footprints and returned to his house up the
river. His compound was deserted. Mrs.
Almayer with her women had gone to
Lakamba for protection, taking Dain's
gift of money with her. Almayer found
the old rusty key to his unused office* He
went inside, broke up the furniture, and
piled it in the middle of the room. When
he came out he threw the key into the
river and sat on his porch until the
flames began to billow from his office. He
was burning down his old house.
He lived out the rest of his days in
"Almayer's Folly." Finally he began the
practice of smoking opium in an effort

to forget his daughter Nina. When he look of one who indeed had succeeded
died, the opium had given his eyes the in forgetting.
84

AMADIS DE GAUL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Vasco de Lobeira (c. 1360-c. 1403)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: First century
Locale: France, England, and the rest of Europe
First published: 1508
Principal characters:
Amadis of Gaul
King Perion, his father
Princess Elisena, his mother
Galaor, another son of King Peri6n
Lisuarte, King of Great Britain
Brisena, his queen
O^iana, their daughter
Urganda, an enchantress
Arcalaus, a magician
Critique:
"The best of all books of this kind
and unique in its art" was the
description of Amadis de Gaul put by Cervantes
into the mouth of Don Quixote. It had
many competitors. Besides thirteen other
versions in fifty years, dozens of other
romantic tales of knights-errant were
written after the fifteenth-century Garci
Ordonez (or Rodriguez) de Montalvo,
Mayor of Medina del Campo, found a
three-volume novel in Portuguese by
Lobeira, and, according to his testimony,
"corrected the original—corrupt and
composed in old style—and took out
superfluous words and substituted others more
polished and elegant," thus producing a
piece of effulgent Renaissance prose.
Scholars have disputed the identity of
the Lobeira who wrote the version found
by Montalvo, a manuscript reportedly
seen in the library of the Duke of Al-
veiro as late as 1750, but destroyed,
perhaps, along with the library, in the
Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Joao de Lobeira
flourished between 1258 and 1285. Vasco
de Lobeira, knighted in the battle of Al-
jubarrota in 1385, could not have been
born until after 1350, the year in which
a book containing a reference to Amadis
was circulated in Seville. If Vasco de
Lobeira was the author of Montalvo's
source, he must have based the work on
an earlier story. But regardless of who
wrote the first long prose novel with a
single hero in modern European
literature, Montalvo rewrote it and, adding a
fourth part, produced the only surviving
version of this long-drawn-out tale with
an unreal plot believable only to those
who lived in a rapidly expanding and
newly explored world where anything
might be credible. Certainly the
Montalvo version is superior to its many
sequels in which giants became taller, wild
beasts fiercer, and magicians more
powerful. Glorifying the ideals of chivalry, the
story had great influence on the manners
and thinking, and of course the literature,
of its time.
The Story:
Not many years after the passion of
Christ there lived in Lesser Britain a
Christian king named Garinter. His older
daughter was married to the King of
Scotland. The younger daughter, Elisena,
found none of her suitors attractive until
the day her father brought home King
Peri6n of Gaul, whom Garinter had
watched defeat two powerful knights and
kill a lion. The scheming of Elisena's
attendant, Darioleta, allowed the young
people to meet secretly in the royal
garden. King Peri6n departed ten days later
without knowing the results of their
85

nights of love.
When Elisena's son was born, Daria-
leta concealed her mistress* indiscretion
by putting him into an ark, along with
his father's sword and ring, and a parch*
ment declaring the boy to be "the
timeless Amadis, son of a king." She set the
ark afloat in the river beside the palace;
it drifted out to sea where it was found
by a knight, Gandales, who was on a
voyage to Scotland. Gandales, who brought
up the foundling with his son Gandalin,
called the boy "Child of the Sea."
Gandales, riding through the woods
when the boy was three, rescued Ur-
ganda, an enchantress who was being
pursued by a knight. The grateful witch,
after prophesying that the adopted boy
would become the flower of knighthood,
the most honorable warrior in the world,
promised to aid him should he ever need
her help.
When the boy was seven, King Lan-
guines of Scotland and his queen saw
him and offered to bring him up at court.
Five years later King Lisuarte and Queen
Brisena paused in Scotland on their way
to claim the throne of England. Until all
was safe, they asked permission to leave
behind their daughter Oriana. King Lan-
guines appointed the "Child of the Sea"
to be her squire.
The two children fell so deeply in
love with each other that never again
did they fall out of love, but they dared
not let others know of their feelings. To
be worthy of Oriana, Amadis determined
to be knighted, and when King Peri6n
visited Scotland to seek help against his
enemy, King Abies of Ireland, Oriana
asked her father's old friend to knight
Amadis. The young knight then rode
away in search of fame through
adventures.
Urganda met him in the forest and
gave him a lance with which he rescued
King Peri6n from Irish knights. Though
neither was aware of the blood
relationship between them, Amadis swore always
to aid King Peri6n in time of danger.
Then followed a series of fantastic and
extraordinary adventures, among them
the encounter with haughty Galpano,
whose custom was to stop and rob all who
passed through his realm. Amadis
defeated the bully and his two brothers,
though in the battles he was so severely
wounded that he had to be nursed back
to health by a friendly noble.
Meanwhile, King Peri6n had married
Elisena. Although they lamented their
lost son, they took pleasure in a second
son, Galaor. When King Abies sent an
expedition against Gaul, Amadis
overcame the Irish champion. In the
celebration festivities at King Perion's court,
the identity of Amadis was discovered
through the ring he wore and King
Peri6n proudly acknowledged his long-
lost son.
Amadis remained melancholy,
thinking himself unworthy to aspire to the
daughter of the King of England. He did
briefly visit her at Vindilisora (Windsor),
only to be called away to rescue his
brother Galaor. That summons was a
trick of the enchanter Arcalaus, who cast
a spell over the knight and disarmed him.
When the villain appeared in the armor
of Amadis and riding his horse, Oriana
almost died. Only the timely news of
further feats of arms by Amadis told her
he was still alive, and so she was restored
to health.
Tireless in his villainy, Arcalaus caused
King Lisuarte to disappear and abducted
Oriana. Amadis and his brother, knighted
by Amadis, rescued the princess, but in
the absence of the king, the traitor Bar-
sinan tried to seize Brisena and usurp the
throne. Amadis, dressed in rusty armor,
defeated the rebel; and when Oriana's
father reappeared twelve days of feasting
followed. Amadis, however, was no
nearer to winning the hand of his
beloved in spite of his great service to the
king.
Continuing to seek knightly fame,
Amadis and his friends sailed for the
Firm Island, settled by Apolidon, son of
the King of Greece, who had taken
refuge there after eloping with the daughter
86

of Emperor Siudan of Rome. Here was
an enchanted arch through which only
faithful lovers could pass. Beyond it was
a marriage chamber guarded by invisible
knights. After his arrival in that land
Amadis received a note from Oriana, who
had believed the lying charges of
unfaithfulness made against him by a malignant
dwarf. She had signed herself as a damsel
pierced through the heart by the sword
of Amadis.
His ecstasy of grief upon reading the
note and his withdrawal, under the name
of Beltenebros (The Fair Forlorn One)
to the hermitage at the Poor Rock,
convinced Oriana that she had wronged him.
However, there was nothing she could do
to right matters, for King Lisuarte had
given her in marriage to the Emperor of
Rome.
When a fleet from Rome took her
away, Amadis, calling himself The Greek
Knight, defeated it and returned Oriana
to her father, asking only that she be
protected against further misalliances.
King Lisuarte decided to punish such
effrontery by an attack on Firm Island, a
decision that ranged the knights of the
world on two sides. King Lisuarte
enlisted the help of the Emperor of Rome.
Amadis visited the Emperor of
Constantinople and sent a messenger to the King
of Bohemia. Arcalaus, hating both
Amadis and King Lisuarte, encouraged King
Aravigo to march with his army and prey
on both sides.
When the hosts assembled for the
battle, King Gasquildn of Sweden sent a
personal challenge to Amadis to meet him
in single combat between the lines. The
king's overthrow was the signal for a
general onslaught that lasted for two
days, until at last the death of the
Emperor of Rome disheartened and routed
his army.
Out of affection for Oriana, Amadis
did not pursue the defeated host, but
King Aravigo took this opportunity to
plunder the followers of King Lisuarte.
A hermit, who had been trying to bring
about peace among the combatants, sent
the youthful Esplandidn to take the news
of King Lisuarte's distress to Amadis. The
hero marched at once to the rescue of
King Lisuarte, a kindness that wiped out
the enmity between them. The marriage
of Oriana and Amadis was solemnized on
Firm Island. Afterward the couple passed
under the Arch of True Love into the
magic bridal chamber.
87

THE AMBASSADORS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: About 1900
Locale: Paris, France
First published: 1903
Principal characters:
Chadwick Newsome (Chad), an American expatriate
Lambert Strether, his friend
Maria Gostrey, an acquaintance of Strether
Comtesse de Vionnet, in love with Chadwick Newsome
Mrs. Pocock, Chadwick's married sister
Mamie Pocock, Mrs. Pocock's husband's sister
Critique:
Henry James put great emphasis on
the construction and form of his novels,
and The Ambassadors is one of his best
in point of construction. There are no
loose ends; the entire story is neady
gathered together. The importance of this
novel in Henry James' work is that in
it he at last conquered his
embarrassment over people from America. His
earlier novels had displayed the people
of his native land as rather barbaric in
their appreciation of Europe. But in
Lambert Strether and Chadwick New-
some, James portrayed two Americans
who had the intelligence to realize in
Paris what they had missed in the bleak
and narrowed existence of their earlier
lives in New England.
to
The Story:
Lambert Strether was engaged
marry Mrs. Newsome, a widow. Mrs.
Newsome had a son Chadwick, whom
she wanted to return home from Paris and
take over the family business in Woollett,
Massachusetts. She was especially
concerned for his future after she had heard
that he was seriously involved with a
Frenchwoman. In her anxiety she asked
Strether to go to Paris and persuade her
son to return to the respectable life she
had planned for him.
Strether did not look forward to his
task, for the young man had ignored
all his mother's written requests to return
home. Nor did Strether know what hold
Chadwick's mistress might have over him
or what sort of woman she might be.
He strongly suspected that she was a
young girl of unsavory reputation.
Strether realized, however, that his hopes
of marrying Mrs. Newsome depended
upon his success in bringing Chad back
to America, where his mother could see
him married to Mamie Pocock.
Leaving his ship at Liverpool, Strether
journeyed across England to London.
On the way he met Miss Gostrey, a young
woman who was acquainted with some
of Strether's American friends, and she
promised to aid Strether in getting
acquainted with Europe before he left for
home again. Strether met another old
friend, Mr. Waymarsh, an American
lawyer living in England, whom he asked to
go with him to Paris.
A few days after arriving in Paris,
Strether went to Chad's house. The
young man was not in Paris, and he
had temporarily given the house over to
a friend, Mr. Bilham. Through Bilham,
Strether got in touch with Chad at
Cannes. Strether was surprised to learn
of his whereabouts, for he knew that
THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James. By permission of the agent, Paul R. Reynolds & Son, New
York, and the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1902, 1903, by Harper & Brothers. Renewed, 1930,
by Henry James, Executor.
88

Chad would not have dared to take an
ordinary mistress to such a fashionable
resort.
About a week later Strether, Miss
Gostrey, and Waymarsh went to the
theater. Between the acts of the play,
the door of their box was opened and
Chad entered. He was much changed
from the adolescent college boy Strether
remembered. He was slightly gray,
although only twenty-eight.
Both Strether and Chad Newsome
pleased each other on sight. Over coffee
after the theater, the older man told
Chad why he had come to Europe.
Chad answered that all he asked was an
opportunity to be convinced that he
should return.
A few days later Chad took Strether
and his friends to a tea where they met
Mme. and Mile, de Vionnet. The
former, who had married a French count,
turned out to be an old school friend
of Miss Gostrey. Strether was at a loss
to understand whether Chad was in love
with the comtesse or with her daughter
Jeanne. Since the older woman was only
a few years the senior of the young man
and as beautiful as her daughter, either
was possibly the object of his affections.
As the days slipped by it became
apparent to Strether that he himself
wanted to stay in Paris. The French city
and its life were much calmer and more
beautiful than the provincial existence
he had known in Woollett, and he began
to understand why Chad was unwilling
to go back to his mother and the New-
some mills.
Strether learned that Chad was in
love with Mme. de Vionnet, rather than
with her daughter. The comtesse had
been separated from her husband for
many years, but their position and
religion made divorce impossible. Strether,
who was often in the company of the
Frenchwoman, soon fell under her
charm. Miss Gostrey, who had known
Mme. de Vionnet for many years, had
only praise for her and questioned
Strether as to the advisability of
removing Chad from the woman's continued
influence.
One morning Chad announced to
Strether that he wras ready to return
immediately to America. The young man
was puzzled when Strether replied that
he was not sure it was wise for either
of them to return, that it would be wiser
for them both to reconsider whether they
would not be better off in Paris than
in New England.
When Mrs. Newsome, back in
America, received word of that decision on
the part of her ambassador, she
immediately sent the Pococks, her daughter
and son-in-law, to Paris along with
Mamie Pocock, the girl she hoped her son
would marry. They were to bring back
both Strether and her son.
Mrs. Newsome's daughter and her
relatives did not come to Paris with an
obvious ill-will. Their attitude seemed
to be that Chad and Strether had
somehow drifted astray, and it was their duty
to set them right. At least that was the
attitude of Mrs. Pocock. Her husband,
however, was not at all interested in
having Chad return, for in the young
man's absence Mr. Pocock controlled
the Newsome mills. Mr. Pocock further
saw that his visit was probably the last
opportunity he would have for a gay
time in the European city, and so he
was quite willing to spend his holiday
going to theaters and caf£s. His younger
sister, Mamie, seemed to take little
interest in the recall of her supposed fiance,
for she had become interested in Chad's
friend, Mr. Bilham.
The more Strether saw of Mme. de
Vionnet after the arrival of the Pococks,
the more he was convinced that the
Frenchwoman was both noble and
sincere in her attempts to make friends
with her lover's family. Mrs. Pocock
found it difficult to reconcile Mme. de
Vionnet's aristocratic background with
the fact that she was Chad's mistress.
After several weeks of hints and gen-
89

teel pleading, the Pococks and Mamie
went to Switzerland, leaving Chad to
make a decision whether to return to
America. As for Mr. Strether, Mrs.
Newsome had advised that he be left
alone to make his own decision, for the
widow wanted to avoid the appearance
of having lost her dignity or her sense
of propriety.
While the Pococks were gone, Strether
and Chad discussed the course they
should follow. Chad was uncertain of his
attitude toward Mamie Pocock. Strether
assured him that the girl was already
happy with her new love, Mr. Bilham,
who had told Strether that he intended
to marry the American girl. His advice,
contrary to what he had thought when
he had sailed from America, was that
Chad wick Newsome should remain in
France with the comtesse, despite the fact
that the young man could not marry her
and would, by remaining in Europe,
lose the opportunity to make himself an
extremely rich man. Chad decided to
take his older friend's counsel.
Way marsh, who had promised his
help in persuading Chad to return to
America, was outraged at Strether's
changed attitude. Miss Gostrey, however,
remained loyal, for she had fallen deeply
in love with Strether during their time
together in Paris. But Strether,
realizing her feelings, told her that he had
tu go back to America alone, i lis object
in Europe had been to return Chad
Newsome to his mother. Because he had
failed in that mission and would never
marry Mrs. Newsome, he could not
justify himself by marrying another
woman whom he had met on a journey
financed by the woman he had at one
time intended to marry. Only Mme.
Vionnet, he felt, could truly appreciate
the irony of his position.
90

AMELIA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: 1740's
Locale: England
First published: 1751
Principal characters:
Captain Booth, a soldier
Amelia, his wife
Elizabeth Harris, her sister
Sergeant Atkinson, her foster brother
Dr. Harrison, Booth's benefactor
Miss Matthews, a woman of the town
Colonel James, Booth's former officer
Critique:
As Fielding declared in his
introduction to The History of Amelia, he
satirized nobody in the novel. Amelia, the
long-suffering wife of every generation,
is charming and attractive. The foibles
of her husband still ring true. Dr.
Harrison is a man each reader would like
to know. Some of the interest of the
novel lies in Fielding's accurate
presentation of prison life and the courts. Having
been a magistrate for many years, he was
able to present these scenes in a most
modern and realistic way, for aside from
presenting the virtuous character of
Amelia, Fielding wanted his novel to
interest people in prison and legal
reform. Although the novel lacks the
extravagant humor of his earlier novels,
the plot presents many amusing
characters and complex situations.
The Story:
One night the watchmen of
Westminster arrested Captain William Booth,
seizing him during his attempt to rescue
a stranger who was being attacked by
two ruffians. The footpads secured their
own liberty by bribing the constables,
but Booth, in spite of his protests, was
hailed before an unjust magistrate. The
story he told was a straightforward one,
but because he was penniless and
shabbily dressed the judge dismissed his tale
and sentenced him to prison. Booth was
desperate, for there was no one he knew
in London to whom he could turn for
aid. His plight was made worse by his
reception at the prison. His fellow
prisoners stripped him of his coat, and a
pickpocket made off with his snuffbox.
While he was smarting from these
indignities, a fashionably dressed young
woman was brought through the gates.
Flourishing a bag of gold in the face
of her keepers, she demanded a private
room in the prison. Her appearance and
manner reminded Booth of an old friend
of questionable background, a Miss
Matthews whom he had not seen for several
years. But when the woman passed him
without a sign of recognition, he
believed himself mistaken.
Shortly afterward a guard brought him
a guinea in a small parcel, and with the
money Booth was able to redeem his
coat and snuffbox. The rest of the
windfall he lost in a card game. Booth was
penniless once more when a keeper came
to conduct him to Miss Matthews, for
the woman was indeed she. Seeing his
wretched condition as he stood by the
prison gate, she had sent him the
mysterious guinea.
Reunited under these distressing
circumstances, they proceeded to relate the
stories of their experiences. Miss
Matthews told how she had been committed
to await sentence for a penknife attack
on a soldier who had seduced her under
false promises of marriage.
Booth, in turn, told this story. He had
met a Miss Amelia Harris, a beautiful
91

girl whose mother at first opposed her
daughter's marriage to a penniless
soldier. The young couple eloped but were
later, through the efforts of Dr.
Harrison, a wise and kindly curate, reconciled
with Amelia's mother. Booth's regiment
was ordered to Gibraltar, shortly before
a child was to be born to Amelia. He
left reluctantly, leaving Amelia in the
care of her mother and her older sister,
Elizabeth. At Gibraltar Booth earned the
good opinion of his officers by his
bravery. Wounded in one of the battles of
the campaign, he was very ill, and
Amelia, learning of his condition, left
her child with her mother and sister and
went to Gibraltar to nurse her sick
husband. Then Amelia, in her turn, fell
sick. Wishing to take her to a milder
climate, Booth wrote to Mrs. Harris for
money, but in reply received only a rude
note from Elizabeth. He hoped to get
the money from his army friend, Major
James, but that gentleman was away at
the time. Finally he borrowed the money
from Sergeant Atkinson, his friend and
Amelia's foster brother, and went with his
wife to Montpelier. There the couple
made friends with an amusing English
officer named Colonel Bath and his sister.
Joy at the birth of a second child, a
girl, was dampened by a letter from Dr.
Harrison, who wrote to tell them that
old Mrs. Harris was dead, and that she
had left her property to Amelia's sister.
The Booths returned home, to be greeted
so rudely by Elizabeth that they
withdrew from the house. But for the help
of Dr. Harrison, they would have been
destitute. Harrison set Booth up as a
gentleman farmer and tried to help him
make the best of his half-pay from the
Army. But because of several small
mistakes, Booth made enemies among the
surrounding farmers. Dr. Harrison was
traveling on the continent at the time
and in his absence Booth was reduced
almost to bankruptcy. He came to
London to try his fortunes anew. He
preceded Amelia, found modest lodgings,
and wrote her where they were. It was
at this point that another misfortune
landed him in prison. At the end of
Booth's story, Miss Matthews
sympathized with his unfortunate situation,
congratulated him on his wife and
children, and paid the jailer to let Booth
spend the next few nights with her in
her cell.
Booth and Miss Matthews were shortly
released from prison. The soldier
wounded by Miss Matthews having
completely recovered, charges against her
were dropped. Miss Matthews also
secured the release of Booth, and the two
were preparing to leave prison when
Amelia arrived. She had come up from
the country to save him, and his release
was a welcome surprise for the distressed
wife. The Booths set themselves up in
London. Shortly afterward, Booth met
his former officer, now Colonel James,
who in the meanwhile had married Miss
Bath and grown quickly tired of her.
Mrs. James and Amelia resumed their
old friendship. Booth, afraid that Miss
Matthews would inform Amelia of their
affair in prison, told Colonel James of
his difficulties and fears. The colonel
gave him a loan and told him not to
worry. Colonel James was himself
interested in Miss Matthews, but he was
unable to help Booth by his intercession.
Miss Matthews continued to send Booth
reproachful and revealing letters which
might at any time have been intercepted
by Amelia.
While walking in the park one day,
the Booths met Sergeant Atkinson. He
joined their household to help care for
the children, and soon he started a half
flirtation with a Mrs. Ellison, Booth's
landlady.
Mrs. Ellison proved useful to the
Booths, for a lord who came also to visit
her advanced money to pay some of
Booth's debts. Meanwhile Miss
Matthews had spitefully turned Colonel
James against Booth. Colonel Bath,
hearing his brother-in-law's poor opinion of
Booth, decided that Booth was neither
an officer nor a gentleman, and
challenged him to a duel. Colonel Bath
believed in nothing so much as a code of
92

honor, and when, in the duel, Booth had
run him through, without serious injury,
the colonel was so much impressed by
Booth's gallantry that he forgave him and
brought about a reconciliation between
James and Booth.
During this time Mrs. Ellison had been
trying to arrange an assignation between
Amelia and the nobleman who had given
Booth money to pay his gambling debts.
Amelia was innocently misled by her
false friends. But the nobleman's plan
to meet Amelia secretly at a masquerade
was thwarted by another neighbor, Mrs.
Bennet. This woman, who had been a
boarder in Mrs. Ellison's house, had also
met the noble lord, had encountered
him at a masquerade, and had drunk the
drugged wine he provided. To prevent
Amelia's ruin in the same manner, Mrs.
Bennet came to warn her friend. Then
she informed Amelia that she had
recently married Sergeant Atkinson, whom
Amelia had thought in love with Mrs.
Ellison. But Amelia's joy at learning
of both the plot, which she now planned
to escape, and of the marriage, was
marred by the news that Booth had again
been put into prison for debt, this time
on a warrant of their old friend Dr.
Harrison.
Amelia soon discovered that Dr.
Harrison had been misled by false rumors
of Booth's extravagance, and had put
him in jail in order to stop his rash
spending of money. Learning the truth,
Dr. Harrison had Booth released from
prison.
On the night of the masquerade
Amelia remained at home but sent Mrs.
Atkinson dressed in her costume. At the
dance Mrs. Atkinson was able to fool
not only the lord but also Colonel James.
The complications of the affair were
many, almost every relationship being
misunderstood. Booth fell in with an old
friend and lost a large sum of money
to him. Again he became worried about
being put in jail. Then he became
involved in a duel with Colonel James
over Miss Matthews, whom Booth had
visited only at her insistence. Before
the duel could take place, Booth was
again imprisoned for debt, and Dr.
Harrison was forced to clear his name with
Colonel James. Finally James forgave
Booth, and Miss Matthews promised
never to bother him again.
Called by chance into a strange house
to hear the deathbed confession of a
man named Robinson, Dr. Harrison
learned that Robinson had at one time
been a clerk to a lawyer named Murphy
who had made Mrs. Harris' will. He
learned also that the will which had left
Amelia penniless was a false one prepared
by Elizabeth and Murphy. Dr.
Harrison had Robinson write a confession so
that Amelia could get the money that
was rightfully hers. The lawyer Murphy
was quickly brought to trial and
convicted of forgery.
Booth's troubles were now almost at
an end. With Dr. Harrison he and
Amelia returned home to confront
Elizabeth with their knowledge of her scheme.
Elizabeth fled to France, where Amelia,
relenting, sent her an annual allowance.
Booth's adventures had finally taught
him not to gamble, and with his faithful
Amelia he settled down to a quiet and
prosperous life blessed with many
children and the invaluable friendship of
Dr. Harrison and the Atkinsons.
93

THE AMERICAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Paris, France
First published: 1877
Principal characters:
Christopher Newman, an American
Mr. Tristram, a friend
Mrs. Tristram, his wife
M. Nioche, a shopkeeper
Mlle. Nioche, his daughter
Madame de Bellegarde, a French aristocrat
Claire de Centre, Madame de Bellegarde's daughter
Marquis de Bellegarde, Madame de Bellegarde s older son
Valentin de Bellegarde, Madame de Bellegarde's younger son
Mrs. Bread, Madame de Bellegarde's servant
Critique:
In this novel Henry James shows the
interreaction of two cultures, the
American and the French. His primary interest
is not in the action; his aim is to analyze
the various psychological situations
created by the events of the plot. The
author scrutinizes the inner lives of his
characters and writes about them in an
urbane and polished style uniquely his
own.
The Story:
In 1868 Christopher Newman, a
young American millionaire, withdrew
from business and sailed for Paris. He
wanted to loaf, to develop his aesthetic
sense, and to find a wife for himself.
One day, as he wandered in the Louvre,
he made the acquaintance of Mile.
Nioche, a young copyist. She
introduced him to her father, an unsuccessful
shopkeeper. Newman bought a picture
from Mile. Nioche and contracted to
take French lessons from her father.
Later, through the French wife of an
American friend named Tristram, he met
Claire de Cintr6, a young widow,
daughter of an English mother and a
French father. As a young girl, Claire
had been married to Monsieur de Cintr£,
an evil old man. He had soon died,
leaving Claire with a distaste for
marriage. In spite of her attitude, Newman
saw in her the woman he wished for his
wife. But an American businessman was
not the person to associate with French
aristocracy. On his first call, Newman
was kept from entering Claire's house
by her elder brother, the Marquis de
Bellegarde.
True to his promise, M. Nioche
appeared one morning to give Newman his
first lesson in French. Newman enjoyed
talking to the old man. He learned that
Mlle. Nioche dominated her father and
that he lived in fear that she would leave
him and become the mistress of some
rich man. M. Nioche assured Newman
that he would shoot her if she did.
Newman took pity on the old man and
promised him enough money for Mile.
Nioche's dowry if she would paint some
more copies for him.
Newman left Paris and traveled
through Europe during the summer.
When he returned to Paris in the
autumn he learned that the Tristrams had
been helpful; the Bellegardes were
willing to receive him. One evening Claire's
younger brother, Valentin, called on
Newman and the two men found their
opposite points of view a basis for
friendship. Valentin envied Newman's liberty
to do as he pleased; Newman wished
94

himself acceptable to the society in which
the Bellegardes moved. After they had
become good friends, Newman told
Valentin that he wished to marry his sister
and asked Valentin to plead his cause.
Warning Newman that his social
position was against him, Valentin promised
to help the American as much as he
could.
Newman confessed his wish to Claire,
and asked Madame de Bellegarde, Claire's
mother, and the marquis for permission
to be her suitor. The permission was
given, grudgingly. The Bellegardes
needed money in the family.
Newman went to the Louvre to see
how Mile. Nioche was progressing with
her copying. There he met Valentin
and introduced him to the young lady.
Mrs. Bread, an old English servant of
the Bellegardes, assured Newman that he
was making progress with his suit. He
asked Claire to marry him and she
accepted. Meanwhile, Valentin had
challenged another man to a duel in a
quarrel over Mile. Nioche. Valentin
left for Switzerland with his seconds.
The next morning Newman went to see
Claire. Mrs. Bread met him at the
door and said that Claire was leaving
town. Newman demanded an
explanation. He was told that the Bellegardes
could not allow a commercial person in
the family. When he arrived home, he
found a telegram from Valentin stating
that he had been badly wounded and
asking Newman to come at once to
Switzerland.
With this double burden of sorrow,
Newman arrived in Switzerland and
found Valentin near death. Valentin
guessed what his family had done and
told Newman that Mrs. Bread knew a
family secret. If he could get the secret
from her, he could make them return
Claire to him. Valentin died the next
morning.
Newman attended the funeral. Three
days later he again called on Claire, who
told him that she intended to enter a
convent. Newman begged her not to
take this step. Desperate, he called on
the Bellegardes again and told them that
he would uncover their secret. Newman
arranged to see Mrs. Bread that night.
She told him that Madame de Belle-
garde had killed her invalid husband
because he had opposed Claire's marriage
to M. de Cintr6. The death had been
judged natural, but Mrs. Bread had in
her possession a document which proved
that Madame de Bellegarde had
murdered her husband. She gave this paper
to Newman.
Mrs. Bread left the employ of the
Bellegardes and came to keep house for
Newman. She told him that Claire had
gone to the convent and refused to see
anyone, even her own family. The next
Sunday Newman went to mass at the
convent. After the service he met the
Bellegardes walking in the park and
showed them a copy of the paper Mrs.
Bread had given him.
The next day the marquis called on
Newman and offered to pay for the
document. Newman refused to sell. He
offered, however, to accept Claire in
exchange for it. The marquis refused.
Newman found hfe could not bring
himself to reveal the Bellegardes' secret.
On the advice of the Tristrams he
traveled through the English countryside
and in a melancholy mood went to some
of the places he had planned to visit on
his honeymoon. Then he went to
America. Restless, he returned to Paris and
learned from Mrs. Tristram that Claire
had become a nun.
The next time he went to see Mrs.
Tristram, he dropped the secret
document on the glowing logs in her
fireplace and told her that to expose the
Bellegardes now seemed a useless and
empty gesture. He intended to leave
Paris forever. Mrs. Tristram told him
that he probably had not frightened the
Bellegardes with his threat, because they
knew that they could count on his good
nature never to reveal their secret.
Newman instinctively looked toward the
fireplace. The paper had burned to ashes.
95

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Kansas City, Chicago, and Lycurgus, New York
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Clyde Griffiths
Roberta Alden, his mistress
Samuel Griffiths, Clyde's wealthy uncle
Sondra Finchley, society girl whom Clyde loves
Critique:
An American Tragedy is probably
Dreiser's best novel. The tide itself is,
of course, significant. Dreiser believed
that Clyde's downfall was due to the
American economic system and he
presents a strong indictment against that
system. If Clyde had had the privileges
of wealth and social position, he would
never have been tempted to a moral
decision and his consequent ruin. The
novel is a powerful document on the
theme of social inequality and lack of
privilege.
The Story:
When Clyde Griffiths was still a child,
his religious-minded parents took him and
his brothers and sisters around the streets
of various cities, where they prayed and
sang in public. The family was always
very poor, but the fundamentalist faith
of the Griffiths was their hope and
mainstay throughout the storms and troubles
of life.
Young Clyde was never religious,
however, and he always felt ashamed of the
existence his parents were living. As
soon as he was old enough to make
decisions for himself, he decided to go
his own way. At sixteen he got a job as a
bellboy in a Kansas City hotel. There
the salary and the tips he received
astonished him. For the first time in his
life he had money in his pocket, and he
could dress well and enjoy himself. Then
a tragedy overwhelmed the family.
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser. By permission of Mrs. Theodore Dreiaer and the publisher*,
The World Publishing Co. Copyright, 1925, by Boni & Liveright, Inc.
Clyde's sister ran away, supposedly to be
married. Her elopement was a great
blow to the parents, but Clyde himself
did not brood over the matter. Life was
too pleasant for him; more and more
he enjoyed the luxuries which his job
provided. He made friends with the
other bellhops and joined them in
parties that centered around liquor and
women. Clyde soon became familiar with
drink and brothels.
One day he discovered that his sister
was back in town. The man with whom
she had run away had deserted her, and
she was penniless and pregnant.
Knowing his sister needed money, Clyde gave
his mother a few dollars for ner. He
promised to give her more; instead he
bought an expensive coat for a girl in
the hope that she would yield herself
to him. One night he and his friends
went on a party in a car that did not
belong to them. Coming back from theii
outing, they ran over a little girl. In
their attempt to escape, they wrecked
the car. Clyde fled to Chicago.
In Chicago he got work at the Union
League Club, where he eventually met
his wealthy uncle, Samuel Griffiths. The
uncle, who owned a factory in Lycurgus,
New York, took a fancy to Clyde and
offered him work in the factory. Clyde
went to Lycurgus. There his cousin,
Gilbert, resented this cousin from the
Middle West. The whole family, with
the exception of his uncle, considered
96

Clyde beneath them socially, and would
not accept him into their circle. Clyde
was given a job at the very bottom of
the business, but his uncle soon made
him a supervisor.
In the meantime Sondra Finchley, who
disliked Gilbert, began to invite Clyde
to parties she and her friends often gave.
Her main purpose was to annoy Gilbert.
Clyde's growing popularity forced the
Griffiths to receive him socially, much
to Gilbert's disgust.
In the course of his work at the factory
Clyde met Roberta Alden, with whom
he soon fell in love. Since it was
forbidden for a supervisor to mix socially
with an employee, they had to meet
secretly. Clyde attempted to persuade
Roberta to give herself to him, but the
girl refused. At last, rather than lose
him, she consented and became his
mistress.
At the same time Clyde was becoming
fascinated by Sondra. He came to love
her and hoped to marry her, and thus
acquire the wealth and social position
for which he yearned. Gradually he
began breaking dates with Roberta in
order to be with Sondra every moment
that she could spare him. Roberta began
to be suspicious and eventually found
out the truth.
By that time she was pregnant. Clyde
went to drug stores for medicine that
did not work. He attempted to find a
doctor of questionable reputation. Roberta
went to see one physician who refused
to perform an operation. Clyde and
Roberta were both becoming desperate,
and Clyde saw his possible marriage to
the girl as a dismal ending to all his
hopes for a bright future. He told
himself that he did not love Roberta, that
it was Sondra whom he wished to marry.
Roberta asked him to marry her for the
sake of her child, saying she would go
away afterward, if he wished, so that
he could be free of her. Clyde would
not agree to her proposal and grew more
irritable and worried.
One day he read in the newspaper an
item about the accidental drowning of a
couple who had gone boating. Slowly
a plan began to form in his mind. He
told Roberta he would marry her and
persuaded her to accompany him to an
isolated lake resort. There, as though
accidentally, he lunged toward her. She
was hit by his camera and fell into
the water. Clyde escaped, confident that
her drowning would look like an accident,
even though he had planned it all
carefully.
But he had been clumsy. Letters that
he and Roberta had written were found,
and when her condition became known
he was arrested. His uncle obtained an
attorney for him. At his trial, the
defense built up an elaborate case in his
favor. But in spite of his lawyer's efforts,
he was found guilty and sentenced to be
electrocuted. His mother came to see
him and urged him to save his soul. A
clergyman finally succeeded in getting
Clyde to write a statement—a declaration
that he repented of his sins. It is
doubtful whether he did. He died in the
electric chair, a young man tempted by
his desire for luxury and wealth.
97

AMPHITRYON
Type of work: Drama
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254-184 B.C.)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: The Heroic Age
Locale: Thebes
First presented: c. 185 B.C.
Principal characters:
Amphitryon, a Theban
Alcmena, his wife
Jupiter, and
Mercury, Roman gods
Sosia, Amphitryon s slave
Critique:
Amphitryon is closely akin to many of
the other Plautine plays in that it is a
comedy of mistaken identity. It has long been
believed that a lost Greek play was the
original of Plautus' comedy, but no
definite proof is available. Amphitryon has
had a great influence on modern drama
throughout the Western world, and there
have been numerous translations,
adaptations, and imitations. Such great
dramatists as John Dryden, in England, and
Moliere, in France, made use of its theme
and structure. Shakespeare's Comedy of
Errors, taken largely from Plautus* The
Menaechmi, owes something also to
Amphitryon. In very recent times a
production of the story as adapted by Jean
Giraudoux was successful as a stage play
under the tide Amphitryon 38.
The Story:
Amphitryon, a Theban, joined the
army of Thebes to fight against the
Teloboans. When he left for the wars, his
wife Alcmena, daughter of Electryon,
was pregnant. Nevertheless, in the
absence of Amphitryon, Jupiter fell in love
with Alcmena and decided that he must
enjoy her favors. Disguising himself as
Amphitryon, Jupiter appeared to Alcmena
as her husband, just returned from a
battle with the Teloboans. Alcmena was
unable to penetrate the disguise of the
impostor and welcomed Jupiter as her
husband. Because Jupiter wished to enjoy
Alcmena as long as possible, he had the
sun, moon, and stars remain fixed, and so
the night he spent with Alcmena was long
enough for her to conceive and be ready
to bring forth a child by Jupiter at the
same time she gave birth to the child by
her husband.
In the meantime Amphitryon's ship
returned to Thebes. Because it was still
night Amphitryon's slave, Sosia, fearfully
Walking the streets of the sleeping town,
tried to console himself with the
pleasantness of the news he was bringing to its
citizens. He thought how well his master,
Amphitryon, had handled the war with
the Teloboans, how the enemy had
refused to arbitrate the dispute over lands,
how the battle had been joined, and how
Amphitryon had been awarded the golden
cup of Pterela as a token of the valor
displayed in the battle.
While Sosia soliloquized, Mercury,
disguised as Sosia, was listening to every
word. Mercury had assumed the disguise
to aid his father, Jupiter, in the latter's
scheme to make love to Alcmena. As
Sosia came through the streets to
Amphitryon's house, Mercury, in the guise of
Sosia, was guarding the house and the
inmates against any disturbance. When
Sosia saw Mercury he was afraid, but he
went up to the door and tried to enter.
Mercury, as Sosia, told him to be gone and
beat him with his fists. When Sosia cried
out that he was a slave named Sosia who
belonged to the household, he received
another drubbing.
Sosia, confused, then asked the stranger
who he was. Merucry replied that he was

Sosia, a slave of the household. Looking
closely, Sosia saw that the person in front
of him was dressed and looked exactly like
himself. When Sosia went on to ask
questions about the household, Mercury
answered each one satisfactorily. Sosia asked
about his own conduct during the battle;
Mercury replied that he had been
drinking. Knowing that the answer was correct
and sure that someone had stolen his very
identity, Sosia ran off to the ship, leaving
Mercury to chuckle over the ruse which
would prevent Amphitryon from spoiling
Jupiter's night with Alcmena.
Eventually Jupiter took leave of
Alcmena, after telling her that he had to
return to his army, lest the men become
bitter because their leader absented
himself while they could not. When she grew
sad at the thought of his departure, the
god, to propitiate her, gave her the golden
cup of Pterela which Amphitryon had
received as a token of merit in the war. As
he left, Jupiter ordered the night to move
on in its regular course.
Amphitryon was furious when Sosia
returned to the ship. He thought that the
slave must be mad or, at the very least,
drunk, and he refused to believe that
anyone could have stolen the identity of
Sosia, as the slave declared. Amphitryon,
anxious to discover what was happening,
set out for his home immediately, taking
Sosia with him. By the time the real
Amphitryon and Sosia arrived at the house
Jupiter and Mercury had departed.
Alcmena was surprised to see her husband
return in so short a time. She feared that
he was simply testing her fidelity.
Amphitryon, greeting his wife as a
husband would after an absence of months,
was unable to understand what Alcmena
meant when she rebuked him for leaving
her a short time before on a pretext of
returning to his army. When she told
Amphitryon that he had spent the night with
her, Amphitryon became suddenly and
decidedly angry. Then she mentioned the
golden cup of Pterela, which she had
received from Jupiter during his visit in
disguise. Amphitryon declared she could
not have the cup, for he had it under seal
in his possession. But when he opened the
chest in which he had put the cup, it was
missing; the gods had stolen it to give to
Alcmena.
In spite of the evidence produced to
show that it was he who had been with
his wife, Amphitryon was exceedingly
angry and accused his wife of losing her
honor by breaking her marriage vows.
Alcmena, entirely innocent of any such
intent and still believing that her husband
had visited her earlier, was hurt and
furious at the charges he made.
Amphitryon, wishing to be fair but wanting to get
to the bottom of the matter, went to get
Alcmena's kinsman, Naucrates, who had
been with him all night on board the
ship. He also told Alcmena that he would
divorce her unless she could prove her
innocence.
Alcmena was upset at the charges
heaped upon her by Amphitryon and
made plans to leave the house. Jupiter,
sorry for the trouble he had caused,
prepared to help her. He appeared to
Alcmena in disguise and softened
somewhat her anger against Amphitryon.
Speaking as Amphitryon, he apologized
for the charges made against Alcmena's
honesty and virtue.
Amphitryon was unable to find
Naucrates and returned to his home. Warned
by Mercury, Jupiter appeared as
Amphitryon, and a riotous scene, with both men
seeming to be Amphitryon, followed, an
argument broken off when word came
that Alcmena was about to give birth to a
child. As Amphitryon prepared to leave,
Jupiter struck him unconscious with a
thunderbolt. With Jupiter's aid Alcmena
painlessly gave birth to two sons, one by
Amphitryon and the other by Jupiter. One
child was so active that he could hardly
be held on his cot to be bathed, and the
waiting-women reported that within a few
minutes of his birth the baby had
strangled two large snakes that entered
the room. The voice of Jupiter called out
to Alcmena and told her that the lusty
lad, Hercules, was his and the other child
99

Amphitryon's.
After the waiting-women had gone,
Jupiter himself appeared to Amphitryon
and told the husband what had happened.
When he warned Amphitryon not to be
harsh toward his wife for producing a
child by a god, Amphitryon, faced with no
other choice, promised to obey all that the
god commanded.
100

AMPHITRYON 38
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)
Time: The Heroic Age
Locale: In and about Amphitryon's palace, Thebes
First presented: 1929
Principal characters:
Jupiter, master of the gods
Mercury, his half-son
Amphitryon, a general of Thebes
Alkmena, his wife
Sosie, their servant
It is a fact that much influence was
exerted on the written works of Jean
Giraudoux by the physical productions of
all but two of his plays in the theater of
actor-director Louis Jouvet. Such a close
and mutually advantageous association of
managers or directors with a favorite
playwright (or vice versa) has become an
established pattern in the modern theater.
Where highly personal directorial
techniques and positive artifice exist in
director and author, the published product is
likely to contain much that the
playwright never conceived in the original
manuscript. The result is as it should be,
not only living theater, but an art form
embodying a power of ideas. In the
partnership between Jouvet and Giraudoux,
the actor respected and hallowed the poet.
The happy circumstance of complete
understanding between the writer's
temperament and spirit and the actor's
interpretative powers insured a rarity in the
theater; Giraudoux wrote in a prose style that
is practically verse, and the words roll
from the tongues of actors with an ease
and fluency that many writers strive for
but few attain. Amphitryon 38, the
second production of the Giraudoux-Jouvet
collaboration, conclusively established
Giraudoux as a playwright of great wit and
dexterity.
The recasting of Greek myths into
modern molds has long fascinated
playwrights. Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38 may
or may not be the thirty-eighth version of
that legend. The whimsical title,
implying that legends and myths belong to
time, sets the mood for the capricious
events of the play.
The Amphitryon legend tells us that
Jupiter impersonated Amphitryon and
gained admission to the bed of his wife
Alkmena. From this encounter Hercules
was born. On this familiar framework
Giraudoux draws fresh character, weaves
new plot structure, and imbues the play
with wit and ideas impossible in the
original. The result is a mixture of theology,
high comedy, satire, farce, and
matrimonial and political commentary.
Basking on a cloud and spying on
their victim, Jupiter and Mercury lay
plans for the seduction of Alkmena as
if preparing for a tasty banquet. In order
to remove Amphitryon from his
bedchamber, Mercury suggests that Jupiter
have the friendly Athenians declare war
on Thebes. Amphitryon, a stalwart
general of the Theban army, will hurry to
engage the enemy. Mercury will then
take the place of Sosie, a servant, and tell
Alkmena that Amphitryon will
momentarily desert the battle and return to her
bed that very night. Jupiter, of course,
Will impersonate Amphitryon and partake
of the delectable Alkmena.
Giraudoux's writings have long been
concerned with the causes of war;
opportunities for comment on the high level
planning of war appear early in
Amphitryon 38 and in most of his other plays.
Giraudoux leaves the sordid, clinical
reporting: of battle for his colleagues; he
himself, in play after play, shows us the
causes of conflict, frequently a startlingly
inhuman cause which frighteningly
illustrates the workings of political power.
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Jupiter arrives before the palace of
Alkmena amidst a great clanging noise,
for he has forgotten the laws of gravity
in his descent. With the help of
Mercury he goes through some difficulty in
transforming himself from the guise of a
god to that of a mortal. Giraudoux sets
for himself the difficult task of showing
Jupiter the god and Jupiter the mortal
simultaneously, a device of dual identity
he uses in many of his works.
Mercury has already prepared the
faithful wife for the return of
Amphitryon, to whom she has promised fidelity
or suicide if she knowingly deceives him
Jupiter whets his appetite for love by
demanding admission to her bed as a
lover, not as a huband. It is not enough
to love within the union of marriage—the
added fillip is to be the tantalizingly
illegal husband-seducer. With guileless
logic, Alkmena swears fidelity to her
husband-wife vows and refuses to open her
gates and admit the false husband Jupiter
to her chambers as a lover. As her
husband, however, he gains easy entry
through the gates which had been
unlocked all the while.
Mercury thoughtfully holds back the
dawn until Jupiter consummates the
union, but he takes the precaution of
informing the universe that Jupiter has
made another mortal conquest so that the
proper celestial eruptions will signify the
seduction. He also practices a caprice of
his own and has the real Amphitryon
leave the battle and return to Alkmena
the next day. This is only fair, for
Jupiter, as has been his practice, will reveal
his true identity to Alkmena with the
coming of dawn and take leave of her in
a burst of ego-satisfying, celestial glory.
But Mercury and Jupiter have
underestimated the power of Alkmena.
Giraudoux shows us here, as he does in other
plays, his strong conviction that the
female possesses a brand of intellect of an
extraordinary nature; mere feminine wiles
and physical beauty are but a means to
an end, for the true power of logic and
incisiveness belong in the female mind.
Alkmena, without deliberation, but
because she is a woman, is more than a
match for Jupiter. When dawn finally
arrives, she is found on her patio placidly
eating breakfast fruit, while Jupiter, the
traditional ravisher of innocent
womanhood, lolls in the drowsy sensuality of
her bed. When he joins her, he tries to
reveal his true identity, but he is
thwarted at every turn by Alkmena's
charming and unclouded humanistic
approach to divinity. There is a clarity and
lack of religious fervency here that might
pass for na'ivete\ But Giraudoux has more
in mind than mere flippancy; Alkmena's
childlike reasoning is the embodiment of
utter simplicity and faithfulness in the
kind, matter, and form of the gods. It is
a perfectly satisfying and workable
theology, uncluttered by the implementalia of
animistic practices.
Jupiter, having satisfied his desires,
and knowing that if his true identity is
revealed Alkmena will kill herself and
his unborn seed, now wishes to whet his
holy ego by paying a formal celestial visit
to Alkmena, thereby legalizing their
secret union. Mercury makes the official
proclamation of the impending visit, and
Leda, Queen of Sparta, who has had
some previous knowledge of heavenly
unions, pays a duty call on Alkmena. In
the scene between the two women
Giraudoux epitomizes his own simplicity
and clarity of style. With wit and candor,
Leda describes her encounter with the
heavenly swan. TTiere is no pretense or
pomposity here, only statement of fact
which becomes a kind of understatement
that runs through all of Giraudoux's
plays and is particularly apparent in his
female characterizations. The expected is
avoided, humor for its own sake and wit
as a result of syntax. The comedy is the
result of character rather than situation,
but the situation produces the character.
Alkmena, having discovered that Leda
longs for another encounter with Jupiter,
persuades the queen to take her place in
the bedchamber. Jupiter will visit her in
the form of Amphitryon, for he has a habit
of appearing in the form most desired by
his earthly mates. Leda agrees, and the real
102

Amphitryon arrives, is mistaken for
Jupiter masquerading, and is sent into the
palace. Only when Jupiter himself
appears to Alkmena does she realize her
mistake.
The resolution of the provocative
situation is brought about by the resourceful
Alkmena. Will Jupiter forego the
celestial visit for which she is so evidently
unprepared, and remain only friends with
her? Jupiter quickly agrees to this strange
relationship and assures the suspicious
Alkmena that he has never visited her
before—as her lover. Jupiter then gives his
blessing to Alkmena and Amphitryon
and bids them name their unborn child
Hercules. As a twinkling afterthought,
he offers to be godfather to the child.
Amphitryon 38 may appear to the
casual reader or spectator to be comedy
that is witty, satirical, and playfully
suggestive. In order to appreciate Giraudoux
fully, it is necessary to look further for
the social and political playwright.
Giraudoux does not obscure his point, nor does
he burden his audience with a message.
Rather, he tantalizes with ideas craftily
derived from situation, character, and
language that joins the comedy of manners
and the comedy of ideas.
103

ANABASIS
Type of work: Poem
Author: St.-John Perse (Alexis St.-Leger Leger,
Time: The past
Locale: The East
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
The Conqueror-Prince
A Woman
The Mariner
If the distinction between traditional
poetry and modern poetry is that the
traditional attempts to tell about experiences
and emotions (has its own subject
matter) whereas the modern attempts to
present experiences and emotions directly (is
its own subject matter), then St.-John
Perse can be said to be both a traditional
and a modern poet at the same time. His
five long works—tXoges, Anabasis, Exile,
Winds, and the recent and magnificent
Seamarks—have been called "epics of the
soul." But each has a more definite, a
more tangible, subject matter than the
soul itself. £loges, for example, is about
childhood; Seamarks is a poem in praise
of the sea, a majestic symbol enclosing
the beginning, perhaps the end, of life.
There is always a coherent system of
solid reality behind what T. S. Eliot calls
Perse's "logic of the imagination." The
modernist surface of the poems may
present what seem at first glance to be
fascinatingly juxtaposed but apparently
disconnected images, brilliantly phrased but
completely gratuitous declamations,
catalogues of wonderful but bewilderingly
selected things. Below the surface,
however, is a firm foundation of experience,
as systematized and coherent as that of
The Knight's Tale or Madame Bovary,
In Perse's Anabasis this concreteness is
perhaps more clearly seen, more palpably
felt, than in any of his other poems.
Anabasis is, first of all, a modern poem,
reminiscent in its technique of Rimbaud and
of the French Symbolist school in
general. Relying on the "logic of
imagination" rather than on the logic of dis-
ANABASIS by St.-John Perse. The translation by T
publisher. Copyright, 1938,1949, by Harcourt, Brace
1887- )
course, it attempts to present experience
directly. But as we discover (through the
impact of the images and through our
resultant awareness of their symbolic
meanings) the nature of the experience
being presented, we realize thar we are
being told about an experience, as well.
Something is happening in an epic more
than in the figurative sense of the word,
and it is happening somewhere—in time
and in a certain place.
The place is important for at least two
reasons. It is the East, not the
romanticized Orient, not specifically the Far East
or the Near East, but the wide expansive
East of the great conquerors like
Alexander, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan; the
East of ancient ceremony, the age-old
source of knowledge. As such, it is impor*
tant symbolically, for the experience
presented is in one sense the experience of
knowledge—of awareness, of contact with
Cor, perhaps more accurately, of a return
to) reality. A theme that runs through
the poem is the theme of power, the
power of knowledge—
The Sun is unmen-
tioned but his power is amongst us
and the sea at morning like a
presumption of the mind.
Et le soleil n'est
point nomm6, mais sa puissance est
parmi nous
et la mer au matin comme une prd-
somption de Tesprit.
There is also a recurrence of ceremony.
The language is important for the
clarity and immediacy of imagery that it al-
S. Eliot is used with the permission of the American
Co., Inc.
104

lows the poet. His scene is not the
romantic East in any vague or misty sense. For
the East is familiar to St.-John Perse as
fact. It must be remembered that Perse
the poet is also Alexis St.-L6ger L6ger, a
leading French diplomat until the time
of the German occupation during World
War II. As a diplomat he had spent the
early part of his career in China. There,
undoubtedly, the keen senses of the poet
Perse took in the sights, sounds, and
ceremonial ways of that ancient land, the
poet's sensibilities transmuting them into
images that make up the texture of
Anabasis and give the poem its strong
feeling of reality of the East that
underlines its theme of contact with the real:
Milch camels, gentle beneath the
shears, sewn with mauve
scars, let the hills march forth under
the facts of the harvest sky
—let them march in silence over the
pale incandescence of the
plain;
Chamelles douces sous la tonte,
cousues de mauves
cicatrices, que les collines s'acheminent
sous les donn£es
du ciel agraire—qu'elles cheminent
en silence sur les
incandescences pales de la plaine;
or
Through
the gate of living chalk we see the
things of the plain: living
things,
excellent things!
Par la
porte de craie vive on voit les choses
de la plaine: choses
vivantes, 6 choses
excellentes!
sacrifice of colts on the tombs of
children, purification of
widows among the roses and
consignments of green birds in the
courtyards to do honour to the old men;
des sacrifices de poulains sur des
tombes d'enfants,
des purifications de veuves dans les
roses et des rassemble-
ments d'oiseaux verts dans les cours en
l'honneur des vieil-
lards;
many things on the earth to hear and
to see, living
things among us!
beaucoup de choses sur la terre a
entendre et a voir,
choses vivantes parmi nous!
Anabasis stands firmly on the substrata
of the poet's Tfe in still another way; and
again these facts work themselves up to
the symbolic surface of the poem. It is a
story of a quest and of conquest and of
the continuing cycle of these things, for
after two conquests the poem ends at
the beginning of a new search. The
quest, the militarv advance into the new
country, from which the poem derives
its name, is at its basic level the search
for realitv. (Eliot's note, that the title is
not an allusion to Xenophon but is used
in a literal sense, bears repetition.) The
quest is the Rimbaudian search, but with
a significant difference: For Perse, there
is no descent into hell; there is sufficient
reality for him above ground. To capture
it, he must return to ancient ways and
ceremonies; but the reality is there.
In this princeliness the essential
difference between Perse and Rimbaud can
be found. The poem begins, "Sur trois
grandes saisons m'etablissant avec hon-
neur,/j'augure bien du sol ou j'ai fonde"
ma loi":
I have built myself, with honor and
dignity have I
built myself on three great seasons,
and it
promises well, the soil whereon I
have established my Law.
The poet is the Prince, the lawgiver, the
conqueror, the founder of cities. As the
Prince, Perse can do in this poem the
very things that Rimbaud had to leave
his poetry to do. Just as there need be no
descent, so there need be no flight from
105

poetry into action. Perse's life has been a
life of action; for him there has been
only the necessity of distilling the
experience of the action into poetry. Born on
a family-owned Caribbean island, he had
been educated as an aristocrat whose
destiny was to serve his state. His diplomatic
career had been one of authority and
responsibility, of power, decision, and
restraint. These also go into the
distillation. The poem is powerful yet restrained
and it is about power, the conquest of
those "living things, excellent things."
Thus, while Rimbaud had to descend
into hell to find himself and had then to
fly to primitivism to find reality, Perse
knows himself already as the Prince and
knows from experience, not so much the
primitive, but the ceremonial and
ancient. With these he turns to poetry to
find the reality of that experience. Aside
from obvious technical similarities—and
in technique Perse owes much to
Rimbaud, particularly in his use of "poetic
prose," which is really poetry measured
in terms of paragraphs rather than in
terms of lines—the two are alike in their
search but different in their means of
searching. In this respect, it is Perse who
is the true poet: the maker, serene,
detached, anonymous.
In this sense, Anabasis is a poem by
the Prince and is about the quest and
conquest by the poet as the Prince. It is
divided into ten parts. These parts were
indicated in the original merely by
Roman numerals, but later they were given
titles (actually brief synopses) by Lucien
Fabre. Part I, following the beautiful
introductory "Song" ("Under the bronze
leaves a colt was foaled") ("II naissait un
poulain sous les feuilles de bronze") deals
with the "arrival of the Conqueror at the
site of the city which he is about to
build." The dominating symbols here are
those of power, knowledge, and
humanity: the Sun, salt, and thirst:
"Him who has not praised thirst and
drunk the water of
the sands from a sallet
I trust him little in the commerce of
the soul. . . ."
"Qui n'a, louant la soif, bu l'eau
des sables dans un
casque,
je lui fais peu credit au commerce
de Tame. . . ."
The next three parts—"Tracing the
plan of the city," "Consultation of
augurs," and "Foundation of the city"—are
quieter: ceremony and the business of
living take the place of power:
Come, we are amazed at you, Sun!
You have told us such
lies!
Va! nous nous e*tonnons de toi, Soleill
Tu nous as
dit de tels mensonges!
Gradually blended with the ceremony
are dscontentment and lust. The city is
good, and it has its own beauty,
. . . more beauty
than a ram's skin painted red!
. . . plus beau
qu'une peau de belier peinte en rouge!
But the sense of reality is dulled by its
busyness and shoddy ways.
In Part V, "Restlessness towards
further explorations and conquests," the
symbols of knowledge and power begin
to serve as counterpoint to those of city
and ceremony. They reassert themselves
more in Parts VI and VII—"Schemes for
foundation and conquest" and "Decision
to fare forth"—in which a new, erotic
theme is added. Now the lust felt in the
second part assumes new meaning. Love
joins power, knowledge, humanity; the
"scented girls, who shall soothe us
with a breath, silken
webs"
"parfumdes, qui nous apaiseront d'un
souffle, ces
tissus"
join the Sun, the Law, and Salt as
dominant symbols. These symbols give way for
a time to those of desolation and dryness
106

m Part VIII, "March through the desert";
but they rise with new strength in the
penultimate section, "Arrival at the
threshold of a great new country." Here
the erotic theme reaches its climax in a
song reminiscent of the Song of Solomon
in its voluptuous grandeur. It is spoken
by one of the women (perhaps the
Princess) of the city which the Prince is
about to capture, and with its note of
physical union the triumphant union of
all the themes and symbols is announced.
The poet-prince, victorious over reality,
sees the "living things, excellent things"
in a state of full awareness in the final
section of the poem. Ceremony, the
occupations of the men of the city, serve with
love, law, power to make awareness of
reality complete, triumph unconditional.
The first half of the final section is
called "Acclamation, festivities, repose."
The second adds, "Yet the urge towards
departure, this time with the mariner."
There is still more "out in the vast spaces"
where the mariner plots the way. This is
the reality of the earth, but there is one
more conquest to be made.
There is more for the Prince, but the
poem, with its look to the heavens, is
complete. The reader has watched the
conquest and participated in it; he has
been told about an experience and has
had it presented directly, thanks to the
Prince's knowledge and power.
107

THE ANABASIS
Type of work: History
Author: Xenophon (c. 430-c. 354 B.C.)
Time: 401-399 B.C.
Locale: Persia, Babylon, Armenia, Paphlagonia, Thrace
First transcribed: Fourth century B.C.
Principal personages:
Xenophon, the narrator
Cyrus, son of King Darius of Persia
Artaxerxes, the older son of Darius
Tissaphernes, a Persian general
Clearchus, a Spartan exile, a general under Cyrus
Chirisophus, a Spartan mercenary captain
Agasias, a Stymphalian captain in the Greek army
Proxenus, a Theban mercenary captain under Cyrus
The Anabasis is Xenophon's personal
account of one of the most amazing
marches in history, the march of a Greek
army numbering ten thousand men from
Babylon to the Black Sea. Xenophon
played a leading role in the march and
was, in effect, supreme commander of
the army, although he refused the actual
title. This account of the Persian
expedition begins with the recital of Cyrus*
effort to wrest the Persian throne from
his brother Artaxerxes, but its principal
part is concerned with the march from
Babylon after the death of Cyrus at the
battle of Cunaxa. The narrative is lively
and vivid; it presents a great historical
event from the perspective of a humane
leader who organized his troops and
maintained discipline by combining
intelligence with the methods of Greek
democratic leadership.
After the death of King Darius of
Persia, his son Artaxerxes took possession of
the throne. Cyrus, the younger son, with
the support of his mother, Parysatis,
began to build up an army to wrest control
of Persia from his brother. By pretending
to need troops to fight the Persian
general Tissaphernes and the Pisidians,
Cyrus acquired armies from the Pelopon-
nese, the Chersonese (under the Spartan
exile Clearchus), the Thessalians (under
Aristippus), the Boeotians (under
Proxenus), the Stymphalians (under Sophae-
netus), and the Achaeans (under
Socrates, the mercenary).
Cyrus marched from Sardis to Tarsus,
gathering the elements of his army. At
Tarsus the troops under Clearchus
refused to move forward, arguing that they
had not been hired to fight against the
king. Clearchus dealt with the mutiny
by first enlisting the loyalty of the men
to himself (by pretending he would stay
with them and not with Cyrus) and
then by supporting Cyrus* claim that the
enemy was not the king, but Abrocomas,
one of the king's commanders.
By marches averaging fifteen miles a
day Cyrus brought his army from Tarsus
to Issus, the last city in Cilicia, where
he was joined by ships from the Pelopon-
nese. The march continued through the
gates of Cilicia and Syria without
opposition.
When Cyrus arrived at the city of
Myriandrus, Xenias the Arcadian and
Pasion the Megarian deserted the army.
Cyrus refused to pursue or punish them,
declaring that they had served him well
in the past.
The army moved on to the Euphrates
and the city of Thapsacus. Here the word
was finally given to the Greek soldiers
that the campaign was to be against King
Artaxerxes. At first the soldiers refused
to go further without more pay, but when
Menon led his forces across the Euphrates
in order to set a good example and to
win Cyrus' favor, and when Cyrus
promised to give each soldier additional pay,
the Greeks crossed the river in force,
108

making the crossing on foot. Since the
Euphrates was usually too high for such
a passage, the army was encouraged by
this good sign.
When they reached the Arabian desert,
Cyrus forced the troops to long marches
in order to bring them to water and
fodder. He kept discipline by ordering
important Persians to help with the
wagons when the road was difficult. A
quarrel between the soldiers of Menon
and Clearchus was halted by Cyrus*
warning that they would all be destroyed
if they fought among themselves.
Orontas, a Persian under Cyrus,
attempted to transfer his army to the kind's
forces, but Cyrus learned of the plan
by intercepting a letter from Orontas
to the king. At a trial held in Cyrus*
tent Orontas was condemned to death.
He was never seen again.
Cyrus moved through Babylonia and
prepared for battle with King Artaxerxes,
but when the king's forces failed to take
a stand at a defensive ditch which had
been dug, Cyrus proceeded with less
caution.
The two armies met at Cunaxa, and
the Greeks put the opposing Persian
forces to flight. Cyrus, with six hundred
Persian cavalry, charged the center of
the Persian line in order to reach the
king; but after wounding King
Artaxerxes, Cyrus was himself killed by a
javelin blow. The cavalrymen with Cyrus
were killed, except for the forces under
Ariaeus, who hastily retreated.
While the main Greek armies under
Clearchus and Proxenus were pursuing
the Persians, the king's troops broke into
Cyrus' camp and seized his mistresses,
money, and property. Tissaphernes then
joined the king's force and attacked the
Greeks, but again the Greeks put the
Persians to flight.
Phalinus, a messenger from King
Artaxerxes, attempted to force Clearchus to
surrender, but the Spartan, regarding
the Greeks as victors, refused. The
Greeks then allied themselves again with
Ariaeus, who had been second to Cyrus,
and pledged their support of him. When
Ariaeus refused to attempt further battle
against the king, the joint decision was
to take a longer route back, putting as
much distance as possible between their
forces and the king's army.
The Greeks began their march and by
accident came close to the king's army,
frightening it into retreat. A truce was
then arranged, and the king transferred
supplies to the Greeks. Finally a treaty
was made which provided safe conduct
for the Greek army, with Tissaphernes
as escort.
Many of the Greek leaders suspected
Tissaphernes of treachery, but Clearchus,
reassured by a conference with the
Persian general, went to Tissaphernes with
four of his generals and twenty of his
captains in order that those who had
been slandering the Persian commander
could be named. Then, at a signal from
the treacherous Tissaphernes, the
Persians massacred the captains and took the
generals as prisoners. The generals—
Clearchus, Proxenus, Menon, Agias, and
Socrates—were taken to the king and
beheaded. Ariaeus was discovered to have
been involved with Tissaphernes in this
act of treachery.
After the capture of the generals,
Xenophon, who had accompanied the
Greek army at the urging of his friend
Proxenus, bolstered the courage of the
Greeks and urged that new generals
and captains be appointed. The army
responded to this decisive act of
leadership.
Mithridates, a Persian commander who
had been with Cyrus, returned to the
Greeks and pretended to be friendly, but
he suddenly attacked them and had to be
driven back. The Greeks were then
pursued by Tissaphernes and harassed by
attacks from the Carduchi as they crossed
the mountains to Armenia. Hearing that
Tiribazus, the governor of Western
Armenia who had promised the Greeks
safe passage, planned to attack them, the
Greek generals ordered a raid on
Tiribazus' camp and then quickly resumed the
109

march across snow-covered plains. The
soldiers suffered from snow-blindness,
frosfbite, and bulimia.
To encourage the soldiers, Xenophon
often worked and marched with the men.
He arranged to procure guides from the
Armenians and conceived the idea of
capturing the mountain pass beyond the
Phasis River by climbing it at night.
Chirisophus and Xenophon were the
principal leaders of the march.
In the country of the Taochi the
Greeks were delayed by an attack from
a fortification out of which large boulders
were rolled down a hill, but when the
stones were exhausted and as the
opposing forces—including women and
children—began to leap from the walls, the
Greeks took possession. Finally, after
fighting the Chalybes, the Greeks came
within sight of the sea on their arrival
at Trapezus.
Chirisophus was sent to secure ships,
and the Greeks, now numbering eighty-
six hundred troops of their original ten
thousand, went on plundering
expeditions for supplies. When Chirisophus
was delayed, the available ships were
loaded with the s;ck and wounded and
with women, children, and baggage,
while the rest of the army continued by
land. After battling their way through
the country of the barbarous Mossvnoici,
the Greeks arrived in the Euxine. There
Xenophon considered founding a city,
but he rejected the idea when the others
opposed him. Some of the generals were
critical of Xenophon's disciplinary
measures, but he was able to defend himself
against their charges.
The Greeks bought food and also
plundered supplies from the Paphlago-
nians. During their stay in that territory
the captains went to Xenophon and asked
him to be commander-in-chief of the
army, but after reflection and sacrifices
to the gods he decided that it would be
better both for himself and the army if
the command were either kept divided or
given to some other man. When
Chirisophus was elected commander-in-chief,
Xenophon willingly accepted a
subordinate position.
By this time the Greeks had enough
ships to carry all their men, and they
sailed along the Paphlaoonian coasf from
Harmene, the port of Sinope, to Herac-
lea, a Greek city in the country of the
Maryandyni. The army then split into
three parts because of a disagreement
about demanding supplies from Heraclea.
The Arcadians and Achaeans, who
favored the demand, formed one body;
Chirisophus, no longer in supreme
command, headed a second body cf troops;
and Xenophon commanded the remainder.
The Arcadians landed in Thrace and
attacked some villages. When thev got into
d fficulties, thev were rescued bv
Xenophon and h's force. At Port Calpe the
three armies were reuniteck
Many Greeks were killed by the
Bithynians while hunting for supplies,
but the Greek forces finallv achieved
victory over them. A quarrel involving
Cleander, the Spartan governor of
Byzantium, and Abasias, a Greek captain
who had rescued one of his men from
arrest by Dexippus, a traitorous Greek
acting by Cleander's order, was settled
by Xenophon's diplomacy.
Eventually the army crossed the straits
from Asia to Byzantium. After some
difficulty with Anaxibius, a Spartan
admiral at Byzantium, the Greeks joined
forces with King Seuthes of Thrace and
participated in numerous raids on Thra-
cian villages for supplies. When King
Seuthes withheld pay from the Greeks,
Xenophon was blamed but after a long
inquiry, during which Xenophon was
accused of being too much concerned with
the welfare of the ordinary soldier, King
Seuthes finally gave the Greeks the
money due them.
Xenophon then led the army out of
Thrace by sailing to Lampsacus,
marching through the Troad, and crossing
Mount Idea to the plain of Thebe. When
the army reached Pergamon in Mysia,
Xenophon conducted a partially
successful raid against the Persian Asidates. He
110

then turned the Greek army over to Thi- the Greeks to war against Tissaphemes
bron, the Spartan commander, who used and Phamabazus, a Persian governor.
Ill

THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
Type of work: Philosophical and scientific treatise
Author: Robert Burton (1577-1640)
First'published: 1621
The seventeenth century found men
beset by intellectual ferment, even
intellectual confusion. Ideas and theories, old
and new, clamored for attention and
consideration because science had not yet
begun to classify, assimilate, accept, and
reject what man found in the world about
him. More than that, each man
attempted, in an age before specialization,
to master all, or as much as he could, of
human knowledge. Such was the age in
which Robert Burton, who styled
himself Democritus, Jr., wrote The Anatomy
of Melancholy, which in many ways
exemplifies the times in which it was
written.
Burton was more than an educated
man; he was a learned man who gave his
life to learning, and much of his vast
hoard of erudition found its way into his
book. Ostensibly a study on melancholy,
his work, before it was finished, ab:obed
into its pages most of the learning of
Burton's time, either through his
examination of everything he could associate
with melancholy or through his many
digressions.
The Anatomy of Melancholy is
difficult to categorize. Its organization is
complex, almost incoherent. An outline for
each of the three "partitions" of the book,
complicated though each is, does not
indicate all that Burton managed to cram
into the pages. The device seems really to
be Burton's way of following a
"scientific" convention of the times. Perhaps
the best way to categorize the book is to
regard it as an informal and hete-ogene-
ous collection of essays on man's
dissatisfaction with the universe, as the
seventeenth century saw it, and on ways in
which that dissatisfaction could be cured.
In that sense, at least, the book is a
treatise on psychology, although the
digressions Burton made are so numerous and
involved that the reader sometimes
wonders whether the author may not have
lost his way.
Burton assuredly had no special theme
or thesis he was attempting to prove. One
critic has said that all The Anatomy of
Melancholy proves is that a seventeenth-
century classical education could produce
an astounding amount of recondite
learning. While Burton presented no set of
principles, scientific or otherwise, to be
proved, he did bring to his work a
tremendous zest for learning as he found it
in the books he read. This sense of gusto
often puts the modern reader at a
disadvantage, for Burton larded his paragraphs!
heavily, perhaps no English writer more
so, with tags of Latin prose and poetry,
and nowadays too few readers have a
knowledge of Latin which enables them
to read even tags in that language. The
quotations are from countless authorities,
many of them long since almost forgotten.
A typical page, for example, cites Leo
Afer, Lipsius, Zuinger, Seneca, Tully,
Livy, Rhasis, Montaltus, Celsus, and
Comesius. It is the host of references,
allusions, and quotations that makes
Burton's style seem heavy. Actually, he wrote
in the tradition of Francis Bacon,
studiously striving for a plain, even colloquial
and racy, style. Like Bacon, too, he
frequently begins a topic with an allusion,
an anecdote, or a quotation as a
springboard and from such a start often moves
to whimsy and humor.
Sections of The Anatomy of
Melancholy are famous for various reasons. The
opening; letter, a foreword to the reader,
is well known for its satirical tone and its
catalogue of the follies of mankind.
Humor and whimsy account for the
popularity of the sections on marriage and
bachelorhood, on the "love of learning or
overmuch study," and on the nature of spirits.
The last "partition," ostensibly on
melancholy growing out of love and religion,
has many short synopses of world-famous
stories. One contemporary critic has
112

shown that if Elizabethan literature had
somehow been lost during the
intervening centuries, we could reconstruct a good
bit of its nature from a study of The
Anatomy of Melancholy alone.
The pervading tone of the book is
satirical, but Burton's satire is always
realistic, reflecting the point of view of an
objective, even detached, observer of
human folly. He begins the first "partition"
with a contrast between man as he was
in the Garden of Eden and man as he
has been since the Fall. The result of
man's transgression, according to Burton,
is that mankind has since suffered a
universal malady, a melancholy that affects
both mind and body. Since he regards
man as a whole, from a humanistic point
of view, he proceeds to mingle
sympathetically both religion and science. Much of
the learning and many of the notions and
theories which found their way into the
book are nowadays of historical interest
only, such as the analysis of the four
humors, the discussion of the
understanding and the will (as the seventeenth
century used those terms), and the
discussion of the nature of angels and devils.
Still amusing, however, are his
discussions of old age, diet, heredity, exercise,
and constipation. While admitting that
none is a panacea, Burton offers various
cures for melancholy, including prayer,
practice of the arts, the study of
geography, coffee, traditional games, and
moderate amounts of wine and other drink.
Like many another learned man in
history, the writer often found himself
discoursing on subjects on which there is
perhaps no answer. Thus it is in his
critique on marriage, which he delivers
under the heading of "Cure of
Love-Melancholy," that Burton, who himself never
married, first quotes twelve reasons in
favor of marriage, taking them from
Jacobus de Voragine. Those arguments in
favor of marriage include statements that
a wife is a comfort and assistance in
adversity, that she will drive away
melancholy at home, that she brings an
additional supply of the "sweet company of
kinsmen," and that she enables a man to
have fair and happy children.
Immediately following these arguments, Burton
himself adds an equal number as an Anti-
parodia. He suggests that a wife will
aggravate a man's misery in adversity,
will scold a man at home, bring a host of
needy relatives, and make him a cuckold
to rear another man's child. At the last,
all Burton can say is that marriage, like
much of life, is filled with chance: " 'Tis
a hazard both ways I confess, to live
single or to marry."
A sound observer of human nature,
Burton also showed sympathetic
understanding for his fellow beings. Living in
an age when religious beliefs held a
strong hold on men's and women's
emotions, reinforced by fears of a physical
Satan and Calvinistic doctrines of
predestination and the depravity of man, he
advocated that people afflicted by
religious melancholy turn from
contemplation of the more awful aspects of God
and religion to such aspects of God as
His infinite mercy and love. He even
advocated recreation of an honest sort as
an antidote to too much religion. In this,
as in other ways, Burton was a man who
stood out as being ahead of his time, a
rare tribute to a man in any age.
113

AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mikhail Sholokhov (1905- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1913-1918
Locale: Tatarsk, Russia
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Gregor Melekhov, a Cossack
Piotra, Gregorys brother
Natalia, Gregorys wife
Aksinia Astakhova, Gregor's mistress
Bunchuk, a revolutionary leader
Critique:
Inasmuch as this novel has been so
frequently mentioned by the Russians as
proof that great art can be produced
under their form of government, the
book deserves careful consideration. The
Russians are quite right in being proud
of Sholokhov. And Quiet Flows the Don
is a good book, free of any propaganda
and standing on its own merit as a novel.
The book is doubly successful, both as
historical narrative and as an interesting
story of people living during a difficult
period in history.
The Story:
The Melekhov family lived in the
small village of Tatarsk, in the Don
basin of Tsarist Russia. Gregor, the
oldest son, had a love affair with Aksinia,
wife of his neighbor, Stepan Astakhova.
Stepan was away serving a term in the
army. In an effort to make his son settle
down, Gregor's father arranged a marriage
with Natalia Korshunov. Because Gregor
never loved Natalia, their relationship
was a cold one. Soon Gregor went
openly to Aksinia and the affair became
the village scandal.
When he heard the gossip, Gregor's
father whipped him. Humiliated and
angry, Gregor left home. With Aksinia
he became the servant of the Listnitsky
family, well-to-do landowners who lived
outside the village of Tatarsk. When
Aksinia bore him a daughter, Gregor's
father relented enough to pay a visit
before Gregor left for the army.
In the meantime, Gregor's wife,
Natalia, tried to commit suicide because
Gregor did not return her love. She
went back to her own home, but the
Melekhovs asked her to come to them.
She was glad to do so. When Gregor
returned to Aksinia, on his first leave
from the army, he discovered that she
had been unfaithful to him with Eugene
Listnitsky, the young officer-son of his
employer. Aksinia's daughter had died,
and Gregor felt nothing but anger at his
mistress. He fought with Eugene and
whipped Aksinia as well. Then he
returned to his own home, and there he
and Natalia became reconciled. During
the time he served in the army, Natalia
bore him twins, a boy and a girl.
In the war against the Central Powers,
Gregor distinguished himself. Wounded,
he was awarded the Cross of St. George
and so he became the first Chevalier in
the village. While in the army, he met
his brother, Piotra, and his enemy,
Stepan Astakhova, who had sworn to
kill him. Nevertheless, on one occasion
he saved Stepan's life during an attack.
Discontent was growing among the
soldiers. Bolshevik agitators began to talk
against the government and against a
continuance of the war. In Eugene
Listnitsky's company an officer named
Bunchuk was the chief agitator. He deserted
AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON by Mikhail Sholokhov. Translated by Stephen Garry. By permission of th<
publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1934, by Alfred A. Knopf. Inc.
114

before Listnitsky could hand him over
to the authorities.
Then the provisional government of
Kerensky was overthrown and a Soviet
Socialist Republic was established. Civil
war broke out. The Cossacks, proud of
their free heritage, were strongly
nationalistic and wanted an autonomous
government for the Don region. Many of them
joined the counter-revolutionists, under
such men as Kornilov. Many returned
to their homes in the Don basin. Gregor,
joining the revolutionary forces, was
made an officer of the Red Army.
Meanwhile the revolutionary troops in
Rostov were under attack. Bunchuk, the
machine gunner, was prominent in the
battle and in the administration of the
local revolutionary government. He fell
in love with a woman machine gunner,
Anna Poodko, who was killed during an
attack. The counter-revolutionary troops
were successful, and the Red Army troops
had to retreat.
Gregor returned to the village and
resumed the ordinary life he had led before
the war. Soon news came that
revolutionary troops were advancing on the village.
When his neighbors prepared to flee,
Gregor refused to do so. Stories of
burning, looting, and rape spread through the
countryside. A counter-revolutionary
officer attempted to organize the villagers
against the approaching enemy troops.
He named Gregor as commander, but
the nomination was turned down in
anger because all the village knew that
Gregor sympathized with the Reds, had
fought with them. Instead, Gregor's
brother Piotra was named commander.
The village forces marched out, Gregor
going with them. When they arrived
at their destination, they found that
the revolutionary troops had already been
defeated and that the leaders had been
captured. Gregor asked what would
happen to them. He was told they would
be shot. Then Gregor came face to face
with Podtielkov, his old revolutionary
leader. When the latter accused him of
being a traitor and opportunist, all of
Gregor's suppressed feelings of disgust
and nationalism burst forth. He
reminded Podtielkov that he and other
Red leaders had ordered plenty of
executions, and he charged that Podtielkov
had sold out the Don Cossacks. The
revolutionists died prophesying that the
revolution would live. Gregor went back
to his Cossack village.
115

ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES
(SELECTIONS)
Type of work: Tales
Author: Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
Type of plots: Folk tradition
Time of plots: Indeterminate
Locale: Denmark
First published: At intervals, 1835-1872
Principal characters:
Karen, who owned the red shoes
The Ugly Duckling
The Snow Queen
Kay, a little boy
Gerda, a little girl
The Shepherdess, a china figure
The Chimneysweep, her lover
The Emperor
A Tin Soldier
A Poor Soldier
Critique:
Hans Christian was a dreamy little
boy whose thoughts were very much like
those of many of the characters in his
fairy tales. When his father died and his
mother remarried, he asked to go to
Copenhagen to make his fortune. Because a
soothsayer had told his mother that Hans
would be Denmark's pride, she let him
go. When he tried to enter the theater,
he had little success. However,
influential men realized he was a poet and
befriended him until his publications
began to attract attention. By the time Hans
Christian Andersen died, he was
Denmark's most beloved countryman. His
tales may be fantastic, running through
many moods, but they merely reflect his
own character which was equally
fantastic, though lovable.
The Stories:
THE RED SHOES
Karen was a little girl so poor that she
had to go barefoot in winter. An old
mother shoemaker felt sorry for her and
made Karen a clumsy pair of shoes out
of pieces of red felt. When Karen's
mother died, the girl had to wear the red
shoes to the funeral. An old lady, seeing
Karen walking forlornly behind her
mother's coffin, pitied her and took the
child home. The old lady thought the
red shoes ugly and burned them.
One day Karen saw the queen and the
little princess. The princess was dressed
all in white, with beautiful red morocco
shoes.
When the time came for Karen's
confirmation, she needed new shoes. The old
lady, almost blind, did not know that the
shoes Karen picked out were red ones
just like those the princess had worn.
During the confirmation Karen could
think of nothing but her red shoes.
The next Sunday, as Karen went to
her first communion, she met an old
soldier with a crutch. After admiring the
red shoes, he struck them on the soles
and told them to stick fast when Karen
danced. During the service she could
think only of her shoes. After church
she started to dance. The footman had
to pick her up and take off her shoes
before the old lady could take her home.
At a ball in town Karen could not
stop dancing. She danced out through
the fields and up to the church. There
an angel with a broad sword stopped her
and told her she would dance until she
116

became a skeleton, a warning to all other
vain children.
She danced day and night until she
came to the executioner's house. There
she tapped on the window and begged
him to come out and cut off her feet.
When he chopped off the feet, they and
the little red shoes danced off into the
forest. The executioner made Karen
wooden feet and crutches and taught her
a psalm, and the parson gave her a home.
Karen thought she had suffered enough
to go to church, but each time she tried
she saw the red shoes dancing ahead of
her and was afraid. One Sunday she
stayed at home. As she heard the organ
music, she read her prayer book humbly
and begged help from God. Then she
saw the angel again, not with a sword
but with a green branch covered with
roses. As the angel moved the branch,
Karen felt that she was being carried off to
the church. There she was so thankful
that her heart broke and her soul flew
up to heaven.
THE UGLY DUCKLING
A mother duck was sitting on a clutch
of eggs. When the largest egg did not
crack with the rest, an old matriarchal
duck warned the setting fowl that she
might as well let that egg alone; it would
probably turn out to be a turkey. But
the egg finally cracked, and out of it
came the biggest, ugliest duckling ever
seen in the barnyard. The other
ducklings pecked it and chased it and made
it so unhappy that it felt comfortable
only when it was paddling in the pond.
The mother duck was proud only of the
very fine paddling the ugly duckling did.
The scorn heaped on his head was so
bitter that the duckling ran away from
home. He spent a miserable winter in the
marsh.
When spring came he saw some
beautiful white swans settle down on the
water. He moved out to admire them as
they came toward him with ruffled
feathers. He bent down to await their attack,
but as he looked in the water he saw that
he was no longer a gray ugly duckling
but another graceful swan. He was so
glad then that he never thought to be
proud, but smiled when he heard some
children say that he was the handsomest
swan they had ever seen.
THE SNOW QUEEN
A very wicked hobgoblin once
invented a mirror that reflected everything
good as trivial and everything bad as
monstrous; a good thought turned into
a grin in the mirror. His cohorts
carried it all over the earth and finally up
to heaven to test the angels. There many
good thoughts made the mirror grin so
much that it fell out of their hands and
splintered as it hit the earth. Each tiny
piece could distort as the whole mirror
had done.
A tiny piece pierced Kay through the
heart and a tiny grain lodged in his eye.
Kay had been a happy little boy before
that. He used to play with Gerda in
their rooms high above the street, and
they both admired some rose bushes their
parents had planted in boxes spanning
the space between their houses. With
the glass in his eye and heart, however,
Kay saw nothing beautiful and nothing
pleased him.
One night he went sledding in the
town square. When a lady all in white
drove by, he thought her so beautiful
that he hitched his sled behind her sleigh
as she drove slowly around the square.
Suddenly her horses galloped out of the
town. The lady looked back at Kay and
smiled each time he tried to loosen his
sled. Then she stopped the sleigh and
told Kay to get in with her. There she
wrapped him in her fur coat. She was
the Snow Queen. He was nearly frozen,
but he did not feel cold after she kissed
him, nor did he remember Gerda.
Gerda did not forget Kay, and at last
she ran away from home to look for him.
She went to the garden of a woman
learned in magic and asked all the
flowers if they had seen Kay, but the flowers
knew only their own stories.
117

She met a crow who led her to the
prince and princess, but they had not
heard of Kay. They gave her boots and
a muff, and a golden coach to ride in
when they sent her on her way.
Robbers stopped the golden coach. At
the insistence of a little robber girl, Gerda
was left alive, a prisoner in the robber's
house. Some wood pigeons in the loft
told Gerda that Kay had gone with the
Snow Queen to Lapland. Since the
reindeer tethered inside the house knew the
way to Lapland, the robber girl
unloosed him to take Gerda on her way.
The Lapp and the Finn women gave
Gerda directions to the Snow Queen's
palace and told her that it was only
through the goodness of her heart that
Kay could be released. When Gerda
found Kay, she wept so hard that she
melted the piece of mirror out of his
heart. Then he wept the splinter from
his eye and realized what a vast and
empty place he had been in. With
thankfulness in her heart, Gerda led Kay out of
the snow palace and home.
THE SHEPHERDESS AND THE SWEEP
In the middle of the door of an old
wooden parlor cupboard was carved a
ridiculous little man with goat's legs,
horns on his head, and a beard. The
children called him Major-general-field-
sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's-legs. He
always looked at the china figure of a
Shepherdess. Finally he asked the china
figure of a Chinaman, who claimed to
be her grandfather, if he could marry
the Shepherdess. The Chinaman, who
could nod his head when he chose,
nodded his consent.
The Shepherdess had been engaged to
the china figure of a Chimneysweep.
She begged him to take her away. That
night he used his ladder to help her get
off the table. The Chinaman saw them
leave and started after them.
Through the stove and up the
chimney went the Shepherdess and the
Chimneysweep. When she saw how big the
world was, the Shepherdess began to cry,
and the Chimneysweep had to take her
back to the parlor. There they saw the
Chinaman broken on the floor. The
Shepherdess was distressed, but the
Chimneysweep said the Chinaman could
be mended and riveted.
The family had the Chinaman riveted
so that he was whole again, but he could
no longer nod his head. When the Major-
general-field-sergeant-commander - Billy-
goat's-legs asked again for the
Shepherdess, the Chinaman could not nod, and so
the Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep
stayed together and loved each other
until they were broken to pieces.
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES
Once there was a foolish Emperor
who loved clothes so well that he spent
all of the kingdom's money to buy new
ones. Two swindlers, who knew the
Emperor's weakness, came to town with big
looms. They told the people they wove
the most beautiful cloth in the world
but that it had a magical property. If
someone unworthy of his post looked
at it, the cloth became invisible.
The Emperor gave them much gold
and thread to make him a new outfit.
The swindlers set up their looms and
worked far into the night. Becoming
curious about the materials, the Emperor
sent his most trusted minister to see them.
When the minister looked at the looms,
he saw nothing; but, thinking of the
magical property of the cloth, he
decided that he was unworthy of his post.
Saying nothing to the swindlers, he
reported to the Emperor, praising the
colors and pattern of the cloth as the
swindlers had described it.
Others, looking at the looms, saw
nothing and said nothing. Even the
Emperor saw nothing when the material was
finished and made into clothes, but he
also kept silent. He wore his new clothes
in a fine procession. All the people called
out that his new clothes were beautiful,
all except one little boy who said that the
Emperor did not have on any clothes
at all.
118

Then there was a buzzing along the
line of march. Soon everyone was saying
that the Emperor wore no clothes. The
Emperor, realizing the truth, held
himself stiffer than ever until the procession
ended.
THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER
A little boy had a set of twenty-five
tin soldiers made out of the same tin
spoon. Since there was not quite enough
tin, one soldier had only one leg, but
he stood as solidly as those with two legs.
The one-legged soldier stood on a table
and looked longingly at a paper castle,
at the door of which stood a paper dancer
who wore a gauze dress. A ribbon over
her shoulder was held in position by a
spangle as big as her face.
One morning the little boy put the
one-legged soldier on a window sill.
When the window opened, the soldier
fell three stories to the ground. There
he stuck, head down between two stones,
until some boys found him. They made
a paper boat for the soldier and sailed it
down the gutter. After a time the boat
entered a sewer. Beginning to get limp,
it settled deeper into the water. Just as
the soldier thought he would fall into
the water, a fish swallowed him.
When the fish was opened, the soldier
found himself in the same house out of
which he had fallen. Soon he was back
on his table looking at the dancer. For
no reason the boy threw him into a
roaring fire. Suddenly a draft in the room
whisked the dancer off the table and
straight to the soldier in the fire. When
the fire burned down, the soldier had
melted to a small tin heart. All that was
left of the dancer was her spangle, burned
black.
THE TINDER BOX
A soldier was walking along the
highroad one day when a witch stopped him
and told him that he could have a lot of
money if he would climb down a hollow
tree and bring her up a tinder box.
Thinking that was an easy way to get money,
he tied a rope around his waist and the
witch helped him to climb down inside
the tree.
He took along the witch's apron, for
on it he had to place the dogs that
guarded the chests of money. The first
dog, with eyes as big as saucers, guarded
a chest full of coppers. The soldier placed
the dog on the apron, filled his pockets
with coppers, and walked on.
The next dog, with eyes as big as
millstones, guarded silver. The soldier placed
the dog on the apron, emptied his
pockets of coppers, and filled them with
silver.
The third dog had eyes as big as the
Round Tower. He guarded gold. When
the soldier had placed the dog on the
apron, he emptied his pockets of silver
and filled them, his knapsack, his cap
and his boots with gold. Then he called
to the witch to pull him up.
When she refused to tell him why she
wanted the tinder box, he cut off her
head and started for town. There he
lived in splendor and gave alms to the
poor, for he was good-hearted.
He heard of a beautiful princess who
was kept locked up because of a prophecy
that she would marry a common soldier.
Idly he thought of ways to see her.
When his money ran out, and he had
no candle, he remembered that there was
a piece of candle in the tinder box. As
he struck the box to light the candle,
the door flew open and the dog with eyes
like saucers burst in, asking what the
soldier wanted. When he asked for money,
the dog brought it back immediately. Then
he found that he could call the second
dog by striking the box twice, and the
third dog by striking it three times. When
he asked the dogs to bring the princess,
she was brought to his room.
The king and queen had him thrown
into prison when they caught him. There
he was helpless until a little boy to whom
he called brought the tinder box to him.
When the soldier was about to be
hanged, he asked permission to smoke a
last pipe. Then he pulled out his tinder
119

box and hit once, twice, three times. were so impressed that they made the sol-
All three dogs came to rout the king's dier king and the princess his queen,
men and free the soldier. The people
120

ANDRIA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, c. 190-159 B.C.)
Type of plot: Comedy
Time of plot: Second century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 166 B.C.
Principal characters:
Simo, a wealthy Athenian
Pamphilus, Simo's son
Glycerium, beloved of Pamphilus
Davus, slave of Pamphilus
Chremes, another wealthy Athenian, friend of Simo
Crito, a traveler from Andros
Charinus, a suitor for the daughter of Chremes
Critique:
Although Andria was Terence's first
play, it shows those characteristics for
which this dramatist was noted
throughout his career. As in all his plays, the
action is closely knit, with no digressions,
and the comedy is of a more serious turn
than the popular slapstick humor. The
language is natural. Actually, the plot was
not new. Terence admitted that he had
adapted his drama from two plays by
Menander, the Greek dramatist who
wrote The Lady of Andros and The Lady
of Perinthos. The whole story turns, like
so many Greek and Latin comedies, on the
theme of mistaken identity. The modern
reader will undoubtedly compare it to
Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, which
in turn was freely adapted from The
Menaechmi of Plautus. Nor have modern
authors ceased to adapt from Terence's
Andria. It was the basis of Baron's
L'Andrienne, Sir Richard Steele's The
Conscious Lovers, and Thornton Wilder's
novel, The Woman of Andros.
The Story:
One day Simo confided in a servant
that he had been pleased with his son
Pamphilus until that very afternoon,
when he had discovered that his son was
in love with Glycerium, the sister of a
courtesan who had recently died. Simo,
who wished to marry his son to the
daughter of his friend Chremes, saw in his son's
love for Glycerium a threat to his plans.
Later Simo encountered his son's slave,
Davus, and threatened him with severe
punishment. Simo was afraid that Davus,
a clever fellow, would help Pamphilus
thwart his father's plans for his future.
Davus immediately saw that some scheme
would have to be put into action quickly if
the love between Pamphilus and
Glycerium were to end in marriage, even
though Glycerium was already pregnant
by Pamphilus.
Pamphilus' own scheme was to
acknowledge the expected infant and then
claim that Glycerium was actually an
Athenian whose father had been
shipwrecked on Andros and who had been
reared by the family of the courtesan as a
foster child. But Davus laughed at the
story and felt that no one would believe it
Pamphilus, warned that his fathef
wanted him to marry that very day, wa?
greatly troubled. He was put at ease, how
ever, when Davus heard that the
approaching marriage to Chremes' daughter
had been refused by the girl's father, for
Chremes had also learned of the affair
between Pamphilus and the courtesan's
sister. Davus told Pamphilus to agree to the
marriage for the time being. Before long,
he added, some way out of the
predicament might be found.
Charinus met Davus and Pamphilus
and told them that he was in love with
Chremes' daughter. Pamphilus said he
had no desire to marry the girl and that
Charinus was welcome to her. Not
knowing the true reason for Pamphilus' assent,
121

Charinus was thrown into despair within
the hour, when he heard Pamphilus agree
to marry Chremes' daughter.
Later, while Simo, the father, and
Davus stood before the door of
Glycerium's residence, they heard the servants
send for a midwife. Simo was angry,
thinking that Davus was trying to trick
him into believing that Glycerium was
having a child by his son. A short time
later Glycerium was delivered of a baby
boy. When Simo heard the news, he still
thought Davus was trying to trick him and
refused to believe what he heard.
Meanwhile Pamphilus waited
patiently, believing that no marriage with
Chremes' daughter had been arranged.
While he waited, however, his father met
Chremes on the street, and they agreed
once more to marry their children to one
another.
When Davus reported the latest
development to Pamphilus, the young man was
furious, for it now seemed certain he
would never be able to marry the woman
he loved. Glycerium, from her
confinement bed, sent for Pamphilus to learn
what progress he was making in his plans
to marry her.
Davus, to prevent the marriage
between Pamphilus and Chremes' daughter,
had Glycerium's maidservant lay the
infant on a bed of verbena in front of Simo's
door. Chremes came up the street and saw
the child. Davus, pretending that he did
not see Chremes, began to argue with
Glycerium's servant. During the argument
the fact that the child was the son of
Pamphilus and Glycerium was shouted
aloud. Chremes stormed into Simo's house
to withdraw again his offer of marriage
between Pamphilus and his daughter.
Soon afterward Crito, a cousin of the
dead courtesan, came looking for the
house of his dead cousin. As soon as he
found it, he asked the maidservant if
Glycerium had found her parents in
Athens. Davus, looking after Pamphilus'
interests, overheard the conversation and
entered the house after them.
When Davus left the house a few
minutes later, he met Simo, who ordered
the slave chained and thrown into a
dungeon. While Chremes and Simo
were talking over the delayed wedding,
Pamphilus also left the house. After some
argument the young man convinced his
father that Crito had proof that
Glycerium was an Athenian and Pamphilus
would have to marry her because they had
had a child. Pamphilus re-entered the
house where Glycerium was lodged and
emerged presently with Crito.
Chremes immediately recognized Crito
as an acquaintance from Andros. Simo
was finally convinced that Crito was an
honorable man from that island. Crito
then told how Phania, a citizen of
Athens, had been shipwrecked on Andros
and had died there. With the man had
been a little girl, whom the dying man
said was his brother's daughter. Chremes
then broke into the story to exclaim that
Glycerium must be his own daughter,
because Phania had been his brother. When
Chremes asked what the girl's name had
been, Crito said that her name had been
changed to Glycerium from Pasibula, the
name of Chremes' daughter.
Everyone congratulated Chremes on
finding his long-lost child. Pamphilus
reminded his father that there could be no
barrier to the marriage since Glycerium,
too, was a daughter of Chremes and,
according to the law, Pamphilus would have
to marry her as her seducer. Chremes,
overjoyed, declared that he would give a
dower of ten talents to the bride.
Davus was freed from the dungeon,
and Pamphilus told him all that had
occurred. While they spoke, Charinus
entered, happy that the other daughter of
Chremes was now free to be his bride.
The father gave ready consent to
Charinus' suit and said that his only
objection had been a desire to have his
family united with Simo's. In addition, he
promised that Charinus would receive a
large dowry as well as a wife.
122

ANDROMACHE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c. 485c. 406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Tragedy of intrigue
Time of plot: About a decade after the Trojan War
Locale: The temple of Thetis in Thessaly
First presented: c. 426 B.C.
Principal characters:
Andromache, Hector's widow, slave to Neoptolemus
Hermione, wife of Neoptolemus and daughter of Menelaus
Menelaus, King of Sparta
Peleus, Neoptolemus' grandfather
Molossus, son of Andromache and Neoptolemus
OaESTES, Agamemnon's son
Thetis, goddess and dead wife of Peleus
Chorus of Pythian Maidens
Critique:
Andromache is one of Euripides' most
poorly constructed plays; both the plot
line and the focus on personalities
undergo a radical shift in the middle. It moves,
not by development out of the original
situation, but by accretion, and new
characters are introduced with no preparation
whatsoever. The first half of the play
concerns Hermione's foiled plot against
her rival, Andromache; the second deals
with Orestes' treacherous murder of his
rival, Neoptolemus; and there is only a
very tenuous connection between the two.
Written shortly after the outbreak of the
war between Athens and Sparta, the play
seems to be strongly motivated by
Euripides' intense hatred of Spartan
characteristics as they are shown in the arrogance
of Hermione, the treachery of Orestes,
and the criminal brutality of Menelaus.
Although flawed, Andromache
nevertheless has a certain hardness and brilliance
that are fascinating.
The Story:
After the death of Hector and the fall
of Troy, Andromache had been given as
a special prize to Neoptolemus, son of
Achilles. As his slave and concubine, she
had borne a son, Molossus, thereby
arousing the jealous wrath of Hermione, the
barren wife of Neoptolemus. Fearing
Hermione's hatred and sensing
impending doom, Andromache sought sanctuary
in the sacred grounds of the temple of
Thetis, after secretly sending her son to
a neighbor for safekeeping.
Hermione appeared at the temple and
accused Andromache of seeking to oust
her, taunted her for bearing a son to
Hector's slayer, and threatened her with
death. Andromache protested that as an
aging woman and a helpless slave she
would be mad to compete with Hermione
and that she herself had gracefully
accepted Hector's illegitimate children
rather than let herself be corrupted by
jealousy. Hermione, unmoved by these
arguments, left the temple after
threatening that she would find bait that would
lure Andromache from her sanctuary.
She was true to her word, for soon
afterward Menelaus arrived leading
Molossus by the hand. The Spartan king
warned that he would kill the boy on the
spot if Andromache would not emerge
and offer up her own life instead. Once
agiin Andromache argued with a
Spartan, pointing out that murder would
surely pollute his reputation and that
Neoptolemus would never condone the
death of his only son. But Menelaus was
adamant, and Andromache emerged from
the sanctuary to learn that both she and
her son were marked for slaughter. But
before the order for execution could be
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carried out, the aged Peleus appeared
and in response to her supplication
commanded that her bonds be loosened.
Furious with Menelaus, Peleus denounced
Spartan cowardice and treachery and
ordered the king to leave Thessaly at once
and to take his barren daughter with him.
Menelaus, however, announced that he
was leaving with his army only in order
to vanquish a city hostile to Sparta, after
which he would return to confront Neop-
tolemus himself and settle the matter
of his daughter's status in Thessaly.
After everyone had left the temple, a
terribly distraught Hermione entered
carrying a sword with which she intended
to commit suicide. After her nurse had
wrested the sword from her, Hermione,
in great anguish, lamented the horrible
deed she had plotted and chanted her
fear that Neoptolemus would banish her.
Suddenly Orestes appeared, claiming that
he was merely passing through on his
way to the oracle at Dodona, and
Hermione threw herself at his feet. Because
Orestes had once been betrothed to
Hermione and had always loved her, he
revealed that he had actually come to carry
her off; he was prepared to murder her
husband even if the deed involved
sacrilegious treachery. Hermione's taunts at
Andromache were now ironically being
fulfilled upon herself.
After the desperate pair had fled,
Peleus appeared. Before he could question
the chorus about the fearful rumors he
had heard, a messenger brought sad
news. Peleus' grandson, Neoptolemus,
was dead; he had been horribly murdered
and mutilated by Orestes and his brigands
while praying to the gods in the temple
of Phoebus. The body of Neoptolemus
was then carried in on a bier and
bereaved old Peleus lamented the end of
his line, for the only son of his only son
was now dead. Throwing his scepter on
the ground, the distraught king resolved
to grovel in the dust until his death. At
that moment the dim form of the divine
Thetis, the goddess who had once been
his wife, appeared hovering in mid-air.
She commanded her husband to cease
his mourning and take the body of
Neoptolemus to be buried at the Pythian
altar as a reproach to the Spartans. She
further commanded that he take
Andromache and Neoptolemus' son to Helenus,
whom Andromache would marry so that
the line of Peleus could continue. After
this mission Peleus himself would be
converted into a god and live with Thetis
in the halls of Nereus forever. Peleus
consented, moralizing that every prudent
man should take heed to marry a wife
of noble stock and give his daughter to
a good husband.
124

ANDROMACHE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
Type of plot: Neo-classical tragedy
Time of plot: Shortly after the close of the Trojan War
Locale: Epirus
First presented: 1667
Principal characters:
Andromache, widow of Hector and captive of Pyrrhus
Pyrrhus, King of Epirus and son of Achilles
Orestes, son of Agamemnon and spurned suitor of Hermione
Hermione, daughter of Helen and affianced bride of Pyrrhus
Pylades, Orestes' friend and companion
Critique:
The appearance of Andromache on the
stage was one of the great events of the
French theater for 1667 and for all time.
This play has been acted more times than
any other drama by Racine. Its dramatic
simplicity is outstanding. Each of the four
leading characters is dominated by a
single emotion. Orestes loves Hermione to
distraction; Hermione is overwhelmed by
Pyrrhus; Pyrrhus is madly in love with
Andromache; Andromache can think
only of the dead Hector and their child,
Astyanax. Suffering of an emotional kind
drives the four characters into a maze of
spite, love, hate, and vengeance. At the
end only Andromache is left—Pyrrhus
and Hermione are dead, and Orestes has
gone mad. The distinction is important,
for Racine killed off the three who were
led by their personal passions, but he
saved the sole character whose unselfish
grief was for others.
The Story:
Orestes, son of the Greek leader,
Agamemnon, journeyed to Epirus to tell
Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, that the Greeks
were fearful of Astyanax, the young son of
Hector and Andromache, who might
someday try to avenge the fall of Troy.
Because of their fear, they had sent
^Orestes to request that Pyrrhus put
Astyanax to death.
Pyrrhus had fallen in love with
Andromache, however, and at first, afraid
of losing her love, he refused to grant the
request. To Orestes, who had long loved
Hermione, betrothed of Pyrrhus, the
news of Pyrrhus* love for Andromache
was welcome. Orestes thought he saw in
the situation a chance for him to win
Hermione for his wife. Orestes' friend
Pylades was amazed, for Orestes had
previously sworn that his love for Hermione
had degenerated into hate because she
spurned him.
When Pyrrhus refused to kill Astyanax
or turn the child over to the Greeks,
Orestes threatened him. Pyrrhus swore
that he would make Epirus a second Troy
before he permitted the death of Astyanax.
Pyrrhus, hoping that his decision would
lead her to forget her dead husband, told
Andromache what he had done, but she
made no response to his overtures.
Angered, Pyrrhus told her that unless she
married him the child would die.
Meanwhile Hermione, spurned by
Pyrrhus, was trying to decide whether she
loved or hated the king, and whether she
wanted to flee with Orestes. When
Pyrrhus, rebuffed by Andromache, went
to her, they decided that they were still in
love. Reconciled to Hermione, Pyrrhus
promised to love only her and to give
Astyanax to the Greeks.
But Hermione, changing her mind,
prepared to flee with Orestes to inflict
punishment on Pyrrhus, after Orestes told
her that Pyrrhus had renewed his suit of
Andromache. Pyrrhus returned while
they spoke and announced that he was
ready to give over the boy to the Greeks
because Andromache had again spurned
his love and aid.
Convinced that Pyrrhus had decided to
125

marry Hermione only to keep her from
her Greek lover, Orestes plotted to carry
off the girl. Pylades, his friend, agreed to
help in the abduction. When Hermione
met Orestes, she spoke only of her
approaching marriage to Pyrrhus, whom she
still loved. While they talked,
Andromache entered the room and begged
Hermione to protect Astyanax, whom
Pyrrhus had determined to kill.
Andromache reminded Hermione that
Hector had championed Helen, Hermione's
mother, when the Trojans had wished to
murder her. Hermione refused to listen
and scorned Andromache's request.
Andromache then pleaded with
Pyrrhus, but he told her that her plea came
too late. At last, when Andromache vowed
to kill herself, her vow and tears moved
the vacillating Pyrrhus, who once again
told her that he would marry her instead
of Hermione and champion the boy
against the Greeks. But Andromache
refused to save her son by marrying her
captor and former enemy. After a conference
with her waiting-woman, she decided to
consult her husband's ghost. The result of
that conference was a decision to marry
Pyrrhus, thus bringing Astyanax under
Pyrrhus' protection, and then to kill
herself.
Hermione, furious when she learned
that on the following day Pyrrhus
intended to marry Andromache, sent for
Orestes and told him that she wanted his
help in avenging herself on the king.
Without promising herself to Orestes, she
asked him to kill Pyrrhus during the
wedding ceremony.
At first Orestes demurred. Not wishing
to become an assassin, he wanted to
declare war on Pyrrhus and earn glory on
the battlefield. But at Hermione's urging
he finally agreed to the murder. She told
him that it would be easy to commit the
crime, because the king's guards had been
sent to watch over Astyanax and none had
been ordered to guard the nuptial
ceremonies. She finally added that after the
murder she would become Orestes' bride.
After Orestes left, Pyrrhus came once
more to Hermione. Hoping that the king
had changed his mind again, she sent her
serving-woman to tell Orestes not to act
until he had further word from her. But
Pyrrhus had come to tell her only that he
intended to marry Andromache, come
what would. Hermione vowed she would
have revenge.
This was her message to Orestes.
Finally Orestes arrived to inform her that
the deed was done; Pyrrhus had died at
the hands of Orestes' soldiers.
Hermione, turning on Orestes, declared
that she disowned such savagery and
would have no more to do with him
because he had killed the man she loved.
When Orestes argued with her that she
had persuaded him to commit the murder
for her sake, her only defense was that she
had been distraught at having her love
spurned by Pyrrhus and that Orestes
should not have listened to her. When she
rushed out of the room, Pylades came
with the Greek warriors to warn Orestes
that if they were to escape the wrath of
Pyrrhus' subjects they must take ship and
sail away from Epirus at once. The people,
they said, were obeying Andromache as
their queen. And Hermione was dead; she
had run into the temple and thrown
herself on Pyrrhus' body, after stabbing
herself with mortal wounds.
Hearing that news, Orestes turned mad
and fainted in his agony. His men quickly
took him away and made their escape
from Epirus.
126

ANGEL GUERRA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Benito Perez Ga!d6s (1843-1920)
Type of plot: Political and religious tragedy
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Madrid and Toledo
First published: 1890-1891
Principal characters:
Angel Guerra, a widower
Dona Sales, his mother
Encarnacion ("Cion"), his seven-year-old daughter
Lorenza ("Lere"), Dona Sales' nurse
Aristides Garcia Babel, an embezzler
Fausto Garcia Babel, his dishonest brother
Dulcenombre ("Dulce") Babel, Angel's sometime mistress
Padre Casado, a priest
Critique:
Perez Galdos, a great figure in Spanish
literature of the late nineteenth century,
wrote thirty novels in addition to the
forty-six in his series called National
Episodes. Angel Guerra belongs to a
group of about eight that present a
picture of religious faith and the results of
fanaticism on Spanish life. This group
includes some of his best, Dona Perfecta
(1876), Gloria CI876-1877), The
Family of Ledn Roch (1879), and The Crazy
Woman in the House (1892). Angel
Guerra is the story of a politician and a
mystic, a character whose names, "Angel"
and 'War," were intended to present his
dual personality. By environment he was
made a rebel who hated his mother, yet
received from her the wealth that meant
his personal freedom. Not only does the
novel depict the working of fate, but it
also presents a philosophy of religion and
the influence of a deeply religious
atmosphere on a man who was essentially
destructive and modern. Besides the
intermingling of human and religious love, the
novel contains a realistic touch in having
violence and crime cure idealism. As
always, in the novels of this great local
color artist, the painting of the
background is unforgettable: the summer
nouses in the suburbs of Toledo, the
narrow cobbled streets of the city, and the
noble, austere cathedral.
The Story:
Angel Guerra, thirty and a widower,
father of an adored daughter
Encarnacion, had spent an unhappy childhood.
An idealist, he had turned to the
revolutionists, thinking that if everything were
overthrown life could be improved in the
rebuilding. His mother, Dona Sales,
disapproved of him and treated him like a
child, even after he was married. An
extremely rich woman, she tried to starve
her liberal-minded son into submission to
her wishes, but she managed only to
drive him into the company of advocates
of violence, the Babels.
The Babel household contained an
unsavory group. With Babel lived his
brother, Captain Agapito, an ex-slaver,
and his children, drunken Matias and
slippery Policarpo. Babel's family was as
bad. Aristides, an embezzler, had fled
from Cuba; Fausto had been dismissed
from the post office for peculation; and
Dulcenombre had love affairs from which
the whole family profited. She became
attracted to Angel and lived with him for
a year in order to escape her family, but
he was too poor to marry her.
At last the crimes of the Babels sent
Angel also into hiding, with a wounded
hand that Dulce bandaged. After a month
of skulking he went home to find his
mother, Dona Sales, dying. Lere, the
twenty-year-old tutor of "Cion," was
nursing her. At first she and Dr. Maquis re-
127

fused to let Angel see the sick woman,
but finally he was allowed to be with her
during her dying moments. She left him
a comfortable fortune, but when he tried
to use it selfishly the convent-trained Levi
shamed him into carrying out his mother's
desires with it.
Troubles mounted for Angel. Dulce,
his mistress, became ill. Cion died. Ler6
announced she was entering a convent in
Toledo. In his loneliness, Angel followed
her, and when Dulce came looking for
him he had already gone. Following the
advice of her uncle, Captain Agapito,
she sought solace in alcohol.
Angel had both rich and poor relatives
in Toledo. He became a boarder at the
home of Teresa Pantoja, along with two
priests. Lere was already working for one
of the nursing orders. Discussing life
with her, and moved by his loneliness,
his affection for her, and the religious
atmosphere of Toledo, Angel also found
himself seeking the comfort of the
Church.
The appointment of one Babel to a
government post in Toledo brought the
whole family, including Dulce, to that
city. To escape them, Angel went to live
with wealthy relatives in the outskirts of
Toledo. Ler£ demanded that he marry
Dulce or never see her again. Going to
discuss the situation with Dulce, Angel
found her disgustingly drunk. In a
quarrel that followed, he almost killed Aris-
tides. Again, at Lere's bidding, he went
to Arfstides to ask forgiveness. He learned
that Dulce's illness had cured her of her
liking for alcohol and that she was
planning to enter a convent.
Angel's many conversations with Ler6
caused considerable gossip, with the
result that the Mother Superior called the
girl in for questioning. Although she was
declared innocent, the lack of trust so
angered Angel that he declared his
intention of founding a convent to be put in
Lere's charge. She declared that she
would accept his plan only if he became
a priest. Angel agreed.
Padre Casado, a clear-sighted priest,
whose preference for farming instead of
books had prevented his advance in the
Church, prepared Angel for taking holy
orders. One night, while he and Ler£
were nursing an ailing priest, Angel felt
desire for the girl. Later he confessed his
carnal thoughts to Padre Casado, who
could not understand any sexual
attraction to a woman in plain nun's clothing.
They also discussed Angel's plans for the
convent, and his philosophy for
improving mankind by a Christian revolution.
Angel tried to prove his theories when
Aristides, again caught in crime, and
Fausto, also fleeing justice, begged him
for help and he hid them. Joined by Po-
licarpo, they demanded money for a flight
to Portugal. Angel was stabbed during a
quarrel over his refusal. Although badly
wounded, he would not give the police
the name of his assailant.
Lere came to nurse Angel. The dying
man had no regrets. Like Don Quixote,
he felt that the approach of death
restored his reason and also solved his
problems. He would not have made a good
priest, he declared. He apportioned his
wealth, designating most for Lere^s
project, some for relatives and servants,
before he died. Lere, stifling her sorrow,
returned to the convent where she was
assigned to nurse another patient.
128

ANNA CHRISTIE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Johnny the Priest's saloon, New York City, and Provincetown harbor
First presented: 1921
Principal characters:
Chris Christopherson, captain of the barge, Simeon Winthrop
Anna, his daughter
Mat Burke, a stoker
Marthy Owen, a prostitute
Critique:
O'Neill claims rightfully that the
ending of his play was not intended
to be a happy one. The play illustrates
O'Neill's idea that the forces which
control our destinies and which
seemingly lie outside ourselves are really
within. O'Neill agrees with Galsworthy
in maintaining that man's character is
his fate and in Anna Christie he proves
it.
The Story:
Old Chris Christopherson looked upon
the sea as the symbol of a malignant
fate. True, he was now skipper of the
coal barge, Simeon Winthrop, but in his
younger days he had been an able
seaman and bosun on the old windjammers
and had visited every port in the world.
As far back as he knew, the men of
his family in Sweden had followed the
sea. His father died aboard ship in the
Indian Ocean, and two of his brothers
were drowned. Nor was the curse of
the sea confined to the men in the
family. After the news of her husband's
and her sons' deaths, Chris' mother had
died of a broken heart. Unable to bear
the loneliness of being a sailor's wife,
his own wife had brought their young
daughter, Anna, to America to live with
some cousins on a farm in Minnesota.
Here Anna's mother had died, and the
girl was brought up by her relatives.
Chris had not seen his daughter for
almost twenty years. One day while he
was having a drink at Johnny the Priest's
saloon near South Street in New York
City, he received a postcard from St.
Louis telling him that Anna was on
her way to New York.
This news threw Chris into something
of a panic, for living on the barge with
him was an ancient prostitute named
Marthy. Chris decided to get rid of the
woman. Being a kind-hearted soul and
genuinely fond of Marthy, he disliked
the idea of turning her out. But Marthy
said that Chris had always treated her
decently, and she would move on to
someone else.
When Marthy caught a glimpse of
Chris's daughter, she was shocked. Anna
was twenty years old and pretty in a
buxom sort of way. But her painted
face and cheap showy clothes were
telltale evidence of what she was—a
prostitute. Marthy wondered what Chris'
reaction was going to be.
In his eyes, however, Anna was the
innocent child he had always imagined
her to be, and he was even hesitant
about ordering wine to celebrate their
reunion. Life on the barge was an
entirely new experience for Anna
Christopherson. She came to love the sea and
to respond to its beauty with the same
intensity with which her father
responded to its malignance. With the
soothing effect of her new environment,
ANNA CHRISTIE by Eugene O'Neill. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Copyright.
1922, by Eugene O'Neill. Renewed, 1949, by Eugene O'Neill.
129

and the presence of her father's
gentleness and simplicity, Anna began to lose
some of her hardness and to build up
some faith in men.
One night, while the Simeon Win-
thwp was anchored in the outer harbor
of Provincetown, Massachusetts, Chris
heard cries for help. He pulled aboard
the barge four men from a boat which
had been drifting for five days after
the wreck of their ship. One of the
men, an Irishman named Mat Burke,
took an immediate fancy to Anna, and
even in his weakened condition he made
it clear that he intended to have Anna
for his own.
Mat Burke represented everything in
life that Chris hated. In the first place,
he was a stoker on a steamship, an
occupation the old windjammer sailor
regarded as beneath contempt. Secondly,
Burke followed the sea and so was
connected in the old Swede's mind with
inevitable tragedy. But lastly, and most
important from Chris* viewpoint, Mat
was obviously in love with Anna and
wanted to take her away from him.
But to Anna Mat represented all that
she had always wanted in life. At first
she was naturally suspicious of his Irish
glibness, but she soon began to see that
underneath his voluble exterior there
were some genuine convictions, a basic
core of integrity which gave her as a
woman a sense of security, as well as,
in the light of her own past, a gnawing
fear.
Her father and Mat were mortal
enemies from the start. This conflict
reached its climax one day in the cabin
when Chris, goaded on by the Irishman's
taunts, came at Mat with a knife,
intending to kill him. Anna came in as
Mat overpowered the old man. She
realized that they were fighting over her
as if she were a piece of property which
must belong to one or the other.
This situation was so close to her
previous experience with men that she
made them both listen to a confession
of the truth about herself, of which
apparendy neither of them had been
aware. She informed her father that his
romantic picture of her idyllic life on
the Minnesota farm was untrue from
beginning to end, that she had been
worked relendessly by her relatives, and
that at sixteen she had been seduced
by one of her cousins. At last she had
gone to St. Louis and entered a bawdy
house, where her experience with men
did not diflFer greatly from what she had
known on the farm. She informed Mat
that for the first time in her life she
had realized what love might be. But
Mat, having neither intelligence nor
imagination enough to appreciate Anna's
sincerity, angrily called her names and
left the barge in disgust. Chris followed
him, and the two men proceeded to
get drunk. Anna waited on the Simeon
Winihrop for two days, hoping that Mat
would return. Finally she prepared to
go to New York and resume her old
profession.
Her father was the first to return with
the news that to save her from going
back to the old life he had signed on
the Londonderry, a steamer to
Capetown, Africa, and had made
arrangements for his pay to be turned over to
Anna. When Mat returned, Anna felt
sure he had come back merely to kill
her. He was bruised and bloody from
waterfront fights. He too had signed on
the Londonderry, and the irony of her
father and Mat on the same boat struck
Anna as funny. Finally she made Mat see
that she had hated the men who had
bought her and that all she wanted was
the assurance of one man's love.
Chris was glad that Anna and Mat
were reconciled, were going to be
married and be happy, for he now realized
that much of Anna's past misery was his
own fault. But at the same time he
wondered what tricks the malignant sea
would play on Anna and Mat in the
future.
130

ANNA KARENINA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First puhlished: 1875-1877
Principal characters:
Anna Karenina
Alexei Karenin, her husband
Count Vronsky, her lover
Stepan Oblonsky, her brother
Kitty Shtcherbatsky, Stepan's sister-in-law
Konstanttne Levin, in love with Kitty
Critique:
Anna Karinina, one of Tolstoy's
masterpieces, is distinguished by its realism.
The novel contains two plots: the tragedy
of Madame Karenina, in love with a
man who is not her husband, and the
story of Konstantine Levin, a sensitive
man whose personal philosophy is
Tolstoy's reason for writing about him. The
story of Anna is an absorbing one and
true; the person of Levin reflects
Tolstoy's own ideas about the Russian society
in which he lived. Thus the book is a
closely knit plot of a woman bound in
the fetters of the Russian social system
and a philosophy of life which attempts
to untangle the maze of incongruities
present in this society.
The Story:
Anna Karenina, the sister of Stepan
Oblonsky, came to Moscow in an attempt
to patch up a quarrel between her
brother and his wife, Dolly. There she
met the handsome young Count Vronsky,
who was rumored to be in love with
Dolly's younger sister, Kitty.
But Konstantine Levin, of an old
Muscovite family, was also in love with
Kitty, and his visit to Moscow coincided
with Anna's. Kitty refused Levin, but
to her chagrin she received no proposal
from the count. Indeed, Vronsky had
no intention of proposing to Kitty. His
heart went out to Anna the first time he
laid eyes on her, and when Anna
returned to her home in St. Petersburg,
he followed her.
Soon they began to be seen together at
soirees and at the theater, apparently
unaware of gossip which circulated about
them. Karenin, Anna's husband, became
concerned. A coldly ambitious and
dispassionate man, he felt that his social
position was at stake. One night he
discussed these rumors with Anna and
pointed out the danger of her flirtation,
as he called it. He forbade her to
entertain Vronsky at home, and cautioned her
to be more careful. He was not jealous
of his wife, only worried over the social
consequences of her behavior. He
reminded her of her duty to her young son,
Seryozha. Anna said she would obey
him, and there the matter rested.
But Anna was unable to conceal her
true feelings when Vronsky was injured
in a race-track accident. Karenin
upbraided her for her indiscreet behavior
in public. He considered a duel,
separation, divorce, but rejected all of these
courses. When he finally decided to
keep Anna under his root, he reflected
that he was acting in accordance with
the laws of religion. Anna continued to
meet Vronsky in secret.
Levin had returned to his country
estate after Kitty had refused him, and
there he busied himself in problems of
agriculture and peasant labor. One day
he went into the fields and worked witn
a scythe along with the serfs. He felt that
he was beginning to understand the old
primitive philosophy of their lives. He
planned new developments, among them
131

a cooperative enterprise system. When
he heard that Kitty was not married after
all, and that she had been ill but was
soon returning to Moscow, he resolved
to seek her hand once more. Secretly,
he knew she loved him. His pride, as
well as hers, had kept them apart.
Accordingly, Levin made the journey
to Moscow with new hope that soon
Kitty would be his wife.
Against her husband's orders, Anna
Kar&iina sent for Vronsky and told him
that she was with child. Aware of his
responsibilities to Anna, he begged her
to petition Kar^nin for a divorce so that
she would be free to marry him. Kar6-
nin informed her coldly that he would
consider the child his and accept it so
that the world should never know his
wife's disgrace, but he refused to think
of going through shameful divorce
proceedings. Kar£nin reduced Anna to
submission by warning her that he would
take Seryozha away if she persisted in
making a fool of herself.
The strained family relationship
continued unbroken. One night Kar&iin
had planned to go out, and Anna
persuaded Vronsky to come to the house.
As he was leaving, Kar^nin met Vronsky
on the front steps. Enraged, Kar^nin
told Anna that he had decided to get
a divorce and that he would keep
Seryozha in his custody. But divorce
proceedings were so intricate, the scandal
so great, the whole aspect of the step
so disgusting to Kar&iin that he could
not bring himself to go through with the
process. As Anna's confinement drew
near, he was still undecided. After
winning an important political seat, he
became even more unwilling to risk his
public reputation.
At the birth of her child, Anna became
deathly ill. Vronsky, overcome with
guilt, attempted suicide, but failed. Kard-
nin was reduced to a state of such
confusion that he determined to grant his
wife any request, since he thought her
to be on her deathbed. The sight of
Vronsky seemed to be the only thing
that restored her. After many months
1
of illness, she went with her lover and
baby daughter to Italy, where they lived
under strained circumstances.
Meanwhile, Levin proposed once more to Kitty,
And after a flurry of preparations they
Were married.
Anna Kar£nina and Vronsky returned
to Russia and went to live on his estate.
It was now impossible for Anna to return
home. Although Karenin had not gone
through with divorce proceedings, he
considered himself separated from Anna
and was everywhere thought to be a
man of fine loyalty and unswerving
honor, unjustly imposed upon by an
unfaithful wife. Sometimes Anna stole
into town to see Seryozha but her fear
of being discovered there by her husband
cut these visits short. After each visit
she returned bitter and sad. She became
more and more demanding toward
Vronsky, with the result that he spent less
time with her. She took little interest
in her child. Before long she convinced
herself that Vronsky was in love with
another woman. One day she could not
stay alone in the house. She found
herself at the railway station. She bought
a ticket. As she stood on the platform
gazing at the tracks below, the thunder
of an approaching train roared in her
ears. Suddenly she remembered a man
run over in the Moscow railroad station
on the day she and Vronsky met.
Carefully measuring the distance, she threw
herself in front of the approaching train.
After her death, Vronsky joined the
army. He had changed from a handsome,
cheerful man to one who welcomed
death; his only reason for living had been
Anna.
For Levin and Kitty life became an
increasing round of daily work and
everyday routine, which they shared with
each other. Levin knew at last the
responsibility wealth imposed upon him in
his dealings with the peasants. Kitty
helped him to share his responsibility.
Although there were many questions he
could never answer satisfactorily to him-

self, he was nevertheless aware of the pain, and happiness,
satisfying beauty of life, its toil, leisure,

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Rural England
Firs* published: 1902
Principal characters:
Ephraim Tellwright, a miser
Anna, his older daughter
Agnes, his younger daughter
Henry Mynors, Anna's suitor
Willie Price, in love with Anna
Beatrice Sutton, Anna's friend
Critique:
Anna of the Vive Towns was the first
of Bennett's novels dealing with the
pottery region of the Five Towns. It is
primarily a novel of character, but Anna
changes so slightly that the reader is
hardly aware of any development in her
attitudes or actions. In fact, her tragedy
occurs because she cannot change her
original nature. But in spite of certain
weaknesses, the story has touches of
Bennett's great writing skill and human
insight and is worth the time of all
Bennett lovers. The novel is also Bennett's
most detailed study of the repressive
effects of Wesleyanism, which affects all
his characters in one degree or another.
The Story:
Ephraim Tellwright was a miser, one
of the wealthiest men in any of the Five
Towns, a group of separate villages joined
by a single road. He was a former
preacher, concerned more with getting
congregations in good financial shape,
however, than with the souls of his
parishioners. Although he had made money
from rentals and foreclosures, in
addition to marrying money, he lived in the
most frugal way possible and gave his
two daughters nothing but the barest
essentials. Both of his wives had died,
the first giving him his daughter Anna
and the second producing Agnes before
her death. Mr. Tellwright was usually
amiable. As long as his meals were on
time, no money was wasted, and the
house was never left alone and
unguarded, he paid little attention to his daugh-
" ters.
Anna loved her father even though
she could never feel close to him. Agnes,
much younger, followed her sister's lead.
The two girls were especially close, since
their father ignored them most of the
time.
On Anna's twenty-first birthday her
father called her into his office and told
her that she would that day inherit
almost fifty thousand pounds from her
mother's estate. He had invested the
original sum wisely until it had grown
to a fortune. Anna, who had never owned
one pound to call her own, could not
comprehend an amount so large.
Accustomed to letting her father handle all
business affairs, she willingly gave him
control of her fortune. The income from
the stocks and rentals was deposited in
the bank in her name, but she gave her
father her checkbook and signed only
when he told her to. The money made
little difference in Anna's life; it simply
lay in the bank until her father told her
to invest it.
ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS by Arnold Bennett. By permission of The Owners of the Copyright, of
A. P. Watt & Son, London, and of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1902, by McClure,
Phillips & Co. Renewed. All rights reserved.
134

One result of the money, however,
was unhappy for Anna. Among her
properties was a run-down factory owned by
Titus Price. Because Price was
continually behind in his rent, Mr. Tellwright
forced Anna to keep demanding
something on account. Knowing that the
property would never rent to anyone else, the
old miser never put Price out but kept
hounding him for as much as the man
could pay. Anna usually had to deal with
Willie Price, the son, and she always-
left the interview with a feeling of guilt.
Although the sight of Willie's
embarrassment left her unhappy, she always
demanded his money because she was afraid
to face her father without it.
A teacher in the Sunday School in
which Anna taught was Henry Mynors,
a pillar in the church and a successful
man in the community. Anna, attracted
to him, tried to join in his religious
fervor, but she could not quite bring
herself to repent and to accept God publicly.
She felt repentance to be a private
matter, not one to be dragged out in
meeting. Henry was patient with her,
however. When the townspeople said that he
was interested mainly in her money,
Anna refused to believe the gossip. Henry
began to call on her occasionally,
combining his courtship with business with
Mr. Tellwright. The miser persuaded
Anna to invest some of her money in
Henry's business, after arranging first for
a large share of the profits and a high
interest. Anna, caring little for the
money, liked to be associated with Henry and
spent much time with him.
After Anna had received her fortune,
she was invited for the first time to the
house of Mrs. Sutton, the social leader
of the town. Mrs. Sutton's daughter
Beatrice and Anna became friends. There
was talk that Beatrice and Henry Mynors
had once been engaged. The Suttons
took Anna and Henry to the Isle of Man
on a vacation, and Anna thought there
could never again be such luxurious
living. She had had to take ten pounds of
her own money without her father's
knowledge in order to get clothes for the
trip, and the miser had berated her
viciously when she told him what she
had done. Being with Henry and the
Suttons, however, helped her forget his
anger. When the vacation was marred by
Beatrice's serious illness, Anna won a
permanent place in the Suttons'
affection by her unselfish and competent
nursing.
After Beatrice had recovered, Anna
and Henry returned home. Before they
left the island Henry proposed to Anna
and she accepted. Later her father gave
his consent because Henry knew the
value of money. Young Agnes was
enchanted by the romantic aspects of the
courtship, and Anna was happy in her
quiet love for Henry. But her joy at
being engaged was soon clouded by the
news that old Mr. Price, Willie's father,
had hanged himself. Anna felt that she
and her father were to blame because
they had hounded him for his rent.
Henry assured her that Mr. Price was in debt
to many people and that she need not
feel guilty. Nevertheless, Anna worried
a great deal about the suicide and about
Willie.
Later Willie confessed to her that a
bank note he had given in payment had
been forged. The confession seemed to
reduce Willie to nothing. Anna,
realizing that he and his father had been
driven to desperation, tried to protect
Willie and his father's reputation by
taking the forged note from her father's
office. When she told Mr. Tellwright that
she had burned the note, he was so
furious with her that he never forgave her.
Because Willie was planning to make
a fresh start in Australia, Henry arranged
to buy the Price house for them to live
in after he and Anna were married.
Although Anna was sure she could never
be happy in a house the miserable Prices
had owned, she was docile and let Henry
make all the arrangements.
When Anna told her father that she
needed one hundred pounds to pay for her
linens and her wedding clothes, Mr. Tell-
135

wright denounced her for a spendthrift.
Handing over the checkbook, he told her
not to bother him again about her
money. Henry, pleased at the turn of events,
was full of plans for the use of Anna's
fortune. Then there was more bad news
about Mr. Price. Before his death he had
defrauded the church of fifty pounds.
Anna tried to cover up for him so that
Willie would never know, but someone
told the secret. Willie, ready to leave for
Australia, heard of the theft. When he
told Anna goodbye, he was like a
whipped child. As Anna looked into his
eyes for the last time, she knew suddenly
that he loved her and that she loved
him. She let him go, however, because
she felt bound by her promise to Henry.
She had been dutiful all her life; it was
too late for her to change.
Willie was never heard from again.
Had anyone in Five Towns happened to
look into an abandoned pitshaft, the
mystery of Willie would have been solved.
The meek lad had found his only way to
peace.
136

THE ANNALS OF TACITUS
Type of work: History
Author: Cornelius Tacitus (c. 55-c. 120)
Time: 14-69
Locale: The Roman Empire
First transcribed: c. 119
Principal personages:
Tiberius, Augustus Caesar's stepson and successor
Germanicus (Nero Claudius Drusus),Tiberius' brother
Agrippina (Major), Germanicus' wife and Caligula's mother
Drusus, Tiberius' son
Drusus, Germanicus' son
Caligula, Tiberius' successor
Claudius, Caligula's uncle and his successor
Messalina, Claudius' first wife
Agrippina (Minor), Claudius' niece and second wife
Britannicus, Claudius' son, killed by Nero
Nero, Agrippina's son and Claudius' successor
Poppaea, Nero's wife
Aelius Sejanus, Tiberius' favorite
Pi so, leader of a conspiracy against Nero
Cornelius Tacitus is by an accident of
fate the sole surviving historian of his
day; all the writings of his contemporaries
and immediate predecessors are lost. It
may be that the fates were guided by
standards of literary aesthetics rather than
scientific accuracy, for though Tacitus'
facts and interpretations have from time
to time been severely criticized, he has
always been admired for his lucid, morally-
charged narrative style. The Annals are
not merely a skillful prose account of a
half-century of Roman history, but also a
compassionate evaluation of tne horrors of
imperial despotism. In fact, the earliest
extant manuscript is entitled Ab excessu
divi Augusti (although in Book IV, the
writer refers to his work as Annals').
Obviously, Tacitus saw in Roman
history a gradual decline from a primitive
Golden Age when no laws were
necessary to times when laws became a
necessity and, finally, an abominable evil.
As the Annals proceed from the reign of
Tiberius to those of Claudius and Nero
(a section dealing with Caligula is lost,
as are the last books) the tyranny becomes
more cruel, the populace and patricians
grow more submissive, the opportunists
and informers become more despicable,
and the dwindling number of virtuous
men find themselves more helpless.
In these matters, Tacitus is by no
means taciturn; in fact, so great are the
horrors depicted in the Annals that until
the atrocities of twentieth-century politics
and war recapitulated them on a hor-
rendously magnified scale, civilized men
were inclined to view Tacitus' account as
grossly exaggerated, beyond the possible
depths of human nature.
Tacitus is modest about his aims,
though the grave irony of his remarks
should not go unnoticed:
The matter upon which I am
occupied is circumscribed, and unproductive
of renown to the author—a state of
undisturbed peace, or only interrupted in
limited degree, the sad condition of
affairs in the city, and a prince indifferent
about extending the bounds of the
empire. Not unprofitable, however, will it
be to investigate matters which, though
unimportant in a superficial view,
frequently give the first impulse to events
of magnitude. ... I bave only to
record the mandates of despotism,
incessant accusations, faithless friendships,
the ruin of innocence; the one
unvarying repetition of causes terminating in
the same event, and presenting no
novelty from their similarity and tiresome
repetition. (IV, 32-33)
137

In general, Tacitus presents not a
sustained history, but a chronological
depiction of selected events—some
thoroughly detailed over several chapters and
others sketched in lightly, continually
referred to but not described extensively
in any one place. It has been conjectured
that the original Annals consisted of
three hexads, the pattern employed by
Vergil, Statius, Polynus, and Cicero; but
there is no concrete evidence that there
were two books written after XVI, and
the loss of Books VII-X prevents us from
being absolutely certain they fitted with
Books XI-XII to constitute a middle hexad.
At any rate, the Annals, as they now
stand, can be conveniently arranged by
subject matter—the reign of Tiberius is
the concern of the first six books, of
Claudius in books XI-XII, and of Nero
in the final four books. This is not to say
that the focus of attention is concentrated
on the three emperors. In dealing with
Tiberius, for example, Tacitus devotes
the opening forty-nine chapters to the
first year (more space than to any other
year of the entire history), beginning
with the jockeying for power after the
death of Augustus. Since Tiberius never
led troops in battle after he became
emperor, the narrative shifts to Tiberius' son
Drusus (Chapters 16-30) quelling the
Pannonian mutiny and to Germanicus
(most of Chapters 31-71) campaigning
on the Rhine. These two men, logical
heirs to the throne, were the objects of
the intrigues of the utterly unscrupulous
Aelius Sejanus, Tiberius' favorite.
Jealous of Germanicus' successes, Tiberius
had him recalled and sent to the East as
king in Armenia, where he died in A.D.
19, probably at the hands of Piso under
orders from Tiberius. Piso's trial ended
abruptly with his unexplained murder,
though Tacitus hints that Tiberius
arranged that as well. Drusus, then,
dominated the sons of Germanicus (Nero,
another Drusus, and Caligula) as heir-
apparent, but Tiberius openly preferred
Seianus—"a stranger was called in as
coadjutor in the government; nay, how
little was wanting to his being; declared
colleague." This Sejanus, "whose heart
insatiably lusted for supreme domination,"
then dispatched Drusus with a slow
poison that made him appear a victim of
disease, and set out to marry Livia, his
widow and the sisfer of Germanicus. There
remained, however, Agrippina, widow of
Germanicus, and her three sons. Sejamn
contrived onen enmity between Agrip-
pina and Tiberius and skillfully arranged
for the emperor to retire to Capri from
Rome in A.D. 27. There, while Sejanus
plotted his rise to power, the ruler
"indulged his cruel and libidinous
disposition ... in the secrecy of a retired
situation." One of the most tantalizing
lacunae of the Annals deals with Agrip-
pina's hopeless struggle for the rights of
her sons and the final conflict between
Sejanus and the emperor, a struggle
leading to Sejanus' execution.
The first hexad ends with Tiberius at
the age of seventy-eight, when he had
outlived all the intriguers who surrounded
him and relinquished "nothing of his
libidinous excesses." His end was dramatic,
and Tacitus relishes the irony. Assured
by Tiberius' physician that his death was
imminent,
Caligula in the midst of a great throng
of persons, paying their gratulations,
was already going forth to make a
solemn entrance on the sovereignty, when
suddenly a notice came, "that Tiberius
had recovered his sight and voice, and
had called for some persons to give him
food to restore him." The consternation
was universal: the concourse about
Caligula dispersed in all directions . . .
Caligula himself stood fixed in silence
—fallen from the highest hopes, he now
expected the worst. Macro [Caligula's
right hand man], undismayed, ordered
the old man to be smothered with a
quantity of clothes. . . . (VI, 51)
The dramatic technique is magnificent.
Caligula is left as a monstrous legacy to
Rome. However, the extant history
resumes in Book XI with Claudius'
succession to the purple. The new emperor
is depicted as a cut above his
predecessors: he dignified the theater, augmented
138

the alphabet, restrained predatory
creditors, increased the Senate, and
incorporated new provinces into the Empire.
But the intrigues flourished, centering
upon Claudius* wife Messalina, who was
concerned at the way in which freedmen
(especially Narcissus and Pallas) had
gained the actual power. Messalina,
knowing she was about to be murdered
by Claudius* agents, committed suicide:
"Tidings were then carried to Claudius
'that Messalina was no more*; without
inquiring whether by her own or another's
hand, [he] called for a cup of wine and
proceeded in the feast." Tacitus
brilliantly achieves a sense of horror at the
moral corruption of the Empire with just
such detail and understatement. Book XII
opens with the contest among the
freedmen concerning the choice of a new wife
for Claudius. Pallas prevailed with his
suggestion of Agrippina, despite the fact
that she was the daughter of Claudius'
brother Germanicus. The horrendous
narrative continues to delineate
debauchery and chaos. Nero destroyed the
emperor's son Britannicus, and Agrippina
afterward poisoned Claudius in order to
secure the succession for her own son,
Nero. Book XIII tells of Agrippina's
struggles for power, first against the freed-
woman Acte and then against Poppaea,
Nero's wife—murders and
counter-murders and abortive palace revolts that went
on while Nero engaged in his orgiastic
debauches. Book XIV opens with Pop-
paea's vigorously dramatic reproach against
Nero for his cowardice in not destroying
rr's mother, who had desperately clung to
life and power by incestuously lavishing
her own body on her son. Tacitus
handles Nero's attempts on Agrippina's life
with almost grotesque comedy. First, she
was put to sea in a faulty vessel, but she
swam ashore while another woman,
hoping to save herself by claiming to be the
emperor's mother, was slain. Finally,
brute force was resorted to and she was
slain in bed: ". . . to the centurion, as
he was drawing his sword to dispatch her,
she presented her womb, and with a loud
voice, 'Strike your sword into my belly/
she cried, and was instantly dispatched."
Thus, Tacitus vivifies an important
dramatic scene with a stroke of realism.
Nero, struck with remorse and
apparently unaware of the extent to which
Roman society had degenerated to his
own low level, feared to return to the
capital. Matricide during the Republic
would have seemed the destruction of
morality's basis, the family. But Nero's
entry into Rome was triumphant and he
thenceforth "abandoned himself to all his
inordinate passions which, though
insufficiently controlled, had been somewhat
checked by his reverence for his mother,
such as it was." Throughout his career
"Nero wallowed in all sots of
defilements, lawful and unlawful: and seemed
to leave no atrocity which could add to
his pollution," including one which
Tacitus describes with great disgust—a mock-
marriage "with all the solemnities of
wedlock" to a homosexual. The height of his
inhuman cruelty was the great fire of
Rome, in which he madly reveled and
from which he gained enormous profits.
The most sustained episode of the final
books concerns the conspiracy in A.D. 65
of Piso and eighteen other leaders to
assassinate Nero and set up Piso as emperor.
Piso gave no promise of better
government, since he was almost as addicted to
sensuous pleasure as Nero himself, but
some change was obviously necessary.
The conspiracy had difficulty settling on
a method, and before it could get under
way the plot was inadvertently revealed
when Epicharis, a freedwoman, attempted
to solicit one of Nero's naval officers,
Volusius Proculus, who alerted Nero.
One of the rare cases of personal virtue
was Epicharis' refusal to betray the
conspirators, despite the horrible torture she
endured. In their haste the conspirators
betrayed themselves, and in panic Nero
began wholesale slaughters. Chapters 37-
70 constitute a steady series of desth
scenes—Epicharis, Seneca, Subrius Fla-
vus, Lucan (who died reciting his verses),
and others—each presented with vivid
detail. Piso, himself, though urged to stir up
a popular revolt, chose to sever his veins
139

and 'left a will full of odious flattery to
Nero, in tenderness to his wife, a
depraved woman and void of every
recommendation but personal beauty."
The deaths of those close to Nero
continued. Poppaea died "by a fit of passion
in her husband, who gave her a violent
blow with his foot when she was
pregnant; for I cannot believe he poisoned
her as some have stated." Her funeral was
sumptuous; she was embalmed with spices
rather than cremated as was the custom,
but her death was "rejoiced at by those
who recollected her . . . lewdness and
cruelty." An account of the last two
years of Nero's life is missing, and the
Annahy ending in mid-sentence, suggest
that this section was lost.
Such are the main lines of Tacitus'
history, but the text abounds in frequent
digressions tracing in close detail the
fortunes of the Roman Empire and its
provinces and outposts so vividly that some
authorities suggest that he must have had
a host of reliable sources in the form of
autobiographies and diaries. However,
the Annals are clearly the personal
document of a writer with sincerity,
intelligence, courage, and enormous artistry. In
a very real sense, Tacitus was an
Existentialist in his view of social corruption
replacing traditional morality. Convinced
that human effort is absurd, he was
sustained, however, by a faith in human
solidarity and unity in suffering. The
gravity of his tragic vision is relieved by
a deeply felt compassion for suffering
mankind, and he has left in the Annals
one of the greatest histories of all time.
140

ANNALS OF THE PARISH
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Gait (1779-1839)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1760-1810
Locale: Scotland
First published: 1821
Principal characters:
The Reverend Micah Balwhtdder, minister at Dalmailing
Lord Eaglesham, the minister's friend and patron
Betty Lanshaw, the first Mrs. Balwhidder
Lizy Kibbock, the second Mrs. Balwhidder
Mrs. Nugent, a widow, the third Mrs. Balwhidder
Mr. Cayenne, an industrialist
Lady MacAdam, a high-spirited old lady in the parish
Critique:
John Gait was important to his own
time both as a settler in Canada and as
a novelist who presented Scottish life in
fiction. As both a novelist and a leader
in the Canada Company, he has,
however, been largely forgotten. In the field
of fiction Gait was so far overshadowed
by Sir Walter Scott in his own time that
he never became widely known outside
of Britain, and the neglect has
continued, unfortunately, to this time. A Scot
himself, Gait wrote in the Annals of the
Parish about the Scotland he and his
parents had known, and he wrote lovingly.
His humane feeling and the love he
gave to his own country can be marked
on almost every page he wrote. In this
novel the strongest and most
sympathetically portrayed character is of the
Scottish Presbyterian clergyman of strict Cal-
vinist persuasion. Hardly less important
are the descriptions of the new class of
industrialists.
The Story:
As a young man just out of divinity
school at the University of Glasgow, and
but recently accepted for the ministry,
the Reverend Micah Balwhidder was
appointed to the charge of the established
Presbyterian church in the village of
Dalmailing, in western Scotland. Because he
had been appointed by a great landowner,
without their approval, the people of
Dalmailing tried to prevent Mr. Balwhidder
from taking his post. On the Sunday Mr.
Balwhidder was installed, the ministers
officiating had to enter the church
through a window, because the door had
been nailed fast. Nor did they try to go
to the church without a guard of soldiers.
Immediately after being installed, Mr.
Balwhidder began a series of visits to his
parishioners, as he believed a good Cal-
vinistic clergyman should do. He was
rebuffed at door after door, until Thomas
Thorl, the minister's most outspoken
opponent, relented and accepted him. The
rest of the parish followed within a
matter of weeks. Soon after the excitement
died down, Mr. Balwhidder married his
first wife, Betty Lanshaw, a cousin with
whom he had grown up; he believed
strongly that a minister should be
married to accomplish his best work.
During the first few years of his
ministry, during the 1760's, Mr. Balwhidder
fought earnestly against two habits among
his parishioners, smuggling and drinking.
He felt that both were sinful. In the end,
however, he became reconciled to tea as
a beverage, for he thought it better for
his people to drink that instead of
spirituous liquors. His main objection to
smuggling was that it encouraged
lawlessness among his people and resulted in the
appearance of illegitimate children.
One of the chief problems in
Dalmailing, so far as the minister was concerned,
was the Malcolm family, composed of
Mrs. Malcolm, a widow, and her five
children. The minister always tried to
141

help them succeed, for they were
hardworking folk who had known better days.
The first ray of success for them came
when Charles Malcolm was made an
officer in the merchant marine, an event
which gladdened Mr. Balwhidder's heart.
In that same year the first Mrs. Balwhid-
der died. Her death saddened the whole
parish, for everyone had come to love her.
In the following year, 1764, Mr. Bal-
whidder tried to write a doctrinal book.
He found, however, that he had too
much to do to keep his house and servants
in order and so he decided to look about
for another wife, and none too soon, for
one of his maidservants was with child.
Some of the village gossips blamed the
minister, although the actual father
admitted his part in the affair. As soon as
a year and a day had passed after his first
wife's death, Mr. Balwhidder married
lizy Kibbock, the daughter of a very
successful farmer in the parish.
The second Mrs. Balwhidder
immediately set out to augment her husband's
stipend. She purchased cattle and hogs
and set up a regular dairy. Within a year
she had sufficient income from her
projects so that the minister's pay could be
ut into the bank. Her husband approved
eartily of her industry, not only because
he himself was made comfortable but
because the industry of his wife encouraged
greater efforts on the part of other women
in the parish. In that year three coal
mines were opened in the parish,
bringing new prosperity to the people.
In 1767 a great event occurred in the
village's history. Lord Eaglesham, after
being thrown in a muddy road which ran
through the village, resolved to have a
fine highway built to prevent a second
occurrence. The new road made
transportation much easier for the villagers. The
event also caused the lord and Mr.
Balwhidder to become friends, for at the
time of the accident the clergyman had
lent Lord Eaglesham some dry clothes.
Through the nobleman's influence Mr.
Balwhidder was on many occasions able
to help the people of his village.
Scandal threatened the pulpit in 1772,
when a visitor from another parish, Mr.
Heckletext, was invited to speak. Shortly
after his sermon the church session
learned that he was the father of an
illegitimate child by one of the village girls.
It was a bitter lesson for Mr. Balwhidder,
who resolved never again to permit a
man to speak from his pulpit until he
had thoroughly investigated the stranger's
habits and character.
The 1770's were disturbing times for
the minister of Dalmailing. Mr.
Balwhidder was a peace-loving man who hated to
see his young parishioners enlist to fight
against the rebellious colonists in
America. More especially, he hated to hear of
the battles in which some of them were
killed. The greatest blow given him by
the war was the death of the widow
Malcolm's son, who died a hero in a naval
battle with the French. Mr. Balwhidder,
who looked upon the fatherless Malcolm
family as his particular charge, grieved as
much as if the boy had been his own son.
He was also in difficulties with Lady
MacAdam, an older woman who had
been at court in England and France in
her youth. A spirited woman who
wanted to have a good time in life and to
dictate to other people, she was beside
herself when she learned that her son, an
officer in the Royal Scots regiment, was
in love with the oldest Malcolm girl. She
mistreated the girl shamefully, refusing
even to listen to the minister's remonstra-
tions. Using his own judgment, he finally
had to marry the young people against
her wishes. She soon became reconciled,
however, after the marriage had taken
place.
After the close of the American
Revolution, a loyal American who had
returned to Britain settled in Dalmailing.
This man, Mr. Cayenne, had a temper as
fiery as his name. The weaving mill he
set up near the village brought prosperity
to the parish, but it also brought troubles.
During the 1790's the weavers who
settled there were in favor of the French
Revolution, while Mr. Balwhidder and
142

his more conservative parishioners were
all against it. Aside from their political
differences, the weavers also belonged to
different faiths, a fact which gave the
minister grave concern, for he disliked
any other church to set itself up as long
as the Presbyterian Church was the
official church of the land. He fought a
lengthy but losing battle against churches
which preached other doctrines than his
own. It was the one problem which he
felt he could not solve, for the tide of
history was against him.
In 1796, Mr. Balwhidder again became
a widower. Still of the opinion that to
serve his people best he ought to be a
married man, he took another wife a year
later. His third wife was Mrs. Nugent,
a widow of good reputation.
As the years passed the minister's two
children, a son and a daughter, grew up
and were married. Finally, in 1810, the
church authorities decided that Mr.
Balwhidder who had served his parish for
fifty years, should have some help. But
he had become so deaf and so forgetful
that he himself decided to retire. He
preached a farewell sermon to his
crowded church and then set himself to write
into a book the annals of the parish he
had served so long.
143

ANNALS OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE
Type of work: History
Author: Livy (Titus Livius, 59 B.C.-A.D. 17)
Time: 753-9 B.C.
Locale: Rome, Spain, Carthage. Greece, Macedonia
First transcribed: c. 26 B.C.-A.D. 14
Livy undertook a great task. In his Ab
urbe condita libri, he was attempting to
narrate the history of nearly eight
centuries, from the time of Romulus and
Remus to the reign of Tiberius. The work
occupied 142 books, of which barely a
quarter have been preserved: Books I-X
and XXI-XLV, along with some
fragments of several others. Even so, this
material is enough to fill six volumes in one
English translation and thirteen in
another.
Titus Livius Patavinus (from his
birthplace, Padua), was originally a
teacher of rhetoric and apparently, from
casual references in his writing, a friend
of the Emperor Augustus. Perhaps the
emperor, as part of his program to glorify
Rome, suggested that Livy stop teaching
and write a history of the city. The
project represented a challenge. His only
sources were traditions, the official
temple annals listing the consuls and the
chief events of each year, and personal
records, frequently exaggerated, kept by
the famous families. Like Herodotus,
however, Livy was always attracted to a
colorful story. Macaulay declared in disgust:
"No historian with whom we are
acquainted has shown so complete
indifference to the truth."
But probably a truthful chronicle was
not what Livy set out to produce. In
addition to his patriotic duty, he wanted by
his dramatic power and the charm of his
style to impress the sophisticated readers
of Rome. Accuracy came second. He was
no soldier in his battles, no statesman in
recording the problems of government;
even as a geographer he was most hazy.
In an epoch when research was
unknown, he was no critical historian.
When he found two conflicting accounts,
he was likely to chose the more colorful,
or include both and let the reader be the
judge.
The Annals were issued in "decades,"
or units of ten, a volume at a time, the
first between 27 and 25 B.C., at the time
Vergil was writing his Aeneid. The work
did what the author intended: painted
vividly the grandeur of Rome, even
though, like an artist, he sometimes
changed details for better composition.
Whatever his faults as a historian, Livy
the novelist, the dramatist, the orator, left
unforgettable pages for readers of later
generations.
It is a wonder that so much of his
work has come down to us, for he had
many enemies. Pope Gregory I, for
example, ordered all available copies burned
because of the superstitions they
contained, and other Church fathers were
also to blame for the hundred books that
have disappeared, including those about
Livy's own times. More than one modern
historian has wished he could exchange
the first ten books for those in which Livy
set down what he had seen. Few,
however, would willingly give up the books
dealing with the sixteen years of the
Punic Wars, the story of the life and
death struggle between Rome and
Carthage.
"It would be a satisfaction to me,"
declared Livy in the preface to the first
decade of his Annals, "that I have
contributed my share to perpetuate the
achievements of a people, the lords of the
world." He determined "neither to affirm
nor refute" the traditions antedating the
founding of Rome, even though they
were "more suited to the fiction of poetry
than to the genuine record of history."
In writing them down, however, his aim
was to acquaint the Romans of his day
with the lives and customs of ancestors
who might serve as examples in the
present low moral status of Rome, "when we
144

can neither endure our vices nor their
remedies."
He began by repeating the legend of
Aeneas, who led the Trojans to Latium
and married Lavinia. He listed the petty
chiefs who followed, making no changes
in the story of Romulus and Remus and
their wolf nurse. He related briefly the
account of the founding of Rome, April
21, 753 B.C., when the ceremonies ended
with the quarrel between the brothers
and the death of Remus. By inviting in
the discontented from the neighboring
tribes, Romulus populated the city, then
provided wives by kidnaping the Sabine
women who came as guests to a feast.
In the remaining books of the first
decade, which carries the story through
460 years, Livy paid special attention to
Rome's virtuous and exemplary citizens:
Cincinnatus, summoned from his plow to
drive back the Aequians; Virginius,
protecting his daughter Virginia from lustful
decemvir Appius Claudius; Camillus,
returning from exile to fight the Cauls;
Manlius, defending the capitol; and the
patriotic Curtius, riding his horse into a
chasm in the Forum to preserve his city.
The decade ends when the defeat of the
Samnites left Rome the master of Italy.
The next ten books have been lost.
Only because they were summarized in
an epitome does the world know Livy's
account of what happened between 294
and 219 B.C.
At the beginning of the next decade,
Books XXI-XXX, Livy declared: "I am
about to relate the most memorable of all
wars that were ever waged, the war which
the Carthaginians under Hannibal
maintained against the Roman people." As far
as ancient history goes, he was
undoubtedly right. It was a war between the Indo-
Germanic and the Semitic races for world
dominion. The two were not only equally
matched, but they were also familiar with
the enemy's war tactics and potential
power; and their hatred for each other, as
the historian pointed out, was as strong
as their armies.
Livy never minimized the exploits of
twenty-six-year-old Hannibal, who
became the outstanding figure in his book.
What details he could not find recorded
of the crossing of the Alps by ninety
thousand infantry, twelve thousand
cavalry, and thirty-seven elephants, he made
up from his imagination.
Scipio the father, having failed to stop
the Carthaginians in Gaul, tried again on
the plains of Italy, but one defeat after
another brought terror to the imperial
city. After Trebia and Lake Trasimene,
the delaying tactics of Fabius Maximus
succeeded in holding back the invaders
for a time, but the impatience of another
consul, Varro, resulted in the culminating
Roman disaster at Cannae (216 B.C.).
Had Hannibal taken advantage of his
victory, he could easily have entered
Rome.
Book XXV deals with another phase of
the struggle. Marcellus, besieging
Syracuse, was held at bay for three years by
the craft of a seventy-four-year-old
mathematician, Archimedes, with his
invention of the catapult and the grappling
hooks that lifted the prows of Roman
ships trying to attack the breakwater, and
sank them. Ultimately, however, the
Romans found the weak spot in the defenses
and captured the island.
On another battlefront, a second Sci'
pio, later to be called Africanus, was
trying to keep Spain from being used as the
Carthaginians' European headquarters. A
comparison of the version by Livy with
another by Polybius shows the superiority
of Livy's technique. Though Scipio could
not immobilize Hasdrubal entirely or
prevent his departure with reinforcements
for his brother in Italy, the delay did con-'
tribute to the Carthaginian defeat on the
Metaurus River, a Roman victory that
was quickly neutralized by the death of
Marcellus in a clash with Hannibal.
Eventually, however, Roman might
prevailed when Scipio carried the war into
Africa. Although Hannibal was recalled
for the defense of Carthage, his veterans
were no match for the Roman legionaries
at the Battle of Zama (202 B.C.), and
defeated Carthage was literally wiped
from the map.
145

An additional fifteen books of Livy's
history survive, dealing with Roman
expansion in Greece and Asia and ending
when Macedonia became a Roman
province. But this story is an anticlimax. No
longer were the soldiers fighting for the
life of Rome, but the plunder they hoped
to acquire, so that the reader does not
follow the story with the same interest.
But even in these pages, the storytelling
ability of Livy is still apparent. It is easy
to understand why he was called the
greatest prose writer of the Augustine
Age.
146

ANTHONY ADVERSE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hervey Allen (1889-1949)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
lime of plot: Late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
Locale: Western Europe, Africa, North America
First published: 1933
Principal characters:
Anthony Adverse
Don Luis, Marquis da Vincitata, husband of Anthony's mother
Maria, Anthony's mother
Mr. Bonnyfeather, Anthony's grandfather
Faith Paleologus, Mr. Bonnyfeather's housekeeper
Angela Guiseppe, Anthony's mistress
Florence Udney, Anthony's first wife
Dolores de la Fuente, Anthony's second wife
Vincent Nolte, Anthony's friend, a banker
Critique:
Anthony Adverse is the story of a
soldier of fortune whose ramblings carry
him over a large part of Europe, to
Africa, and to North America. The book
contains a wealth of incident, as well as
mention of historical personages. The
characters, however, are subordinate to
the plot. The novel is also interesting
because its various sections represent
different types of romantic fiction.
The Story:
The pretty young Marquise Maria da
Vincitata, daughter of a Scottish
merchant of Leghorn, fell in love with young
Denis Moore within a year of her
marriage and met with him secretly in France
while her husband was taking a cure for
his gout. Don Luis, the arrogant Marquis
da Vincitata, discovering the intrigue,
spirited his wife away and killed her
gallant, luckless lover when he started
out in pursuit. Maria's baby was born
high up in the Alps. After bis wife had
died in childbirth, Don Luis took the
child to Leghorn, where he stealthily
deposited the infant at the Convent of
Jesus the Child. The only tokens of its
parentage were a cape and a statue of the
Madonna which had belonged to Maria.
The boy, christened Anthony by the
nuns, lived at the convent until he was
ten. Then he was delivered to a
prominent merchant of the town, Mr.
Bonnyfeather, to become his apprentice.
Bonnyfeather and his housekeeper
had no trouble recognizing the cape and
the doll as possessions of the merchant's
daughter, Maria. Although Anthony was
given the surname Adverse and was not
told of his relationship to his benefactor,
he was carefully educated with the tacit
understanding that he would one day
inherit the flourishing Bonnyfeather
business.
Anthony matured early. Seduced by
the housekeeper, Faith Paleologus, he
also had a brief affair with the cook's
daughter, Angela. He was attracted, too,
by the English consul's daughter,
Florence Udney, but was not encouraged
by her mother, who was unaware that
Anthony had any expectations.
Anticipating the eventual arrival of
Napoleon's army in Leghorn, Mr.
Bonnyfeather quietly liquidated his business,
sent his money abroad, and made plans
to retire. He arranged passage for his
grandson on the American ship Warn-
panoag, under Captain Jorham. Anthony
was to sail to Cuba to collect some money
on a long-overdue account.
ANTHONY ADVERSE by Hervey Allen. By permission of the author and the publishers, Rinehart & Co., Inc.
Jopyright, 1933, by Hervey Allen.
147

The Wamyanoag stopped first at
Genoa. There Anthony visited Fathei
Xavier, a Jesuit, who had been his
guardian at the convent. Mr. Bonnyfeather
had given the priest the right to decide
whether the time had come to tell
Anthony he was the merchant's heir. It was
from the priest's lips that Anthony
learned of his origin and prospects.
When the Wamfanoag reached
Havana Anthony discovered that his
creditor, Gallego, was in Africa as a slave
trader. With the aid of the captain-
general, Don Luis de la Casas, a plan was
devised whereby Anthony would sail to
Africa as a government agent. There he
would impound a cargo of Gallego's
slaves, bring them to Cuba for sale, and
split the proceeds with the captain-
general, thus satisfying the Bonnyfeather
debt. Strongly attracted by Don Luis'
young relation, Dolores de la Fuente,
the young man finally agreed to stay in
Africa and to ship several additional
cargoes of slaves, for the enrichment of
the captain-general and the increase of
his own hopes that he might one day
marry Dolores.
The trip aboard the Ariostatica was a
trying one. Father Francois, a monk who
was being shipped to Africa because he
had tried to give aid and comfort to the
slaves, fell ill of yellow fever and nearly
died. Anthony, forced to rule the crew
and its captain with an iron hand, was
able to put down a mutiny as the ship
sailed up the Rio Pongo to the Gallego
establishment. There he learned that
Gallego had died a few months before,
leaving his factor, Ferdinando, in charge.
Anthony took over the trade station
and for three years shipped cargoes of
human freight to Cuba to be sold there.
To the sorrow of Father Francois, he took
the half-breed Neleta, Ferdinando's sis-
tef, as his mistress. But he was not able
completely to reconcile himself to trading
in human bodies.
While Anthony was absent from the
trading station, Father Francois was
captured by a native witch doctor, Mnom-
bibi, and crucified. Upon his return,
Anthony found the priest pinioned to his
own cross. With the knowledge that Mr.
Bonnyfeather was dead, and that Captain
Bittern of the Unicorn was waiting in
the Rir Pongo to bear him back to
Leghorn, Anthony decided to leave the
trading station. He left Neleta behind.
Don Luis, Marquis da Vincitata,
arrived in Leghorn at the same time.
They were both there on business, the
marquis to close up the Casa
Bonnyfeather, of which he was landlord, and
Anthony to receive the merchant's will
from Vincent Nolte, a banker with whom
he had been friendly in his youth.
Vincent suggested that Anthony take
advantage of an offer made by M. Ouvrard,
a French financier who was planning to
supply the bankrupt Spanish government
with French food and money, in return
for silver from Mexican mines. Anthony
was to take charge of the shipments,
which would arrive at New Orleans from
Vera Cruz, and to reinvest profitably as
much of the money as he could. The rest
was to be shipped to Florence Udney's
husband, David Parish, in Philadelphia,
and from there on to Europe.
Traveling to Paris to make
arrangements, Vincent and Anthony were
waylaid in the Alps by Don Luis, who tried
to force their coach over a cliff. His plans
were thwarted, however, and his own
carriage and coachman plunged into the
deep gorge. At the time Don Luis was
traveling with Faith Paleologus, whom
he had made his mistress. The two had
dismounted to watch the destruction of
Anthony and his friend. After their plot
failed, they were left to descend the
mountain on foot.
In Paris Anthony met Angela for the
first time in many years. She had borne
him a son, and had become a famous
singer and the mistress of Napoleon. She
refused to marry Anthony and follow
him to America, but she did give him his
son. At her entreaty, Anthony left the
148

child with Vincent's childless cousin,
Anna.
Anthony's affairs prospered in New
Orleans. He was able to invest the silver
profitably, to form a bank, and to build
a handsome plantation for himself.
When David Parish died of heart failure,
Anthony married Florence. Their
daughter, Maria, was three, when the
plantation house caught fire one night while
Anthony was away. His wife and
daughter were burned to death.
Burdened by his sorrow, Anthony
started west. Captured by a tribe of
Indians, he escaped, only to fall into
the hands of soldiers from Santa Fe\
There he was brought before the
governor, Don Luis, and sentenced to go to
Mexico City in a prison train. That
same day Don Luis had a stroke and
died. Faith, his wife by that time,
prepared to return to Spain.
Anthony spent two years in the
Hospital of St. Lazaro before Dolores, widow
of a wealthy landowner, found him and
arranged for his freedom. Later they
were married and went to live in the
village of San Luz. Dolores bore him two
children. All went well until an ax
slipped one day and caught Anthony in
the groin while he was felling a tree. He
bled to death before he was found.
Many years later, long after the village
had been deserted by Dolores and her
people, a group of migrants on their way
to Santa F£ came to its site. The little
Madonna, which Anthony had carried
with him through life, still stood in a
chapel in the ruins of San Luz. Mary
Jorham, the young niece of a Captain
Jorham, found the image, but she was
not allowed to keep it because her parents
thought it a heathen idol. Instead, it
served as a fine target for a shooting
match. It was splintered into a thousand
pieces.
149

ANTIGONE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sophocles (495P-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: The city of Thebes
First presented: 440 B.C.
Principal characters:
Creon, tyrant of Thebes
Antigone, daughter of Oedipus
Ismenb, her sister
Haemon, son of Creon
Tiresias, a prophet
Critique:
Although
play would
the main problem of this
be unimportant today, the
discussions of the responsibilities of a
ruler are as pertinent now as in ancient
Greece. The characters of the play move
to their tragic ends with highly dramatic
speeches, while the moral and
philosophical problems of the plot are displayed
through the chorus and soliloquies.
When first presented, the play was so
successful with Athenian audiences that
Sophocles was made a general in the
war against Samos. Recent presentations
of the play have been well received by
both audience and critic.
The Story:
Polynices and Eteocles, sons of the
cursed family of King Oedipus, led two
armies against each other before the
gates of Thebes, and both brothers were
killed in single combat with each other.
Creon, their uncle, and now the tyrant
ruler of the city, ordered that Eteocles
be given full funeral rites, but that
Polynices, who had attacked the city, be left
unburied and unmourned. Anyone who
broke this decree would be punished with
death.
Antigone and Ismene, the sisters of
Polynices and Eteocles, discussed this
order, and with grief for the unburied
brother tearing at her heart, Antigone
asked Ismene to aid her in giving him
burial. When Ismene refused to help in
so dangerous a task, Antigone went de-
fiandy to bury Polynices.
Shordy afterward, Creon learned
from a sentry that the body had been
buried. Angrily he ordered the sentry to
find the perpetrator of the deed. The
sentry returned to the grave and
uncovered the body. During a dust storm
Antigone came to look at the grave and,
finding it open, filled the air with
lamentation. Her cries attracted the attention
of the guard, who captured her and
took her to Creon.
Questioned by Creon, she said that to
bury a man was to obey the laws of the
gods, even if it were against the laws of
a man. Her reply angered Creon.
Antigone must die. Ismene tried to soften
Creon's heart toward her sister by
reminding him that Antigone was engaged
to his son, Haemon. But Creon remained
firm.
Haemon incurred his father's anger by
arguments that Creon should soften his
cruel decree because of popular sympathy
for Antigone. Creon said that he cared
nothing for the ideas of the town, and
Haemon called his answer foolish. As a
punishment, Creon ordered that
Antigone be killed before Haemon's eyes.
Haemon fled with threats of revenge.
Creon ordered that Antigone be walled
up in a cave outside Thebes and left
there to die for her crime against his
law.
When Antigone was led out of the
city, the people of Thebes followed her,
lamenting her fate. She was thrust into
the cave. All this while, Polynices' body
150

Jay unburied outside the walls. The
prophet Tiresias warned Creon that the
gods had not been pleased with his
action, and that the body should be buried.
He foretold that before long Haemon
would die if his father did not bury Poly-
nices and rescue Antigone from the cave.
Creon, realizing that Tiresias'
prophesies had never proved false, hurried to
avert the fate the prophet had foretold.
Quickly he ordered a tomb prepared for
Polynices, and he himself set off to
release Antigone. But the will of the gods
could not be changed so easily. When he
reached the cave, he heard his son's voice
within, crying out in grief. Creon
entered and saw that Antigone had hanged
herself with a rope made from her own
dress. Haemon, sword in hand, rushed
at his father as if to attack him, but
instead he spat on the old man. He then
fell on his sword and killed himself in
sorrow over Antigone's death. The news
of these events quickly traveled back to
the city, and Creon's wife, hearing of
so many misfortunes, died by her own
hand.
On returning to Thebes with the bodr
of his son, Creon learned of his wifes
death. Seeing that his life could no
longer have meaning, he had himself led
out of the city into exile. He was,
himself, the final victim of his harsh tyranny.
151

THE ANTIQUARY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: Scotland
First published: 1816
Principal characters:
Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns, the antiquary
Lovel, an illegitimate son of unknown parents
Sir Arthur Wardour, a baronet, Oldbuck's friend
Miss Isabella Wardour, his daughter
Edie Ochiltree, a beggar
Hector M'Intyre, Oldbuck's nephew
The Earl of Glenallan, present head of a powerful family
Dousterswivel, a magician
Critique:
Not one of the most popular of
Scott's novels, The Antiquary is
nevertheless a respected member of the Wa-
verley group and the novel most nearly
contemporary to Scott's own time.
Although it is a romance, it is also a
novel of manners. Scott admitted that
when necessary he sacrificed the plot in
order to describe more clearly the
manners of the characters, particularly those
of the lower social classes. His
characterizations of the Scottish peasants are
much more vivid than are those of the
upper classes. But the touch of magic
that was Scott's is evident everywhere
in this novel, as it is in all he wrote.
The Story:
When old Jonathan Oldbuck of
Monkbarns first met young Lovel, he
was impressed by the young man's good
manners and conduct; but he was also
mystified by the little he could learn
of Lovel's past. It was obvious that
Lovel was not the boy's real name and
that there was something in his history
of which he was ashamed.
From his good friend Sir Arthur
Wardour, Oldbuck at last learned
something of Lovel's history. The young man
was the illegitimate son of unknown
parents. Although a benefactor had
settled a large estate on him, he lived in
solitude and disgrace because of his
questionable ancestry. To make matters
worse, he was in love with Sir Arthur's
daughter, Isabella. Though the girl
loved him, she would not accept him
because she knew her father would not
permit an alliance with a man of
unknown and illegitimate origins. Even
after Lovel had saved her life and that
of her father, when they were trapped
by the tides, she gave him no more
than the thanks due him for his bravery.
Sir Arthur was in serious financial
straits, in debt to dozens of tradesmen
and friends, among them Oldbuck. In
order to restore his fortune, he had
fallen into a plot prepared by one
Dousterswivel, an evil magician who had
promised his aid in finding valuable
minerals on Sir Arthur's property. Sir
Arthur, forced to put up money before
Dousterswivel would work his magic,
had already borrowed one hundred
pounds from Oldbuck, who suspected
that Dousterswivel was the crook that
he was.
Before the magician could attempt to
work his magic, Oldbuck's nephew,
Captain Hector M'Intyre, came home
for a visit. A hot-headed young man, he
accused Lovel of lying about the little
he told of his past. Hector challenged
Lovel to a duel, and although Lovel
did everything he could to prevent it
the duel was fought. Lovel wounded
Hector fatally, or so it appeared, and
was forced to flee the country on a boat
152

provided by a friend. Hector did
recover, but Lovel did not hear the news
until much later. He had been aided in
his flight by Edie Ochiltree, a beggar
who knew all the secrets of the
countryside. While Edie hid Lovel in a cave,
they overheard Dousterswivel trying to
convince Sir Arthur that he could find
buried treasure in that cave, if Sir Arthur
would put up the necessary money. Edie
used that knowledge to good account.
When Sir Arthur asked Oldbuck for
another hundred pounds, to give to
Dousterswivel so that he would get the
treasure from the cave, Oldbuck insisted
that they go to the cave and dig foi
the treasure. Although the magician tried
to prevent the excursion, Oldbuck would
not be denied. Everyone present was
completely surprised when, after much
digging, old Edie the beggar stuck a
pick into the ground and hit a chest.
When the chest was opened, the
bewildered spectators found a fortune in
coin; Sir Arthur was saved from disaster.
Edie, in an attempt to pay back
Dousterswivel, tricked him into digging for hours
for more treasure that Edie said was
also buried in the cave. He also arranged
with a friend to have a specter appear
and frighten the magician half to death.
About the same time there occurred
another event which was to have great
influence upon Oldbuck, Sir Arthur,
and their friends. An old woman in the
neighborhood sent for the Earl of Glen-
allan, head of a wealthy and powerful
family. Before she died, the old woman
wanted to clear her conscience of a
terrible wrong she had done the earl
when he was a young man. The earl
had been in love with a girl whom his
mother hated, primarily because of her
family. The earl had secretly married
the girl before his mother, in a spiteful
attempt to break up the romance, told
her son that the girl was his own sister.
Because of certain letters and the
perjured testimony of servants, including
the old woman telling the story, the
earl had believed his mother's story.
His wife had taken her own life, but
before she died she had given birth
to a male child. A servant had whisked
the child away, and the old woman did
not know whether he had lived or died.
The earl, who had lived a life of misery
because of the horrible crime he thought
he had committed in marrying his own
sister, was joyful at the news given him
by the old crone, even though he grieved
at the useless death of the girl he loved.
He told the story to Oldbuck and asked
his help in determining whether the
child had lived.
While Oldbuck and the Earl of
Glenallan were conducting their
investigation, news came that the French were
about to raid the Scottish coast. Hector,
who was now fully recovered from the
wound suffered at Lovel's hands,
prepared to gather troops and meet Major
Neville, an officer in charge of local
defense. Lovel had not been heard from
since the duel, and there were rumors
that he had died at sea. Then old Edie
brought the joyful news that the ship
carrying Lovel had put in to shore and
that all aboard were safe. From his
remarks to Oldbuck, the old gendemen
learned that the money found in the
cave on Sir Arthur's land had been
buried there by Lovel and Edie after
they had overheard the conversation
between Dousterswivel and Sir Arthur.
Lovel, hearing of Sir Arthur's financial
difficulties, had taken that way of helping
Isabella's father without embarrassing the
old gentleman by offering him money
outright.
When Major Neville appeared to take
charge of the garrison, everyone was
amazed to see that he was in reality
Lovel. Lovel, or rather Major Neville,
brought word that there would be no
battle. A watchman had mistaken a
bonfire for a signal that the French were
coming. As they all stood talking, the
Earl of Glenallan noted the young
man's marked resemblance to his dead
wife. Then the mystery was solved.
Through old papers and the words of
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old servants of the Glenallan family,
the earl learned that without doubt
Lovel was his son. While a baby, the
boy had been cared for by the earl's
brother and, unknown to the earl, had
inherited his uncle's fortune.
Lovel was restored to his rightful
place, and within a month he and
Isabella Wardour were married. From
that time on all the friends lived in peace
and prosperity and joy.
154

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: About 30 B.C.
Locale: Egypt and various parts of the Roman Empire
First presented: 1606-1607
Principal characters:
Mark Antony,
Octavius Caesar, and
Lepidus, triumvirs, ruling Rome
Enobarbus, and
Eros, Antony's friends
Sextus Pompeius, leader of the party opposed to Octavius Caesai
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
Octavia, Caesar's sister and Antony's wife
Charmian, and
Iras, Cleopatra's attendants
Critique:
In his tragedies Shakespeare rose to
dramatic heights seldom equaled.
Although critics may argue to determine
the greatest of his tragedies, surely
Antony and Cleopatra is among the top
few. Its scope is staggering; it covers the
whole Roman Empire and the men who
ruled it. Only a genius could match the
greatness of the scenes with such beauty of
poetry and philosophy. Here a man
born to rule the world is brought to ruin
by his weaknesses and lusts. Deserted
by friends and subjects, he is denied
even a noble death, but must attempt
suicide. Even that he bungles. The
tragedy is grimly played out; honor and
nobility die, as well as the man.
The Story:
After the murder of Julius Caesar,
the Roman Empire was ruled by three
men, the noble triumvirs, Mark Antony,
Lepidus, and Octavius, Caesar's nephew.
Antony, having been given the Eastern
sphere to rule, had gone to Alexandria
and there he had seen and fallen
passionately in love with Cleopatra, Queen
of Egypt. She was the flower of the
Nile, but a wanton who had been the
mistress of Julius Caesar and of many
others. Antony was so filled with lust
for her that he. ignored his own counsel
and the warnings of his friends, and
as long as possible he ignored also a
request from Octavius Caesar that he
return to Rome. Sextus Pompeius, son
of Pompey the Great, and a powerful
leader, was gathering troops to seize
Rome from the rule of the triumvirs,
and Octavius Caesar wished to confer
with the other two, Antony and Lepidus.
At last the danger of a victory by Sextus
Pompeius, coupled with the news that
his wife Fulvia was dead, forced Antony
to leave Egypt and Cleopatra and journey
to Rome.
Pompeius was confident of victory so
long as Antony stayed in Egypt, for
Antony was a better general than either
Lepidus or Octavius. When Pompeius
heard that Antony was headed toward
Rome, his hope was that Octavius and
Antony would not mend their quarrels
but would continue to fight each other
as they had in the past. Lepidus did not
matter; he sided with neither of the other
two, and cared litde for conquest and
glory. Pompeius faced disappointment,
however, for Antony and Octavius
mended their quarrels in the face of
common danger. To seal their renewed
friendship, Antony married Octavia, the
sister of Octavius; through her, each
general would be bound to the other.
Thus it seemed that Pompeius' scheme
to separate Antony and Octavius would
155

fail. His last hope Was that Antony's
lust would send him back to Cleopatra;
then he and Octavius would batde each
other and Pompeius would conquer
Rome. To stall for time, he sealed a
treaty with the triumvirs. Antony, with
his wife, went to Athens on business
for the Empire. There word reached him
that Lepidus and Octavius had waged
war in spite of the treaty they had
signed, and Pompeius had been killed.
Octavius* next move was to seize Lepidus
on the pretext that he had aided Pom
peius. Now the Roman world had but
two rulers, Octavius and Antony.
But Antony could not resist the lure
of Cleopatra. Sending Octavia, his wife,
home from Athens, he hurried back to
Egypt. His return ended all pretense of
friendship between him and Octavius.
Each man prepared for battle, the
winner to be the sole ruler of the world.
Cleopatra joined her forces with those
of Antony. At first Antony was supreme
on the land, but Octavius ruled the sea
and lured Antony to fight him there.
Antony's friends and captains,
particularly loyal Enobarbus, begged him not
to risk his forces on the sea, but Antony,
confident of victory, prepared to match
his ships with those of Octavius at
Actium. But in the decisive hour of the
great sea fight Cleopatra ordered her
fleet to leave the batde, and sail for home.
Antony, leaving the batde and his honor
and his glory, followed her. Because he
had set the example for desertion, many
of his men left his forces and joined the
standard of Octavius.
Antony was sunk in gloom at the folly
of his own actions, but his lust had
made him drunk with desire, and
everything, even honor, must bow to
Cleopatra. She protested that she did not
know that Antony would follow her
when she sailed away. Antony had
reason enough to know she lied, but he
still wanted the fickle wanton at any
cost.
Octavius sent word to Cleopatra that
she might have all her wishes granted
if she would surrender Antony to
Octavius. Knowing that Octavius was likely
to be the victor in the struggle, she sent
him a message of loyalty and of
admiration for his greatness. Although
Antony had seen her receive the
addresses of Octavius* messenger, and even
though he ranted and stormed at her
for her faithlessness, she was easily able
to dispel his fears and jealousy and
make him hers again. After a failure
to sue for peace, Antony decided to
march again against his enemy. At this
decision even the faithful Enobarbus
left him and went over to Octavius, for
he thought Antony had lost his reason
as well as his honor. But Enobarbus too
was an honorable man who shordy
afterward died of shame for deserting his
general.
On the day of the battle victory was
in sight for Antony, in spite of
overwhelming odds. But once more the flight
of the Egyptian fleet betrayed him.
His defeat left Octavius master of the
world. Antony was like a madman,
seeking nothing but revenge on
treacherous Cleopatra. When the queen heard
of his rage, she had word sent to him
that she was dead, killed by her own
hand out of love for him. Convinced
once more that Cleopatra had been true
to him, Antony called on Eros, his one
remaining follower, to kill him so that
he could join Cleopatra in death. But
faithful Eros killed himself rather than
stab his beloved general. Determined to
die, Antony fell on his own sword.
Even that desperate act was without
dignity or honor, for he did not die
immediately and he could find no one
who loved him enough to end his pain
and misery. While he lay there, a
messenger brought word that Cleopatra
still lived. He ordered his servants to
carry him to her. There he died in hex
arms, each proclaiming eternal love for
the other.
When Octavius Caesar heard die
news of Antony's death, he grieved.
Although he had fought and conquered
156

Antony, he lamented the sorry fate of a
great man turned weakling, ruined by
his own lust. He sent a messenger to
assure Cleopatra that she would be treated
royally, that she should be ruler of her
own fate. But the queen learned, as
Antony had warned her, that Octavius
would take her to Rome to march
behind him in his triumphant procession,
where she, a queen and mistress to two
former rulers of the world, would be
pinched and spat upon by rabble and
slaves. To cheat him of his triumph,
she put on her crown and all her royal
garb, placed a poisonous asp on her
breast, and lay down to die. Charmian
and Iras, her loyal attendants, died the
same death. Octavius Caesar, entering
her chamber, saw her dead, but as
beautiful and desirable as in life. There
was only one thing he could do for his
one-time friend and the dead queen:
he ordered their burial in a common
grave, together in death as they had
wished to be in life.
157

APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
First pvhlished: 1864.
This long essay, also known as History
of My Religious Opinions, is the famous
reply written by John Henry Newman in
answer to the attack made upon him by
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875). The yeass
1833 to 1841 had seen the publication of
the Tracts for the Times, to which
Newman had been a contributor; these tracts,
which gave their name to the "Tractarian
Movement" or "Oxford Movement," were
the spearhead of the great theological
controversy of the middle years of the
century. Newman and his friends were eager
to return the Anglican Church to
something like its position during past
centuries; they valued tradition and hierarchy;
they wished to go back to the severe, au-
tho-itarian faith of the past, from which
they believed the Church of England had
lapsed. In a word, they were the "High
Church" party; and some idea of the rift
that was created within the Church can
be gleaned from Trollope's Barchester
novels. In 1845, Newman left the
Anglican Church for the Roman; two years
later he was ordained priest in that
communion.
In January, 1864, Kingsley, an
Anglican clergyman of what was known as the
"Broad Church" party and a popular
novelist, attacked Newman in a magazine
article, in which he stated that "Truth,
for its own sake, has never been a virtue
with the Roman clergy. Father Newman
informs us that it need not, and on the
whole ought not to be. . . ." To this
article, Newman replied in a pamphlet in
February of that year, whereupon Kings-
ley wrote still another pamphlet entitled
"What, then, does Dr. Newman mean?"
in which he accused Newman of having
"gambled away" his reason, of having a
"morbid" mind, and of not caring about
"truth for its own sake." It was in
answer to this pamphlet that Apologia pro
Vita Sua was written.
Newman divided his work into
chapters, each dealing with a crucial period
in his life. The first gives the story of
his youth and his education up to his
thirty-second year, by which time he was
a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and
had been ordained in the Anglican
Church. By his own account, he emerges
as an extraordinarily precocious lad,
preoccupied at a very early age with religious
questions. He resembled, indeed, the hero
of his own novel Loss and Gain—which
phrase might be applied as a description
of his career. The modern reader will
smile at Newman's decision, reached at
the age of fifteen, that celibacy was the
only course for him; yet his prodigious
intellect shines through his very modest
account of his youth. He tells us of his
reading; but the real influences were his
friends Hurrell Froude and the older
John Keble (1792-1866). It was Froude,
with his love for tradition and for the
external beauty of the Roman Church,
who began to soften Newman's insular
dislike of that institution.
The year 1830 was a momentous one
for Newman. The revolution that
deposed Charles X of France distressed him;
the Whig victory in England distressed
him even more. He had a violent hatred
of Liberalism, and everywhere it seemed
triumphant. The "Tractarian Movement"
was largely a counterattack. Newman
himself claimed that the movement had
begun to stir as far back as 1828, when he
was Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford; but the
date of its beginning is usually set in
July of 1833, when Keble preached a
famous sermon at Oxford against the
errors of the Whig government in Church
policy. The Tracts for the Times, written
by Newman and his friends, stated their
position. As Newman saw it, the Whigs
must be opposed and the Church of
England returned to the position of authority
it had held during the early seventeenth
century. He considered himself as
belonging to neither the "High" nor the
"Low" Church party; he was merely anti-
158

Liberal. He explained his position as
based on: (1) dogma (he had no use for
"religion as a mere sentiment"; there
must be positive beliefs); (2) a visible
Church with sacraments and rites and the
Episcopal system; (3) anti-Romanism.
Such was the general point of view of
the Oxford Movement. Newman,
incidentally, had very little to say about
ritual, usually associated with the High
Church position. He was interested in
theology, not liturgies.
Newman admitted frankly that in the
vast amount of writing he did during
these years he had attempted to refute
many of the tenets of Romanism. What
he was seeking for himself was a basis in
reason for his beliefs; for the Anglican
Church, he was seeking a theology of its
own that would make it more than a via
media. These investigations led him to a
consideration of the common heritage of
Romanism and Anglicanism and to the
question of how much of the Roman
belief could be accepted by an Anglican. He
began to be convinced that in English
history the real objection to Rome had
been political rather than theological; that
Romanism and Anglicanism had, after
all, not been so far apart as was generally
believed. Inevitably, he began to find a
difference between Roman dogmas,
which he could accept, and Roman
practice, which he often could not. He
confessed that, for a long time, the stumbling
block had been the Roman veneration of
the Virgin and prayers to the saints. But
he was obviously drawing closer to Rome.
It was Tract XC, published in 1841,
that brought the storm on Newman's
head and led to his final break with the
Church of England. In this tract he
examined the question of how far the
Thirty-Nine Articles, on which the Church
rests, were capable of a Roman
interpretation. Immediately he was accused of
everything from "traducing the
Reformation" to planning to build a monastery
near Oxford. He himself was feeling
grave doubts about Anglicanism, derived
mainly from his reading on the abstruse
doctrines of the Monophysites. When he
could no longer conscientiously maintain
his clerical position, he resigned his living
of St. Mary's in September of 1843. As
he explained, he had spent the years from
1835 to 1839 trying, in his writings, to
benefit the Church of England at the
expense of the Church of Rome and the
years from 1839 to 1843 trying to benefit
the Church of England without prejudice
to the Church of Rome. In 1843 he
began to despair of the Church of England.
The years between 1843 and 1845
were spent, according to Newman, in
retirement. He had now reached the
crossroads but was as yet unable to make
his final decision. He had already
retracted the "hard things" he had said
against Rome, the things he had felt
compelled to say in defense of the Anglican
Church. He made a point of seeing no
Roman Catholics; his struggle was purely
an inward one. Though he still felt that
the Church of England was a branch of
the true Church, though he still deplored
the "Mariolatry" of Rome, he was
convinced that Rome was more in accord
with the early Church. His ho-ror of
Liberalism also played its part; he very
genuinely felt that the spirit of
Liberalism was the spirit of Antichrist. As he
now saw the situation, on the one hand
there was Liberalism leading inevitably to
atheism; on the other, Anglicanism
leading to Rome. He still remained in lay
communion with the Church of England
during this difficult period, but more and
more often he found himself asking this
question: "Can I be saved in the English
Church?" When he was compelled to
answer in the negative, he made the great
decision and was received into the Roman
Communion in 1845. Two years later he
was ordained priest.
In the concluding section of the essay
Newman defended himself against the
jibes that were hurled at him after his
conversion. It was said that by submitting
to Rome he had abdicated his power of
personal judgment and that he was now
compelled to accept dogmas which might,
at any moment, be changed. His reply
was that the Roman doctrines were not
159

difficult for him, that historically the
Church had not suppressed freedom of
intellect. He felt that an infallible Church
had been intended by the Creator to
preserve religion—especially in an age of
increasing skepticism. Lastly—and this is
the most famous part of the essay—he
advanced the idea that a conflict between
authority and private judgment is
beneficial to the man whose ideas are being
tested.
Though the Apologia won Newman a
resounding victory over Kingsley, the
work is not easy reading. The difficulty
does not lie in the style, for no one has
written more clearly and simply than he.
But he wrote for readers who were
familiar with Church history and with
theological problems, so that most readers in
our age of religious ignorance and
indifference lack the knowledge to grasp many
of his arguments. It is difficult today to
understand his dilemma. Yet the Apologia
remains a powerful and sincere work.
Some, naturally, have seen in Newman,
as Kingsley must have done, only a man
whose habit of mind made him take
refuge in an authoritarian Church which
would solve his spiritual problems for
him. Others, taking the opposite view,
would agree with Ramon Fernandez that
"In him intelligence and faith act as
mutual brakes and yet no attentive reader
can accuse him of the slightest artifice."
160

AN APOLOGY FOR THE LIFE OF COLLEY CIBBER, COMEDIAN
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: Colley Cibber (1671-1757)
Time: Late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
Locale: England
First published: 1740
Principal personages:
Colley Cibber, actor, playwright, producer
William Congreve, playwright
Sir John Vanbrugh, architect and playwright
John Gay, poet, author of The Beggar's Opera
Joseph Addison, essayist and author of the successful Cato
Sir Richard Steele, essayist and playwright
Alexander Pope, author of The Dunciad
To read Colley Cibber's Apology is to
recapture intimate views of London
theatrical, social, and literary life during the
last decade of the seventeenth and the
first quarter of the following century, as
observed by a successful actor and
theatrical manager, a playwright of sorts, and
a man of shrewd insight into his own
foibles and those of his fellows.
Published ten years after his retirement
from the stage (1730) and his acceptance
of the poet laureateship, this
autobiography is a frank and engaging account of
his childhood experiences as the son of
a well-known sculptor, his schoolboy
activities, his early days as a stage-struck
youth, his long career in the theater, and
his candid and unprejudiced observations
of people and events. For this is an
apology, not in the sense of an
acknowledgment of wrongdoing, mistake, or
regrettable circumstance, but as an
explanation of the life of a man who was
regularly and closely connected with the
theater; who knew and talked with many of
the most influential people of his day;
who was acquainted with political
actions, backstage gossip, and the infinite
variety of public life and private in his
time. Cibber was attempting, as he
expressed it in the first chapter, to present
"as true a picture of myself as natural
vanity will permit me to draw," since "a
man who has pass'd above forty years of
his life upon a theatre, where he has
never appear'd to be himself, may have
naturally excited the curiosity of his
spectators to know what he really was, when
in no body's shape but his own. . . ."
He also proposed to include "the
theatrical history of my own time, from my first
appearance on the stage to my last exit."
Following a simple chronological
pattern of development, Cibber devotes the
first three chapters of his autobiography
to matters of his parents and family. His
father had emigrated from Holstein many
years before the Restoration in 1660; his
mother was a member of the Colley
family, formerly of some prominence in
Rutlandshire. His education was regrettably
limited to a few years in a free school.
Early in life, he says he was possessed of
a "giddy negligence," an inconsistency of
character, and these qualities persisted, he
admits, frequently to his own
embarrassment. But Cibber notes that Pope's
selection of him as the heir to the throne
of folly in The Dunciad was done not so
much to satirize Cibber as it was to give
publicity to the poem, for an attack on
the laureate was likely to gain increased
sales for any publication. Thus, with
remarkable good nature, Cibber transforms
Pope's malicious defamation into a device
for "profit to himself." This was both a
successful and extraordinary outcome for
any controversy with Alexander Pope,
"the wasp of Twickenham."
Cibber's attempts to gain entrance to
Winchester proving fruitless, he next
tried the life of a trooper in the
Revolution of 1688. His father sought
preferment for his lively and mercurial son in
161

various ways, but by 1690, Gibber
succumbed to the "allurements of a theatre,"
and so his long stage career began.
In the remaining portion of the book,
chapters IV through XVI, Cibber
intermingles autobiographical details and
anecdotes with factual accounts of the history
of the London stage from its restoration
in 1660 until his retirement in the 1730's;
with personal reminiscences and valuable
word-portraits of actors and actresses,
playwrights, managers; with first-hand
experiences with the licensing acts and
Masters of Revels. For example, before
recounting his early days in the theater,
Cibber sets forth, swiftly but
convincingly, his own "short view of the
stage" from its rebirth in 1660 until the
time he became an actor in 1690. To this
he adds an account of the greatest players
of the time, describing them in vivid and
satisfying detail, evaluating their
performances, enumerating their best roles.
His highest praise goes to Betterton and
Mrs. Bracegirdle, for Cibber knew them
all, regarded them closely as a student of
acting, and valued their talents shrewdly
as a stage manager. He writes of his own
first appearance in a significant acting role
as the chaplain in Otway's The Orphan,
of the first prologue he composed, of his
first play, the successful Love's Last Shift.
This play led to his long
acquaintanceship with Sir John Vanbrugh, an
architect turned playwright. Cibber frankly
admits that Gay's The Beggars Opera
was a "vast success" and that his attempt
to offset this portrayal of highwaymen,
thieves, and receivers of stolen goods with
a comedy in praise of virtue, Love in a
Riddle, was a resounding failure. In this
instance, his middle-class morality seems
to have blurred Cibber's judgment, for
the charm and delightful raciness of Gay's
ballad-opera have made it a favorite for
countless generations, while no one but
an avid student of the history of English
comedy has ever heard of Love in a
Riddle.
Cibber traces the complex and curious
history of the rival acting companies, of
the rise to great popularity of Italian
opera, of his ultimate assumption of a
position of authority as actor-manager.
He pauses to comment upon the building
of a new theater, the Hay Market, and
its weaknesses acoustically. He remarks
upon the actor-manager's difficulties with
gentlemen who sought to master the
intricacies of theater operation, of the
intense rivalries and jealousies of actors and
actresses, of the origin of actor's benefits.
He admits freely his own inadequacies as
a tragic actor, for his voice was unsuited
to heavy roles; however, he does assert
his success as a villain. He comments on
the unfortunate public attitude toward
the profession of acting; he even offers
good advice to would-be playwrights,
suggesting that they always pay particular
attention to their plotting.
No doubt it is this union of the frank
appraisal of a man who recognizes his
own mistakes and strong points with his
shrewd observations of personages and
events that gives Cibber's book its
continuing vigor, its essential charm. He can
look upon the self-seeking defections of
actors with charity, for he realizes
intimately the insecurity of their profession
and excuses their failure to fulfill certain
obligations as understandable. He
perceives that well-meaning patrons of the
theater could not possibly understand all
the implications of their amateurish
decisions, and so he deals with them gently,
despite all the trouble they caused him
as an actor-manager. In short, Cibber is
both a professional in the theater and a
devoted, though not always gifted, master
craftsman in the art of the drama. His
youthful passion for the stage and acting
and writing plays and refurbishing old
dramas seems never to have left him. His
lifelong interest in matters theatrical
seldom wavers; hence his desire to record
important happenings in dramatic history,
his awareness of the significance of minor
occurrences, and his appraisal of the
people concerned with these events large and
small combine to give this account
remarkable value.
If the test of excellence in
autobiographical writing is the author's ability
162

not only to set down his views of people,
events, and circumstances accurately and
with satisfying detail, but also to portray
his own qualities with rich revealing
honesty, then Colley Cibber's Apology
deserves recognition. For Cibber's
enthusiasm for the stage and its people is
intensely absorbing; his zeal to make his
readers understand the development of
English acting, the facts of play
production during his time, and the history of
the theater in those lively years is genuine
and almost incomparable. Moreover, his
sincerity, his good humor, his vanity, his
strong armor against insult and vitriolic
attack, his keen sense of justice, and his
wholesome absorption in the "allurements
of a theatre," make this autobiography a
record unique in theatrical writings.
Cibber the playwright, manager, actor,
play-doctor, poet laureate is dead long
since save for specialists in theatrical
matters. But Colley Cibber the apologist
and commentator on dramatic history is
still intensely human, vivid, and readable.
163

THE APOSTLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sholem Asch CI880- )
Type of plot: Religious chronicle
Time of plot: Shortly after the Crucifixion
Locale: The Roman Empire
First published: 1943
Principal characters:
Saul of Tarshish, afterwards known as Paul
Joseph bar Nab a of Cyprus, Saul's friend, an early convert
Reb Istephan, a famous Jewish preacher
Simon bar Jonah, called Peter
Reb Jacob, Joseph's son
Critique:
The Apostle is a faithful attempt to
chronicle the life of the two great
apostles, Peter and Paul. Adhering
carefully to the history of the period, the
author has presented a sympathetic
portrait of the struggles of the early
Christians. His knowledge of contemporary
events gives the reader a vivid picture of
the life of the period shortly after the
Crucifixion.
The Story:
It was seven weeks after the crucifixion
of Yeshua of Nazareth by Pontius Pilate.
All the poor of Jerusalem, who had found
in Jeshua their Messiah, had gone into
hiding; but the word was spreading.
Little by little the story was told, of Yeshua
who had come back after his death, of
the Messiah who had appeared to his
disciples. The matter was hotly argued
on all sides. The pious Jews could not
believe in a Messiah who had been killed;
the Messianists devoutly affirmed their
faith.
Saul of Tarshish and Joseph bar Naba
came upon a street preacher, a rustic
Galilean, who told with great conviction
of Yeshua's return after he had been
entombed. Cries of belief and of
repugnance interrupted his talk. Saul
himself spoke with great bitterness against
this Messiah, for he had no patience with
the gentle Yeshua who was hanged.
The agitation rapidly spread. One of
the most vigorous upholders of Yeshua
was Reb Istephan. He had a gift for
moving men's souls, and more and more
Jews became persuaded. Joseph bar
Naba himself had known Yeshua in his
lifetime, and when Joseph heard Reb
Istephan he was convinced. Joseph
became a Messianist. This conversion
disgusted Saul, and in sorrow and bitterness
he turned away from his friend Joseph.
Then a dramatic incident took place.
Simon, the first of Yeshua's disciples,
healed Nehemiah the cripple in the
name of the Nazarene. Many were much
impressed by the cure, but others
resented Simon's use of the Messiah's
name. As a result his enemies had their
way, and Simon was imprisoned by the
High Priest to await trial. Then another
miracle happened! Simon and his
follower Jochanan had been securely locked
in a dungeon, but in the morning they
were walking the streets again. It was
said that they had passed directly through
the stone walls — with the help of
Yeshua.
The resentment against the wild
Galileans grew among the rulers, while the
humble folk followed Simon with trust.
The High Priest again brought Simon to
trial; but Simon spoke so well in defense
of his doctrine that he was freed. And
now the tumult increased. The ignorant
folk, seeing Simon released, concluded
that there was official sanction for the
THE APOSTLE by Sholem Asch. Translated by Maurice Samne.' By permission of the author and the
publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1943, by Sholem Asch.
164

new cult; hence more joined the followers
of Yeshua.
Saul was greatly incensed. He believed
that the Messiah was yet to come, that
the disciples were corrupting Jerusalem.
He went to the High Priest and secured
appointment as official spy. In his new
job Saul tracked down the humble Mes-
sianists and sentenced them to the lash.
Growing in power, Saul the Zealot
finally took Reb Istephan prisoner for
preaching the new faith. With grim
pleasure Saul led the way to the stoning
pit and watched Istephan sink beneath
the flung rocks. As he died, the preacher
murmured a prayer for the forgiveness of
his tormentors. Saul was vaguely
troubled.
Then the Messianists were much
heartened. Reb Jacob ben Joseph,
Yeshua's younger brother, came to
Jerusalem to head the humble cult, and Saul
could do little against this pious and
strict Jew. By chance the High Priest
heard of more Messianists in Damascus
Saul volunteered to investigate and
hurried to his new field. But on the way a
vision appeared to him and said, "Saul,
Saul, why dost thou persecute me?" Saul
then recognized Yeshua for his Lord and
as he was commanded he went on to
Damascus, although he was still blinded
by the heavenly apparition. A follower
of the new religion baptized him and
restored his sight. The penitent Saul
hurried away from the haunts of man.
In all he waited seven years for his
mission.
Finally as he prayed in his mother's
house, the call came. Joseph bar Naba
asked Saul to go with him to Antioch
to strengthen the congregation there.
At last Saul was on the way to bring
the word of the Messiah to others. He
left for Antioch with Joseph and the
Greek Titus, Saul's first convert.
Now Simon had founded the church
at Antioch among the Greeks. The
perplexing question was, could a devout
Jew even eat with the gentiles, let alone
accept them into the church? In
Jerusalem Jacob held firmly to the law of
the Torah: salvation was only for the
circumcised. Simon vacillated. In
Jerusalem he followed Jacob; among the
Greeks he accepted gentiles fully. Joseph
had been sent by the elders of Jerusalem
to Antioch to apply the stricter rule to
the growing Messianic church.
Saul at first met with much suspicion,
The Messianists remembered too well
Saul the Zealot who had persecuted them.
But little by little the apostle won them
over. Yeshua appeared to Saul several
rimes, and he was much strengthened in
the faith. At last Saul found his true
mission in the conviction that he was
divinely appointed to bring the word of
Yeshua to the gentiles. He worked
wonders at Antioch and built a strong church
there, but his acceptance of gentiles cost
him Joseph's friendship. As a symbol of
his new mission Saul became Paul and
began his years of missionary work.
To Corinth, to Ephesus, to Cyprus—
to all the gentiles went Paul. Everywhere
he founded a church, sometimes small
but always zealous. With him much of
the time went Lukas, the Greek
physician. Lukas was an able minister and a
scholar who was writing the life of
Yeshua.
The devout Jews in Jerusalem were
greatly troubled by this strange preacher
who accepted the gentiles. Finally they
brought him up for trial. Paul escaped
only by standing on his rights as a
Roman citizen. As such he could
demand a trial before Caesar himself. Paul
went to Rome as a captive, but he
rejoiced, for he knew the real test of
Christianity would be in Rome.
Already Simon was there, preaching to the
orthodox Jews.
The evil Nero made Paul wait in
prison for two years without a hearing,
and even then only the intervention of
Seneca freed the apostle. For a short
time Simon and Paul worked together,
one among the Jews and the other among
the gentiles. They converted many, and
the lowly fervently embraced the promise
of salvation.
To give himself an outlet for his

fancied talents as an architect, Nero
burned Rome and planned to rebuild a
beautiful city. But the crime was too
much even for the Romans. To divert
suspicion from himself, Nero blamed the
Christians. He arrested thousands of
them, and on the appointed day opened
the royal carnage. Jews and Christians
hour after hour were gored by oxen,
torn by tigers, chewed by crocodiles. At
the end of the third day many Romans
could no longer bear the sight, but still
Nero sat on. It was so strange: the
Christians died well, and with their last
breath they forgave their persecutors.
Simon, only a Jew, was crucified
afterward; Paul, born a Roman citizen, was
beheaded. With them to the execution
went Gabelus the gladiator, who had
accepted Christianity. But the deaths
of Simon and Paul were in reality the
beginning. The martyrdom of the early
Christians was the foundation stone of
the Christian church.
166

THE APPLE OF THE EYE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Glenway Wescott (1901- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Rural Wisconsin
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Hannah Madoc, a primitive
Jule Bier, Hannah s lover
Selma, Jule's wife
Rosalia, Jule's and Selma's daughter
Mike, Rosalia's lover
Dan Strane, Rosalia's cousin
Critique:
This novel tells of the background and
youth of Dan Strane in rural Wisconsin,
and the story of Hannah Madoc reveals
the set of values against which the
author measures his characters. Jule
himself believed in Hannah's goodness,
but he was too weak to break away
from his own social ties to marry the girl
he really loved. The emphasis upon sex
in the story is typical of a young boy's
wonder at the difference between
religious doctrines and the natural functions
of man's true personality.
neighborhood dances, and they went for
rides in his buggy. Hannah soon tired of
the attentions of other men. When Mr.
Boyle attempted to make love to her, she
quit her job to go to work on a farm
near Jule's home.
Old Mr. Bier sent Jule to court Selma
Duncan, the oldest daughter of a wealthy
farmer. Blindly obeying his father, Jule
proposed to the girl and was accepted.
Then he realized what he had done.
Facing Hannah, he was bewildered by
her grief, only half aware of his own.
Leaving the neighborhood of
Sheboygan, Hannah went to Fond du Lac,
where she became a prostitute and lost
in a few years her beauty and vitality.
At last Jule went to Fond du Lac to
bring his former sweetheart back to her
home. Hannah ended her years in bitter
sterility, answering a call for help from
a neighbor, nursing a sick calf, or taking
care of someone's children when theii
mother became ill. She died, prematurely
aged and broken, as the result of a fall.
Jule and Selma had one daughter,
Rosalia. Selma's sister, Mrs. Strane, had
a son, Dan, who was a boy of fourteen
when Rosalia was in her early twenties.
Mike, a young man with a keen zest
for life, worked on Jule's farm. Because
his mother was so tight-lipped and
because she tried to instill in him a chastity
of ignorance and abstinence, Dan had
developed an adolescent feeling of frus-
THE APPLE OF THE EYE by Glenway Wescott. By permission of the author and the publishers, Harper *
Brothers. Copyright, 1924, by Dial Press, Inc.
The Story:
When her drunken father dame home
one night and swung at her with a broom
handle, patient, hard-working Hannah
Madoc pushed him off the porch in self-
defense. He died a few days later,
leaving his daughter orphaned and
penniless, and Hannah went to work in Mrs.
Boyle's store. There she waited on
customers during the day and served the
men liquor in the evening.
One night Jule Bier saw her behind
the store counter. Ever since the death
of his wife and the piling up of debts,
old Mr. Bier had struggled to make
enough money from his farm to give
Jule a chance in life. Cold and
calculating, the elder Bier had sent Jule to work
as a hired hand on the neighborhood
farms. Jule began to court Hannah
during long walks at night; he took her to
167

tration and curiosity. He longed to know
what sex was, how it affected people,
but at the same time he was overcome
by an inbred feeling of shame. It was
Mike who cleared the way for Dan after
they became friends. Mike, who believed
that life should be full of experience both
physical and mental, made life's processes
a wonderful thing, not obscene and dirty,
as Dan's mother had led the boy to*
believe. Breaking away from the mother
who had been his idol, Dan replaced her
with his new friend, Mike. Mike, in
love with Rosalia, shared his deeper
feelings with his young friend. Dan had
grown up.
Mike loved Rosalia and he desired her,
but at first Rosalia resisted his
love-making. One afternoon he seduced her.
Rosalia's subsequent tears frightened him,
but soon she learned to hide her terror
of love. She told Mike that they ought
.o get married to redeem their sin, but
Mike's suggestion that Selma might not
approve quieted the frightened girl. Mike
was not certain that he wanted to marry
Rosalia. When Jule quietly told Mike
that he had noticed Rosalia's and Mike's
love and that he would not object to the
marriage if Mike wanted it, Mike felt
trapped. He quit his job with Jule and
left the Bier farm.
Dan was inconsolable. Having looked
upon his cousin and Mike as perfect
lovers, he could not understand why
Mike should leave. Rosalia brooded, her
sense of guilt increasing after Mike's
departure. Although she hid her feelings
from her parents, Dan knew enough of
her affair with Mike to be curious about
Rosalia's feelings. But he could learn
nothing from her. Rosalia herself was
not as calm as she appeared to be. The
punishment for love was a child. She
felt a surge of emotion within her, and
it seemed permanendy a part of her. She
concluded that she must be with child.
It was inevitable; she had sinned and this
was to be her harvest. Deserted by her
lover-husband, she could not bear to
think of her shame. She told some
neighbors that she was going to run off to meet
Mike, and one night during a snowstorm
she left her home.
No one had heard from Rosalia or
Mike. Dan and Selma waited through
the winter. Once, when Dan went to
visit his aunt in Milwaukee, he looked
for Mike, but he did not find him. In
the spring a neighbor brought the news
to Jule that Rosalia's body had been
found in the swamp. Fearing that the
news would kill the already ailing Selma,
Jule made the neighbor and Dan
promised to tell no one about Rosalia's
body. They buried the girl in the swamp.
All summer Dan worked on his father's
farm. He had begun to hate the memory
of Mike ever since he had helped Jule
bury the body of Rosalia. A hundred
times over Dan killed Mike in effigy. In
the fall Selma died, and Dan went to live
with Jule. The kindly, patient man, who
had seen so much of life, won Dan's
affections.
Jule wanted Dan to tell him all he
knew about Rosalia and Mike. The
wonderful understanding of the old man
impressed his nephew. Mike had done
the best he knew how, Jule maintained.
In turn, he told Dan about Hannah
Madoc. If Hannah had been Rosalia's
mother instead of Selma, Jule said,
Rosalia would not have been destroyed
through fear. Hannah knew how to
handle life. Religious people were always
trying to make life better than it was,
but life should be accepted at its simple,
natural values. Dan accepted his uncle's
views.
Dan's father had never understood his
son. Having completed his high school
education, Dan was becoming restless.
His father, realizing that Dan was not
cut out for farm work, suggested that
he go to college. With high hopes that
he would find more answers to his
questioning oi life, Dan prepared to enter
the state university.
168

APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA
Type of work: Novel
Author: John O'Hara (1905- )
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1930
Locale: Pennsylvania
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Julian English, a car dealer
Caroline, his wife
Harry Reilly, a rich man
Al Grecco, the bootlegger's handyman
Critique:
This novel is in the tradition of the
roaring twenties; it deals with prohibition,
bootleggers, easy morals. In style it recalls
F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is mentioned in
the book. The character analysis is
somewhat in the manner of Lewis' Babbitt.
Appointment in Samarra goes beyond
mere pandering to sensationalism,
however, in that it sustains a theme of moral
judgment, as implied by the title. The
lives led by these people can have no
fruitful or important end.
The Story:
Julian English was thirty, a congenial
seller of cars, popular with the country
club set. He had the right connections
with Ed Charney, the local bootlegger,
and consequently was always well sup-
Elied with liquor. He and Caroline had
een married four years. They were both
natives of Gibbsville and had an assured
social position. They had no children.
Just before Christmas they went to a
party at the country club. As usual, Julian
had had too much to drink. He sat idly
twirling his highball and listening to
Harry Reilly's stories. Harry was a rich
Irish Catholic and definitely a social
climber. Actually, Julian hated Harry, al*
though Harry had lent him twenty
thousand dollars the previous summer to
bolster his Cadillac agency. But that loan
did not give Harry the right to make
passes at Caroline, Julian thought darkly.
Harry told stories in paragraphs. He
always paused at the right time. Julian kept
thinking how fitting it would be if he
stopped the stories by throwing his drink
in Harry's face. Julian grew bored. On
impulse he did throw his drink in Harry's
face. A big lump of ice hit Harry in the
eye.
On the way home Julian and Caroline
quarreled furiously. Julian accused his
wife of infidelity with Harry, among
other people. Caroline said that Julian
always drank too much and chased women
as well. More important, Harry had a
mortgage on the car agency and a good
deal of influence with the Catholics, and
he was a man who could hold a grudge.
Al Grecco was a little man who as Ed
Charney *s handyman had a certain
standing in the town. He liked Julian because
Julian was the only one of the social set
who was really friendly. Al grew up on
the wrong side of the tracks. Before he
was finally sentenced to a year in prison
he had been arrested several times. When
he got out he worked in a poolroom for a
while until his boss died. The widow
wanted Al to stay on as manager, but he
went to work for Charney. Now he
delivered bootleg booze, ran errands, and
kept an eye on the torch singer at the
Stage Coach, a country inn owned by
Charney. Helene Holman, the singer, was
Charney's girl, and if she were not
carefully watched, she might out of sheer
good-heartedness extend her favors to
other men.
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara. By permission of the publishers, Duell, Sloan &
Pearce, Inc. Copyright, 1934, by John O'Hara.
169

On Christmas Day Julian woke up with
a hangover. As was his custom, he
quarreled with the cook. At Caroline's
suggestion he went to Harry Reilly's house to
apologize. Although Reilly's sister was
sympathetic, she brought down word that
Harry would not see him; he had a black
eye and still nursed a grouch.
Julian's father and mother came for
Christmas dinner. The father, a staid,
successful surgeon, was suspicious of his son.
He always looked for evidence of moral
weakness in Julian, for his own father had
committed suicide after embezzling a
fortune. He was afraid that the English
inheritance was stained. Dinner was a trying
time.
Caroline and Julian had supper at the
club. The usual crowd was there. Julian
was unmercifully ribbed in the locker
room. In a dismal mood he sat drinking by
himself while he waited for a chance to
see Father Creedon and ask him to patch
up his affair with Harry. The old priest
was sympathetic and made light of the
incident. After agreeing that Harry was a
bore, he promised to send Julian some
good Irish whiskey.
Ed Charney was a good family man
who spent Christmas Day with his wife
and son. He intended to go out to the
Stage Coach only in the evening. Then
his son became suddenly ill. It looked as
if he would have to stay home. Mindful
of Helene's weaknesses, he telephoned Al
Grecco to go out to the inn and keep watch
on her. It was Christmas night and she
would be drinking too much. Al did not
care for the assignment, but he dutifully
went out to the inn and sat down with
Helene.
The country club set began to drift in.
Froggy Ogden, who was Caroline's one-
armed cousin, was the oldest man there;
he seemed to feel a responsibility for
Julian, who was still drinking. In a spirit
of bravado Julian danced several times
with Helene, even though Al warned him
of Charney's anger. Finally, carried away
by the music and too many drinks, Julian
and Helene left the dance floor. Caroline
and Froggy found Julian in a stupor in
the back of a sedan and took him home.
The day after Christmas Caroline went
to her mother and announced her
intention to divorce Julian. Her mother found
it difficult to listen to her daughter; she
believed herself above the foibles of the
younger generation. Caroline thought
herself a heroine in an old-fashioned
melodrama. But she was determined not to go
back to Julian. After meeting him on the
street and quarreling again, she canceled
the big party they were to have given that
evening.
Al Grecco, as he backed out of the
garage with a case of Scotch, had decided
to kill Ed Charney. When Charney had
phoned him, he had tried to excuse his
lack of vigilance: he protested that he had
only let Helene dance. But Ed in a rage
had said some things that Al could not
accept.
Determined to look businesslike, Julian
went to his office at the auto agency. He
sat importantly at his desk and wrote
figures on a piece of scratch paper. The
only conclusion he could reach was that
he needed more money. One of his
salesmen came in to try to lay down the law.
He asserted that Julian's difficulties were
gossiped about strenuously in the little
town of Gibbsville. The offense to
Charney was particularly grave: he had
been a good friend to the agency and had
helped them sell cars to other bootleggers.
Julian left the office in no cheerful
mood. He wandered into his club for
lunch. Since it was the day after
Christmas, the dining-room was deserted except
for some elderly lawyers and Froggy.
Avoiding his wife's cousin, Julian sat
down in a far corner of the room. After
picking up his plate, Froggy followed him
and began to reproach him for his conduct
with the torch singer. He told Julian he
had always distrusted him and had warned
Caroline about his conduct many times.
When Froggy invited him outside to
fight, Julian refused because he could not
hit a one-armed man. Froggy became
more insulting, so that the lawyers came
170

to their table to interfere. Julian was
intensely angered when they seemed to side
with Froggy. Turning quickly, he hit one
of the lawyers full in the mouth and
dislodged his false teeth.
Julian went home and fell asleep.
About ten o'clock a society reporter awoke
him when she came to get a story about
the canceled party. After several drinks,
he tried to seduce her but with no success.
As soon as she left, Julian went to the
garage, closed the door, and started the
motor. He was pronounced a suicide by
the coroner.
171

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS
(SELECTIONS)
Type of work: Tales
Author: Unknown
Type of plots: Adventure romances
Time of plots: The legendary past
Locale: India, China, Persia, Arabia
First transcribed: Fifteenth century
Principal characters:
Shahriar, Emperor of Persia and India
Scheherazade, his bride
The Fisherman
The King of the Black Isles, half man, half marble
Sindbad the Sailor, a wanderer from Baghdad
The Sultan of India
Houssain,
Ali, and
Ahmed, his sons
Periebanou, Ahmed's wife
Ali Baba, a woodcutter in Persia
Cassim, his brother
Morgiana, his slave
Aladdin, a good-for-nothing boy in China
Critique:
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments
is the title usually used in English to
designate a group of tales more properly
called The Thousand and One Nights.
These stories, adapted and formalized by
bazaar storytellers, had their origins in
many lands throughout the East and
were handed down by word of mouth
for hundreds of years. Some present
interesting parallels. In the story of "The
Three Sisters" a baby is put in a basket
to float down a river, a circumstance
reminiscent of the Biblical account of
Moses in the bulrushes. In Sindbad's
various journeys by sea there are
similarities to the wanderings of Ulysses as
related by Homer, in one instance a close
parallel to the Cyclops story. Some of
the characters have been drawn from
history. But whether the source is
folklore, religious tradition, or history, the
tales have a timeless quality appealing,
from legendary times to the present, to
authors of every sort. Stories of Robin
Hood have the same flavor. More
recently, Gilbert and Sullivan used the
"sisters and the cousins and the aunts"
grouping such as Aladdin employed to
impress the sultan that he had plenty of
followers to back his cause as suitor for
the hand of the princess. Most scholars
believe that the collection took its
present form in Cairo in the fifteenth
century; it was introduced to the Western
World in a translation by Antoine Gal-
land, published in Paris in 1704.
Traditionally there were a thousand and one
stories told by Scheherazade to her
emperor-husband, but in extant manuscripts
the tales are not always the same.
Practically all modern editions contain only
a small portion of the complete
collection. Those most frequently reprinted
have become minor classics of the world's
literature.
The Stories:
Convinced by the treachery of his
brother's wife and his own that all
women were unfaithful, Shahriar, Emperor
of Persia and India, vowed that he would
marry a new wife every day and have
her executed the next morning. Only
Scheherazade, wise as well as beautiful,
172

had the courage to try to save the young
women of Persia. On the night of her
marriage to Shahriar, she began to tell
him a tale which fascinated him so much
that he stayed her death for one more
night so that he could learn the end of
the story. Scheherazade told him stories
for one thousand and one nights. At that
time, convinced of her worthiness and
goodness, he bade her live and made her
his consort.
One tale Scheherazade told was "The
History of the Fisherman and the Genie**:
A poor Mussulman fisherman drew from
the sea in his nets a strange box with a
seal on top. When he pried off the top,
a huge genie appeared and threatened
him with death, offering the poor man
no more than his choice in the manner
of his death. The fisherman begged for
his life because he had done the genie a
favor by releasing him, but the genie
declared that he had vowed death to the
man who opened the box. Finally the
fisherman exclaimed that he could not
believe anything as huge and terrible as
the genie could ever have been in a space
so small. Dissolving into a cloud of
smoke, the genie shrank until he could
slip back into the box, whereupon the
fisherman clamped on the lid. Throwing
the box back into the sea, he warned all
other fishermen to beware if it should
ever fall into their nets.
Another story was "The History of
the Young King of the Black Isles**: A
fisherman caught four beautiful fish, one
white, one red, one blue, and one yellow.
They were so choice that he took them to
the sultan's palace. While the fish were
being cooked, a beautiful girl suddenly
appeared and talked to the fish, after
which they were too charred to take to
the sultan. When the same thing
happened two days in a row, the sultan was
called. After asking where the fish came
from, he decided to visit the lake.
Nearby he found a beautiful, apparently
deserted palace. As he walked through the
beautiful halls, he found one in which
a king was sitting on a throne. The king
apologized for not rising, explaining that
his lower half was marble.
He was the King of the Black Isles.
When he had learned that his queen was
unfaithful to him, he had nearly killed
her blackamoor lover. In revenge the
queen had cast a spell over her husband,
making him half marble. Daily she
whipped him, then had him dressed in
coarse goat's hair over which his royal
robes were placed. In the meantime, while
she had kept her lover barely alive, she
had changed her husband's town and all
its inhabitants into the lake full of fish.
The king told the sultan where the
queen's lover was kept. There the
sultan went, killed the lover, and put
himself in the blackamoor's place. The
queen, overjoyed to hear speaking the
one she had kept from the edge of death
so long, hastened to do all the voice
commanded. She restored the king to
his human form and the lake to its
previous state as a populous town. The four
colors of fish indicated the four
different religions of the inhabitants.
When the queen returned to the
sultan, whom she mistook for her lover, he
killed her for her treachery. Thereafter
he took home with him the King of the
Black Isles, and rewarded the fisherman
who had led him to the magic lake.
Shahriar was vastly entertained by
"The History of Sindbad the Sailor**: A
poor porter in Baghdad, resting before
the house of Sindbad, bewailed the fact
that his lot was harder than that of
Sindbad. Overhearing him, Sindbad invited
the porter to dine with him. During the
meal he told of the hardships he had
suffered in order to make his fortune.
On his first voyage, to India by way of
the Persian Gulf, Sindbad's ship was
becalmed near a small green island. The
sailors climbed upon the island, only to
find that it was really a sea monster
which heaved itself up and swam away.
Sindbad was the only man who did not
get back to the ship. After days of
clinging to a piece of driftwood, he
landed on an island where some men
were gathered. They led him to a maha-
rajah who treated Sindbad graciously.
173

When he had been there some time his
own ship came into port, and he claimed
his bales of goods, to the astonishment
of the captain, who thought he had seen
Sindbad killed at sea. Then Sindbad
sailed home in the ship in which he had
set out.
The porter was so impressed with the
first tale that he came again to hear a
second. On his second voyage Sindbad was
left asleep on an island where the sailors
had rested. There he found a huge roc's
egg. Knowing that the parent bird would
return to the nest at dusk, he waited.
When it came, he used his turban to tie
himself to the bird's leg. In the morning
the bird flew to a place surrounded by
mountains. There Sindbad freed himself
when the bird descended to pick up a
serpent. The place seemed deserted, except
for large serpents. Diamonds of great size
were scattered throughout the valley.
Sindbad remembered that merchants
were said to throw joints of meat into the
diamond valley, from which big eagles
carried the joints to their nests close to
shore. At the nests the merchants
frightened away the birds and recovered
diamonds which had stuck to the meat.
Sindbad collected some large diamonds. Then
with his turban he fastened a piece of
meat to his back and lay down. An eagle
picked him up and carried him to its nest.
When he was dropped into a nest, the
merchant who claimed the nest was
indignant and accused Sindbad of stealing his
property. Sindbad offered him some
choice diamonds. In return the merchant
was glad to take the adventurer back to
civilization.
On his third voyage Sindbad was
wrecked on an island inhabited by
cannibal dwarfs and huge black creatures
with only one eye in the middle of their
foreheads. Sindbad and his friends
blinded one black giant, but two others helped
the blind one to chase the sailors. By the
time the giants and a large serpent had
overtaken them, only Sindbad was lucky
enough to escape.
Sindbad sailed from a port in Persia on
his fourth voyage. He and his friends
were shipwrecked on an island inhabited
by black cannibals who fattened the
sailors before killing them. Sindbad refused
the food, grew too thin to interest the
black men, and finally found his way to
the shore. There he met white men who
took him to their kingdom. To please the
king, Sindbad made a fine saddle. In
appreciation the king married Sindbad to a
beautiful girl. In that country a man or
woman was buried alive if the spouse
died. When Sindbad's wife died, he was
put in a tomb with a small amount of
bread and water. As he ate the last of his
food he heard an animal snuffling, then
running away. Following the sound, he
found himself on the shore and hailed a
ship which carried him home.
Sindbad used his own ship on his fifth
voyage. After his sailors had broken open
a roc's eggy the parent rocs hurled
tremendous stones on the ship and broke it
to pieces. Sindbad came under the power
of the Old Man of the Sea and escaped
only after making the old man so
intoxicated that he loosed his death grip on
Sindbad. Again Sindbad found a ship to
take him home; he did much profitable
trading on the way.
All his companions on the sixth voyage
succumbed on a beautiful but lifeless
coast. Sindbad, expecting to die, built a
raft which he put in an underground
river to drift where it would. When he
reached the kingdom of Serendib, he had
to be revived. He found the country
exceedingly rich and the people kind. When
he asked to be allowed to go home, the
king sent him there with rich presents
for Sindbad's ruler, the Caliph Harun-al-
Rashid of Baghdad.
Sindbad made his seventh and final
voyage to take gifts from the caliph to the
King of Serendib. He carried them safely,
but his return trip was delayed when
corsairs seized his ship and sold the sailors
into slavery. Sindbad, sold to an ivory
merchant, was ordered to shoot an
elephant a day. Annoyed at Sindbad's per-
174

sistence, an elephant picked him up and
took him to an elephant burial ground, to
which Sindbad and his owner returned
many times to gather ivory. As a reward,
the merchant sent Sindbad home with
rich goods.
Another diverting tale was "The
History of Prince Ahmed": Houssain, Ali,
and Ahmed, sons of the Sultan of India,
were all in love with the Princess Nouron-
nihar, their father's ward. To determine
who should be the bridegroom, the
sultan sent them out to find the most
extraordinary things they could. Whoever
brought back the rarest object would win
the hand of the princess.
Houssain found a magic carpet which
would transport him wherever he wished.
Ali found an ivory tube containing a glass
which would show any object he wished
to see. Ahmed found an artificial apple,
the odor of which would cure any illness.
The three princes met before they
journeyed home. As they displayed their
gifts, Houssain, looking through the tube,
saw the princess apparently at the point
of death. They all jumped on his magic
carpet and were whisked to her bedroom,
where Ahmed used his magic apple to
revive her. The sultan could not determine
which article was the most unusual, for
all had been of use to effect the princess'
recovery. He suggested an archery
contest. Prince Ali shot farther than
Houssain, but Ahmed's arrow could not be
found. The sultan decided in favor of
Ali. Houssain retired to become a dervish.
Ahmed, instead of attending the wedding,
went in search of his arrow, which he
found at the foot of a mountain, much
farther away than he could have shot.
Looking around, he found a door into the
mountain. When he passed through the
door, he found a fairy called Periebanou,
who pleased him so much that he
married her.
When Ahmed went to visit his father,
he refused to discuss where or how he
lived, but he appeared to be so rich that
the courtiers grew jealous and persuaded
the sultan that it was dangerous to have
his son so powerful a neighbor. The
sultan asked Ahmed to perform unreasonable
tasks, made possible only by Periebanou's
help; but while fulfilling one request her
brother became so annoyed with the
sultan that he killed him. Ahmed became
sultan and afterward dealt kindly with
his brothers.
Scheherazade pleased her lord also with
"The History of Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves": Ali Baba was a Persian
woodcutter. One day, to hide from a band of
strange horsemen, he% climbed a tree
under which they halted. When the leader
cried, "Open, Sesame!" to a rock nearby,
a door opened through which the men
carried their heavy packs. After the men
left, Ali Baba used the secret word to
investigate the cave. He found such riches
there that the gold he took could never
be missed.
He and his wife were content with that
amount, but his brother Cassim, to whom
he had told his story, was greedy for more
wealth. Without telling Ali Baba,
Cassim went to the cave. He was so excited
by the gold that he forgot the password
and could not get out. The robbers found
and murdered him.
The robbers tried to find Ali Baba in
order to kill him and so keep the secret
of their hoard. The leader brought his
men, hidden in oil jars, to Ali Baba's
house, but a beautiful slave, Morgiana,
went in search of oil, discovered the ruse,
and killed the bandits. Again the captain,
disguised as a merchant, entered the
house, but Morgiana saw through his
disguise and killed him.
To reward Morgiana, Ali Baba not only
made her a free woman, but he also gave
her to his son in marriage. Ali Baba was
then the only one who knew the secret
of the cave. He used the hidden wealth in
moderation and passed the secret on to
his posterity.
No less pleasing was "The History of
Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp":
Aladdin was a youthful vagabond who lived
in China. An African magician, sensing
that Aladdin would suit his plans, and

pretending to be the boy's rich uncle,
took him to a secret place to get a magic
lamp. Passing through halls stored with
treasures, Aladdin filled his gown with so
many things that he could not give the
magician the lamp at the moment he
wanted it, and the magician sealed him
up in the earth. By chance Aladdin
rubbed a ring which the magician had
given him. A genie appeared and escorted
him home.
When Aladdin showed his mother the
lamp, she tried to clean it to sell. As she
rubbed, another genie appeared from
whom Aladdin asked food. The food
appeared on silver trays that Aladdin sold
one by one to a Jewish chapman. When
an honest jeweler stopped Aladdin one
day and asked to buy the silver, Aladdin
began to realize the great riches he had at
his finger tips, enough to win him the
sultan's daughter as his wife.
Because the grand vizier wanted his
own son to marry the princess, he
suggested many outrageous demands which the
sultan made upon Aladdin before he
could be considered a suitor. The genies
produced slaves, costumes, jewelry, gold,
and chargers in such profusion that the
sultan gladly accepted Aladdin's suit.
Overnight Aladdin had the genie build
a magnificent palace next to the sultan's.
Life went smoothly until the African
magician, while Aladdin was away,
persuaded the princess to trade the old lamp
for a new one. Then the magician
transported the great palace to Africa. When
Aladdin came home, the sultan
threatened him with arrest, but allowed him
forty days in which to find the palace
with the princess therein. Rubbing his
ring by chance and summoning its genie,
Aladdin asked to be carried wherever his
palace was. The princess was overjoyed
to see him. After he had killed the
magician by a ruse, he ordered the genie of
the lamp to transport the palace back to
China. There, after disposing of the
magician's brother, who had followed them,
Aladdin and the princess lived happily
ever after.
176

THE ARBITRATION
Type of work: Drama
Author: Menander (342-291 B.C.)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Fourth century B.C.
Locale: A suburb of Athens
First presented: c. 310 B.C.
Principal characters:
Charisius, a young Athenian
Pamphila, his wife
Smicrines, miserly father of Pamphila
Onesimus, Charisius' slave
Chaerestratus, Charisius' friend and neighbor
Syriscus, a charcoal burner
Davus, a goatherd
Habrotonon, a pretty harp-playing slave
Sophrona, a nurse
Critique:
What Aristophanes was to the great
age of Greek comedy, Menander was to
New Comedy, that form characterized by
the abandonment of the chorus and the
intervention of the gods and by its
concern with domestic problems of ordinary
mortals. Tradition made Menander
author of a hundred plays, of which about
eighty titles are still known, but for
centuries all trace of his writings, except for
a few fragments, was lost. In the late
nineteenth century papyri recovered from
Egyptian tombs enabled students to get
a better idea of Menander's writing. Still
more recent discoveries provided almost
complete versions of two of his comedies:
The Girl with the Shorn Locks, about a
soldier-lover who mistreated his mistress
and almost lost her, but won her back by
marrying her, and the Arbitration.
Actually, the title refers only to one amusing
scene in this comedy of a harsh father, a
knavish slave, and a slave girl with a
heart of gold. The play contains stock
material and situations. The nurse, even
to her name, is a type, as are the servant
and the avaricious father. But
Menander's clever plotting is shown in his use
of the miser as the arbitrator whose
decision regarding the fate of his own
grandson brings trouble to him and
provides material for the picaresque servant's
amusing insults. The action is l'vely and
the dialogue amusing, especially in the
scene in which the two slaves, Onesimus
and Habrotonon, outmaneuver each
other.
The Story:
Pamphila, the daughter of a respected
but miserly Athenian citizen, had been
ravished by a drunken young man of
ordinarily good behavior during the night
festival of the Tauropolia. The only clue
she had to his identity was a signet ring
which he had left in her possession. A
short time later Pamphila was married
to her ravisher, a young Athenian named
Charisius, and Smicrines, her father,
provided a good dowry for his idealistic but
rather priggish son-in-law. Pamphila,
who soon learned to love her husband,
gave birth to her child during his
absence and, acting on the advice of her
nurse Sophrona, exposed the infant and
with the baby a pouch containing
assorted tokens, including the ring.
Charisius, learning of the birth from his prving
servant Onesimus, decided that the child
could not be his. Instead of repudiating
Pamphila, however, he left home and
began to waste his substance in rich
feasts given at the home of his friend
Chaerestratus, who lived next door.
Pamphila was distracted because the husband
she loved had deserted her for the
company of hired dancing girls and harp
players.
177

So matters stood when Smicrines came
to investigate reports of Charisius'
conduct; he had heard that his son-in-law
was spending every night for a hired harp
player a sum sufficient to feed a slave for
a month. Just before his arrival a
conceited, loud-mouthed cook, Carion, on his
way to prepare a meal in the house of
Chaerestratus, vainly questioned
Charisius' servant Onesimus about his master;
the cook also wanted to know why
Charisius neglected his wife and paid twelve
drachmas a night to be entertained by
the lovely, harp-playing slave, Habroto-
non. While Carion and Ones;mus were
talking, the musician was delivered by
her master. The slave dealer managed to
persuade bemused Charisius that he
owed money for several previous nights'
entertainment. Charisius paid, but wily
Onesimus recovered the overpayments for
himself.
When Smicrines appeared, Onesimus
managed to befuddle the anxious, angry
father with the story that it was
Chaerestratus who was giving the parties and
that Charisius attended only to protect
his friend's possessions and good name.
After Smicrines had gone into his son-
in-law's house, two of Chaerestratus'
tenants appeared to pay their rent. They
were Davus, a goatherd, and Syriscus, a
charcoal burner accompanied by his wife
carrying a baby. While they waited they
argued over another matter. A month
earlier Davus had come upon a baby
exposed in the hills. His first impulse had
been to adopt the foundling, but later,
having calculated the cost of rearing a
child, he was returning the infant to
the place where he had found it when
Syriscus offered to adopt the baby in
flace of his own child who had just died.
Jow Syriscus, having learned that Davus
had kept the trinkets left beside the baby,
claimed them because they might some
day help to identify the child's parents.
Davus had refused to give up the tokens,
but he had agreed to let someone else
decide the matter. Smicrines, reappearing
from the house of Charisius, was
persuaded to listen to the story and give his
decision. Deciding that the trinkets ought
to go with the baby, he ordered Davus to
give Syriscus the pouch containing them.
While Syriscus and his wife were
looking over the contents of the pouch,
Onesimus recognized the signet ring that
his master had lost at the time of the
Tauropolia festival a year before. The
slave borrowed it to show his master,
then hesitated because to return it would
be to accuse Charisius of having fathered
the abandoned baby. Habrotonon came
came along about that time, saw the ring,
heard the story, and concocted a scheme
of her own. She would learn the truth by
wearing the ring and seeing if Charisius
recognized it. In that case, she would
claim that she had been the girl he had
ravished and so rescue the child from
the life of a slave. Onesimus knew very
well that her chief purpose was to win her
own freedom.
Smicrines reappeared, determined to
demand the return of his daughter and
her dowry. The neighbors tried to
dissuade him by saying that everything
would turn out all right. As the party
ended, broken up by Habrotonon and her
claim that the child was hers, Onesimus
infuriated the miser by congratulating
him on bringing happiness to everybody
by his arbitration.
Pamphila begged her father not to
meddle with her marriage; she had no
desire for another husband, she declared.
If Charisius was infatuated with a
harpist, that was only a temporary
estrangement. At her father's announcement that
his current love was the mother of his
child, Pamphila fainted.
Regaining consciousness, she accused
her nurse Sophrona of causing all the
trouble by preventing her confession to
Charisius after the birth of the child.
While they argued, Habrotonon
happened by and recognized Pamphila as the
girl who had been Charisius' companion
of a year earlier. She told the patrician so
when he came to keep his promise to
arrange for her freedom. At first he re-
178

garded the story as another of her lies.
To save himself, Onesimus also accused
her of having invented the story. Habro-
tonon maintained stoutly that it was true,
and she declared that she would rather
see the child looked after properly than
win her own freedom.
Chaerestratus, who had always
admired the lovely slave, began
questioning her about her own early history, but
she remembered nothing of her infancy,
not even her name. Then the sight
of a small silver cup with an
indecipherable inscription among the trinkets of
Syriscus caused her to comment that she
had once possessed a similar cup.
Smicrines, seeing the cup for the first time,
identified it as having once belonged to
his oldest daughter, who had been
kidnapped by the slave traders during the
siege of the city some years before. So-
phrona, recognizing the harp player as
Smicrines' long-lost daughter Clearista,
stirred the girl's recollection by using her
baby name of "grasshopper."
Chaerestratus, who had loved the girl
from the first, now asked to marry her,
and when he showed miserly Smicrines
how he could get his daughter back
without spending money in court trials, he
got both the girl and her father's
blessing. Rascally Onesimus, instead of
getting the beating he deserved, was
probably given his freedom.
179

ARCADIA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
Type of plot: Pastoral romance
Time of plot: Classical antiquity
Locale: Arcadia, in Greece
First published: 1590
Principal characters:
Prince Pyrocles (Zelmane), son of Evarchus, King of Macedon
Prince Musidorus (Dorus), Duke of Thessalia, Pyrocles* friend,
Evarchus' nephew
Basilius, Duke of Arcadia
Gynecia, his wife
Pamela, his older daughter
Philoclea, his younger daughter
Philanax, Arcadian general, Basilius' friend
Dametas, Basilius' chief herdsman
Miso, his wife
Mopsa, his daughter
Evarchus, King of Macedon
Critique:
Although the original version of this
work was intended by Sidney as an
entertainment for his sister Mary, Countess
of Pembroke, and her friends (the tale
was originally titled The Countess of
Pembroke s Arcadia), this light pastoral
story holds a significant place in the
development of the English novel, for it
serves as a bridge between the delicately
written Italian romances and the more
sturdy prose tales of the later Elizabethan
period in England. The original Arcadia
was revised and considerably enlarged by
Sidney into an unfinished version which
was published in 1590. The "old"
Arcadia, although not published in its
complete and original form until 1926, clearly
shows the complete primary intention of
its author. It has a rustic charm and
coherence of plot not nearly so evident in
the more ambitious later version. The
presence of occasional passages of poetry
and of the four eclogues, largely in the
form of poetry, which are inserted among
the five "books" of the romance is a
carryover from the earlier continental
romances; but the plot, skillfully handled
for its time, and the philosophical asides
of the author pointed the way toward a
more serious genre of fiction to follow.
The Story:
Basilius, the powerful Duke of
Arcadia, a quiet and peaceful province of
Greece, ruled his faithful subjects
happily and well. Being overcome by an
ungovernable curiosity to learn what the
future held for him, his wife Gynecia, and
his beautiful daughters Pamela and
Philoclea, he went to consult the Oracle at
Delphos. There he was told that his older
daughter, Pamela, would be stolen from
him; his younger daughter would engage
in an unsuitable love affair; his wife
would commit adultery; and a foreign
ruler would sit upon his throne—all
within a year.
Basilius told the prophecy to his friend
Philanax, whom he left in charge of the
country while he, in an effort to escape
the destiny foretold by the Oracle, took
his wife and daughters into a secluded
part of the country to live for the year.
Basilius lived in one of two lodges with
his wife and Philoclea; in the other he
put Pamela under the care of Dametas, a
rude shepherd of whose honesty Basilius
had a high opinion.
Shortly after the duke's retirement, two
young princes, Pyrocles and Musidorus,
arrived in Arcadia. Young men of great
courage, personal beauty, and integrity,
180

who had been reared together in close
friendship, they had been swept ashore
at Lydia after experiencing a shipwreck
and many strange adventures as well as
performing many acts of daring and
honor.
Pyrocles saw a picture of Philoclea,
learned of her enforced retirement, and
fell in love with her. Determined to see
the princess face to face, he told Musi-
dorus of his love and of his plan to
disguise himself as a chivalric Amazon and
in woman's guise to approach Philoclea.
For a name, he took that of his lost lady,
Zelmane.
After a lengthy debate, in which Musi-
dorus attempted to convince his friend of
the folly of love, Pyrocles still remained
firm in his intention; and the two princes
traveled to the place of the duke's
retirement, Pyrocles in his disguise as an
Amazon. While Musidorus waited in a nearby
wood, Pyrocles, now Zelmane, sat down
and sang a melancholy song which
awakened Dametas, who hastened to the duke's
lodge to tell him of a strange woman who
had arrived in the vicinity.
Basilius, upon seeing Pyrocles in his
disguise, fell in love with the supposed
Amazon. His true identity still
unsuspected, he was introduced to the duke's
family and invited to remain with them
for a while. Soon a young shepherd
appeared. He was Musidorus, who had
fallen in love with Pamela on sight and
assumed a disguise of his own. After
telling his contrived tale of being sent
by a friend to serve Dametas, Musidorus,
under the name Dorus, was taken by the
chief herdsman as a servant.
Zelmane saved Philoclea from a savage
lion, but in doing so he was discovered by
Gynecia, the duke's wife, to be a man;
she immediately fell in love with him.
Dorus, meanwhile, saved Pamela from a
bear. Before long both princesses began
to become enamored of the disguised
princes.
The Arcadian shepherds, as was their
custom, met and exchanged poetic songs
for their own entertainment and that of
the duke's family and his guests. The
songs, often accompanied by dancing,
chiefly concerned the gods and the human
passions. This occasion only increased the
intensity of the tangle of love
relationships that had so rapidly developed.
After the pastoral festival, Gynecia and
Basilius both declared their love for
Zelmane, and Philoclea was puzzled greatly
by the strange passion she felt for the
person she thought a woman. In the
meantime Dorus pretended to be in love
with Mopsa in order to be near Pamela,
who in this manner became aware of his
affection for her. He also managed, by
subtle stories and poems, to reveal his
true station to her.
Pyrocles, distressed by the advances of
Basilius, revealed his true identity to
Philoclea, who at first embraced him
joyously but then became ashamed of her
sudden show of affection. Gynecia,
suspecting this attachment, was overcome
with jealousy.
While Gynecia, having sent Philoclea
home from a meeting with Pyrocles, was
starting to tell the disguised prince of the
depth of her love, they were attacked by
some roving ruffians. Pyrocles, Basilius,
and then Dorus with the aid of some
shepherds drove off the attackers. This
was only the prelude to an uprising by
the citizens of a nearby Arcadian village,
who had become enraged by the duke's
seeming unconcern about his country. In
an impassioned speech, however, Pyrocles
convinced them of their error and stirred
in them a renewed loyalty to Basilius.
This triumph was celebrated by another
pastoral entertainment, largely taken up
with a poetic debate between Reason and
Passion. Once more, the poems, dances,
and stories served to increase the depth of
the emotions felt by the royal party.
Dorus then told his friend of his
moderate success with Pamela, whom he. had
urged to flee with him to Thessalia.
Pyrocles, sharing Dorus' sorrow over their
separation, decided to press his suit of
Philoclea and to rid himself of the
importunate demands of Basilius and
Gynecia. When they renewed their
entreaties, Pyrocles, still in his disguise and fear-
181

ing to deny them outright, gave them
hopeful but obscure answers.
Meanwhile, Dorus, having tricked Da-
metas and his family into leaving the
lodge, had escaped with Pamela to a
forest on the way to Thessalia. There they
were set upon by a band of ruffians.
The false Zelmane, hard pressed by
Gynecia's declarations, was forced to
pretend a deep passion for her, a situation
which so distressed Philoclea that she
kept to her room in the lodge, in profound
sorrow. In order to be free to execute a
plan to be alone with Philoclea, Pyrocles
moved from the lodge to a dark cave not
far away. He then took the duke and his
wife aside separately and made an
assignation with each at the same time in
the cave.
When Basilius met Gynecia, who had
dressed like Zelmane, in the cave, he
failed to recognize his wife. Gynecia,
ashamed of her actions, embraced him
lovingly. Back at the lodge, Pyrocles, now
in his own person, crept into Philoclea's
room and, after a brief time, won her
over and stayed the night.
Dametas, realizing that he had been
tricked, began a search for Pamela.
Entering the duke's lodge by a secret
entrance, he discovered Philoclea and
Pyrocles asleep. He left hastily to inform
the local citizens of the treachery.
In the cave Gynecia, angered at her
husband's praise of Zelmane, revealed her
identity. Basilius, ashamed, repented his
weakness, pledged renewed love to his
wife, and drank a long draught from a
cup of a mysterious beverage standing
close by. The liquid was a potion,
believed by Gynecia to be a love philter,
which the duchess had brought to give
to Zelmane. After drinking it, Basilius
fell to the ground and appeared to die.
The duke's death being discovered,
Philanax, with a troop of soldiers,
imprisoned Gynecia, Pyrocles, and
Philoclea.
The rogues who had attacked Dorus
and Pamela, the remnant of the rebellious
band which had earlier caused much
trouble, overwhelmed the lovers and captured
them. While in captivity, Musidorus
revealed his actual name and rank. A short
time later some of Philanax's soldiers, sent
to search for Pamela, came upon the band
and their prisoners. Recognizing the
princess, the soldiers returned the entire
group to Philanax, who put the lovers
under restraint.
There was now a great turmoil, and
many opinions and beliefs were
exchanged as to the real guilt in the death
of the duke and the disgrace of the
princesses.
Hearing that Evarchus, King of Mace-
don, had arrived in Arcadia to visit the
duke, Philanax persuaded him to be the
judge in the trial of the five people
involved. Gynecia admitted her guilt and
begged to be executed. Then Evarchus,
not recognizing his son and his nephew
because they had been away for such a
long time, condemned the two princes to
death and the princesses to milder
punishments. Even after learning the true
identity of the young men, Evarchus
refused, from a deep sense of justice, to
alter his verdict.
At that point Basilius, who had
swallowed only a powerful sleeping potion,
awoke. The young lovers and the duchess
were promptly forgiven. Basilius
pondered on how accurately the Oracle's
prophecy had been fulfilled and how
happily events had turned out. The princes
and their loves, soon wed, assumed the
high stations for which their rank fitted
them.
182

ARGENIS
Principal characters:
Poliarchus, the name assumed by Astioristes, Prince of France
Argenis, Princess of Sicily
Meleander, King of Sicily, her father
Archombrotus, the name assumed by Hyempsal, Prince of
Mauritania, during his sojourn in Sicily
Hyanisbe, Queen of Mauritania
Radirobanes, King of Sardinia
Lycogenes, a Sicilian noble, leader of the rebellion against Meleander
Arsidas, a Sicilian noble, Governor of Messana, a friend to Poliarchus
Gelanorus, a French noble sojourning in Sicily in the guise of
Poliarchus' servant
Selenissa, a Sicilian matron, Argenis' nurse and companion
Timoclea, a Sicilian matron, a friend to Poliarchus and, later, Argenis*
companion
Nicopompus, a Sicilian courtier-poet of pro-monarchial sentiments
Type of work: Prose romance
Author: John Barclay (1582-1621)
Type of plot: Pseudo classical heroic allegory
Time of plot: The Hellenistic era
Locale: Sicily and the Western Mediterranean
First published: 1621
Critique:
John Barclay, the son of a Scot, was
born in France, died in Italy, and wrote
in Latin. His last work, Argenis, finished
only a month before his death, became
immediately popular and remained so for
two centuries. Seven years after its
publication it had been honored by three
translations into English (the first, by
Ben Jonson, in 1623, is, unfortunately,
not extant), and as late as the nineteenth
century it received the high praise of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Its original
popularity was not due entirely to its
artistic merits, however, for it was as
satire that it first caught the fancy of
readers on both sides of the Channel.
Barclay had already a reputation as a
satirist, but in Argenis the objects of his
attacks are generalized behind a screen of
allegory. The story of the love of
Poliarchus and Argenis is supposed to represent
the wars and intrigues in France before
the Concordat under Henry IV. As
revealed by the Clovis published in the
edition of 1623, Sicily, the scene of the
action, stands for France, with Argenis a
personified symbol of the throne contested
during the religious wars and Poliarchus
and Archombrotus representing different
aspects of Henry of Navarre (later Henry
IV). Meleander is Henry III; Mauritania
is England; Hyanisbe, Elizabeth; and Ra-
dirobanes, the rapacious and deceitful
Philip of Spain. The whole work is aimed
at opponents of the monarchical system.
Although interest in the work as satire
lasted only as long as the controversy over
the divine right of kings remained a vital
issue, Argenis was long praised for the
grandeur of its expression, the nobility of
its theme, the heroic stature of its
characters. Today, however, only its historical
interest remains; it stands with Honore*
d'Urfe's UAstree as an interesting
transitional work between the Greek-influenced
prose romances of the sixteenth century
on the one hand, and the interminable
French romances of La Calprenede and
Mile, de Scuddry on the other.
The Story:
Before the Mediterranean world had
ever come under the dominance of Rome,
a young adventurer from Africa landed on
183

the shores of Sicily and was met by a
distraught lady who begged him to assist
her friend, who was being attacked by
thieves. The young man, who gave his
name as Archombrotus, sped to the
rescue only to find that his help was not
needed: the lady's friend had dispatched
the thieves singlehanded. The three
returned to the lady's house where
Archombrotus learned that the lady was
Timoclea, a respected Sicilian matron, and that
her friend was young Poliarchus, also a
stranger to Sicily, who had distinguished
himself in the service of King Meleander
against a rebel army led by the traitorous
noble, Lycogenes. Poliarchus, having
urged more forceful resistance to the
rebellion, had been banished when the
over-cautious king declared a truce.
Meleander, Archombrotus learned, had a
beautiful daughter, Argenis;
Archombrotus concluded immediately that
Poliarchus was in love with her.
While engaged in their discussion, they
noticed signal fires blazing on the
surrounding hilltops. Timoclea explained that
these were beacons fired to warn the
people that a traitor was at large. Presently
a servant entered with word that
Poliarchus was the one accused of treachery;
the "thieves" had been Lycogenes'
ambassadors, and the king had interpreted his
defense as an attempt to break the truce.
Timoclea, loyal to her guest, hid him
immediately in a cave on her estate and then
sent for his friend Arsidas, the Governor
of Messana. Arsidas arrived promptly, and
he and Poliarchus' servant, Gelanorus,
devised a plan whereby it was given out
that Poliarchus had been drowned after
a fall from his horse. Arsidas hastened to
Argenis to tell her, secretly, the truth so
that she should not be distracted by false
news of Poliarchus' death.
Meanwhile, rustics on Timoclea's
estate mistook Archombrotus for Poliarchus,
seized him, and carried him off to the
king. Meleander, realizing their mistake,
took Archombrotus into his council but
praised the peasants for their loyalty. At
the same time, Arsidas arranged to have
Argenis see Poliarchus. As a priestess of
Pallas presiding over the sacrifice to
celebrate the truce, she was to insist that the
common people be allowed to worship the
goddess beforehand, and Poliarchus was
to come before her in the dress of a
peasant. Thus the lovers were briefly united.
Poliarchus then fled with Arsidas to Italy.
Argenis, throwing herself into a frenzy,
claimed that the goddess would not honor
the sacrifice or the truce.
Enraged, Lycogenes resumed the war,
and Meleander fled with his train to the
fortified seaport of Epercte. On the way
he was almost drowned when his coach,
driven by a rebel spy, plunged into the
river, but he was saved by Archombrotus,
who was thus made secure in his favor.
The war going badly for the king,
Archombrotus convinced him that their only
hope lay in the return of the champion
Poliarchus. The king sent a precious
brooch to Poliarchus as a peace offering;
however, spies of Lycogenes poisoned the
brooch, and the rebel sent his own
messenger with a letter warning Poliarchus
that the brooch was fatal. If the king's
messenger arrived first, Poliarchus would
be dead; if Lycogenes', he would become
an enemy of the king—either way,
Lycogenes would no longer have to fear him.
But Poliarchus and his servant
Gelanorus had already left for Sicily.
Shipwrecked off the coast, they were rudely
hauled aboard a pirate craft. The two
routed the pirates and turned the ship
over to its rightful owner.
Discovering among the pirate treasure
jewels and letters belonging to Queen
Hyanisbe of Mauritania, Poliarchus
immediately ordered the ship to Mauritania
so that he could return the royal property.
The queen was delighted, for the letters
concerned the whereabouts of her knight-
errant son. She ordered a celebration
which would have continued indefinitely
had not Poliarchus been anxious to return
to his beloved. But in spite of his anxiety,
he was forced to stay when smitten by an
attack of the ague. Gelanorus was
dispatched with letters in his stead.
In the meantime, at Epercte, Melean-
der's situation was becoming untenable.
184

When matters seemed hopeless, the
tremendous fleet of Radirobanes, King of
Sardinia, arrived to help defend the rights
of the monarch against rebel upstarts.
The combined forces of Meleander and
Radirobanes routed the army of Lyco-
genes, and Archombrotus slew the rebel
leader in single combat.
The rebellion ended, Archombrotus
became the king's favorite. Having fallen in
love with Argenis, during the siege, and
with Poliarchus gone, he thought himself
the foremost claimant for her hand. But
Radirobanes also announced his claim to
the hand of the princess. Meleander was
in a quandary. Archombrotus was his
favorite, but both gratitude and the armed
fleet in the harbor lent weight to
Radirobanes' cause. Meleander solved the
problem by leaving the decision up to
Argenis. The Sardinian ruler advanced
his plea; the Sicilian princess rebuffed
him. Radirobanes then gained the
confidence of Argenis' nurse and companion,
Selenissa, who in nightly installments
told him the following story:
Lycogenes had also demanded Argenis
and, being refused, had threatened to
abduct her. To forestall his design,
Meleander had his daughter, along with
Selenissa and certain young ladies of her
court, placed in an inaccessible and
heavily guarded castle. While they were thus
secluded, a beautiful stranger who gave
her name as Theocrine came to Selenissa
and begged sanctuary. Admitted to the
castle, she shared the chamber of the
princess. When Lycogenes' men stormed
the castle, Theocrine seized a sword and
put the attackers to flight. The supposed
Theocrine was in reality Poliarchus, who,
having heard of the beauty of Argenis,
had used that disguise to be near her.
When he begged forgiveness, Argenis
immediately fell in love with him. He had
then disappeared, to return later in Me-
leander's service. The king, convinced
that Theocrine was warlike Pallas, had
dedicated his daughter to the service of
that beautiful, austere goddess.
Despairing of winning the princess by
fair means, Radirobanes planned to
blackmail her into acceptance of his proposal,
but Selenissa persuaded him that
abduction would be the better course. But
Argenis, having overheard part of Selenis-
sa's betrayal, feigned an illness that kept
her inaccessible, thereby frustrating
Radirobanes' plans. Thwarted, Radirobanes
returned with his fleet to Sardinia, leaving
with Meleander a letter informing him of
the true identity of Theocrine and
demanding payment of three hundred
talents for his aid. When Meleander
confronted his daughter with the information
he had received, she denied any untoward
dealings in the affair. Meleander, only
half believing her, demanded that she
marry Archombrotus. Selenissa, seeing the
damage she had done, killed herself, and
Timoclea succeeded her as chief lady of
the household.
Meanwhile, Poliarchus, having
recovered from his illness, had returned in
disguise to Sicily. Seeing no chance of
amicable dealings with Meleander, he asked
Argenis to delay her marriage to
Archombrotus while he found some means to
settle the matter. Then he sailed away.
Weeks passed and he failed to return.
Finally Argenis sent Arsidas to find him,
with letters pleading for his return.
Arsidas' ship was wrecked, however,
and he was rescued and taken aboard the
leading ship of a great war fleet. Gobrias,
the captain, received Arsidas hospitably
and informed him that the fleet belonged
to the King of France, who was preparing
to attack Sicily. The king himself was
commanding the flagship, which was
leading the second half of the fleet.
To entertain his guest, Gobrias told
him the strange history of the French
ruler, King Astioristes—how his mother
had kept his birth a secret so that he
would not be murdered in a rebellion that
was going on at the time, how he had
been reared by foster parents, had proved
himself a hero in battle, and had finally
been revealed as the true prince; how he
had heard of the beauty of the Sicilian
princess, Argenis, and had sojourned in
Sicily under the name of Poliarchus to
win her, and how now—as king, the old
185

king having died in his absence—he was
sailing to claim her.
Arsidas immediately identified himself
as Poliarchus' friend and offered his
assistance. Gobrias was delighted, but before
the two halves of the fleet could establish
a rendezvous, a terrible storm came up,
driving each part to a different point
on the African coast. The flotilla
commanded by the French king found safety
in the harbor of Mauritania, and once
again Astioristes, the one-time Poliarchus,
was entertained by Hyanisbe. His arrival
was most fortunate, for Radirobanes was
threatening Mauritania. Hyanisbe had
sent for her son, Hyempsal, who was at
the court of King Meleander in Sicily,
but he had not yet returned. When the
Sardinian troops arrived, they were
repulsed by the French. Poliarchus and
Radirobanes met in single combat, and
the Sardinian ruler was slain.
Disheartened, his followers were routed, but
Poliarchus was injured and again confined
in Mauritania.
Returning belatedly to his mother's
defense, Hyempsal turned out to be Ar-
chombrotus. Hyanisbe was dismayed
when she found that her son and her
protector were enemies; but when she learned
the cause of their quarrel she was
relieved and she wrote to Meleander a
letter which, she promised, would end their
difficulties.
While Astioristes was recovering from
his wounds, Hyempsal led a successful
expedition to Sardinia. Then the two
returned to Sicily and presented Hyanisbe's
sealed letter to Meleander. The message
proved as effective as Hyanisbe had
promised. Hyempsal, it was revealed, was the
son of Meleander and the king's secret
first wife, Hyanisbe's sister. Thus he was
both the heir to the Sicilian throne and
Argenis' half-brother. Since there was
now no obstacle to the marriage of
Argenis and Astioristes, Meleander gave them
his blessing, the wedding took place at
once, and an epithalamium was written
by the courtier-poet Nicopompus.
186

DER ARME HEINRICH
Type of work: Poem
Author: Hartmann von Aue (c 1170-between 1210 and 1220)
Type of plot: Didactic romance
Time of plot: Late twelfth century
Locale: Germany
First transcribed: Between 1192 and 1202
Principal characters:
Heinrich von Aue, a Swabian knight
A Peasant Girl
Critique:
Hartmann von Aue, a knight in the
service of a Swabian nobleman and one
of the first truly German writers, received
his education in monastery schools. Later
he traveled in France and translated
many French poems into Middle High
German. The death of his much admired
master in 1195 was the chief reason for
his participation in a crusade in Palestine,
possibly in 1197. This experience
revealed the basic conflict of his life, the
struggle to choose between the pen and
the sword. The presence of secular and
religious elements in Der arme Heinrich
mirrors the author's dilemma as knight
and poet in one person. Regardless of the
existence of other legends embodied in
the story, Der arme Heinrich is
considered one of the earliest forms of
original German literature. The poem shows
the influence of martyr legends popular
at the time, especially in the inspired
speech of the heroine, a simple peasant
girl. The writer also displays remarkable
ability for characterization and gives the
reader a vivid picture of medieval life
and thinking. Hartmann von Aue is
regarded as the founder of the German
court epic, surpassed only by that master
of the chivalric romance, Wolfram von
Eschenbach (c. 1170-c. 1220).
The Story:
Heinrich von Aue, a Swabian knight,
was a fortunate man. Wealthy and of
noble birth, he was known throughout
the land for his high standard of honor.
Fulfillment of his obligations as a knight
was his goal; nothing but purest virtue
and upright truth marked his life.
Suddenly, however, all his happiness
was blighted by a terrible disaster:
Heinrich became leprous. As in the case of
Job in ancient times, his physical
appearance deteriorated rapidly; but he did not
have the patience of Job. All his life
seemed a curse to him, and his pride left
him without friends. His cheerful nature
vanished; he detested even the light of
day. Only one thing kept him alive, the
hope of a cure for his terrible disease.
Trying to find a cure for his malady,
he searched out the most famous doctors
in all Europe. The school of Montpellier
was known for its able doctors and so he
went hopefully to that place, only to
learn that there was no medicine to heal
him. Disappointed, he traveled to
Salerno, where he talked to many skilled
physicians. At last he met a master who
told him that he could be healed, yet the
cure itself would be of such a nature that
it would be impossible to achieve it;
therefore the doctor preferred not to talk
about it.
Desperately, Heinrich begged the
doctor to reveal his remedy. After some
hesitation the physician yielded and told the
knight that he could be cured only by
the heart's blood of a virgin who would
submit willingly, out of love, to a fatal
operation.
Heinrich, realizing the hopelessness
of his situation, returned sadly to Swabia.
All his worldly belongings he gave to the
poor and to the monks. Of his land and
estates, he kept no more than a clearing
in a wood where a poor but contented
peasant lived. When Heinrich decided to
187

live in his house in the wood, the peasant
and his family did all they could to ease
the suffering of the leprous man. Loving
the knight, they were concerned for his
health because they realized that they
would never find such a good master
again. The young daughter of the
peasant was, in particular, deeply moved by
Heinrich's suffering.
One day the peasant asked why the
doctors had been unable to help his
master. Heinrich told him of the visit to
Salerno and described the impossible cure
of which the doctor had spoken. The
young girl overheard this. tale. Late that
same evening she told her parents that
she wanted to be the virgin who could
save their master's life. Her parents were
horrified when they heard her request,
and her father threatened physical
punishment if she dared to mention the
subject again. But the next evening the girl
began to talk once more of her desire to
help the leprous knight. She spoke in
such a convincing manner that her
parents did not interrupt her but listened in
amazement as their daughter begged with
heart-moving words to be allowed to gain
the eternal life which would be assured
her. She spoke also of the uncertainty her
earthly life offered, of the catastrophe
which could befall the whole family if
their master should die and a harsh ruler
scourge the countryside. At last she was
able to convince her parents that her
service to God and her master would be the
only honorable thing to do, and
sorrowfully they gave their consent to her
intended sacrifice.
Very early the next morning she told
the unbelieving Heinrich of her
willingness to offer herself for his cure. He
warned her that she should not talk
lightly about such a subject and assured
her that she would soon forget her
impulsive idea. After the parents confirmed the
seriousness of their daughter's wish,
Heinrich took a long time to consider her
offer. Finally he too yielded to her pleas.
Beautiful clothes and furs and a fine
horse were bought for the girl, and at
last she and Heinrich set out on their
journey to Salerno. When the doctor
there heard from Heinrich that the girl
was willing to sacrifice herself in that
fashion, he doubted the knight's words
and took the girl aside to implore her to
speak the truth by telling him whether
she was ready of her own free will to
face so horrible a fate. Impressed by her
sincerity and beauty, the doctor declared
that he would be much happier not to
take her heart's blood. Still the girl
remained steadfast and begged the doctor
to proceed with the operation at once.
Sitting in a neighboring room,
Heinrich heard the doctor sharpening his
knife. The knight peered through a small
hole in the wall and saw the girl tied to
a table. For the first time he realized how
beautiful she was, and he bitterly accused
himself of trying to circumvent the
judgment of God by sacrificing the girl's
beauty to his ugliness. At the very last
moment he was able to stop the doctor
before an incision had been made.
Although the girl implored him not to
become weak and called him a coward, a
man without the courage of a true
knight, Heinrich disregarded her insults
and left with her for home.
During the journey back the grace of
God touched Heinrich and rapidly his
leprosy disappeared; he and the girl had
passed the test given to them by God.
Heinrich looked younger and handsomer
than ever before. The rumor of his
miraculous cure having spread throughout
the countryside, Heinrich's vassals came
to meet the travelers two days before they
arrived at their destination. The happy
parents of the girl were the first to meet
them, and all thanked God for her
deliverance and the knight's cure.
In spite of the peasant girl's low birth,
the council of knights agreed that the
hand of God had surely chosen her to
become Heinrich's wife. All in the land,
rich and poor, rejoiced when Heinrich
and the girl were wed.
188

ARNE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Bjdrnstjerne Biornson (1832-1910)
Type of plot Pastoral romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
ijocoXe.- Norway
First published: 1858
Principal characters:
ft ils, a tailor
Maagii, his wife
Arnb, their son
Baard Boen, Nils' enemy
Eli, Baard's daughter
Critique:
Arne is best described as a pastoral
story, but the discerning reader will find
it also an allegory of the life of Norse
peasants. He will read of their devotion
to personal honor, their ability to
translate memory into action of word or deed.
He will read of a man as wicked as Nils
and feel that Nils was in a sense a martyr
to evil spirits. He will leave the story of
Arne with a sense of completion, for the
resdess and tragic searching of Nils' life
is in a sense fulfilled when the
daughter of his enemy marries his son.
The Story:
Arne was born on the hillside farm
of Kampen. He was the son of Margit,
betrayed one night when she attended a
dance. The man said to be the child's
father was Nils, the tailor, who in his
free time fiddled for country dances.
Ame's grandmother was a frugal widow
who saved what she earned so that her
daughter and her grandson might not
want for lack of a man to look after
them. In the meantime the fiddler-
tailor, Nils, drank more and tailored less
so that his business fell off.
By the time Arne was six he knew a
local song written about the wild
behavior of his father. His grandmother
insisted that Arne be taught his origin.
Not long afterward Nils suffered a
broken back in a barn fight with Baard
Boen. About the same time the old
grandmother, who felt that her days
were numbered, warned her daughter
against wasting the money saved for her
use.
When the grandmother died, Ame's
mother brought Nils home to be nursed.
The next spring Margit and Nils were
married and Nils recovered enough to
help with some of the farm work. At first
Nils was gloomy and morose because he
was no longer able to join the fiddlers
and the dancers at weddings, and he
drank heavily. As his strength returned
he began to fiddle once more. Arne went
along to merry-makings to carry his
fiddle case. By this companionship Nils
weaned Arne away from Margit by
degrees. Occasionally the boy was
remorseful, but his father's hold grew
stronger as time passed.
Finally, during a scene of drunken
violence, Nils died. Arne and his mother
took the blame for his death partly
upon themselves. Arne became aloof
from the villagers; he tended his cattle
and wrote a tew songs.
He became more and more shy. At a
wedding, interpreting one of trie folk
tales as referring to him, he told a wild
story, part truth, part fancy, about his
father's death. Then he rushed from the
house. He had had too much brandy, and
while he lay in die barn recovering, his
mother told him she had once found
Nils there in the same condition—on
the occasion of Ame's christening.
Arne began to take a new interest in
old legends and ballads. As he listened
to stories told by an old man of the
village, he found himself making up
tales of his own. Sometimes he wandered
189

alone in the forest and sang songs as they
came into his head.
From a distance he observed El£
Boen and her good friend, the pastor's
daughter. He began to sing love songs.
Arne did some carpentering and his
work took him into the village more
often. That winter Boen sent for Arne
to do some carpentering. Arne's mother
was disturbed because it had been Boen
who had caused Nils to break his back
years before. At first Boen's wife
refused to speak to Arne. Eli Boen, who
was attentive to him in the beginning,
later ignored him. One day Arne brought
word that the pastor's daughter was
leaving the village. Eli fainted when she
heard the news, for the two girls had
been close friends.
Baard Boen tried to explain to Arne
what had happened years before between
Nils and himself. But he did not manage
to make himself clear, and after many
years he himself was not sure of the
cause of their long-standing quarrel.
Eli's mother became friendly with
Arne at last and she asked him to sing
for Eli, who seemed to be recovering
from her illness. While he sang, he
and Eli felt a deep intimacy spring up
between them. The next day, his work
completed, Arne took his tools and left.
From that time on he thought more and
more about Baard Boen's daughter.
Arne had a friend, Krisrian, who had
gone to America. Now Kristian began
to write urging Arne to join him, but
Margit hid the letters as they came.
Finally she went to the pastor for advice.
He felt that Arne must be allowed to
live his own life as he saw fit.
The farm was beautiful when spring
came. On one of his rambles Arne came
upon Eli and thought her more
beautiful than he had ever seen her before.
Margit took heart from his fondness for
the girl. One midsummer evening she
discovered Eli in the village and asked
her to go for a walk. She took the girl
to her homestead and showed her about,
from the stables to the chest in which
Arne kept the many gifts that were to
belong to his bride, among them a
hymn book with a silver clasp. On the
clasp Eli saw her own name engraved.
Presently Arne appeared and later he
walked with Eli back to her own home.
They realized now that they were
completely in love.
Shortly afterward they were married.
Children stood by the church bearing
bits of cake. Baard Boen, remembering
his long-ago feud with Arne's father,
marveled at this wedding of his
daughter and the son of his old enemy.
190

ARROWSMITH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: United States and West Indies
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Martin Arrowsmith, a medical scientist
Leora, his wife
Dr. Max Gottlieb, a scientist
Gustave Sondeltus, a scientist
Terry Wickett, Martin's friend
Joyce Lanyon, a young widow
Dr. Almus Pickerbaugh, a public health reformer
Critique:
Arrowsmith is one of the novels in
which Sinclair Lewis has attempted to
point out the insufficiencies and
complacencies of American life. What
Babbitt did for the American
businessman, Arrowsmith was intended to do for
the American doctor. The thesis of
Arrowsmith would appear to be that the
only decent way for a physician to serve
mankind is by research. Using Martin
Arrowsmith as his example, Lewis has
tried to show that the progressive doctor
is not appreciated in private practice; that
the field of public health is politically
corrupt; that the fashionable clinic is
often a commercial enterprise; that even
the best institutes of research are
interested chiefly in publicity.
The Story:
Martin Arrowsmith was the descendant
of pioneers in the Ohio wilderness. He
grew up in the raw red-brick town of
Elk Mills, in the state of Winnemac, a
restless, lonely boy who spent his odd
hours in old Doc Vickerson's office. The
village practitioner was a widower, with
no family of his own, and he encouraged
Martin's interest in medicine.
At twenty-one Martin was a junior
preparing for medical school at the
University of Winnemac. Continuing on at
the medical school, he was most
interested in bacteriology and research and
the courses of Professor Max Gottlieb, a
noted German scientist. After joining a
medical fraternity, he made many
lifelong friends. He also fell in love with
Madeline Fox, a shallow,
pseudo-intellectual who was taking graduate work
in English. To the young man from
the prairie, Madeline represented culture.
They became engaged.
Martin spent many nights in research
at the laboratory, and he became the
favorite of Professor Gottlieb. One day
Gottlieb sent him to the Zenith City
Hospital on an errand. There Martin
met an attractive nurse named Leora
Tozer. He soon became so interested in
Leora that he became engaged to her
as well. Thus young Martin Arrowsmith
found himself engaged to two girls at
the same time. Unable to choose
between them, he asked both Leora and
Madeline to lunch with him. When he
explained his predicament, Madeline
stalked angrily from the dining-room
and out of his life. Leora, amused,
remained. Martin felt that his life had
really begun.
Through his friendship with Gottlieb,
Martin became a student instructor in
bacteriology. Leora was called home to
North Dakota. Because of Leora's
absence, trouble with the dean, and too
much whiskey, Martin left school during
the Christmas holidays. Traveling like a
ARROWSMITH by Sinclair Lewis. By permission of the author and publisher*, Harcourt Brace & Co., Inc
Copyright, 1925, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
191

tramp, he arrived at Wheatsylvania, the
town where Leora lived. In spite of the
warnings of the dull Tozer family,
Martin and Leora were married. Martin went
back to Winnemac alone. A married
man now, he gave up his work in
bacteriology and turned his attention to
general study. Later Leora joined him in
Mohalis.
Upon completion of his internship,
Martin set up an office in Wheatsylvania
with money supplied by his wife's family.
In the small prairie town Martin made
friends of the wrong sort, according to
the Tozers, but he was fairly successful
as a physician. He also made a number
of enemies. Meanwhile Martin and
Leora moved from the Tozer house to
their own home. When Leora's first child
was born dead, they knew that they
could never have another child.
Martin had again become interested in
research. When he heard that the
Swedish scientist, Gustave Sondelius,
was to lecture in Minneapolis, Martin
went to hear his lecture. In that way
Martin became interested in public
health as a means of controlling disease.
Back in Wheatsylvania, still under the
influence of Sonaelius, he became acting
head of the Department of Public
Health. Because Martin, in his officiaJ
capacity, found a highly respected
seamstress to be a chronic carrier of typhoid
and sent her to the county home for
isolation, he became generally unpopular.
He welcomed the opportunity to join Dr.
Almus Pickerbaugh of Nautilus, Iowa,
as the Assistant Director of Public
Health, at a considerable increase in
salary.
In Nautilus he found Dr. Pickerbaugh
to be a public-spirited evangelist with
little knowledge of medicine or interest
in scientific control of disease. The
director spent his time writing health
slogans in doubtful poetic meter,
lecturing to clubs, and campaigning for health
by means of Better Babies Week, Banish
the Booze Week, and Tougher Teeth
Week. Martin was gradually drawn
under the influence of the flashy,
artificial methods used by his superior.
Although he tried to devote some time
to research, the young doctor found that
his job took up all his time. While Dr.
Pickerbaugh was campaigning for
election to Congress, Martin investigated the
most sanitary and efficient dairy of the
town. He found that the dairy was
spreading disease through a streptococcus
infection in the udders of the cows.
Against the advice of Dr. Pickerbaugh,
Martin closed the dairy and made many
enemies for himself. Despite his act,
however, he was made Acting Director
of Public Health when Dr. Pickerbaugh
was elected to Congress.
In his new capacity, Martin hired a
competent assistant in order to have
more time for research in bacteriology.
Largely because he fired a block of
tenements infested with tuberculosis, Martin
was asked to resign. For the next year
he worked as staff pathologist of the
fashionable Rouncefield Clinic in
Chicago. Then publication of a scientific
paper brought him again to the attention
of his old friend and professor, Max
Gottlieb, now located at the McGurk
Institute in New York. Dr. Arrowsmith
was glad to accept the position Gottlieb
offered him.
At the McGurk Institute Martin
devoted his whole time to research, with
Gottlieb as his constant friend and
adviser. He worked on staphylococcus
germs, producing first a toxin, then an
antitoxin. Under the influence of
Gottlieb and Terry Wickett, his colleague at
McGurk, Martin discovered the X
Principle, a bacterial infection which might
prove to be a cure for disease. Although
Martin wanted to postpone publication
of his discovery until he was absolutely
certain of its value, the directors of the
institute insisted that he make his results
public at once. Before his paper was
finished, however, it was learned that
the same principle had already been
discovered at the Pasteur Institute, where
it was called a bacteriophage. After that
disappointment, Martin began work on
the possibility of preventing and curing
192

bubonic plague with the phage, as the
new antitoxin was called.
Meanwhile Gustave Sondelius had
come to the McGurk Institute. He
became so interested in Martin's work
that he spent most of his time helping
his young friend. When a plague broke
out on St. Hubert, an island in the
West Indies, Martin and Sondelius were
asked to go there to help in the fight
against the epidemic. Accompanied by
Leora they sailed for the island of St.
Hubert. Before leaving, Martin had
promised Gottlieb that he would conduct
his experiment deliberately by refusing
to treat some of the plague cases with
phage, so that the effects of the treatment
could be tabulated.
The plague spread daily on the tropical
island. Sondelius was stricken and he
died. Martin was often away from his
laboratory as he traveled between villages.
During one of his trips Leora lighted a
half-smoked cigarette she found on a
table in his laboratory. The tobacco had
been saturated with germs from an
overturned test tube. Leora died of the
plague before Martin's return.
Martin forgot to be the pure scientist.
He gave the phage to all who asked for
it. Although his assistant continued to
take notes to carry on the research,
Martin was no longer interested in the
results. When the plague began to abate,
he went back to New York. There,
lonely and unhappy, he married Joyce
Lanyon, a wealthy young widow whom
he had met on St. Hubert. But the
marriage was not a success. Joyce
demanded more of his time than he was
willing to take from research; he felt ill
at ease among her rich and fashionable
friends. When he was offered the
assistant directorship of McGurk Institute,
he refused the position. In spite of
Joyce's protests, he went off to join his
old friend, Terry Wickett, at a rural
laboratory in Vermont, where they
intended to experiment on a cure for
pneumonia. At last, he believed, his work—
his life—was really beginning.
193

ARS POETICA
Type of work: Poem on critical theory
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65
First transcribed: 13-8 B.C.
To Horace, this poem was the last of
his Epistles, but almost at once his
contemporaries began referring to it as Ars
Poetica (The Art of Poetry') and by
"poetry" they meant any field of literary
composition. Horace addressed it to his
friend Lucius Calpurnius Piso, famous
for his battles in Thrace, and to his two
sons. Apparently the older son yearned
for a career as dramatist or epic poet.
Whether he was deterred, and kept his
work unpublished for nine years, or
whether his assassination while a praetor
in Spain was the reason, no writing has
survived bearing his name.
While not a formal treatise or abstract
discussion, like the similarly named
composition of Aristotle, the 476 lines of this
unsystematic letter in verse influenced
Joachim du Bellay (c. 1524-1560) in
writing the manifesto of the Pleiad, and
a century later inspired Boileau's VArt
poitique (1674) and Pope's Essay on
Criticism (1711). Some of Horace's
suggestions, like the classical five-act division
of the drama, are no longer important,
but today's writers still can learn much
from the rest of the poem. The double
purpose of literature, a mingling of "the
useful with the sweet," has been quoted
through the centuries in every literary
movement.
One would be amused rather than
impressed, begins Horace, by the painting
of a creature with a horse's body and a
man's head, with limbs from every sort
of animal, adorned with feathers from a
variety of birds. Yet poets combine just
such outlandish elements, adding "purple
patches" where they are entirely out of
place in order to give color and brilliance
to pompous openings in portions of their
writing. Therefore he begins his Art of
Poetry with a plea for simplicity and
unity.
Addressing Piso and his sons directly,
8 B.C.)
Horace confesses that most poets are
misled by what looks like truth. When
striving for brevity, the poet becomes
unintelligible. Attempts to write smoothly result
in loss of vigor and spirit. Aiming at
grandeur, he becomes bombastic. Only
when he is guided by art can a writer
avoid some errors without committing
worse ones. The remedy, therefore, is to
select subjects equal to one's ability and
to use appropriate language. Old words,
properly used, seem new; new words,
borrowed from the Greeks, may also have a
place. Man is admired for making over
nature when he builds harbors or drains
marshes. Usage, then, should maintain
or change the material and rules of
speech.
Homer, according to Horace, showed
the writer how to handle the deeds of
kings and sad tales of war. No one is
sure who invented the elegiac couplet,
but Archilochus devised the iambus, used
in tragic and comic drama; and since it
was born of rage, it is designed to record
man in action. The Muses gave the lyric
for singing about victories, lovers, and
gay banquets. All these meters have their
specific uses and the poets would do well
to employ them only in their appropriate
places, though sometimes a writer of
comedy may borrow from other forms of
poetic art or an author of tragedies set
aside his sesquipedalian words in favor
of shorter ones to touch the hearts of his
audience.
Feeling is the true test of literary
worth, for beauty of writing is not
enough. Unless a writer feels, he cannot
make his audience feel. One style of
writing goes with a gloomy face; another sort
goes with an angry one, or a playful one.
Nature first makes us reveal our feelings
physically; then with the tongue for an
interpreter she voices the emotions of the
heart. There is also a difference in Ian-

guage between the gods and men,
between old men and young, between
merchants and farmers, among Colchians,
Assyrians, and Thebans.
Either follow tradition or be consistent
in your inventions, Horace advises.
Achilles on the stage must be
hot-tempered, appealing to the sword rather than
to the law. Follow tradition and make
Medea haughty, Ino tearful, and Ixion
perjured. If the writer presents original
characters, he must keep them consistent:
do not let them be too bombastic or
promise too much out of prudent fear that the
mountain in labor will bring forth no
more than a ridiculous mouse.
If the writer wishes the applause of
his audience, he must paint accurately
the characteristics of the four ages of
man. The young boy is unsettled and
changing; the beardless youth is fond of
horses and dogs, boastful, scornful of
advice; in middle age, man is ambitious but
cautious; and the old man is surrounded
by discomfort. Do not, therefore,
attribute the wrong qualities to a stage of
human life.
In touching lightly on the rules laid
down by classical dramatists, Horace
believed in the superiority of showing
action rather than telling about it; but there
are, he adds, things too horrible to be
seen. He comments on the number of
actors—only three—and the place of the
chorus. He comments on the rules and
restraints of satyric drama. Then, after
an appeal that Greek, not Roman, tastes
be followed in selecting verse forms, he
embarks on a history of the theater.
Slightly confused, he gives Thespis
credit for inventing the tragedy and
traveling in a cart to put on plays in which
the faces of actors were stained by dregs
of wine. Then came Aeschylus, with the
invention of the raised stage, the mask,
and the buskins. Old comedy followed,
soon to degenerate into license, and the
chorus lost its role of abuse.
Roman playwrights, he continues, tried
all forms of drama, but most were not
successful because they were careless. Horace
adjures his student reader to condemn
any literary composition that has not been
erased and amended. Even genius cannot
discard rules. Characterizing himself, he
says that he is too lazy to be a genius; he
will perform his duty and criticize.
Answering the question of what to
write, Horace declares that knowledge is
the basis of good writing and that moral
philosophy will supply matter. Life and
manners should also occupy a writer's
attention. The purpose of the poet should
be to benefit and entertain. "He has
received the votes who has mingled the
useful and the sweet, by instructing and
delighting the reader at the same time."
People do not always expect perfection
from a poet. Some faults can be pardoned,
for even Homer failed at times, though
usually he excelled in his craft. But
continued carelessness is unforgivable, .and
eternally second-rate material cannot be
tolerated. A person who cannot play the
game should keep off the field unless he
craves the jeers of the spectators. If you
write something, he told Piso's son, let
the censor of plays see it; then show it to
your father and me. Afterward, keep it in
your desk for nine years. What you have
not published, you can always destroy.
The final eighty lines of the poem deal
with generalities. In the early days, says
Horace, Orpheus represented the dignity
of poets who, by their wisdom,
distinguished between public and private
property, divine and earthly things, lore and
law. By their songs, they won honor.
Homer and Tyrtaeus inspired men to
battle; oracles guided men by their verses. It
is a question for debate whether a poet is
born or made, but at any rate, without art
and study even a genius will fail.
The best of writers need criticism, but
they should avoid mere flatterers. One
good critic used to mark, for improvement
and reworking, lines in poems submitted
to him, and if the would-be poet
defended his mistakes, the critic had no
more to do with him. The honest critic
puts black marks before poor verses as
Aristarchus did to Homer. Self-willed
poets will not like such treatment, com-
195

ments Horace, but in that case they are at an innocent bystander. Such a poet
not worth trying to save. They are prob- will be your death, reading you his po-
ably mad, each one, like a bear, clawing etry.
196

ARTAMENE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Madeleine de Scud6ry CI607-1701)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: 500 B.C.
Locale: Asia Minor
First published: 1646-1653
Principal characters:
Artamene, the Great Cyrus
Cyaxares, King of Cappadocia, then of Media
Mandane, his daughter
Philidaspes, King of Assyria, in love with Mandane
The King of Pontus, in love with Mandane
Anaxoris, in reality Aryante, Prince of the Massagetae, Thomyris'
brother, in love with Mandane
Prince Mazare of Sacia, in love with Mandane
Thomyris, Queen of Scythia
Spargapises, Thomyris' son
Araminta, Princess of Pontus
Spithridates, in love with Araminta
Panthea, Queen of Susiana
Martesie, Mandane's maid of honor
Metrobate, a traitor
Critique:
Some books seem to have a universal
value that transcends the time in which
they were written. Others seem to be
particularly representative of their epoch,
and eventually stand as a milestone in
the development of a genre. Artamene,
ou le grand Cyrus belongs to the latter
category. It consists of ten volumes, each
in two books. In spite of its length, it
has a remarkable unity of interest, if
not of plot. The story is centered around
the pursuit of Mandane by Cyrus,
Mandane being constantly abducted by
various other suitors. The author indulges in
lengthy stories within the story. These
successive stories are ingeniously knitted
together, one character being introduced
casually in one, and being caught up
with later in another. The organization
of the novel is such that it is actually
quite difficult to read only parts of it and
still understand it. This type of novel
was expected to provide a pastime, in the
literal sense of the word. Although this
may seem ironic in view of its length,
Artamene fulfilled this purpose. It
provided noble sentiments together with a
little learning. It is still possible to
understand why it was such a great success.
The Story:
Cyrus, son of the King of Persia, had
been given away as a child to a shepherd,
who was ordered to kill the infant
because his grandfather had been told by
an omen that his grandson would
eventually kill him. Instead, the shepherd
had reared the boy to manhood and now,
under the name of Artamene, he was the
best general of Cyaxares, King of
Cappadocia. He was also secretly in love with
Mandane, Cyaxares' daughter.
The kings of Cappadocia and of
Pontus had decided to settle a dispute
between themselves by a combat, using two
hundred men on each side. Artamene
had been given the command of the
Cappadocian warriors, to the great
disappointment of his explosive rival,
Philidaspes. Although all the odds were
against him, Artamene was the only
survivor and won the victory for the Cap-
padocians.
He discovered, however, that
Philidaspes was also in love with Mandane.
They had a violent fight and Cyaxares,
unaware of the real cause of the quarrel,
had them both put in prison.
There were other great battles fought,
and Artamene, now out of prison, was
197

again victorious. Then he disappeared
and was believed dead. This was the
occasion for Mandane to confess her love
for him to her confidante, Martesie, a
thing she had never dared do before.
Eventually Artamene returned. He
accidentally learned that Philidaspes was
actually the prince of Assyria, heir to
the throne of his mother Nitocris, and
that he was plotting to take Mandane
away. The King of Pontus had also
become a new rival for the love of
Mandane. To make matters worse, Thomyris,
Queen of Scythia, who had never loved
before, had fallen in love with Artamene
the moment she saw him when he was
sent on a mission to her court.
Philidaspes, now King of Assyria, had
succeeded in taking Mandane to Babylon,
where he pleaded with her to love him
or at least to let him hope that she
would, some day, accept his suit.
Meanwhile, Artamene, sent in pursuit
of Mandane, had laid siege to mighty
Babylon, but Philidaspes managed to
escape to Sinope with Mandane and Ma-
zare, the chivalrous prince of Sacia.
Sinope was set afire and while the
Assyrian king was locked up in a tower, Ma-
zare took Mandane away to sea. A
shipwreck brought her to the fortress of the
King of Pontus.
When Cyaxares arrived at Sinope and
failed to find his daughter, he also
discovered that Artamene was in love with
her. However, he still did not know the
hero's real identity, and he was about to
have him executed when the army
assaulting the castle rescued Artamene and
proclaimed him as Cyrus.
When Cyrus set out to get Mandane
back, Philidaspes insisted on a
paradoxical alliance in order to rescue their
common love. They besieged Sardis and
captured two hostages, Panthea, the wife
of Abradantes, one of the enemy rulers,
and Araminta, the sister of the Queen of
Pontus. Unfortunately this action
provoked Mandane's jealousy, and in a letter
she accused Cyrus of using her as a mere
pretext to further his ambition. She was
particularly jealous of Araminta, whose
lover Spithridates resembled Cyrus and
could easily have been mistaken for him.
Cyrus, with his best paladins, managed
to enter Sardis, but Mandane was gone,
carried away by the King of Pontus, and
perhaps not unwillingly. The hunt for
Mandane had to be resumed. Philidaspes
stole away to search for Mandane by
himself.
Cyrus then learned that the King of
Pontus had taken Mandane to Cumae, a
place protected by marshes and open to
the sea on which she had so often been
taken away from him. Meanwhile, the
Queen of Corinth, who had conceived a
romantic but platonic admiration for
Cyrus, sent her fleet to help him. Martesie
wrote that Mandane was at last no longer
jealous, for Panthea had killed herself
over the dead body of her husband, and
Araminta had been taken away against
her will by Prince Phraortes. Spithridates
was desperate.
Cumae was captured and the lovers
met at last. A certain Anaxoris had been
instrumental in keeping Mandane from
being carried away from Cumae. When
Philidaspes turned up again to keep
watch on Cyrus, he later entrusted
Anaxoris with his secret, asking him to take
care of Mandane should anything
happen to him. Anaxoris, however, was
actually Aryante, the prince of the Massa-
getae, and brother of Thomyris, the
formidable Scythian queen. Aryante
surrendered Mandane to his sister, and
Cyrus went to fight Thomyris.
Spargapises, the son of Thomyris,
considering himself disgraced because he
had not been recognized when he was
captured in battle, killed himself.
Thomyris then threatened Cyrus by declaring
that she would deliver Mandane's dead
body to him unless he surrendered
unconditionally. Aryante, not wishing to
have Mandane murdered or to have
Cyrus near her, sent him a message
begging him not to surrender. A tremendous
battle followed in which Cyrus set fire
to some forests between the two armies.
The unfortunate Spithridates, clad in a
suit of armor given to him by Cyrus, was
198

mistaken for Cyrus and was killed. His
head was taken to Thomyris.
Unfortunately, she was not the only one who was
mistaken. Cyrus' troops gave up the fight
and he was seized by an ally of
Thomyris, but his captor later allowed him to
escape because of his admiration for his
noble prisoner. Cyrus escaped, but only
after many difficulties. Thomyris then
ordered Mandane killed, but a maid of
honor was mistaken for her and killed in
her place. Meanwhile, the queen's allies
were preparing to desert her. When
Cyrus' faithful friends arrived, she fled.
Now Cyrus and Mandane were free to
wed, except that an ancient law stated
that a prince or princess could not marry
a foreigner. But an oracle declared that
he who had conquered every kingdom in
Asia could not be considered a foreigner
in any of them. Thus, to the satisfaction
of all concerned, the last obstacle to their
union was cleared away.
199

THE ARTAMONOV BUSINESS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Maxim Gorky (Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, 1868-1936)
Type of plot: Family chronicle
Time of plot: c. 1862-1918
Locale: Russia
First published: 1925
'Principal characters:
Ilia Artamonov, the father
Peter Artamonov, his oldest son
Nikita Artamonov, his hunchbacked son
Alexey Artamonov, an adopted son
Natalia Baimakov, Peter's wife
Uliana Baimakov, widow of the late mayor and Ilia's mistress
Ilia, Peter's first son
Yakov, Peter's second son
Tikhon Vialov, a worker in the Artamonov factory
Critique:
Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, whose
pseudonym was Maxim Gorky (the bitter
one), was the son of poor parents and
received no formal education. By the
time he was nine years old he was
earning his own living. During his long
wanderings across Russia he educated
himself and gained knowledge of all types
of people. About 1900 he became a
Marxist and was arrested for revolutionary
activities. He was exiled in 1906 to Capri,
but was permitted to return in 1913. In
1918 he joined the Bolshevik revolution
and became one of the best-known writers
of Communist Russia. His novels first
excited Russian intellectuals but were
popular with the masses after the
revolution. In spite of his predominantly
political influence he was not able to
eliminate elements of romanticism in his
novels, as is shown in his presentation of
the pre-revolution characters of the The
Artamonov Business. The author is here
still far away from a purely socialistic
novel, and he does not attempt to discard
the strong influence which orthodox
Christianity exercised on his heroes. As
a description of the social climate in one
particular Russian town before the
revolution the novel is successful in its
effects; however, if the writer intended
also to make a plea for the revolutionary
cause, it is not, on tlvs thematic level,
wholly convincing.
The Story:
A year or so after the liberation of the
Russian serfs Ilia Artamonov arrived with
his two sons, Peter and Nikita, and
Alexey, his nephew and adopted son, in
the little town of Dromov along the Va-
taraksha River. Ilia Artamonov had served
as a bailiff to a prince, and the nobleman
had recommended him highly to the
authorities. Without giving the mayor of
Dromov, Evgeny Baimakov, a chance for
objections, Artamonov announced that he
planned to build a linen factory and that
he considered the mayor's daughter
Natalia a good wife for his oldest son.
Artamonov, disregarding the resentment his
dictatorial behavior provoked in the town,
went ahead with plans for the factory
and preparations for Peter's marriage. The
mayor, who died before the wedding,
advised his wife Uliana to let Artamonov
have his way. But Peter's marriage to the
mayor's daughter and the prospect of
employment for many citizens did not
reduce the enmity felt toward the intruders.
When Uliana Baimakov became Ilia's
mistress, she decided to live with the
Artamonovs on the other side of the river
where the factory was located. Ilia tried
to be a strict but humane superior to his
men. Among his workers, Tikhon Vialov
was the most able, although he begged
not to be promoted because he did not
want to supervise others. Meanwhile,
Nikita, the hunchback, had fallen in love
200

with Natalia, and when he overheard an
unkind remark she made about him, he
tried to hang himself. The attempt
failing, Nikita entered a monastery.
The factory developed rapidly under
Ilia's direction. Peter was the second in
charge. Alexey, unhappy at the factory,
wanted to join the army, but Ilia refused
to give him permission to enlist.
When Natalia bore her first child, the
baby died after five months. Another girl,
Elena, followed. Then a much desired
son, also named Ilia, was born. Alexey
married a woman nobody in the family
liked or understood.
During the transportation of a heavy
steam boiler Ilia senior suffered a
hemorrhage and died soon afterward. As time
passed, Peter's only true happiness was
his son. Against his wife's wishes he let
Ilia attend a good secondary school away
from Dromov. While Peter devoted his
time almost exclusively to the factory,
Alexey made the necessary business trips
to trade fairs and to Moscow. Although
Natalia gave birth to a second boy, Ya-
kov, Ilia remained Peter's favorite.
In spite of all efforts to prepare Ilia
as Peter's successor as the factory director,
his son showed a completely different
attitude. He liked to talk to Vialov, the
philosopher among the wo-kers, whom
Peter despised; and he also formed a
close friendship with an uneducated child
of a worker. When Ilia, after completing
his schooling, announced his desire to
become a historian, his father objected
because he still wanted Ilia to take o~er the
factory. Ilia refused and left Dromov
without receiving any financial assistance
from his father. Thereafter Peter became
an unhappy man; his wife could not
please him, and he tried to find
distraction with a local prostitute.
Often Peter had difficulty in
controlling his temper, and one day he
accidentally killed Ilia's former playmate.
Vialov, too, irritated him with
philosophizing whenever he had a question to
ask. Hoping to find some spiritual
guidance, Peter finally decided to visit his
brother Nikita in the monasterv. Nikita
explained that he had failed in his efforts
to become a good monk. Although he
considered himself unworthy, the monastery
valued him highly because he was able
to give visiting pilgrims some comfort
with patient ears and empty phrases.
When Peter failed to find peace of
mind with Nikita, he attended a trade
fair in a nearby city. Alexey had told him
so many exciting stories about city life
that he hoped to find distraction there.
After a series of extended drinking sprees
and orgiastic behavior with prostitutes, he
was finally discovered by Alexey, who
had heard from a friend of the family
about Peter's disgraceful behavior. Back
home, Peter heard rumors that his son
had become a member of a revolutionary
extremist party. He also detected unusual
new ideas in Alexey's son Miron. Only
his younger son, Yakov, seemed
unconcerned about the new ideas that were
spreading among workers. Yakov was not
good-looking; however, Peter considered
his interests, mainly girls, more normal
than all the ideas expressed by the others,
ideas which he believed a threat to the
factory.
The rapid growth of the factory had
b-ought a large settlement of workers to
Dromov, along with many hardship cases.
Peter tried to show his interest in his
workers by building a new hospital or
arranging a big party for them.
Alexey died suddenly. A telegram was
sent to summon Nikita, but he had left
the monastery. Only Vialov knew his
address. After the funeral Nikita and Vialov
were seen together frequently. Peter's
feelings grew against all people who did
not think primarily of the factory, and
when Nikita died four days before the
outbreak of World War I, he had no kind
word for his dying brother.
When Peter grew too old for most of
the factory work and Yakov took over in
his place, Yakov also became concerned
over the growing signs of unrest among
the workers. One worker, who spied for
201

him in the factory, became his oppressor.
Early in the war many workers were
drafted. Some returned, crippled, to the
factory. Yakov's fear of being killed by
his workers increased rapidly. With his
mistress Pauline, a girl of easy virtue and
expensive tastes, he planned to go away.
Trying to avoid suspicion, he let Pauline
leave Dromov first. His own plan was to
meet her in Moscow with all the money
he could raise. But he never arrived in
Moscow. Reports reached Dromov that he
had been robbed, killed, and thrown from
the train.
Peter, who had tried to ignore all
rumors about uprisings and a new way of
life for the workers, lived in a state of
semicoma and asked constantly the
whereabouts of Ilia and Yakov. He failed to
realize what was going on around him
until one day, he felt a sharp sense of
hunger and realized that he was in his garden
house. Outside he saw a soldier. When
Peter called for his wife, only Vialov
came. He explained that Peter was a
prisoner.
At first Peter thought Vialov was
jeering at him- Later he believed that he had
been taken prisoner because someone had
learned the truth about the death of Ilia's
former playmate. Vialov tried in vain to
inform him about the revolution which
had taken place and to explain that he
was still alive only because of Ilia's
influence. Peter thought Vialov had gone
mad. When Natalia arrived with a
cucumber and a piece of bread, Peter
considered himself insulted that she dared
offer him such meager food when he was
so hungry. Angrily he threw the food
away and with abusive words asked her
to leave him alone.
202

AS I LAY DYING
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Mississippi
First published: 1930
Principal characters:
Addie Bundren, a dying old woman
Anse Bundren, her husband
Cash,
Darl,
Jewel, and
Vardaman, their sons
Dewey Dell, their daughter
Critique:
Centered around the effect of Addie
Bundren's death and burial on the
members of her family, this novel has a
powerful unity not always found in Faulkner's
longer works. The author tells the simple
story through the eyes and minds of each
of his characters. This method of shifting
the multiple points of view binds the
Bundrens into a homogeneous group beset
by the tragedy of Addie's death and the
frustrations connected with her burial, yet
each character emerges clearly with his
own secrets, his own emotional abnormal*
ity.
The Story:
Addie Bundren was dying. She lay
propped up in a bed in the Bundren
farmhouse, looking out the window at her son
Cash as he built the coffin in which she
was to be buried. Obsessed with perfection
in carpentry, Cash held up each board
for her approval before he nailed it in
place. Dewey Dell, Addie's daughter,
stood beside the bed, fanning her mother
as she lay there in the summer heat. In
another room Anse Bundren, Addie's
husband, and two sons, Darl and Jewel,
discussed the possibility of the boys' making
a trip with a wagonload of lumber to earn
three dollars for the family. Because
Addie's wish was that she be buried in
Jefferson, the town where her relatives lay,
Anse was afraid the boys might not get
back in time to carry her body to the
Jefferson graveyard. He finally approved
the trip and Jewel and Darl set out.
Addie died while the two brothers were
gone and before Cash could finish the
coffin. When it was obvious that she was
dying, a Dr. Peabody was summoned, but
he came too late to help the sick woman.
While Dr. Peabody was at the house,
Vardaman, the youngest boy, arrived
home with a fish he had caught in the
river; his mother's death somehow became
entangled in his mind with the death of
the fish and, because Dr. Peabody was
there when she died, Vardaman thought
the doctor had killed her.
Meanwhile a great rainstorm came up.
Jewel and Darl, with their load of lumber,
were delayed on the road by a broken
wagon wheel. Cash kept working through
the rain, trying to finish the coffin. At last
it was complete and Addie was placed in
it, but the crazed Vardaman, who once
had almost smothered in his crib, tried
to let his mother out by boring holes
through the top of the coffin.
After Jewel and Darl finally got back
with the wagon, neighbors gathered at the
Bundren house for the funeral service,
which was conducted by Whitfield, the
minister. Whitfield had once been a lover
of Addie's after her marriage, and Jewel,
AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Copyright,
1930, by William Faulkner.
203

the son whom she seemed to favor, had
been fathered by the minister.
Following the service, Anse, his family,
and the dead Addie started out for
Jefferson, normally one hard day's ride away.
The rainstorm, however, had so swollen
the river that the bridge had been broken
up and could not be crossed by wagon.
After trying another bridge, which had
also been washed out, they drove back to
an old ford near the first bridge. Three
of the family—Anse, Dewey Dell, and
Vardaman, with the assistance of Vernon
Tull, a neighboring fanner—got across the
river on the ruins of the bridge. Then
Darl and Cash attempted to drive the
wagon across at the obliterated ford, with
Jewel leading the way on his spotted horse.
This horse was Jewel's one great
possession; he had earned the money to
purchase it by working all day at the
Bundren farm and then by working all
night clearing ground for a neighbor.
When the wagon was nearly across, a big
log floating downstream upset the wagon.
As a result, Cash broke his leg and nearly
died; the mules were drowned; the coffin
fell out, but was dragged to the bank by
Jewel; and Cash's carpenter's tools were
scattered in the water and had to be
recovered one by one.
Anse refused the loan of anyone's
mules, insisting that he must own the
team that carried Addie to the grave. He
went off to bargain for mules and made
a trade in which he offered, without
Jewel's consent, to give the spotted horse
as part payment. When Jewel found out
what his father had done, he rode off,
apparently abandoning the group. Later it
turned out that he had put the spotted
horse in the barn of Snopes, who was
dickering with Anse. And so they got their
new mules and the trip continued.
By the time they arrived in Mottson, a
town on the way to Jefferson, Addie had
been dead so long that buzzards followed
the wagon. In Mottson they stopped to
buy cement to strengthen Cash's broken
leg. The police and citizens, whose noses
were offended, insisted that the wagon
move on, but they bought the cement and
treated the leg before they would budge.
While they were in the town, Dewey Dell
left the wagon, went to a drugstore, and
tried to buy medicine which would abort
the illegitimate child she carried, for she
had become pregnant by a man named
Lafe, with whom she had worked on the
farm. The druggist refused to sell her the
medicine.
Addie Bundren had been dead nine
days and was still not buried. The family
spent the last night before their arrival in
Jefferson at the house of a Mr. Gillespie,
who allowed them to put the odorous
coffin in his barn. During the night Darl,
whom the neighbors had always thought
to be the least sane of the Bundrens, set
fire to the barn. Jewel rescued the coffin
by carrying it out on his back. Anse later
turned Darl over to the authorities at
Jefferson; they sent him to the asylum in
Jackson.
Lacking a spade and shovel to dig Ad-
die's grave, Anse stopped at a house in
Jefferson and borrowed these tools. The
burial finally took place. Afterward Dewey
Dell again tried to buy her medicine at
a drugstore. One of the clerks pretended
to be a doctor, gave her some innocuous
fluid, and told her to come back that night
for further treatment. The further
treatment took the form of a seduction in the
basement of the drugstore.
Cash's broken leg, encased in cement,
had by now become so infected that Anse
took him to Dr. Peabody, who said that
Cash might not walk for a year. Before
starting on the trip home, Anse bought
himself a set of false teeth that he had
long needed. He then returned the
borrowed tools. When he got back to the
wagon he had acquired not only the new
teeth but also a new Mrs. Bundren, the
woman who lent him the tools.
204

AS YOU LIKE IT
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Pastoral romance
Time of plot: The Middle Ages
Locale: The Forest of Arden in medieval France
First presented: 1599-1600
Principal characters:
The Banished Duke
Frederick, his brother and usurper of his dominions
Oliver, older son of Sir Rowland de Boys
Orlando, younger son of Sir Rowland ae Boys
Adam, a servant to Oliver
Touchstone, a clown
Rosalind, daughter of the banished duke
Celia, daughter of Frederick
Critique:
Shakespeare took most of the plot of
this play from a popular novel of the
period, Rosalynde, by Thomas Lodge.
What he added was dramatic characteri-
and wit. As You Like It is a
zation and wit.
comedy compounded of many elements,
but the whole is set to some of
Shakespeare's loveliest poetry. Kindliness, good
fellowship, good-will—these are the
elements of As You Like It, and
Shakespeare shows how much they are worth.
The Story:
A long time ago the elder and lawful
ruler of a French province had been
deposed by his younger brother,
Frederick. The old duke, driven from his
dominions, fled with several faithful
followers to the Forest of Arden. There he
lived a happy life, free from the cares
of the court and able to devote himself
at last to learning the lessons nature had
to teach. His daughter Rosalind,
however, remained at court as a companion
to her cousin Celia, the usurping Duke
Frederick's daughter. The two girls were
inseparable, and nothing her father said
or did could make Celia part from her
dearest friend.
One day Duke Frederick commanded
the two girls to attend a wrestling match
between the duke's champion, Charles,
and a young man named Orlando, the
special object of Duke Frederick's hatred.
Orlando was the son of Sir Rowland de
Boys, who in his lifetime had been one
of the banished duke's most loyal
supporters. When Sir Rowland died, he had
charged his oldest son, Oliver, with the
task of looking after his younger brother's
education, but Oliver had neglected his
father's charge. The moment Rosalind
laid eyes on Orlando she fell in love with
him, and he with her. She tried to
dissuade him from an unequal contest with
a champion so much more powerful than
he, but the more she pleaded the more
determined Orlando was to distinguish
himself in his lady's eyes. In the end he
completely conquered his antagonist, and
was rewarded for his prowess by a chain
from Rosalind's own neck.
When Duke Frederick discovered his
niece's interest in Sir Rowland's son, he
banished Rosalind immediately from the
court. His daughter Celia announced
her intention of following her cousin. As
a consequence, Rosalind disguised herself
as a boy and set out for the Forest of
Arden, and Celia and the faithful
Touchstone, the false duke's jester, went with
her. In the meantime, Orlando also
found it necessary to flee because of his
brother's harsh treatment. He was
accompanied by his faithful servant, Adam,
an old man who willingly turned over his
life savings of five hundred crowns for
the privilege of following his young
master.
Orlando and Adam also set out for the
205

Forest of Arden, but before they had
traveled very far they were both weary
and hungry. While Adam rested in the
shade of some trees, Orlando wandered
into that part of the forest where the old
duke was, and came upon the outlaws at
their meal. Desperate from hunger,
Orlando rushed upon the duke with a drawn
sword and demanded food. The duke
immediately offered to share the hospitality
of his table, and Orlando blushed with
shame over his rude manner. Moreover,
he would not touch a mouthful until
Adam had been fed. When the old duke
found that Orlando was the son of his
friend, Sir Rowland de Boys, he took
Orlando and Adam under his protection
and made them members of his band of
foresters.
In the meantime, Rosalind and Celia
also arrived in the Forest of Arden, where
they bought a flock of sheep and
proceeded to live the life of shepherds.
Rosalind passed as Ganymede, Celia, as a
sister, Aliena. In this adventure they
encountered some real Arcadians—Silvius,
a shepherd, and Phebe, a dainty
shepherdess with whom Silvius was in love.
But the moment Phebe laid eyes on the
disguised Rosalind she fell in love with
the supposed young shepherd and would
have nothing further to do with Silvius.
As Ganymede, Rosalind also met
Orlando in the forest, and twitted him
on his practice of writing verses in praise
of Rosalind and hanging them on the
trees. Touchstone, in the forest, displayed
the same willfulness and whimsicality he
showed at court, even to his love for
Audrey, a country wench whose sole
appeal was her unloveliness.
One morning, as Orlando was on his
way to visit Ganymede, he saw a man
lying asleep under an oak tree. A snake
was coiled about the sleeper's neck, and
a hungry lioness crouched nearby ready
to spring. He recognized the man as
his own brother, Oliver, and for a
moment Orlando was tempted to leave him
to his fate. But he drew his sword and
killed the snake and the lioness. In the
encounter he himself was wounded by
the lioness. Because Orlando had saved
his life, Oliver was duly repentant, and
the two brothers were joyfully reunited.
His wound having bled profusely,
Orlando was too weak to visit Ganymede,
and he sent Oliver instead with a bloody
handkerchief as proof of his wounded
condition. When Ganymede saw the
handkerchief the supposed shepherd
promptly fainted. The disguised Celia
was so impressed by Oliver's concern for
his brother that she fell in love with him,
and they made plans to be married on
the following day. Orlando was so
overwhelmed by this news that he was a
little envious. But when Ganymede came
to call upon Orlando, the young shepherd
promised to produce the lady Rosalind
the next day. Meanwhile Phebe came
to renew her ardent declaration of love
for Ganymede, who promised on the
morrow to unravel the love tangle of
everyone.
In the meantime, Duke Frederick,
enraged at the flight of his daughter, Celia,
had set out at the head of an expedition
to capture his elder brother and put him
and all his followers to death. But on
the outskirts of the Forest of Arden he
met an old hermit who turned Frederick's
head from his evil design. On the day
following, as Ganymede had promised,
with the banished duke and his followers
as guests, Rosalind appeared as herself
and explained how she and Celia had
posed as the shepherd Ganymede and
his sister Aliena. Four marriages took
Elace with great rejoicing that day—Or-
indo to Rosalind, Oliver to Celia,
Silvius to Phebe, and Touchstone to
Audrey. Moreover, Frederick was so com'
pletely converted by the hermit that he
resolved to take religious orders^ and he
straightway dispatched a messenger to
the Forest of Arden to restore his
brother's lands and those of all his
followers.
206

ASH WEDNESDAY
Type of work: Poem
Author. T. S. Eliot (1888- )
First published: 1930
After the publication of The Waste
Land, in 1922, had established his
reputation as a major poet, T. S. Eliot wrote
one important poem, "The Hollow Men"
(1925), which seemed at that time to
be a postlude to its predecessor but which
now appears more as a prelude to Ash
Wednesday. In any case, it should be
read as a connecting link between the
two longer poems. Its theme is the
emptiness of modern intellectualism, which
amounts only to
Shape without form, shade without
colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without
motion.
It is another aspect of the Waste Land,
desiccated and meaningless, inhabited
only by the empty and futile hollow
men.
Ash Wednesday marks an important
point in the author's poetic development,
for it sprang directly from his acceptance
of the Anglo-Catholic faith. This
biographical aspect of the poem, even more
than its theme, influenced its reception
by Eliot's former admirers and caused a
schism among them that gave an
interesting insight into the modern mind.
The tone of the poem is the humility
appropriate to Ash Wednesday, the first
day of the penitential season of Lent; its
theme is the dilemma of the modern man
who wants to believe and who yet cannot
bring himself to do so because of his dry,
sterile intellectuality. This theme is stated
in the first of the six parts: the poet,
turning his irony upon himself, describes this
characteristically modern predicament of
a man caught in the web of his own in-
tellectualizing but who can yet know that
he must
ASH WEDNESDAY by T. S. Eliot. Excerpts
copyright, 1936, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
Co., Inc.
. . . pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too
much discuss
Too much explain,
and that at this stage of religious
experience the proper prayer is
Teach us to sit still.
Throughout this opening section sound
the echoes of the Penitential Office:
"Turn thou us, O good Lord, and so shall
we be turned" as well as of Guido Caval-
canti's poem, "In Exile at Sarzana."
The second part is based on a
reminiscence of the Valley of Dry Bones
described by Ezekiel, the language of which
it echoes. Eliot once said in a lecture that
the three white leopards could be taken
as representing the World, the Flesh,
and the Devil. They have fed on the
body of the speaker, but Ezekiel was told
to prophesy that these bones should live
again, that "I [the Lord] shall put my
spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I
shall place you in your own land." There
is also the figure of the Lady, who seems
to play a role analogous to that of
Beatrice as an intermediary; she is dressed
in white, the color of Faith. The speaker,
then, having been stripped of everything,
has learned resignation; but through the
intercession of the Lady and the
prophecy of Ezekiel he has found hope.
The third section, with its description
of the spiral stairway, obviously recalls
Dante's winding ascent of the Purgatorial
Mount. There seems to be no direct
connection with any particular canto of the
Purgatorio, only a linking of the journey
of purgation with the penitential spirit
of Lent. There is also the glimpse
through the window of a scene suggestive
of sensual pleasure that distracts the
pilgrim from his journey. Dante is again
COLLECTED POEMS 1909-1935 by T. S. Eliot,
I by permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace &
207

recalled in the fourth section, this time
by the Earthly Paradise and the Divine
Pageant at the end of the Purgatorio.
Again there are echoes: of St. Paul's
Epistle to the Ephesians and of the "Salve
Regina."
For the fifth section Eliot made use of
a sermon by Lancelot Andrews that he
had already quoted in an essay on the
Bishop: ". . . the Word of an Infant?
The Word and not be able to speak a
word?"—an elaborate play upon the word
(speech), the Word (the Logos, the most
abstruse of Christian doctrines), and the
Word made Flesh.
The last section, doubling back upon
the opening lines of the poem, suggests a
scene in a confessional ("Bless me
father") during which the beauty of the
natural world intrudes into the mind of
the speaker and distracts him from his
proper meditation. Thus, the world seeks
to draw us back to itself. Then,
appropriately, the poem ends with words taken,
with one slight change, from the
Penitential Office for Ash Wednesday in the
Book of Common Prayer:
And let my cry come unto Thee.
Thus, the poem deals with various
aspects of a certain stage in religious
experience: "Lord, I am not worthy"; it is a
poem of spiritual, as Cavalcanti's was one
of physical, exile. The dweller in the
Waste Land who "cannot drink/there,
where trees flower, and springs flow"
must find his way back through
penitence, with the humble prayer: "Suffer
me not to be separated."
This is a simpler poem than The
Waste Land, though Eliot used much the
same technical devices of ellipsis and
echoes. It rises to heights of verbal beauty
unequaled in any other contemporary
verse. Its reception, however, was
curious and not without irony. To many
readers of the 1920's, Eliot had become
the spokesman for the disillusionment of
the now famous "lost generation"—a
statement that he himself characterized as
"nonsense." 1930, with its Marxian
enthusiasm for proletarian literature, was
probably the high point of the secular
humanism of our time; Bertrand Russell's
A Free Man's Worship was dominant. It
was among the adherents to this secular
humanism that Eliot's greatest admirers
were to be found. For him to become a
member of the Anglican Church and to
Write a poem with a deeply religious
theme was to them a grievous shock.
Some of them flatly refused to believe
in his sincerity; his membership in the
Church of England must be a pose, a
kind of romantic, aesthetic Catholicism.
To others, to whom religion was a retreat
from reality, a "failure of nerve," he was
a lost leader, a writer whose significant
work had ended with 'The Hollow
Men." Yet it might not be an
exaggeration to claim that the publication of Ash
Wednesday marked the beginning of the
swing from the intellectual Left to Right,
with the consequent decline of the
secular humanist attitude.
208

ASHES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Stefan Zeromski (1864-1925)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1796-1812
Locale: Poland and Spain
First published: 1904
Principal characters:
Raphael Olbromski, a Pole
Christopher Cedro, his friend
Helen, beloved of Raphael
Prince Gintult, a nobleman
Elizabeth, his sister
Nardzevski, Raphael's uncle
Critique:
Much of this work is in the German
romantic tradition. Zeromski describes
nature in great detail and devotes long
sections to philosophical speculations
engendered by contemplation of nature.
The tragic love affair of Helen and
Raphael and the frequent unconnected
sequences of action are reminiscent of
Goethe. In contrast, the scenes
descriptive of some of the Napoleonic campaigns
are precise and realistic. As a historical
novel, Ashes ranks high, and as an author
Zeromski was acknowledged a master by
Conrad.
The Story:
When he was very young, Raphael
Olbromski paid a short visit to his uncle's
secluded estate. Nardzevski, fond of his
nephew, initiated him into the art of
hunting. The fierce old man was a firm
adherent to feudal times and treated his
peasants as serfs. Casper, his huntsman,
was his only intimate. Raphael's visit
came to a sudden end with the arrival
of an Austrian official.
The Austrian lectured Nardzevski
severely on the necessity of paying the new
taxes and modifying his treatment of his
peasants, but the old man had no
intention of truckling to the Austrians. To
emphasize his attitude, he practiced his
pistol marksmanship in the dining hall.
Defiantly Nardzevski ordered his steward
to summon all the peasants in the
morning and to arrange for a public flogging
of a miscreant. Raphael never learned
what happened afterward because early
in the morning he was bundled into a
sleigh and sent home.
A great sleighing party one winter
attracted all the gentry. Raphael,
mounted on a spirited horse, followed Helen's
sleigh closely. The party stopped to dance
at Raphael's poor house, and his
aristocratic father staged a big celebration.
During the affair Raphael managed to
tell Helen that he would come to her
window some midnight. The party lasted
for two days, but Raphael missed much
of it because he slept in a drunken stupor.
At school Raphael was no student,
but he was a leader. One evening he and
Christopher stole a rowboat and went
out into the ice-packed Vistula. When
they tried to land, the thin shore ice
broke arid the boys were soaked. As they
went on toward school, they sank into
a bog. They were nearly frozen before
Raphael took vigorous measures. He tore
off his clothes and those of the weakened
Christopher, and the boys pummeled
each other to get warm. Then, quite
naked, they ran back to school, to be
caught as they tried to slip inside.
Christopher fell ill with fever, and Raphael
ASHES by Stefan Zeromski. Translated by Helen Stankiewicz Zand. By permission of the publishers,
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1925, as POPIOLY by Stefan Zeromski. Copyright, 1928, by Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc.
209

as the leader was sentenced to be
chastised. When the beadle tried to carry
out the punishment, Raphael drew a
knife, wounded the beadle, and escaped.
His father, when he arrived home in
disgrace, imprisoned him in a small room
and forbade the family to speak to him.
Later he had to spend months working
with the peasants. One night Raphael
took a fine mare from the barn and rode
through a storm to Helen's house. When
a watchman came upon them in an
outbuilding, Helen got back to her bedroom
safely, but Raphael barely escaped ahead
of the fierce watchdogs.
A storm came up. Raphael was
followed by four wolves. When his horse
stumbled, the wolves were on him. Three
brought down the horse; Raphael killed
the fourth with his hands. Gravely
wounded, he was found by an old
peasant and taken home. When he recovered,
he was cast out of the family and sent
to live with his older brother Peter, who
had been cast out years before.
Peter, in poor health from war wounds,
lived quietly. Raphael spent delightful
months in idleness until the arrival of
Prince Gintult, an old comrade of Peter's.
Peter and the prince had angry words on
the treatment of peasants, and as the
result of the quarrel Peter had a
hemorrhage and died. With no home and
melancholy with memories of Helen, who
had been taken out of the country,
Raphael went to stay with the prince.
In the noble household Raphael was
half family, half guest. The prince gave
him money for clothes and others gave
him errands to run. Raphael was
particularly attracted to the prince's sister
Elizabeth, a haughty young girl. One day,
while they were riding in a group,
Elizabeth's horse ran away. Raphael rescued
her and made the mistake of kissing her
as he held her in his arms. She slashed
his face with her whip.
The prince suddenly departed on a
voyage to Venice and Paris, after paying
Raphael's lodging in a school for a year.
Raphael studied fairly well and spent his
time profitably. When he was forced to
return home, his stern father outfitted
him in work clothes and for four years
he worked on the farm. His release came
with an offer of a position from Prince
Ginrult.
In Warsaw, Raphael served as
secretary to the prince, who was writing a
vague philosophical treatise on
Freemasonry. In order to continue the work on
the secret lodge, Raphael was taken into
the Masons; soon afterward he was
accepted in society. Through the lodge,
he met Helen again.
Abruptly Raphael and Helen fled to
the country to enjoy their love. One
night they slept in a cave in the moun
tains. Although Raphael was armed,
brigands overpowered him as he slept
and bound him while they had their
sport with Helen. She escaped their
clutches at last and jumped over a cliff.
While he was searching for Helen's
body and tracking the brigands, Raphael
was arrested by a patrol. He did not dare
give his right name or mention Helen
for fear of defiling her memory, and
while in prison he had a long siege of
fever. More than a year passed before
he was released.
Penniless and tramping aimlessly about
the country, Raphael fell in with his old
friend Christopher. The reunited friends
spent happy months on Christopher's
estate. Then a soldier who had been with
Napoleon for twelve years fired their
imagination, and they decided to leave
that Austrian-dominated part of Poland
and join the emperor. Aided by Elizabeth,
who was now married and living near
the border, they made a daring escape
across the frontier.
Christopher, as an enlisted man, crossed
Europe with Napoleon and took part in
the Spanish campaign. His most vivid
impressions were those of the siege of
Saragossa, where he distinguished
himself for valor and saved a young girl
from soldiers who sacked a convent and
raped the nuns. He was thrilled when
Napoleon abolished the Inquisition. After
210

he had been wounded, he saw the
emperor at close hand.
Raphael saw action in Poland, where
the Austrian legions were too strong for
Napoleon's forces. Once the Poles were
preparing to demolish a church, held by
the enemy. Prince Gintult, fighting as
a civilian, attempted to save the church
by interfering with the cannoneers, and
Raphael helped him. For his deed the
prince was cut down by an officer's
sword. In the confusion Raphael carried
the wounded nobleman away to his
father's house.
When the fighting died down, Raphael
was discharged. He went to live at his
uncle's old estate, and for a time he was
happy there. He rebuilt the barns
demolished by the soldiers and cleared land.
Then he began building a house. Just
as he was finishing, Christopher arrived.
Invalided out of the army, but well
again, he was impatient for action.
Reluctant to leave his home, Raphael
objected at first; but finally he agreed to
accompany his friend. In the middle of
August, 1812, the Polish Corps was
united with the Grand Army, and
Raphael returned to serve the emperor. At
Orsha, Napoleon reviewed his hordes oi
Polish, Dutch, Italian, and German
soldiers.
211

AT THE SIGN OF THE REINE PEDAUQUE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1893
Principal characters:
Jacques Menetrier, a young scholar
Maitre Jerome Coignard, an abbot
Catherine, a temptress
Jael, a Jewess
Monsieur d'Astarac, a philosopher
Critique:
At the Sign of the Reine PSdauque
(JLa Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque)
was the first of France's many works to
exhibit in full his peculiar talents. This
tale is gusty in outline and overlaid with
vast erudition in philosophy and in
ancient history. In plot the novel is
reminiscent of Tom Jones but the treatment
is pure Gallic. France's humor is always
subtle and at times wicked. In the Abb6
Jerome he has created a memorable
character, the fluent, scoundrelly cleric who
becomes a sympathetic creation.
The Story:
Jacques Meri^trier's father was a
merry cook and his mother a long-suffering,
plain woman. The father spent several
hours each night at a nearby tavern in
the company of Jeannette, the hurdy-
gurdy woman, and Catherine, the lace
maker. Both ladies helped him relive his
lusty youth.
When Jacques was six, he was
stationed all day long in the chimney
corner to turn the spitted roasts. His time
was not altogether wasted, however, for
he learned his letters at the same time
from a beggar Capuchin, Brother Ange.
The good Brother Ange ate well at the
common table in return for his services,
and in secret he sighed for Catherine.
After a drunken brawl, Brother Ange
was imprisoned, and Maitre Je*r6me
Coignard, a Greek and Latin scholar,
became Jacques' tutor. As he grew to
young manhood he progressed rapidly
under the scholar's teachings.
Jeannette, complaisant with all,
initiated Jacques into the mysteries of love,
but, perversely, Jacques was attracted to
Catherine, who made fun of Jacques'
beardless chin and refused to take him
seriously. Jacques and his father were
greatly discomfited when she ran away
with Brother Ange.
One evening a tall, gaunt philosopher
entered abruptly, crying that he saw a
salamander in the fireplace. Vigorously
stirring the ashes, he asked the company
if they saw anything. Only Jacques
thought he saw the outlines of a
beautiful woman in the smoke. The
philosopher was much pleased with Jacques'
discernment.
When Monsieur d'Astarac, their
strange visitor, learned that the Maitre
J£r6me could read Greek easily, he
arranged to have the abbot and Jacques
come live with him.
At the ruined estate of the
philosopher, the two friends were astonished by
the rich library. In spite of crumbling
walls and overgrown grounds, d'Astarac
was evidently wealthy as well as learned.
Maitre J£r6me was set to work
translating the ancient works of Zosimus the
Panopolitan, with Jacques as his helper.
According to d'Astarac, the only other
inhabitant of the estate was Mosaide, a
AT THE SIGN OF THE REINE PEDAUQUE by Anatole France. By permission of the publishers,
Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1912, by Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
212

learned Jew over a hundred years old.
The Jew lived mysteriously withdrawn
in a separate cottage, where he worked
on old Hebrew manuscripts.
After several tranquil months Jacques
went for an evening walk into Paris.
Brother Ange came up and whispered
that a lady was eagerly awaiting him in
her carriage. At the rendezvous Jacques
found Catherine seated in an elegant
coach. Astonished at her magnificence,
Jacques learned that she was now the
mistress of de la Gueritaude, a tax
collector. Then they kissed fervently and
made an appointment for later that night.
On Jacques' arrival, the house where
Catherine lived was in disturbance. She,
half-dressed, was shrieking at the door
and lackeys were pursuing Brother Ange
with spears. De la Gueritaude had
surprised her with her monk. Jacques
comforted Catherine ardently, but when de
la Gueritaude returned he rudely shoved
Jacques into the street and slammed the
door.
Soon afterward d'Astarac summoned
Jacques to a private conference in a
secret laboratory, where he told the young
man that he would reveal some of the
mysteries of philosophy. The spirit world
consisted of sylphs, males who helped
philosophers, and salamanders, beautiful
females in search of human lovers. Since
Jacques was well on his way to being a
philosopher and since he had little to do
with carnal women, d'Astarac would
show him how to summon a salamander.
Guiltily thinking of Catherine, Jacques
agreed to try.
D'Astarac helped him open a crystal
ball filled with Stardust. Feeling
overwhelmed, Jacques sank down and d'As-
tarac left him. After a few minutes
Jacques looked up to see in front of him
a voluptuous, dark-haired woman.
Although she resisted his advances for a
time, she accepted him as her lover, and
they spent the night together.
Jacques soon learned that she was no
salamander; she was Jael, niece of Mo-
saide. The fierce old Jew kept her
secluded, hiding her from Christian eyes,
but Jael came frequently to his room
despite the uncle's vigilance. One early
morning Maitre J£r6me saw her leaving
and traced her to Mosa'ide's cottage.
Although Jael slipped inside unseen, Mo-
sai'de saw the abbot from his window and
cursed him in Hebrew and Spanish. Not
to be outdone, Maitre Jer6me cursed the
Jew in French and Latin.
That evening, as Maitre Je"r6me and
Jacques passed Catherine's house, she
greeted Jacques with great affection from
her doorway. Someone inside slapped her
sharply and pulled her inside. It was the
noble d'Anquetil, Catherine's new lover.
He invited them in, pleased that he had
Jacques for a rival instead of the begging
Capuchin.
The four spent an agreeable evening
at the card table. Maitre Jer6me always
won. Catherine sat snuggled close to
d'Anquetil, and while vowing eternal
fidelity to him pressed Jacques' foot under
the table. Suddenly there was a
thunderous rapping outside. De la Gueritaude
had returned, furious at being locked out
of the house he rented for Catherine.
The four revelers brawled with the
tax collector, injuring him gravely and
killing one of his lackeys. Jacques, Maitre
J£r6me, and d'Anquetil fled to d'Astarac's
estate for safety. Jacques put the
nobleman in his own room and went to talk
with the philosopher, although it was
almost morning. Unfortunately, Jael
came visiting, and before she could flee
d'Anquetil was smitten with her charms.
D'Anquetil, who had hired carriages
so that they could flee the police,
wanted to take Jael with him. To Jacques'
horror, Jael agreed after being promised
a set of silver plate and a monthly
income. In the morning d'Anquetil and
Jael set off in a closed coupe, followed by
Maitre Jer6me and a morose Jacques.
During the journey Jacques reproached
Jael for her easy switch of lovers, but she
took a practical view of the matter. A set
of silver plate could not be ignored. One
night at an inn Jael left d'AnquehTs
213

room to visit Jacques, who was thereafter
somewhat more content.
From Jael, Jacques learned that Mo-
saide was not a hundred years old, but
barely sixty; and instead of being a
famous scholar, he was a banker who had
fled Spain after killing a Christian.
Furthermore, Mosaide was Jael's lover.
Shocked by these disclosures, Jacques
was uneasy at the sight of a mysterious
carriage which followed them closely. His
apprehensions were justified one night
when they ran into a bridge and broke
a wheel. Jacques, d'Anqueril, and Jael
waited for repairs in a nearby dell, while
Maitre Jer6me searched the wreckage for
bottles of wine.
In the darkness Mosaide, who had
been following the runaways, fell upon
the abbot and wounded him mortally, for
the jealous Jew thought that Maitre
Jerome had stolen Jael. The monk died in
a neighboring village, where he had been
carried for medical aid. Jacques,
mourning his tutor and friend, returned to his
parents in Paris.
Later Jacques went to pay a visit to
d'Astarac. When he arrived at the estate,
he saw the big house blazing fiercely.
The philosopher was burned to death in
the fire, and Mosaide drowned in a
swamp as he tried to run away.
Gradually, the memory of Jael becoming less
poignant, Jacques found his true
vocation. He became a bookseller and
supported his father and mother in dignity
in their old age.
214

ATALA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Francois Rene" de Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
Type of plot: Philosophical romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth rentury
Locale: Louisiana
First published: 1801
Principal characters:
Atala, an Indian maiden
Chactas, beloved of Atala
Father Aubry, a missionary
Critique:
A tale of passionate but pure love,
Atala is another of the stories of the
Noble Savage which began to find such
favor in the early nineteenth century.
Against a background of the primitive
American wilderness, the two lovers and
the gentle priest wage a winning battle
against sin and paganism. Simplicity and
complexity of character are vividly
contrasted, the two meeting in Christian
faith in the goodness of God. Atala was
the first of Chateaubriand's romances to
be published, and the book had a
tremendous vogue in its own day. The
novel was originally planned as part of
a much longer work, The Natchez, based
on Chateaubriand's travels on the
American frontier and influenced by his
romantic philosophy.
The Story:
Chactas was an old, blind, and wise
Indian of the tribe of Natchez, whose
hunting ground was in the territory of
Louisiana. Because of his great age and
deep wisdom gained through countless
years of tragic misfortune, Chactas was
the patriarch of the tribe. Thus it was
that when a young Frenchman named
Ren6 presented himself for membership
in the tribe in the year 1725, it was
Chactas who questioned him to
determine his fitness to join the Natchez
nation. Finding Rene fixed in his
determination to become a savage, Chactas
accepted him. As the Indians prepared for
a beaver hunt, Chactas—even though he
was blind—was made the leader of the
party. One night as they lay in their
canoes Chactas recited to Rene* the story
of his adventures.
When Chactas had lived but
seventeen summers, his father was killed in
battle and he himself was taken prisoner
by the enemy and led away by the
Spaniards to St. Augustine. There he was
befriended by an old Castilian named
Lopez and his sister. The two white
people cared for the young savage and tried
to educate him as their son. But after
thirty moons had passed, Chactas tired
of this civilized life and begged Lopez to
allow him to return to his people. Lopez,
knowing the dangers awaiting a lonely
youth in the forests, tried to dissuade
Chactas at first. At last, seeing that the
youth was firm in his resolve, the old
man sent him away with his blessing.
The warning given by the good Lopez
soon proved right. Chactas, having lost
his way in the woods, was captured by
an enemy tribe and taken to their village
to await death by burning. Because of
his youth and bravery, the women of the
tribe took pity on him. One night, as he
sat by the campfire, he heard a rustling
and fhen felt the presence of a woman
beside him. In low tones she told him
that she was Atala, daughter of the chief
and his dead wife. She asked Chactas if
he were a Christian, and when he told
her that he had not forsaken the gods
of his father, she departed.
For many days the tribe marched,
taking Chactas with them, and each night
Atala visited him by the fire. One night,
after Chactas had been tied to a tree,
Atala appeared and told his guard that
215

she would watch the prisoner for a rime.
Since she was the daughter of the chief,
the guard gladly gave her his place.
Quickly she untied the cords and gave
Chactas his freedom. But he as quickly
placed the cords in her hand, telling her
that he wanted to be chained to her
forever. She cried out in anguish that their
religions separated them. She also seemed
to have some other terrible secret that
she feared he would learn. Atala begged
him to flee without her, but Chactas said
that he would rather die by fire than
leave her. Neither would change, and so
Atala tied Chactas again, hoping that
soon he would change his mind. Each
night they slipped off into the woods
together, but Chactas did not possess her,
for her God helped her to deny her
passion for her beloved. She prayed that the
savage boy might give himself to her God
so that one barrier to their love would be
broken.
One night her father's warriors
discovered them together. Chactas was returned
to the camp and placed under heavy
guard. The tribe marched on and came
at last to the place where Chactas was
to be burned at the stake. From far and
near Indians gathered to witness his
torture and death at a Feast of the Dead.
Chactas was prepared for his ordeal in
the manner of savages, his body being
painted and then laid on the ground,
with guards lying across the ropes so that
they might feel the slightest movement
of the prisoner's body. But in spite of the
great precautions, Atala again freed him
by a ruse, and they made their escape
into the forest. Although they were
pursued, the Indians were so drunk from
celebrating the Feast of the Dead that
the pursuit was only half-hearted, and
the lovers had little trouble in eluding
them.
But the wilderness almost conquered
the fugitives, who were ill-prepared for
the hardships they now had to endure.
Their fates joined, Atala proclaimed her
love for Chactas but said that they could
never marry. Although she gave their
differences in religion as the only reason,
Chactas felt that there was more she
feared to tell him. At last, upon his
urging, she told him her secret. She was not
the daughter of the chief, but the
illegitimate child of a white man and the
chiefs wife. When Chactas learned that
the white man was his old friend Lopez,
he loved her as a sister as well as a lover.
It was through Lopez that she had gained
her Christian faith, transmitted to her by
her mother.
A terrible storm drove them to the
shelter of a tree, and while in that refuge
they saw approaching a dog and an old
hermit. The hermit was a missionary,
Father Aubry, who took them to his grotto
and gave them food and shelter. Chactas
feared to go, for he was not a Christian,
but Father Aubry said that he was one
of God's children and made him welcome.
When he promised to instruct Chactas
in Christianity so that he and Atala could
be married, the girl paled at his words.
They learned that Father Aubry had
spent almost his entire life among the
savages, even though he could have had
a more comfortable life in Europe. A
good man, he considered it a privilege
and not a sacrifice to endure the
hardships and dangers of the wilderness.
Atala and Chactas became a part of the
little community of Christian savages
over whom the good priest presided. After
a time Chactas began to feel the spirit
of God in his heart.
One day, returning from a pilgrimage
with Father Aubry, Chactas found Atala
apparently dying from a mysterious fever.
Then they learned what her true
secret had been. On her deathbed Atala's
mother had taken the girl's vow that she
would always remain a virgin. Her own
sin had made her want to protect her
daughter, and Atala, knowing nothing
of real love, had given her vow which
could never be broken. When Father
Aubry told the lovers that the bishop in
Quebec could release her from her vow,
Chactas* heart grew light. In real
anguish Atala then told them that she had
216

taken poison because she had believed
Chactas forever denied to her. There
were no remedies for the poison, and so,
after receiving the blessing of the priest
and the promise of Chactas that he would
embrace the Christian religion so that
they could be joined in heaven, the poor
virgin expired.
With the priest's aid Chactas buried
his beloved. Then he said goodbye to
Father Aubry and once more began his
wanderings. Many years passed before
he received baptism in the faith of his
beloved Atala.
And many years more were to pass
before the daughter of Rene", whom
Chactas had adopted, took the bones of Atala
and Father Aubry and Chactas to the
land of the Natchez for burial. Chactas
and Father Aubry had been killed by
savage enemies. The daughter of Rene*
told a curious traveler that he should not
grieve. The three friends were together
with God.
217

ATALANTA IN CALYPON
Type of work: Poem
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Ancient Greece
First published: 1865
Principal characters:
CEneus, King of Calydon
Alth^a, his wife
Meleager, their son
Atalanta, a virgin huntress
CHORU9
Critique:
Atalanta in Calydon, typical of the
Victorian treatment of Greek tragedy, was
the first of Swinburne's longer works to
attract marked critical notice. As in the
case of Swinburne's other poetic dramas,
it was not written for stage
presentation, but for reading. One of the Pre-
Raphaelites, Swinburne was criticized for
using too much intensity and too violent
colors in his poetry. In this poem his
intensity and violence are very much the
essence of the passionate and soul-stirring
description of the characters' fateful
existence.
The Story:
OEneus, father of Meleager, had
offended Artemis, goddess of the hunt, by
offering sacrifices to all the gods except
her. As a punishment for his negligence
Artemis had sent into Calydon a wild boar
that ravaged the land and the crops.
Althaea, embittered by the curse,
refused to pay homage to Artemis and raged
against the gods. Althaea was a woman of
strong will and determination. Years
before, when her son Meleager was born,
she had had a strange dream concerning
his birth. In the dream three spinning
women, the Fates, had visited Althaea and
had promised for Meleager strength, good
fortune, and a bounteous life until the
brand on the hearth burned out. On
hearing the last part of the prophecy, Althaea
had sprung from her bed, grasped the
burning brand, and beaten and trampled
the heat from it with her bare hands and
feet. Then, to guard Meleager's life, she
had hidden the brand.
Again she had dreamed that the heat-
less brand burst into flame as a bud bursts
into flower; and with this strange
phenomenon Death had come to blow
charred ash from the brand into her
breast, but there Love had quenched the
flame. The omen presaged for Althaea the
security of her family; but in spite of
her great pride she was not unmindful of
the lots which the gods might cast for
mortals. These thoughts were in her mind
as she went to arm Meleager for the boar
hunt. Never had there been born so strong
a man of royal birth as Meleager.
The Chorus, reviewing the life span of
man, summed up this existence as a
passing between a sleep and a sleep.
The warriors of Arcadia were to join
the Calydonians in the hunt, and
Meleager and Althaea discussed the
qualities and characteristics of these
men, among them the valiant sons of
Leda, Althaea's sister. Meleager described
Toxeus and Plexippus, Althaea's brothers,
as undoing their deeds with too much
talk. Althaea counseled her son against too
great pride in earthly accomplishments
and advised him to submit his soul to fate.
The Chorus admonished Meleager to
follow his mother's counsel.
Meleager, recounting the many
tumultuous battles he had experienced, pointed
out to his mother that in all these frays he
had never seen evidence of the infallible
gods to whom she and the Chorus would
218

have him submit.
CEneus reported the coming of the
Arcadians and said that among them was
a woman armed for the hunt. Although
CEneus wished to have this woman shown
great respect because of her favor from the
gods, he warned Meleager against
becoming infatuated with her beauty. Althaea,
recalling the prophecies of the Fates
regarding Meleager's career, added to her
husband's warning against earthly love.
Again imploring her son to give himself to
fate, she told him that he would not die as
ordinary men die and that his death would
be her death as well. Meleager declared
his boundless love for his mother and
expressed respect for her teaching. Ever
faithful to Zeus, the sole determiner of
things, he prepared for the hunt.
The Chorus, philosophizing on Love,
saw her blind as a flame, covered by earth
for hiding, and fronted by laughter to
conceal the tears of desire. According to
the portent of the Chorus, man and maid
would go forth; the maid's name, Fate;
the man's, Death. The Chorus lamented
also the meagerness of life's span. This
futility, an evil blossom born of sea foam
and blood froth, had come into existence
with Aphrodite, goddess of love. Before,
there had been joy upon the earth, but
Aphrodite's influence had resulted in
suffering, evil, and devastation.
In the hunt, as predicted, Meleager met
the Arcadian maiden. She was Atalanta,
the virgin priestess of Artemis, whom
CEneus had neglected in his sacrifices and
who had sent the wild boar to ravage
Calydon. Atalanta invoked Artemis to
favor Meleager that he might be victorious
in the hunt. Meleager, confessing his love
for Atalanta, was taunted by his uncles,
Toxeus and Plexippus, for his woman-
tonguedness. Althaea pleaded for peace
among her kinsmen lest words become
snakes and poison them against each
other.
The hunt proceeded. According to a
message sent by CEneus to Althaea, the
expedition demanded energy, courage,
and hunting strategy. The boar, crazed by
the chase and by the numerous wounds
inflicted, charged Meleager, who with all
daring and skill slew the animal, thereby
ridding Calydon of its curse. Althaea
offered praise to the gods. A messenger who
had brought the message to Althaea added
that pride in earthly accomplishments
would bring about destruction.
The Chorus, chanting a song of
thanksgiving to the gods, was hushed by the
messenger, who ordered them to change
their songs to wails of pity because Toxeus
and Plexippus had been slain.
Althaea, lamenting the death of her
brothers, found comfort in the thought
that Meleager would avenge them. The
messenger questioned whether her son
should slay himself. When Althaea
threatened him for his ambiguity, the
messenger bluntly informed her that
Meleager had slain his uncles.
After the boar had been killed, Toxeus
and Plexippus requested that the head
and the hide be kept as a monument in
Calydon; but Meleager, enamoured of
Atalanta, gave her the spoils of the hunt.
Pleased with this token of his devotion,
Atalanta laughed. The Calydonians
construed her reaction as a taunt and sought
to destroy her. In furious fighting to
protect the maiden, Meleager killed his
uncles. Althaea recalled her brothers'
kindnesses in their childhood, anticipated her
sister's scorn for Meleager's crime, and
accepted her fate as a victim of many curses.
The Chorus, endeavoring to comfort
Althaea in the loss of her brothers, was
rebuked. Had Toxeus and Plexippus died
in sacrifice or battle, Althaea maintained,
their lives would not have been in vain;
but knowing that they had been slain by
her son, she could never become
reconciled to their deaths or to his crime.
In Meleager's deed, caused by excessive
earthly pride and undue desire for
attainment, Althaea sensed her error in taking
the burning brand from the fire at the
time of his birth. Stoically she thrust the
brand into the fire that it might be
consumed at last. Althaea suffered with
torment and anguish as the Chorus described
the burning, which resulted in Meleager's
219

death after his return from the hunt.
Meleager reviewed his existence
without remorse and besought CEneus and
Althaea not to let his name die among
men. He described his passing as an
empty night harvest in which no man
gathers fruit. Althaea died of sorrow.
Atalanta, hailing Meleager's greatness,
returned to Arcadia. (Eneus ruled alone in
Calydon.
220

AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE
Type of work: Tale
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Twelfth century
Locale: Provence, in France
First transcribed: Fourteenth-century manuscript
Principal characters:
Count Gartn de Beaugaibb
Aucassin, his son
Nicolette, a slave girl
Critique:
Aucassin and Nicolette is considered
by many scholars to be the masterpiece
of the romances of chivalry. It is written
in what is called the chante-fable, or
song-story style—a prose tale containing
verse passages which are sung by a
minstrel. In it are'found certain Oriental
elements and much folklore.
The Story:
Count Bougars de Valence and Count
Garin de Beaucaire were at war. Count
Garin had one son, Aucassin, who was so
smitten by love that he would neither
accept the duties of knighthood nor
participate in his father's quarrel, unless his
father consented to his love for Nicolette.
She was a slave girl, bought by a captain
of the town from the Saracens and reared
as his own daughter. Count Garin agreed
to the marriage of Aucassin to any
daughter of a king or count, but not to
Nicolette. He went to see the captain and told
him to send Nicolette away. The
captain said that he would keep Nicolette
out of sight, and so she was imprisoned
in the high chamber of a palace with an
old woman to keep her company.
Rumors sped through the countryside:
Nicolette was lost; Nicolette had fled the
country; Nicolette was slain by order of
Count Garin.
Meanwhile the war between the two
counts grew more fierce, but Aucassin
still refused to fight. Father and son then
made a covenant; Aucassin would go into
the battle, and if God willed that he
should survive, the count must agree to
allow him two or three words and one
kiss from Nicolette. Aucassin rode into
the fray, but thoughts of Nicolette so
distracted him that he was captured.
Then Aucassin reflected that if he were
slain, he would have no chance at all
to see Nicolette. Therefore he laid his
hand on his sword and began fighting
with all his strength. He killed ten
knights and wounded seven and took
Count Bougars prisoner. But when Count
Garin refused to keep the covenant,
Aucassin released Count Bougars. Aucassin
was cast into a dungeon.
Nicolette, knowing her companion to
be asleep, escaped from her prison by a
rope made of bed linen and went to the
castle where Aucassin lay. While they
exchanged lovers' vows, the guards came
searching for Nicolette, as her escape had
been discovered. But a friendly sentinel
warned Nicolette of their coming. She
leaped into the moat and, bruised and
bleeding, climbed the outer wall.
Nicolette fell asleep in a thicket near
the castle. Next day she saw some
shepherds eating their lunch at a fountain
nearby. She asked them to take a
message to Aucassin, saying there was a
beast in the forest and that he should
have this beast and not part with one of
its limbs for any price. Nicolette built
herself a lodge within the forest and
waited to prove her lover's faith.
Aucassin was taken from his prison
and allowed to attend a great feast, but
he had no joy in it. A friendly knight
offered his horse to Aucassin and
suggested that he ride into the forest.
Aucassin was only too happy for a chance
to get away. He met the shepherds by
the fountain and heard what Nicolette
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had told them. Aucassin prayed God
that he would find his quarry.
He rode in all haste through the
thorny forest. Toward evening he began
to weep because his search had been
fruitless. He met a huge, ugly fellow,
leaning on a terrible cudgel. Aucassin
told him that he mourned for a white
hound he had lost. The burly fellow
scornfully replied that he had lost his
best ox and had searched fruitlessly for
three days without meat or drink.
Aucassin gave the man twenty sols to pay
for the beast. They parted and went their
separate ways.
Aucassin found the lodge built by
Nicolette and rested there that night.
Nicolette heard Aucassin singing and
came to him. The next day they mounted
Aucassin's horse and journeyed until they
came to the seas. Aucassin and Nicolette
embarked upon a ship. A terrible storm
rarried them to Torelore. First Aucassin
fought with the king of that strange
land and then freed the king of his
enemies. He and Nicolette lived happily
in Torelore until Saracens besieged the
castle and captured all within it.
Aucassin was put in one ship and Nicolette
in another. A storm scattered the ships,
and that in which Aucassin was a
prisoner drifted ashore at Beaucaire. He
was now the Count of Beaucaire, his
parents having died.
Nicolette was in the ship bearing the
King of Carthage, who was her true
father. They did not recognize each
other because Nicolette had been but a
child when she was stolen. But when
she saw the walls of Carthage memory
came back to her, and she revealed her
identity in a song. The king gave her
great honor and desired to marry her to
a king of the Saracens, but Nicolette
remained steadfast in her love for
Aucassin. She disguised herself as a
minstrel and took ship for Provence, where
she traveled from castle to castle until
she came to Beaucaire.
In the great hall Nicolette sang of
her adventures. When Aucassin heard
her song, he took her aside and inquired
concerning Nicolette. He asked her to
return to the land where Nicolette lived
and bring her to him. Nicolette returned
to the captain's house and there she
clothed herself in rich robes and sent for
Aucassin. And so at last they were
wedded and lived long years with great
joy.
222

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Time: 1706-1757
Locale: Boston, London, Philadelphia
First published: 1791; first printed in Paris, as Mdmoires
Principal personages:
Benjamin Franklin
Josiah Franklin, his father
James Franklin, his brother and first employer
Sir William Keith, Governor of Pennsylvania
Mr. Denham, a merchant
Mr. Meredith, Franklin's partner in the print shop
Alexander Hamilton
Governor Morris
Addressing himself to his "Dear Son/'
Benjamin Franklin first began in Twy-
ford, England, at the age of sixty-five, to
set down reminiscences of his early days.
For years he had been collecting data
about his ancestors, who had lived in
Ecton, Northamptonshire, as far back as
1555, the oldest date of the town records;
and he thought that his son William
Franklin (1731-1813) would someday be
interested in the "circumstances" of his
father's life, just as Franklin had
delighted in anecdotes relating to his
family.
The work was composed in
installments, the first section, dealing with
Franklin's first twenty-four years, the
product of a week of leisure in England
in 1771. Then, because of his political
activities abroad and at home, he had no
further opportunity to continue his task
until the urgings of friends persuaded
him to resume his writing in 1783. The
final section was probably written
between November, 1789, and April, 1790.
Titled MSmoires, it was first printed in
France in 1791. No complete text
appeared until 1868.
In spite of the lengthy period of
composition, only Franklin's life before July,
1757, is covered, with a few comments
on his activities in the following year.
But the failure to complete the
Autobiography beyond his fifty-first year does not
mean that Franklin failed to write of his
activities over the next thirty years. Some
of his most important diplomatic missions
are reported in individual compositions,
such as the sample he showed to
Jefferson of the "history of my life" that he
said he was preparing. They cover
"Negotiations in London for Effecting a
Reconciliation between Great Britain and the
American Colonies" and the "Journal of
the Negotiations for Peace with Great
Britain from March 21st to July 1st,
1782."
In addition, this indefatigable letter
writer filled his correspondence (in many
ways the most interesting part of his
writing) with details and sketches. Some of
the most complete are the letters to his
wife, whom he addressed as "My dear
Child." By combining the correspondence
chronologically, a biographer can obtain
Franklin's personal reactions to practically
everything that happened to him. These
letters show Franklin as the first real
American who stood apart from
European influences.
The Franklin family, whose ancestors
had lived in the Noithamptonshire
village of Ecton from the time they assumed
a surname originally signifying a middle-
class landowner, was transplanted to
Boston about 1682, when Benjamin's father
Josiah brought his wife and several
children to Massachusetts. After his wife's
death, the older Franklin remarried.
Benjamin, born of the second marriage, was
the youngest son of seventeen children.
Fond of study and quickly learning to
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read, Benjamin was destined for the
ministry until his father, a tallow-candler and
soap-boiler by trade, began calculating
the cost of education and the pitiable
salary received by most ministers. So the
boy was taken out of school to learn a
trade. After a brief period as his father's
assistant he was, at the age of twelve,
apprenticed to his half brother James, a
printer. In his brother's shop he saw his
first writing in print, topical ballads
written to be sold in the streets.
He continued to read: The Pilgrim's
Progress, Plutarch's Parallel Lives, essays
by Defoe, Burton, and Mather. A volume
of the Spectator, acquired by chance,
revealed to him the importance of style and,
like Robert Louis Stevenson at a later
date, he taught himself by rewriting and
comparing sentences. From this printshop
came the fifth—Franklin mistakenly says
the second—newspaper in America, the
New England Courant, to which
Franklin became an anonymous contributor.
Quarrels with his brother eventually
sent the seventeen-year-old apprentice to
Philadelphia looking for employment.
His arrival early in the mornings with
three-penny-worth of rolls in his mouth
and under his arms as he walked up
Market Street past the home of Miss Read,
whom he was to marry later, was
Philadelphia's first sight of one of its most
distinguished citizens.
Neither Biddford nor Keimer, the only
printers in Philadelphia, was very
advanced. After the boy found a place in
Keimer's shop, his wide reading and his
ability to talk and to listen brought him
many friends. Finally Governor Keith
offered to send him to England to buy type
and equipment for a shop of his own.
Arriving in London, he learned that
Keith, whose credit was not good, had
provided nothing but promises. To
support himself, Franklin found work in a
printing house. After eighteen months he
was happy to accept the offer of a
merchant who wanted him to take back to
America a consignment of merchandise.
Back in Philadelphia, he worked for a
time in Keimer's shop; then, finding a
partner in Hugh Meredith, he and the
Welsh Pennsylvanian set up their own
establishment. They prospered and in
1729 Franklin became the sole
proprietor, having bought out Meredith, whose
drinking habits were distasteful to the
temperate, frugal Franklin. He branched
out as a stationer. In 1730 he founded the
Pennsylvania Gazette and also married
Miss Read. At this point the first section
of the Autobiography ends.
In 1784, in Passy, France, Franklin
again began to write his story, this time
addressed more generally to the reading
public than to his son. With friends
interested in scientific and intellectual
matters he had in 1743 founded a Junto for
their mutual exchange of ideas and
intellectual improvement; this was later to
become the American Philosophical
Society. The members sponsored a library
for the use of the public.
Now that he had educated himself,
Franklin sought moral perfection. He set
down twelve virtues, then added a
thirteenth, Pride, at the suggestion of critical
friends. But he had reason to be proud.
He had learned to speak fluent French,
Spanish, and Italian. His civic spirit, born
when he was appointed postmaster of
Philadelphia, induced him to reorganize
the fire department, start a movement to
pave and light the streets, and to
establish an academy which later became the
University of Pennsylvania. The death of
a son from smallpox caused him to argue
for inoculation against the disease. He
invented an improved form of heating
stove and offered it free for general use,
only to learn that he had brought wealth
to one stove manufacturer. Meanwhile,
beginning in 1732, he published Poor
Richard's Almanack, the usual collection
of agricultural and astronomical data to
which he added a compendium of
practical wisdom and moral maxims. This
venture also brought him wealth and
enabled him to retire from active business
in 1748.
His thoughts about defense caused him
to campaign for the establishment of a
militia, but this man who so candidly
224

confessed his "errata," his mistakes, was
too well acquainted with himself to
accept the appointment as their colonel.
Other civic improvements, when initiated
by others, needed his approval before his
fellow citizens would adopt them. He
extended his influence beyond his own city
to the whole colony, and to other
colonies. Yale and Harvard awarded honorary
degrees to this self-taught scholar, and he
was elected to membership in cultural
and scientific societies at home and
abroad.
Braddock sought Franklin's advice in
campaigning against the Indians, only to
disregard it with disastrous results. After
selling out his shop to his foreman, he
occupied his time with philosophical
concerns and scientific experiments,
particularly those relating to electricity. His
theories, when ignored or contradicted
abroad, led to his experiments with
lightning in 1752.
Having represented Pennsylvania at
the Albany Congress of 1754, he was
chosen to represent it in protests to the
English crown. His arrival in England,
July 27, 1757, is the last date in his
story of himself.
225

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENVENUTO CELLINI
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571)
Type of plot: Chronicle of adventure and art
Time of plot: 1500-1562
Locale: Italy and France
First published: Sixteenth-century manuscript
Principal characters:
Benvenuto Cellini, goldsmith, artist, sculptor
Pope Clement VII
Pope Paul III
Francis I, King of France
Cosimo de' Medici, Duke of Florence
Bandinello, a rival sculptor
Critique:
The Autobiography of Benvenuto
Cellini, written 1558-1562 and circulated in
manuscript form until printed in 1730, is
perhaps the finest document left to
moderns from the period of the Italian
Renaissance. In its pages we view intimately,
through the eyes of an artistic and
adventurous contemporary, the men, women,
princes, dukes, and popes of the sixteenth
century. In addition, we see the artists
who produced some of the great pictures
and sculpture which we take more or less
for granted. In Cellini's backward glances
we can feel some measure of the pangs
and troubles and joys that went into those
art works and the climate of culture which
produced them. To judge Cellini and
his contemporaries by twentieth-century
standards is common enough to bear
comment. It suffices to say that no one can
appreciate Cellini as a man and as an
artist who does judge by current
standards. He was a product of his time, and on
that basis he must be judged as an author,
a man, and an artist.
The Story:
At the age of fifty-eight Benvenuto
Cellini began to set down his memoirs.
He related first a fictional version of the
founding of Florence by his ancestors and
then began the story of his life.
Benvenuto, destined by his father to be
a musician, was as a lad taught to play the
flute and sing by note. But lessons in
music from his father failed to interest
him, and at the age of fifteen Cellini
apprenticed himself to a goldsmith. Cellini
said of himself that he had a natural bent
for the work and in a few months he had
surpassed men long in the trade.
As an apprentice and, later, as a
journeyman goldsmith, Cellini on his travels
through Italy did fine work and acted the
part of a bravo. He became an excellent
swordsman and handler of the poniard, as
he proved when he killed an enemy in a
street brawl.
In 1527 the Constable of Bourbon
marched on Rome and besieged Pope
Clement VII in his fortress. Cellini, then
in Rome and in sympathy with the pope,
served the pontiff valiantly as an artillerist
and as a goldsmith, having been
commissioned by the besieged prelate to melt
down much jewelry and turn it into a
more transportable form. Later he boasted
that during the siege he had killed the
Constable of Bourbon and wounded the
Prince of Orange.
After the siege was lifted and a truce
declared, Cellini returned to Florence an^
killed his brother's murderer. He later
went to Mantua. Ill with fever in that
city, he returned to Florence. When Pope
Clement declared war on that city,
however, Cellini left his shop and trade to
enter the papal service. While in Rome
he made a medallion of tremendous size
for the papal cope, a work which was the
226

beginning of his fortunes. It was a
splendid button, pleasing greatly the pontiff for
whom it was made. From then on, during
Clement's life, Cellini did much work for
the papacy.
Cellini's career under Pope Clement
was a stormy one. His fiery temper often
caused him no end of trouble; for
example, he received the commission of the
papal mint and then lost it because of his
foolhardy and unmannerly actions.. He
killed another enemy in a quarrel but was
lucky enough to be pardoned by his
patron.
Cellini's great commission from Pope
Clement was for a gold chalice. The
chalice was never finished, for Clement
died too soon. During the last years of his
life, however, the chalice was a matter of
contention between the pope and his
goldsmith. Cellini, an independent and
temperamental workman, often got into
trouble because of the slowness with
which he worked. And the pope,
according to Cellini's account, often forgot that
gold was needed to make the vessel.
Upon the accession of Cardinal Far-
nese as Pope Paul III, Cellini went into
his service for a time. But Cellini was
away from Rome a great deal, at one time
taking service with Cosimo de' Medici,
Duke of Florence. Upon his return
Cellini was imprisoned on a charge of
homicide. The pope granted him a safe-
conduct for a time, but eventually he was
imprisoned. Only after many difficulties
did he receive a pardon for the slaying.
Cellini came to the notice of Emperor
Charles V when that monarch visited
Rome and was presented by the pope with
a Book of Hours bound into a gold cover
encrusted with jewels, the work of
Cellini. A short time later Cellini was sent for
by Francis I, King of France, but before
he could leave Rome he was accused of
theft and thrown into prison by the pope's
bargello, or police force. Cellini cleared
himself of the charge, but he had made so
many enemies that he was kept in prison
for many months and suffered, at times,
cruel punishment.
Action on Cellini's behalf by King
Francis only served to make his lot harder.
At last Cellini managed to escape by using
bed sheets to lower himself from the
prison tower and to get himself over the
prison walls. Having broken his leg in his
flight, he was recaptured. Released after a
long period of confinement, he found
asylum with a French cardinal and finally
with the aid of Cardinal d'Este of Ferrara
made his way to France.
In France, with King Francis as his
patron, the goldsmith and artist turned to
sculpture. He executed an amazing statue
of Jupiter for the king and also
constructed the large statue of the nymph of
Fontainebleau. But Cellini made an
enemy of Madame d'Etampes, the king's
mistress, who made his career difficult and
his life dangerous, and the Cardinal of
Ferrara did not fulfill the promises he had
made. Cellini's amorous adventures also
got him into many difficulties.
In desperation, and with some hopes of
a better future, Cellini left France and
returned to his native Florence in 1545,
there to find protection under the pation-
age of Cosimo de' Medici.
In Florence he made an enemy of the
Duchess of Florence and a famous
sculptor, Bandinello, whose work Cellini
reviled in public and to the sculptor's
face. As in France, a woman's enmity, the
dislike of fellow artists, the pettifogging
of minor officials, and small commissions
used up Cellini's valuable time in
Florence. Nevertheless, while there, in the
years after 1545, Cellini did his greatest
work, a bronze Perseus of which he was
extremely proud.
Following the completion of that
statue, Cellini went to work on other
pieces, including a tremendous crucifix
with a mausoleum at its base, to hold his
body when he had died.
While working in Florence for the
duke, Cellini bought some farm land
which, failing to bring him the revenues
he had been promised, embroiled him in
a long and upsetting litigation. That
trouble, plus the enmity of the duchess,
227

finally drove him from Florence. In 1562,
while the duke and his family were away
on a journey, Cellini left Florence and
headed for Pisa. With that final entry, the
departure for Pisa, Cellini ended his
memoirs, though he lived for eight more
years.
228

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
Type of work: Informal essays
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
Time: 1857-1858
Locale: Boston
First published: 1858
Principal characters:
The Autocrat
The Schoolmistress*
The Divinity-Student,
The Old Gentleman, and
The Young Fellow Called John, the Autocrat's fellow boarders
The Landlady
The Landlady's Daughter
Benjamin Franklin, the Landlady's son
The Professor, and
The Poet, friends of the Autocrat who, though never present, contribute
to the discussion
At one point in the recounting of his
breakfast-table experiences, the Autocrat
observed that, since medieval times, the
reputation of Aristotle had passed through
two stages and was then (one hundred
years ago) entering its third. First came
the period of idolization when everything
attributed to the Greek sage was accepted
not only as scientifically sound but as
absolute and ultimate truth. Then came
the period of critical examination, the
stage at which his scientific inaccuracies
were discovered and, as a result, all of his
ideas belittled and discredited. Finally, in
Dr. Holmes' time, there was the third
stage, the enlightened period when the
scientific inaccuracies were excused,
being viewed in historical perspective as
unavoidable, and the value of his
philosophical insights reasserted.
On a smaller time scale, the reputation
of Oliver Wendell Holmes, along with
that of the Cambridge-Boston group as a
whole (as opposed to that of the Concord
group), has gone through the first two of
these stages but shows no signs, as yet,
of entering the third. Although few, and
certainly never Dr. Holmes himself,
actually believed that Boston was "The Hub
of the Universe," Harvard Yard and the
eastern end of Beacon Street (including
the first eight doors on Arlington Street
so as to take in the offices of the Atlantic
Monthly') were for better than half a
century regarded as the dual nerve center,
as it were, the cerebrum and cerebellum,
of American culture. A Cambridge-born
Harvard Professor of Anatomy, a member
of the Saturday Club, a resident of
Beacon Street, Dr. Holmes did not merely
share in such regard; he helped to create
it. It was he, in fact, who coined the
term, "The Hub." (But the original
statement, as it appeared in Chapter VI of
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, was
made, not by a Bostonian, but an out-
lander whose remark was, "Boston State-
House is the hub of the solar system.")
As lecturer, poet, novelist, biographer,
and, most of all, perhaps, as the author
of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
and later The Professor at the Breakfast-
Table (1860) and The Poet at the
Breakfast-Table (1872), Dr. Holmes helped to
establish in the public mind a concept
of Bostonian wit, sensibility, and culture.
Gradually—not suddenly as did the
Wonderful One-Hoss Shay (Chapter XI
of The Autocrat")—the reputations of
many of the New England writers
seemed autumnal and dry, and a season
of critical neglect set in. Today, however,
the situation has somewhat changed.
Hawthorne has been resurrected by the
229

New Critics; the cautiously radical
Emerson has been turned into a spokesman
for the Neo-conservatives; and Thoreau
is a pet nonconformist in these
conformist times. The Concordians have entered
their third stage, but not the Cambridge-
Bostonians. Yet, while it is no doubt true
that the poetry of the Cambridge-Boston
group is a mixture of neoclassic
moralizing combined with a nostalgic and
academic romanticism, it should be
remembered that Longfellow had a gift for
storytelling, that Lowell was a sprightly
satirist, and that Holmes possessed wit,
urbanity, a background of knowledge,
and a tolerant, all-encompassing view of
life, the like of which has not appeared
in English letters on either side of the
Atlantic since his death.
It can be argued that in regard to
Holmes such qualities did not produce
the reputation, but are deduced from it,
that the alleged wit and urbanity are
really provincial smugness, and that what
passes for a tolerant and total life-view is
in reality a carefully cultivated
dilettantism. Such arguments have been made,
but they neglect both the facts provided
by history and the literary evidence
provided by The Autocrat of the Breakfast-
Table. The facts show that Holmes was
learned in both science and humane
letters and that he was one of the foremost
advocates of technological progress in the
nineteenth-century United States. One
English critic has said that he, rather
than Emerson, deserves the title, the
"American Montaigne."
It is on an objective reading of The
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table that the
case for Holmes must finally rest. The
Autocrat appeared originally in the first
twelve issues of the Atlantic Monthly
(1857-1858) and was published in book
form directly after this appearance. Its
plan is simple enough: the Autocrat lives
in a Beacon Hill boarding house; the
essays are, we are told, reports, somewhat
condensed, and interlarded with the
Autocrat's comments, of the conversations
that take place each morning at the
breakfast table of this remarkable
establishment, a table at which is found a most
heterogeneous collection of boarders.
Each has his say occasionally, but his
main purpose is to provide a sounding
board for the wit and philosophizing of
the Autocrat. There is conversation, but
mostly (as it is finally reported, in any
case) there is monologue. The varied
responses of the boarders allow Holmes'
wit to play over a wide range of subjects,
to jump easily from point to point, and
to juxtapose ideas that have no apparent
relevance.
The result may seem chaotic at first.
One is carried along by the bubbling
cleverness easily enough, but apparently
to no particular place. For example, the
topics of the first chapter are, in order of
appearance: (1) the algebraic
classification of minds; (2) the value of mutual
admiration societies; (3) the meaningless-
ness of brute fact; (4) the typing of
various kinds of speakers; (5) the dangers of
specialized learning; (6) an attack on the
use of puns (Holmes deplores the use of
them here but cannot always resist them;
later, for example, he speaks of the
landlady's economically-minded poor relation
as standing by her guns, "ready to repel
boarders"); (7) the poverty of pure logic
as opposed to common sense; (8) the
foibles of young poets; (9) the
superiority of men of family over self-made men,
"other things being equal" (Holmes'
italics); (10) the rendering of a pair of
poems. Holmes makes these points
interesting in themselves, but there seems to
be little connection between one and
another. As the reader continues, however,
he becomes aware that certain ideas are
recurrent; that certain themes are
announced, dropped, but repeated later
with variations; that there are
psychological connections in the apparently chance
juxtapositions of ideas—that the whole
thing develops in a geometric, not in an
arithmetic, progression.
The effect is produced by a means that
230

is at the same time modern and
metaphysical. Holmes was a Proper Bostonian,
a Victorian American, and it has been
said that his sympathies lay with the
eighteenth century, that he was at heart
a Neo-Johnsonian. This assertion is in
some respects valid. But if his conscious
affinities turned back one hundred years,
his unconscious ones turned back two.
Andrew Lang notes "a fleeting
resemblance to Sir Thomas Browne," a
resemblance based on "a community of
professional studies," but this similarity
between Holmes and the author of Religio
Medici and Urn Burial is not explained
simply by the fact that both were medical
men. Holmes possessed the "divided
sensibility" found also in the metaphysical
school; and Browne, it is now
acknowledged, was a metaphysical poet writing in
prose. This division in Holmes, obscured
as it is by his neoclassical pose, has been
too often neglected.
He was divided along a different axis
from Browne's, for he lived under
different conditions; but the division is still
there. First was the religious division:
Holmes had disavowed the Puritanism of
his fathers, but the scars of his youthful
indoctrination were never completely
gone. More important, perhaps, at least
as far as its reflection in The Autocrat of
the Breakfast-Table is concerned, is his
divided allegiance between Brahminism,
which stood for all the deeply rooted
things that meant the good life to him,
on the one hand, and science, which
meant technology and, with it, the
unleashing of those forces, human and
mechanical, that would destroy Brahminism,
on the other. The division could not
exercise itself in Holmes' poetry because
the moralizing-romantic tradition was too
binding. But when Holmes found in his
hands a form free from restrictions and
with which he could experiment as he
wished, his divided sensibility found
expression in the essay through the use of
what are very close to metaphysical
techniques.
First, there is the juxtaposition of
topics. The most extreme, and the one that
most strongly anticipates the modern
reflection of the metaphysical, is Chapter
IX, in which Holmes presents a series of
childhood reminiscences—the stuff of
poems:
Many times I have come bearing flowers
such as my garden grew; but now I
offer you this poor, brown, homely
growth, you may cast it away as
worthless. And yet—and yet—it is something
better than flowers; it is a seed-capsule.
There is also the shift in prose styles—
from the colloquial or the scientific to
the lofty and poetic—a device that harks
back to the style of Browne. But most
important are the similitudes—the similes,
the metaphors, the extended analogies.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table is
full of them. But the important thing is
that they are functional, not decorative;
they are the very fabric of the work.
Holmes uses them to bring into focus the
two parts of his divided world. Science
and beauty stand for the two parts of the
key dichotomy, represented in character
by Holmes' own two alter egos, the
Professor and the Poet, and playing their
dual parts in all of the analogies:
We get beautiful effects from wit—all
the prismatic colors—but never the
object as it is in fair daylight. A pun,
which is a kind of wit, is a different
and much shallower trick in mental
optics; throwing the shadows of two
objects so that one overlies the other.
Poetry uses the rainbow tints for
special effects, but always keeps its
essential object in the purest white light of
truth.
Through the interplay of these two
conflicting worlds, by means of analogy
and opposition of character, the themes
of the work are brought out. They appear
as questions, not as answers, for
awareness of the divided world permits no
dogmatic assertions. What is love and what is
231

beauty? How are human communication
and expression achieved? What, after all,
is really important? And how can it be
found—by sculling beneath the bridges
of the Charles, by searching for seed
capsules of poetry in one's memory, or by
counting the rings of an elm that stood
when Shakespeare was a boy?
To bring out these questions in a
meaningful way is a decided literary
achievement. Not that The Autocrat of
the Breakfast-Table is entirely a great
literary work. Holmes cannot maintain
his metaphysical detachment. He becomes
too concerned with his characters and
they begin to lose their reflecting
qualities. He becomes too concerned with love:
in the end the Autocrat and the
Schoolmistress degenerate into the principal
figures of a rather sentimental romance. So
there are weaknesses, true; but they are
not the weaknesses for which the
"Genteel Tradition" is usually condemned.
Only half of Holmes was in that
tradition anyway. In respect to that other half,
he deserves to have his reputation
advanced to its third stage.
232

THE AWAKENING OF SPRING
Type of work: Drama
Author: Frank Wedekind (1864-1918)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Germany
First presented: 1891
Principal characters:
Melchior Gabor, an intelligent high school boy
Moritz Stiefel, his friend
Wendla Bergmann, a schoolgirl, aged fourteen
Mrs. Bergmann, her mother
Mrs. Gabor, and
Mr. Gabor, Melchior's parents
Martha, and
Thea, schoolgirls
Ilse, a young prostitute and model
Rentier Stiefel, Moritz* father
A Muffled Gentleman
Critique:
In The Awakening of Spring,
Wedekind presents a plot stripped to its
naturalistic essentials: the suffering inflicted
on the very young when their burgeoning
native, erotic consciousness confronts the
deadly, adult, hypocritical
unconsciousness of the society to which they are
answerable. The plot is, however, only the
crude skeleton for a powerful
anti-naturalistic dramaturgy which relies on its
own intractable poetic logic. Within a
loose episodic structure, scenes are
articulated by means of ironic parallel actions,
and an unsubtle but dramatically
effective use of symbolic references. Dramatic
tension depends not upon the formal plot
revelations, but on swift modulations of
response elicited in the spectator by the
mixture of satire and tragedy; caricature
yields to lyrical statement, the horrific
yields to the commonplace, the
commonplace to that realm of parable inhabited
by the existential absurd—or rather
haunted, in this case, by the figure of
the muffled gentleman, to whom the play
is dedicated.
The Story:
Wendla hung up again in the closet
the long, grown-up dress which her
mother had just completed, protesting
that she did not see why next year would
not be soon enough to put on such a
penitential garment. Mrs. Bergmann
acquiesced with motherly affection to her
daughter's wish to continue wearing, for
the present, the freer, familiar clothes of
childhood, remarking at the same time on
the fact that Wendla had retained her
childhood grace without a trace of the
gawkiness usual to her age. Mrs.
Bergmann was not without misgivings, even
while she cherished that appearance of
innocence and grace, and she expressed
her uneasiness in various equivocating
substitutes for her real fears, all of which
Wendla gaily laughed away.
Melchior Gabor, Moritz Stiefel, and
their classmates broke up their games to
go prepare their homework. Moritz and
Melchior, walking home in the spring
night, became involved in a discussion of
the meaninglessness of the exam system
and the sexual phenomena of adolescence
which they were beginning to experience.
For Moritz, the mysterious sexual
pressures were a great burden, partly because
they hindered his already desperate
attempts to meet the rigid demands made
upon him by school and parents. Though
a poor student, and excessively timid, he
possessed an acute sensitivity in certain
areas which went unrecognized by all but
Melchior, who was his closest friend and,
233

unlike Moritz, an extremely promising
student. The ease with which Melchior
dealt with his schoolwork left him time
not only for metaphysical speculation, but
for a scholarly acquisition of the facts of
reproduction, which he now offered to
impart. Moritz accepted Melchior's offer
on the condition that the facts be in
written form and slipped into his books where
he could come upon them as if by chance.
On a blustery spring day not long
afterward, Wendla, Thea, and Martha
also exchanged confidences on the
subjects of parental tyranny, love, marriage,
and children, embellishing their remarks
with the gaudy and arbitrary imagination
of childish ignorance. The talk turned to
boys of their own age, and to the peculiar
behavior which they sometimes exhibited.
Wendla disclosed that Melchior had once
told her he believed in nothing. Mention
of the spring floods revealed the fact that
Melchior had come near drowning in one
of the swollen streams, but was saved by
his ability as a swimmer.
In another gathering of the schoolboys,
it was revealed that Moritz had illicitly
entered the staff common room
(repository of all records), driven by the desire
to learn whether he was to be promoted.
When Moritz appeared, dazed by his own
boldness but relieved by the knowledge
of a provisional remove, he was taunted
by the boys for his statement that he
would have shot himself had he not
received it.
Melchior and Wendla met by chance
in the woods, where Wendla had gone
to gather woodruff for her mother and
had stopped to daydream by a brook.
Melchior persuaded her to sit down and
asked if she enjoyed going among the poor
to take them food and money, errands on
which she was often sent by her mother.
Wendla's answer, that it gave her
pleasure, began an argument on the reality of
virtue and selflessness.
Wendla also confessed that she
daydreamed of being a poor beggar child,
beaten by a cruel father, although she
herself had never been beaten. She
picked a switch and begged Melchior to
strike her, to show her how such
punishment felt. The boy at first refused; then,
as she persisted in her request, he threw
the stick aside and pummeled her with
his fists before he ran away into the
wood, crying out in anguish.
Moritz found himself again on the
verge of school failure. While reading
Faust with Melchior, he related his
grandmother's story of the headless queen,
a tale which had been haunting him
during his studying. It told of a fabulously
beautiful queen unfortunately born
without a head who was one day conquered
by a king who happened to be provided
with two heads that argued constantly.
The court wizard gave one to the queen,
on whom it proved surpassingly
becoming, and the two were married with great
joy, the heads now being on the best of
terms. Melchior's mother entered with
tea and words of encouragement for
Moritz. Noticing the Faust, she wondered if
they ought to be reading it, saying ellip-
tically, however, that she preferred to
place her trust in Melchior rather than
in pedagogical principles. Realizing that
she was thinking of the Gretchen
episode, they became annoyed, Melchior
because everyone insisted on acting as if
the world turned on nothing but
obscenities, Moritz because he had begun to fear
that it actually did. He had received
Melchior's sex essay which affected him like
a series of dim recollections. He was
disposed to exalt the satisfaction experienced
by the woman, and regarded that of the
man as insipid.
Meanwhile, Wendla persistently
interrogated her mother on the subject of her
sister's latest baby. She mocked her
mother's giggling fairy tales by
pretending to see a ridiculous vision outside the
window. At Wendla's insistence, Mrs.
Bergmann was forced to begin telling her
daughter how babies come about, but
finally she managed to evade the issue by
saying that the things required were
marriage and an enormity of love which
Wendla was too young to comprehend.
234

A short time later Wendla went looking
for Melchior and, disarmed by his
intensity and his tortured insistence that there
is no such thing as love, she remained
with him in the hayloft, where she
conceived a child.
Moritz finally reached the end of his
resources and, at the brink of suicide over
the realization that he was about to fail,
wrote to Mrs. Gabor for a loan which
would enable him to leave home. She,
considering it her duty to refuse,
appealed to his common sense and better
nature. At dusk, in a parting soliloquy
pervaded by his unfailing wry humor but
mixed with self-pity, he concluded that
life was not his responsibility. The
Headless Queen beckoned. Life was a matter
of taste. His only regret was in not
having known sexual fulfillment, the most
human experience of all. When Use, a
young model with an insatiable appetite
for life, appeared to tempt him with tales
of her warm, carefree, animal existence,
he wavered but then rejected the
opportunity she offered.
Moritz' suicide precipitated an
investigation on the part of the school officials.
Melchior, charged with indecency on the
basis of the notes on sex discovered among
Moritz* books, became the scapegoat.
At the funeral service Moritz was
condemned for his crime against man and
God by the adults in attendance. Rentier
Stdefel comforted himself by repeating
he had never cared for the boy from a
child; he was no son of his. The pastor
urged with consummate coarseness that
he seek comfort in the arms of his wife.
While the reaction of the schoolboys at
the funeral was largely one of curiosity
as to the exact manner of the suicide,
Martha and Use brought to the grave a
profusion of flowers. Ilse had discovered
the suicide pistol and concealed it.
Mrs. Gabor, meeting with indignation
her husband's determination to send
Melchior to the reformatory, defied
anyone to perceive moral corruption in what
the boy had written; but she was unable
to stand up to the discovery that Wendla
was pregnant, and Melchior responsible.
Shortly after her discovery of the cause
of her illness, Wendla succumbed to the
combined concoctions of Dr. Von Brause-
pulver and Mother Schmidt for inducing
abortion. After her death, Melchior,
hounded by society and by his own self-
contempt, managed to return to look at
her grave. As he wandered enviously
among the graves, he encountered Moritz
Stiefel, with his head under his arm, who
attempted to persuade Melchior to join
him in his life among the dead, which
he pictured as a fabulous if grotesque
freedom. While Melchior hesitated, a
muffled gentleman appeared to take
Moritz to task for his attempt, his lack of a
head, and his general crumbling
condition. He accused Moritz of charlatanism
and asked Melchior to submit himself to
his care. Melchior, contending that he
could not entrust himself to a masked
unknown, subjected the muffled
gentleman to questions regarding his moral
position. Moritz admitted that he had been
boasting and urged Melchior to
accompany the muffled gentleman, who was, in
any event, alive. The two alive withdrew
together while Moritz returned to warm
himself with putrefaction.
235

THE AXE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sigrid Undset (1882-1949)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Late thirteenth century
Locale: Norway
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Olav Audunsson, master of Hestviken
Steinfinn Toresson, his foster father
Ingebjorg Jonsdatter, Steinfinn's wife
Ingunn, Steinfinn's daughter, betrothed to Olav
Tora, another daughter
Arnvid Finnsson, Steinfinn's kinsman
Kolbein Toresson, Steinfinn's half-brother
Teit, an Icelander, a clerk
Critique:
The Axe is the first volume of a
tetralogy—the others are The Snake Pit,
In the Wilderness, and The Son Avenger
—published under one title, The Master
of Hestviken. These four books together
make up a great historical chronicle, a
great religious novel, and a novel of
character. In this story of thirteenth-century
Norway, Sigrid Undset presents a massive
picture of human conflicts which are
universal and timeless. As a study of man's
faith, the novel shows a world poised
between the old pagan spirit and Christian
belief and practice. Olav Audunsson, her
chief character, is the medieval man,
virile yet innocent and meek in his simple
goodness. The Axe tells the story of a
murder which he never dared confess
without the certainty of harming others,
a crime which was to burden his
conscience and influence his actions for the
rest of his days.
The Story:
The troubles of the Steinfinnssons
began when Tore Toresson sent his
youngest son to the royal bodyguard at
Bergen. There Steinfinn Toresson saw
Ingebjorg Jonsdatter, who had come from
Denmark with young Queen Ingebjorg,
and he fell in love with her. But King
Magnus had alreadv promised the girl to
his friend, Mattias Haraldsson. Steinfinn
was in the Orkneys that winter. The next
summer he went to Bergen and stole
Ingebjorg out of the king's court.
Although Tore was displeased with his
son, he gave the couple the manor at
Frettastein, where they lived as if in
lawful wedlock. After a time the queen
reconciled all concerned, and Steinfinn and
Ingebjorg held their wedding at the royal
court in Oslo. Ingunn, their first child, was
three when her parents were wed.
Meanwhile Mattias Haraldsson had
gone into foreign lands, so that Steinfinn
had little thought of his ill will. When
Steinfinn and Ingebjorg had been
married about seven years, however, Mattias
came one night with his men, bound
Steinfinn, and shamed him before his
household. After Mattias rode home to his
own manor, young Olav Audunsson cut
his foster father's bonds. Steinfinn swore
that he would not sleep with his wife until
he could show the world that she was his
without Mattias' leave.
But Steinfinn had no revenge at that
time, for Mattias sailed again to foreign
lands. Meanwhile life grew slack and
somber at Frettastein. Steinfinn was much in
the company of Kolbein, his grim half-
brother, and Ingebjorg lived in a house
apart with her women and her two small
THE AXE by Sigrid Undset. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1928, by
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
236

sons, Hallvard and Jon. Ingunn and Tora,
the older daughters, would have been left
to themselves if it had not been for Olav
Audunsson, Steinfinn's foster son.
Olav's father had been Audun Ingolfs-
son of Hestviken; his mother had died at
his birth. One summer, when Steinfinn
met Auden at the Thing, the man from
Vik said that he was soon to die. There
was much drinking that night, and it
seemed good sport to betroth little Ingunn
to Olav. Next morning Steinfinn would
have cried quits on the agreement, but
Audun held him to his word. So Olav
grew up at Frettastein. An aged kinsman
managed his estate at Hestviken.
All his life Olav remembered a day
just past his sixteenth year. The edge of
his ancient Viking ax, Kin-fetch, being
blunted, he took it to an armorer in
Hamar. Ingunn stole away from the house
to go with him, and the two rowed up the
fjord under sunny skies. Later he never
knew whether his deep feeling of pleasure
came from a sudden, disturbing sense of In-
gunn's loveliness, the summer light over
the town, or the vesper service he and
Ingunn went to before they started home
through the dark; but he always thought
that day the happiest of his life.
Arnvid Finnsson, Ingunn's cousin,
brought word that Mattias was at Bind,
and two days later Steinfinn and his
kinsmen, Olav among them, rode away. There
was great merriment at Frettastein when
they returned. Mattias and his house-
carls had been taken by surprise, and
Steinfinn had killed his enemy in fair
fight. Steinfinn, badly wounded, laughed
at his own hurts. After he and Ingebjorg
went to their loft-room, the dancing and
drinking continued, and some became
wanton. Half-tipsy, Olav went with
Ingunn to her loft.
That night Ingebjorg died suddenly in
her sleep and Steinfinn's wounds
reopened. From that time on he grew
steadily weaker. While he lay dying,
Arnvid asked him to declare the marriage
of Ingunn and Olav but he refused,
saying the settlement had never been clearly
drawn. After Steinfinn's death Olav found
among his own gear the betrothal ring he
had given Ingunn many years before. He
suspected Kolbein of that sly attempt to
repudiate the betrothal.
Arnvid stayed on at Frettastein for a
time. That fall Olav spent many nights
with Ingunn in her loft. When Arnvid
finally learned how matters stood, he
advised Olav to lay the case before Bishop
Thorfinn in Hamar and to claim that he
had only fulfilled a marriage contract
which Ingunn's kinsmen had broken.
Bishop Thorfinn was a stern man but just,
and he saw that Olav had some right in
the wrong he had done. All might have
gone well for the lovers if the Kolbeinssons
had not quarreled with Arnvid and Olav
in the convent guest house at Hamar. At
last, unable to endure their taunts, Olav
raised Kin-fetch and struck down Einar
Kolbeinsson.
Proclaimed an outlaw, Olav fled to
Sweden, and Ingunn went to stay with
Arnvid at Micklebo. There she was taken
with an illness so strange that Arnvid's
mother accused the Kolbeinssons of
witchcraft. After her recovery the girl
went to live with her aunt, the Lady
Magnhild of Berg. Olav, meanwhile, had
gone to his mother's kinsmen in Denmark.
Tora married Haakon Gautsson and came
to visit at Berg, where her first child was
born. Ingunn wished for a husband and
child of her own, but she grew stubborn
when her relatives talked of marrying her
to any of the young men who came
wooing.
Four years later Olav returned in the
tidin of Earl Alf Erlingsson, Queen
Ingebjorg's liegeman. On promise of
penance and payment of blood-atonement
to Kolbein for Einar's slaying, the Stein-
finnssons acknowledged him as Ingunn's
betrothed. Then the queen died and her
son proclaimed Alf and all his men
outlaws. Word came that Olav had followed
Alf to Sweden. Once more Ingunn was
left to wait at Berg.
One summer Teit, an Icelander, came
on business to the manor. Mistaking
Ingunn for a servant, he was not abashed
when he learned that she was a daughter

of the house. Ingunn liked the clerk's
pert speech and merry ways. At last, out
of weakness and pity, she let him stay
with her in the house she shared with
her aged grandmother. When Olav, no
longer an outlaw, came home in the
spring, she was carrying Teit's child.
Olav was dismayed when he learned
how things were with Ingunn, but he felt
bound to her by every tie between them
in the past. Bitter because he could not
part from her, he offered to claim that he
had gone secretly to Berg during his
outlawry and that the child was his. Shamed,
Ingunn refused so unseemly an offer.
Olav was staying with the Preaching
Friars in Hamar. Teit, believing that Olav
no longer wanted Ingunn, proposed to
Olav that he accompany the Icelander
when he went to Arnvid to plead for
Ingunn^ hand. As Olav prepared for the
journey, Kin-fetch, hanging on the wall,
rang—old superstition said that when the
ax sang, death would follow. That night,
at the saeter where they stopped to rest,
Olav killed Teit and burned the hut.
Although he knew he could never confess
his deed without shaming Ingunn, he
felt that her secret was safe.
When Ingunn's child, a boy, was born,
Lady Magnhild gave it to a foster mother,
a forester's wife. A short time later Olav
went to claim his bride. After years of
waiting it was a sorry bridal ale they drank
at their wedding feast.
238

BABBITT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: Zenith, fictional Midwestern town
First published: 1922
Principal characters:
George F. Babbitt, a middle-aged real estate broker
Myra, his wife
Ted, their son
Verona, their daughter
Paul Riesling, Babbitt's friend
Zilla, Paul's shrewish wife
Critique:
Babbitt is a pungent satire about a
man who typifies complacent mediocrity.
George F. Babbitt, as standardized as his
electric cigar lighter, revels in his own
popularity, his ability to make money,
his fine automobile, and his penny-
pinching generosity. Babbitt worships
gadgets. He praises prohibition and
drinks bootleg whiskey, bullies his wife,
ogles his manicurist. Though he is
constantly discontented with the life he
leads, he is thoroughly satisfied with
George F. Babbitt. Because his character
is grounded in realism, Babbitt is one of
the most convincing characters in
American literature.
The Story:
George F. Babbitt was proud of his
house in Floral Heights, one of the most
respectable residential districts in Zenith.
Its architecture was standardized; its
interior decorations were standardized; its
atmosphere was standardized. Therein
lay its appeal for Babbitt.
He bustled about in a tile and
chromium bathroom in his morning ritual
of getting ready for another day. When
he went down to breakfast, he was as
grumpy as usual. It was expected of him.
He read the dull real estate page of the
newspaper to his patient wife, Myra.
Then he commented on the weather,
grumbled at his son and daughter,
gulped his breakfast and started for his
office.
Babbitt was a real estate broker who
knew how to handle business with zip
and zowie. Having closed a deal whereby
he forced a poor businessman to buy a
piece of property at twice its value, he
pocketed part of the money and paid
the rest to the man who had suggested
the enterprise. Proud of his acumen, he
picked up the telephone and called his
best friend, Paul Riesling, to ask him to
iunch.
Paul Riesling should have been a
violinist, but he had gone into the
tar-roofing business in order to support
his shrewish wife, Zilla. Lately she had
made it her practice to infuriate
doormen, theater ushers, or taxicab drivers,
and then ask Paul to come to her rescue
and fight them like a man. Cringing
with embarrassment, Paul would pretend
he had not noticed the incident. Later,
at home, Zilla would accuse him of being
a coward and a weakling.
So sad did Paul's affairs seem to
Babbitt that he suggested a vacation to Maine
together—away from their wives. Paul
was skeptical, but with magnificent
assurance Babbitt promised to arrange the
trip. Paul was humbly grateful.
Back in his office Babbitt fired a
salesman who was too honest. When he got
home, he and his wife decided to give
a dinner party, with the arrangements
taken bodily from the contents of a
BABBITT by Sinclair Lewis. By permission of the author and publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1922, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
239

woman's magazine, and everything edible
disguised to look like something else.
The party was a great success.
Babbitt's friends were exactly like Babbitt.
They all became drunk on prohibition-
period gin, were disappointed when the
cocktails ran out, stuffed themselves
with food, and went home to nurse
headaches.
The next day Babbitt and Myra paid
a call on the Reislings. Zilla, trying to
enlist their sympathy, berated her
husband until he was goaded to fury.
Babbitt finally told Zilla that she was a
nagging, jealous, sour, and unwholesome
wife, and he demanded that she allow
Paul to go with him to Maine. Weeping
in self-pity, Zilla consented. Myra sat
calmly during the scene, but later she
criticized Babbitt for bullying Paul's
wife. Babbitt told her sharply to mind
her own business.
On the train, Babbitt and Paul met
numerous businessmen who loudly
agreed with each other that what this
country needed was a sound business
administration. They deplored the price
of motor cars, textiles, wheat, and oil;
they swore that they had not an ounce
of race-prejudice; they blamed
Communism and socialism for labor unions
which got out of hand. Paul soon tired
of the discussion and went to bed.
Babbitt stayed up late, smoking countless
cigars, and telling countless stories.
Maine had a soothing effect upon
Babbitt. He and Paul fished and hiked
in the quiet of the north woods, and
Babbitt began to realize that his life in
Zenith was not all it should be. He
promised himself a new outlook on life,
a more simple, less hurried way of living.
Back in Zenith, Babbitt was asked to
make a speech at a convention of real
estate men which was to be held in
Monarch, a nearby city. For days he
tried to write a speech about the good
life, as he now thought of it. But at the
convention he scrapped his speech,
declaimed loudly that real estate was a
great profession, that Zenith was God's
own country—the best little spot on earth
—and to prove his statements quoted
countless statistics on waterways, textile
production, and lumber manufacture.
The speech was such a success that
Babbitt instantly won recognition as an
orator.
Babbitt was made a precinct leader in
the coming election. His duty was to
speak to small labor groups about the
inadvisability of voting for Seneca Doane,
a liberal, in favor of a man named Prout,
a solid businessman who represented the
conservative element. Babbitt's speeches
helped to defeat Doane. He was very
proud of himself for having Vision and
Ideals.
On a business trip to Chicago, Babbitt
spied Paul Reisling sitting at dinner with
a middle-aged but pretty woman. Later,
in his hotel room, Babbitt indignantly
demanded an explanation for Paul's lack
of morality. Paul told Babbitt that he
could no longer stand living with Zilla.
Babbitt, feeling sorry for his friend, swore
that he would keep her husband's secret
from Zilla. Privately, Babbitt envied
Paul's independence.
Babbitt was made vice-president of the
Booster's Club. He was so proud of
himself that he bragged loudly when his
wife called him at the office. It was a
long time before he understood what she
was trying to tell him; Paul had shot
his wife.
Babbitt's world collapsed about him.
Though Zilla was still alive, Paul was in
prison. Babbitt began to question his
ideas about the power of the dollar. Paul
was perhaps the only person Babbitt had
ever loved. Myra had long since become
a habit. The children were too full of
new ideas to be close to their father.
Babbitt felt suddenly alone. He began to
criticize the minister's sermons. He no
longer visited the Athletic Club, rarely
ate lunch with any of his business
acquaintances.
One day a pretty widow Mrs. Judique,
came to his office. She became his
mistress, and Babbitt joined her circle of
Bohemian friends. He drank more than
he had ever drunk in his life. He spent

money wildly. Two of the most powerful
men in town requested that he join the
Good Citizen's League—or else. Babbitt
refused to be bullied. For the first time
in his life he was a human being. He
actually made friends with his
archenemy, Seneca Doane, and discovered
that he liked his liberal ideas. He
praised Doane publicly. Babbitt's new
outlook on life appealed to his children,
who at once began to respect him as they
never had before. But Babbitt became
unpopular among his business-boosting
friends. When he again refused to join
the Good Citizen's League, he was
snubbed in the streets. Gradually
Babbitt found that he had no real resources
within himself. He was miserable.
When Myra became ill, Babbitt
suddenly realized that he loved his
colorless wife. He broke with Mrs. Judique.
He joined the Good Citizen's League. By
the time Myra was well again, there was
no more active leader in the town of
Zenith than George F. Babbitt. Once
more he announced his distrust of Seneca
Doane. He became the best Booster the
club ever had. His last gesture of revolt
was private approval of his son's
elopement. Outwardly he conformed!
241

THE BACCHAE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Thebes, in Boeotia
First presented: c. 405 B.C.
Principal characters:
Dionysus, god of the vine
Pentheus, King of Thebes
Cadmus, grandfather of Pentheus and former king
Tiresias, a Theban seer
Agave, Pentheus* mother
Critique:
In this sinister drama, Euripides would
seem to have attempted the impossible;
that is, to condemn religious excess and
at the same time to accept the myth of a
man who died for disapproving of
religious excess. It has been said that The
Bacchae, posthumously staged, was a
recantation, marking Euripides' acceptance
of the nature-worship aspects of the
Dionysiac cult. If so, the play can still be
interpreted as a warning against excess. In
this drama Euripides was also an accurate
observer of Nature. As half-man, half-
god, Dionysus is exasperating in his
divine self-sufficiency; as a symbol of certain
aspects of brute Nature, he is terrifying.
The Story:
Visited by Zeus, Semele, daughter of
Cadmus, the King of Thebes, conceived
a child. While she was still carrying her
unborn child, she prayed to see Zeus in
all his regal splendor. Zeus accordingly
appeared to her in the form of a bolt of
lightning; Semele was killed instantly.
Zeus took the prematurely bom child he
had fathered and placed him within
himself.
In its proper time the child was born
again and was named Dionysus. When he
grew up and became the god of revelry
and wine, men established a cult for his
worship. The cult of Dionysus spread
throughout western Asia, but it had not
yet gained a real foothold in Europe.
Dionysus, the god-man whom his
devotees associated with the vine and with the
ecstasies derived from the juice of the
grape, decided that Thebes, home of his
ancestors, would be the logical place for
the beginning of his cult in the West. At
first Theban resistance to Dionysiac
behavior balked his efforts, and many
Thebans refused to believe that he was a
son of Zeus. Pentheus, grandson of
Cadmus and cousin of Dionysus, ruled as
King of Thebes. Dreading the disorders
and madness induced by the new cult, he
stubbornly opposed its mysteries, which
hinged largely upon orgiastic and frenzied
Nature-rites.
A group of Eastern women, devotees of
Dionysus, called upon the Theban
women to join them in the worship of
their beloved god. During the
ceremonies blind Tiresias, an ancient Theban
prophet, summoned old Cadmus, now
withdrawn from public life, to the
worship of Dionysus. Performing the frenzied
rites, the two old men miraculously
regained youthful vigor.
Pentheus, enraged because some of his
people had turned to the new religion,
imprisoned all women who were caught
carrying any of the Bacchic symbols,
wine, an ivy crown, or a staff. He rebuked
his aged grandfather and accused Tiresias
of responsibility for the spread of the cult
in Thebes. Tiresias championed
Dionysus, declaring that wine provided men
242

with a temporary release from the
harshness and miseries of life. The Theban
maidens, he said, were exalted and
purified by the Bacchic ecstasies. Old Cadmus
seconded the words of Tiresias and
offered to place an ivy wreath on Pentheus'
brow. Pentheus brushed it aside and
ordered some of his soldiers to destroy
Tiresias' house; others he directed to seize
a mysterious stranger, a priest of
Dionysus, who had a remarkable influence
over Theban women.
When the stranger, Dionysus in
disguise, was brought before the king, all the
Theban women who had been jailed
suddenly and mysteriously found themselves
free in a forest where they were engaged
in worship of Dionysus. Meanwhile, in
the city, Pentheus asked the prisoner his
name and his country. Dionysus
answered that he was from Lydia, in Asia
Minor, and that he and his followers had
received their religion from Dionysus. He
refused, however, to tell his name. When
Pentheus asked to know more about the
strange religion, Dionysus said that this
knowledge was reserved for the virtuous
only. Pentheus impatiently ordered a
soldier to cut off Dionysus' curls, which
the prisoner had said were dedicated to
his god. Then Pentheus seized Dionysus'
staff and ordered him to be imprisoned.
Dionysus, calm in spite of these
humiliations, expressed confidence in his own
welfare and pity at the blindness of
Pentheus. Before the guards took
Dionysus to be imprisoned in the royal
stables, he predicted catastrophe for
Pentheus. The king, unmindful of this
prophecy, directed that the female
followers of Dionysus be put to practical
womanly labors.
From his place of imprisonment
Dionysus called out encouragement to his
devotees. Then he invoked an earthquake
which shook the foundations of Pentheus'
fortress. Flames danced on Semele's tomb.
Dionysus appeared, mysteriously freed
from his prison, and rebuked his
followers for any doubts and fears they had
expressed. He had cast a spell on Pentheus,
who in his mad frenzy mistook a bull for
Dionysus and chained the animal in its
stall while the god-man looked on.
Another earth tremor tumbled the royal
fortress in ruins.
Pentheus, enraged at seeing Dionysus
free, ordered his guards to shut the gates
of the city. At the same time a messenger
reported that many Theban women,
among them Agave, mother of Pentheus,
were on nearby Mount Cithaeron
observing Dionysiac rites that were partly a
dignified and beautiful Nature-worship,
partly the cruel slaughter of cattle. A
battle had taken place between the
women and Boeotian peasants, but the
frenzied women, although victorious over
the peasants, did not harm them.
Pentheus ordered the immediate
suppression of the cult. Dionysus offered to lead
the women back to the city, but he
declared that if he did so the women would
only grow more devoted to the man-god.
When Pentheus imperiously demanded
that his orders be obeyed, Dionysus cast
over him a spell which made the king
express a desire to see the women at their
worship. In a trance, he resisted only
feebly when Dionysus dressed him in
woman's clothes in order that he might
not be detected by the women, who were
jealous of the secrecy of their cult.
Pentheus, in fact, was almost overcome
by Dionysus' charms as the god led him to
Mount Cithaeron.
On the mountain Pentheus complained
that he could not see the rites because of
the thick pine forest. Dionysus
immediately bent a large pine tree to the
ground, set Pentheus in its topmost
branches, and gently let the tree return to
its upright position. At that moment the
man-god disappeared, but his voice
boomed out to his ecstatic devotees that a
great enemy of the cult was hidden in the
tall tree. The women, wild with fury,
felled the tree, Pentheus with it. Agave,
in a Dionysiac frenzy, stood over her son.
He frantically threw off his feminine
243

dress and pleaded with her to recognize
him, but in her Bacchic trance she
imagined him to be a lion. With
prodigious strength she tore off his left arm at
the shoulder. Her sisters, Ino and
Autonoe, joined her and together the
three women broke Pentheus' body to
pieces. Agave placed his severed head on
her wand and called upon the revelers to
behold the desert-whelped lion's head that
she had taken.
Cadmus and his attendants carried the
maimed body of his grandson back to the
city. When Agave displayed her bloody
trophy, the old man could only feel the
deepest pity for his daughter in her blind
excess. When Agave awoke from hei
trance and recognized the head of her
beloved son on her wand, she was
bewildered and grief-stricken. Cadmus,
mourning the violence that had occurred,
urged all men to comply with the wishes
of the Olympian deities.
Dionysus returned in his divine form
and prophesied that Cadmus and his wife,
Harmonia, transformed into dragons,
would overcome many Grecian lands
before they died. He showed no sympathy
for Agave, who cried out that she had
been guilty of sinning against him. He
doomed her and her sisters to wander
without respite until death overtook them.
244

BACK TO METHUSELAH
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Time: The past and the future
Locale: The Garden of Eden, Mesopotamia, the British Isles
First presented: 1922
Principal characters:
Adam
Eve
Cain
The Serpent
Conrad Barnabas, a biologist
Franklyn Barnabas, his brother, a theologian
William Haslam, a rector, later Archbishop of York
A Parlor Maid, later Mrs. Lutestring, Domestic Minister
Joseph P. B. B. Barlow, an elderly gentleman
Badger Bluebin, Commonwealth Prime Minister
A He-Ancient
A She-Ancient
Lilith, mother of mankind
Back to Methuselah is Shaw's only
major drama of ideas which falls flat as
a play. It is true that both Man and
Superman and Major Barbara contain
lengthy speeches which contribute little
to the action, but Shaw's mastery of
idiosyncrasy and dialogue compensates for
those stretches of verbosity and often
justifies them. Back to Methuselah,
however, has no such redeeming stylistic
touches. For the most part, the dialogue
is declamation and the characters are
orators. Worst of all, talk takes the place of
action—ninety thousand words of talk in
the play itself and thirty thousand in the
preface which Shaw the essayist wrote
to explain the dramatist's ninety
thousand.
The play does have moments in which
theatricalism relieves the tedium of the
talk. In one scene, for example, a make-
believe sibyl appears to the
accompaniment of lightning and thunder. In
another, a full-grown girl is hatched from
an egg. In still another, characters appear
on a simulated television screen. But all
these devices are so obviously contrived
that they fail to delight.
Properly speaking, Back to Methuselah
is not a play at all. A far more
appropriate designation is the subtitle Shaw
gave it: A Metabiological Pentateuch. It
is a pentateuch because it consists of five
separate plays which add new
information to the Bible. It is biological because
the information concerns evolution. It is
twctflbiological because the concept of
evolution expounded in the play transcends
the conventional theory of Darwin. Back
to Methuselah is Shaw's attempt to
explain the theory of Creative Evolution to
a public unwilling or unable to read
biological treatises. That the public might be
unwilling or unable to sit through a play
which takes two or three evenings to
perform apparently did not worry him.
Yet Back to Methuselah is an
important play: a work important in the
development of modern drama because it
stretched the drama of ideas as far as it
could go and important in the body of
Shavian drama because it contains the
core of Shaw's philosophy.
The theme of the play and the central
tenet of Shaw's belief and teaching is
that man does not live long enough but
that he could if he would. As soon as
man has lived long enough to acquire the
knowledge and experience to solve some
of the problems of life, life ends. The
knowledge and experience are wasted.
Life itself is wasted. Such waste, in
Shaw's belief, is shameful, for all that
man must do to avoid it is resolve to live
245

longer. What man wants, he can have,
whether it be an extra head, arm, leg, or
additional years of life. This is the secret
of Creative Evolution: species acquire
new characteristics not through random
mutations which are confirmed or
rejected in the struggle for existence but
through the recognition that new
characteristics are needed and then the
desire, conscious or unconscious, for their
development. A disciple of Lamarck and
Samuel Butler, Shaw believed that man
could create his own evolution. In Back
to Methuselah he attempts to show how
and why.
Creative Evolution, according to Shaw,
was one of the mysteries which the
Serpent explained to Eve in the Garden of
Eden—the setting of "In the Beginning,"
the first part of the pentateuch.
Paradoxically, the great problem of life in the
Garden was not how to extend life but
how to end it. Faced with the horrible
prospect of living forever, Adam longs to
die and yet is unwilling to end life on
earth. The Serpent solves the dilemma
for him by explaining to Eve the
doctrine of creative imagination. All they
need to do to die is to will to die; to
ensure the perpetuation of life, to create
new life. The secret of creation is one
the Serpent is only too willing to whisper
in Eve's ear.
The second act, which takes place a
few centuries later, is a variation on this
theme of life and death. It is actually
a debate on the purpose of life, witn
Adam, Eve, and Cain taking three
different views. Adam contends that the
purpose of life is to live, quietly working
to pass away the years. Cain, the inventor
of murder, believes that to live bravely,
daring death and dying gloriously is the
goal of man. Eve, believing that there is
something nobler than either working or
fighting, scoffs at both. Though she has
not yet discovered just what it is, she has
hope that man will find and cherish it.
By 1919-the date of "The Gospel of
the Brothers Barnabas," the second part
of the pentateuch—the triumph of Cain's
apostles of death and destruction has
shortened man's life span to its current
length. But Franklyn and Conrad
Barnabas have rediscovered the Serpent's secret
of Creative Evolution and have settled on
three hundred years as the ideal life span.
Their task is to convince enough people
that extending life is possible, then let
nature do the rest. Although they are
notably unsuccessful in persuading two
politicians, Burge and Lubin, to adopt
"Back to Methuselah" as the Liberal
Party slogan, they remain confident that
someone will soon live for three hundred
years.
By 2170, the date of "The Thing
Happens," the miracle has been
accomplished. The Archbishop of York and
Mrs. Lutestring, both of whom had been
exposed to the Barnabas gospel, have
lived 283 and 274 years respectively.
Except for their ages, both are typical
Shavian heroes in that they are so superior
to a conventional society that society
rejects and despises them. Their plight is
more ironic than that of most Shavian
heroes because by 2170 England is a
Utopia, albeit a bureaucratic Utopia,
administered by Chinese men and African
women. When confronted with the
prospect of a race of supermen, the rulers of
lhe Utopia can only contemplate their
own impotence.
By 3000, the date of "Tragedy of an
Elderly Gentleman," the rulers' worst
fears have materialized: the new race has
expropriated the British Isles for its own
use and banished ordinary mortals. The
thematic significance of this section of
the play is drawn from the contrast
between the new race and the old. From
Baghdad, the new capital of the British
Commonwealth, comes a politician
posing as a statesman to seek counsel from
the supermen. The supermen are so
contemptuous of the politician's intellect that
they present the advice, which itself is
humiliating, through a humbug oracle.
True to form, the politician ignores it,
fabricates his own counsel, and departs.
An elderly gentleman, a member of the
delegation, decides to remain behind,
but he is so feeble in contrast to one of
246

the super beings that he dies upon
meeting her gaze.
By 31,920, the ordinary human race is
extinct. Children are hatched from eggs
at the age of seventeen and live
indefinitely. "As Far As Thought Can Reach,"
the fifth and last section of the play,
sketches the development of the new
human being, who, after a four-year
accelerated intellectual and physical growth
devoted to playing, dancing, and mating,
becomes an "Ancient," one who devotes
himself to pure thought and whose goal
is existence as pure, disembodied thought.
That this goal will be reached is
affirmed by Lilith, the mother of Adam and
Eve, in the closing speech of the play.
In fact, the only reason Lilith has
permitted the human race to evolve is that
it has been striving toward such a goal.
But, Lilith concludes, the attainment of
the goal is merely a step in a greater plan,
the nature of which even she knows
nothing.
In such a fashion Shaw finally reaches
the conclusion that life, some form of
life, will endure. Admittedly, the
conclusion is not a profound one, but the
insistence that man can forge his own
destiny and create his own form of life
is well worth considering if only because
it is the underlying assumption of every
one of Shaw's major plays.
247

BAMBI
Type of work: Novel
Author: Felix Salten (1869-1945)
Type of plot: Pastoral allegory
Lime of plot: Indefinite
Locale: The woods
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Bambi, a deer
The Old Prince, a stag who befriends Bambi
Bambi's Mother
Faline, Bambi's cousin
Gobo, her brother
Critique:
Bambi is one of the few * successful
attempts to humanize animals in fiction.
A fairy tale for children, but an allegory
for adults, the book tells the story of a
deer who learns that he must travel alone
if he is to be strong and wise.
The Story:
Bambi was born in a thicket in the
woods. While he was still an awkward
young fawn, his mother taught him that
he was a deer. He learned that deer did
not kill other animals, nor did they
fight over food as jaybirds did. He
learned, too, that deer should venture
from their hiding places to go to the
meadow only in the early morning and
late in the evening and that they must
rely on the rustle of last year's dead
leaves to give them warning of
approaching danger. On his first visit to the
meadow Bambi had a conversation with
a grasshopper and a close look at a butter-
One evening Bambi and his mother
went to the meadow again. On his
second visit he was introduced to the
hare, an animal with big, soft eyes and
flopping ears. Bambi was not impressed.
The little deer was considerably happier
to meet his cousins, Gobo and Faline,
and their mother, Ena. The two families
were about to separate when two stags
with spreading antlers on their heads
came crashing out of the forest. Bambi's
mother explained that the larger, statelier
stag was Bambi's father.
As he grew older, Bambi learned the
sounds and smells of the forest.
Sometimes his mother went off by herself.
Missing her one day, Bambi started out
to look for her and came upon his cousins
in the meadow. Faline suggested that
both their mothers might have gone to
visit their fathers. Bambi decided to
continue his search by himself. As he stood
at the edge of a clearing, he saw a
creature he had never seen before. The
creature raised what looked like a stick
to its face. Terrified, Bambi ran back
into the woods as fast as he could go.
His mother appeared suddenly, and they
both ran home to their glade. When they
were safe again, Bambi learned that he
had seen a Man.
On another day he began to call for
his mother. Suddenly a great stag stood
before him. Coldly he asked Bambi why
he was crying, and told him that he
ought to be ashamed of himself. Then
he was gone. The little deer did not tell
his mother of his experience, nor did he
call her any more. Later he learned that
he had met the Old Prince, the biggest
and wisest stag in the forest. One
morning Bambi was nibbling in the meadow
with his mother when one of the stags
came out of the forest. Suddenly there
was a crash. The stag leaped into the
air and then fell dead. Bambi raced
away after his mother. All he wanted
was to go deeper and deeper into the
BAMBI by Felix Salten. By permission of the publishers, Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright, 1928, by Simon &
Schuster, Inc.
248

forest until he could feel free of that
new danger. Ke met the Old Prince
again. When Bambi asked him who Man
was, the stag only replied that he would
find out for himself. Then he
disappeared.
The forest gradually changed as
summer passed into fall and then into
winter. Snow fell, and grass was not easy
to find. All of the deer became more
friendly during the cold months. They
would gather to talk and sometimes even
one of the stags would join them. Bambi
grew to admire the stags. He was
especially interested in Ronno, the stag
who had escaped after a hunter had
wounded him in the foot. The constant
topic of conversation was Man, for none
of the deer could understand the black
stick he carried. They were all afraid
of it.
As the winter dragged on, the
slaughter of the weaker animals in the forest
began. A crow killed one of the hare's
children. A squirrel raced around with a
neck wound a ferret had given him. A
fox murdered a pheasant. A party of
hunters came into the woods with their
noise-making sticks and killed many of
the animals. Bambi's mother and his
cousin Gobo were not seen again.
That spring Bambi grew his first pair
of antlers. With his mother gone, he
had to spend most of his time alone.
The other stags drove him away when
he tried to approach them, and Faline
was shy with him. Deciding one day
that he was not afraid of any of the
stags, Bambi charged at what he thought
was one of his tormentors in a thicket.
The stag stepped aside, and Bambi
charged past him. It was the Old Prince.
Embarrassed, the young deer began to
tremble when his friend came close to
him. With an admonishment to act
bravely, the older deer disappeared into
the woods.
A year later Bambi met Faline again,
and once more they played as they had
when they were very young. Then
an older stag named Karus appeared
and tried to block Bambi's way. When
Bambi attacked him, Karus fled, as did
the stag named Ronno, who had been
pursuing Faline.
Faline and Bambi ventured into the
meadow one day and there saw a stranger
nibbling the grass. They were surprised
when he came skipping up to them and
asked if they did not know him. It
was Gobo. Hunters had caught him and
kept him until he was full-grown. Then
he had been sent back to join his
family in the forest. His mother was
delighted to see him once more.
Gobo explained his absence to an
admiring audience, and praised Man for
his kindness. While he was talking, the
Old Prince appeared and asked Gobo
about the strip of horsehair around his
neck. Gobo answered that it was a
halter. The Old Prince remarked pitingly
that he was a poor thing, and vanished.
Gobo would not live as the other deer
in the forest did. He insisted on going
about during the day and sleeping at
night. He had no fear about eating in
the meadow, completely exposed. One
day, when a hunter was in the woods,
Gobo declared that he would go talk to
him. He walked out into the meadow.
Suddenly there was a loud report, Gobo
leaped into the air and then dashed
into the thicket, where he fell mortally
wounded.
Bambi was alone when he met the Old
Prince for the first time since Gobo's
death. They were walking together
when they found a hare caught in a
noose. Carefully the Old Prince managed
to loosen the snare with his antlers.
Then he showed Bambi how to test tree
branches for a trap. Bambi realized for
the first time that there was no time
when Man was not in the woods.
One misty morning, as Bambi stood
at the edge of the clearing, a hunter
wounded him. He raced madly for the
forest, and in its protection lay down to
rest. Soon he heard a voice beside him,
urging him to get up. It was the Old
Prince. For an hour the veteran led
Bambi through the woods, crossing and
recrossing the place where he had lain
249

down, showing him the herbs which
would stop his bleeding and clear his
head. He stayed with Bambi until the
wound had healed.
Before he went off to die, the old
stag showed Bambi a poacher who had
been killed. He explained that man, like
animals, must die. Bambi understood
then that there is someone even more
powerful than Man.
Walking through the forest one day,
Bambi spied a brother and sister fawn
crying for their mother. As the Old
Prince had spoken to him so many
years before, he asked them if they
could not stay by themselves. Then, as
his friend haa done, he vanished into the
forest.
250

BARABBAS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Par Lagerkvist (1891- )
Type of plot: Realistic symbolism
Time of plot: First century
Locale: Palestine, the Near East, Rome
First published: 1949
Principal characters:
Barabbas, the robber freed in Christ's stead
A Girl, unnamed, formerly intimate of Barabbas
Sahak, a fellow slave of Barabbas, an Armenian Christian
The Roman Governor
Mary
Peter
Lazarus
Critique:
Barabbas in surface and in details of
action and characterization seems a very
realistic historical novel. In this fable,
however, Lagerkvist has created a
symbolic story which treats a primitive man's
unwitting search for God. His portrait of
the criminal Barabbas' emerging
conscience patterns the emergence of
Christian doctrine from fhe superstition and
bewilderment which, the author implies,
were the first reactions of the populace
to the Crucifixion. The symbolic
meaning of Barabbas' story is probably to be
extended to include the blind search of
all men of all times for belief. In 1951,
two years after the appearance of this
novel, Lagerkvist was awarded the Nobel
Prize for literature.
The Story:
At Golgotha, Barabbas, watching the
Crucifixion from which he had suddenly
been saved, was startled by the words
uttered by the figure on the cross: "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?" Even stranger to him was the
darkness which seemed to come over the
world. As he was leaving the scene he
was also disturbed by the look of silent
reproach directed at him by the dead
man's mother.
Back in Jerusalem, he met and walked
with a young girl, whom he had known
before. The girl, who had a harelip, went
with him to a dive where some of his
low companions were gathered. Barabbas
and the people there discussed Barabbas*
rescue and the strange rabbi who had
made such extreme claims and yet
permitted himself to be crucified like any
criminal. Barabbas was considerably
relieved that the people in the cafe" did not
believe in the rabbi's divinity, though he
was rather troubled that they had not
even noticed the darkness which had for
a while hung over the land. The young
girl having left the dive, Barabbas
indulged, as a kind of escape from his
worries, in a drunken debauch with one of
the patrons of the caf£—a fat, crude
woman.
Later Barabbas met a red-bearded
follower of Christ who expected Christ to
rise from the dead the next day. He
explained some of Christ's teachings to
Barabbas, but shamefacedly admitted that
before the end he had denied Christ. The
girl with the harelip, to whom Barabbas
also talked about Christ, said that she
had met Him. She was wilder in her
predictions than was the red-bearded
man; she expected the millennium and
divine miracles any day. Superstition did
not blur everything, however, for she
told Barabbas that Christ's message was
one of love. Barabbas thereupon went to
BARABBAS by Par Lagerkvist. Translated by Alan Blair. By permission of the publishers, Random
House, Inc. Copyright, 1951, by Random House, Inc.
251

the grave, and watched all night, but
saw nothing. The next day, however, the
stone was gone from the entrance. He
believed that the followers of Christ had
taken the body; the girl thought He had
risen.
Barabbas asked the followers of Christ
about these events, but found little
satisfaction in their answers. He could not
understand One who used His power
by refraining from using it. Barabbas was
later taken to a man who had been dead
four days and had been raised again by
this rabbi. This man told Barabbas that
death was nothing; it was there, but it
signified nothing. He added that after
one had experienced death, life also was
as nothing. As Barabbas further
questioned the followers of Christ, it became
clear that though they were believers
they were quite confused as to the
meaning of all these happenings. When the
followers learned Barabbas* identity, as
sooner or later they did, they naturally
hated him.
About this time Barabbas became
estranged from his fellows in the low life
of Jerusalem—so much so that he left off
his sensual life. The fat woman, his
sometime lover, thought that Christ's soul
had possessed Barabbas. One day, by
accident, Barabbas was present at a church
meeting and heard a rather disappointing
sermon bv the red-bearded man who had
denied Christ. The snuffling testimony of
witness given by the harelipped girl he
found even more distasteful; vet later,
when a blind man denounced the girl as
a Christian, Barabbas knifed the first
person who stoned her. She died a humble
martyr, but one who saw Christ as she
died. Barabbas carried her bodv to the
grave of a baby she had had: Barabbas
had been the father of that child.
A short time later Barabbas left
Jerusalem and returned to the robber band
which he had at one time led. The
robbers were distressed by his seeming
character change: formerly the boldest of all,
he had become apathetic. So bold had he
been that years ago he had fought and
killed and supplanted the bandit leader;
thus he had come by the scar on his face.
What none of the characters knew was
that Eliahu, whom Barabbas had killed,
was his own father. Sensing that he no
longer fitted in with the robber band,
Barabbas silently stole away from the
camp.
For an indeterminate period Barabbas
wandered the face of the earth. Later he
was enslaved and put to mining for the
Romans. There he met Sahak, a slave
who was thrilled by the knowledge that
Barabbas had seen Christ. Without
revealing to Sahak the true nature of that
relation, Barabbas increased the details
oF Sahak's belief by telling him things
about Christ. Some of these were lies,
such as that he had seen an angel come
down from the sky on the night that he
had watched outside Christ's tomb. After
a time Barabbas apathetically suffered
Sahak to enter into Christian observances
with him. He even permitted Sahak to
draw Christ's symbol on his slave's disk,
and for a time he prayed with him. Years
later a new mine overseer, attracted to
Christianity but mystified by its doctrine
of love, noticed the two slaves, bound
to each other by a chain. The overseer,
having talked to them about Christianity,
was moved to secure positions above
ground for the two men. Though still
slaves, Sahak and Barabbas were at any
rate free of the deadly conditions of
primitive mining.
Matters soon changed when the
Roman governor of the territory learned
through another slave that both men were
Christians. Sahak refused to renounce his
faith. Barabbas, who by this point would
have liked to believe in Christ but could
not, readily renounced his. He let the
governor scratch through the sign that
Sahak had put on his disk. He then had
to witness Sahak's crucifixion, but he
himself was rewarded. He was relieved
when no miraculous occurrences
accompanied the death of Sahak.
When the pagan but kindly Roman
governor retired to Rome, he took Barab-
252

bas with him. Once Barabbas went to
the catacombs to see a Christian religious
service, but no wo-shipper was there. In
the darkness of the catacombs he felt
terribly alone. He also felt that, as he
had dreamed one night, he was still
chained to Sahak, just as he had been
during the days when he had pretended
to believe.
After he had left the place of the dead,
he smelled fire; flames were everywhere.
He thought that Christ had returned to
save the world, the first step of which
would be to destroy Rome—for Rome felt
that Christ was the enemy. Barabbas
seized a burning brand and began to set
everything afire that he could; he
thought, wildlv, that he was helping the
Christians and his Saviour.
Thrown into prison with the
Christians, Barabbas learned that there had
been no service in the catacombs because
the followers had been forewarned that
an attack was to be made on them. The
fires were probably set bv agents or spies
to discredit further the Christians.
The Christians in the prison naturally
denied trr»t Barabbas, who had been
caught red-handed, was one of them.
When they protested to the jailer, the
man showed as evidence Barabbas* disk,
which still had the Christian symbol
dimly scratched on it. A venerable old
man among the Christians turned out to
be one whom Barabbas had met before,
the man who had denied Christ. Now
he explained to Barabbas that it was
Caesar who had set the fires, not Christ;
it had been Caesar, therefore, whom
Barabbas had helped by trying to burn
Rome. Christ's message was still that of
love.
To the others the old man added that
they must not condemn Barabbas, though
he was the Acquitted One. He continued
that Barabbas was unhappy, and he had
to wear his crossed-out disk. The others
were also weak and full of faults; their
belief had come from God. They must
not condemn a man who had no god in
whom to believe.
Soon the Christians were led out in
pairs to be crucified, but Barabbas was
taken alone. When death was coming,
he spoke rather ambiguously into the
darkness, saying that he delivered up his
soul "to thee."
253

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Seville, Spain
Virzt presented: 1775
Principal characters:
Figaro, the barber of Seville
Count Alma viva, a Grandee of Spain
Bartholo, a doctor
Rosine, his ward
Don Bazile, Rosine's singing-master
Critique:
Although the plot of The Barber of
Seville has been used many times by
dramatists and composers, Beaumarchais
seems to have a fresh approach to the
story. It is on this gentle comedy that
Rossini's famous opera is based. The
play is fast-moving and brisk. It has
all the necessary ingredients for a
romantic comedy: intrigue, wit, clear-cut
characterizations, satire, and a well-
defined plot. Indeed, the plot is more
important than the actors themselves,
even though Figaro, the barber, has
become famous in the literature of all
countries. Beaumarchais' style served as
a model for many dramatists who
followed him.
The Story:
Count Almaviva was so much in love
with Rosine, the ward of Dr. Bartholo,
that even though he had never spoken
to her he had left Madrid and the
pleasure of the court in order to be near
her in Seville. Because her guardian
desired to marry her, he kept the young
girl locked in her room. To help him
in his suit the count enlisted the aid of
Figaro, the barber and apothecary of
Bartholo.
A note Rosine threw from her window
convinced the count that she returned
his love. At Figaro's suggestion, the
count then disguised himself as a soldier
seeking quarters for the night. He called
himself Lindor, the name Figaro had used
in telling Rosine of her unknown
lover. When Bartholo, suspicious of
everyone who might come near Rosine,
refused to give the disguised count
lodging, the count managed to slip a
note to Rosine before Bartholo ordered
him from the house. Bartholo forced
Rosine to show him the note, but she
cleverly tricked him into reading another
letter which she had received from her
cousin. Still his suspicions were not
allayed.
His first plan having failed, the
count, with the help of Figaro, disguised
himself as a student. Calling himself
Alonzo, he told Bartholo that he had
been sent by Don Bazile, Rosine's music
teacher. His story was that Don Bazile
was ill and had asked Alonzo to take
his place. Bazile was a party to Bartholo's
plot to force Rosine to marry him the
next day. Figaro, having learned of this
plot, had given the count the
information so that he could pretend to help
Bartholo. The count gave Bartholo a
letter which he claimed would help
Bartholo in his suit. They would tell her
that another woman had given it to
Bartholo, a woman with whom the
count was supposed to be in love.
The count thought that by pretending
to help Bartholo he could be alone with
254

Rosine and tell her his plans to rescue
her from the old man. But again Bartholo
would not leave them alone together until
Figaro managed to trick him into leaving
the room. Then Figaro stole the key to
Rosine's room from the old man's key
ring. When Bartholo returned to the
room, the music lesson seemed to be
in progress. Then Don Bazile himself
was announced. It took all of Figaro's
ingenuity to keep him from revealing
Alonzo as an impostor. Figaro and the
count at last managed to get Don Bazile
out of the house before Bartholo began
to suspect the truth. But Bartholo,
suspicious of everyone, sneaked behind the
count and Rosine and overheard enough
to make him decide to investigate Don
Bazile's strange behavior and apparent
bewilderment.
Don Bazile confessed that he knew
nothing of his supposed illness and had
never before seen the so-called Alonzo.
This confirmation of his suspicions made
Bartholo uneasy. Although he feared
that Alonzo was the count's friend, he
did not suspect that Alonzo was the
count himself. He told Don Bazile to
arrange to have the notary come at once
to perform his marriage with Rosine.
Immediately afterward he went to
the young girl's room and showed her
the letter the count had given him.
Instead of the help the count expected
from the letter, however, it worked
against him. Bartholo told Rosine also
that her young lover would pretend
to rescue her, but in reality he planned
to sell her to the count. Since Rosine too
did not know the real identity of the
man she called Lindor, she believed
Bartholo and promised to marry him at
once. She also told him of Alonzo's plan
to steal into her room that night and
carry her off. Bartholo left her to
arrange for the police to come and
apprehend the kidnaper.
While Bartholo was gone, the count
and Figaro climbed up a ladder and
entered Rosine's room. Thinking him to
be Lindor, she scorned the count and
accused him of a plot to sell her to the
count. The count then threw aside his
disguise. He told her he was the Count
Almaviva, that in his love for her he
had followed her hopelessly for the past
six months. Rosine was so overcome that
she fainted. When she was revived, she
told them of her loss of faith and of
her promise to marry Bartholo. She told
them also of Bartholo's knowledge of the
plan to carry her away. Already the
ladder had been removed from her
window and the police were on the way.
When all looked blackest, Don Bazile
appeared with a notary, as Bartholo had
instructed him to do. The notary knew
only that he was to perform a marriage
here and another marriage at the home
of Figaro. Here he was to marry Bartholo
and a young lady named Rosine. At
Figaro's he was to marry Count
Almaviva and a young lady named Rosine.
By some clever and rapid talking, the
count and Figaro were able to convince
the notary that he was merely confused.
Don Bazile was more difficult, but he
finally decided the money the count
slipped into his hand was more important
than his loyalty to Bartholo. He signed
the marriage contract as a witness just
before Bartholo burst into the room
with many policemen and a justice of
the peace.
Bartholo ordered the justice of the
peace to arrest the count, but that civil
servant was too much impressed with
Count Almaviva's high position to risk
offending him. Bartholo, anxious to
marry his ward, then ordered the count
out of the house. When he learned that
the count and Rosine had just been
married, and that the contract was
legally signed, he was infuriated and
tried in vain to keep Rosine from leaving
with her husband. By threatening
Bartholo with a demand for an exact
accounting of his ward's property, an
expose" which Bartholo dared not allow,
the justice of the peace was able to
persuade the old man to sign the marriage
certificate, thus giving his consent to the
255

marriage of Rosine. Bartholo could not could always defeat an old man's
understand how his plans had failed. schemes.
Figaro told him that youth and love
256

BARCHESTER TOWERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: "Barchester," an English cathedral town
First published: 1857
Principal characters:
Bishop Proudie, Bishop of Barchester
Mrs. Proudie, his wife
The Reverend Obadiah Slope, his chaplain
The Reverend Septimus Harding, member of the cathedral chapter
Mrs. Eleanor Bold, his daughter
Dr. Grantly, Archdeacon of Barchester
Charlotte Stanhope, Mrs. Bold's friend
La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni, nee Stanhope, Charlotte's sister
Ethelbert Stanhope (Bertie), Charlotte's brother
Mr. Quiverful, Mrs. Proudie's candidate for warden of Hiram's Hospital
The Reverend Francis Arabin, dean of the cathedral
Critique:
This novel is the most famous of Trol-
lope's Barchester chronicles. Its fine ironic
tone and pleasantly complex situations
make for interesting reading. No
problems of social significance are given
serious treatment, for the chief purpose is
entertainment. The portraits of cathedral
town characters are full and varied.
The Story:
At the death of Bishop Grantly of
Barchester, there was much conjecture
as to his successor. Bishop Grantly's
son, the archdeacon, was ambitious for
the position, but his hopes were deflated
when Dr. Proudie was appointed to the
diocese. Bishop Proudie's wife was of
Low Church propensities. She was also
a woman of extremely aggressive nature,
who kept the bishop's chaplain, Obadiah
Slope, in constant tow.
On the first Sunday of the new
bishop's regime, Mr. Slope was the preacher
in the cathedral. His sermon was
concerned with the importance of simplicity
in the church service and the consequent
omission of chanting, intoning, and
formal ritual. The cathedral chapter was
aghast. For generations the services in
the cathedral had been chanted; the
chapter could see no reason for
discontinuing the practice. In counsel it was
decreed that Mr. Slope never be
permitted to preach from the cathedral
pulpit again.
The Reverend Septimus Harding, who
had resigned because of conscientious
scruples from his position as warden of
Hiram's Hospital, now had several
reasons to believe that he would be returned
to his post, although at a smaller salary
than that he had drawn before. But
when Mr. Slope, actually Mrs. Proudie's
mouthpiece, told him that he would be
expected to conduct several services a
week and also manage some Sunday
Schools in connection with the asylum,
Mr. Harding was perturbed. Such duties
would make arduous a preferment
heretofore very pleasant and leisurely.
Another change of policy was effected
in the diocese when the bishop
announced, through Mr. Slope, that
absentee clergymen should return and help
in the administration of the diocese. Dr.
Vesey Stanhope had for years left his
duties to his curates while he remained
in Italy. Now he was forced to return,
bringing with him an ailing wife and
three grown children, spinster Charlotte,
exotic Signora Madeline Vesey Stanhope
Neroni, and ne'er-do-well Ethelbert.
Signora Neroni, separated from her
husband, was an invalid who passed her days
lying on a couch. Bertie had studied art
and had been at times a Christian, a
257

Mohammedan, and a Jew. He had
amassed some sizable debts.
The Proudies held a reception in the
bishop's palace soon after their arrival.
Signora Neroni, carried in with great
ceremony, quite stole the show. She had
a fascinating way with men and
succeeded in almost devastating Mr. Slope.
Mrs. Proudie disapproved and did her
best to keep Mr. Slope and others away
from the invalid.
When the living of St. Ewold's became
vacant, Dr. Grantly made a trip to
Oxford and saw to it that the Reverend
Francis Arabin, a High Churchman,
received the appointment. With Mrs.
Proudie and Mr. Slope advocating Low
Church practices, it was necessary to
build up the strength of the High Church
forces. Mr. Arabin was a bachelor of
about forty. The question arose as to
what he would do with the parsonage at
St. Ewold's.
Mr. Harding's widowed daughter, Mrs.
Eleanor Bold, had a good income and
was the mother of a baby boy. Mr. Slope
had his eye on her and attempted to
interest Mrs. Bold in the work of the
Sunday Schools. At the same time he
asked Mr. Quiverful, of Puddingdale, to
take over the duties of the hospital. Mr.
Quiverful's fourteen children were
reasons enough for his being grateful for
the opportunity. But Mrs. Bold learned
how her father felt over the extra duties
imposed upon him, and she grew cold
toward Mr. Slope. In the end, Mr.
Harding decided that he simply could
not, at his age, undertake the new
duties. So Mr. Quiverful, a Low
Churchman, was granted the preferment, much
to Mrs. Proudie's satisfaction.
Mr. Slope was not the only man
interested in Mrs. Bold. The Stanhope
sisters, realizing that Bertie could never
make a living for himself, decided that
he should ask Mrs. Bold to be his wife.
Meanwhile Mr. Slope was losing favor
with Mrs. Proudie. That he should
throw himself at the feet of Signora
Neroni was repulsive to Mrs. Proudie.
That he should be interested in the
daughter of Mr. Harding, who refused
to comply with her wishes, was
disgraceful.
The Thornes of Ullathorne were an
old and aflfluent family. One day they
gave a great party. Mrs. Bold, driving
to Ullathorne with the Stanhopes, found
herself in the same carriage with Mr.
Slope, whom by this time she greatly
disliked. Later that day, as she was
walking with Mr. Slope, he suddenly put his
arm around her and declared his love.
She rushed away and told Charlotte
Stanhope, who suggested that Bertie should
speak to Mr. Slope about his irregularity.
But the occasion for his speaking to Mr.
Slope never arose. Bertie himself told
Mrs. Bold that his sister Charlotte had
urged him to marry Mrs. Bold for her
money. Naturally insulted, Mrs. Bold
was angered at the entire Stanhope
family. That evening, when Dr. Stanhope
learned what had happened, he insisted
that Bertie go away and earn his own
living or starve. Bertie left several days
later.
The Dean of Barchester was beyond
recovery after a stroke of apoplexy. It
was understood that Dr. Grantly would
not accept the deanship. Mr. Slope
wanted the position but Mrs. Proudie
would not consider him as a candidate.
When the dean died, speculation ran
high. Mr. Slope felt encouraged by the
newspapers, which said that younger men
should be admitted to places of influence
in the church.
After Bertie had gone, Signora Neroni
wrote a. note asking Mrs. Bold to come
to see her. When Mrs. Bold entered the
Stanhope drawing-room, Signora Neroni
told her that she should marry Mr.
Arabin. With calculating generosity she
had decided that he would make a good
husband for Mrs. Bold.
Meanwhile, Mr. Slope had been sent
off to another diocese, for Mrs. Proudie
could no longer bear having him in
Barchester. And Mr, Arabin, through
Oxford influences, was appointed to the
deanship—a victory for the High
Churchmen. With Mr. Slope gone, the
258

Stanhopes felt safe in returning to Italy.
Miss Thome asked Mrs. Bold to spend
some time at Ullathorne. She also
contrived to have Mr. Arabin there. It was
inevitable that Mr. Arabin should ask
Mrs. Bold to be his wife. Dr. Grantly
was satisfied. He had threatened to
forbid the hospitality of Plumstead Episcopi
to Mrs. Bold if sne had become the wife
of a Low Churchman. In fact, Dr.
Grantly was moved to such generosity that he
furnished the deanery and gave
wonderful gifts to the entire family, including
a cello to his father-in-law, Mr. Harding.
259

BARNABY RUDGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1775-1780
Locale: England
First published: 1841
Principal characters:
Emma Haredale, an heiress
Geoffrey Haredale, her uncle
Edward Chester, in love with Emma
John Chester, his father
John Willet, landlord of the Maypole Inn
Joe Willet, his son
Gabriel Varden, a London locksmith
Dolly Varden, his daughter
Simon Tapperttt, Varden's apprentice
Rudge, a fugitive from justice
Mrs. Rudge, his wife
Barnaby Rudge, their half-witted son
Lord George Gordon, a fanatic
Gashford, his secretary
Hugh, hostler at the Maypole Inn
Dennis, the hangman
Critique:
Barnaby Rudge was Dickens' first
venture into the field of historical fiction. A
novel filled with violence and melodrama,
it undoubtedly owes much to Scott's The
Heart of Midlothian, particularly in those
scenes dealing with the historic Gordon
riots and the burning of Newgate prison
by the infuriated mob. Barnaby Rudge
and his talking raven forecast at the
beginning of the book the development of a
nightmarish plot in which Dickens tried
to combine two themes of interest and
suspense: private crime and public
disorder. As in many of his novels, the book
lives chiefly in the lively and original
minor characters whom he created. Lord
George Gordon, drawn from history, is
presented in a more sympathetic light
than that in which he was viewed by
Parliament and responsible citizens of
that nobleman's own day.
The Story:
At twilight of a wild, windy day in
March, 1775, a small group of men sat in
the bar parlor of the Maypole Inn, an
ancient hostelry situated in Chigwell parish
on the borders of Epping Forest. Two
guests in particular engaged the attention
of John Willet, the proprietor. One was a
well-dressed young gentleman
preoccupied in manner. The other was a traveler
who sat huddled in an old riding-coat, his
hat pulled forward to hide his face from
the landlord's curious gaze.
After the young gentleman had left the
inn, Joe Willet, the landlord's son,
announced that Mr. Edward Chester, his
horse having gone lame, was walking the
twelve miles to London. Miss Emma
Haredale, he added, was attending a
masquerade in town, and Edward, hoping
to see her there, was willing to foot it in
spite of the stormy weather.
The name Haredale seeming to interest
the stranger, Solomon Daisy, the parish
clerk, told the story of a murder which
had shocked the neighborhood twenty-
two years before to the day. Mr. Reuben
Haredale, Emma's father, was at that
time owner of The Warren, a great house
near the village. One morning he was
260

found murdered in his bedroom. His
steward, a man named Rudge, and a gardener
were missing. Several months later
Rudge's body, identified by the clothing he
had been wearing, was recovered from a
pond on the estate. Of the gardener there
had been no trace, and the mystery was
still unsolved. Ever since her father's
violent death Emma Haredale had lived
at The Warren with Mr. Geoffrey Hare-
dale, her bachelor uncle.
The stranger called abruptly for his
horse and galloped away, almost crashing
into a chaise driven by Gabriel Varden*
the Clerkenwell locksmith. By the light of
a lantern Varden saw the traveler's
scarred, scowling face. The rider warned
the locksmith against interfering in his
affairs.
On his way back to London that same
night, Varden, alarmed by cries for help,
found Edward Chester lying wounded on
the highway. About the fallen man
capered the grotesque figure of Barnaby
Rudge, son of that Rudge who had been
Reuben Haredale's steward. The boy had
been born half-witted on the day the
murder was discovered. Helpless, loved,
pitied, he lived in a shabby street nearby
with his mother and his tame, talking
raven, Grip. Aided by Barnaby, Varden
took the wounded man to the Rudge
house and put him to bed.
The next morning Varden told the
story of his night's adventures to Dolly,
his daughter, and thin-shanked Simon
Tappertit, his apprentice. Dolly, who
knew of Emma's affection for Edward
Chester, was deeply concerned.
That night Varden went to the Rudge
house to inquire about Edward, whom he
found greatly improved. While he sat
talking with Mrs. Rudge, whose face
clearly revealed the troubles and sorrows
of her life, a soft knocking sounded at the
closed shutter. When she opened the door,
Varden saw over her shoulder the livid
face and fierce eyes of the horseman he
had encountered the night before. The
man fled, leaving the locksmith convinced
that he was also the highwayman who
had attacked young Chester. Mrs. Rudge,
visibly upset by the man's appearance on
her doorstep, begged Varden to say
nothing about the strange visitor.
John Chester, Edward's father, was a
vain, selfish man with great ambitions for
his son. Shortly after the mysterious
attack, he and Geoffrey Haredale met by
appointment in a private room at the
Maypole. Although the two families had
been enemies for many years, Chester felt
that at last they had a common interest;
both should oppose a match between
Emma and Edward. Chester confessed
frankly that he wished his son to marry
a Protestant heiress, not the niece of a
Catholic country squire. Haredale,
resenting Chester's superior airs, promised
that he would do his best to change his
niece's feelings toward Edward. The
meeting of the two men caused great interest
among the villagers gathered in the bar
parlor of the inn.
Haredale, true to his promise, refused
to admit Edward to The Warren. When
the young man confronted his father to
demand an explanation for the agreement
between him and Haredale, the older
Chester sneered at his son for his
sentimental folly and advised him not to let his
heart rule his head.
The mysterious stranger came again to
Mrs. Rudge's house. Admitted, he
demanded food and money. Frightened by
the threats of the sinister blackmailer, she
and her son moved secretly to a remote
country village.
Edward, refusing to obey his father's
commands, asked Dolly Varden to carry a
letter to Emma, her foster sister. In turn,
Emma gave her a message intended for
Edward. Hugh, the brutish hostler at the
Maypole, took the letter from her and
delivered it to John Chester, who was using
every means to keep the lovers apart.
Before long he had involved Mrs. Varden,
Simon Tappertit, and John Willet in his
schemes.
Joe Willet became resentful when his
father, trying to keep Joe from acting as
a go-between for the lovers, began to in-
261

terfere with his son's liberties. Meanwhile
Joe had troubles of his own. He had
apprenticed himself to the locksmith in order
to be near Dolly, but Mrs. Varden favored
Tappertit's suit. Joe, annoyed by what he
considered Dolly's fickleness, trounced his
rival and declared that he would go off to
fight the rebels in America. Dolly forgot
that she was a coquette and wept bitterly
when she heard of his enlistment.
Five years later John Willet again
presided over his bar parlor on a tempestuous
nineteenth of March, the anniversary of
Reuben Haredale's murder. Only
Solomon Daisy was needed to make the
gathering of cronies complete. When he
appeared, he had a strange story to tell. In
the village churchyard he had seen a man
believed murdered years before. Willet,
disturbed by the clerk's story, carried it
that same night to Geoffrey Haredale, who
asked that the report be kept from his
niece.
On the way home Willet and the
hostler, who had accompanied him on his
errand, were stopped by three horsemen.
The travelers were Lord George Gordon,
leader of an anti-Catholic crusade; Gash-
ford, his secretary, and John Grueby, a
servant. They stayed overnight at the
Maypole.
Lord Gordon was a fanatic, his mind a
muddle of Queen Besses and Bloody
Marys. Gashford, his sly, malevolent
helper, was the true organizer of the No-
Popery rioters, a rabble of the disaffected
and lawless from the London slums.
Haredale gained the enmity of Gashford when
he revealed in public the past of Lord
Gordon's hypocritical secretary. Sir John
Chester, now a baronet, was interested in
the Gordon cause. Among Gashford's
followers were Tappertit, Hugh from the
Maypole, and Dennis, the public
hangman.
Barnaby Rudge and his mother
journeyed by chance to London on the day the
Gordon riots began. Separated from her by
a yelling, roaming horde, Barnaby found
himself pushed along in a mob led by
Hugh and Tappertit. Catholic churches,
public buildings, and the homes of
prominent Papists were sacked and
burned. Later, Barnaby was among those
arrested and thrown into Newgate prison.
Gashford, wishing to be revenged on
Haredale, sent part of the mob to destroy
The Warren. On the way the rioters, led
by Tappertit, Dennis, and Hugh,
plundered the Maypole and left the landlord
bound and gagged. Haredale himself was
not at home; he had gone to London in an
attempt to learn the whereabouts of
Ban w by and his mother. Fearing the
destination of the mob headed toward Chig-
well, and alarmed for the safety of his
niece and Dolly, her companion, he rode
home as fast as he could. With Solomon
Daisy, who joined him on the way, he
arrived at the Maypole, where they
unbound Willet and heard his account of a
strange face which had peered through
the window a short time before. Haredale
and Daisy rode on to The Warren, a heap
of smoking ruins. While they stirred
among the ashes, they spied a man lurking
in the old watchtower. Haredale threw
himself upon the skulking figure. His
prisoner was Rudge, the double murderer.
Haredale had Rudge locked in
Newgate. A few hours later rioters fired the
prison and released the inmates. The mob
was led by Hugh, who had learned of
Barnaby's imprisonment from a one-
armed stranger. The same armless man
saved Varden from injury after the
locksmith had refused to open the door of the
prison. Tappertit and Dennis, meanwhile,
had taken Emma and Dolly to a wretched
cottage in a London suburb.
When Haredale, taking refuge from the
mob, went to the home of a vintner whom
he knew, rioters attacked the house.
Escaping through a secret passage, they
encountered Edward Chester, just returned
from abroad. With him was Joe Willet,
who had lost an arm in the American war.
Edward and Joe succeeded in taking
Haredale and the vintner to a place of safety.
Barnaby, his father, and Hugh,
betrayed by Dennis, were captured and sen-
262

tenced to death. Having learned where the
girls were being held, Edward and Joe led
a party to rescue them. In the city the
riots had been quelled, and Gashford,
hoping to save himself, had betrayed Lord
Gordon. Dennis was also under arrest.
Tappertit, wounded, and with his legs
crushed, was discovered in the house
where Emma and Dolly had been held.
Mrs. Rudge vainly tried to get her
husband to repent before he and Dennis died
on the scaffold. Hugh, who was Sir John
Chester's natural son, met the same end.
After much effort Varden was able to
secure the release of innocent,
feebleminded Barnaby.
Haredale withdrew all objections to a
match between Edward and Emma. He
himself planned to leave England. Before
his departure, however, he revisited the
ruins of The Warren. There he met Sir
John Chester and killed his old enemy in
a duel. That night he fled abroad and
died, several years later, in a religious
institution. Gashford survived Lord Gordon
and died at last by his own hand.
But these grimmer matters were of little
concern to Dolly, mistress of the Maypole,
or to Joe, the beaming landlord. Nor did
they disturb the simple happiness of
Barnaby Rudge, who lived many years on
Maypole Farm, in company with his
mother and Grip, his talking raven.
263

BARON MUNCHAUSEN'S NARRATIVE
Type of work: Mock-heroic chronicle
Author (in part): Rudolph Erich Raspe (1737-1794)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Various countries and the moon
First published: 1785
Principal character:
Baron Munchausen (Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von
Munchhausen), a prodigious, traveler from Gottingen
Critique:
This collection of tales was begun by
Raspe, who is thought to have been a
friend of the prototype of Baron
Munchausen. The work has gone through
many editions, and various subsequent
writers have added a multitude of tales to
the earlier editions. The tales appearing
subsequent to the sixth edition, however,
lack the authentic Munchausen flavor.
These tall stories give continuous delight.
They recall the wit of Rabelais and
foreshadow Paul Bunyan's feats. So long as
men enjoy harmless boasting these tales
will live.
The Story:
Baron Munchausen knew that, some
people might doubt the truth of these
stories. To lend credibility to the tales, he
got reputable witnesses to attest that
everything he said was nothing but a
simple addition to the truth. His witnesses
were beyond question, for the four were
Sinbad, Ananias, Aladdin, and Gulliver.
The Baron sailed for Ceylon with a
cousin. While the ship was at anchor in
an island harbor, a great wind arose and
blew enormous trees, roots and all, five
miles into the air. When the storm
subsided, the trees fell back into their
respective holes. In one tree, however, an
old couple had been gathering
cucumbers. When their weight overbalanced the
tree it came down and toppled onto the
chief, killing him outright. But it was a
fortunate accident because the chief was
an evil man.
While hunting on Ceylon, the Baron
was attacked by a lion. Behind him was a
forty-foot crocodile with open mouth, to
his left a precipice, and to his right a lake.
He faced the lion bravely. The beast
jumped clear over the Baron and landed
in the crocodile's mouth. Quickly the
Baron whipped out his knife, cut off
the lion's head, and shoved it down the
crocodile's throat, thus killing both his
adversaries.
The Baron left Rome to make a journey
to Russia. One night, no village being in
sight, he tethered his horse to a pointed
stump and lay down in the snow to sleep.
In the morning he was surprised to find
himself lying in a churchyard. Hearing a
faint whinny, he looked up and saw his
faithful horse tied to the top of the church
steeple. A moment's reflection gave an
explanation to the Baron: during the night
the deep snow had entirely melted!
Taking his pistol, he shot through the bridle
and his horse fell unharmed to earth.
Smartly mounting, the Baron continued
his journey to St. Petersburg.
He found that most Russians traveled
by sledge rather than on horseback.
Suiting himself to the customs of the country,
he hitched his horse to a one-man sleigh
and continued his journey. A ferocious
wolf pursued him. The frantic animal's
leap from behind was too long, for he
jumped over the Baron's head and began
to eat the horse's hindquarters. The
famished wolf soon was eating himself right
into the horse's body. The Baron whipped
the wolf's rear vigorously and pushed him
farther ahead. The horse's carcass dropped
off and the harness settled on the wolf.
With exuberant shouts the Baron drove
the wolf on to St. Petersburg.
One day the Baron saw a flock of ducks
264

in a pond. When he rushed out of the
door, he banged his face hard enough for
sparks to fly from his eyes. Arriving at
the pond, he found the flint missing from
his gun. He hit himself smartly between
the eyes and the resultant sparks touched
off the powder in his fowling piece. The
shot killed fifty brace of ducks, twenty
widgeons, and three pairs of teal.
When he went out to hunt another
day, he forgot his shot. He saw a great stag
with spreading antlers. Quickly he ate
some cherries and spit the seeds into his
gun. He fired at the stag and hit him
squarely in the forehead, but the animal
staggered off. The next year he came upon
the same stag with a ten-foot cherry tree
frowing between his horns. After he
illed the animal, he had cherry sauce
with a roasted haunch.
The Baron had a faithful hound who
hunted her legs off for her master;
thereafter he used her only as a terrier. Once
while she was big with pups, she set out
in pursuit of a hare. From the sounds the
Baron thought he must have a pack of
hounds. As soon as he caught up he saw
what had happened. Both the hare and
the hound had stopped to litter, and six
dogs were chasing six hares.
The Baron entered the tsar's army to
help retrieve the glory of Russian arms.
His regiment drove the Turks into
Oczakow, and the Baron pursued the
enemy so closely that he entered the town
gates ahead of all his comrades. The
Turks closed the portcullis on him and cut
his horse in two. Riding only on the fore-
quarters, he returned to the gate and had
the farrier sew the hindquarters back on.
During this war the Baron was taken
prisoner. Following the custom, he was
sold as a slave to the sultan. His duties
were light but irksome—each day he drove
the bees to pasture. One day a bee escaped
his vigilance. Two hungry bears fell on
her to steal her honey. The brave Baron
threw his silver hatchet at the bears but
missed; the deflected hatchet flew to the
moon. He quickly planted a Turkish bean
and climbed the stalk to retrieve his
hatchet. While he was on the moon, the
hot sun withered the beanstalk. To get
down, the Baron seized some chopped
straw and instantly plaited a rope. Since
the rope was not long enough to reach
the earth, he held onto the lower end and
cut loose the upper end fastened to the
horn of the moon. Then, tying the severed
end to the bottom end, he gradually
descended.
While in the service of the Turks he
chanced to see a bright object in the sky.
Taking aim, he brought it down with his
fowling piece. To his surprise a
Frenchman carrying part of a roasted sheep
stepped from the balloon. The man
explained that the wind had shifted just
after he took off in his weather balloon
from Land's End. The sheep was intended
for meteorological experiments. After
several days in the air, the man became
hungry. Since he was so high up, he
roasted a part of the sheep on the sunny
side of the balloon basket. Roast mutton
had been all he had to sustain him on the
long trip.
The Baron possessed a famous
slingshot, the very sling that David had usea
to kill Goliath. Uriah's wife stole the sling
when she left David and bequeathed it to
her favorite son. Afterward it was handed
down in the family until it reached the
Baron's great-great-grandfather. This
ancestor lent it to a famous poacher, one
Will Shakespeare, who used the sling to
good effect to get venison from Sir
Thomas Lucy's park.
Once, after jumping into the crater of
Mt. Etna, the Baron landed in Vulcan's
domain. Vulcan, jealous of Venus'
attentions to the earthling, dropped the Baron
down through the earth. He came out in
the Antarctic Ocean. On the way back he
came upon a cheese island whose
inhabitants were nine feet tall. On the blue side
of the island the cheese was so moldy that
the people who ate it were incandescent
from the luminous cheese. The Baron
brought one of the luminous people back
to London. This cheese man was
employed to light the lamps in Somerset
Park. All went well for several nights,
until the starlings were attracted by the
265

strong odor of the lamplighter. The
voracious birds consumed entirely the
unhappy cheese man. The Baron trapped
the starlings and baked them in a pie. The
pie, naturally au gratin, was served to the
Lord Mayor's company.
266

BARREN GROUND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: Rural Virginia
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Dorinda Oakley, daughter of a poor white Virginia farmer
Josiah, and
Rufus, her brothers
Jason Greylock, last member of an old Virginia family
Geneva Ellgood, later Jason's wife
Nathan Pedlar, a country farmer and merchant
Critique:
Barren Ground is an honest, realistic
novel of the South, in which Ellen
Glasgow pictured the struggle of a class
to maintain high living standards in the
face of humiliating and depressing
circumstances. Through her heroine she
presented the problems of people who
are by blood related to both the
established aristocracy and the poor white
tenant class. The story of Dorinda's
vitality stands in sharp contrast to the
weakness of her lover, Jason Greylock.
In their frustrated union tragedy results
for both, a tragedy out of their own
blood rather than one of willful creation.
The Story:
Late one cold winter day Dorinda
Oakley started to walk the four miles
between Pedlar's Mill and her home at
Old Farm. The land was bleak and
desolate under a gray sky, and a few
flakes of snow were tailing. For almost
a year she had worked in Nathan Pedlar's
store, taking the place of his consumptive
wife. Her brisk walk carried her swiftly
over the rutted roads toward her father s
unproductive farm and the dilapidated
Oakley house. On the way she passed
Green Acres, the fertile farm of James
Ellgood, and the run-down farm of Five
Oaks, owned by dissolute old Doctor
Greylock, whose son, Jason, had given up
his medical studies to take over his
father's practice and to care for his
drunken father.
As she walked, Dorinda thought of
young Jason Greylock. Before she
reached Old Farm, Jason overtook her in
his buggy. During the ride to her home
she remembered the comment of old
Matthew Fairlamb, who had told her
that she ought to marry Jason. The
young doctor was handsome. He
represented something different from the
drab, struggling life Dorinda had always
known. Her father and mother and her
two brothers were all unresponsive and
bitter people. Mrs. Oakley suffered from
headaches and tried to forget them in a
ceaseless activity of work. At Old Farm,
supper was followed by prayers and
prayers by sleep.
Dorinda continued to see Jason.
Taking the money she had been saving to
buy a cow, she ordered a pretty dress
and a new hat to wear to church on
Easter Sunday. But her Easter finery
brought her no happiness. Jason sat in
church with the Ellgoods and their
daughter, Geneva, and afterward he
went home with them to dinner. Dorinda
sat in her bedroom that afternoon and
meditated on her unhappiness.
Later, Jason proposed unexpectedly,
confessing that he too was lonely and
unhappy. He spoke of his attachment
to his father which had brought him
of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc. Copy-
BARREN GROUND by Ellen Glasgow. By permission
right, 1925, 1933, by Ellen Glasgow.
267

back to Pedlar's Mill, and he cursed the
tenant system which he said was ruining
the South. He and Dorinda planned
to be married in the fall. When they
met during the hot, dark nights that
summer, he kissed her with half-angry,
half-hungry violence.
Meanwhile Geneva Ellgood told her
friends that she herself was engaged
to Jason Greylock. Late in September
Jason left for the city to buy surgical
instruments. When he was overlong
in returning, Dorinda began to worry.
At last she visited Aunt Mehitable Green,
an old Negro conjure woman, in the
hope Aunt Mehitable would have heard
from the Greylock servants some gossip
concerning Jason. There Dorinda
became ill and learned that she was to
have a child. Distressed, she went to
Five Oaks and confronted drunken old
Dr. Greylock, who told her, as he
cackled with sly mirth, that Jason had
married Geneva Ellgood in the city. The
old man intimated that Jason was white-
livered and had been forced into the
marriage by the Ellgoods. He added,
leering, that Jason and his bride were
expected home that night.
On the way home Dorinda saw,
herself unseen, the carriage which brought
Jason and Geneva to Five Oaks. Late
that night she went to the Greylock
house and attempted to shoot Jason.
Frightened, Jason begged for pity and
understanding. Despising him for his
weakness and falseness, she blundered
home through the darkness. Two days
later she packed her suitcase and left
home. By accident she took the
northbound train rather than the one to
Richmond, and so she changed the course of
her later life.
Dorinda arrived in New York in
October, frightened, friendless, with no
prospects of work. Two weeks later
she fortunately met a kindly middle-
aged woman who took her in and gave
her the address of a dressmaker who
might hire her. But on the way to the
shop Dorinda was knocked down by a
cab. She awoke in a hospital. Dr.
Faraday, a surgeon who had seen the
accident, saved her life, but she lost
her baby. Dr. Faraday hired her to look
after his office and children.
Dorinda lived in New York with the
Faradays for two years. Then her father
had a stroke and she returned home. Her
brother Josiah was married; Mrs. Pedlar
was dead. Dorinda had become a woman
of self-confidence and poise. She saw
Geneva Greylock, who already looked
middle-aged, and had only pity for the
woman who had married Jason. Her
brother Rufus said Jason was drinking
heavily and losing all his patients. Five
Oaks farm looked more run-down than
ever. Determined to make the Oakley
land productive once more, Dorinda
borrowed enough money to buy seven
cows. She found Nathan Pedlar
helpful in many ways, for he knew good
farming methods and gave her advice.
When she saw Jason again, she wondered
how she could ever have yielded herself
to the husk of a man that Jason was.
After her father's death, Josiah and his
wife Elvira went to live on their own
land. Rufus, who hated the farm,
planned to go to the city. Before he left
the farm, however, Rufus was accused
of murdering a neighboring farmer.
Dorinda was sure that he had committed
the murder, but Mrs. Oakley swore under
oath that her son had been at home with
her at the time of the shooting. Her lie
saved Rufus. Mrs. Oakley's conscience
began to torment her because of the
lie she had told, and she took to her
bed. Her mind broken, she lived in
dreams of her youth. When she died in
her sleep, Dorinda wept. To her it
seemed that her parents' lives had been
futile and wasted.
During the next ten years Dorinda
worked hard. She borrowed more
money to improve the farm and she
saved and scrimped, but she was happy.
Geneva Greylock was losing her mind.
One day she told Dorinda that she had
borne a child but that Jason had killed
268

it and buried it in the garden. Geneva
drowned herself the same day that
Nathan Pedlar asked Dorinda to marry
him.
Together Dorinda and Nathan
prospered. She was now thirty-eight and still
felt young. John Abner Pedlar, Nathan's
crippled son, looked to her for help and
she gave it willingly. Nathan's 'other
children meant less to her, and she was
glad when they married and moved away.
When Five Oaks was offered for sale,
Dorinda and Nathan bought it for six
thousand dollars. As Jason signed over
the papers to her, Dorinda noticed that
he was his dirty, drunken old father all
over again.
The next few years Dorinda devoted to
restoring Five Oaks. John Abner was
still her friend and helper. There were
reports that Jason was living in an old
house in the pine woods and drinking
heavily. Dorinda, busy with her house
and dairy farm, had little time for
neighborhood gossip.
One day Nathan took the train to the
city to have a tooth pulled and to attend
a lawsuit. The train was wrecked, and
Nathan was killed while trying to save
the lives of the other passengers. He
was given a hero's funeral.
The years following Nathan's death
were Dorinda's happiest, for as time
passed she realized that she had regained,
through her struggle with the land, her
own integrity and self-respect.
One day some hunters found Jason
sick and starving in the woods, and her
neighbors assumed Dorinda would take
him in. Unwillingly, she allowed him
to be brought to Old Farm, where she
engaged a nurse to look after him. In
a few months Jason died. Many of the
people at the funeral came only out of
curiosity, and a pompous minister said
meaningless things about Jason, whom
he had never known. Dorinda felt
nothing as she stood beside the grave, for
her memories of Jason had outlived her
emotions. She sensed that for good or
ill the fervor and fever of her life were
ended.
269

BARRY LYNDON
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England, Ireland, and Europe
First published: 1843
Principal characters:
Redmond Barry, a braggart and a bully
Lady Honoria Lyndon, his wife
Lord Bullingdon, her son
Critique:
Few narratives written in the first
person present a better portrait of the
narrator than that found in The Memoirs of
Barry Lyndon, Esq. From the first boastful
paragraph to the last petulant complaint
against the deceit of his wife, the
revelation of his true nature is complete. The
period in history covered by this book
lends itself well to the full scope of
Redmond Barry's talents, which seem directed
toward the basest practices of the times.
Given to murder, adept at winning at
cards, skillful in wooing the ladies, Barry
shows himself a thoroughly corrupt
scoundrel in the pattern of Fielding's
Jonathan Wild.
The Story:
Deprived of wealth and estates by
relatives, Widow Barry devoted herself to
the careful rearing of her son Redmond.
Uncle Brady took a liking to the lad and
asked the widow for permission to take
the child to his ancestral home, Brady
Castle. There Barry was treated kindly by
his uncle. One of his cousins, Mick,
persecuted him, however, and Mrs. Brady
hated him.
Aggressive by nature, Barry invited
animosity; his landless pride in his
ancestral heritage led him into repeated
neighborhood brawls until he had fought
every lad in the area and acquired the
reputation of a bully. At fifteen he fell in
love with twenty-four-year-old Nora
Brady, who was in love with Captain
John Quinn, an Englishman. Deeply in
debt, Uncle Brady hoped that Nora
would marry the captain, who had
promised to pay some of the old man's debts.
Thoroughly unscrupulous and lacking in
appreciation for his uncle's kindness,
Barry, in a fit of jealousy, insulted Quinn
and wounded him in a duel.
Believing the captain dead, Barry
hurriedly set out on the road to Dublin. On
the way he befriended a Mrs. Fitzsimons,
the victim of a highway robbery. She took
him to her castle, where Barry spent some
of his own money in a lavish attempt to
create a good impression. When he had
lost all his money through high living and
gambling, Mrs. Fitzsimons and her
husband were glad to see him leave.
Barry next took King George's shilling
and enlisted for a military expedition in
Europe. Boarding the ship, a crowded and
filthy vessel, he learned that Captain
Quinn had not died after all, for the
pistols had been loaded only with tow, but
had married Nora Brady.
Detesting service in the British Army,
Barry deserted to the Prussians. At the end
of the Seven Years' War he was garrisoned
in Berlin. By that time he was known as
a thorough scoundrel and a quarrelsome
bully. Sent by Frederick the Great to spy
on the Chevalier Balibari, suspected of
being an Austrian agent, Barry learned
that the officer was his own father's
brother, Barry of Ballybarry. This elderly
gentleman actually made his way by
gambling, rising and falling in wealth as
his luck ran. When the gambler decided
to leave Berlin, Barry, eager to escape
from Prussian service, disguised himself
and fled to Dresden. There he joined his
270

uncle, who was high in favor at the Saxon
court.
Barry, living like a high-born
gentleman, supported himself by operating a
gambling table. At the court of the Duke
of X— he pursued Countess Ida, one
of the wealthiest heiresses in the duchy.
Disliking the countess personally but
greatly admiring her fortune, he
ruthlessly set about to win her from her fiance*,
the Chevalier De Magny. Gambling with
the hapless man, Barry won from him all
he possessed. At last De Magny agreed to
play for the hand of Countess Ida, and
lost. Barry's scheme might have succeeded
if he had not become involved in a court
intrigue. He was forced to leave the
duchy.
Roaming through all the famous cities
of Europe, Barry acquired a wide
reputation as a skillful gambler. At Spa he met
Lord Charles and Lady Honoria Lyndon,
who held the former Barry lands, and he
decided to marry Lady Lyndon following
the death of her husband, who was very
ill. A year later, hearing that Lord Charles
had died at Castle Lyndon, in Ireland, he
set out to woo Lady Honoria. Employing
numerous underhanded devices, which
included blackmail, bribery, dueling, and
intimidation, Barry forced himself upon
Lady Lyndon, who at first resisted his suit.
But Barry persecuted the lady relentlessly,
bribing her servants, spying on her every
move, paying her homage, and stealing
her correspondence. When she fled to
London to escape his persistent attentions,
he followed her. At last he overcame her
aversion and objections, and she agreed to
become his wife. Adding her name to his
own, he became Barry Lyndon, Esq.
Although she was haughty and
overbearing by nature, Lady Lyndon soon
yielded to the harsh dominance of her
husband, who treated her brutally and
thwarted her attempts to control her own
fortune. After a few days of marriage the
Lyndons went to Ireland, where he
immediately assumed management of the
Lyndon estates. Living in high fashion,
he spent money freely in order to establish
himself as a gentleman in the community.
When Lady Lyndon attempted to protest,
he complained of her ill temper; if she
pleaded for affection, he called her a nag.
The abuse he showered upon her was
reflected in the way he used her son, Lord
Bullingdon, who, unlike his mother, did
not submit meekly to Barry's malice.
The birth of Bryan Lyndon added to
Barry's problems. Since the estate was
entailed upon Lord Bullingdon, young
Bryan would have no rights of inheritance
to Lady Lyndon's property. To provide
for his son, Barry sold some of the timber
on the estates, over the protests of Lord
Bullingdon's guardian. Barry gave the
money so obtained to his mother, who
used it to repurchase the old Barry lands,
which Barry intended to bequeath to his
son. Barry himself was actively despised in
the community, but through foul means
and cajolery he won a seat in Parliament
and used his victory to triumph over his
enemies.
Barry made no attempt to disguise his
contempt and disgust for his wife, who
under his profligacy had become petulant.
When she rebelled against his conduct,
he threatened to remove Bryan from her;
she was subdued many times in this
manner. Little Bryan was completely spoiled
by his father's indulgence. Barry
contrived also to rid himself of his stepson,
who finally obliged him by running off to
America to fight against the rebels. Barry's
enemies used Lord Bullingdon's flight to
slander the Irish upstart, and the young
man's legal guardians continued their
efforts to curb the wasteful dissipation of
Lady Lyndon's wealth, which was
dwindling under Barry's administration. In the
end Barry's unpopularity caused him to
lose his seat in Parliament.
Heavily in debt, he retired to Castle
Lyndon. When Lord Bullingdon was
reported killed in America, young Bryan
became heir to the estates. Soon afterward
the boy died when thrown from his horse.
His death caused Lady Lyndon such
anguish that a report spread that she was
mad. Barry and his mother, now the
271

mistress of Castle Lyndon, treated Lady
Lyndon shabbily. Keeping her virtually a
prisoner, spying on her every move, and
denying her intercourse with her friends,
they did almost drive her mad. Under the
necessity of signing some papers, she
tricked Barry into taking her to London.
There he was trapped by Lord George
Poynings, Lady Lyndon's former suitor,
and her indignant relatives, gathered to
free the unhappy woman from his
custody.
Offered the alternative of going to jail
as a swindler or of leaving the country
with an annuity of three hundred pounds,
he chose the latter. Later he returned
secretly to England and nearly succeeded
in winning back his weak-willed wife.
His attempt was foiled, however, by Lord
BuUingdon, who reappeared suddenly
after he had been reported dead. Barry
was thrown into the Fleet Prison, where,
suffering from delirium tremens, he died.
272

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ben Jonson (1572M637)
Type of plot: Satirical comedy
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale. Smithfield, London
First presented: 1614
Principal characters:
John Littlewit, a minor city official
Win-the-Fight, his wife
Dame Purecraft, her mother, a widow
Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, a puritan, suitor of Dame Purecraft
Winwife, his rival, a London gallant
Quarlous, Win wife's friend, a gamester
Bartholomew Cokes, a foolish young squire
Grace Wellborn, his fiancee
Waspe, his servant
Adam Overdo, a justice of the peace
Dame Overdo, his wife
Ursula, owner of a booth at Bartholomew Fair
Critique:
The main plot, if there can be said
to be such, of Bartholomew Fair is the
story, reminiscent of the Arabian Nights'
tale of Harun-al-Rashid, of Adam Over-
do's mingling, in disguise, among people
to whom he metes out justice. The other
plots are hinted at rather than developed.
Still, Bartholomew Fair teems with life
and is probably unsurpassed for its
delineation of English types—especially the
low types—of the early Jacobean period.
Jonson also held the society of his day
up for criticism in such figures as Zeal-
of-the-Land Busy, the puritan; Adam
Overdo, the zealous justice of the peace;
and Bartholomew Cokes, the well-to-do
simpleton from Middlesex. That no great
evil is done in the play and that no one
comes to any grief would indicate that
Jonson, though a satirist, felt a real
affection for all men in his beloved
London.
The Story:
Winwife, a London gallant, came
courting Dame Purecraft, a widow who
lived with her daughter, Win-the-Fight,
and her son-in-law, John Littlewit, a
proctor. Littlewit disclosed to him that
Dame Purecraft had been told by
fortune-tellers that she would marry, within
a week, a madman. In this connection
Littlewit suggested to Winwife that he
deport himself in the manner of his
companion Tom Quarlous, a city madcap.
Quarlous, entering in search of
Winwife, kissed Win several times until
Winwife cautioned him to desist. Littlewit,
who was not too acute, actually
encouraged Winwife and Quarlous to be free
with his wife. Littlewit also revealed to
his visitors that Dame Purecraft had a
new suitor, one Zeal-of-the-Land Busy,
a puritan from Banbury. Busy had taken
lodgings in Littlewit's house.
Humphrey Waspe, the testy old
servant of young Bartholomew Cokes, a
foolish gentleman of the provinces, came to
Littlewit to pick up a marriage license
for his master. Soon afterward Cokes
appeared in company with two women.
One was Mistress Overdo, his natural
sister and the wife of Justice Adam
Overdo; the other was Grace Wellborn, Cokes'
fiancee and Overdo's ward. It was
obvious that Waspe was the servant to an
extremely light-headed young man. Cokes
declared his intention of squiring Grace
to Bartholomew Fair before they returned
to Middlesex. Waspe objected, but
finally resigned himself to the inevitable.
Winwife and Quarlous, sensing fun at
273

hand, decided to go along. Not wishing
to miss the fun, Littlewit declared that
he would go too. Dame Purecraft and
Busy both rationalized puritan strictures
against attending fairs and gave the young
couple permission to go so that Win
might eat roast pig; indeed, Busy and
the widow declared their intention of
going with them to Bartholomew Fair.
In disguise and with a notebook in his
pocket, Justice Overdo had gone to the
fair to seek out criminals and to record
lawlessness. Suspecting Ursula, a seller
of beer and roast pig, Overdo stopped at
her booth to test her. As he drank,
various shady personalities entered the booth.
He asked Mooncalf, Ursula's handy man,
for information about them all, but
Mooncalf's replies were always vague. Overdo
conceived a feeling of sympathy for one
Edgeworth, a young cutpurse. Not
suspecting Edgeworth's profession, he felt
that he should rescue this excellent youth
from such knavish company.
At Ursula's booth, where Win wife
and Quarlous condescendingly stopped
for a drink, Quarlous became involved
in a fight with Knockem, a horse-trader.
Ursula, running from her kitchen to
throw hot grease on Winwife and
Quarlous, stumbled and the grease burned her
leg. Knockem declared that he would
operate her booth while she sat by to
oversee the business.
Cokes and his party, arriving at the
fair, made their way to Ursula's booth,
where Overdo warned them against the
evils of tobacco and ale. Edgeworth stole
Cokes' purse and gave it to his
confederate, Nightingale, a ballad-monger.
Mistress Overdo observed that Overdo, who
was in disguise, spoke much in the
manner of her own husband, Justice Adam
Overdo. Missing his purse, Cokes
declared indiscreetly that he had another
one and that he defied cutpurses by
placing it on his belt where the other one
had been. Waspe, suspecting Overdo to
be the cutpurse, thrashed the justice.
As Overdo cried for help, Cokes and his
party left Ursula's booth.
Busy led Littlewit, Win, and Dame
Purecraft into the fair after cautioning
them to look neither to left nor right and
to stay from the sinful booths as they
marched toward Ursula's booth to get
roast pig. While they waited to be served,
Overdo reappeared, still determined to
observe the goings on, but without
preaching. Cokes and his party, burdened with
trinkets, also returned to the booth.
Waspe was miserable because Cokes was
spending his money on every foolish
article offered him. When a toyman and
a gingerbread woman argued over
customer rights, Cokes bought the wares of
both and even retained the toyman to
provide entertainment at the
forthcoming marriage. Nightingale and Edgeworth
feared that Cokes would spend all of
his money before they could get at him
again. Nightingale sang a ballad while
Edgeworth lifted the second purse from
the enchanted Cokes' belt. Winwife and
Quarlous looked on with amusement.
When Cokes realized his loss and cried
out, Overdo, who was standing nearby,
was seized as a suspect. Waspe, sure that
Cokes would lose everything he
possessed, took into his care a black box
containing the marriage license.
Quarlous, meanwhile, disclosed to
Edgeworth that he had been detected
stealing Cokes' purse. In exchange for
secrecy, Edgeworth promised to steal the
contents of the black box.
Busy and his friends ate pork at
Ursula's booth. Encountering the toyman
and the gingerbread woman, Busy, in a
moment of religious zeal, attempted to
seize the wicked toys and upset the tray
of gingerbread figures. The toyman called
police officers, who took Busy, followed
by Dame Purecraft, away to be put in
the stocks. Littlewit and Win were now
free to enjoy the fair as they chose.
Overdo, also in the stocks, overheard
to his shame that he had a reputation for
harshness in meting out justice. He did
not reveal himself when the officers took
him and Busy away to face Justice
Overdo.
274

While Cokes was looking for the
toyman and the gingerbread woman, in
hopes of getting his money back from
them, he was intercepted by Nightingale
and Edgeworth, who tricked him out of
his hat, jacket, and sword. Wretched
Cokes began to understand at last that
he was being grievously abused at the
fair.
In another part of the fair, Winwife
and Quarlous, who had attracted Grace
away from her group, drew swords to
decide a dispute as to who should have
Cokes' attractive young fiancee. Grace
bade them not to fight; at her suggestion,
each wrote a word on a tablet. The first
passerby was to choose the word he
liked the better. The one whose word
was thus chosen would win the hand
of Grace, who had quite decided that
Cokes was not the man for her. This
business was interrupted, however, when
Edgeworth urged both men to watch him
steal the marriage license from Waspe,
who was with the crowd in Ursula's
booth.
Waspe and his companions, including
Mistress Overdo, were drinking ale; all
were quite intoxicated. When Waspe got
into a scuffle with Knockem, Edgeworth
took the license from the black box.
Quarlous laughed at the drunken antics
of one of the group and had to fight.
Officers entered and seized Waspe for
disturbing the peace.
Littlewit, who had written the story
of the puppet show, left Win at Ursula's
booth while he joined the puppeteers.
While she waited, Win met Captain
Whit, a bawd, who told her that he knew
how she could live a life of endless
pleasure and wealth.
Unable to find Justice Overdo at his
lodgings, the officers returned their
prisoners to the stocks. Waspe, brought to
the stocks, managed to escape before his
legs could be confined. When a
madman engaged an officer in a scuffle,
Overdo and Busy also escaped, the lock of
the stocks having been left unclasped.
Dame Purecraft suddenly fell in love
with the madman, a lawyer who was
distracted because of a past
misunderstanding with Justice Overdo.
Later Quarlous, disguised as the
madman and pursued by Dame Purecraft,
returned to Winwife and Grace.
Meanwhile the real madman had chosen Win-
wife's word, Palemon. Grace then declared
that she would become Win wife's spouse.
Overdo, disguised as a porter, came upon
Quarlous. Anxious to help the man whom
he had brought to distraction, Overdo
gave him a seal and warrant for
anything within reason that he might desire.
Cokes, in the meantime, had found
his way to the puppet theater, where he
borrowed money from Littlewit. When
Captain Whit, Knockem, and Edgeworth
came to the theater, they had with them
Win, masked, and Mistress Overdo, who
was sick from too much ale. Captain
Whit offered Win to Overdo for his
pleasure. Waspe also came to the theater
and joined his young master. The play
was presented; it was an idiotic blending
of the legends of Hero and Leander and
Damon and Pythias. During the showing
Busy entered and threatened to break
up the theater. Persuaded to argue the
sinfulness of the puppet theater with
one of the puppets, he was soundly
defeated in the argument.
Quarlous, still disguised as the
madman, came with Grace to the theater.
Littlewit, who had gone in search of
Win, returned without her. The true
madman and Ursula entered. When all
were together, Overdo declared his
intention of punishing all who had
engaged in rascality. But when Quarlous
questioned his judgment and revealed
Edgeworth as a cutpurse and not an
innocent youth, as the justice had supposed,
Overdo decided there was such a thing
as false judgment; also, that mankind
was weak. Quarlous won the hand of
Dame Purecraft. Being reassured that
restitution would be made all around, Overdo
invited everyone to his house for dinner.
275

BATOUALA
Tyye of work: Novel
Author: Rene Maran (1887- )
Time: c. 1910
Locale: Ubangi-Shari, French Equatorial Africa
First published: 1921
Principal characters:
Batouala, the chief of many villages
Yassiguindja, the favorite of Batouala's nine wives
Bissibingui, a young man, Batouala's rival
Indouvoura, another of Batouala's wives
Batouala is important not as a story,
although within its modest limits it
provokes suspense and sustains interest in
the affairs of its characters, but as a
sensitive evocation of the experience of
being an African native in the French
Congo. Rene* Maran, who was born in
Martinique, served from 1909 until 1925
as a member of the diplomatic service of
the French government in French
Equatorial Africa. His novel, the result of six
years of study and writing, is an attempt
to render in a thoroughly objective
manner the thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes of
an African chief.
The attempt to be objective in the
presentation of thoughts and attitudes
necessarily involves the author's
sympathetic extension of his imagination. Ma-
ran's work rings true not because he
is a Negro—for the knowledge of the
temperament and customs of an African
Negro is not inherited with one's skin-
but because he is a man concerned
enough about the men whose lives he
writes about to have become like them
in loving life and in condemning French
colonialism, which has done much to
destroy the values of life for the African
native.
The technique of the novel can be
described as the stream of consciousness,
supplemented to some extent by
descriptive passages which maintain the
perspective of the African. But the style differs
markedly from that of such writers as
Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, for the
persons whose experiences are being
evoked are not of the same society as
their author, but are removed, both
spatially and in degree of civilization, from
the world of the man who attempts to
reconstruct the temper of their days. To
overcome the distance between himself
and his subject, Maran adopts a
modification of the speech of the Africans; he
writes as if their minds were speaking,
and he keeps the simplicity and naivete*
of native phrasing. Even more important,
he manages to express the smoldering,
helpless anger which is part of the daily
experience of the African in the grip of
the white man. Such writing is objective
in the sense that it puts across what is,
in fact, part of someone's experience; but
it is passionate and subjective in the
respect that one knows that the author
snares the anger and, by sharing it,
throws in his lot with that of his
characters.
For a brief novel that does no more
than tell how a young man's desire for
the favorite wife of his chief is finally
satisfied as the chief lies dying from the
wound of a panther's bite, Batouala
succeeds remarkably well in immersing the
reader in a different culture. Considered
didactically, the novel is powerfully
effective largely because of its sutcess as a
representation of the experiences of the
African. The reader's conclusion must be
that the African is worthy of
consideration and respect as a human being; the
differences between him and the white
man are differences of custom and
learning; and if one begins to make moral
comparisons, it is not always the white man
who wins.
Maran's indictment of the colonial
administrators in the introduction to his
276

novel speaks of the vileness of the white
colonial and of civilization built on
corpses. He calls upon his fellow writers
to correct France's brutal policies, and he
mentions the colonial administrator's
excessive use of alcohol. But these remarks,
impassioned as they are, do not compete
in persuasive power with the sparse,
bitter comments of the Africans themselves.
The whites are criticized for treating the
Negroes like slaves, for punishing them
unreasonably, for using Negroes as police
to keep their former brothers in line, for
lying, for believing lies, for callously
dismissing the suffering and death of the
natives about them. One incident in the
novel tells of the French commandant
who, upon hearing of Batouala's
imminent death, cheerfully replied that Batou-
ala could rot to death and all the others
with him.
The native, because of his unavoidable
ignorance of the ways of the white man,
understandably confuses convention with
magic; and in his reflections on the white
man's magic we find something of the
native's contempt for the white man and
something of his awe. Batouala, in his
reflections, thinks of the white man's
stench, particularly of his foul-smelling
feet encased in skins; he marvels at the
white man's ability to remove his teeth
or even an eye; he thinks of white men
who can look through tubes at objects far
away, and he remembers the white "doc-
torro" who can make anyone urinate
blue. But then, at other moments, he
remembers the white man's drunkenness
his disregard for his children born of
Negro women, and the white man's
promises—never kept.
If the novel expressed nothing more
than the Negro's bitterness, it would not
be convincing and would fail to achieve
its revolutionary intention. But the chief,
Batouala, is a living man, a convincing
tribesman, not a mouthpiece for Maran.
He knows the value of doing nothing and
distinguishes between resting for the joy
of it and sheer laziness. When he
discovers that the young man, Bissibingui,
wants to possess Yassiguindja, Batouala's
favorite wife, he does not accept the fact
of desire, as most do in his tribe; he
determines to pursue Bissibingui and
pounce on him like a panther, tearing
him to bits. Bissibingui had already been
successful with eight of Batouala's nine
wives, but his attempt to add
Yassiguindja to his list of conquests is
frustrated by Batouala's pride, a
manifestation of Batouala's eminence as chief.
Only an accident of the hunt, brought
about by Batouala's act of hurling a
javelin at Bissibingui instead of at a charging
panther, brings about the downfall and
death of Batouala. Ironically, the chief
who would kill like the panther dies
by the panther.
Not these events alone, but, rather,
the thoughts and responses of the natives
to the events, intrigue the reader. While
a man is alive, he glories in life; he thinks
there is nothing better in all the world
than to be strong, to run with the
hunters, to be in danger, to kill the beasts
that are hunted. He delights, too, in
calling his friends to the circumcision
ceremony, and the rhythm of his drumming
not only conveys the invitation but also
the spirit of it—the joy of anticipating
good food, drink, dancing, and riotous
love-making. But when a man dies, as
Batouala's father died, from too much
drink at the circumcision festival, he is
soon forgotten; he is no longer useful to
anyone, and only convention prompts the
mourning which extends over eight days
in order to make sure that the man is
truly dead, not merely sleeping. For
death, to the native, is a profound sleep,
perhaps so profound that a man sleeping
such a sleep never wakes again. The
references to the gods are more conventional
than pious; the concerns of the day, the
joy and sorrow of it, are too compelling
to leave time for either religion or
metaphysics.
Batouala compels the reader to a strange
conclusion. The natives are not
romanticized; they are not noble savages. But
they are noble, nevertheless, in their
277

direct acceptance of the needs and
conventions of their lives. Even in their
acceptance of superstition and in their
giving way to the lust of the native dance
they seem to relate themselves more
honestly to the earth about them than do
the white administrators who fortify their
fancied superiority with alcohol, brutality,
and disdain. The problem for the white
man becomes that of using his knowledge
and power to develop something more
respectable than human meanness.
There is more than truth and power to
Batouala; there is poetry, the rhythmical
expression of jungle images and jungle
emotions. This dimension of style gives
the novel a beauty which makes the crime
it uncovers even more reprehensible. As
long as the Negro suffers, Batouala will
continue to be not only a work of art but
also a severe indictment.
278

THE BAY OF SILENCE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Eduardo Mallea (1903- )
Time: 1926-1940
Locale: Buenos Aires, London, Paris, Italy, Brussels
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Martin Tregua, the narrator
Anselmi, a fellow law student
Jimenez, an office employee
Cesar Acevedo, a wealthy Argentine
Blagoda, an associate on the magazine Enougjn
Gloria Bambil, the librarian
The outstanding Argentine writer, and
one of the most important figures in the
literature of Latin America, is Eduardo
Mallea, a skilled technician in fiction and
the literary editor of the Buenos Aires
Nacidn. Among his experiments he has
written short stories like The City heside
the Motionless River (1933) and essays
like History of an Argentine Passion
(1937), both seeking, behind the faults
and the grandeur of a new country, the
basic principles of Argentine life. This
theme pervades most of Mallea's writing.
Of the group of young writers who
considered individual freedom and man's
responsibility, Mallea reveals the greatest
power and possesses the greatest technical
skill, though his work is sometimes marred
by a turgid style. He demonstrated these
qualities as early as 1936, with the
publication of Fiesta in November, an
impressionistic portrait of the decadent
upper class of the Argentine capital. Into
the small talk and the evidences of
corruption that reveal the "buyers and the
bought," is woven an incident of fascist
violence, presented with complicated
technique.
Between paragraphs of the account of
an armed patrol dragging a poet out of
bed, rushing him off to an open space,
and shooting him, is the story of Eugenia
Rague and her weak family: the husband
trying to conclude an advantageous stock
transfer, one daughter undergoing an
abortion, and the other exchanging
philosophies with an anarchistic poet.
There is more plot and more optimism
in The Bay of Silence. Mallea's belief is
that there has been a decline in the
moral qualities of Argentine national life.
"It was marching along, then the
motivating force broke down," is the way he
expresses it. Even those only casually
acquainted with the nation can realize how
Argentina had deteriorated economically,
culturally, and spiritually, even before
the era of Per6n. This decline is
especially noticeable in its theater.
In The Bay of Silence, a roomer in a
student boarding house, the aging Dr.
Dervil, expresses his sentiments when he
declares that Argentina is a lost nation,
still colonial in spirit. He wonders when
the healthy but submerged country,
which exists because men believe in it,
will rise from depths of ignorance and
sloth. Mallea's own hope, like that of
the young ex-law student supposedly
writing The Bay of Silence, is that the
re-creation of Argentina will come from
the unspoiled rural areas.
Martin Tregua, who had stopped
attending law school because of his disgust
with methods of teaching and the
unscientific, spiritless faculty, turned to
writing. His first project was to give
meaning to the life and suffering of the
average Argentine in a volume called
The Forty Nights of Juan Argentino.
Then the sight of a lovely woman of his
own age, never once mentioned by name,
but called only "You," inspired Martin to
write to her, telling her the story of his
life and letting her see her effect upon
him. So The Bay of Silence comes into
279

being.
The book is divided into three parts.
The first, "Youth," covers Martin's life
from his birth in Rio Negro, through his
student days, to his first success as a
writer in 1932. Part II, "The Islands/'
tells of his trip to Europe. The last
section, "The Defeated," brings his life up
to 1939. The novel ends as it began, with
the narrator's glimpse into a flower shop
in Buenos Aires and of the woman he
had adored in silence for twelve years.
The story is developed with a wealth
of detail. When Martin takes a walk, the
streets he traverses and the buildings
along the route are named, and the casual
actions of unimportant people along the
way are fully described. There is very
little action in the first part. It is mostly an
exchange of ideas about the fundamental
problems of the world that the students
discuss endlessly in their boarding house
or pass around the editorial table of the
magazine Enough, which they have
founded with the financial assistance of
a wealthy man of the city.
In the course of Martin's European
trip, the author contrives to get him into
conversations with a Czech munitions
millionaire, several fascist underlings, and
a disillusioned surgeon in Brussels. Then
he returns, in the final section, to his
own country, whose destiny he feels as
keenly as his own, to write a sequel to
his ]uan Argentino. This task becomes
complicated when he is attracted to a
lending librarian named Gloria Bambil,
one of many women in his life. Earlier,
the unsettled and unsettling Mercedes
Miro had been his companion at art
exhibits, French theatrical performances,
and musicales, circumstances related with
many details and references that reveal
Mallea's wide acquaintance with
contemporary culture.
Because Gloria was unconsciously an
Existentialist, Martin must occupy his
time by reassuring her, in taking her from
the mountains to the seashore in an
attempt to give her confidence in herself
and her future. Failure in this effort made
him one of the many defeated in the final
section of the novel. Meanwhile, Martin
Tregua has been finding his way from
the uncertainties of youth to the
disillusioned wisdom of middle age.
The title is twice explained. Once, in
discussing The Forty Nights of Juan
Argentino, Martin declares that his book
is to be a sea, rich and abundant, where
there are storms and stresses, and
delightful bays of silence, filled with the dreams
and sufferings of his people. Again, at
the end, he tells the unnamed woman to
whom he is writing that she has reached
that place at which the angry sea of
persecution beats in vain: the place, a bay
of silence, where those who have turned
their failure into triumph may wait.
280

THE BEACH OF FALESA
Type of work: Novella
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: An island in the South Seas
First published: 1892
Principal characters:
Wiltshire, a trader
Uma, his wife
Case, another trader
Tarleton, a missionary
Black Jack, Case's confederate
Captain Randall, Case's friend
Critique:
A suspenseful tale of intrigue in the
South Seas, The Beach of Falesd is
distinguished, among Stevenson's works of
fiction, for its realism. It pictures unre-
generate human nature—the natives with
their superstition and gullibility; the
traders with their crudeness, treachery, and
degradation; the missionaries with their
misguided zeal. A memorable feature of
the story is the characterization of
Wiltshire, a rough, uneducated man,
something of a braggart, but withal a man
of courage and rudimentary decency.
The Story:
Wiltshire welcomed his transfer to the
trading station at Falesd after spending
four years on a Pacific island where he
had no white neighbors. In Falesd lived
Case and old Captain Randall. Even
though they operated a competing store,
Wiltshire was grateful for their
presence. At first, he was not disturbed by the
fates of his two predecessors. One of them,
John Adams, had become ill and, after
a period of insanity, died. The other,
Vigours, had left suddenly because of his
intense fear of Case and Black Jack.
When Wiltshire first met Case and
his colored colleague, Black Jack, he was
pleased with the clean appearance of both
and with the educated speech of the
white man. Case was very obliging. It
was he who suggested that Wiltshire get
a native wife and he who pointed out
Uma, a shy, slender girl whom Wiltshire
agreed to take. Because Wiltshire did not
know the native tongue, Case made all
the arrangements with the girl and her
mother.
The wedding took place in the store
operated by Randall, Case, and Black
Jack. This store, a small and filthy place
with few supplies other than firearms and
liquor, was nominally owned by
Randall, a sottish old derelict; but Case was
obviously in charge. The marriage
service was conducted by Black Jack, who
pretended to read the service from a
novel and said a few obscene words in
English, which Uma could not
understand. Case prepared a document which
stated that they were illegally married.
At first sight, Wiltshire had been
favorably impressed by Uma, and this
impression was deepened by her modest and
serious demeanor during the ceremony.
His long-standing resolve to avoid serious
involvement with a native woman was
weakening.
On the next day began a series of
mysterious happenings. In the morning
Wiltshire discovered a group of natives
who were sitting quietly and staring with
sorrowful expressions at his house. The
crowd increased during the day and did
not disperse until evening. On his first
day of business he had no customers;
more surprising, not one curious
spectator entered his store. On Sunday,
attracted by the singing, he stuck his
281

head in the window of a church. The
native pastor, staggering from amazement
and fear, pointed his finger at the white
man. After a second business day had
passed without a single visitor to the
store, Wiltshire concluded that he had
been tabooed by the natives.
Ostensibly to help his fellow
Englishman, Case accompanied Wiltshire to a
meeting with five of the chiefs of Falesa\
Because Wiltshire was ignorant of the
language, Case acted as his spokesman.
Afterward Case alleged that he had not
succeeded in getting the chiefs to change
their attitude toward Wiltshire. He said
that because of some unknown
superstition the natives feared Wiltshire, much
the same as they had feared Vigours, and
would not go near him.
That same day Wiltshire gained his
first insight into the plot that Case was
working against him. Uma disclosed that
it was on her that the taboo had been
placed originally and that it was now put
on him because of his marriage. Case had
told her that Wiltshire had married with
full knowledge of the situation.
Wiltshire also learned that Case, when
Uma and her widowed mother had come
to Falesd a year before, had shown
interest in the two women and given them
assistance. A native chief had proposed
marriage to Uma, but, quite
unaccountably, he had deserted her. Just as
unaccountably, the two women found
themselves ostracized. Case, who continued
to see the women in the evening, had
proposed to Uma, but she had rejected
his offer.
More information on the situation in
Falesd came from Tarleton, a missionary.
The missionary, who was on his regular
tour of the island, performed a proper
marriage service for Uma and Wiltshire,
at the latter's request. Then he acquainted
the trader with some of Case's activities.
One of Tarleton's native pastors had
fallen under Case's influence and had
encouraged the natives to use the sign of
the cross to avoid the supposed evil eye
of Vigours. To end this practice, Tarleton
had hurried to Falesd. He had discovered
that many of the villagers were under
the subjugation of Case and that by
working on their superstitions he had led them
to perform diabolic acts, including the
burying alive of a white trader. Tarleton
had failed in his effort to nullify the
influence of Case. Case, an expert at
legerdemain, had by sleight of hand
pretended to snatch a dollar bill from
Tarleton's head and had claimed that the
missionary was interested only in increasing
native contributions.
For about a month after the
missionary left, all was quiet in Falesa\ Unable
to trade with the natives, Wiltshire
worked on the copra that Lima's mother
owned. Often he went hunting, and he
found that in the woods the natives were
not reluctant to talk with him. He
learned that the eastern end of the island,
which was uninhabited and seldom
entered, was believed to be occupied by
devils. Among many superstitions
connected with this area was the belief that
Case could travel freely in it because he
was under the protection of a powerful
devil.
One day Wiltshire explored this
wilderness. Fighting his way through the jungle
growth and up a steep hill, he became
aware of a weird, moaning sound.
Fearfully he advanced and discovered the
source of the noise, an aeoiian harp
suspended from a tree. Finding a well-
beaten path, he followed it until he
reached an old, tumble-down wall, on
the top of which was a line of queer,
ugly figures, carved and painted,
wearing hair and dressed in bright clothes.
Noticing that they were newly made, he
recalled that Case was a good forger of
island curiosities. Nearby he discovered
a cellar. Entering it, he saw on the wall
in luminous paint the face of a devil.
Returning from his expedition, he met
Case, and, unthinkingly, mentioned the
luminous paint. His secret known, Case
would now want Wiltshire promptly
disposed of. When Wiltshire arrived home,
Maea, the richest and most powerful
282

chief of Falesa, was there. He and Case
were rivals for a girl, and he had decided
to hurt Case by turning over his business
to Wiltshire. Although he had not
believed the stories about Uma that had led
to her ostracism, he had, up to this time,
played along with Case to further his
own ends. Wiltshire explained to Maea
the hoax that Case had perpetrated on
the natives and told him that if he went
into the wilderness the next morning he
would find the devils destroyed.
After dark, Wiltshire, equipped with
dynamite fishing-bombs, returned to the
devils' den. He pulled down the idols,
placed them on the cellar roof, and
prepared his charge. As he was walking
toward the harp, he was startled by
Uma, who had come to warn him that
Case was coming. Hurriedly he lit the
fuse. The explosion scattered the woods
with red coals, and one burning image
fell close to the place where he and Uma
sought to hide themselves. As he rushed
to extinguish this light, two shots were
fired, the second hitting the mark. His
leg smashed and causing severe pain, he
yelled out. As Uma ran to help him,
she too was hit.
Having lost his gun, Wiltshire grasped
his knife and pretended to be dead. After
an interval, Case moved toward him and
fired another shot, which barely missed.
When Case came within reach, Wiltshire
grabbed his ankle, threw him down, and
stabbed him. After fainting twice,
Wiltshire managed to get to Uma, who was
badly frightened but not seriously hurt.
Shortly after dawn Tarleton and a group
of natives led by Maea appeared on the
scene; they buried Case and helped the
wounded couple home.
Tarleton set matters straight with the
natives for Wiltshire. With Case dead,
Randall and Black Jack left Falesa, and
Wiltshire settled down to a profitable
business.
283

BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Meredith (1828-1909)
Type of plot: Political romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
Virst published: 1874-1875
Principal characters:
Nevil Beauchamp, a young naval officer
Everard Romfrey, his uncle
Mrs. Rosamund Culling, the Romfrey housekeeper
Renee Rouaillout, nee de Croisnel, Nevil's beloved
Colonel Halkett, a stanch Tory
Cecelia Halkett, his daughter
Dr. Shrapnel, a radical
Jenny Denham, his niece
Critique:
Beauchamp's Career appeared only a
short time before Meredith published his
famous "Essay on Comedy. The novel, in
consequence, bears the stamp of his
theorizing, and in it comedy becomes a
subtle and complex tool for character
portrayal and social criticism, especially in
the field of contemporary politics.
Frederick Augustus Maxse, political reformer
and Meredith's friend, was the original
of Beauchamp. Other characteristics of
the novel are typical of Meredith's work.
There are delicately treated emotional
conflicts and skillfully rendered
personality differences. The dialogue is good,
probably less discursive than in other
Meredith novels. The plot is a simple one.
The satire follows the same pattern. The
hero, Beauchamp, is an admirable
character, as is Cecelia Halkett. Both are targets
for ironic but poetic comedy.
The Story:
There was a diplomatic dispute
between England and France, with much
rattling of swords on both sides. The
affair, loudly taken up by the press, so
stirred Nevil Beauchamp's national pride
that he decided to post a challenge to the
French Guard. Uncle Everard Romfrey's
housekeeper, Mrs. Rosamund Culling,
mailed the letter for Nevil. No reply ever
came, and Nevil went off to fight the
Russians in the Crimea. Uncle Everard
expected his nephew to behave like a true
Beauchamp.
Wounded in service, Nevil went to
Venice with Roland de Croisnel, a French
officer whose life he had saved at the risk
of his own. Mrs. Culling also went to
Italy. In Venice, Nevil drifted in a
gondola with Roland de Croisnel's sister
Renee, who was grateful to her brother's
rescuer. The flirtation was interrupted by
the arrival of the middle-aged Marquis de
Rouaillout, intended as a husband for
Renee. Nevil asked Renee to marry him,
but she refused to disappoint her father by
betraying Rouaillout. When Nevil
persisted, Roland assured him that Renee did
not love him.
The marquis arrived just as Nevil,
Roland, Renee, and Mrs. Culling set out
for an overnight jaunt in a boat. During
the trip Nevil secured Ranee's promise to
break her pledge to the marquis. They
headed for Trieste, but Ranee's
phlegmatic consent and Roland's dismal
viewpoint dissuaded Nevil from the
elopement. They returned to Venice with
nothing settled. The next day R6nee
married the marquis. Nevil went to sea once
more.
Later, in the famous port of Bevisham,
Nevil began his campaign as a Liberal
candidate for a seat in Parliament. Mrs.
Culling, following the young man there,
284

met a Miss Denham, ward of Dr.
Shrapnel, who seemed to be helping Nevil in
his campaign. Mrs. Culling wished that
she could influence Nevil to drop his
foolish scheme. Uncle Everard scoffed at
Nevil's political ambitions, especially so
because he despised Dr. Shrapnel.
Nevil, campaigning for votes, paid calls
on his acquaintances and attended
dinners. Colonel and Cecelia Halkett,
steadfast Tories, prompted by Uncle Everard,
tried to talk the young Liberal candidate
out of his set course. They were strongly
opposed to his views, but when the
opposition wrote a rhyme comically
depicting Nevil's romance with R6nee, the
colonel thought the thrust unfair.
Meeting Lord Palmet, who was secretly
in the rival camp, Nevil invited the
gentleman to accompany him on his
campaign tour. While entangled in political
plots from which Cecelia was trying to
extricate him, Nevil received from Renee
a note bidding him to come to her at once.
Twice since her marriage Nevil had
met R£nee, both times in the company of
her husband, and Roland had written to
him occasionally. In France, Re"nee told
Nevil that she had sent for him only to
fulfill a wish to see him once again, a mere
caprice. She was in the company of a
Count Henri d'Henriel, who wore her
glove. The marquis was traveling and
only his sister, Madame d'Auffrey, was
staying with Renee. Later Madame
d'Auffrey told Nevil that R6nee had
wagered her glove to d'Henriel that Nevil
would come immediately at her request.
A storm had delayed Nevil; the
Frenchman had kept the glove.
When Nevil returned from France
with a game leg, his enemies gossiped that
he had fought a duel with the marquis.
The report was not true, but Nevil did not
win the election.
During the campaign Cecelia Halkett,
admiring courage, had fallen in love with
him. Uncle Everard pressed his nephew's
cause by proposing to Colonel Halkett an
alliance between Nevil and Cecelia.
Nevil, after promising to meet Colonel
Halkett and his daughter, paid a call on
Dr. Shrapnel to bid farewell to Jenny
Denham, who was leaving for
Switzerland. The young girl begged Nevil to look
after the doctor.
A letter written by Dr. Shrapnel filled
with advice for the young man fell into
Uncle Everard's hands. Indignant at the
contents, he went to Dr. Shrapnel and
horsewhipped the man who was
attempting to undermine Nevil's future with
radical theories. Cecelia, fearing that a
break between Nevil and his uncle would
end the marriage negotiations, tried to
convince her father that Nevil was worthy
of her. The more Colonel Halkett derided
Nevil's political views and disdained the
Shrapnel influence, the more Cecelia
insisted that Nevil was a man of high honor.
She added, however, that she would give
him up if she ever learned that his honor
was sullied.
Nevil challenged his uncle to give Dr.
Shrapnel a personal apology. Trying to
assist the injured man in earning his
livelihood, Nevil next asked Uncle Everard
for money. His request was refused.
Penniless, Nevil left his uncle's house,
but a short time later an unexpected
inheritance saved him from actual need.
One night R£nee appeared at Nevil's
house. Having left her husband and
believing in Nevil's courtesy and constancy,
she had come to him. Since she had
married the marquis to please her father, now
dead, she had no other bonds to keep her
chained to a cold and sullen husband.
Nevil sent immediately for Mrs. Culling
and pleaded with R£nee that Roland be
summoned. Close on Ranee's heels came
Madame d'Auffrey, who announced that
the marquis was in London. When
Renee became ill, it was necessary for her
family to occupy Nevil's home until her
recovery. Nevil, who no longer loved
R£nee, patched the shattered marriage,
and the unhappy wife returned to France.
Cecelia still loved Nevil and in spite of
all attempts to dissuade her she had
remained loyal to him. But the new scandal
about the marquis shook her faith. She
went to Italy with her father. On her re-

turn she yielded to her father's wishes and
became engaged to a young man of
stable notions, Mr. Blackburn Tuckham.
Nevil's proposal of marriage came too late,
and when she refused him he became ill.
Uncle Everard, some time before, had
married Mrs. Culling, who was soon to
bear a child. When Nevil became ill, his
uncle, in an effort to ease his wife's
anxiety, begged Colonel Halkett to let Cecelia
marry Nevil in order to hasten the sick
man's recovery. Meanwhile Jenny Den-
ham was Nevil's nurse in Dr. Shrapnel's
house.
Nevil's illness brought all his friends to
his bedside, as well as his political
enemies. In the end a reconciliation between
uncle and nephew was effected when
Everard apologized to Dr. Shrapnel. Nevil
was persuaded to sail to Italy to
recuperate. He insisted that Jenny and the doctor
accompany him.
Jenny had nursed Nevil back to health.
More than that, she had been steadfast
throughout all his difficulties. In love with
Jenny, Nevil wanted her to marry him
before they set out on their voyage. Until
the last moment she refused, hoping that
he and Cecelia would become reconciled.
The three went on their cruise. Jenny
bore a child along the wayT~Sher-tly_after
their return to England, Nevil, trying^trr^
rescue a drowning child, was himself
drowned. His career to reform the world
was over.
286

THE BEAUX' STRATAGEM
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Farquhar (1678-1707)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: Lichfield, England
First presented: 1707
Principal characters:
Aimwell, a poor younger brother of Lord Aimwell
Archer, his friend
Dorinda, an heiress
Lady Bountiful, Dorinda's mother
Mrs. Sullen, Dorinda's sister-in-law
Sullen, Dorinda's brother, a drunkard and a brute
Foigard, an Irishman disguised as a French priest
Critique:
Beneath the surface of this gay,
bustling, even risque' comedy, lies a sterner
note. The final agreement of Sullen and
his wife to separate because they cannot
arrive at compatibility is basically the
same doctrine which John Milton had
professed in his divorce tracts some sixty-odd
years before. Yet those doctrines were still
not prevalent in England in Farquhar's
time, and the dramatist showed courage
in introducing them into his play, even
though it was a comedy not likely to be
taken seriously. Restoration plays with a
locale other than London and Bath were
extremely rare. This drama, laid in
Lichfield, proved popular in its own day, and
it is still acted by college drama groups.
The lively scenes in the tavern and the
picture of life in a smaller English town
give the play perennial appeal.
The Story:
Aimwell and Archer, two younger sons
who were down to their last two hundred
pounds, left London and traveled to
Lichfield, where they hoped to wed Aimwell
to an heiress and thus make their fortunes.
Aimwell posed as his older brother, Lord
Aimwell, and Archer assumed the livery
of a servant. Arriving in Lichfield, they
went to an inn, where the innkeeper
mistook them for highwaymen traveling in
disguise.
In Lichfield they learned that Dorinda,
sister of Sullen, the local squire, was an
heiress in her own right. Aimwell went to
church on Sunday to call himself to her
attention and to see her for himself. Back
at the inn Archer made advances to the
innkeeper's daughter Cherry. He found
her ready to marry him and bring a dower
of two thousand pounds. But in spite of
the fact that she was pretty and well-
dowered, he could not, as a gentleman,
make up his mind to marry her.
After church Dorinda and her sister-in-
law, Mrs. Sullen, talked about the
gentleman they had seen at the service. Dorinda
had decided already that she was in love
with Aimwell. Offering as evidence her
own unhappy marriage to the brutal and
drunken Sullen, Mrs. Sullen urged her
not to hurry into matrimony. Mrs. Sullen
also disclosed that she was enjoying a
flirtation with Bellair, a French officer
held prisoner in Lichfield. Dorinda agreed
to help Mrs. Sullen in her flirtation as
long as Mrs. Sullen retained her honor.
At the inn the landlord, in league with
a gang of robbers, talked with Gibbet, a
highwayman, about Aimwell and Archer.
The evasiveness of Archer and Aimwell,
when questioned, made the innkeeper
and Gibbet even more certain that the two
gentlemen were also highwaymen. The
innkeeper's daughter, overhearing the
conversation, resolved to aid Archer.
Meanwhile Dorinda and Mrs. Sullen
287

tried to learn more about Aimwell. They
had their servant invite Archer, his
supposed servant, to the house so that they
could question him about his master.
While the two women made their plans,
Gibbet introduced himself to Aimwell
and tried to find out who Aimwell might
be. They were both introduced to Foigard,
who claimed to be a French priest but
who actually was an Irishman in disguise.
At the Sullen house Dorinda and Mrs.
Sullen questioned Archer about his
master. Mrs. Sullen, seeing through his
disguise as a servant, became infatuated
with him. Dorinda and Mrs. Sullen later
agreed that Aimwell and Archer must be
hiding after a duel, since both of them
were obviously gentlemen. Later in the
day, Bellair came to the house. While he
and Mrs. Sullen talked, Sullen entered
and threatened to kill the Frenchman,
even though the latter, as a prisoner, bore
no arms. Mrs. Sullen intervened by
threatening her husband with a pistol.
Late in the afternoon Aimwell
pretended to be taken ill in front of the
Sullen house. Carried inside for
treatment, he took the opportunity to get
better acquainted with Dorinda and her
sister-in-law. Both Aimwell and Dorinda
were soon convinced that they were in
love, and Mrs. Sullen found herself more
and more infatuated by Archer. While in
the house Archer discovered from the
servants that Foigard, the pretended
Frenchman, had plotted to introduce
Bellair into Mrs. Sullen's bedroom that night.
On their return to the inn Aimwell and
Archer made Foigard acknowledge his
plot against Mrs. Sullen. Rather than be
taken to law, he agreed to help them.
While they spoke, in another part of the
inn, the landlord, Gibbet, and other
highwaymen were plotting to rob the
Sullen house that night. They planned to
leave the country and live well for a while.
Early in the evening Sir Charles
Freeman, Mrs. Sullen's brother, arrived at the
inn. Just returned to England, he was
furious to learn that his sister had been
married to Sullen. Sir Charles, knowing
the brute Sullen was, hoped to secure his
sister's release from the marriage.
With the help of Foigard, Archer hid
himself in Mrs. Sullen's bedroom. When
he revealed himself to Mrs. Sullen, they
talked until the robbers entered the house.
Gibbet, entering Mrs. Sullen's room, was
overpowered by Archer, who then went
in pursuit of the other rogues. As he
engaged two of them, Aimwell, who had
been aroused by the innkeeper's daughter,
arrived and aided his friend in subduing
the robbers.
Archer, slightly wounded in the fray,
was taken away and treated by Mrs.
Sullen and her mother-in-law, Lady
Bountiful. Meanwhile Aimwell proposed to
Dorinda and was accepted. As Foigard
was about to begin the impromptu
ceremony, Aimwell became conscience-
stricken at the thought of marrying the
girl under false pretenses. When he
revealed that he was not Lord Aimwell but
only a poor younger brother, the ceremony
was postponed.
Sir Charles Freeman arrived from the
inn to visit his sister. Archer and Aimwell,
who knew him well, realized that he
would penetrate their disguises
immediately. Dorinda put an end to their worries
when she returned to tell Aimwell that
his brother had died. He was now Lord
Aimwell and a rich man.
Aimwell could not believe the news
until Sir Charles Freeman confirmed the
story. Aimwell agreed quickly to give an
amount equal to Dorinda's dower, ten
thousand pounds, to Archer, who had
helped him win her hand.
Sullen, entering on this scene of
happiness, demanded to be told what Aimwell
and Archer were doing in his home. He
softened somewhat when told that they
had rescued his family and property from
robbers. Then Sir Charles questioned
Sullen and discovered that he was as unhappy
as Mrs. Sullen in their marriage. Sullen
agreed to a separation, but he refused to
give up her dower. Archer then produced
some papers he had taken from the
robbers, including the marriage documents
288

and Sullen's titles to property, and gave
them to Sir Charles Freeman. Faced with
the loss of the documents, Sullen agreed
to give up both his wife and her dower.
Everyone except Sullen joined hands
and danced their celebration of the
approaching marriage of Dorinda and Aim-
well and Mrs. Sullen's separation from
her husband. Sullen glumly sent for a
drink of whiskey.
289

THE BEAVER COAT
Type of work: Drama
Author: Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946)
Type of plot: Satiric comedy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Prussia, on the outskirts of Berlin
First presented: 1893
Principal characters:
Frau Wolff, a washerwoman and a seller of stolen goods
Julius Wolff, her husband, a poacher
Leontine, their older daughter
Wulkow, a buyer of stolen goods, a boatman
Krugeh, the well-to-do victim of the thieves
Doctor Fleischer, his friend, a liberal
Von Wehrhahn, Justice of the Peace
Motes, an informer
Critique:
In this folk-type comedy, the author
of The Weavers—& starkly realistic
proletarian drama—displays another side of his
genius. In this play he follows in the
tradition of Gogol and his famous
Inspector General, except that here the
theme, of mistaken identity concerns a
person universally praised, though
cunningly depraved. Hauptmann's portrait of
the stupid magistrate and the inefficient
court he runs are satiric masterpieces.
The Story:
To the suburban shack of the Wolff
family, for which Julius and Frau Wolff
were paying on the installment plan, their
older daughter Leontine returned with
complaints that the Kriigers had sent her
after wood late at night. Leontine had
been hired out to the rich family in the
neighborhood in order to gain enough
money to start a stage career, so pretty
did Frau Wolff consider her daughter.
Although the husband wanted to send
the girl back immediately, Frau Wolff
seized the opportunity to plan the
stealing of the wood which her rebellious
daughter had refused to carry.
Julius had just returned with his
shipwright's tools and oars, for he
manufactured boa's and ran the local ferry as a
kind of front for his real profess'on, the
illegal snaring of game, from rabbits to
deer. Frau Wolff had just completed the
butchering of a stag preparatory to the
arrival of a boatman, Wulkow, who dealt
in plundered goods. If the older daughter
had delusions of grandeur, the younger
one, Udelheid, did not—she seemingly
served as a verifier of invented facts. This
happy family thrived by trickery, wit,
and chance; right now they had a supply
of firewood and a s*ag ready for market.
Wulkow seemed very reluctant to pay
more than thirteen shillings for the meat,
but Frau Wolff, the real ringleader in
all their dealings, wangled seventeen.
The important thing, however, was the
fact that Wulkow would be willing to
pay sixty or seventy crowns for a good
fur coat to relieve It's rheumatism those
cold days on the barge. Frau Kriiger,
coincidentally, had just bought such a
coat for her husband's Christmas present.
Their d'scussion was inferrupted by the
appearance of Motes and his wife, who
by bribery obtained eggs and bread from
Frau Wolff in return for an uneasy
truce over several snares they had found.
Motes, having lost an eye in a hunting
accident and consequently his job as a
ranger, sometimes remedied his
misfortunes by informing on poachers in the
neighborhood.
THE BEAVER COAT by Gerhart Hauptmann. Translated bv Ludwig T.ewisrhn. By permission of the
publishers, The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1912, by B. W. Huebsch. Copyright, 1940, by Ludwig
290

After th;s brief stir Frau Wolff
fortified her husband with whiskey for the
midnight wood loading session. Their
friend, the imbibing policeman on his
nightly rounds wheedling drinks,
innocently helped the Wolffs prepare for the
task ahead. Also, he was several days
late in delivering a message that the
honest washerwoman was to appear at
Justice von Wehrhahn's house on the
following morning.
In the justice's court, the next day,
Kriieer lodged a complaint that his wood
had been stolen, but the justice was not
at all interested in the theft. Having
heard that Kriiger's friend and boarder,
a notorious liberal democrat and
freethinker, had said slanderous things about
a certain official newly arrived, von
Wehrhahn was certain that the official
referred to was himself; and he was
occupied with rigging circumstantial evidence
to press charges against young Doctor
Fleischer, the free-thinker and shrewd
observer. When Kriiger ins;sted, in spite
of rebuffs, that his hired girl be sent
back to him, Frau Wolff was brought
dripping from the von Wehrhahn tubs
to settle the dispute. She announced her
refusal to send her daughter back to a
house where she was forced to carry wood
in the middle of the night. Half-deaf
Kriiger, becoming angry, accused the
justice of shouting and the court of
incompetency; and he was right in each
case. As Frau Wolff returned with
injured pride to her washing and Kriiger
stormed out, von Wehrhahn was left
with Motes to give him reassurance.
Several days later a beaver coat was
delivered to Wulkow for ninety-nine
crowns (the coat new had cost about
a hundred). Frau Wolff counted her
money carefully, claiming that the
boatman had cheated her of one crown. In
spite of Julius' wishes to pay the final
installment on their house, his wife in-
s;sted on burying the money until things
blew over. Udelheid, the younger
daughter, busily building a fire of stolen wood,
was sent to study confirmation verses for
the glad season at hand. Doctor Fleischer
and his little boy, great favorites of the
family, stopped by for a boat ride, a
whimsical midwinter wish of the delicate
child. As Udelheid took them out,
Kriiger arrived with lamentations and
apologies. His lamentations he emphasized
by waving a stick of stolen wood, and
denouncing the security system for the
loss of both his wood and his beaver
coat. His apology was for the way he had
treated Frau Wolff, given with a plea for
Leontine's return at higher pay. Frau
Wolff assured him that jail was the place
for scoundrelly thieves.
In an effort to deceive the authorities,
Frau Wolff invented a fiction. A
waistcoat, a note, and a key, she said, had
been found by her daughter near the
railway station. Her theory was that the
thief left them behind while taking the
beaver coat to Berlin. But she seemed
willing to believe that the thief was still
in the vicinity, even more so when
Wulkow appeared in the courtroom to
register the birth of a daughter. So many
petitioners showed up at once that Justice
von Wehrhahn could not get on with his
plans to indict Doctor Fleischer for
slander on the false testimony of Motes'
landlady—a new landlady quite gullible
and ignorant of Motes' habit of avoiding
any kind of payment whatsoever. Doctor
Fleischer, however, had knowledge of a
beaver coat. While out on the river he
had seen a boatman—the unfortunate
Wulkow, who could not get hh boat free
of the ice in time to get his wife to
Berlin for the expected event—sitting on
deck in a new fur coat. This evidence
made no impression on von Wehrhahn;
anyone could own a fur coat, he insisted,
even a boatman. Wulkow assured him
that boatmen could easily afford such a
coat and that he himself had one.
Kriiger, not hearing all that was said,
criticized the justice severely for not allowing
the good washerwoman to present her
daughter's evidence. He also rebuked the
magistrate for consorting with Motes, a
man who never paid his bills, who in-
291

formed on others, and who was even now
rigging false evidence. Doctor Fleischer
presented documentary proof that Motes
had extracted evidence from his
landlady against himself. All this the justice
waved aside.
Wulkow finally succeeded in
registering the birth of his daughter. The
incriminating evidence against him was
thrown out, von Wehrhahn saying that
he would have to search every house
around—Frau WolfF suggested that he
start at hers—if such flimsy stories were
to be believed. Kriiger stated that he
would never rest until the coat was
found, as well as his stolen wood. Von
Wehrhahn sent away Motes and his star
witness. Frau Wolff, true to her sense of
honor, would say nothing good of Motes
and nothing bad of Doctor Fleischer,
even though the justice seemed more
than willing to hear with favor such
information. He admired her feelings
but begged to differ with the honest lady,
one whom everyone admired and with
whom no one found fault. To his
pronouncement that as sure as she was an
honest woman, Doctor Fleischer was a
thoroughly dangerous person, Frau WolfF
said only that she did not know what to
think.
292

THE BEGGARS9 BUSH
Type of work: Drama
Authors: John Fletcher (1579-1625) and Philip Massinger (1583-1640)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: The Renaissance
Locale: The Netherlands
First presented: c. 1622
Principal characters:
Wolfort, the usurping Earl of Flanders
Florez, rightful Earl of Flanders (known as Goswin, a merchant of
Bruges)
Gerrard, Florez, father (disguised as Clause, King of the Beggars)
Hubert, an honest Flemish nobleman
Hempskirke, a courtier of Wolfort's party
Vandunke, Burgomaster of Bruges
Jaculin (Minche), Gerrard's daughter
Bertha, daughter of the Duke of Brabant but known as Gertrude, Van-
dunke's daughter
Critique:
In its combination of the romantic and
the rustic, The Beggars' Bush is very
much like As You Like It, although
greatly inferior to it in other respects.
Many of the staples of Elizabethan
romance are present: nobility in disguise,
a villainous usurper, and a contrast
between the falsehood and sterility of the
court on the one hand and the truth and
beauty of the country on the other. The
pastoral element is particularly noticeable,
for it is in the forest that lovers are united,
villains confounded, and men of true
heart vindicated. Although the romantic
episodes are highly entertaining, the play
draws its real strength from the characters
of the beggars, whose broad humor
counterbalances the more delicate and artificial
atmosphere of romance.
The Story:
Claiming that his daughter had been
stolen away by the Flemings, the Duke
of Brabant launched against Flanders a
bloody seven-year campaign which
eventually resulted in his defeat. Wolfort, the
leader of the Flemish armies, inflamed by
his military success and his popularity
with the soldiery, usurped the earldom of
Flanders, causing the flight of the child
Florez, the true earl; his widower father
Gerrard, a commoner; his sister Jaculin,
who had been pledged to Lord Hubert;
and several loyal noblemen. As time
passed, Wolfort ruthlessly crushed
resistance to his rule, and finally the entire
earldom except the city of Bruges
capitulated to him. Try as he might, however,
Wolfort was unable to find Florez and
the party of fugitives. As long as the
rightful heir lived, Wolfort's title
remained insecure.
Although Hubert remained in
Wolfort's court, he could not forget Jaculin,
and at last he resolved to go again in
search of her. He was captured, however,
and returned by the usurper's soldiers.
Wolfort received him honorably and,
pretending to be overcome with remorse for
his crimes, asked Hubert to seek not only
Jaculin but also Florez and Gerrard, to
whom he would restore the earldom.
Although he suspected Wolfort's sincerity,
Hubert left for Bruges, where the loyalists
had been reported. Hempskirke, one of
Wolfort's tools, accompanied Hubert on
his mission.
In Bruges the merchants were agog
over the success of one of their company,
the handsome and liberal young Goswin.
Known throughout the city for his
courtesy, honesty, and open-handedness, Gos-
win's credit had no bounds; and in love
he was as fortunate as he was in business,
being engaged to the lovely Gertrude,
293

daughter of Burgomaster Vandunke.
Among the most devoted of Goswin's
followers was Clause, king of the beggars,
who had been chosen for that eminence
by Goswin. The beggar king's subjects
included Minche, a pretty beggar-maid,
and Higgen, Ferret, Prigg, Snap, and
Ginks—good fellows all. Hubert and
Hempskirke, who were disguised, passed
this group on the road near Bruges. Both
Clause and Minche looked somehow
familiar to Hubert, but when he attempted
to inquire about them from the other
beggars he was met by stutters and stammers
only. Resolving to return later, he
continued on to the city, where he and
Hempskirke were to be entertained by
Vandunke, even though the burgomaster had
no love for Wolfort, their master.
Hempskirke, on his arrival, was
outraged to learn that Gertrude, his niece
and a gentlewoman, was being courted by
Goswin, her social inferior. He insulted
the young merchant, who replied nobly
and returned Hempskirke's blow by
striking the nobleman with his own sword. As
a result, Hempskirke challenged Goswin
to combat. Incapable of fair play, the
nobleman hired several ruffians to be on
hand when he met Goswin and to beat
him. Fortunately, Clause and the beggars
met the ruffians near Bruges and, while
gulling them, learned of the plot; thus the
beggar band seized Hempskirke and his
henchmen when they betrayed Goswin.
Clause then learned that Goswin was
despondent because he was in debt to the
extent of one hundred thousand crowns,
the day of repayment was upon him,
and his merchant ships had not come in.
Clause told the unbelieving Goswin that
the beggars would furnish the money
from their treasury by the next day. Only
partly reassured, Goswin left the forest.
After his departure the beggars turned
their attention to their prisoner,
Hempskirke, and tormented him until he
revealed that Wolfort had instructed him
to kill Florez and Gerrard if they could
be found and then to dispose of Hubert.
Deciding to keep Hempskirke a prisoner,
Clause gave him into the care of Hubert,
who had joined the beggar band in the
disguise of a huntsman.
In Bruges, Goswin grew so concerned
over his impending ruin that he almost
offended Gertrude, to whom he would
not reveal the cause of his worry. When
he pleaded with his fellow mercnants for
a further extension of credit, they, in
strong contrast to their previous attitude
of regard for him, mercilessly insisted
upon the immediate repayment of his
debts. He was thoroughly disillusioned
and in despair when the faithful Clause
entered with two beggars carrying bags
of gold. Goswin paid his now fawning
creditors and then gratefully promised
Clause that he would grant freely one
petition, which Clause reserved for the
future.
Meanwhile, Hubert had been able to
speak alone with Minche, the beggar-
maid. Their conversation grew tender and
Hubert, kissing her, had his previous
suspicions confirmed. She was in reality
his lost Jaculin. She also recognized him,
but would not abandon her disguise for
fear of revealing the other members of
the beggar band. Hubert then formulated
a plan to trap Wolfort. Still pretending
to be a simple huntsman, he allowed
Hempskirke to persuade him to set the
prisoner free; and he agreed to lead
Wolfort and his men to Florez and Gerrard.
During this time Goswin's ships had
returned, heavily laden with profitable
merchandise. Once more the most
successful young merchant in Bruges, he
decided to marry Gertrude immediately.
When Clause heard this news, however,
he unaccountably resolved that the
wedding must not take place. Staying only
long enough to allow Hubert to identify
himself, to recognize him as Gerrard, and
to reveal his reason for releasing
Hempskirke, Gerrad, still disguised as the king
of the beggars, hurried to Bruges. There
he appeared just before the wedding and
demanded, for reasons that he would not
explain, that Goswin forsake his bride-
to-te and accompany him. The young
merchant pleaded pitifully, but Gerrard
was firm. Goswin had no recourse in
294

honor but to grant the petition he had
promised him.
Gertrude, thinking Goswin false to her,
followed him into the forest and there
fell into the hands of Hempskirke,
Wolfort, and their men. They were met by
Hubert, still disguised, who convinced the
usurper that the best way to capture the
fugitives was to divide his force into five
squadrons. Just as Gerrard was informing
Goswin that the supposed beggar king
was in reality his father and that Gosw'n
was Florez, the rightful earl, Wolfort's
forces seized them, Jaculin, and several
noblemen disguised as beggars.
When Wolfort spoke to them in their
true persons, Gertrude believed that her
love for Goswin, who as Florez was high
above her, was hopeless; but Wolfort,
revealing a hitherto unsuspected villainy,
identified Gertrude as Bertha, the missing
heir of Brabant, stolen from her father
and given by Hempskirke to the innocent
Vandunke.
Hubert, in the meantime, had not
betrayed his old loyalties; he had arranged
for the true beggars, Vandunke, and the
loyal merchants of Bruges to overcome
Wolfort's scattered troops. As Wolfort
was ordering the execution of his
captives, Vandunke's band arrived. Florez
was at once reunited with Bertha and
Hubert with Jaculin. The only ones
unhappy at the outcome were the beggars.
Claiming that they could not stand the
strain of making an honest living, they
decided to go to England to practice their
trade.
295

THE BEGGAR'S OPERA
Type of work: Comic opera
Author: John Gay (1685-1732)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1728
Principal characters:
Captain Macheath, leader of a band of robbers
Polly Peachum, a young woman who believes she is Macheath's wife
Mr. Peachum, Polly's father, a fence for stolen goods and an informer
Lucy Lockit, a young woman who also believes she is Macheath's wife
Mr. Lockit, Lucy's father, a jailer
Mrs. Peachum, Polly's mother
Critique:
The Beggars Opera follows in the
satiric tradition of Swift and Pope. Gay's
purpose was to ridicule the corrupt
politics of his day and the follies of
polite society. Highwaymen and thieves
stand for the great lords and powerful
public officials of Georgian England.
Depiction and intimation of crime and
vice in all strata of society and shrewd,
humorous characterization give the play
its universality.
The Story:
Mr. Peachum, as he sat reckoning up
his accounts, declared that his was an
honest employment. Like a lawyer, he
acted both for and against thieves. That
he should protect them was only fitting,
since they afforded him a living. In a
businesslike manner he was deciding who
among arrested rogues should escape
punishment through bribes and who had
been unproductive enough to deserve
deportation or the gallows. Though Mrs.
Peachum found a favorite of hers on his
list, she made no effort to influence her
husband's decision as to his fate, for she
knew that the weakness of her sex was
to allow her emotions to dominate her
practical nature.
She did say, however, that Captain
Macheath, a highwayman, stood high in
her regard, as well as in that—so she
hinted to Mr. Peachum—of their
daughter Polly. The news upset her spouse.
If the girl married, her husband might
learn family secrets and thus gain power
over them. Peachum ordered his wife to
warn the girl that marriage and a
husband's domination would mean her
ruin. Consequently they were dismayed
when Polly announced her marriage to
Macheath. They predicted grimly that
she would not be able to keep Macheath
in funds for gambling and philandering,
that there would not even be enough
money to cause quarrels, that she might
as well have married a lord.
The Peachums' greatest fear was that
Macheath would have them hanged and
so gain control of the fortune which
would be left to Polly. Before he could
do that, they decided, he would have to
be disposed of, and they suggested to
Polly that she inform on him.
Widowhood, they declared, was a very
comfortable state. But the girl stubbornly
asserted that she loved the dashing
highwayman. Overhearing the plan of her
parents to have her husband arrested,
Polly warned Macheath. They decided
that he should go into hiding for a
few weeks until, as Polly hoped, her
parents should relent.
Parting from his love, Macheath met
his gang at a tavern near Newgate to
tell them their rendezvous would have to
be confined to gatherings at their private
hideout for about a week, so that
Peachum would be led to believe the
highwayman had deserted his
companions. After his men had left to go
296

about their business, some street women
and female pickpockets joined Macheath.
Two of them covered Macheath with his
own pistols as Peachum, accompanied
by constables, rushed in to arrest him.
When Macheath had been carried off to
spend the night in Newgate, some of the
women expressed their indignation at
not having been chosen to spring the
trap and share in the reward Peachum
had offered for the highwayman's
capture.
Though Captain Macheath had funds
to bribe his jailer to confine him with
only a light pair of fetters, it was another
matter to deal with Lucy Lockit, the
jailer's daughter. As Macheath freely
admitted, she was his wife except for
the ceremony. But Lucy, who had heard
of his gallantry toward Polly Peachum,
could be convinced of his sincerity only
by his consent to an immediate marriage.
Meanwhile Peachum and Lockit
agreed that they would split the reward
for Macheath. As he went over his
accounts, however, Peachum found cause
to question his partner's honesty. One
of his men had been convicted, although
he had bribed Lockit to have the man go
free. Also, Peachum's informer, Mrs.
Coaxer, had been defrauded of
information money. The quarrel was
shortlived, however, as each was well aware
that if they fell out each had the power
to hang the other. After his talk with
Peachum, Lockit warned his daughter
that Macheath's fate had been sealed. He
advised her to buy herself widow's weeds
and be cheerful; since she could not have
the highwayman and his money too, she
might as well make use of the time
that was left to extract what riches she
could from him.
There was no clergyman to be found
that day, but Lucy had so far softened
toward her philandering lover as to agree
to see if her father could not be bought
off. She had just consented to help him
when Polly appeared in search of her
husband. Macheath managed to convince
Lucy of his faithfulness by disowning
Polly, who was carried off by the angry
Peachum.
After they had gone, Lucy agreed to
steal her father's keys so that her lover
might escape. Macheath, free once more,
went to join two of his men at a gambling
house. There he made arrangements to
meet them again that evening at another
den, where he would point out a likely
victim for them to rob.
Peachum and Lockit were discussing
the disposal of some assorted loot when
they were joined by Mrs. Trapes, a
procuress who innocently told them that
Macheath was at that moment with one
of her girls. While Peachum and Lockit
went off to recapture him, Polly paid a
visit to Lucy Lockit. Together they
bewailed their common fate—Macheath's
neglect. Lucy tried to give Polly a
poisoned drink. When the suspicious
girl refused to accept it, Lucy decided
that perhaps Polly was too miserable to
deserve to die.
When Macheath was brought back to
prison once more by Peachum and
Lockit, both girls fell on their knees
before their fathers and begged that his
life be spared. Neither parent would be
moved. Lockit announced that the
highwayman would die that day. As he
prepared to go to the Old Bailey, Macheath
said that he was resigned to his fate,
for his death would settle all disputes
and please all his wives.
While Macheath in his cell reflected
ironically that rich men may escape the
gallows while the poor must hang, he
was visited by two of his men. He
asked them to make sure that Lockit and
Peachum were hanged before they
themselves were finally strung up. The thieves
were followed by the distraught Polly
and Lucy, come to bid Macheath
farewell. When the jailer announced that
four more of his wives, each accompanied
by a child, had appeared to say goodbye,
Macheath declared that he was ready to
meet his fate.
But the rabble, feeling that the poor
should have their vices as well as the
rich, raised so much clamor for
Macheath's reprieve that charges were
297

dropped and he was released in triumph. really his wife. From that time on he
In the merrymaking that followed, he intended to give up the vices—if not the
himself chose Polly as his partner, be- follies—of the rich,
cause, he gallantly announced, she was
298

BEL-AMI
Type of work: Novel
Author: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: About 1885
Locale: Paris and Cannes
First published: 1885
Principal characters:
Georges Duroy, later Georges du Roy de Cantel, a newspaper man
Madeleine Forestier, wife of Duroy's benefactor and later Duroy*s wife
Clotilde de Marelle, Duroy's mistress
Charles Forestier, Duroy's former brother officer and the editor who befriends him
M. Walter, owner of the newspaper for which Duroy works
Basile Walter, M. Walter's wife
Suzanne Walter, M. Walter's daughter
Critique:
The subtitle of Bel-Ami, or The
History of a Scoundrel, is not inappropriate
for the story of an intriguer who climbs
to a position of wealth and power by
publishing the story of his first wifes
disgrace and later cheating her of part
of her fortune. The unscrupulous
parvenu and the women he dupes are among
the masterpieces of characterization
produced by the French realistic school to
which de Maupassant belonged.
The Story:
Georges Duroy, a former soldier, had
only three francs in his pocket when he
met his former brother ofiBcer, Charles
Forestier, in Paris one evening. Forestier,
an editor of the daily newspaper, La
Vie Francaise, unhesitatingly lent Duroy
money to buy suitable clothes and
invited him to come to dinner the
following evening to meet the owner of the
paper. The Forestiers, party was a
success for Duroy. M. Walter hired him
as a reporter to write a series of articles
on his experiences in Algeria.
It was not easy for Duroy to adapt
himself to his new job. His first article
was due the day following the dinner
party. Unable to write it in proper form,
he was forced to hurry to the Forestier
home early in the morning to seek
stylistic advice. Forestier, just leaving,
referred Duroy to Mme. Forestier for
help. Together they turned out a
successful piece. With her help Duroy
slowly built a reputation as a clever
reporter, but his salary remained small.
Two months after the Forestiers*
dinner party Duroy called on Mme. de
Marelle, who had been among the guests
that evening. Duroy's friendship with
Mme. de Marelle quickly developed into
an affair. De Marelle was often away
from home, so that his wife had ample
time to see her lover, at his lodgings at
first and then at an apartment which she
rented for their rendezvous. Duroy
objected mildly to having Mme. de Marelle
bear this expense, but it was not long
before he found himself regularly
accepting small sums of money from her.
It was Mme. de Marelle's daughter
Laurine who first called him "Bel-Ami,"
a nickname gradually adopted by most of
his friends.
M. Forestier suffered from a bronchial
ailment. As his health grew worse, his
disposition became unbearable at the
office. Duroy determined to avenge
himself by attempting to seduce Mme.
Forestier. She gently rebuffed him, but
agreed that they could be friends. Duroy
was brash enough to propose that she
become his wife if she were ever
widowed.
At Mme. Forestier's suggestion Duroy
began to cultivate Mme. Walter. The
week following his first visit to her he
was appointed editor of the "Echoes,"
299

an important column. He had barely
assumed this position when the editor of
a rival newspaper, La Plume, accused
him falsely of receiving bribes and
suppressing news. For the honor of La Vie
Francaise Duroy was forced to challenge
his disparager to a duel. Though neither
he nor his opponent was injured, M.
Walter was pleased with Duroy's spirit.
Duroy moved into the apartment Mme.
de Marelle had rented for their meetings
after he had promised that he would
never bring anyone else there. Shortly
afterward Forestier became seriously ill,
and Duroy received a telegram asking
him to join the Forestiers in Cannes,
where they had gone for the invalid's
health. After Forestier's death, as he and
Mme. Forestier kept a vigil over the
corpse, Duroy proposed once more. The
widow made no promises but stated the
next day that she might consider an
alliance, though she warned her swain
that she would have to be treated as an
equal and her conduct left unquestioned.
Mme. Forestier returned to Paris. A
year later she and Duroy were married.
Georges du Roy de Cantel, as he now
called himself at his wife's suggestion,
and his bride had agreed to spend their
honeymoon with his parents in
Normandy. However, Mme. de Cantel spent
only one day with his simple, ignorant
peasant family in their tiny home.
The newspaper man found in his wife
a valuable ally who not only aided him
in writing his articles but also, as the
friend of influential men, helped him to
find a place in political circles.
Unfortunately, friction soon developed
between them. After he had moved into
his wife's home, de Cantel found that
its comforts had been designed to please
its old master, and he soon found
himself pushed gently into the niche his
friend had occupied. Even the meals
were prepared according to Forestier's
taste. To pique his wife de Cantel
began to call Forestier "poor Charles,"
always using an accent of infinite pity
when he spoke the name.
Not long after his marriage de Cantel
resumed his relationship with Mme. de
Marelle and at the same time began an
affair with Mme. Walter. He had briefly
bemoaned the fact that he had not
married wealthy young Suzanne Walter, but
he soon became intrigued with the idea
of seducing her mother, a pillar of
dignity. His conquest was not a difficult
one. Mme. Walter began to meet her
lover at his rooms and to shower affection
and attentions upon him so heavily that
he quickly became bored.
Among Mme. de Cantel's political
acquaintances was the foreign minister,
Laroche-Mathieu, who supplied news of
government activities to La Vie
Francaise. Because the minister was also a
close friend of M. Walter, it was not
difficult for de Cantel's new paramour to
learn the state secret that France would
soon guarantee the Moroccan debt. Mme.
Walter planned to buy some shares of
the loan with the understanding that de
Cantel would receive part of the profit.
While Mme. Walter was carrying on
her speculations, the de Cantels received
a windfall in the form of a bequest from
the late Count de Vaudrec, an old family
friend of Mme. de Cantel. De Cantel
objected to the count's bequest of one
million francs, however, on the grounds
that appearances would compromise her.
He allowed her to accept the money only
after she had agreed to divide it equally
with him, so that it would seem to
outsiders as if they had both received a
share.
De Cantel profited handsomely when
France assumed the Moroccan debt, but
his gains were small compared to those
of Laroche-Mathieu and M. Walter, who
had become millionaires as a result of
the intrigue. One evening he and his
wife were invited to view a painting in
the Walters' magnificent new mansion.
There de Cantel began a flirtation with
Suzanne Walter; his own wife and
Laroche-Mathieu had become intimates
without attempting to conceal their
friendship. That evening de Cantel per-
300

suaded Suzanne to agree never to accept
a proposal without first asking his advice.
At home after the reception he received
with indifference the cross of the Legion
of Honor which the foreign minister had
given him. He felt that he was entitled
to a larger reward for concealing news of
the Moroccan affair from his readers.
That spring he surprised his wife and
Laroche-Mathieu at a rendezvous. Three
months later he obtained a divorce,
causing the minister's downfall by naming
him corespondent.
A free man again, de Cantel was able
to court Suzanne Walter. It was simple
for him to persuade the girl to tell her
parents she wished to marry him, to have
her go away with him until they gave
their consent to the match.
Mme. Walter was the only one at the
magnificent church wedding to show any
signs of sadness. She hated the daughter
who had taken her lover, but at the same
time she was powerless to prevent the
marriage without compromising herself.
M. Walter had managed to resign
himself to having a conniving son-in-law,
had, in fact, recognized his shrewdness
by making him chief editor of the
newspaper. Suzanne was innocently happy as
she walked down the aisle with her
father. Her new husband was also
content. Greeting their well-wishers in the
sacristy after the ceremony, he took
advantage of the occasion to reaffirm, with
his eyes, his feelings for Mme. de Ma-
relle. As he and his wife left the church,
it seemed to him that it was only a stone's
throw from that edifice to the chamber
of deputies.
301

A BELL FOR ADANO
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Hersey (1914- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1943
Locale: Adano, Italy
First published: 1944
Principal characters:
Major Victor Joppolo, American Military Governor of Adano
Sergeant Borth, Major Joppolo's subordinate
Captain Purvis, head of the Military Police
General Marvin, Commander-in-Chief of the American invasion troops and Major
Joppolo's superior
Critique:
A Bell for Adano is one of the
outstanding works of fiction to come out of
World War II. John Hersey has told
his story in simple but effective language.
There is nothing of the artificial, the
contrived, or the melodramatic. The
portrayal of character is perhaps the
author's greatest achievement. Only a
good observer, only a person with a
deep love for human beings, could have
written so realistically and so
sympathetically of the American invasion troops,
and of an Italian town and its people
who had lived under Fascist rule for
more than twenty years.
The Story:
When the American army invaded
Sicily, Major Victor Joppolo was placed
in command of Adano. He set up his
office in the city hall, re-hired the janitor,
and investigated the records left by
the Fascist mayor, who had fled to the
hills.
Soon after his arrival Major Joppolo
summoned the leading citizens of the
town and asked them, through Giuseppe,
his interpreter, what they considered the
most important thing to be done. Some
answered that the shortage of food was
the most pressing problem. Others
insisted that what the town needed most
was its bell, which had been removed
by the Fascists. The bell, it seemed,
had a soothing tone. It also regulated
the lives of Adano's residents.
The major promised every effort to
recover the b'ell. Meanwhile the problem
was to obtain food and to have produce
brought into the town. In order that his
directives would be understood and
carried out, the major issued
proclamations which the town crier, after being
silent for so long, hastened to shout in
the village.
On Sunday morning the major
attended mass at one of the churches.
There he noticed a blonde girl sitting in
front of him. When he later asked
Giuseppe about her, the interpreter
assumed that the American's interest had
nothing to do with official business.
Major Joppolo's primary interest,
however, was the girl's father, Tomasino,
owner of a fishing fleet. He had
Giuseppe ask Tomasino if he would come
to see him. But Tomasino, distrustful
of authority, would not come to
headquarters. The major decided to go to
Tomasino. He went, followed by
practically all the townspeople. The old
Italian was defiant, sure that the major
had come to arrest him. Finally the
[talian was convinced that the major
meant neither to arrest him nor to ask
for a cut in the proceeds from the sale of
the fish. He agreed to go out with his
fishing fleet, despite the danger of mines.
By that time the major and his policies
had become the subject of much discus-
A BELL FOR ADANO by John Hersey. By permission of the author and the publishers. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1944, by John Hersey.
302

sion among the people. The Fascist
mayor provided them with a great deal
of amusement. He had come out of
hiding and had been paroled into
Sergeant Borth's custody. Every morning
the mayor went to Sergeant Borth and
publicly confessed a Fascist sin. Giuseppe
was astonished to discover that when the
major told him to report for work at
seven in the mornings, he meant it.
Gargano, the ex-Fascist policeman,
learned that he could no longer force
the others to make way for him when
they stood in line at the bakery.
While driving through Adano one
day, General Marvin found the road
blocked by a mule cart. The driver,
having had his daily quota of wine, was
sleeping peacefully.
When the mule refused to budge, the
general ordered the vehicle thrown into
the ditch. Reluctantly, the soldiers
dumped the cart, mule, and sleeping
driver. Swearing furiously, the general
drove up to the city hall, confronted
Major Joppolo, and ordered that the
major forbid the entrance of all carts
into Adano.
The next day a group of townspeople
besieged the major. The carts, they
explained, were essential, for they brought
food and water into the town. Major
Joppolo countermanded the general's
order and telephoned Captain Purvis
that he would accept full responsibility.
Captain Purvis, anxious to keep out of
trouble, ordered Lieutenant Trapani to
make a memorandum and to send it to
General Marvin. But the lieutenant,
out of regard for Major Joppolo, put the
memorandum among Purvis' papers in
the hope that the captain, who rarely
looked through his files, would never find
it.
Major Joppolo's efforts to restore the
bell were not successful, for it had been
melted down by the Fascists. However,
a young Naval officer, in charge of a
nearby station, promised to obtain a
ship's bell for him.
In the meantime Captain Purvis had
gone through the papers on his desk
and had found the memorandum for
General Marvin. He ordered it
forwarded at once. Lieutenant Trapani
mailed it, but addressed it to the wrong
person at headquarters in Algiers. From
there it was forwarded to the general's
aide, Colonel Middleton. Every day the
colonel met with General Marvin and
went over important communications.
Accordingly, he was half-way through
Purvis* letter before he realized what
it was. He tried to go on to the next
letter, but it was too late. The general
had heard Major Joppolo's name and
that of Adano, and remembered both.
The bell arrived in Adano. It was
touched, prodded, sounded by the
experts, and admired by everybody. When
it pealed forth, the townspeople declared
that its tone was even better than that
of the old bell. The major was a hero.
To show their appreciation and affection,
the townspeople had him taken to a
photographer. From the resulting picture,
a local artist painted his portrait.
At the celebration that night, Sergeant
Borth was very, very drunk. He refused
to take orders from Major Joppolo,
saying that the major was no longer in any
position to give orders. Captain Par-
vis, said the sergeant, almost sobbing,
had a letter from General Marvin. It
ordered Major Joppolo back to Algiers.
Next morning the major said goodbye to
Borth, who apologized for his conduct of
the previous night. The major asked
him to help his successor make the
people happy. As he drove away from
the town, he heard in the distance the
tolling of a bell, the new bell for Adano.
303

BEN HUR; A TALE OF THE CHRIST
Type of work: Novel
Author: Lewis (Lew) Wallace (1827-1905)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: At the time of Christ
Locale: Antioch and Jerusalem
First published: 1880
Principal characters:
Ben Hur, a Roman-educated Jew
Balthasar, an Egyptian
Simonides, a Jewish merchant and friend of Ben Hur
Esther, daughter of Simonides
Iras, daughter of Balthasar
Messala, a Roman and an enemy of Ben Hur
Critique:
Ben Hur is an amazing book, a
mixture of melodramatic adventure and
scholarly research. The author shows
great familiarity with the customs and
traditions of the society that he is
describing, and it is this detailed knowledge of
Roman and Jewish history that accounts
for the value and importance of Ben Hur.
It is unfortunate that the characters
never seem quite real, and that the
modern reader cannot feel much
sympathy for them.
The Story:
In the Roman year 747 three travelers
met in the desert, where the Athenian,
the Hindu, and the Egyptian had been
led by a new bright star shining in the
sky. After telling their stories to one
another, they journeyed on, seeking the
new-born child who was King of the
Jews. In Jerusalem their inquiries aroused
the curiosity of King Herod, who asked
that they be brought before him. Herod
then asked them to let him know if they
found the child, for he, too, wished to
adore the infant whose birth had been
foretold. Arriving at last in Bethlehem,
the three men found the new-born child
in a stable. But having been warned in
a dream of Herod's evil intentions, they
did not return to tell the king of the
child's whereabouts.
At that time there lived in Jerusalem
three members of an old and eminent
Jewish family named Hur. The father,
who had been dead for some time, had
distinguished himself in service to the
Roman Empire and had, consequently,
received many honors. The son, Ben
Hur, was handsome, and the daughter,
Tirzah, was likewise beautiful. Their
mother was a fervent nationalist who had
implanted in their minds a strong sense
of pride in their race and national culture.
When Ben Hur was still a young man,
his friend Messala returned from his
studies in Rome. Messala had become
arrogant, spiteful, cruel. As Ben left
Messala's home after their meeting, he
was hurt, for he realized that Messala
had so changed that their friendship must
end.
A few days later, while watching a
procession below him in the streets, Ben
Hur accidentally dislodged a piece of
tile which fell on the Roman procurator.
The Roman believed that the accident
was an attempt on his life. Led by
Messala, who had pointed out his former
friend, the Romans arrested the Hur
family and confiscated their property.
Ben Hur was sent to be a galleyslave.
While he was being led away in chains,
a young man took pity on him and gave
him a drink. One day, while he was
rowing at his usual place in the galley,
Ben Hur attracted the attention of Quin-
tus Arrius, a Roman official. Later,
during a sea battle, Ben Hur saved the life
of Quintus, who adopted the young Jew
as his son. Educated as a Roman citizen,
Ben Hur inherited his foster father's
wealth when Quintus died.
304

Ben Hur went to Antioch, where he
learned that his father's old servant,
Simonides, was now a prosperous
merchant. In effect, the wealth of Simonides
was really the property of the Hur family,
for he had been acting as agent for his
dead master. Simonides assured himself
that Ben Hur was really the son of his
old master, and begged that he be allowed
to serve the son as well. Ben Hur was
Attracted to Simonides* daughter, Esther.
In company with a servant of
Simonides, Ben Hur went to see a famous well
on the outskirts of Antioch. There an
aged Egyptian was watering his camel,
on which sat the most beautiful woman
Ben Hur had ever seen. While he looked,
a chariot came charging through the
people near the well. Ben Hur seized
the lead horse by the bridle and swerved
the chariot aside. The driver was his
false friend, Messala. The old Egyptian
was Balthasar, one of the wise men who
had traveled to Bethlehem. The
beautiful girl was his daughter, Iras.
Learning that the arrogant Messala
was to race his chariot in the games at
Antioch, Ben Hur wished to defeat and
humiliate his old playfellow. He had
Simonides and his friends place large
wagers on the race, until Messala had
staked his whole fortune. The day of
the race came. At the turn Messala
suddenly struck with his whip at the horses
of the chariot Ben Hur was driving. Ben
Hur managed to keep his team under
control, and then in the last lap around
the arena he drove his chariot so close
to Messala's vehicle that the wheels
locked. Messala was thrown under his
horses and crippled for life. Because
Messala had attempted foul play earlier
in the race, the judges allowed Ben Hur
to be proclaimed the winner. Messala
was ruined.
From Balthasar, Ben Hur learned that
the King of the Jews to whom the
Egyptian and his companions had paid homage
some years before was not to be the king
of a political realm, but of a spiritual
one. But Simonides convinced Ben Hur
ihat the promised king would be a real
deliverer who would lead the Jews to
victory over the Romans.
From Antioch Ben Hur went to
Jerusalem to search for his mother and sister.
There he learned the part Messala had
played in the ruin of his family. After
his own arrest, his mother and sister had
been thrown into prison, and Messala
and the procurator had divided the
confiscated property between them. But
Messala knew nothing of the fate of the
two women after the procurator had
ordered them confined to an underground
cell. There they had contracted leprosy.
When Pilate, the new procurator, arrived,
he had ordered all political prisoners
freed and so the two women had been
set at liberty. But there was no place
for them to go except to the caves outside
the city where the lepers were sent to
die. A faithful old servant found them
and carried food to them daily, under
sacred oath never to reveal their names.
When Ben Hur met the old servant, she
allowed him to believe that his mother
and sister were dead.
Meanwhile Simonides had bought the
home of his old master, and he, Esther,
Balthasar, and Iras took possession of it.
Ben Hur himself could visit it only at
night and in disguise. He was plotting
to overthrow the Roman rule and was
recruiting an army to follow the future
King of the Jews. He went one day
near the place where the lepers usually
gathered on the hill beyond the city
gates. On the way, he met a young man
whom he recognized as the one who had
given him a drink of water years before
when he was being led away to slavery.
The young man was the Nazarene. That
day the old servant had persuaded Tirzah
and her mother to show themselves to
the Nazarene as he passed. Both were
cured, and Ben Hur saw the two lepers
transformed into his mother and sister.
Ben Hur's attitude toward the King of
the Jews was slowly changing. When he
witnessed the crucifixion in company
with Simonides and old Balthasar, any
doubts that he might have had were
removed. He was convinced then that
305

Christ's kingdom was a spiritual one.
From that day on, he and his family
were Christians.
Some years later, in the beautiful villa
at Misenum, Ben Hur's wife, Esther,
received a strange visit from Iras, the
daughter of Balthasar. Iras told Esther
that she had killed Messala for the
misery he had brought her. When he
learned of the visit, Ben Hur was sure
that on the day of the crucifixion, the
day that Balthasar himself had died, Iras
had deserted her father for Messala.
Ben Hur was happy with Esther and
their two children. He and Simonides
devoted their fortunes to the Christian
cause. When Nero began the
persecution of the Christians in Rome it was
Ben Hur who went there to build the
catacombs under the city itself, so that
those who believed in the Nazarene could
worship in safety and peace.
306

BENITO CERENO
Type of work: Short story
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1799
Locale: The harbor of St. Maria, off the coast of Chile; Lima, Peru
First published: 1856
Principal characters:
Amasa Delano, an American sea captain
Don Benito Cereno, a Spanish sea captain
Babo, a Negro slave
Critique:
Superficially, Benito Cereno, a long
short story, is a tale of mysterious
adventure. The story deals with mutiny and
slavery, elements of excitement on the
high seas. The climax is carefully built
up, mysteriously guarded, so that,
although hints are present, the reader
senses a mystery he cannot explain
throughout most of the story. Beneath
this tale of mysterious adventure,
however, Melville deals significantly with the
horror and depravity of which man is
capable, a depravity caused by the
institution of slavery. In the story, Negro slaves
mutiny on a Spanish vessel and commit
all sorts of horrible atrocities in order to
retain power. Captain Amasa Delano, a
good-hearted, naive, high-principled New
Englander, wanders into this depravity.
He cannot fully perceive or understand
it; if aware, he could not cope with it.
Yet, almost miraculously, his very
innocence allows him, at the crucial moment,
to rescue the victimized Benito. It is
almost as if his innocence, ironically,
permits him to conquer evil, though he
himself is hardly aware of what he is doing.
The ironic aspects of the tale, in addition
to the development of the characters and
Melville's speculations on the incident,
help to make this a magnificently
contrived parable of limited, rational, well-
ordered man struggling against the forces
of evil in the social and natural universe
and achieving at least a partial victory.
The Story:
Captain Amasa Delano, commander
of an American sealer called Bachelor's
Delight, was anchored in the harbor of
St. Maria, on an island off the coast of
southern Chile. While there, he saw a
ship apparently in distress and, thinking
it carried a party of monks, he set out in
a whaleboat to board the vessel and
supply it with food and water. When he came
aboard, he found that the ship, the San
Dominick, was a Spanish merchant ship
carrying slaves. The crew was parched
and moaning; the ship itself was filthy;
the sails were rotten. Most deplorable of
all, the captain, the young Don Benito
Cereno, seemed barely able to stand or to
talk coherently. Aloof, indifferent, the^
captain seemed ill both physically (he
coughed constantly) and mentally. The
captain was constantly attended by Babo,
his devoted Negro slave.
Delano sent the whaleboat back to his
ship to get additional water, food, and
extra sails for the San Dominick, while
he himself remained aboard the desolate
ship. He tried to talk to Cereno, but the
captain's fainting fifs kept interrupting
the conversation. The Spaniard seemed
reserved and sour, in spite of Delano's
attempts to assure the man that he was
now out of danger. Delano finally
assumed that Cereno was suffering from a
severe mental disorder. The captain did,
with great difficulty and after frequent
private talks with Babo, manage to
explain that the San Dominick had been at
sea for 190 days. They had, Cereno
explained, started out as a well-manned and
smart vessel sailing from Buenos Aires to
307

Lima, but had encountered severe gales
around Cape Horn, lost many officers and
men, and then run into dreadful calms
and the ravages of plagues and scurvy.
Most of the Spanish officers and all
of the passengers, including the slave
owner, Don Alexandro Aranda, had died
of fever. Delano, who knew that the
weather in recent months had not been
as extreme as Cereno described it, simply
concluded that the Spanish officers had
been incompetent and had not taken the
proper precautions against disease.
Cereno kept repeating that only the devotion
of his slave, Babo, had kept him alive.
Numerous other circumstances on the
San Dominick began to make the
innocent Delano more suspicious. Although
everything was in disorder and Cereno
was obviously ill, he was dressed
perfectly in a clean uniform. Six Negroes
were sitting in the rigging holding
hatchets, although Cereno said they were only
cleaning them. Two Negroes were
beating up a Spanish boy, but Cereno
explained that this deed was simply a form
of sport. The slaves were not in chains;
Cereno claimed they were so docile they
did not require chains. This notion
pleased the humane Delano, although it
also surprised him.
Every two hours, as they awaited the
expected wind and the arrival of Delano's
whaleboat, a large Negro in chains was
brought before Cereno, who would ask
the Negro if he, the captain, could be
forgiven. The Negro would answer,
"No," and be led away. At one point
Delano began to fear that Cereno and
Babo were plotting against him, for they
moved away from him and whispered
together. Cereno then asked Delano about
his ship, requesting the number of men
and the strength of arms aboard the
Bachelor's Delight. Delano thought they
might be pirates.
Nevertheless, Delano joined Cereno
and Babo in Cereno's cabin for dinner.
Throughout the meal Delano alternately
gained and lost confidence in Cereno's
story. He tried, while discussing means
of getting Cereno new sails, to get Babo
to leave the room, but the man and the
master were apparently inseparable. After
dinner Babo, while shaving his master,
cut his cheek slightly despite the
warning that had been given. Babo left the
room for a second and returned with his
own cheek cut in a curious imitation of
his master's. Delano thought this episode
curious and sinister, but he finally decided
that the man was so devoted to Cereno
that he had punished himself for
inadvertently cutting his master.
At last Delano's whaleboat returned
with more supplies. Delano, about to
leave the San Dominick, promised to
return with new sails the next day. When
he invited Cereno to his own boat, he was
surprised at the captain's curt refusal and
his failure to escort the visitor to the rail.
Delano was offended at the Spaniard's
apparent lack of gratitude. As the whale-
boat was about to leave, Cereno appeared
suddenly at the rail. He expressed his
gratitude profusely and then, hastily,
jumped into the whaleboat. At first
Delano thought that Cereno was about to
kill him; then he saw Babo at the rail
brandishing a knife. In a flash he
realized that Babo and the other slaves had
been holding Cereno a captive. Delano
took Cereno back to the Bachelor's
Delight. Later they pursued the fleeing
slaves. The slaves, having no guns, were
easily captured by the American ship
and brought back to shore.
Cereno later explained that the slaves,
having mutinied shortly after the ship
set out, had committed horrible atrocities
and killed most of the Spaniards. They
had murdered the mate, Raneds, for a
trifling offense and had committed
atrocities on the dead body of Don Alexandro
Aranda, whose skeleton they placed on
the masthead.
On his arrival in Lima, Don Benito
Cereno submitted a long testimony,
recounting all the cruelties the slaves had
committed. Babo was tried and hanged.
Cereno felt enormously grateful to
Delano, recalling the strange innocence that
308

had somehow kept the slaves from
harming him, when they had the chance,
aboard the San Dom;n;.ck.
Don Benito Cereno planned to enter
a monastery; however, broken in body
and spirit, he died three months after he
completed his testimony.
309

BEOWULF
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Heroic epic
Time of plot: c. Sixth century
Locale: Denmark, southern Sweden (land of the Geats)
First transcribed: c. 1000
Principal characters:
Beowulf, a Geat hero
Hrothgar, King of the Danes
Unferth, a Danish warrior
Wiglaf, loyal noble of Beowulf's court
Critique:
This poem is the great masterpiece of
Anglo-Saxon literature. Its scribes were
writing down a story transmitted orally
for generations by Northern peoples. The
poem is a valuable record of the customs
of the time, a pagan story overlaid with
a veneer of Christian theology, and a
narrative of high artistic worth.
The Story:
Once long ago in Hrothgar's kingdom
a monster named Grendel roamed the
countryside at night. Rising from his
marshy home, Grendel would stalk to the
hall of the king, where he would seize
fifteen of Hrothgar's sleeping warriors
and devour them. Departing, he would
gather fifteen more into his huge arms
and carry them back to his watery lair.
For twelve years this slaughter continued.
Word of the terror spread. In the
land of the Geats, ruled over by Hygelac,
lived Beowulf, a man of great strength
and bravery. When he heard the tale
of Hrothgar's distress, he set sail for
Denmark to rid the land of its fear. With a
company of fourteen men he came ashore
and asked a coast watcher to lead him
to Hrothgar's high hall. There he was
feasted in great honor while the mead
cup went around. Unferth reminded
Beowulf of a swimming contest which
Beowulf was said to have lost. Beowulf
answered that not only had he won the
contest, but he had also killed many
deadly monsters in the sea. At the close
of the feast Hrothgar and his warriors
went to their rest, leaving Beowulf and
his band in the hall. Then came the
awful Grendel and seized one of the
sleeping warriors. But he was fated to
kill no more that night, for Beowulf
without shield or spear seized the dread
monster and wrenched off his mighty
right arm. Thus maimed, Grendel fled
back to his marshland home. His bloody
arm was hung in Hrothgar's hall.
The next night Grendel's mother came
to avenge her son. Bursting into the
great hall, she seized one of the warriors,
Aeschere, Hrothgar's chief counselor, and
fled with him into the night. She took
with her also the prized arm of Grendel.
Beowulf was asleep in a house removed
from the hall, and not until morning did
he learn of the monster's visit. Then,
with Hrothgar leading the way, a
mournful procession approached the dire marsh.
At its edge they sighted the head of the
ill-fated Aeschere and saw the stain of
blood on the water. Beowulf prepared
for descent to the home of the foe.
Unferth offered Beowulf the finest sword in
the kingdom, and thus forfeited his own
chance of brave deeds.
As Beowulf sank beneath the waters of
the marsh, he was beset on every hand
by prodigious monsters. After a long
swim he came to the lair of Grendel's
mother. Failing to wound her with Un-
ferth's sword, he seized the monster by
the shoulder and threw her to the ground.
During a grim hand-to-hand battle, in
which Beowulf was being worsted, he
sighted a famous old sword of the giants,
which he seized and thrust at Grendel's
310

mother, who fell in helpless death throes.
Then Beowulf turned and saw Grendel
himself lying weak and maimed on the
floor of the lair. Quickly he swung the
sword and severed Grendel's head from
his body. As he began to swim back up
to the surface of the marsh, the sword
with which he had killed his enemies
melted until only the head and hilt were
left. On his return, the Danes rejoiced
and feted him with another high feast.
He presented the sword hilt to Hrothgar
and returned Unferth's sword without
telling that it had failed him.
The time came for Beowulf's return to
his homeland. He left Denmark in great
glory and sailed toward the land of the
Geats. Once more at the court of his
lord Hygelac, he was held in high esteem
and was rewarded with riches and
position. After many years Beowulf himself
became king among the Geats. One of
the Geats by accident discovered an
ancient hoard, and, while its guardian
dragon slept, carried away a golden
goblet which he presented to Beowulf. The
discovery of the loss caused the dragon
to rise in fury and to devastate the land.
Old man that he was, Beowulf was
determined to rid his kingdom of the
dragon's scourge. Daring the flames of
the dragon's nostrils, he smote his foe
with his sword, but without effect. Once
more Beowulf was forced to rely on the
grip of his mighty hands. Of his warriors
only Wiglaf stood by his king; the others
fled. The dragon rushed at Beowulf and
sank its teeth deeply into his neck. But
Wiglaf smote the dragon with his sword,
and Beowulf with his war-knife gave the
dragon its death blow.
Weak from loss of blood, the old hero
was dying. His last act was to give
Wiglaf a king's collar of gold. The other
warriors now came out of hiding and
burned with pagan rites the body of their
dead king. From the dragon's lair they
took the treasure hoard and buried it in
the great mound they built over
Beowulf's ashes. Then with due ceremony
they mourned the passing of the great
and dauntless Beowulf.
311

BERENICE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
Type of plot: Tragedy
Time of plot: First century
Locale: Rome
First presented: 1670
Principal characters:
Titus, Emperor of Rome
Berenice, Queen of Palestine
Antiochus, King of Comagene
Paulin, Titus' confidant
Arsace, Antiochus* friend and confidant
Phenice, Berenice's confidante
Critique:
The elements of interest in Berenice
are three-fold: historical, political, and
sentimental. Racine has taken liberties
with history. In reality, Titus and
Berenice were drawn together by ambition,
and Antiochus, never king of Comagene,
was neither a friend to Titus, who
scorned his presumption, nor in love with
Berenice. Rather, the historical element
provides a brilliant background,
masterfully suggested by Racine's poetry. On
the political level, Titus represents the
ideal sovereign, according to Racine and
most of his contemporaries. Having the
highest conception of his duty and his
dignity, and being both guardian and
victim of Roman law, he sacrifices his
love for it. The interest supplied by
Berenice is mostly sentimental, but she
is considered one of Racine's most
convincing feminine characters. Titus, a
model for all sovereigns, is a tender lover
who suffers from the wrong he must do
to himself and to his love. Antiochus,
who receives confidences from both
lovers, suffers to see Berenice unhappy over
a man who is both his rival and his
friend. He drifts from the greatest hope
to the utmost despair. The play seems
to have inaugurated a new dramatic
approach corresponding to a new sensibility.
It contains some of Racine's most
beautiful love verses.
The Story:
The period of official mourning for the
Emperor Vespasian had ended. His son
Titus was to succeed to the throne, and
the rumor was that he would marry
Berenice, the Queen of Palestine, with whom
he had long been in love. Antiochus, the
war companion of Titus and a close
friend, was also Berenice's faithful
friend. Although he had been in love
with her for five years, she had never
responded to his feeling.
Antiochus, who had hoped that Titus
would not marry Berenice, went to see
her for the last time before he left Rome.
He gave orders to his confidant Arsace
to prepare everything for his departure.
Arsace was surprised that Antiochus
should be preparing to leave when Titus
was rising to great honor and would, in
all probability, want his friend close by.
Berenice, confident that the rumor of
her marriage with Titus was true, was
expecting a confirmation at any moment.
When Antiochus appeared to bid her
farewell, she cruelly reproached him for
declaring his love at that time. She
declared that she had enjoyed his
friendship and was depending on him to stay
as a dear witness to her happiness.
Titus, aware that his love for B£re"nice
was a cause of concern to the Roman
Empire, asked Paulin, a faithful
confidant, his opinion of the emperor's suit.
312

Paulin said frankly that the court would
approve anything Titus might do, but
that the Roman people would never be
willing to have Berenice as their empress.
Although Titus realized this fact only too
well, he tried desperately to cling to his
hope that somehow he could make her his
wife without arousing public indignation
and protest. Meanwhile, he sent for
Antiochus and asked him to take Berenice
back to her own country.
When Berenice arrived, full of love
and joy and believing that she would
soon marry Titus, the emperor, unable to
tell her the truth, blamed his father's
death for the restrictions imposed upon
him. She misundersfood him. however,
and with all her passion reaffirmed her
love, saying that he could never miss his
father as she would miss him if he did
not love her. Overwhelmed, Titus found
it impossible to tell her that he could
not make her his empress.
Left alone with Phenice, Berenice
showed some concern over Titus' actions
and speech. Then, remembering that
Titus was to see Antiochus, she imagined
that he was jealous of Antiochus and
therefore really in love with her, and
that soon everything would be all right.
When Antiochus arrived, Titus asked
him to talk to Berenice in his place, as a
friend, and to assure her that Titus was
sacrificing their love only out of the
demands of duty. Left alone with Arsace,
Antiochus did not know whether to
rejoice for himself or grieve for his friend.
Although his heart was filled with
renewed hope, he did not want to be the
one to tell Berenice of Titus' decision.
But in spite of his reluctance Berenice
persuaded him to reveal what Titus had
told him. On hearing his story she
refused to believe him and said that she
herself would see Titus. In a painful
interview she declared that she would
kill herself. Paulin had a hard time to
keep Titus from following her when
she left. Antiochus. alarmed, came to beg
Titus to save her life.
Titus met with the representatives of
the Senate. Meanwhile, he asked
Antiochus to reassure Berenice of his love.
Arsace came looking for Antiochus with
the news that Berenice, about to leave
Rome, had written a letter to Titus.
Antiochus announced that he was going to
commit suicide, and left. Berfn'ce,
coming out of her apartment, met Ti'us and
told him she was leaving immediately.
When Titus declared that he loved her
now more than ever, she pleaded with
him to show mercy and love her less
when he ordered her to leave. He found
the letter, which announced her decision
to die since she could not s*ay with him.
Saving that he could not let her go, he
called for Antiochus. When Beren;ce
collapsed, Titus, in despair, assured her
that he loved her to such a degree that
he would be willing to give up the
empire for her sake, even though he knew
that she would be ashamed of him if he
were to do so. If she would not promise
to stav alive, he declared, he would kill
himself. When Antiochus arrived, Titus
told him to be a witness of how weak
love had made h;s friend. Antiochus
replied that he had always loved Berenice
and that he had been prepar'ng to
commit suicide when Titus called him back.
Moved by so much grief on all sides,
Berenice accepted Titus' decision.
Leaving, she asked Antiochus to pattern his
decision on theirs. Thus the three went
different ways.
313

THE BETROTHED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Milan, Italy
First published: 1825-1826
Principal characters:
Lorenzo, a young Italian peasant
Lucia, his betrothed
Don Rodrigo, an arrogant nobleman
The Un-Named, a powerful outlaw nobleman
Don Abbondio, a parish priest
Fra Cristoforo, a Capuchin, friend of the betrothed couple
Critique:
The Betrothed, one of the world's great
historical novels, established its author as
the leading Italian romantic novelist of
the nineteenth century. It was the work
of Manzoni, and The Betrothed in
particular, which raised Italian fiction from the
low estate to which it had fallen and made
it, in the nineteenth century, assume a
high place in European fiction. The
simple, adventurous story that Manzoni
told has captivated readers ever since it
first appeared; in fact, the novel has had
a recent flurry of popular success. In the
best tradition of historical fiction,
Manzoni presented many facets of life and
culture in Milan during the 1620's, when
much of Italy was under Spanish
domination. In this novel there are not only
peasants and villainous nobles, who are the
chief characters, but also the bravos,
citizens, nuns, petty officials, churchmen in
high office, and scores of other types so
typical of seventeenth-century Italy.
The Story:
On the day before he was to have
performed the marriage ceremony for
Lorenzo and Lucia, two young peasants,
Don Abbondio, parish priest at Lecco,
was warned by two armed henchmen of
Don Rodrigo, a tyrannical noble, not to
marry the pair. In fear for his life, Don
Abbondio refused to perform the marriage
when asked to do so by the young couple,
and when they tried to trick him into
being present while they exchanged vows
he dashed away into hiding.
The reason for the warning given to the
priest was that Don Rodrigo himself
wished to seduce Lucia. He was not in
love with the girl, but he had wagered his
cousin that he could have her for his
enjoyment while she was still a virgin.
Toward this end he sent a crew of his
henchmen to abduct the girl from her
home. Appearing at Lucia's home, they
were frightened away by the tumult
aroused when the priest caused the alarm
to be sounded by tolling the church bell.
Lucia, frightened, sought aid from a
saintly Capuchin, Fra Cristoforo, who
gave her, her mother, and Lorenzo
temporary haven within the walls of the
monastery while he made arrangements
for the safety of all three away from the
wrath and wickedness of Don Rodrigo.
He sent the girl to seek sanctuary with a
Capuchin chapter at Monza, along with
her mother. He sent Lorenzo to another
monastery in Milan.
Arriving at Monza, Lucia was put
under the care of a nun who belonged to
a noble family that had placed her in the
convent rather than pay a dowry. The nun
was a headstrong woman and, in some
ways, wicked, but the Capuchins thought
Lucia would be safe under her care. Lucia
remained hidden for some weeks. Then
she was abducted from the convent by
ruffians who had received forced aid from
the nun.
After Lucia had escaped him, Don
314

Rodrigo caused a search to be made for
her until his henchmen discovered her
place of refuge. Fearing that he himself
could never take her from the sanctuary,
Don Rodrigo enlisted the aid of a
powerful noble called The Un-named. The
Unnamed, grateful for past services by Don
Rodrigo, agreed to aid his vassal in
abducting the girl and teaching a harsh lesson
to peasants who thought they could defy
the nobility.
The Un-named learned that one of his
men living near the convent had
undertaken to murder a nun who had displeased
the woman to whom the Capuchins had
sent Lucia. Because of the murder
committed for her benefit, the nun was forced
to enter into the scheme and send Lucia
out of the convent. Once out of the
sanctuary, Lucia was kidnaped by the
Un-named's men and taken in a coach to
his mountain retreat.
Meanwhile Lorenzo had failed to reach
the Capuchin monastery in Milan. On his
arrival in the city he had found the
populace in a turmoil because of a shortage of
bread created by famine. He had taken
part in a riot and afterwards he became
drunk in a tavern. While drunk, he had
babbled to a police spy that he had incited
a crowd to riot, and the spy had him
picked up by the police. Another mob
released Lorenzo from the police. With a
price on his head, he fled from the Duchy
of Milan into territory controlled by
Venice. There he located a distant
relative who found work for him in a silk
mill. When the authorities of Milan tried
to have him returned to that city, Lorenzo
fled again and assumed a fictitious name
in another Venetian community.
The Un-named, moved by Lucia's
beauty and innocence, refused to turn her
over to Don Rodrigo. Instead, he went to
Cardinal Federigo and announced that he
had suffered a change of conscience and
wished to end a career of tyranny and
oppression. The churchman welcomed him
as an erring parishioner. Lucia, released
from her imprisonment in the noble's
mountain castle, returned once again to
the keeping of her mother. Rather than
31
send the girl to her home and the
persecution of Don Rodrigo, Cardinal Federigo
sent Lucia and her mother to the home of
a noblewoman known for her charity.
There the girl would be safe.
Don Rodrigo, angry because Fra Cristo-
foro had been able to aid the girl and so
preserve her honor, caused the removal of
the Capuchin to Rimini.
More than a year passed, with Lorenzo
unable to return to the Duchy of Milan
because of his banishment.
Corresponding with Lorenzo through letterwriters,
Lucia told him that in her period of duress
she had vowed to the Virgin that she
would never marry if released from the
clutches of the ruffians who held her.
Finally, because of the time that had
intervened and the confusion that had
arisen because of a plague, Lorenzo
decided to return to Milan, where Lucia was
staying with the charitable noblewoman.
While searching for her in a city
desolated by the plague, he himself took the
disease. After his recovery he continued
his search, only to learn that Lucia had
been taken ill and sent to the pesthouse,
along with thousands of other
unfortunates who had contracted the disease.
At the pesthouse he found Fra Cristo-
foro, who had gone to Milan to aid the
sick. Among his patients the Capuchin
had Don Rodrigo, who had caught the
plague and was near death. Fra Cristoforo
made Lorenzo pardon Don Rodrigo and
promise to pray for his soul. Continuing
his search for Lucia, Lorenzo found her
convalescing in the women's section of
the pesthouse. After their reunion Fra
Cristoforo told Lucia that her vow to the
Virgin was not valid, inasmuch as she had
previously exchanged betrothal vows with
Lorenzo.
When the plague subsided, Lorenzo
went back to their village and found that
the plague had almost wiped out its
population as well, although sparing Don Ab-
bondio and Lucia's mother. While he was
there, the new heir to the estate arrived,
Don Rodrigo having succumbed to the
plague. With the new incumbent's aid,
for he was a friend of the cardinal who
5

had befriended Lucia, the betrothed
couple returned to Lecco and were at last
married by Don Abbondio.
After their marriage the couple moved,
again with the nobleman's aid, to a new
home in the Venetian territory, where
Lorenzo plied his trade in a silk mill and
he and Lucia reared a large and healthy
family.
316

BETWEEN THE ACTS
Type of work: Novel
Author. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Type of plot: Symbolic allegory
Time of plot: June, 1939
Locale: England
First published: 1941
Principal characters:
Bartholomew Oliver, the owner of Pointz Hall
Giles, his son
Isa, his daughter-in-law
Mrs. Lucy Swithin, his widowed sister
Mrs. Manxes a, and
William Dodge, guests at the pageant
Miss La Trobe, writer and director of the pageants
Critique:
Between the Acts, Virginia WoolFs
last novel, is a work filled with cryptic
and portentous symbols. Written during
the early years of World War II, it
presents with poetic and fragmentary vis!on
an outline of srark human drama against
the vast backdrop of history. In Mrs.
Woolfs handling of background there is
always an awareness of the primitive or
historical past, conveyed in images of the
flint arrowhead, the Roman road, the
manor house which is the scene of the
novel. England rather than time gives
the novel its underlying theme. But the
pageant which presents a p;cture of
English history from the Middle Ages to the
present is only an interlude between the
acts. The true drama is found in the lives
of the trivial, selfish, stupid, frustrated,
idealistic people who watch the pageant
and in the end are brought face to face
with themselves, actors in an older drama
than Miss La Trobe's pictures out of the
past or the threat of the war to come in
the planes droning overhead. The novel
represents Mrs. Woolfs final affirmation
of the artist's vision, the ability to
distinguish between the false and the true,
and to catch a glimpse of truth in the
mirror of reality.
The Story:
Pointz Hall was not one of the great
English houses mentioned in the
guidebooks, but it was old and comfortable
and pleasantly situated in a tree-fringed
meadow. The house was older than the
name of its owners in the county.
Although they had hung the portrait of an
ancestress in brocade and pearls beside
the staircase and kept under glass a
watch that had stopped a bullet at
Waterloo, the Olivers had lived only a little
more than a century in a district where
the names of the villagers went back to
Domesday Book. The countrys:de still
showed traces of the ancient Britons, the
Roman road, the Elizabethan manor
house, the marks of the plow on a hill
sown in wheat during Napoleon's time.
The owner of the house was
Bartholomew Oliver, retired from the Indian Civil
Service. With him lived his son Giles, his
daughter-in-law Isa, two small
grandchildren, and his w:dowed sisfer, Mrs. Lucy
Swithin. Bartholomew, a disgruntled old
man who lived more and more in the
past, was constantly snubbing his srster
as he had done when they were children.
Mrs. Swithin was a woman of careless
dress, good manners, quiet faith, and
great intelligence. Her favorite book was
an OutVne of H-story; she dreamed of a
time when Piccadilly was a
rhododendron forest in which the mastodon
BETWEEN THE ACTS by Virginia Woolf. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1941, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
317

roamed. Giles Oliver was a London
stockbroker who had wanted to be a farmer
until circumstances decided otherwise. A
misunderstanding had lately developed
between him and his wife Isa, who wrote
poetry in secret, suspected that Giles had
been unfaithful, and fancied herself in
love with Rupert Haines, a married
gentleman farmer of the neighborhood. Isa
thought that Mrs. Haines had the eyes of
a gobbling goose.
On a June morning in 1939, Pointz
Hall awoke. Mrs. Swithin, aroused by
the birds, read again in the Outline of
History until the maid brought her tea.
She wondered if the afternoon would be
rainy or fine, for this was the day of the
pageant to raise funds for installing
electric lights in the village church. Later she
went to early service. Old Bartholomew
walked with his Afghan hound on the
terrace where his grandson George was
bent over a cluster of flowers. When the
old man folded his newspaper into a cone
to cover his nose and jumped suddenly
at the boy, George began to cry.
Bartholomew grumbled that his grandson was a
crybaby and went back to his paper.
From her window Isa looked out at her
son and the baby, Caro, in her
perambulator that a nurse was pushing. Then she
went off to order the hsh for lunch. She
read in Bartholomew's discarded
newspaper the story of an attempted assault
on a girl in the barracks at Whitehall.
Returning from church, Mrs. Swithin
tacked another placard on the barn
where the pageant would be given if
the day turned out rainy; regardless of
the weather, tea would also be served
there during the intermission. Mocked
again by her brother, she went off to
make sandwiches for the young men and
women who were decorating the barn.
Giles was expected back from London
in time for the pageant. The family had
just decided not to wait lunch for him
when Mrs. Manresa and a young man
named William Dodge arrived
unexpectedly and uninvited. They had intended,
Mrs. Manresa explained, to picnic in the
country, but when she saw the Olivers'
name on the signpost she had suddenly
decided to visit her old friends. Mrs.
Manresa, loud, cheerful, vulgar, was a
woman of uncertain background married
to a wealthy Jew. William Dodge, she
said, was an artist. He was, he declared,
a clerk. Giles, arriving in the middle of
lunch and finding Mrs. Manresa's showy
car at the door, was furious; he and Mrs.
Manresa had been carrying on an affair.
After lunch, on the terrace, he sat hating
William Dodge. Finally Mrs. Swithin
took pity on the young man's discomfort
and took him off to see her brother's
collection of pictures. William wanted to
tell her that he was married but his child
was not his child, that he was a pervert,
that her kindness had healed his
wretched day; but he could not speak.
The guests, arriving for the pageant,
began to fill the chairs set on the lawn,
for the afternoon was sunny and clear.
Behind the thick bushes that served as
a dressing room Miss La Trobe, the
author and director of the pageant, was
giving the last instructions to her cast. She
was something of a mystery in the
village, for no one knew where she came
from. There were rumors that she had
kept a tea shop, that she had been an
actress. Abrupt, restless, she walked
about the fields, used strong language,
and drank too much at the local pub. She
was a frustrated artist. Now she was
wondering if her audience would realize that
in her pageant she had tried to give unity
to English history, to give something of
herself as well.
The pageant began. The first scene
showed the age of Chaucer, with pilgrims
on their way to Canterbury. Eliza Clark,
who sold tobacco in the village, appeared
in another scene as Queen Elizabeth.
Albert, the village idiot, played her court
fool. The audience hoped he would not
do anything dreadful. In a play
performed before Gloriana, Mrs. Otter of
the End House played the old crone who
had saved the true prince, the supposed
beggar who fell in love with the duke's
daughter. Then Miss La Trobe's vision
of the Elizabethan age ended and it was
318

time for tea during the intermission.
Mrs. Manresa applauded; she had
seen herself as Queen Elizabeth and
Giles as the hero. Giles glowered.
Walking toward the barn, he came on a coiled
snake swallowing a toad, and he stamped
on them until his tennis shoes were
splattered with blood. Isa tried to catch a
glimpse of Rupert Haines. Failing, she
offered to show William Dodge the
greenhouses. They discovered that they
could talk frankly, like two strangers
drawn together by unhappiness and
understanding.
The pageant began again. This time
the scene showed the Age of Reason.
Once more Miss La Trobe had written a
play within a play; the characters had
names like Lady Harpy Harraden, Sir
Spaniel Lilyliver, Florinda, Valentine,
and Sir Smirking Peace-be-with-you-all,
a clergyman. After another brief interval,
the cast reassembled for a scene from the
Victorian Age. Mr. Budge, the publican,
was made up as a policeman. Albert was
in the hindquarters of a donkey while
the rest of the cast pretended to be on a
picnic in 1860. Then Mr. Budge
announced that the time had come to pack
and be gone. When Isa asked Mrs.
Swithin what the Victorians were like,
the old woman said that they had been
like Isa, William Dodge, and herself,
only dressed differently.
The terrace stage had been left bare.
Suddenly the cast came running from
behind the bushes, each holding up a mirror
of some kind in which the men and
women in the audience saw themselves
reflected in self-conscious poses. The time
was the present of June, 1939. Swallows
were sweeping homeward in the late light.
Above them twelve airplanes flying in
formation cut across the sky, drowning
out all other sounds. The pageant was
over, the audience dispersed. Mrs.
Manresa and William Dodge drove away in
her car. Miss La Trobe went on to the
inn. There she drank and saw a vision
and tried to find words in which to
express it—to make people see once more, as
she had tried to do that afternoon.
Darkness fell across the village and
the fields. At Pointz Hall the visitors had
gone and the family was alone.
Bartholomew read the evening paper and drowsed
in his chair. Mrs. Swithin took up her
Outline of History and turned the pages
while she thought of mastodons and
prehistoric birds. At last she and her brother
went off to bed.
Now the true drama of the day was
about to begin, ancient as the hills,
secret and primitive as the black night
outside. Giles and Isa would quarrel,
embrace, and sleep. The curtain rose on
another scene in the long human drama
of enmity, love, and peace.
319

BEVIS OF HAMPTON
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: c. Tenth century
Locale: England, the Holy Land, Western Europe
First transcribed: c. 1200-1250
Principal characters:
Bevis, a knight, heir to the estate of Hampton
Josyan, a Saracen princess
Sir Murdour, the usurper of Hampton
Ascapard, a giant
Sabes, a knight, Bevis' uncle
Ermyn, a Saracen king, Josyan's father
Inor, and
Bradmond, Saracen kings
Critique:
This Middle English romance, also
sometimes spelled "Beves," comes to us
in many versions, including several from
France, Scandinavia, and Italy. The
manuscripts in English contain a wealth of
incident, much of which parallels that
found in the native romances of France
and other areas; however, Bevis of
Hampton is of special importance because it
also contains typically English elements
and thus serves as a fine example of the
transition from the rude Anglo-Saxon
tales to the more refined French
romances that prevailed after 1066. This
quality of the poem may be seen by the
later additions of much foreign material
to a typically English celebration of a
local hero. Although early romances are
seldom found to have great unity of plot,
Bevis of Hampton probably violates this
principle as much as such a form could.
As a metrical romance, Bevh of Hamv-
ton is not a success, but it is historically
significant and contains that most
common charm of early tales: the exuberant
force of great events told in a
fast-moving, sometimes even humorous, fashion.
The Story:
The bold spirit of Bevis was first
displayed when he was only seven years old.
His father had been treacherously
murdered, and now his mother and the
assassin were engaged in shameless revelry.
Bursfing into the castle hall, Bevis
cudgeled his mother's paramour, Sir
Murdour, into senselessness. The mother,
fearing future outbursts, sold him into
slavery.
But honor, not slavery, awaited the
courageous youth. Taken by slave
merchants from England to a Saracen court,
Bevis so impressed the king, Ermyn, that
the monarch made the youth a
chamberlain.
After hold'ng this position for eight
uneventful years, Bevis began a series of
remarkable exploits. The first was his
single-handed slaughter of sixty Saracen
warriors who made the error of deriding
his Christianity. Next, he attacked and
killed a man-eating boar and, to retain
his trophy, beat out the brains of twelve
keepers of the forest. These successes of
the fifteen-year-old boy led Ermyn to
place him in charge of a small troop that
was to defend the kingdom against the
aggression of Bradmond, a rival king.
Bevis, astride his incomparable horse
Arundel and wielding his good sword,
Morglay, laid waste to the enemy forces.
To his later misfortune, however, he
spared Bradmond's life.
Bevis' valor had not escaped the
attention of Josyan, the king's daughter. In
fact, this fair young girl became so
enamored of him that she agreed to
renounce her religion and become a Chris-
320

tian if he would marry her. Hitherto
reluctant, Bevis, under this condition,
consented. But when news of his
daughter's apostasy reached Ermyn, the
incensed king determined to get rid of her
corrupter. To accomplish this task, he
sent Bevis unarmed to the court of Brad-
mond with a sealed letter requesting the
bearer's execution. Only after a
considerable number of men were slain was
Bevis subdued and thrown into a
dungeon.
For seven long years Bevis remained
in the dungeon, and during that time
he grew in Christian virtue. At last
divine intercession, as a reward for his
piety, plus his own initiative (he killed
two jailers and a dozen grooms) enabled
him to end his imprisonment.
Immediately, he headed for Jerusalem to confess
his sins and give thanks to God. Killing
a sturdy knight and a thirty-foot giant on
the way, he reached the Holy City and
there received absolution, accompanied
by an injunction never to marry a woman
who was not a virgin.
Then, in order to be reunited with
Josyan, he started toward Ermony, but
on the way he learned that the maid,
during his imprisonment, had married
King Inor of Mounbraunt. To have one
last look at his beloved, he dressed
himself as a palmer and went to
Mounbraunt. There Josyan, discovering his
true identity, implored him to take her
away. He at first refused; but when she
revealed that, though seven years
married, she had by magic avoided
defloration, he relented.
After they had escaped from the city
by trickery, Bevis turned his thoughts
toward returning to England and
avenging his father's death. Several years
before he had learned that Saber, his uncle,
was waging war against Sir Murdour
and needed his nephew's help to gain the
victory. Imprisonment, however, had
detained Bevis, and he was to encounter
other obstacles before he again saw
England.
Killing two lions with one blow and
subduing a thirty-foot giant, Ascapard,
who then became his page, the
indomitable Bevis, accompanied by his mistress,
made his way to the coast. In a ship
taken from the Saracens, they set sail
for Germany. In Cologne, Josyan was at
last baptized. And it was near this city
that Bevis had the most perilous
adventure of his life. A burning dragon was
his opponent on this occasion. Only after
suffering a broken rib, being knocked
unconscious, and falling into a
miraculous well was Bevis able to defeat his
enemy.
Leaving Ascapard to protect Josyan
and taking with him a hundred men,
Bevis finally sailed to England. Pos'ng as
a French knight, he tricked Sir Murdour,
who was now his stepfather, into
providing him with arms and horses. These
supplies he then carried to his uncle and
they prepared to make war on Sir
Murdour.
Back in Cologne, meanwhile, Josyan
was in trouble, for a German earl had
conceived a great lust for her. After
tricking the giant into leaving, he fancied
that she was at his mercy. But the
resourceful Josyan insisted that he marry
her; then on the wedding night she
calmly made a slip knot in her girdle,
strangled the unsuspecting German, and
hung the corpse over a beam. The next
day, when the deed was exposed, the
unrepenting widow was sentenced to be
burned; but before the sentence could
be carried out, Ascapard and Bevis
arrived, rescued her from the stake, and
killed all who opposed them.
Taking Josyan and Ascapard with him
this time, Bevis returned to England to
pursue his war against Sir Murdour.
Although Sir Murdour had a large army
from Germany and another from
Scotland, Bevis, assisted by Ascapard, Saber,
and a moderate number of knights, won
the battle. Sir Murdour was thrown by
the victors into a caldron filled with
boiling pitch and molten lead; Bevis'
mother, on hearing the news, threw
herself from a lofty tower.
Bevis now had avenged his father's
death and regained his heritage. To com-

plete his happiness, he married Josyan.
But he was not destined to settle down
in peace. In London, where he had gone
to receive investiture, an event occurred
that led him into further adventures
after the son of King Edgar tried to s^eal
Bevis* horse and had his brains knocked
out by the animal's sudden kick. Because
King Edgar was inconsolable over the
loss of his son and intent on revenge,
Bevis proposed, in expiation of the crime,
to settle his land on Saber and to banish
himself and his horse from England.
Ascapard, after pondering this change
in his master's fortunes, decided to betray
him. Hastening to Mounbraunt, he made
an agreement with King Inor to bring
back Josyan. When the giant discovered
her in a forest hut, she had just given
birth to twin boys. Leaving the babies, he
seized Josyan and started for
Mounbraunt. Bevis, returning to the hut, took
up the children and began searching for
Josyan. Arriving at a large town, he
decided to stay there and await news of his
wife. While waiting, he entered a
tournament and overcame all adversaries. The
prize was the hand in marriage of a young
lady, daughter and heiress of a duke.
Bevis agreed to wed her after seven years,
if Josyan had not by then appeared.
Saber, meanwhile, had learned, through
a dream, of Josyan's plight.
Accompanied by twelve knights, he overtook the
giant on the road to Mounbraunt, killed
him, and freed Josyan. Then began a
long search for Bevis.
After nearly seven years of wandering,
they came to the town where Bevis was
residing, and Josyan was reunited with
her husband and children. Presently,
news arrived that Josyan's father was in
trouble; King Inor was attacking his
kingdom. Bevis went to his rescue, defeated
King Inor, and reached a reconciliation
with his father-in-law. When Ermyn died
a short time later, Bevis' son Guy became
King of Ermony. A second empire came
to the family soon after; in another fight
with King Inor, Bevis killed him and
became the ruler of Mounbraunt. To both
these countries, Bevis, by the method of
rewarding converts and butchering
recalcitrants, brought Christianity.
Again he was not destined to rule in
peace. News came that his uncle's lands
had been taken by King Edgar. Hurrying
to the assistance of Saber, Bevis and his
two sons led an attack on the city of
London in which sixty thousand men
were killed. To end the slaughter, Edgar
agreed that his only daughter should
marry Mile, son of Bevis.
Guy, Bevis' other son, resumed his rule
of Ermony; and Bevis and Josyan
returned to Mounbraunt. There Josyan,
stricken by a mortal disease, died in her
husband's arms. A few minutes later the
peace of death descended also on that
incomparable knight, Sir Bevis of
Hampton.
322

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Type of work: Philosophical treatise
Author: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
First published: 1886
In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-
1884) Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed in
parable and pseudo-prophetical cries the
philosophy of the Superman, the being
who would transcend man in his will to
power, going beyond conventional
morality and making his own law. Beyond
Good and Evil carries forward, in a
somewhat more temperate style, the same basic
ideas, but with particular attention to
values and morality. The central thesis of
the book is that the proud, creative
individual goes beyond good and evil in
action, thought, and creation.
Ordinary men are fearful, obedient,
and slave-like. The true aristocrat of the
spirit, the noble man, is neither slave nor
citizen; he is the lawmaker, the one who
determines by his acts and decisions what
is right or wrong, good or bad. He is
what the novelist Dostoevski in Crime
and Punishment calls the "extraordinary"
man.
To sharpen his image of the noble
man Nietzsche describes two primary
types of morality: master-morality and
slave-morality. Moral values are
determined either by the rulers or the ruled.
The rulers naturally regard the terms
"good" and "bad" as synonymous with
"noble" and "despicable." They apply
moral values to men, venerating the
aristocrat; but those who are ruled, the
subservient class, apply moral values
primarily to acts, grounding the value of an
act in its utility, its service to them. For
the noble man pride and strength are
virtues; for the "slaves" patience,
self-sacrifice, meekness, and humility are virtues.
The aristocrat scorns utility, cowardice,
self-abasement, and the telling of lies; as
a member of the ruling class he must seek
the opposite moral qualities. According
to Nietzsche:
The noble type of man regards
himself as a determiner of values; he does
not require to be approved of; he passes
the judgment: "What is injurious to
me is injurious in itself"; he knows
that it is he himself only who confers
honour on things; he is a creator of
values. He honours whatever he
recognizes in himself: such morality is self-
glorification.
Those who are ruled, the slaves,
construct a morality which will make their
suffering bearable. They are pessimistic
in their morality and come to regard the
"good" man as the "safe" man, one who
is "good-natured, easilv deceived, perhaps
a little stupid, un honhomme."
Nietzsche concludes that in slave-
morality "language shows a tendency to
approximate the significations of the
words 'good* and 'stupid/ " Perhaps
because Nietzsche regarded love considered
"as a passion" as of noble origin, he
maintained in the chapter titled
"Apophthegms and Interludes" that "What is
done out of love always takes place
beyond good and evil."
A proper interpretation of Nietzsche's
work is possible only if one remembers
that Nietzsche is not talking about actual
political rulers and the ruled, although
even in this particular case something of
his general thesis applies. He is speaking
instead of those who have the power and
will to be a law to themselves, to pass
their own moral judgments according to
their inclinations, and of those who do
not: the former are the masters, the
latter, the slaves. A revealing statement of
the philosophical perspective from which
this view becomes possible is the
apophthegm, "There is no such thing as
moral phenomena, but only a moral
interpretation of phenomena."
Nietzsche must be given credit for
having anticipated to a considerable
extent many of the prevailing tendencies
in twentieth-century philosophy. He is
sophisticated about language: he
understands the persuasive function of philos-
323

ophy; and he is unrelenting in his
naturalistic and relativistic interpretation of
man's values and moralities. If he errs
at all in his philosophic objectivity, it is
in endorsing the way of power as if, in
some absolute sense, that is the way, the
onlv right wav. This flaw in Nietzsche's
disdain of dogmatism, this capitulation
to dogmatism in his own case, is one
cause of the ironic character of his book.
Another weakness in the author which
makes something of a mockery out of
his veneration of the Superman is his
fear of failure and rejection. The fear is
so strong that it comes to the surface of
certain passages despite what must have
been the author's desire to keep it hidden.
Certainly he would not have appreciated
the irony of having others discover that
he himself is the slave he so much
despises! For example, in the last few pages
of the book Nietzsche writes that "Every
deep thinker is more afraid of being
understood than of being misunderstood."
A little later, in describing the
philosopher, he writes: ."A philosopher: alas, a
being who often runs away from himself,
is often afraid of himself. . . ." He ends
the book with a passage which begins,
"Alas! what are you, after all, my written
and painted thoughts!" and ends, ". . .
but nobody will divine . . . how ye
looked in your morning, you sudden
sparks and marvels of my solitude, you,
my old, beloved—evil thoughts!"
Although in context such passages seem to
be part of Nietzsche's pose of superiority,
it is interesting that out of context they
take on another, revealing meaning.
Nietzsche begins his book with a
chapter on the "Prejudices of Philosophers."
He claims that philosophers pretend to
doubt everything, but in the exposition
of their views they reveal the prejudices
they mean to communicate. Philosophers
of the past have tried to derive human
values from some outside source; the
result has been that what they reveal is
nothing more than their own dogmatic
"frog perspective." Nietzsche, on the
other hand, prides himself on being one
of the "new" philosophers, one who
suggests that the traditional values may be
intimately related to their evil opposites.
Nietzsche chides traditional
philosophers for scurrying after truth as if she
were a woman. He argues that false
opinions a-e often better tlnn true ones,
that the only test of an opinion is not
whether it is true or false but whether
it is "life-furthering, life-preserving,
species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing."
This is the point at which his own
dogmatism shows itself: in making "species-
rearing" the criterion of a worthy idea
he shows his own prejudice in favor of
the mar of power. He is unabashed in
his preference and argues that the
recognition of the value of untruth impugns
the traditional ideas of value and places
his philosophy beyond good and evil.
Nietzsche, declaring himself one who
wishes to bring about a transvaluation of
all values, argues that there is no more
effective way than to begin by supposing
that conventional morality is a sign of
slavery and weakness. The free man, the
man strong enough to be independent,
sees through the pretenses of philosophers
and moralists; he laughs, and creates a
new world.
According to Nietzsche himself, there
is danger in his philosophy. In fact, he
takes pride in that danger. He identifies
himself with the "philosophers of the
dangerous 'Perhaps' "—that is, with
philosophers who insist that "perhaps"
everyone else is mistaken. He offers certain
"tests" that one can use to determine
whether he is ready for independence
and command, and he says that one
should not avoid these tests, "although
they constitute perhaps the most
dangerous game one can play." He chooses
a dangerous name for the new
philosophers: "tempters."
Speaking for the "philosophers of the
future," the "opposite ones," Nietzsche
writes: ". . . we believe that severity,
violence, slavery, danger in the street and
in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's
art and deviltry of every kind,—that
everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical,
predatory, and serpentine in man, serves

as well for the elevation of the human
species as its opposite. . . ."
Considered coolly, what is this danger
and deviltry of which Nietzsche is so
fond? It is nothing more than the
possibility of new lines of development for the
human spirit. The danger and the
deviltry are such only in relation to the rule-
bound spirits of conventional men.
Nietzsche is philosopher enough to know
that the human being is too complex an
organism ever to have been confined or
exhausted by ways of life already tried
and endorsed. He calls attention to the
value of revolt by playing the devil or
tempter. The "most dangerous game/' or
the "big hunt," is man's free search for
new wavs of being in so far as he has the
power. The hunting domain is extensive;
it is the entire range of man's experiences,
both actual and possible. And there is no
need or use in taking "hundreds of
hunting assistants," Nietzsche tells us, for
each man must search alone; each man
must do everything himself in order to
learn anything.
Nietzsche's objection to Christianity is
that it has been a major force in limiting
man by imposing on him a static morality.
Since Nietzsche thinks of man's most
important creative function as the creation
of a new self, since he would urge each
man, as artist, to use himself as material
and fashion a new man, even a superman,
he rejects as life-defeating any force that
works against such a creative function.
He argues that men with neither the
strength nor the intelligence to recognize
the differences among men, to distinguish
the nobles from the slaves, have fashioned
Christianity with the result that man has
become nothing more than "a gregarious
animal, something obliging, sickly,
mediocre. . . ."
Whether one agrees with Nietzsche in
his estimate of Christianity and
philosophy, no one can justifiably deny his
claim that to look beyond good ana evil,
to throw over conventional modes of
thought, is to provide oneself with a
challenging, even a liberating, experience.
The old "tempter" tempts us into a
critical consideration of our values, and that
is all to the good.
325

BEYOND HUMAN POWER, II
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bjornstjerne Bjornson (1832-1910)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First presented: 1895
Principal characters:
Rachel Sang, a young liberal
Elias Sang, her brother, also a liberal
Bratt, an extremist union leader
Holger, an industrialist
Credo, his nephew
Spera, his niece
Pastor Falk, an idealist
Critique:
This play is the second and more
powerful half of a dual play in which
Bjornson examined social and economic
problems of his century. In Beyond
Human Power, II, he probed the apparent
inability of labor and management to
understand one another. Bjornson's own
solution is propounded by Pastor Falk,
who preaches Christian patience and
forbearance, and by Rachel Sang, a
moderate liberal whose aim it is to spread social
enlightenment. There is in the drama
a rather disconcerting mixture of
naturalism and expressionism which slightly
diminishes but does not too greatly detract
from the effectiveness of the play as a
document of social protest.
The Story:
In an industrial city of coastal Norway
the workingmen were on strike against
the factory owners. They were forced,
by their poverty and low social status, to
live in a dank chasm below the city,
called Hell.
The strike dragged on, and from day
to day the people grew more desperate
and restive. Maren Haug, a worker's
wife, was so distracted by the futility of
the situation that she bolstered her
courage with liquor and killed her two
children and herself. The entire community
of Hell attended the funeral, which was
conducted by the good but ineffectual
Pastor Falk. After the funeral service,
the people gathered in what constituted
the community square. There they
listened while Falk tried to give them
Christian advice; he told them that they
should not despair, that they should
avoid all violence, that the situation
demanded understanding and patience.
As he talked, Bratt, a former pastor
who was now leader of the workers'
union, appeared and the crowd joined
him Bratt harangued the workers with
hate-tilled words about the injustices
suffered by the inhabitants of Hell, and he
revealed that the owners were to meet
that night in the castle, which had been
bought and rebuilt by the town's most
affluent manufacturer. Bratt's attitude
suggested that violence might be done
the owners while they were assembled
in the castle, a symbol of their wealth
and power.
As the workingmen trooped away to
get money at the union office in Hell,
Elias Sang, a young sympathizer of the
workers, joined Bratt. Elias, in seeking
solutions to the workers' plight, had been
avoiding Bratt. Now, under Bratt's dem-
BEYOND HUMAN POWER, II by Bjornstjerne Bjornson, from PLAYS BY BJORNSTJERNE
BJORNSON, SECOND SERIES. Translated by Edwin Bjorkman. By permission of the publishers,
Charles Scnbner's Sons. Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed, 1941, bv Edwin
Bjorkman.
326

agogic influence, he had changed; he
appeared to believe that Maren Haug's
recourse was one that more of the
workers should take, that sensational examples
of martyrdom would impress the owners
and public opinion. Elias, clearly
determined on more violent methods than
those already employed, left Bratt deeply
disturbed.
Meanwhile the industrialist Holger had
turned his hilltop mansion over to Rachel,
the sister of Elias; it was to house the
workers' convalescent hospital that she
had established. Rachel and Elias, who
were from the northern part of Norway,
had inherited a fortune from an aunt
in America, and they had put their
fortune into worthy endeavors. Elias
devoted his time and money to the cause
of the union; Rachel had established a
hospital and a liberal newspaper. Holger,
Rachel's -friend, was about to move into
the medieval castle he had recently
bought and restored. At the same time
he took under his own supervision his
niece and nephew, Spera and Credo, the
children of his late liberal brother,
Summer. Since the death of their parents
Rachel had been their guide and mentor.
When a delegation of workingmen
called on Holger for the purpose of
settling the strike, his highhanded attitude
greatly incensed them. Aroused by his
insults, one workman leaped at Holger's
throat, but was restrained from doing
violence by his fellow workers. The
workingmen having left in despair, Rachel
went to Holger and advised him not to
hold the manufacturers' meeting in the
castle that night; she foresaw danger.
Holger, insisting that the meeting would
be held there, declared that it would be
lavish in hospitality and entertainment.
When Rachel hinted that the working-
men might set off dynamite in the
abandoned mine shafts which ran under the
castle, Holger said that such a move
would only aid the cause of the owners.
Elias, joining his sister in her new
hospital, was disturbed as he tried to
explain how deeply Maren Haug's suicide
had affected him, but Rachel was unable
to grasp the seriousness of his new
attitude even when he told her that the only
way to a new life was through death.
The two reminisced about their happy
childhood in northern Norway; then Elias
kissed Rachel goodbye, as though for the
last time, and left her.
Bratt, in excitement, went to Rachel
and disclosed his conviction that Elias
was about to end his life in the cause of
the workingmen. Rachel, understanding
at last, regretted that her brother had ever
come under the influence of a leader who
preached extreme, impracticable
measures. Bratt himself, realizing what he had
done, was filled with remorse.
In the castle, meanwhile, Holger was
host to manufacturers from the entire
country. The castle was festively lighted;
servants dressed in medieval costumes
carried refreshments to the guests; several
orchestras provided music. In the great
hall Holger presided over a meeting to
decide upon the adoption of his plan to
unionize the owners. The majority were
quite eager, like sheep, to follow his plan,
but two of the owners, Anker and Blom,
spoke in behalf of an enlightened attitude
toward the workingmen and toward
capital's function in society. When they saw
that they spoke to no avail, they left.
A short time later they returned to report
that they were unable to leave the castle.
All but one of the servants had
disappeared. When Holger demanded an
explanation from the remaining servant,
who was Elias in disguise, he was told
that the workingmen had filled the mine-
shafts beneath the castle with high
explosives, that the police who were
guarding the castle had been tricked away
from their posts, and that at his signal
the castle would be blown to bits. As
Elias moved to signal his people, Holger
shot him.
The owners were thrown into a panic.
One, out of his mind with fear, leaped
from a window and fell to his death in
the moat below. Holger, seeing that his
fellow owners were, in their way, as
327

wretched as the workingmen, joined
Anker in a prayer for the good of all in
the future; then the castle blew up.
Sometime later, at the hospital, Rachel
mourned the loss of her brother. She was
particularly disturbed by her inability to
understand that when she had last talked
to Elias he had then been intent upon
self-destruction; she thought that she
might have saved him. She felt bitterness
because radical Bratt had brought death
to her brother and barbarism to the city.
Believing that the workingmen were in
the right, she wondered why those in
the right had ever resorted to violence.
As Rachel talked with Halden, a young
architect, Holger, his right hand
paralyzed and his head swathed in bandages,
was brought to her in an armchair. When
he disclosed to her that he had shot Elias,
Rachel wept. Bratt, shaken out of his
right senses by the explosion, came also
to Rachel and disclosed, to her
amazement that Halden was the son of Holger
and that the architect, while employed in
rebuilding the castle, had aided the
workingmen in placing their dynamite.
After Bratt had wandered off
distractedly, Credo and Spera came to Rachel
and told her that Holger had given them
permission to stay with her. Credo
declared that he would dedicate his life
to the inventions of devices that would
bring mankind more leisure and
happiness. Spera said that her intention was
to work among women to bring them
more freedom. The three went to find
Holger, to ask him to forgive the
workingmen and to confer with them.
328

THE BIG SKY
Type of work: Novel
Author: A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (1901- )
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1830-1843
Locale: Western United States
First published: 1947
Principal characters:
Boone Caudill, a mountain man
Teal Eye, his Indian wife
Jim Deakins, his friend
Dick Summers, an old hunter
Jourdonnais, a keelboat captain
Poordevil, a half-witted Blackfoot
Elisha Peabody, a Yankee speculator
Critique:
For constant and varied action this
story is outstanding. Between episodes
much of the philosophy of the Western
hunter and trapper is set forth. Also,
there are passages of vivid description
in which the author communicates the
feel of the open spaces and the elemental
emotions of the men who roamed them.
Throughout the book realism is added by
putting the words and thoughts of the
characters into frontier dialect. The Big
Sky is a notable contribution to regional
and historical fiction.
The Story:
In 1830 Boone Caudill set out alone
for St. Louis and the West after a fight
with his father. Taking his father's rifle
with him, he headed for Louisville to get
out of the state before his father could
catch him. On the road he met Jim
Deakins, an easy-going redhead, and the
two decided to go West together. At
Louisville, where the sheriff and Boone's
father were waiting for the runaway, he
and Jim were separated. Boone escaped
by swimming the Ohio River to the
Indiana shore.
When Boone was falsely accused of
attempted theft and jailed, Jim, who had
followed him after their separation, stole
the sheriff's keys and released him.
Together the boys continued west.
In St. Louis they signed up on the
crew of the keelboat Mandan. Most of
the crew were French, as was the leader,
Jourdonnais. The boat was headed for
the country of the Blackfeet with a
store of whiskey and other goods to trade
for furs. Jourdonnais also had aboard
Teal Eye, young daughter of a Blackfoot
chief. She had been separated from her
tribe for some time; Jourdonnais hoped
to gain the friendship of the Indians by
returning the girl to them.
The keelboat moved slowly upstream
by means of poles, tow rope, and oars.
Boone and Jim found a friend in Dick
Summers, the hunter for the Mandan,
whose job was to scout for Indians and
keep the crew supplied with meat. He
made Boone and Jim his assistants.
Jourdonnais was worried about making
Blackfoot country before winter, and he
worked the crew hard. At last they
passed into the upper river beyond the
mouth of the Platte. All the greenhorns,
including Boone and Jim, were initiated
by being dunked in the river and having
their hair shaved off.
At last they were in buffalo country.
Summers took Boone with him to get
some fresh meat. Attacked by a hunting
party of Sioux, the white men escaped
unharmed; but Summers expected
trouble from the hostiles farther along
the line. A few days later the Mandan
was ambushed by a large Indian war
I*HE BIG SKY by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. By permission of the author, his agents Ruth & Maxwell Aley, and the
publishers, William Sloane Associates, Inc. Copyright, 1947, by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
329

party. Only the swivel gun on the deck
of the boat saved the white men from
death.
Just before the Mandan arrived at
Fort Union, two men tried to sabotage
the cargo. At Fort Union, Jourdonnais
accused the American Fur Company
trader, McKenzie, of trying to stop him.
McKenzie denied the charge, but he
tried to argue Jourdonnais out of
continuing upriver and offered to pay double
value for the Mandan s cargo.
Jourdonnais refused. At Fort Union, Boone met
his Uncle Zeb, an old-time mountain
man. He predicted that the days of
hunting and trapping in open country were
nearly over, but Boone and Jim did not
believe him.
When the Mandan arrived in Black-
foot country, Teal Eye escaped. The
crew began to build a fort and trading
post. One day Indians attacked and killed
all but the three hunters, Boone, Jim,
and Summers.
For seven years these three hunted
together, and Summers made real
mountain men out of the others. In the spring
of 1837 the three headed for a
rendezvous on the Seeds-Kee-Dee Piver, where
they could sell their furs and gamble,
drink, and fight with other mountain
men. They took with them a half
witted Blackfoot named Poordevil.
At the rendezvous Boone killed a man
who said that he was going to take
Poordevil's scalp. Then, after they had
had their fill of women and liquor, the
three friends left the camp. But
Summers did not go hunting with them.
No longer able to keep up the pace of
the mountain men, he went back to
settle in Missouri. Boone, Jim, and
Poordevil headed up the Yellowstone
toward Blackfoot country.
The journey was Boone's idea. He
knew that Teal Eye was now a grown
woman. Her beauty had remained in his
memory all those years; now he wanted
her for his squaw. On the way to the
Three Forks, Boone stole a Crow horse
and took a Crow scalp, two coups that
would help him to make friends with
the Blackfoot Indians.
They came upon a Blackfoot village
ravaged by smallpox, but Boone refused
to stop until he was certain that Teal
Eye was dead. At last he located her.
She was with a small band led by Red
Horn, her brother, who sold her to
Boone as his squaw.
Life was good to Boone. For five years
he lived happily among the Blackfoot
Indians with Teal Eye as his wife. Jim
lived in the Blackfoot camp also, but
he often left for months at a time to go
back down the Missouri. He craved
companionship, while Boone enjoyed living
away from crowds. On one of his trips
Jim met Elisha Peabody, a shrewd
Yankee speculating upon the future
prosperity of the Oregon Territory, who
wanted someone to show him a pass
where wagons could cross the mountains.
Jim and Boone contracted to show him a
suitable pass. Before Boone left, Teal
Eye told him that he would have a son
when he returned.
The expedition had bad luck. Indians
stole all the horses and wounded Jim
badly. Then snow fell, destroying all
chances to get food. Finally, Boone was
able to shoot some mountain goats. Jim
recovered from his wound, and the party
went ahead on foot. Boone and Jim
showed Peabody the way across the
mountains and into the Columbia Valley.
It was spring when Boone returned to
Teal Eye and his son.
The child, born blind, had a tinge of
red in his hair. The baby's blindness
brought a savage melancholy to Boone.
Then some of the old Indians hinted that
the red hair showed the child was Jim's
baby. Boone laid a trap to catch Jim with
Teal Eye. Jim, suspecting nothing, found
Teal Eye alone in her lodge; he tried to
comfort her about her child's blindness
and the ugly mood of her husband.
Boone mistook the intent of Jim's
conversation. Entering the lodge, he shot Jim
in the chest, killing him. He cursed
Teal Eye and left the Blackfoot camp.
330

Then he headed back to Kentucky to see
his mother before she died.
In Kentucky he found his brother
married and taking care of the farm.
Boone grew restless. Slowly it came to
him that he had been wrong about Jim
and Teal Eye, for he noticed that one
of his brother's children had a tinge of
red hair. His mother said that there
had been red hair in the family. When
a neighbor girl insisted that he marry
her because he had made love to her,
Boone started back to the West. He
longed for freedom and for Teal Eye.
In Missouri he visited Summers, who
now had a wife and a farm. Over their
whiskey, Boone revealed to Summers
that he had killed Jim. He knew now
that he had made a mistake. Everything
was spoiled for him—Teal Eye, and
all the West. The day of the mountain
man was nearly over; farmers were going
to Oregon. Without saying goodbye, he
stumbled out into the night. Summers
could see him weaving along the road
for a short distance. Then the darkness
swallowed him, and he was gone.
331

THE BIGLOW PAPERS
Type of work: Poetry, with editorial comment
Author: James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
First published: 1848 (First Series); 1867 (Second Series)
Principal characters:
Hosba Biglow, the Yankee author of the poems in The Biglow Papers
Birdofredum Sawin, his correspondent, a Massachusetts militiaman
(First Series), an adopted Rebel (Second Series)
Homer Wilbur, A.M., Parson of the First Church of Jaalam, author
of the editorial comments in The Biglow Papers
The Biglow Papers are political satire,
and as such, cannot be understood or
appreciated until the reader is acquainted,
first, with the policies and ideas being
satirized and, secondly, with the
conditions of their publication. In short, like
all satire, they must be seen in their
historical perspective before they can be
evaluated.
There are two series of the Pavers: The
first is an attack, from the
Whig-Abolitionist point of view, on the Mexican
War and the policies of Polk and the pro-
slavery forces that authorized it; the
second—all but the last paper—is an attack,
from the Northern-Republican point of
view, on the rebellious, slaveholding
South, the Democrats, and the
interventionist policies of England during the
first years of the Civil War; the last paper
is a condemnation of the "retrograde
movement" of President Johnson.
The history of the papers is rather
complex. In one sense, perhaps, it dates back
to 1840 and the beginning of Lowell's
relationship with Maria White, who became
his wife in 1844, for it was this visionary
and forceful young woman who first
converted him to the abolitionist cause. In
any case, by the time of the outbreak of
the Mexican War (1846), Lowell had
identified himself with the movement
by contributions to the National Anti-
Slavery Standard, which he edited for a
short time. Such a radical position was
more in keeping with the spirit of the
Emersonians than with that of the aloof
Brahmins with whom Lowell was allied
by birth, and the strong influence of his
wife's personality and ideals may be
inferred from the fact that Lowell grew
more and more conservative in the years
following her death. By the time of his
own death he was once more a
conservative, but in the 1840's his radical leanings
b-ought him into the camp of those
idealistic New Englanders who preached
freedom vociferouslv (and at times
effectively) and those shrewd and stubborn rural
Yankees who supported them for more
practical reasons. The First Series of The
Biglow Papers arose from the interaction
of these two elements: abolitionist
idealism gave it motivation; Yankee
shrewdness gave it form.
The first Biglow Paper appeared as a
letter to the editor of the Boston Courier,
a weeklv Whig newspaper, in June of
1846. The letter was signed by one Eze-
kiel Biglow of Jaalam, Massachusetts,
and its ostensible purpose was to
introduce a poem by Mr. Biglow's son, Hosea.
The important thing here was the poem,
an attack, in the Yankee dialect, on the
recruiting of the Massachusetts regiment
for service in a war which the
abolitionists and their sympathizers claimed was
being fought only to extend the borders
of slavery.
The response to this first letter prompted
Lowell to continue the poetic exertions of
young Mr. Biglow. "The success of my
experiment," wrote Lowell later in the
introduction to the Second Series, "soon
began not only to astonish me, but to
make me feel the responsibility of
knowing I had in my hand a weapon instead
of the mere fencing stick I had supposed."
Lowell, clad in the rustic armor of Hosea
Biglow, entered the jousts with this new-
332

found weapon eight more times in the
following two years. Five of these dialect
poems were direct political attacks on the
war party group and their sympathizers,
the Democrats and the "Cotton-" Whigs
(those Whigs, as opposed to the
"Conscience-" Whigs, who favored the war
and were more or less tolerant of slavery),
particularly those to be found in Big-
low's— and Lowell's—own Bay State. The
other three provided a more general satire
of the progress of the war, the ignorance,
inefficiency, and immorality of those in
command, and the mistreatment of the
Massachusetts enlisted man, both as
soldier and disabled veteran.
This general satire was presented
through a new character, Birdofredum
Sawin, whom Lowell introduced in his
second letter to the Courier. Sawin was
a ne'er-do-well Yankee from Jaalam who,
succumbing to the blandishments of the
recruiting officer, had enlisted as a
private in the Massachusetts regiment. From
Mexico, he wrote back to Hosea who
turned his letter into the Eastern
Massachusetts equivalent of iambic heptameter
couplets. Birdofredum's complaints and
caustic observations supplied the material
for papers Two, Eight, and Nine. In Two
he is engaged in combat. In Eight and
Nine he has been released from service
minus one eye and one arm; he still has
two legs, though by this time one of them
is wooden.
The third "character" of these papers
did not come upon the scene until the
poems were published in book form late
in 1848. This character is the pastor of
the First Church of Jaalam, the Rev.
Homer Wilbur, A.M., who is presented
as the editor of the volume. Admits
Lowell eighteen years later:
I needed on occasion to rise above the
level of mere patois, and for this
purpose conceived the Rev. Mr. Wilbur,
who should express the more cautious
element of the New England character
and its pedantry, as Mr. Biglow should
serve for its homely common-sense
vivified and heated by conscience.
The pedantry and the long-winded self-
centeredness of Mr. Wilbur add much to
the book—literally, for the learned
churchman's remarks take up more space in the
volume than do the nine original poems.
His verbose expatiations do, undoubtedly,
allow Lowell to express, as he says, "the
more cautious element of the Yankee
character," and they allow him, also, to
extend his satire by poking fun at the
excessive and distracting paraphernalia
that encumber learned works. Most
amusing, perhaps, are the "Notices of an
Independent Press" that Mr. Biglow
admittedly wrote himself and included the
lengthy material at the beginning of the
volume. And besides offering amusing
material, Mr. Wilbur can become
eloquent in his own right in defense of
freedom. For the most part, however, Lowell's
imitation of pedantry is too realistic.
Rather than acting as ballast, Mr. Wilbur
almost causes the book to sink. In the
end, his main contribution is that of
making the poems, when they finally appear,
more delightful because of their contrast
to his wordy prose.
The addition of Parson Wilbur was a
sign of the innate conservative caution
in Lowell's character as artist, critic, and
political figure. This caution and
conservatism betray themselves still more in
the Second Series of The Biglow Papers.
By the time the slavery question reached
its climax, Lowell was no longer the
outspoken young abolitionist radical of the
forties. By then he had been for six years
Professor of Belles-Lettres at Harvard
(having succeeded his friend Longfellow
to that chair in 1855), had founded and
was still editor of the Atlantic Monthly;
and, perhaps most important of all, had
lost his wife, Maria White Lowell (1853)
and had remarried. Occasionally he is
effective in the Second Series, especially
in the letters from Birdofredum Sawin
(who, after having been falsely
imprisoned in the South for two years, marries
a slaveholding widow and becomes a
sympathizer with the Southern cause) and
in the last part of the second paper, an
333

attack on England which ends with a
piece bearing the title of "Jonathan to
John":
The South says "Poor folks downl" John,
an "All men wpl" say we,—
White, yeller, black an* brown, John:
Now which is your idee?
Ole Uncle S. sez he, "I guess,
John preaches wal," sez he;
"But sermon thru, an* come to du,
Why there's the old J. B.
A-crowdin you an* me!"
In these he rises to the satirical heights
of the original collection, but for the most
part, as Lowell himself admitted, the
papers of the Second Series are more
studied, less spontaneous, more cautious
and less biting than those of the first.
Even the quaintness of the old Yankee
diction was intentionally diminished,
excused by the claim that Hosea was being
tutored by Parson Wilbur and was
learning proper spelling and academic
phraseology.
Lowell kept the Yankee dialect to the
last, but in the end his apparent need to
defend its use is another indication of
the dying out of his earlier satiric fire.
The individual numbers of the Second
Series were first printed in the Atlantic
Monthly; when, in 1867, they were
collected in book form, Lowell wrote for
them a lengthy introduction. A brilliant
contribution to linguistic knowledge, the
preface is made concrete by Lowell's
sensitive ear for dialect, and it is documented
by his voluminous reading in English and
American literature. Valuable as it is in
its own right, however, it is still an
apology; and when satire is apologized for, it
loses much of its force, much of its reason
for being.
As a whole, however, despite this
decreasing force, The Biglow Papers remain
an important American literary
monument. First, they are important
historically as vivid expressions of public
opinion in a particular section of the country
during an especially critical stage in the
health of the nation. Secondly, they are
important in our literary history as one
of the earliest examples of dialect
writing and as the very earliest example of
the Yankee dialect. Most of all, they are
intrinsically important as outspoken
examples of independent thought, of that
Yankee independence, outspokenness, and
ironic humor that are a part of national
tradition, a part that is being leveled by
the same forces which are reducing to
general national usage the regional
dialects that once expressed them.
334

BILLY BUDD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Svmbolic tragedy
Time of plot: 1797
Locale: Aboard a British man-of-war
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Billy Budd, a young British sailor
Captain Vere, commanding officer of H. M. S. Indomitable
Claggart, master-at-arms aboard the Indomitable
Critique:
This last work of Melville's, finished
shortly before his death in 1891, was
finally given to the reading public
through the offices of the author's
granddaughter. It came at a time to help
nurture the reawakened interest in
Melville's work which has been growing ever
since. If there is any message that the
author wished his readers to have from
him in the last days of his life, it must
be found here. Such message is probably
the symbolic assertion that evil is defeat
in the world and that natural goodness,
as exemplified in Billy Budd, the young
sailor, is invincible in the affections of
man, as represented by Captain Vere and
the rest of the navy men aboard the
Indomitable. This message seems to be
what the author himself clung to in his
last years when he was forgotten; he
seemed to have the feeling that his
apparent defeat at the hands of unknown
forces could still be a victory.
The Story:
In 1797 the British merchant ship
Rights-of-Man, named after Thomas
Paine's famous reply to Edmund Burke's
criticism of the French Revolution, was
close to home after a long voyage. As it
neared England, the merchant vessel was
stopped by a man-of-war, H. M. S.
Indomitable, and an officer from the
warship went aboard the Rights-of-Man to
impress sailors for military service. This
practice was necessary at the time to
provide men to work the large number of
ships which Britain had at sea for
protection against the French.
The captain of the Rights-of-Man was
relieved to have only one sailor taken
from his ship, but he was unhappy
because the man was his best sailor, Billy
Budd. Billy was what his captain called
a peacemaker; because of his strength
and good looks he was a natural leader
among the other sailors, and he used
his influence to keep them contented and
hard at work. Billy Budd seemed utterly
without guile, a man who tried to
promote the welfare of the merchant ship
because he liked peace and was willing
to work hard to please his superiors.
When informed that he was not to
return to England, but was to head for
duty with the fleet in the Mediterranean
Sea, he did not appear disturbed; he liked
the sea and he had no family ties. He
was an orphan who had been left in a
basket as a tiny baby on the doorstep
of a family in Bristol.
As the boat from the warship took him
away from the merchant ship, Billy called
farewell to the Rights-of-Man by name,
a deed which greatly embarrassed the
naval officer who had impressed him.
The remark was unwittingly satirical of
the treatment to which Billy was being
BILLY BUDD by Herman Melville. By permission of Mrs. Eleanor Melville Metcalf. From SHORTER
NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE, copyright, 1928, by Horace Livcright. Published by Liveright
Publishing Corp.
335

subjected by the navy.
Once aboard the Indomitable, Billy
quickly made himself at home with the
ship and the men with whom he served
in the foretop. Because of his good
personality and his willingness to work, he
soon made a place for himself with his
messmates and also won the regard of
the officers under whom he served.
At first the master-at-arms, a petty
officer named Claggart, seemed
particularly friendly to Billy, a fortunate
circumstance, Billy thought, for the master-
at-arms was the equivalent of the chief
of police aboard the warship. The young
sailor was rather surprised, therefore,
when he received reprimands for slight
breaches of conduct which were normally
overlooked. The reprimands came from
the ship's corporals who were Claggart's
underlings. Since the reprimands
indicated that something was wrong, Billy
grew perturbed; he had a deadly fear of
being the recipient of a flogging in
public. He thought he could never stand
such treatment.
Anxious to discover what was wrong,
Billy consulted an old sailor, who told
him that Claggart was filled with
animosity for the young man. The reason
for the animosity was not known, and
because the old man could give him no
reason Billy refused to believe that the
master-at-arms was his enemy. Claggart
had taken a deep dislike to Billy Budd
on sight, however, and for no reason
except a personal antipathy that the young
man's appearance had generated. Sly as
he was, Claggart kept, or tried to keep,
his feelings to himself. He operated
through underlings against Billy.
Not long after he had been warned
by the old sailor, Billy spilled a bowl of
soup in the path of Claggart as he was
inspecting the mess. Even then,
Claggart smiled and pretended to treat the
incident as a joke, for Billy had done
the deed accidentally. But a few nights
later someone awakened Billy and told
him to go to a secluded spot in the ship.
Billy went and met a sailor who tried
to tempt him into joining a mutiny. The
incident bothered Billy, who could not
understand why anyone had approached
him as a possible conspirator. Such
activity was not a part of his personality, and
he was disgusted to find it in other men.
A few days later the master-at-arms
approached the captain of the ship and
reported that he and his men had
discovered that a mutiny was being fomented
by Billy Budd. Captain Vere, a very fair
officer, reminded Claggart of the
seriousness of the charge and warned the
master-at-arms that bearing false witness in
such a case called for the death penalty.
Because Claggart persisted in his
accusations, Captain Vere ended the
interview on deck, which place he thought
too public, and ordered the master-at-
arms and Billy Budd to his cabin. There
Captain Vere commanded Claggart to
repeat his accusations. When he did, Billy
became emotionally so upset that he was
tongue-tied. In utter frustration at being
unable to reply to the infamous charges,
Billy hit the master-at-arms. The petty
officer was killed when he fell heavily
to the floor.
Captain Vere was filled with
consternation, for he, like everyone except the
master-at-arms, liked Billy Budd. After
the surgeon had pronounced the petty
officer dead, the captain immediately
convened a court-martial to try Billy for
assaulting and murdering a superior officer.
Because England was at war, and because
two mutinies had already occurred in
the British navy that year, action had to
be taken immediately. The captain could
not afford to overlook the offense.
The court-martial, acting under
regulations, found Billy Budd guilty and
sentenced him to be hanged from a yard-
arm the following morning. Even under
the circumstances of Claggart's death,
there was no alternative. The only
person who could have testified that the
charge of mutiny was false was the man
who had been killed.
336

All the ship's company were dismayed
when informed of the sentence. But
Billy bore no animosity for the captain
or for the officers who had sentenced him
to die. When he was placed beneath the
yardarm the following morning, he called
out a blessing on Captain Vere, who, he
realized, had no other choice in the
matter but to hang him. It was quite strange,
too, that Billy Budd's calm seemed even
to control his corpse. Unlike most hanged
men, he never twitched when hauled
aloft by the neck. The surgeon's mate,
when queried by his messmates, had no
answer for the unique behavior of the
corpse.
Some months later Captain Vere was
wounded in action. In the last hours
before his death he was heard to murmur
Billy Budd's name over and over again.
Nor did the common sailors forget the
hanged man. For many years the yard-
arm from which he had been hanged
was kept track of by sailors, who
regarded it almost as reverently as Christians
might revere the Cross.
337

THE BIRDS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Second Peloponnesian War
Locale: Athens and Nephelo-Coccygia, the city of the birds
First presented: 414 B.C.
Principal characters:
Euelpides, an Athenian
Pisthetaerus, his friend
Epops, the hoopoe, formerly a man
The Birds
Critique:
It has been said that The Birds was
written to ridicule the Athenian
expedition to Sicily, which ended in disaster for
the Greeks in 413 B.C. Quite aside from
the political theme, however, The Birds
is rollicking commentary on the simpler
level of the customary weaknesses of Man
and his institutions: his eternal
dissatisfaction with his lot; his habit of ignoring
the divinities which shape his ends; his
crowded, evil-breeding cities, and his god-
provoking tendency forever to be
disturbing the equilibrium of the universe.
Pisthetaerus, with his irresistible rhetoric,
surely is a forebear of the men who sell
uplift, salvation, or the world's goods with
equal glibness and ease.
The Story:
Euelpides and Pisthetaerus, two
disgruntled citizens, wanted to escape
from the pettiness of life in Athens.
They bought a jay and a crow,
which Philocrates, the bird-seller, told
them could guide them to Epops, a bird
not born of birds; from Epops they hoped
to learn of a land where they could live a
peaceful life.
The jay and the crow guided the pair
into the mountains and led them to a
shelter hidden among the rocks. They
knocked and shouted for admittance.
When Trochilus, Epops' servant, came to
the door, Euelpides and Pisthetaerus
were prostrated with fear; they insisted
that they were birds, not men, a species
the birds intensely disliked. Epops, a
hoopoe with a triple crest, emerged from
the shelter to inform the Athenians that
he had once been a man named Tereus,
whom the gods had transformed into a
hoopoe. At that particular time, however,
Epops did not present a very colorful
aspect, since he was molting.
When the Athenians revealed the
purpose of their visit, Epops suggested that
they move on to the Red Sea, but they said
they were not interested in living in a
seaport. Epops suggested several other
places, but on one ground or another the
pair objected to all suggestions which
Epops had to offer. The truth was that
they wanted to stay among the birds and
establish a city. Interested in this novel
idea, Epops summoned the birds that
they too might hear of the plan.
The birds swarmed to the shelter from
all directions until every species of Old
World birds was represented at the
gathering. The leader of the birds, fearful
of all men, was dismayed when he learned
that Epops had talked with Euelpides and
Pisthetaerus, and he incited all the birds
to attack and to tear the Athenians to
pieces. To defend themselves, Euelpides
and Pisthetaerus took up stewpots and
other kitchen utensils. But Epops rebuked
the birds for their precipitous behavior.
Finally, heeding his suggestion that
perhaps they could profit from the plan of the
two men, they settled down to listen.
Epops assured the birds that Euelpides
and Pisthetaerus had only the most
honorable of intentions.
Pisthetaerus told the birds that they
were older than man. In fact, the feath-
338

ered tribes had once been sovereign over
all creation, and even within the memory
of man birds were known to have been
supreme over the human race. For that
reason, he continued, men used birds as
symbols of power and authority. For
example, the eagle was the symbol of Zeus,
the owl Athena's symbol, and the hawk,
Apollo's.
Seeing that the birds were vitally
interested in his words, Pisthetaerus
propounded his plan: the birds were to build
a wall around their realm, the air, so that
communication between the gods and
men would be cut off. Both gods and men
would then have to recognize the
supremacy of the birds. If men proved
recalcitrant, the sparrows would devour their
grain and crows would peck out the eyes
of their livestock. If men acceded, the
birds would control insect plagues and
would help men to store up earthly
treasures.
The birds were delighted with his plan.
Epops ushered the Athenians into his
shelter, where the pair momentarily forgot
their project when they saw Epops' wife,
Procne, who had an uncanny resemblance
to a desirable young maiden. Meanwhile
the leader of the birds spoke of man's
great debt to the birds. Urging mankind
to look upon the birds as the true gods, he
invited all men to join the birds and
acquire wings.
Pisthetaerus, winged like a bird,
organized the building of the wall and
arranged all negotiations with gods and
men. As he prepared to make propitiatory
offerings to the new gods, he was beset
by opportunists who had heard of the
great project. An indigent poetaster
offered to glorify the project in verse. A
charlatan offered worthless prophecies.
But when Meton, a surveyor, offered to
divide the realm of the air into the
principal parts of a typical Greek city,
Pisthetaerus thrashed him. An inspector
and a dealer in decrees importuned him
and were likewise thrashed and
dismissed. Annoyed by these money-seeking
hangers-on, Pisthetaerus retreated into
Epops' shelter to sacrifice a goat. The
leader of the birds again sang the praises
of his kind and told how the birds were
indispensable to the welfare of mankind.
The sacrifice was completed, and
shortly thereafter the wall was finished,
all the birds, using their various
specialized organs, having cooperated in the
construction. Then a messenger reported that
a winged goddess, sent by Zeus, had got
through to the bird kingdom in spite of
the wall. Pisthetaerus issued a call to arms
—the birds would war with the gods.
When Iris, the goddess of the rainbow,
made her appearance. Pisthetaerus was
enraged at the ineffectualness of his wall.
Oblivious of the importance assumed by
the birds under Pisthetaerus' influence,
Iris declared that she was on her way to
men to ask them to make a great sacrifice
to the Olympian gods. When Pisthetaerus
inferred that the birds were now the only
gods, Iris pitied him for his presumption
and warned him not to arouse the ire of
the Olympians.
A messenger who had been sent as an
emissary from the birds to men returned
and presented Pisthetaerus with a gift, a
golden chaplet. Men, it seemed, were
delighted with the idea of the bird city;
thousands were eager to come there to
take wings and to live a life of ease.
Pleased and flattered, the birds welcomed
the men as they arrived.
First came a man with thoughts of
parricide, who felt that he would at last be
free to murder his father. Pisthetaerus
pointed out to the would-be parricide that
the young bird might peck at his father,
but that later it was his duty to administer
to his father. He gave the vouth wings and
sent him off as a bird-soldier in order to
make good use of his inclinations. Next
a poet arrived and asked for wings so that
he might gather inspiration for his verse
from the upper air. Pisthetaerus gave him
wings and directed him to organize a
chorus of birds. An informer arrived and
asked for wings the better to practice his
vicious profession; Pisthetaerus whipped
him and in despair removed the baskets of
wings which had been placed at the gate.
Prometheus, the friend of mankind,
339

made his appearance. Although he still
feared the wrath of Zeus, he raised his
mask and reported to Pisthetaerus, who
recognized him, that men no longer
worshipped Zeus since the bird city, Nephelo-
Coccygia, had been founded. He added
that Zeus, deeply concerned, was sending
a peace mission to the city and was even
prepared to offer to Pisthetaerus one of
his maidservants, Basileia, for his wife.
Prometheus then sneaked away to return
to the abode of the gods.
Poseidon, Heracles, and Triballus, the
barbarian god, came upon Pisthetaerus as
he was cooking a meal. Pisthetaerus,
visibly impressed by their presence, greeted
them nonchalantly. They promised him
plenty of warm weather and sufficient
rain if he would drop his project. Their
argument might have been more effective
had they not been so noticeably hungry.
Pisthetaerus declared that he would invite
them to dinner if they promised to bring
the scepter of Zeus to the birds. Heracles,
almost famished, promised, but Poseidon
was angered by Pisthetaerus* audacity.
Pisthetaerus argued that it was to the
advantage of the gods that the birds be
supreme on earth since the birds, who
were below the clouds, could keep an eye
on mankind, while the gods, who were
above the clouds, could not. The birds
could, in fact, mete out to men the justice
of the gods. The envoys agreed to
this argument, but they balked when
Pisthetaerus insisted also upon having
Basileia as his wife.
After a heated discussion Pisthetaerus
convinced Heracles, a natural son of Zeus,
that he would receive nothing on the
death of Zeus, and that Poseidon, as
brother of Zeus, would get Heracles'
share of Zeus' property. Heracles and
Triballus prevailed over Poseidon in the
hot dispute that followed and Basileia
was conceded after much argument.
The envoys then sat down to dinner.
Pisthetaerus, having received the scepter
of Zeus, became not only the king of the
birds but also the supreme deity.
340

THE BLACK ARROW
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1888
Principal characters:
Sir Daniel Brackley, a political turncoat
Richard Shelton (Dick)* his ward
Joanna Seduey, Lord Foxham's ward
Sm Oliver Oates, Sir Daniel's clerk
Ellis Duckworth, an oudaw
Lawless, another outlaw, Dick's friend
Richard, Duke of Gloucester
Critique:
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two
Roses is a historical romance intended
primarily for younger readers. Set in
the fifteenth century, the historical
background of the plot deals with a minor
battle of the Wars of the Roses and
the appearance of the infamous Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, as a young
soldier. More interesting are the swiftpaced
adventures of Dick Shelton in his
attempts to outwit his scheming guardian,
Sir Daniel Brackley. Children have been
fortunate that one of the gifted writers
of the last century lent his talents to
their pleasure.
The Story:
One afternoon in the late springtime,
the Moat House bell began to ring. A
messenger had arrived with a message
from Sir Daniel Brackley for Sir Oliver
Oates, his clerk. When the peasants
gathered at the summons of the bell, they
were told that as many armed men as
could be spared from the defense of Moat
House were to join Sir Daniel at Kettley,
where a battle was to be fought between
the armies of Lancaster and York.
There was some grumbling at this
order, for Sir Daniel was a faithless man
who fought first on one side and then on
the other. He had added to his own
lands by securing the wardships of
children left orphans in those troubled times,
and it was whispered that he had
murdered good Sir Harry Shelton to make
himself the guardian of young Dick
Shelton and the lord of the Moat House
estates.
Planning to marry Dick Shelton to the
orphaned heiress of Kettley, Joanna Sed-
ley, Sir Daniel had ridden there to take
charge of the girl. Dick, knowing
nothing of his guardian's plans, remained
behind as one of the garrison of the manor.
Old Nick Appleyard, a veteran of Agin-
court, grumbled at the weakness of the
defense in a country overrun by
stragglers from warring armies and insisted
that Moat House lay open to attack. His
prophecy came true. While he stood
talking to Dick and Bennet Hatch, Sir
Daniel's bailiff, a black arrow whirred out
of the woods and struck Nick between
the shoulder blades. A message on the
shaft indicated that John Amend-All, a
mysterious outlaw, had killed old Nick.
Sir Oliver Oates trembled when he
read the message on the arrow. Shortly
afterward, he was further disturbed by a
message, pinned on the church door,
announcing that John Amend-All would
kill Sir Daniel, Sir Oliver, and Bennet
Hatch. From it Dick learned that the
outlaw accused Sir Oliver of killing Sir
Harry Shelton, his father. But Sir Oliver
swore that he had had no part in that
knight's death. Dick decided to remain
quiet until he learned more about the
matter and in the meantime to act in all
fairness to Sir Daniel.
It was decided that Hatch should re-
341

main to guard Moat House while the
outlaws were in the neighborhood. Dick
rode off with ten men-at-arms to find Sir
Daniel. He carried a letter from Sir
Oliver telling of John Amend-AlFs
threats.
At Kettley Sir Daniel was awaiting the
outcome of a battle already in progress,
for he intended to join the winning side
at the last minute. Sir Daniel was also
upset by the outlaw's threats, and he
ordered Dick to return to Moat House
with a letter for Sir Oliver. He and his
men left to join the fighting; but not
before he roundly cursed his luck because
Joanna Sedley, whom he held hostage,
had escaped in boy's clothing. He ordered
a party of men-at-arms to search for the
girl and then to proceed to Moat House
and strengthen the defenses there.
On his return journey Dick met
Joanna, still dressed as a boy, who told
him that her name was John Matcham.
Dick, unaware that she was Sir Daniel's
prisoner, promised to help her reach the
abbey at Holywood. As they hurried on,
they came upon a camp of the outlaws
led by Ellis Duckworth, another man
ruined by Sir Daniel. Running from the
outlaws, they saw the party of Sir
Daniel's retainers shot down one by one.
The cannonading Dick heard in the
distance convinced him that the soldiers of
Lancaster were faring badly in the day's
battle. Not knowing on which side Sir
Daniel had declared himself, he
wondered whether his guardian were among
the victors or the vanquished.
Dick and his companion slept in the
forest that night. The next morning a
detachment of Sir Daniel's men swept by
in disorderly rout. Soon afterward they
saw a hooded leper in the woods. The
man was Sir Daniel, attempting to make
his way back to Moat House in disguise.
He was dismayed when he heard that
the outlaws had killed a party of his
men-at-arms.
When the three arrived at Moat
House, Sir Daniel accused Dick of
distrust. He claimed innocence in the death
of Dick's father and forced Sir Oliver to
do the same. Another black arrow was
shot through a window into a room in
which the three were talking. Sir Daniel
gave orders to defend Moat House against
attack. Dick was placed under close
watch in a room over the chapel, and he
was not allowed to see his friend, John
Matcham.
That night, when John Matcham came
secretly to the room over the chapel, Dick
learned that the companion of his
adventures in the forest was really Joanna
Sedley, the girl to whom Sir Daniel had
betrothed him. Warned that he was
now in danger of his life, Dick escaped
into the forest. There he found Ellis
Duckworth, who promised him that Sir
Daniel would be destroyed.
Meanwhile the war went in favor of
Lancaster, and Sir Daniel's fortunes rose
with those of the house he followed. The
town of Shoreby was full of Lancastrians
all of that summer and fall, and there
Sir Daniel had his own house for his
family and followers. Joanna Sedley was
not with him; she was kept in a lonely
house by the sea, under the care of the
wife of Bennet Hatch. Dick and an
outlaw companion, Lawless, went to the
town, and while reconnoitering Joanna's
hiding place Dick encountered Lord Fox-
ham, enemy of Sir Daniel and Joanna's
legal guardian. Lord Foxham promised
that if Joanna could be rescued she would
become Dick's bride. The two men
attempted a rescue by sea in a stolen boat,
but a storm almost sank their boat and
Lord Foxham was injured when the
party attempted to land.
That winter Dick and his faithful
companion, Lawless, returned to Shoreby.
Disguised as priests, they entered Sir
Daniel's house and were there protected
by Alicia Risingham, Joanna's friend and
the niece of a powerful Lancastrian lord.
When Dick and Joanna met, she told him
that the following day she was to marry
Lord Shoreby against her will. An alarm
was given when Dick was forced to kill
one of Lord Shoreby's spies. Still in the
disguise of a priest, he was taken to Sir
Oliver Oates, who promised not to betray
342

Dick if he would remain quietly in the
church until after the wedding of Joanna
and Lord Shoreby. During the night
Lawless found Dick and gave him the
message that Ellis Duckworth had
returned and would prevent the marriage.
As the wedding procession entered the
church, three archers discharged their
black arrows from a gallery. Lord
Shoreby fell, two of the arrows in his body.
Sir Daniel was wounded in the arm. Sir
Oliver Oates denounced Dick and
Lawless and they were taken before the Earl
of Risingham. But Dick argued his cause
with such vigor, aided by Joanna and
Alicia, that the earl agreed to protect
him from Sir Daniel's anger. Later,
learning from Dick that Sir Daniel was
secretly plotting with the Yorkist leaders,
the earl set him and Lawless free.
Dick made his escape from Sir Daniel's
men only to be captured by the old
seaman whose skiff he had stolen on the
night he and Lord Foxham had attempted
to rescue Joanna from Sir Daniel. It took
him half the night to elude the angry
seaman and his friends. In the
morning he was in time to meet, at Lord Fox-
ham's request, young Richard of York,
Duke of Gloucester. On his arrival at
the meeting place he found the duke
attacked by bandits. He saved Richard's
life and later fought with the duke in
the battle of Shoreby, where the army of
Lancaster was defeated. For his bravery
in the fight he was knighted. Afterward,
when Richard was giving out honors,
Dick claimed as his portion only the
freedom of the old seaman whose boat
he had stolen.
Pursuing Sir Daniel, Dick rescued
Joanna and took her to Holywood. The
next morning he encountered Sir Daniel
in the forest near the abbey. Dick was
willing to let his enemy escape, but Ellis
Duckworth, lurking nearby, killed the
faithless knight. Dick asked the outlaw
to spare the life of Sir Oliver Oates.
Dick and Joanna were married with
great honor. They lived quietly at Moat
House, withdrawn from the bloody
disputes of the houses of Lancaster and
York. Both the old seaman and Lawless
were cared for in their old age, and
Lawless finally took orders and died a friar.
343

BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON
Type of work: Record of travel
Author: Rebecca West (Cecily Fairfield Andrews, 1892-
Type of plot: Travel sketches
Time of plot: 1937
Locale: Yugoslavia
First published: 1941
Principal characters:
Rebecca West, a journalist
Henry Andrews, her husband
Constantine, a Yugoslavian poet
Gerda, Constantine s German wife
Critique:
Miss West's book is more than a
narrative of her journey through Yugoslavia.
She spent several years working on the
book, building up a study of Yugoslavia
and its people around the impressions
she had gained while traveling in the
country. The result is that for every page
of travel description there are several
pages of material about the country
gleaned from study and reading. The
work is full of digressions on
anthropology, architecture, cultural history,
literature, politics, philosophy, and
Yugoslavian psychology.
The Story:
Rebecca West had not seen Yugoslavia
until 1936, when she made a lecture
tour in that country; but it impressed her
so greatly that she decided to travel
throughout the country as a tourist in
1937. She also felt that it was important
to know something of the country
because of the effect it might have upon
world politics after the death of its king,
Alexander, in 1937. It had been of great
importance twenty-three years before,
when the assassination of Franz
Ferdinand in Sarajevo had precipitated a world
conflict.
The author and her husband entered
Yugoslavia by railroad on the line which
ran from Munich, Germany, to Zagreb,
Yugoslavia. Their journey was not a very
interesting one, except for the antics of
four fat German tourists who shared their
compartment and told of the advantages
BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON by Rebecca West. By permission of the author, her agent A. D. Petert,
London, and the publishers, The Vikias Piress, Inc. Copyright, 1940, 1941, by Rebecca West.
of Germany over the barbaric country
they were entering. Zagreb was
interesting because it was inhabited mainly by
Croats, one branch of the south Slavic
racial group.
In Zagreb they met Constantine, a
Yugoslavian poet who had become a
friend of the author on her previous trip
to his country. Constantine showed them
about the city, introduced them to various
interesting people, and promised to travel
with them during part of their journey.
In Zagreb the tourists were surprised at
the depth of feeling and the frequent
arguments between the various
Yugoslavian groups. There were Serbs,
Slovenes, and Croats, all under the
government at Belgrade, and all disagreeing
heartily on government policies. The
country was also divided internally by
religious beliefs. There were three main
religious groups, the Roman Catholics,
the Orthodox Catholics, and the
Moslems. The latter were either Turks who
had remained in the country when the
Turkish regime had been driven out
over a century before, or Yugoslavs who
had accepted the religion of the Moslems
during the five centuries of Turkish
occupation of that part of Europe. Miss
West noted that in Zagreb the people
lived in physical comfort, if not in
political comfort. She thought that the
city had a warm and comfortable
appearance, but that the Austrian influence
had deprived it of much of its originality
and naivet6.
344

From Zagreb the travelers went to
visit a casde which had been turned into
a sanatorium. They found the place
spodessly clean for such an old casde.
The sanatorium was one of the few
places in Yugoslavia in which there was
litde political speculation or argument.
The doctors were too busy for pohtics.
Patients were forbidden to discuss such
matters.
Returning to Zagreb, the author and
her husband went next to Sushak on the
Dalmatian coast. Their first impression
of the coast was one of bare, treeless
hillsides and shouting, angry men. It
was poor country. While at Sushak,
they crossed the river to Fiume, which
seemed to be the kind of city one
would find in a bad dream. What struck
the travelers as being the worst aspect of
this town was the number of officials
throughout the city who demanded to
see their passports.
After visiting Fiume they traveled by
steamer to Senj, a city which interested
them because it had played a decisive
part in keeping the Turks from
overrunning Western Europe in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. The town
had financed pirate vessels which
terrorized the Turks and had kept them from
using the western part of the
Mediterranean and the Adriatic.
Farther south on the Dalmatian coast
they visited Split, and found it to have
an almost Neapolitan air. The town was
also famed for the palace Diocletian had
built there. Miss West learned that
from Diocletian's palace
eighteenth-century British architects had borrowed the
Georgian style so popular in England
and in some parts of the American
colonies.
This information came to her from
a young Englishman she met at Split.
The young man was making a living in
the city by teaching English. For him
the Dalmatian coast was the closest
thing to a terrestrial heaven. Miss West
was surprised at the number of old
buildings still in use. Diocletian's mausoleum,
for example, had been turned into a
Christian cathedral. At Spht Miss West
disclosed that she had little respect for
the Romans and thought far more highly
of the Croats and Slavs. She hoped that
school children were not being impressed
with the idea that the Romans had been
a great and glorious influence on the
Yugoslavian territory and people, for she
saw that their poverty and their
reputation as barbarians were the result of the
Roman attitude toward their forebears,
an attitude maintained by Central
Europeans in the twentieth century.
The last stop on the Dalmatian coast
was Dubrovnik, a disappointment to the
travelers. There they wired their friend
Constantine to meet them at Sarajevo, to
which they were going by automobile
from Dubrovnik. On the way to Sarajevo
they passed a valley which Miss West
could describe only as something out of
Baron Munchausen's tales. This valley
was a lake in the wintertime, but in the
spring the water went out of the valley
through some unknown oudet to the
sea, leaving fertile fields in which
peasants planted crops during the
summer months.
At Sarajevo they met Constantine and
his German wife, Gerda. The German
woman made the air about the party a
bit tense because of the deprecating
attitude which she, like most Germans,
took toward Yugoslavians. While at
Sarajevo they wandered all over the town
and were able to visit the family of the
man who had killed Franz Ferdinand in
1914.
The next phase of their journey was
a rail trip to the capital city of Belgrade,
where they were impressed by the large
supply of good food available and the
provincial air of the capital and its
people.
That part of the journey by rail from
Belgrade to Skoplje was almost as
uninteresting as the trip from Munich to
Zagreb. More enjoyable was a stay at
Lake Naum, on the southern edge of
Yugoslavia near Greece and Albania. It
345

was a wild and beautiful part of the
country, despite the poverty of the
land and its people.
From the Lake Naum area they went
back part of the way to Belgrade on the
railroad, and then motored to Kotor
on the Dalmatian coast. There Con-
stantine and his German wife bade them
goodbye. The author and her husband
took a ship at Kotor and traveled up
the coast, and then returned by rail to
Zagreb. They visited the Plivitse Lakes
on the way. The last leg of the journey
was by rail from Zagreb to Budapest,
Hungary.
The sadness of the plight of the
Yugoslavs was impressed on Miss West one
last time in Budapest. There she met a
university student who wanted to write
a paper about Miss West's work. The
girl tried to prevent Miss West from
discovering that her family had come
from the Balkans, for the girl wanted
to be a part of the Central European
culture rather than of the one she had
inherited.
346

BLACK VALLEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hugo Wast (Gustavo Martinez Zuvirfa, 1883- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: C6rdoba and the hill country of northern Argentina
First published: 1918
Principal characters:
Gracian Palma, an orphan
Don Jesus de Viscarra, his guardian
Mirra, Don Jesus' daughter
Flavta, Don Jesus' sister
Don Pablo Camargo, a neighboring landowner, Don Jesus' enemy
Victoria, daughter of Flavia and Don Pablo
Lazarus, a Creole overseer
Amoroso, Flavia's devoted peon
Pichana, an old beggar woman
Critique:
Black Valley—in the original, Valle
negro—is subtitled "A Romance of the
Argentine/' The romantic elements of the
novel are readilv apparent. A story of a
primitive way of life and elemental
emotions, the action has been staged against
a background of wild natural beauty.
Hugo Wast's settings are real, as are his
people and the way of life he presents.
Lacking certain of the didactic elements
found in Stone Desert, this work reveals
to excellent advantage the novelist of
character and the painter of landscapes.
The plot, although epsodic in form, is
well ordered, and the s*ory moves
forward with increasing emotional and
dramatic interest as the writer unfolds the
dual theme presented through the ill-
fated love of Flavia and Don Pablo and
the relationship cf spoiled, weak
Gracian and strong, devoted Mirra. The
style is vigorous, precise, pure. For this
novel Wast was awarded the gold medal
or the Spanish Academy.
The Story:
Gracidn Palma was in his fourteenth
year when his father died suddenly and
the boy, already motherless, became the
ward of Seiior Palma's old and trus'ed
friend, Don Jesus de Viscarra. Gracian
had seen Don Jesus only once in his l'fe;
he remembered him as a tall, disHn-
guished-looking man whom his father
described as the owner of Black Valley—
"where the w'nd roprs," his father had
added. To Graci&n tl> ese words seemed to
cast an air of mystery about Don Jesus
and his home.
Shortly af *er Seiior Palma's death Don
Jesus visited Gracidn at the convent
school in C6rdoba and promised to take
him to Black Valley for the summer.
Don Jesus was as good as his word. On
the last day of the term he appeared at
the school and that afternoon they took
a train for Cosquin. From there they
traveled by horseback through a wild,
hilly countryside that reminded Gracian
of fairies and witches. Darkness had
fallen long before they arrived at the
ranch house, where Graci&n met the
other members of Don Jesus' family—his
young daughter Mirra and his s:ster
Flavia. While they were at supper a
harsh scream sounded from the darkness
ou'side. Flavia said that the cry had
been made by old Pichana. Lazarus, the
Creole overseer, spoke up to say that he
had seen Pichana about a league away
on the road to Cosquin. Gracidn felt that
there was some mystery here which he
BLACK VALLEY by Hugo Wast. Translated by Herman and Miriam Hespelt. By permission of the
author. Copyright, 1928, by Longmans, Green & Co., Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
347

did not understand.
The next morning Don Jesus left to
visit his brother, a rancher in the sierras,
and Gracian was free to play with Mirra.
While they were eating some roasted corn
near a willow grove, the boy saw an old
colored woman in ragged clothes crouched
in the fork of one of the trees. Mirra
said that the crone was Pichana, a
beggar whom many people believed a witch,
but really a harmless old woman. Later
the girl pointed out the house of the
neighboring landowner. She said that
Don Pablo Camargo claimed part of Don
Jesus* land and that Flavia was unkind
to her because she had once quarreled
with Victoria, Don Pablo's daughter.
When they returned home, Flavia drew
Graci&n as:de and asked him if he had
seen anyone on the Camargo estate.
Because of a boundary dispute the
Camargos and the Viscarras had been
enemies for several generations. Don
Jesus had been prepared to forget the
ancient grudge until Don Pablo met
Flavia de Viscarra and fell in love with
her. Because of the young man's
reputation for wildness and violence Don Jesus
refused to consent to his sister's
engagement to his family's enemy, and he had
sent her to live with some distant
relatives. There she had stayed, nursing h^r
resentment, until Don Jesus' wife died
and Flavia came to live at Black Valley
as his housekeeper. What Don Jesus did
not know, however, was that Flavia had
secretly given birth to Don Pablo's child,
the little girl Victoria. For a time after
her return to Black Valley Flavia had
avoided her former lover, but at last her
desire to see her daughter had drawn
her to him. When he arrived at their
meeting place, Don Pablo would imitate
Pichana's wild screech and Flavia would
steal out to join him. Although she was
deeply disturbed in her own conscience
by her deceit, she continued to meet him
because she hoped that he would
sometime bring Victoria with him. Except for
Amoroso, the only resident of Black
Valley who knew Flavia's secret was
Lazarus, the overseer. In love with Flavia,
he spied on her movements and followed
her when she left the house to meet Don
Pablo.
So matters stood when Gracidn came to
Black Valley. A few days later Don
Jesus announced that Don Pablo had
begun a suit for possession of the d's-
puted land. That night a heavy
thunderstorm was brewing. Gracian, unable to
sleep, saw Flavia walking in the
courtyard. Toward midnight he was awakened
by a clap of thunder. Mirra, frightened,
came to his room and said that the sound
had been a shot. The children discovered
that Flavia was not in her room. The
next morning the events of the night
seemed like a dream until Graci&n and
Mirra found one of the watchdogs dead,
a bullet through his throat.
One day Mirra took Gracidn to the
place of the winds, great caves at the
bottom of a river gorge where Pichana's
hut stood. A storm came up while they
were exploring the caverns through which
the wind roared, and they found it
impossible to climb out of the canyon.
Pichana found the children in the cave
in which they had taken refuge and led
them back to Don Jesus' house. On
another day Graci&n met Victoria, who
became angry when she learned that he
came from Black Valley.
Gracidn returned to school in C6r-
doba. By the time he came to Black
Valley in the spring, Flavia had conceived a
plan: Gracian must fall in love with
Victoria, marry her, and so restore the
girl to her mother. That summer, with
the aid of Lazarus, Flavia met Victoria
and revealed herself as the child's mother.
A short time later Lazarus began to
approach Flavia with bold flattery and she
was forced to reprove him. Consequently,
when Don Jesus received a letter
accusing her of secret meetings with Don
Pablo, she was sure that Lazarus was the
writer. To her dismay, she saw that the
handwriting was Don Pablo's.
That winter Mirra learned Flavia's
secret from Pichana. Also, Graci&n's
348

uncle, who had been living abroad,
returned and wrote to Don Jesus saving
that he wanted his nephew to spend the
next vacation with him. Mirra grieved
because Gracidn would not be coming
to Black Valley for the summer. The
next three years brought more changes.
Flavia no longer went to meet Don
Pablo, and at times Don Pablo acted like
a madman as his love and hatred grew
more intense. Lazarus, still in love with
Flavia, overstepped at las* the bounds of
a servant and Don Jesus discharged him.
The Creole swore to be revenged. While
he waited to ambush Don Jesus on the
road from Cosquin, Don Pablo
suddenly appeared and shot the master of
Black Valley; the lawsuit had been
decided at last in Don Jesus' favor and Don
Pablo was w:ld with fury. Don Jesus
died after asking that the law not be
put on the trail of his murderer.
Although the police suspected both
Don Pablo and Lazarus, nothing could
be proved against either man. Don Pablo
moved with Victoria to Cosquin. One
day he was seen whitewashing a wall—
a peon's work—and people beaan to say
that his mind was affected. Then,
wishing to be near her daughter, Flavia also
went to Cosqum and secured an
appointment as a teacher in the "government
school. Left alone, Mirra decided to open
a school of her own for the children of
the district.
Some years passed before Graci^n
returned from his travels abroad. Bored
with life in C6rdoba, he went to see
Flavia in Cosqum, where she was
taking care of Don Pablo, now a broken,
sad man. There Graci&n met Victoria
again and the two fell in love. Gracian,
who had never forgotten Mirra, would
have broken off the affair with Victoria
if Flavia had not talked to him and
shamed him. One day he saw Mirra at
mass, and all his old affection for her was
reborn. Months later, after Flavia had
heard that Gracidn was staying at Black
Valley and that he and Mirra were soon
to be married, she went to her niece and
begged for her own daughter's happiness
and good name. Mirra did not hesitate
between duty and love. She sent Gracidn
back to Victoria, the mother of his
unborn child.
349

BLEAK HOUSE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: London, Lincolnshire, and Hertfordshire, England
First published: 1852-1853
Principal characters:
John Jarndyce, owner of Bleak House
Richabd Carstone, his cousin
Ada Clare, also his cousin
Esther Summerson, his ward and companion to Ada
Allan Woodcourt, a young physician
Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock's wife
Tulkinghorn, a solicitor
William Guppy, Tulkinghorn's clerk
Critique:
A satire on the methods of an English
equity court, Bleak House is a great novel
based upon an actual case in Chancery.
The story of lives sacrificed on the rack
of a meaningless judicial system is an
arresting one. Several of the minor
characters are caricatures of well-known
literary figures of the day. The complicated
Lady Dedlock plot which gave Bleak
House its contemporary popularity is
rather thin, but the novel as a whole
stands up remarkably well.
a country place which was not as dreary
as its name. His two young cousins lived
with him. He had provided a companion
for Ada in the person of Esther Summer-
Esther had suffered an unhappy
The Story:
The suit of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce was
a standing joke in the Court of Chancery<•
Beginning with a dispute as to how the
trusts under a Jarndyce will were to be
administered, the suit had dragged on,
year after year, generation after
generation, without settlement. The heirs, or
would-be heirs, spent their lives waiting.
Some, like Tom Jarndyce, blew out their
brains. Others, like tiny Miss Flite,
visited the Court in daily expectation of
some judgment which would settle the
disputed estate and bring her the wealth
of which she dreamed.
Among those involved in the suit were
John Jarndyce, great-nephew of the Tom
Jarndyce who had shot himself in a coffee
house, and his two cousins, Richard Car-
stone and Ada Clare. Jarndyce was the
owner of Bleak House in Hertfordshire,
son
childhood under the care of Miss Bar-
bary, her stern godmother, and a servant,
Mrs. Rachel. The two had told the girl
that her mother was a wicked woman who
had deserted her. Miss Barbary was now
dead, and Mr. Jarndyce had become
Esther's benefactor.
Two others who took a strange interest
in the Jarndyce estate were Sir Leicester
and Lady Dedlock of Chesney Wold, in
Lincolnshire. Lord Dedlock had a
solicitor named Tulkinghorn, who, like every
other reputable lawyer in London, was
involved in the Jarndyce suit. One day
when the Dedlocks were in
Tulkinghorn's office, the lawyer presented Lady
Dedlock with a document. At the sight
of the handwriting on the paper she
swooned. Immediately suspicious,
Tulkinghorn resolved to trace the
handwriting to its source. His search led him to
Mr. Snagsby, a stationer, but the best
that Snagsby could tell him was that the
paper had been copied by a man named
Nemo, a lodger in the house of Mr.
Krook, a junk dealer. Mr. Tulkinghorn
went to the house with Snagsby, only to
find Nemo dead of an overdose of opium.
Convinced that Nemo was not the dead
350

man's real name, the lawyer could learn
nothing of the man's identity or
connections.
Esther Summerson soon found an
ardent friend and admirer in William
Guppy, a clerk in the office of Kenge and
Carboy, Jarndyce's solicitors. It was
Guppy who first noticed Esther's
resemblance to Lady Dedlock. Allan Wood-
court, a young surgeon who had been
called to administer to the dead Nemo,
requested an inquest. One of the
witnesses called was Jo, a crossing sweeper
whom Nemo had often befriended. A
little later Jo was found with two half-
crowns on his person. He explained that
they had been given him by a lady he
had guided to the gate of the churchyard
where Nemo was buried. Jo was
arrested, and in the cross-examination
which followed, Mr. Guppy questioned
the wife of an oily preacher named
Chadband and found that the firm of
Kenge and Carboy had once had charge
of a young lady with whose aunt Mrs.
Chadband had lived. Mrs. Chadband was,
of course, the Mrs. Rachel of Esther
Summerson's childhood. She revealed
that Esther's real name was not
Summerson, but Hawdon.
The mystery surrounding Esther
Summerson began to clear. A French maid
who had left Lady Dedlock's service
identified her late mistress as the lady
who had given two half-crowns to the
crossing sweeper. The dead Nemo was
promptly proved to have been Captain
Hawdon. Years before he and the
present Lady Dedlock had fallen in love;
Esther was their child. But Miss Barbary,
angry at her sister's disgrace, had taken
the child and moved to another part of
the country. The mother later married
Lord Dedlock. She was now overjoyed
that the child her unforgiving sister had
led her to believe dead was still alive, and
she resolved to reveal herself to her.
Mr. Guppy informed Lady Dedlock
that a packet of Captain Hawdon's letters
was in the possession of the junk dealer,
Krook. Fearing that the revelation of
these letters would ruin her position,
Lady Dedlock asked Guppy to bring
them to her, and the wily law clerk
agreed. But on the night the letters
were to be obtained the drunken Krook
exploded of spontaneous combustion, and
presumably the letters burned with him.
In the meantime, Richard Carstone,
completely obsessed by the Jarndyce case.
had abandoned all efforts to establish a
career for himself. He lived in a false
hope that the Chancery suit would soon
be settled, spending the little money he
had on an unscrupulous lawyer named
Vholes. When Jarndyce remonstrated,
Richard thought his cousin's advice
prompted by selfish interests. Ada Clare
also worried over Richard's behavior, and
secretly married him so that her own
small fortune might stand between
Richard and his folly.
Esther Summerson fell desperately ill
of a fever, and when Lady Dedlock heard
of the girl's illness she went to her at
once and revealed herself. So mother
and daughter were finally reunited. As
a result of her illness, Esther's beauty
was completely destroyed. John
Jarndyce, feeling free for the first time to
declare his love for a woman so much
younger than himself, asked her to marry
nim, and she accepted.
Lady Dedlock, meanwhile, was
threatened by Tulkinghorn with exposure.
Desperate, she wandered away from
Chesney Wold. On the night of her
disappearance Tulkinghorn was
murdered by the French maid through whom
he had learned of Lady Dedlock's
connection with the crossing sweeper. She
had attempted to blackmail the lawyer,
and when he threatened her with
imprisonment she killed him. Inspector
Bucket, who solved the mystery of the
murder, also informed Lord Dedlock of
his wife's past. The baronet told the
detective to employ every means to bring
about her return. It was Esther Summer*
son, however, who found her mothet
dead at the gate of the churchyard where
Captain Hawdon was buried.
Among Krook's effects was a Jarndyce
will made at a later date than the one
351

which had been disputed in Chancery
for so many years. It settled the question
of the Jarndyce inheritance forever.
Richard and Ada were declared the heirs, but
unfortunately the entire fortune had
been eaten up in court costs and the two
young people were left to face a life of
genteel poverty. Richard did not long
survive this final blow. He died, leaving
his wife and infant son in the care of
John Jarndyce.
Esther became the mistress of her own
Bleak House. John Jarndyce, discovering
that her true love was young Doctor
Woodcourt, released her from her
promise to marry him and in his generosity
brought the two lovers together. Before
her wedding to Doctor Woodcourt,
Jarndyce took her to see a country house
he had bought at Yorkshire. He had
named it Bleak House, and it was his
wedding present to the bride and groom.
There Esther lived, happy in the love of
her husband and her two daughters and
in the lasting affection of John Jarndyce,
proprietor of that other Bleak House
which would always be her second home.
352

THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Massachusetts
First published: 1852
Principal characters:
Miles Coverdale, a resident of Blithedale Community
Zenobia, a worldly woman
Priscilla, a simple maiden
Hollingsworth, loved hy Zenobia and Priscilla
Westervelt, an evil conjurer
Old Moodie, Priscilla's protector
Critique:
Hawthorne himself told us that The
Blithedale Romance grew out of his
experiences at Brook Farm, that famous
but short-lived experiment in communal
living indulged in by idealists, reformers,
and writers. In the story, however, the
setting is incidental to the plot and the
characters, all of whom, Hawthorne
assured us, are fictitious. There is no
attempt to judge the merits or evils of
community living, only an effort to show
the way in which certain chracteristics
affect the lives of people thrown togethei
into close associations.
The Story:
As Miles Coverdale prepared to
journey to Blithedale, where he was to join
in a project in community living, he was
accosted by Old Moodie, a seedy ancient
who seemed reluctant to state his
business. After much mysterious talk about
having Coverdale do him a great favor,
he changed his mind and shuffled off
without telling what it was that he
wanted.
It was April, but Coverdale and his
companions arrived at Blithedale in a
snowstorm. There they were greeted by
a woman called Zenobia, a well-known
magazine writer. Zenobia was a
beautiful, worldly woman of wealth and
position. At all times she wore a rare,
exotic flower in her hair. Zenobia spent
most of her energy fighting for "woman's
place in the world."
On the evening of Coverdale's arrival
another of the principals arrived at
Blithedale. He was Hollingsworth, a
philanthropist and reformer. In fact,
philanthropy was to him a never-ceasing
effort to reform and change mankind.
With him he brought Priscilla, a simple,
poorly dressed, bewildered young girl.
Priscilla went at once to Zenobia and,
falling at the proud woman's feet, never
took her eyes from that haughty face.
There was no explanation for such
behavior. Hollingsworth knew only that
he had been approached by Old Moodie
and asked to take Priscilla to Blithedale.
That was the request Old Moodie had
tried to ask of Coverdale, but his
courage failed him. But such was the
community of Blithedale that the
inhabitants made the girl welcome in spite
of her strange behavior.
It was soon evident to Coverdale that
Hollingsworth's philanthropy had turned
inward until that man was on the way
to madness. He was convinced that the
universe existed only in order for him
to reform all criminals and .wayward
persons. The dream of his life was to
construct a large edifice in which he
could collect his criminal brothers and
teach them to mend their ways before
doom overtook them. To Coverdale he
was a bore, but it was obvious that both
Zenobia and Priscilla were in love with
him. Priscilla blossomed as she reaped
the benefits of good food and fresh air,
and Zenobia viewed her as a rival with
evident but unspoken alarm. Hollings-
353

worth seemed to consider Priscilla his
own special charge, and Coverdale feared
the looks of thinly veiled hatred he
frequently saw Zenobia cast toward the
lovely girl. Priscilla, devoted to Zenobia,
wanted always to be close to the
beautiful woman.
When Old Moodie appeared at Blithe-
dale to inquire of Priscilla, Coverdale
tried to persuade him to reveal the
reason for his interest in the girl. But the
old man slipped away without telling
his story.
Shortly after this incident, Professor
Westervelt came to Blithedale to inquire
about Zenobia and Priscilla. Coverdale
saw Westervelt and Zenobia together and
was sure that even though Zenobia hated
him now, she once had loved and been
ruined by this evil man. Coverdale knew
that all of the misery which he sometimes
saw in Zenobia's eyes must surely have
come from this man. Coverdale felt also
that there was still some bond between
them.
After Westervelt's visit Zenobia was
short-tempered and more vehement than
usual about the poor lot of women. But
she was so much in love with Hollings-
worth that even the misery, or perhaps
terror, caused by Westervelt did not deter
her from literally worshiping at his feet.
Hollingsworth, in his egotism, believed
that women were placed on earth only to
serve men, and so great was Zenobia's
passion that she accepted his words without
protest, not proclaiming her real thoughts
in his presence. It was clear to Coverdale
that Hollingsworth intended to use
Zenobia's money to build the school for
criminals of which he never ceased to talk.
When Coverdale refused to join him in
this project, Hollingsworth became quite
cool in his dealings with Coverdale.
Tiring of the life at Blithedale, Cover-
dale took a vacation in town. He was
greatly surprised when Zenobia, Priscilla,
and Westervelt also arrived in the town
shortly afterward. He called on the ladies
and was disturbed by the tension that was
apparent. When he chided Zenobia about
Priscilla and Hollingsworth, she warned
him not to interfere lest he cause serious
trouble. Priscilla obviously did not know
why she was there. She told Coverdale
that she was like a leaf blown about by
the wind. She had no will of her own,
only the will of Zenobia. Then
Westervelt called for the two women, and the
three left Coverdale standing as if they
did not know he was there.
Determined to uncover the mystery
surrounding the three, Coverdale sought
out Old Moodie and pried from him the
story of the two girls. Once Moodie had
been a wealthy and influential man until
through dishonest business practices he
was ruined. Then, leaving his wife and
daughter Zenobia, he wandered about in
poverty and disgrace. His wife died and
he married again. To them Priscilla was
born, as different from his first child as it
was possible to be. Zenobia was beautiful
and proud, Priscilla plain and shy.
Neighbors thought Priscilla had supernatural
powers, but her kindness and her
goodness made everyone love her.
Zenobia, after Moodie's disgrace, was
reared by his brother; and since Moodie
was believed dead, Zenobia, as the next
heir, inherited her uncle's wealth.
Because she grew up a wild and willful girl,
it was whispered that she had made a
secret marriage with an unprincipled man.
No one, however, knew anything
definite. Such were her beauty and wealth
that no one criticized her. Moodie called
her to his home and, not telling her who
he was, cautioned her to be as kind as a
sister to Priscilla.
During his vacation Coverdale chanced
upon a magician's show in a nearby
village. There he found Hollingsworth in
the audience and Westervelt on the stage.
Westervelt produced a Veiled Lady, an
ethereal creature whom he said he could
make do his bidding. At the climax of the
act Hollingsworth arose from the
audience and strode to the platform. He called
to the Veiled Lady to remove her veil, and
as he spoke, Priscilla lifted her veil and
fled into the arms of Hollingsworth with a
cry of joy and of love. She looked like one
who had been saved from an evil fate.
354

Coverdale returned to Blithedale.
There he witnessed a terrifying scene
between Zenobia, Priscilla, and
Hollingsworth. To Zenobia Hollingsworth
admitted his love for Priscilla. Zenobia reviled
him and warned her sister against the
emptiness of his heart. She said she knew
at last the complete ego of the man and
saw that he had deceived her only to get
her fortune for his great project. After the
lovers left her, Zenobia sank to the
ground and wept, and that night the
unhappy woman drowned herself in the
river flowing close by. Westervelt came to
view her dead body, but his only sorrow
seemed to be that he could no longer use
Zenobia in his black schemes.
After Zenobia's tragedy, Coverdale left
Blithedale. Priscilla and Hollingsworth
lived quietly, he giving up his desire to
reform other criminals because he felt
himself Zenobia's murderer. In his twilight
years Coverdale confessed his real interest
in these ill-fated people. He had from the
first been in love with Priscilla.
355

BLOOD WEDDING
Type of work: Drama
Author: Federico Garcia Lorca (1899-1936)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Probably early 1900's
Locale: Spain
First presented: 1933
Principal characters:
The Bridegroom
The Bridegroom's Mother
The Bride
The Bride's Father
Leonardo FelIx, former suitor of the Bride
Leonardo's Wife
Critique:
The works of Garcia Lorca are today
unavailable in Spain, for he alienated the
Franco regime and his works were
proscribed. The author himself was slain
brutally by Falangists during the Spanish
Civil War. Although Lorca spent some
time in America and several of his plays
have been produced here, his works are
not well known in this country, probably
because his plays have puzzled readers
and theater audiences alike. His drama,
like his paintings and his poetry, shows
the influences of avant-garde art. In the
early years of the Spanish Republic Lorca
was active in a movement to popularize
drama among the Spanish masses. In
1931 and 1932, largely because of his
efforts and those of Lernando de los
Reos, Minister of Education, a touring
company presented plays of the first
quality to village and small-town audiences
throughout Spain. Although more
passionate and symbolic, Lorca has been
compared to the Irish dramatist, John
Millington Synge. He was the chief lyric
dramatist of the contemporary European
theater.
The Story:
The Bridegroom's Mother was
unhappy when she learned that he wished
to be married and that he had found a
girl whom he desired. In spite of her
BLOOD WEDDING by Federico Garcia Lorca, from THREE TRAGEDIES OF GARCIA LORCA.
Translated by Richard L. O'Connell and James Graham-Lujan. By permission of the publishers, New
Directions. Copyright, 1947, by New Directions.
sorrow at losing him, she commanded
him to go buy fine presents for the
Bride. The Bridegroom's Mother was
unhappy because the Bridegroom was her
only surviving child. Her husband and
her older son had both been killed many
years before in fights with members of
the Felix family. Ever since then, the
Bridegroom's Mother had lived in fear
that the only surviving man in her
family, the Bridegroom, might also fall a
victim to someone's knife or gun. She
told her son that she would much rather
that he had been born a girl, to sit in
the house and knit instead of going out
among men.
After the Bridegroom had left the
house to go buy gifts for the Bride, gifts
to be presented when the parents met,
a neighbor stopped to see his Mother.
The neighbor told the Bridegroom's
Mother that there was bad blood in the
Bride's veins, inherited from her mother.
She also said that Leonardo, a member
of the hated Felix family and a cousin
of the Bride, had wooed the Bride
unsuccessfully before his own marriage
three years earlier. The Bridegroom's
Mother grew uneasy at the news, but she
determined to carry through her part in
the marriage forms because her son was
in love and because the Bride's Father
owned rich vineyards comparable to those
356

of her own family.
Meanwhile word of the proposed
marriage had reached Leonardo, who still
was in love with the Bride. In fact, he
rode many miles to her house to see her
whenever he had the chance. For some
time both Leonardo's Wife and her
mother had realized that something was wrong.
Leonardo was curt and sharp with his
wife for no reason at all and he failed to
take much notice of their child.
The next day the Bride's servant
prepared her to meet with her father, the
Bridegroom, and the Bridegroom's
Mother in order to make plans for the
wedding. The servant accused the Bride of
permitting Leonardo to visit late at night.
The Bride, without denying the fact,
merely indicated that she was not very
happy at the prospect of marrying the
Bridegroom.
After the arrival of the Bridegroom
and his Mother, it was decided to have
the wedding take place on the following
Thursday, the Bride's twenty-second
birthday. The Bride said that she would
welcome the chance to shut out the
world from her life and devote herself
to the Bridegroom. A short time after
the Bridegroom and his Mother had
departed, Leonardo's horse was heard
neighing beneath the Bride's window.
The day of the wedding arrived, and
early in the morning the servant began
to prepare the Bride for the ceremony.
But the Bride was not happy. When the
servant began to speak of the bliss that
would soon be hers, the Bride
commanded the woman to be quiet. She even
threw her wreath of orange blossoms to
the ground.
A short time later the guests began to
arrive. The first to make his appearance
was the Bride's cousin and former wooer,
Leonardo. He and the Bride, despite the
servant's pleas, had a talk in which
bitter recriminations were flung back and
forth. Neither wished to be married to
anyone else, but each blamed the other
for the unhappiness to which they were
apparently doomed. Only the arrival of
other guests broke up the argument.
The guests having arrived, the party
set out for the church. Only the most
vigorous language on the part of his wife
convinced Leonardo that he ought to ride
in the cart with her, in order to keep up
appearances. When the wedding
ceremony was over, Leonardo and his wife
were the first guests to return to the
Bride's Father's house. Leonardo had
driven like a madman.
Shortly after the guests had gathered
at the house, the Bridegroom went
quietly up behind the Bride and put his arms
about her. She shrank from his embrace.
Complaining that she felt ill, she went
to her room to rest after asking the
Bridegroom to leave her alone. As the
wedding feast continued, some of the guests
proposed that the Bridegroom and the
Bride dance together. But the Bride was
nowhere to be found. Searchers
discovered that she and Leonardo had ridden
away on his horse. The Bridegroom,
furious at being so dishonored and filled with
desire for revenge, organized a posse of
his own relatives and immediately
started out after the fugitives. All day they
searched without finding the pair.
On into the night the Bridegroom
continued his search and came at last into
the wood where the runaways had
stopped. The Bride, meanwhile, had had
a change of heart; refusing to give
herself to Leonardo, she said that it was
enough that she had run away with him.
Leonardo, becoming angry, reminded her
that it was she who had gone down the
stairs first, who had put a new bridle on
the horse, and who had even buckled on
his spurs. Nevertheless, the Bride said
she had had enough. She did not want
to stay with him, but she had no greater
desire to return to her husband.
While they argued, the Bridegroom
met Death, disguised as a beggarwoman.
Death insisted upon leading him to the
place where he would find his escaped
bride and her lover. By the light of the
moon they searched until they found the
pair. When they met, Leonardo and the
357

Bridegroom fought, killing each other.
After they had died, Death, still
disguised as a beggarwoman, went back to
spread the evil tidings. When she heard
of her son's death, the Bridegroom's
Mother took the news stoically, not
wanting her neighbors to see her
overwhelming grief. Returning to her mother-in-
law, the Bride was told to remain at the
door without entering the room. The
Bride tried to explain her actions, saying
also that she had come so that the
Bridegroom's Mother could kill her. No one
paid any attention to the Bride's
argument that neither Leonardo nor her
husband had ever known her as a woman.
The Bridegroom's Mother was joined
in her lamentations by Leonardo's wife
when searchers carried in the bodies of
the two men. The grief-stricken women,
joined by the Bride, complained bitterly
that an instrument as small as a knife
could take away the lives of two such
men, lives that were so much greater
than the instruments which caused theii
deaths.
358

A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON
Type of work: Drama
Author: Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Rural England
First presented: 1843
Principal characters:
Thorold, Earl Tresham, a proud nobleman
Mildred, his younger sister
Henry, Earl Mertoun, her suitor
Austin Tresham, brother of Mildred and the earl
Guendolen, the Treshams' cousin and Austin's betrothed
Critique:
This drama was published in one of the
eight small volumes of poetry issued by
Browning under the title of Bells and
Pomegranates between 1841 and 1846. It
had been written at the request of Ma-
cready, the famous actor and producer in
England during the nineteenth century.
The play, though written expressly for the
stage, has never been popular on the
boards. While the drama is obviously
Browning's invention, the similarities to
Romeo and Juliet immediately call the
Shakespearean play to mind. The quarrel
between two great houses, the duel, the
love affair between a young man and an
extremely young girl, and the multiple
deaths of the principals at the end all are
paralleled in the two plays. Interesting to
most readers of the play are the comments
by the retainers of both houses about the
main characters and the great families
they represent.
The Story:
Thorold, Earl Tresham was a middle-
aged, active man, the epitome of courtesy
and honor, and extremely proud of his
family's record through the generations.
So proud of that reputation was he that he
resolved to keep it untarnished
throughout his life, and to see that other members
of the family bore themselves as
honorably.
The earl's parents had died many years
before, leaving a younger sister in his care.
Mildred was now fourteen years of age
and ready for marriage. She was loved by
her brothers and her more distant relatives,
who regarded her as an innocent,
guileless, and beautiful young woman.
Henry, Earl Mertoun, having seen
Mildred, came one day to ask her hand in
marriage. Tresham was at first hesitant,
but when he had talked with the young
man and looked over the Mertoun family
record, he realized that no more honorable
and personable young suitor could have
sought Mildred as a wife. He therefore
gave his consent to the marriage if the girl
herself agreed. Mertoun left Tresham
Castle after promising to return at the end
of two days, during which time the Tresh-
ams and their cousin were to broach the
subject of marriage to Mildred.
In the library, that same night,
Tresham, his brother Austin, and their cousin
Guendolen acquainted Mildred with Mer-
toun's suit, but she seemed indifferent to
the nobleman's proposal. Later, in
Mildred's room, Guendolen continued the
discussion, describing the personality and
appearance of the young earl. The girl still
remained hesitant. When Guendolen left
the room she was confident, however, that
her cousin would soon look kindly on so
desirable a suitor.
Shortly after Guendolen's departure
the clocks struck midnight. Mildred
placed a candle in her window. A short
time later a man dressed in a long, flowing
cloak and a slouch hat entered through
the window. The hat and cloak were
swept away, revealing Henry, Earl
Mertoun. Mildred declared that she could
359

not bring herself to agree to a marriage
with him under the conditions known to
both, for she and Mertoun had been
lovers for many weeks. She said she could
not appear at a wedding under the guise of
a virgin and a stranger to a man whom she
had long since taken as her lover.
Seeing no real sin in what they had
done, the lovers felt that their youthful
years had betrayed them. They had met
when Mertoun had wandered into the
Tresham domain after wounded game,
and they had fallen in love immediately.
Within a short time Mildred had
admitted Mertoun to her bedchamber.
After a lengthy discussion the young
nobleman left Mildred, with her promise
that she would talk to him once again on
the following night before announcing
her decision to her brothers and cousin.
The following morning one of the
retainers went to Tresham and told that he
had seen a man leaving Mildred's
chamber window late at night. Pressed by
Tresham, the retainer admitted that the
man had been there on previous nights
and that the nocturnal visitor obviously
had Mildred's aid in visiting her. Tresham
was dumfounded and then angry, for he
saw the whole reputation of the family
about to receive its first blot in
generations. He also thought he saw why
Mildred had appeared hesitant in giving her
consent to marry Mertoun.
After talking over the matter with
Guendolen, Tresham sent for Mildred.
Accused by her brother, Mildred admitted
by her silence that she was guilty of
transgression, but she steadfastly refused to
acknowledge the identity of her lover.
Tresham was furious that she could have
even permitted her relatives to consider
a match between herself and Mertoun
after she had fallen into sin. Mildred's
only defense to her brother was that she
had not had a mother's guiding hand, that
she was too young to know what she had
done, and that God must have deserted
her at a crucial time.
Mildred's brother, refusing to recognize
the defense she offered, disowned her in
the presence of Austin and Guendolen.
But they, feeling only sorrow and
sympathy for Mildred, remained loyal to her.
Guendolen took Mildred to her chamber
and tried to comfort the girl as best she
could. While the two women talked, it
became evident to Guendolen that
Mertoun was not only Mildred's suitor
but her lover as well. Guendolen realized
that Mertoun's suit was the way taken by
the lovers to hide their transgression. As
soon as she realized the situation,
Guendolen went at once to tell Austin and the
earl. Tresham, however, was nowhere to
be found; he had gone to the farther
reaches of his estates.
Tresham had wanted to be alone while
he tried to find some solution to his
problems. At last he decided to He in ambush
for the lover, in case the man tried to visit
Mildred that night. He was unaware that
Mertoun was Mildred's lover, and Austin
and Guendolen were unable to find him
in time to tell him what they had learned.
That night Earl Tresham concealed
himself behind a tree to watch. Shordy
after midnight a figure wearing a cloak
and slouch hat raced across the lawns and
clambered into a yew tree which grew just
outside Mildred's window. As the figure
started into the tree Tresham seized him
and pulled him back to the ground.
Mertoun then threw off his disguise and
revealed himself. Too angry to realize
the implications of Mertoun's identity,
Tresham engaged him in a duel. Mertoun
did not even try to defend himself and
was quickly run through by Tresham.
Seeing his opponent downed and mortally
wounded, Tresham lost his anger and
became filled with remorse. His regrets
knew no bounds when Mertoun revealed
how he and Mildred had been led
innocently into sin. Tresham realized that
haste and anger had undone both of them,
as well as Mildred.
The noise of the duel had attracted
Guendolen and Austin, who tried
unsuccessfully to save Mertoun's life. After
Mertoun died, Tresham went to tell
Mildred what had happened. Her dismay
at hearing of her lover's death at the hands
of her brother was too much for the girl;

she died within a matter of minutes. As
she died Guendolen and Austin appeared
to see if they could be of assistance, and
they saw that Tresham, too, was as white
as death. He told them that they came
too late, for he had taken poison. His last
words before he died were that he left his
name, title, and estates to them
unblemished; he felt that three tragic deaths
had obliterated the sinful blot on his
family escutcheon.
361

THE BOHEMIANS OF THE LATIN QUARTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henri Murger (1822-1861)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1848
Principal characters:
Rodolphe, a poet
Marcel, a painter
Schaunard, a musician and painter
Colline, a philosopher
Mimi, loved by Rodolphe
Musette, loved by Marcel
Critique:
Henri Murger wrote of his own life
and that of his friends when he composed
the episodes which make up Seines de
la vie de Boh&me, the romantic work
usually translated as The Bohemians of
the Latin Quarter. Places and people of
his novel have been identified easily, and
the situations are almost wholly derived
from actual experiences. Written
originally for a periodical called The Corsair,
the book was later rewritten as a play, a
work in which Murger had the assistance
of M. Barriere. The play, tremendously
popular, was the foundation of Murger s
literary success. At a still later date
Puccini turned the play into the
ever-appealing opera, La Bohime. Together, the
novel and the play have created the
romantic tradition of the Parisian Latin
Quarter, still the artistic and spiritual
home of young poets, painters, and
musicians from many lands.
The Story:
Alexander Schaunard, a poor musician
and painter, was unable to pay the rent
for his cold and windy top-floor room in
the Latin Quarter of Paris. Eluding the
porter who was on watch to keep
Schaunard from moving his few pieces of
furniture, the musician tried in vain to
borrow money from his impecunious
friends. Shortly after he left the
tenement, Marcel, a painter, came to take
over the room Schaunard had vacated.
The painter had no furniture except his
canvas flats, and he was pleased to find
that his quarters would contain Schau-
nard's table, chairs, bed, and piano.
Although Schaunard approached all of
his friends in alphabetical order, he was
unable to borrow more than three of the
seventy-five francs he needed to satisfy
his landlord. At dinnertime his stomacn
led him to Mother Cadet's, famous for
her rabbit stew. There he arrived too
late; his table companion had ordered the
last stew of the evening. This companion,
barricaded behind a pile of books, kindly
offered to share the stew with Schaunard.
Not to be outdone, Schaunard ordered
extra wine. Colline, as his companion
introduced himself, ordered still another
bottle. Schaunard called for a salad;
Colline, for dessert. By the time they left
Mother Cadet's they were well pleased
with the world. Stopping by a cafe for
coffee and liqueurs, they fell into
conversation with Rodolphe, who could have
been nothing but a poet if one judged by
his clothes.
Rodolphe soon became as expansive as
they. Forgetting that he no longer had
a room, Schaunard offered to take
Colline and Rodolphe home with him, for
the hour was late and they lived at the
far ends of Paris. As they reeled into the
house, the porter also forgot that
Schaunard had been dispossessed. The
musician was a bit taken aback when he
found another key in his door, but the
three made so much noise that Marcel
362

opened for them and gladly accepted the
supper they had brought with them.
Schaunard and Marcel decided to stay
together, since the musician owned the
furniture and the painter had paid the
rent. The other two were surprised to
find themselves in a strange room the
next morning. After another day and
night of convivial treating, when all but
Schaunard still had a few francs in their
pockets, the four decided to meet daily.
One day Marcel received an invitation
to dine with a patron of the arts. Being
famished, he yearned to go but realized
that he had no dress coat. Just then a
stranger appeared at the door asking for
Schaunard, whom he wanted to paint
his portrait. Marcel pointed to the
caller's coat, and Schaunard, preparing to
begin the painting, asked the man to doff
his coat and put on a borrowed dressing
gown because the picture, intended for
the man's family, ought to be as informal
as possible. Marcel appropriated the coat
and went to the dinner. Schaunard
persuaded his sitter to send out for a fine
dinner and kept the man entertained
until Marcel returned.
One evening in Lent Rodolphe was
disturbed to find that everywhere he
looked people and birds were pairing off.
Schaunard told him that he was in love
with love and offered to find him a girl.
Schaunard did produce a fresh-colored,
pleasing girl, but she refused to stay with
Rodolphe more than a few days. She did
not understand his poetizing.
Lacking money for his rent, Rodolphe
turned to his stove-maker uncle, who
wanted him to write a manual on stove-
making. Having learned that an advance
to Rodolphe meant that he would
disappear until the money had been spent,
the uncle kept the young man locked up.
The manual proved to be slow and
boring work. Rodolphe struck up an
acquaintance with an actress on the floor
below and she promised to get his play
produced. When a letter arrived with
word that Rodolphe had won three
hundred francs, the uncle refused to let him
go. Rodolphe made a knotted rope out of
his quilt and slid down to the actress*
apartment. She provided a disguise for
him, enabling him to leave the house.
Later she did have his play put on, but it
brought the young writer neither fame
nor Fortune. Before long, as he said, his
address was Avenue St. Cloud, third tree
as you go out of the Bois de Boulogne,
fifth branch.
Mile. Musette was a friend of Ro-
dolphe's, but never more than a friend,
though neither knew why. When he
asked leave to introduce Marcel, Musette
invited them both to a party. She had
just been jilted by her lover, the
Councilor of State. On the day of her party
her creditors took her furniture from her
rooms and put it in the courtyard to be
sold the following morning. Nothing
abashed, Musette had her party in the
courtyard and invited all the tenants.
They were still laughing and singing
when the porters came to take the
furniture away. It was such a successful
party that Rodolphe and Marcel carried
Musette off to the country for the day.
On their return to Paris Rodolphe
allowed Marcel to take Musette home.
Soon after he had left her at her
doorway he felt a tap on his shoulder. There
stood Musette, who told him that she no
longer had a key to her room and that
it was after eleven o'clock at night.
Calling her the goddess of mirth, Marcel took
her home with him. The next morning
he bought her a pot of flowers. She said
that she would stay with him until the
flowers faded. He was surprised at their
continued freshness until the day he
found Musette watering them carefully.
M. Benoit was dunning Rodolphe for
three quarters of rent, three pairs of
shoes, and extra money lent, for he was
landlord, shoemaker, and money-lender
all in one. Rodolphe walked the streets
all day in the hope that providence would
provide. When he returned, M. Benoit
had already rented his room, but the
landlord allowed Rodolphe to go upstairs
to claim his papers. A girl named Mimi
363

was the new tenant. After one look at
Rodolphe she told M. Benoit that she
had been expecting the gentleman.
On Christmas Eve the four friends
with Mimi and Musette and Schaunard's
Phemie repaired to the Cafe Momus.
Momus and his wife had a weakness for
the arts; depending on that weakness,
the bohemians ordered a fine supper. In
their high holiday spirits they ran up a
huge bill before they drew lots to see who
would speak diplomatically to the
proprietor. Schaunard was having no success
on that errand when a stranger, Barbe-
muche, asked to be introduced and
offered to pay the bill. Schaunard
suggested a game of billiards to settle the matter.
Barbemuche had the good taste to lose
the match and the bohemians* dignity
was saved.
Neither Mimi nor Musette could
resist going off with other lovers. One
time Mimi and Rodolphe agreed quietly
to separate, but it was not long before
Mimi came to call, ostensibly to take
away her belongings. Instead, she stayed
on with Rodolphe.
Musette was said to alternate between
blue broughams and omnibuses. While
she was living with M. Maurice, she
received a letter from Marcel asking her
to come for dinner, for the friends even
had wood for a fire. She received the
note in a roundabout way but left the
bewildered M. Maurice immediately.
Because snow was beginning to fall, she
stopped at a friend's house and there met
an interesting young man. Five days later
she arrived at Marcel's room. The fire
was dying out and the food was gone.
She stayed one day before returning to
M. Maurice with the announcement that
she had quarreled with Marcel. She told
M. Maurice that each of her loves was
the verse of a song, but Marcel was the
refrain.
The second time Mimi and Rodolphe
separated, she went to live with Paul,
a young viscount. Meeting by chance on
the street, Mimi and Rodolphe bowed.
The poet went home and wrote for Mimi
a long poem which so irritated the young
nobleman that he put Mimi out of his
house.
On another Christmas Eve, as Marcel
and Rodolphe were trying to forget their
sorrows, Mimi came back, so ill that a
doctor insisted that she be taken at once
to a hospital. She was afraid to go, even
though her friends tried to encourage
her with the hope that she would be well
by spring. Rodolphe went to see her on
the first visiting day. Before the next day
for calling he heard that she was dead.
A few days later his correspondent
admitted that he had been mistaken, that
Mimi had been moved to a different
ward. Rodolphe hurried to the hospital,
only to have his hopes shattered forever.
Mimi, grieved because Rodolphe had
failed to appear for the expected visit,
had died that morning.
A year later Rodolphe had written a
book which was receiving much critical
attention. Schaunard had produced an
album of songs. Colline had married
well, and Marcel's pictures had been
accepted for the annual exhibit. Musette
came to spend a final night with Marcel
before marrying her last lover's guardian.
364

THE BONDMAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Philip Massinger (1583-1640)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Fourth century B.C.
Locale: Syracuse
First presented: c. 1623
Principal characters:
Pisander, a gentleman of Thebes
Cleora, daughter of the Praetor of Syracuse
Leosthenes, Cleora's suitor
Archidamus, Praetor of Syracuse
Timoleon, General of Corinth
Corisca, a wanton woman
Asotus, her stepson
Critique:
The Bondman is a fine expression of
Massinger's philosophy of human liberty.
Through the action and the declarations
of his characters, he reveals that man may
be as fully enslaved by his jealousy, lust,
and greed as by physical bondage. A
second merit of the play is its swift, gripping
action. To attain these two excellences,
however, Massinger makes sacrifices in
his portrayal of character. Often poorly
motivated, his characters' behavior at
times approaches the absurd.
The Story:
The people of Syracuse suffered from
too much success. Years of wealth and
easy living had made them soft, self-in-
dul [gent, and indifferent to the act of
government. Now, under the threat of
war with Carthage, they called upon
Timoleon, the great Corinthian general.
When Timoleon arrived in Syracuse,
he admonished the citizenry, especially
the rich and the powerful, for slothful
habits and lack of public spirit. Strict
obedience to his commands he made a
condition for his help. The people
enthusiastically approved of his leadership
—until he gave his first command. When
he ordered that private money be
confiscated, there was great lamentation. But
the complaints were silenced by Cleora,
daughter of the Praetor of Syracuse, who
made an impassioned appeal to their sense
of honor and patriotism. Timoleon next
turned his attention to the formation of
an army. To his disgust, they suggested
that slaves and laborers be used to fill the
ranks. A second appeal by Cleora,
however, inspired the men to volunteer their
services. An army was formed to take
immediate action against the
Carthaginians.
Among the most eager to go to war was
Leosthenes, who saw in martial glory a
chance to win the hand of Cleora. She
had encouraged his suit, but her father,
Archidamus, had prevented their
marriage. At their parting, Leosthenes
expressed his love for her and also revealed
his fear that during his absence she would
not remain chaste. With her father, her
brother, and her lover gone, he doubted
her ability to resist the enticements of a
seducer. Deeply wounded by his distrust,
she had him bind her eyes with a scarf,
and she pledged not to remove it nor to
utter a word until he returned.
After the army had gone, the city was
populated by women, slaves, and men
too old or too weak to fight. Among the
men who remained were miserly Cleon
and his cowardly son Asotus. The
indignities that Asotus suffered because of
his craven nature, he compensated for
by his cruel treatment of slaves. The
slaves fared little better with his
stepmother, Corisca. The war was hard on
Corisca. Married to an impotent old man,
she was accustomed to entertaining young
men. But the war left her only with
slaves, who did not appeal to her, and
365

with Asotus, who was a bungler. She
decided one day to help Asotus overcome
his awkwardness by enacting with him a
love scene. In this practice session, Cor-
isca played the part of Cleora, whom
Asotus for a long time had been wooing
unsuccessfully. So proficient was Corisca
in her part that Asotus was inspired to
perform his role effectively. Soon he
began to think of Corisca as herself rather
than as an actress. But they were
prevented from playing the final act by the
arrival of Cleon.
Unknown to their masters, the slaves
were preparing to shake off their bonds.
The revolt was led by Pisander, a Theban
gentleman disguised as a slave. Having
fallen in love with Cleora and having
had his suit denied by her father, he, in
order to be close to her, had himself sold
as a slave to Archidamus. His chief
reason for stirring up the rebellion was to
advance his suit of Cleora, although he
also felt sympathy for the bondmen. The
ill-treated slaves, easily moved to
insurrection, encountered no difficulty in
taking the city.
With Pisander in Syracuse was his
sister Statilia, also disguised as a slave.
At Pisander's request, Statilia rendered
an exaggerated account to Cleora of the
insolence, bloodshed, and rapes that had
accompanied the bondmen's victory. She
also stated that Pisander had devised the
plan so that he might rape her. Cleora
was terrified by this announcement, but
her fears were promptly allayed by
Pisander himself. Treating her with great
respect, he vowed his love but denied
any intention of taking her by violence.
Although Cleora, because of her vow, did
not speak to him, she appeared to be
moved by his generosity.
Adversity affected the citizens in
various ways. Cleon, Corisca, and Asotus
were brought closer together by their
misery. While Cleon still displayed his
selfishness and Asotus his cowardice,
Corisca was radically changed. Accepting
her position as a just punishment for her
lust and pride, she rejected her former
life as a courtesan and turned to the
solace of a stoic philosophy.
In the meantime the army under
Timoleon had been victorious over
Carthage, and in the action Leosthenes'
heroism had been outstanding. He,
however, was unable to take joy in his feats
because of the remorse he felt for having
wronged Cleora's innocence.
On returning home, the soldiers
expected a glorious welcome. Instead, they
were shocked to find the gates of the city
closed and the walls armed by their
slaves. Pisander, who had inspired the
bondmen to take a stand against their
masters, demanded that they be given
their liberty as a condition for
surrendering the city. Timoleon, regarding the
terms unreasonable, gave orders to attack.
The slaves at first made a valiant stand
against the army, but when, at the
suggestion of the general, their masters
exchanged their swords for whips, they
immediately surrendered.
Leosthenes was fully convinced that
Cleora, if she had not submitted will-
ingly, had at least been raped. Only after
the repeated protestations of Cleora and
Statilia did he abandon his belief. When
he asked Cleora who her preserver had
been, she, having had her gratitude
increased by Statilia's accounts of Pisander,
gave a glowing report of her benefactor.
The passion of her speech again filled
Leosthenes with jealousy and doubt.
Pisander, after the defeat of the
bondmen, hid himself in Cleora's chamber.
Discovered, he was seized and taken to
prison. Cleora, whose interest in Pisander
continued to increase, asked her father
to intercede for him. Told that he was
being tortured, she rushed to the prison.
When Leosthenes and Timagoras,
Cleora's brother, heard of her action, they
too hurried to the prison. There they
found her comforting Pisander and even
offering some encourage-nent to his suit.
Timagoras, infuriated that his sister could
associate with a bond nan, was preparing
to kill her when Archidamus and the
officers arrived and restrained him. In an-
366

swer to Leosthenes' claim on Cleora, Ar-
chidamus said the matter must be decided
in court.
At court, Leosthenes and Pisander
were permitted to speak in their own
behalf. Leosthenes, stressing the
degradation of having to argue with a slave,
accused Cleora of being ungrateful and of
having loose desires. Pisander, in
contrast, spoke of the pureness of his love
for Cleora. Timagoras, indignant at the
impertinence of a slave, suggested that
he be whipped. Pulling off his disguise,
Pisander revealed his reasons for coming
to Syracuse. Leosthenes had once been
plighted to Statilia. After he had deserted
her, Pisander had come to Syracuse to
kill the false suitor, but love for Cleora
had stayed his intent. Now, having
undergone danger and suffering, he felt
that he had a just claim to her. With her
father's blessing, Cleora readily consented
to marry him. Leosthenes returned to
Statilia. The slaves, ably defended by
Pisander, were given full pardon.
367

THE BONDS OF INTEREST
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jacinto Benavente y Martinez (1866-1954)
Type of plot: Comic romance
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: Italy
First presented: 1907
Principal characters:
Leander, a rogue with gentlemanly attainments
Crispin, his accomplice
Silvia Polichinelle, an heiress
Signor Polichinelle, Silvia's miserly father
Dona Sirena, a well-placed, but penniless aristocrat
Columbine, Dona Sirena's confidante and servant
Harlequin, poet and lover of Columbine
Critique:
This play was a product of the Nobel
Prize winner in 1922 and one of the most
important authors in the Spanish literary
world of the twentieth century. In this
particular work we find Benavente
playing the part of satirist, demonstrating the
duality of man's nature. He has attempted
to reveal the mixture of good and evil in
every man by showing that the human
personality is a complex one, that
generosity and friendliness mingle freely, but
irreconcilably, with the sordid and base. In
addition, Benavente shows by means of
the characters and the action in The
Bonds of Interest that every person must
be made aware of the practical
implications of one's conduct and the effect that
these implications have on every person's
ethical outlook. One point that this play,
and Benavente's work in general, makes
clear: he was primarily interested in man
as an individual. Benavente, a Loyalist
sympathizer, disappeared during the
Spanish Civil War; his fate has not
definitely been determined.
Tfec Story:
Crispin and Leander, two rascals with
gentlemanly airs, arrived penniless in a
strange city. Crispin, the more realistic of
the two, pointed out that there were
actually two cities, one of the rich and one
of the poor. He hoped that they would
chance upon the better one. Being
penniless, the two rogues plotted to make their
way by putting on the best possible front.
Leander suggested that they make use of
some letters of introduction which he had
received to present to persons of mark in
the city, but Crispin scoffed at the idea.
Instead, he proposed that Leander
impersonate a great nobleman who came to
the city on official but mysterious
business. He further proposed that he,
Crispin, would act as a servant and carry
off the whole plan, if Leander would
remain quiet and speak only when
necessary. Leander having agreed, Crispin
proceeded to pound on the door of an inn.
By treating the innkeeper with blows and
scurrilous language, they convinced him
that Leander was indeed a great man and
one whom the innkeeper should welcome
to his establishment. So deceived was he
that he had his best rooms made ready for
the two guests.
Shortly after Leander and Crispin had
been treated so royally by the innkeeper
and his household, two other down-at-
heels rogues—a poet named Harlequin,
and a captain—approached the inn.
Knowing that they were penniless, the
innkeeper refused to serve them. Crispin,
hearing of their plight, forced the inn-
By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's
THE BONDS OF INTEREST by Jacinto Benavente.
Sons. Copyright, 1929, by John Garrett Underbill.
368

keeper to give them a fine dinner by
putting them under the protection of his
so-calkd master. The poet and the
captain, pleased to be so treated, vowed
friendship for the great man who had
caused them to be treated like gentlemen.
When asked by Leander why he helped
the two, Crispin answered that by so
doing they had enlisted the aid of both
poetry and arms, and that with such
support they could win the entire world.
In another quarter of the city a well-
placed but penniless and middle-aged
widow was also concerned with affairs of
money. The woman, Dofia Sirena, had
been informed by Columbine, her maid,
that the servants, musicians, and
tradespeople had all refused to serve her until
she paid her overdue bills. Dofia Sirena
had planned a garden f&te for the same
day, at which were to appear Signor and
Signora Polichinelle, along with
Silvia, their only daughter. Since Signor
Polichinelle was extremely rich, Dona
Sirena was trying to wed their daughter
to one of her own friends, all of whom had
signed statements agreeing to pay a large
sum of money to Dona Sirena for
arranging the match.
Columbine, in love with Harlequin,
promised to get help from him for her
mistress, for he had many friends who
would be willing to help put on the
garden fete. But when Columbine went to
find Harlequin, she found Crispin
instead. Crispin introduced himself as her
lover's friend and told her that if his
master were invited to the fete he would
see that the affak went off well. Crispin
pointed out that his master wished to
marry Silvia Polichinelle and would
amply reward Dona Sirena for her aid as
matchmaker.
The fete began in grand style that
afternoon. When he arrived, Crispin gave
Dona Sirena a promissory note in which
his master agreed to pay a large sum at the
time of the marriage and another
large sum upon the death of Signor
Polichinelle. Dona Sirena did not know
who Leander was, but she found the
prospect of money too pleasant to be
ignored, and so she agreed.
The fete was a success in every way.
Everyone was anxious to learn the identity
of the great but mysterious nobleman who
paid marked attentions to Silvia
Polichinelle, and all except Signor Polichinelle
seemed happy at the prospect of a match
between the two. Silvia herself had
quickly fallen in love with the handsome
young man and her mother, despising her
own husband as a vulgar tradesman,
seconded the daughter in preferring the
young nobleman for a prospective
husband. Leander was in love with Silvia the
moment he saw her. Crispin, seeing that
the only possible trouble lay with Signor
Polichinelle, plotted to keep him in the
background.
Before long Leander and Crispin found
their own affairs in a sorry state. Having
paid for nothing since their arrival in the
city, they were faced by many
creditors demanding payment. In addition,
Leander had become over-scrupulous
in the plan to have him marry Silvia
Polichinelle. Having fallen in love with
the girl, he did not want to marry her
under false pretenses. The only successful
aspect of the adventure seemed to be
Crispin's; he was plotting to undermine
the name of Silvia's father so that he could
not very well oppose the marriage.
Crispin's last stratagem had been to have
Leander attacked by a group of rascals and
then to spread the word that the bravos
had been hired by Signor Polichinelle to
assassinate Leander.
One morning Dona Sirena arrived to
press for an immediate marriage between
Silvia and Leander, for she wanted money
without delay. Silvia, she declared, was at
her house and quite ready for the
ceremony. She also reported that the
authorities, including a lawyer from Bologna,
were hot on the trail of Leander and
Crispin, and she pointed out that the
marriage must take place quickly, if it was to
take place at all. At that moment Silvia
arrived and proposed an immediate
ceremony. Leander began to tell her of the
369

plot by which he had hoped to make her
his wife. He was interrupted when the
authorities and the rogues' angry creditors
arrived at the door. Crispin, after hiding
Silvia and helping Leander to escape
through a window, prepared to meet the
men clamoring at the door.
The creditors stormed in, announcing
their intention to send Leander and
Crispin to prison and to seize whatever
property the two possessed, but after some
argument Crispin was able to convince
them that such a procedure, while it
would hurt him and Leander, would not
pay their debts. He then proceeded to
point out that it was to everyone's benefit
to hush up the matter of credit and
promote the marriage between Silvia and
Leander. Then Leander would be in
control of a fortune and would be able to pay
his bills.
The practical aspects of Crispin's
proposals appealed to everyone but Signor
Polichinelle. The creditors immediately
pounced on him, however, and badgered
him into consenting to the wedding. He
also was forced into agreeing to give his
daughter a large sum of money as a
dowry, to be paid over to Leander.
Everyone was then completely happy. Leander
confessed his true identity to Silvia, who
said it mattered not to her. Even Silvia's
mother was so pleased with his manners
and appearance that she made no protest.
Silvia replied to her lover that everyone
was moved by the bonds of interest
between himself and other people. She
added that the strongest bond was love,
the bond that had drawn her and
Leander together.
370

BOOK OF SONGS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Heinricli Heine (1797-1856)
First published: 1827
Although it is generally conceded that
Heine's finest poetry was not written
until his last years, the Book of Songs
(Buck der Lieder^), which as:embled his
entire lyrical output to the age of twenty-
six, remains the core of his poetic work.
The book gained an immediate
popularity and appeared in a new edition
every other year for decades. German
critical opinion of the period cited Heine
for writing in the spirit and with the
simple accents of German folk song, but
he was soon to become a controversial
figure. His merits are still fiercely
disputed in German territories, much of the
controversy centering about his later
pro:e writings, in which the unquench-
ably poetic nature of his approach to
religion and political philosophy yielded,
along with chilling prophetic insights,
considerable rhetorical muddle.
His own feelings toward Germany
were intensely ambiguous. He was later
to become, through his Paris exile, "a
link that spanned the Rhine"; but the
French influences which surrounded him
in his first sixteen years (during which
time the Rhineland was mostly under
French military occupation or French
civil rule) apparently had little effect. He
said in his Memoiren that early school
experiences imbued him with a
permanent prejudice against French literature,
and he went through a phase of
nationalistic fervor which ended only when he
discovered that he breathed more freely
under the French than the Prussian
regime; ultimately he denounced
Gallophobia and German national egotism.
"The Grenadiers," one of his earliest
poems, expresses his boyish admiration
for Napoleon—typically an admiration
not for the deeds but only for the genius
of the man. When Heine lived among
the French, however, his admiration was
chiefly directed toward their freedom from
the idealism, prudery, and sentimentality
which he deplored in the German
"Philistine," at whose expense his satirical wit
waxed especially brilliant. In the North
Sea cycle which closes his Book of Songs,
Heine describes his deep love of
Germany, a love which flourished in spite of
the fact that Germany's "pleasant soil"
was "encumbered with madness, hussars,
and wretched verses." There are passages,
especially in the early poems, in which
he expresses identification with the
German character, either lamenting the
passing of the nobility and virtue of the old
Germany or praising the Oak which
stands for the essential hardihood and
"holiness" of the Fatherland: but there is
something in his love for Germany that
is similar to his commitment to the lost
beloved, the false fair, the maiden with
flowering beauty and decaying heart, that
constitutes his poetic stock in trade and
is, in fact, almost his whole Nibelungen-
hort. Nevertheless, he considered himself
from first to last a German, and his poetry
is deeply rooted in the German Romantic
Movement. He liked to refer to himself
as the last of the Romantics, marking the
close of the old lyric school of the
Germans, but he attacked the political, realist,
engage* "Young Germany" group with
much the same exuberance as he did the
old "poesy" and regressive spiritualism.
Heine, experimenting in most of the
modes of Romanticism but ultimately
taking from the movement only what
suited him, provided finally one of the
paths by which the Romantic spirit was
deflected toward Symbolism. Individual
lyrics of the Book of Songs sometimes
suffer from a facile outpouring of stock
diction and sentiment, but here is poetry
which avoids from the beginning either
the heights or the depths of the abysmal
absolute. Its dealings with the absolute
are rather directed at maintaining a
perilous equilibrium, buoyed by Heine's
fresh, vigorous idiom, his delicate music

with its constant play of assonance, and
his frequent ironic twists. Reacting from
the artifice of eighteenth-century diction,
Heine sympathized with the Romantic
interests in a return to the German folk
tradition and in a poetic approximation to
the supposedly purer aesthetic impact of
music. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact
that some of his ballads ("The Loreley,"
for example) were actually admitted into
the canon of German folk song, Heine
himself insisted of his poetry that it was
only the form that was somewhat akin to
the folk song; the subject matter was that
of conventional society. Perhaps more
important to Heine's poetry than the
Romantic exaltation of the Volk was the
concern, distinctive to the German
Romantic school, with developing a rationale
of the comic. This concern provided a
sympathetic climate for Heine's
particular form of mockery, itself partially a
product of the satirical wit native to his
Jewish cultural inheritance.
The Romantic Movement itself was
later to provide one of the most obvious
targets for Heine's irony, and the lyrical
preface to the third edition of the Book
of Songs is not without its implicit
comment on that subject. It was Heine who
once defined the German Romantic
school as a return to the medieval poetry
that sprang from Catholicism in which
men derived voluptuous pleasure from
pain. The prefacing verses satirically
summarize that pleasure as it finds
expression in his own lyrics. It is the "old
enchanted wood" through which the poet
wanders, listening to the nightingale
singing "of love and the keen ache of
love." He comes to a gloomy castle
before which lies a marble sphinx, half
lion, half woman, which the song of the
nightingale prompts him to kiss. The kiss
awakens the statue, who proceeds to
embrace him rapturously in return,
meanwhile sinking her claws into him, kissing
and rending at the same time. As the
poet submits to this "exquisite torture,"
the nightingale sings, "O wondrous
sphinx, O love,/Why this always
distressing/Mingling of death-like agony/With
every balm and blessing?" The whole
effect involves the same burlesque by
exaggeration that is operative at the end of
the "Lyrical Intermezzo," in which he
describes the enormity of the coffin that
would be necessary to lower all his
sorrows into the Rhine—a facetious note not
entirely confined to his earliest poems.
On the whole, the Book of Songs
contains Heine's exploration of the Romantic
Movement rather than his rejection of it,
if only because it contains expressions of
the sentimental attachments of various
adolescent periods. The first section,
titled "Junge Lieden (Sorrows of
Youth)," represents roughly Heine's
Sturm und Drang period. It contains
such characteristic pieces as "The
Minnesingers" in which, with "word for sword,"
the singers engage in a tournament whose
victor is the one who enters the fray with
the deadliest wound. The section is
subdivided into Dream Pictures, Songs,
Romances, and Sonnets; the romantic decor
of the poet's sensibility is rendered in its
most studied garishness and most
rollicking meter. We find the enchanted
garden and the graveyard vision, the
wedding festivities and the attendant corpse
conjuring, the shining dream that turns
to nightmare or to daylit delusion; and
we find Poor Peter, alias the clumsy
knight, alias "King Heinrich"—a
primordial Prufrock. Not all of the skeleton-
rattling in this group is as delightful as
that of "I came from my love's house."
Here a minstrel sits on his crumbling
tombstone and plays a delirious dance to
arouse the graveyard's other inhabitants,
and each tells how he came to be there
—"How he fared, and was snared in
love's mad and furious chase."
By the time of the "Lyrical
Intermezzo" and the "Homecoming" sequence,
which follow "Junge Lieden," Heine had
largely abandoned his supernatural
baggage in favor of a more natural imagery
and a more personal, direct form of
address:
God knows where I'll find that silly
Madcap of a girl again,
I have searched this endless city,
372

Wet and cursing in the rain ....
The imagery of sea, storm, seasonal
change, and the like is never employed
for its own richness, but for its directly
evocative effect, as in the famous "Der
Tod, Das 1st Die Kiihle Nacht." Heine
also proves himself capable of a restraint
and lightness of touch in the most
ageless tradition:
The golden flame of summer
Burns in your glowing cheek;
But in your heart lies winter,
Barren and cold and bleak.
Soon it will change, my darling,
Far sooner than you seek;
Your heart will harbor summer,
While winter lines your cheek.
In the "Lyrical Intermezzo," a subtle
spring to autumn progression is threaded
through the whole sequence.
Max Brod has noted the remarkable
cohesion which was revealed by
assembling the whole of Heine's early poetry
into a single book. The experiences of
the hero of the poem sequences form a
consistent whole in which the action
develops with almost the progression of a
verse novel. A biographical basis for these
experiences is easy to establish, but it is
only detracting to do so; and Heine was
himself extremely opposed to any
biographical reading.
A unity less restricted to the theme
of the rejected lover is attempted in the
two North Sea cycles. Short, parallel
sequences which exhibit a kind of
symphonic development, they are often dis-
counted as set pieces because they were
written partly in order to escape the
confines of a reputation for "lyrical, mordant,
two-stanza" verse. They are not
without rewarding moments, however, and
their parallelism is curious and
revealing. In the beginning the poet invokes
the sea, the great symbol of inhuman
immensity and constant change. In the
poems that follow, the poet is actually at
sea, witnessing and participating in
various phenomena—storm, calm, seasickness,
sunset, the progression of twilight, and
night. There are also apostrophes to the
ancient gods. Finally the poet comes to
port, in the first sequence to the Peace
of Christ, and in the final sequence, in a
poem which parodies Christian metaphoi
throughout, to the haven of the wine
cellar of Bremen. In a final burst of
exuberance he writes:
Well, I have always declared
That not among quite common people,
Nay, but the best society going,
Lived for ever the King of Heaven!
373

BORIS GODUNOV
Type of work: Dramatic poem
Author: Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: 1598-1605
Locale: Russia
First published: 1831
Principal characters:
Boris Godunov, Tsar of Russia
Feodor, his son
Grigory Otrepyev, the pretender
Maryna, beloved of Grigory
Basmanov, a military leader
Critique:
Pushkin, a great admirer of
Shakespeare, wanted to bring some of the
boldness of Renaissance drama to the
Russian stage. He was not successful.
Boris Godunov, excellent as a poem, is
static as a play. It was written in 1825,
published in 1831, and failed as a stage
piece when it was first presented nearly
forty years later. Pushkin had little
political interest in this poem; he wrote it
as a study of personal ambition. To most
readers the poem is remembered chiefly
because it furnished the libretto for Mous-
sorgsky's opera.
The Story:
Boris Godunov, a privy councilor, was
a schemer. He had planned the
assassination of Tsarevitch Dimitry so that the
actual assassins had been caught and
promptly executed by a mob, but
popular suspicion did not fall on Boris. He
even sent Shuisky, a nobleman, to
investigate the crime. Shuisky returned
and told with a straight face the
version of the murder that Boris had
suggested to him.
When the people began to clamor for
Boris to become tsar, Boris and his sister
took refuge in a monastery, ostensibly
to escape the pressure of the populace
who had acclaimed him their ruler. With
a great show of humility and hesitation
he finally accepted the great honor. In
spite of his initial popular appeal, Boris
proved to be a cruel ruler, binding the
serfs more firmly than ever to their
masters and crushing ruthlessly nobles who
might have opposed him. There were a
few, however, who could never forget
that Boris had murdered Dimitry.
Father Pimen was an old monk, a
writer of chronicles. At night he wrote
his observations of Russia's troubled
times while a young monk named
Grigory Otrepyev slept nearby. Grigory
was troubled by grandiose dreams. It
seemed to him that he was mounting a
great stairs from the top of which all
Moscow was spread out before him.
When he awoke, Father Pimen
counseled him to forget the call of the world,
for lust and power were illusory. Grigory
would scarcely listen, for he knew that
in his youth Pimen had been a soldier
and had had his fill of secular life.
When a wicked monk tempted Grigory
by reminding him that he was the same
age as the murdered Dimitry would have
been, Grigory accepted the intimation
quickly. Then and there he resolved that
he would indeed be Dimitry.
To get support for his enterprise
Grigory went to Lithuania. To pass
unnoticed through the country, he attached
himself to two beggar monks. Somehow
word had got to Boris of the impostor's
intentions. His description was broad-
BORIS GODUNOV by Alexander Pushkin. Translated by Alfred Hayes. Copyright, 1918, by the
publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1936, by the publishers, Random House, Inc., in THE
WORKS OF ALEXANDER PUSHKIN. By permission of Random House, Inc.
374

cast, and the tsar's agents had
instructions to arrest him on sight. In a remote
tavern some officers came upon Grigory
and his two companions. To escape
capture, Grigory drew a dagger and fled.
Both the Lithuanians and the Poles
were delighted to help Grigory march
on Moscow. The Poles, especially, were
eager to attack the hated Muscovites. As
rumors of the impending rebellion spread,
many Russians came into Poland to join
the swelling ranks of Grigory's
supporters. Before long Grigory found another
powerful ally in a Jesuit priest who
promised to throw the influence of Rome
behind the pretender. All in all, Grigory
at the head of a rebellious army in
Poland was a real menace to Boris' throne
and life.
Still Grigory, comfortably installed at
an estate near the Russian border,
lingered in Poland. He could not bring
himself to give orders to advance. The
reason was that Maryna, the daughter of
the house, had captured his heart. She
had been cold in her manner for a time,
but finally at a tryst she asked him
outright whether he was really Dimitry or
an unfrocked monk, as some people were
saying. Grigory, unnerved by love,
confessed that he was a baseborn monk.
Then Maryna haughtily refused to ally
her noble blood with his. Stung by her
actions, Grigory proudly declared that he
would be tsar, and if Maryna denounced
him, he would use his power to punish
her. Satisfied that he had an indomitable
spirit, Maryna overlooked his birth and
agreed to be his tsarina.
The next morning Grigory began his
conquering march, and for a while all
went well. Towns and villages joined his
campaign willingly, for the name of
Dimitry was a powerful one.
In Moscow, Boris was greatly
perturbed and asked the Patriarch to give
his best counsel. He was told that
Dimitry's grave had become noted for its cures;
the Patriarch himself knew of an old
man who had been blind for many years
before a visit to the tomb had restored
his sight. Therefore, if Dimitry's remains
were brought into the Kremlin, and a
miracle were to happen before all the
people, Moscow would have proof that
Dimitry was dead and that the pretender
was a fraud. Boris paled at the
suggestion. Tactfully Shuisky proposed another
course. Rather than appear to use
religious means in a political quarrel, he
would go before the people and denounce
Grigory. Surely when the people knew
the truth they would desert the baseborn
monk who called himself Dimitry.
For a time events seemed to favor
Boris. Grigory was beaten back in
several attacks on strongholds held by Boris'
troops. But Grigory did not seem to mind
defeat. He remained cheerful and
confident, so that Boris grew less easy in his
mind at the outcome of the fighting.
Even after his forces had defeated
Grigory, the attackers reassembled and
continued to fight.
At last Boris entrusted the command
of his whole defense to Basmanov, an
able leader though not of noble birth.
Basmanov was gratified at the honor, for
he had as little patience with the
intrigues of the court as he did with the
fickle loyalties of the mob. His
conference with Boris was interrupted by the
arrival of a delegation of foreign
merchants. Boris had hardly left the room
before an alarm was sounded; the tsar
had suddenly been taken ill. Blood
gushed from his mouth and ears.
Before his death Boris had time
formally to name his son Feodor the next
tsar. His life ebbing, he advised Feodor
to name Basmanov the military leader,
to retain all the stately court procedures
which gave dignity to the government,
and to preserve strictly the discipline of
the church. After the last rites were
administered, Boris died.
At army headquarters, Pushkin, a
supporter of Grigory, had an interview with
Basmanov. Pushkin admitted that Grig-
ory's army was only a rabble, that
Cossacks and Poles alike were not to be
trusted. But if Basmanov would declare
375

for Grigory, the new tsar would make
him commander of all the Russian
armies. At first Basmanov hesitated, until
Pushkin reminded him that even if
Grigory were an impostor the magic name
of Dimitry was enough to insure that
Feodor had no chance of retaining his
tsardom. Basmanov, convinced, publicly
led his troops over to Grigory's side.
Basmanov's defection spread. The
people of Moscow willingly listened to
Pushkin when he made an inflammatory
speech in the great square. As he
reminded them of all they had suffered under
Boris and of the justice of Dimitry's
accession, the crowd shouted their
allegiance to the false Dimitry. Impassioned,
the mob surged into Boris' palace to seek
out Feodor.
In the meantime Feodor looked
hopelessly out of the window. Some in the
crowd felt pity, but their voices were
overruled. The boyars forced their way
inside, presumably to make Feodor swear
allegiance to Dimitry. Out of the uproar
came screams. At last the door opened.
One of the boyars made an
announcement: Feodor and his mother had taken
poison. He had seen the dead bodies.
The boyar urged the people to acclaim
Dimitry, but the people stood silent,
speechless.
376

THE BOURGEOIS GENTLEMAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris, France
First presented: 1670
Principal characters:
Monsieur Jourdain, a tradesman
Madame Jourdain, his wife
Lucile, their daughter
Nicole, a servant
Cleonte, in love with Lucile
Covielle, his valet
Dorante, a count
Dorimene, a marchioness
Critique:
Moliere, the master satirist, is a trifle
more gentle in The Bourgeois
Gentleman (he Bourgeois Gentilhomme^) than
in many of his plays, but here too he
thrusts sharply at the sham and
hypocrisy so often seen in seventeenth-century
Paris. Humor and keen wit are abundant,
but they are used to ridicule as well as
to amuse. The play, one of the best of
Moliere's court dramas, was first
performed in 1670, just three years before
the playwright's death. It was instantly
popular and has remained one of his
most successful plays.
The Story:
Monsieur Jourdain was a tradesman
who aspired to be a gentleman.
Thinking, like many of his kind, that
superficial manners, accomplishments, and
speech were the marks of a gentleman,
he engaged a dancing master, a music
master, a fencing master, a philosophy
teacher, and other assorted tutors who
were as vain and ignorant as he. They
constantly quarreled among themselves
as to which art was the most important,
and each tried to persuade Jourdain to
favor him above the others.
From the dancing master he learned
to approach a lady: to bow, to step
backward, and to walk toward her bowing
three times and ending at her knees.
From the philosopher he learned that all
speech is either poetry or prose. Jourdain
was delighted to learn that he had been
speaking prose all his life. He also learned
that he spoke with vowels and
consonants. This great knowledge set him
apart from ordinary citizens and certainly
made him a gentleman.
The primary reason for his great
desire to be a gentleman was his regard for
one Dorimene, a marchioness. He had
himself fitted out in costumes so
ridiculous that they appeared to be
masquerades, six tailors being required to dress
him in his fantastic costumes. Madame
Jourdain had retained her common sense
in spite of her husband's wealth, and she
constantly chided him about his
foolishness. But he considered her a bumpkin
and reviled her for her ignorance.
In addition to criticizing his dress and
speech, his wife rebuked him for being
taken in by Count Dorante, a nobleman
who flattered Jourdain's affected
gentlemanly customs and at the same time
borrowed large sums of money from him.
Jourdain begged Dorante to accept the
money because he thought it the mark of
a gentleman to lend money to a
nobleman. Jourdain, engaging Dorante to plead
his case with Dorimene, provided money
for serenades and ballets and a large
diamond ring. Dorante had promised to
bring Dorimene to Jourdain's house for
dinner, Jourdain having made
arrangements to send his wife and daughter
away at the time. Madame Jourdain, sus-
377

peering that her husband was up to some
knavery, sent the maid, Nicole, to listen
to the conversation between the two men.
Nicole could not hear all of it before
being discovered by Jourdain, but she heard
enough to convince Madame Jourdain
that her husband needed watching.
Jourdain's daughter Lucile loved and
was loved by Cleonte. Nicole loved his
servant, Covielle. When the girls passed
the men on the street without nodding,
the men swore to forget the faithless
ladies and turn to new fields. But after
learning that Lucile's aunt had been the
cause of their coldness—that old lady
thinking it unseemly to speak to men—
the four lovers were reconciled. Lucile
and Cleonte wanted only Jourdain's
permission to marry. Madame Jourdain
approved of Cleonte and promised to
intercede with her husband. But Jourdain
would not have Cleonte for a son-in-law;
the boy was not a gentleman. C16onte
was honorable, with both wealth and a
noble career, but he shunned hypocrisy
and false living, conduct becoming a
gentleman. The lovers pleaded in vain. At
last Covielle suggested a deception to
play on the foolish old man, and Cl6onte
agreed to the plan.
In the meantime Dorante, true to his
nature but false to Jourdain, used the
tradesman's money to act as suitor to
Dorimene. All of the gifts and
entertainment provided by Jourdain's money
were presented to Dorimene as coming
from Dorante. Even the diamond ring
became a gift from him. Dorante secretly
thought Jourdain a fool and enjoyed
making him a real one.
At the dinner in Jourdain's home
Dorimene was somewhat confused by
Jourdain's ardent speeches to her, for she
thought herself known as Dorante's
mistress. She was even more disturbed when
Madame Jourdain burst in upon the
dinner and accused her husband of
infidelity. Convinced that she was being
insulted by a madwoman, Dorimene left in
tears.
Covielle, disguised, called on Jourdain
and informed him that he had been a
friend of Jourdain's father and that his
father was indeed a gentleman. He had
not been a tradesman, but had only
bought fabrics and then given them to
his friends for money. Jourdain,
delighted with the news, felt justified in his
belief that he was a gentleman. Then
Covielle told Jourdain that the son of the
Grand Turk desired to marry Lucile.
Jourdain was flattered and promised to
give the girl to the Grand Turk's son
even though she had vowed she would
marry no one but Cleonte. Jourdain,
duped into accepting initiation into the
Grand Turk's religion, a ceremony
performed with much silly gibberish,
believed he was being honored above all
men.
When Cleonte appeared, disguised as
the son of the Grand Turk, Lucile
recognized him and agreed to be his
wife. Madame Jourdain chided her
for infidelity to Cl6onte until Covielle
whispered to her that the Grand Turk's
son and Cleonte were one and the same;
then she gave her consent to the
marriage. Jourdain sent for a notary. After
convincing Jourdain that their plan was
only in jest, Dorante and Dorimene said
that they would be married at the same
time. In great joy at his exalted position
Jourdain blessed them all and in addition
gave Nicole to Covielle, whom he thought
to be the Grand Turk's son's interpreter.
Thinking himself loved by Dorimene,
Jourdain offered his wife to whoever
wanted her. She, knowing the whole
plot, thanked him and proclaimed him
the greatest fool of all.
378

BOUVARD AND PECUCHET
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1881
Principal characters:
Bouvard, one of the bourgeoisie
Pecuchet, his friend
Madame Borodin, a neighbor
Abbe Jeufroy, the village priest
M. Foureau, the mayor
M. Vaucorbeil, the village doctor
Critique:
This unfinished novel presents an
example of Flaubert's passionate feelings
against the middle class. It shows his
persistent pessimism regarding their
aspirations and abilities, and also his hatred of
every aspect of their lives. Indeed, the
novel becomes almost a caricature of the
way in which a great mass of people lived
in his time. Although it was unfinished
at his death, Flaubert's notes showed that
he planned to make the two men move
in a full circle, eventually returning to
the same point at which the novel
began. In doing this he meant to show them
incapable of ever overcoming their plight.
The Story:
Bouvard and P6cuchet met quite by
accident one summer evening while each
was out for a walk. They sat down to
rest at the same moment on the same
bench and soon noticed that they had
both written their names on the inside
of their hats. On this common ground
they began talking and soon found out
that they were alike in practically
everything except appearance. They held the
same political views and the same kind
of job as clerks, and both were bachelors
living alone. Pecuchet, however, was
fairly tall and thin while Bouvard was
shorter and much heavier. After a lengthy
conversation they decided it was time for
them to return to their homes, and they
then spent much more time walking each
other to their respective doors. A
friendship had already developed; from that
time on they spent every available
moment together.
Soon afterward Bouvard learned that
he had inherited a considerable sum of
money from a man who he thought was
his uncle but who was really his natural
father. Because the friends shared
everything by this time, Bouvard considered
and consulted Pecuchet before making
any plans for investing his fortune. It
was decided between them that they
should buy a house and farm far from
the city and their desks and, after much
deliberation about location, they finally
obtained one. They thought that now
they could forget their rather plebian
tasks as clerks and give themselves up to
more rewarding labors. They had long
ago convinced themselves that they
possessed great minds and that only
circumstances prevented them from becoming
great men.
One of the first things they undertook
after settling on their farm was the care
of the kitchen garden. They made
elaborate plans, did a great deal of work, and
subsequently had some success.
Confident of their abilities they decided to
undertake the care of the entire farm,
work which had previously been done
by a tenant. For this project they
consulted the successful farmers of the
neighborhood, read all the authorities to
discover the best methods, and even
subscribed to an agricultural journal. But
there were far too many theories
advanced and they were compelled to guess
379

which were the best. At this they were
unsuccessful. Soon all of the livestock had
broken through the fences and run off,
or had died from excessive bloodletting.
The wheat caught fire and was
completely destroyed because of their own
ignorance and carelessness. Bouvard and
P6cuchet realized that such farming
would completely ruin them within two
years.
These failures they decided were
simply a result of their trying to do too much
at once. It was then resolved to give up
the major part of the farm and
concentrate their efforts on making a beautiful
formal garden. They planted the rarest
flowers, trees, and shrubs, and they
pruned and cut the trees and bushes into
unusual shapes. They included sculpture
in their design and they even made a
pool for which they carried water by hand
every day. When the garden was
completed they invited all the important
people of the neighborhood to dinner
and planned to surprise them afterwards
with a view of the garden. But the
dinner was a failure, and when the blinds
were pulled to show the garden they
discovered that the evening light was a great
disadvantage. The guests found fault
everywhere and eventually laughed at the
whole thing.
These failures, however, were easily
attributed to the ignorance of the guests,
and, thinking they had achieved some
degree of success, Bouvard and P6cuchet
went on to something else. The fruit
trees in the garden had done fairly well,
so they determined to use their produce
from the farm and attempt to find better
ways of preserving their food. In this
experiment they almost succeeded in
blowing themselves up, but in nothing else.
This time the failures were attributed to
a lack of knowledge about chemistry;
they then began to study that science.
Chemistry quickly led them to an
interest in medicine, which they took up
in even greater detail. Here again they
were merely confused by the great
number of contradictory theories. They
practiced this art on some of the local people,
much to the anger of M. Vaucorbeil, the
local doctor, but the experiment ended
when they began imagining that they
were themselves suffering from many
different ailments. The study had, however,
awakened an interest in the secret of life
and the universe, and they soon took up
geology in an attempt to find out the
truth about the world. But this pursuit
led only to controversy with the cur£
because their findings apparently
contradicted the teachings of the Church.
Within six months geology had led
them into a study of archaeology, and
soon they had turned their home into a
museum, filling it with all the great
treasures which they had discovered in
the neighborhood. Again their neighbors
came to see what was being done but
none appreciated their efforts to the
extent that Bouvard and P6cuchet thought
they should have; however, they were
not to be daunted. Their interest in
ancient objects led to an interest in the
people, but they soon realized they could
not understand people without knowing
something of psychology. In an attempt
to learn this science they began reading
historical romances. From this point they
proceeded through various types of
literature, including the drama, and soon
they began acting out certain plays for
their own amusement. Again the villagers
became interested in the doings of
Bouvard and P6cuchet, and it was in this
connection that Bouvard developed a
romantic interest in Madame Borodin.
He began to see her frequently and
was quickly overcome with a strong
desire to marry her. She consented to many
him, but at the same time extracted the
promise of a favor. When Bouvard
learned that the favor was for him to
fulfill her desire to own a certain piece
of property in his possession, his hopes
ended. He could not give her the
property and she would not marry him
otherwise. In the meantime P6cuchet had been
carrying on his own affair with their
servant girl. He was quite successful in
his attempts but because of them he
contracted a venereal disease which
380

caused him an extreme amount of
embarrassment. The two friends became
more and more dejected.
For diversion they became interested
in athletics, then spiritualism. Soon they
were again practicing medicine and
studying psychology. Logic and
metaphysics also occupied them for a time;
then they turned to religion. But in each
case they "became disgusted or frustrated
in their attempts and soon gave them
up. About this time they decided to
adopt a boy and girl who were to be sent
away to a reformatory and an
orphanage, respectively. They wanted to devote
all their time and energy to the
education and training of these two children,
but again they simply became confused
by the divergent ideas on education and
even by the subject matter they were
supposed to be teaching. The worst part
came when they discovered that the
children would not respond to education and,
in fact, were incorrigible delinquents.
They had to be sent away.
[At this point Flaubert's manuscript
broke off but a plan found among his
papers after his death indicated the
following conclusion to the story: Bouvard
and Pecuchet were to proceed in the
same manner for some time, lecturing to
the people on such topics as morals,
ethics, and government. In time they
were to get to a consideration of the
condition of mankind and the world and
from there they were to proceed to
speculation about the future. Finally they
were to realize how foolish they had been
ever since they had come to the country.
The remedy, the thing that would really
make them happy, would be to go back
to their desks and continue the routine
work of copying. Thus they ordered a
desk and writing materials and prepared
to go to work.]
381

THE BRACKNELS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Forrest Reid (1876-1946)
Type of plot: Domestic chronicle
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1911
Principal characters:
Mr. Bracknel, a self-made wealthy businessman
Mrs. Bracknel, his sickly wife
Alfred, sport-loving son of the Bracknels
Denis, a neurotic younger son
May, the charming older daughter
Amy, the sensual younger daughter
Hubert Rusk, Denis Brackners tutor
Critique:
Forrest Reid was a novelist little
known in the United States. Like Walter
de la Mare, his friend, he found the
supernatural inseparable from his
conception of reality. Denis Bracknel, in this
novel, reflects somewhat the author's
personal experience, for in his imagination,
at least, Reid himself lived in a pagan
dream world not unlike that of his hero;
and his interest in such imaginary
existence, another reality quite different
from the ordinary world, is apparent in
most of his fiction. As a beginning
novelist, he was influenced by Henry James,
but their correspondence ended when
James failed to comprehend fully Reid's
first novel. As a novelist and as a person,
Reid was poetical and mystical, qualities
which are easily discernible in The Brack-
nets, especially in the character of young
Denis, who finds the evil of the
everyday world unbearable. In this book, as
in most of Reid's fiction, there is reflected
as well the author's strong interest in
the psychology of the abnormal person.
The Story:
Mr. Bracknel, an Irish businessman,
was disgusted with his family, for he
felt that they all tried to go counter to
his wishes merely for the sake of
displeasing him. The members of his
family felt, however, that he was unduly
tyrannical. Alfred Bracknel, the oldest
child, had a place in his father's business,
but he paid little attention to his work.
Instead, he preferred to spend his time
and thought on gambling, drinking, and
women, much to his father's disgust.
Seventeen-year-old Denis, the youngest
child, displeased his father with his
interest in everything mystical. Mr.
Bracknel prided himself upon being a very
practical person.
May, the oldest daughter, gave her
father the least trouble, but Amy, a very
sensual girl, constantly fell in love with
undesirable young men whom her
father had to discourage. Mrs. Bracknel
annoyed her husband because she was
sickly. Although only forty-six, she
seemed much older, while her husband
was still a lusty man.
The entire family thought that Denis
was a little mad because of his interest
in the occult. He had been sent away to
school in England. After his career there
had ended in failure, a series of tutors
had not been able to cope with him. At
last a physician who specialized in
mental cases recommended to Mr. Bracknel
that he hire Hubert Rusk, a young Eng-
THE BRACKNELS by Forrest Reid. By permission of Mr. Stephen Gilbert, Executor of the estate
of Forrest Reid, and of the publishers, Faber and Faber, Ltd., London. Copyright, 1911, by Edward
Arnold, London. All rights reserved. Now published under the title DENIS BRACKNEL by Faber and
Faber, Ltd. All rights reserved.
382

lishman, as a tutor for the boy. The
doctor knew Rusk and felt that he could
depend on the young man to be careful of
the boy's mental condition.
The girls in the family, particularly
Amy, looked forward to the arrival of
the young tutor, for their father tried to
keep them from social contacts with
young men. Even before his arrival, Amy
expressed a real interest in Hubert Rusk.
Being a deferential and easygoing
man, Rusk made himself quickly at home
with the Bracknels, all of whom seemed
anxious to have him as a confidant. On
his arrival he found that his charge had
a wide knowledge of occult subjects but
knew next to nothing in other fields.
He also found that Denis was an
extremely odd young man who had been
driven inward by the failure of the
family to understand him.
On his first night at the Bracknel
home Rusk observed that Denis went out
for a walk late at night. Later he
discovered that Denis, obsessed with moon
worship, had discovered an ancient pagan
altar in a wood near the house. At the
ancient altar Denis performed ceremonies
in honor of the moon, including the
sacrifice on occasion of small animals.
Before long the two daughters of the
house became rivals for Rusk's
attentions. Amy, the more sensual of the two,
cowed her sister into letting her have
what attentions the oblivious tutor gave.
He, on his part, was unaware of the
attraction he had for the girls, except
that he did not like to have Amy
constantly interrupting the lessons he was
giving her younger brother.
During Rusk's stay with the Bracknels,
Alfred gave his father a great deal of
trouble. Once Mr. Bracknel shipped
Alfred off to an office of the business in
Switzerland, but he had to bring him
back because of the young man's
incompetence. Later he discovered that Alfred
was stealing from the firm to pay his
gambling debts. Finally Alfred married
a typist from the office, at which point
Mr. Bracknel turned him out, but not
without a scene in which Alfred accused
his father of being partial to his
illegitimate son, who was also in the business.
Alfred even thought of telling publicly
the fact that his father had an illegitimate
son, for no one except the mother of the
young man, Alfred, and his father knew
the fact.
In the meantime Rusk was
investigating Denis' behavior. One night he found
the lad actually worshiping the moon,
but the boy did not tell his tutor that
he had visions, both at night and in the
daytime, of the goddess of the moon, who
appeared to him and even kissed him.
As it was, healthy-minded Rusk tried to
convince the lad that such behavior was
peculiar and not good for his own mental
health. Despite his friendship with the
doctor who had requested him as a tutor,
Rusk did not tell the medical man of
Denis' visions. Learning that the boy
believed the house to be haunted and lived
in fear, he did decide to enlist the
doctor's aid in getting Mr. Bracknel's
permission to take Denis abroad for a year
or two, as an aid to improving the young
man's state of mind. The boy was so
frightened by his illusions that he moved
his bed from his own room to that
occupied by his tutor.
Amy Bracknel, still infatuated with the
young tutor, seized every opportunity to
throw herself at him; she even had an
old woman make up a love potion for
her to administer to him. Almost
pathologically obsessed, she found him alone
in the library one evening and enticed
him into kissing her. She then told her
sister and her mother that Rusk and she
were engaged to be married. Rusk, not
knowing what she had said, but
thinking that her sister and Denis had been
aware of the embrace, prepared to leave.
He assumed that Mr. Bracknel would
discharge him for making love to Amy.
As it was, Mr. Bracknel heard from
Amy herself that she was in love with
Rusk and wished to marry him. She also
related to her father that she had gone
to Rusk's room the night he had kissed
383

her, but that she had been deterred in
carrying out her plans by the presence
of Denis in the tutor's room. Mr. Brack-
nel sent Amy at once to an aunt's house
and made arrangements to have Denis
and the tutor leave within two days for
a trip to the continent.
Before the two could leave, however,
Mr. Bracknel died of a heart attack,
brought on by a heated interview with
Alfred in the father's office. Alfred, was
glad rather than sorry to come into his
own as the heir to the business. Mr.
Bracknel's death was a great shock to
Denis, who believed that he had seen a
vision of his father's death. In spite of
the young man's strange behavior, Rusk
left him alone at tea time one day. When
the lad failed to appear after nightfall,
Rusk and the doctor went to look for
him. They found him hanging from a
tree limb beside the old pagan altar he
had discovered.
His pupil being dead, and preparations
for his departure already made, Rusk left
the house after Mr. Bracknel's funeral.
Two years later he had an opportunity to
emigrate to Australia. Before leaving, he
decided to make a short trip to Ireland
to see the Bracknels. He found them
engaged in a great deal of social activity.
Amy Bracknel was infatuated with a new
beau. Alfred had turned the business over
to a capable manager. No one paid any
attention to Rusk. He realized that he
no longer -mattered to anyone in that
strange family.
384

THE BRAGGART SOLDIER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 255-184 B.C.)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: Third century B.C.
Locale: Ephesus, in Asia Minor
First presented: c. 206 B.C.
Principal characters:
Pyrgopolinices, a braggart army captain
Pleusicles, a young Athenian
Periplecomenus, an old gentleman, Pleurides' friend
Scblbdrus, a servant of Pyrgopolinices
Palaestrio, another servant of Pyrgopolinices, former servant of
Pleusicles
Philocomasium, Pyrgopolinices* mistress
Acroteleuhum, an Ephesian courtesan
Critique:
Miles Gloriosus, or The Braggart
Soldier, provided the prototype of the
vainglorious, cowardly soldier for many
characters in later drama, not the least of
whom is Shakespeare's Falstaff.
Pyrgopolinices* character, however, is not
worked out with nearly the depth that
FalstafFs is. Plautus tends to give a jerky
movement to the play by his failure to
integrate character development with plot
development: the action is frequently
brought to a full stop while discussions
take place that have little function other
than to give the audience a notion of
what the characters are like.
Nevertheless, the action is ingeniously contrived.
Even though the trickery seems in
excess of that required by the situation, the
tone of the play is sufficiently light to
prevent the audience from feeling any
strong desire for verisimilitude.
The Story:
Pleusicles, a young Athenian, was in
love with and loved by Philocomasium,
a young woman of Athens. But while he
was away on public business in another
city, a captain of Ephesus,
Pyrgopolinices, came to Athens and, in order to
get Philocomasium into his power,
worked his way into the confidence of
her mother. As soon as the opportunity
presented itself, he abducted the
daughter and carried her off to his home in
Ephesus.
News of ravished Philocomasium soon
reached Pleusicles* household, and
Palaestrio, a faithful servant, immediately
embarked for the city in which his
master was staying, intending to tell him
what had happened. Unfortunately,
however, Palaestrio's ship was taken by
pirates; he was made captive and was
presented by chance to Pyrgopolinices as
a gift. In the captain's house. Palaestrio
and Philocomasium recognized each othei
but tacitly agreed to keep their
acquaintance a secret.
Perceiving that the girl bore a violent
hatred for Pyrgopolinices, Palaestrio
privately wrote to Pleusicles, suggesting that
he come to Ephesus. When the young
man arrived, he was hospitably
entertained by Periplecomenus, an old
gentleman who was a friend of Pleusicles*
father and who happened to live in a
house adjoining that of Pyrgopolinices.
Since Philocomasium had a private room
in the captain's house, a hole was made
through the partition wall, enabling the
two lovers to meet in the approving
Periplecomenus' house.
One day Sceledrus, a dull-witted
servant appointed to be the keeper of
Philocomasium, was chasing a monkey along
the roof of the captain's house when he
happened to look through the skylight of
the house next door and saw Pleusicles
385

and Philocomasium at dalliance together.
He was observed, however, and before
he could report his discovery to the
captain, Periplecomenus told Palaestrio how
matters stood. Palaestrio then evolved an
elaborate hoax to convince Sceledrus that
he had not seen what he thought he had.
Philocomasium was to return
immediately through the hole in the wall and
pretend never to have left the captain's
house. In addition, she was to make a
reference at the proper time to a dream
she had had regarding the sudden advent
in Ephesus of a pretended twin sister.
This ruse was carried out before the ever
more confused Sceledrus, Philocomasium
first playing herself and then changing
clothes, going through the hole to the
other house, and playing her
nonexistent twin sister. The dull Sceledrus was
slow in taking the bait, but at last he
swallowed it and became as unshakably
convinced that he had not seen
Philocomasium as he had previously been to
the contrary.
The danger of discovery temporarily
averted, Palaestrio, Periplecomenus, and
Pleusicles conferred together on how they
might trick Pyrgopolinices into giving up
Philocomasium and Palaestrio. The
servant again formulated an elaborate ruse.
Since the captain was ridiculously vain
regarding his attractiveness to women as
well as his pretended prowess in battle, it
was decided that the plotters would use
an Ephesian courtesan to undo him.
Periplecomenus, a bachelor, was to hire
her to pretend to be his wife but so
infatuated with Pyrgopolinices that she
was willing to divorce her aging husband
for the captain's favor.
This plan was executed. Acroteleutium,
chosen as the courtesan and using her
maid and Palaestrio as go-betweens, sent
the ring of her "husband" to the captain
with word of her infatuation.
Pyrgopolinices was immediately aroused, but as he
was discussing the situation with
Palaestrio, it occurred to him that he would be
compelled to get rid of Philocomasium
before he could take advantage of Acro-
teleutium's offer. When Palaestrio
informed him that Philocomasium's mother
and twin sister had just arrived in
Ephesus looking for her and that the captain
could easily put her out and let her
return to Athens with them, Pyrgopolinices
eagerly accepted this suggestion.
Overwhelmed by Palaestrio's flattery, he even
agreed to let Philocomasium keep the
gold and jewels he had given her.
When Pyrgopolinices went in to tell
her to leave, however, she feigned
immense grief. Finally she agreed to leave
quietly but only after he promised that
sne might take Palaestrio with her as well
as the gold and jewelry. The captain,
amazed at this sudden display of
affection, attributed it to his irresistible
masculine charm. When he returned to
Palaestrio he was given to understand that
Acroteleutium wanted him to come to
her in Periplecomenus' house. Although
he was at first reluctant to do so for fear
of the old man's wrath, he was told that
Acroteleutium had put her "husband"
out and that the coast was clear.
At that moment Pleusicles, disguised
as the master of a ship, appeared and said
he had been sent to take Philocomasium
and her effects to the ship where her
mother and sister were waiting.
Pyrgopolinices, overjoyed that the matter was
being handled with such dispatch, sent
the girl and Palaestrio off as soon as he
could manage it.
After their departure he hurried into
Periplecomenus' house in expectation
that Acroteleutium would be waiting for
him. Much to his dismay, however,
Periplecomenus and his servants were
waiting instead, armed with rods and whips
and intent on giving Pyrgopolinices the
beating that a real husband would have
inflicted under such circumstances. This
punishment they accomplished with great
alacrity, extorting from the captain,
under threat of even more dire punishment,
the promise that he would never retaliate
against any of the persons involved.
When they were finished, Sceledrus
came up and crowned the captain's
beating with the news that the ship's master
was Philocomasium's lover and that he
386

had seen them kissing and embracing
each other as soon as they were safely
outside of the city gate. Pyrgopolinices
was overwhelmed with rage at the way
he had been tricked, but as Sceledrus and
he entered the house the servant
observed that the captain had received only
what he deserved.
387

BRAND
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of vlot: Nineteenth century
Locale: West coast of Norway
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Brand, a priest
His Mother
Agnes, his wife
Einar, a painter
The Mayor
The Doctor
The Dean
The Sexton
The Schoolmaster
Gerd, a gipsy girl
Critique:
Immensely popular when first
published, Brand took the whole
Scandinavian world by storm, and with it
Ibsen's European fame began. Four
editions appeared in the year of ifs
publication; the eleventh, in 1889. Four
translations were made in Germany
between 1872 and 1882. Though not
intended for the stage, Act IV has been
played repeatedly; only in Sweden has
the whole drama been performed. The
play was written in Italv, where the
author had exiled himself in protest
against the national shame when Norway
remained neutral and failed to support
Denmark in its war against invading
Prussia. From Italy, Ibsen was able to
catch in clearer perspective the strength
as well as weakness of his native land.
The writing of Brand seemed to act as a
personal catharsis, and he was able
thereafter to return to his northern home and
produce in regular succession, almost
every two years for the rest of his life,
his original and stirring dramas. Though
Brand is addressed to the people of
Norway, it is universal in its appeal,
depicting the never-ending struggle of the soul,
relentless and tragic, in its search for
uncompromising truth.
BRAND by Henrik Tbsen, from THE COLLECTED
Her ford. By permission of the publishers, Charles Sc
Sons. Renewed. All rights reserved.
The Story:
Brand, a young priest, met three types
of people as he made his way down the
mountainside to the fumble-down church
in his home valley. The first was a
peasant whose daughter was dving, but for
whom he would not give his own l:fe.
The second was Emar, a young painter
returned from travel overseas, and Agnes,
his betrothed, who were gaily on their
way to the town of Agnes' parents. The
third was a half-gipsy girl named Gerd
who taunted him to climb up to her
church of ice and snow. In the peasant,
Einar and Agnes, and Gerd—the
fainthearted, the light-hearted, and the
uncontrolled—Brand saw exemplified the
triple sickness of the world: and he vowed
to heaven to bring about its cure.
In the village Brand gained the
admiration of the crowd when he risked his life
to aid a man. Later he saw Agnes sitting
by the shore, disturbed and uplifted by
new powers awakening in her, a vision of
God urging her to choose between two
paths. Then he saw his aged mother, who
offered him all her savings on condition
that he would preserve them for family
use. Brand refused and urged her to give
up all her earthly possessions. The mother
left unrepentant, unwilling that her life-
WORKS OF HENRTK IBRFN. Translated by C. H.
ribner's Sons. Copyright, 1906. by Charles Scribner't
388

time savings should be scattered. By these
encounters Brand was convinced that his
mission lay close at hand in daily duties,
even if he were unapplauded by the
world. As he smarted to return to the
village, Einar suddenly appeared and
demanded that Agnes return to him. But
Agnes, having seen the vision, refused
to go with Einar, even though Brand
warned her it would be gray and sunless
in his fissure between the mountains; he
demanded all or nothing.
Three years passed. Although success
had marked Brand's work, he realized
that, married to Agnes and blessed with
her love and that of their son Alf. he had
yet made no real sacrifices. The tests
soon came. First his mother died,
unrepentant. Then the child became ill, and
the doctor advised them to leave their
icy home or the child would die. When
Brand agreed, the doctor pointed out
that, in leaving, Brand would belie his
own stern attitude towards others; his
words would become mere preachments.
Agnes made ready to go, but Brand
was haunted by the larger issues. Should
they go or stay? As mother of the child,
Agnes—Brand thought—should make the
decision. When Agnes said that she
would abide by her husband's choice,
Brand chose the only way he could,
though he knew his decision meant death
for the child they loved.
A year later, the mayor, with elections
near, arrived to seek Brand's aid in
building a house for the poor. When Brand
said he himself was going to build a new
church which would cost the people
nothing, the mavor left.
Agnes felt that she must challenge
her husband with what he demanded of
others, all or nothing. If she were to
return to her old life, Agnes asked,
would he choose her or his holy work?
There could be only one answer. Agnes
rejoiced, knowing indeed that for the
husband she loved it was all or nothing.
Soon afterward she died, leaving Brand
alone.
A year and a half later the new church
was complete and a great throng
gathered for the consecration. The mayor
and the dean congratulated Brand on his
great accomplishment. Einar appeared,
emaciated, fanatic. He had become a
missionary. He brushed aside as unimportant
the news of the death of Agnes and her
child; his only interest was the faith in
which she died.
Einar left, but the encounter had made
things clear to Brand. He exhorted the
people to lead a new life. It had been
wrong, he said, to lure the spirit of God
to their heart by simply building a larger
church. There should be no compromise.
It must be all or nothing. He waved them
away from the church and locked the
door.
When he called the people to the
greater Church of Life where every
day was dedicated to God, they lifted
Brand on their shoulders. Up toward
the mountains he urged them. As the
rain began to fall, the sexton warned
them they were on the way to the Ice-
church. The older ones complained of
feeling faint and thirsty. Many cried out
for a miracle. They felt the gift of
prophecy was on Brand and called on
him to speak. Uplifted, he told them they
were waging a war that would last all
their lives; they would lose the wealth of
mammon but gain faith and a crown of
thorns. At this the crowd cried out that
they had been misled, betrayed, and
they were ready to stone and knife the
priest.
Brand toiled upward, followed far
behind by a single figure, Gerd. Now
he heard an invisible choir which
mocked him, saying his work on earth
was doomed. The apparition of Agnes
appeared, saying he could be reunited
with his wife and son if he would blot
out from his soul three words which had
characterized his old life: nought or all.
When Brand spurned the tempter, the
phantom vanished. Gerd, with her rifle,
caught up with him. She saw that
Brand's hands were pierced and torn, his
389

brow marked with thorns. To Gerd he
was the Lord, the Redeemer. Brand bade
her go, but Gerd told him to look up.
Above him towered the Ice-church. Brand
wept, feeling utterly forsaken. With his
tears came sudden release. His fetters
fell away, and he faced the future with
renewed youth and radiant faith.
In the forms of snow from the
mountain heights Gerd saw a mocking sprite,
and she raised her rifle and shot. With
a terrible, thunderous roar an avalanche
swept down. As it was about to crush
him, Brand called out to God. Above the
crashing thunder a voice answered with
assurance of a God of love.
390

BRAVE NEW WORLD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: 632 years After Ford
Locale: London and New Mexico
First published: 1932
Principal characters:
Bernard Marx, a citizen of
Lenina Crowne, an Alpha
John, the Savage
Mustapha Mond, a World
Critique:
Aldous Huxley satirizes our current
Western civilization by describing in
Brave New World the condition in which
it might find itself some six hundred
years from our time. Contemporary
trends in culture are carried to shocking,
amusing, and fantastic extremes in the
book. Brave New World, because of
obvious limitations of space, contains
features which beg further elucidation.
Within definite limits, however, the
author has succeeded in indicting
twentieth-century Western culture with
delightful acerbity and urbane wit.
The Story:
One day in the year 632 After Ford,
as time was reckoned in the brave new
world, the Director of the Central
London Hatchery and Conditioning Center
took a group of new students on a tour
of the plant where human beings were
turned out by mass production. The
entire process, from the fertilization of
the egg to the birth of the baby, was
carried out by trained workers and
machines. Each fertilized egg was placed
in solution in a large bottle for scientific
development into whatever class in
society the human was intended. The
students were told that scientists of the
period had developed a Bokanovsky
Process by means of which a fertilized
egg was arrested in its growth. The
egg responded by budding, and instead
of one human being resulting, there
would be from eight to ninety-six
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley. By permis!
Copyright. 1932, by Doubleday. Doran & Co.. Inc.
the future
worker
Controller
humans, all identical.
These Bokanovsky Groups were
employed wherever large numbers of people
were needed to perform identical tasks.
Individuality was a thing of the past; the
new society bent every effort to make
completely true its motto, Community,
Identity, Stability. After birth the babies
were further conditioned during their
childhood for their predestined class in
society. Alpha Plus Intellectuals and
Epsilon Minus Morons were the two
extremes of the scientific Utopia.
Mustapha Mond, one of the World
Controllers, joined the inspection party
and lectured to the new students on the
horrors and disgusting features of old-
fashioned family life. To the great
embarrassment of the students, he, in
his position of authority, dared use the
forbidden words mother and father; he
reminded the students that in 632 A. F.
everyone belonged to everyone else.
Lenina Crowne, one of the Alpha
workers in the Hatchery, took an interest
in Bernard Marx. Bernard was different
—too much alcohol had been put into
his blood surrogate during his period in
the prenatal bottle and he had
sensibilities similar to those possessed by people
in the time of Henry Ford.
Lenina and Bernard went by rocket
ship to New Mexico and visited the
Savage Reservation, a wild tract where
primitive forms of human life had been
preserved for scientific study. At the
pueblo of Malpais the couple saw an
i of the author and the publishers, Harper & Brother*,
391

Indian ceremonial dance in which a
young man was whipped to propitiate
the gods. Lenina was shocked and
disgusted by the filth of the place and by
the primitive aspects of all she saw.
The pair met a white youth named
John. The young man disclosed to them
that his mother, Linda, had come to
the reservation many years before on
vacation with a man called Thomakin.
The vacationers had separated and
Thomakin had returned alone to the
brave new world. Linda, marooned in
New Mexico, gave birth to a son and
was slowly assimilated into the primitive
society of the reservation. The boy
educated himself with an old copy of
Shakespeare's plays which he had found.
Bernard was convinced that the boy was
the son of the Director of Hatcheries,
who in his youth had taken a companion
to New Mexico on vacation and had
returned without her. Bernard had enough
human curiosity to wonder how this
young savage would react to the scientific
world. He invited John and his mother
to return to London with him. John,
attracted to Lenina and anxious to see the
outside world, went eagerly.
Upon Bernard's return, the Director of
Hatch eries publicly proposed to dismiss
him from the Hatchery because of his
unorthodoxy. Bernard produced Linda
and John, the director's son. At the
family reunion, during which such words
as mother and father were used more
than once, the director was shamed out
of the plant. He later resigned his
position.
Linda went on a soma holiday, soma
being a drug which induced forgetful-
ness. John became the curiosity of
London. He was appalled by all he saw—
by the utter lack of any humanistic
culture and by the scientific mass
production of everything, including humans.
Lenina tried to seduce him but he was
held back by his primitive morality.
John was called to attend the death
of Linda, who had taken too much soma
drug. Maddened by the callousness of
people conditioned toward death, he
instigated a mutiny of workers as they
were being given their soma ration.
Arrested, he was taken by the police to
Mustapha Mond, with whom he had a
long talk on the new civilization. Mond
explained that beauty caused unhappiness
and thus instability; therefore
humanistic endeavor was checked. Science was
dominant. Art was stifled completely;
science, even, was stifled at a certain
point. And religion was restrained so
that it could not cause instability. Mond
explained, with a genial sort of cynicism,
the reasons underlying all of the features
of the brave new world. Despite Mond's
persuasiveness, the Savage continued to
champion tears, inconvenience, God, and
poetry.
John moved into the country outside
London to take up his old way of life.
Sightseers came by the thousands to see
him; he was pestered by reporters and
television men. At the thought of
Lenina, whom he still desired, John
mortified his flesh by whipping himself.
Lenina visited him and was whipped to
death by him in a frenzy of passion
produced by his dual nature. When he
realized what he had done, he hanged
himself. Bernard's experiment had failed.
Human emotions could end only in
tragedy in the brave new world.
392

BREAD AND WINE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ignazio Silone CI900- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1930's
Locale: Italy
First published: 1937
Principal characters:
Don Benedetto, a liberal priest
Pietro Spina, his former pupil and a political agitator
Bianchina Girasole, a peasant girl befriended by Spina
Cristtna Colamarttni, Bianchina's schoolmate
Critique:
This novel, which has been dramatized
and produced on Broadway, is the study
of a character who, despite tremendous
intellectual disappointments and physical
hardships, remained faithful to his
concept of justice. Silone vividly presents
the widespread compromising of ideals
which took place on all levels of Italian
society under the corporate state of
Mussolini. By showing the efforts of
several generations of honest, courageous
Italians in their struggle for justice and
social reform, Silone appears to present
the thesis that good men, if not
triumphant, will continue the fight as long as
man exists.
The Story:
In the Italian village of Rocca dei
Marsi, Don Benedetto, a former Catholic
teacher, and his faithful sister, Marta,
prepared to observe the don's seventy-
fifth birthday. It was April, and war
with the Abyssinians was in the making.
Benedetto had invited several of his old
students to observe his anniversary with
him. Three appeared and the group
talked of old acquaintances. Most of
Benedetto's students had compromised
the moral precepts that the high-minded
old scholar had taught them. Benedetto
asked about Pietro Spina, his favorite
pupil, and learned from his guests that
the independent-minded Spina had
become a political agitator, a man without
a country. It was rumored that Spina
had returned to Italy to carry on his
work among the peasants.
One day Doctor Nunzio Sacca, one of
those who had been at the party, was
summoned by a peasant to come to the
aid of a sick man. Sacca, upon finding
the man to be Spina, was filled with
fear, but the sincerity and fervor of Spina
made him ashamed. Spina, only in his
thirties, had, with iodine, transformed
his features to those of an old man.
Sacca administered to Spina and arranged
for the agitator's convalescence in a
nearby mountain village. Later he furnished
Spina with clerical clothes. Disguised as
a priest and calling himself Don Paolo
Spada, Spina went to the Hotel Girasole
in Fossa, where he brought comfort to
a young girl who was believed dying as
the result of an abortion.
In the mountains, at Pietrasecca, Paolo
—as Spina now called himself—stayed
at the inn of Matelena Ricotta. In his
retreat, Paolo began to have doubts
concerning the value of the life he was
leading, but always the animal existence
of the peasants of Pietrasecca spurred
him on in his desire to free the
oppressed.
Bianchina Girasole, the girl whom
Paolo had comforted at Fossa, appeared,
well and healthy. Attributing her
survival to Paolo, she said that the man
was surely a saint. Bianchina, disowned
by her family, went to Cristina Cola-
martini, a school friend who lived in
Pietrasecca. The two girls, discussing
school days and old friends, concluded
BREAD AND WINE by Ignazio Silone. Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher. By permission of
the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1937, by Harper & Brothers.
393

that most Sf their schoolmates had taken
to ways of evil in one way or another.
When Bianchina seduced Cristina's
brother, Alberto, the Colamartinis were
scandalized. Paolo lost his respect for
Cristina, who showed only too plainly
that her devotion to God excluded all
reason and any humanity; she avowed
that a Colamartini could never marry
a Girasole because of difference in caste.
Paolo began to visit more and more
among the peasants. Soon he had a
reputation as a wise and friendly priest.
In his association with those simple
people he learned that no reformer
could ever hope to be successful with
them by use of abstractions; the peasants
accepted only facts, either good or bad.
He left the valley. At Fossa he again
sought out potential revolutionary
elements. He spoke of revolution to Alberto
and Bianchina, who had moved to Fossa,
and to Pompeo, son of the local chemist.
The youths were delighted. Paolo
enlisted Pompeo in the movement.
Paolo next went to Rome. There, in
the church of Scala Santa, he discarded
his clerical dress to become Spina once
again. In Rome he found an air of
futility and despair. Romeo, his chief
contact, told him that peasant agitators
did not have a chance for success. Spina
explained that propaganda by words was
not enough; success could be achieved
only by living the truth to encourage
the oppressed. Spina saw student
demonstrations in favor of the leader and of the
projected war. He talked to Uliva, who
had become completely disillusioned.
Then he looked for Murica, a youth
from his own district who, perhaps,
could direct him to dependable peasants.
But Murica had returned to his home.
Before Spina left Rome he heard that
an explosion had killed Uliva in his
apartment. The police learned that
Uliva had been preparing to blow up a
church at a time when many high
government officials were to be in it.
Back at the Hotel Girasole in Fossa,
Spina, again disguised as Don Paolo, was
sickened by the enthusiasm of the
peasants for the success of the Abyssinian
war. He sent Bianchina to Rocca to seek
out Murica, and during the pro-war
demonstrations he went about the village
writing anti-war and anti-government
slogans on walls. Pompeo, who had gone
to Rome, returned during the excitement
and revealed that he had been won over
by the glory of the new war; he had
enlisted for service in Africa. Paolo's
charcoaled slogans soon had the village
in an uproar. Pompeo, who suspected
Paolo, announced publicly that he would
disclose the culprit's identity* but
Bianchina persuaded the youth not to
expose her beloved Paolo.
Paolo went to visit his old
schoolmaster, Don Benedetto, at Rocca. He
appeared before the venerable old priest
as himself, not as Paolo, and the two
men, although of different generations,
agreed that theirs was a common problem.
They asked each other what had become
of God in the affairs of men. Neither
could offer any solution for the problem,
but they both agreed that any compromise
to one's belief was fatal, not only to
the individual but also to society.
Paolo gave Bianchina money and
letters and sent her to Rome; he himself
went to Pietrasecca. There a young
peasant brought him a letter from Don
Benedetto; the messenger was Murica,
the man he had been seeking. When
Spina revealed his true identity to
Murica, the two men swore to work
together. News of Murica's work with
Paolo circulated in Pietrasecca and Paolo
found himself playing the part of
confessor to Pietraseccans. What they
disclosed to him from their secret hearts
disgusted him, but at the same time
convinced him more than ever that the
peasants must be raised from their
squalor. He renewed his acquaintance
with Cristina, who had been asked by
Don Benedetto to give Paolo help
whenever he should need it.
Don Benedetto had been threatened
because of his candid opinions. Called
to officiate at a mass, he was poisoned
when he drank the sacramental wine.
394

At the same time Paolo, having received
word that Romeo had been arrested in
Rome, went to the Holy City, where
he found that Bianchina had become a
prostitute. She confessed her undying
love for the priest. Paolo, now Spina,
found the underground movement in
Rome in utter chaos after Romeo's arrest
Despairing, he returned to his home
district, where he learned that Murica had
been arrested and killed by government
authorities. He fled to Pietrasecca to
destroy papers which he had left in the
inn where he had stayed during his
convalescence. Learning that he was
sought throughout the district, he fled
into the snow-covered mountains. Cris-
tina followed his trail in an attempt to
take him food and warm clothing. Mists
and deep snow hindered her progress.
Night fell. Alone and exhausted, she
made the sign of the cross as hungry
wolves closed in upon her.
395

THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Late seventeenth century
Locale: Scotland
First published: 1819
Principal characters:
Edgar, Master of Ravenswood
Sir William Ashton, Lord Keeper of Scotland
Lucy Ashton, his daughter
Lady Ashton, his wife
Caleb Balderstone, Ravenswood's old servant
Frank Hayston of Bucklaw, a young nobleman
The Marquis of A , Ravenswood's powerful kinsman
Alice, a blind old tenant on the Ravenswood estate
Critique:
The Bride of Lammermoor has many
elements of good melodrama: murder,
insanity, ghosts, a beautiful and good
young heroine, a noble hero, and a
diabolical villainess, Lady Ashton, a
character as thoroughly unpleasant as Scott
ever created. In spite of the lurid aspects,
however, the author's fine portrayal of
both nobility and village folk and his
subtle use of historical events to lend
authenticity to his action make this novel an
enthralling one. It furnishes the plot for
Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor.
The Story:
Sir William Ashton, the new master
of the Ravenswood estate, was delighted
to hear of the disturbances at the late Lord
Ravenswood's funeral. He hoped that the
brave stand of Edgar, the young Master
of Ravenswood, which made it
possible for the Episcopal service, prohibited
in Scotland, to take place, would put him
in disfavor with the Privy Council and
prevent his attempt to reclaim his
family's property. However, when the Lord
Keeper and his daughter Lucy visited
old Alice, a tenant on the estate, they
were warned about the fierce
Ravenswood blood and the family motto, "I bide
my time."
The Ashtons' first encounter with
Edgar seemed fortunate; he shot a bull as
it charged Sir William and Lucy, saving
them from serious injury. The sheltered,
romantic girl was fascinated by her proud
rescuer, who left abruptly after he
identified himself. Her more practical father
gratefully softened his report of the
disturbances at Lord Ravenswood's funeral
and asked several friends to help Edgar.
On the evening of the rescue Edgar
joined Bucklaw, the heir to a large
fortune, and the adventurer-soldier Captain
Craigengelt at a tavern where he told
them that he would not go with them to
France. As he started home, Bucklaw,
who thought himself insulted, challenged
him to a duel. Edgar won, then gave his
opponent his life and invited him to
Wolf's Crag, the lonely, sea-beaten tower
that was the only property left to the last
of the once powerful Ravenswoods.
Old Caleb Balderstone did his best to
welcome his master and his companion
to Wolf's Crag in the style befitting the
Ravenswood family, making ingenious
excuses for the absence of whatever he
was not able to procure from one of his
many sources. The old man provided
almost the only amusement for the two
men, and Edgar thought often of the girl
whom he had rescued. Deciding not to
leave Scotland immediately, he wrote to
his kinsman, the Marquis of A , for
advice. The marquis told him to remain
at Wolf's Crag, hinted at political
intrigue, but offered no material assistance
396

to supplement Caleb's meager findings.
One morning Bucklaw persuaded
Edgar to join a hunting party which was
passing by the castle. An ardent
sportsman, Bucklaw brought down the deer,
while his friend watched from a hillside.
Edgar offered WolFs Crag as shelter
against an approaching storm for an
elderly gentleman and a young girl who
had come to talk to him.
Poor Caleb's resourcefulness was taxed
to its limit with guests to feed, and when
Bucklaw thoughtlessly brought the
hunting party to the castle he closed the gate,
saying that he never admitted anyone
while a Ravenswood dined. The old
gentleman's servant sent them to the village,
where Bucklaw met Captain Craigengelt
again.
At Wolf's Crag, Edgar soon realized
that his guests were Sir William and
Lucy; Sir William had planned the hunt
with the hope of securing an interview
with Edgar. Lucy's fright at the storm
and Caleb's comical excuses for the lack
of food and elegant furnishings made
relations between the two men less tense.
When Edgar accompanied Sir William to
his room, after a feast of capon cleverly
stolen by Caleb, the older man offered his
friendship and promised to try to settle in
Edgar's favor certain unresolved questions
about the estate.
An astute politician, Sir William had
heeded a warning that the Marquis of
A was likely to rise in power, raising
his young kinsman with him, and he
feared the loss of his newly acquired
estate. He felt that Edgar's good will
might be valuable, and his ambitious
wife's absence allowed him to follow his
inclination to be friendly. Lady Ashton,
a stanch Whig, was in London, where
she was trying to give support to the
falling fortunes of her party.
Although Edgar's pride and bitterness
against the enemy of his father kept him
from trusting Sir William completely,
the Lord Keeper had an unexpected
advantage in the growing love between
Edgar and Lucy. Anxious to assist the
romance, he invited Edgar to
accompany them to the castle where the young
man had grown up.
Edgar and Lucy went together to see
old Alice, who prophesied that tragedy
would be the result of this unnatural
alliance of Ravenswood and Ashton.
Edgar resolved to tell Lucy goodbye, but at
the Mermaiden Fountain he asked her to
marry him. They broke a gold coin in
token of their engagement, but decided
to keep their love secret until Lucy's
much-feared mother arrived home.
Sir William correctly interpreted the
confusion of the pair when they returned,
but he overlooked it to tell them of
the approaching visit of the Marquis of
A to Ravenswood. He urged Edgar
to stay to meet his kinsman.
Sir William's elaborate preparations for
his distinguished guest left Edgar and
Lucy alone together much of the time,
to the great disgust of Bucklaw, who had
inherited the adjoining property. He
unfairly resented Edgar, thinking that he
had ordered Caleb to dismiss him
summarily from Wolf's Crag. Bucklaw
confided to his companion, Captain
Craigengelt, that a cousin of his had become
intimate with Lady Ashton and had made
a match between himself and Lucy. He
sent the captain to tell I^dy Ashton of
Edgar's presence and of the Marquis of
A *s impending visit. Bucklaw hoped
that she would return and intervene on
his behalf.
Lady Ashton was so much upset by the
news that she left for home immediately,
arriving simultaneously with the marquis
and striking fear into the hearts of her
husband and daughter. She immediately
sent Edgar a note ordering him to leave,
thereby incurring the displeasure of his
kinsman. She became still more furious
when Lucy told her of her engagement.
As Edgar passed the Mermaiden
Fountain, traditionally a fateful spot for his
family, he saw a white figure which he
recognized as old Alice, or her ghost.
When he went to her cottage and found
her dead, he realized that her appearance
had been her final warning to him.
The marquis joined his young cousin,

who had been helping with the funeral
preparations, and reported that all his
entreaties had failed to make Lady Ashton
tolerate the engagement. He asked Edgar
to let him spend the night at Wolf's Crag,
insisting over the young man's protests
about the lack of comfort there.
However, when the two approached the old
castle they saw the tower windows aglow
with flames. Later, after the people of
Wolfs Hope had provided a bountiful
feast for the marquis and his retinue,
Caleb confessed to Edgar that he had set
a few fires around the tower to preserve
the honor of the family. Henceforth he
could explain the absence of any number
of luxuries by saying that they had been
lost in the great conflagration.
Edgar went to Edinburgh with his
kinsman, who very shortly acquired the
expected power when the Tories took
over Queen Anne's government for a
short time. In prospect of better fortunes
Edgar wrote to Sir William and Lady
Ashton asking permission to marry Lucy.
Both answered negatively, the lady with
insults, the gentleman in careful phrases
hopefully designed to win favor with the
marquis. A brief note from Lucy warned
her lover not to try to correspond with
her; however, she promised fidelity.
Edgar, unable to do anything else, went to
France for a year on a secret mission for
the government.
Bucklaw, whose suit was approved by
the Ash tons, requested an interview with
Lucy and learned from Lady Ashton, who
insisted upon being present, that the girl
had agreed to marry him only on the
condition that Edgar would release her from
her engagement. Lucy had written to ask
him to do so in a letter dictated by her
mother, but Lady Ashton had intercepted
it, hoping that her daughter would give
in if she received no answer. Lucy
confessed, however, that she had sent a
duplicate letter with the help of the
minister and that she expected an answer
before long.
She was little like the girl with whom
Edgar had fallen in love, for she had
been held almost a prisoner by her mother
for weeks. Unable to stand the constant
persecution, she had grown gloomy and
ill. Lady Ashton hired as nurse for her an
old woman who, at the mother's
instigation, filled the girl's wavering mind with
mysterious tales and frightening legends
about the Ravenswood family. Sir
William, suspecting the reason for his
daughter's increasing melancholy, dismissed the
crone, but the damage had already been
done.
Edgar, who had finally received Lucy's
request that their engagement be ended,
came to Ravenswood Castle to determine
whether she had written the letter of her
own free will; he arrived just as she was
signing her betrothal agreement with
Bucklaw. Unable to speak, the girl
indicated that she could not stand against
her parents' wishes, and she returned
Edgar's half of the gold coin.
Lucy remained in a stupor after this
encounter. Meanwhile, her mother
continued making plans for the wedding.
Old women outside the church on the
marriage day prophesied that a funeral
would soon follow this ceremony. Lucy's
younger brother was horrified at the cold
clamminess of the girl's hand. Later, she
disappeared during the bridal ball, and
Lady Ashton sent the bridegroom after
her. Horrible cries brought the whole
party to the girl's apartment, where they
found Bucklaw lying stabbed on the floor.
After a search Lucy was discovered
sitting in the chimney, gibbering insanely.
She died the next evening, reaching
vainly for the broken coin that had hung
around her neck.
Bucklaw recovered, but Edgar, who
appeared silently at Lucy's funeral,
perished in quicksand near Wolf's Crag as
he went to fight a duel with Lucy's
brother, who blamed him for her death.
Lady Ashton lived on, apparently without
remorse for the horrors her pride had
caused.
398

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Evelyn Waugh (1903- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Lcale: England
First published: 1945
Principal characters:
Charles Ryder, an architectural painter and the narrator
Lord Marchmatn, owner of Brideshead
Lady Marchmain, his wife
Brideshead (Bridey),
Sebastian,
Julia, and
Cordelia, their children
Celia, Charles Ryder's wife
Anthony Blanche, and
Boy Mulcaster, Oxford friends of Charles and Sebastian
Rex Mottram, Julia's husband
Cara, Lord Marchmain's mistress
Critique:
Most of Evelyn Waugh's books are
satires on some phase or precept of
human life. Brideshead Revisited is no
exception, but beneath the surface
buffoonery and satire is a serious dedication
of faith. Members of the Marchmain
family attempt, each in a different way,
to escape the promptings of their faith,
but each is drawn back, sooner or later,
into the enduring values of the Church.
Even the droll, mocking hero is
converted. In Waugh's mordantly comic
world, man can no longer find his way
without faith. The witty yet serious
theme of the novel is suggested in its
subtitle, "The Sacred and Profane
Memories of Captain Charles Ryder."
The Story:
Captain Charles Ryder of the British
Army and his company were moved to
a new billet in the neighborhood of
Brideshead, an old estate he had often
visited during his student days at Oxford.
Brideshead was the home of the March-
mains, an old Catholic family.
Following the first World War, the Marquis
of Marchmain went to live in Italy.
There he met Cara, who became his
mistress for life. Lady Marchmain, an
ardent Catholic, and her four children,
Brideshead, Sebastian, Julia, and
Cordelia, remained in England. They lived
either at Brideshead or at Marchmain
House in London.
When Charles Ryder met Sebastian
at Oxford, they soon became close
friends. Among Sebastian's circle of
friends were Boy Mulcaster and Anthony
Blanche. With Charles' entrance into
that group, his tastes became more
expensive so that he ended his year with
an overdrawn account of five hundred
and fifty pounds.
Just after returning home from school
for vacation, Charles received a telegram
announcing that Sebastian had been
injured. He rushed off to Brideshead,
where he found Sebastian with a cracked
bone in his ankle. While at Brideshead,
Charles met some of Sebastian's family.
Julia had met him at the station and
later Bridey, the eldest of the March-
mains, and Cordelia, the youngest,
arrived. After a month, his ankle having
healed, Sebastian took Charles to Venice.
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh. By permission of the author and Brandt & Brandt. Published
by Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1945, by Evelyn Waugh.
399

There they spent the rest of their vacation
with Lord Marchmain and Cara.
Early in the following school year
Charles met Lady Marchmain when
she visited Sebastian at Oxford. Her
famous charm immediately won Charles,
and he promised to spend his Christmas
vacation at Brideshead. During the first
term, Sebastian, Charles, and Boy Mul-
caster were invited to a London charity
ball by Rex Mottram, a friend of Julia's.
Bored, they left early and were later
arrested for drunkenness and disorderly
conduct. Rex obtained their release.
As a consequence of the escapade,
Charles, Sebastian, and Boy were sent
back to Oxford, and Mr. Samgrass, who
was doing some literary work for Lady
Marchmain, kept close watqh on them
for the rest of the term. Christmas at
Brideshead was spoiled for almost
everyone by the presence of Samgrass. Back
at Oxford, Charles began to realize that
Sebastian drank to escape and that he
was trying to escape his family. At
Brideshead, during the Easter vacation,
Sebastian became quite drunk. Later
Lady Marchmain went to Oxford to see
Sebastian. During her visit he again
became hopelessly drunk. Shortly
afterward he left Oxford. After a visit with
his father in Venice, he was induced to
travel in Europe under the guidance
of Samgrass.
The next Christmas Charles was
invited to Brideshead to see Sebastian, who
had returned from his tour. Sebastian
told Charles that during their travels
Samgrass had had complete control of
all their expense money in order that
Sebastian might not get any for drink.
However, just before coming down to
Brideshead, Sebastian had managed to
evade Samgrass by pawning his own
valuables, and by borrowing. He had
enjoyed what he called a happy
Christmas; he remembered practically nothing
of it. Lady Marchmain tried to stop
his drinking by having all liquor locked
up, but her efforts proved useless.
Instead of going on a scheduled hunt,
Sebastian borrowed two pounds from
Charles and got drunk. Charles left
Brideshead in disgrace and went to
Paris. Samgrass was also dismissed when
the whole story of the tour was revealed.
Rex Mottram was given permission to
take Sebastian to a doctor in Zurich, but
Sebastian gave him the slip in Paris.
Rex Mottram, a wealthy man with a
big name in political and financial circles,
wanted Julia not only for herself but
also for the prestige and social position
of the Marchmains. Julia became
engaged to him despite her mother's
protests but agreed to keep the engagement
secret for a year. Lord Marchmain gave
his complete approval. Rex, wanting a
big church wedding, agreed to become
a Catholic. Shortly before the wedding,
however, Bridey informed Julia that
Rex had been married once before and
had been divorced for six years. They
were married by a Protestant ceremony.
When Charles returned to England
several years later, Julia told him that
Lady Marchmain was dying. At her
request Charles traveled to Fez to find
Sebastian. When he arrived, Kurt,
Sebastian's roommate, told him that
Sebastian was in a hospital. Charles
stayed in Fez until Sebastian had
recovered. Meanwhile word had arrived
that Lady Marchmain had died. Charles
returned to London. There Bridey gave
Charles his first commission; he was to
paint the Marchmain town house before
it was torn down.
Charles spent the next ten years
developing his art. He married Celia,
Boy Mulcaster's sister, and they had two
children, Johnjohn and Caroline, the
daughter born while Charles was
exploring Central American ruins. After
two years of trekking about in the
jungles, he went to New York, where
his wife met him. On their way back to
London they met Julia Mottram, and she
and Charles fell in love. In London
and at Brideshead they continued the
affair they had begun on shipboard.
Two years later Bridey announced
that he planned to marry Beryl Mus-
pratt, a widow with three children.
400

When Julia suggested inviting Beryl
down to meet the family, Bridey
informed her that Beryl would not come
because Charles ana Julia were living
there in sin. Julia became hysterical.
She told Charles that she wanted to
marry him, and they both made
arrangements to obtain divorces.
Cordelia, who had been working with
an ambulance corps in Spain, returned
at the end of the fighting there and
told them of her visit with Sebastian.
Kurt had been seized by the Germans
and taken back to Germany, where
Sebastian followed him. After Kurt
had hanged himself in a concentration
camp, Sebastian returned to Morocco
and gradually drifted along the coast
until he arrived at Carthage. There he
tried to enter a monastery, but was
refused. Following one of his drinking
bouts, the monks found him lying
unconscious outside the gate and took him
in. He planned to stay there as an
under-porter for the rest of his life.
While Bridey was making
arrangements to settle at Brideshead after his
marriage, Lord Marchmain announced
that he was returning to the estate to
spend his remaining days. He did not
arrive until after he had seen Bridey
and Beryl, honeymooning in Rome.
Having taken a dislike to Beryl, Lord March-
main decided that he would leave Brides-
head to Julia and Charles. Before long
Lord Marchmain's health began to fail.
His children and Cara, thinking that
he should be taken back into the Church,
brought Father Mackay to visit him, but
he would not see the priest. When he
was dying Julia again brought Father
Mackay to his bedside and Lord March-
main made the sign of the cross.
That day Julia told Charles what he
had known all along, that she could
not marry him because to do so would
be living in sin and without God.
These were some of Captain Charles
Ryder's memories when he saw Brides-
head again after many years.
401

THE BRIDGE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Hart Crane (1899fl932)
First published: 1930
Hart Crane was considered the most
promising young poet of the early
1930's. His motivation ^nd central
symbol, the sea, he realized brilliantly in his
first volume, White Buildings, published
in 1926. From this source of inspiration
and from his vantage point in Brooklyn,
in a house once owned by the engineer
who designed the famous bridge, Crane
conceived a great plan for a poem
expressive of his own urban America. A
wealthy patron subsidized the volume
which, ironically, was written in Cuba
and France and first published in Paris.
As a result of the reception given The
Bridge, Crane was awarded the Levinson
Prize by Poetry and granted a
Guggenheim Fellowship; but while returning
from Mexico, where he had chosen to
write, he jumped overboard and drowned
in the Gulf of Mexico. His short,
disordered life has become one of the legends
of the "lost generation." The Bridge,
inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge, has
created a view of life which extends its span
beyond the present.
Taking his cue from Whitman, the
poet he most loved and imitated, Crane
wished to establish a mythology for
America, a country created too late for
such a cultural tradition. In "Proem: To
Brooklyn Bridge," the poet invokes the
genius of this utilitarian work of art to
synthesize the chaos of the modern
world, for this span joins city, earth,
machine, river, sea, and man:
O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming
sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep,
descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to
God.
The successive sections of the poem,
while unequal in poetic merit and
historical significance, extend this symbol
from America's discovery to the present.
Ave Maria, Part I, is a dedication to
Columbus, the source of the original
myth and legend, who seeks to unite his
divided world, to sustain his vision of
cosmography.
Part II. Powhatan's Daughter,
containing several hundred years of
American history and legend intermingled,
opens on "The Harbor Dawn," in which
two lovers awaken to bridge noises and
city sights. As an above-ground Dante led
by a Beatrice-Pocahontas vision, the poet
walks abroad with the fabled past and
the strenuous present. In "Van Winkle,"
the poet's school-day recollections of Pi-
zarro, Cortez, Priscilla, and John Smith
combine with his most vivid recollection
of Rip Van Winkle. Crane's own
boyhood discoveries and tragedies are here
synthesized with Van Winkle's, ending
on this note of discord for all those -who
are out of time:
Macadam, gun-gray as the tunny's belt,
Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden
Gate. . . .
Keep hold of that nickel for car-change,
Rip,-
Have you got your "Times"—}
And hurry along, Van Winkle—it's
getting late!
"The River," perhaps the best single
poem in this spiritual odyssey and
anthology, holds the star-spangled jazz beat
of Vachel Lindsay coupled with John
Dos Passos' itinerary, expanded from
coast to coast but centered on the
Mississippi River:
The River, spreading, flows—and spends
your dream.
J,?LiB?IDGE by.Hart,C[ane- &?? THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HART CRANE. Excerpts re-
£iverl htyincrmiSSl°n Publishers, Liveright Publishing Corp., New York. Copyright, 1933, by
402

What are you, lost within this tideless
spell?
You are your father's father, and the
stream—
A liquid theme that floating niggers
swell.
Damp tonnage and alluvial march of
days-
Nights turbid, vascular with silted shale
And roots surrendered down of moraine
clays:
The Mississippi drinks the farthest
dale.
Having started from Brooklyn, as did
Whitman, and passing by subway to the
outer rails and the river with the ghosts
of America's past, the poet gives his
reason for his Pocahontas theme in "The
Dance": the Indian heroine's marriage
with a white man gave us all a different
flesh and blood, a distinct lineage. This
unison makes a life dance celebrated
vividly in America's childhood and
expanded to an idyl, the myth of our Eden.
"Indiana," the final poem in this section,
envisions another myth, Eldorado, seen
through the eyes of a pioneer mother
bereft of a son who goes off to sea. Here
is suggested the last frontier, possibly
symbolizing modern man's rootlessness.
In Part III, Cutty Sark, the image is
jumbled; the vision fades as the poet
traverses Manhattan's dark night with a
drunken sailor. The loss of Eden, the
frontier, makes drink a necessity and
distortion a result.
Part IV, Cape Hatteras, takes up a
different history, the orogeny which lifted
the Appalachians above the sea as well
as the cosmic eruptions which gave us
the machine and genius, an airplane and
a Whitman.
Dream cancels dream in this new realm
of fact
From which we wake into the dream of
act;
Seeing himself an atom in a shroud-
Man hears himself an engine in a
cloud!
Walt, tell me, Walt Whitman, if
infinity
Be still the same as when you walked
the beach
Near Paumanok. . . .
Part V, Three Songs, is an interlude in
praise of three women, Eve, Magdalene,
and Mary, but with satiric overtones.
Part VI, Quaker Hill, becomes a
personal, lyrical celebration of humble
pursuits, rural scenes, and seascapes
intermingling with the cacophony of the
disparate, the distraction of modern life,
and death.
In Part VII, climactically, the poet
returns to the city by air, to The Tunnel,
the subway, which is the chute to hell.
Here Dante-Crane meets Vergil-Poe in
what must have been intended as a
modern Inferno, however fragmented.
And why do I often meet your visage
here,
Your eyes like agate lanterns—on and
on
Below the toothpaste and the dandruff
ads?
—And did their riding eyes right
through your side,
And did their eyes like unwashed
platters ride?
And Death, aloft,—gigantically down
Probing through you—toward me, O
evermore!
The conclusion, Atlantis, must then
be the Paradiso, the bridge the concentric
circles. The symbol of Atlantis makes
this an earthly-unearthly pilgrimage in
time and space.
The final vision is prophetic, possibly,
of more spiritual, less materialistic things
to come, the eternal bridge to God:
Always through spiring cordage,
pyramids
Of silver sequel, Deity's young name
Kinetic of white choiring wings . . .
ascends.
403

THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thornton Wilder (1897- )
Type of plot: Philosophical romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: Peru
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Brother Juniper, a Spanish friar
The Marquesa de Montemayor, a lonely old woman
Pepita, her maid
The Abbess Madre Maria del Pilar, directress of the Convent of
Santa Maria Rosa de las Rosas
Uncle Pio, an actor-manager
La Pe'richole, an actress
Manuel, a foundling
Esteban, his brother
Critique:
The Bridge of San Luis Rey tells a
story of Peru in the golden days when
it was a Spanish colony. The novel is
full of life, of interesting sidelights on
an interesting period, and, above all, of
excellent character sketches. The
marquesa is an unforgettable person, tragic
and comic at the same time. Wilder has
brought together a group of unusual
people and made them fit into a
narrative pattern in which their individual
contrasts stand out more clearly. A
Pulitzer prize novel of its day, the story
is still popular and widely read.
far in explaining God's ways to man.
Through a strange quirk of fate, one
copy of the book was left undestroyed,
and it fell into the hands of the author.
From it, and from his own knowledge,
he reconstructed the lives of the five
persons.
The Marquesa de Montemayor had
been an ugly child, and was still homely
when she grew up. Because of the
wealth of her family, she was fortunately
able to marry a noble husband, by whom
she had a lovely daughter, Dofia Clara.
As she grew into a beautiful young
woman, the marquesa's daughter became
more and more disgusted with her crude
and unattractive mother, whose
possessive and over-expressive love left Dofia
Clara cold and uncomfortable. The
daughter finally married a man who took
her to Spain. Separated from her one
joy in life, the marquesa became more
eccentric than before, and spent her
time writing long letters to her daughter
in Spain.
In order to free herself of some of her
household cares, the marquesa went to
the Abbess Madre Marfa del Pilar and
asked for a girl from the abbess' school
to come and live with her. So Pepita,
unhappy that her beloved teacher was
sending her away from the school, went
THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder. By permission of the author. Copyright, 1927, by
Albert & Charles Boni, Inc.
Tfee Story:
On Friday, July the twentieth, 1714,
the bridge of San Luis Rey, the most
famous bridge in Peru, collapsed, hurling
five travelers into the deep gorge below.
Present at the time of the tragedy was
Brother Juniper, who saw in the event
a chance to prove, scientifically and
accurately, the wisdom of that act of God.
He spent all his time investigating the
lives of the five who had died, and he
published a book showing that God had
had a reason to send each one of them
to his death at exactly that moment.
The book was condemned by the Church
authorities, and Brother Juniper was
burned at the stake. He had gone too
404

to live with the marquesa.
When the marquesa learned by letter
that Dona Clara was to have a child,
she was filled with concern. She wore
charms, bought candles for the saints,
said prayers, and wrote all the advice
she could discover to her daughter. As
a last gesture, she took Pepita with her
to pay a visit to a famous shrine from
which she hoped her prayers would
surely be heard. On the way the
marquesa happened to read one of Pepita's
letters to her old mistress, the abbess.
From the letter the marquesa learned
just how heartless she had been in her
treatment of the girl, how thoughtless
and egotistic. She realized that she had
been guilty of the worst kind of love
toward her daughter, love that was
sterile, self-seeking, and false. Aglow
with her new understanding, she wrote
a final letter to her daughter, telling her
of the change in her heart, asking
forgiveness, and showing in wonderful
language the change that had come over
her. She resolved to change her life, to
be kind to Pepita, to her household, to
everyone. The next day she and Pepita,
while crossing the bridge of San Luis
Rey, fell to their deaths.
Uncle Pio had lived a strange life
before he came to Peru. There he had
found a young girl singing in a tavern.
After years of his coaching and training,
she became the most popular actress of
the Spanish world. She was called La
Pe'richole, and Uncle Pio's greatest
pleasure was to tease her and anger her into
giving consistently better performances.
All went well until the viceroy took an
interest in the vivacious and beautiful
young actress. When she became his
mistress, she began to feel that the stage
was too low for her. After living as a
lady and becoming prouder and prouder
as time went on, she contracted
smallpox. Her beauty was ruined, and she
retired to a small farm out of town,
there to live a life of misery over her
lost loveliness.
Uncle Pio had a true affection for his
former prot6g6e and tried time and again
to see her. One night, by a ruse, he got
her to talk to him. She refused to let
him help her, but she allowed him to
take Jaime, her illegitimate son, so that
he could be educated as a gentleman.
The old man and the young boy set off
for Lima. On the way they came to the
bridge, and died in the fall when it
collapsed.
Esteban and Manuel were twin broth-
ess-who had been left as children on
the doorstep of the abbess' school. She
had brought them up as well as she
could, but the strange relation between
them was such that she could never
make them talk much. When the boys
were old enough, they left the school
and took many kinds of jobs. At last they
settled down as scribes, writing letters
for the uncultured people of Lima. One
day Manuel, called in to write some
letters for La P6richole, fell in love with
the charming actress. Never before had
anything come between the brothers, for
they had always been sufficient in
themselves. For his brother's sake Manuel
pretended that he cared little for the
actress. Shortly afterward he cut his leg
on a piece of metal and became very
sick. In his delirium he let Esteban
know that he really was in love with
La P6richole. The infection grew worse
and Manuel died.
Esteban was unable to do anything
for weeks after his brother's death. He
could not face life without him. The
abbess finally arranged for him to go on
a trip with a sea captain who was about
to sail around the world. The captain
had lost his only daughter and the
abbess felt he would understand Esteban's
problem and try to help him. Esteban
left to go aboard ship, but on the way
he fell with the others when the bridge
broke.
At the cathedral in Lima a great
service was held for the victims. Everyone
considered the incident an example of a
true act of God, and many reasons were
offered for the various deaths. Some
months after the funeral, the abbess was
visited by Dona Clara, the marquesa's
405

daughter. Dona Clara had finally learned
what a wonderful woman her mother
had really been. The last letter had
taught the cynical daughter all that her
mother had so painfully learned. The
daughter, too, had learned to see life
in a new way. La Perichole also came
to see the abbess. She had given up
bemoaning her own lost beauty, and she
began a lasting friendship with the
abbess. Nothing could positively be said
about the reason for the deaths of those
five people on the bridge. Too many
events were changed by them; one could
not number them all. But the old abbess
believed that the true meaning of the
disaster was the lesson of love for those
who survived.
406

BRITANNICUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
Type of plot: Neo-classical tragedy
Time of plot: A.D. 55
Locale: Rome, the palace of Neron
First presented: 1669
Principal characters:
Britannicus, Claudius' son by the wife who preceded Agrippine
Agrippine, Claudius' widow
Neron, Agrippine's son, Emperor of Rome
Junie, betrothed to Britannicus
Narcisse, Britannicus' tutor
Albina, Agrippine's confidante
Burrhus, Neron's tutor
Critique:
Racine's third play, Andromache, had
established his mastery of the
"sentimental" drama. In his fifth, Britannicus,
he intended to prove his ability to write
a Roman "political" tragedy to rival, and
if possible surpass, Corneille. The first
performance was only moderately
successful. Later its reputation improved after
Louis XIV spoke highly of it. The play
is constructed in keeping with Aristotle's
unities, as was obligatory in seventeenth-
century French drama after the success
of Corneille's neo-classic plays. The
theme is Neron's first crime, which sets
the pattern for the rest of his reign.
Burrhus attempted to keep uppermost
the good elements of Neron's character,
while Narcisse, a supreme opportunist,
worked on the emperor's baser instincts.
His attitude toward Britannicus was the
proving ground of that conflict.
Agrippine was a woman dominated by lust
for power. It was Neron's reaction against
her that crystallized his evil destiny.
Although other plays by Racine have
greater emotional insight and poetic
beauty, Britannicus is a fine example of his
command of verse and language and of
his dramatic perception of the motivation
of his characters.
The Story:
In the anteroom of the imperial palace
Agrippine waited to speak with Neron,
her son. The impatient nature of his
character had at last revealed itself in
antagonistic behavior toward Britannicus, and
Agrippine feared that she would next
incur his disfavor. Albina was convinced
of the emperor's continued loyalty to his
mother. Agrippine felt that if N6ron
were indeed noble, the fact that she had
won the throne for him would insure his
devotion; but if he were ignoble, the fact
of his obligation would turn him against
her.
On the previous night N£ron had
abducted Junie, to whom Britannicus was
betrothed, a deed possibly motivated by
resentment against Agrippine, who had
begun to support Britannicus in an
attempt to preserve her position in the
future if Neron were to turn against her.
Albina assured her that her public power
and honor, at least, had not decreased.
However, Agrippine needed the
assurance of a more personal trust. She
confided that once N6ron had turned her
aside from the throne on which she
customarily sat in the Senate. Also, she was
now denied all private audience with
him.
Agrippine, reproaching Burrhus for
disloyalty to her, accused him of
attempting to gain power over Neron. Burrhus
was convinced that his prime loyalty was
to the emperor who ruled well by his
own authority. N6ron feared that
Britannicus' children would inherit the throne
if he married Junie.
407

Britannicus, distracted by his loss of
Junie, complained of Neron's harshness.
Agrippine sent him to the house of
Pallas, the freedman, where she would meet
him later. Britannicus told Narcisse, who
encouraged him to join Agrippine, that
he still wished to claim the throne.
Neron decided to disregard his mother's
reproaches, which he called unjust, and
to banish Pallas, the friend and adviser
of Agrippine, who, he thought, had
corrupted Britannicus. Narcisse assured him
that Rome approved of his abduction of
Junie, and Neron confessed that now
that he had seen her he had fallen in love
with her himself. He was convinced by
Narcisse that Britannicus was devoted to
Junie and that she probably loved him in
return. Narcisse insisted that the love of
Junie would be won by a sign of favor
from the emperor. He advised Neron to
divorce Octavia, Britannicus* s;ster, and
marry Junie. Neron feared Agrippine's
wrath if he did so; only when he avoided
her completely did he dare defy her
wishes, for in her presence he was
powerless. Narcisse informed N6ron that
Britannicus still trusted him; he was therefore
dispatched to bring Britannicus for a
meeting with Junie.
Junie asked Neron what her crime had
been and insured that Britannicus was
the most suitable person for her to marry,
as he was the only other descendant of
Augustus Caesar at court. When N6ron
said that he himself would marry her,
Junie, appalled, begged him thus to not
disgrace Octavia. Finally she realized thar
she could save Britannicus' life only by
telling him, when they met, that he was
to leave Rome. Neron intended to listen
to their conversation.
At their interview, Britannicus was
bewildered by Junie's coldness toward him
and by her praise of the emperor. When
he left, Neron reappeared, but Junie
fled, weeping. Neron sent Narcisse to
comfort Britannicus.
Burrhus reported that Agrippine was
angry at N6ron, and he feared that she
might plot against the emperor. When
Neron refused to listen to Burrhus as he
begged him not to divorce Octavia, the
tutor realized that the emperor's true
character was at last appearing.
Meanwhile, Agrippine planned to take
Britannicus before the Roman army and
to declare that she had wronged him by
exalting Neron to the throne. By this
action she hoped to win their allegiance
to Britannicus. Burrhus told her that her
scheme was impossible. Agrippine told
Albina that if Neron married Junie and
banished Britannicus, her own power
would be ended. That condition she
would never accept. Although
Britannicus did not trust her, she planned with
his cooperation to prevent Neron's
marriage to Junie.
Although Narcisse had persuaded
Britannicus that Junie was faithless,
she nevertheless managed to see him
and ins;sted that he flee to save his life.
Accused of unfaithfulness, she explained
that Neron had been listening during
their previous meeting. Britannicus fell
at her feet in gratitude for her continued
love. In this situation Ne*ron came upon
them and demanded from Britannicus the
obedience that through fear he intended
to extort from all Rome. Later Neron
ordered Britannicus arrested and
Agrippine detained in the palace.
Burrhus advised Agrippine, before her
audience with Neron, to be affectionate
and even apologetic, and to make no
demands on him. Instead, she explained to
him exactly how she had procured the
throne for him and reproached him for
his present behavior. Neron, infuriated
by her continued claims on him, realized
that she had made him emperor only for
her own glory. Accused, Agrippine
denied that she had attempted to replace
N6ron with Britannicus; all she wanted
was that Junie should be allowed to
choose her own husband and that she
herself should be able to see Neron
when she wished. When N6ron
appeared to yield, Burrhus congratulated
him. But N6ron had merely deceived
Agrippine; he still intended to punish
408

Britannicus. Burrhus then implored him
to continue his just reien and be
reconciled with Britannicus. Ne*ron, again
wavering, decided to meet Britannicus.
Narcisse had already prepared po;son
for Britannicus, but N6ron declared he
would not now use it. Narcisse,
counseling him against clemency, said that
Agrippine already publicly boasted of
her regained control. He also insinuated
that Burrhus was not to be trusted.
N£ron decided to plan his future actions
with Narcisse.
Britannicus informed Junie that he
was to be reconciled with N6ron and
voiced his conviction that she would be
returned to him, but Junie, doubting
N6ron's sincerity, feared that Narcisse
had deceived them. Agrippine, on the
other hand, believed that her words had
changed N6ron completely and that her
plans would be executed.
Sometime after Britannicus had left
for his audience with Ne'ron, Burrhus
returned and informed the women that
Narcisse had poisoned Britannicus and
that Ne'ron, unmoved, had watched him
die. Appalled by Neuron's callousness,
Burrhus determined to leave Rome.
Although N6ron declared that the
death of Britannicus had been inevitable,
Junie fled from the palace. When
Agrippine accused N£ron of murder, Narcisse
attempted to explain that Britannicus
had been a traitor. Agrippine foretold
that N6ron had now set the pattern for
his reign.
After a public disturbance, Albina
informed the court that at the statue of
Augustus Junie had pledged herself to
become a priestess of Vesta and that the
crowd, to protect her, had killed
Narcisse. Agrippine and Burrhus went to
N6ron to try to console him in his
despair.
409

BROAD ANI> ALIEN IS THE WORLD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ciro Alegria (1909- )
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1912-1926
Locale: Peru
First published: 1941
Principal characters:
Rosendo Maquis, mayor of a community of Indians
Don Amenabar, tyrannical owner of a neighboring ranch
Bismarck Ruiz, a rascally lawyer
Correa Zavala, a lawyer friendly to the Indians
Fiero Vasquez, a highwayman friendly to the Indians
Benito Castro, an Indian who had lived away from the village
Critique:
This novel won for its author a two
thousand dollar award offered in 1941
by the Division of Intellectual
Co-operation of the Pan-American Union.
Although the book and author are Peruvian,
the novel was submitted by the Chilean
committee. Stephen Vincent B6net later
dramatized part of the novel. Underlying
the story is Alegrfa's plea for justice for
the Peruvian Indians, a group exploited
and injured by racial, social, and political
self-seekers. When the novel appeared,
it was frequently referred to as a South
American version of John Steinbeck's
The Grapes of Wrath. In addition to the
sociological elements, the novel is a
veritable storehouse of Peruvian lore, giving
as it does a detailed picture of the social
structure of the Indian community, its
innate dignity, its traditions, and its
overwhelming tragedy. Since 1934 Alegria
has been an exile from Peru because of
his political views.
The Story:
Rosendo Maquis was the mayor of
Rumi, a small Indian town in the
Peruvian uplands. The village was a
communal organization, as it had been for
centuries. Its life was peaceful, for the
Rumi Indians were an agricultural
people. Rosendo's only troubles were
personal. Because his wife was dying, he
had been sent into the mountains to find
herbs to be used in making medicine for
the sick woman. On his way back to the
village he saw an evil omen in the
passage of a snake across his path. Troubled
times, he felt, lay ahead.
That same night Rosendo's wife died,
and her death marked the beginning of
manv misfortunes for the mavor and his
people. A few days later it became known
that Don Amenabar, whose ranch
bordered the Indian village, was filing suit
to take away the best of the land
belonging to Rumi. Rosendo and his
selectmen saddled their horses and rode to the
nearby town to get a lawyer to defend
them. They hired Bismarck Ruiz, a man
who had a poor reputation in the town
because of his love affair with La Caste-
lafia, a notorious woman of very
expensive tastes. In return for a large fee,
Bismarck Ruiz promised to win the suit for
the Indians.
Life went on as usual in the village
during the days before the trial. There
was a cattle roundup, to which Don
Amenabar sent men to collect the cattle
belonging to him. Although he did not
pay the grazing fee, and the Indians
knew it would be futile to ask it of him,
he charged them a high fee to redeem
any cattle that accidentally wandered
onto his lands. The Indians were also busy
BROAD AND ALIEN IS THE WORLD by Ciro Alegria. Translated by Harriet de Onis. By per-
mission of the publishers, Rinehart & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1941, by Farrar & Rinthart, Inc.
410

building a school, for the commissioner
of education of the province had
promised them a schoolmaster as soon as they
had a hygienic place for the school to
convene.
In an effort to learn what Don Amen-
abar was plotting against them, the
Indians sent one of their number to the
ranch to sell baskets and woven mats.
When Don Amenabar saw the Indian
on his ranch, he ordered his overseers to
give the unlucky fellow a hundred
lashes, a punishment which would have
killed many men.
Finally the case came to court. The
Indians felt at first that they would win.
Don Amenabar's men had removed the
stones marking the community
boundaries, but the Indians had returned them.
The return, they felt, was indicative of
their success. But the case was soon over,
thanks to a large number of perjuring
witnesses who testified against the
Indians by claiming that the people of Rumi
had encroached on Don Amenabar's land.
Even the judge had received money and
preferment from the rancher.
The Indians' lawyer immediately made
up a brief for an appeal to a higher court,
but Don Amenabar's men, disguised as
the followers of Fiero Vasquez, the
outlaw, stole the mailbag containing the
documents as the mailcarrier passed
through a desolate part of the Andes.
Don Amenabar did not want the
authorities in Lima to hear of the affair
because he wished to send his son to the
legislature and, eventually, to become a
senator himself.
Correa Zavala, a young lawyer fired
with zeal for the cause of the Peruvian
Indians, took up the villagers' case. I*
had become clear to the Indians that
Bismarck Ruiz was not helping them
with all his ability, and they had
evidence that he was really in the pay of
Don Amenabar. The young lawyer made
up a long brief which included many
documents from the history of the village.
These were sent to the capital with a
guard of troops and Indians, for their
loss would have made it difficult to prove
the village's legal existence as a
community.
All was to no avail, however, for at
last the day came when the court order,
enforced by troops, was delivered to the
Indians. They were to leave the most
fertile of their lands and move to what
was left to them in the higher areas.
When one of the village women went
to her lover, Fiero Vasquez, the
notorious highwayman and bandit, he came
with his band of cutthroats to help the
Indians drive off the people who were
forcing them to leave. Rosendo refused
aid from the outlaws because he knew
that resistance would have been useless.
His point was made when a villager was
machine-gunned to death for daring to
kill one of Don Amenabar's men with a
rock.
Even in the highlands the Indians
were not safe from Don Amenabar, who
wanted to make them slaves to work a
mine that he owned on another piece of
property. Because he had resolved never
to be satisfied until they were delivered
into his hands, his men raided the
Indians' cattle herds, even creeping up to
the corrals in the village at night. At last
the prize bull of the village disappeared.
The Indians found the animal on Don
Amenabar's ranch. In spite of the brand,
Don Amenabar refused to return the
bull and ordered Rosendo off the ranch.
That same night the mayor returned,
determined to regain the animal for his
people. He found the bull, but as he was
leading the animal away he was
captured. Taken into town, Rosendo was
jailed on a charge of thievery. At his
trial he was found guilty and sentenced
to a long term in prison.
While Rosendo was in jail, Fiero
Vasquez was captured and placed in the
cell with Rosendo. Having plenty of
resources to make bribes, the highwayman
made arrangements to break out of prison.
When he escaped, Rosendo was blamed.
The prison guards beat the old man so
severely that he died within a few hours.
411

Not long after the death of Rosendo,
a young Indian he had reared came back
to the village after an absence of many
years. Benito Castro, a soldier and a
gaucho, was quickly accepted as a leader
by the Indians, who needed the wisdom
and aid of someone who had been
outside the mountain village. Under Castro's
leadership the people drained swampy
meadows and rebuilt their village in a
better location in the highlands. But their
relative prosperity was short-lived, for Don
Amenabar still planned to enslave them
or drive them into hiding. At last a large
detachment of troops, augmented by men
convinced that the Indians were
mutinous against the government, attacked
the village. In a long battle with the
forces sent against them, the Indians
were utterly defeated, their leaders were
killed, and the village was destroyed. The
few survivors, told by the dying Benito
Castro to save themselves, had no idea
where they could go to seek a refuge in
that harsh, lawless land.
412

THE BROKEN JUG
Type of work: Drama
Author: Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: A village in the Netherlands
First presented: 1808
Principal characters:
Adam, the village judge
Walter a counselor-at-law
Licht, clerk of the court
Marthe Rull, a villager
Eve, her daughter
Ruphecht, Eve's suitor
Brtgitte, Ruprecht's aunt
Veit Tumpel, Ruprecht's i
Critique:
Heinrich von Kleist's The Broken Jug
was written as the result of a jest which
von Kleist and two of his friends
arranged. They had seen a painting called
"La Cruche Cassee," which showed a
village judge involved in controversy with
a group of villagers over a broken pitcher.
Each of the three friends decided to write
a play about the possible events leading
up to the disagreement about the pitcher,
and though the other two plays did not
survive, von Kleist's was a great success.
A robust farce, strongly reminiscent of
Moliere, though it lacks the physical
action typical of the earlier French farces,
the play is, in actuality, a highly
humorous attack upon the somewhat
questionable methods of the courts of the period
in bringing about justice. It has become
a classic in German literature and is
performed in Germany to this day.
The Story:
Licht, clerk of the court of Huisum,
a village near Utrecht in the Netherlands,
appeared at the courtroom one morning
to prepare for the day's proceedings. He
discovered Adam, the village judge, in
a generally disreputable state, nursing a
badly lacerated face and an injured leg.
THE BROKEN JUG by Heinrich von Kleist. Trans1
Ushers, George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd. Copyright, 19,
When he asked the judge how he had
come to be in such a condition, he
received a highly questionable story about
an altercation with a clothesline and a
goat. Licht, sensing that there had been
some philandering afoot, hinted as much
to Adam, but the judge quite naturally
denied the clerk's suggestions.
Besides, there were more important
matters to discuss. A peasant passing
through Holla, a neighboring village, had
heard that Counselor Walter, of the High
Court at Utrecht, had inspected the courts
in Holla and was preparing to come to
Huisum on a tour of inspection this very
day. That was serious business,
particularly when Adam learned that in Holla
both the clerk of the court and the judge
had been suspended because their affairs
were not in order and that the judge had
narrowly missed death when he tried to
hang himself in his own barn. Needless
to say, Adam's affairs were in no better
shape than those of his unfortunate
neighbors. Before he could get his clothes on
and make an attempt at restoring order,
however, Counselor Walter's servant came
to announce that Walter had arrived.
Adam tried to defer immediate action
by telling an even more unlikely story
.id by Winifred Kntzin. Bv permission of the put-
', by George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd.
413

about his accident and begging that the
inspection be delayed. Licnt was calmer,
however, and insisted that Adam receive
the counselor.
At the height of the chaos in
preparations for Walter, Adam, discovering that
he could not find his wig, was informed
by a spying servant girl that he had come
home without it after eleven o'clock the
night before. He naturally denied this
claim also and told the servant girl that
she had lost her mind; he suddenly
remembered that the cat had kittened in
his wig and therefore he could not use it.
So the girl was sent to borrow a wig from
the verger's wife, after being reminded
not to mention the matter to the verger
himself. Before the girl could return,
Counselor Walter appeared, expressing
regrets that he had not been able to
announce himself in advance and assuring
Adam and Licht that he knew matters
would be only tolerably in order but that
he expected little more. He then
demanded that the court proceedings get
under way, just as the servant girl
returned bearing the calamitous news that
she could not borrow a wig. Though it
was highly irregular for a judge to sit
without his wig, Walter insisted that the
petitions begin, wig or no wig.
When the doors were opened, Marthe
Rull and her daughter Eve, and Veit
Tumpel and his son Ruprecht charged
in, obviously in a high state of
agitation over a broken pitcher. Marthe
accused Ruprecht, who was engaged to
marry Eve, of breaking the pitcher, but
Ruprecht denied doing so. Eve was in a
mild case of hysterics because she was
about to lose Ruprecht, who swore that
he never wished to see her again and
kept calling her a strumpet. Marthe,
wanting to see justice done, demanded
it vociferously because she felt that Eve's
good name had been destroyed along with
the pitcher.
In the middle of this confusion Judge
Adam appeared in his robes, but wigless,
to open his court; he was visibly shaken
at the scene which greeted him. Eve
continued to plead with her mother to leave
well enough alone and Adam tried
unsuccessfully to talk with Eve about a
piece of paper; but she would have none
of it. Counselor Walter insisted that court
begin.
Marthe, brought at last to the stand,
accused Ruprecht of breaking the pitcher.
He denied the charge and demanded
that she prove her accusation. Adam
agreed completely with Marthe and tried
to dismiss the case, but the counselor
would not let him. So the trial proceeded.
As the evidence was presented, it came
out that the pitcher had been broken at
eleven o'clock the night before when
Marthe had heard voices coming from
Eve's room and had rushed in to find
the pitcher smashed, Eve in tears, and
Ruprecht standing in the middle of the
room. Naturally Ruprecht was suspect;
but according to Ruprecht there had
been a third party present whom he could
not identify. According to Marthe, Eve
had also admitted that there was a third
party in the room but the girl had
refused to identify him. When Ruprecht
finally took the stand, he testified that he
had come to make a late call on Eve and
had found her near the gate to her house
with another man. He had watched until
they went to Eve's room; then, moved by
passion, he had rushed after them and
broken down the door, smashing the
pitcher just as someone jumped out of
the window and got caught in the grape
vine. He had seized the door latch and
beaten the culprit over the head with
it, receiving in return a handful of sand
in the face. He thought the man was the
village cobbler, but he could not be sure.
Adam was quite anxious to assign the
blame to the cobbler and thereby
prevent Eve from giving testimony; but his
attempts were unsuccessful. Eve, taking
the stand, cleared Ruprecht of smashing
the pitcher but refused to identify the
third party.
However, there had been another
participant in the affairs of the
preceding evening—one Brigitte, the aunt
414

of Ruprecht. She appeared in court with
a wig which was identified as Adam's
and a story of having seen the devil
leave Eve's house around eleven o'clock
the night before. She had followed the
tracks in the snow the next morning in
order to find the devil's abode and the
tracks had led to the judge's very door.
Adam, declaring that this account had
nothing to do with the case, proceeded
to sentence Ruprecht.
The judge's decision prompted Eve to
confess the whole story. It seemed that
Adam had told Eve that Ruprecht would
be drafted and sent to India but that
he had the power to save Ruprecht from
this fate; and he had forged a certificate
which he made Eve go to her room to
sign. There he tried to seduce her, at
which time Ruprecht burst in, smashed
the pitcher, and beat Adam, who had
jumped out of the window. Before the
whole story was out, however, Adam had
already run off to escape a beating, and
the only person who was not satisfied
was Marthe, who planned to take her
pitcher to the High Court in Utrecht
and demand justice.
415

THE BROTHERS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, c. 190-159 B.C.)
Type of plot: Social comedy
Time of plot: Second century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 160 B.C.
Principal characters:
Micio, an aged Athenian
Demea, his brother
Aeschinus, Demea's son, adopted by Micio
Ctesipho, Demea's other son
Sostrata, an Athenian widow
Pamphila, Sostrata's daughter
Sannio, a pimp
Hegio, an old man of Athens
Critique:
Revolving around the question of
whether discipline or understanding
tolerance is best for rearing children, The
Brothers (Adelphi) is one of the first
"problem plays" in European literature.
Although the action does not lead to an
unambiguous conclusion on one side 01
the other, Terence clearly leans toward
tolerance. The plot is built around
traditional romantic attachments and
misunderstandings, but its action is resolved
by elements inherent in the characters
as Terence depicts them and not by
the usual farcical tricks and coincidences.
Terence keeps comic irony alive by
maintaining his audience's awareness of the
true state of affairs out of which the
characters' misunderstandings arise.
The Story:
Micio was an aging, easygoing
Athenian bachelor whose strict and
hardworking brother Demea had permitted
him to adopt and rear Aeschinus, one of
Demea's two sons. Unlike his brother,
Micio had been a permissive parent,
choosing to let pass many of Aeschinus*
small extravagances on the assumption
that children are more likely to remain
bound to their duty by ties of kindness
than by those of fear.
Micio came to wonder if his policy had
been the best. One day, shortly after
Aeschinus had told him he was tired of
the Athenian courtesans and wanted to
marry, Demea came to Micio and
informed him angrily that Aeschinus had
broken into a strange house, beaten its
master, and carried off a woman with
whom he was infatuated. It was a
shameful thing, Demea said, especially since
Aeschinus had such a fine example of
continence and industry in his brother
Ctesipho, who dutifully spent his time
working for Demea in the country. It
was also shameful that Aeschinus had
been reared the way he had, Demea
suggested; Micio was letting the youth go
to the bad by failing to restrain his
excesses.
After quarreling about their methods
for rearing children, the two men parted.
Demea agreed not to interfere and Micio,
although confused and grieved by
Aeschinus' apparent change of heart and
failure to inform him of the escapade,
determined to stand by his adopted son.
As it turned out, however, Demea's
report of Aeschinus was correct only in
outline. The house into which the young
man had broken belonged to Sannio, a
pimp and slave dealer, and the woman
carried off was a slave girl with whom,
ironically, the model son Ctesipho had
fallen in love, but whom he could not
afford to buy. Demea's restraint had been
more than Ctesipho could bear, and
because he was afraid to indulge himself
416

before his father he had chosen to do so
behind his back. Aeschinus had agreed
to procure the girl for his brother but had
kept his motives secret in order to protect
his brother from Demea's wrath.
Sannio, furious at the treatment he
had received, hounded Aeschinus for the
return of the girl. But because he was
soon to leave on a slave-trading
expedition, he had no time to prosecute the case
in court; moreover, an obscure point of
law created the possibility that the girl
might be declared free and that Sannio
could lose his entire investment. In
consequence, he finally consented to sell her
for the price he had paid for her.
Meanwhile, other complications arose.
Long before the slave girl episode,
Aeschinus had fallen in love with Pamphila,
the daughter of Sostrata, a poor Athenian
widow. Aeschinus had promised to marry
Pamphila and they had anticipated this
union with the result that she was about
to be delivered of his child. Then, while
she was in labor, it was reported that he
had abducted the slave girl and was
having an affair with her. The mother and
daughter were of course extremely upset
at Aeschinus' apparent faithlessness, and
in despair Sostrata related her dilemma
to her only friend, Hegio, an
impoverished old man who had been her
husband's friend and who was also a friend
of Demea. Hegio, indignant, went to
Demea to demand that justice be done.
Demea, having just heard that Ctesipho
had played some part in the abduction
and assuming that Aeschinus had seduced
the model son into evil ways, was doubly
furious at Hegio's news. Immediately he
went off hunting for Micio, only to be
misdirected by one of Aeschinus' slaves,
who was attempting to prevent the old
man from discovering that Ctesipho and
his mistress were both in Micio's house.
A short time later Hegio encountered
Micio, who, having learned the truth
regarding the abduction, promised to
explain everything to Sostrata and Pam-
Ehila. As he was leaving the widow's
ouse, he met Aeschinus, who was
himself coming to try to explain to the
women the muddle he was in. Pretend*
ing ignorance of Aeschinus' situation,
Micio mildly punished the young man
for his furtiveness by pretending to be
at Sostrata's house as the representative
of another suitor for Pamphila's hand;
but when he saw the agony which the
prospect of losing Pamphila produced in
Aeschinus, Micio put an end to his
pretense and promised the grateful and
repentant youth that he could marry
Pamphila at once.
Demea, finally returning from the wild-
goose chase that the servant had sent him
on, accosted Micio in front of his house.
Although Micio calmed his brother
somewhat by telling him how matters really
stood, Demea still retained his disapproval
of Micio's parental leniency. The crisis
occurred shortly afterward when Demea
learned the full truth about Ctesipho—
that the model son had not only been a
party to the abduction, but that the whole
affair had been conceived and executed
for his gratification. At first the knowledge
nearly put him out of his wits, but Micio
gradually brought him to a perception of
the fact that no irreparable harm had
been done. Also, since Demea's
strictness and severity had ultimately not
succeeded, perhaps leniency and generosity
were most effective after all in dealing
with children. Demea, realizing that his
harshness had made Ctesipho fearful and
suspicious of his father, decided to try
Micio's mode of conduct, and he
surprised all who knew him by his cheerful
resignation. Indeed, he even went so far
as to have the wall between Micio's and
Sostrata's houses torn down and to
suggest, not without a certain malice, that
the only truly generous thing Micio
could do for Sostrata would be to marry
her. At first Micio hesitated, but when
the suggestion was vehemently seconded
by Aeschinus, Micio at last gave in.
Demea also persuaded Micio to free
Syrus and his wife Phrygia, his slaves,
and to give Hegio some property to
support him in his old age. Then he turned
417

to his sons and gave his consent to their
amorous projects, asking only to be
allowed in the future to check them
when their youthful passions threatened
to lead them astray. The young men
submitted willingly to his request.
418

THE BROTHERS ASHKENAZI
Type of work: Novel
Author: Israel Joshua Singer (1893-1944)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: Poland
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Simcha Meyer Ashkenazi, an enterprising Jew
Jacob Bunim, his twin brother
Abraham, their father
Dinah, Simcha's wife
Pearl, Jacob's wife
Gertrude, daughter of Simcha and Dinah
Tevyeh, a revolutionary weaver
Nissan, a revolutionary
Critique:
This long novel of the Jewry of Lodz
has two main themes: the cyclical
prosperity and misfortune of the Polish Jews,
and the differences between the
Ashkenazi brothers. In their increasing
industrialization the Jews had all the ups and
downs of the Poles and Germans except
that the masses were always a little more
miserable than their gentile neighbors.
In addition, they suffered recurring waves
of oppression. Jacob, the younger of the
brothers, represents the upright,
extroverted Jew who makes his way by
personality. Simcha is a planner and
schemer who outlasts his brother because he
can take any insults and turn them to
his own advantage.
The Story:
Abraham was a pious Jew and a good
businessman. General agent for the
Huntze mills, he was greatly respected
by the community. He always spent the
Passover season with his beloved rabbi in
a town some distance from Lodz. One
year his wife protested more than usual
at being left alone because she expected
to be confined soon. Furthermore she
knew the child would be a boy; she felt
stirrings on her right side. Abraham paid
no attention to her protests.
When he returned he found two sons.
The older by several minutes was
Simcha, the younger Jacob. Simcha, the
smaller, always showed a meaner spirit.
As they grew older, Jacob was the happy
leader of neighborhood games, the
favorite of all. Dinah, a neighbor girl,
worshipped him for years. Simcha seldom
played with anyone, and he had no
stomach for physical hurts.
In school, however, Jacob was an
amiable dunce, while Simcha was the scholar.
Before long Simcha was recognized as a
genius. At an early age he could cite the
Talmud and dispute with his teacher.
By the time he was ten he was sent to
a more learned rabbi, Nissan's father.
Since his new teacher was more moral
and uncompromising, Simcha's glib
smartness often led him into disfavor.
Also, he had to take second place to
Nissan.
Simcha kept his leadership by running
gambling games during the class hours,
and on holidays he led his schoolmates
into gambling houses. Simcha always
won, even from the professional
gamblers. Nissan had no time for gambling,
but his sin was even greater: he read
secular books on chemistry, astronomy,
economics. Betrayed by Simcha, and cast
out by his father, Nissan became an ap-
«55«^Sp°*EHfillr ASHI£?*NAZI bJ Israer1 Josiua Singer. Translated by Maurice Samuel. By per-
mission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1936, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
419

prentice weaver.
Because of Simcha's growing
reputation for acuity, a marriage broker was
able to arrange an advantageous
engagement. At the age of thirteen, Dinah
and Simcha were betrothed. Dinah was
miserable. She was blonde and educated
in languages; Simcha was unprepossessing
and educated only in the Talmudic
discipline. The marriage, which took place
several years later, was never a happy
one. Dinah could never forget Jacob.
Simcha, with a clever head for
figures, kept the accounts at the mill
belonging to his easygoing father-in-law.
By getting the older man to sign
promissory notes, Simcha soon became a
partner. Although the family resented
Simcha's hard dealing, he was grimly intent
on making money. By shrewdness and
trickery he became sole owner of the mill
in a short time* But his father-in-law's
mill was only a handloom establishment;
Simcha set his sights higher.
The biggest steam mill in Lodz was
owned by a crusty German, Huntze.
With Simcha's father as general agent,
the mill had a high reputation. Huntze's
profligate sons wanted a title in the
family, but old Huntze would not spend the
money for one. Wily Simcha lent great
sums to the Huntze boys, enough to buy
a title and more. When their father died,
the sons recognized the debt by
appointing Simcha their agent; Abraham was
dismissed. Thereafter Abraharn counted his
oldest son among the dead.
Meanwhile Jacob had married Pearl,
the anemic daughter of the great Eisen
household in Warsaw. Pearl had seen
Jacob at Simcha's wedding and had
fallen in love with the ebullient younger
brother. Jacob easily shed his Jewish
ways and became Europeanized. Since
Pearl was sickly, she could not keep up
with her vigorous husband, and Jacob
spent much time in Lodz. Eventually, tr
Simcha's chagrin, Jacob was made agent
for the Fkderbaum mills, a rival
establishment.
When a depression came, Simcha
adulterated his goods to keep going, and
then decided to cut wages. Under the
leadership of Tevyeh, a fanatic, and
Nissan, now a well-educated weaver, the
men struck. Simcha resisted for a long
time and then broke the strike by bribing
the police to arrest Nissan and Tevyeh.
The two were sentenced to exile in
Siberia.
By close attention to sales, by sweating
his labor, Simcha made money. He
traveled to the East and increased his market
enormously. He was recognized as the
merchant prince of Lodz. During the
Russo-Japanese War he made great profits
by selling to the military. Throughout
these years the trade union movement
was growing, however, and Nissan, back
in Lodz, had become a highly-placed
official in the revolutionary society. When
the workers struck again, the unionists
were too strong for Simcha and his
factory stayed closed for months. This time
the strike was broken only by military
action which turned into a pogrom
against the Jews. Nissan was again sent
to prison.
In order to increase his holdings and
to get sufficient capital to buy the
entire ownership of the Huntze mills,
Simcha divorced Dinah and married a rich
widow. Jacob, matching his brother's
affluence by becoming the lover of one
of the Flederbaum girls after Pearl
divorced him, was made director of the
rival mill. Simcha's daughter Gertrude,
a headstrong modern girl, made Jacob
fall in love with her. He married her
because she reminded him of Dinah.
When the World War broke out,
Simcha moved his factory to Petrograd
and so missed the German occupation of
Lodz. Russia went through a revolution,
however, and the workers came to power.
Once again Nissan met Simcha, but this
time Nissan was the master, and his
party confiscated Simcha's property.
When the ruined Simcha tried to get
out of Russia, he was arrested and jailed
420

through the treachery of 2 fellow Jew.
Back in Lodz, Jacob still maintained
some position in the community, and
Simcha's second wife had managed to
hold on to some wealth. Jacob went to
Russia and by judicious bribery freed his
brother", now a broken man. When the
two brothers attempted to re-enter
Poland, anti-Jewish feeling was strong. The
border guards forced Simcha to dance
and grovel and shout a repudiation of
his religion and race. Jacob, refusing to
truckle, struck a captain savagely. Jacob
was shot to death but Simcha was
permitted to live.
Simcha lived for a time apathetically
with his wife, his divorced wife Dinah,
his daughter Gertrude, and his
granddaughter. Gradually his cunning
returned. He made a trip to England and
arranged for a loan big enough to
rebuild his looted factory. He induced his
long-forgotten son to come back from
France. Ignatz brought with him his
French wife. Simcha suspected darkly
that she was not even Jewish, but he
did not inquire. When the postwar
depression struck, Simcha was reviled by
his fellow merchants for bringing in
English capital. Lodz was almost a dead town
commercially when Simcha died.
421

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski (1821-1881)
Type of pilot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1880
Principal characters:
Fyodor Karamazov, a profligate businessman
Dmitri, his sensuous oldest son
Ivan, his atheistic, intellectual son
Alexey, his youngest son, called Alyosha
Grushenka, a young woman loved by Fyodor and Dmitri
Smerdyakov, an epileptic servant of Fyodor
Zossima, an aged priest
Katerina, betrothed to Dmitri
Critique:
The anguish caused by the dual nature
of man recurs in great chords throughout
this powerful novel.
Psychologist-novelist Dostoevski chose as the theme for
this story of a father and his three sons
the effect of sensuality and inherited
sensuality on a family and on all with
whom the family came in contact. The
earthy barbarism of tsarist Russia can be
seen beneath the veneer of Western
culture which covers Dostoevski's society.
Several poorly connected and lengthy
sub-plots in the novel detract from the
unity of the work; their inclusion
suggests that Dostoevski had planned a
longer work which, because of the
installment form in which the novel first
appeared, could not be completed.
The Story:
In the middle of the nineteenth
century in Skotoprigonyevski, a town in the
Russian provinces, Fyodor Karamazov
fathered three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by
his first wife, and the other two, Ivan
and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor, a
good businessman but a scoundrel by
nature, abandoned the children after
their mothers died. A family servant,
Grigory, saw that they were placed in
the care of relatives.
Dmitri grew up believing he would
receive a legacy from his mother's estate.
He served in the army where he
developed wild ways. Becoming a wastrel,
he went to his father and asked for money
which he believed was due him. Ivan,
morose but not timid, went from a
gymnasium to a college in Moscow. Poverty
forced him to teach and to contribute
articles to periodicals, and he achieved
modest fame when he published an
article on the position of the ecclesiastical
courts. Alexey, or Alyosha, the youngest
son, a boy of a dreamy, retiring nature,
entered a local monastery, where he
became the pupil of a famous Orthodox
Church elder, Zossima. When Alyosha
asked his father's permission to become
a monk, Fyodor, to whom nothing was
sacred, scoffed but gave his sanction.
When the brothers had all reached
manhood, their paths met in the town
of their birth. Dmitri returned to
collect his legacy. Ivan, a professed atheist,
returned home for financial reasons.
At a meeting of the father and sons
at the monastery, Fyodor shamed his
sons by behaving like a fool in the
presence of the revered Zossima. Dmitri,
who arrived late, was accused by Fyodor
of wanting the legacy money in order to
entertain a local adventuress to whom he
himself was attracted. Dmitri, who was
betrothed at this time to Katerina, a
colonel's daughter whom he had rescued
from shame, raged at his father, saying
that the old man was a great sinner and
had no room to talk. Zossima fell down
before Dmitri, tapping his head on the
422

floor, and his fall was believed to be a
portent of an evil that would befall the
oldest son. Realizing that the Karama-
zovs were sensualists, Zossima advised
Alyosha to leave the monastery and go
into the world at Zossima's death. There
was further dissension among the Kara-
mazovs because of Ivan's love for Kater-
ina, the betrothed of Dmitri.
Marfa, the wife of Grigory, Fyodor's
faithful servant, had given birth to a
deformed child. The night that Marfa's
deformed baby died, Lizaveta, an idiot
girl of the town, also died after giving
birth to a son. The child, later to be
called Smerdyakov, was taken in by
Grigory and Marfa and was accepted as a
servant in the household of Fyodor, whom
everyone in the district believed the
child's true father.
Dmitri confessed his wild ways to
Alyosha. He opened his heart to his
brother, and told how he had spent
three thousand roubles of Katerina's
money in an orgy with Grushenka, a
local woman of questionable character
with whom he had fallen passionately
in love. Desperate for the money to
repay Katerina, Dmitri asked Alyosha
to secure it for him from Fyodor.
Alyosha found Fyodor and Ivan at the
table, attended by the servant,
Smerdyakov, who was an epileptic. Entering
suddenly in search of Grushenka, Dmitri
attacked: his father. Alyosha went to
Katerina's house, where he found
Katerina trying to bribe Grushenka into
abandoning her interest in Dmitri. But
Grushenka was not to be bargained with.
Upon his return to the monastery, Al
yosha found Zossima dying. He returned
to Fyodor, to discover his father afraid
pf both Dmitri and Ivan. Ivan wanted
Dmitri to marry Grushenka so that he
himself could marry Katerina. Fyodor
wanted to marry Grushenka. The father
refused to give Alyosha any money for
Dmitri.
Katerina, spurned by Dmitri, dedicated
her life to watching over him, although
she felt a true love for Ivan. Ivan, seeing
that Katerina was pledged to torture
herself for life, nobly approved of her
decision.
Later, in an inn, Ivan disclosed to
Alyosha that he believed in God, but that
ne could not accept God's world. The
young men discussed the dual nature of
man. Ivan disclosed that he hated
Smerdyakov, who was caught between the
wild passions of Dmitri and Fyodor and
who, out of fear, worked for the interests
of each against the other.
The dying Zossima revived long
enough to converse once more with his
devoted disciples. When he died, a
miracle was expected. In the place of
a miracle, however, his body rapidly
decomposed, delighting certain of the
monks who were anxious that the
institution of the elders in the Orthodox Church
be discredited. They argued that the
decomposition of his body proved his
teachings had been false.
In his disappointment at the turn of
events at the monastery, Alyosha was
persuaded to visit Grushenka, who
wished to seduce him. He found
Grushenka prepared to escape the madness
of the Karamazovs by running off with
a former lover. The saintly Alyosha saw
good in Grushenka; she, for her part,
found him an understanding soul.
Dmitri, eager to pay his debt to
Katerina, made various fruitless attempts to
borrow the money. Mad with jealousy
when he learned that Grushenka was not
at her home, he went to Fyodor's house
to see whether she were there. He found
no Grushenka, but he seriously injured
old Grigory with a pestle with which he
had intended to kill his father.
Discovering that Grushenka had fled to another
man, he armed himself and went in
pursuit. He found Grushenka with two
Poles in an inn at another village. The
young woman welcomed Dmitri and
professed undying love for him alone.
During a drunken orgy of the lovers the
police appeared and charged Dmitri with
the murder of his father, who had been
found robbed and dead in his house.
Blood on Dmitri's clothing, his
possession of a large sum of money and pas-
423

sionate statements he had made against
Fyodor were all evidence against him.
Dmitri repeatedly protested his
innocence, claiming that the money he had
spent on his latest orgy was half of
Katerina's roubles. He had saved the
money to insure his future in the event
that Grushenka accepted him. But the
testimony of witnesses made his case seem
hopeless. He was taken into custody
and placed in the town jail to await trial.
Grushenka fell sick after the arrest
of Dmitri, and she and Dmitri were
plagued with jealousy of each other.
Dmitri, as the result of a strange dream,
began to look upon himself as an
innocent man destined to suffer for the crimes
of humanity. Ivan and Katerina, in the
meantime, worked on a scheme whereby
Dmitri might escape to America.
Before the trial Ivan interviewed the
servant Smerdyakov three times. The
servant had once told Ivan that he was
able to feign an epileptic fit; such a fit
had been Smerdyakov's alibi in the search
for the murderer of Fyodor. The third
interview ended when Smerdyakov
confessed to the murder, insisting, however,
that he had been the instrument of Ivan,
who by certain words and actions had
led the servant to believe that the death
of Fyodor would be a blessing for
everyone in his household. Smerdyakov,
depending on a guilt complex in the soul
of Ivan, had murdered his master at a
time when all the evidence would point
directly to Dmitri. He had felt that Ivan
would protect him and provide him with
a comfortable living. At the end of the
third interview, he gave the stolen money
to Ivan, who returned to his rooms and
fell ill with fever and delirium, during
which he was haunted by a realistic
specter of the devil which resided in his
soul. That same night Smerdyakov
hanged himself.
The Karamazov case having attracted
widespread attention throughout Russia,
many notables attended the trial.
Prosecution built up what seemed to be a
strong case against Dmitri, but the
defense, a city lawyer, refuted the evidence
piece by piece. Doctors declared Dmitri
to be abnormal, but in the end they
could not agree. Katerina had her
woman's revenge by revealing to the
court a letter Dmitri had written her, in
which he declared his intention of killing
his father to get the money he owed her.
Ivan, still in a fever, testified that Smer
dyakov had confessed to the murder.
Ivan gave the money to the court, but
he negated his testimony when he lost
control of himself and told the court
of the visits of his private devil.
In spite of the defense counsel's
eloquent plea in Dmitri's behalf, the jury
returned a verdict of guilty amid a
tremendous hubbub in the courtroom.
Katerina, haunted by guilt because she
had revealed Dmitri's letter, felt that she
was responsible for the jealousy of the
two brothers. She left Ivan's bedside and
went to the hospital where Dmitri, also
ill of a fever, had been taken. Alyosha
and Grushenka were present at their
interview, when Katerina begged Dmitri
for his forgiveness.
Later Alyosha left Dmitri in the care
of Grushenka and went to the funeral of
a schoolboy friend. Filled with pity and
compassion for the sorrow of death and
the misery of life, Alyosha gently
admonished the mourners, most of them
schoolmates of the dead boy, to live for
goodness and to love the world of man. He
himself was preparing to go with Dmitri
to Siberia, for he was ready to sacrifice
his own life for innocence and truth.
424

THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England and India
First published: 1895
Principal characters:
Georgie Cottar, the brushwood boy
Miriam Lacy, the girl in his dreams
Critique:
One of the lesser known of Kipling's
works, "The Brushwood Boy," from The
Days Work, follows the career of a boy
who was haunted by the same dream
from his infancy through his years in the
army. The companion of his dreams, a
lovely girl, grew with him and shared
his experiences in dreamland. When she
materialized and appeared before him in
real life, he knew that he had
unknowingly been waiting for her all his life.
This brief, fantastic romance differs
sharply from the themes and treatment
found in Kipling's more popular books.
The Story:
When he was three years old, Georgie
Cottar was frightened by a dream about
a policeman and screamed out in terror.
But by the time he was six his dreams
fused into the stories he told himself
while he was going to sleep. These
dreams always started the same way.
Near a beach was a pile of brushwood.
Around this heap of brushwood Georgie
ran and played with other boys and girls.
Strange and beautiful things happened in
his dream story. Iron railings turned soft
and could be walked on; houses filled
with grown-up people were pushed over
by the children. These wonderful things
happened, however, only so long as
Georgie knew he was dreaming. As soon as
he thought them real, his dream left him
sitting on a doorstep doing multiplication
tables.
The princess of his dreams, and his
favorite, he called by the two names he
thought the most beautiful in the world,
Anna and Louise. These he ran together
and pronounced Annieanlouise. She
applauded his slaying of dragons and
buffaloes and all the other brave deeds he
<did in the country of dreams.
When he was seven, Georgie moved
with his family to "Oxford-on-a-visit."
While there he was taken to a magic
show, where he sat next to a little girl
who in a lisping voice admired the cut
in Georgie's finger. The cut was the
work of Georgie* s first knife, and he was
intensely proud of it. He hoped it might
give him lockjaw. His conversation with
the little girl was cut short by his nurse,
who told him he must not talk to
strangers. Georgie knew his friend was not a
stranger, but he could not explain the
fact to a grownup. That night he had a
new dream, and at the brushwood pile
the girl of the theater waited for him;
they played wonderful games around the
brushwood.
The next ten years Georgie spent at
an English public school. Those busy
years did not leave much time for
dreaming. In each form he became a leader,
excelling in athletics and dealing with the
boys* personal quarrels. In his last year
at school he was the acknowledged
leader of the students, a friend of the
Headmaster himself. From public school he
went to Sandhurst, where he again
started at the bottom of the Lower Third
Form and worked his way up to a
position of leadership. After Sandhurst he
received a commission as a subaltern in
THE BRUSHWOOD BOY from THE DAY'S WORK by Rudyard Kipling. By permission of Mrs.
George Bambridge, of A. P. Watt & Son, London, and of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1895, 1898, 1899, by Rudyard Kipling. Renewed, 1922, 1926, 1934, by Rudyard Kipling.
425

one of Her Majesty's regiments.
His training for leadership during his
school years served him well in his new
position of minor authority in the
Indian service. His natural way with men
made him a good leader; the poorest
soldiers became men under his training. He
knew his own men as few officers did,
and they would follow him through any
danger or through the boredom of
garrison duty. Heroic deeds he passed off as
no more than duty. Although ladies of
the garrison sought his favor, he was
oblivious to their attentions.
In India his dreams started again. They
began like his dreams of old, by a
brushwood pile. A sea lay beyond the
brushwood pile, and on it he would travel far.
Somewhere there was a lamppost, at
which any wonderful thing could
happen. Sometimes he raced for that
lamppost in his dreams, for he knew it was a
place of safety. Once a policeman waited
there for him and filled him with terror,
just as the policeman had terrified him in
his babyhood dream. Sometimes his
dreams were filled with pleasure. He
sailed in a clockwork steamer, stopping
by lilies labeled Hong Kong or Java. He
knew that he had reached the world's
end. Then a person, unknown and
unseen, would lead him back to the
brushwood pile and safety. He took a pony on
a Thirty-Mile Ride, trying to reach the
down with the lamppost on it. Then
"They" could not harm him, whoever
"They" were. So his dreams went,
formless and weird.
Georgie was promoted, and under his
leadership his men won an important
battle. As a reward he was given a year's
leave in England. Throughout his
furlough his dreams continued. Now a girl
with black hair, combed in a widow's
peak, was his companion in most of his
dreams. She was the companion who
helped him back to the lamppost and the
brushwood pile. Although she had
become a woman, Georgie still recognized
her as his dreamland friend.
At home Georgie was pampered and
catered to by his father and mother and
the servants. Mothers brought their
daughters to parade before the eligible
Georgie, but he was immune to them.
Then Miriam Lacy was brought for a
visit by her mother. Before he saw
Miriam he heard her singing a song about the
policeman and the city of sleep, from the
land of his dreams. His heart stood still;
he knew here was the girl of the
brushwood pile. When he met her he saw the
black hair, the widow's peak, and she
spoke with a concealed lisp.
On a ride, that evening, Georgie spoke
to Miriam of the Thirty-Mile Ride and
the lamppost. At first she pretended
ignorance, but her song had given her
away. Then the two young people broke
all barriers and shared in real life the
dreams they had shared so long. Miriam,
too, had seen all the wonderful things
Georgie had seen. The companion of his
dreams, through all the years, she was his
Annieanlouise. Now they would marry
and be together in real life. In the
darkness, each of them wondered what tile
other would look like in the light.
426

THE BRUT
Principal personages:
Brut, legendary first king of Britain
Arthur, legendary king of Britain
Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father, king of Britain
Wenhaver (Guinevere), Arthur's queen
Walwain (Gawain), a knight, Arthur's nephew
Modred, Walwain's brother
Kay, a knight
Beduer (Bedivere), Arthur's steward
Gorlots, Earl of Cornwall
Yg^erne, wife of Gorlois
Type of work: Verse chronicle
Author: Layamon (fl. twelfth century)
Time: Fall of Troy to the seventh century
Locale: Britain
First transcribed: c. 1205
Layamon's Brut is the work of an
English priest of Worcestershire who took
Wace's Roman de Brut (c. 1155) and,
following its outline, nearly doubled its
length with the addition of imaginative
passages and selections from Welsh
tradition. Wace's verse chronicle was a
Norman version of the prose history
composed by Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.
1100-1152 or 1154), who first drew the
elements of the Arthurian legend together
in his Historia Regum Britanniae. By
emphasizing the Saxon character of the
Arthurian period and by incorporating
fanciful Celtic additions to the narrative,
Layamon added considerably to the
dimensions of the Arthurian story inherited
from Geoffrey and Wace. From his Brut
later writers such as Chretien de Troyes
and Sir Thomas Malory borrowed the
essential elements of their own
masterpieces.
The language of the Brut, closer to
Middle English than to the Anglo-Saxon,
is a product of the transition. The verse
retains the Anglo-Saxon features of
alliterative lines and rhymed couplets.
Layamon's work contains 32,241 verses as
compared to the 15,300 verses in Wace's
Brut. The translation available to modern
readers is that of Sir Frederic Madden in
a three-volume edition published in 1847.
Although the Brut is a literary version
of the history of Britain from the fall of
Troy and the arrival of Brutus in Britain
to the death of Cadwalader, the seventh-
century British king, the heart of the
poem and the part most favored by the
author and readers alike is the story of
Arthur, the central figure in this
chronicle of early, legendary kings.
The Layamon version, following Wace,
chronicles the rise and fall of Arthur's
predecessors, telling, among others, of
Constantine, the Roman king, allegedly
murdered by Vortiger (Vortigern) of
Wales, a schemer who managed to secure
the election of Constance (Constantius),
Constantine's oldest son, as his father's
successor. Constantine is important
because he was the father not only of
Constance, but of Aurelie Ambrosie (Aure-
lius Ambrosius) and of Uther (later,
Uther Pendragon), Arthur's father.
According to the Brut, Vortiger
arranged the murder of Constance by the
Peohtes and became king. He formed an
alliance with Hengest from Alemaine,
introducing the Saxons to political power
in Britain. Vortiger's romantic interest in
Hengest's daughter Rowenne provoked a
revolt against him—for consorting with
the heathen Saxons—and Vortimer,
Vortiger's son by his first wife, became king.
Vortiger plotted to have Vortimer
poisoned by Rowenne, and thus he regained
his throne.
It is at this point that Merlin, the
magician and prophet, is introduced. Ac-
427

cording to the legend, a sage named
Joram had declared that if anyone were
to discover a male child that had never
had a father and were to open his breast,
take his blood, and mix it with lime, any
castle wall made with the mixture would
stand forever. Some knights subsequently
overheard a quarrel between two boys,
the one charging the other with having
no father, since his father was unknown.
The knights, remembering Joram's
prophecy, took the latter boy, whose name was
Merlin, to the king, together with
Merlin's mother, a nun. She told of a golden
knight who had come to her in a dream
and got her with child. Vortiger was
interested in using Merlin's blood to repair
his castle's walls, for the walls fell down
every night; but Merlin proved that
Joram was a false prophet by showing
that the walls fell because of a nightly
battle between two dragons far down in
the earth. Merlin then told Vortiger that
the dragons were signs of kings yet
to come, of Aurelie and Uther, who
would, in that order, follow Vortiger as
kings. And then Merlin made mention
of Arthur, describing him in the most
glowing terms and predicting great deeds
for him. He revealed that Arthur would
come out of Cornwall and that he would
be indomitable, like a wild boar in
ferocity as he destroyed all traitors. In
addition to his bravery, Arthur would also be
noble in thought and would one day rule
in Rome. He would fell all his foes; none
would be able to stand against him, such
would be his might and his valor.
It is just such a mixture of historical
legend and fanciful folklore that gives
the early chronicles their charm, inviting
other writers to extend the material with
inventions of their own. Layamon, an
imaginative monk, must have entertained
himself by embellishing Wace's poem
with colorful details or new features
altogether.
As prophesied, Aurelie and Uther, like
two fire-breathing dragons, came upon
Vortiger in his castle and set fire to it,
so that it collapsed and Vortiger was
killed. Aurelie became king and fought
Vortiger's son Pascent. After Aurelie's
death by poisoning, Uther came to the
throne.
Uther was in Wales when Aurelie
died. He saw a comet and at the end of
the comet's tail a dragon. Merlin
interpreted the comet's tail as a sign of
Aurelie's death and the dragon as a sign of
Uther's reign. A gleam from the dragon's
mouth was another sign of Arthur's
coming.
References such as these prepare the
reader for Arthur, the greatest king of
ancient British legend. By surrounding
Arthur's birth with the mystery of other
worlds, the chroniclers give him
something of the eminence of a god; and when
Layamon, in the tale of Arthur's death,
finally speaks of his being borne away to
Avalun (Avalon) where Argante
(probably Morgan le Fay), queen of the elves,
will heal his wounds so that afterwards
he will return to his kingdom and live
among the Britons with great joy, he is
merely joining the enduring faith of the
Britons with the Celtic imagery he
inherited.
A similar magical aura surrounds the
account of Arthur's birth. Arthur was
Uther's son by Ygaerne, the wife of Gar-
lois, Earl of Cornwall (hence, "out of
Cornwall" as Merlin prophesied). The
fact that Uther had access to the earl's
wife was in itself the result of Merlin's
magic, for Merlin disguised Uther as the
earl so that the king could enter the
castle and make love to Ygaerne. Uther
married her after Cornwall's death, but
Arthur had already been conceived.
Arthur was born after Ygaerne had
become queen.
Immediately upon his birth the elves
endowed him with magical qualities.
They gave him three things: the strength
to be the best of all knights; the assurance
that he would become a rich king; and
the promise of a long life. The elves also
decreed that the child be endowed with
the virtue of generosity so that Arthur
became the most generous man in all the
world. Such were the princely attributes
428

bestowed upon the legendary Arthur at
birth.
Perhaps no part of Arthur's legend
has done more to fix him in the minds of
those who know the story than the
account of the Round Table. According to
Layamon, who developed earlier
references, the Round Table was suggested
to King Arthur by a clever carpenter
after a battle about precedence at the
board resulted in the death of several
knights. The table was designed to seat
sixteen hundred knights in one large
circle, so that none need ever feel that he
has been slighted.
The carpenter made the table portable
so that Arthur could take it with him and
avoid future squabbles. In this way
Arthur need never fear that any sensitive
knight, feeling that he deserved a place
nearer the "head" of the table, might
cause trouble.
The Brut tells of Arthur's wars to win
Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway,
Denmark, and France—all of which became
parts of his kingdom. He won France in
single combat with King Frolle.
Arthur's chivalric spirit is made
evident by the tale of his combat with a
giant capable of eating six swine at a
sitting. Arthur found the giant sleeping,
but the king refused to kill the ogre
while he lay defer teless. He awoke the
giant, downed him after a great struggle,
and beheaded him.
After fighting Luces (Lucius) the
Poman and gaining control of Rome,
Arthur had a dream that Modred, his
nephew (in some versions, also his son),
and Wenhaver (Guinevere), his queen,
were destroying his castle. The dream
was prophetic. In a battle with Modred
at Camelford, Modred was slain; Arthur
had already lost his favorite knights, Kay
and Beduer, while fighting the Romans,
and he had lost Walwain in an earlier
battle against Modred.
The descriptions are detailed and vivid.
According to Layamon, after the last
battle with Modred, of more than two
hundred thousand men who were engaged
in the battle, only Arthur and two of his
knights remained alive after the struggle
ended. Arthur's wounds were fatal; he
is described as having fifteen dreadful
wounds from a broad slaughter-spear,
wounds so large that two gloves could be
thrust in even the smallest of them.
Layamon's final words about Arthur
are encouraging: he recalls that Merlin,
the sage soothsayer, has promised that an
Arthur would yet come to aid the English
in time of need.
429

BUDDENBROOKS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of flot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Germany
First published: 1901
Principal characters:
Jean Buddenbrook, head of a German business house
Frau Buddenbrook, Jean's wife
Antontb (Tony), Jean's daughter
Christian, Jean's son
Tom, Jean's son
Herr Grunlich, Tone's first husband
Erica, daughter of Tony and Griinlich
Gerda, Tom's wife
Hanno, son of Tom and Gerda
Herr Permaneder, Tony's second husband
Critique:
The decadence of a materialistic society
is clearly exposed in this novel, which
had been compared with Galsworthy's
Forsyte Saga. Objective in manner, the
story nevertheless carries with it a
condemnation of its people. The Budden-
brooks were by nature honest and good;
they were imbued with family love and
loyalty to their own class, but they
allowed themselves no room for new
blood. Their development, or rather their
decay, lay in a kind of intermarriage;
not intermarriage of blood relations, but
of class. Their only mainstay was wealth.
Losing that, they were destroyed.
The Story:
In the year 1875 the Buddenbrook
family was at its peak. Johann had
maintained intact the business and wealth
he had inherited from his father, and the
Buddenbrook name was held in high
esteem. Johann's oldest son, Jean,
inherited the business when old Johann
died. Antonie, Jean's first child was born
in the family home on Mengstrasse.
Tony was an aristocrat by nature and
temperament. The next child was Tom,
followed by Christian, who seemed
peculiar in his manners from birth.
Tom displayed an early interest in the
Buddenbrook business, but Christian
seemed indifferent to all family
responsibilities.
Tony grew into a beautiful woman.
One day Herr Grunlich came to call
on the family. Because of his obvious
interest in Tony, Jean investigated
Griinlich's financial status. But the
headstrong girl despised Grunlich and his
obsequious manner. Having gone to the
seashore to avoid meeting Grunlich
when he called again, she fell in love
with a young medical student named
Morten Schartzkopf. Learning of Tony's
interest in the student, Jean and Frau
Buddenbrook hurried their daughter
home, and Tony was too much bred with
a sense of her family duties to ignore
their arguments in favor of Grunlich
when he asked for her hand. Her
wedding date set, Grunlich received a
promise of a dowry of eighty thousand
marks.
Grunlich, after taking his twenty-
year-old bride to the country, would not
allow her to call on any of her city
friends. Although she complained in her
letters to her parents, Tony resigned
herself to obeying her husband's wishes.
Tom held an important position in the
business which was still amassing money
BUDDENBROOKS by Thomas Mann. Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. By permission of the author and the
publisher!, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1924, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
430

for the Buddenbrooks. Christian's early
distaste for business and his ill health
had given him the privilege of going
to South America.
When Griinlich found his
establishment floundering, his creditors urged him
to send to his father-in-law for help.
Jean Buddenbrook learned then of
Griinlich's motive in marrying Tony; the
Buddenbrook reputation had placed
Griinlich's already failing credit upon a
sounder basis. Actually Griinlich was a
poor man who was depending upon
Jean's concern for Tony to keep his son-
in-law from financial failure. Tony
herself assured her father that she hated
Griinlich but that she did not wish to
endure the hardships that bankruptcy
would entail.
Jean brought Tony and his
granddaughter, Erica Griinlich, back to the
Buddenbrook home. The divorce, based
on Griinlich's fraudulent handling of
Tony's dowry, was easily arranged.
Jean Buddenbrook, loving his family
dearly, firmly believed in the greatness
of the Buddenbrook heritage. Tony was
once again happy in her father's home,
although she bore her sorrows like a
cross for everyone to notice and reverence.
Tom had grown quite close to his sister,
who took pride in his development and
in the progress of the Buddenbrook
firm.
Christian, having failed in his
enterprises in South America, had returned
home. His father gave him a job and an
office which Christian hated and avoided.
His manners were still peculiar and his
health poor. Serious Tom handled the
business as well as Jean, and he remained
fixed in his attachment to family customs.
When Jean died and left the business to
Tom, Tony felt that the family had lost
its strongest tie. Tom, too, was greatly
affected by his father's death, but the
responsibility of his financial burdens
immediately became of foremost
importance.
Because Christian could not adjust
himself to Buddenbrook interests, the
ever-patient Tom sent him to Munich
for his health. Reports from Munich
that he was seen often in the company
of a notoriously loose actress distressed
his family. Then Tom made a
satisfactory marriage with the daughter of a
wealthy businessman. Gerda, whose
dowry added to the Buddenbrook fortune,
was an attractive woman who loved
music. Parties were once more held at
the Buddenbrook mansion on Meng-
strasse.
Tony returned from a trip with hopes
that a man whom she had met while
traveling would come to call. Soon Herr
Permaneder did call. He was a
successful beer merchant in Munich. Tom and
Frau Buddenbrook thought that
Permaneder, in spite of his crude manners
and strange dialect, would make a
satisfactory husband for Tony. Fortified with
her second, smaller dowry, Tony went
to Munich as Frau Permaneder. She
sent Erica off to boarding-school.
Once again Tony wrote passionate
appeals to her family complaining of her
married life. Finally she came home,
weeping because Permaneder had
betrayed her by making love to a servant.
Tom protested against a second divorce,
but Tony insisted. Prevailing upon Tom
to write to Permaneder, Tony was
surprised to learn that her husband would
not fight the proceedings, that he felt
the marriage had been a mistake, and
that he would return to Tony her dowry
which he did not need.
Tom and Gerda had produced a son to
carry on the family name. Little Johann,
or Hanno, as he was called, inherited his
mother's love for music, but he was pale
and sickly from birth. Tom tried to
instill in his son a love for the family
business, but Hanno was too shy to
respond to his father.
The death of Frau Buddenbrook
brought Christian, Tony, and Tom
together to haggle over the inheritance.
Christian demanded his money, but Tom,
as administrator, refused. Infuriated,
Christian quarreled bitterly with Tom, all
the pent-up feeling of the past years
431

giving vent to a torrent of abuse against
the cold, mercenary actions of Tom Bud-
denbrook.
Tom was not mercenary. He worked
hard and faithfully, but in spite of his
efforts the business had declined much
in the past few years because of economic
changes. In poor health, he felt that
sickly Christian would outlive him.
Although Tony found a fine husband
for her daughter, even the marriage of
Erica and Herr Weinschenk was
destined to end in disaster. Herr
Weinschenk was caught indulging in some
foul business practices and went to jail
for three years. Accustomed to public
scandal, Tony bore that new hardship
with forbearance. Erica, too, adopted
her mother's attitude.
Suddenly Tom died. He had fallen in
the snow, to be brought to his bed and
die, a few hours later, babbling
incoherently. His loss was greater to Tony
than to any of the others. Christian,
arriving from Munich for the funeral,
had grown too concerned over his own
suffering to show grief over the death
of his brother. Gerda felt her own sorrow
deeply, for her marriage with Tom had
been a true love match.
After the will had been read, Christian
returned to Munich to marry the mistress
whom Tom's control had kept him from
marrying. Soon afterward Christian's
wife wrote to Tony that his illness had
poisoned his mind. She had placed
Christian in an institution.
Life at the Buddenbrook home went
on. Little Hanno, growing up in a
household of women, never gained much
strength. Thin and sickly at fifteen, he
died during a typhoid epidemic.
So passed the last of the Buddenbrooks.
From the days of the first Johann, whose
elegance ana power had produced a fine
business and a healthy, vigorous lineage,
to the last pitiably small generation which
died with Hanno, the Buddenbrooks had
decayed into nothing.
432

THE BULWARK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: 1890 to the mid-1920's
Locale: Dukla, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, New York City, Atlantic City
First published: 1946
Principal charucters:
Solon Barnes, a Quaker banker
Benecia, his wife
Rufus Barnes, Solon's father
Hannah Barnes, Solon's mother
Phoebe Kimber, Hannah's sister
Cynthia, Solon's sister
Rhoda Kimber, and
Laura Kimber, Phoebe's daughters
Justus Wallin, Benecia's father
Isobel, oldest child of Solon and Benecia
Orville, second child of Solon and Benecia
Dorothea, attractive third child of Solon and Benecia
Etta, fourth child of Solon and Benecia
Volida La Porte, Etta's friend
Hester Wallin, Justus Wallin's sister
Willard Kane, an artist, Etta's lover
Stewart, youngest child of Solon and Benecia
Victor Bruge, and
Lester Jennings, Stewart's friends
Psyche Tanzer, a young girl
Critique:
The Bulwark deals with three genera- experience into a meaningful and worthy
tions of the Barnes family, and the impact pattern against the inevitable forces work-
of social change in America on them- ing in his own nature and in the life
selves and their Quaker faith. Once about him.
again, as is frequently the case in Drei- ~, „
ser's novels, the control advocated by r
Quaker belief is unable to stem the Rufus Barnes was a farmer and trades-
impact of the modern and commercial man living near Segookit, Maine. He and
world. Children desert the faith for his Wlfe Hannah were good Quakers,
worldly pleasures, following the call of Wlu» Hannah's sister, Phoebe Kimber,
their inevitable natures; even Solon, the livm§ m Trenton, New Jersey, lost her
most dedicated of adherents, finds his husband, she asked Rufus to come to
own faith warped and made rigid by New Jersey to helP «tk her husbands
his increasing attention to business. The affairs. Rufus, finding himself the execu-
Bulwark is less crowded and repetitious tor of a rather large estate, did a thorough
than are some of Dreiser's earlier novels. and competent job. In gratitude for his
Less of the social background and fewer help and in hopes that he would move
economic details are given. The novel, his family close to her, Phoebe offered
characteristically and powerfully, al- Rufus one of her properties, an old, run-
though at times somewhat clumsily, down, but elegant house in Dukla, Penn-
pits man's best efforts to channel his sylvania, just across the Delaware from
THE BULWARK by Theodore Dreiser. By permission of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright,
1946, by Doubleday & Co., Inc.
433

Trenton. Rufus was willing to restore the
house and try to sell it, but Phoebe was
eager to give the house to him. At last
Rufus agreed to take the house and move
his family to Dukla. He and his wife
had the house restored to great taste and
beauty.
Rufus and Hannah became somewhat
more worldly in Dukla. Rufus went into
business, dealing in real estate, but he
applied his Quaker principles to his
business and helped the poor farmers make
their land yield more profit so that he
would not have to foreclose. Respected
and prosperous, he and his wife still
followed their faith and taught it carefully
to their two children, Cynthia and Solon.
Solon Barnes cut his leg with an ax.
An incompetent doctor bungled the
treatment and for a time they all feared that
the boy might die. But his mother prayed
devoutly and Solon recovered, an event
that kept the family strictly loyal to their
faith.
Sent to school with their cousins, Laura
and Rhoda, Phoebe's children, Cynthia
and Solon began to acquire more polish
and knowledge of the world. At school,
Solon also met Benecia Wallin, the
daughter of a wealthy Quaker. The other
children, Cynthia, Laura, Rhoda, and
Benecia, were all sent to a Quaker
finishing school at Oakwold, but Solon chose
to remain at home and help his father
in the real estate business.
Justus Wallin, Benecia's father, was
impressed by the Barnes family. He
admired the way Rufus and Solon
conducted their business; he was impressed
with Hannah's faith and her behavior at
Quaker meetings. The families became
friendly, and Justus asked Rufus and
Solon to become the agents for his
extensive holdings. Solon and Benecia fell in
love. Justus found for Solon a job in his
Philadelphia bank and, although Solon
had to start at the bottom, it was clear
that he had both the talent and the
influence to rise quickly to the top. Solon and
Benecia were married, to the delight of
both families, in a Quaker ceremony.
The years passed. Solon and Benecia
were happy and successful. Solon did
well at the bank in Philadelphia; Benecia
was a quiet, principled, and religious
woman. After the death of Solon's
parents, Solon and Benecia moved into the
house in Dukla. Although Solon
occasionally experienced metaphysical doubts,
he lived in complete adherence to the
moral principles of the Quakers. He
became a bulwark of the community, an
honest forthright man who did not
approve of smoking, drinking, art, music,
literature, or dancing. He and Benecia
brought up their five children in
accordance with these strict Quaker principles.
Each of the children reacted differently
to this upbringing. The oldest, Isobel,
was an unattractive girl, not popular in
school, who found it difficult to make
friends. She began to read books and
decided, against the ideas implanted by
her parents, that she wanted to avoid
the Quaker finishing school and go to
college. Solon managed to compromise
and send her to Llewellyn College for
Women, a Quaker institution, where
she remained to do postgraduate work.
Orville, the oldest son, inherited Solon's
severity, although not his kindness.
Orville became interested in business at an
early age, although his materialism was
not tempered by any principle deeper
than respectability. He married a wealthy
socialite and went into her father's
pottery business in Trenton. The third child,
Dorothea, was the beauty of the family.
She had been taken up by her father's
cousin Rhoda, who had married a
wealthy doctor, one of Benecia's cousins,
in the Wallin family. More worldly than
the Barnes family, Rhoda gave elegant
parties, approved of dancing, and soon
had Dorothea married to a wealthy and
socially acceptable young man. None of
these three children, however, overtly
abandoned the Quaker faith or caused
their parents serious concern.
The fourth child, Etta, was more
interesting. Sensitive, pretty, highly
intelligent, she soon began to read forbidden
books. She became friendly with a young
girl named Volida La Porte, who intro-
434

duced her to French novels and gave her
the idea of studying literature at the
University of Wisconsin. When Solon
insisted his daughter attend the Llewellyn
College for Women, Etta ran away to a
Wisconsin summer session after pawning
her mother's jewels to provide the fare.
Solon went after her, and the two were
reconciled. Etta acknowledged the theft
and returned the jewels. In the
meantime old Hester Wallin had died and
left Etta, as well as each of her sisters, a
small income.
Solon allowed Etta to remain at
Wisconsin for the summer session. After she
left the university, Etta moved to
Greenwich Village to continue her studies.
There she met Willard Kane, an artist,
and eventually had an affair with him,
even though she realized that he had no
intention of jeopardizing his artistic career
by marriage. The Barnes family knew of
the affair—Orville had discovered it—and
they disapproved highly.
The youngest child, Stewart, was the
wildest of all. He lacked the essential
honesty of his brothers and sisters.
Spoiled by his cousin Rhoda, who took
him up as she had taken up Dorothea,
and sent to a snobbish private school,
Stewart was interested only in his
conquests of lower-class girls on riotous trips
to Atlantic City. With his friends, Bruge
and Jennings, Stewart would pick up
girls and take them off for the weekend.
He often had to steal money from his
parents or his brother to finance his
escapades. His reckless life was
paralleled by wild financial speculations, in
the business world, that increasingly
worried Solon. Solon's bank was involved in
some questionable activities, but Solon,
true to his religious principles, felt he
could not pull out of the situation
without hurting others who depended on him.
Similarly, he could not abandon Stewart.
One weekend Stewart's friend Bruge
gave a young girl, Psyche, some of his
mother's "drops" because Psyche had not
yielded to Bruge and he felt the "drops"
might make her comply. They did,
but they also killed Psyche. The boys,
frightened, left her body on the road.
The police soon apprehended them and
charged all three with rape and murder.
Unable to face his family and feeling
some vestiges of religious guilt, Stewart
killed himself in jail.
The shock of Stewart's suicide caused
Benecia to suffer a stroke. Etta left her
lover and returned home shortly before
her mother's death. She found Solon
greatly changed. In his despair, he had
lost his severity and no longer felt he
had the right to judge others. Realizing
that his concern with business and with
strict standards had cut him off from the
kindness and light at the center of his
faith, he had learned to love all things,
all creatures of nature. Etta, who often
read to him, found herself more and
more attracted to the central "Inner
Light" of the Quaker belief. Always
the most understanding child, she and
her father developed a genuine closeness
and affection for each other before Solon
died of cancer six months later. Etta, left
alone and removed from the commercial
contemporary world, became the
embodiment of essential Quaker principles.
435

BUSSY D'AMBOIS
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Chapman (1559M634)
Type of plot: Tragedy of blood
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: c. 1604
Principal characters:
Bussy d'Ambois, a soldier of fortune
Henry III, King of France
Monsieur, the king's brother
The Duke of Guise
The Count of Montsurry
Tamyra, his wife
A Friar
Critique:
Bussy d'Ambois appears to represent a
decadent, rather cynical comment on the
Renaissance individual whose ambition
and self-confidence knew no bounds.
Having achieved status in a ruthless and
utterly corrupt court, he offended at
every hand and dallied with abandon in
illicit love. What the Quarto of 1607
refers to as Bussy d'Ambois: A Tragedy,
appears to be as much satire as tragedy.
Even Bussy's determination, after he has
been shot, to die while he supports
himself on his sword seems comic in its
futility, considering the despicable nature
of his antagonists and of his mistress.
Chapman's play, based on the actual
career of Louis de Clermont, Sieur de
Bussy d'Amboise, is skillfully constructed,
the language poetic and compelling.
The Story:
In Paris, Bussy d'Ambois was a soldier
and gentleman too poor to gain favor at
the court. By appointment he met
Monsieur, brother of King Henry III, in a
side street. Monsieur, chiding Bussy for
his downcast countenance, reminded him
that some of the greatest men in history
had endured obscurity and exile before
becoming renowned. Anxious to have
ambitious and ruthless young men about
him, Monsieur invited Bussy to be his
man and to become a courtier. Later,
Maff6, Monsieur's steward, came to
Bussy and, seeing the wretched state he was
in, gave him a hundred crowns of the
thousand that Monsieur had sent Bussy.
But Bussy, perceiving that Maffe was a
proud scoundrel and knowing Monsieur's
reputation for generosity, was able to
talk Maffe out of the remaining nine
hundred crowns. With the money in his
possession, Bussy struck Maffe" in
payment for his insubordination. Maffe"
hinted that he would be avenged.
Monsieur introduced Bussy, dressed in
fine new clothes, at court. As he was
presented to various noble people of the
court, he impressed them with his
directness. The Duke of Guise jealously noted
that Bussy was being quite free with his
wife, Elenor, and suggested that Bussy
not be so forward. Bussy, uncourtier-like,
answered Guise sharply. Although
warned by Monsieur, Bussy still
persisted in dallying pleasantly with Elenor.
Having offended Guise, Bussy also
bluntly incurred the enmity of three courtiers,
Barrisor, l'Anou, and Pyrhot.
In the duel which followed the three
courtiers and two of Bussy's friends were
killed; he was the only survivor. Later
he went to the court with Monsieur, who
successfully won a pardon for Bussy from
King Henry. Bussy thanked the king and
declared that he could not avoid
defending his honor. Guise was deeply offended
by the royal pardon Bussy had received.
Tamyra, Countess of Montsurry, met
Bussy and fell in love with him. At the
same time Monsieur, making every
attempt to seduce the noblewoman, gave
436

her a pearl necklace. Later Tamyra
entered a secret chamber back of her
bedchamber. A friar, in league with her,
brought Bussy by a secret passageway to
the chamber on the pretext that Bussy
was to explain to Tamyra a false report
that he had killed Barrisor because the
dead man had been interested in the
countess. The friar, after hinting of
Tamyra's love for Bussy and cautioning
him to be discreet, left Bussy and Tamyra
together.
Her passion for Bussy having been
consummated, Tamyra expressed a deep
feeling of guilt and feared that she might
be discovered. Bussy assured her that he
would protect her from all dishonor. As
he took leave of her, again accompanied
by the friar, she gave him the necklace
Monsieur had given her. At daybreak
Montsurry returned home to find his
wife awake and fully clothed. She
explained that she had not been able to
sleep while he had been away on
business. When he asked her to come to bed
with him, she begged off, saying that the
friar did not approve of making love by
daylight.
Bussy, having become a great favorite
of the king, declared to the court that
he would be the king's own right arm
in exposing sycophants, rascals, and any
other unprincipled men in the realm.
Grown heady with favor, he taunted
Guise, who retorted that Bussy was the
illegitimate son of a cardinal. The two
men were ready to settle their grudge in
a duel, but the king managed to
reconcile them momentarily.
Monsieur realized that he had
sponsored a man who could not be
manipulated. He and Guise plotted Bussy's
downfall by gaining the confidence of
the serving-women of the chief ladies of
the court. Pero, Tamyra's maid, disclosed
to Monsieur that her mistress had given
herself to Bussy, but the servant was
unable to reveal the identity of the person
who had acted as go-between in the illicit
affair.
Bussy, at the height of his power in
the court, reminded his patron of
Monsieur's ambition to be king. He declared
that he would assist Monsieur in
everything short of actually killing King
Henry. Monsieur asked Bussy for his honest
opinion of him; Bussy said he would give
it in return for Monsieur's opinion of
Bussy. Monsieur thereupon declared that
Bussy was a vain, pompous, ruthless, and
inconsistent man. Bussy, in return, said
that Monsieur was a liar, a gossip, and
the fountainhead of all cruelty and
violence in France. The two, having made
their disclosures of each other's worth,
went together to a banquet given by the
king.
During the banquet Monsieur
suggested to Bussy that he pay court to
Tamyra, who was reputed to be
unapproachable. When Bussy pretended to
have only the slightest acquaintance with
her, Monsieur hinted that he knew more
than he would tell. The king, sensing
that violence was in the offing, beckoned
to his favorite to join him, and he and
Bussy left the banquet hall.
Monsieur offered to show Montsurry
a letter which would reveal to him the
perfidy of his wife, but trusting
Montsurry refused to take the letter. His
suspicions having been aroused, however,
Tamyra, aided by Pero, was able to
convince him that he had no cause to
suspect his wife of faithlessness.
Later Bussy and Tamyra met in the
secret chamber and Tamyra revealed to
her lover that Monsieur knew of their
meetings. The friar invoked spirits so
that the two could foresee what the
future might hold. Behemoth, the chief
spirit invoked, re-created an image of
Monsieur, Guise, and Montsurry in
conference. Monsieur and Guise, having
convinced Montsurry of Tamyra's passion
for Bussy, urged him to force Tamyra to
reveal the identity of the go-between so
that Bussy might more easily be
ambushed and killed. Pero came to the
conferring lords and gave Monsieur a letter
written by Tamyra. Montsurry, utterly
confused by that time, and not knowing
whom to trust, stabbed Pero. Behemoth
forecast a violent end for the friar, Tamy-
437

ra, and Bussy unless they were able to
act with the greatest wisdom.
Montsurry returned to his house and
seized Tamyra, who was in the company
of the friar. Despite the friar's warning
to him not to act with violence,
Montsurry ordered Tamyra to write her
confession. She resisted, whereupon he
stabbed her repeatedly. When she still
persisted in her refusal to write, he had
her placed on a rack. The friar, who had
left that scene of violence, returned with
a sword and killed himself with it.
Tamyra, tortured on the rack, confessed that
the friar had been the go-between. She
wrote to Bussy in her own blood that he
was to come to her in the secret chamber.
Montsurry, disguised as the friar,
brought hired murderers to his friends
Monsieur and Guise; then he left them
to lure Bussy to a carefully plotted doom.
Meanwhile the ghost of the friar
appeared to Bussy and predicted a dire fate
for him. When the ghost left, after
declaring that it would meet Bussy in
Tamyra's secret chamber, Bussy
apprehensively invoked the spirit of the
underworld. The spirit, appearing, told him
that the friar was really dead and that
Bussy should not heed his next
summons from Tamyra. Bussy wanted to
know who would deliver the summons.
The spirit could not answer because a
stronger spirit, Fate, controlled by
Monsieur and Guise, prevented that
disclosure.
Montsurry, dressed as the friar, brought
the letter written in blood to Bussy.
Duped by the disguise and defying the
malign predictions he had heard, Bussy
followed Montsurry back to Tamyra.
The ghost of the friar, meanwhile,
appeared to Tamyra and advised her to
shout a warning to Bussy as he was
brought into the secret room. When
Bussy and Montsurry entered the
chamber, she did indeed warn Bussy. As his
enemies and the hired murderers closed
in on their victim, the ghost of the friar
unnerved the murderers and Bussy was
given time to collect himself. Having
killed one of the murderers, he was about
to kill Montsurry when he was shot
down. Bussy, propping himself on his
sword so that he might die in a defiant
attitude, forgave those who had brought
him to his death. After Bussy's death
Montsurry banished Tamyra, the
unfaithful wife.
438

THE CABALA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thornton Wilder (1897- )
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: About 1920
Locale: Rome
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
Samuele, a young American student and writer
James Blair, his friend
The Duchess d'Aquilanera, a Cabalist
Marcantonio, her son
Cardinal Vatni, a former Chinese missionary
Astree-Luce de Morfon fAiNE, a religious fanatic
Alee d'Espoli, in love with James Blair
Critique:
Practically all of Thornton Wilder's
work is unusual in one degree or another.
The Cabala—really a series of sketches
held together by locale and a group of
people who have something in common
—is no exception. The novel is a
fantastic story of the pagan gods grown old
and weak. Christianity and modern
society have doomed them to despair,
madness, and death. A young American
of Puritan background records their
overthrow, an ironic ending to their pagan
power and pride.
The Story:
When Samuele went to Rome with
his friend, James Blair, he learned of the
existence there of a certain group known
as the Cabala, talented and wealthy
aristocrats, clever esoterics who had
mysterious influence in affairs of Church
and State. Blair, a bookish person, was
familiar with some of its members, and
he introduced his friend into that strange
circle of Roman society. Samuele soon
became a favorite of the Cabalists.
One of them, the Duchess d'Aquila-
nera, had a great problem on her mind.
Her son Marcantonio, who was sixteen,
had had five or six love affairs with
various women, and she was disturbed by
his unsettled habits. She had arranged
a marriage for him, but the wedding
would not take place unless Marcantonio
changed his ways. She pleaded with
Samuele to spend a weekend at her
villa and to talk to the boy in an effort
to show him the errors of the life he
was leading. Samuele refused, thinking
the whole matter ridiculous. Then he
had a talk with Cardinal Vaini, a friend
of the duchess, who said that
Marcantonio had begun his wild career by
imitating his older friends. Later his
vicious morality had become a habit, and
finally a mania. Samuele was so shocked
by the cardinal's description of the boy's
cnaracter that he finally agreed to go to
the villa, as the duchess had requested.
Marcantonio liked to drive
automobiles as fast as possible. He also told
Samuele that he wished to train for the
Olympics. Samuele, in a passionate
outburst, denounced the boy's loose loves.
The next day Marcantonio jumped from
a balcony and killed himself.
Samuele was shocked and grieved. But
he was soon to become involved in the
strange conduct of another Cabalist, the
Princess Alix d'Espoli. Alix always had
the habit of falling in love with men
who could not possibly be attracted to
her. She had beauty and charm, but
little intelligence. To make up for her
lack, she cultivated a way of speaking
that was interesting and appealing. Al-
THE CABALA by Thornton Wilder. By permission of the author. Copyright, 1926, by Albert ft Charlei Boni.
Ioc.
439

though people enjoyed having her at
dinner, she accepted few invitations.
One day she went to visit Samuele and
found James Blair in his apartment.
Though Blair was rude, she fell in love
with him and proceeded to lay siege to
his affections. At last she was convinced
that she had scored a triumph, for Blair
gave her a book that had once been
mentioned in casual conversation. She
began going to his rooms uninvited.
When Blair became upset, Samuele
suggested that the only way out was for him
to leave Rome. After Blair left on a
trip to Spain, Alix proceeded to lose
herself in the life of the city. She accepted
all sorts of invitations, even asking to be
introduced to various people. She seemed
happy in a round of pleasure. Samuele
hoped that she had forgotten Blair.
A month later Blair wrote to Samuele,
saying that he was returning to Rome.
Samuele warned him to stay away, but
Blair insisted that his researches into
ancient secret societies made his return
necessary. One night both of them went
to visit a famous seer who was holding
a seance in an old Roman palace. While
they were there, a heavily veiled woman
came in, rushed to the seer, and implored
his help in some matter. Recognizing
Alix, Samuel and Blair attempted to
leave, but the woman saw them before
they could get out of the room. Abruptly,
angrily, she went away. Later Samuele
heard that she had become interested
in the fine arts, that she was studying
music. She started on a trip to Greece,
but returned suddenly without an
explanation. Some said that she continued
to search for a lover. More and more
she was spoken of in a derogatory
manner.
One day in her presence a Danish
archeologist said that he had met Blair.
Upon hearing his name, Alix fainted.
Samuele also spent much of his time
with Astree-Luce de Morfontaine, a
deeply religious woman. She saw some
spiritual meaning in the initials of an
American teacher named Irene H.
Spencer, and on one occasion she was
deeply offended when someone spoke
slightingly of the pelican, because to her
the bird was a holy symbol. She had
great faith in prayer. One day the
cardinal spoke derisively of prayer, and she
broke down. The cardinal said that she
had never suffered, that she did not know
the meaning of suffering. The woman's
faith was badly shaken. She invited the
cardinal to her house for a party.
During the evening she accused him of being
the devil, took out a pistol, and shot at
him. He was not hurt. But a later
reconciliation was impossible. The
cardinal decided to go back to his mission
in China. En route, he caught a fever,
died, and was buried at sea.
Before Samuele left Rome, he called
on Miss Elizabeth Grier, an American
member of the Cabala. From her he
learned at last who the men and women
of the Cabala really were. They were
the pagan gods of Europe grown old,
deities whose brooding ancient wisdom
could not save them from the sufferings
and follies of ordinary humanity. Miss
Grier confused Samuele by stating hei
belief that he was the new god Mercury,
an idea vaguely upsetting to a young
American of New England ancestry.
440

THE CABIN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Vicente Blasco Ibdnez (1867-1928)
Type of plot: Regional realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: The country near Valencia, Spain
First published: 1898
Principal characters:
Batiste Borrull, a tenant farmer
Roseta, his daughter
The Bishop, Batiste's youngest son, a little boy
Piment6, the bully of the district
Critique:
Although this novel presents a vivid
and realistic picture of life in one
corner of Spain, Blasco Ib&riez did not want
himself to be catalogued as a regional
novelist. Proud of his country and its
efforts, he felt that he, his work, and his
countrymen in general were often
misunderstood, particularly by Americans.
Like many other Spanish authors, also,
he could not understand why Americans
knew so little about Spain and its
culture, and so much of his early fiction
dealt with his native section of Spain.
Even so, he did not want to be thought
of as associated with any one district or
as the chronicler of the manners of any
one region. Many of his novels achieved
greater popularity, but most critics
believe that The Cabin was his major
contribution to the art of the novel.
The Story:
Batiste Borrull brought his family to
a district near Valencia to take up a small
truck farm that had lain idle for more
than ten years. None of the Borrulls
knew that other farmers in the district
had vowed that the owners of the farm
should never reap any profit from its
rich soil. When Batiste and his family
arrived, they knew only that the stares
and lack of greeting meant that they
were not welcome.
The former tenant of the farm had
been a very meek old man named
Barret, a farmer who would do anything to
keep his land, which meant more to him
than did his family. The owner of the
farm, Don Salvador, lived in the nearby
city of Valencia. He took advantage of
Barret's meekness and his love of the
land and raised the rent year after year,
always knowing that the old farmer
would somehow find a way to get the
money. Charging a large amount of
interest, he even lent Barret money to buy
a horse when the old one died of
overwork. At last the rent for the rich acres
exceeded the income from the crops;
Barret and his family sold all their bits
of finery and used up all their savings to
pay the rent, but such actions only
postponed their inevitable ruin. At last the
time came when they could not pay the
rent.
When that fateful day arrived, Barret
was forcibly put off his farm by officers
of the law. The old man went beserk
that night and crept off into the cane-
breaks. The next day he found Don
Salvador alone on the road and killed
him with a scythe. He also destroyed all
the crops so that the heirs of Don
Salvador would not gain anything by his
labors. Old Barret was imprisoned for
his deed and his daughters ended up as
prostitutes in Valencia. The neighbors
vowed in a body that no one should farm
the place and thus make it profitable for
the heirs of the hateful Don Salvador.
THE CABIN by Vicente Blasco Ibaiiez. Translated by Francis Haffkine Snow and Beatrice M. Mekota.
By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1917, 1919, 1938, by Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc.
441

Several people before Batiste Borrull had
come to take over the place, but the
farmers had driven off each newcomer
very shortly.
Batiste and his family stayed on the
farm and worked as busily as ants for
many days. While they were on their
own land, not even Piment6, the
neighborhood bully, dared bother them, for the
home was sacred to those simple
peasants. In addition, Batiste was a very large
and strong man. When he and his family
ended their initial labors, the house was
repaired and half of the land was under
cultivation. Once again the place looked
prosperous, even more so than the fields
around it. To the neighbors' original
prejudice was added envy.
Roseta, Batiste's daughter, went to
work in the silk mills of Valencia,
returning to her home each night from
the city. Many of the girls from the
district worked in the factory, and Roseta
quickly learned that she was not wanted
in their company any more than her
family was wanted in the district.
The three little boys of Batiste fared
no better in school. The other boys
picked on them and thrashed them at
every opportunity, even though the young
Borrulls gave no offense to the others.
Disaster almost overtook the family
when Batiste was falsely accused before
the water tribunal of taking water from
the irrigation ditch when it was not his
turn. For that offense he was fined
heavily, and was ordered by the court
not to use any water for some time. The
person behind the accusation was
Pimento, the village bully. But Bastite
refused to allow his crops and his family to
be ruined. That same night he took his
shotgun and went to the water gates.
Opening the gates, he took the water his
land needed. He looked so fierce that
no one disturbed him, nor did anyone
tell the authorities what he had done.
Although humiliated in little ways and
insulted at every turn, the family
prospered. They even felt that they were
beginning to make some decent impression
upon the farmers who hated them. But
one day the schoolboys beat the smallest
of Bastiste's sons and threw him into a
water-filled ditch. The boy, whom the
family called the Bishop because of his
inoffensive manners and quiet attitude,
became ill from exposure and died after
a lingering illness. The entire district
finally took pity on the family, the
neighbors feeling that they were somewhat to
blame for the little fellow's death.
Everyone attended the funeral, even though
a few days before several of the men
had wounded Batiste's horse as it stood
in the fields.
For several weeks after the Bishop's
death and burial, Batiste's family seemed
to fit into the community life; even the
bully Pimento was pleasant to them. The
harvest was ready, and Batiste's acres
yielded him a fine return for the labor
and love he had bestowed upon them.
The barn was filled with wheat and
vegetables to carry the family through the
coming seasons. But during the festival
days that followed, the people, envious
of the fine harvest the newcomers had
raised, began to turn against the Borrulls
again.
During the festival Pimento and two
fellow rascals held a contest in the local
inn to see who could sit and play cards
the longest while drinking brandy. For
more than two days the contest
continued. Batiste, overwhelmed by curiosity
and thinking he had only friends in the
district, went to the inn to watch. As the
contest drew to a close, with Pimento
the winner, the bully saw Batiste
standing among the spectators. Utterly drunk,
the bully turned upon Batiste and
ordered him to leave the inn and the
district immediately. Batiste, knowing the
matter had to be settled sooner or later,
raised a heavy stool and attacked the
bully. So fiercely did he swing the stool
that no one bothered him. From that day
on Batiste carried his shotgun wherever
he went.
One evening, while he was returning
to his home, he felt that he was being
442

followed. As he entered a dark lane,
someone shot him in the shoulder.
Wounded only slightly, Batiste pursued
his attacker and saw that the man was
Piment6. He followed the bully and
finally wounded him seriously. Batiste,
suffering from his wound, then crawled
back to his cabin. No one bothered the
family for several days, although the
tumult a few days later told them that
Piment6 had died and was being buried
in the local manner.
On the night following Piment6's
funeral Batiste could not sleep well. He
had weird dreams, in which it seemed
that Piment6 was victorious over him.
At last he awoke, to find the cabin in
flames. He and his family dashed
outside, saving almost nothing but their own
skins. They sat helplessly and alone by
the side of the road and watched their
belongings and their harvest go up in
flames. Knowing that their neighbors had
set the blaze, the Borrulls realized that
they would be forced to leave at last,
unless they wished to court death. They
were surrounded by an insurmountable,
undying hatred.
443

CADMUS
Type of work: Classical legend
Source: Folk tradition
Type of plot: Heroic adventure
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Ancient Greece
First transcribed: Unknown
Principal characters:
Cadmus, founder of Thebes
Jupiter, king of the gods
Minerva, daughter of Jupiter
Mars, god of war
Harmonia, wife of Cadmus
Critique:
The story of Cadmus is not one of the
best known myths, but it is an important
one, for it is a basis upon which many
other stories have been built. Cadmus,
like the other great classical heroes, lived
at least thirty centuries ago, and the
tales of his great deeds have been told
over and over, changing a little with each
telling. In reading of Cadmus, we meet
the gods and goddesses, the serpents and
mom ters, and the other great figures who
supposedly roamed the world when it
was the playground of the gods. All
things were possible in those heroic days.
The Story:
Jupiter, in the form of a bull, carried
away Europa, who was the daughter of
Agenor, king of Phenicia. When her
handmaidens told her father of the
kidnaping, he commanded his son Cadmus
to look for Europa and not to return until
he had found her. Cadmus searched for
his sister for many years and in strange
lands. But though he searched diligently,
killing many monsters and endangering
himself many times in his quest he could
not find her. Afraid to return to his father,
he consulted the oracle of Apollo at
Delphi and asked where he should settle.
The oracle told him that he would find
a cow in a field, and if he were to follow
her, she would lead him to a good land.
Where the cow stopped, Cadmus was to
build a great city and call it Thebes.
Cadmus soon saw a cow walking ahead
of him, and he followed her. Finally
the cow stopped on the plain of Panope.
Cadmus prepared to give thanks to the
gods, and he sent his slaves to find pure
water for the sacrifice he would make.
In a dense grove they found a wonderful
clear spring. But the spring was guarded
by a terrible dragon sacred to Mars, his
scales shining like gold and his body
filled with a poisonous venom. He had
a triple tongue and three rows of huge,
ragged teeth. The servants, thinking
only to please their master, dipped their
pitchers in the water, whereupon all were
instantly destroyed by the monster.
Having waited many hours for the
return of his servants, Cadmus went to
the grove and found the mangled bodies
of his faithful slaves and close by the
terrible monster of the spring. First
Cadmus threw a huge stone at the dragon.
The stone did not dent his shining scales.
Then he drew back his javelin and
heaved it at the serpent. It went through
the scales and into the entrails. The
monster, trying to draw out the weapon
with his mouth, broke the blade and
left the point burning his flesh. He
swelled with rage as he advanced toward
the hero, and Cadmus retreated before
him. Cadmus then threw his spear at
the monster, the weapon pinning him
against a tree until he died.
As Cadmus stood gazing at the terrible
creature he heard the voice of the goddess
Minerva telling him to sow the dragon's
teeth in a field. Hardly had he done
so when a warrier in armor sprang up
444

from each tooth. Cadmus started toward
the warriors, thinking he must slay them
all or lose his own life, but again Minerva
spoke to him and told him not to strike.
The warriors began to do battle among
themselves and all were slain but five,
who then presented themselves to
Cadmus and said that they would serve him.
These six heroes built the city of Thebes.
Jupiter gave Cadmus Harmonia, the
daughter of Mars and Venus, goddess of
beauty, to be his wife, and the gods came
down from Olympus to do honor to the
couple. Vulcan forged a brilliant
necklace with his own hands and gave it to
the bride. Four children were born, and
for a time Cadmus and Harmonia lived
in harmony with their children. But
doom hung over Cadmus and his family
for the killing of the serpent, and Mars
revenged himself by causing all of
Cadmus' children to perish.
In despair, Cadmus and Harmonia left
Thebes and went to the country of the
Enchelians, who made Cadmus their
king. But Cadmus could find no peace
because of Mars' curse on him. One day
he told Harmonia that if a serpent were
so dear to the gods he himself wished
to become a serpent. No sooner had he
spoken the words than he began to grow
scales and to change his form. When
Harmonia beheld her husband turned
into a serpent, she prayed to the gods
for a like fate. Both became serpents,
but they continued to love their fellow
men and never did injury to any.
445

CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Time: Autumn 48-Spring 47 B.C.
Locale: Egypt: the Syrian Border and Alexandria
First presented: 1901
Principal characters:
Julius Caesar
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
Ptolemy Dionysus, her brother and husband, King of Egypt
Ftatateeta, Cleopatra's nurse
Britannus, a Briton, Caesar's secretary
Rufio, a Roman officer
Pothinus, the king's guardian
Apollodorus, a Sicilian
Ever since the publication, in 1579, of
North's translation of Plutarch's Parallel
Lives, Cleopatra has been one of the great
romantic figures of English literature. To
be sure, Dante had briefly glimpsed her,
"tossed on the blast," in the Circle of the
Lustful; but he had hurried on to give
the famous story of Paolo and Francesca.
It remained for Shakespeare, in Antony
and Cleopatra, to make her immortal as
"the serpent of old Nile/' the epitome of
the eternal and irresistible feminine, who,
even in death, seemed
As she would catch another Antony
In her strong toil of grace,
and to lavish on her some of his greatest
descriptive poetry:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd
throne,
Burn'd on the water. . . .
so that Shakespearean critics have
exhausted themselves in their efforts to do
justice to the poet's creation. As Marc
Parrot said, "Of Shakespeare's Cleopatra
it is hard to speak without breaking into
rhapsody of praise." Even the neo-classic
Dryden, in 1678, still found her the
archetype of an all-consuming passion, for
whose sake Antony held "the world well
lost."
As for Caesar, his imprint has been
upon the European mind since 44 B.C.
To Dante—who saw him in Limbo as
"Caesar armed, with the falcon eyes"—
he was the founder of the Empire, and
his murder was so terrible an example of
treachery to lords and benefactors that
Cassius and Brutus were placed with
Judas in the jaws of Satan in the lowest
pit of Hell. To Shakespeare, he was a
man who in spite of arrogance and a
thinly disguised ambition for absolute
power actually bestrode "the narrow
world like a Colossus." These are the
figures of world history and world
legend whom Shaw chose to bring together
in a modern comedy.
So strongly has Shakespeare stamped
his interpretation of Cleopatra upon our
literary consciousness that it is with a
distinct shock that we meet Shaw's heroine:
a girl of sixteen, crouched, on a moonlit
October night, between the paws of a
sphinx in the desert where she has fled
to escape the invading Romans. She is
the typical schoolgirl: high-strung, giggly,
impulsive, terrified of her nurse, ready to
believe that Romans have trunks, tusks,
tails, and seven arms, each of which
carries a hundred arrows. She has the child's
instinctive cruelty; after she has
encountered Caesar—whom she does not
recognize—and he has forced her nurse to
cringe at her feet, she is eager to beat the
nurse and can talk gleefully of poisoning
slaves and of cutting off her brother's
head. For Shaw has set his plot at the
moment in history when Egypt is di-
446

vided: Ptolemy Dionysus has driven
Cleopatra from Alexandria; and the opposing
children—Ptolemy represented by Pothi-
nus and Cleopatra by Ftatateeta—are at
swords' points, while Egypt is ready to
fall into the conqueror's hand. It is the
familiar situation of an immensely old
and decadent civilization at the mercy of
a rising world power, represented by
Caesar.
Again, the reader, with memories of
Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic War
and of Mark Antony's funeral oration,
receives a shock when Caesar comes upon
the scene and finds Cleopatra hiding
between the paws of the sphinx. The
conqueror of the world is presented as a
middle-aged man, painfully conscious of his
years, somewhat prosaic, very far indeed
from "Caesar armed, with the falcon
eyes." He is past fifty, and the fateful
Ides of March are less than four years
away. As most men of his age in any
period of history would be, he is somewhat
amused and yet wholly fascinated by the
lovely child he has met under such
strange circumstances. He is quite aware
of his weakness for women, so that the
reader begins to foresee a romantic turn
to the plot. But Shaw was not a romantic
dramatist. When Caesar returns
Cleopatra to her palace, reveals his identity, and
forces her to abandon her childishness
and to assume her position as queen, we
recognize him as a man who is eminently
practical, imperturbable in moments of
danger, endowed with the slightly cynical
detachment of the superior mind
surrounded by inferiors.
The basic story that Shaw used for
his somewhat ramtling plot is to be found
in Plutarch's Life of Caesar and in
Caesar's Civil War. As Plutarch tells it,
Caesar arrived in Egypt to find that his
great rival Pompey had been killed at the
instigation of Pothinus, a eunuch and the
favorite of Ptolemy. Caesar, overcome
with grief at Pompey's murder, took into
his service the latter's friends who had
been left wandering in Egypt.
Meanwhile, Pothinus, having banished
Cleopatra, had begun to plot against Caesar
in the interest of the king, thus
compelling Caesar, in self-defense, to take
Cleopatra's side. Plutarch gives the famous
story of her ruse to get to Caesar: with
the assistance of Apollodorus she hid
herself in a roll of bedding and was carried
into Caesar's apartments. Then, at a feast
in the palace, Caesar learned that
Pothinus was plotting his murder, and so he
killed the eunuch. Achillas, Ptolemy's
general, raised the city against Caesar and
cut off Roman communications by sea,
forcing Caesar to burn his own ships and,
by accident, the Alexandrine library. It
was while he was besieged on the Island
of Pharos that Caesar performed his
famous exploit of leaping into the sea and
swimming to his own men who were
defending the mole. Later he defeated
Achillas in a battle in which young
Ptolemy was killed, thus leaving Cleopatra
sole ruler of Egypt.
This is the story that Shaw followed
quite closely, except for his invention of
the meeting of Caesar and Cleopatra in
the desert and the added device of
having Pothinus killed by Ftatateeta at
Cleopatra's instigation after Caesar had given
him a safe-conduct from the palace.
There is also a possible debt to the
almost-forgotten drama, The False One,
written by John Fletcher and Philip Mas-
singer about 1620, which deals with
exactly the same story. Certainly Shaw's
blunt-spoken Rufio appears to be a
reworking of the Sceva of the old play.
Shaw has also added two characters of
his own to the story: the savage
Ftatateeta, who is eventually killed by Rufio;
and Britannus, Caesar's secretary. The
latter is Shaw's picture of the eternal
Englishman-conventional, easily shocked,
unable to understand any customs but
those of his own island. It is in
characterization, rather than in plot, that the
play excels, and it excels through the
element of surprise. The surprise is, of
course, created by the device of
presenting familiar literary figures from new
angles, for it is obvious that Shaw intended
447

to rub some of the romantic gilding from
them. Cleopatra, although she has
become, at the end of the play, a precocious
adult under Caesar's influence, has lost
her girlish charm without becoming a
particularly attractive woman. She has
never really loved Caesar—nor he her,
for Shaw rearranged history in this aspect
of their relationship—and her one thought
is of the arrival of Antony, whom she has
met before and never forgotten. She has
a presentiment of her coming tragedy,
yet, eternally childish, is poised to run
to meet it. Perhaps Leigh Hunt's phrase
best describes her: "The laughing queen
that caught the world's great hands."
James Huneker maintained that this
drama "entitled [Shaw] to a free pass to
that pantheon wherein our beloved Mark
Twain sits enthroned." But this play is
no Connecticut Yankee with its smug
conviction of the vast progress achieved
since the Middle Ages. It is Shaw's
conviction that there has been no perceptible
progress since Caesar's day. Caesar
himself knew that history would continue to
unroll an endless series of murders and
wars, always disguised under the most
high-sounding and noble names. He was
a great man, not because he was "ahead
of his age," but because he stood outside
it and could rule with mercy and without
revenge. Such a man would be great in
any period of history.
448

CAESAR OR NOTHING
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pfo Baroja (1872- )
Type of plot: Political satire
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Spain, Italy, France
First published: 1919
Principal characters:
Laura, Marchesa of Vaccarone, formerly Laura Monoada
Caesar Moncada, Laura's brother
Amparo, Caesar's-wife
Ignacio Alzugaray, Caesar's friend
Critique:
Caesar or Nothing is a political novel
of satire directed against those elements
of Spanish life which Baroja considered
opposed to the improved social status of
the common man. These elements were
the aristocracy and the Church. The
novel is interesting in the light of what
has happened in Spain since this novel
was published thirty years ago.
The Story:
Juan Guillen was a highwayman of
Villanueva. When Vicenta, his youngest
daughter, was ruined, she went away to
Valencia, where she married Antonio
Fort, a grocer. Francisco, Juan's eldest
son, became a priest and changed his
name to Fray Jose de Calasanz de
Villanueva. Juan Fort, son of Vicenta,
became a priest and was called Father
Vicente de Valencia. He later became
Cardinal Fort. Isabel, Vicenta's daughter,
married a soldier, Carlos Moncada. Isabel
and Carlos became the parents of Caesar
Moncada and of Laura, later the
Marchesa of Vaccarone.
Defying family tradition, Caesar
rebelled at the idea of becoming a cleric.
He attended various schools but cared
little for the subjects taught there.
Convinced that he had a definite mission in
life, he set about preparing himself for
it. Academic subjects did not enter into
his plans. At school in Madrid he met
Ignacio Alzugaray, who became his
lifelong and intimate friend. He also met
Carlos Yarza, a Spanish author
employed in a bank in Paris, and through
him Caesar became interested in
financial speculation. Caesar developed a
system, which he could explain only
vaguely, to use in playing the stock
market, but he had no money at the
time with which to try it out.
Caesar and his sister Laura went to
Rome, where Laura became popular in
fashionable society. Caesar, however,
cared little for social functions, art, and
the historical relics of ancient Rome.
After a time he did meet some
important personages, among them Countess
Brenda, with whom he had an affair.
Cardinal Fort, their kinsman, sent the
Abb6 Preciozi to act as a guide for
Caesar and Laura. Caesar disliked his
uncle, the cardinal, and cared little if
the abb£ carried back to the cardinal
his nephew's frank opinions of his
eminence. Through the abbe\ Caesar
tried to find people who would help him
become a financial dictator, and he was
directed to sound out Father Herreros
and Father Mir6. The cardinal,
however, learned of Caesar's scheming and
put a stop to it
Archibald Marchmont fell in love with
Laura. Both were unhappily married.
Susanna Marchmont, Archibald's wife,
was in turn attracted to Caesar, and she
and Caesar took a trip together as man
and wife. While in Rome, Caesar also
met an Englishman named Kennedy
through whom he learned much about
the history of Rome and the history
CAESAR OR NOTHING by Pio Baroja. Translated by Louis How. By permission of the publisher*, Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1919, 1947, by Alfred A Knopf, Inc.
449

of the Borgias. Caesar Borgia's motto,
"Caesar or Nothing/' struck a responsive
note in the latent ambition of Caesar
Moncada. Without quite knowing why,
he began to make notes about people
in Rome who were members of the
Black Party and who had connections in
Spain.
Coming from the Sistine Chapel one
day, Caesar and Kennedy met a Spanish
painter who introduced them to Don
Calixto, a senator and the political leader
of the province of Zamora in Spain.
Caesar accepted Don Calixto's invitation
to dine with him and agreed to act as
his guide about Rome. The don was
appreciative, and when Caesar jokingly
asked whether the don would consider
making him a deputy, Don Calixto
agreed to put Caesar's name on the ballot
as a candidate for the district of Castro
Duro whenever Caesar returned to Spain.
When Caesar returned to Spain, he
reminded Don Calixto of his promise.
Deciding to run on the Conservative
ticket, Caesar drove about the country
to meet the voters and to determine the
most important political personages of
the district. Don Platon Peribanez and
Antonio San Romdn were, he discovered,
quite influential. Father Martin La-
fuerza, the prior of a monastery, had
a great deal of political influence in and
about Castro Duro. Caesar's friend,
Ignacio Alzugaray, came to Castro Duro
and made himself useful to Caesar in
many ways. At the house of Don Calixto
Caesar met Amparo, the don's niece, but
at first Caesar and Amparo could not
get along. Later, however, they fell in
love and planned to be married.
In the election Caesar defeated his
two opponents, Garcia Padilla and San
Romdn, and left Castro Duro to go to
Madrid as deputy. In Madrid he became
quite influential behind the political
scene. When the Minister of Finance
faced a crisis in his career, he sent
Caesar to Paris to meet a financial expert
who had a plan to save the government.
Caesar, suspecting the minister, planned
an airtight speculation which would
make his own fortune and remove the
minister from office.
With the money he had gained
through his speculations, Caesar began
to devise and carry into execution many
improvements in Castro Duro. He
designed a better water system and also
a library for the Workmen's Club which,
he had previously established. In
addition, he turned his back on the
Conservative party and became a Liberal.
Meanwhile the reactionary element in the
district was not idle. It formed institutions
and organizations to compete with the
Workmen's Club, and used every
possible means to wreck the political
organization of the workers, until there was
a state of undeclared war between
Caesar's group and the others. During
those disturbances Caesar and Amparo
were married.
Father Martin's followers had hired a
man nicknamed the "Driveller" to
threaten and browbeat the more timid
members of Caesar's group. The
"Driveller" picked a fight with "Lengthy," the
son of "The Cub-Slut," and a man known
as "Gaffer." When "Lengthy" was killed
in the fight, the workmen clamored for
blood because they believed that the
"Driveller" had done the deed at the
request of the reactionaries of Father
Martin. Caesar was requested by "The
Cub-Slut" and the "Driveller's" mother
to spare the "Driveller's" life, but for
different reasons. "The Cub-Slut"
wanted to revenge herself upon him,
whereas the mother wanted to save her
son. Caesar was in a quandary, and so
he and Amparo went to Italy to visit
Laura. It was believed that his act
indicated a desire to retire from politics.
At home the political situation grew
worse. When Caesar received a letter
written by his liberal friends, Dr. Orti-
gosa, Antonio San Rom&n, and Jose"
Camacho, he decided that he would not
retire. He returned to Castro Duro
and joined his friends in the struggle
once more.
The battle continued right up to the
next election. One day "The Cub-Slut"
450

sent a note to Caesar, a message which
he put distractedly into his pocket.
Setting out to tour the district, he was
wounded by an assassin when his car
came to a crossroads. If he had read
"The Cub-Slut's" letter, he might not
have been shot. After the attempted
assassination of Caesar, the Liberal party
began to lose ground, the opposition using
every possible method to defeat Caesar.
Ballot boxes were stuffed. Messengers
carrying ballot boxes were robbed and
false ballots substituted. Voting places
were hidden and made known only to
the reactionary voters. As a result, Padilla
won the election. Caesar Moncada
retired from politics and, ironically,
devoted his time to the collection of
antiques and to studying primitive Castilian
paintings. The improvements he had
planned for Castro Duro were
forgotten, for the reactionary elements in
the district had gained the upper hand
and they kept it. Caesar had not
become Caesar. He became nothing.
451

CAIN
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-18:
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: The period of Genesis
Locale: Outside Eden
First published: 1821
Principal characters:
Adam, the first man
Eve, his wife
Cain, and
Abel, their sons
Adah, Cain's wife
Zillah, Abel's wife
Lucifer, the fallen angel
Critique:
Byron, unorthodox in his religious
beliefs and bitterly critical of the mores of
his society, managed to adapt this Biblical
tale to an expression of his own
temperament. Cain's motivation in murdering his
brother lay deeply within the murderer's
tortured soul, a soul which lusted for
truth but was denied fulfillment. Byron's
Cain is the eternal romantic rebel, and
Byron, in spite of his rationalism, his
autobiographical egocentricity, and his
invectives against society, is an original and
singular artist in this poetic drama.
The Story:
While Adam, Eve, Abel, Zillah and
Adah prayed to God, Cain stood sullenly
by and complained that he had nothing
to pray for, since he had lost immortality
when Eve ate the fruit from the tree of
knowledge. He could not understand
why, if knowledge and life were good, his
mother's deed had been a deadly sin. Abel,
Adah, and Zillah urged him to cast off his
melancholy and join them in tending the
fields.
Alone, Cain deplored his worldly toil.
Tired of the repetitious replies to all his
questions, replies which refused to
challenge God's will, he was no longer sure
that God was good.
At the conception of this thought,
Lucifer appeared to explain that Cain's
mortality was only a bodily limit. He
would live forever even after death. Cain,
driven by instinct to cling to life, at the
same time despised it. Lucifer admitted
that he also was unhappy in spite of his
immortality, which was a cursed thing in
his fallen state. He launched into a bitter
tirade against God, whom he described as
a tyrant sitting alone in his misery,
creating new worlds because his eternity was
otherwise expressionless and boring to
him. Lucifer exulted that his own
condition was at least shared by others. These
words echoed for Cain his own beliefs
about the universe. Long had he pitied
his relatives for toiling so hard for
sustenance, as God had decreed when he had
banished Adam and Eve from Eden.
Lucifer confessed that the beguiling
snake had not been a disguise for himself;
the snake was merely a snake. He
predicted, however, that later generations of
man would array the fall of Adam and Eve
in a cloak of fable.
Cain then asked his mentor to reveal
the nature of death, which held great
terrors for Cain. Lucifer promised to teach
Cain true knowledge if Cain would
worship him. But Cain, having refused to
worship even God, would not worship any
being. His refusal was, according to
Lucifer, in itself a form of worship.
Adah came to ask Cain to go with her,
but he claimed that he must stay with
Lucifer, who spoke like a god. She re-

minded Cain that the lying serpent, too,
had spoken so. Lucifer insisted that the
serpent had spoken truly when it had
promised knowledge from the fruit of the
forbidden tree; man's grief lay not in
the serpent's so-called lie but in man's
knowledge of evil. Lucifer said he would
take Cain with him for an hour, time
enough to show him the whole of life and*
death.
Traveling with Lucifer through the air,
Cain, watching with ecstasy the beauty
around him, insisted upon viewing the
mystery of death, which was uppermost
in his mind. The travelers came at last
to a place where no stars glittered and
all was dark and dreadful. As they entered
Hades, Cain voiced again his hatred of
death, the end of all living things.
In the underworld he saw beautiful and
mighty shapes which, Lucifer explained,
had inhabited the world and died by
chaotic destruction in an age before Adam
had been created. When Lucifer taunted
Cain with his inferiority compared to
those other beings of an earlier age, Cain
declared himself ready to stay in Hades
forever. Lucifer confessed, however, that
he had no power to allow anyone to
remain in Hades. When he pointed out to
Cain that the spirits of the former
inhabitants of the earth had enjoyed a
beautiful world. Cain said that earth was
still beautiful. His complaint was against
man's toil for what the earth bore, his
failure to obtain knowledge, and his
unmitigated fear of death.
Cain, bewailing the trade man had
made of death for knowledge, asserted that
man knew nothing. Lucifer replied that
death was a certainty and therefore truth
and knowledge. Cain thought that he had
learned nothing new from his journey,
but Lucifer informed him that he had at
least discovered that there was a state
beyond his own.
They discussed Cain's relative state of
happiness in life, which, Cain asserted,
was dependent upon his love for his
family. Lucifer hinted that Abel, favored by
the others and by God, caused Cain some
jealousy. Cain then asked his guide to
show him where Lucifer lived, or else
God's dwelling place. It was reserved for
those who died, Lucifer claimed, to see
either one or the other, not both.
As Lucifer prepared to return his pupil
to earth, Cain complained that he had
learned nothing. He had, Lucifer said,
discovered that he was nothing. With a
warning to distinguish between real good
and evil, and to seek his own spiritual
attachment, Lucifer transported the mortal
back to earth.
Standing over their son Enoch, who was
asleep under a tree, Adah and Cain
discussed their ever-present sorrow: they
must all die. When Adah said she would
gladly die to save her parents, Cain agreed
only if his own death might save everyone
else. Adah prophesied that such a gift
might some day be rendered. Seeing the
pair of altars Abel had erected for a
sacrifice, Cain uttered his first evil thought by
muttering a denial that Abel was his
brother.
Abel insisted that Cain share in the
sacrificial rites he was about to perform.
While Cain impiously stood by, Abel
knelt in eloquent prayer. Cain's prayer
was a defiant challenge to the omnipotent
to show his preference for one of the altars.
His own offerings were scattered to the
earth, while Abel's sacrifice burned in
high flames toward the heavens. In anger
Cain attacked his brother's altar, and
when Abel protested that he loved his God
more than life, Cain struck him a mortal
blow.
Adam, Eve, Adah, and Zillah, rushing
to the scene of the murder, accused Cain
of murdering his brother. Eve uttered loud
imprecations against her guilty son. Adam
ordered him to depart. Only Adah
remained by his side. The Angel of the Lord
then appeared to confront Cain and ask
the whereabouts of his brother. The Angel
predicted that henceforth Cain's hand
would cultivate no growing things from
the earth and that he should be a fugitive.
453

Lest the man guilty of fratricide be the
cause of another murder, the Angel
branded Cain with a mark on his forehead,
to warn the beholder that to kill Cain
would engender a sevenfold vengeance.
Cain blamed his evil deed upon Eve, who
bore him too soon after her banishment
from Eden, when her own mind was still
bitter over the lost paradise.
Adah offered to share her husband's
fate. Carrying their children with them,
she and Cain traveled eastward from
Eden.
454

CAKES AND ALE
Type of work: Novel
Author: W. Somerset Maugham (1874- )
Type of plot: Literary satire
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: London and Kent
First published: 1930
Principal characters:
Ashenden, a writer
Alroy Kear, a popular novelist
Edward Driffield, a great Victorian
Rosie, Driffield's first wife
Amy Driffield, Driffield's second wife
George Kemp, Rosie's lover
Critique:
This novel is written with a lightness
of touch that defies description. By
contrasting Alroy Kear's opinion of
Driffield with the real Driffield as Ashenden
knew him, the author shows up the sham
of the literary world and deepens the
insight into the character of Driffield.
Now and then the author interrupts the
story to insert pungent comments on
literary matters. For one interested in
authors and the world of letters, Cakes
and Ale is especially good reading.
The Story:
Alroy Kear, the most popular novelist
of the day, arranged to lunch with his
friend Ashenden, another writer.
Ashenden was fond of Kear, but he suspected
that his invitation had been extended for
a purpose. He was right. Kear wanted
to talk about the late Edward
Driffield, a famous English author of the
past century. Kear had nothing but praise
for the old man's books, but Ashenden
said that he had never thought Driffield
exceptional. Kear enthusiastically told
how well he had known Driffield in his
last years, and said that he was still a
friend of Driffield's widow, his second
wife. Luncheon ended without a request
for a favor. Ashenden was puzzled.
Returning to his rooms, Ashenden fell
into a reverie. He recalled his first
meeting with Driffield. Ashenden was then
a boy, home for the holidays at Black-
stable, a Kentish seacoast town, where
he lived with his uncle, the local vicar.
Ashenden met Driffield in the company
of his uncle's curate; but the boy thought
the writer a rather common person. He
learned from his uncle that Driffield had
married a local barmaid after spending
a wild youth away from home.
Two or three days after Ashenden had
lunched with Kear, he received a note
from Driffield's widow. She wished him
to visit her in Blackstable. Puzzled,
Ashenden telephoned to Kear, who said
that he would come to see him and
explain the invitation.
Ashenden had seen Mrs. Driffield only
once. He had gone to her house with
some other literary people several years
before, while Driffield was still alive.
Driffield had married his second wife
late in life, and she had been his nurse.
In the course of the visit Ashenden had
been surprised to see old Driffield wink
at him several times, as if there were
some joke between them.
After that visit Ashenden recalled how
Driffield had taught him to bicycle many
years before. Driffield and his wife,
Rosie, had taught him to ride and had
taken him with them on many excursions.
He liked the Driffields, but he was
shocked to find how outspoken they were
with those below and above them in
social station.
One evening Ashenden found Rosie
CAKES AND ALE by W. Somerset Maugham. By permission of the author and the publishers, Doubleday ft
Co., Inc. Copyright, 1930, by W. Somerset Maugham.
455

visiting his uncle's cook, her childhood
friend. After Rosie left, he saw her
meet George Kemp, a local contractor.
The couple walked out of town toward
the open fields. Ashenden could not
imagine how Rosie could be unfaithful
to her husband.
Ashenden went back to school. During
the Christmas holiday he took tea often
with the Driffields. Kemp was always
there, but he and Rosie did not act like
lovers. Driffield sang drinking songs,
played the piano, and seldom talked
about literature. When Ashenden
returned to Blackstable the next summer,
he heard that the Driffields had bolted,
leaving behind many unpaid bills. He
was ashamed that he had ever been
friendly with them.
Kear arrived at Ashenden's rooms and
explained that he was planning to write
Driffield's official biography. He wanted
Ashenden to contribute what he knew
about the author's younger days. What
Ashenden told him was not satisfactory,
for the biography should contain nothing
to embarrass the widow. Kear insisted
that Ashenden write down what he
remembered of Driffield and go to Black-
stable to visit Mrs. Driffield. Ashenden
agreed.
Ashenden remembered how he had
met the Driffields again in London
when he was a young medical student.
By chance he saw Rosie on the street;
he was surprised that she was not
ashamed to meet someone from Black-
stable. But he promised to come to one
of the Driffields' Saturday afternoon
gatherings. Soon he became a regular
visitor in their rooms. Since Driffield
worked at night, Rosie often went out
with her friends. Ashenden began to
take her to shows. She was pleasant
company, and he began to see that she
was beautiful. One evening he invited
her to his rooms. She offered herself to
him and remained for the night; after
that night Rosie visited his rooms
regularly.
One day Mrs. Barton TrafTord, a
literary woman who had taken Driffield
under her care, invited Ashenden to tea.
From her he learned that Rosie had run
away with Kemp, her old lover from
Blackstable. Ashenden was chagrined to
learn that Rosie cared for another man
more than she did for him.
After that Ashenden lost touch with
Driffield. He learned that the author
had divorced Rosie, who had gone to
New York with Kemp. Mrs. Barton
Trafford continued to care for Driffield
as his fame grew. Then he caught
pneumonia. He went to the country to
convalesce and there married his nurse,
the present Mrs. Driffield, whom Mrs.
Trafford had hired to look after him.
Ashenden went down to Blackstable
with Kear. They and Mrs. Driffield
talked of Driffield's early life. She and
Kear described Rosie as promiscuous.
Ashenden said that she was nothing of
the sort. Good and generous, she could
not deny love to anyone; that was all.
Ashenden knew this to be the truth, now
that he could look down the perspective
of years at his own past experience. The
others disagreed and dismissed the subject
by saying that, after all, she was dead.
But Rosie was not dead. When
Ashenden had last been to New York, she had
written him and asked him to call on her.
He found her now a wealthy widow;
Kemp had died several years before. She
was an old woman who retained her love
for living. They talked of old times, and
Ashenden discovered that Driffield, too,
had understood her—even when she was
being unfaithful to him.
Rosie said that she was too old to
marry again; she had had her fling at
life. Ashenden asked her if Kemp had
not been the only man she really cared
for. She said that it was true. Then
Ashenden's eyes strayed to a photograph
of Kemp on the wall. It showed him
dressed in flashy clothes, with a waxed
mustache; he carried a cane and flourished
a cigar in one hand. Ashenden turned
to Rosie and asked her why she had
preferred Kemp to her other lovers. Her
reply was simple. He had always been
the perfect gentleman.
456

CALEB WILLIAMS
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Godwin (1756-1836)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1794
Principal characters:
Caleb Williams
Ferdinando Falkland, Caleb's employer
Collins, Falkland's servant
Barnabas Tyrrel, Falkland's enemy
Gines, Caleb's enemy
Emily Melvile, Tyrrel's cousin
Critique:
Godwin titled his novel, Things As
They Are, or the Adventures of Caleb
Williams; it survives under the name of
its hero. It is a novel of divided
interests, as it was written both to criticize
society and to tell an adventure story.
All of the elements which contribute to
Caleb's misery are the result of
weaknesses in eighteenth-century English
laws, which permitted the wealthy
landowners to hold power over poorer citizens.
The Story:
Caleb Williams was engaged as
secretary by Mr. Ferdinando Falkland, the
wealthiest and most respected squire in
the country. Falkland, although a
considerate employer, was subject to fits of
distemper which bewildered Caleb.
Because these black moods were so contrary
to his employer's usual gentle nature,
Caleb soon questioned Collins, a trusted
servant of the household, and learned
from him the story of Falkland's early
life.
Studious and romantic in his youth,
Falkland lived many years abroad before
he returned to England to live on his
ancestral estate. One of his neighbors
was Barnabas Tyrrel, a man of proud,
combative nature. When Falkland
returned to his family estate, Tyrrel was
the leading gentleman in the
neighborhood. Soon Falkland, because of his
graceful manners and warm intelligence,
began to win the admiration of his
neighbors. Tyrrel, jealous, showed his feelings
by speech and actions. Falkland tried to
make peace, but the ill-tempered Tyrrel
refused his proffered friendship.
Miss Emily Melvile, Tyrrel's cousin,
occupied somewhat the position of a
servant in his household. One night she
was trapped in a burning building, and
Falkland saved her from burning.
Afterward Emily could do nothing but praise
her benefactor. Her gratitude annoyed
her cousin, who planned to revenge
himself on Emily for her admiration of
Falkland. He found one of his tenants,
Grimes, a clumsy ill-bred lout, who
consented to marry Emily. When Emily
refused to marry a man whom she could
never love, Tyrrel confined her to her
room. As part of the plot Grimes helped
Emily to escape and then attempted to
seduce her. She was rescued from her
plight by Falkland, who for the second
time proved to be her savior. Further
cruelties inflicted on her by Tyrrel finally
killed her, and Tyrrel became an object
of disgrace in the community.
One evening Tyrrel attacked Falkland
in a public meeting and Falkland was
deeply humiliated. That night Tyrrel
was found dead in the streets. Since the
quarrel had been witnessed by so many
people just before the murder of Tyrrel,
Falkland was called before a jury to
explain his whereabouts during that fatal
night. No one really believed Falkland
guilty, but he was hurt by what he
considered the disgrace of his inquisition.
Although an ex-tenant was afterward
457

arrested and hanged for the crime,
Falkland never recovered his injured pride.
He retired to his estate where he became
a recluse, moody and disconsolate.
For a long time after learning these
details Caleb pondered over the apparent
unhappiness of his employer. Attempting
to understand his morose personality, he
began to wonder whether Falkland
suffered from the unearned infamy that
accompanied suspicion of murder or from
a guilty conscience. Determined to solve
the mystery, Caleb proceeded to talk to
his master in an insinuating tone, to draw
him out in matters concerning murder
and justice. Caleb also began to look
for evidence which would prove Falkland
guilty or innocent. Finally the morose
man became aware of his secretary's
intent. Swearing Caleb to secrecy, Falkland
confessed to the murder of Barnabas
Tyrrel and threatened Caleb with
irreparable harm if he should ever betray
his employer.
Falkland's mansion became a prison
for Caleb, and he resolved to run away
no matter what the consequences might
be. When he had escaped to an inn, he
received a letter ordering him to return
to defend himself against a charge of
theft. When Falkland produced from
Caleb's baggage some missing jewels and
bank notes, Caleb was sent to prison in
disgrace. His only chance to prove his
innocence was to disclose Falkland's
motive, a thing no one would believe.
Caleb spent many months in jail,
confined in a dreary, filthy dungeon and
bound with chains. Thomas, a servant
of Falkland and a former neighbor of
Caleb's father, visited Caleb in his cell.
Perceiving Caleb in his miserable
condition, Thomas could only wonder at
English law which kept a man so
imprisoned while he waited many months for
trial. Compassion forced Thomas to
bring Caleb tools with which he could
escape from his dungeon. At liberty once
more, Caleb found himself in a hostile
world with no resources.
At first he became an associate of
thieves, but he left the gang after he had
made an enemy of a man named Gines.
When he went to London, hoping to
hide there, Gines followed him and soon
Caleb was again caught and arrested.
Falkland visited him and explained that
he knew every move Caleb had made
since he had escaped from prison.
Falkland told Caleb that although he would
no longer prosecute him for theft, he
would continue to make Caleb's life
intolerable. Wherever Caleb went, Gines
followed and exposed Caleb's story to the
community. Caleb tried to escape to
Holland, but as he was to land in that
free country, Gines appeared and stopped
him.
Caleb returned to England and
charged Falkland with murder, asking
the magistrate to call Falkland before
the court. At first the magistrate refused
to summon Falkland to reply to this
charge. But Caleb insisted upon his
rights and Falkland appeared. The squire
had now grown terrible to behold; his
haggard and ghostlike appearance showed
that he had not long to live.
Caleb pressed his charges, in an
attempt to save himself from a life of
persecution and misery. So well did
Caleb describe his miserable state and
his desperate situation that the dying
man was deeply touched. Demonstrating
the kindness of character and the honesty
for which Caleb had first admired him,
Falkland admitted his wrong doings and
cleared Caleb's reputation.
In a few days the sick man died,
leaving Caleb remorseful but determined to
make a fresh start in life.
458

THE CALL OF THE WILD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jack London (1876-1916)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1897
Locale: Alaska
First published: 1903
Principal characters:
Buck, a dog
A Spitz, his enemy
John Thornton, his friei
Critique:
The most popular of all Jack London's
books is The Call of the Wild. The great
dog Buck seems not an animal but &
human being. London obviously had »
Ereat love for animals and the country
e wrote about, and he transferred that
love into tales which are read as widely
now as they were when first published.
For those who like adventure and
excitement, The Call of the Wild is an
excellent evening's entertainment.
The Story:
Buck was the undisputed leader of all
the dogs on Judge Miller's estate in
California. A crossbreed of St. Bernard and
Scottish shepherd, he had inherited the
size of the first and the intelligence of
the other. Buck could not know that the
lust for gold had hit the human beings
of the country and that dogs of his
breed were much in demand as sled dogs
in the frozen North. Consequently he
was not suspicious when one of the
workmen on the estate took him for a
walk one night. The man took Buck to
the railroad station, where the dog heard
the exchange of money. Then a rope
was placed around his neck. When he
struggled to get loose, the rope was
drawn so tight that it shut off his breath
and he lost consciousness.
He recovered in a baggage car. When
the train reached Seattle, Buck tried to
break out of his cage while he was being
unloaded. A man in a red shirt hit him
with a club until he was senseless. After
that, Buck knew that he could never win
THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London. By pern
J903, 1912, by The Macmillan Co. Renewed. 1931, by
a fight against a club. He retained that
knowledge for future use.
Buck was put in a pen with other dogs
of his type. Each day some of the dogs
went away with strange men who came
with money. One day Buck was sold.
Two French-Canadians bought him and
some other dogs and took them on board
a ship sailing for Alaska. The men were
fair, though harsh, masters, and Buck
respected them. Life on the ship was not
particularly enjoyable, but it was a
paradise compared to that which awaited
Buck when the ship reached Alaska.
There he found men and dogs to be
little more than savages, with no law but
the law of force. The dogs fought like
wolves, and when one was downed the
pack moved in for the kill. Buck watched
one of his shipmates being torn to pieces
after he lost a fight, and he never forgot
the way one dog in particular, a Spitz,
watched sly-eyed as the loser was slashed
to ribbons. The Spitz was Buck's enemy
from that time on.
Buck and the other dogs were
harnessed to sleds on which the two French-
Canadians carried mail to prospectors in
remote regions. It was a new kind of life
to Buck, but not an unpleasant one. The
men treated the dogs well, and Buck
was intelligent enough to learn quickly
those things which made him a good sled
dog. He learned to dig under the snow
for a warm place to sleep and to keep
the traces clear and thus make pulling
easier. When he was hungry, he stole
food. The instincts of his ancestors
iion of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright,
ie Macmillan Co.
459

came to life in him as the sled went
farther and farther north. In some vague
manner he sensed the great cunning of
the wolves who had been his ancestors in
the wilderness.
Buck's muscles grew firm and taut, his
strength greater than ever. But his feet
became sore and he had to have
moccasins. Occasionally one of the dogs
died or was killed in a fight, and one
female went mad. The dogs no longer
worked as a team, and the two men had
to be on guard constantly to prevent
fights. One day Buck saw his chance. He
attacked the Spitz, the lead dog on the
sled, and killed him. After that Buck
refused to be harnessed until he was
given the lead position. He proved his
worth by whipping the rebellious dogs
into shape, and he became the best lead
dog the men had ever seen. The sled
made record runs, and Buck was soon
famous.
When they reached Skaguay, the two
French-Canadians had official orders to
turn the team over to a Scottish half-
breed. The sled was heavier and the
weather bad on the long haul back to
Dawson. At night Buck lay by the fire
and dreamed of his wild ancestors. He
seemed to hear a far-away call which
was like a wolf's cry.
After two days' rest in Dawson, the
team started back over the long trail
to Skaguay. The dogs were almost
exhausted. Some died and had to be
replaced. When the team arrived again
in Skaguay, the dogs expected to rest,
but three days later they were sold to
two men and a woman who knew
nothing about dogs or sledding conditions in
the northern wilderness. Buck and the
other dogs started out again, so weary
that it was an effort to move. Again
and again the gallant dogs stumbled and
fell and lav still until the sting of a whip
brought tnem to their feet for a few
miles. At last even Buck gave up. The
sled had stopped at the cabin of John
Thornton, and when the men and the
woman were ready to leave Buck refused
to get up. One of the men beat Buck
with a club and would have killed him
had not Thornton intervened, knocking
the man down and ordering him and
his companions to leave. They left Buck
with Thornton.
As Thornton nursed Buck back to
health, a feeling of love and respect
grew between them. When Thornton's
partners returned to the cabin, they
understood this affection and did not
attempt to use Buck for any of their
heavy work.
Twice Buck saved Thornton's life
and was glad that he could repay his
friend. In Dawson Buck won more than
a thousand dollars for Thornton on a
wager, when the dog broke loose from
the ice a sled carrying a thousand-pound
load. With the money won on the
wager, Thornton and his partners went
on a gold-hunting expedition. They
traveled far into eastern Alaska, where
they found a stream yellow with gold
In his primitive mind Buck began to
see a hairy man who hunted with a
club. He heard the howling of the
wolves. Sometimes he wandered off for
three or four days at a time, but he
always went back to Thornton. At one
time he made friends with a wolf that
seemed like a brother to Buck.
Once Buck chased and killed a great
bull moose. On his way back to the
camp, he sensed that something was
wrong. He found several dogs lying
dead along the trail. When he reached
the camp, he saw Indians dancing around
the bodies of the dogs and Thornton's
two partners. He followed Thornton's
trail to the river, where he found the
body of his friend full of arrows. Buck
was filled with such a rage that he
attacked the band of Indians, killing some
and scattering the others.
His last tie with man broken, he
joined his brothers in the wild wolf
packs. The Indians thought him a ghost
dog, for they seldom saw more than his
shadow, so quickly did he move. But
had the Indians watched carefully, they
could have seen him closely. Once each
year Buck returned to the river that
460

held Thornton's body. There the dog piercing cry that was the tribute of
stood on the bank and howled, one long, savage beast to his human friend.
461

CAMILLE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Alexandre Dumas, son (1824-1895)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First presented: 1852
Principal characters:
Camille Gautier, a woman 01 Paris
Nantne, her maid
Count de Varville, who desired Camille
Armand Duval, who loved her
M. Duval, Armand's father
Madame Prudence, Camille's friend
Critique:
Although Camille was published as a
novel in 1848, the story is better known
in the dramatic version first presented in
1852. Camille, which introduced to the
French stage a new treatment of social
and moral problems, was received with
critical acclaim. To the modern
audience the story of Camille and her love
affairs seems somewhat exaggerated, for
the characters in the play are sentimental
and unreal. But the moral problem
presented is one that is present in any
society, whether it be modern or a thousand
years old.
The Story:
Camille Gautier was a woman of poor
reputation in the city of Paris. The
symbol of her character was the camellia,
pale and cold. She had once been a
needleworker who, while taking a rest
cure in Bagneres, had been befriended
by a wealthy duke whose daughter she
resembled. After the death of his
daughter, the duke had taken Camille
back to Paris and introduced her into
society. But in some way the story of
Camille's past life had been rumored on
the boulevards, and society frowned upon
her. She was respected only by a few
friends who knew that she longed for a
true love and wished to leave the gay
life of Paris. She was heavily in debt for
her losses at cards and had no money of
her own to pay her creditors.
The Count de Varville, her latest
admirer, offered to pay all her debts if she
would become his mistress. Before she
gave her consent, however, she met
Armand Duval. Armand had nothing to
offer her but his love. He was presented
to Camille by her milliner, Madame
Prudence, who pretended to be her friend
but who was loyal to her only because
Camille was generous with her money.
At first Camille scorned Armand's
love, for although she longed for a simple
life she thought she could never actually
live in poverty. But Armand was
persistent, and at last Camille loved him
and told him she would forsake her
present friends and go away with him.
Because she had a racking cough, Armand
wanted Camille to leave Paris and go to
a quiet spot where she could rest and
have fresh air.
Camille, Armand, and Nanine, her
maid, moved to a cottage in the country.
For many weeks Armand was suspicious
of Camille and feared she missed her
former companions. Convinced at last
of her true love, Armand lost his
uneasiness and they were happy together. The
garden flowers he grew replaced the
camellias she had always worn in Paris.
Their happiness was brief. Armand's
father called on Camille and begged her
to renounce his son. He knew her past
reputation, and he felt that his son had
placed himself and his family in a
disgraceful position. Camille would not
listen to him, for she knew that Armand
loved her and would not be happy
without her. Then Armand's father told her
462

that his daughter was betrothed to a
man who threatened to break the
engagement if Armand and Camille insisted
on remaining together. Moved by
sympathy for the young girl, Camille
promised Armand's father that she would send
his son away. She knew that he would
never leave her unless she betrayed him,
and she planned to tell him that she no
longer loved him but was going to return
to her former life. Armand's father knew
then that she truly loved his son and he
promised that after her death, which
she felt would be soon, he would tell
Armand she had renounced him only for
the sake of his family.
Camille, knowing that she could never
tell Armand that lie, wrote a note
declaring her dislike for the simple life he had
provided for her and her intention to
return to de Varville in Paris. When
Armand read the letter, he swooned in
his father's arms.
He left the cottage and then Paris, and
did not return for many weeks.
Meanwhile Camille had resumed her old life
and spent all her time at the opera or
playing cards with her former associates,
always wearing a camellia in public.
Count de Varville was her constant
companion, but her heart was still with
Armand. Her cough was much worse.
Knowing she would soon die, she longed
to see Armand once more.
When Camille and Armand met at
last, Armand insulted her honor and
that of the Count de Varville. He threw
gold pieces on Camille, asserting they
were the bait to catch and hold her kind,
and he announced to Hie company
present that the Count de Varville was a
man of gold but not of honor.
Challenged by de Varville, Armand wounded
the count in a duel and left Paris. He
returned only after his father, realizing
the sacrifice Camille had made, wrote,
telling him the true story of Camille's
deception, and explaining that she had
left him only for the sake of his sister's
honor and happiness.
By the time Armand could reach Paris,
Camille was dying. Only Nanine and a
few faithful friends remained with her.
Madame Prudence remained because
Camille, even in her poverty, shared
what she had. Camille and Nanine had
moved to a small and shabby flat, and
there Armand found them. He arrived to
find Camille on her deathbed but
wearing again the simple flowers he had once
given her. He threw himself down beside
her, declaring his undying love and
begging for her forgiveness. Thus, the once
beautiful Camille, now as wasted as the
flowers she wore on her breast, died in
the arms of her true love.
463

CAMPASPE
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Lyly (c. 1554-1606)
Type of plot: Historical-romantic comedy
Time of plot: c. 325 B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 1584
Principal characters:
Alexander, King of Macedon
Campaspe, his captive, a maiden of Thebes
Hephestion, his chief general
Diogenes, a philosopher
Apelles, a painter
Manes, the servant of Diogenes
Critique:
Lyly's primary effort in his -writings
was to refine the rude speech of the
Elizabethan age. In Campaspe (also titled
Alexander and Campaspe) this effort is
clearly evident. The play lacks many of
the qualities of great drama—character
development, careful plotting, and a
dramatic climax, for example—but its diction
is elevated and graceful, of a piece with
the nobility of the characters and their
sentiments. Another noteworthy feature
is the inclusion of several charming lyrics,
including the famous "Cupid and my
Campaspe played/ At cards for kisses."
Despite the lack of dramatic unity, as
exemplified by the absence of interaction
between the main plot and the subplot,
this play, along with Lyly's other dramas,
helped to supply the greater playwrights
to follow with a delicacy of language
and sentiment that greatly enriched
English drama.
The Story:
The great King Alexander had
conquered the city of Thebes and taken
prisoner the beautiful and virtuous
Campaspe, whom he promised to treat gently.
In Athens, at that time, was Diogenes,
the ill-tempered philosopher. His servant
Manes complained to the servants of
Plato and Apelles, the painter, that
Diogenes was a man of exceedingly frugal
habits and that his servant, in
consequence, often went hungry.
Also in Athens were Plato, Aristotle,
and several other great philosophers
whom Alexander had called to his
headquarters. The great thinkers disputed the
difference between divine and natural
causes until Alexander came to them and
asked each a difficult question about such
things as animals, gods and men, life and
death, and the composition of the world.
After each philosopher had answered
wisely, Alexander departed, satisfied with
their sagacity. Then Diogenes entered
and berated them for toadying to the
king. Upon the entrance of Manes and
his fellow servants, after the departure
of the philosophers, there ensued a witty
exchange between Diogenes and the
servants, in which Diogenes abused them
all.
During a long dialogue in the market
place, Alexander admitted his love for
Campaspe, at which Hephestion was
horrified. While his loyal general decried
love as a weakener of men, Alexander
defended the passion and told
Hephestion to allow him to love in peace.
Alexander, seeing Diogenes in his tub,
went to him and asked if he had no
reverence for kings, to which Diogenes
replied that he had none and wished
nothing from anyone. Apelles entered
and said that the portrait he was
painting of Campaspe was not quite finished.
While Campaspe posed for the
painting, Apelles praised her beauty, but
464

Campaspe, saying that she did not
believe men's flattery, cut short the
painter's questions about her feelings toward
love with a request that he get on with
the painting.
Although several of Alexander's
lieutenants declared their concern for the
king's martial inactivity, Alexander was
planning a campaign against Persia. After
telling Hephestion that he wished only a
brief respite from war, the conqueror
went to talk with Apelles and Campaspe
about the painting. Apelles excused his
delay by saying that Campaspe was so
beautiful that it was difficult to paint her
as she really was. Alexander was pleased
with the work, and his love for Campaspe
grew even greater, despite Hephestion's
warnings against love.
Returning to his house, Apelles, in a
long soliloquy, revealed his despair over
his hopeless love for Campaspe, whom he
knew he could never obtain because she
was loved by a king. In a melancholy
song he praised her beauty and bemoaned
his helpless condition.
Several of the servants met in the
market place to witness a strange event:
Diogenes had said that he would fly. Manes
entered, followed by a crowd of citizens,
and they all approached Diogenes' tub.
It soon became apparent that Diogenes
had made the promise so that he could
gather a group of Athenians about him
and berate them for their lack of virtue
and wisdom. After a heated debate, the
citizens left in disgust. The servants,
however, were amused by the philosopher's
biting criticisms.
Alone in the palace, Campaspe debated
with herself whether she preferred
Apelles to the great Alexander. Apelles
entered, and in a veiled dialogue revealed
his love for her. Later, at Apelles' studio,
he and Campaspe vowed their love for
each other, but their feeling of mutual
devotion was mixed with fear of
Alexander's displeasure. A page entered and
told Apelles that Alexander wished him
to take the painting immediately to the
palace; the conqueror suspected, rightly.,
that the painter had finished the portrait
but did not wish to part with it.
When Sylvius, a citizen, brought his
sons to Diogenes to be educated, the
father made his three sons dance, do
acrobatics, and sing. Diogenes,
unimpressed, criticized the boys' performances
and called them trivial. Neither the boys
nor Diogenes wanted anything to do with
the other, and Sylvius departed in anger.
A short time later two of Alexander's
soldiers, accompanied by a courtesan,
passed by Diogenes' tub. Bent on
pleasure, they paused to ask him what he
thought of their intention, and he
insulted them harshly. One offered to strike
him, but, afraid of being found by
Alexander, they left after singing a short
song.
Soon Alexander and Hephestion
approached the tub. Alexander, believing
that Apelles was in love with Campaspe,
told his page to summon Apelles and
then to cry out that his studio was on
fire. The page left, and the two great
warriors talked with Diogenes about love,
which the philosopher scorned.
Soon Apelles appeared. While he was
talking with Alexander about a new
painting, the page entered and shouted
that Apelles' studio was afire. The painter
revealed his love for Campaspe by being
concerned only about her portrait.
Alexander then told him of the ruse and had
the page call Campaspe. After he had
forced the two lovers to admit their true
feeling for each other, Alexander, in a
sudden burst of generosity, ordered them
to marry.
Alexander then commanded the page
to summon his generals so that they
could prepare to invade Persia. When
Hephestion praised the king's conquest
of his feelings, Alexander replied that a
man should not wish to command the
world if he cound not command himself,
and that he would fall in love when there
were no more countries to conquer.
465

CANDIDA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Time: 1894
Locale: London
First presented: 1897
Principal characters:
The Reverend James Morell, a Christian Socialist clergyman
Candida Morell, his intelligent, vivacious wife
Eugene Marchbanks, a poet in love with Candida
Mr. Burgess, Candida's father
The Reverend Alexander Mill, Morell's idealistic, admiring young
curate
Proserpine Garnett, Morell's secretary
George Bernard Shaw's critics often
bring a two-fold charge against his plays:
CO his characters are too academic and
lifeless; (2) his plays are merely tracts
for expressing Shavian ideas on love, war,
property, morals, and revolution. This
charge, however, is not usually leveled
at Candida. Usually the most completely
anti-Shaw critic concedes that here is one
play free, for the most part, from any
really revolutionary ideas, aside from a
few comments on socialism and
corruption in government. In fact, in the lively
Candida, Shaw is saluting an old,
established institution: marriage. But as he
salutes, the author is, as usual, winking.
Candida belongs to the group of his
Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant published
in 1898. It was given its first public
London production in 1904, after a
private presentation in 1897, and has gone
on to become one of the most popular
plays in the Shaw repertory, probably
ranking second only to Saint Joan. It
was an early favorite with Shaw himself.
He held on to it for some time before
allowing its production, preferring to read
it privately to his friends, who, it is said,
would weep loudly at the more touching
scenes.
Shaw and the English and American
theaters are correct in their veneration for
Candida, for the play is put together m
masterly form, with respect for a
uniformity that is often lacking in some of
his other works. Here is a play that gives
an audience highly comic scenes on the
one hand, and yet moments of highly
serious insights on the other. Finally,
here is an extremely actable play.
Candida herself is one of the great roles in
the modern theater, that of the
self-possessed woman who, as in many homes,
subtly runs the household while
appearing subservient to her husband. The
Reverend James Mavor Morell, the husband
in question, is another excellent role: the
hearty Christian Socialist clergyman, the
popular speaker always in demand, the
unintimidated man who is happy and
secure in his important position until
untoward events began to occur, brought
about by a young, wild, seemingly
effeminate friend of the family, the poet
Eugene Marchbanks. The role of March-
banks, the eighteen-year-old worshiper of
Candida, has also been a favorite of many
stage juveniles though others have seen
it as a highly distasteful, unrealistic part
to play. As the boy who grows faint at
the thought of Candida's peeling onions,
who rants, raves, and whines over the
thought of the earthly, boorish Morell
being married to such a poetic delight and
inspiration as Candida, Marchbanks often
reminds us of the young and ethereal
Shelley, and is possibly a younger
Bernard Shaw.
Most readers and viewers are quick to
note that Candida bears a great
resemblance to Ibsen's A Doll's House. Shaw,
however, has reversed Ibsen. In the lat-
466

ter's play, Nora is the doll, the puppet;
but in Candida the tables are turned.
Mo-ell, though a likable, high-principled
fellow, is actually the doll. It is his wife,
as he eventually learns, who is
responsible for his success. Thus when Candida
is "forced" to choose between March-
banks and Morell, she chooses Morell,
the weaker of the two. This is,
supposedly, Shaw's Virgin Mother play;
certainly Candida plays the role of Morell's
wife, mother, and sisters rolled into one.
She is the one who arranges his affairs,
who keeps him happy and content, who
peels his onions for him. Her true status
Morell finally comes to realize, though
later he will probably rationalize his
way out of his paradoxical victo-y. Here,
then, is one aspect of the play, and to
many the main idea behind it: the
coiling of a husband and wife to a fuller
understanding of each other.
All of this bears a certain resemblance
to romantic drama, and perhaps that is
the secret of the play's success among non-
Shaw theatergoers. Shaw tiraded against
romanticism, but Candida is often
romantic. Although Candida discovers a
typical Shavian thought—that service and
not necessarily contentment is the
greatest triumph in life—the play and its
celebration of the wife-mother role seems
greatly romantic in comparison with other
Shavian drama.
If one takes the view that the play
concerns growing awareness between a
husband and wife, Marchbanks serves as the
catalyst bringing about the final result.
Through the poetic railings of the young
poetaster, Morell begins to wonder if he
is actually too commonplace for Candida.
But when Morell is accepted and the poet
is spurned in the famous choosing scene,
Marchbanks leaves as a more adult being
with a secret in his heart, and apparently
quite eaoer to go out into the night. It
may well be that Marchbanks realizes
that this mundane domesticity is not for
him—he has a greater destiny than this.
Candida has revealed the average happy
marriage to him, and he realizes there is
no poetry in it. A poet must go out into
the night, and on to greater and more
exalted triumphs.
This, quite possibly, is another of
Shaw's main ideas in the play—that the
man of genius is out of place in
conventional society. However, the fact that
the role of Marchbanks is often
unrealistic and overdrawn reduces the total
effect of this particular Shavian premise.
Through his excessive behavior, the
conflict between Marchbanks and Morell
fails to convince many readers and
viewers; to some, there is no choice at all
between the likable clergyman and the
effeminate boy.
Most others, however, are willing to
overlook this flaw and to ignore the
charge that Candida, in the "choosing"
scene, behaves in a most conceited
fashion. Audiences have much more
preferred to delight in the high comedy of
Candida, its amusing situations and the
witty, sparkling dialogue which is
generally consistent throughout the play.
This is, next to Saint Joan, Shaw's best-
constructed drama. And there is no doubt
that its great popularity is due not only
to its form, but also to the fact that in
Candida we have Shaw's safest play.
467

CANDIDE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Europe and South America
First published: 1759
Principal characters:
Candide, Baroness Thunder-ten-tronckh's illegitimate son
Mlle. Cunegonde, Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh's daughter
Pangloss, Candide's friend and tutor
Cacambo, Candide's servant
Critique:
Candide, the most popular of Voltaire's
works, is a masterful satire on the follies
and vices of men. Everything which
permeates and controls the lives of men
is taken to task—romance, science,
philosophy, religion, and government. The
mistakes of men in this story are exactly
the same that men make today. Candide
is a commentary which is timeless
because it is as contemporary as today's
newspaper.
The Story:
Candide was born in Westphalia, the
illegitimate son of Baron Thunder-ten-
tronckh's sister. Dr. Pangloss, his tutor,
and a devout follower of Liebnitz, taught
him metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigolo-
gy and assured his pupil that this is the
best of all possible worlds. Cunegonde,
the daughter of the baron, kissed
Candide one day behind a screen. Candide
was expelled from the Doble baron's
household.
Impressed into the army of the King of
Bulgaria, Candide deserted during a
battle between the King of Bulgaria and
the King of Abares. Later he was
befriended by James the Anabaptist. He
also met his old friend, Dr. Pangloss, now
a beggar. James, Pangloss, and Candide
started for Lisbon. Their ship was
wrecked in a storm off the coast of
Portugal. James was drowned, but Candide
and Pangloss swam to shore just as an
earthquake shook the city. The rulers of
Lisbon, both secular and religious,
decided to punish those people whose
wickedness had brought about the
earthquake, and Candide and Pangloss were
among the accused. Pangloss was hanged,
Candide thoroughly whipped.
While he was smarting from his
wounds, an old woman accosted Candide
and told him to have courage and to
follow her. She led him to a house where
he was fed and clothed. Then
Cunegonde appeared. Candide was amazed
because Pangloss had told him that
Cunegonde was dead. Cunegonde related the
story of her life from the time that she
last saw Candide to their happy meeting.
She was being kept by a Jew and an
Inquisitor, but she held both men at a
distance. Candide killed the Jew and the
Inquisitor when they came to see her.
With the old woman, Cunegonde and
Candide fled to Cadiz, where they were
robbed. In despair, they sailed for
Paraguay, where Candide hoped to enlist in
the Spanish army which was fighting the
rebellious Jesuits. During the voyage the
old woman told her story. They learned
that she was the daughter of Pope Urban
X and the Princess of Palestrina.
The governor of Buenos Aires
developed a great affection for Cunegonde,
and through his scheming Candide was
accused of having committed robbery
while still in Spain. Candide fled with
his servant, Cacambo; Cunegonde and
the old woman remained behind. When
Candide decided to fight for the Jesuits,
he learned that the commandant was
468

in reality Cunegonde's brother. But the
brother would not hear of his sister's
marriage to Candide. They quarreled,
and Candide, fearing that he had
killed the brother, took to the road with
Cacambo once more. Shortly afterward
they were captured by the Oreillons, a
tribe of savage Indians, but when
Cacambo proved they were not Jesuits, the
two were allowed to go free. They
traveled on to Eldorado. There life was
simple and perfect, but Candide was not
happy because he missed Cunegonde.
At last he decided to take some of the
useless jeweled pebbles and golden mud
of Eldorado and return to Buenos Aires
to search for Cunegonde. He and
Cacambo started out with a hundred sheep laden
with riches, but they lost all but two
sheep and the wealth these animals
carried.
Candide approached a Dutch
merchant and tried to arrange passage to
Buenos Aires. The merchant sailed away
with Candide's money and treasures,
leaving Candide behind. Cacambo then
went to Buenos Aires to find Cunegonde
and take her to Venice to meet Candide.
After many adventures, including a sea
fight and the miraculous recovery of one
of his lost sheep from a sinking ship,
Candide arrived at Bordeaux. His
intention was to go to Venice by way of
Paris. Police arrested him in Paris,
however, and Candide was forced to buy
his freedom with diamonds. Later he
sailed on a Dutch ship to Portsmouth,
England, where he witnessed the
execution of an English admiral. From
Portsmouth he went to Venice. There he
found no Cacambo and no Cunegonde.
He did, however, meet Paquette,
Cunegonde's waiting maid. Shortly afterward
Candide encountered Cacambo, who was
now a slave, and who informed him that
Cunegonde was in Constantinople. In
the Venetian galley which carried them
to Constantinople, Candide found Pan-
gloss and Cunegonde's brother among
the galleyslaves. Pangloss related that
he had miraculously escaped from his
hanging in Lisbon because the bungling
hangman had not been able to tie a
proper knot. Cunegonde's brother told
how he survived the wound which
Candide had thought fatal. Candide bought
both men from the Venetians and gave
them their freedom.
When the group arrived at
Constantinople, Candide bought the old woman
and Cunegonde from their masters and
also purchased a little farm to which
they all retired. There each had his own
particular work to do. Candide decided
that the best thing in the world was to
cultivate one's garden.
469

THE CANTERBURY TALES
(SELECTIONS)
Type of work: Poem
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer (1340M40C0
Types of plots: Chivalric romance, folk tradition, and saint's legend
Times of plots: Remote antiquity to fourteenth century
Locale: England
First transcribed: 1380-1390
Principal characters:
Theseus, Duke of Athens
Emily, his sister-in-law
Palamon, and
Arcite, her lovers
John, a carpenter
Alison, his wife
Nicholas, a clever cleric
Absalom, a parish clerk
A Summoner
A Yeoman, the devil
A Squire, of King Arthur's court
The Queen
An Old Woman, the Squire's wife
Three Rioters
Chanticleer, a rooster
Dame Partlet, his favorite wife
A Fox
Cecilia, a young girl of Rome
Valerian, ner husband
Tiburtius, his brother
Almachius, a Roman prefect
Critique:
Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of a wealthy by everyone, not by the learned only,
wine merchant, spent most of his life in Just as he used everyday language, he
the king's service in various capacities, used everyday characters, presenting a
some of which entailed frequent journeys series of portraits in poetry such as no
to France and Italy. Actually, he served one had attempted before. The pilgrims
under three English kings, Edward III, to Canterbury, representing all kinds of
Richard II, and Henry IV. It seems prob- Englishmen, are revealed as real people,
able that his keen insight into human na- some noble, some coarse, some witty,
ture was the direct result of his associa- some pious. While these portraits are in-
tion with people of all kinds in his various dividual, they are also typical; in them
positions. In Chaucer's day England was we hive a picture of English life in the
still medieval, but in Italy the Renais- fourteenth century. The stories the pil-
sance had begun; his poetry belongs to grims tell on their way to Canterbury are
both the Middle Ages and the new. His as varied as the characters who tell them,
works can be roughly divided into three Among the most common types used by
periods: the French, the Italian, and Chaucer were the chivalric romance in
the English. The Canterbury Tales make "The Knight's Tale"; the fabliau, a farci-
his English period the most important. cal or bawdy story, in "The Miller's Tale"
For these tales Chaucer used a form of and "The Friar's Tale"; the supernatural
language now called Middle English, Ian- story in "The Wife of Bath's Tale"; the
guage which in his day was understood sermonizing exemplum in "The Pardon-
470

er's Tale"; the beast fable in 'The Nun's
Priest's Tale"; and the saint's legend in
"The Second Nun's Tale."
The Stories:
THE PROLOGUE
In the spring of the year when
everyone wanted to get outdoors, Chaucer met
a group of people at the Tabard Inn, in
Southwark, bent on making a pilgrimage
to the shrine of Thomas Becket in
Canterbury. Among the pilgrims were the
Knight, who had behaved admirably in
his lord's wars; the Miller, a jokester and
a ribald clown; the gap-toothed, lusty
Wife of Bath; the Friar, a wanton, merry
licensed beggar; the Pardoner with a bag
stuffed with pardons hot from Rome; a
kindly Parson; Nuns; Priests; a Merchant;
a Man of Law; a Physician; a Franklin,
and others that added up to a band of
thirty. The host suggested that Chaucer
join them and that each, to shorten the
way, tell at least one story, the pilgrim
telling the best story to be treated to a
fine dinner on their return to Southwark.
THE KNIGHT'S TALE
After Theseus, Duke of Athens, had
defeated Creon at Thebes, his soldiers
captured two cousins of the Theban royal
house and imprisoned them for life in a
high tower overlooking the duke's garden.
Their names were Palamon and Arcite.
Theseus had a beautiful sister-in-law,
Emily, who used to walk in the garden.
Palamon and Arcite saw her there and
both immediately loved her.
Soon afterward Arcite was released as
a favor to an old friend of Theseus who
had known Arcite for many years.
Arcite, unable to stay away from Emily,
changed his name and worked as a
servant in Theseus' palace.
Palamon escaped from prison to be
near Emily. When he and Arcite met,
they agreed to fight the next day in full
courtly armor, the winner to woo the
girl. Theseus came upon them during
the fight and persuaded them to desist.
Instead, he arranged a tourney for them
and one hundred knights each a year
hence.
At the tourney Arcite and his knights
captured Palamon, and Arcite was
declared the winner. Then his horse
stumbled and injured him mortally. When he
died, Theseus gave Emily to Palamon,
since he, as well as Arcite, was a noble
youth.
THE MILLER'S TALE
John, a rich carpenter in Oxford, had
recently married buxom and beautiful
Alison. Since his wife was younger than
he, he was constantly afraid of being
cuckolded. John kept as a boarder in his
house a lively young cleric called
Nicholas who knew, among other odd
information, the signs for rain and drought.
Nicholas immediately laid siege to
Alison, but the wife, while she was not
loath to play, feared her husband's
jealousy. Nicholas spoke so appealingly that
Alison promised to find time for them
to be together.
Meanwhile Absalom, a young dandy,
had fallen in love with Alison. He wooed
her by singing under her window and
sending her gifts of all sorts. Alison
would have none of him.
Nicholas prepared to trick John so that
he could spend the night with Alison.
He told John that all signs pointed
toward a flood second only to that of Noah's
time, but that he and John and Alison
might be saved if the carpenter would
secure three large tubs, one for each of
them, to be hung under the attic roof.
John was to fill each with food for a day.
In the roof he was to cut a hole out of
which the tubs could float when the flood
came.
John worked so hard getting the tubs
prepared that he fell asleep shortly after
the three of them took their places. Then
Alison and Nicholas crept downstairs and
made merry in John's bed.
Near dawn Absalom came to the
bedroom window and begged Alison's love.
When she tried to send him away, he
asked for a kiss. She told Nicholas she
would have a little fun with her foolish
471

suitor and she stuck her bum out of the
window. Absalom's hot love being cooled,
he went to a blacksmith and borrowed a
hot iron. Returning to Alison's window,
he begged another kiss for which he
would give a gold ring. By that time
Nicholas wanted to get in on the fun, and
so he thrust his rump out the window.
Absalom, ready with the hot iron,
scorched Nicholas' buttocks. When
Nicholas screamed for water to cool his
scorched flesh, John awoke and,
thinking the flood had come, cut the ropes
holding his tub. He fell headlong into
the cellar.
THE FRIAR'S TALE
Once there was a summoner who knew
more about bribery than can be told
briefly. He was on his way to summon
an old widow, pretending he had a case
against her, when he met a yeoman at
the edge of a forest.
They swore to be blood brothers and
to stay together. The summoner tried to
learn some more tricks from his compan-
ivDn when the yeoman claimed to be a
bailiff who made all his money by
extortion. Then the yeoman told him that he
was really the fiend from hell.
They passed a carter whose horses
were mired down. As he beat the beasts,
the carter consigned them to the devil.
The summoner asked his companion why
he did not take the animals. The yeoman
explained that the carter did not really
mean that speech, though he did mean
the praise he heaped on the horses when
they got on firm ground.
When the summoner and the devil
reached the widow's house, the
summoner tried to get twelve pence from
her. She refused to pay a penny since
she was guilty of nothing, but she begged
mercy. The summoner, swearing that the
foul fiend could take him if he let her
off, said that he would take her new pot
in payment. She consigned the summoner
and the pot to the devil. The yeoman
asked if that were her true desire and
she said it was unless the summoner
repented. Since the summoner had no
intention of repenting, the devil claimed
him by rights and carried him off to hell.
THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE
A lusty squire from King Arthur's
court ravished a girl against her will. For
this deed he was condemned to death,
but the queen and her ladies asked mercy
for him. The king allowed the queen to
decide on the lad's life or death. She
decided to give the boy a year in which to
find the answer to the question of what
women desire most.
Although the squire traveled far and
wide seeking the answer, he found none
to satisfy him. Finally a horribly ugly old
woman gave him an answer to take back
to the queen.
When the queen received him, the boy
answered her question by saying that
women wanted most to have complete
control over their husbands and love
affairs. The queen accepted that answer
and agreed that he deserved to live.
The old hag who had supplied the
answer asked of the queen the right to
marry the squire. Scorning her because
she was ugly, old, and of low birth, the
squire was horrified at having to bed with
a wife so foul. After lecturing him at
length about gentle manners, noble deeds,
and honesty, his wife finally gave him
the choice of having her old, ugly, and
true to him, or young and beautiful and
possibly unfaithful. He sighed that he
left the choice up to her. Seeing that she
was then master of the situation, she
commanded him to kiss her and swore to be
both beautiful and true. When he looked
at her in the light of day, he found her
truly beautiful, and they lived in perfect
joy.
THE PARDONER'S TALE
There was once a group of people in
Flanders who were given to dissipation
in all its forms, to excesses in eating,
drinking, gambling, dancing, and
frequenting brothels.
One morning before nine o'clock three
rioters were sitting drinking in a tavern
when they heard a bell tolled as a corpse
472

was carried by. They sent a boy out to
learn who had died. He returned to tell
them that the dead man had been a merry
friend of theirs from a neighboring town,
where Death seemed to have found a
home.
Swearing to be true brothers, the three
rioters decided to look for and slay Death
himself. Briskly they set out for the
nearby town. On the way they met an
old man to whom they were unduly rude.
He told them they would find Death
under a certain tree in the forest ahead.
When they reached the tree, they found
a huge pile of gold coins. They were
overjoyed at their find, but decided they
had better wait until dark before they
took the coins home.
One of the young men went into town
for food for all. On the way he decided
to kill the other two and keep all the
gold for himself. He secured poison
which he put into two of the three
bottles of wine he bought.
Meanwhile the other two, having
decided to share the gold equally, worked
up a friendly tussle with the third man
when he returned. In the scuffle one of
the rioters brought out a dagger and
killed the third one. Then the two
celebrated his death with the bottles of wine.
In no time all three were dead and had
proved the old axiom that greed is the
root of all evil.
THE NUN'S PRIESTS TALE
Chanticleer was a very beautiful rooster
whose crowing was the delight of the
neighborhood. He lived on a widow's
small farm with his seven hens. Dame
Partlet was his favorite wife. She sat by
him at night.
One night, after dreaming that he
was being chased by a fox, he awoke
frightened and trembling. Partlet insisted
that dreams were all foolishness and
that he needed a laxative which she
would find for him among the herbs as
soon as they flew from their perch in
the morning. She accused him of being
a coward, even after he had quoted Cato,
St. Cenhelm, Macrobius, and the Bible
to her. Then in the flush of a beautiful
morning he made love to her and forgot
the dream.
Sometime later that morning he had
gone ahead of his hens to spy out some
tempting food for them. There in the
long grass lay a fox. Chanticleer would
have run away except that the fox began
to talk to him like an old friend of the
family. The fox told Chanticleer that he
had had the honor of entertaining
Chanticleer's father and uncle in his home.
Never was there such a sweet singer as
Chanticleer's father, who sang so loudly
that he had to close both eyes! Was
Chanticleer's voice of the same caliber?
Chanticleer tipped back his head,
closed his eyes, and crowed. The fox
jumped up, grabbed Chanticleer by the
throat, and carried him out of the yard.
Chanticleer's hens made such a clatter,
however, that the widow came out to
investigate. She, her children, and all the
barnyard animals made a great din.
Chanticleer asked the fox why he did
not spurn the animals and tell them he
was already clear of them. As soon as the
fox opened his jaws Chanticleer leaped
high into a tree. The fox begged him to
come down, but the rooster hoped never
to be fooled by flattery again. The fox
hoped that some day he would learn to
hold his tongue when he should.
THE SECOND NUN*S TALE
Cecilia was a devout Christian girl in
Rome. On the night of her marriage to
Valerian she told him that she had a
guardian angel who protected her awake
or asleep. If Valerian would love her only
spiritually, the angel would protect him
too, but if he loved her physically the
angel would kill him.
Valerian asked to see the angel to
know what he should do, and Cecilia
directed him to St. Urban to be baptized.
After being baptized, Valerian returned
home. There he found Cecilia with the
angel, who carried two wreaths of roses
and lilies that he put on Cecilia's head
and on Valerian's. Only those who truly
believed could see the wreaths. Valerian
473

asked the angel to convert his brother
Tiburtius as well.
Tiburtius came to the house and was
changed in heart as soon as he smelled
the flowers. He too wanted to be baptized
by St. Urban.
When officers of the law in Rome
heard of the conversions and miracles
attributed to Cecilia and the brothers,
the prefect Almachius commanded them
to sacrifice to Jupiter. Imprisoned
overnight, they converted their jailer and his
family. Because they refused to make a
sacrifice to the pagan god, Valerian and
Tiburtius were beheaded. Their jailer said
he saw angels carrying their souls to
heaven, and many more people were
converted because of his story.
Tried before Almachius, Cecilia would
not deny Christ. The prefect commanded
that she be burned in a bath of red
flames. Because the heat did not harm
her, Almachius' emissary tried to sever
her neck. He hit her three times; the law
forbade a fourth try. Cecilia lived three
days thereafter and continued to preach.
After asking that her house be made a
church, she died. Her body was buried
among the saints, and her house became
the Church of St. Cecilia.
474

CANTOS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Ezra Pound (1885- )
First published: 1925-1956 and continuing
The Cantos of Ezra Pound constitute
an ambitious work of poetrv that has
been appearing in various drafts over
many years, and fairly late sections of
the Cantos bear such designations as
these: The Pisan Cantos (1948) and
Section: Roch-Drill (1956). This
ambitious work is not yet complete and. for
reasons that will at once appear, it is not
likely to be complete.
The work is more often talked about
than read, and for several causes. First,
the poem does not escape association with
the controversial career of its author.
Pound, for many years prior to 1939,
lived abroad as an expatriate, critical of
the economic systems of Anglo-Saxon
culture. During World War II he
broadcast from Italian radio stations against
various aspects of Anglo-Saxon cultural
life and economic systems. For these
activities he was taken into custody at the
end of the war; he did not face trial,
however, and after a period of
confinement for psychological reasons, he was
released and returned to Italy to live.
During this time Pound continued to add
new cantos to his work; he was also the
controversial recipient of an award—the
Bollingen—for meritorious literary
service in poetry.
The Cantos are also much talked about
for reasons less sensational and more
valid. To the reader who makes a hasty
inspection—and possibly to the person
who spends a good deal of time studying
them—the work offers a surface that is
daunting. One finds that many sections
of the poetic discourse written in English
are interrupted by quotations from
Provencal, Italian, German, French, Latin,
and Greek, not to mention Anglo-Saxon
and Middle English. Even more, many
pages are adorned with the completely
enigmatic ideograms which Pound
derives from classical Chinese. These
syllabic symbols stand for ideas precious to
Pound.
A closer inspection of the actual
employment of language offers no further
comfort to the beginning reader; the tone
of the verse is extremely varied. There
are passages in the earlier Cantos that
are among the finest lines fashioned by
English-writing poets in our century:
elegiac passages of lament for the virtues
of "good" cultures, vitriolic attacks on the
defects of what Pound regards as Anglo-
Saxon finance-capitalism. These passages
of excellence alternate with others that,
as poetry, seem very strange materials
indeed. There are quotations from the
prosy diplomatic correspondence of John
Adams, phrases more than a century old
and deader in intrinsic interest than that.
There are quotations from the fiscal
regulations of Leopold of Hapsburg-Lorraine,
who instituted good financial conditions
in Tuscany before the disaster of
Napoleon's arrival. There are abundant
references to historical and literary figures
good and bad, Oriental and Western.
There are references to many people,
both well-known and obscure,
contemporaries familiar to Pound himself;
through them, the literary crusades and
battles of the first half of the twentieth
century find adequate memorial in some
sections of the long poem.
All this, as suggested, is included and
woven into a tight but anecdotal structure
which Pound introduces and embroiders
with great metrical variety and dexterity.
His language varies from noble simplicity
and elegance through imitations of the
banality (with which all men in all ages
have conducted the affairs of the world)
to the argot of the illiterate. A special
interest appears in the section entitled The
Pisan Cantos, in which we are allowed to
view Pound in a prison camp at Pisa,
working away on an installment of his
masterwork.
Strange and without many literary par-
475

allels in its lack of plan, in its preference
for jumble rather than clarity, the Cantos
should not, however, be regarded as a
hoax or a fraud. The continuing poem is,
rather, a record of the workings of a
sophisticated and ingenious mind that has
conducted a decades-long war with a
world out of joint. In this work language
is in decay, social life is ebbing, and the
economic system is a center of rot.
To thread one's way with utter
confidence through the poem one would have
to be as erudite as Pound himself. But
one can make some progress and have
some profit if one reminds oneself of
what Pound's abiding gustos and disgusts
are. Then one will see that the disorder
of the poem is a transcription of the
mixture of pleasure and nausea which the
twentieth century—and the rest of human
history, for that matter—have aroused in
the poet's sensorium.
More systematically than the Cantos
ever present the matter, a list could be
drawn up thus: There are ages that are
(or have been) human; and there are
ages that have not been human. The
twentieth century, as Pound himself
experienced it in American "learneries" and
in the British countryside, is an age that
has not been particularly human, has not
afforded superior men a good chance to
investigate their own natures and inspect
the resources of art and language. Thus,
our age (or parts of our age) is "against
nature": an upside-down world in which
money has ceased to be a necessary
convenience and has become, in many
minds, the most real entity which man
can handle. Nature and the
man-fashioned grandeur of art have become
sources of only second-rate experience.
Such an impression Pound repudiates.
To him, our money culture places us in
the midst of ordure, and this is a view
attested to in all sorts of ways. Leisure is
not understood and used; language itself,
that ultimate and precious human
possession, is debased by the uses business and
"affairs" make of it; it is more subtly and
more thoroughly debased by the use
which Victorian and Georgian poets made
of it. These facile poets, Pound is
convinced, merely sweetened the air to
wealthy nostrils that did not want to
smell the stench that money making and
interest taking created.
Thus, the Cantos represent a break
with the going social order and the modes
of literary expression grateful to that
order. Pound, in a phrase he derives from
the Chinese, must "make things new."
The techniques of confusion, blending,
and non sequitur in the poem are
techniques of assault; indurated sensibility
must be awakened, and new habits of
direct, nonabstract apprehension must be
set up. Pound gathers hints from Homer,
Confucius, the Provencal poets, and
countless other writers who managed to
be "human." By tearing apart the
tapestry of the conventionally viewed past
and weaving the threads into a new
pattern of his own, Pound assaults
ingrained and complacent sensibilities; in
Rock-Drill, for example, the agile reader
must be willing to experience all stages
of man's history at once, with each stage
held before his attention for no more than
a moment or so.
Pound also startles conventional and
unreflective moral tastes by expressing
admiration for such "natural" monsters as
Sigismundo Malatesta, whose evil was at
least direct and not transmogrified into a
neutral entry in a ledger. One must have,
in the world of the Cantos, sl considerable
amount of sin; but in "good" ages, unlike
our age, sin and virtue declare themselves
for what they are and do not masquerade
as something else.
Thus the organized confusion of the
Cantos becomes the pattern of Pound's
own outraged and crusading sensibility.
What the poem expresses is always clear
to that sensibility. If it is not clear to ours,
according to the poet, so much the worse
for us and our responses and our
blindness. Such, at any rate, is the intransigent
accent of many a canto.
One can, at any rate, say that Pound's
long work is a representative poem which
belongs to the same century as Eliot's
The Waste Land and Joyce's Ulysses. It
476

also attempts to interpret a world that is
on the verge of escaping all
interpretation. Long sections of the Cantos testify
to a power with language that both W. B.
Yeats and T. S. Eliot thought it worth
their while to attend to. Pound may or
may not be a great poet; beyond question,
he has been schoolmaster to a generation
of poets.
477

CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER
Type of work: Novel
Author: C. S. Forester (1899- )
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: The Pacific Ocean, South America, the Mediterranean, Spain, France, England
and the Adantic Ocean
First published: 1937, 1938, 1939
Principal characters:
Captain Horatio Hornblower, captain of H. M. S. Lydia and H. M. S. Sutherland
Bush, first lieutenant
Brown, captain's coxswain
Don Julian Alvarado (El Supremo), a rich plantation owner of Central America
Maria, Hornblower's wife
Lady Barbara Wellbslby, the Duke of Wellington's sister
Admiral Leighton, Hornblower's immediate commander and Lady Barbara's husband
Critique:
C. S. Forester has created in Captain
Hornblower a personality of wide
general appeal, and the writer's technical
knowledge of war at sea is woven into
the story with such skill that one learns
unconsciously the language of the
seamen, the parts of a fighting ship, and
something of naval gunnery. The
Hornblower novels—Beat to Quarters, Flying
Colours, and A Ship of the Line—have
been read with interest and enthusiasm
by readers of all classes and all ages.
The Story:
Captain Horatio Hornblower,
commander of H. M. S. Lydia, a thirty-six-
gun frigate, was sailing under sealed
orders from England around the Horn to
the Gulf of Fonseca on the western shores
of Spanish America. He had been
ordered to form an alliance with Don
Julian Alvarado, a large landowner, to
assist in raising a rebellion against Spain.
The Lydia carried the necessary
munitions with which to start the revolution.
In addition, Hornblower had fifty
thousand guineas in gold which he was to
give for the support of the rebellion
only if the revolt threatened to fail
without English gold to back it. To do
otherwise would result in court-martial. His
orders also casually mentioned the
presence in Pacific waters of a fifty-gun
Spanish ship called the Natividad. It was his
duty to take, sink, burn, or destroy this
ship at the first opportunity.
After the ship had been anchored in
the Gulf of Fonseca a small boat appeared
containing emissaries from Don Alvarado,
who now called himself El Supremo.
They told Hornblower that El Supremo
required the captain's attendance.
Hornblower was not pleased with
evidences of El Supremo's tyranny. What
he observed made him only the more
cautious. He refused to hand over to El
Supremo the arms and ammunition which
he had until his ship had taken on food
and water. The ship was loaded with
stores as rapidly as possible, and the
operation was going forward when a
lookout on the mountain announced the
approach of the Natividad,
Deciding to try to capture her in the
bay, Hornblower hid the Lydia behind
an island as the Natividad approached.
At the moment which gave him the
greatest advantage, Hornblower ordered
the Lydia to sail alongside the Natividad
and rake her decks with grapeshot. The
British sailors lashed the two ships
together and boarded the Natividad, El
Supremo demanded the captured ship
as his own. Hornblower hesitated to
turn over his prize to El Supremo, but
he dared not antagonize the dictator if
CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER by C. S. Forester. By permission of Harold Matson. Published by
Little. Brown & Co. Copyright, 1939, by Cecil Scott Forester.
478

he were to fulfill the requirements of his
orders.
Hornblower sailed away and shortly
afterward learned that England was now
an ally of Spain because of Napoleon's
deposition of King Ferdinand. He also
received further orders, one from his
admiral and one from an English lady
in Panama. The Englishwoman was
Lady Barbara Wellesley, sister of the
Duke of Wellington, who requested
transportation to England. During this
period the Lydia met and defeated the
Natividad, now under El Supremo. A
long period of association between Lady
Barbara and Hornblower ended in deep
mutual love. But Hornblower could not
bring himself to make love to her because
of his wife Maria at home and because
of his own chivalry. Lady Barbara was
carried safely to England.
Captain Horatio Hornblower was next
ordered to command H. M. S.
Sutherland, sl seventy-four-gun battleship. He
sailed with the Pluto and the Caligula
to protect a convoy of merchant ships as
far as the latitude of North Africa. They
met French privateers and beat them
off. Before parting company with the
merchantmen, Hornblower impressed
sailors from the convoy.
Sailing along the coast, he captured
the Ameliet attacked the battery at Llan-
za, burned and destroyed supply vessels,
and shelled two divisions of cavalry on
a highway passing near the seashore.
Admiral Leighton—now Lady
Barbara's husband—ordered Hornblower to
join and take charge of Spanish forces
at the siege of French-held Rosas, but
the operation failed because the
Spaniards did not cooperate. After his
retreat Hornblower met the Cassandra, a
British frigate, and learned that four
French ships were bearing down upon
them. Hornblower decided to fight, even
though the odds were four to one, and
sent the Cassandra to seek the Pluto and
the Caligula. The Cassandra came back
and relayed a message to Hornblower to
engage the enemy. That order indicated
the presence of the admiral's flagship.
Hornblower engaged the French ships
one at a time. The fourth French ship,
however, came upon him as he was
fighting a two-decker and forced him to
surrender.
After his surrender Hornblower and
Bush were imprisoned at Rosas. Admiral
Leighton sailed into the bay with the
Pluto and the Caligula and completed the
destruction of the French squadron.
Hornblower watched the battle from the
walls and saw the Sutherland, which had
been beached, take fire as a raiding party
of British seamen burned her to prevent
her use by the French. He learned from
a seaman that Admiral Leighton had been
injured by a flying splinter.
Colonel Calliard, Napoleon's aide,
came to Rosas to take Hornblower and
the wounded Bush to Paris. Bush was
seriously ill as a result of losing a foot
in the battle, therefore Hornblower
requested a servant to attend Bush on the
long journey. He selected Brown, the
coxswain, because of his strength, his
common sense, and his ability to adapt
himself to every situation. In France
their stagecoach was halted by a
snowstorm near Nevers. Hornblower had
noticed a small boat moored to the bank
of a river and, as he and Brown
assisted the French in trying to move the
coach, he laid his plans for escape. He
himself attacked Colonel Calliard and
Brown tied up the Frenchman and
threw him into the bottom of the coach.
They lifted Bush out of the coach and
carried him to the boat. The whole
operation required only six minutes.
The fugitives made their way down
the river in the dead of night with
Hornblower rowing while Brown bailed the
icy water from the boat. When the
boat crashed against a rock, Hornblower,
thinking he had lost Bush and Brown,
swam ashore in the darkness. Brown,
however, brought Bush safely to shore.
Shivering with cold, the three men made
their way to a farmhouse nearby, where
they announced themselves as prisoners
of war and were admitted.
Throughout the winter they remained
479

as guests of its owner, Comte de Grac,ay,
and his daughter-in-law. Brown made an
artificial foot for Bush and, when Bush
was able to get around well, he and
Brown built a boat in which to travel
down the Loire.
In early summer Hornblower disguised
himself as a Dutch customs inspector.
To complete his disguise the comte gave
him the ribbon of the Legion of Honor
which had been his son's. That
decoration aided Hornblower in his escape.
When Hornblower and his two men
arrived in the harbor at Nantes,
Hornblower cleverly took possession of the
Witch of Endor, taking with him a group
of prisoners to man the ship. They made
their way to England. Upon his arrival,
Hornblower was praised for his exploits,
knighted, and whitewashed at a court-
martial. His sickly wife had died during
his absence and Lady Barbara had
become guardian of his young son.
Hornblower went to the home of Lady
Barbara to see his son—and Barbara. She
was now a widow, Admiral Leighton
having died of wounds at Gibraltar, and
Hornblower realized from the quiet
warmth of her welcome that she was
already his. He felt that life had given
him fame and fortune—in Barbara, good
fortune indeed.
480

CAPTAIN SINGLETON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: The navigable world
First published: 1720
Principal characters:
Captain Bob Singleton, a sailor, explorer, and pirate
William Walters, a Quaker surgeon
Critique:
Defoe can justly be called the first
English novelist. The three outstanding
works of prose fiction before Defoe wrote
were Lyly's Euphues, a courtly and
philosophical work; Sidney's Arcadia, a
chivalrous romance, and John Bunyan's
religious and symbolic allegory, The
Pilgrim's Progress. Realistic characters and
the common-sense point of view were
Defoe's contributions to prose fiction. In
The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the
Famous Captain Singleton, unlike
Robinson Crusoe to which it is undoubtedly
inferior, character is subordinated to
action. In both books Defoe relied heavily
on Dampier's accounts of voyages,
travelers' tales and available maps and
geographies. However, the novel contains
also a wealth of clearly imagined detail
in its objective narrative, and two
contrasted characters: the courageous,
egocentric Singleton and the shrewd pacifist,
William. Here and in the rest of Defoe's
fiction is the germ of the English novel.
The Story:
Captain Bob Singleton was stolen as
a child and reared by the gipsy who
bought him. His first voyages, which
began when he was twelve, were to
Newfoundland. On one of these voyages the
ship was captured by Turks. The Turkish
vessel was subsequently captured by a
Portuguese ship. After many months on
shore Singleton sailed as a cabin boy from
Portugal on a voyage to Goa on the
Malabar coast. At this time Singleton
began to learn the arts of navigation, and
he also became an accomplished chief.
On the return voyage a storm drove
the ship to the shore of Madagascar.
There Singleton enthusiastically joined a
group of malcontents who plotted the
harsh captain's death, and he barely
escaped hanging. However, he and twenty-
six companions, with guns, tools, and
provisions, were abandoned on shore. The
natives were friendly and traded food
with the sailors in exchange for metal
charms cut out of beaten coins, as they
had no knowledge of the value of
currency. After exploring the island and the
shore, the party was able to build a
frigate and sail for the mainland.
Landing at Mozambique, they decided
to trek across the entire unknown
continent to the Atlantic. They began the
journey with buffaloes loaded with their
provisions and with some sixty captured
natives as guides and bearers. Singleton
was by this time their appointed leader.
At first they marched only when travel
by river was impossible. By hunting and
foraging they survived well enough until
they came to the first desert. After nine
days on the desert they reached a lake,
fished, and renewed their water supply.
In sixteen days they completed the desert
crossing and entered another fertile
region where travel was easy until they
came to an impassable river—possibly the
Nile.
When the chief native prisoner found
gold in a small stream flowing into the
main river, they panned as much as they
could and agreed to share it equally. After
a time they built a garrisoned camp to
481

avoid traveling in the rainy season.
Protected by palisades from wild animals that
roamed the region, the travelers remained
there through the rainy season. On the
subsequent march they almost perished
while crossing a further stretch of arid
land. Beyond this desert they obtained
meat from a native village and soon
moved into a mountainous region. While
proceeding along the main valley, they
were astonished to meet an Englishman
who had been captured and robbed by
the French. Having managed to escape
inland, he had stayed in the country of
friendly natives. He joined the travelers
and told them where to find more gold.
After two profitable years they continued
on to the Gold Coast. There the party
disbanded and Singleton sailed to England.
In England, during the next two years,
Singleton spent lavishly and was often
cheated. When his money was gone, he
sailed for C&diz. Off the coast of Spain
he broke his journey at the instigation of
a friend and went aboard a vessel whose
crew had mutinied and taken possession
of the ship. Thus began Singleton's career
as a pirate.
Having obtained provisions in Cadiz,
the pirate ship sailed for the Canary
Islands and thence to the West Indies.
After the capture of a Spanish sloop.
Singleton sailed aboard her and arranged
to meet the other ship in Tobago. He
found that the crew of a captured ship
was often willing to join him. One man
who did ?o was a Quaker surgeon named
William Walters. William and Singleton
became friends and the Quaker often
saved him from wasteful maneuvers and
bloodshed. After a meeting in Tobago the
pirates arranged to cruise separately again
and later to join forces in Madagascar.
In a successful engagement off Brazil,
Singleton captured and took command of
a forty-six-gun Portuguese man-of-war.
From the next ship captured they
acquired many slaves. William persuaded
Singleton and the crew not to kill these
men. Instead, he sold them on the Rio
Grande for gold and a fine French sloop.
Continuing the voyage, they rounded the
Cape of Good Hope to land on
Madagascar for provisions.
During the night which followed the
sighting of a wrecked European ship on
the African shore, William and the
coxswain both dreamed that if they landed
they would find gold. They discovered a
group of their former companions who,
shipwrecked on Tabago, had been taken
aboard another ship and subsequently had
captured several ships of their own and
thereby gained much gold. The whole
pirate fleet, including ships under Captain
Wilmot and Captain Avery, gathered at
Manga helly. Some stayed in a camp on
shore. Eventually William and Singleton
sailed for Ceylon in the man-of-war.
Off Ceylon they captured a ship from
the Mogul's court. The vessel yielded so
much gold that the sailors wished to
return at once to Madagascar. Together,
William and Singleton persuaded them
to continue the voyage.
Singleton's ambition was to capture
ships from the Dutch Spice Islands. After
sailing north of the Philippines they
finally overtook a vessel laden with
nutmegs. Unfortunately, they grounded the
man-of-war on a group of rocks and were
forced to beach and repair her. Soon
after they resailed they were hit by a
violent storm which shook the ship and
momentarily so terrified Singleton that
he believed the lightning to be the
punishment from Divine Providence for his
crimes. However, nobody was hurt and,
with the ship only slightly damaged,
they continued as before.
North of Manila three Japanese ships
yielded cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and
some gold. From there they sailed two
months until they reached Formosa. By
this time everybody was agreed that they
were rich enough. Off the Chinese coast
they made contact with merchants with
whom William traded spices and cloth
for gold. Then they began the long
journey southward and westward home.
The vessel sailed to Java for provisions
and then to Ceylon, where they had great
482

trouble with natives who nearly ignited
the ship with fire-arrows. Finally, after
tricking the native leaders through a
Dutch interpreter who was a prisoner
there, they managed to take him on board
and to sail away unharmed.
William continued to trade, and when
he had satisfactorily disposed of most of
the booty he talked earnestly to
Singleton about his crimes. Together they
agreed to abandon piracy. Furthermore,
Singleton said that from then on he
would be under William's command.
William made two more trading trips. On
the second Singleton and another
surgeon accompanied him in the sloop with
their accumulated treasure. William sent
a letter to the man-of-war saying that
they had been captured and that they
must sail away to save their own lives;
The men quickly obeyed.
William and Singleton disguised
themselves as Persian merchants. During this
time Singleton became profoundly
troubled by his conscience. William dissuaded
him from suicide that they might be able
to put their illegal fortunes to some good
use. They traveled in caravan to
Alexandria and thence sailed to Venice.
In time William wrote to his widowed
sister in England. He and Singleton both
sent her money to buy a house for her
children and themselves. Finally, still
disguised as merchants, they returned
home. Singleton, whose repentance was
complete, married William's sister and
lived with her in great quiet and
contentment.
483

CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1890's
Locale: Grand Banks of Newfoundland
First published: 1897
Principal characters:
Harvey Cheyne, a spoiled young rich boy
Disko Troop, owner and captain of the We're Here
Dan Troop, his son
Mr. Cheyne, Harvey's father
Critique:
Captains Courageous is one of the
great favorites among lovers of sea stories,
for it captures the spirit of the men who
risked their lives to catch fish on the
Grand Banks in the days before
commercial fishing with steam-powered
trawlers. One of the aspects of the novel,
frequently overlooked, however, is the
attention paid by Kiphng to the
American millionaire in the story. He, also,
is one of the "Captains Courageous."
As a respecter of power and force, Kiphng
X esteemed the capitalist as well as the
captain of the fishing vessel.
The Story:
Harvey Cheyne was a rich, spoiled
boy of fifteen years, bound for Europe
aboard a swift ocean liner. He was a
seasick young man, as well, so seasick that
he hardly reahzed what was happening to
him when a huge wave washed him over
the rail of the ship into the sea. Luckily,
he was picked up by a fisherman in a
dory, and put aboard the fishing schooner
We're Here. The owner and captain of
the boat, Disko Troop, was not pleased
to have the boy aboard, but told him that
he would pay him ten dollars a month
and board until the schooner docked in
Gloucester the following September. It
was then the middle of May. But
Harvey insisted upon being taken to New
York immediately, asserting that his
father would gladly pay for the trip. The
captain, doubting that Harvey's father
was a millionaire, refused to change his
plans and hazard the profits of the
fishing season. Harvey became insulting.
Disko Troop promptly punched him in
the nose to teach him manners.
The captain's son, Dan, soon became
the friend of the castaway. He was glad
to have someone his own age aboard the
fishing boat, and Harvey's stories about
mansions, private cars, and dinner parties
fascinated him. Being a boy, he recog-
»aized the sincerity of the rich lad and
knew that he could not possibly have
made up all the details of a wealthy
man's life.
As Harvey began to fit into the life
aboard the schooner, the fishermen all
took an interest in his nautical education.
Long Jack, one of the crew, escorted him
about the boat to teach him the names
of the ropes and the various pieces of
equipment. Harvey learned quickly, for
two reasons. First, he was a bright young
lad, and, secondly, the sailor whipped
him roughly with the end of a rope when
he gave the wrong answers. He also
learned how to swing the dories aboard
when they were brought alongside with
the day's catch, to help clean the cod
and salt them away below the decks, and
to stand watch at the wheel of the
schooner as they went from one fishing
ground to another on the Grand Banks.
Even Disko Troop began to admit that
the boy would be a good hand before
they reached Gloucester in the fall.
Gradually Harvey became used to the
sea. There were times of pleasure as
CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS by Rudyard Kipling. By permission of Mrs. George Bambridge and the publishers,
Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1896, 1897, by Rudyard Kipling. Renewed, 1923, by Rudyard Kipling.
484

well as work. He enjoyed listening while
the other eight members of the crew
talked and told sea yarns in the evenings
or on the days when it was too rough
to lower the dories and go after cod.
He discovered that the crew came from
ill over the world. Disko Troop and his
son were from Gloucester, Long Jack
was from Ireland, Manuel was a
Portuguese, Salters was a farmer,
Pennsylvania was a former preacher who had lost
his family in the Johnstown flood, and
the cook was a Negro who had been
brought up in Nova Scotia and swore
in Gaelic. All these men fascinated
Harvey, for they were different from
anyone he had ever known. What pleased
the boy most was that they accepted
him on his own merits as a workman
and a member of the crew, and not as an
heir to millions. Of all the crew, only
Dan and the Negro cook believed
Harvey's story.
One day a French brig hailed the
We're Here. Both vessels shortened sail
while Harvey and Long Jack were sent
from the scnooner to the brig to buy
tobacco. Much to Harvey's chagrin,
he discovered that the sailors on the
French boat could hardly understand his
schoolboy French but that they
understood Long Jack's sign language perfectly.
The French brig figured in another
of Harvey's adventures. He and Dan
went aboard the ship at a later time to
buy a knife that had belonged to a
deceased sailor. Dan bought the knife
and gave it to Harvey, thinking it had
added value because the Frenchman had
killed a man with it. While fishing from
a dory several days later, Harvey felt a
weight on his line and pulled in the
Frenchman's corpse. The boys cut the
line and threw the knife into the sea, for
it seemed to them that the Frenchman
had returned to claim his knife.
Although they were the same age,
Harvey was not nearly as handy on the
schooner or in the dory as was Dan, who
had grown up arouna fishing boats and
fishermen. But Harvey surpassed Dan in
the use of a sextant. His acquaintance
with mathematics and his ability to use
his knowledge seemed enormous to the
simple sailors. So impressed was Disko
Troop that he began to teach Harvey
what he knew about navigation.
Early in September the We're Were
joined the rest of the fishing fleet at a
submerged rock where the cod fishing was
at its best, and the fishermen worked
around the clock to finish loading the
holds with cod and halibut. The vessel
which first filled its holds was not only
honored by the rest of the fleet, but it
also got the highest price for the first
cargo into port. For the past four years
the We're Here had finished first, and it
won honors again the year Harvey was
aboard. All canvas was set, the flag
was hoisted, and the schooner made the
triumphant round of the fleet picking
up letters to be taken home. The
homeward-bound men were the envy of all
the other fishermen.
As soon as the We're Here had docked
at Gloucester, Harvey sent a telegram to
his father informing him that he had
not been drowned, but was well and
healthy. Mr. Cheyne wired back that
he would take his private car and travel
to Gloucester as quickly as he could
leave California. Great was the surprise
of Disko Troop and the rest of the crew,
except Dan and the Negro cook, when
they discovered that Harvey's claims were
true.
Mr. Cheyne and Harvey's mother were
overjoyed to see their son, and their
happiness was increased many times
when they observed how much good the
work aboard the fishing schooner had
done him. It had changed him from a
snobbish a^nlpgppnt into a self-reliant
young man who knew how to make a
living with his hands and who valued
people for what they were rather than
for the money they had. Mr. Cheyne,
who had built up a fortune after a
childhood of poverty, was particularly glad to
see the change in his son.
Disko Troop and the crew of the We're
Here refused to accept any reward for
themselves. Dan was given the chance to
485

become an officer on a fleet of fast
freighters Mr. Cheyne owned. The
Negro cook left the sea to become a
bodyguard for Harvey. In later years,
when Harvey had control of the Cheyne
interests, the Negro got a great deal of
satisfaction out of reminding Dan, who
was by then a mate on one of Harvey's
ships, that he had told the two boys
years before that some day Harvey would
be Dan's master.
486

THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: About 1774
Locale: Russia
First published: 1836
Principal characters:
Peter Andreitch Grineff, a young Russian officer
Maria Ivanovna, his sweetheart
Alexey Ivanitch Shvabrin, Peter's fellow officer
Savelitch, Peter's servant
Emelyan Pougatcheff, a rebel Cossack leader
Critique:
One of the first pure examples of
Russian realism, The Captain's
Daughter, or The Generosity of the Russian
Usurper, Pougatcheff, is a narrative
concisely and excitingly told. Using the
touch of a master, Pushkin delineated a
gallery of characters ranging from the
simple Maria to the cruel rebel,
Pougatcheff. The novel was written as the
result of Pushkin's appointment to the
office of crown historian, a position
which gave him access to the state
archives and the private papers of the
Empress Catherine II.
The Story:
Although Peter Andreitch Grineff was
registered as a sergeant in the Semenov-
sky regiment when he was very young,
he was given leave to stay at home until
he had completed his studies. When he
was nearly seventeen, his father
decided that the time had arrived to begin
his military career. With his parents'
blessing, Peter set out for distant
Orenburg, in the company of his faithful
servant, Savelitch.
The trip was not without incident.
One night the travelers put up at
Simbirsk. There, while his man went to see
about some purchases, Peter was lured
into playing billiards with a fellow
soldier, Zourin, and quickly lost one
hundred roubles. Toward evening of the
following day the young man and
Savelitch found themselves on the snowy
plain with a storm coming up. As
darkness fell the snow grew thicker, until
finally the horses could not find their
way and the driver confessed that he
was lost. They were rescued by another
traveler, a man with such sensitive
nostrils that he was able to scent smoke from
a village some distance away and to lead
them to it. The three men and their
guide spent the night in the village. The
next morning Peter presented his hare-
skin jacket to his poorly-dressed rescuer.
Savelitch warned Peter that the coat
would probably be pawned for drink.
Late that day the young man reached
Orenburg and presented himself to the
general in command. It was decided
that he should join the Bailogorsk fortress
garrison under Captain Mironoff, for his
superior felt that the dull life at
Orenburg might lead the young man into a
career of dissipation.
The Bailogorsk fortress, on the edge
of the Kirghis steppes, was nothing more
than a village surrounded by a log fence.
Its real commandant was not Captain
Mironoff but his lady, Vassilissa Egor-
ovna, a lively, firm woman who saw to
the discipline of her husband's
underlings as well as the running of her own
household.
Peter quickly made friends with a
fellow officer, Shvabrin, who had been
exiled to the steppes for fighting a duel.
He spent much time with his captain's
family and grew deeply attached to the
couple and to their daughter, Maria
Ivanovna. After he had received his
commission, he found military discipline
so relaxed that he was able to indulge his
487

literary tastes.
The quiet routine of Peter's life was
interrupted by an unexpected quarrel
with Shvabrin. One day he showed his
friend a love poem he had written to
Maria. Shvabrin criticized the work
severely and went on to make derogatory
remarks about Maria until they
quarreled and Peter found himself challenged
to a duel for having called the man a
liar.
The next morning the two soldiers met
in a field to fight but they were stopped
by some of the garrison, for Vassilissa
Egorovna had learned of the duel. Peter
and his enemy, although apparently
reconciled, intended to carry out their
plan at the earliest opportunity.
Discussing the quarrel with Maria, Peter
learned that Shvabrin's actions could be
explained by the fact that he was her
rejected suitor.
Assuring themselves that they were
not watched, Shvabrin and Peter fought
their duel the following day. Peter,
wounded in the breast, lay unconscious
for five days after the fignt. When he
began to recover, he asked Maria to marry
him. Shvabrin had been jailed. Then
Peter's father wrote that he disapproved
of a match with Captain MironofFs
daughter, and that he intended to have
his son transferred from the fortress so
that he might forget his foolish ideas.
As Savelitch denied having written a
letter home, Peter could only conclude
that Shvabrin had been the informer.
Life would have become unbearable
for the young man after his father's
letter arrived if the unexpected had not
happened. One evening Captain Miro-
noff informed his officers that the Yaikian
Cossacks, led by Emelyan PougatchefT,
who claimed to be the dead Emperor
Peter III, had risen and were sacking
fortresses and committing outrages
everywhere. The captain ordered his men to
keep on the alert and to ready the
cannon.
The news of Pougatcheff's uprising
quickly spread through the garrison.
Many of the Cossacks of the town sided
with the rebel, so that Captain MironofiF
did not know whom he could trust or
who might betray him. It was not long
before the captain received from the
Cossack leader a manifesto ordering him to
surrender.
It was decided that Maria should be
sent back to Orenburg, but the attack
came early the next morning before she
could leave. Captain MironofiF and his
officers made a valiant effort to defend
the town, but with the aid of Cossack
traitors inside the walls PougatchefT was
soon master of the fortress.
Captain MironofiF and his aides were
hanged. Shvabrin deserted to the rebels.
Peter, at the intercession of old
Savelitch, was spared by PougatchefT. The
townspeople and the garrison soldiers had
no scruples about pledging allegiance to
the rebel leader. Vassilissa Egorovna was
slain when she cried out against her
husband's murderer.
When PougatchefT and his followers
rode off to inspect the fortress, Peter
began his search for Maria. To his great
relief, he found that she had been hidden
by the wife of the village priest, and
that Shvabrin, who knew her
whereabouts, had not revealed her identity.
From Savelitch he learned that the
servant had recognized PougatchefT as the
man to whom he had given his hare-
skin coat months before. Later the rebel
leader sent for Peter and acknowledged
his identity.
The rebel tried to persuade Peter to
join the Cossacks, but respected his wish
to rejoin his own forces at Orenburg.
The next day Peter and his servant were
given safe conduct, and PougatchefT gave
Peter a horse and a sheepskin coat for
the journey.
Several days later the Cossacks
attacked Orenburg. During a sally against
them Peter received a disturbing
message from one of the Bailogorsk
Cossacks; Shvabrin was forcing Maria to
marry him. Peter went at once to the
general and tried to persuade him to
raise the siege and go to the rescue of
the village. When the general refused,

Peter and Savelitch started out once
more for the Bailogorsk fortress.
Intercepted and taken before Pougatcheff,
Peter persuaded the rebel to give Maria
safe conduct to Orenburg.
On the way they met a detachment of
soldiers led by Captain Zourin, who
persuaded Peter to send Maria, under Save-
litch's protection to his family, while he
himself remained with the troops in
Orenburg.
The siege of Orenburg was finally
lifted, and the army began its task of
tracking down rebel units. Some months
later Peter found himself near his own
village and set off alone to visit his
parents' estate. Reaching his home, he
found the serfs in rebellion and his
family and Maria captives. That day Shva-
brin swooped down upon them with his
troops. He was about to have them all
hanged, except Maria, when they were
rescued by Zourin's men. The renegade
was shot during the encounter and taken
prisoner.
Peter's parents had changed their
attitude toward the captain's daughter, and
Peter was able to rejoin Captain Zourin
with the expectation that he and Maria
would be wed in a month. Then an
order came for his arrest. He was
accused of having been in the pay of
Pougatcheff, of spying for the rebel, and
of having taken presents from him. The
author of the accusations was the cap
tive, Shvabrin. Though Peter could easily
have cleared himself by summoning
Maria as a witness, he decided not to
drag her into the matter. He was
sentenced to spend the rest of his life in
exile in Siberia.
Maria, however, was not one to let
matters stand at that. Leaving Peter's
parents, she traveled to St. Petersburg
and went to Tsarskoe Selo, where the
court was. Walking in the garden there
one day, she met a woman who
declared that she went to court on
occasion and would be pleased to present
her petition to the empress. Maria was
summoned to the royal presence the same
day and discovered that it was the
empress herself to whom she had spoken.
Peter received his pardon and soon
afterward married the captain's daughter.
489

THE CAPTIVES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254-184 B. C.)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: During war between Aetolia and Elis
Locale: Aetolia
First presented: c. 210 B. C.
Principal characters:
Hegio, a wealthy Aetolian
Ergasilus, a parasite
Philocrates, a wealthy Elian and prisoner of war
Tyndarus, son of Hegio and Philocrates' slave
Philopolemus, elder son of Hegio
Aristophontes, a prisoner of war and Philocrates' friend
Stalagmus, a runaway slave
Critique:
This drama is one of the most
inoffensive from the racy pen of Plautus; for
this reason it is most frequently included
in play anthologies. We know also that
thirty years or so after the death of the
dramatist a prologue was added to the
play, indicating the harmless nature of
the drama and explaining the plot, a rather
complicated series of mistaken identities.
The plot of the drama was probably
derived from a comedy by the Greek
playwright Menander, as were many of
Plautus' other plays. This drama, although
laid in Greece, abounds in details allusive
to life in Plautus' Rome. Like
Shakespeare, Plautus was skilled at adapting
older plays to new and alien settings.
The real comedy springs not from the
situation of the lost sons, but rather from
the character of the parasite, a stock
figure in Roman drama, who is always
hungry and always looking for a free meal.
The Story:
Hegio, a wealthy Aetolian, had lost a
son years before, when a runaway slave
named Stalagmus had carried the boy off
at the age of four years. Later, during a
war with Elis, his other son,
Philopolemus, was captured and made a slave by
the Elians. In an effort to regain his
second son, Hegio bought up prisoners of
war captured by the Aetolian army; his
hope was to find a wealthy young Elian
whom he could exchange for his own son.
He had spent a great deal of money
without finding a prisoner who might be so
exchanged. Mourning his son's loss with
him was a parasite, Ergasilus, a favorite
of Hegio's son and the recipient of many
free meals.
Finally, entirely by accident, Hegio
bought a pair of prisoners, one of whom
was the son stolen years before. The son,
named Tyndarus, was the slave of
Philocrates, a wealthy Elian prisoner.
Philocrates and Tyndarus, having changed
clothing and names, hoped by that ruse
to get Philocrates set free to return to
Elis. The ruse worked, for Hegio allowed
Philocrates to return to Elis and arrange
for an exchange of his own son for
Philocrates' "master." Shortly afterward,
Hegio, while visiting at his brother's home,
found there another slave, a prisoner
named Aristophontes, who claimed to be
a friend of Philocrates. To satisfy
himself as to the identity of his hostage and
to do a kindness to both prisoners, Hegio
took Aristophontes home with him. At
Hegio's home Aristophontes laid bare the
ruse that had been played on Hegio. At
first Tyndarus tried to carry out his plans
by claiming that Aristophontes was mad,
but Hegio soon became aware that
Tyndarus was not Philocrates. In his anger,
Hegio had Tyndarus, actually his own
son, sent to the stone quarries, with orders
490

that he was to be worked hard for the
trick he had played on his new owner.
In the meantime poor Ergasilus, the
parasite, was going hungry in the
absence of his patron, Philopolemus,
although Hegio occasionally gave him a
frugal meal. Ergasilus was the victim of
a move on the part of the wealthy Aeto-
lians to pay no attention to the parasites,
thus forcing those rather unwelcome
individuals to earn an honest living in some
way or other.
Elian Philocrates was an honest man
who had loved his slave Tyndarus, for
the two had been companions since
childhood. Upon his return to Elis he
arranged for the exchange of
Philopolemus in return for his own freedom. He
also decided to go with Philopolemus to
Aetolia to regain his slave Tyndarus. He
had promised, through the false
Philocrates, to pay a sum of money as bail for
Tyndarus' return.
The first person to see Philocrates and
Philopolemus was the parasite Ergasilus.
Realizing that the news was money in his
wallet and food in his stomach, he rushed
headlong to tell Hegio the tidings.
Overjoyed, Hegio promised to give Ergasilus
his board for the rest of his life and, for
one meal, to give Ergasilus free rein in
the kitchens. While Ergasilus rushed to
have a feast prepared, Hegio went to the
harbor to meet Philopolemus and the
former prisoner, Philocrates. Hegio's joy
knew no bounds when he embraced his
son.
As soon as he returned to his house,
Hegio sent for Tyndarus and had him
released to his master Philocrates, without
payment of the money he had once
demanded for Tyndarus* freedom. While
they were waiting for Tyndarus, Hegio
questioned Stalagmus, his former slave,
who had been recaptured at Elis and
returned by Philocrates. Hegio hoped to
discover what had happened to his
other son. Stalagmus told how he had
kidnaped Hegio's son and taken him
to Elis. There, he said, he had sold
the young boy to Philocrates' father.
Philocrates then related how the little boy
had been given to him as a companion
and play fellow and had later become his
valet. By the time Tyndarus had
returned from the Quarry, the riddle had
been solved. He was welcomed, not as a
slave, but as a free man, the brother of
Philopolemus, and Hegio's son.
Tyndarus was overjoyed by his good
fortune. Hegio, anxious to punish
Stalagmus for the kidnaping and to make
amends to his long-lost son, gave the
kidnaper over to Tyndarus to be
punished. Tyndarus sent immediately for a
blacksmith to strike off his own chains,
which were exceedingly heavy, and had
them placed on Stalagmus; he promised
that unworthy person a life of hard
labor and harsh treatment. Stalagmus
philosophically accepted his fate; he had been
born a slave, and he could expect to die
a slave as well
491

CARMEN
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Prosper M6rim6e (1803-1870)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Spain
First published: 1847
Principal characters:
Don Jose, a soldier
Carmen, a cigarette worker
Garcia, Carmen's husband
Lucas, a toreador
Critique:
lhe importance of this short novel
should not be underestimated. First of
all, it is a romantic and satisfying work,
displaying all the gifts that have earned
Merim6e an honored place in world
literature. Secondly, it was on this story
that Bizet based his opera. Bizet's
version changes a few details of plot and
characterization, but it is safe to say that
without the original story there would
have been no opera. Thus we owe
M6rim6e a twofold debt, for a good
story and one of the world's most popular
operas.
The Story:
Don Jos6 was a young, handsome
cavalryman from Navarre. The son of a
good Basque family, he had excellent
chances of being quickly promoted and
making his name as a soldier. But
a short time after arriving at his post
in Seville, he happened to meet a
beautiful and clever young gipsy. Her name
was Carmen. Don Jos6 fell in love with
her at once, and allowed her to go free
after she had attacked with a knife
another worker in a cigarette factory.
One night she persuaded him to desert
his post and go with her. He was
punished by being ordered to stand
guard. She went to him again and urged
him to go with her once more. When
he refused, they argued for more than
an hour, until Don ]os6 was exhausted
by his struggle between anger and love.
After he became her lover, she caressed
him and ridiculed him by turn. Carmen
was independent, rebellious, and
tormenting. The more fickle she was, the
more madly Don Jos6 loved her.
One night, having agreed to a
rendezvous with Carmen, he went to her
apartment. While they were together, a
lieutenant, who was Carmen's lover, entered.
There was an argument and swords
flashed. In the struggle that followed
Don Jos6 killed the lieutenant. He
himself suffered a head wound from the
officer's sword. Carmen had remained in
the room throughout the struggle, and
when the lieutenant fell to the floor
she accused Don Jose* of being stupid.
Then she left him, only to return a few
minutes later with a cloak. She told him
to put it on and flee because he would be
a hunted man. All of Don Jose's hopes
for a brilliant career were shattered. His
love had led him to murder, and he was
doomed to live the life of an outlaw with
a woman who was a pickpocket and a
thief.
Carmen had many friends and
acquaintances who were outlaws. Because
Don Jos6 had no choice in the matter,
he agreed to go with her and join a
small band of smugglers and bandits for
whom Carmen was a spy. In the
meantime a reward was posted for Don Josefs
capture. The two set out together.
Eventually they found the smugglers.
For a long time Don Jos£ lived with
them, throwing himself into his new,
lawless life with such vigor and enthusiasm
that he became known as a desperate
and ruthless bandit. But all the time his
life was unhappy. By nature he was
kind and had nothing of the desperado

in him. His wild life was not the type
of existence he had envisioned. Further,
he knew that Carmen was not faithful
to him, that she had other lovers, and
he grew silent and sullen.
His anger and jealousy increased when
he discovered that Garcia, the one-eyed
leader of the gang, was Carmen's
husband. The band had already been
reduced in numbers by that time. One
day, while Carmen was absent because
of a quarrel with Don Jose\ the latter
killed Garcia. A fellow outlaw told Don
Jose that he had been very stupid, that
Garcia would have given Carmen to
him for a few dollars. When Carmen
returned, he informed her that she was
a widow. Also, the death of Garcia meant
that there were only two of the band left,
on the eve of a dangerous raid which
they had planned.
Don Jos<6 and a smuggler named Dan-
caire organized a new band. Carmen
continued to be useful to them. She
went to Granada and there she met a
toreador named Lucas. Jealous of his
rival, Don Jose asked her to live with
him always, to abandon the life they
were leading and to go off with him to
America. Carmen refused, telling him
that nobody had ever successfully ordered
her to do anything, that she was a gipsy,
and that she had read in coffee grounds
that she and Don Jos6 would end their
lives together. Her words half convinced
Don Jose* that there was no reason for
him to worry.
A short time later Carmen defied him
again and went to Cordova, where Lucas
was appearing in a bullfight. Don Jos6
followed her, but he caught only a
glimpse of her in the arena. Lucas
was injured by a bull. Outside the
arena, Don Jos6 met Carmen. Once
more he implored her to be his forever,
to go with him to America. She laughed
at him and jeered at his request.
Don Jos6 went to a monk and asked
him to say a mass for a person who was
in danger of death. He returned to
Carmen. When he asked her to follow
him, she said that she would go with
him, even to her death. She knew that
he was about to kill her, but she was
resigned to her fate. No longer did she
love him, she insisted; and even if Lucas
did not love her, she could not love Don
Jos6 any more; their affair was ended.
In desperate rage, Don Jose* took out his
knife and killed her. With the same
knife he dug her grave and buried her in
a grove of trees. Then he went to the
nearest constabulary post and
surrendered. The monk said the mass for
the repose of Carmen's soul.
493

CARMINA
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84-c. 54 B.
First transcribed,: c. 50 B.C.
Catullus, greatest of the Latin lyric
poets, was born in Verona in northern
Italy, only a few years after it had been
conquered from the Celts. Some scholars
believe him to have been Celtic, not only
because of his name, but also because of
his use of Celtic words like "basium," for
"kiss," instead of the Latin "osculum."
He was one of the "New Poets," whose
leader was Valerius Cato. Beginning
about 90 B.C., these revolted against the
conservative poets who treated only wars,
history, and mythology. In their
experiments with Greek meters and Greek
words, under the inspiration of Sappho,
Archilochus, and especially the
Alexandrians, Catullus was a pioneer. One
cannot know how radical his fellow poets
were, for most of their work has been
lost, and the poetry of Catullus survived
only by chance.
During his lifetime he probably
published a number of books—"libelli," the
Latins called them—made by pasting
together sheets of parchment or papyrus
into a long strip and rolling it on a stick.
About a thousand lines constituted a
book. Someone arranged all the poems of
Catullus, by length rather than by
subject or chronology, on one roll. It could
not have been the poet himself, because
the dedication provided was hardly
suitable for such a volume. This roll of 116
poems was disregarded for fourteen
centuries. (Catullus was not an important
classical poet like his friend Vergil, whose
indebtedness to him is evident both in his
earlier poetry and in the Aeneid, or Ovid
or Martial, both of whom praised him
highly.) Then the roll came to light
briefly in Catullus' native city in the
fourteenth century, long enough for two
admirers to make complete copies. After
that it was lost forever; but from those
two copies the world learned to admire
the lyric genius of Catullus. Petrarch
owned and used one copy.
30
After the Cannina (Poems) appeared
in print, the cult of Catullus began to
spread. The pious Fe*nelon, overlooking
the Roman's occasional vulgarity and
obscenity, accounted in two words for his
greatness: "simplicit6 passion6e." And
that has been the critical judgment of
him ever since: one of the supreme poets
of love, a singer of ardent and sincere
passion expressed with fiery earnestness,
but also with simplicity.
The date of Catullus' first poems
cannot be determined. It is known that he
went to Rome when he was about twenty.
There he met the object of an
overpowering love, a woman whom he addressed in
his verses as Lesbia, a name suggested by
the homeland of Sappho, whose meter he
used in several of the poems. Scholars
later identified her as Clodia, wife of the
praetor Quintus Caecilius Metellus, a
highly sexed, talented, cruel beauty,
described as ox-eyed, even by her enemies.
She still had a husband when Catullus,
meeting her, was so upset that he could
not speak. But he wrote for her one of
the most famous of all love poems, in
which he declared that a man becomes
godlike
who sits and constantly in your presence
watches and hears you laugh.
Possibly about this same time he
courted her in a charming and well-
known lyric (Number 2 in his collected
verse), addressed to her pet sparrow, who
could be happy though its mistress and
the poet were miserable and thwarted.
Before he had progressed very far in
his courtship, his older brother, a
diplomat in the east, died suddenly. Perhaps
he had financed Catullus' literary career
in Rome. Certainly the poet never
mentioned his father's assistance. At any rate,
Catullus returned home in 60 B.C.
Verona was not then the romantic city of
Romeo and Juliet. In it, the poet, with

no kindred spirits, was frankly bored.
One rhyme to a friend complained that
he found no poetic inspiration. Another
lyric begged a fellow poet to come and
visit him. Julius Caesar is known to have
lodged with his father several times
when going from his Gallic campaigns to
Rome, but Catullus did not like him.
In 57 B.C., apparently believing it was
time for him to get into politics, the poet
secured an appointment to the staff of
Memmius, Governor of Bithynia, in
northern Africa, but from the evidence of
Catullus' satirical poems, his superior
appropriated all the art treasures and the
gold. All that fell to the poet was a yacht:
Stranger, the bark you see before you
says
That in old times and in her early days
She was a lovely vessel that could make
The quickest voyages and overtake
All her competitors in sail or oar.
This vessel brought him home the
following year. On the way he stopped to
visit the tomb of his brother near the site
of Troy, where he wrote one of the most
beautiful of his elegiac poems (Number
101):
By ways remote and distant waters sped,
Brother, to thy sad graveside am I come
That I may give the last gifts to the
dead
And vainly parley with thy ashes
dumb. . . .
Take them, all drenched with a
brother's tear,
And, Brother, for all time, hail and
farewell.
Back in Rome, trouble-making Clodia,
after her husband's suspiciously sudden
death, had become the mistress of Cae-
lius. When his ardor cooled, she tried to
destroy his political career by bringing
all sorts of charges against him. Cicero,
the greatest orator of his time, defended
Caelius in an oration, still existing, that
completely demolished the reputation and
character of Clodia. But the returning
Catullus still felt some of "Lesbia's" old
charm, and again he wrote impassioned
lyrics to her. Some scholars have tried
to arrange the score or more in a pattern
to show the growth of their love, their
quarrels, charges of infidelity,
reconciliations, and the final break, but their
suppositions are pure guesswork. There is
not, for instance, any chronological clue
to the shortest and most memorable poem
about her (Number 85):
I hate and love. You ask perhaps how
that could be?
I know not, but I feel its agony.
Determined to leave her, Catullus wrote
(Number 8):
She-devil, damn you! What life's left
for you? . . .
Whom will you kiss? In whose lips set
your teeth?
Stop, Catullus! It's over; don't give in.
But he did write one more poem about
her, in Sapphic meter, asking several
friends to take her a message, "short and
not kindly," bidding farewell to her and
her "hundreds of lovers, whom she
exhausts sexually."
Poets ever since have been inspired to
translate and adapt these love lyrics.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674), has been called
an English Catullus, though he certainly
lacks the Latin poet's depth of passion.
Nearer in spirit was John Donne (1572-
1631), who claimed that Catullus was
only one of the "1,400 authors" the
English poet had analyzed.
Among the 116 poems of Catullus are
themes other than those on love. About
twenty-five deal with friendship in
various forms. Some, fewer but fiercer,
poetize his hates: false friendship,
pretension, infractions of the mo-al code, and
corruption in high places. His dislike of
Julius Caesar he expressed in the
invective of Number 93. Later, however, he
felt more kindly toward Caesar and made
amends by praising Caesar's undoubted
personal charm and military ability.
Among Catullus' works are several long
poems, including two wedding hymns
and two epyllia, or little epics, modeled
on those of the Alexandrian poets. One,
celebrating the marriage of Peleus and
495

Thetis, includes the story of Theseus and
Ariadne. The other, a translation of Calli-
machus' "Lock of Berenice," is one of the
sou-ces for Alexander Pope's "The Rape
of the Lock."
The largest number of the Carmina of
Catullus were satiric poems, sometimes
with invective or humor so vulgar that
they have shocked readers of later
centuries. Perhaps forty-six can be so
considered, but those are not the verses for
which Catullus will be remembered. He
is immortal because of his expressions of
passion and love, and for his inspired
poems of sadness, which, though only a
few, are enough to have made
Tennyson refer to Catullus as the tenderest of
Latin poets.
496

THE CASE OF SERGEANT GRISCHA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arnold Zweig (1887-
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1917
Locale: Russia
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Grischa, a Russian soldier
Babka, his mistress
von Lychow, a divisional general
Schieffenzahn, an administrative general
Winfribd, a German lieutenant
Critique:
The plot of this novel, an absorbing
account of the last months of World
War I, appeared first as a play in 1921.
Its great and deserved popularity led
Zweig to recast his characters in the
larger framework of a novel. Sergeant
Grischa, a Russian prisoner, is only a
pawn in the struggle between the
Prussian caste system and middle-class
opportunism. The reader senses at the
outset that Grischa has little chance to
escape in this clash of two German
philosophies.
The Story:
In the year 1917 the Russians were
nearly beaten, and the Germans
contented themselves with consolidating their
hold on Russian territory from Riga south
through Poland. With the end of the
bitter fighting a comradeship grew up
between the German soldiers and their
Russian prisoners. Even so, Sergeant
Grischa Iljitsch Paprotkin was
determined to get away. His work was not
hard and his cheerful strength had made
him foreman of the labor gang and a
general favorite with his German captors.
But Grischa, thinking of his wife and
son far to the east, made his plans as
he loaded lumber into freight cars on the
railroad siding. He made a tunnel in
the car, a wooden tunnel about the
size of a coffin. That night he succeeded
in concealing himself in his hideout.
Before daybreak the train pulled out.
Grischa did not know it, but his train
went far to the south. After four days
the train came to a stop. With his stolen
pliers Grischa opened the door and
walked cautiously away from the railroad
tracks. Guided only by his small
compass, he set his path toward the east.
The thick underbrush made traveling
difficult. Somewhere along the route
Grischa picked up an old umbrella. By
binding several ribs together with a string
and using a long thong, he had a
serviceable bow. Another rib made an arrow.
With patient waiting he could shoot
rabbits in the snow and he seldom went
hungry. One day he came to the blasted
area of a battlefield, where he built a
fire in a ruined dugout and heated snow
water for a bath. Taking off his upper
clothes, Grischa stretched out and began
to wash himself.
A curious pair, attracted by his fire,
surprised him in his retreat. One was a
Russian soldier, a deserter, and the other
was Babka, a small, dirty woman whose
gray hair justified her name,
"Grandmother." Both were armed. After they
became acquainted, Grischa knew he was
in luck, for they were the leaders of a
band of refugees camped comfortably
nearby in a wooden house made from
old German dugouts.
THE CASE OF SERGEANT GRISCHA by Arnold Zweig. Translated by Eric Suttoa. By pennissio* of the
publishers, The Vikiag Press, lac Copyright, 1928, by The Viking Press, Inc.
497

Grischa stayed with the refugees the
rest of the winter. He cut wood
energetically and traded in the villages of
friendly peasants. More important, he
slept with Babka, who was young and
vital under her misshapen clothes. Three
years of war had turned her hair gray.
Under the shrewd leadership of Babka
by day, and warmed in her bed at night,
Grischa became a man again.
The band of refugees scattered in the
spring. Grischa and two companions were
the first to leave. Grischa felt reasonably
safe. Babka had given him the
identification tag of a dead Russian soldier and
he called himself by a new name. He
was no longer Grischa Paprotkin, an
escaped prisoner, but Sergeant Pav-
lovitsch Bjuscheff, a deserter from the
Russian army who was trying to get
back to the Russian lines.
In Mervinsk the Germans had
established military headquarters. With litde
fighting to be done, the rivalry between
field troops and the military police grew
more bitter. The fighting men under
old General von Lychow were technically
in charge of the town, but the military
police under General SchiefFenzahn had
been stationed in Mervinsk so long that
SchiefFenzahn had consolidated his hold
on the whole district. Von Lychow was
a Prussian, a stern man but just and
human; SchiefFenzahn was an upstart
more concerned with power.
Outside the city stood several rows of
small wooden villas. Many of them now
housed German officers. Grischa, gaunt
and dirty, came upon these villas one
day and hid in an empty one. A few
days later alert military police discovered
him there.
The man called BjuschefF was not
really afraid at his trial. Even when they
said he must be a spy because he had
spent so many months behind the
German line, he was easy in his mind. They
would merely hold him prisoner a little
while in the town of Mervinsk. Surely
the war would end soon. But the court
declared that a Russian deserter who,
according to his own story, had wandered
about in German territory for nearly
two years was by definition a spy.
Sergeant BjuschefF was condemned to die.
Scarcely understanding what he was
told, Grischa was led back to his cell.
When the truth dawned on him, he
called out so violendy that an officer
came to quiet the disturbance and to him
Grischa told his whole story. He was
not BjuschefF the deserter, but Grischa
the escaped prisoner.
Ponsanski, a famous Jewish lawyer
and aide to General von Lychow,
questioned the prisoner. Impressed by the
story of changed identity, but interested
only from a legal point of view,
Ponsanski collected all the evidence he could
and went to von Lychow. With the
general's permission, two guards who
had known Grischa in his former prison
camp went all the way to Mervinsk and
identified him. With legal logic
Ponsanski claimed that the court-martial
decision should be set aside. All the
evidence, depositions, and signatures were
put in a neat packet and forwarded to
SchiefFenzahn with a request that the
Komandatur indicate which military
court now had jurisdiction over the case
of Sergeant Grischa.
In some way Babka learned where
Grischa was imprisoned. Walking
barefoot, she went to Mervinsk in the
disguise of a peddler woman. She was now
carrying Grischa's child. Her plan was
simple. She would bring berries and
fruit to the post to sell to the Germans.
She would get in to see Grischa. Then,
after she had become a familiar visitor,
she would poison the guards' schnapps.
With the Germans dead, Grischa could
walk out a free man once more.
But Grischa would not agree to hei
plan. He knew that all his papers had
been sent away for final judgment.
Anyway, the war would soon be over.
When Grischa's papers went to the
Komandatur, they came before Wilhelmi,
his aide. Knowing the temper of Schief-
fenzahn, Wilhelmi recommended that
498

Grwcha be executed. When that advice
was known in Mervinsk, von Lychow
was indignant. A new request was
forwarded to Schieffenzahn.
Schieffenzahn grew a little tired of the
affair. Hearing that von Lychow was
coming to see him, he sent a telegram
ordering Grischa's execution within
twenty-four hours. Von Lychow
protested. Because the old Prussian had
influence at court, Schieffenzahn
telegraphed a reprieve.
That telegram was never delivered
in Mervinsk because of a snowstorm.
Grischa knew at last that he would
be shot. When Babka brought in the
poisoned schnapps, he poured the drink
down the drain. He was shot according
to Schieffenzahn's orders, and he died
like a soldier after digging his own
grave. Babka's child and his was born
just after his death.
In Berlin von Lychow smarted. He
drew up the full particulars of the case
and presented his report to the emperor.
The kaiser promised to demote
Schieffenzahn, but his mind was distracted
by a present of a jeweled casket.
Because of the kaiser's joy in a new toy,
Schieffenzahn got off with a light
reprimand. The case of Sergeant Grischa was
closed.
499

CASS TIMBERLANE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1940's
Locale: Grand Republic, Minnesota
First published: 1945
Principal characters:
Cass Timberlane, a district judge
Jinny Marshland Timberlane, his wife
Bradd Criley, Jinny's lover
Critique:
In Cass Timberlane, Sinclair Lewis
has once again attacked his favorite
enemy, the smugness and cruelty of
small-town life. With his usual double-
edged pen he has drawn portraits of the
newly rich, who consider anyone with
an income of less than ten thousand
dollars to be a revolutionist; of the "good"
families, who are but one generation
removed from bartenders or hod
carriers; of the virtuous gossips who attack
the morals of the lower classes but who
are more generous in their attitudes
toward the affairs of their social equals.
The story of Cass Timberlane continues
the examination of American manners
and morals Lewis began in Main Street
and Babbitt.
The Story:
After his divorce from his wife,
Blanche, Judge Cass Timberlane
continued to meet his old friends socially
and to hold court in his usual honest
and effective manner, but it was not
until Jinny Marshland appeared in his
court as witness in a routine case that
Cass once more began to find his life
interesting. Because Cass was forty-one
and Jinny in her early twenties, he told
himself that he was foolish to think of
her in a romantic manner. But in spite
of his logical reasoning, Cass thought
more and more about Jinny; and within
a few days of their first meeting he had
arranged to see her again. Dignified
Judge Cass Timberlane was falling in
love.
He had no smooth romance. His
friends thought him stupid to become
involved with a young girl of the
working class. It seemed strange to Cass that
his friends would dare to criticize
anyone. For example, there was Dr. Roy
Drover, who openly made love to any
and every cheap girl he met without
bothering to conceal his infidelities from
his wife. In the same class were Boone
and Queenie Havock, both loud, brassy
and very vulgar; Jay Laverick, rich,
lustful, and a drunkard; Bradd Criley,
notorious for his affairs with the wives of bis
best friends. Cass Timberlane's friends
were not the only ones opposed to the
affair. Jinny's young radical friends
thought Cass a stuffy conservative. The
only two people who were sympathetic
with Cass were Chris Grau, who also
wanted to marry him, and Mrs. Higbee,
his housekeeper.
What his friends thought of Jinny did
not matter; it was what Jinny would
think of them that worried Cass at the
time of their marriage. After the
honeymoon they lived in his old family home,
although Jinny would have preferred
a new house in the country club section.
They went out seldom, for they were
happy enough to stay at home together.
It was the first year of the war, and
Jinny found work to do in various civic
activities. Cass hoped that the work
CASS TIMBERLANE by Sinclair Lewis. By permission of the author and the publishers, Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 19+5, by Sinclair Lewis.
500

would keep her stimulated. When he
noticed that she was beginning to be
bored by civic duties, he encouraged her
to accept a part in a little theater
production. Later he was sorry that he had
encouraged her, for the town began to
talk about Jinny and various male
members of the cast, particularly Jay Laverick.
When Cass spoke to her about the gossip,
Jinny accused him of being unreasonably
jealous and then apologized. Cass loved
her more than ever.
Cass sold some property at an
unexpectedly high price and bought the new
house in the country club district.
While waiting for it to be finished,
they took a trip to New York. At first
Jinny was enchanted with the size and
brightness of the city, but soon she was
bored by the unfriendliness of everyone
she met until Bradd Criley arrived in
New York and took them under his
wing. Then Jinny enjoyed herself. Cass
was not so happy.
Shordy after they returned home, they
learned that Jinny was pregnant. But
their happiness was marred by the
knowledge that Jinny had diabetes. Roy
Drover, her doctor, assured Cass there
was no cause for worry if Jinny followed
her diet and got plenty of rest. Because
Bradd Criley seemed to amuse her, Cass
often invited him to the house.
Jinny went through her delivery safely,
but the baby died. For many weeks
afterward she would see no one but Cass.
Then she suddenly, for no apparent
reason, wanted to have a party almost
every night. Cass tried to be patient
with her, for he knew that she was still
reacting from the death of the baby and
also that the restrictions placed on her
by her illness were irritating. WTien his
friends once again warned him about
allowing Jinny to see so much of Bradd,
his patience wore thin; he almost ordered
Jinny to stop seeing Bradd, and he told
Bradd to stay away from Jinny. Later
Bradd apologized to Cass and the three
were friends once more. After Bradd
moved to New York, all tension between
Jinny and Cass seemed to disappear for
a time. Then Jinny grew restless again
and began to talk of moving to a larger
city. Although Cass prized his judgeship
and hated to give it up, he was still
willing to do anything for his wife. They
took another trip to New York, where
Cass hoped to find a partnership in an
established law firm. They met Bradd
during their visit. Although he trusted
his wife, Cass was relieved when Jinny
told him that she knew she would not
really like living in New York and that
she wanted to go home. They left
hurriedly, without seeing Bradd again
before their departure.
On their first night at home Jinny *old
Cass that she loved Bradd, that he had
become her lover while she was in New
York. When Cass refused to give her
a divorce until she had had ample time
to consider her own wishes carefully,
she went back to New York, to stay
with Bradd's sister until Cass would
free her. For Cass, the town, the house,
his friends, and his work were now
meaningless. He could think only of
Jinny. Then he had a telegram from
her. Failing to follow her diet, she
was desperately ill and she wanted Cass.
He flew to New York that night. He
found Jinny in a coma, but she awakened
long enough to ask him to take her
home.
After Jinny could be moved, Cass
took her to a seashore hotel and then
home. He had forgiven her completely,
but he warned her that she would have
to work hard to win back their friends.
They still had to make their own private
adjustment. It was not until Bradd
returned to Grand Republic that Jinny
was able to see him as the charming
philanderer that he really was. That
night she went to Cass' room. He
received her as if she had never been
away.
501

CASTE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas William Robertson (1829-1871)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: 1867
Principal characters:
The Honorable George D'Alroy, a young man of social position
Marquise de St. Maur, George D'Alroy's mother
Esther Eccles, an actress loved by George D'Alroy
Eccles, Esther's drunken father
Polly, Esther's sister
Captain Hawtree, George D'Alroy's friend
Sam Gbrrtdge, Polly's fiance"
Critique:
Robertson is famous in the history of
nineteenth-century British drama for his
efforts to introduce naturalism in
dialogue, feeling, and situation. He felt that
British drama needed plays which would
reflect the life of the times without
artificialities of plot and violence of passion.
Critics failed to appreciate his pioneering
in realistic drama, but the contemporary
theatergoers patronized productions of his
dramas in large numbers. To the reader
of today, accustomed to extreme realism
in both fiction and drama, Robertson's
plays seem rather conventional, unless
one remembers that he was a pioneer
and his work was revolutionary at the
time. When compared to the drama of
the 1920's and later, the realism of Caste
may seem questionable, the stage business
lacking in finesse, and the dialogue
stilted. But in a historical analysis, plays like
this are important for the changes they
mark in the development of the drama.
The Story:
Captain George D'Alroy, whose
mother was married to a French marquis, fell
in love with a beautiful dancer named
Esther Eccles. Despite his mother's pride
in rank and family, he was resolved to
marry the girl, but his good sense warned
him that the marriage might result in his
mother's unhappiness. In an effort to
prove he was right in wishing to marry
her, in spite of her place in a lower level
of society, D'Alroy took his friend,
Captain Hawtree, to see Esther at her home.
Hawtree agreed that Esther was a
charming girl. Indeed, he himself was
quite charmed with Esther's sister Polly.
He warned D'Alroy, however, that the
differences in social position and culture
were too great to be bridged; he pointed
out what D'Alroy wished to overlook-
that Esther's father was a confirmed
drunkard and loafer and that Polly was
satisfied to marry a petty tradesman.
Hawtree tried to make D'Alroy see that
such people could never be acknowledged
as the relatives of the daughter-in-law of
the Marquise de St. Maur and the wife
of an officer in a good regiment.
When Hawtree recommended that
D'Alroy take a leave of absence from the
regiment and travel to the West Indies in an
effort to forget Esther, D'Alroy said that
he had already tried unsuccessfully to
stay away from her. He said also that
he would rather be dead than give her up
for good. D'Alroy pointed out that the
girl's love for him was worth more than
a title, at which statement Hawtree only
smiled.
Captain D'Alroy, refusing to listen to
his friend's well-intended advice, married
Esther, and the newly married pair moved
into good lodgings. A few weeks after
the wedding D'Alroy's regiment was
ordered to service in India. The captain
did not know how to break the news to
502

Esther. When the day of departure
arrived, he still had not told her. To add to
the complications, he had word that his
mother, the marquise, was coming to bid
him goodbye. Before he could tell Esther,
his mother arrived. Afraid to let his
mother meet Esther, D'Alroy had her
hide in a bedroom. Overhearing the
conversation, Esther learned that her
husband would embark within a few hours.
Unable to contain herself, she burst into
the room. The marquise misunderstood at
first and thought that Esther was her
son's mistress. When she learned that the
girl was his wife, however, she was only
slightly mollified. Then Esther's drunken
father came in, accompanied by Polly's
tradesman-fiance', Sam Gerridge. The
marquise was dismayed.
A few months after D'Alroy's
departure for India, Esther gave birth to a
son. While she was still convalescing,
word came that D'Alroy had been
captured by Sepoys and undoubtedly killed.
In addition, Esther was in need of money.
Her father, entrusted with the money
D'Alroy had left to provide for her, had
spent the funds on drink and
horse-racing. Too proud to ask her mother-in-law
for help, Esther lived in real poverty.
When the marquise heard of Esther's sad
straits, she offered to take the baby and
rear it as a grandson of the nobility ought
to be reared. Too spirited and loving to
accept the offer, Esther indignantly
showed the marquise to the door.
Esther then tried to get work as a
dancer, but the theater managers, knowing
her story, took advantage of her plight and
refused to pay her even a living wage,
so that she and the baby were forced to
rely on financial help from Polly's fianc£,
who had but little money of his own, and
on an unexpected check from Hawtree.
Esther felt truly degraded when she
found her father stealing the baby's gold
necklace in order to pawn it for money
to buy liquor.
Captain Hawtree, who had been
promoted to a majority, returned from India
and went to see what he might do to
help his friend's widow. He had not
even guessed the extent of Esther's
difficulties. The sight of him was too much
for her. She became ill and had to be put
to bed. Polly then invited Hawtree to
stay for tea with her and her fiance\
While they sat at tea, D'Alroy himself,
much to everyone's surprise, came to the
house.
D'Alroy told that after his capture he
had been befriended by a native whom
he had helped some time before. With
the assistance of the native and his own
daring in killing a guard with his bare
hands, D'Alroy had managed to escape
not long after Hawtree left India.
D'Alroy was surprised to learn that he
was the father of a son. Overjoyed, he
swore that he would buy the boy a pony
the next day. As soon as his first rapture at
seeing his child was over, D'Alroy wanted
to see his wife, but Polly was afraid that
the shock of seeing her supposedly dead
husband might kill Esther. Polly asked
D'Alroy to leave the room until she could
break the good news gently to her sister.
Esther was a sensitive woman, and it
took only a hint from Polly to let her
know the news was about D'Alroy. As
soon as she guessed, D'Alroy rushed into
the room and took her in his arms.
Scarcely a minute afterward, D'Alroy's mother
also arrived. Pleased with D'Alroy's
return, she forgave him his marriage to a
commoner and agreed to accept her son's
wife and the child without further regard
for Esther's inferior social rank.
Highly pleased with his mother's
change of heart and the splendid way in
which Esther had cared for herself and
the child during his absence, despite the
many terrible difficulties she had faced,
D'Alroy told Hawtree that Esther had
proved caste of no importance. He said
Esther had proved that a woman with
brains could surmount a crude and
vulgar background and make herself
capable of being accepted by the highest
classes of society.
In her own happiness Esther felt some-
503

what sorry for her sister, who was con- on the other hand, that she would be
tent to marry a tradesman. Polly thought, happier than Esther could possibly be.
504

THE CASTLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
Type of plot: Philosophical and religious allegory
Time of plot: Any time
Locale: Indefinite
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
K., a seeker
Frieda, a barmaid
Barnabas, a young man
Olga, and
Amalia, his sisters
Arthur, and
Jeremiah, K.'s assistants
Critique:
This unfinished novel has been called
a modern Pilgrim's Progress. K. tries to
find the grace of God so that he can
fulfill his life, but his path is beset with
the confusion of the modern world. K.'s
straightforward attack on the confusion
that surrounds the castle and his
unrelenting desire to solve his problems are
finally rewarded, but only at the time
of his death. The unique thing about
Kafka's allegory is the humor which
runs through it. The story itself is
emotionally and intellectually appealing.
The Story:
It was late in the evening when K.
arrived in the town which lay before
the castle of Count West-west. After
his long walk through deep snow K.
wanted to do nothing so much as go to
sleep. He went to an inn and fell asleep
by the fire, only to be awakened by a
man wanting to see his permit to stay in
the town. K. explained that he had just
arrived and that he had come at the
count's request to be the new land
surveyor. A telephone call to the castle
established the fact that a land surveyor
was expected. K. was allowed to rest in
peace.
The next morning, although his
assistants had not yet arrived, K. decided
to go to the castle to report for duty.
He set off through the snowy streets
towards the castle, which as he walked
seemed farther and farther away. After
a while he became tired, and he stopped
in a house for refreshment and directions.
As he left the house he saw two men
coming from the casde. He tried to
speak to them, but they refused to stop.
As evening came on K. got a ride back
to the inn in a sledge.
At the inn he met the two men he had
seen coming from the castle. They
introduced themselves as Arthur and
Jeremiah, and said that they were his
old assistants. They were not, but K.
accepted them, because he knew that
they had come from the casde, and
therefore must have been sent to help
him. Because he could not tell the
two men apart, so alike were they, he
called them both Arthur. He ordered
them to have a sledge to take him to the
casde in the morning. When they
refused, K. telephoned the castle. A voice
told him that he could never come to
the castle. Shortly afterward a messenger
named Barnabas arrived with a letter
from Klamm, a chief at the castle. K.
was ordered to report to the
superintendent of the town.
K. arranged for a room in the inn. He
asked Barnabas to let him go for a walk
with him. Barnabas, a kind young man,
agreed. He took K. to his home to meet
his two sisters, Olga and Amalia, and his
THE CASTLE by Franz Kafka. Translated by Edwin and Willa Muir. By permission of the publishers, Alfred
A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1930, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
505

sickly old mother and father. But K.
was ill at ease; it was Barnabas, not he,
who had come home. When Olga left
to get some beer from a nearby inn, K.
went with her. At the inn it was made
clear that he would be welcome only in
the bar. The other rooms were reserved
for the gentlemen from the castle.
In the bar K. quickly made friends
with the barmaid, Frieda, who seemed
to wish to save him from Olga and her
family. She hid K. underneath the
counter. K. did not understand what
was happening. He learned that Frieda
had been Klamm's mistress.
Frieda was determined to stay with
K. from then on, if K. were willing. K.
thought he might as well marry her.
Determined to get through to the castle,
he thought his chances would improve
if he married a girl who had been a
chief's mistress. Arthur and Jeremiah
came into the room and watched them.
K. sent the men away. Frieda decided
to go to the inn where K. was staying.
K. went to call on the village
superintendent, whom he found sick in bed
with gout. From him K. learned that a
land surveyor had been needed several
years before, but that nobody knew why
K. had now come to fill the unnecessary
post. When K. showed him Klamms
letter, the superintendent said that it
was of no importance. The
superintendent convinced him that his arrival
in the town was a result of confusion.
K. decided to remain and find work so
that he could become an accepted citizen
of the town.
By the time K. returned to the inn
Frieda had made his room comfortable.
The schoolmaster came to offer K. the job
of janitor at the school. At Frieda's
insistence, K. accepted. That night K.,
Frieda, and the two assistants went to the
school to live. The next morning the
assistants tricked K. into so many
arguments with the teachers that K. dismissed
both of them. After he had done his
day's work, he slipped away from Frieda
and went to Barnabas' house, to see if he
had received a message from the castle.
Barnabas was not at home. Olga
explained that her family was an outcast
group because of Amalia's refusal to
become the mistress of one of the
gentlemen of the castle. He had written her
a very crude and obscene letter, which
Amalia tore up. Afterward the whole
town had turned against them. K. was
so interested in this story that he did
not realize how late he had stayed. When
he finally got ready to go, he saw that
Jeremiah was outside spying on him.
K. slipped out the back way, but came
back down the street and asked Jeremiah
why he was there. The man sullenly
answered that Frieda had sent him. She
had gone back to her old job at the
tavern and never wanted to see K. again.
Barnabas came up with the news that
one of the most important men from the
castle was waiting at the tavern to see K.
At the tavern he learned that the
gendeman had gone to sleep. As he
stood in the hall, he saw Frieda going
down another corridor. He ran after
her to explain why he had stayed away
so long with Olga, and he asked her to
come back to him. Just as she seemed
to relent, Jeremiah came from one of
the rooms and persuaded Frieda to go
with him. Frieda left K. forever.
(At this point the novel in its
published form ends, and for the rest of
the story we have only the few
statements made by Kafka to his friends in
conversation. K. was to continue his
fight to live and work in the town and
eventually to reach the casde. On his
deathbed he was to receive a call from
the casde, a message granting him the
right to live in the town in peace.)
506

THE CASTLE OF FRATTA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ippolito Nievo (1831-1861)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1775-1852
Locale: Italy and England
First published: 1867
Principal characters:
Carlo Altovitt, an Italian patriot, the narrator
Giovanni, Count of Fratta
Countess Cleonice, his wife
Clara, and
Pis ana, their daughters
Aquilina Provedoni, Carlo's wife
Monsignor Orlando, the count's brother
Lucilio Vianello, a young doctor, in love with Clara
Leopardo Provedoni, Carlo's friend
Doretta, his wife
Raimonoo di Venchterbdo, Doretta's lover
Father Pendola, a Jesuit
Alberto Partistagno, a young nobleman
Giuuo del Ponte, a poet in love with Pisana
Todero Altoviti, Carlo's father
Aglaura, Carlo's half-sister
Spiro Apostulos, son of a Greek banker, later Aolaura's husband
Mauro Navagero, an old nobleman, Pisana's husband
Almoro Frumier, Senator of Venice
The Spaccafumo, a bandit
Napoleon Bonaparte
o never
Critique:
The Castle of Fratta, second only to
Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed
among Italian novels of the-nineteenth
century, is the English
fessioni di un otfuagent
tween December, 1857,
1858, by Ippolito Nievo,
baldfs historic "Thousand."
lived to revise his work, to which he
originally gave the patriotic title, Le Con-
fessioni di un ltaliano; the later change
of name was made by his publisher, who
thought Nievo's title too forthright for
those unsettled times. The novel, a work
of tremendous vigor, presents a
remarkable gallery of character portraits, both
real and imaginary, and tells with
passionate patriotic feeling of half a century
of strife that led at last to the period of
the Risorgimento and the liberation of
Italy. Lucrlio Vianello is undoubtedly
modeled after the life of Mazzini. Gulo
Altoviti is a man dedicated to two great
passions, his love of freedom and his love
for Pisana, that lovely, wayward, sensual
woman capable of great loyalty and ciuol
betrayal. Certainly she must be listed
among the notable women of Italian
fiction. <^--
The Story:
Carlo Altoviti, born in Venice on the
Day of St. Luke the Evangelist in 1775,
spent his bovhood in the ancient,
decaying casrle of Fratta, the neglected,
unwanted poor relation in a household of
feudal gentry such as he would live to
see swept away by war and revolutions.
His mother, the sister of the Countess of
Fratta, had made a runaway match with
THE CASTLE OF FRATTA by Ippolito Nievo. Translated by Lrvett F. Edwards. By permission of the
Rubhshers, Houghton Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1954, by The Folio Society. Copyright, 1959, by Lovett F.
507

an adventurer named Todero Altoviti,
but had deserted her husband a few
months later. When her child was born,
the infant had been dispatched at once
to Fratta. In his childhood Carlo knew
only that his mother was dead and that
Irs father was reported to have turned
Turk somewhere in the Levant.
The household at Fratta was made up
of the austere, pompous count and his
haughty wife; their daughters, Clara and
Pisana; the count's brother, Monsignor
Orlando, a stupid, gluttonous priest; the
chancellor who managed the count's
business affairs; Captain Sandracca, the
swaggering but timid captain of militia; the
chaplain, and a number of hangers-on
and servants. Carlo's place was a menial
one, and he spent most of his time in the
cavernous, gloomy kitchen with the
retainers. Sometimes he slipped away to
play with his cousin Pisana, who even as
a child was a creature of whims and
passions, contradictions and loyalties; in
later years she was to make Carlo's life
a torment and a delight. The older
daughter, Clara, was a grave, lovely girl who
devoted herself to the care of her
bedridden grandmother, Lady Badoer. It was
Clara who drew the young men of the
Friuli region to Fratta. Among these were
Giulio del Ponte, a writer of graceful
verses; Lucilio Vianello, a medical
student, and Alberto Partistagno, a young
man of noble family.
The Spaccafumo, a bandit who had
once rescued young Carlo from the
marshes, was the friend of Antonio
Provedoni, the mayor of the commune.
When Antonio's son Leopardo courted
Doretta, daughter of the chancellor of
Venchieredo, he was set upon by some
bullies of Venchieredo and the
Spaccafumo rescued him. The Count of
Venchieredo charged that the chaplain of
Fratta had sheltered the bandit and he
then laid siege to Fratta; his real
purpose was to secure some incriminating
documents that a retainer at Fratta
possessed. His plan was thwarted by Lucilio
Vianello, who put the castle in a state
of defense, and by Partistagno, who
arrived with his retainers to put the
men of Venchieredo to rout. Later Carlo
saved the documents from theft. The
Count of Venchieredo was sentenced to
ten years in prison. With Venchieredo
humbled, Leopardo was free to marry
Doretta.
When the news of the French
Revolution reached Venice and men began to
dream of a new kind of freedom, the
Inquisition of State began a reign of terror.
Seeing troubled times ahead, Almoro
Frumier, a Venetian senator and
kinsman of the Count of Fratta, moved with
his family to Portogruaro. There the
people of Fratta went frequently to visit, and
Carlo, now an acknowledged member of
the family, went with them. The boy
was often thrown into moods of
depression as Pisana revealed her fliratatious
nature among the young gallants of the
region. Clara was kinder to him than
ever, but Pisana paid no attention to his
bitterness and gloom.
For relief, Carlo turned to his studies
so earnestly that the count decided to
send him to Padua to study for his
doctor's degree. About the same time Rai-
mondo di Venchieredo, son of the
disgraced castellan, returned to his nearby
castle and Pisana began to pay attention
to the young nobleman. Meanwhile,
Clara was being courted by a number of
aristocratic dandies. The countess tried
to arrange a match between young
Venchieredo and Clara; however, the alliance
was unacceptable to Venetian authorities.
Partistagno became Clara's accepted
suitor, but she refused him; people said
that she was really in love with Lucilio.
When the countess took her daughter to
Venice, Lucilio, after taking his degree
at Padua, settled there also.
Carlo, on a scholarship, went to Padua
to study shortly before the French
invaded Italy. Returning to Fratta for a
visit, he found Pisana now a beautiful
woman, demanding admiration from all.
Her chief aim was Giulio del Ponte. Back
in Padua, Carlo came under the influence
of Amilcare Dossi, a young man of
liberal political views, and became an ardent
508

Voltairian. Then word came that the old
chancellor had died at Fratta, leaving
affairs disordered; Carlo returned to take
over his duties. Clara entered the
Convent of St. Therese. The old count died
and Pisana went to Venice.
One day news arrived that a young
French general, Napoleon Bonaparte,
had taken command of the Army of the
Alps. Within a few months he controlled
the fate of Italy. The people of Fratta
fled as the French advanced. Returning
from a trip to Portogruaro, Carlo found
Fratta deserted and looted and old Lady
Badoer dying as the result of French
atrocities. When Carlo went to Urbino
to protest, Napoleon refused to listen to
his story.
A change came in Carlo's fortunes
when his father returned unexpectedly
to Venice. Grown wealthy in trade, he
planned to establish a family of social
and political prestige. His hopes failed
when Venice capitulated to the French
in 1797. The fall of the patricians
completed the ruin of the Frattas. Pisana
gave in to her mother's urgings and
married an aged kinsman, Mauro Nava-
gero. Lucilio begged Clara to marry him,
but she refused to return to a world that
had no respect for God and the Church.
When the French turned Venice over to
Austria, Carlo prepared to take refuge in
the Cisalpine Republic. His father
returned to the Levant after giving him a
letter of credit on Apostulos, a Greek
banker. Pisana became Carlo's mistress
and lived with him until he was forced to
flee the city. In Milan he learned that
Aglaura Apostulos, his companion in his
flight, was his half-sister.
Carlo fought with the Cisalpine
Legion under Ettore Carafa, who became
Pisana's lover. When English and
Russian troops entered Naples, Carafa was
captured and hanged. Carlo, Lucilio, and
Pisana escaped aboard a Portuguese ship
to Genoa. After the battle of Marengo,
Carlo served as Secretary of Finances at
Ferrara. Returning to Fratta after the
Peace of Pressburg, Carlo married Aqui-
lina Provedoni; two children were born
to them. Later he fought under General
Pepe against the Austrians. Captured, he
was sentenced to death but was later
pardoned. Accompanied by Pisana, he went
to London. There he lost his sight,
restored to him through an operation
performed by Lucilio. Pisana, who had
begged in the streets in order to provide
for Carlo during his illness, died.
Carlo returned to Venice in 1823 and
engaged in trade until he and Aquilina
returned to the Friuli in 1848. Aquilina
died soon afterward. At last Carlo found
courage to return to the site of the Castle
of Fratta. Only a few stones remained of
the place so full of memories of the past.
Writing his memoirs, he realized that
these were memories of sweetness as well
as grief.
509

THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of plot: Twelfth century
Locale: Italy
First published: 1764
Principal characters:
Manfred, Prince of Otranto
Matilda, Manfred's daughter
Conrad, Manfred's son
Isabella, Conrad's fiancee
Father Jerome, a priest
Theodore, a young peasant, true heir to Otranto
Critique:
This book is one of the earliest and
most famous of the Gothic novels, a
literary type characterized by supernatural
occurrences and a mysterious or sinister
atmosphere. These supernatural
occurrences do not excite much horror and
dread in the modern reader, for they are
patendy tricks of the author to create
interest. The Castle of Otranto is of
particular interest to the student of
literature for its technique and style.
The Story:
Manfred, the prince of Otranto,
planned to marry his fifteen-year-old
son, Conrad, to Isabella, daughter of the
Marquis of Vicenza. But on the day of
the wedding a strange thing happened.
A servant ran into the hall and informed
the assembled company that a huge
helmet had appeared mysteriously in the
courtyard of the castle.
When Count Manfred and his guests
rushed into the courtyard, they found
Conrad crushed to death beneath a
gigantic helmet adorned with waving black
Slumes. Theodore, a young peasant,
eclared the helmet was like that on a
statue of Prince Alfonso the Good which
stood in the chapel. Another spectator
shouted that the helmet was missing from
the statue. Prince Manfred imprisoned
the young peasant as a magician and
charged him with the murder of the heir
to Otranto.
That evening Manfred sent for
Isabella. He informed her that he intended
to divorce his wife so that he himself
might marry Isabella and have another
male heir. Frightened, Isabella ran away
and lost herself in the passages beneatn
the casde. There she encountered
Theodore, who helped her to escape through
an underground passage into a nearby
church. Manfred, seaching for the girl,
accused the young man of aiding her. As
he was threatening Theodore, servants
rushed up to tell the prince of a giant
sleeping in the great hall of the casde.
When Manfred returned to the hall, the
giant had disappeared.
The following morning Father Jerome
came to inform Manfred and his wife
that Isabella had taken sanctuary at the
altar of his church. Sending nis wife
away, Manfred called upon the priest to
aid nim in divorcing his wife and
marrying Isabella. Father Jerome refused,
warning Manfred that heaven would
have revenge on him for harboring such
thoughts. The priest unthinkingly
suggested Isabella might be in love with the
handsome young peasant who had aided
in her escape.
Manfred, enraged at the possibility,
confronted Theodore. Although the
young man did not deny having aided
the princess, he claimed never to have
seen her before. The frustrated Manfred
ordered him to the courtyard to be
executed, and Father Jerome was called to
give absolution to the condemned man.
But when the collar of the lad was
loosened, the priest discovered a birthmark
510

which proved the young peasant was
Father Jerome's son, born before the
priest had entered the Church. Manfred
offered to stay the execution if the priest
would deliver Isabella to him. At that
moment a trumpet sounded at the gates
of the castle.
The trumpet signaled the arrival of
a herald from the Knight of the Gigantic
Sabre, champion of Isabella's father, the
rightful heir to Otranto. Greeting
Manfred as a usurper, the herald demanded
the immediate release of Isabella and
the abdication of Manfred, or else the
satisfaction of mortal combat. Manfred
invited the Knight of the Gigantic Sabre
to the castle, hoping through him to get
permission to marry Isabella and keep
the throne. The knight entered the castle
with five hundred men at arms and a
hundred more carrying one gigantic sword.
After a feast, during which the strange
knight kept silence and raised his visor
only to pass food into his mouth, Manfred
broached the question of marrying
Isabella, telling the knight he wished to
marry again to insure himself an heir.
Before he had finished, Father Jerome
arrived with the news of Isabella's
disappearance from the church. After
everyone had gone to find Isabella, Matilda
assisted Theodore to escape from the
castle.
In the forest Theodore met Isabella
and promised to protect her. Shortly
thereafter they met the Knight of the
Gigantic Sabre. Fearing the knight meant
harm to Isabella, the young man
overcame him in combat. Thinking himself
about to die, the knight revealed to
Isabella that he was her father in disguise.
They all returned to the castle. There
Isabella's father confided to her that he
had discovered the gigantic sword in the
Holy Land. It was a miraculous weapon,
for on the blade it was written that only
the blood of Manfred could atone for the
wrongs committed on the family of the
true ruler of Otranto. Manfred returned
to the castle, where he found Theodore
dressed in armor. It seemed to Manfred
that the young man resembled the prince
whose throne Manfred had usurped.
Manfred still hoped to wed Isabella,
and he craftily won her father's consent
by betrothing that nobleman to Matilda.
At that point a nearby statue dripped
blood from its nose, an omen that
disaster would follow those proposed
marriages.
Manfred saw only two courses open to
him. One was to surrender all claims
to Otranto; the other was to go ahead
with his plan to marry Isabella. In either
case it appeared that fate was against his
success. Nor did a second appearance
of the giant in the castle ease the anxiety
he felt. When news of the giant came
to Isabella's father, he decided not to
court disaster for himself by marrying
Matilda or by permitting Manfred to
marry his daughter. His resolution was
increased when a skeleton in the rags of
a hermit called upon him to renounce
Matilda.
Hours later Manfred was told that
Theodore was in the chapel with a
woman. Jealous, he went to the chapel
and stabbed the woman, who was his own
daughter Matilda. Over the body of
Matilda, Theodore announced that he
was the true ruler of Otranto. Suddenly
there appeared the giant form of the
dead Prince Alfonso, who proclaimed
Theodore to be the true heir. Then he
ascended to heaven where he was
received by St. Nicholas.
The truth was now made known.
Theodore was the son of Father Jerome,
then prince of Falconara, and Alfonso's
daughter. Manfred confessed his
usurpation and he and his wife entered
neighboring convents. Theodore married
Isabella and ruled as the new prince of
Otranto.
511

CASTLE RACKRENT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Ireland
Tint published: 1800
Principal characters:
Honest Thady Quirk, the narrator
Sir Kit Rackrent, owner of Casde Rackrent
Sir Condy Rackrent, Sir Kit's heir
Isabella, Condy's wife
Judy McQunut, Thady s niece
Jason, Thady's son
Critique:
Pardy imaginative and partly critical,
the story of Castle Rackrent is related
with all the native candor of an Irish
family servant, Thady Quirk. The story
is bare of any stylistic embellishments
and comes out as a straightforward
narrative of events, colored only by the
authentic Irish wit and language of the
narrator. A footnoted copy would enable
a modern reader to enjoy some of the
hidden references in Thady's language.
The Story:
After the death of his fine and
generous master, Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin,
Honest Thady Quirk found himself
working at Casde Rackrent for the heir,
Sir Murtagh, a penny-pinching owner
with a vicious temper. Lady Murtagh,
too, was more interested in money than
in the happiness of her tenants, and after
Sir Murtagh died in a fit of temper she
stripped Casde Rackrent of its treasures
and went to live in London. The estate
passed to her husband's younger brother,
Sir Kit Rackrent, a wild, carefree man.
Finding the estate in debt and heavily
mortgaged, Sir Kit went to England to
marry a rich wife who would repair the
estate and bring a dowry for his support.
At last he came back with the wealthy
wife, a Jewess he had married while
staying in Bath. To Honest Thady it
was soon apparent that there was no love
between the honeymooners. One serious
difficulty arose over the presence of pig
meat on the dinner table. Lady Kit
had insisted that no such meat be served,
but Sir Kit defied her orders. When the
meat appeared on the table, Lady Kit
retired to her room and her husband
locked her in. She remained a prisoner
for seven years. When she became very
ill and seemed to be dying, Sir Kit tried
to influence her to leave her jewels to
him, but she refused. It was assumed she
would die shortly, and all eligible ladies
in the neighborhood were endeavoring
to become the next wife of Kit Rackrent.
So much controversy arose over his
possible choice that Sir Kit was finally
challenged and killed in a duel. Miraculously
recovering from her illness Lady Kit went
to London. The next heir was Sir Condy
Rackrent, a distant cousin of Sir Kit.
Sir Condy Rackrent was a spendthrift,
but a good-natured master. Although
the estate was more deeply in debt than
ever, the new master made no attempt to
relieve the impoverished condition of his
holdings. On the neighboring estate lived
a family with whom Sir Condy soon
began a steadfast friendship. The
youngest daughter, Isabella, took a fancy to
Sir Condy, but her father would not
hear of a match between his family and
the owner of Castle Rackrent. Sir Condy
really loved Judy, the grandniece of
Honest Thady. One day in Thady's
presence Sir Condy tossed a coin to
determine which girl he would marry. Judy
lost, and in a short while Sir Condy
eloped with Isabella.
It had been expected that Isabella
could bring some money to the estate,
but when she married Sir Condy she was
512

disinherited by her father. While the
newlyweds lived in careless luxury, the
house and grounds fell into neglect, and
the servants and the tenants wrung their
hands in distress. At last Sir Condy,
learning of a vacancy in the coming
elections, decided to stand for Parliament.
He won the election, but too late to
save himself from his creditors.
Honest Thady's son, Jason, a legal
administrator, helped a neighbor to buy
up all of Sir Condy's debts. With so
much power in his hands Jason even
scorned his own father. When Lady
Condy learned that her husband's debtors
were closing in on him, she complied
with the demands of her family and
returned to her father's house. True to his
good-natured generosity, Sir Condy wrote
a will for his wife in which he willed
her his land and five hundred pounds
a year after his death. When Jason
demanded payment for the Rackrent debts,
Sir Condy said he had no way of
paying, explaining that he had given an
income of five hundred a year to Lady
Condy. Jason insisted Sir Condy sell
Castle Rackrent and all the estates to
satisfy his creditors. With no other
recourse, Sir Condy agreed. The five
hundred a year was still guaranteed for
Isabella. Thady was grief-stricken that
his son had maneuvered this piece of
villainy against Sir Condy. Jason now
would have nothing to do with Honest
Thady.
On her way back to her father's house,
Lady Condy s carriage was upset and
she was nearly killed. Assuming she
would surely die, Jason hurried to Sir
Condy with a proposal that Sir Condy
sell him Lady Condy's yearly income.
Sir Condy, needing the cash, complied
with Jason's proposal.
Judy McQuirk had been married and
her husband had died. She paid a call
on Sir Condy, who was staying at Thady's
lodge. The old servant felt certain that
now Judy would become Lady Rackrent,
but Judy told her uncle that there was
no point to being a lady without a castle
to accompany the title. She hinted she
might do better to marry Jason, who at
least held the lands. Thady tried to
dissuade her from such a thought, but
Judy was bent on fortune hunting.
Sir Condy had been indulging in such
excesses of food and drink that he
suffered from gout. One night at a drinking
party he drank a large draught too quickly
and died a few days later. After Sir
Condy's death Jason and Lady Condy,
who nad now recovered, went to court
over the title of the estate. Some said
Jason would get the land and others said
Lady Condy would win. Thady could
only guess how the suit would come out.
513

CASUALS OF THE SEA
Type of work: Novel
Author: William McFee (1881- )
Tyfe of flat: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1916
Principal characters:
Bert Gooderich, a machinist
Mary, his wife
Young Bert, his son
Hannibal, another son
Minnie, Mary's daughter
Briscoe, a ship's captain
Nellie, Hannibal's wife
Critique:
Casuals of the Sea is a family study,
the story of three children who aid what
they wanted to do. William McFee is
especially well qualified to write of the
the sea, and those portions of the novel
which take place aboard the Caryatid
are particularly vivid.
The Story:
Mary fell in love with the baker's
boy. When he deserted her, she went
home, with country-bred fortitude, to
bear her child. After Minnie was born,
Mary received a proposal from Bert
Gooderich, a stolid machinist. Bert
offered nothing in the way of romance,
but Mary accepted him thankfully. They
settled in suburban London. In time
Bert Junior was born, and later
Hannibal.
Young Bert early showed a talent for
fighting. He was big and strong and
led the graders against the boarder pupils
and the parochial boys. Noting his
carefully-planned skirmishes, the school
inspector, an old army man, resolved to
keep the boy in mind. His resolution
was strengthened when Bert blurted out
in school that he hoped to be a soldier.
A few years later the inspector
encouraged the boy to enlist. But young
Bert's career in the army was short. He
was killed at Pretoria.
Minnie was difficult. She was thin
and reserved, and her mother, feeling
powerless to mold her, finally let her go
her own way. Minnie became engaged
to a coal clerk, but broke the
engagement publicly when her fiance asked her
if she smoked.
Minnie worked at a shop where she
retouched photographs. One day an
American firm took over the place and
introduced machines. Let out for a time,
she refused to go back on the usual
terms. Mary begged her to take back the
coal clerk, but Minnie was adamant.
Next to the Gooderich family lived an
American woman, Mrs. Gaynor, and her
small son Hiram. Mrs. Gaynor wrote
an odd letter of reference for Minnie
which stated that the girl was proud,
stubborn, and conceited. She sent the
girl with the letter to Mrs. Wilfley, who
was having a party when Minnie arrived
at the door. Despite her assurance, the
girl was afraid to go in, but middle-aged
Anthony Gilfillan helped her to overcome
her shyness. Minnie attended the party,
listened to Spanish music, and ate
cucumber sandwiches. She kept close to
Anthony.
After the company had left, Mrs.
Wilfley engaged Minnie as her secretary.
When Bert Gooderich fell off a bridge
one night and was drowned, Mrs. Wil-
CASUALS OF THE SEA by William McFee. By permission of the author and the publishers. Random Home,
lac
514

fley promptly arranged a benefit for the
family, a musicale which grossed seventy-
four pounds. Mrs. Wilfley's fee was
sixty-seven pounds; the bereaved family
got seven. Minnie was bitter on the
subject.
One day Anthony Gilfillan sent a
telegram to Minnie and asked her to meet
him at his office. He offered her a way
to escape from the life she hated. They
went away to the continent.
Five years later Minnie, now known
as Mabel, was staying in a little hotel
in Rouen. The mistress of Captain
Briscoe, she was respected and even envied
by the world of occasional light ladies
in Rouen. But Minnie was apprehensive;
the ship captain had been gone three
weeks, and he had promised to be back
in one. When Captain Briscoe finally
did return, he came only to say goodbye,
explaining that he no longer dared to
keep her because his first mate was from
his home town. They parted without a
scene. Minnie went into dressmaking
in London. Soon, however, her smitten
captain sought her out and offered to
marry her. A little amused at the idea,
she consented.
Hannibal had grown into a big lout
of eighteen, troublesome to his mother,
who often had to get him out of foolish
scrapes. He had lost his factory job. One
day Mrs. Gaynor and Hiram came to
call, Hiram in his merchant marine
uniform. Hannibal, inarticulate and
bungling, was attracted by the idea of going
to sea and even went so far as to visit
Hiram's ship. Later he heard that the
S. S. Caryatid needed a mess boy, and
so he signed on.
On shore, meanwhile, Minnie had
asked her mother to come and live with
her during Captain Briscoe's long
absences. Satisfied with this arrangement,
Briscoe joined his ship at Swansea, the
S. S. Caryatid.
In port Hannibal was spreading his
wings. Quite by chance he met Nellie,
a plump, merry girl who had come to
town to work for her uncle, a tavern
keeper. Never understanding quite how
it happened, Hannibal became an
engaged man before his ship sailed. He
adapted himself easily to life at sea. In
time he grew tired of his job in the mess
room, and at Panama he became a
trimmer. Wheeling coal was hard work, bul
after a while Hannibal felt proud of his
physical prowess.
In Japan he met Hiram, and they went
ashore together. Soon after the ship
pulled out on the long trip home,
Hannibal was stricken with fever.
Captain Briscoe wanted to look aftei
his young brother-in-law but he had
other matters to worry him. He had
picked up an English paper in port and
had learned that Minnie was in jail,
arrested for taking part in a suffragette
demonstration. To add to his confusion,
Minnie's letters were short and
disappointing. Then near the Dutch East
Indies the ship piled up on a coral reef
and was refloated only after long delay.
The ship barely reached England in time
for Christmas.
Captain Briscoe met Hannibal on the
dock and persuaded him to go to the
hotel where Minnie was waiting.
Reluctant to go because of Nellie, Hannibal
found both his mother and Minnie at the
hotel. During her husband's absence
Minnie had earned fat fees by writing
advertisements for a cough syrup. She
and her mother urged Hannibal to stay
with them, but he refused.
At Swansea he learned that Nellie,
now the licensee of the tavern, still
wished to marry him. So Hannibal
settled down in the pub, secure and
well-loved by a capable wife.
His cough kept bothering him. Finally ?
after trying a patent cough syrup to no
avail, Nellie called the doctor. HannibaJ
had lobar pneumonia. The coal dust had
settled in his lungs and the cough syrup,
which Nellie had bought after seeing
an ad written by Minnie, had neark
killed him. Hannibal rallied a little
but he died within a few days. Deatfe
seemed as casual as life had always been
515

CATILINE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ben Jonson (1573M637)
Type of plot: Political tragedy
Time of 'plot: First century B.C.
Locale: Ancient Rome
First presented: 1611
Principal characters:
Catiline, leader of a conspiracy against Rome
Lentulus, and
Cethegus, his lieutenants
Curius, a conspirator and spy
Cicero, defender of the State
Cato, "the voice of Rome"
Julius Caesar, shrewd politician, friend of the conspirators
Fulvia, a courtesan and spy
Sempronia, feminist conspirator
Aurelia, Catiline's wife
Critique:
Even the most ardent Jonsonians are
unlikely to agree with the author in
giving this tragedy place above the great
comedies of Jonson's prime, though
certainly there is much to respect and
admire in it. To Jonson, historical
accuracy was evidently a major merit of
his tragedies, and they are based on
diligent research. Catiline was drawn chiefly
from Sallust's Catiline, Cicero's
Orations, and Plutarch's Lives; but poets
as well as historians furnished source
material: the Prologue with Sulla's ghost
is modeled on Seneca's Thyestes, and
various passages in the play recall
Statius, Lucan, and other classical poets.
Both Sejanus and Catiline have been
called "studies in statecraft"; and they
have been wisely considered as the
tragedies of a nation rather than of
individuals. Most readers and audiences prefer
emphasis on individuals in tragedy; hence
Jonson's tragedies have not aroused the
enthusiasm their excellent workmanship
deserves. Jonson's use of the Chorus in
Catiline is noteworthy. Whether this
Chorus, like Shakespeare's in Henry V\
is a single speaker, or whether it is a
croup speaking in unison is not clear
from the text. The latter would probably
appeal more to a lover of the classics like
Jonson; therefore, it is assumed that the
Chorus is a group of substantial Roman
citizens speaking in concert. In plot,
character-drawing, and poetry, the appeal
of Catiline is more to the intellect than
to the emotions. Both the sculptural verse
and the characterization foreshadow
Milton, whose council in Hell recalls the
deliberation of the conspirators.
The Story:
Under the sinister influence of Sulla's
ghost, the reckless patrician Catiline
organized a conspiracy to overthrow the
Roman Republic. The conspirators,
including the rash Cethegus and outcast
senators Lentulus and Curius, gathered at
Catiline's home. Catiline and his wife
pandered to the weaknesses of each and
skillfully manipulated them without
allowing them to realize that they were his
puppets. The conspirators concluded their
meeting with a gruesome sacrament,
pledging faith by drinking the blood of
a newly-slaughtered slave. The first step
in their plan was to have Catiline elected
as one of the two consuls. When four of
the candidates withdrew in favor of
Catiline, leaving only three men in the race,
success seemed very probable. The two
remaining candidates were Antonius,
impecunious and lukewarm, and Cicero, a
"new man" but a dangerous antagonist.
A Chorus of Roman citizens gathered
and discussed the uncertainty of the sur-
516

vival of great national powers, which
often seem to carry in themselves seeds of
their destruction: luxuries and vices
soften nations and leave them easy prey
to their own malcontents or alien
invaders.
Fulvia, the profligate wife of an elderly
fool, numbered among her lovers the
conspirator Curius and Julius Caesar, the
latter on a very casual basis. Since she
was interested in wealth, not romance,
she forbade her servants to admit the
down-at-heels Curius on future visits.
While being readied for her social day,
she was visited by Sempronia, a feminine
bluestocking politician well past the
bloom of youth. Sempronia was an eager
supporter of the patrician Catiline and a
scorner of "that talker, Cicero," who
presumed to be more learned and eloquent
than the nobility. When Curius arrived
to interrupt their gossip, Sempronia
overrode Fulvia's objections, ushered him in,
and made great play of leaving the lovers
alone. Fulvia's reception of Curius was
so hostile that he became enraged and
dropped threats and hints of future
greatness and power. Fulvia immediately
shifted to Delilah's tactics and wheedled
his secret from him.
The Chorus gathered before the
election and prayed for wisdom to choose
consuls worthy of Rome's great past.
Antonius and Cicero won the election,
shocking and infuriating Catiline and his
party. Cato praised Cicero warmly; but
Caesar and other sympathizers with
Catiline regarded the new consul with veiled
hostility or open contempt. Catiline
masked his fury in public, but in private
he planned rebellion and civil war.
Fulvia, partly through self-interest and partly
through a vain dislike of playing second
fiddle to Sempronia, carried information
about the conspiracy to Cicero. Using her
information to intimidate Curius and
appealing to his greed, Cicero won him as
a spy in Catiline's inner circle; Fulvia
served the same purpose among the
feminine conspirators. Alone, Cicero
bemoaned the low estate of Rome, which
was reduced to dependence on such tools
as Fulvia and Curius for safety. He
strengthened his position still further by
giving a province to Antonius.
Caesar showed Catiline favor and gave
him advice, but did not join the
assemblage of conspirators. At the conspirators'
next meeting, plans were laid for setting
fire to the city at strategic points and
starting local uprisings to be timed with
invasion from outside. The first move was
to be the murder of Cicero that very
night. The feminine conspirators entered
with Catiline's wife Aurelia. Under cover
of their excited chatter, Curius whispered
to Fulvia the plan to assassinate Cicero.
She left the meeting and warned Cicero
in time for him to gather protecting
friends and impartial witnesses. Although
the attempt on Cicero's life failed, the
threat of civil violence terrified senators
and citizens. The Chorus expressed
horror at the danger, which seemed brought
about by the city's guilt.
In the Senate, Cicero delivered an
impassioned oration against Catiline and
disclosed knowledge of intimate details
of the conspiracy. Catiline lost control of
himself, threatened Cicero and Rome,
and left to join his army outside the city.
Lentulus and Cethegus remained in
charge of the internal organization of the
conspirators. Cato warned Cicero of the
danger from Caesar and other concealed
supporters of Catiline, but Cicero chose
to avoid a break with them. He
persuaded the ambassadors from the Allo-
broges, who had been approached by
Catiline's men, to pretend to join the
conspiracy and to secure incriminating
documents. When the ambassadors were
arrested, as prearranged, a conspirator
taken with them turned state's evidence
to save his life. With the evidence of the
conspirator and the ambassadors, the
Senate approved the arrest and execution of
the conspirators remaining in Rome,
though Caesar tried to save their lives.
Caesar was accused by Curius, but Cicero
chose to pretend that this dangerous man
was innocent, allowing him to remain
517

alive and uncurbed.
After the execution of the conspirators,
the leader of the Roman forces arrived
and reported the defeat of Catiline and
his "brave bad death" while leading his
troops. Honored and rewarded by the
Senate and the Roman people, Cicero
pronounced thanks for Rome's rescue.
518

CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA
Type of work: Story
Author: Giovanni Verga (1840-1922)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Sicily
First published: 1880
Principal characters:
Turiddu Macca, a Sicilian peasant
Lola, his former sweetheart
Alfio, her husband
Critique:
Verga's stories of Sicilian peasant life
are deeply moving in their realism and
dramatic vigor. Best known of his shorter
pieces is "Cavalleria Rusticana—Rustic
Chivalry"—a story of swift passions,
violence, and revenge, on which Pietro
Mascagni based his famous opera of the
same title. In all his work Verga revealed
his sympathy for the ignorant and
downtrodden poor, and sorrow for the humble
and innocent wronged by the wise and
the worldly. He was unsparing in his
realism, however, in showing how the
vulgar and greedy peasants destroyed
others of the same class. His concise style
and the disciplined feeling of his work
mark him as one of the important
forerunners of contemporary Italian literature.
The Story:
When Turiddu Macca returned from
soldiering, he swaggered like a hero
through his tiny Sicilian village. Each
Sunday he wore his rifleman's uniform
and a red cap with a tassel that swung
jauntily about his shoulders. In addition,
he smoked a pipe with a figure of the king
on horseback carved on the bowl. In short,
he cut a dashing figure as he strutted
about the town square, and the girls eyed
him approvingly and longingly if they
passed him on their way to or from mass.
Small boys tagged at his heels and begged
him to tell stories of the faraway places
he had seen.
But Turiddu had eyes only for Lola,
Master Angelo's daughter, who had given
him her handkerchief and wept many
tears when he went away to be a conscript.
While he was away, however, she had
been betrothed to Alfio, a young carter
who had four mules in his stable. Turiddu
was enraged when he heard the news on
his return, and he swore that he would
have revenge on the man who had stolen
his sweetheart. Although he lingered day
after day in the neighborhood of Master
Angelo's house, Lola neither appeared on
the balcony nor went to mass. Unable to
speak to her, Turiddu had to content
himself with singing derisive songs under her
window. The neighbors began
complaining instead of laughing after a while; they
felt the time had come for him to end his
caterwauling ways and earn money to
support his widowed mother, Mistress
Nunzia.
At last Turiddu came face to face with
Lola as she was on her way home from
church. She answered his reproaches by
saying that she was soon to marry Alfio.
Turiddu angrily declared that theii
friendship was at an end.
The first Sunday after her wedding
Lola appeared on the balcony of her new
home, her hands outspread against her
dress so that the neighbors could see the
gold rings that Alfio had given her. That
show of wealth was an added insult to
Turiddu, a peasant so poor that Mistress
Nunzia had been forced to sell their
vineyard while he was away.
In order to make Lola jealous, Turiddu
went to work for Master Cola, the vine
grower, whose house was directly across
from Alfio's. Before long Turiddu was
making pretty speeches to Santa, his
master's unmarried daughter. When the
519

girl asked him pertly why he did not keep
his compliments for Lola, he told her that
his former sweetheart was not even fit to
carry Santa's shoes. And Santa was greatly
pleased by his rustic gallantry, in spite of
her father's disfavor. Every evening, after
Master Cola had closed the door behind
his young workman, Santa would show
herself at her window and stand there
talking with Turiddu until long after
bedtime. Because the two houses stood so close
together, Lola, loitering on her balcony
night after night, overheard, as Turiddu
intended, his protestations of love to
Santa.
One day, unable to control herself any
longer, Lola called down to ask her old
lover why he no longer greeted her as a
friend. At the time Alfio was away
showing his mules at country fairs. Turiddu
gave the watchful neighbors, especially
Santa, much to talk about when he went
to see Lola in secret during her husband's
absence. Santa, jealous, closed her window
in his face.
When Alfio came home, he brought
Lola a new dress to wear on feast days.
Santa, meeting him, scoffed at the fine
gift. Lola, she said, had been seeing
Turiddu Macca at night while her
husband was away.
Now that Alfio was back, Turiddu no
longer loitered near Lola's balcony.
Disconsolate, he spent his days and nights
carousing with his friends at the tavern.
On Easter eve Alfio went to the inn,
where Turiddu and his friends were
feasting. When Alfio refused the wine offered
him, Turiddu knew that they must fight.
Solemnly the two men exchanged the kiss
which was Alfio's challenge to a duel, and
Turiddu bit the carter's ear as a sign that
he would meet his rival in mortal combat.
They agreed to fight at sunrise in a
thicket of prickly pears not far from the
village.
That night Turiddu told his mother
that he might be going on another long
journey. Taking the old clasp knife which
he had hidden under the straw when he
went soldiering, he started off down the
road before daybreak. Mistress Nunzia,
who had risen early with the excuse of
feeding her chickens, watched him go.
Meanwhile Alfio had left Lola in tears,
for she realized what her husband
intended and that she was to blame.
The two arrived at the appointed
meeting place at sunrise. Turiddu frankly
admitted that he was in the wrong and
deserved to die. He declared, however,
that he intended to kill Alfio like a dog,
in order to spare his mother more grief and
tears. The carter threw off his coat and
dared Turiddu to strike his hardest with
his knife. Turiddu took the first thrust in
his arm before he stabbed Alfio in the
groin. The wounded carter told Turiddu
to open his eyes wide so that he would be
ready for the next blow. Then Alfio picked
up a handful of dust and threw it into his
rival's face. Blinded, Turiddu shouted
and leaped backward. While he was
groping for his enemy, Alfio stabbed him in
the stomach and the throat.
Mortally wounded, Turiddu fell among
the prickly pears. With blood gurgling
from his throat, he died before he could
call his mother's name.
520

CAWDOR
Type of work: Poem
Author: Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1900
Locale: Carmel Coast Range, California
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Cawdor, a farmer
Hood Cawdor, his son
George Cawdor, another son
Michal Cawdor, a daughter
Martial, a neighbor
Fera, Martial's daughter
Concha Rosas, Cawdor's Indian servant
Critique:
The tragedy of Cawdor is that all the
characters lived inwardly for themselves,
not-outwardly or creatively. Out of this
picture of violence and self-inflicted
suffering, Jeffers shows us Cawdor arriving
at a greater understanding of the mystery
of life and death. Man must look to
himself for the strength to exist and for
forbearance until death brings release.
This poem is in keeping with the violent
writing of its author, a further
demonstration of his pessimistic philosophy of
life.
The Story:
In 1899 a terrible fire devastated
many of the farms along the Carmel
coast, but Cawdor's farm was untouched.
Early one morning he saw two figures
approaching his house, a young girl
leading a blind old man. They were the
Martials, who held the land bordering
his, and with whom Cawdor had an
old feud. Martial had been blinded by
the fire, his farm destroyed. His
daughter Fera had only Cawdor to turn to for
relief.
Cawdor took them in and sent his
servant, Concha Rosas, to live in a hut.
When the old man was well enough to
walk around, Cawdor spoke of sending
the two away unless Fera would many
him. She agreed.
Hood Cawdor had left home after a
fight with his father. On the night of
the wedding he dreamed that the old
man had died, and he decided to return
to the farm to see if all were well. When
he reached a hill overlooking the farm,
he camped and lit a fire. His sister
Michal saw him and went to tell him
of their father's marriage. Cawdor
received his son in a friendly manner. For
a wedding present, Hood gave Fera a
lion skin.
Fera found in Hood the same quality
of hardness which had drawn her at first
to Cawdor. She openly confessed to
Hood that although she had loved his
father when she married him, she no
longer cared for him. She was jealous,
too, of Concha Rosas, who had been
Cawdor's mistress before he married Fera,
and whom he again seemed to prefer
to his wife. Disturbed by Fera's advances,
Hood resolved to leave. But after a
prowling lion killed one of the farm dogs,
he decided to stay until he had killed
the animal. A terrible storm arose which
prevented his hunting for several days.
Fera's father was dying. On the
pretext that Martial wished to talk to Hood,
Fera called him into the sick room.
Openly, before her unconscious father,
she confessed her passion. That night
Fera asked Concha to watch with her
CAWDOR by Robinson Jeffers. By permission of the author and the publishers, Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 1928, by Robinson Jeffers.
521

by the old man's bedside. Toward
morning Martial died.
But instead of summoning her
husband, Fera went to Hood's room, where
Cawdor found them. Fera tried to lull
his suspicions by declaring that she had
tried to awaken him but could not, and
so she had gone to rouse Hood.
The next morning the men dug a
grave for the old man. Fera who had
been watching them, called Hood into
the wood to help her pick laurels for
the grave. Again she begged for his love.
Suddenly he drew his knife and stabbed
himself deep in the thigh. Once more
he had been able to resist her. The
funeral service for her father was short
but painful. Afterward Fera found her
way home alone.
Desperate now, she covered herself
with the lion skin Hood had given her
and hid in the bushes. Hood shot at
her, his bullet entering her shoulder.
He carried Fera to her room, where
Cawdor attempted to set the bones which
had been fractured. Fera begged him to
stop torturing her. Then, as if it were
wrenched out of her because of the pain,
she said that Hood had seduced her by
force. Her lie was a last resort to prevent
Hood's leaving. But Hood had already
left the farm and was camped once
more on the top of the hill. There the
infuriated father found him. In the fight
that followed Hood was pushed off the
cliff, his body falling upon the rocks
below. Cawdor met Michal on his way
down the cliff and told her that Hood
had fled. Meanwhile Fera sent Concha
from the room to get some water. Quickly
she unfastened the strap around her arm,
and slung it over the head of the bed
and around her own neck. When Concha
returned, Fera was almost dead. Fw
many days she lay in bed, slowly
recovering. Neither George nor Michal would
visit her. They hated her for what they
knew must have been false charges
against Hood.
Cawdor was haunted by his secret
sin. Fera tried to destroy him with her
own death wish. She told him the truth
about Hood; how, rather than betray his
father, he had stabbed himself with his
knife. Cawdor's grief was uncontrollable.
When Fera taunted him, demanding that
he kill her, his fingers fastened around
her throat. But when she began to
struggle, he released her and ran into
Hood's old room. There he thought he
saw Hood lying on the bed, and for a
moment he imagined all that had passed
had been a dream.
He was aroused when Fera came to
tell him that every one knew he had
killed Hood, that soon the authorities
were bound to hear of his crime. Again
she urged him to seek the peace that
death would bring. They were walking
near her father's grave, with George and
Michal nearby. Cawdor suddenly
declared to them that their suspicions were
correct, that he had killed Hood, and
that they were to send for the authorities.
Then he reached down and picked up a
flint. Without warning, he thrust it into
his eyes. Then, patiently, he asked them
to lead him back to the house, to wail
for whatever fate his deed would merit.
Fera followed him weeping. Once again
she felt that she had failed. She had
tried to get Cawdor to kill her and then
himself; instead, he had shown the
courage to face his crime and pay for it aj
humanity saw fit.
522

CECILIA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fanny Burney (Madame d'Arblay, 1752-1840)
Type of plot: Sentimental novel of manners
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Eng-and
First published: 1782
Principal characters:
Cecilta Beverley, a beautiful and virtuous heiress
Mr. Harrel, her profligate guardian
Mr. Brtggs, her miserly guardian
Mr. Delvile, a proud aristocrat, also a guardian
Mrs. Delvile, his wife
Mortimer Delvile, their son
Mr. Monckton, Cecilia's unscrupulous counselor
Mr. Belfield, a pleasing but unstable young man
Henrietta Belfield, his modest sister
Critique:
CecTa, or, Memoirs of an Heiress is
a blend of wit, sentiment, and morality.
If, as has been charged, Fanny Burney's
writing is marred by caricature and prig-
gishness, it cannot be denied that she had
a real gift for maintaining the interest of
her readers. Seen in historical perspective,
Miss Burney merits credit for being one
of the writers who made the novel
respectable. She also has a special literary
significance in having influenced Jane
Austen, whose Pride and Prejudice
(1813) got its title from a sentence in
Cecilia.
The Story:
Cecilia Beverley, just short of her
majority, was left ten thousand pounds by
her father and an annual income of
three thousand pounds by her uncle, the
latter inheritance being restricted by the
condition that her husband take her
name. Until her coming of age, she was
expected to live with one of her
guardians, the fashionable spendthrift Mr. Har-
rel, husband of a girlhood friend. One
who warned her against the evils of
London was Mr. Monckton, her clever and
unscrupulous counselor, whose secret
intention to marry Cecilia was at present
prevented by the existence of an old and
ill-tempered wife, whom he had married
for money.
The constant round of parties in
London and the dissipation of the Harrels
were repugnant to Cecilia. Kind but
unimpressive Mr. Arnott, Mrs. Harrel's
brother, fell hopelessly in love with the
girl, but Harrel obviously intended her
for his friend, insolent Sir Robert Floyer,
whom Cecilia detested. After vainly
begging Harrel to pay a bill, which Arnott
finally paid, Cecilia became so disgusted
with the Harrels' way of life that she
decided to leave their household. But she
found the abode of her miserly guardian,
Mr. Briggs, so comfortless, and was so
repulsed by the pride and condescension
of her third guardian, Mr. Delvile, that
she decided to remain with the Harrels.
At a masquerade party she was
pursued by a man disguised as the devil.
He was Monckton in disguise, his aim
being to keep others away from her. She
was rescued first by a Don Quixote and
later by a domino whose conversation
pleased her greatly. At first she believed
the domino was Mr. Belfield, a young
man she had met before. Later she was
surprised to learn that Don Quixote was
Belfield.
At the opera, Sir Robert, angered at
Cecilia's courtesy to Belfield, insulted him
so that a duel resulted and Belfield was
wounded. A young man, courteously
attentive to Cecilia, proved to be the
domino and Mortimer Delvile, the only
son of her guardian and the pride and
523

hope of his family, whose fortune he was
to recoup by marriage. Cecilia visited his
mother and was charmed by her gracious-
ness and wit. She was disturbed, however,
by the knowledge that she was universally
believed to be betrothed to either Sir
Robert or Belfield. Monckton, feeling
that only the Delviles were a threat to
him, attempted to destroy her friendship
for them.
Cecilia met and immediately liked
Henrietta Belfield. When she visited her
new friend, she found Henrietta nursing
her wounded brother, whom Mortimer
wished to aid. Seeing Cecilia there,
Mortimer believed that she was in love with
Belfield. Having been educated above his
station, Belfield had grown to feel
contempt for business. He was clever and
pleasant but unable to settle down to
anything.
Although Cecilia had refused Sir
Robert's proposal, she still saw that Harrel
was bent on the marriage. Monckton's
constant warnings against the Delviles
disturbed her, for she was now in love
with Mortimer. Knowing his father's
pride, however, she determined to
conquer her feelings.
Cecilia, who had previously discharged
some debts for Harrel, was now so alarmed
by his threats of suicide that she pledged
herself to a total of seven thousand
additional pounds. Since Briggs would not
advance the money she was forced to
borrow from a usurer.
Mortimer, learning that Cecilia loved
neither Sir Robert nor Belfield, betrayed
his own love for her—and then avoided
her. Cecilia d'scovered that Henrietta had
also fallen in love with Mortimer. Mrs.
Belfield, believing that Cecilia loved her
son, constantly urged him to propose
marriage to her.
Cecilia lent another thousand pounds
to Harrel, who was to escape his
creditors by leaving the country. Meanwhile,
his wife was to live with her brother
until Cecilia's house was ready. Harrel
shot himself, however, leaving a note for
Cecilia in which he revealed that her
marriage to Sir Robert was to have
canceled a gambling debt.
Monckton discharged Cecilia's debt
with the usurer; she was to repay him
on coming of age. Against his wishes, she
went with the Delviles to their castle.
Only Mrs. Delvile was agreeable there.
The family was too proud to encourage
visitors, and Mortimer still avoided
Cecilia. Much later, during a thunderstorm
in which he contracted a fever, he
betrayed his true emotions. Cecilia was
puzzled and hurt, the more so when Mrs.
Delvile, who had guessed the feelings of
both Mortimer and Cecilia, let Cecilia
know that they were not for each other.
Mortimer, before going away for his
health, told Cecilia that his family would
never accept the change-of-name clause
in the will.
Cecilia then went to live with an old
friend. There she was surprised to see
Mortimer's dog, sent, she discovered
later, as a joke, unknown to the
Delviles. She spoke aloud of her love for its
master, and turned to discover Mortimer
beside her. She agreed to a secret
wedding, but Monckton, chosen as their
confidant, persuaded her of the wrongness
of the act.
Cecilia went on to London with the
intention of breaking off the match. But
discovery made her feel she was
compromised, and she agreed to go through
with the wedding. She could not
continue, however, after a disguised woman
interrupted the ceremony. Later Mrs.
Delvile, whose family pride exceeded her
love for Cecilia, made her promise to give
up Mortimer. She renounced him in a
passionate scene during which Mrs.
Delvile burst a blood vessel. Cecilia consoled
her misery by acts of charity which
Monckton, feeling that she was
squandering his money, tried in vain to prevent.
Finally of age, Cecilia went to London
with the Moncktons. There she
discharged her debt to Monckton. Abused
by Mr. Delvile, she was sure that
someone had slandered her. When Cecilia
went to visit Henrietta, Mr. Delvile, hav-
524

ing just heard Mrs. Belfield say that
Cecilia loved her son, saw her there and
had his suspicions of her impurity
confirmed.
Mrs. Harrel and Henrietta moved
with Cecilia into her new home.
Mortimer came to tell her that both his
parents were agreed that if she would
renounce her uncle's fortune, he would
marry her, though she would have only
the ten thousand pounds inherited from
her father. Mr. Delvile knew, however,
that she had already lost her father's
money. Enraged at his father's treachery,
Mortimer was determined to marry
Cecilia, even though she was portionless.
She agreed, but only if his mother would
consent. Again a secret wedding was
planned, this time with Mrs. Delvile's
approbation. They were married; Cecilia
returned to her house, and "Mortimer
went to inform his father.
A woman Cecilia had befriended
identified Mrs. Monckton's companion as the
person who had stopped the first
wedding. Mortimer was prevented from
telling his father of the marriage by the
scandals with which Delvile charged
Cecilia. On learning that the slanderer
was Monckton, Mortimer fought and
wounded him, and was forced to flee.
The man who was to inherit Cecilia's
fortune, since her husband had not taken
her name, demanded his rights. Cecilia
determined to join her husband. Mrs.
Harrel took Henrietta with her to Arnott's
house. Cecilia hoped that Henrietta, as
miserable in her hopeless love for
Mortimer as Arnott was in his for Cecilia,
would comfort and be comforted by him.
In London, Cecilia consulted Belfield
about her trip. Mrs. Belfield, hoping to
get her son married to Cecilia, had left
them alone when Mortimer entered. The
meeting seemed to confirm his father's
accusations, and he sent her to wait for
him at his father's house. Mr. Delvile
refused to admit her. Wild with fear
that Mortimer would fight a duel with
Belfield, she began a distracted search
for her husband. Fevered, delirious, and
alone, she was locked up by strangers.
When Mortimer, convinced of her purity
by Belfield, found her, she was too sick
to know him.
After many days of uncertainty, Cecilia
eventually recovered. Monckton also was
out of danger and grudgingly admitted
that he had deliberately lied to Mr.
Delvile about Cecilia's moral character. Mr.
Delvile then accepted her as his
daughter. Mrs. Delvile recovered her health.
Mrs. Harrel married again and resumed
her life of careless frivolity. Arnott and
Henrietta married. With Mortimer's help,
Belfield finally settled down to an army
career. Monckton lived on in bitterness
and misery. Cecilia was willed a fortune
by Mortimer's aunt, so impressed was she
by Cecilia's unselfishness and sweetness.
Cecilia was then able to continue her
charities, though never extravagantly. She
did occasionally regret the loss of her own
fortune, but wisely recognized that life
cannot be absolutely perfect.
525

CELESTINA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fernando de Rojas (1475M538?)
Type of/plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: Spain, probably Toledo
First published: Burgos edition, 1499; Seville edition, 1502
Principal characters:
Calisto, a young nobleman
Melibea, his beloved
Pleberio, her father
Alisa, her mother
Celestina, a procuress
Elicia, and
Areusa, girls in Celestina's house
Sempronio, and
Parmeno, Calisto's servants
Critique:
Although written in dramatic form,
with conventional division into acts, this
work is regarded as a novel in dialogue
because its excessive length and
frequently shifting scenes make performance
impossible on any stage. In the 1499 version
the story consisted of sixteen acts,
increased to twenty-one in 1502, and at a
considerably later date to twenty-two.
Some doubt has been cast upon the
authenticity of certain of these additions.
Although the work was published
anonymously, Rbjas is generally accepted as the
author, the chief evidence being an
acrostic poem containing his name to which
one of his early publishers first called
attention, as weil as several legal
depositions made about 1525. The writer
declared that he found the first act and
amused himself by completing the story at
the rate of an act a day during a two-week
vacation at the University of Salamanca.
His purpose, besides providing pleasant
philosophy and instruction to young
people, was to warn against the tricks of
bawds and designing servants. Originally
called The Comedy of Calisto and
Melibea, the novel was rechristened with the
name of its bawdy chief character, the
old go-between, Celestina. In spite of its
cynical realism and frank descriptions of
life among prostitutes, Celestina is
essentially the story of an idealistic and
romantic love. Along with their coarse
language, even the servants cite philosophy
and quote the ancient philosophers. The
book has appeared in many editions and a
number of translations, including the first
translation into English of any Spanish
book, and it has had a tremendous
influence upon all succeeding writing in
Spain.
The Story:
One day, while pursuing his stray
falcon, Calisto entered a strange garden
where he saw and fell in love with a
beautiful young girl named Melibf-a. His
eagerness to take advantage of heT gentle
innocence shocked her and she angrily
drove him away.
Calisto went home desolate and ready
to die, his only comfort being the
melancholy tunes he played on his lute. One
of his servants, Sempronio, let him suffer
for a time before he suggested that his
master seek the aid of Celestina, a
procuress, with whose servant, Elicia,
Sempronio himself was in love. At Calisto's
command the servant hurried to
Celestina's house to summon the old bawd.
He and the procuress agreed to work
together to cheat lovesick Calisto. The
young nobleman had another servant,
Parmeno, who had once worked in
Celestina's house. He told his master of the
bawd's evil reputation throughout the
city and warned him against her.
Ignoring the warning, Calisto
welcomed Celestina and offered her gold to
526

act as a go-between in his suit. While he
was upstairs getting the money for her,
Celestina tried to win Parmeno to her
side by assuring him that she was
interested in his welfare because of her
fondness for his mother. She also promised to
help him in winning the affections of
Areusa, whom he coveted. Parmeno,
knowing her tricks, was not entirely
convinced.
Calisto, unable to control his
impatience to make Melibea his own, sent
Sempronio to hurry Celestina in her
efforts. Refusing to consider Pdrmeno's
suggestion that he court Melibea honorably
instead of trusting a notorious go-between,
he did, however, order his horse so that
he could ride past her house. He rode
away after further criticism of Parmeno
for trying to cross his desires, harsh words
which made the servant regret his
decision to remain faithful to his young
master.
When Sempronio arrived at Celestina's
house, he found her making a love charm.
While she was busy, he and Elicia made
love. Then Celestina, who had weighed
the threat to her life from Melibea's
father against the gold that grateful Calisto
would pay her, went to talk to Melibea.
Lucrecia, a servant in the household, saw
the go-between coming and warned
Melibea's mother against Celestina, but Alisa
thought the woman no more than a
vender of sewing materials, hair nets, and
feminine make-up. Trustingly she asked
Celestina to stay with Melibea while she
herself went to visit a sick sister.
Celestina first told Melibea that she
had come in behalf of a sick man. After
purposely confusing the girl, she finally
explained that all Calisto wanted was a
rope belt that had been taken on
pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem and a
copy of a prayer by Saint Polonia,
supposed to cure toothaches.
Ashamed of what she thought had
been unjust suspicions of the old bawd,
Melibea gave her the rope girdle and
promised to copy off the charm so that it
would be ready by the next day. Before
she left the house Celestina won
Lucrecia to her side by promising to
sweeten the maid's breath and to make her a
blonde. Going to Calisto's house, the
procuress boasted of her success, and the
grateful lover promised her a new cloak.
By that time Parmeno had decided to
accept Celestina's offer and help her in her
scheme. He suggested that he accompany
her home. On the way he demanded that
she make arrangements to have him spend
the night with Areusa. Celestina took
him to her house, where Areusa was in
bed, and persuaded the girl that Parmeno
would comfort her during her sweetheart's
absence.
The next day, while the servants were
dining at Celestina's house, Lucrecia
arrived with word that her mistress was ill
and wished to see the procuress. The
bawd went at once to Pleberio's house,
where she discovered that Melibea's
disease was lovesickness for Calisto.
Celestina promised to cure the malady by
having Calisto call at Melibea's door at
midnight.
When she reported this latest
development to Calisto, her news won his regard
so completely that he gave her a gold
chain. Having no intention of dividing
it with her partners, she refused to agree
when Sempronio and Pdrmeno demanded
their share. While they quarreled, she
screamed for the police. The servants
silenced her forever, but her screams had
been heard. Sempronio and Pdrmeno tried
to escape through a window but were
injured in the fall. The authorities
beheaded them on the spot.
In the meantime Calisto had gone to
Pleberio's house, where he found
Melibea eagerly awaiting him. While the
lovers talked through the door, his cowardly
attendants, who were supposed to be
guarding him, ran away from imaginary
enemies. The confusion awoke her
parents, but Melibea explained that
Lucrecia had made the noise while she was
getting a drink for her mistress.
The next morning Calisto awoke
happy, only to be saddened by news of Sem-
pronio's and P&rmeno's fate. The thought
527

of seeing his beloved in her garden that
night was enough to make him forget
what had happened, however, except for
a fleeting thought that Celestina's bawdry
was now punished.
With another servant to carry a ladder,
he went that night to the garden and
climbed over the wall. Melibea was
waiting for him. When the time for parting
came, hours later, she lamented the loss
of her maidenhood. Calisto mourned only
the shortness of their time together.
Grieved by the loss of their servant
sweethearts, Elicia and Areusa were
determined to revenge their deaths. By
pretending to be in love with Sosia, another
of Calisto's servants, Areusa learned that
the lovers were meeting secretly each
night in Pleberio's garden. Because he was
eager for her favors, Sosia was willing to
join in the plot. Neither he nor the girls
were strong enough for violence,
however, and so they played up to a
scoundrelly soldier and murderer named
Centurio. Elicia, who had taken over Celes-
tina's house after the old bawd's death,
had Areusa offer herself to Centurio if
he would go into the garden and kill, or
at least beat up, Calisto. At first the bully
agreed, but prudent reconsideration
convinced him that he would be unwise to
meddle in the affair. Instead, he
arranged to have several friends go to the
garden and make a noisy but harmless
commotion.
Pleberio and Alisa, meanwhile, talked
over plans to marry off their daughter.
Overhearing their conversation, and
conscience-stricken because she had spent
every night of the past month with
Calisto, Melibea almost confessed her
wrongdoing to her unsuspecting parents.
Once more Calisto went to the garden
with his servant and ladder and made his
way over the wall. A short time later
Centurio's friends arrived and pretended
to get into a fight with Sosia in the street
outside. Calisto was aroused by the
disturbance. In spite of Melibea's fears he
started hastily over the wall in order to
go to the aid of his servant.
He fell from the wall and was killed.
Lucrecia, frightened by the vehemence
of her mistress* sorrow, awoke Pleberio
and Alisa. Melibea, meanwhile, had
climbed to the roof of the house. There
she reflected upon the effect her actions
would have on her parents. Her resolve
to die unweakened by their pleadings,
she compared herself to many parricides
of antiquity, confessed her misdeeds, and
bade them farewell. Then she leaped to
her death. Pleberio carried her shattered
body into the house, where he and Alisa
sat alone in their grief.
528

THE CENCI
Principal caaracters:
Count Cenci, a Roman nobleman
Beatrice, his daughter
Bernardo, his son
Giacomo, his son
Lucretia, his wife and stepmother to his children
Count Orsino, a priest once loved by Beatrice
Olimpio and Marzio, assassins of Cenci
Saveixa, a papal legate who discovers the murder of Cenci
Type of work: Dramatic poem
Author: Percy Bysshe Sbelley (1792-1822)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: 1 599
Locale: Rome and the Apennines
First published: 1819
Critique:
This play, in spite of eloquent and
moving passages, has not been successful
on the stage. It is at best a play for
reading, as the author's purpose was to
present dramatically the events of a
typical late Renaissance tragedy.
The Story:
Count Cenci was a cruel and brutal
man whose greatest delight was to make
people suffer. He had sent two of his
sons to Salamanca in hopes that they
would starve. His daughter, Beatrice,
had been in love with Count Orsino, who
had entered the priesthood. She was
wretched because she did not know
where to turn for solace. Her father was
worse than cruel to her and her lover
had become a priest. Orsino promised to
present to the Pope a petition in which
Beatrice begged relief from the constant
punishment she and the rest of her
family were suffering from her father.
Beatrice told Orsino of a banquet her father
was giving that night in celebration of
lome news from Salamanca and said
that she would give him the petition at
that time. When she left him, Orsino
contemplated his own problem and
resolved not to show the Pope her petition,
lest she be married by the Pope's order
and Orsino be left without a chance of
winning her outside wedlock. He resolved
also not to ask for special permission to
marry lest he lose his own large income
from the Church.
At the banquet that night, Cenci
announced the purpose of his celebration;
his two sons had been killed by accident
in Salamanca. Since they had been given
to disobedience and rebellion, Cenci felt
that this punishment was well deserved.
At first the guests could not believe their
ears. Beatrice boldly begged that the
guests protect her, her stepmother, and
her remaining two brothers from further
cruelties at the hands of her father.
Cenci, telling them she was insane, asked
the guests to leave. Then he turned on
his daughter, threatened her with a new
cruelty, and ordered her and his wife
to accompany him to his castle in the
Apennines on the following Monday.
At the Cenci palace, Beatrice
disclosed to her stepmother that Cenci had
committed a crime against her which she
dared not name. Orsino came to the
women and proposed a pian for the
assassination of Cenci. At the bridge on
the way to the Apennines he would
station two desperate killers who would be
glad to murder Cenci. As the women left
the apartment, Giacomo entered to
announce that he had lent his father his
wife's dowry and had never been able
to recover it. In fact, Cenci had accused
him of spending the money in a riotous
night, and had suggested, to Giacomo's
529

wife that her husband was a secret
wastrel. Orsino assured Giacomo that the
money would never be restored and
explained to him that the murder of Cend
had been planned.
Later Orsino came to report to
Giacomo that his father had escaped from
the plot and was safe within his castle in
the Apennines. Giacomo now resolved
to kill his father by his own hand, but
Orsino, restraining him, said that he
knew two men whom Cenci had
wronged and who would be willing to
rid the earth of their persecutor. At the
Apennine castle, Cenci raged against the
insolence of his daughter and confessed
to Lucretia that he had tried to corrupt
the soul of Beatrice. While he was
sleeping, the two murderers, Olimpio and
Marzio, appeared. Lucretia said she had
put a sleeping potion in Cend's drink
so that he would be sure to sleep soundly.
But the two men were hesitant. Olimpio
reported that he could not kill an old
man in his sleep. Marzio thought he
heard the ghost of his own dead father
speaking through the lips of the
sleeping Cenci. Beatrice snatched a dagger
from them and cried out that she herself
would kill the fiend. Shamed into
action, the assassins strangled Cenci and
threw his body over the balustrade into
the garden.
The Papal Legate, Savella, arrived
with a warrant for the immediate
execution of Cend for his crimes. When
Savella and his followers discovered that
Cenci was already dead, they began an
investigation. The guards seized Marzio
on whose person they found Orsino's
note introducing the two murderers.
Lucretia and Beatrice denied knowledge of
the handwriting, but Savella arrested
them and said that they must appear
before the court in Rome. Giacomo,
tricked by Orsino, fell into the hands of
the Roman police. Orsino escaped in
disguise.
Conflicting testimony at the trial
turned against the Cend family.
Beatrice appealed to Marzio to save the
innocent prisoners from death, but the
assassin died on the rack without changing his
testimony. Consigned to cells to await
the Pope's final decision, the Cend
family lived on in misery. Beatrice tried to
comfort her stepmother in vain. The
Pope decreed that the prisoners must die.
Beatrice at first was delirious with despair.
Then the young and innocent Bernardo
went to beg clemency from the Pope, but
later returned filled with grief that his
petition had been useless. When the
guards came to take them away, Beatrice
and her stepmother went out to their
execution with noble resignation.
530

CESAR BIROTTEAU
Type of work: Novel
Author: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1837
Principal characters:
Cesar Birotteau, a perfumer
Constance, his wife
Cesarine, their daughter
Anselm Popinot, assistant in the perfumery
Ferdinand du Tillet, a discharged assistant
Pillerault, Constance's uncle
Critique:
Opinion has always differed greatly as
to the place of The Rise and Fall of Cesar
Birotteau among Balzac's novels. As with
much of his work, the action is frequently
slowed by long retrospective accounts of
the past, and the preoccupation with the
legal details of bankruptcy has proved
boring to many readers. Some of the main
characters, shown by their creator in a flat
light, tend to represent types rather than
to become real people. But at the same
time the novel is marked by scenes of
inspired writing. Cesar in the end is an
honorable man, and we have a good deal
of sympathy for his trials.
The Story:
C6sar Birotteau was a strong peasant
lad employed by Ragon in his perfumery.
He ran errands, cleaned and nailed boxes,
and submitted to the gibes and impositions
of the other employees. Often he was tired
out after the day's work, but his strong
constitution and peasant stubbornness
made him persist in learning his trade. His
life was a little easier after Ursule, the
Picard cook, began to look after his needs.
Cesar, influenced by Ragon and his
wife, became a Royalist. As a member of
the guard he fought in some of the street
skirmishes against Napoleon. When he
was wounded in the thigh, rumor said
that Bonaparte himself had fired the shot.
This wound was Cesar's claim to
distinction; he never wearied of telling the tale
of his military exploits.
C6sar was twenty years old when he
met Constance Pillerault, a shopgirl in a
nearby store. By patient attendance and
much admiration C6sar won her hand
with the approval of her uncle and
guardian, a well-to-do ironmonger. His own
modest savings and her dowry enabled
him to buy a controlling interest in the
perfumery. By the time he was twenty-one
the peasant boy possessed a wife and a
business, and when his daughter C6sarine
was born he counted himself a happy
man.
In spite of his rather narrow outlook,
Cesar was an honest businessman who
treated his employees well. Only once did
he have any trouble. Du Tillet, his chief
assistant, tried to seduce Constance and
then stole three thousand francs. C6sar
himself made up the loss and discharged
du Tillet. Although he tried to temper
justice with kindness, he made a deadly
enemy in du Tillet.
Working with Vauquelin, a chemist,
Cesar discovered a new bleaching agent
and began to market his discovery both as
a paste arid as a lotion. By judicious
advertisements of his perfumes and
cosmetics he began to prosper. With increasing
sales and with Constance to guard the cash
register, C6sar soon had the reputation of
being a rich man. Anselm Popinot, his
new assistant to replace du Tillet, was
lame, but he was a hard worker and much
attracted to C6sarine.
Again by chance C6sar learned that
531

hazel oil had been used by the ancients in
dressing the hair, and Vauquelin assured
him that the oil was harmless as long as
it was applied to the scalp. C6sar saw in his
new discovery an opportunity to increase
his sales further. He set up a new
company, with Popinot in charge, to extract
the oil from hazelnuts and to enter the oil
in competition with the Macassar hair-
dressing popular at the time. Because of
Popinot's shrewdness and industry, and
his willingness to stint himself for his
employer, the new company prospered.
After the Restoration, Cesar was made a
deputy-mayor; from that time on he
thought of himself as a public figure. His
self-esteem grew even greater when he
was decorated with the Legion of Honor.
To celebrate these honors he decided to
remodel his house and give a grand ball.
Constance was opposed to the great
expense. She had vague premonitions of
disaster from Cesar's dreams of
magnificence, but she finally allowed her husband
to go ahead with his plans. The ball was a
great social success and C6sar thought
little of the cost as he listened to the
compliments of his guests. He was too puffed
up with his own importance to realize that
most of the government officials and minor
nobility were laughing at him behind his
back.
The ball marked the end of his rise to
wealth. Du Tillet, meanwhile, looked for
a way to get even with his former
employer. Since his discharge he had become
a shady financier and had acquired a
reputation for moneymaking. Although no one
suspected it, the money had come from the
Roguins. Roguin, the notary, and his wife
had been estranged for some time, and the
'foolish husband had become infatuated
with a famous courtesan, La Belle Hol-
landaise. By making love to both the wife
and the courtesan, du Tillet got funds
from each, money originally earned by
Roguin.
Du Tillet set up Claparon, a dissolute
drummer, as a dummy banker and began
to work out his plot. Against the advice of
his wife, C6sar was induced to join Roguin
and Ragon in a land speculation venture,
but the money paid to Claparon
eventually reached the pockets of du Tillet.
Unfortunately C£sar got no receipt for the
three hundred thousand francs he turned
over to Roguin for investment in the
scheme.
Because the ball and the remodeling
had cost C£sar more than he had expected,
he was hard pressed to meet his bills.
Then Roguin absconded with part of the
money which was supposed to have been
invested in the land speculation. It was
the final blow to Cesar's financial
standing. He began a dreary round of bankers
and money-lenders, but no one would
lend him money. Du Tillet hypocritically
pretended svmpathy for his plight and
gave him a letter of recommendation to a
famous banker. But he signed his name
in such a wav that the banker knew that
the recommendation meant nothing. Du
Tillet, meanwhile, had bought cheaply
Ce*sar's holdings in the land speculation.
At last Osar was forced to accept the
inevitable. He told the whole story to
his wife and began to go through the
proceedings of bankruptcy under the guiding
hand of old Pillerault. He gave up all his
assets, even his two watches, and his wife
surrendered her jewelrv. When the long
process was over, the creditors were happy
to realize sixtv cents on the dollar. His
disgrace was rot as great as du Tillet had
hoped it would be, but as long as he mor-
allv owed monev Cesar refused to wear the
red ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
He got a position in the government
and lived with Pillerault. All his salary
went to pay back the remaining forty
percent of bis debts. Constance went to work
as a bookkeeper with Popinot, whose
business was prospering. Cesarine found a job
with a draper. The two women also saved
their salaries to pav off the debts.
Popinot and Cesarine had spoken of
their love, but C£sar would not agree to
a wedding until he had repaid all he
owed. Popinot worked all the harder to
increase his profits, for Cesar was still
a silent partner in the hazel oil concern.
At last came the day when Cesar was
completely free of all financial obligations.

It was a proud day for him. The news got
to the king, who was much affected by
Cesar's honesty. He gave the former
perfumer six thousand francs from the royal
purse as a mark of favor.
C£lestin, one of Cesar's old assistants,
was now running the perfumery. He had
kept the Birotteau's apartment intact, and
Constance was secretly arranging to move
her family back into their old rooms. Also
in secret the banns for Popinot's and
C£sarine's wedding had been published.
When the whole legal tangle was
straightened out and Cesar had been readmitted
to full citizenship, Pillernult went with
him to the Exchange. There Cesar was
congratulated on every hand as a really
honest man. Du Tillet was forced to stand
by and hear fulsome praise for the old
enemy he had helped to ruin.
Old Pillerault then took C£sar back to
his old home. There thev found a ball in
progress. Constance and Cesarine were
welcoming the same guests they had
invited so long ago.
The shock was too much for Cesar. As
he was cordially greeted by the
distinguished guests, his mouth filled with
blood and he collapsed. Constance called
for the doctor and the priest, but already
a film was covering her husband's eyes.
Constance pillowed his head on her breast
while the priest held his hand. A blood
vessel in his lungs had burst and the
aneurism stopped his breath. So died a
commercial martyr.
533

THE CHAINBEARER
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: About 1785
Locale: Upstate New York
First published: 1845
Principal characters:
Mordaunt Littlepage. the narrator, a young landowner
Andries Coejemans, called Chainbearer, an old woodsman and surveyor
Ursula Malbone, called Dus, his half-sister's orphan daughter
Frank Malbone, her half-brother
Cornelius Littlepage, and
Anneke Ltttlepage, Mordaunt's parents
Kate, Mordaunt's sister
Tom Bayard, Kate's fiance"
Priscilla Bayard, his sister
Jaap, Mordaunt's colored servant
Susquesus (Trackless), an Indian friend of the Littlepages
Jason Newcome, the sciuire at Ravensnest
Aaron Timberman, called Thousandacres, a squatter and timberman
Lowiny, his daughter
Tobit, and
Zephanaiah. two of his sons
Dirck Follock, Cornelius Littlepage's friend
Critique:
The Chainbearer, or, The Littlevage
Manuscripts, is the second novel in
James Fenimore Cooper's anti-rent
trilogy. Told through Mordaunt Littlepage,
it combines Cooper's insight into social
conditions with his dramatic writing
style. The novel suffers from Cooper's
consistent weaknesses: lack of subtlety,
stereotyped and wooden characters, and
extreme romanticism. At the same time
it is fast-moving, clearly written, and
enjoyable reading. Much of the
characterization is too obvious to be cons'dered
good literature, but the author's
treatment of the relationship between
landlord and renter is excellent, although
heavily slanted toward the landlord's
viewpoint. Like most romantic novels,
good and bad are at loggerheads
throughout the work. Equallv romantic, the good
wins out in the end. Cooper's faithful,
surefooted Indian plays an important role
on the side of good.
The Story:
Mordaunt Littlepage, son of Cornelius
Littlepage, of Satanstoe, was at Princeton
for six years studying for his bachelor of
arts degree during most of the
Revolutionary War. Upon graduation, he served
in his father's battalion at the siege of
Yorktown and there met sixty-seven-year-
old Captain Andries Coejemans, a skilled
woodsman and known as Chainbearer
because he carried the forward chain in the
surveying work he did as a civilian.
Mordaunt himself attained the rank of
captain by the time of Cornwallis' surrender.
Mordaunt formed a strong attachment
to the hale old man and at the close of
the war Chainbearer suggested that
Mordaunt meet Dus Malbone, his orphaned
niece. The captain thought that she
would make a fine wife for his young
friend, but Mordaunt, determined to
remain unattached, returned home.
Chainbearer went back to his civilian
occupation, which was considered an ordinary
laboring job.
Traveling back to Lilacsbush,
Mordaunt and his aged servant, colored Jaap,
534

were low in funds because by that time
the continental currency was practically
worthless. On one occasion they stopped
at an inn where Jaap performed and
collected plenty of money for their lodging.
After stopping at Lilacsbush, Mordaunt
and Kate, his youngest sister, rode on to
Satanstoe to visit their grandmother.
During the ride Kate told Mordaunt that
she hoped to marry Tom Bayard, whom
they would meet at Satanstoe, where he
was visiting with his sVer Priscilla,
Kate's good friend. Kate had hoped that
Mordaunt would fall in love with Pr's-
cilla. Mordaunt's grandmother was also
conniving to have him fall in love with
Priscilla Bayard.
Mordaunt found that Priscilla, as
beautiful and intelligent as his sVer had
promised, was outspoken in her
independence and also free in her opinions,
which alwavs found Mordaunt in perfect
agreement. Tom. her brother, was rather
conservative in his beliefs, but Tom and
Mordaunt respected each other.
Mordaunt readily gave his consent to his
sister's marriage.
After a short time Mordaunt
announced that he was to travel to Ravens-
nest, land that h's grandfather, Herman
Mordaunt, had left him, and that he was
to be gone for the entire winter. Before
they parted, however, Mordaunt learned
that Priscilla was a schoolfriend of Dus,
Chainbearer's niece, and had the highest
opinion of her. The two discussed the
qualities of Dus and Chainbearer. who
had been hired to contract for all the
surveying work at Ravensnest.
Mordaunt went with Jaap to
Ravensnest. It was to be Mordaunt's first visit
to the wilderness tract. Jaap had been
there several times previously with
Mordaunt's father. Chainbearer was already
on the ground and surveying the land
into small plots for rental. At the Bridge
Inn it was learned that he was working
with Dus and her half-brother, Frank
Malbone. Before reaching Ravensnest,
Mordaunt heard a beautiful Indian song
sung, as he learned later, by Dus, and he
met Susquesus, a faithful Indian hunter
who had served Mordaunt's father years
before. Susquesus was a good friend of
old Chainbearer.
Putting on clothes less fitting a
gentleman, Mordaunt with the Indian went
to Ravensnest village to learn something
of the people there. He learned that a
town meeting had been called, with
Squire Jason Newcome presiding. New-
come, a powerful and highly respected
man, prodded the crowd to vote for
the erection of a Congregational rather
than a Presbyterian church. Mordaunt
watched the proceedings with contempt.
The men of the town raised the pike-
poles of the church with the help of a
girl who, Mordaunt later learned, was
Dus.
Chainbearer welcomed Mordaunt to
Ravensnest and took him to the hut
where he lived when he was not out
surveying. There Mordaunt met Dus
formally. She seemed ashamed to meet him
and said that she had been working with
her uncle; she considered herself below
Mordaunt because of her work.
Mordaunt convinced her that she was his
equal.
Mordaunt made Frank Malbone his
agent, replacing Squire Newcome, who
had proved himself untrustworthy. This
work assured Frank of a good living.
Newcome was given a new rental lease
to which, it was explained, he had no
right other than the liberality of his
landlord.
When Chainbearer took Mordaunt to
see the land he had surveyed, Dus
accompanied them. By that time Mordaunt
had fallen in love with her, as he told
her one evening. Dus answered that her
affections were tied to another. Mordaunt
left the hut and that night slept on the
open ground.
The next morning Mordaunt found
Susquesus camped nearby. The Indian
brought word that a hidden sawmill was
being illegally operated on Littlepage
land. Following his guide, Mordaunt
came upon the sawmill of Aaron Tim-
535

berman, called Thousandacres. Not
knowing that his white guest was Mor-
daunt Littlepage, Thousandacres
welcomed him. Later Mordaunt made
himself known and was thrown, a prisoner,
into the storehouse. Susquesus made his
escape, however, and informed Jaap of
Mordaunt's capture before returning to
aid the prisoner. Captured by several of
Thousandacres' sons, the Indian was also
imprisoned in the storehouse.
Meanwhile, Mordaunt learned that Thousand-
acres and his sons, Tobit and Zephanaiah,
like most squatters, would have nothing
to do with the law. Lowiny, the
daughter, proved friendly to Mordaunt and did
not think that he should be kept a
prisoner. From his place of confinement
Mordaunt watched Squire Newcome
visit the mill and offer to buy the timber
at a lower price than Thousandacres
demanded, for, as Newcome insisted, the
Littlepages were sure to discover the mill
before long. Thousandacres sent New-
come away as soon as possible.
That night Lowiny came to the
storehouse bringing food. The next morning
Chainbearer appeared and, while trying
to open the door of the storehouse, was
seized and confined with Mordaunt and
Susquesus. Dus, hiding nearby, sent
Zephanaiah a letter saying that she would
not now have him as a husband.
At a family council Thousandacres
tried to bargain with Chainbearer, but
the old man refused to be disloyal to
the Littlepage family. Thousandacres then
threw Chainbearer back into the
storehouse, leaving Mordaunt in the house
with Lowiny. The girl helped him to
escape while her father and brothers were
otherwise occupied. Thousandacres,
looking for Mordaunt, found him with Dus,
who had just confessed her love to him.
Returned to the clearing, Dus was held
in the house and Mordaunt was returned
to the storehouse.
At another family gathering to which
Mordaunt and Chainbearer were
summoned, Thousandacres attempted to
coerce Dus into marrying Zephanaiah. Dus
refused, however, and Chainbearer
became extremely angry at the suggestion.
As the angry old man, his arm around
Dus, tried to leave the room, someone
fired a shot and Chainbearer fell,
mortally wounded. Chainbearer, dying on
the bed to which he had been carried,
said that death was not a bad thing. He
told Dus and Mordaunt, who sat by his
bedside, that they must follow whatever
course their hearts directed, even though
he felt that Dus should not marry above
her station.
Suddenly rifle shots sounded outside.
Frank Malbone, informed by Jaap of his
master's capture, had arrived at the head
of a rescuing posse. During the attack
Thousandacres was mortally wounded.
His sons and the other squatters fled into
the forest. Thousandacres was given a
respectable burial, and his widow was
allowed to remove her personal effects
from the cabin. Lowiny, who had been
friendly with Dus, decided to stay with
her.
The business of the squatters settled,
Chainbearer's body was taken back to
Ravensnest for burial. There they found
Kate, Tom and Priscilla Bayard, and
Mordaunt's parents, who had come to
pay tribute to Chainbearer after receiving
news of his death. Chainbearer was
buried with simple but sincere dignity and
honor.
Dus, introduced to the Littlepages and
now convinced that she was their equal,
agreed to marry Mordaunt. Lowiny
decided to live with them and be their
maid. Prisc'lla Bayard found herself at-
tracred to Frank Malbone and later they
decided to get married. Susquesus, amply
supplied by the Littlepages, continued to
live at Ravensnest. Jaap, who had
become the Indian's good friend, decided to
stay with him. The two lived happily
together for many years.
Squire Newcome continued his
knavery for many years, but in the end he
died poor and in debt.
Mordaunt and Dus had a happy
marriage, and she gave her husband a child
536

within a year. Feeling deeply indebted to
Chainbearer for their happiness, the Lit-
tlepages erected a monument at his grave.
From then on he was known as Uncle
Chainbearer, and his friends remembered
him always with affection.
537

THE CHANGELING
Type of work: Drama
Authors: Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) and William Rowley (15 85?-1642?)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Early seventeentn century
Locale: Alicante, a seaport on the east coast of Spain
First presented. 1622
Principal characters:
Vermandero, governor of the castle of Alicante
Beatrice, his daughter
Alsemero, her suitor and later her husband
Alonzo De Piracquo, another suitor of Beatrice
Alibius, a jealous doctor
Isabella, his wife
Antonio, the changeling
Diaphanta, Beatrice's waiting-woman
De Floses, Vermandero's servant
Jasperino, Alsemero's friend
Critique:
Despite its pointless title and a trivial,
rather coarse secondary plot, The Change-
ling is generally considered the
masterpiece of those plays written by Middle-
ton and Rowley in collaboration. Its
virtues far outweigh its faults; and the two
great characterizations of Beatrice and De
Flores are alone enough to lift the drama
above the level of the commonplace. De
Flores, especially, in his intensity of aim,
singleness of devotion, and brutality of
cynicism is a creation worthy of
Shakespeare himself. The main plot has
usually been credited to Middleton, with the
exception of the opening and concluding
scenes. Rowley's contribution, a distinctly
doubtful one in this case, is mainly
connected with the minor plot, which,
mercifully, is as brief as it is tasteless.
The Story:
Alsemero, after glimpsing Beatrice at
church, expressed to himself the hope
that he could gain her hand in marriage.
Outside, in the street, his musings were
interrupted by Jasperino. To the latter's
surprise, he learned that Alsemero, whose
enthusiasm for travel was common
knowledge, had become reluctant to undertake
a projected voyage to Malta. While they
were talking, Beatrice entered,
accompanied by Diaphanta, and the four talked
in friendly fashion. But the mood of
Beatrice changed when she was angered
by the arrival of De Flores, her father's
servant, to whom she had a seemingly
unconquerable aversion. She made no
effort to hide her feelings from De Flores,
who, nevertheless, remained unabashed
and continued to follow her about.
Vermandero, Beatrice's father, passed
by and met Alsemero for the first time.
Fie was pleased to learn that the young
man was the son of an old friend of his,
a battle companion now dead. To
Alsemero he gave an invitation to visit the
castle of which Vermandero was
governor. The invitation was eagerly
accepted, but Alsemero's pleasure turned to
dismay when he learned of Vermandero's
determination to wed Beatrice to Alonzo
De Piracquo within the next seven days.
As they started for the castle, Beatrice
dropped one of her gloves. In disdain she
threw its mate after it rather than accept
the glove from the hands of De Flores,
who had picked it up and offered it to
her.
Meanwhile, in another part of
Alicante, Alibius was giving instructions to
his servant Lollio. Alibius, a doctor, made
Lollio promise to keep an eye on Isabella,
the former's much younger wife. The
doctor's establishment, which included
facilities for the care of madmen and
fools, soon increased with the arrival of
a new patient. Antonio, enamored of
538

Isabella, had chosen to pose as an idiot
so that he could be near her. Lollio
interrogated Antonio in an eflFort to
establish his degree of stupidity, but Antonio
cleverly parried the servant's questions.
With the help of Jasperino and
Diaphanta, Beatrice and Alsemero
communicated with each other and arranged a
secret meeting. De Flores, coming to
announce the arrival of Beatrice's suitor,
Alonzo, was cruelly railed at but he
equably prolonged the interview in order
to be in Beatrice's presence. His dogged-
ness aroused in her a vague presentiment
of evil, which was quickly dismissed
when she rallied herself to face Alonzo.
He and her father reluctantly agreed to
her request for a three-day postponement
of the wedding. Her behavior prompted
Alonzo's brother, Tomaso, to utter the
warning that Beatrice was not in love,
but Alonzo shrugged off any intimation
that the marriage was not wise.
Beatrice and Alsemero confessed their
mutual affection. Beatrice, however,
refused her lover's offer to engage Alonzo
in a duel because she feared that his
death or punishment would be the result
of such an affair. Instead, she suggested
another scheme to get rid of Alonzo, with
De Flores serving as a possible too!
through whom to work her will. Seeking
him out, she gained his consent to help
her, but she did not know the price which
he expected her to pay. Fate took a hand
in their plotting when Alonzo presently
asked De Flores to guide him about the
castle's obscure maze of passageways. De
Flores cozened Alonzo into disarming,
then killed him with a rapier previously
hidden behind a door. Before disposing
of the body, he cut off a finger adorned
by a diamond ring.
Back at the house of Alibius, Isabella
complained to Lollio about the strict
watch under which she was kept. Out
of curiosity, she prevailed upon him to
let her visit the quarters reserved for the
madmen and fools. There she met Fran-
ciscus who, like Antonio, was one of the
gentlemen from the castle of Alicante
with amorous designs upon Isabella. He
managed t0 convey his feelings to her,
and she reflected that, after all, a lady
need not leave her home if she has any
desire to stray from virtue. Lollio,
infected by all this romantic intriguing,
forgot his master's commission and made
advances to Isabella; but she repulsed
him.
De Flores, to prove that he had done
her bidding, brought the finger of the
murdered Alonzo to Beatrice. Refusing
her offer of gold, he threatened her with
exposure for her part in the crime if she
refused to reward him with her love.
Beatrice, twist and turn as she tried,
could find no avenue of escape from his
relentless blackmail, and eventually she
yielded to his desires.
Vermandero misunderstood the sudden
disappearance of Alonzo; angered, he
allowed his daughter to make a hasty
marriage to Alsemero. Nevertheless, he
began to wonder about the prolonged
absence from the castle of Antonio and
Franciscus; and they were sent for, to be
questioned about Alonzo. A few hours
before her wedding night, Beatrice
began to fear Alsemero's discovery that she
was no longer a maid. Pleading timidity,
she persuaded Diaphanta, who was still a
virgin, to act as her substitute in
Alsemero's bed during the early part of the
night. Diaphanta was far from displeased
at being asked for this favor, even
without the gold with which her mistress
promised to reward her.
Elaborate nuptial celebrations had been
planned for Beatrice and Alsemero. As
part of the entertainment, Vermandero
had requested Alibius to rehearse some of
his madmen and fools so that they might
perform a weird dance for the
amusement of the assembly. Alibius decided
that he would let Isabella accompany him
to the castle for that event. Meanwhile
that lady, attracted to Antonio, disguised
herself briefly as a madwoman in order
to converse with him. Lollio played a
prank on Antonio and Franciscus by
pretending, to each, that Isabella would re-
539

ward him for getting rid of the other.
Diaphanta, pretending to be Beatrice,
amorously overstayed her time with
Alsemero, so that her impatient mistress
became first dismayed, then suspicious, and
at last vengeful. At the suggestion of De
Flores, she agreed to Diaphanta's death.
A fire was set, to create confusion and
arouse Diaphanta from the marriage bed.
The unfortunate girl was followed to her
own bedroom and slain by De Flores.
By that time Franciscus and Antonio
had been apprehended and charged with
the murder of Alonzo, since it was
learned that they had entered Alibius*
house in disguise on the very day of
Alonzo's disappearance. But Beatrice and
De Flores finally brought at out their own
undoing. Discovery of their secret
meetings, by Alsemero, made him suspicious.
Under his questioning, Beatrice broke
down and confessed. Although she
pleaded her love for him as an excuse for
the crime, Alsemero, shocked, took her
and De Flores into custody. But the pair
were unwilling to face trial; De Flores
gave Beatrice a fatal wound and then
stabbed himself, unmoved by his fate and
unrepentant to the last.
540

CHARLES DEMAILLY
Type of work: Novel
Authors: Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1860
Principal characters:
Charles Demailly, a young author
Marthe Mance, an actress whom he marries
Nachette, a journalist and critic
Couturat, another journalist
Remonville, Charles' friend, a writer
Chavannes, Charles* boyhood friend
Critique:
Charles Demailly, originally published
as Les Hommes de LetUes, is among the
early works of the Goncourt brothers,
whose novels were of great importance in
the development of naturalism. Their
joined effort to convey contemporary life
in all its details is shown here in a
realistic dissection of the world of letters,
and their interest in the secrets behind
man's behavior and in the undiscovered or
overrefined aspects of both personality
and society led them to depict the impact
of this world on a hypersensitive young
writer. The course of the story is
interwoven with discussions from many points
of view on art and literature.
The Story:
A new kind of literary world came into
being in Paris during the mid-nineteenth
century. This world was that of the
journals, the little newspapers which thrived
on gossip and superficial aesthetic
criticism by creating, or catering to, the
shifting fads of the fashionable world yet
debasing tastes through a concentration
on personality, modishness, and
sensationalism.
Two young men among the writers
for Scandal, one of these journals, were
thoroughly immersed in their world.
Nachette, a belligerent, clever man who
had fled his father's bad name in his
home province, enjoyed the power, which
he felt the journals possessed, to create
or ruin a reputation. Couturat, hiding
behind a mask of innocence and gaiety,
was a thorough opportunist. Also among
the group was Charles Demailly, who
disliked these dilettantes and their trivial
gossiping but seemed unable to do
anything more than observe them ironxally
as he accompanied them to cafes, salons,
and balls.
Charles, after many illnesses as a child,
had grown up a nervous and acutelv
sensitive young man. The heightened
perceptivity of all his senses extended to an
unusual awareness of emotional nuances
in those around him. This oversensitivity,
however, kept him from finding
satisfaction in real life. His search for
perfection always met his uncanny ability to
perceive imperfection- pleasure for him
paled at the slightest false note. Even in
writing, h;s real refuge, his
hypersensitivity was a handicap, for his meticulously
keen observation and attention to detail
almost precluded true depth and
greatness.
A letter from an old friend, Chavannes,
urged Charles to visit him in the country
and settle down to serious writing.
Although Charles declined the invitation,
he did shut himself up to work on his
novel. At last his book, La Bourgeoisie,
was finished but his late friends of
Scandal, irritated because he had deserted
them and jealous of his potential success,
decided to harm him. Scarcelv bothering
to read the book, they ignored its attempt
to convey psychological reality. Instead,
541

thev used the title as an excuse to
generalize wittily on it as an inept social
document. Full of anguish at this
criticism, Charles wandered about the streets
until he met Boisroger, a poet who cared
nothing for the fripperies of society.
Seeing the worth of the novel, he introduced
Charles to a circle of men who were
truly artists in various fields. Charles,
happy among these vivid, intelligent
people, admired greatly their individualism
and their informed opinions on art and
literature.
Charles' uncle died, leaving him
feeling bereft. A discuss;on of the nature of
love led some of his friends to assert that
the artist cannot be a true husband or
lover; other men seek in love what the
artist finds only in creation.
These two factors may have
predisposed Charles to fall in love himself as a
protest against the loneliness which his
friends felt inevitable. At the theater he
saw a charming young ingenue, Marthe,
and fell violently in love with her. At
last he met her at a masquerade ball;
three months later they were married.
For a time they created a blissful world
in which onlv they existed. Marthe
entranced Charles with her affection and
endearing, childlike ways. Charles worked
secretly on a play whose heroine
captured Marthe's coquettish innocence.
Finding his hidden work, Marthe was
enraptured by it because the role was so
well suited to her. Charles, delighted by
her appreciation, failed to look beneath
the surface and assumed, in his
idealization of her, that she was actually the
character he had created.
After Marthe had read an article by
the now fashionable Nachette, criticizing
Charles' work, she suggested that he find
a collaborator to help him with the play.
Realizing that she cared only for his
reputation and its effect on her own, and not
for his work, Charles began to see her
as she really was: an insensitive
chatterbox, full of false sentiment and other
people's ideas. Marthe, too, had tired of
her sweet role. Now she tried another,
the woman who despises her husband
for the love he bears her, who delights
in violent changes of mood and becomes
wholly self-absorbed.
His distress at his disillusionment and
Marthe's behavior made Charles ill, and
the couple went to stay at a provincial
spa so that he might recover. Charles
rejoiced in the placid beautv of the
country. Marthe, bored, posed as the
martyred wife. Refusing to leave, she showed
her pique in subtle ways. Her banal'ty
and insincerity further tortured Charles;
but the growing knowledge that she no
longer loved him was even worse, for it
threatened to destroy what remained of
the image he had created.
At a country fete they met the group
from Scandal, and the visitors returned
to dine with them. Nachette, however,
stayed on for a week. Shortly afterward
a mock play in which a sweet ingenue
was held prisoner bv a neurasthenic
appeared in Scandal. Charles was hurt, not
by the silly play but by knowing that
Marthe had deliberately created the
impression on which it was based.
Charles grew well enough to return to
Par's. There, however, events combined
to break him down again. He first
discovered that his wife had borrowed money,
ostensibly because he was a madman who
never gave her any. In retaliation for his
indignation at her falsehoods, she
announced that she was leaving her role in
his play, which had gone into rehearsal.
At length, trying to create a scene, she
told him that she loved Nachette. When
he refused to give her the opportunity
for histrionics, she walked out.
Next day she returned, stricken with
remorse, and almost succeeded in
captivating Charles again by her winsome
affection. For two weeks she behaved as
if they were again on their honeymoon.
Then she asked to have her role back.
When Charles refused, saying truthfully
that it was too late for any change before
the opening night, she broke into a
furious tirade, saving that she had never
loved him and that she had spread stories
542

to dishonor him. Overcome with anguish,
Charles wept. When she laughed at his
tears, he ran into the street. At last he
acquired enough self-control to return
and order her out of the house.
When Marthe left, however, she took
the letters Charles had once written to
her while gaily parodying some of his
friends in the inner circle of artists into
which he had been welcomed. Really
innocuous, when lifted out of context and
changed slightly they looked like mali
cious attempts to scoff at his friends.
Marthe, unable to bear the thought that
her husband's play might be a success
without her, believed that if these
influential gen'lemen were offended, they
might somehow contribute to its ruin.
Spitefully, she gave the letters to
Nachette, who was engaged in a sclent
struggle with Couturat for control of
Scandal. Nachette recognized their
sensational value but told Marthe to leave
him: she could do him no good and hef
ingenuous charms were wearing thin.
Couturat, the opportunist, won the paper,
however, and saw in the letters, set up on
the front page, an excuse to fire Nachette
and to establish himself as a good fellow.
He sent one copy of the front page to
Charles and burned the rest.
Charles' friend Chavannes brought
news that Charles had suffered an attack
on seeing the journal. At length Charles
himself, wraith-like but calm, appeared
to hear Couturat's supposedly profound
apologies. To Charles, the knowledge
that Marthe had been behind the
attempt to ruin him was intolerable.
Loathing Paris, the theater, life itself, he
refused to allow the performance of his
play and withdrew to another part of the
city. There only his old nurse cared for
him as he sank into apathy and madness.
Feeling his reason slipping away, he tried
to write, but could only scrawl his own
name over and over.
Charles was taken to an asylum where
steady treatment brought him gradually
to himself. When he was at last well
enough to go outside, he rejoiced at a
new life opening up. He felt able to
attend a small theater, but when he saw
his wife on the stage—for Marthe had
descended to playing in second-rate
theaters—madness overcame him once more.
After months of violence, he became calm
again, but with the calmness of an idiot
or a beast. So he lived, little more than
a heap of flesh, to the end of his days.
543

CHARLES O'MALLEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Lever (1806-1872)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: 1808-1812
Locale: Ireland and Europe
First published: 1841
Principal characters:
Charles O'Malley, an Irish dragoon
Godfrey O'Malley, his uncle
William Considine, a family friend
Captain Hammersley, O'Malley's rival
General Dashwood
Lucy Dashwood, his daughter
Critique:
Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon
is a light novel in the Irish romantic
style. It has little plot and slight
structure. The value of the book lies in its
great fund of stories and anecdotes of
Irish prowess and cunning and in a
highly romanticized picture of the
Napoleonic wars. To the Irish dragoon, war
is a gay and adventurous affair much like
a combination fox hunt and banquet.
The novel ranks high among works
written simply to delight the reader.
The Story:
At seventeen Charles O'Malley was
tall and broad-shouldered, deadly with a
gun and sure in the saddle. He possessed
in abundance the qualities of generosity
and honor expected of Godfrey
O'Malley's nephew. Godfrey, of O'Malley
Casde, Galway, was still a good man on
a horse and quick to pass the bottle. In
his ruined old castle hard by the river
Shannon, he held the staunch affections
of his tenants.
Old Godfrey was standing for election
to the Irish Parliament. Unable to leave
home during the election campaign, he
sent Charles to the home of a distant
cousin named Blake to ask his support in
the coming election. But Blake belonged
to the opposition, and although Charles
did his best to win help for his uncle, he
hardly knew how to handle the situation.
Part of the trouble was Lucy
Dashwood. She and her father were visiting
Blake while the general tried to buy
some good Galway property. Charles
was jealous of the general's aide, Captain
Hammersley, who was attentive to Lucy.
At a fox hunt Charles led the way at
first, but Hammersley kept up with him.
Charles' horse fell backward in jumping
a wall. With cool daring Charles kept
on and took a ditch bordered by a stone
rampart. Hammersley, not to be
outdone, took the ditch too, but fell heavily.
Charles was first at the kill, but both he
and Hammersley had to spend several
days in bed.
One night at dinner one of the guests
spoke insultingly of Godfrey O'Malley,
and Charles threw a wine glass in his
face. Billy Considine, who had been in
more duels than any other Irishman in
Galway, arranged the affair as Charles'
second. Charles left his man for dead
on the field. Luckily the man recovered,
and Charles escaped serious consequences
for his rashness.
Charles went to Dublin to study law.
There chance led him to share rooms
with Frank Webber. College life became
for Charles a series of dinners, brawls and
escapades, all under the leadership of
Frank.
While in Dublin, Charles saw Lucy
again, but she was distant to him. Ham-
uersley was now a favored suitor. Charles
became increasingly attracted to military
life, the more so since he seemed
unfitted for study. Perhaps Lucy would
544

approve his suit if he became a dashing
dragoon, Godfrey arranged for a
commission through General Dashwood, and
Charles became an ensign.
His first duty was in Portugal.
Napoleon had invaded the peninsula, and
England was sending aid to her
Portuguese and Spanish allies. In Lisbon
Charles' superb horsemanship saved
Donna Inez from injury. His friendship
with Donna Inez was progressing
satisfactorily when he learned that Inez was
an intimate of Lucy Dashwood.
A his own request Charles was sent
to the front. There he soon distinguished
himself by bravery in battle and was
promoted to a lieutenancy.
Lucy had given him letters for Ham-
mersley. When Charles delivered them,
Hammersley turned pale and insulted
him. Only the good offices of Captain
Powers prevented a duel.
Charles saw action at Talavera and
Ciudad Roderigo. In one engagement he
sneaked under cover of darkness to the
French trenches, and by moving the
engineers' measuring tape he caused the
French to dig their trenches right under
the British guns. Wherever Charles
went, his man Michael Free looked out
for his master, polished his buttons, stole
food for him, and made love to all the
girls.
After Charles received his captaincy,
news came from home that the O'Malley
estates were in a bad way. The rents
were falling off, mortgages were coming
due, and Godfrey's gout had crippled
him. Charles went home on leave,
arriving in Galway shortly after his uncle's
death. There was little money for the
many debts, and the estate would require
close management. Because a last letter
from his uncle had asked him to stay in
Galway, Charles decided to sell his
commission and retire to civil life.
Billy Considine, who acted as his
adviser, told him a distressing story.
General Dashwood had sent an agent to
Galway to buy property. Thinking of
Dashwood as an English interloper,
Godfrey had written him a harsh letter of
warning to stay out of Ireland. In spite
of his gout, Godfrey had offered to go
to England to do battle with the general.
Billy himself had sent a direct challenge
to Dashwood. The general had answered
in mild tone, and the two hot-headed
Irishmen felt their honor had been
vindicated. But Charles heard the story
with a heavy heart. Lucy seemed lost to
him forever. For two years Charles led
a secluded life, scarcely quitting his farm.
Charles and Michael, his servant, were
in Dublin on the day news came of
Napoleon's return from Elba, and Charles
decided to go back into the army. He
and Michael went to London. There
he was appointed to his old rank on the
general staff.
Charles arrived in Brussels just before
Waterloo. The Belgian city was crowded.
General Dashwood and Lucy were there,
as were Donna Inez and her father.
Charles was safe in one quarter,
however, for Captain Powers and Inez were
to be married. One day in a park Lucy
sat down alone to await her father.
Hammersley came to her and asked
hoarsely if he could ever hope for her
hand. Although not meaning to
eavesdrop, Charles heard Lucy dismiss
Hammersley. Charles saw Lucy again at the
ball, but she seemed as distant and cool as
ever.
Charles became a special courier, and
in the discharge of his duties he was
captured by the French and thrown into
prison. To his amazement his cellmate
was General Dashwood, condemned to
die for having used spies against the
French. St. Croix, a French officer whom
Charles had befriended in Spain, offered
to help him escape. Unselfishly Charles
let General Dashwood go in his place.
Napoleon himself summoned Charles to
an audience, and throughout the battle
of Waterloo he saw the action from the
French lines. He was watching his
chances, however, and when the French
troops were scattered he made his way
back to the English lines.
545

After Charles' heroic action in saving Irish tenantry bared their heads in wel-
her father from execution, Lucy could come to the new mistress of O'Malley
not longer refuse him. Charles and Lucy Castle,
went back to Galway to stay, and the
546

THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle, 1783-1842)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Italy
First published: 1839
Principal characters:
Fabrizio del Dongo, a young adventurer
Gina Pietranera, his aunt
Count Mosca, Gina's lover
Marietta, an actress
Clelia Conti, Fabrizio's mistress
Critique:
The Charterhouse of Parma is one of
the earlier examples of French romantic
prose. The scene is the principality of
Parma in Italy, and the long, involved
plot takes the reader through many
adventures, light-hearted and tragic, from
Waterloo to Bologna. The story, a
historical romance, contains also the
elements of social comedy and more serious
reflections on the futility of life. The
novel has a sustained dramatic interest
which contributes much to its
recognition as a classic of French romanticism.
The Story:
Early in the nineteenth century
Fabrizio, son of the Marchese del Dongo,
grew up at his father's magnificent villa
at Grianta on Lake Como. His father
was a miserly fanatic who hated
Napoleon and the French, his mother a long-
suffering creature cowed by her
domineering husband. In his boyhood
Fabrizio was happiest when he could leave
Grianta and go to visit his mother's
widowed sister, Gina Pietranera, at her
home in Milan. Gina looked upon her
handsome nephew very much as a son.
When he was nearly seventeen,
Fabrizio determined to join Napoleon. Both
his aunt and his mother were shocked
but the boy stood firm. Fabrizio's father
was too stingy to allow his womenfolk
to give Fabrizio any money for his
journey, but Gina sewed some small
diamonds in his coat. Under a false
passport Fabrizio made his way to Paris as
a seller of astrological instruments.
Following one of Napoleon's battalions
out of Paris, Fabrizio was arrested and
thrown into jail as a spy. His
enthusiastic admiration for the emperor and his
bad French were against him. Released
from jail by the kind-hearted wife of the
turnkey, Fabrizio pressed on, anxious to
get into the fighting. Mounted on a
horse he bought from a good-natured
camp follower, he rode by accident into
a group of hussars around Marshall Ney
at the battle of Waterloo. When a
general's horse was shot, the hussars lifted
Fabrizio from the saddle and the general
commandeered his mount. Afoot,
Fabrizio fell in with a band of French
infantrymen and in the retreat from Waterloo
killed a Prussian officer. Happy at being
a real soldier, he threw down his gun
and ran away.
Meanwhile, at home, Gina had
succumbed to the pleadings of Count Mosca,
prime minister of Parma. They made a
happy arrangement. Old Duke San-
severina wanted a diplomatic post very
badly. In return for Mosca's favor in
giving him the post, he agreed to marry
Gina and set her up as the Duchess of
Sanseverina. Then the duke left the
country for good, and Mosca became
Gina's accepted lover. It was a good
thing for Fabrizio that his aunt had some
influence. When he returned to Grianta,
the gendarmes came to arrest him on a
false passport charge. He was taken to
Milan in his aunt's carriage. On the way
547

the party passed an older man and his
younger daughter, also arrested but
condemned to walk. Graciously Gina and
Fabrizio took General Conti and his
daughter Clelia into the carriage with
them. At Milan Fabrizio's difficulties
were easily settled.
Gina was growing very fond of
Fabrizio, who was a handsome youth, and
she took him with her to Parma to
advance his fortune. There, upon the
advice of Mosca, it was decided to send
the young man to Naples to study for
three years at the theological seminary.
When he came back, he would be given
an appointment at court.
At the end of his studies Fabrizio was
a suave, worldly young monsignor, not
yet committed to a life of piety in spite
of his appointment as alternate for the
archbishop. At the theater one night the
young cleric saw a graceful young actress
named Marietta Valsera. His attention
soon aroused the anger of a rascal called
Giletti, Marietta's protector.
Fearing the consequences of this
indiscretion, Mosca sent Fabrizio to the
country for a while to supervise some
archeological diggings. While looking
over the spot, Fabrizio borrowed a
shotgun and walked down the road to look
for rabbits. At that moment a carriage
drove by, with Marietta and Giletti
inside. Thinking that Fabrizio intended
to take Marietta, Giletti leaped from the
carriage and rushed at Fabrizio with his
dagger. In the fight, Fabrizio killed
Giletti. The alarmed Marietta took
Fabrizio with her to Bologna. There his aunt's
emissaries supplied him with ample
funds, and Fabrizio settled down to
enjoy his lovely Marietta.
News of the affair reached Parma.
Political opponents of Mosca found an
opportunity to strike at him through
Gina, and they influenced the prince to
try the fugitive for murder. Fabrizio was
tried in his absence and condemned to
death or imprisonment as a galleyslave.
Fabrizio soon tired of his Marietta.
Attracted by a young singer named
Fausta, he followed her to Parma. There
he was recognized and imprisoned. In
spite of his influence, Mosca could do
little for Gina's nephew. But Fabrizio
was happy in jail, for Clelia, the daughter
of his jailer, was the girl to whom
Fabrizio had offered a ride years before. By
means of alphabet cards the two were
soon holding long conversations.
Outside Gina laid her plans for
Fabrizio's escape. With the help of a poet
named Ferrante, she arranged to have
ropes smuggled to her nephew. Clelia
herself was to carry them in. Fabrizio
escaped from the tower and fled to
Piedmont. At Parma, according to Gina's
instructions, Ferrante poisoned the prince
who had condemned Fabrizio to
imprisonment. In the resulting confusion Gina
and Fabrizio returned to Parma, now
governed by the new prince. Pardoned,
he was named coadjutor by the
archbishop. Later he became archbishop and
attracted great crowds with his
preaching. In the meantime Clelia had married
a rich marchese. One day, moved by
curiosity, she came to hear Fabrizio
preach. Her love finally led her to take
him for a lover. Every night he came to
her house. After their child was born,
Fabrizio took the baby to his own house and
Clelia visited her small son there. But
Fabrizio was to be happy only a short
time. The infant died and Clelia did
not long survive her child. Saddened bj
her death, Fabrizio gave up his office and
retired to the Charterhouse of Parma, a
monastery on the river Po, where quiet
meditation filled his days.
548

A CHASTE MAID IN CHEAPSIDE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Mlddleton (1580-1627)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1611
Principa1 characters:
Sir Walter Whorehound, a man about town
Yellowhammer, a goldsmith
Moll, his daughter
Allwit, a complacent cuckold
Mistress Allwit, his wife
Touchwood (Senior), a man rich only in progeny
Touchwood (Junior), his younger brother
Critique:
A Chaste Maid in Cheapsidey the only
play now extant known to have been
acted at the Swan Theatre, belongs to
that lively series of farcical comed:es
which Middleton produced between 1604
and 1612. Bawdy, skillful, and wholly
laughter-provoking, it is notable for its
exceptional freedom and audacity, even if
not for its chastity. Its story interweaves
most adroitly the affairs of several
households, and it travels at a fast pace through
wildly comic situations to a satisfactory
conclusion. Despite the lightness of its
subject matter, however, the drama is
given some ballast by its incidental
comment on contemporary manners and
customs. In one hilarious sequence, Middle-
ton sees to it that detested police
informers are made ridiculous; in another, a
realistic christening party provides
certain pious Puritan ladies with an excuse
for imbibing wine with a zeal over and
beyond the demands of mere politeness.
The Story:
In the London shop of Yellowhammer,
the goldsmith, a family discussion was
taking place, a sharp, even quarrelsome
exchange. Maudlin, the goldsmith's wife,
was finding fault with Moll, her
daughter. Moll, opposed to the distasteful
marriage into which her parents were trying
to inveigle her, was not attracted to the
elderly libertine, Sir Walter Whore-
hound, whose suit the parents had
encouraged. Nevertheless, her final consent
was being taken for granted by her
mother, who railed against Moll for her
lack of enthusiasm for the match. So
anxious were the Yellowhammers to
achieve that connection with Sir Walter
that they proposed to cement the family
alliance in still another way. As a bride
for their son Tim, a bemused student at
Cambridge, they had approved Sir
Walter's supposed niece, reportedly a Welsh
heiress owning nineteen mountains.
Actually, the Welshwoman was Sir Walter's
mistress, whom he was conveniently
preparing to discard as a preliminary to his
marriage to Moll.
As the Yellowhammers argued, Sir
Walter entered their shop, accompanied
by his "niece." From all except Moll, the
newcomers received a warm welcome. In
the festivities which followed, the
younger Touchwood made a casual
entrance and, under the very nose of her
father, slipped a note to Moll. To the
latter, Touchwood posed as a customer,
in the shop for the purpose of ordering a
wedding ring. He said that he had
forgotten the correct size, but he was sure
that it would be satisfactory if it would
fit the finger of the goldsmith's daughter.
In another household, that of Allwit
and his wife, Sir Walter was also held in
high esteem, but for very different rea-
549

sons. Allwit, the nominal master of the
household without being its
breadwinner, was an arrant but satisfied cuckold
whose wife had been Sir Walter's
mistress for many years and the mother of
Sir Walter's six children. At the time, in
fact, she was expecting the imminent
birth of a seventh. Allwit, anxiously
awaiting Sir Walter's arrival and
complacently reviewing the advantages of his
singular situation, gloated over the fact
that Sir Walter maintained the house,
kept it stocked with food, begot Allwit's
brood for him, and even—by being
jealous of Mistress Allwit—relieved the
husband of that irksome prerogative. The
only cloud on the Allwit horizon was the
possibility that Sir Walter might
eventually grow restive and drift into marriage
with someone younger and more
attractive. Allwit had spiked such disastrous
prospects before by making judicious
hints to those rich widows and landed
virgins who had found favor with Sir
Walter. He intended to do the same
again before parting with such a prize as
his treasured benefactor.
Elsewhere in London, the older of the
Touchwood brothers was persuading his
disconsolate but understanding wife that
they must separate from each other for a
while. Touchwood Senior's infallible gift
for acquiring paternity had brought their
domestic establishment to the verge of
financial ruin, and there seemed no other
way to slow down the steady increase in
the size of his family. This matter settled,
Touchwood Senior—a generous man-
prepared to help his younger brother, who
had requested aid in securing a marriage
license.
At the same time, Touchwood Senior
was, unknown to him, the subject of
conversation between Sir Oliver and Lady
Kix, a childless couple who bewailed the
fate that kept them without heirs, thereby
diverting income and property that should
be theirs into the coffers of Sir Walter
Wrurehound. To achieve parenthood,
they had tried numberless remedies in
vain, in the meantime endlessly debating
the blame for their childless state. Their
hope had been quickened when their
maid recommended the services of
Touchwood Senior, who reportedly worked
wonders with a fabulously effective,
though quite expensive, type of water.
Mistress Allwit gave birth to a fine girl
and in preparation for the christening
Allwit and Sir Walter collaborated in the
choice of godparents. To allay suspicion,
Sir Walter appointed himself, along with
his fiancee, Moll; Allwit selected
Touchwood Junior. At the christening, the
latter was able to exchange a few hurried
wo-ds with Moll, commenting with
satisfaction on the fact that the goldsmith had
completed work on the wedding ring.
A short time later Touchwood Junior
and Moll met secretly to be married.
Their plans were thwarted, however,
when Yellowhammer and Sir Walter
burst in and took Moll away. The
goldsmith promised, henceforth, to keep his
daughter under lock and key until her
marriage to Sir Walter could be
accomplished. Meanwhile, Touchwood Senior,
motivated by the prospect of both revenge
and profit, agreed to turn the tables on
Sir Walter by bringing parenthood to Sir
Oliver and his lady. Sir Oliver was
induced to drink a dubious liquid and then
was sent to ride horseback for five hours.
In his absence, Touchwood acquainted
Lady Kix with the measures connected
with her part of the treatment.
Allwit, disturbed to hear of Sir
Walter's wedding plans, told Yellowhammer
some colorful details of Sir Walter's
behavior. Although the goldsmith
professed dismay at the disclosure, after All-
wit's departure he reaffirmed his
intention to give his daughter to Sir Walter.
Moll, however, had once more proved
resourceful enough to escape her father's
house, only to be brought back dripping
wet and dragged by the hair by her
angry mother, who had overtaken the
runaway after a chase along the river. Angry,
Yellowhammer decided to forestall any
additional attempts of the kind by setting
the next day for Moll's marriage. Des-
550

perate at the thought of losing his
sweetheart, Touchwood Junior forced Sir
Walter into a duel in which they were both
wounded.
Sir Walter, distraught, was carried to
All wit's house. His reception there,
however, did not follow the usual pattern of
unquestioning welcome. Bad news came
thick and fast: one moment he heard the
rumor that he was guilty of the death of
Touchwood Junior; the next, his spirits
sank at the news that Sir Oliver Kix's
wife was finally pregnant. Allwit, sensing
the turn in his benefactor's fortunes,
decided to get rid of Sir Walter, even in
his wounded condition. When he bluster-
ingly threatened the old libertine with
the law, Sir Walter woefully directed his
servants to take him away. Left alone,
Allwit and Mistress Allwit congratulated
themselves on the profits they had gained
from Sir Walter's past generosity.
Moll, ill from exposure and grief,
received a letter purportedly containing a
dying message from her lover. Swooning,
she was carried out by Touchwood Senior
and the servants of the Yellowhammers.
Conscience-stricken, the goldsmith and
his wife berated themselves for causing
her death.
Later, in church, the coffins of
Touchwood Junior and Moll were placed by
separate doors. To the surprise of the
mourners assembled, however, the
supposed corpses rose from their coffins and
revealed the lovers as alive and well. The
goldsmith and his wife at last conceded
defeat and agreed to the marriage of
Touchwood Junior and Moll. Since his
son Tim had just married the
Welshwoman, Yellowhammer consoled himself
with the fact that one wedding feast
could serve for the marriage of both his
son and his daughter.
551

CHERI
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette (1873-1954)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: c. 1910
Locale: Paris
First published: 1920
Principal characters:
Leonie Vallon, called L£a de Lonval
Fred Peloux, called Ch£ri
Mme. Peloux, Chan's mother
Edmee, the girl Ch£ri married
Marie-Laure, Edmee's mother
Critique:
Chert is probably the most perfect
example of Colette's exploration of the
human heart through the five senses. The
emotional truth with which she is
concerned is complemented by her
disciplined intellect, and a balance is
maintained throughout the book between LeYs
shrewd personal vision and the whole-
heartedness with which she abandons
herself, with Ch£ri, to sensual delight.
Colette holds her unique place in French
literature in part through the central
matrix of sensuous perception in her
work. In highly individual language
which is both lyrical and precise, she
wittily and dispassionately measures the
cost of man-woman relationships. Amoral,
but never irresponsible in outlook,
Colette was at the time of her death the
foremost woman novelist in France.
The Story:
In the pink boudoir of L6a, a still
lovely courtesan, Ch£ri, her handsome
young lover, demanded her valuable
pearls to play with. She discouraged his
mood, fearing that the removal of her
pearls might cause him to notice that her
neck was showing the wrinkles of age.
Ch6ri cursed his luncheon engagement
with his mother. Lea gently and teasingly
helped him in his erratic dressing.
Although he became lazily aroused at her
touch, she managed to send him away.
Alone, L£a dressed with efficient care,
choosing a white-brimmed hat for her
visit to Mme. Peloux. She ate a good
lunch before joining Ch6ri at his mother's
house. There she found Mme. Peloux
loud-voiced, gossipy and inquisitive; but
years of familiarity, and later Cheri, had
cemented their relationship. There also
were Marie-Laure, an elegant woman of
forty, and her quiet daughter Edm6e,
whose looks nearly equaled her mother's.
They left as soon as Lea arrived and the
degree to which mother and son then
relaxed disgusted Lea. Despite his careless
manners Cherie still looked to her like a
young god.
She remembered him as a very
beautiful and lonely child who had soon
developed his mother's miserliness and her
keen business sense. In his late
adolescence L£a had taken him away to
Normandy to feed him well and also to
remove him from his dissipated life in
Paris. Her offer to do so had been
accepted with a kiss which had inflamed
them both.
In Normandy they had become lovers.
Cheri was devoted to Lea for her passion
and solicitude, and she to him for his
youth, ardor, and faunlike freedom. At
that point Lea would still have been
willing to abandon him because of the
inconvenience he caused her; he was, in
succession, taciturn and demonstrative,
CHERI by Colette, from CHERI AND THE LAST OF CHERI. Translated by Roger Senhouse. By
permission of the publishers, Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, Inc. Copyright, 1951, by Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc.
552

tender and spiteful. But after they
returned to Paris Ch6ri still wanted L6a,
and he became her established lover. He
had remained with her for six years.
When Ch£ri returned to L6a after the
luncheon party, he told her that he was
to marry Edm6e. Since L6a had always
known a marriage would be eventually
arranged for Ch6ri, she did not outwardly
react to this news. Ch6ri declared that
his wife would influence him little and
that she already adored him. Wounded
by LeYs apparent lack of emotion, he
declared that he would like her to hide
herself in Normandy and grieve. He
desperately wanted to be her last lover.
In the few weeks before Ch6rfs
marriage he and L6a were very gay, though
at times she was appalled at his heartless-
ness toward his future bride and realized
that by pampering him she had
maintained in him the immaturity of a child.
When Cheri chattered about his
honeymoon, L6a reminded him that she would
not be there. Che'ri turned white and
gave her great happiness by announcing
ambiguously that for him she would
always be there.
While visiting Mme. Peloux during
the honeymoon, L6a was suddenly
overwhelmed by an ill-defined grief.
Thinking that she was ill, she returned home
and went to bed. When she realized that
she was for the first time really suffering
from the loss of a great love, she fled from
Paris and stayed away for a year.
Cheri and Edm6e lived with Mme.
Peloux at Neuilly until their own house
was finished. Chfri, also miserable,
questioned his mother about LeYs uninform-
ative parting note. No one knew where
she had gone. Sometimes he fought
viciously with his young wife, who loved
him and bored him. Again, he would
become obsessed with plans for their house
and give many and contradictory orders
for exotic decorations.
Edmee became so unhappy that at last
she resorted to looking for love letters in
Cheri's desk. When she accused him of
loving only Lea and wept unrestrainedly,
Cheri was unmoved but clinically
interested; L6a had never cried. Edme'e
deeply offended Che'ri when she suggested
that their own love-making was not really
love. Ch6ri explained that no man could
tolerate such remarks. Their quarrels
finally forced Edm6e to suggest a divorce.
Ch6ri calmly rejected the suggestion
because he knew that Edm6e loved him and
because divorce offered no real solution
to his problem.
Chiri next went to LeYs house, but
her servants had no news of her. In deep
despair he dined away from home for the
first time. He stayed in Paris, living a
miserable and silent life with a young
man who had frequently lived on his
money before. He recovered the strength
to act when at last the lamps in LeYs
house were again lighted. Then, without
seeing L6a, he bought jewels for his wife
and returned home.
L6a did not wholly regret her exile,
but she was distressed to discover how
much the year had aged her. Only her
eyes remained as lovely as before.
Although a visit from Mme. Peloux restored
her spirit, she was hurt by the news she
received of Ch6ri, and she realized that
she was not free of her love for him.
While out walking, she twice saw young
men who she was convinced were Ch6ri.
Knowing that she was not yet strong
enough to meet him unexpectedly, she
returned home. She changed her street
clothes for a peach-colored robe and paced
about her room while trying to face the
fact that she was alone.
About midnight Ch6ri arrived, sullen
and disheveled, and declared that he had
returned to her. She quarreled with him
for a time but at last was so completely
disarmed by his pleas that she kept him
there. For the first time, that night, they
declared to each other that they were in
love.
In the morning L£a, unknowingly
watched by Ch6ri, made wild plans for
their departure together. She looked old
553

to Ch6ri and he felt exhausted. Unable
to draw him into her plans, she bitterly
abused Edm6e. He stopped her by
insisting that she was not being the fine and
lovely woman he had known. She told
him gently that their fate had been to
love and then part. Ch6ri, although he
knew how he had hurt L6a, was unable to
follow any course but return to his
family. L6a begged him not to make Edm6e
miserable and told Ch6ri how she loved
him. Having thus successfully sent him
away, Le*a last saw Ch6ri breathing in the
air of the courtyard as if it were
something that he could savor and taste.
554

THE CHERRY ORCHARD
Type of work: Drama
Author: Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: An estate in Russia
First presented: 1904
Principal characters:
Madame Ranevskaya, a landowner
Anya, her daughter
Varya, her adopted daughter
Gaev, her brother
Yasha, a valet
Dunyasha, a maid
Fiers, an old footman
Lopakhin, a merchant
Charlotta, a governess
Pischin, a landowner
Trofimov, a student
Critique:
The Cherry Orchard is Chekhov's best-
known play. In this work his characters
are not tragic in the usual sense of the
word because they are incapable of any
great heroic action. But for what they are
he sees them clearly and sees them whole,
in their frustrations, jealousies, and loves.
In addition to his subtle characterizations,
he has caught in Madame Ranevskaya's
household a picture of the end of an era,
the passing of the semi-feudal existence
of Russian landowners on their country
estates.
The Story:
When Madame Ranevskaya's little son,
Grischa, was drowned only a year after
the death of her husband, her grief was so
overwhelming that she was forced to go
to Paris in order to forget, and she
remained away for five years. The Easter
before her return to her estate in Russia,
she sent for her seventeen-year-old
daughter Anya to join her. To pay the expenses
of her trip and that of her daughter,
Madame Ranevskaya had been forced to
sell her villa at Men tone, and she had
nothing left. She returned home to find
that her whole estate, including a cherry
orchard, so famous that it was mentioned
in the Encyclopedia, was to be sold at
auction to pay her debts. Madame
Ranevskaya was heartbroken, but her old friend
Lopakhin, a merchant whose father had
once been a serf on her ancestral estate,
proposed a way out. He said that if the
cherry orchard were cut down and the
land divided into lots for rental to summer
cottagers, she would be able to realize an
income of at least twenty-five thousand
roubles a year.
Madame Ranevskaya could not endure
the thought that her childhood home with
all its memories should be subjected to
such a fate, and all the members of her
family agreed with her. Her brother Gaev,
who had remained behind to manage the
estate, was convinced that there must be
some other way out, but none of his ideas
seemed feasible at the moment. It would
be fine, he thought, if they all came in for
a legacy, or if Anya could be wed to a rich
man, or if their wealthy aunt could be
persuaded to come to their aid. But the
aunt did not entirely approve of Madame
Ranevskaya, who, she felt, had married
THE CHERRY ORCHARD by Anton Chekhov. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed.
555

beneath her.
The thought that Gaev himself might
do something never occurred to him; he
went on playing billiards and munching
candy as he had done all his life. Others
who made up the household had similar
futile dreams. Varya, an adopted
daughter, hoped that God might do something
about the situation. Pischin, a
neighboring landowner, who had been saved
financially when the railroad bought a
part of his property, advised a policy of
waiting for something to turn up.
Lopakhin, who had struggled hard to
attain his present position, was frankly
puzzled at the family's stubborn attitude.
He had no illusions about himself; in fact,
he realized that, compared with these
smooth-tongued and well-mannered
aristocrats, he was still only a peasant. He had
tried to improve himself intellectually,
but he fell asleep over the books with
which he was supposed to be familiar.
As he gazed at the old cherry orchard in
the moonlight, the cherry orchard which
seemed so beautiful to Madame Ranev-
skaya, he could not help thinking of his
peasant ancestors, to whom every tree
must have been a symbol of oppression.
Trofimov, who had been little Grischa's
tutor, and who was more expressive than
Lopakhin, tried to express this thought to
Anya, with whom he was in love.
The cherry orchard was put up at
auction. That evening Madame Ranevskaya
gave a ball in the old house, an act in
keeping with the unrealistic attitude of her class
in general. Even her aged servant, Fiers,
supported her in this view by his loyalty to
her and her brother. Lopakhin arrived at
the party with the news that he had
bought the estate for ninety thousand
roubles above the mortgage. When he
announced that he intended to cut down
the orchard, Madame Ranevskaya began
to weep. She planned to return to Paris.
Others were equally affected by the sale
of the cherry orchard. Gaev, on the basis
of the transaction with Lopakhin, was
offered a position in the bank at six
thousand roubles a year, a position he would
not keep because of his laziness. Madame
Ranevskaya's servant, Yasha, was
delighted over the sale because the trip to
Paris would mean for him an escape from
the boredom of Russian life. But for
Dunyasha, her maid, the sale meant the
collapse of her hopes of ever marrying
Yasha, and a lifelong bondage to
Yephodov, a poor, ineffectual clerk. To
Varya, Madame Ranevskaya's adopted
daughter, it meant a position as
housekeeper on a nearby estate. To the
landowner, Pischin, it was the confirmation of
his philosophy. Investigators had found
valuable minerals on his land, and he was
now able to pay his debt to Madame
Ranevskaya and to look forward to
another temporary period of affluence. Fiers
alone was unaffected. Departure of the
family was the end of this old servant's
life, for whatever it had been worth, but
he was more concerned because Gaev, his
master, had worn his light overcoat
instead of a fur coat when he escorted the
mistress, Madame Ranevskaya, to the
station.
556

THE CHEVALIER OF THE MAISON ROUGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1793
Locale: Paris
First published: 1846
Principal characters:
Genevieve Dixmer, a young woman of aristocratic birth
Maurice Lindey, an officer in the Civic Guard
Louis Lorin, his faithful friend
Monsieur Dixmer, a tanner and a royalist conspirator
Morand, his friend, the Chevalier of the Maison Rouge
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France
Simon, a cobbler
Heloise Tison, an aide to the conspirators
Critique:
The Chevalier of the Maison Rouge
is a particularly striking example of
Dumas' genius in catching and holding the
reader's interest. With a plot based on
the hero's supposed love for Marie
Antoinette, the novel tells of his several
unsuccessful attempts to free her before she
was sentenced to death and executed.
The fact that the reader knows these
attempts are bound to fail in no way
diminishes the interest of a complex story
in which the fabricated circumstances fit
precisely into the actual ones. A
champion of monarchy and of aristocratic
virtues, Dumas has endowed his republican
heroes with these same qualities.
Maurice and Louis are republicans only for
the sake of plot. The former is the ideal
romantic lover; the latter is the faithful
friend and perfect gentleman. The book
can in no way serve as a manual of
history, but it is captivating reading for
amateurs of adventures in fiction.
The Story:
At the beginning of the year 1793,
after the death of King Louis XVI on the
guillotine, France was menaced at her
borders by practically all of Europe at a
time when the Convention was torn
apart by dissensions between the Mon-
tagnards and the Girondins. One night
in March, Maurice Lindey, a lieutenant
in the Civic Guard, met a group of
enlisted volunteers who were taking a
woman to the guardhouse because she
had no pass permitting her to be out at
that time. The woman implored the
officer for his protection against these men,
who showed the effects of having drunk
many toasts to their future victories. He
decided to conduct her to the guardhouse
himself, but she talked him into
escorting her to her home.
Louis Lorin, Maurice's friend, had
tried to persuade the lieutenant to avoid
involving himself with an unknown
woman who was so afraid of the
guardhouse and who might well be a ci-devant,
an aristocrat. But Maurice was already in
love with her; he was afraid only that
she was returning from a lovers' tryst.
He escorted her home, but she refused to
tell him her name, and once they had
arrived in the old Rue Saint Jacques, in
the center of the tanneries, with their
horrible smell, she ordered him to close
his eyes, gave him a kiss, and, leaving a
ring between his lips, disappeared. The
next morning he received a short note in
which the woman gave him her thanks
for his gallant conduct and said goodbye
to him forever. This note he treasured
with the ring.
Now that he had the lovely unknown
woman on his mind he was not too upset
557

to learn that the same night the Chevalier
of the Maison Rouge, back in Paris, had
attempted a new conspiracy to free Marie
Antoinette. The immediate consequence
was that the Dauphin was taken away
from the apartment where he was
imprisoned with his mother, sister, and aunt.
The boy was given to Simon, a
shoemaker, to receive a so-called republican
education.
On another evening Maurice went
back to the same spot where the
beautiful stranger had vanished. When he
began reading all the names on the doors
in the hope that love would prompt him
to identify the right one, he was suddenly
surrounded by seven men and thrown
into a cave with his hands tied and his
eyes blindfolded. Behind the door he
could hear the men deliberating to
determine whether he was a spy and whether
they should kill him. The name of Mme.
Dixmer was also mentioned. Maurice
had gathered from their talk that she was
the wife of one of the men, apparently
the manager of a large tannery. The men
continued talking, emphasizing that Mme.
Dixmer must know nothing of this
happening. Maurice wondered why a
tanner would want to assassinate him.
Meanwhile, he had succeeded in
freeing himself, and when the door was
opened he jumped out, only to find
himself in an enclosed garden where he
found no visible means of escape. He
leaped through a window and found
himself in a room where a woman was
reading. Dixmer followed him and ordered
the woman to step aside so that he could
shoot the intruder. Instead, she stretched
out her arms to protect him. Genevieve
Dixmer was the unknown woman of his
previous encounter. Dixmer offered his
apologies, explaining that he was using
prohibited acids in his tannery business
and that his smugglers had been afraid
Maurice was an informer. Maurice was
asked to stay for dinner, where he met
Dixmer's business partner, Morand. At
the end of the evening he was invited
to return.
One day in May, Maurice was on duty
at the Temple—the apartment where
Marie Antoinette was held—when H61o-
lse Tison came to visit her mother, the
prisoner's keeper. She was accompanied
by a friend who was allowed to go
upstairs. After they had left, a letter was
discovered in Marie Antoinette's pocket,
a note confirming the death of a friend.
The handwriting was familiar to
Maurice, and he wondered how Genevieve
Dixmer could have anything to do with
the queen. The next day Marie
Antoinette asked to go to the top of the tower
for a walk. After a while, turning to the
east, she received signals from a window.
Maurice thought he recognized
Genevieve and immediately went to the Rue
Saint Jacques, where he found everyone
very busy with a new dye. He was
amused at his own suspicions.
While he believed that Genevieve felt
esteem rather than real love for her
husband, Maurice was growing more and
more jealous of Morand, whom for no
reason at all he suspected of being in
love with her. One day he did voice his
jealousy; Genevieve pleaded with him to
remain her friend. On the following day
he received a note from her asking him
to send a letter to her husband giving any
reason he might think of for stopping his
visits. Once more he complied with her
wish.
His action greatly upset Dixmer and
Morand, whose tannery business was
only a cover to hide their conspiracies.
Morand was the Chevalier of the Maison
Rouge. After Genevieve refused to write
to Maurice or to invite him back to theii
home, Dixmer himself went to see him.
Maurice, true to his promise, refused to
return. However, he became so lovesick
that he could not do anything until he
received a letter from Genevieve, in
which, at her husband's insistence, she
invited him to call once more. He had no
suspicion that the conspirators had great
need of him. They had bought a house
close to the Temple and had worked all
night to connect its caves with a trapdoor
558

leading into the prison yard.
Genevieve having expressed a desire to
see the queen, Maurice asked her to come
to the Temple on the following
Thursday. He also invited Morand. When a
girl offered them some carnations,
Maurice bought a bouquet for Genevieve.
Later, as the queen walked by, on her
way to the top of the tower, she admired
the flowers and Genevieve offered her
the bouquet.
Simon, who hated Lorin and Maurice
because they protected the Dauphin
against his cruelty, picked up a flower
that had fallen from the bouquet and
discovered a note hidden inside; but the
note was blown away by the wind. After
Simon had given the affair great
publicity, the flower girl was found, tried,
and condemned to death. The Chevalier
of the Maison Rouge was unsuccessful in
his efforts to rescue her, for she was
executed immediately. She was HeloTse
Tison. Her mother had contributed to
her doom by joining her accusations to
Simon's.
When the day set for the queen's
escape arrived, Marie Antoinette asked to
go into the yard for a walk. She was to
sit by the trapdoor, then pretend to faint;
during the confusion, she and her
daughter and sister-in-law could be carried
away through the tunnel. But as they
were entering the yard, the queen's little
black dog jumped forward and went
barking toward the concealed trap. The
conspirators were forced to retreat.
Because the plot confirmed his earlier
charge, Simon became the man of the
day. Maurice fell under suspicion,
together with his friend Lorin.
Lorin, determined to save his friend,
insisted that he join the expedition which
was to arrest the man who had bought
the house to which the tunnel led.
Maurice accepted, only to learn that Dixmer
was the man. He realized that he had
been a mere instrument in the hands of
his alleged friends. When he arrived at
the house, Genevieve said that she really
loved him, and she promised to be his if
he would let the chevalier go free. He
revealed the password to them, and the
conspirators escaped. The house was
burned down. As Maurice ran
everywhere desperately calling for Genevieve,
Lorin realized who the woman was. He
followed his friend through the city on a
fruitless search for his love, and finally
took him home after he had become
completely exhausted. There they found
Genevieve waiting for Maurice.
Maurice decided to leave France in
order to take Genevieve away. She was
left alone to pack her few belongings
while Maurice went to see Lorin. During
his absence her husband came after her
and forced her to go away with him.
In the meantime Marie Antoinette had
been transferred to the Conciergerie. The
chevalier managed to be hired as a
turnkey there, replacing the former turnkey,
whom he had bribed.
Dixmer also had a plan for the queen's
escape. His design was to introduce
himself in the Conciergerie as a registrar. He
hoped to get into Marie Antoinette's
room with Genevieve and kill the two
keepers. Genevieve wouM then persuade
the queen to change clothes with her
and leave with Dixmer.
The Chevalier of the Maison Rouge
had introduced into the queen's room a
small file with which she was supposed
to cut the bars of her window.
Meanwhile, he would keep the jailers busy at
the other window.
Unfortunately, the two attempts,
taking place simultaneously, worked against
each other, and Genevieve was arrested.
Maurice, having searched all Paris in
order to find Genevieve again, had gone
to live with Lorin after narrowly missing
arrest in his own quarters. He and Lorin
were definitely marked as suspects.
It was not until Marie Antoinette's
trial, at which he met the chevalier, that
Maurice learned what had happened to
Genevieve. Every day he went to the
Revolutionary Tribunal in the hope of
finding her there. Finally she was
brought in, and Maurice was surprised
559

to see Lorin brought in also. The
commissary who had come to arrest Maurice
had arrested Lorin instead when
Maurice was not to be found. Genevieve and
Lorin were sentenced to death.
Maurice had seen Dixmer in the
audience. After the trial he followed him
and killed him during a quarrel. He
took a pass which Dixmer, in order to
harass his wife and accuse her of
adultery, had secured for the purpose of
entering the room where the prisoners were
kept. Maurice ran to the waiting room
and, handing the pass to Lorin, told him
he, Lorin, was now free. But Lorin
refused his friend's offer. Maurice was
seized and all three died on the scaffold.
560

CHILDREN OF GOD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Vardis Fisher (1895- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1820-1890
Locale: New York, Illinois, Utah
First published: 1939
Principal characters:
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Latter-day Saints
Brigham Young, the leader of the Church after Smith s death
John Taylor, a later leader of the Mormon Church
Critique:
Vardis Fisher calls his book an
American epic. Certainly the material dealt
with is of an epic character, for no one
can doubt the bravery and the sincerity
of the Mormons after reading this
account of the great migration from New
York to Illinois and Missouri and, finally,
to Utah. Taking the bare bones of fact,
Fisher rounded out the personalities and
events of Mormonism in such manner
that the facts seemed to take on flesh
and come to life. The result is a novel
in which history and fiction are one.
The Story:
In the early 1820's a young man in
Palmyra, New York, had visions which
led him to believe himself a prophet of
the Lord. The young man was Joseph
Smith and his visions were the basis
upon which he built the Church of the
Latter-day Saints, more commonly known
as the Mormon Church. In those days
his followers were few, being only his
family and a handful of friends.
In March of 1830 the Book of
Mormon was published. Shortly after it
appeared, Joseph Smith ordained his
brothers and the men of the Whitmer
family as Latter-day Saints. After Joseph
was reported to have cast out the
personal devil of a man called Newel Knight,
word of the miracle spread about the
country near Palmyra and many were
converted.
But with success came trouble. On
one occasion a mob of men almost
lynched the new prophet. On another, he
was taken to court for trial. He realized
that his life was no longer safe in the
state of New York.
Joseph's three hundred followers left
New York State for Ohio. Meanwhile
Joseph sent two men, one of them Oliver
Cowdery, his first convert, to travel
beyond the Mississippi River for the
purpose of converting the Indians and
locating the place where the Saints were to
build their Zion. In Ohio, Joseph Smith
was again persecuted. One winter night
a mob abducted him from his house and
tarred and feathered him. Shortly
afterward Joseph decided to take his flock to
Missouri, and he went with a few of his
followers to survey the country.
More trouble awaited him when he
returned to Ohio. Several of his
converts had set themselves up as prophets
during his absence. Reports reached him
that the people he had left in Missouri
were being mobbed. Then one day two
men came to offer their services to Joseph
Smith. One was Brigham Young, the
other Heber Kimball. Brigham Young
was a great help to the Saints' community
because he could make men do what he
wished, something that Joseph Smith, the
mystic, was never able to learn.
While the Saints in Ohio were facing
internal strife, the people of the new
faith in Missouri were being
horsewhipped, murdered, and driven from
their homes by mobs. Eventually Brig-
ham Young was authorized to organize
CHILDREN OF GOD by Vardis Fisher.
Copyright, 1939, by Vardis Fisher.
By permission of the author and the publishers, Vanguard Press, Inc.
561

an army to march upon Missouri and
rescue the Mormons there. At the last
minute Joseph Smith went with it as
leader. The expedition was doomed to
failure. Cholera and Indians took then
toll among the men. They never fought
the Missouri mobs.
For the next few years the Saints
prospered in Ohio. Joseph Smith and
Brigham Young opened a Mormon-
operated bank, which failed, along with
many others, in the panic of 1837. The
loss of their money turned the Saints
against their leaders as nothing else had
done, and Brigham Young and Joseph
Smith fled to Missouri for their lives.
They were soon joined by three hundred
families from Ohio who remained true to
Joseph's religion and prophetic power.
In Missouri mobs again harassed their
settlements. The desperate Saints
organized a retaliating secret society called
the Danites or Destroying Angels.
Finally the governor of Missouri ordered
all the Mormons to leave the state or be
killed. Again Joseph Smith and his
leaders were tried for treason. Through a
friendly guard they escaped execution.
The Saints settled next at Nauvoo, in
Illinois, where Joseph Smith began the
practice of plural marriages in an effort
to keep the women in the church, who
outnumbered the men, from becoming
charity cases or harlots. Joseph himself
soon had twenty wives. His first wife,
Emma, made him send away all but two.
Joseph Smith never left Illinois. He
was killed by a mob when he gave
himself up to stand trial for treason a third
time. Brigham Young then took over
the leadership of the Mormons, not as a
prophet, but as a leader. He decided that
the only way for the Mormons to find
peace was to leave the United States,
to seek a place in the far West.
Trudging westward through the snow,
three thousand Mormons started out
under Brigham's leadership. Those left
behind felt lost without their leader and
soon there were fifteen thousand more
people following Brigham westward.
In the spring of 1847 Brigham Young
set out from his winter camp for the
Rocky Mountains with a hundred and
fifty picked men. The others were to
follow later. Brigham had determined
to settle south of the salt lake in Utah.
By the winter of 1847 seventeen hundred
Mormons were already in Utah. When
Brigham learned that the Utah territory
had been ceded to the United States by
Mexico, he felt that the Mormons would
never have a land of their own. The
next winter five thousand of the
Mormons lived through a year of intense cold
and starvation rations. The third year
in Utah brought a new problem to
Brigham Young. California gold
attracted thousands of rascals and
adventurers, many of whom passed through
the settlement of the Mormons on their
way to the coast. Those scoundrels
stole from the scanty stores of the
settlers and made trouble among the women.
As the years passed, the Saints
flourished. Brigham Young was elected
governor of Utah Territory. In 1852 he
took a bold step when he announced
publicly what many people had long
known or at least suspected, the practice
of polygamy by the leaders of the
Mormon Church. The hue and cry against
the practice amazed and embittered
Brigham, for he could say truthfully that it
had maintained morality in the Mormon
settlements.
In 1855 locusts demolished their crops.
Many of the Saints turned against the
practice of polygamy, for in times of
famine a man could not secure enough
food for his over-expanded family.
Two years later the Mormons heard
that the Federal government had sent
an army to deal with them. From their
previous experiences, the Mormons knew
they could expect little mercy. The
territorial governor sent by the president was
vigorously defied and the Mormons
threatened to burn Salt Lake City and
leave the country a desert as they had
found it. Finally the president sent a
pardon to the Mormons.
562

With General Grant in the White
House, the Mormon problem again
became a pressing one. Federal prosecutors
invoked the anti-bigamy law and began
to imprison Mormon leaders. Then the
prosecutors attempted to indict the
leaders, including Brigham Young, for
murder. Young was never tried,
however, for he died of natural causes.
After Young's death, the authorities
secured more indictments in the hope
that the Mormons would repudiate
polygamy. They also moved against the
cooperative stores and industries which had
been founded, and attempted to deprive
the Mormon Church of all assets in
excess of fifty thousand dollars. The sum
of those strains was too great. The
president of the Mormon Council denounced
plural marriages. No longer could the
Mormon community hold itself apart in
order to continue its existence. The
Saints and the settlers from the East
would live side by side in the new state
of Utah.
563

THE CHILDREN OF HERAKLES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c. 485 c. 406 B.CO
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: The age of legend
Locate: Before the temple of Zeus at Marathon
First presented: c. 430 B.C.
Principal characters:
Iolaus, aged friend of Herakles
Copreus, herald of Eurystheus
Demophon, King of Atnens
Macaria, Herakles' daughter
Alcmene, Herakles' mother
Eurystheus, King of Argos
Critique:
There are so many awkwardnesses in
the structure of the Children of Herakles
(the Herakleidae) that critics have
suggested that important scenes must be
missing or that, like Alcestis, it was not
intended as a tragedy but as a substitute
for a satyr play. Another suggestion is
that since the Herakleidae was presented
in the early years of the Peloponnesian
War and glorifies the virtues of the
Athenian city-state, Euripides depended
upon the high patriotism of the play to
carry it. The unity of the play lies in the
fact that in the beginning Eurystheus
threatens to slay the surviving relatives
of Herakles, who are seeking refuge in
Athens, and at the end of the play he
is himself slain by command of Alcmene,
the mother of Herakles.
The Story:
Iolaus, the aged warrior friend of the
dead Herakles, together with Alcmene
and the Herakleidae, the children of
Herakles, had for years been wandering
over Greece seeking a refuge from
Eurystheus, King of Argos. No city had dared
to take them in against the command of
the powerful Argive ruler. At last the
wanderers arrived in Athens. There,
while resting at the temple of Zeus, they
were immediately confronted by Copreus,
the herald of Eurystheus, who demanded
that they proceed at once to Argos and
submit to death by stoning. Iolaus
stanchly refused, and when Copreus
seized the children a violent conflict
ensued and Iolaus was thrown to the
ground.
The chorus of aged Athenians
immediately summoned their king, Demophon,
who was warned by Copreus that his
refusal to surrender the Herakleidae to
the Argives would surely result in war.
In response to Iolaus' plea, Demophon
offered his protection on the grounds that
the children of Herakles were gathered
around the altar of Zeus, that they were
bound to him by ties of kinship, and that
the honor and freedom of Athens were
at stake. Copreus sullenly departed, after
warning that he would return with an
army and punish Athens for its insolence.
The grateful Iolaus praised the Athenians
for their willingness to aid the helpless in
an honest cause, but he refused to leave
the temple until the issue with Argos was
settled.
The Argive host appeared, led by
Eurystheus himself. Demophon, who had
consulted a variety of public and private
oracles, came to Iolaus with the news that
victory depended upon the sacrifice of
some royal maiden and that he could not
in good conscience slay his own daughter.
When the distraught Iolaus offered to
surrender himself to Eurystheus,
Demophon pointed out that the Argive king
desired only the children.
Macaria, daughter of Herakles, emerged
564

from the temple to ofFer herself, insisting
that she be chosen even after lolaus
proposed that the victim be selected by lot.
After she had been led away, a servant
of Hyllus, son of Herakles, entered to
announce that Hyllus had arrived with
an army to aid the Herakleidae. The
elated lolaus summoned Alcmene from
the temple to hear the good news. He
was so overjoyed that in spite of his age
he insisted on donning armor and setting
off to take part in the battle.
Later a servant brought Alcmene
tidings of victory and described how, after
the cowardly Eurystheus had refused
single combat with Hyllus, the rejuvenated
lolaus plunged into the fray and took
Eurystheus prisoner. Alcmene was
astounded that lolaus had not killed him
on the spot. When guards brought the
bound Eurystheus before her, she
demanded his immediate death.
The messenger of Demophon
cautioned her that such an act would violate
Athenian custom, but the vengeful
Alcmene swore that she herself would kill
Eurystheus if necessary. The Argive king
explained that he had never had any
personal quarrel with the Herakleidae
and that he was merely forced to do as
he did by the divine power of Hera, the
deity of Argos. Nevertheless, he would
not ask for mercy; in fact, since an old
oracle had predicted it, he was quite
willing to submit to death if his body would
be buried at Pallene, where in the future
his spirit could protect his former
enemies. The bloodthirsty Alcmene then
demanded that he be taken away from
the city, slain, and cast to the dogs. The
chorus, observing that so long as
Eurystheus was not killed within Athens no
stain of guilt would come upon the city,
led him away to be executed.
565

CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Israel Zangwill CI864-1926)
Type of plot: Ethnocentric realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: London
First published: 1892
Principal characters:
Moses Ansell, a pious Jew
Esther, his daughter
Hannah Jacobs, a beautiful young Jewess
Reb Shemuel Jacobs, her father, a rabbi
David Brandon, in love with Hannah
Melchitsekek Pinchas, a poor poet and scholar
Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, Esther Ansell's benefactress
Raphael Leon, a young journalist
The Reverend Joseph Strelitski, minister of a fashionable synagogue
Debby, a seamstress
Critique:
Children of the Ghetto, A Study of a
Peculiar People is a story of the Jews of
London, a novel which at the time of
its publication uncovered a new vein
of English fiction. The ghetto, as here
presented, was a separate community
continually struggling with the influx of
destitute Poles, and the fierce, surging
life within—a life both comic and tragic
—was regulated by the canons of strict
orthodoxy. In one sense this work is not
a novel. There is no central plot, only a
series of loosely grouped episodes, and
the numerous characters are only vaguely
connected in many instances. Although
Zangwill wrote from a parochial point
of view, the book is valuable for its
descriptions of seething life, its study of
racial strivings and discontents, and its
warm, sympathetic character sketches.
The Story:
Moses Ansell accepted poverty as the
natural condition of the chosen people.
A pious man, he observed all the rituals
of his religion, but even his meek wife,
before she died, realized that he should
have spent less time in prayer and more
time working. His family consisted of
Esther, a serious young girl, two smaller
sons, a little daughter, and their
complaining grandmother. The Ansells lived in
one room in the ghetto. When the
mother died, Benjamin, an older son, had
been put in an orphanage.
One night Esther returned from the
soup kitchen with a pitcher of soup and
two loaves of bread. At the doorway of
their room she fell and the soup spilled.
The hungry family snatched at the bread.
Becky Belcovitch, from the floor below,
came to complain that the soup had
leaked through the ceiling. When the
Belcovitches heard what had happened,
they sent up their own rations to the
Ansells.
Malka Birnbaum was the cousin of
Moses' dead wife. Occasionally, when
the Ansells grew too hungry, she would
f've Moses a few shillings and berate
im for his pious ineptitude. Malka had
two daughters, Milly and Leah, by her
first husband. Milly was married. Leah
had become engaged to Sam Levine, a
commercial traveler.
At the feast of redemption for Milly's
infant son, Sam pretended that he had
forgotten to give Leah a present. He
took from his pocket an expensive ring
and held it up for all to admire. Playfully
he slipped it on the finger of Hannah
Jacobs, the beautiful daughter of Reb
Shemuel, while he repeated the words
he had memorized for his marriage to
566

Leah. The horrified company realized at
once what Sam was too secular to
understand; he and Hannah were married
according to the law. Hannah and Sam
arranged for the ritualistic formality o£
a divorce after his next trip.
As compensation, Sam and Leah took
Hannah to the Purim ball. There
Hannah was greatly taken with David
Brandon, a young South African immigrant
who no longer observed orthodox
practices. Hannah already had an earnest
suitor, an impoverished poet and scholar
named Pinchas. Although Reb Shemuel
listened favorably to his bid for Hannah's
hand, the indulgent rabbi refused to
force his daughter to marry anyone she
did not love.
Sugarman, the marriage broker, had a
daughter, Bessie, who was in love with
Daniel Hyams, but there was no talk of
marriage because Daniel supported his
aged parents. When the father saw that
Daniel remained unmarried because he
could not keep up two households, the
old man pretended to receive word from
a brother in America. With borrowed
money the two old people took steerage
passage for New York.
Sugarman, seeing that Becky Belco-
vitch was of an age to marry, thought he
could arrange a match with Shosshi
Shmendrik, a street hawker. Bear Bel-
covitch, her father, gave his consent.
Becky, having other ideas, tried never to
be at home when Shosshi came courting.
One day Shosshi stationed his barrow in
front of Widow Finkelstein's store.
Because he started to leave without paying
his sixpence rent, the determined widow
harangued him in the street and
continued the argument at his house. When
she admitted to owning two hundred
and seventeen golden sovereigns as well
as her shop, Shosshi fell in love with her.
Their marriage was a great success.
The disconsolate Pinchas met Wolf, a
Jewish labor leader. When starving
sweatshop workers struck for higher wages,
Pinchas persuaded Wolf to let him
address the strikers. In a speech filled with
Messianic delusions, he asked them to
support his candidacy for Parliament. In
disgust the workers threw him out.
Occasionally Benjamin Ansell came to
see his family, but he did not get on well
with them. Only Esther, who had dared
to look into a New Testament,
sympathized with him. Word came from his
school that the boy had pneumonia. In
his dying delirium Benjamin spoke only
Yiddish, and Moses, sitting by his
bedside, rejoiced that his son died a real Jew.
When Hannah and David planned to
marry, Reb Shemuel was apprehensive
of her suitor's orthodoxy. David assured
the rabbi that his family was orthodox
and that he himself was a cohen, a
priest. But Reb Shemuel declared they
could never marry. Hannah had been
divorced, and the law forbade a cohen
to take a divorced woman. Hannah and
David planned to run away to America.
But after she had accompanied her
father to the Seder services, Hannah realized
the old ways were too strong for her to
break. Heartbroken, she renounced
David forever.
Ten years later wealthy Mrs. Henry
Goldsmith entertained at a Chanukah
dinner. Most of the guests were artists
and intellectuals who had drifted away
from the strict practices of Old Jewry.
Among them was Raphael Leon, a young
journalist. One topic of conversation was
Mordecai Josephs, a new novel
scandalous to West End Judaism, written by
an unknown author named Edward Ar-
mitage. Sidney Graham, a young
dilettante, praised the novel but criticized the
crudity and immaturity of the writer.
Raphael noticed that a shy, dark girl
followed the conversation closely but said
nothing.
The girl was Esther Ansell. Mrs.
Goldsmith, after packing old Moses and the
rest of his brood off to America, had
adopted Esther and educated her. A
graduate of London University, Esther was
trying to decide upon a career. Unknown
to all, she was Edward Armitage, the
author of Mordecai Josephs.
567

Raphael's interest in her continued
after he became editor of a Jewish
paper, The Flag of Judah, financed by
Mr. Goldsmith. Pinchas, the neglected
poet, aspired to become a contributor.
Raphael, unwilling to compromise
between his principles and the wishes of
his sponsor, was unhappy in his work.
At the theater Esther encountered
Leonard James, the snobbish, vulgar
brother of Hannah Jacobs. A short time
later Leonard went to see Esther. They
quarreled and he reminded her that her
family had always been Schnorrers,
beggars. Esther, feeling that he might be
right, decided to abuse the generosity of
the Goldsmiths no longer. When
Raphael called, she told him her decision
and announced that she was Edward
Armitage.
Dissatisfied with himself, Raphael had
an interview with the Reverend Joseph
Strelitski, a fashionable minister who was,
like Esther, of humble origins. Regarding
himself as a hypocrite, a slave to wealth
and outmoded ritual, Strelitski intended
to resign his pastorate and go to America.
Encouraged by his and Esther's examples,
Raphael felt relieved when Mr.
Goldsmith fired him and made Pinchas editor
of the paper.
Esther, meanwhile, had returned to the
ghetto to stay with Debby, a seamstress
she had known years before. Surrounded
by friends of her childhood, she felt
herself drawn bv family ties; she would go
to America. She was glad when her
publisher told her that her novel promised
to be a success, for she would not go to
her family empty-handed. On a ship
loaded with Jewish emigrants she and
Strelitski sailed for America. But there
was no deep sadness in the parting when
Esther said goodbye to Raphael. He
would come to her later.
568

CHITA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904)
Type of plot: Exotic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Louisiana coastal waters
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
Feliu Viosca, a fisherman
Carmen Viosca, his wife
Chita, a foundling
Dr. Julien La Brierre, her father
Critique:
Hearn's method of telling a story, his
purpose, and his literary style are always
distinctive. The style is always abrupt, an
almost disdainful attitude on the part of
the writer, as if he scorned any
communication between himself and the reader.
Chita: A Memory of Last Island is more,
however, than a straight narrative. It is
both poetry and story, for grained into the
plot development is the exotic and
dramatic description of the islands of the
Louisiana coast and of a devastating
hurricane that occurred there in the middle
of the nineteenth century.
The Story:
Southward from New Orleans one
passes settlements of many nationalities
and races, Western and Oriental. Beyond
lies an archipelago, the islands of which
are Grande Pass, Grande Terre, and
Barataria. Still to the south lies Grande
Isle, a modern bathing resort, the loveliest
island in the Gulf of Mexico. Last Island,
forty miles west of Grande Isle, is now
desolate, but at an earlier time it was the
most popular of the group and a
fashionable resort. The hotel there was a two-
story timber structure with many
apartments, a dining-room, and a ballroom.
One night the sea destroyed it.
On the northwest side of each island
are signs of the incessant influence of the
wind and sea, for the trees all bend away
from the water. Ail along the Gulf coast,
and on the island beaches, are the ruins
of hurricanes, skeletons of toppled
buildings and broken tree trunks. The land
itself is being eaten away.
The innocent beauty of summer on
these islands is impossible to express.
Years ago Last Island was immersed in the
azure light of a typical July. It was an
unusually lovely summer and the
breathless charm of the season lingered on. One
afternoon the ocean began to stir and great
waves started to hurl themselves over the
beaches, giving warning on Last Island
that a hurricane was brewing. The wind,
beginning to blow, continued for a few
days to stir the water. A steamer, the Star,
due that day, was not expected to arrive.
Captain Abraham Smith, an American,
knew the sea and he knew his ship.
Sensing that he might be needed, he had sailed
for Last Island. As he approached he saw
the storm rising. He ordered the excess
weight of the Star tossed overboard to help
her ride out the storm. On the island,
however, the guests at the hotel continued
to dance until they noticed water at their
feet and the building began to be buffeted
by the waves. Captain Smith spent the
night rescuing as many as he could.
Buildings were ripped apart, the shores were
lashed by wind and wave, lakes and rivers
overflowed, and by daybreak countless
corpses floated on the stormy sea.
When the hurricane subsided,
scavengers came to claim whatever plunder
could be salvaged from the ruins and from
the bodies of the dead.
On a tiny volcanic island lived Feliu
Viosca, a fisherman, and his wife Carmen.
569

On the night of the terrible storm Carmen
was awakened by the noise. Afraid, she
aroused her husband, whose calmness
comforted her, and he ordered her to
return to sleep. In her dreams her dead
child, dark-eyed Conchita, came to her.
The next day the fishermen, gathered
at the shore, stood watching the wreckage
and the bodies floating past. A flash of
yellow caught Feliu's eye. In a moment he
had stripped and was swimming out
toward a child, still alive, clinging to her
drowned mother. Feliu managed to rescue
the baby and swim back to shore.
The half-drowned child was taken to
Carmen, whose skillful hands and
maternal instincts nursed the little girl into a
warm, sound sleep; there was hope she
would survive. Her yellow hair had saved
her, for it was the flash of sun on her
tresses that had caught Feliu's eye.
Captain Harris, of New Orleans, along
with several other men, was sailing up
and down the coast in search of missing
persons, dead or still alive after the storm.
Ten days after the rescue of the girl,
Harris came to Viosca's wharf. Hardly able to
communicate with the men, Feliu told
them the story of his heroism, but
cautioned them that if they wished to
question the child they must proceed gently,
since she was still not fully recovered from
shock.
The child's Creole dialect was not
comprehensible to anyone there until
Laroussel, a Creole, began to question her.
In her broken speech she told him that
her Creole name was Zouzoune, her real
one Lili. Her mother was called Adele
and her father Julien. Nothing more
could be determined. Realizing that the
child's relatives might never be found,
Harris decided to leave her with Feliu
and Carmen, who promised to give her
excellent care. laroussel gave the little girl
a trinket that had caught her eye.
Although other searching parties stopped to
see Feliu's waif, the child's identity
remained a mystery. Meanwhile, near
another island, a pair of bodies drifting in
the sea had been identified as those of Dr.
Julien La Brierre and his wife Adele. The
doctor had survived, however; six months
later he was in New Orleans looking at
his own epitaph and that of his wife.
Dr. La Brierre had grown up in New
Orleans. In maturity, to please his father,
he had studied medicine in Paris. After
his return to New Orleans he had fallen
in love and had been wounded in a duel
with a rival named Laroussel. Following
the death of his father and mother, Julien
had married Adele, and Zouzoune was
born.
On the lonely island the small child,
now called Chita, had become a member
of the Viosca family. Gradually she
adapted herself to the ways of her foster
parents.
Years later Dr. La Brierre was
practicing in New Orleans, a lonely and kindly
physician. One year Edwards, an elderly
patient of his, went to Viosca's Point,
which Captain Harris had recommended
for the sick man's recovery. While there,
Edwards suffered a stroke. Hurriedly
summoned, Dr. La Brierre arrived too late to
help his patient.
Before the doctor could set out for
home, he too became ill. Carmen nursed
him. In the vague consciousness that
accompanied his malady, the doctor saw
Chita, whose resemblance to his dead wife
greatly excited him. In his delirium he
called out to Zouzoune, to Adele, while
Carmen tried to calm him.
Reliving the horror of the hurricane
that had taken Adele and Zouzoune from
him, the sick man died.
570

THE CHOUANS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Honors de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1799
Locale: Brittany
First published: 1829
Principal characters:
Marie de Verneuil, natural daughter of a duke
The Marquis de Montauran, leader of the Chouans
Marche-a-Terre, a Chouan
Francine, Marie's maid
Corenttn, agent of the Republic
Madame du Gua Saint-Cyr, a royalist in love with Montauran
Hulot, soldier of the Republic
Critique:
The Chouans was the first of Balzac's
novels to gain recognition. It shows much
unevenness in structure and the
characters are but shallowly motivated; the
action scenes, however, are well written. An
obscure chapter in French history comes
to life in this imitation of Scott's historical
novels. Although few readers of Balzac
are likely to place The Chouans high
among his works, the author himself had
the novel reprinted as part of The Human
Comedy to represent "Scenes of Military
Life." As such, it has a definite place in
Balzac's work, aside from the picture
presented of the struggles of the young
Republic.
The Story:
The French Republic, in the years
after the Revolution, had many
enemies. Abroad, the remaining monarchies
watched with cold disapproval the new
government; at home, the survivors of the
old aristocratic regime intrigued with all
the dissident groups at odds with the
central government in Paris. In Brittany
peasants and smugglers, who came to be
called Chouans, finally joined the
aristocrats in guerrilla warfare against the
Republic.
To put down the outbreak, Hulot,
who commanded the Republican garrison
at Mayenne, was on his way from
Fougeres with his conscripted Bretons.
He was uneasy, for the Chouans were
active and they would make every effort to
rescue their comrades. When the Chouans
did attack, he was partly prepared.
Although the conscripts all got away,
Hulot's vigorous defense got his
Republican troops safely back to Mayenne. A
short time later Hulot was ordered to
escort the mail coach from Mayenne to
Montagne. Passengers in the coach were
Marie de Verneuil and her pretty maid
Francine, who had become objects of
great curiosity when they stopped at the
inn in Mayenne. With them was a third
traveler, Monsieur Corentin, a small,
secretive man whom Hulot suspected of
being a secret agent for the Republic. At
Alencon the two women accepted an
invitation to breakfast with Madame du
Gua and her supposed son, the Citizen
du Gua Saint-Cyr. Marche-a-Terre, a
Chouan skulking nearby in his rebel
uniform of goatskin, observed the party with
distrust and sent to Madame du Gua a
message warning her to beware of Marie,
whom he suspected of being a Republican
spy.
Hulot was also uneasy. He was sure
that Madame du Gua's son was really the
Marquis de Montauran, called Gars, the
fiery leader of the Chouans. At last he
forced his way into the dining-room to
question the man. Marie, attracted to the
handsome young man, came to his aid by
producing a paper, countersigned by the
Paris ministry, which notified all local au-
571

thorities to obey the bearer. Ordered to
retire, the old soldier was furious at having
to obey a woman. A loyal Republican,
however, he let the son go and announced
his intention to resign his commission.
Since all were bound for Fougeres, the
next day Madame du Gua and her son set
out in a carriage with Marie and Francine.
Marie's letter had procured them an
escort of soldiers to guard them through
the dangerous Chouan territory. Once
while they were ascending a long hill,
Marie ana the son walked up behind the
coach. Their bearing was almost
loverlike, and Madame du Gua seemed
strangely jealous for a mother. Marie had
little success in learning who the son
really was. She in her turn was reticent
about her own past.
The Chouans under an aristocratic
leader ambushed the coach but were
driven off by the Republican guard. The
Chouan chief took the opportunity to
whisper a warning against Marie to young
du Gua.
After the excitement Madame du Gua
announced that they were close to the
family estate at Vivetiere, and she and her
son invited their companions to spend the
night at the chateau. When the son
promised safety for Marie and Francine
and supper for the guards, the whole
party went to the castle. Once inside,
Marie saw that the hall was filled with
insurgents who had come to lay plans for
continuing the war against the Republic.
Marie then realized that Madame du
Gua's supposed son was in reality the
Marquis de Montauran, the famous Gars.
She knew also that she had fallen in love
with the handsome rebel.
In spite of Montauran's promise of safe
conduct, the jealous Madame du Gua
ordered an attack on the Republican guard.
Under the fierce Marche-a-Terre the
Chouans massacred the guards and took
Marie and Francine prisoner. Marche-a-
Terre, however, saved Francine, whom
he recognized as his former sweetheart.
He was also able to rescue Marie, after
Madame du Gua had turned the girl over
to the smugglers, and the two women
were returned to Fougeres in the coach.
In Fougeres, Corentin rented a house
for Marie and installed her as a great lady.
She was tormented by her memories of
Montauran and wondered if he really
loved her. While walking near the city
limits, she saw Madame du Gua and
Montauran with a band of skulking
Chouans. When Madame du Gua tried
to kill Marie with a rifle shot, while
Montauran looked on, Marie's love for
him turned to hatred and a desire for
revenge.
Marie tucked a jeweled dagger in her
bodice and set out to kill Montauran.
During her search she ran from some roving
Chouans and took refuge in a cellar. In an
abandoned scullery she found Marche-a-
Terre and his band torturing a miser to
get his gold. After helping the miser to
escape, she was told of a nearby sanctuary,
the cottage of Galpe-Chopine, who
worked both for the Republicans and the
Chouans. Galpe-Chopine's wife Barbette
helped Marie to return to Fougeres.
When Marie learned that the Chouans
planned to give a ball, she resolved to
attend. She induced Galpe-Chopine to
guide her to St. James, where the
aristocrats were pathering. By her great beauty
Marie attracted the admiration of all the
men, and when she told that she was
the daughter of the Duke de Verneuil she
removed the smirch on her reputation.
Montauran, fascinated anew, escorted her
from the ball.
Marie told Montauran her true story.
Although she was only the natural
daughter of the duke, she had been recognized
by him. Unprovided for after his death,
she had accepted the guardianship of a
seventy-year-old friend of her father.
Then, to her horror, she was accused of
being the old man's mistress. After two
years of adventures she became the wife
of Danton. When he died she entered the
service of the Republic. Her present
mission was to win the love of Montauran
572

and betray him to the government.
Montauran, even after hearing her story
could not restrain his love for her.
In Fougeres, Corentin, now revealed as
an agent of the Republic, determined to
use Marie as a lure to draw Montauran to
his death. The lovers finally decided to get
married and flee the intrigues of France.
A priest was procured and a small altar
was set up in Marie's drawing-room.
Then Marie sent word through Barbette
to Montauran. Under cover of dense fog
Montauran slipped into Fougeres and the
marriage ceremony was solemnized. But
Corentin, who had been on the lookout,
warned Hulot, commander of the
Republican garrison, that the rebel leader could
be captured easily. Hulot stationed a
heavy guard around Marie's house, but
because of the fog he could not be sure
that Montauran was actually in the
drawing-room.
In the morning Marie, seeing the
guard, roused her husband. Montauran,
in Chouan clothes, attempted to escape
over the wall but was shot and
captured. Marie, meanwhile, had put on
Montauran's dress uniform and had gone
out the street door. She too was shot down.
The lovers, carried to the barracks, died
there.
Disgusted with spies and intrigues,
Hulot drove Corentin out of town.
573

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: London, England
First published: 1843
Principal characters:
Ebenezer Scrooge, a miser
Jacob Marley's Ghost
Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's clerk
Tiny Tim, Cratchit's son
Scrooge's Nbphbw
Critique:
This story has become as much a part
of the tradition of Christmas as holly
wreaths, mistletoe, and Christmas carols.
Dickens' skill with humor and character
analysis are particularly evident. At the
beginning of the story, we are made to
dislike Scrooge for his miserly ways, but
we are in sympathy with him as he is
subjected to the tortures of his ghostly
journeys. Dickens provides a
psychological explanation for Scrooge's
bitterness and desire to live apart from the
rest of the world. At the same time he
paves the way for Scrooge's reform, so
that it comes as no surprise. It is entirely
right that Scrooge should become an
example of the meaning of Christmas
among men.
The Story:
Ebenezer Scrooge was a miser. Owner
of a successful counting-house, he would
have in his bleak office only the smallest
fire in the most bitter weather. For his
clerk, Bob Cratchit, he allowed an even
smaller fire. The weather seldom
mattered to Scrooge, who was always cold
within, never warm—even on
Christmas Eve.
As the time approached for closing the
office on Christmas Eve, Scrooge's
nephew stopped in to wish him a Merry
Christmas. Scrooge only sneered, for he
abhorred sentiment and thought only of
one thing—money. To him Christmas
was a time when people spent more
money than they should, and found
themselves a year older and no richer.
Grudgingly Scrooge allowed his clerk,
Bob Cratchit, to have Christmas Day
off; that was the one concession to the
holiday that he made. But he warned
Cratchit to be at work earlier the day
after Christmas. Scrooge left his office
and went home to his rooms in a
building in which he was the only tenant.
They had been the rooms of Scrooge's
partner, Jacob Marley, dead for seven
years. As he approached his door, he
saw in the knocker Marley's face. It was
a horrible sight. Marley was looking at
Scrooge with his eyes motionless, his
ghostly spectacles on his ghostly
forehead. As Scrooge watched, the knocker
resumed its usual form. Shaken by this
vision, Scrooge entered the hall and
lighted a candle; then he looked behind
the door, half expecting to see Marley's
pigtail sticking out into the hall.
Satisfied, he double-locked the door. He
prepared for bed and sat for a time before
the dying fire. Suddenly an unused bell
hanging in the room began to ring, as did
every bell in the house.
Then from below came the sound of
heavy chains clanking. The cellar door
flew open, and someone mounted the
stairs. Marley's ghost walked through
Scrooge's door—Marley, dressed as
always, but with a heavy chain of cash
boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and
heavy purses around his middle.
Marley's ghost sat down to talk to the
frightened a'hd bewildered Scrooge. Forc-
574

ing Scrooge to admit that he believed in
him, Marley explained that in life he had
never done any good for mankind and so
in death he was condemned to constant
traveling with no rest and no relief from
the torture of remorse. The ghost said
that Scrooge still had a chance to save
himself from Marley's fate. Scrooge
would be visited by three spirits who
would show him the way to change. The
first spirit would appear the next day at
the stroke of one. The next would arrive
on the second night, and the last on the
third. Dragging his chain, the ghost
disappeared.
After Marley's ghost had vanished,
Scrooge went to bed and in spite of his
nervousness fell asleep instantly. When
he awoke, it was still dark. The clock
struck twelve. He waited for the stroke
of one. As the sound of the bell died
away, his bed curtains were pulled
apart, and there stood a figure with a
childlike face, but with long, white hair
and a strong, well-formed body. The
ghost introduced itself as the Ghost of
Christmas Past, Scrooge's past. When the
ghost invited Scrooge to go on a journey
with him, Scrooge was unable to refuse.
They traveled like the wind and
stopped first at Scrooge's birthplace. There
Scrooge saw himself as a boy, neglected
by his friends and left alone to find
adventure in books. Next he saw himself
at school, where his sister had come to
take him home for Christmas. Scrooge
recalled his love for his sister, who had
died young. The ghost reminded him that
she had had a son whom Scrooge
neglected. Their next stop was the scene of
Scrooge's apprenticeship, where
everyone made merry on Christmas Eve.
Traveling on, they saw a young girl weeping
as she told young Scrooge that she
realized he loved money more than he loved
her. The ghost showed him the same
girl, grown older but happy with her
husband and children. Then the ghost
returned Scrooge to his room, where he
promptly fell asleep again*
When the Ghost of Christmas Present
appeared, he led Scrooge through the city
streets on Christmas morning. Their
first stop was at the Cratchit home, where
Bob Cratchit appeared with frail,
crippled Tiny Tim on his shoulder. In the
Cratchit home a skimpy meal became a
banquet. After dinner Bob proposed a
toast to Mr. Scrooge, even though it
put a temporary damper on the holiday
gaiety. Then the ghost and Scrooge
crossed swiftly through the city where
everyone paused to wish one another a
Merry Christmas. As they looked in on
the home of Scrooge's nephew, gaiety
prevailed and Scrooge was tempted to
join in the games. There, too, a toast
was proposed to Scrooge's health. As
the clock began to strike twelve, Scrooge
found himself in his room, and the ghost
of Christmas Present faded away.
With the last stroke of twelve, Scrooge
saw a black-shrouded phantom
approaching him, the Ghost of Christmas Future.
The phantom extended his hand and
forced Scrooge to follow him until they
came to a group of scavengers selling the
belongings of the dead. One woman had
entered a dead man's room, had taken his
bed curtains, bedding, and even the
shirt in which he was to have been
buried. Scrooge saw a dead man with his
face covered, but he refused to lift the
covering. Revisiting the Cratchits, he
learned that Tiny Tim had died.
After seeing his empty counting-house
and his own neglected grave, Scrooge
realized that it was he who had lain on
the bed in the cold, stripped room with
no one to mourn his death. Scrooge
begged the spirit that it should not be
so, vowing that he would change, that
he would forever honor Christmas in
his heart. He made a desperate grasp
for the phantom's hand and realized that
the ghost had shriveled away and
dwindled into a bedpost. Scrooge
bounded out of bed and thanked Jacob
Marley's ghost for his chance to make
amends. Dashing into the street, he
realized that it was Christmas Day. His first
act was to order the largest turkey avail-
575

able to be sent anonymously to the
Cratchits. He stopped a man whom the
day before he had ordered from his
counting-house for asking for a
contribution, and to him Scrooge gave a large
sum of money for the poor. Then he
astounded his nephew by arriving at his
house for Christmas dinner and making
himself the life of the party.
Scrooge never reverted to his old ways.
He raised Bob Cratchit's salary,
improved conditions in his office,
contributed generously to all charities, and
became a second father to Tiny Tim. It
was said of him thereafter that he truly
knew how to keep Christmas well.
576

A CHRONICLE OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA
Type of work: History
Author: Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Time: 1465-1492
Locale: Spain
First published: 1829
Principal characters:
Henry IV, King of Castile and Le6n
Ferdinand V, King of Spain, his son
Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain
Muley Abul Hassan, King of Granada
Boabdil (El Chico), the last King of Granada
Ayxa la Horra, his mother
Zoraya, Abul Hassan's wife
El Zagal, the rebel King of Andalusia
Vizier Aben Comixa
The Count of Tendilla
Washington Irving, youngest of the
eleven children of a wealthy New York
merchant, was sickly as a child. Unable
to continue in school, he educated
himself along lines that struck his fancy, and
his studies included the Spanish language.
One of the early books in his scattered
reading was Don Quixote, which inspired
in him a life-long interest in Spain and
the Spanish people.
In 1825, while traveling in southern
France, he decided to see the land of
Cervantes, using as his excuse the need to
go to Madrid to consult manuscripts
dealing with Columbus. Out of this visit
developed A History of the Life and
Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828).
From material uncovered but unsuitable
for this work, and from impressions of
his travels, he wrote a chronicle of the
conquest of Granada which he attributed
to an imaginary historian, the Jesuit Fray
Antonio Agapida. While in Granada he
visited the Alhambra, then no national
monument but a dirty, run-down
building, and secured permission to live there
while writing the tales contained in The
Alhambra (1832).
In the introduction to the first edition
of A Chronicle of the Conquest of
Granada, Irving invented details of the
life of Fray Antonio and affirmed that the
original manuscript was in the Escorial
Library. In a note to the 1850 revised
edition, however, he confessed that the
Jesuit priest was his own invention. He
also admitted romanticizing some of the
scenes and incidents of the history, but
in this respect he was only doing what
the Spaniards had done before, especially
Gin6s P6rez de Hita (c. 1544-c. 1619) in
his Civil Wars of Granada (1595-1604),
which he attributed to an imaginary
Arabic contemporary.
The advantage of putting the account
of the conquest of Granada into the
mouth of a monkish zealot like Fray
Antonio Agapida was to keep it in spirit
with contemporary accounts by orthodox
chroniclers of Spain. It also provided an
explanation for its attitude toward religion
and the throne, so much a part of the
Spanish spirit in the fifteenth century.
After seven centuries of warfare
between Moors and Christians, Aben Is-
mael, King of Granada, became weary of
fighting in 1457 and bought a truce from
King Henry IV of Castile and Leon.
When his proud son, Muley Abul
Hassan, inherited the throne in 1465, he
stopped payment of the tribute. King
Henry did nothing about the matter, but
his successors, Ferdinand and Isabella,
after amalgamating the kingdom in 1478
sent Juan de Vera as their ambassador
to demand resumption of payment. The
577

Moorish monarch rebuffed the
ambassador with the statement that the Moorish
mint no longer coined money, only
scimitar blades and the heads of lances.
Ferdinand listened to de Vera's report
of the strength of the city, whose name
means pomegranate, and the impossibility
of direct siege, then made a punning
threat that he would pick out the
pomegranate's seeds one by one. Washington
Irving's book tells with fascinating and
romantic details how he kept that promise.
Granada in the late fifteenth century
was a fortress city of parks, fountains,
pools, and architectural gems still to be
seen; but it was also a city of intrigue,
as Irving bears witness. Among the women
of Abul Hassan's harem was the
captured daughter of a Christian warlord,
Isabella Ximenes de Solis, better known
to history by her Arabic name of Zoraya,
the Morning Star. As mother of two of
the king's sons, she schemed to place one
of them on the throne of Granada instead
of Abul Hassan's firstborn, Boabdil, the
son of Princess Ayxa la Horra. Nobles
in the court were taking sides in this
intrigue, and one group was plotting to
depose the king in favor of Boabdil.
Meanwhile, the ambitious Abul
Hassan, unpunished for refusing to pay
tribute, decided to break the unwritten truce
and reconquer a poorly defended frontier
town. Now that war with Portugal had
ended, however, Ferdinand was free to
retaliate by sending an army against the
Moorish town of Alhama. Irving makes
the campaign sound like a chess game.
Troops from Granada marched to defend
the town. Urged by Isabella, the
powerful Duke of Medina Sidonia forgot his
quarrel with the Marqu6s of Cddiz. The
combined strength of die Spaniards drove
Abul Hassan back to Granada, where his
disappointed subjects revolted against him
and crowned his son Boabdil, nicknamed
El Chico, the young king.
By a wealth of details Irving keeps his
account from being a dry catalogue of
battles and proves that the war was fought
during the age of chivalry. Moors and
Christians vied to outdo each other in
courtesy. Boabdil, captured by King
Ferdinand, was released in exchange for
Christian captives. Isabella, marching to
visit her fighting husband, was allowed
to pass by the Moors, who were unwilling
to wage war against women. Fatima,
niece of Boabdil's vizier, was captured by
the Count of Tendilla while on her way
to marry the governor of Tetuan. To
ransom her, Boabdil offered a hundred
Christians in exchange. Without waiting for
their arrival, Tendilla loaded Fatima with
jewels as a wedding present and escorted
her home. The admiring king increased
her ransom by twenty priests and a
number of peasant women, and the delighted
vizier started a correspondence with
Tendilla that lasted through the siege and
was useful in persuading the hesitant
Boabdil of the uselessness of further fight-
e author divides his study into two
volumes, the first dealing with a
succession of brief forays, and the second
narrating the slow "picking" of the
pomegranate seeds. While the world watched,
Mdlaga, Granada's seaport for trade with
Syria and Egypt, was besieged. The
Grand Turk and the Soldan of Egypt
stopped their feuding to send help to
their Moorish brother monarch. Queen
Isabella called on all Spaniards under
the age of seventy to enlist in the Holy
War, and she and her daughter, later to
marry Henry VIII of England, came
to cheer the fighters. Even the ancient
Grand Cardinal of Spain donned armor
and promised high pay to all who would
follow him into battle.
Eventually the worried Boabdil offered
to rule Granada as a vassal of Ferdinand
if he were allowed time to prepare the
minds of his subjects for the change; but
with the capitulation of the last Moorish
stronghold in sight, the Catholic monarch
refused. When the Moors burned the
camp of their besiegers, Ferdinand ordered
a permanent city built, called Santa Fe,
578

to prove his intentions of remaining in
the field until Granada surrendered.
From legends and ballads, as well as
histories, Irving reconstructed the last
year of the siege. He told of the brave
Moor who rode into the Christian camp
and flung an insulting spear at the
queen's tent and of Hernando P6rez del
Pulgar, who answered the Moorish knight
by stealing into Granada and fastening a
scroll bearing the words "Ave Maria" to
the door of the chief mosque. There were
no pitched battles. At the king's
command, Spanish soldiers refrained from
fighting while they waited for the
starving Arabs to capitulate. Finally, on
November 25, 1491, a sixty-day truce
was declared. Before it ended, Boabdil
surrendered, and on January 2, 1492, he
marched out of the fallen city. With the
Count of Tendilla appointed governor of
Granada, Spain concluded a crusade of
reconquest that had lasted for seven and
a half centuries.
579

CHRONICLES OF FROISSART
Type of work: History
Author: Jean Froissart (c. 1338-c. 1410)
Time: 1316-1399
Locale: England and Western Europe
First transcribed: 1373-1410
Jean Froissart, by being so much a
man of his age, has become a man for
all time. This unpriestly priest, this
citizen celebrator of chivalry, took such an
intense childlike joy in chronicling his
times that he devoted an entire half-
century to traveling, interviewing,
writing and rewriting. He interviewed over
two hundred princes in various courts
from Rome and the Pyrenees to
Edinburgh, and with such zest that he was a
favorite of the nobles on both sides in
the Hundred Years' War. In his own
time his works were widely copied and
—a sure sign of the value placed upon
them—illuminated.
Although he recorded the Hundred
Years' War on a colorful and
unprecedented scale, he is not a reliable historian.
Born in Valenciennes, now a city in
France but at that time in the Low
Country countship of Hainaut, Froissart
was a Fleming who shifted his allegiance
from one side of the conflict to the other,
depending on the court that offered him
patronage at the moment. Relying mostly
on hearsay evidence from partisan
observers, he never consulted official
documents, many of which are still extant.
As a result his history abounds in
anachronisms, erroneous dates, garbled names,
and impossible topography. More
important, Froissart was afflicted with a
psychological astigmatism; he was unaware that
the fourteenth century marked the
waning of the Middle Ages, and that he was
the last of the medieval innocents. The
Ottomans had penetrated deep into
Europe in the East and Southwest; plagues
were ravaging England and the
Continent; the incessant wars were gradually
increasing in ferocity; the peasants were
challenging social order everywhere, the
"universal" Church was split between
Rome and Avignon—and Froissart was
writing to praise famous men. The most
significant historian to follow him was
Philippe de Comines (c.l447-c.l511),
whose Memoirs reflect a realism and
disillusionment in startling contrast to Frois-
sart's chivalric naivete*.
Froissart's purpose was clear: he wrote
"in order that the honorable and noble
adventures and feats of arms, done and
achieved by the wars of France and
England, should notably be registered and
put in perpetual memory." His
remarkable career was auspiciously launched in
1361 when he went to England as Queen
Philippa's secretary and court historian.
There he thoroughly ingratiated himself
with the aristocracy and began a pro-
English account of the wars from the
time of Edward III in 1316 to the death
of Richard II in 1399. Curiously enough,
he makes no mention of Chaucer, a
tacitly ignored rival, at court; and
Chaucer reciprocated the slight. After the
queen's death in 1369, Froissart returned
to Valenciennes, went obscurely into
business ("je me suis mis dans la marchan-
dise"), and completed Book I of the
Chronicles under the patronage of Robert
of Namur, Philippa's nephew. A very
large proportion of that version was
directly plagiarized from his pro-English
predecessor, Jehan le Bel, but Froissart's
fame was such that Count Guy de Blois
gave him first a prosperous living at Les-
tinnes and later a sinecure as a private
chaplain. Under Count Guy's patronage
Froissart traveled through France, making
an especially fruitful trip in 1388 to
Gaston de Foix in Orthez. During this
period, he rewrote Book I and completed
Books II and III, adopting a pro-French
perspective on the wars. "Let it not be
said/' he prevaricates, "that I have cor-

rupted this noble history through the
favor accorded me by Count Guy de
Blois, for whom I wrote it. No, indeed!
For I will say nothing but the truth and
keep a straight course without favoring
one side or the other." The facts belie
these lofty words.
In 1397 Count Guy de Blois died, a
sot who had sold his patrimony, and
Froissart gained a new patron in the
Duke of Bavaria, who sent him again to
England. Although Richard II, the new
king, did not receive him cordially, when
he retired to his home town eighteen
months later, to revise and complete his
work, it is interesting to note that the
chronicles again took on a somewhat pro-
English turn, whether subconsciously or
by design.
Froissart more than returned the favors
of his patrons by immortalizing them as
heroes and heroines of chivalry, and he
took immense delight in doing so: "I
have taken more pleasure in it than in
anything else. The more I work on these
things, the more they please me, for just
as the gentle knights and squires love the
calling of arms and perfect themselves by
constant exercize, so I, by laboring in this
matter, acquire skill and take pleasure in
it." What Froissart loved most was the
resplendent panoply and pageantry of
jousts and battle and the Chronicles are
really a pastiche of anecdotes, great and
small. His knights are invariably "noble,
courteous, bold, and enterprising" and his
ladies are eternally noble, beautiful, and
gentle. It is no wonder that Sir Walter
Scott said of Froissart, "This is my
master!"
The Chronicles abound in dramatic
vignettes: the Black Prince graciously
submissive to his own prisoner, King
John; the Duke of Brabant's envoy sick
almost to death of the treachery he has
unwittingly performed; King Henry IV
meditatively feeding his falcons as he
deliberates on the murder of deposed
Richard; Gaston de Foix discovering a
purse of poison on his treacherous son's
person and unwillingly killing him; the
blind King of Bohemia found dead in
battle surrounded by the bodies of loyal
guardsmen. In these narratives Frois-
sart's style occasionally soars above the
conventional rhetoric of the medieval
romance. Johan Huizinga is surely too
harsh when he says that "poverty and
sterility" mark a "style wholly devoid of
rhetorical qualities," for Froissart can
range from the crude language of
peasants and soldiers to the lofty rhetoric of
the Bishop of St. Andrew's. A knight
storming battlements in Spain leans oyer
the wall to see the defenders, "ugly as
monkeys or bears devouring pears." The
Earl of Derby greets Pembroke after the
battle of Auberoche: "Welcome, cousin
Pembroke, you have come just in time to
sprinkle holy water on the dead!" "Where
is that son of a Jew's whore?" demands
de Trastamara before the murder of Don
Carlos.
Perhaps one of the finest little dramas
concerns Edward Ill's love-game of chess
with the Countess whom he has rescued
from a Scottish siege:
When the chessmen arrived, the
King, who wished to leave some
possession of his with the Countess,
challenged her, saying: "My lady, what
stakes will you play?" And the
Countess replied: "And you, Sire?" Then the
King placed on the table a very fine
ring, set with a large ruby, which he
was wearing on his finger. The
Countess said: "Sire, Sire, I have no ring as
valuable as that." "Lady," said the
King, "put down such as you have, it
is indeed good enough."
The Countess, to please the King, took
from her finger a gold ring, which was
not of great worth. Then they played
at chess together, the Countess playing
as well as she could, in order that the
King should not consider her too
simple and ignorant; and the King made
wrong moves, and did not play as well
as he might. And there was scarce a
pause between the moves but he looked
so hard at the Countess that she lost
countenance and fumbled her game.
And when the King saw that she had
581

lost a knight, a rook, or whatever it
might be, he lost too to keep the
Countess in play.
Froissart is by no means always so
delicately perceptive. He can describe in
gruesome detail the dismemberment of
Hugh Despencer, the heart thrown into
the fire, the head sent to London, and
the pieces of his quartered body carried
off to be displayed in other cities—and
then calmly proceed with the narrative
of the queen's joyous arrival for feasting
in London. One feels a bizarre sense of
the grotesque when Froissart asserts mat-
ter-of-facdy that Galeas Visconti
murdered his uncle "by bleeding him in the
neck, as they are wont to do in Lombardy
when they wish to hasten a person's end."
He laments when captives are killed
because they would have brought a good
ransom. There are dozens of accounts of
towns sacked and women and children
murdered, all related without the least
trace of compassion. Perhaps this
detachment is explained by the fact that death
was common (G. G. Coulton cites the
fact that in proportion to the total
population, more Christians killed each other
then than they do now) or by Froissart's
evident commitment to Boethian
philosophy of the Wheel of Fortune,
dramatically presented in one of the illuminated
miniatures of an early manuscript.
Montaigne, who was a touchstone of
the Renaissance just as Froissart was of
the Middle Ages, said of the Chronicles
that they were the "crude and unshapen
substance of history." If he meant that
they lacked any profound philosophical
perspective, he was right. The simplicity
of Froissart's mind can be seen in his
obtuse declaration that "Mankind is divided
into three classes: the valiant who face
the perils of war . . . , the people who
talk of their successes and fortunes, and
the clerks who write and record their
great deeds." Froissart was a man who
could report, without realizing the
realistic significance of his account, that French
King John's Round Table of three
hundred knights, who were to meet annually
to tell their tales and have their heroism
recorded, lasted only one year because all
the knights perished in their foolhardi-
ness.
Nevertheless, the Chronicles are rich
in the sheer entertainment value of
Gothic adventures. Froissart's account of
the blazing day when Charles VI went
mad is illustrative. As the troupe rode
along, a page accidentally struck
another's helmet with his spear:
The King, who rode but afore them,
with the noise suddenly started, and his
heart trembled, and into his
imagination ran the impression of the words of
the man that stopped his horse in the
forest of Mans, and it ran into his
thought that his enemies ran after him
to slay and destroy him, and with that
abusion he fell out of his wit by
feebleness of his head, and dashed his spurs
to his horse and drew out the sword
and turned to his pages, having no
knowledge of any man, weening nim-
self to be in a battle enclosed with his
enemies, and lifted up his sword to
strike, he cared not where, and cried
and said: "On, on upon these traitors!"
Of greater horror are the descriptions
of Sir Peter of Be'arn haunted by the
ghost of a bear; or of the King of France
at a marriage feast almost cremated alive
when five of his squires dressed in pitch-
covered linen for an entertainment
brushed against a torchlight and were
consumed in the flames. It is for these
tales that Gray dubbed him "the
Herodotus of a barbarous age," but it is for his
celebration of chivalry that he was first
translated into English by Sir John Bour-
chier, Lord Berners, in 1523-1525. In
the preface to that work, Lord Berners
cites a reason for reading the Chronicles
that is still valid five centuries later:
"What pleasure shal it be to the noble
gentylmen of Englande to se, beholde,
and rede the highe enterprises, famous
actes, and glorious dedes done. . . ."
582

CICERO'S ORATIONS
Type of work: Speeches
Author: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
First transcribed: 80-43 B.C.
When one thinks of the greatness of
Rome and especially of its government,
the name of Cicero is likely to come to
mind. While a figure like Julius Caesar
may symbolize the military greatness of
imperial Rome, the figure of Cicero is a
symbol of Roman justice and law, of the
Roman Senate and its traditions, and of
Roman greatness in philosophy and
literature. Cicero is important in literature
primarily for his orations and his
numerous writings about oratory and rhetoric.
As the author of these writings Cicero set
a pattern in public speaking that is still
alive in European culture. More than
that, because of what he wrote and said,
because of the viewpoints he held and
defended, even to dying for them, Cicero
became historically one of the great
advocates of culture and conservatism.
Cicero took ten years to prepare
himself as a lawyer before he appeared on
behalf of a client in public. In those
years of preparation he held, as he did all
his life, that a thorough education is
necessary for success in any activity. There
have been exponents of oratory who have
averred that manner is everything; Cicero
disagreed, believing that matter is as
inescapably a factor in oratorical success as
is manner. In the Orator, one of his most
mature pieces of writing on the art of
oratory, Cicero wrote that his own
success, like that of any orator, was more to
be credited to his study of the
philosophers than to his study of earlier
rhetoricians, and that no one can express wide
views, or speak fluently on many and
various subjects, without philosophy.
Although Cicero tried to make a science of
rhetoric and saw profit in his own
attempts at its systemization, he also
realized that no simple set of formulas could
ever make a great orator. As he put it, an
eloquent man should be able to speak "of
small things in a lowly manner, of
moderate things in a temperate manner, and
of great things with dignity."
In Cicero's time there were two
prevalent styles in oratory, the Attic and the
Asian. In the latter type, Cicero himself
discerned two varieties, the one
epigrammatic and euphuistic, dependent upon
artful structure rather than importance of
content, and the other characterized by a
swift and passionate flow of speech in
which choice of words for precise and
elegant effect was a dominant factor.
Cicero found both styles wanting in some
degree and built his own style upon an
eclectic combination of the two.
Fifty-eight speeches by Cicero are still
extant, although not all have complete
texts. The number of his speeches is
unknown, but more than forty are known
to have been lost. Not all the speeches
Cicero wrote were delivered; sometimes
he wrote them for an occasion which did
not occur. His second Philippic is an
example of such a speech. Marcus Antonius
was so enraged by Cicero's first speech
against him after the death of Julius
Caesar that Cicero's friends persuaded the
orator to leave the city of Rome
temporarily. While absent from Rome, living at
a villa near Naples, Cicero wrote the
second Philippic, which was not spoken in
the Senate or even published
immediately. A copy was sent, however, to
Brutus and Cassius, who enjoyed its invective
against their enemy.
Not all of Cicero's speeches are of
equal interest to a modern reader. His
earliest extant oration, containing
relatively little of interest, was delivered in
a law court on behalf of Publius Quinc-
tius. Cicero appeared for the defense, as
he usually did, and spoke against Quin-
tus Hortensius, the greatest lawyer in
Rome at the time. Although Cicero won
his case, it is difficult for a modern reader
to retain interest in a case decided two
583

thousand years ago when the stuff of the
argument is largely points of law. But
this speech, along with other early efforts,
provided the opportunity for Cicero to
prove himself. He made such a reputation
that he was chosen to prosecute Caius
Verres, who was accused of tyranny and
maladministration in Sicily. Once again
the famous Hortensius was Cicero's legal
opponent. In the second oration he made
against Verres, Cicero managed to
produce such overwhelming evidence against
the defendant that he went voluntarily
into banishment. The evidence included
chicanery designed to prevent the case
from coming to trial, and even Hortensius
could find little to say for the defendant.
Although Cicero had no occasion to
deliver five additional speeches he had
written for the trial, scholars have judged that
they are among Cicero's best and have
found them excellent sources for material
about Sicilian government, history, and
art. Another of Cicero's noteworthy
speeches is the one given in defense of
Aulus Cluentius, who was tried and
acquitted on a charge of having poisoned
his father-in-law, who had tried a few
years before to poison Cluentius.
Cicero's intent was to move his hearers,
and his devices to insure victory in court
were not always above reproach, as his
speech in defense of Lucius Flaccus
indicates. The defendant was accused of
extortion while an administrator in Asia,
and apparently Cicero could find little to
say in his client's defense beyond
impugning the Jews and Greeks who were
witnesses against him, members of groups
not much in favor in Rome. Of even
greater interest is Cicero's defense of
Aulus Licinius Archias, a poet of Greek
descent whose status as a Roman citizen
had been questioned. In this oration
Cicero developed a long passage in praise
of literature, saying that literature and
its creators are of paramount interest to a
nation because they afford excellent
material for speeches, because they make
great deeds immortal by preserving them
in writing, and because they give readers
a useful and refreshing pastime.
Not all of Cicero's speeches were
intended for courtroom presentation. Some
were written for delivery in the Senate
and some with a view to Cicero's own
benefit. In 58 B.C. Cicero was exiled
temporarily as a result of his activities in
crushing the conspiracy of Catiline.
When Pompey recalled him to Rome a
year later, he thanked the Roman Senate
in One speech for his recall; in another he
thanked the Roman people generally; and
in a third he made a request to the Senate
for the return of his home, which had
been taken over by Clodius for the state.
The most famous of Cicero's speeches
are those he wrote against Marcus An-
tonius after the death of Julius Caesar.
Cicero, a conservative, had not been
favorable to the autocracy of Caesar and
rejoiced when Caesar was assassinated.
During an eight-month period in 44-43 B.C.,
when Marcus Antonius presumed to try
to succeed Caesar, Cicero directed
fourteen orations against him. These orations,
passionate and sincere, are called the
Philippics, after the famous speeches of
Demosthenes against Philip, the father of
Alexander the Great. In his first speech
Cicero spoke with some moderation,
speaking only of Antonius' public life and
appealing to his sense of patriotism. In later
speeches, especially the second Philippic,
he made all sorts of attacks on Antonius'
private life, accusing him of almost every
conceivable type of immorality.
Eventually Antonius had his revenge: when he,
Lepidus, and Octavianus formed their
triumvirate, Cicero was put to death.
Whether Cicero's Orations will ever
again be popular with readers is doubtful.
Oration? of any kind are in little favor
today. More than that, too few modern
readers have the background in Roman
history and culture needed to enjoy
reading what Cicero wrote and said two
thousand years ago.
584

THE CID
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Eleventh century
Locale: Seville
First presented: 1636
Principal characters:
Don Fernand, King of Castile
Dona Urraque, Infanta, daughter of Fernand
Don Diegue, father of Rodrigue
Don Gomes, father of Chimene
Don Rodrigue, accepted suitor of Chimene
Don Sanche, in love with Chimene
Chimene, daughter of Don Gomes
Critique:
In France, "Good as The Cid" became
a proverb used to bestow high praise. The
Cid, a tragedy in the neo-classical
tradition, is generally ranked as the best of
Corneille's works. The subject of the
drama is man himself, and the hero
determines his own fate in this tragedy
of renunciation.
The Story:
Because she was the princess royal,
the Infanta felt she could not openly love
Rodrigue, a nobleman of lower rank.
She encouraged, therefore, the growing
attachment between Chimene and
Rodrigue. Chimene asked her father, Don
Gomes, to choose for his son-in-law either
Rodrigue or Sanche. She awaited the
choice anxiously; her father was on his
way to court and she would soon hear his
decision. Don Gomes chose Rodrigue
without hesitation, chiefly because of
the fame of Don Diegue, Rodrigue's
father.
A complication soon arose at court.
The king had chosen Don Diegue as
preceptor for his son, the heir apparent.
Don Gomes felt that the choice was
unjust. Don Diegue had been the greatest
warrior in Castile, but he was now old.
Don Gomes considered himself the
doughtiest knight in the kingdom. In a
bitter quarrel Don Gomes unjustly
accused Don Diegue of gaining the king's
favor through flattery and deceit. He felt
the prince needed a preceptor who would
be a living example, not a teacher who
would dwell in the past. In the quarrel,
Don Gomes slapped his older rival. Don
Diegue, too feeble to draw his sword
against Don Gomes, upbraided himself
bitterly for having to accept the insult.
His only recourse was to call on his
young son to uphold the family honor.
Torn between love and duty, Rodrigue
challenged Don Gomes to a duel. After
some hesitation because of Rodrigue's
youth and unproved valor, Don Gomes
accepted the challenge of his daughter's
suitor. To the surprise of the court,
Rodrigue, the untried novice, killed the
mightiest man in Castile, piercing with
his sword the man whom he respected as
his future father-in-law.
Chimene now felt herself in a
desperate plight because her love for
Rodrigue was mixed with hatred for the
murderer of her father. She finally
decided to avenge her father by seeking
justice from the king. Since she had
the right to petition the king, Don
Fernand was forced to hear her pleas. In
the scene at court, Don Diegue made a
strong counter-plea for his son,
reminding the king that Rodrigue had done
only what honor forced him to
do—uphold the family name.
The king was saved from the vexing
decision when fierce Moors assaulted the
walls of Seville. Chimene awaited the
585

outcome of the battle with mixed
emotions. The army of Castile returned in
triumph, bringing as captives two
Moorish kings. And the man who had inspired
and led the Castilians by his audacity
was Rodrigue. The grateful king gave
the hero a new title, The Cid, a Moorish
name meaning "lord." The Infanta was
wretched. Although her high position
would not allow her to love Rodrigue,
she could love The Cid, a high noble
and the hero of Castile. She showed her
nobility by yielding to Chimene's prior
right.
Chimene was still bound to seek
redress. The king resolved to test her true
feelings. When she entered the throne
room, he told her gravely that Rodrigue
had died from battle wounds. Chimene
fainted. The king advised her to follow
the promptings of her heart and cease
her quest for vengeance.
Still holding duty above love, however,
Chimene insisted on her feudal right of
a champion. Sanche, hoping to win the
favor of Chimene, offered to meet
Rodrigue in mortal combat and avenge the
death of Don Gomes. Chimene accepted
him as her champion. The king decreed
that Chimene must marry the victor.
In private, Rodrigue came to Chimene.
Indignant at first, Chimene soon softened
when she learned that Rodrigue had
resolved to let himself be killed because
she wished it. Again wavering between
love and duty, Chimene begged him to
defend himself as best he could.
Sanche went bravely to meet Rodrigue
who easily disarmed his opponent and
showed his magnanimity by refusing to
kill Chimene's champion. He sent his
sword to Chimene in token of defeat.
As soon as Chimene saw her champion
approach with Rodrigue's sword in his
hand, she immediately thought that
Rodrigue was dead. She ran in haste to
the king and begged him to change his
edict because she could not bear to wed
the slayer of her lover. When the king
told her the truth, that Rodrigue had
won, Don Diegue praised her for at last
avowing openly her love. Still Chimene
hesitated to take Rodrigue as her
husband. The king understood her plight.
He ordered The Cid to lead an
expedition against the Moors. He knew that
time would heal the breach between the
lovers. The king was wise.
586

CINNA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
Type of plot: Neo-classical tragedy
Time of plot: c. A.D. 10
Locale: Rome
First presented: c. 1640
Principal characters:
Augustus, Emperor of Rome
Livia, the empress
Cinna, the grandson of Pompey
Maximus, his friend and fellow conspirator
Amelia, engaged to Cinna
Fulvia, her confidante and companion
Polyclitus, once Augustus' slave, now freed
Evander, Cinna's freedman
Euphorbus, Maximus* freedman
Critique:
Although this play is widely known Her friend Fulvia felt that the plot
merely by its title, the subtitle, "The against Augustus' life could be success-
Mercy of Augustus" is more revealing, ful only if anger and hatred were not
The theme of royal generosity and clem- apparent, especially since Augustus held
ency made a timely commentary of special Amelia in such high esteem that cour-
importance during the years of Louis tiers often asked her to act as an inter-
XIV's minority, and because of this play mediary in affairs at court. The two
its author received benefits from the great women debated the worth of Augustus
Richelieu, formerly his antagonist. The as compared to the cruelties exercised to
third of Corneille's great plays (the others establish him in his high position. Amelia
are The Cid and Horace) y Cinna displays thought the winning of love through the
the writer's unusual ability to utilize the destruction of a tyrant worth all the risk
so-called classical unities of time, place, involved, but self-glorification seemed to
and action heightened by noble senti- Fulvia more obvious in the design than
ments concerning a superior person. The either love or desire for vengeance — a
play is chiefly remembered today for thought which almost caused Amelia to
Augustus Caesar's brilliant soliloquy on waver in deference to her endangered
the confusion of good and evil, the na- and beloved Cinna.
ture of egotism and humility, and the Cinna, however, felt the plot had an
strength and weakness that may exist in excellent chance of success. All the con-
one person, spirators seemed to him as desirous of
vengeance and as eager for the rewards
of love as he himself, though their in-
The Story: spiration was the result of his oratorical
Amelia, the daughter of Augustus* eloquence in reciting his own as well as
tutor, sought revenge for her father's the historical grievances against the em-
death, and she had asked for vengeance peror — especially those of the proscripts
as a provision of her marriage to Cinna, who, like Amelia's father, deserved better
the grandson of Pompey and perhaps than they received. Cinna himself would,
more deeply wronged than his loved one. while bearing the sacrificial cup at to-
CINNA by Pierre Corneille, from CHIEF PLAYS OF CORNEILLE. Translated by Lacy Lockert. By
permission of the publishers, Princeton University Press. Copyight, 1952, 1957, by Princeton University
587

morrow's thanksgiving to the gods, strike
home the dagger. His friend Maximus
would hold back the mob while others
would surround Cinna. Even though he
proclaimed he cared not whether he lived
or died as long as honor were upheld —
an honor not unlike that of Brutus and
Cassius, Amelia hastened to add — he
believed that the people would then
accept him as emperor.
Evander, a freed servant of Cinna,
brought news that Augustus wanted to
see both Cinna and Maximus, an event
which upset their plans and struck fear
into Amelia's heart. She retired to Livia's
side while Cinna went to confront
Augustus after each had sworn to die for
the other.
Augustus prefaced his remarks by a
long history of man's desire for the empty
bauble of power and then asked the two
young men to decide his fate, whether he
should be the emperor or a private citizen.
Both conspirators swore that Augustus,
so much more noble than Julius Caesar,
should remain supreme in power as the
rightful ruler of a grateful empire.
Although the sentiment redounded to
Augustus' credit, neither felt it more than
weakness to want a republic when a
monarchy could be maintained. But
Augustus was not convinced that five
generations of struggle to eminence proved
anything more than that the people
wanted democracy. Cinna, disclaiming
this idea, even citing his grandfather's
claim on the throne as evidence, urged
Augustus to name a successor who could
carry on this Augustan age to posterity.
Cinna was surprised to hear himself so
named. Although Maximus wavered
after such a noble act by their ruler,
Cinna remained resolute in his bloody
plan: he will kill Augustus, put his
bloody hand in that of Amelia, and
marry her on Augustus' tomb.
A short time later Maximus revealed
to his companion and confidant Euphor-
bus that he too loved Amelia; the freed-
man in turn urged his former master to
kill Cinna and gain not only the girl but
the emperor's gratitude. Maximus, after
much argument, was repelled and yet
intrigued by such a prospect. Just such a
conflict existed in Cinna's breast as well;
he loved the avenger but could not feel
true hatred for the object, so dear was
his own person to Augustus. Maximus
suggested that these sentiments were
enfeebling, though he felt the justice of
their cause. Cinna, alone with his
conscience, reasoned from cause to effect
and decided to ask Amelia to release
him from his promise of revenge.
Amelia greeted her lover with
rejoicing, for she too had heard the news of
Augustus' high regard for Cinna; she
was, however, relentless in her desire for
vengeance. When Cinna pleaded with
her to return not only his love but that
of Augustus as well, she replied that
treason was the only answer to Augustus'
tyranny. Finally he agreed to her
demands, though not without a
commentary on woman's ruthlessness.
In the meantime, perhaps thinking to
better his own low position, Euphorbus
went to Augustus with news of the plot
against him. Augustus was more shocked
at Cinna's treachery than at that of
Maximus, who at least gave warning of his
feelings, and he would have pardoned
the latter had not Euphorbus lied and
said that Maximus had committed
suicide. In a soliloquy Augustus
summarized the pity of it all. In the meantime
Maximus proposed flight to Amelia as the
best of a bad situation. When she spurned
his love as traitorous to his friend, he
in turn lamented the courisel of
Euphorbus.
Augustus summoned Cinna and spoke
of the leniency with which he had
allowed his traditional enemy to live as
recompense for ancient wrongs. For this,
he declared, Cinna had planned to kill
him at a religious ceremony in the
Capitol. The emperor then offered all to
Cinna, even though without the help of
Augustus the young man could not
succeed in his design. Cinna, unrepentant,
refused to give Augustus satisfaction over
588

his death.
Amelia and Livia then resolved the
conflict, the former taking the blame on
herself, even begging to die with Cinna;
the lovers quarreled over the seeming
break in love and honor, honor and love.
Maximus then hastened to reveal his
betrayal, through Euphorbus, of the plot.
These circumstances moved Augustus to
ask the friendship of those whom he
most admired and loved. Amelia, the first
to respond, was followed by the others,
all moved by royal clemency. Livia
commended her husband's generosity as a
heavenly thing, a bright example to
future rulers. Augustus humbly wished
it would be so and appointed the morrow
as the day of joyous sacrifice, doubly so
because of the plotters' remorse and the
forgiveness of the man against whom
they had schemed.
589

CINQ-MARS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alfred Victor de Vigny (1797-1863)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1826
Principal characters:
Henri d'Effiat, Marquis of Cinq-Mars and a conspirator against
Richelieu
Cardinal Richelieu, Minister of State
Louis XIII, King of France
Anne of Austria, Queen of France
Marie de Gonzaga, beloved of Henri Cinq-Mars
Fransois August de Thou, fellow conspirator with Cinq-Mars
Critique:
Alfred de Vigny, poet and novelist,
began this novel while he was still a
lieutenant in the French army, before he
settled down, after leaving military service,
to make art, rather than war, his
profession. However, the novel was not Vigny's
only important contribution to French
literature; he is also highly regarded for
his poetry, much of which is written on
themes of Christian religious tradition.
His novel he based on true incidents in
the history of the reign of King Louis
XIII, and the novel parallels fact in the
story of the conspiracy in which Cinq-
Mars was involved. The characterization
of Richelieu is an outstanding feature of
the book. In this respect Vigny's writing
differs from that of many twentieth-
century historical novelists, most of whom
hang a purely fictitious set of characters
and a fictitious plot on the merest thread
of historical background, bringing in,
briefly, an actual person to give some
semblance of reality to the story. Cinq-
Mars has been called the first French
historical novel.
The Story:
One June day in 1639, at the chateau
of Chaumont in Touraine, young Henri
d'Effiat, Marquis of Cinq-Mars, took leave
of his family and set out, at the request
of Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's chief
minister, to join the king's forces at the
siege of Perpignan. Shortly after he left,
a guest of his mother's, the Marshal Bas-
sompierre, was placed under arrest at
Richelieu's order, and sent in chains
toward Paris and the Bastille. Young Cinq-
Mars tried to release the marshal, but
the haughty old soldier refused to be
rescued. As if his flouting of the king's
officers were not enough for a day, Cinq-
Mars returned under cover of night to
the chateau to bid goodbye again to Marie
de Gonzaga, the beautiful Duchess of
Mantua, who was staying with Cinq-
Mars' mother at the chateau. He returned
to bid her farewell again because the
two, despite the differences of their
stations, were very much in love.
Finally leaving Chaumont, Cinq-Mars,
accompanied by a few servants, set out
for Loudun. Upon his arrival, he found
the town in a turmoil because a local
clergyman, a monk named Urbain Gran-
dier, was under trial as a magician.
Charges against the monk had been made
by order of Richelieu, who wished to do
away with the independent cleric. The
Abbe* Quillet, Cinq-Mars' former tutor,
had taken the clergyman's part and was
just about to leave Loudun in secret,
fearful for his own life. At the execution of
Grandier, Cinq-Mars discovered that the
man's assassins, for they were but that,
had given him a red-hot cross to kiss.
Seizing the cross, Cinq-Mars struck the
590

judge's face with it, thus earning the
enmity of one of Richelieu's most trusted
agents.
After the execution Cinq-Mars
hastened on his way to Perpignan. In the
meantime, however, Cardinal Richelieu
was making plans to use Cinq-Mars as
a tool in undermining the authority of
the king. The report of his agents about
Cinq-Mars' actions with regard to the
king's officers and Richelieu's agents
made no difference to the cardinal, who
felt he could shape the young man to his
own ends.
Shortly after his arrival at Perpignan,
Cinq-Mars was asked to join in a duel
between a monarchist sympathizer and a
cardinalist sympathizer, and on the
monarchist's side. Immediately after the duel
he found himself in the thick of an
attack on the walls of the besieged city,
along with the members of the king's
own guard. He behaved so valiantly in
the struggle that the captain of the guard
introduced Cinq-Mars to the king, much
to the disgust of Cardinal Richelieu, who
himself had planned to introduce Cinq-
Mars to the monarch.
The king took an immediate liking to
Cinq-Mars, who had suffered a wound
in the battle, and he made the young
man an officer in the royal guards.
During the battle Cinq-Mars had befriended
the son of the judge whom he had struck
with the cross at Loudun, and thereby
he made a new friend, for the son was
a bitter enemy of his father and hated all
that his father and Richelieu stood for.
At Perpignan, Cinq-Mars also renewed a
friendship with a young aristocrat named
de Thou, who was later to stand as close
to him as a brother.
Two years passed. At the end of that
time Cinq-Mars had become the
confidant of Louis XIII, an important officer
in the court, and the open and avowed
enemy of Richelieu. He hated the
minister of state for what Richelieu was doing
to France, but more important was the
fact that Cinq-Mars was ambitious to
win for himself honors and posts that
might allow him to marry Marie de Gon-
zaga, who was being prepared against her
will to become the Queen of Poland.
To accomplish his ends, Cinq-Mars
had earned more and more of the king's
confidence and had improved his
influence with the nobility and the army. He
also had gained the support of the Duke
de Bouillon, who had been estranged
from the king by Richelieu. De Bouillon
was a strong support, for he had an army
of his own in southern France. Cinq-
Mars also gained the support of Gaston
d'Orleans, the king's brother and
another of Richelieu's enemies, and of Anne
of Austria, the queen, who wished to
protect her children, including the
future Louis XIV, from the hatred and
ambitions of Richelieu. The success of the
plan to depose the minister lay in
gaining the king's support for the plan and in
securing aid from Spain. Cinq-Mars and
his fellow conspirators were forced to
deal with Spain on their own initiative,
for neither King Louis nor his queen
could assume responsibility for bringing
Spanish troops into France. In addition,
Louis XIII had for so long been under
the influence of Cardinal Richelieu and
his agents that he had little mind of his
own and knew almost nothing of the
problems, great and small, which daily
beset those who guided the kingdom of
France in those turbulent years of the
1640's.
Cinq-Mars, taking his chances, signed
a treaty with Spain and sent a copy,
concealed in a hollow staff, with a trusted
messenger to Spain. Then he approached
the king and secured the royal permission
to revolt against Richelieu, after
convincing the king that the revolt was not
against the crown. Immediately
afterward, as he was leaving the monarch's
apartments, Cinq-Mars realized that an
agent of the cardinal was on his way to
seek an audience with King Louis. All
Cinq-Mars could do was hope that the
591

king would hold to the promise he had
given the conspirators.
In order to insure his union with Marie
de Gonzaga, Cinq-Mars had the duchess
and himself affianced by a clergyman, an
act which at that time was the equivalent
of legal marriage. But in so doing Cinq-
Mars revealed all his plans to the girl in
the presence of the priest. Soon afterward
he learned that the priest was not his
own agent but a spy of Richelieu.
Realizing that his plans were endangered, Cinq-
Mars immediately went to Perpignan,
which was to be the scene of the revolt.
Richelieu had all the time known what
was afoot and had made his own plans.
Having won over the armies, he knew
he had nothing to fear in that quarter.
He had also arranged that Marie de
Gonzaga, in spite of her love for Cinq-Mars,
was to become Queen of Poland. All that
was left was to finish off Cinq-Mars and
the other conspirators and prevent the
treaty from reaching Spain. The
messenger carrying the treaty was intercepted in
the Pyrenees by the cardinal's agents and
killed. In order to gain control of the
conspirators, Richelieu pretended to
resign his post as minister. King Louis
realized within a few hours that he did
not know enough about the affairs of the
kingdom to rule France. He called back
Richelieu and granted the minister's
request to do as he pleased with the
conspirators. Gaston d'Orleans was banished,
while Cinq-Mars and de Thou were
arrested at Narbonne, tried at Lyons by a
secret court appointed by Richelieu, and
beheaded. Marie de Gonzaga, pawn of
the cardinal's political schemes, became
Queen of Poland.
592

THE CIRCLE OF CHALK
Type of work: Drama
Author: Unknown; sometimes attributed to Li Hsing-Tao (n. d.)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Before the thirteenth century
Locale: Nanking and Peking
First presented: Thirteenth or fourteenth century
Principal characters:
Chang-hi-tang, a concubine
Chang-ling, her brother
Mr. Ma, a rich mandarin and tax collector
Mrs. Ma, his wife
Chow, an official of justice
Chu-chu, a corrupt judge
Prince Po, in love with Chang-hi-tang
Critique:
A typical Chinese classical play in four
acts (with a prologue) of the Yuan
dynasty (1259-1368), The Circle of
Chalk is remarkable for the beauty of
its lyrical verse. The plot of the original
play is concerned with a case of murder
and a disputed son solved by a
Solomonlike judge. The love affair between the
prince and the commoner was
introduced by the German adapter, who also
widened the application of the symbolic
circle of chalk.
The Story:
Chang-hi-tang, a beautiful girl of
sixteen, was sold to a teahouse in Nanking
by her mother. Her father, a market
gardener and grower of silkworms, had
been unable to pay his taxes, and in
consequence he and his wife and
children were driven from their home. Later,
the father had hanged himself. Hi-tang's
brother, Chang-ling, was opposed to her
sale into the house of ill fame but, being
a poor scholar, he could do nothing to
help his family. He took a part of the
money paid for his sister and left
Nanking to seek his own fortune.
On her first night in the teahouse,
Hi-tang met Prince Po, one of the
emperor's many sons, and the young man
was struck with her beauty and many
accomplishments. The girl drew a circle
of chalk to symbolize her fate. But
before their love could be fulfilled, another
man visited the teahouse. Mr. Ma, the
mandarin and tax collector, outbid the
prince and bought Hi-tang as his
concubine.
One year later, Hi-tang had given
birth to a boy. Mr. Ma, though a man
given to sensual pleasure and money-
seeking, felt real love for the concubine.
Naturally, his childless lawful wife was
jealous.
One day Chang-ling, in beggar's rags,
appeared at the door of Mr. Ma's house.
Hi-tang did not at first recognize him.
Then he told her that he had joined a
secret society, the Brotherhood of the
White Lotus, whose purpose was to take
revenge on the oppressors of the poor.
Mr. Ma's name was marked in the
blacklist, and the gangsters intended to
murder him and plunder and burn his house.
Hi-tang tried to dissuade her brother by
consulting the oracle. She drew a circle
and threw a knife. Instead of striking
inside the circle, the knife cut the chalk-
line; it seemed the gods did not approve
of the crime. Chang-ling then agreed to
reconsider the case. Hi-tang gave him
her fur jacket to protect him from cold.
Mrs. Ma, who had seen the stranger,
reported to Mr. Ma that Hi-tang had
been talking to a man, obviously a lover,
and had given away her fur jacket. Mr.
Ma was satisfied when Hi-tang said that
593

the man was only her brother.
On the same day Chow, an official of
justice in the local courts, was invited
to Mr. Ma's house to discuss a legal
point. Mr. Ma was thinking of getting
a divorce and raising Hi-tang to the rank
of wife. Divorce to Mrs. Ma would mean
the loss not only of her position but also
of the inheritance of Mr. Ma's property.
Even if she remained the head wife, as
Chow explained to her, the concubine
and her boy would be the heirs to the
property and she could expect to receive
only a certain amount of allowance, as
she was childless. She was desperate.
But Chow was actually her paramour,
so she could depend on his help.
Her solution came when Mr. Ma
wanted a drink: she put in the tea the
poison brought by Chow. It was Hi-tang
who served the tea, so she became the
suspect when Mr. Ma dropped dead after
taking the drink. She was put under
arrest and sent to the prison.
Chu-chu, the local judge, accepted a
bribe from Mrs. Ma. Her position was
further strengthened by the testimony of
a midwife who declared that it was really
Mrs. Ma who had given birth to the child
and that of two coolies who remembered
how they were entertained at a feast in
celebration of the birth of Mrs. Ma's
child. Mrs. Ma swore that Hi-tang had
murdered her master in order to obtain
the child and the inheritance. Chow
suggested the motive of revenge since
Mr. Ma had caused the death of her
father. Hi-tang, who had been kneeling
inside a circle of chalk, was therefore
convicted and sentenced to death.
At that moment a courier arrived from
Peking with the news that the old
emperor had died. The new emperor had
ordered that all death sentences be
suspended and that the judges and judged
alike be summoned to Peking for
imperial investigation. So Hi-tang's life was
saved for the time being. Chang-ling,
who had been in the crowd of people
watching the trial, was angry at the kind
of justice his sister received; he expressed
his indignant doubt that the new emperoi
would be any more just than the old. His
blasphemy was overheard and he, too,
was put in the block.
Hi-tang suffered greatly on the way
to Peking under the escort of two
soldiers. In a big snowstorm she saw her
brother, also guarded by two soldiers,
struggling onward. When he collapsed,
she took off her mantle to buy a glass of
wine to revive him. The soldiers had their
drinks, too, but did not pay, much to the
chagrin of the innkeeper. Chu-chu,
Chow, Mrs. Ma, and the child were
traveling in sedan chairs.
In the Imperial Palace the young
emperor, who was Prince Po, kept thinking
of the teahouse girl whom he had been
unable to marry in Nanking a year
before. When the prisoners from
Nanking were brought before him, he and
Hi-tang immediately recognized each
other, but their recognition was not
noticed by anyone else. He questioned her
about her life in the teahouse and
suggested that surely she remembered the
young prince she had met on the night
she entered the place. But it was his
official duty to reestablish justice in China
before he could declare his love again.
He ordered a circle of chalk to be drawn
on the floor wherein the child was placed.
The two women were to pull the boy out
of the circle, one grasping each arm. She
who succeeded in pulling him out would
prove herself his mother. Mrs. Ma won
with one pull, since Hi-tang pulled only
gently, not making the least effort. The
emperor asked her why she did not pull
with enough strength to win. Hi-tang
answered that a child's arms were tender
and that to pull him hard would hurt
him. Since a mother would never harm
her own child, it was decided that Hi-
tang was the child's real mother. Also,
Mrs. Ma having sworn on oath that the
false mother was also the murderess, the
murder case was easily solved.
The emperor left his rod of justice
in Hi-tang's hand and let her pass
sentence on the criminals. She pronounced
594

the judgment that Chow and Chu-chu
be deprived of their offices and Mrs. Ma
should make herself a cup of tea; the
kind of tea she should make was left to
her conscience to decide. The emperor
approved this judgment and appointed
as Chu-chu's successor Hi-tang's brother
Chang-ling, whose crime had been
pardoned when his criticism of the
corruption in government found a sympathetic
listener in the emperor, who shared the
young scholar's zeal for reform.
After the court had been dismissed,
the emperor held Hi-tang for a private
talk. She told him that she had had a
dream on the first night she was brought
to Mr. Ma's house. She was alone,
dozing, and she dreamed that a young lord
climbed to her bed and loved her as a
husband would his wife. The young man
was Prince Po. And it was not a dream,
for the prince had not given up his desire
even after he was outbid, but had
followed her to Mr. Ma's house and
ravished her while she was still a virgin.
Thus, the prince had begotten the child.
Hi-tang was made empress.
595

CLARISSA HARLOWE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1747-1748
Principal characters:
Clarissa Harlowe, a young woman of family and fortune
Robert Lovelace, her seducer
John Belford, Lovelace's friend
William Morden, Clarissa's cousin
Arabella, Clarissa's older sister
James, Clarissa's older brother
Critique:
This novel is unusual for the modern
reader because of its style. It is an
epistolary novel, made up entirely of
letters written by the various characters
to each other, in which characterization
and plot are revealed to the reader. The
drawbacks to this form of novel are its
tediousness and its superfluities. One
wonders how the characters found the
time during their adventures to pen such
long, involved, and painstaking letters.
It is also difficult for a twentieth-century
reader to follow Clarissa's logic. Her
decision to die, rather than marry the man
who had seduced her, is not of a pattern
to be quickly assimilated by a mind
conditioned to the pragmatism of the modern
world. The book is, in spite of
sentimental theme and physical bulk,
Richardson's best novel.
The Story:
Robert Lovelace, a young Englishman
of a noble family, was introduced into
the Harlowe household by Clarissa's
uncle, who wished Lovelace to marry
Clarissa's older sister, Arabella. The
young man, finding nothing admirable
in the older girl, fell deeply in love with
Clarissa, but he quickly learned that his
suit was balked by Clarissa's brother and
sister. James Harlowe had disliked
Lovelace since they had been together at
Oxford, and Arabella was offended
because he had spurned her in favor of
Clarissa. Both were jealous of Clarissa
because she had been left a fortune by
their grandfather and they had not.
James Harlowe, having convinced his
mother and father that Lovelace was a
profligate, proposed that Clarissa be
married to Mr. Solmes, a rich, elderly man
of little taste and no sensibility. When
Solmes found no favor in the eyes of
Clarissa, her family assumed she was in
love with Lovelace, despite her
protestations to the contrary.
Clarissa refused to allow Solmes to
visit with her in her parlor or to sit next
to her when the family was together.
Her father, outraged by her conduct,
ordered her to be more civil to the man
he had chosen as her husband. When
she refused, saying she would never
marry a man against her will, not even
Lovelace, her father confined her to her
room.
Lovelace, smitten with the girl's beauty
and character, resolved to seduce her
away from her family, partly out of love
for her and partly in vengeance'for the
insults heaped upon him by the
Harlowe family.
He was greatly aided in his scheme
by the domineering personalities of Mr.
Harlowe and his son. They took away
Clarissa's trusted maid and replaced her
with a girl who was impertinent and
insolent to the young woman. They refused
to let her see any member of the family,
even her mother. Clarissa's only adviser
whom she could trust was Miss Howe,
596

a friend and correspondent who advised
her to escape the house if she could, even
if it meant accepting Lovelace's aid and
his proposal of marriage.
One evening Lovelace slipped into the
garden where Clarissa was walking and
entreated her to elope with him.
Thinking only to escape her domineering
father, she went with him after some
protest. Lovelace told her she would be
taken to the home of Lord M—, a
kinsman of Lovelace, who would protect her
until her cousin, Colonel Morden, could
return to England and arrange for a
reconciliation between Clarissa and her
family. Lovelace was not as good as his
word, however, for he took her to a house
of ill repute, where he introduced her to
a woman he called Mrs. Sinclair.
Inventing reasons why he could not take
her to Lord M—'s house, he persuaded
the bewildered girl to pass as his wife,
for the time being, and he told Mrs.
Sinclair that Clarissa was his wife
with whom he could not live until
certain marriage settlements had been
arranged. Clarissa permitted him to tell
the lie, in the belief that it would
prevent her father and her brother from
discovering her whereabouts.
In Mrs. Sinclair's house she was
almost as much a prisoner as she had been
in her father's home. Meanwhile her
family had disowned her and refused
to send her either money or clothes.
Indeed, her father declared she was no
longer his daughter and he hoped she
would have a miserable existence in
both this world and the next.
This state of affairs was distressing
to Clarissa, who was now dependent upon
Lovelace for her very existence. He took
advantage of the circumstances to press
his love upon her without mentioning
his earlier promises of marriage. Clarissa
tried to escape and got as far as Hamp-
stead before Lovelace overtook her. There
he had two women impersonate his
cousins to convince Clarissa that she should
return to her lodgings with them. Upon
her return to Mrs. Sinclair's house, they
filled her with drugs and later Lovelace
raped her. A few days later Clarissa
received from Miss Howe a letter in which
she learned that she was in a house in
which no woman of her station would be
seen. Again Clarissa tried to escape, this
time by calling for aid from a window.
Lovelace finally promised to leave her
unmolested until she could get aid from
her cousin or from Miss Howe.
Lovelace left London for a few days
to visit Lord M—, who was ill. While
he was gone, Clarissa contrived to steal
the clothes of a serving-girl and escape
from the house, but within a day or two
Mrs. Sinclair discovered Clarissa's
whereabouts and had her arrested and
imprisoned for debt. When John Belford,
a friend of Lovelace, heard of the girl's
plight, he rescued her by proving the
debt a fraud. He found shelter for
Clarissa with a kindly glove-maker and
his wife. Tired of her miserable
existence, Clarissa began to go into physical
decline, in spite of all that the apothecary
and doctor secured by John Belford could
do for her.
She spent her time writing letters in
an effort to secure a reconciliation with
her family and to acquaint her friends
with the true story of her plight. She
refused to have anything to do with
Lovelace, who was by that time convinced
that he loved her dearly. He wished to
marry her, to make amends for the
treatment she had suffered at his hands,
but she refused his offer with gentle
firmness.
As she declined in health, Clarissa's
friends did what they could to have her
family forgive her. When her father and
brother refused to receive her, she went
to an undertaking establishment and
bought a coffin which she had fitted as
she wished, including a plaque which
gave the date of her death as the day
on which she left her father's house.
On his return to England Colonel
Morden tried to raise her spirits, but his
efforts failed because he, too, was unable
to effect any change in the attitude of
597

the Harlowe family. He also had an
interview with Lovelace and Lord M—.
The nobleman and Lovelace assured him
that their family thought very highly
of Clarissa and wished her to marry
Lovelace and that Lovelace wanted to
marry her. But even her cousin was
unable to persuade Clarissa to accept
Lovelace as a husband.
Everyone, including the Harlowe
family, saw that Clarissa was determined to
die. Her father and brother lifted their
ban upon her ever entering the Harlowe
house; her sister was sorry she had been
cruel to Clarissa; and the mother was
convinced that she had failed in her duty
toward her daughter. They all wrote to
Clarissa, begging the girl's forgiveness
and expressing their hope she would
recover quickly and be reunited with her
family. Their letters, however, arrived
too late, for Clarissa had breathed her
last,
Clarissa was returned to her father's
house for her funeral. She was interred in
the family vault at the feet of the
grandfather whose fortune had been one of
the sources of her troubles. Lovelace,
who was quite broken up at her death,
was persuaded by Lord M— to go to
the continent.
There Clarissa was avenged. Lovelace
met Colonel Morden in France, and early
one winter morning Clarissa's cousin
fought a duel with her betrayer.
Lovelace was mortally wounded by a thrust
through his body. As he lay dying, he
expressed the hope that his death would
expiate his crimes.
598

CLAUDIUS THE GOD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Graves (1895- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: A.D. 41-54
Locale: Rome, Britain, the Near East
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, Emperor of Rome
Messalina, his third wife
Calpurnia, his mistress
Agrippinilla, his fourth wife
Lucius Domitius, later called Nero, Agrippinilla's son and Claudius' grandnephew
Herod Agrippa, Tetrarch of Bashan
Critique:
Claudius the God and His Wife
Messalina is characterized by meticulous
care of detail and scrupulous handling
of incident and character. Graves'
technique is such that he is able to re-create
a strikingly vivid picture of the life and
the times about which he writes. A
sequel to I, Claudius, this novel is,
nevertheless, an entity in itself.
The Story:
When the Emperor Claudius was the
neglected scholar of the Claudian family,
before his accession to the throne, one
of his friends and well-wishers was
Herod Agrippa. The Emperor Tiberius
had imprisoned Herod for treasonous
sentiments, but when Caligula came to
the throne he made Herod Tetrarch of
Bashan. When Caligula was murdered
and Claudius proclaimed emperor by the
palace guards, Herod was back in Rome
on official business.
Claudius* position was a difficult one
at first, especially so as the result of
popular opinion that he was a cripple,
a stammerer, and an idiot. The Roman
Senate did not expect much of such a
man and certainly not a capable handling
of public affairs after Caligula's four
years of misrule. But Claudius
immediately began a program of reforms,
among them a reorganization of the
Senate, a stabilization of the state's
CLAUDIUS THE GOD by Robert Graves. By permission of the author and the publishers, Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 1934, by Harrison Smith & Robert Haas, Inc.
finances, and the abolition of many of
Caligula's cruel decrees. To carry out
his widespread program Claudius ap-
Eointed many new ministers of state. To
is wife, Messalina, he entrusted the
office of the Director of Public Morals,
as she had been most helpful in
reorganizing the Senate list. To his loyal
friend, Herod, Claudius gave the lands
of Judea, Samaria, and Edom. Then in
the open market place before an immense
crowd Claudius and Herod made a
solemn pact of friendship and loyalty.
Soon after Claudius' ascent to the
throne his son Brittanjcus was born,
followed approximately eleven months
later by a daughter named Octavia. After
the birth of his second child, Messalina
came to Claudius and requested his
permission to move into an apartment in
the new palace and thus live apart from
him. Claudius ruefully agreed to her
plan. Messalina's real desire to move to
the new palace was greater freedom than
she could enjoy under the eyes of
Claudius, and her removal to her new
quarters began a life of debauchery,
licentiousness, political intrigue, bribery,
cheating, and murder. Claudius was so
busy with matters of state that seven
years passed before he heard rumors of
Messalina's depravities.
After beginning a public works
program, sending an expedition into Ger-
599

many to recover the eagle standard lost
by Varus* army, and putting down a
minor revolt at home, Claudius turned
his attention to the conquest of Britain.
The war was hastened by the detention
of Roman trading ships by Togodum-
nus, who was joint ruler witn his brother
Caractacus, and also by the rapid spread
of the Druid cult through Britain and
France. Claudius sent Aulus Plautius
to Britain with a large invasion force and
the promise of additional legions if
Roman losses exceeded a certain figure.
Aulus managed to cross the Thames and
capture London. Then he camped just
outside London to await the arrival of
Claudius and reinforcements. A decisive
battle took place at Brentwood Hill, a
ridge between London and Colchester.
The Romans won it by means of
Claudius* armchair strategy. At the age
of fifty-three Claudius fought his first
battle, won it, and never fought again.
In Britain he was deified as a god and
upon his return to Rome he received a
full triumph.
He now had to turn his attentions to
the East, where for some time he had
been receiving disquieting reports
regarding Herod Agrippa and his plot to
establish a united Jewish empire. Herod had
been making secret alliances with
neighboring princes and potentates, and he
hoped to obtain the support of the Jews
by declaring himself the long-awaited
Messiah. Claudius realized that affairs
had progressed to the stage where there
was little he could do to forestall Herod's
plans. Herod, at the great festival at
which he proposed to proclaim himself
the Messiah, permitted neighboring rulers
to address him as God without bothering
to correct their error. At that moment
an owl flew into the arena. Herod
remembered a prophecy that when next he
saw an owl his death would be near and
the number of days left to him would be
the same as the number of hoots. The
owl hooted five times; five days later
Herod was dead. His plot to set up a
Jewish kingdom collapsed.
About eight years after they were
married, Messalina came to Claudius
with a strange tale. Barbillus the
astrologer had predicted that her husband would
die within thirty days, not later than
the Ides of September. She proposed that
Claudius* death might be averted if he
permitted her to divorce him in order to
remarry Silius, her former husband.
Claudius finally gave in to her pleading.
But the whole story was a ruse to rid
herself of Claudius so that she might
marry Silius; the two were plotting
Claudius* murder and their own
accession to the throne. Her marriage to
Silius was announced for September
tenth, but on the fifth of September,
while Claudius was out of the city, she
married Silius. Calpurnia, a former
mistress of Claudius, finally told him the
whole truth regarding Messalina and her
behavior throughout their marriage.
Claudius tried and executed over one
hundred people, most of them the men
with whom Messalina had committed
adultery. Messalina herself was killed by
an officer of the palace guards.
Claudius married again, this time his
niece, Agrippinilla, the mother of Lucius
Domitius, later the emperor Nero. He
no longer took any interest in life but
allowed the affairs of state to be handled
by Agrippinilla and his ministers.
Claudius adopted Lucius and made him
joint heir with Brittanicus. Lucius
became of age first, and Agrippinilla, who
wished to see her son sole ruler of Rome,
poisoned Claudius. His death was
concealed from the people until the empire
had been secured for Nero. Thus
Claudius, Emperor of Rome and a Roman
god, ended his troubled reign.
600

THE CLAYHANGER TRILOGY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: 1870-1895
Locale: England
First published: 1910, 1911, 1915
Principal characters:
Edwin Clayhanger, a businessman
Hilda Lessways, his wife
Maggie Clayhanger, Edwin's sister
Mr. Ingpen, Edwin Clayhanger's friend
George Cannon, Hilda s first husband
Darius Clayhanger, Edwin's father
Critique:
In The Clayhanger Trilogy (day-
hanger, Hilda Lessways, These Twain)
Bennett depicted the middle class of late
nineteenth-century England with
sympathy and understanding. He, unlike
the naturalistic novelists, was not after
ugliness for its own sake. Though the
region he drew was one of the least
picturesque in England's industrial
Midlands, he did not see its ugliness alone;
in it he perceived a homely beauty.
Certainly, if the events of the work do
not linger brilliantly in the mind, the
characters will be remembered clearly
and long.
The Story:
In 1872 sixteen-year-old Edwin
Clayhanger left school to aid his father in the
Clayhanger printing shop. His father
had disregarded Edwin's request that he
be allowed to go to school and study to
be an architect. Old Darius Clayhanger
was a self-made man who had risen
from a boyhood experience in the
workhouse to the position of affluence he
held in the Midland community, and it
was his desire that his work be carried
on by his only son. Since he was a
complete tyrant in the home, no one dared
to cross him.
Several years later Darius Clayhanger
built a new house in a more pretentious
part of town. Edwin became friendly
with the Orgreave family, who lived next
door. The elder Orgreave was an
architect, with whom Edwin spent many hours
discussing his own interest in that
profession. Unknown to Edwin, the oldest
Orgreave daughter, Janet, fell in love
with him.
Edwin met Hilda Lessways at the
Orgreave home. She was an orphan
living in Brighton with the sister of a
former employer, George Cannon, who
wished to marry her. Although she was
attracted to Edwin, she returned to
Brighton and soon married Cannon. At the
time of her marriage she gave Cannon her
small patrimony to invest for her.
A year later Hilda returned to visit
the Orgreaves. During that year she had
learned that her husband had been
married earlier and that her marriage to him
was void. On this second visit she fell
in love with Edwin and promised to
marry him, for no one knew of her
marriage at Brighton. Then, learning that
she was to have a baby, she returned to
Brighton. She wrote to Janet Orgreave,
saying that she was married and asking
Janet to inform Edwin. He, deeply hurt,
turned himself entirely to his father's
business, for his father had become
mentally ill.
Hilda, meanwhile, had had her child
THE CLAYHANGER TRILOGY by Arnold Bennett. By permission of A. P. Watt & Son, London, and of the
publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1910, by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1937, by Marie
Margaret Bennett.
601

and had named him George Edwin, after
its father and Edwin Clayhanger. She
managed a rooming-house owned by her
husband's sister. Cannon, discovered by
his first wife, was sentenced to serve a
two-year prison term for bigamy. After
his release he was again imprisoned for
ten years for passing a forged check.
The money he had imprudently invested
for Hilda was lost when the hotel
corporation, whose shares he had bought,
collapsed. Hilda was no longer financially
independent.
After his father's death, Edwin and
his sister Maggie continued to live alone
in the Clayhanger house. Both of them
became old-maidish in their habits,
although many young women, including
Janet Orgreave, would have gladly
married Edwin, whose printing business
continued to prosper and grow.
Edwin became quite fond of Hilda's
son, who was living temporarily with the
Orgreaves. When George Edwin became
ill with influenza, it was Edwin who
sent for the doctor and notified Hilda.
Although neither spoke openly of their
feelings, Hilda and Edwin renewed their
affection for one another when they met
at the sick child's bed. When he was
well again, George Edwin and his mother
went back to Brighton. Nine years had
passed since Edwin and Hilda first had
met. Hilda was still struggling along with
the failing boarding-house at Brighton.
Months later Edwin went to see Hilda
and found her penniless and about to be
evicted. Edwin paid her bills, and Hilda
told him all that had happened to her,
explaining that her marriage was void
and her child illegitimate. Edwin
returned home but at last he resolved to
marry Hilda quiedy. He met her in
London, where they were married. They
then moved into the Clayhanger house
and Maggie went to live with a maiden
aunt. Edwin also adopted Hilda's son
and gave him his name.
Edwin, long having had his own way,
was accustomed to a certain routine in
his home and to making his own
decisions. But Hilda was a person of
equally strong personality, and Edwin
felt that she was trying to make him
conform too much to her own domestic
views and habits. Worst of all, she
attempted to influence Edwin in business
affairs, a realm which he thought was
solely his own.
A few months after the marriage, the
aunt with whom Maggie Clayhanger was
living became seriously ill. During her
last days, Mr. Ingpen, Edwin's business
friend was injured in a factory accident.
At Ingpen's request, Edwin went to his
rooms to destroy some letters and
pictures, so they would not be found if
Ingpen died in the hospital. There
Edwin found a woman asleep. She was
Ingpen's mistress, a woman whose
husband was incurably insane. Edwin was
disturbed for his friend, but Ingpen
laughed and said that the situation was
best as it was because he did not want
to be trapped in a marriage.
When Edwin's aunt died, her estate
was left to the children of Edwin's
younger sister, Clara. Edwin and Maggie
were pleased, but Hilda thought that she
and Edwin should have received part of
the estate. Her selfishness irked Edwin.
He felt that he was rich enough and that
his nieces and nephews deserved the
money. Seriously thinking that a divorce
was the answer to his present situation,
he recalled with nostalgia his bachelor
days. The only bright ray in his life
seemed to be George Edwin, his
stepson, who was studying the elements of
architecture with the aid of John
Orgreaves. Edwin hoped that his son might
now have the chance to become an
architect.
On a visit to a nearby city, Hilda and
Edwin were taken to inspect a prison.
There they saw George Cannon. He
was released soon afterward when he was
found to be innocent of the forgery
charge. Cannon then went to Edwin,
unknown to Hilda, and Edwin gave him
money to go to America. Edwin never
expected to see the money again, but he
602

wanted to get the man out of the country.
He was also bothered by the fact that
Hilda had been in correspondence with
Cannon's other wife.
The climax of Edwin's unhappiness
with Hilda came on Christmas day, when
she took him to see a house in the
country. She tried to force him into buying
it by diplomatic moves and conversations
with their friends and family, so that
Edwin would appear foolish if he did not
buy the house.
After a violent argument with his
wife, whom he accused of being
grasping, underhanded, and dishonest, Edwin
left the house in a rage. But after a
long walk in the cold winter night he
realized that his marriage and his wife
meant a great deal to him. He saw in
his mind that he had to make
concessions for his wife and for the fact that
they had been married so late in life
that they had already fixed their habits.
Finally ne saw, in his mind, his friend
Ingpen, who was unable to marry the
woman he loved.
He went back to the house to
reconcile himself with Hilda. His faith in
human nature was completely
reestablished when he found in the mail a
check from America for the money he
had lent to George Cannon.
603

CLIGES
Type of work: Poem
Author: Chretien de Troyes (c. 1150-c. 1190)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Sixth century
Locale: England, Brittany, Germany, and Constantinople
First transcribed: Before 1164
Principal characters:
Alexander, heir to the Greek Empire
Soredamors, Sir Gawain's sister, King Arthur's niece
Cliges, son of Alexander and Soredamors
Aus, Alexander's brother, later regent for Cliges
Fenice, a German princess, later Empress of Greece
King Arthur
Queen Guinevere
Sir Gawain, Cliges' uncle, a knight of King Arthur's court
Thessala, a necromancer, Fenice's nurse
John, an artisan in stone
Critiq*ue:
This metrical romance, the second in
chronological order of the surviving tales
of Chretien de Troyes, marks also the
second period in that writer's work, one
devoted to combining materials from the
Arthurian cycle with classical elements
drawn from Ovid, Vergil, Statius, and
others. It is generally held that the
central situation, the duping of Alis through
the drinking of a potion, reflects the
influence of an early Byzantine story, now
lost, and there is some resemblance to the
account of the wife of King Solomon who
deceived her husband in the same way.
The fusion of the materials, based as it
may have been on a lost medieval
manuscript, is clearly original, however, and
delightful in its subtleties. Also
interesting is the fact that this tale contains the
writer's most detailed analysis of the
anatomy of love, a matter of absorbing
interest to the medieval audience.
The Story:
Alexander, the older son of the
Emperor of Greece and Constantinople,
scorned to receive knighthood in his own
country. Having heard of the famed King
Arthur of Britain, the young prince was
determined to emulate the brave and
courteous knights of that monarch's court
and to win knighthood by his own merits.
Accordingly, he swore never to wear
armor on his face or helmet upon his head
until King Arthur himself should gird on
his knightly sword. At last he was
allowed to have his own way in spite of the
disapproval of his father and his mother's
grief at being separated from her son, and
he set sail at once for Britain. With him
went twelve noble companions and a
store of rich treasure.
When Alexander and his friends
arrived at the royal court in Winchester,
King Arthur and Queen Guinevere
welcomed them with gracious speech. All
who saw him were impressed by the
young Greek, not alone for his generosity
but for his strong character and handsome
appearance as well. Sir Gawain, a knight
of great prowess and the nephew of the
king, took him for his friend and
companion, and King Arthur, about to make
a journey into Brittany, included the
young man in his retinue. On the trip
Alexander and the damsel Soredamors,
sister of Sir Gawain, fell deeply in love.
Since each felt that such a love was hope-
CLIGES by Chretien de Troyes, from ARTHURIAN ROMANCES by Chretien de Troyes. Translated in
prose with introduction, notes and bibliography, by W. W. Comfort. From EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY.
By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
604

less, they did nothing but grow pale and
sigh and tremble, so that Queen
Guinevere, observing them, mistook their love-
sickness for the effects of the heaving sea.
King Arthur remained in Brittany
through the summer, and during that
time the young lovers were much
perplexed and distressed by emotions they
were unable to reveal to each other. At
the beginning of October messengers
arrived with news that Count Angres, who
had been entrusted with the rule of the
kingdom during the king's absence, was
raising an army and preparing to
withstand King Arthur on his return. Angered
by this traitorous deed, the king
transported a great host across the Channel
and prepared to lay siege to London,
where Count Angres had assembled his
forces. Prince Alexander and his twelve
companions were knighted while the
king's army was encamped outside the
city walls. Queen Guinevere's gift to the
young knight was a white silk shirt on
which Soredamors had embroidered
strands of her own hair, indistinguishable
from the golden thread of the design.
When Count Angres and his army
slipped away from the city under cover of
night and retreated to the strong castle at
Windsor, King Arthur and his troops
pursued the traitors and besieged the
fortress. During the siege Alexander
displayed great bravery and prowess. One
night, while he was in attendance on the
queen, Guinevere noticed that the gold
thread on his shirt was tarnishing but
that the golden hair of Soredamors was
as lustrous as ever. So the damsel's deed
was disclosed and Alexander rejoiced to
wear on his person a token of the lady to
whom he had vowed undying devotion.
A short time later Windsor Castle was
taken through his wit and valor. He and
several of his companions dressed in the
armor of vanquished traitor knights and
then went by a secret path into the
fortress, where they killed many of the
enemy and captured Count Angres. For
this deed Alexander was awarded a gold
cup which the king had promised to the
most valiant of his knights. In the
meantime, believing Alexander killed during
the fighting inside the castle, Soredamors
had revealed her love for the young
prince. After the battle the knight
received three joys and honors as the
reward for his valor: the town he had cap-
turned, a kingdom in Wales, and,
greatest of all, the hand of Soredamors.
From this union was born a handsome
son, Cliges. Meanwhile, in
Constantinople, the emperor died without hearing
again from his older son, and Alis, the
younger heir, assumed the rule of the
empire after receiving a report that
Alexander was also dead. Hearing that his
brother had taken the crown, Alexander
set out to reclaim his kingdom,
accompanied by his wife, his small son, and
forty valiant knights from King Arthur's
court. When Alis learned that his older
brother was alive, an amicable
arrangement was made whereby Alis would rule
in name only and the affairs of the
kingdom would be entrusted to Alexander.
Also, Alis promised never to marry or
have heirs, so that Cliges would in time
reign over Greece and Constantinople.
Before Cliges had grown to manhood,
however, Alexander died of a pestilence
and Soredamors of grief.
Not long afterward advisers began to
urge Alis to take a wife, with the result
that the emperor was moved to break the
oath made to his brother. The bride
proposed was the daughter of the Emperor
of Germany, the Princess Fenice,
prophetically named for the phoenix bird.
The princess had previously been
affianced to the Duke of Saxony, however,
and that incensed nobleman felt that he
had a prior claim to her hand. While
arrangements for the wedding were
being made, Cliges and Fenice fell deeply
in love. About the same time the duke
sent his nephew to proclaim that his
uncle's claim to the princess would be
defended against the Greeks. His defiant
speech so angered Clig6s that he
challenged the young Saxon to trial by arms
and in the melee unhorsed him and
605

routed his followers. By this time,
although Fenice loved Clig£s dearly, she
prudently decided that she would not
yield herself to either the uncle or the
nephew; and with the help of her nurse
Thessala, a sorceress, she planned to
remain a virgin. A potion served
unwittingly, to the bridegroom by his nephew
made it seem to the emperor that in his
dreams he possessed his bride, though he
never did so in reality.
On the return trip to Constantinople,
the nephew of the Duke of Saxony set
an ambush for the travelers. When
Clig£s killed the treacherous knight and
the duke offered a reward for Cliges'
head, that resourceful young knight cut
off the head of an enemy and affected a
disguise as his father had done before
him. Fenice was abducted, however,
during the battle that followed. Overtaking
her captors, Clig£s killed all but one, who
survived to carry to the duke news of
what happened. The conflict ended when
Clig£s, inspired by his love for Fenice,
defeated the duke in single combat. The
lovers then parted, Fenice going to
Constantinople with her husband and Cligei
traveling to England, there to fulfill his
father's wish that he receive knighthood
at the hands of King Arthur.
At a great tournament on the plain
before Oxford, Cliges, changing his armor
each day, defeated King Arthur's most
valiant knights and bore himself so
bravely that he became the subject of
much speculation concerning his origin
and whereabouts, for the young warrior
retired to his lodgings every night and
kept away from the feasting that
followed each day's tourney. As the Black
Knight he defeated mighty Sagremore;
as the Green Knight, Sir Lancelot of the
Lake; as the Vermilion Knight, Sir
Perceval of Wales. On the fourth day,
disguised as the White Knight, he would
have defeated Sir Gawain, his uncle, if
King Arthur had not intervened. Then
Cliges appeared in his own person and
at the royal banquet revealed his name
and told his story, to the pleasure and
astonishment of all. King Arthur and Sir
Gawain, in particular, were delighted to
find their young kinsman so brave in
conduct, so pleasing in modesty and knightly
courtesy.
On his return to Greece, Cliges
learned that Fenice had missed him as
much as he had desired her. Since their
great love could no longer be denied,
they were able, with the help of Thessala
and an artful stonecutter, to devise a plan
that would ensure their happiness. From
the artisan, John, Cliges got possession of
a tower in which the builder had
constructed hidden chambers with secret
entrances and exits. Thessala then
concocted a potion which put Fenice into a
trance so deep that all except three
skeptical physicians from Salerno believed her
dead. But the three doctors were slain by
a mob of indignant women before they
could restore Fenice to consciousness by
acts of torture, and the body of the
empress was placed, amid great mourning
throughout the kingdom, in a sepulcher
which John had built. From there she
was taken in secret by Cliges, restored to
life, and hidden in one of the secret
chambers of the tower.
There, for a year and two months, they
were free to take their pleasure with each
other as they pleased. At the end of that
time Fenice began to pine for the out of
doors, and John revealed a secret door
which opened upon a walled garden
filled with beautiful blooming trees and
flowers. Cliges and Fenice had much joy
in their hidden paradise until, one day,
a hunter searching for his lost hawk
climbed the wall and saw the lovers
asleep in each other's arms. Although
Cliges awoke and wounded the hunter,
the man escaped to tell the emperor of
what he had seen. Alis dispatched troops
to the tower, but Cliges and Fenice had
already fled. Arrested, John accused the
emperor of having tried to wrong Cliges
by marrying and expecting to produce an
heir; then the artisan revealed how Alis
had been tricked by the potion he had
drunk on his wedding night, so that he
606

had never possessed his wife except in
his dreams. The emperor swore that he
could never again be happy until he had
taken his revenge for the shame and
disgrace that had been put upon him.
In the meantime Clig£s and Fenice,
with Thessala's aid, had eluded their
pursuers and enlisted the aid of King Arthur,
who promised to fill a thousand ships
with knights and three thousand more
with men-at-arms in order to help Clig£s
regain his rights. Before the mighty
expedition could set sail, however,
messengers arrived in Britain with word that Alis
had died of rage and grief because the
lovers had escaped him. With Fenice,
Clig6s returned to rule over Greece and
Constantinople, and there the two lived
happily in love, as husband and wife,
lover and mistress.
Since that time, however, every
emperor, remembering the story of Fenice
and her potions, has had little confidence
in his empress and has kept her closely
guarded, attended by no man except one
who has been a enunch since his boyhood.
607

THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Reade (1814-1884)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: Holland, Germany, France and Italy
First published: 1861
Principal characters:
Gerard Eliason, a young artist
Margaret Brandt, his betrothed
Denys, a Burgundian bowman
Margaret Van Eyck, sister of Jan Van Eyck
Ghysbrecht Van Swteten, a burgomaster
Critique:
The two outstanding features of this
novel are its photographic details of
fifteenth century European life, and the
vivid character portrayal of Denys, the
Burgundian crossbowman. Reade did
tremendous research in order to achieve
his accurate descriptions of fifteenth
century European life. His Denys is one
of the most delightful characters in
English literature. Among the variety of
literary types found in The Cloister and
The Hearth are the long letter, poetry,
dramatic dialogue, the tale within the
tale, and picaresque romance. The
description of the Catholic Church and
clergy in the late Middle Ages is
illuminating.
The Story:
Gerard, the son of Elias, a Dutch cloth
and leather merchant, and Katherine,
his wife, developed at an early age his
talent for penmanship and illuminating.
At first he was aided by the monks of the
local convent for which he was destined.
When the monks could teach the young
artist no more, he became the pupil of
Margaret Van Eyck, sister of the famous
painter, Jan Van Eyck. She and her
servant, Reicht Heynes, encouraged the
lad to enter a prize art competition
sponsored by Philip the Good, Duke of
Burgundy and Earl of Holland.
On his way to Rotterdam to an
exhibit of the entries, Gerard met an old
man, Peter Brandt, and his daughter,
Margaret, who sat exhausted by the
wayside. He went with them into the town.
There he took to the Princess Marie,
daughter of Prince Philip, a letter of
introduction from Dame Van Eyck.
Impressed by the lad's talent, the princess
promised him a benefice near his village
of Tergou as soon as he had taken holy
orders. He won a prize in the contest
and returned to Tergou wondering
whether he would ever again see
Margaret Brandt, with whom he had fallen
in love.
Gerard, learning accidentally from
Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, Tergou's
burgomaster, that the old man and his
daughter lived in Sevenbergen, a nearby
village, began to frequent their cottage.
Ghysbrecht disclosed to Katherine,
Gerard's mother, that the young man was
interested in Margaret Brandt. A quarrel
ensued in the family, EHas threatening to
have Gerard imprisoned to prevent his
marrying. Margaret Van Eyck gave
Gerard money and valuable advice on
art and recommended that he and the
girl go to Italy, where Gerard's talents
were sure to be appreciated. Gerard and
Margaret Brandt became betrothed, but
before they could be married the
burgomaster had Gerard seized and put in jail.
He was rescued at night from the prison
by Margaret, his sweetheart, Giles, his
dwarf brother, and Kate, his crippled
sister. In the rescue, Giles removed
from a chest in the cell some parchments
which the villainous Ghysbrecht had
608

hidden there. At Sevenhergen, Gerard
buried all of the parchments except a
deed which concerned Margaret's father.
After an exciting pursuit, Gerard and
Margaret escaped the vicinity of Tergou.
They separated, Margaret to return to
Sevenbergen, Gerard to proceed to Rome.
On the way, he was befriended by a Bur-
gundian soldier named Denys, and the
pair traveled toward the Rhine. They
went through a variety of adventures
together.
In Sevenbergen, meanwhile, Margaret
Brandt fell sick and was befriended by
Margaret Van Eyck. Martin, an old
soldier friend of the young lovers, went
to Rotterdam where he procured a
pardon for Gerard from Prince Philip. Dame
Van Eyck gave a letter to Hans Memling
to deliver to Gerard in Italy, but Mem-
ling was waylaid by agents of the
burgomaster and tne letter was taken from him.
Gerard and Denys came upon a
company of Burgundian soldiers on their way
to the wars and Denys was ordered to
ride with them to Flanders. Gerard was
left to make his solitary way to Rome.
Later Denys, released because of woundt*
received in the duke's service, set out
for Holland, where he hoped to find
Gerard. Elias and Katherine welcomed
him in Tergou when he told them that
he had been Gerard's comrade.
Meanwhile old Brandt and Margaret
disappeared from Sevenbergen, and Denys
searched all Holland for the girl. They
had gone to Rotterdam, but only the
burgomaster knew their whereabouts.
When Margaret practiced medicine
illegally, she was arrested and sentenced U
pay a large fine. In order to stay alive
she took in laundry. Denys discoverer
Margaret in Rotterdam and the pair
returned to Tergou, where Gerard's
family had become reconciled to Gerard's
attachment to the girl.
Gerard made his dangerous way
through France and Germany to Venice.
From there he took a coastal vessel and
continued to Rome. When the ship was
wrecked in a storm, Gerard displayed
bravery in saving the lives of a Roman
matron and her child. He went on to
Rome and took lodgings, but he found
work all but impossible to obtain. He
and another young artist, Pietro,
decorated playing cards for a living. Finally
through the good graces of the woman
whose life he had saved in the
shipwreck, Gerard was hired to decorate
manuscripts for Fra Colonna, a leading
classical scholar.
Hans Memling brought to Rome a
letter, sent by Ghysbrecht, which gave
Gerard the false news that Margaret had
died. Gerard forsook the Church and in
despair threw himself into the Tiber. But
he was saved and carried to a monastery,
where he recovered and eventually took
monastic vows. He became Brother
Clement of the Dominican Order. After a
period of training he was sent to teach at the
University of Basle, in Switzerland.
Meanwhile, in Holland, Margaret gave
birth to Gerard's son.
Brother Clement received orders to
proceed to England. Preaching as he
went, he began the journey down the
Rhine.
In Rotterdam, Luke Peterson became
Margaret's suitor. She told him he could
prove his love for her by seeking out
Gerard, but Luke's and Brother
Clement's paths were fated not to cross. The
priest went to Sevenbergen, where he
was unable to find the grave of
Margaret. He proceeded to Rotterdam, and
there Margaret heard him preach without
recognizing him as Gerard. He next
went to Tergou to see Ghysbrecht. The
burgomaster was dying; he confessed to
Brother Clement that he had defrauded
Margaret of wealth rightfully hers. On
his deathbed Ghysbrecht made full
restitution.
When Brother Clement left the
burgomaster, he returned to Rotterdam and
took refuge in a hermit's cave outside
the city. There he mortified himself out
of hatred for mankind.
Margaret, having learned his
whereabouts through court gossip, went to him,
609

but he repulsed her in the belief that
she was a spirit sent by Satan. Margaret
took her son to the cave in an attempt
to win back his reason. Brother Clement's
acquaintance with his son, also named
Gerard, brought him to his senses.
Margaret by shrewd argument persuaded him
to come with her to Gouda, where he
would be parson by arrangement with
church authorities. They lived in Gouda,
but apart, Gerard tending his flock and
Margaret assisting him in his many
charitable works.
After ten years at Gouda, Margaret
died of the plague. Gerard, no longer
anxious to live after her death, died two
weeks later. Their son, Gerard, grew
up to be Erasmus, the world-famous
sixteenth-century Biblical scholar and man
of letters.
610

THE CLOSED GARDEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Julian Green (1900- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1908
Locale: France
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Antoine Mesurat, a retired teacher
Adrienne, his daughter
Germaine, her invalid older sister
Dr. Denis Maurecourt, a physician
Madame Legras, a neighbor
Critique:
It has been said that the inspiration for
The Closed Garden—Adrienne Mesurat
in the original edition—was a painting by
Utrillo. Certainly the novel has the sunlit
yet melancholy dullness we find in many
of Utrillo's street scenes. Julian Green has
also been compared with Emily Bronte
for the intensity of his atmosphere and
with Balzac for his realistic rendering of
French provincial life. But these
comparisons are true only in part. Green is himself
first of all, with his own powers and
compelling insights. In this novel there is a
constant clashing of motives and wills
among members of a single household;
and the limitation of characters and scene
gives added force to the story of Adrienne
Mesurat, who falls in love with a man to
whom she had never spoken, commits a
crime of violence, and goes mad. Julian
Green's mastery of his somber theme
makes this novel a classic of its kind, just
as the writer himself, born in Paris of
American parents, is one of the most
distinguished writers of his literary
generation abroad.
The Story:
Adrienne Mesurat lived with her
father, a retired writing-master, and Ger-
maine, her invalid older sister, in a small,
ugly villa in the country town of La Tour
TEv&que. The routine of the household
was simple, for Antoine Mesurat lived
only to indulge his own quiet tastes. Three
meals a day, his morning and evening
walks, his favorite newspaper, an
occasional game of trente-et-un—these were his
pleasures. In his tranquilly stubborn
manner he was a complete domestic tyrant,
and the idea that his daughters might be
unhappy with their lot never crossed his
mind.
There had been a time when callers
came to the villa, for the Mesurats owned
enough property to attract young men of
the district. But old Mesurat considered
his daughters superior to the sons of
provincial tradesmen and lawyers and
laughed complacently at their proposals of
marriage. Finally the visits ceased. In the
uneventful round of Adrienne's days a
strange passerby in the street, local gossip
her father brought back from his walks,
and the succession of tenants who each
summer rented the Villa Louise on the
corner became items for speculation and
comment. So matters might have gone on
indefinitely if Adrienne had not, in the
summer of her seventeenth year, fallen
suddenly in love.
She had been gathering flowers beside
a country road when a carriage passed her
and she saw in it a slight man of middle
age, who half lifted his hat as the vehicle
went by. Adrienne recognized him as Dr.
THE CLOSED GARDEN by Julian Green. By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright*
1928, by Harper & Brothers.
611

Maurecourt, a recent arrival in the town.
A feeling of gratitude and adoration filled
her because he had noticed her. For the
rest of the summer she walked the same
road every day, but the doctor never rode
that way again.
At last Adrienne hit upon another plan.
Each night, after Germaine had gone to
her room and Mesurat had settled himself
in the parlor for his evening nap, she
would steal out of the house. From the
corner on which the Villa Louise stood she
could see the front of the Maurecourt
dwelling, and the sight of its lighted
windows gave her a deep feeling of
happiness. Once she saw Maurecourt on the
street. Later she felt that she had to see
him again at any cost. One day, while
cleaning, she discovered that she could
also watch his house from the window of
Germaine's room. As often as possible she
went there and sat, hoping to see him
enter or leave by his front door.
Germaine, surprising Adrienne in her
bedroom, became suspicious. That night
the older sister was awake when Adrienne
returned quietly from her evening vigil.
Mesurat, informed of what had happened,
ordered Adrienne to play cards with him
after dinner the next day. Under her
father's suspicious gaze, she played badly.
Enraged, he accused her of stealing out
nightly to meet a lover. From that time on
she was allowed to leave the house only
when she went walking with her father.
Again she saw Maurecourt on the street.
Thinking that if she were hurt he would
be called to attend her, she thrust her arms
through the windowpane. Her father and
sister bandaged her cuts, much to her
despair.
Germaine's sickness grew worse.
Mesurat, refusing to acknowledge her serious
condition, insisted that she get up for her
meals. One morning, after he had berated
her at breakfast, Germaine confided her
intention of leaving home, and she
borrowed five hundred francs from Adri-
enne's dower chest to pay her fare to a
convent hospital. Adrienne was glad to see
her sister go; she hoped to occupy the room
from which she used to watch Maure-
court's house. Mesurat, surprised and
furious, was puzzled to know how
Germaine had arranged for her flight and
where she had secured money for her train
fare.
In June, Madame Legras had become
the new tenant of the Villa Louise.
Adrienne and her father had met the summer
visitor at a concert and Madame Legras
had invited the young girl to call. After
Germaine's flight Adrienne went to see
her new neighbor. Madame Legras was
affable but prying. Confused by questions
about a possible lover, Adrienne had a
strange attack of dizziness.
That night Mesurat angrily ordered her
to produce her dower box. Seeing that
five hundred francs were missing, he
accused her of plotting with Germaine to
outwit him. While he stood reviling her
from the head of the stairs, Adrienne ran
against him in the dark. He fell into the
hall below. Dazed and frightened by her
deed, Adrienne went to bed.
The cook stumbled upon Mesurat's
body the next morning, and Madame
Legras, aroused by the disturbance,
summoned Maurecourt. Although there were
some whispers that the old man's end
might not be all it seemed, the verdict was
one of accidental death. Germaine did not
return for the funeral. Before long
Adrienne, to her dismay, found herself lonelier
than ever. A feeling of lethargy possessed
her much of the time. When the prioress
wrote asking for money in Germaine's
name or lawyers sent legal papers for her
signature, she disregarded them. Nothing
seemed to matter except the time she spent
with Madame Legras, who had assumed
a protective attitude toward the girl. But
at last Adrienne began to realize that
Madame Legras suspected the truth about
Mesurat's death, and her sly looks and
pointed remarks seemed intended to lead
the girl into a trap.
One day Adrienne decided to go to
Montfort. There, walking the streets, she
imagined that people were staring at her.
She spent the night in Dreux, where a
612

young workman accosted her. Later,
frightened because she did not remember
why she had gone away, she returned to
La Tour TEveque after sending Maure-
court a card telling him of her unhappi-
ness.
Shortly after her return she collapsed
and had to be put to bed in the Villa
Louise. Madame Legras, undressing her,
found a love letter which she gave to the
doctor when he came in response to her
summons. That night Adrienne awoke
and went back to her own home. Maure-
court went to see her there the next day.
When she confessed her love, he told her
that he was sick and soon to die.
Overcome by his visit, she was barely able to
rouse herself when Madame Legras
appeared and demanded an immediate loan
in order to pay some pressing debts. While
she looked on helplessly, the woman
emptied the dower chest of its gold coins.
Then she removed the watch and chain
Adrienne was wearing and dropped them
into her purse.
A short time later, when the cook
brought word that Madame Legras had
left town very suddenly, Adrienne
realized that the servant also knew her guilt.
Dazed, she sat vacant-eyed when Maure-
court's sister called to reproach her for her
shameless behavior. At nightfall she left
the house and wandered toward the
lighted square, where a f&te was in
progress. Suddenly she turned and ran
toward the dark countryside. There some
peasants found her a few hours later. She
could not tell them her name. She was
mad.
613

THE CLOUDS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Fifth century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 423 B.C.
Principal characters:
Strepiades, an Athenian gentleman
Phidippides, his son
Socrates, a Sophist philosopher
Critique:
The Clouds is one of the best known
of Aristophanes' many comedies. This
Greek master, recognized as a leading
playwright in his day and still
acknowledged as the foremost of comedy writers,
colors this play with an air of buffoonery
and raillery, sometimes savage and
biting. The attacks on the Sophists, the
logic lessons that Socrates administers to
Strepiades, and the lesson that
Phidippides gives his father, gave the Athenian
audience moments of high entertainment.
Aristophanes rejected the school of
Sophists, whom he considered irreverent and
artificial, and he satirized their teachings
in The Clouds.
The Story:
Strepiades, a rich gentleman of Athens,
was plunged into poverty and debt by
his profligate son, Phidippides. Hounded
by his son's creditors, Strepiades
pondered ways and means to prevent
complete ruin. Hearing reports that the
Sophists taught a new logic which could
be used to confuse one's creditors and so
get one out of debt, Strepiades saw in
the Sophist teachings a possible solution
to his problem. He pleaded with
Phidippides to enter the school of the Sophists
and learn the new doctrines. When
Phidippides, more interested in horse-
racing than in learning, refused to
become a pupil, Strepiades denounced his
son as a wastrel and decided to enroll
himself.
He went to the Thoughtery or
Thinking-School, which was the term used for
the classroom of the Sophists, and asked
to see Socrates, the philosopher. After
Strepiadies had explained his purpose,
Socrates proceeded to demonstrate several
logical conclusions of the new school.
More certain than ever that the new
logic would save him from ruin and
disgrace, Strepiades pleaded until Socrates
admitted him to the Thoughtery.
Unfortunately, Strepiades proved too
old to master the Sophist technique in
the classroom. Socrates then decided that
Strepiades could learn to do his thinking
outdoors. But when Socrates put
questions concerning poetry to Strepiades, his
answers showed such complete ignorance
that Socrates finally admitted defeat and
returned to the Thoughtery. Strepiades,
disgusted with his own efforts, decided
that he would either make Phidippides
go to the Sophist school or turn him out
of the house.
Approached a second time by his
father, Phidippides again protested a-
gainst enrolling in the school but finally
yielded to his father's demands.
Strepiades felt that all now would be well.
Some time afterward Strepiades went
to learn what progress his son had made.
Socrates assured him that Phidippides had
done well. At this news, Strepiades felt
sure that his plan had been a good one
and that the new logic, as learned by his
son, would soon deliver him from his
creditors. He asked Socrates to call
Phidippides from the classroom. When
Phidippides emerged, Strepiades greeted him
between tears and laughter, and said it
was fitting that he should be saved by the
son who had plunged him into debt.
614

He asked Phidippides to demonstrate
his new learning, and Strepiades was
amazed by the cunning of the new logic.
At that moment one of Strepiades*
creditors appeared to demand money that was
owed him for a horse. Strepiades,
confident that the Sophist-taught
Phidippides could turn the tables on any
creditor in the law court, refused to pay,
ignoring threats of court action. He treated
a second creditor in the same way and
went home convinced that the new logic,
as argued by Phidippides, would save him
in the pending law suits.
It became a different matter, however,
when Phidippides proceeded to
demonstrate the Sophist teaching at home.
Arguing that Strepiades had beaten him
often for his own good, Phidippides
buffeted his father during a family
argument and declared that he was beating
Strepiades for his own good. The old
man protested, but with the new logic
Phidippides silenced his protests and
threatened to beat his mother on the
same principle.
Strepiades realized that the Sophists
could justify all manner of evil with
their tricky logic. Thinking the teachings
dangerous to the youth of Athens, he
took a torch and set fire to the Thought-
ery. As Socrates and the Sophist disciples
screamed their objection, the Thoughtery
went up in flames. Strepiades watched
it burn, certain that he had eliminated
an evil.
615

THE CX>CKTAIL PARTY
Type of work: Drama
Author: T. S. Eliot (1888- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Mid-twentieth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1949
Principal characters:
Edward Chamberlayne, a lawyer
Lavinia, his wife
Julia, a meddling woman
Celia, a sensitive young woman
Peter, in love with CeKa
Alex, a meddling man
Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly, at first unidentified
Critique:
The Cocktail Party, a verse play, was
an immediate success on Broadway. The
style, the clever comedy, the sharp social
criticism—all were factors in its ready
acceptance. That Eliot's intelligent comedy
should win a wide audience is another
token of his place among men of letters.
The penetrating social analyses concern
the present fetish of psychiatry, the
dullness of cocktail parties and those who give
them, and the meaning of success.
Although the play is a comedy, Eliot has
used it to give new light on contemporary
civilization.
The Story:
The Chamherlaynes were givinga
cocktail party in their London flat. The
atmosphere was somewhat strained because
Lavinia, the hostess, was not there, and
Edward, her bumbling husband, hastily
invented a sick aunt to account for her
absence. Alex, as usual, had an exotic story
to tell, for he traveled widely and knew
everyone. Julia, a sharp-eyed and sharp-
tongued family friend, missed the point of
his tale and wondered why Alex and the
Maharaja were up a tree. Julia usually
missed the point of stories she heard.
The assembly demanded that Julia give
her inimitable imitation of Lady Klootz
and the wedding cake. They had all heard
the story before, except possibly Edward,
who forgot stories, and an unidentified
and unintroduced guest. Somehow Julia
got off on a family who had a harmless
son, and the story never did get told. The
harmless son was a fascinating person: he
could hear the cries of bats. Then Peter
had to tell of a scenario which he had
written and which, unfortunately, never
was produced.
To Edward's relief, the guests prepared
to leave. Only the stranger remained. He
drank gin with Edward for a while, and
Edward was compelled to confide in him.
Lavinia was not really at her aunt's house;
she had simply left with no explanation.
The stranger pointed out that her leaving
might be a blessing, since Lavinia was
demanding and practical. But Edward was
uneasy, without knowing exactly why he
wanted Lavinia back. The stranger
promised that the erring wife would return
within twenty-four hours if Edward would
ask for no explanations. He warned also
that both Lavinia and Edward might be
greatly changed. The stranger, full of gin,
broke into song as he left the apartment.
Julia, .returning for her glasses, had
Peter in tow. The glasses were in Julia's
bag all the time, and she departed again,
leaving behind an agitated Peter. The
young man wanted to confide in Edward.
THE COCKTAIL PARTY by T. S. Eliot. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1950, by T. S. Eliot.
616

He had fallen in love with Celia after
attending many concerts with her, and
she had been very friendly. Lately,
however, she had been unresponsive. He asked
if Edward would intercede for him.
At this juncture Alex came gaily back.
Edward was irritated. He asked Peter and
Alex to lock the door when they left so
no one else would wander in. Alex archly
went to the kitchen, intent on whipping
up a meal for the lone Edward. He
succeeded in using up all the fresh eggs in
some outlandish concoction.
At last, after answering the phone
several times, Edward settled down in solitary
comfort to play patience. Then the
doorbell rang and in came Celia. She had
divined that Lavinia had left Edward, and
now she thought it would be a good time
for Edward to seek a divorce so that he and
Celia could marry. Edward agreed, but in
spite of his repeated assurances of
continued love, Celia was uneasy, for she
sensed a change in him. Edward then
confessed that Lavinia was coming back and
that he almost wanted her back. He
scarcely knew why, for until his wife left
he had wanted only Celia. Celia was
discomfited at her faint-hearted lover. When
Julia returned once more, this time to
invite Edward to dinner, Celia escaped into
the kitchen. There, under pretext of
getting a lunch for the lone Edward, she
ruined Alex's concoction completely.
The next day the stranger returned.
Again he warned Edward that by wanting
Lavinia to return he had set in motion
forces beyond his control. When she
returned, she would be a stranger and
Edward would be a stranger to her. But since
Edward had made his choice he had to
abide by it. After admonishing Edward to
receive any visitors who might come, the
mysterious stranger left by the back stairs.
Celia was the first to arrive. She had
come at Julia's request, apparently in
response to a telegram from Lavinia. While
they were together, Celia had a chance
to look at Edward carefully; he seemed to
her only a rather comic middle-aged man.
She could laugh now at her infatuation.
Peter arrived in response to Alex's
invitation. Alex had also received a wire,
ostensibly from Lavinia. He had time for
some reproachful remarks to Celia and
then announced he was leaving for
Hollywood.
Lavinia herself arrived next, surprised
to find Peter and Celia and disclaiming
any knowledge of telegrams to Alex and
Julia. When the latter two got there, the
mystery deepened. At length the guests
departed and Lavinia turned expectantly
to Edward. But he had little to say. He
reproached her for her overbearing ways,
and she twitted him for being unable to
make decisions. When she suggested
Edward was on the verge of a nervous
breakdown, he was angered but interested in the
possibility. He resolved stoutly not to visit
any doctor Lavinia might recommend, and
stalked off to his club.
In Sir Henry's offices, preparations were-
being made to receive patients. The first
was Edward, who was surprised to see that
Sir Henry was his mysterious stranger. In
the consultation Edward told why he had
wanted Lavinia back: she had dominated
him so long that he was incapable of
existence without her. Sir Henry then
brought in Lavinia, the better to have the
whole problem threshed out.
During the conversation it was revealed
that Lavinia had left because of Edward's
disgraceful affair with Celia. Edward,
somewhat shaken to learn that she had
known of the affair, grew confident again
when Lavinia confessed she had been
infatuated with Peter. Sir Henry diagnosed
their trouble as mutual fear: Edward was
afraid he could not make successful love to
any one and Lavinia was afraid she was
completely unlovable. The doctor assured
them that they had every requirement for
a successful life together. They had a
mutual fear and hatred of each other, and
both were quite mediocre people. They
left, moderately reconciled.
Julia arrived at the doctor's office to ask
how successful her scheming had been.
It had been she who had induced Sir
Henry to step in, and Alex had abetted her.
617

Celia also came in for a consultation.
She had vague feelings of guilt and sin
and wanted to take a rest cure. After
talking with her, Sir Henry recognized that
she was an outstanding person, that her
destiny called her. He advised her to be at
ease and do whatever she had to do.
Two years later the Chamberlaynes
were giving another cocktail party to many
of the old crowd. They were smugly
settled in their mediocrity and even made a
pretense of being in love. To them the
inanities of cocktail parties were their
measure of social standing. Peter came in
hurriedly. He had been a great success in
America. He now had money and renown
of a sort. His destiny had been a material
one. Alex arrived next. He was just back
from bearing the white man's burden on
a tropical island. He reported (Delia's
death. Celia had been a nurse on the
island. She had been killed in a native
rebellion. Her destiny had called her to
martyrdom for the love of humanity.
618

COLLECTED POEMS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
First published: 1941
Walter de la Mare published his first
book of poems, Songs of Childhood, in
1902, his last, O Lovely England, in
1953, three years before his death; and
his career, spanning more than half a
century, was productive to the end. Since
five books of new lyrics and a
supplementary volume of earlier verse followed
the 1941 edition of his Collected Poems,
this collection cannot in any sense be
regarded as complete. Rather, it marks
an interval stage of revision and
regrouping of work which de la Mare wished to
preserve and present in its final form. A
number of the poems have been slightly
altered from their original versions; others
have been regrouped by subject matter,
and some have been omitted from earlier
single volumes. Most of these have been
reprinted in a second series, Collected
Rhymes and Verses (1944). In the light
of these changes it seems certain that at
the time the poet considered this volume
the definitive edition of his most serious
work.
"Delamarian" has come to stand for
that blending of supernal beauty and the
supernatural, nature and mankind tinged
delicately with "theotherworlde," as
Henry C. Duffin, friend and critic of
the poet, has styled it. Poems: 1906 opens
on this note in "Shadow":
Even the beauty of the rose doth cast,
When its bright, fervid noon is past,
A still and lengthening shadow in the
dust,
Till darkness come
And take its strange dream home.
The poem concludes with recognition of
the "dark and livelong hint of death"
which is the shadow of life haunting us
into eternity. In this first group is an-
COLLECTED POEMS by Walter de la Mare. Excer
of Walter de la Mare and The Society of Authors as t
Mare.
other poem, "England," which presents
the other side of his brightest coin:
No lovelier hills than thine have laid
My tired thoughts to rest:
No peace of lovelier valleys made
Like peace within my breast.
The poem continues with a celebration of
the woods, "a refuge green and cool," and
seas that "like trumpets peal," and
concludes:
Thine be the grave whereto I come,
And thine my darkness be.
Neither the sonnets nor the attempts to
re-create characters from Shakespeare are
equal to de la Mare's lyric or descriptive
poems, though the selections which are
recalled from childhood display his unique
ability to "become as a little child," often
with startling results, as in "Fear" or
"Echo," in which phantasms arise and
will not be put down. Then, too, the
lovely idyl which is childhood takes
shape in "The Mermaids" and "Myself,"
but always with a touch of strangeness,
a shadow.
The Listeners (1912) contains the
title poem, too well-known to be
repeated but beloved by all, and many
others which exhibit the same masterly
blending of clear, singing music and the
twilight atmosphere of a world of
fantasy and dreams, qualities that made his
poetry popular. "All That's Past" suggests
in modern runes the wonder and antiquity
of winds, brooks, minerals, the rose, and
immemorial man:
Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve's nightingales;
)ts reprinted by permission of the Literary Trustees
irir representative. Copyright, 1941, by Walter de la
619

We wake and whisper awhile,
But the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.
From this past, against the background
of "Arabia" or other romantic, distant
lands, Walter de la Mare takes his reader
on a pilgrimage from light to shadow,
from the real to the unreal. "Martha,"
one of the unreal, tells stories "in the
hazel glen" of fairies and gnomes that
the poet makes real. For those who
believe that de la Mare is limited in
subject and mood, "The Keys of Morning"
presents the poignant wisdom of a child,
Louisa, who faces death with an
understanding beyond that of adults.
Motley C1918) and The Veil (1922)
mark the maturation of the delamarian
style: the most exact and exacting words
in the most carefully chosen places, the
rhythmic cadences more syllabic than
metered, the rhymes more individually
and unmistakably set in a perfection of
sentiment. Here, too, the poet's themes
match the times, for de la Mare was
against the Philistines, "Mrs. Grundy,"
and all those who gloat in righteousness.
Here is one of the most perfect poems,
"Music," which takes one away from this
earth to the place where "all her lovely
things even lovelier grow." The antique
though rememberable past comes forth
and the poet reaches a synthesis with
time.
As critics have remarked, a newer
realism is discernible in the later poems.
"The Old Angler," obviously a stylized
person, fishes in eternity though he
himself, his boat, and his surroundings are
often naturalistically displayed.
"Titmouse" is an exercise of the physical
senses with symbolic overtones:
This tiny son of life; this spright,
By momentary Human sought,
Plume will his wing in the dappling
light,
Clash timbrel shrill and gay—
And into time's enormous nought,
Sweet-fed, will flit away.
In this section great love lyrics appear,
and also humor—that most difficult
element to place in lyric poetry—as in
"Maerchen":
Soundless the moth-flit, crisp the death-
watch tick;
Crazed in her shaken arbour bird did
sing;
Slow wreathed the grease adown from
soot-clogged wick:
The Cat looked long and sofdy at
the King.
The section closes with "An Epitaph"
(de la Mare wrote many such, all
wonderful):
Last, Stone, a little yet;
And then this dust forget.
But thou, fair Rose, bloom on.
For she who is gone
Was lovely too; nor would she grieve to
be
Sharing in solitude her dreams with
thee.
The Fleeting (1933) is full of
surprises, new cadences, startling themes,
odd forms. "The Feckless Dinner-Party,"
for example, contains all these and satiric
thrusts against an inane society madly
orbiting to death, and led by a butler,
Toomes. Here, too, is "Slum Child," de la
Mare's bitterest criticism of a society
which allows a child to go frightened and
•inloved into "evil, filth, and poverty" as
"epitome of man's disgrace"; yet there is
hope of finding "living bread in stones"
and "a self beyond surmise." Echoes of
an early note, however, sound with the
same chill magic in such a fine though
macabre poem as "The House":
"Mother, it's such a lonely house,"
The child cried; and the wind sighed.
"A narrow but a lovely house,"
The mother replied.
"Child, it is such a narrow house,"
The ghost cried; and the wind sighed.
"A narrow and a lonely house,"
The withering grass replied.

If the poet could not pass a graveyard
without stopping, neither can the reader
overlook the resulting poems, especially
the epitaph of "Isaac Meek" who
"inherited the earth" or that of "J
H : Aged 34" who sleeps "Beneath
a Motionless Yew," remembered faintly
by his ancient widow.
Memory (1938), containing as it does
echoes from earlier poems, even a
reworking of earlier themes under similar titles,
returns to the essential de la Mare of
childhood, of ancient ways, of shadows
extended backward in time, all expressed
in the short lyric, the close-cropped line,
the sentient rhyme, the evocative symbol.
The title poem suggests that memory is a
"strange deceiver" who brings back the
relevant and irrelevant, "poor and trivial,
rich and rare," but refuses to yield "grave
fact and loveliest fantasy." The poet then
cites, autobiographically though
symbolically, instances of memory's caprices.
The loss of a child, "Sallie's Musical
Box," is as poignant a short lyric as exists
in the language:
Once it made music, tiny, frail, yet
sweet—
Bead-note of bird where earth and elf-
land meet.
Now its thin tinkling stirs no more,
since she
Whose toy it was, has gone; and taken
the key.
Here, again, is the earlier theme of lost
rapture, but now without the Blakian
quality noted in the earlier Songs of
Childhood.
Walter de la Mare may have
considered this his last volume of poems,
published as it was when he was sixty-
eight. Fortunately, some of his loveliest
writing, like the beautiful and moving
"Winged Chariot," came later. In this
book, however, the last lines of the last
poem, "Snow," appropriately epitomize
his unique poetry:
A marvel of light,
Whose verge of radiance seems
Frontier of paradise,
The bourne of dreams.
O tranquil, silent, cold-
Such loveliness to see:
The heart sighs answer,
Benedicitel
621

COLLECTED POEMS, 1934-1952
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
First published: 1952
When Dylan Thomas died at the age
of thirty-nine he was, for a poet in this
century, extraordinarily popular. His
poetry had been read and admired for years;
a paean of praise greeted his collected
works, and still more appreciation was
accorded him after his death. However,
many reputable critics, fellow poets, and
general readers have disliked, derided,
and dismissed his work on the grounds
that it is merely sibylline raving. These
contradictory reactions are explained by
the fact that Thomas was primarily a
violently emotional poet. The strength of
his feelings thus either forcibly attracts
or repels his readers.
The poems make an emotional impact,
on first reading, that subsequent analyses
will not displace. With the exception of
Ezra Pound, Thomas is probably the
most obscure of the great poets of this
century. Whether he is a major or a
minor poet will be established only by the
evaluation of critics in the future, as no
contemporary can have the necessary
perspective to place a poet accurately in
such a hierarchy. Undeniably, Dylan
Thomas' poetry is great in kind; to what
degree, posterity will decide.
A poet who is both very obscure and
very popular is an anomaly, but Thomas
is not in this position by virtue of
belonging to a particular school of verse, nor by
writing in a recognized poetic
convention. Nor is he socially or politically
committed. His poetry is an affirmation of
life: "These poems are written for the
love of man and in praise of God, and I'd
be a damn* fool if they weren't." The
truth of this assertion in the
introductory note to his volume of collected verse
is shown in every successful poem that
he wrote. His early poetry is egocentric;
he was writing of his own private feelings
in these poems of birth, death, and sex,
and the glory he found in these themes
was entirely personal. His later poems
show a far wider human interest and an
increasing concern for mankind.
Throughout his work a unity of vision
is apparent. He sees death in birth and
resurrection in death. He is aware of the
hate in all love and of the power of love
to transcend suffering. He comprehends
the simultaneous glory and corruption in
life, and the fact that all forms of life
are interdependent and inseparable. "I
see the boys of summer" is a dialogue
between the young poet who sees the
destruction of the future in the present,
and the adolescent boys living their first
passionate and confusing loves. The
successive images of light and dark, heat and
cold, throughout the poem emphasize this
contrast. The poem is filled with
pleasure and pain conjoined, and with gain
and loss. The polarity of these emotions
is explicitly stated in the final, joyful
image:
O see the poles are kissing as they
cross.
"If I were tickled by the rub of love"
is a difficult poem, to be understood by
remembering the comprehensiveness of
Thomas' idea of life. In the context of
the poem, "tickled" appears to mean
completely involved with, or wholly absorbed
by, but the term necessarily retains the
connotations of amusement and
enjoyment. "Rub," as well as having sensual
implications, also means doubt, difficulty,
or strain. The poet says that if he were
"tickled by the rub of love," he would not
fear the fall from Eden or the flood; if
he were "tickled" by the birth of a child,
COLLECTED POEMS, 1934-1952 by Dylan Thomas. Excerpts reprinted by permission of the publii
New Directions. All rights reserved by J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. Copyright, 1952, by New Directions.
shers,
622

he would not fear death or war. Desire
is spoken of as devilish and is provoked
by
. . . the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks
her eye.
This harsh image is followed by a
statement of the poet's consciousness that he
carries his own old age and death
already within him.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with
my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the
sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my
nail
Wearing the quick away.
The feeling of fear is strong, and neither
love, sex, beauty, nor birth is the "rub";
the solution is in wholeness or unity:
I would be tickled by the love that is:
Man be my metaphor.
Thomas' poetical development is
unusual in that the thought in his later
poems is usually not at all obscure.
These poems are also less clotted with
material; there are fewer esoteric symbols;
ideas are developed at greater length, and
tension is relaxed. The close attention to
rhythm and* structure persists, and the
evocative power of his language is
enhanced. Thomas' genius lay in the
brilliant and highly personal use of the
words with which his penetrating
perception is communicated. The ambiguity
of his language parallels the reciprocal
nature of his images. He delights in
punning and the various meanings of a word
or image will often reverberate
throughout an entire stanza.
"Poem on his birthday" is a good
example of his method. The last poems
are often, as this one is, set in the Welsh
countryside. The heron is always in his
poems a religious or priestly symbol. In
the first stanza "herons spire and spear";
in the third, "herons walk in their
shroud," and in the ninth he writes of
the "druid herons' vows" and of his
"tumbledown tongue"—this last a
beautifully fused image of the action of the
tongue of a pealing bell and the
impetuous voice of the poet. In the tenth stanza
he speaks of the "nimbus bell' which is
a magical goal. By this use of compound
images Thomas explores and thoroughly
penetrates his subject. All aspects of the
experience are involved, and pain,
happiness, grief, and joy are equally present
in this expression of unified sensibility.
This inclusive view of the universe is
sometimes incoherent in his early poems,
sometimes illuminating. One of the finest
of his early poems is titled "The force
that through the green fuse drives the
flower." The symbolism here is not
obscure and the emotions are controlled by
the form of the poem. The third line of
each of the four five-line stanzas has only
three or four words and is the main clause
of the three-line sentence in which the
theme of each stanza is stated. The last
two lines of each stanza begin with the
words "And I am dumb. . . ." After the
dramatic first two lines the short solemn
third lines ready the reader for the
equally forceful antithesis. The poem
ends with a rhyming couplet:
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb,
How at my sheet goes the same crooked
worm.
The theme of the poem is that the
forces of nature are the same as those
that drive man and that these forces both
create and destroy. The careful structure
of this poem is typical of Thomas'
craftsmanship. He has been called
undisciplined. He is not, but his unfettered
imagination can confuse his meaning and
his symbolism remains, in spite of
painstaking analysis, almost inexplicable.
The sonnet sequence, "Altarwise by
owl-light," is Thomas' most difficult
poetry. The sonnets contain lines and
passages of great beauty, and the overall
movement, from horror and suffering
toward the idea of the redemption of man
by the Resurrection of Christ after the
623

Crucifixion, is clear. But the sequence
as a whole remains too compressed and
fragmentary to be successful. Thomas has
failed mainly to communicate the bases
of the intense suffering and hope that he
so obviously felt.
In "After the funeral," an elegy for a
cousin, Ann Jones, Thomas expresses
both his own grief and the character of
the dead woman. It is, as the poet points
out, written with a magniloquence that
exceeds the subject's,
Though this for her is a monstrous
image blindly
Magnified out of praise. . . .
This manner contrasts so sharply with
the humble and suffering woman that the
poignancy of the portrait is increased.
His grief
Shakes a desolate boy who slit his
throat
In the dark of the coffin and sheds dry
leaves.
The clear-sighted description of the
woman after the expression of such grief
is very moving:
I know her scrubbed and sour humble
hands
Lie with religion in their cramp, her
thread-bare
Whisper in a damp word, her wits
drilled hollow,
Her fist of a face died clenched on a
round pain.
The sonnet sequence and the elegy
give some indication of Thomas' later
themes, where religious faith and a
concern for mankind are evident.
During the second world war Thomas
spent several years in London, where he
was deeply moved by German air raids
on the city. This reaction is very clear in
his fourth volume, Deaths and Entrances.
The well-known "A refusal to Mourn the
Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" is
both an affirmation of Christian faith and
an expression of cold fury at such a death.
The poet feels that the event was too
great for grief and that no elegy should
be written for the child until the end of
the world. Writing of grief at the time
would be as if to murder her again:
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave
truth.
The child is representative of all
mankind and of all London's dead, a view
which gives her a certain greatness:
Deep with the first dead lies London's
daughter.
The last line of the poem is
ambivalent; it communicates both the
irrevocability, finality, and cruelty of death and
the Christian belief of the deathlessness
of the soul:
After the first death there is no other.
After the war Thomas was concerned
to recapture in his poetry the world of
his childhood. The rhythm of these poems
is more relaxed and flowing than that of
his early work, and the landscapes are
glowing and full of color and wonder.
These lyrics are poems in praise of the
created world. Thomas' skill with words
and rhythm evokes the whole Welsh
countryside, and his unique imaginative
vision makes the places his own. He has
here communicated his great reverence
and love of life. The unified vision of life
remains, and Thomas is still aware of the
presence of death in life, although this is
no longer a cause of anguish as it was in
the early poems.
In "Fern Hill," Thomas describes his
youth on a farm. He has re-created
youthful feeling that the whole world was his;
there is an atmosphere of timelessness, a
lulling of the consciousness of time's
destruction, which the poet in recapturing
his youthful feeling has conveyed without
negating his manhood's knowledge.
Dylan Thomas was a highly emotional
poet whose lyrics express a unified vision
of life. His poetry contains many of the
aspects of birth and death, fear, grief,
624

joy, and beauty. From the violent,
anguished poems of his youth, his power
over his "craft or sullen art" increased
until he was able to channel his special
mode of feeling in ways which enabled
him to speak for all men:
And you shall wake, from country
sleep, this dawn and each first dawn,
Your faith as deathless as the outcry of
the ruled sun.
625

THE COLLEGIANS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gerald Griffin (1803-1840)
Type of plot: Domestic tragedy
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1828
Principal characters:
Eily O'Connor, a beautiful girl of the lower classes ;
Hardress Cregan, a spirited young man of wealth
Ann Chute, a young woman of the upper classes, in love with Cregan
Kyrle Daly, a college friend of Cregan, in love with Ann Chute
Danny Mann, Cregan's villainous servant
Mrs. Cregan, Hardress Cregan's mother
Critique:
Gerald Griffin was a dramatist and poet
as well as a novelist, but his chief claim
to fame is The Collegians, which was
extremely popular in the years immediately
after its publication. The story is more
familiar to Americans in drama form,
having been dramatized by Dion Bouci-
cault under the title of The Colleen
Bawn, a play which capitalized upon the
melodramatic qualities of the novel.
Griffin attempted to do for the Irish and
Ireland what Sir Walter Scott had done in
portraying Scotland and the Scottish
people, and like Scott, Griffin was intensely
interested in the folk traditions, customs,
and personalities of the people about
whom he wrote. The pages of The
Collegians are filled with items of Irish
folklore and more than a little attention has
been paid to capturing the language of
the peasants.
The Story:
Hardress Cregan and Kyrle Daly had
been companions in their college days, in
spite of the fact that Kyrle was of the
middle classes and Hardress was the son
of an Irish gentleman. Their respective
ranks were close enough, however, so that
they could respect one another and not be
ashamed of their friendship. After
leaving college they maintained the same
close relationship, for they lived not far
from each other. In fact, Kyrle, who had
begun the study of law, became a suitor
for the hand of Hardress' cousin, Ann
Chute, a suit in which Kyrle had the
good will of his friend.
Hardress Cregan, a spirited young
man, lived more for sports and good
times; he was actually shy in the presence
of women, although he was bold enough
in the face of danger. He was also
disdainful of people from the lower classes.
As an example of his attitude for them,
one morning Kyrle's family watched from
a window of their house as Hardress ran
down some fishermen with his yacht,
when such action could have been
averted by a slight shift of the yacht's tiller.
That same day Kyrle set out for Chute
Castle to attend the races and to press
his suit with Ann Chute. He did not
know that on board Hardress' yacht was
a young woman of the lower classes,
Eily O'Connor, daughter of a rope-maker,
whom Hardress had secretly married a
month before. The young woman was
beautiful, but Hardress was afraid to
make his marriage public, for he knew
that his mother expected him to make
a marriage with a young woman of
wealth and position. He had taken Eily
on board his yacht and was sailing with
her up the coast, where he intended
lodging her in the cottage of his servant's
sister, close to his family's home. She had
consented to go with him and to stay
away from her father's home only
because Hardress had promised to acknowl-
626

edge her publicly as his bride within a
matter of days. Hardress knew that he
was safe in settling her with the sister
of his servant, Danny Mann, because
Danny, a hunchback, was devotedly loyal
to his headstrong master.
At Chute Castle that same afternoon
Kyrle's suit for the hand of Ann was
ended. The girl told Kyrle in definite
terms that she could not marry him,
although she loved no one else. That night
Kyrle met Hardress at the cottage where
the latter had taken Eily. Kyrle was too
distraught to notice anything unusual in
the fact that the girl was with his friend.
Hardress promised to do everything he
could to assist Kyrle in marrying Ann.
Ann, asked to stay at the home of
Hardress* parents, accepted the invitation. A
few days after her arrival she confided to
a sick old huntsman that she was in love
with Hardress. Just before the old man
died, he told his master that someone was
in love with the young man. He did not,
however, tell who loved him, but
Hardress' mother soon realized the love Ann
had for her son. Approving of the match,
even though the young people were
cousins, she threw them together at every
opportunity. When Hardress tried to avoid
Ann, his mother upbraided him bitterly.
Her attitude completely prevented the
young man from revealing his marriage to
Eily.
Eily, meanwhile, grew restive when
her husband refused to acknowledge her
as his bride, for even the people with
whom she stayed did not know that
Hardress was her husband. As the weeks
went by she realized that she had
outworn her welcome among the peasants
with whom she was quartered. Above all,
she found her husband acting very
strangely when he visited her. The girl
asked him the reasons for his strangeness
and for his reluctance to admit to the
world that she was his wife. When she
did, he burst out in anger, pointing out
that he had married below his station and
was very sorry he had done so. It was then
that he realized that he was in love with
Ann. Leaving the cottage in a rage, he
met his confidential servant, the
hunchbacked Danny Mann. The servant was
so devoted to his master that he promised
to do away with the girl if Hardress
wished her out of the way. His offer, a
shocking one, brought Hardress to his
senses, although he was still torn between
his duty to his unacknowledged wife and
his love for Ann.
At home the love for him that Ann
openly showed, as well as his mother's
wishes that he* marry the girl, increased
the young man's perplexities. Gradually
his desire to marry Ann overcame his
sense of duty to his secret bride.
In the meantime Eily decided to let
someone know of her marriage. Leaving
the cottage, she went to see an uncle, the
parish priest in a village not far from
where she was staying. She told her
uncle that she was married, but obedience
to her husband kept her from telling who
the husband was. Upon her return to the
cottage she met Danny Mann, who gave
her a letter from Hardress. Finally
yielding to temptation and resolving to be rid
of Eily, he had commissioned Danny to
spirit her out of Ireland and put her on
a boat bound for Canada. In the letter he
told his wife of his decision; Eily, still
obedient to her husband, submitted to
his wishes.
But Danny misinterpreted his master's
commands and murdered the girl. Too
late, Hardress realized what had
happened, but in spite of the blood on his
hands he determined to marry Ann. His
hope was that Danny would disappear for
good and that the crime would never be
discovered. As plans were being made for
the wedding, Hardress began to act
rather strangely. No one knew of the crime
that was preying on his mind; people put
his strange actions down to cowardice and
illness.
Quite by chance, a short time before
the date set for the marriage, Eily's body
was discovered. At the inquest nothing
627

was learned of the girl's death. Although
the coroner suspected foul play, it seemed
as if Hardress' plans were to work out
successfully. Then, on the day before
the marriage, Danny returned and was
captured by the authorities. For a time it
seemed as if fate were with the criminals.
Hardress was able to effect his servant's
escape, but Danny continued to linger in
the neighborhood, much to Hardress'
dismay. Discovering the servant, he beat the
hunchback unmercifully. In revenge,
Danny went to the authorities and
confessed his crimes, implicating his master.
Hardress, a few hours before his
wedding, was taken from his home and sent
into exile as a criminaL Danny Mann was
hanged.
A happy ending of the tragedy came
when, some months later, Ann married
Kyrle Daly, who she found was really a
better man and more worthy of her love
than wealthier and more spirited Hardress
Cregan.
628

COLOMBA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Prosper M£rim£e (1803-1870)
Type of plot: Romantic adventure
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Corsica
First published: 1840
Principal characters:
Colonel Sir Thomas Nevil, an Irish officer serving in the English
army
Lydia Nevil, his daughter
Orso della Rebbia, a lieutenant in the French army
Colomba della Rebbia, his sister
Lawyer Barricini, blood enemy to the della Rebbias
Critique:
A tale of vengeance, Colomba tells
the story of the blood enmity between
two Corsican families, one honorable,
the other cowardly. Although primitive
customs of the Corsicans are contrasted
with the civilized manners of two British
subjects, the savage Corsicans do not fall
short in honor and courage. Adventure
and romance form the background for
this story of a girl who would not rest
until she saw her father's death avenged.
The Story:
When Lydia Nevil and her father,
Colonel Nevil, first met Lieutenant Orso
della Rebbia, they were impressed with
that young man's good looks and his
obvious pride in his native Corsica.
Although Colonel Nevil and Orso had been
on opposite sides in the Napoleonic Wars,
each admired the other's bravery and
courage. The Nevils were on their way
to Corsica when they met Orso, a trip
they hoped would provide release from
boredom for Lydia and good hunting for
her father. Orso, a lieutenant under
Napoleon, was going home on half pay now
that the wars were over and his leader
had been defeated.
A short time after the party arrived in
Corsica, Orso's sister Colomba joined
them. From her and Orso, the Nevils
learned the story of the della Rebbia
family. The father had been murdered from
ambush and no one had paid for the
crime. But Colomba firmly believed that
Lawyer Barricini had been responsible
for her father's death, the two families
having been blood enemies for
generations, and she demanded that Orso avenge
the death. Orso, having been absent from
Corsica for many years, did not feel the
old passionate hatred of his kin, and he
was satisfied that the law had rightly
cleared Barricini, there being no proof
that he was guilty of murder. Colomba,
sharing the fiery passions of her ancestors,
was determined that her brother should
uphold the honor of their family. Lydia,
on the other hand, pleaded with Orso to
let the law settle such matters; she felt
that to avenge the death would be to
commit murder.
There had been evidence in the case,
the bloodstained notebook of the
murdered man, in which he had printed part
of a name before he died. Barricini, as
mayor of the village, had impounded the
book, and when it was offered in
evidence the name appeared to be that of a
bandit in the district. Colomba believed
that Barricini had torn out the original
page and himself printed the bandit's
name. No one believed her story but
some peasant friends who were also
bandits, and their testimony was of no value.
Orso and Colomba left the Nevils for
a time and returned to their native
village, the colonel and Lydia promising to
visit them later. Not long after their re-
629

turn the prefect called on them and said
that he had proof that Barricini was not
guilty of the crime of which Colomba
accused him. A thief, now imprisoned, had
confessed that he had written a letter that
had started the trouble between Barricini
and the slain della Rebbia. Colomba,
not impressed, said that Barricini,
fearing that she would prevail upon her
brother to seek out their enemy and kill
him, had no doubt bribed the prisoner
to make a false confession.
The prefect invited Orso to accompany
him to the Barricini house, there to
settle the matter peacefully. The prefect,
who also had a letter for Orso from Lydia,
promised that he would hand over the
letter when the young man made the
call. But the next morning Colomba told
the prefect's servant that her brother had
sprained his ankle; she asked the prefect
to call at their home. When the prefect
arrived, accompanied by Barricini and his
two sons, Colomba confronted them with
one of her friends, a bandit who said that
he had been in prison with the thief
supposed to have confessed to writing the
letter. The bandit said that the prisoner
had received many visits from Barricini's
son and that the prisoner displayed a
great deal of money for one so notoriously
poor. Orso, convinced by this evidence,
accused Barricini of forgery, perhaps
murder. He struck one of the sons and
promised to seek true vengeance later. The
prefect, promising to investigate the
whole matter, asked Orso to refrain from
violence until the investigation was
complete.
Orso wrote to Barricini's son, however,
and challenged him to a duel with guns.
Barricini promptly sent the note to the
public prosecutor as evidence that Orso
had threatened his family. Orso then
wrote to Lydia, whose letter to him had
stated that she and her father were on
the way for their visit, and asked the
Nevils not to come until she heard from
him again. He wished to spare them the
danger of a feud. Learning that his
letter had not reached Lydia in time, he
proposed to intercept the Nevils on their
way to the village.
In order to stir her brother to violence,
Colomba slit the ear of his favorite horse.
Convinced by his sister that his enemies
had done the deed, enraged Orso swore
he would avenge his honor, for to slit the
ear of an enemy's horse was a mortal
challenge.
On his way to meet the Nevils, a
friendly child warned Orso that his
enemies were waiting to ambush him, but
he refused to turn back. When he reached
a thicket, he was attacked from two sides
and injured in the arm. With one arm
he discharged his heavy gun twice and
killed both his attackers. Realizing that
they were the two sons of Barricini, he
knew that he would be arrested for
murder. He took refuge with some bandits
friendly to his family.
Lydia and Colonel Nevil, arriving in
the village, learned of Orso's
disappearance, and they joined Colomba in fears
for his safety. At last the bandits sent
word that Orso had escaped and was
hiding with them. Believing in his
innocence, Lydia convinced her father that
Orso had only defended himself against
his would-be assassins. In fact, Colonel
Nevil told the prefect that he and Lydia
had heard Orso's gun fire twice after two
lighter guns had been fired. The
colonel's reputation convinced the prefect
that Orso had acted in self-defense.
Colomba and Lydia visited Orso in his
hideout. As the two young people
declared their love for each other they were
interrupted by the arrival of .the police.
Orso fled again. Colomba and Lydia were
seized and returned to the prefect. By
that time the prefect had proof that Orso
had acted in self-defense, which carried
no charge of murder. He demanded,
however, that Orso surrender to the
authorities so that the affair could be settled
legally-
After his surrender Orso was found
innocent of any crime. He and Lydia
married and went to Italy. Colomba and
630

Colonel Nevil accompanied them.
Although Colomba soon learned the dress
and manners of polite society, she often
longed for her wild life in Corsica. One
day she saw an old man who had almost
lost his senses. She learned that he was
old Barricini, who had been forced to
flee Corsica after Orso's vindication. Now
he was a broken man, mourning the loss
of his sons and his honor. He confessed
to Colomba that he had indeed torn the
page out of the notebook and substituted
another name for his own. Colomba had
no sympathy for the old man. She felt
that his plight was due to his own evil
and was glad that her father's blood was
now completely avenged.
631

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: First century B.C.
Locale: Ancient Greece
First presented: c. 1592
Principal characters:
Solinus, Duke of Ephesus
Aegeon, a merchant of Syracuse
Antipholus of Ephesus, and
Antipholus of Syracuse, twin brothers, sons of Aegeon and Aemilia
Dromio of Ephesus, and
Dromio of Syracuse, twin brothers, attendants of above twins
Aemilia, Aegeon's wife
Adriana, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus
Luciana, Adriana's sister
A Courtesan
Critique:
The Comedy of Errors is a farce-
comedy at times bordering on slapstick.
The situations make the farce, the
characters being only incidental to the plot. It
required a nimble wit to place each
character at the right place at the exact time
to increase the confusion already existing
in the story. Here Shakespeare had no
subtle moral, no lyrical expression of love,
no purpose of any kind but to entertain
with scenes of hilarious confusion. The
reader must enter wholeheartedly into the
spirit of fun and gaiety or his time is
wasted. Absent is the perfection of
structure and characterization of Shakespeare's
later works, but nowhere does he surpass
The Comedy of Errors in simple,
sidesplitting fun.
The Story:
Aegeon, a merchant of Syracuse
recently arrived in Ephesus, was to be put
to death because he could not raise a
thousand marks for payment of his fine.
The law of the time was that a native of
either land must not journey to the other
on penalty of his life or the ransom of a
thousand marks. But when Solinus, Duke
of Ephesus, heard Aegeon's story, he gave
the merchant one more day to try to raise
the money.
It was a sad and strange tale Aegeon
told. He had, many years ago, journeyed
to Epidamnum. Shortly after his wife
joined him there she was delivered of
identical twins. Strangely enough, at the
same time and in the same house, another
woman also bore twin boys, both
identical. The second wife and her husband
were so poor that they could not care for
their children, and so they gave them to
Aegeon and his wife Aernilia, to be
attendants to their two sons. On their way
home to Syracuse, the six were
shipwrecked. Aemilia and the two with her
were rescued by one ship, Aegeon and the
other two by a different ship. Aegeon did
not see his wife and the two children in
her company again. When he reached
eighteen years of age, Antipholus, the son
reared by his father, grew anxious to find
his brother, and he and his attendant set
out to find their missing twin. Now they
too were lost to Aegeon, and he had come
to Syracuse to seek them.
Unknown to Aegeon, his son and his
attendant had just arrived in Ephesus.
Antipholus and Dromio, his attendant,
met first a merchant of the city, who
warned them to say that they came from
somewhere other than Syracuse, lest they
632

suffer the penalty already meted out to
Aegeon. Antipholus, having sent Dromio
to find lodging for them, was utterly
bewildered when the servant returned and
said that Antipholus* wife waited dinner
for him. What had happened was that the
Dromio who came now to Antipholus was
Dromio of Ephesus, servant and
attendant to Antipholus of Ephesus. Antipholus
of Syracuse had given his Dromio money
to pay for lodging, and when he heard a
tale of a wife about whom he knew
nothing he thought his servant tricked
him. He asked the servant to return his
money. But Dromio of Ephesus had been
given no money and professed no
knowledge of the sum. He was beaten soundly
for dishonesty. Antipholus of Syracuse
later heard that his money had been
delivered to the inn; he could not
understand his servant's joke.
A short time later the wife and sister-
in-law of Antipholus of Ephesus met
Antipholus of Syracuse and, after
berating him for refusing to come home to
dinner, accused him of unfaithfulness
with another woman. Not understanding
a thing of which Adriana spoke,
Antipholus of Syracuse went to her home to
dinner, Dromio being assigned by her to
guard the gate and allow no one to enter.
Thus it was that Antipholus of Ephesus
arrived at his home with his Dromio and
was refused admittance. So incensed was
he that he left his house and went to an
inn. There he dined with a courtesan and
gave her gifts intended for his wife.
In the meantime Antipholus of
Syracuse, even though almost believing that
he must be the husband of Adriana, fell
in love with her sister Luciana. But when
he told her of his love, she called him an
unfaithful husband and begged him to
remain true to his wife. Dromio of
Syracuse was pursued by a kitchen maid
whom he abhorred; the poor girl mistook
him for Dromio of Ephesus, who loved
her.
Even the townspeople and merchants
were bewildered. A goldsmith delivered
to Antipholus of Syracuse a chain meant
for Antipholus of Ephesus and then tried
to collect from the latter, who in turn
stated that he had received no chain and
accused the merchant of trying to rob
him.
Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse
decided to get out of the seemingly mad
town as soon as possible, and the servant
was sent to book passage on the first ship
leaving the city. But Dromio of Syracuse
brought back the news of the sailing to
Antipholus of Ephesus, who by that time
had been arrested for refusing to pay the
merchant for the chain he had not
received. Antipholus of Ephesus, believing
the servant to be his own, sent Dromio of
Syracuse to his house to get money for his
bail. But before that Dromio returned
with the money, Dromio of Ephesus came
to Antipholus of Ephesus, naturally
without the desired money. Meanwhile
Dromio of Syracuse took the money to
Antipholus of Syracuse, who had not sent
for money and could not understand
what his servant was talking about. To
make matters worse, the courtesan with
whom Antipholus of Ephesus had dined
had given him a ring. Now she
approached the other Antipholus and
demanded the ring. Knowing nothing about
the ring, he angrily dismissed the wench,
who decided to go to his house and tell
his wife of his betrayal.
On his way to jail for the debt he did
not owe, Antipholus of Ephesus met his
wife. Wild with rage, he accused her of
locking him out of his own house and of
refusing him his own money for bail.
She was so frightened that she asked the
police first to make sure that he was
securely bound and then to imprison him
in their home so that she could care for
him.
At the same time Antipholus and
Dromio of Syracuse were making their
way toward the ship that would carry
them away from this mad city. Antipholus
was wearing the gold chain. The
merchant, meeting them, demanded that
633

Antipholus be arrested. To escape,
Antipholus of Syracuse and his Dromio fled
into an abbey. To the same abbey came
Aegeon, the duke, and the executioners,
for Aegeon had not raised the money for
his ransom. Adriana and Luciana also
appeared, demanding the release to them
of Adriana's husband and his servant.
Adriana, seeing the two men take refuge
in the convent, thought they were
Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus. At that
instant a servant ran in to tell Adriana
that her husband and Dromio had escaped
from the house and were even now on
the way to the abbey. Adriana did not
believe the servant, for she herself had
seen her husband and Dromio enter the
abbey. Then Antipholus and Dromio of
Ephesus appeared before the abbey.
Aegeon thought he recognized the son and
servant he had been seeking, but they
denied any knowledge of him. The
confusion grew worse until the abbess
brought from the convent Antipholus and
Dromio of Syracuse, who instantly
recognized Aegeon. Then all the mysteries
were solved. Adriana was reunited with
her husband, Antipholus of Ephesus, and
his Dromio had the kitchen maid once
more. Antipholus of Syracuse was free to
make love to Luciana. His Dromio was
merely freed. Still more surprising, the
abbess turned out to be Aegeon's wife,
the mother of the Antipholi. So the happy
family was together again. Lastly,
Antipholus of Ephesus paid his father's
ransom and brought to an end all the errors
of that unhappy day.
634

COMMENTARIES
Type of work: History
Author: Gaius Julius Caesar (102 or 10044 B.C.)
Time: First century B.C.
Locale: Western Europe
First transcribed: c. 51 B.C.
Principal personages:
Julius Caesar, Roman governor and general in Gaul
Vercingetorix, rebel leader of the Gauls
Orgetorix, a chieftain of the Helvetii
DivmAcus, a Gaul loyal to the Romans
Ariovistus, a chieftain of the Germanic tribes
Two thousand years ago the Roman
Empire expanded north and westward
into the area now known as France and
Germany, and in 59 B.C. Julius Caesar,
already famous as a general and
administrator, was appointed to govern the
Roman territories inhabited by the Gauls.
When he went to Gaul he faced a
situation requiring strong, active government,
and as he proceeded he kept records of
the events of his governorship, a record
eventually to be known as Caesar's
Commentaries. The Commentaries are an
important record for posterity, despite the
fact that many generations of English-
speaking schoolchildren learning Latin
have found them repugnant as a
classroom exercise. Scholars and general
readers have wished that Caesar had left a
more complete record than he did. To
expect a detailed history in the
Commentaries is, however, to misunderstand the
writer's purpose. His intention was not to
write a definitive history of the period of
the Gallic Wars, but rather to put down
in writing what he considered, as the
Roman general and administrator, most
important.
No one can understand the
Commentaries without having some concept of the
flux of migration and its consequent
pressures in Europe during the first century
before Christ. The Gallic peoples were
under pressure from the Germanic
peoples across the Rhine River, tribes that
coveted the rich lands of the Gauls and
were, in their turn, under pressure from
migrations still farther to the east. Rome
faced a double threat from the Germanic
tribes. First, they were pressing
constantly southward; eventually they would
invade and dismember the Roman
Empire. The Germanic tribes also threatened
Rome indirectly by the unrest they
created in Gaul. Being a man of action and
a clear analyst of the situation
confronting Rome, Caesar took war home to the
Germans.
In the Commentaries he gives a
chronological account of his activities in Gaul
from the time of his succession to the
governorship of Gallia Narbonensis in 59
B.C. to the end of the Gallic revolt led
by Vercingetorix late in the same decade.
During those years Caesar and his Roman
legions we-" set first against one group of
tribes and then another. Most of the
sections of the book carry such headings
as "Campaign against Ariovistus,"
"Expedition against the Unelli," "First
expedition into Germany," and "Siege and
Sack of Avaricum." Only two sections,
the first section of Book I and the second
section of Book VI, are not about actual
battle operations or preparations. The
former is a description of Gaul and its
inhabitants; the latter, an account of
customs of the Gauls and Germans.
In his comments about the Gauls,
Caesar stirs the imagination and stimulates
curiosity by giving only enough
information to make the reader wish more had
been written; for example, an account of
the druids' place in Gallic culture and the
religious rites at which the druids
officiated would be welcome. In some other
cases, however, Caesar taxes the
imagination, as in reporting certain kinds of ani-
635

mals as existing in the Hyrcanian Forest.
One such animal is an elk that is
captured, says Caesar, by partly cutting trees
the elk leans against to rest; the animal
has no joints in the legs and once down
cannot rise. Caesar also reports a fabulous
ox with but one horn growing from the
middle of the forehead. Such reports,
when compared with other natural
histories of the period, do not detract from
the value of the Commentaries, for in
Caesar's time such reports were generally
taken seriously, however absurd they may
seem today.
Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars
reminds us that war has been a continual
factor in human affairs. As one example
of the fury and effectiveness of war in
ancient times, Caesar comments at the
end of his account of the battle with the
Nervii: "This battle being ended, and
the name and nation of the Nervii
almost reduced to annihilation, their old
men, together with the boys and women
whom we have stated had been collected
together in the inlets and the marshes,
when this battle had been reported to
them, convinced that nothing was an
obstacle to the conquerors, and nothing safe
to the conquered, sent ambassadors to
Caesar with the consent of all who
survived, and surrendered themselves to him;
and in recounting the calamity of their
state, they said that their senators were
reduced from six hundred to three; that
of sixty thousand men who could bear
arms, scarcely five hundred remained."
Another example of the character of these
ancient wars is the siege of Avaricum, at
which, according to Caesar, scarcely eight
hundred people of all ages and both sexes
escaped the city when it was taken, out
of a population of forty thousand; the
rest were killed.
Caesar the Roman administrator is
apparent throughout the Commentaries. He
writes in an impersonal fashion,
however, much as though he were preparing
a favorable report to the Roman Senate.
Only rarely does an individual come
through to the reader as a real
personality. Even Caesar himself, whose name
figures more largely than any other,
remains an official and a general, rather
than a clearly visualized person. The
Gallic and Germanic chieftains who
opposed him are little more than names,
and the same is true of the lieutenants
who served under him. The only
outstanding exception to this general
statement is the passage concerning Sextius
Baculus who, sick though he was, arose
from his bed and saved the day for the
Romans, rallying their forces when they
were attacked in a camp at Aduatuca and
fighting bravely until he had to be
carried back to rest.
Of particular interest to
English-speaking readers are those portions of the
Commentaries which deal with Britain and
Caesar's invasions of Britain. Most of us
know all too little about the early history
of that part of our heritage, and Caesar's
account is the earliest in any Roman
documents. Caesar tells of his first
expedition, an abortive one, made in 55 B.C.,
and his second and more successful
attempt the following year, an invasion
which paved the way for the Roman
occupation that was to last until the fifth
century after Christ. For his second
invasion he built and assembled a fleet of
more than eight hundred vessels, a
logistical success noteworthy in any era of
history. This fleet carried two thousand
cavalrymen with their mounts, and five
Roman legions, each consisting at that
time of about five thousand men.
Caesar was a remarkable man, one of
the greatest in human history, in the
sense that greatness may be defined as
leaving an indelible mark on the pages of
history. Few such men have lived; fewer
still have left written records for
posterity; and none has ever left a document
to compare with Caesar's Commentaries.
The book occupies a unique place in the
written records of the Western world. In
addition to its value as history, it also
deserves to be read as an example of the
concise report presented with a style and
flavor all its own.
636

THE COMPLEAT ANGLER
Type of work: A treatise on sport, nature, and human conduct
Author: Izaak Walton (1593-1683); added to by Charles Cotton (1630-1687)
Time: Seventeenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1653; fifth edition with the Cotton additions, 1676
Principal characters:
Piscator, a fisherman
Venator, a hunter
Auceps, a falconer
Piscator Junior
Viator, a traveler
One of the most modest and
unassuming books ever written, The Compleat
Angler has preserved its quality of
evergreen freshness through more than three
hundred editions since its first appearance
in 1653. Its importance as a practical
handbook on the angler's art has long
since passed, although its appeal remains
perennial to anyone who has ever sat for
hours on the bank of a creek, with a cane
pole and a can of worms, while waiting
patiently for a horny-headed chub to take
the hook, or has crept up behind some
bushes at dawn to lay a fly in water
swirling around a shaded rock where the
riffle is guarded by hungry trout. What
survives is the pastoral beauty of
woodland, meadow, and stream, charmingly
yet vividly drawn; the mood of pure
pleasure that a sport like fishing holds for
the contemplative man; and above all the
author's ability to convey a message of
fellowship and peace to all "honest, civil,
quiet men" in an age of turmoil and
revolution.
Izaak Walton, who wrote The Corn-
pleat Angler in a decade of religious and
political ferment, himself remained
serene and detached from the disturbances
of his age. Aptly subtitled "The
Contemplative Man's Recreation," his book
is addressed to the "honest angler." "We
anglers," he declares, "all love one
another." In his Epistle to the Reader
prefacing the third edition, he wrote:
And though this discourse may be
liable to some exceptions, yet I cannot
doubt but that most readers may
receive so much pleasure or profit by it as
may make it worthy the time or their
perusal, if they be not very busy
men. . . . And I am the willinger to
justify the pleasant part of it because
though it is known I can be serious at
seasonable times, yet the whole
Discourse is, or rather was, a picture of my
own disposition, especially in such days
and times as I have laid aside business
and gone a-fishing with honest Nat.
and R. Roe; but they are gone, and
with them most of my pleasant hours,
even as a shadow that passeth away
and returns not.
Even a believer in the unstrenuous life—
the indoors man or woman—will be
charmed by Izaak Walton, whose book is
a highly personal treatise on the art of
angling, a work of fascinating though
not always reliable natural history, an
anthology of reflective passages on the
condition of man, and an example of the
almost lost art of graceful writing.
The author opens his discourse on a
fine, fresh morning in May when
Piscator, by stretching his legs up Tottenham
Hill, overtakes Venator and Auceps. The
latter is headed toward "a friend's house
who mews a hawk for me, which I now
long to see," and Venator hopes "to
bestow another day or two in hunting the
Otter." As the three walk along, each
extols his favorite sport. First Auceps
describes the beauty of his falcons as they
soar high into his element, the Air.
Venator commends his element, the
Earth, and praises the pleasure of men
637

who hunt "the stately Stag, the generous
Buck, the wild Boar, the cunning Otter,
the crafty Fox, and the fearful Hare."
Both Auceps and Venator look somewhat
down their noses at angling, believing it
to be an easy art, but Piscator is so
persuasive in defense of his element, Water,
and so convincing on the importance of
fish and the antiquity of his sport that,
after Auceps drops off to see his hawk,
Venator decides he would like to learn
more from his new friend, the fisherman.
Piscator agrees that they shall first spend
one day in hunting the otter, a notorious
killer of fish, and then Venator shall
begin his education in the art of angling
At the stream Piscator demonstrates his
skill by catching a chub (for it is the
middle of the day and trout will not bite
before evening) and when Venator
objects to wasting time on such a rough,
tasteless fish, Piscator proves the chub
can be made delicious by proper dressing.
The next day's instruction is on the
catching of trout. Says Piscator, "The Trout
is usually caught with a worm, or a
minnow, which some call a Penk, or with a
fly, viz. either a natural or an artificial
fly: concerning which three I will give
you some observations and directions."
The names of the best worms for trout
are strange to twentieth-century ears:
there is the Lob-worm, the Brandling,
the Gilt-tail, the Twachel. But with
charming detail Piscator tells where to
find them and how to put them on the
hook. He commends minnows highly, for
"a large Trout will come as fiercely at a
Minnow, as the highest metded hawk
doth seize on a partridge, or a greyhound
on a hare."
Venator is unsuccessful in his first try
at trout, but Piscator catches three brace.
When he loses a big one his comment is
a model of restraint for fishermen: "Nay,
the Trout is not lost; for pray take notice,
no man can lose what he never had."
When Venator insists that he should
learn to tie artificial flies, Piscator names
twelve kinds "to angle with upon the top
of the water," among them the Moorish-
fly and the Dark-Drake-fly. Then he gives
instructions for the tying of flies and how
to fish with them. All of this chapter on
the trout is charmingly interspersed with
references to and quotations from Bacon,
the classics, and the Bible.
So it is with the other types of angling
and other fish. For Piscator is thorough
and his lessons take Venator (by now,
of course, an ardent angler) from the
grayling to the salmon to the tench to the
eel to the gudgeon to the miller's thumb.
Walton rounds off Part I of The Com-
pleat Angler with discussions of rivers
and fish ponds ("and how to order them")
and with directions for making a line.
Written by Walton's young friend
Charles Cotton, whose additions are now
an integral part of the text, Part II
returns (this time with Piscator Junior
and Viator) to what is obviously the great
love of both authors, fishing for trout.
Here we have more directions on
technique (including one called "Daping,
Dabbing, or Dibbling") and more on
what flies are best for what months;
August, for instance, demands a Harry-Long-
Legs, "the body made of bear's dun and
blue wool mixed, and a brown hackle-
feather over all." But Cotton, like Izaak
Walton, is also a lover of fish well cooked,
and so he includes a recipe for trout that
is, to say the least, elaborate; among the
ingredients (aside from the trout) are
beer, white wine, salt, lemon rind,
horseradish root, "a handsome little fagot of
rosemary, thyme, and winter-savory,"
butter, and ginger. Having exhausted the
possibilities of angling at the top, the
middle, and the bottom for trout and
grayling, Piscator Junior concludes his
instructions to Viator by apologizing for
having "tired you sufficiently."
But no one can grow tired (either
sufficiently or insufficiently) of The Com-
pleat Angler. True, a great deal of the
information it contains is of litde value to
the present-day fisherman who may never
see the Trent or the Severn, never feel
on the end of his line a barbel or a bleak.
He will, however, revel in Izaak Walton's
638

(and Cotton's) tender consideration for
the smallest detail of angling, and
through the whole book he will feel the
presence of the author, a man of charm,
scholarship, and propriety. He will even
find a special kind of morality, for Sir
Izaak at one point apparently fears he
may be making the sport too attractive:
he suggests that a time be set when each
man should "leave fishing, and fall to
his business." Most of all, Walton is a
writer. His style is polished and gentle, as
befits a description of angling, and his
sentences move at a leisurely pace, the
pace of a man carefully working up a
trout stream. As long as there are fish in
rivers and readers who enjoy good
writing, The Compleat Angler will be read
and loved.
639

COMRADES
Type of work: Drama
Author: August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Type of plot: Comic realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1888
Principal characters:
Axel, an artist
Bertha, his wife, also an artist
Abel, her woman friend, an ardent feminist
Willmer, a dandified author
Dr. Ostermark, a doctor, Axel's friend
Mrs. Hall, his divorced wife
Carl Starck, a happily married army officer
Critique:
The problem of marriage—the
responsibilities of each of the parties, the proper
relationship between them, the respective
rights, duties, and privileges of each-
concerned the thrice-divorced Strindberg,
both as a person and as an artist,
throughout his adult life. Along with this
problem, the complications introduced into it
by the feminist movement strongly
concerned him also. While his Scandinavian
contemporaries, Henrik Ibsen and Bj0rn-
stjerne Bj0rnson, were defending the
rights of women in their plays,
Strindberg was pleading the cause of masculine
supremacy. His relatively early play
Comrades is an example of his attempt to
deal with this problem through comic
means. Here he is illustrating the
impossibility of a marriage based on equal rights
and, along with it, the shallowness,
meanness, and actual viciousness of those
females who aspire to masculine
prerogatives. However, though they obviously
have Strindberg's sympathy, the
triumphant males here seem little better than
the conniving females whom they defeat.
The play, inferior to the best of
Strindberg, is an excellent example of his early
work and interests.
The Story:
When Dr. Ostermark visited his painter
friend Axel, he found that Axel was
married to a young feminist named Bertha,
herself an aspiring artist. Axel explained
the conditions of his marriage: the two
were to live, not as husband and wife, but
as comrades, each with equal rights, each
free to achieve artistic expression in his
own way. Dr. Ostermark, a widower who,
earlier in life, had been divorced, was
dubious about the whole thing.
While they were talking, a male model
arrived. Axel explained that the model
was hired for Bertha and that he, forced
to paint commercially to pay for Bertha's
art lessons, could not afford one. Carl
Starck, a Swedish army officer, and his
wife joined the company. They were
shocked that the model posed in the nude
and that Bertha was left alone with him.
After the company had gone, Bertha
returned. There was a slight altercation
over finances, but Bertha kept the
argument subdued because she had a favor
to ask of Axel. Both had submitted
paintings to an important show. It seemed
certain that Axel's would be accepted by
the jury, but there was much doubt about
Bertha's. She begged Axel to use his
influence—especially on the wife of the
jury's chairman—to have her painting
accepted. At first Axel claimed that to do
so would be unsporting, but Bertha and
COMRADES by August Strindberg. Translated by Edith and Warner Oland. By permission of the
publishers, Bruce Humphries, Inc. Copyright, 1912, by L. E. Bassett. Renewed. All rights reserved.
640

her two friends, the masculine female,
Abel, and the effeminate male, Willmer,
finally convinced him to make the
attempt. They even talked him into
wearing the ribbon to a Russian decoration
which he had vowed never to wear.
Axel carried out his wife's mission,
returned, and then left again as the result
of an argument. During his absence Abel
arrived with the news that Axel's own
painting had been rejected by the jury.
A subsequent letter confirmed her
statement. Bertha was triumphant. She and
Abel gloated over the downfall of the
male.
After Abel had gone, Bertha was
visited by a Mrs. Hall, who explained that
she was the divorced wife or Dr. Oster-
mark. The doctor, she claimed, had left
her penniless with two young daughters
twenty years before. Hearing that Dr.
Ostermark was in Paris and that Bertha
was a leading feminist, she had come
to Bertha for help in devising a plan
of vengeance. Bertha promised that she
would present Mrs. Hall and her two
daughters to the unsuspecting doctor at
a masquerade party which she and Axel
were to give the following evening.
Bertha planned that the party was also
to further Axel's humiliation: she had
ordered a dancing girl's costume for him
to wear. When Axel returned, the
quarrel over finances was resumed. Bertha
taunted Axel with the charge that he was
quibbling because her painting had been
accepted and his had not. This charge
angered him. When he saw his costume
for the masquerade, he left again,
completely enraged.
Abel and Bertha devised still another
humiliation for Axel: they planned to
arrange for the rejected painting to be
brought home during the party. While
they were contemplating their success,
Willmer arrived with liquor and tobacco
which they had ordered as supplies for
a pseudo-masculine orgy. Willmer agreed
to see that the painting was brought in
at the right time. When he tried to make
love to Bertha, she slapped and insulted
him. As he left, Abel warned Bertha
that it was dangerous to turn a friend
into an enemy.
Bertha waited hours that night for
Axel to come home. When he finally did
come in, she attempted to placate him
with genuinely feminine wiles, but he
informed her that it was too late for her
to become feminine; he had regarded
her as a comrade for too long. Besides,
he had just been with a woman who was
truly a woman. His intentions were to
divorce her. Also, having learned from
Willmer that she had mismanaged his
finances, he intended to demand
financial reparations as well. Bertha was
reduced to purely female pleading, but
Axel was adamant. His only concession
was to hold off the proceeding until after
the party.
At the party, everything went wrong
for Bertha. Axel refused to wear the
effeminate costume. Starck recognized
Mrs. Hall's daughters as a pair of
prostitutes who had once accosted him and a
fellow officer. Then Dr. Ostermark,
confronted by Mrs. Hall, who by that time
was too drunk to stand, revealed that he
had divorced the woman twenty years
before because she was a confirmed
dipsomaniac and that the two daughters were
not his at all but the results of a
subsequent marriage or liaison.
Bertha's final blow was the return of
the rejected painting, not Axel's, but
Bertha's. Axel confessed that, like a good
comrade, he had switched numbers on
the paintings so that Bertha's might have
the advantage of his name. The advantage
had not been enough, it proved, to
overcome the poor workmanship. When
Willmer admitted arranging for its return
during the party, Axel threw him out
bodily.
Bertha now resorted to taunts inspired
by jealousy. Axel was getting rid of her,
she claimed, because he was in love with
Abel. Axel assured her that the notion
was preposterous—no more feminists for
him. He had, he admitted, a womanly
woman to take her place.
641

Defeated, Bertha begged to be allowed to see comrades, in the cafe. At home he
to see him again. He would see her, he would see his wife,
agreed, but in the place where one ought
642

COMUS
Type of work: Masque
Author: John Milton (1608-1674)
Type of plot: Moral allegory
Time of plot: The age of myth
Locale: Kingdom of Neptune
First presented: 1634
Principal characters:
Attendant Spirit, later disguised as Thyrsis
Comus
The Lady
The Elder Brother
The Second Brother
Sabrina, the River Nymph
Critique:
The masque, popular in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century England, was
originally composed of dancing, pageantry,
and processions. Masques were performed
in the homes of noblemen and were
usually presented by the nobility themselves.
The music and scenery were composed
and designed by well-known musicians
and architects. Ben Jonson introduced the
anti-masque to these performances: the
presence of non-noble and usually
uncouth characters, who were in sharp
contrast to the chief characters. Thus plot
and character increased in importance,
whereas in earlier times music and
scenery had taken precedence over these.
Comus was first presented to the Earl of
Bridgewater at Ludlow Castle in honor of
his appointment as Lord President of
Wales and was performed by his three
children. The Earl and Countess
appeared in the final scene. In this work
the poetry is more sensuous in its imagery
than in Milton's earlier Arcades, and the
structure is more complex and
architectonic; the masque thus marks an
important advance in his poetic development.
Although Comus is not an example of the
conventional masque (it would more
properly be called a pastoral drama), it is
important because, by its verse structure
and its wealth of classical imagery used to
further Puritan philosophy, it
foreshadows Milton's later epic poetry.
The Story:
The Attendant Spirit came into a wild
wood, far from his usual abode outside
Jove's court, far above the dirt and
hubbub of the world. He was on earth only
to show the rare mortals before him some
of the ways to godly virtue. He spoke of
the plight of the children of Neptune,
ruler of many island kingdoms, who were
traveling to visit their father. Their path
lay through a dark and treacherous wood
where their lives would have been in
danger if Jove had not sent the Spirit to
protect them. The chief danger was
Comus, son of Bacchus and Circe. He
lived in the wood and possessed a magic
wine which, when drunk by thirsty
travelers, gave them the heads and
inclinations of wild animals. The Spirit
disguised himself as a shepherd to guide the
children of Neptune. He left when he
heard Comus and his band of bewitched
travelers approaching.
Comus, invoking joy and feasting,
drinking and dancing, declared that the
night was made for love and should be
so used before the sun revealed the revels
of his band and turned them to
sinfulness. His followers danced until he
stopped them, sensing the approach of
a girl whom he immediately wished to
enchant.
The Lady entered, drawn to the scene
by the noise of the revelers. Unwilling as
she was to meet such people, she
nevertheless felt that they were the only hope
she had of finding her way out of the
643

wood. Because she had been tired by her.
walking, her brothers had left her to
find wild fruit for refreshment, but night
had fallen before they could return and
they were unable to find her again.
Meanwhile, a dark cloud had covered the stars.
The Lady called and sang to the nymph,
Echo, to guide her to her brothers.
Comus, delighted with the song she
sang, decided that the Lady should be
his queen, and in the disguise of a
village boy he greeted her as a goddess. The
Lady reproved him and said that she
wanted help to find her companions.
After questioning her about them, he said
that he had seen two such young men
gathering fruit and that it would be a
delight to help her find them. Comus
added that he knew the woods perfectly
and that he would therefore lead the
Lady to her brothers. She replied that she
would trust him. They left the clearing
together.
The two brothers arrived and the elder
called to heaven for the moon and stars,
so that they might see their way. Failing
this, he wished to see the lights of
someone's cottage. The Second Brother,
adding that even the sound of penned-up
flocks would help them, expressed great
fear for his sister's fate. The Elder Brother
insisted that the Lady's perfect virtue
would protect her. The Second Brother
said that beauty such as hers needed to
be guarded and that she could easily be
in danger in such a place. The Elder
Brother repeated that he had great hope
for her safety as she was armed by
chastity. Nothing could violate this; the very
angels in heaven would protect her.
Hearing someone approaching, the
brothers called out to him. When the
Attendant Spirit greeted them, they
thought they recognized him as their
father's shepherd, Thyrsis. He anxiously
asked where their sister was and, hearing
that she was lost, told them that Comus
dwelt in the wood. He added that he had
overheard Comus offer to escort a lady
to her companions. Fearing that she was
their sister, he had himself left to find
the brothers. That news plunged the
Second Brother into complete despair. The
Elder Brother, maintaining that virtue
could be attacked but not injured,
declared that they must find Comus and
fight him for their sister; but the
Attendant Spirit warned them that swords would
not help them against Comus. He said,
however, that he had been given a magic
herb that was effective against all
enchantments. He instructed the brothers to
break the glass in Comus' hand when
they found him and to seize his wand.
In Comus' palace, meanwhile, the Lady
refused his wine and attempted to leave,
but she was restrained by a threat to
transfix her in her chair. When she
declared that Comus could not control her
mind, he propounded his hedonistic
philosophy, saying that she should enjoy her
youth and beauty, not cruelly deny them.
She replied that she would never accept
anything from him, since only the good
man can give good things. Comus argued
that in rejecting him she was denying
life, and the plentiful gifts of nature by
her abstinence; beauty should be enjoyed,
not left to wither like a dying rose. The
Lady decided that she must refute these
arguments with her own: nature's gifts
are for the temperate to use well, and
excess of luxury only breeds ingratitude
in men. She feared that Comus could
never understand this doctrine; and she
felt that if she attempted to explain, her
conviction would be so strong that his
palace would tumble around him. Comus
was impressed by her argument, which
seemed to him inspired by Jove himself,
yet he determined to try again to persuade
her. As he began to speak, the brothers
rushed in, broke his glass on the ground,
and overwhelmed his followers.
Comus himself escaped because they
had not captured his wand. The
Attendant Spirit despaired of freeing the Lady
until he remembered that he could
summon Sabrina. This river nymph would
help them, since she loved the virtue that
644

the Lady personified. By song he
summoned her in the name of Neptune and
Triton to save the girl. As Sabrina rose
from the river, she sang of the willows
and flowers that she had left. She freed
the Lady by sprinkling on her the pure
and precious water from her fountain.
The Attendant Spirit gave Sabrina his
blessing and prayed that the river should
always flow in good measure and that its
banks would be fertile.
The Attendant Spirit then told the
Lady that he would lead them to
Neptune's house, where many friends were
gathered to congratulate him. In Ludlow
Town, at the President's castle, country
dancers led the Lady and her two brothers
before the Earl and the Countess, who
impersonated Neptune and his Queen.
There the Attendant Spirit praised the
young people's beauty, patience, and
honesty, and their triumph over folly; then
he announced his return to his natural
home in the Gardens of Hesperus, for
his task was done. If any mortal would
go with him, however, his way was the
path of virtue.
645

CONFESSIONS
Tjye of work: Spiritual autobiography
Author: Saint Augustine (AureSus Augustinus, 354-430)
Time: 354-399
Locale: Tagaste, Carthage, Rome, Milan
First transcribed: 397-401
Principal characters:
Saint Augustine
Monica, his mother
Adeodatus, his natural son
Faustus, Bishop of the Manichaean sect
Ambrose, Bishop of Milan
Alypius, a friend from Tagaste
"My Confessions, in thirteen books,"
wrote Saint Augustine, looking back from
the age of sixty-three at his various
writings, "praise the righteous and good God
as they speak either of my evil or good,
and they are meant to excite men's minds
and affections toward him. . . . The first
through the tenth books were written
about myself, the other three about the
Holy Scripture."
In the year before his death, writing to
Darius, he declared: "Take the books of
my Confessions and use them as a good
man should. Here see me as I am and do
not praise me for more than I am."
The Confessions was a new form in
literature. Others, like Marcus Aurelius,
had set down meditations, but this was
more. Others had written biographies and
autobiographies, but again Saint
Augustine did not follow their model. True, he
does tell about his life, but his method is
a departure from a narrative of dates and
events. He was more interested in his
thievery of pears than in more important
actions, and he makes the fruit as
meaningful in his life as the Old Testament
symbolism of the apples in the Garden of
Eden. Other episodes are selected because
of their revelation of the grace and
provision of God. As he wrote: "I pass over
many things, hastening on to those which
more strongly compel me to confess to
thee." In fact, his life story might be
looked on as a parallel to the parable of
the Prodigal Son, with his heart "resdess
till it finds its rest in God"; and he brings
his account to an end, after his struggles
to free himself from pride and sensuality,
with his return to his home at Tagaste.
Half his life still lay ahead of him.
Although his friends, his teachers, and
his mother appear in the Confessions,
they lack any physical details by which
one may visualize them. Two lines cover
the death of his father. Neither name noi
description is given to his mistress and
the mother of his child, nor of the friend
whose death drove him from his native
city. Detail was of less importance to
Saint Augustine than theological
meditation and interpretation.
Taking his text from the psalmist who
would "confess my transgressions unto
the Lord," this work is one long prayer
beginning, "Great art thou, O Lord, and
greatly to be praised," and ending with
the hope that "thus shall thy door be
opened."
From the very first, the consolation of
God's mercy sustained Saint Augustine.
His memories of infancy made him
wonder what preceded that period, as later he
theorized about what had been before the
creation. His pictures of himself crying
and flinging his arms about because he
could not make his wants known were
symbols to him of the Christian life, even
as the acquisition of facts about this early
period from his mother impressed on him
the need for help from others to gain self-
knowledge.
Though his mother Monica was a
devout Christian and her son had been
646

brought up in that faith, young Aurelius
Augustinus was more interested in Aeneas
than in God. Once, at the point of death
from a stomach ailment, he begged to be
baptized, but his mother refused to have
him frightened into becoming a
Christian. So he went on, reading Latin and
disliking Greek, and taking special
delight in the theater. A frank but modest
description of his many abilities, the gift
of his God to one not yet dedicated to
God, ends the first book of this revealing
work.
Book II concentrates on the sixteenth
year of lazy, lustful, and mischievous
Aurelius. He and his companions robbed
a pear tree, not because they wanted the
fruit, since they threw it to the swine,
but because it was forbidden. His
confession that he loved doing wrong made
him ponder his reasons for wandering
from the path of good and becoming a
"wasteland."
When he traveled to Carthage to study,
at the age of nineteen, his chief delights
were his mistress and the theater. In the
course of his prescribed studies he read an
essay by Cicero, Hortensius, now lost,
urging the study of philosophy.
Remembering his mother's hopes that he would
become a Christian, he tried to read the
Scriptures; but he found them inferior in
style to Cicero. However he did become
involved with a pseudo-Christian sect,
founded by the Persian religious teacher
Mani (c.216-277), because he approved
of their logical approach to the problems
of evil and good, represented by the dual-
istic concept of the universe. During the
nine years that he was a Manichaean, his
mother, encouraged by a dream that he
would eventually see nis error, kept
loyally by him.
Back in Tagaste, he wrote plays, taught
rhetoric, and lived with a mistress. He
had no patience with a bishop, sent by
his mother, to instruct him in
Christianity. He was equally scornful of a
magician who offered to cast spells to
insure his success in a drama competition.
He thought he was sufficient to himself,
and by his own efforts he won a rhetoric
contest.
His temporary interest in astrology
ended when he was unable to prove that
successful divinations were more than
chance. The death of a dear friend, who
during his last illness became a Christian
and denounced the life Aurelius was
leading, so profoundly affected him that he
returned to Carthage. There, still
following the Manichaean beliefs, he wrote
several essays, now lost. He was soon to be
disillusioned. Faustus, reputed the most
learned of Manichaean bishops, came to
Carthage, and Aurelius Augustinus went
to him to clear his religious doubts. But
he found Faustus more eloquent than
logical. Hoping to improve himself, this
teacher of rhetoric then went to Rome,
where students were reported to be less
rowdy than those in his classes in
Carthage. In Rome, malaria, the teaching of
the skeptics who upset his confidence in
the certainty of knowledge, and above all,
the lack of classroom discipline induced
him to accept the invitation of officials to
go to Milan and resume his teaching
career in that city.
In Milan he enjoyed the
companionship of two friends from Tagaste, Alypius
and Nebridius. His mother, coming to
live with him, persuaded Bishop Ambrose
to try to convert her son. About the same
time efforts to get him married and to
regularize his life caused a break with his
mistress, who on her departure left him
with his young son Adeodatus.
The group around the young
rhetorician often discussed philosophy, and in
Neo-platonism he found an answer to his
greatest perplexity: If there is a God,
what is die nature of His material
existence? Now he was ready to study
Christianity, especially the writings of Saint
Paul. In Book VII, which describes this
period of his life, appears one of Saint
Augustine's two ecstatic visions, a
momentary glimpse of the One.
Book VIII recounts his conversion.
Anxious to imitate those who had gained
what he himself sought, he listened to an
647

account of the conversion of the orator
Marius Victorinus. While returning home,
still upset and uncertain, he heard a child
chanting: "Pick it up and read it."
Taking these words as God's command, he
opened the Bible at random and found
himself reading Romans XIII, 13: "Put
on the Lord Jesus Christ." Convinced, he
called Alypius, and they found Monica
and reported to her their newly acquired
convictions.
Giving up his teaching, Saint
Augustine prepared for baptism, along with his
friend and Adeodatus. He was baptized
by Bishop Ambrose during Easter Week,
A.D. 387. Then the party set out to
return to Tagaste. During their journey,
and following another moment of
Christian ecstasy, Monica died at Ostia on the
Tiber. Her son's Confessions contains
touching chapters of affection and
admiration for her; sure of his faith at the
time of her death, however, he fell into
no period of abject mourning such as that
which had followed the death of his
friend at an earlier time.
With Book X, Saint Augustine turned
from episodes of his life to self-analysis,
detailing the three steps of the souPs
approach to God, passing from an
appreciation of the beauties of the outside world
to an introspective study of itself, and
ending with an inexplicable anticipation
of the blessedness of the knowledge of
God, the "truth-given Joy," that crowns
the soul's pilgrimage.
Book XI represents one of Saint
Augustine's great contributions to Christian
thought, the analysis of time. Pondering
the mysteries of creation in an "eternal
world," he saw it not as measured by
"the motion of sun, moon, and stars," but
as determined by the soul, the past being
its remembrance; the present, its
attention; and the future, its anticipation. He
wrote: "The past increases by the
diminution of the future, until by the
consumption of all the future, all is past."
The last two books present speculation
on the methods of creation and on the
truth of the Scriptures, with most of the
chapters devoted to interpretation of the
opening verses of Genesis. The Old
Testament account is open to many
interpretations, and the final book of the
Confessions deals with both the material and
allegorical possibilities of the story of the
Creation. At the end, Saint Augustine
acknowledges the "goodness" of creation,
and meditates on verses describing the
rest on the Seventh Day. He begs that
God will bestow the rest and blessedness
of that Sabbath in the life eternal that is
to come.
The Confessions, a work filled with
the spirit of a sincere, devout faith, lays
the groundwork for Saint Augustine's
more formal treatises, On the Trinity and
The City of God.
648

CONFESSIONS
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Time: 1712-1765
Locale: Switzerland, France, England
First published: 1784
Principal personages:
Jean Jacques Rousseau, French writer and philosopher
Isaac Rousseau, his father
Louise de Warens, a Catholic convert and divorcee
Claude Anet, a domestic, Madame de Warens' lover
Denis Diderot, celebrated French encyclopedist
Friedrich Melchior Grimm, a writer
Louise d'£pinay, a French woman of letters
Therese Levasseur, a servant girl, Rousseau's mistress
Comtesse d'Houdetot, sister~in-law of Madame d'fipinay
Rousseau's Confessions is the result of
the attempt of a famous but psychotic
romantic to speak fully and honestly of
his own life. It is famous as a literary
expression of a writer's remembrance of
things past, more revealing through its
signs of passion and prejudice than
through its recording of the facts of his
experience. The book serves as
autobiography only to the extent that it can be
checked against other, more objective,
reports; but whatever its bias, the
Confessions is Rousseau's work, and it
reflects the man as he was at the time of
its writing.
To some extent Rousseau undoubtedly
succeeded in his effort to write an
autobiography of such character that he could
present himself before "the sovereign
Judge with this book in my hand, and
loudly proclaim, Thus have I acted; these
were my thoughts; such was I. With
equal freedom and veracity have I related
what was laudable or wicked, I have
concealed no crimes, added no virtues.
. . ." Only a person attempting to
tell all would have revealed so frankly
the sensual satisfaction he received from
the spankings administered by Mile.
Lambercier, the sister of the pastor at
Bossey, who was his tutor. Only a writer
finding satisfaction either in truth or
self-abasement would have gone on to
tell that his passion for being
overpowered by women continued
throughout his adult life: "To fall at the feet of
an imperious mistress, obey her
mandates, or implore pardon, were for me
the most exquisite enjoyments; and the
more my blood was inflamed by the
efforts of a lively imagination, the more I
acquired the appearance of a whining
lover." Having made this confession,
Rousseau probably found it easier to tell
of his extended affair with Madame de
Warens at Annecy and of his experiences
with his mistress and common-law wife,
Therese Levasseur.
Rousseau records that he was born at
Geneva in 1712, the son of Isaac
Rousseau, a watchmaker, and Suzanne
Bernard. His mother died at his birth, "the
first of my misfortunes." According to
the son's account of his father's grief,
Isaac Rousseau had mixed feelings
toward his son, seeing in him an image of
Suzanne and, at the same time, the cause
of her death. Rousseau writes: ". . . nor
did he ever embrace me, but his sighs,
the convulsive pressure of his arms,
witnessed that a bitter regret mingled itself
with his caresses. . . . When he said to
me, 7ean Jacques, let us talk of your
mother/ my usual reply was, 'Yes, father,
but then you know we shall cry/ and
immediately the tears started from his
eyes."
Rousseau describes his first experiences
with reading. He turned to the romances
that his mother had loved, and he and
649

his father sometimes spent the entire
•night reading aloud alternately. His
response to these books was almost entirely
emotional, but he finally discovered other
books in his grandfather's library, works
which demanded something from the
intellect: Plutarch, Ovid, Moliere, and
others.
He describes with great affection how
his Aunt Suzanne, his father's sister,
moved him with her singing; and he
attributes his interest in music to her
influence.
After his stay at Bossey with Pastor
Lambercier, Rousseau was apprenticed to
an engraver, Abel Ducommun, in the
hope that he would succeed better in the
engraver's workshop than he had with
City Registrar Masseron, who had fired
him after a brief trial. Ducommun is
described as "a young man of a very violent
and boorish character," who was
something of a tyrant, punishing Rousseau if
he failed to return to the city before the
gates were closed. Rousseau was by this
time, according to his account, a liar and
a petty thief, and without reluctance he
stole his master's tools in order to
misplace them.
Returning from a Sunday walk with
some companions, Rousseau found the
city gates closing an hour before time.
He ran to reach the bridge, but he was
too late. Reluctant to be punished by the
engraver, he suddenly decided to give up
his apprenticeship.
Having left Geneva, Rousseau
wandered aimlessly in the environs of the
city, finally arriving at Confignon. There
he was welcomed by the village curate,
M. de Pontverre, who gave him a good
meal and sent him on to Madame Louise
de Warens at Annecy. Rousseau expected
to find "a devout, forbidding old woman";
instead, he discovered "a face beaming
with charms, fine blue eyes full of
sweetness, a complexion whose whiteness
dazzled the sight, the form of an
enchanting neck. . . ." He was sixteen, she was
twenty-eight. She became something of a
mother to him (he called her "Marxian")
and something of a goddess, but within
five years he was her lover, at her
instigation. Her motive was to protect him and
to initiate him into the mysteries of love.
She explained what she intended and
gave him eight days to think it over;
her proposal was intellectually cool and
morally motivated. Since Rousseau had
long imagined the delights of making
love to her, he spent the eight days
enjoying thoughts more lively than ever;
but when he finally found himself in her
arms, he was miserable: "Was I happy?
No: I felt I know not what invincible
sadness which empoisoned my happiness:
it seemed that I had committed an incest,
and two or three times, pressing her
eagerly in my arms, I deluged her bosom
with my tears."
Madame de Warens was at the same
time involved with Claude Anet, a young
peasant with a knowledge of herbs who
had become one of her domestics. Before
becoming intimate with Rousseau she had
confessed to him that Anet was her lover,
having been upset by Anet's attempt to
poison himself after a quarrel with her.
Despite her generosity to the two young
men, she was no wanton; her behavior
was more a sign of friendship than of
passion, and she was busy being an
intelligent and gracious woman of the
world.
Through her efforts Rousseau had
secured a position registering land for the
king in the office at Chambery. His
interest in music, however, led him to give
more and more time to arranging
concerts and giving music lessons; he gave
up his job in the survey office.
This was the turning point of his life,
the decision which threw him into the
society .of his times and made possible
his growing familiarity with the world of
music and letters. His alliance with
Madame de Warens continued, but the
alliance was no longer of an intimate sort,
for he had been supplanted by Winzen-
reid de Courtilles during their stay at
Les Charmettes. Winzenreid came on the
650

scene after the first idyllic summer, a
period in his life which Rousseau
describes as "the short happiness of my
life." He tells of rising with the sun,
walking through the woods, over the
hills, and along the valley; his delight in
nature is evident, and his theories
concerning natural man become
comprehensible. On his arrival Winzenreid took
over physical chores and was forever
walking about with a hatchet or a pickax;
for all practical purposes Rousseau's close
relationship with Madame de Warens
was finished, even if a kind of filial
affection on his part survived. He describes
other adventures in love, and although
some of them gave him extreme
pleasure, he never found another "Maman."
Rousseau, having invented a new
musical notation, went to Paris hoping to
convince others of its value. The system
was dismissed as unoriginal and too
difficult, but Rousseau had by that time
been introduced to Parisian society and
was known as a young philosopher as
well as a writer of poetry and operas. He
received an appointment as secretary to
the French ambassador at Venice, but he
and M. de Montaigu irritated each other
and he left his post about a year later.
Returning to Paris, Rousseau became
involved with the illustrious circle
containing the encyclopedist Diderot, Fried-
rich Melchior Grimm, and Mme. Louise
d'Epinay. He later became involved in a
bitter quarrel with all three, stemming
from a remark in Diderot's Le Fils na-
turel, but he was reconciled with Diderot
and continued the novel he was writing
at the time, La Nouvelle Heloise. His
account of the quarrel together with the
letters that marked its progress is one of
the liveliest parts of the Confessions.
As important an event as any in
Rousseau's life was his meeting with Therese
Levasseur, a needlewoman between
twenty-two and twenty-three years of age,
with a "lively yet charming look."
Rousseau reports that "At first, amusement
was my only object," but in making love
to her he found that he was happy and
that she was a suitable successor to
"Maman." Despite the difficulties put in
his way by her mother, and despite the
fact that his attempts to improve her
mind were useless, he was satisfied with,
her as his companion. She bore him five
children who were sent to the foundling
hospital, against Therese's will and to
Rousseau's subsequent regret.
Rousseau describes the moment on the
road to Vincennes when the question
proposed by the Academy of Dijon—
"Has the progress of sciences and arts
contributed to corrupt or purify morals?"
—so struck him that he "seemed to
behold another world." The discourse that
resulted from his inspired moment won
him the prize and brought him fame.
However, it may be that here, as
elsewhere in the Confessions, the actual
circumstances have been considerably
altered by a romantic and forgetful author.
The Confessions carries the account of
Rousseau's life to the point when,
having been asked to leave Bern by the
ecclesiastical authorities as a result of the
uproar over £mile, he set off for England,
where David Hume had offered him
asylum.
Rousseau's Confessions offers a
personal account of the experiences of a
great writer. Here the events which
history notes are mentioned—his literary
triumphs, his early conversion, his
reconversion, his romance with Madame
d'Houdetot, his quarrels with Voltaire,
Diderot, and churchmen, his musical
successes—but they are all transformed by
the passionate perspective from which
Rousseau, writing years after most of the
events he describes, imagines his own
past. The result is that the Confessions
leaves the reader with the intimate
knowledge of a human being, full of faults
and passions, but driven by ambition and
ability to a significant position in the
history of literature.
651

CONFESSIONS OF AN E
Type of work: Essays
Author: Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
Type of treatise: Confession and fantasy
lime of treatise: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England and Wales
First published: 1821
Principal characters:
Thomas De Quincey, th<
Ann, a prostitute
Critique:
This book is one of those works about
which all educated people have heard
but which few have read, in spite of the
sensational subject, addiction to drugs.
The modern reader has litde patience
with deliberate displays of erudition, with
protracted sentimentality, with latinate
periodic sentences, and with apostrophes
to this abstraction or to that inanimate
object. De Quincey was a conscious
stylist in his attempt to give prose writing
the imaginative and emotional qualities
of poetry. But he was also prolix; and
it is for this prolixity, perhaps, that he
goes largely unread today. Still,
Confessions of an English Opium Eater is worth
reading: De Quincey forbore admirably
here, hewing to or staying close to his
theme throughout. As an inspiration to
human beings who have succumbed to
any pernicious habit and who despair
of ever breaking free, the work is
invaluable.
The Story:
When Thomas De Quincey was about
twenty-eight years of age, intense
stomach pains drove him to take opium for
relief These stomach pains were a legacy
from hardships that he endured as an
adolescent.
De Quincey's father had died when the
boy was seven. Thomas, the joint
responsibility of four guardians, was sent to
school, where he became an excellent
Greek scholar. Later, at the Manchester
Grammar School, he was so superior to
his teachers in Greek that he soon felt
a desire to leave the school. His guardi-
OPIUM EATER
narrator
ans being against this plan, however, he
asked an old friend for money, received
it, and planned to make his escape from
a school which he felt had nothing to
offer him intellectually.
The day of his escape came- When
the groom of his hall was carrying his
book-laden trunk down a narrow
stairway, the man slipped and fell, the trunk
clattering noisily to the floor below.
Young De Quincey was sure he would
be caught. But the incident,
miraculously, did not arouse the curiosity of the
resident master, and the youth was able
to get away.
Seventeen-year-old De Quincey headed
westward, walking through Wales,
where, in Bangor, he took a room. His
landlady was the ex-servant of a bishop's
family. On one of her regular visits to
the bishop's house, she disclosed that she
was taking in lodgers. When she
reported her disclosure to De Quincey, he took
exception to the tenor of her remarks
concerning him, moved out of her house
at once, and found lodging in inns. That
type of lodging being relatively
expensive, the young man soon found himself
reduced to eating only once a day, and
this a meal of only coflFee or tea. The
mountain air of Wales and the walking
made him abnormally hungry, so that
his having to subsist off berries and
charitable handouts hurt him physically. As
time went by, he managed to earn a
meager living by writing letters for the
illiterate and by doing odd jobs. But the
damage to his health had been done.
His travels then took him from Wales

to London, where, utterly destitute and
afraid to reveal himself to any friends of
his family, he lived for several months on
little more than a small ration of bread;
also, at that time, he slept out of doors.
At last, in cold weather, an acquaintance
gave him shelter in a large, almost empty
house, where De Quincey's companion
was a ten-year-old girl. Pains in his
stomach prevented his ever getting a
proper night's sleep; consequently, he
slept by fits and snatches both day and
night. The master of the house was a
legal representative of money-lenders,
but despite the man's apparent lack of
principles De Quincey found him
generous in his way. The little girl appeared
to be a servant in the large house, which
was situated near Soho Square.
De Quincey walked the streets and
often sat all day in parks, until Ann, a
sixteen-year-old street-walker, befriended
him. One night, when he had a violent
attack of his stomach complaint, Ann
spent part of her scant savings on wine
and spices for him.
Soon afterward he met an old family
acquaintance who gave him money, thus
ending De Quincey's period of extreme
poverty. Previously, he had been afraid
to appeal to family friends for help for
fear that his guardians would send him
back to the grammar school. That he
might have taken on literary work of
some kind never occurred to him. Now,
solvent for the moment, he made
arrangements to get an advance on his
patrimony, which would not be legally his
until his twenty-first birthday.
After saying goodbye to Ann, he took
a coach to Eton to get a signature that
was required for an advance on his
patrimony. At Eton he called upon an
acquaintance, young Lord Desart, who
invited him to breakfast. Finding that he
could not keep down the food, he took
wine to his great comfort. Lord Desart,
who was only eighteen, was reluctant to
sign for security, but he finally
consented. De Quincey returned to London,
where he found that Lord Desart's
signature did not impress the money-lenders
with whom he was negotiating for the
advance. Again he was threatened with
hardship; again, however, he was saved,
for his reconciled relatives sent him to
Oxford University. Meanwhile, before
he left London, he searched
unsuccessfully for Ann. She was nowhere to be
found, and he never saw her again.
De Quincey, now nineteen, made
frequent weekend trips to London from
Oxford. One Sunday, while in the
metropolis, he suffered agonies from neuralgic
pains in the head, and a fellow student
whom he encountered recommended
opium for relief. He thereupon bought a
small amount of laudanum, the tincture of
opium, from an apothecary. He returned
to his room and took the prescribed
amount. The result seemed phenomenal
to him; all his pain ceased, and he knew
boundless pleasure. There was no
intoxication, as from wine or spirits; there
was only a protracted sense of being
utterly at peace with the world and with
himself. The opium uplifted the intellect
rather than the animal spirits, and when
its effect wore off there was no period of
depression such as spirits induced.
As a college student, De Quincey's two
great pleasures were to hear Grassini, an
Italian soprano who often sang in
London, or to take opium and afterward join
the Saturday night crowds in the
London markets. Even greater than these
pleasures, however, was that of
withdrawing himself at the time when the opium
had reached its maximum effect on his
mind, so that he could get the most
complete enjoyment from his opium-induced
dreams and visions.
De Quincey left Oxford. In 1812 he
took a cottage, where he studied German
metaphysics and continued to take
opium once a week. His health was
apparently never better. Even after eight
years of taking opium, he was able to say
that he had not become a slave to the
drug; he was still able to control the
653

amount taken and the intervals between
doses.
But a recurrence, in 1813, of his old
stomach disorder led him to take the
drug every day. That he was already
partially addicted was a secondary reason
for his increased use of opium. For two
years he took three hundred and twenty
grains of opium daily, but at last he was
able to reduce the amount to forty grains.
Staying on that allowance, he
experienced the happiest year of his life.
About that time a Malay, traveling
afoot, stopped for a night at the
cottage. De Quincey was impressed by the
aspect and garb of the Oriental. Before
the man left the next morning, De
Quincey gave him enough opium, divided into
three parts, to kill a man if taken all at
once. The Malay clapped all three pieces
into his mouth and departed. De Quincey
felt concern for several days, but to his
relief he never heard or read of the
untimely death of a Malay in his part of
Great Britain.
In his little cottage in the mountains
of northern England, De Quincey, in
the winter of 1816-1817, knew complete
happiness in his experience with opium.
Deep snows, heavy rains, a snug cottage,
a roaring fire, a large collection of good
books, plenty of tea, and daily
consumption of laudanum brought him idyllic
happiness.
But matters changed. Having become
addicted to the daily taking of opium, it
became impossible for him to reduce his
daily allowance without bringing on
abnormal perspiration and excruciating
abdominal pains. He soon lost interest in
reading and the study of mathematics
and philosophy. A friend sent him David
Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy
and Taxation. The book aroused him
from his lethargy long enough to write
for publication on that popular subject.
Then, unable to write a preface for his
work, he shelved the project. He
neglected household responsibilities. At
night he lay awake in his bed,
processions of visions passing through his mind.
These visions consisted largely of scenes
from the English Civil War and from
ancient Rome. Soon he found it difficult
to distinguish between the real and the
unreal. Furthermore, other dreams and
visions took him into frightful abysses.
Constantly depressed, he lost all normal
sense of space and time, and he often
had the sensation of having lived through
a millennium. Also, he found himself
able to recall insignificant events of his
childhood, details which he had never
been conscious of remembering.
The opium dreams were periodic in
subject matter: there were nights during
which he dreamed historical scenes; then
there was a period of architectural dreams
—vast piles of buildings and enormous
cities; these were followed by dreams of
water—lakes, lagoons, vast oceans; and
next a period of dreams in which
countless human faces presented themselves in
peculiar situations to his mind's eye.
In May, 1818, his dream visions took
on an Oriental theme. At times he was
in Egypt, then in China, or in India.
Where in previous dream sequences he
had known only spiritual horrors, in
these Oriental ones he sensed physical
horror from reptiles and frightful birds.
In the summer of 1819, De Quincey,
still addicted to opium, dreamed of a
graveyard in his own little valley. In the
dream he arose and walked out of his
cottage yard to enjoy the air. He thought
he saw an Oriental city and, beneath a
palm tree, Ann, the street-walker friend
of his youth. She did not speak; the dream
faded and he found himself walking with
her in the streets of London. In 1820
one vision was so terrifying in its
profundity and breadth that he awoke and
declared that he would never sleep again.
Finally, he reasoned that he would
surely die if he continued to take opium
and that he might die in the attempt to
break the habit. With so little choice, he
654

decided to try, at least, to free himself to himself that an addict may end a habit
from opium. He reduced his ration grad- of seventeen years' duration.
ually and finally broke free, thus proving
655

CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Germany, Paris, Lisbon
First published: 1954
Principal characters:
Felix Krull, alias Armand, a hotel employee, alias the Marquis de
Venosta
Engelbert Krull, his father
Frau Krull, his mother
Olympia, his sister
Herr Schimmelpreester, his godfather
Muller Rose, an actor and a friend of Engelbert Krull
Mme. Houpfle, a sentimental novelist
Dom Antonio Jose Kuckuck, a Portuguese museum director
Dona Maria Pia Kuckuck, his wife
Susanna ("Zouzou") Kuckuck, their daughter
The Marquis de Venosta, a wealthy young nobleman
Zaza, the marquis' mistress
Critique:
Thomas Mann, who had left Nazi
Germany in 1933 and who became an
American citizen in 1944, returned in
1952 to Switzerland. There he wrote
Felix Krull. Preliminary work to this
novel had been published as early as
1922, but only after the nightmare of
Hitler and World War II was over did
Mann find time and the mood to continue
writing about Felix Krull, a character who
surprised some of his readers, accustomed
as they were to a steady flow of more
metaphysically inclined characters and
unprepared for the diary of a confidence
man. Shortly after publication of the
book, the world knew that Felix Krull
would be the last character created by
the pen of the great Thomas Mann.
Many Germans consider Mann the only
writer worthy to continue the tradition
of classical German literature as
established by Goethe and Schiller. It is most
unfortunate for Mann's readers in
general, and for readers of this novel in
particular, that the greater part of Felix
Krull's adventures will remain a secret
forever. The present book, subtitled The
Early Years, indicates that more volumes
of KrulPs confessions were planned, but
so far nothing has been found among
Mann's papers that leads readers to hope
for more information about the fate of
Felix Krull, the confidence man.
The Story:
Felix Krull was born in the Rhine
Valley, the son of a champagne maker
named Engelbert Krull. Townspeople
considered the Krull family upper class,
but frowned on the easygoing way of life
in the Krull household; Engelbert Krull,
for one thing, showed too much interest
in one of his female employees. A
number of fun-loving friends, led by Felix'
godfather, Herr Schimmelpreester, were
frequent guests at Krull's gay parties.
Early in life Felix and his sister Olympia
were allowed to take part in the festivities.
The greatest experience of Felix* youth
was a dramatic performance starring a
famous actor, Muller Rose. Since the
actor was a friend of Engelbert Krull,
Felix was allowed to visit backstage.
When he saw the actor removing his
CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN by Thomas Mann. Translated by Denver
Lindley. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1955, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
656

make-up, he was completely disillusioned.
For a long time he marveled at the
impressions an actor could create. Before
long Felix himself became an actor. He
decided to prolong the vacation period in
school by falsifying his father's signature
on absentee notes, but he gained much
more satisfaction when he was able to
feign sickness to such a degree that the
family doctor was at a loss for
explanations.
Unfortunately, the champagne
business did not prosper. Krull's champagne
was bottled in a most exquisite manner,
yet the wine was of such a low quality
that even Herr Schimmelpreester spoke of
it only with disdain. The loss of his
business and consequently his fun-loving
friends was too much for Engelbert Krull,
and he shot himself. Herr
Schimmelpreester recommended that Frau Krull open a
rooming house in Frankfurt. For sister
Olympia he provided employment in a
light opera company. For Felix he
arranged an apprenticeship in a Paris hotel,
but the problem of military conscription
prevented Felix' departure. Thus he was
free to explore city life in Frankfurt,
although lack of financial means left for
him only the role of an outside observer.
He studied the behavior of society at
theaters and learned from window
displays what was recommended for
gentlemen. With equal interest he studied the
lives of prostitutes. So far his only affair
had been with one of his father's female
employees. This experience was enriched
when he met Rosza. While her procurer
was in jail he became her lover.
In order to follow Herr Schimmel-
preester's advice about employment in
Paris, Felix had two alternatives left: to
serve his military term before departure
or to be excused entirely from service.
Felix decided on the latter. After careful
preparation he gave an impressive
performance at the army medical
examination center. While declaring dramatically
his desire to serve the fatherland, he
managed to convey the most unfavorable
information about his background, and
he crowned his performance with a
pretended epileptic fit. Seemingly
heartbroken because of his rejection, he left
for Paris. During the confusion at
customs inspection he inadvertently, as he
assured himself, slipped the jewel case of
a woman traveler in his suitcase.
In Paris he found himself the lowest
member of the hotel hierarchy. With the
help of a roommate he sold some of the
stolen jewels. As an elevator operator in
a luxury hotel, he made every effort to
please his customers, especially the
women. The hotel director gave him the
name Armand. One of the guests in his
elevator turned out to be the original
owner of the jewel case, Mme. HoupfI6,
the wife of a rich Strassburg merchant.
When Armand realized that the woman
did not suspect him of the theft, he was
very considerate toward her and was
rewarded with an invitation to visit her
during off-duty hours.
He became her lover. Mme. Houpfl6
enjoyed especially the humiliating aspect
of the affair, and talked about her need to
be humiliated. Armand considered the
moment appropriate for confessing the
theft of the jewel case. Surprisingly,
Mme. Houpfl£ enjoyed the confession
because it increased her abasement, and she
suggested that he should rob her of all
her valuables. He gladly obliged.
After he had sold the valuables, he
rented a room in town. A dual life
began: during the day he was Armand the
hotel employee, and during the night
Felix Krull, man about town. Thanks to
his excellent manners he was soon
promoted to the post of waiter. Difficulties
arose when the sixteen-year-old daughter
of a wealthy family fell hopelessly in love
with him, and when the Scottish Lord
Strathbogie was determined to have
Armand as his valet. To all offers Armand
said no; freedom to do as he pleased
seemed to him the most valuable goal in
life.
His favorite customer was the young
Marquis de Venosta, who enjoyed the
witty remarks of waiter Armand. The
657

nobleman's mistress, a Parisian dancing
girl named Zaza, also approved of him
because he did not fail to call her Madame
la Marquise. It was de Venosta who
finally discovered Armand's double life
when he came across Felix dining in a
famous restaurant.
A great dilemma had developed for de
Venosta. His parents, not approving of
his relationship with Zaza, planned to
send him on a trip around the world.
Because he found the thought of parting
from Zaza unbearable, the marquis was
happy to find in Felix a sympathetic
listener. Felix explained that the only way
for him to stay with Zaza would be to let
someone else assume his identity and
travel under his name. Delighted with
the idea, de Venosta decided that Felix
was the best candidate.
After elaborate preparations and much
coaching Felix received a letter of credit
and took the train to Lisbon. On the way
he met Dom Antonio Jose Kuckuck,
director of the Museum of Natural History
in Lisbon. Impressed by the high social
standing of his fellow traveler, the
professor explained the outline of his
philosophy. Felix found in the professor's
theories an explanation of his own being; all
developments of natural history seemed to
him only steps toward himself. The
professor's opinion that all phases of
development were still with us and around
us gave Felix a clue to the stage-like
appearance of the world. He accepted
gladly an invitation to visit Kuckuck in
Lisbon.
When he met Dona Maria Pia
Kuckuck and her daughter Susanna, called
Zouzou, Felix was impressed by the
beauty of the two women, who were in
turn equally impressed by the handsome
"Marquis." Determined to kiss Zouzou
before his departure, but finding his time
in Lisbon running short, Felix wrote a
letter to "his parents," presenting his stay
in Lisbon in such a favorable light that
they agreed to the postponement of the
scheduled trip to South America. Under
the pretext of wanting to show some of
his drawings to Zouzou, Felix met her
secretly in Kuckuck's garden. The
incident resulted in a kiss, which was
suddenly interrupted by Dona Maria. Sternly
she asked "the Marquis" to come into the
house, where she reprimanded him for
abusing her hospitality. Outspoken Dona
Maria wanted to know why Felix could
not appreciate maturity instead of asking
satisfaction from childishness. When
Dona Maria threw herself into his arms,
he realized that his attempted seduction
of the daughter had ended with his
unforeseen conquest of the mother.
658

THE CONFIDENCE MAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: The Mississippi River
First published: 1857
Principal characters:
The Confidence Man
Charles Noble, a talkative passenger
Mr. Roberts, a merchant
Pitch, a frontiersman
Mark Winsome, a mystic
Egbert, his disciple
Critique:
The Confidence Man: His
Masquerade is a quiet but bitter castigation of
mankind. Episodic in structure, it
relentlessly reveals man's utter lack of faith in
man and, at the same time, discloses the
facility with which most men can be
duped. This, Melville's last major fiction,
rivals Mark Twain's late works for gloom,
pessimism, and misanthropy. However,
Melville's career-ending novelette, Billy
Buddy Foretopman, written more than
thirty years later, exhibits none of these
harsh and cynical characteristics.
The Story:
Aboard the steamboat Fidele, in dock
at St. Louis, a group of passengers stood
reading a placard which offered a
reward for the capture of an impostor from
the East—a confidence man. A deaf-mute
beggar joined the group and began
displaying a slate on which he wrote several
mottoes praising the virtue of charity.
Jeered at by the crowd, the deaf-mute lay
down and slept on the forecastle as the
steamboat pulled out for New Orleans.
A short time later Black Guinea, a
crippled Negro, appeared on deck to beg
for pennies, which he skillfully caught in
his mouth. A man with a wooden leg
broke up this cruel game by loudly
accusing the Negro of fraud, but Black
Guinea protested his innocence and, in
reply to an Episcopal clergyman's request
for references, described several persons
on the boat, all of whom, along with
Black Guinea himself and the deaf-mute
as well, were one and the same man—the
confidence man. After the clergyman
left to find one of these references, only
a kindly country merchant gave Black
Guinea alms, an act which had
unfortunate consequences, since he dropped one
of his business cards while he was fishing
in his pocket for a coin.
To this merchant, Mr. Roberts by
name, the impostor introduced himself as
John Ringman. Pretending that he had
met Mr. Roberts six years earlier, on a
business matter, Ringman won his
confidence and talked him out of a sum of
money. To repay Mr. Roberts, Ringman
gave him a tip on some valuable stock
which could be bought aboard ship from
the president of the Black Rapids Coal
Company.
Next, Ringman accosted a college
student who was reading Tacitus. Before
Ringman could make a pitch for money,
the student left in embarrassment at a
lecture Ringman was delivering on the
decadence of Tacitus.
The confidence man appeared next as
a solicitor of funds for the Seminole
Widow and Orphan Society. In this
disguise he was recognized as one of Black
Guinea's references by the Episcopal
clergyman. The clergyman gave his alms
for Black Guinea and was prevailed upon
to contribute to the Seminole Fund also.
659

In the same disguise the impostor gulled
a widow and a gentleman into donating
to the fund. Somewhat reluctantly, the
gendeman also contributed to a plan for
the world-wide consolidation of all
charities.
Disguised as Mr. Truman, the
president of the Black Rapids Coal Company,
the impostor met the student again.
Ironically, since he prided himself on his
cynicism and circumspection, the
student insisted on buying some stock,
despite the impostor's feigned reluctance to
sell. The good merchant, Mr. Roberts,
was also pleased to purchase some of the
shares which his friend Ringman had
recommended. During the conversation
which followed this transaction, Mr.
Roberts happened to mention the
presence of a sickly old miser aboard ship and
thus informed the confidence man of
another victim.
The confidence man succeeded in
gulling the miser twice: once by selling him
some of the bogus stock and once,
posing as an herb doctor, by selling him
a supply of Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator,
guaranteed, if taken with confidence, to
cure a consumptive cough.
A Missouri frontiersman's scorn for
herbs and natural healing transformed
the herb doctor into a representative of
an employment agency, the Philosophical
Intelligence Office. This Missourian,
named Pitch, had resolved to purchase
machinery to work his farm rather than
rely on another boy, having had thirty-
five unpleasant experiences with as many
boys. Through brilliantly specious
rhetoric the impostor persuaded him to hire
still another boy.
The impostor appeared to Pitch once
more, this time disguised as Francis
Goodman, a friendly world traveler and
cosmopolitan. But Pitch, brooding over
his own gullibility, was in no mood for
fellowship. After trying unsuccessfully to
dispel Pitch's misanthropic melancholia,
the cosmopolitan moved on in search of
more susceptible prey.
He was accosted by one Charles Noble,
a garrulous passenger who, having
overheard the colloquy with Pitch, was
reminded of another bitter frontiersmanr
Colonel John Moredock, a notorious
Indian hater. Goodman being agreeable,
Noble proceeded to narrate a long tale
of Moredock's vendetta against Indians
and to expound the philosophy of Indian-
hating.
Needless to say, the confidence man
was appalled by such a misanthropic tale.
Finding that Noble shared his feeling,
Goodman agreed to split a bottle of port
with him. Over their port, the two
found that they shared a high regard for
wine, but their incipient friendship was
strained by Goodman's suspicion that
Noble was trying to get him drunk.
Cordiality and noble sentiments prevailed,
however, until Goodman asked Noble to
prove his professed confidence in
mankind by lending him fifty dollars. This
startling request produced such a
violent reaction that the friendship would
have ended then and there had not
Goodman pretended that he had been
joking. Confidence restored, Goodman
told the story of Charlemont, an
aristocrat of singularly peculiar behavior, as a
prelude to another request for a loan.
Before Goodman could make his appeal,
Noble abruptly retired.
A passenger who had been watching
the two men warned Goodman to
beware of Noble's companionship.
Goodman had difficulty in extracting a
comprehensible reason for this warning
because the passenger turned out to be
Mark Winsome, a mystic philosopher of
no plain, ordinary tongue. Finally,
Winsome stated clearly that Noble was a
confidence man. Of course the real
confidence man expressed incredulity,
whereupon Winsome withdrew, leaving behind
a disciple, a young man named Egbert, to
explain the Winsome mystic philosophy,
which was, in effect, quite practical.
To explore the philosophy on a
practical level, Goodman suggested that
Egbert use it to answer a hypothetical
request for a loan. Steadfastly and consist-
660

ently Egbert rejected the plea and finally
told a long story to illustrate the folly,
the tragedy, of loans between friends.
Disgusted by such complete cynicism, the
confidence man retreated.
Still in the guise of the cosmopolitan,
he visited the ship's barber shop. There
he succeeded in cheating the barber out
of the price of a shave but failed,
ultimately, in persuading the barber to
extend credit to his customers.
Later that night, in the gentleman's
sleeping cabin, the confidence man found
only one person still awake, an old man
reading the Bible. Though he mouthed
pious sentiments attesting his faith in
mankind and God, the old man eagerly
bought a traveler's lock and a money belt
from a child peddler and accepted a
counterfeit detector as a premium.
Commenting that the two of them put equal
trust in man and God, the confidence
man led the old gentleman, who was now
carrying a life preserver, off to bed.
661

CONINGSBY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Type of plot: Political romance
Time of plot: 1832-1840
Locale: England and Paris
First published: 1844
Principal characters:
Harry Coningsby, a young nobleman
Marquis of Monmouth, his grandfather
Sidonia, a wealthy young Jew, Coningsby's friend
Edith Millbank, Coningsby's sweetheart
Oswald Millbank, Edith's father
Mr. Rigby, a member of Parliament
Lucretia, a young Italian noblewoman, later Lord Monmouth's wife
Flora, a member of a troupe of actors
Critique:
Coningsby occupies a special position in
literature because of its varied aims. Not
only is it the literary history of young
Harry Coningsby's fortunes, but it is an
important political treatise as well. In it
Disraeli traced the decline of the Whig
and-Tory factions and the developments
which led to the birth of the Conservative
Party. The characters may be readily
identified with real personages of the time.
The Story:
Harry Coningsby was fourteen when
he met his grandfather, the Marquis of
Monmouth, for the first time. He had
been placed in his grandfather's charge
when he was still very young with the
understanding that his widowed mother, a
commoner, was never to see him again. He
had been turned over, sight unseen, to the
care of Mr. Rigby, a member of
Parliament who sat for one of Lord Monmouth's
ten boroughs.
Lord Monmouth, who preferred to live
abroad, had returned to his native land in
1832 in order to help fight the Reform
Bill. Hearing favorable reports of his
frandson, he had ordered Mr. Rigby to
ring the boy from Eton to Monmouth
House. Unfortunately, young Coningsby
was unable to put out of his mind thoughts
of his mother, who had died when he was
nine, and he burst into tears at the sight
of his grandfather. Lord Monmouth,
disgusted by that sign of weakness, ordered
him to be led away. He thought to himself
that the sentimental boy's future probably
lay with the church.
Fortunately, the boy became friendly
with the marquis' guests, Princess Co-
lonna and her stepdaughter, Lucretia. The
princess passed on such glowing
descriptions of Coningsby to his grandfather that
they were on excellent terms by the time
he returned to school.
At Eton one of Coningsby's close friends
was Oswald Millbank, a manufacturer's
son. When Coningsby left Eton in 1835
he went to explore Manchester's factories
before going to Coningsby Castle to join
his grandfather. During his journey he
visited the Millbank mills. Oswald was
abroad, but he was hospitably greeted by
his friend's father. At the Millbank
mansion Coningsby met beautiful but shy
young Edith Millbank and learned from
her Whig father that he favored the rise
of a new force in government—a natural
aristocracy of able men, not one composed
of hereditary peers.
Before departing for Coningsby Castle,
young Coningsby was tempted to inquire
about the striking portrait of a woman
which graced the dining-room wall. His
host, much upset by his question, made a
brusque, evasive answer.
Lord Monmouth, backing Mr. Rigby
for reelection to Parliament, had returned
662

to his borough and scheduled an elaborate
program of dances, receptions, and plays,
to gain a following for his Conservative
candidate. Princess Colonna and Lucretia
were again his grandfathers guests.
Coningsby had no need, however, to
confine his attentions to them, for as Lord
Monmouth's kinsman and possible heir he
found himself much sought after. He
found time also to encourage Flora, a
member of the troupe of actors entertaining the
marquis* guests. The girl was shy and
suffering from stage fright.
Here Coningsby met Sidonia, a
fabulously wealthy young Jew. Coningsby
found his new friend impartial in his
political judgments, not only because his
fortune allowed him to be just but also
because his religion disqualified him as a
voter. Sidonia taught him, during their
lengthy discussions, to look to the national
character for England's salvation. He
believed that the country's weakness lay in
developing class conflicts.
Lucretia made a brief effort to attract
Coningsby when she observed the favor in
which his grandfather held him, but
before long she found Sidonia, a polished
man of the world, more intriguing. But
Sidonia was not to be captured. He was
attracted by others' intellects, and Lucretia
could not meet him on his own level.
After his holiday Coningsby went to
Cambridge for his last years of study.
During his first year there King William IV
died and the Conservative cause fell in
defeat. Mr. Rigby was, as he had been for
many years, the candidate from his
borough, and with the marquis to back him his
victory seemed certain until Mr. Milbank
entered the field. The manufacturer and
the marquis had been enemies for many
years, and their feud reached a climax
when Millbank not only bought Hel-
lingsley, an adjoining estate which Lord
Monmouth had long coveted, but also
defeated his lordship's candidate.
Prepared for the worst, the defeated Mr.
Rigby went to Monmouth House, where
the marquis was in residence. He was
pleasantly disappointed, however, for his
employer's thoughts were not on him. Lord
Monmouth was preparing to marry
Lucretia, who, if she could not have the
man she desired, was determined at least
to obtain power and riches through
marriage.
A year after the wedding Coningsby
was invited to join his grandfather and his
bride in Paris at Christmas time. Stopping
at his banker's on his way through
London, he was given a package of his
mother's correspondence. In the packet
was a locket, with an exact copy of the
portrait he had seen at Millbank. It was
a picture of his mother.
While visiting an art gallery in Paris
with Sidonia, Coningsby again met Edith
Millbank, who was traveling with her
relatives, Lord and Lady Wallinger.
Coningsby, who fell in love with her
immediately, was distressed to hear reports
that Sidonia intended to marry her.
Finding the couple conversing on familiar
terms one evening, he regretfully decided
to withdraw from the scene. He returned
to England.
Disappointed in love, Coningsby
devoted himself to his studies for the
remainder of his stay at Cambridge. Then,
learning that Edith had not married and
that Sidonia was no more than an old
family friend, he went to Coningsby Castle
in order to be near the Millbanks.
Coningsby spent every possible
moment with Edith and her family during
the next few weeks. When her father
discovered the lovers' feelings, he asked
Coningsby to leave. He would not, he
explained, submit his daughter to the same
fate the young man's mother had suffered
at Lord Monmouth's hands. In this
manner Coningsby learned that his mother
had once been Mr. Millbank's fiancee.
Leaving Hellingsley, Coningsby went
on a sea voyage from which he was called
home by the marquis. Parliament faced
another crisis, and Lord Monmouth had
decided that Coningsby should stand as
his candidate. Coningsby refused, for he
was of the opinion that men should cut
across party lines to establish recognition
663

of the bond between property and labor.
The same day Lord Monmouth faced
his rebellious grandson he separated from
Lucretia, who had proved unfaithful.
The marquis died at Christmas of that
year. Most of his fortune he left to Flora,
who was his natural daughter. Coningsby
was cut off with the interest on ten
thousand pounds.
Deeply disappointed in his
expectations, Coningsby gave up his clubs and
most of his friends and began to study
law. He had resigned himself to the
prospect of years of drudgery when Mr.
Millbank repented his decision. The
manufacturer withdrew his candidacy in the
1840 election to back Coningsby as the
Tory candidate. Mr. Rigby was his rival
candidate, but he was easily defeated.
Not many months later Edith became
Coningsby's bride and went with him to
live at Hellingsley, their wedding present
from Mr. Millbank. As a final blessing,
though not an unmixed one, Flora, who
had always been weak, died, leaving the
fortune sne had inherited to the man who
had befriended her many years before at
Coningsby Castle.
664

THE CONJURE WOMAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Post-Civil War
Locale: North Carolina
First published: 1899
Principal characters:
The Narrator
Annie, his wife
Uncle Julius, his colored coachman
Aunt Peggy, the conjure woman
Critique:
The first important American novelist
of Negro descent, Charles Chesnutt has
given us pure folktale and regional
romance in The Conjure Woman. Uncle
Julius is a very real person, one who does
not waste his stories on any occasion.
Each tale has a motive, some for the
benefit of Julius himself, others for the
benefit of his white employers. His stories
are fantasy in the purest form, but so
delicately, so fancifully told that the
reader grieves or rejoices, just as Uncle
Julius wants him to. Charles Chesnutt
has portrayed the old Negro retainer with
fidelity and understanding.
The Story:
When the Narrator's wife began to
suffer ill effects from the severe Great
Lakes climate, he began to look around
for a suitable place to take her. He had
been engaged in grape culture in Ohio,
and when he learned of a small North
Carolina town that seemed to offer what
he needed in climate and suitable land,
he decided to buy an old, dilapidated
plantation and settle there. An untended
vineyard was already on the place; with
a little care and expense the vines would
flourish once more.
On the day that he took his wife Annie
to look at the plantation they happened
upon an ancient Negro who called
himself Uncle Julius. He advised them not
to buy the plantation because it was
goophered. Seeing they did not know that
anything goophered was bewitched
(conjured), the old colored man asked
permission to tell them the story of the
vineyard.
Many years before the war, when
Uncle Julius was still a slave, the
plantation owner had made many thousands of
dollars from the grapes. Because the
master could never keep the slaves from
eating the rich grapes and stealing the
wine made from them, he conceived the
idea of having Aunt Peggy, a conjure
woman living nearby, put a goopher on
the vines. She made one that said that
any Negro eating the grapes would die
within a year. Most of the slaves stayed
away from the grapes, but a few tried
them in spite of the conjure—and they
all died. When a new slave came to the
plantation, no one remembered to tell
him about the conjure, and he ate some
of the grapes. So that he would not die,
Aunt Peggy made him a counter-goopher.
Then a strange thing happened. Every
year, as the grapes ripened, this slave
became so young and sprightly that he
could do the work of several men, but
in the fall, when the vines died, he
withered and faded. This strange action went
on for a year or two, until the master hit
upon the idea of selling the slave every
spring when he was so strong, and buying
THE CONJURE WOMAN by Charles Waddell Chesnutt. By permission of the publishers, Houghton
Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1899, by Charles W. Chesnutt. Renewed, 1927, by Charles W. Chesnutt.
665

him back cheaply in the fall. By this
transaction he made money each year.
One year the master hired an expert to
prune his vines, but the expert cut them
out too deeply and the vines were ruined.
Soon afterward the slave who had
bloomed and withered with the vines
died also. Some said he died of old age,
but Uncle Julius knew that it was the
goopher that finally overcame him. Uncle
Julius advised strongly against buying the
land because the conjure was still on.
The Narrator bought the plantation,
however, and it prospered. Later he
learned that Uncle Julius had been living
in a cabin on the place and sold the
grapes. He always suspected that the story
was told to prevent ruination of the old
man's business. He gave Uncle Julius
employment as a coachman, and so the
former slave was well cared for.
At another time Annie wanted a new
kitchen, and her husband decided to tear
down an old schoolhouse on the place
and use the lumber from it for the new
building. Uncle Julius advised him
against the plan. Strangely enough, that
schoolhouse was goophered, too. The
story was that a slave called Sandy was
borrowed by others so often that his
woman was afraid they would be separated
forever. She was a conjure woman, and
so she turned him into a tree. Each night
she would turn him back into a man,
and they would slip into her cabin until
morning, when she would again change
him into a tree. One day the woman was
sent away from the plantation before she
could change Sandy into a man. While
she was away the master had the tree
that was Sandy cut down to build a new
kitchen. The slaves had a hard time
felling the tree, which twisted and turned
and tried to break loose from the chains.
At last they got it to the sawmill. Later
the house was built, but it was never
much use. The slaves refused to work
there because at night they could hea\
moaning and groaning, as if someone
were in great pain. Only Sandy's woman,
when she returned, would stay in the
building, and she, poor girl, went out of
her mind.
Uncle Julius advised against using
goophered lumber for the new kitchen.
It also seemed that Uncle Julius needed
the old schoolhouse for his church
meetings. The goopher would not bother the
worshipers; in fact, the preaching would
help Sandy's roaming spirit. There was
nothing for the wife and her husband to
do but buy new lumber for her kitchen.
No one would want to use goophered
wood.
When the Narrator was about to buy
a mule to use in cultivating some land,
Uncle Julius warned him against mules
because most of them were conjured.
Uncle Julius did, however, know of a
horse for sale. After his employer bought
the horse, which died within three
months, Uncle Julius appeared in a new
suit he had been admiring for some time.
One day, when Annie felt depressed
and listless, Uncle Julius told her and
her husband about Becky, a slave traded
for a horse. Taken away from her child,
she grieved terribly. Aunt Peggy, the
conjure woman, turned the baby into a
hummingbird so that he could fly down
to his mother and be near her and soothe
her. Later the conjure woman arranged
to have Becky and her baby reunited.
But Uncle Julius knew that she would
never have had all that trouble if she
had owned the hindfoot of a rabbit to
protect her from harm. The story .seemed
to cheer Annie, and her husband was not
surprised later to find Uncle Julius*
rabbit's foot among her things.
When the Narrator prepared to clear
a piece of land, Uncle Julius warned him
that the land was goophered and told
him a harrowing tale about a slave turned
into a gray wolf and tricked into killing
his own wife, who had been changed
into a cat. Although the gray wolf was
said to haunt the patch of land, it did
not seem to bother a bee tree from which
Uncle Julius gathered wild honey.
One day Annie's sister Mabel and her
666

fianc£ quarreled bitterly. Uncle Julius
had another story for them about Chloe,
a slave who ruined her life because she
was jealous. Chloe listened to a no-account
rival and believed his story that her lover
was meeting another woman. When she
learned that she had lost her lover
because she allowed her jealousy to trick
her, she sorrowed and died. Even the
conjure woman could not help her. Mabel
listened to the story and then ran to her
fiance^ who just happened to be close to
the spot where Julius had stopped their
carriage. Later on the young man seemed
to develop a special fondness for Uncle
Julius. After the wedding he tried to hire
the old Negro into his service, but Uncle
Julius remained faithful to his employers.
He thought they needed his advice and
help.
667

A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT KING ARTHUR'S COURT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens, 1835-1910)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Sixth century
Locale: England
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
The Connecticut Yankee, the Boss
Clarence, a page
King Arthur
Sandy, wife of the Boss
Merlin, a magician
Critique:
Buried beneath a layer of wit is the
serious social satire of Mark Twain's
imaginative chronicle. The glorified days
of knight errantry are exposed as a form
of childish barbarism. The Connecticut
Yankee finds instead of the legendary
gallantry a cruel system of feudalism
where the common people are abused and
impoverished. Examining the Yankee's
ideas about democracy, one can discern
Mark Twain's own principles. He
demonstrates that a government is good only
insofar as the bulk of the people benefit
by it.
The Story:
Struck on the head during a quarrel
in a New England arms factory, a skilled
mechanic awoke to find himself being
prodded by the spear of an armored
knight on horseback. The knight was
Sir Kay of King Arthur's Round Table
and the time was June, A.D. 528 in
Merrie England, as a foppish young page
named Clarence informed the
incredulous Yankee, when his captor took him
back to white-towered Camelot. The
Yankee remembered that there had been
a total eclipse of the sun on June 21,
528. If the eclipse took place, he was
indeed a lost traveler in time turned
backward to the days of chivalry.
At Camelot the Yankee listened to
King Arthur's knights as they bragged
of their mighty exploits. The magician,
Merlin, told again of Arthur's coming.
Finally Sir Kay told of his encounter
with the Yankee, and Merlin advised
that the prisoner be thrown into a
dungeon to await burning at the stake on
the twenty-first of June.
In prison the Yankee thought about
the coming eclipse. Merlin, he told
Clarence, was a humbug, and he sent the
boy to the court with a message that on
the day of his death the sun would
darken and the kingdom would be
destroyed. The eclipse came, and at the
right time, for the Yankee was about to
be burned when the sky began to dim.
Awed, the king ordered the prisoner
released. The people shouted that he
was a greater magician than Merlin.
The court demanded another display
of his powers. With the help of
Clarence, the Yankee mined Merlin's tower
with some crude explosives he had made
and then told everyone he would cause
the tower to crumble and fall. When
the explosion took place, the Yankee was
assured of his place as the new court
magician. Merlin was thrown into prison.
The lack of mechanical devices in
King Arthur's castle bothered the
ingenious New Englander, and the
illiteracy of the people hurt his American pride
in education. He decided to make the
commoners more than slaves to the
nobility. He had a title of his own by this
time, for the people called him the Boss.
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT KING ARTHUR'S COURT by Mark Twain. Published by Harper &
Brothers.
668

As the Boss, he intended to modernize
the kingdom.
His first act was to set up schools in
small communities throughout the
country. He had to work in secret, for he
feared the interference of the Church.
He trained workmen in mechanical arts.
Believing that a nation needed a free
press, he instructed Clarence in the art
of journalism. He had telephone wires
stretched between hamlets, haphazardly,
however, because there were no maps
by which to be guided.
When Sir Sagramor challenged the
Boss to a duel, the court decided that he
should go upon some knightly quest to
prepare himself for the encounter. His
mission was to help a young girl named
Alisande, whose story he could not get
straight. With many misgivings he put
on a burdensome coat of mail and on
his heavy charger started off with Sandy,
as he called her. Sandy was a talkative
companion who told endless tall tales as
they traveled through the land. Along
the way the Boss marveled at the pitiable
state of the people under the feudal
system. Whenever he found a man of
unusual spirit he sent him back to
Clarence in Camelot, to be taught reading,
writing, and a useful trade. He visited
the dungeons of the castles at which he
stayed and released prisoners unjustly
held by their grim masters.
In the Valley of Holiness he found
another opportunity to prove his magic
skill. There a sacred we' II had gone dry
because someone, according to legend,
had bathed in it. When he arrived,
Merlin, now released from prison, was
attempting magic to make the spring flow.
With a great deal of pomp and flourish,
the Boss repaired a leak in the masonry
at the bottom of the well. As the well
filled, Merlin went home in shame.
By chance the Boss came upon one of
his telephone installations in a cave
nearby. He talked to Clarence, who told
him that King Arthur was on his way
to the Valley of Holiness to see the
flowing spring. He returned to the spring
to find a fake magician assuring the
gaping pilgrims that he could tell what
anyone was doing at that moment. The
Boss asked him about King Arthur. The
magician said that he was asleep in his
bed at Camelot. The Boss grandly
predicted that the king was on his way to
the Valley of Holiness. When the king
did arrive, the people were again awed
by the Boss's magic.
Anxious that King Arthur be
convinced of the sufferings of his people,
the Boss suggested that he and the king
disguise themselves as commoners and
travel as pilgrims through the country.
The Boss knew that Arthur was not to
blame for his own social doctrines; he
was a victim of his place in society. On
their journey the king proved to be
courageous and kind.
Misfortune soon overtook them. They
were seized by an earl and sold as slaves,
because they were unable to prove
themselves free men. The slaves were taken
to London, where the Boss picked the
lock that held him and escaped. The
rest of the slaves were ordered to be
hanged after his escape. But the Boss
located one of his telephones and called
Clarence in Camelot, ordering him to
send Sir Lancelot and an army of knights
to London to save their king from
hanging.
The Boss came back to Camelot in
glory, but not for long. He still had to
fight a duel with Sir Sagramor—in reality
a battle between Merlin and the Boss.
Merlin professed to cover Sir Sagramor
with an invisible shield, but the
credulous knight was invisible to no one but
himself. The Boss wore no armor, and
so on the field of the tournament he
was able to dodge the charging knight
until Sir Sagramor grew tired. Then the
Boss lassoed him and pulled him from
his horse. When Sir Sagramor returnee1
once again to the field, Merlin stole the
Boss's lasso. There was no alternative;
the Boss shot Sir Sagramor with his gun.
Then he challenged all the knights of
the Round Table. He had only twelve
669

shots in his two revolvers, but
fortunately, when he had killed eleven of the
charging knights, the line wavered and
gave up.
Three years passed. By this time the
Boss had married Sandy and they had a
little girl. He and Clarence were
planning to declare a republic after the death
of Arthur, for the sixth-century kingdom
was now a nineteenth-century land with
schools, trains, factories, newspapers, the
telephone and the telegraph. Although
the code of chivalry had. been abolished,
the knights still insisted on wearing their
armor. Then little Hello-Central, the
Boss* daughter, became ill, and he and
Sandy took the child to the seashore for
recuperation. On their return, the Boss
found Camelot in a shambles. Only
Clarence remained to tell him the story.
There had been a battle between King
Arthur and Sir Lancelot over Queen
Guinevere. The king was dead, and by
interdict the Church had destroyed the
work of the Boss. Clarence and the Boss
built a fortress surrounded by an
electrically charged barrier. In a battle with
the surviving chivalry of England the
Boss was stabbed. When an old woman
came to the fortress from the enemy lines
and offered to nurse him, no one
recognized her as Merlin. The magician cast
a spell on the Boss and declared that he
would sleep for thirteen hundred years.
And, indeed, the Yankee did awake once
more in the nineteenth century.
670

CONQUISTADOR
Type of work: Poem
Author: Archibald MacLeish (1892- )
Time: Early sixteenth century
Locale: Mexico
First published: 1932
Principal personages:
Bernal Diaz, called del Castillo, the narrator
Diego Velasquez, Spanish administrator in Cuba
Hernan Cortes, conqueror of Mexico
Montezuma, Emperor of the Aztecs
Conquistador: In his truly fine poem
Archibald MacLeish makes* this word
whistle and flash like a blade of Spanish
steel. But there are no overblown heroics
here. Avoiding the stale approach of the
historian, of "this priest this Gomara with
the school-taught skip to his writing,"
MacLeish turns over the telling of his
story to Bernal Diaz, an old man who
in his youth was a soldier with Cortes
and who confines his tale to " 'That which
I have myself seen and the fighting/
. . ." The result, as Diaz rambles on
with simple eloquence, becomes an
impressionistic, sensual record of the
bravery and the brutality, the sickness of
defeat and the tingle of triumph that are
all a part of conquest.
Diaz* narrative follows the exploits of
the first Spanish conquerors of Mexico
under the leadership of Cortes, but the
story is neither complete nor fully
connected. Episodic and broken, it is what
a veteran would remember when he is
old and going blind. Wisely, MacLeish
does not force Diaz into passing moral
judgment on the Spaniards or the
Indians, into pondering tricky questions on
the rights of the conquerors and the
conquered. Of the massacre of the
natives at Cholula, Diaz says simply:
They died slowly with much pain like
serpents:
Our hands were lame with the sword
when the thing was done. . . .
Andwhoareyetobejudgeofus . . . ?
When Diaz does exercise judgment it is
mainly to deride the men who were "not
there": Vespucci, who gave his name to
two continents, but who was unknown
in Cuba and Mexico; Velasquez, who
tried to restrain Cortes and his men, to
block them, to take credit for their
victories. Such touches make this truly
Bernal Dfaz' story, not MacLeish's, and by
this sublimation of the author's
personality to that of his narrator, MacLeish has
given the story an absorbing reality. But
it is, of course, MacLeish's poetic talent
that turns Conquistador into one of the
finest long poems of this century.
For his stanza form MacLeish has
chosen a variation on terza rima and
by skillful shifting of the rhythm he
avoids monotony; by delicate use of
assonance and consonance he creates a
sensuous music that is felt as well as
heard. Listen to (and feel) these stanzas
describing the life of CorteV men in a
rare time of peace among the Indians:
And the girls they gave us for love with
the scented hair:
The green light through the leaves: the
slow awakening:
How there were many and small birds
in the air then. . . .
We were like those that in their lands
they say
The steers of the sun went up through
the wave-lit orchards
Shaking the water drops and those gold
naked
CONQUISTADOR by Archibald MacLeish, from POEMS: 1924-1933 by Archibald MacLeish. Excerpts
reprinted by permission of the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1932, by Archibald MacLeish.
Renewed. All rights reserved.
671

Girls before them at their dripping
horns!
And they ate the sea-doused figs with
the salt taste:
And all their time was of kine and of
sea and of morning:
This passage reveals the subtle, musical
effects of his technique. In the first
stanza there is the unobtrusive "scen-ken-
then" of terminal assonance and the
outright rhymes of "hair" and "air"; in the
second, "say-wave-nake" and "orchards-
naked"; and in the third, "horns-morn,"
with an echo o£ the second stanza in
"taste" and, as a kind of fillip, the
internal "time-kine" combination. Such
ingenuity, while sustaining a clear thought,
calls for the highest technical skill. All is
so cleverly done that one must almost
ponder the lines to realize the effects of
imagery and tonal pattern.
Oddly enough, the major flaw in
Conquistador is a result of MacLeish's
decision to let the whole story be Diaz*. In
achieving unity and reality and the
balance between hardship and glory that is
the soldier's lot, the poet has played down
the overall drama and climaxes to the
point of flatness. The death of
Montezuma, for instance, becomes little more
important than the death of a favorite
war stallion. Here is the way Diaz
describes it:
And the smoke coiled on the cold
stones: and we went by
Dawn on the wall-head there: and
Montezuma
Clad in the gold cloth: gilded: and he
smiled:
He climbed by the stair and smiling
and they slew him:
Even Cortes himself is presented as a
shadowy figure, more a symbol of
leadership than a man. ("This is Cortes that
took the famous land.") Perhaps this is
the way the soldier sees the great men;
perhaps it is only history and legend that
lifts the leaders above the led.
But Diaz, the narrator, is certainly no
shadow. He emerges from the poem as a
full character, fiercely alive and tenderly
human. In his preface Diaz calls himself
"an ignorant sick old man," but he takes
pride that he fought in the battles, that
he was there. Disclaiming any desire for
fame, he mourns, as death comes closer,
that his youth is past, that his
companions are nearly all gone. Yet he
remembers that once
We were the lords of it all. . . .
Now time has taught us:
Death has mastered us most: sorrow
and pain
Sickness and evil days are our lives'
lot:
Now even the time of our youth has
been taken:
Now are our deeds words: our lives
chronicles:
Afterwards none will think of the night
rain. . . .
By remembering the night rains, the
mountains, the windy ditches, the taste
of melons, Diaz elevates a story that
might have been a dry chronicle of
battles to the level of high poetry. He is a
professional soldier with a keen eye for
military strategy, but he is also a
sensualist, a man whose memory holds vivid
impressions of a strange land that was
alternately a paradise and a hell. He can
catch the details of the fighting, of the
drums rolling "like the thud in the ear of
a man's heart"; he can take satisfaction
in the Spanish cannons that mow down
scores of Indians as the link chain slashes
their bellies. But equally well he can
describe a market in an Indian town: the
corn, the fish, the hides "smelling of
oak," the sellers of "lettuces washed cool"
and of henequen, the makers of rope and
"of stone masks of the dead and of stone
mirrors." The reader of Conquistador can
see, hear, and feel with Diaz.
When the wars are over, the conquest
complete, Diaz disparages the colonists
who come like lice to build their Spanish
cities. For him "the west is gone now"
672

and Conquistador ends with his final
dream:
O day that brings the earth back bring
again
That well-swept town those towers and
that island. . . .
The literature of the United States has
been criticized for its failure to produce
an epic in poetry or prose which records
and matches the epic event in our
history: the opening of the American West.
All we have been able to come up with,
some say, is the stylized "Western" of the
paperbacks, the movies, and the
television programs that is like a stale joke
repeated over and over. MacLeish has
chosen to go south to Mexico for his
story and in doing so he has avoided
stumbling onto any well-worn paths. An
American has written a great poem about
the history of our continent.
Conquistador is an epic.
673

THE CONSCIOUS LOVERS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)
Type of flot: Sentimental comedy
Time of flot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1722
Principal characters:
Young Bevil, a young gendeman of fortune
Sir John Bevil, young Bevil's father
Indiana Danvers, a girl befriended by young Bevil
Lucinda Sealand, engaged to young Bevil
Mr. Sealand, Luanda's father
Mr. Myrtle, young Bevil's friend, in love with Lucinda Sealand
Mr. Cimberton, a suitor for Lucinda Sealand's hand
Critique:
The Conscious Lovers, often called
Steele's finest play, began the vogue of
sentimental comedy and marked a
departure from the comedy of manners
popular during the late eighteenth century.
In this drama the virtues of the true
gentleman, as opposed to those of the wit
and fop, are clearly demonstrated. The
characters are frankly middle-class people
instead of the nobility. The lovers are
frank in their affections and the father
is portrayed as the object of filial
affection, whereas in earlier drama he had
been the object of ridicule, often a bar
to the enjoyment of a fortune. As a
social reformer Steele advanced two
doctrines: the abolishment of marriage as
simply a contractual affair, and the
absurdity of the barbaric practice of
dueling. The latter doctrine he had presented
earlier in a famous number of The
Spectator. Steele, unlike earlier dramatists of
the period, sought to give good examples
to his audiences.
The Story:
Young Bevil, a gentleman of some
fortune, was engaged to marry the daughter
of Mr. Sealand. Although he was not in
love with the girl, he had agreed to
marry her at his father's request. On the day
of the marriage, however, there was some
doubt that the marriage would take place,
for the bride's father had discovered that
Bevil was paying the bills of a young
woman he had brought back from France.
Fearing that the young woman, called
Indiana, was Bevil's mistress, Mr.
Sealand did not want to see his daughter
married to a man who kept another
woman.
The fathers did not know that Bevil
had sent a letter to Lucinda Sealand
which gave her his permission to break off
the marriage at that late date. Bevil had
done so because he knew that Lucinda
was really in love with his friend, Mr.
Myrtle, and because he himself wanted
to marry Indiana. Shortly after the letter
was sent, Sir John's valet told young
Bevil that the marriage would probably
be broken by Mr. Sealand. Bevil then
confided in the servant that Indiana was
the daughter of the British merchant
named Danvers, who had disappeared in
the Indies soon after the ship in which
Indiana, her mother, and her aunt had
been traveling to join him had been
captured by French privateers.
Shortly afterward Myrtle arrived at
Bevil's apartment and told his friend that
a third marriage arrangement was in the
wind that day. Mrs. Sealand was trying
to wed her daughter to Mr. Cimberton,
a queer fellow with peculiar ideas about
wives and a great deal of money; Mrs.
Sealand was willing to overlook strange
notions in favor of the fortune her
daughter might marry. The only thing that
prevented the marriage contract from being
674

settled that day was the non-appearance
of Cimberton's wealthy uncle. Bevil
suggested to Myrtle that he and Bevil's
servant Tom, an artful rascal, disguise
themselves as lawyers and go to the Sealand
house in an attempt to prevent the
marriage or, at least, to find out what could
be done to keep the contract from being
signed.
Meanwhile Indiana's aunt was
cautioning her against the attentions of Bevil.
The aunt could not believe, despite
Indiana's reports of Bevil's behavior, that
the young man was helping Indiana and
paying her bills without intending to make
her his mistress. As they continued to
argue, Bevil himself appeared. Indiana
tried to learn in private conversation what
his intentions were, for she loved him
very much. He would only reply that he
did everything for her because he found
pleasure in doing good. Wanting him to
love her, she felt rather hurt. Secretly,
Bevil had promised himself that he would
never tell her of his affection as long as
his father had not given permission for
a marriage to her.
At the Sealand house, in the
meantime, Lucinda was subjected to the
humiliation of an inspection by Mr. Cim-
berton, who in company with Mrs.
Sealand looked at Lucinda as he might look
at a prize mare he was buying for his
stable. While they were talking over her
good and bad points, Myrtle and Bevil's
servant, disguised as lawyers, put in their
appearance. They learned very little,
except that Mrs. Sealand was determined
to wed her daughter to Cimberton as soon
as possible. Upon leaving the house,
Bevil's servant received a letter from
Lucinda for his master. Myrtle, who was of
a very jealous disposition, suspected
duplicity on Bevil's part and instantly sent
him a challenge to a duel.
Myrtle appeared at Bevil's apartment
a few minutes after his challenge. Bevil
refused at first to be a party to a duel,
out when Myrtle heaped many insults
upon Bevil and Indiana, calling the
latter Bevil's whore, his language so
enraged Bevil that he said he would fight.
A moment later Bevil regained control of
himself. Realizing how foolish a duel
would be, he showed Myrtle the letter
from Lucinda, which only thanked Bevil
for giving her permission to break off
the wedding.
Sir John and Mr. Sealand met. Mr.
Sealand refused to go on with the
marriage that day until he had satisfied
himself as to the relationship between
Indiana and Bevil. Sir John agreed to wait
until the investigation had been made.
Bevil and Myrtle decided to make one
more attempt to terminate the possible
marital arrangements of Mrs. Sealand for
her daughter. Myrtle disguised himself
as Cimberton's uncle and went to the
Sealand house. There Lucinda discovered
his identity, but she kept it from her
mother and the unwelcome suitor.
At the same time Mr. Sealand had
gone to Indiana's home. As soon as he
entered the house Indiana's aunt
recognized him as someone she had known
before, but she decided not to reveal
herself to him. Questioned, Indiana said that
she had been befriended by Bevil but
that he had made no effort to seduce her.
Her deportment and her narrative
assured Mr. Sealand that there was no
illicit relationship between the two. When
she had finished her story, telling of her
lost father and the capture of herself, her
mother, and her aunt by French
privateers, he asked her father's name. She
told him it was Danvers. Mr. Sealand
then announced that Indiana was his
long-lost daughter, and he identified some
trinkets she had as those belonging to his
first wife and their child. When Indiana's
aunt appeared, identifying herself as Mr.
Sealand's sister, he recognized her at
once. He told them that he had changed
his name after undergoing certain
difficulties in the Indies.
Mr. Sealand readily agreed to a
marriage between his new-found daughter
and Bevil. At that moment Sir John,
675

young Bevil, and a group from the Sea-
land house arrived. Sir John, hearing the
news, was pleased at the prospect of a
marriage between Indiana and his son.
Bevil, anxious to aid his friend Myrtle,
then requested that a marriage be
arranged between his friend and Lucinda
Sealand. Cimberton tried to intercede on
his own behalf until Mr. Sealand
informed him that only half his fortune
would now go to Lucinda. Cimberton, who
was more anxious for the money than the
girl, departed in a huff, whereupon
Myrtle, who was still disguised as Cimberton's
uncle, threw off the disguise and claimed
Lucinda for his bride.
676

THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY
Type of work: Philosophical prose and verse
Author: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (<
First transcribed: 523
When Theodoric, Ostrogoth king of
Italy, imprisoned his minister Boethius
because he suspected him of plotting
with the Emperor Justin The Elder, h1?
inadvertently encouraged the writing of
a masterpiece. For Boethius was a
philosopher with the intellectual and spiritual
resources of a Socrates, and until his
death he used the time in prison not
only in consoling himself by
philosophical reflections but also by writing a
book of prose and verse in which
Philosophy, pictured as a fair lady, reconciles
him to his condition. She consoles
Boethius by giving him substantial amounts
of Platonic philosophy, but she manages
to give her message a distinctive
character which we may take as a reflection
of the author's own philosophic
temperament.
Philosophy's consolations,
metaphysically defended and poetically adorned,
amount to this message: God is
blessedness; trust in Him.
The Consolations of Philosophy is
important historically because it made Pla-
tonism an important element in the
thought of the Middle Ages, and it is
important philosophically and as
literature because it presents a calm and
inspiring use of Plato's ideas. Also it
secures for Boethius a place in the historv
of philosophy. It cannot be defended,
however, as a Christian work unless one
is willing to call Plato a Christian.
Controversy continues over the question of
whether Boethius was a Christian, and it
is significant that although everyone
knows and admits that The Consolations
of Philosophy is his work, that knowledge
by no means settles the question one way
or the other, although it tends to support
the negative case. Only the fact that
Boethius is reputed to have written a
number of tracts explaining and supporting
certain theological points of Christian
:. 480-524)
dogma leads anyone to suppose that
Boethius was a Christian.
Like Dante's Vita Nuova (c. 1292),
which may have been influenced by The
Consolations of Philosophy, Boethius'
work alternates prose and verse, but
unlike the Vita Nuova the prose passages
do not merely explain the circumstances
under which the verses were written but
contain the body of the work: a dialogue
between Boethius and Philosophy.
The First Book begins with a verse in
which Boethius complains about the
coming of old age and sorrows. A woman
with a grave appearance, a clear eye, and
of indeterminate age and height appears
to him and objects to the presence of the
"tragical harlots" of poetry. It turns out
that she is Philosophy and that she has
come to Boethius to help him in his time
of trouble. She reminds him that
philosophers have often suffered because of
criticizing wicked men; Socrates is but
one of many who have been punished
for speaking the truth.
Boethius then tells Philosophy of his
political difficulties, and concludes by
suggesting that wicked men often prosper
while the innocent suffer. In a poem
addressed to God, "Creator of the Sky,"
Boethius asks, ". . . why should
punishments/ Due to the guilty, light on
innocents?" and goes on to complain that
". . . now the highest place/ Giveth to
naughty manners greatest grace,/ And
wicked people vex/ Good men, and tread
unjustly on their necks. . . ."
In this manner Boethius presents the
problem of evil as the subject matter of
his work. The answer, when it comes
after several books of discussion, is that
evil is nothing, all manner of fortune is
good, adversity makes virtue possible,
God knows what He is doing, and all is
for the best.
Baldly stated, such an answer would

satisfy no one, particularly a suffering
man. But Boethius reached this answer
only after leisurely, charming discourse
on value, man's condition, the nature of
God, and the uses of philosophy.
After Boethius has complained to
Philosophy, Philosophy reminds him that he
believes that God created all things; it
would be odd if he had doubt about
God's concern for the end of all things,
including men. She continues, in a
striking passage:
"But I would have thee answer me
to this also; dost thou remember that
thou art a man?" "Why should I not
remember it?" quoth I. "Well, then,
canst thou explicate what man is?"
"Dost thou ask me if I know that I am
a reasonable and mortal living creature?
I know and confess myself to be so."
To which she replied: "Dost thou not
know thyself to be anything else?"
"Not anything."
"Now I know," quoth she, "another,
and that perhaps the greatest, cause of
thy sickness: thou hast forgotten what
thou art . . ."
In Book Two, Philosophy tells
Boethius that Fortune is always changeable;
that is her nature. Philosophy then
determines that nothing is more precious to
a man than himself, and nothing of
himself is more important than his happiness.
But in what does happiness consist? Not
in wealth, for no matter how much a
man has, he wants more; material goods
fail to satisfy him, and covetous men
endanger him. Not in power and honors,
for they are given to the undeserving as
well as to the deserving, and that spoils
them for all men; furthermore, power
and honor will not keep a man from
giving way to lusts that can destroy him.
Nor does happiness reside in fame, for a
man who loves fame expects only glory
in this life, yet after death he has nothing.
Philosophy agrees with Aristotle that
all men love happiness, but the usual
goods which men pursue neither consist
in happiness nor bring happiness. Even
pleasure is not happiness, for it enslaves
a man and turns his attention away from
what could make him happy. Philosophy
decides that only the Sovereign God is
true goodness, happiness, and blessedness.
Anything else which is ever good, such
as power, fame, and pleasure, is good
because it is not in addition to, but part of,
the blessedness which is God. The
substance of God consists in goodness. This
argument comprises the content of Book
Three.
In the following book Philosophy
argues that if nothing is more powerful
than God and God is goodness, then
evil cannot be absolute and evil men
cannot truly triumph. Philosophy agrees
with Plato that "only wise men can do
that which they desire"; wicked men do
what pleases them but not what they
would do if they were to choose action
capable of leading to happiness. The evil
are punished by the fact of doing evil;
they deprive themselves of the good
which would otherwise be theirs.
Wickedness makes men into beasts: the violent
are like wolves; the angry, like dogs; the
treacherous, like the fox; the outrageous,
like the lion; the fearful, like the deer;
the slow and stupid, like the ass; the
inconstant, like the birds; the lustful, like
sows. "So that he who, leaving virtue,
ceaseth to be a man, since he cannot be
partaker of the divine condition, is turned
into a beast."
In considering God's Providence,
Philosophy tells Boethius, one is forced to
the conclusion that evil "hath no place
left for it at all." Therefore, "all manner
of fortune is good." If it sometimes seems
that the wicked prosper and the virtuous
suffer, it is because men do not always
realize the value of adversity, how
adversity challenges man's spirit and makes
him virtuous.
In Book Five Philosophy assures
Boethius that man has free will even though
everything is a manifestation of God's
Providence. God's contemplation does not
prevent the free exercise of man's reason
678

and will. The necessity of doing well is "since you live in the sight of your Judge,
one which man's spirit imposes on itself who beholdeth all things."
679

CONSUELO
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Sand (Mme. Aurore Dudevant, 1804-1876)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Venice, Bohemia, Vienna
First published: 1842
Principal characters:
Consuelo, a singer
Anzoleto, her betrothed
Porpora, her music master and godfather
Count Rudolstadt, a Bohemian nobleman
Albert, his son
Corilla, Consuelo's rival
Joseph Haydn, a composer
Critique:
Although George Sand was one of the
most popular novelists of the nineteenth
century, her style seems somewhat
tedious to present-day readers. The plot of
Consuelo, interesting as it is, suffers
at times from the excessive detail with
which the thoughts and movements of
the main characters are depicted. The
author's many literary skills are exhibited,
however, in this novel. Her descriptive
passages are beautiful and moving, and
her intimate knowledge of music and
musicians enabled her to write
convincing characterizations of many of the
people whom Consuelo met in her travels.
All told, Consuelo is well worth the effort
spent reading it, for its virtues at least
balance, if not outweigh, its defects.
The Story:
At the church of the Mendicanti in
Venice, Consuelo was the most gifted of
all the pupils of the famous teacher,
Porpora. Consuelo was a poor orphan
child, and Porpora had made her his
goddaughter. Before the death of her mother,
Consuelo had promised that she would
one day become betrothed to Anzoleto,
another poor musician of Venice.
Through the efforts of Anzoleto,
Consuelo was engaged as the prima donna
at the theater of Count Zustiniani,
replacing Corilla, who had also been Por-
pora's student. Consuelo was a great
success, but Anzoleto, who had also been
engaged in the theater at the insistence
of Consuelo, was not much of a musician
and was not well received. Anzoleto,
afraid that he would be discharged,
pretended to be in love with Corilla,
thinking that he would be safe if both singers
were in love with him.
Porpora had never liked Anzoleto, and
at last he contrived to have Consuelo
visit Corilla's home. When they found
Anzoleto there, Consuelo was so hurt
that she left Venice at once, vowing that
she would never set foot on the stage
again, and renouncing the false
Anzoleto forever.
From Venice Consuelo went to
Bohemia, where she was engaged by Count
Rudolstadt as a companion for his niece,
Amelia. This young noblewoman had
been betrothed to young Count Albert
Rudolstadt, but she feared him because
he seemed to be insane. Albert often
had visions in which he saw scenes of the
past and often imagined himself to be the
reincarnated body of some person long
dead.
When Albert first heard Consuelo sing,
he called her by her name, even though
she had taken another name to hide her
unhappy life in Venice. Albert told
Consuelo and the whole family that she
was his salvation—that she had been
sent to remove the curse from him.
Consuelo was bewildered.
Albert often disappeared for many
680

days at a time, no one knew where.
Consuelo followed him, but could never
find his hiding place until the night she
descended into a deep well and found
steps leading to a grotto where Albert
and an idiot called Zdenko spent many
days together. Zdenko loved Albert more
than his own life; when he saw
Consuelo coming into the well, he thought
she wanted to harm Albert and almost
killed her. Consuelo escaped from
Zdenko and found Albert, and after she
spoke soothingly to him he ceased his
mad talk and seemed to regain normal
behavior. She persuaded him to return
to his family and not to go back to the
grotto without her. Albert told Consuelo
that he loved her and needed her; but
although she no longer loved Anzoleto,
she could not forget how she had once
loved him, and she asked Albert to wait
a while for her answer.
Albert's father and the rest of the
family were grateful to Consuelo for
helping restore Albert to his senses. The
father, Count Rudolstadt, even told
Consuelo that he would give his consent to a
marriage between his son and her, for
the old gentleman believed that only
Consuelo could keep his son sane. While
Consuelo was debating whether she loved
Albert and could accept the honor,
Anzoleto, having deserted Corilla, came to the
castle in search of her. Consuelo slipped
away from the casde, leaving a note for
Albert. She went to Vienna to rejoin
Porpora.
Without funds, Consuelo had great
difficulty in reaching Vienna, and had
to walk most of the way. In her travels,
she met Joseph Haydn, a young
composer who had been on his way to the
castle to find her; he had hoped he could
persuade her to take him to Porpora,
under whom he wished to study. Dressed
as a peasant boy, Consuelo accompanied
Haydn to Vienna. One night they took
refuge in the home of a canon of the
Church. While they were there, Corilla
came to the door, seeking a safe place
to give birth to her child. Consuelo had
pity on her former enemy and took
Corilla to an inn, where she helped to
deliver the child. From a maid,
Consuelo learned that Anzoleto was the
father. Corilla did not recognize
Consuelo, who continued to wear the
disguise of a boy.
When Joseph and Consuelo finally
reached Vienna, the girl found Porpora
overjoyed to see her again. Haydn
became Porpora's pupil, and Consuelo
sang for the Empress. Then Corilla,
who had also come to Vienna and learned
that it was Consuelo who befriended
her during the birth of her child,
arranged for Consuelo to sing in the
theater there. Corilla hoped to seal the
lips of Consuelo, who knew of the
illegitimate child and knew also that Corilla
had abandoned the baby in the home of
the canon who had given Consuelo and
Joseph shelter. Anzoleto was never heard
from again.
Consuelo wrote to Albert, telling him
that she was almost ready to return to
him, but Porpora intercepted the letter
and tore it up. Consuelo waited in vain
for a reply from Albert. At last,
Porpora told her that he had received a
letter from the count, saying that he did
not wish his son to marry an actress, and
that Albert had concurred in the
decision. Consuelo so trusted her godfather
that she believed him, not realizing how
ambitious Porpora was for her musical
career.
Porpora went with Consuelo to accept
a theater engagement in Berlin. On the
way they met the brother of Count
Rudolstadt. Albert had asked his father to
have someone at a certain place on the
road on a specific day and at a specific
hour, saying that the messenger was to
bring the travelers he would meet there
to the castle at once. Albert was very
ill, and Consuelo persuaded Porpora to
allow her to go to Albert. When she
arrived at the castle, she learned that his
father had received a letter from Porpora
saying that he would never consent to
a marriage between Consuelo and Albert
681

and that Consuelo herself had renounced
Albert. It had been the deathblow.
Albert grew very weak and begged
Consuelo to marry him before he died so
that his soul could find peace; he still
believed that only through Consuelo
could he find salvation. So the marriage
vows were repeated, and Albert, crying
that he was now saved, died in Con-
suelo's arms.
Consuelo stayed with her husband all
night, leaving him only when he was
carried to his bier. She then bade Albert's
family goodbye, refusing to accept any of
the fortune which was now hers. Then
she left the castle and went to join Por-
pora in Berlin, where Frederick the
Great himself worshipped both her
beauty and her art.
682

THE COPPERHEAD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Harold Frederic (1856-1898)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: 1860's
Locale: Four Corners, New York
First published: 1893
Principal characters:
Abner Beech, a farmer
Hurley, his hired man
Jeff, his son
Esther Hagadorn, Jeff's sweetheart
Jee Hagadorn, a cooper, Esther's father
Ni Hagadorn, his son
Jimmy, an orphan
Critique:
The Copperhead is the story of the
fortitude of one man in opposition to his
neighbors. Although Harold Frederic
deplores the irrationality of society in time
of stress, the true significance of the
theme lies in the thought that it is
impossible properly to judge, much less
to condemn, a man for his political views
unless one comes to understand the
personal motivations of the man himself.
The story is seen through the eyes of a
young boy who himself plays little part
in the action. The local descriptions are
vivid and a sense of realism is carried by
the heavily flavored dialects and regional
locutions of the farmers who live in the
community of Four Corners.
The Story:
Abner Beech was a stalwart, shaggy
man, who had often been supervisor of
his district. Jimmy, who was an orphan,
went to live with him when he was six
or seven years old. Abner was a town
leader, a great reader, and he owned
more books than most people did in
Dearborn County, located in northern New
York State.
For some reason, Abner Beech
violently hated the Abolitionists. The first
Abolitionist in Dearborn County, as far
as Jimmy knew, was old Jee Hagadorn,
but now nearly everyone except Abner
Beech shared the old man's sentiments.
Because the Anti-abolitionists were
attacked from the pulpit every Sunday at
church meeting, Abner and Jimmy finally
stopped going to church. Then someone
spread the rumor that Abner's milk had
not been accepted at the communal
cheese factory because he had put water
into it. At that time Abner's household
became real outcasts in Four Corners.
One day in August, Abner came home
early from the field. He was furious
because he learned that Jeff, his only son,
had been seen walking with Esther
Hagadorn, the daughter of his enemy. Abner
sent Jimmy to call Jeff home. When
Jimmy found Jeff and Esther, the young
man gave the boy his fishing pole and
told him to tell Abner that he was going
to Tecumseh to enlist in the Union
Army. When Jimmy told Jeff's parents
what Jeff had said, they took the news
calmly. They had already guessed his
intention, for on that same day an entire
group of boys from the area had gone off
to enlist.
Abner's hired man also enlisted, and
Abner hired an Irish widower, Hurley,
who had been doing odd jobs in the
neighborhood. Hurley was also an Anti-
abolitionist, the only one in the area
besides Abner. It was understood in
Abner's household that Jeff's name should
never be mentioned, and Abner refused
to show regret over the departure of his
683

only son.
In late September, Hurley and Jimmy
went to Octavius to buy some butter
firkins; Abner refused to buy firkins from
Jee Hagadorn, who lived close by. In
Octavius Hurley and Jimmy learned of the
terrible battle at Antietam, in which a
number of the boys from Dearborn
County had taken part. Hurley got into a fight
when some of the citizens taunted him
for being a Copperhead, a Northerner
who sympathized with the Southern cause
in the Civil War.
On the way home from Octavius,
Jimmy went to see Jee Hagadorn. Jimmy
found Esther there, worrying about Jeff.
Jee came home elated because Lincoln
had signed the Emancipation
Proclamation.
A fortnight later the Beech household
learned that Jeff Beech and Byron Truax
had been reported missing after a battle
in the South.
The work on the farm continued.
Warner Pitts, Abner's former hired man,
came home on furlough as an officer. A
hero to the townspeople, one day he
called Abner a Copperhead. Ni
Hagadorn, Jee's son, did not like Warner
Pitts, and so he went to Abner's house
to tell him that he was going south to
try to find Jeff. Abner refused, however,
to give Ni any money to help him on his
journey.
The local citizens were beginning to
feel that the North was not carrying on
the war as vigorously as they expected.
On election day, November 4, Jimmy
accompanied Abner and Hurley to the
polls. Abner voted proudly, but the
inspector said that Hurley's naturalization
papers were not in order and that he
could not vote. When a fight started,
another inspector then said that Hurley
could vote. A few days later it was
learned that the Abolitionists had lost in
that congressional district. Abner was
overjoyed, believing that this defeat
would lead to peace and an end of what
he called murder. To celebrate, Janey,
one of the hired girls, made a big
bonfire.
The next day Jimmy was in bed with
a cold. To the amazement of everyone,
Esther Hagadorn came in and asked to
speak to Abner. When Abner came home
he was civil to Esther and asked her to
stay to supper. Esther said that there was
a rumor to the effect that Copperheads
were spreading clothes that had smallpox
in them and that the local citizens were
fearful and angry. She said that Abner's
bonfire to celebrate the voting results had
made them even angrier and that they
were planning to come for Abner that
night. Esther then accepted Abner's
invitation to remain and have supper with
them.
The townspeople arrived to tar and
feather Abner and Hurley and to ride
them on a rail. Abner, however, stood
firm, a loaded shotgun on his arm.
Suddenly Jimmy realized that the house was
afire. He fainted.
Jimmy regained consciousness later
that night. It was snowing, and the house
had been completely burned. With some
of the furniture that they were able to
rescue, Abner and his wife, M'rye, had
improvised a home in the cold barn.
Esther, still with them, had regained the
friendship of M'rye, since they were both
able to talk about Jeff again.
Jimmy, unable to sleep that night,
overheard Esther talking to Abner. Abner
said that he believed that the
townspeople had started a fire for the tarring
and feathering* and that, because of the
strong wind, his house had caught fire
accidentally. Esther said that Abner was
really liked and respected by the
townspeople but that they could not be
expected to behave reasonably because so
many husbands and sons were now
involved in the war.
At that point Jee Hagadorn arrived in
search of his daughter. Abner pulled off
Jee's wet boots and gave him some warm
socks. They had breakfast in near silence.
Suddenly Ni Hagadorn appeared. He told
M'rye that Jeff had been only slightly
hurt and was due home any day. M'rye
684

suddenly ran out of the barn, where she
found Jeff returned from the war after
having lost his left arm.
While everyone was welcoming Jeff
and offering condolences, an unexpected
visitor arrived. He was Squire Avery, who
wanted, on behalf of the townspeople, to
apologize for the events of the previous
night. Hoping to let bygones be bygones,
he asked Abner to send milk to the cheese
factory again. He also wanted to have a
house-raising bee for Abner's new house
and to lend him money if he needed it.
Abner, filled with the spirit of
forgiveness, said that all of these kindnesses
were nearly worth the house burning.
He and M'rye expressed the hope that
Jeff and Esther would marry.
685

CORIOLANUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical tragedy
Time of plot: Third century
Locale: Rome, Corioli, and Antium
First presented: c. 1609
Principal characters:
Caius Marcius Coriolanus, a noble Roman
Titus Lartius, and
Cominius, generals against the Volscians
Menenius Agrippa, friend of Coriolanus
Tullus Aufidius, general of the Volscians
Sicinius Velutus, and
Junius Brutus, tribunes of the people
Volumnia, mother of Coriolanus
Virgilia, wife of Coriolanus
Critique:
The Tragedy of Coriolanus, a powerful
study of a man's willful spirit and his
inability to follow the advice of those who
would help him, moves with a fluency not
found in all of Shakespeare's plays. This
faster tempo is the result, chiefly, of a
terseness of line and a highly compact
unity of plot. The play is devoid of
prolonged soliloquy and subplot to divert the
attention, with the whole action so closely
geared to the- title character that the play
leaves but a single impression upon
audience and reader alike.
The Story:
Caius Marcius, a brilliant soldier, was
attempting to subdue a mob in Rome
when he was summoned to lead his troops
against the Volscians from Corioli. The
Volscians were headed by Tullus Aufidius,
also a great soldier and perennial foe of
Marcius. The hatred the two leaders had
for each other fired their military
ambitions. Marcius' daring as a warrior, known
by all since he was sixteen, led him to
pursue the enemy inside the very gates of
Corioli. Locked inside the city, he and his
troops fought so valiantly that they
overcame the Volscians. Twice wounded, the
victorious general was garlanded and
hailed as Caius Marcius Coriolanus.
On his return to Rome, Coriolanus was
further proclaimed by patrician, consul,
and senator; and he was recommended for
the office of consul, an appointment
whole-heartedly approved by the nobles.
Because the citizens also had to vote on his
appointment, Coriolanus, accompanied
by Menenius Agrippa, went to Sicinius
and Brutus, the plebian tribunes, to seek
their approval.
The people had long held only
contempt for Coriolanus because of his
arrogance and inhumane attitude toward
all commoners. Although coached and
prompted by Menenius to make his
appeal as a wound-scarred soldier of many
wars, Coriolanus was not able to bring
himself to solicit the citizens' approval. He
could only request and demand their
support, which he got from individuals
approached at random on the streets.
But Brutus and Sicinius, as
representatives of the common people, were not
willing to endorse the elevation of Coriolanus
to office. Voicing the opinions of many
citizens in their accusations against
Coriolanus for his abuses in denying the
people food from the public storehouses
and for his insolence, Brutus and Sicinius
urged the citizens to rescind their votes
for Coriolanus. They pointed out that his
military prowess was not to be denied, but
that this very attribute would result in
further suppression and misery for the
people. Coriolanus' ambitions, they pre-
686

dieted, would lead to his complete
domination of the government, thereby
destroying their democracy.
The repeated pleading by Menenius,
Cominius, and the senators that Corio-
lanus relent and approach the tribunes
civilly in order to realize his political
desires gave rise to Volumnia's admonition
that he take the measures advised and gain
the election. Volumnia, appealing to his
responsibility as a Roman, pointed out
that service to one's country was not
shown on the battlefield alone and that
Coriolanus must use certain strategies and
tactics for victory in peace as well as in
war.
Coriolanus misconstrued his mother's
suggestions. She had taught him
arrogance, nurtured his desires in military
matters, and boasted of his strength and
of her part in developing his dominating
personality. Because of her attitude,
Coriolanus inferred that his mother in her
older years was asking for submissiveness
and compliance. Although he promised
Volumnia that he would deal kindly with
the people, it was impossible for him to
relent.
Virgilia, his wife, who had never
condoned his soldiership, lent her pleas to
those of the group, but he spurned her
appeal to his vanity as a capable political
leader and to his responsibility as a father
and husband.
Coriolanus' persistence in his derision
and mockery of the citizens led to an
uprising against him. Drawing his sword, he
would have stood alone against the mob,
but Menenius and Cominius, fearing that
the demonstration might result in an
overthrow of the government, prevailed upon
him to withdraw to his house before the
crowd assembled.
Coriolanus, mistaking the requests of
his friends and family that he yield to the
attitudes of the common people for denials
of loyalty and devotion to him, displayed
such arrogance that he was banished from
Rome. Tullus Aufidius, learning what was
happening, prepared his armies to take
advantage of the civil unrest in Rome.
Coriolanus, in disguise for protection
against the many who would avenge the
deaths of those whom he had killed
earlier, went to Antium to offer his
services to Aufidius against Rome. When
Coriolanus removed his disguise, Aufidius,
who well knew the Roman's ability as a
military leader, willingly accepted his
presence and his offer to aid in the
Volscian campaign. Aufidius divided his
army in order that he and Coriolanus each
could lead a unit, thereby broadening the
scope of his efforts against the Romans.
Aufidius foresaw in his plan the
possibility of avenging his earlier defeats by
Coriolanus. When they had taken Rome,
Aufidius thought, the hatred the Romans
held for Coriolanus would make easy his
dominance over the arrogant patrician.
The Romans heard with dismay of
Coriolanus' affiHation with Aufidius; their
only hope, it was claimed, was to appeal
to Coriolanus to spare the city. Although
Menenius and Cominius blamed the
tribunes for the banishment of
Coriolanus, they went as messengers to the
great general in his camp outside the gates
of Rome. Unsuccessful in their efforts,
Cominius returned to inform the citizens
that Coriolanus, in spite of old
friendships, would not be swayed in his
intentions to annihilate the city. Coriolanus
could not, Cominius reported, take time
to find the few grains who were his
friends among all the chaff that he
intended to burn.
Menenius, sent to appeal again to
Coriolanus, met with the same failure,
Coriolanus maintaining that his ears were
stronger against the pleas than the city
gates were against his might. Calling the
attention of Aufidius to his firm stand
against the Romans, he asked Aufidius to
report his conduct to the Volscian lords.
Aufidius promised and praised the general
for his stalwartness. While Coriolanus
was vowing that he would not hear the
pleas of another Roman, he was
interrupted by women's voices calling his
name.
The petitioners were Volumnia, Vir-
687

gilia, and young Marcius, his son.
Reaffirming to Aufidius his determination to
demolish Rome, he told the callers he
would not be moved, and he urged
Aufidius to observe his unyielding spirit.
Volumnia answered that their requests for
leniency and mercy were in vain since he
had already proclaimed against
kindliness; therefore, they would not appeal to
him. She also declared that he made it
impossible for them to pray to the gods; they
could not pray for victory for Rome,
because such supplication would be against
him, and to pray for his success in the
campaign was to betray their country.
Volumnia suggested that she was not
seeking advantage for either the Romans or
the Volscians. Asking only for
reconciliation between the two governments, she
declared that Coriolanus would be a hero
to both sides if he could arrange an
honorable peace between them.
Moved by his mother's reasoning,
Coriolanus announced to Aufidius that he
would frame a convenient peace between
the two forces. Even Aufidius declared
that he had been moved by Volumnia's
solemn pleas and wise words. Volumnia,
Virgilia, and young Marcius returned to
Rome, there to be welcomed for the
success of their intercession with Coriolanus.
Aufidius withdrew to Antium to await
the return of Coriolanus and their
meeting with the Roman ambassadors. But as
Aufidius reviewed the incidents of the
day, he realized that peace would nullify
his plan for revenge against Coriolanus.
Also, he was aware of the favorable regard
the Volscians had for the Roman. He had
to remove the man who had been his
conqueror in war and who might become
his subduer in peace. At a meeting of the
Volscian lords Aufidius announced that
Coriolanus had betrayed the Volscians by
depriving them of victory. In the
confusion he stabbed Coriolanus to death.
Regretting his deed, he then eulogized
Coriolanus and said that he would live
forever in men's memory. One of the
Volscian lords pronounced Coriolanus the
most noble corpse that was ever followed
to the grave.
688

THE CORSICAN BROTHERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802-1870)
Type of flot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1841
Locale: Corsica and Paris
First published: 1845
Principal characters:
Alexandre Dumas, narrator of the story and traveler in Corsica
Lucien de FrancAi, a Corsican at whose home Dumas spent a night
Louis de Franchi, Lucien's brother, and a law student in Paris
Emelie, a married woman with whom Louis is in love
M. de Chateau-Renaud, Louis' rival for EmehVs affections
Critique:
The story of Lucien and Louis, two
brothers unlike in temperament and
interests, yet held together by a bond which
stretches even beyond the grave, is in the
true romantic vein. The pace of the novel
never lags; its colorfulness is in the florid,
robust tradition of French romanticism.
The Story:
In March, 1841, Alexandre Dumas
was traveling, with his horse and guide,
on the island of Corsica. One day he
arrived at the top of a hill overlooking
the towns of Olmeto and Sullacaro; and
in accordance with the custom followed
by travelers on that island, he surveyed
the scene before him in order to decide
at whose house he would spend the night.
Hospitality was an ancient art on Corsica,
where it was considered an honor to
entertain a guest without recompense. From
his vantage point Dumas decided upon
a house which his guide informed him
was the Sullacaro property of Madame
Savilia de Franchi.
The weary traveler was cordially
welcomed by Madame de Franchi and shown
to the room of her absent son, Louis.
She promised that her other son would
soon be home and would pay his respects
on his arrival. A few minutes later young
Lucien de Franchi knocked at the guest's
door.
Dumas gathered from the youth's
conversation that there was little likeness
between the twin de Franchi brothers in
appearance or tastes. Lucien, browned and
robust, was dressed in riding clothes. He
could not, he said, be forced to leave his
native mountains. Louis, he declared,
was a student who had spent most of
his time indoors with his books. In spite
of variance in interests, Lucien continued,
they were devoted to each other.
So that they might continue their
conversation while he dressed, Lucien invited
the guest to his room, a chamber in
contrast with that of the absent Louis. The
student's room was furnished in the
modern French manner and filled with
books. Lucien's furniture was all of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the
walls were hung with weapons of every
type. Lucien exhibited two pistols, each
bearing a similar date and inscription on
its butt, which had belonged to his father
and mother.
When the two men rejoined Madame
de Franchi, she anxiously asked Lucien
if he had anything to tell her about Louis.
He replied that he had not. To the guest
Lucien explained that the brothers, born
attached and cut apart, experienced like
impressions at the same time. Because he
had felt melancholy for the past few days,
he knew his brother must be in trouble.
He knew Louis was not dead, however,
for if he had been he would have seen
his twin in a vision.
At dinner Lucien explained that he
had to go out later, as he had been chosen
mediator to bring to an end an ancient
689

vendetta between the Orlandi and Q>
lonna families. That evening Lucien was
to meet with the leader of the Orlandi
clan at a ruin about a league from town
so that a reconciliation might take place
the following day. He invited Dumas to
accompany him.
In the moonlight they climbed a hill
on which stood the ruins of an old house
which had belonged to an ancestress of
the de Franchis, a woman who some four
hundred years before had become
involved in a feud with the de Guidice
family. The pistols in Lucien's room
celebrated the end of the vendetta,
concluded when his parents had
simultaneously killed two brothers, the last of their
hereditary enemies.
The head of the Orlandi clan agreed,
after some urging, to bring his family to
Sullacaro the following morning so that
a peace treaty with the Colonna clan
might be signed. After Lucien had shot
a pheasant, he and his guest began their
descent to the town.
The following morning Dumas was on
hand to witness the conciliation of the
Orlandi and Colonna families as they
marched from either end of the town to
stand before the church. After a pact had
been signed before the village notary, the
clan leaders attended mass together.
That afternoon Dumas was forced to
leave for Paris. After exchanging his
hunting belt for one of Lucien's daggers,
he started for the coast. Lucien had given
Dumas a letter for his brother, and
Madame de Franchi had begged that he
himself should deliver it. The author sought
out the young man immediately on his
arrival in Paris. Louis was not at home.
In answer to a note left by Dumas, he
came to call the next day. Dumas was
surprised at the resemblance between
Louis and his brother. In response to
inquiries, the young man admitted that he
had been suffering from a bitter private
grief. Unfortunately, he was in a hurry
and could not stay long that day. It was
agreed that he and Dumas would meet
the following night at an opera ball.
When he kept his appointment with
his new friend, Louis appeared distraught
and at first did not want to accompany
Dumas to a supper party to be given after
the ball by D—, a friend of the writer.
When he understood, however, that a
M. de Chateau-Renaud would be present
and that this gentleman had a bet with
his host that he would bring a certain
unidentified personage with him, the Cor-
sican declared he would go.
At the party Dumas and Louis
discovered that de Chateau-Renaud had
gambled on bringing a young married woman
with him and on being able to present
her before four o'clock. The couple
arrived only a few minutes before the hour,
the man forcing rather than escorting
his companion. When she realized, from
the few words which de Chateau-Renaud
let slip to their host, that she had been
the object of a bet, she insisted on leaving
immediately and asked Louis to take her
home. When the young man consented,
he was challenged by de Chateau-Renaud.
Although he had never handled a
weapon, Louis accepted the challenge.
Later that day Dumas called on his
young friend and agreed to serve as a
second in the duel. Louis explained that
Emelie, the young woman whose cause
he had championed, had been entrusted
to his care by her husband, a sea captain.
Deeply in love with her, he had made
every effort to conceal his passion. When,
to his dismay, he realized she was
carrying on an affair with de Chateau-
Renaud, he had attempted to reprove her
but had been accused of jealousy for his
pains. Then, by chance, he had been
invited to D—ys party, where Emelie had
appeared as the result of de Chateau-
Renaud's wager.
The duel, with pistols, was to take
place next morning at nine. Dumas
arrived at Louis* rooms at seven-thirty and
found the young man writing a letter
690

in which he informed his mother and
brother that he was writing in a lucid
interval, but that he would soon be dead
of brain fever. He explained to Dumas
that he had been visited by his father the
previous night and been told that he
would die. Not wishing his family to
know the true circumstances of his death,
he asked his friend to send the letter so
that Lucien would not come to Paris
seeking vengeance and so, perhaps, be killed.
The young Corsican died, as he hid
predicted. A bullet entered below his
sixth rib, and came out just above his hip
on the other side of his body. Dumas
mailed the letter as he had promised.
Five days later he was surprised by a
visit from Lucien, who could not yet
have learned of his brother's fate. The
Corsican declared he had been out riding
the day his brother was killed, and at the
moment of Louis' death he had felt as
though a bullet had pierced him also.
To Dumas' astonishment, he showed an
inflamed mark below the sixth rib on his
own body. The following morning he had
set out for Paris, with his mother's
blessing.
Two days later Lucien stood facing
de Chateau-Renaud on the spot where
his brother had fallen. An instant later
de Chateau-Renaud lay dead, a bullet
through his head, and Lucien shed his
first tears since Louis' death.
691

THE COSSACKS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: The Caucasus
First published: 1863
Principal characters:
Olyenin, a Russian aristocrat
Maryanka, a Cossack girl
Lukashka, a young Cossack, betrothed to Maryanka
Uncle Yeroshka, an old Cossack retired from service
Critique:
The Cossacks is one of Tolstoy's lesser
known and shorter novels, but in it is one
of the finest pictures of Cossack life and
the Cossack people in all Russian
literature. Against that primitive background
Tolstoy placed two psychological
problems. The first is that of a young man who
wants to love and who wants to fit into
society. The second problem is that of the
difficulty of a primitive society in
accepting the domination of a higher culture. In
the reactions of a Russian aristocrat and
a Cossack girl one sees quite clearly the
same problems that occurred when a body
of Russians appeared in a Cossack village
to aid in defending the borders. The two
groups could not at all times admire,
respect, or conceive affection for one
another, despite the fact that they were
allied against a strong and determined foe.
The Story:
Olyenin, a young Russian aristocrat,
decided to leave the society of Moscow
and enter the army as a junior officer for
service in the Caucasus. There were a
number of reasons for his decision: he had
squandered a large part of his estate, he
was bored with what he considered an
empty life, and he was in some
embarrassment because of a love affair in which he
could not reciprocate the woman's love.
Olyenin left the city after a farewell
party one cold, wintry night. He and
his servant, Vanyusha, traveled steadily
southward toward the Caucasus, land of
the Cossacks. The farther Olyenin went
on his journey the better he felt about the
new life he was about to begin. In a year's
service he saw the opportunity to save
money, to rearrange his philosophy, and
to escape from a mental state which did
not permit him to love. He was sure that
in a new environment he could become
less egocentric, that he could learn to love
others as he loved himself.
Shortly after he joined his \mit, he was
one of a force sent out along the Terek
river hne to guard against depredations by
the tribes who lived in the mountains and
on the steppes south of the river. The
troops were to reinforce the Cossacks who
lived in the narrow strip of verdant land
which bordered the river. Olyenin's unit
was stationed in the village of Novomlin,
a small settlement of houses and farms
with a population of less than two
thousand people, mainly Cossacks.
The Cossack men spent their time in
hunting and standing guard at posts along
the Terek river, while the women tended
the homes and farms. When Olyenin's
unit moved into the village, he, as an
aristocrat, was not assigned duties with the
troops, and so his time was largely his
own.
The .Cossacks did not like the Russian
troops, for there were years of enmity
and different cultures to be reconciled.
Olyenin, quartered in the house of a
Cossack ensign, soon learned that he was
not welcome. They were accepting him
and his servant only because the house-
692

hold had to take them in.
In the house lived an ensign, his wife,
and their daughter Maryanka. The girl
had been spoken for in marriage by a
young Cossack, Lukashka, a hero in his
village because he had saved a boy from
death by drowning and had killed a
mountain tribesman who had attempted
to swim across the river during a raid.
Olyenin quickly became infatuated with
Maryanka. He did not know how to act
in her presence, however, because he was
bewildered by the possibility of a love
affair between himself and the young,
uncultured Cossack girl.
Olyenin made friends with Lukashka,
whom he met at an outpost while
hunting, and Uncle Yeroshka, an old Cossack
whose days of service were over. In
Yeroshka's company Olyenin went
hunting almost every day. He disliked drinking
bouts, gambling at cards with the other
officers, and the pleasure they found in
pursuing the women of the village whose
husbands and sweethearts were away on
duty. Olyenin was happier alone or with
Yeroshka hunting in die woods along the
Terek, where he could try to work out his
emotional problems.
At last Olyenin began to feel that he
could be happy through generosity to
others. He discovered that he enjoyed
giving a horse to Lukashka and presenting
old Yeroshka with small gifts that meant
little to Olyenin but a great deal to the old
man. In addition, Olyenin won the
respect of the Cossacks by his ability to
shoot pheasants on the wing, a new feat to
the Cossacks, who had never even seen it
done before.
As time passed Olyenin became more
and more aware of Masyanka's presence.
When the girl's parents announced
that she was formally engaged to
young Lukashka, the announcement
made Olyenin decide that he, too, was
really in love with her. He turned over in
his mind the possibilities that such a love
would entail. He could not imagine
taking the girl back to Moscow, into the
society to which he had expected to return
after his tour of duty, nor could he
imagine settling down for life in the
Cossack village. Although his stay there
meant a great deal to him, he knew that
he could never be happy following the
primitive life he saw there, for he had too
many ties, both social and material, in
the world he had temporarily left.
While Olyenin helped Maryanka pick
grapes in the vineyards, he had an
opportunity to declare his love. Maryanka
neither became angry nor repulsed him,
although she gave him little
encouragement. Later Olyenin, able to press his suit
at various times, promised to marry the
Cossack girl. She, on her part, refused to
say that she would marry him, for she too
realized the difficulties such a marriage
would bring about. Unlike most of the
Cossack girls, she was not free with her
favors and refused to let either Olyenin
or Lukashka share her bed. Lukashka,
well aware of what was happening, was
not worried; he felt that the situation
would right itself because he was actually
the better man of the two.
One day a small band of marauders
from across the Terek appeared a short
distance from the village. When the
Cossacks, accompanied by Olyenin, made a
sortie against them, the outlaws tied
themselves together, so that they could not run
away while they made a stand against the
Cossacks. After the battle Lukashka,
wounded by a gunshot, was carried back
to the village, where it was discovered
that he could not recover from his wound.
Maryanka, faced with the death of the
man her parents had chosen as her
husband, realized that her life and people
were widely separated from Olyenin and
the culture for which he stood. Deciding
that she could never have any lasting
affection for the Russian, she told Olyenin
bluntly of her decision. Olyenin requested
a change of duty to another unit.
Permission for the transfer having been granted,
he and his servant left the village and the
kind of life he never could learn to accept.
693

THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1844
Principal characters:
Edmond Dantes, a young sailor
Mercedes, his sweetheart
Ferdinand Mondego, a rival
M. Danglars, an ambitious shipmate
M. Villefort, a deputy
Valentine, his daughter
Abbe Faria, a prisoner at Chateau Dlf
Caderousse, an innkeeper
M. Morrel, a shipping master
Maximilian, his son
Albert, Mondego's son
Haidee, An Albanian
Critique:
The Count of Monte-Cristo is a good
story, and that seems to be its chief merit.
The characters are flat; they remain
courageous, avaricious, kind, loyal, selfish or
treacherous, in the conventional mold
the author has set for them. But in spite
of many defects the novel remains a
great work in literature, for the story of
the Count of Monte-Cristo is still a
breath-taking experience for all who read
his adventure, a dramatic tale filled with
mystery and intrigue.
The Story:
When Edmond Dantes sailed into
Marseilles harbor that day in 1815, he was
surrounded by enemies. His shipmate,
Danglars, coveted his appointment as
captain of the Pharaon. Ferdinand
Mondego wished to wed Mercedes, who was
betrothed to Edmond.
Danglars and Ferdinand wrote a note
accusing Edmond of carrying a letter
from Elba to the Bonapartist committee
in Paris. Caderousse, a neighbor, learned
of the plot but kept silent. On his
wedding day Edmond was arrested and taken
before a deputy named Villefort, a
political turncoat, who, to protect
himself, had Edmond secretly imprisoned in
the dungeons of the Chateau D'lf. There
Dantes* incarceration was secured by the
plotting of his enemies outside the prison,
notably Villefort, who wished to cover
up his own father's connections with the
Bonapartists.
Napoleon came from Elba, but
Edmond lay forgotten in his cell. The
cannonading at Waterloo died away. Years
passed. Then one night Edmond heard
the sound of digging from an adjoining
cell. Four days later a section of the
flooring fell in and Edmond saw an old
man in the narrow tunnel below. He
was the Abb£ Faria, whose attempt to
dig his way to freedom had led him only
to Edmond's cell. Thereafter the two
met daily, and the old man taught
Edmond history, mathematics, and
languages. In Edmond's fourteenth year of
imprisonment Faria, mortally ill, told
Edmond where to find a tremendous
fortune should he escape after the old man's
death. When death did come, the abbess
body was placed in a sack, and Edmond
conceived the idea of changing places
with the dead man, whom he dragged
through the tunnel into his own bed.
Jailers threw the sack into the sea.
Edmond ripped the cloth and swam through
the darkness to an islet in the bay.
At daybreak he was picked up by a
694

gang of smugglers with whom he worked
until a stroke of luck brought him to the
island of Monte-Cristo, where Faria's
fortune awaited him. He landed on the
island with the crew of the ship, and,
feigning injury in a fall, persuaded the
crew to leave him behind until they
could return for him. Thus he was able
to explore the island and to find his
treasure hidden in an underground cavern.
He returned to the mainland and there
sold some small jewels to provide himself
with money enough to carry out his
plans to bring his treasure from Monte-
Cristo. There he learned that his father
had died and Mercedes, despairing of
Edmond's return, had married Ferdinand.
Disguised as an abbe\ he visited M.
Caderousse to seek information of those
who had caused his imprisonment. M.
Villefort had gained fortune and station
in life. Danglars was a rich banker.
Ferdinand had won wealth and a title in
the Greek war. For this information
Edmond gave Caderousse a diamond
worth fifty thousand francs.
He learned also that his old shipping
master, M. Morrel, was on the verge of
bankruptcy. In gratitude, because
Morrel had given the older Dantes money
to keep him from starvation, Edmond
saved Morrel's shipping business.
Edmond took the name of his treasure
island. As the Count of Monte-Cristo
he dazzled all Paris with his fabulous
wealth and his social graces. He and his
mysterious protegee, a beautiful girl
named Haidle whom he had bought
during his travels in Greece, became the talk
of the boulevards.
Meanwhile he was slowly plotting the
ruin of the four men who had caused
him to be sent to the Chateau Dlf.
Caderousse was the first to be destroyed.
Monte-Cristo had awakened his greed
with the gift of a diamond. Later, urged
by his wife, Caderousse had committed
robbery and murder. Now, released from
prison, he attempted to rob Monte-Cristo
but was mortally wounded by an escaping
accomplice. As the man lay dying,
Monte-Cristo revealed his true name—
Edmond Dantes.
In Paris, Monte-Cristo had succeeded
in ingratiating himself with the banker,
Danglars, and was secretly ruining him.
Ferdinand was the next victim on his list.
Ferdinand had gained his wealth by
betraying Pasha Ali in the Greek
revolution of 1823. Monte-Cristo persuaded
Danglars to send to Greece for
confirmation of Ferdinand's operations there.
Ferdinand was exposed and Haid£e,
daughter of the Pasha Ali, appeared to
confront him with the story of her
father's betrayal. Albert, the son of
Mercedes and Ferdinand, challenged
Monte-Cristo to a duel to avenge his
father's disgrace. Monte-Cristo intended
to make his revenge complete by killing
the young man, but Mercedes came to
him and begged for her son's life. Aware
of Monte-Cristo's true identity, she
interceded with her son as well, and at
the scene of the duel the young man
publicly declared his fathers ruin had
been justified. Mother and son left
Paris. Ferdinand shot himself.
Monte-Cristo had also become
intimate with Madame Villefort and
encouraged her desire to possess the wealth of
her stepdaughter, Valentine, whom
Maximilian Morrel, son of the shipping
master, loved. The count had slyly
directed Madame Villefort in the use of
poisons, and the depraved woman
murdered three people. When Valentine
herself succumbed to poison, Maximilian
went to Monte-Cristo for help. Upon
learning that his friend Maximilian loved
Valentine, Monte-Cristo vowed to save
the young girl. But Valentine had
apparently died. Still Monte-Cristo
promised future happiness to Maximilian.
Meanwhile Danglars' daughter,
Eugenie, ran off to seek her fortune
independently, and Danglars found himself
bankrupt. He deserted his wife and fled
the country. Villefort having discovered
his wife's treachery and crimes,
confronted her with a threat of exposure.
She then poisoned herself and her son
695

Edward, for whose sake she had poisoned
the others. Monte-Cristo revealed his
true name to Villefort, who subsequently
went mad.
But Monte-Cristo had not deceived
Maximilian. He had rescued Valentine
while she lay in a drugged coma in the
tomb. Now he reunited the two Jovers
on his island of Monte-Cristo. They were
given the count's wealth, and Monte-
Cristo sailed away with Haid6e never
to be seen again.
696

THE COUNTERFEITERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Andre Gide (1869-1951)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early 1920's
Locale: Paris
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Edouard, a writer
Olivier Molinier, his nephew
George Molester, Olivier s younger brother
Vincent Molinier, Olivier's older brother
Bernard Profitendieu, Olivier's friend and Edouard's secretary
Laura Douviers, Edouard's friend
Comte de Passavant, a libertine
Armand Vedel, Laura's brother and Olivier's friend
Critique:
The Counterfeiters traces the behavior
pattern of a group of youths, each
stimulated by intimate contact with an older
individual. It is generally considered
Gide's finest novel and one of the
noteworthy novels in contemporary fiction.
The author's ability to create real
characters, to understand them and present
them for our understanding, is
remarkable. His intention is to show that man
must follow the dictates of his own heart
and ignore convention, if he wishes to
find full expression and happiness.
The Story:
When seventeen-year-old Bernard
Profitendieu discovered an old love letter of
his mother's and realized that he was an
illegitimate son, he left a scathing letter
for the man whom he had considered his
real father and ran away from home.
He spent that night with his friend,
Olivier Molinier. Olivier told him of
his Uncle Edouard, a writer, who would
be arriving from England the following
day, and also of a woman with whom his
older brother Vincent was involved.
The next morning Bernard left before
Olivier had awakened. For a time he
wondered what to do. He idly decided
to go to the station and watch Olivier
meet his uncle.
That same morning Vincent visited
his friend, the notorious homosexual,
Comte de Passavant. He was disturbed
over his affair with Laura Douviers, a
married woman whom he had met while
both were patients in a sanatorium. Upon
her release she had followed Vincent
to Paris.
Edouard was returning to Paris
because of a promise to Laura. He had
known her before her marriage, and had
told her to call upon him whenever
necessary. He was also looking forward
to seeing his nephew Olivier, of whom
he was very fond. So excited was he,
in fact, that, after checking his bag, he
threw away his checkroom ticket. But
the meeting with his nephew was
unsatisfactory.
Bernard, unobserved, had watched the
meeting between the two. He picked up
the checkroom ticket Edouard had
dropped and claimed the bag. In it he
discovered a large sum of money, which
he quickly pocketed; Edouard's journal,
which he read without scruple; and
Laura's supplicating letter.
With no definite plan in mind, he
called on Laura. Laura was disturbed
by the young man who knew so much
THE COUNTERFEITERS by Andr6 Gide. Translated by Dorothy Bussy. By permission of the publisher*,
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1927, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
697

about her affairs, but his actions became
understandable when Edouard arrived
and Bernard admitted the theft of the
bag. Bernard said that he had stolen it
as a means of getting in touch with
Edouard. Edouard was very much taken
with the young man's impudent charm.
When Bernard suggested that he might
fill the role of a secretary, Edouard
agreed.
A few days later, with Bernard as his
secretary, Edouard took Laura to
Switzerland. Bernard wrote to Olivier in
glowing terms about his new position. Olivier
was jealous of Bernard, who, he felt,
had taken his place in Edouard's
affections. He decided to take an editorial
assignment offered him by Comte de
Passavant.
In the meantime Bernard fell in love
with Laura. When he confessed his
love, Laura showed him a letter from
her husband, begging her to come back
to him with her child and Vincent's.
She had decided to return to him.
Bernard and Edouard returned to Paris.
A letter arrived from Olivier to
Bernard. He was in Italy with de Passavant,
and he wrote complacently about the
wonderful journal they intended to
publish. Bernard showed the letter to
Edouard, who failed to realize that the letter
disguised the boy's real feelings of
jealousy and hurt.
Bernard, although still acting as
Edouard's secretary, had enrolled in the
Vedel School and was living in the Vedel
household. The Vedels were Laura's
parents and Edouard's close friends.
Edouard was particularly fond of Rachel,
Laura's older sister, and it distressed him
to see that she was devoting all her time
and energy to managing the school.
Bernard told Edouard about some
children, including George Molinier,
Olivier's younger brother, who were
engaged in some underhanded activities.
The boys, as Bernard was soon to learn,
were passing counterfeit coins.
Olivier returned to Paris to get in
touch with Bernard. The meeting
between the two was strained. As they
parted, Olivier invited Edouard and
Bernard to a party which de Passavant was
giving that evening. Olivier then went
to call on another old friend, Armand
Vedel, Laura's younger brother. Armand
refused the invitation to the party, but
suggested that Olivier ask his sister
Sarah to go in his place. Bernard, who
was living at the school, was to serve
as her escort.
The party was an orgy. Olivier became
drunk and quarrelsome. Edouard led
him from the room, and Olivier, ashamed,
begged his uncle to take him away.
Bernard escorted Sarah home. Her
room was beyond Armand's, and her
brother handed Bernard the candle to
light the way. As soon as Bernard had
§one into her bedroom, Armand bolted
le door. Bernard spent the night with
Sarah.
The next morning he found Edouard
attempting to revive Olivier. The boy,
after spending the night with his uncle,
had risen early in the morning on the
pretext that he wanted to rest on the
sofa. Getting up later, Edouard had
discovered his nephew lying on the
bathroom floor unconscious, the gas jets
turned on. Edouard nursed Olivier until
the boy recovered. When Olivier's mother
went to see her son, she expressed to
Edouard her concern for George and
his wayward habits. Edouard promised
to speak to George. He also learned that
Vincent had gone away with Lady
Griffith, a friend of de Passavant.
A few days later Edouard received a
call from M. Profitendieu, Bernard's
foster father. Ostensibly he had called
in his office as magistrate to ask Edouard
to speak to his nephew George, who was
suspected of passing counterfeit coins.
But it soon became evident that the real
object of his visit was to inquire about
Bernard. Since the boy had left home,
Profitendieu had worried about him. He
wanted very much to have him home
once more.
Meanwhile Bernard's affair with Sarah
698

had attracted Rachel's attention, and
she asked him to leave the school. Ber
nard went to Edouard, who told him of
the interview with Profitendieu. For
some time Bernard had regretted the
harsh letter he had written, and the
hatred he had felt for his foster father
had changed to sympathy and fondness.
It was evident that Bernard was no longer
needed as Edouard's secretary. He
decided to return home.
Armand had succeeded Olivier as
editor of de Passavant's journal. He went
to see Olivier and showed him a letter
from an older brother in Egypt. The
writer told of a man with whom he was
living who was almost out of his mind.
From what he could gather from the
fellow's ravings, the man had been
responsible for his woman companion's
death. Neither Armand nor Olivier
guessed that the man was Olivier^
brother Vincent.
Ceorge and his friends caused a
tragedy at their school. Boris, the young
grandson of an old friend of Edouard,
had been invited to join a secret society
if he would perform the act of initiation
—stand up before the class and shoot
himself through the temple. It was
understood that the cartridge would be
a blank. One of the boys, however,
substituted a real bullet for the dummy, and
when Boris, pale but resolute, walked to
the front of the class and shot himself,
the joke became a tragedy. The
experience was terrible enough to bring
George to his senses.
Olivier having completely recovered,
Edouard settled down again to writing
his book, with a great sense of peace and
happiness.
699

THE COUNTESS DE CHARNY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1791
Locale: France
First published: 1853-1855
Principal characters:
Count Olivier de Charny, aide to King Louis XVI
Countess Andree de Charny, his wife
Sebastian, her illegitimate son
Dr. Gilbert, the boy's father
Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, assumed name of Joseph Balsamo
King Louis XVI
Queen Marie Antoinette
HONORE MlRABEAU
Critique:
The Countess de Charny is the
concluding novel of a series dealing with
historical personages and events before and
during the period of the French
Revolution. Other novels of the group are
Memoirs of a Physician, The Queen's
Necklace, and The Taking of the
Bastille. Dumas drew much of his material
for this novel from Michelet's History of
the Revolution. The story, told in the
Dumas manner, carries the conviction of
the reader by means of dramatic scenes
and rapid movement.
The Story:
In the days following the fall of the
Bastille, King Louis XVI and Queen
Marie Antoinette were forcibly escorted
to Paris by troops under the command
of General Lafayette. With the king were
his most trusted aides, Count Olivier de
Charny, the Marquis de Favras, and a
commoner but also a close and trusted
friend of the king, Dr. Gilbert. During
the commotion of the king's return, an
agent of the powerful and mysterious
Cagliostro learned from the king's
locksmith, Gamain, of the construction of a
secret door in the quarters in Paris where
the king was to be confined. He
immediately reported this information to
Cagliostro. It was suspected by Cagliostro
that the secret door would be used in the
future to allow the king's escape with his
family.
Meanwhile, young Sebastian Gilbert,
disturbed by reports of riots in Paris,
left his foster home in the country in
order to seek his father, for whose
safety he feared. In Paris, Sebastian met
the Countess Andree de Charny, whom
he immediately felt was his mother. She,
in turn, recognized him as her own long-
lost son. What Sebastian did not know,
however, was that he had been born out
of wedlock when the countess, then
known as Mademoiselle de Taverney,
had been attacked by Dr. Gilbert, at that
time only a humble peasant, fifteen years
before. Later, when she became the wife
of Count de Charny and gained the favor
of Queen Marie Antoinette, she procured
from the queen a lettre de cachet and
had Dr. Gilbert locked in the Bastille
where he stayed until it was captured
by the rioting populace.
Years had brought a philosophic calm
to Dr. Gilbert and he now sought to
expiate his early crime by doing deeds of
charity to all who would accept his
services.
Sebastian, sensing his mother's hatred
for his own father, ran away and was
run over by a carriage in the streets of
Paris soon after leaving the countess*
apartment. Dr. Gilbert, arriving soon
after in search of his son, quickly traced
the boy to a small house where Sebastian
700

had been taken after the accident. Dr.
Gilbert administered to him and he
recovered.
Count de Chamy, knowing nothing of
his wife's early misfortune, could not
understand why their relationship had
remained so distant throughout their
married life; the countess had been fearful
that her husband would discover the story
of her earlier life. Now, however, the
count had little time to think of his own
affairs because of the rapid movements
of events and the dangers facing the king
and his family.
Soon after the royal family's arrival in
Paris, King Louis summoned de Charny
and asked him to go on a mission to the
Marquis de Bouille and procure his aid
in securing troops to cover the king's
escape. Dr. Gilbert, meanwhile, tried to
convince King Louis to put his trust in
Honore Mirabeau, who was then the
man of the hour and held the respect of
the French people. The king's only
chance was to agree with Mirabeau and
sign the revolutionary principles.
Although the king listened to Dr. Gilbert's
advice, he still decided to bide his time
until more favorable circumstances arose.
In the meantime the National
Assembly grew more restless. Many people
were brought to trial, among them the
Marquis de Favras, whose execution was
practically certain. His sole chance of
reprieve was offered to him by Cagliostro,
who guaranteed him a sure escape. Favras
declined, however, and in the end went
nobly to his death.
In desperation the king finally agreed
to follow Dr. Gilbert's advice and joined
forces with Mirabeau. Mirabeau's own
popularity began to wane, however, when
one of Cagliostro's agents distributed
pamphlets accusing Mirabeau of
betraying the revolutionary cause. A short
time later Mirabeau, who had been
suffering from a lung condition, died. On
his deathbed he managed to scrawl a
message to the king, urging him to flee
while time still remained. The king and
his family immediately began
preparations for their flight.
On the night before the royal party
was to leave, Cagliostro paid Dr. Gilbert
a visit. He told Dr. Gilbert that he knew
of the king's plans for escape and that he
was willing to offer assistance in order to
assure that King Louis and his family
would have a safe journey. Dr. Gilbert,
who was quite fatalistic, declined
Cagliostro's offer; he felt that what must be
would be.
The night of departure arrived. The
king and his family escaped through the
secret door and thus were able to elude
the guards stationed around their
quarters. Accompanying the royal family were
Count de Charny and M. de Maiden,
another trusted nobleman dedicated to
the king's cause. The flight had been
carefully planned. Long before,
arrangements had been made to have fresh
horses waiting for the king's carriage at
regular stations along the route, and at
a bridge near Someville the Marquis de
Choiseul was waiting with a company of
dragoons to accompany the king on his
journey.
Sudden difficulties developed when the
king's carriage broke down and caused a
delay of four hours. Meanwhile, at
Someville, the marquis' troops were being
threatened by the local populace and
there was imminent danger of the
arrival of nationalist troops. After waiting
as long as he could, the marquis was
finally forced to retire with his dragoons.
When the royal family finally did reach
Someville, the king was recognized by a
revolutionary patriot, Jean Drouet, who
immediately fled to inform nationalist
troops quartered not too far away. De
Charny, exchanging his tired horse for
a fresh one, immediately set out in
pursuit of Drouet. He finally caught up with
him, only to discover that neither of his
pistols was loaded when he fired at
Drouet. The informant escaped in the
woods and finally made contact with the
nationalist troops. A short time later the
troops arrived in Someville, where the
king was being detained by the villagers.
701

In order to avoid bloodshed, King
Louis agreed to an armed escort back to
Paris. On their arriving in the city the
king and his family were threatened by
large groups of people. De Charny,
trying to defend the king, attempted single-
handedly to fight a hostile mob and
barely escaped with his life.
Although de Charny had, throughout
his career, devoted his chief energies to
the defense of the monarchy, his wife
had always been in his thoughts. After
his escape, and in the presence of the
royal family, Dr. Gilbert disclosed to the
count his wife's secret of her illegitimate
child. The doctor explained that only
her great love for de Charny had kept
her from revealing her shame and
expressing her true feelings for her
husband. De Charny immediately returned
to Andr6e and the two were happily
reunited.
702

A COUNTRY DOCTOR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Oldfields, Maine
First published: 1884
Principal characters:
Nan Prince, a student of medicine
Mrs. Thacher, her grandmother
Dr. Leslie, her guardian
Miss Nancy Prince, her aunt
Critique:
Sarah Orne Jewett's A Country Doctor
is a good example of the local color novel.
The plot is simple and subordinated to
the description of the environment and
the customs and habits of the people
therein, but the novel is a highly
successful and satisfying book.
The Story:
One cold winter night while Mrs.
Thacher and two of her neighbors were
sitting around the stove and gossiping about
neighborhood activities, they were
interrupted by a noise at the door. Adeline
Thacher Prince had fallen on the
doorstep. In her arms she held her infant
daughter, Nan. Dr. Leslie was sent for
at once but by the next day Adeline was
dead. According to her wishes, Dr. Leslie
became the little child's guardian, though
she lived with her maternal grandmother.
Nan's mother had left home to go to
work in a textile mill in Lowell. There
she had fallen in love with a young man
from Dunport, Maine, and after a short
courtship she had married him. The
marriage had been far from happy.
Adeline had inherited a wild, rebellious
tendency, and it was whispered in
Dunport that she had eventually taken to
drink. She resented, furthermore, the
opposition of her husband's family to the
marriage, especially the views of her
husband's sister, Miss Nancy Prince. After
Adeline's husband died, she tried for a
time to support herself and the child.
When she could do so no longer, she
trudged back to Oldfields to die in her
mother's home.
Little Nan seemed to exhibit some of
her mother's characteristics, for she was
mischievous and inclined to pleasure. Her
grandmother often thought her a trial,
but to Dr. Leslie she was something quite
different. One day Nan retrieved a fallen
bird with a fractured leg and applied a
splint, as she had seen Dr. Leslie do to
his patients. The doctor began to wonder
if Nan had not inherited some tendency
toward medicine which her father had
had. He did not insist that she go to
school. He thought that the training she
received in the woods and the fields was
far more beneficial than any she would
obtain in the schoolroom.
When Mrs. Thacher died, Nan went
to live with Dr. Leslie. Between the two
there was a great feeling of affection.
Nan, who continued to go out on calls
with the doctor, exhibited much interest
in his work. The time came at last for her
to be sent to boarding-school. At first she
was shy and rather backward in her
studies, but after a while she made
admirable progress. She would have been
completely satisfied with her life if she
had not wondered, from time to time,
about the mysterious aunt of whom she
had heard only rumors. Mrs. Thacher had
never explained anything of the girl's
family background to her,.and Nan had
conjured up the figure of a wealthy
aristocratic relative who would one day send
for her. Miss Prince, who had inherited a
703

large estate, regularly sent money to Dr.
Leslie to provide for Nan's upkeep. The
doctor never touched a penny of it. When
Adeline had died, Miss Prince had asked
for the custody of the child, but Mrs.
Thacher and Dr. Leslie had refused her
request.
When Nan grew older, she told Dr.
Leslie of her desire to study medicine.
Although the doctor was aware of the
difficulties she would face, he approved
heartily of her interest. But the town of
Oldfieldsdid not, and many were shocked
at the idea of a woman doctor. Nan
continued her studies in the doctor's books,
however, and acted as his nurse. That
training she was to continue at a medical
school in a nearby city.
When the time came for her to leave
Oldfields, Nan wrote a brief note to her
aunt, Miss Prince, and asked if she might
visit her father's sister. Miss Prince,
although she feared that Nan might be like
her mother, consented to receive her
niece. On Nan's arrival in Dunport, Miss
Prince, genuinely pleased with her,
helped Nan to make friends and openly
acknowledged her young relative. But
when Nan expressed her wish to study
medicine, everyone was shocked, even
Miss Prince, who in a large measure
blamed Dr. Leslie for Nan's unladylike
desire for a professional career. Nan,
although made unhappy by her aunt's
objections, remained adamant.
Her aunt and her friends, however,
sought to lead her astray'from her work.
Miss Prince had a favorite friend, young
George Gerry, to whom she intended
leaving her money. When Nan grew fond
of George, everyone hoped that they would
marry. One day, during an outing, Nan
and George stopped at a farmhouse, and
Nan treated a farmer who had thrown
his arm out of joint. Sometime later,
George asked Nan to marry him. She
refused, both because she wanted to
become a doctor and because she was afraid
that her inherited characteristics might
cause her to be a bad wife.
At last she told her aunt that she would
have to return to Oldfields. On her
arrival, the doctor, who had been
apprehensive that Nan might have been
influenced by Miss Prince and her money,
was pleasantly surprised. She was the
same Nan she had been before, and all
the more ambitious for a successful
medical career.
Nan went away to study. When she
returned, Dr. LesHe was older and needed
more help in his practice. Nan settled
down in Oldfields and slowly the
community accepted her. Before many years
passed she had succeeded Dr. LesHe in
the affections of the men and women of
the village.
704

THE COUNTRY DOCTOR
Tyfe of work: Novel
Author: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of flot: Naturalism
Time of flot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Southern France
First published: 1833
Principal characters:
Pierre Joseph Genestas, a soldier
Dr. Benassis, physician and mayor
La Fosseuse, a social waif
Critique:
The plot of The Country Doctor is
spare and concise. The various country
folk appear only as incidental to the busy
doctor's life, for the main narrative
thread concerns only Genestas' visit and
its consequences. For most readers the
true interest of the novel lies in Benassis'
present existence and the mystery of his
past. Interesting as the people are, they
appear only as sketches. Genestas himself
is but half drawn. The reader would like
to know more about La Fosseuse and
Judith, but they are shadowy types. The
good doctor, however, emerges as one of
Balzac's real creations; his is a sympathetic
portrayal. The book belongs to the
unfinished series of novels, "Scenes of
Country life."
The Story:
Pierre Joseph Genestas had long been
a simple soldier. He always did his duty
well and silently; this lack of ostentation
and his reserved nature made his
promotion slow. He had followed Napoleon
from Egypt to Moscow, but the monarchy
showed him httle gratitude or recognition
for his services. Now he rode slowly along
a mountain road in the direction of the
Grande Chartreuse to seek out Dr.
Benassis.
A rather sullen peasant woman gave
him a drink of milk and pointed out
Benassis' house, but when he got there
the doctor was out. When he finally found
the man he sought, Genestas came upon
a strange scene. A cretin was on his
deathbed in a miserable hovel. It seemed to
Genestas that the whole village must have
crowded around the humble cottage in a
remote section of the town, for they
regarded the dying cretin with superstitious
awe. As the religious procession entered
the hut, Genestas and the doctor took
their leave, the soldier curious about what
he had seen. Benassis told him that not
long before he had been stoned in the
same poor quarter of the town.
Eight years ago, when Benassis first
came to practice in the village, the place
had only seven hundred inhabitants; now
there were two thousand. Once the
district where the cretin died had been a
settlement of mental defectives. Benassis,
as the only health official in the town, had
condemned the district and removed all
but one of the cretins to an asylum. This
change had been accomplished against
the will of the village, but gradually the
inhabitants had come to understand the
doctor's unselfish wisdom.
Although the village was not far from
Grenoble, the peasants could not trade
with the big city because there was no
road between the town and the village.
Benassis' first project had been to build a
road across the valley. Now it was a broad
straight highway lined with Lombardy
poplars, and the peasants' carts went
constantly to Grenoble with produce.
Benassis, having been elected mayor,
was shrewd enough to get the former
705

mayor on his side. Many projects, all
encouraged and financed by the mayor,
brought jobs and money to the town.
There were tile works, an osier-basket
works, a mill, and many more farms. With
selfless devotion the mayor had built up
both the population and the prosperity of
the village.
On the excuse that his old wounds
needed attention, Genestas arranged to
stay for a time with the mayor. When he
was ready to go to bed the first night, he
found his own room comfortable, even
luxurious. By contrast, Benassis' room was
monastic in simplicity. Genestas resolved
to pierce the secret of this strange doctor-
mayor.
In the morning Genestas made the
rounds with his doctor host. They visited
two houses of mourning where the fathers
had just died. Among the poorer folk
death was a natural occurrence; among
the richer people the father's death was a
sign for much lamentation, many visitors,
and elaborate mourning garments. The
contrast emphasized the fact that Benassis
was equally at home with all classes, and
equally welcome.
From one house to another the pair
continued that whole day. Everywhere the
fields were carefully cultivated and the
stock was cleanly housed. Laborers were
busy clearing new land in the level spots
and draining marshes. Everywhere the
peasants gave credit to Benassis for
inspiration.
Near evening the two men called on La
Fosseuse, a strange but beautiful girl who
lived alone. She was supported by
Benassis, for she had no talent with which to
earn a living. Left an orphan, she had
been brought up in a rich household, but
the family had cast her out when she was
sixteen. For years she had been forced to
beg. Her body was frail and her spirit was
changeable. All she could do was sew, but
her attention wandered often and she
seldom did much work. Genestas was
impressed by the great devotion La Fosseuse
showed toward Benassis.
That evening at dinner Genestas met
the priest, the notary, the former mayor,
and the justice of the peace. These
dignitaries also showed great faith in
Benassis' leadership. Truly the doctor was a
great man.
On impulse Benassis confided to
Genestas the secret of his life. Benassis
had been born into a rich family. His
father had sent him to good schools and
eventually to Paris to study medicine. At
first Benassis was a willing student, but
before long he lost interest in his studies*
Because his strict father gave him only a
small allowance, the gay life of Paris was
far beyond his reach. He met a devoted
young girl and lived with her in
contentment. Under her influence he regained
his zest for work.
When his father died, Benassis
inherited a fortune. On his return to Paris
he was determined to cut a social figure,
and he quickly ran through the
inheritance after casting off his devoted
mistress. Two years later, learning that the
girl was dying, he went to see her. He
made her a deathbed promise that he
would care faithfully for their son.
Soon afterward he fell in love with the
young daughter of a very religious family.
On the advice of an older man, Benassis
kept secret the story of his dead mistress
and his child, and the family came to
look on him as a man of upright character
and their own son. Finally his conscience
forced him to tell the girl of his past; in
sorrow she renounced him. It was a
crushing blow to Benassis. The final misfortune
came when- his son died. In expiation
Benassis had buried himself in the little
village in the Grande Chartreuse and
there devoted himself to the poor and
miserable peasants of the region.
Genestas was much affected by the
story. A bond of sympathy with the doctor
led him to tell his own story.
Genestas, with one of his friends, had
been quartered in the house of a Jewish
706

family in Poland after the retreat from
Moscow. Judith, the daughter, had
attracted him gready, but she married his
friend. Shortly afterward, when the
friend was killed in batde, he left Judith
pregnant. Before his death, however, he
asked Genestas to marry Judith and look
after the baby. After much scheming
Genestas got Judith to Paris, where her
son was born. Genestas married her on her
deathbed and took her son as his own.
The boy, Adrien, was living with a
tutor. He was well educated but in poor
health. Although he was sixteen, he
looked twelve. Genestas wanted Benassis
to take the boy into his own home and
rebuild his health. After seeing Adrien,
Benassis declared he was only run-down,
not consumptive, as had been feared.
Benassis let the boy run with the village
hunter and soon he was strong and
healthy. His care of young Adrien was
only one of his many good works
throughout the countryside.
Genestas was given a regiment at
Grenoble, his first real command. One day
he received a letter from Adrien; Benassis
was dead. Tired out, he had succumbed
to a chill. Genestas hurried to the village,
to be told on his arrival that Benassis had
already been buried. Sorrowing workmen
were erecting over his grave a huge
mound topped with a monument.
Weeping, La Fosseuse lay beside the grave.
707

THE COUNTRY HOUSE
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1907
Principal characters:
George Pendyce, heir to Worsted Skeynes
Mrs. Helen Bellew, separated from her husband
Horace Pendyce, George's father
Margery Pendyce, his mother
The Reverend Hussell Barter, rector at Worsted Skeynes
Gregory Vigil, Mrs. Bellew's guardian
Captain Bellew, her husband
Mr. Paramor, the family lawyer
Critique:
Before the two world wars had shaken
the institutions of the world to the
breaking point, the English country house was
symbolic of many of the strongest
traditions of the aristocracy. In this novel we
see what happens when one such house
is threatened with disrepute and, perhaps,
eventual destruction because of the
careless attitude of one of its sons.
Galsworthy also gives a vivid account of the
prejudices and feelings of English
society, including the pettiness of some of
its members. Everything, however,
remains indestructible and, through the
deft handling of one of its more
insignificant members, society comes away
without even a blemish.
The Story:
In the fall of 1891, Horace Pendyce
invited several people to Worsted Skeynes,
his country estate, for a hunt. Little had
been changed at Worsted Skeynes since
the time of Mr. Pendyce's great-great-
great-grandfather. Mr. Pendyce, as head
of the house, naturally took a
conservative political sfand and expected each
member of his family to follow suit.
Included in the party for the hunt
was George Pendyce, the oldest son of
Horace and Margery Pendyce, who now
spent most of his time in London and
who had recently become interested
enough in racing to buy his own horse
and have him trained for that sport.
There was also Mrs. Helen Bellew, a
very attractive young woman who had
separated from her husband simply
because they had grown tired of one
another and who, it was being rumored,
now encouraged the attentions of George.
Needless to say, in the English country
society of that time separation of
married couples was still frowned upon and
for a lady in such a position to favor at
all the attentions of a gentleman was for
her to invite criticism. Unfortunately, at
a dance given by Mrs. Pendyce during
the week of the hunt, the young couple
were seen to kiss each other passionately.
The observer was the Reverend Hussell
Barter, rector of the parish of Worsted
Skeynes and another member of the party.
Soon after the week of the hunt
Gregory Vigil, cousin of Mrs. Pendyce and
guardian of Mrs. Bellew, who was
himself in love with his beautiful ward,
decided that Helen's situation was
intolerable and had gone on quite long enough.
After consulting Mrs. Pendyce on the
matter, he approached his lawyer, Mr.
Paramor, on the subject of divorce.
Paramor advised against it, however, on the
grounds that there must be some very
THE COUNTRY HOUSE by John Galsworthy. By permission of the publishers. Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1907, by William Hemeraann. Renewed. All rights reserved-
708

tangible reason for the lady's wanting a
divorce and also because of the fact that
such an act was always extremely public
and painful, even for the one bringing
the action. Helen Bellew was subject to
certain charges, unknown to her
guardian, because of her growing relationship
with George Pendyce.
When Mr. Vigil decided to go on with
the action, Mrs. Pendyce took up the
matter with the rector, without, however,
suspecting in the least his strong feelings
against both divorce and Mrs. Bellew.
Mr. Barter objected, of course, because of
what he considered an immoral act which
he himself had witnessed. In his mind it
was the husband, Captain Bellew, who
had been wronged, and he felt it his
Christian duty to make that gentleman
aware of the action that was about to be
taken against him. Consequently,
Captain Bellew began proceedings before
Gregory Vigil had had time to do so on
behalf of Mrs. Bellew.
In the meantime George had fallen in
love with Mrs. Bellew to the extent that
he felt he could not live without her, and
he was willing to allow his name and
reputation to be dirtied in the divorce
courts in order that he might then marry
the woman. Besides, he had also fallen
very heavily into debt through gambling
on the horses. This combination of
circumstances proved too much for the
conservative Mr. Pendyce; no Pendyce had
ever been a gambler and certainly none
had ever been involved in a divorce Suit.
When George had finally lost all his
money and was forced to sell his horse to
pay his debts, and when the papers had
been served naming him corespondent in
the case of Bellew vs. Bellew, Mr.
Pendyce resolved to take action. Rather than
see the estate and heritage of the family
fall into the hands of one so irresponsible,
he decided to disinherit George, unless
his son would promise never to see the
woman again. If George would agree to
do this, Mr. Pendyce had Captain Bel-
lew's word that he would drop the
divorce proceedings. But George refused.
Mrs. Pendyce, however, would not
consent to her husband's action. Because of
a very tender and somewhat sympathetic
feeling for her firstborn child, she
threatened to leave Mr. Pendyce if he carried
out his decision. She was as good as her
word. Having a small income of her own,
she felt that she could keep herself and
George with some measure of comfort
if not with the luxury they had known
at Worsted Skeynes. Her first steps were
to go to London, find George, and
attempt to get him to fulfill his father's
demands. When this effort failed, she
went to see Helen Bellew to see if she
would give up George. By this time Mrs.
Bellew was as tired of George as she
previously had been of her husband, and she
was quite willing—in fact, she desired—
never to see George again.
Meanwhile, Mr. Pendyce was highly
upset by his wife's leaving him; such an
act was so very much out of keeping with
the tradition in which he lived. He was,
therefore, quite relieved to see her when
she returned to their home. However,
Horace Pendyce was far too proud a man
to write to Captain Bellew and
acknowledge that his son had been discarded in
the same way that the captain himself
had been. Thus the danger of divorce
proceedings, with the subsequent harm
to the family reputation, was as great as
ever. Again it was Mrs. Pendyce, only an
insignificant part of the social system as
Mr. Pendyce thought of it, who was able
to solve the problem. She took it upon
herself to visit Captain Bellew and ask
him to drop proceedings. Because he had
instituted the whole action as a kind of
self-defense and because he was so much
impressed by a real lady, he agreed to do
so. So the Pendyce name, the country
house, and the whole system of society
were again preserved.
709

THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Maine seacoast
First published: 1896
Principal characters:
Mrs. Todd, a New England herbalist
Mrs. Blackett, her mother
William, her brother
The Boarder, a writer
Esther, William's sweetheart
Mrs. Hight, Esther's mother
Critique:
In this book there are few episodes
that could be called exciting. Instead,
the interest lies in character portrayal
and nature description. Each chapter
can stand alone as a local-color sketch,
a self-contained unit. For one who wishes
to explore the deep springs of New
England character, however, this book is
pleasant and leisurely reading.
The Story:
A woman writer came one summer to
Dunnet Landing, a Maine seacoast town,
to find seclusion for her work. She
boarded with Mrs. Almira Todd, a
friendly widow and the local herb
doctor. Besides having a garden full of
herbs, Mrs. Todd often roamed far afield
for rarer specimens. The boarder
sometimes took care of Mrs. Todd's sales of
herbs and birch beer when Mrs. Todd
was away.
At last the boarder realized that she
must get to work on her book and give
up the society of Mrs. Todd in the
daytime. The boarder found the village
schoolhouse a quiet place for her writing,
and she spent most of her days there.
One morning she was surprised to have
a visit from old Captain Littlepage, a
retired seaman who seldom left his house.
For a time he spoke seriously of the great
English poets. When he saw that the
boarder did not laugh at him, he launched
upon a long narrative. It seemed that
he had been shipwrecked upon a small
island and had met there another sailor
who had been to the North Pole. He
told Captain Littlepage of a town of
ghosts he had discovered. It was Captain
Littlepage's theory that in this town
souls awaited their passage into the next
world. The old man's narrative stopped
suddenly as his mind returned to the
present. The boarder helped him home
and told no one about his strange story.
On another day Mrs. Todd took her
boarder out to Green Island, where Mrs.
Todd's mother lived. Mrs. Blackett was
over eighty, her daughter past sixty. Mrs.
Blackett still did her own work and kept
house for her son William, who was past
fifty. William was a bashful man, but he
found a friend to his liking in the boarder.
Mrs. Todd and the boarder gathered some
herbs before they left the island, and
Mrs. Todd showed her the spot offshore
where her husband had gone down in
his boat.
Mrs. Fosdick came to visit Mrs. Todd.
Hie two old ladies and the boarder often
spent their evenings together. One night
Mrs. Todd told of her husband's Cousin
Joanna, who had lived on Shell-heap
Island. Disappointed in love, Joanna
went to live alone on the tiny island.
Passing fishermen often left presents on
the shore for her, but no one ever visited
THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS by Sarah Orne Jewett. By permission of the publishers, Houghton
Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1896, by Sarah Orne Jewett, 1924, by Mary R. Jewett.
710

her. Finally Mrs. Todd and the minister
went to see her, for the minister was
worried about the state of Joanna's soul.
They found Joanna living comfortably
but simply. Satisfied with her lonely life,
she could not be induced to return to the
mainland. Joanna lived out her life on
the island and was buried there.
Late in August* Mrs. Todd took her
boarder and Mrs. Blackett to the Bowden
family reunion. They hired a carriage
and drove far inland to the family seat.
All the Bowdens for miles around came
to the reunion, and Mrs. Blackett was one
of the privileged guests because of her
age. For once Mrs. Todd forgot her
herbs and spent the entire day in the
enjoyment of the society of ner friends.
William had not come to the gathering
because of his bashfulness. Mrs.
Blackett treasured every moment of the day,
for she knew it was one of the last
reunions she would attend.
One day the boarder stood on the shore
below Dunnet Landing. There she met
Mr. Tilley, one of the oldest fishermen
in the village. Mr. Tilley was reserved
toward strangers, but he had at last
accepted the boarder as a friend and he
invited her to visit him that afternoon.
When the boarder arrived, he was
knitting some socks. The two friends sat in
the kitchen while Mr. Tilley told the
boarder about his wife. She had died
eight years before, but her husband had
never got over his sorrow. He kept the
house just as she had left it. Proudly
he showed the boarder the seldom-used
parlor and Mrs. Tilley's set of china. She
left the cottage feeling the loneliness
that surrounded the old fisherman.
When the clear, cool autumn came, it
was time for the boarder to leave. Mrs.
Todd helped her pack and get her
belongings down on the wharf for the
steamer. Mrs. Todd took her leave of the
boarder before she left the house. From
the deck of the steamer the boarder
watched Dunnet Landing fade into the
distance. She recalled a day of the
past summer when William had come to
the mainland. He was going trout fishing
in an inland stream. Self-consciously
he asked the boarder to go with him.
They caught no fish, but William took
her afterward to see Mrs. Hight and her
daughter Esther. The boarder stayed
to talk to Mrs. Hight, while William
went out to speak to Esther, who
supported her aged and crippled mother by
tending sheep. As William and the
boarder left, she realized that William
and Esther were lovers.
When the boarder returned to Dunnet
Landing in the spring, Mrs. Todd told
her that Mrs. Hight had recently died
and that Esther and William were to
be married immediately. He was to come
to the mainland the next day if the
weather proved good.
Early in the morning Mrs. Todd was
up to watch for a sail from Green Island.
Finally she saw it approaching. Then
neighbors began to drop in to inquire
why William was coming to the
mainland. After the ceremony William and
Esther stopped for a moment at Mrs.
Todd's house before returning to the
island. Mrs. Todd and the boarder
accompanied the pair to the landing to see
them off. The older woman expressed
no emotion at the leavetaking; but as
she and the boarder returned to the
house, they walked holding hands all
the way.
711

THE COUNTRY WIFE
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Wycherley (1640M716)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1673
Principal characters:
Mr. Horner, a gallant alleged to be impotent
Mr. Pinchwife, a jealous husband
Mrs. Pinchwife, his dissatisfied wife
Alithea, Mr. Pinchwife's sister, a society woman
Harcourt, a gallant in love with Alithea
Critique:
This play is the epitome of the spirit of
the reign of Charles II. The plot is
presented with Restoration boldness, depend-*
ing as it does on the supposition of
Horner's impotence and his amorous
adventures with various wives who have
been gulled into believing that he is
incapable of feelings for the opposite sex.
While the main device of the play is
frankly indecent, the handling of the
theme, particularly in the dialogue, is
brilliant. Clever dialogue and the
whimsicality of Mrs. Pinchwife's naivete* save the
drama from approaching pornography,
however, and raise the play to the realm of
art. Because of the deftness of the
handling, the reader usually finds
himself laughing, along with the characters,
at the duplicity of the women and their
lover.
The Story:
Mr. Horner, a gallant with a bad
reputation for seduction pretended that he had
been made impotent through disease and
caused word of his misfortune to be
spread throughout the town by his quack
doctor. Immediately, men who had been
afraid to let him meet their wives for fear
of seduction hastened to assure him that
he could come to their homes and escort
their women anywhere.
Horner's old companions among the
town gallants teased him unmercifully
and at first the women would have
nothing to do with him. Among his
friends was Jack Pinchwife, who was
vastly afraid of being made a cuckold. He
had not even let it be known that he was
married. His wife was a woman from the
country; she, he thought, did not know
enough about fashionable city life to
think of taking a lover.
Pinchwife made the mistake, however,
of escorting his wife to a play, where she
was seen by Horner and some of his
friends. When Pinchwife returned to his
lodgings, his wife, tired of being kept
locked in the house, asked her husband to
let her go walking. A relative, a woman
from the town, spoke for her as well.
Pinchwife became angry with both: at his
wife for wanting to go out and at his
relative who had, he claimed, been corrupting
Her morals. Pinchwife foolishly told his
wife what she was missing in town life-
plays, dinners, parties, and dances—and
so aroused her interest in all that he was
attempting to keep from her for the sake
of his own honor.
When a party of women came to take
his wife to the latest play, Pinchwife
refused to let her go or even to see the
visitors. He gave out the excuse that she had
smallpox. The excuse failed. At the same
time Horner and some other gallants came
to call.
The women were urged by their
husbands to let Horner take them to the
theater, but they, in disgust, refused, until
Horner himself whispered to one of them
that the rumor spread about his impotency
712

was untrue. Mrs. Pinchwife was forgotten
and left behind.
After some time Mrs. Pinchwife
became melancholy because she wished to
enjoy the gayety her husband told her
about but refused to let her see. At last
Pinchwife agreed to take her to a play if
she would dress as a man. On the way to
the play, accompanied by Pinchwife's
sister Alithea, they met the sister's fiance\
a simpleton who let his friend, Harcourt,
pay court to Alithea. She, realizing that
her fiance* was a fool, tried to treat
Harcourt coolly, even though her fianc6 was
angry with her for doing so.
Before they arrived at the theater they
met Horner. Pinchwife, in spite of all he
had heard about Horner's impotence, was
worried lest Horner penetrate Mrs, Pinch-
wife's disguise. Horner, recognizing Mrs.
Pinchwife, teased the jealous husband by
kissing the young "gentleman" and telling
"him" the kiss was for his sister, Mrs.
Pinchwife. Horner, in addition, told the
"young man" that he was in love with
Mrs. Pinchwife.
The following morning Alithea was
dressed to marry her fianc6. The
bridegroom came with a parson, actually
Harcourt in disguise. Harcourt was still
determined to take Alithea for his own, if
he could. After some discussion the
marriage was put off for a day.
Meanwhile Pinchwife tried to force his
wife to send a letter calculated to
discourage Horner's attentions, but she
substituted a love letter for the one her
husband had dictated. After taking the
letter, Pinchwife locked her in her room
and told her to stay away from the
window.
In his own rooms, Horner held a
discussion with his quack doctor and told him
how well his scheme to fool husbands was
working. In proof, a well-bred woman
came to his rooms, but the opportunity
was lost when her husband followed her.
A few moments later two other women
arrived, much chagrined when they found
Horner entertaining other visitors.
Pinchwife, knowing nothing of the
substitution, delivered the letter. Upon
his return home he found his wife writing
another love letter to Horner. Angered, he
drew his sword, but he was interrupted by
the entrance of Alithea's fianc6.
Mrs. Pinchwife lied her way out of the
situation by saying she was writing the
letter for Alithea, who, she said, was in
love with Horner. Pinchwife, knowing
that Horner was of as good family and as
wealthy as his sister's fianc6, thought that
by marrying Alithea to 'Horner he could
keep his wife away from the rake. When
he agreed to take Alithea to Horner, his
wife disguised herself in Alithea's
clothing and presented herseK as Alithea to be
taken to Horner's lodgings.
Pinchwife unsuspectingly took his wife
to Horner and left to get a clergyman to
marry the couple. On the way he met his
sister's fianc6, who was puzzled by Pinch-
wife's tale. When they met the real
Alithea, all were confused.
Shortly after Pinchwife had gone,
three women appeared at Horner's
lodgings. During the visit all three discovered
that Homer had enjoyed their favors,
while they each thought he was hers
alone. After they left, Horner got rid of
Mrs. Pinchwife after some little trouble;
she wanted to leave her husband and live
with Horner.
Pinchwife, Alithea, Harcourt, and the
fiance* all arrived to clear up the mystery
of the disguised Alithea. The men
accused Horner of double-dealing, and
Pinchwife threatened the gallant with his
sword. Mrs. Pinchwife, who had been
loitering nearby, entered the room. To
save the honor of all concerned, Alithea's
maidservant took the blame for lying. The
doctor came in unexpectedly and testified
again to the impotency of Horner. His
report put all husbands at their ease again.
Only Mrs. Pinchwife, who had been
unable to leave her husband or to have
Horner's favors, was out of sorts.
713

THE COURTESAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pietro Aretino (1492-1556)
Type of plot: Satiric comedy
Time of plot: Early sixteenth century
Locale: Rome
First presented: 1534
Principal characters:
Messer Maco, a would-be courtier
Maestro Andrea, a clever charlatan
Signor Parabolano, a nobleman
Valerio, a gentleman, Parabolano's chamberlain
Rosso, a rogue, Parabolano's groom
Alvigia, a procuress
Arcolano, a baker
Togna, his young wife
Critique:
Pietro Aretino's biting satire earned
him the title "The Scourge of Princes."
No one, no institution, in
sixteenth-century Europe was immune to his barbs—
not even the Papacy. In The Courtesan
(La Cortegiana) he is settling an old
score. Driven from the Papal court in
fear of his life (upon which an attempt
was actually made by the Papal favorite
Giberti in 1525), Aretino long nursed a
grudge against the headquarters of the
Holy See. The knaves, fools, and lechers
who constitute the personae of this drama
are supposed to be typical of the courtiers
who fawned upon the Medici Popes and
of their own minions who in turn fawned
upon them, duping them whenever they
could. But in spite of his personal
grievance, Aretino's satire here is not
personal. He is ridiculing the kind of
pretentiousness that exists in any age. This
universality, plus the unabashed ribaldry
of the action, makes The Courtesan a
perennially entertaining piece.
The Story:
Messer Maco, a wealthy Sienese fop
and a fool, came to Rome with the
intention of becoming a cardinal. Upon his
arrival he met Maestro Andrea who
informed him that he would first have to
be a courtier. Maco then announced his
desire to become a courtier, and Andrea
obligingly promised to transform him into
one.
Signor Parabolano, learning that Maco
was in town, ordered his groom, Rosso,
to have all the lampreys he could find
sent to Maco as a gift of welcome. When
Parabolano left, Rosso made fun of his
master's love affairs to the other servants.
Valerio, Parabolano's faithful
chamberlain, overheard him and ran him off.
Rosso swindled a fisherman out of his
lampreys by posing as a servant of the
Pope. When discovered, he convinced
the authorities that the fisherman was
mad.
Maco received his first lesson in being
a courtier. He was instructed in being,
among other things, a blasphemer, a
gambler, an adulator, a slanderer, an in-
grate, a whore-chaser, an ass, and a
nymph.
Next, Rosso visited Alvigia, a procuress.
Rosso, having overheard Parabolano
talking in his sleep, had thereby learned that
his master was in love with the matron
Livia. If, he told Alvigia, he could
successfully pander to his master's lust, he
would be secure in his favor and could
also be revenged on Valerio, Parabolano's
THE COURTESAN by Pietro Aretino. Translated by Samuel Putnam. By permission of the publishers,
Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1926, by Pascal Covici. Renewed. All rights reserved.
714

chamberlain. Alvigia agreed to help the
groom.
Meanwhile, Maco had fallen in love
with Camilla, a courtesan who was being
kept by a Spanish lord. Andrea feared
that this new interest would interrupt his
fleecing of Maco, but Maco was now all
the more determined to become a
courtier. He was still impatient about Camilla,
however, and disguised himself as a groom
in order to gain access to her house. To
hinder him, Andrea and Maco's own
groom cried out that the sheriff was after
him for illegal entry into Rome. Afraid
to appear in his own clothes, Maco ran
off, still in his disguise as a servant.
Rosso and Alvigia were having their
problems, too. Although Parabolano had
agreed to allow Rosso to secure the
services of the procuress for him, Livia proved
unapproachable. The two then devised
the Allowing plan: Rosso was to tell
Parabolano that Livia was willing to meet
him, but that, being proper and shy, she
would do so only in the profoundest dark;
he must promise not to embarrass her
with any light whatsoever. Once assured
that Parabolano would not be able to see
his mistress, Alvigia would substitute the
baker*s young wife, Togna, for the
virtuous Livia. Parabolano, his lust now
almost consuming him, was willing to
agree to any stipulations. He was willing,
even, to believe the calumnies of his
groom and put his chamberlain, Valerio,
in disgrace.
Maco, hiding in Parabolano's house
from the supposed sheriff, finally
mustered enough courage to emerge for the
final courtier-making process. He was
placed in a vat which, according to
Andrea, was a courtier-mold. There he was
thoroughly steamed. Once recovered, he
headed for Camilla's house as a full-
fledged courtier. Andrea and Maco's
groom pretended to be Spaniards
storming the house. Maco leaped from the
window, terrified, and fled in his underwear.
His embarrassment was followed by
Parabolano's. Togna had planned to steal
away to her assignation in her husband's
clothes. Suspicious of her design, the old
baker feigned drunken sleep while he
watched her put on his garments and
steal away. He then dressed in her clothes
and followed her to the house of the
procuress.
Parabolano discovered the ruse,
however, once he was alone with Togna. At
first he was enraged, but Valerio,
embittered and determined to leave Rome
and the fickleness of courtiers, arrived in
time to calm him down. Admitting that,
blinded by lust, he had allowed himself
to be led around like a fool, Parabolano
restored Valerio to favor and begged his
forgiveness. Valerio advised him to admit
the whole escapade openly and to treat
it as a joke so that, by owning up to his
own folly, he would be safe from having
his enemies use it against him.
As Parabolano was beginning to see
the humor in the situation, the baker
Arcolano added to it by appearing, dressed
in his wife's clothes. He too was enraged,
but Parabolano convinced him that he
had no designs on his wife. The two,
Togna and Arcolano, were forced to kiss
and make up. Then, in keeping with the
comic ending that Parabolano insisted
upon, everyone was forgiven—even the
conniving Rosso, after he had returned a
diamond which Parabolano had given
him to help seduce Livia. He was a
Greek, Parabolano observed, and was
only acting according to his nature.
Finally Maco appeared, seeking help
from the "Spaniards." When their true
identity was revealed, Maco was shown
what a fool he really was. He, in turn,
was forced to forgive Andrea.
715

THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH
Type of work: Poem
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: 1621
Locale: Massachusetts
First published: 1858
Prinicpal characters:
Miles Standish, a soldier
John Alden, Miles Standish's friend
Priscilla, a girl loved by Standish and Alden
Critique:
The ironic situation which results
when Miles Standish sent John Alden to
plead his lover's case before Priscilla is
tempered by the genial, placid tone of
this poem. Simply and gracefully
written, it has long been a favorite among
American romantic poems.
The Story:
In the Pilgrim colony Miles Standish
and John Alden shared a cabin. The
latter was a young scholar; the former
was a gruff captain of the soldiers, whose
wife had died after the landing of the
Mayflower the previous fall.
One night Standish dropped his copy
of Caesar's Commentaries and turned to
John, who was writing a letter filled with
praise for Priscilla, one of the young girls
of the colony. Standish spoke of the
loneliness and weariness of his own life,
and of the fact that Priscilla, too, was
living alone, her parents having died
during the winter. Since he himself was
no scholar but only a blunt soldier, he
asked John to take to Priscilla his
proposal of marriage.
Taken aback by the request, John
could only stammer that it would be
wiser for Standish to plead his own case.
When the captain asked the favor in the
name of friendship, the youth could not
refuse.
Priscilla was singing the Hundredth
Psalm as John approached her cabin,
and as he opened the door he saw her
industriously spinning. Filled with woe
at what he must do, he nevertheless
stepped resolutely inside. Seizing what
seemed the opportune moment, John
blurted out the captain's proposal.
Priscilla flatly refused, for she felt that
Standish himself should have come if she
were worth the wooing. And she further
confused the young man by asking him
why he did not speak for himself.
Caught between his own love for
Priscilla and his respect for Standish, John
decided to go back to England when the
Mayflower sailed next day.
Miles Standish was enraged when he
heard the outcome of John's wooing, but
the captain's tirade was interrupted by
news of Indians on the warpath. He
strode into the colony's council room and
there saw a snakeskin full of arrows, the
challenge to batde. Pulling out the
arrows, he filled the skin with bullets
and powder, and defiantly handed it
back to the Indian. The savage quickly
disappeared into the forest. Captain
Standish, his eight men and their Indian
guide left the village next morning
before anyone else was awake.
Alden did not sail that day. Among
the people on the beach he saw Priscilla,
who looked so dejected and appealing
that he decided to stay and protect her
They walked back to the village to
gether, and John described the reaction
of Miles Standish to Priscilla's question.
He also' confided that he had planned
to leave the colony, but had remained
in order to look after her.
Miles Standish, marching northward
along the coast, brooded over his defeat,
but finally concluded that he should
confine himself to soldiering and forget woo-
716

ing: When he returned to the village
from his attack on the Indian camp, he
brought with him the head of one of
the savages and hung it on the roof of
the fort. Priscilla was glad then that she
had not accepted Miles Standish.
That autumn the village was at peace
with the Indians. Captain Standish was
out scouring the countryside. John Alden
had built his own house, and 'often
walked through the forest to see
Priscilla. One afternoon he sat holding a
skein of thread as she wound it. As they
sat talking, a messenger burst in with
the news that Miles Standish had been
killed by a poisoned arrow and his men
cut off in ambush.
At last John felt free to make his own
declaration. He and Priscilla were
married in the village church, before all the
congregation. The magistrate had read
the service and the elder had finished the
blessing when an unexpected guest
appeared at the door. It was Miles
Standish—recovered from his wound—and he
came striding in like a ghost from the
grave.
Before everyone, the gruff soldier and
the bridegroom made up their
differences. Then, tenderly, Standish wished
John and Priscilla joy, and merrily the
wedding procession set off through the
forest to Priscilla's new home.
717

COUSIN BETTE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Honors de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Paris, France
First published: 1847-1848
Principal characters:
Baron Hulot
Adeline, his wife
Hortense, their daughter
Victorxn, their son
Lisbeth, Adeline's Cousin Bette
M. Crevel, Baron Hulot's enemy
Celesttne, Victories wife and daughter of M. Crevel
Colonel Hulot, the baron's older brother
Madame Marneffe, Baron Hulot's mistress
M. Marneffe, Madame Marneffe's husband
Count Steinbock, Hortense's husband
Baron Montes, Mme. Marneffe's lover
Critique:
The plot of this book is involved; many
of the incidents seem contrived, like the
death of the newly-wed Crevels and the
rescue of Baron Hulot from the slums.
Yet the forces at work upon the characters
give the book a unity. The characters,
more than anything else, make the story
what it is. Balzac is a master at
depicting human nature; he knows what motive
force lies behind good and evil actions.
Cousin Bette, the author's attempt to
present a person consumed by hate, will
remain in the reader's mind long after
he has forgotten the rest of the book.
The Story:
One day in the summer of 1838, M.
Crevel called upon Adeline, the Baroness
Hulot, with an offer to make her his
mistress, but she refused his offer. M.
Crevel swore that he would be revenged
upon Baron Hulot, who had stolen his
former mistress. Her price had been
the baron's fortune. Now he was unable
to give his daughter Hortense a
satisfactory dowry. Hortense was able to
forget her sorrow over her own marriage
prospects by teasing Lisbeth, Adeline's
cousin, about her lover.
Lisbeth—Cousin Bette—was the old maid of the
family; her lover was Count Steinbock, a
718
sculptor and a Polish refugee. The
attachment was that of mother and son,
but Cousin Bette was insanely jealous.
That evening the baron's older brother,
Colonel Hulot, and his son and daughter-
in-law, Victorin and Celestine, came for
dinner. Celestine, the daughter of M.
Crevel, did not share her father's
dislike of Baron Hulot. After dinner Baron
Hulot escorted Cousin Bette home and
then went to see his mistress. He found
that she had deserted him for a rich
duke.
The next morning Baron Hulot laid
plans to seduce Madame Marneffe, the
wife of a clerk who worked for him. In
the meantime, Hortense had managed to
speak to Count Steinbock by buying one
of his pieces of sculpture. He called
shortly afterward. The Hulots felt that
the penniless young nobleman might be
a good match for Hortense, but the plan
was kept secret from Cousin Bette.
Baron Hulot arranged to meet
Madame Marneffe in Cousin Bette's rooms.
Later he moved the Marneffes into a
more lavish establishment in the Rue
Varennes, and Cousin Bette went there
to live. Through her new friend, Cousin
Bette learned of the coming marriage
between Hortense and Count Steinbock,

for Baron Hulot had no secrets from
Madame Marneffe. Cousin Bette had
always been treated in the family as the
eccentric old maid and the ugly duckling;
this stealing of her lover was the final
humiliation. She swore vengeance upon
the whole Hulot family, and Madame
Marneffe agreed to aid ner.
As her first step, Cousin Bette
introduced M. Crevel to Madame Marneffe.
As her second step, she had Count
Steinbock imprisoned for debt. Then she told
Hortense that he had returned to Poland.
When he obtained his release through
some friends, the wedding plans went
ahead. No one suspected that Cousin
Bette had put him in prison. Meanwhile,
Baron Hulot managed to raise a dowry
for Hortense and planned to keep
himself solvent by sending Adeline's uncle to
Algiers. There Baron Hulot had arranged
to steal money from the government
through dealings with the Army
commissary; the uncle was to be an innocent
dupe.
As soon as Hortense was married,
Baron Hulot moved Adeline to a more
modest house so that he could spend
more money upon Madame Marneffe.
She and the baron conducted their affair
quietly so as to attract little notice. At
the same time she was also intimate with
M. Crevel. M. Marneffe gave little
trouble to either of these gentlemen as
long as they kept him supplied with
money and a good position at the war
office.
The appearance one evening of Baron
Montes, an old lover of Madame
Marneffe, worried Baron Hulot and M.
Crevel. That same night Madame Marneffe
denied Baron Hulot access to her
apartment. M. Crevel revealed to Baron Hulot
how he also had been the lover of
Madame Marneffe. Reconciled, the two old
rivals went next day to Madame Mar-
neffe's house. She agreed to consider
M. Crevel's offer to marry her after her
husband died, but she told Baron Hulot
that he need not hope to be her lover
again. After the two old men had left,
she asked Cousin Bette to try to get
Count Steinbock to come to her. She
had always wanted to make a conquest of
him; his downfall would also be Cousin
Bette's revenge upon Hortense.
Count Steinbock was in need of
money, and Cousin Bette slyly suggested
borrowing from Madame Marneffe. The
count went to see her secretly. Madame
Marneffe's conquest was complete.
When Madame Marneffe found
herself pregnant, she told each lover
separately that he was the father. Hortense
believed that Count Steinbock was the
father and deserted him to return to her
mother. Baron Hulot found it necessary
to visit Adeline in order to see Hortense
and ask her to return to her husband.
Hortense refused and made a violent
scene. Cousin Bette arrived to take the
side of Hortense. She said that she could
no longer stay with Madame Marneffe;
she would keep house for old Colonel
Hulot. It was her plan to marry the old
man and gain control of the only money
left in the family.
The baron's affairs were growing
desperate. Adeline's uncle in Algiers wrote
that the plot to steal from the
government was discovered; money was needed
to stop an investigation. Madame
Marneffe was insisting upon money for her
child and a better position for her
husband. One night M. Marneffe brought
the police to the lovers' room and said
that he would prosecute unless he were
promoted at the war office. Madame
Marneffe had led Baron Hulot into a
trap; her husband got his appointment.
At last, the Algerian scandal broke and
the uncle killed himself. When Colonel
Hulot learned of his brother's deed, he
was crushed by this blow to the family
honor. He paid the necessary money
from his own savings and died only a few
days later from wounded pride. Cousin
Bette had her revenge. Baron Hulot was
a ruined man.
In disgrace, he sought shelter with the
mistress who had deserted him for the
duke. She provided him with some cap-
719

ital and a pretty seamstress to keep him
company. He lived in the slums under
an assumed name. Through the efforts
of Victorin, now a successful lawyer, the
family slowly regained its wealth.
Meanwhile Madame Marneffe's child was
stillborn, and her husband died. Victorin
was determined to keep his father-in-law
from throwing himself away on the
wretched woman. He hired an
underworld character to inform Baron Montes
that Madame Marneffe was having an
affair with Count Steinbock and was
to marry M. Crevel. Baron Montes took
his revenge upon Madame Marneffe and
M. Crevel by infecting them with a
fatal tropical aisease; they both died soon
after their marriage.
Adeline began to do charity work in
the slums. On one of her visits she
discovered her husband and brought him
back to live with his family. Cousin
Bette meanwhile had taken to her bed
with consumption; she died soon after
Baron Hulot's return.
Baron Hulot became the model
husband. Then one day his wife hired
Agathe, a peasant girl, as a cook. A few
evenings later Adeline discovered her
husband in the servants* quarters. Three
days later Adeline died. Shortly after his
wife's funeral Baron Hulot left Paris, and
as soon as possible he and Agathe were
married. This impropriety caused
Victorin to remark that parents can hinder
the marriages of their children; but
children can do nothing about the actions of
their parents in their second childhood.
720

COUSIN PONS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: The 1840's
Locale: Paris
First published: 1847
Principal characters:
Sylvain Pons, an elderly musician and amateur art collector
Schmucke, Pons' friend and fellow-musician
Madame Cibot, portress at Pons' residence
Monsieur de Marville, Pons' cousin
Madame de Marville, M. de Marville's wife and enemy of Pons
Fraisier, a rascally attorney
Remonencq, a friend and accomplice of Mme. Cibot
Critique:
Cousin Pons, like other of Balzac's
novels, is a study of Parisian society in the
mid-nineteenth century. Like Balzac's
other work, also, it is a study of human
nature in that vein of naturalism more
common to writers of a half-century and
more later, writers like Zola, Dreiser, and
Frank Norris. There are no terms with
squeamishness for Balzac. Indeed, lie
makes the reader often feel as if there can
be no such aggregation of people
anywhere but between the covers of a book.
The hatred of mankind for one another,
the grubbing after unearned inheritances,
and the inhumanity of man to man all
stand out in the most glaring colors in
Balzac's work. Balzac himself said that
only in Paris could one find the characters
that he needed for his fiction. The reader
is inclined to hope that such a race of
men, if it ever did exist, exists no more.
The Story:
Sylvain Pons was an ugly man who had
no family at all except one cousin,
Monsieur de Marville, a rich and influential
government official. Through his relative,
Cousin Pons, as the de Marvilles called
him, was able to dine out at a rich man's
home at least once a week. Those
opportunities satisfied one of Pons' two
pleasures in life, a delight in good food
well served. Pons' job as conductor of the
orchestra at a ballet theater and his series
of private music pupils gave him the
money to live and to satisfy his other
delight in life, collecting works of art.
By the time he was in his sixties, Pons
had built up a collection worth over a
million francs, though neither he nor anyone
else realized that it was so valuable. Pons'
only friend was a musician in his
orchestra, an old German named Schmucke.
The two men lived together in an
apartment filled with Pons' art treasures. Their
lives were extremely simple; the portress
at the house, Madame Cibot, cooked for
them and cleaned the apartment, and
their work kept them busy most of the
time. The only flaw in their existence, as
Schmucke saw it, was the fact that Pons
went out to dinner once a week and
sometimes twice.
Even that flaw was remedied when
Madame de Marville, the wife of Pons'
cousin, grew tired of having the old man
in her home and made her attitude
obvious to him. He then began taking all his
meals at home with Schmucke. But Pons
was too fond of dining out on rich food
to be happy with the arrangement, and
he missed the company that he had
enjoyed for over forty years. So, with
Schmucke's help, he determined to try to
make peace with Madame de Marville by
securing a rich husband for C£cile, the de
Marvilles' daughter. The attempt ended
in failure, and as a result their house and
the homes of all the de Marvilles' friends
were closed to Pons, who was regarded as
721

vicious and hateful.
The shock of finding that his cousin
and all his cousin's connections would no
longer speak to him, much less have him
in their homes, was too much for Pons.
He fell ill, and nothing the doctor could
do helped him. His friend Schmucke
tried to keep their small establishment
going with the aid of Madame Cibot, who
acted as a nurse while Schmucke worked
at the theater or gave music lessons.
Unfortunately for the two old men,
Madame Cibot learned that the art
treasures lying about the apartment were
extremely valuable. At first she thought only
of having Pons set up an annuity for her
at his death, in return for her nursing
care, but her avarice finally caused her to
conceive the idea of getting the entire
fortune into her own hands. She took into
her confidence a small dealer in bric-a-brac
named Remonencq, who in turn enlisted
the aid of Elie Magus, a Jew with a
passion for art. The Jew, with the help of the
other two, gained admittance to Pons'
apartment and made an estimate of the
collection's value. At the same time he
made an agreement to pay Madame Cibot
over forty thousand francs if she would get
Schmucke, who knew nothing of art, to
sell four of his friend's pictures for money
to pay Pons' doctor bills.
Poor Schmucke, who thought only of
saving his friend's life, readily agreed to
sell four masterpieces, whose value he did
not know, for a fraction of their true
value. After they had been sold, thinking
that Pons would never notice, he simply
hung four other pictures in their places.
Madame Cibot, delighted at her success
in fleecing the old men, decided to try to
get all of the collection and enlisted the
aid of the doctor, who was a poor man,
and a rascally attorney named Fraisier.
Fraisier, who knew of Pons' influential
relatives, pointed out to Madame Cibot
that the relatives would fight any attempt
by the portress to get the old man's estate.
He also convinced her that they were
powerful enough to send her to the
guillotine if they could prove her guilt.
Feeling that her only chance of success lay
with him, Madame Cibot agreed to do
what the attorney told her to do.
The attorney went to Madame de Mar-
ville, who was also avaricious, and told
her of Ponsf wealth and Pons'
determination to leave it to Schmucke. Madame de
Marville immediately agreed to do
anything she could to gain the fortune for
herself, for all the family's wealth had
gone into her daughter's dowry. She
promised to have her husband get good
appointments for Fraisier and the doctor,
and she consented to set up an annuity for
Madame Cibot. Her husband, when she
told him, agreed.
Fraisier and Madame Cibot then began
to lay plans to find a way into Pons'
confidence. Unfortunately for their designs,
Pons became suspicious of Madame Cibot.
His suspicions were confirmed when he
awoke one afternoon to find Elie Magus,
his rival collector, examining the art
objects on the walls and tables. Summoning
what strength he had left, Pons left his
sickbed and staggered to the other rooms,
where he discovered that his paintings
were gone. He realized immediately that
someone had been attempting to fleece
him at poor Schmucke's expense. That
night, after Schmucke had confessed to
selling the paintings, he and Schmucke
discussed what they could do. Pons
forgave Schmucke, for he well knew that the
German had no idea of the cash values of
the paintings or the more personal value
they had for Pons himself.
Pons drew up a will naming Madame
Cibot as one of his heirs, in an attempt to
deceive her as to his real intentions. He
even left the will where she would see it.
The portress was pleased, although the
will did not provide for as much as she
wanted. Fraisier, who also saw the
document, was pleased because it was a will
that could easily be broken in court for the
benefit of the de Marville family. Pons
had hoped that they would react in that
722

way, and the following day he secretly
made a new will which left his fortune to
the crown, with the stipulation that in
return the government should give
Schmucke a lifetime annuity.
When Pons died shortly afterward, his
death left poor Schmucke in a dreadful
state. The German musician knew little
of the world, and his friend's death left
him without judgment or willpower. All
he cared about was dying quickly in order
to meet his friend in heaven. Because of
his state of mind, the plotters felt that
they would have little trouble in taking
the estate away from him.
The de Marvilles, bringing a suit to
break the will, hoped that Schmucke, to
avoid trouble, would accept a small
annuity and let them have the bulk of the
estate. They were right in their belief, but
just as the papers were about to be signed
a messenger brought Schmucke a copy of
the charges made in court against the old
man, charges that he had influenced his
friend in an attempt to get the estate. The
shock to Schmucke was so great that he
died within a few days, allowing the
estate to go unchallenged to the de
Marvilles, who had denied their cousin and
despised him during his last years.
Many people gained by the deaths of
Pons and Schmucke. The de Marvilles
recouped their fortune; Fraisier, the rascally
attorney, received an office of trust for his
part in the affair; the doctor who had
tended Pons received a sinecure; Elie
Magus, the Jew, had his coveted pictures,
a*fd Madame Cibot had her annuity. She
also had a new husband, for Remonencq,
her fellow conspirator, poisoned her
husband and then married her. Everyone,
except Schmucke, the man Pons had
wanted most to help, had benefited from
Pons' fortune.
723

THE COXCOMB
Type of work: Drama
Authors: Francis Beaumont (1585?-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: England and France
First presented: 1608-1610
Principal characters:
Antonio, a foolish gentleman
Mercury, his former traveling companion
Ricardo, a young gentleman, viola s sweetheart
Valerio, a country gentleman
Maria, Antonio's wife
Viola, a young lady in distress
Critique:
This play is a rather trivial compound
of Jacobean comic commonplaces; it is
perhaps one of the least happy of the
Beaumont and Fletcher collaborations.
The main plot and the subplot explore
different aspects of love, but they are so
tenuously related that neither reinforces
the other, and a virtual act of violence is
required to bring them together at the
end. Not only is the plotting slovenly,
but also the characters are so imperfectly
drawn as to be almost completely
unbelievable. Antonio, the coxcomb, is so
poorly developed that his cuckolding
seems more of a shabby trick played upon
him than a just punishment for his
foolishness, and Mercury appears more the
betrayer of a genuine, though ridiculous,
friendship than one who takes legitimate
advantage of a fool. In spite of the
dramatists' attempt to pass Maria off as a
woman of wit and sophistication, her actions
are little more than sordid. The young
lovers of the subplot fare little better.
Ricardo is fairly successful as the contrite
youth who has lost his sweetheart through
his own weakness, but Viola forgives him
in the end not so much because she loves
him as to extricate herself from an
impossible situation. The minor characters
are drawn directly out of the Elizabethan
comic tradition, and nothing more is done
with them than the tradition demanded.
Nevertheless, the play seems to have been
successful in its own time, perhaps
because skilled actors were able to carry off
the comic situations with farcical effect.
The Story:
Although carefully guarded by her
father, Viola, a beautiful maid of sixteen,
met and fell in love with handsome young
Ricardo. Deciding to elope, they agreed to
meet on a convenient street corner after
Viola had provided herself with gold and
jewels from her father's house. They had
just reached this decision when Mercury
and Antonio, two travelers home from an
extended journey, appeared on the scene.
Mercury, thoroughly sick of Antonio,
tried to take his leave as graciously as he
could so that he could proceed to his own
home. Antonio, however, held him with
protests: two travelers who had endured
so much together could not part so
casually—Mercury must visit for a few days.
Overwhelmed by Antonio's extravagant
courtesy, Mercury reluctantly
accompanied him. At Antonio's house they found
Maria, his handsome wife, entertaining
at a dance a group of fashionable young
people whom Ricardo and Viola had just
joined. Before she was made known to
him, Mercury was captivated by Maria's
beauty; when he spoke with her he was
further inflamed by her grace and wit.
As the guests left and he prepared to go
to his rooms, Mercury tried to still an
irresistible desire to cuckold his ridiculous
friend.
It now lacked only an hour until Ri-
cardo's meeting with Viola. To pass the
724

time, the young gallant went with a
party of his friends to a nearby tavern,
where one toast led to another so quickly
that Ricardo became thoroughly
intoxicated. About the time Viola fearfully left
her father's house, throwing the key back
through the window as a final gesture of
farewell, Ricardo began to talk of seeking
out wenches and perhaps beating up the
watch as a culmination to the evening's
sport. Leaving the tavern, Ricardo and
his party reeled along the street; when
they passed Viola, her lover in his blind
drunkenness thought her to be a strumpet
and attempted to throw her down in the
gutter. Viola barely escaped as the watch
came to take the revelers in tow.
Meanwhile, Mercury realized that the
only way for him to overcome his desire
for Maria was to separate himself from
her. When he tried to leave secretly,
Antonio discovered him and would not hear
of his going. Pressed to desperation,
Mercury revealed the truth, thinking that
reason would cause Antonio to encourage
him to leave. But to Antonio a wife was
nothing in comparison with a friend; if
Mercury wanted his wife, Antonio would
woo her for him and thus gain
immortality as the truest friend in history.
Dumbfounded, Mercury got rid of his
host only on the condition that he would
seduce Maria with Antonio's approval.
Shocked, frightened, and too ashamed
to return home, Viola by this time had
fled to the outskirts of the city. There she
fell in with a rude tinker and his trull,
who robbed her and left her tied to a tree.
She was discovered by Valerio, a country
gentleman, who released her and agreed
to help her by giving her a position as a
maid. As they rode off together, he
began to alter the terms of his proposal;
she was not to be a maid after all, but his
mistress. When Viola indignantly
declined, Valerio left her and rode on.
It was now morning. In the city
Ricardo, awaking, remembered the events
of the night before and was overwhelmed
with remorse for his actions. With the
encouragement of Viola's father, he
enlisted his friends to help him find her
again.
Antonio, meanwhile, had attempted to
further Mercury's suit by writing a
letter reviling himself, signing Mercury's
name, and delivering it to Maria in the
disguise of an Irish footman. Maria,
penetrating the disguise, decided to answer
trick with trick. She had Antonio beaten
and locked up; then she visited Mercury.
To him she reported that Antonio was
missing and doubtless murdered, and,
pretending great grief, she requested that
he take her to some place of retirement.
Mercury suggested his mother's house in
the country and the two departed, Maria
Still vowing secretly that she would be
revenged on her husband for his
foolishness. Learning that they had left the city,
Antonio revealed himself to the servants
who had kept him prisoner and declared
that he would leave the two
uninterrupted for a time so that Mercury could win
his suit.
Having been abandoned by Valerio,
Viola had fallen in with two sympathetic
milkmaids employed by Mercury's mother;
they took her to their mistress to seek
work as a domestic servant. That honest
but acerbic woman took Viola into the
household, but her position grew more
and more uncertain as she revealed her
ineptitude for domestic tasks. Attention
was diverted from her, however, by the
arrival of Mercury and Maria. While
Mercury told his mother of his travels,
Maria retired to her chamber. There
Antonio soon appeared, this time
transparently disguised as a post-rider. Had he
commanded his wife to return home, she
would have done so; instead, he presented
her with another ridiculously awkward
letter in which he again advised her to
favor Mercury. Maria, feeling that if he
insisted on being such an utter ass she had
little choice but to do as he wished, sent
him to bring Mercury to her.
Ricardo's search had by this time led
him to Valerio, who, after hearing the
unhappy lover's story, allowed himself to
be persuaded to help look for Viola. As
725

the two rode through the countryside
near the place where Valerio had left the
maiden, they came upon her as she was
going out to milk. When Ricardo abjectly
threw himself upon his knees, confessed
his faults, and begged forgiveness, Viola,
who still loved him, yielded to his pleas.
Meanwhile, Antonio's cousin, believing
his kinsman murdered and Maria and
Mercury probably guilty because of what
seemed their precipitate flight from the
city, arrived at the house of Mercury's
mother with a warrant and a justice of
the peace. As Mercury and Maria were
about to be arrested, Antonio revealed
himself, rather to the discomfiture of the
justice, who had eagerly anticipated a
hanging. Maria and Mercury, whose
ardor for each other had cooled after their
night together, pretended great joy at
seeing Antonio alive. All celebrated at a
banquet which Ricardo and Viola also
attended.
726

THE CRADLE SONG
Type of work: Drama
Author: Gregorio Martinez Sierra (1881-1947)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Spain
First presented: 1911
Principal characters:
Sister Joanna of the Cross, eighteen years of age
Teresa, aged eighteen
The Prioress, aged forty
The Vicaress, aged forty
The Mistress of Novices, aged thirty-six
Sister Marcella, aged nineteen
Sister Maria jEstis, aged nineteen
Sister Sagrario, aged eighteen
Sister Inez, aged fifty
Sister Tornera, aged thirty
The Doctor, aged sixty
Antonio, aged twenty-five
Critique:
G. Martinez Sierra served an
apprenticeship in the theater as an actor under
Jacinto Benavente, a prominent Spanish
playwright, ten years before he wrote
any plays of his own. Though not his first
written play, The Cradle Song, Cancidn
de Cuna in the original, was his first
definite success in Madrid in 1911, in
New York in 1921, in London in 1926,
and again in New York in 1927, when
Eva Le Gallienne brought it to her Civic
Repertory Theater. Since that time it
has been considered a success wherever
it has been presented. Martinez Sierra's
wife, usually his collaborator, had more
than her usual interest in this play
because it was reminiscent of her home
town, where her father was the convent
doctor and where his sister, Sister Joanna
of the Cross in the play, became a nun.
The two acts of the play are divided by
a poem covering a lapse of eighteen years.
This is a play of laughter and tears, in
which the stifling of the mother instinct
is the theme before which the characters
pale.
The Story:
When the Prioress, the Mistress of
Novices, the Vicaress and the other nuns
begged her, Sister Joanna of the Cross
consented to read the poem she had
composed in celebration of the birthday of
the Prioress. The Vicaress was sure that
praise for the poem would lead to pride,
a sin, but Sister Joanna of the Cross
disclaimed all but a small part of the
birthday present. She had composed the lines,
it was true, but Sister Maria Jesus had
copied the verses, Sister Sagrario painted
the border, Sister Marcella tied the
ribbons, and the Mistress of Novices made
the gift possible by giving them the
parchment and the ribbon.
The mayor's wife sent the Prioress a
canary in a cage. The bird so delighted
the novices that they begged permission
to talk among themselves until time for
prayers. The doctor interrupted them on
his daily round. He looked at a felon
Sister Sagrario had on her finger, and
turned to prescribe for Sister Maria Jesus,
who was melancholy. He asked her age
and, when she said eighteen, he asked
THE CRADLE SONG by Gregorio Martinez Sierra. Translated by John Garrett Underhill. By per-
mission of the publishers, Samuel French. Copyright, 1915, 1917, by John Garrett Underhill; 1922, by
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.; 1934, by Samuel French. Renewed, 1942, by John Garrett Underhill.
Application for the right to present this play should be made to Samuel French, of 25 West 45th St., New York
36, N. Y., or 7623 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood 46, Calif., or if in Canada to Samuel French (Canada) Ltd.,
27 Grexmlle St., Toronto, Ont. '
727

to see her face. It was a pretty one and
he commented that the Lord had not
bad taste. But, for a prescription? One of
two things for a girl of that age: the
Prioress could write the child's mother to
take her home and provide a good
husband, or Sister Maria Jesus would have
to take cold baths every morning and say
five Pater Nosters with each.
While the doctor and the Prioress went
to see a bedridden sister, the novices
stayed to guard the front grille. As they
were talking, a bell rang by the grille,
and a basket was placed on the revolving
box by which gifts were brought into the
cloister. The novices could not resist
looking in the basket. Sister Marcella's cry
when she saw a baby lying there brought
all the other nuns back to determine the
trouble. The Prioress read a letter, which
had come in the basket, asking that the
nuns bring up the baby because her
mother could not keep her properly. The
Vicaress was horrified that the sisters
would even consider keeping the little
girl. The doctor, remarking that legally
the nuns had no right to maternity,
proposed that he adopt the baby and leave
her to be brought up in the convent.
There were still other problems to be
faced—the matters of feeding and
clothing and tending the child—but Sister
Joanna of the Cross had an answer for each.
The gardener's wife, who had a baby of
her own at the time, could help on all
counts. The Prioress, thinking that the
baby was the best of all birthday
presents, appointed Sister Joanna of the Cross
the child's guardian.
In the eighteen years that passed, the
nuns spent all their pent-up love on the
girl Teresa. She was a gay child, loving
the gardens of the cloister and the
adoring sisters; but it was easy to see that she
would not spend her life as a hermit,
though she was utterly devout. In time
she met a man, Antonio, whom she
promised to marry.
The nuns made for her an elaborate
trousseau, hand-embroidered and trimmed
with lace and blue ribbons. While they
worked on fancy chemises, petticoats, and
dressing jackets, one of their number
would read aloud meditations of various
sorts. As they tried to meditate, they
were interrupted continually by Teresas
happy singing in the garden where she
was picking flowers for the altar.
Sister Marcella had temptations to
melancholy which the Prioress offered to
alleviate by sending her out in the
garden for a little sunshine, but Sister
Marcella said that the flowers, the blue sky,
and the sun tempted her to deeper
melancholy. The other nuns sighed in accord.
The Vicaress, on a round of inspection,
had found a mirror hidden under Sister
Marcella's mattress. Mirrors being
definitely forbidden to the nuns, Sister
Marcella was under deep suspicion of the
sins of pride and vainglory. In confusion,
she explained that when her melancholy
became too deep, she used the mirror to
catch a sunbeam and make it dance
among the leaves, while pretending it
was a bird or a butterfly that could go
wherever it pleased. When Teresa came
in to tell how she had had to climb the
acacia trees to get enough white flowers
for the altar, Sister Marcella's eyes grew
wide with envy.
Teresa was bubbling over when she
came to gather up her things before
leaving the cloister for good. The nuns coun-
se led a more subdued manner for the
occasion. But Teresa could not be
restrained, though she was grateful for all
the love and care they had given her who
would otherwise have been an outcast
and a beggar. The nuns wanted no
thanks; the convent had been her home
as well as theirs, even if she could not
feel the desire to join them by entering
their order.
While they gathered together the
pieces of the trousseau to put into
Teresa's trunk, the Vicaress grumbled about
the Devil's hand on the fashion sheets
the sisters had used as patterns; but even
she relented enough to tell Teresa that
728

she deserved all the nuns had done for
her because she had always worked for
them inside the convent and out. Then
the Vicaress gave Teresa an itemized
account of the money the doctor, as foster
father, had given for the materials in her
trousseau.
When the packing was finished,
Teresa and Sister Joanna of the Cross were
left together to await the coming of
Antonio, the groom-to-be, and the doctor,
who was to drive Teresa to the train.
Teresa admitted that she had always
considered Sister Joanna of the Cross her
own mother, and asked her blessing.
Sister Joanna of the Cross admitted that
Teresa had been her whole happiness all
the years they had been together, that
Teresa's coming into the cloister had
dissipated the melancholy which had
followed her own separation from the
family she loved.
When Antonio came to the curtained
grille, he assured Sister Joanna of the
Cross that he would take care of Teresa
because he loved her dearly, but that he
knew she would never forget the peace
and calm of the convent. As the sister
went for the others to meet Antonio, he
told Teresa that he had found honor,
self-respect, and sympathy for his fellow-
man in loving her.
Hating to see Teresa go, the nuns tried
to give Antonio instructions in her care.
The Vicaress asked for and received his
pledge that he would always respect the
fear of God that Teresa would carry out
of the cloister with her.
Antonio told them that he was taking
Teresa to America. He begged the favor
of being allowed to see the sisters before
he left, and the Prioress allowed the
curtains to be drawn.
Then the doctor came for Teresa and
hurried her through her leave-taking. She
begged him never to forsake the sisters
and, with a final passionate embrace of
Sister Joanna of the Cross, left the
cloister with him.
729

CRANFORD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1853
Principal characters:
Mary Smith, the narrator
Miss Deborah Jenkyns, a genteel spinster
Miss Matilda Jenkyns (Matty), her sister
Peter Jenkyns, their long-lost brother
Mrs. Jamieson, leader of society
Lady Glenmire, Mrs. Jamieson's sister-in-law
Martha, Miss Matilda's faithful servant
Critique:
Foi a whimsical and kind, yet
humorous account of the habits and customs of
genteel spinsters of nineteenth-century
England, Cranford is unsurpassed. Only
a very warm and gentle woman could
have portrayed the little peculiarities of
her sex with affection and sly humor, as
did Mrs. Gaskell. There is something of
Charles Lamb in her finely drawn
characters, her humorous accounts of even the
most trivial events. The writer shows
great understanding and sympathy for the
everyday problems of poor but genteel
ladies. All in all, Cranford is a book to
please even the most sober realist.
The Story:
Cranford was a small English village
inhabited mostly by ladies. Few
gentlemen took up residence there, and most
of those who did seemed to disappear on
various and mysterious errands. The
doctor, the shopkeepers, and a few male
servants were all of their sex who crossed
the ladies' vision with any regularity.
Most of the ladies lived in "elegant
economy," and the spending of money
was considered vulgar and showy. There
was no mention of anyone's being poor
unless in privacy with one's dearest friend.
Thus when semi-retired Captain Brown
moved to Cranford and talked openly
about being poor, it was quite an affront
to the ladies. But the captain was so kind
and considerate to everyone, whether more
or less fortunate than he, that the ladies
could not long resent his vulgar behavior
and talk. He had two daughters. The
elder, dying of an incurable illness, had
a tongue sharpened by pain, but the kind
women joined her younger sister in
trying to make her last days pleasant and
comfortable. Many a cup of tea and small
delicacy found their way from the ladies'
already poor stores to the suffering girl.
Their sorrow was great when the kind
captain was killed while rescuing a small
child from in front of a train. When his
elder daughter soon followed him, all of
the ladies were hard pressed to make
suitable arrangements for the younger
daughter, left alone. One day a former
suitor appeared and took her for his wife.
The village ladies rested happily in the
knowledge that Captain Brown would be
pleased with his daughter's security.
Until her death Miss Deborah Jenkyns
was one of the more dominant spinsters
in the town. She made all decisions for
her younger sister, Miss Matilda, age
fifty-five. Miss Matilda, affectionately
called Miss Matty by all but her sister,
knew that Deborah had the better mind
and did not resent her sister's dominance.
After Miss Deborah's death Miss Matty
had almost to learn again how to live.
Her particular friends were Miss Pole,
Mrs. Forrester, and Mrs. Jamieson, who
became the social leader of Cranford after
Miss Deborah's death. Miss Mary Smith
730

often visited Miss Matty and brought her
the good advice of Mr. Smith, Mary's
father and Miss Matty's financial adviser.
Mary was surprised to learn that Miss
Matty had long ago had a suitor whom
she rejected in order to stay with her
mother. Not long after Miss Deborah's
death that gentleman returned to Cran-
ford for a visit. Mary was disappointed
that he did not renew his courtship of
Miss Matty. Miss Matty grieved too,
in secret, for she would never have
admitted openly such vulgar sentiments.
Mary learned also that Miss Deborah
and Miss Matty had once had a brother
who had disappeared many years before,
after being severely punished by their
father for playing a practical joke on Miss
Deborah. Peter Jenkyns was believed
dead, although Miss Matty had heard
rumors that he was living in India.
The genteel ladies were suddenly
thrown into a flurry of excitement when
they heard that Mrs. Jamieson's sister-in-
law, Lady Glenmire, was to settle in
Cranford. They spent long hours
discussing how they should address her, for
she was the first noblewoman they had
encountered. Their worries were in vain,
however, for Mrs. Jamieson subtly but
firmly informed them that they would not
be included in her guest list. At first the
ladies were greatly hurt. Later Mrs. Jamie-
son was forced to relent and invite them
to call, for most of the county gentility
were away or otherwise occupied. Miss
Matty, Miss Pole, and Mrs. Forrester first
thought they would be engaged elsewhere
for the fateful night, but their innate
kindness, or perhaps their curiosity,
prevailed, and they accepted the invitation.
They found Lady Glenmire delightful and
no more refined nor genteel than they
themselves—a fact they, if not Mrs. Jamie-
son, considered not surprising.
Mrs. Jamieson departed Cranford for
a time, leaving Lady Glenmire in charge
of her home. And in that genteel lady's
absence Lady Glenmire became engaged
to the doctor of the town, a man not even
recognized by the ladies except when his
services were needed for bleeding. Thus,
he was no higher socially than a
shopkeeper. Even more exciting was the fact
that the ladies at last knew someone who
was to be married. They awaited Mrs.
Jamieson's return with fear and
anticipation. They were not disappointed. Mrs.
Jamieson, deciding to cut Lady
Glenmire, stated that she had always known
her to be of low taste.
The engaged couple were married
before Mrs. Jamieson returned. By that time
a great tragedy had befallen Miss Matty.
The bank in which her estate was
deposited had to close its doors, and she was
left with but thirteen pounds a year. She
made no complaint; her biggest worry was
whether Mrs. Jamieson would allow the
ladies to continue their friendship with
her. Mary Smith sent for her father to see
what he could plan for Miss Matty. Miss
Pole, Mrs. Forrester, and another friend,
careful that she should not know of their
gift, gave up some of their own small
incomes so that they could help their
friend. Mary and Mr. Smith persuaded
Miss Matty to sell tea, but it took a good
deal of convincing to assure her that this
would be a genteel way for a lady to
supplement her income. Miss Matty's
faithful maid, Martha, forced her young man
to marry her sooner than he had
anticipated so that they could rent Miss Matty's
house and have her for a lodger. In that
way Martha could continue to look after
her old mistress without injuring Miss
Matty's pride. Everyone was happy wheri
Mrs. Jamieson returned and said that the
ladies could continue to call on Miss
Matty because her father had been a
rector and his daughter, who had never
married, was entitled to the position he
had left her.
More good fortune followed. Mary
Smith wrote to Miss Matty's brother in
India. When he received the letter, Peter
Jenkyns sold his property and returned
to Cranford to keep his sister in comfort
and in some prosperity. Peter also brought
about a reconciliation between Mrs. Jamie-
731

son and Lady Glenmire, who now called Once more there was peace in Cranford.
herself a vulgar Mrs. instead of Lady.
732

THE CREAM OF THE JEST
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Branch Cabell (1879-1958)
Type of plot: Satiric fantasy
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Virginia
First published: 1917
Principal characters:
Feltx Kennaston, an author
Kathleen Kennaston, his wife
Richard Harrowby, his neighbor
Ettarre, a woman in his novel and his dreams
Critique:
The Cream of ih€ Jest is fiction
compounded of philosophic speculation, a
fragile plot, and much literary allusion,
often somewhat obscure. The novel is
typical of that period of Cabell's career
when his books maintained a skeptical
tone and presented over and over again
the values of chivalric love. The story
represents Cabell's effort to escape the
realities of naturalism through the
speculations of romanticism.
The Story:
Felix Kennaston told his neighbor,
Richard Harrowby, about his dreams. In
writing his novels, Kennaston had created
a world much different from the ordinary
world of the Virginia countryside, and
his dreams contained similar elements of
the romantic and the marvelous. To
Harrowby the whole thing seemed
indecent, for Harrowby was a conventional,
unimaginative gentleman farmer, who
had made his money in soaps and beauty
aids.
Kennaston was writing a novel called
The Audit at Storisende, and in his
dreams he identified himself with a
character named Horvendile, who was
looking for the elusive and highly
improbable creature, the ideal woman. In
Ettarre, his heroine, Kennaston felt he had
found her. Much of his plot centered
about a broken round medallion bearing
mysterious symbols, a medallion he called
the sigil of Scoteia.
One afternoon Kennaston, walking in
his garden, stooped to pick up a little
piece of shining metal, apparently a
broken half of a small disc, and casually
dropped it into his pocket. Later, while
looking over some books in his library,
he thought of the little piece of metal
in his pocket. He brought it out and
laid it where the light of the lamp fell
upon it. At once he seemed to be
talking with Ettarre, who explained that he
had picked up half the broken sigil of
Scoteia and that it had brought him back
to her imagined world of romance and
dream. As he reached out to touch her,
she disappeared, and Kennaston found
himself sitting again in his library.
Kennaston's novel was published as
The Men Who Loved Alison, a title
which his pubhsher assured him would
bring better sales. When several readers,
shocked by what they called indecency in
the novel, wrote indignant letters to the
newspapers, the book became a best
seller. Mrs. Kennaston, who made it a
point never to read her husband's books,
enjoyed his success. She treated
Kennaston with polite boredom.
Strange things happened to Kennaston.
One day at a luncheon a famous man
took him aside and asked him whether
he bred white pigeons. This question
puzzled Kennaston, as did the little
mirror the man held in his hand. At another
THE CREAM OF THE JEST by James Branch Cabell. By permission of the author. Copyright, 1917, by James
Branch Cabell. Renewed, 1944, by James Branch Cabell.
733

time he saw an ugly old woman who told
him that there was no price of admission
to her world but that one paid on leaving.
Several times he talked to Ettarre in his
dreams.
One day Kennaston received an
invitation to call on a prelate who had
come to Linchfield to attend the bishop's
funeral. The prelate praised Kennaston's
book. He spoke of pigeons, too, and
mentioned how useful he found his little
mirror. Kennaston was frankly puzzled.
He returned to his dreamland, where,
as Horvendile, he experienced almost
every passion and emotion known to man.
And always, as he reached out to touch
Ettarre, the dream would come to an end.
Kennaston read widely in philosophy
and the classics, and he began to
question the reason for his own existence. He
came to the conclusion that the present
moment was all that was real—that the
past and future had no part in the reality
of today. As a man of letters, he became
interested in the artistry of creation and
decided that God must have been happy
over his creation of the character of
Christ. Probably because of his interest
in God as an artist, Kennaston was
confirmed in the country church nearby.
This act on his part increased his stature
■among the people of the neighborhood.
They even elected him to the vestry.
One day Kennaston went to the station
to meet his wife's train. While he was
waiting, a woman with whom he had
once been in love came up to him and
started to talk. She was about to go
back to her home in St. Louis. They
recalled the past and, as she left him to
get on her train, he had a moment in
which he identified her with Ettarre.
But his remark to his wife about her was
that she was not keeping her good looks
as she grew older. What haunted him,
however, was that the woman had drawn
from her purse a medallion resembling
the sigil of Scoteia.
Kennaston—as Horvendile—dreamed
of being in many parts of the world in
many eras; and one of the mysteries was
that he was always a young man of
about twenty-five. He was at Queen
Elizabeth's court; he was at Whitehall
with Cromwell; he was at the French
court of Louis Quartorze; he was among
the aristocrats about to be beheaded
during the French Revolution. And
always beside him was Ettarre, whose
contact would bring his dreams to an end.
One afternoon he found, quite by
accident, the missing piece of the sigil of
Scoteia in his wife's bathroom. After
securing the other piece, he put them
together on his wife's dressing table and
began speculating about the relation of
his wife to Ettarre. He hoped that her
discovery of the entire sigil would
express to her what he had never been able
to convey. But she paid no attention
to it and their life continued its banal
rounds. Eleven months later Mrs.
Kennaston died in her sleep without ever
having discussed the sigil or its
significance with her husband. After her death
he showed Harrowby the two halves of
the sigil, by which he had almost made
his dreams come true. Far from being
a magic emblem, the pieces proved to be
merely the broken top of a cold cream
jar. It was the final disillusionment for
Kennaston, compelled at last to give up
romantic youthful dreaming for the
realities of middle age.
734

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski (1821-1881)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Raskolnikov, a Russian student
Dounia, his sister
Sonia, a prostitute
Porfiry, inspector of police
Razumihtn, Raskolnikov's 'friend
Critique:
The theme of this novel is that man
pays by suffering for his crimes against
men. Dostoevski's Raskolnikov is a
tremendous study of a sensitive
intellectual driven by poverty to believe that
he was exempt from moral law. Other
features of Crime and Punishment are
the use of psychology in police
investigation, the author's sympathy for the
downtrodden as expressed in the person
of Sonia, a young prostitute, and realistic
descriptions of slum life in a large Russian
city of the nineteenth century.
The Story:
Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished
student in St. Petersburg, dreamed of
committing the perfect crime. With an
ax he murdered an old widowed
pawnbroker and her stepsister, and stole some
jewelry from their flat.
Back in his room, Raskolnikov received
a summons from the police. Weak from
hunger and illness, he prepared to make
a full confession. But the police had
called merely to ask him to pay a debt
his landlady had reported to them. When
he discovered what they wanted, he
collapsed from relief. Upon being revived,
he was questioned; his answers provoked
suspicion.
Raskolnikov hid the jewelry under a
rock in a courtyard. He returned to his
room, where he remained for four days in
a high fever. When he recovered, he
learned that the authorities had visited
him while he was delirious and that he
had said things during his fever which
tended to cast further suspicion on him.
Luzhin, betrothed to Raskolnikov's
sister Dounia, came to St. Petersburg from
the provinces to prepare for the wedding.
Raskolnikov resented Luzhin because he
knew his sister was marrying to provide
money for her destitute brother. Luzhin
visited the convalescent and left in a
rage when the young man made no
attempt to hide his dislike for him.
A sudden calm came upon the young
murderer; he went out and read trie
accounts of the murders in the papers.
While he was reading, a detective joined
him. The student, in a high pitch of
excitement caused by his crime and by
his sickness, talked too much, revealing
to the detective that he might well be the
murderer. However, no evidence could
be found that would throw direct
suspicion on him.
Later, witnessing a suicide attempt in
the slums of St. Petersburg, Raskolnikov
decided to turn himself over to the police;
but he was deterred when his friend, an
ex-clerk named Marmeladov, was struck
by a carriage and killed. Raskolnikov
gave the widow a small amount of money
he had received from his mother. Later
he attended a party given by some of his
friends and discovered that they, too,
suspected him of complicity in tne murder
of the two women.
Back in his room. Raskolnikov found
735

his mother and his sister, who were
awaiting his return. Unnerved at their
appearance and not wanting them to be
near him, he placed them in the care of
his friend, Razumihin, who, upon
meeting Dounia, was immediately attracted
to her.
In an interview with Porfiry, the chief
of the murder investigation, Raskolnikov
was mentally tortured by questions and
ironic statements until he was ready to
believe that he had been all but appre
hended for the double crime. Partly in
his own defense, he expounded his theory
that any means justified the ends of a
man of genius, and that sometimes he
believed himself a man of genius.
Raskolnikov proved to his mother and
Dounia that Luzhin was a pompous fool,
and the angry suitor was dismissed.
Razumihin had by that time replaced
Luzhin in the girl's affections.
Meanwhile Svidrigailov, who had
caused Dounia great suffering while she
had been in his employ as a governess,
arrived in St. Petersburg. His wife had
died and he had followed Dounia, as he
explained, to atone for his sins against
her by settling upon her a large amount
of money.
Razumihin received money from a rich
uncle and went into the publishing
business with Dounia. They asked
Raskolnikov to join them in the venture, but
the student, whose mind and heart were
full of turmoil, declined; he said goodbye
to his friend and to his mother and sister
and asked them not to try to see him
again.
He went to Sonia, the prostitute
daughter of the dead Marmeladov. They
read Sonia's Bible together, Raskolnikov
deeply impressed by the wretched girl's
faith. He felt a great sympathy for
Sonia and promised to tell her who had
committed the murders of the old
pawnbroker and stepsister. Svidrigailov, who
rented the room next to Sonia's,
overheard the conversation; he anticipated
Raskolnikov's disclosure with interest.
Tortured in his own mind,
Raskolnikov went to the police station, where
Porfiry played another game of cat-and-
mouse with him. His conscience and his
imagined insecurity had resulted in
immense suffering and torment of mind for
Raskolnikov.
At a banquet given by Marmeladov's
widow for the friends of her late
husband, Luzhin accused Sonia of stealing
money from his room. He had observed
Raskolnikov's interest in Sonia and he
wished to hurt the student for having
spoken against him to Dounia. The girl
was saved by the report of a neighbor
who had seen Luzhin slipping money
into Sonia's pocket. Later, in Sonia's
room, Raskolnikov confessed his crime
and admitted that in killing the two
women he had actually destroyed
himself.
Svidrigailov, having overheard the
confession, disclosed his knowledge to
Raskolnikov. Believing that Porfiry
suspected him of the murder and realizing
that Svidrigailov knew the truth,
Raskolnikov found life unbearable. Then
Porfiry told Raskolnikov outright that he was
the murderer, at the same time promising
Raskolnikov that a plea of temporary
insanity would be placed in his behalf and
his sentence would be mitigated if he
confessed. Raskolnikov delayed his
confession.
Svidrigailov, having informed Dounia
of the truth concerning her brother,
offered to save the student if Dounia
would consent to be his wife. He made
this offer to her in his room, which he
had locked after tricking her into the
meeting. He released her when she
attempted unsuccessfully to shoot him with
a pistol she had brought with her.
Convinced at last that Dounia would have
none of him, Svidrigailov gave her a
large sum of money and ended his life
with a pistol.
Raskolnikov, after being reassured by
his mother and his sister of their love
for him, and by Sonia of her undying
devotion, turned himself over to the
police. He was tried and sentenced to
736

serve eight years in Siberia. Dounia and
Razumihin, now successful publishers,
were married. Sonia followed
Raskolnikov to Siberia, where she stayed in a
village near the prison camp. In her
goodness to Raskolnikov and to the other
prisoners, she came to be known as Little
Mother Sonia. With her help,
Raskolnikov began his regeneration.
737

THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1881
Principal characters:
Sylvestre Bonnard, a bibliophile
Jeanne, his ward
Mme. Coccoz, later the Princess Tr6pof, his benefactress
Mixe. Prefers, a schoolteacher
Henri Gelis, a student
Critique:
This gentle novel is the best known
of France's work, and in many ways the
most typical. In it we find the
characteristic style—precise, elegant, gently
ironic, and learnedly humorous. The old
bibliophile becomes a real friend of the
reader and Jeanne is a charming foil. The
plot is tenuous. The chief pleasure in
reading the book derives from the author's
droll comments, the asides, the quips, and
the keen observations. Parts of the novel
have been widely quoted, especially
France's remark that children learn only
when they truly enjoy themselves.
The Story:
Bonnard was a retiring philologist, a
Member of the Institute, and a bachelor.
Th£rese, his maid, looked after him
firmly; she was the real mistress of his
domestic arrangements. Bonnard, his mind
stuffed with antiquarian lore about the
old abbeys of Paris, lived mostly in the
past.
One day a sickly bookseller called and
unsuccessfully showed him some cheap
editions. Although he bought no books,
Bonnard was moved by the thin, intense
man. When he inquired of Th£rese she
told him that the bookseller, M. Coccoz,
lived up in the attic under a leaky roof
with seldom even a fire, and his wife had
just had a baby. Moved to pity, Bonnard
sent up some logs for the indigent couple
to burn.
Shortly afterward he heard that the
husband had died. Therese sniffed
virtuously at the gay widow who had far
too many admirers. Bonnard saw the
beautiful Mme. Coccoz only once on the
stairs. She showed him her healthy baby
and remarked on his kindness in sending
firewood.
Ten years later Bonnard read in a
catalogue of a manuscript of the Golden
Legend, a work he wished very much to
own. Finally he tracked it down,
discovering that it was owned by one Signor
Polizzi, who lived in Sicily. The Italian
refused to lend the manuscript, but he
invited Bonnard to come to Sicily to read
it at his leisure. Although it was a long,
hard trip for a shy man of letters, Bonnard
set out for Sicily.
On the island he met Prince Tr£pof, a
Russian, and his beautiful wife whom
Bonnard never associated with the young
widow he had met once on the stairs years
before. They were rich travelers who had
nothing to do but to look for match boxes
for the prince's collection. The princess
gently decried her nomadic existence, but
she adored her husband.
Signor Polizzi's house was difficult to
reach. Bonnard had to make the last part
of the trip by mule litter. When he at
last arrived, he found that Polizzi, a
slippery jack-of-all-trades, had given the
Golden Legend to his son, who had
opened a shop in Paris. While Bonnard
was making the long trip to Sicily, the
manuscript had all the time been in a
bookshop not far from his apartment.
Furious at the unkindness done him,
738

Bonnard poured out his bitter story to the
sympathetic princess.
Back in Paris, Bonnard went to the
son's shop; there was the manuscript. The
son refused to quote a price on it because
he was putting it up at auction. When
the sale took place, Bonnard hopefully
bid up to six thousand francs, but some
one always outbid him. To his
consternation he found that it was Polizzi who had
successfully bid on the manuscript. The
dealer was acting as agent for a client
who had instructed him to buy back the
manuscript at any cost.
Back in his apartment, while Bonnard
was gloomily thinking of his troubles, a
young boy was shown in. The youngster
gave him a package from his mother and
disappeared, but not before Th£rese had
seen the carriage. The package contained
a make-believe log. Inside was a card from
the Princess Tr£pof and a profusion of
violets. Under the flowers Bonnard found
the manuscript. Just then Th£rese
lumbered in to ask what Mme. Coccoz was
doing in such a rich carriage and why
she had stopped at their door.
M. de Gabry invited Bonnard to come
to his country estate to catalogue the
library he had inherited. Bonnard found
the estate in run-down condition, but the
library was extensive. He happily settled
down to his long task.
In front of him on the desk was a
tiny fairy who scolded him for his dry
preoccupations and threw ink at him.
Bonnard awoke with a start and found
that a sudden wind had upset his ink
bottle. Mme. de Gabry listened to the
story of his dream with much interest.
A few days later Bonnard came back from
a walk to find his dream fairy perched on
a console in the hall. As he stared in
astonishment, Mme. de Gabry came up to
introduce Jeanne Alexandre.
Jeanne was a shy girl with red hands.
After Mme. de Gabry had described the
fairy to her, she made a like statuette to
surprise Bonnard. The old man was much
pleased by the gift, and when he heard
something of Jeanne's story he was moved
to emotions he had not felt for years.
Jeanne was the granddaughter of
Clementine, a girl whom he had loved long ago.
Now Jeanne's relatives were dead and
she was staying a few days with Mme.
de Gabry. Bonnard resolved to look after
the girl for the sake of his dead
Clementine.
In Paris Mme. de Gabry went with
him to Clementine's grave and there
listened to his nostalgic tale. When
Bonnard, a young man, had loved her,
Clementine's mother was dead, and she
lived with her choleric father, who was
a map maker. They were renting rooms
temporarily from Bonnard's father.
Bonnard was afraid to disclose his love for
Clementine, but she seemed to know how
he felt. One evening a great quarrel arose
between Clementine's father, a royalist,
and Bonnard's uncle, who was a Bona-
partist. After the quarrel Clementine was
taken away and Bonnard never saw her
again.
After telling his story, Bonnard asked
Mme. de Gabry how he could best help
the orphan Jeanne. She reminded him
that Jeanne had a guardian, Maitre
Mouche the notary, who would have to
be consulted.
The honest bibliophile cared little for
Maitre Mouche's shifty ways, but the
notary gave him permission to visit Jeanne
each Thursday afternoon. Jeanne was in
Mile. Prefere's select school, where at
first Bonnard was received with suspicion.
As soon as Mile. Prefere learned, however,
that Bonnard was a Member of the
Institute, she was effusive. Immediately
Jeanne began to receive better treatment
than she had as a charity student.
During the vacation period Mile.
Prefere frequently brought Jeanne to
Bonnard's apartment. The schoolmistress
quickly made herself at home and soon
had her favorite rocker and her shelf for
her knitting. One afternoon, while Jeanne
was in the kitchen, Mile. Prefere
proposed marriage to Bonnard, who was
739

thunderstruck at the idea.
The next time he went to the school to
see Jeanne, Mile. Prefere received him
coldly and forbade him to have anything
to do with the girl. Bonnard complained
to Mairre Mouche, who upheld Mile.
Prefere. Then on a rainy day Bonnard
waited outside the school wall until he
saw Jeanne and passed her through the
gate by a ruse. Amazed at his own daring
in kidnaping a minor, he took her to the
de Gabry house.
M. de Gabry undertook to settle the
affair with Mairre Mouche, but that
worthy had disappeared after embezzling
his clients* funds. Bonnard was legally
appointed Jeanne's guardian and took her
home with him.
A young student, Henri Gelis, called
on Bonnard for help with his thesis. He
soon had eyes only for Jeanne and
eventually he proposed to marry her, even though
she had no dowry. Bonnard made
arrangements to sell his library so that his ward
could have a respectable financial start
in her married life. One evening, just
before the books were sold, he guiltily
took a book and hid it. He would have
one volume left, at any rate.
After Jeanne and Gelis were married,
Bonnard went to live in Brolles, a small
village. There Jeanne and her husband
visited him twice each year, and there also
he kept the cradle of little Sylvestre, their
child who had died. Bonnard often
reflected that the parents were young and
healthy. There would be more family.
740

THE CRISIS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Winston Churchill (1871-1947)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Civil War period
Locale: Missouri and Virginia
First published: 1901
Principal characters:
Stephen Brice, a young lawyer from Boston
Virginia Carvel, his sweetheart
Clarence Colfax, Brice's rival for Virginia Carvel
Judge Whipple, Brice's employer and friend
Colonel Carvel, Virginia's father
Abraham Lincoln
Critique:
The American-born Winston Churchill
had several reasons for choosing St
Louis as the setting for this novel. First,
it was his aim to show the remarkable
contrasts in the lives of Sherman, Grant,
and Lincoln, all of whom came from St.
Louis and the neighboring state of
Illinois. Secondly, two streams of
emigration, from the North and from the South,
met at St. Louis, with the result that
Northern and Southern culture could be
brought into focus and examined in
detail. The Crisis remains one of the best
novels of its type. The author brought
in the historical characters, including the
almost legendary Lincoln, in a natural
way not found in many later efforts.
tor against Stephen A. Douglas. When
Stephen Brice finally found his man,
Abraham Lincoln, he was in time to hear
the famous Freeport debate between
Lincoln and Douglas. Lincoln made a deep
impression on Stephen, who went back
to St. Louis a confirmed Republican, as
Judge Whipple had hoped. Feeling that
Stephen would some day be a great
politician, the judge had sent him to
Lincoln to catch some of Lincoln's
idealism and practical politics.
Convinced by Lincoln that no country
could exist half-slave and half-free,
Stephen Brice became active in Missouri
politics on behalf of the Republicans;
a dangerous course to take in St. Louis
because of the many Southerners living
in the city. His anti-slavery views soon
alienated Stephen from the girl he wanted
to marry, who then promised to marry
Stephen's rival, her cousin and fellow
Southerner, Clarence Colfax.
Lincoln lost the election for the senate,
but in doing so won for himself the
presidency of the United States in 1860.
During both campaigns, Stephen Brice
worked for the Republican party. An
able orator, he became known as a rising
young lawyer of exceptional abilities.
The guns at Fort Sumter reverberated
loudly in St. Louis in 1861. The city
was divided into two factions, pro-slavery
Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners.
Friends of long standing no longer spoke
THE CRISIS by Winston Churchill. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1901, by
The Macmillan Co. Renewed. 1929. by Winston Churchill.
The Story:
In 1858 Stephen Brice emigrated from
Boston to St. Louis with his widowed
mother. He went to accept the offer of
Judge Whipple, his father's friend, who
had promised Stephen an opportunity
to enter his law firm. Being a personable
young man, Stephen Brice found favor
among the people of St. Louis, including
Colonel Carvel, and the colonel's
daughter, Virginia. Stephen prompdy fell in
love with Virginia Carvel. He was not
encouraged by the girl at first because
he was a New Englander.
One day Judge Whipple sent Stephen
to Springfield, Illinois, with a message
for the man who was running for sena-
741

to each other and members of the same
family found themselves at odds over the
question of which side Missouri should
favor, the Union or the Confederacy.
It was a trying time for Stephen Brice.
Because of his widowed mother and his
political activities, he was unable to join
the army. Judge Whipple convinced him
that, for the time being, he could do
more for his country as a civilian. It
was hard for the young man to believe
the judge when all of Stephen's friends
and acquaintances were going ahout the
city in uniform.
When war was declared, Missouri had
a little campaign of its own, for the state
militia under the direction of the governor
attempted to seize the state. This action
was defeated by the prompt action of
Federal forces in capturing the militia
training camp without firing a shot. A
spectator at that minor engagement,
Stephen made the acquaintance of an
ex-army officer named Sherman and of
another shambling man who claimed he
should be given a regiment. The young
officers laughed at him; his name was
Ulysses S. Grant.
Among those captured when Federal
troops overcame the Missouri militia
was Clarence Colfax, Stephen's rival.
Clarence refused to give his oath and
go on parole, and he soon escaped from
prison and disappeared into the South.
Virginia Carvel thought him more of a
hero than ever.
Because communications with the
South and the Southwest had been cut
by the Union armies, Colonel Carvel
went bankrupt. He and his daughter
aided Southern sympathizers attempting
to join the Confederate Army. At last
the colonel himself felt that it was his
duty to leave St. Louis and take an active
part in the hostilities.
The war continued, putting the lie to
those optimists who had prophesied that
hostilities would end in a few months.
By the time of the battle at Vicksburg,
Stephen had become a lieutenant in the
Union Army. He distinguished himself
in that battle and came once more to the
attention of Sherman. When the city
fell, Stephen found Clarence Colfax,
now a lieutenant-colonel in the
Confederate Army. The Southerner had
received a severe wound. To save
Clarence's life, Stephen arranged for him
to be sent to St. Louis on a hospital ship.
Stephen knew that he was probably
sending his rival back to marry Virginia
Carvel. Young Colfax realized what Stephen
had done, and told Virginia as much
while he was convalescing in St. Louis.
The girl vowed that she would never
marry a Yankee, even if Colfax were
killed.
Judge Whipple had fallen ill, and he
was nursed by Virginia and by Stephen's
mother. While the judge was sinking
fast, Colonel Carvel appeared. At the
risk of his life, he had come through
the lines in civilian clothes to see his
daughter and his old friend. There was
a strange meeting at Judge Whipple's
deathbed. Clarence Colfax, Colonel
Carvel, and Stephen Brice were all there.
They all risked their lives, for the
Confederates could have been arrested as
spies, and Stephen, because he was with
them, could have been convicted of
treason. That night Virginia realized
that she was in love with Stephen.
After the judge's death Stephen
returned to the army. Ordered to General
Sherman's staff, he accompanied the
general on the march through Georgia. At
the battle of Bentonville, Stephen again
met Clarence Colfax, who had been
captured by Union soldiers while in
civilian clothes and brought to Sherman's
headquarters as a spy. Once again
Stephen interceded with Sherman and
saved the Southerner's life. Soon
afterward Stephen, promoted to the rank of
major, was sent hy Sherman with some
dispatches to General Grant at City Point,
in Virginia. Stephen recognized Grant
as the man he had seen at the
engagement of the militia camp back in St.
Louis.
During the conference with the gen-
742

eral an officer appeared to summon
Stephen to meet another old
acquaintance, Abraham Lincoln. The president,
like Grant, wished to hear Stephen's
first-hand account of the march through
Georgia to the sea. When Stephen asked
for a pardon for Clarence Colfax, Lincoln
said he would consider the matter.
Stephen went with Lincoln to Richmond
for an inspection of that city after it
had fallen to Grant's armies.
Virginia Carvel, not knowing of
Stephen's intercession on behalf of
Clarence Colfax, traveled to Washington
to ask Lincoln for a pardon. She gained
an audience with the president, during
which she met Stephen once again.
Lincoln granted them the pardon, saying
that with the war soon to end the time
to show clemency had come. He left
Virginia and Stephen alone when he
hurried to keep another appointment.
The young people had realized during
their talk with Lincoln that there was
much to be forgiven and forgotten by
both sides in the struggle which was
drawing to a close. The emotion of the
moment overcame their reticence at last,
and they declared their love for each
other. They were married the following
day.
After the wedding they went to visit
Virginia's ancestral home in Annapolis.
A few days later word came to them that
Lincoln had died from an assassin's
bullet.
743

THE CRISIS
Type of work: Political essays
Author: Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
First published: 1776-1783
In the series of sixteen essays now
known as The Crisis, Thomas Paine,
called by Benjamin Franklin "an
ingenious worthy young man," emerged as the
ablest propagandist of the cause of liberty
during the American Revolution. The
first Crisis essay appeared during the
darkest days of December, 1776, after
Washington's forces had retreated from Fort
Lee down through New Jersey and into
Pennsylvania. Not only the army but the
Continental Congress had been forced to
flee before the advancing forces of
General Howe. Many people believed that
conditions had become so bad that
Washington's army could be liquidated and the
revolt suppressed before the end of 1776.
Paine, who had attached himself to the
Continental Army as a civilian aide, was
free to mix among the officers and
enlisted men during the retreat, and he
was well aware of the dire situation in
which the new nation found itself. In
the midst of those troubled times the
military situation received another blow
by the plotting of the Conway Cabal,
which threatened to remove Washington
from the post of commander-in-chief and
place the army under the direction of
General Gates. It was under these
conditions that Thomas Paine, America's
first great propagandist, entered the
struggle as a writer to defend the honor of
Washington and to advance the cause of'
the Revolution among the people. The
first and best-known of the sixteen
pamphlets appeared on December 19, 1776;
it was signed "Common Sense."
The characteristics and style of Paine's
writings may well be compared to those
of Rousseau and Marx, for like them, he
could electrify his audience with the
written word. Also, he possessed the gift
of using key words and phrases which
had a magnetic effect upon those who
read him. Nor have the words of Thomas
Paine been forgotten. When the United
States faced the great crisis of World War
II, Franklin D. Roosevelt constantly
turned to the words of Paine to express
his thoughts. The two opening sentences
of The Crisis offer excellent examples of
Paine's ability to use key phrases and
catch words:
These are times that try men's souls.
The summer soldier and the sunshine
patriot will in this crisis, shrink from
the service of his country; but he that
stands it NOW, deserves the love and
thanks of men and women.
Paine in an effort to bolster the sagging
morale of the Americans made light of
British successes, declaring that Howe
was ravaging the countryside as a brigand
and not as a successful invader making
a lasting conquest. The withdrawal of
Washington was considered by Paine to
be a strategic retreat and the promise of
victory, not disaster, was imminent. He
was positive that final victory could be
achieved, but he declared that a greater
effort was needed, that "those who expect
to reap the blessings of freedom, must,
like men, undergo the fatigues of
supporting it." In his opinion, a regular
army was essential since the militia was
unequal to the task at hand. He added
to the hatred for the Tories by describing
them in the most uncomplimentary
manner in an effort to effect an irreconcilable
breach between this group and the
patriots. He defined Tories as being
cowards with "servile, slavish, self-interested
fear" and added that
the Tories have endeavored to insure
their property with the enemy, by
forfeiting their reputation with us; from
which may be jusdy inferred, that their
governing passion is avarice.
Some students of the American
Revolution are of the opinion that catch phrases
744

such as "summer soldier" and
"sunshine patriot" were important in igniting
the spark which enabled Washington to
cross the Delaware River and fall upon
the British forces in a limited offensive
at Trenton and Princeton before going
into winter quarters.
As conditions began to improve, Paine
pointed out the hopeless position of the
British by stating that General Howe's
condition and ours are very different.
He has everybody to fight, we have
only his one army to cope with, and
which wastes away at every
engagement: we can not only reinforce, but
can redouble our numbers; he is cut
off from all suppliers, and must sooner
or later inevitably fall into our hands.
Continuing his argument, Paine wrote
that "if Britain cannot conquer us, it
proves that she is neither able to govern
nor protect us. . . ." Any victories for
the British were interpreted as defeats
because "it is distressing to see an enemy
advancing into a country but it is the
only place in which we can beat them,
and in which we have always beaten
them, whenever they have made the
attempt." The losses of Philadelphia and
Charleston were considered unimportant;
those cities could be liberated in a matter
of hours should the inhabitants decide to
rise up against the enemy.
With the British armies growing
weaker, in his opinion, Paine constantly
urged the people to make sacrifices and
to become active in their support of the
movement for liberty: "The nearer any
disease approaches a crisis, the nearer it
is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make
their advances together, and it is only the
last push, in which one or the other takes
the lead." The essays, since they were
intended for propaganda purposes, by
necessity had to be written in a simple,
clear, and forceful style which could be
completely understood by all who read
them or heard them read. They were read
to the pitifully small army; they were
posted on trees and in taverns in the hope
that they would inspire all who read them
to a more strenuous effort for the cause
of liberty. An example of the simple and
direct approach utilized by Paine is
shown in the following passage:
Our support and success depend on
such a variety of men and
circumstances, that every one who does but
wish well, is of some use: there are men
who have a strange aversion to arms,
yet have hearts to risk every shilling in
the cause, or in support of those who
have better talents for defending it.
Nature, in the arrangement of
mankind, has fitted some for every service
in life: were all soldiers, all would
starve and go naked, and were none
soldiers, all would be slaves. As
disaffection to independence is the badge of a
Tory, so affection to it is the mark of a
Whig; and the different services of the
Whigs, down from those who nobly
contribute every thing, to those who
have nothing to render but their wishes,
tend all to the same centre, though with
different degrees of merit and ability.
The larger we make the circle, the more
we shall harmonize, and the stronger
we shall be. All we want to shut out
is disaffection, and, that excluded, we
must accept from each other such duties
as we are best fitted to bestow. A
narrow system of politics, like a narrow
system of religion, is calculated only to
sour the temper, and be at variance
with mankind. All we want to know
in America is simply this, who is for
independence, and who is not? Those
who are for it, will support it, and the
remainder will undoubtedly see the
reasonableness of paying the charges;
while those who oppose or seek to De-
tray it, must expect the more rigid fate
of the jail and the gibbet.
The true value of the essays to the
reader of the present generation is to
clear up the misconception of earlier
historians who were of the belief* that the
Revolution had the almost universal
support of the population. Also, the essays
serve as a chief chronicle of events as
they were occurring. It must be remem-
745

bered, however, that Paine wrote
favorably toward the American cause and that
the true picture may not have been
presented in every case.
Paine saw much of the actual fighting
and perhaps understood the war more
clearly than anyone else who wrote as the
events occurred. He was a master at
summing up the situation and then
interpreting it as he would have liked it to
have been. As an interpreter of changing
events, he must be ranked among the
outstanding interpreters of any period of
history.
During the years of the Revolution,
Thomas Paine was a widely read and
highly influential propagandist. It was
after the French Revolution, in which
he participated, that he came to be
considered a radical and a dangerous
revolutionary. For a more complete
understanding of the American Revolution one
should read The Crisis pamphlets in their
entirety.

THE CRITIC
Tyfe of work: Drama
Author: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Type of plot: Literary satire
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1779
Principal characters:
Mr. Dangle, a wealthy, stage-struck Londoner
Mrs. Dangle, his wife
Mr. Sneer, Dangle's friend
Sm Fretful Plagiary, a dramatist
Mr. Puff, dramatist and journalist
Critique:
In Sheridan's time The Critic, Or, A
Tragedy Rehearsed was probably best
known for its bitingly satirical portrait of
Sheridan's fellow dramatist, Richard
Cumberland, who was the prototype of
Sir Fretful Plagiary. Today the play is
most important for the light it sheds on
what Sheridan thought of the drama
prevalent in his own time. By showing the
reader the insipidity of the tragedy
rehearsed within the play, the laughable
defense of trite dramatic devices by its
author, and the comments by the actors
themselves, Sheridan lets the reader see
what he thought of the state of drama
during his age. Nor should it be overlooked
that Sheridan's The Critic is one of a line
of English plays which use plays within
plays to satirize the times and the drama.
Sheridan's play can be compared with
such similar plays as Buckingham's The
Rehearsal, Henry Fielding's Tom Thumb,
David Garrick's Peep Behind the Curtain,
and Shaw's Fannys First Play.
The Story:
Mr. Dangle, a well-to-do gentleman of
London, sat one morning with his wife at
breakfast. While he read the newspapers,
Mrs. Dangle complained that her
husband's hobby, the theater, was making her
house unlivable, with disappointed
authors, would-be actors, musicians, and
critics making it their meeting place.
Dangle protested vigorously, but as he did
so a stream of callers arrived to prove her
point.
The first caller was Mr. Sneer. He and
Mrs. Dangle got into a discussion on the
morality of the stage and the proper
material for comedies. Then Sir Fretful
Plagiary, a dramatist, was announced.
Before he entered, Dangle reported that he
was a close friend but that he could not
accept criticism of his work. Sir Fretful
told how his new play had been sent to the
Covent Garden theater, rather than to
Drury Lane, because of the envy he had
uncovered there.
Sneer, Dangle, and Sir Fretful Plagiary
began to discuss the latter's new play. In
the discussion all criticism of his drama
was brushed aside in one way or another
by the author, who ended up with a
diatribe against all who would say
anything against his work, including the
newspapers. At the end of' their talk, a
group of musicians entered looking for
Dangle's assistance in securing work with
the theaters. They were led by an Italian
who knew no English and a Frenchman
who knew little English, but was to act as
interpreter.
The Frenchman and the Italian tried
to make Dangle understand what they
wanted, but with little success. After a
trilingual conversation, in which not one
of the participants could understand the
others, Mrs. Dangle took the musicians
into another room for refreshment and so
relieved her husband of their troublesome
presence.
As the musicians left Dangle and Sneer
alone in the room, Mr. Puff, another
747

dramatist who had a play in rehearsal at
the theater, entered. Puff was introduced
to Sneer by Dangle as a puffing writer for
the newspapers, whose job it was to praise
anyone or anything for a price; he was, in
short, an eighteenth-century press agent.
He explained for the benefit of Mr. Sneer
the various kinds of "puffs" he wrote: the
direct, the preliminary, the collateral, the
collusive, and the oblique. At the end of
the conversation, the three agreed to meet
at the theater to watch a rehearsal of
Puff's new play.
Later the three met, and Puff informed
his two friends, Dangle and Sneer, that
the time of his play was the days following
defeat of the Spanish Armada during the
reign of Elizabeth. The under-prompter,
appearing to notify the author that the
rehearsal was ready to begin, said that the
play had been somewhat shortened. The
actors, informed that anything they found
unnecessary in the tragedy could be cut,
had taken full liberties with Mr. PufFs
script.
When the curtain rose, two watchmen
were found asleep at four in the morning.
Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Walter
Raleigh appeared on the stage and began
the exposition of the plot. They were
interrupted at intervals by protestations and
explanations by the author, who spoke to
the actors on the stage and to his two
friends observing the rehearsal.
In the second act of the play a love
story between the daughter of the fort
commander and a captured Spanish
prince was introduced, again with
continued interruptions by the dramatist,
who was enraged at the liberties taken by
the actors in cutting his lines and parts of
scenes. He and his friends, Sneer and
Dangle, continued to discuss dramatic art
as the rehearsal continued and found
various aspects of the play to point up their
discussion. Puff was particularly proud of
the second sight credited to the heroine, a
device by which he was able to describe
the defeat of the Spanish Armada without
showing the sea fight on the stage.
He was also quite proud of a verbal
fencing match between the heroine and
the Spanish prince. When Sneer and
Dangle found the repartee ambiguous,
Puff explained that he had written the
dialogue completely in fencing terms, an
explanation which his friends found
scarcely more intelligible.
Puff irritated the actors by directinc
them as the rehearsal progressed, and
they, in turn, continued to irritate him by
cutting out more lines. At their
protestations that they could not act because of his
interruptions, he replied heatedly that he
had feelings, too, and did not like to see
his play shredded by the players.
At the end of the love scene in the
play, Puff began an argument with the
under-prompter, who informed him that
it was impossible to rehearse the park
scene because the carpenters had not built
the scenery. Puff angrily announced that
they could cut his play as they would; he
intended to print it in its entirety.
The next scene in the rehearsal of
Puff's play was a sentimental discovery
scene not connected with the main story.
In reply to his friends' comments, Puff ex-
f)lainea that there was no need to have a
ogical connection between the main plot
and the subplot. Then came what- Puff
called the most perfect scene in the play.
An actor entered, sat down, shook his
head, arose, and went off the stage. The
shaking of the head, according to Puff,
said more than all the words he could have
written.
In the last scene of the play the Spanish
prince was killed in a duel, and his
English sweetheart went mad. After her exit
from the stage, a masque procession of all
the British rivers and their tributaries
passed over the stage, while an orchestra
played Handel's water music.
Following the procession, Puff
announced to his friends that the rehearsal
was good, but that the actors were not yet
perfect. To the actors he announced that
another rehearsal would be held the next
day.
748

CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
Type of work: Philosophical treatise
Author: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
First published: 1781
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a
masterpiece in metaphysics designed to
answer the question, "How are synthetic
a priori judgments possible?" Since a
synthetic judgment is one whose
predicate is not contained in the subject, and
an a priori judgment is one whose truth
can be known independently of
experience, Kant's question meant, in effect,
"How can there be statements such that
the idea of the subject does not involve
the idea of the predicate and which,
nevertheless, must be true and can be known
to be true without recourse to
experience?"
To make the question clearer, Kant
offered examples of analytic and synthetic
judgments. The statement that "All
bodies are extended" is offered as an analvtic
judgment, since it would be impossible
to think of a body—that is, of a physical
object—that was not spread out in space;
and the statement "All bodies are heavy"
is offered as a synthetic judgment, since
Kant believed that it is possible to
conceive of something as a body without
supposing that it has weight.
Perhaps even clearer examples are
possible. The judgment that "All red apples
are apples" is surely analytic, since it
would be impossible to conceive of
something as being red and as being an apple
without supposing it to be an apple; the
predicate is, in this sense, included in the
subject. But the judgment "All apples are
red" is surely synthetic, since it is
possible to think of something as being an
apple without supposing it to be red; in
fact, some apples are green. Synthetic
judgments can be false, but analytic
judgments are never false.
A priori knowledge is knowledge
"absolutely independent of all experience,"
and a posteriori knowledge is empirical
knowledge, that is, knowledge possible
only through experience. We can know a
priori that all red apples are apples (and
that they are red), but to know that a
particular apple has a worm in it is
something that must be known a posteriori.
The question of how synthetic a priori
judgments are possible is, then, a
question concerning judgments that must be
true—since they are a priori and can be
known to be true without reference to
experience—even though, as synthetic,
their predicates are not conceived in
thinking of their subjects.
As an example of a synthetic a priori
judgment Kant offers, "Everything which
happens has its cause." He argues that
he can think of something as happening
without considering whether it has a
cause; the judgment is, therefore, not
analytic. Yet he supposes that it is
necessarily the case that everything that
happens has a cause, even though his
experience is not sufficient to support his
claim. The judgment must be a priori.
How are such synthetic a priori
judgments possible?
One difficulty arises at this point.
Critics of Kant have argued that Kant's
examples are not satisfactory. The
judgment that everything that happens has a
cause is regarded as being either an
analytic, not synthetic, a priori judgment
(every event being a cause relative to an
immediately subsequent event, and an
effect relative to an immediately
precedent event), or as being a synthetic a
posteriori, not a priori, judgment (leaving
open the possibility that some events
may be uncaused). A great many critics
have maintained that Kant's examples
are bound to be unsatisfactory for the
obvious reason that no synthetic a priori
judgments are possible. (The argument
is that unless the predicate is involved in
the subject, the truth of the judgment is

a matter of fact, to be determined only
by reference to experience).
Kant's answer to the problem
concerning the possibility of synthetic a friori
judgments was that pure reason—that is,
the faculty of arriving at a friori
knowledge—is possible because the human way
of knowing determines, to a considerable
extent, the character of what is known.
Whenever human beings perceive
physical objects, they perceive them in time
and space; time and space are what Kant
calls "modes of intuition," that is, ways
of apprehending the objects of sensation.
Since human beings must perceive
objects in time and space, the judgment
that an object is in time must be a friori
but, provided the element of time is no
part of the conception of the object, the
judgment is also synthetic. It is
somewhat as if we were considering a world
in which all human beings are compelled
to wear green glasses. The judgment that
everything seen is somewhat green would
be a friori (since nothing could be seen
except by means of the green glasses),
but it would also be synthetic (since
being green is no part of the conception of
object).
In Kant's terminology, a transcendental
philosophy is one concerned not so much
with objects as with the mode of a friori
knowledge, and a critique of pure
reason is the science of the sources and
limits of that which contains the
principles by which we know a friori. Space
and time are the forms of pure intuition,
that is, modes of sensing objects. The
science of all principles of a friori
sensibility, that is, of those principles that
make a friori intuitions (sensations)
possible, Kant calls the transcendental
aesthetic.
But human beings do more than
merely sense or perceive objects; they
also think about them. The study of how
a friori concepts, as distinguished from
intuitions, are possible is called
transcendental logic. Transcendental logic is
divided into transcendental analytic,
dealing with the principles of the
understanding without which no object can
be thought, and transcendental dialectic,
showing the error of applying the
principles of pure thought to objects
considered in themselves.
Using Aristotle's term, Kant calls the
pure concepts of the understanding
categories. The categories are of quantity
(unity, plurality, totality), of quality
(reality, negation, limitation), of relation
(substance and accident, cause and
effect, reciprocity between agent and
patient), and of modality
(possibility-impossibility, existence-nonexistence,
necessity-contingency. According to Kant,
everything which is thought is considered
according to these categories. It is not a
truth about things in themselves that
they are one or many, positive or
negative, but that all things fall into these
categories because the understanding is
so constituted that it can think in no
other way.
Kant maintained that there are three
subjective sources of the knowledge of
objects: sense, imagination, and
apperception. By its categories the mind
imposes a unity on the manifold of
intuition; what would be a mere sequence of
appearances, were the mind not involved,
makes sense as the appearance of objects.
The principles of pure understanding
fall into four classes: axioms of intuition,
anticipations of perception, analogies of
experience, and postulates of empirical
thought in general.
The principle of the axioms of
intuition is that "All intuitions are extensive
magnitudes," proved by reference to the
claim that all intuitions are conditioned
by the spatial and temporal mode of
intuition.
The principle by which all perception
is anticipated is that "the real that is an
object of sensation has intensive
magnitude, that is, a degree." It would not be
possible for an object to influence the
senses to no degree; hence various ob-
750

jects have different degrees of influence
on the senses.
The principle of the analogies of
experience is that "Experience is possible
only through the representation of a
necessary connection of perceptions." Our
experience would be meaningless to us
were it not ordered by the supposition
that perceptions are of causally related
substances which are mutually
interacting.
Kant's postulates of empirical thought
in general relate the 'possibility of things
to their satisfying the formal conditions
of intuition and of concepts, the actuality
of things to their satisfying the material
conditions of sensation, and the necessity
of things to their being determined "in
accordance with universal conditions of
experience" in their connection with the
actual.
A distinction which is central in Kant's
philosophy is the distinction between the
phenomenal and the noumenal. The
phenomenal world is the world of
appearances, the manifold of sensation as
formed spatially and temporally and
understood by use of the categories. The
noumenal world is the world beyond
appearance, the unknown and unknowable,
the world of "things-in-themselves."
In the attempt to unify experience, the
reason constructs certain ideas—of a soul,
of the world, of God. But these ideas are
transcendental in that they are
illegitimately derived from a consideration of
the conditions of reason, and to rely on
them leads to difficulties which Kant's
"Transcendental Dialectic" was designed
to expose. The "Paralogisms of Pure
Reason" are fallacious syllogisms for
which the reason has transcendental
grounds; that is, the reason makes sense
out of its operations by supposing what,
on logical grounds, cannot be admitted.
The "Antinomies of Pure Reason" are
pairs of contradictory propositions, all
capable of proof provided the arguments
involve illegitimate applications of the
forms and concepts of experience to
matters beyond experience.
Kant concludes the Critique of Pure
Reason with the suggestion that the ideas
of God, freedom, and immortality arise
in the attempt to make moral obligation
intelligible. This point was developed at
greater length in his Metaphysics of
Morals (1785) and his Critique of
Practical Reason (1788).
751

THE CROCK OF GOLD
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Stephens (1882-1950)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Any time
Locale: Irish countryside
First published: 1912
Principal characters:
The Philosopher
The Thin Woman, his wife
Seumas and Brigid, iwq children
Angus Og, an early Irish god
Caitilin, his mortal wife
Critique:
This tale of adventure and
philosophical discussions is a modern classic in
its field. Stephens is most successful in
his attempt to bring old Irish legends to
life in the pages of a delightful book.
The philosophic discussions abound with
a delightful humor, and the seriousness
of some of the observations in no way
lessens the magic quality of the story. The
tale is a wandering one, containing many
elements and telling many stories. All
of them are entertaining to read, and
most of them are perfect in execution.
The Story:
In the center of a very dark pine wood
lived the two old Philosophers and their
wives, the Grey Woman of Dun Gortin
and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath.
One couple had a little boy named
Seumas, the other a little girl named
Brigid. Both were born on the same day.
When the children were ten years
old, one of the old Philosophers decided
that he had now learned all he was
capable of learning. This conclusion
depressed him so much that he decided to
die. It was unfortunate, as he pointed
out, that at the time he was in the best
of health. However, if the time had come
for him to die, then die he must. He
took off his shoes and spun around in
the center of the room for fifteen minutes
until he fell over dead. So grieved was
the Grey Woman that she, too, killed
herself, but as she was much toughei
than her husband she spun for forty-
five minutes before she died. The Thin
Woman calmly buried the two bodies
under the hearthstone.
The people who lived on the edge
of the pine wood often came to see the
Thin Woman's husband when they
needed advice. One day Meehawl Mac-
Murrachu came to the Philosopher to
learn who had stolen his wife's scrubbing
board. The Philosopher, after much
questioning, finally decided that the fairies
had taken it. He advised Meehawl to
go to a certain spot and steal the Crock
of Gold that the Leprecauns of Gort na
Gloca Mora had buried there. For years
the Leprecauns had been filling their
Crock of Gold by clipping the edges of
gold coins that they found in men's
houses at night. They needed the gold
to ransom any of the little people caught
by human beings.
Losing their gold to Meehawl made
the Leprecauns angry, and they tried to
make Meehawl bring it back by giving
him and his wife all kinds of aches
and pains. Next they came stealthily and
lured Brigid and Seumas down into a
little house in the roots of a tree, but
fear of the Thin Woman was on them
and they set the children free. Then
they sent the Great God Pan, the god
of the beast which is in every man, to
lure away Caitilin, MeehawFs daughter,
THE CROCK OF GOLD by James Stephens. By permission of the publishers, The MacmilUn Co. Copyright
1912, by The Macmillan Co. Renewed, 1940, by James Stephens.
752

with the music of his pipes.
When Meehawl came with his tale of
sorrow, the Philosopher sent Brigid and
Seumas to tell Pan to let the girl go.
But Pan refused to answer their
questions. When they told the Philosopher,
he became so angry that he ordered his
wife to bake him some cakes to eat on
the way, and he started off by himself
to visit Pan. But none of the
Philosopher's arguments could persuade Pan to
free Caitilin, and the Philosopher went
off to get the help of Angus Og of the
old gods.
Angus Og himself went to see Pan
and the girl in their cave and forced the
girl to choose between them. Caitilin,
who had learned the true meaning of
hunger and pain with Pan, did not know
how to choose. Angus Og explained to
her that he was Divine Inspiration, and
that if she would come and live with
him and be his wife, he would show
her peace and happiness. By several
signs he proved that he was the favorite
of the gods of the earth and had more
power than Pan. Caitilin sensed that
true happiness, which she had never
known, would be found with Angus Og,
tnd that only hunger could be found with
Pan. So she chose to leave Pan and go
with Angus Og. Thus she was saved
from the beast in man.
The Philosopher, on his way back
home, delivered several messages from
the god. One message he gave to a young
boy, a promise from Angus Og that in
time the old gods would return, and
that before they did the boy would write
a beautiful poem in their praise. Cheered
by the news that the gods would soon
come back, the Philosopher finally
arrived home, where he greeted his wife
with such affection that she decided
always to be kind to him and never again
to say a cross word.
Unknown to them, the Leprecauns
had informed the police in the village
that there were two bodies buried under
the hearthstone in the Philosopher's
house. One day the police broke into
the house, found the bodies, and accused
the Philosopher of murder. Meanwhile
Brigid and Seumas were playing in the
woods, and quite by chance they
happened to dig a hole and find the Crock
of Gold where Meehawl had buried it.
They gave it back to the Leprecauns,
but the return of the gold was not enough
to set matters right. The police kept the
Philosopher in jail. Then the Thin
Woman baked some cakes and set out
to find Angus Og, dragging the children
behind her and saying the worst curses
there were against the police. The first
gods she met were the Three Absolutes,
the Most Beautiful Man, the Strongest
Man, and the Ugliest Man. By her
wisdom the Thin Woman was able to
answer their questions and save herself
and the children from their frightful
powers. When they had passed these
gods, they found the house of Angus
Og. He was waiting for someone to come
and ask him to aid the Philosopher, for
it is impossible for the gods to help
anyone unasked.
Calling all the old gods together,
Angus Og and his wife led a great dance
across the fields, and then they went
down into the town with all the gods
following. In the town their merry
laughter brought happiness to all who
saw them except the most evil of men.
The charges against the Philosopher were
forgotten and he was free to go back to
his house in the pine woods and
dispense wisdom once more. Then the gods
returned singing to their own country
to await the birth of Caitilin's and Angus
Og's child and the day when the old
Irish gods could again leave their hidden
caves and hollows and rule over the land
with laughter and song.
753

CROME YELLOW
Type of work: Novel
Author: Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: England
First published: 1922
Principal characters:
Henry Wimbush, owner of Crome
Anne Wimbush, his niece
Denis Stone, a young poet
Mr. Scrogan, a man of reason
Gombauld, an artist
Mary Bracegirdle, a victim of repressions
Jenny Muixion, a keen-eyed observer
Critique:
Aldous Huxley has written an amusing
satire on the ill-fated love affair of a
sensitive young poet. Using the plot as
an excuse for bringing together all sorts
of interesting and unusual facts and
stories, he holds the reader's interest by
an almost continual shift of emphasis.
We learn of each of the guests at the
house party, their faults, interests, and
virtues. As in all of Huxley's novels,
there is much philosophical discussion.
No particular ideas are set forth as
correct, but a precise picture of the early
twenties as Huxley saw them is presented
to the reader with wit and dexterity.
The Story:
Denis Stone, a shy young poet, went
to a house party at Crome, the country
home of Henry Wimbush and his wife.
He went because he was in love with
Wimbush's niece, Anne. Anne looked
down on Denis because he was four years
younger than she, and treated him with
scorn when he attempted to speak of love.
Mr. Wimbush was interested in little
except Crome and the histories of the
people who had lived in the old house.
Mrs. Wimbush was a woman with red
hair, probably false, and an interest in
astrology, especially since she had recently
won a bet on a horse with her star-given
information. Other guests at the party
included Gombauld, an artist who had
been invited to paint Anne's picture;
the diabolically reasonable Mr. Scrogan;
deaf Jenny Mullion; and Mary Brace-
girdle, who was worried about her
Freudian dreams. Denis and Anne
quarreled, this time over their philosophies
of life. Denis tried to carry all the cares
of the world on his back, but Anne
thought that things should be taken for
granted as they came. The quarrel cost
Denis his first opportunity to tell Anne
that he loved her.
Mary Bracegirdle discussed with Anne
her dreams and repressions. Having
decided to secure either Gombauld or Denis
for a husband, she chose the wrong times
to talk with both men. Gombauld was
busy painting when Mary came up to
him. Denis was smarting with jealousy
over the time Anne and Gombauld spent
together.
Ivor Lombard arrived for the party.
Ivor, a painter of ghosts and spirits,
turned his attentions toward repressed
Mary, and secretly visited her one night
in the tower. He went away without
seeing her again.
From time to time Mr. Wimbush
called the party together while he read
stories of the early history of Crome.
These stories were from a history at which
Mr. Wimbush had worked for thirty
CROME YELLOW by Aldous Huxley. By permission of the author and the publishers, Harper & Brothers.
Copyright, 1922, by George H. Doran & Co.
754

years. Denis often wondered if he would
ever get a chance to tell Anne that he
loved her. Walking in the garden after
a talk with Mr. Scrogan, whose
coldblooded ideas about a rationalized world
annoyed him, he found a red notebook
in which Jenny had been writing for
the past week. In it he found a collection
of sharply satirical cartoons of all the
people at the house party. Jenny had
drawn him in seven attitudes which
showed up his absurd jealousy,
incompetence, and shyness. The cartoons
deeply wounded his vanity and shattered
his conception of himself.
He was further discouraged by the
fact that there was nothing for him to do
at a charity fair held in the park outside
Crome a few days later. Mr. Scrogan
made a terrifying and successful
fortuneteller; Jenny played the drums; Mr. Wim-
bush ran the various races; and Denis
was left to walk aimlessly through the
fair as an official with nothing to do.
Gombauld made sketches of the people
in the crowd, and Anne stayed by his
side.
The night after the fair Denis
overheard part of a conversation between
Gombauld and Anne. Without knowing
that Anne had repulsed Gombauld, for
she had made up her mind to accept
Denis if he ever got around to asking
her, Denis spent hours of torture
thinking of the uselessness of his life. At
last he decided to commit suicide by
jumping from the tower. There he found
Mary grieving because she had received
only a brisk postcard from Ivor. She
convinced Denis that both their lives
were ruined, and advised him to flee
from Anne. Convinced, Denis arranged
a fake telegram calling him back to
London on urgent business. When it
arrived, Denis realized with dismay that
Anne was miserable to see him go. The
telegram was the one decisive action of
his life. Ironically, it separated him from
Anne.
755

CROTCHET CASTLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1831
Principal characters:
Ebenezer Mac Crotchet, a country squire
Young Crotchet, his son
Lemma Crotchet, his daughter
Susannah Touchandgo, loved by young Crotchet
Mr. Chainmail, an antiquarian
Captain Fitzchrome, a young army officer
Lady Clarinda Bossnowl, loved by Fitzchrome
Critique:
In Crotchet Castle, as in his other
novels, Peacock ridicules the excesses and
exaggerations in human behavior. His
satire is never unkind; rather, it is the
product of a mind that is tolerant of
weaknesses but vexed by an
overabundance of those weaknesses in an
imperfect world. The plot is almost
non-existent, and the people are caricatures; but
in spite of these apparent defects the
book gives a fairly accurate picture of
nineteenth-century English country life.
The Story:
The squire of Crotchet Castle had
descended from Scotch and Jewish
ancestors, but he tried to hide this ancestry
under the guise of an English country
squire. His background having given
him the ability to make money readily,
he used his wealth to buy a manor and
a coat of arms. His wife was dead, his
son in London, leaving the squire alone
with a daughter. Young Crotchet, who
had inherited his father's love for money,
had taken his father's gift of a large sum
and turned it into enormous profits. His
business dealings were shady, and many
thought his day of reckoning would
come. For the present, however, he was
riding on a crest of success. He had
been engaged to Miss Susannah
Touchandgo, the daughter of a great banker,
but when that gentleman had absconded
with the bank's funds, leaving his
daughter almost penniless, young Crotchet had
deserted his love without a backward
glance. Susannah had retreated into
Wales, where in simple surroundings she
taught a farmer's children for her
livelihood.
Squire Crotchet's daughter Lemma
had assumed some of the facial
characteristics of her ancestors, a fact which
was compensated for in the eyes of local
swains by the size of her father's
fortune. A suitor had not yet been selected
for her, but there would be no problem
in choosing one from the many who
sought her hand and her purse.
Crotchet Castle was a gathering place
for philosophers and dilettantes picked at
random by Squire Crotchet. These would-
be intellectuals engaged in long and
tiresome disputes on all branches of
philosophy and science. One of them, a Mr.
Chainmail, longed for a return to the
customs and morals of the Middle Ages,
for he believed that the present was
decidedly inferior to the past. He was
violently opposed by others of the group
who worshipped mammon. No one of the
philosophers ever changed his views;
each found much pleasure in expounding
his own pet theory.
While strolling through the grounds
one day, some of the gentlemen came
upon a young army officer, Captain
Fitzchrome. The captain, invited to join the
group, accepted readily, for he was in
756

love with one of the guests, Lady Cla-
rinda Bossnowl. Lady Clarinda obviously
loved the captain, but she had been
promised to young Crotchet. The match
was purely a business arrangement; he
would exchange his money for her title.
The captain pleaded with her at every
opportunity, but she silenced him and
her own heart by ridiculing his lack of
funds. Lemma Crotchet, in the meantime,
was pledged to Lady Clarinda's brother.
The four young people spent many hours
together, much to Captain Fitzchrome's
sorrow.
One day the squire took his guests on
a river voyage down the Thames. They
visited places of learning and culture,
but saw little of either except the
buildings supposed to house those virtues.
During the trip the captain finally gave
up his hopes of winning Lady Clarinda,
and he left the party without notifying
anyone. He settled in a village inn, where
he was later joined by Chainmail, the
antiquarian, who had left the party in
order to study a ruined castle in the
neighborhood. Since the captain knew
the way to the castle, he offered to guide
Chainmail, but he was called back to
London on business before they could
undertake their expedition. Chainmail
went on alone.
During his researches Chainmail
caught a glimpse of a nymph-like
creature who fascinated him so much that
he could not rest until he had made her
acquaintance. After many false attempts,
he met her and learned that she was
Susannah Touchandgo, the lady
betrayed by young Crotchet. Chainmail
found her perfect in every way but one.
He knew she would share the simple,
old-fashioned life he loved, but he had
determined to marry a lady of gentle
birth. Susannah, ashamed of her father's
theft, would tell him nothing of her
family background. In spite of her
reluctance in this respect, Chainmail loved
her and spent many happy hours at the
farmhouse in which she lived.
Captain Fitzchrome returned.
Learning of his friend's plight, he encouraged
Chainmail to ask for the lady's hand,
but the antiquarian could not change his
views on his need for a wife of gentle
birth. The situation was brought to a
climax when they saw in the paper an
announcement of the approaching
marriage of Lady Clarinda and young
Crotchet. Susannah was temporarily
overwrought by the news, and in trying to
comfort her Chainmail inadvertently
proposed. Then Susannah told him of her
father's crime. Chainmail could overlook
that fact in his joy over the discovery that
Susannah was of good blood. In a few
days the two were married.
The following Christmas most of the
friends gathered again at Crotchet
Castle. Lemma Crotchet had married Lord
Bossnowl, but Lady Clarinda Bossnowl
had not yet married young Crotchet. The
young man was a little dismayed at
seeing Susannah married to Chainmail, for
he still held her in affection. Lady
Clarinda cast longing glances at the captain,
even to the point of singing a song that
was obviously intended for him. There
was no sorrow in her heart, consequently,
when young Crotchet disappeared. His
firm had failed and he was penniless. It
was assumed that he had crossed the
Atlantic to join forces with Susannah's
father, who had set up business there; the
two rogues would make good partners.
Lady Clarinda would not again be put
up for sale. She gladly accepted Captain
Fitzchrome and his smaller but more
stable fortune.
757

THE CRUISE OF THE CACHALOT
Type of work: Pseudo-factual account
Author: Frank T. BuUen (1857-1915)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
"Locale: At sea
First published: 1898
Principal characters:
Frank T. Buixen, the narrator
Mr. Jones, fourth mate
Abner Cushing, a sailor
Mr. Count, first mate
Captain Slocum, of the Cachalot
Critique:
The Cruise of the Cachalot was for
some years a favorite with boys, because
of its dramatic picture of Hfe aboard an
American whaler during the last century.
There is no plot and almost no character
analysis; indeed the author made no
pretense at writing a Hterary work. The
chief value of the book lies in its full
descriptions of whale hunting. As natural
history the book must seem inexact to
a modern reader; and the author's
unquestioning acquiescence in the many
needless hardships of the common sailor
is indicative of an uncritical approach.
The Story:
By a strange combination of
circumstances, Frank Bullen found himself in
New Bedford, Massachusetts, looking for
a ship. He was only eighteen at the
time, but already he had spent six years
at sea.
He was strolHng down a street in New
Bedford, intent on a possible berth aboard
any ship, for his pockets were empty,
when he was hailed by a scraggy Yankee
with the inevitable tobacco juice drib-
Ming down his whiskers. Asked if he
wanted to ship out, he accepted eagerly
without knowing the type of craft or any
of the conditions of employment. He
accompanied the sharp-featured Yankee
to a small, dirty hall where he joined a
group of men all bound for the same ship.
When he saw the motley crowd of
greenhorns, he felt doubts about joining the
ship, but there was little chance to back
out. After hastily signing the ship's
articles, he went with his mates to the
docks.
All of the crew were carefully kept
together until they were safe in the
small boat. On the trip out into the
harbor Bullen saw with many misgivings
the Cachalot, which would be his home
for three years. He deeply regretted
signing on, for the Cachalot was a whaler
and whalers were notoriously the worst
ships afloat. The Cachalot did not
compare favorably with the trim English
whalers with which he was more famihar.
She was small, a three hundred and fifty
tonner, dirty and unpainted, and quite
dumpy-looking because she had no raised
bow or poop.
Once on board, Bullen's worst fears
were realized. The officers were hard and
mean; they carried lashes with them
and a clumsy or slow sailor often felt
the sting of a lash on his back. The
men needed a great deal of discipline,
however, to do a halfway decent job.
Of the twelve white crew members,
Bullen was the only one who had been to
sea before. The hands were beaten and
cursed, and they were not even allowed
to rest while they were seasick.
Along with the white greenhorns,
there were a score of Portuguese, all
experienced whahng men. There were also
THE CRUISE OF THE CACHALOT by Frank T. Bullen. By permission of the publishers, Appleton-Century-
Crofts, Inc.
758

four mates and Captain Slocum. The
captain was a hard driver and a foul
talker. The first mate, Mr. Count, was
an older man, the only decent officer
aboard. The fourth mate, Mr. Jones,
was a giant Negro.
Because of his past experience, Bullen
escaped most of the abuse meted out to
his fellows. After the ship had been
scrubbed and polished, and the men had
been licked into shape, he became almost
fond of the ship. That feeling was
heightened when he learned the Cachalot
was, in spite of her lines, seaworthy.
The ship was heading toward the
Azores, to the delight of the Portuguese.
At last the first whale was sighted.
Bullen was put into the boat of the first
mate and told to mind the sail. The
boat came up almost on top of the whale
before Louis, the harpooner, threw his
great hook. When the whale sounded,
the hands paid out over two hundred
fathoms of line. Then the whale began
to rush away at full speed, towing the
boat in his wake. When he slowed down,
the boat was brought close enough for
the harpooner to use his lance. After
a final flurry, the whale died and was
towed alongside.
After some months at sea, Bullen had
an unpleasant picture of ship's discipline.
Abner Cushing, a Yankee sailor, tried
to make some beer in the forecastle.
Needing some potatoes for his brew, he
stole a few from the officers' galley. One
of the Portuguese reported the theft to
the captain and, as punishment, Abner
was strung up by the thumbs and lashed
vigorously by one of the harpooners until
he fainted. When his punishment was
over, he was not allowed to go below,
but was forced to turn to immediately.
The cruise was an ill-fated one for
Abner. He was in a small boat when
a whale unexpectedly turned and bore
down on the frail craft. The line was
hurriedly pulled in. Then the whale
sounded, and as the line was paid out
Abner's neck caught in a loop. The
weight of the descending whale severed
his head neatly.
Mr. Jones, after the Cachalot had been
at sea over a year, became greatly
depressed. He recalled a fortune-teller's
prediction that he would die in a fight
with a white man and finally decided
that Captain Slocum was destined to
cause his death. Deranged, he went
on the bridge, wrapped his huge arms
around the captain, and jumped with
him into the sea. When Mr. Count
assumed command, he promoted Bullen
to Mr. Jones' vacant post.
Once Bullen nearly met his end when
a harpooned cachalot suddenly turned
sidewise and with his mighty tail smashed
a boat to bits. His foot tangled in the
wreckage, Bullen went under. When
he came up, nearly exhausted, he caught
blindly at a rope and hauled himself
along until he came to the inert whale.
He clambered aboard and clung to the
harpoon in the side of the dead whale.
But the whale suddenly came to life.
When the other boats came alongside
after the whale had finally died, Bullen
had a dislocated thigh and severe rope
burns on each arm.
At last, after three years, the
Cachalot's barrels were full, and the ship
headed home around Cape Horn. In
good time the lookout sighted Cape
Navesink. With every flag flying, she
came into New Bedford. The cruise of
the Cachalot was ended.
759

CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alan Paton (1903-
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Mid-twentieth century
Locale: South Africa
First published: 1948
Principal characters:
The Reverend Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu clergyman
Gertrude, his sister
Absalom, his son
Msimangu, his friend
Mr. Jarvis, his white benefactor
Critique:
In South Africa today there is racial
unrest more bitter than any now known
in our own country. Cry, The Beloved
Country is a beautiful and tragic story
of that unrest, told with poetic loveliness.
It is a story of personal tragedy, as well
as a story of a national tragedy. This
distinguished novel by a South African
minister has quickly, and rightly, found a
permanent place in twentieth-century
literature. Dramatized, the story has been
equally compelling as a play.
The Story:
The letter brought fear to the hearts
of the Reverend Stephen Kumalo and
his wife. To a Zulu, letters were rare and
frightening. Once opened, they could
never be closed again, their contents
forgotten. Kumalo waited until he could
control his fear before he opened the
letter from Johannesburg telling him that
his sister was a sick woman and needed
his help. The trip would be costly for
a poor Zulu clergyman, but he must go.
Perhaps there he could also find their son
Absalom, who had never been heard
from since he left the village. They knew
in their hearts that in Johannesburg
Absalom had succumbed to the evil
resulting from the white man's success at
breaking up the tribes and compelling
black men to work in the mines.
Taking their small savings, Kumalo
journeyed to the city. He went first to
the mission and met Msimangu, who had
written the letter. Msimangu was a
clergyman also, working for his people in the
city as Kumalo worked in the country.
He sorrowfully told Kumalo that his
sister Gertrude was a prostitute and a
dealer in illegal liquor. She and her child
were in want, even though she had once
made much money from her trade.
Kumalo located Gertrude, with the help of
Msimangu, and found her willing to go
with him to the temporary rooms he had
found with a good woman. When his
business was finished, she and the child
would go with him to his home, away
from temptation.
Before looking for his son, Kumalo
visited his brother John, a successful
merchant and a politician who was under
surveillance by the police for his ability
to stir up the blacks. But John was
discreet; he took no chance of being arrested
and losing his business. Many of the
black leaders sacrified everything to help
their people, but not John. Expediency
was his only thought. He had left the
church * and turned a deaf ear to his
brother's pleas that he return to the good
life.
Kumalo began his search for Absalom.
With Msimangu, he searched every-
CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY by Alan Paton. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's
Sons. Copyright, 1948, by Alan Paton.
760

where, each place visited adding to his
fear, for it was obvious that the boy had
been engaged in stealing, drinking, and
worse. Often they walked for miles, for
the black leaders were urging their
people to boycott the buses in order to get
the fares reduced. Kumalo learned that
Absalom had been in the company of
his brother John's son, both of them in
and out of trouble. The trail led to a
reformatory, but the boy had been
dismissed shortly before because of his good
behavior. The white teacher of the
reformatory joined Kumalo in his search
because the boy's behavior reflected on his
training. Kumalo found next the girl
who, soon to bear Absalom's child, waited
to marry him. The old man knew at
once that should Absalom not be found,
the girl must return to the hills with him
and make her home there.
At last he found Absalom in prison.
In company with John's son and another
boy, Absalom had robbed and killed
Arthur Jarvis, a white man who had
befriended the blacks. Broken-hearted, the
old man talked with his son. He could
tell that the son did not truly repent but
only said the right things out of fear.
His one ray of goodness was his desire
to marry the girl in order to give his
unborn child a name. Kumalo wept for his
son. But he wept also for the wife and
children, for the father and mother of
the slain man.
At the trial Absalom was defended by
a lawyer found by Kumalo's friends. The
plea was that the murder was not
planned, that the boy had shot in fear.
The judge, a good man, weighed all the
evidence and pronounced a verdict of
guilty; the punishment, death by
hanging. John's son and the other boy were
acquitted for lack of evidence. The
verdict was a gross miscarriage of justice,
but John was more powerful than
Kumalo.
Before Kumalo left Johannesburg, he
arranged for the marriage between his
son and the girl. Then he started home,
taking the girl and Gertrude's child with
him. Gertrude had disappeared the night
before they were to leave, no one knew
where. She had talked to him of becoming
a nun, but Kumalo feared that she had
gone back to her old life; Gertrude liked
the laughter and fun.
At home, the people welcomed their
minister, showering love and blessings
upon him. The crops were poor that
season and people were starving. Kumalo
prayed for his people and worked for
them. Knowing that they must learn
to use the land wisely, ne was helpless to
guide them. He went to their chief to
ask for cooperation, but the chief was
concerned only for himself and his family.
Hope came to the people in the form
of a child. He was the grandchild of Mr.
Jarvis, father of the man Absalom had
murdered. Mr. Jarvis had always helped
the black people, and after his son's death
he gave all his time to the work started
by the murdered man. He sent milk for
the children and brought to the people
an agricultural demonstrator who would
help them restore fertility to the soil. Mr.
Jarvis built a dam and sent for good seed.
His grandchild became Kumalo's friend,
and through him the white man learned
6f the needs of the people. Kumalo,
whose son had killed his benefactor's
son, was at first ashamed to face Mr.
Jarvis. When they met, few words were
exchanged, but each read the heart of
the other and understood the sorrow
and grief there.
The bishop came and told Kumalo
that it would be best for him to leave
the hills and the valley, to go where
his son's crime was unknown. Kumalo
grieved and stood silent. Before the bishop
left there came a letter from Mr. Jarvis,
thanking Kumalo for his friendship and
offering to build his people a new church.
The bishop felt ashamed. How little he
understood this man and his people.
When the day came for Absalom's
execution, Kumalo went into the
mountains. There he had gone before when
761

struggling with fear. Mr. Jarvis, knowing Kumalo cried out for his son. He cried
the torment that was in his soul, bade too for his land and his people. When
him go in peace. When the dawn came, would dawn come for them?
762

CUD JO'S CAVE
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Townsend Trowbridge (.1827-1916)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of flot: 1861
Locale: Tennessee
First published: 1863
Principal characters:
Penn Hapgood, a Quaker schoolmaster
Mr. Villars, a blind clergyman
Virginia, and
Sauna, his daughters
Lysander Sprowl, Salina's estranged husband
Augustus Blythewood, a planter
Mr. Stackridge, a Unionist farmer
Carl, a German boy, friend of Penn
Old Toby, a freed slave
Cudjo, and
Pomp, runaway slaves
Silas Ropes, a bully
Critique:
Written during the Civil War, Cudjo's
Cave mingles elements of propaganda
with its historical setting and romantic
theme. Because the novel displays deep
sincerity, however, and a considerable
degree of literary skill, it has enjoyed a
popularity outlasting by many years the
political issues which gave it birth. The
book presents clearly and forcefully the
problem of the rural population in
Tennessee during that difficult time of
decision at the beginning of the Civil War
period. In that particular time and place
the problem was peculiarly acute because
Tennessee was a border state and its
citizens had many reasons for indecision
when faced by the reaHties of conflict
between North and South. The writer,
working close to actual history,
dramatized effectively the guerrilla warfare
fought among the people of Tennessee
and Kentucky.
The Story:
In 1861, Penn Hapgood, a young
Quaker, was the schoolmaster in the
small Tennessee town of Curryville.
Because he made no effort to conceal his
anti-slavery convictions, he was
unpopular among the hot-headed Secessionists
of the community. The Unionists, on the
other hand, had offered him a commission
in the militia unit they were secretly
organizing. Penn refused the commission
offered him on the grounds of his
religious faith.
His unpopularity grew after he aided
Dan Pepperill, a poor white flogged and
ridden on a rail because he had
befriended a whipped slave. Penn's friend, a
kindly young German named Carl,
offered him a pistol to use in self-defense
if he were attacked, but the
schoolmaster saw no need to arm himself. A
short time later a party of ruffians seized
Penn and tarred arid feathered him. Carl,
unable to save his friend, searched for
some Union sympathizers to defend
Penn, but by the time the rescue party
arrived at the schoolhouse the young
teacher was not to be found. It was*
learned, however, that he had gone to
his boarding-house, where his landlady,
Mrs. Sprowl, had refused to let him in.
She had acted on the orders of Silas
Ropes, the leader of the mob.
Penn had found shelter in the home
of a blind clergyman, Mr. Villars. The
minister's household was made up of his
two daughters, Virginia and Salina, old
763

Toby, a freed slave, and Carl, the young
German. Old Toby and Farmer Stack-
ridge, a stanch Unionist, tended to Penn
and put him to bed in the clergyman's
home. While he was still resting,
Augustus Blythewood, a planter in love with
Virginia, appeared at the house. Although
she was little attracted to her suitor,
Virginia entertained him graciously in order
to conceal the fact that the fugitive was
hidden nearby. Another caller was Ly-
sander Sprowl, the son of Penn's
landlady. Salina, the older sister, and young
Sprowl were married, but they had
separated some time before.
Sprowl, having learned Penn's
whereabouts, promised to lead the villagers to
the schoolmaster's hiding place. The
aroused townspeople accused Mr. Villars
of hiding an Abolitionist. While they
were threatening the old man, Penn
disappeared from the house under
mysterious circumstances.
A mob, aroused by Blythewood, seized
old Toby and prepared to flog him in an
effort to learn Penn's whereabouts. Carl
managed to cut the Negro's bonds
before the mob could carry out its threat.
Toby, escaping, ran into Blythewood and
recognized him. The planter then called
off the mob and went to the minister's
house, where he pretended great
indignation at what had happened.
Penn, meanwhile, was safe in Cudjo's
Cave, a hide-out known only to runaway
slaves. Having heard the angry
townspeople threatening Mr. Villars, he had
in his half-delirious condition fled into
an adjoining field before he fainted.
When he came to, he found himself
beside a fire in a cavern, with Cudjo and
Pomp, two escaped slaves, ministering to
his wants. They had befriended Penn
because of the help he had given Pepperill
several weeks before. Pomp, in particular,
was a magnificent old fellow, almost
heroic in his dignity and spirit. Both slaves
had suffered at the hands of Blythewood
and Ropes, the town bully. Through the
two Negroes Penn sent word to Mr.
Villars that he was safe. The clergyman
sent Penn's clothes and food to the hiders.
When he was able to travel, Penn
decided to set out for the North. Near
Curryville he fell into the hands of a
small detachment of Confederate soldiers.
Convicted at a drumhead trial, he was
sentenced to be hanged unless he joined
the army. He refused. Carl, who had
helped his friend before, volunteered to
enlist in Penn's place. Set free, Penn was
again in danger from a group of
townspeople led by Ropes and Sprowl, but
with the aid of Farmer Stackridge he
managed to elude his pursuers.
Blythewood, hearing of his escape, was furious
that Penn had slipped through his
fingers.
Penn did not go far, however, for he
was unwilling to leave the Villars family
without protection. His fears were
justified. When he returned secretly to the
minister's home, he learned that Mr.
Villars had been seized and carried off to
prison. Penn himself was captured a
short time later, and among his fellow
prisoners he found the blind clergyman.
Because Carl was one of the soldiers
detailed to guard them, he and the minister
were able to make their escape.
Stackridge was guiding them to a place of
safety in the mountains when they, were
again captured. As the soldiers were
about to run Penn through with their
bayonets, one of their number dropped
dead. The others ran away. Pomp and
Cudjo appeared and led the fugitives to
Cudjo's Cave.
Augustus Blythewood proposed to
Virginia Villars, but she, realizing his
dislike for Penn, would have nothing to do
with the young planter. Meanwhile
Stackridge and a party of his Unionist
friends were skirmishing with the
Confederate soldiers in the woods nearby.
Virginia; while searching for Penn, was
captured by a Confederate soldier, but
she was relieved when she discovered that
her captor was Carl. Before the young
German could lead her out of the
forest, set afire by the skirmishers, he
himself was captured by Ropes' men. After
764

she had climbed to a rocky ledge, the
fire having cut off her escape on both
sides, she was rescued from her
predicament by Penn and Cudjo, who
conducted her to the cave. That night rain put
out the forest fire. In the morning old
Toby appeared at the cave. He was
overjoyed to discover that his mistress and
her father were both safe.
Lysander Sprowl, in the meantime,
had taken possession of Mr. Villars' house
and forced Salina to serve him there.
When Toby returned with a note to tell
Salina that her sister and her father
were safe, the Negro tried to deceive
Sprowl as to the fate of the fugitives,
but Salina, who still loved her worthless
husband, incautiously showed him
Virginia's note. Sprowl brutally ordered
Toby flogged in order to learn where Mr.
Villars and Penn were hidden. Angered
by SprowFs cruelty, Salina set fire to her
father's house and under cover of the
confusion helped old Toby to make his
escape.
Sprowl, encountering Carl, demanded
that the young German lead him to the
cave. Carl pretended to agree, but along
the way he managed to hit the bully
over the head with a stone. While Sprowl
was still unconscious, Carl dragged him
to the cave, where he was securely
bound. Meanwhile old Toby and Salina
made their way to the cave, and they
arrived about the time Carl appeared with
the wounded Sprowl. Pomp had also
conducted to the cave the band of
Unionists led by Stackridge. They prepared to
turn their quarters into an underground
fortress.
Before long a party led by Silas Ropes
discovered the location of the cave. He
and his men guarded the entrance in
the hope of starving the occupants into
submission.
Salina, ever changeable, loosened
Sprowl's bonds so that he was able to
escape. He went at once to the troops
under Blythewood and arranged to have
a squad of men sent to attack the cave.
When Sprowl, at the head of the
attacking force, reached the entrance of the
cave, he found it defended by his wife.
She fired at her husband, wounding him
fatally, and was herself bayoneted by one
of the Confederate soldiers. Virginia and
her father were captured and taken
before Blythewood.
The planter again pleaded his suit
with Virginia, but she received his offers
with contempt. While they argued, apart
from the camp, Pomp suddenly appeared
and told his former master that any
sudden move would mean his death. Carl
and Penn were covering Blythewood with
their guns, and he was taken a prisoner
to the cave. There Pomp compelled his
former master to sign a safe conduct pass
for the defenders and an order for the
attackers to cease the fight.
Under safe conduct, the defenders left
the cave. Mr. Villars, Virginia, Penn, and
Pomp set out for Ohio. They left
behind them in the cave the body of Salina,
as well as those of Cudjo and Ropes, who
had killed each other during an earlier
attack. Pomp returned long enough to
free Blythewood before joining his friends
on their way to safety.
Penn and Carl went from Ohio to
Pennsylvania, where they enlisted in the
same regiment. Pomp served the Union
as a colored scout. In many battles of the
war Penn did heroic service, earning for
himself the nickname of "The Fighting
Quaker."
765

CUPID AND PSYCHE
Type of work: Classical myth
Source: Folk tradition
Type of plot: Allegory of love
Time of plot: The Golden Age
Locale: Ancient Greece
First transcribed: Unknown
Principal characters:
Psyche, daughter of a Greek king
Cupid, the god of love
Venus, the goddess of beauty
Critique:
Cupid and Psyche is the simple but
moving story of the union of a mortal,
Psyche, and the god Cupid. In this
ancient mythological tale a beautiful
maiden achieved immortality because her
love and faith triumphed over mistrust.
The Story:
Psyche, daughter of a Greek king, was
as beautiful as Venus and sought after
by many princes. Her father, seeking to
know what fate the gods might have in
store for her, sent some of his men to
Apollo's oracle to learn the answer.
To the king's horror, the oracle replied
that Psyche was to become the mate of a
hideous monster, and the king was
ordered to leave his daughter to her fate
upon a mountaintop, to prevent the
destruction of his people. Psyche was
led, clad in bridal dress, to a rocky
summit and left there alone. The weary girl
soon fell into a swoon.
Venus, jealous of Psyche's beauty,
called her son Cupid and ordered him to
use his arrows to turn Psyche's heart
toward a creature so hideous that mortals
would be filled with loathing at the
sight of Psyche's mate. But when Cupid
saw his victim asleep he fell in love with
her and decided that she should be his
forever. While Psyche slept, Zephyrus
came at Cupid's bidding and carried her
to the valley in which Love's house
stood. There she awoke in a grove of
trees in which stood a magnificent golden
palace. She entered the building and
wandered through the sumptuously
furnished rooms.
At noon Psyche found a table lavishly
spread. A voice invited her to eat,
assured her that the house was hers, and
told her that the being who was to be
her lover would come that night.
As she lay in bed that night a voice
close beside her told her not to be afraid.
The voice spoke so tenderly that the girl
welcomed her unseen suitor and held out
her arms to him. When Psyche awoke
the next morning, her lover had gone,
but he had left behind a gold ring and
had placed a circlet on her head.
For a time Psyche lived happily in
the golden palace, visited each night by
the lover whose face she had not seen.
But at last she became homesick for her
two sisters and her father. One night
she asked her lover to permit her sisters
to visit her the next day. He gave his
consent, but he warned that she was not
to tell them about him.
Zephyrus carried the sisters to the
valley. Overjoyed to see them, Psyche
showed them the beauties of the palace
and loaded them with gifts. Jealous of
her good fortune, they tried to make her
suspicious of her unseen lover. They
suggested that her lover was a serpent
who changed into the form of a youth
at night, a monster who would at last
devour her. To save herself, they
advised her to hide a lamp and a knife
by her bed so that she might see him and
slay him as he slept.
Psyche did as they had suggested.
That night, as her love 'lay asleep, she
lit the lamp and brought it close so that
she might look at him. When she saw
766

the handsome young man by her side, she
was powerless to use her knife. As she
turned, sobbing, to extinguish the flame,
a drop of burning oil fell on Cupid's
shoulder. Awaking with a cry, he looked
at her reproachfully. With the warning
that love cannot live with suspicion, he
left the palace. Psyche tried to follow, but
fell in a swoon at the threshold.
When she awoke, the palace had
vanished. Determined to seek her lover,
she wandered alone across the countryside
and through cities hunting the god.
Meanwhile Cupid tooK his vengeance
on her sisters. To each he sent a dream
that she would become his bride if she
were to throw herself from the mountain-
top. Both sisters, obeying the summons,
found only the arms of Death to
welcome them.
No god would give the wandering
Psyche shelter or comfort, or protect her
from the wrath of Venus. At the temples
of Ceres and Juno she was turned away.
At last she came to the court of Venus
herself. Warned by her heart to flee,
she was nevertheless drawn before the
throne of the goddess. Venus decided
that Psyche should be kept as a slave.
She was to be given a new task to do
each day and was to live until she once
more began to hope.
Psyche's first task was to sort a huge
pile of mixed seeds and grain into
separate heaps, with the warning that
if there were so much as one seed in
the wrong pile she would be punished.
But by dusk she had separated only
small heaps of grain. Cupid so pitied
her that he commanded myriads of ants
to complete the task for her.
Next day Psyche was ordered to gather
the golden fleece of Venus' sheep.
Obeying the advice of a reed at the edge of
the river, she waited until the animals
had lain down to sleep and then
collected the wool which had been left
clinging to the bushes.
Psyche's third task was to fill a jug
with the black water which flowed down
a steep mountain into the rivers Styx
and Cocytus. This task she was able to
complete with the aid of a bird who
carried the jug to the stream, collected
the water, and brought it back to her.
On the fourth day Psyche was given
her most difficult task; sne was to go to
the land of the dead and there collect
some of the beauty of the goddess
Proserpine in a golden box. If she succeeded,
Venus promised, she would treat Psyche
kindly thereafter. But to visit Proserpine
and to return was an almost impossible
achievement. In despair, Psyche
determined to cast herself from a tower, but
as she was about to kill herself a voice
called to her and told her how she might
fulfill her mission.
Following instructions, Psyche traveled
to Proserpine's realm. There she might
have stayed on forever if she had not
thought suddenly of her love. On her
way back, she had almost reached the
daylight when envy seized her. She
opened the box, thinking she would have
whatevei it contained for herself, but
no sooner had she lifted the lid than
she fell into a deep sleep filled with
nightmares.
She might have lain that way
forever if Cupid, going in search of her,
had not found her. He awoke her
with one of his arrows and sent her on
to his mother with the box. Then he
flew off and presented himself before
Jove with his petition that Psyche be
made immortal. Jove, after hearing his
pleas, sent Mercury to conduct Psyche
into the presence of the gods. There
she drank from the golden cup of
ambrosia Jove handed her and became
immortal. So she and Cupid were at last
united for all time.
767

THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: New York, Paris
First published: 1913
Principal characters:
Undine Spragg, a predatory woman
Elmer Moffatt, her first husband
Ralph Marvell, Undine's second husband
Paul, son of Undine and Ralph Marvell
Raymond de Chelles, her third husband
Peter Van Degen, her lover
Abner E. Spragg, her father
Critique:
This novel traces the development and
refinement of a woman's ambition.
Undine Spragg is a heartless creature whose
striking beauty has led her to believe
that the sole aim of society is to provide
diversion and security for its women.
However deeply Edith Wharton may
incriminate the heroine, there is an even
greater incrimination of the society that
produced her, for Undine is the purest
exponent of a world motivated by the
desire for power and status. The well-
constructed story is carried along by a
direct, unornamented prose style.
The Story:
Undine Spragg, who came from Apex
City with her parents, had been in New
York for two years without being
accepted in society. Her opportunity came
at last when she was invited to the
dinner given by Laura Fairford, whose
brother, Ralph Marvell, took an interest
in Undine.
Ralph, although his family was
prominently established in social circles, had
little money. Moreover, he was an
independent thinker who disliked the
superficiality of important New York figures
like Peter Van Degen, the wealthy
husband of Ralph's cousin, Clare Dagonet,
with whom Ralph had once been in love.
About two months after their meeting
Undine became engaged to Ralph. One
night they went to see a play. Undine
was shocked to find herself sitting next
to Elmer Moffatt, a figure in her past
whom she did not want to recognize in
public. She promised to meet him
privately in Central Park the next day.
When they met, Moffatt, a bluntly
spoken vulgarian, told Undine that she
must help him in his business deals after
she married Ralph.
Moffatt also went to see Undine's
father and asked him to join in a
business deal. Moffatt threatened to make
Undine's past public if Mr. Spragg
refused.
Ralph and Undine were married and
Ralph was happy until he realized that
Undine cared less for his company than
for the social world. Mr. Spragg, having
made the business deal with Moffatt, had
thus been able to give Undine a big
wedding. Ralph soon began to realize the
ruthlessness of Undine's desire for money.
Her unhappiness and resentment were
increased when she learned that she was
pregnant.
In the next several years Moffatt
became a significant financial figure in New
York. Ralph, in an attempt to support
THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY by Edith Wharton. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed. All rights reserved.
768

Undine's extravagance, went to work in
a business to which he was ill-suited.
Undine, meanwhile, kept up a busy schedule
of social engagements. She had also
accepted some expensive gifts from Peter
Van Degen, who was romantically
interested in her, before Peter left to spend
the season in Europe.
One day Undine saw Moffatt, who
wanted to meet Ralph in order to make
a disreputable business deal. The
business deal succeeded and Undine went
to Paris to meet Peter. Before long she
had spent all her money. She then
met the Comte Raymond de Chelles, a
French aristocrat whom she thought of
marrying. In the face of this competition
Peter frankly told Undine of his desire
for her and said that if she would stay
with him he could give her everything
she wanted. At this point Undine
received a telegram announcing that Ralph
was critically ill with pneumonia and
asking her to return to New York
immediately. Undine decided to stay in Paris.
Ralph recovered and, after four years
of marriage to Undine, returned to the
Dagonet household with his son Paul.
He began to work hard at the office for
Paul's sake and on a novel which he had
begun.
Undine, after an uncontested divorce
from Ralph, lived with Peter Van Degen
for two months. Peter, however, was
disillusioned when he learned that
Undine had not gone to see Ralph when he
was critically ill; he left her without
getting the promised divorce from his wife
Clare.
Ralph, meanwhile, was concerned only
with his son and his book. Then he
learned that Undine was engaged to
Comte Raymond de Chelles and badly
needed money to have her marriage to
Ralph annulled by the Church. Undine
agreed to waive her rights to the boy if
Ralph would send her one hundred
thousand dollars to pay for her annulment.
Ralph borrowed half of the needed sum
and went to Moffatt to make another
business deal. As Undine's deadline
approached, with the deal not yet
concluded, Ralph went to see Moffatt, who
told him that the matter was going more
slowly than expected and that it would
take a year to go through. Moffatt told
Ralph that he himself was once married
to Undine, back in Apex City, but that
Undine's parents had forced the young
couple to get a divorce. After hearing
this story Ralph went home and
committed suicide.
Undine, now in possession of her son,
married Raymond de Chelles. She was
very happy in Paris, even though
Raymond was strict about her social life.
After three months they moved to the
family estate at Saint Desert to live
quietly and modestly. When Raymond
began to ignore her, Undine became
bored and angry at her husband's family
for not making allowances for her
customary extravagance.
One day she invited a dealer from
Paris to appraise some of the priceless
Chelles tapestries. When the dealer
arrived, the prospective American buyer
with him turned out to be Moffatt, now
one of the richest men in New York.
Over the next several weeks Undine saw
a great deal of her former husband.
When the time came for Moffatt to
return to New York, Undine invited him
to have an affair with her. Moffatt told
her that he wanted marriage or nothing.
Undine went to Reno, where she
divorced Raymond and married Moffatt
on the same day. Moffatt gave Undine
everything she wanted, but she realized
that in many personal ways he compared
unfavorably with her other husbands.
The Moffatts settled in a mansion in
Paris to satisfy Undine's social ambitions
and her husband's taste for worldly
display. When Undine learned that an old
society acquaintance, Jim DriscoU, had
been appointed ambassador to England,
she decided that she would like to be the
wife of an ambassador. Moffatt told her
bluntly that that was the one thing she
could never have because she was a
divorced woman. Still dissatisfied, Un-
769

dine was certain that the one thing she bassador's wife,
was really meant for was to be an am-
770

THE CYCLOPS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c. 485-c. 406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Satyr play
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Mt. Aetna in Sicily
First presented: Fifth century B.C.
Principal characters:
Odysseus, King of Ithaca
The Cyclops
Silenus, aged captive of the Cyclops
Chorus of Satyrs
Companions of Odysseus
Critique:
By purely aesthetic standards, the
Cyclops cannot be considered a valuable or
important play, but it otherwise has a
twofold interest as the only complete
satyr play preserved from ancient Greece
and as a dramatization of an episode
from Homer's Odyssey. Euripides has
kept the main line of Homer's tale, but
for the sake of enhanced humor has added
the character of old Silenus and, of course,
the Chorus of Satyrs. Furthermore, the
exigencies of stage presentation have
made it necessary for him to change
Homer's ingenious escape device to a
mere slipping through the rocks past the
blind Cyclops. The light tone of the play
must have been a welcome relief to the
Greek audience, for it followed three
somber tragedies presented in succession.
The Story:
As he raked the ground before the cave
of his master, the Cyclops, old Silenus
lamented the day he was shipwrecked on
the rock of Aetna and taken into
captivity by the monstrous, one-eyed offspring
of Poseidon, god of the sea. About
Silenus gamboled his children, the Chorus of
Satyrs, who prayed with their father to
Bacchus for deliverance. Suddenly
Silenus spied a ship and the approach of a
group of sailors obviously seeking
supplies. Odysseus and his companions
approached, introduced themselves as the
conquerors of Troy, driven from their
homeward journey by tempestuous winds
and desperately in need of food and
water. Silenus warned them of the
cannibalistic Cyclops' impending return,
urged them to make haste and then
began to bargain with them over the
supplies. Spying a skin of wine, the precious
liquid of Bacchus which he had not
tasted for years, Silenus begged for a
drink. After one sip he felt his feet
urging him to dance. He offered them all
the lambs and cheese they needed in
exchange for one skin of wine.
As the exchange was taking place, the
giant Cyclops suddenly returned,
ravenously hungry. The wretched Silenus
made himself appear to have been
terribly beaten and accused Odysseus and
his men of plundering the Cyclops'
property. Odysseus denied the false
charge, but although he was supported by
the leader of the Chorus of Satyrs, the
Cyclops seized two of the sailors, took
them into his cave, and made a meal of
them. Horrified Odysseus was then urged
by the satyrs to employ his famed
cleverness, so effective at Troy, in finding some
means of escape.
After some discussion, Odysseus hit
upon a subtle plan: first they would
make the Cyclops drunk with wine; then,
while he lay in a stupor, they would cut
down an olive tree, sharpen it, set it
afire, and plunge it into the Cyclops'
eye. After that escape would be easy.
When the Cyclops emerged from his
cave, Odysseus offered him the wine, and
771

the giant and Silenus proceeded to get
hilariously drunk. So pleased was the
monster with the effects of the Bacchic
fluid that Silenus without much trouble
persuaded him not to share it with his
fellow giants but to drink it all up by
himself. The grateful Cyclops asked
Odysseus his name (to which the clever
warrior replied "No man") and promised
that he would be the last to be eaten.
Soon the Cyclops found the earth and sky
whirling together and his lusts mounting.
He seized the unhappy Silenus and
dragged him into the cave to have his
pleasure with him.
As the Cyclops lay in a stupor,
Odysseus urged the satyrs to help him fulfill
the plan they had agreed upon, but the
cowardly satyrs refused and Odysseus
was forced to take his own men for the
task. Soon the agonized Cyclops, shouting
that "no man" had blinded him, came
bellowing out of the cave. The chorus
mocked and jeered him for this ridiculous
charge and gave him false directions for
capturing the escaping Greeks. The
berserk giant thrashed about and cracked his
skull against the rocks. When the
escaping Odysseus taunted him with his true
name, the Cyclops groaned that an oracle
had predicted that Odysseus would blind
him on his way home from Troy, but he
told also that the clever one would pay
for his deed by tossing about on
Poseidon's seas for many years. The satyrs
hastened to join the escape so that they
could once more become the proper
servants of Bacchus in a land where grapes
grew.
772

CYMBELINE
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: First century B.C.
Locale: Britain, Italy, and Wales
First presented: c. 1609
Principal characters:
Cymbeline, King of Britain
The Queen, Cymbeline's wife
Clotbn, the queen's son by a former husband
Imogen, Cymbeline's daughter by a former marriage
Posthumus Leonatus, Imogen's husband
Pisanio, servant of Posthumus
Iachimo, an Italian braggart
Belarius, a banished lord
Guiderius, and
Arvtragus, Cymbeline's sons, reared by Belarius
Caius Lucius, a Roman ambassador
Critique:
Shakespeare apparently drew upon a
number of sources for the plot of The
Tragedy of Cymbeline, All historical
accuracy of the play is debatable and
actually unimportant. Cymbeline himself
was a mythical character of tribal legend.
The details of relationship among the
characters are to be found in other
romantic writings which appeared prior to
Shakespeare's time and which were
apparently adopted to clothe the skeletal
international aspects of the story. Cymbeline
presents a plot of political intrigue—both
domestic and international—and personal
emotional involvement. That the personal
well-being of the characters takes
precedence over military and political details
gives the play its human-interest appeal.
The apparition of Posthumus has the
richness of detail found in similar scenes
in Macbeth.
The Story:
Gullible Cymbeline and his conniving
queen planned to have Imogen, his
daughter, marry his stepson Cloten.
Instead, Imogen chose the gentle Posthumus
as a husband and secretly married him.
Banished by the king in a fit of anger,
Posthumus fled to Italy after promising
that his loyalty and fidelity to his bride
would always be above reproach. As a
token of their vows Imogen gave
Posthumus a diamond ring that had
belonged to her mother, and Posthumus
placed a bracelet of rare design upon
Imogen's arm.
In Rome Posthumus met Iachimo, a
vain braggart who tried to tempt
Posthumus by appealing to his sensuality.
Posthumus, not to be tempted into
adultery, told Iachimo of his pact with
Imogen and of the ring and bracelet they
had exchanged. Iachimo scoffingly
wagered ten thousand ducats against
Posthumus* ring that he could seduce Imogen.
Iachimo went to Britain with letters to
which he had forged the name of
Posthumus. Because of these letters Imogen
received him. Then Iachimo, by
ambiguities and innuendo, played upon her
curiosity regarding the faithfulness of her
husband. Failing to win her favor in that
way, he gained access to her bedroom in a
trunk which, he had told her, contained
a valuable gift, bought in France,
intended for the Roman emperor; he had
asked that the trunk be placed in her
chamber for safekeeping. While Imogen
slept, he noted the details of the
furnishings in the room, took the bracelet from
her arm, and observed a cinque-spotted
773

mole on her left breast.
Back in Italy, Iachimo described
Imogen's room to Posthumus and
produced the bracelet, which he said Imogen
had given him. Incredulous, Posthumus
asked Iachimo to describe some aspect of
Imogen's body as better proof of his
successful seduction. Iachimo's claim that he
had kissed the mole on Imogen's breast
enraged- Posthumus, who swore that he
would kill Imogen. He sent a letter to
Pisanio, commanding that the servant kill
Imogen. He also sent a letter to Imogen
asking her to meet him in Milford Haven.
Pisanio was to kill Imogen as they traveled
through the Welsh hills.
On the journey Pisanio divulged the
real purpose of their trip when he showed
Imogen the letter ordering her death.
Unable to harm his master's wife, Pisanio
instructed her to dress as a boy and join
the party of Caius Lucius, who was in
Britain to collect tribute to the Emperor
Augustus and who was soon to return to
Rome. Then Imogen would be near
Posthumus and could ultimately disprove
Iachimo's accusations against her. Pisanio
also gave Imogen a box containing a
restorative, entrusted to him by the queen
in case Imogen became ill during her trip.
The contents, presumed by the queen to
be a slow-acting poison, had been
procured from her physician, who, suspecting
chicanery, had reduced the drug content.
The medicine would only induce long
sleep. Taking leave of his mistress,
Pisanio returned home.
Dressed in boy's clothing, Imogen,
hungry and weary, came to the mountain
cave of Belarius, who, banished from
Cymbeline's court twenty years before,
had kidnaped Guiderius and Arviragus,
Cymbeline's infant sons. In Wales the
two boys had been brought up to look
upon Belarius as their father. Calling
herself Fidele, Imogen won the affection of
the three men when she asked shelter of
them. Left alone when the men went out
to hunt food, Imogen, emotionally spent
and physically ill, swallowed some of the
medicine which Pisanio had given her.
Cymbeline, meanwhile, had refused to
pay the tribute demanded by Rome, and
the two nations prepared for war.
Cloten, infuriated by Imogen's coldness to
his attentions, tried to learn her
whereabouts. Pisanio, thinking to trick her
pursuer, showed him the letter in which
Posthumus asked Imogen to meet him at
Milford Haven. Disguised as Posthumus,
Cloten set out to avenge his injured
vanity.
In Wales he came upon Belarius,
Arviragus, and Guiderius as they hunted.
Recognizing him as the queen's son,
Belarius assumed that Cloten had come
to arrest them as outlaws. He and
Arviragus went in search of Cloten's
followers while Guiderius fought with
Cloten. Guiderius cut off Cloten's head
and threw it into the river. Returning
from their search, Arviragus found
Imogen in a deathlike stupor. Thinking
her dead, the three men prepared for her
burial. Benevolent Belarius, remembering
that Cloten was of royal birth, brought
his headless body for burial and laid it
near Imogen.
Imogen, awakening from her drugged
sleep, was grief-stricken when she saw
close by a body dressed in Posthumus'
clothing. Still sorrowing,, she joined the
forces of Caius Lucius as the Roman army
marched by to engage the soldiers of
Cymbeline.
Remorseful Posthumus, a recruit in the
Roman army, regretted his order for
Imogen's death. Throwing away his
uniform, he dressed himself as a British
peasant. Although he could not restore
Imogen's life, he would not take any more
British lives. In a battle between the
Romans and Britons, Posthumus
vanquished and disarmed Iachimo.
Cymbeline, taken prisoner, was rescued by
Belarius and his two foster sons. These
three had built a fort and, aided by
Posthumus, had so spurred the morale of the
fleeing British soldiers that Cymbeline's
army was victorious.
Failing to die in battle, Posthu-
774

mus identified himself as a Roman after
Lucius had been taken, and was sent to
prison by Cymbeline. In prison he had a
vision in which Jove assured him that he
would yet be the lord of the Lady Imogen.
Jove ordered a tablet placed on Posthu-
mus' chest. When Posthumus awoke and
found the tablet, he read that a lion's
whelp would be embraced by a piece of
tender air and that branches lopped from
a stately cedar would revive. Shortly
before the time set for his execution, he was
summoned to appear before Cymbeline.
In Cymbeline's tent, the king conferred
honors upon Belarius, Guiderius, and
Arviragus and bemoaned the fact that the
fourth valiant soldier, so poorly dressed,
was not present to receive his reward.
Cornelius, the physician, told Cymbeline
that the queen had died after her
villainies. Lucius pleaded for the life of
Imogen, still dressed as a boy, because of
the page's youth. Pardoned, Imogen
asked Iachimo to explain his possession
of the ring he wore. As Iachimo confessed
his dastardly cunning and lying to win the
ring from Posthumus, Posthumus
entered and identified himself as the
murderer of Imogen. When Imogen protested
against his confession, Posthumus struck
her. Pisanio then identified Imogen to
keep Posthumus from striking her again.
The truth disclosed, Belarius
understood his foster sons' affinity for Imogen.
Posthumus and Imogen, reunited,
professed lifelong devotion to each other.
After Guiderius had confessed the
murder of Cloten, Cymbeline ordered him
bound, but he stayed the sentence when
Belarius identified himself and the two
young men. Cymbeline then blessed his
three children who stood before him. A
soothsayer interpreted Jove's message on
the tablet left on Posthumus* chest. The
lion's whelp was Posthumus, the son of
Leonatus, and the piece of tender air was
Imogen. The lopped branches from the
stately cedar were Arviragus and
Guiderius, long thought dead, now restored in
the king's love. Overjoyed, Cymbeline
made peace with Rome.
775

CYRANO DE BERGERAC
Type of work: Drama
Author: Edmond Rostand (1868-1918)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: France
First presented: 1897
Principal characters:
Cyrano de Bergerac, poet and soldier
Roxane, with whom Cyrano is in love
Christian de Neuvillette, a clumsy young soldier
Critique:
Considered by many the most popular
play of the modern French theater,
Cyrano de Bergerac is also a perennial
favorite with American audiences. Cyrano
is more than a hot-tempered swordsman
who gets into trouble because he resents
people who make fun of his nose, and his
name is more than a symbol for physical
ugliness. Cyrano de Bergerac symbolizes
magnanimity, unselfishness, beauty of
soul.
The Story:
In the theater hall of the H6tel de
Burgundy, a young soldier named
Christian de Neuvillette anxiously waited for
the beautiful Roxane to appear in her box.
Christian had fallen passionately in love
with this girl whom he had never met.
While he was waiting for her arrival,
Christian became increasingly upset
because he feared that he would never be
able to summon sufficient courage to
address her, for he believed she was as
brilliant and as graceful as he was doltish and
clumsy.
Also in the audience, waiting for the
curtain to go up, was one Ragueneau, a
romantic tavern-keeper and toss-pot poet,
whose friends praised his verses to his
face while behind his back they helped
themselves to the pastries that he made.
Ragueneau inquired of another poet
concerning the whereabouts of Cyrano de
Bergerac. The actor Montfleury, Cyrano's
enemy and one of Roxane's suitors, was to
star in the play, and Cyrano had
threatened him with bodily injury if he
appeared for the performance. Cyrano,
however, had not yet arrived.
At last Roxane appeared. The play
began, and Montfleury came out on the
stage to recite his lines. Suddenly a
powerful voice ordered him to leave the stage.
After the voice came the man, Cyrano de
Bergerac, one of the best swordsmen in
France. The performance was halted
abruptly.
Another of Roxane's suitors tried to
provoke a fight with Cyrano by ridiculing de
Bergerac's uncommonly big nose. Cyrano,
sensitive about his disfiguring nose,
became the insulter instead of the insulted.
Words led to a duel. To show his
contempt for his adversary, Cyrano composed
a poem while he was sparring with his
opponent, and when he had finished the
last word of the last line, Cyrano staggered
his man. Le Bret, Cyrano's close friend,
cautioned the gallant swordsman against
making too many enemies by his insults.
Cyrano confessed that he was
exceptionally moody lately because he was in
love with his lovely cousin Roxane,
despite the fact he could never hope to win
her because of his ugliness. While Le Bret
tried to give Cyrano confidence in
himself, Roxane's chaperone appeared to give
Cyrano a note from his cousin, who
wanted to see him. Cyrano was overcome
with joy.
The place selected for the
meeting between Cyrano and Roxane was
Ragueneau's tavern. Cyrano arrived
CYRANO DE BERGERAC by Edmond Rostand. Translated by Brian C. Hooker. By permission of the
publishers, Henry Holt and Co., Inc. Copyright, 1923, by Henry Holt and Co., Inc. Renewed, 1951.
776

early, and, while he waited for his
beautiful cousin, he composed a love letter
which he left unsigned because he
intended to deliver it in person. When
Roxane appeared, she confessed to
Cyrano that she was in love. Cyrano
thought for a moment that she was in
love with him. But he soon realized that
the lucky fellow was not Cyrano himself,
but Christian. Roxane asked Cyrano to
take the young soldier under his wing, to
protect him in battle. Cyrano sadly
consented to do her bidding.
Later, when Christian dared jest with
Cyrano concerning the latter's nose,
Cyrano restrained himself for Roxane's
sake. When he learned that Cyrano was
Roxane's cousin, Christian confessed his
love for Roxane and begged Cyrano's help
in winning her. Christian was a warrior,
not a lover; he needed Cyrano's ability to
compose pretty speeches and to write
tender, graceful messages. Although his
heart was broken, Cyrano gave the young
man the letter he had written in
Ragueneau's tavern.
Cyrano visited Roxane to inquire about
her love affair with Christian. Roxane,
who had recently received a letter from
Christian, was delighted by his wit.
Cyrano did not tell her that he was the
writer of the letter.
Shortly afterward Christian told
Cyrano that he now wanted to speak for
himself in his wooing of Roxane. Under her
balcony one evening Christian did try to
speak for himself, but he became so
tongue-tied that he had to ask the aid of
Cyrano, who was lurking in the shadows.
Cyrano, hidden, told Christian what to
say, and Roxane was so delighted by
these dictated protestations that she
bestowed a kiss on Christian.
A friar appeared with a letter from the
Count de Guiche, commander of Cyrano's
regiment, to Roxane. The count wrote
that he was coming to see her that night,
even though by so doing he was deserting
his post. Roxane deliberately misread the
letter, which, she said, ordered the friar
to marry her to Christian. Roxane asked
Cyrano to delay de Guiche until after the
ceremony, a request which de Bergerac
effectively carried out by making the count
think that Cyrano was mad. After
learning that Roxane and Christian were
already married, the duped de Guiche
ordered Christian to report immediately
to his regiment.
In a battle which followed, Cyrano and
the other cadets were engaged against the
Spanish. During the conflict Cyrano
risked his life to send letters to Roxane
through the enemy's lines, and Roxane
never suspected that the author of these
messages was not Christian. Later Roxane
joined her husband, and to him she
confessed that his masterful letters had
brought her to his side.
Realizing that Roxane was really in
love with the nobility and tenderness of
Cyrano's letters, Christian begged Cyrano
to tell Roxane the truth. But Christian
was killed in battle shortly afterward, and
Cyrano swore never to reveal Christian's
secret. Rallying the cadets, Cyrano
charged bravely into the fight, and under
his leadership the Spanish were defeated.
Fifteen years passed. Roxane, grieving
for Christian, had retired to a convent.
Each week Cyrano was accustomed to
visit Roxane. But one day he came late.
When he arrived, he concealed under his
hat a mortal wound which one of his
enemies had inflicted by dropping an
object from a building on Cyrano's head.
While talking about her dead husband,
Roxane recited to Cyrano Christian's last
letter, which she kept next to her heart.
With Roxane's permission, Cyrano read
the letter which he himself had written,
even though it had grown so dark that
neither he nor Roxane could see the
words.
Suddenly Roxane realized that Cyrano
knew the contents of the letter by heart,
that he must have written it. With this
realization came her conviction that for
fifteen years she had unknowingly loved
the soul of Cyrano, not Christian. Roxane
confessed her love for Cyrano, who died
knowing that at last Roxane was aware of
his love and that she shared it with him.
777

DAISY MILLER
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Vevey, Switzerland, and Rome
First published: 1878
Principal characters:
Daisy Miller, an American tourist
Winterbourne, an American expatriate
Giovanelli, Daisy's Italian suitor
Critique:
As in most of James* work, there is
practically no plot in Daisy Miller.
Rather, James is interested in a conflict
between European and American customs
and ideals. The crudities and touching
innocence of Daisy Miller are revealed
against a background of European
manners and morals, and both are shown
from the point of view of an expatriate
American who has lived abroad too long.
The special point of view makes Daisy
Miller an ironic study of contrasts.
The Story:
Winterbourne was a young American
who had lived in Europe for quite a
while. He spent a great deal of time
at Vevey, which was a favorite spot of
his aunt, Mrs. Costello. One day, while
he was loitering outside the hotel, he
was attracted by a young woman who
appeared to be related to Randolph
Miller, a young American boy with whom
he had been talking. After a while
the young woman exchanged a few
words with him. Her name was Daisy
Miller. The boy was her brother, and
they were in Vevey with their mother.
They came from Schenectady,
Winterbourne learned, and they intended to go
next to Italy. Randolph insisted that he
wanted to go back home. Winterbourne
learned that Daisy hoped to visit the
Castle of Chillon. He promised to take
her there, for he was quite familiar with
the old castle.
Winterbourne asked his aunt, Mrs.
Costello, to meet Daisy. Mrs. Costello,
however, would not agree because she
thought the Millers were common. That
evening Daisy and Winterbourne
planned to go out on the lake, much to
the horror of Eugenio, the Millers'
traveling companion, who was more like a
member of the family than a courier. At
the last moment Daisy changed her mind
about the night excursion. A few days
later Winterbourne and Daisy visited
the Castle of Chillon. The outing
confirmed Mrs. Costello's opinion that Daisy
was uncultured and unsophisticated.
Winterbourne made plans to go to
Italy. When he arrived, he went directly
to the home of Mrs. Walker, an
American whom he had met in Geneva. There
he met Daisy and Randolph. Daisy
reproved him for not having called to see
her. Winterbourne replied that she was
unkind, as he had just arrived on the
train. Daisy asked Mrs. Walker's
permission to bring an Italian friend, Mr.
Giovanelli, to a party Mrs. Walker was
about to give. Mrs. Walker agreed. Then
Daisy said that she and the Italian were
going for a walk. Mrs. Walker was
shocked, as young unmarried women did
not walk the streets of Rome with
Italians. Daisy suggested that there would
be no objection if Winterbourne would
go with her to the spot where she was to
meet the Italian and then walk with
them.
Winterbourne and Daisy set out and
eventually found Giovanelli. They
walked together for a while. Then Mrs.
Walker's carriage drew alongside the
778

strollers. She beckoned to Winterboume
and implored him to persuade Daisy to
enter her carriage. She told him that
Daisy had been ruining her reputation
by such behavior; she had become
familiar with Italians and was quite
heedless of the scandal she was causing. Mrs.
Walker said she would never speak to
Winterboume again if he did not ask
Daisy to get into the carriage at once.
But Daisy, refusing the requests of Mrs.
Walker and Winterboume, continued
her walk with the Italian.
Mrs. Walker determined to snub
Daisy at the party. When Winterboume
arrived, Daisy had not made her
appearance. Mrs. Miller arrived more than
an hour before Daisy appeared with
Giovanelli. Mrs. Walker had a moment
of weakness and greeted them politely.
But as Daisy came to say goodnight,
Mrs. Walker turned her back upon her.
From that time on Daisy and Giovanelli
found all doors shut to them. Winter
bourne saw her occasionally, but she
was always with the Italian. Everyone
thought they were carrying on an
intrigue. When Winterboume asked her
if she were engaged, Daisy said that she
was not.
One night, despite the danger from
malarial fever, Giovanelli took Daisy
to the Colosseum. Winterboume,
encountering them in the ancient arena,
reproached the Italian for his
thoughtlessness. Giovanelli said that Daisy had
insisted upon viewing the ruins by
moonlight. Within a few days Daisy was
dangerously ill. During her illness she
sent word to Winterboume that she had
never been engaged to Giovanelli. A
week later she was dead. '
As they stood beside Daisy's grave in
the Protestant cemetery in Rome,
Giovanelli told Winterboume that Daisy
would never have married her Italian
suitor, even if she had lived. Then
Winterboume realized that he himself
had loved Daisy without knowing his
own feelings, that he could have married
her had he acted differently. He
reasoned, too late, that he had lived in
Europe too long, that he had forgotten the
freedom of American manners and the
complexity of the American character.
779

DAME CARE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hermann Sudermann (1857-1928)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Germany
First published: 1887
Principal characters:
Paul Meyerhofer, a simple farmer
Max Meyerhofer, his father
Frau Elsbeth, his mother
Elsbeth Douglas, a neighbor girl
Critique:
This novel, which has enjoyed
widespread critical acclaim, is frequently read
in language classes. It is an outstanding
example of German romanticism. The
three hallmarks of its epoch are the style
colored by a kind of world-sadness, its
completely rural setting, and its
sentimental tone. Dame Care—Vrau Sorge in
the original—covers a wide span of years
in its action, but it is gracefully concise
without being abrupt. Sudermann
exhibits a paternal sympathy for his characters;
perhaps his greatest gift is his
understanding of all classes of people.
The Story:
About the time their third son, Paul,
was born, the Meyerhofers lost through
forced sale their country estate, Helenen-
thal. Meyerhofer tried to keep his wife,
Frau Elsbeth, in ignorance of what was
going on, but she was so uneasy in her
bed that at last he told her that a family
named Douglas had bought his property.
Meyerhofer was a violent man, given
to grandiose schemes to make wealth and
endowed with a martyr complex. It
suited him to move his family to a humble
farm, within sight of Helenenthal, where
they would be constantly reminded of
their lost prosperity. Frau Elsbeth, who
was a docile woman, shuddered at the
prospect.
Mrs. Douglas, a kind-hearted woman,
came to see the mother and her baby.
She assured Frau Elsbeth that she could
stay on at Helenenthal as long as the
family wished. The two women became
good friends. Mrs. Douglas acted as
godmother for Paul, and Frau Elsbeth was
godmother for Elsbeth, a daughter born
to the Douglases a short time later. In
spite of their friendship, however,
Meyerhofer took offense at a fancied slight and
moved his family in bleak November to
their farm on the moor.
In those poor surroundings Paul led a
secluded childhood. His mother, sensing
his retiring disposition, was kind to him;
his father was brutal. He continually
ridiculed his son by comparing him
unfavorably with his two lively older brothers.
Paul was frequently beaten by his heavy-
handed father, and after the beatings his
mother would comfort him. She often
told him stories; the one he remembered
best was a frightening tale. It was about
Dame Care, a gray woman who laid great
burdens on poor people. Some years after
they moved, Frau Elsbeth had twin
daughters, Katie and Greta.
About the time Paul was learning to
whistle, bad times came to the farm. The
mortgage was due and there was no
money to pay it. Day after day
Meyerhofer drove into town and came back very
late, usually drunk. In spite of the awe
she felt for her husband, Frau Elsbeth
determined to seek help. She took Paul with
her to Helenenthal on a memorable visit.
There she explained her husband's
dislike for the Douglas family and asked for
their help. The amiable Mr. Douglas
780

gave her the money to pay the mortgage.
Paul played with Elsbeth while the
grownups visited.
At school Paul did not succeed easily.
He had to study a long time to get his
work done and he had to memorize all
the answers to problems. But his
handwriting was very good. The Erdmann
brothers, wild-eyed and saucy, made his
life miserable for years. They often beat
him, stole his lunch, and threw his
clothes into the river.
The Meyerhofer property was
surrounded by a peat bog. Always too busy
to pay attention to his farm, Meyerhofer
bought a used steam engine to harvest
peat. He gave half his harvest as down
payment to Levy, a sharp trader, and
hired an engineer whom Levy had
recommended. But the old engine would never
run, and Meyerhofer learned that the
supposed engineer was only a tramp
hired by Levy for a few days' imposture.
That winter, when Levy came to collect
the other half of the harvest, the duped
Meyerhofer drove him off with a whip.
Levy, a shrewd man of business, went to
a lawyer. Meyerhofer was compelled to
give up his harvest and, in addition, pay
a heavy fine.
After the older brothers had been
sent away to school there was no money
to educate Paul, who was sent to
confirmation classes. He saw Elsbeth there,
even sat near her. She was kind to the
boy and went out of her way to speak to
him. The Erdmann brothers teased them
about the friendship and said that Paul
was sweethearting. Hating ridicule, Paul
seldom spoke to Elsbeth.
For five years Paul, toiling on the farm,
got little help from his father. Once
when he was out seeding a distant field,
Paul saw Elsbeth. Delighted to see him
again, she gave him a book of Heine's
poetry, and she was impressed with his
ability to whistle whole symphonies.
Once after she had been abroad for a
long time, a party was given on her
return and Paul and his family were
invited. The rest of the Meyerhofers went
early in the day, but Paul went after dark
so that no one would see his shabby
clothes. He watched his two sisters
having a merry time, and saw his father
talking grandly with Mr. Douglas.
Out of sympathy for Paul, Mr.
Douglas agreed to go in with Meyerhofer
on one of his schemes. On the strength
of Douglas' endorsement, Meyerhofer
borrowed money recklessly. When he heard
what was going on, Mr. Douglas came
to the farm and told Meyerhofer to stop.
Meyerhofer set the dog on him, but Mr.
Douglas, though bitten, choked the
savage beast. While Paul was apologizing to
his neighbor, Meyerhofer attacked a
servant, Michel, who had watched the scene.
Michel picked up an ax. Paul took it
away from him and threw it down a well.
Then he carried his struggling father
into the house. From that day on Paul was
master in the household.
While Paul was wandering late one
night near Helenenthal, he saw brilliant
flames shooting from his farm buildings.
Michel had fired the barn. Paul was able
to save the house, the livestock, and the
old steam engine, but everything else
was lost.
Beaten in spirit, Frau Elsbeth died a
lingering death. At the funeral Paul saw
Elsbeth again. Since her own mother was
incurably ill, she felt a strong bond of
sympathy for Paul. Later Paul, with the
aid of books on mechanics sent by his
remote brothers, began to rebuild the
steam engine which had been his father's
folly. He worked so hard that he had
little time to look after his sisters. One night
he overheard them in the meadow with
the Erdmann boys and learned that his
sisters' honor had been smirched by his
old enemies. Waiting in a deserted road
for them at night, he forced them at
pistol point to swear they would many
Katie and Greta.
Finally getting the old steam engine
to work, Paul began to cut and market
peat. As his trade increased he became a
man of substance and traveled about
Germany. He heard of Elsbeth from time to
781

time and knew she planned to marry her
cousin.
One night, eight years after their barn
burned, Paul suspected Meyerhofer's
intention to burn the Douglas barn. To
distract his father from his mad deed,
he set fire to his own house and barn and
was seriously burned in the flames.
Paul was taken to Helenenthal. The
searchers had found Meyerhofer dead of
a stroke near the Douglas barn, a broken
pot of petroleum by his side. Although it
was Elsbeth's wedding day, she insisted
on staying by Paul's bed. The vicar was
sent away, and her cousin left. For many
weary days Elsbeth watched over Paul.
After his recovery Paul was tried for
the deliberate burning of his own house.
Admitting his guilt, he blamed himself
for always having been so timid and
withdrawn. Now that he had lost everything,
he felt himself free at last. Dame Care,
who had been his nemesis all his life,
had been routed.
Paul was sentenced to two years in
prison. On his release Elsbeth and Mr.
Douglas met him to take him home.
Both Helenenthal and Elsbeth would be
his.
782

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Harold Frederic (1856-1898)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: The 1890's
Locale: New York State
First published: 1896
'Principal characters:
Theron Ware, a young Methodist minister
Alice Ware, his wife
Father Forbes, a Catholic priest
Celia Madden, a rich young Irish-Catholic girl
Dr. Ledsmar, Father Forbes' friend
Mr. Gorringe, a trustee of Theron's church
Critique:
The Damnation of Theron Ware was
one of the first novels to deal with the
problems of an American clergyman.
While the book was in part an
indictment of the hypocrisy of a particular
denomination, it was not meant to be
wholly so. The author intended to show that
any individual was bound to fall who
was not given a moral bulwark on which
to lean in adversity. The novel condemns
the minister's denomination only in so
far as it did not prepare him to meet the
beliefs of others and accept them, while
still holding to the beliefs in which he
had been trained. It is the training, not
the denomination, which is taken to task.
The Story:
Theron Ware had gone to the annual
statewide meeting of the Methodist
Episcopal Church with great expectation of
being appointed to the large church in
Tecumseh. He was greatly disappointed,
therefore, when he was sent to Octavius,
a small rural community.
To the minister and his wife, the town
and its citizens did not appear
formidable at first, but a hint of what was to
come occurred the first morning after
their arrival. A boy who delivered milk
to Mrs. Ware informed her that he could
not deliver milk on Sunday because the
trustees of the church would object.
Shortly afterward the trustees told the
new minister that his sermons were too
dignified and that Mrs. Ware's Sunday
bonnet was far too elaborate for a
minister's wife. Theron and his wife were
depressed. Unhappy in his new charge,
Theron decided to write a book about
Abraham.
One day Theron assisted an injured
Irish-Catholic workman and went home
with him to see what help he might give.
At the man's deathbed Theron observed
the parish priest and a pretty young red-
haired girl, Celia Madden, who assisted
him. Upon becoming acquainted with
these two, the minister was surprised to
find that his earlier hostility to Catholics
and the Irish was foolish. These people
were more cultured than he, as he learned
a few evenings later when he went to the
priest for some advice in connection with
his proposed book.
At the priest's home he met Dr.
Ledsmar, a retired physician interested in
Biblical research. Both the priest and the
doctor knew a great deal about the
actual culture of Abraham and his people.
They tried to be tactful, but the young
minister quickly saw how wrong he had
been to think himself ready to write a
religious book on any topic; all he knew
was the little he had been taught at his
Methodist Seminary.
Upon leaving Father Forbes and the
doctor, Theron walked past the Catholic
church. Hearing music within, he
entered to find Celia Madden at the organ.
Later he walked home with her and
discovered that she was interested in liter-
783

ature and art as well as music. Once
again that evening Theron was made to
realize how little he actually knew. He
went home with the feeling that his own
small world was not a very cultured one.
Three months later there was a revival
at Theron's church. Mr. and Mrs.
Soulsby, two professional exhorters, arrived to
lead a week of meetings which were
designed to pay off the church debt and
put fervor into its members. The Wares,
who entertained the Soulsbys, were
surprised to find that the revival leaders
were very much like insurance salesmen,
employing very much the same tactics.
During the revival week Theron was
nonplussed to discover what he thought were
the beginnings of an affair between his
wife and one of the trustees of his church,
Mr. Gorringe.
In a long talk with Mrs. Soulsby,
Theron told her that he had almost
decided to give up the Methodist ministry
because of the shallowness he had
discovered in his people and in his church.
Mrs. Soulsby pointed out to him that
Methodists were no worse than anyone
else in the way of hypocrisy, and that all
they lacked was an external discipline.
She also reminded him that he was
incapable of making a living because he
lacked any worldly training.
Theron's life was further complicated
when he realized that he was beginning
to fall in love with Celia Madden.
Because of her interest in music, he had
asked her advice in buying a piano for
his home, and she had, unknown to him,
paid part of the bill for the instrument.
He also found time to call on Dr. Leds-
mar, whose peculiar views on the early
church interested him. He disgusted the
old doctor, however, with his
insinuations of an affair between Father Forbes
and Celia.
In September the Methodists of Oc-
tavius had a camp meeting. Its fervor did
not appeal to Theron, after his more
intellectual religious reading and his
discussions with Celia and Father Forbes,
and he went off quietly by himself. In
the woods he came upon a picnic given
by Father Forbes* church. At the picnic
he met Celia and had a long talk with
her, kissed her, and told her of his un-
happihess in his double bondage to
church and wife.
Soon afterward he alienated Celia by
telling her that he was afraid of scandal
if he were seen talking with her. He also
offended Father Forbes by reports that
Dr. Ledsmar had spoken slightingly of
Celia. The priest told his housekeeper
that he was no longer at home to Theron
Ware.
One day Theron openly confronted his
wife with his suspicions about her and
Mr. Gorringe. She denied the charges,
but her very denial seemed to speak
against her in her husband's mind. In
his unhappiness he went to see Celia.
She was not at home, but her brother,
who was dying slowly of tuberculosis,
saw him. With the license of the dying
he said that when Theron arrived in Oc-
tavius he had the face of an angel, full
of innocence, but that in the eight
months the minister had spent in the
little town his face had taken on a look
of deceit and cunning. Celia's brother
continued by warning the minister that
he should stay among his own people,
that it was bad for him to tear himself
from the support which Methodism had
given him.
Leaving the Madden home, Theron
learned that Celia was going to New York
City. It occurred to him that Father
Forbes was also going to the city that
evening and perhaps they were traveling
together. He went home and told his wife
that urgent business called him to
Albany; then he went to the station and
boarded the train unseen. In New York
he saw the priest and Celia meet, and he
followed them to a hotel. After the priest
had left the hotel, he went upstairs and
knocked at Celia's door. She told him
that she was busy and did not wish to
see him, adding that she had noticed him
following her earlier in the journey.
While he pleaded with her, Father
784

Forbes came in with some other
gentlemen and informed Theron that they had
come to New York to get another brother
of Celia's out of a bad scrape.
Dismissed, Theron stumbled down the
stairs. A few days later he arrived at the
Soulsby house at dawn. He told an
incoherent story of having tried to commit
suicide, of stealing money from the
church at Octavius, and of wandering
alone about the city for hours while he
tried to drink himself to death.
The Soulsbys took him in and sent for
his wife. He was ill for months. After
his recovery both he and his wife
realized that he was never meant for the
ministry. Through the Soulsbys, Theron was
finally able to make a new start in a real
estate office in Seattle. Theron knew he
would make a successful real estate agent.
Or if that failed, he could try politics.
There was still time enough for him to
be in Congress before he was forty.
785

THE DANCE OF DEATH
Type of work: Drama
Author: August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Sweden
First presented: 1901
Principal characters:
Edgar, a captain in the Swedish coast artillery
Alice, his wife
Judith, their daughter
Curt, Alice's cousin
Allan, Curt's son, in love with Judith
Critique:
The dramatic works of Strindberg
have seldom been translated or produced
in English-speaking countries, although
his plays are known throughout Europe.
Strindberg was especially interested in
establishing a Swedish dramatic literature
comparable to that of Ibsen in Norway.
This particular play was written in two
parts, in the way that Shakespeare wrote
Henry IV in two parts; it is, in essence,
a double play, the first part dealing with
the mature adults and the second with
their children. European critics have
often referred to The Dance of Death as
Strindberg's greatest dramatic
achievement. The characters are real to the
reader, shockingly so. And yet, beyond the
intense realism, there is a fabric of
symbolism, the meaning of which is nothing
less than the vast sum of human
relationships.
The Story:
For twenty-five years Edgar, a captain
in the Swedish coast artillery, and his
wife Alice had lived an unhappy
existence. Their unhappiness was caused
by Edgar's contempt for everyone else
in the world; he thought of himself as
a better being than others, even his wife,
and he had made their marriage a
tyranny. They lived on an island off the coast,
where Edgar was the commanding
officer of the artillery detachment. Living
in an old prison, they avoided the other
people of the island as well as officers
of the post and their wives. Indeed, Alice
was virtually a prisoner in her home.
The only means of communication she
had with the mainland was through a
telegraph key, which she had taught
herself to operate. Her skill she kept a
secret, for her husband did not want her
to have any means of communication
with the outside world.
Alice's only hope of release from her
husband's tyranny lay in the fact that
he was ill and might die at any time.
On their silver wedding anniversary Curt,
Alice's cousin, arrived on the island to
officiate as the quarantine officer. On his
first visit to Edgar and Alice he learned
about the life which they led, when
Edgar suffered an attack and Alice
gloated over her husband's illness. Curt, who
had been divorced by his wife, also
learned that Edgar had caused the
divorce and persuaded the court to award
the custody of the children to Curt's wife.
During the two days that Edgar lay
ill, grave changes took place in the three
people. Alice turned gray-haired;
feeling that the time had come when she
should admit her age, she had stopped
tinting her hair. She also became an
object of distrust to Curt, for she tried
THE DANCE OF DEATH by August Strindberg, from PLAYS BY AUGUST STRINDBERG.
Translated by Edwin Bjorkman. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright,
1912, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed, 1940, by Edwin Bjorkman.
786

to make love to her cousin while hei
husband lay ill. Curt, unable to
understand her actions, could not fully realize
how much she hated her husband and
how much she had suffered during the
past twenty-five years. Edgar himself
resembled a corpse after his illness; but he
immediately tried, upon his recovery, to
dominate the others.
On the third day after his attack the
captain told his wife he was going to
divorce her. In retaliation, she tried to
have him convicted of the
embezzlement of government funds, of which he
was innocent. She also embraced her
cousin Curt in her husband's presence,
at which time Edgar tried to kill her with
his saber. After that incident, both
husband and wife subsided emotionally,
admitting they had tortured each other
enough. They both said they hoped that
they could get along with each other
peaceably, if not happily.
A few months later Curt's son Allan,
a cadet stationed with Edgar's artillery
company, fell in love with Judith, the
daughter of Alice and Edgar. The
parents, failing to realize the youngsters
were serious in their affair, thought that
Judith was making game of Allan at her
father's request, for Edgar hated Allan
because he was Curt's son. At the time
Edgar was trying to arrange a marriage
for Judith with a major in the regiment,
a man older than Edgar. The lovers'
quarrels of the two young people only
served to heighten the illusion under
which the three grownups labored.
Edgar, meanwhile, was also busy
undermining Curt's position as quarantine
officer. After gleaning information from
Curt, he then published articles about
quarantine management in periodicals
and thus gained a reputation for himself
in a field in which he was actually
ignorant. After his retirement, the result
of his illness, he planned to run for the
national legislature, in opposition to Curt,
who had expected to try for an office.
Edgar completely discredited Curt with
the voters by taking up a subscription
for his rival, who, acting on Edgar's
advice, had lost a great deal of money in
an unwise investment. With deliberate
malice, Edgar did everything he could to
discredit Curt in the eyes of the world
and to reduce him to abject poverty and
dependence.
After Curt had lost his money, Edgar
bought his house and its furnishings and
then left the house exactly as it was, in
order to make the loss more poignant to
Curt. Then Edgar was made an inspector
of quarantine stations, an appointment
which made him Curt's superior in
employment. Curt, accepting his reverses
calmly and stoically, refused to lose his
head, even though Alice tried to make
him seek revenge. Alice still hoped that
her ailing husband might die quickly,
before he could completely ruin the lives
of Curt, his son Allan, Judith, and Alice
herself.
In the meantime the captain continued
his plan to marry Judith to a man who
could help to fulfill Edgar's ambitions.
Instead of marrying her to the major, he
arranged a marriage to the colonel of his
old regiment, notwithstanding the fact
that the colonel was more than forty
years older than the girl. So far as
anyone could suppose, the marriage was to
take place; Judith herself seemed to be
agreeable to the match. Alice made one
last attempt to spoil the plan, but a
letter she had written was intercepted
by Edgar and returned by him to his
wife.
Judith herself ruined Edgar's scheme
by revealing her true love to Allan. To
prevent the marriage, she called the
colonel on the telephone, insulted him, and
broke off the engagement. Then, with
her mother's aid, she arranged to go to
Allan at the military post to which Edgar
had sent him. The failure of his plan was
too much for Edgar. He suffered an
apoplectic stroke, much to the delight of his
wife, who saw revenge at last for all
that she and the other members of the
family had suffered at the sick man's
hands. Unable to control her delight at
787

Edgar's approaching death, she taunted
him on his deathbed with the fact that
he was hated and that his evil plans
were finally going awry. His only answer,
since he had lost the power of speech,
was to spit in her face.
After Edgar's death, which occurred
within a few hours, both his wife and
her cousin admitted that death had
changed their attitudes toward the dead
man. Alice said she must have loved him
as well as hated him, and she hoped that
peace would rest with his soul.
788

DANGEROUS ACQUAINTANCES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: Paris and environs
First published: 1782
Principal characters:
Cecile de Volanges, a young girl of good family
Madame de Volanges, her mother
The Comtb db Gercourt, betrothed to C&rile
The Chevalier Danceny, Chile's admirer
The Marquise de Merteuil, a fashionable matron, Gercourt's former
mistress
The Vicomte de Valmont, a libertine
Madame de Tourvel, the wife of a judge
Sophie Carnay, C^cile's confidante
Madame de Rosemonde, Valmont's aunt
Critique:
Dangerous Acquaintances QLes
Liaisons Dangereuses) is the only novel of a
French artillery officer turned writer. It is
a slow-paced but fascinating story in
which Laclos proved himself a master of
the epistolary form popularized by Samuel
Richardson and other novelists of the
eighteenth century. The letters are so
skillfully interplayed and the
characterizations so scrupulously presented that the
reader willingly accepts the letters as real
and the characters as people rather than as
tools for telling a story. The illusion is
furthered by Laclos' use of frequent
footnotes explaining details in the letters.
On its publication the novel achieved a
succes de scandale which has caused the
book to be stigmatized as a pornographic
work. In actuality, the writer employed
a theme of sexual intrigue in order to
dissect the decadent society of his age
and to lay bare its underlying tensions
and antagonisms, so that it stands in
sharp contrast to contemporary erotic
romances which threw an atmosphere of
glamor about a subject Laclos revealed
in all its starkness. Interestingly,
examples of the Freudian concepts of sex
appear throughout the novel.
The Story:
When Cdcile de Volanges was fifteen
789
years old, her mother removed her from
a convent in preparation for the girl's
marriage to the Comte de Gercourt, a
match already arranged by Madame de
Volanges but without her daughter's
knowledge. Shortly after her departure
from the convent C6cile began an
exchange of letters with Sophie Carnay,
her close friend. Except for trips to shops
for the purchase of an elaborate
wardrobe, C6cile had few contacts with her
fashionable mother. The little she knew
about the plans for her future she learned
from her maid.
Knowing of the match, the Marquise
de Merteuil, an unscrupulous woman,
saw in the proposed marriage an
opportunity to be revenged on Gercourt, who
some time before had deserted her for a
woman of greater virtue. In her wounded
vanity she schemed to have the Vicomte
de Valmont, a libertine as unscrupulous
as she, effect a liaison between C£cile and
the Chevalier Danceny. Such an affair,
circulated by court gossip after C£cile and
Gercourt were married, would make the
husband a laughing stock of the
fashionable world. To complete her plan for
revenge, the marquise also wanted Valmont
to seduce Madame de Tourvel, the wife
of a judge. Madame de Tourvel was the
woman for whom Gercourt had aban-

doned the Marquise de Merteuil. As a
reward for carrying out these malicious
designs she promised to reinstate
Valmont as her own lover.
Valmont was able to arrange a meeting
between Cecile and Danceny. Although
she was attracted to the young man,
Cecile hesitated at first to reply to his letters.
Her final consent to write to him, even to
speak of love, was concealed from
Madame de Volanges.
Valmont, meanwhile, had turned his
attention to Madame de Tourvel. A
woman of virtue, she tried to reject the
vicomte's suit because she was aware of
his sinister reputation. In spite of her
decision she nevertheless found herself
attracted to him, and in time she agreed
to write to him but not to see him. She
stipulated also that Valmont was not to
mention the subject of love or to suggest
intimacy. Eventually Valmont and
Madame de Tourvel became friends. Aware
of her indiscretion even in friendship,
she finally told Valmont that he must go
away, and he accepted her decision.
In the meantime, although she wrote
him letters in which she passionately
declared her love, Cecile was steadfast in
her refusal to see Danceny. With love
Cecile had grown more mature. She still
wrote to Sophie Camay, but not as
frankly as before. Instead, she turned to the
Marquise de Merteuil, whom she saw as
a more experienced woman, for advice. In
turn the marquise, impatient with the
slow progress of the affair between Cecile
and Danceny, informed Madame de
Volanges of the matter, with the result that
the mother, in an angry interview with
her daughter, demanded that Cecile
forfeit Danceny's letters. The marquise*
plan produced the effect she had
anticipated; Cecile and Danceny declared
themselves more in love than ever.
Hoping to end her daughter's
attachment to Danceny, Madame de Volanges
took Cecile to the country to visit
Madame de Rosemonde, Valmont's ailing
aunt. Valmont soon followed, on the
Marquise de Merteuil's instructions, to
keep alive the affair between Cecile and
the young chevalier and to arrange for
Danceny's secret arrival. Then Valmont,
bored with rustic life, decided to take
Cecile for himself. Under the pretext of
making it safer for him to deliver Dan-
ceny's letters, he persuaded her to give
him the key to her room. At the first
opportunity that arose Valmont seduced her.
At first the girl was angered and shocked
by his passion, but before long she was
surrendering herself to him willingly. At
the same time Valmont was still
continuing his attentions to Madame de
Tourvel. Deciding that persistence
accomplished nothing, he began to ignore
her. Madame de Tourvel then wrote
offering her friendship.
Cecile, deep in her affair with
Valmont, wrote asking the Marquise de
Merteuil's advice on how to treat
Danceny. Madame de Volanges, not knowing
the true situation, also wrote the
marquise and said that she had considered
breaking off the match with Gercourt;
her daughter's happiness, she declared,
was perhaps worth more than an
advantageous marriage. In reply, the marquise
earnestly cautioned Madame de Volanges
on a mother's duty to guide a daughter
and to provide for her future.
Madame de Tourvel, also a guest of
Valmont's aunt, gave that gallant the
opportunity to seduce her. Although
tempted, he took greater pleasure in
seeing her virtue humbled. After his refusal
and Madame de TourvePs own moral
scruples had forced her to flee in shame,
she wrote Madame de Rosemonde a
letter in which she apologized for her
abrupt departure and explained fully her
her emotional straits. Madame de Rose-
monde's reply was filled with noble
sentiments and encouragement for her friend.
Valmont was surprised to find himself
deflated by Madame de Tourvel's
departure. His ego suffered another blow when
Cecile locked him out of her room.
The marquise, more impatient than
790

ever with Valmont's slow progress,
decided to work her revenge through
Danceny. Her first step was to captivate the
young chevalier. An easy prey, he
nevertheless continued to write impassioned
letters to C£cile.
Valmont then decided to possess
Madame de Tourvel. Her initial hesitation,
surrender, and complete abandon he
described in a triumphant letter to the
Marquise de Merteuil. His account closed
with the announcement that he was
coming at once to claim the reward she had
promised him. But the marquise
managed to put off his importunate claim by
reproving him about his handling of his
affair with Madame de Tourvel. The
difference between this and his other affairs,
she said, was that he had become
emotionally involved; his previous conquests
had been smoothly and successfully
accomplished because he had regarded
them only as arrangements of
convenience, not relationships of feeling. The
irony of her attitude was that she was
still in love with Valmont and had not
counted on losing him, even for a short
time. She had lost control of the strings
by which she had dangled Valmont to
satisfy her desire for vengeance.
Valmont, meanwhile, was trying to
free himself of emotional involvements
with C£cile and Danceny. Cecile had
miscarried his child; Danceny's devotion
no longer amused him. Although he
made every effort to win the favor of
the marquise, she held herself aloof, and
after a quarrel she capriciously turned
from him to Danceny and made that
young man a slave to her charms and
will.
Both Valmont and the marquise were
eventually defeated in this duel of
egotistic and sexual rivalry. Danceny,
having learned of Valmont's dealings with
Cecile, challenged the vicomte to a duel
and mortally wounded him. As he was
dying, Valmont gave the chevalier his
entire correspondence with the marquise.
Her malice exposed, she faced social ruin.
After an attack of smallpox which left
her disfigured for life, she fled to
Holland. Madame de Tourvel, already
mentally upset because of the treatment she
had received from Valmont, died of grief
at his death. Cecile entered a convent.
Danceny gave the incriminating letters
to Madame de Rosemonde and, vowing
celibacy, entered the order of the Knights
of Malta. Madame de Rosemonde sealed
the letters which had brought disaster or
death to all who had been involved with
so dangerous an acquaintance as the
Marquise de Merteuil.
791

DANIEL DERONDA
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880)
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Rural England, London, the Continent
First published: 1876
Principal characters:
Daniel Deronda
Mirah Lapidoth, a girl he saves from drowning
Sir Hugo Mallinger, Daniel's guardian
Lady Mallinger, his wife
Gwendolen Harleth, a beautiful young lady
Mrs. Davilow, her mother
Mrs. Gascoigne, Gwendolen's sister
Mr. Gascoigne, her husband
Rex Gascoigne, their son
Anna Gascoigne, their daughter
Mallinger Grandcourt, Gwendolen's husband, Sir Hugo's heir
Lush, his follower
Herr Klesmer, a musician
Catherine Arrowpoint, his wife, an heiress
Hans Meyrick, one of Deronda's friends
Mrs. Meyrick, his mother
Ezra Cohen, a shopkeeper in the East End
Mordecai, a boarder with the Cohens, Mirah's brother
Mrs. Lydia Glasher, Grandcqurt's former mistress
Critique:
Daniel Deronda shifts from a novel
depicting the difficulties and romances of
a group of people in English society to a
treatment of anti-Semitism in Victorian
England. The character Daniel Deronda,
the ward of Sir Hugo Mallinger,
provides a bridge between the two portions
of the book. With all its heavy evidence
against the evil of anti-Semitism, the
novel does not become an essay, for
throughout the work George Eliot
maintains sharp observation of the follies and
delusions of Victorian life, as well as a
keen sense of moral discrimination
between her characters. Like Middlemarch,
this novel is distinguished by realistic
appraisals of people in all levels of society
from the august and benevolent Sir Hugo
Mallinger to Ezra Cohen, the crafty yet
generous shopkeeper in the East End.
If the novel does not show the
consistency of theme or careful construction of
George Eliot at her best, it still
propagandizes skillfully for worthy causes and
creates a vivid, clear, and varied scheme
of Hfe.
The Story:
Gwendolen Harleth, a strikingly
beautiful young woman, was gambling at Leu-
bronn. Playing with a cold, emotionless
style, she had been winning consistently.
Her attention was suddenly caught by
the stare of a dark, handsome gentleman
whom she did not know and who seemed
to be reproving her. When her luck
changed, and she lost all her money, she
returned to her room to find a letter from
her mother requesting her immediate
return to England. Before she left,
Gwendolen decided that she would have one
more fling at the gaming tables. She sold
her turquoise necklace for the money to
play roulette, but before she could get
to the tables the necklace was
repurchased and returned to her with an
anonymous note. Certain that the unknown
792

man was her benefactor, she felt that she
could not very well return to the roulette
table. She went back to England as soon
as she could. Her mother had recalled
her because the family had lost all their
money through unwise business
speculations.
Gwendolen a high-spirited, willful,
accomplished, and intelligent girl, was Mrs.
Davilow's only child by her first marriage,
and her favorite. By her second marriage
—Mr. Davilow was also dead—she had
four colorless, spiritless daughters. About
a year before, she had moved to Offen-
dene to be near her sister and brother-
in-law, the prosperous, socially acceptable
Gascoignes and to see what she could do
about arranging a profitable marriage for
her oldest daughter. Gwendolen's beauty
and manner had impressed all the
surrounding gentry, but her first victim was
her cousin, affable Rex Gascoigne.
Although he had been willing to give up
his career at Oxford for Gwendolen, his
family refused to countenance so unwise
a move. Rex, broken in spirit, was sent
away temporarily, but Gwendolen
remained unmoved by the whole affair.
Soon afterward the county became
excited over the visit of Mallinger Grand-
court, the somewhat aloof, unmarried heir
to Diplow and several other large
properties owned by Sir Hugo Mallinger. All
the young ladies were eager to get Grand-
court to notice them, but it was
Gwendolen, apparently indifferent and coy in
conversation with the well-mannered but
monosyllabic Grandcourt, who had most
success. For several weeks, Grandcourt
courted Gwendolen, yet neither forced to
any crisis the issue of possible marriage.
Gwendolen's mother, uncle, and aunt
urged her to try to capture Grandcourt.
Just when it seemed that Grandcourt
would propose and Gwendolen would
accept, Mrs. Lydia Glasher appeared,
brought to the scene by the scheming of
Grandcourt's companion, Lush, to tell
Gwendolen that she was the mother of
four of Grandcourt's illegitimate children
and that she had left her husband to live
with Grandcourt. She begged Gwendolen
not to accept Grandcourt so that she
might have the chance to secure him as
the rightful father of her children.
Gwendolen, promising not to stand in Mrs.
Glasher's way, had gone immediately to
join friends at Leubronn.
Before he came to Leubronn, Daniel
Deronda, the man whom Gwendolen had
encountered in the gambling casino, had
been Sir Hugo Mallinger's ward. He did
not know his parents, but Sir Hugo had
always treated him well. Sir Hugo, who had
married late in life, had only daughters.
Although he lavished a great deal of
expense and affection on Deronda, his
property was to go to his nephew, Mallinger
Grandcourt. At Cambridge, Deronda had
been extremely popular. There, too, he
had earned the undying gratitude of a
poor student named Hans Meyrick,
whom Deronda helped to win a
scholarship at the expense of his own studies.
One day, after leaving Cambridge, while
in a boat on the river, Deronda saved a
pale and frightened young woman, Mirah
Lapidoth, from committing suicide. She
told him that she was a Jewess, returned
after years of wandering with a brutal
and blasphemous father, to look for her
lost and fondly remembered mother and
brother in London. Deronda took her to
Mrs. Meyrick's home. There Mrs.
Meyrick and her daughters nursed the
penniless Mirah back to health.
When Gwendolen returned to Offen-
dene, she learned that her family would
be forced to move to a small cottage and
that she would have to become a
governess. The idea oppressed her so strongly
that when she saw Grandcourt, who had
been pursuing her on the Continent,
she agreed at once to marry him, in spite
of her promise to Mrs. Glasher. Her
mother, aunt, and uncle knew nothing
of Mrs. Glasher; Grandcourt knew only
that she had spoken to Gwendolen,
knowledge that he kept to himself.
After their marriage, Grandcourt soon
turned out to be a mean, domineering,
demanding man. He had set out to break
793

Gwendolen's spirit, and he did. In the
meantime, at several house parties,
Gwendolen had met Daniel Deronda and found
herself much attracted to him. At a New
Year's party at Sir Hugo Mallinger's,
Gwendolen, despite her husband's
disapproval and biting reprisals, had spoken
to Deronda frequently. When she told
Deronda her whole story and confessed
her guilt in breaking her promise to Mrs.
Glasher, Deronda suggested that she show
her repentance by living a less selfish life,
caring for and helping others less
fortunate than she. Gwendolen, realizing the
folly of her marriage to Grandcourt, and
wisning to find some measure of
happiness and peace, decided to follow the
course Deronda had proposed.
Meanwhile, Deronda was attempting to
secure Mirah's future and, if possible, to
find her family. Mirah had been an
actress and had some talent for singing.
Deronda arranged an interview for her
with Herr Klesmer, a German-Jewish
musician with many connections, who
could get Mirah started on a career. Herr
Klesmer was very much impressed with
Mirah's singing. He had known
Gwendolen at Offendene and, in his honesty, had
refused to help her when she also asked
for singing engagements; he had thought
her without sufficient talent and had
given her ego its first blow. Herr Klesmer
had also married Miss Arrowpoint, the
most talented and attractive girl, save
Gwendolen, in the vicinity of Offendene.
Still trying to find Mirah's family,
Deronda went wandering in the London
East End. There he became friendly with
the family of Ezra Cohen, a shopkeeper
of craft and generosity. For a time, on the
basis of some slight evidence, Deronda
believed that the man might be Mirah's
brother. There also, through Ezra's
family, he met Mordecai, a feeble and
learned man who immediately felt a great
kinship with Deronda. Mordecai took
Deronda to a meeting of his club, a group
of men who discussed scholarly, political,
and theological topics far removed from
the commercial interests of Ezra.
Deronda was delighted when he finally
learned that Mordecai was really Mirah s
brother. This discovery helped Deronda
himself to acknowledge and accept his
own spiritual and literal kinship with the
Jews. The boy of unknown origin, able
to move successfully in the high society
of England, had found his real home in
London's East End.
794

DAPHNIS AND CHLOE
Type of work: Tale
Author: Attributed to Longus (third century)
Type of plot: Pastoral romance
Time of plot: Indefinite
Locale: Island of Lesbos
First transcribed: Third century manuscript
Principal characters:
Daphnis, a young shepherd
Chloe, a shepherdess
Critique:
A product of decadent Greek
literature, Daphnis and Chloe is one of the
most popular of the early predecessors of
the modern novel. Highly romantic in
both characterization and incident, it
centers about the innocent though
passionate love of two children of nature
amid idyllic scenes of natural beauty.
We forgive the many extravagant
improbabilities of the story because of the
charming portrayal of the refreshing,
often amusing, naivete" of two children
unspoiled by contact with city manners.
The Story:
On -the Greek island of Lesbos a
goatherd named Lamo one day found a
richly dressed infant boy being suckled
by one of his goats. Lamo and his wife,
Myrtale, hid the purple cloak and ivory
dagger the boy had worn and pretended
he was their own son. They named him
Daphnis. Two years later a shepherd
named Dryas discovered in a cave of the
Nymphs an infant girl being nursed by
one of his sheep. This child also was
richly dressed. Dryas and his wife Nape
kept the girl as their own, giving her the
name Chloe.
When the two children were fifteen
and thirteen respectively, they were given
flocks to tend. Daphnis and Chloe played
happily together, amusing themselves in
many ways. One day, while chasing a
goat, Daphnis fell into a wolf-pit, from
which he was rescued unharmed by
Chloe and a herdsman she had
summoned to help her. Daphnis began to
experience delightful but disturbing
feelings about Chloe. Dorco, a herdsman,
asked permission to marry Chloe but was
refused by Dryas. Disguising himself in a
wolfskin, Dorco shortly afterward
attempted to seize Chloe. Attacked by the
flock dogs, he was rescued by Daphnis
and Chloe, who innocendy thought he
had merely been playing a prank. Love,
little understood by either, grew between
Daphnis and Chloe.
In the autumn some Tyrian pirates
wounded Dorco, stole some of his oxen
and cows, and took Daphnis away with
them. Chloe, who heard Daphnis
calling to her from the pirate ship, ran to
aid the mortally wounded Dorco. Dorco
gave her his herdsman's pipe, telling hei
to blow upon it. When she blew, the
cattle jumped into the sea and overturned
the ship. The pirates drowned, but
Daphnis, catching on to the horns of two
swimming cows, came safely to shore.
After the celebration of the autumn
vintage Daphnis and Chloe returned to
their flocks. They attempted in their
innocence to practice the art of love,
but they were not successful. Some young
men of Methymne came to the fields
of Mitylene to hunt. When a goat
gnawed in two a withe used as a cable
to hold their small ship, the Methym-
neans blamed Daphnis and set upon
him. In a trial over the affair Daphnis
was judged innocent. The angry
Methymneans later carried away Chloe.
The god Pan warned the Metnymnean
captain in a dream that he should bring
back Chloe, and she was returned.
Daphnis and Chloe joyfully celebrated holi-

days in honor of Pan.
The two lovers were sad at being
parted by winter weather, which kept
the flocks in their folds. In the spring
the lovers happily drove their flocks again
to the fields. When a woman named
Lycaenium became enamored of the boy,
Daphnis finally learned how to ease the
pains he had felt for Chloe; but
Lycaenium warned him that Chloe would
be hurt the first time she experienced the
ecstasy of love. Through fear of doing
physical harm to his sweetheart the
tender Daphnis would not deflower his
Chloe. Meanwhile many suitors, Lampis
among them, asked for the hand of
Chloe, and Dryas came near consenting.
Daphnis bewailed his inability to compete
successfully with the suitors because of
his poverty. Then with the aid of the
Nymphs he found a purse of silver, which
he gave Dryas in order to become
contracted to Chloe. In return Dryas asked
Lamo to consent to the marriage of his
son, but Lamo answered that first he
must consult his master, Dionysophanes.
Lamo, Daphnis, and Chloe prepared
to entertain Dionysophanes; but Lampis
ravaged the garden they had prepared
because he had been denied Chloe's hand.
Fearing the wrath of his master, Lamo
lamented his ill fortune. Eudromus, a
page, helped to explain the trouble to
Lamo's young master Astylus, who
promised to intercede with his father and
blame the wanton destruction on some
horses in the neighborhood. Astylus*
parasite, Gnatho, fell in love with
Daphnis but was repulsed. Finally the
depraved Gnatho received Astylus'
permission to take Daphnis with him to the
city. Just in time Lamo revealed the
story of the finding of Daphnis, who was
discovered to be Dionysophanes* son.
Meanwhile Lampis stole Chloe, who was
later rescued by Gnatho. After Dryas
told how Chloe had been found as a
child, it was learned that she was the
daughter of Megacles of Mitylene. Thus
the supposed son and daughter of Lamo
and Dryas were revealed as the children
of wealthy parents who were happy to
consent to their marriage. The wedding
was celebrated amid the rural scenes
dear to both bride and groom. Daphnis
became Philopoemen and Chloe was
named Agele. On her wedding night
Chloe at last learned from Daphnis how
might be obtained the delights of love.
796

THE DARK JOURNEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Julian Green (1900- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: France
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Paul Gueret, a neurotic tutor
Angele, a young laundress
Madame Londe, a restaurant proprietress
Monsieur Grosgeorge, Gueret's employer
Madame Grosgeorge, his wife
Fernande, a young girl
Critique:
Like all of Julian Green's work, The
Dark Journey is a bleak and somber book,
impressive both in its realistic evocation of
French provincial life and in its
metaphysical overtones of human destiny.
Shadows of disaster and doom brood over
his pages; his characters, as in the case of
Paul Gueret and Madame Grosgeorge,
have premonitions of their fates, but they
are powerless to help themselves. This
novel, published in France under the title
Leviathan, deals with the twin themes of
violence and lust. Nothing is trivial,
however, and little is vulgar. Instead, with
impersonal detachment and classic gravity of
style, the writer tells a story of disturbing
but compelling vigor, in which violence
and melodrama are only incidental to his
vastly greater effects of cumulative passion
and tragic finality.
The Story:
Paul Gueret was an incompetent,
prematurely-aged tutor hired to instruct the
sickly, backward son of a prosperous
provincial family named Grosgeorge.
Knowing himself a failure and tired of the
wife whom he no longer loved, he had
hoped that life would be better in
Chanteilles; but within a month he was
just as wretched there as he had been in
Paris, where his feelings of self-pity and
frustration had often driven him into
sordid love affairs. In Chanteilles, bored
by his dreary surroundings, he soon found
himself infatuated with Angele, a young
girl who worked in a laundry. Hoping to
become her lover, he began to write letters
asking her to meet him. Sometimes he
followed her at a distance when she delivered
washing to her customers.
One night he accosted her at a
footbridge on the outskirts of the town.
Hating himself for his shabby clothes and
stammering speech, he offered her a cheap
ring stolen from his wife. Although she
accepted the ring, the girl did not
encourage his attentions. His abrupt yet
furtive ardor both attracted and repelled
her.
That same night Gueret went by
chance to the Restaurant Londe in nearby
Lorges. There Madame Londe, the
proprietress, presided majestically behind
her cashier's desk. A sly woman whose
days were given over to spying and gossip,
she delighted in alternately cajoling and
bullying her patrons, who seemed to hold
her resentfully in awe. When Gueret
entered, she was disturbed because he was a
stranger and she knew nothing about him.
Refusing to let him pay for his dinner,
she had him write his name in her
account book. Her desire was to add him
to her regular clientele.
Madame Londe's hold over her patrons
TS? PA?K J0y?.NE,Y by Juli»n Green. By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright,
1929, by Harper & Brothers. *
797

was a sinister one, maintained through her
niece, Angele. Because the girl was
indebted to her for food and a room, she
forced Angele to sell her favors to the
habitues of the restaurant. With
knowledge thus gained of the guilt and secret
vices of her patrons, she was able to dictate
to them as she pleased. Her own position
as a procuress gave her no worry; her only
concern was her lust for power over others.
Upset by his desire for Angele, Gu£ret
paid little attention to his duties as a tutor.
Andre* Grosgeorge was a poor student, but
his mother shrewdly blamed Gueret for
her son's slow progress. Madame
Grosgeorge was a woman in whom the starved
passions of her girlhood had turned to a
tortured kind of love which found its
outlet in cruelty and treachery. Because the
husband whom she despised ignored her
nagging tirades, she took special pleasure
in beating her son and in humiliating
Gueret.
Monsieur Grosgeorge felt sorry for the
browbeaten tutor. Having guessed that
Gueret was unhappily married, he bluntly
advised him to find a mistress before he
wasted his years in moping dullness. That,
said Grosgeorge, was the course he
himself had followed. One day he boastingly
produced a note in which the writer asked
Grosgeorge to meet her the next night.
Gueret, staring at the letter, shook with
suppressed rage. He recognized the scrawl
as Angele's handwriting.
Angele, after several meetings with
Gu6ret, became more independent in her
attitude toward Madame Londe. Because
his conduct was quite different from that
of other men who sought her favors, she
no longer wished to sell herself in order
to act as her aunt's informant. During a
quarrel Angele, who refused to keep an
assignation the old woman had arranged,
threatened to run away. Madame Londe
was worried. Afraid that she would lose
her hold over her patrons, she began to
train Fernande, a twelve-year-old girl, to
take Angele's place.
Gu6ret returned to the Restaurant
Londe. During the meal he learned from
the talk of the other diners that Angele
was Madame Londe's niece and that she
had given herself to most of the men
there. That night, driven to desperation
by his knowledge, he broke into her
bedroom. It was empty. When Madame
Londe, aroused by his entry, screamed for
help, he ran away and hid in a wood. On
his way back to Chanteilles he met
Angele. In sudden, brutal fury he picked
up a branch and struck at her until blood
covered her face and head.
All that day he skulked beside the river.
While he was sneaking back into town
after dark, he met a feeble old man.
Fearing capture, he seized the old man's stick
and beat him to death. Filled with blind
terror, he fled across the yards of unknown
houses and through back streets of the
town.
The neighborhood was shocked by the
brutality of Gueret's crime, and for weeks
the townspeople refused to venture into
the streets at night. Angele, disfigured for
life, refused to give the name of her
assailant and remained shut up in her room
above the restaurant. Only Madame
Grosgeorge scoffed at those who bolted their
doors at dusk. Indeed, she seemed to relish
the fact that the shabby, blundering tutor
had scarred the face of her husband's
mistress and violently disrupted the monotony
of her own existence.
At last the hue and cry died down.
Gueret, unable to stay away from Angele,
returned to the district. Madame
Grosgeorge, out walking, saw him near the
footbridge and called after him that she
would meet him there the next evening.
Gu6ret did not appear, although she
waited impatiently for more than an hour.
Later he came to her villa, and she,
unknown to her husband, hid the fugitive in
her private sitting-room. She promised
that she would give him money and some
of her husband's clothing before she sent
him away in the morning.
But his presence in the house gave her
such strange satisfaction that she refused
798

to let him go as she had promised. The
next morning she went to her sitting-room
and tried to talk to him about his crimes.
When his answers showed only that he
was still in love with Angele, Madame
Grosgeorge felt cheated. She had admired
him for his violence; now she despised him
for his foolish passion. Again she locked
him in the room while she tried to decide
what to do. Little Fernande came to
deliver some laundry. On impulse Madame
Grosgeorge wrote a note telling Angele
that Gueret was in her house and asking
that the police be called.
Madame Londe, always on the alert,
intercepted the message and hurried to give
the alarm. Angele, learning what had
happened, sent Fernande to warn the
fugitive that he must escape at once.
Madame Grosgeorge, meanwhile, had
returned to Gueret. When he insisted that
she let him go, she locked the door and
threw the key out of the window. Then
she told him that Angele knew his
whereabouts and that if he were betrayed the
laundress would be to blame. Taking a
revolver from her desk, she put it in her
belt and calmly prepared to write a letter.
Fernande ran into the garden. Gueret,
leaning out of the window, asked her to
pick up the key and unlock the door. A
report sounded behind him. Madame
Grosgeorge had shot herself.
799

DARK LAUGHTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: Old Harbor, Indiana
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Bruce Dudley, formerly John Stockton, a Chicago reporter
Sponge Martin, a workman close to the grass roots
Fred Grey, owner of an automobile wheel factory
Aline, his wife
Critique:
Dark Laughter, Sherwood Anderson's
most popular novel, is a book of moods
rather than of plot. Its simple story is
that of two individuals in revolt against
the restrictions of modern life and
seeking happiness together. Anderson seems
to say that Bruce Dudley and Aline Grey
were unhappy because they were
repressed; they gave themselves over to
the secret desires within them and
therefore they became happy. One may
question whether Bruce and Aline were
not merely restless and somewhat
adolescent emotionally, rather than strong
and brave in .their attempt to live by
amoral standards.
The Story:
Bruce Dudley's name was not Bruce
Dudley at all. It was John Stockton.
But he had grown tired of being John
Stockton, reporter on a Chicago paper,
married to Bernice who worked on the
same paper and who wrote magazine
stories on the side. She thought him
flighty and he admitted it. He wanted
adventure. He wanted to go down the
Mississippi as Huckleberry Finn had
done. He wanted to go back to Old
Harbor, the river town in Indiana where he
had spent his childhood. And so, with
less than three hundred dollars, he left
Chicago, Bernice, and his job on the
paper. He picked up the name Bruce
Dudley from two store signs in an
Illinois town. After his trip to New
Orleans he went to Old Harbor and got
a job varnishing automobile wheels in
the Grey Wheel Company.
Sponge Martin worked in the same
room with Bruce. Sponge, a wiry old
fellow with a black mustache, lived a
simple, elemental life. That was the
reason, perhaps, why Bruce liked him
so much. Sometimes when the nights
were fair and the fish were biting,
Sponge and his wife took sandwiches
and some moonshine whiskey and went
down to the river. They fished for a
while and got drunk, and then Sponge's
wife made him feel like a young man
again. Bruce wished he could be as
happy and carefree as Sponge.
When Bruce was making his way
down the Mississippi and when he stayed
for five months in an old house in New
Orleans—that was before he came to
Old Harbor—he watched the Negroes
and listened to their songs and laughter.
It seemed to him that they lived as
simply as children and were happy,
laughing their dark laughter.
Aline, the wife of Fred Grey, who
owned the Grey Wheel Company, saw
Bruce Dudley walking out the factory
door one evening as she sat in her car
waiting for Fred. Who he was she did
not know, but she remembered another
man to whom she had felt attracted in
the same way. It happened in Paris
DARK LAUGHTER by Sherwood Anderson. By permission of Mrs. Sherwood Anderson, of Harold Ober, And
the publishers, Liveright Publishing Corp. Copyright, 1925, by Boni & Liveright, Inc.
800

after the war. She had seen the man at
Rose Frank's apartment and she had
wanted him. Then she had married
Fred, who was recovering from the
shock of the war. He was not what
she wished for, but, somehow, she had
married him.
One evening Bruce Dudley passed
by the Grey home as Aline stood in the
yard. He stopped and looked first at the
house and then at Aline. Neither spoke
but something passed between them.
They had found each other.
Aline, who had advertised for a
gardener, hired Bruce after turning down
several applicants. Bruce had quit his
job at the factory shortly before he saw
her advertisement. When Bruce began to
work for her, the two maintained some
reserve, but each was determined to have
the other. Bruce and Aline carried on
many imaginary conversations. Fred
apparently resented Bruce's presence about
the grounds, but he said nothing to the
man. When he questioned his wife, he
learned that she knew nothing of Bruce
except that he was a good worker.
As Aline watched her husband leave
for the factory each morning she
wondered how much he knew. She
thought a great deal about her own life
and about life in general. Her husband
was no lover. Few women nowadays had
true lovers, fyjodern civilization told one
what he could not have. One belittled
what he could not possess. Because one
did not have love, one made fun of it,
was skeptical of it, and besmirched it.
The little play of the two men and the
woman went on silently. Two Negro
women who worked in Aline's house
watched the proceedings. From time
to time they laughed, and their dark
laughter seemed mocking. White folks
were queer. They made life so involved.
Negroes took what they wanted—simply,
openly, happily.
One day in June, after Fred had gone
to march in a veterans' parade and the
Negro servants had gone to watch the
parade, Aline and Bruce were left alone.
She sat and watched him working in
the garden. Finally he looked at her,
and he followed her into the house
through a door she purposely left open.
Before Fred returned, Bruce had left
the house. He disappeared from Old
Harbor. Two months later Aline told
Fred she was going to have a child.
As Fred came home one evening in
the early fall, he saw his wife and
Bruce together in the garden. Aline
calmly called to him and announced that
the child she was expecting was not his.
She and Bruce had waited, she went on,
so that she might let him know they
were leaving. Fred pleaded with her to
stay, knowing she was hurting herself,
but they walked away, Bruce carrying
two heavy bags.
Fred told himself, as he stood with
his revolver in his hand a few minutes
later, that he could not dispassionately
let another man walk away with his
wife. His mind was filled with confused
anger. For a moment he thought of
killing himself. Then he followed the
pair along the river road. He was
determined to kill Bruce. But he lost them
in the darkness. In a blind fury he shot
at the river. On the way back to his
house he stopped to sit on a log. The
revolver fell to the ground and he sat
crying like a child for a long time.
After Fred had returned to his home
and gone to bed, he tried to laugh at
what had happened. He could not. But
outside in the road he heard a sudden
burst of laughter. It was the younger
of the two Negresses who worked in the
Grey home. She cried out loudly that
she had known it all the time, and again
there came a burst of laughter—dark
laughter.
801

DARKNESS AT NOON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arthur Koestler (1905- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1930*5
Locale: Russia
First published: 1941
Principal characters:
Nicholas Rubashov, a political prisoner
Ivanov, a prison official
Gletkin, another official
Michael Bograv, another prisoner
Kieffer (Hare-Lip), an informer
Critique:
This remarkable modern novel by
Arthur Koestler is a highly analytical
piece of writing which transports the
reader into a Russian prison and into
the very consciousness of a political
prisoner, accused of crimes he never
committed. Darkness at Noon represents an
ironic and scathing criticism of the
Moscow trials. At the same time, it presents
a careful analysis of the Soviet principles.
Reference to Russia is made only in the
foreword, however, and the party leader
is known only as No. 1 in this powerful
but highly restrained social document.
The Story:
Nicholas Rubashov, ex-Commissar of
the People and once a power in the
party, was in prison. Arrested at his
lodgings in the middle of the night, he
had been taken secretly to cell 404,
which bore his name on a card just
above the spy-hole. He knew that he
was located in an isolation cell for
condemned political suspects.
At seven o'clock in the morning
Rubashov was awakened by a bugle, but he
did not get up. Soon he heard sounds
in the corridor. He imagined that
someone was to be tortured, and he dreaded
hearing the first screams of pain from the
victim. When the footsteps reached his
own section, he saw through the judas-
eye that guards were serving breakfast.
Rubashov did not receive any breakfast
because he had reported himself ill. He
began to pace up and down the cell,
six and a half steps to the window, six
and a half steps back.
Soon he heard a quiet knocking from
the wall of adjoining cell 402. In
communicating with each other prisoners
used the "quadratic alphabet," a square of
twenty-five letters, five horizontal rows
of five letters each. The first series of
taps represented the number of the row;
the second series the number of the
letter in the row. From the tappings
Rubashov pictured his neighbor as a
military man, one not in sympathy with
the methods of the great leader or with
the views of Rubashov himself. From
his window he saw prisoners walking in
the courtyard for exercise. One of these,
a man with a hare-lip, looked repeatedly
up at Rubashov's window. From his
neighbor in cell 402, Rubashov learned
that Hare-lip was a political prisoner
who had been tortured by a steam bath
the day before. A little later Hare-lip,
in cell 400, sent Rubashov his greetings,
through the inmate of 402, but he would
not give his name.
Three days later Rubashov was brought
up for his first examination. The
examiner was Ivanov, Rubashov's old
college friend and former battalion
commander. During the interview the
DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler. By permission of the author and the publishers, The Macmillan Cb.
Copyright, 1941, by The Macmillan Co.
802

Erisoner learned that he was accused of
elonging to the opposition to the party
and that he was suspected of an attempt
on the party leader's life. Ivanov
promised a twenty-year prison term
instead of the death penalty if Rubashov
confessed. The prisoner was given a
fortnight to arrive at a decision.
After the hearing Rubashov was
allowed to have paper, pencil, soap, towels,
and tobacco. He started writing in his
journal and recasting his ideas about the
party and the movement. He recalled
a young man named Richard arrested in
Germany while Rubashov was at the head
of the party Intelligence and Control
Department. He could not forget an
incident which had happened in Belgium
two years later. There Rubashov had
been tortured and beaten. In Belgium
he expelled from the party a
hunchbacked, eager worker who later hanged
himself in his room. Rubashov also
thought constantly of Arlova who had
been his mistress and who had met her
death because of him.
The night before the time set by
Ivanov had expired, Rubashov felt a
tenseness in the atmosphere. His friend
in 402 communicated to him that one of
the prisoners was to be shot. This
prisoner was Michael Bograv, who had
always been Rubashov's close friend. As
the condemned man was brought through
the corridors, the prisoners tapped his
progress from one cell to another and
drummed on the doors of their cells as
he passed. The beaten, whimpering
figure of Bograv came by Rubashov's
cell. Rubashov believed that his friend
shouted to him as he was dragged down
the stairs.
Rubashov's second hearing took place
late at night. Ivanov came to Rubashov's
cell with a bottle of brandy and
convinced him that to keep faith with the
living was better than betrayal of the
dead. Accordingly, Rubashov wrote a
letter to the Public Prosecutor renouncing
his own oppositional attitude and
acknowledging his errors. The third night
after delivering the letter to the warder,
Rubashov was awakened and taken to the
office of Gletkin, another official of the
prison. Under blinding lights in Glet-
kin's office, he was questioned day and
night for an interminable period of time.
Ivanov, he learned, had been liquidated
for conducting Rubashov's case
negligently. Gletkin called in Hare-lip as a
witness against Rubashov. It was only
with great difficulty that Rubashov
recognized in that broken, cringing man the
son of his former friend and associate,
Keiffer. The bright spotlight, the lack of
sleep, the constant questionings—these
factors combined to make Rubashov sign
a trumped-up charge that he had plotted
to take the life of the party leader.
Rubashov had committed none of these
crimes. He was merely the victim of a
change in party policy. One night he
heard the sound of drumming along the
corridor. The guards were taking
Harelip to be executed. When the drumming
started again, Rubashov knew that his
time had come. He was led into the
cellar. An officer struck him twice on
the head with a revolver. Another party
incident was closed.
803

DAVID COPPERFIELD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1849-1850
Principal characters:
David Copperfield, the narrator
Clara Copperfield, his mother
Miss Betsy Trotwood, David's great-aunt
Peggotty, a nurse
Mr. Peggotty, her brother
Little Em'ly, his orphan niece
Ham, his orphan nephew
Mr. Murdstone, David's stepfather
Miss Jane Murdstone, his sister
Mr. Creakle, master of Salem House
James Steerforth, David's schoolmate
Tommy Traddles, a student at Salem House
Mr. Wilkins Micawber, a man of pecuniary difficulties
Mr. Wickfield, Miss Trotwood's solicitor
Agnes Wickfield, his daughter
Uriah Heep, a clerk
Mr. Spenlow, under whom David studied law
Dora Spenlow, his daughter, later David's wife
Mr. Dick, Miss Betsy's protege
Critique:
One of the many qualities that
distinguish David Copperfield from more
modern and more sophisticated novels is
its eternal freshness. It is, in short, a work
of art which can be read and re-read,
chiefly for the gallery of characters
Dickens has immortalized. The novel has its
flaws. These faults seem insignificant,
however, when the virtues of the novel as
a whole are considered. The first-person
point of view adds much to realistic
effects and sympathetic treatment of
character and helps to explain, in part, why
David Copperfield is the most loved piece
of fiction in the English language.
The Story:
David Copperfield was born at Blun-
derstone, in Suffolk, six months after his
father's death. Miss Betsy Trotwood, an
eccentric great-aunt was present on the
night of his birth, but she left the house
abruptly and indignantly when she learned
that the child was a boy who could never
bear her name. David spent his early
years with his pretty young mother,
Clara Copperfield, ana a devoted servant
named Peggotty. Peggotty was plain and
plump; when she bustled about the house
her buttons popped off her dress.
The youthful widow was soon courted
by Mr. Murdstone, who proved, after
marriage, to be stingy and cruel. When
his mother married a second time, David
was packed off with Peggotty to visit her
relatives at Yarmouth. There her brother
had converted an old boat into a seaside
cottage, where he lived with his niece,
Little Em'ly, and his sturdy young
nephew, Ham. Little Em'ly and Ham were
David's first real playmates, and his
visit to Yarmouth remained a happy
memory of his lonely and unhappy childhood.
Arter Miss Jane Murdstone arrived to
take charge of her brother's household,
David and his mother were never to feel
free again from the dark atmosphere of
suspicion and gloom the Murdstones
brought with them.
One day in a fit of childish terror
804

David bit his stepfather on the hand.
He was immediately sent off to Salem
House, a wretched school near London.
There his life was more miserable than
ever under a brutal headmaster named
Creakle. But in spite of the harsh
system of the school and the bullyings of
Mr. Creakle, his life was endurable
because of his friendship with two boys
whom he was to meet again under much
different circumstances in later life—
lovable Tommy Traddles and handsome,
lordly James Steerforth.
His school days ended suddenly with
the death of his mother and her infant
child. When he returned home, he
discovered that Mr. Murdstone had
dismissed Peggotty. Barkis, the stage driver,
whose eourtship had been meager but
earnest, had taken Peggotty away to
become Mrs. Barkis and David was left
friendless in the home of his cruel
stepfather.
David was put to work in an export
warehouse in which Murdstone had an
interest. As a ten-year-old worker in the
dilapidated establishment of Murdstone
and Grinby, wine merchants, David was
overworked and half-starved. He loathed
his job and associates such as young
Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes. The
youngster, however, met still another
person with whom he was to associate
in later life. That was Wilkins Micaw-
ber, a pompous ne'er-do-well in whose
house David lodged. The impecunious
Mr. Micawber found himself in debtor's
prison shortly afterward. On his
release he decided to move with his brood
to Plymouth. Having lost these good
friends, David decided to run away from
the environment he detested.
When David decided to leave
Murdstone and Grinby, he knew he could not
return to his stepfather. The only other
relative he could think of was his father's
aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, who had
flounced indignantly out of the house on
the night of David's birth. Hopefully he
set out for Dover, where Miss Betsy lived,
but not before he had been robbed of all
his possessions. Consequently, he
arrived at Miss Betsy's home physically and
mentally wretched.
David's reception was at first not
cordial. Miss Betsy had never forgotten the
injustice done her when David was born
instead of a girl. However, upon the
advice of Mr. Dick, a feeble-minded
distant kinsman who was staying with her,
she decided to take David in, at least
until he had been washed thoroughly.
While she was deliberating further about
what to do with her bedraggled nephew,
she wrote to Mr. Murdstone, who came
with his sister to Dover to claim his
stepson. Miss Betsy decided she disliked
both Murdstones intensely. Mr. Dick
solved her problem by suggesting that she
keep David.
Much to David's joy and satisfaction,
Miss Betsy planned to let the boy
continue his education, and almost
immediately sent him to a school in Canterbury,
run by a Mr. Strong, a headmaster quite
different from Mr. Creakle. During his
stay at school David lodged with Miss
Betsy's lawyer, Mr. Wickfield, who had
a daughter, Agnes. David became very
fond of her. At Wickfield's he also met
Uriah Heep, Mr. Wickfield's cringing
clerk, whose hypocritical humility and
clammy handclasp filled David with
disgust.
David finished school when he was
seventeen. Miss Betsy suggested he travel
for a time before deciding on a
profession. On his way to visit his old nurse,
Peggotty, David met James Steerforth
and went home with his former
schoolmate. There he met Steerforth's mother
and Rosa Dartle, a girl passionately in
love with Steerforth. Years before, the
quick-tempered Steerforth had struck
Rosa, who carried a scar as a reminder of
Steerforth's brutality.
After a brief visit, David persuaded
Steerforth to go with him to see
Peggotty and her family. At Yarmouth, Steer-
form met Little Em'ly. In spite of the
fact that she was engaged to Ham, she
and Steerforth were immediately attracted
805

to each other.
At length David told his aunt he
wished to study law. Accordingly, he
was articled to the law firm of Spenlow
and Jorkins. At this time David saw
Agnes Wickfield, who told him she
feared Steerforth and asked David to
stay away from him. Agnes also expressed
a fear of Uriah Heep, who was on the
point of entering into partnership with
her senile father. Shortly after these
revelations, by Agnes, David encountered
Uriah himself, who confessed he wanted
to marry Agnes. David was properly
disgusted.
On a visit to the Spenlow home, David
met Dora Spenlow, his employer's pretty
but childish daughter, with whom he fell
instantly in love. Soon they became
secretly engaged. Before this happy event,
however, David heard some startling
news—Steerforth had run away with
Little Em'ly.
Nor was this elopement the only blow
to David's happiness. Shortly after his
engagement to Dora, David learned from
his aunt that she had lost all her money,
and from Agnes that Uriah Heep had
become Mr. Wickfield's partner. David
tried unsuccessfully to be released from
his contract with Spenlow and Jorkins.
Determined to show his aunt he could
repay her, even in a small way, for her
past sacrifices, he took a part-time job
as secretary to Mr. Strong, his former
headmaster.
But the job with Mr. Strong paid very
little; therefore David undertook to study
for a position as a reporter of
parliamentary debates. Even poor simple Mr. Dick
came to Miss Betsy's rescue, for Traddles,
now a lawyer, gave him a job as a clerk.
The sudden death of Mr. Spenlow
dissolved the partnership of Spenlow and
Jorkins, and David learned to his dismay
that his former employer had died almost
penniless. With much study on his part,
David became a reporter. At twenty-one
he married Dora, who, however, never
seemed capable of growing up. During
these events, David had kept in touch
with Mr. Micawber, now Uriah Heep's
confidential secretary. Though
something had finally turned up for Mr.
Micawber, his relations with David, and
even with his own family, were
mysteriously strange, as though he were
hiding something.
David soon learned what the trouble
was, for Mr. Micawber's conscience got
the better of him. At a meeting arranged
by him at Mr. Wickfield's, he revealed
in Uriah's presence and to an assembled
company, including Agnes, Miss Betsy,
David, and Traddles, the criminal
perfidy of Uriah Heep, who for years had
robbed and cheated Mr. Wickfield. Miss
Betsy discovered that Uriah was also
responsible for her own financial losses.
With the exposure of the villainous Uriah,
partial restitution both for her and for
Mr. Wickfield was not long in coining.
His conscience cleared by his exposure
of Uriah Heep's villainy, Mr. Micawber
proposed to take his family to Australia.
There, he was sure something would
again turn up. To Australia, too, went
Mr. Peggotty and Little Em'ly; she had
turned to her uncle in sorrow and shame
after Steerforth had deserted her. David
watched as their ship put out to se*a.
It seemed to him the sunset was a bright
promise for them as they sailed away to a
new life in the new land. The darkness
fell about him as he watched.
The great cloud now in David's life
was his wife's delicate health. Day after
day she failed, and in spite of his ten-
derest care he was forced to see her grow
more feeble and wan. Agnes Wickfield,
like the true friend she had always been,
was with him on the night of Dora's
death. As in his earlier troubles, he turned
to Agnes in the days that followed and
found comfort in her sympathy and
understanding.
Upon her advice he decided to go
abroad for a while. But first he went to
Yarmouth to put into Ham's hands a last
letter from Little Em'ly. There he
witnessed the final act of her betrayal.
During a storm the heavy seas battered a
806

ship in distress off the coast. Ham went
to his death in a stout-hearted attempt
to rescue a survivor clinging to a broken
mast. The bodies washed ashore by the
rolling waves were those of loyal Ham
and the false Steerforth.
David lived in Europe for three years.
On his return he discovered again his
need for Agnes Wickfield's quiet
friendship. One day Miss Betsy Trotwood slyly
suggested that Agnes might soon be
married. Heavy in heart, David went off to
offer her his good wishes. When she
burst into tears, he realized that what he
had hoped was true—her heart was
already his. They were married, to
matchmaking Miss Betsy's great delight, and
David settled down to begin his career
as a successful novelist.
807

DAVID HARUM
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edward Noyes Westcott (1846-1898)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Upstate New York
First published: 1898
Principal characters:
David Harum, a banker and horse trader
John Lenox, Harum's assistant
Mary Blake, John's sweetheart
Polly Bixbee, Harum's widowed sister
Critique:
Westcott, who himself had been a
banker in upper New York State, wrote
David Harum to give the country at large
a picture of his region and its people. The
greatness of the book lies in the
characterization of David Harum, that
original and delightfully humorous horse
trader who has fascinated two generations
of readers. Harum was a dry, quaint,
semi-literate countryman with a shrewd
knowledge of human nature.
Unfortunately, the horse-trading banker does
not dominate the story completely. The
novel is threaded together by a love
story involving Harum's banking assistant
and a young heiress. The best chapters,
by far, are those in which David Harum
tells stories in dialect, swaps horses, or
indulges in reminiscences of other days.
The Story:
John Lenox was the son of a well-to-
do businessman in New York. After
college he lived for several years in
Europe at his father's expense. He was
twenty-six years old when he returned
to America, without having done
anything which fitted him to earn a living.
John returned to find that his father's
business was failing rapidly and that he
would soon have to make a living for
himself. His father found a place for
him with a New York law firm, but
reading law proved uncongenial. When
his father died, John left the firm. Then,
through an old friend of his father's,
John became assistant to the owner of a
small bank in Homeville, New York.
David Harum, the owner of the bank,
was a crusty old man who enjoyed his
reputation as a skinflint. What most of
the townspeople did not know was that
he was quite a philanthropist in his own
way, but preferred to cover up his charity
and good deeds with gruff words.
Harum's one vice was horse trading. His
sister, who kept house for him, firmly
relieved that he would rather trade horses
Kan eat or sleep. Moreover, he usually
ame out ahead in any swapping deal.
David Harum was well pleased with
Jie appearance of his new assistant, John
Lenox. And when John took hold of his
ciuties better than any other clerk in the
bank had ever done, David Harum began
:o think seriously of looking after the
young man's future. Harum felt that
John should have an opportunity to
better himself, but he wanted first to be
certain that he was not mistaken in
judging the young man's character. He
set out to discover what he wanted to
know in a peculiar way. He let John
live uncomfortably in a broken-down
hotel for several months to ascertain his
fortitude. He also gave John several
chances to be dishonest by practices
which a sharp trader like Harum might
DAVID HARUM by Edward Noyes Westcott. By permission of the publishers, Appleton-Ceatury-Crofta, Inc.
Copyright, 1898, by D. Appleton & Co. Renewed, 1926, by Philip N. Westcott.
808

be expected to approve. John's
straightforward dealings won Harum's respect
and approval. He casually gave John
five ten-dollar gold pieces and asked him
to move into a room in Harum's own large
house with him and his sister, Polly.
John had begun to discover that
Harum was not the selfish and crusty
old man he appeared. He knew that
Harum had called in a widow whose
mortgage was overdue and had torn up
the paper because the woman's husband
had at one time taken Harum to the
circus when the banker was a little
boy without a cent to his name. Evem
Harum's horse trading was different when
one came to know him. As John Lenox
discovered, Harum only let people cheat
themselves. If someone professed to knov*
all about horses, Harum used the trade
to teach him a lesson, but if a tyro
professed his ignorance of the animals
Harum was sure to give him a fair
exchange. He was a living example of the
proverb which propounds shrewdly that
it is impossible to cheat an honest man,
and the corollary, that it is almost
impossible not to cheat a dishonest one.
John Lenox's life in Homeville was
restricted, and he was thrown much on
his own resources. He secured a piano
for himself and played in the evenings
or read from a small collection of books
which he had saved from his father's
library. His only real friends were David
Harum and Harum's sister, Polly, both
old enough to be John's parents. He
spent many pleasant hours in Harum's
company. They would often take
Harum's horses out for a drive, during
which the loquacious banker would regale
the young man with stories of horse
trading, of the foibles of the people in
the community, or of Harum's early life
when he had run away from home to
work along the Erie Canal. On one of
these rides Harum learned that John was
in love with an heiress he had met in
Europe. John felt that he could not
ask her to marry him until he had proved
himself a success.
Soon afterward Harum gave John an
opportunity to make a large amount of
money. Harum had a tip on a corner in
pork on the Chicago market. Harum
and John bought several thousand
barrels of pork and sold them at a
considerable profit. This deal was the first
step Harum took to make John financially
independent.
John's second year in Homeville was
more eventful. By that time he had been
accepted as a member of the community
and had made friends both in the town
and among the wealthy people who came
to Homeville during the summer months.
Meanwhile Harum revealed to his sister
his plan to retire from active work in
the bank and to make John his partner.
He also revealed to her that John had a
tract of land in Pennsylvania which
everyone had considered worthless, but
which was likely to produce oil. Harum,
in his younger days, had spent some
time in the Pennsylvania oil fields, and
like most small-town bankers of the
time, he knew something about a great
many financial activities. What he did
not reveal to his sister was that he also
planned to leave his estate to John, for,
excepting Polly, he had no relatives.
By the end of his third year in
Harum's bank, John had made enough
money through market operations to make
himself independent, and he could have
left the bank and the town for New
York City if he had cared to do so. When
the banker broached the subject to him,
John admitted that two years before
the prospect of returning to the city
would have been welcome. Now he
had come to like Homeville and had no
desire to leave the home of David Harum
and his sister. That was exactly what
Harum wanted to hear. He told John
that he was to become a partner in the
bank. Harum also told him that a
company wanted to lease his Pennsylvania
land for the purpose of drilling for oil.
Then John fell ill, and his doctor sent
809

him on a Mediterranean cruise. While
aboard ship, John met Mary Blake, the
young heiress with whom he had fallen
in love several years before. At first
John thought, because of an error in the
ship's passenger list, that Mary Blake
was already married. One moonlight
night, on a mountain overlooking the
bay at Naples, Mary informed John of
his mistake and promised to marry him,
and a few days later Harum was
overjoyed to receive a cable announcing
John's marriage. Harum wired back the
good news that drilling had begun on the
property in Pennsylvania.
When John and Mary Lenox returned
to the United States several months
later, they settled in Homeville and John
took over the bank. Then David Harum
was free to spend the rest of his days
driving about the countryside and swary
ping horses.
810

DE RERUM NATURA
Type of work: Didactic epic
Author: Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus, c.!
First transcribed: First century B.C.
The De rerum natwra (On the Nature
of Things') is justly renowned as the
greatest poetic monument of Epicurean
philosophy. It is outstanding both as a
scientific explanation of the poet's atomic
theory and as a fine poem. Vergil himself
was much influenced by Lucretius'
dactylic hexameter verse, and echoes passages
of the De rerum natura in the Georgics,
a didactic epic modeled on Lucretius'
poem, and in the Aeneid.
Lucretius, following his master
Epicurus' doctrine, believed that fear of the
gods and fear of death were the greatest
obstacles to peace of mind, the object of
Epicurean philosophy. He felt that he
could dispel these unfounded terrors by
explaining the workings of the universe
and showing that phenomena interpreted
as signs from the deities were simply
natural happenings. His scientific
speculations were based on Democritus' atomic
theory and Epicurus' interpretation of it.
Lucretius outlined the fundamental laws
of this system in the first book of his
poem.
According to Lucretius, everything is
composed of small "first bodies," tiny
particles made up of a few "minima" or
"least parts" which cannot be separated.
These "first bodies," atoms, are solid,
indestructible, and of infinite number.
They are mixed with void to make
objects of greater hardness or softness,
strength or weakness.
Lucretius "proves" these assertions by
calling upon the reader's reason and his
observation of nature, pointing out
absurdities that might come about if his
point were not true. For example, he
substantiates his statement that nothing can
be created from nothing by saying, "For
if things came to being trom nothing,
every kind might be born from all things,
nought would need a seed. First men
B.C.-55 B.C.)
might arise from the sea, and from the
land the race of scaly creatures, and birds
burst forth from the sky." These proofs,
which may fill fifty or one hundred lines
of poetry, are often unconvincing, but
they reveal the author's knowledge of
nature and his imaginative gifts.
The universe is infinite in the
Epicurean system. Lucretius would ask a
man who believed it finite, "If one were
to run on to the end . . . and throw a
flying dart, would you have it that that
dart . . . goes on whither it is sped and
flies afar, or do you think that something
can check and bar its way?" He ridicules
the Stoic theory that all things press
toward a center, for the universe, being
infinite, can have no center. Lucretius is,
of course, denying the law of gravity. He
often contradicts what science has since
proved true, but he is remarkably
accurate for his time.
Book II opens with a poetic description
of the pleasure of standing apart from the
confusion and conflicts of life: "Nothing
is more gladdening than to dwell in the
calm high places, firmly embattled on the
heights by the teaching of the wise,
whence you can look down on others, and
see them wandering hither and thither."
Lucretius is providing this teaching by
continuing his discussion of atoms, which
he says move continuously downward like
dust particles in a sunbeam. They have a
form of free will and can swerve to unite
with each other to form objects. Lucretius
adds that if the atoms could not will
motion for themselves, there would be no
explanation for the ability of animals to
move voluntarily.
The poet outlines other properties of
atoms in the latter part of the second
book: they are colorless, insensible, and
of a variety of shapes which determine
properties of the objects the atoms com-
11

pose. Sweet honey contains round, smooth
particles; bitter wormwood, hooked atoms.
While Lucretius scorns superstitious
fear of the gods, he worships the creative
force of nature, personified as Venus in
the invocation to Book I. Nature controls
the unending cycle of creation and
destruction. There are gods, but they dwell
in their tranquil homes in space,
unconcerned for the fate of men.
A passage in praise of Epicurus
precedes Book III, the book of the soul.
Lucretius says that fear of death arises from
superstitions about the soul's afterlife in
Hades. This fear is foolish, for the soul is,
like the body, mortal. The poet describes
the soul as the life force in the body,
composed of very fine particles which
disperse into the air when the body dies.
Since man will neither know nor feel
anything when his soul has dissolved,
fear of death is unnecessary.
A man should not regret leaving life,
even if it has been full and rich. He
should die as "a guest sated with the
banquet of life and with calm mind embrace
... a rest that knows no care." If
existence has been painful, then an end to it
should be welcome.
The introductory lines of Book IV
express Lucretius' desire to make philosophy
more palatable to his readers by
presenting it in poetry. His task is a new one:
"I traverse the distant haunts of the Pieri-
des (the Muses), never trodden before by
the foot of man."
The poet begins this book on sensation
with an explanation of idols, the films of
atoms which float from the surfaces of
objects and make sense perception
possible. Men see because idols touch their
eyes, taste the bitter salt air because idols
of hooked atoms reach their tongues.
Idols become blunted when they travel
a long distance, causing men to see far-off
square towers as round.
Lucretius blames the misconceptions
arising from visual phenomena like
refraction and perspective on men's reason,
not their senses, for accuracy of sense
perception is an important part of his theory:
"Unless they are true, all reason, too,
becomes false."
A second eulogy of Epicurus
introduces the fifth book, for some readers the
most interesting of all. In it Lucretius
discusses the creation of the world and
the development of human civilization.
Earth was created by a chance
conjunction of atoms, which squeezed out sun,
moon, and stars as they gathered together
to form land. The world, which is
constantly disintegrating and being rebuilt,
is still young, for human history does not
go back beyond the Theban and Trojan
wars.
The poet gives several explanations for
the motion of stars, the causes of night,
and eclipses. Since proof can come only
from the senses, any theory which does
not contradict perception is possible.
Lucretius presents the curious idea that
the first animals were born from wombs
rooted in the earth. Monsters were
created, but only strong animals and
those useful to man could survive. A
delightful picture of primitive man, a hardy
creature living on nuts and berries and
living in caves, follows. Lucretius
describes the process of civilization as men
united for protection, learned to talk, use
metals, weave, and wage war. Problems
arose for them with the discovery of
wealth and property, breeding envy and
discord. It was at this point that Epicurus
taught men the highest good, to free them
from their cares.
The sixth book continues the
explanation of natural phenomena which
inspired men to fear the gods: thunder,
lightning, clouds, rain, earthquakes.
Lucretius rambles over a great many
subjects, giving several explanations for
many of them. He concludes the poem
with a vivid description of the plague of
Athens, modeled on Thucydides' account.
812

DEAD FIRES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jose Lins do Rego (1901-1957)
Time: 1848-1900
Locale: Paraiba, Brazil
First published: 1943
Principal characters:
Jose: Amaro, a crippled, embittered saddlemaker
Sinha, his wife
Colonel Jose Paulino, owner of Santa Clara plantation
Colonel Lula, owner of Santa Fe plantation
Captain Victorino Carneiro da Cunha, a humane lawyer
Lieutenant Mauricio, of the army
Silvino, a bandit
Dead Vires (Fogo morto), the tenth
novel by Lins do R&go, marks his return
to the themes of his original Sugar Cane
Cycle, after four weak experiments in
other fields. The author, descendant of
an aristocratic planter family settled for
years in Northeast Brazil, was educated
for the law, but friendship with Brazil's
great sociologist, Gilberto Freyre, showed
him the rich literary inspiration in Brazil's
ingenhos, or sugar centers, and turned
him to fiction writing. Beginning with
the novel Plantation Lad, Lins do R&go
went on with Daffy Boy, Black Boy
Richard, Old Plantation, and The Sugar
Refinery, all dealing with the same
characters. In 1943, after four lesser novels
based on other themes, came Dead Fires,
his masterpiece, in which some of the
characters from the earlier novels
reappear. The novel is marked by improved
technique, a greater use of dialogue, less
morbidity and better character portrayal.
Some critics see in Victorino, the
penniless, abused lawyer, a Brazilian Don
Quixote, sure of what is right, hating
bandits, cruel soldiers, and haughty
plantation owners alike, and fighting all
injustice, regardless of the cost to him. Like
the Spanish don, Victorino was an
aristocrat, related by blood to many of the
important families of the region, but
censuring their use of power because of his
reeling for the common man. There is
also a parallel with Don Quixote in the
way Victorino was first ridiculed and then
admired.
The main character, the crippled and
ugly saddlemaker Jos6 Amaro, was a
failure who tried to hide his sense of
inferiority and cowardice behind a biting
tongue and a scornful attitude toward
everybody. He insisted that nobody
owned him, or, as he expressed it more
vividly, that nobody could scream at him.
His only friends were the kindly Negro
hunter Leandro, who occasionally left
part of his bag at Jos6's door, and white
Victorino, sunk so low that even the
molecjues, the black boys, mocked him
in the streets, calling afteu him "Papa
Rabo."
Jos6's attitude toward the bandit,
Captain Ant6nio Silvino, arose from the
admiration of a coward for a man daring
enough to brave the power of the
plantation owners. The imagination of the
saddlemaker built Silvino into a kind of
Robin Hood, siding with the poor against
the grasping landlords, especially at the
moment when the bandit attacked the
town of Pilar and sacked the strongbox
of the prefect, Quinca Napoleon.
Afterward he invited the villagers to pillage
the house. Jos6 was grateful because the
bandit came to his defense when he was
ordered evicted from the house his father
and he had occupied for half a century.
However, Silvino's threats of interference
stiffened the determination of Josefs
landlord.
Not until the end was Jos£
disillusioned and the bandit's self-interest
revealed. Attracted by rumors that Colonel
813

Lula still possessed the gold inherited
from his father-in-law, Silvino came after
it, threatening torture unless the hiding
place was revealed. In reality, the wealth
was not at the plantation. Lula,
vanquished by circumstances and about to
abandon his estate for the big city, had
sent the money ahead. An attack of
convulsions momentarily saved the
landowner from torture; the protests of Vic-
torino brought him further respite; but
it was the arrival of Colonel Paulino that
drove off the bandit. Until he realized
Silvino's cruelty, Jos£ Amaro made
sandals for him and his men, spied on his
pursuers for him, and even got food and
provisions to him when Lieutenant. Mau-
ricio and his soldiers were on his trail.
Josefs feelings toward the wealthy
plantation owners were determined by their
attitude toward him. The novelist
introduces two of them as representative of the
landed gentry of the nineteenth century
in Northeastern Brazil, men who derived
their titles from their social and political
positions.
With Colonel Jos6 Paulino, whose
family had long owned the Santa Clara
plantation, Jos6 Amaro was continually
at odds because, as the wealthy man rode
past the saddlemaker's house in his family
carriage, he would only nod
condescendingly. At the beginning of the novel,
when Laurentino, the house painter,
paused to talk on a May afternoon, while
on his way to help the colonel beautify
his manor house for the wedding of his
daughter, Jose* from his doorway said
angrily that he would never work for a man
he hated as much as he hated Colonel
Paulino.
His attitude toward the other big sugar
planter, Colonel Lula C6sar de Holanda
Chac6n, supposedly modeled on a cousin
of the author's grandfather, was less
bitter. He finally agreed to go to the Santa
Fe plantation to repair the family
carriage, whose history is related in the
second part of the novel.
During the Revolution of 1848,
Captain Tomds Cabral de Malo arrived with
his cattle, his slaves, and his family in
Parahyba Cor Parafba). He took
possession of the Santa Fe plantation, adjoining
Santa Clara, bought additional land from
the Indians, and planted cotton. About
then a penniless cousin, Lula, turned up
and began courting the plantation owner's
daughter.
Having won the captain's permission,
Lula took her away on a honeymoon from
which they returned with a pretentious
Carriage, practically useless in that
roadless region. The rest of Lula's progress, as
told in Dead Fires, makes him anything
but admirable. At Captain Tomas' death,
he fought the widow for control until her
death. Then, in complete possession of
the plantation and sugar refinery, he
revealed his avaricious and cruel nature.
Jose" overlooked the past of his landlord,
however, because Lula occasionally
exchanged a word with him.
Josefs family is introduced early in the
story. When Laurentino stopped to talk,
the saddlemaker invited him for supper
with his wife and their thirty-year-old
daughter. The girl had never married
because she insisted that she did not want
to, but she nearly drove the old man
frantic because she spent her days weep-,
ing. Eventually, in his exasperation, he
beat her until he dropped unconscious;
from that time on his wife thought only
of ways to get herself and her daughter
safely away. Jos6 had no other children.
Lacking a son to carry on at his death,
he had no incentive to enlarge his leather
business or attract new customers.
Lins do R&go is continually making
thrifty use of minor episodes, not only to
carry forward the story, but to reveal
character. For example, while working at
Colonel Lula's plantation, Jos6 revealed
his trait of showing contempt for those
he tries to impress; and by his actions he
so roused the enmity of the Negro Flor-
ipes, the Santa Fe overseer, that from
then on he worked against Jos6 and
hastened his tragedy. It was Floripes' lie, the
report that Jose had promised aid to Vic-
torino's candidate against the politician
814

backed by Lula, that persuaded the
landowner that his tenant was ungrateful,
and so Jos6 was ordered to leave the cabin
occupied by his family for many years.
The kindness of the hunter in leaving
a rabbit at Josefs door revealed the old
man's nausea at the sight of blood, while
the blood started a rumor that Jos6 was
a werewolf. This rumor was crystallized
into belief when he was found
unconscious beside the river, where, in reality,
he had collapsed trying to warn the
bandits of the coming of soldiers.
In telling the story, Lins do Rego
divides his narrative into three parts, with
the second one, "The Santa Fe
Plantation," a flashback of half a century,
covering the rise to power of Lula.
When Isabel, daughter of Emperor
Pedro, freed Brazil's last slaves in 1888,
Lula was left without anyone to run the
plantation or the refinery, for his Negroes
were quick to get away from a master
who used to beat them until he fell down
in convulsions. In contrast, Colonel
Paulino's field hands, who had been treated
kindly, stayed on even after the
liberation, and so he was able to lend his cousin
by marriage enough laborers to help with
the work. But still the hearth fires of
Santa Fe burned lower and the
plantation was doomed. Neighbors brought suits
against Lula that were setded only
because Colonel Paulino intervened. And
Lula could find no one willing to marry
his daughter.
Josefs fortunes also declined.
Disillusioned about the outlaws, he found the
soldiers of Lieutenant Mauricio even
more cruel. Coming to protect the
villagers, Lieutenant Mauricio beat blind
Torcuato as a spy, arrested Jose\ and
mistreated Victorino, who had won the
admiration of his fellow citizens by facing
the domineering officer with a writ of
habeas corpus in order to free the saddle-
maker.
Freedom was meaningless now to old
Jos6. His family had left him, and he
had no friends. He committed suicide in
his empty house, where his Negro friend,
Pajarito, found his body. Two cycles had
ended. When Pajarito looked out the
window, smoke was billowing from the
chimneys of the Santa Clara sugar
refinery, but he saw no activity at Santa Fe
—where the fires were dead.
815

DEAD SOULS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Nikolai V. Gogol (1809-1852)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1842
Principal characters:
Pavel Ivanovttch Tchttchtkoff, an adventurer
Maniloff, from whom he bought souls
Tentetnikoff, whom he tried to marry off
Platon Platonoff, with whom he later traveled
Klobueff, whose estate he bought
Kostanzhoglo, who lent him money
Alexei Ivanovttch Lyenttzen, who threw him into jail
Critique:
This novel is written in high good
humor. Its portraits of various Russian
types—peasant, landholder, prince—are
delightful. The plot itself is not
complex. The length of the novel is
accounted for by the author's numerous
digressions, which add up to a rich picture
of provincial Russian life in the early
nineteenth century. The satire ranks
with the best the world has produced.
The Story:
Pavel Ivanovitch Tchitchikoff had
arrived in the town accompanied by his
coachman, Selifan, and his valet, Pe-
trushka. He had been entertained
gloriously and had met many interesting
people, who insisted on his visiting them
in their own homes. Nothing could
have suited Tchitchikoff better. After
several days of celebration in the town,
he took his coachman and began a round
of visits to the various estates in the
surrounding country.
His first host was Maniloff, a genial
man who wined him and dined him in
a manner fit for a prince. When the
time was ripe, Tchitchikoff began to
question his host about his estate and
learned, to his satisfaction, that many
of ManilofFs souls, as the serfs were
called, had died since the last census
and that Maniloff was still paying taxes
on them and would continue to do so
until the next census. Tchitchikoff offered to
buy these dead souls from Maniloff and
so relieve him of his extra tax burden.
The contract signed, Tchitchikoff set out
for the next estate.
Selifan got lost and in the middle of
the night drew up to a house which
belonged to Madame Korobotchkina, from
whom Tchitchikoff also bought dead
souls. When he left his hostess, he found
his way to an inn in the neighborhood.
There he met Nozdreff, a notorious
gambler and liar. Nozdreff had
recently lost a great deal of money at
gambling, and Tchitchikoff thought
he would be a likely seller of dead souls.
But when he broached the subject,
Nozdreff asked him the reason for his
interest in dead souls. For every reason
Tchitchikoff gave, Nozdreff called him a
liar. Then Nozdreff wanted to play at
cards for the souls, but Tchitchikoff
refused. They were arguing when a police
captain came in and arrested Nozdreff
for assault on a man while drunk.
Tchitchikoff thought himself well rid of
the annoying Nozdreff.
His next host was Sobakevitch, who
at first demanded the unreasonable sum
of one hundred roubles for each name
of a dead soul. Tchitchikoff finally
argued him into accepting two and a
half roubles apiece, a higher price than
he had planned to pay.
Pliushkin, with whom he negotiated
next, was a miser. He bought one hun-
816

dred and twenty dead souls and seventy-
eight fugitives after considerable
haggling. Pliushkin gave him a letter to Ivan
Grigorievitch, the town president.
Back in town, Tchitchikoff persuaded
the town president to make his recent
purchases legal. Since the law required
that souls when purchased be transferred
to another estate, TchitchikoflF told the
officials that he had land in the Kherson
province. He had no trouble in making
himself sound plausible. Some bribes to
minor officials helped.
TchitchikoflF proved to be such a
delightful guest that the people of the town
insisted that he stay on and on. He
was the center of attraction at many
social functions, including a ball at which
he was especially interested in the
governor's daughter. Soon, however, rumors
spread that TchitchikoflF was using the
dead souls as a screen, that he was really
planning to elope with the governor's
daughter. The men, in consultation at
the police master's house, speculated
variously. Some said he was a forger;
others thought he might be an officer
in the governor-general's office; one man
put forth the fantastic suggestion that
he was really the legendary Captain
Kopeykin in disguise. They questioned
NozdreflF, who had been the first to
report the story of the purchase of dead
souls. At their interrogation NozdreflF
confirmed their opinions that
TchitchikoflF was a spy and a forger who was
trying to elope with the governor's
daughter.
Meanwhile TchitchikoflF had caught
a cold and was confined to his bed. When
at last he had recovered sufficiently to go
out, he found himself no longer
welcome at the houses of his former friends.
He was, in fact, turned away by
servants at the door. TchitchikoflF realized
it would be best for him to leave town.
The truth of the matter was that
TchitchikoflF had begun his career as a
humble clerk. His father had died
leaving no legacy for his son, who served
in various capacities, passing from
customs officer to smuggler to pauper to legal
agent. When he learned that die Trustee
Committee would mortgage souls, he hit
upon the scheme of acquiring funds by
mortgaging dead souls that were still
on the census lists. It was this purpose
which had sent him on his current tour.
He turned up next on the estate of
Andrei Ivanovitch TentetnikoflF, a thirty-
three-year-old bachelor who had retired
from public life to vegetate in the
country. Learning that TentetnikoflF was in
love with the daughter of his neighbor,
General BetrishtcheflF, TchitchikoflF went
to see the general and won his consent
to TentetnikoflF's suit. He brought the
conversation around to a point where
he could offer to buy dead souls from
the general. He gave as his reason the
story that his old uncle would not leave
him an estate unless he himself already
owned some property. The scheme so
delighted the general that he gladly made
the transaction.
TchitchikofFs next stop was with
Pyetukh, a generous glutton whose table
TchitchikoflF enjoyed. There he met a
young man named PlatonoflF, whom
TchitchikoflF persuaded to travel with him
and see Russia. The two stopped to see
PlatonoflF's sister and brother-in-law,
Konstantin Kostanzhoglo, a prosperous
landholder. TchitchikoflF so impressed his
host that Kostanzhoglo agreed to lend him
ten thousand roubles to buy the estate of
a neighboring spendthrift named Klo-
bueflF. KlobueflF said he had a rich old
aunt who would give great gifts to
churches and monasteries but would not
help her destitute relatives. TchitchikoflF
proceeded to the town where the old
woman resided and forged a will to his
own advantage. But he forgot to insert
a clause canceling all previous wills. On
her death he went to interview His
Excellency, Alexei Ivanovitch Lyenitzen,
who told him that two wills had been
discovered, each contradicting the other.
TchitchikoflF was accused of forging the
second will and was thrown into prison.
In the interpretation of this mix-up,
817

TchitchikoflF learned a valuable lesson in
deception from the crafty lawyer he
consulted. The lawyer managed to
confuse the affair with every public and
private scandal in the province, so that
the officials were soon willing to drop the
whole matter if TchitchikoflF would leave
town immediately. The ruined
adventurer was only too glad to comply.
818

DEAR
Type of work: Drama
Author: James M. Barrie (1860-1937)
Type of plot: Romantic fantasy
Time of plot: Midsummer Eve
Locale: England
First presented: 1917
Principal characters:
Lob, the ancient Puck
Matey, his buder
Gubsts at Lob's House
Critique:
Barrie's thesis—that the exigencies of
human life are the fault of the individual,
not of so-called Fate—is fancifully
developed in Dear Brutus by means of a
folk superstition concerning Midsummer
Eve. The play is fantastic and realistic
at the same time, fantastic in that its
characters are transported into the realm
of the unreal, realistic in the perfecdy
candid way in which the various
relationships among the characters are set forth.
Tfee Story:
Dinner was over, and the ladies of
Lob's house party returned to the
drawing-room after leaving the gentlemen to
their cigars and wine. Matey, the buder,
had stolen jewelry from one of the guests.
The women called him in to tell him they
knew he was the thief. When Matey
returned the jewelry, the women stated
that they would not report him if he
told them why they were guests at the
house. Matey either could not or would
not give them a direct answer. In the
course of the conversation it was learned
that their host was mysteriously ageless
and that Lob was another name for the
legendary Puck. Matey admitted that
Lob always asked a different party of
guests to his house for Midsummer
Week. He warned the women not to
venture outside the garden on this
Midsummer Eve. When he left them with
the warning not to go into the wood,
the women were puzzled because there
DEAR BRUTUS by James M. Barrie, from THE PL/
liehera, Ourlt* Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1914, by (
BRUTUS
Party
was no wood within miles of the house.
Host Lob entered thoughtfully. He
was followed by old Mr. Coade, who
was collecting notes for a projected
work on the Feudal System, and Mr.
Purdie, an intellectual young barrister.
Coade and Purdie suggested that the
group take a walk to discover a mysterious
wood. Lob said slyly that the villagers
believed that a wood appeared in a
different part of the neighborhood eacb
Midsummer Eve. He pretended skep
ticism to sharpen the curiosity of hii;
guests, who went to prepare for th«i
adventure.
Among Lob's guests was Lady Caroline
Laney, unmarried and of disdainful poise,
and Joanna Trout, single and in love
with love. Joanna and Mr. Purdie were
caught kissing in the living room by
Mabel Purdie, who saw them from the
garden. She came in. Joanna, surprised,
asked Mabel what she was doing in the
!garden. Mabel answered that she was
ooking for her lost love. Her calm
candor caught Jack Purdie and Joanna
completely off guard. Jack admitted
his love for Joanna. Mabel left the lovers
grieving that fate had not brought them
together earlier. Alice Dearth entered.
Cattishly, Joanna revealed that Mrs.
Dearth had at one time been an artist's
model. Dearth, an artist now broken by
drink, entered. Alice Dearth had grown
to despise him for his sottishness. Dearth
regretted not having a child; Alice Dearth
S OF JAMES M. BARRIE. By permission of the pub.
urle* Scribner's Sons, 1918, 1928, by J. M. Barrie,
819

regretted not having married a former
suitor.
When the party reassembled, Lob
revealed that to go into the forest gave one
another chance, something nearly
everyone in the group was seeking. Dearth
drew aside the curtain to reveal a forest
in the place of the garden. He entered
the wood and disappeared. Mabel Purdie
followed him. Next went Jack Purdie
and Joanna, followed by Alice Dearth,
Lady Caroline, and old Mr. Coade. Lob
enticed Matey to the edge of the wood
and pushed him into it.
In the moonlight of Midsummer Eve,
in the fanciful realm of the second
chance, Matey and Lady Caroline
discovered that they were vulgar husband
and wife. Joanna was in search of her
husband. When Mr. Coade, now a wood-
lander, appeared dancing and blowing
a whistle, Joanna said that she was Mrs.
Purdie; she suspected her husband of
being in the forest with another woman.
They saw Purdie in the company of
Mabel, whom he chased among the trees.
In the forest, Mabel and Joanna had
changed places. Purdie and Mabel
mourned that*they had met too late.
In another part of the forest, Will
Dearth and his young daughter
Margaret raced to the spot where the artist's
easel was set up, for Dearth was painting
a moonlit landscape. Margaret was
worried over her excess of happiness; she
expressed her fear that her father would
be taken from her. The pair agreed that
artists, especially, needed daughters and
that fame was not everything.
Alice, a vagrant searching for scraps to
eat, passed the happy pair. She told them
that she was the Honorable Mrs. Finch-
Fallowe, the wife of the suitor that she
had recalled in Lob's house, and that she
had seen good times. Dearth approached
a nearby house to get food for the
vagrant woman. Margaret, somehow
afraid, tried to restrain him.
Back in the house, Lob was waiting
for the return of his guests. There was a
tapping on the window and Jack Purdie
and Mabel, still charmed, entered. They
noticed but did not recognize the
sleeping Lob. Still under the influence of
Midsummer magic, Purdie spoke words
of love to Mabel. He was interrupted by
the entrance of Joanna, his Midsummer
Eve wife. Lob seemed to leer in his
sleep. Suddenly the enchantment
disappeared; the trio recognized the room
and Lob. After the complete return to
reality, Purdie realized that fate was not
to blame for human destiny. Ashamed
but honest, he admitted that he was a
philanderer and asked Mabel to forgive
him.
Matey returned, still the vulgarian in
speech and dress. He stated, to the
surprise of those present, that his wife was
with him and he introduced Lady
Caroline Matey. The charm was broken, to
the horror of the fastidious Caroline
Laney and to the embarrassment of
Matey.
Still piping on his whistle, Mr. Coade
returned. Although he did not
recognize Mrs. Coade, he expressed his
admiration for her lovable face. The old man
returned to reality after making his wife
proud that he had chosen her again in
the world of the second chance.
Alice Dearth, hungry, entered and
looked ravenously at the refreshments.
Between mouthfuls of cake she bragged
of her former affluence as Mrs. Finch-
Fallowe; she mystified the other guests
with talk of a painter and his daughter
in the forest. Dearth, the happy painter
of the forest, came in. In their
disenchantment, Alice knew that she would
have been unhappy with the former
suitor, and that Will Dearth would have
been happier without her. Dearth was
momentarily crushed by the loss of
Margaret, but he recovered to thank Lob
for providing that night's experience.
Lob, who had been curled up in a
chair in a trance-like sleep during the
adventures, and who had leered and
smiled in his sleep as his guests came
back to the actual world, returned to the
care of his beloved flowers. Midsummer
820

Eve was past; the world of might-have- been had ended.
821

DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP
Type of work: Novel
Author: WillaCather (1876-1947)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Last half of the nineteenth century
Locale: New Mexico and Arizona
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Father Jean Marie Latour, Vicar Apostalic of New Mexico
Father Joseph Vaillant, his friend, a missionary priest
Kit Carson, frontier scout
Jacinto, an Indian guide
Critique:
Death Comes for the Archbishop is
a novel reaffirming the greatness of the
American past. This chronicle of the
Catholic Southwest is a story,
beautifully told, which re-creates in the lives
of Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant,
his vicar, the historical careers of Bishop
Lamy and Father Macheboeuf, two
devout and noble missionary priests in the
Vicarate of New Mexico during the
second half of the nineteenth century.
Bishop Latour is scholarly and urbane;
Father Vaillant, energetic and
passionately the man of feeling. A novel of
these dedicated lives, the book presents
also a picture of a region and a culture.
There are many strands of interest here
—the bleak desert country of sand and
gaunt red mountains, colorful adobe
towns and Mexican customs, conflicts
with a stubborn and sometimes corrupt
native clergy, missionary journeys in all
weathers, the rituals and legends of
the Indian pueblos, frontier heroes like
Kit Carson and desperadoes like Buck
Scales, relics of the conquistadores who
brought the sword and the Cross into
the New World. The novel lives in its
bright glimpses of the past, stories that
cut backward into time so that the action
is not always upon the same level. Tales
and legends that go beyond the period of
American occupation into three centuries
of Spanish colonial history and back to
the primitive tribal life of the Hopi, the
Navajo, and the vanished cliff-dwellers
break this chronicle at many point*
and give the effect of density and variety
to a work which recaptures so completely
the spirit and movement of the pioneex
West.
The Story:
In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latou*
reached Santa F6, where he was to
become Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico.
His journey from the shores of Lake
Ontario had been long and arduous. He
had lost his belongings in a shipwreck
at Galveston and had suffered painful
injury in a wagon accident at San Antonio.
Upon Father Latour's arrival, in
company with his good friend, Father
Joseph Vaillant, the Mexican priests
refused to recognize his authority. He
had no choice but to ride three thousand
miles into Mexico to secure the necessary
papers from the Bishop of Durango.
On the road he lost his way in an arid
landscape of red hills and gaunt junipers.
His thirst became a vertigo of mind and
senses, and he could blot out his own
agony only by repeating the cry of the
Saviour on the Cross. As he was about
to give up all hope, he saw a tree
growing in the shape of a cross. A short
time later he arrived in the Mexican
settlement called Agua Secreta, Hidden
Water. Stopping at the home of Benito,
Bishop Latour first performed the
marriage ceremonies and then baptized all
the children.
Cather. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A
DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa
Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1926, 1927, by Willa Cather.
822

At Durango he received the necessary
documents and started the long trip back
to Santa F6. Meanwhile Father Vaillant
had won over the inhabitants from
enmity to amity and had set up the
Episcopal residence in an old adobe house. On
the first morning after his return to Santa
F6 the bishop heard the unexpected sound
of a bell ringing the Angelus. Father
Vaillant told him that he had found the
bell, bearing the date 1356, in the
basement of old San Miguel Church.
On a missionary journey to
Albuquerque in March, Father Vaillant acquired
as a gift a handsome cream-colored mule
and another just like it for his bishop.
These mules, Contento and Angelica,
served the men in good stead for many
years.
On another such trip the two priests
were riding together on their mules.
Caught in a sleet storm, they stopped
at the rude shack of an American, Buck
Scales. His Mexican wife warned the
travelers by gestures that their lives were
in danger, and they rode on to Mora
without spending the night. The next
morning the Mexican woman appeared
in town. She told them that her husband
had already murdered and robbed four
travelers, and that he had killed her
four babies. The result was that Scales
was brought to justice, and his wife,
Magdalena, was sent to the home of Kit
Carson, the famous frontier scout. From
that time on Kit Carson was a valuable
friend of the bishop and his vicar.
Magdalena later became the housekeeper
and manager for the kitchens of the
Sisters of Loretto.
During his first year at Santa F£,
the bishop was called to a meeting of
the Plenary Council at Baltimore. On
the return journey he brought back with
him five nuns sent to establish the
school of Our Lady of Light. Next,
Bishop Latour, attended by the Indian
Jacinto as his guide, spent some time
visiting his own vicarate. Padre
Gallegos, whom he visited at Albuquerque,
tcted more like a professional gambler
than a priest, but because he was very
popular with the natives Bishop Latour
did not remove him at that time. At
last he arrived at his destination, the top
of the mesa at Acoma, the end of his
long journey. On that trip he heard
the legend of Fray Baltazar, killed during
an uprising of the Acoma Indians.
A month after the bishop's visit, he
suspended Padre Gallegos and put Father
Vaillant in charge of the parish at
Albuquerque. On a trip to die Pecos
Mountains the vicar fell ill with an
attack of the black measles. The bishop,
hearing of his illness, set out to nurse
his friend. Jacinto again served as guide
on the cold, snowy trip. When Bishop
Latour reached his friend's bedside, he
found that Kit Carson had arrived
before him. As soon as the sick man could
sit in the saddle, Carson and the bishop
took him back to Santa F6.
Bishop Latour decided to investigate
the parish of Taos, where the powerful
old priest, Antonio Jos6 Martinez, was
the ruler of both spiritual and temporal
matters. The following year the bishop
was called to Rome. When he returned,
he brought with him four young priests
from the Seminary of Montferrand and
a Spanish priest to replace Padre
Martinez at Taos.
Bishop Latour had one great
ambition; he wanted to build a cathedral in
Santa F6. In that project he was assisted
by the rich Mexican rancheros, but to
the greatest extent by his good friend,
Don Antonio Olivares. When Don
Antonio died, his will stated that his estate
was left to his wife and daughter during
their lives, and after their decease to the
Church. Don Antonio's brothers
contested the will on the grounds that the
daughter, Sefiorita Inez, was too old to
be Dona Isabella's daughter, and the
bishop and his vicar had to persuade the
vain, coquettish widow to swear to her
true age of fifty-three, rather than the
forty-two years she claimed. Thus the
money was saved for Don Antonio's
family and, eventually, the Church.
823

Father Vaillant was sent to Tucson,
but after several years Bishop Latour
decided to recall him to Santa F6. When
he arrived, the bishop showed him the
stone for building the cathedral. About
that time Bishop Latour received a
letter from the Bishop of Leavenworth.
Because of the discovery of gold near
Pike's Peak, he asked to have a priest
sent there from Father Latour's diocese.
Father Vaillant was the obvious choice.
Father Vaillant spent the rest of his
life doing good works in Colorado,
though he did return to Santa F6 with
the Papal Emissary when Bishop Latour
was made an archbishop. Father Vaillant
became the first Bishop of Colorado. He
died there after years of service, and
Archbishop Latour attended his
impressive funeral services.
After the death of his friend, Father
Latour retired to a modest country estate
near Santa Fe\ He had dreamed during
all his missionary years of the time when
he could retire to his own fertile green
Auvergne in France, but in the end he
decided that he could not leave the land
of his labors for his faith. Memories of
the journeys he and Father Vaillant had
made over thousands of miles of desert
country became the meaning of his later
years. Bernard Ducrot, a young
Seminarian from France, became like a son to
him.
When Father Latour knew that his
time had come to die, he asked to be
taken into town to spend his last days
near the cathedral. On the last day of
his life the church was filled with people
who came to pray for him, as word that
he was dying spread through the town.
He died in the still twilight, and the
cathedral bell, tolling in the early
darkness, carried to the waiting countryside
the news that at last death had come for
Father Latour.
824

DEATH IN VENICE
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
Type of plot: Symbolic realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Italy
First published: 1912
Principal characters:
Gustave von Aschenbach, a middle-aged German writer
Tadzio, a young Polish boy
Critique:
Death in Venice is a short novel of
great psychological intensity and tragic
power. To read it simply as the story of
a middle-aged artist whose character
deteriorates because of his hopeless passion
for a young Polish boy and whose death is
the final irony of his emotional upheaval
is to miss almost all of the writer's
intention in this fable. Here Mann brings
together most of the conflicting themes
which have occupied him in his longer
works of fiction: being and death, youth
and age, sickness and health, beauty and
decay, love and suffering, art and life,
the German North and the classic lands
of the Mediterranean. The symbols are
complex and numerous. One effective
device is the reappearance of the same
character on different crucial occasions in the
narrative. As the stranger in the
cemetery, for example, he is a summoner sent
to lure Aschenbach from the discipline
and devotion which are the standards of
the writer's craft, but later, as the
mysterious gondolier, he is Charon ferrying
a lost soul on his last journey. In this
work Mann examines understandingly
and critically the solitary position of the
artist in modern society, and he uses the
theme of Aschenbach's infatuation to
dramatize in symbolic fashion the
narcissism which can be one of the fatal
qualities of art
The Story:
Gustave von Aschenbach was a
distinguished German writer whose work had
brought him world fame and a patent of
nobility from a grateful government. His
career had been honorable and dignified.
A man of ambitious nature, unmarried,
he had lived a life of personal discipline
and dedication to his art, and in his
portrayal of heroes who combined the force-
fulness of a Frederick the Great with the
selfless striving of a Saint Sebastian he
believed that he had spoken for his race
as well as for the deathless spirit of man.
At the same time his devotion to the
ideals of duty and achievement had
brought him close to physical collapse.
One day, after a morning spent at his
desk, he left his house in Munich and
went for a walk. His stroll took him as
far as a cemetery on the outskirts of the
city. While he waited for a streetcar
which would carry him back to town, he
suddenly became aware of a man who
stood watching him from the doorway
of the mortuary chapel. The stranger,
who had a rucksack on his back and a
walking staff in his hand, was evidently
a traveler. Although no word passed
between the watcher and the watched,
Aschenbach felt a sudden desire to take
a trip, to leave the cold, wet German
spring for the warmer climate of the
Mediterranean lands. His impulse was
strengthened by a problem of technique
which he had been unable to solve in his
writing. At last, reluctantly, he decided
DEATH IN VENICE by Thomas Mann, from STORIES OF THREE DECADES by Thomas Mann.
Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. Copyright,
1930, 1931, 1934, 1935, 1936, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
825

ro take a holiday and leave his work for
a time in order to find relaxation for mind
and body in Italy.
He went first to an island resort in
the Adriatic, but before long he became
bored with his surroundings and booked
passage for Venice. On the ship he
encountered a party of lively young clerks
from Pola. With them was an old man
whose dyed hair and rouged cheeks made
him a ridiculous but sinister caricature of
youth. In his disgust Aschenbach failed
to notice that the raddled old man bore
a vague resemblance to the traveler he
had seen at the cemetery in Munich.
Aschenbach's destination was the Lido.
At the dock in Venice he transferred to
a gondola which took him by the water
route to his Lido hotel. The gondolier
spoke and acted so strangely that
Aschenbach became disturbed, and because of
his agitation he never noticed that the
man looked something like the drunk old
scarecrow on the ship and the silent
stranger at the cemetery. After taking his
passenger to the landing stage, the
gondolier, without waiting for his money,
hastily rowed away. Other boatmen
suggested that he might have been afraid of
the law because he had no license.
Aschenbach stayed at the Hotel des
Bains. That night, shortly before
dinner, his attention was drawn to a Polish
family, a beautiful mother, three
daughters, and a handsome boy of about
fourteen. Aschenbach was unaccountably
attracted to the youngster, so much so that
he continued to watch the family all
through his meal. The next morning he
saw the boy playing with some
companions on the beach. His name, as
Aschenbach learned while watching their games,
was Tadzio.
Disturbed by the appeal the boy had
for him, the writer announced his
intention of returning home, but on his
arrival at the railroad station in Venice
he discovered that his trunks had been
misdirected to Como. Since there was
nothing for him to do but to wait for
his missing luggage to turn up, he went
back to the hotel. Even though he
despised himself for his vacillation, he
realized that his true desire was to be near
Tadzio. For Aschenbach there began a
period of happiness and anguish,
happiness in watching the boy, anguish in that
they must remain strangers. One day he
almost summoned up enough courage to
speak to the youngster. A moment later
he became panic-stricken lest Tadzio be
alarmed by the older man's interest. The
time Aschenbach had set for his
holiday passed, but the writer had almost
forgotten his home and his work. One
evening Tadzio smiled at him as they
passed one another. Aschenbach
trembled with pleasure.
Guests began to leave the hotel; there
were rumors that a plague had broken
out in nearby cities. Aschenbach, going
one day to loiter on the Piazza, detected
the sweetish odor of disinfectant in the
air, for the authorities were beginning to
take precautions against an outbreak of
the plague in Venice. Aschenbach
stubbornly decided to stay on in spite of the
dangers of infection.
A band of entertainers came to the
hotel to serenade the guests. In the troupe
was an impudent, disreputable-looking
street singer whose antics and ballads
were insulting and obscene. As he passed
among the guests to collect money for
the performance, Aschenbach detected on
his clothing the almost overpowering
smell of disinfectant, an odor suggesting
the sweetly corruptive taints of lust and
death. The ribald comedian also had a
strange similarity to the gondolier, the
rouged old rake, and the silent traveler
whose disturbing presence had given
Aschenbach the idea for his holiday.
Aschenbach was torn between fear and
desire. The next day he went to a tourist
agency where a young clerk told him
that people were dying of the plague in
Venice. Even that confirmation of his
fears failed to speed Aschenbach's
departure from the city. That night he
826

dreamed that in a fetid jungle,
surrounded by naked orgiasts, he was taking part
in horrible, Priapean rites.
By that time his deterioration was
almost complete. At last he allowed a
barber to dye his hair and tint his cheeks,
but he still refused to'see the likeness
between himself and the raddled old fop
whose appearance had disgusted him on
shipboard. His behavior became more
reckless. One afternoon he followed the
Polish family into Venice and trailed
them through the city streets. Hungry
and thirsty after his exercise, he bought
some overripe strawberries at an open stall
and ate them. The odor of disinfectant
was strong on the sultry breeze.
Several days later Aschenbach went
down to the beach where Tadzio was
playing with three or four other boys.
They began to fight and one of the boys
threw Tadzio to the ground and pressed
his face into the sand. As Aschenbach
was about to interfere, the other boy
released his victim. Humiliated and hurt,
Tadzio walked down to the water. He
stood facing seaward for a time, as
remote and isolated as a young Saint
Sebastian, and then he turned and looked
with somber, secret gaze at Aschenbach,
who was watching from his beach chair.
To the writer it seemed as though the
boy were summoning him. He started to
rise but became so giddy that he fell back
into his chair. Attendants carried him to
his room. That night the world learned
that the great Gustave von Aschenbach
had died suddenly of the plague in
Venice.
827

DEATH OF A HERO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Richard Aldington (1892-1962)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: World War I
Locale: England
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
George Winterbournb, killed in the war
Mr. George Winterbournb, his father
Mrs. George Winterbourne, his mother
Elizabeth, his wife
Fanny Welford, his mistress
Critique:
With cynicism that is almost morbid
in its brutality, Richard Aldington here
tells the story of a soldier killed in World
War I. It was the author's belief that the
hero had deliberately allowed himself to
be killed, so confused and miserable was
the life which he had attempted to
divide between his wife and mistress. The
author, attempting to show that the
shabby childhood through which the hero
lived was responsible for his troubles,
purports to tell only the truth.rBut the
truth as he sees it is so bitter that in the
telling Aldington condemns not only a
generation but a whole society.
The Story:
WTien word was received that George
Winterbourne had been killed in the war,
his friend tried to reconstruct the life of
the dead man in order to see what forces
had caused his death. The friend had
served with George at various times during
the war, and it was his belief that George
had deliberately exposed himself to
German fire because he no longer wanted
to live.
George Winterbourne's father had been
a sentimental fool and his mother a
depraved wanton. The elder Winterbourne
had married primarily to spite his
dominating mother, and his bride had
married him under the mistaken notion that
he was rich. They gave themselves up
to mutual hatred, the mother showering
her thwarted love on young George. She
imagined herself young and desirable and
was proud of her twenty-two lovers. Her
husband conveniently went to a hotel
when she was entertaining, but he prayed
for her soul. All in all, they were the most
depressing parents to whom a child could
be exposed and undoubtedly they caused
young George to hate them both. Soon
after receiving word of their son's death,
the elder Winterbourne was killed in an
accident. Mrs. Winterbourne married her
twenty-second lover and moved to
Australia, but not before she had thoroughly
enjoyed being a bereft mother and widow.
When he reached young manhood,
George mingled with all sorts of queer
people. He dabbled in writing and
painting—the modern variety. Sexual freedom
was his goal, even though he had
experienced Httle of it. At an aflFair given by
his pseudo-intellectual friends he first
met Elizabeth. They were immediately
compatible; both hated their parents and
both sought freedom. At first Elizabeth
was shocked by George's attacks on
Christianity, morals, the class system, and all
other established institutions, but she
soon recognized him as a truly "free"
man. In fact, it was not long before she
adopted his ideas and went him one
better. Free love was the only thing she
could talk or think about. Thinking
DEATH OF A HERO by Richard Aldington. By permission of the author. Copyright, 1929, by Covicr
r neae. Inc.
828

themselves extremely sensible, they saw
no reason to many in order to experience
love as long as they were careful not to
have a baby. Babies complicated matters,
for the ignorant middle classes still
frowned on such children. Unknowingly,
George and Elizabeth were about as
middle class as it was possible to be.
The two lovers planned carefully to
have no sordidness cloud their affair.
They did not talk of love, only sex. They
were to take all the other lovers they
pleased. That was freedom in an
intelligent way. Elizabeth v/as even more
insistent than George upon such freedom.
Finally, Elizabeth mistakenly thought
that she was pregnant. Gone were the
new freedoms, the enlightened woman;
George must many her at once, for
female honor was at stake. All the old
clich6s were dragged out for poor
old George. They were married, much
to the horror of their families. When
the mistake was discovered,
supplemented by the doctor's statement that
Elizabeth could not possibly have a child
without an operation, back came
freedom, stronger than ever. She became an
evangelist, even though she detested the
word, for sex. Marriage made no
difference in their lives. They continued to live
separately, meeting as lovers.
When Elizabeth had to make a trip
home, George became the lover of her
best friend, Fanny Welford, another
enlightened woman. He was sure that
Elizabeth would not mind, for she had
become the mistress of Fanny's lover. Thus
he was quite stunned when Elizabeth
kicked up a row about Fanny. However,
the girls remained surface friends, each
one too free to admit horror at the other's
duplicity.
War had been approaching fast while
these friends had been practicing their
enlightened living. George was drafted
and sent quickly to France. The war
poisoned George. Killing horrified him,
and he began to imagine his own death.
He was brave, but not from any desire
to be a hero; it was just that the
monotony of his existence seemed to demand
that he keep going even though he was
ready to drop from fatigue. The
knowledge of the ill-concealed dislike between
Fanny and Elizabeth began to prey on
his mind. There seemed to be only two
solutions: to drift along and accept
whatever happened or to get himself killed
in the war. It seemed to make little
difference to him or anyone else which
course he chose. His letters to his two
women depressed each of them. Had he
known their feelings he could have been
spared his worry about them. Each took
other lovers and gave little thought to
George.
His own depression increased. He felt
that he was degenerating mentally as well
as physically, that he was wasting what
should have been his best years. He knew
that he would be terribly handicapped if
he did live through the war, that those
not serving would have passed him by.
George was made an officer and sent
back to England for training. There he
lived again with Elizabeth, but she left
him frequendy to go out with other men.
Fanny, too, seemed to care little whether
she saw him or not. Talk of the war and
his experiences obviously bored them,
and they made only a small pretense of
being interested. He spent his last night
in England with Fanny, Elizabeth being
off with someone else. Fanny did not
bother to get up with him the morning
he left. In fact, she awoke lazily, then
went to sleep again before he even left
the flat.
Back at the front, George found that
he was ill-suited to command a company.
Although he did his best, he was con-
standy censured by his colonel, who
blamed George for all the faults of his
untrained and cowardly troops. George
himself could think of litde but death.
During a particularly heavy German
shelling he simply stood upright and let
the bullets smash into his chest. Who
knows whether his death was an act of
heroism or one of complete and utter
futility?
829

DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Arthur Miller (1915- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Mid-twentieth century
Locale: New York
First presented: 1949
Principal characters:
Willy Loman, a salesman
Linda, his wife
Biff, and
Happy, his sons
Charley, his friend
Bernard, Charley's son
Uncle Ben, Willy's brother
The Woman
Critique:
Death of a Salesman represents a
successful attempt to blend the themes of
social and personal tragedy within the
same dramatic framework. For the story
of Willy Loman is also the story of false
values sustained by almost every agency
of publicity and advertisement in our
national life. Willy Loman accepts at face
value the over-publicized ideals of
material success and blatant optimism, and
therein lies his tragedy. His downfall and
final defeat illustrate not only the
failure of a man but also the failure of a
way of life. The playwright's ability to
project the story of his tragic, lower
middle-class hero into the common experience
of so many Americans who sustain
themselves with illusions and ignore realities
makes this play one of the most significant
in the American theater in recent years.
The Story:
When Willy Loman came home on
the same day he had left on a trip through
his New England territory, his wife
Linda knew that he was near the breaking
point. Lately he had begun to talk to
himself about things out of the past.
That day he had run off the road two or
three times without knowing what he
was doing, and he had come home in
fear. Willy, sixty-three, had given all his
life to the company. He told himself
they would just have to make a place for
him in the New York home office.
Traveling all week and driving futile miles
had become too much for him.
Willy had had such hopes before Biff
came home from his last job. Biff had
always been the favorite, though Happy
was the more settled and successful son.
Biff was thirty-four now and still had
to find himself, but Willy knew he would
settle down when the time came. The
boy had been the greatest football player
his school had ever known. In a game
at Ebbets Field he had been a hero.
Three colleges offered him scholarships.
Biff had not gone to college, had not
done anything but bum around the West,
never making more than twenty-eight
dollars a week. It was hard to
understand him.
During the next two days, Willy's
whole life unrolled before him, today's
reality intermingled with yesterday's half-
forgotten episodes. Broken as it was, the
pictures told the story of Willy Loman,
salesman.
Perhaps the first mistake was in not
following his brother Ben to Alaska—or
was it Africa? Ben had wanted Willy to
DEATH OF A SALESMAN by Arthur Miller. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press,
Inc. Copyright, 1949, by Arthur Miller.
830

join him, but Willy was a salesman.
Some weeks he averaged two hundred
dollars. No, that was not quite true; it
was nearer seventy. But he would make
the grade, he told Ben, and so he stayed
in New York. Ben went into the jungle
a pauper; four years later he came back
from the diamond mines a rich man.
Willy's boys were both well liked; that
was important. Bernard, Charley's son,
was liked, but not well liked. Bernard
had begged to carry Biff's shoulder pads
that day at Ebbets Field. Sometimes
Willy had worried a little about the boys.
BiflF stole a football from school, and a
whole case of them from the sporting
goods store where he worked. He did not
mean any harm, Willy knew. Willy even
laughed when the boys stole a little
lumber from a construction job nearby; no
one would miss it. Willy and the boys
used it to make the front stoop.
But that day at Ebbets Field seemed
to be the last great day in Biff's life.
Willy had left for Boston after the game, but
surely that little Boston affair had not
made the difference in the boy. Willy
was with a woman when Biff burst in on
him. Biff had failed math and could not
take one of the scholarships unless Willy
talked to the teacher and got him to
change the grade. Willy was ready to
leave for New York at once, but when
Biff saw the woman in Willy's room, he
left. Things were never the same
afterward.
There was also Happy, who used to
stand in Biff's shadow. Happy was a
magnificent specimen, just like Biff, and
there was not a woman in the world he
could not have. An assistant
merchandising manager, he would be manager
someday, a big man. So would Biff. Biff
needed only to find himself.
On the day Willy Loman turned back
home he dreamed his biggest dreams.
Biff would go back to that sporting goods
store and get a loan from the owner to
set himself and Happy up in business.
That man had always loved Biff. And
Willy would go to young Howard
Wagner, his boss's son, and demand to be
given a place in the New York office.
They would celebrate that night at
dinner. Biff and Happy would give Willy
a night on the town to celebrate their
mutual success.
But Biff failed to get the loan. That
man who had loved Biff did not even
recognize him. To get even, Biff stole
a fountain pen and ran down eleven
flights with it. And when Howard heard
Willy's story, he told him to turn in his
samples and take a rest. Willy realized
he was through. He went to Charley for
more money, for he had been borrowing
from Charley since he had been put on
straight commission months ago. Bernard
was in Charley's office. He was on his
way to plead a case before the Supreme
Court. Willy could not understand it.
Charley had never given his life for his
boy as Willy had for his. Charley offered
Willy a job, but Willy said he was a
salesman. They loved him in New
England; he would show them yet.
Willy stumbled in to the dinner they
had planned, a failure himself but
hoping for good news about Biff. Hearing of
Biff's failure, he was completely broken.
Happy picked up two girls, and he and
Biff left Willy alone.
When Biff and Happy finally came
home, Linda ordered them out of the
house by morning. She was afraid
because Willy had tried to kill himself once
before. Giving vent to his anger and
sense of defeat, Biff cursed Willy for a
fool and a dreamer. He forced himself
and Willy to acknowledge that Biff had
been only a clerk in that store, not a
salesman; that Biff had been jailed in
Kansas City for stealing; that Happy was
not an assistant manager but a clerk and
a philandering, woman-chasing bum;
and that Willy had never been a success
and never would be. When Biff began to
weep, Willy realized for the first time
that his son loved him.
Willy, left alone after the others went
upstairs, began to see Ben again, to tell
him his plan. Willy had twenty thousand
831

in insurance. BifF would be magnificent
with twenty thousand. Willy ran out to
his car and drove crazily away.
At the funeral, attended only by
Linda and the boys and Charley, Charley
tried to tell Biff about his father. He said
that a salesman had to dream, that
without dreams he was nothing. When the
dreams were gone, a salesman was
finished. Sobbing quietly, Linda stooped
and put flowers on the grave of Willy
Loman, salesman.
832

THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH
Type of work: Novella
Author: Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1880's
Locale: St. Petersburg and nearby provinces
Virst published: 1884
Principal characters:
Ivan Ilyich Golovin, a prominent Russian judge
Praskovya Fedorovna Golovina, his wife
Peter Ivanovitch, his colleague
Gerasim, his servant boy
Critique:
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a
masterpiece of Tolstoy's later period, was written
after he had published his most famous
novels. Its theme is related to his own
struggle against an obsessive fear of death
and the conclusion that he had wasted
his life, a struggle which culminated for
him in a spiritual rebirth. The story
itself is a supreme imaginative creation,
however deep its roots in the author's
own experience. Tolstoy presents, with
frankness, simplicity, and kindness, an
ordinary man confronted by the
irrevocable fact of death. Here is one of the
finest examples in literature of the
portrayal of the particular—in this case the
life and death of Ivan Ilyich—with such
realistic understanding that it acquires
universal significance.
The Story:
During a break in a hearing, a group
of lawyers gathered informally. One,
Peter Ivanovitch, interrupted the good-
natured arguing of the others with the
news that Ivan Ilyich, a colleague they
greatly respected, was dead. Unwittingly,
each thought first of what this death
meant to his own chances of promotion,
and each could not help feeling relief
that Ivan Ilyich and not himself had died.
That afternoon Peter Ivanovitch visited
the dead man's home, where the funeral
was to be held. Although he met a
playful colleague, Schwartz, he attempted to
behave as correctly as possible under
such sorrowful circumstances, as if
observing the proper protocol would enable
him to have the proper feelings. He
respectfully looked at the corpse; he
talked with Ivan's widow, Praskovya
Fedorovna. But he was continually
distracted during his talk by an unruly
spring in the hassock on which he sat.
As he struggled to keep his decorum,
Praskovya spoke only of her own
exhaustion and suffering. Peter, suddenly
terrified by their mutual hypocrisy, longed to
leave, and the widow, having gathered
from him information about her pension,
was glad to end the conversation. At the
funeral Peter also saw Ivan's daughter
and her fiance\ who were angrily glum,
and Ivan's little son, who was tear-
stained but naughty. Only the servant
boy, Gerasim, spoke cheerfully, for only
he could accept death as natural. Leaving,
Peter hurried to his nightly card game.
Ivan Ilyich had been the second and
most successful of the three sons of a
superfluous bureaucrat. An intelligent
and popular boy, he seemed able to mold
his life into a perfect pattern. As
secretary to a provincial governor after
completing law school, and later as an
examining magistrate, he was the very model
of conscientiousness mingled with good
humor. He managed the decorum of his
official position as well as the ease of
his social one. Only marriage, although
socially correct, did not conform to his
ideas of decorum; his wife, not content
to fulfill the role he had chosen for her,
became demanding and quarrelsome. As
833

a result, he increasingly shut himself off
from his family (for he now had two
children), finding the order and peace
he needed in his judiciary affairs.
In 1880, however, he was shattered
by the loss of two promotions. In
desperation he went to St. Petersburg, where a
chance meeting led to his obtaining a
miraculously good appointment. In the
city he found precisely the house he had
always wanted and he worked to furnish
it just to his taste. Even a fall and a
resulting bruise on his side did not
dampen his enthusiasm. He and his wife
were delighted with their new home,
which they felt to be aristocratic, although
it looked like all homes of those who
wished to appear well-bred. To Ivan, life
was at last as it should be: smooth,
pleasant, and ordered according to an
unwavering routine. His life was properly divided
into the official and the personal, and
the two halves were always kept dex-
trously apart.
Then Ivan began to notice an
increasing discomfort in his left side. At last he
consulted a specialist, but the
examination left him frightened and helpless, for
although he understood the doctor's
objective attitude as akin to his own official
one, he felt that it had given his pain
an awesome significance. For a time he
fancied he grew better from following
prescriptions and learning all he could
about his illness, but renewed attacks
terrified him. Gradually Ivan found all
his life colored by the pain. Card games
became trivial; friends seemed only to
speculate on how long he would live.
When Ivan's brother-in-law came for a
visit, his shocked look told Ivan how
much illness had changed him, and he
suddenly realized that he faced not
illness but death itself. Through deepening
terror and despair, Ivan shrank from this
truth. Other men died, not he.
Desperately he erected screens against the pain
and the knowledge of death it brought,
but it lurked behind court duties or
quarrels with his family. The knowledge that
it had begun with the bruise on his side
only made his condition harder to bear.
As Ivan grew steadily worse, drugs
failed to help him. But the clean strength
and honesty of a peasant boy, Gerasim,
nourished him, for he felt that his
family were hypocrites who chose to pretend
that he was not dying. Death to them was
not part of that same decorum he too had
once revered and was therefore hidden
as unpleasant and shameful. Only
Gerasim could understand his pain because
only he admitted that death was real and
natural.
Ivan retreated increasingly into his
private anguish. He hated his knowing
doctors, his plump, chiding wife, his
daughter and her new fiance. Lamenting,
he longed to have his old, happv life
again. But only memories of childhood
revealed true happiness. Unwillingly he
returned again and again to this
knowledge as he continued questioning the
reasons for his torment. If he had always
lived correctly, why was this happening
to him? What if he had been wrong?
Suddenly he knew that the faint urges
he had consciously stilled in order to do
as people thought proper had been the
true urges. And since he had not known
the truth about life, he also had not
known the truth about death. His
anguish increased as he thought of the
irrevocable choice he had made.
His wife brought the priest, whose
sacrament eased him until her presence
reminded him of the deception his life
had been. He screamed to her to leave
him, and he continued screaming as he
struggled against death, unable to
relinquish the illusion that his life had been
good. Then the struggle ceased, and he
knew that although his life had not been
right, it no longer mattered. Opening his
eyes, he saw his wife and son weeping by
his bedside. Aware of them for the first
time, he felt sorry for them. As he tried
to ask their forgiveness, everything
became clear to him. He must not hurt
them; he must set them free and free
himself from his sufferings. The pain and
fear of death were no longer there.
Instead there was only light and joy.
834

THE DEATH OF THE GODS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Dmitri Merejkowski CI865-1941)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Fourth century
Locale: Ancient Rome
First published: 1896
Principal characters:
Caesar Constantius, the Roman Emperor
Julian Flavius, Caesar's cousin
Gallus Flavius, Julian's brother
AhsinoM, Julian's beloved
Critique:
Merejkowski, one of the most
successful of modern Russian novelists of the
old regime, saw European civilization as
a result of the meeting of Hellenism and
Christianity. In this novel he attempted
to show how that meeting was carried
on in the reign of Julian the Apostate,
a Roman emperor of the fourth century.
The novelist's success in re-creating what
is distant, both in point of time and
place, is almost unparalleled in any
national literature. Little street urchins
of Constantinople, common soldiers in
the Roman legions, innkeepers of Asia
Minor, and fawning courtiers of
Caesar's court, all take on flesh and life as
they pass through the story, all of them
reflecting in greater or lesser degree the
struggle between the, two great
philosophies, paganism and Christianity.
The Story:
The Roman Emperor Constantius had
risen to power by a series of
assassinations. Two of his cousins, Julian and
Gallus, were still alive, prisoners in Cap-
padocia. No one knew why they were
permitted to live, for they were the last
people who could challenge the right
of the emperor to his position. Julian
was the greater of the two, a young man
steeped in the teachings of the
philosophers. His brother was younger and
more girlish in his habits. Both knew
that they could expect death
momentarily.
When Julian was twenty years old,
Constantius gave him permission to travel
in Asia Minor, where the lad affected the
dress of a monk and passed as a
Christian. His younger brother, Gallus, was
given high honors as co-regent with
Constantius and named Caesar. The affection
which Constantius seemed to bestow on
Gallus was shortlived, however, for soon
the young man was recalled to Milan
and on his journey homeward he was
beheaded by order of the emperor. When
word of his brother's death reached
Julian, he wondered how much longer
he himself had to live.
While Julian wandered about Asia
Minor, he met many philosophers, and
was initiated into the mysteries of Mithra,
the sun god. Julian felt more power in
the religion of the pagans than he did
in the Christ which his grandfather had
declared the official religion of the Roman
Empire. Knowing the danger of his
beliefs, Julian kept them secret.
One day, PubHus Porphyrius took
Julian to an ancient wrestling arena
where they watched a young woman
playing at the ancient Grecian games.
She was Arsinoe, who, like Julian, found
more joy in paganism than in
Christianity. One night she told him that he
must believe in himself rather than in
THE DEATH OF THE GODS by Dmitri Merejkowski. Translated by Herbert Trench. By permission of the
publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1901, by Herbert Trench. Renewed, 1929, by Desmond Patrick
Trench.
835

any gods, and he replied to her that
such was his aim.
Before long Julian had an
opportunity to strike at Constantius. Raised to a
position of honor at court and given the
purple robe of a Caesar, he was trained
as a warrior and sent to Gaul to tame
the barbarians. Contrary to Constantius'
hopes that the young man would be
killed, he was highly successful in Gaul.
When Constantius sent an emissary to
recall several of Julian's legions, the
soldiers revolted and hailed Julian as the
emperor and made him accept the crown.
Meanwhile Julian's anger against all
Christians had risen; his wife refused to
share his bed because she had decided to
become a nun. He felt no pity when she
fell ill and died. He thought her actions
had disgraced him.
With his loyal legions Julian began a
march of conquest through the empire.
While he was crossing Macedonia, he
received word that Constantius had died
in Constantinople.
As soon as word spread among Julian's
legions that he was now the rightful
emperor, he gathered his men together
for a ceremony at which he denied
Christianity and affixed the statue of
Apollo in place of the Cross on his
standards. That act was only the
beginning of changes in the empire. On his
arrival in Constantinople he reinstated
the pagan gods and returned to their
temples the treasure which had been
taken from them by the Christian monks.
The Christians were outraged at his
practices, and his popularity waned. Few
visited the reopened pagan temples. Soon
Julian began to wonder if he would be
successful in restoring a golden age of
Hellenism to his empire. He discovered
that even his beloved Arsinoe had
become a Christian nun in his absence.
When he went to visit her, she agreed
to see him; but she refused to marry him
and become the empress. Julian began
to wonder to what end he was headed.
At the end of the first year of his
reign as emperor of the Eastern Roman
Empire, Julian found that he had
become the laughing-stock of his people,
despite his power as a ruler. His ap*
pearance and his scholarly activities
earned him the disrespect of all his
subjects, who were accustomed to a Caesar
of martial power. When the Christians
began to ridicule him and openly defy
his edicts, Julian decided to ladopt a
different course. He hit upon the idea
of a campaign against Persia. He hoped
that after he had conquered that
country and returned as a victor, his people
would respect both him and his anti-
Christian views.
Julian's army assembled at Antioch,
but before it was ready to march Julian
had a demonstration of the feeling he
had evoked by championing the
Olympian deities against Christianity. When
he ordered a Christian chapel removed
from the temple of Apollo at Antioch,
the Christians burned the temple and
destroyed the idol in the presence of the
emperor and his legions.
In the spring Julian and his armies
left Antioch and started toward the
Persian frontier. They marched along the
Euphrates until they came to the canal
which the Persians had built to
connect that river with the Tigris. The
Persians had flooded the area to halt
the invaders, and Julian's army marched
in water up to their knees until they
were far down the Tigris. After days
of marching under a burning sun, they
reached Perizibar, a Persian fortress. The
fort was gallandy defended, but the
Romans finally battered down the walls.
After resting his army for two days,
Julian pushed on to Maogamalki. By
brilliant strategy and some luck, he
carried the second of the Persian defense
posts and then pushed onward to Ctesi-
phon, the Persian capital.
Arriving at a point across the river from
the city, Julian consulted his pagan
priests. When they failed to foretell a
successful attack on the city, Julian be
came as enraged at Apollo and the other
pagan gods as he had been at Christian-
836

ity. In a frenzy he overturned the altars,
said that he trusted no god but
himself, and added that he meant to attack
the city immediately.
By a ruse, Julian and his army crossed
the Tigris in boats at night. The next
morning a single Persian came to their
camp and persuaded Julian to burn his
boats so that his men would not lose heart
and retreat from the assault. He promised
also to lead the Romans into the city by
a secret way. Too late, his boats
destroyed, Julian realized Jie had been
tricked. Unable to take the city, he
ordered a retreat. After the Romans had
been weakened by forced marches under
burning desert suns, the Persians
attacked.
In the battle, the Romans won a
victory against heavy odds; but it was a
victory for the Romans, not for their
emperor. In the battle Julian, dressed in his
purple robes, refused to wear any armor.
He was mortally wounded by a javelin
while giving chase to a band of Per-
sians. When he was carried to his tent,
Arsinoe, who was still a nun, came to
him and attempted to make him see that
Christ was a god of beauty and mercy.
Julian would not listen to her. As he
died, he lifted himself up and cried out
to his attendants that the Galilean had
defeated him.
837

THE DEATH OF THE HEART
Type of work: Novel
Author: Elizabeth Bowen (1899- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: After World War I
Locale: London and Seale, England
First published: 1938
Principal characters:
Thomas Quayne, of Quayne and Merrett, an advertising agency
Anna Quayne, his wife
Portia Quayne, his sixteen-year-old half-sister
St. Quentin Miller, an author and a friend of the Quaynes
Eddie, an employee of Quayne and Merrett
Major Brutt, a retired officer
Mrs. Heccomb, Anna's ex-governess
Critique:
The travail of adolescence and its
painful emergence into maturity are
recorded with keenness and sympathy in
Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart.
Maturity's gain in awareness, she implies,
is offset by childhood's loss in idealism
and simplicity; adulthood involves
compromises with one's heart and thoughts
which the young find intolerable, at least
at first. And so the arrival of Portia,
with her innocent longings and candid
curiosity, provides a kind of catalyst for
an upper middle-class English household
where compromise and boredom have
long held sway. Portia's loneliness and
her search for love and understanding
are characteristic of her age, sex, and
particular situation; but Miss Bowen
never allows the individual to be
submerged in the typical. Although the
ending of the story is no more conclusive
than life itself, it crystallizes some truths
that are often elusive.
The Story:
Anna Quayne's pique demanded an
outlet—she could no longer contain it all
within herself. Therefore, while St.
Quentin Miller shivered with cold, she
marched him around the frozen park,
delivering herself of her discontent. The
trouble, of course, had started with
Portia, for the Quayne household had not
been the same since the arrival of Tom's
sixteen-year-old half-sister. Not that
Portia was all to blame; the business had
begun with a deathbed wish. Who could
expect dying old Mr. Quayne to ask Tom
to take a stepsister he hardly knew, keep
her for at least a year, and give her a
graceful start in life? Anna herself, she
went on to St. Quentin, hardly knew
how to cope with the arrangement,
though she had tried to accept it with
outward tranquillity. Now she had
stumbled across the girl's diary, glimpsed her
own name, and been tempted to read. It
was obvious that Portia was rather less
than happy, that she was scanning the
atmosphere of her brother's house with
an unflattering eye.
While Anna was thus unburdening
herself, the subject of her discussion
returned home quietly from Miss Paullie's
lessons. She was vaguely disturbed to
learn from Matchett, the housekeeper,
that Anna had commented upon the
clutter in Portia's bedroom. Later she
shared tea with Anna and St. Quentin
when they came in tingling with cold;
but the atmosphere seemed a bit stiff,
and Portia readily acquiesced in Anna's
suggestion that she join her brother in
his study. Portia felt more at ease with
Tom, even though he obviously found
conversation with her awkward.
THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1938, by Elizabeth Bowen.
838

Portia knew, by now, that there was
no one in whom she could readily
confide. At 2 Windsor Terrace, Matchett
offered a certain possessive friendship; at
school, only the inquisitive Lilian took
notice of her. Major Brutt was better
than either of these; his eyes, in her
presence, showed a fatherly gleam, and
she liked the picture puzzle he had sent.
Anna tolerated the major—he was her
only link with an old friend, Pidgeon—
but Major Brutt seldom ventured to call,
and Portia saw him mostly in the
company of others.
Another of Anna's friends whom
Portia sometimes saw was Eddie. But Eddie
was Anna's property and seemingly
beyond the range of Portia's clumsy
probing for companionship. Too, he was
twenty-three and brightly self-assured.
Anna found it amusing to have him
around, though she often rebuked his
conceit and presumption; she went so
far as to find him a job with Quayne
and Merrett. One day Portia handed
Eddie his hat as he took leave of Anna; the
next day he wrote to her. Before long
they were meeting regularly and secretly.
Eddie, having no wish to alienate
Anna, cautioned Portia not to mention
him in her diary. But he reveled in
Portia's uncritical adoration. They went to
the zoo, to tea, ultimately to his
apartment. Matchett, who found Eddie's letter
under Portia's pillow, soon became coldly
jealous of his influence. Even Anna and
Tom became slightly restive, as they
began to realize the situation. Meanwhile
Portia was falling deeper and deeper in
love. When Eddie lightly declared that
it was a pity they were too young to
many, Portia innocently took his remarks
as a tentative proposal. Though he
carefully refrained from real love making,
Portia felt sure he returned her love.
With the approach of spring, Anna
and Tom revealed their intention of
spending a few weeks in Capri. Since
Matchett would houseclean while they
were gone, they decided to send Portia
to Mrs. Heccomb, Anna's old governess,
who lived in a seaside house at Seale.
Portia, dismayed by the prospect of
separation from Eddie, was only partially
consoled by his promise to write.
Eddie did write, promptly; so did
Major Brutt, with the promise of another
picture puzzle. And Seale, happily,
turned out better than expected. Having
none of Anna's remoteness, Mrs.
Heccomb deluged her guest with carefree
chatter. Her two grown-up stepchildren
reacted somewhat more cautiously, since
they were prepared to find Portia a
highbrow. Finding her only shy, they quickly
relaxed; the radio blared while they
vigorously shouted over it about
roller-skating, hockey games, and Saturday night
parties. Portia gradually withdrew from
her shell of loneliness. Within a few
days she felt enough at home to ask
Daphne Heccomb if Eddie might spend
a weekend at Seale. Daphne consented
to relay the request to her mother,
whereupon Mrs. Heccomb affably approved.
Eddie's visit was not a success. His
efforts to be the life of the party soon
had Mrs. Heccomb wondering about the
wisdom of her invitation. At the cinema
his good fellowship extended to holding
hands enthusiastically with Daphne.
When Portia, distressed, uttered mild
reproaches, he intimated that she was a
naive child. Walking together in the
woods, on their final afternoon, Portia
learned that Eddie had no use for her
love unless it could remain uncritical and
undemanding. Her vision of an idyllic
reunion shattered into bits as she began
to see his instability. Two weeks later
her stay at Seale ended. Back in London,
Matched triumphantly informed her that
Eddie had left word that he would be
out of town a few days.
Walking home from school not long
afterward, Portia encountered St. Quen-
tin, who inadvertently revealed Anna's
perusal of the diary. Upset, she sought
comfort from Eddie once more. No
longer gratified by her devotion, he made her
feel even more unwanted; and the sight
of a letter from Anna, lying on Eddie's
839

table, convinced her that they were
allied against her. As she left his
apartment it seemed unthinkable that she
could ever return to Windsor Terrace;
her only possible refuge now was Major
Brutt. To the Karachi Hotel, therefore,
she went, surprising the worthy major
as he finished his dinner. Surprise
changed to alarm as she pleaded her case:
would he take her away, would he
marry her? She could relieve his loneliness,
she could care for him, she could polish
his shoes. Polishing shoes, the major
affirmed, with as much serenity as he could
muster, was a job women had little
success with; with a little time and patience,
her position would soon appear less
desperate. He wished very much to call the
Quaynes, for it was getting late and
they would be worried. Portia felt that
she had been defeated, but she could still
choose ground on which to make a final
stand. Very well, she finally agreed,
he might call them, but he was not to
tell them she was coming. That would
depend, she finished enigmatically but
firmly, on whether they chose to do the
right thing.
The major had been right; the
Quaynes were worried. After the
telephone rang, their momentary relief was
succeeded by real confusion. What, after
all, would Portia consider the right thing
for them to do? It would have to be
simple, without fuss or feathers. With help
from St. Quentin, they finally decided,
and Matchett was sent in a taxi to fetch
her.
840

THE DEATH OF VIRGIL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hermann Broch (1886-1951)
Type of plot: Poetic mysticism
Time of plot: 19 B.C.
Locale: Brundisium (Brindisi, Italy)
First published: 1945
Principal characters:
Publius Virgilius Maro, chief poet of Rome
Augustus Caesar, Emperor of Rome
Plotia Hieria, a woman Virgil had once loved
Lysanias, a young boy
A Slave
Critique:
In some respects -this difficult yet
extraordinarily beautiful novel may
better be called a poem, for although it is
written mostly in prose, its means of
presentation and its effect are wholly
poetic. There are three different levels of
interest: the vivid imagery and uncanny
presentation of both the real world and
the fever-ridden, hallucinated, yet
visionary world of the dying Virgil; the beauty
of language and of the rhythmic
sentences; the depth of the writer's attempts
to explore metaphysical truth. Using a
simple plot as a basis, Broch presents a
symphony in four movements. Although
the mood of the whole is meditative and
elegiac, the style of each movement
establishes its tempo, from the pages-long
sentences of the second movement to the
antiphonal bursts of conversation in the
third. In each movement, symbols,
incidents, and phrases are reechoed and
transformed, so that the meaning of the
novel becomes clear to the reader only as
the mystic knowledge which
approaching death brings becomes clear to the
poet.
to the shouting Roman throngs — to the
mob with its frightening latent capacity
for brutality, its fickle adoration of its
leaders. Yet these were the Romans whom
Virgil had glorified; the nobles he had
seen on shipboard greedily eating and
gaming were their leaders; dapper, sham-
majestic Augustus was their emperor.
Fever-ridden, the poet heard a boy's
song as the ship entered the harbor.
Later, as he was carried from the ship, a
beautiful boy appeared from nowhere to
lead his litter away from the tumult
surrounding the emperor, through narrow
streets crowded with garbage ripening
into decay, streets full of the miseries
of the flesh where women jeered at him
for being rich and weak. The women's
insults made him aware of his own sham-
divinity and of the futility of his life.
Dying, he at last saw clearly what
hypocrisy his life had been, like the shining,
hollow emperor whom he served.
At the palace he was taken to his
chambers. The boy, Lysanias, remained
with him as night fell. In the depths of
a violent attack Virgil recognized his own
lack of love. As he lay, conscious of his
dying body and the infested night, he
knew that, like the Augustus-worshiping
masses, he had followed the wrong gods;
that in his devotion to poetry he had
from the beginning given up the service
of life for that of death; that it was too
late for him to be fulfilled, for even the
THE DEATH OF VIRGIL by Hermann Broch. Translated by Jean Starr Untermeyer. By permission of
the publishers, Pantheon Books, Inc. Copyright, 1945, by Pantheon Books, Inc.
The Story:
The imperial fleet returned from
Greece to Brundisium, bearing with it
the Emperor Augustus and his poet,
Virgil, who lay dying. Augustus had
sought Virgil and brought him back from
the peace and calm philosophy in Athens
841

Aeneid lay unperfected. Some recurrence
of vigor drove him to the window.
Looking into the night, he knew that not his
poem alone remained to be fulfilled;
some knowledge still lay ahead for him to
achieve. For the necessity of the soul is
to discover itself, since through
self-discovery it finds the universe: the
landscape of the soul is that of all creation.
One must learn, not through the stars,
but through man.
Interrupting his thoughts, two men
and a woman came through the streets
quarreling and shouting good-natured
obscenities, guffawing their bawdiness with
that male laughter whose matter-of-fact-
ness annihilates rather than derides. This
laughter, juxtaposed against the beautiful
night, revealed something of the nature
of beauty itself. Beauty is the opponent
of knowledge; because it is remote,
infinite, and therefore seemingly eternal,
it is pursued wrongly for its own sake.
The same nonhuman laughter is hidden
in it. The artist who pursues beauty
plunges into loneliness and self-idolatry;
because he chooses beauty rather than
life, his work becomes adornment rather
than revelation. This path Virgil had
chosen: beauty's cold egotism instead of
love's warm life which is true creativity.
Thus he had died long before, even
before his renunciation of the lovely Plotia,
whom he now remembered.
The need for contrition because of his
refusal of love, a refusal of the pledge
given to each man with his life,
overwhelmed him. The fever rose within
him, bringing strangely prophetic visions
of Rome in ruins with wolves howling,
of giant birds droning. As reality
returned, he knew that for his own
salvation he had to do one thing: burn the
Aeneid.
Lysanias read to him as he drifted into
a calm dream, shining with a knowledge
of all past earthly happenings and a
vision of something to come. Not yet, but
soon would come one in whom creation,
love, immortality would be united; one
who would bear salvation like a single
star, whose voice he seemed to hear
bidding him open his eyes to love, for he
was called to enter the Creation. As the
fever left him and dawn broke, he
momentarily doubted the voice. Then came
the vision of an angel and, at last,
undisturbed sleep.
Virgil awoke to find two old friends
come to cheer him. Their bluff
reassurances changed to incredulity when they
heard he planned to burn the Aeneid.
Their arguments against his own
conviction that his book lacked reality because
he himself lacked love were blurred by
his fevered perception. Lysanias, whose
existence seemed questionable to his
friends, appeared with a Near Eastern
slave to reaffirm that Virgil was the
guide, although not the savior. Plotia
came and called him on to an exchange
of mutual love and the destruction of his
work, the renunciation of beauty for love.
Suddenly he and Plotia were exposed and
power thundered around him.
Augustus had come to ask Virgil not
to burn the Aeneid. In the ensuing
interview, Virgil's rising delirium made him
not only supernaturally aware of truth
but also confused as to reality: the
invisible Plotia guarded the manuscript; the
invisible Lysanias lurked nearby; the
room sometimes became a landscape.
Augustus insisted that the poem was
the property of the Romans, for whom
it had been written. Virgil tried to
explain that poetry is the knowledge of
death, for only through death can one
understand life; that unlike Aeschylus,
whose knowledge had forced him to
poetry, he, Virgil, had sought knowledge
through writing poetry and had therefore
found nothing.
Then Augustus and the slave seemed
to be talking, and Augustus was the
symbol of the state he had created, which
was order and sobriety and humanity's
supreme eternal reality. The slave,
awaiting the birth of the supreme ancestors
son, was steadfastness and the freedom
of community. The truth of the state
must be united to the metaphysical by
842

an individual act of truth, must be made
human to realize perfection. Such a
savior will come, whose sacrificial death
will be the supreme symbol of humility
and charity. Still Virgil insisted that he
must sacrifice his work because he had
not sacrificed his life, that destroying a
thing which lacked perception redeemed
both himself and the Romans.
Augustus, growing angry, accused
Virgil of envy, and in a moment of love
Virgil gave him the poem, agreeing not
to destroy it. He asked, however, that
his slaves might go free after his death.
As he talked of his will to his friends,
renewed attacks of fever brought him
more and more strange hallucinations.
He called for help and found he could at
last say the word for his own salvation.
After he had finished dictating his will,
it seemed to him that he was once more
on a boat, one smaller than that which
had brought him into the harbor the day
before, rowed by his friend Plotius and
guided by Lysanias. About him were
many people he knew. Gradually all
disappeared as he floated into the night;
the boy became first a seraph whose ring
glowed like a star, then Plotia, who led
him into the day again. Reaching shore,
they entered a garden where, somehow,
he knew that she had become the boy
and the slave and that he had become
all of them; then he was also the animals
and plants, then the mountains, and
finally the universe, contained in a small
white core of unity—and nothing. Then
he was commanded to turn around, and
the nothing became everything again,
created by the word in the circle of time.
Finally he was received into the word
itself.
843

DEBIT AND CREDIT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gustav Freytag (1816-1895)
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Eastern Germany and Poland
First published: 1855
Principal characters:
Anton Wohlfart, an intelligent, industrious middle-class German
T. O. Schroter, Anton Wohlfart's employer
Sabine Schroter, T. O. Schroter's young sister
Fritz von Fink, an Americanized German, Wohlfart's friend
Baron von Rothsattel, a German nobleman
Lenore von Rothsattel, the baron's beautiful daughter
Hirsch Ehrenthal, a Jewish usurer
Veitel Itzig, a rascally former schoolmate of Anton Wohlfart
Critique:
While Gustav Freytag's novels exhibit
certain aspects of romanticism, they also
contain a greater, more influential
element of realism. The combination has
sometimes been compared to the work of
Freytag's distinguished British
contemporary, Charles Dickens. Freytag, a great
champion of the German middle c^ss,
believed that Germans as a whole were
better, more honorable, more stable
people than other Europeans and that in the
sober, industrious middle class lay the
future greatness of his country. With the
nobility Freytag had little patience,
portraying them, as he did in Debit and
Credit, as a group with little talent, little
common sense, and an empty sense of
honor. Of all Freytag's work, both in
drama and fiction, Debit and Credit has
received the highest praise as an example
of the combination of the romance and
the realistic social novel.
The Story:
Upon the death of his father, an
accountant, Anton Wohlfart, a very young
man, traveled to the capital of his
province in eastern Germany. In the city he
found employment in the mercantile
establishment of T. O. Schroter, an
industrious and honorable German
businessman. During his journey, Wohlfart
encountered two people who were later to
play an important part in his life. He
wandered accidentally onto the estate of
Baron von Rothsattel, whose beautiful
daughter Lenore made a lasting
impression on the boy. He also met Veitel Itzig,
a young Jew who had been a former
schoolmate, making his way to the city to
seek his fortune.
Being an industrious and intelligent
young man, as well as personable, Anton
Wohlfart soon made a place for himself
among his fellow workers and in the
esteem of his employer. Among the other
clerks in the firm was Fritz von Fink, a
young Americanized German whose sense
of industry and honor had been warped
by a stay in New York City. Von Fink
became a close friend of Wohlfart's
despite the differences in their social
standing and the escapades into which von
Fink led Wohlfart, sometimes to the
latter^ embarrassment and chagrin.
In the meantime Baron von Rothsattel,
who had little talent for managing his
estates or business, was led to accept the
advice of Hirsch Ehrenthal, an
unscrupulous Jewish usurer and businessman who
plotted the baron's financial ruin so that
he might buy up his estates at a fraction
of their value. Ehrenthal, who had
persuaded the baron to mortgage his estates
in order to purchase lands in Poland and
to build a factory to extract sugar from
beets, depended on the baron's lack of
business acumen to ruin him, with a little
844

help from Ehrenthal on the way.
Ehrenthal did not realize at the time that Itzig,
whom he had taken into his employ, was
also plotting to acquire the baron's estates
by a dishonest manipulation of documents
and the knowledge he had of EhrenthaFs
affairs. Itzig was coached in his scheme
by a drunken lawyer who also hoped to
make some profit from the nobleman's
ruin.
Fritz von Fink finally decided to return
to America to take over the affairs of a
wealthy uncle who had recently died.
Before he left, he proposed marriage to
Sabine Schroter, Wohlfart's employer's
sister, but the young woman refused the
nobleman's offer. Shortly after his
departure, revolt broke out in the nearby
provinces of Poland. In order to prevent
business losses and reestablish his affairs
there, Schroter bravely entered Poland,
accompanied by Wohlfart. During their
stay Wohlfart saved his employer's life,
winning his and his sister's gratitude.
Because of his employer's trust, Wohlfart
was left in Poland for many months as
the firm's agent, to reorganize the
business of the company. He returned to
Germany to be honored by'his employer and
given a position of considerable
responsibility. During his stay in Poland he had
met Eugene von Rothsattel, the baron's
son, who proved to be a gallant but
impractical young man. Because of his
admiration for the young nobleman and his
romantic regard for Lenore von
Rothsattel, Wohlfart had lent a large sum of
money to Eugene.
As time passed the financial affairs of
Baron von Rothsattel became worse and
worse; falling deeper into debt, the
nobleman gave personal notes and mortgages
to Ehrenthal and the other usurers who
were his accomplices. When the baron
thought himself on the edge of ruin, a
ray of hope appeared in the person of
Ehrenthal's son, an upright and noble-
hearted young man who tried to persuade
his father to give up dishonest gains and
let the baron keep his family estates. The
young man was ill, however, and he died
before he was able to influence his
father's actions. On the night of his death
a casket filled with important documents
was stolen from Ehrenthal's office by It-
zig's accomplice.
The baron, desperate, attempted
suicide. He failed in this, but the blast of
the pistol blinded him. In desperation,
Lenore von Rothsattel appealed to
Wohlfart to become her father's agent. After
much soul-searching, the young man
agreed, although his departure from
Schroter's firm made his employer angry
and opened a breach between the two
men. Schroter felt that the nobility, who
constantly proved their inability to
manage their affairs, should be allowed to ruin
themselves and so lose their place of
influence in German culture.
Wohlfart journeyed again to Poland,
this time to try to salvage the estate which
the baron had acquired in that country.
He found the estate in run-down
condition and the Poles decidedly incompetent
and unfriendly. With the help of loyal
German settlers in the area, Wohlfart
managed to bring some order to the farms
of the estate, to which the baron, his
wife, and his daughter moved, knowing
that the family estates in Germany were
lost. After many months Wohlfart
managed to put the baron's affairs in order;
however, his efforts were lost on the
baron, who had a misplaced sense of rank.
Only Wohlfart's regard for Lenore kept
him in the position of responsibility after
he had been repeatedly insulted.
When the revolutions of 1848 broke
out, the troubles spread to the Polish
provinces in which the von Rothsattel
estate was located. Fortunately, Fritz von
Fink appeared and under his leadership
the estate was defended from the rebel
depredations until help from a military
force arrived on the scene. During this
period von Fink and Lenore discovered
their love for each other. When danger
was past, the baron's resentment against
Wohlfart exploded, and the young man
was dismissed. The baroness, who
realized what the young man had sacrificed
845

for her family, spoke to him of her
gratitude and asked him to try to straighten
out their affairs with the usurers.
Returning to his home city, Wohlfart
found a cordial welcome from his former
employer's sister, but a rather cool one
from Schroter himself. Schroter feared
that living with the nobility had spoiled
the young man, and he still resented the
fact that Wohlfart had left his firm.
Through his own efforts and those of a
detective, Wohlfart began to trace down
the plots which had ruined Baron von
Rothsattel. He was informed that Ehren-
thal was not the real villain, and soon it
appeared that Itzig had been the true
culprit in the affair. When the broken-
down lawyer who had been Itzig's
mentor learned of the investigations, he went
to Itzig for money and a chance to leave
Germany; he was the one who had stolen
the baron's documents and he feared
arrest. Itzig, driven by panic, drowned his
accomplice. Just at the hour he was to
marry Ehrenthal's daughter, a beautiful
woman and the usurer's only heir, Itzig
was told that the authorities were ready
to arrest him. In his attempt to escape,
Itzig himself was drowned at the place
where he had murdered his accomplice.
The documents were recovered, however,
and the fortune and honor of Baron von
Rothsattel were redeemed.
Having recovered the fortune of the
baron's family and overcome his
sentimental regard for Lenore, Wohlfart
decided to leave the city, for he believed
that he had no future in the firm of
T. O. Schroter. Before he left, however,
he went to see Sabine Schroter, his
employer's sister, and the two young people
confessed to each other that they were in
love. The girl took the young man to her
brother, who amazed Wohlfart by his
warmth. Sabine revealed to Wohlfart
that he was to marry her and become a
partner in the firm, if that was his wish.
846

THE DECAMERON
(SELECTIONS)
Type of work: Tales
Author: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)
Types of plots: Romantic tragedy, farce, folk tradition
Times of plots: Graeco-Roman times and the Middle Ages
Locale: Italy
First transcribed: 1353
Principal characters:
The Three Tedaldo Sons, gentlemen of Florence
Alessandro, their nephew
The Daughter of the King of England
Tancred, Prince of Salerno
Ghismonda, his daughter
Guiscardo, her lover
Isabetta, of Messina
Lorenzo, her lover
Her Three Brothers
Galeso, of Cyprus, known as Cimone
Efigenia, his love
Lisimaco, of Rhodes
Federigo degli Alberighi, of Florence
Monna Giovanna, his love
Peronella, a wool carder of Naples
Her Husband
Strignario, her lover
Nathan, a rich man of Cathay
Mitridanes, envious of Nathan
Saladin, Sultan of Babylon
Messer Torello, of Pavia
Gualtieri, son of the Marquess of Saluzzo
Griselda, his wife
Critique:
Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch were
the leading lights in a century that is
considered the beginning of the Italian
Renaissance. Dante died while Boccaccio
was a child, but Petrarch was the friend
of his middle and later life. Dante's work
was essentially of the spirit; Petrarch's
was that of the literary man; Boccaccio's
broke free of all tradition and created a
living literature about ordinary people.
His Decameron is his most famous work.
This collection of one hundred tales is
set in a framework much like that in the
Arabian Nights' Tales, or in Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, written later in the
same century. A terrible plague was
ravaging Florence. To flee from it, a group
of seven girls and three young men, who
had met by chance in a church, decided
to go to a villa out of town. There they
set up a working arrangement whereby
each would be king or queen for a day.
During the ten days they stayed in the
country, each told a story following
certain stipulations laid down by the daily
ruler. The stories range from romance to
farce, from comedy to tragedy. They are
all told with a wit that carries them
above the range of the licentious, a term
sometimes used unjustly about the tales.
It may be true that none of the plots was
original with Boccaccio, but he wrote
one hundred excellent stories, and many
are the authors since his day who have
borrowed from him.
847

The Stories:
pampinea's tale about the three
tedaldo young men
When Messer Tedaldo died, he left all
his goods and chattels to his three sons.
With no thought for the future, they
lived so extravagandy that they soon had
little left. The oldest son suggested that
they sell what they could, leave Florence,
and go to London, where they were
unknown.
In London they lent money at a high
rate of interest, and in a few years they
had a small fortune. Then they returned
to Florence. There they married and
began to live extravagandy again, while
depending on the monies still coming to
them from England.
A nephew named Alessandro took care
of their business in England. At that time
there were such differences between the
king and a son that Alessandro's business
was ruined. He stayed in England,
however, in hopes that peace would come and
his business would recover. Finally he
returned to Italy with a group of monks
who were taking their young abbot to
the pope to get a dispensation for him and
a confirmation of the youthful cleric's
election.
On the way Alessandro discovered that
the abbot was a girl, and he married her
in the sight of God. In Rome the girl
had an audience with the pope. Her
father, the King of England, wished the
pope's blessing on her marriage to the
old King of Scodand, but she asked
the pope's blessing on her marriage to
Alessandro instead.
After the wedding Alessandro and his
bride went to Florence, where she paid
his uncles' debts. Two knights preceded
the couple to England and urged the king
to forgive his daughter. After the king
had knighted Alessandro, the new knight
reconciled the king and his rebellious son.
fiammetta's tale of tancred
and the golden cup
Tancred, Prince of Salerno, loved his
daughter Ghismonda so much that when
she was widowed soon after her marriage
he did not think to provide her with a
second husband, and she was too modest
to ask him to do so. Being a lively girl,
however, she decided to have as her lover
the most valiant man in her father's
court. His name was Guiscardo. His only
fault was that he was of humble birth.
Ghismonda noticed that Guiscardo
returned her interest and they met secredy
in a cave, one entrance to which was
through a door in the young widow's
bedroom. Soon she was taking her lover into
her bedroom, where they enjoyed each
other frequendy.
Tancred was in the habit of visiting
his daughter's room at odd times. One
day, when he went to visit, she was not
there and so he sat down to wait in a
lace where he was by accident hidden
y the bed curtains from his daughter
and her lover, who soon came in to use
the bed.
Tancred remained hidden, but that
night he had Guiscardo arrested. When
he berated his daughter for picking so
humble a lover, she defied him for
letting so brave a man remain poor in his
court. She begged nothing from Tancred
except that he kill her and her lover with
the same stroke.
The prince did not believe Ghismonda
would be as resolute as she sounded.
When her lover was killed, Tancred had
his heart cut from his body and sent to
her in a golden cup. Ghismonda thanked
her father for his noble gift. After
repeatedly kissing the heart, she poured
poison into the cup and drank it. Then
she lay down upon her bed with Guis-
cardo's heart upon her own. Tancred's
own heart was touched when he saw her
cold in death, and he obeyed her last
request that she and Guiscardo be buried
together.
FILOMENO'S TALE OF THE POT OF BASIL
Isabetta lived in Messina with her
three merchant brothers and a young
man named Lorenzo, who looked after all
848

their business. Isabetta and Lorenzo fell
in love One night, as she went to
Lorenzo's room, her oldest brother saw her. He
said nothing until the next morning,
when the three brothers conferred to see
how they could setde the matter so that
no shame should fall upon them or upon
Isabetta.
Not long afterward the three brothers,
setting out with Lorenzo, said that they
were going part way with him on a
journey. Secretly they killed and buried the
young man.
After their return home the brothers
answered none of Isabetta's questions
about Lorenzo. She wept and refused to
be consoled in her grief. One night
Lorenzo came to her in a dream and told
her what had happened and where he
was buried. Without telling her brothers,
she went to the spot indicated in her
dream and there found her lover's body.
She cut off his head and wrapped it in a
cloth to take home. She buried the head
in dirt in a large flower pot and planted
basil over it. The basil flourished,
watered by her tears.
She wept so much over the plant that
her brothers took away the pot of basil
and hid it. Because she asked about it
often, the brothers grew curious. At last
they investigated and found Lorenzo's
head. Abashed, they left the city. Isabetta
died of a broken heart.
PAMFILO's TALE OF CIMONE, WHO
BECAME CIVILIZED THROUGH LOVE
Galeso was the tallest and handsomest
of Aristippo's children, but he was so
stupid that the people of Cyprus called
him Cimone, which means Brute. Ci-
mone's stupidity embarrassed his father
until the old man sent the boy to the
country to live. There Cimone was
contented until one day he came upon a
sleeping girl, Efigenia, whose beauty
completely changed him.
He told his father he intended to live
in town. The news worried his father for
a while, but Cimone bought fine clothes
and associated only with worthy young
men. In four years he was the most
accomplished and virtuous young man on
the island.
Although he knew she was promised
to Pasimunda of Rhodes, Cimone asked
Efigenia's father for her hand in
marriage. He was refused. When Pasimunda
sent for his bride, Cimone and his friends
pursued the ship and took Efigenia off
the vessel, after which they let the ship's
crew go free to return to Rhodes. In the
night a storm arose and blew Cimone's
ship to the very harbor in Rhodes where
Efigenia was supposed to go. Cimone and
his men were arrested.
Pasimunda had a brother who had
been promised a wife, but this girl was
loved by Lisimaco, a youth of Rhodes, as
Efigenia was loved by Cimone. The
brothers planned a double wedding.
Lisimaco made plans with Cimone. At
the double wedding feast, Lisimaco and
Cimone with many of their friends
snatched the brides away from their
prospective husbands. The young men
carried their loved ones to Crete, where
they lived happily in exile for a time
until their fathers interceded for them. Then
Cimone took Efigenia home to Cyprus,
and Lisimaco took his wife back to
Rhodes.
fiammetta's tale of federigo
and his falcon
Federigo degli Alberighi was famed in
Florence for his courtesy and his
prowess in arms. He fell in love with Monna
Giovanna, a woman who cared nothing
for him, though he spent his fortune
trying to please her. Finally he was so poor
that he went to the country to live on his
farm. There he entertained himself only
by flying his falcon, which was
considered the best in the world.
Monna's husband died, leaving her to
enjoy his vast estates with one young son.
The son struck up an acquaintance with
Federigo and particularly admired the
falcon. When the boy became sick, he
thought he might get well if he could
own Federigo's bird.
849

Monna, as a last resort, swallowed her
pride and called upon Federigo. She told
him she would stay for supper, but
Federigo, desperately poor as he was, had
nothing to serve his love except the
falcon, which he promptly killed and
roasted for her.
After the meal, with many apologies,
Monna told her host that her son,
thinking he would get well if he had the
falcon, desired Federigo's bird. Federigo
wept to think that Monna had asked for
the one thing he could not give her.
The boy died soon after and Monna
was bereft. When her brothers urged her
to remarry, she finally agreed to do so.
But she would marry no one but the
generous Federigo, who had killed his pet
falcon to do her honor. So Federigo
married into great riches.
FILOSTRATO's TALE OF PERONELLA,
WHO HID HER LOVER IN A BUTT
Peronella was a Neapolitan wool-
comber married to a poor bricklayer.
Together they made enough to live
comfortably. Peronella had a lover named
Strignario, who came to the house each
day after the husband went to work.
One day, when the husband returned
unexpectedly, Peronella hid Strignario in
a butt. Her husband had brought home a
man to buy the butt for five florins.
Thinking quickly, Peronella told her
husband that she already had a buyer who
had offered seven florins for the butt, and
that he was at that moment inside the
butt inspecting it.
Strignario came out, complaining that
the butt was dirty. The husband offered
to clean it. While the husband was
inside scraping, Strignario cuckolded him
again, paid for the butt, and went away.
FILOSTRATO's TALE OF NATHAN^
GENEROSITY
There was once in Cathay a very rich
and generous old man named Nathan.
He had a splendid palace and many
servants, and he entertained lavishly
anyone who came his way.
In a country nearby lived Mitridanes
who was not nearly so old as Nathan but
just as rich. Since he was jealous of
Nathan's fame, he built a palace and
entertained handsomely everyone who
came by. One day a woman came
thirteen times asking alms. Furious when
Mitridanes called her to task, she told
him that she had once asked alms of
Nathan forty-two times in one day
without reproof. Mitridanes decided that he
would have to kill Nathan before his own
fame would grow.
Riding near Nathan's palace,
Mitridanes came upon Nathan walking alone.
When he asked to be directed secretly
to Nathan's palace, Nathan cheerfully
took him there and established him in a
fine apartment. Still not realizing who
Nathan was, Mitridanes revealed his plan
to kill his rival. Nathan arranged
matters so that Mitridanes came upon him
alone in the woods.
Mitridanes, curious to see Nathan,
caught hold of him before piercing him
with a sword. When he discovered that
Nathan was the old man who had first
directed him to the palace, made him
comfortable, and then arranged the
meeting in the woods, Mitridanes realized
that he could never match Nathan's
generosity, and he was greatly ashamed.
Nathan offered to go to Mitridanes'
home and become known as Mitridanes,
while Mitridanes would remain to be
known as Nathan. But by that time
Mitridanes thought his own actions would
tarnish Nathan's fame. He went home
humbled.
PAMFILO'S TALE OF SALADIN AND
MESSER TORELLO
In the time of Emperor Frederick the
First, all Christendom united in a
crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land.
To see how the Christians were
preparing themselves and to learn to protect
himself against them, Saladin, the Sul-
850

tan of Babylon, took two of his best
knights and made a tour through Italy
to Paris. The travelers were disguised as
merchants.
Outside the little town of Pavia they
came upon Messer Torello, who was on
his way to his country estate. When they
asked him how far they were from Pavia,
he told them quickly that the town was
too far to be reached that night and sent
his servants with them to an inn.
Having sensed that the three men were
foreign gentlemen and wanting to honor
them, he had the servants take them by
a roundabout way to his own estate.
Meanwhile he rode directly home. The
travelers were surprised when they saw
him in his own place, but, realizing that
he meant only to honor them, they
graciously consented to spend the night.
The next day Messer Torello sent
word to his wife in town to prepare a
banquet. The preparations being made,
both Torellos honored the merchants that
day. Before they left, the wife gave them
handsome suits of clothes like those her
husband wore.
When Messer Torello became one of
the crusaders, he asked his wife to wait
a year and a month before remarrying if
she heard nothing from him. She gave
him a ring to remember her by. Soon
afterward a great plague broke out among
the Christians at Acre and killed many
men. Most of the survivors were
imprisoned by the sultan. Messer Torello was
taken to Alexandria, where he trained
hawks for Saladin and was called Sala-
din's Christian. Neither man recognized
the other for a long time, until at last
Saladin recognized a facial gesture in
Torello and made himself known as one
of the traveling merchants. Freed,
Torello lived happily as Saladin's guest and
expected daily to hear from his wife, to
whom he had sent word of his
adventures. His messenger had been
shipwrecked, however, and the day closely
approached when his wife would be free
to remarry.
At last Torello told Saladin of the
arrangement he and his wife had made.
The sultan, taking pity on him, hjad
Torello put to sleep on a couch heaped with
jewels and gold. Then the couch, whisked
off to Italy by magic, was set down in the
church of which his uncle was abbot.
Torello and the abbot went to the
marriage feast prepared for Torello's wife
and her new husband. No one recognized
Torello because of his strange beard and
oriental raiment until he displayed the
ring his wife had given him. Then with
great rejoicing they were reunited, a
reward for their early generosity.
DINEO'S TALE OF THE PATIENT GRISELDA
Gualtieri, eldest son of the Marquess
of Saluzzo, was a bachelor whose
subjects begged him to marry. Though he
was not anxious to take a wife, he
decided to wed poor Griselda, who lived in
a nearby hamlet. When he went with
his friends to bring Griselda home, he
asked her if she would always be obedient
and try to please him and never be angry.
Upon her word that she would do so,
Gualtieri had her stripped of her poor
gown and dressed in finery becoming her
new station.
With her new clothes Griselda changed
so much in appearance that she seemed
to be a true noblewoman, and Gualtieri's
subjects were pleased. She bore him a
daughter and a son, both of whom
Gualtieri took from her. In order to test her
devotion, he pretended to have the
children put to death, but Griselda sent them
off cheerfully since that was her
husband's wish.
When their daughter was in her early
teens, Gualtieri sent Griselda home, clad
only in a shift, after telling her that he
intended to take a new wife. His subjects
were sad, but Griselda herself remained
composed. A short time later he called
Griselda back to his house and ordered
her to prepare it for his wedding, saying
851

that no one else knew so well how to
arrange it. In her ragged dress she
prepared- everything for the wedding feast.
Welcoming the guests, she was
particularly thoughtful of the new bride.
By that time Gualtieri thought he had
tested Griselda in every possible way.
He introduced the supposed bride as her
daughter and the little boy who had
accompanied the girl as her son. Then he
had Griselda dressed in her best clothes
and everyone rejoiced.
852

DECLINE AND FALL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Evelyn Waugh (1903- )
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: England and Wales
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Paul Pennyfeather, a serious-minded young Oxonian
Sir Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington, a young aristocrat
Arthur Potts, a noble-minded young man
Dr. Augustus Fagan, head of Llanabba Casde School
Flossie, and
Diana, his daughters
Mr. Prendergast, an ex-clergyman
Captain Grimes, a public-school man
Peter BeSte-Chetwynde, one of Paul's pupils
Margot Beste-Chetwynde, his mother
Solomon Philbrick, a confidence man
Sir Humphrey Maltravers, later Lord Metroland, a British politician
Critique:
Decline and Fall mingles farce with
grim tragedy. Episodic in form, with
many of its scenes no more than a page
or so in length, it is a penetrating yet
hilarious study of disordered English
society in the period between wars. Mr.
Waugh insists that his books are not
intended as satires, since the satirical spirit
presupposes a stable and homogeneous
society against which to project its
critical exposure of folly and vice. For all
that, the writer demonstrates in this
novel, his first, a tremendous talent for
comic satire. Paul Pennyfeather's
misadventures reflect one phase of the
contemporary mood of disillusionment. On the
other hand, Grimes, a bounder and a
cad, is timeless, a figure who would have
been as much at home in the days of
the Caesars as he was in the reign of
King George V. Waugh's distortions and
exaggerations have also the quality of
fantasy, for in his pages the impossible
and the believable exist on the same
plane at the same time.
The Story:
At Scone College, Oxford, the annual
g^fLIN^AND FALL by Evelyn Waugh. By permission of the author. Copyright, 1928, 1929, by
dinner of the Bollinger Club ended with
the breaking of glass. Reeling out of
Sir Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington's
rooms, the drunken aristocrats ran to
earth Paul Pennyfeather, an inoffensive
divinity student, and forcibly left him
trouserless before they went roaring off
into the night.
Bollinger members could be fined, but
the college authorities felt that Paul
deserved severer punishment for running
across the quadrangle in his shorts, and
he was sent down for indecent behavior.
His unsympathetic guardian, after
informing him that under his father's will
his legacy could be withheld for
unsatisfactory behavior, virtuously announced
his intention to cut off Paul's allowance.
Through a shoddy firm of scholastic
agents Paul became a junior assistant
master at Llanabba Castle, Wales.
Llanabba was not a good school. Its head was
Dr. Augustus Fagan, whose lectures on
service were intended to cover up the
inadequacies of his institution. He had two
daughters, Flossie, a vulgar young woman
of matrimonial ambitions, and Diana,
who economized on sugar and soap. One
853

of the masters was Mr. Prendergast, a
former clergyman who suffered from
doubts. The other was Captain Grimes,
who wore a false leg and was, as he
frankly admitted, periodically in the soup.
A bounder and a scoundrel, he put his
faith in the public-school system, which
may kick a man out but never lets him
down. Grimes thought he had been put
on his feet more often than any public-
school man alive. His reluctant
engagement to Flossie was his protection against
the next time he found himself in trouble.
Paul was in charge of the fifth form.
When he met his class for the first time,
most of the boys claimed that their name
was Tangent. An uproar arising between
would-be Tangents and a few
non-Tangents, Paul announced that the writer of
the longest essay would receive half a
crown. Mr. Prendergast wondered why
Paurs classes were always so quiet. His
own students behaved outrageously and
made fun of his wig. Paul found young
Peter Beste-Chetwynde the most
interesting of his pupils.
Arthur Potts, one of the few men Paul
had known at Scone, wrote that Alastair
Trumpington, regretting Paul's dismissal,
wanted to send him twenty pounds.
Grimes, hearing of the offer, wired for
the money in Paul's name.
Some parents planned to visit Llanab-
ba Castle. Dr. Fagan decided to honor
their visit with the annual field sports
meet. Philbrick, the butler, objected to
his extra duties. To Paul he confided
that he was a crook who had taken the
post in order to kidnap little Lord
Tangent, but that he had reformed after
falling in love with Diana. He told Mr.
Prendergast that he was really Sir
Solomon Philbrick, a millionaire shipowner,
and he left Grimes under the impression
that he was a novelist collecting material
for a book.
The sports meet was not a gala
occasion. Lady Circumference, Lord
Tangent's mother, was rude to everyone in
distributing the prizes. The Llanabba
Silver Band played. Margot
Beste-Chetwynde created a social flurry when she
arrived with a Negro. Mr. Prendergast,
the starter, accidentally shot Lord
Tangent in the heel. Later he became
abusively drunk. But Paul, without
intending to, fell in love at first sight with Peter
Beste-Chetwynde's beautiful widowed
mother.
The term dragged to a close. Lord
Tangent's foot became infected and he
died. Grimes, landing in the soup once
more, announced his engagement to
Flossie, but the marriage turned out as badly
as he had expected. Detectives arrived
to arrest Philbrick on charges of false
pretense, but their man had already
flown. A few days later Grimes' clothing
and a suicide note were discovered on the
beach.
Paul, engaged to tutor Peter during
the vacation, went to Margot's country
house, King's Thursday. When she
bought the place from her impoverished
bachelor brother-in-law, Lord Pastmaster,
it had been the finest example of Tudor
domestic architecture in England. Bored
with it, however, she had commissioned
Otto Silenus, an eccentric designer, to
build a modernistic house in its place.
Silenus built a structure of concrete,
glass, and aluminum, a house for
dynamos, not people, but people went there
anyway for endless house parties.
When Paul finally found enough
courage to propose to Margot, she accepted
him because Peter thought the young
Oxonian would make a better stepfather
than a rival suitor, Sir Humphrey Mal-
travers, Minister of Transport. During
preparations for the wedding Paul learned
that Margot still carried on her father's
business, a syndicate vaguely connected
with amusement enterprises in South
America. Grimes turned up mysteriously
in her employ. Potts, now working for
the League of Nations, also took an
unexplained interest in Margot's business
affairs.
854

A few days before the wedding Margot
asked Paul to fly to Marseilles and
arrange for the passage of several cabaret
entertainers to Kio de Janeiro. He did so
without realizing that he was bribing the
officials he interviewed. On his wedding
morning Paul was having a final drink
with Alastair Trumpington when a
Scotland Yard inspector appeared and
arrested him on charges of engaging in an
international white-slave traffic.
Margot fled to her villa at Corfu and
did not appear at the trial. Potts, a
special investigator for the League of
Nations, was the chief witness for the
prosecution. Convicted of Margot's crimes,
Paul was sentenced to seven years* penal
servitude. The first part of his sentence
he served at Blackstone Gaol, where he
found Philbrick a trusty and Mr. Pren-
dergast the chaplain. Shortly after Pren-
dergast was killed by a crazed inmate,
Paul was removed to Egdon Heath Penal
Settlement. Grimes was one of his fellow
prisoners, but not for long. One day,
while serving on a work gang, he walked
off into the fog. Everyone supposed that
he perished later in a swamp, but Paul
believed otherwise. Grimes, whose
roguery was timeless, could never die.
Margot came to visit Paul. She announced
her intention to many Maltravers, now
Lord Metroland and the Home Secretary.
Paul's escape from Egdon Heath was
carefully contrived. On orders from the
Home Secretary he was removed for an
appendicitis operation in a nursing home
owned by Dr. Fagan, who had forsaken
education to* medicine. After a drunken
doctor had signed a death certificate
stating that Paul had died under the
anesthetic, Alastair Trumpington, who had
become Margot's young man, put him on
a yacht which carried him to Margot's
villa at Corfu. Officially dead, Paul
enjoyed the rest he thought he deserved.
Some months later, wearing a heavy
mustache, he returned to Scone to continue
his reading for the church. When the
chaplain mentioned another Pennyfeath-
er, a wild undergraduate sent down for
misconduct, Paul said that the young
man was a distant cousin.
At Scone the annual dinner of the
Bollinger Club ended with the breaking of
glass. Paul was reading in his room when
Peter Beste-Chetwynde, Lord Pastmaster
since his uncle's death, came in, very
drunk. Paul's great mistake, Peter said,
was that he had ever become involved
with people like Margot and himself.
After his departure Paul setded down
to read another chapter in a book on early
church heresies.
855

DEEPHAVEN
Type of work: Tales
Author: Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Maine seacoast
First published: 1877
Principal characters:
Helen Denis, the narrator
Kate Lancaster, her friend
The Carews, and
The Lorimers, Deephaven's society
Mrs. Kew, wife of the lighthouse keeper
Captain Lant,
Captain Sands, and
Danny, Maine seamen
Mrs. Bonny, an elderly eccentric
Miss Chauncey, an elegant woman
Critique:
Deephaven, Miss Jewett's first
collection of tales and sketches, contains those
characteristics of nature study and
character drawing which the author used
throughout her later work. This book,
although unified in background r and
theme, is too diffuse in its effects to be
called a novel; it is a series of sketches
describing an idyllic summer in an almost
forgotten town on the New England
coast. It illustrates also Miss Jewett's
belief that a writer must know the village
well before he can know the world. Wil-
la Cather, in her reminiscences of Sarah
Orne Jewett, revealed that the older
woman set her on the path to literary
achievement by telling her to write about
people and places that she knew best.
When Miss Cather followed Miss
Jewett's advice, books like O Pioneers! and
My Antonia were the result. While Miss
Jewett may not have reached Willa
Cather's heights as a writer, she wrote
pleasantly and nostalgically of familiar
things; and Miss Cather never failed to
pay her literary debt to her preceptor.
The Story:
Kate Lancaster's great-aunt, Katherine
Brandon, had died, leaving to Kate's
mother a charming old house and the
family estate, including wharf rights, at
Deephaven, a quaint sea town that had
known better days. Since Kate's family
was scattering for the summer, she asked
Helen Denis, a friend, to spend the
season with her in the old house on the
Maine coast. They took with them two
maids who came from that part of New
England, and they left Boston without
regret.
Riding with them in the stagecoach
from the railway station was a large,
weather-beaten, but good-natured woman
who turned out to be Mrs. Kew, the wife
of the lighthouse keeper. She was a
keenly observant person but so
warmhearted that the girls knew that she
meant her invitation to visit the Light,
and by the end of the summer they knew
that wherever she was there was always
a home and a heart for them.
Great-aunt Brandon's house was a
sedate and imposing one full of
furnishings brought home by generations of
seagoing ancestors. Its closets were filled
with china and its walls were covered
by family portraits. The girls rummaged
the place from cellar to attic until they
felt that they knew Katherine Brandon
as well as if she were still alive. Then
they started to learn their way around
856

the shore, out to the lighthouse, through
the town, and out into the country.
People who had known Katherine
Brandon and Kate's mother felt
themselves the girls' friends by inheritance
and the girls were never lonely. Those
people had held Katherine Brandon in
great respect but with fond admiration.
The girls tried to do nothing to hurt the
Brandon name. Through Widow Jim
Patton they realized that Kate's aunt
had been a thoughtful, generous soul
who remembered in her will her less
fortunate neighbors.
To the girls it seemed as* though the
clocks had stopped long ago in Deep-
haven and that the people went on
repeating whatever they had been doing
at that time in the past. Even their faces
looked like those of colonial times. The
people attached a great deal of
importance to the tone of their society,
handed down from the fabulous times of
Governor Chantrey, a rich shipowner and
an East India merchant. Now there were
few descendants of the old families left;
these were treated almost with reverence
by the others. Even the simple
fishermen felt an unreasoning pride in living
in Deephaven. There were no foreigners,
and there were no industries to draw
people from out of town.
The Carews and the Lorimers, old
friends of Katherine Brandon, became
friends of Kate and Helen. Mr. Dick
Carew had been an East India
merchant. Mr. Lorimer was the minister. The
ladies were of the old order, inordinately
proud of their mementos of the old days
and always happy to tell reminiscences
of earlier times.
Naturally, in a seacoast town, there
were also old sailors, all of whom were
called captain by the time they reached
a certain age. When attacks of
rheumatism did not keep them home, they
gathered on the wharves. Huddled close
together, for many had grown deaf, they
told over and over again the tales of their
distant voyages. The girls noticed that
silence fell when anyone approached the
group, but on one occasion they hid close
by to hear the yarns the old men told.
Singly the old mariners were pleased
to have a new audience, and before long
Kate and Helen were friendly with many
of the old men. While some of them told
stories of marine superstitions and
adventures, others told supernatural tales
they swore were true. Captain Lent
related the story of Peletiah Daw, to whom
he had been bound out in his youth.
Old Peletiah put more store by his wild
nephew Ben than he did by his own
sons. One night, when Peletiah was old
and feeble, he cried out and begged his
sons to cut down Ben, whom he had seen
hanging from a yardarm. The sons
thought their father was delirious, but
a short time later a sailor came to tell
them that Ben had died of a fever.
Peletiah called the man a liar, but the sailor
held to his story before the women.
Outside, he told the sons that Ben had been
hanged from the yardarm, just as the old
man had said, and on the day Peletiah
had cried out.
Kate and Helen came to know Danny,
a silent, weather-beaten fisherman who
spent most of his time cleaning fish but
who told them shyly about a pet cat
he owned. Another good friend was
Captain Sands, who kept in a warehouse all
the souvenirs of his sea voyages that his
wife refused to have cluttering her house.
When they took Mrs. Kew with them
to a circus in nearby Denby, they all had
a hilarious time, although the circus
turned out to be a droopy and dispirited
performance. Their high spirits were
dampened for a while when Mrs. Kew
recognized the fat lady as a girl who had
once been her neighbor in Vermont.
The girls learned to know people all
over the countryside as far as their horses
would carry them. The person they liked
best was Mrs. Bonny, who they thought
looked so wild and unconventional that
they always felt they were talking to a
good-natured Indian.
857

One family along the coast was so
forlorn that the thought of them preyed on
the girls' minds all summer. Neither the
father nor the mother had health, and
there were several little children with
whom they had made friends. Early in
the fall Kate and Helen went back along
the coast to see them. Receiving no
answer, they were standing undecided at
the door when some neighbors came up
to say that the mother had died a short
time before. The father, after drinking
heavily, was now lying dead, and the
children had been parceled out as best
they could be. Not daring to go to the
funeral, the girls watched it from a
distance. They felt that their everyday world
was very close to the boundary of death.
Still closer to that boundary was Miss
Chauncey of East Parish, a town even
smaller and more forgotten than Deep-
haven. She was a splendid-looking,
aristocratic old lady who had been mildly
insane but harmless for years. Hers had
been a rich and happy childhood until
her father lost his fortune during the
embargo early in the century. It was said
that a sailor to whom he had broken a
promise cursed her father and his family.
One brother killed himself; another died
insane. Miss Chauncey herself had been
so ill that her guardian sold all her
household goods to pay her hospital bills.
Suddenly she became well, her mind
unclouded. No one had told her that her house
furnishings had been sold. Her shock at
seeing the bare house unbalanced her
mind again, but she remained harmless.
She refused to leave the house and she
never seemed to realize that it was bleak
and empty. She was still an elegant
woman, possessed of unusual worldly
advantages; she lived, however, without
seeing the poverty of her surroundings.
Although she had no idea of time, she
always knew when Sunday came. She
read the Bible beautifully. Faith
sustained her.
By fall Kate and Helen had become
so attached to their friends in Deephaven
that they postponed their return to
Boston as long as possible. Helen thought
that, though they might never return,
they would always remember their
completely happy summer in that
old-fashioned village.
858

THE DEERSLAYER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jairies Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1740
Locale: Northern New York State
First published: 1841
Principal characters:
Natty Bumppo, called Deerslayer by the Delaware!
Hurry Harry, a frontier scout
Chtngachgook, Deerslayer's Indian friend
Thomas Hutter, owner of the lake
Judith Hutter, a girl Thomas Hutter claims as his daughter
Hetty Hutter, Judith's sister
Wah-Ta!-Wah, Chingachgook's beloved
Critique:
There is no question that the savages
and the woodsman, Natty Bumppo, come
off best in this first of the Leatherstock-
ing Tales. Deerslayer and the Indians,
good and bad, are depicted as having
codes of honor and morality. Tom Hutter
and Hurry Harry are motivated by greed
and viciousness in their efforts to obtain
Iroquois scalps and in their murder of
an innocent Indian girl. The simple-
minded Hetty Hutter and Judith, ner
vain sister, are but two-dimensioned
characters, however, in this novel of
atmosphere and exciting action.
The Story:
Natty Bumppo, a young woodsman
known as Deerslayer, and Hurry Harry
traveled to the shores of Lake Glimmer-
glass together. It was a dangerous
journey, for the French and their Iroquois
allies were on the warpath. Deerslayer
was planning to meet his friend Chin-
gachgook, the young Delaware chief, so
that they might go against the Iroquois.
Hurry Harry was on his way to the lake
to warn Thomas Hutter and his daughters
that hostile Indians were raiding along
the frontier. Harry was accustomed to
hunt and trap with Hutter during the
summer, and he was an admirer of Hut-
ter's elder daughter, the spirited Judith.
Hutter and his daughters lived in a
cabin built on piles in the middle of the
lake. Hutter had also built a great,
scowlike vessel, known among frontiersmen
as the ark, on which he traveled from one
shore of the lake to the other on his
hunting and trapping expeditions. On
their arrival at the lake the two found
a hidden canoe. Having paddled out to
ths cabin and found it deserted, they
proceeded down the lake and came upon
the ark anchored in a secluded outlet.
Hutter had already learned of the Indian
raiders. The party decided to take refuge
in the cabin, where they could be
attacked only over the water. The men
managed to maneuver the ark out of the
narrow outlet and sail it to the cabin.
They had one narrow escape. As the ark
was clearing the outlet, six Indians tried
to board the boat by dropping from the
overhanging limbs of a tree. Each missed
and fell into the water.
Under cover of darkness, Hutter,
Deerslayer, and Hurry Harry took the canoe
and paddled to shore to get Hutter's two
remaining canoes hidden there. They
found the canoes and, on their way back
to the ark, sighted a party of Indians
camped under some trees. While
Deerslayer waited in a canoe offshore, the
other two men attacked the Iroquois
camp in an attempt to obtain scalps, for
which they could obtain bounties. They
were captured. Deerslayer, knowing that
he was powerless to help them, lay down
to sleep in the canoe until morning.
When Deerslayer awoke, he saw that
one of the canoes had drifted close to
shore. To rescue it, he was forced to
859

shoot an Indian, the first man he had
ever killed.
Returning to the fort with his prizes,
Deerslayer told the girls of their father's
fate. It was agreed that they should delay
any attempt at rescue until the arrival of
Chingachgook, whom Deerslayer was to
meet that night.
Under cover of darkness, the party
went in the ark and met Chingachgook
at the spot where the river joined the
lake. Back in the cabin, Deerslayer
explained that the Delaware had come to
the lake to rescue his sweetheart, Wah-
ta!-Wah, who had been stolen by the
Iroquois. Suddenly they discovered that
Hetty Hutter had disappeared. The girl,
who was somewhat feeble-minded, had
cast off in one of the canoes with the
intention of going to the Indian camp to
rescue her father and Hurry Harry.
The next morning Wah-ta!-Wah came
upon Hetty wandering in the forest. She
took the white girl to the Iroquois camp.
Because the Indians believed deranged
persons were protected by the Great
Spirit, she suffered no harm.
It was Deerslayer's idea to ransom the
prisoners with some rich brocades and
carved ivory he and Judith found in Tom
Hutter's chest. Its contents had been
known only to Hutter and the simple-
minded Hetty, but in this emergency,
Judith did not hesitate to open the coffer.
Meanwhile a young Iroquois had rowed
Hetty back to the cabin on a raft.
Deerslayer told him that the party in the cabin
would give two ivory chessmen for the
release of the captives. He was unable
to drive quite the bargain he had
planned. In the end, four chessmen
were exchanged for the men, who were
returned that night.
Hetty brought a message from Wah-
ta!-Wah. Chingachgook was to meet the
Indian girl at a particular place on the
shore when the evening star rose above
the hemlocks that night. Hurry Harry
and Tom Hutter were still determined
to obtain scalps, and when night closed
in they and Chingachgook reconnoitered
the camp. To their disappointment, they
found it deserted and the Indians camped
on the beach, at the spot where Wah-ta!-
Wah was to wait for Chingachgook.
While Hutter and Harry slept, the
Delaware and Deerslayer attempted to
keep the rendezvous. Unfortunately, the
girl was under such close watch that it
was impossible for her to leave the camp.
The two men entered the camp and
boldly rescued her from her captors.
Deerslayer, who remained at their rear
to cover their escape, was taken prisoner.
When Judith heard from
Chingachgook of Deerslayer's capture, she rowed
Hetty ashore to learn what had become
of the woodsman. Once more Hetty
walked unharmed among the
superstitious savages. Deerslayer assured her
there was nothing she could do to help,
that he must await the Iroquois* pleasure.
She left to return to Judith.
As the girls paddled about, trying to
find the ark in the darkness, they heard
the report of a gun. Torches on shore
showed them that an Indian girl had been
mortally wounded by a shot from the
ark. Soon the lights went out. Paddling
to the center of the lake, they tried to
get what rest they might before morning
came.
When daylight returned, Hutter
headed the ark toward the cabin once more.
Missing his daughters, he had
concluded the cabin would be the most
likely meeting place. Hutter and Harry
were the first to leave the ark to go into
the cabin. There the Iroquois, who had
come aboard in rafts under cover of
darkness, were waiting in ambush. Harry
managed to escape into the water, where
he was saved by Chingachgook. Judith
and Hetty came to the ark in their canoe.
After the savages had gone ashore, those
on the ark went to the cabin. They
found Hutter lying dead. That evening
he was buried in the lake. Hurry Harry
took advantage of the occasion to
propose to Judith, but she refused him.
Shortly afterward they were surprised
to see Deerslayer paddling toward the
860

ark. He had been given temporary
liberty in order to bargain with the fugitives.
The Iroquois sent word that Chingach-
gook would be allowed to return to his
own people if Wah-ta!-Wah and Judith
became brides of Iroquois warriers. Hetty,
they promised, would go unharmed
because of her mental condition. Although
Deerslayer's life was to be the penalty
for refusal, these terms were declined.
Deerslayer did not have to return to
his captors until the next day, and that
evening he and Judith examined
carefully the contents of her father's chest.
To the girl's wonder, she found letters
indicating that Hutter had not been her
real father, but a former buccaneer whom
her mother had married when her first
husband deserted her. Saddened by this
knowledge, Judith no longer wished to
live at the lake. She intimated slyly to
Deerslayer that she loved him, only to
find he considered her above him in
education and intelligence.
When Deerslayer returned to the
Iroquois the next day, he was put to
torture with hatchets. Hetty, Judith, and
Wah-ta!-Wah came to the camp and
attempted to intercede for him, but
to no avail. Suddenly Chingachgook
bounded in, and cut his friend's bonds.
Deerslayer's release was the signal for
the regiment from the nearest fort to
attack, for Hurry Harry had gone to
summon help during the night.
The Iroquois were routed. Hetty was
mortally wounded during the battle. The
next day she was buried in the lake
beside her parents. Judith joined the
soldiers returning to the fort. Deerslayer
departed for the Delaware camp with
Chingachgook and his bride.
Fifteen years later, Deerslayer,
Chingachgook, and the latter's young son,
Uncas, revisited the lake. Wah-ta!-Wah
was long since dead, and, though the
hunter inquired at the fort about Judith
Hutter, he could find no one who knew
her. Rumor was that a former member of
the garrison, then living in England on
his paternal estates, was influenced by a
woman of rare beauty who was not his
wife. The ark and the cabin in the lake
were falling into decay.
861

A DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Type of work: Political treatise
Author: John Adams (1735-1826)
First published: 1787-1788
This sprawling work consists of John
Adams' selections from writings on
republican governments ranging from
ancient Greece to America of the 1780's,
material interspersed with his own
maxims and observations on historical
characters and events. He excused his faulty
arrangement and style on the grounds
of "hasty," fourteen-month compilation,
prompted by news of Shays' Rebellion in
Massachusetts and moves toward revising
the constitution of the American union.
Some regard the work as possibly the most
complete examination into the
philosophy and institutions of republicanism by
any American.
Adams' purposes were several: to rebut
the French philosophe Turgot's charge
that Americans showed themselves slavish
followers of England in their state
constitutions, most of which, like that of
Adams for Massachusetts, provided for
constitutional checks and balances; to
show such governments superior to
"simple" ones which centralized authority in
an omnipotent, unicameral legislature,
like those advocated by Turgot and
instituted in Pennsylvania by Benjamin
Franklin; and to prove by comparing
historic forms of republics that their ruin
proceeded from improper division of
power.
Adams was convinced that, regardless
of all differences, governments "move by
unalterable rules." He declared his
repugnance for absolutism, whether monar-
chial or egalitarian, basing his argument
on the practical grounds that neither gave
"full scope to all the faculties of man,"
enlisted the talents of all citizens, or
checked administrative abuses. Instead,
he saw absolutisms sowing furtive
suspicion which pitted against one another
family and family, rich and poor,
educated and ignorant, the gifted and the
dull. He espoused a "mixture" of the
advantages of democracy, aristocracy, and
monarchy. Although his statement of the
favorable aspects of aristocracies and
monarchies was turned against him by
political rivals later on, the Defense
contains as many strictures against these two
forms of government as against democracy.
Alleging that "there can be no free
government without a democratical branch
in the constitution," Adams even said
America would be better off to risk civil
war arising from improper balance of
power in a democratic republic than to
establish an absolute monarchy.
Sure that sovereignty was derived from
a majority of the mass of people and that
a representative branch of the legislature
should be organized on democratic
principles, Adams feared to trust without
restraint all power to the masses. As a
check on the representative house, he
advocated a senate in terms which have
seldom been duplicated. It would be not
only a forum where property interests
might be defended against leveling
tendencies of the representatives, but also an
honorable place whither demagogues
might be banished by election to render
their ambition safe to and their abilities
conserved for an empire of liberty. Adams'
advocacy of coordinate but
independent executive, judicial, and legislative
branches of government causes no
surprise. He advocated a single executive in
order for it to be censorable for
administrative abuse. By these forms, he
contended, America would realize a practical
government of laws and not of men.
Less hopeful of mankind and
distrustful of a supposed passion for democracy,
Adams denied Turgot's assertion that "a
love of democracy is the love of equality,"
862

saying that "every man hates to have a
superior . . . [and] no man is willing to
have an equal," that "democracy signifies
nothing more or less than a nation of
people without any government at all,
and before any constitution is instituted/'
Adams deemed "reason, conscience, a
regard for justice, and a sense of duty and
moral obligation" the only defenses
against "desire for fame, and the
applause, gratitude, and rewards of the
public" as well as "the real friends of
equality." He was so confident of the
beneficent effects of a republic of mixed
characteristics that he averred it would
make honest men of knaves from having
one rogue to watch another.
Believing that "God and nature"
ordained inequalities of wealth, birth, and
ability among men, Adams declared there
was a natural aristocracy. Not dangerous
in itself, he believed it would transform
an omnipotent unicameral legislature into
an oligarchy or monarchy, destroying "all
equality and liberty, with the consent and
acclamation of the yeofle themselves."
Believing man more selfish than public-
spirited, he would no more trust all of an
omnipotent, unicameral legislature than
any one man's ambition for gold or power
or acclaim. Unless "the rich and the
proud" and the representatives of the
masses were thrown into separate, coequal
assemblies, each could do mischief and
neither check the other or an executive.
He declared that "conviction," not
"habit," caused Americans to retain their
English inheritance of preserving
governmental equilibrium by division of powers
between executives, two-house
legislatures, and a separate judiciary. Only in
such institutions did he find hope for
avoiding the hypocrisy, superstition,
flattery, and corruption which had
overturned earlier republics. Advancing from
the individual states to the federal
government, Adams dismissed the continental
congresses under the Articles of
Confederation as "only a diplomatic assembly,"
necessitating that the states themselves
have balanced governments to check the
aristocratical traits of the congressmen.
"Mixing the authority of the one, the
few, and the many confusedly into one
assembly," said he, created a train of
events which would proceed from
aristocratical wrangling over offices to
"division, faction, sedition, and rebellion." He
observed political parties in every
country, controlled only by monarchial armies
or by "a balance in the constitution."
Thinking virtue "toa precarious a
foundation for liberty," he declared that
governments needed power to compel "all
orders, ranks, and parties" to "prefer the
public good before their own," but that
power was surest if based on "reverence
and obedience to the laws."
With enthusiasm for the proposed
federal constitution, Adams hailed the old
confederation as inadequate and the new
frame of government, so similar to Adams'
own views, to be the "greatest single
effort of national deliberation that the
world has ever seen."
863

DEIRDRE
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Stephens (1882-1950)
Type of plot: Legendary romance
Time of plot: The Heroic Age
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1923
Principal characters:
Conachur mac Nessa, King of Ulster
Clothru, his first wife
Maeve, his second wife
Cathfa, his father, a magician
Lavarcham, his conversation-woman
Fergus mac Roy, his stepfather
Nessa, his mother
Felimid mac Dall, his story-teller
Deirdre, Felimid's daughter, ward of Conachur
Uisneac, Conachur's brother-in-law
Naoise,
Ainnle, and
Ardan, Uisneac's sons
Critique:
James Stephens was a brilliant Irish
writer of poetry and prose, whose best
work was grounded in the early literature
of his own country. Just as he attempted
to bring Irish folklore to life in The
Crock of Gold, so he tried to revitalize
ancient Gaelic legend in Deirdre. In this
novel he wrote of the beautiful and
mystical Deirdre, of brave and handsome
Naoise, and of strong and willful
Conachur, who was loved by all his people
and who was almost great. But it is not
only the people in the story that are
remembered afterward; there are also
memorable scenes, like the one of Maeve
taking her goods and chattels back to her
father's kingdom, or the fight in the Red
Branch fortress, or the picture of Deirdre
falling dead over Naoise* s body just as
Conachur is ready to claim her. Deirdre
is a novel of legend and fantasy, but there
is also a core of realism at its center.
The Story:
The King of Ulster had a daughter
who was called Assa, the Gentle. She
loved knowledge and had many tutors.
One day, returning from a visit to her
DEIRDRE by James Stephens. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright. 1923,
by The Macmillan Co. Renewed, 1951, by Cynthia Stephens.
father and finding her tutors killed, she
buckled on her armor and set out to find
the murderer. Henceforth her name was
Nessa, the Ungentle. While she was
bathing in the forest, Cathfa, the
magician, saw and loved her. He offered to
spare her life only if she would marry
him. Their son was Conachur mac
Nessa. After a while Nessa left Cathfa,
taking her son with her.
When Conachur was sixteen, Nessa
was still the most beautiful woman in the
land. Fergus mac Roy, the new King of
Ulster, was only eighteen, but he fell
in love with Nessa as soon as he saw her.
She promised to marry him only if
Conachur could be king for a year while she
and Fergus lived away from court.
Fergus agreed, but after the year was up
Conachur kept the throne and Fergus
became one of his most trusted followers.
Nessa arranged a marriage between
Conachur and Clothru, daughter of the
High King of Connacht. On a visit to
her father, Clothru was killed by her
sister Maeve. Conachur's first son was
born just before she died.
Bent on vengeance, Conachur went to
864

Connacht. There he saw Maeve and,
changing his mind, married her against
her wishes. When she went to Ulster
with him, she took along great riches and
also a guard of one thousand men.
During one of his journeys at a time
when Maeve had refused to accompany
him, he stopped at the house of Felimid
mac Dall, his story-teller. That night
Conachur sent a servant to say that Felimid's
wife should sleep with him. The servant
returned to say that Felimid's wife could
not accommodate him as she was then
in childbed. Soon the men heard the
wail of the newborn infant. Conachur
asked Cathfa, his father, to interpret the
wail and other evil omens that men had
seen recently. Cathfa prophesied that the
child then born, a girl, would be called
The Troubler and that she would bring
evil and destruction in Ulster. When one
of his followers suggested that Conachur
have the child killed immediately, he sent
for the infant. But he decided it was not
becoming a prince to evade fate, and he
let the child live. Deirdre was her name.
Conachur had Deirdre brought up at
Emania by Lavarcham, his conversation-
woman, who let the girl see no one but
women servants and a guard of the
oldest and ugliest swordsmen in Ulster.
Lavarcham could adapt herself to any
situation or group of people and, while
acting as a spy for Conachur, she also
learned everything that had to be taught
to Deirdre to prepare her for the place
Lavarcham had decided she should have
in the kingdom.
Lavarcham reported regularly to
Conachur so that, while he never saw Deirdre,
the king knew how she progressed month
by month. He refused to believe
Lavarcham^ glowing reports; besides, at that
time, he was well satisfied with Maeve.
On the other hand, Lavarcham reported
at length to Deirdre about Conachur
until the child knew all his whims, his
boldness, and his majesty.
Maeve, who had never forgiven
Conachur for marrying her against her will,
finally decided to leave him. She was so
unforgiving that she refused to leave
behind one thread of her clothes or one bit
of her riches. Since some of those* riches
included great herds of cattle, flocks of
sheep, heaps of silver and jewelry, and
pieces of furniture, she had to make
careful plans to get everything away when
Conachur was not looking. She trusted
no one entirely, but she had a spy, mac
Roth, who was even more diligent than
Conachiir's Lavarcham. He discovered
that Conachur was to take a trip to Lein-
ster; he even followed Conachur's
company for two full days until he felt the
group was far enough away to be unable
to get back in time; then he returned to
help Maeve in her flight. Only
Lavarcham guessed that something might
happen, but her messengers did not reach
Conachur before Maeve had fled.
Conachur grieved for Maeve, but he
was unable to bring her back to Ulster.
In the meantime # Lavarcham began to
brood about the matter. The whole
kingdom wanted the king to remarry, and
Deirdre was sixteen. Lavarcham
persuaded the king to come to see Deirdre.
Although Lavarcham had taught
Deirdre all that she needed to know about
Conachur, she did not realize that the
child thought of the king as an ancient
and feared him a little. Nor did
Lavarcham know that Deirdre, longing for
people of her own age, had learned how to
escape the guards around Emania.
Deirdre was first tempted to go
beyond the walls to investigate a campfire.
Around it she saw three boys: Naoise,
who was nineteen; Ainnle, who was
seventeen; and Ardan, who was fourteen.
They were the sons of Uisneac, who had
married Conachur's sister. Deirdre
startled them when she first appeared in
the light of the fire, but they all laughed
and told so many good stories that she
knew she would have to go back again.
The younger boys insisted that Naoise
would soon be the champion of Ulster,
865

and Deirdre did not doubt it.
When Conachur went to see Deirdre,
he found her the most beautiful girl in
Ulster, and he intended to marry her
immediately. Lavarcham made him wait a
week, after which he would have a three-
month feast. Deirdre, in love with Naoise,
was horrified at the idea of marrying one
so old and huge, but several nights passed
before she could make her way to the
campfire again. At her pleading, the
brothers took her out of the country.
Six years later Conachur decided that
Deirdre and the sons of Uisneac should
be brought back from Scotland, where
they had found refuge, but the boys
would not return except under the
protection of one of Conachur's trusted men.
Fergus and his sons were sent to Scotland
with assurances of safety. Deirdre had a
dream and begged Naoise not to leave,
but he declared that Fergus was
honorable.
When the travelers reached the coast
of Ulster, Fergus was detained by one of
Conachur's men, and Fergus' sons took
Deirdre and the sons of Uisneac under
their protection. Arriving at Conachur's
court at night, they were lodged in the
fortress called the Red Branch. Then
Deirdre knew there would be trouble
because Conachur had not received them
under his own roof.
Conachur sent his men to batter down
the doors and to bring Deirdre to him.
The sons of Uisneac and Fergus made
quick sallies, dashing out one door and
in another, and killed so many of
Conachur's warriors that at last the king
ordered the fortress set afire. As Deirdre
and the boys fled, Conachur asked Cathfa
to stop them. Cathfa cast a spell which
made the boys drop their arms, and they
were captured. Conachur had Fergus'
and Uisneac's sons killed. When Deirdre
knelt over Naoise's dead body, she sipped
his blood and fell lifeless.
866

DEIRDRE OF THE SORROWS
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Millington Synge (1871-1909)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: The legendary past
Locale: Ireland
First presented: 1910
Principal characters:
Deirdre, a heroine of Gaelic legend
Naisi, Deirdre's lover
Conchubor, High King of Ulster
Fergus, Conchubor's friend
Lavarcham, Deirdre's nurse
Ainnle, and
Ardan, Naisi's brothers
Owen, Conchubor's attendant and spy
Critique:
Deirdre of the Sorrows, Synge's last
play, was never performed until after his
death. The play deals with the Irish
legendary past, dramatizing an account of
the beautiful Irish heroine who preferred
death along with her lover to life as the
wife of the king. The play is full of this
romantic dedication, fully developed in
Synge's rich Irish idiom. The language
of the Irish peasant is given both power
and dignity as it is shaped into the tragic
movement of the play. And the play is
not without touches of humane
characterization. The king is not simply the cruel
ruler; he is also a sad and lonely man
who deeply regrets the deaths he has
caused. Naisi is not simply the martyred
hero, but also the husband who rants
that his wife has caused him to be a softer
man and allowed him to desert the ways
of his brothers and his companions in
arms. The play contains both the rich
warmth of Synge* s local and distinctively
Irish characterizations and the romantic
quality of the legendary.
The Story:
King Conchubor had been keeping
Deirdre, the beautiful young girl whom
he had resolved to make his bride, at the
home of Lavarcham, the old nurse, on
Slieve Fuadh. One rainy evening,
Conchubor and his friend Fergus arrived to
find that Deirdre, to the king's
displeasure, was still out gathering nuts and
sticks in the woods. Lavarcham warned
the king that Deirdre would not be
anxious to see him, and she repeated the old
prophecy that Deirdre had been born to
bring destruction into the world. When
Deirdre came in, the king presented her
with rings and jewels and remonstrated
with her for staying out in the woods.
Deirdre defended her behavior and said
that she had no desire to go to Emain to
become queen.
Conchubor pleaded with her, talking
of his loneliness, his love for her, the
rooms he had prepared for her in his
castle at Emain, but Deirdre insisted that
in spite of the fact that she was pledged
to Conchubor she would prefer to remain
in the simple cottage with Lavarcham as
long as possible. Conchubor, growing
impatient, insisted that she be ready to go
to Emain and become his queen within
a few days.
After he left, Lavarcham urged
Deirdre to be sensible and bend to Conchu-
bor's wishes, but Deirdre kept talking
about other defiant legendary heroines
and about the hero, Naisi, and his broth-
P/?i?TD£Eo9^rJJIE^SORROWS h? J°hn Millington Synge, from THE COMPLETE WORKS OF
JOHN M. SYNGE. By permission of the publishers, Random House. Inc. Copyright, 1935. by Random
House, Inc.
867

ers, the bravest men in the woods. Deir-
dre went to dress elegantly for the last
night or so of her freedom.
In the meantime Naisi and his brothers
arrived at the cottage to take refuge from
the storm. Lavarcham was not eager to
let them in, but they claimed that a
beautiful lady whom they had met in
the woods had promised them refuge
from the storm. They entered, but
Lavarcham, sensing trouole, tried
unsuccessfully to get rid of them. They were still
in the room when Deirdre returned.
Deirdre provided food for Ainnle and
Ardan. When they left the cottage she
asked Lavarcham to leave also. Alone
with Naisi, she told him of Conchubor's
imminent suit. Deeply in love by this
time, they decided to marry and run away
in spite of their knowledge of the
troubles foretold. They asked Ainnle, who
had returned to the cottage, to marry
them before they fled into the night.
Seven years passed during which
Deirdre and Naisi, with Ainnle and Ardan,
lived happily beside the sea in Alban.
One day Lavarcham arrived to announce
that Fergus was on his way with peace
offerings from King Conchubor and to
plead with Deirdre to accept the king's
offer. Deirdre insisted on her loyalty to
Naisi. Owen, Conchubor's trusted man,
arrived with word that Naisi and Fergus
were already talking on the path below;
he rudely advised Deirdre to leave Naisi
and return to the king, for Owen thought
that seven years of love were more than
enough and that Deirdre would one day
be old and yearn for the comfort of the
royal palace. The messenger also revealed
that he was jealous of Naisi and hated
him because he had killed Owen's father
some time before.
Fergus, on his arrival, said that
Conchubor in his peace offering had invited
both Naisi and Deirdre back to Emain
in peace. Naisi and Deirdre wondered
if they should accept the offer. They
talked of age, the possible death of love,
and the happiness of their seven years,
despite some difficult times, at Alban.
Because they had experienced such
perfect years, they decided to accept
Conchubor's offer and return to Emain, for
they felt they would never know such
complete happiness at Alban again. Owen
returned, screaming that it was all a plot,
and then ran out and split his head
against a stone. Believing Owen mad,
Naisi and Deirdre accepted Fergus'
promise that no trick was involved, and they
set out for Emain to meet Conchubor
again.
Lavarcham, arriving first to speak with
Conchubor, found him a lonely old man.
After assuring the king that he could
never gain Deirdre's love, she reported
that Owen, despairing of ever gaining
Deirdre, had run mad and destroyed
himself. Conchubor's warriors arrived and re
B)rted that they had separated Naisi and
eirdre from Naisi's brothers. When
Naisi and Deirdre arrived, they found
themselves in a tent. A freshly-dug grave
was concealed by curtains next to the
tent. They spoke mournfully, for they
strongly suspected a plot against them.
Conchubor returned, welcomed them,
and seemed, in spite of the evidence of
the tent, the grave, and warriors lurking
nearby, to mean his offer of peace
seriously. Then, as he and Naisi were about
to clasp hands of friendship, Naisi heard
his brothers cry for help. Naisi started
to leave, although Deirdre pleaded with
him to stay. Naisi cursed the softness of
women and ran out. The king's warriors
killed Naisi, as they killed his brothers.
Conchubor urged Deirdre to end her
mourning foi Naisi and become his
queen. But Deirdre continued to lament
and would have nothing to do with
Conchubor. Fergus appeared and announced
that he had burned Emain because the
king had gone back on his pledge not to
harm Naisi. Fergus, who had acted in
good faith, tried to protect Deirdre, but
Deirdre used Naisi's knife to commit
suicide and join him in another world
without defiling their love. After
Deirdre's death, all mourned. Conchubor, old
and broken, was led away by Lavarcham.
868

DELPHINE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Madame de Stael (Baronne de Stael-Holstein, 1766-1817)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1802
Principal characters:
Delphine d'Albemar, a rich, talented young widow
Matilda de Vernon, her kinswoman, daughter of Madame de Vernon
Madame de Vernon, Delphine's close friend and confidante
Leonce Mondeville, affianced to Matilda de Vernon
Madame d'Ervin, a friend of Delphine
Monsieur de Serbellane, Madame d'Ervin's lover
Monsieur de Valorbe, in love with Delphine
Critique:
In terms of world literature, this novel
is an anachronism. It appears in the form
of letters, the epistolary form which,
although prevalent seventy years before,
was almost outmoded by the time of
Madame de Stael. In addition, the tone
of the novel is in the sentimental vein of
many French and British novels of the
first rank in the first half of the
eighteenth century. The origin of the
sentiment was undoubtedly Rousseau, for
whom Madame de Stael had a very high
regard. In Delphine there is constant
reflection of the ideas of Rousseau and
other advanced political thinkers and
philosophers of the late eighteenth
century, for such doctrines as the education
of women, political equality, freedom of
religious conscience, anti-clericism, and
devotion to reason appear constantly in
the letters written by Delphine to the
other characters in the novel. The novel
is, therefore, an index to the temper of
Madame de Stael's circle at the time.
The Story:
Delphine d'Albemar was a rich young
widow who had been married to her
guardian after her father's death. Her
husband, who had been her tutor in
childhood, had instilled in her the best
of sentiments and virtues. As a result of
her education, however, she did not wish
to submit to the dogmas of society or
church. Although she was a member of
the French nobility, she was a believer
in revolutionary doctrine, a dangerous
way of thinking in France during the
years immediately preceding the French
Revolution. In addition, she, unlike most
women of her time and position, refused
to let men do her thinking for her. After
her husband's death, which occurred in
her twentieth year, Delphine was
emotionally, intellectually, and financially
independent.
Shortly after her husband's deatht
Delphine proposed giving away a large
part of her fortune to Matilda, a relative
of her husband and the daughter of Del-
phine's close friend, Madame de Vernon.
Despite the warnings of Mademoiselle
d'Albemar, Delphine's sister-in-law, that
Madame de Vernon was a very
treacherous person, the gift was made so that
Matilda could marry Leonce Mondeville,
a Spanish nobleman. No one had met
L6once Mondeville, for the marriage had
been arranged by Matilda's mother, a
long-time friend of the proposed
bridegroom's mother.
When Mondeville arrived in Paris, he
met his future wife and Delphine. Much
to Delphine's dismay, she fell in love
with him and he with her. To Delphine,
who had bestowed on Matilda the
fortune which was making the marriage
possible, it seemed that fate had played
its worst trick of irony. For a time it
seemed as if the two lovers might find a
869

way out of the difficulty. As her
confidante in the problem, Delphine took
Matilda's own mother, Madame de
Vernon. Matilda's mother had no intention
of allowing so advantageous a match to
slip through her and her daughter's
fingers, and she plotted to turn Mondeville
against Delphine.
Delphine, meanwhile, had been
aiding Madame d'Ervin in a love affair with
Monsieur de Serbellane. Because de Ser-
bellane was seen going into Delphine's
house late at night, scandal linked her
name with his, although he had actually
gone there to see Madame d'Ervin. A
short time later Madame d'Ervin's
husband surprised the two lovers in
Delphine's home. When de Serbellane killed
the husband in a duel, scandal named
Delphine as the woman in the case.
Delphine, desiring to keep her friend's
honor, did not relate the true cause of the
quarrel which had precipitated the duel.
Anxious to clear herself with Mondeville,
however, Delphine asked Madame de
Vernon to act as her friend. Instead of
telling what had really happened, the
older woman told him that Delphine and
de Serbellane were lovers and that
Delphine was about to leave France to join
de Serbellane in Italy.
Mondeville prepared to marry
Matilda, although he did not love her.
Although Delphine realized that someone
had misrepresented her to her lover, she
could find no way to prevent the
marriage. Only after the marriage had taken
place did Delphine learn that Madame de
Vernon's duplicity had caused the rift
between herself and Mondeville. At that
time, anxious not to hurt Matilda,
Delphine promised herself not to see
Mondeville and to try to forget her passion
for him. Unfortunately, they continued
to love one another greatly. A few
months later Madame de Vernon, on her
deathbed, confessed her guilt.
Feeling themselves cheated, the lovers
decided to continue seeing each other,
even though their course was dangerous
to their honor and unfair to Matilda.
Society was soon whispering that
Delphine and Mondeville were lovers.
Actually, there was nothing immoral in
their affair, but society assumed the
worst.
De Valorbe, a friend of Delphine's
late husband, learned of the state of
affairs and resolved to marry her in order
to remove her from a compromising
situation. His intention aroused Mondeville's
jealousy, even though Delphine protested
that she did not love de Valorbe and
would never marry him. One night de
Valorbe went to Delphine's house in the
hope that she would hide him from the
police. Mondeville saw him there and
challenged him to a duel. De Valorbe,
hoping to escape from the country
before he was imprisoned on political
charges, refused to fight. A witness set
scandal going once again. Soon everyone
believed that the two men had
accidentally met while both going to
assignations with Delphine, and so her name
was publicly dishonored. In addition, de
Valorbe's refusal to meet Mondeville
placed him in disgrace.
Learning at last that her husband and
Delphine were in love, Matilda went to
Delphine and revealed that she was to
have a child. Delphine, moved by
Matilda's pleas, decided to leave France.
She went to Switzerland and became a
pensionary at a convent which was under
the direction of Mondeville's aunt. De
Valorbe followed her there and caused
her name to become common gossip.
When he offered to clear her name by
marriage, Delphine refused his proposal
and decided to remain in the convent.
De Valorbe, moved to distraction, caused
his own death, but before he died he
cleared Delphine's reputation with
Mondeville.
Word came to Mondeville's aunt that
Matilda was dying. She, in league with
Mondeville's mother, persuaded Delphine
to become a nun. They were able to have
the pope waive the required year's no-
870

vitiate. By the time Mondeville went to
the convent to claim Delphine, she had
already taken her vows.
Meanwhile the republican government
had taken over in France and had
disallowed the vows of religious orders.
Friends persuaded Delphine that she
should renounce the vows and return to
France to marry her lover. She left the
convent, only to discover that public
opinion condemned her action. Rather
than make her lover live a life of misery,
she refused to marry him.
Mondeville went to join the royalist
forces fighting against the republican
French government, but before he could
join them he was captured and
sentenced to death as a traitor. Delphine
tried unsuccessfully to secure his pardon.
When she failed, she took poison and
then joined him when he went to the
execution ground. She died on the spot
where he was to be executed. At first
the soldiers refused to shoot Mondeville.
Having no desire to live, he taunted them
until they picked up their muskets and
killed him. Friends took the bodies of
Delphine and her lover and buried them
side by side, so that they, kept apart in
life, might be close in death.
871

DELTA WEDDING
Type of work: Novel
Author: Eudora Welty (1909-
Type of plot: Regional realism
Time of plot: Early 1920's
Locale: Mississippi
First published: 1946
Principal characters:
Laura McRaven, cousin to the Fairchilds
Dabney Fatrchild, a bride-to-be
Ellen, her mother
Battle, her father
Shelley, her sister
George Fatrchild, her uncle
Robbie, George's wife
Troy Flavin, a plantation manager
Critique:
Delta Wedding is the chronicle of a
remarkable family living in Mississippi
in the early 1920's. The Fairchilds
seemed to draw excitement to them just
by doing nothing. Although the plot
centers around the preparations for the
wedding of one of the Fairchild
daughters to a man considered in all ways her
inferior, the main theme of the story is
in reality the portrayal of this unusual
family and a regional way of life.
Through the eyes of a child we see the
cousins and aunts and great-aunts, all
criticizing the others but uniting against
any outsider. Life on the Delta is a thing
apart from that in other sections of the
country, and Eudora Welty has shown
in her novel a superb picture of this
segment of America.
The Story:
Nine-year-old Laura McRaven made
her first journey alone from Jackson to
the Delta, to visit her dead mother's
people, the Fairchilds. One of her cousins,
Dabney Fairchild, was to be married,
and Laura's chief regret was that she
could not be in the wedding party
because of her mother's recent death. She
remembered Shellmound, the Fairchild
plantation, and knew that she would
have a wonderful time with her exciting
cousins and aunts. The Fairchilds were
people to whom things happened,
exciting, unforgettable things.
At Shellmound, Laura found most of
the family assembled for the wedding.
Although children her age were her
companions, she was aware also of the doings
of the grownups. It was obvious that the
family was not happy about Dabney's
marriage. Her husband-to-be was Troy
Flavin, the manager of the plantation,
whose inferior social position was the
main thing against him. Uncle Battle,
Dabney's father, was most of all reluctant
to let one of his family go from him, but
he could not bring himself to say
anything to Dabney, not even that he would
miss her. In fact, that seemed to Laura
to be a strange thing about her cousins.
They seldom talked as a united family,
but they always acted as one.
There were so many members of the
family that it was hard for Laura to keep
them straight. Uncle Battle's wife was
Aunt Ellen, and their oldest daughter
was Shelley, who was going to be a nun.
Again the whole family disapproved of
her plan, but there was hardly ever any
attempt to get her to change her mind.
The obvious favorite was Uncle George,
DELTA WEDDING by Eudora Welty. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co.. Inc.
Copyright, 1945, 1946, by Eudora Welty.
872

Battle's brother. Uncle George had also
married beneath himself. He and his
wife Robbie lived in Memphis, where
everyone knew poor Uncle George could
never be happy.
When George arrived for the wedding
festivities, he was alone and miserable.
Robbie had left him, and he had come
down alone to see his family. Not
wanting to make Dabney unhappy, they did
not tell her of Robbie's desertion. The
children and the aunts and great-aunts
were not told either, although one by one
they began to suspect that something was
wrong. Ellen could have killed Robbie
for making George unhappy, but she kept
her feelings to herself except when she
was alone with Battle, her husband.
Robbie's anger at her husband began
on the afternoon of a family outing.
George had risked his life to save one of
the cousins, a feeble-minded child caught
in the path of a train as they crossed a
railroad trestle. After that incident
Robbie was never the same with George. She
seemed to want him to prove that he
loved her more than he loved his family.
Probably Shelley understood the family
best. She knew that they had built a wall
against the outside world. But she
suspected that they were more lonely than
self-sufficient. Most people took the
family as a group, loving or hating them all
together. Only Uncle George seemed to
take them one by one, loving and
understanding each as an individual. Shelley
thought that this was why they all loved
Uncle George so much.
Dabney herself seemed to wish for
more than she had in her love for Troy.
Sometimes she felt left out, as if she were
trying to find a lighted window but found
only darkness. She loved Troy, but she
wanted to feel even more a part of him.
She wished also that her family would
try to keep her with them, wanted to
make certain of their love.
Preparations for the wedding created
a flurry. The dresses had been ordered
from Memphis, and when some of the
gowns failed to arrive there was the usual
hubbub among the women, a concern
that the men could not appreciate. One
of the children fell sick at the last
minute, so that Laura was made one of the
wedding party after all. Troy's mother
sent some beautiful handmade quilts
from her mountain shack. Troy felt
proud, but the Fairchilds were even more
self-consciously and unwillingly ashamed
of his background.
After their wedding Dabney and Troy
would live at Marmion, an estate owned
by the family. Dabney rode over to see
the house. Looking at the stately
buildings and the beautiful old trees, she knew
that best of all she would love being
inside it looking out on the rest of the
world. That was what she wanted the
most, to be inside where she was a part
of the light and warmth. That was what
marriage must give her.
All the time, unknown to any of the
family but Shelley, Robbie was not far
away. She had come after George in
hopes that he was looking for her. What
had almost defeated Robbie was the fear
that she had not married George but the
whole Fairchild family. It was that fear
which had made her angry at the affair on
the railroad trestle. Wanting desperately
to come first with George, she knew
instinctively that he could never set her
apart from or above the family. Contrite
and humble, she went to Shellmound.
The fact that George was not even there
at the moment hurt her even more, for
she wanted very much for him to be
miserable without her. He was, of course,
but it was not the Fairchild way to let
anyone see his true feelings.
Robbie probably hit the secret of the
family when she said that the Fairchilds
loved each other because in so doing they
were really loving themselves. But of
George that fact was not quite true. He
was the different one. Because of his
gentleness and his ability to love people
as individuals, he let Robbie see his love
for her without ever saying the words
873

she had longed to hear.
The wedding was almost an anticlimax,
a calm scene following gusty storms of
feeling. Troy and Dabney took only a
short trip, for Troy was needed to
superintend the plantation. While they were
gone Battle worked the hands hard to
get Marmion ready for them. Dabney
was anxious to move in, but the move was
not so necessary after her marriage as it
had seemed before; she no longer felt left
out of Troy's life. She thought her life
before had been like seeing a beautiful
river between high banks, with no way
to get down. Now she had found the way
and she was at peace. Indeed, the whole
family seemed to have righted itself.
When Aunt Ellen asked Laura to live
with them at Shellmound, her being
wanted by the Fairchilds seemed too
wonderful for her belief. Laura knew that
she would go back to her father, but still
feeling that she really belonged to the
Fairchilds seemed like a beautiful dream.
She clung briefly to Aunt Ellen, as if to
hold close that wonderful moment of
belonging.
874

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: 1850
Locale: The Cabot farmhouse in New England
First presented: 1924
Principal characters:
Ephraim Cabot, a farmer
Simeon,
Peter, and
Eben, his sons
Abbie, his third wife
Critique:
Desire Under the Elms was the last of
O'Neill's naturalistic plays and one of his
most effective. The structural set,
showing the entire farmhouse with one wall
removed, was an innovation in its day. In
this play O'Neill's daring reduction of
human motives to the simple impulses of
love, hate, lust, and greed gives an
impression of human nature as convincing and
complete as the more complex studies of
his later, longer plays.
The Story:
When the news of gold discoveries in
California reached New England,
Simeon and Peter Cabot, who had spent their
lives piling up stones to fence their
father's farm, became restless. In the
summer of 1850 they were ready to tear down
the fences which seemed to hem them in,
to rebel against their close-fisted old
father, and for once in their lives to be free.
One day Ephraim Cabot hitched up his
rig and drove off, leaving the farm in
charge of his three sons, Sim, Peter, and
their younger half-brother, Eben. All
three sons cordially hated their father
because they saw him for what he was, a
greedy, self-righteous old hypocrite. The
older brothers hated old Ephraim for what
he had done to them, but Eben had a
further grievance. He hated his father
because he had stolen the land which had
belonged to his mother, and had then
DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS by Eugene O'Neill.
Copyright, 1925, by Boni and Liveright Inc.
worked her to death on the farm. Eben
felt the farm belonged to him, and he
meant to have it. He had inherited some
of old Ephraim's stony implacability, as
well as his sensuality, and he gave
expression to the latter on his trips down the
road to visit Minnie, the local prostitute
who had belonged to his father before
him.
Realizing that Sim and Peter wanted
to go to California, yet had no money to
take them there, Eben thought up a plan
to get rid of them once and for all. During
old Ephraim's absence he offered them
three hundred dollars apiece in gold if
they would sign a paper renouncing all
claims to the farm. The money had
belonged to Eben's mother, and Eben had
found it buried beneath the floorboards of
the kitchen. The brothers accepted
Eben's offer and set off for California.
Shortly afterward old Ephraim drove
home with his third wife. He was seventy-
six, she was thirty-five. But Abbie Putnam
had decided that she wanted a home of
her own. When old Ephraim offered to
marry her she accepted him at once, and
when she moved into the Cabot
homestead she was already determined that
whatever happened the farm would be
hers someday. She tried unsuccessfully to
make friends with Eben. But the thought
of another woman's coming to take his
mother's place and the farm which right-
By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc.
875

fully belonged to him made him hate
Abbie at first.
After a time Eben began to notice that
life on the farm was easier since his
stepmother had arrived. But the realization
that Abbie could influence his father as
she desired only strengthened Eben's
determination to resist her attempts to
conciliate him. Finally some of his taunts
became so pointed that Abbie complained
to Ephraim. When she falsely hinted that
Eben had been making advances toward
her, the old man threatened to kill his son.
Realizing that she had gone too far, and
that she must make a different approach,
Abbie subtly built up in Ephraim's mind
the idea that a son and heir who would
inherit the farm upon his death would be
a better way of getting back at Eben than
to kill him outright. The thought that at
the age of seventy-six he might have a son
flattered the old man, and he agreed to let
Eben alone.
One night, after Ephraim had gone out
to sleep in the barn, Abbie saw her
opportunity to make her hold on the farm
secure. She managed to lure Eben into his
mother's parlor, a room which had not
been opened since her death, and there
she seduced him, breaking down his
scruples with the suggestion that by
cuckolding his father he could get revenge for
Ephraim's treatment of his mother.
The result of this move on Abbie's part
was the son whom Ephraim wanted as an
heir. To celebrate the child's birth,
Ephraim invited all the neighbors to a
dance in the kitchen of the farmhouse.
Many of the guests suspected the true
circumstances and said so as openly as
they dared. Ephraim paid no attention to
the insinuations and outdanced them all
until even the fiddler dropped from sheer
exhaustion.
While the revelry still was going on the
old man stepped outside to cool off. There
he and Eben, who had been sulking
outside, quarreled over the possession of the
farm. Spitefully Ephraim taunted his son
with a revelation of how Abbie had
tricked him out of his inheritance.
Furious, Eben turned on Abbie, threatening
to kill her, and telling her he hated her
and the child he had fathered when she
tricked him with her scheme. But by this
time Abbie was genuinely in love with
Eben, and, thinking the child was the
obstacle which was keeping them apart, she
smothered it in an effort to prove to her
lover that it was he and not the child she
wanted. When he discovered what had
happened, Eben was both enraged and
shocked, and he set off to get the sheriff
for Abbie's arrest.
WTien Ephraim discovered that Abbie
had killed the child that was not his, he
too was shocked, but his heart filled with
contempt at his son's cowardice in giving
Abbie over to the law.
On his way to the farm Eben began to
realize how much he loved Abbie, and the
great love she had shown for him in
taking the child's life. WTien the sheriff came
to take Abbie away, he confessed that he
was an accomplice in the crime. The two
were taken off together, both destined for
punishment, but happy in their love.
Ephraim Cabot was left alone with his
farm, the best farm in the county. It was,
the sheriff told him, a place anybody
would want to own.
876

DESTINY BAY
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Donn Byrne (Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne, 1889-1928)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Sir Valentine Macfarlane, lord of Destiny Bay
Jenepher, his blind sister
Kerry, his nephew and heir
James Carabine, his valet and friend
Jenico Hamilton, Kerry's cousin
Ann-Dolly, Jenico's wife
Patrick Herne, Jenepher's husband
Cosimo, Sir Valentine's brother
Anselo Loveridge, Cosimo's friend
Critique:
Reading Donn Byrne's short stories
is like being lifted up out of a flat
country and being set down in a
wonderfully clean, colorful, and powerful land.
There the characters are courtly, their
stories full of courage, humor, and skill.
Destiny Bay is a series of nine of these
stories, differing greatly in length, told
by Kerry Macfarlane, heir to Destiny
Bay, a house and a district in the north
of Ireland. This place is a region of high
hills, wild ocean, sun, and heather; the
characters are equally bold, wild, warm,
and beautiful.
The Story:
Kerry's uncle, Sir Valentine
Macfarlane, lord of Destiny Bay, with his great
fan-shaped red beard that came to his
waist, was the courtliest and most
hospitable of men. In twenty minutes he
had persuaded the old Duke of la Men-
tera and his grandson that he could not
allow Spanish royalty to stay at the
Widow McGinty's village hotel when there
was room and plenty at Destiny Bay.
With the simplicity which comes with
great age, the duke said that his life had
been full of many turnings; now he was
on the last path and he had come hoping
to find a treasure chest, said to have been
DESTINY BAY by Donn Byrne. By permission of
by the estate of Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne.
lost when one of his ancestors was killed
off the Irish coast after Drake's defeat of
the Armada. His grandson must be
provided for; he had nowhere else to turn.
Aunt Jenepher, beautiful, blind, but
seeming to see people better than
anyone, said the duke and Don Anthony,
his grandson, were noble and good, and
she treated them with that kindness of
hers which went straight to the heart.
A short time later the duke died,
leaving his girlish-looking grandson to the
Macfarlanes' several cares—the courtliness
of Uncle Valentine, the trust of his valet,
James Carabine, the kindness of Aunt
Jenepher, and Kerry's companionship.
That friendship was not always pleasing
to Don Anthony, since he could not bear
to see their prize fights or cock fights,
though he was beside himself with joy
at their horse races. But it was Jenico for
whom the boy conceived a hero worship.
Jenico was not a large man like Uncle
Valentine, but he had that look of
burnished strength which made women try
to get his attention, and he was innately
courteous, though his mind might be a
thousand mile's away. His home was near
Destiny Bay and nearer Spanish Men's
Rest, that spot where the Spaniards were
buried after their ships had been wrecked.
the publishers, Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1928,
877

For a long time the bees and birds had
shunned the place, and it was a chill on
the heart to go there. But when Jenico
and Kerry took Don Anthony to Spanish
Men's Rest, they heard the bees and
birds again and the place seemed
sunnier.
Jenico, trying to get the boy's mind
off the settlement of the grandfather's
estate, finally asked him to take off with
him on a trip to the Atlas Mountains.
The boy was flattered and obviously
wanted to go, but begged off. Shortly
after, as the three walked near the river,
Jenico and Kerry decided to go
swimming. Jenico went on ahead and Kerry
could see his head like that of a sleek
seal in the waves. When Kerry started
to strip, Don Anthony begged him not
to take off his clothes. Jenico laughed and
told Kerry to strip the boy and throw
him in. Kerry headed for the boy. Don
Anthony flashed a knife, then ducked
away. As Kerry turned to follow him,
there was Uncle Valentine, roaring that
there was once a time when a lady codld
be trusted amongst Irishmen.
With a change of clothes, Ann-Dolly,
as she asked to be called, was one of the
loveliest girls they had ever seen, and
there was a new spirit in her. So that
she would feel free to stay, they made
her companion to Aunt Jenepher. At that
time her relations with Jenico were
strained, but whenever they were in a
room together she would look at him
when he was not looking, and then he
would look at her when she had turned
away.
Jenico tried a fool scheme of planting
treasure for her to find, but he and
Kerry had a fight about that and he never
told her. Finally she had enough of the
Macfarlanes and ran away in the night.
Jenico and James Carabine and Kerry
used horses, bicycles, and even
bloodhounds to follow her. At last they found
her huddled in an old ruin. She was
deathly white and scared, and nothing
they did could make her move. James
Carabine plucked Kerry's sleeve,
suggesting that they return the horses, the
bicycles, the dogs they had borrowed, but
Kerry brushed him off. Finally Carabine
picked Kerry up like a feather and
forcibly carried him out, to leave Jenico and
Ann-Dolly together.
After Ann-Dolly became mistress of
Jenico's house, the birds always sang and
the bees knew it was a fair and happy
home.
One never knew what or whom Uncle
Valentine might bring back from a trip.
One of the kindest of men was Patrick
Heme, a man who looked like a double
for Digory Pascoe, who was to have
married Aunt Jenepher after he made his
fortune. Digory had died in a fight, but
Uncle Valentine had kept him alive for
twelve years by writing letters from him,
until he found Patrick Heme and brought
him home as Digory. Aunt Jenepher
played along for a while until she had to
ask who the man really was who thought
just as she did. Theirs was a happy
wedding.
One time Uncle Valentine went off to
America to find James Carabine, who
had once saved his life. James Carabine
was the Irish champion in the prize ring
when he had an urge to sail to America
to take care of a drunken friend.
Because the friend died at sea, he was
lonesome in New York and married a hard-
faced and, as it turned out, two-faced
singer whose friends ran illegal fights in
and around the city. When Uncle
Valentine found him, he had taken to drink
after losing a bad fight and his wife; but
he regained his self-respect and rewon
his title before Uncle Valentine took him
home. There was no more devoted valet
and friend in Ireland than Uncle
Valentine's James Carabine.
It was not only Uncle Valentine who
traveled distances to help a friend. Anselo
Loveridge, the gipsy whom Uncle
Valentine's brother Cosimo saved from the
hangman's noose, worried about Uncle
Cosimo's heavy drinking, brought on,
878

Uncle Cosimo told him, because of a
Chinese girl he called the Fair Maid of Wu,
whom he had seen three times and never
spoken to. Anselo disappeared for six
years, and when he came back he brought
the Chinese girl as a present to Uncle
Cosimo. Having lost his heart in those
hard years, he would not wait to see
Uncle Cosimo, but continued his
wanderings. Uncle Cosimo was happy, his
pocket bulging with his big flask, when
he went to see what Anselo had brought.
After one look his head cleared and he
turned on his heel and left the country.
From that day he worked to reclaim
drunks in the slums of London and
became so straight-laced that he was made
Bishop of Borneo.
879

THE DEVIL'S ELIXIR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822)
Type of plot: Psychological fantasy
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Germany and Italy
First published: 1815-1816
Principal characters:
Medardus, a monk
Aurelia, a young noblewoman
Francesco, a painter
Prince von Rosenthurm
Count Victorin, Medardus' brother
Leonardus, a prior
An Abbess
Pietro Belcampo, a hairdresser
Critique:
E.T.A. Hoffmann was a writer,
musician, and artist whose stories will be
remembered for their presentation of the
bizarre as an ironic facet of the natural.
Hoffmann took evident pleasure in
creating odd situations and weaving out of
them a confusing and fantastic web of
associations, intimations, and
recapitulations, all made grotesque, of what had
gone before. For example, Medardus is
an insane priest who finds himself in a
devilish hall of distorted mirrors. As soon
as a reasonable pattern begins to emerge
from the course of events, a new mystery
rises to destroy it. The story deals with
an innocent who has sinned and who is
then confronted by all the devices of the
powers of darkness.
The Story:
Francis was born at the Convent of
the Holy Lime-Tree in Prussia, at the
very moment that his father lay dying.
At Kreuzberg, the abbess of the
Cistercian convent made him her pupil. When
he was sixteen he became a monk at the
Capuchin convent in Konigswald and
took the name of Medardus.
Medardus was put in charge of the
relics of the convent. Among them was
a strange elixir. Legend said that all who
drank of the potion would belong to the
devil, and that if two persons drank of
it, they would share the same thoughts
and desires but secretly wish to destroy
each other.
On St. Anthony's Day Medardus
preached a sermon about the elixir.
While he was talking he saw in the
audience a painter whom he had once
seen at the Convent of the Holy Lime-
Tree. The sight disturbed him so much
that he began to rave like a madman.
Later, in an attempt to regain his full
senses, he drank some of the elixir.
One day, during the confessional a
beautiful woman, in appearance exactly
like a painting of St. Rosalia, told
Medardus that she loved him, and then
left. Medardus determined to run away
to find her. Before he could escape from
the convent, however, Prior Leonardus
sent him on an errand to Rome.
On the way to Rome Medardus saw
an officer leaning over a precipice. When
Medardus tried to save him, the officer
fell over the ledge. Just then a page
appeared and told Medardus that his
disguise was very good. Medardus, hardly
knowing what he did, went to the nearby
castle, where he met an old man, Rein-
hold, who seemed to be expecting him.
Reinhold told him that Baron von F ,
the owner of the castle, had a son, Her-
mogen, and a daughter, Aurelia, by an
Italian wife who later died. The baron
880

had then married Euphemia, a sinister
woman who was carrying on an affair
with Count Victorin, an ex-suitor. The
count was in the habit of disguising
himself in order to gain entrance to the
castle.
Medardus became convinced that he
was Victorin. When he saw that Aurelia
was the mysterious lady who looked like
St. Rosalia, he felt that fate was guiding
him. He tried to approach Aurelia, but
she ran away. Because Hermogen had
witnessed the incident, Medardus killed
him. As Medardus fled from the castle,
he heard that Euphemia was dying of a
poison she had intended for him. Taking
refuge in the woods, Medardus cut off
his beard and changed into clothes that
Victorin's page had brought him.
When Medardus arrived in Franken-
burg, he recognized the painter who had
disturbed his sermon on St. Anthony's
Day. After he had tried to kill the man
with a stiletto, Medardus was rescued
from an angry mob by Pietro Belcampo,
an odd hairdresser.
At the forest house of the Prince von
Rosenthurm, Medardus met a monk who
looked like him and who drank some of
his elixir. Medardus later went to the
castle, where the court physician showed
him a picture of a person who again
looked just like him. The man was
Francesco, who, together with a strange
painter, had been brought to the court
by the prince's brother, the Duke of
Neuenburg. The duke had become
engaged to an Italian countess and married
her, but on their wedding night the duke
had been found murdered by a stiletto
wound. The bride claimed, however, that
the groom had come to the bridal
chamber without a light, consummated the
marriage, and left. The painter, accused
of the murder, escaped, and the countess
went to live in a distant castle.
Francesco was engaged to the sister of
the princess. During the marriage
ceremony the painter reappeared. Francesco,
trying to kill the painter with a stiletto,
fainted. The next day he left, still
unwed. It was later learned that the Italian
countess had given birth to a son named
Victorin. Francesco's intended bride left
to become the abbess at Kreuzberg.
Hearing these tales, Medardus realized
that Francesco must be his father. At a
party that night Medardus was astonished
to see that the princess was accompanied
by Aurelia. When Aurelia recognized
him, he was charged with the murder of
Hermogen and imprisoned. Later he was
released because his double, a mad monk
who greatly resembled him, had
confessed to the crime. Medardus also
learned that he and Victorin were
stepbrothers.
Medardus became engaged to Aurelia.
On the day that he was to marry her he
saw the mad monk being taken to the
scaffold. Suddenly Medardus began to
rave. In his frenzy he stabbed Aurelia,
rescued the monk from the cart, and
escaped into the woods. When he
regained consciousness he found himself,
dressed as a monk, in an Italian
madhouse. He had been taken there by
Belcampo, the hairdresser, who said that
he had found Medardus in the woods,
naked, with a monk's robe lying beside
him.
Medardus went next to a Capuchin
convent near Rome. While there, he
learned that Aurelia was alive. He also
saw a strange book that a mysterious
painter left at the convent. It contained
sketches of paintings Medardus had seen
at the Convent of the Holy Lime-Tree
and the history of the artist. He was
Francesco, a painter who had drunk of
St. Anthony's elixir.
Among his works, according to the
account, was a painting of the martyrdom
of St. Rosalia. One day he had met a
woman who looked just like the
painting. They married, but his wife died
soon after their son was born. Then
Francesco, accused of sorcery, fled with
his child, whom he nourished on the
elixir. From Francesco's son the family
branched out and included the Princess
von Rosenthurm, the abbess, the first
881

Baroness von F , Euphemia, and Vic-
torin.
Medardus, now repenting his past,
punished himself so much that he became
known to the Pope, who spoke of making
the monk his confessor. Having incurred
the antagonism of the papal confessor in
this manner, Medardus, realizing that his
life was in danger, left Rome.
He returned to the Cistercian
monastery and saw Prior Leonardus, who said
that Victorin had come there, claimed to
be Medardus, and then disappeared. By
piecing together the strange sequences
of events, Medardus and Leonardus
realized that Medardus and Victorin, two
brothers who had drunk of the elixir, had
tried to destroy each other.
Leonardus also told Medardus that
Aurelia was to become a nun that day,
taking the conventual name of Rosalia.
This news so disturbed Medardus that
while Aurelia was taking her vows he had
an impulse to stab her, but after ap
inward struggle he conquered his demon
and had peace in his soul. Suddenly
there was a disturbance in the church.
Medardus' double, dressed in rags, ran
to the altar, shouted that Aurelia was
his intended bride, stabbed her in the
heart, and escaped. Medardus rushed to
Aurelia's side. Close by he saw the
mysterious painter, who said that Medardus'
trials would soon end. Aurelia regained
consciousness, told Medardus that he and
she were destined to expiate the guilt of
their family, and then died. The people
in the church, having seen the painter
emerge from a picture over the altar,
believed that a miracle had occurred; they
regarded Aurelia, now called Rosalia, as
a saint.
Medardus, having fully recovered,
could clearly tell truth from falsehood,
and from Leonardus and the abbess he
received forgiveness for his past deeds.
Leonardus then asked him to commit his
life story to writing. Having completed
this task, he was awaiting the time when
he would join Aurelia in Heaven.
Father Spiridion, the librarian of the
Capuchin monastery at Konigswald,
appended a note to Medardus' manuscript.
He wrote that one night, hearing strange
sounds from Medardus' cell, he
investigated and saw a tall man who said that
the hour of fulfillment would come soon.
Then Medardus died, one year to the
minute from the time of Aurelia's death.
Father Spiridion added that die painting
of St. Rosalia, which the monastery had
acquired, bore, on the day of Medardus'
funeral, a wreath of roses. The wreath
had been put there by Pietro Belcampo,
who later joined the order and became
Brother Peter.
882

THE DEVOTION OF THE CROSS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pedro Calder6n de la Barca Q600-16S
Type of plot: Religious tragedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Siena, Italy
First presented: c. 1633
Principal characters:
Eusebio, a foundling
Julia, his sister
Lisardo, his brother
Curcio, their father
Gil, a peasant
Menga, a peasant woman
Alberto, a priest
Critique:
To understand a religious play like
The Devotion of the Cross, one must
always keep in mind that Spain was, and
still is, a deeply religious nation, and
that Calderon most truly expressed its
feelings and ideas in the seventeenth
century. The most popular of Spanish
playwrights after the death of Lope de Vega
in 1635, he wrote both secular and
religious dramas until he took holy orders
in 1651. From that time until his death
he wrote only religious plays, including
two Corpus Christi plays a year. The
Devotion of the Cross is one of his early
works. Since the characters and the
setting are Italian, some critics assign it to
the period when he was a soldier in Italy.
Another version called The Cross in the
Sepulchre has been found in a rare
"suelta," or play printed separately,
undated but signed "Ivan de Alarcon." Its
discoverer believes that Calderon used it
as a basis for his improved version. Val-
buena Prat, on the other hand, wonders
whether it may be a later version of Cal-
deron's play, done by a less skilled
dramatist. Another version of it, assigned—as
was practically every other unclaimed
play during the Golden Age—to Lope de
Vega, can be found in a collection dated
1634. All that is definite is that Calder5n
claimed it under its present title in his
Primer a Parte of 1636. The plot is less
complicated than is usual in Calderon's
work.
The Story:
Two rustics, Gil and Menga, were
looking for a lost donkey when they spied
two men preparing to fight a duel. One
was Lisardo, angry that anyone as
lowborn as Eusebio should aspire to marry
his sister Julia.
Eusebio explained by telling a
miraculous story. He had been one of two
infants abandoned beneath a wayside cross.
Taken home by a shepherd, the famished
baby bit the breast of his foster mother,
who threw the child into a well where
his rescuers found him floating safely
with arms crossed. Later the house in
which he was living burned, but the fire
broke out on the Day of the Cross, and
once more he survived unharmed. More
recently, in a shipwreck, he had floated to
safety on a raft of two crossed planks.
He explained that since he had obviously
acquired nobility by devotion to the cross,
he deserved the girl. Lisardo denied the
claim and they fought. Again nothing
could harm Eusebio. As Lisardo lay
dying of his wound, he begged in the
name of the cross for Eusebio to save
him. The amazed peasants reported that
they had seen Eusebio pick up his dying
enemy and carry him to a convent.
Back in Siena, Julia was fearful of her
father's discovery of letters she had
received from Eusebio. When her lover
appeared, wanting to take her away with
him before she learned about her
brother's death, her father's arrival forced him

to hide and listen to Curcio as he voiced
his long-held suspicions of his wife's
infidelity. Curcio was interrupted by the
arrival of four peasants carrying the body
of Lisardo. Julia, grieving, ordered the
killer out of her life forever.
Eusebio, broken-hearted, turned
bandit and through his cruelty rose to
command a troop of outlaws. Only captives
mentioning the cross escaped death at
his hands. One day a bullet-creased
prisoner was brought in carrying a volume
titled Miracles of the Cross. He was
Father Alberto, and in gratitude for
having his life spared the priest promised
Eusebio that he would be on hand to
hear the bandit's last confession.
News arrived that Lisardo's father,
having put Julia into a convent, was
pursuing Eusebio with soldiers. Scorning
danger, Eusebio let his passion for Julia
take him to the convent, where he found
the girl in bed. Before he could take
her, he saw on her breast the same sign
of the cross that was on his own skin.
The mark told him that she had been the
other child left beside the cross, his
sister, and so he ran away. Julia, who had
tried to fight him off in her cell, now
pursued him in masculine attire; she did not
know why he refused to love her.
When the soldiers overtook him,
Curcio wounded Eusebi#o fatally. Then the
cross on the young man's body revealed
to Curcio that he had slain his own son,
exposed with his twin sister because of
the father's baseless suspicions of his
wife's unfaithfulness.
With his dying breath, Eusebio called
for Father Alberto. Four shepherds
arrived to bury his body. The priest also
appeared as he had promised. He
explained that because of God's pleasure in
Eusebio's devotion to the cross, his soul
had been left in his body long enough for
him to make his confession and be
redeemed.
884

LE DIABLE BOITEUX
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alain Rene* Le Sage (1668-1747)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: Madrid
First published: 1707
Principal characters:
Don Cleophas Leandro Perez Zambullo, a student
Asmodeus, the demon in the bottle
Don Pedro de Escolano, a Spanish nobleman
Donna Seraphina, his daughter
Critique:
Le Sage is chiefly remembered today
for his long picaresque novel, Gil Bias
(1715-1735), but his early publication
of Le Diable boiteux (Asmodeus; or, The
Devil on Two Sticks*), with its extensive
revision and enlargement in 1725, created
far more excitement in his own day and
is still an interesting example of the early
realistic novel of manners. As he did in
most of his prose fiction, Le Sage worked
from a Spanish original in this work,
borrowing his title and some of the early
incidents from El Diablo Cojuelo (1641),
by Luis Velez de Guevara. Once started,
however, Le Sage drew further and
further away from his Spanish beginnings
and thereby entertained his
contemporaries by introducing a wealth of
anecdotes and reminiscences, portraits and
sketches of some of the most prominent
of Parisian personages, under the guise
of Spanish names. His satire is trenchant
and ironical, though never gross or
vulgar. Le Sage saw humanity with a sharp
and critical eye, and he was particularly
successful in his witty portrayals of
authors, actors, lawyers, the social world,
and "persons of quality." Like most
picaresque fiction, the novel is loosely
plotted; within a central narrative
concerning the fortunes of Don Cleophas, a
young Spanish cavalier, Le Sage
introduced scores of other tales, ranging from
brief summaries of a few sentences to
short stories running for several pages or
chapters. But the major plot remains in
evidence throughout the book, and the
author concludes his tale with a suitably
romantic ending.
The Story:
On a dark October night in Madrid,
Don Cleophas Leandro Perez Zambullo,
a student of Alcala, was in dreadful
trouble. While visiting Donna Thomasa, his
inamorata, in her apartment, three or four
hired bravos set upon him, and when he
lost his sword in the ensuing struggle, he
was forced to take flight over the rooftops
of the neighboring houses. Spying a light
in a garret, he entered through a window
and discovered an empty room furnished
with all manner of a magician's strange
gear. As he was taking stock of the place,
he heard a sigh. Soon he realized that he
was being addressed by a demon in a
bottle. To the student's questionings the
spirit replied that he was neither Lucifer,
Uriel, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Belphegor,
nor Ashtaroth, but Asmodeus, the Devil
on Two Sticks, who always befriended
hapless lovers.
Welcoming the help of this creature,
Cleophas broke the vial, and out tumbled
a monstrous dwarf, with the legs of a
goat, a stature of less than three feet, and
a grotesque and grimacing face. Half
concealed by extraordinary clothing and a
curiously embroidered white satin cloak
were the two crutches on which the dwarf
hobbled about.
Since Cleophas was eager to escape his
pursuers and Asmodeus wished to avoid
hjis captor, the magician, the two did not
885

linger in the attic. Cleophas grasped the
edge of the demon's cloak, and off they
flew into the sky over Madrid. For the
remainder of their association together,
Asmodeus entertained his companion
with views of all that was happening in
the city, explaining the circumstances and
characteristics of those into whose houses
they looked.
At first they peered into the houses
immediately beneath them. Asmodeus
showed Cleophas some ridiculous views
of a coquette and her artifices, a
nobleman, a poet, and an alchemist. At last
they came to a mansion where cavaliers
and their ladies were celebrating a
wedding. The demon proceeded to tell the
story of the Count de Belflor and Leonora
de Cespedes.
The Count de Belflor, a gallant of the
court, fell in love with Leonora de
Cespedes and wished to make her his
mistress. By guile, the gift of a well-filled
purse, and the promise of another
thousand pistoles when he had accomplished
his design, he secured the aid of her
duenna, Marcella, who at last prevailed
on the girl to admit the young nobleman
to her chamber at night. One morning, as
the count was making a hasty departure,
for the dawn was breaking, he slipped
and fell while descending the silken
ladder lowered from Leonora's bedchamber,
and the noise awakened Don Luis de
Cespedes, her father, who slept in the
room above. Uncovering the truth and
affronted by this stain upon his family
honor, the old don confronted his
daughter's lover. The count offered to provide
for Don Pedro, the son of the insulted
father, but refused to marry the daughter,
giving as his false excuse a marriage
which the king had already arranged for
the young courtier.
Later, after reading a reproachful letter
written by Leonora, the count was moved
to repentance. About the same time Don
Pedro played truant from his studies at
Alcala to pay court to an unknown young
beauty whom he was meeting in secret.
In a street brawl his life was saved by the
count, who happened to be passing by.
The count asked the young man to go
with him to act as a watchman and guard
while Belflor had an interview with
Leonora. The truth being revealed when Don
Luis confronted his son, the count asked
for the hand of Leonora and bestowed
that of his sister, Donna Eugenia, on his
new friend and brother. Don Pedro was
overjoyed when he in turn discovered
that his secret love was the sister of the
Count de Belflor. The two couples were
married, and Cleophas, guided by the
demon, witnessed the festivities of their
double wedding. Only Marcella, the
treacherous duenna, had no part in the
mirth; Don Luis sent her to a nunnery
where she could spend her ill-gotten
pistoles and prayers to win pardon for her
wickedness.
Directing Cleophas' attention to other
homes in the city, Asmodeus showed him
the plight of an impoverished marquis, a
plagiarizing author, a procurer of young
men for rich widows, and a printer of
anti-religious books. At Cleophas' request,
the dwarf secured revenge for his mortal
companion on the faithless Donna Tho-
masa. As she was entertaining the assassins
she had hired to attack Cleophas,
Asmodeus put the men into a jealous rage
over her and set them to fighting. So great
was the disturbance they caused that
neighbors summoned the police, who on
their arrival found two of the men slain.
The assassins were thrown into the city
dungeon and Donna Thomasa was
eventually sentenced to be transported to the
colonies. Thus proud Cleophas had his
revenge.
Next, Asmodeus revealed the
circumstances of the wretches in the nearby
prison and madhouse. Poisoners, assassins,
servants falsely accused and servants
deserving imprisonment, a dishonest
surgeon, and others were all displayed in
their cells. At the madhouse, Cleophas
saw political and religious fanatics, as
well as those maddened by jealousy,
grief, and the ingratitude of their
relatives. Asmodeus also took the opportunity
886

of showing Cleophas other people who
should have been confined in an insane
asylum, for their brains were addled by
avarice, egotism, and the uncontrollable
pangs of love.
Suddenly from their vantage point
above the city, the two glimpsed a raging
fire in a house beneath them. To
everyone's horror, the beautiful Donna Sera-
phina, daughter of Don Pedro de Esco-
lano, was trapped in an upstairs room.
Asmodeus, at the entreaties of Cleophas,
assumed the shape and appearance of the
young student and brought the girl out
of the burning building safely. After the
rescue Asmodeus told Cleophas that he
had suddenly decided upon a grand
design: the young man was ultimately to
marry the lovely Donna Seraphina, whose
noble father already believed himself
deeply indebted to the handsome young
cavalier.
Asmodeus continued this strange tour
of Madrid with portrayals of the unre-
vealed secrets of those buried in the
tombs of a churchyard and with glimpses
of bedside death scenes of true grief,
avarice, jealousy, and self-seeking. For
contrast, he then told Cleophas a long
and circumstantial tale of true friendship
and love.
Having slain his false wife's lover,
Don Juan de Zarata, a gallant of Toledo,
fled to Valencia. Near the outskirts of
that city he stopped a duel between Don
Alvaro Ponzo and Don Fabricio de Men-
doza, rivals for the hand of the beautiful
young widow, Donna Theodora de Ci-
fuentes. On the advice of Don Juan, the
lady was allowed to choose between her
suitors; her choice was Don Fabricio.
Through that meeting the young Toledan
and Don Fabricio became inseparable
companions. The latter, however, coulcj
not understand his friend's seeming
indifference to the charms of Donna
Theodora. What he did not suspect was that
the Toledan had been greatly attracted
to the lady and she to him, but that out
of regard for friendship Don Juan made
every effort to repress his passion.
Unhappy in her own unrealized love for Don
Juan, the lady finally decided to return
to her estate at Villareal. When the
Toledan confessed the truth to Don Fabricio,
that gentleman was so moved by Don
Juan's delicacy of feeling that he vowed
no rivalry in love could ever part them.
Meanwhile, Donna Theodora had been
kidnapped by Don Alvaro's ruffians and
put on a vessel bound for Sardinia. Don
Fabricio and Don Juan set out in pursuit,
but the ship on which they sailed was
overtaken by Tunisian pirates and the
two were made prisoners. Separated in
their captivity, they were in despair. Don
Juan, sold to the Dey of Algiers, was
made a gardener. At length the dey,
impressed by the bearing and courtesy of his
Christian slave, made him his confidant.
The dey had in his harem a Spanish lady
whose grief appeared inconsolable; he
asked Don Juan to speak to her as a
countryman and assure her of her master's
tender regard. To Don Juan's surprise,
the lady proved to be Donna Theodora,
also taken captive when her abductors
were killed by Algerian pirates.
From that time on Don Juan planned
to deliver Donna Theodora from her
captivity, and at last, aided by an unknown
accomplice, they made their escape. Their
unknown benefactor turned out to be
Don Fabricio, who had been rescued
aboard a French privateer. Mistaking
Don Juan for the false Don Alvaro, Don
Fabricio stabbed his friend and then,
discovering his error, plunged his sword into
his own breast. The condition of Don
Fabricio grew worse and he died soon
after the arrival of the fugitives in Spain.
Torn between their mutual love and
grief for their friend, Donna Theodora
and Don Juan were at last free to marry.
A short time later Don Juan was mortally
injured in a fall from his horse. Half mad
with grief, Donna Theodora would soon
follow him to the grave.
At length the sleeping city awoke.
Protesting that he was not weary, Cleophas
urged the Uttle demon to let him see
more. Asmodeus directed his glance to
887

the activities in the streets of beggars,
artisans, a miser, a philosopher. Then
they came upon the throngs of people
gathering for the king's levee: faithless
and forgetful noblemen, those seeking
their own good fortune, gamblers, an
honest magistrate, and others awaited their
turn to appear before the king. But
Cleophas could not be shown into the king's
presence, since the royal cabinet, as As-
modeus carefully explained, was under
the exclusive control of other devils.
For diversion, Asmodeus took Cleophas
to see the arrival of ransomed slaves at
the Monastery of Mercy. Each captive
had his own fears and hopes to realize,
and Asmodeus recounted the past and
future of scores of these wretches. A few
met with happy circumstances upon
gaining their freedom, but most of them
found grief, loneliness, and
disappointment for their reward.
At that point Asmodeus became aware
that his master, the magician, had missed
him, and he departed swiftly after
making the student promise that he would
never reveal to mortal ears all that he had
seen and overheard that night.
Returned to his own apartment,
Cleophas sank into a deep slumber that lasted
a day and a night. When he awoke, he
went to call on Donna Seraphina, where
he was welcomed by the grateful Don
Pedro, her father. During a later visit in
the house where he was now an honored
guest, Cleophas confessed that it was not
he who had rescued the girl from the
flames. Although overcome by
astonishment, Don Pedro waved the explanation
aside. After all, it was at Cleophas'
insistence that Donna Seraphina had been
brought from the blazing house
unharmed. A few weeks later the wedding
of Donna Seraphina and Cleophas was
celebrated with much magnificence, and
the happy bridegroom never had occasion
to regret the night of freedom he had
provided for the devil on two sticks.
888

DIALOGUE DES HEROS DE ROMAN
Type of work: Literary criticism in the form of satiric dialogue
Author: Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636-1711)
First published: 1713
Principal characters:
Minos,
Pluto,
Rh ADAM ANTHU S,
Diogenes, and
Mercury, judges of the heroes
Cyrus,
Tamyris,
horattus cocles,
Clelie,
Brutus,
Sapho, and
Faramond, heroes and heroines of French romances
The French literary scene of the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries was blessed with the corrective
vigorous activity of two writers endowed with
unsurpassed wit and common
sense—Moliere and Boileau. It was an age that
desperately needed the scourge of satire. Life
and letters were thoroughly corrupt; the
topmost level of society rode like a gaudy,
grinning monkey on the back of the
miserable, millipedic populace, and the
amusements of the idle betrayed clearly their
innocent or deliberate unawareness of
reality and the bizarre lengths to which
they were willing to go in their futile
attempt to conquer an enormous
boredom.
One of their most fantastic solitary
diversions was the writing and reading of
romantic novels that often ran to a dozen
or more volumes. Beginning with Honor6
d'Urfe's Astree (1607-1627), this papier-
mache* fantasy went through a tortuous
evolution in de Gomberville's La Carithee
(1621) and Polexandre (1629-1637),
Jean Desmarets* Ariane (1623), La Cal-
prenede's Cassandre (1642-1650), Cleo-
pdtre (1647-1658), and Faramond (1661-
1670), and, finally, reached an apogee
in the four romances of Mademoiselle
Madeleine de Scudery, darling of the
famous H6tel de Ramboullet salon before
establishing her own popular Saturday
nights. These novels probably constitute
the most valueless literature of all rime.
Mile, de Scudery insisted that the
language of her characters (like that of the
dramatists Racine and Corneille)
reproduce exactly the language of society, a
carefully cultivated, artificial speech
striving for novelty and preciosity and
inevitably tumbling into absurdity. It is
precisely this affectation that Moliere made
such hilarious fun of in his farce, Les
Precieuses Ridicules (1659), but
apparently the institution was so
well-established and so satisfying to its
practitioners that not even the blows of the great
Moliere could strike it down. Boileau
soon joined his friend in the attack,
composing in 1664 his Dialogue des hews de
roman, which he enjoyed reciting with
great zest and elaborate mimicry to his
friends. However, as he says in the
preface to his first published version, he was
unwilling to publish or even to circulate
his satire in manuscript while Mile, de
Scudery was still alive, "since she was
after all a woman of considerable merit
and honor even if her writing did not
reflect those attributes." Even after her
death, the satire would probably not have
appeared in print with Boileau's blessing
had not a pirated version been published
anonymously in Prussia in 1687. Boileau's
devoted young friend Brossette, who
discovered and reported the piracy to him
in 1704, urged him to add this to the
889

nine satires which had already
contributed to his fame. Although Madame de
Lafayette had established a basis for a
change to the modern novel of sentiment
with La Princesse de Cleves in 1678,
there was still a large target of fantasy-
romance for Boileau's Dialogue, since
romantic literary faddism had spread not
only across France but in England as
well. Addison recommended Faramond
and Cassandre to the readers of the
Spectator Papers; multi-volume translations
found a fascinated public; imitations
(such as Aphra Behn's The Young King)
rolled off the presses, and stage
adaptations like Dry den's Almanzor and Alma-
hide (1670-1672) hastened the vogue of
neo-classic tragedy.
It is impossible to present in a short
space any satisfactory vision of the
enormous tedium of the seventeenth-century
French romances. Even Desmarets'
Ariane, remarkable for its unusual
brevity, runs to well over a thousand pages.
Shepherds, guided by gods and goddesses,
make fleshless love in stilted prose and
verse; characters from Greek, Roman, and
Celtic tradition roam across fairy
wonderlands in pursuit of or in escape from
monsters or powerful enemies in disguise.
Elaborate allegorical dreams, involuted
love letters, intensely polite conversations,
portraits in enameled prose, and grandiose
heraldry and tournaments pad out
complex, disorganized plot lines that make
Italian opera classically simple by
comparison. Boileau declared himself unable
to stomach "their precious affectation of
language, frivolous and pointless
conversations, flattering portraits at every turn,
of obviously mediocre persons, endless
verbiage about love leading nowhere."
But the leading practitioner of that
romantic nonsense, Mile, de Scudery,
gained an astonishing international fame
—gifts from the Queen of Sweden,
membership in the Italian academy, homage
from English writers, as well as pensions
from Cardinal Mazarin and the King of
France.
Witty and polished conversation in
writing as well as in society was a favorite
seventeenth-century art, witness Mile, de
Scud6ry's own ten volumes of model
Conversations. For this reason Boileau,
like many another critic of his day,
adopted the dialogue: "I have taken as a
point of departure in this attack on the
novel . . . the manner of Lucian" (the
greatest of the second-century Sophists,
who also used humor and buffoonery to
attack manners and ideas of his time).
Although Boileau says that this is "the
least frivolous work to issue from my
pen," the Dialogue is hilarious good fun.
Like Lucian, he sets his scene in Hades.
Minos comes running frantically to Pluto
with a report that hell has suddenly
become populated with idiots afflicted with
a "fury to talk ... a certain language
they call gallantry":
"One even assured me that this
pestilent gallantry had infected all the
infernal countries and even the Elysian
fields so that the heroes and, above all,
the heroines who live there today are
the most foolish people in the world,
thanks to certain authors who have
taught them that fine language and
have made them bashful lovers.'
As Pluto resolves to examine these
strange people, Rhadamanthus arrives
with the news that the fiercest criminals
in Hades—Prometheus, Tantalus, Ixion,
and Sisyphus—have revolted. While
preparations are being made for war,
Diogenes arrives to contribute his walking
stick to the arsenal. He warns Pluto not
to expect much help from the newly
arrived heroes: "They are a troop of
madmen . . . I've never seen anything so
effeminate and gallant!" But Pluto, eager
for heroic aid, summons them. He is
delighted when the first hero turns out to
be the great Cyrus, the Persian warrior-
king who had conquered the Medes and
ravaged more than half the world. But
his delight quickly turns to dismay when
he learns that Cyrus has adopted the
[Scud6rian] name of Artimin and is
engaged in an eternal quest to find his
890

kidnapped princess, though he fears that
even if he finds her she will not return
to him because he is so unworthy. "Chase
away this rain-bucket, this great sobber!"
cries Pluto as he turns to welcome Ta-
myris, savage queen of the Massagetes
who had plunged the great Cyrus' head
into a bucket of human blood. Tamyris,
however, is now distraught because she
has lost the madrigal which she had
composed to woo Cyrus. Next comes Horatius
Codes, the Roman warrior who alone
had held off an entire army at the bridge.
He is now a shepherd troubadour
singing a song he had made from an echo for
Clelie. 'The nut! the nut!" cries Pluto,
dismissing him; "to amuse himself with
such trifles he must have entirely lost
his senses!"
The mad parade continues. Clelie,
once the audacious hero of Titus Livius,
is now completely absorbed with the map
of Tendre-Land, tracing the path from
Constant Love along Inclination River,
through Billet Doux and Sincerity to
New Amity. Lucretia, who once killed to
defend her chastity, now babbles of love;
and Brutus, savior of Rome against the
Tarquins, also prattles of love. Diogenes
tries unsuccessfully to explain to Pluto:
"Lucretia who is in love with and
loved by Brutus says to him in
transposed words: 'How sweet it would be
to love, if one loved always! But alas,
there are no eternal loves/ And Brutus
answers: 'Permit me to love, marvel of
our days. You will see that one can
have eternal loves/ "
To which Pluto shouts, "By these
bagatelles I recognize that they're
possessed with infinite folly. Chase them
away!" Then Mile, de Scud6ry herself
arrives in the person of Sapho, once a
famous Lesbian, now a poser of elaborate
parlor-game questions on friendship:
"Define for me what a tender heart is,
what tenderness in friendship, tenderness
in love, tenderness of inclination, and
tenderness of passion." As indignant Pluto
is about to send for the Fury Tisiphone,
the "impertinent wench" subjects him to
a ridiculous, flattering character sketch of
that deadly harridan.
At last, after several more of these
impossible heroes of the novel have passed
in review, Mercury (one of the most
frequently invoked gods of the romance)
arrives to denounce them all as fakers.
He has brought with him a Frenchman
who identifies them as the common
bourgeoisie of his quarter. Pluto wrathfully
summons all the demons and furies of
hell to skin alive these chimerical heroes.
"The last act of the comedy is over!" he
cries as the heroes call in vain upon the
authors who created them.
Thus Boileau, whose epitaph rightly
names him the "not unequal rival of
Horace," redeemed the reputation of the
French mind for common sense, clarity,
and wit from one of the greatest threats
in France's literary history.
891

THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO
Type of work: Philosophical dialogues
Author: Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Time: About 400 B.C.
Locale: Greece, principally Athens
First transcribed: c. 387-347 B.C.
Principal personages:
Socrates, the Athenian philosopher
Gorgias, a Sophist
Protagoras, a Sophist
Crito, Socrates' contemporary, an aged friend
Phaedrus, a defender of rhetoric
Aristophanes, a poet and playwright
Theaetetus, hero of the battle of Corinth
Parmenides, the philosopher from Elea
Philebus, a hedonist
Timaeus, a philosopher and statesman
Plato, Socrates' pupil
The Platonic Dialogues rank with the
extant works of Aristotle as the most
important collection of philosophical works
so far produced in the Western world.
Although Plato's influence is partly due
to the fact that his works have survived,
unlike many writings of earlier Greek
philosophers, and also to the fact that at
various times in the history of the
Christian church his ideas have been utilized
in one form or another in the process of
constructing a Christian
theology—although Aristotle's influence in this
respect has been greater—the principal
cause of his past and present effect on
human thought is the quality of his
work.
The distinctive character of Platonic
thought finds adequate expression in the
dialogue form. Although Plato, like all
philosophers, had his favored
perspectives from which he interpreted and,
consequently, saw the world, he realized
better than most philosophers that
philosophy is more an activity of the mind
than the product of an investigation.
This is not to say that philosophy does
not, in some legitimate sense, illuminate
the world; it means that in the process
of making sense out of experience the
philosopher is restless: no one way of
clarifying an idea or a view is entirely
satisfactory, and there is always much to
be said for some alternative mode of
explanation. When distinctive Platonic
conceptions finally become clear, they do
so against a background of penetrating
discussion by means of which alternative
ideas are explored for their own values
and made to complement the conception
which Plato finally endorses. As an
instrument for presenting the critical point
counterpoint of ideas, the dialogue is
ideal; and as a character in control of
the general course and quality of the dis-
cussion, Socrates is unsurpassed.
Socrates was Plato's teacher, and it
was probably out of respect for Socrates
the man and philosopher that Plato first
considered using him as the central
disputant in his dialogues. Reflection must
have enforced his decision, for Socrates
was important more for his method than
for his fixed ideas, more for his value as
a philosophical irritant than as a source
of enduring wisdom. The Socratic method
is often described as a question-answer
method designed to bring out the
contradictions and omissions in the
philosophical views of others; but it is better
understood as a clever technique for so
playing upon the ambiguities of claims
as to lead others into changing their use
of terms and, hence, into apparent in-
892

consistency.
The question concerning the extent to
which Plato uses the dialogues to record
the ideas of Socrates and the extent to
which he uses Socrates as a proponent of
his own ideas will probably never be
conclusively answered. The question is, of
course, historical; philosophically
speaking, it makes no difference whose ideas
find their way into the dialogues. A
fairly safe assumption is that Socrates
emphasized the importance of
philosophical problems of value, knowledge, and
philosophy itself. He probably did argue
that it is important to know oneself, that
the admission of one's own ignorance is
a kind of wisdom possessed by few men,
and that virtue is knowledge.
Certainly Socrates must have had a
devotion to his calling as philosopher and
critic: no man who regarded philosophy
as a game would have remained in Athens
to face the charge that by philosophy he
had corrupted the youth of Athens, nor
would he have refused a chance to escape
after having been condemned to death.
The courage and integrity of Socrates are
recorded with poignant power in the
Apology, the dialogue in which Socrates
defends himself and philosophy against
the charges brought against nim; the
Crito, in which Socrates refuses to escape
from prison: and the Phaedof in which
Socrates discusses the immortality of the
soul before he drinks the hemlock poison
and dies.
Of the ideas presented in the dialogues,
perhaps none is more important than
Plato's theory of Ideas or Forms. This
idea is most clearly expressed in the
Republic Cq.v.), the dialogue in which the
problem of discovering the nature of
justice in man is resolved by considering
the nature of justice in the state. Plato
distinguished between particular things,
the objects we experience in our daily
living, and the characters that things
have, or could have. Goodness, truth,
beauty, and other universal characters-
properties that can affect a number of
individual objects—are eternal,
changeless, beautiful, and the source of all
knowledge. Although some critics have
claimed that Plato was speaking
metaphorically when he talked, through
Socrates, about the reality of the Forms,
speaking as if they enjoyed a separate
existence, the dialogues leave the
impression that Plato considered the Forms
(Ideas) to be actually existing, in some
sense peculiar to themselves, as universals
or prototypes which things may or may
not exemplify.
If one reviews, however inadequately,
the range of questions and tentative
answers to be found in the dialogues, a bare
inkling of Plato's power as a philosopher
is then realized. But the dialogues must
be read before the depth of Plato's
speculative mind and the skill of his dialectic
can be appreciated. Furthermore, only a
reading of the dialogues can convey
Plato's charm, wit, and range of
sympathy. Whether the final result may be
in good part attributed to Socrates as
Plato's inspiring teacher is not important.
Socrates as the subject and Plato as the
writer (and philosopher—in all
probability more creative than Socrates)
combine to leave us with an unforgettable
image of the Hellenistic mind.
Although many of the dialogues
concern themselves with more than one
question, and although definitive answers
are infrequent so that discussions
centering about a certain subject may crop up
in a number of different dialogues, it
may be helpful to indicate the central
problems and conclusions of the
dialogues:
Channides centers about the question,
"What is temperance?" After criticizing
a number of answers, and without finally
answering the question, Socrates
emphasizes the point that temperance
involves knowledge. Lysis and Laches
consider, respectively, the questions, "What
is friendship?" and "What is courage?"
The former discussion brings out the
difficulty of the question and of
resolving conflicts of values: the latter
distinguishes courage from a mere facing of
893

danger and makes the point that courage,
as one of the virtues, is a kind of
knowledge involving willingness to act for the
good. The Ion exhibits Socratic irony at
work on a rhapsode who is proud of his
skill in the recitation of poetry. Socrates
argues that poetry is the result of
inspiration, a kind of divine madness. In
the Protagoras Socrates identifies virtue
and knowledge, insisting that no one
chooses evil except through ignorance.
One of a number of attacks of the
Sophistical art of fighting with words is
contained in the Euthydemus.
In the Meno the philosopher Socrates
and his companions wonder whether
virtue can be taught. The doctrine that
ideas are implanted in the soul before
birth is demonstrated by leading a slave
boy into making the correct answers to
some problems in geometry. At first it
seems that since virtue is a good and
goodness is knowledge, virtue can be
taught. But since there are no teachers
of virtue, it cannot be taught; and, in any
case, since virtue involves right opinion,
it is not teachable.
'What is piety?" is the question of the
Euthyphro. Euthyphro's idea that piety
is whatever is pleasing to the gods is
shown to be inadequate.
The Apology is the most effective
portrait of Socrates in a practical situation.
No moment in his life had graver
consequences than the trial resulting from
the charge that he had corrupted the
youth of Athens by his teachings, yet
Socrates continued to be himself, to argue
dialectically, and to reaffirm his love of
wisdom and virtue. He pictured himself
as a gadfly, stinging the Athenians out
of their intellectual arrogance. He argued
that he would not corrupt anyone
voluntarily, for to corrupt those about him
would be to create evil that might harm
him.
Socrates is shown as a respecter of the
law in the Crito; he refuses to escape
after having been pronounced guilty. In
the Phaedo he argues that the
philosopher seeks death because his whole aim
in life is to separate the soul from the
body. He argues for the immortality of
the soul by saying that opposites are
generated from opposites; therefore, life
is generated from death. Also, the soul
is by its very nature the principle of life;
hence, it cannot itself die.
The dialogue Greater Hippias does not
settle the question, "What is beauty?"
but it does show, as Socrates points out,
that "All that is beautiful is difficult."
The subject of love is considered from
various philosophic perspectives in the
Symposium, culminating in the
conception of the highest love as the love of
the good, the beautiful, and the true.
Gorgias begins with a discussion of the
art of rhetoric, and proceeds to the
development of the familiar Socratic ideas
that it is better to suffer evil than to do
it, and it is better to be punished for
evil-doing than to escape punishment.
The Parmenides is a fascinating
technical argument concerning various logical
puzzles about the one and the many. It
contains some criticism of Plato's theory
of Ideas. Plato's increasing interest in
roblems of philosophic method is shown
y the Cratylus, which contains a
discussion of language beginning with the
question whether there are true and false
names. Socrates is not dogmatic about
the implications of using names, but he
does insist that any theory of language
allow men to continue to speak of their
knowledge of realities.
The Phaedrus is another discourse on
love. It contains the famous myth of the
soul conceived as a charioteer and winged
steeds. In the Theaetetus Socrates
examines the proposal by Theaetetus that
knowledge is sense perception. He
rejects this idea as well as the notion that
knowledge is true opinion.
The Sophist is a careful study of
sophistical method with emphasis on the
problem of Being and Not-being. In the
Statesman Plato continues the study of
the state he initiated in the Republic,
introducing the idea—later stressed by
Aristotle—that virtue is a mean.
894

Socrates argues in the Philebus that
neither pleasure nor wisdom is in itself
the highest good, since pleasure that is
not known is worthless and wisdom that
is not pleasant is not worth having; only
a combination is wholly satisfactory.
A rare excursion into physics and a
philosophical consideration of the nature
of the universe are found in the Ti-
maeus. Here Plato writes of God,
creation, the elements, the soul, gravitation,
and many other matters.
The Critias, an unfinished dialogue,
presents the story of an ancient and
mythical war between Athens and
Atlantis; and with the Laws, the longest of
the dialogues, Plato ranges over most of
the areas touched on in his other
dialogues, but with an added religious
content: Soul is the source of life, motion,
and moral action; and there is an evil soul
in the universe with which God must
deal.
895

DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Meredith (1828-1909)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1885
Principal characters:
Diana Merion Warwick, a woman of beauty and charm
Augustus Warwick, her husband
Lady Emma Dunstane, Diana's friend
Thomas Redworth, Diana's friend and admirer
Lord Dannisburgh, another friend
Sir Percy Dacier, a young politician in love with Diana
Critique:
Any novel by George Meredith
requires attention not only to the book in
question but also to the wider aspects of
the technique of fiction, for Meredith,
always an original, was a writer of deep
concentration and mature force. His Diana
is a character head and shoulders above
most heroines in nineteenth-century
English novels. She offers the charm of
femininity, perplexed by convention and
yet aware of its force. Her predicament
is at once an error in judgment and a
glory to her. Her career compels our
belief that a life which will not let go
its harvest of errors until they are
thoroughly winnowed is a human drama of
deepest interest, for that life extracts the
wisdom experience can oflFer. Diana,
beautiful, witty, skeptical of social
convention and moral expediency, is the
embodiment of Meredith's philosophy and
art.
The Story:
All of fashionable London was amazed
and shocked when Diana Warwick
suddenly left her husband's house. Society
should not have been surprised at her
action, however; the marriage had been
ill-fated from the start. For Augustus
Warwick, a calculating, ambitious
politician, his marriage to the beautiful and
charming Diana Merion had been
largely one of convenience. Diana, in her
turn, accepted his proposal as a refuge
from unwelcome attentions to which her
own position as an orphan had exposed
her.
Diana Merion had first appeared in
society at a state ball in Dublin, where
her unspoiled charm and beauty attracted
many admirers. Lady Emma Dunstane
introduced Diana to Thomas Redworth,
a friend of her husband, Sir Lukin
Dunstane, and Redworth's attentions so
enraged Mr. Sullivan Smith, a hot-tempered
Irishman, that he attempted to provoke
the Englishman to a duel. Redworth
pacified the Irishman, however, to avoid
compromising Diana by a duel fought
on her account.
Later, while visiting Lady Emma at
Copsley, the Dunstane country home in
England, Diana was forced to rebuflF
Sir Lukin when he attempted to make
love to her. Leaving Copsley, she went
to visit the Warwicks. Meanwhile,
Thomas Redworth announced to Lady
Emma that he loved Diana. His
announcement came too late. Diana was
already engaged to Augustus Warwick.
In London the Warwicks took a large
house and entertained lavishly. Among
their intimates was Lord Dannisburgh,
an elderly peer who became Diana's
friend and adviser. While Warwick was
away on a government mission, the two
were often seen together, and Diana was
so indiscreet as to let Lord Dannisburgh
accompany her when she went to visit
Lady Emma. Gossip began to circulate.
On his return Warwick, who was in-
896

capable of understanding his wife's
innocence and charm, served Diana with a
process in suit. Accusing her of infidelity,
he named Lord Dannisburgh as
corespondent. Diana disappeared from
Warwick's house and from London. In a
letter to Lady Emma she had said that
she intended to leave England. Her
friend, realizing that flight would be
tantamount to confession, felt sure that
Diana would go to Crossways, her father's
old home, before she left the country.
Determined that Diana should remain
and boldly defend the suit, Lady Emma
sent Redworth to Crossways with
instructions to detain Diana and persuade her
to go to stay with the Dunstanes at
Copsley.
Lady Emma had guessed correctly;
Diana was at Crossways with her maid.
At first Diana was unwilling to see Lady
Emma's point of view, for she thought
of her flight as a disdainful stepping aside
from Warwick's sordid accusations; but at
last she gave in to Redworth's arguments
and returned with him to Copsley.
Although the court returned a verdict
of not guilty to the charge Warwick had
brought against her, Diana felt that her
honor had been ruined and that in the
eyes of the world she was still guilty.
For a time she was able to forget her own
distress by nursing her friend, Lady
Emma, who was seriously ill. Later she left
England to go on a Mediterranean cruise.
Before her departure she had written a
book, The Princess Egeria.
In Egypt she met Redworth, now a
brilliant member of Parliament. He was
accompanied by Sir Percy Dacier, Lord
Daniusburgh's nephew and a rising
young politician. Falling in love with
Diana, Sir Percy followed her to the
continent. He was recalled to London by the
illness of his uncle. Diana followed him
a short time later, to learn on her arrival
in London that Redworth had been active
in making her book a literary triumph.
He had stirred up interest among the
critics because he knew that Diana was
in need of money.
Lord Dannisburgh died, with Diana at
his bedside during his last illness. He
had been her friend, and she paid him
that last tribute of friendship and respect
regardless of the storm of criticism it
created. When Lord Dannisburgh's will
was read, it was learned that he had left
a sum of money to Diana.
In the meantime Diana had made an
enemy of the socially ambitious Mrs.
Wathin, who thought it her social
duty to tear Diana's reputation to shreds.
Part of her dislike was motivated by
jealousy that Diana should be accepted
by people who would not tolerate Mrs.
Wathin. Some of her actions were
inspired by Warwick, Mrs. Wathin's
friend, who, having lost his suit against
Diana, was trying to force his wife to
return to him.
Sir Percy's attentions were also
distressing to Diana. Half in love with
him, she was not free to marry again.
She faced a crisis in her affairs when
Mrs. Wathin called to announce that
Warwick, now ill, wanted Diana to
return and to act as his nurse. Diana
refused. Warwick then threatened to
exercise his legal rights as her husband. Sir
Percy, who informed her of Warwick's
intention, asked her to elope with him
to Paris. She agreed. She was saved
from that folly by the appearance of
Redworth, who arrived to tell her that
Lady Emma was ill and about to undergo
a serious operation at Copsley. Diana
went with him to be at her friend's side.
Lady Emma nearly died, and the
gravity of her condition restored Diana's own
sense of responsibility. She ordered Sir
Percy to forget her, but in spite of her
protests he continued to follow her
about. One day he confided a
tremendous political secret to her—the prime
minister was about to call upon
Parliament to pass some revolutionary reform
measures. Having told her his secret, he
attempted to resume his former
courtship. Diana refused to listen to his
pleadings. After he had gone, she felt broken
and cheated. If she would not have Sir
897

Percy as a lover, she felt, she could not
keep him as a friend. Diana was
desperately in need of money. She had been
forced to sell Crossways to pay her debts
and her later novels had been failures.
Feeling herself a complete adventuress,
she went to the editor of a paper which
opposed the government party and sold
him the information Sir Percy had given
her.
When the paper appeared with a full
disclosure of the prime minister's plan,
Sir Percy accused her of betraying him
and broke with her. A short time later
he proposed to a young lady of fortune.
About the same time Warwick was struck
down by a cab in the street and killed.
Diana had her freedbm at last, but she
was downcast in spirit. She knew that
she was in public disgrace. Although
she had burned the check in payment for
the information she had disclosed, it was
common knowledge that she had
betrayed Sir Percy and that he had
retaliated by his marriage to Constance
Asper, an heiress. When Sullivan Smith
proposed for her hand, Diana refused him
and sought refuge in the company of her
old friend, Lady Emma. Her stay at
Copsley freed her of her memories of
Sir Percy, so much so that on her return
to London she was able to greet him and
his bride with dignity and charm. Her
wit was as sharp as ever, and she took
pleasure in revenging herself upon those
who had attempted to destroy her
reputation with their gossip and slander.
On another visit to Copsley she again
encountered Red worth, now a railroad
promoter and still a distinguished
member of Parliament. When he invited her
and Lady Emma to visit Crossways, Diana
learned that it was Redworth who had
bought her old home and furnished it
with her own London possessions, which
she had been forced to sell in order to
pay her debts. He bluntly told Diana
that he had bought the house and
furnished it for her because he expected
her to become his wife. Not wishing to
involve him in the scandals which had
circulated about her, she at first pretended
indifference to his abrupt wooing. Lady
Emma, on the other hand, urged her to
marry Redworth, who had loved her for
many years, so that he could protect her
from social malice. At last, knowing that
she brought no real disgrace to Red-
worth's name, she consented to become
his wife.
898

DIARY
Type of work: Diary
Author: John Evelyn (1620-1706)
Time: 162a 1706
Locale: England and the Continent
First published: 1818-1819
Principal personages:
John Evelyn
Charles I
Charles II
James II
Oliver Cromwell
Samuel Pepys
Queen Mary
William of Orange
Queen Anne
Jeremy Taylor, English divine
An intimate of people in high places,
John Evelyn was able to observe at first
hand many of the significant events and
developments of his time. To his
observation, he brought a mind remarkable in a
turbulent era for its calmness, balance,
and acuity. His diary is a contribution of
exceptional value to our understanding
of seventeenth-century England.
Evelyn, the son of a large landowner,
was a royalist and an Anglican. He served
briefly in the army of Charles I, but,
after the king's retreat in 1641, he
resigned, believing that further service
would mean financial ruin for himself
and would little aid the royalist cause.
Finding it difficult to maintain a neutral
position, he left England in 1643 for the
Continent, where he spent most of the
next nine years traveling and studying
European culture. After his return to
England in 1652, he occupied himself
with gardening and with improving his
estate. He refused a position under
Cromwell and maintained secret
correspondence with Charles II. From the
Restoration until his death in 1706, he enjoyed
the favor of the crown and held several
important minor positions in the
government.
Evelyn lived in an era of unrest and
calamity. Three times he saw the
existing English government overthrown; he
observed the Dutch war from the vantage
point of an official position; he remained
in London during the plague of 1665; he
watched the progress of the Great Fire
from its start to its engulfment of the
city; he noted with disapproval the
licentiousness of the court of Charles II; he
attended the spectacular trials of the men
accused of complicity in the Popish Plot.
In religion, he witnessed the shifting
fortunes of the various sects; in politics,
he saw the rise and the fall of a
multitude of favorites.
The diary, in addition to providing an
inside view of these major events, reveals
the ordinary conditions of existence in
the seventeenth century. Life was filled
with hazards. On voyages, pirates were
frequently a threat, Evelyn himself barely
escaping them on one occasion. For travel
on the Continent, an armed escort was
often necessary for protection against
highwaymen. Within a brief period,
Evelyn was robbed three times; and once, in
England, he was robbed and bound, and
narrowly missed being killed. Also in the
seventeenth century, many barbarous
practices were still sanctioned by law.
Evelyn tells of beheadings that required
several blows of the ax, of men put on
the rack to elicit confessions, of the public
display of bodies that had been hanged,
then drawn, and quartered. The plague,
smallpox, and other diseases constantly
reminded men of their mortality. Evelyn
899

made frequent references in his diary to
death among his friends and his children,
seven of whom never reached adulthood.
Amid the public tumult and private
insecurity, Evelyn was throughout a truly
civilized man. While many were
dominated by the emotions that religious and
political controversy aroused, he retained
his sanity. Of a compassionate nature, he
deplored acts of cruelty, and expressed
his opposition to many accepted
practices, such as the harsh treatment of
criminals and the baiting of animals.
During the Dutch war he served as
commissioner for the care of the sick,
wounded, and prisoners of war. He was
not deterred from his duties by the
plague or by the frustrating difficulties
involved in securing funds.
At a time when apostasy was
commonplace, Evelyn remained firm in his
religious and political convictions. His life
was guided, first, by his belief in the
Church of England and, secondly, by his
belief in the monarchy. A large part of
the diary is concerned with church affairs,
ranging from discussions of major issues
to records of fasting days. A devoutly
religious man, he based his conduct upon
his conception of the Christian ideal, and
accepted blessings and misfortunes alike
as the will of God. Although he feared
rival sects—the Jesuits, in particular—
and believed that certain laws were
necessary to protect the Church of England,
he was a generally tolerant man and
opposed punitive laws against Catholics
and Nonconformists.
As a monarchist, he felt that the
execution of Charles I was the blackest spot
on English history. He regarded the
Restoration as the greatest blessing God
could bestow, and he continued to
celebrate its anniversary even after King
James II was deposed in 1688. Initially,
he had misgivings about the Glorious
Revolution, but, probably because of its
preservation of the Church of England,
he came to approve of it.
However unwavering he may have
been in his royalist sympathies, he was
no absolutist, nor did he hesitate to
criticize the actions of royalty. When
the king overstepped his traditional
authority—as Charles II did, for example,
in revoking the charter of London, and
as James II did in dispens:ng with the
Test Act—Evelyn was firm in his
objections. He frequently protested against
the profligacy of the court; and once,
after having observed some disabled
soldiers, he wrote: "What confusion and
mischief do the avarice, anger, and
ambition of Princes, cause in the world!"
Evelyn apparently could have aspired
to higher positions than he attained, but
he enjoyed his "private condition" and
cared not for "the extreme slavery and
subjection that courtiers live in." There
was in him none of the sycophant.
Generally he avoided offices that might beget
a clash between his personal interests and
his principles. In one position which did
create such a conflict, he followed his
principles. As a commissioner of the
Privy Seal, he twice refused, against the
wishes of James II, to license the illegal
sale of Catholic literature.
His independent nature can also be
seen in his loyalty to friends. When
Samuel Pepys was placed in the Tower
on suspicion of treason, Evelyn
immediately went to see him. He was the last
person to visit Clarendon before that
deposed official fled England to escape
the wrath of Parliament and king. Many
others found in Evelyn a friend who was
unmoved by the tergiversations of courtly
favor.
Despite the heavy demands of private
business and public service, Evelyn
found time to acquire a vast amount of
knowledge. His range of interests was
prodigious, with the novel as well as the
important attracting his attention. Amid
more weighty topics, such subjects as
fire-eating and knife swallowing are
soberly discussed in the diary. Much of
his intellectual curiosity, however, was
directed toward practical matters. His
concern with the depletion of forests in
England led him to write Sylva CI664),
900

a highly significant book on afforestation.
His knowledge of gardening was
considerable, and his gardens at Saves Court
attracted thousands of visitors. The smoke
nuisance in London was attacked by
Evelyn as early as 1661. After the Great
Fire he drew up plans for rebuilding the
city. His publications include works on
government, education, English customs,
horticulture, science, chalcography, and
architecture.
Evelyn was also active in promoting
the work of others. He was closely
associated with England's creative leaders,
men such as Robert Boyle and
Christopher Wren. A patron of the arts, he
introduced Grinling Gibbons to the notice of
Charles II, and he persuaded the Duke of
Norfolk to present the Arundel marbles
to Oxford University. His most
productive efforts of this kind were those
connected with the Royal Society, of which
he was an original promoter and, for
many years, an active member.
Unlike the other great diarist of the
seventeenth century, Samuel Pepys,
Evelyn had little talent for bringing warm,
personal touches to his writing. In
reading the objective, factual presentation of
the earlier part of the diary—with its
absence of feeling and with little, even, of
personal opinion—one wishes that more
of John Evelyn were in the work. In the
later part of the diary there is greatei
freedom of expression. Never, however,
is Evelyn able truly to share his
emotional experiences with the reader. He
was a man of reason, and his writing is
formal, dignified, and cerebral.
901

DIARY
Type of work: Day-to-day journal
Author: Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
Time: 1660-1669
Locale: London
First published: 1825; first complete edition, 1848-1849
Principal personages:
Samuel Pepys, Clerk of the Acts of the Navy Board, the diarist
Elizabeth St. Michel Pepys, his wife
Sir Edward Montague, the First Earl of Sandwich, his patron
Charles II, King of England
The Duke of York, his brother, later James II
Sir William Penn, a Commissioner of the Navy Board
Every other important statesman, politician, courtier,
musician, POET, PLAYWRIGHT, ENTERTAINER, SYCOPHANT, ROYAL
MISTRESS, AND CHARLATAN THAT INHABITED THE LONDON OF 1660-1669
The Diary of Samuel Pepys is a unique
document in the annals of English
literature—perhaps of all literature. There are
other fascinating day-to-day accounts of
interesting and momentous times, and
some of these were written by men of
genius; but there is only one other
autobiographical collection—the recently
discovered journals of James Boswell—which
combines fascinating subject matter and
genius of composition with the intriguing
detective-story discovery that is associated
with the Diary of Pepys.
The author of the greatest of all
biographies must bow to this lesser Samuel
in one respect: Boswell, as his editors
admit, was writing for posterity; Pepys
was not. Pepys' Diary was written for
himself only, apparently for the sole
purpose of allowing its author to savor once
more, at the end of each day, the
experiences of the preceding twenty-four
hours. There is no evidence of revision
of any kind, and it was written in a
shorthand which protected it from
posterity for over a hundred years after its
author's failing eyesight had forced him
reluctantly to give it up.
Pepys' method of composition gives
the Diary an immediacy that makes Bos-
well's Journals appear sedulously
organized. And the protective coloration of the
shorthand allows for admissions of
personal animosities and revelations of
scandalous behavior that otherwise would not
be found in the confessions of a
responsible public official. Also, the point that
Pepys was a responsible public official is
the last factor that contributes to the
importance of his work. Boswell was the
scion of an important Scottish family and
a member of the Scottish bar, but (aside
from his Corsican experience) the only
history he was involved in was literary
history. Pepys was involved with the
history of a nation at a very important time.
The Diary is important in a number of
ways. First, it is of great value as a
document of the Restoration period. No writer
of a historical novel based on the history
of the time could possibly create a
character familiar with as many important
events as was that opportunistic
busybody, Samuel Pepys. One of the most
influential figures in bringing about the
return of the Stuarts in 1660 was the
former Cromwellian, Sir Edward Montague,
who was assisted by his able cousin and
protege, Samuel Pepys. It was Sir
Edward who commanded the fleet that
sailed from Holland and returned
triumphantly with the king. On board the
flagship, kissing the king's hand, firing a
cannon to salute the new monarch (and
burning an eye in the process),
commenting on the plainness of the queen, taking
charge of the king's dog in the landing
at Dover was, again, Samuel Pepys.
Later, made Clerk of the Acts of the Navy
Board because of his assistance to the
902

Stuarts (Sir Edward Montague was made
Earl of Sandwich), he remained at his
post in London and wrote down his
observations of the terrible plague from
which most members of his class fled in
panic. It was Pepys, again, who did his
best to keep the English Navy afloat
during the Dutch Wars, and Pepys who
defended the Navy in a brilliant speech
before Parliament in the investigation that
followed (1668). Earlier (September 2,
1666), when the great fire of London
broke out, it was Pepys who rushed to
the king to inform him of the catastrophe
and to suggest the blowing up of houses
to prevent the spread of the fire. Pepys,
who had a part in all these events, tells
of them in a straightforward, unself-con-
scious account unvarnished by fear of
what his contemporaries would have
thought or of what posterity would think.
Along with vivid pictures of the major
events of Restoration history are
day-today accounts of the less earthshaking but
equally revealing activities in the life of
the London that Pepys shared, accounts
that make the Diary a document of social,
cultural, and artistic history as well. Here
Pepys* concern with—his actual delight
in—detail brings a particular world of the
past to life. We see the crowded,
unsanitary, and often impassable London
streets. At times, during trips to Pepys'
father's house in Brampton or during
excursions to the country, we catch glimpses
of rural existence in the days of Charles
II. We see life in the houses of the well-
to-do and the noble and, occasionally, at
court. On a more mundane scale, there is
Pepys* concern with clothes (his father
was a tailor and he reflects a professional
knowledge) and his greater concern with
managing his own household.
Unfortunately for revelations on this score,
Pepys had no children, but his problems
in household management included his
handling of the affairs of his rather
shiftless parents, brothers, and sister, the
maintenance of a staff of servants that
grew as his own wealth increased, and
domestic supervision of his beautiful but
erratic—sometimes docile, sometimes
temperamental—young wife. In regard to the
arts, there is a wealth of material on the
theater and on music. Pepys was an
inveterate playgoer. Though his frequent
attendance bothered his basically Puritan
conscience and though he made
intermittent vows to refrain, it is seldom that
many entries go by in which some play
that he has seen is not commented on. So
frequent are these comments, in fact,
that the Diary is an invaluable source of
information to the student of Restoration
drama. It is equally valuable to the
specialist in the history of music: Pepys was
not only an accomplished musician but
also a composer, and the delight in music
which he expresses gives an insight into
a particularly musical age.
Nor was artistic beauty the only kind
that captivated the practical and
mercenary Pepys. Since he was equally
attracted to beauty in its carnal
manifestations, his pursuit of beauty in feminine
form and his diligent (but finally
unsuccessful) attempts to hide these pursuits
from his wife provide an insight into the
mores of the Restoration period. These
accounts of the diarist's philanderings—
honest, but hidden by the elaborate code
—are a part of the personal revelation
that the work provides.
In spite of its importance as historical
and social document, the Diary is, on its
most intriguing level, the portrait of a
man, a self-portrait drawn in strong and
certain lines with no detail, however
uncomplimentary, however compromising,
omitted. That it is the portrait of a man
active in the affairs of his day adds to its
interest; but the main value comes from
its unstinting wealth of circumstantial
detail. Yet the detail and the man cannot
be separated: the love of detail and the
love of life that inspired the keeper of
the Diary make up the essence of the
man himself. The Diary is a celebration
of the things of this world and a portrait
of the man who praised them.
903

THE DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST
Type of work: Novel
Author: Georges Bernanos (1888-1948)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: France
First published: 1937
Principal characters:
A Parish Priest, the diarist
The Cure de Torcy, a superior of the narrator
Dr. Maxence Delbende, the narrator's friend
Seraphita Dumouchel, a young parishioner
Monsieur Dufrety, a former classmate of the narrator
The Count, a wealthy resident of the parish
The Countess, his wife
Mademoiselle Chantal, their daughter
Mademoiselle Louise, governess at the chateau
Critique:
Meager of plot because Bernanos is
interested more in showing a man's thoughts
and basic principles than in picturing
human behavior, The Diary of a Country
Priest is fictional presentation of priestly
attitudes, functions, and tribulations.
Through this philosophical and realistic
treatment of life in a small French parish,
it is easy to see Bernanos' high regard for
Joan of Arc as the symbol of France. In
their simplicity the Maid's peasantry and
saintliness are not unlike those phases of
the diarist's life. Fittingly, compassion and
tenderness characterize the writing, which,
in translation, sustains the poetic charm
and fluency of the original. Mankind's
holiness is Bernanos' keynote.
The Story:
A young priest, thirty years old, in
charge of the Ambricourt Parish in
France, recorded in his diary his
impressions and activities over a period of one
year. His purpose in keeping the diary
was to maintain frankness with himself in
his relationships with his parishioners and
in his service to God.
The priest was a man of marked
humility, sympathy, simplicity, and great
loneliness. Son of a poor family in which there
had been much suffering and hardship,
he planned to raise the scale of living
in his parish. His plans for a village
savings bank and for cooperative farming
were discussed at his first monthly meeting
with the curates, but his plans were
disapproved because of their pretentious
scope and his lack of personal influence in
the parish. This saddening blow, which
caused him to question whether God
would use his services as He did the
services of others, was intensified by the words
of his superior and ideal, the Cure* de
Torcy, and of his friend, Dr. Maxence
Delbende, who soon afterward committed
suicide because of his disappointment at
not receiving a legacy he expected.
These two men thwarted the young
priest's ambition with their opinions that
the poor were not to be raised from their
low level because of religious and social
reasons. God gave the poor a dignity, the
Cur6 de Torcy said, which they do not
wish to lose in His sight. According to the
doctor, poverty served as a social bond
and a mark of prestige among the poor. In
the eyes of the Church, the curate
believed, the rich are on the earth to protect
the poor.
Undaunted and hopeful, the priest
accepted an invitation to the chateau, where
he hoped to get financial help from the
THE DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST by Georges Bernanos. By permission of the publishers, The
Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1937, by The Macmillan Co.
904

Count for his parish projects. Thwarted
in his attempt, he gave his physical
energy, which was limited because of
insomnia and a chronic stomach disorder, to
the spiritual advancement of his parish.
But his efforts in this direction were ill-
spent. He questioned his success in
teaching a catechism class, for the children did
not respond as he had hoped, and he was
tormented and plagued by the unsavory
attentions of Seraphita Dumouchel, a
young student in the class, who
discomfited him by her suggestive questions and
remarks to the other children and by her
scribbled notes left about for the young
priest to find.
Seraphita later befriended him, when
on a parish visit he suffered a seizure and
fell unconscious in the mud. A few days
later Seraphita, bribed by sweets, offset
her beneficence to the priest by telling
Mademoiselle Chantal, the Count's strong-
willed, jealous daughter, that the priest
had fallen in drunkenness. The story was
believed because it was known generally
among the parishioners that the priest
drank cheap wine, and because his
physical condition was growing progressively
worse.
The priest's spiritual strength was
shown in his theological dealings with the
Count's family. Mademoiselle Chantal
had told, in conversation and in
confession, that her father was having an affair
with Mademoiselle Louise. The daughter,
believing that she was to be sent to
England to live with her mother's cousin,
declared that she hated everyone in her
household—her father and the governess
for their conduct, and her mother for her
blindness to the situation. After asserting
that she would kill Mademoiselle Louise
or herself and that the priest would have
to explain away her conduct to God, she
got his promise that he would discuss the
girl's problems with her mother.
The priest went to the chateau to confer
with the Countess regarding her
daughter's spiritual state. There he found the
mother in a more pronounced atheistic
frame of mind than that of her daughter.
Her spiritual depression resulted from
the death of her baby son, twelve years
before. During a prolonged philosophical
discussion the Countess, after ridiculing
the priest for his theological idealism and
his lack of vanity and ambition, described
with bitterness the hateful selfishness of
her daughter, and related with
indifference the Count's many infidelities.
Before he left the chateau, the priest
sensed a spiritual change in his wealthy
parishioner when she threw into the fire
a medallion containing a lock of her son's
hair. The priest, always humble, tried to
retrieve the locket. In a letter delivered
to him at the presbytery later in the day
the Countess informed him that he had
given her peace and escape from a horrible
solitude with the memory of her dead
child.
The Countess died that night. The
priest's success in helping to redeem her
soul left him with an uncertain feeling.
He did not know whether he was happy
or not.
If his reaction was happiness, it was
short-lived. When the details of his session
with the Countess became common
knowledge, for Mademoiselle Chantal had
eavesdropped during the interview,
criticism and derision were heaped upon him.
The canon reprimanded him because he
had assumed the role of her confessor, and
the Cure* de Torcy ridiculed his approach
in dealing with the Countess. Members
of the family, unstable as they were in
their relationships, accused him of
subversive tactics to realize a childish
ambition.
His social ineptness, his personal
inadequacies, and his professional inaptitude-
deficiencies repeatedly mentioned in his
introspective moods—seemed to increase
as his physical condition grew worse. His
hemorrhages continuing, he decided to
consult Dr. Lavigne in Lille.
His last major bungle was in
connection with this medical aid. Because he
forgot the name of the doctor
recommended to him, in Lille he turned to the
directory and mistakenly chose the name
905

of Dr. Laville. The physician, a drug
addict, bluntly diagnosed the priest's ailment
as cancer of the stomach.
From the doctor's office, the priest went
to the address of his old schoolmate at the
seminary, Monsieur Dufrety, who had
long been urging his friend to visit him.
There he died that night.
In a letter from Monsieur Dufrety to
the Cure* de Torcy, details of the priest's
death were described. In great suffering
and anguish, following a violent
hemorrhage, the priest held his rosary to his
breast. When he asked his old friend for
absolution, his request was granted and
the ritual performed in a manner,
Monsieur Dufrety wrote, that could leave no
one with any possible misgivings. The
priest's last words affirmed his great faith
in the whole scheme of things, because
of God's existence.
906

DIGBY GRAND
Type of work: Novel
Author: George J. Whyte-Melville (1821-1878)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1853
Principal characters:
Digby Grand, a spirited young Englishman, officer in the Guards
Sm Peregrine Grand, Digby's father
Shadrach, a money-lender
Tom Spencer, Digby's friend
Captain Levanter, a fellow officer
Colonel Cartouch, Digby's commanding officer
Flora Belmont, loved by Digby
Critique:
Because George J. Whyte-Melville's
works have been catalogued as sporting
fiction, they have never been given their
rightful place in the history of English
literature, and most scholars pass them by
completely. It is true that Whyte-Melville
wrote particularly foi the sporting world,
but his novels, especially Digby Grand,
have interested wider audiences in their
time. His writings have an air of
liveliness, a note of authenticity, and an
ineffable freshness. Digby Grand was
Whyte-Melville's first novel, and it was
truly termed by the novelist an
autobiography, for the author's own early career as
an officer in a Highland regiment and the
Guards is mirrored in the novel. Digby
Grand is, in fact, partly young Whyte-
Melville. Considered in his time an
authority on fox hunting, the author refers
to the sport frequently in Digby Grand, as
in his other novels.
The Story:
Digby Grand's father, Sir Peregrine
Grand, of Haverley Hall, had one fond
wish with respect to his son: he wanted
Digby to be a man of fashion and to know
his position in society. With that in mind,
he decided that when Digby, then a
youngster at Eton, should finish school he
would be commissioned in the British
Army. Digby, taken with the idea, wished
to have his appointment made at once.
As luck had it, Digby met General Sir
Benjamin Burgonet, who, pleased with
the young man, made every effort to
secure Digby's commission. Within a matter
of weeks Digby received a letter
announcing his commission in the army as an
ensign in a regiment of infantry.
Digby Grand reported to his regiment's
headquarters in Scotland, where he
rapidly adjusted himself to military lire.
Being of an adventurous turn and liking
sports and gambling, he quickly became a
sought-out addition to any party. He soon
discovered, however, that the slim
allowance made him by his father and his small
pay as an ensign did not cover his large
expenditures, and so he fell into the habit
of gambling on horses, cards, and billiards
to augment his income. Most of his fellow
officers existed in much the same fashion.
While in Scotland, Digby had a narrow
escape from marriage when an officer's
daughter, a woman in her thirties,
induced Digby to become engaged. His
friends saw through the woman's plot,
however, and rescued him from his
predicament. He had the satisfaction of
seeing her become instead the wife of Dubbs,
the regimental drum major.
Shortly after that incident Digby was
sent to Canada for a tour of duty.
Memorable events of that short tour were the
slaughter of a huge bull moose and a love
affair with a French-Canadian girl named
907

Zoe. Colonel Cartouch, Digby's
commanding officer, having taken a liking to
the high-spirited young man, prevented
him from marrying the girl because he felt
that the teen-age ensign was not yet ready
for marriage.
Upon his return to England, Digby
found himself with a new commission in
Her Majesty's service; his father had
purchased a lieutenancy in the Life Guards
for him during his absence in Canada.
Digby was now in the most honored and
most social brigade in the service, the
Guards being the units which were
stationed in London. Within a short time
Digby had once again won for himself a
place in fashionable London life. He was
voted into several of the choicest gambling
clubs, appeared in the best society, and
was taken up by some well-known people.
One of his friends was a youthful peer
named St. Heliers; another was an officer
named Levanter; a third was Mrs.
Mantrap, a woman who basked in the
attentions of young men.
To keep up his life of ease, including
gambling for high stakes, maintaining
good rooms, drinking only the best wines,
and buying expensive horses, required all
of Digby's resourcefulness. Because his
resourcefulness was not enough at times,
his friend Levanter introduced him to a
money-lender named Shadrach, who was
quite willing to lend Digby money at a
high rate of interest, the principal to be
repaid when Digby inherited the family
estates. Not once but many times Digby
borrowed from Shadrach.
One day, while in charge of a small
group of military police at parade, Digby
met Flora Belmont, who had attended the
parade with her father, a retired colonel.
Immediately Digby fell in love, in spite of
the fact that the colonel had little or
nothing to pass on to his daughter in the
way of a fortune.
On his twenty-first birthday, spurred
on by his own love and that which Flora
Belmont had declared for him, Digby
went home to Haverley Hall to request a
definite income of size from his father so
that he and Flora could be married. Sir
Peregrine, instead of being happy, was
furious that Digby would even think of
marrying anyone but an heiress, for the
Grand estate was in poor financial
condition and Sir Peregrine had been counting
on a brilliant marriage by his son to recoup
the family fortunes.
Downhearted, Digby returned to duty
in London. To while away the time he
continued his old life, living beyond his
means and borrowing money to pay his
expenses. He even borrowed from
Shadrach when his boyhood chum, Tom
Spencer, who was studying for holy
orders at Oxford, had to sign the notes
with him. For a time Digby had an affair
with Coralie de Rivolte, a famous dancer,
but that romance ended, though only
after Digby had made an enemy of a scar-
faced Spaniard who seemed to be the
dancer's relative.
Eventually Digby got so deeply into
debt that only a change of regiments could
help him. As an officer in the Guards he
had too many social responsibilities, and
he exchanged commissions with an officer
in a dragoon regiment stationed in Kent,
at some distance from London. Within a
few weeks he made still another move.
Old General Sir Benjamin Burgonet, who
had secured Digby's original commission,
made him his aide, and Digby prepared to
go with the general to India. He was
somewhat aghast, however, to learn that
the girl who had married the drum major
was now Lady Burgonet.
In spite of his precautions, Digby was
unable to leave England without falling
into the hands of Shadrach and other
creditors, who had him imprisoned for
debt. To satisfy his creditors, Digby had
to sell his commission and give up all he
owned. At that black hour word came that
Sir Peregrine had died, leaving Digby
with the title and the estate. When the
will was settled, however, it became
apparent that the estate was too heavily in
debt to be of any use to the new heir. To
908

salvage himself, Digby had to sell the
land; he inherited only the title.
He was saved by a meeting with Tom
Spencer, who haa been prevented from
finishing his degree at Oxford by an
arrest made for a note he had signed on
Digby's behalf. Spencer, far from being
downcast, had become a successful wine
merchant. He took Digby into the
business with him and the two built up a
flourishing trade. Digby had, by that
time, acquired a great deal more discretion
and a few gray hairs.
After some years Digby ran across his
old commanding officer, Colonel Car-
touch. The colonel was engaged in
prosecuting a man who had forged checks on
his name, and the two discovered that the
man was married to Coralie de Rivolte,
Digby's old love. That surprise was not
the end, for the colonel discovered also
that Coralie was his own daughter by a
Spanish woman who had run away from
him after killing her sister, whom she
believed in love with Cartouch.
The appearance of Coralie reminded
Digby of Flora Belmont, the girl whom
his father had forbidden him to many
because she lacked a fortune. Digby found
her in mourning for her father but still
single. Through friends Digby learned
that she had remained faithful to him. In
a short time they had made plans for their
approaching marriage. Digby Grand was
ready to be tamed.
909

THE DISCIPLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Paul Bourget (1852-1935)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Paris and Riom
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
Adrien Slxte, a philosopher
Robert Greslou, his disciple
M. de Jussat, a hypochondriac nobleman
Charlotte, his daughter
Lucien, her younger brother
Andre, her older brother
Critique:
Bourget represents in some ways the
transition in French letters from
naturalistic materialism to the more
traditional religious and moral disciplines, and
The Disciple is the mid-point in the
work of this distinguished critic, novelist,
and academician. This novel is a
psychological study of the moral bases in
abstract learning. Bourget has written an
impeccable novel which combines solid
psychological analysis with a sensational
murder story.
The Story:
Adrien Sixte grew up in a peculiar
way. His hardworking father wanted
him to study for one of the professions,
but despite the boy's early promise in
school he never went to a university.
His indulgent parents allowed him to
spend ten lonely years in study. In 1868,
at the age of twenty-nine, Adrien Sixte
published a five-hundred-page study of
The Psychology of God. By the outbreak
of the Franco-Prussian War, Adrien had
become the most discussed philosopher in
the country. He followed his first study
with two books even more provocative,
The Anatomy of the Will and The
Theory of the Passions.
Soon after the death of his parents,
Adrien settled down to a well-regulated
life in Paris. So regular was he that the
inhabitants of the quarter could set their
watches by his comings and goings. He
spent eight hours of the twenty-four in
work, took two walks each day, received
callers, chiefly students, one afternoon, a
week, and on another afternoon made
calls on other scholars. By patient labor
and brilliant insight he developed to his
complete satisfaction his deterministic
theory that each effect comes from a
cause, and that if all causes are known,
results can be predicted accurately. He
applied his theory to all forms of human
activity, to vices as well as virtues.
One day the neighbors were startled
to see Adrien leave his apartment
hurriedly at an unusual hour. He had
received, to his great consternation, a notice
to appear before a magistrate in the affair
of Robert Greslou, one of his students,
and he had also a letter from Robert's
mother saying that she would visit him
that very day at four on an urgent
matter.
The sophisticated judge was
incredulous when he learned that Adrien never
read the papers. The celebrated savant
had not heard of Greslou's imprisonment
after being charged with the murder of
Charlotte de Jussat. Adrien soon learned
that the suspect had been arrested on
purely circumstantial evidence, that the
proof of his guilt or innocence might
well be only psychological. Hence
Adrien, the master, must testify as to his
THE DISCIPLE by Paul Bourget. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
910

disciple's ideas on multiplied
psychological experience. Adrien explained that if
a chemist can analyze water into
hydrogen and oxygen, he can synthesize
hydrogen and oxygen into water. Similarly, if
a psychological result can be analyzed
into its causes, the result can be
reproduced by those same causes; that is,
by scientific method one can predict
human behavior. The judge was much
interested and inquired if his theory
applied to vices. Adrien said that it did, for
psychologically vices are forms of
behavior as interesting and valid as social
virtues.
When he returned home, Adrien
found Robert's mother waiting for him.
She protested her son's innocence and
begged Adrien to save her boy. Adrien
remembered Robert as a precocious
student of philosophy, but he really knew
little of him as a person. The mother
begged Adrien to help and gave him a
manuscript written by Robert while in
jail. On the outside of the manuscript
was a note. If Adrien read the
document, he must agree not to try to save
Robert; if the condition were
unacceptable, he must burn the manuscript
immediately. With many misgivings Adrien
took the document and read it. It was a
minute and detailed account of Robert's
upbringing, his studies, and his
experiences in the de Jussat home.
Robert was always brilliant. He did
outstanding work in school and early in
his studies showed a pronounced talent in
psychology. Most of his time was
devoted to study, but a developing
sensuality showed itself sporadically. Since he
grew up at Clermont, he lacked some of
die polish imparted at Paris; in
consequence he failed an examination. While
waiting another opportunity to enter the
university, Robert accepted a year's
appointment as tutor to Lucien de Jussat.
At the de Jussat country home Robert
found an interesting household. Lucien,
his pupil, was a fat, simple boy of
thirteen. Andr6, the older brother, was an
army officer fond of hunting and riding.
The father was a hypochondriac and a
boor. But Charlotte, the daughter of the
family, was a beautiful girl of nineteen.
Robert soon began the studied
seduction of Charlotte. He had three reasons
for such a step. First, he wanted to have
some sort of revenge against the wealthy
family. In the second place, his developed
sexuality made the project attractive.
Also, and probably more important, he
wanted to test his theory that if he could
determine the causes leading to love and
sexual desire, he could produce desire by
providing the causes. Robert kept
careful notes on procedures and results.
He knew that pity is close to love.
Consequently he aroused the pity of
Charlotte by mysterious allusions to his
painful past. Then, by carefully selecting
a list of novels for her to read, he set
about inflaming her desire for passionate,
romantic love. But Robert was too hasty.
He made an impassioned avowal to
Charlotte and frightened her into leaving for
Paris. Just as Robert began to despair of
ever accomplishing his purpose, tne
illness of Lucien recalled Charlotte. Robert
wrote her a note telling her he would
commit suicide if she did not come to
his room by midnight. He prepared two
vials of strychnine and waited. When
Charlotte came, he showed her the poison
and proposed a suicide pact. Charlotte
accepted, provided she could be the first
to die. They spent the night together.
Robert had triumphed.
Robert repudiated the pact, prompted
in part by a real love for Charlotte. The
next day she threatened to call her
brother if Robert attempted to stop her
own attempt at suicide, lor she had read
Robert's notes and knew she was simply
the object of an experiment. After
writing to her brother Andr6 a letter telling
him of her intended suicide, she drank
the strychnine. Robert was arrested soon
afterward on suspicion of murder.
When Adrien Sixte came to the end
of the manuscript, he began to feel a
moral responsibility for his disciple's act
Disregarding the pledge implicit in his
911

reading, he sent a note to Andr6 asking
him if he intended to let Robert be
convicted of murder by concealing
Charlotte's letter. Andr6 resolved to tell the
truth, and in a painful courtroom scene
Robert was acquitted.
Immediately after the trial, Andr6
went to look for Robert. Scarcely able
to resist, since he had been ready to die
with Charlotte's secret safe, Robert went
with Andr6 willingly. On the street,
Andr6 pulled out a gun and shot Robert
in the head. Robert's mother and Adrien
mourned beside the coffin, Adrien
because he accepted moral responsibility for
the teachings that had prompted his
disciple's deed.
912

THE DIVAN
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Hafiz (Shams ud-din Mohammed, C.1320-C.1388)
First transcribed: c.1350
The Divan of Hafiz is one of the
glories of Persian literature in its Golden
Age and a classic of Eastern literature.
Hafiz was the pen name of Shams ud-din
Mohammed, a Persian who early in life
turned to the serious study of philosophy,
poetry, and theology. The pen name he
adopted means "a man who remembers,"
a title normally bestowed upon persons
who have committed the Koran to
memory. In Hafiz' case the title was not
unwarranted, for he was a dervish who
taught the Koran in an academy founded
by his patron, the Vizier Haji Kiwam-ud-
din.
The Divan is the best known of Hafiz'
works. In addition, he wrote in various
other patterns common to Persian poetry.
The Divan itself is a collection of short
poems, lyric in quality, in the form
known as ghazals. In the original Persian
these poems consist of from five to
sixteen couplets (called baits'), and the
particular poetical form has been compared
to the ode and the sonnet in English-
language poetry because of the lyric
qualities, the length, and the subject matter.
One curious feature of Hafiz' ghazals is
that the last two lines normally contain
the poet's name. The first line of each
ghazal introduces the rhyme, which is
repeated in every other succeeding line
within the poem.
Although relatively little known in the
Western world, Hafiz' Divan has
remained the most popular poetry ever
written in his native land. It has even
been considered oracular, and Persians
sometimes consult it by opening the book
and placing a finger on a chance passage,
hoping to have an answer thereby to
whatever question has arisen. Such a
procedure, or a variation of it, was
supposedly done at the death of the poet.
Because of exception taken to some of his
poems, his corpse was at first denied the
usual burial rites. To settle the question,
some of his ghazals were written on slips
of paper and placed in an urn, one to be
drawn out by a child. According to
legend, the verse drawn by chance from
the urn said that Hafiz should be given
appropriate funeral rites, as he would
enter Paradise; thus the question was
settled.
Through the centuries there has been
debate over whether his poetry should
be taken literally or symbolically, with
those who want to see in the Divan a
serious work by a great Persian
philosopher and student of the Koran taking one
side of the question, those who wish to
see in the work a fine expression of a
warmly alive human being taking the
other. Western readers who cannot see
anything religious in these superficially
hedonistic poems should call to mind the
religious expression, veiled in imagery
though it is, of such poetry as that of
John Donne and Richard Crashaw in
England and Edward Taylor in America.
Whether one may wish to take it
literally or on a symbolic level, the imagery
of Hafiz' poetry is warm, human, even
passionate. There is no escaping, even in
translation, the sincerity of the poet. Like
most Eastern poetry, the imagery may
even seem lush to Western readers, as in
the followirig example:
The east wind at the dawn of day
brought a perfume from the tresses
of my beloved, which immediately
cast my foolish heart into fresh
agitation.
THE DIVAN by Hafiz. Translated by Henry Bertram Lister. Published by La Boheme Club, San
Francisco, Calif. Excerpts reprinted by permission of the Executors of the Estate of Henry B. Lister.
Copyright, 1950, by Henry B. Lister.
913

I imagined that I had uprooted that
flower from the garden of my heart,
for every blossom which sprang up
from its suffering bore only the fruits
of pain.
From fear of the attacks of her love, I
set my heart free with bloody strife;
my heart dropped gouts of blood
wnich marked my footsteps.
I beheld from her terrace how the glory
of the moon veiled itself in
confusion, before the face of that dazzling
sun.
In his poems Hafiz praises love
between man and woman, and he praises
also the beauty of women, their eyes,
their lips, their hair, their features, their
forms. He also sings of wine and men,
as in these lines:
O Cupbearer! bring the joy of youth;
bring cup after cup of red wine.
Bring medicine for the disease of love;
bring wine, which is the balm of old
and young.
Do not grieve for the revolution ofr
time, that it wheeled thus and not
thus. Touch the lute in peace.
Wisdom is very wearisome; bring for its
neck the noose of wine.
When the rose goes, say, "Go gladly,"
and drink wine, red like the rose.
If the moan of the turde does no
remain, what matter? Bring music in
the jug of wine.
Whether one can interpret this praise of
wine as symbolic of spiritual substance is
open to question. That there is passion,
grace, and charm in the lines is, however,
undeniable. The same is true of the
following, also typical of Hafiz:
O interpreter of dreams! give good
tidings because last night the sun
seemed to be my ally in the joy of
the morning sleep.
At the hour when Hafiz was writing
this troubled verse, the bird of his
heart had fallen into the snare of
love.
An interesting legend about one of
Hafiz' poems in the Divan has come down
through the ages. In the poem he offered
willingly to exchange both the rich cities
of Bokhara and Samarkand for the mole
on the cheek of his beloved. When the
great conqueror Tamerlane learned of the
poem and had an opportunity, he sent
for the poet and rebuked him, saying
that Hafiz should not have offered to
give away what did not lay in his power
to bestow. Not entirely subdued, even in
the presence of the great Tamerlane,
Hafiz is supposed to have replied that it
was through such generosity that he came
to the attention of the mignty conqueror.
Over and over again in the Divan
another city is mentioned, his own native
city of Shiraz, which he loved greatly.
("Hail, Shiraz! incomparable site! O
Lord, preserve it from every disaster!")
From the fame of Hafiz and his poems,
Shiraz came to be a symbol of poetic
inspiration among poets who followed
him.
The reader of the Divan will find
himself making comparisons between Hafiz*
lyrics and those of Omar Khayyam, an
earlier Persian poet and one whose work
is more widely known among English-
speaking readers through the adaptation
by Edward FitzGerald. The works of the
two poets have much in common. The
apparent hedonism, the similar imagery,
and the same flowing mellifluousness are
found in the work of both men. The
obvious difference is the superficial one
of form, Omar Khayydm having written
in quatrains, as the word "Rubaiyat"
indicates, Hafiz in the form of the ghazal.
But a more important difference lies in
the attitudes expressed in the poems.
Hafiz is the more serious of the two, despite
an apparent hedonism. There is a greater
inclination on the part of Hafiz to be
religious, to place his faith in Allah and
his wisdom, inscrutable as the poet may
find it. One result is that it is easier to
think of Hafiz growing old gracefully
than of Omar Khayyam facing inevitable
old age with equanimity.
914

THE DIVINE COMEDY
Type of work: Poem
Author: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Type of plot: Christian allegory
Time of plot: The Friday before Easter, 1300
Locale: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise
First transcribed: c. 1307
Principal characters:
Dante
Virgil, his guide
Beatrice, the soul of Dante's beloved
Critique:
No words can describe the greatness
of this work, a greatness both of theme
and poetry. As a poet, Dante takes his
place in the ranks of the foremost artists
the world has ever known. The theme
which he treats is universal; it involves
the greatest concepts which man has ever
attained. Only a master could find the
loftiness of tone and the splendor and
variety of images and scenes which are
presented in The Divine Comedy.
The Story:
Dante found himself lost in a dark
and frightening wood, and as he was
trying to regain his path, he came to a
mountain which he decided to climb in
order to get his bearings. Strange beasts
blocked his way, however, and he was
forced back to the plain. As he was
bemoaning his fate, the poet Virgil
approached Dante and offered to conduct
him through Hell, Purgatory, and
blissful Paradise.
When they arrived at the gates of Hell,
Virgil explained that here were confined
those who had lived their lives without
regard for good or evil. At the River
Acheron, where they found Charon, the
ferryman, Dante was seized with terror
and fell into a trance. Aroused by a loud
clap of thunder, he followed his guide
through Limbo, the first circle of Hell.
The spirits confined there, he learned,
were those who, although they had lived
a virtuous life, had not been baptized.
At the entrance to the second circle
of Hell, Dante met Minos, the Infernal
Judge, who warned him to take heed how
he entered the lower regions. Dante was
overcome by pity as he witnessed the
terrible punishment which the spirits
were undergoing. They had been guilty
of carnal sin, and for punishment they
were whirled around without cessation
in the air. The third circle housed those
who had been guilty of the sin of
gluttony. They were forced to lie deep in
the mud, under a constant fall of snow
and hail and stagnant water. Above them
stood Cerberus, a cruel monster, barking
at the helpless creatures and tearing at
their flesh. In the next circle, Dante
witnessed the punishment of the
prodigal and the avaricious, and realized the
vanity of fortune.
He and Virgil continued on theii
journey until they reached the Stygian
Lake, in which the wrathful and gloomy
were suffering. At Virgil's signal, a
ferryman transported them across the
lake to the city of Dis. They were denied
admittance, however, and the gates were
closed against them by a multitude of
horrible demons. Dante and Virgil
gained admittance into the city only after
an angel had interceded for them. There
Dante discovered that tombs burning
with a blistering heat housed the souls of
heretics. Dante spoke to two of these
tormented spirits and learned that
although they had the power to predict the
future, they had no way of knowing what
was occurring in the present.
The entrance to the seventh circle was
guarded by the Minotaur, and only
after Virgil had pacified him could the
two travelers pass down the steep crags
915

to the base of the mountain. There they
discerned a river of blood in which those
who had committed violence in their
lifetimes were confined. On the other
side of the river they learned that those
who had committed suicide were doomed
to inhabit the trunks of trees. Beyond
the river they came to a desert in which
were confined those who had sinned
against God, or Art, or Nature. A stream
flowed near the desert and the two poets
followed it until the water plunged into
an abyss. In order that they might
descend to the eighth circle, Virgil
summoned Geryon, a frightful monster, who
conducted them below. There they saw
the tortured souls of seducers, flatterers,
diviners, and barterers. Continuing along
their way, they witnessed the
punishment accorded hypocrites and robbers.
In the ninth gulf were confined
scandalmongers and spreaders of false doctrine.
Among the writhing figures they saw
Mahomet. Still farther along, the two
discovered the horrible disease-ridden
bodies of forgerers, counterfeiters,
alchemists, and all those who deceived
under false pretenses.
They were summoned to the next
circle by the sound of a trumpet. In it
were confined all traitors. A ring of
giants surrounded the circle, one of whom
lifted both Dante and Virgil and
deposited them in the bottom of the circle.
There Dante conversed with many of
the spirits and learned the nature of their
particular crimes.
After this visit to the lowest depths of
Hell, Dante and Virgil emerged from
the foul air to the pure atmosphere which
surrounded the island of Purgatory. In
a little while, they saw a boat conducted
by an angel, in which were souls being
brought to Purgatory. Dante recognized
that of a friend among them. The two
poets reached the foot of a mountain,
where passing spirits showed them the
easiest path to climb its slope. On their
way up the path they encountered many
spirits who explained that they were
confined to Purgatory because they had
delayed their repentance too long. They
pleaded with Dante to ask their families
to pray for their souls when he once
again returned to earth. Soon Dante and
Virgil came to the gate of Purgatory,
which was guarded by an angel. The
two poets ascended a winding path and
saw men, bent under the weight of heavy
stones, who were expiating the sin of
pride. They examined the heavily carved
cornices which they passed, and found
them covered with inscriptions urging
humility and righteousness. At the
second cornice were the souls of those who
had been guilty of envy. They wore
sackcloth and their eyelids were sewed
with iron thread. Around them were the
voices of angels singing of great examples
of humility and the futility of envy. An
angel invited the poets to visit the third
cornice, where those who had been guilty
of anger underwent repentance. Dante
was astonished at the examples of
patience which he witnessed there. At the
fourth cornice he witnessed the purging
of the sin of indifference or gloominess.
He discussed with Virgil the nature of
love. The Latin poet stated that there
were two kinds of love, natural love,
which was always right, and love of the
soul, which might be misdirected. At the
fifth cornice, avarice was purged. On
their way to the next cornice, the two
were overtaken by Statius, whose spirit
had been cleansed and who was on his
way to Paradise. He accompanied them
to the next place of purging, where the
sin of gluttony was repented, while
voices sang of the glory of temperance.
The last cornice was the place for
purging by fire of the sin of incontinence.
Here the sinners were heard to recite
innumerable examples of praiseworthy
chastity.
An angel now directed the two poets
and Statius to a path which would lead
them to Paradise. Virgil told Dante that
he might wander through Paradise at
his will until he found his love,
Beatrice. As he was strolling through a
forest, Dante came to a stream, on the
916

other side of which stood a beautiful
woman. She explained to him that the
stream was called Lethe, and helped him
to cross it. Then Beatrice descended from
heaven and reproached him for his
unfaithfulness to her during her life, but
the virgins in the heavenly fields
interceded with her on his behalf. Convinced
of his sincere repentance and remorse,
she agreed to accompany him through
the heavens.
On the moon Dante found those who
had made vows of chastity and
determined to follow the religious life, but
who were forced to break their vows.
Beatrice led him to the planet Mercury,
the second heaven, and from there to
Venus, the third heaven, where Dante
conversed with many spirits and learned
of their virtues. On the sun, the fourth
heaven, they were surrounded by a group
of spirits, among them Thomas Aquinas.
He named each of the spirits in turn and
discussed their individual virtues. A
second circle of blessed spirits surrounded
the first, and Dante learned from each
how he had achieved blessedness.
Then Beatrice and Dante came to
Mars, the fifth heaven, where were
cherished the souls of those who had been
martyred. Dante recognized many
renowned warriors and crusaders among
them.
On Jupiter, the sixth heaven, Dante
saw the souls of those who had
administered justice faithfully in the world. The
seventh heaven was on Saturn, where
Dante found the souls of those who had
spent their lives in meditation and
religious retirement. From there Beatrice and
her lover passed to the eighth heaven,
the region of the fixed stars. Dante
looked back over all the distance which
extended between the earth and this apex
of Paradise and was dazzled and awed by
what he saw. As they stood there, they
saw the triumphal hosts approaching,
with Christ leading, followed by Mary.
Dante was questioned by the saints.
Saint Peter examined his opinions
concerning faith; Saint James, concerning
hope, and Saint John, concerning charity.
Adam then approached and told the poet
of the first man's creation, of his life in
Paradise, and of his fall and what had
caused it. Saint Peter bitterly lamented
the avarice which his apostolic successors
displayed, and all the sainted host agreed
with him.
Beatrice then conducted Dante to the
ninth heaven, where he was permitted
to view the divine essence and to listen
to the chorus of angels. She then led
him to the Empyrean, from the heights
of which, and with the aid of her vision,
he was able to witness the triumphs of
the angels and of the souls of the blessed.
So dazzled and overcome was he by this
vision that it was some time before ke
realized Beatrice had left him. At his
side stood an old man whom he
recognized as Saint Bernard, who told krxx
Beatrice had returned to her throne. He
then told Dante that if he wished U.
discover still more of the heavenly vision,
he must join with him in a prayer to
Mary. Dante received the grace to
contemplate the glory of God, and to glimpse,
for a moment, the greatest of mysteries,
the Trinity and man's union with the
divine.
917

THE DIVINE FIRE
Type of work: Novel
Author: May Sinclair (1870?-1946)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: The 1890's
Locale: England
First published: 1904
Principal characters:
Savage Keith Rickman, the genius
Horace Jewdwine, a literary editor
Lucia Harden, loved by Rickman
Flossie Walker, betrothed to Rickman
Mr. Pilkington, a financier
Critique:
Written by a popular English author
of the early twentieth century, The
Divine Fire is the chronicle of a gifted but
unknown poet. His story was one of
conflict between the genius and the man.
First one, then the other was supreme,
and he fought unsuccessfully to reconcile
the two. It was only through the help
of a good and inspiring woman that he
was at last able to find himself.
The Story:
Horace Jewdwine, a literary editor, had
a problem. He thought he had
discovered a genius in Savage Keith Rickman,
a young and unknown poet who earned
his living by making catalogs for his
father, a bookseller. But Jewdwine was
afraid to say openly that Rickman was
a genius, afraid for his reputation if he
called Rickman a genius publicly and
then the young man proved otherwise.
He encouraged Rickman privately but
failed to give him the public recognition
that would have meant so much to the
young writer.
Rickman himself cared little for fame
or money. He knew too that he was a
genius. That is, part of him was a genius.
He was also a student, a young man
about town, a journalist, a seeker after
simple home life, and sometimes a drunk.
It was hard to have so many facets to
one's nature. One part warred constantly
with the others. But no matter in what
form he found himself, honor never left
him. Even when drunk he continued to
be honorable.
Rickman's intelligence and his ability
to judge books were the foundations
upon which the elder Rickman had built his
financial success as a book dealer. The
father and son could never understand
each other. Money was the father's god;
the muse was Rickman's. The father
was backed by and supported by Mr.
Pilkington, a financier of questionable
ethics but great success. When
Pilkington informed him that the Harden
library might soon be on the market, the
old man sent his son to evaluate it. At
the same time Miss Lucia Harden,
daughter of the owner of the library, asked for
someone to catalog it for her. Rickman
was sent because his knowledge of old
books was infallible.
Rickman was awed by Lucia. She was
the daughter of a baronet, so far above
him that he could never hope to have her
return his affection, but from the first
he knew that she was destined to be his
inspiration. Lucia was Jewdwine's cousin,
and he was unhappy when he learned of
her association with Rickman. He knew
Rickman was beneath her, but he knew
too that his cousin was moved by poetry.
In addition, Jewdwine himself thought
he would one day marry Lucia and in-
THE DIVINE FIRE by May Sinclair. By permission of the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.. Inc.
Copyright, 1904, by May Sinclair. Renewed, 1931, by May Sinclair.
918

herit the library and the country estate.
However, he could not bring himself to
ask for her hand; decisions were almost
impossible for Jewdwine.
Rickman soon learned, as he worked
for Lucia, that his father and Pilkington
were planning to pay a ridiculously low
price for the Harden library. In order to
help the girl, he wrote to Jewdwine and
asked him to buy the library at a fair
figure. Jewdwine failed to answer the
letter. When Lucia's father died
suddenly, leaving her indebted to Pilkington,
Rickman went to his father and tried to
persuade him to change the offer. The
old man refused, and Rickman left the
bookshop forever, refusing to compromise
his honor in return for the partnership
his father offered him if he would stay.
Not wanting to hurt Lucia, he told her
little of what had happened. He even
tried to excuse Jewdwine's failure to buy
the library and so salvage some of her
father's estate.
Pilkington took the Harden house and
furniture and Rickman's father the
library. After Rickman left him the old
man's business began to fail, and he had
to mortgage the library to Pilkington.
The books were stored, pending
redemption. Rickman left Lucia and returned
to his rooming-house, not to see her
again for five years.
Back in London, Rickman continued
to write for various journals. Jewdwine
gave him a junior editorship on the
journal which he edited, and the job allowed
Rickman to live fairly comfortably. His
serious writing he had put away in a
drawer. The product of his genius, it
would bring no money. Meanwhile he
was trapped into a proposal by little
Flossie Walker, a fellow boarder. Flossie was
a girl who could never understand the
ways of genius; her proper world was a
house in the suburbs, decorated with
hideous furniture. Rickman found himself
with the house bought and the wedding
date set.
Chance was to save him. Lucia, after
five years, visited a friend in Rickman's
boarding-house and the two met again.
No word of love was spoken, for Lucia,
even without her fortune, was still above
him. And Rickman had no desire to hurt
Flossie, who had waited two years for
him to make enough money for their
marriage. But he and Lucia found
inspiration and comfort in renewed
acquaintance. The real blow to Flossie's dreams
came when Rickman's father died,
leaving him a small inheritance. WTith it,
Rickman could possibly redeem from
Pilkington the mortgaged Harden library
and return it to Lucia. To do so would
mean a wait of at least two more years
for Flossie. This she could not
understand. A legal debt was one thing, a debt
of honor another. With great relief
Rickman learned that she refused to wait.
She quickly married another boarder and
found her house in the suburbs, complete
with nursery.
Rickman lived through years of the
most killing labor he would ever know.
He worked all night, starved himself,
lived in an unheated attic in order to
redeem the complete library. He got
extensions from Pilkington, who enjoyed
the sight of genius chasing an impossible
goal. His friends lost track of him. He
lost his job with Jewdwine because he
would not compromise his honor even in
his desperate need to help Lucia. At last
he seemed doomed to fail, for his lack of
food and his feverish work made him
desperately ill. Friends found him and
took him, unconscious, to a hospital.
Later, going through his things, they
found the work of his genius. When it
was published, Rickman's fame was
assured. Poor Jewdwine! How he wished
now that he had had the courage to claim
Rickman in time. But Jewdwine had by
that time sacrificed his own principles,
and success was beyond hope for him.
Recovered, Rickman went to Lucia.
He found her ill, unable to walk. When
she learned that his illness had been
caused by work for her, the gift was
almost more than she could bear. With his
aid she arose from her bed. Cured of the
919

malady which she knew now was only genius and the man fused at last,
heartbreak, she saw Rickman whole, the
920

DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM
Type of work: Theosophical treatise
Author: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)
First 'published: 1763
During the earlier part of his life
Emanuel Swedenborg established for
himself a lasting reputation as a man of
science, doing research in many scientific
fields, including physics, astronomy,
mathematics, engineering, and human
anatomy. His research in several of these
fields culminated in important
publications which showed him well in advance
of his time. His work in anatomy, for
example, anticipated some of the theories
of modern physiology, including those
involving the functions of the ductless
glands.
With respect to his later writings in
religion and theosophy Swedenborg's rep
utation is a mixed one. Between 1743
and 1745 he suffered a mental and
religious crisis which changed his life and
his work. During the crisis, according to
his own report, he underwent mystical
experiences during which he was given
access to the spiritual world, enjoying
visions of that world, hearing and taking
part in celestial conversations, and
receiving divine instruction. In 1745, during a
third great spiritual experience, reported
Swedenborg, he witnessed the second
advent of Christ and was instructed to
establish a "New Church." From his visions
and the instructions he purportedly
received grew Swedenborg's theosophical
writings, written in Latin. Although he
wrote voluminously on his doctrines,
Swedenborg did not himself found a sect, for
he believed that members of any church
could follow his doctrines. Later his
followers did constitute the Church of the
New Jerusalem, or New Church.
Like all theosophical writings, those of
Swedenborg depend for their importance
on how seriously one is willing to take
the author's reports of divine inspiration
and revelation. If acceptance is granted
by the reader, then the writings assume
tremendous, even cosmic, significance, for
Swedenborg did not attempt to disguise
or conceal the supernatural source of his
doctrines. He stated as actual fact that
his doctrines were the results of visions
granted to him by God, and he calmly
and routinely noted certain facts and
points either overheard in conversations
among the angels or witnessed during
the times he was transported spiritually
to heaven. He regarded his mission
seriously, sincerely believing that he had
been commanded to interpret the
spiritual world and explicate the Bible's true
spiritual intent to mankind.
Swedenborg's most important
theosophical work is the Divine Love and
Wisdom, in which he stated his system most
comprehensively and succinctly. The
premises of his doctrine are that God
is Man (or God-Man) and that God is
Love. He reported that the conception
of God as Man is held in all the heavens,
the reason he vouchsafed being that
heaven as a whole and in every part
resembles the human form, and the Divine
itself, together with the angels (who are
also human in form) constitutes heaven.
Swedenborg added that all angels and
other heavenly spirits are men in perfect
form. The essence or being of God,
according to Swedenborgian doctrine, is
love, an infinite love which mankind
knows only as existing and not through
an acquaintance with its nature,
inasmuch as mankind is, without God, held
to the natural world.
For Swedenborg, the manifestation of
God and His infinite love is a sun, in
the spiritual world a living sun. That
spiritual sun corresponds in heaven to
the "dead" sun of the natural world, and
is the source of spiritual life. The sun of
the natural world, according to
Swedenborg, is the source of life in nature,
which is but a receptacle of life, not a
source. Just as the spiritual sun and the
921

natural sun are distinct but analogous
in part and whole, so are heaven and
earth distinct but analogous. Swedenborg
warned, however, that space and time
are concepts only of the natural world
and are not to be found in the structure
of the infinite and perfect realm of
heaven. In heaven, according to the
cosmology expounded in Divine Love and
Wisdom, are three uncreated, distinct,
and eternal degrees, corresponding to
which in the natural world there are
three finite degrees. Swedenborg did not
describe in Divine Love and Wisdom
how these degrees exist, but only stated
that they are love, wisdom, and use, or
to put it another way, end, cause, and
effect. The three degrees exist, said
Swedenborg, in every man at birth, although
as a creature of the natural world the
human being is unaware of them. As the
degrees are opened successively to the
individual, so is God in man and man
in God, according to the doctrine. Light
from the spiritual sun flows into man as
he shuns evil, meaning that he can gain
in wisdom; but the "heat" of the spiritual
sun, or love, man cannot receive. The
natural mind of the lowest degree, said
Swedenborg, is a hell in itself, while the
mind which is spiritualized becomes a
heaven. In other words, by love and the
opening of each of the successive degrees
man can rise toward God. According to
Divine Love and Wisdom, the end of
creation, both spiritual and natural, is
to become perfectly the image of God-
Man.
Swedenborg undertook to answer the
question of creation that has bothered
countless numbers of theologically-minded
persons in every generation: Did God
create the universe out of nothing, or
did He form a cosmos from the stuff of
chaos? He wrote:
Every one of enlightened judgment
sees that the universe was not created
out of nothing, because it is impossible
to make anything out of nothing; for
nothing is nothing, and to suppose
anything to be made out of nothing is
absurd and therefore contrary to the light
of truth, which comes from the divine
Wisdom; and whatever is inconsistent
with the divine Wisdom is also
inconsistent with the divine Omnipotence.
Everyone of enlightened judgment also
sees that all beings were created out of
self-existent substance, the very Being
out of which all things that exist come
forth: and as God is the only
self-existent Substance, and thus is essential
Being, it is plain that this is the source
of all things that exist. Many have seen
this because it is consistent with reason;
but they have not dared to confirm it,
fearing to be led to suppose that the
created universe is God, because it
exists from Him, or that nature is self-
existent, and thus that what is called
God is only nature in her utmost
recesses.
Swedenborg suggests that there are
pairs in all parts of the body in order
that every man may achieve the love and
wisdom of divinity. He notes that the
eyes, ears, nostrils, hands, loins, and feet
exist in pairs, that the heart, brain, and
lungs are divided into two parts. The
right-hand parts, according to his views,
have a relation to love and the left-hand
parts a relation to wisdom.
The doctrine propounded in Divine
Love and Wisdom grants to all human
beings the means of achieving the
spiritual heaven, for in the Swedenborgian
view it is a false doctrine that the Lord
admits or excludes members of the
human race arbitrarily from salvation.
922

DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
Type of plot: Philosophical chronicle
Time of plot: 1885-1945
Locale: Germany
First published: 1947
Principal characters:
Adrian Leverkuhn, an arrogant, sickly musical genius
Serenus Zeitblom, his lifelong friend, the narrator
Wendell Kretschmar, Adrian's music teacher
Ehrenfried Kumpf, and
Eberhard Schleppfuss, teachers of theology
Rudiger Schildknapp, a poet, Adrian's friend
Rudolf Schwerdtfeger, a violinist befriended by Adrian
Inez Institoris, in love with Schwerdtfeger
Clarissa Rodde, her sister
Marie Godeau, loved by Adrian
Nepomuk Schneidewein, Adrian's young nephew
Critique:
Doctor Faustus: The Life of the
German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn as
Told by a Friend offers several approaches
to an understanding of Mann's purpose
and narrative pattern. On one level, it
may be taken simply as the biographical
story of a strange and fascinating genius,,
written in simple, honest prose by his
lifelong friend and admirer, Serenus
Zeitblom, a retired professor of philology.
Again, it may be regarded as an
excursion into a field which present-day fiction
has neglected, a story of the destruction
of a human soul in that demon-haunted
world of the imagination which modern
science has almost destroyed. Or it may
be read as a study of the problem of the
artist in contemporary society, of the
conflict between his love of beauty and his
moral responsibility to the kind of world
in which he lives today. Beneath and
beyond these levels of meaning,
however, the novel is a political and
philosophical allegory deeply charged with
suggestion and purpose. Leverkuhn, who
gave his soul to the devil for twenty years
of creative genius, symbolizes the
German break-through to world power, the
tortured nationalism of the Nazi state.
As the narrator digresses to comment on
the progress of the war the reader
perceives that the rise and collapse of the
Nazi dream runs side by side with Lever-
kuhn's tragic story, like musical
counterpoint creating a mood of increasing shame
and community guilt, and a realization
of inescapable doom. The novel is
intricately constructed, profoundly serious,
and beautifully written, with meanings
which extend beyond the purely national
and the temporal.
The Story:
At the outset Serenus Zeitblom
doubted his ability to make understandable
the life story of his friend Adrian
Leverkiihn, a musical genius whose strange,
doomed career had much in common with
the fated course of German history in
the twentieth century. A former
professor of philology, living in retirement and
out of sympathy with the Hitler regime,
greatly concerned for the future of his
country, Zeitblom hesitantly began his
task in May, 1943.
Adrian Leverkuhn was born in 1885
DOCTOR FAUSTUS by Thomas Mann. Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. By permission of the
publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1947, by Thomas Mann. Copyright, 1948, by Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc.
923

on a farm near Kaiseraschem, in Thu-
ringia. His family was of superior
yeoman stock, and his father, a man
interested in curious natural phenomena, did
everything in his power to stimulate his
son's intellectual curiosity. Adrian's
boyhood friend was Serenus Zeitblom, a
frequent visitor in the Leverkiihn
household. Years later Zeitblom could
remember his friend's absorbing interest in a
book filled with pictures of exotic lepi-
doptera. One in particular, Her sera
Esmeralda, fascinated the boy because of
its unusual beauty and protective
coloring. Adrian had his introduction to
music from a hired girl who taught him
old folk songs.
A boy of brilliant mind and arrogant
disposition, Adrian was educated to
become the scholar of the family, since the
farm was intended for an older brother.
When he was ten he entered the
gymnasium in Kaiseraschem. Living in the
house of his uncle, a dealer in musical
instruments, he had the run of the shop
and began to play chords on an old
harmonium. His uncle, overhearing his
efforts, decided that the boy ought to
have piano lessons. Adrian began to
study under Wendell Kretschmar, the
organist at the cathedral. His chief
interest at that time, however, was
theology, and he entered the University of
Halle with the intention of preparing
himself for the clergy. Zeitblom, certain
that his friend's choice was dictated by
the arrogance of purity, went with
Adrian to his theological lectures. One of
the teachers was Ehrenfried Kumpf, a
forthright theologian who enlivined his
classes by insulting the devil with
epithets that Martin Luther might have
used. Another instructor was Eberhard
Schleppfuss, whose lectures were filled
with anecdotes and sly undertones of
demonism and witchcraft.
Because of the variety of his talents
Adrian was soon ready for a career in
scholarship, theology, or music. At last,
unable to reconcile his interest in
philosophy and science with theological
precepts, he turned to music and
began, still under Kretschmar's training,
experiments in theory and technique
which were to determine the highly
original nature of his art. Before long
the pupil had surpassed the instructor.
Then Zeitblom was called up for a year
of military duty, service from which
Adrian was exempt because of his frail
constitution, and the two friends
separated for a time.
Adrian went to Leipzig for further
study. With Kretschmar's encouragement
he began to compose music of his own.
A new friend was Riidiger Schildknapp,
an Anglophile poet whose enthusiasm for
Shakespeare led to Adrian's decision to
plan an opera based on Love's Labor's
Lost. One night a sinister guide,
somewhat like Schleppfuss in appearance,
lured Adrian to a brothel. When a girl
in the house—an Esmeralda, he called
her—approached him, he ran from the
place. Later he tried to see the girl again,
but she had gone to Pressburg. Adrian
followed her and there voluntarily
contracted the venereal infection which was
to account for the strange flowering of
his genius and the eventual wreckage of
his life. Several years afterward, during
a holiday in Italy, he imagined a medi-
evalistic, hallucinated encounter with the
devil, who in return for his soul
promised him twenty-four years in which to
fulfill his powers as an artist.
Before his Italian journey Adrian had
lived for a time in Munich. There his
friends were artists and young
intellectuals, including Riidiger Schildknapp,
the poet; Jeanette Scheurl, a novelist;
Rudolf Schwerdtfeger, a young violinist;
several actors, and the daughters of his
landlady, Inez and Clarissa Rodde."
Through Adrian, Zeitblom met these
people and became interested in them. In
1912 Zeitblom married. A short time
later, on his return from Italy, Adrian
retired to a Bavarian farm presided over
by motherly Frau Else Schweigestill. In
924

his retreat, during the next twenty years,
he composed the music that established
his fame. Zeitblom went to teach at
Freising, not far away, and from that
time on the friends saw each other
frequently. Zeitblom wrote the libretto for
Love's Labour's Lost.
In 1914 Zeitblom went into the army
and served until invalided home with
typhus. Adrian, in retirement, wrote Marvels
of the Universe and a composition based
on the Gesta Romanorum. During the war
Inez Rodde married Dr. Helmut Insti-
toris. Secretly in love with Rudolf
Schwerdtfeger, however, she kept up an
adulterous relationship with the violinist
for years. Adrian's health began to
improve after the war. His great work of
that period was an oratorio, Apocalypse.
As his fame grew he acquired a
patroness, Madame de Tolna, a wealthy
Hungarian widow whom Zeitblom never met.
Schwerdtfeger, in the meantime, had
broken off his love affair with Inez. Their
first meeting after their separation was at
the funeral of Clarissa Rodde, an actress
driven to suicide by a blackmailing lover.
Adrian yielded at last to Schwerdt-
feger's urging and composed for the
musician a violin concerto. About that time
Adrian met attractive Marie Godeau.
Hoping to marry her, he sent
Schwerdtfeger to act as his emissary in his
courtship, but the violinist fell in love with
the girl and wooed her for himself.
Shortly after the engagement had been
announced Inez Institoris boarded a
streetcar in which Schwerdtfeger was riding
and shot her former lover. Adrian blamed
himself for his friend's death.
Fate had one more blow in store for
the composer. Adrian had a nephew,
Nepomuk Schneidewein, of whom he
was paternally fond. While convalescing
from an illness, little Echo, as his uncle
called him, went to stay with Adrian at
the Schweigestill farm. Taken suddenly
ill with cerebrospinal meningitis, the
child died. It seemed to Adrian that he
had lost the child he himself might have
had. He was never to recover completely
from his grief.
Meanwhile he was at work on his
masterpiece, a symphonic cantata called
The Lamentation of Doctor Faustus. In
the early summer of 1930 he invited a
number of his friends and some critics
to hear excerpts from the work, but his
explanation of his composition was so
disordered and blasphemous that many
of the guests left before he sat down to
begin playing the score. As he struck the
first chords he fell senseless to the floor.
Adrian Leverkiihn lived in madness
for the next ten years, and he died,
tenderly cared for by his aged mother, at
his Thuringian birthplace in 1940. Se-
renus Zeitblom was among the few old
friends present at the funeral. It seemed
to him then, and the certainty grew
upon him while he was writing the story
of Adrian's life, that his friend had
somehow reflected the destiny of the German
nation, a land arrogant, isolated,
dehumanized, and at last reeling to that
destruction which was the price of its power
as the old philologist penned his final
pages in April, 1945.
925

DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Germany
First presented: c. 1588
Principal characters:
Faustus, master of all knowledge
Wagner, his servant
Lucifer, the fallen angel
Mephostopilis, a devil
Good Angel
Evil Angel
Critique:
This drama should be regarded as a
skeletal structure of the play written by
Marlowe, for the surviving manuscripts
are so interspersed with comic scenes and
the lines themselves so often revised
according to whims of the actors that the
original writing must be culled out of the
surviving version. Even so, The Tragical
History of Doctor Faustus is worth
reading and study because of the many
remaining examples of the poet's skill it
contains. In addition to the adulterated
poetry in this play there is also the problem
of the tainted characterization and
symbolism; for while the personality of
Mephostopilis is often caricaturized and
while the exploits of Faustus are
frequently rendered pure low comedy, still
the Marlowe version of the two principal
characters is evident in the sober and more
consistent moments of the play. As an
added contribution to existing Faustian
literature, Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is an
artistic effort, although not comparable in
depth or scope to the treatment given this
theme in Goethe's Faust.
The Story:
Faustus nad been born of base stock in
Rhodes, Germany. In his maturity, while
living with some relatives in Wittenberg,
he studied theology and was called a
doctor. However, Faustus was so swollen with
conceit that, Daedalus-like, he strove too
tar, Decame glutted with learning,
conspired with the devil, and finally fell,
accursed.
At the outset of his downward path
Doctor Faustus found himself complete
master of the fields of knowledge which
men at that time studied. As a medical
doctor he had already achieved huge
success and great renown. But after obtaining
good health for men no challenge
remained in medicine except immortality.
Law, Faustus concluded, was nothing but
an elaborate moneymaking scheme. Only
divinity remained, but theology led to a
blind alley. Since the reward of sin was
death and since no man could say he was
without sin, then all men must sin and
consequently die.
Necromancy greatly attracted Faustus.
Universal power would be within his
reach, the whole world at his command,
and emperors at his feet, were he to
become a magician. Summoning his servant
Wagner, Faustus ordered him to summon
Valdes and Cornelius, who could teach
him their arts.
The Good Angel and the Evil Angel
each tried to persuade Faustus, but
Faustus was in no mood to listen to the
Good Angel. He exulted over the
prospects of his forthcoming adventures. He
would get gold from India, pearls from the
oceans, tasty delicacies from faraway
places; he would read strange
philosophies, cull from foreign kings their
secrets, control Germany with his power,
926

reform the public schools, and perform
many other fabulous deeds. Eager to
acquire knowledge of the black arts, he went
away to study with Valdes and Cornelius.
Before long the scholars of Wittenberg
began to notice the doctor's prolonged
absence. Learning from Wagner of his
master's unhallowed pursuits, the scholars
lamented the fate of the famous doctor.
Faustus' first act of magic was to
summon Mephostopilis. At sight of the ugly
devil, he ordered Mephostopilis to assume
the shape of a Franciscan friar. The docile
obedience of Mephostopilis elated the
magician, but Mephostopilis explained
that magic had limits in the devil's
kingdom. Mephostopilis claimed that he had
not actually appeared at Faustus' behest
but had come, as he would have to any
other person, because Faustus had cursed
Christ and abjured the Scriptures.
Whenever a man is on the verge of being
doomed, the devil will appear.
Interested in the nature of Lucifer,
Faustus questioned Mephostopilis about
his master, the fallen angel, and about
hell, Lucifer's domain. Mephostopilis was
wary. He claimed that the fallen spirits,
having been deprived of the glories of
heaven, found the whole world hell.
Mephostopilis urged Faustus to give up
his scheme, but Faustus scorned the
warning, saying that he would surrender his
soul to Lucifer if the fallen angel would
give to Faustus twenty-four years of
voluptuous ease, with Mephostopilis to
attend him.
While Faustus indulged in a mental
argument concerning the relative merits of
God and the devil, the Good Angel and
the Evil Angel, symbolic of his inner
conflict, appeared once again, each
attempting to persuade him. The result was that
Faustus was more determined than ever
to continue his course.
Mephostopilis returned to assure
Faustus that Lucifer was agreeable to the
bargain, which must be sealed in Faustus'
blood. When Faustus tried to write,
however, his blood congealed and
Mephostopilis had to warm the liquid with fire.
Significantly the words, "Fly, man,"
appeared in Latin on Faustus' arm. When
Faustus questioned Mephostopilis about
the nature of hell, the devil claimed that
hell had no limits for the damned.
Intoxicated by his new estate, Faustus
disclaimed any belief in an afterlife. Thus
he assured himself that his contract with
Lucifer would never be fulfilled, in spite of
the devil's warning that he, Mephostopilis,
was living proof of hell's existence.
Faustus, eager to consume the fruits of
the devil's offering, demanded books that
would contain varied information about
the devil's regime. When the Good Angel
and the Evil Angel came to him again, he
realized that he was beyond repentence.
Again the opposing Angels insinuated
themselves into his mind, until he called
on Christ to save him. As he spoke,
wrathful Lucifer descended upon his
prospective victim to admonish him never to call
to God. As an appeasing gesture Lucifer
conjured up a vision of the Seven Deadly
Sins.
Faustus traveled extensively
throughout the world, and Wagner marveled at
his master's rapid progress. In Rome, at
the palace of the Pope, Faustus, made
invisible by his magic arts, astounded the
Pope by snatching things from the holy
man's hands. Like a gleeful child Faustus
asked Mephostopilis to create more
mischief. When Faustus returned home the
scholars questioned him eagerly about
many things unknown to them. As his
fame spread, the emperor invited him to
the palace and asked him to conjure up
the spirit of Alexander the Great. Because
a doubtful knight scoffed at such a
preposterous idea, Faustus, after fulfilling
the emperor's request, spitefully placed
horns on the head of the skeptical
nobleman.
Foreseeing that his time of merriment
was drawing to a close, Faustus returned
to Wittenberg. Wagner sensed that his
master was about to die when Faustus
gave his faithful servant all his wordly
goods.
As death drew near, Faustus spoke with
927

his conscience, which, assuming the form
of an Old Man, begged him to repent
before he died. When Faustus declared that
he would repent, Mephostopilis
cautioned him not to offend Lucifer. Faustus
asked Mephostopilis to bring him Helen
of Troy as a lover to amuse him during the
final days of his life.
In his declining hours Faustus
conversed with scholars who had loved him,
and the fallen theologian revealed to them
his bargain with Lucifer. Alone, he
uttered a final despairing plea that he be
saved from impending misery, but in the
end he was borne off by a company of
devils.
928

THE DOCTOR IN SPITE OF HIMSELF
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1666
Principal characters:
Sganarelle, a woodcutter
Martine, his wife
Geronte, a gentleman of means
Luctnde, his daughter
Valere, his attendant
Leandre, Lucinde's lover
Critique:
This drama, ordinarily considered one
of Moliere's less important works,
nevertheless demonstrates his ability to ridicule
the fads of his day, in this case the
vogue, not wholly extinct three centuries
later, of showing obsequious deference
to men of science no matter what their
real qualifications may be. Exposing the
fact that ignorance often hides behind
a smattering of superficial learning, he
levels his barbs against the doctors of his
time. The comedy was an immediate
success and has always been popular. Sixty-
five years after its first presentation,
Henry Fielding, English novelist and
dramatist, adapted the basic plot in a
play presented at the Drury Lane
Theatre under the title of The Mock Doctor;
or, the Dumb Lady Curd.
The Story:
Sganarelle, a faggot gatherer, was
driven to extremes because Martine, his
nagging wife, accused him of always
being drunk instead of working, and finally
he took a stick and beat her soundly.
When their neighbor M. Robert sought
to interfere, Martine boxed his ears and
declared she liked to have her husband
beat her. But as Sganarelle went off to
the woods after promising to bring back
a hundred faggots that day, Martine
itched for wifely revenge.
Geronte's daughter Lucinde had
feigned illness and loss of speech in
order to escape marriage to a wealthy
suitor her father had chosen for her; she
herself was in love with Leandre, who
returned her love. Her father had
summoned many physicians to treat her, but
all had failed to find a cure. At last
Geronte sent his attendants, Valere and
Lucas, in search of a specialist.
When they encountered the offended
Martine and confided in her the reason
for their journey, she saw in their search
an opportunity to get even with her
husband. She told them that he was a
marvelous curer of any illness, a doctor who
pretended to be a woodcutter who dressed
absurdly and pretended complete
ignorance of his art, so that it might actually
be necessary to thrash him violently to
gain from him admission of his real
talents. Her boasts of the wonderful cures
he had performed so impressed her
listeners that they set off in immediate search
of this medical prodigy. They found
Sganarelle in the wood, relaxing with
his bottle, and, being rebuffed by him
after their first ceremonious introduction,
they thrashed him severely and finally
forced him to say he was a doctor and
to follow them to see Lucinde.
The attendants persuaded Geronte that
Sganarelle, though he loved a joke and
seemed to be off his head, was really the
greatest doctor in the world. When
Sganarelle was introduced to Geronte,
he inquired, as he himself had been
929

asked, if the other man were a doctor.
Ge"ronte replied that he was not,
whereupon Sganarelle, following the pattern
applied to him, gave him a sound
thrashing. The attendants thereupon explained
to the bewildered G6ronte that this was
merely an example of the great doctor's
eccentricity, a sure sign of his greatness.
When Geronte brought in his
daughter, she replied to Sganarelle's questions
by signs, gestures, and grunts. From these
noises Sganarelle diagnosed Lucinde as
dumb, a malady caused by loss of speech
because of an impediment in the action
of her tongue, on which subject Aristotle
said—thus and so. Using some learned-
sounding Latin words which meant
nothing at all, he prescribed that the patient
be put to bed and given plenty of bread
soaked in wine; his explanation was that
in this manner parrots were induced to
speak.
Geronte, overwhelmed by the brilliance
of Sganarelle's diagnosis and vast medical
knowledge, felt absolute confidence in
the ability of this eccentric to cure his
daughter of her strange action. What
pleased Sganarelle most was the generous
fee G6ronte gave him.
L6andre came to the fake physician
to ask his help in carrying out a plan
by which the young man hoped to see
Lucinde; but Sganarelle pretended to be
beyond influence in such matters, until
the lover offered him a handsome fee.
L6andre then told him that Lucinde's
illness was put on and that its cause was
not the brain, the spleen, or intestines,
but love. Sganarelle and the young man
plotted to disguise L6andre as an
apothecary's assistant so that he could speak
with Lucinde. Sganarelle also confided
that he was not really a doctor but had
been forced to appear one in spite of
himself, for a reason he did not know. Once
the error had spread, however, everyone
had taken him for a man of great
reputation, and so he had made up his mind to
stick to his new calling, for it paid very
well.
As if to substantiate his storv, Thibaut
and his son Perrin, country fellows who
had heard of Sganarelle's powers, asked
him to prescribe for Thibaut's ailing wife;
but Sganarelle gave no ear to their
troubles until they gave him gold crowns. As
a cure, he prescribed a piece of cheese,
which, he said, was made of mixed gold,
coral, pearls, and other precious things,
and must be used as directed. He also
warned them that if the patient died they
should bury her as decently as possible.
G6ronte reported to Sganarelle that his
patient had grown worse since taking
his remedy. When the nurse brought in
Lucinde, Sganarelle asked his disguised
assistant to feel her pulse, meanwhile
keeping G6ronte occupied in conversation
in order to keep him from overhearing the
lovers' plans. But Geronte caught a few
words spoken by Lucinde and exclaimed
in surprise andf in praise of the doctor.
Lucinde approached her father and
acknowledged that she had now recovered
her speech, but only to tell him that she
would marry no one except L£andre and
that nothing would shake her resolution.
G6ronte stubbornly insisted that she
must marry Horace, the man of his
choice, that very evening. When Lucinde
declared she would rather die, Sganarelle
stepped in and assured the father that
her actions were merely a sign of
additional madness and that the apothecary
was the man who could effect a cure.
Summoning L6andre, and, sprinkling his
instructions with Latin polysyllables to
mislead the others, he urged the lover to
fly with Lucinde immediately. Sganarelle
engaged G6ronte in conversation while
Lucinde and Leandre made their escape.
When their flight was reported to the
irate father, he threatened Sganarelle
with hanging for aiding in his daughter's
elopement.
In the midst of this predicament Mar-
tine overtook her husband. On being
told he was about to hang for helping
his master's daughter elope, she bewailed
the fact but added she would have been
somewhat comforted if only he had fin-
930

ished chopping their wood. Sganarelle
told her to leave, but she said she
preferred to stay and see him hanged.
At that critical moment Lucinde and
L^andre returned to confront G6ronte
with the news that L6andre's uncle had
just died and named the young man heir
to a considerable fortune. Geronte,
overjoyed at the turn of events which would
bring him a rich son-in-law, gave the
couple his blessing. Martine insisted that
since Sganarelle was not to be hanged he
could thank her for having achieved the
honor of being a doctor; but Sganarelle
pointed out that this distinction had
gained him innumerable thwacks with a
stick. He forgave the beatings, however,
because of his new dignity as a doctor.
But he took occasion to remind his
shrewish wife that henceforth she must
show greater respect for a man of his
consequence, one whom the world now
looked up to and honored—in spite of
himself.
931

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: London
First published: 1886
Principal characters:
Dr. Henry Jekyll, a London physician
Mr. Utterson, counselor for Dr. Jekyll
Poole, Dr. Jekyll's manservant
Dr. Hastie Lanyon, Dr. Jekyll's close friend
Critique:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde has steadily maintained the
popularity which it had originally. The
story is basically one of romantic
adventure and fantasy, of the type currently
found in paper pulps. Yet by merit of
Stevenson's understanding of human
nature and his mastery of English prose,
the story holds subtle values as an
illustration of man's dual nature. It is not
necessary to believe the story in order to
understand and believe the symbolism.
The Story:
Mr. Richard Enfield, and his cousin,
Mr. Utterson, a lawyer, were strolling
according to their usual Sunday custom
when they came upon an empty building
on a familiar street. Mr. Enfield told that
some time previously he had seen an ill-
tempered man trample down a small child
at the doorway of the deserted building.
He and other indignant bystanders had
forced the stranger, who gave his name
as Hyde, to pay over a sum of money for
the child's welfare. Enfield remembered
the man Hyde with deep loathing.
Utterson had reasons to be interested
in Hyde. When he returned to his a-
partment he reread the strange will of
Dr. Henry Jekyll. The will stipulated
that in the event of Dr. Jekyll's death all
of his wealth should go to a man named
Edward Hyde.
Utterson sought out Hyde, the man
whom Enfield had described, to discover
if he were the same who had been
named heir to Dr. Jekyll's fortune.
Suspicious of Utterson's interest, Hyde
became enraged and ran into his house.
Questioned, Dr. Jekyll refused to discuss
the matter, but insisted that in the event
of his death the lawyer should see to it
that Mr. Hyde was not cheated out of
his fortune. The lawyer believed that
Hyde was an extortioner who was getting
possession of Dr. Jekyll's money and who
would eventually murder the doctor.
About a year later Hyde was wanted
for the wanton murder of a kindly old
man, Sir Danvers Carew, but he escaped
before he could be arrested. Dr. Jekyll
presented the lawyer and the police with
a letter signed by Hyde, in which the
murderer declared his intention of
making good his escape forever. He begged
Dr. Jekyll's pardon for having ill-used
his friendship.
About this time Dr. Lanyon, who had
been for years a great friend of Dr.
Jekyll, became ill and died. Among his
papers was a letter addressed to Utterson.
Opening it, Utterson discovered an inner
envelope also sealed and bearing the
notice that it was not to be opened until
after Dr. Jekyll's death. Utterson felt
that it was somehow associated with the
evil Hyde, but he could in no way
fathom the mystery.
One Sunday Enfield and Utterson
were walking again in the street
where Enfield had seen Hyde mistreating
the child. They now realized that the
strange deserted building was a side
entrance to the house of Dr. Jekyll, an
additional wing used as a laboratory.
932

Looking up at the window, they saw Dr.
Jekyll sitting there. He looked
disconsolate. Then his expression seemed to
change, so that his face took on a grimace
of horror or pain. Suddenly he closed
the window. Utterson and Enfield walked
on, too overcome by what they had seen
to talk further.
Not long afterward Utterson was
sitting by his fireside when Poole, Dr.
Jekyll's manservant, sought entrance. He
related that for a week something strange
had been going on in Dr. Jekyll's
laboratory. The doctor himself had not
appeared. Instead, he had ordered his
meals to be sent in and had written
curious notes demanding that Poole go to
all the chemical houses in London in
search of a mysterious drug. Poole was
convinced that his master had been slain
and that the murderer, masquerading as
Dr. Jekyll, was still hiding in the
laboratory.
Utterson and Poole returned to Dr.
Jekyll's house and broke into his
laboratory with an ax. Entering, they discovered
that the man in the laboratory had killed
himself by draining a vial of poison just
as they broke the lock. The man was
Edward Hyde.
They searched in vain for the doctor's
body, certain it was somewhere about
after they discovered a note of that date
addressed to Utterson. In the note Dr.
Jekyll said he was planning to disappear,
and he urged Utterson to read the note
which Dr. Lanyon had left at the time
of his death. An enclosure contained
the confession of Henry Jekyll.
Utterson returned to his office to read
the letters. The letter of Dr. Lanyon
described how Dr. Jekyll had sent Poole
to Dr. Lanyon with a request that Dr.
Lanyon search for some drugs in Dr.
Jekyll's laboratory. Hyde had appeared
to claim the drugs. Then, in Dr. Lan-
yon's presence, Hyde had taken the
drugs and had been transformed into Dr.
Jekyll. The shock of this transformation
had caused Dr. Lanyon's death.
Dr. Jekyll's own account of the
horrible affair was more detailed. He had
begun early in life to live a double life.
Publicly he had been genteel and
circumspect, but privately he had practiced
strange vices without restraint.
Becoming obsessed with the idea that people
had two personalities, he reasoned that
men were capable of having two physical
beings as well. Finally, he had
compounded a mixture which transformed
his body into the physical representation
of his evil self. He became Hyde. In
his disguise he was free to haunt the
lonely, narrow corners of London and
to do the darkest acts without fear of
recognition.
He tried in every way to protect Hyde.
He cautioned his servants to let him in at
any hour; he took an apartment for him,
and he made out his will in Hyde's favor.
His life proceeded safely enough until he
awoke one morning in the shape of
Edward Hyde and realized that his evil
nature had gained the upper hand.
Frightened, he determined to cast off the
nature of Hyde. He sought out better
companions and tried to occupy his mind
with other things. However, he was not
strong enough to change his true nature.
He finally permitted himself to assume
the shape of Hyde again, and on that
occasion Hyde, full of an overpowering
lust to do evil, murdered Sir Danvers
Carew.
Dr. Jekyll renewed his effort to
abandon the nature of Hyde. Walking in the
park one day, he suddenly changed into
Hyde. On that occasion he had sought
out his friend Dr. Lanyon to go to his
laboratory to obtain the drugs which
would change him back to the personality
of the doctor. Dr. Lanyon had watched
the transformation with horror.
Thereafter the nature of Hyde seemed to assert
itself constantly. When his supply of
chemicals had been exhausted and could
not be replenished, Dr. Jekyll, as Hyde,
shut himself up in his laboratory while he
experimented with one drug after another.
Finally, in despair, as Utterson now
realized, he killed himself.
933

DOCTOR PASCAL
Type of work: Novel
Author: £mile Zola (1840-1902)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: The south of France
First published: 1893
Principal characters:
Doctor Pascal, a doctor interested in heredity
Clotilde, his niece
Marttne, their devoted old servant
Felicite Rougon, Dr. Pascal's mother
Doctor Ramond
Maxime, Clotilde's brother
Critique:
Doctor Pascal is the twentieth and last
volume of the Rougon-Macquart series,
in which Zola intended to apply the
methods of the experimental sciences to
the social novel. Dr. Pascal, himself a
Rougon, is doing research on the problem
of heredity. Using experimental methods,
he has chosen his own family as his field
of investigation. Thus the novel affords
Zola a double opportunity: to conclude
the whole series with flashbacks to the
former volumes, and to expose his own
conception of reality through Dr. Pascal's
exposition of his theories. When Dr.
Pascal remarks that his files on the
family contain the materials for a fresco of
life during the Second Empire, the
parallel is obvious. What Dr. Pascal has meant
to do on the subject of heredity, Zola
intended to do on the subject of social life.
As in the preceding volumes, a dominant
characteristic of the book is its
objectivity. Although Zola has often been
accused of insensibility, Dr. Pascal seems
to testify more to his great passion for
truth, whether pleasant or not.
The Story:
The July afternoon was extremely
hot, but the room was well protected
from the heat by heavy wooden shutters.
In front of a huge carved oak armoire,
Dr. Pascal was patiently looking for a
paper. The search was not easy. For
some thirty years, the doctor had been
amassing manuscripts related to his work
on heredity.
A smile came over his face as he found
the paper and handed it to his niece,
asking her to copy it over for their friend,
Dr. Ramond. Clotilde took it without
interrupting her pastel drawing of some
flowers intended to provide illustration
plates for the doctor's work.
Martine, the housekeeper, came in to
repair the tapestry on an armchair. She
had been with the doctor for thirty years,
ever since he had come to Plassans as a
young doctor. Thirteen years later, Dr.
Pascal's brother, following the death of
his wife, had sent Clotilde, then seven
years old, to live with him. MSrtine had
cared for the child according to her own
zealous religious conviction.
For his part, Dr. Pascal completed
Clotilde's instruction by trying to give
her clear and healthy ideas on
everything. The three had lived in peaceful
happiness, although a certain uneasiness
was now beginning to grow out of their
religious conflicts. Martine considered it
a pity that such a kind man as her
master refused to go to church; the two
women had agreed that they would force
him to attend services.
Toward the end of the afternoon old
Madame Rougon came for a visit, but
under a false pretext; she was actually
there to inspect everything. Hearing her
son in the next room, she appeared quite
934

displeased that he was again doing what
she called his "devilish cooking." She told
Clotilde of the unpleasant rumors going
around about the doctor's new drug. If
only he could try spectacular cures on the
famous people of the town, she declared;
but he was always treating the poor. She
had always wanted him to be a success,
like his two brothers or his nephew,
Clotilde's brother. But Dr. Pascal was
most unlike the rest of his family. He
had practiced medicine for only twelve
years; then he had invested his money
with a private broker and was now living
on its returns. Martine was getting the
money every three months and using it
to the best advantage. When his patients
paid him, Dr. Pascal would throw the
money in a drawer, taking it only as he
needed it. When he visited a poor patient
he often left money there instead of
receiving payment. He was completely
lost in his research work, his faith in life,
and his fight against suffering.
Madame Rougon was upset most by
the fact that the big oak armoire
contained detailed information on each
member of the family. Afraid that the doctor's
papers might fall in the hands of a
stranger, she asked Clotilde to give her the
key. She opened the cupboard, but as
she was reaching for the famous files,
Dr. Pascal entered; she left demurely as
if nothing had happened. It was Clotilde
who received the explosion of the doctor's
anger.
From that time on Dr. Pascal felt that
he was being betrayed by the two human
beings who were dearest to him, and to
whom he was dearest. He kept all the
drawers of his desk tightly locked.
One day Maxime came for a visit. He
was still young, but worn out by a d:sso-
lute way of life. Seeing that his sister was
not planning to get married, he asked her
to come to Paris with him. Clotilde was
frightened at the idea of leaving Dr.
Pascal's home, but she promised to go to her
brother if some day he reallv needed her.
After Maxime's visit the house
returned to its s*ate of subdued tension
until a Capuchin came to Plassans to
preach. Clotilde, deeply shaken by his
preaching, asked Dr. Pascal to burn all
his papers. He refused. He also had
another fruitless discussion with his
mother, who was constantly begging the
young girl to destroy Irs files.
One night, after Clotilde had taken
the key to the armoire, he found her
trying to steal the papers. While she was
helping him replace them, he made a last
attempt to convince her of the value of
his work. He showed her the files and
explained the use he was making of
them. Clotilde, almost convinced, asked
for time to think about the matter.
One day the doctor returned in an
upset state from a call he had made. A
patient had died of a heart attack while
he was giving the man an injection. After
Dr. Pascal had refused Clotilde's
attempted comfort, his mother hinted that
he might be going insane, and he nearly
believed the suggestion. He felt he might
be suffering from the same insanity as his
grandmother, who had never been well-
balanced and who was still in a
sanitarium at the age of one hundred and four.
Anxious and helpless, Clotilde and Mar-
tine watched over him.
When Dr. Ramond came to ask
Clotilde to marry him, she said that she
needed time to consider his proposal but
that she would answer him soon. In the
meantime she wanted to learn from him
what he thought about her uncle's
condition. Dr. Pascal overheard the
conversation, and from that time on his health
became worse. Although he allowed
Clotilde to take care of him, he would not
let her come into his room when he was
in bed. She finally persuaded him to try
some of his own injections, as Dr.
Ramond had suggested. As he began to
show improvement she tried to restore
his faith in his research. He was
overjoyed when she found the key to the
armoire and brought it to him.
At last Dr. Pascal declared that he felt
greatly improved, and he told Clotilde
that she should begin to think about a
935

date for her marriage. Clotilde did not
seem concerned. One day, as they were
coming back from a walk, she asked him
to help untie her hat. Suddenly, as he
bent close to her, he realized how greatly
he desired her. Disturbed by the strength
of his feelings, he insisted that she give
Dr. Ramond a definite date for the
wedding. A short time later he bought her an
extravagant present of lace, which he put
on her bed. That night Clotilde came
running to his door and told him that if
her marriage was the occasion for the
gift, she was not going to marry Dr.
Ramond. He, Pascal, was the man she
loved. That night she was his.
A period of extreme happiness for
both followed. Martine, after
disappearing for a full day to show her
disapproval, continued her faithful service.
One day Martine returned with the
news that the broker had embezzled the
doctor's funds and fled. She performed
miracles in preparing meals, using the
money accumulated in the drawer, but
at last their situation became really
desperate. Dr. Pascal and Clotilde seemed
quite unconcerned, however, and waited
patiently for the matter to be settled in
court.
Meanwhile, Madame Rougon kept
busy. She produced a letter from Max-
ime, now disabled, in which he asked for
his sister; she shamed Dr. Pascal for
keeping this young girl without even
marrying her and for not being able to
feed her properly. Dr. Pascal was happy
when Clotilde refused to go to her
brother. Then, feeling guilty, he tried
working hard in order to keep his mind
busy. Finally, pretending that he needed
time to devote himself to his research, he
insisted that she should go. Clotilde,
deeply hurt, obeyed.
Dr. Pascal went on working, waiting,
meanwhile, for the painful joy of Clo-
tilde's letters. In poor health, he suffered
two heart attacks. Dr. Ramond brought
him the news that some of his money
had been recovered. About the same time
he received a letter from Clotilde saying
that she was pregnant. He immediately
wired her to return. She left at once,
but two hours before she arrived he
died. However, he had gathered enough
strength at the end to complete his files
concerning himself, Clotilde, and their
unborn child.
While Clotilde was in Dr. Pascal's
room, Madame Rougon, with the help
of Martine, burned all his papers. Later
on, Clotilde used the shelves to store her
baby's clothes.
936

DOCTOR THORNE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: "Barsetshire," England
First published: 1858
Principal characters:
Doctor Thorne, a country doctor
Mary Thorne, his niece
Squire Gresham, owner of Greshamsbury Park
Lady Arabella, his wife
Frank Gresham, their son
Roger Scatcherd, a stonemason, later a barone.
Louis Philippe, his son
Miss Dunstable, an heiress
Critique:
The third in the series of Barchester
Novels, Doctor Thorne continues the
chronicling of clerical and county life
begun in The Warden and Barchester
Towers. The usual Trollopian theme of
making money and a successful marriage
is here portrayed against the background
of an English country estate and the life
connected with it. There is, as in other
books of the series, a mixture of sentiment,
humor, romance, and fidelity to human
nature and experience. The chief value of
these novels lies in their authentic
depiction of middle-class country life in
nineteenth-century England. The Barchester
Novels do not contain the whole of
Victorian society, but in them Trollope
reflected, better than any other writer of
his time, the manners and morals of the
period.
The Story:
Greshamsbury Park, in the county of
Barsetshire, dominated the life of the
surrounding countryside. Unfortunately,
Greshamsbury's lord, Squire Gresham,
was rapidly spending himself into poverty.
Most of his financial troubles resulted
from the desire of his wife, Lady Arabella
De Courcy Gresham, to get him into
politics. The squire had inherited his father's
seat in Parliament. He had lost favor,
however, because of his Whig leanings.
Barsetshhe, overwhelmingly Tory, did not
approve of Gresham's Whig friends or the
fact that his wife's aristocratic family, the
De Courcys, were aggressively Whig in
sentiment. Having lost his seat in the
Parliamentary elections, Gresham twice tried
to regain it. These attempts were
stimulated by his wife, who fancied being the
wife of a member of Parliament. But
Gresham was not successful, and he lost
a great deal of money in financing his
campaigns.
Consequently, when his son Frank
came of age, Squire Gresham had not
much to offer him in the way of financial
security. Lady Arabella saw as their only
hope die possibility of Frank's marriage
to a wealthy heiress. That he might do
such a thing seemed rather doubtful,
however, for, much to the distress of his mother
and her family, young Frank was highly
enamored of Mary Thorne, niece of the
local doctor. Frank and Mary had known
each other all their lives, and Mary had
been educated along with the young
Greshams at Greshamsbury Park. Hers
was an interesting history.
She had been brought to live with her
uncle, Doctor Thorne, when she was a
mere infant. The real circumstances of her
birth—that she was the illegitimate child
of Doctor Thome's brother and Mary
Scatcherd, a village girl—were known only
to the doctor. Even Mary Scatcherd's
brother Roger, who had killed his sister's
betrayer, did not know that Doctor
Thorne had adopted the child. Roger
937

Scatcherd, a poor stonemason, had been
sentenced to six months in prison for his
crime. When his term was up, he was told
that the child had died. Since the doctor
stood in high favor with Squire Gresham
and daily attended Lady Arabella, it was
natural that his niece should visit the
estate. Because she was an attractive child
and near the age of the Gresham children,
she soon took her lessons with them. By the
time Frank was of age, Mary Thorne
seemed part of the family. But Lady
Arabella was determined that this was
not to be the literal state of affairs; Mary
had no money.
One of Squire Gresham's greatest
misfortunes was the loss of a particularly
choice part of his estate, land sold to pay
off his numerous and most pressing debts.
Doctor Thorne, acting as agent for the
squire, found a buyer in Sir Roger
Scatcherd, a wealthy baronet. Sir Roger
was the former stonemason, who had
prospered well after his jail term and was
now the possessor of a title, a seat in
Parliament, and a large fortune. Although he
knew nothing of the existence of his
sister's illegitimate child, Sir Roger was in
close contact with Doctor Thorne. Sir
Roger was a chronic alcoholic, and Doctor
Thorne was often called on to attend him
during his sprees.
To the Gresham family the loss of this
piece of property was indeed a tragedy,
for the sale gready diminished the estate
Frank would someday inherit. Nervously,
Lady Arabella began to plan for the future
of her family. Fortunately, one of the
daughters was engaged to marry money,
a politician who wanted the Gresham and
De Courcy position and family
connections. Another daughter would marry the
local vicar and so would be assured of a
respectable position, though one without
much money. But Frank was his mother's
real hope. If he could make a wealthy
marriage, their troubles would be over.
But Frank, in love with Mary Thorne,
had no lofty matrimonial ambitions. Lady
Arabella's family, to save him from an
unfortunate romance, invited Frank to De
Courcy Castle for a visit.
It was the Countess De Courcy's plan to
make a match between Frank and Miss
Dunstable, a family friend. Miss
Dunstable was considered the wealthiest
heiress in England, but she was wary and
sharp-tongued. Mostly to humor his aunt,
Frank pretended to woo the heiress, and
to his surprise he found her rather good
company. Miss Dunstable, ten years his
senior and much more worldly-wise, soon
uncovered his little plot. Thereafter they
became the best of friends, and she acted
as an adviser to Frank in his affair with
Mary Thorne.
Meanwhile Sir Roger Scatcherd was in
such poor health from excessive drinking
that he decided to make his will, leaving
everything to Louis Philippe, his equally
alcoholic son. When Dr. Thorne learned
the terms of the will, he told Sir Roger
that Mary Scatcherd's child was still
living. Sir Roger made her his second heir
in the event of his son's death.
Otherwise matters were not going well
for Mary. Lady Arabella, finding Frank's
attachment for Mary unchanged, would
not allow the girl to visit Greshamsbury.
When Frank arrived home and became
aware of the shabby treatment she had
received, he was furious. But the family
insisted that he had to marry wealth,
particularly after his sister, who was to many
money, had been jilted.
Sir Roger was also in difficulties.
Having discovered a fraud in his election, the
committee unseated him, and the shock
was too great for the o]d man. He went
on one final drinking bout and died from
the effects. Louis Philippe, having
inherited the estate, also formed an
attachment for Mary, but she remained true to
Frank. Dr. Thome's only hope for the
happiness of Mary and Frank lay in the
possible death of Louis Philippe.
Meanwhile that young man was well on his
way to fulfilling the doctor's half-wish.
Having paid a visit to the squire for the
purpose of foreclosing on some debts,
Louis Philippe went on a drinking spree
that rivaled any of his father's. Weak and
938

very ill, he was finally sent home.
Soon afterward, in a stormy interview,
Lady Arabella demanded that Mary end
her engagement to Frank. Mary refused to
break her promise, but she did ask the
young man to release her because of the
hopelessness of the situation in which they
found themselves. Frank refused, insisting
that they loved each other. Then it was
that Louis Philippe died. Doctor Thorne
jubilantly told Mary the news of her
inheritance, news which opened the way
for her marriage to Frank. With Mary now
an heiress in her own right, not even the
proud De Courcys could object to so
excellent a match. For the first time in years
an atmosphere of rejoicing hung over
Greshamsbury Park.
939

DODSWORTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: United States and Europe
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Sam Dodsworth, an American manufacturer
Fran Dodsworth, his wife
Kurt Obersdorf, Fran's lover
Edith Cortright, Sam's friend, later his fiancee
Clyde Lockert, Fran's admirer
Emily, the Dodsworths' daughter
Brent, the Dodsworths* son
Critique:
Dodsworth is a successful novel in spite
of its sprawling and sometimes rambling
style. It describes convincingly the
degeneration and unmasking of the shallow,
snobbish Fran Dodsworth, and the
disillusion and final rebellion of her idealistic
husband. One of the last in the tradition
of American novels on American
materialism and European cultivation, the book
contains brilliant insights into the
relationships of the two cultures.
The Story:
In 1903, Sam Dodsworth married Fran
Voelker whom he had met at the Canoe
Club while he was assistant
superintendent at the Zenith Locomotive works. Five
years after their marriage Sam became
vice-president and general manager of
production for the Revelation Automobile
Company. By 1925, the Dodsworths had
two children, Emily, about to be married,
and Brent, in school at Yale. When Sam
sold his factory to the Unit Automotive
Company, they decided to go to Europe
for a leisurely vacation, a second
honeymoon.
The first night out on the S.S. Ultima,
Major Clyde Lockert seated himself at
Sam's table in the smoking room. Lockert,
who said he was growing cocoa in British
Guiana, quickly became friends with
Fran Dodsworth, and while Sam looked
on like an indulgent parent, he squired
her about, censuring and selecting the
new friends she made. He continued to
see the Dodsworths after they arrived in
London.
Fran was snobbishly pleased when he
took them to see his cousins, Lord and
Lady Herndon. Between them Fran and
Lockert made Sam feel almost like an
outsider. He was a failure at the dinner party
the Herndons gave, for he knew nothing
about cricket or polo, and he had no
opinions about the Russian situation.
One evening Hurd, manager of the
London branch of the Revelation Motor
Company, invited Sam to a get-together,
along with about thirty representatives of
American firms. Sam was surprised to
learn that few of them wanted to go back
to the United States except, perhaps, for
a visit. They all preferred the leisureli-
ness, the freedom from imposed moral
restraint, which their adopted land afforded.
These arguments made Sam see Europe
in a different light.
When he returned to the hotel, he
found Fran in tears. Lockert had taken
her out that evening, and on their return
had tried to make love to her. Fran,
ashamed of the situation in which she had
DODSWORTH by Sinclair Lewis. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc. Copy-
right 1929, by Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc.
940

placed herself and sure that Lockert
would be laughing at her, asked that they
leave for France as soon as possible. They
started four days later.
France was a new experience for Sam
Dodsworth. When Fran was willing to go
sightseeing, he was able to see Paris and
observe its people. When she chose to be
fashionable and take tea at the Crillon
with other American tourists, he was less
fortunate. But the more he saw, the more
convinced Sam became that he could not
understand Frenchmen. In the back of
his mind he was afraid that his inability
to accept foreign ways, and Fran's
willingness to adopt them, would finally drive
them apart. He felt lonely for his old
friend Tubby Pearson, president of the
Zenith bank.
Before long Fran had many friends
among expatriate Americans of the
international set. With her constant visits to
dressmakers and her portrait painter, her
outings with the leisured young men who
escorted her and her friends, she and Sam
saw less and less of each other. When he
went home for his college class reunion
that summer, he left Fran to take a villa
with one of her new friends. He was to
join her again in the fall, so that they
might go on to the Orient together.
Back in New York, Sam felt, at first, as
if he had become a stranger to the life of
noise and hurry which he had previously
taken for granted. Nor was he interested
in the newest model Revelation which
had been, quite competently, developed
without his aid. He discovered also that
he and his son no longer had common
ground. Brent was planning to sell bonds.
The newly-married Emily, her father
observed, was the very capable manager of
her own home, and needed no assistance.
Even Sam's best friend, Tubby Pearson,
had gone on without him to new poker-
playing and golfing companions.
At first his letters from Fran were lively
and happy. Then she quarreled with the
friend who shared her villa over one of
their escorts, Arnold Israel, a Jew. Sam
grew increasingly anxious as he realized
that the man was trailing Fran from one
resort to another and that their
relationship was becoming increasingly more
intimate. He made sailing reservations and
cabled his wife to meet him in Paris.
Sam had no difficulty discovering that
his wife had been unfaithful to him; she
admitted as much during their stormy
reunion in Paris. With the threat that he
would divorce her for adultery if she did
not agree to drop Israel, he forced her to
leave for Spain with him the following
day.
The Dodsworths wandered across
Spain into Italy, and finally on to
Germany and Berlin, and Sam had ample
time to observe his wife. Increasingly he
noted her self-centeredness, her
pretentiousness, and his pity for her restlessness
made him fonder of her.
At the home of the Biedners, Fran's
cousins in Berlin, the Dodsworths met
Kurt Obersdorf, a ruined Austrian
nobleman. Kurt took them to places of interest
in Berlin and became Fran's dancing
companion.
When the news came that the
Dodsworths were grandparents, for Emily now
had a boy, they did not sail for home. In
fact, they did not tell their friends of the
baby's birth because Fran feared that as a
grandmother she would seem old and
faded to them. When Sam went to
Paris to welcome Tubby Pearson and his
wife, abroad for the first time, Fran
remained in Berlin.
Sam and Tubby enjoyed themselves in
Paris. Then Sam, driven by a longing to
see his wife, flew back to Berlin. That
night Fran announced that she and Kurt
had decided to marry, and that she
wanted a divorce. Sam agreed, on the
condition that she wait a month before
starting proceedings.
Sadly, Dodsworth left for Paris and
later went on to Italy. While he was
sitting on the piazza in Venice and reading
one of Fran's letters, he saw Edith Cort-
941

right, a widow whom the Dodsworths had
met during their earlier trip to Italy. Mrs.
Cortright invited Sam home to tea with
her, and on his second visit he told her
about his separation from Fran.
Sam spent most of the summer with
Edith and her Italian friends. He began
to gain a new self-confidence when he
found that he was liked and respected by
these new acquaintances, who admired
him and were satisfied with him as he
was. He grew to love Edith, and they
decided to return to America together. Then
Sam received a letter from Fran telling
him that she had dropped divorce
proceedings because Kurt's mother objected
to his marriage with a divorced American.
Without saying goodbye to Edith, Sam
rejoined Fran, homeward bound. He
tried patiently to share her unhappiness
and loneliness. But before long Fran
became her old self, implying that Sam had
been at fault for the failure of their
marriage and flirting with a young polo player
aboard ship. After breakfast, one
morning, Sam sent a wireless to Edith, making
arrangements to meet her in Venice.
When the boat docked in New York, Sam
left his wife forever. Three days later he
sailed again to Italy and Edith Cortright.
942

A DOLL'S HOUSE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First presented: 1879
Principal characters:
Torvald Helmer, a bank manager
Nora Helmer, his wife
Mrs. Linde, Nora's old school friend
Krogstad, a bank clerk
Dr. Rank, a friend of the Helmers
Critique:
A Doll's House is the best known and
one of the most popular of Ibsen's works.
A classic expression of the theme of
woman's rights, the play shocked Ibsen's
contemporaries, because in the end Nora
leaves her husband and children. In the
character of Dr. Rank there is a
foreshadowing of the heredity theme later
to be developed by Ibsen in Ghosts.
The Story:
On the day before Christmas, Nora
Helmer was busying herself with last
minute shopping, for this was the first
Christmas since her marriage that she
had not had to economize. Her husband,
Torvald, had just been made manager of
a bank and after the New Year their
money troubles would be over. She
bought a tree and plenty of toys for the
children, and she even indulged herself
in some macaroons, her favorite
confection, but of which Torvald did not
entirely approve. He loved his wife dearly,
but he regarded her very much as her
own father had seen her, as an amusing
doll—a plaything.
It was true that she did behave like a
child sometimes in her relations with her
husband. She pouted, wheedled, and
chattered because Torvald expected these
things; he would not have loved his doll-
wife without them. Actually, Nora was
not a doll but a woman with a woman's
loves, hopes, and fears. This was shown
seven years before, just after her first
child was born, when Torvald had been
ill, and the doctor said that unless he
went abroad immediately he would die.
Nora was desperate. She could not seek
Torvald's advice because she knew he
would rather die than borrow money. She
could not go to her father, for he himself
was a dying man. She did the only
thing possible under the circumstances.
She borrowed the requisite two hundred
and fifty pounds from Krogstad, a
moneylender, forging her father's name to the
note, so that Torvald could have his
holiday in Italy.
Krogstad was exacting, and she had
to think up ways and means to meet the
regular payments. When Torvald gave
her money for new dresses and such
things, she never spent more than half
of it, and she found other ways to earn
money. One winter she did copying,
but she kept this work a secret from
Torvald, for he believed that the money
for their trip had come from her father.
Then Krogstad, who was in the
employ of the bank of which Torvald was
now manager, determined to use Torvald
to advance his own fortunes. But
Torvald hated Krogstad, and was just as
determined to be rid of him. The
opportunity came when Christina Linde,
Nora's old school friend, applied to
Torvald for a position in the bank. Torvald
resolved to dismiss Krogstad and hire
Mrs. Linde in his place.
When Krogstad discovered that he was
to be fired, he called on Nora and
informed her that if he were dismissed he
943

would ruin her and her husband. He
reminded her that the note supposedly
signed by her father was dated three days
after his death. Frightened at the turn
matters had taken, Nora pleaded
unsuccessfully with Torvald to reinstate Krog-
stad in the bank. Krogstad, receiving
from Torvald an official notice of his
dismissal, wrote in return a letter in
which he revealed the full details of the
forgery. He dropped the letter in the
mailbox outside the Helmer home.
Torvald was in a holiday mood. The
following evening they were to attend a
fancy dress ball, and Nora was to go as
a Neapolitan fisher girl and dance the
tarantella. To divert her husband's
attention from the mailbox outside, Nora
practiced her dance before Torvald and
Dr. Rank, an old friend. Nora was
desperate, not knowing quite which way
to turn. She had thought of Mrs. Linde,
with whom Krogstad had at one time been
in love. Mrs. Linde promised to do what
she could to turn Krogstad from his
avowed purpose. Nora thought also of
Di. Rank, but when she began to confide
in him he made it so obvious that he
was in love with her that she could not
tell her secret. However, Torvald had
promised her not to go near the mailbox
until after the ball.
What bothered Nora was not her own
fate, but Torvald's. She pictured herself
as already dead, drowned in icy black
water. She pictured the grief-stricken
Torvald taking upon himself all the
blame for what she had done and being
disgraced for her sake. But the reality
did not quite correspond with Nora's
picture. Mrs. Linde, by promising to
marry Krogstad and look after his
children, succeeded in persuading him to
withdraw all accusations against the
Helmers, but she realized that Nora's
affairs had come to a crisis and that sooner
or later Nora and Torvald would have to
come to an understanding.
This crisis came when Torvald read
Krogstad's letter after their return from
the ball. He accused Nora of being a
hypocrite, a liar, and a criminal, of
having no religion, no morality, no sense of
duty. He declared that she was unfit to
bring up her children. He informed her
that she might remain in his household
but she would no longer be a part of it.
Then another letter arrived from
Krogstad, declaring that he intended to take
no action against the Helmers. Torvald's
whole attitude changed, and with a sigh
of relief he boasted that he was saved.
For the first time Nora saw her husband
for what he was—a selfish, pretentious
hypocrite with no regard for her position
in the matter. She reminded him that
no marriage could be built on inequality,
and announced her intention of leaving
his house forever. Torvald could not
believe his ears and pleaded with her to
remain. But she declared she was going to
try to become a reasonable human being,
to understand the world—in short, to
become a woman, not a doll to flatter
Torvald's selfish vanity. She went out and
with irrevocable finality, slammed the
door of her doll house behind her.
944

DOMBEY AND SON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1846-1848
Principal characters:
Mr. Dombey, a rich London merchant
Paul, his son
Florence, his daughter
Edith Granger, his second wife
Mr. Carker, his trusted agent
Walter Gay, in love with Florence
Critique:
Dombey and Son, which appeared after
Martin Chuzzlewit, was an effort by
Dickens to regain popularity he had lost
with the publication of his previous novel.
Martin Chuzzlewit, which had heavily
satirized America and Americans, had
caused Dickens to lose a great deal of
favor, a loss which greatly irritated
Dickens, who was by that time in
something of a competition for the public's
attention with another great Victorian
novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray.
Dombey and Son is also a milestone in
Dickens' work in that he placed the story
at a higher social level that he had done
in his previous novels. For the first time
he indicated an interest and a sympathy in
the upper middle classes and the
aristocracy. The story is a very serious one,
involving the downfall of a dignified and
pompous merchant and his learning of
the power of love as compared to the lesser
power of money. In typical Dickensian
style, however, there is a whole catalog of
characters to provide a humorous
background.
The Story:
Mr. Dombey was a stiff and dignified
man who rarely showed emotion. But the
birth of an infant son, who was named
Paul, was cause for rejoicing, as Mr.
Dombey had longed many years for a
child who would fill the second part of the
mercantile firm of Dombey and Son. Even
the fact that Mrs. Dombey died shortly
after the boy's birth did not particularly
concern him; he was centered entirely on
the little infant who he hoped would
someday take over the business. Mr.
Dombey also had a daughter, Florence,
but she meant almost nothing to him, for
she could not take a place in the firm.
Little Paul was first given over to a wet
nurse, but the woman proved to be
unreliable and was dismissed. After her
dismissal little Paul was cared for by Mr.
Dombey's sister and a friend of hers.
Despite their vigilant care, however, little
Paul's health was poor. He was listless and
never cared to play. At last Mr. Dombey
made arrangements to have him sent to a
home, together with his sister, at Brighton,
there to gain the benefits of the sea air.
Paul, in spite of his father's dislike for
little Florence, loved his sister very much,
and they were constant companions. Paul's
love for Florence only made Mr. Dombey
dislike the girl more, for the father felt
that his daughter was coming between
himself and his son.
One weekend, while Mr. Dombey was
visiting at Brighton, Walter Gay, a young
clerk in the firm, came to the inn where
Mr. Dombey and his children were having
dinner. Some time before the clerk had
rescued Florence from an old female
thief. Now his uncle was about to become
a bankrupt, and Walter had come to ask
for a loan to save his uncle's shop. Mr.
945

Dombey let litde Paul, who was then six
years old, make the decision. Paul asked
Florence what he should do; she told him
to lend the money, and he did.
Shordy afterward, little Paul was
placed in a private school at Brighton,
where he was to be educated as quickly as
possible. The pace of his studies proved
too much for him, and before the year was
out his health broke down. He never
seemed to grow any better, even after his
father took him home to London. Before
many months had elapsed, little Paul died,
mourned by his father and his sister,
though for different reasons.
Mr. Dombey took his son's death as a
personal blow of fate at his plans. His
sister and her friend became so concerned
about him that they planned to have him
take a trip with Major Bagstock, a retired
officer, to Leamington. While they were
there, they met Edith Granger, a young
widow whose mother the major had
known. Mr. Dombey, seeing in Mrs.
Granger a beautiful, well-bred young
woman who would grace his household,
immediately began to court her. Mrs.
Granger, coaxed by an aged mother who
was concerned for her daughter's welfare,
finally accepted Mr. Dombey, although
she was not in love with him.
Florence Dombey had seen young
Walter Gay several times since their
meeting at Brighton, and after her brother's
death she came to look upon young Walter
as a substitute brother, despite his lowly
station. Then their friendship was broken
temporarily when Mr. Dombey sent
Walter on a mission to the West Indies.
Weeks passed, but no word was heard of
the ship on which he had sailed.
Everyone believed that it had sunk and that
Walter had been drowned.
After Mrs. Granger had accepted Mr.
Dombey's suit, they began to make plans
for the wedding and for reopening the
Dombey house in London. It was at the
house that Edith Granger first met
Florence. The two immediately became fast
friends, even though Mr. Dombey
disliked his daughter and made it plain that
he did not want his wife to become too
fond of the girl.
Mr. Dombey's second marriage was
unsuccessful from the start. Edith Granger
was too proud to give in to Mr. Dombey's
attempts to dictate to her and to his claim
upon her as a piece of merchandise, and
she resisted him in every way. Dombey,
who was too dignified to argue with her,
sent his business manager, Mr. Carker, to
tell his wife that he was dissatisfied with
her conduct. Carker warned Mrs. Dombey
that, unless she obeyed Mr. Dombey,
Florence would be the one to suffer. Edith
Dombey then became outwardly cool to
her stepdaughter, but still she resisted her
husband. Mr. Carker was once more
dispatched to tell her that Mr. Dombey
meant to be obeyed in everything.
The wife then openly revolted. She felt
that she could get complete revenge by
running off with Carker, her husbands
most trusted employee, who was also so
far below Mr. Dombey socially that the
blow would hurt even more. After she and
the employee disappeared, Florence was
only rebuffed in her attempts to comfort
her father. When he struck her, she ran
away from the house and went to the shop
owned by Walter Gay's uncle, Sol Gills.
There she found that Gills had
disappeared and that an old ship's captain
named Cutde was in charge. Captain
Cutde recognized Florence and took her
in.
Mr. Dombey at last learned the
whereabouts of his wife and Carker from a
young woman whom Carker had seduced
and deserted. Mr. Dombey followed the
pair to France but failed to locate them.
Carker, meanwhile, returned to England.
Mrs. Dombey had refused to have
anything to do with him. She had her
revenge, she said, in ruining him and her
husband. Carker, trying to escape into the
English countryside, met Mr. Dombey at
a railway station. An accident occurred,
and Carker was killed by a train.
Florence, staying with Captain Cuttle,
hoped that Walter would return, even
946

though everyone had given him up for
dead. Her faith was at last rewarded.
Walter had been picked up by a China-
bound vessel and so had not had the
opportunity to send back word of his safety.
Shortly after his return he revealed to
Florence that he no longer felt as a brother
toward her, since she had become a woman
during his absence. Realizing that she,
too, had fallen in love with him, she
accepted his proposal. Walter had found
work as clerk on a ship, and after their
marriage they sailed on a ship bound for
the Orient.
The failure of his marriage had broken
Mr. Dombey*s spirit, and he took little
interest in his firm from that time on. His
lack of interest was unfortunate, for the
firm had been placed in a difficult position
by certain dealings of Carker's while he
had been Dombey's trusted agent. As a
result of Carker's mismanagement and
Dombey's lack of interest, the firm went
bankrupt. After the bankruptcy Mr.
Dombey stayed alone in his house, saw
no one, and gradually drifted into despair.
On the very day that Mr. Dombey had
decided to commit suicide, Florence
returned to London from the Orient with
her year-old son, who was named Paul,
after his dead uncle. Florence and the
baby cheered up Mr. Dombey, and he
began to take a new interest in life.
Reconciled to his daughter, he realized that she
had always loved him, even though he had
been exceedingly cruel to her. Walter Gay
succeeded in business, and all of them
lived together happily, for his misfortunes
had made a changed man of the almost
indomitable Mr. Dombey.
947

DOMINIQUE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Eugene Fromentin (1820-1876)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1862
Principal characters:
Dominique de Bray, a gentleman
Madeleine de Nievres, his beloved
Augustin, his tutor
Olivier d'Ohsel, his friend
Critique:
Although Fromentin was primarily a
painter, his writings quickly won the
respect of the most distinguished of his
contemporaries. In Dominique he drew
from the experiences of his own youth;
the powerful and permanent hold that
the French countryside and the seacoast
exerted upon his mind is evident
throughout the book. The love theme is the old
one of the moth being drawn to the
flame, despite morality, orthodoxy, or
common sense. The hero is also torn in
a choice between the rigors of excellence
and the pleasures of mediocrity. The
psychology of personality is deftly explored
in polished prose style.
The Story:
The narrator of the book first met
Dominique de Bray at Villeneuve.
Dominique lived at the large Chateau des
Trembles with his wife and two children.
The mayor of the commune, he was shy,
unpretentious, and a friend to all in the
community.
On St. Hubert's Day Dominique was
visited by Olivier d'Orsel, a wealthy,
solitary man with captivating manners and
a passion for luxury, who had suddenly
retired from social life. A few days after
his visit Olivier tried to commit suicide.
This event led Dominique to tell the
narrator about himself.
Orphaned at an early age, Dominique
grew up at Villeneuve. In his youth he
DOMINIQUE by Eugene Froraentin. Translated by Edward Marsh. By permission of the publishers.
The Cresset Press. Copyright, 1948, by The Cresset Press.
became a lover of the outdoors. He was
cared for by Madame Ceyssac, his aunt,
who provided him with a tutor named
Augustin. The two differed greatly in
temperament. Dominique was emotional
and wild and loved nature; Augustin was
well-read, exact, practical, and
apparently oblivious to nature. When he was
not tutoring Dominique, he would
remain in his room, writing plays and
letters. After four years the time came for
Dominique to go away to school.
Augustin went to Paris with high hopes of his
own success.
Dominique went to live with Madame
Ceyssac in her mansion at Ormesson. At
school he befriended young Olivier
d'Orsel, who also had an estate near Les
Trembles. Dominique, who was a good
student, helped Olivier with their school-
work. Too shy to admit it, Dominique
fell in love with Madeleine, Olivier's
cousin. At night he would spend his time
writing poetry. He also kept up a
correspondence with Augustin, who warned
him against confusing Olivier's love of
pleasure with the true goals in life.
Dominique was surprised when
Madeleine married M. de Nievres, a well-
established gentleman. After the
ceremony Dominique was in despair because
he realized that he loved a married
woman.
After graduation, Dominique and
Olivier went to Paris. There they saw
948

Augustin, who grew to like Olivier but
had no esteem for him. Olivier, in turn,
esteemed Augustin without liking him.
Dominique, trying to forget his love
for Madeleine, buried himself in his
literary work. He went to libraries and
lectures, and he read through the small
hours of the night in the belief that the
austere routine was good for him. After
a few months, however, he burned his
writings because he thought them stale
and mediocre. Olivier, who saw what
Dominique had done, told him to find
other amusements and affections.
Augustin, on the other hand, simply said that
he would have to begin again. Augustin,
who had experienced setbacks of his own,
never complained. Having guessed
Dominique's love problem, he told him to
solve it by plunging into continuous
work.
In spite of Augustin's advice and
example, Dominique found it impossible to
settle to his work. Through Olivier, he
met a woman whom he saw steadily for
two months. Then he learned that
Nievres and Madeleine were going to
Ormesson, and he invited them to Les
Trembles for the holidays. Although he
never told Madeleine about his love for
her, those were happy months for
Dominique. That winter Nievres and
Madeleine decided to go to Paris.
Eventually Dominique wanted to make
Madeleine admit that they loved each
other, but the harder he tried to draw an
admission from her the more she
pretended to be quite unaware of his
intention. One day, when he was
determined to tell her of his love, he saw tears
in her eyes; he understood then that
there was nothing more to be said.
After that day their relationship
became relaxed and natural, and
Madeleine, wanting to encourage Dominique
in his work, began to meet him at the
risk of compromising her reputation.
After a time Dominique realized that
Madeleine was about to surrender herself
to him. He then stopped seeing her, and
she became gloomy and irritable. Her
reactions made Dominique realize that he
had deeply troubled her conscience.
Meanwhile, Augustin had married.
Visiting Augustin in his home,
Dominique saw the near-poverty but great
happiness in which his former tutor
lived. At the same time Olivier, deeply
involved with the women he had been
seeing, began to hate the world and
himself. It became evident that Julie,
Madeleine's younger sister, loved Olivier.
But Olivier, who claimed that happiness
was a myth, refused to think of marrying
her, and his attitude led to a loss of
confidence between Dominique and Olivier.
One night, while Dominique and
Madeleine were attending the opera,
Dominique caught the glance of his
former mistress. Madeleine saw the
exchange and later told Dominique that he
was torturing her and breaking her heart.
That night Dominique, determined to
deal honestly with Madeleine, decided to
claim her. For the next three weeks,
however, she was not at home to him.
Frustrated, Dominique moved to new
quarters and, as a final effort, tried to escape
the life of emotions and concentrate on
the logical disciplines of the mind. He
read much, saved his money, and
published anonymously two volumes of his
youthful poetry. He also wrote some
political books which were immediately
successful. When he evaluated his talents,
however, he concluded that he was a
distingu;shed mediocrity.
Several months later Olivier told
Dominique that there was unhappiness at
Nievres, where Madeleine was staying.
Julie was ill and Madeleine herself was
not well. Dominique went to Nievres at
once and there found Julie recovering.
No longer needed as her sister's nurse,
Madeleine, with disregard for propriety,
shared with Dominique three days of
supreme happiness.
On impulse, after Madeleine had led
him in a dangerous ride on horseback,
Dominique decided to leave as he had
come, without premeditation or
calculation. When he was helping her to fold a
949

large shawl that evening, Madeleine half-
fainted into his arms, and they kissed.
Dominique felt very sorry for her and
let her go. After dinner Madeleine told
him that, although she would always
love him, she wanted him to go away, to
get married, to take up a new life. That
was the last Dominique saw of
Madeleine. He returned to Les Trembles and
settled down to quiet country life.
Dominique told the narrator that the
years had brought forgiveness and
understanding. Augustin, he said, had become
a respected figure in Paris. Dominique
himself had never repented his early
retirement; he felt, in fact, that his life
was merely beginning.
950

DON CARLOS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)
Type of plot: Historical tragedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Spain
First presented: 1787
Principal characters:
Don Carlos, heir to the Spanish throne
Philip II, King of Spain and Don Carlos' father
Elizabeth de Valois, Queen of Spain, Don Carlos' stepmother
Marquis de Posa, Don Carlos' friend
Domingo, confessor to the king
Duke of Alva, Philip II's trusted general and minister
Princess de Eboli, attendant to the queen
Critique:
This drama by Schiller was based
chiefly on a historical novel of the same
title published by the Abbe de Saint-
R£al at Paris in 1672. The play, an
exceedingly long one, was written in blank
verse and represented a distinct advance
over Schiller's earlier dramas, which had
been written in prose. Within this play
the reader finds Schiller's own ideas of
humanity and liberty expressed in words
spoken by Don Carlos and the Marquis
de Posa. Although the title indicates that
the hero was to be Don Carlos, heir
to the Spanish throne, the marquis
usurps the central position, as he did in
Schiller's own mind while the play was
being written. This was Schiller's last
play before he turned to writing in the
fields of aesthetics, ethics, and literary
criticism.
The Story:
Philip II of Spain did not wish to trust
his son, Don Carlos, with any of the
crown's aflFairs, even though Don Carlos
was twenty-three years old. Philip's
ostensible reason was that Don Carlos was
too hot-blooded. Probably the real reason
was Philip's fear of his son, fear
springing from the fact that Philip himself had
forced his father, Charles V, from the
throne. To aggravate the differences and
the coldness between the king and his
son, Philip was married to Elizabeth de
Valois, with whom Don Carlos had been
in love. Indeed, both France and Spain
had given permission for the courtship
between the two, until Philip had
decided to take Elizabeth for himself.
Don Carlos hid his love for his
stepmother until the Marquis de Posa
returned from Flanders, at which time Don
Carlos revealed his secret to his friend.
The marquis was horrified, but swore
upon their boyhood friendship to help
the prince, if the prince in turn would
try to help the people of Flanders escape
from the heavy and tyrannic policies
forced upon them by Philip through his
emissary, the Duke of Alva.
Stating that he could be more humane
than the duke, Don Carlos went to his
father and pleaded that he be made the
king's agent in Flanders. Philip, refusing
to listen, sent the duke over Don Carlos'
protests. He did, however, ask the duke
to be more friendly with the prince.
When the duke went to speak to the
prince, he found Don Carlos in the
queen's antechamber. They had words
and fought, until the queen intervened.
From one of the queen's pages Don
Carlos received a mysterious note and a
key to a room in the queen's apartments.
Hoping against hope that the queen had
sent it to him, he went to the room, an
act for which his jealous father would
have punished him severely. He found,
instead of the queen, the Princess de
Eboli. Having fallen in love with the
951

prince, she had sent him the note.
Loving Don Carlos, she asked his help in
evading the importunities of the king,
who sought her for his mistress. Don
Carlos repelled the advances of the
princess and thus incurred her anger. When
he left, he took with him a letter which
the king had sent to her. Hoping to use
the letter as proof that the king was a
tyrant and an evil man, he showed it to
the Marquis de Posa. The marquis tore
up the letter, saying that it was too
dangerous a weapon and might hurt Don
Carlos and the queen more than the king.
In the meantime the Princess de Eboli,
infuriated at Don Carlos' refusal of her
love, went to Domingo, the king's
confessor and pander, and told him of her
decision to become Philip's mistress. She
also told about her meeting with the
prince and his obvious hope that he was
to meet the queen. That information
pleased Domingo and the Duke of Alva,
who wanted to rid the kingdom of both
Don Carlos and the queen.
With the help of the princess, the
duke and the confessor laid a trap for
Don Carlos and the queen. Becoming
suspicious of the conspirators' motives,
Philip called in a man he thought would
be completely honest in solving the
problem. The man was, ironically, Don
Carlos' friend, the Marquis de Posa. He
quickly gained the king's confidence,
even though some of his religious ideas
were heretical, and he did his best to
help Don Carlos. Having to work in
secret, the marquis seemed to Don Carlos
to be a traitor to his friend. Other
courtiers reported to Don Carlos that a file of
letters he had given to the marquis had
been seen in the king's chamber. What
Don Carlos heard was true, for the
marquis had found it necessary to tell the
truth about the letters to clear Don
Carlos of the charge of illicit relations with
the queen.
Don Carlos, not knowing the truth
concerning the marquis* activities, went
to the Princess de Eboli to seek her help.
The Marquis de Posa, learning of Don
Carlos' visit to the princess, entered
immediately after the prince. Using the
authority given him by the king to
arrest Don Carlos, the marquis had him
put incommunicado in prison, lest he
talk to others who could do him harm.
The easiest way to keep Don Carlos safe
would have been to murder the Princess
de Eboli, but the marquis did not have
the heart to kill her, even when his
dagger was at her breast.
Instead of assuming the guilt of
murder, the marquis resolved to make
himself the victim. The king had been
convinced that Don Carlos and the queen
had been involved in a treasonable plot
against the crown in Flanders. To clear
them, the marquis sent a letter he knew
would be put into the king's hands. In
it he stated that he, the marquis, was the
real conspirator. Afterward the marquis
had only enough time to go to the prison
and reveal his true actions to Don Carlos.
As he spoke, a shot was fired through the
gratings by an assassin sent by Philip.
Popular wrath and the indignation of
the grandees forced Philip to release his
son, but Don Carlos refused to leave the
prison until his father came in person to
give him back his sword and his freedom.
When Philip arrived, in the company of
the grandees of the council, Don Carlos
confronted him with the marquis* corpse
and told him that he had caused the
murder of an innocent man. Philip,
seeing the truth of the accusation, and filled
with remorse, became ill in the prison and
was carried away by the grandees.
A friend reported to Don Carlos that
the king and the Duke of Alva had been
enraged by public reaction in favor of
the imprisoned prince. Hoping to lift
the yoke of tyranny his father and the
Duke of Alva had placed upon that
country and its people, Don Carlos
decided to leave Spain immediately and go
to Flanders. Before he left, he planned
to see the queen once more and tell her
of his plans. Donning a mask and the
952

garb of a monk, he went through a
secret passage to the wing of the castle in
which the queen lived. There he went
through open corridors to her rooms, able
to do so because of a superstition that
Charles V, garbed in like manner,
haunted the castle. The superstitious
soldiers let him pass.
The king, meanwhile, had sent for
the Cardinal Inquisitor. Asked for his
advice, the churchman rebuked Philip
for his waywardness in letting the heretic
marquis escape proper punishment for
so long and then having him killed for
political reasons. They discussed also the
heresy of the young prince, and Philip
resolved to turn his son over to the
Inquisition for punishment. In person,
Philip led the cardinal to the queen's
apartments, for the king, having heard
reports of the ghost, guessed who really
was beneath the disguise. Don Carlos
was found with the queen and handed
over to the authorities of the Inquisition.
953

THE DON FLOWS HOME TO THE SEA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mikhail Sholokhov (1905- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1918-1920
Locale: Russia
First published: 1933, 1938
Principal characters:
Gregor Melekhov, a soldier
Piotra, his brother
Aksinia, his mistress
Natalia, his wife
Koshevoi, a Communist
Critique:
The Don Flows Home to the Sea is a
sequel to And Quiet Flows the Don. Here
the fortunes of the Cossacks are lengthily
and vividly portrayed after the peace
with the Central Powers in 1917 up to
the dominance of the Reds in 1920.
Although The Don Flows Home to the
Sea, published in two parts in 1933 and
1938, was written under the Soviet
regime, the insurgent Cossacks are
sympathetically portrayed. The beginnings of
Soviet autocratic ruthlessness are seen as
base and inhuman but probably
inevitable. In scope the work is vast. It
deserves to be ranked among the best Soviet
productions.
The Story:
The Germans were still carrying off
white flour, butter, and cattle. Every day
their trucks rolled from the Don through
the Ukraine. Various sections of Russia,
however, were fighting each other. To
the north of the Don Basin the White
Army was driving back the Bolsheviks.
Most of the Cossacks were in the White
forces, although some were with the
Reds.
Gregor and Piotra Melekhov were
leaders in the White Army. Piotra, the elder
brother, was decidedly anti-Red and
waged battle viciously. Gregor was of
two minds; perhaps the Reds would bring
stable government. Gregor was opposed
to pillaging civilians and killing
prisoners. As best he could he kept his men in
hand. When his father and his sister-in-
law Daria visited him at the front, he was
furious when they took home a wagon
load of loot.
Back in Tatarsk the Whites were
trying to win over the Cossacks to full
support of the insurgent cause. In the spring
of 1918 there had been a great defection
of northern Cossacks to the Reds, and the
southern Cossacks were only
half-hearted in throwing back the Red tide.
Koshevoi, a Red sympathizer, was caught when
he returned to his home in Tatarsk. His
companions were killed, but he was let
off to join the drovers in the steppes.
Eugene Listnitsky, a rich Cossack from
the district, spent a furlough with a
brother officer. Eugene was attracted to
Olga, the man's wife. After the officer was
killed, Listnitsky married the widow.
When he got home, invalided out with a
missing arm, Aksinia, his former
mistress, was still there, waiting for him.
Eugene wanted nothing more to do with
her after his marriage. He made love to
her briefly under a currant bush and
offered her money to go away. Aksinia was
pained but stayed on in service. Her
husband Stepan, miraculously alive after
years in prison, tried in vain to get her
to come home.
Gradually the Cossacks returned home;
THE DON FLOWS HOME.TO THE SEA by Mikhail Sholokhov. Translated by Stephen Garry. By
permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1940, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
954

farmers, they had to till the land. The
advancing Red Army passed through the
village of Tatarsk. After them came the
political men and the Red government
took charge. Gregor, glad to be home,
had little longing now for Aksinia, who
had been his mistress before she became
Eugene's. After years of fighting
Germans and Reds, he was content to be a
little reconciled to Natalia, his wife.
Koshevoi was put in charge of the
government of Tatarsk, and soon
Stockman, a professional Red, came to help
him. They began gradually, seizing a
man here and there and spiriting him off
to death or imprisonment. They wanted
to arrest both Piotra and Gregor. A little
afraid to take Piotra, who was friendly
with Fomin, a Red commander, they did
decide to take Gregor. Learning of their
intentions in time, Gregor left Tatarsk
and escaped.
As the political imprisonments and
executions increased, the Cossacks revolted.
Their wrongs were so great that in a
comparatively short time the rebellion
was succeeding. Piotra was made a
commander immediately. He was a ferocious
fighter and ruthless to the Reds. In a
skirmish, however, he was captured by
the enemy. Koshevoi, now a Communist,
stepped out from a patrol and killed
Piotra without compunction.
Gregor, after serving under Piotra, rose
to command a division. He was cold with
fury toward the Communists and had the
reputation of never keeping live prisoners
for long. Yet when the Cossacks began
to imprison Red sympathizers from among
the civilians, he dissented strongly. On
one occasion he even forced open a prison
and released old men and women who
were suspected of helping the Reds.
Stockman and the others who had
been the political rulers of Tatarsk were
captured when a Red regiment deserted.
Stockman was killed outright, and the
others were returned to run a terrible
gantlet at Tatarsk. Daria herself killed
the man she thought responsible for the
death of Piotra, her husband. Koshevoi
was unsuspected at the time.
Daria recovered from Piotra's death
rather speedily and soon was carrying on
various affairs. When Gregor came home
on furlough, she even made tentative
love to him. But Gregor was tired from
fighting and carousing, and he still had
bitter memories of Aksinia. Natalia, who
had heard of Gregor's conduct on his
sprees, was cold to him. The day before
he was to return to the army, Gregor
met Aksinia at the Don. He thought of
their former love and of her affair with
Listnitsky. But the old love was not dead,
and he took Aksinia again.
The Soviet government, realizing by
May of 1919 that they had a formidable
task on their hands, increased their forces
and slowly pushed back the insurgent
Cossacks. The rebels retreated toward the
Don, taking with them crowds of
refugees. At last the Cossacks crossed the
river and held their positions.
The Reds came through Tatarsk as
Natalia was recovering from typhus.
Koshevoi was with them; he was
indignant that Dunia, Gregor's young sister,
was across the Don, for he had long been
in love with her. Koshevoi's own family
was missing and his father's house had
been destroyed. He took pride in firing
the houses of all the rich landowners in
and near Tatarsk.
Gregor, busy as a division commander,
took time to send for Aksinia and she
came to live near him. Stepan returned,
to her embarrassment, and although she
did not take him back as her husband,
they preserved appearances among the
refugee families.
With the arrival of the White Army,
the Reds were driven back. Now that
the insurgents were incorporated into a
regular army, Gregor was demoted to the
rank of squadron commander, for he was
an uneducated man. The Whites sent
punitive patrols to punish those who had
aided the Reds. To the horror of the
Melekhovs, all of Koshevoi's relatives
were executed. Daria caught syphilis and
drowned herself. Natalia, learning of
955

Gregor's return to Aksinia, refused to
bear him another child. She had an
unskillful abortion performed and bled to
death.
With increasing Red pressure and
desertion from the Cossack ranks, the White
Army was going down in defeat. Gregor
and Aksinia fled south to try to board a
ship. On the way Aksinia fell ill with
typhus and had to be left behind. She
later made her way back to Tatarsk.
Gregor could not leave the country. With
nothing better to do, he joined the Reds
and fought valiantly against the Poles.
In spite of family protests Dunia
married Koshevoi, now commissar of the
village. When Gregor returned home,
Koshevoi at once set in motion plans to
arrest him. But Gregor again escaped,
joining up with Fomin, a deserter from
the Red Army. Fomin tried to rally the
Cossacks to revolt against the
Communists for levying heavy taxes and
collecting grain. The revolt, however, was
shortlived. The rebels were killed, and only
Gregor came back to Tatarsk. This time,
when Gregor fled, he took Aksinia with
him, but she was killed by a pursuing
Red patrol. Gregor threw his arms into
the Don and came back to his house.
Only his son was left to him now and he
would fight no more.
956

DON JUAN
Type of work: Poem
Author: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: Spain, Turkey, Russia, England
First published: By Cantos, 1819-1824
Principal characters:
Don Juan, a young Spaniard
Donna Inez, his mother
Donna Julia, his first mistress
Haidee, his second love
The Sultana, who coveted Juan
Catherine, Empress of Russia
Lady Adeline Amundeville, Juan's adviser
Duchess of Fitz-Fulke, who pursued Juan
Aurora Raby, pursued by Juan
Critique:
Although Byron said that Don ]uan
was to be an epic, his story does not
follow epic tradition but becomes a vehicle
for digression on any and every subject
and person that entered his mind as he
wrote. The plot itself is almost a minor
part of the poem, for much more
interesting are Byron's bitter tirades on England,
wealth, power, society, chastity, poets,
and diplomats. For that reason, Juan's
adventures being largely incidental, the
poem holds a high place among literary
satires, even though unfinished at Byron's
death.
The Story:
When Don Juan was a small boy, his
father died, leaving the boy in the care
of his mother, Donna Inez. Donna Inez
was a righteous woman who had made
her husband's life miserable. She had
her son tutored in the arts of fencing,
riding, and shooting, and she herself
attempted to rear him in a moral manner.
But even though young Don Juan read
widely in the sermons and lives of the
saints, he did not seem to absorb from
his studies the qualities his mother
thought essential.
At sixteen, he was a handsome lad
much admired by his mother's friends.
Donna Julia, in particular, often looked
pensively at the youth. Donna Julia was
just twenty-three and married to a man
of fifty. Although she loved her husband,
or so she told herself, she thought often
of young Don Juan. One day, finding
herself alone with him, she gave herself
to the young man.
The young lovers spent long hours
together during the summer, and it was
not until November that Don Alfonso,
her husband, discovered their intrigue.
When Don Alfonso found Don Juan in
his wife's bedroom, he tried to throttle
him. But Don Juan overcame Don
Alfonso and fled, first to his mother's home
for clothes and money. Then Donna
Inez sent him to Cadiz, there to begin a
tour of Europe. The good lady prayed
that the trip would mend his morals.
Before his ship reached Leghorn a
storm broke it apart. Don Juan spent
many days in a lifeboat without food or
water. At last the boat was washed
ashore, and Don Juan fell exhausted on
the beach and slept. When he awoke,
he saw bending over him a beautiful girl
who told him that she was called Haidee
and that she was the daughter of the
ruler of the island, one of the Cyclades.
Her father, Lambro, was a pirate,
dealing in jewels and slaves. Because she
knew her father would sell Don Juan to
the first trader who came by, Haid6e hid
Don Juan in a cave and sent her maids to
957

wait on him.
When Lambro left on another
expedition, Haidee took Don Juan from the
cave and they roamed together over the
island. Haidee heaped jewels and fine
foods and wines on Don Juan, for he was
the first man she had ever known except
her father and her servants. Although
Don Juan still tried to think of Donna
Julia, he could not resist Haidee. A child
of nature and passion, she gave herself to
him with complete freedom. Again Don
Juan lived an idyllic existence, until
Haidee's father returned unexpectedly.
Don Juan again fought gallantly, but at
last he was overcome by the old man's
servants and put aboard a slave ship
bound for a distant market. He never
saw Haidee again, and he never knew
that she died giving birth to his child.
The slave ship took Don Juan to a
Turkish market, where he and another
prisoner were purchased by a Negro
eunuch and taken to the palace of a
sultan. There Don Juan was made to
dress as a dancing maiden and present
himself to the sultana, the fourth and
favorite wife of the sultan. She had
passed by the slave market and had seen
Don Juan and wanted him for a lover.
In order to conceal his sex from the
sultan, she forced the disguise on Don Juan.
But even at the threat of death, Don
Juan would not become her lover, for he
still yearned for Haidee. Perhaps his
constancy might have wavered, if the sultana
had not been an infidel, for she was
young and beautiful.
Eventually Don Juan escaped from
the palace and joined the army of
Catherine of Russia. The Russians were at
war with the sultan from whose palace
Don Juan had fled. Don Juan was such
a valiant soldier that he was sent to St.
Petersburg, to carry the news of a
Russian victory to Empress Catherine.
Catherine also cast longing eyes on the
handsome stranger, and her approval soon
made Don Juan the toast of her capital.
In the midst of his luxury and good
fortune, Don Juan grew ill. Hoping that
a change of climate would help her
favorite, Catherine resolved to send him on a
mission to England. When he reached
London he was well received, for he was
a polished young man, well versed in
fashionable etiquette. His mornings were
spent in business, but his afternoons and
evenings were devoted to lavish
entertainment. He conducted himself with such
decorum, however, that he was much
sought after by proper young ladies and
much advised by older ones. Lady
Adeline Amundeville, made him her prot6g6,
and advised him freely on affairs of the
heart. Another, the Duchess of Fitz-
Fulke, advised him too, but her
suggestions were of a more personal nature and
seemed to demand a secluded spot where
there was no danger from intruders.
Because of the Duchess of Fitz-Fulke's
attentions to Don Juan, Lady Adeline
began to talk to him about selecting a
bride from the chaste and suitable young
ladies attentive to him.
Don Juan thought of marriage, but his
interest was stirred by a girl not on Lady
Adeline's list. Aurora Raby was a plain
young lady, prim, dull, and seemingly
unaware of Don Juan's presence. Her
lack of interest served to spur him on to
greater efforts, but a smile was his only
reward from the cold maiden.
His attention was diverted from Aurora
Raby by the appearance of the ghost of
the Black Friar, who had once lived in
the house of Lady Adeline, where Don
Juan was a guest. The ghost was a
legendary figure reported to appear before
births, deaths, or marriages. To Don
Juan, the ghost was an evil omen, and
he could not laugh off the tightness about
his heart. Lady Adeline and her husband
seemed to consider the ghost a great
joke. Aurora Raby appeared to be a little
sympathetic with Don Juan, but the
Duchess of Fitz-Fulke merely laughed
at his discomfiture.
The second time the ghost appeared,
Don Juan followed it out of the house
and into the garden. It seemed to float
before him, always just out of his reach.
958

Once he thought he had grasped it, but
his fingers touched only a cold wall.
Then he seized it firmly and found that
the ghost had a sweet breath and full,
red lips. When the monk's cowl fell
back, the Duchess of Fitz-Fulke was
revealed.
On the morning after, Don Juan
appeared at breakfast, wan and tired.
Whether he had overcome more than the
ghost, no one will ever know. The
duchess, too, came down, seeming to have the
air of one who had been rebuked. . . .
959

DON JUAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Sicily
First presented: 1665
Principal characters:
Don Juan, a philanderer
Sganarelle, his valet
Elvire, his betrayed wife
Don Louis, his father
Don Carlos, and
Don Alonse. Elvire's brothers
Statue of the Commander
Critique:
Don Juan is not really representative
of Moliere's work, but it holds lasting
interest for the modern reader for two
reasons. Written to fatten the lean exchequer
of his company's theater because of the
enforced closing of Tartuffe, as well as
to please his fellow actors, it is an
excellent example of the skill and speed with
which Moliere could turn out a play. It
also departs from his usual technique in
making use of the melodramatic and
supernatural elements which characterized
the original Spanish drama from which it
was adapted. Here, as in his other
dramas, Moliere holds to his genius as a re-
vealer of the hypocrisies and manners of
his day, and the play brought down on
itself the harsh criticism of those who had
been shocked by the boldness of Tartuffe.
By the spectacle-loving Parisians it was
hailed with delight.
The Story:
Don Juan's philandering habits filled
Sganarelle, his valet, with apprehension
that such scandalous behavior could only
bring on him the wrath of heaven and
an evil end; but Don Juan blatantly
affirmed that any love he had for one fair
face could not withhold his heart from
others, and as for heaven, he was not
afraid of divine wrath. His valet knew
him for the greatest scoundrel on earth,
a man who was ready to woo a fine lady
or country lass at any time but who tired
of them in rapid succession. Through
fear, however, he remained faithful to
Don Juan and often applauded his
master's acts, even though he really detested
them.
In one of his many affairs Don Juan
had killed a Commander. Though
officially pardoned, he was believed not
entirely free of guilt, and friends and
relatives of the dead man sought revenge.
They followed Don Juan on one of his
philandering journeys to a town where he
determined to separate a pair of lovers he
had chanced upon and to gratify his
passion for the lady. The happy pair had
planned a sail on the sea, and he
prepared to follow in another vessel manned
by villains ready to do his bidding.
Meanwhile, Donna Elvire, whom Don
Juan had seduced and carried off from a
convent where her brothers, Don Carlos
and Don Alonse, had placed her, had got
wind of his escapade and followed him.
She upbraided him for his desertion. Don
Juan refused to admit that he was tired of
her, but he wished her to believe that he
repented his former madcap behavior in
forcing her to marry him against her will.
From this sin he would deliver her by
allowing her to return to the convent and
her former obligations. Elvire, seeing
through this deception, threatened him
with the anger of an injured woman and
declared that heaven would punish him
for the wrong he had done her.
960

Don Juan gave chase to the vessel
which carried the object of his most
recent infatuation. But his plans were
upset when a sudden squall arose and both
ships were wrecked. Don Juan was
rescued by Pierrot, a country lad, and
brought with his men to land. He made
immediate love to Charlotte, Pierrot's
sweetheart, and she, overwhelmed by his
smooth talk and social bearing, promised
to marry him. At that moment Mathu-
rine, another country lass who had caught
the philanderer's fancy, accosted Don
Juan, but he cleverly led each girl to
think she was his only love and the one
he would marry.
When Don Juan heard that his
pursuers were closing in on him, he changed
clothes with his valet. Sganarelle devised
a better disguise. Putting on the attire
of a physician, he prescribed remedies at
randoTi for ailing country folk, not
knowing whether his medicines would kill or
cure.
In the wood through which they were
traveling, Don Juan and Sganarelle
sought to evade their pursuers. They
discoursed on heaven, hell, the devil, and
another life, Don Juan declaring himself
a practical man who held no belief in
such stupid and supernatural things.
Deep in argument, they lost their way.
Suddenly, through a clearing in the trees,
they saw Don Carlos, Elvire's brother,
being attacked by a band of robbers. Don
Juan rushed to assist the stranger and
succeeded in routing the attackers. Don
Carlos, not knowing that his rescuer was
his own sister's seducer, expressed his
gratitude to Don Juan for saving his life.
At this moment Alonse came upon them.
Their friendly attitude horrified him, for
he immediately recognized Don Juan and
demanded of his brother that this
betrayer of their sister be killed. Don Carlos
pleaded for delay and won for Don Juan
a day's respite, but he agreed that after
this short delay justice would be done
and vengeance satisfied.
As Don Juan and Sganarelle continued
on their way, Don Juan gave voice again
to the song that his heart belonged
equally to all the fair sex and that his
attraction to Elvire had entirely faded.
Amono the trees they came on a statue,
part of the tomb which the Commander
had been building when killed by Don
Juan. On a sudden whim Don Juan
insisted that the shocked Sganarelle
approach the mausoleum and invite the
Commander to dine with them. To their
amazement the statue nodded its head in
assent. Overwhelmed, they retreated
hastily, although Don Juan boldly asserted
that strong minds are not affected by a
belief in anything supernatural.
Don Louis, father of Don Juan,
threatened action to put an end to his son's
irregularities, reproaching his son for his
unworthy life and lack of virtue, from
the consequences of which even a worthy
name could not protect him. A tradesman
and creditor, Monsieur Dimanche, also
learned where Don Juan was hidden.
Although he blandly acknowledged his
indebtedness to the tradesman, Don Juan
had no intention of meeting his
obligations, and he put the honest man off with
hypocritical words of solicitude and
friendliness.
Elvire, veiled, let Don Juan know that
her love for him was now wholly free
from sensual attachment and that she
would retire to the convent from which
he had taken her. Fearing that he could
not escape the wrath of heaven, she
implored him to reform before he was
utterly crushed.
Meanwhile, Sganarelle and Don Juan
had forgotten their invitation asking the
statue to dinner. When the meal was
served, the statue knocked at the door and
seated itself at their table. The statue
challenged Don Juan to dine with it the
next day.
These happenings led Don Juan to
pretend conversion and penitence to his
father, who was overjoyed. But his so-
called reform was merely a sham to
further another of his designs, for Don Juan
still believed that hypocrisy was a
fashionable and privileged vice. He would boldly
961

don the clothes of hypocrisy, more
relentlessly than ever continue to persecute
his enemies, and, holding to 4 good
opinion of himself alone, adapt himself to
the vices of his age.
Don Carlos demanded that Don Juan
recognize Elvire publicly as his wife, but
Don Juan demurred, saying the matter
was no longer in his hands as Elvire was
resolved to go into retreat and he to
reform. Sanctimoniously, he begged Don
Carlos to leave everything to the will of
heaven, but he also warned that if
attacked he would fight.
Don Juan, in calling on heaven, had
gone too far. A ghost in the form of a
veiled woman warned him to repent of
his sins immediately. Don Juan, thinking
he recognized the voice, challenged the
fiaure and raised his sword to strike, but
the shape changed to that of Time with a
scythe before vanishing. Later the statue
returned, adding its threat of a terrible
death if Don Juan persisted in his
wickedness. Scorched by an invisible flame, Don
Juan cried out, but amid lightning flashes
and thunderous sounds, the earth opened
up and swallowed him. Thus he who
neglected debts, seduced his victims,
dishonored friends, and violated all laws
finally offended heaven. The things
which he held in scoffing disbelief
brought about his doom.
962

DON JUAN TENORIO
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jose Zorrilla y Moral (1817-1893)
Type of plot: Fantastic-religious comedy
Time of plot: c. 1545
Locale: Seville, Spain
First presented: 1844
Principal characters:
Don Juan Tenorio, a nobleman of Seville
Don Diego Tenorio, his father
Don Luis Mejia, another Andalusian gentleman
Don Gonzalo de Ulloa, Comendador of Calatrava
Ines de Ulloa, Ijis daughter
Ana de Pantoja, betrothed to Mejia
Marcos Ciutti, servant of Don Juan
Critique:
One of the best examples of Spain's
romantic theater is this play in seven
acts, four of which take place during a
single night, the remaining three about
five years later. The drama was written
in twenty days for a theater owner
threatened with bankruptcy. Though full
of exaggeration and melodramatic
improbabilities that even its author
ridiculed, it has been popular in Spain since
the time of its first presentation. Based
on a well-loved Spanish legend, spiritedly
written in excellent and varied poetry,
traditionally it is produced all over the
Spanish-speaking world for All Saint's
Day, the first of November. Audiences
see in it not only a play about a
rollicking adventurer whom they would like to
imitate, but also a story with a meaning
deeper than that which appears on the
surface. The implication of the drama
seems to be that since God's love is
infinite, a man can sin as much as he likes,
provided at the end he wins the love of
a pure woman. This combination of the
romantic with the mystic has perennial
appeal to the Latin temperament.
The Story:
It was the carnival season in Seville,
and the Laurel Tavern was a strange
place in which to find gallant young Don
Juan Tenorio, when the streets outside
were filled with masked merrymakers.
But he was there with his servant,
Marcos Ciutti, to keep a rendezvous with Don
Luis Mejia, another gallant. One year
before each had wagered that he could
do the most harm in the next twelve
months. That night they were to decide
the bet.
Don Gonzalo de Ulloa, father of the
girl whom Don Juan hoped to marry,
went masked to the inn, for he wanted
to hear with his own ears an account of
the wild and villainous deeds attributed
to his prospective son-in-law. Don Diego,
Juan's father, joined him, masked as
well. Several officers, friends of Don
Juan and Mejia, were also loitering in
the tavern to learn the outcome of the
wager, which had been talked about in
the city for months. Mejia appeared
promptly, just as the cathedral clock was
striking eight.
With good-humored boasting the
rivals compared lists of the men they had
slain in duels and the women they had
cruelly deceived during the year. Don
Juan was easily the victor. Because his
roster lacked only two types of women,
a nun and the bride of a friend, he
wagered that he could add both to his list
within a week. Fearing that his rival
had an eye on Ana de Pantoja, whom he
was planning to many, Mejia sent his
servant to call the police. Angered by
the evil deeds of which Don Juan had
boasted, the comendador announced that
he would never consent to the young
963

scoundrel's marriage with his daughter
Ines. Instead, the girl would be kept safe
in a convent. Don Diego also disowned
his son.
A patrol appeared to arrest Don Juan
on Mejia's accusations. Other guards
summoned by Ciutti took Mejia into
custody at the same time.
Through the influence of powerful
friends Mejia soon had himself freed.
He hurried at once to the house of Ana
de Pantoja, where he persuaded a
servant to let him into the house at ten
o'clock that night. His purpose was to
keep Don Jaan^from attempting an
entrance. When Ana appeared at the
balcony, he told her his plan and got her
acquiescence to it.
Don Juan, also released from custody,
overheard their conversation, which gave
him the idea of impersonating his rival
in order to get into Ana's room. Ciutti
had already bribed Ana's duenna to
secure the key to the outer door. To make
sure that Mejia was out of the way,
Ciutti also hired several men to impersonate
the police patrol. These bravos seized
Mejia and bound him.
Don Juan next interviewed Brigida,
the duenna of Ines, and bribed her to
deliver a note to the girl in the convent.
When the old woman reported that her
charge was already in love with Don
Juan, whom she had never seen, the
gallant decided that he had time to go to
the convent and abduct her before the
hour for him to appear at Ana's house.
Meanwhile, at the convent, Ines
listened abashed as the abbess praised the
girl's godliness. Perhaps she had once
been like that; now she no longer looked
forward to taking holy orders. Half-
frightendd, half-eager, she kept thinking
of Don Juan. The appearance of Bri-
gida with the note upset her still more,
so that when Don Juan himself appeared
suddenly at the door of her cell she
collapsed in a faint. In her unconscious state
it was easy for him to cany her off. Don
Gonzalo, worried by the young man's
boasting and reports of conversations
between him and Brigida, arrived at the
convent too late to save his daughter.
Ines remained unconscious while Don
Juan took her to his house beside the
Guadalquiver River. When she came to,
Brigida lied to her charge, saying that
Don Juan had saved the girl's life when
the convent caught on fire.
Later Don Juan returned, after he had
successfully entered Ana's room. Mejia,
seeking revenge, came in pursuit. Don
Gonzalo, hoping to rescue his daughter,
also appeared at the house. Enraged by
their insults, Don Juan shot Don
Gonzalo and stabbed Mejia. Then he jumped
into the river to escape from police who
were hammering at his front door.
Abandoned by Don Juan, Ines returned to
the convent and died of grief.
Five years later a sculptor was putting
the finishing touches to the Tenorio
pantheon. On Don Diego's orders the
family mansion had been torn down and the
grounds had been turned into a cemetery
for his son's victims. Lifelike statues of
the three chief ones, Mejia, Don
Gonzalo, and Ines, gleamed in the moonlight.
Patiently the sculptor explained his
labors to a stranger who finally terrified the
craftsman by revealing himself as Don
Juan.
Repentant, Don Juan knelt before
Ines' monument and begged her to
intercede with God for mercy. When he
looked up, her statue had disappeared
from its pedestal and Ines herself stood
beside him, sent reincarnate from
Heaven either to bring him back with her to
salvation or to be damned with him
throughout eternity; he had until dawn
to choose their fate. Don Juan, unable
to believe that what was happening was
real, thought it a trick of crafty priests.
When two officers who five years
before had witnessed the outcome of his
bet with Mejia came into the graveyard,
he laughed at their fear of ghosts; fear
had no entry to his heart. After inviting
his old acquaintances to have supper with
him and hear the story of his adventures,
with rash bravado he also extended his
964

invitation to the statue of Don Gonzalo.
Only the comendador's presence at the
table, Don Juan said, would convince
him of a life beyond the grave. The
statue kept its stony silence.
While the trio sat drinking at the table,
they heard the sound of knocking, each
time nearer, though all the doors were
bolted. Then into the room stalked the
statue of Don Gonzalo, to tell the
skeptic about the life eternal that could be
realized through God's mercy. The
officers fainted, but Don Juan was so
courteous a host that before the statue
disappeared through the wall it invited
him to a similar banquet in the cemetery.
Still unconvinced that one moment of
repentance could wipe out thirty years
of sin, Don Juan refused to be moved
when Ines appeared to persuade him to
make the right choice. Half believing
that the whole affair was a joke
concocted by the sleeping officers, he shook
them back to consciousness and accused
them of using him for their sport. They
in turn charged him with drugging them.
The argument ended in challenges to a
duel.
In the half light of early morning the
statues of Ines and Don Gonzalo were
still missing from the pantheon of the
Tenorio family when Don Juan,
melancholy because he had killed his old
friends in the duel, appeared to keep his
appointment. His knock at the
comendador's tomb transformed it into a
banquet table that parodied his own
bountiful spread of the night before. Snakes
and ashes were the foods, illuminated by
the purging fire of God, and ghostly
guests crowded around the board.
Although death was on his way, Don Juan
still refused to repent as Don Gonzalo's
statue once more told him about the
redeeming power of Heaven.
As Don Juan's funeral procession
approached, Don Gonzalo seized the
sinner's arm and prepared to drag him off
to Hell. At that moment Don Juan
raised his free arm toward Heaven. Ines
appeared and she and Don Juan, both
saved, sank together into a bed of flowers
scattered by angels. Flames, symboHzing
their souls, mounted to Heaven.
965

DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Late sixteenth century
Locale: Spain
First published: Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615
Principal characters:
Don Quixote de la Mancha, a knight-errant
Sancho Panza, his squire
Dulcinea del Toboso, a village wench
Pedro Perez, a village curate
Master Nicholas, a barber
Samson Carrasco, a young bachelor of arts
Critique:
Macauley said that Don Quixote is
"the best novel in the world, beyond
comparison." This belief was, is, and
certainly will be shared by lovers of
literary excellence everywhere. Cervantes'
avowed purpose was to ridicule the books
of chivalry which enjoyed popularity
even in his day. But he soared beyond
this satirical purpose in his wealth of
fancy and in his irrepressible high spirit
as he pokes fun at social and literary
conventions of his day. The novel provides
a cross-section of Spanish life, thought,
and feeling at the end of the chivalric
age.
The Story:
A retired and impoverished gendeman
named Alonzo Quixano lived in the
Spanish province of La Mancha. He had
read so many romances of chivalry that
his mind became stuffed with fantastic
accounts of tournaments, knightly quests,
damsels in distress, and strange
enchantments, and he decided one day to imitate
the heroes of the books he read and to
revive the ancient custom of knight-
errantry. Changing his name to Don
Quixote de la Mancha, he had himself
dubbed a knight by a rascally publican
whose miserable inn he mistook for a tur-
reted castle.
For armor he donned an old suit of
mail which had belonged to his
greatgrandfather. Then upon a bony old nag
he called Rosdnante, he set out upon his
first adventure. Not far from his village
he fell into the company of some
traveling merchants who thought the old man
mad and beat him severely when he
challenged them to a passage at arms.
Back home recovering from his cuts
and bruises, he was closely watched by
his good neighbor, Pedro Perez, the
village priest, and Master Nicholas, the
barber. Hoping to cure him of his fancies,
the curate and the barber burned his
library of chivalric romances. Don
Quixote, however, believed that his books had
been carried off by a wizard. Undaunted
by his misfortunes, he determined to set
out on the road again, with an uncouth
rustic named Sancho Panza as his squire.
As the mistress to whom he would
dedicate his deeds of valor he chose a buxom
peasant wench famous for her skill in
salting pork. He called her Dulcinea del
Toboso.
The knight and his squire had to sneak
out of the village under cover of
darkness, but in their own minds they
presented a brave appearance: the lean old
man on his bony horse and his squat,
black-browed servant on a small ass,
Dapple. The don carried his sword and
lance, Sancho Panza a canvas wallet and
a leather bottle. Sancho went with the
don because in his shallow-brained way
he hoped to become governor of an isle.
The don's first encounter was with a
score of windmills on the plains of Mon-
tiel. Mistaking them for monstrous giants,
966

he couched his lance, set spurs to Rosi-
nante's thin flanks, and charged full tilt
against them. One of the whirling vanes
lifted him from his saddle and threw him
into the air. When Sancho Panza ran to
pick him up, he explained that sorcerers
had changed the giants into windmills.
Shortly afterward he encountered two
monks riding in company with a lady in
a coach escorted by men on horseback
Don Quixote imagined that the lady was
a captive princess. Haughtily demanding
her release, he unhorsed one of the friars
in an attempted rescue. Sancho was
beaten by the lady's lackeys. Don
Quixote bested her Biscayan squire in a sword
fight, sparing the man's life on condition
that he go to Toboso and yield himself
to the peerless Dulcinea. Sancho, having
little taste for violence, wanted to get on
to his isle as quickly as possible.
At an inn Quixote became involved in
an assignation between a carrier and a
servant girl. He was trounced by the
carrier. The don, insulted by the
innkeeper's demand for payment, rode away
without paying. Sancho, to his terror,
was tossed in a blanket as payment for his
master's debt.
The pair came upon dust clouds stirred
up by two large flocks of sheep. Don
Quixote, sure that they were two
medieval armies closing in combat, intervened,
only to be pummeled with rocks by the
indignant shepherds, whose sheep he had
scattered.
At night the don thought a funeral
procession was a parade of monsters. He
attacked and routed the mourners and
was called the Knight of the Sorry Aspect
by Sancho. The two came upon a roaring
noise in the night. Quixote, believing
it to be made by giants, wanted to attack
immediately, but Sancho judiciously
hobbled Rosinante so he could not move.
The next day they discovered the noise
came from the pounding of a mill.
Quixote attacked an itinerant barber
and seized the poor barber's bowl, which
he declared to be the famous golden
helmet of Mambrino, and his packsaddle,
which he believed to be a richly-jeweled
caparison.
Next, the pair came upon a chain-
gang being taken to the galleys. The don
interviewed various prisoners and decided
to succor the afflicted. He freed them,
only to be insulted by their remarks
concerning his lady, the fair Dulcinea.
Sancho, afraid of what would ensue from
their releasing of the galley slaves, led
Quixote into the mountains for safety.
There they came upon a hermit, a
nobleman, who told them a long story of
unrequited love. Quixote and the hermit
fought over the virtues of their
inamoratas. Deciding to do penance and to fast
for the love of Dulcinea, Quixote gave a
letter to Sancho to deliver to the maiden.
When Sancho returned to the village
Don Quixote's friends learned from
Sancho the old man's whereabouts. They
returned with Sancho to the mountains,
in hopes that they could trick Don
Quixote into returning with them. The priest
devised a scheme whereby a young
peasant woman would pose as a distressed
princess. Don Quixote, all but dead from
hunger and exposure, was easily deceived,
and the party started homeward.
They came to the inn where Sancho
had been tossed in the blanket. The
priest explained the don's vagaries to the
alarmed innkeeper, who admitted that
he, too, was addicted to the reading of
romances of chivalry. At the inn Don
Quixote fought in his sleep with ogres
and ran his sword through two of the
innkeeper's precious wine-skins. The
itinerant barber stopped by and
demanded the return of his basin and pack-
saddle. After the party had sport at the
expense of the befuddled barber,
restitution was made. An officer appeared with
a warrant for the arrest of the don and
Sancho for releasing the galleyslaves.
The priest explained his friend's mental
condition and the officer departed.
Seeing no other means of getting Don
Quixote quietly home, his friends
disguised themselves and placed the don in
a cage mounted on an oxcart. He was
967

later released under oath not to attempt
to escape. A canon, joining the party,
sought to bring Quixote to his senses by
logical argument against books of knight-
errantry. The don refuted the canon with
a charming and brilliant argument and
went on to narrate a typical romance of
derring-do. Before the group reached
home, they came upon a goatherd who
told them a story and by whom Quixote
was beaten through a misunderstanding.
Sometime later the priest and the
barber visited the convalescing Don Quixote
to give him news of Spain and of the
world. When they told him there was
danger of an attack on Spain by the
Turks, the don suggested that the king
assemble all of Spain's knights-errant to
repulse the enemy. At this time, Sancho
entered despite efforts to bar him. He
brought word that a book telling of their
adventures had appeared. The sight of
Sancho inspired the don to sally forth
again. His excuse was a great
tournament to be held at Saragossa.
Failing to dissuade Don Quixote from
going forth again, his friends were
reassured when a village student promised
he would waylay the flighty old
gentleman.
Don Quixote's first destination was the
home of Dulcinea in nearby El Toboso.
While the don awaited in a forest, Sancho
saw three peasant girls riding out of the
village. He rode to his master and told
him that Dulcinea with two handmaidens
'approached. Frightened by the don's
fantastic speech, the girls fled. Don Quixote
swore that Dulcinea had been enchanted.
Benighted in a forest, the knight and
his squire were awakened by the arrival
of another knight and squire. The other
knight boasted that he had defeated in
combat all Spanish knights. The don,
believing the knight to be mistaken,
challenged him. They fought by daylight
and, miraculously, Don Quixote unhorsed
the Knight of the Wood, who was Car-
rasco, the village student, in disguise. His
squire was an old acquaintance of
Sancho. The don declared the
resemblances were the work of magicians and
continued on his way. Upset by his
failure, Carrasco swore vengeance on Don
Quixote.
Sancho filled Quixote's helmet with
curds which he procured from shepherds.
When the don suddenly clapped on his
helmet at the approach of another
adventure, he thought his brains were
melting. This new adventure took the
form of a wagon bearing two caged lions.
Quixote, ever intrepid, commanded the
keeper to open one cage—he would
engage a lion in combat. Unhappily, the
keeper obeyed. Quixote stood ready, but
the lion yawned and refused to come out.
The don and Sancho joined a wedding
party and subsequently attended a
wedding festival at which the rejected lover
tricked the bride into marrying him
instead of the rich man she had chosen.
Next, the pair were taken to the Caves
of Montesinos, where. Quixote was
lowered underground. He was brought up
an hour later asleep, and, upon
awakening, he told a story of having spent three
days in a land of palaces and magic
forests where he had seen his enchanted
Dulcinea.
At an inn Quixote met a puppeteer
who had a divining ape. By trickery, the
rascal identified the don and Sancho
with the help of the ape. He presented
a melodramatic puppet show which Don
Quixote, carried away by the
make-believe story, demolished with his sword.
The don paid for the damage done and
struck out for the nearby River Ebro.
He and Sancho took a boat and were
carried by the current toward some
churning mill wheels, which the don thought
were a beleaguered city awaiting
deliverance. They were rescued by millers after
the boat had been wrecked and the pair
thoroughly soaked.
Later, in a forest, the pair met a
huntress who claimed knowledge of the
famous knight and his squire. They went
with the lady to her castle and were
welcomed by a duke and his duchess
who had read of their previous adventures
968

and who were ready to have great fun at
the pair's expense. The hosts arranged
an elaborate night ceremony to
disenchant Dulcinea, who was represented by
a disguised page. Sancho was told, to
his great discomfort, that he would
receive five hundred lashes as his part of
the disenchantment. Part of the jest was
a ride through space on a magic wooden
horse. Blindfolded, the pair mounted
their steed and servants blew air in their
faces from bellows and thrust torches
near their faces.
Sancho departed to govern his isle, a
village in the domains of the duke and
duchess*, while the female part of the
household turned to the project of
compromising Quixote in his worship of
Dulcinea. Sancho governed for a week. He
made good laws and delivered wise
judgments, but at the end of a week he
yearned for the freedom of the road.
Together he and his master proceeded
toward Saragossa. Don Quixote changed
their destination to Barcelona, however,
when he heard that a citizen of that
city had written a spurious account of
his adventures.
In Barcelona they marveled at the
city, the ships, and the sea. Don Quixote
and Sancho were the guests of Moreno,
who took them to inspect the royal
galleys. The galley which they visited
suddenly put out to sea in pursuit of
pirates and a fight followed. Sancho was
terrified.
There came to Barcelona a Knight of
the White Moon, who challenged Don
Quixote to combat. After the old man
had been overcome, the strange knight,
in reality the student Carrasco, sentenced
him to return home. Don Quixote went
back, determined next to follow a
pastoral shepherd life. At home, the tired
old man quickly declined. Before he
died, he renounced as nonsense all to do
with knight-errantry, not realizing that
in his high-minded, noble-hearted nature
he himself had been a great chivalric
gentleman.
969

DON SEGUNDO SOMBRA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ricardo Giiiraldes (1882-1927)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Argentina
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
Don Segundo Sombra, a gaucho
Fabio, a young waif
Don Leandro Gal van, a rancher
Pedro Barrales, a gaucho
Paula, a pretty young woman, loved by Fabio
Critique:
Don Segundo Somhra: Shadows on the
Pampas has been called the South
American counterpart of Huckleherry Finn.
Like the hero of Mark Twain's novel,
Fabio wanders on his own through youth
in a new country, giving the author a
chance not only to tell a story but also to
present a vivid and varied
documentation of details about the people, the
customs, and the countryside. In Argentina
itself, the book was immediately
popular. It and the earlier gaucho epic,
Martin Fierro, are the best narratives dealing
with the gaucho, the South American
cowboy. The hero of Giiiraldes' novel
was drawn from a real-life gaucho whom
the author had known and loved in his
own childhood on his father's ranch, La
Portena, in the province of Buenos Aires.
The novel reflects a pastoral form of
life that has all but disappeared in
Argentina, and the story will probably
fascinate later generations much as Owen
Wister's picturesque narrative of the
North American cowboy, The Virginian,
has caught the fancy of post-frontier
readers.
The Story:
Fabio was a young lad who lived with
his two maiden aunts in a small
Argentine village. He disliked his aunts, who
felt, in their turn, that he was simply a
bother. He was not sure that the two
women were truly his relatives, for they
paid him little heed as long as he gave
them no trouble. Don Fabio Caceres, a
rancher, occasionally came to see the
boy and take him into the country for
a day, but the man ceased coming about
Fabio's eleventh year.
Fabio grew up to be a cheeky
youngster who showed off for the worst
element of the town. He knew all the
gossip and spent most of his time hanging
about the saloons; no one seemed to care
that he never went to school. The village
loafers hinted that he was an illegitimate,
unwanted child. At best, he seemed
destined to be a ne'er-do-well who carried
a chip on his shoulder in defiance of the
rest of the world.
One night a gaucho rode into the town
as Fabio was going homeward from
fishing. The man impressed the boy at sight,
and a little later Fabio earned the
gaucho's interest by warning him of an
ambush laid by a knife-wielding bully.
The kind words spoken by the gaucho,
Don Segundo, went to the boy's heart,
and Fabio immediately decided to follow
the man when he left town. Gathering
together his meager possessions, which
fortunately included a saddle and two
ponies, Fabio went quietly away
without telling anyone where he was going,
in order to escape his hated aunts. He
rode to the ranch belonging to Don Le-
DON SEGUNDO SOMBRA by Ricardo Giiiraldes. Translated by Harriet de Onis. By permission of
the publishers, Rinehart & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1935, by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.
970

andro Galvdn, where he knew Don Se-
gundo was going to spend a few days
breaking wild horses for riding.
When he arrived, the boy applied for
work and was accepted. By the time Don
Segundo was ready to leave the ranch on
a cattle drive Fabio had convinced Don
Leandro and Don Segundo that he was
a willing worker, and they let Fabio go
with the other gauchos on half pay. At
the end of the drive Fabio was well along
in his apprenticeship as a gaucho.
For five years Fabio continued under
the tutelage of Don Segundo. Traveling
from ranch to ranch, they worked for a
number of landowners. From the older
man Fabio learned to care for himself
and his horses, to work cattle under
various conditions, to live courageously, to
get along with all kinds of people, and
to have a good time singing songs,
dancing, and telling stories. It was more than
a way of making a living that the man
passed on to the boy; it was an entire
culture, a culture as old as the cattle
industry and in some respects even older,
going back as it did to the culture of
Spain.
There were many incidents in their
wanderings, including the time that
Fabio won a large number of pesos by
picking the winning bird in a cockfight
when everyone else bet against the bird.
That happened in the town of Navarro,
a town which remained a lucky place in
young Fabio's mind. He remembered
also a long drive with cattle to a ranch on
the seashore. There Fabio found a
country he detested and a young woman he
loved, as well as a great store of bad
luck. He had picked up quite a
respectable string of horses, the tools of
the gaucho's trade, and he was very proud
of them. But in working the cattle at the
seashore ranch two of the horses were
injured, much to the young gaucho's
disgust. One of them was badly gored by a
bull, and when Fabio came across the
bull one evening while exploring with
another young man he vowed to break
its neck. He lassoed the beast and broke
its neck with the shock, but in doing so
he injured himself severely, breaking
several bones.
While Fabio remained at the ranch
convalescing from his injuries he fell in
love, he thought, with Paula, a pretty
young girl who lived on the place.
Unfortunately, she led him on and also the
rather stupid son of the rancher. The
other lad took advantage of Fabio's crip-
pled arm and attacked him with a knife.
Fabio, not wanting to injure the owner's
son, to fight over a woman, or to violate
the father's hospitality, avoided the other
fellow's thrusts until they became deadly.
Then with a quick thrust Fabio slashed
the boy's forehead slightly, taking the
will to fight out of him very quickly,
Paula, over whom the fight began,
rebuked the crippled Fabio. Disgusted at
her and at himself, Fabio, crippled as he
was, mounted his horse and rode away to
rejoin Don Segundo, who was working
at a nearby ranch until Fabio could be
ready to travel.
Don Segundo and Fabio happened
into a small village on a day when people
had gathered from miles around to race
horses. Fabio bet and lost a hundred
pesos, then another hundred, and finally
the third and last hundred he possessed.
Still not satisfied that he was a hopeless
loser, he gambled five of his horses and
lost them as well. He came out of the
afternoon's activity a sad young man.
He and Don Segundo were hired to
trail a herd of cattle from a ranch near
the village to the city to be butchered.
It was a long, hard drive, even for
experienced gauchos. It was made even
more difficult for Fabio by the fact that
he had only three horses, for the animals
soon became fatigued from the work of
carrying him and working the cattle on
the road. When the herd stopped to rest
one afternoon, Fabio decided to see if he
could somehow get another horse or two.
While looking about he found Pedro
Barrales, a gaucho who had traveled with
971

him and Don Segundo several times
before. Pedro Barrales had a letter
addressed to Senor Fabio Caceres, a letter
which he gave to Fabio. The lad looked
blankly at the letter, not believing it
was addressed to him, for he thought he
had no surname. Don Segundo opened
the letter to find that the maiden aunts
had been truly Fabio's relatives and that
Don Fabio Caceres who had visited him
at his aunts' home was really his father,
from whom he had inherited a fortune
and a large, well-stocked ranch. The
news saddened Fabio because he saw that
it would take him away from the life he
loved. He was angered, too, because he
had been left so long under the
impression that his parentage was one to be
ashamed of.
Acting upon the good advice of Don
Segundo, Fabio returned to his native
town, however, and from there to the
ranch where he had begun work under
Don Leandro Galvan, who had now
become his guardian. When Don Segundo
agreed to remain with him for three
years on his own ranch, Fabio was
willing to settle down. But the three years
passed all too swiftly, and at the end of
that time Fabio was exceedingly sad when
Don Segundo, answering the gaucho's
call to wander, rode away.
972

DONA BARBARA
Type of work: Novel
Author: R6mulo Gallegos C1884- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: The Arauca Valley of Venezuela
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Dona Barbara, a beautiful, unscrupulous mestiza
Santos Luzardo, owner of the Altamira ranch
Marisela, illegitimate daughter of Dona Barbara and Lorenzo Barquero
Antonio, a cowboy at the Altamira ranch
The Wizard, a rascally henchman of Dona Barbara
Senor Danger, an American squatter on the Altamira ranch
Don Balbino, treacherous overseer at the Altamira ranch
Critique:
Seldom is the literary man a political
leader, but Romulo Gallegos is an
exception to that rule. He was one of the
founders of the Democratic Action Party
in Venezuela in 1941 and was nominated
by that party for the Venezuelan
presidency in 1947. He was elected by the
people to office and served until
overthrown by a military dictatorship.
Gallegos and his party stood for a liberal,
social-minded government which would
improve living conditions for the masses
of Venezuela. Gallegos* national pride in
his country and his people is reflected
in his fiction. Although his fiction, like
most of the books written in Latin
America, is little known in the United States,
it has a high reputation with readers who
have come to know it either in Spanish
or in translation.
The Story:
The Altamira ranch was a vast estate
in the wildest section of the Arauca River
basin of Venezuela, a ranch that had
been established early in the history of
the cattle business of that South
American country. Late in the nineteenth
century, however, it had been divided into
two parts by the joint heirs of one of the
owners. One part retained the old name
and went to the male heir of the Luzardo
family. The other part, going to a
daughter who had married a Barquero, took its
name from the new owner. As the years
went by the two families carried on a
feud which killed most of the men on
both sides. In the years of the Spanish-
American War, trie owner of Altamira
and his elder son quarreled; the father
killed the son and then starved himself
to death. Dona Luzardo took her only
remaining son and went to Caracas, there
to rear him in a more civilized
atmosphere.
Years went by, and finally the son,
Santos Luzardo decided to sell the ranch,
which had been allowed to deteriorate to
almost nothing under irresponsible
overseers. In order to set a price upon his
property he went into the back country
to see it for himself. On his arrival he
found that the neighboring ranch of the
Barqueros had fallen into the hands of
Dona Barbara, a mestiza who had been
the mistress of the real owner before she
ran him off his own property. Dona
Barbara was in the process of taking over
Altamira ranch with the help of several
henchmen,, including Don Balbino, the
overseer of Altamira ranch. Santos
decided to keep the ranch and try to make
it a prosperous business, if he could only
keep it out of Dona Barbara's hands.
DONA BARBARA by R6mulo Gallegos. Translated by Robert Malloy. By permission of the publishers,
Peter Smith. Copyright, 1931, by Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith.
973

To help him, Santos had a handful of
loyal cowboys who had known him as a
child, including Antonio, a cowboy who
had been his playmate years before.
Santos Luzardo's first move was to end the
feud between himself and the Barqueros.
He found Lorenzo Barquero living in a
cabin in a swamp, the only land his
mistress had not taken from him. After
making his peace with Lorenzo and with
his illegitimate daughter Marisela, Santos
took them to live at Altamira ranch.
Marisela was as beautiful as her mother, Dona
Barbara, and Santos wished to retrieve
her from barbarity.
Most of the cattle had been stolen
from Altamira ranch, until only about
a hundred head were left. But Antonio,
the loyal cowboy, had seen to it that
many hundreds more had been allowed
to stray into wild country in order to save
them from the depredations of Dona
Barbara and Sefior Danger, an American
who had begun as a squatter and who
was carving his own ranch out ofr
Altamira land. Don Balbino, the treacherous
overseer, was immediately discharged.
Since he had been working for Dona
Barbara and was her lover, he sought the
mestiza's protection.
Santos, who had been trained as a
lawyer, decided first to try legal means
in order to repossess part of his ranch.
He went to the local magistrate and
through his knowledge of the law forced
that official to call in Dona Barbara and
Sefior Danger. They were told to permit
a roundup of his cattle and to help him,
since their herds were intermingled with
those from Altamira. They were also
told to take action with respect to fences.
Danger had to build fences, for
according to the law he had too few cattle to
let them run wild. Dona Barbara was to
help build a boundary fence between her
ranch and Altamira. Surprisingly, she
took the decisions with good grace. Her
henchmen were completely surprised, for
previously she had ridden roughshod over
all opposition. The answer lay in the fact
that she was secretly in love with Santos
Luzardo, and she thought she could
command his love and his property by her
beauty.
As weeks of deadening ranch routine
passed, Santos was glad that he had
brought Marisela to his house, for his
efforts to teach her culture kept him from
losing touch with civilization. Although
his interest in her was only that of a
friend and tutor, Marisela had fallen in
love with the rancher.
Along the Arauca River there were
thousands of herons. When the birds
were moulting, the people of Altamira
went out to collect the plumes and
gathered fifty pounds of the valuable feathers,
which were sent with two of the
cowboys to market. Santos intended to use
the money from the sale to fence his
boundaries. On their way to market: the
cowboys were murdered and the feathers
stolen. Their loss and the failure of the
authorities to track down the culprit
caused a great change in Santos. He
determined to take the law into his own
hands and to match violence with
violence when he found it necessary.
His first act was to have three of Dona
Barbara's henchmen captured and sent off
to prison, for they had been long
wanted for a number of crimes. A short time
later he received word from Dona
Barbara, who was pulled in two ways by her
love for him and by her wish for power,
that he would find in a certain canyon
the thief who had taken the feathers.
Santos went in the night and killed the
Wizard, Dona Barbara's most trusted
and bloodthirsty henchman. Meanwhile
Don Balbino, the treacherous overseer
who had been in charge of Altamira and
who had been Dona Barbara's lover,
became distasteful to her. She had him
killed after discovering that it was he who
had stolen the feathers. To aid Santos,
she threw on Don Balbino the blame for
killing the Wizard.
Recovering the feathers, Dona
Barbara went to town to sell them for Santos.
974

At the same time she had documents
made out to transfer the disputed lands
to their rightful owner. When she
returned to her ranch she found that her
people had deserted her; they could not
understand why she had turned on her
trusted killers. Dona Barbara rode
immediately to Altamira, where she found
Santos talking to Marisela, whose father
had recently died. Because the girl's love
for Santos showed plainly on her face,
Dona Barbara, unseen, drew her revolver
to kill her daughter. Her own love for
Santos prevented the deed, however, and
she rode away without revealing her
presence.
Dona Barbara was not heard from
again. The next day a large envelope was
delivered to Santos. In it he found a sheaf
of documents giving back the property
that had been stolen from him, and
others transferring the Barquero ranch to
Dona Barbara's daughter Marisela.
Shortly afterward Santos and Marisela were
married, and thus the two ranches which
had been separated for many years were
once again joined under one owner.
975

DONA PERFECTA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Benito Perez GaMos (1843-1920)
Type of plot: Tragedy of religious bigotry
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Orbajosa, Spain
First published: 1876
Principal characters:
Jose ("Pepe") Rey
Dona Perfecta Rey, his aunt
Rosario, her daughter
Don Inocencio, canon of the cathedral
Mar!a Remedios, his sister
Jacinto, Maria's son
Critique:
P6rez Gald5s went to Madrid as a
student of law in 1863; however, literature
and the theater proved more interesting
than the bar. Early in his literary career
he wrote several novels about politics and
social customs. Then, between 1875 and
1878, Galdos became interested in
religion and published three novels dealing
with its different aspects: Dona Perfecta,
the story of a town dominated by the
clergy; CAoria (1876-1877), a novel
about a Jewish-Christian clash, and The
Family of Leon Roch (1879), a story of
religious fanaticism ruining a happy
household. All are classified as belonging
to the novelist's early period, though they
represent a great technical advance o^er
his first attempts. In Dona Perfecta,
Galdos describes the clash of modern ideas
against the walls of bigotry and prei\idice
in a small Andalusian town removed from
the main current of life. Representative
of the new order is the scientifically
trained, clear-thinking, outspoken bridge
builder. The old is represented by a
wealthy woman so fanatically religious
that to save her dauahter's immortal soul
she would even condone murder. The
result is a suspense novel that has shown its
popularity by translation into eight
languages.
The Story:
The city of Orbajosa, with its 7,324
inhabitants, was proud of its religious
atmosphere. It boasted a cathed-al and a
seminary, but it possessed nothing else to
make it known to the rest of Spain. It had
no manufacturing, and its only
agricultural activity was the raising, of garlic.
The leading citizen of Orbajosa was
Dona Perfecta Rey, a widow whose
wealth was the result of legal victories
won over her rnisband's family by her
brother, an Andalusian lawver. Since he
had a son, Pepe Rey, and she had a
daughter, Rosario, the idea of marrhge
between the two young people seemed a
natural arrangement to their elders. It
was for this purpose that Pepe first came
to Orbajosa.
In his busy life as a road construction
engineer, Pepe had thought little about
matrimony, but he began to do so after
seeing the lovely Rosario. The girl was
in turn attracted to her cousin. Dofia
Perfecta was also much taken with Pepe,
but not for long.
Dofia Perfecta, like the other
inhabitants of Orbajosa, was under the
domination of the Church, and as the town's
most exemplary citizen she felt the need
to be especially devout. At the same time
Don Inocencio, canon of the cathedral,
had other plans for Rosario. Urged on by
his sister, Maria Remedios, who desired
the Rey fortune for her son Jacinto, Don
Inocencio, far less innocent than his
name implied, began conniving to end all
talk of marriage between the cousins.
976

Pepe, through his wide travel and
training, was unorthodox, though not
without regard for religion. Before long,
however, Don Inocencio made him
appear a heretic, and Dona Perfecta,
forgetting her indebtedness to his father
and ignoring the feelings of her
daughter, refused him permission to see
Rosario. The girl, made meek by education
and dominated by her mother, lacked the
courage to assert herself in declaring her
love for her cousin.
Soon all the people of Orbajosa, from
the bishop to the working man in the
fields, were made to feel it a matter of
religious and civic pride to rid their city
of the heretic. The unsuspecting Pepe
could not conceive of such intolerance.
He tried to explain that he had no
intention of attacking religion, but his
attempts to make clear his position only
made matters worse.
Finally, after several stolen interviews
with Rosario in the family chapel, Pepe
decided to take her away, and Rosario
agreed to go with him. But the lovers
had failed to reckon with the power of
community opinion. While the
conscience-stricken Rosario was revealing to
her mother her plan to run away that
night with Pepe, Maria Remedios, filled
with hatred for the young man who was
cheating her Jacinto out of the Rey
fortune, arrived to warn Dona Perfecta that
the heretic was entering the garden.
Warned now that Pepe was coming to
take Rosario away, her mother ordered
one of her acquaintances to shoot him.
Pepe fell, mortally wounded. His death
drove Rosaria insane. Don Inocencio felt
himself cut off from the world, and Dona
Perfecta died of cancer. Nobody gained
anything, but Orbajosa felt sure it had
won a victory for the faith.
977

THE DOUBLE-DEALER
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Congreve (1670-1729)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1694
Principal characters:
Mellefont, an earnest young man
Lord Touchwood, his uncle
Lady Touchwood, in love with Mellefont
Cynthia, Mellefont's sweetheart
Maskwell, Mellefont's false friend
Critique:
The Double-Dealer, Congreve's second
y, failed at the time of its presentation.
lis failure probably can be explained by
the play's departure from the established
tradition of Restoration comedy. In spite of
its firm construction and witty dialogue,
The Douhle-Dealei contains some
repulsive elements not relished by the play-going
audience of Congreve's day. Yet its plot,
characters, and light dialogue make it one
of the best comedies of the period. The
play also reflects the dramatic conventions
of its time and type: the attack on
Puritans and Puritanism, dissolute dandies,
devastatingly witty maidens, faithless
young wives of old men, rascally servants,
and devious intrigue.
The Story:
Lady Touchwood was infatuated with
her husband's nephew, Mellefont, who
had pledged himself to Cynthia, daughter
of Sir Paul Plyant. When she confessed
her ardor to him, and he rebuked her, she
attempted to end her life with his sword.
Prevented in her attempt, she vowed
revenge.
Fearing the designs of Lady
Touchwood, Mellefont engaged his friend
Careless to keep Lady Plyant, Cynthia's
stepmother, away from Lady Touchwood.
Careless also revealed his distrust of
Maskwell, Mellefont's friend, who was
under obligations to Lord Touchwood.
From sheer spite, Lady Touchwood
gave herself to Maskwell. In return,
Maskwell promised to help Lady
Touchwood by insinuating to Lady Plyant that
Mellefont really loved her, not Cynthia.
Lady Touchwood's plan began to work.
Old Sir Paul Plyant and Lady Plyant
expressed indignation when they were told
that Mellefont desired Lady Plyant.
Actually, Lady Plyant was flattered and
merely pretended anger, but she was
nevertheless shocked that Mellefont intended
to marry Cynthia for the ultimate purpose
of cuckolding Sir Paul. Lady Plyant
rebuked him, but at the same time she told
the puzzled young man not to despair.
Maskwell revealed to Mellefont that he
was Lady Touchwood's agent in
provoking trouble; Mask well's real purpose was
to create general confusion and to win
Cynthia's hand.
Lord Touchwood, refusing to believe
that his nephew played a double game,
was scandalized when Lady Touchwood
recommended cancellation of the marriage
on the grounds that Mellefont had made
improper advances to her. Maskwell,
instructed by Lady Touchwood, ingratiated
himself with Lord Touchwood by saying
that he had defended Lady Touchwood's
honor and had prevailed upon Mellefont
to cease his unwelcome attentions.
Maskwell, in his own vicious behalf,
told Mellefont that his reward for
assisting in the breakup of Mellefont's marriage
to Cynthia was the privilege of bedding
with Lady Touchwood. Plotting
Mellefont's ruin, the fake friend pretended that
he wished to be saved from the shame of
collecting his reward, and he asked the
978

credulous young man to go to Lady
Touchwood's chamber and there surprise
Maskwell and Lady Touchwood together.
When Lord Plyant, frustrated by Lady
Plyant's vow to remain a virgin,
complained to Careless that he did not have an
heir, Careless waggishly promised to see
what he could do in the matter.
Mellefont, to escape the evil that was
brewing, impatiendy urged Cynthia to
elope with him. Although she refused,
she promised to marry no one but him.
When she challenged Mellefont to thwart
his aunt and to get her approval of their
marriage, he promised to get Lady
Touchwood's consent that night.
Lady Plyant, meanwhile, had
consented to an assignation with Careless.
When Lord Plyant appeared, Careless
had to give her, secretly, a note containing
directions for their meeting. Lady Plyant,
anxious to read Careless' letter, asked her
husband for a letter which he had
received earlier. Pretending to read her
husband's letter, she read the one given her
by Careless. By mistake she returned her
lover's letter to her husband.
Discovering her mistake, she reported
it in alarm to Careless. Lord Plyant,
meanwhile, had read the letter. Lady Plyant
insisted that it was part of an insidious plot
against her reputation, and after accusing
her husband of having arranged to have
it written in order to test her fidelity, she
threatened divorce. Careless pretended
that he had written it in Lord Plyant's
behalf to test his wife's virtue. As foolish
as he was, Lord Plyant was not without
suspicion of his wife and Careless.
That night Mellefont concealed
himself in Lady Touchwood's chamber.
When she entered, expecting to find
Maskwell, Mellefont revealed himself.
Lord Touchwood, informed by Maskwell,
then appeared. When her husband
threatened his nephew, Lady Touchwood
pretended that the young man was out
of his wits.
Not suspecting Maskwell's treachery,
Lady Touchwood later told him of her
lucky escape. Maskwell, in a purposeful
soliloquy, revealed to Lord Touchwood
his love for Cynthia. Duped, the old man
named Maskwell his heir and promised to
arrange a marriage between Cynthia and
the schemer.
Lady Touchwood learned of Mask-
well's treachery when Lord Touchwood
told her that he intended to make Mask-
well his heir. Chagrined by her betrayal,
Lady Touchwood urged her husband
never to consent to Cynthia's marriage
with anyone but Mellefont.
Maskwell, still pretending to be Melle-
font's friend, made his final move by
plotting with the unwary Mellefont to get
Cynthia away from her house. His
intention being to marry her himself, he
privately told Cynthia that Mellefont would
be waiting for her in the chaplain's
chamber. Careless checked Maskwell's
carefully laid plans, however, when he
disclosed to the young lovers Maskwell's
true villainy. Cynthia and Lord
Touchwood, in concealment, overheard Lady
Touchwood rebuke Maskwell for his
betrayal of her. At last she tried to stab her
lover but was overcome with emotion.
Maskwell then revealed the meeting place
where Mellefont, in the disguise of a
parson, would be waiting for Cynthia.
Lady Touchwood, planning to disguise
herself as Cynthia, hurried away to meet
him there.
Lord Touchwood, knowing of her
plan, put on a chaplain's habit and
confronted his wife when she came to make
overtures to the man she supposed was
Mellefont. The whole plot uncovered,
and Maskwell, the double-dealer,
unmasked, Mellefont, cleared of all
suspicion, took Cynthia for his own.
979

DOWN THERE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joris Karl Huysmans (Charles Marie Georges Huysmans, 1848-1907)
Time: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1891
Principal characters:
Durtal, a writer
Des Hermies, his friend and interlocutor
Cajrhatx, bell ringer at Saint- Sulpice
Chantelouve, a Catholic historian
Hyacinthe Chantelouve, his wife and Durtal's mistress
Canon Doc^e, a Satanist
Gilles de Rats (1404-1440), Marshal of France, infamous murderer,
sadist, and Satanist
Huysmans began his career as a
novelist during the 1870's as a member of the
naturalistic school of Zola, whose friend
and disciple he then was. But in 1884
he broke with Zola by writing his most
famous book, A rebours (Against the
Grain), which was vastly admired by the
fin-de-siecle writers on both sides of the
Channel.
Down There (La-bas) was the first of
a series of four novels, the purpose of
which was to trace the spiritual autob;oa-
raphy of one Durtal (Huysmans himself)
as he struggled from skepticism trrough
spiritual despair to the final goal of faith.
It was not the author's intention to "tell
a story" but rather to analyze his own
reactions to the faith that he had lost,
but hoped to regain, and to various
aspects of historical and contemporary
Roman Catholicism; hence, the plots of the
books are very slight, and Huysmans
used the novels as a platform from which
he could express his very decided views
on a number of subjects and display his
esoteric learning.
When the story opens, Durtal is
engaged in writing a biography of Gilles de
Rais, the infamous murderer of children,
who lived in the fifteenth century. With
his friend Des Hermies, whose sole
function is to provide someone for him to talk
with, Durtal visits the home of Carhaix,
the bell ringer of Saint-Sulpice, in the
tower of the church. During these visits
the conversation turns to Church history
and especially to Satanism, a subject in
which Durtal has become interested as
part of the background for his study of
de Rais. Des Hermies avers that Satanism
is being practiced in Paris at that very
time and he mentions a certain Canon
Docre, a renegade priest. While Durtal
is wondering how he can make the
contacts necessary to observe modern
Satanism at first hand, he receives a series of
anonymous love letters. He eventually
discovers that the writer is a Madame
Chantelouve, whose receptions he has
sometimes attended. After a few meetings
she becomes his mistress; he learns that
she knows Docre. and at lenpth he
persuades her to take him to a Black Mass.
He witnesses the revolting spectacle, held
in an abandoned Ursuline convent;
afterwards, in a nearby tavern, Madame
Chantelouve tricks him into committing
sacrilege. Disgusted with her, he breaks
off their relationship, and the novel comes
to an end.
There is, however, a story within the
story, for large sections of the book are
devoted to Durtal's readings from his
biography of de Rais. The material for
this section Huysmans obtained from a
work by the Abb6 Bossard published in
DOWN THERE by Joris Karl Huysmans. Translated by K^ene Wallis. By permission of the publishers,
University Books, Inc. Copyright, 1958, by University Books, Inc.
980

1884, which contained a transcript of
the records of de Rais' trial preserved in
the archives at Nantes. Although he
made a number of mistakes, Huysmans
traced, with reasonable accuracy and
considerable drama, the career of the
sinister marshal. The details are often
horrifying, and Huysmans spares his readers
none of them; but the ending of the
story, with de Rais' trial and final
repentance, gave him the opportunity for
his most famous passages of description.
He was attracted to this unsavory bit of
history as others have been (for the
literature in French on de Rais is
considerable) by the problem in morbid
psychology that it presents. De Rais had
been in his youth a companion-in-arms
of Jeanne d'Arc and had apparently
shared the religious exaltation that had
affected her followers. How, then, did he
change into such a monster of butchery,
Satanism, and sexual perversion that his
name is remembered after the passage of
five hundred years? In addition,
Huysmans was a fervent medievalist; and all
aspects of the period fascinated him,
particularly the religious fervor that had
been possible in an age of faith. He never
tired of contrasting the ardent
Catholicism of the Middle Ages, the splendor of
its ritual and the beauty of its architec-
ture, with the vulgar manifestations that
he saw in his own day. Faith had been
easy in the fifteenth century, he believed;
the problem was to find it in the
materialistic present.
The parts of the novel dealing with
modern Satanism—weird as they appear
—were taken from happenings in
contemporary Paris. There was apparently a
good deal of this disgusting hocus-rocus
going on at the time, and several of the
characters in Down There were drawn
from life.
Huysmans, during his later period,
never wearied of damning; the nineteenth
century and all its characteristic works.
He begins the novel with an attack on
Naturalism, the literary school to which
he had once belonged. It has "made our
literature the incarnation of materialism
. . . 'appetite and instinct* seem to be
its sole motivation and rut and
brainstorm its chronic states." And tlro'iah-
out the book he continues to attack his
own age for its shoddiness, crassness, and
vulgarity.
But the core of the book is its
contribution to the author's spiritual
autobiography. Huysmans had spent his
childhood quite literally in a religious
atmosphere, under the shadow of Saint-
Sulpice, but he confessed later that he
had been completely indifferent to
religion throughout his youth. He was
converted between 1884 and 1892; Down
There represents the first stage of this
conversion. In this work Durtal-Huys-
mans has reached the stage, familiar
enough in such cases, of being attracted
by the externals of religion, such as the
beauty of the liturgy and the fascination
of Church history, and yet unable to
accept the essentials. He had the true
Romanticist's attitude: he could have been
a devout Catholic in any period except
the present. Because the Church fell
artistically short of what he believed it to
have been during the Middle Ages, he
had difficulty in understanding that the
underlying reality could have remained
unchanged. Here his artistic nature
interfered with his religious conversion
because the undoubted ugliness of much
nineteenth-century ecclesiastical art was
a stumbling block. He had yet to
understand that belief in a materialistic age is
a greater triumph than during an age of
faith.
981

THE DOWNFALL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1870-1871
Locale: France
First published: 1892
Principal characters:
Maurice Levasseur, a private in the French Army
Jean Macquart, his corporal
Delaherche, a textile manufacturer
Weiss, his secretary
Henriette, twin sister of Maurice and wife of Weiss
Fouchard, a shrewd farmer
Honore, his son
Silvtne, Fouchard's servant
Critique:
Zola's theme in this highly contrived
novel would seem to be that France paid
in full measure for the indulgences of
seventy years in her wretched defeat at
the hands of Bismarck and Von Moltke
in 1870-71. Each character is a symbol
of an economic or social group. Zola's
account of Sedan, of the events leading
up to Sedan, and of the insurrection in
Paris, command admiration for his
research. The plot makes even more
dramatic the historical facts.
The Story:
Corporal Jean Macquart, a sturdy
French peasant, led the squad of infantry
of which Private Maurice Levasseur was
a member. The squad was a part of the
106th Regiment of the Seventh Corps
of the French Army. A state of war
existed between France and Prussia; the
year was 1870. At the outset it had
been felt in France that the war would be
nothing more than a quick promenade to
Berlin, but shortages of equipment, the
rivalry of the French commanders, and
quick Prussian success made the outcome
of the conflict doubtful.
Maurice, a scapegrace who had enlisted
to get away from financial troubles in
Paris, believed in the evolutionary
necessity of war. As a member of the middle
class, he loathed Jean, whose peasant
common sense was unendurable to him.
Misinformation and lack of
information led the leader of the Seventh Corps
to order his divisions to fall back from
their positions around Mulhausen, in
Alsace. Defeat was in the air. Civilians,
having heard that the Prussians were
sweeping all before them, were fleeing
westward. Demoralized, the troops threw
away their packs and rifles. At Belfort
the corps entrained for Rheims, where
the retreating and disorganized French
forces were regrouping.
Prussian victories cost Emperor
Napoleon III his command of the French
armies. But Napoleon, with his official
entourage, remained with the troops.
Maurice, in Rheims, learned from battle
veterans that the Prussians were young,
healthy, well-organized, and well-
equipped. He lost all hope for France
when he caught sight of the sickly
emperor in Rheims.
The army was ordered to march to
Verdun. Mendacious ministers and
journalists lulled the French forces into
a false sense of security. When the
troops reached the Ardennes, there were
marches and counter-marches, for the
positions of the Prussian armies were
not known by the French commanders.
Regiments became mobs as the French
982

approached Sedan. By that time Maurice
had become reconciled to his fate, and
had even grown to admire Jean, whose
steadiness had kept the squad together.
Near Sedan, Maurice, Jean, and Hon-
or6, an artilleryman, rescued Honor6's
father, old Fouchard, from pillaging
soldiers. There Honor6 also promised to
marry Silvine, Fouchard's servant, who
had had a baby by Fouchard's hired
hand, Goliath. The hired man was
suspected of being a Prussian spy, for at
the beginning of hostilities he had
disappeared from the Fouchard farm.
Sedan was a place of confusion, where
men were separated from their units
because there was no discipline and no
organization. In the confusion, Jean and
Maurice met at the house of Delaherche,
a Sedan textile manufacturer, whose
secretary, Weiss, was the husband of
Maurice's twin sister, Henriette. After
a rest Jean and Maurice rejoined their
regiment. Napoleon III accompanied the
troops to Sedan.
As the French poured into Sedan, it
became evident that the Prussians were
drawing a ring around the fortified town.
Weiss and Delaherche went to Bazeilles,
a village near Sedan, to check the safety
of property which they owned there.
Weiss, caught in a battle which took
place in the village, joined the French
forces against the Prussians. Delaherche
hastened back to Sedan. Maurice, in
the meantime, experienced his first
artillery barrage.
At Bazeilles the Prussians closed in
on inferior French forces. Weiss, in his
house, was joined by a small group of
French soldiers and one civilian to make
a last ditch stand. Captured, Weiss was
put up against a wall to be shot.
Henriette appeared, and despite her plea to
be shot with her husband, she was pushed
aside while the Prussians shot Weiss.
Henriette, nearly out of her mind with
grief, wandered about the field where
the battle was still going on.
The 106th Regiment was decimated
in a futile attempt to retake a strategic
hill. When Jean was wounded, Maurice
carried him to safety. Honor6 Fouchard
was killed at his gun. Napoleon had a
white flag raised over a city roof, but it
was torn down. Delaherche's factory
was converted into a hospital, soon filled
to overflowing with French wounded.
Napoleon sent General Reille to the
Prussians with a letter of capitulation.
Maurice, Jean, and several survivors
of the 106th made their way into Sedan,
where Maurice met Henriette and
learned of Weiss' gallant death. They
were engaged in a fight with Prussian
Guards commanded by an officer whom
Maurice recognized to be his cousin
Gunther. Henriette kept Maurice from
shooting Gunther.
By nightfall all had become silent
except for the turmoil created by the
movement of thousands of French troops into
Sedan. The French were forced to accept
the demands of Bismarck and Von
Moltke.
The next day Silvine went out to the
battlefield and recovered the body of
Honor6. Henriette learned that Weiss'
body had been consumed in fires started
by the Prussians at Bazeilles.
The surrendered French soldiers were
herded together to await deportation to
Germany. A few French officers who
promised never to take up arms again
were released. In the camp men were
murdered for filthy scraps of bread and
spoiled horseflesh. Maurice, who no
longer believed in anything, nearly lost
control of himself. Jean, a cool veteran
of previous campaigns, placed himself
and Maurice among soldiers of a
regiment leaving for Germany. At a stop
along the way, Jean procured civilian
clothes from a sympathetic French girl
who was selling bread. The pair changed
quickly inside a tent and escaped into
a forest. When they came to a Prussian
outpost, Jean was wounded by rifle fire,
but they managed to escape and make
their way back to old Fouchard's farm,
where they found Henriette. Maurice
went on to aid in the defense of Paris;
983

Jean remained with Fouchard to be
nursed back to health by Henriette.
The proclamation of the Second
Republic was followed by the capitulation
of Marshal Bazaine at Metz. Paris was
invested by the Prussians while frantic
attempts were made to organize new
French armies in other parts of France.
Goliath, employed by the Prussians as
a spy around Sedan, came to Silvine
seeking her good graces. Upon her refusal,
he threatened to expose Fouchard's
connection with French partisans. When
Goliath returned for his answer, two of
the partisans, assisted by Silvine, killed
him.
In Sedan Delaherche became friendly
with Prussian Captain Von Gartlauben,
who was billeted in the Delaherche
house; he found the captain's friendship
to be most advantageous in the matter
of reestablishing his textile works.
Jean, well again, joined the Army of
the North. Maurice, meanwhile, took
part in the defense of Paris. Sick of the
Republic, he deserted after the
capitulation of Paris and took a room near the
boulevards. When the Commune took
command in Paris and civil war broke
out, Maurice joined the forces of the
Commune to fight against the
Republican forces, of which Jean's regiment was
a part. The insurrectionists fired the
city as they were pushed back. Maurice
was bayoneted by Jean during night
fighting in the streets. Jean disguised
Maurice as a Republican soldier and took
him to Maurice's lodgings, where
Henriette, who had come to Paris to seek
Maurice, was waiting. There Maurice
passed the crisis safely, but a later
hemorrhage killed him. Jean, broken-hearted
at having been the cause of his friend's
death, told Henriette goodbye, with the
feeling that here was a pin-point of the
desolation all France must know.
984

DRACULA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Bram Stoker (1847-1912)
Type of plot: Horror romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Transylvania and England
First published: 1897
Principal characters:
Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor
Mina Murray, his fiancee
Count Dracula, a mysterious nobleman
Dr. Seward, head of a mental hospital
Dr. Van Helsing, a Dutch medical specialist
Lucy Westenra, Mina's friend
Arthur Holmwood, engaged to marry Lucy
Critique:
This strange tale of vampires and
werewolves has worn surprisingly well. It has
been presented on the stage and its
principal character, Dracula, has become a well-
known figure of literary reference. Full of
Gothic touches such as mysterious gloomy
castles and open graves at midnight, the
story is exciting even today. Although
Dracula is not truly great literature, it is
an excellent example of its type. Written
with the rhetorical device of letters and
diaries, its overall effect is one of realism
and horror.
The Story:
On his way to Castle Dracula in the
province of Transylvania, in Rumania,
Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor, was
apprehensive. His nervousness grew when
he observed the curious, fearful attitude
of the peasants and the coachman after
they learned of his destination. He was on
his way to transact business with Count
Dracula, and his mission would
necessitate remaining at the castle for several
days.
Upon his arrival at the castle, Harker
found comfortable accommodations
awaiting him. Count Dracula was a charming
host, although his peculiarly bloodless
physical appearance was somewhat
disagreeable to Harker's English eyes. Almost
immediately Harker was impressed with
the strange life of the castle. He and the
count discussed their business at night, as
the count was never available during the
daytime. Although the food was excellent,
Harker never saw a servant about the
place. While exploring the castle, he
found that it was situated high at the top
of a mountain with no accessible exit
other than the main doorway, which was
kept locked. He realized with a shock that
he was a prisoner of Count Dracula.
Various harrowing experiences ensued.
While Harker half dozed in the early
morning hours, three phantom women
materialized and attacked him, attempting
to bite his throat. Then the count
appeared and drove them off, whispering
fiercely that Harker belonged to him.
Later Harker thought he saw a huge bat
descending the castle walls, but the
creature turned out to be Count Dracula.
In the morning Harker, trying frantically
to escape, stumbled into an old chapel
where a number of coffin-like boxes of
earth were stored. Beneath the cover of
one which Harker opened lay the count,
apparently dead. In the evening,
however, the count appeared as usual, and
Harker demanded that he be released.
Obligingly the count opened the castle
door. A pack of wolves surrounded the en-
DRACULA by Bram Stoker. By permission of Mr. N. T. Stoker and the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1897, by Bram Stoker. Renewed, 1924, by Florence A. L. Bram Stoker.
985

trance. The count, laughing hysterically,
left poor Harker a prisoner in his room.
The next day Harker, weak and sick
from a strange wound in his throat, saw
a pack cart loaded with the mysterious
boxes drive from the castle. Dracula was
gone and Harker was alone, a prisoner
with no visible means of escape.
In England, meanwhile, Harker's
fiance'e, Mina Murray, had gone to visit
her beautiful and charming friend, Lucy
Westenra. Lucy was planning to marry
Arthur Holmwood, a young nobleman.
One evening, early in Mina's visit, a storm
blew up and a strange ship was driven
aground% The only living creature aboard
was a gray wolf-like dog. The animal
escaped into the countryside.
Soon afterward Lucy's happiness began
to fade because of a growing tendency to
sleepwalk. One night Mina followed her
friend during one of her spells and
discovered Lucy in a churchyard. A tall, thin
man who was bending over Lucy
disappeared at Mina's approach. Lucy, on
waking, could remember nothing of the
experience, but her physical condition
seemed much weakened. Finally she grew
so ill that Mina was forced to call upon
Dr. Seward, Lucy's former suitor. Lucy
began to improve under his care, and
when Mina received a report from
Budapest that her missing fiance' had been
found and needed care, she felt free to
end her visit.
When Lucy's condition suddenly grew
worse, Dr. Seward asked his old friend,
Dr. Van Helsing, a specialist from
Amsterdam, for his professional opinion.
Van Helsing, examing Lucy thoroughly,
paused over two tiny throat wounds which
she was unable to explain. Van Helsing
was concerned over Lucy's condition,
which pointed to unusual loss of blood
without signs of anemia or hemorrhage.
She was given blood transfusions at
intervals, and someone sat up with her at
night. She improved but expressed fear
of going to sleep at night because her
dreams had grown so horrible.
One morning Dr. Seward fell asleep
outside her door. When he and Van
Helsing entered her room, they found
Lucy ashen white and in a worse
condition than ever. Quickly Van Helsing
performed another transfusion; she rallied,
but not as satisfactorily as before. Van
Helsing then secured some garlic flowers
and told Lucy to keep them about her
neck at night. When the two doctors
called the next morning, Lucy's mother
had removed the flowers because their
odor might bother her daughter.
Frantically Van Helsing rushed to Lucy's room
and found her in a coma. Again he
administered a transfusion and her condition
improved. She said that with the garlic
flowers close by she was not afraid of
nightly flapping noises at her window.
Van Helsing sat with her every night until
he felt her well enough to leave. After
cautioning her always to sleep with the
garlic flowers about her neck, he returned
to Amsterdam.
Lucy's mother continued to sleep with
her daughter. One night the two ladies
were awakened by a huge wolf that
crashed through the window. Mrs.
Westenra fell dead of a heart attack and
Lucy fainted, the wreath of garlic flowers
slipping from her neck. Seward and Van
Helsing, who had returned to England,
discovered her half-dead in the morning.
They knew she was dying and called
Arthur. As Arthur attempted to kiss her,
Lucy's teeth seemed about to fasten on his
throat. Van Helsing drew him away.
When Lucy died, Van Helsing put a tiny
gold crucifix over her mouth, but an
attendant stole it from her body.
Soon after Lucy's death several children
of the neighborhood were discovered far
from their homes, their throats marked
by small wounds. Their only explanation
was that they had followed a pretty lady.
When Jonathan Harker returned to
England, Van Helsing went to see him and
Mina. After talking with Harker, Van
Helsing revealed to Dr. Seward his belief
that Lucy had fallen victim to a vampire,
986

one of those strange creatures who can
live for centuries on the blood of their
victims and breed their kind by attacking
the innocent and making them vampires
in turn. The only way to save Lucy's soul,
according to Van Helsing, was to drive a
stake through the heart of her corpse, cut
off her head, and stuff her mouth with
garlic flowers. Dr. Seward protested
violently. The next midnight Arthur, Dr.
Seward, and Van Helsing visited Lucy's
tomb and found it empty. When daylight
came they did as Van Helsing had
suggested with Lucy's corpse, which had
returned to its tomb.
The men, with Mina, tried to track
down Dracula in London, in order to find
him before he victimized anyone else.
Their object was to remove the boxes of
sterilized earth he had brought with him
from Transylvania so that he would have
no place to hide in the daytime. At last
the hunters trapped Dracula, but he
escaped them. By putting Mina into a trance
Van Helsing was able to learn that
Dracula was at sea, and it was necessary to
follow him to his castle. Wolves gathered
about them in that desolate country. Van
Helsing drew a circle in the snow with
a crucifix and within that magic enclosure
the travelers rested safely. The next
morning they overtook a cart carrying a black
box. Van Helsing and the others
overcame the drivers of the cart and pried open
the lid of Dracula's coffin. As the sun
began to set, they drove a stake through
the heart of the corpse. The vampire was
no more.
987

DRAGON SEED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pearl S. Buck (1892- )
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: World War II
Locale: China
First published: 1942
Principal characters:
Ling Tan, a Chinese farmer
Ling Sao, his wife
Lao Ta,
Lao Er,
Lao San, and
Pansiao, their children
Orchid, Lao Ta's wife
Jade, Lao Er's wife
Wu Lien, Ling Tan's son-in-law
Mayli, a mission teacher
Critique:
The plot of this novel as a social
chronicle is swiftly paced and convincing until
the appearance of Mayli; then the
emphasis shifts to the rather improbable love
affair of Mayli and Lao San. Background
and character remain superior to plot.
As a result, the reader absorbs an
excellent impression of these people of an alien
culture, through colorful details woven
into the pattern of the narrative. Dragon
Seed also tells what World War II meant
to the Chinese peasantry.
The Story:
Ling Tan's family all lived together in
his ancestral home. Besides Ling Tan
and his wife, Ling Sao, there were three
sons, Lao Ta, Lao Er, and Lao San, and
a daughter, Pansiao. Lao Ta and his wife
Orchid had two children. Lao Er and his
wife Jade as yet had none.
Jade was a strange woman who cared
little for the old rules and customs
governing Chinese wives. Her free manners
and frank tongue were an embarrassment
to Lao Er, for the men chided him about
it. Then, too, he felt as if he did not
really understand his wife. One evening,
after they had both heard how the
Japanese had begun war in the north, they
unburdened their hearts to each other,
and Lao Er accepted the fact that he was
married to a woman who was not like
the others. He promised to go to the city
and buy her a book so that she could
learn what was happening in the world.
While Lao Er was in the city, he
visited Wu Lien, a merchant who had
married his older sister. Some Chinese
students destroyed the Japanese
merchandise that Wu Lien had for sale and
branded him as a traitor. When Ling Sao
heard this bad news, she too went to the
city. Wu Lien was sick with worry over
what had happened to him; he had also
heard that the Japanese had landed on
the coast nearby and were pushing
inland. Ling Sao comforted him as well as
she could and returned home.
The next morning Ling Tan was
working in his fields when he saw Japanese
aircraft approaching to bomb the city.
He and the other farmers watched the
planes, curious and unafraid. That night
Wu Lien came to his father-in-law's
house seeking refuge, for his shop had
been hit by a bomb. Only then did Ling
Tan's family learn the meaning of what
had happened that day.
The next day Ling Tan and Lao San
went to the city, where they were caught
in the second air raid. Gravely, Ling Tar*
DRAGON SEED by Pearl S. Buck. By permission of the author, her agent David Lloyd, and the publishers.
The John Day Co., Inc. Copyright, 194 k 1942. by Pearl S. Buck.
988

asked his family how they were going
to resist this enemy. Lao Er and Jade
said that they must go westward into the
hills, for Jade was now with child. The
rest of the family decided to stay and hold
the ancestral land at all costs.
Streams of refugees passed along the
road toward the west, and Lao Er and
Jade joined a group of students who
were moving their school inland. Lao Er
promised to send word when the baby
was born. Other students passed through
the village and stopped to tell of the
atrocities of the Japanese, but the simple
farmers could not believe the stories they
heard. After a month or so Ling Tan and
his family could hear the roar of the
Japanese guns as they approached the
city, Chinese soldiers deserted to the
hills, leaving the inhabitants at the mercy
of the enemy. For a few days after the
city was taken all was peaceful. Then
some Japanese marched to the village and
demanded wine and women. Ling Tan
hid his family in the fields. The soldiers
discovered Wu Lien's mother, who was
too old and fat to flee. When they found
no other women, they attacked her and
killed her. Then they wrecked the house
and left.
Since he knew now that no woman
was safe from the Japanese, Ling Tan
put all of the women of his family with
the white missionary lady in the city.
The men remained at the farm, except
for Wu Lien. He returned to his shop
in the city and advertised for Japanese
business.
Meanwhile the soldiers came again to
Ling Tan's house in search of women.
When they found none, they attacked
Lao San, the youngest son. Humiliated
and filled with hatred, the boy left to join
the hill people who were fighting the
Japanese.
Wu lien ingratiated himself with the
conquerors and was appointed to a job
in the new city government. He took
his family from the mission and moved
into spacious quarters provided by the
Japanese.
Orchid grew bored in the mission.
She thought that the city was quiet now
and nothing could happen to her. One
day she went for a walk. Five soldiers
captured her and killed her while they
satisfied their lust. When her body was
returned to the mission, Ling Sao sent
for Ling Tan and Lao Ta. She could no
longer stay in the city. She returned to
the farm with Ling Tan, Lao Ta, and the
two children of Orchid and Lao Ta. Pan-
siao was sent westward to a mission
school in the hills, where she would be
safe.
A message from Lao Er announced
that Jade had a son. Ling Tan sent foi
Lao Er and his family to come and help
with the farm. Lao Er obeyed the
summons, for he could be useful as a
messenger between the village and the
guerilla -warriors in the hills. He and
Jade made a secret cavern under the
house where they could store arms for the
villagers. Meanwhile the children of Lao
Ta died of flux and fever. Despondent,
he left for the hills to join Lao San. Ling
Tan worked his farm as best he could
and held back from the enemy as much
grain as he dared.
Lao San and Lao Ta returned from the
hills with rifles to hide in the secret
cavern. Whenever there were no
witnesses, the farmers killed Japanese soldiers
and secretly buried them. Jade succeeded
in poisoning many Japanese leaders at a
great feast in the city. A cousin of Ling
Tan went to the city and stole a radio
from Wu Lien. Afterwards he was able
to report to the people the progress of the
war. The people took heart from the
knowledge that there were others fighting
the Japanese.
Lao San had become a ruthless killer
and Ling Tan thought that he needed a
spirited wife to tame him. Jade wrote
to Pansiao, asking her to find a wife for
Lao San among the girls at the mission.
Pansiao told one of her teachers, the
daughter of a Chinese ambassador, about
her brother. This girl, Mayli, traveled to
see Lao San for herself. The young peo-
989

pie fell in love at first sight, but Mayli
returned to the hills to wait for Lao San
to come after her. Lao Ta also returned
home with a new wife. Ling Tan's house
was full again, for Jade gave birth to
twin boys.
The hardships continued. Losing all
hope of conquering the Japanese, Ling
Tan began to brood. Then one day Lao
Er took the old man to the city to hear
the news from the hidden radio. They
heard that England and the United States
were now fighting on their side. Ling
Tan wept for joy. Perhaps some day
there would be an end to the war. Once
again there was hope.
990

DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Tsao Hsueh chin (c. 1715-1763), with a continuation by Kao Ou
Type of plot: Domestic chronicle
Time of plot: c. 1729-1737
Locale: Peking
First published: 1792
Principal characters:
Madame Shih (the Matriarch), the living ancestress of the Chia
family
Chia Sheh, her older son, master of the Yungkuofu, or western
compound
Madame Hsing, his wife
Chia Lien, their son
Hsi-feng (Phoenix), Chia Lien's wife
Ying-chun (Welcome Spring), Chia Sheh's daughter by a concubine
Chia Cheng, the Matriarch's younger son
Madame Wang, his wife
Pao-yu, their son
Cardinal Spring, their daughter, an Imperial concubine
Chia Huan, Chia Cheng's son by his concubine
Tan-chun (Quest Spring), Chia Cheng's daughter by his concubine
Tai-yu (Black Jade), the Matriarch's granddaughter, an orphan
Hsiang-yun (River Mist), the Matriarch's grandniece
Pao-chat (Precious Virtue), Madame Wang's niece
Hsueh Pan, Precious Virtue's brother, a libertine
Chia Gen, master of the Ningkuofu, or eastern compound
Yu-shth, his wife
Chia Jung, their son
CmN-smH, Chia Jung's wife
Hsi-Chun (Compassion Spring), Chia Gen's sister
Hsi-jen (Pervading Fragrance),
Ching-wen (Bright Design), and
Sheh-yueh (Musk Moon), Pao-yu's serving maids
Critique:
Chinese scholars and readers consider Pao-yu, the pampered younger son of an
the eighteenth-centurv Hung Lou Meng aristocratic and powerful family in grad-
(Dream of the Red Chamber') the great- ual financial decline at the time of his
est cf their novels. Published anony- birth. Like Pao-yu, Tsao Hsueh-chin was
mously in 1792, and for a long time a petted by his family and spoiled by lux-
matter of scholarly reference and dis- ury; unlike Pao-yu, he failed to pass the
pute, the book is now ascribed to Tsao Imperial Examinations which would have
Hsueh-chin, who completed the first raised him to some official position,
eightv chapters before his death in 1763, Dream of the Red Chamber is within a
and Kao Ou, who added forty more as single framework a long and extremely
an expansion of Tsao Hsueh-chin's orig- complicated domestic chronicle—the novel
inal notes. There is internal evidence to contains more than four hundred charac-
show that Tsao Hsueh-chin may have ters—that is both a lively comedy of man-
drawn on his own experience and family ners and a realistic fable of moral seri-
background in creating the character of ousness. The title is capable of express-
DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER by Tsao Hsueh-chin. Translated by Chi-Chen Wang. Published by
Twaync Publishers. By permission of the translator. Copyright, 1958, by Chi-Chen Wang.
991

ing several meanings. In the view of
Professor Chi-Chen Wang, it may be
translated as "Dreams of Young Maidens,"
since the younger women of the Chia
clan lived in the traditional "red
chamber" of a palace compound like those
which housed wealthy or aristocratic
Chinese families until fairly recent times.
The term may also be interpreted as a
reference to the metaphor "Red Dust,"
which in Buddhist usage is a designation
for the material world with all its
pleasures, follies, and vices. Manuscript copies
of the first eighty chapters of the novel
were apparently circulated before the
publication of the complete 120-chapter
version in 1792.
The Story:
Ages ago, in the realm of the Great
Void, the Goddess Niigua whose task it
was to repair the Dome of Heaven
rejected a stone which she found unsuited
to her purpose. Because she had touched
it, however, the stone became endowed
with life, so that thereafter it could move
as it pleased. In time it chanced on a
crimson flower in the region of the
Ethereal, where each day it watered the
tender blossoms with drops of dew. At last
the plant was incarnated as a beautiful
young girl. Remembering the stone that
had showered the frail plant with
refreshing dew, she prayed that in her human
form she might repay it with the gift of
her tears. Her prayers were to be granted,
for the stone, too, had been given l'fe in
the Red Dust of earthly existence. At his
birth the piece of jade was miraculously
found in the mouth of Pao-yu, a younger
son of the rich and powerful house of
Chia, which by imperial favor had been
raised to princely eminence several
generations before.
At the time of Pao-yu's birth the two
branches of the Chia family lived in great
adjoining compounds of palaces,
pavilions, and parks on the outskirts of
Peking. The Matriarch, an old woman of
great honor and virtue, ruled as the
living ancestress over both establishments.
Chia Ging, the prince of the Ningkuofu,
had retired to a Taoist temple some time
before, and his son Chia Gen was master
in his place. The master of the Yung-
kuofu was Chia Sheh, the older son of
the Matriarch. Chia Cheng, her younger
son and Pao-yu's father, also lived with
his family and attendants in the Yung-
kuofu. A man of upright conduct and
strict Confucian morals, he was a
contrast to the other members of his family,
who had grown lax and corrupt through
enervating luxury and the abuse of
power.
Pao-yu, the possessor of the miraculous
jade stone and a boy of great beauty and
quick wit, was his grandmother's favorite.
Following her example, the other women
of the family—his mother, aunts, s:sters,
cousins, and waiting maids—doted on the
boy and pampered him at every
opportunity, with the result that he grew up
girl'sh and weak, a lover of rouge pots
and feminine society. The trails of
effeminacy he d'splayed infuriated and d;s-
gusted his austere father, who treated the
boy with undue severity. As a result, Pao-
yu kept as much as possible to the
women's quarters.
His favorite playmates were his two
cous:ns. Black Jade and Precious
Virtue. Black Tade, a granddaughter of the
Matriarch, had come to live in the Yung-
kuofu aPer her mother's death. She was
a lovely, delicate girl of great poetic
sensitivity, and she and Pao-vu were drawn
to each other bv bonds of sympathv and
understanding that seemed to stretch back
into some unremembered past. Precious
Virtue, warm-hearted and practical, was
the niece of Pao-yu's mother. She was a
girl as good as her brother Hsueh Pan
was vicious, for he was always involving
the family in scandal because of his
pursuit of maidens and young boys. Pao-yu's
favorite waiting maid was Pervading
Fragrance. She slept in his chamber at
night, and it was with her that he
followed a dream vision and practiced the
play of cloud and rain.
When word came that Black Jade's
992

father was ill and wished to see her before
his death, the Matriarch sent the girl
home under the escort of her cousin Chia
Lien. During their absence Chin-shih
the daughter-in-law of Chia Gen, died
after a long illness. By judicious bribery
the dead woman's husband, Chia Jung,
was made a chevalier of the Imperial
Dragon Guards in order that she might
be given a more elaborate funeral.
During the period of mourning Chia Gen
asked Phoenix, Chia Lien's wife, to take
charge of the Ningkuofu household. This
honor gave Phoenix a position of
responsibility and power in both palaces. From
that time on, although she continued to
appear kind and generous, she secretly
became greedy for money and power. She
began to accept bribes, tamper with the
household accounts, and lend money at
exorbitant rates of interest.
One day a great honor was conferred
on the Chias. Cardinal Spring, Pao-yu's
sister and one of the emperor's
concubines, was advanced to the rank of an
Imperial consort of the second degree.
Later, when it was announced that she
would pay a visit of filial respect to her
parents, the parks of the two compounds
were at great expense transformed into
magnificent pleasure grounds, called the
Takuanyuan, in honor of the consort's
visit. Later, at Cardinal Spring's request,
the pavilions in the Takuanyuan were
converted into living quarters for the
young women of the family. Pao-yu also
went there to live, passing his days in
idle occupations and writing verses. His
pavilion was close to that of Black Jade,
who had returned to the Yungkuofu after
her father's death.
Pao-yu had a half-brother, Chia Huan.
His mother, jealous of the true-born son,
paid a sorceress to bewitch the boy and
Phoenix, whom she also hated. Both were
seized with fits of violence and wild
delirium. Pao-yu's coffin had already been
made when a Buddhist monk and a lame
Taoist priest suddenly appeared and
restored the power of the spirit stone. Pao-
yu and Phoenix recovered.
A short time later a maid was accused
of trying to seduce Pao-yu. Dismissed,
she drowned herself. About the same
time Chia Cheng was told that his son
had turned the love of a young actor
away from a powerful patron. Calling
his son a degenerate, Chia Cheng almost
caused Pao-yu's death by the severity of
the beating which the angry father
administered.
As Phoenix became more shrewish at
home, Chia Lien dreamed of taking
another wife. Having been almost caught in
one infidelity, he was compelled to
exercise great caution in taking a concubine.
Phoenix learned about the secret
marriage, however, and by instigating claims
advanced by the girl's former suitor she
drove the wretched concubine to suicide.
Black Jade, always delicate, became
more sickly. Sometimes she and Pao-yu
quarreled, only to be brought together
again by old ties of affection and
understanding. The gossip of the servants was
that the Matriarch would marry Pao-yu
to either Black Jade or Precious Virtue.
While possible marriage plans were being
talked about, a maid found in the
Takuanyuan a purse embroidered with an
indecent picture. This discovery led to a
search of all the pavilions, and it was
revealed that one of the maids was involved
in a secret love affair. Suspicion also fell
on Bright Design, one of Pao-yu's maids,
and she was dismissed. Proud and easily
hurt, she died not long afterward. Pao-yu
became even moodier and more depressed
after her death. Outraged by the search,
Precious Virtue left the park and went to
live with her mother.
A begonia tree near Pao-yu's pavilion
bloomed out of season. This event was
interpreted as a bad omen, for Pao-yu lost
his spirit stone and sank into a state of
complete lethargy. In an effort to revive
his spirits the Matriarch and his parents
decided to marry him at once to Precious
Virtue rather than to Black Jade, who
continued to grow frailer each day. Pao-
yu was allowed to believe, however, that
Black Jade was to be his wife. Black Jade,
993

deeply grieved, died shortly after the
ceremony. Knowing nothing of the deception
that had been practiced, she felt that she
had failed Pao-yu and that he had been
unfaithful to her. So the flower returned
to the Great Void.
Suddenly a series of misfortunes
overwhelmed the Chias as their deeds of graft
and corruption came to light. When
bailiffs took possession of the two compounds,
the usury Phoenix had practiced was
disclosed. Chia Gen and Chia Sheh were
arrested and sentenced to banishment.
The Matriarch, who took upon herself
the burden of her family's guilt and
surrendered her personal treasures for
expenses and fines, became ill and died.
During her funeral services robbers looted
the compound and later returned to carry
off Exquisite Jade, a pious nun. Phoenix
died also, neglected by those she had
dominated in her days of power. Through
the efforts of powerful friends, however,
the complete ruin of the family was
averted, and Chia Cheng was restored to
his official post.
But it was the despised son who in
the end became the true redeemer of
his family's honor and fortunes. After a
Buddhist monk had returned his lost
stone, Pao-yu devoted himself earnestly
to his studies and passed the Imperial
Examinations with such brilliance that
he stood in seventh place on the list of
successful candidates. So impressed was
the emperor that he wished to have the
young scholar serve at court. But Pao-yu
was nowhere to be found. The tale was
that he became a bodhisattva and
disappeared in the company of a Buddhist
monk and a Taoist priest.
994

DRINK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Second half of the nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1877
Principal characters:
Gervaise, a laundress
Coupeau, a roofer, her husband
Lantier, her lover and the father of her first two children
Adele, Lantier's mistress
Goujet, a neighbor secretly in love with Gervaise
Nana, the daughter of Gervaise and Coupeau
Virginie, Adele's sister
Critique:
Drink belongs to the series of the
Rougon-Macquart in which Zola
attempted to apply the methods of the
experimental sciences to the social novel.
This particular novel depicts with an
extremely cruel precision the destructive
effects of alcoholism among workers. At
the time of publication it was received
either with enthusiasm or with
indignation, never with indifference. Actually,
Drink might well be the one of Zola's
novels in which there is the least
prejudice and where the bare document is the
most effective. Zola's visionary
imagination communicates an intense life to the
social group he describes as a whole; thus,
a certain poetry evolves from the
atmosphere of fatality in Drink, and it is this
quality which makes the reading bearable.
The Story:
All night Gervaise had been waiting
for her lover, Lantier, to come back to
their quarters in Paris. When he finally
came home, he treated her brutally and
did not display the least affection toward
Claude and fitienne, their two children.
He stretched out on the bed and sent
Gervaise off to the laundry where she
worked.
When she was thirteen, Gervaise had
left her country town and her family to
follow Lantier; she was only fourteen
when fitienne was born. Her family had
been cruel to her, but until recently
Lantier had treated her rather kindly.
Gervaise knew that Lantier had come under
the influence of the dram shop and at the
same time of Adele, a pretty prostitute.
Gervaise herself was rather pretty, but
she had a slight limp which, when she
was tired, became worse; the hard life
she had lived also had put its mark on
her face, although she was only twenty-
two. She would have been perfectly
happy working hard for her own home
and a decent life for her children, but
all she had ever known was endless
hardship and insecurity.
At the laundry she found some relief
in confiding her story to Madame Boche,
an older woman who had become her
friend. Suddenly the children came
running in with word that Lantier had
deserted the three of them to go away with
Adele and that he had taken with him
everything they owned.
Gervaise's first thought was for her
children, and she wondered what would
become of them. Soon, however, she was
roused in anger by the insults of Virginie,
Adele's sister; Virginie had come to the
laundry for the sadistic pleasure of
watching how Gervaise would take the triumph
of her rival. Gervaise was quite frail and
much smaller than Virginie; nevertheless^
she jumped toward her, full of rage. A
struggle followed, in which the two
women used pieces of laundry equipment
and wet clothes to beat each otter. Sur-
995

prisingly, Gervaise, who had given all her
strength, came out victorious. Virginie
was never to forgive her.
Madame Fauconnier, proprietress of a
laundry, gave Gervaise work in her
establishment. There she earned just enough
to provide for herself and her children.
Another person interested in Gervaise
was Coupeau, a roofer who knew all
about her unhappy life. He would have
liked to have her live with him.
Gervaise preferred to devote herself entirely
to her two small boys, but one day, when
Coupeau proposed marriage to her, she
was overcome by emotion and accepted
him.
The situation was not very promising
at first because the couple had no money.
Coupeau's sister and brother-in-law, who
were as miserly as they were prosperous,
openly disapproved of his marriage.
Slowly, perseverance in hard work made
it possible for the Coupeaus to lead a
decent life and even to put a little money
aside. Gervaise had quite a reputation as
a laundress and she often dreamed of
owning her own shop. A little girl, Nana,
was born to the couple four years later.
Gervaise resumed working soon
afterward.
This good fortune could not last. While
he was working on a roof, Nana diverted
her father's attention for a split second
and he fell. Gervaise, refusing to let him
be taken to the hospital, insisted on
caring for him at home. Coupeau somehow
survived, but his recovery was very slow.
What was worse, inactivity had a bad
effect on him. He had no more ambition,
not even that of supporting his family.
He also went more and more often to the
dram shop.
Meanwhile, Gervaise was preparing to
give up her dream of a little shop of her
own when Goujet, a neighbor secretly in
love with her, insisted that she borrow
the five hundred francs he offered her
as a gesture of friendship. She opened
her shop and soon had it running quite
well.
Goujet's money was never returned.
Instead, the family's debts kept
progressively increasing, for Coupeau
remained idle and continued his drinking.
Gervaise herself had become accustomed
to a few small luxuries, and she was not
as thrifty as she had once been. Actually,
she still felt quite confident that she
would be able soon to meet her
obligations: she had a very good reputation in
the whole neighborhood.
At this point, Virginie returned,
pretending that she had forgotten the fight
in the laundry. Gervaise was a little
startled at first to discover that her old
enemy was going to be her neighbor once
more. Being unprejudiced, however, she
had no objection to being on friendly
terms with Virginie.
Then Lantier came back. When
Gervaise heard from Virginie that he had
deserted Adele and had been seen again
in the neighborhood, she had been badly
frightened. So far, however, her former
lover had made no attempt to see her and
she had forgotten her fears.
Lantier had waited to make a
spectacular entrance. He chose to appear in
the middle of a birthday party that
Gervaise was giving. Most unexpectedly,
Coupeau, who by that time was
continuously drunk, invited him in. During
the weeks that followed the two men
became drinking companions. Later on,
Lantier suggested that he might live and
board with the Coupeaus. Gervaise's
husband had reached such a s'ate of
degeneration that he welcomed the idea.
Although the agreement was that
Lantier was to pay his share of the expenses,
he never kept his promise, and Gervaise
found herself with two men to support
instead of one. Furthermore, Lantier had
completely taken over the household and
was running it as he pleased. Still a
charming seducer, he was extremely
popular with the women of the
neighborhood.
Gervaise herself began to degenerate.
Disgusted by her husband, she could not
find the strength to refuse the embraces
of her former lover. Before long her
996

work suffered from such a state of affairs,
and eventually she lost the shop. Vir-
ginie bought it and, at the same time,
won the favors of Lantier.
Meanwhile, Nana had almost grown
up, and she was placed as an apprentice
in a flower shop. When she decided to
leave home for the streets. Gervaise gave
up all interest in life and joined Coupeau
in the dram shop. After he finallv died of
delirium tremens, she tried walking the
streets, but nobody would have her,
wretched as she was. Gouiet's timid
efforts to help her were useless.
Completely worn out by all the demands that
had been made on her, she died alone.
997

DRUMS
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Boyd (1888-1944)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: American Revolution
Locale: North Carolina and London
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Squire Fraser, a North Carolina planter
Mrs. Fraser, his wife
John Fraser, their son
Sir Nat Duktnfield, a sportsman
Captain Tennant, Collector of the Port at Edenton
Eve Tennant, his daughter
Wylie Jones, a plantation owner
Paul Jones, a sailor
Sally Merrillee, a neighbor of the Frasers
Critique:
In Drums the author attempted to
reproduce the feelings and actions of all
classes of Americans during the
Revolution, and he accomplished his purpose
admirably, sometimes, however, at the
expense of the movement of the plot. The
episodes at the race track and on the
sea stand out in vividness above the rest
of the action. The book is a pleasing
mixture of history and adventure, with
little emphasis upon character.
The Story:
John Fraser lived with his mother and
father in the backwoods of North
Carolina. Squire Fraser, a strict but kind
Scotsman, was determined that his son
should have a gentleman's education, and
so he sent John to the coastal town of
Edenton to be tutored by Dr. Clapton, an
English clergyman.
There John made many friends. Sir
Nat Dukinfield, a young rake, asked
John to go riding with him one
afternoon. They parted close friends. Through
Dr. Clapton, John met Captain Tennant,
the Collector of the Port at Edenton,
Captain Tennant took John home with
him and introduced him to Eve, his
daughter, who overwhelmed John and
embarrassed him with her coquettish
manners. Captain Flood, a river boat
skipper, was another of his friends. The
old man taught him some sea lore and on
his trips up and down the river acted as
a messenger between John and his
parents.
John went often to visit Captain
Tennant and Eve. One evening two other
gentlemen arrived at their house, Mr.
Hewes, a shipbuilder, and Mr. Battle, a
young lawyer. A bitter argument began
among the gentlemen over the new tax
on tea. Autumn came, and Squire
Fraser sent for John to come home for a
short vacation. Captain Flood took John
up the river to Halifax. There he stayed
overnight at the plantation of Wylie
Jones, a rich young landowner.
After three years of schooling from
Dr. Clapton, John became a young
provincial gentleman. The only cloud on
his horizon was the report of troubles
with the British in Boston. Many people
were angry; some predicted violence. But
John thrust dark thoughts aside, for
tomorrow was the day of the races. Sir Nat
was to match his horse against a
thoroughbred from Virginia. Everyone seemed to
be excited over the holiday except Mr.
Hewes, Mr. Battle, and Wylie Jones.
The three sat apart at a table in the
DRUMS by James Boyd. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1925, by Charles
Scribner's Sons.
998

tavern and talked seriously among
themselves while the rest of the company
sang songs. At last Wylie Jones rose and
announced that the ministers in
Parliament had requested the king to declare
the American Colonies in a state of
rebellion.
The next day John rode to the races
with Sir Nat; Eve was going with fat
Master Hal Cherry, a repulsive boy,
but rich. Sir Nat's horse was in perfect
condition; his jockey, who had been
drunk the night before, was not. He lost
the first heat to the horse from Virginia.
Then Sir Nat turned to John and asked
him to ride. John rode the next two heats
and won both of them. His friends
celebrated the victory he had won for North
Carolina.
Spring came. Sir Nat, putting no stock
in rumors of war with the Colonies,
volunteered for the English cavalry; he
wanted to fight the French. The day
after Sir Nat left for England, John
learned of the battle fought at Lexington.
Squire Fraser sent a letter to his son
with instructions to come home at once
if British authority were overthrown at
Edenton. John went to say goodbye to
Captain Tennant and Eve, and then,
following his father's instructions, he took
leave of Dr. Clapton and went up the
river with Wylie Jones. At Wylie's
plantation he met Paul Jones, an
adventurous seaman who had taken Wylie's last
name. Mr. Batde, Paul Jones, and Wylie
discussed a naval war against the British.
They urged John to decide soon on which
side he would be. He rode sadly home
from Wylie's, but he brightened when
he met Sally Merrillee, an old playmate.
He suddenly decided that he liked her
backwoods manners, so different from
those of Eve Tennant. Later a company
of militia camped on the Merrillee
property, and the officers were billeted in
Sally's house. John became angry at
Sally's attentions to the militia officers and
ceased courting her. Finally, Squire
Fraser sent John to England to put the
family money in a safe bank. John was
happy at a chance for an honorable
escape from his problem. But when he
went to say goodbye to Sally, she had
only contempt for him. Her brother had
gone with the militia.
In London, John became the clerk oi
an importing firm and again met Eve
and Captain Tennant. He received a
letter from Wylie Jones, who asked him
to deliver some money to Paul Jones'
mother in Scodand. John was staying
at an inn on the Scottish coast the night
American sailors made a shore raid.
Suddenly homesick for America, he went
back with them to their ship. The captain
was Paul Jones. Grateful for the favor
John had done for him in Scotland, he
signed John on as a crew member.
After a naval engagement, the ship
anchored in the French harbor of Brest.
Then came long months of waiting while
Paul Jones tried to get a larger ship from
the French. Sir Nat arrived from
England to visit John. One evening the two
became involved in a tavern brawl, and
Sir Nat was killed. At last Paul Jones
obtained another ship, the Bonhomme
Richard.
The ship put to sea with a modey
crew and captured several British
merchant vessels. Then, in a running fight
with the Baltic Fleet, John was wounded
in the left elbow. No longer fit for active
duty and still feverish from his wound,
he sailed home to North Carolina on a
Dutch ship. As soon as his arm had
healed, he volunteered in the militia, but
they wanted no stiff-armed men. He
helped out Sally's mother on her farm.
Sally had gone north to nurse her brother,
who had smallpox. Mr. Merrillee had
been killed in the war.
When Sally returned, John went to
call on her. But when he tried to tell her
that he loved her, she wept. Thinking
she was rejecting his love, he left
disconsolately. He volunteered again for the
militia and was accepted. In a skirmish
with British troops he was wounded a
second time.
His arm now useless, John spent his
999

days sitting on the front porch. One day
Sally's mother came to call on him and
scolded him for neglecting her daughter.
Sally was in love with him; he had
mistaken her reason for crying. John
suddenly felt much better. He felt better
still when his father heard that the
British were retreating. As he sat on the
porch, General Greene's victorious army
passed along the road. John stumbled
down to the fence and raised his stiff arm
in an Indian salute as the last man of
the rear guard came to the crest of a
hill. The distant soldier, silhouetted
against the sunset, raised his rifle over his
head in answer. The war was over. In
a few days he would be strong enough to
visit Sally.
1000

DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Walter D. Edmonds (1903- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1775-1783
Locale: The Mohawk Valley.
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Gilbert Martin, a young pioneer
Magdelana Borst Martin (Lana), his wife
Mark Demooth, a captain of the militia
John Wolff, a Tory
Blue Black, a friendly Oneida Indian
Mrs. McKlennar, Captain Barnabas McKlennar's widow
Joseph Brant, an Indian chief
General Benedict Arnold
Nancy Schuyler, Mrs. Demooth's maid
Jurry McLonis, a Tory
Hon Yost, Nancy's brother
Critique:
Drums Along the Mohawk depicts
with great clarity the history of those
stirring years from 1775 to 1783.
Edmonds does not attempt a sweeping
picture of the Revolutionary War. Instead,
he shows how the times affected the
farmers and residents of the Mohawk
Valley in upstate New York. Realistically
told, the novel gains added authenticity
because its people, with some exceptions,
actually lived during that period of
American history. Edmonds lists his fictitious
characters in an Author's Note.
The Story:
Magdelana Borst, the oldest of five
daughters, married Gilbert Martin and
together they started off from her home
at Fox's Mill to settle farther west in their
home at Deerfield. The time was July,
1776, and the spirit of the revolution
was reaching into the Mohawk Valley,
where settlers who sided with the rebels
had already formed a company of militia
commanded by Mark Demooth. Soon
after he came to his new home Gil had
to report for muster day. Some Indians
had been seen in the vicinity. Also, the
militia had decided to investigate the
home of John Wolff, suspected of being
a king's man. Finding evidence that a
spy had been hidden on the Wolff farm,
they arrested John Wolff, convicted him
of aiding the British, and sent him to
the Newgate Prison at Simsbury Mines.
A few months after their arrival at
Deerfield, Gil decided to have a
log-rolling to clear his land for farming. The
Weavers, the Realls, and Clem Copper-
nol all came to help with the work.
When they were about half finished,
Blue Black, a friendly Oneida Indian,
came to warn them that a raiding party
of Seneca Indians and whites was in the
valley. The settlers immediately scattered
for home to collect the few movable
belongings which they might save, and then
drove to Fort Schuyler. Lana, who was
pregnant, lost her baby as a result of
the wild ride to the fort. The enemy
destroyed the Deerfield settlement. All the
houses and fields were burned; Gil's cow
was killed, and Mrs. Wolff, who had
refused to take refuge with the people who
had sent her husband to prison, was
reported missing. Gil and Lana rented a
one-room cabin in which to live through
the winter. With spring coming on and
DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK by Walter D. Edmonds. By permission of the author, of Harold Ober, and
the publishers, Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1936, by Walter D. Edmonds.
1001

needing a job to support himself and
Lana, Gil became the hired man of Mrs.
McKlennar, a widow. The pay was
forty-five dollars a year plus the use of a
two-room house and their food.
General Herkimer tried to obtain a
pledge of neutrality from the Indian
chief, Joseph Brant, but was
unsuccessful. At the end of the summer, word
came that the combined forces of British
and Indians, commanded by General St.
Leger, were moving down from Canada
to attack the valley. The militia was
called up and set out westward U en
counter this army. But the attack by the
militia was badly timed and the party
was ambushed. Of nearly six hundred
and fifty men, only two hundred and
fifty survived. The survivors returned in
scattered groups. Gil received a bullet
wound in the arm. General Herkimer,
seriously injured in the leg, died of his
wounds.
After the death of General Herkimer,
General Benedict Arnold was sent out
to reorganize the army and lead rit in
another attack—this time against General
St. Leger's camp.
When Nancy Schuyler, Mrs. De-
mooth's maid, heard that her brother,
Hon Yost, was in the neighborhood with
a group of Tories, she decided to sneak
out to see him. On the way she met
another Tory, Jurry McLonis, who
seduced her. Before she was able to see
Hon, the American militia broke up the
band. Hon was arrested but was latex
released when he agreed to go back to
the British camp and spread false reports
of the American strength. As a result of
her meeting with Jurry McLonis, Nancy
became pregnant. About that same time
John Wolff escaped from the prison at
Simsbury Mines and made his way to
Canada to join Butler and to look for his
wife.
The following spring brought with it
General Butler's destructives, raiding
parties that would swoop down to burn
and pillage small settlements or farms.
Mrs. Demooth tormented Nancy
constantly because of her condition and one
night frightened the girl so completely
that Nancy, in terror, packed a few of
her belongings in a shawl and ran away.
Her only idea was to try to get to Niagara
and find her brother Hon, but she had
not gone far before labor pains oyertook
her and she bore her child beside a
stream. An Indian found her there and
took her with him as his wife. Lana had
her child in May. The destruction by the
raiding parties continued all through that
summer, and the harvest was small. Mrs,
McKlennar's stone house was not burned,
but there was barely enough food for
her household that winter. In the spring
Colonel Van Schaick came to the
settlement with an army, and the militia
headed west once again, this time to strike
against the Onondaga towns.
Lana had her second child the
following August. Because of the lack of food
during the winter, she was still weak
from nursing her first boy, Gilly, and
after the birth of her second boy it took
her a long while to recover. The next
winter they all had enough to eat but
the cold was severe. During that winter
Mrs. McKlennar aged greatly and kept
mostly to her bed. The destructives
continued their raids through the next spring
and summer. The men never went out
to their fields alone; they worked in
groups with armed guards. One day,
after all the men had gone to the fort,
Lana took the two boys for a walk and
then sat down at the edge of a clearing
and fell asleep. When she awoke, Gilly
was gone. Two Indians were near the
house. She put the baby, Joey, into a
hiding place and then searched for Gilly.
She found him at last and the two of
them crawled into the hiding place
also. Meanwhile the two Indians had
entered the house and set it on fire.
Overwhelmed by Mrs. McKlennar's righteous
indignation, they carried out her bed for
her. They fled when men, seeing the
smoke, came hurrying from the fort
Gil and the two scouts, Adam Helmer
and Joe Boleo, built a cabin to house
1002

them all during the coming winter.
With the spring thaws, a flood
inundated the valley. As the waters receded,
Marinus Willett came into the Mohawk
Valley with his army, with orders to track
down and destroy the British forces under
General Butler. Butler's army already
was having a difficult time, for British
food supplies were running out and
tracking wolves killed all stragglers. The
militia finally caught up with Butler,
harassed his army for several miles, killed
Butler, and scattered the routed army in
the wilderness. The Mohawk Valley was
saved.
Three years later, the war over, Gil
and Lana went back to their farm at
Deerfield. They now had a baby girl and
Lana and Gil felt content with their
hard-won security, their home, their
children, and each other.
1003

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Webster (1580-1638)
Type of flat: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Amain and Milan, Italy
First presented: c. 1613
Principal characters:
Giovanna, Duchess of Amalfi
Antonio, her second husband
Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, jealous brother of the duchess
The Cardinal, another brother of the duchess
Bosola, the brothers' spy and executioner
Critique:
Webster's play is a blood-tragedy
typical of the so-called decadent drama of the
reign of James I of England. The
melodrama of its scenes, however, is not
enough to detract from the general
dignity and tragedy of the play. A peculiarity
of this play is that a year elapses between
the first and second acts and another
two years between the second and third
acts, the passage of time made apparent
to the audience by the birth of children
to the duchess. As in most of the bloody
tragedies, the setting is a Latin country.
The Story:
The Duchess of Malfi was a young
widow whose two brothers, one a
Cardinal and the other Ferdinand, the Duke
of Calabria, were desperately jealous
lest she marry again, for they planned to
inherit her title and estates. Their spy
in her household was Bosola, her master
of horse.
In spite of the warnings of her brothers,
the duchess fell in love with Antonio,
her steward, and married him. Later,
unknown to any person in the court
except Antonio and Cariola, a servant
girl, she had a child, a boy.
Unfortunately, the happy father wrote out the
child's horoscope according to the rules
of astrology and then lost the paper.
Bosola found the document and so
learned about the duchess' child. He
dispatched a letter immediately to Rome
to inform the brothers. The duke swore
that only her blood could quench his
anger and threatened that once he knew
for certain the duchess* lover, he would
be content only with her complete ruin.
The years passed and the duchess bore
Antonio two more children, a second
son and a daughter. Antonio told his
friend Delio that he was worried because
Duke Ferdinand was too quiet about the
matter and because the people of Malfi,
not aware of their duchess' marriage, were
calling her a common strumpet.
Duke Ferdinand had come to the court
to propose Count Malateste as a second
husband for the duchess. She refused.
Meanwhile Bosola had not been able to
discover the father of the duchess'
children. Impatient with his informer, the
duke decided on a bolder course of action.
He determined to gain entrance to the
duchess* private chamber, and there to
wring a confession from her. That night,
using a key Bosola had given him, the
duke went to her bedroom. Under threats
she confessed to her second marriage,
but she refused to reveal Antonio's name.
After the duke left, she called Antonio
and Cariola to her chamber. They
planned Antonio's escape from Malfi
before his secret became known to the
duchess' brothers.
The duchess called Bosola and told
him that Antonio had falsified some
accounts. As soon as Bosola left, she
recalled Antonio and told him of the
feigned crime of which she had accused
him to shield both their honors, and then
bade him flee to the town of Ancona,
where they would meet later. In the
1004

presence of Bosola and the officers of her
guard she again accused Antonio of
stealing money, and banished him from
Main. Antonio replied that such was
the treatment of stewards of thankless
masters, and then left for Ancona. The
duped Bosola upheld Antonio in an
argument with the duchess. She then felt
that she could trust Bosola with the secret
of her marriage, and she asked him to
take jewels and money to her husband
at Ancona. Bosola, in return, advised her
to make her own departure from the court
more seemly by going to Ancona by way
of the shrine of Loretto, so that the flight
might seem a religious pilgrimage.
Bosola immediately traveled from Malfi
to Rome, where he betrayed the plans
of Antonio and the duchess to Duke
Ferdinand and the Cardinal. They had
the lovers banished from Ancona.
Bosola met the duchess and Antonio
near Loretto with a letter from Duke
Ferdinand bidding Antonio report to him,
since now he knew Antonio as his sister's
husband. Antonio refused and fled with
his oldest son toward Milan. After
Antonio's departure, Bosola took the duchess
back to her palace at Malfi, a prisoner
by Duke Ferdinand's command. At Malfi
the duke again visited her in her
chamber. He presented her with a dead man's
hand, implying that it was from
Antonio's corpse. Finally Bosola came to
the duchess and strangled her. Cariola
and the children were also strangled,
though not with the quiet dignity with
which the duchess was murdered. When
Bosola asked Duke Ferdinand for his
reward, the hypocritical duke laughed and
replied that the only reward for such a
crime was its pardon.
In Milan, meanwhile, Antonio planned
♦:o visit the Cardinal's chamber during
the night to seek a reconciliation with
the duchess' brothers. He intended to
approach the Cardinal because Duke
Ferdinand had lost his mind after
causing his sister's murder. The Cardinal
ordered Bosola that same evening to seek
out Antonio, who was known to be in
Milan, and murder him. But when so
ordered, Bosola accused the Cardinal of
having plotted the duchess' murder and
requested his reward. When a reward
was again refused, Bosola swore to
himself to join forces with Antonio to
avenge the duchess' death.
That night all plans miscarried. In
the dark Bosola accidentally murdered
Antonio, the man he hoped to make an
ally in his revenge on Duke Ferdinand
and the Cardinal. A few minutes later,
Bosola stabbed the Cardinal and was in
turn stabbed by the mad Duke
Ferdinand, who had rushed into the room.
Bosola, with his last strength, stabbed
the duke and they both died. Alarmed,
the guards broke into the apartments to
discover the bodies. Into the welter of
blood a courtier led the young son of
the Duchess of Malfi and Antonio, whom
Antonio had taken to Milan. He was
proclaimed ruler of the lands held by his
mother and uncles.
1005

DUINO ELEGIES
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
First published: 1923
For the reader who must rely on a
prose translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's
culminating work, the story and the man
behind its appearance may overshadow
the poem itself. Nothing of the elegiac
quality of the original German can be
translated which is as deeply affecting as
the inspiration which produced the work,
or the philosophy of the man who wrote
it.
Often ranked with Yeats as one of the
great poets of this century, Rilke is also
called the great beginner. One might,
however, better compare his poetic
innovations with those of Gerard Manley
Hopkins, though in the case of Rilke
experimentation with rhythm and rhyme
never took precedence over content. Like
Yeats, he more often let the content find
the form. Of the three, Rilke was the
most intuitive, rhapsodic, and mystical;
and he was perhaps the most
consummate craftsman.
In October, 1911, the poet visited his
friend, Princess Marie von Thurn und
Taxis-Hohenlohe, at Schloss Duino, near
Trieste. He remained at the castle, alone
throughout the winter, until April, and
there he composed the first, the second,
and parts of several other elegies. The
opening stanza, "Who, if I cried, would
hear me among the angelic orders?" came
to him while walking in a storm along a
cliff two hundred feet above the raging
sea, a romantic interlude worthy of an
atmospheric passage in a Gothic novel.
Rilke conceived the plan of all ten elegies
as a whole, though ten years elapsed
before the poem found its final form.
The First Elegy, like the first
movement of a musical work, presents the
central theme and suggests the variations
that follow. From the opening line to
DUINO ELEGIES by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translat
reprinted by permission of the publishers, W. W. N<
& Co., Inc.
the last, Rilke invokes the Angels, not
those of Christianity but of a special
order immersed in time and space, a
concept of being of perfect consciousness, of
transcendent reality. As a symbol
appearing earlier in Rilke's poetry, the Angel
represents to him the perfection of life in
all the forms to which he aspired, as high
above man as God is above this
transcending one. Nearest to this angelic
order are the Heroes—later he praises
Samson—and a woman in love, especially
one who dies young, as did Gaspara
Stampa (1523-1554), whom Rilke
celebrates as a near-perfect example. Like
the lover, man must realize each moment
to the fullest rather than be distracted by
things and longings. With this contrast
of Man and Angels, of Lovers and
Heroes, and with the admission of life's
transitoriness, the poet suggests the
meaning of life and death as well as words can
identify such profound things.
If the introduction or invocation is a
praise of life, the Second Elegy is a
lament for life's limitations. We moderns
must, at best, content ourselves with an
occasional moment of self-awareness, of
a glimpse at eternity. Unlike the Greeks,
we have no external symbols for the life
within. In love, were we not finally
satiated, we might establish communication
with the Angels; but finally our
intuitions vanish and we have only a fleeting
glance at reality.
Rilke began the Third Elegy at Duino
and completed it in Paris the following
year; during an intervening visit to Spain
he composed parts of the Sixth, Ninth,
and Tenth Elegies. In the third section
he confronts the physical bases of life,
especially love. He suggests that woman
by J. B. Irishman and Stenh-n Spender. Excerpts
:on & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1939, by W. W. Norton
1006

is always superior in the love act, man a
mere beginner led by blind animal
passion, the libido a vicious drive. Sublime
love is an end in itself, but often human
love is a means to escape life. Even
children have a sort of terror infused into
their blood from this heritage of doubt
and fear. From this view of mortality
Rilke would lead the child away, as he
says in powerful though enigmatic
conclusion,
. . . Oh gently, gently
show him daily a loving, confident task
done,—guide him
close to the garden, give him those

counterbalancing nights. . . .
Withhold him. . . .
Perhaps the advent of war made the
Fourth Elegy the most bitter of all,
written as it was from Rilke's retreat in
Munich in 1915. The theme of distraction,
our preoccupation with fleeting time and
time serving, makes of this part a deep
lament over the human condition. We
are worse than puppets who might be
manipulated by unseen forces, Angels.
Our attempts to force destiny, to toy with
fate, cause us to break from heaven's firm
hold. We must be as little children,
delighted within ourselves by the world
without, and with our attention and
energies undivided, alone. Here, we will
find our answer to death as the other side
of life, a part of life and not the negation
or end of it.
The Fifth Elegy, the last from the
standpoint of time, written at the
Chateau de Muzot in 1922, was inspired by
Picasso's famous picture of the acrobats.
Here again the circumstances of the
writing overshadow the very real worth of
the poem. Les Saltimhanques of Picasso
was owned by Frau Hertha Koenig, who
allowed Rilke the privilege of living in
her home in 1915 in order to be near his
favorite painting. Either the poet
imperfectly remembered the details of the
painting when the poem was finally
written or else he included recollections of
acrobats who had so delighted him
during his Paris years. Regardless of
influences, however, this poem is remarkable
in its merging of theme and movement
with a painting, emphasizing Rilke's
conviction that a poem must celebrate all the
senses rather than appeal to eye or ear
alone.
The acrobats, symbolizing the human
condition, travel about, rootless and
transitory, giving pleasure neither to
themselves nor the spectators. Reality to the
acrobat, as to man, is best discovered in
the arduousness of the task; but routine
often makes the task a mockery,
especially if death is the end. If death,
however, is the other side of life and makes
up the whole, then life forces are real
and skillfully performed to the inner
delight of performers and spectators, living
and dead alike.
The Hero, Rilke asserts in the Sixth
Elegy, is that fortunate being whose
memory, unlike that of long-forgotten lovers,
is firmly established by his deeds. He,
being single-minded and single-hearted,
has the same destiny as the early
departed, those who die young without
losing their view of eternity. The great
thing, then, is to live in the flower of
life with the calm awareness that the
fruit, death, is the unilluminated side of
life. For the Hero, life is always
beginning.
In the Seventh Elegy, the poet as the
we and the you as well as the I, no
longer worries about transitory decaying
or dying. Now he sings the
unpremeditated song of existence:
Don't think that I'm wooing!
Angel, even if I were, you'd never come.
For my call
is always full of 'Away!' Against such a
powerful
current you cannot advance. Like an
outstretched
arm is my call. And its clutching,
upwardly
open hand is always before you
1007

as open for warding and warning,
aloft there, Inapprehensible.
From this viewpoint, Rilke attempts in
the Eighth Elegy, dedicated to his friend
Rudolph Kassner, to support his belief in
the "nowhere without no," the "open"
world, timeless, limitless, inseparable
"whole." "We," contrasted to animals,
are always looking away rather than
toward this openness.
The theme of creative existence Rilke
continues in the Ninth Elegy, possibly
begun at Duino but certainly finished at
Muzot. Here he suggests that the life of
the tree is superior in felicity to the
destiny of man. We should, perhaps, rejoice
in spite of the limiting conditions of man
by overcoming this negation of the flesh
with a reaffirmation of the spirit. Then
death holds no fears since it is not
opposite to life, not an enemy but a friend.
This work possibly represents the author's
own transformation from the negating,
inhibiting conditions of the Great War to
a renewed faith in life.
The Tenth Elegy, the first ten lines
of which came to him in that burst of
creativity at Duino, contains a satiric
portrait of the City of Pain where man
simply excludes suffering, pain, death,
from his thoughts; where distractions,
especially the pursuit of money, are the
principal activities. This semi-existence
the poet contrasts with that in the Land
of Pain, Life-Death, where there is
continuous progress through insights of a
deeper reality to the primal source of joy.
And we, who have always thought
of happiness climbing, would reel
the emotion that almost stardes
when happiness falls.
Perhaps Rilke means that by complete
submission or attunement to universal
forces one is suspended or even falls into
the "open." This deeply realized
philosophy he developed in the Sonnets to Or-
ykeus (1923), a work which
complements the Duino Elegies, though it does
not surpass them in deep emotional
undertones and sheer power of expression.
1008

THE DUNCIAD
Type of work: Poem
Author: Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Time: Eighteenth century
Locale: England, the underworld
First published: 1728-1743
Principal personages:
Dulness, a goddess
Tibbald, hero of the first edition, a Shakespearian scholar
Colley Cibber, hero of the second edition, playwright, producer, and
poet laureate
When Alexander Pope set out to
criticize the general literary climate of his
time and to avenge the slights given his
own work by other writers, he took the
theme of John Dryden's MacFlecknoe,
in which the poetaster Thomas Shadwell
is crowned ruler of the Kingdom of
Nonsense, and expanded it to make a true
mock epic of three books. He added a
fourth book when he rewrote the poem
in 1742. The Dunciad acclaims the
goddess Dulness, daughter of Chaos and
Night, and her chosen prince: the scholar
Lewis Theobald (Tibbald) in the first
edition, Colley Cibber, playwright and
poet laureate, in the second.
This poem lacks the close-knit quality
of Pope's other fine mock epic, The Rape
of the Lock. It is longer, and the fact
that the hero appears only at intervals
explains a certain disunity. Tibbald-Cib-
ber appears at the middle of Book I, is
present only as a spectator at the epic
games described in Book II, and dreams
the trip to the underworld, modeled on
that of Aeneas in Book VI of the Aeneid.
Thus, the action is limited. The
important points in the poem are made in the
descriptive passages in these episodes and
in conversations which contain criticism
of individuals and trends.
The general plan outlined above shows
Pope's close reliance on the classical epic
as his model. The Dunciad, like The
Rape of the Lock, begins with a parody
of the Aeneid:
The mighty Mother, and her Son, who
brings
The Smithfield Muses to the ear of
Kings,
I sing.
The invocation is appropriately directed
not at a muse but at the Patricians, the
patrons whose purses inspire dull writing.
The dedication to the author's friend
Jonathan Swift which follows is an
eighteenth-century, rather than a classic
convention.
Pope describes in detail the abode of
Dulness and the allegorical figures
gathered around her throne: Fortitude,
Temperance, Prudence, and Poetic Justice,
who is weighing truth with gold and
"solid pudding against empty praise."
The gods are notoriously interested in the
affairs of mortals; Dulness looks out upon
the ingredients of dull writing and the
numerous creators of it. Her eye lights
upon the hero, who is raising to her an
altar of tremendous tomes of his writing.
She anoints him as king of her realm,
and the nation croaks Aesop's line, "God
save King Log."
In the second book Pope designs
appropriate contests for his various groups of
enemies. The booksellers race to win a
phantom poet. A patron is designated for
the poet who tickles best, but he is
carried off by an unknown sycophantic
secretary. Journalists swim through the
muck of the Thames River:
Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes
around
The stream, be his the Weekly Journals
bound;
A pig of lead to him who drives the
best;
1009

A peck of coals apiece shall glad the
rest.
As a final test the goddess promises her
"amplest powers" to anyone who can
remain awake as he listens to the verses of
"Three College Sophs, and three pert
Templars." The book ends with the whole
company lying asleep.
Grandiose heroic couplets and
numerous parallels with classical visits to the
underworld fill the third book. John
Taylor, the Water Poet, replaces the
ferryman Charon; Elkanah Settle, a
Restoration poet, takes Anchises' part in showing
the hero the future of Dulness and her
offspring. The high point of this book is
the crowning of Tibbald-Cibber with a
poppy wreath by Bavius, prototype of the
worst of poets from ancient times.
The 1742 Dunciad, centering on the
triumph of Dulness over England, reveals
a slightly more mature outlook in the
poet than does the earlier version. Tib-
bald was the object of a vindictive attack,
occasioned by his criticism of Pope's
edition of Shakespeare. Cibber is
representative of the dull poet; as laureate he was
well known for his poor occasional verse.
The fourth book is far more concerned
with the institutions promoting the rise
of dullness than with individuals. The
more frequent use of classical names,
rather than personal ones, indicates the
poet's movement toward universality.
The last book is almost an entity in
itself. It opens with a new invocation, to
Chaos and Night. The pseudo-learned
notes, effective satire written by Pope
himself, point out the precedents for a
second invocation when important new
matter is introduced. Evil omens presage
the coming destruction as Dulness
ascends her throne and Cibber reclines in
her lap, making his only appearance in
this book.
Around the goddess are Science, Wit,
Logic, Rhetoric, and other abstractions in
chains, reminiscent of several scenes in
The Faerie Queene. Various personages
appear to tell of Dulness' victory over the
many arts and institutions. First to come
is a harlot representing the Italian opera;
she rejoices in the banishment of Handel
to Ireland and the supremacy of chaos
in music.
Pope uses an epic simile to describe the
nations clustering around the goddess:
Not closer, orb in orb, congloved are
seen
The buzzing Bees about their dusky
Queen.
Present are the passive followers of
Dulness and those who lead the advance:
pompous editors who make mincemeat of
good poets with notes and commentary,
patrons who set up a bust of a poet after
he has died neglected.
A specter, the head of Westminster
School, modeled on Milton's Moloch,
speaks on the state of education:
As Fancy opens the quick springs of
Sense,
We ply the Memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on
chain,
Confine the thought, to exercise the
breath;
And keep them in the pale of Words
till death.
Pope criticizes the hair-splitting
grammarians in Aristarchus' boasts that he has
turned good verse into prose again.
Science is also satirized as the study which
loses itself in detail; but Dulness fears
even that condition of affairs, for an
object of nature is capable of awakening a
mind. Religion does not escape; the poet
says that it has degenerated into a belief
in a mechanistic God, made in man's
image.
Knowing the state of her kingdom, the
goddess celebrates her mysteries,
reflecting Pope's interest in ceremony. As the
rites are concluded a state of dullness
encompasses the country, schools,
government, army. Truth, philosophy, and re-
1010

ligion perish as "Universal Darkness
buries All."
The Dunciad contains more of the
true heroic spirit than most other mock
epics, like Samuel Butler's coarse Hudi-
hras or the delicate and sophisticated The
Rape of the Lock. These poems are
directed toward the amusement of the
reader, while The Dunciad reveals Pope's
passionate conviction that the triumph of
dullness was a real danger to art, science,
and learning. He chose to deliver his
warning to England in the humorous
mock-epic form, but his seriousness about
his subject raises the latter part of the
fourth book to the level of real heroic
poetry.
There are many fine lines of poetry in
The Dunciad, but it is more diffuse and
less brilliant satire than either MacFleck-
noe or Pope's own Epistle to Dr. Arhuth-
not. Missing are the biting, succinct
couplets like Dryden's
The rest to some faint meaning make
pretense,
But Sh— never deviates into sense . . .
or Pope's lines on Addison:
Damn with faint praise, assent with
civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest
to sneer.
The greatest deterrent to the modern
reader of The Dunciad is probably the
fact that so much of the poet's
contemporary criticism is almost unintelligible;
few names die faster than those of the
fifth-rate writers of an era. Yet the
satirical comments on universal conditions
remain fresh and pointed. The Dunciad
is worthy of a high place among mock-
heroic poems.
1011

THE DYNASTS
Type of work: Dramatic poem
Author: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Type of plot: Historical epic
Time of plot: 1806-1815
Locale: Europe
First published: 1903-1908
Principal characters:
Napoleon I
Josephine, his first wife
Marie Louise, his second wife
King George III of England
Tsar Alexander of Russia
Emperor Francis of Austria
Sir William Pitt, Prime Minister of England
Spirit of Years,
Shade of Earth,
Spirit of Pities,
Spirit Sinister, and
Spirit Ironic, allegorical figures
Critique:
Written in various types of verse and
in poetic prose, The Dynasts, a vast epic-
drama of the tragedy of Napoleon, marks
Hardy's greatest effort to portray Man
as completely subject to a disinterested
Destiny. Among his manifold points of
view, shifting from a point somewhere
above the earth to the courts of emperors
or the cottager's fireside, that of the rural
folk of southern England is the most
effective. Long prose stage directions fill
out the historical perspective of this
sweeping panoramic treatment of the
constant turmoil in Europe from 1805 to
1815. The array of allegorical spectators
who comment on the events of the drama
as they occur, and Hardy's device of
switching the point of view, tend to make
strikingly trivial the alarums and
excursions of earth-bound humanity.
The Story:
The Spirit of Years, Shade of Earth,
Spirit Sinister, Spirit Ironic, Spirit of
Pities, and their accompanying choruses,
forgathered somewhere above the earth
to watch the larger movements of men in
western Europe in 1805. The design of
the Immanent Will manifested itself at
the time in Napoleon's preparations for
the invasion of England.
Sir William Pitt, in England,
contended with isolationist members of
Parliament in order to secure proper defense
against the invasion. Meanwhile
Napoleon went to Milan to be crowned King
of Italy. The spirits made light of the
chicanery and pomp that attended the
coronation. The Spirit of Pities descended
to earth and disturbed Napoleon by
reminding him of his original intention of
championing liberty.
At sea, a Pyrrhic victory of the French
and Spanish over the English prevented
the support required for the planned
invasion. On the south coast of England
the Phantoms of Rumor caused great
disturbance. A fleet of fishing craft was
mistaken for the invasion fleet, and
civilians fled from the coastal towns as signal
fires flared upon the cliffs and hills.
When Napoleon learned that his
admiral, Villeneuve, had returned to Cadiz,
he discarded his invasion plan and moved
eastward against Austria and Russia,
countries which Pitt had enlisted in the
THE DYNASTS by Thomas Hardy. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 190*, by
The Macmillan Co. Renewed, 1931, by The Macmillan Co.
1012

English cause. The Spirit of Years
remarked that the ensuing campaign would
be a model in tactics for all time.
At Ulm, Napoleon defeated the Aus-
trians, who had hoped in vain that the
English fleet would hold the French
forces in northern France. In London,
Pitt, unsuccessful in gaining permission
from the king to form a coalition
government, visibly declined in health under
his terrible burden.
Villeneuve was ordered out of Cadiz.
The British under Nelson met the French
and Spanish off Trafalgar and defeated
them. Nelson was killed in the
engagement; Villeneuve subsequently ended his
own life in an inn at Rennes.
Napoleon defeated the Austrians and
Russians at Austerlitz. Then, hearing of
the English victory at Trafalgar, he
declared his intention of closing all
continental ports to English ships. He dictated
peace terms to Emperor Francis of Austria
while attendant Austrian officers stood by
in disgust at the sight of a nobody
dictating to true royalty. In Paris the Spirit
of Rumor commented on the way
Napoleon was uprooting old dynasties and
founding new ones.
Pitt having died and King George III
being mentally ill, England, in the
person of Charles James Fox, negotiated
with Napoleon for peace; but the
emperor used the negotiations as a screen
for his real plans. He marched on
Prussia and defeated the Germans at the
Battle of Jena. In Berlin he decreed that all
British ships were barred from continental
ports. Next, Napoleon and Tsar
Alexander of Russia met at the River Nie-
men, where the two drew up a Franco-
Russian alliance. During this meeting
Napoleon expressed the desire to cement
his various alliances with blood ties. The
Spirit of Years remarked ironically that
Napoleon was one of the few men who
could see the working of the Immanent
Will.
Napoleon invaded Spain as a friend to
help the Spanish gain Portugal. The
Spanish Bourbons abdicated and
Napoleon's brother, Joseph, was proclaimed
king. When Bourbon partisans enlisted
English aid, an English invasion fleet
sailed for Portugal.
Back in Paris, Napoleon told his wife,
Josephine, that he wished a divorce.
Josephine had borne the emperor no
children and he was anxious to
perpetuate the dynasty he had founded. The
British invasion of the Iberian Peninsula
drew the emperor to Spain to direct the
campaign there. Preparation for war in
Austria caused Napoleon next to invade
that country and to defeat its forces at
Wagram. The British, under the Duke
of Wellington, held their own against
the French in Spain. At that point the
Spirit Sinister reminded the Spirit Ironic
not to sneer for fear Immanent Will
would cut short the comedy that was
taking place.
A British force was sent to the Scheldt,
but the expedition ended disastrously
when the army was decimated by mias-
mal fever. Napoleon, fearful of
assassination and still anxious to perpetuate his
line, negotiated with the Russians for the
hand of a Russian princess, and with the
Austrians for the hand of Princess Marie
Louise. The tsar accepted the offer, but
Napoleon had already arranged, through
Metternich, for a marriage with the
Austrian princess, Marie Louise. The
marriage was performed in the
conspicuous absence of many high clergy, and
the Russians, incensed, prepared for war.
In the meantime the British in Spain
under the Duke of Wellington gained a
decisive victory at Albuera.
In due time Marie Louise gave birth
to Napoleon's heir. The insane King of
England died after hearing of British
successes in Spain. On the continent war
became imminent between France and
Russia.
Again on the banks of the Niemen,
Napoleon received an evil portent when
he was thrown from his horse. The Spirit
of Pities foresaw misery for the French
Grand Army in the Russian campaign.
Wellington in Spain defeated the French
1013

at Salamanca. Napoleon gained a costly
victory over the Russians at Borodino, and
the French entered Moscow to find the
city deserted and in flames. There
followed a general retreat by the French
across snow-covered Russian steppes to
Lithuania. Thousands perished from the
cold or were killed by harassing Russian
cavalry. Napoleon deserted his army and
raced back to Paris in order to arrive
there before the news of his failure in
Russia. His chief task now was to hold
his empire together.
As the British continued their successes
in .Spain, Austria joined the allies.
Napoleon met defeat at the hands of the
Austrians and Prussians at Leipzig. The
allies invaded France. Napoleon, forced
to abdicate, was exiled to Elba, an island
in the Mediterranean. Marie Louise and
the infant King of Italy went to Austria
to stay. The Bourbons reassumed the
throne of France and a congress to
deliberate on general peace in Europe met in
Vienna.
Napoleon escaped from Elba and
returned to Paris at the head of an army
he had picked up on his way. The allies
outlawed Napoleon and prepared to
overthrow him again.
A private ball in Brussels was broken
up by the news that the French army was
nearing the Belgian frontier. . Almost
overnight, Napoleon had organized and
put into the field a large army. But he
failed to separate the British and
Prussians in Belgium, and he was brought to
utter defeat on the fields south of
Waterloo. The Hundred Days were ended.
The Spirit of Years pointed out to the
Spirits assembled that the human beings
below them behaved as though they were
in a dream, as though they were puppets
being drawn by strings manipulated by
Immanent Will. The Spirit of Years
pointed to Napoleon in defeat and
compared him to a tiny insect on an obscure
leaf in the chart of the^Ages. When the
Spirit of Pities asked for what purpose
the events below had taken place, the
Spirit of Irony answered that there was
no purpose, for only a dumb thing turned
the crank which motivated and directed
human behavior.
1014

EARTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: 1860's
Locale: La Beauce, France
First published: 1887
Principal characters:
Fouan, an old peasant farmer
Rose, his wife
Hyacinthe, called J£sus-Christ, his older son
Fanny, his daughter
Buteau, his younger son
Delhomme, Fanny's husband
Lise, Fouan's niece, daughter of Old Mouche
Fran£Oise, Lise's sister
Jean Macquart, a soldier and artisan, later a farm laborer in La Beauce
Critique:
Earth (La Terre), the fifteenth
volume of the Rougon-Macquart series, is
Zola's horrifying vision of the French
peasantry before the Franco-Prussian
War. In the relationships between Fouan
and his family, Zola consciously adopted
the theme of Lear, although the farmer
drawn with realistic detail has none of
the nobility of Shakespeare's king. Zola's
introduction of Rabelaisian humor in the
character J6sus-Christ was an
innovation in literary realism. The earth itself
dominates the novel, and its beauty and
indifference contrast vividly with the
peasants' passionate absorption in
possessing the land and with the crimes they
commit in order to do so. When the
novel appeared, Zola was reproached for
his lack of idealism and his lack of
understanding of the peasants. Mallarm6,
however, did not hesitate to see in it true
poetry. Earth is now among the most
widely read of Zola's novels.
The Story:
As Jean Macquart finished sowing
each furrow with grain, he paused and
gazed over the wide, rich plain. As far
as he could see farmers were scattering
their wheat, anxious to finish sowing
before the frosts came. He met and talked
with Franchise about the coming division
of old Fouan's property.
In the notary's office, plans for Fouan's
sons and son-in-law to divide and farm
his land were angrily made. Fouan could
not bear to lose the land which had taken
all his strength to work and which he
had loved more passionately than his
wife. The rent and food he asked in
return for his property seemed excessive to
his children, who, now that the land was
within their grasp, intended to keep as
much of its yield as possible. Buteau
declared that the old man had money saved
in bonds. This claim so enraged Fouan
that he exhibited some of his former
ferocity and authority. Finally the notary
completed the transaction and arranged
for the division of land by the surveyor.
Buteau, having drawn the third lot of
land, declared it was the worst, and he
refused to take that part of the property.
His refusal distressed Lise, Franchise's
sister, for Buteau had been her lover
and she was pregnant. She had hoped
that when he got the land he would
marry her.
Old Mouche, the sisters' father, had a
stroke and died in his home. As the
village women watched by his deathbed, a
violent hail storm laid waste the village
crops. The peasants examined the
damage by lamplight, their animosities
forgotten in their common anguish at this
devastation and their furv at the destruc-
1015

tiveness of heaven.
Lise and Franchise stayed in the house
after their father's death. Lise's son had
been born and still Buteau had not
married her. Jean became a constant visitor
in the household. Believing that he was
attracted by Lise, he proposed to her.
Before accepting him, she decided to
consult Buteau because of the child.
At the autumn haymaking Jean and
Franchise worked together. While the
girl stood atop the growing rick, Jean
forked up bales of hay to her. She was
flushed and laughing and Jean found
her violently attractive. Because he was
years older than Franchise, he was greatly
upset when he suddenly realized that it
was she who had drawn him to the house
and not Lise.
Jean and the sisters met Buteau at the
market in Cloyes. Because Lise now had
property of her own and because he had
at last accepted his share of land, Buteau
decided to marry Lise. Buteau, delighted
now by possession of the land, plowed
and sowed with vigor and passion,
determined never to relinquish one inch of
the earth. As the wheat grew, its rolling
greenness covered La Beauce like an
ocean. Buteau watched the weather as
anxiously as a sailor at sea. Although
Franchise wished to have her share of
the land decided, Buteau managed to
avoid a final settlement.
When Fouan's older son, nicknamed
J6sus-Christ, took to buy brandy the
money which Buteau had grudgingly
given his parents as their allowance,
Buteau was so infuriated that he struck his
mother to the floor. Rose did not recover
and in three days she was dead. Fouan
was then left completely alone. Finally,
much against his will, he decided to make
his home with Delhomme, his son-in-
law.
By harvest time the green sea of
wheat had turned to a fiery gold, and
the whole village worked at the harvest.
Jean, meanwhile, was tormented by his
desire for Franchise. Finally, exhausted
by her struggle to resist the constant
attentions of Buteau as well, she yielded
to him. Buteau, in his fear of losing both
the girl and her land, asserted wildly that
they could never be married while
Franchise was under age.
Meanwhile, Fouan was bullied and
restricted in Delhomme's home; he had no
money for tobacco and he was allowed
little wine. Completely miserable, he
went to live with Buteau and Lise. There
he was appalled by Bureau's pursuit of
Franchise, whose resistance made Buteau
so angry that even Lise expressed the
wish her sister would surrender in order
to have peace once more in the
household. Francoise, continuing proudly to
refuse Buteau, was gradually turned into
a domestic drudge.
In desperation Francoise agreed to
marry Jean when she was of age. Fouan,
drawn into these household quarrels, was
no happier than he had been with
Delhomme. At last, because Buteau and his
wife begrudged every mouthful of food
that he ate, he accepted J£sus-Christ's
offer of a home. Jesus-Christ was the
only one of Fouan's children without a
passion for land. Although it distressed
Fouan to see his hard-won acres go to
buy brandy for Jesus-Christ, he enjoyed
the jokes and the occasional excellent
meals cooked in the nearly ruined house
by Jesus-Christ's illegitimate daughter.
Before the time of the vintage Jesus-
Christ discovered that his father was
spending his bonds on an annuity by
which he hoped to acquire some land of
his own once more. Amazed, first Fanny
and then Buteau tried to bribe the old
man to return to them. Fouan's
relationship with Jesus-Christ was never close
again after the discovery.
After a final explosion with Lise,
Francoise left the house and went to live with
her aunt. It was arranged that she should
soon marry Jean and claim her full share
of the property. The ill will between the
sisters was intensified when the land was
divided and Francoise secured the house
at auction. Buteau and Lise moved to an
adjacent house, where Fouan, fearing
1016

that Jesus-Christ would steal his bonds,
joined them.
Jean and Buteau were forced to work
side by side in the fields. One day, while
Jean was manuring the earth, Lise told
Buteau that Fouan had had a stroke and
that she would bring the doctor.
Surprisingly, the old man recovered. During
his illness, however, Lise discovered his
bonds. When they refused to return
them, he left.
Homeless and desperate, Fouan
wandered to Delhomme's farm, where he
stayed wearily looking into the house.
Next he went to Jesus-Christ's hovel, but
fear and pride again prevented him from
entering. That night, during a terrible
storm, Fouan, wretched and exhausted,
dragged himself around to look once
more at the land he had owned. Finally
his hunger became so great that he
returned to Buteau, who jeeringly fed
him.
Francoise was pregnant. Enraged by
the fear that the property might not revert
to him and by the fact that Jean's plow
had cut into their land, Buteau, aided by
Lise, at last raped Franchise. The girl then
realized with revulsion that she had
always loved him. Jealous, Lise knocked
Franchise against a scythe in the field
and the blade pierced her abdomen. As
she lay dying Franchise refused to will
her share of the farm to Jean; although
he was her husband, she still regarded
him as an outsider. After her death, Jean
was evicted from the land.
Greedy for more money, and terrified
that the old man would betray the
manner of Franchise's death, Lise and Buteau
murdered Fouan by smothering him with
a pillow and then setting fire to his bed.
Jean Macquart, having no further ties
with La Beauce, decided again to become
a soldier. After a final tour of the land
he left the region for good. If he could
not cultivate it, he would at least be
able to defend the earth of France.
1017

EAST OF EDEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Steinbeck (1902- )
Type of plot: Regional chronicle
Time of plot: 1865-1918
Locale: California
First published: 1952
Principal characters:
Adam Trask, a settler in the Salinas Valley
Cathy Ames, later Adam's wife
Caleb, and
Aron Trask, their twin sons
Charles Trask, Adam's half-brother
Samuel Hamilton, a neighbor of the Trasks
Lee, Adam's Chinese servant
Abra Bacon, Aron's fiancee
Critique:
East of Eden is an ambitious but not
altogether successful attempt to present
three themes simultaneously: a
panoramic history of the Salinas Valley (and
thus of America itself) around the turn
of the century; a melodramatic chronicle
of two families in the valley; a svmbolic
re-creation of the Cain and Abel story.
Its expressed concern, however, is
philosophic—the nature of the conflict Ifetween
good and evil. In this conflict love and
the acceptance or rejection it brings to
the individual plays an important role,
yet one has always the opportunity to
choose the good. In this freedom lies
man's glory. The book's defects stem
from the author's somewhat foggy and
sentimental presentation of its philosophy
and his tendency to manipulate or
oversimplify characters and events for
symbolic purposes.
The Story:
The soil of the Salinas Valley in
California is rich, though the foothills
around it are poor and its life shrivels
during the long dry spells. The Irish-
born Hamiltons, arriving after American
settlers had displaced the Mexicans,
settled on the barren hillside. There Sam
Hamilton, full of talk, glory, and
improvident inventions, and Liza, his dourly
religious wife, brought up their nine
children.
In Connecticut, Adam Trask and his
half-brother Charles grew up, mutually
affectionate in spite of the differences in
their natures. Adam was gentle and good;
Charles, roughly handsome with a streak
of wild violence. After Adam's mother
had committed suicide, his father had
married a docile girl who had borne
Charles. Adam loved his stepmother but
hated his father, a rigid disciplinarian
whose fanatic militarism had begun with
a fictitious account of his own war career
and whose dream was to have a son in
the army. To fulfill his dream, he chose
Adam, who could gain the greater
strength that comes from the conquest
of weakness as Charles could not. But
Charles, whose passionate love for his
father went continually unnoticed, could
not understand this final rejection of
himself. In violent despair, he beat Adam
almost to death.
Adam served in the cavalry for five
years. Then, although he hated
regimentation and violence, he reenlisted, for
he could neither accept help from his
father, who had become an important
figure in Washington, nor return to the
farm Charles now ran alone. Afterward
he wandered through the West and the
Fo^ft0?^*1^^ ty 7ohn Steinl>eck. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright,
1952, by John Steinbeck.
1018

South, served time for vagrancy, and
finally came home to find his father dead
and himself and Charles rich. In the
years that followed he and Charles lived
together, although their bickering and
inbred solitude drove Adam to periodic
wanderings. Feeling that their life was
one of pointless industry, he talked of
moving west but did not.
Meanwhile, Cathy Ames was growing
up in Massachusetts. She was a
monster, born unable to comprehend
goodness but with a sublimely innocent face
and a consummate knowledge of how to
manipulate or deceive people to serve her
own ends. After a thwarted attempt to
leave home, she burned her house,
killing her parents and leaving evidence to
indicate that she had been murdered.
She then became the mistress of a man
who ran a string of brothels and used his
insatiable love for her to torment him.
When he realized her true nature, he
took her to a deserted spot and beat her
savagely. Near death, she crawled to the
nearest house—the Trasks'—where Adam
and Charles cared for her. Adam found
her innocent and beautiful; Charles, who
had a knowledge of evil through himself,
recognized the evil in her and wanted her
to leave. Cathy, needing temporary
protection, enticed Adam into marrying her,
but on their wedding night she gave him
a sleeping draught and went to Charles.
Feeling that Charles disapproved of
Cathy, Adam decided to carry out his
dream of going west. He was so
transfigured by his happiness that he did not
take Cathy's protests seriously; as his ideal
of love and purity, she could not disagree.
Adam bought a ranch in the richest part
of the Salinas Valley and worked hard
to ready it for his wife and the child she
expected. Cathy hated her pregnancy,
but she knew that she had to wait calmly
to get back to the life she wanted. After
giving birth to twin boys, she waited a
week; she then shot Adam, wounding
him, and walked out.
Changing her name to Kate, Cathy
went to work in a Salinas brothel. Her
beauty and seeming goodness endeared
her to the proprietress, Faye, and Kate
gradually assumed control of the
establishment. After Faye made a will leaving
Kate her money and property, Kate slyly
engineered Faye's death. Making her
establishment one which aroused and
purveyed to sadistic tastes, she became
legendary and rich.
Adam was like a dead man for a year
after his wife left him, unable to work
his land or even to name his sons. Finally
Sam Hamilton woke him by deliberately
angering him, and Sam, Adam, and Lee,
the Chinese servant and a wise and good
man, named the boys Caleb and Aron.
As the men talked of the story of Cain
and Abel, Lee concluded that rejection
terrifies a child most and leads to guilt
and revenge. Later, after much study,
Lee discovered the true meaning of the
Hebrew word timshel—thou mayest—and
understood that the story meant in part
that man can always choose to conquer
evil.
Sam, grown old, knew that he would
soon die. Before he left his ranch, he
told Adam of Kate and her cruel,
destructive business. Adam, disbelieving in
her very existence, visited her and
suddenly knew her as she really was. Though
she tried to taunt him, telling him that
Charles was the true father of his sons,
and to seduce him, he left her a free
and curiously exultant man. Yet he could
not tell his sons that their mother was
not dead.
Caleb and Aron were growing up very
differently. Aron was golden-haired and
automatically inspired love, yet he
remained single-minded and unyielding;
Caleb was dark and clever, a feared and
respected leader left much alone. When
Adam moved to town, where the schools
were better, Aron fell in love with Abra
Bacon. Abra told Aron that his mother
was still alive, but he could not believe
her because to do so would have
destroyed his faith in his father and thus
in everything.
About this time Adam had the idea of
1019

shipping lettuce packed in ice to New
York, but the venture failed. Aron was
ashamed of his father for failing
publicly. Caleb vowed to return the lost
money to his father.
As they faced the problems of growing
into men, Aron became smugly religious,
disturbing to Abra because she felt
unable to live up to his idealistic image of
her. Caleb alternated between wild
impulses and guilt. Learning that Kate was
his mother, he began following her until
she, noticing him, invited him to her
house. As he talked to her, he knew with
relief that he was not like her; she felt
his knowledge and hated him. Kate
herself, obsessed by the fear that one of the
old girls had discovered Faye's murder,
plotted ways to destroy this menace.
Although Caleb could accept Kate's
existence, he knew that Aron could not. To
get the boy away from Salinas, Caleb
talked him into finishing high school in
three years and beginning college. Adam,
knowing nothing of Caleb's true feelings,
was extravagantly proud of Aron.
World War I began. Caleb went into
the bean business with Will Hamilton
and made a fortune because of food
shortages. With growing excitement, he
planned an elaborate presentation to his
father of the money once lost in the
lettuce enterprise. First he tried to persuade
Aron, who seemed indifferent to his
fathers love, not to leave college. Caleb
presented his money to Adam, only to
have it rejected in anger because Adam's
idealistic nature could not accept money
made as profit from the war. He wanted
Calebs achievements to be like his
brothers. In a black mood of revenge, Caleb
took Aron to meet his mother. After her
sons* visit Kate, who was not disturbed
by those she could hurt as she was by
someone like Caleb, made a will leaving
everything to Aron. Then, overburdened
by age, illness, and suspicion, she
committed suicide.
Unable to face his new knowledge of
his parents* past, Aron joined the army
and went to France. Adam did not re-
cover from the shock of his leaving. Abra
turned to Caleb, admitting that she loved
him rather than Aron, whose romantic
stubbornness kept him from facing
reality. When the news of Aron's death
arrived, Adam had another stroke. As he
lay dying, Caleb, unable to bear his guilt
any longer, told his father of his
responsibility for Aron's enlisting and thus his
death. Lee begged Adam to forgive his
son. Adam weakly raised his hand in
benediction and, whispering the Hebrew
word titnshel, died.
1020

EASTWARD HO!
Type of work: Drama
Authors: George Chapman (c. 1559-1634) with Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) and John
Marston CI576-1634)
Type of plot: Realistic comedy
Time of plot: About 1605
Locale: London
first presented: 1605
Principal characters:
Touchstone, a goldsmith
Mistress Touchstone, his wife
Gertrude, his haughty daughter
Mildred, his dutiful daughter
Francis Quicksilver, his idle and prodigal apprentice
Golding, his diligent apprentice
Sir Petronel Flash, a new-made knight
Security, an old usurer
Winifred, his young wife
Sindefy, Quicksilver's mistress
Critique:
Eastward Ho! is a remarkable example
of successful collaboration. For three
authors as different in temperament as
Chapman, Jonson, and Marston to write
together a smooth, unified, and amusing
play is almost a miracle. It encompasses
the heartwarming theme of the Prodigal
Son and satirical thrusts at contemporary
society. Scholars have tried to assign
specific scenes and lines to the individual
authors, but the general reader or
playgoer need not trouble himself with
problems of authorship. The play's rapid
dramatic movement, in keeping with its
apparently rapid composition, carries its
audience through laughter and sentiment
to an appropriate happy ending. The
characters are amusing, and even the
victims of the satire are treated without the
bitterness or savagery that other works of
Jonson and Marston might lead one to
expect. It is a true comedy which should
be as effective on the modern as on the
Elizabethan stage.
The Story:
Touchstone, a goldsmith, had two
daughters, Gertrude, a flutter-brained
social climber, and Mildred, a modest,
gentle girl. He also had two apprentices,
Francis Quicksilver, a fellow as unstable
as his name, and Golding, who was
steady and conscientious.
Caught while trying to slip away from
the shop, Quicksilver made a spirited
defense of his way of life, especially of his
prodigality among the town gallants.
Touchstone answered with a severe moral
lecture and pointed out the exemplary
behavior of his fellow apprentice. The
lecture was interrupted by a messenger
from Sir Petronel Flash, who wished to
make arrangements to marry Gertrude. As
soon as Touchstone was out of hearing,
Quicksilver abused the old citizen; but
Golding defended his master and warned
and rebuked Quicksilver.
Mildred, with the help of a tailor and
a maid, attired Gertrude elegantly to
receive her knight, while Gertrude rattled
away, full of herself and contemptuous
of her bourgeois family. Touchstone
brought in Sir Petronel and concluded
the arrangements for the wedding,
warning both Gertrude and the knight that
they need not expect any gifts beyond
the agreed dowry. Gertrude impudently
flouted him and left with the knight,
Mistress Touchstone fluttering in
attendance on her soon-to-be-married daughter.
1021

After their departure Touchstone
proposed a match between Mildred and
Golding.
From the wedding feast Quicksilver
returned to the shop drunk, hiccuping
and quoting lines from popular plays
like Tamburlaine and The Spanish
Tragedy. Touchstone, losing patience with the
fellow, released him from his indenture
and discharged him. After Quicksilver's
defiant and staggering exit, Touchstone
told Golding that he too would no longer
be an apprentice, but a full-fledged
member of the guild and his master's son-in-
law.
At * the home of old Security, where
Quicksilver and his mistress Sindefy lived,
the old usurer plotted with them to trap
Sir Petronel and to gain possession of
Gertrude's property. Quicksilver was to
encourage the knight to borrow money
for a proposed voyage to Virginia, and
both Quicksilver and Sindefy, who was
to become Gertrude's maid, were to
encourage the bride to put up her land to
cover the debt. Before leaving to set his
plans in motion, Security delayed to bid
farewell to his pretty young wife,
Winifred.
Sir Petronel confessed to Quicksilver
that he had no castle, but that he
intended to send his bride on a wild-goose
chase to an imaginary castle in the
country in order to get her out of the way
while he carried off old Security's young
wife on the Virginia voyage. Security
brought in Sindefy and placed her with
Gertrude as a maid, then took Sir
Petronel to his home for breakfast. Captain
Seagull, Scapethrift, and Spendall joined
Sir Petronel there to make the final plans
for the voyage.
As Gertrude prepared for her ride into
the country to see her husband's
nonexistent castle, Touchstone entered with
his other daughter and his new son-in-
law, Golding. Gertrude heaped contempt
on all three, and Sir Petronel made
disparaging remarks about the groom's lack
of nobility. Touchstone distributed a few
ironical barbs and led away the newly-
weds. After their departure, Security
presented Gertrude with papers,
supposedly to cover a loan for new furnishings
for the country castle. At Sir Petronel's
request she signed the papers without
even reading them and set out .in her
coach after urging the knight to follow
as soon as, possible. Sir Petronel and
Quicksilver convinced Security that the
knight was planning to elope with a
lawyer's wife; and Security, maliciously
delighted at the chance to injure another
man, promised to lend them his wife's
gown as a disguise. He also felt that
lending the gown would be a good way to
make certain that his wife did not leave
home.
Sir Petronel, the disguised Winifred,
Quicksilver, and the other adventurers
ignored storm warnings and set out in
their boats for the ship. Security
discovered his wife's absence and tried to
follow them. Slitgut, a butcher coming
to Cuckold's Haven to set up a pair of
horns, saw from his elevated vantage
point a boat overturned in the waves.
A few minutes later old Security crawled
ashore bemoaning the appropriateness of
his place of shipwreck. As soon as he had
crept away, the butcher saw a woman
struggling in the waves and a boy
plunging in to save her. The boy rescued a very
repentant Winifred, brought her ashore,
and offered her shelter and dry clothes.
A third victim of the storm was washed
ashore at the foot of the gallows—a bad
omen, Slitgut thought. The man was
Francis Quicksilver, who passed by
cursing his fate. Finally, Sir Petronel and
Captain Seagull reached shore and met
Quicksilver. Sir Petronel, having lost his
money in the water, had no hope of
saving his ship, which he expected to be
confiscated. Winifred, now dry and
freshly dressed, convinced Security that
she had not left home until she began
to worry about him. Slitgut made a few
wry remarks about marriage and went
home, unobserved by any of the adven-
1022

turers.
Touchstone, thoroughly angered by
the knight's desertion and by his wife's
and daughter's foolishness, turned out
Gertrude and Sindefy to shift for
themselves, but having borne his wife as a
cross for thirty years, he felt he should
continue to do so. Golding, made an
alderman's deputy on his first day in the
guild, reported that Sir Petronel and
Quicksilver had been arrested and the
ship attached.
Mistress Touchstone had learned her
lesson; but Gertrude, in spite of her
mother's entreaties that she beg
forgiveness, treated her father with her
customary contempt. Sir Petronel and
Quicksilver were brought in by a constable,
and Quicksilver was charged with the
theft of five hundred pounds, a capital
offense. A warrant was also sent out for
old Security for his share in the business.
Sir Petronel and Quicksilver reached a
peak of repentance that made them the
talk of the prison. Golding and the jailer
joined Mistress Touchstone and her
daughters in pleading with Touchstone
to show mercy to the offenders; but
Touchstone was adamant. Finally
Golding had himself arrested, sent for
Touchstone to come to release him, and
arranged for the latter to overhear
Quicksilver's ballad of repentance, sung for the
edification of other prisoners to the tune
of "I Wail in Woe, I Plunge in Pain."
Touchstone's heart was moved, and he
offered forgiveness to both prodigal son-
in-law and prodigal apprentice. Old
Security, hearing that a song of repentance
had worked such wonders, rushed up
howling a lamentable song in a most
lamentable voice; he too received mercy.
At Golding's urging, Quicksilver agreed
to marry Sindefy. Security returned to
Winifred. Even Gertrude forgave her
erring husband and asked forgiveness
from her father. Thus all differences
were reconciled.
1023

EBONY AND IVORY
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Llewelyn Powys (1884-1939)
Time: Early twentieth century
Locale: Africa and Europe
First published: 1923
Llewelyn Powys, the youngest of three
brothers to achieve literary fame, was a
rather gifted and remarkable British
writer. He was educated at Cambridge,
worked as a stock farmer in Kenya
during World War I, and then moved to
New York to work as a journalist for five
more years. The stories in Ebony and
Ivory, many of which were published in
the best magazines of the time, were
written during his stay in Kenya and New
York. They present perhaps the best and
most representative examples of his
outlook and art.
Powys' outlook and art are very closely
related. His vision of life informs every
aspect of his art, while his art is an
attempt to answer that vision. This
tension between outlook and art, truth and
style, content and form, provides Powys'
stories with their intensity and force.
Powys' vision of life, the spirit that
informs these stories, was grounded in pain
and death, cruelty and mortality, vanity
and doom, for Powys was obsessed with
agony and fate, which for him were the
sole absolutes of life. His stories dwell
overwhelmingly on the tragic
soul-destroying aspects of life and have much the
same spirit as Ecclesiastes, the Rubdiydt
of Omar Khayyam, and much of the
fiction of Joseph Conrad. They show an
intimate acquaintance with the terror,
cruelties, and savagery that plague men.
Powys knew the futility and mortality of
humanity. This was the lesson he learned
in Africa.
In this collection there are the Ebony
stories and sketches, which take place in
British East Africa, and the Ivory tales,
which take place in Europe. The title
obviously contains an ironic play on skin
color, on black and white, but beyond
this fact and far more important is the
reference to the Arab proverb: "On
Ebony and Ivory the same dark doom is
writ."'
The Ebony stories provide the hard
core of Powys' vision, for their total
effect is that of hopelessness and despair.
These sketches show the soul-killing
effect of Africa on the European and Af-
frican alike. The unrelenting sun, the
harshness of color and noise, the
voraciousness of animal and human life all
reduce men to their naked, cruel selves.
The European is demoralized and all of
his illusions are destroyed. His rule is
stripped of its benevolence in Africa and
is shown to rest on brutality and
cunning. Thus in "Black Parasites" a
hardhearted, mediocre farmer sets fire to his
brushland after tying up a native sheep
thief in the middle of it. In "How It
Happens" a sensitive boy arrives in
British East Africa from England, and in his
harsh, new surroundings he is
demoralized by his mediocre associates, gets
syphilis, and commits suicide. Powys' theme,
the loss of innocence, was almost
inevitable, given his outlook on life. In
"Black Gods" he declared that the
bottom of the well of life contains no hope,
that the surface was all, the depth
hollow and empty.
When Powys' heroes undergo any
change, it is in the direction of shedding
illusions, of descending to the bottom of
the well of life and facing life without
hope. This does not mean that they
necessarily give up; Powys' most memorable
heroes face life's savagery with a
hopeless defiance. In "Dead Matter in Africa"
a zebra guards his dead mate against the
vultures, against all hope and reason, and
against the universe. Again, in his Ebony
story, "The Stunner," a dumb brute of
a man rises from his deathbed and stag-
1024

gers miles to his sweetheart solely on
strength of his love. But this kind of
heroism, however admirable, is
essentially futile; it means involving oneself in
pain, in death, and in tragedy. Although
Powys' stories are not Christian in
outlook, the figure of the crucified Jesus
runs through the majority of them, for
Jesus is the epitome of this futile
heroism, of this agonized defiance of fate.
As the Arab proverb suggests, Powys'
Ivory tales elaborate the ideas and motifs
of the Ebony section. In "Threnody,"
"Death," and "The Brown Satyr," Powys
develops the same theme he used in
"How It Happens," namely the loss of
innocence and the problem of facing a
world devoid of hope. In "Not Guilty,"
"Un Mufle," and "The Wryneck," Powys
shows again the impossibility of love in
a cursed and savage world devoid of
meaning and full of doom.
In quality the Ebony stories seem
slightly superior to the Ivory tales
simply because Africa provided a more
appropriate background for Powys'
despairing vision, even though he does a fine job
of conveying that vision in the Ivory
section as well. For Powys the world was
cursed and damned, and it was damned
no matter where one was, whether in the
heart of Africa or in the heart of
civilization. To him it was as if some evil
wizard had desolated the world and left it
in agony and despair.
Needless to say, such a vision of life
could easily become intolerable to the
person who possessed it unless he had
some means of protecting himself against
it, some means of converting it into
something productive. Powys' method of
achieving release was through writing,
through art which gave a tangible form
to that vision. Powys sought his
salvation through his stories and through
observation. If participation in the world
meant pain and tragedy, observation was
a way of protecting oneself from pain and
tragedy, a way of keeping the world at a
distance. Art, for Powys, was a way of
reshaping life's pain and thereby
controlling it. Passive observation and active
artistic creation were his way of protecting
himself against his vision.
As one might expect, Powys wrote
about pain and tragedy in a detached
style that was both cool and evocative.
Powys possessed a happy feeling for the
right word, the precise expression, which
contributed greatly to the crisp, cold,
clear quality of his writing. This
detached mode of writing, which at times
approached cruelty, considerably
heightened the horror of his tales. If Powys had
written with sympathy for his characters
the effect would have been reduced and
the full power of his vision would not
have come through.
Powys was essentially an ironist. His
irony was engendered by the conflict
between his vision and his art. On the one
hand he saw the world as irrevocably
damned and on the other he tried to
escape this damnation through art; thus he
wrote about cruelty, pain, and doom with
detachment and reserve. Truth, for
Powys, was only to be gained through
passive observation. Through truth he
hoped to gain a kind of salvation, but the
truth proved to be just as ironic as
himself. What Powys did gain through
passive observation was the ability to
transform horror into beauty. His stories
possess a cruel, evocative beauty, but his
beauty, like his truth, was essentially
ironic, frigid and sterile in its revelation.
Powys' failings and virtues as a writer
arise from his vision of life and his
attempt to cope with that vision. He was a
fine writer of short stories and sketches
and had a remarkable ability to express
himself with clarity, beauty, and force,
but he paid for this ability in terms of
agony and coldness. His stories are
comparable with those of Poe, Bierce, and
Hemingway in vividness, beauty, and
power. One must be prepared to pay for
these things.
1025

THE ECCLESIAZUSAE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-c. 385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Utopian comedy
Time of plot: Early fourth century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 392 B.C.
Principal characters:
Praxagora, leader of the revolution
Blepyrus, her husband
Chremes
A Young Man
Three Old Women
Critique:
The Ecclesiazusae is not one of
Aristophanes' best plays. Written late in his
career, it lacks the wit and ingenuity of
Lysisirata, the play which it most
resembles. The scatological humor seems
gratuitous, but the satire on the
communistic Utopia enforced by the women
of Athens is effective and the action
moves swiftly, especially since the role
of the chorus has been reduced to
practically nothing. Although the play
appeared some twenty years before Plato's
Republic, some critics believe that the
playwright is here deriding the
philosopher's ideas as they circulated in
discussion.
The Story:
Praxagora, who had stolen her
husband's clothes and escaped from the
house before dawn, was waiting in the
street for her fellow conspirators to
appear. As they arrived she inspected them
to see if they had made all the
preparations that had been agreed upon at the
feast of the Scirophoria. Had they let the
hair under their armpits grow? Had they
darkened their complexions by rubbing
themselves thoroughly with oil and
standing all day in the sun? Had they
prepared false beards? Had they stolen their
husbands' shoes, cloaks, staffs, and clubs?
Assured that they had done everything
possible to disguise themselves as men,
Praxagora opened the discussion of their
plot to save Athens by taking over the
government from the men. This was to
be achieved by invading the assembly
disguised as men and dominating the vote!
The first problem was to select a
spokesman. When woman after woman failed
the practice test by invoking goddesses or
addressing the audience in feminine
terms, Praxagora herself took on the
responsibility of speaking for them. At
dawn they departed for the assembly.
Meanwhile, Blepyrus, Praxagora's
husband, had awakened with a need to
relieve himself, only to find both his wife
and his clothes missing. His need was
so great, however, that he dressed in his
wife's saffron robe and rushed outdoors.
Before he could return to the house, he
was accosted by his friend Chremes, who
gave him a detailed account of the
strange proceedings at the assembly. He
told how, after several citizens had
proposed stupid suggestions for curing the
economic plight of the city, a rather fair
young man had taken the floor to urge
that the government be hereafter
entrusted to the women. The speaker had
been enthusiastically applauded by a
large crowd of strange shoemakers.
Chremes himself was rather in favor of
the idea, since it was the one and only
solution that had hitherto not been tried.
After supervising a secret change back
to feminine dress among the women,
Praxagora returned to her husband with
the excuse that she had been called
during the night to aid a friend in labor and
1026

had taken his clothes for greater warmth.
When Blepyrus described the decision of
the assembly, Praxagora expressed great
surprise and delight and immediately
launched into a detailed list of the
revolutionary reforms she intended to carry
out. Every conceivable kind of private
property—land, money, food, and even
husbands and wives—was to be common
to all. All cheating, bribery, and lawsuits
would disappear, since no one would
have to engage in such activities to
achieve what he wanted. Robbery,
gambling, and the exchange of money would
be abolished. Prostitutes would be
outlawed so that decent women could have
the first fruits of the young men. Upon
Blepyrus* s protest that complete sexual
freedom would result in chaos,
Praxagora established the rule that all the
youth would first have to satisfy the
prior claims of the aged before mating
with other young people and that all
children would look upon the oldest
people in the community as their parents.
Blepyrus, thrilled, looked forward to the
prospect of being known as the dictator's
husband.
Chremes, also eager to cooperate,
began to pack up all his belongings to
contribute to the common store, despite the
taunts of a skeptical citizen who
reminded him that all previous decrees,
such as the reduction of the price of salt
and the introduction of copper coinage,
had failed. But Chremes insisted that the
new reform was thoroughgoing and
departed for the common feast, leaving the
citizen to devise some scheme whereby
he, too, might participate without
abandoning all his goods.
The first great test of the new society
occurred when a young man, about to
enter the house of a voluptuous girl, was
stopped by an old woman, a veritable
hag, who insisted on her prior claim.
The young man tried every conceivable
stratagem to avoid relations with the aged
flat-nose, but the old woman stubbornly
insisted on her legal rights. At first the
young man decided to do without sex
altogether, rather than yield to the
disgusting hag first; but, finding such
renunciation impossible, he at last
reluctantly submitted. Before the old woman
could get him into her house, an even
older and uglier hag appeared on the
scene to demand her prior right to him.
While he quarreled with her, a third and
truly horrendous old woman seized him.
He was last seen being carried off by two
frightful old hags.
Praxagora's maid, returning from the
great banquet, met Blepyrus, who had
not yet dined, and regaled him with a
frenzied account of the delicious viands
that were being served there. Taking
some young girls with him, Blepyrus
hurried off to gorge himself on rich food
and drink.
1027

EDMUND CAMPION
Type of work: Novelized biography
Author: Evelyn Waugh (1903- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Oxford, London, Douai, Rome, Prague
First published: 1935
Principal characters:
Edmund Campion, an English martyr
Dr. William Allen, head of the English College at Douai
Robert Persons, Campion's classmate at Oxford
George Eliot, a priest-hunter
Critique:
This book is an intelligent, sober, and
admirably written biography of a man
dear to the hearts of Anglo-Saxon
Catholics. Evelyn Waugh has written a fine
impressionistic portrait of the English
martyr after whom Campion Hall at
Oxford was named. Waugh warns that
intolerance is a growing evil in our modern
world, and martyrs may again be forced to
die for their faith.
The Story:
Edmund Campion, born in 1540, was
one of the most promising young men at
Oxford. When Elizabeth visited the
university in 1566, she was so impressed by
him that she assured him of her
patronage. Although there was a strong
Protestant group in the university, Oxford then
had a population of students who were
mostly Catholic in religion, for laws
against Catholics were not rigidly
enforced. Campion, who as proctor held
a responsible position, was suspected of
Catholicism, however, and was asked to
make a public declaration of his
principles by delivering a sermon in a suitable
church. He refused, and when his term
was over he left for Dublin, where he
was warmly received by the Stanihurst
family. A university was to be built in
Dublin, and he was waiting to accept a
post on its faculty. Then rebellion
threatened, and all Catholics were ordered
arrested. Campion managed to escape
and make his way to Douai and the
English College there.
The mild restrictions against Catholics
turned into persecution when the Pope
issued a Bull of Excommunication against
Queen Elizabeth. Because of the fear of
a French-Spanish alliance against
England, the Bull caused grave anxiety in
England and led to reprisals against
Catholics. It became illegal to hear mass, to
harbor a priest, or openly to profess
Catholicism.
With the Catholic bishops imprisoned,
thereby preventing the ordination of
priests, and with all Catholic schools
closed, the faith began to die out in
England. The college at Douai sent young
English priests into England to preserve
the faith of the English Catholics.
Campion went to Douai and became
a priest. Then he announced his
intention of going to Rome and entering the
Society of Jesus. Although Dr. Allen, the
venerable head of the college, did not
like to lose him to the Jesuits, he made
no objection to Campion's plans.
Admitted into the Society, Campion was sent
to Bohemia, where he held important
posts at the University of Prague.
Dr. Allen wrote Campion a letter
informing him that he was to go to
England. He and a few others, including
Robert Persons, who had been an
undergraduate at Oxford during the time of
Campion's proctorship, were to be smug-
EDMUND CAMPION by Evelyn Waugh. By permission of the author, of Brandt & Brandt, and the publishers,
Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1946, by Evelyn Waugh.
1028

gled into England, there to carry on
the work of the Church. They all realized
that capture meant certain death.
Campion demanded that Persons be made his
superior before the group departed.
Though the English goyernment had
learned of the group's intentions and had
all the ports guarded, the priests
succeeded in getting into England.
In disguise, Campion visited the homes
of various Catholics, where he said mass
and brought the sacraments to the
faithful who had been long without them.
He wrote his famous Campion's Brag, a
defense of himself and his Church, which
the best minds of the Anglican Church
were called upon to answer. Persons
wrote his own Censure of the Anglican
reply. Later Campion wrote his equally
famous Ten Reasons.
Persecution grew more intense, with
Campion the prize the government most
hoped to capture. During one of his
tours Campion was persuaded to stop at
Lyford Grange, the home of Mr. Yate,
a well-known Catholic. He stayed there
briefly, warning everyone not to tell the
neighbors of his presence. After his
departure some neighbors heard of his visit
and were distressed that they had missed
the visit of Father Campion. Father Ford
was sent after him and reluctantly
Campion returned.
A certain George Eliot, a professional
priest-hunter, stopped at Lyford Grange.
He was informed by a servant, who
presumed Eliot to be Catholic, that Father
Campion was there. He was shown into
the room where Campion was saying
mass. After receiving communion from
Campion, Eliot went to notify the
authorities. They came at once, but all
evidence of the mass had been destroyed
and the priests had been hidden behind a
secret panel. The guards found nothing
and were preparing to go when one of the
searchers happened to tap a hollow-
sounding portion of the wall. The priests
were discovered in a secret room.
Months of imprisonment followed.
Four conferences were held at which
Campion and the Anglican clergy
disputed points of doctrine. Campion was
tortured and finally brought to trial with
some other prisoners who were charged
with having plotted to murder Queen
Elizabeth and with conspiring with
foreign powers. But Campion insisted that
their only crime was their faith. They
were tried by a court that was absolutely
biased. Found guilty, they were sentenced
to die by hanging, and their bodies to be
drawn and quartered. Father Campion
and the others went to the scaffold and
died the death of martyrs on December
first, 1581.
1029

THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS
Type of work: Novelized autobiography
Author: Henry Adams (1838-1918)
Type of plot: Intellectual and social history
Time of plot: 1838-1905
Locale: America, England, France
First published: 1907
Principal characters:
Henry Adams, an American
Charles Francis Adams, his father
John Hay, his friend
Clarence King, whom he admired
Critique:
The theme of The Education of Henry
Adamsis the process of multiplication and
acceleration of mechanical forces which,
during his own lifetime, led to the
breakdown of moral relationships between men
and the degeneration of their pursuits into
money-seeking or complete lassitude. The
book is, too, an excellent autobiography,
tracing Adams' thought processes
intimately, and on an intellectual plane not
generally achieved by most writers. Both
for style and content this book ranl$s with
the finest of American autobiographies.
The Story:
Henry Brooks Adams was born of the
union of two illustrious Massachusetts
families, the Brookses and the Adamses,
and he was, in addition, the grandson
and the great-grandson of presidents. His
wealth and social position should have
put him among the leaders of his
generation.
Although the period of mechanical
invention had begun in 1838, Henry
Adams was raised in a colonial
atmosphere. He remembered that his first
serious encounter with his grandfather,
John Quincy Adams, occurred when he
refused to go to school, and that
gentleman led him there by the hand. For
Henry Adams, the death of the former
president marked the end of his
eighteenth-century environment.
Charles Francis Adams, Henry's father,
was instrumental in forming the Free-
Soil party in 1848, and he ran on its
ticket with Martin Van Buren. Henry
considered that his own education was
chiefly a heritage from his father, an
inheritance of Puritan morality and
interest in politics and literary matters.
In later life, looking back on his
formal education, he concluded that it
had been a failure. Mathematics, French,
German, and Spanish were needed in
the world in which he found himself
an adult, not Latin and Greek. He had
opportunity to observe the use of force
in the violence with which the people
of Boston treated the anti-slavery
Wendell Phillips, and he had seen Negro
slaves restored to the South.
Prompted by his teacher, James Russell
Lowell, he spent nearly two years abroad
after his graduation from college. He
enrolled to study civil law in Germany, but
finding the lecture system atrocious he
devoted most of his stay to enjoying the
paintings, the opera, the theater in
Dresden.
When he returned to Boston in 1860,
Henry Adams settled down briefly to
read Blackstone. In the elections that
year, however, his father became a
Congressman, and Henry accompanied him
to the capitol as his secretary. There he
met John Hay, who was to become his
best friend.
In 1861 President Lincoln named
Charles Francis Adams Minister to
England. Henry went with his father to
THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams. By permission of the publishers, Houghton Mifflin
Co. Copyright, 1918, by Massachusetts Historical Society. Renewed, 1946, by Charles FrancU Adams.
1030

Europe. The Adams party had barely
disembarked when they were met by bad
news. England had recognized the
belligerency of the Confederacy. The North
was her undeclared enemy. The battle
of Bull Run proved so crushing a blow
to American prestige that Charles Francis
Adams felt he was in England on a day-
to-day sufferance. The Trent Affair and
the second battle of Bull Run were
equally disastrous abroad. Finally, in
1863, the tide began to turn. Secretary
Seward sent Thurlow Weed and
William Evarts to woo the English, and they
were followed by announcements of
victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg.
Charles Francis Adams remained in
England until 1868, for Andrew Johnson
had too many troubles at home to make
many diplomatic changes abroad.
At the end of the war Henry Adams
had no means of earning a livelihood.
He had, however, developed some taste
as a dilletante in art, and several of his
articles had been published in the North
American Review. On his return to
America, Henry Adams was impressed
by the fact that his fellow-countrymen,
because of the mechanical energy they
had harnessed, were all traveling in the
same direction. Europeans, he had felt,
were trying to go in several directions at
one time. Handicapped by his education
and by his long absence from home, he
had difficulty in adapting himself to the
new industrial America. He achieved
some recognition with his articles on legal
tender and his essays in the Edinburgh
Review, and he hoped that he might be
offered a government position if Grant
were elected president. But Grant, a man
of action, was not interested in reformers
or intellectuals like Henry Adams.
In 1869 Adams went back to Quincy
to begin his investigation of the scandals
of the Grant administration, among them
Jay Gould's attempts to obtain a corner
on gold, Senator Charles Sumner's
efforts to provoke war with England by
compelling her cession of Canada to the
United States, and the rivalries of
Congressmen and Cabinet members.
He decided it would be best to have
his article on Gould published in
England, to avoid censorship by the powerful
financier. Gould's influence was not
confined to the United States, however, and
Adams was refused by two publications.
His essay on Gould was finally published
by the Westminster Review.
Adams became assistant professor of
Medieval History at Harvard and taught
at Cambridge for seven years. During
that time he tried to abandon the lecture
system by replacing it with individual
research. He found his students apt and
quick to respond, but he felt that he
needed a stone against which to sharpen
his wits. He gave up his position in
1871 and went west to Estes Park with
a Government Geological Survey. There
he met Clarence King, a member of the
party, with whom he could not help
contrasting himself. King had a
systematic, scientific education and could have
his choice of scientific, political, or
literary prizes. Adams felt his own
limitations.
After his flight from Harvard he made
his permanent home in Washington,
where he wrote a series of books on
American history. In 1893 he visited
the Chicago Exhibition. From his
observations of the steamship, the locomotive,
and the newly-invented dynamo, he
concluded that force was the one unifying
factor in American thought. Back in
Washington, he saw the gold standard
adopted, and concluded that the
capitalistic system and American intervention in
Cuba offered some signs of the direction
in which the country was heading.
During another visit to the Exhibition in
1900 Adams formulated an important
theory. In observing the dynamo, he
decided that history is not merely a series
of causes and effects, of men acting upon
men, but the record of forces acting upon
men. For him, the dynamo became the
symbol of force acting upon his own
time as the Virgin had been the symbol
of force in the twelfth century.
1031

During the next five years Henry
Adams saw his friends drop away.
Clarence King was the first to go. He
lost his fortune in the panic of 1893 and
died of tuberculosis in 1901. John Hay,
under McKinley, became American
Minister to England, and then Secretary of
State. He was not well when he
accepted the President's appointments, and
the enormous task of bringing England,
France, and Germany into accord with
the United States, and of attempting to
keep peace, unsuccessfully, between
Russia and Japan, caused his death in
1905.
Adams considered that his education
was continuous during his lifetime. He
had found the tools which he had been
given as a youth utterly useless and he
had to spend all of his days forging new
ones. As he grew older, he found the
moral standards of his father's and
grandfather's times disintegrating, so that
corruption and greed existed on the highest
political levels. According to his
calculations, the rate of change, due to
mechanical force, was accelerating, and the
generation of 1900 could rely only on
impersonal forces to teach the generation
of 2000. He himself could see no end
to the multiplicity of forces which were
so rapidly dwarfing mankind into
insignificance.
1032

EDWARD THE SECOND
Type of work: Drama
Author: Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Fourteenth century
Locale: England and France
First presented: c. 1590
Principal characters:
Edward II, King of England
Prince Edward, his son
Edmund, Earl of Kent, half-brother to the king
Pierce de Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall
Guy, Earl of Warwick
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster
Lord Mortimer, the elder
Lord Roger Mortimer, the younger
Hugh Spencer, Earl of Gloucester
Queen Isabella, wife of King Edward
Critique:
The Troublesome Reign and
Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, the last
play written by Marlowe before his
untimely death, is a pre-Shakespearian
chronicle in its highest form. In fact, the drama
had in the past been assigned to
Shakespeare himself. Unlike Marlowe's earlier
work, this play is polished in form,
sustained in theme, and consistent in
characterization. Marlowe's first real success in
the field of historical drama, Edward the
Second sacrifices for a highly dramatic and
tragic ending the lyrical beauty of language
and metaphor present in his other plays. A
further accomplishment to be noted here
is Marlowe's use of a large group of
dominant characters; in his earlier plays
he had employed only two central figures.
The Story:
King Edward II having recalled his
favorite from exile, Pierce de Gaveston
joyfully returned to England. While
hurrying to Westminster to rejoin his
monarch, he came upon the king talking
to his courtiers. Secretive, he hid from the
royal assemblage and overheard the
noblemen discussing his repatriation.
Edward, an immature and weak-
minded yet stubborn man, nourished for
Gaveston an unwholesome and
unyielding love, in spite of the fact that Edward's
father had originally banished the man.
The noblemen of England, sworn to
uphold the decree of exile, hated the royal
favorite. Most passionate in his fury was
young Mortimer. But others were not far
behind Mortimer in lusty dislike, and
they threatened the king with revolt if
Gaveston were permitted to remain in
England. None but the king's brother
Edmund would harbor Gaveston.
The fiery discussion ended, the nobles
stalked off in haughty displeasure.
Gaveston, still in hiding, rejoiced in his
knowledge of the king's love, for Edward
revealed his pettiness by his unconcern for
the welfare of his kingdom as weighed
against his desire to clasp Gaveston to his
bosom once more. When Gaveston
revealed his presence, Edward ecstatically
rewarded him with a series of titles and
honors, the scope of which caused even
Edmund to comment wryly that Edward
had outdone himself. Gaveston smirk-
ingly claimed that all he desired was to be
near his monarch. To add further salt to
the kingdom's wounds, Edward sentenced
the Bishop of Coventry, the instigator of
Gaveston's exile, to die in the Tower of
London.
This action, coupled with the titles and
estates lavishly bestowed upon Gaveston,
so incensed the rebellious nobility that
1033

under the leadership of the two
Mortimers, Warwick, and Lancaster, they
plotted to kill the favorite. The
Archbishop of Canterbury, protesting the
damage inflicted upon the Church by the
king's folly, allied himself with the plot.
Queen Isabella, who professed to love her
lord dearly, complained to the noblemen
that since Gaveston's return Edward had
snubbed her beyond endurance. She
agreed that Gaveston must be done away
with, but she cautioned the angry
noblemen not to injure Edward.
When the rebellious nobility seized
Gaveston, Edward, vielding to the
archbishop's threat to enforce his papal powers
against the king, could do nothing but
stand by and allow his beloved friend to
be carried off. A bitter exchange of words
between the king and his lords was
tempered by the gentle sentiments of
Gaveston as he bade Edward farewell.
Driven by childish anger, perhaps
incensed by an intuitive knowledge,
Gaveston attacked the queen and accused
her of a clandestine association with the
younger Mortimer, a charge which she
denied. Sensing his advantage, Edward
seized upon the accusation as a wedge to
undermine his enemies, and he compelled
the queen to use her influence to save
Gaveston. The queen, because of her love
for Edward and her hopes for a
reconciliation, resolved to mend the rift by abetting
her husband.
At first the nobles disdainfully refused
to hear her entreaties. Then, having
prevailed upon young Mortimer's sympathy,
she disclosed to him a plot whereby
Gaveston could be overthrown and the
king obeyed at the same time. Mortimer
then convinced the other nobles that if
Gaveston were allowed to remain in
England, he would become so unpopular that
the common people would rise in protest
and kill him.
There was peace in England once
more. Edward affected renewed love for
his queen and the lords humbly repledged
their fealty to Edward. An undercurrent
of meanness prevailed, however, in the
bosom of young Mortimer, whose sense of
justice was outraged at the fact that
Edward had chosen such a baseborn villain
as his minion. He still believed that it
would be a service to his king and country
to unseat Gaveston, and thus he plotted
secretly.
But at the ceremonial in honor of
Gaveston's return the lords could not
stomach the presence of the king's minion.
Bitter sarcasm was showered upon
Gaveston and young Mortimer tried to
stab him. So outraged was Edward at this
show of independence by his peers that
he vowed vengeance for his dear
Gaveston's sake. Even the loyal Edmund could
not brook this display on the part of his
brother; he deserted Edward to join the
nobles.
Edward renewed the smoldering
accusation against Isabella that she was
Mortimer's lover. Defeated in battle, the
king's forces, with Gaveston in flight,
were split up to confuse the enemy.
Warwick, Lancaster, and others
succeeded in capturing the king's minion and
ordered his death, but Arundel, a
messenger from Edward, pleaded that
Gaveston be allowed to say farewell to the king.
One of the nobles, unable to scorn the
king's wishes, arranged to escort Gaveston
to Edward. With a servant in charge,
Gaveston was conducted to a hiding place
to spend the night. Warwick, driven by
blind hatred and an irrational patriotism,
kidnaped the prisoner.
Meanwhile Valois, King of France and
Isabella's brother, had taken advantage of
the revolt in England and had seized
Normandy. Edward, displaying the
corruption of his statesmanship, dispatched
his son Prince Edward and Isabella to
negotiate a parley with Valois. Arundel,
meanwhile, reported to Edward that
Warwick had beheaded Gaveston.
Edward, in a wild rage against his lords,
swore to sack their lands and destroy their
families. Characteristically, having lost his
beloved friend, he declared that
henceforth young Spencer would be his
favorite. He continued to resist the rebels, an3
1034

before long Warwick, Lancaster, and
Edmund were captured and sentenced to
death.
In France, the Earl of Gloucester
suspected that Isabella was gathering forces
to place her son upon the throne. Isabella,
in the meantime, had been rejected by
V^lois. Sir John of Hainault rescued the
queen and prince by offering to keep the
pair at his estate in Flanders until Edward
had matured sufficiently to rule England.
The young prince was already showing
signs of royal character and a depth and
magnitude of personality which promised
to make him a suitable monarch.
The condemned Mortimer and
Edmund escaped to France, where Sir John
agreed to help them in levying forces to
aid Isabella and the prince. Landing at
Harwich, the forces of Mortimer and
Edmund routed the king, who fled toward
Ireland. Stalwart, sincere, and
intellectually honest, Edmund, who had broken
with his brother only after the king had
driven him too far, relented in his feelings
against Edward; he was further disturbed
by a suspicion that Isabella was in love
with Mortimer. Mortimer became a
despot in his triumph. Edward was captured
and sent to Kenilworth Castle, a prisoner.
There he was prevailed upon to surrender
his crown to the prince.
With the queen's consent Mortimer
outlined a crafty scheme to kill Edward.
He drew up an ambiguous note which
ordered the king's death in one sense and
abjured it in another. When Prince
Edward, Isabella, Edmund, and Mortimer
argued fiercely to decide upon the prince's
protector, the prince revealed his distrust
for Mortimer. Edmund, fearing greater
disunion, resolved to rescue the
imprisoned king. His attempt failed.
Prince Edward was crowned by the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Shortly after
the coronation the deposed Edward,
tortured cruelly in a dungeon, was murdered
by Mortimer's hireling. Edmund was
beheaded. Thereupon Edward III, now
monarch in his own right, ordered
Mortimer to be hanged and Isabella, who was
suspected of being the nobleman's
accomplice in plotting her husband's death, to
be taken to the Tower of London.
1035

EFFI BRIEST
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodor Fontane (1819-1898)
Type of plot: Domestic tragedy
Time of plot: Second half of the nineteenth century
Locale: Germany, Prussia
First published: 1895
Principal characters:
Effi von Briest, only child of the Briest family
Frau von Briest, her mother
Ritterschaftsrat von Briest, her father
Baron von Innstetten, Em's hushand, a government official in Kessin
Annie, Em's daughter
Major von Crampas, District Commander in Kessin
Roswitha, Em's maid
Critique:
Although he had been a writer for
most of his life—poet, journalist,
historian—Fontane did not begin to write
fiction until he had gained a thorough
knowledge of Prussian society. He was
sixty when he completed his first novel,
seventy-five when he wrote Effi Briest.
His main subject was the human being
entangled in a net of strict rules and
principles of a society which felt secure
in a Prussia stabilized by the "Iron
Chancellor," Bismarck. Fontane did not raise
a warning pedagogical finger when he
described the merciless destruction of
human happiness by the rigid rules of that
society. He merely introduced his
characters and left judgment to his readers.
When, after the tragic death of Effi
Briest, EfFs mother asks whether they
might have done something wrong, the
father waves the question aside because
it is useless to discuss it. Fontane initiated
in Germany the modern realistic novel,
and in describing him the term
"psychological novel" appears for the first
time in German literature. The tragic
tale of Effi Briest remains a perennial
reprint favorite of German publishers.
The Story: *
Effi Briest was sixteen years old when
her mother cheerfully announced that
Baron von Innstetten had asked for her
hand in marriage. Effi had seen
Innstetten only once, but she knew he had
vainly tried to marry her mother years
before. When Baron von Innstetten was
absent for a long period, her mother had
married EfFs father; at the time a match
with Ritterschaftsrat von Briest had
seemed too good an opportunity to forego.
Innstetten was now a government official
with a promising future.
Half an hour before, Effi had been
sitting on a swing enjoying a happy
childhood. Suddenly she was a bride to be.
The situation seemed to her a new and
welcome experience. In a few weeks she
would be the wife of an important
government official.
After the excitement of preparations,
the wedding, and a honeymoon trip to
Italy, the couple arrived in Kessin, a small
town on the Baltic Sea. At first the
completely new surroundings were
interesting for Effi, but soon she felt ill at ease
in the house. It was a strange house,
formerly owned by a seafaring captain;
his relics and souvenirs gave the place a
bizarre character. A stuffed shark, stories
about the captain's mysterious Chinese
servant, and a mentally ill maidservant,
who sat in the kitchen with a black
chicken on her shoulder, brought
nightmares to Effi, and she claimed that she
heard noises in an unoccupied upstairs
room. Considerate toward his young wife,
Innstetten never failed to show his devo-
1036

tion, but being a practical-minded man,
he paid no attention to Effi's tales of
supernatural happenings in the house. He
was convinced that his wife's childish
imagination would soon return to normal.
The obligatory social visits to the local
aristocracy revealed to Effi that she would
not have friends in their circle. At first
her only friend was the town apothecary.
Her second friend was Roswitha, her
maid, whom she met in the graveyard
where the girl was bemoaning the loss of
her former mistress. Effi was pregnant and
needed a maid. Learning that Roswitha
was Catholic, she was convinced Roswi-
tha's faith would conquer the ghostlike
noises in the house. Roswitha never heard
ghosts and her straightforward manner
was a relief from the formal stiffness of
Effi's social world. The birth of a
daughter, Annie, gave Effi new activities, but
her boredom with Kessin continued.
The new military commander in
Kessin, Major von Crampas, was another
addition to Effi's social world. The major's
carefree behavior and witty conversation
were quite a contrast to the
well-disciplined and formal Innstetten, but both
men respected each other and became
friends. Visits to the Innstetten home,
horseback riding along the seashore, and
participation in community plays brought
Effi and Crampas closer together. Effi,
realizing the danger of this situation,
made efforts to avoid him. During a
sleighride Crampas overstepped the
boundaries of their friendship.
One day Innstetten informed Effi that
he had been promoted to a new post in
a Berlin Ministry, a position which would
take them to Berlin. Effi was happy to
leave the strange house, the boring
people, and above all to be separated from
Crampas, for their relationship, although
a well-kept secret, burdened her
conscience increasingly. Innstetten, seeing
Effi's great joy when he told her about
the transfer to Berlin, felt guilty for not
having considered leaving the disliked
house sooner.
In Berlin, Innstetten made a special
effort to have a cheerful house and an
enjoyable social life. Though Innstetten's
duties at the Ministry kept them from
spending much time together, the years
in Berlin were happy ones until Effi went
to the Rhine country for recuperation
after an illness. Meanwhile, Innstetten
and Annie remained in Berlin. One day
Annie fell on a stairway and cut her
forehead, and Roswitha searched through
Effi's belongings to find a bandage.
Innstetten, trying to restore order in Effi's
room, found a bundle of love letters from
Crampas, written six years before.
Innstetten did what he considered his duty
regardless of his personal feelings: he
called a friend to make the necessary
arrangements for a duel with Crampas.
Although his friend pointed out that the
letters were more than six years old,
Innstetten, who would have preferred to
pardon Effi, decided to go through with
the duel because he felt that the insult
to his honor had not been diminished by
time. In the duel, fought near Kessin,
Crampas was shot fatally.
At the time Effi was still in the Rhine
country waiting for Innstetten's letters,
which used to arrive punctually every
day. Instead, a letter from her mother
informed her of the duel and of pending
divorce. Annie was put in the custody of
Innstetten. The Briest family was willing
to assist Effi financially, but her conduct
had made it impossible for her to return
home. Heartbroken, she went back to
Berlin and lived in a small apartment. As
quickly as she had changed years ago
from a child into a woman, she now
became a social outcast. Only Roswitha
remained faithful to her.
Effi's health declined rapidly. Once she
accidentally saw Annie leaving school,
but she avoided meeting the child.
Finally, moved by a desire to see her
daughter again, Effi asked for permission legally
to have Annie visit her. When Annie
arrived at the apartment, however, she
gave only well-rehearsed and evasive
answers. Discouraged, Effi sent the child
home without the hope of seeing her
1037

again. Soon after this incident Effi's
health became extremely poor and the
family doctor reported her condition to
her parents, hinting that their continued
rejection could mean her death. Her
health improved when she was finally
permitted to return home. Aside from her
parents and the local minister, however,
there was nobody for Effi to speak to.
Roswitha, concerned for her mistress'
loneliness, wrote to Innstetten asking him
to give Effi the family dog. Innstetten
was glad to fulfill her desire. His career
in the Ministry had been extremely
successful, but no promotion would lessen
the pain in his heart; he still loved his
former wife.
After a beautiful summer at her
parents' home, Effi died. In her last
conversation with her mother she asked Frau
von Briest to tell Innstetten that he had
done the only correct thing possible for
him. She wanted to die as Effi Briest, for
she had not honored her married name.
1038

EGMONT
Type of work: Drama
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Brussels
First presented: 1788
Principal characters:
Count Egmont, Lord of Game
Clarchen, his beloved
Brackenburg, a citizen in love with Clarchen
The Duke of Alva, emissary of Philip II
Margaret of Parma, Regent of The Netherlands
William, Prince of Orange
Critique:
This tragic account of the martyrdom
of Egmont has remained constantly in
favor, partly because of Beethoven's
musical setting. Here Goethe has taken for his
theme the undying love for liberty of
oppressed peoples everywhere, and for his
plot an episode in the struggle of The
Netherlands to throw off Spanish rule.
Egmont is warmly depicted as a brave and
generous man, but the other characters
are less fully developed. The action of the
play is designed to bring out the theme of
liberty, and in that design it succeeds
admirably.
The Story:
The people of The Netherlands were
unhappy in the state of their homeland.
Philip II of Spain was tightening his
absolute control of the Lowlands,
particularly in religious matters, for Philip was
the main instrument of the Inquisition.
Recently a new regent had been
appointed to administer his rule. The
populace had hoped the office would go to
Count Egmont, who, after his defeat of
the French at Gravelines, had become a
national hero. Besides, although Egmont
was a Catholic, he treated the Protestants
with kindness, and he had even gone to
Madrid to plead with Philip to lessen the
strictures of Catholic repression.
The king, however, had given the office
to Margaret, his half-sister. She, like
Philip, tolerated no dissidence from the
established church, yet by firmness and
tact she had pacified the sturdy burghers
who stubbornly resisted any laws but their
own. She had even managed to conciliate
Egmont and William of Orange, so that
outwardly at least there was harmony
among the nobility.
Margaret summoned Machiavel, her
secretary, to hear his account of new
uprisings. He told her how throughout
Flanders mobs were breaking into
cathedrals and despoiling the monuments of
the hated foreign religion. He counseled
Margaret to be firm but not cruel toward
the Protestants. Margaret told him that
her efforts toward conciliation would
mean little, for it was rumored that the
cruel Duke of Alva was on his way to
assume control of the provinces. Machiavel
reminded her that as regent she would
hold the final power, but Margaret was
wise in the ways of kings. Officially or
not, Alva would rule The Netherlands,
and she could hope to circumvent him
only by appealing directly to her brother.
She was especially fearful of what might
happen to Egmont and William of
Orange, and the effects of Alva's harsh rule
on the people.
Meanwhile, in her humble house,
Clarchen was happily singing; that night
Egmont would come to her. Brackenburg
watched her anxiously, for he loved her
and he was certain that no good would
come of that love affair between a count
1039

and a commoner. When Clarchen,
looking from her windows, saw a mob in the
street, she asked Brackenburg to learn the
cause of the disturbance. During his
absence her mother reproached Clarchen
bitterly for rejecting Brackenburg's suit.
Even now, the mother declared, the
burgher would be glad to marry Clarchen.
Brackenburg returned to tell them the
people had heard of the outbreaks in
Flanders, and were heartened by that
uprising against their oppressors.
A group of commoners argued about
their rights as citizens. One, who could
read, told them of their rights under the
constitution and of their forefathers'
vigilance in protecting their privileges.
Egmont, arriving on the scene, advised
them to be moderate in their talk but to
preserve their ancient liberties. After he
left, a keen observer remarked that Eg-
mont's head would make a dainty morsel
for the headsman.
In his residence Egmont attended to
duties of state. One of his letters came
from Count Oliva, his old preceptor, who
counseled him to be more circumspect in
his behavior and less free in his talk.
Egmont threw the letter aside, remarking
that every one was different; he himself
believed in doing what was right without
fear or favor. Let others play the part of
fawning courtier.
William of Orange arrived to talk over
the coming of Alva. William was in favor
of caution; they would do nothing until
they knew what Alva had been sent to
accomplish. Egmont reminded him that
they were both Knights of the Golden
Fleece. As members of that order they
could not be punished except through a
trial by their peers. Prince William was
inclined to place little trust in their rights,
however, for Philip was a determined and
ruthless ruler. William declared that he
himself would remain on his own estate
and refuse to meet the Duke of Alva.
Egmont, on the other hand, decided to speak
his mind freely. If he had to be a rebel, he
would openly do his best to advance the
welfare of The Netherlands.
Margaret, in the meantime, had
received a dispatch from Philip. The letter
was gentle and considerate in tone, a fact
ominous in itself. The king informed her
officially of Alva's mission and told in
detail of the formidable army the duke was
bringing to garrison the recalcitrant
towns. Margaret knew that her authority
as regent had been superseded.
In the evening Clarchen received
Egmont with joy. For a time Egmont was
remote in his conduct, even keeping on
his mantle. Then he showed her that he
was wearing his full uniform, decorated
with the emblem of the Golden Fleece,
and said that he had come thus attired
because she had asked him to do so as a
favor. Clarchen, particularly impressed by
the decoration of the Golden Fleece, was
touched by that evidence of his regard.
The inhabitants of the town grew
fearful. Alva's soldiers had been stationed at
every strategic point and his spies were
everywhere, so that the citizens dared not
congregate to discuss their new woes. The
ordinary people were afraid for Egmont; it
was rumored that he would be killed.
In his palace Alva had made his plans,
with his trusted guards forming so tight
a cordon around the residence that no one
could get in or out. To his natural son
Ferdinand he announced his intentions.
He was expecting Egmont and William of
Orange. At the end of the audience, Alva
would detain Egmont on a pretext. Prince
William would be arrested outside. As
soon as he was safely in custody,
Ferdinand, acting as the duke's
messenger, was to return to the reception
chamber. His arrival would be the signal to
arrest Egmont. Ferdinand, uneasy over
the success of the plot, was nevertheless
flattered by the part he was to play.
William of Orange was too cautious to
fall into the duke's trap, however, and he
stayed away from the audience. Egmont,
who knew no fear, went without
hesitation and discussed at great length the
troubled situation in The Netherlands.
He was a skillful debater. At every point
he upheld the dignity of the burghers and
1040

wisely counseled patience and tact in
dealing with them. At last Alva became
impatient and abruptly ordered his arrest.
He read a document in which Philip
decreed Egmont had been tried and found
guilty of treason. Because the King of
Spain did not acknowledge the authority
of the Knight of the Golden Fleece,
Egmont failed in his demand for immunity.
Clarchen was distraught when she
heard of Egmont's arrest. Accompanied by
faithful Brackenburg, she wandered about
the town in an attempt to incite the
citizens to rescue Egmont. But Alva had done
his work well; the burghers were all afraid
even to discuss the matter. Returning to
the house, Clarchen thought of the vial of
poison that Brackenburg had once shown
her when he was disconsolate. Thinking
to quiet her temporarily, he gave her the
vial. Clarchen immediately drank the
poison and left the room to die.
Meanwhile, in the palace prison,
Egmont had been wakeful When he finally
dozed off he was wakened by Ferdinand
and Silva. The latter read Egmont's
sentence; he was to be executed publicly in
the market place as a warning to the
people. Silva left, but Ferdinand
remained behind to condole with the count.
Although he had had a part in the plot,
he really sympathized with Egmont.
When Egmont slept again, a vision
appeared. Freedom was reclining on a cloud.
Her features were those of Clarchen. She
held above his head a wreath of victory.
Egmont awoke at dawn to strains of
martial music. The guards were at his door.
1041

THE EGOIST
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Meredith (1828-1909)
Type of plot: Social satire
rime of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1879
Principal characters:
Sir Willoughby Patterne, the egoist
Vernon Whitford, his cousin
Colonel De Craye, his relative
Laetitia Dale, a neighbor
Clara Middleton, Sir Willoughby's betrothed
Doctor Middleton, her father
Crossjay Patterne, Sir Willoughby's distant kinsman
Critique:
The Egoist creates a fantastic world
where, in scenes of subtle comedy, the
characters are treated realistically. The
effect is one of drollery. Each character
is a symbol of some virtue or vice rather
than a living individual. All the
characters speak alike, and they speak the
language of Meredith. This novel stands
apart from Meredith's other novels,
distinguished as it is by its originality of
technique and purpose. It is, to use
Meredith's own term, "a comedy in
narrative."
The Story:
On the day of his majority Sir
Willoughby Patterne announced his
engagement to Miss Constantia Durham.
Laetitia Dale, who lived with her old father
in a cottage on Willoughby's estate, bore
her love for him—she thought—secretly,
but everyone, including Willoughby
himself, knew about it. Ten days before the
wedding day Constantia astonished her
betrothed by eloping with Harry Oxford,
a military man. For a few weeks after
that, the proud Willoughby courted
Laetitia while the neighborhood gossiped
about the poor girl's chances to become
his wife. There was great disappointment
when he suddenly decided to go abroad
for three years. On his return to his
estate he brought with him his cousin,
Vernon Whitford, as an adviser in the
management of his properties, and a
young distant kinsman named Crossjay
Patterne.
At first Laetitia, the faithful, was
overjoyed at Willoughby's return, but soon
she saw that again she was to lose him,
for he became engaged to Clara Middle-
ton, the daughter of a learned doctor.
Middleton and his daughter came to
Willoughby's estate to visit for a few
weeks. It might have been the
controversy over Crossjay or even the existence
of Laetitia that caused Clara to see
Willoughby for what he really was. In
spite of Willoughby's objections, Vernon
wanted Crossjay to enter the Marines and
the young man was sent to Laetitia to be
tutored for his examination. Vernon,
a literary man, wanted to go to London,
but Willoughby overruled him. Noting
Willoughby's self-centered attitude
toward Crossjay, his complete and selfish
concern with matters afFecting himself
and his attempt to dominate her own
mind, Clara began to feel trapped by her
betrothal. She reflected that Constantia
had escaped by finding a gallant Harry
Oxford to take her away, but she
sorrowfully realized that she had no one to
rescue her.
When Clara attempted to break her
engagement, she found Willoughby in^
tractable and her father too engrossed in
his studies to be disturbed. Meanwhile,
Willoughby had picked Laetitia Dale as
Vernon's wife. This was Willoughby's
1042

plan to keep near him both his cousin
and the woman who fed his ego with
her devotion. Vernon could retire to one
of the cottages on the estate and write
and study. Asked by Willoughby to aid
him in his plan, Clara took the
opportunity to ask Vernon's advice on her own
problem. He assured her that she must
move subtly and slowly.
In desperation, she persuaded Doctor
Middleton to agree to take a trip to
France with her for a few weeks. From
such a trip she hoped never to return to
Willoughby. But this wary lover
introduced Dr. Middleton to his favorite
brand of claret. Two bottles of the wine
put the doctor in such an amiable mood
that when Clara asked him if he were
ready to go to London with her, he told
her that the thought was preposterous.
Willoughby had won the first round.
Colonel De Craye arrived to be best
man at the wedding. Little by little he
sensed that Clara was not happy at the
prospect of her approaching marriage.
In desperation Clara resorted to other
means of escape. She wrote to her friend
Lucy Darleton in town and received from
that young lady an invitation to visit her
in London.
Clara gave Crossjay the privilege of
accompanying her to the train station.
A hue and cry was raised at her absence
from the estate, and Vernon, accidentally
discovering her destination, followed her
to the station and urged her to come
back. Only because she believed that her
behavior might cause an injury to Cross-
jay's future did Clara return to her prison.
If she were to leave now, Willoughby
would have full control of the young
boy, for Vernon was soon to go to London
to follow his writing career.
Complications resulted from Clara's
attempted escape. At the station Vernon
had had her drink some brandy to
overcome the effects of the rainy weather.
The neighborhood began to gossip.
Willoughby confronted Crossjay, who told
him the truth about Clara's escape. Clara
hoped that Willoughby would release
her because of the gossip, but he refused.
Doctor Middleton seemed ignorant of
what was happening. He was determined
that his daughter should fulfill her pledge
to marry Sir Willoughby. Furthermore,
he liked Willoughby's vintage wines and
Willoughby's estate.
By this time the Egoist knew that his
marriage to Clara would not take place.
He decided upon the one move that
would soothe his wounded vanity—he
asked Laetitia to become his wife. She
refused, declaring she no longer loved
him.
Colonel De Craye shrewdly surmised
what had happened. He told Clara the
hopeful news. Clara felt that her only
remaining obstacle was her father's
insistence that she must not break her promise
to Willoughby. Now she could show
that Willoughby had broken his promise
first by proposing to Laetitia while he
was still pledged to Clara.
Willoughby's world blew up in his
face. Dr. Middleton announced firmly
that Clara need not marry Willoughby.
He had decided that he admired Vernon's
scholarship more than he liked
Willoughby's wines. But the twice-jilted
lover had other plans for his own
protection. He must even the score. If he
could get Clara to consent to marry
Vernon, he felt there would be some
measure of recompense for himself, for
such a marriage would have the ironic
touch to satisfy Willoughby. But Clara
told him it was already her intention
to wed Vernon as soon as her
engagement to Willoughby could be broken.
The Egoist's selfishness and arrogance
had brought them together.
The Egoist was defeated. He went
straight to Laetitia, offering her his hand
without love. He was willing for her to
marry him only for money. Laetitia
accepted on the condition that Crossjay be
permitted to enter the Marines. Clara and
the doctor planned to leave for Europe.
Vernon arranged to meet them in the
Swiss Alps, where he and Clara would
marry.
1043

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Type of plot: Philosophical romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Germany
First published: 1808
Principal characters:
Edward, a wealthy nobleman
Charlotte, his wife
Ottilie, Charlotte's protegee
The Captain, Edward's friend
Luciana, Charlotte's daughter by a previous marriage
Nanny, a youngster, Ottilie's protege
Herr Mittler, a self-appointed marriage counselor
Critique:
Although written late in the author's
career, Elective Affinities (Die Wahlver-
wandtschaften) illustrates some of the
romantic tendencies usually found in
Goethe's earlier works. The
emotionalism of Edward, the quasi-scientific theme,
and the poetically fitting (if unrealistic)
deaths are examples of the romantic
elements. At the same time, it is only fair
to classify the novel as a philosophical
piece of fiction. The human relationships
(both the actual and the symbolic), the
passages discussing education and
pedagogical techniques, and the comments
found in the passages taken from Ottilie's
fictional diary all contribute to the
philosophical effect. Elective Affinities is a
novel in which psychological actions and
reactions are important, while of physical
action there is so little that one can
almost say there is none, just as there is
almost no plot as ordinarily defined.
The Story:
Edward, a wealthy nobleman, had long
been in love with Charlotte, but each
had been forced to wed someone else.
Both their first spouses died before many
years elapsed, and soon afterward Edward
and Charlotte were married. With
Charlotte's daughter Luciana placed in a good
school, the pair, happily married at last,
settled down to an idyllic existence at
Edward's rural castle. They spent their
time working at pleasant tasks about the
castle and its park, leading together the
kind of life they had long dreamed about
and hoped for.
But one day a letter came to threaten
the happy couple. The Captain, long a
friend of Edward, was out of a position.
Edward immediately suggested that his
friend be invited to the castle, where he
could help in improving the grounds and
buildings. At first Charlotte withheld her
consent, but finally she agreed to her
husband's earnest desire. She revealed
that she, too, had thought of inviting
someone to the castle, the daughter of a
dead friend. Charlotte had taken the girl,
Ottilie, as her protegee because of her
friendship for the girl's mother. Ottilie,
who was at school with Luciana, was not
immediately invited for the visit
Charlotte planned.
When the Captain arrived, as he did
shortly, his presence soon made marked
differences in the household. In order
that he and Edward might work together
undisturbed and with greater
convenience, Edward moved from the wing in
which Charlotte's rooms were located to
the wing in which the Captain had been
placed; and Charlotte saw less and less
of her husband. One evening the three
read about the elective affinities of
chemical elements and fell to speculating on
how people were also attracted to one
another in different combinations and in
varying degrees. The invitation to Ottilie
1044

was again discussed. Since the girl was
not doing well in school, and because
Charlotte obviously needed additional
companionship, Ottilie was immediately
sent for.
When Edward had seen the girl and
been in her company on previous
occasions, Ottilie had made no impression on
him. Seeing her in the same household,
however, he soon became aware of her
attractiveness. It became obvious, too,
that Ottilie found Edward attractive. The
two fitted together strangely well. When
they played duets, Ottilie's very mistakes
coincided with Edward's. Gradually, as
the two spent more and more time
together, Charlotte and the Captain often
found themselves together, too, much to
their delight. After some weeks had
passed, Edward realized the extent of his
passion and his influence on Ottilie, all
of which made him rejoice. Recognizing
the force of his passion, he made efforts
to cause it to grow, as it did steadily and
swiftly. Although Charlotte noticed the
attentions he paid the girl, she refused
to become upset by them; since she had
discovered her own regard for the
Captain, she could more easily overlook her
husband's behavior.
One day, while Charlotte and the
Captain were out boating, their passion for
each other could no longer be concealed.
Being mature people, however, they
immediately controlled their emotions and
resolved, after a few kisses, to adhere
strictly to the moral path in their
conduct. Also, during one of their periods
together, Ottilie and Edward discovered
their love for each other. Being more
easily swayed and emotionally immature,
they welcomed the passion and did not
try to curb their emotions.
While the relationships among the
four were developing, more guests came
to the castle. They were a countess and
a baron who were spending a vacation
as lover and mistress while away from
their respective spouses. On the night of
their arrival, Edward showed the baron
the way to the countess' rooms, that the
lovers might be together. While wishing
he could enter Ottilie's room with- the
same freedom as the baron had entered
that of his mistress, Edward found
himself at his wife's door. He knocked and
was admitted. He remained the night
with Charlotte, but when he and his
wife embraced they did not think of each
other, but of Ottilie and the Captain.
The four people had all been working
on plans for improving the grounds of
the castle, with the hope, especially on
Edward's part, that everything might be
finished in time for Ottilie's birthday. On
the day of the birthday celebration
Edward made a public spectacle of himself,
proving almost a fool in his ardor for
Ottilie. Finally, Charlotte suggested that
Ottilie be returned to school or sent to
live with other friends. Edward, angry
and frustrated in his love, left the castle.
When he left he vowed he would have
nothing more to do with Ottilie, as
Charlotte wished, so long as the girl
remained. On the same day the Captain,
who had received a position which
promoted him to the rank of major, also left
the castle.
Shortly after Edward's departure,
Charlotte, discovering that she was
pregnant as the result of the night her
husband had spent in her apartments, called
on the services of Herr Mittler, a volun-
ceer marriage counselor. But Herr Mittler
was unable even to begin a reconciliation
with Edward, whose passion for Ottilie
had conquered him completely. Having
been accustomed all his life to doing as
he pleased, Edward could not see why
he should not have his way in this
matter. When war broke out, he entered the
king's service. He served gallantly and
won many honors. He believed that if he
lived through the war he was fated to
have Ottilie.
Charlotte, meanwhile, endured her
pregnancy, but she and Ottilie were no
longer so close to each other, for the
younger woman had become suspicious of
Charlotte. For a time life at the castle
was enlivened when Luciana arrived for
1045

a visit with a large party of her friends.
During the entertainment of the visit,
Luciana pointedly left Ottilie out of the
activities arranged for the guests.
Ottilie's friend during the trying weeks
after Edward had gone was a young
architect hired to supervise the building
of a summerhouse. His work completed,
Charlotte had kept him on to redecorate
the local church. The young man
admired Ottilie very much. A young
schoolmaster who had taught Ottilie also
expressed interest in marrying the girl, but
Ottilie could think only of Edward.
At last a son was born to Charlotte. At
the christening Ottilie and Herr Mittler,
who stood as sponsors for the baby, were
surprised to note how much the infant
resembled both Ottilie and the Captain, a
resemblance soon noted by others.
Charlotte, remembering how she had dreamed
of the Captain while embracing her
husband, guessed that Edward had been
dreaming at the same time of Ottilie. In
a sense the child, named Otto, was a
symbol of the parents' double adultery.
Edward returned to a nearby farm
when the war ended. Meeting the
Captain, he made a proposal to solve
everyone's problems. He suggested that he and
Charlotte be divorced, so that he could
marrv Ottilie and Charlotte could marry
the Captain. Although the ethics of the
plan did not appeal to him, the Captain
agreed to take the suggestion to
Charlotte. When the Captain set out for the
castle, Edward also visited the grounds
in hopes of seeing Ottilie. They met, and
Ottilie was much upset, so much so that
while returning to the castle alone in a
small boat she dropped Charlotte's baby
overboard. The child was drowned.
When the Captain arrived at the castle,
Charlotte showed him the little corpse
that was a miniature of himself.
Ottilie decided to go away. Edward,
meeting her at an inn, persuaded her to
return to the castle with him. There the
four—Edward, Charlotte, Ottilie, and the
Captain—tried to resume the happy life
they had known before. But Ottilie
seldom spoke and ate her meals in her
rooms. One day she died suddenly,
having starved herself to death. It came out
that Nanny, her little protegee, had been
persuaded to eat the food intended for
Ottilie. Edward also began a fast. When
he died a short time later, although not
as the result of his fasting, he was laid
in a tomb beside the girl he had loved.
In death for one, in life for the other, the
two couples were finally united.
1046

ELECTRA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: After the fall ot Troy
Locale: Argos
First presented: c. 413 B.C.
Principal characters:
Electra, daughter of Agamemnon
Orestes, her brother
Clytemnestra, her mother
Aegisthus, lover of Clytemnestra
Critique:
The Electra of Euripides is a
psychological study of a woman's all-consuming
hatred for her mother and stepfather on
the one hand, and love for her murdered
father and exiled brother on the other.
The character of Electra clearly
dominates the action, for it is she who spurs
her brother on to kill those whom she
hates. In Electra, her brother, and her
mother, Euripides created three
characters who are as alive today as they were
on the Athenian stage.
The Story:
After Agamemnon, King of Argos, had
returned home from the Trojan War, his
wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover,
Aegisthus, murdered him in cold blood during
the home-coming banquet. Afterward
Aegisthus and Clytemnestra were
married, and Aegisthus became king.
Orestes, young son of Agamemnon, was sent
by a relative to Phocis before Aegisthus
could destroy him. Electra, the daughter,
remained, but was given in marriage to
an old peasant, lest she marry a warrior
powerful enough to avenge her father's
death.
One day, after Electra and the peasant
had gone out to do the day's work,
Orestes came in disguise with his best friend,
Pylades, to the farm to seek Electra.
Tney heard her singing a lament for her
lot and for the death of her father. A
messenger interrupted her lament with
word that a festival would be held in
honor of the Goddess Hera and that all
Argive maidens were to attend. Electra
said she preferred to remain on th*
farm away from the pitying eyes of the
people of Argos. The messenger advised
her to pay honor to the gods and to ask
their help.
Electra mistook Orestes and Pylades
for friends of her brother and told them
the story of her grief. She urged that
Orestes avenge the death of Agamemnon
and the ill treatment of himself and
Electra. Aegisthus, meanwhile, had
offered a reward for the death of Orestes.
The peasant returned from his work
and asked Orestes and Pylades to
remain as his guests. Electra sent her
husband to bring the relative who had
taken Orestes away from Argos. On his
way to the peasant's cottage, the old
foster father noticed that a sacrifice had
been made at the tomb of Agamemnon
and that there were some red hairs on
the grave. He suggested to Electra that
Orestes might be in the vicinity, but
Electra answered that there was no
chance of his being in Argos. When
Orestes came out of the cottage, the old
man recognized a scar on his forehead;
thus brother and sister were made known
to each other.
At the advice of the old peasant,
Orestes planned to attend a sacrificial feast
over which Aegisthus would preside.
Electra sent her husband to tell
Clytemnestra that she had given birth to a baby.
Electra and Orestes invoked the aid of
the gods in their venture to avenge the
death of their father.
Orestes and Pylades were hailed by
1047

Aegisthus as they passed him in his
garden. The pair told Aegisthus that
they were from Thessaly and were on
their way to sacrifice to Zeus. Aegisthus
informed them that he was preparing
to sacrifice to the nymphs and invited
them to tarry. At the sacrifice of a calf,
Orestes plunged a cleaver into Aegisthus'
back while Aegisthus was examining the
entrails of the beast. Orestes then revealed
his identity to the servants, who cheered
the son of their former master. Orestes
carried the corpse of Aegisthus back to
the cottage where it was hidden after
Electra had reviled it.
At the sight of Clytemnestra
approaching the peasant's hut, Orestes had
misgivings about the plan to murder her.
He felt that matricide would bring the
wrath of the gods upon his head. But
Electra, determined to complete the
revenge, reminded Orestes that an oracle
had told him to destroy Aegisthus and
Clytemnestra.
Clytemnestra defended herself before
Electra with the argument that
Agamemnon had sacrificed Iphegenia, their child,
as an offering before the Trojan venture
and that he had returned to Argos with
Cassandra, princess of Troy, as his
concubine. Electra indicted her mother on
several counts and said that it was only
just that she and Orestes murder
Clytemnestra. The queen entered the hut to
prepare a sacrifice for Electra's supposed
first-born; within, she was killed by
Orestes, who moaned in distress at the
violence and bloodshed and matricide in
which the gods had involved him.
The Dioscuri, twin sons of Zeus and
brothers of the half-divine Clytemnestra,
appeared to the brother and sister, who
were overcome with mixed feelings of
hate and love and pride and shame at
what they had done. The twin gods
questioned the wisdom of Apollo, whose
oracle had advised this violent action;
they decreed that Orestes should give
Electra to Pylades in marriage and that
Orestes himself should be pursued by
the Furies until he could face a trial in
Athens, from which trial he would
emerge a free man.
1048

THE EMIGRANTS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Johan Bojer (1872-1959)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot; Late nineteenth century
Locale: Norway and the American West
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Erik Foss, an emigrant leader
Ola Vatne, a laborer
Else, his wife
Morten Kvidal, a joiner
Kal Skaret, a crofter
Karen, his wife
Per Foll, a young workman
Anne, his wife
Bergitta, Morten's wife; Anne's sister
Critique:
The Emigrants is a saga of the
Norwegians who settled the wheat lands of
the Dakotas. Bojer is well qualified for
his subject. A Norwegian, he knows the
stock from which our prairie pioneers
came, and his visits to America have
made him familiar with the American
scene. The result is a lasting novel, an
American story written in Norwegian.
It is a vital part of our cultural heritage.
The Story:
Erik Foss came back to Norway after
some time spent working in America,
and to the cramped, class-conscious
farmers and laborers of his Norwegian
countryside he held out hope for a more free
and generous life in the new country.
Many resolved to join his party of
emigrants to America.
There was Ola, the colonel's hired
boy. Ola had a way with people,
especially with girls, and Else, the colonel's
daughter, looked on him with eager
eyes. But Ola was poor and the stories
about him did not please the colonel.
After his dismissal from the farm, Ola
set fire to the barn. He spent a year
in prison and came out in time to join
the emigrants. Else came too, as Ola's
wife. There was Per Foil, a big, hulking
man and his new wife, Anne, the
most attractive girl in the parish, already
carrying a baby who was to be born too
soon after her marriage. There were
Kal Skaret and Karen, a kindly and slow-
moving couple. The tax collector took
their only cow when they could not pay
even the previous year's taxes. There
was Morten Kvidal, a skilled joiner.
When the steamer left, the little band
sorrowed to leave Norway. But Erik
was strong and he knew the way and
he had enough money to help them.
That first summer the emigrants
reached Wisconsin. They stayed there
during the bleak winter, the men working
in the sawmills to add to their meager
funds. Early the next spring, they started
out across the prairie. Erik had been to
the Red River Valley before; he had
tested the soil and knew it was good.
The settlers had wagons and oxen, now,
and all their supplies.
Erik said they had arrived when they
came to a vast level land covered with
a six-foot stand of grass.
Kal took the quarter farthest to the
west* There he swung his scythe in
sweeping strokes. The children and Karen
piled the fodder, enough to feed a cow
all winter! Now he would plow. Mor-
r/HE EMIGRANTS by Johan Bojer. Translated by A. G. Jayne. By permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Published by The Century Co. Copyright, 1925, by Johan Bojer.
1049

ten took no heed of the buffalo grass;
he set his great breaking plow and turned
it under. They built their homes from
the grass, too, piling squares of turf for
their sod houses.
That summer there was drought and
the wheat crop was poor. Ola went into
town with one of the loads, and gambled
and drank up all his money. Without
the help of the others, Ola and Else
would never have survived the winter.
During a blizzard Erik's feet were
frostbitten while he hunted his strayed stock.
When gangrene set in, Morten made
the long trip to town on skis; but he
returned too late with medicine for the
sick man.
After Erik's death, the leadership of
the small band fell to Morten. Good
times and bad followed.
Per thought long and bitterly about
Anne, for he could never forget that
his first-born boy had come into the
world too soon after his marriage. When
Morten's young brother visited his house
too frequently, Per began to roam the
prairie. They had to tie him finally and
take him to the madhouse, leaving Anne
with her children and a sense of sin.
Although well established, Morten
felt compelled to go back to Norway.
When he returned to Dakota, he brought
with him a wife, Bergitta, Anne's sister.
He became an agent for the new
railroad. He said that the people should
have their own bank and grain elevators
so that they would not be at the mercy
of speculators. The Norwegians became
Americans. At a party they put up an
American flag beside the Norwegian
banner.
Kal and Karen built outbuildings of
wood, and each son took up another
quarter. Before long Kal's fields stretched
to the horizon, and he had to ride from
one wheat planting to the other. When
the steam thresher came, an army of
laborers piled up the mounds of grain;
it poured too fast to cart away. In his
machine shed, in a tiny strong room,
Kal stored wheat, so that his family
would never be hungry. Under his bed,
in his emigrant chest, he kept his money.
He and Karen were proud on the day
their son came back from school in St.
Louis and preached in their own church.
Morten grew old. He still acted for
the railroad; he ran the bank; he was
elder of the church; he put up buildings
for the growing town. Bergitta died. A
lamp exploded in Morten's face, blinding
him. Now his grandson read to him.
The old man thought of Norway often.
He went back, blind and old, to his
home. His people were dead; only the
old land remained. It must be like that,
he realized. The old settlers are a part
Norwegian always, but their children
belong to the new world.
1050

THE EMIGRANTS OF AHADARRA
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Carleton (1794-1869)
Type of plot: Local color romance
Time of plot: 1840's
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1848
Principal characters:
Bryan M'Mahon, an honest young farmer
Kathleen Cavanagh, in love with Bryan M'Mahon
Hycy (Hyacinth) Burke, a well-to-do libertine and rascal
Jemmy Burke, Hycy's father
Nanny Peety, a beggar girl
Kate Hogan, Nanny s aunt, a tinker's wife
Patrick O'Finigan, master of a hedge-school
Critique:
William Carleton's fiction is best
known for his realistic pictures of Irish
peasant life during the nineteenth
century, and The Emigrants of Ahadarra is
one of his best novels in this respect. The
most noteworthy sections are the chapters
describing such things as a "kemp" (a
spinning contest among the peasant
women), a country funeral, an election, and
illegal distillation of whiskey. While his
treatment of these matters is outstanding,
the entire novel is filled with specific and
colorful details of peasant life. The
speech of the people, the homes they live
in, the farm routine, landlord-peasant
relations, whiskey smuggling, the character
of the people—all these are related with a
view to giving the reader a true picture
of rural Irish life a century ago. Although
Carleton's fiction is now little read, it
deserves attention from the student of the
novel as an example of early realism well
done.
The Story:
Hycy Burke was the son of a well-to-do
and respected peasant who had allowed
his wife, a woman with social pretensions
of her own, to spoil the young man, and
Hycy, with his mother's approval, had
become a dissolute young man. Because his
father, Jemmy Burke, tried to curb him,
Hycy entered into partnership with
whiskey smugglers to supplement the
diminished allowance from his father.
When one of the prettiest girls in the
area, Kathleen Cavanagh, caught Hycy's
eye, he determined to seduce her.
Unfortunately for his plans, he misdirected
two letters: one, intended for Kathleen,
went to Bryan M'Mahon, who truly loved
the girl; another, intended for young
M'Mahon, went to Kathleen. Later,
publicly snubbed on more than one occasion,
Hycy resolved to have revenge on the
girl and her true admirer. Any additional
villainy could scarcely put him in greater
danger, for he had already been an
accomplice to burglarizing his father's house,
taking a large sum of money, as well as
an active accomplice of smugglers. It was
through his fellow smugglers that he
planned to get his revenge. At the time
there was a law in Ireland which required
the inhabitants of a township to pay fines
for illegal distillation and smuggling of
whiskey if the actual culprits were not
known. Bryan M'Mahon's farm at
Ahadarra covered an entire township; if he
were required to pay such a fine by
himself he would be ruined. To carry out his
plan, Hycy tried to get the help of the
nephew of the local gauger. Hycy
promised the exciseman's nephew the chance
to lease a fine farm if the latter would
press Hycy's suit for his sister's hand. The
farm, of course, was Bryan M'Mahon's.
Bryan was not the only member of his
1051

family facing tragedy. Both his and his
father's farm leases had run out, and
death had prevented the absentee
landlord from renewing them. The new
landlord, a well-meaning but weak and
inexperienced young man, was ruled by his
agent, who wished to see the M'Mahons
lose their farms, leased by the family for
generations.
Hycy carefully made his plans. What
he failed to realize, however, was that he
had made enemies while Bryan had made
friends, so that some persons who knew
of his villainy were prepared to take
measures to thwart him. In his father's house
was Nanny Peety, a pretty, virtuous
beggar girl who resented Hycy's attempts to
seduce her. She knew something of his
plans and she had been a witness to the
burglary Hycy and his accomplice had
committed. Nanny Peety's aunt, Kate
Hogan, loved her niece and thought
highly of Kathleen Cavanagh. She was
willing to help them and could because
she was married to one of Hycy's
smuggling associates. Also friendly to Kathleen
and Bryan was Patrick O'Finigan, the
drunken master of the local hedge-school.
The plot against Bryan was put into
operation when Hycy's anonymous letter
sent the gauger to discover the illicit still
at Ahadarra, on Bryan's farm. Faced with
financial ruin and his family's loss of their
leases, the young peasant did not know
what to do. Because his own honesty kept
him from believing that Hycy was
working against him in that manner, Bryan
even took advice from the man who was
bent on ruining him. Before long he
found himself worse off by his taking
that advice. A parliamentary election was
about to take place, in which the M'Ma-
hons' landlord was standing for a seat.
The voting turned out to be a tie until
Bryan, angry with his landlord and
following Hycy's advice, voted for his
landlord's opponent. By doing so he made
himself appear false in everyone's eyes,
for his landlord was a liberal who favored
the Irish peasantry and religious freedom,
while the opponent was a conservative
who worked against the peasants and the
Roman Catholic Church.
When Hycy sent another letter
enclosing a fifty-pound note, it looked as if
Bryan had accepted a bribe for his vote.
The evidence was so damning that even
Kathleen, who loved Bryan sincerely, was
forced to believe him guilty. Faced with
calamity and disfavor in his community,
Bryan and his family planned, like so
many unfortunate Irish at the time, to
emigrate to America in order to start a
new and more successful life.
But Bryan's friends began to work for
him. Kate Hogan, displeased at Hycy's
treatment of her niece and the troubles
facing Kathleen when she lost her fianc6,
began investigating Hycy's activities. She,
Patrick OTinigan, Nanny Peety's father,
and others gathered additional
information and presented it to the magistrates
with demands for a hearing. At the
hearing it was proved that Hycy had robbed
his father, had been an accomplice of the
whiskey smugglers, had placed the still
at Ahadarra to incriminate Bryan, had
plotted to make his victim appear to have
taken a bribe, and had also become a
counterfeiter. Confronted with these
proofs, Jemmy Burke gave his son two
hundred pounds to leave the country and
stay away. Hycy's accomplices were
arrested, convicted, and transported as
criminals from Ireland, thus becoming the
"emigrants" of Ahadarra. Cleared of all
charges, Bryan resumed his rightful place
in the community and in the affections of
Kathleen.
1052

EMILE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Time: Eighteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1762
Principal characters:
Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the role of tutor
£mile, a French orphan, healthy and intelligent
Sophie, a wellborn, warm-hearted young woman
Rousseau's treatise on education—a
novel in name only—is addressed to
mothers in the hope that, as a result of
learning Rousseau's ideas on education, they
will permit their children to develop
naturally without letting them be crushed
by social conditions. Children cannot be
left to themselves from birth because the
world as it is would turn them into beasts.
The problem is to educate a child in the
midst of society in such a manner that
society does not spoil him.
Rousseau argues that education comes
from nature, from men, and from things.
The education from men and from things
must be controlled so that habits
conformable to nature will develop. Children
have natural tendencies which should be
encouraged, for nature intends children
to be adults; the aim of education,
according to Rousseau, is to make a boy a
man. Yet by swaddling children, by
turning them over to wet nurses, and by
punishing them for not doing what is said
to be their duty, parents turn children
from natural ways of acting and spoil
them for life.
Rousseau insists that the proper way
to bring up a child is to begin by having
the mother nurse the child and the father
train him. But if substitutes must be
found, a wet nurse of good disposition
who was lately a mother should be
selected; and a young tutor should be
chosen, preferably one with the qualities
of Rousseau.
In order to explain his theory of
education, Rousseau refers to an imaginary
pupil, £mile. The child should come from
France, since inhabitants of temperate
zones are more adaptable and more
intelligent than those from other climates.
He should be from a wealthy family,
since the poor are educated by life itself,
and he should be an orphan in order to
allow Rousseau free range as tutor.
Finally, he should be healthy in body
and mind.
Rousseau recommends a predominantly
vegetable diet, particularly for the nurse,
since the milk would be better if meat
were not eaten. The tutor should see to
it that the child is taken out to breathe
the fresh air of the country, and, if
possible, the family should live in the
country: "Men are devoured by our towns."
The child should become accustomed
to frequent baths, but he should not be
softened by warm water or by other
pampering which destroys his natural vigor.
The child should not be allowed to
fall into habits other than that of having
no habits. He should not have regular
meal times or bedtimes, and as far as
possible he should be free to act as he
chooses. He may injure himself or
become ill, but it is better for him to learn
how to live naturally than to become
a weak and artificial adult.
"The natural man is interested in all
new things," wrote Rousseau, and he
urged that the child be introduced to
new things in such a way that he would
not be encouraged to fear whatever is
not naturally fearful. He offers, as an
example of the proper kind of education
in this respect, an account of what he
would do to keep £mile from becoming
afraid of masks. He would begin with a
pleasant mask and then proceed to less
1053

pleasing and, finally, to hideous ones, all
the while laughing at each mask and
trying it on different persons. Similarly,
to accustom £mile to the sound of a gun,
Rousseau would start with a small charge,
so that £mile would be fascinated by the
sudden flash, then proceed to greater
charges until £mile could tolerate even
large explosions.
Rousseau maintained that cries and
tears are the child's natural expression of
his needs. The child should not be
thwarted, for he has no other way of
learning to live in the world, and
education begins with birth. On the other
hand, h£ should not become the master
of the house, demanding obedience from
his parents.
It was Rousseau's conviction that
children must be given more liberty to do
things for themselves so that they will
demand less of others. A natural
advantage of the child's limited strength is that
he cannot do much damage even when
he uses his power freely. A child w^ll
learn to speak correctly, to read and write,
if it is to his advantage to do so; threats
and coercion only hinder him.
Speaking of a mode of education which
burdens a child with restrictions and is, at
the same time, overprotective, Rousseau
wrote, "Even if I considered that
education was wise in its aims, how could I view
without indignation those poor wretches
subjected to an intolerable slavery and
condemned like galley-slaves to endless
toil . . . ? The age of harmless mirth is
spent in tears, punishments, threats, and
slavery. You torment the poor thing for
his good; you fail to see that you are
calling Death to snatch him from these
gloomy surroundings/* Instead of
torturing children with excessive care, one
should love them, laugh with them, send
them out into the meadows, and play
with them.
"When our natural tendencies have
not been interfered with by human
prejudice and human institutions, the
happiness alike of children and men consists
in the enjoyment of their liberty." Here
the principle behind Rousseau's theory
of education becomes clear. The effort of
the tutor or the parent is so to educate
the child in such fashion that he will
learn through his own efforts to be as
free as possible within society. If he is
educated by rules and threats he becomes
a slave, and once free he seeks to enslave
others. The most satisfactory general rule
of education, Rousseau argued, is to do
exactly the opposite of what is usually
done.
Since the child is supposed to learn
through his own experience, misdeeds
should be punished only by arranging
matters so that the child comes to
experience the natural consequences of what he
has done. If there is any rule which can
be used as a moral injunction, it would
be, "Never hurt anybody"; only trouble
comes from urging children or men to
do good to others.
Rousseau rejected the use of tales and
fables for children. An amusing analysis
illustrates his conviction that even the
simplest fable, such as "The Fox and the
Crow/* strikes the child as ridiculous and
puzzling and encourages him to use
language carelessly and to behave foolishly.
After the child has reached
adolescence, the education of his intellect
should begin. Prior to this time the
concern of the tutor was to give £mile the
freedom to learn the natural limits of his
powers. Now he teaches £mile by
showing him the natural advantages of the use
of the intellect. The tutor answers
questions, but just enough to make the child
curious. His explanations are always in
language the child can understand, and
he encourages the child to solve his own
problems and to make his own
investigations. Interest should lead the child to
increase his experience and knowledge;
it is a mistake to demand that he learn.
Jean Jacques, as the tutor, shows £mile
the value of astronomy by gently
encouraging him to use the knowledge that he
has in order to find his way out of the
woods.
Rousseau's accounts of his efforts to
1054

teach fimile owe some of their charm to
the author's willingness to show himself
unsuccessful in some of his efforts.
Nevertheless, the pupil fimile never becomes a
distinctive character; fimile is merely a
child-symbol, just as later in the book
Sophie is, even as the author indicates,
a woman-symbol devised to enable
Rousseau to discuss marriage problems.
By the time fimile is fifteen he has
gained a considerable amount of practical
and scientific knowledge; he can handle
tools of all sorts, and he knows he will
have to find some trade as his life's work.
In Book IV of Smile, Rousseau discusses
the most difficult kind of education: moral
education, the study of the self in
relation to other men.
Rousseau presents three maxims which
sum up his ideas concerning human
sympathy, the foundation of moral virtue:
First Maxim.—It is not in human
nature to put ourselves in the -place of
those who are happier than ourselves,
but only in the place of those who can
claim our pity.
Second Maxim.—We never pity
another's woes unless we know we may
suffer in like manner ourselves.
Third Maxim,—The pity we feel
for others is proportionate, not to the
amount of the evil, but to the feelings
we attribute to the sufferers.
These maxims fortify the tutor, but
they are not imparted to fimile. The
youth is gradually made aware of the
suffering of individuals; his experience
is broadened; and he comes to know
through personal experience the
consequences of various kinds of acts. The
important thing is to turn his affections to
others.
fimile is given insight concerning
religious matters by hearing a long
discourse by "a Savoyard priest" who tells
of the difficult passage from doubt to
faith. He affirms man's natural goodness
and the reliability of conscience when
uncontaminated by philosophers or by
mere convention.
Sophie, "or Woman," is introduced in
Book V, since fimile must have a
helpmate. Rousseau begins curiously by
saying, "But for her sex, a woman is a man";
but when he considers her education it
is apparent that sex makes quite a
difference. Woman need not be given as many
reasons as man, and she can get along
with less intellect; but she must have
courage and virtue. Rousseau offers a
great deal of advice, even concerning
Sophie's refusal of fimile's first attempt
to share her bed. The book closes, after
a charming digression on travel, with
fimile's announcement that he is about
to become a father and that he will
undertake the education of his child,
following the example of his beloved tutor.
Smile is as full of good humor as it is
of good advice. Rousseau pursued an
educational philosophy which is, on the
whole, humane and sensible. He desired
to make the child neither a noble savage
nor a cultivated gentleman, but a man,
living fearlessly and forthrightly
according to impulses and abilities which were
naturally his. Although Rousseau's
psychology is sometimes naive, it is seldom
far from the modern view; and that, if
anything, is a compliment to the modern
view.
1055

EMILIA GALOTTI
Type of work: Drama
Author: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: Guastalla and Sabionetta, two mythical principalities in Italy
First presented: 1771
Principal characters:
Emilia Galotti, a beautiful, middle-class young woman
Odoardo Galotti, her father
Claudia Galotti, her mother
Hettore Gonzaga, Prince of Sabionetta and Guastalla
Count Appiani, betrothed to Emilia
The Marquis Marinelli, chamberlain to the prince
The Countess Orsina, a mistress spurned by the prince
Critique:
This play, romantic though it now
seems, was one of the first tragedies which
broke from strict adherence to the French
neo-classic unities. The best tragedy of
Lessing's small group of plays, Emilia
Galotti takes its theme from classical
antiquity, the story of the innocent maiden
who dies at the hand of her father in
order to prevent the loss of her chastity.
A drama of middle-class life, the work is
also a problem play, with revolt from
the tyranny of the aristocracy presenting
in interesting development an underlying
social theme.
The Story:
Prince Hettore Gonzaga, once happily
in love with and loved in return by
Countess Orsina, had unhappily fallen
in love with Emilia Galotti. She, the
daughter of a soldier who resisted the
conquest of Sabionetta by the prince, was
to be married to Count Appiani, of the
neighboring principality of Piedmont.
This desirable union of a nobleman and a
beautiful, middle-class woman was the
result of her mother's studied plan.
The treacherous Marquis Marinelli
proposed that the prince retire to his
palace at Dosalo after sending Count
Appiani on a mission to the Princess of
Massa, soon to be the prince's bride. The
absence of her betrothed would leave
Emilia open to the designs of the prince.
Motivated by lechery, the ruler eagerly
agreed to this plan.
Odoardo Galotti, having readied his
villa at Sabionetta in preparation for the
wedding, returned to his wife in
Guastalla in order to accompany the bridal
party. A young assassin garnered from a
family servant all these facts so that he
could plan the abduction of Emilia, who,
pursued by the prince, had just returned
from church. This action of Prince Het-
tore's the honest patriot father or the
independent husband-to-be would have
avenged, but the unsophisticated Emilia
did not know how to treat the prince's
lustful behavior.
Count Appiani, disturbed by
presentiments of evil, rejected the prince's
proposal to send him off on his wedding day,
and he was killed for his temerity when
the bridal party was attacked.
Closely guarded, Emilia was taken to
the palace under pretense of a rescue
from brigands. There the prince, playing
the gallant, allayed the fears of Emilia by
apologizing for his former behavior and
promising to escort her to her mother.
Claudia, in the meantime, had been made
frantic by separation from her daughter,
and, hysterical over the death of Count
Appiani, she accused Marinelli of
plotting this deed of treachery and violence.
The prince, now beset by a hysterical
mother and a swooning young woman
1056

whom he desperately desired, had not
reckoned with the wrath of a rejected
mistress as well. The Countess Orsina,
whose spies had uncovered all the
prince's guilty secrets, arrived at the
palace in Dosalo and, failing in an attempt
at blackmail, revealed Prince Hettore's
guilt to Odoardo Galotti when he came
in haste and unarmed to the aid of his
daughter and wife. The countess,
determined to have revenge on her former
lover, gave Galotti the dagger she had
intended to use on the prince. Galotti
insisted on his rights as a father to take
his daughter to her home, but his
petition was denied by the crafty Marinelli.
Meanwhile, the prince, unaware of Ga-
lotti's knowledge and purpose, tried to
appear as a benefactor who would see
justice done in the courts. Until that
time, however, he would keep Emilia
apart for security's sake. To this
arrangement Galotti seemed to agree, ironically
commenting on each provision of
treachery as it was proposed.
When the anxious father was finally
allowed to see his daughter, she told her
fears that her virtue might yield where
force could never prevail, the arts of
seduction being so brilliantly practiced in
Prince Hettore's court. To protect her
innocence, Galotti stabbed Emilia,
presented her body to the lustful prince,
threw the dagger at his feet, and went off
to give himself up to the authorities.
1057

EMINENT VICTORIANS
Type of work: Biography
Author: Lytton Strachey (1880-1932)
Time: Nineteenth century
Locale: England, Scutari, the Sudan
First published: 1918
Principal personages:
Henry Edward Manning, a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
Florence Nightingale, a nineteenth-century career woman
Dr. Thomas Arnold, an English educator
Charles George Gordon, a British general
Though possibly controversial, the
biographical writings of Lytton Strachey are
never dull; and when they address
themselves to the Victorian Period they
possess a special interest. For the biographer
himself was a product of that period, and
his feelings about it, while mixed, were
far from being vague or uncertain. The
Age of Victoria both fascinated and
repelled him; he loved it while he hated it.
Even though its pretentiousness
exasperated the artist in Strachey, he could not
help acknowledging its solidity and force,
as manifested in many outstanding
scientists and men of action.
Four such people, including one
woman, are his subjects in Eminent
Victorians. Not the greatest of their time,
these four yet belong among the most
appropriate of its decorations.
Superficially diverse in their activities, they
include an ecclesiastic, a woman of action,
an educational authority, and a man of
adventure. As drawn by their biographer,
they provide a striking illustration of the
many-faceted era in which they lived and
worked.
This quartet of portraits proved to be
a critical and financial success. It became
the cornerstone in an increasingly solid
career, and after it appeared, Strachey
was no longer in need of assistance from
family or friends. Yet his treatment of
Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale,
Arnold of Rugby, and General Gordon
did not go unchallenged. The author was
accused of undue severity with his
subjects, of handling facts with carelessness,
and of superficiality in his judgments.
Such indictments derived, in general,
from people friendly to one or more of
the individuals pictured in Eminent
Victorians; but not infrequently they were
joined by critics of influence and
standing.
Some of these critics overlooked the
point that Strachey's biographical method
aimed at verisimilitude instead of
photographic realism. It is true that his
determination to rise above mere facts
sometimes carried him too far—as far as
outright and sometimes outrageous caricature
—but the writing remained brilliant and
stimulating. The intelligent reader is
more likely to be diverted than deceived
by his prejudices, for his dislike for such
targets as Florence Nightingale and
Thomas Arnold is hardly disguised.
Whatever charges may be brought against
Strachey today, his services to
biographical writing are generally admitted: he
brought to it good proportion, good style,
and colorful realism.
For such talents, the life of Cardinal
Manning provides ideal material. But
Manning, despite his distinction as a
churchman, does not escape a touch of
the Strachey lash. He is revealed, this
representative of ancient tradition and
uncompromising faith, as a survival from
the Middle Ages who forced the
nineteenth century to accept him for what he
was. Practical ability, rather than saintli-
ness or learning, was the key to his
onward march. In the Middle Ages, says
Strachey, he would have been neither a
Francis nor an Aquinas, but he might
have been an Innocent.
1058

Very early in his life, Manning's hopes
became fixed on a position of power and
influence in the world. Upon leaving
college he aspired to a political career, but
its doors were abruptly closed to him by
his father's bankruptcy. Next he tried
the Church of England as another,
perhaps less promising, avenue to fulfillment.
By 1851, already over forty, he had
become an archdeacon, but such rank was
not enough. For some time his glance had
been straying to other pastures; finally,
he made the break and became a convert
to Roman Catholicism. In the process he
lost a friend—a rather important one-
named Gladstone.
Thereafter his ecclesiastical career was
an almost unbroken series of triumphs
and advances. One important asset was
the ability to make friends in the right
places, especially if one of those places
was the Vatican. Brooking no rivals,
Manning became the supreme
commander of the Roman Church in
England, then a cardinal. His magnetism and
vigor spread his influence beyond Church
boundaries; and at his death crowds of
working people thronged the route of his
funeral procession. At the end of a long
and twisted road, his egoism, fierce
ambition, and gift for intrigue accomplished
some unexpected rewards; not least
among them the regard of the poor.
The second of Strachey's eminent
Victorians is Florence Nightingale. Here, in
his treatment of one of the most
remarkable women of any age, the biographer
is conspicuously successful in resisting
any urge to be gallant. What her friends
called calm persuasiveness, he
characterized as demoniac fury; it is clear that to
him the "Lady with a Lamp" might be
extremely capable but she was also tire-
somely demanding and disagreeable.
Nevertheless, his account does disclose
the almost miraculous energy and
endurance which carried Miss Nightingale past
obstacle after obstacle.
For the sake of convenience, Strachey
divides the accomplishments of Florence
Nightingale into two phases. The first is
her dramatic contribution to the welfare
of British wounded during the course of
the Crimean campaign; the second deals
with her unflagging efforts, after the war,
to transform. the Army Medical
Department, revolutionize hospital services, and
even to work much needed reform in the
War Office itself. These aims dominated
her completely; in the prosecution of
them she drove her friends ruthlessly,
but she used herself with even less mercy.
Enduring to the age of ninety, she
became a legend; but, ironically and cruelly,
her last years brought senility and
softness upon her. They also brought, after
consciousness had dulled almost into
insensibility, the Order of Merit.
Dr. Thomas Arnold is generally
considered the father, not only of Matthew
Arnold, poet and critic, but of the British
public school system as well. Neither of
these products inspires Strachey with
much respect, and his bias against the
doctor is obvious in Eminent Victorians.
Dr. Arnold, for instance, was determined
to make good Christians, as well as good
Englishmen, out of his public school boys,
whereas Strachey had little patience for
either Christianity or Christian
institutions. This fact, incidentally, seems to
color his attitude toward all his subjects
in Eminent Victorians, since the latter
are, without exception, religiously
employed or inclined to a very strong degree.
Dr. Arnold's prefectorial system, as he
instituted it at Rugby, also meets with
strong disapproval. Strachey credits it
with two dubious, if unexpected, effects
on later English education, the worship of
athletics and the worship of good form.
To some Victorians, Dr. Arnold may have
seemed one of their most influential
teachers; to Strachey, he is the apostle of
ideas obviously harmful and absurd.
With apparent alacrity, the biographer
turns to his fourth and final portrait. It
is a long step from the educator to the
general, involving as it does the distance
between the single-mindedness of Arnold
and the maddening inconsistencies of
Gordon. For Charles George Gordon is
1059

unveiled as a mass of contradictions whom
no biographer could ever hope completely
to unraveL A mischievous, unpredictable
boy, he developed into an undisciplined,
unpredictable man. A romantic legend
wove itself about his early, swashbuckling
exploits in China and Africa. His deeds
were genuinely heroic—no one has ever
questioned Gordon's bravery—but they
combined oddly with his passion for
religion. He was influenced strongly, and
to an approximately equal degree, by
brandy and the Bible. Inclined, on the
whole, to be unsociable, he maintained
an icy reserve, except for fits of
ungovernable temper vented upon unlucky
servants or trembling subordinates.
This is the man who, in his fifties, was
chosen by the English government for a
delicate African mission. Strangely,
considering the qualifications of the man
selected, it was not military in its nature,
but diplomatic, requiring the utmost in
self-control, tact, and skill of a negotiator.
For General Gordon was to arrange for
inglorious evacuation of the Sudan by
British forces, a project for which he was
disqualified by his opinions, his
character, and everything in his life. What
followed, not surprisingly, was the tragedy
at Khartoum, an episode seldom matched
in military annals for the mystery and
horror with which it enveloped the fate
of the principal actor.
Thus, on a dramatic note, ends the
biographer's searching glance at four
eminent Victorians. Widely differing in
background, vocation, and personality, they
illustrate different phases of existence in
England of the later nineteenth century.
Each is bound to the others, however,
by the possession of a restless, questing
vitality, and each has left a mark upon
his age.
1060

EMMA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Type of plot: Social comedy
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Surrey, England
First published: 1816
Principal characters:
Emma Woodhouse, heiress of Hartfield
Mr. Woodhouse, her father
Harriet Smith, Emma's prote"g£e
Miss Bates, the village gossip
Jane Fairfax, Miss Bates' niece
Mr. George Knightley, Emma's brother-in-law
Mrs. Weston, Emma's former governess
Frank Churchill, stepson of Emma's former governess
Mr. Elton, a rector
Robert Martin, a yeoman
Critique:
The major problem in the world of
Jane Austen's novels is that of getting
the characters properly married, and
Emma is no exception. Its plot is
concerned with the complications taking
place before the couples are paired off
correctly, and with Emma's sometimes
unwise attempts to help things along.
She is perhaps a less generally appealing
heroine than Elizabeth Bennet in Pride
and Prejudice, but she is excellently done,
as are her father and the rest of the
Highbury circle. Miss Bates and Mrs.
Elton remain unsurpassed in English
satire.
The Story:
Emma Woodhouse, rich, clever,
beautiful, and no more spoiled and self-satis-
£ed than one would expect under such
circumstances, had just seen her friend,
companion, and ex-governess, Miss
Taylor, married to a neighboring widower,
Mr. Weston. While the match was
suitable in every way, Emma could not
help sighing over her loss, for now only
she and her father were left at Hartfield
and Mr. Woodhouse was too old and too
fond of worrying about trivialities to be
a companion for his daughter.
The Woodhouses were the great family
in the village of Highbury. In their
small circle of friends there were enougn
middle-aged ladies to make up card tables
for Mr. Woodhouse but no young lady to
be friend and confidante to Emma. Lonely
for her beloved Miss Taylor, now Mrs.
Weston, Emma took under her wing
Harriet Smith, the parlor boarder at a nearby
boarding-school. Harriet was an
extremely pretty girl of seventeen, not in
the least brilliant, but with pleasing,
unassuming manners, and a gratifying habit
of looking up to Emma as a paragon.
Harriet was the natural daughter of
some mysterious person, and Emma,
believing that the girl might be of noble
family, persuaded her that the society in
which she had moved was not good
enough for her. She encouraged her to
give up her acquaintance with the Martin
family, respectable farmers of some
substance though of no fashion. Instead of
thinking of Robert Martin as a husband
for Harriet, Emma influenced the girl
to aspire to Mr. Elton, the young rector.
Emma believed from Mr. Elton's
manner that he was beginning to fall in love
with Harriet, and she flattered herself
upon her matchmaking schemes. Mr.
Knighdey, brother of a London lawyer
married to Emma's older sister and one
of the few people who could see Emma's
faults, was concerned about her intimacy
1061

with Harriet. He warned her that no
good could come of it for either Harriet
or herself, and he was particularly upset
when he learned that Emma had
influenced Harriet to turn down Robert
Martin's proposal of marriage. Emma
herself suffered from no such qualms, for
she was certain that Mr. Elton was as
much in love with Harriet as Harriet—
through Emma's instigation—was with
him.
Emma suffered a rude awakening
when Mr. Elton, finding her alone, asked
her to marry him. She suddenly realized
that what she had taken for gallantries
to Harriet had been meant for herself,
and what she had intended as
encouragement to his suit of her friend, he had
taken as encouragement to aspire for
Emma's hand. His presumption was bad
enough, but the task of breaking the
news to Harriet was much worse.
Another disappointment now occurred
in Emma's circle. Frank Churchill, who
had promised for months to come tp see
his father and new stepmother, again
put off his visit. Churchill, Mr. Weston's
son by a first marriage, had taken the
name of his mother's family. Mr. Knight-
ley believed that the young man now
felt himself above his father. Emma
argued with Mr. Knightley, but she found
herself secretly agreeing with him.
Although the Hartfield circle was
denied Churchill's company, it did
acquire an addition in the person of Jane
Fairfax, niece of the garrulous Miss
Bates. Jane rivaled Emma in beauty and
accomplishment, one reason why, as Mr.
Knightley hinted, Emma had never been
friendly with Jane. Emma herself blamed
Jane's reserve for their somewhat cool
relationship.
Soon after Jane's arrival, the Westons
received a letter from Churchill setting
another date for his visit. This time he
actually appeared, and Emma found him
a handsome, well-bred young man. He
called frequently upon the Woodhouses,
and also upon the Bates family, because
cf prior acquaintance with Jane Fairfax.
Emma rather than Jane was the recipient
of his gallantries, however, and Emma
could see that Mr. and Mrs. Weston were
hoping that the romance would prosper.
About this time Jane Fairfax received
the handsome gift of a pianoforte,
anonymously given. It was presumed to'have
come from some rich friends with whom
Jane, an orphan, had lived, but Jane
herself seemed embarrassed with the
present and refused to discuss it. Emma
wondered if it had come from Mr.
Knightley, after Mrs. Weston pointed
out to her his seeming preference and
concern for Jane. Emma could not bear
to think of Mr. Knightley's marrying
Jane Fairfax, and after observing them
together, she concluded to her own
satisfaction that he was motivated by
friendship, not love.
It was now time for Frank Churchill
to end his visit, and he departed with
seeming reluctance. During his last call
at Hartfield, he appeared desirous of
telling Emma something of a serious
nature; but she, believing him to be on
the verge of a declaration of love, did
not encourage him because in her
daydreams she always saw herself refusing
him and their love ending in quiet
friendship.
Mr. Elton returned to the village with
a hastily wooed and wedded bride, a lady
of small fortune, extremely bad manners,
and great pretensions to elegance.
Harriet, who had been talked into love by
Emma, could not be so easily talked out
of it; but what Emma had failed to
accomplish, Mr. Elton's marriage had, and
Harriet at last began to recover. Her
recovery was aided by Mr. Elton's
rudeness to her at a ball. When he refused
to dance with her, Mr. Knightley, who
rarely danced, offered himself as a
partner, and Harriet, without Emma's
knowledge, began to think of him instead of
Mr. Elton.
Emma herself began to think of
Churchill as a husband for Harriet, but
she resolved to do nothing to promote
the match. Through a series of misin-
1062

terpretations, Emma thought Harriet was
praising Churchill when she was really
referring to Mr. Knightley.
The matrimonial entanglement was
further complicated because Mrs. Weston
continued to believe that Mr. Knightley
was becoming attached to Jane Fairfax.
Mr. Knightley, in his turn, saw signs of
some secret agreement between Jane
Fairfax and Frank Churchill. His
suspicions were finally justified when
Churchill confessed to Mr. and Mrs.
Weston that he and Jane had been
secretly engaged since October. The Wes-
tons' first thought was for Emma, for they
feared that Churchill's attentions to her
might have had their effect. Emma
assured Mrs. Weston that she had at one
time felt some slight attachment to
Churchill, but that that time was now
safely past. Her chief concerns now were
that she had said things about Jane to
Churchill which she would not have said
had she known of their engagement, and
also that she had, as she believed,
encouraged Harriet in another fruitless
attachment.
When she went to break the news
gently to Harriet, however, Emma found
her quite unperturbed by it, and after
a few minutes of talking at cross
purposes Emma learned that it was not
Churchill but Mr. Knightley upon whom
Harriet had now bestowed her affections.
When she told Emma that she had
reasons to believe that Mr. Knightley
returned her sentiments, Emma suddenly
realized the state of her own heart; she
herself loved Mr. Knightley. She now
wished she had never seen Harriet Smith.
Aside from the fact that she wanted to
marry Mr. Knightley herself, she knew
a match between him and Harriet would
be an unequal one, hardly likely to bring
happiness.
Emma's worry over this state of affairs
was soon ended when Mr. Knightley
asked her to marry him. Her complete
happiness was marred only by the fact
that she knew her marriage would upset
her father, who disliked change of any
kind, and that she had unknowingly
prepared Harriet for another
disappointment. The first problem was solved when
Emma and Mr. Knightley decided to
reside at Hartfield with Mr. Woodhouse as
long as he lived. As for Harriet, when
Mr. Knightley was paying attention to
her, he was really trying to determine the
real state of her affections for his young
farm tenant. Consequently Mr. Knightley
was able to announce one morning that
Robert Martin had again offered himself
to Harriet and had been accepted. Emma
was overjoyed that Harriet's future was
now assured. She could always reflect
that all parties concerned had married
according to their stations, a prerequisite
for their true happiness.
1063

THE EMPEROR JONES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
Type of plot: Expressionistic melodrama
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: West Indies
First presented: 1920
Principal characters:
Brutus Jones, Emperor
Smithers, a Cockney trader
Lem, a native
Critique:
Eugene O'Neill departed from
traditional dramatic writing when he created
this play, which concerns itself expres-
sionistically with the forces that make a
man what he is. The Emperor Jones goes
forward and backward simultaneously:
Brutus Jones is carried, in the realm of the
stage-actual, from his position as emperor
to his death from fear; while, in the short,
interrelated, and dynamic episodes which
symbolize Jones' and his race's history, the
action regresses in point of time from the
present to several hundred years ago in
the Congo jungle. The Emperor Jones
was first produced by the Provincetown
Players, in 1920.
The Story:
Henry Smithers, a Cockney
adventurer, learned from a Negro woman that
the followers of Brutus Jones, self-styled
emperor of a West Indian island, were
about to desert their ruler. With Smithers*
help, Jones, a former Pullman porter and
jail-breaker, had duped the natives into
believing he was a magician. The
superstitious natives made him emperor of the
island. Smithers disclosed to the emperor
the disaffection of his subjects, who had
been taxed and cheated by the pair
beyond human endurance. Jones had
judged that he had six more months of
power before the natives caught on to his
skullduggery. He had had a silver bullet
cast for a good luck charm; besides, the
bullet might be useful if he were ever
caught by his subjects.
At Smithers' suggestion, Jones rang a
bell for his attendants; no one appeared.
Jones resigned his position as emperor on
the spot and made immediate plans to
escape through the jungle to the coast.
Drums began to beat in the hills. The ex-
emperor gave the palace to Smithers, took
up his white Panama hat, and walked
boldly out the front door.
At the edge of the jungle Brutus Jones
searched unsuccessfully for tinned food
he had cached for such an emergency.
The drums continued to beat, louder and
more insistent. Night fell, and formless
fears came out of the jungle to beset
Jones. The moon rose. Jones came into a
clearing and there in the moonlight he
saw Jeff, a Pullman porter he thought he
had killed in a razor duel. Jeff was
throwing dice. When the kneeling figure
refused to answer him, Jones shot at him.
The phantom disappeared. Drums still
thudded in the distance. Jones, now sick
with fright, plunged into the inky jungle.
After a while he came upon a road and
paused to rest. A chain gang came out of
the forest. The guard of the gang
motioned to Jones to take his place in the
gang and get to work. When the guard
whipped him, Jones lifted his shovel to
strike him, but he discovered that he
actually had no shovel. In his rage of fear
and frustration, he fired his revolver at
THE EMPEROR JONES by Eugene O'Neill. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Copy-
right, 1921, by Boni and Liveright Inc. Renewed, 1948.
1064

the guard. The road, the guard, and the
chain gang disappeared; the jungle closed
in. The louder beat of the tom-toms drove
Jones on in frantic circles.
Now in tatters, the terrified Jones
repented the murders he had committed
and the way he had cheated the islanders.
He came next upon a slave auction
attended by whites dressed in the costumes
of the 1850's. An auctioneer put Jones
on the auction block. Frightened, Jones
shattered this apparition by firing one
shot at the auctioneer and another at a
planter. He dashed into the forest, mad
with fear. The drums continued to beat.
At three o'clock Jones came to a part of
the jungle which strangely resembled the
hold of a slave ship. He found himself
one of a cargo of slaves who were swaying
slowly with the motion of the ship. Jones
and the other slaves moaned with sorrow
at being taken away from their homeland.
Having only the silver bullet left in his
revolver, Jones saved it and dashed on again
into the black of the night.
Next he came upon an altar-like
arrangement of boulders near a great river.
He sank to his knees as if to worship. A
Congo witch doctor appeared from
behind a large tree and began a primitive
dance. Jones was hypnotized by the ritual.
The witch doctor indicated to Jones in
pantomime that the ex-emperor must offer
himself as a sacrifice in order to overcome
the forces of evil. A great green-eyed
crocodile emerged from the river; Jones
fired the silver bullet at the monster and
the witch doctor disappeared behind a
tree, leaving Jones lying on the ground
completely overcome by fear.
At dawn Lem, the leader of the rebels,
came with Smithers and a group of
natives to the edge of the jungle where
Jones had entered the night before. Lem
had been delayed in pursuing Jones
because of the necessity of manufacturing
silver bullets, which, Lem believed, were
the only means of taking Jones' life.
Several of Lem's men entered the jungle.
They soon found the prostrate Jones, who
had run in circles all the night. One shot
him through the chest with a silver bullet.
Jones' body was brought back to Lem,
who thought that the silver bullet was
what had really killed Jones. But
Smithers, looking at Brutus Jones' fear-
contorted face, knew differently.
1065

ENDYMION
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Lyly (c. 1554-1606)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Ancient Greece
First presented: 1588
Principal characters:
Endymion, a courtier
Cynthia, the queen, loved by Endymion
Tellus, in love with Endymion
Eumenides, Endymion's friend
Semele, loved by Eumenides
Corsites, in love with Tellus
Dipsas, an enchantress
Geron, her long-lost husband
Sir Tophas, a fop
Floscula, Tellus' friend
Critique:
Endymion; or, The Man in the Moon,
is undeniably an effete, even trivial play:
the plot is singularly inconsequential and
artificial; the characters are unreal; the
dialogue is pedantic. But Endymion was
important historically for these very
reasons, in that Lyly was trying to make the
drama an art. Writing for the court rather
than the populace, Lyly replaced the
earthiness and crudity of earlier English
plays with refinement and polish, thereby
setting new standards which later
dramatists, including Shakespeare, were to
emulate.
The Story:
To his friend Eumenides, Endymion
declared his love for Cynthia, goddess of
the moon. Eumenides chided Endymion,
reminding him of the moon's inconstancy,
whereupon Endymion extolled
inconstancy and change as virtues, attributes
of everything beautiful. Convinced that
Endymion was bewitched, Eumenides
prescribed sleep and rest for the love-sick
swain, but Endymion rejected the advice
and berated his friend.
In hopes of misleading his friends,
Endymion had also professed love for
Tellus, a goddess of the earth. Enraged
by his apparent perfidy, Tellus swore to
take revenge. Since she still loved
Endymion, Tellus was unwilling for him to
die; therefore she resolved to resort to
magic and witchcraft in order to awaken
his love for her. Her friend Floscula
warned that love inspired by witchcraft
would be bitter, but Tellus ignored the
warning and left to consult Dipsas, an
enchantress.
In contrast to Endymion and Tellus,
Sir Tophas habitually scoffed at love and
dedicated his life to war—against
blackbirds, mallards, and wrens. When mocked
by Endymion's and Eumenides' pages,
Dares and Samias, Sir Tophas swore to
kill them, but pardoned them when they
explained that they had been speaking in
Latin.
Meanwhile, Tellus had found Dipsas,
whom she consulted about the possibility
of killing Endymion's love for Cynthia
and supplanting it by magic with love for
the earth goddess herself. Dipsas declared
that since she was not a deity, she could
only weaken love, never kill it. At Tellus*
request Dipsas agreed to enchant
Endymion in such a way that his protestations
of love for Cynthia would be doubted.
Accompanied by Floscula and Dipsas,
Tellus confronted Endymion in a garden
and tried to make him confess his love
for Cynthia. Though he admitted that he
honored Cynthia above all other women,
1066

he insisted that he loved Tellus.
Later, the two pages, Dares and Sa-
mias, strolled in the gardens with their
own lady loves, whom they had shown
Endymion and Eumenides in the act of
mooning over their loves. As a jest, Dares
and Samias asked the two girls to feign
love for Sir Tophas, who, as usual, was
playing at warfare in the gardens. The
girls complied, but Sir Tophas, ignoring
them, reiterated his contempt for love
and his passion for war.
Still later, Dipsas came upon
Endymion asleep in a grove. Assisted by Bagoa,
her servant, Dipsas spelled Endymion
into a sleep from which he would not
awake until he was old and gray. In a
dream, three women appeared to
Endymion, and one of them started to stab him.
She desisted at the importuning of the
third, peered into a looking glass, and
threw down her knife. At this moment
an old man appeared carrying a book
which contained only three pages.
Endymion refused to read the book until
the man had torn up two of the pages.
When informed of Endymion's
mysterious slumber, Cynthia agreed with
Eumenides that the sages of the world
should be consulted about a remedy.
Also, angered by the impertinence of
Tellus, Cynthia made her a prisoner in
Corsites* palace, where she was to weave
tapestries depicting stories of people who
had been punished for their long tongues.
On the way to Thessaly, where
Cynthia was sending him to seek a cure for
Endymion, Eumenides met Geron, an
old hermit. Geron said that Eumenides,
if he were a faithful lover, could learn
the cure from a magic fountain nearby.
Since Eumenides had always been true
to Semele, the fountain promised to grant
any single wish he might make. Although
tempted to wish that his love for Semele
might be requited, dutifully he asked for
a cure for his friend. The fountain
answered that the cure was a kiss from
Cynthia.
In the meantime Tellus, slowly pining
away in prison, promised Corsites, her
jailer and suitor, that she would marry
if he could perform the impossible task
of bringing Endymion to a cave, where
she might see him once more. Corsites
undertook *his task but was himself
pinched into a slumber by fairies
guarding Endymion's body.
And so Cynthia found two sleeping
men when she came to the grove
accompanied by wise men who she hoped
would wake Endymion. But the sages
succeeded in waking only Corsites, who
freely confessed his love for Tellus and
what he had dared to do, inspired by
that love.
At last Eumenides returned and
persuaded Cynthia to attempt the cure. And
so, upon her kiss, Endymion awoke. But
his forty-year slumber had withered him:
he was so senile that he could not stand.
At Cynthia's request, however, he related
his strange dream, explaining that in the
book which the old man had given him
to read, he saw Cynthia being attacked
by beasts of ingratitude, treachery, and
envy. Cynthia promised to listen later
to a fuller account of this vision.
A short time later Bagoa disclosed that
Tellus and Dipsas had been responsible
for enchanting Endymion. For her pains
Bagoa was transformed into an aspen
tree by Dipsas.
Cynthia, however, was more lenient
than Dipsas. Learning that Tellus had
been motivated by unrequited love,
Cynthia forgave her and gave her to Corsites
as his wife. Dipsas, too, was pardoned
on condition that she would be reunited
with Geron, her husband, whom she had
sent away many years ago. This reunion
displeased Sir Tophas, who had discarded
his armor out of love for Dipsas; he was
content, however, when Cynthia
disenchanted Bagoa and gave her to Tophas
as his wife. To Eumenides she promised
Semele, but Semele objected on the
grounds that Eumenides had not asked
for her at the magic fountain. She was
placated, however, when Geron explained
that Eumenides would not have learned
the fountain's secret had he not been
1067

faithful. youth of Endymion and hade him perse-
Most important, Cvnthia restored the vere in his love.
1068

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Southern Norway
First presented: 1883
Principal characters:
Doctor Thomas Stockmann, a medical officer
Mrs. Stockmann, his wife
Petra, his daughter
Eilif, and
Morten, his sons
Peter Stockmann, his brother, the mayor
Morten Kiil, Mrs. Stockmann's father
Hovstad, an editor
Billing, a sub-editor
Aslaksen, a printer
Captain Horster, Dr. Stockmann's friend
Critique:
Known as the foremost dramatist of
the nineteenth century, Ibsen was in
constant conflict with the society of his time.
He believed that it was the majority who
caused people to stagnate. In An Enemy
of the People, Doctor Stockmann stood
alone, far in advance of the majority of
the people. He was persecuted and
ridiculed by those he tried to serve only
because he was in conflict with established
institutions of society. Ibsen saw himself
as a Doctor Stockmann, and through the
doctor gave the world ideas of universal
significance.
The Story:
All the citizens of the small Norwegian
coastal town were very proud of the
Baths, for the healing waters were making
the town famous and prosperous. Doctor
Stockmann, the medical officer of the
Baths, and his brother Peter, the mayor
and chairman of the Baths committee, did
not agree on many things, but they did
agree that the Baths were the source of
the town's good fortune. Hovstad, the
editor of the People's Messenger, and
Billing, his sub-editor, were also loud in
praise of the Baths. Business was good and
the people were beginning to enjoy
prosperity.
Then Doctor Stockmann received from
the University a report stating that the
waters of the Baths were contaminated.
Becoming suspicious when several visitors
became ill after taking the Baths, he had
felt it his duty to investigate. Refuse from
tanneries above the town was oozing into
the pipes leading to the reservoir and
infecting the waters. This meant that the
big pipes would have to be relaid, at a
tremendous cost to the owners or to the
town. When Hovstad and Billing heard
this news, they asked the doctor to write
an article for their paper about the
terrible conditions. They even spoke of
having the town give Doctor Stockmann
some kind of testimonial in honor of his
great discovery.
Doctor Stockmann wrote up his
findings and sent the manuscript to his
brother so that his report could be acted
upon officially. Hovstad called on the
doctor again, urging him to write some
articles for the People's Messenger. It was
Hovstad's opinion that the town had
fallen into the hands of a few officials
who did not care for the people's rights,
and it was his intention to attack these
men in his paper and urge the citizens to
get rid of them in the next election.
Aslaksen, a printer who claimed to
1069

have the compact majority under his
control, also wanted to join in the fight to get
the Baths purified and the corrupt officials
defeated. Doctor Stockmann could not
believe that his brother would refuse to
accept the report, but he soon learned that
he was wrong. Peter went to the doctor
and insisted that he keep his knowledge
to himself because the income of the town
would be lost if the report were made
public. He said that the repairs would be
too costly, that the owners of the Baths
could not stand the cost, and that the
townspeople would never allow an
increase in taxes to clean up the waters. He
even insisted that Doctor Stockmann
write another report, stating that he had
been mistaken in his earlier judgment.
He felt this action necessary when he
learned that Hovstad and Billing knew of
the first report. When the doctor refused
either to change his report or withhold it,
Peter threatened him with the loss of his
position. Even his wife pleaded with him
not to cross his powerful brother; he was
sustained in his determination to do right
only by his daughter Petra.
Hovstad, Billing, and Aslaksen were
anxious to print the doctor's article so that
the town could know of the falseness of
the mayor and his officials. They thought
his words so clear and intelligible that all
responsible citizens would revolt against
the corrupt regime. Aslaksen did plead for
moderation, but promised to fight for
what was right.
Peter Stockmann appeared at the office
of the Peoples Messenger and cleverly
told Aslaksen, Hovstad, and Billing that
the tradespeople of the town would suffer
if the doctor's report were made public.
He said that they would have to stand the
expense and that the Baths would be
closed for two years while repairs were
being made. The two editors and the
printer then turned against Doctor
Stockmann and supported Peter, since they felt
that the majority would act in this way.
The doctor pleaded with them to stand
by the promises they had given him, but
they were the slaves of the majority
opinion which they claimed to mold. When
they refused to print his article, the
doctor called a public meeting in the home of
his friend, Captain Horster. Most of the
citizens who attended were already
unfriendly to him because the mayor and the
newspaper editors had spread the news
that he wanted to close the Baths and ruin
the town. Aslaksen, nominated as
chairman by the mayor, so controlled the
meeting that a discussion of the Baths was
ruled out of order.
Doctor Stockmann took the floor,
however, and in ringing tones told the citizens
that it was the unbelievable stupidity of
the authorities and the great multitude of
the compact majority that caused all the
evil and corruption in the world. He said
that the majority destroyed freedom and
truth everywhere because the majority
was ignorant and stupid. The majority
was really in slavery to ideas which had
long outlived their truth and usefulness.
He contended that ideas become outdated
in eighteen or twenty years at the most,
but the foolish majority continued to
cling to them and deny new truths
brought to them by the intelligent
minority. He challenged the citizens to deny
that all great ideas and truths were first
raised by the persecuted minority, those
few men who dared to stand out against
the prevailing opinions of the many. He
said that the real intellectuals could be
distinguished as easily as could a
thoroughbred animal from a cross breed.
Economic and social position had no
bearing on the distinction. It was a man's soul
and mind that separated him from the
ignorant masses.
His challenge fell on deaf ears. As he
knew from the beginning, the majority
could not understand the meaning of his
words. By vote they named him an enemy
of the people. The next day they stoned
his house and sent him threatening
letters. His landlord ordered him to move.
He lost his position as medical director of
the Baths, and his daughter Petra was dis-
1070

missed from her teaching position. In each
case the person responsible for the move
against him stated that it was only public
opinion that forced the move. No one had
anything against him or his family, but no
one would fight the opinion of the
majority. Even Captain Horster, a friend who
had promised to take the Stockmanns to
America on his next voyage, lost his ship
because the owner was afraid to give a
ship to the man, the only man, who had
stood by the radical Dr. Stockmann.
Then the doctor learned that his father-
in-law had bought up most of the now
undesirable Bath stock with the money
which would have gone to Mrs.
Stockmann and the children. The townspeople
accused the doctor of attacking the Baths
so that his family could buy the stock and
make a profit, and his father-in-law
accused him of ruining his wife's
inheritance if he persisted in his stories about the
uncleanliness of the Baths. Reviled and
ridiculed on all sides, Doctor Stockmann
determined to fight back. He could open a
school. Starting only with any urchins he
could find on the streets, he would teach
the town and the world that he was
stronger than the majority, that he was
strong because he had the courage to
stand alone.

ENOCH ARDEN
Type of work: Poem
Author: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1864
Principal characters:
Enoch Akden, a shipwrecked sailor
Annie Lee, his wife
Philip Ray, his friend
Miriam Lane, a tavern keeper
Critique:
To some modern readers the language
of Enoch Arden may seem stilted and the
story of his unselfish love mawkishly
romantic, but we must remember that it
was written during a period when
unrequited love and unselfish devotion to
one's family were favorite subjects of
the reading public of England and
America. Tennyson has one virtue not shared
by all of his contemporaries; his poems
are easily read and understood. He
expressed better than any other poet of his
time the essential character of the
English people of the nineteenth century.
The Story:
Annie Lee, Philip Ray, and Enoch
Arden played together as children.
Sometimes Philip was the husband, sometimes
Enoch, but Annie was always the
mistress. If the boys quarreled over her,
Annie would weep and beg them not to
quarrel and say she would be a wife to
both of them.
As they grew older and ceased their
childish games, Enoch and Philip grew
to love Annie. Enoch told her of his
love, but Philip kept silent. Philip was
the miller's son and a rich boy; Enoch
was a poor orphan. He bought a small
boat and became a fisherman. He sailed
aboard a merchant ship for a full year
before he had enough money to make a
home for Annie. When he reached his
twenty-first year he asked her to be his
wife. While the two lovers talked
together, Philip looked down on them as
they sat at the edge of the wood. He
went away quietly, locking his love far
Annie deep in his heart.
For seven years Enoch and Annie
lived in health and prosperity. They had
two children, a girl and a boy. Then
misfortune came. Enoch slipped and fell
and lay months recovering. While he
was ill, a sickly child was born, his
favorite. There was no money and the
children were hungry, and Enoch's heart
almost broke to see his family in want.
The chance came for him to sail again
on a merchantman bound for China.
He sold his fishing boat that he might
get a small store of goods and set Annie
up as a trader while he was gone, so that
she and the children might not be in want
before his return. Annie begged him
for their children's sake not to take this
dangerous voyage. Rut Enoch laughed
at her fears and told her to give all hei
cares to God, for the sea was His as well
as the land, and He would take care oi
Enoch and bring him safely home. Annie
cut a lock of hair from the sickly child
and gave it to Enoch when he sailed.
For many months Annie waited for
word from Enoch. Her business did not
prosper; she did not know how to
bargain. In the third year the sickly child
died and Annie was crushed by grief.
After the funeral Philip broke his
silence. He begged to send the children
to school and care for them for the sake
of his friendship with her and Enoch,
Enoch had been gone for ten long years
before Philip asked Annie to be his wife.
He had not spoken before because he
1072

knew that she still waited for Enoch's
return. Annie asked him to wait one
year more. Six months bevond the year
passed before she and Philip were wed.
But still she feared to enter her own
house and thought that one day she
would see Enoch waiting for her. It was
not until after she bore Philip a child
that she was at peace with herself.
Enoch had been shipwrecked and cast
upon a desert island. Although he did
not lack for food and shelter, his heart
was heavy with loneliness and worry
about his wife and children. One day
a ship came to the island and took him
aboard. When he returned to England
he was old and stooped and no one knew
him. Finding his old house empty, he
took lodging in a tavern kept by a widow,
Miriam Lane. Not knowing who he
was, Mrs. Lane told him of Annie and
Philip and their new baby. Enoch could
only murmur that he was lost. Watching
from a high wall behind Philip's house,
he saw Annie and the children in their
happiness. He knew he could never
shatter that new life.
He lived quietly and did what work
he could and told no one his name or
from where he came. At last, sick and
dying, he called Mrs. Lane to his
bedside and told her his story. He asked
her to tell Annie and Philip and the
children that he died blessing them, and
he sent the lock of hair to Annie so she
would know he spoke the truth. His
was a great unselfish love until the end.
1073

THE ENORMOUS ROOM
Type of work: Novel
Author: E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)
Type of plot: Autobiographical fiction
Time of plot: 1917
Locale: France
First published: 1922
Principal characters:
E. E. Cummings, an American ambulance driver
W. S. B., his American friend
Apollyon, head of the French prison
rockyfeller,
The Wanderer,
Zoo-Loo,
Surplice, and
Jean Le Negre, fellow prisoners
Critique:
The Enormous Room tells of more
than three uncomfortable months in
prison; it tells of the outrage and terror
and hope and fear of men caught in the
mesh of wartime government. E. E.
Cummings did not want the book to
stand merely as an indictment of the
French government; he wanted it to tell
of the strange and amazing things he
had learned about people while in prison.
In reading the book, one gets to know
not only the author and his friend B.,
but all the inmates of the enormous
room. Each is a study of some human
quality. Abounding with sharply drawn
scenes and portraits, the novel is
compelling in its vivid detail. The book is not
so much a study of the stupidity and
brutality of war as it is a quietly
passionate vindiction of the animal Man.
The Story:
E. E. Cummings and his friend, B.,
were unhappy as members of the Norton-
Harjes Ambulance Service, a unit sent
by Americans to aid the French during
World War I. One day they were
arrested by French military police. From
hints dropped during an investigation
Cummings gathered that B. had written
some letters suspected by the censor.
Because they were good friends, both
men were held for questioning. Exactly
what they were suspected of doing they
never found out. On one occasion
Cummings was asked whether he hated the
Germans; He replied that he did not,
that he simply loved the French very
much. The investigating official could
not understand how one could love the
French and not hate Germans. Finally
Cummings and B. were separated and
sent to different prisons. As time went
by, Cummings was questioned again and
again and moved from one spot to
another, always under strict guard.
Late one night he was taken to a
prison in the little provincial town of
Mac6. There he was thrown into a
huge darkened room, given a straw
mattress, and told to go to sleep. In the
darkness he counted at least thirty voices
speaking eleven different languages.
Early the next morning he was told that
B., his friend, was in the same room.
The two men were happy to see each
other again. B. told him that the
prisoners in the room were all suspected
of being spies, some only because they
spoke no French.
That morning he learned the routine
of the prison. The enormous room was
lined with mattresses down each side,
with a few windows to let in light at one
THE ENORMOUS ROOM by E. E. Cummings. By permission of the author, of Brandt & Brandt, and the
publishers, Liveright Publishing Corp. Copyright, 1922, by Boni & Liveright, Inc.
1074

end. It smelted of stale tobacco and
sweat. Some of the men in the room
were mad; most of them were afraid they
might become so. To all of them life
consisted of following dull prison routine.
At five-thirty in the morning someone
went down to the kitchen under guard
and brought back a bucket of sour, cold
coffee. After coffee, the prisoners drew
lots to see who would clear the room,
sweep the floors, and collect the trash. At
seven-thirty they were allowed to walk
for two hours in a small, walled-in
courtyard. Then came the first meal of the
day, followed by another walk in the
garden. At four they had supper. At
eight they were locked in the enormous
room for the night.
There was little entertainment except
fighting and conversation. Some of the
men spent their time trying to catch
sight of women kept in another part of
the prison. Cummings began to accustom
himself to the enormous room and to
make friends among the various inmates.
One of the first of these was Count Bra-
gard, a Belgian painter who specialized in
portraits of horses. The count was z.
perfect gentleman, even in prison, and
always looked neat and suave. He and
Cummings discussed painting and the
arts as if they were at some polite party.
Before Cummings left, the count began
to act strangely. He withdrew from his
old friends. He was losing his mind.
One day Cummings was taken to see
the head of the prison, a gross man he
called Apollyon, after the devil in
Pilgrim's Progress. Apollyon had no interest
in the prisoners as long as they made as
little trouble as possible for him. He
questioned Cummings for a considerable
time in an effort to learn why the
American was there, a circumstance over which
the American himself often wondered.
When new inmates arrived in the
room, everyone looked them over
hopefully, some to find a man with money he
would lend, some to find a fellow-
countryman, and some to find a friend.
One day a very fat, rosy-cheeked man
joined the group. He had been a
successful manager of a disreputable house.
Because he had a large sum of money
with him, he was nicknamed Rocky-
feller. He hired a strong man to act as
his bodyguard. Nobody liked him, for
he bought special privileges from the
guards.
During his stay in the room,
Cummings met three men, very different
from each other, whose personal qualities
were such that they made life seem
meaningful to him. He called them the
Delectable Mountains, after the
mountains Christian found in Pilgrim's
Progress. The first was the Wanderer, whose
wife and three little children were in
the women's ward of the prison. He was
a strong man, simple in his emotions and
feelings. Cummings liked to talk with
him about his problems. One of the
Wanderer's children, a little boy,
sometimes came to the enormous room to
visit his father. His pranks and games
both bothered and amused the men. The
Wanderer treated his son with love and
the deepest kind of understanding. Until
he was sent away he remained
Cummings* best friend.
The second Delectable Mountain was
called Zoo-loo, a Polish farmer who could
speak neither French nor English, but
who could communicate by signs. In a
short time he and Cummings knew all
about each other. Zoo-loo had a knack
for hiding money, and despite the fact
that the head of the prison had him
searched from head to toe, and all his
belongings searched, he seemed always
able to produce a twenty franc note from
his left ear or the back of his neck. His
kindnesses to Cummings and B. were
innumerable.
The third Delectable Mountain was
an amazing little man named Surplice.
Everything astonished him. When
Cummings had some candy or cheese,
Surplice was sure to come over to his cot
and ask questions about it in a shy
manner. His curiosity and friendly
conversation made everything seem more
1075

important and interesting than it really
was.
One morning Jean le Negre was
brought to the enormous room, a gigantic,
simple-minded Negro whom Cummings
was to remember as the finest of his
fellow prisoners. Jean was given to
practical jokes and tall tales; he had been
arrested for impersonating an English
officer and had been sent to the prison
for psychopathic observation. Because of
his powerful body, the women prisoners
called their approval and admiration
when he walked in the courtyard. His
favorite was Lulu, who smuggled money
and a lace handkerchief to him. When
she was sent to another prison, Jean
was disconsolate. When one of the
prisoners pulled at Lulu's handkerchief,
Jean handled him roughly. A scuffle
followed. The guards came and Jean
was taken away for punishment. Calls
from the women prisoners aroused him
so that he attacked the guards and sent
them flying until he was quieted and
bound by a fellow prisoner whom he
trusted. After that experience Jean grew
quiet and shy.
Just before Cummings himself was
released, B. was sent away. Jean le
Negre tried to cheer Cummings with
his funny stories and exaggerated lies,
but without much success. Cummings
was afraid B. might never get free from
the prisons of France, a groundless fear
as he learned later. He himself left the
enormous room knowing that in it he
had learned the degradation and nobility
and endurance of human nature.
1076

AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING
Type of work: Philosophical treatise
Author: David Hume (171M776)
First published: 1748
"Philosophical decisions," says Hume
toward the end of his Enquiry, "are
nothing but the reflections of common life,
methodised and corrected." This simple,
homely epigram conceals a great deal. For
one thing, the Enquiry is actually a sort
of popularized revision of ideas that were
systematically developed in Book I of his
precocious Treatise of Human Nature
(1739-1740), which, although it was
completed before the author was twenty-
five, has been characterized as one of the
most profound, thoroughly reasoned, and
purely scientific works in the history of
philosophy. Secondly, Hume's method for
correcting the reflections of common life
actually involves a thorough attack on the
obscurities of metaphysical idealists.
Born in an age of reason, Hume at first
shared the optimism of those who were
certain that pure reason could unlock the
secrets of nature, and as he read Bacon,
Newton, Hobbes, and Locke, he longed
for fame equal to theirs. But, as he
reported in a letter to Sir Gilbert Elliot,
though he "began with an anxious search
after arguments, to confirm the common
opinion; doubts stole in, dissipated,
returned; were again dissipated, returned
again; and it was a perpetual struggle of
restless imagination against inclination,
perhaps against reason." That last,
"perhaps against reason," is the crucial phrase,
for no philosopher before Hume used
reason so brilliantly in an attack against
the certainties of reason. The twelve
essays of the Enquiry reflect his three
principal attacks: (1) against rationalism, the
doctrine of innate ideas, faith in onto-
logical reasoning and an ordered
universe; (2) against empiricism, both the
kind that led to Lockian dualism and
Berkeleyan idealism, on the ground that
neither the physical nor the spiritual can
be proved; and (3) against deism, based
HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
on universal axioms and the law of
causality. It is not surprising that since Hume
religions have largely made their appeals
to faith rather than to reason.
Considering what remains when such
thoroughgoing skepticism rejects so much
of the beliefs of rational men, Hume
himself readily admitted (in the fourth essay,
"Sceptical Doubts Concerning the
Operations of the Understanding") that as a
man he was quite satisfied with ordinary
reasoning processes, but that as a
philosopher he had to be skeptical. For
reasoning was not based on immediate sense
experience. "The most lively thought is
still inferior to the dullest sensation," he
asserted in his second essay, "The Origin
of Ideas." Unless the. mind is "disordered
by disease or madness," actual perceptions
have the greatest "force and vivacity,"
and it is only on such matters of basic
mental fact rather than on the abstract
relations of ideas, as in mathematics, that
we must depend for certainties about life.
For example, no amount of reasoning
could have led Adam in the Garden of
Eden to believe that fluid, transparent
water would drown him or that bright,
warm fire would burn him to ashes. "No
object ever discovers [reveals], by the
qualities which appear to the senses,
either the causes which produced it, or
the effects which arise from it." In
dealing with this idea, Hume is quite dogged
and persistent; he backs every argument
into a corner, into some "dangerous
dilemma." What is more he enjoys himself
immensely while doing it—"philosophers
that gave themselves airs of superior
wisdom and sufficiency, have a hard task
when they encounter persons of
inquisitive dispositions," he says. Concerning
cause and effect, he argues that we
expect similar effects from causes that
appear similar; yet this relationship does not
1077

always exist and, though it is observed, it
is not reasoned. Furthermore, it is merely
an arbitrary assumption, an act of faith,
that events which we remember as having
occurred sequentially in the past will
continue to do so in the future. Causation
thus was merely a belief, and belief he
had defined as a "lively idea related to or
associated with a present impression."
This seemed to Hume not merely an
impractical philosophical idea, but a
momentous discovery of great consequence.
Since causation was an a priori principle
of both natural and moral philosophy,
and since causation could not be
reasonably demonstrated to be true, a
tremendous revolution in human thought was
in preparation. Only in the pure realm
of ideas, logic, and mathematics, not
contingent upon the direct sense awareness
of reality, could causation safely (because
arbitrarily) be applied—all other sciences
are reduced to probability. The
concluding essay, "Of the Academical or
Sceptical Philosophy," reaches grand heights of
eloquence, when Hume argues that a
priori reasoning can make anything
appear to produce anything: "the falling of
a pebble may, for aught we know,
extinguish the sun; or the wish of a man
control the planets in their orbits. . . ."
When we run over libraries,
persuaded of these principles, what havoc
must we maker* If we take in hand any
volume; of divinity or school
metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it
contain any abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number? No. Does it
contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matter of fact and existence?
No. Commit it then to the flames: for
it can contain nothing but sophistry
and illusion.
The polemic vigor of the essays stems
in large part from the bitter experiences
Hume had in the years immediately
preceding the publication of the Enquiry.
In 1744 he had sought to fill a vacancy
in the chair of Ethics and Pneumatical
Philosophy at Edinburgh University, but
to his astonishment his Treatise was
invoked to prevent the appointment: "such
a popular clamor has been raised against
me in Edinburgh, on account of
Scepticism, Heterodoxy, and other hard names
. . . that my Friends find some Difficulty
in working out the Point of my
Professorship." Then he was dismissed without
full salary as tutor to the mad son of the
Marquis of Annandale. These experiences
helped sharpen the hard cutting edge of
his thought and prose style.
After refining his conception of reason
and its modes of function, Hume applies
it to four crucial problems: "Liberty and
Necessity," "Reason of Animals,"
"Miracles," and "Particular Providence and a
Future State."
Concerning liberty and necessity,
Hume argues that since the subject
relates to common life and experience
(unlike topics such as the origin of worlds or
the region of spirits), only ambiguity of
language keeps the dispute alive. For a
clear definition, he suggests that it be
consistent with plain matters of fact and
with itself. Difficulty arises when
philosophers approach the problem by examining
the faculties of the soul rather than the
operations of body and brute matter. In
the latter, men assume that they perceive
cause and effect, but in the functioning
of their minds they feel no connection
between motive and action. However, we
cannot invoke the doctrine of cause and
effect without, ultimately, tracing all
actions—including evil ones—to the Deity
whom men refuse to accept as the author
of guilt and moral turpitude in all his
creatures. As a matter of fact, freedom
and necessity are matters of momentary
emotional feeling "not to be controuled
or altered by any philosophical theory or
speculation whatsoever."
The "Reason of Animals" consists—as
it does in children, philosophers, and
mankind in general—not so much in
logical inferences as in experience of
analogies and sequential actions. Observation
and experience alone teach a horse the
1078

proper height which he can leap or a
greyhound how to meet the hare in her
tracks with the least expenditure of
energy. Hume's learning theory here seems
to be based on the pleasure-pain principle
and forms the background for some
theories of twentieth-century psychology.
However, Hume ends this essay with a
long qualification in which he cites the
Instincts, unlearned knowledge derived
from the original hand of nature, and
then adds this curious final comment:
"The experimental reasoning itself, which
we possess in common with beasts, and
on which the whole conduct of life
depends, is nothing but a species of instinct
or mechanical power, that acts in us
unknown to ourselves."
The essay on miracles is perhaps the
most spirited of the entire collection and
it is the one which Hume expected,
correctly, would stir the greatest opposition.
Nevertheless, he was certain that his
argument would be, for the wise and the
learned, "an everlasting check to all kinds
of superstitious delusion, and
consequently . . . useful as long as the world
endures." Events can be believed to
happen only when they are observed, and
all reports of events not directly observed
must be believed only to the degree that
they conform with probability,
experimentally or experientially derived. A
miracle is a violation of the laws of nature;
therefore it violates all probability;
therefore it is impossible. History gives no
instance of any miracle personally attended
to by a sufficient number of
unquestionably honest, educated, intelligent men.
Despite the surprise, wonder, and other
pleasant sensations attendant upon
reports of novel experiences, all new
discoveries that achieve credibility among
men have always resembled in
fundamentals those objects and events of which we
already have experience. The most
widespread belief in miracles exists among
primitive barbarians. Finally, since there
is no objective way of confirming
miracles, believers have no just basis for
rejecting those claimed by all religions.
"So that, on the whole, we may
conclude, that the Christian Religion not
only was at first attended with miracles,
but even at this day cannot be believed
by any reasonable person without one.
Mere reason is insufficient to convince us
... to believe what is most contrary to
custom and experience."
In the 1777 posthumous edition of the
Enquiry appeared the announcement that
these unsystematic essays be alone
regarded as containing Hume's
philosophical sentiments and principles. Despite the
fact that professional philosophers,
especially the logical positivists, still prefer
the earlier Treatise of Human Nature, it
is well that the Enquiry with its livelier
style and popular appeal stands as his
personal testament. In it he said that he
would be "happy if ... we can
undermine the foundations of an abstruse
philosophy, which seems to have hitherto
served only as a shelter to superstition,
and a cover to absurdity and error." The
irony is that he succeeded so well in
undermining reason that he opened the
door to the romanticism of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But
his voice has outlasted that babel and his
humanistic skepticism survives. "Be a
philosopher," he cautioned himself, "but
amidst all your philosophy, be still a
man."
1079

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Heroic adventure
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: The ancient world
First transcribed: c. 2,000 B.C.
Principal characters:
Gilgamesh, ruler of Uruk
Engidu, his companion
Anu, the chief god
Ishtar, divinity of fertility
Utnapishtim, a man who found the secret of life
Ur-Shanabi, boatman on the waters of death
Ninsun, a goddess
Siduri, the divine cup-hearer
Khumbaba, a dragon
Critique:
The idea of the superman is not a new
one. Demigods who overcame great
obstacles enjoy a long and honored literary
tradition. Achilles, Odysseus, Hercules,
Samson, Beowulf, Roland and King
Arthur all have epic stature. Earlier than
any of these, however, is Gilgamesh, the
valiant hero of a Babylonian epic written
about four thousand years ago. A figure
of heroic proportions, Gilgamesh knew
love and conflict, friendship and loyalty,
joy and sorrow, courage and fear, and
ultimately the horror and mystery of
death. Thus the Gilgamesh epic embraces
die enduring themes of literature, and its
hero remains an enduring affirmation of
life in all its transience and mystery.
The Story:
Gilgamesh was the wisest, strongest
and most handsome of mortals, for he
was two-thirds god and one-third man. As
king of the city-state of Uruk he built a
monumental wall around the city, but in
doing so he overworked the city's
inhabitants unmercifully, to the point where
they prayed to the gods for relief.
The god Anu listened to their plea
and called the goddess Aruru to fashion
another demigod like Gilgamesh in
order that the two heroes might fight, and
thus give Uruk peace. Aruru created the
warrior Engidu out of clay and sent him
to live among the animals of the hills.
A hunter of Uruk found Engidu and
in terror reported his existence to
Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh advised the hunter to
take a priestess to Engidu's watering
place to lure Engidu to the joys of
civilization and away from his animal life.
The priestess initiated Engidu into
civilization with her body, her bread, and her
wine. Having forsaken his animal
existence, Engidu and the priestess started for
Uruk. On their arrival she told him of
the strength and wisdom of Gilgamesh
and of how Gilgamesh had told the
goddess Ninsun about his dreams of meeting
Engidu, his equal, in combat.
Engidu challenged Gilgamesh by
barring his way to the temple. An earth-
shaking fight ensued in which Gilgamesh
stopped Engidu's onslaught. Engidu
praised Gilgamesh's strength and the two
enemies became inseparable friends.
Gilgamesh informed Engidu of his
wish to conquer the • terrible monster,
Khumbaba, and challenged him to go
along. Engidu replied that the
undertaking was full of peril for both. Gilgamesh
answered that Engidu's fear of death
deprived him of his might. At last Engidu
THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH by William Ellery Leonard. By permission of the publishers, The Viking
Press, Inc. Copyright, 1934, by William Ellery Leonard.
1080

agreed to go with his friend. Gilgamesh
then went to the elders and they, like
Engidu, warned him of the perils he
would encounter. Seeing his
determination, the elders gave him their blessing.
Gilgamesh then went to Ninsun and she
also warned him of the great dangers,
but to no avail. Then she took Engidu
aside and told him to give Gilgamesh
special protection.
Upon climbing the cedar mountain to
reach Khumbaba, Gilgamesh related
three terrible dreams to Engidu, who
shored up Gilgamesh's spirit by placing
a favorable interpretation on them. On
reaching the gate to the cedar wood
where Khumbaba resided, the pair were
stopped by the watchman, who possessed
seven magic mantles. The two heroes
succeeded in overcoming him.
Accidentally, Engidu touched the magic portal
of the gate; immediately he felt faint
and weak, as if afraid of death. The
champions entered the cedar wood and
with the aid of the sun god slew
Khumbaba.
Upon their return to Uruk after their
victory, the goddess Ishtar fell in love
with Gilgamesh and asked him to be her
consort. But Gilgamesh, being wiser than
her previous consorts, recalled all of the
evil things she had done to her earlier
lovers. Ishtar then angrily ascended to heaven
and reported his scornful refusal to Anu.
Threatening to destroy mankind, she
forced Anu to create a monster bull that
would kill Gilgamesh.
Anu formed the bull and sent it to
Uruk. After it had slain five hundred
warriors in two snorts, Engidu jumped
on its back while Gilgamesh drove his
sword into its neck. Engidu then threw
the bull's thighbone in Ishtar's face, and
Gilgamesh held a feast of victory in his
palace.
Engidu, still ailing from touching the
portal to the cedar wood, cursed those
who had showed him civilization. He
related his nightmares to Gilgamesh,
grew faint-hearted, and feared death.
Since he had been cursed by touching
the gate, he died. Gilgamesh mourned
his friend six days and nights; on the
seventh he left Uruk to cross the steppes in
search of Utnapishtim, the mortal who
had discovered the secret of life.
Upon reaching the mountain named
Mashu, he found scorpion men
guarding the entrance to the underground
passage. They received him cordially
when they learned he was seeking
Utnapishtim, but they warned him that no
one had ever found a way through the
mountain.
Gilgamesh traveled the twelve miles
through the mountain in pitch darkness,
and at last he entered a garden. There
he found Siduri, the cup-bearing goddess,
who remarked on his haggard condition.
Gilgamesh explained that his woeful
appearance had been caused by the loss of
Engidu, and that he sought Utnapishtim.
The goddess advised him to live in
pleasure at home and warned him of the
dangers ahead.
Gilgamesh went oh his way, seeking
the boatman Ur-Shanabi, who might
possibly take him across the waters of death.
On finding Ur-Shanabi's stone coifers,
Gilgamesh broke them in anger, but he
made up for them by presenting the
boatman with huge poles. Ur-Shanabi then
ferried Gilgamesh across the waters of
death.
Utnapishtim, meeting Gilgamesh on
the shore, also spoke of his haggard
condition. Gilgamesh told him about the
loss of Engidu and his own search for
the secret of life. Utnapishtim replied that
nothing was made to last forever, that
life was transient, and that death was part
of the inevitable process.
Gilgamesh then asked how
Utnapishtim had found the secret of eternal life,
and Utnapishtim told him the story of
the Great Flood.
Utnapishtim had been told in a dream
of the gods' plans to flood the land. So
he built an ark and put his family and
all kinds of animals on it. When the flood
came, he and those on the ark survived,
and when the flood subsided he found
1081

himself on Mount Nisser. After the
waters had returned to their normal level,
he gave thanks to the gods, and in
return the god Ea blessed him and his wife
with the secret of life everlasting.
After finishing his story Utnapishtim
advised Gilgamesh to return home, but
before going he had Ur-Shanabi bathe
and clothe Gilgamesh in a robe that
remained clean as long as he lived. As
Gilgamesh was leaving Utnapishtim gave
him the secret of life, a magic plant
which grew at the bottom of the waters
of death. However, as Gilgamesh bathed
in a pool on his way home, an evil
serpent ate the plant.
On arriving home Gilgamesh went to
Ninsun to inquire how he could reach
Engidu in the land of the dead.
Although Ninsun directed him, he failed
in his attempt because he broke some of
the taboos that she had laid out for him.
Deeply disappointed, he made one final
appeal to the god Ea, the lord of the
depths of the waters, and Engidu was
brought forth. Gilgamesh asked Engidu
what happened to one after death, and
Engidu laid bare the full terrors of the
afterworld. Worms, neglect, and
disrespect were the lot of the dead.
1082

EPIGRAMS OF MARTIAL
Type of work: Verse epigrams
Author: Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis, c. 40-c. 104)
First transcribed: 80-104
The fourteen books of epigrams which
were written by Martial during a pivotal
period in the history of Rome display a
rare form of literary accomplishment, the
adoption and complete individual mastery
of a literary form by one man. From the
time of his arrival at Rome, about the
age of twenty-three, until his return to
his birthplace in Spain, Martial wrote
verse epigrams on a wide variety of
subjects and in many different styles.
Almost all that we know of Martial we
learn from his epigrams, and a great deal
of our present knowledge of Rome from
the death of Nero, in A.D. 68, until the
end of the first century comes from the
same source. What Martial tells us is the
sort of information that could not,
perhaps, be gained in any other way. One of
the most common subject areas of
Martial's verse is the everyday life of ancient
Rome. He took an active part in that
life, and it is realistically mirrored in his
writings.
There are roughly five other kinds of
epigrams that Martial produced. The first
of these, probably the most important to
him personally, is the epigram written in
praise of the emperor or some other man
of wealth and power. This tvpe was
written largely as a means of subsistence,
patronage being the primary svstem by
which poets lived. The contemplative
epigrams, usually addressed to friends, show
that Martial was realistic almost to the
point of cynicism. He reached no great
heights of philosophy, wishing only to be
comfortable and peaceful. His desire for
peace and solitude is expressed in another
type of epigram in which he praises life
in the country. In these Martial sees the
country with the enthusiasm often found
in the city dweller, but he did not write
pastoral verse; he saw the Italian
countryside as it really existed. The epigrammatic
epitaphs, often written on children, or
animals, are among his best work, revealing
sentiments that are rare in Martial,
feeling often leavened by humor. In the
epigrams on friendship he comes the closest
to real emotion. Romantic love is usually
treated satirically, and his discussions of
that passion in himself seem devoid of
sincere feeling.
Perhaps the chief fault that has been
found with his work is found in Martial's
personal situation, his toadying to men of
position. When he begged the Emperor
Domitian, whose name has become
synonymous with cruel despotism and
wicked licentiousness, for a special
position (pleading as the father of three
children), for example, his epigram has a
self-abasement that may disgust the
modern reader:
Welfare and glory of the earth, while
thee
We safe behold, we gods believe to be;
If my slight books did e'er thee
entertain,
And oft to read them thou didst not
disdain,
What nature does deny, do thou
bestow:
For father of three children make me
go-
When my verse takes not, this will be
an ease;
A high reward, in case it thee do
please.
It is important, however, to understand
the position poets held in Rome at that
time. Only through patronage, from the
emperor if possible, could a poet lead a
comfortable life. Everyone who hoped to
be looked upon as a gentleman wrote
verses, and those who wrote to live were
compelled to praise and praise highly in
order to be heard. Martial was certainly
not alone in this respect. Completely a
product of his time, he accepted the
necessity to praise great men as a part of
1083

the literary milieu in which he lived.
Criticism that may carry more weight
today is Martial's lack of poetic vision.
He is never profound, seldom lyrically
imaginative. His subjects are the people
and things around him, and he depicts
them as they are. It is this accuracy of
portrayal that makes his verse so valuable
in understanding his era.
Counterbalancing this absence of elevated vision,
however, is Martial's technical grasp of the
form in which he wrote. Although he did
not create the epigram, he is usually
considered the first epigrammatist. He
adopted the form, wrote exclusively in
it, and did with it all that could be done.
The verse epigram customarily has two
major parts, the exposition and the
conclusion. The parts may vary in length
—Martial's epigrams are from two to over
thirty verses long—but usually the
exposition takes up most of the poem, with the
conclusion being short, often containing
a sharp twist of meaning. Within this
general framework Martial used direct
address, questions, brief transition from
exposition to conclusion, satire, irony,
and sarcasm. Striking exaggerations and
sudden surprises are common, as are plays
on words and brief aphorisms. Rhetorical
devices abound. His epigram "On a
Pretender/' for example, shows the quick
turn of meaning at the close:
He whom you see to walk in so much
state,
Waving and slow, with a majestic gait,
In purple clad, passing the nobles' seat,
My Publius not in garments more
complete;—
Whose new rich coach, with gilt and
studded reins,
Fair boys and grown-men follow in
great trains,
Lately his very ring in pawn did lay
For four poor crowns, his supper to
defray.
Along with his technical skill goes an
animation and a lively perception that
make his epigrams often sound like casual
conversation. With all the conciseness so
necessary for the successful epigram,
Martial has an ease that removes from
his verses the tenseness that very often
causes epigrams to be painful reading.
Although he himself was poor, Martial
was the associate of rich men, and so had
full opportunity to see Roman life in all
its aspects. Slaves as well as emperors are
the subjects of his epigrams. Dinner
parties are described along with great
monuments. Everywhere he shows a sharp eye
and a penetrating wit. Hating pretension,
he pricks many a pompous bubble. Few
elements of physical or human nature
escape his attention.
Apart from Martial's clear pictures of
Rome at the end of the first century,
probably his greatest importance lies in
his influence upon later writers of the
epigram. Certainly it would be difficult
to find any seventeenth- or eighteenth-
century writer of this form in England
who did not turn to Martial as his
inspiration and guide. That there are at
least seven French translations of the
epigrams testifies to his popularity on the
Continent.
Shortly after the accession of the
Emperor Trajan, whom Martial flattered in
verse with little effect, the poet returned,
in 94, to his birthplace, Bilbilis, a Roman
colony in Spain, where he lived on a
comfortable estate given to him by a
woman whom he probably later married.
Characteristically, he was given money
for the trip by a friend, Pliny, because of
some verses written to him. It is equally
characteristic that Martial continued his
writing in Spain, sending his epigrams to
Rome promptly, but now with frequent
expressions of longing'for the excitements
and pleasures of the city that was to be
for only a short time longer the capital of
the world.
1084

THE EPINICIA
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Pindar (c. 522-c. 443 B.C.)
First transcribed: 502-452 B.C.
Pindar, by general consent the supreme
lyric poet of Greece, is one of the least
read of the world's great writers. A
number of reasons have been given by various
Greek scholars for the neglect of Pindar
by modern readers. His language, based
upon the Dorian dialect, poses problems
for readers of his poems in the original
Greek. Because all his epinicia or victory
odes (his only complete poems extant)
were written for special occasions and for
special audiences, today's readers must
depend upon scholarly notes for
explanations of his many allusions and his abrupt
transitions. The nature of the victory
odes, too, makes them seem monotonous
and even somewhat repetitious if a
number of them are read at one time.
Edith Hamilton has said that Pindar
is the most resistant of all poets to
translation; the intricate form of his poems has
never been more than faintly
approximated in most of the attempts that have
been made. In these odes Pindar achieved
a masterly blend of carefully balanced
structure and apparent emotional
freedom, so that while he seems carried away
by his feelings, he is at the same time in
full control of his art. Such a fusion is
difficult enough, one would suppose, for
a poet himself to attain. It is even more
so for a scholar or another poet to imitate
successfully in translating Pindar's Greek.
Ernest Myers and Sir John Sandys
simply turned the Greek poems into English
prose.
One reason for the tenuous appeal of
Pindar was mentioned a half-century ago
by Robert Tyrrell. 'It is hard," says
Tyrrell,
for us to figure to the imagination a
form of art which partakes in nearly
equal parts of the nature of a collect,
THE ODES OF PINDAR. Translated by Richard
publishers, The University of Chicago Press. Copyrij
1(
a ballad, and an oratorio; or to entej
into the mind of a poet who is partly
also a priest, a librettist, and a ballet
master; who, while celebrating the
victory of (perhaps) a boy in a wrestling
match, yet feels that he is not only
doing an act of divine service and
worship, but preaching the sacred truth of
the unity of the Hellenes and their
common descent from gods and heroes.
Yet the reader who does make the
attempt to imagine the ancient occasions
when these odes were first performed and
to understand their effect upon the
Greeks who watched and listened, even
if he reads them only in translation, will
be richly rewarded as he becomes familiar
with their form and purpose and with the
artistry of the poet who wrote them.
The cpinicia were written on contract
to celebrate the winning of such events
as chariot races, foot races, boxing and
wrestling contests, and the combination
pentathlon in four regularly held great
"games" or athletic meets. (The Pythian
games included competition in singing to
the flute and playing on the flute and the
lyre, as well as the usual athletic events
and horse races.) These games were
religious as well as secular, and they
honored particular gods: the Olympian and
Nemean games were in honor of Zeus,
the Pythian of Apollo, and the Isthmian
of Poseidon. The events were Panhel-
lenic, open only to contestants from
Greece or from such Greek island
colonies as Rhodes and Sicily. Any soldier
bearing .arms to the games, which were
held during periods of truce, was liable to
arrest and could be freed only by
ransom.
The odes were not written at the time
of the victories which they celebrated but
,attimore. Excerpts reprinted by permission of the
it, 1947, by The University of Chicago.

were composed for presentation at a later
time. Exact details are not known but it
is believed that the odes, commissioned
by the family or patron of the victor, were
presented by trained singers at some
private entertainment.
Though a close study of all forty-five
of the Efinicia reveals many individual
differences (several, in fact, are not really
victory odes), most of them follow a
general pattern. Composed in groups of three
stanzas—strophe, antistrophe, and epode
—they contain an introduction which
invokes divine aid to the poet, praises the
victor, and may include some reference to
the contest itself (which is never actually
described); a myth about gods or heroes;
and eulogy of the victor, his family, and
his city, along with social, moral, or even
semi-philosophical commentary on life.
Though the moral observations and
exhortations are usually reserved for the
concluding section of an ode, they often
appear in other sections. The odes vary
considerably in length: Olympia 12, for
example,, contains only nineteen lines,
whereas Pythia 4 runs to 299. The
present order of the odes does not follow the
chronology of their composition. They are
grouped according to the games in which
the victories were won; and even within
the four groups chronology is not
followed.
Pindar belonged to the aristocracy and
in the odes he celebrates the virtues and
accomplishments of aristocratic families
for whom the poems were composed.
This praise is to be expected since he had
been paid to write the poems, but one
gathers that Pindar had scant interest in
the less fortunate classes, whom he rarely
mentions. When he says, in Pythia 2,
that "wealth, with wisdom allotted
thereto, is the best gift of Fortune,,, he seems
to be expressing his own belief. A similar
sentiment is found in Nemea 9: 'Tor if
with much possession a man win
conspicuous honor,/there lies beyond no mark
for a mortal to overtake with his feet."
The many lines in which Pindar states
his faith in the gods or praises them for
their gifts to men suggest the earnest
sincerity of his religion. In Pythia 2 he
reminds Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, that
It Is God that accomplishes all term to
hopes,
God, who overtakes the flying eagle,
outpasses the dolphin in the sea; who
bends under his strength the man
with thoughts too high,
while to others he gives honor that ages
not.
In Isthmia 3 he says: "Great prowess
descends upon mortals,/Zeus, from you."
He often invokes the Graces or indicates
his great debt to them. One of the most
beautiful of the briefer Epinicia is
Olympia 14, which is less a victory ode than a
hymn in praise of the Graces who bless
mankind. It begins:
You who have your dwelling
in the place of splendid horses, founded
beside the waters of Kephisos:
O queens of song and queens of
shining
Orchomenos: Graces: guardians of the
primeval Minyai,
hear! My prayer is to you. By your
means all delight,
all that is sweet, is given to mankind.
The poet refers to the Olympian
victory itself only at the very end, when he
asks that Echo tell Kleodamos that his
son has "crowned his vouthful locks with
garlands won from the ennobling games."
Though there is an air of joyousness in
the Epinicia, with many references to
drinking and feasting and to processional
singing to the music of flute or lyre, they
are dignified by relating mortal victories
of strength and skill to the glorious deeds
of the gods or great heroes of the past.
The myths either alluded to or told in
detail include stories about Zeus, Hera-
kles, Belerophon, Tantalus, Jason,
Orestes, Peleus, and Hippolyta. The poems
are also elevated by the beauty of
Pindar's style, his frequent adjurations to
right living, and his reminders that man's
life is filled with both lights and shadows.
In Pythia 8 he praises the sweetness of
1086

life when God's brightness shines on
men. Yet he reminds us in Pythia 12:
Success for men, if it comes ever, comes
not unattended with difficulty. A god
can end it, even today. That which is
fated you cannot escape.
Though the fame of Pindar rests
almost entirely upon his Epinicia, he is
known to have written several other types
of lyrics, among them hymns, paeans,
dithyrambs, eulogies, and dirges. Of
these, more than three hundred fragments
have survived, enough to show Pindar's
considerable versatility both in form and
in style. Among the more beautiful of
the fragments are those from the dirges,
as in this picture of the dead in Elysium:
For them the sun shineth in his
strength, in the world below, while
here 'tis night; and, in meadows red
with roses, the space before their city
is shaded by the incense-tree, and is
laden with golden fruits. . . .
1087

EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908)
Type of plot: Philosophical realism
Time of plot: 1805-1869
Locale: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
First published: 1880
Principal characters:
Braz Cubas, a wealthy, cultured Brazilian
Marcella, his first mistress
Virgilia, his fiancee, later his mistress
Lobo Neves, Virgilia's husband
Quincas Borba, a philosopher and pickpocket
Critique:
This novel, written by one of Brazil's
leading men of letters, was not made
available in English translation until
1952, even though it had long been a
favorite with readers in the original
Portuguese and in Spanish translations.
Machado de Assis himself was president
of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from
its foundation in 1897 until his death in
1908. Epitaph of a Small Winner is the
story of an ordinary man who sums up
the profit of living as nothing, except
that he had left no children to whom he
could pass on the misery of human
existence. Because he left no children to
endure life, he was, says the author, a
small winner in the game of life.
Obviously Machado de Assis* attitude is one
of complete and ironic pessimism. As the
English translator points out, the book
combines the twin themes of nature's
indifference to man and man's own
egoism. Readers familiar with eighteenth-
century fiction will recognize many
stylistic peculiarities similar to those in
Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
The Story:
Braz Cubas, a wealthy Brazilian, died
of pneumonia in his sixty-fifth year. After
his death he decided to write his
autobiography, to while away a part of eternity
and to give mankind some record of his
life.
Braz was born in 1805. His childhood
was an easy one, for his father was
extremely wealthy and indulgent, only
pretending to be severe with his child for
the sake of appearances. One of the
earliest experiences the boy remembered
was the elation of the Brazilians over the
defeat of Napoleon, an occasion marked
in his memory by the gift of a small
sword. The sword was the most
important aspect of the occasion, and Braz
remarked that each person has his own
"sword" which makes occasions
important.
As a child, Braz Cubas did not like
school. In his seventeenth year he had
his first love affair with a courtesan
named Marcella. Trying to please his
mistress, Braz spent all the money he
could borrow from his mother, and then
gave promissory notes to fall due on the
day he inherited his father's estate. His
father, learning of the affair, paid off his
son's debts and shipped him off to a
university in Spain. At first Braz hoped
to take Marcella with him. She refused
to go.
Graduated from the university and
awarded a degree, Braz admitted that he
knew very little. He then took advantage
of his father's liberality and wealth and
spent several years traveling about Eu-
EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Translated by William L.
Grossman. By permission of the publishers, The Noonday Press. Copyright, 1952, by William Leonard
Grossman.
1088

rope. Called back to Rio de Janeiro by
news that his mother was dying of
cancer, he arrived home in time to see her
before she died. After her death he went
into retirement, remaining in seclusion
until his father came to him with plans
for a marriage and a seat in the Brazilian
legislative body. After some vacillation
Braz decided to obey his father's wishes.
The reason for his hesitation was a love
affair with a rather beautiful girl. His
discovery that she was lame, however,
turned him away from her. On his return
to social life he learned that the young
woman his father had picked out for
him, a girl named Virgilia, had position,
wealth, and beauty. It was through her
father's influence that the elder Cubas
expected his son to get ahead politically.
Unfortunately for the schemes of both
father and son, Virgilia met Lobo Neves,
a young man with more ambition and
greater prospects. She decided to marry
him, a decision which ended, at least
temporarily, prospects of a political
career for Braz.
Disappointed and disgruntled with life,
he accidentally met Marcella, his former
mistress. He found her greatly changed,
for smallpox had destroyed her beauty.
After losing her looks, she had left her
earlier profession to become the keeper
of a small jewelry shop.
Disappointment over his son's failure
to win Virgilia was too much for his
father, who died shortly afterward. There
was a great to-do after the father's death,
for Braz' brother-in-law turned out to
be an avaricious man who wanted his
wife, Braz* sister, to have as much of
the estate as possible. Braz accepted
calmly the selfish and unfortunate aspect of
human nature thus revealed and agreed,
for his sister's sake, to be reconciled with
his greedy brother-in-law.
Not very long after his father's death,
Braz learned from Virgilia's brother that
Virgilia and her husband were returning
to Rio de Janeiro. Braz was pleased; he
was still in love with her. A few days
after the return of Virgilia and her
husband, he met them at a ball. Virgilia and
Braz danced several waltzes together and
fell more deeply in love than they had
ever been while Braz was courting her.
They continued to meet and before long
Virgilia became his mistress.
One day Braz found a package in
which were several bundles of banknotes.
He kept the money and later used it to
establish a trust fund for Dona Placida,
a former servant of Virgilia's family, who
maintained the house in which Virgilia
and Braz kept their assignations. They
managed for several years to keep their
affair a secret, so that Braz could be a
guest in Virgilia's home as well. In fact,
he and Lobo Neves were good friends.
One day Braz met Quincas Borba, an
old schoolmate who had been reduced
to begging. The man took some money
from Braz and, as he discovered later,
also stole his watch. That night Braz
suggested to Virgilia that they run away.
She refused to do so. They had a lovers'
quarrel, followed by a tender scene of
repentance.
A short time later Lobo Neves was
offered the governorship of a province, and
he suggested that Braz accompany him
as his secretary. The situation was
inviting to the two lovers, but they knew that
in the smaller provincial capital their
secret could not long be hidden. Their
problems were unexpectedly solved when
superstitious Neves refused the
government post because the document
appointing him was dated on the thirteenth of
the month.
The love affair continued until
Virgilia became pregnant. Neither of the
lovers doubted that Braz was the father
of the child, and he acted very much like
a husband who expected to be presented
with his first-born. The child, not carried
the full time, died at birth, much to the
sorrow of Virgilia and Braz, and of the
husband as well, who thought the child
was his.
1089

One day Braz received a letter from
Quincas Borba, the begging schoolmate
who had stolen his watch. Having
improved his finances, the beggar had
become a philosopher, a self-styled
humanist. Borba's ideas fascinated Braz,
who had always fancied himself an
intellectual and a literary man. He was also
pleased when Borba sent him a watch
as good as the one he had stolen. Braz
spent a great deal of time with Borba,
for Neves had become suspicious of the
relationship between his wife and her
lover, and the two were discreet enough
to stay away from each other for a
time.
At last Virgilia and her husband left
Rio de Janeiro after Neves received
another political appointment. For a time
Braz felt like a widower. Lonely, he
himself turned to public life. Defeated for
office, he then became the publisher of
an opposition newspaper, but his venture
was not successful. He also fell in love
and finally decided to get married. Once
more he was disappointed, for his fiancee
died during an epidemic.
The years passed rather uneventfully.
Braz grew older, and so did his friends.
Not many weeks after the death of
Quincas Borba, who had become a close
companion, Braz himself fell ill of
pneumonia. One visitor during his last illness
was Virgilia, whose husband had died,
but even her presence was not enough
to keep Braz from slipping into delirium.
In his dying moments he cast up the
accounts of his life and decided that in
the game of life he was the winner by
only a small margin, in that he had
brought no one else into the world to
suffer the misery of life.
1090

EREC AND ENIDE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Chretien de Troyes (c.l 140-c.l 190)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Sixth century
Locale: Arthurian England
First transcribed: Before 1164
Principal characters:
King Arthur
Queen Guinevere
Erec, a knight of the Round Table and son of King Lac
Enide, his bride
Guivret the Little, Erec's friend and benefactor
Critique:
Erec and Enide is chronologically the
first of a group of metrical romances by a
master tale teller of the medieval period
about whom very little is known. More
important, it is the oldest romance on
Arthurian materials extant in any
language. In it the more primitive Celtic
elements of the writer's sources have been
lost or are almost completely obscured;
King Arthur and his knights are now
models of the highly sophisticated and
intricately detailed chivalric code growing
out of the courts of love which flourished
in France during the Middle Ages.
Written in eight-syllable rhyming couplets,
and sometimes called the first novel
because of its consistent plot, this story is
one of four which give us the most
idealized expression of the code of chivalry by
a single writer of medieval times.
The Story:
One Easter season, while King Arthur
held his court in the royal town of
Cardigan, he summoned all his knights to a
hunt for the White Stag. Sir Gawain,
hearing of the king's wish, was displeased
and said that no good would come of that
ancient custom, for the law of the hunt
decreed that the successful hunter must
also kiss the lady whom he considered
the most beautiful damsel of the court.
As Sir Gawain noted, there was likely
to be dissension among the assembled
knights; each was prepared to defend his
EREC AND ENIDE by Chretien de Troyes, from ARTHURIAN ROMANCES by Chretien de Troyes.
Translated in prose with introduction, notes and bibliography, by W. W. Comfort. From EVERYMAN'S
LIBRARY. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
own true love as the loveliest and gentlest
lady in the land, and he would be
angered by the slight put upon her if she
were not so chosen.
At daybreak the hunters set out. After
them rode Queen Guinevere, attended by
Erec, a fair and brave knight, and one of
the queen's damsels, a king's daughter.
While they waited by the wayside to hear
the baying of the hounds or the call of a
bugle, they saw coming toward them a
strange knight, his lady, and a dwarf who
carried a knotted scourge. First the queen
sent her damsel to ask who the knight
and his fair companion might be, but the
dwarf, barring her way, struck the damsel
across the hand with his whip. Then Erec
rode forward and the dwarf lashed him
across the face and neck. Being unarmed,
Erec made no attempt to chastise the
dwarf or his haughty master, but he
vowed that he would follow the strange
knight until he could find arms to hire
or borrow that he might avenge the insult
to the queen.
In the fair town to which the strange
knight and his companions presently led
him, Erec found lodgings with a vavasor
who told him the reason for all the stir
and bustle that Erec had seen as he rode
through the gates. On the next day a fine
sparrow hawk would be given to the
knight who could defend against all
comers the beauty and goodness of his lady.
The haughty knight, who had won the
1091

bird in two successive years, would be
allowed to keep it if his challenge went
unanswered on the morrow. At the home of
the vavasor Erec met his host's daughter
Enide, who in spite of her tattered
garments was the most radiantly beautiful
damsel in Christendom. With her as his
lady and with arms borrowed from his
host, Erec challenged and defeated in
single combat the arrogant knight who was
defending the hawk. Then Erec
dispatched the vanquished knight, whose
name was Yder, to Queen Guinevere to
do with at her pleasure, along with his
lady and his dwarf. With them he sent
word that he would return with his
beautiful bride, the damsel Enide.
Erec promised Enide's father great
riches and two towns to rule in his own
land, but he refused all offers to have
Enide dressed in robes suitable to her new
station: he wished all in King Arthur's
court to see that in spite of her humble
garments she was the most beautiful lady
who ever lived. So great was her beauty
that King Arthur, who himself had killed
the White Stag, kissed her without a
demur from the assembled knights and
ladies. The king also granted Eric the
boon of a speedy marriage, so eager was
the young knight for the love of his
promised bride. The ceremony was performed
by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the
time of the Pentecost before an
assemblage of knights and ladies from every
corner of the kingdom, and the
celebration continued for a fortnight.
A month after Pentecost a great
tournament was held near Tenebroc and in
the lists there Erec showed himself the
most valiant of all the knights assembled.
On his return he received from the king
permission to visit his own land, and he
and Enide set out with an escort of sixty
knights. On the fifth day they arrived in
Carnanf, where King Lac welcomed his
son and his bride with much honor.
Meanwhile, Erec found so much pleasure
in his wife's company that he had no
thought for other pastimes. When
tournaments were held in the region around, he
sent his knights to the forays but he
himself remained behind in dalliance with
the fair Enide. At last people began to
gossip and say that he had turned a
craven in arms. These reports so distressed
Enide that one morning while they
were still abed she began to lament the
way in which the brave and hardy knight
had changed because of his love for her.
Overhearing her words, Erec was moved
to anger, and he told her to rise and
prepare herself at once to take the road with
him on a journey of knight-errantry in
search of whatever perils he might
encounter by chance. At the beginning of
the journey he gave orders that she was
never to tell him of anything she might
see, nor to speak to him unless he
addressed her first.
As Enide rode ahead, forbidden to
speak, she lamented her disclosure and
their sudden departure from the life she
had enjoyed with her loving husband.
She disobeyed him, however, when they
were about to be attacked by three robber
knights, and again when they were
assailed by five recreants. Erec, having
overcome all who opposed him, felt no
gratitude for her wifely warnings and fears
for his safety, but spoke harshly to her
because she had disobeyed his command
that she was under any circumstance to
remain silent until he gave her leave to
speak.
That night, since they knew of no
town or shelter nearby, they slept in an
open field. There the squire of Count
Galoin came upon them the next day
and conducted them to lodgings in the
town where the count was master. That
nobleman, going to pay his respects to
the strange knight and his lovely lady,
was much smitten with Enide's beauty,
so much so that, going to the place where
she sat apart, he expressed his pity for her
obvious distress and offered to make her
mistress of all his lands. When Enide
refused, he declared that he would take her
by force. Fearful for her husband's life,
Enide pretended to do his pleasure. It
was arranged that on the next day the
1092

count's knights were to overtake the
travelers and seize Enide by force. Erec,
coming to her rescue, would be killed, and
she would be free to take the count as
her lord. Once more Enide disobeyed her
husband and told him of Count Galoin's
plan. Forewarned, Erec overcame his
assailants and knocked the false count
senseless from his steed. When Galoin's
followers would have pursued Erec and
Enide, the count restrained them,
praising Enide's prudence and virtue and the
bravery of her knight.
Departing from Count Galoin's lands,
the travelers came to a castle from which
the lord came riding on a great steed to
offer Erec combat at arms. Enide saw him
coming but did not dare tell her husband
for fear of his wrath. At last she did
speak, however, and Erec realized
her love for him that made her
disobedient to his commands. The knight who
challenged Erec was of small stature but
stout heart and both were wounded in
the fight. Though the doughty little
knight lost, he put up such a good fight
that he and Erec became friends. Guivret
the Little invited Erec to have his wounds
dressed and to rest at his castle, but Erec
thanked him courteously and rode with
Enide on his way.
At length they arrived at a wood where
King Arthur had come with a large
hunting party. By then Erec was so begrimed
and bloodied that Sir Kav the seneschal
did not recognize him. When he would
have taken the wounded knight to the
king's camp, Erec refused and they fought
until Sir Kay was unhorsed. Sir Gawain
then rode out to encounter the strange
knight, and he was able to bring Erec
to the place where the king had ordered
tents set up in anticipation of their
coming. There was great joy in that meeting
for the king and Queen Guinevere, but
distress at Erec's wounds. Although the
king pleaded with Erec to rest there until
his hurts were healed, the knight refused
to be turned aside or delayed on his
journey, and early the next morning he and
Enide set out once more.
In a strange forest they heard the cries
of a lady in distress. Leaving Enide to
await his return, Erec rode in the
direction of the sound and found a damsel
weeping because two giants had carried
away her knight. Riding in pursuit, Erec
killed the giants and rescued the knight,
whose name was Cadoc of Tabriol. Later
he sent Cadoc and the damsel to King
Arthur's camp, to tell the story of how he
fared. Meanwhile, Erec's wounds had
reopened and he lost so much blood that
he fell from his horse in a swoon.
While Enide was weeping over his
prostrate bodv, a count with his suite
came riding through the forest. The
nobleman gave orders that the bodv was to
be taken to Limors and prepared for
burial. On their arrival at the count's palace
he declared his intention of espousing
Enide at once. Although she refused to
give her consent, the ceremony was
performed in great haste and guests were
summoned to a wedding banquet that
night.
Erec, recovering from his deep swoon,
awoke in time to see the wretched count
strike Enide across the face because her
grief was so great that she could neither
eat nor drink at her new husband's
bidding. Springing from the funeral bier, he
drew his sword and struck the count on
the head with such force that blood and
brains flowed out. While the other
knights and squires retreated in fear of
the ghostly presence that had so suddenly
returned to life, the two made their
escape, Erec meanwhile assuring his wife
that he was now convinced of her
devotion and love.
Meanwhile, Guivret the Little had
received word that a mortally wounded
knight had been found in the forest and
that the lord of Limors had carried off the
dead man's wife. Coming to see that the
fallen knight received proper burial and
to aid his lady if she were in distress the
doughty little knight came upon Erec,
whom he failed to recognize in the murky
moonlight, and struck a blow which
knocked Erec unconscious. Enide and
1093

Guivret remained by the stricken man all
that night, and in the morning they
proceeded to Guivret's castle. There,
attended by Enide and Guivret's sisters,
Erec was nursed back to health. After his
recovery, escorted by Guivret and
burdened with gifts, the couple prepared to
return to King Arthur's court.
Toward nightfall the travelers saw in
the distance the towers of a great fortress.
Guivret said that the town was named
Brandigant, in which there was a perilous
passage called the "J°v of the Court."
King Evrain welcomed the travelers with
great courtesy, but that night, while they
feasted, he also warned Erec against
attempting the mysterious feat which no
knight had thus far survived. Despite the
disapproval of his friend and his host
Erec swore to attempt the passage.
The next morning he was conducted
into a magic garden filled with all
manner of fruits and flowers, past the heads
and helmets of unfortunate though brave
knights who had also braved danger in
order to blow the magic horn whose blast
would signify joy to King Evrain's land.
At the end of a path he found a
beautiful damsel seated on a couch. While he
stood looking at her, a knight appeared to
engage him in combat. They fought until
the hour of noon had passed; then the
knight fell exhausted. He revealed that
he had been held in thrall in the garden
by an oath given to his mistress, whose
one wish had been his eternal presence
by her side. Erec then blew the horn
and all the people rejoiced to find him
safe. There was great joy also when the
knight of the garden was released from
his bondage and the beautiful damsel
identified herself as the cousin of Enide.
Erec and Enide, with Guivret,
continued their journey to the court of King
Arthur, where they were received with
gladness and honor. When his father
died, Erec returned to reign in his own
land. There he and Enide were crowned
in a ceremony of royal splendor in the
presence of King Arthur and all the
nobles of his realm.
1094

EREWHON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Type of plot: Utopian satire
Time of plot: 1870's
Locale: Erewhon and England
First published: 1872
Principal characters:
Strong, a traveler in Erewhon
Chowbok, a native
Nosnibor, a citizen of Erewhon
Arowhena, his daughter
Critique:
Erewhon is an anagram of nowhere,
but the institutions satirized-in this story
of an imaginary land are unmistakably
British. Beginning as an adventure story,
the book becomes an elaborate allegory.
Some of Butler's satire grows out of the
ideas of Darwin and Huxley. In the main
the book is original and often prophetic,
The "straighteners" of Erewhon are the
psychologists of today, and the treatment
of Erewhonian criminals is somewhat
like that advocated by our own liberal
thinkers. The novel is humorous, but
it is also serious.
The Story:
Strong, a young man of twenty-two,
worked on a sheep farm. From the
plains he looked often at the seemingly
impassable mountain range that formed
the edge of the sheep country and
wondered about the land beyond those
towering peaks. From one old native named
Chowbok he learned that the country
was forbidden. Chowbok assumed a
strange pose when questioned further
and uttered unearthly cries. Curious,
Strong persuaded Chowbok to go on a
trip with him into the mountains.
They were unable to find a pass
through the mountains. One day Strong
came upon a small valley and went up
it alone. He found that it led through
the mountains. When he went back to
get Chowbok, he saw the old native
fleeing toward the plains. He went on
alone. After climbing down treacherous
cliffs and crossing a river on a reed raft,
he finally came to beautiful rolling plains.
He passed by some strange manlike
statues which made terrifying noises as
the wind circled about them. He
recognized in them the reason for Chowbok's
performance.
Strong awoke next morning to see a
flock of goats about him, two girls
herding them. When the girls saw him they
ran and brought some men to look at
him. All of them were physically
handsome. Convinced at last that Strong was
a human being, they took him to a small
town close by. There his clothing was
searched and a watch he had with him
was confiscated. The men seemed to be
especially interested in his health, and
he was allowed to leave only after a
strict medical examination. He wondered
why there had been such confusion over
his watch until he was shown a museum
in which was kept old pieces of
machinery. Finally he was put in jail.
In jail he learned the language and
something of the strange customs of the
country, which was called Erewhon. The
oddest custom was to consider disease a
crime; anyone who was sick was tried
and put in jail. On the other hand,
people who committed robbery or murdei
were treated sympathetically and given
hospital care. Shortly afterward the
jailor informed Strong that he had been
summoned to appear before the king and
queen, and that he was to be the guest
of a man named Nosnibor. Nosnibor
had embezzled a large sum of money
from a poor widow, but he was now re-
1095

covering from his illness. The widow,
Strong learned, would be tried and
sentenced for allowing herself to be imposed
upon.
In the capital Strong stayed with Nos-
nibor and his family and paid several
visits to the court. He was well received
because he had blond hair, a rarity among
the Erewhonians. He learned a great
deal about the past history of the country.
Twenty-five hundred years before a
prophet had preached that it was
unlawful to eat meat, as man should not kill
his fellow creatures. For several hundred
years the Erewhonians were vegetarians.
Then another sage showed that animals
were no more the fellow creatures of man
than plants were, and that if man could
not kill and eat animals he should not
kill and eat plants. The logic of his
arguments overthrew the old philosophy.
Two hundred years before a great
scientist had presented the idea that machines
had minds and feelings and that if man
were not careful the machine would
finally become the ruling creature on
earth. Consequently all machines had
been scrapped.
The economy of the country was
unusual. There were two monetary
systems, one worthless except for spiritual
meaning, one used in trade. The more
respected system was the valueless one,
and its work was carried on in Musical
Banks where people exchanged coins for
music. The state religion was a worship
of various qualities of godhead, such as
love, fear, and wisdom, and the main
goddess, Ydgrun, was at the same time
an abstract concept and a silly, cruel
woman. Strong learned much of the
religion from Arowhena, one of Nosni-
bor's daughters. She was a beautiful girl,
and the two fell in love.
Because Nosnibor insisted that his
older daughter, Zulora, be married first,
Strong and his host had an argument,
and Strong found lodgings elsewhere.
Arowhena met him often at the Musical
Banks. Strong visited the University of
Unreason, where the young Erewhonian
boys were taught to do anything except
that which was practical. They studied
obsolete languages and hypothetical
sciences. He saw a relationship between
these schools and the mass-mind which
the educational system in England was
producing. Strong also learned that
money was considered a symbol of duty,
and that the more money a man had the
better man he was.
Nosnibor learned that Strong was
meeting Arowhena secretly. Then the
king began to worry over the fact that
Strong had entered the country with a
watch, and he feared that Strong might
try to bring machinery back into use.
Planning an escape, Strong proposed to
the queen that he make a balloon trip
to talk with the god of the air. The
queen was delighted with the idea. The
king hoped that Strong would fall and
kill himself.
Strong smuggled Arowhena aboard the
balloon with him. The couple soon
found themselves high in the air and
moving over the mountain range. When
the balloon settled on the sea, Strong
and Arowhena were picked up by a
passing ship. In England, where they
were married, Strong tried to get up an
expedition to go back to Erewhon. Only
the missionaries listened to his story.
Then Chowbok, Strong's faithless native
friend, showed up in England teaching
religion, and his appearance convinced
people that Erewhon actually did exist.
Strong hoped to return to the country
soon to teach it Christianity.
1096

ESSAIS
Type of work: Essays
Author: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1
First published: Books I-II, 1580; HI, revised,
Montaigne began his essays as a stoical
humanist, continued them as a skeptic,
and concluded them as a human being
concerned with man. Substantially, this
evolution is the one upon which
Montaigne scholars are agreed. Surely these
three phases of his thought are apparent
in his Essais, for one may find, in these
volumes, essays in which Montaigne
considers how a man should face pain and
die, such as "To Philosophize Is to Learn
to Die"; essays in which the skeptical
attack on dogmatism in philosophy and
religion is most evident, such as the
famous "Apology for Raimond Sebond";
and essays in which the writer makes a
constructive effort to encourage men to
know themselves and to act naturally for
the good of all men, as in "The
Education of Children."
Montaigne retired to his manor when
he was thirty-eight. Public life had not
satisfied him, and he was wealthy enough
to live apart from the active life of his
times and to give himself to
contemplation and the writing of essays. He did
spend some time in travel a few years
later, and he was made mayor of
Bordeaux, but most of his effort went into
the writing and revision of his EssaiSy the
attempt to essay, to test, the ideas which
came to him.
An important essay in the first volume
is "That the Taste for Good and Evil
Depends in Good Part upon the Opinion
We Have of Them." The essay begins
with a paraphrase of a quotation from
Epictetus to the effect that men are
bothered more by opinions than by things.
The belief that all human judgment is,
after all, more a function of the human
being than of the things judged
suggested to Montaigne that by a change of
attitude human beings could alter the
values of things. Even death can be
valued, provided the man who is about
592)
1582; Mil, 1588; Mil, revised, 1595
to die is of the proper disposition. Poverty
and pain can also be good provided a
person of courageous temperament
develops a taste for them. Montaigne
concludes that "things are not so painful and
difficult of themselves, but our weakness
or cowardice makes them so. To judge of
great and high matters requires a suitable
soul. . . ."
This stoical relativity is further
endorsed in the essay "To Study Philosophy
Is to Learn to Die." Montaigne's
preoccupation with the problem of facing pain
and death was caused by the death of
his best friend, £tienne de la Boftie, who
died in 1563 at the age of thirty-three,
and then the deaths of his father, his
brother, and several of his children. In
addition, Montaigne was deeply
disturbed by the Saint Bartholomew Day
massacres. As a humanist, he was well
educated in the literature and philosophy
of the ancients, and from them he drew
support of the stoical philosophy
suggested to him by the courageous death of
his friend La Boetie.
The title of the essay is a paraphrase of
Cicero's remark "that to study philosophy
is nothing but to prepare one's self to
die." For some reason, perhaps because it
did not suit his philosophic temperament
at the time, perhaps because he had
forgotten it, Montaigne did not allude to a
similar expression attributed by Plato to
Socrates, the point then being that the
philosopher is interested in the eternal,
the unchanging, and that life is a
preoccupation with the temporal and the
variable, For Montaigne, however, the
remark means either that the soul in
contemplation removes itself from the body,
so to speak; or else that philosophy is
concerned to teach us how to face death.
It is the latter interpretation that
interested him.
Asserting that we all aim at pleasure,
1097

even in virtue, Montaigne argued that
the thought of death is naturally
disturbing. He refers to the death of his brother,
Captain St. Martin, who was killed when
he was twenty-three by being struck
behind the ear by a tennis ball. Other
instances enforce his claim that death often
comes unexpectedly to the young; for
this reason the problem is urgent. With
these examples before us, he writes, how
can we "avoid fancying that death has
us, every moment, by the throat?" The
solution is to face death and fight it by
becoming so familiar with the idea of
death that we are no longer fearful. "The
utility of living," he writes, "consists not
in the length of days, but in the use of
time. . . ." Death is natural, and what
is important is not to waste life with the
apprehension of death.
In the essay "Of Judging the Death of
Another," Montaigne argues that a man
reveals his true character when he shows
how he faces a death which he knows is
coming. A "studied and digested" death
may bring a kind of delight to a man of
the proper spirit. Montaigne cites
Socrates and Cato as examples of men who
knew how to die.
Montaigne's most famous essay is his
"Apology for Raimond Sebond,"
generally considered to be the most complete
and effective of his skeptical essays. Yet
what Montaigne is skeptical of is not
religion, as many critics have asserted,
but of the pretensions of reason and of
dogmatic philosophers and theologians.
When Montaigne asks "Que sais-je?"
the expression becomes the motto of his
skepticism, "What do I know?"—not
because he thinks that man should give up
the use of the intellect and imagination,
but because he thinks it wise to recognize
the limits of these powers.
The essay is ostensibly in defense of
the book titled Theologia naturalis: sive
Liber creaturarum magistri Raimondi de
Sebonde, the work of a philosopher and
theologian of Toulouse, who wrote the
book about 1430.
Montaigne considers two principal
objections to the book: the first, that
Sebond is mistaken in the effort to support
Christian belief upon human reasons;
the second, that Sebond's arguments in
support of Christian belief are so weak
that they may easily be confuted. In
commenting upon the first objection,
Montaigne agrees that the truth of God can
be known only through faith and God's
assistance, yet Montaigne argues that
Sebond is to be commended for his noble
effort to use reason in the service of God.
If one considers Sebond's arguments as
an aid to faith, they may be viewed as
useful guides.
Montaigne's response to the second
objection takes up most of the essay, and
since the work is, in some editions, over
two hundred pages long, we may feel
justified in concluding from length alone
the intensity of Montaigne's conviction.
Montaigne uses the bulk of his essay
to argue against those philosophers who
suppose that by reason alone man can
find truth and happiness. The rationalists
who attack Sebond do not so much
damage the theologian as show their own
false faith in the value of reason.
Montaigne considers "a man alone, without
foreign assistance, armed only with his
own proper arms, and unfurnished of the
divine grace and wisdom . . ." and he
sets forth to show that such a man is not
only miserable and ridiculous but
grievously mistaken in his presumption.
Philosophers who attempt to reason without
divine assistance gain nothing from their
efforts except knowledge of their own
weakness. Yet that knowledge has some
value; ignorance is then not absolute
ignorance. Nor is it any solution for the
philosopher to adopt the stoical attitude
and try to rise above humanity, as Seneca
suggests; the only way to rise is by
abandoning human means and by suffering,
cause oneself to be elevated by Christian
faith.
In the essay "Of the Education of
Children," Montaigne writes that the
1098

only objective he had in writing the
essays was to discover himself. In giving his
opinions concerning the education of
children Montaigne shows how the study of
himself took him from the idea of
philosophy as a study of what is "grim and
formidable" to the idea of philosophy as
a way to the health and cheerfulness of
mind and body. He claims that "The most
manifest sign of wisdom is a continual
cheerfulness," and that "the height and
value of true virtue consists in the
facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise.
. . ." Philosophy is "that which instructs
us to live." The aim of education is so
to lead the child that he will come to
love nothing but the good, and the way
to this objective is an education that takes
advantage of the youth's appetites and
affections. Though his love of books led
Montaigne to live in such a manner that
he was accused of slothfulness and "want
of mettle," he justifies his education by
pointing out that this is the worst men
can say of him.
Not all of Montaigne's essays reflect
the major stages of his transformation
from stoic, and skeptic to a man of good
will. Like Bacon, he found satisfaction in
working out his ideas concerning the
basic experiences of life. Thus he wrote
of sadness, of constancy, of fear, of
friendship (with particular reference to La
Boetie), of moderation, of solitude, of
sleep, of names, of books. These essays
are lively, imaginative, and informed with
the knowledge of a gentleman well
trained in the classics. Yet it is when he
writes of pain and death, referring to his
own long struggle with kidney stones
and to the deaths of those he loved, and
when he writes of his need for faith and
of man's need for self-knowledge, that
we are most moved. In such essays the
great stylist, the educated thinker, and
the struggling human being are one. It
was in the essaying of himself that
Montaigne became a great essayist.
1099

AN ESSAY CONCERNING
Type of work: Philosophical treatise
Author: John Locke (1632-1704)
First published: 1690
Locke's purpose in An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding was to
inquire into the origin and extent of
human knowledge, and his answer—that all
knowledge is derived from sense
experience—became the principal tenet of the
new empiricism which has dominated
Western philosophy ever since. Even
George Berkeley (1685-1753), who
rejected Locke's distinction between sense
qualities independent of the mind and
sense qualities dependent on the mind,
produced his idealism in response to
Locke's provocative philosophy and gave
it an empirical cast which reflected
Western man's rejection of innate or
transcendental knowledge.
An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding is divided into four books: Book
I, "Of Innate Notions"; Book II, "Of
Ideas"; Book III, "Of Words"; and Book
IV, "Of Knowledge, Certain and
Probable."
In preparation for his radical claim
that all ideas are derived from experience,
Locke began his Essay with a careful
consideration of the thesis that there are
innate ideas, that is, ideas which are a
necessary part of man's convictions and
are, therefore, common to all men.
Locke's attack on this claim is from two
directions. He argues that many of the
ideas which are supposed to be innate
can be and have been derived naturally
from sense experience, that not all men
assent to those ideas which are supposed
to be innate. He maintained that even if
reason enables men to discover the truth
of certain ideas, those ideas cannot be said
to be innate; for reason is needed to
discover their truth.
In Book II, "Of Ideas," Locke considers
the origin of such ideas as those
expressed by the words "whiteness,"
"hardness," "sweetness," "thinking," "motion,"
HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
"man," and the like. The second section
states his answer:
Let us then suppose the mind to be,
as we say, white paper void of all
characters, without any ideas. How comes it
to be furnished? . . . Whence has it
all the materials of reason and
knowledge? To this I answer, in one word,
from experience. . . . Our observation,
employed either about external sensible
objects, or about the internal operations
of our minds perceived and reflected on
by ourselves, is that which supplies our
understandings with all the materials of
knowledge.
The two sources of our ideas,
according to Locke, are sensation and
reflection. By the senses we come to have
perceptions of things, thereby acquiring the
ideas of yellow, white, cold, for example.
Then, by reflection, by consideration of
the mind in operation, we acquire the
ideas of thinking, doubting, believing,
knowing, willing, and so on.
By sensation we acquire knowledge of
external objects; by reflection we acquire
knowledge of our own minds.
Ideas which are derived from sensation
are simple; that is, they present "one
uniform appearance," even though a number
of simple ideas may come together in the
perception of an external object. The
mind dwells on the simple ideas,
comparing them to each other, combining
them, but never inventing them. By a
"simple idea" Locke meant what some
modern and contemporary philosophers
have called a "sense-datum," a distinctive,
entirely differentiated item of sense
experience, such as the odor of some
particular glue, or the taste of coffee in a cup.
He called attention to the fact that we
use our sense experience to imagine what
we have never perceived, but no
operation of the mind can yield novel simple
ideas.
1100

By the "quality" of something Locke
meant its power to produce an idea in
someone sensing the thing. The word
"quality" is used in the Essay in much
the same way the word "characteristic" or
"property" has been used by other, more
recent, writers. For Locke distinguished
between primary and secondary qualities.
Primary qualities are those which matter
has constantly, whatever its state. As
primary qualities Locke names solidity,
extension, figure, motion or rest, and
number. By secondary qualities Locke
meant the power to produce various
sensations which have nothing in common
with the primary qualities of the external
objects. Thus, the power to produce the
taste experience of sweetness is a
secondary quality of sugar, but there is no
reason to suppose that the sugar itself
possesses the distinctive quality of the
sensation. Colors, tastes, sounds, and odors
are secondary qualities of objects.
Locke also referred to a third kind of
quality or power, called simply "power,"
by which he meant the capacity to affect
or to be affected by other objects. Thus,
fire can melt clay; the capacity to melt
clay is one of fire's powers, and such a
power is neither a primary nor a
secondary quality.
Locke concluded that primary ideas
resemble external objects, but secondary
ideas do not. It is this particular claim
which has excited other professional
philosophers, with Berkeley arguing that
primary qualities can be understood only in
terms of our own sensations, so that
whatever generalization can be made about
secondary qualities would have to cover
primary qualities as well, and other
philosophers arguing that Locke had no
ground for maintaining that primary
ideas "resemble" primary qualities, even
if the distinction between primary and
secondary qualities is allowed.
Complex ideas result from acts of the
mind, and they fall into three classes:
ideas of modes, of substances, and of
relations. Modes are ideas which are
considered to be incapable of independent
existence since they are affections of
substance, such as the ideas of triangle,
gratitude, and murder. To think of substances
is to think of "particular things
subsisting by themselves," and to think in that
manner involves supposing that there is a
support, which cannot be understood,
and that there are various qualities in
combination which give various
substances their distinguishing traits. Ideas
of relations are the result of comparing
ideas with each other.
After a consideration of the complex
ideas of space, duration, number, the
infinite, pleasure and pain, substance,
relation, cause and effect, and of the
distinctions between clear and obscure ideas and
between true and false ideas, Locke
proceeded to a discussion, in Book III, of
words and essences. Words are signs of
ideas by "arbitrary imposition,"
depending upon observed similarities which are
taken as the basis for considering things
in classes. Words are related to "nominal
essences," that is, to' obvious similarities
found through observation, and not to
"real essences," the actual qualities of
things. Locke then discussed the
imperfections and abuses of words.
In Book IV Locke defined knowledge
.as "the perception of the connection of
and agreement, or disagreement and
repugnancy, of any of our ideas." An
example cited is our knowledge that white is
not black, Locke arguing that to know
that white is not black is simply to
perceive that the idea of white is not the
idea of black.
Locke insisted that knowledge cannot
extend beyond the ideas we have, and
that we determine whether ideas agree
or disagree with each other either
directly, by intuition, or indirectly, by
reason or sensation. Truth is defined as "the
joining or separating of signs, as the
things signified by them do agree or
disagree one with another." For example,
the proposition "White is not black"
involves the separation by "is not" of the
signs "white" and "black," signifying the
disagreement between the ideas of white
1101

and black; since the ideas are different,
the proposition is true. Actually to have
compared the ideas and to have noted
their disagreement is to know the fact
which the true proposition signifies.
Locke devoted the remaining chapters
of Book IV to arguing that we have
knowledge of our existence by intuition,
of the existence of God by demonstration,
and of other things by sensation. Here
the influence of Descartes is clearly
evident. But it is the empiricism of the
earlier parts of the book which won for
Locke the admiration of philosophers.

ESSAYS
Type of work: Essays
Author: Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
First published: 1597; added to and revised, 1612, 1625
Sir Francis Bacon was a man of many
accomplishments—scientist, philosopher,
and politician; he was adept, too, at
taking bribes and for that was imprisoned.
Yet it is as a literary man that he is
perhaps best remembered, a writer so
competent with the pen that for decades there
have been persons willing to argue that
Bacon wrote the plays attributed to
Shakespeare.
The essay form is rare in our age,
although there are some faint signs of its
revival. As Bacon used it, the essay is a
carefully fashioned statement, both
informative and expressive, by which a man
comments on life and manners, on nature
and its puzzles. The essay is not designed
to win men to a particular cause or to
communicate factual matter better put in
scientific treatises. Perhaps that is one
reason why it is not so popular in an age
in which it is always pertinent to ask
whether a claim can be proved and
whether knowing it makes a practical
difference.
The Essays first appeared, ten in
number, in 1597. They were immediately
popular because they were brief, lively,
humane, and well written. Perhaps they
were effective in contrast to the rambling,
florid prose written by most writers of
the time. A considerable part of their
charm lay in what keeps them charming,
their civilized tone. In these essays Bacon
revealed himself as an inquisitive but
also an appreciative man with wit enough
to interest others.
The first edition contained the
following essays: "Of Studies," "Of Discourse,"
"Of Ceremonies and Respects," "Of
Followers and Friends," "Of Suitors," "Of
Expense," "Of Regiment of Health," "Of
Honour and Reputation," "Of Faction,"
and "Of Negociating."
By 1612 the number of essays had
been increased to thirty-eight, the earlier
ones having been revised or rewritten.
By the last edition, in 1625, the number
was fifty-eight. Comparison of the earlier
essays with those written later shows not
only a critical mind at work but also a
man made sadder and wiser, or at least
different, by changes in fortune.
The essays concern themselves with
such universal concepts as truth, death,
love, goodness, friendship, fortune, and
praise; with such controversial matters as
religion, atheism, "the True Greatness
of Kingdoms and Estates," custom and
education, and usury; and with such
intriguing matters as envy, cunning,
innovations, suspicion, ambition, praise,
vainglory, and the vicissitudes of things.
The Essays or Counsels, Civil and
Moral, as they are called in the heading
of the first essay, begins with an essay on
truth and entitled directly, "Of Truth."
The title formula is always the same,
simply a naming of the matter to be
discussed, as, for example, "Of Death," "Of
Unity in Religion," "Of Adversity."
"What is Truth? said jesting Pilate;
and would not stay for an answer." One
expects a sermon—and is pleasantly
surprised. Bacon uses his theme as a point
of departure for a discussion of the
charms of lying, trying to fathom the love
of lying for its own sake. "A mixture of a
lie doth ever add pleasure," he writes.
But this pleasure is ill-founded; it rests
on error resulting from depraved
judgment. Bacon reverses himself grandly:
". . . truth, which only doth judge
itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth,
which is the love-making or wooing of it,
the knowledge of truth, which is the
presence of it, and the belief of truth,
which is the enjoying of it, is the
sovereign good of human nature."
What of death? Bacon begins by
admitting that tales of death increase man's
natural fear of it, but he reminds the
1103

reader that death is not always painful.
By references to Augustus Caesar,
Tiberius, Vespasian, and others Bacon
showed that even in their last moments
great men maintained their characters
and composure. Death is natural, he
concludes, and it has certain advantages: it
opens the gate to good fame and puts an
end to envy. The good man is in no fear
of death because he has better things
to do and think about, and when he dies
he knows he has obtained "worthy ends
and expectations."
The essay "Of Adversity" is
particularly interesting since it reflects Bacon's
own experience after imprisonment, the
loss of friends and position, and enforced
retirement. He writes, "Prosperity is the
blessing of the Old Testament; Adversity
is the blessing of the New; which car-
rieth the greater benediction, and the
clearer revelation of God's favour."
Adversity puts life's brighter moments into
effective contrast, and it allows a man
the chance to show his virtues.
Bacon is no casual essayist. We do not
need the report of history to tell us that
the essays as we find them are the
product of numerous revisions. Sentences do
not achieve a careful balance and rhythm
accidentally, nor does a moment's
reflection provide apt allusions, pertinent Latin
phrases, and witty turns of thought.
The essay "Of Beauty" begins with a
well-fashioned, complex statement:
"Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set;
and surely virtue is best in a body that
is comely, though not of delicate
features; and that hath rather dignity of
presence, than beauty of aspect." The
essay continues by commenting on the
sad fact that beauty and virtue are not
always conjoined, but then Bacon
remembers some noble spirits who were
"the most beautiful men of their times"—
Augustus Caesar, Titus Vespasianus,
Philip le Bel of France, Edward the
Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens,
and Ismael the Sophy of Persia. Then he
comes to a striking thought in a simple
line: "There is no excellent beauty that
hath not some strangeness in the
proportion."
Although appreciative of beauty, Bacon
was modern in his appreciation of use.
"Houses are built to live in," he writes
in the essay "Of Building"—"therefore
let use be preferred before uniformity,
except where both may be had." He is
aware of the importance of location; he
warns the reader to beware of an "ill
seat" for his house, and mentions in
particular the discomfort that results from
building a house in a hollow of ground
surrounded by high hills. So much aware
is he of the mistakes that a builder can
make that Bacon follows a catalogue of
dangers and difficulties with a charming
and involved description of an ideal
dwelling: a place for entertaining, a place
for dwelling, and the whole a beautiful
construction of rooms for various uses,
courts, playing fountains—all of large,
but proper dimensions, and built to take
account of summer sun and winter cold.
Although there is a prevailing moral
character to the essays so that, in
retrospect, they seem to be a series of beautiful
commands to erring spirits, there is
enough of wisdom, education, humor,
and common sense in them to save the
author from the charge of moral
arrogance. For example, Bacon does not begin
his essay on anger by declaring how
shameful anger is; he says instead, "To
seek to extinguish Anger utterly is but
a bravery of the Stoics." He then gives
practical advice: To calm anger there is
no other way but to consider the effects
of anger, to remember what it has done
in the past; and to repress particular
angry acts, Bacon advises the reader to let
time pass in the belief that the
opportunity for revenge will come later; and he
particularly warns against the bitterness
of words and the doing of any irrevocable
act.
In writing of atheism Bacon combined
philosophical argument with moral
persuasion and intensity of expression. If it
seems strange that a scientist, the father
of induction, should take so seriously the
1104

ordinary arguments of the Church, it is
only because we tend to think of men as
playing single roles and as living apart
from their times. In any .case, Bacon's
philosophic skill was most at evidence in
scientific matters, and there is no more
reason to expect that he would be adept
at philosophizing about religion than to
expect that he should have anticipated
Einstein in his reflections about science:
as an Elizabethan he did as well as we
have a right to ask. The essay contains
the famous line: "It is true, that a little
philosophy inclineth man's mind to
atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth
men's mind about to religion."
Although the essays naturally reflect a
lifetime of experience, they do so in
general, not in particular. One looks in vain
for reports of adventures and
misadventures at court—and Bacon had many of
both. He sounds like the better side of
Machiavelli in his essay on simulation
and dissimulation, but there are no
personal references to events in which he
was involved and from which he acquired
the knowledge imparted here. Nor would
we suspect that Bacon was one of the
leading scientific minds of his age; he
discourses on friendship, parents and
children, gardens, study, and the rest,
as a gentle, humane scholar. We realize
that in the Essays Bacon gave up the roles
which ambition made him play. In his
contemplative moments he sought to
satisfy a two-fold goal: to present the
wisdom of his living, the wisdom that comes
from experience and reflection on it, and
to make this presentation by means of a
style designed to be economical and
ornamental at the same time.
1105

ESSAYS: FIRST AND SECOND SERIES
Type of work: Philosophical essays
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
first published: First Series, 1841; Second Series, 1844
Emerson's Essays proclaim the
self-reliance of a man who believed himself
representative of all men since he felt
himself intuitively aware of God's
universal truths. He spoke to a nineteenth
century that was ready for an emphasis
on individualism and responsive to a
new optimism that linked God, nature,
and man into a magnificent cosmos.
Emerson himself spoke as one who
had found in Transcendentalism a
positive answer to the static Unitarianism of
his day. He had been a Unitarian
minister for three years at the Old North
Church in Boston (1829-1832), but he
had resigned because in his view the
observance of the Lord's Supper could
not be justified in the Unitarian Church.
Transcendentalism combined Neopla-
tonism, a mystical faith in the
universality and permanence of value in the
universe, with a pervasive moral seriousness
akin to the Calvinist conviction and with a
romantic optimism that found evidence of
God's love throughout all nature.
Derivative from these influences was the faith
in man's creative power, the belief that
the individual, by utilizing God's
influence, could continue to improve his
understanding and his moral nature.
Knowledge could come to man directly, without
the need of argument, if only he had the
courage to make himself receptive to
God's truth, manifest everywhere.
Through his essays and addresses
Emerson became not only the leading
Transcendentalist in America, but also
one of the greatest if least formal of
American philosophers. The latter
accomplishment may be attributed more to
the spirit of his philosophy than to its
technical excellence, for Emerson had
little respect for logic, empiricism, and
linguistic analysis—features common to
the work of other great American
philosophers such as Charles Sanders Peirce,
William James, and John Dewey. Nor
can Emerson be compared in his method
to such a philosopher as Alfred North
Whitehead, for Emerson disdained
speculative adventures; he believed himself to
be affirming what nature told him, and
nature spoke directly of God and of
God's laws.
Emerson's Nature (1836) was the first
definitive statement of his philosophical
perspective, and within this work may be
found most of the characteristic elements
of Emerson's thought. The basic idea is
that nature is God's idea made apparent
to men. Thus, "the whole of nature is a
metaphor of the human mind," "The
axioms of physics translate the laws of
ethics," and "This relation between the
mind and matter is not fancied by some
poet, but stands in the will of God, and
so is free to be known by all men."
Emerson asserted emphatically that "day
and night, river and storm, beast and
bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary
Ideas in the mind of God"; hence he
agreed with those who supposed that
nature reveals spiritual and moral truths.
Not only does nature reveal truths; it
also disciplines men, rewarding them
when nature is used properly, punishing
them when it is abused.
One secret of Emerson's charm was his
ability to translate metaphysical
convictions into vivid images. Having argued
that nature is the expression of God's
idea, and having concluded that "The
moral law lies at the center of nature
and radiates to the circumference," he
illustrated the moral influence of nature
by asking, "Who can guess how much
firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught
the fishermenr1" The danger in Emerson's
1106

method, however, was that readers
tended to forget that his idealism was
philosophically, not merely poetically,
intended; he believed literally that only
spirit and its ideas are real. He admitted
the possibility that nature "outwardly
exists," that is, that physical objects
corresponding to his sensations exist, but he
pointed out that since he was not able to
test the authenticity of his senses, it
made no difference whether such
outlying objects existed. All that he could be
sure of were his ideas, and that, whether
directly or indirectly, the ideas came
from God. For Emerson, then, idealism
was not only a credible philosophy, but
also the only morally significant one.
If nature is God's idea made apparent
to men, it follows that the way to God's
truth is not by reason or argument but
by simple and reverent attention to the
facts of nature, to what man perceives
when his eye is innocent. Emerson
criticized science not because it was useless,
but because more important matters,
those having a moral bearing, confronted
man at every moment in the world of
nature; the individual needed only to intuit
nature, to see it as it was without
twisting it to fit his philosophy.or his science,
in order to know God's thoughts. Thus,
in the essay "Nature" Emerson wrote
that "Nature is the incarnation of a
thought, and turns to a thought again.
. . . The world is mind precipitated.
. . ." He added, with assurance, "Every
moment instructs, and every object; for
wisdom is infused into every form."
The ideas which Emerson had
endorsed in Nature found explicit moral
application in the address titled "The
American Scholar," delivered before the Phi
Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in
1837. Emerson defined the scholar as
"Man Thinking," and he declared that
the main influences of the scholar's
education are nature, books, and action. The
duties of a scholar all involve self-trust;
he must be both free and brave. The
rewards of such freedom and bravery are
inspiring: the mind is altered by the
truths uncovered, and the whole world
will come to honor the independent
scholar. It was in this address that
Emerson said that "the ancient precept, 'Know
thyself/ and the modern precept, 'Study
nature/ become at last one maxim."
The essay "Self-Reliance," included in
the First Series, emphasizes the
importance of that self trust to which Emerson
referred in his Phi Beta Kappa address.
It is understandable that this emphasis
seemed necessary to Emerson. If nature
reveals the moral truths which God
intends for man's use, then three elements
are involved in the critical human
situation: nature, man, and man's attitude
toward nature. It is possible to be blind
to the truths about us; only the man who
is courageous enough to be willing to be
different in his search and convictions is
likely to discover what is before every
man's eyes. Emerson emphasized self-
reliance not because he regarded the self,
considered as a separate entity, important,
but because he believed that the self is
part of the reality of God's be'ng and
that in finding truth for oneself,
provided one faces nature intuitively, one
finds what is true for all men. "To
believe your own thought, to believe that
what is true for you in your private heart
is true for all men—that is genius,"
Emerson wrote in "Self-Reliance"; he added
that it is a kind of genius that is possible
for anyone who is willing to acquire it.
Believing that each man's mind is
capable of yielding important truth,
Emerson distinguished between goodness and
the name of goodness. He urged each
man to work and act without being
concerned about the mere opinions of others.
"Whoso would be a man, must be a
nonconformist," and whoever would advance
in the truth should be willing to
contradict himself, to be inconsistent: "A
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds, adored by little statesmen and
philosophers and divines."
That Emerson's philosophy was not an
endorsement of selfish behavior is clear
from his emphasis upon the use of the
1107

mind as an instrument for the intuitive
understanding of universal truths and
laws, but it is possible to misinterpret
"Self-Reliance" as a joyous celebration
of individuality. A sobering balance is
achieved by the essay "The Over-Sour*
in which Emerson subordinates the
individual to the whole: "Meantime within
man is the soul of the whole ... the
eternal One." Using language
reminiscent of Platonism, Emerson wrote that
the soul "gives itself, alone, original and
pure, to the Lonely, Original and Pure,
who, on that condition, gladly inhabits,
leads and speaks through it."
Emerson valued the poet because the
poet uses his imagination to discern the
meanings of sensuous facts. The poet sees
and expresses the beauty in nature
because he recognizes the spiritual meaning
of events; he takes old symbols and gives
them new uses, thereby making nature
the sign of God. In the essay "The Poet"
Emerson wrote that the poet's insight is
"a very high sort of seeing," a way of
transcending conventional modes of
thought in order to attend directly to the
forms of things.
It is a misunderstanding of Emerson
to regard him as a sentimental mystic, as
one who lay on his back and saw divinity
in every cloud. Emerson's transcendental
insight is more akin to the intelligence
of the Platonic philosopher who, having
recognized his own ignorance, suddenly
finds himself able to see the universal in
the jumble of particular facts. Emerson
may be criticized for never satisfactorily
relating the life of contemplation to the
life of practical affairs, but he cannot be
dismissed as an iconoclastic mystic. For
him the inquiring soul and the heroic
soul were one, and the justification of
self-reliance and meditation was in terms
of the result, in the individual soul, of
the effort to recognize the unity of all
men. In "Experience," Emerson chooses
knowing in preference to doing, but it is
clear that he was rejecting a thoughtless
interest in action and results. In "Charae-
ter" and again in "Politics" he
emphasized the importance of coming to have
the character of transcending genius, of
spirit which has found moral law in
nature and has adapted it for use in the
world of men. The transforming power
of spirit properly educated and employed
was something Emerson counted on, and
he was concerned to argue that such
power is not easily achieved.
Emerson defended democracy as the
form of government best fitted for
Americans whose religion and tradition
reflect a desire to allow the judgments of
citizens to be expressed in the laws of
the state. But he cautioned that "Every
actual State is corrupt," and added,
"Good men must not obey the laws too
well." Here the independent spirit,
concerned with the laws of God, demands
heroism and possibly, like Thoreau, civil
disobedience.
Scholars have written innumerable
articles and books attempting to account for
Emerson's influence—which continues to
be profound—on American thought. If
agreement is ever reached, it seems likely
that it will involve acceptance of the
claim that Emerson, whatever his value
as a philosopher, gave stirring expression
to the American faith in the creative
capacity of the individual soul.
1108

ESSAYS OF ELIA and LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA
Type of work: Essays
Author: Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
First published: 1823 and 1833
Among modern platitudes at least half
true is the assertion that conversation is
a lost art. Certainly more than half true
is a similar statement: that the art of the
personal essay as practiced by Charles
Lamb in The Essays of Elia is an art that
few modern writers practice. Both
conversation and the personal essay—as might
be pointed out by persons who lived at
other stages of our culture—depend on
periods of quiet, periods of boredom, and
finally mental action that is various and
witty, the display of riches that have been
laid up in periods of quiet and refined
in periods of apparent boredom. The
personal essay, at any rate, can be only
the product of a person who has followed
from his youth onward the dictum of
Dr. Samuel Johnson and read five hours
a day and who, in his middle years, takes
delight in displaying, sometimes with
mock modesty, the fruits of silent study.
Lamb's essays are, at any rate, a kind of
conversation with the unhurried reader;
and the ^reader's part, though mute, is
essential. He must be a "good listener";
he must be patient and allot to Lamb
time enough to play with a thought as
well as to develop it; he must award a
smile to the poor "jokes" that mingle with
the good ones told by Elia; he must be
able to follow the quick alternations of
mood that appear in such essays as "The
South-Sea House," "Dream-Children,"
and "The Superannuated Man." He
must be willing to be irresponsibly
playful along with the author who is, at a
particular moment, writing "A
Dissertation on Roast Pig" or "A Chapter on
Ears."
For these reasons it is obvious that the
old-style personal essay, as written by
Lamb and his great contemporary
William Hazlitt, is a form of writing to
which hasty readers, readers for
information, will continue to remain
indifferent. Such readers read essays as they
attend lectures. They wish to be informed
about a topic on which, it is supposed,
the speaker is an expert. Or they hope
to be given a new set of ideas; and they
scan these ideas energetically to see
whether the lecturer is unsound on
crucial issues. Lamb demands no such
attention; indeed, he suffers from it. Lamb
does not write to convey ideas or facts or
convictions even though his essays are
full of all these. But his ideas are mostly
playful, as in "Sanity of True Genius";
he aims not to persuade the reader of the
truth of a concept but chiefly to provide
temporary entertainment by presenting a
startling assertion. And though his essays
abound in facts about old houses and
old relatives and old clerks, they are not
facts that "prove" anything; they simply
stand as reminders of mileposts along
which "Elia" (Lamb's pen name) has
passed in his journey—mileposts of which
it is amusing to speak. Finally, Elia-Lamb
is not without convictions, but they are
not ideas that command attention because
they belong to the abstract level of
philosophy. The true, the beautiful, and the
good do not exist in Lamb's essays and
demand our assent or denial. Lamb's
mind seizes little portions of truth that
turn up in the daily round. In his world
virtue is not a system; it is a fleeting deed
or a glance of affection detected in a
parlor, over a game of whist. Nor is
beauty an intellectual entity; it is, at the
most, a hundred tiny little impressions
recorded during a summer stroll and now
shared with us.
By such perceptions we can come to
understand what Lamb's essays offer to
us. Originally written for the London
Magazine, the essays survive their first
appearance in a modest but insistent way.
Weightier writing of the
time—Coleridge's essays, for example, which were
1109

not conversations but lectures and "final"
philosophical pronouncements, and
similar writings—survive in the "complete
works" and become the subject of
graduate study. Lamb's essays continue to
speak to a small but faithful company of
readers who are more drawn by a tone,
a sensibility delicate and yet robust,
hinting rather than explicit. (Some of this
company are probably readers of Jane
Austen also, whose ideas may fade but
whose perceptions of truth are
deathless.)
Doubtless the conditions of Lamb's life,
once they are known, add to the interest
of the essays. That Lamb had a stammer
and could not find a way to complete his
education, that he worked through a
hundred folios of bookkeeping for the East
India Company, that violence and
insanity threatened the good cheer of his
life, that "Dream-Children" was written
by a man condemned to solitary life, that
"Old China" speaks of luxury that Lamb
himself could never possess, that many
essays explore old books that Lamb
haunted bookstalls to buy—all such
knowledge adds to our response to the
blend of whimsy, outright jest, and
fleeting sentiment in the essays.
This blend was Lamb's own. But it is
not without its models in language and
form, as Lamb would be ready to admit.
It might be said that Lamb's literary
tastes caused him to leap backward more
than a century. He ignored the essays
of Addison and Steele and even more
those of Dr. Samuel Johnson; these were
writers who tended toward public
address, public instruction, and public
betterment, whatever they treated. Lamb,
who sought an audience of friends rather
than a cluster of worshipful inferiors,
turned to such seventeenth-century
masters as Sir Thomas Browne and Robert
Burton, men who wrote before English
prose had taken on a cold, instructing,
and regular form. Sir Thomas Browne
said, "I love to lose myself in O Altitu-
dos"; and in such spirit does Lamb love
to pursue the small ecstasies of his daily
life: the middle-class jaunts, the
excitements of the card-table, and the thrills
of inexpensive theatrical attendance.
"T'is all mine, none mine," wrote Robert
Burton of his disorderly masterpiece,
The Anatomy of Melancholy, that vast
tissue of quotation and opinionated
comment. So might Lamb say; whatever he
treats, there are ancient echoes. In these
echoes sound the quaint, crabbed spirits
of Browne and Burton, and the more
generous and still more undisciplined
natures of Elizabethan dramatists who,
though "minor," were one and all great
to Lamb, one of their first "dis«overers."
No analysis or digest can suggest to
the reader the charm of the Essays of
Elia or the Last Essays. They must, if
we may use a word-play that would please
Lamb, not be digested but digested, and
that again and again.
1110

ESTHER WATERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Moore (1852-1933)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1894
Principal characters:
Esther Waters, a servant girl
William Latch, her betrayer
Mrs. Barfield, her mistress
Sarah Tucker, her enemy
Jackie, her son
Fred Parsons, her betrothed
Miss Rice, her employer
Critique:
Esther Waters is a landmark in the
development of realism in English fiction.
The story of Esther and her struggle
against almost insurmountable odds shows
the influence of Balzac and Zola.
Between Richardson's Pamela and Moore's
Esther Waters there is a dividing line of
a completely new theory of art as well
as a division of time in the history of
the novel.
The Story:
The first person Esther Waters met
when she arrived at Woodview was
William Latch, the son of the cook under
whose direction Esther was to work.
William was the bane of his mother's life,
for he was like his dead father, a gambler.
Mrs. Latch had hoped that William
would become a delivery boy and leave
Woodview, but William was determined
to go into service for Mr. and Mrs. Bar-
field, the owners of Woodview, in order
to observe their racing stable.
The position as kitchenmaid at Wood-
view was a godsend to Esther, for her
stepfather, claiming that he had too many
mouths to feed, had forced her to leave
home. The workhouse might have been
her only refuge if she had not secured
a position with the Barfields. But in
spite of her efforts to do her work well,
it was hard for her to get along with the
other servants. Mrs. Latch seemed to
go out of her way to make life unpleasant
for Esther, and the maids teased her
because she was religious. Among the
servants, William was at first her only
champion, and she was grateful to him.
Then Esther found an unexpected friend
in her mistress, Mrs. Barfield. She, too,
was deeply religious, and she invited
Esther to join the services she held in
her room each Sunday morning.
Learning that Esther could not read, Mrs. Bar-
field tried to teach her. To Esther, Mrs.
Barfield seemed a friend as well as, an
employer.
Mrs. Barfield's interest made Esther's
life easier for a time. William continued
to pay her special attention, to the
anguish of Sarah Tucker, another of the
maids. After a servant's ball in
celebration of the victory of one of the Wood-
view horses, William took Esther out to
some wheat stacks and seduced her after
telling her that they would be married
as soon as he had enough money. By the
following morning Esther had convinced
herself that she had been betrayed, and
she refused to speak to William. He tried
to reason with her, telling her that he
loved her and they would be married
soon, but she would not listen. Tiring at
last of her sulking, he turned to Miss
Peggy Barfield, a cousin of his master,
ESTHER WATERS by George Moore. By permission of Mr. C. D. Medley, London, and the publisher*
I.iveright Publishing Corp.
Publishing Corp.
Copyright, 1901, by H. S. Stone & Co., 1917, by" Brent a no's, 1932. by Liveright
1111

and after a few weeks eloped with her.
Three months later Esther realized that
she was pregnant. Strangely, the servant
girls who had been her former tormentors
became kind and sympathetic, and their
kindness made her feel even more
ashamed of her wickedness. In spite of
her sympathy, Mrs. Barfield had to send
Esther away, for she had become a bad
example for the other girls.
There was no place for her to go but
to her home. There she found her mother
also pregnant and her stepfather more
cruel than ever. But he tolerated her as
long as she paid her rent and gave him
money to buy beer. At last Esther knew
that she would have to leave before all
her savings were used up and there
would be nothing left for her baby.
She took lodgings close to the hospital
where she was to be confined. After her
son, Jackie, was born, she was filled with
a happiness she had never known before,
but her joy was lessened when she
learned that her mother had died in
childbirth, just a few days after Esther's
baby was born. Soon afterward Esther's
stepfather and the other children went
to Australia; with their going Esther felt
that she was really alone in the world.
For Esther the next few years were
terrible ones. Sometimes she worked
seventeen and eighteen hours a day.
Once she had to go to the workhouse.
Her greatest grief was the need to leave
her child in someone's care while she
worked, for Jackie was her whole life.
When he was six years old, Esther found
work with Miss Rice, a writer whose
home was a haven to Esther. Miss Rice
knew Esther's story and tried to make the
girl's life easier for her.
One day Esther met Fred Parsons, a
colorless man, but honest, dependable,
and religious. When Esther told him
her story, he readily forgave her. She
took Fred to see Jackie, and the man and
the boy were fast friends from the first
meeting. Esther and Fred planned to be
married as soon as Miss Rice could get
another servant, for Esther would not
leave her mistress uncared-for. One
evening, while on an errand for Miss Rice,
Esther unexpectedly met William Latch,
who told her that Peggy had left him.
When he learned that Esther had borne
his child, he pleaded to come back to her,
and hinted that it was her Christian duty
to Jackie to give the boy his rightful
father. Esther knew that she would be
better off with Fred, as would Jackie, for
William had become a tavern keeper and
a bookie. But Jackie met his father and
loved him instantly. For his sake Esther
and William were married.
At first William made money. Jackie
was put in a good school, and Esther
had two servants to wait on her. But
there were days of anxious waiting to
hear the results of a race. Often
William had thousands of pounds to cover if
the favorite won. After a time he began
to lose heavily. It was against the law
to accept bets at the tavern, and William
was in constant danger of being reported
to the pohce. Fred Parsons came to warn
Esther to leave William, to tell her that
the tavern was to be raided, but Esther
refused to desert her husband. Then
Sarah Tucker came to the tavern to ask
for help after she had stolen a silver
plate from her employer. The pohce
found her there. Later, when the tavern
was raided, William's fine was heavy.
Business began to dwindle, and Esther
and William had lean times.
After William became tubercular, the
dampness and fog of the race tracks only
made him cough more, and at last he had
to go to the hospital. There the doctors
told him that he must go to Egypt for
his health. He and Esther gambled all
their money on a single race, and lost.
Esther tried to be cheerful for William's
sake, but when he died a few days later
she wished that she had died with him.
She had no money and no place to go.
Her only blessing was that Jackie was
big enough to take care of himself.
Esther went back to Woodview. Only
Mrs. Barfield was left, and she was poor.
Most of the land had gone to pay racing
1112

debts. But Esther would have stayed
with Mrs. Barfield without wages, for she
had never forgotten her old friend's
kindness. Jackie enlisted in the army and
went to Woodview to tell his mother
goodbye. With pride she introduced him
to Mrs. Barfield. She knew that her sin
had been redeemed and that she would
never have to be ashamed again. She
had given her country a fine soldier. Few
women could do more.
1113

ETHAN FROME
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Type of plot: Domestic tragedy
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Starkfield, Massachusetts
First published: 1911
Principal characters:
Ethan Frome, a New England farmer
Zenobia Frome (Zeena), his wife
Mattie Silver, Zeena's cousin
Critique:
Although not considered representative
of Edith Wharton's works, Ethan Frome
is probably the best and most popular of
her novels. Told in less than two
hundred pages, it is a tragic story of three
peoples' wasted lives: Ethan Frome;
Zeena, his wife; and young Mattie Silver,
Zeena's cousin. Through the flash-back
technique, Edith Wharton permits us to
glimpse the fate of Ethan Frome at the
beginning, but we must wait until the
end of the book to see how that fate is
brought about. Although we know that
the story is to have an unhappy ending,
the author's crushing use of irony makes
the conclusion come as a surprise.
The Story:
Ethan Frome was twenty-eight years
old when he married Zenobia Pierce, a
distant cousin who nursed his sick mother
during her last illness. It was a wedding
without love. Zenobia, called Zeena, had
no home of her own, and Ethan was
lonely. So they were married. But Zee-
na's talkativeness, which had been
pleasing to Ethan during his mother's illness,
quickly subsided, and within a year of
their marriage Zeena developed the
sickliness which was to plague her husband
all her life. Ethan became increasingly
dissatisfied with his life. He was an
intelligent and ambitious young man who
had hoped to become an engineer or a
chemist. But he soon found himself
chained to a wife he detested and a farm
he could not sell.
The arrival of Mattie Silver brightened
the gloomy house considerably. Mattie,
Zeena's cousin, had come to Starkfield
partly because she had no other place to
go and partly because Zeena felt in need
of a companion around the house. Ethan
saw in Mattie's goodness and beauty
every fine quality that Zeena lacked.
When Zeena suggested that Ethan
help Mattie find a husband, he began to
realize how much he himself was
attracted to the girl. When he went to a church
social to bring Mattie home and saw hex
dancing with the son of a rich Irish
grocer, he realized that he was jealous of
his rival and in love with Mattie. On
his way home with her, Ethan felt his
love for Mattie more than ever, for on
that occasion as on others, she flattered
him by asking him questions on
astronomy. His dreams of happiness were
short-lived however, for when he reached
home Zeena was her nagging, sour self.
The contrast between Zeena and Mattie
impressed him more and more.
One day Ethan returned from his
morning's work to find Zeena dressed in
her traveling clothes. She was going to
visit a new doctor in nearby Bettsbridge.
Ordinarily Ethan would have objected to
the journey because of the expensive
remedies which Zeena was in the habit of
buying on her trips to town. But on that
ETHAN FROME by Edith Wharton. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright
1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed, 1939, by Frederic and Leroy King.
1114

occasion he was overjoyed at the news of
Zeena's proposed departure, for he
realized that he and Mattie would have
the house to themselves overnight.
With Zeena out of the way, Ethan
again became a changed man. Later
in the evening, before supper, Ethan and
Mattie sat quietly before die fire, just as
Ethan imagined happily married couples
would do. During supper the cat broke
Zeena's favorite pickle dish, which Mattie
had used to brighten up the table. In
spite of the accident, they spent the rest
of the evening happily. They talked
about going sledding together, and Ethan
told shyly—and perhaps wistfully—that
he had seen Ruth Varnum and Ned
Hale, a young engaged couple, stealing a
kiss earlier in the evening.
In the morning Ethan was happy, but
not because of anything out of the
ordinary the night before. In fact, when he
went to bed, he remembered sadly that
he had not so much as touched Mattie's
fingertips or looked into her eyes. He
was happy because he could imagine
what a wonderful life he could have if he
were married to Mattie. He got glue
to mend the pickle dish, but Zeena's
unexpected return prevented him from
repairing it. His spirits were further
dampened when Zeena told him that the
Bettsbridge doctor considered her quite
sick. He had advised her to get a girl to
relieve her of all household duties, a
stronger girl than Mattie. She had
already engaged the new girl. Ethan was
dumbfounded by this development. In
her insistence that Mattie be sent away
Zeena gave the first real hint that she
may have been aware of gossip about her
husband and Mattie.
When Ethan told Mattie of Zeena's
decision, the girl was as crestfallen as
Ethan. Zeena interrupted their
lamentations, however, by coming downstairs for
something to eat. After supper she
required stomach powders to relieve a case
of heartburn. In getting the powders,
which she had hidden in a spot
supposedly unknown to Mattie, Zeena discovered
die broken pickle dish, which had been
carefully reassembled in order to give the
appearance of being unbroken. Having
detected the deception and learned that
Mattie was responsible for the broken
dish, Zeena called Mattie insulting names
and showed plainly that the girl would
be sent away at the earliest possible
moment.
Faced with the certainty of Mattie's
departure, Ethan thought of running
away with her. But his poverty, as well
as his sense of responsibility to Zeena,
offered no solution to his problem, only
greater despair. On the morning Mattie
was to leave Starkfield, Ethan, against
the wishes of his wife, insisted on
driving Mattie to the station. The thought
of parting was unbearable to both. They
decided to take the sleigh ride that Ethan
had promised Mattie the night before.
Down the hill they went, narrowly
missing a large elm tree at the bottom. Mat-
tie, who had told Ethan that she would
rather die than leave him, begged until
Ethan agreed to take her down the hill
a second time and run the sled into the
elm at the bottom of the slope. But they
failed to hit the tree with force sufficient
to kill them. The death they sought
became a living death, for in the accident
Mattie suffered a permanent spine injury
and Ethan an incurable lameness. The
person who received Mattie into her
home, who waited on her, and who
cooked for Ethan was—Zeena.
1115

ETHICS
Type of work: Philosophy
Author: Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677)
First published: 1677
The complete Latin title of Spinoza's
masterpiece is Ethica ordine geometrico
demonstrata. A geometric demonstration
of ethics is a novelty in the history of
thought, but this work is famous not
because of, but in spite of, its novelty of
method. The principal advantage of the
method is that it reveals Spinoza's thought
as clearly as possible, and although the
demonstrations may not satisfy critics who
concern themselves only with definitions
and logical form, they have a strong
persuasive force upon those who, already
committed to the love of the good and of
God, need clarity and structure in their
thoughts.
Spinoza begins with definitions,
proceeds to axioms (unproved but obviously
acceptable), and then to propositions and
demonstrations. Obviously, if one must
find fault with Spinoza's argument, any
place is vulnerable, for one can quarrel
about the definitions, doubt the truth of
the axioms, or question the validity of the
demonstrations. But in order to reject the
book it would be necessary to question
the integrity and wisdom of Spinoza's
spirit, and that would be not only
difficult but impertinent to do.
It has long been regarded an error in
philosophy to attempt to deduce what
men ought to do from a study of what
men do, but what Spinoza attempts is a
deduction of what men ought to do from
a study of what must be, according to
his definitions and axioms. The primary
criticism of his method, then, is not that
he errs—although most critics find errors
in Spinoza—but that he tries to use
logical means to derive ethical truths. The
criticism depends, of course, on the
assumption that ethical truths are either
matters of fact, not of logic, or else that
they are not truths at all but, for
example, emotive expressions.
Spinoza begins the Ethics with
definitions of "cause," "finite," "substance,"
"attribute," "mode," "free," "eternity,"
and "God," the latter term being defined
to mean "Being absolutely infinite, that
is to say, substance consisting of infinite
attributes, each one of which expresses
eternal and infinite essence." To
understand this definition one must relate it
to the definitions of the terms within it
—such as "substance," "finite," and
"attribute"—but one must also resist the
temptation to identify the term, so
defined, with any conventionally used term.
Spinoza's God is quite different from
anyone else's God, at least in conception.
The point of the definition is that what
Spinoza means by "God" is whatever is
"conceived through itself" (is substance),
has no limit to its essential characteristics
(has infinite attributes), and maintains
its character eternally. As one might
suspect, the definition of "God" is crucial.
The axioms contain such logical and
semantical truths as "I. Everything which
is, is either in itself or in another"; "II.
That which cannot be conceived through
another must be conceived through
itself"; "VI. A true idea must agree with
that of which it is the idea," and "VII.
The essence of that thing which can be
conceived as not existing does not
involve existence." At first the axioms may
be puzzling, but they are not as
extraordinary as they seem. The last axiom,
for example, number VII, means only
that anything which can be thought of
as not existing does not by its nature
have to exist.
The propositions begin as directly
implied by the definitions: "I. Substance is
by its nature prior to its modifications"
follows from the definitions of
"substance" and "mode," and "II. Two
substances having different attributes have
nothing in common with one another" is
another consequence of the definition of
1116

"substance." As the propositions increase,
the proofs become longer, making
reference not only to definitions but also to
previous propositions and their corollaries.
For those interested in technical
philosophy the proofs are intriguing even when
they are unconvincing, but for others
they are unnecessary; the important thing
is to get at Spinoza's central idea.
Proposition XI is important in
preparing the way for Spinoza's main
contention: "XL God or substance consisting of
infinite attributes, each one of which
expresses eternal and infinite essence,
necessarily exists.,, Although one may be
tempted to seize upon this proposition as
an instrument to use against atheists, it
is necessary to remember that the term
"God" is a technical term for Spinoza and
has little, if anything, to do with the
object of religious worship.
Proposition XIV soon follows with the
startling claim that "Besides God no
substance can be nor can be conceived." A
corollary of this proposition is the idea
that God is one; that is, everything that
exists, all of nature, is God. Individual
things do not by their natures exist, but
only through God's action; and God is
not only the cause of their existence but
also of their natures. (XXIV, XXV.) We
might expect, consequently, that a great
deal of the universe is contingent; that
is, it depends upon something other than
itself and need not be as it is. But Spinoza
argues in Proposition XXIX that "In
Nature, there is nothing contingent, but all
things are determined from the necessity
of the divine nature to exist and act in a
certain manner." Consequently, man's
will is not free but necessary. (XXXII.)
This was one of the ideas that made
Spinoza unpopular with both Jews and
Christians.
Having used Part One of the Ethics to
develop the conception of God, Spinoza
goes on in Part Two, after presenting
further definitions and axioms, to explain
the nature and origin of mind. Here
again Spinoza concludes that "In the
mind there is no absolute or free will
. . ." (XLVIII.) In this section he also,
develops the idea that God is a thinking
and extended being.
In Part Three, "On the Origin and
Nature of the Emotions," Spinoza argues
that emotions are confused ideas. "Our
mind acts at times and at times suffers,"
he contends in Proposition I of Part
Three; "in so far as it has adequate ideas,
it necessarily acts; and in so far as it has
inadequate ideas, it necessarily suffers."
Perhaps it is well to note that Spinoza
defines "emotion" as any modification of
the body "by which the power of acting
of the body itself is increased,
diminished, helped, or hindered, together with
the ideas of these modifications."
By this time in his book Spinoza has
created the idea that God, as both
thinking and extended substance, is such that
all nature is both thinking and extended
(since everything that is must be part of
God). Another way of putting it is that
everything that exists does so both as body
and as idea. Thus, the human being
exists as both body and idea. If, then, the
human being, as idea, does not
adequately comprehend the modifications of
the human body, the mind suffers.
In Part Four, "Of Human Bondage;
or of the Strength of the Emotions,"
Spinoza defines the good as "that which
we certainly know is useful to us," and
in a series of propositions he develops the
idea that each person necessarily desires
what he considers to be good, that in
striving to preserve his being a man
acquires virtue, and that the desire to be
happy and to live well involves desiring
to act, to live, "that is to say, actually to
exist." In this attempt to relate man's
freedom to his will to act and in the
identification of the good with the
striving toward existence, Spinoza anticipated
much of the more significant work of the
twentieth-century Existentialists.
In Proposition XXVIII of Part IV,
Spinoza writes that "The highest good
of the mind is the knowledge of God, and
the highest virtue of the mind is to know
God." This claim has been prepared for
1117

by previous propositions relating the good
to what is desired, the desire to action,
action to being, and being to God.
Because of the intricacy of Spinoza's
argument it becomes possible for him to argue
that to seek being, to seek the good, to
use reason, and to seek God are one
and the same. To use reason involves
coming to have adequate ideas, having
adequate ideas involves knowing the
nature of things, knowing the nature of
things involves knowing God.
Although it might seem that Spinoza's
philosophy, for all its references to God,
is egoistic in that this crucial phase of
his argument depends upon the claim
that each man seeks to preserve his own
being, a full examination of Part IV will
show that Spinoza manages to transcend
the egoistic base of action by arguing that
to serve the self best one uses reason; but
to use reason is to seek an adequate idea
of God and, consequently, to seek what is
good for all men. In fact, Spinoza specific
eally states that whatever causes men to
live in harmony with one another is
profitable and good, and that whatever brings
discord is evil.
The highest happiness or blessedness
of man, according to Spinoza, is "the
peace of mind which springs from the
intuitive knowledge of God." This
conclusion is certainly consistent with
Spinoza's ideas that man's good consists in
escaping from the human bondage of the
passions, that to escape from the passions
is to understand the causes that affect the
self, that to understand the causes
involves action, and that action leads to
God.
When man through rational action
comes to determine himself, he
participates in the essence of all being; he
becomes so at one with God that he
possesses an intellectual love of God, which
is man's blessedness and virtue. The
eternal is known only by the eternal; hence,
in knowing God, man makes himself
eternal—not in any finite or individual
way, but as part of God's being.
Divested of its formal trappings and
of those respects in which philosophic
imagination outruns credibility—for
example, the claim that everything is both
thought and extension—Spinoza's
philosophy of ethics tells the reader that
happiness consists in understanding the causes
of things. It might be argued that this
idea, so familiar in philosophy, puts more
simply than any other concept the kind
of faith that makes a man a philosopher.
But to understand the causes of things
is, as Spinoza concludes, "as difficult as
it is rare."
1118

EUGENE ARAM
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1832
Principal characters:
Rowland Lester, an English gentleman
Madeline, his daughter
Ellinor, another daughter
Walter Lester, a nephew
Houseman, a rogue
Eugene Aram, a scholar
Critique:
The history of the crime and trial of
Eugene Aram had fascinated English
writers long before Bulwer-Lytton wrote
his novel on the subject. In an
introduction to his book he comments on the
popularity of the story and deplores that
he is not a greater writer so that he could
better handle the intriguing tale. The
novel attempts to show that a man of good
character can, under the influence of
poverty and hunger, of desire and mental
confusion, commit a serious crime. The
novel has qualities which link it to both
Crime and Punishment and the Doctor
Faustus legend.
The Story:
When Geoffrey Lester, a roving and
dissipated man, ran away from his wife
ind only son, his brother, Rowland Lester,
took the forsaken family into his own
home at Grassdale. Soon both brothers'
wives died, and kindly old Rowland took
over the responsibility of rearing not only
his two daughters, Madeline and Ellinor,
but also his young nephew, Walter. As
the children grew up, Walter fell in love
with Madeline, but his love was not
returned. It was Ellinor who idealized her
cousin as a perfect young man.
One day a stranger came to Grassdale, a
crude, ugly man who was to affect all
their lives. Madeline and Ellinor, startled
by the man while they were out walking,
fled to the house of Eugene Aram, a young
recluse and scholar whom they knew
slightly. Aram did his best to make the
two sisters comfortable and went to secure
a carriage to take them home. During
his absence the stranger came to the
cottage and asked if Eugene Aram were in.
He was sent away. That night he appeared
again at the cottage. Aram recognized him
as a man named Houseman, whom he had
known under dreadful circumstances
years before.
Aram, in spite of his solitary
preoccupation with science and philosophy, began
to visit the Lester family. Before long it
was obvious to Walter that Madeline and
Aram were falling in love, and Walter
begged Rowland to let him go away for
a while. Rowland, sensing his nephew's
feelings, allowed him to go. Before he left,
Walter had a long talk with Madeline and
warned her to consider well her
fondness for Aram, who he felt would not
make her happy. Madeline took his advice
as an insult to her intelligence, and the
anger which she showed went far to dispel
the love Walter had felt for her.
Walter and Bunting, a servant, set out
for London. Old Rowland had given
Walter several letters of introduction to
his friends there and had advised the boy
to learn what he could about the fortunes
of his lost father. From an old friend of
his uncle, Walter learned that Geoffrey
Lester had been to India, had returned,
and under the name of Clarke had gone to
1119

Yorkshire to collect a legacy left him by
a friend he had known in India. Walter
and Bunting started for Yorkshire to trace
Geoffrey's whereabouts.
Meanwhile Houseman reappeared in
Grassdale and again bothered Aram. In
times past Houseman had been connected
with Aram in a way which Aram did not
wish to have announced to the world.
Houseman, Aram knew, was involved in
robbery and worse, but he was not in a
position to expose the man. Houseman
promised to leave the country if Aram
would settle a yearly allowance on
Houseman's daughter, the only person in the
world whom he loved or who loved him.
Aram went to London, where he was able
to raise the sum demanded by Houseman.
When he returned to Grassdale, Aram
thought that he was rid of Houseman
forever.
In Yorkshire Walter learned that his
father had been seen last in the village
of Knaresborough. On the way there he
and Bunting met Houseman, whom
Walter recognized as a man who had robbed
him on a previous occasion. Bunting
recognized him as a man who had been in
Grassdale. Houseman, having learned that
his daughter was dying, was hastening to
Knaresborough, where she lay on her
deathbed. As his horse had gone lame,
Houseman begged Walter to lend him his,
and Walter, despite Bunting's
objections, was so moved by the man's story
that he did so.
When they arrived at Knaresborough,
the two travelers learned that Houseman
had arrived in time to hold his daughter in
his arms before she died. Walter also
learned more of his father, who under the
name of Clarke had come to the town
years before. He had also, Walter was told,
stolen some jewels and run up bills in all
the shops of the town before he had
mysteriously disappeared. An inquest had
been held after Clarke's disappearance,
and the last two men who had seen him
had been tried, but released for lack of
evidence. With surprise and horror
Walter heard that these two men were
Houseman and Eugene Aram.
Walter went immediately to see
Houseman, whom he found almost mad over
the death of his child. He was unable to
answer Walter's questions. Then came
word of the discovery of a body that had
been buried about the time Clarke had
disappeared. Walter forced Houseman to
go with him to the newly opened grave
and demanded to know if those were the
bones of his father. Houseman said that
the bones were not those of Clarke, that
Clarke had been killed and his body
buried in a cave. He said that he and Aram
had planned to rob Clarke, but that in
the struggle Aram had killed Clarke. The
remains of Clarke were uncovered in the
place Houseman had described. Walter
prepared to return home with the news
that Madeline's lover was a murderer.
Meanwhile Rowland had given his
permission to the marriage of Madeline and
Aram, and had come to love his
prospective son-in-law almost as much as he loved
his daughter. Walter's arrival with his
terrible news threw the household into
despair. Aram, arrested for the crime,
denied his guilt. Madeline wasted away with
grief over the affair, and old Rowland
could barely make himself see the reasons
which made his nephew bring his charge
against Aram.
As the day of the trial drew near,
Madeline grew weaker and weaker.
Walter realized that whether Aram was found
guilty or not guilty, there was no place for
him in England. If Aram was judged not
guilty, Walter could never ask
forgiveness, especially as he would always doubt
the judgment. If Aram was found guilty,
Walter could not face his family and
Madeline again.
At last the day of the trial arrived.
Madeline, convinced of Aram's innocence,
went dressed in the clothes she had hoped
to wear at her wedding. Houseman was
called as a witness by the prosecution.
Aram defended himself by pointing out
the lack of evidence and the contradiction
between his own life and the life of a man
who could commit such a crime. House-
1120

man's testimony, he said, could not be
counted, as Houseman was known as a
thief and robber. But the jury, in
accordance with the judge's statement that
it was often possible for a man who had
led an exemplary life to commit a crime,
brought in a verdict of guilty.
As she returned home from the court,
Madeline died, broken-hearted. In jail
Aram still maintained his innocence.
Walter, in great mental turmoil over the
decision of the court, was disturbed by fears
that Aram might not be guilty and that he
had caused both the death of his cousin
and Aram without reason. Granted
permission to visit Aram in jail, Walter
pleaded with the prisoner to tell him the
truth. Aram promised to leave a letter
which Walter could read after the
execution.
Walter awaited with anxiety the day of
the execution. When it was over, he
opened the letter and read Aram's
confession of guilt. Aram tried to justify his
deed. He had robbed so that he would
have money to continue scientific studies
which he thought would be of great
benefit to mankind. The murder had been the
accidental killing of a worthless rogue who
had run away from his family, a liar and
a thief. Aram thought it only right that
such a man should be robbed, even killed,
if the money gained went to the
betterment of mankind. He had not known that
Clarke had really been Geoffrey Lester,
uncle of the woman he later planned to
marry. Walter was astonished at a mind,
so brilliant in so many respects, which
could draw such false conclusions.
Walter kept the letter a secret.
Knowing the grief he had caused, he left the
home of his uncle and cousin and lived
for many years abroad. On his return he
went secretly to Grassdale. There Bunting
recognized his old master, showed him old
Rowland's grave, and gave him directions
to the place where Ellinor lived. After a
time Walter and Ellinor married and lived
a happy life which served to compensate
for all the grief the family had known in
the past.
1121

EUGENE ONEGIN
Type of work: Poem
Author: Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
Type of plot: Impressionistic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1833
Principal characters:
Eugene Onegin, a Russian dandy
Vladimir Lensky, his friend
Tatyana Larin, in love with Eugene
Olga, her sister
Critique:
The outstanding character in this
narrative poem is Tatyana, often called the
first in the long line of Russian heroines;
indeed, Eugene Onegin as a whole must
be regarded as a kind of fountainhead for
the illustrious group of
nineteenth-century Russian novels. Pushkin's
conception of his theme is romantic and his
treatment often lyrical. There are in the
poem many autobiographical elements,
particularly in the resemblance between
Eugene and Pushkin himself. The Soviet
regime has continued to set a high value
on Pushkin's work. The poem was
dramatized as an opera by Tschaikowsky.
The Story:
Eugene Onegin was brought up in the
aristocratic tradition. Although he had
little classical background, he had a
flashing wit and he was well-read in
economics. He had become an accomplished man
of the world by the time he reached
young manhood. In fact, he had been so
successful in love and so accustomed to
the social life of Moscow that he
habitually felt a supreme boredom with life.
Even the ballet had lately failed to hold
his attention.
Eugene's father had led the usual life.
He gave balls regularly and tried his best
to keep up his social position by
borrowing recklessly. Just as he was declared a
bankrupt, Eugene received word that his
uncle was dying. Since he was the heir,
he left in haste to attend the dying man.
Grumbling meanwhile at the call of-duty,
he was thankful to be coming into an
inheritance.
His uncle, however, died before he
arrived. After the relatives had departed
Eugene settled down to enjoy his uncle's
handsome country estate. The cool woods
and the fertile fields charmed him at first,
but after two days of country life his old
boredom returned. He soon acquired a
reputation as an eccentric. If neighbors
called, Eugene found himself obliged to
leave on an urgent errand. After a while
the neighbors left him to himself.
Vladimir Lensky remained his friend.
At eighteen Vladimir was still romantic
and filled with illusions of life and love.
He had been in Germany, where he was
much influenced by Kant and Schiller.
In Russia his German temperament set
him apart. He and Eugene became more
and more intimate.
The Larins had two daughters, Olga
and Tatyana. Olga was pretty and
popular, and although she was the younger,
she was the leader in their group.
Tatyana was reserved and withdrawn, but
a discerning observer would have seen
her real beauty. She made no effort to
join in the country life. Olga had been
long betrothed to Vladimir; the family
despaired of a marriage for Tatyana.
On Vladimir's invitation Eugene
reluctantly agreed to pay a visit to the
Larins. When the family heard that the
two men were coming, they immediately
thought of Eugene as a suitor for
Tatyana. But Eugene was greatly bored with
1122

his visit. The refreshments were too
ample and too rustic, and the talk was heavy
and dull. He paid little attention to
Tatyana.
After he left, Tatyana was much
disturbed. Having fallen deeply in love, she
had no arts to lead Eugene on. After
confiding in her dull-witted nurse, she wrote
Eugene a passionate, revealing love
letter. She wrote in French, for she could
not write Russian grammatically.
Eugene, stirred by her letter, paid
another visit to the Larins and found
Tatyana in a secluded garden. He told
her the brutal truth. He was not a good
man for a husband, for he had had too
much experience with women and too
many disillusionments. Life with him
would not be at all worthy of Tatyana.
The girl, making no protest, suffered in
silence.
On his lonely estate Eugene lived the
life of an anchorite. He bathed every
morning in a stream, read, walked and
rode in the countryside, and slept
soundly nights. Only Vladimir called
occasionally
That winter the Larins celebrated
Tatyana's name-day. When Vladimir
represented the gathering as only a small
family affair, Eugene consented to go.
He felt betrayed when he found the
guests numerous, the food heavy, and
the ball obligatory. For revenge, he
danced too much with Olga, preventing
Vladimir from enjoying his fiancee's
company. Vladimir became jealously angry
and challenged Eugene to a duel.
Through stubbornness Eugene accepted
the challenge.
Before the duel Vladimir went to see
Olga. His purpose was to reproach her
for her behavior, but Olga, as cheerful
and affectionate as ever, acted as if
nothing had happened. More light-hearted
but somewhat puzzled, Vladimir
prepared to meet Eugene on the dueling
ground.
When the two friends met, Eugene
shot Vladimir through the heart.
Remorseful at last, Eugene left his estate
to wander by himself. Olga soon
afterward married an army man and left
home.
In spite of the scandal, Tatyana still
loved Eugene. She visited his house and
made friends with his old housekeeper.
She sat in his study reading his books
and pondering his marginal notes.
Eugene had been especially fond of Don
Juan and other cynical works, and his
notes revealed much about his selfishness
and disillusionment. Tatyana, who had
hitherto read very little, learned much
bitterness from his books and came to
know more of Eugene.
At home Tatyana's mother did not
know what to do. The girl seemed to have
no interest in suitors and had refused
several proposals. On the advice of
relatives the mother decided to take Tatyana
to Moscow, where there were more
eligible men. They were to visit a cousin for
a season in hopes that Tatyana would
become betrothed.
From her younger cousins Tatyana
learned to do her hair stylishly and to act
more urbanely in society. At a ball a
famous general, a prince, was attracted
to Tatyana. In spite of the fact that he
was big and fat she accepted his proposal.
After more than two years of
wandering, Eugene returned to Moscow. Still
indifferent to life, he decided to attend
a fashionable ball, simply to escape from
boredom for a few hours. He was warmly
greeted by his host, whom he had known
well in former times. While the prince
was reproaching him for his long absence,
Eugene could not keep from staring at a
queenly woman who dominated the
gathering. She looked familiar. When he
asked the prince about her, he was
astounded to learn that she was Tatyana,
his host's wife.
The changed Tatyana showed no
traces of the shy rustic girl who had
written so revealingly of her love. Eugene,
much attracted to her, frequently went
to her house, but he never received more
than a cool reception and a distant hand
to kiss.
1123

Finally Eugene began to write her
letters in which he expressed his hopeless
longing. Still Tatyana gave no sign. All
that winter Eugene kept to his gloomy
room, reading and musing. At last, in
desperation, he called on Tatyana
unannounced and surprised her rereading
his letters.
Tatyana refused to give in to his
importunate declarations. Why had he
scorned the country girl and why did he
now pursue the married woman? She
would rather listen to his brutal
rejection than to new pleadings. She had once
been in love with Eugene and would
gladly have been his wife; perhaps she
was still in love with him. Perhaps she
had been wrong in listening to her
mother, who had been insistent that she
marry the prince. But now she was
married, and she would remain faithful to
her husband until she died.
1124

EUGENIE GRANDET
Type of work: Novel
Author: Honore" de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Saumur, France
First published: 1833
Principal characters:
Monsieur Grandet, a miser
Eugenie, his daughter
Charles Grandet, his nephew
Monsieur de Grassins, a banker
Monsieur Cruchot, a notary
Critique:
Eugenie Grandet is one of the best of
Balzac's novels. His use of realistic detail,
so cumbersome and boring in many of his
works, is restricted here to what is
actually needed. Primarily the book is a
character sketch of a loathsome miser
whose greed has warped his own life
and made the lives of his wife and
daughter miserable. The story is told simply
and concisely. Its tragedy lies in the fact
that Eugenie is doomed to a lonely and
loveless life. In any event, she and
Grandet are two of Balzac's most
successful creations.
The Story:
In the French town of Saumur, old
Grandet was a prominent personality, and
the story of his rise to fortune was known
throughout the district. He was a master
cooper who had married the daughter
of a prosperous wood merchant. When
the new French Republic offered for sale
the church property in Saumur, Grandet
used his savings and his wife's dowry to
buy an old abbey, a fine vineyard, and
several farms. Under the Consulate he
became mayor and grew still more
wealthy. In 1806 he inherited three
fortunes from his wife's mother, her
grandfather, and her grandmother. By this
time he owned the abbey, a hundred
acres of vineyard, thirteen farms, and the
house in which he lived. In 1811 he
bought the nearby estate of an
impoverished nobleman.
He was known for his miserliness, but
he was respected for the same reason.
His manners were simple, his table was
meager, but his speech and gestures were
the law of the countryside. His
household consisted of his wife, his daughter,
Eugenie, and a servant, Nanon. Old
Grandet had reduced his wife almost to
slavery, using her as a screen for his
devious financial dealings. Nanon, who
did all of the housework, was gaunt and
ugly but of great strength. She was
devoted to her master because he had taken
her in after everyone else had refused
to hire her because of her appearance.
On each birthday Eugenie received a gold
piece from her father and a winter and
a summer dress from her mother. Each
New Year's Day Grandet would ask to
see the coins and would gloat over their
yellow brightness.
He begrudged his family everything
except the bare necessities of life. Every
day he would carefully measure and dole
out the food for the household—a few
lumps of sugar, several pieces of butter,
a loaf of bread. He forbade the lighting
of fires in the rooms before the middle
of November. His family, like his
tenants, lived under the austere
circumstances he imposed upon them.
The townspeople wondered whom
Eugeriie would marry. There were two
rivals for her hand. One of them, M.
Cruchot, was the son of the local notary.
The other, M. de Grassins, was the son
of the local banker. On Eugeriie's
birthday, in the year 1819, both called at the
1125

Grandet home. During the evening there
was an unexpected knock at the door,
and in came Charles Grandet, the miser's
nephew. Charles' father had amassed a
fortune in Paris, and Charles himself,
dressed in the most fashionable Parisian
manner, was an example of Parisian
customs and habits for these awkward,
gawking provincials whom he tried to
impress with his superior airs.
Eugenie outdid herself in an effort
to make the visitor welcome, even
defying her father in the matter o£ heat,
candlelight, and other luxuries for
Charles. Grandet was polite enough to
his nephew that evening, as he read a
letter Charles had brought from his
father. In it Grandet's brother announced
he had lost his fortune, that he was about
to commit suicide, and that he entrusted
Charles to his brother's care. The young
man was quite unaware of what his fathet
had written, and when informed next day
of his father's failure and suicide, he
burst into tears and remained in hi*
room for several days. Finally he wrote
to a friend in Paris and asked him to
dispose of his property and pay his debts.
To Eugenie, her mother, and Nanon, he
gave little trinkets. Grandet looked at
them greedily and said he would have
them appraised. He informed his wife
and daughter that he intended to turn
the young man out as soon as his father's
affairs were settled.
Charles felt there was a stain on his
honor. Grandet felt so too, especially
since he and his late brother had the same
family name. In consultation with the
local banker, M. de Grassins, he arranged
a plan whereby he could save the family
reputation without, at the same time,
spending a penny. M. de Grassins went
to Paris to act for Grandet. He did not
return, but lived a life of pleasure in
the capital.
In the meantime, Eugenie fell in love
with Charles. Sympathizing with his
penniless state, she decided to give him
her hoard of coins so that he could go to
the Indies and make his fortune. The two
young people pledged everlasting love to
each other, and Charles left Saumur.
On the following New Year's Day,
Grandet asked to see Eugenie's money.
Her mother, who knew her daughter's
secret, kept silent. In spite of Eugenie's
denials, Grandet guessed what she had
done with the gold. He ordered her to
keep to her room, and he would have
nothing to do with either her or her
mother. Rumors began to arise in the
town. The notary, M. Cruchot, told
Grandet that if his wife died, there
would have to be a division of the
property—if Eugenie insisted on it. The
village whispered that Mme. Grandet was
dying of a broken heart and the
maltreatment of her husband. Realizing that he
might lose a part of his fortune, Grandet
relented and forgave them both. When
his wife died, he tricked Eugenie into
signing over to him her share or the
property.
Five years passed, with no word from
Charles to brighten Eugenie's drab
existence. In 1827, when Grandet was eighty-
two years old, he was stricken with
paralysis. He died urging Eugenie to take
care of his money.
Eugenie livea with old Nanon, still
waiting for Charles to return. One day
a letter came. Charles no longer wished
to marry her. Instead, he hoped to marry
the daughter of a titled nobleman and
secure by royal ordinance his father-in-
law's title and coat of arms. Eugenie
released Charles, but M. de Grassins
hurried to Charles and told him that his
father's creditors had not been satisfied.
Until they were, his fiancee's family
would not allow a marriage. Learning of
his predicament, Eugenie herself paid the
debt, and Charles was married.
Eugenie continued to live alone. The
routine of the house was exactly what
it had been while Grandet lived. Suitors
came again. Young de Grassins was now
in disgrace because of the loose life his
father was living in Paris, but M.
Cruchot, who had risen to a high post in the
provincial government, continued to
1126

press his suit. At last Eugenie agreed to
marry him, providing he did not demand
the prerogatives of marriage, for she
would be his wife in name only. They
were married only a short time before
M. Cruchot died. To her own property
Eugenie added his. Nanon herself had
married and she and her husband stayed
with Eugenie. Convinced that Nanon
was her only friend, the young widow
resigned herself to a lonely life. She lived
as she had always lived in the bare old
house. She had great wealth, but,
lacking everything else in life, she was
indifferent to it.
1127

THE EUNUCH
Type of work: Drama
Author: Terence (Piiblius Terentius Afer, c. 190-159 B. C.)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: Fourth century B. C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 161 B. C.
Principal characters:
Phaedria, a young Athenian in love with Thais
Thais, a courtesan
Thraso, a soldier and rival of Phaedria
Parmeno, Phaedria's slave
Chaerea, Phaedria's younger brother, in love with Pamphila
Pamphila, a slave girl
Chremes, Pamphila's brother
Critique:
In antiquity, this was the most famous
and popular of Terence's plays.
Tradition has it that it was once produced
twice in one day. Like most Roman
drama, it had its origins in the plays of
Greek dramatists, and borrowings from
the works of Menander are apparent. In
this play we find that Terence tried to
depart from some of the traditional
conventions of the Roman drama. Most
Roman comedies contained the insolent
parasite, the rascally slave, and the
braggart warrior. These characters are present
in name in The Eunuch, but Terence
worked over his figures until they are
somewhat different from the conventional
portrayals. The slave is an honest and
well-meaning fellow, lacking in the usual
insolence. The warrior, an Athenian
captain, is a fool, but he strives to be a
wit, so that he is more than a boaster
about deeds which he may or may not
have accomplished.
The Story:
Phaedria, a young Athenian of good
family, was disturbed because he had
been excluded from the house of Thais,
a courtesan. He was also perturbed
because of the love he felt for the woman.
Phaedria's slave, anxious to help his
master, advised that Phaedria retire to the
country for a time and try to forget her.
Parmeno, the slave, really believed the
woman was wicked and that his master
would be better off without her. As
master and slave stood before Thais' house,
which was next to Phaedria's father's
residence, the courtesan herself came out
to explain why she had refused to
admit the young man. She explained that
Thraso, a warrior, had purchased a slave
who had formerly belonged to her
mother. Thais believed that the slave, a
young girl, was actually a free citizen of
Athens. In order to get a good name in
Athens, to which city she had recently
come, Thais hoped to learn the girl's
identity and restore her to her family.
Thais had to humor the captain in order
to get possession of the slave girl.
Phaedria believed Thais and
promised to go away into the country for two
days, so that she could work on the
captain with her charms and get possession
of the girl. Before he left, Phaedria gave
Parmeno orders to go into his father's
house and get the two slaves whom he
had purchased for Thais. One of the
slaves was an Ethiopian girl, the other
a eunuch; Thais wanted a eunuch
because royalty preferred them.
On his way to get the slaves for Thais,
Parmeno met Phaedria's younger
brother, Chaerea, who had seen the slave girl
Thais wanted and had fallen in love with
her. Chaerea persuaded Parmeno to
introduce him into Thais' household in
place of the eunuch, and the exchange
was made. In the meantime Thraso's
1128

parasite had brought the slave girl to
Thais' house as a present to the courtesan
from the warrior. He also bade Thais
meet his master for dinner.
Thais and some of her maids went to
Thraso's house as he had requested.
While they were gone, Chaerea, in the
person of the eunuch, was entrusted
with the care of Pamphila, the slave girl.
He sent her to be bathed by other slaves.
When she was returned, he was so
overcome by her charms, aided by a picture
of Jupiter's rape of Danae, that he raped
the girl. Ashamed at what he had done,
he fled.
While Thais was gone, Pamphila's
brother Chremes came to the house at
the request of Thais. Told that she was
not at home, he went in search of her
at Thraso's residence. Thraso, thinking
Chremes a rival for Thais' affections,
behaved boorishly. Disgusted, Thais took
her leave, after telling Chremes to meet
her shortly thereafter at her own house.
Phaedria, in the meantime, had left
for the country, but, overcome by his
affection for Thais, he turned back.
Arriving at his father's house, he was met
by one of Thais' maids, who told him
that the eunuch had raped Pamphila.
Phaedria, swearing that such things
could not happen, found the eunuch
dressed in his brother's clothing. The
maid, upon seeing the eunuch, realized
that the guilty man was not the eunuch
but Phaedria's brother. The brother,
meanwhile, had gone off to a dinner with
some friends. He was both sorry and glad
for his deed; most of all, he wanted to
marry the girl.
Thais returned, distressed and angry
when she heard what had happened. Her
anger was cut short by the arrival of
Chremes, who thought that Pamphila
was his sister, stolen in infancy. To make
sure, he went off to get the nurse who
had been in charge of his sister. Before
he could leave, however, he had to chase
off Thraso, who had arrived with a band
of servants to reclaim the slave he had
given to Thais.
Chaerea returned and confessed his
actions to Thais. When she accused him
of doing the deed to spite her, a
courtesan, he demurred, swearing that he had
raped the girl because he loved her
overmuch. He still claimed that he wanted
to marry her. Chremes returned with the
nurse, who quickly identified Pamphila
as Chremes' long-lost sister, a free citizen
of the city, a member of a good family,
and a fine wife for Chaerea, if the lad
could get his father's consent.
While they were conferring, Thais'
maid resolved to have her own revenge
on Parmeno, Phaedria's slave. She told
Parmeno that Chaerea had been seized
and that he was about to be mutilated,
as was the customary treatment of rapists
in ancient Athens. Parmeno ran to
Laches, the father of Phaedria and Chaerea,
to get the older man's help.
When Laches learned the true facts,
he was quite willing to permit a marriage
between his younger son and the girl
whom he had dishonored. More than
that, the father became reconciled to his
older son's love for the courtesan, since
she had proved herself in her efforts to
restore the slave to freedom and her
proper position in life. He agreed to look after
the courtesan's welfare and to permit his
older son to live with her. This plan made
Phaedria and Thais very happy, for they
truly loved one another.
When Thraso returned for one last
attempt to regain the favor of the
courtesan, Phaedria threatened to kill him if
he appeared in that street again. But
Thraso's parasite suggested to Phaedria
and Thais that they keep the braggart
for entertainment. The parasite pointed
out that Thraso was very foolish, had a
lot of money, and could be kept dangling
a long time by the courtesan without
ever receiving any of her favors. Phaedria,
seeing the humor of the situation, agreed
to the terms. The warrior, not realizing
he was to be made a fool, was so happy
with the arrangement that he promised to
1129

behave himself and to be more generous him into the silly situation,
than ever with the parasite who had got
1130

EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Lyly (c. 1554-1606)
Type of plot: Didactic romance
Time of plot: 1579-1580
Locale: England
First published: 1580
Principal characters:
Euphues, a young gentleman of Athens
Philautus, a young gentleman of Naples, Euphues* friend
Camilla, a young maiden of England
Lady Flavia, a lady of England
Surius, an English nobleman
Fidus, an elderly Englishman
Frances, a young English girl, Lady Flavia's niece
Critiqu
que:
This sequel to Euphues, which deals
less directly with morals and more openly
with the psychology of love, is in some
ways an improvement over the first book.
Although there is the same dependency
on classical sources, such as Pliny and
Erasmus, for examples to illustrate truths
and for the truths themselves, this work
has a better, more coherent plot and
depends less on the use of letters from
one character to another as a narrative
method. The style is, if anything, more
graceful and delicate than that in the
earlier narrative. Some passages might
well please the more fastidious modern
reader, and certainly most of the book
pleased the Elizabethan reader. Perhaps
the most pleased was Queen Elizabeth,
since much of the book is taken up with
praise of England, Englishmen, and the
queen herself. Also of interest to Lyly's
contemporaries, undoubtedly, were the
extensive and often penetrating passages
on the many facets of love. Much sound
advice is freely given among the
characters, and the events in the plot serve to
support the wisdom embodied in action
and character.
The Story:
As they had previously planned,
Euphues and Philautus embarked from
Athens for England. During the two-
month voyage Euphues offered Philautus
considerable counsel on how to behave
while in the strange country, and
cautioned him especially about his penchant
for falling too easily in love. To
illustrate his point, Euphues told the tale of
young Callimachus, who learned through
bitter experience the perils of travel.
Euphues closed his discourse with a
description of the island to which they
sailed.
Upon their arrival, the two young men
encountered Fidus, an old man who kept
bees. After telling them of the folly of
discussing the queen, about whom they
had asked, Fidus illustrated for them the
principles of a sensible monarchy by
describing his colony of bees, with its
queen, workers, and drones. Upon the
urging of Philautus, he also told them
of his own unhappy experience when he
fell in love with a young maiden who
loved another man and who died of grief
after her lover was killed in a distant
land. This experience had led Fidus to
retire to beekeeping in a secluded area
near Dover.
Leaving the old gentleman with thanks
for his hospitality and his story, Euphues
and Philautus proceeded toward London.
The trip was largely taken up with
another warning by Euphues to Philautus
about the dangers of love, advice given
in spite of the Italian's vehement denials
of any such weakness.
Soon the two strangers arrived in
London, where they were welcomed because
1131

of their wit and address. Admitted into
court circles, they were delighted with
English virtue and charm. Philautus* eye
soon fell upon Camilla, a young maiden
not of high birth but of great beauty and
virtue. He fell immediately, and
hopelessly, in love. After a heated debate with
himself about his plight, Philautus was
discovered by Euphues, who began
praising English women for their beauty and
virtue. Philautus stopped his friend and
accused him of being in love. The two
young men quarreled, and Euphues
moved to new lodgings.
At a masque, Philautus revealed his
affection to Camilla, who received his
overtures coldly. After further rebuffs,
he went to an Italian sorcerer in search
of a charm to win his beloved. The
sorcerer told Philautus that stories of such
spells of love, about which he told many
popular tales, were all false and that only
God, who made the human heart, could
govern its inclinations. He advised
Philautus to write to his love of his devotion.
The young Italian did so several times,
one letter being secretly transported to
Camilla in the hollowed-out core of a
pomegranate and her reply returned in
a volume of Petrarch. Camilla still
refused his love, however, and soon she
refused to answer his letters. During his
pursuit of Camilla, which took place
mostly at the house of Lady Flavia, his
hostess introduced Philautus to Frances,
a girl who was almost as beautiful as
Camilla and quite as witty and virtuous.
She engaged with him in several debates
about love and looked with considerably
more favor upon the young Italian.
Philautus, finally convinced of the
hopelessness of his love for Camilla, who
was also courted by Surius, a young
English nobleman, began to feel strongly the
loss of his friendship with Euphues. After
an exchange of letters, in which
Philautus begged his former friend's pardon, the
two young men were reunited.
At a party given by Lady Flavia,
Camilla and Surius, Frances and Philautus,
and Lady Flavia and an old friend
engaged in a three-sided debate which
Euphues judged. Wisely taking the middle
ground, he declared that virtue and honor
must be part of love for both the man
and the woman, and he praised that
higher love which is above lust. At the
party Philautus discovered that he was
very fond of Frances, and Camilla
realized that she loved Surius.
While Philautus wooed Frances in the
country, Euphues remained in London
to study the court and English ways.
Before long, however, he was called back
to Athens by urgent business. From his
home Euphues wrote his Euphues Glass
for Europe, in which he praised at some
length English life, the English court,
and, especially, the English sovereign,
whose beauty, chastity, and wisdom
Euphues declared to be perfect.
In a letter from Philautus, Euphues
learned of his friend's plan to marry
Frances, of Camilla's marriage to Surius,
and of the good wishes of his English
friends. Euphues replied with a long
letter containing counsel for his friend
concerning the management of a marriage.
Then the wise Athenian retired to a
distant mountain for study and meditation.
1132

EUPHUES, THE ANATOMY OF WIT
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Lyly (c. 1554-1606)
Type of plot: Didactic romance
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Naples and Athens
First published: 1579
Principal characters:
Euphues, a young gentleman of Athens
Philautus, a nobleman of Naples, his friend
Don Ferardo, a governor of Naples
Lucilla, his daughter, engaged to Philautus
Livia, her friend
Eubulus, an old gendeman of Naples
Critique:
Unquestionably the greatest
contribution of Lyly's romance to the
development of the English novel was the style
of the writing. Although the "euphuistic"
style, characterized by numerous similes,
the use of countless examples taken from
nature and mythology, frequent rhetorical
questions, balanced sentence
construction, and alliteration, had appeared earlier
in English prose, no one before Lyly had
used it so skillfully or with such
persistence. As always, Lyly's intention was to
refine the manners of an era that realized
its need for delicacy and sophistication.
There is, in addition, a strong strain of
moralistic didacticism in Euphues, which
was also written to oppose Italian
influences in the court of Queen Elizabeth.
Athens is generally accepted to have
been, in Lyly's mind, a symbol of Oxford
University; and he addressed a brief
epilogue to the "Gentlemen Scholars of
Oxford/' What little plot there is in
Euphues is probably based on some of Lyly's
own experiences during his college days,
but the story is less important for its own
sake than as a vehicle for ornately written
digressions, so that its essential purpose,
the development of a graceful and ornate
prose style, is undeniably well achieved.
That the Elizabethan age welcomed such
a development is shown by the fact that
the extreme popularity of Euphues gave
the name that still clings to the kind of
writing which Lyly perfected.
The Story:
Euphues, a young gentleman of
Athens, was graced by nature with great
personal beauty and by fortune with a
large patrimony, but he used his brilliant
wit to enjoy the pleasures of wickedness
rather than the honors of virtue. In his
search for new experiences the young
man went to Naples, a city famed for
loose living. There he found many eager
to encourage a waste of time and talent,
but he was ever cautious, trusting no one
and taking none for a friend. Thus he
escaped real harm from the company of
idle youths with whom he associated.
An elderly gentleman of Naples,
Eubulus, one day approached Euphues and
admonished the young man for his easy
ways, warning him of the evil results
that were sure to follow and urging him
to be merry with modesty and reserve.
In a witty reply Euphues rebuffed the
old man's counsel and told him that his
pious urgings only resulted from his
withered old age. So in spite of the sage
warning, Euphues remained in Naples,
and after two months there he met a
pleasing young man named Philautus,
whom he determined to make his only
and eternal friend. Philautus, impressed
by the charm of Euphues, readily agreed
to be his firm friend forever. Their
friendship grew, and the two young men soon
became inseparable.
Philautus had long before earned the
affection and trust of Don Ferardo, a
1133

prominent official of Naples, and had
fallen in love with his beautiful daughter
Lucilla. While Don Ferardo was on a
trip to Naples, Philautus took his friend
with him to visit Lucilla and a group of
her friends. After dinner Euphues was
given the task of entertaining the
company with an extemporaneous discourse
on love. He declared that one should love
another for his mind, not for his
appearance. When the conversation turned to a
discussion of constancy, Lucilla asserted
that her sex was wholly fickle. Euphues
began to dispute her, but, suddenly
struck by Lucilla's beauty and confused
by his feelings, he broke off his speech
and quickly left.
Lucilla discovered that she was
attracted to the young Athenian. After
weighing the respective claims of
Euphues and Philautus on her affections,
she convinced herself that it would not
be wrong to abandon Philautus for
Euphues; however, she decided to pretend
to each that he was her only love.
Euphues, meanwhile, had persuaded
himself that Lucilla must be his in spite of
Philautus: friendship must give way
before love. In order to deceive his friend,
Euphues pretended to be in love with
Livia, Lucilla's friend. Philautus was
overjoyed and promised to help him win
Livia.
The two young men went immediately
to the house of Don Ferardo. While
Philautus was attending the governor, who
had finally completed arrangements for
his daughter's marriage to the young man,
Euphues and Lucilla engaged in a subtle
debate about love and finally declared
their passion for each other. When Don
Ferardo told his daughter of his plans for
her marriage to Philautus, she told him
of her love for Euphues.
Philautus, betrayed at once by both
his friend and his beloved, blamed now
one and now the other. He wrote a
scathing letter to Euphues, saying that they
were friends no longer and that he hoped
Euphues would soon be in his own
unhappy situation, for Lucilla, having
proved untrue, might be faithless again.
Euphues replied in a taunting letter that
deception in love is natural. He
expressed confidence that Lucilla would be
faithful to him forever.
After what had happened, however, it
was impossible for Euphues to visit
Lucilla while her father was at home.
During her lover's absence she fell in love
again, this time with Curio, a gentleman
who possessed neither wealth nor wit.
When Euphues at last went to apologize
for being away so long, Lucilla replied
curtly that she had hoped his absence
would be longer. Admitting that her new
lover was inferior to both Philautus and
Euphues, she supposed God was
punishing her for her fickleness. Although she
realized that her life was likely to be
unhappy, a fate she had earned, she did not
hesitate to scorn Euphues. Don Ferardo
argued that it was her filial duty to give
up the worthless Curio. When she
refused, her father died of grief not long
after.
Having renewed his friendship with
Philautus before departing from Naples,
Euphues left with his friend a written
discourse against the folly of love.
Saying that love, although it started with
pleasure, ended in destruction and grief,
he urged his friend to forget passion and
to turn his attention toward more serious
pursuits.
After returning to Athens, where he
engaged in long hours of study, Euphues
wrote a treatise on the proper way to rear
a child. With the weakness of his own
upbringing in mind, since it had not
steered him away from the shoals of sloth
and wickedness, he urged that a young
man should be legitimately born and
should be brought up under the influence
of three major forces: nature, reason, and
use. In this manner the young man would
be educated in the ways of virtue as well
as in the customs of use.
Euphues wrote many other letters and
treatises: in one he urged the gentlemen
1134

scholars of Athens to study with the laws
of God in mind; in another he debated
with an atheist and converted him to
godliness; a letter to Philautus
encouraged him to abandon his dissolute life in
Naples; in a letter to Eubulus, Euphues
thanked the old man for his good advice
and told him of his return to
righteousness; another letter to Philautus expressed
regret at the death of Lucilla and at the
irreligious character of her life; two
letters to a pair of young men told them to
accept their destiny and to live
virtuously; in response to a letter in which
Livia told of her intention to be virtuous,
Euphues praised her and told her of
Philautus' possible visit to Athens.
1135

EVAN HARRINGTON
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Meredith (1828-1909)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First puhlished: 1861
Principal characters:
Evan Harrington, a tailor's son
Harriet Cogglesby,
Caroline Strike, and
Louisa, the Countess de Saldar, Evan's sisters
Rose Jocelyn, an heiress
Ferdinand Laxley, Evan's rival
Critique:
That a common tradesman can
vindicate himself in the presence of the upper
classes is the theme of this novel. How the
Countess de Saldar contrives to uphold
the honor of her brother and sisters
provides the plot. Although the plot is
handicapped by complications often difficult to
follow, the novel is, aside from Meredith's
intricate method and involved style, rich
in social satire, smoothly maneuvered to
reach its climax, and ironically amusing in
its consistent characterizations. Evan
Harrington is no mere social climber; he is
more or less a symbol of the refinement
latent in his own class as opposed to
upper-class vulgarity. In the novel
Meredith drew heavily on his own family
background and experience. Melchisedec
Harrington was drawn from his own
grandfather, a tailor, and Evan's sisters are
the writer's three aunts, thinly disguised.
The Story:
Melchisedec Harrington was a tailor
with the bearing and manners of a great
nobleman. When he died, his neighbors
spoke fondly of him and wondered what
his son, who was in Portugal, would do.
His widow knew that the great Mel, as
he was called, had left debts amounting
to more than four thousand pounds,
which Evan would want to repay. The boy
was to go to Mr. Goren in London to
learn the tailor's trade.
There had been three daughters in the
tailor's household, each of whom had
married so well that they had thenceforth cut
themselves apart from their father, a
common tradesman. Harriet had married a
brewer, Andrew Cogglesby; Caroline had
married Major Strike, and Louisa had
become the Countess de Saldar. The
countess decided that her brother Evan must
also marry well, and she tried to ally him
with Rose Jocelyn, who had money of her
own.
When Mrs. Harrington told Evan
about old Mel's debts, the son consented
to go to London and learn his trade from
Mr. Goren; not even the countess'
entreaties and assurances that Rose loved
him could dissuade him from his course.
Setting out for London on foot, he met
Jack Raikes, an old school friend. They
went to the Green Dragon Inn, where they
joined a group of men at dinner. Old Tom
Cogglesby, brother of Andrew, the
brewer, presided. Among those present
were Harry Jocelyn, Rose's brother, and
Ferdinand Laxley, his friend. Evan and
Jack got into a drunken brawl involving
much name calling and many threats. The
gentlemen present scoffed at Evan's choice
of trade. Laxley challenged Evan to a
duel, but on learning that Evan was the
son of a tailor he haughtily declined to
fight a common tradesman.
The day after the tavern brawl, while
watching a cricket match on the green,
Evan met Rose Jocelyn and her party,
which included the Countess de Saldar.
He was prevailed upon to visit the
1136

Jocelyns at Beckley Court before he went
to London. As he rode along beside Rose,
one of the men with whom he had
quarreled the night before pointed him out
as a tailor. At Beckley Court the countess
was able to persuade Harry Jocelyn that
Evan was not the tailor but that Jack
Raikes was. Still, Laxley demanded that
Evan deny his trade and fight the duel as
a gentleman or else acknowledge it.
Laxley was one of Rose's suitors.
Resenting Evan, he continually challenged
him to admit he was not a real gentleman.
Since claiming that he was a gentleman
would mean a duel with Laxley, Evan
resolved to leave Beckley Court.
The countess, fearing to see all her
plans ruined, prevailed upon Evan to seek
the advice of his relatives. Harriet,
Caroline, and Andrew were also visiting at
Beckley Court; Evan's predicament
concerned all of them. Andrew offered the
young man a position in his brewery.
Glorying in her position, Rose
encouraged her admirers to outrace each other
In an amateur steeplechase, the prize to
be her handkerchief. Evan won the prize
but was injured when thrown from his
horse.
There was a rumor in Lymport that at
the age of sixteen the Countess de Saldar
tried to run off with a certain George Up-
loft. Melchisedec allegedly had chased the
pair down and ended the romance. When
Uptoft appeared at Beckley Court, the
countess brazenly defied him to recall her
background. At dinner the conversation
swung to old Mel, and during the last
anecdote, which involved Mel's oldest
daughter, Caroline swooned and was
taken from the room, but not before Up-
loft recognized her as Mel's daughter.
Although confined to bed because of his
injury, Evan was still determined to leave
Beckley Court. The masquerade he was
playing, pretending to be one of the
upper class when he was actually a tailor's
son, was too much for him. That evening,
seeing Rose in the garden, he followed her
to claim the handkerchief which he had
won. When he revealed his love, and she
responded, he promised himself that he
would disclose his base origin to her on
the morrow.
The next day Evan told Rose the facts
about himself. She admitted that she
already knew his story and loved him in
spite of it, and she promised to fight her
family for the right to marry him. She also
asked him to accept employment as her
Uncle Melville's secretary.
Awaiting Evan's arrival in London, Mr.
Goren learned from Jack Raikes that Evan
was loitering at Beckley Court. Mr. Goren
wrote a complaint to Mrs. Harrington,
who proceeded at once to Beckley Court.
Stopping overnight at the Green Dragon
Inn, she met the obstreperous Tom
Cogglesby and tamed him with her
efficiency and good sense. Since both were
going to Beckley Court, they traveled
together the next day. Tom was on his way,
he said, to help a tailor marry a
gentlewoman.
The social involvements at Beckley
Court grew more tense. Laxley was
blamed for an outrageous blunder in
revealing the whereabouts of a runaway
wife whom Lady Jocelyn had befriended,
and he was sent away. The Countess de
Saldar had a triumphant moment. Mrs.
Harrington conducted herself with finesse
in the midst of a difficult situation.
But the Harringtons had been publicly
exposed as the family of the tailor
Melchisedec. Evan, fearing that he had
lost Rose, discovered that his sister, the
Countess de Saldar, was responsible for
the anonymous letter Laxley was supposed
to have written. Failing in his entreaties
to convince his sister to confess the truth to
Lady Jocelyn, Evan decided to take
the blame for Laxley's dismissal. After
declaring his guilt to Lady Jocelyn, he wrote
also to Laxley. Evan decided beforehand
that if Laxley challenged him to a duel
he would refuse the challenge.
Juliana, Rose's cousin and a plain-
1137

looking crippled girl, was in love with
Evan and had always been loyal to him.
From the beginning she had known the
facts about his background. When the
question of his infamous deception
involving Laxley arose, Juliana refused to
believe ill of Evan.
On the day of Evan's departure from
Beckley Court, Rose came to him and
asked him if he had been responsible for
Laxley's humiliation. Feeling that if she
truly loved him she would not need to ask,
he refused to explain. Laxley arrived and
took possession of Rose. A note from
Juliana told Evan that she believed in
him.
In Mr. Goren's shop Evan prepared to
follow his trade. The Cogglesbys,
receiving Juliana as a guest in their home, set
out to win Evan's heart for the invalid
girl. But Evan still pined for Rose, who
cut him cruelly when she met him on the
street.
When Andrew's brewery went
bankrupt and he lost all his property, the three
sisters, who had been living in the Cog-
glesby house, were forced to go to their
mother in Lymport. At Evan's request,
Lady Jocelyn had taken Juliana, in poor
health, back to Beckley Court.
Juliana inherited Beckley Court upon
the death of her grandmother. Just before
she died, her malady being incurable,
Juliana wrote to Rose and revealed Evan's
innocence. She also wrote a will leaving
her estate to Evan. Meanwhile Rose,
engaged to Laxley, felt herself bound by
promise to Evan and sent for him to
release her before she could marry his rival.
Evan did so with no show of self-sacrifice.
Later Rose learned that Evan, rejecting
Juliana's bequest, had returned Beckley
Court to Lady Jocelyn.
Everyone had become indebted to Evan
for his generosity; he himself had simply
tried to make everyone happy. Lady
Jocelyn and Rose went to Lymport to
thank him. There Rose, speaking with
Evan alone, asked him why he had
blackened his name to her. No longer
compelled to pretend anything about
himself, Evan rose manfully to the occasion.
When he declared his love, Rose accepted
him. Old Tom Cogglesby, delighted,
offered to give Evan an income.
The sisters went back to their former
ways of life. Mrs. Harrington became
Tom Cogglesby's housekeeper.
1138

EVANGELINE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Type of plot: Pastoral romance
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: French Canada and the United States
First published: 1847
Principal characters:
Evangeline Bellefontaine
Gabriel Lajeunesse, her betrothed
Basil Lajeunesse, Gabriel's father
Benedict Bellefontaine, Evangeline's father
Critique:
The note of gentleness on which
Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie begins
never falters throughout the poem. The
description of a kindly, contented people,
who accept their exile as God's will, is
followed by an account of Evangeline's
wanderings and her patience through a
lifetime of disappointment. Force and
drama exist only in distilled forms, but
the freshness, music, and poetic imagery
of Evangeline give it wide popularity.
The Story:
In the Acadian province, in the village
of Grand-Pr6, lived a peaceful farming
people who were undisturbed by the
wars between the French and British.
In a land where there was enough for all,
there was no covetousness and no envy,
and every man lived at peace with his
neighbor. Benedict Bellefontaine had
his farm somewhat apart from the village.
His daughter, Evangeline, directed her
father's household. Although she had
many suitors, she favored only one,
Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil, the
village blacksmith. Their fathers were
friends, and the children had grown up
together.
One fall day, while Benedict rested by
the fire and Evangeline sat at her
spinning wheel, Basil brought word that the
men of the village were to meet at the
church the next day. They were to be
told the plans of the English, whose ships
were riding at anchor in the harbor.
That night Benedict and Basil signed
the wedding contract which would unite
their children. Then, while their fathers
played draughts, Evangeline and Gabriel
whispered in the darkening room until
it was time to say goodnight.
The next morning everyone, including
the folk from the outlying districts, came
to the village to hear the announcement
the English commander was to make.
Everybody wore holiday dress, as if the
occasion were one for celebration. At the
Bellefontaine farm there was especial
joy, for with a feast and dancing the
family and its guests were celebrating
the betrothal of Gabriel and Evangeline.
In the afternoon the church bell rang,
summoning the men to the church.
When they filed in, they were followed
by the guard from the ship. Outside the
women stood, waiting.
The news the English commander had
for the little community was a crushing
blow. By order of the king, their land,
houses, and cattle were forfeited to the
crown, and the entire population of
Grand-Pre" was to be transported. The
men were to consider themselves his
prisoners.
The tragic news spread quickly
through the village, and to the farm
where Evangeline was awaiting Bene^
diet's return. At sunset she started toward
the church, on her way comforting the
downcast women she met. Outside she
called Gabriel's name, but there was no
answer from the church where the men
were imprisoned.
The men were held prisoners for five
days. On the fifth, the women brought
1139

iheir household goods to the shore to
*oe loaded in boats, and late that
afternoon the men were led out of the church
by their guards. Evangeline, standing at
the side of the road, watched them
coming toward her. She was able to comfort
Gabriel with the assurance that their love
would keep them from harm, but for
her father she could do nothing. In the
five days he had aged greatly.
Basil and his son were put on separate
ships. Evangeline remained on the beach
with Benedict. That night the villagers
of Grand-Pr6 watched their homes go up
in flames, and listened to their animals
bellowing as the barns burned. Turning
from the sight, Evangeline saw that her
father had fallen dead. She dropped in
a swoon upon his breast and lay there
until morning; then with the aid of
Father Felician, the village priest, the
Acadians buried Benedict Bellefontaine
by the shore. That day Evangeline sailed
with the other exiles.
The scattered exiles from Grand-Pr6
wandered far over the face of North
America in search of their friends and
families. Sometimes Evangeline lingered
for a while in a town, but always she
was driven on by her longing for Gabriel.
Looking at unmarked graves, she
imagined they might contain her lover.
Sometimes she heard rumors of his
whereabouts; sometimes she spoke with people
who had actually seen and known him,
but always long ago. The notary's son,
Baptiste Leblanc, followed her faithfully
and loyally through her years of
searching, but she would have no one but
Gabriel for a husband.
Finally a band of exiles rowed down
the Mississippi, bound for Louisiana,
where they hoped to find some of their
kinsmen. Evangeline and Father Felician
were among them, Evangeline heartened
because she felt she was nearing Gabriel
at last. Then in the heat of the noonday,
the voyagers pulled their craft to shore
and lay down to sleep behind some
bushes. While they slumbered, Gabriel,
in the company of hunters and trappers,
passed the spot on his way to the West
That evening, when the exiles went
ashore, the prosperous herdsman wha
welcomed them proved to be Basil.
Evangeline learned that Gabriel had left home
that day, too troubled by thoughts of his
love to endure the quiet life in his father's
house.
For a time Basil helped Evangeline
carry on her search. Leaving his
peaceful home in the South, the herdsman
traveled with the girl to the base of the
Ozark Mountains. They were guided by
rumors of Gabriel's whereabouts, and
sometimes, from the distance, they saw,
or thought they saw, his campfire. But
when they reached the spot, he had
already gone ahead.
One evening a Shawnee Indian woman
came into the camp, on her way back to
her own people after her husband's
murder by Comanches. In the night, after
the others were asleep, she and
Evangeline exchanged stories. When
Evangeline had finished hers, the woman told
the tale of Mowis, the bridegroom made
of snow, and of the Indian girl who
married and followed him, only to see
him dissolve and fade with the sunshine.
She told of Lilinau, who had followed
her phantom lover into the woods until
she disappeared forever. Evangeline felt
that she, too, was following a phantom.
The next day the party traveled to
the Jesuit Mission on the western side
of the mountains, where they hoped to
hear some word of Gabriel. A priest told
them Gabriel had gone to the north to
hunt six days before. Because it seemed
certain he would pass that way on his
journey home in the fall, Evangeline
decided to wait at the mission. Basil and
his companions returned to their homes.
Autumn and winter passed and spring
came, with no news of Gabriel. Finally
Evangeline heard that he was camping
in the forests of Michigan on the
Saginaw River. When she reached his camp,
it was deserted and in ruins.
For many years she wandered over the
country in search of her lover, but always
1140

she met with disappointment. At last,
grown gray, her beauty gone, she became
a Sister of Mercy in Philadelphia, where
she went because the soft-spoken Quakers
reminded her of her own people. When
pestilence struck the town, she visited
the almshouse to nurse the destitute. One
Sunday morning, she saw on the pallet
before her a dying old man. It was
Gabriel. In his last moments he dreamed of
Evangeline and Grand-Pre\ Trying to
utter her name, he died. Evangeline
murmured a prayer of thanks as she
pressed her lover to her.
The lovers he side by side in
nameless graves in Philadelphia, far from their
old home in the north. But a few
peasants who wandered back from exile still
keep their story alive.
1141

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES
Type of work: Poem
Author: John Keats (1795-1821)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Middle Ages
Locale: A castle
First published: 1820
Principal characters:
Madeline, a young girl
Porphyro, her lover
Angela, an old nurse
Critique:
The Eve of St. Agnes is doubtless
Keats' most beautiful and compelling
composition. Musical in its matchless
verse, vivid in colors, sights, and sounds,
the poem is generally thought of as a
highly idealized picture of the world as
imagined by two young, ecstatic lovers.
The story itself is built around the
ancient superstition that a maiden who
retires to her bed after practising a certain
ritual on St. Agnes' Eve will be awakened
in a dream by her lover. The use of
medieval legend and setting add to the
romantic effects of the poem.
The Story:
A cold St. Agnes' Eve it was—so cold
that the owl with all its feathers shivered,
so cold that the old Beadsman's fingers
were numb as he told his rosary and said
his prayers. Passing by the sculptured
figures of the dead, he felt sorry for them
in their icy graves. As he walked through
the chapel door, he could hear the sound
of music coming from the castle hall. He
sadly turned again to his prayers.
The great hall of the castle was a scene
of feasting and revelry, but one among
the merry throng was scarcely aware of
her surroundings. The lovely Madeline's
thoughts were on the legend of St. Agnes'
Eve, which told that a maiden, if she
followed the ceremonies carefully and
went supperless to bed, might there meet
her lover in a dream.
Meanwhile, across the moonlit moors
came Porphyro. He entered the castle
and hid behind a pillar, aware that his
presence meant danger, because his
family was an enemy of Madeline's house.
Soon the aged crone, Angela, came by
and offered to hide him, lest his enemies
find him there and kill him.
He followed her along dark arched
passageways, out of sight of the revelers.
When they stopped, Porphyro begged
Angela to let him have one ghmpse of
Madeline. He promised on oath that
if he so much as disturbed a lock of hef
hair, he would give himself up to the
foes who waited below. He seemed in
such sorrow that the poor woman gave in
to him. She took Porphyro to the maiden's
chamber and there hid him in a closet
where was stored a variety of sweet meats
and confections brought from the feast
downstairs. Angela then hobbled away,
and soon the breathless Madeline
appeared.
She came in with her candle, which
blew out, and kneeling before her high
arched casement window, she began to
pray. Watching her kneel there, her head
a halo of moonlight, Porphyro grew faint
at the sight of her beauty. Soon she
disrobed and crept into bed, where she lay
entranced until sleep came over her.
Porphyro stole from the closet and
gazed at her in awe as she slept. For an
instant a door opened far away, and the
noises of another world, boisterous and
festive, broke in; but soon the sounds
faded away again. In the silence he
brought dainty foods from the closet—
quinces, plums, jellies, candies, syrups
and spices that perfumed the chilly
room. Madeline slept on, and Porphyro
began to play a soft melody on a lute.
1142

Madeline opened her eyes and thought
her lover a vision of St. Agnes' Eve.
Porphyro, not daring to speak, sank upon
his knees until she spoke, hegging him
never to leave her or sne would die.
St. Agnes' moon went down. Outside
the casements, sleet and ice began to dash
against the windowpanes. Porphyro told
her that they must flee before the house
awakened. Madeline, afraid and
trembling, followed her lover down the cold,
gloomy corridors, through the wide
deserted hall, and past the porter, asleep
on his watch. So they fled—into the
wintry dawn.
1143

EVELINA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fanny Burney (Madame d'Arblay, 1752-1840)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1778
Principal characters:
Sm John Belmont, an English nobleman
Evelina, Sir John's unacknowledged daughter
The Rev. Mr. Villars, Evelina's guardian
Madame Duval, Evelina's grandmother
Lord Orville, whom Evelina married
Sm Clement Willoughby, a gendeman of fashion
Mrs. Mirvan, Evelina's patroness
Critique:
This novel, written in the epistolary
form so popular in the eighteenth century,
still attracts attention, chiefly for its
portrayal of morals and manners. The author
revealed her purpose in her subtitle, The
History of a Young Ladys Entrance into
the World, Even though the reader may
be repelled by the sugar-sweetness of a
heroine who never draws an unkind
breath from the beginning to the end of
the story, the reader will be attracted to
the descriptions of English social life and
the idiosyncrasies of character revealed
through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old
girl.
The Story:
Evelina, abandoned by her father and
her maternal grandmother upon the death
of her mother, had been for many years
the ward of the Rev. Mr. Arthur Villars,
an English clergyman. At last her
grandmother, Madame Duval, wrote from
France to say that she would take charge
of the girl, providing proper proof of the
child's relationship were forthcoming. Mr.
Villars refused, however, to send Evelina
to France. He also objected to the
invitation of Mrs. Mirvan, who wanted
Evelina to join her family in London. He felt
that EveHna, having been brought up
carefully at Berry Hill in Dorsetshire,
should not be exposed to the unhappiness
of London society life, particularly so
since her own father, Sir John Belmont,
would not admit his parentage and she
was without enough income to permit her
to live as the Mirvans did.
After some urging, he finally allowed
Evelina to visit Lady Howard, Mrs. Mir-
van's mother, at Howard Grove. A short
time later Mrs. Mirvan and her daughter,
who were delighted with Evelina, secured
permission to have her accompany them
to London.
Almost at once she was swept into
fashionable London life. Having grown up in
the provinces, the city was a constant joy
to her. She soon met Lord Orville and
both were attracted to one another. On
several occasions her lack of London
manners caused her embarrassment and she
expressed a desire to return to Dorsetshire.
Sir Clement Willoughby was her chief
tormentor.
By chance she met her odious
grandmother, the vulgar and presumptuous
Madame Duval. On an outing the
Frenchwoman became the subject of ridicule
when she was pitched into a mudhole.
Evelina met other of her relations and
found them no better than her
grandmother.
Madame Duval, attaching herself to
the Mirvans, succeeded in making Evelina
most unhappy. Evelina went reluctantly
to the opera with her relatives and was
made miserable by their crudeness.
Hoping to escape them, she joined Sir
Clement, but was only further embarrassed
1144

when Sir Clement intentionally delayed
his coach while escorting her to her
lodgings. For that escapade Evelina was
severely scolded by her guardian. In a
letter to her he indicated that he lived in
daily fears for her honor. He was relieved
when he heard that the Mirvans were at
last returning with her to Howard Grove.
Lady Howard, urged on by Madame
Duval, put forth the plan of forcing Sir
John Belmont to acknowledge Evelina as
his daughter. Mr. Villars did not approve
of this action, as he had promised
Evelina's mother that the girl would never
know her cruel and unnatural father.
At Howard Grove, Evelina
unknowingly participated in a cruel joke planned
by Captain Mirvan and Sir Clement.
Again made a laughing-stock, Madame
Duval took to her bed after she had been
sent upon a fool's errand and had lost her
false curls.
When Sir John Belmont refused to
admit that Evelina was his daughter,
Madame Duval planned to take Evelina to
confront Sir John in person and to
demand his recognition. Mr. Villars would
not listen to her proposal. He did agree,
however, to let Evelina spend a month
with her grandmother in London. EveHna
was unhappy under Madame Duval's
chaperonage because her vulgar relations
attempted to use her to ingratiate
themselves with her fashionable friends. Sir
Clement Willoughby visited Evelina
while she was staying with her
grandmother, but Madame Duval embarrassed
everyone by her uncivil remarks to him.
She remembered the joke played on her
at Howard Grove.
In her London lodgings Evelina was
instrumental in preventing the suicide of
Mr. Macartney, an improvished Scottish
poet. Out of pity for his plight, she
relieved his need with money from her own
purse.
At a fireworks display Evelina was
again chagrined, having been discovered
by Lord Orville while she was in vulgar
company.
Madame Duval announced that she
hoped to marry Evelina to the boorish
young son of Mr. Braughton, a
silversmith. Mr. Braughton was Madame
Duval's nephew. Evelina was much
distressed, the more so when her
grandmother's friends attached themselves to Lord
Orville in a familiar manner. When Mr.
Braughton asked his lordship's custom for
any silver the nobleman might want to
buy, Evelina felt herself ruined forever
in Lord Orville's eyes.
In her distress Evelina wrote to Mr.
Villars, who ordered her to return
immediately to Berry Hill. From there she wrote
to her friend, Miss Mirvan, about her
London adventures. A most painful
surprise to her was a letter she had received
from Lord Orville, to whom she had
written to disclaim responsibility for her
relatives' crudeness. His reply was so insulting
that she became quite ill and had to be
sent to a rest home at Bristol Hot Wells,
where she went in the company of Mrs.
Selwyn, a neighbor.
At the watering place Evelina met
many of her fashionable London friends,
among them Lord Orville. He was so
courteous that she had to forgive him for his
impolite letter. As Evelina was beginning
to feel at home once more among people
of wealth and position, Mr. Macartney
appeared and embarrassed her with his
importunities.
A new arrival at the baths was Miss
Belmont, an heiress reputed to be Sir John
Belmont's daughter. Mrs. Selwyn,
hearing of the girl's identity, decided to learn
more about Miss Belmont. Mrs. Selwyn
was convinced that EveHna was the true
daughter of Sir John.
Mr. Macartney was trying to return
the money Evelina had given him, but
she did not want her friends to learn that
she had ever known him. She feared that
they would suspect her of having had an
affair with him. Lord Orville, however,
encouraged her to see the unfortunate
young poet. From Mr. Macartney,
Evelina learned that he believed himself to be
1145

an unacknowledged son of Sir John
Belmont. Evelina, realizing that she herself
must be the sister of Mr. Macartney, did
not reveal her knowledge.
When Sir John Belmont returned
to England, Mr. Villars was finally stirred to
action against him, for by introducing to
society the woman who posed as his
daughter Sir John was indicating that
Evelina was an impostor. Determined that
Evelina should have her rights, Mr.
Villars prepared to force Sir John to
acknowledge Evelina as his daughter.
Through the good offices of Mrs. Sel-
wyn and others the affair was at last
untangled. The supposed daughter of Sir
John proved to be the daughter of a
penniless nurse, who had substituted her own
child for Lady Belmont's infant. Evelina,
delighted to learn that Sir John's attitude
had been the result of error and not
neglect, was happily reconciled with her
father, who received her warmly. The
impostor was treated with great kindness
by all concerned as she herself was
innocent of the design. She married Mr.
Macartney, who was also acknowledged by
Sir John. Evelina, as Sir John's daughter,
was sought after by Lord Orville, to whom
she gladly gave her hand in marriage.
1146

EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ben Jonson (1572M637)
Type of plot: Comedy of humors
Time of plot: Late sixteenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1598
Principal characters:
Knowell, an old gentleman
Edward Knowell, his son
Brainworm, Knowell's servant
Downright, a plain man
Wellbred, his half-brother
Kitely, a merchant
Captain Bobadill, a cowardly braggart
Dame Kitely, Kitely's wife
Cob, a water carrier
Tib, Cob's wife
Critique:
Every Man in His Humour amused and
delighted literary London in 1598.
Jonson, a shrewd observer of human foibles,
capitalized on these failings to create a
new kind of dramatic comedy in
accordance with the medieval theory of the four
humors—hot, dry, cold, moist. That is to
say, each man contains within him these
four elements, and when any one of
these elements predominates in an
individual, that person is given to a peculiar
sort of folly and is called "humorous."
All comedy, of course, is based on
aberration from the normal, but Jonson's
conscious design of marking each
individual in his play by heightening his
principal folly or shortcoming was a new
departure in the drama and set the
pattern for many subsequent plays by other
hands in which the theory of humors
was similarly employed. It is believed that
Shakespeare acted in this play when it
was first produced at The Curtain theater
in the summer of 1598. The first
published version was the folio edition of
1616.
The Story:
In Hogsden, a conservative suburb
north of London's wall, Edward Knowell,
a dignified, practical citizen, was
somewhat concerned over his son Edward's
interest in poetry. Old Knowell was
further alarmed at the younger generation's
interests when his nephew Stephen, a
country simpleton, showed interest in the
gentle art of falconry. Old Knowell
wished to have his son and his nephew
engaged in more practical arts.
One day he was handed a letter
obviously meant for his son. The letter,
signed by Wellbred, a London gallant,
was an invitation to young Knowell to
renew his association with a group of
young madcaps. Old Knowell, having
read the letter, and being convinced that
his son was up to no good, had his
servant, Brainworm, deliver the letter to the
youth in his study, with the directions
not to reveal that the letter had been
opened. Contrary to orders, Brainworm
told his young master that old Knowell
had read the letter. The young man,
delighted with the prospect of high
entertainment in the city, gave little thought
to what his father might do.
Meanwhile, in the city, Matthew, an
urban fool, called on Captain Bobadill,
a spurious cavalier who roomed in the
low-class lodgings of Cob, a water carrier.
Matthew, his taste having been
questioned by Downright, a plain-spoken man,
1147

asked for and received instructions in
dueling from the braggart, swaggering
city captain.
In his house, nearby, Kitely, a
merchant, discussed with Downright the
dissolute ways of his brother-in-law, Well-
bred, who roomed with the Kitelys. Well-
bred had become the leader of a group
of scoffers, young men who apparently
had no respect for anyone or anything;
their greatest sport was to discover fools
and make sport of them. Kitely feared
that his identity with this sporting crew
might endanger his business reputation;
besides, he was jealous of his wife. When
Matthew and Bobadill called for Well-
bred, Bobadill insulted Downright in
Matthew's behalf. Kitely, cautious,
restrained Downright from avenging his
honor on the spot.
Brainworm, young KnowelFs ally,
appeared in Moorfields disguised as a
disabled veteran for the purpose of
intercepting old Knowell, who he knew would
follow young Knowell into the city to
spy on him. Brainworm encountered
first, however, young Knowell ancl his
cousin Stephen. To the latter he sold a
worthless rapier. Soon afterward he
encountered old Knowell. The old
gentleman, out of pity, hired Brainworm, who
had styled himself Fitz-Sword, as a
personal servant.
Inside the city wall, their rendezvous
the Windmill Tavern in London's Old
Jewry, young Knowell revealed to Well-
bred that old Knowell had read Wellbred's
letter; the pair agreed that the only
recourse was to make a joke of the situation.
Stephen, Matthew, and Bobadill provided
rare fun for young Knowell and Well-
bred. Stephen assumed a ridiculous air of
melancholy, which he thought befitted a
lovesick poet; Matthew, a poetaster,
reflected this melancholy in what he
thought was the urban manner. Bobadill
provided entertainment with preposterous
lies about his military experiences and
with oaths which especially impressed
rustic Stephen. Brainworm joined the
group, revealed his true identity to the
satisfaction of the duped Stephen, and
reported to young Knowell that old
Knowell had come to the city and was
stopping at the house of Justice Clement.
Kitely, meanwhile, obsessed with a
growing fear that his wife might be
unfaithful to him, decided to forego a
profitable business transaction in another
part of the city. Later he changed his
mind, but before he left home he ordered
his servant, Thomas Cash, to report
immediately the coming to the house of
Wellbred and his companions, or of any
stranger. The young gallants came to the
house shortly afterward. Cash, in
desperation, enlisted Cob to carry the message
to Kitely. Before Cob left, he was thrashed
by Bobadill for making a speech against
the use of tobacco.
Having received the message at the
house of Justice Clement, where he
was doing business, Kitely hurried home,
plagued by the imagination of a jealous
husband. Cob, meanwhile, asked Justice
Clement for a warrant for Bobadill's
arrest. When Justice Clement learned
about Cob's anti-tobacco speech, he
sentenced Cob to jail, but through the
good services of old Knowell, who was
present, Cob received the warrant instead
of a jail sentence.
In Kitely's house, Downright
reproached his sister, Mistress Kitely, for
permitting their brother, Wellbred, to
use her house as meeting place for his
mad company. Matthew, to the
amusement of young Knowell and Wellbred,
read bits of stolen verse to Bridget,
Kitely's maiden sister. When Downright asked
Wellbred and his followers to leave,
rapiers were drawn. After Cash and the
other servants had separated the
antagonists, Bobadill made brave gestures. As
Wellbred and his companions left, Kitely
entered excitedly and began a search for
young Knowell, whose virtues were being
praised by Mistress Kitely and Bridget.
He feared the women had hidden the
young man in the house.
1148

Armed with a warrant and aroused by
Kitely's husbandly apprehensions, Cob
went by his house to see that all was well
with his wife Tib. He advised her to
remain indoors and not to admit anyone.
Meanwhile Brainworm, as the disabled
veteran, returned, at the direction of
young Knowell, to inform old Knowell
that his son could be apprehended at Cob's
house, where an assignation was to take
place.
Downright arrived in Moorfields while
Bobadill entertained young Knowell,
Matthew, and Stephen with unbelievable
accounts of his prowess as a swordsman.
After Downright disarmed Bobadill easily
and thrashed him, Matthew, frightened,
ran back to the city. Stephen claimed the
russet cloak which Downright left at the
scene of the fight.
Back in Old Jewry, Kitely continued
to be tortured by his jealousy.
Brainworm, now disguised as Justice Clement's
man, Formal, entered and told Kitely
that Justice Clement wished to see him
immediately. While Kitely again
admonished Cash to guard the house against all
interlopers, Wellbred conspired with
Brainworm for the marriage of young
Knowell and Bridget. Wellbred, ever
seeking amusement at the expense of
others, suggested to Mistress Kitely that
perhaps her husband was a philanderer.
At this, Mistress Kitely departed to spy
on the activities of her husband. Kitely
returned to find his wife absent, and
when he was told that she had gone to
Cob's house he followed, fearful that he
had been cuckolded. Wellbred took the
opportunity, while neither of the Kitelys
was home, to take Bridget to the church.
After their shameful conduct in
Moorfields, Bobadill and Matthew met in the
city; Bobadill rationalized their
cowardice. They encountered Brainworm, still
disguised as Formal, and gave him
jewelry and clothing to pawn for the price
of a warrant to arrest Downright, who
they said wore a russet cloak.
The tricks played by Brainworm,
young Knowell, and Wellbred began to
rebound on the knavish threesome. Old
Knowell went to Cob's house, where he
was told by the indignant Tib that she
knew no Edward Knowell. At the same
time, Mistress Kitely appeared and was
suspected by old Knowell of being young
Knowell's mistress. Kitely arrived next.
He and his wife exchanged bitter words
of mistrust, for Kitely suspected old
Knowell of being his wife's paramour, Mistress
Kitely accused her husband of dalliance
with Tib. Cob appeared and thrashed his
wife for not obeying him. As a result
of misunderstandings all around, Kitely
insisted that all concerned present
themselves before Justice Clement.
In the meantime, Brainworm, having
assumed the disguise of a constable, and
accompanied by Matthew and Bobadill,
arrested Stephen, who was wearing
Downright's russet cloak. Brainworm's
mistake was quickly recognized, but when
Downright himself approached, Matthew
and Bobadill departed in haste.
Downright, although Stephen had surrendered
the cloak, insisted that the matter be
explained to Justice Clement.
Practically all of the principals having
gathered in the hall of his house, Justice
Clement held an investigation of the
misunderstandings which had taken place.
Brainworm threw off his disguise and
explained his part in the confusion of the
day. He was forgiven by his master, old
Knowell. Young Knowell and Bridget,
now man and wife, entered with Well-
bred. Kitely and Mistress Kitely, as well
as Cob and Tib, were reconciled after
explanations had been made. Justice
Clement, having seen peace and trust
reestablished, dedicated the ensuing
evening to celebration and conviviality.
1149

EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ben Jonson (1572M637)
Type of plot: Comedy of humors
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: Not specified, but ostensibly London
First presented: 1599
Principal characters:
Macilente, a malcontent
Carlo Buffone, a scoffer
Sogliardo, a wealthy country fool
Sordido, a rural miser
Fungoso, his son
Puntarvolo, a fantastic knight
Fastidious Brisk, a courtier
Saviolina, a lady of the court
Critique:
Every Man in His Humour having
been the tremendous success it was,
Jonson, possibly urged on by his fellow
investors in the theater, wrote Every Man
out of His Humour as a companion piece
to his earlier success. In this play,
produced the following year, Jonson
overreached himself: there are too many
characters and the plot seems to ramble
unconscionably. One explanation for the
comparative failure of the play lies in the
fact that at the time of its composition
Jonson was actively engaged in the so-
called War of the Theaters, a controversy
in which rival playwrights employed the
stage to satirize each other and to ridicule
actors of the rival companies. As a play,
Every Man out of His Humour is a
hodgepodge which manages somehow to
work out; as personal satire it no longer
holds meaning for the modern audience.
Its subject and treatment, however, make
it a work of particular interest to historians
of literature.
The Story:
Macilente, disgusted by the injustices
of society, had fled to the country. As he
lay idly under a tree he overheard a
conversation between the wealthy young
farmer, Sogliardo, and Carlo Buffone, a
railing cynic whom the rustic bumpkin
had chosen as his guide in becoming a
gentleman. Macilente winced at Sogli-
ardo's presumption and at Buffone's
callous instructions to the foolish
Sogliardo to spend his money liberally, to
haunt the taverns, to frequent the
theater, to have many creditors, and to
assume a melancholy air. Buffone,
seeing Macilente and knowing him to be a
malcontent, hurried away with Sogliardo,
but in departing he told Macilente that
they were going to Puntarvolo's house.
Still musing under the tree, Macilente
next listened while Sordido, a miserly
fanner, consulted his almanac and hoped
for rainy weather in order that his hoarded
grain might soar in value. A farmhand
delivered to Sordido a note, an official
order for him to bring his grain to market.
Sordido scorned the order and swore that
he would hide his surplus harvest.
In front of Puntarvolo's house, Buffone
and Sogliardo talked with the braggart
courtier, Sir Fastidious Brisk. The three
watched with amazement Puntarvolo's
return from the hunt. Puntarvolo, an old-
fashioned, fantastic knight, was given to
extravagances in the form of little
homecoming plays which he wrote himself.
Assuming the role of a strange knight,
Puntarvolo approached his house,
inquired about the owner, and heard his
virtues praised by his indulgent wife and
her women. In anothei part of die play
1150

Puntarvolo wooed his wife in the manner
of a knight-errant. Sordido and his son*
Fungoso, a law student in the city,
appeared. Fungoso was so impressed with
the stylish cut of Brisk's clothes that he
asked his uncle, Sogliardo, to get him
money from Sordido, ostensibly for law
books, but actually for a suit of clothes
in the latest style. All the while hoping
for rain, Sordido reluctantly gave his son
money, but not enough.
Reaction varied to Puntarvolo's
announcement that he had wagered five
thousand pounds at five-to-one odds that
he and his wife and their dog could
travel to Constantinople and back without
a fatal mishap. Buffone saw in this
venture material for a colossal joke, while
Brisk was interested in investing a
hundred pounds in the venture. Fungoso,
meanwhile, taken with Brisk's courtly
manner and dress, was pleased to learn
that his brother-in-law, Deliro, was Brisk's
merchant.
The next day Macilente advised his
friend Deliro to bridle his doting love
for his wife, since this dotage caused the
wife, Fallace, to react petulantly to De-
liro's affections. Fungoso, wearing a new
suit, went to Deliro's house and borrowed
money from his sister, Fallace, in order
to complete his costume. No sooner had
he received the money than Brisk entered
in a new suit. Fungoso, frustrated by this
new development, wrote his father for
more money. Brisk, meanwhile, bragged
of his actually non-existent triumphs at
court; he also made arrangements with
Deliro for mortgaging his land in the
country. Fallace, impatient with her work-
a-day husband, admired Brisk's
courtliness and dreamed of becoming a court
lady.
In the aisles of St. Paul's Cathedral,
the meeting place of gallants and of small
businessmen, Buffone, accompanied by
Puntarvolo, tried to find two retainers for
his newly-arrived gentleman, Sogliardo.
Puntarvolo, who had with him a dog
and a cat, explained that his wife had
withdrawn from the Constantinople
venture and that the cat would go in her
place.
Brisk promised to take the hopeful
Macilente to court if Macilente would
purchase himself a fitting suit of clothes.
Actually, it was Macilente's purpose to
discover Brisk's true standing at the court.
Fungoso and his tailor, ever in pursuit of
the latest fashion, studied Brisk's clothes
as the knight talked to his companions.
And Sogliardo, who desired to have every
gentlemanly attainment, retained a
braggart down-at-heels rascal, one Shift, as
his servant and instructor in the gentle
art of smoking tobacco.
The good weather which prevailed in
the country became the despair of Sordido.
At last, in desperation, he attempted to
hang himself, but he was rescued from
that folly by the neighboring farmers,
who would save him despite his despicable
miserliness. The revelation to him of his
evil nature caused him to have a change
of heart; he vowed to be a kind and
generous neighbor henceforward.
Having dressed themselves in new
clothes, Brisk and Macilente appeared at
the court, Macilente to observe court life
and Brisk's deportment. Macilente
marveled at the inane discourse between
Brisk and Saviolina, a court lady, and he
was amused when Saviolina put Brisk out
of countenance for his abominable habit
of smoking.
Fallace, meanwhile, dreamed of the
virtues of courtier Fastidious Brisk and
paid no attention to Deliro's efforts to
please her. When Macilente told them of
Brisk's folly at court, Deliro was
determined to foreclose on the knight. Fallace,
shocked at Macilente's disloyalty and
eager to help Brisk, sent Fungoso, whom
she gave money to buy himself a new
suit, to warn Brisk of her husband's
intentions.
Brisk failed to keep an appointment at
the notary's, where he was to contribute
a hundred pounds to Puntarvolo's
venture. Not finding Brisk immediately,
Deliro had time to reconsider his plan.
His dotage prevailing, he decided not to
1151

foreclose on Brisk and he renounced
Macilente's friendship because Macilente,
he felt, had unreasonably urged him to be
more realistic in his attitude toward his
wife. Sogliardo, meanwhile, was
delighted with his man Shift, who pretended
to be an ex-highwayman, but who was, in
reality, a shiftless, cowardly indigent.
Brisk made his belated appearance at the
notary's, with the explanation that he had
been detained by ladies of the court.
Fungoso, having gone to see his tailor,
had failed in his mission to intercept
Brisk.
Puntarvolo prepared for his journey to
Constantinople with his dog and cat.
Sogliardo, persuaded by Buffone and
Brisk that the time had finally come,
decided to become a courtier. All of his
acquaintances conspired to make a fool of
him. Fungoso, in what he thought was
the latest fashion, discovered Brisk to be
wearing a new suit and was unhappy.
At the palace foolish old Puntarvolo
put his dog in the care of a surly groom.
Macilente privately obtained the dog from
the groom and poisoned it. Brisk and
Puntarvolo told Saviolina that they were
presenting to her an incomparable
courtier, Sogliardo, and that this courtier
enjoyed playing the part of a country boor.
Confronted by clownish Sogliardo,
Saviolina insisted that she could detect the
gentleman in him; she was appalled to
discover that Sogliardo, who was not
aware of the joke, was a rude peasant.
When Puntarvolo missed his dog, he
accused Shift of doing away with the animal
and threatened to beat the man. Shift,
frightened, confessed, to the
disenchantment of Sogliardo, that he had never had
the courage to commit even one of the
crimes of which he had boasted.
At the Mitre Tavern, Buffone, who
could not endure the follies and
affectations of court life, greeted his companions.
Puntarvolo, dejected by the loss of his
dog and the loss of his wager, was chaffed
by Buffone. In a rage, Puntarvolo sealed
Buffone's lips with sealing wax. When
the police arrived, everyone tried to flee.
Brisk was seized. Fungoso, hiding under
a table, was discovered and held to pay
the reckoning for all the company had
eaten and drunk.
Macilente, seeing in the situation a
chance to rid Deliro and Fallace of their
humors, sent Deliro to rescue Fungoso
at the tavern and Fallace to the jail to
comfort Brisk. Deliro paid the bill at the
Mitre Tavern. Fungoso declared that he
was through with fashion forever.
Macilente then sent Deliro to the jail to obtain
Brisk's release, after telling him that by
so doing Deliro would be reconciled to
his wife. At the jail Deliro, seeing Fal-
lace's interest in Brisk, was suddenly
awakened from his dotage. Brisk was
doomed to serve a term for his debts.
Thus the air was cleared and all who had
been taken with a specific folly were
cured.
1152

EVERYMAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Moral allegory
Time of plot: Any time
Locale: Any place
Earliest extant version: 1508
Principal characters:
God
Death
Everyman
Good-Deeds
Critique:
This drama is one of the few morality
plays to survive, thanks to four printed
versions of the sixteenth century. In
addition, Everyman is almost the only morality
play to appeal at all to modern audiences,
and it has been produced several times
within our century. Like other dramas of
this type, it was written to teach a lesson,
its characters being personified
abstractions of virtue and vice. With the
medieval church services largely conducted in
Latin, short plays were adapted to moral
teaching for the masses.
The Story:
One day a Messenger appeared to
announce a moral play on the summoning of
Everyman. In the beginning of his life,
he declared, man should look to the
ending, for we shall see how all earthly
possessions avail little in the final reckoning.
At first sin looks sweet, but in the end it
causes the soul to weep in pain.
Then God spoke. All living creatures
were unkind to Him. They lived with no
spiritual thought in their worldly
possessions. The crucifixion was a lesson they
had forgotten. Man had turned to the
seven deadly sins, and every year his state
grew worse. Therefore, God had decided
to have a reckoning of all men, lest
mankind should become more brutish than the
beasts.
At an imperative summons Death came
to receive his instructions. He was
ordered to search out every man and tell him
1
<
that he had to make a pilgrimage to his
final reckoning. Death promised to be
cruel in his search for each man who lived
outside God's law.
Spying Everyman walking
unconcernedly about his business, his mind on
fleshly lust and treasure, Death bade him
stand still and asked him if he had
forgotten his Maker. Then Death
announced that God had dispatched him in
all haste to warn Everyman. Everyman
was to make a long journey, and he was
to take with him his full book of accounts.
He was to be very careful, for he had done
many bad deeds and only a few good ones.
In Paradise he would soon be forced to
account for his life.
Everyman protested that death was
farthest from his thoughts at the time.
Death was adamant, setting no store by
wordly goods or rank, for when he
summoned all men must obey. Everyman
cried in vain for respite. Then he asked if
he must go on the long journey alone.
Death assured him that he could take any
companions who would make the journey
with him. Reminding him that his life
was only his on loan, Death said he would
return very shortly; in the meantime
Everyman would have an opportunity to
find possible companions for his journey.
Weeping for his plight and wishing he
had never been born, Everyman thought
of Fellowship, with whom he had spent
so many agreeable days in sport and play.
Fortunately he saw Fellowship close by

and spoke to him. Seeing Everyman's sad
countenance, Fellowship asked his
trouble. Everyman told him he was in deep
sorrow because he had to make a journey.
Fellowship reminded him of their past
friendship and vowed that he would go
anywhere with him, even to Hell. Greatly
heartened, Everyman told him of Death's
appearance and his urgent summons.
Fellowship thought of the long trip from
which there would be no return and
decided against accompanying Everyman.
He would go with him in sport and play,
he declared, or to seek lusty women, but
he definitely refused to go on that
pilgrimage.
Cast down by this setback, Everyman
thought of Kindred. Surely the ties of
blood were strong. His Kindred swore that
they would help him in any way they
could, but when they heard that
Everyman had to account for his every deed,
good or bad, they knew at once the last
journey he had in mind. They refused in
one voice to go with him. Everyman
appealed directly to his favorite cousin, who
said he would have gone willingly if it had
not been for a cramp in his toe.
Still reflecting on his woes, Everyman
thought of turning to Goods. All his life
he had loved Goods. Goods heard his plea
and offered to help him, but when asked
to go on that journey to the highest judge
of all, Goods promptly refused. Everyman
reminded him that money is supposed to
right all wrongs. Goods disagreed with
him. Anyway, if Everyman took Goods
with him he would be the worse off, for
worldly goods were not given, only lent.
Everyman became ashamed of having
sought unworthy companions. Calling
aloud to Good-Deeds, he asked again for
help. Good-Deeds answered feebly, for
he was lying on the cold ground, bound by
sins. Good-Deeds already knew of the
projected journey and wanted to go along,
but he was too weak to stir. It was revealed
that Good-Deeds had a sister, Knowledge,
who would stay with Everyman until
Good-Deeds could regain strength.
Promptly Knowledge offered to go with
him and guide him in his great need.
Knowledge led him to Confession, who
lived in the house of salvation, to ask for
strength for Good-Deeds. Confession in
pity gave penance to Everyman to shrive
his soul. Accepting penance joyfully,
Everyman scourged his flesh and
afterward Knowledge bequeathed him to his
Savior. Thankfully Good-Deeds rose from
the ground, delivered from sickness and
woe. Declaring himself fit for the journey,
Good-Deeds promised to help Everyman
count his good works before the judgment
throne. With a smile of sympathy
Knowledge told Everyman to be glad and merry,
for Good-Deeds would be his true
companion. Knowledge gave a garment to
Everyman to wear, a garment of sorrow
which would deliver him from pain.
Asking Good-Deeds if his account were
ready, Everyman prepared to start his
pilgrimage. Good-Deeds reminded him that
three other companions would go part of
the way: Discretion, Strength, and
Beauty. Knowledge proposed also the Five
Wits, who would be his counselors. After
Kindred had called the new companions
together, Everyman, now well fortified,
set out on his last journey.
Knowledge said that their first stop
must be to see the priest, who would give
Everyman unction and ointment, for
priests perform the seven unctions as
intermediaries of God. Surely priests were
man's best hope on earth, in spite of the
many weak and venal people who
somehow were invested with holy orders.
After receiving the last rites from the
priest, Everyman prepared to meet Death.
Again he was troubled, however, for one
by one his companions left him. Even
Knowledge refused to go with him into
the presence of his Maker. Only Good-
Deeds stayed with Everyman until the
end. So it is with every man who must die.
Knowledge, Strength, Beauty—all the
other companions are a help in the
journey, but only Good-Deeds can face death.
1154

The Angel greeted Everyman as an
elected spouse of Jesus. Taking him on
high, he announced that Everyman was
thus exalted by reason of his singular
virtue. When Everyman's soul was taken
from his body, his reckoning was crystal
clear. So shall it be with every man, if he
will only live well before his doom.
Finally a Doctor appeared to remind all
men that on the last journey, Beauty,
Strength, Discretion, and the Five Wits
forsake every man at the end; only Good-
Deeds avail at the final judgment.
1155

EXEMPLARY NOVELS
Type of work: Novellas
Author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616)
First published: 1613
Principal characters:
Rinconete, a pfcaro
Cortadillo, another wandering rogue
Preciosa, a gipsy girl
Cipion, a dog
Berganza, another dog
To mas Rodaja, an insane student
Cervantes, the great novelist of Spain's
Golden Age (1554-1681), had two
ambitions: to compose deathless poetry, and
to write excellent drama. As a poet, he
finally confessed that he was "more
experienced in reverses than in verses." In
drama he was no more fortunate. In spite
of such confidence that he once signed
a contract to supply the finest plays the
manager had ever seen or not expect
payment, he knew too little about dramatic
technique to be successful. Only his short
plays continue to be read as "slices of life."
One of the most pathetic titles ever given
a book was his Eight Comedies and Eight
Interludes Never Performed, which he
could publish only because of the fame
acquired through the success of Don
Quixote.
In his fiction, the story was otherwise.
But Cervantes remained a nonconformist.
Don Quixote was conceived as a parody
to laugh out of existence the romances of
chivalry, though the last of that lot had
appeared nearly half a century earlier.
It turned into a deeply human novel that
is read today with never a thought of its
author's avowed purpose.
He was also the first writer of short
stories in Spain, a form quite different
from the ejemplo or instructive story of
the early days of Juan Manuel and the
Archpriest of Hita. It was the romantic
Italian novella that inspired Cervantes.
He added the adjective "exemplary," to
indicate that his short fiction contained
none of the immorality associated with
his Italian models. The modern reader
will look in vain, however, for the
"useful examples" that he proclaimed them to
be.
Of the twelve, some are built on
complicated romantic plots that would
naturally appeal to a thwarted playwright.
Others grew out of his own experiences.
Since Spaniards were enjoying tales in
which rascally servants satirized the
professions of their masters, Cervantes also
wrote several picaresque stories, one with
dogs as spokesmen. Another deals with a
crazy student who believed himself made
of glass. In the Exemplary Novels, which
reveal a care and attention to style not
found in Don Quixote, Cervantes
established himself as a master of this genre.
After a preface, worth preserving for
the self-portrait of the author, Cervantes
presents, in "Lady Cornelia," a cape-and-
sword romance close to the Italian school.
Courted and betrayed by an Italian
duke, the hapless heroine was finally
befriended by two Spanish students to
whom a servant had delivered her
newborn child, as they passed in the
darkness. Eventually they arranged a
marriage between her and her betrayer. "The
Prevalence of Blood" also deals with a
child born of violence, whose beauty,
along with the virtue and charm of the
wronged mother, won the heart of the
libertine father seven years later.
Another of the weaker stories in the
volume is "The Spanish-English Lady,"
about a girl of Cadiz captured by
Admiral Howard and carried to England.
It, like "The Generous Lover," set in
Cyprus and Algiers, reveals how
uninterested the author was in authentic local
1156

color. He made no attempt to capture
the pomp of the Elizabethan court.
"The Two Damsels" is the adventure
story of Theodosia, disguised as a man.
On a journey in pursuit of the suitor who
had promised to marry her, she was
recognized by her brother. Later the two
came upon another masquerading damsel
who was searching for the same vanished
lover. After adventures among robbers
and a visit to the fleet as it was about to
sail for Naples, Theodosia found and
married her fleeing sweetheart, while her
brother comforted the runner-up in this
matrimonial race.
In "The Little Gypsy Girl," a story
about idealized Preciosa, Cervantes
revealed his ignorance of gipsies. One of
Preciosa's suitors, a rich nobleman who
spent two years with the tribe in order
to woo her, killed a bully. After all the
gipsy men had been taken to jail, Preciosa
visited the mayor's wife to vouch for their
innocence. Then came the explanation of
her own charm and discretion. The noble
lady recognized Preciosa as her own long-
lost daughter.
In "The Illustrious Scullery Maid," one
youngster, listing the attractions and
adventures offered by various Spanish cities,
echoes Cervantes' own nostalgic
reminiscences of an ill-spent youth. The
youngster and another wealthy sixteen-year-old
went disguised on a journey in search of
thrills. They stopped at an inn in Burgos
because they had heard of a beautiful
servant, Costanza, to be found there. So
attractive was she that the young men
took jobs at the inn to compete with the
son of the mayor for her affection. When
the mayor himself came to investigate the
scullery maid, he was told that she was
really the daughter of a wronged widow
who had left her at the inn, with half
a chain as identification. Shortly
afterward, the father of one of the runaways
appeared with the other half of the
chain. The other runaway married her,
his friend was paired off with the
daughter of the mayor, and Costanza's original
suitor had to be content with the sister
of Costanza's husband.
For relief from these romantic cape-
and-sword stories, Cervantes attempted a
psychological tale dealing with his
favorite theme, an April and December
marriage. In "The Jealous Estremaduran," a
seventy-year-old Spaniard, returning with
a fortune from Peru, married a fifteen-
year-old girl and shielded her so
carefully that the air of mystery surrounding
her aroused the curiosity of handsome
Loaysa. By dressing as a guitar-playing
beggar and drugging the husband with a
sleep-producing ointment, he was able to
enter the house. Although the girl was
too noble to be tempted, the husband
discovered them and died of jealousy.
Before his death, to punish himself for
thinking that at his age he could make
a young girl happy, he willed his
fortune to her so that she could marry
Loaysa.
"A Deceitful Marriage," the most
unmoral of these Exemplary Novels, serves
chiefly as introduction for a better one.
A poor soldier married a fallen woman
to reform her. She tricked him and got
all his money, and he ended up in a
Valladolid hospital, through whose
window he heard and set down "The Dialog
between Cipion and Berganza, Dogs of
the Hospital of the Resurrection." In the
same way that picaros often satirized their
masters' callings, Berganza told of the
crookedness he had seen. As a pup, at
the Seville slaughter house, he became
acquainted with graft. As a sheep dog, he
watched shepherds totally unlike the
figures in the pastoral novels, men who
killed the best sheep and put the blame
on wolves. As the pet of a rich merchant,
he mocked the ostentation he witnessed.
Later, while helping a constable, he was
a party to an agreement by which the
students of Monipodio's school of crime
were to fake a fight, thus enhancing the
reputation of the police force. Berganza
also served a soldier, a gipsy, a miser, a
poet, and the company of actors with
whom he had arrived in Valladolid. As
he ended his autobiography, the dawn
1157

was breaking. The other dog promised
to narrate his adventures on the
following night.
"Doctor Glass Case" provided Cervantes
with other opportunities to criticize
social conditions of his time. Some
students on their way to the University of
Salamanca came upon Tomas Rodaja and
took him along as their servant. During
his spare time Tom&s attended classes
and after eight years attained a
reputation for brilliance. But an unfortunate
love affair drove him insane with the
delusion that he was made of fragile
glass. His agile mind, however, could
still supply answers to any question, and
people amused themselves by asking his
opinions about professions and customs.
Asked if he was a poet, for instance, he
replied: "I have never been so foolish as
to be a bad poet, nor so bold as to think
I could be a good one." Questioned how
to avoid envying others, he advised:
"Sleep, for while you sleep you are the
equal of everybody." Eventually Tomds
was restored to sanity, but no one noticed
him then. To make a living, he joined
the army. He was killed in Flanders.
Best known of all the Exemplary
Novels is "Rinconete and Cortadillo," an
authentic story of customs which influenced
Charles Dickens. Two fourteen-year-old
boys, Pedro de Rincon and Diego Cor-
tado, met on their way to Seville. Since
they both boasted of their cleverness and
ability as cardsharps, purse snatchers, and
general rascals, they joined forces to fleece
a mule driver with marked cards. Then
they traveled on to the Andalusian capital
where, under bad government, crime
flourished. To meet competition, the boys
enrolled in Monipodio's school for
criminals and were nicknamed Rinconete and
Cortadillo. They saw flourishing a crime
trust where rich people could hire bullies
to beat up their enemies and police could
pick up protection money. Only a few of
the crimes of these rascals are narrated.
Cervantes declared the story already over-
long, but he promised a sequel later.
In Exemplary Novels there are stories
whose invention and style would have
established Cervantes* reputation among
his contemporaries if he had never
penned Don Quixote. Some are poetic,
some realistic. It would be possible to
compile a lengthy list of English and
French dramatists and novelists who have
drawn upon them for inspiration ever
since.
1158

EXILES
Type of work: Drama
Author: James Joyce (1882-1941)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1912
Locale: Merrion and Ranelagh, Dublin suburbs
First puhlished: 1918
Principal characters:
Richard Rowan, an Irish writer
Bertha, his common law wife
Archie, their son, eight years old
Robert Hand, a newspaper editor
Beatrice Justice, Robert's cousin, a music teacher
Critique:
James Joyce, one of the most
influential writers during the first half of the
century, was preoccupied, as were many
of his contemporaries, with the creation
of new and meaningful forms of
expression and the effort to speak truly of his
age. His constant themes were Irish
myths and mores, art, sexuality, and
aesthetic integrity. Within this pattern
Exiles can be considered a part of the
continuing development of his genius, since
it falls in the period which saw the
completion of A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man and the beginning of
Ulysses. As theater, however, the play lacks
the force of Ibsen's work, by which Joyce
was greatly influenced; and it lacks also
the plasticity and vibrancy of his own
fiction. Its importance lies in the fact
that this is Joyce's last objective study
of the conscience of the artist, his final
portrait of the artist as man. The themes
are expressed at various levels of
conflict; the resolution, where effected, is
through integrity and single-heartedness.
Both Beatrice and Robert are seen to
have compromised with the world or
within themselves; thus they are
incapable of self-fulfillment. Richard, as the
artist, is dependent solely on his own
intellectual and emotional values, and the
same self-reliance informs his love; he is
thus armored against enervating
sentimentality and the moral anarchy of the
modern world.
The Story:
Richard Rowan and Bertha,
unmarried lovers, returned from Italy with
their eight-year-old son Archie to Dublin,
where, although physically at home, they
were in spiritual exile. The two people
most involved in their return were Robert
and Beatrice, first cousins once engaged
to be married. Robert, however, had
always been dominated by Richard's ideas
and was tenuously in love with Bertha.
When he recognized Bertha's love for
Richard, he had been gradually drawn to
Beatrice, who was in love with him. But
she too had always been fascinated by
Richard, and had found that without
him charming but weak Robert
became a mere cipher. Finally, her
engagement to Robert had been broken off—a
situation from which Beatrice, as she
told Richard, was still convalescing.
Richard had thus been the dominant
force behind at least three sensitive and
intelligent people in their youth. In
maturity, his physical passions and his
commitment to people still complemented
his ideals of freedom and integrity. This
fact was demonstrated in a conversation
with Robert who, while explaining his
eagerness to promote Richard's academic
career, had declared that he found in
Richard the same faith that a disciple
EXILES by James Joyce. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1918, by
Bi W. Huebsch, Inc. Copyright, 1946, by Nora Joyce. Copyright, 1951, by The Viking Press, Inc.
1159

has in his master. Richard answered
cryptically that his was a master's faith
in the disciple who would eventually
betray him. In this fashion he was
trying to indicate to Robert, who had
uneasily become the editor of a
conventional Dublin newspaper, his desire to
avoid influencing those he loved while
remaining wholly loyal to them.
In somewhat the same fashion Richard
desired to be united with Bertha, but not
to be bound or to bind, even in love. In
Italy, Richard had been absorbed in his
writing and Bertha was often sad and
lonely. She had remained devoted to him
but understood neither his aesthetic
standards nor his ethics. In marked
contrast was his wholly objective
relationship with Beatrice. She had always
understood what he wrote and was
fascinated by his unique courage. Through
his exile they had corresponded about his
writing, and on his return Beatrice came
to his house to give piano lessons to
Archie. Upon renewed contact, Richard
found that there was much in Beatrice's
character that he could use in his
current novel. This was the most vital bond
between them.
Through perversity of passion Bertha
identified herself with Richard and thus
saw his relationship with Beatrice as a
love affair. Her concern caused her to
crystallize her feeling of loss toward him,
and she turned to Robert, whom she had
always liked because he too looked up to
Richard. She subsequently explored
Robert's feelings for her and for a time
passively accepted his wooing. Once, when
Robert visited the house, he brought
Bertha roses, a gesture of courtship which
confused and moved her. At that
meeting they kissed and Bertha agreed that
they must meet somewhere alone and
talk together freely. She half promised
to meet Robert at his house that evening.
When Richard questioned Bertha
about Robert, she answered willingly. At
that time he was distressed neither by
her involvement nor by Robert's love for
her, but he was angered to learn that
she was to meet Robert at the same hour
as he, at Robert's arrangement, was to
meet the vice-chancellor of the
university, where Richard was being considered
for the chair of romance literature. He
felt that this plan was a betrayal of
everything that each of them stood for
and that Robert was both a fool and a
thief. Richard decided to see Robert
himself. His intention infuriated Bertha, who
felt that he would simply rob her of their
friend's love and respect.
Having expected Bertha, Robert was
discountenanced by Richard's arrival; but
when Richard explained why he had
come, Robert was most eager to talk to
him. While they talked Richard revealed
his own fears and doubts. He felt that
by refusing to advise Bertha or to ask
anything of her he might have neglected
her, as she had accused him. The
conflict between personal integrity and love
for another person was very real to
Richard; he realized that it was an
inevitable one, yet he felt that his guilt had
destroyed Bertha's innocence. He
expressed to Robert his willingness to let
her go if Robert felt that she would find
fulfillment with him. Faced with this
need to accept moral responsibility,
Robert faltered. Richard reared that he
would ultimately desert Bertha as he had
other women in the past.
Richard admitted that he had desired
some kind of betrayal that would enable
him to redeem, through the rebuilding
of his soul, his guilt and shame. In
answer Robert wildly suggested a duel, but
it would be a duel between the ghost of
fidelity on one side, of friendship on the
other. Richard declared wearily that such
had been the language of his youth,
expressing emotions of which he was no
longer capable. Completely disoriented
by Richard's rejection of his heroic pose,
and distracted by his emotions, Robert
fled when Bertha arrived.
The talk between Richard and Bertha
in Robert's cottage led to a partial reso-
1160

lution of their conflict. Bertha was
overwhelmed by Richard's apparent lack of
faith in her, while he was angered that
she was using Robert's love without
herself loving him. For the last time she
begged Richard to guide her; he merely
repeated his statement of faith in her and
left the house. When Robert returned,
Bertha was uneasy with him and
maintained against all persuasion that she
could never betray Richard.
Having survived her period of crisis
with Robert, Bertha was repossessed by
the problem of Beatrice and Richard.
After a sleepless night she told Richard
that she wished she could meet her lover
freely. Only later in conversation with
Robert, who planned to leave Ireland,
did Richard realize what Bertha had
meant, that she wished she could freely
revive her former relationship with him.
Out of this desire she was able to accept
Richard's account of his relationship with
Beatrice. Thus they arrived at a point
where they could stay together while
continuing to live as independent
individuals, self-exiled from the passions and the
romantic notions of their youth.
1161

A FABLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Type of plot: Religious allegory
Time of plot: 1918
Locale: The Western Front in France
First published: 1954
Principal characters:
The Corporal
The Marshal, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in France
General Gragnon, French Division Commander
The Quartermaster General, the Marshal's former fellow student
The Runner, a former officer, in sympathy with the Corporal's aims
The Reverend Tobe Sutterfield, an American Negro preacher
The Corporal's Wife
Marthe, the Corporal's younger half-sister
Marya, the Corporal's feeble-minded half-sister
David Levine, a British flight officer
Polchek, a soldier in the Corporal's squad
Pierre Bouc, another soldier in the Corporal's squad
Buchwald, an American soldier
Critique:
The end of World War II was only a
few months away when Faulkner started
this novel about World War I. In search
of a more universal background, he left
his native surroundings and the fictional
world of his Yoknapatawpha County
because the battlefields of France seemed
more suitable for his religious allegory.
Nine years later he completed the novel,
probably the most thorough endeavor in
the twentieth century to create a
mythical work by using elements of the Gospel.
Nowhere in the book does the author
indicate that this represents a modern
version of the Christ story, but it is quite
obvious that parts of the story of the Passion
and Crucifixion are methodically woven
into the novel. It would be useless,
however, to indicate comparisons between the
New Testament and A Fable, as critics
are likely to disagree for years to come
about the intentions of the author.
However, any attempt to describe the novel
simply as a partial retelling of the Christ
story fails to do justice to a book which,
even in its mythical elements, points to
the creative power of a strong
individualist who defies all efforts of classification
for himself and his work.
The Story:
On a Monday in May, 1918, a most
unusual event took place on a battlefield
in France where French and German
troops faced one another after four years
of trench warfare. At dawn the regiment
under the command of General Gragnon
refused to attack. Another unbelievable
event occurred when the Germans, who
were expected to take advantage of the
mutiny, did not move either. At noon the
whole sector of the front stopped firing
and soon the rest of the front came to a
standstill. Division Commander Gragnon
requested execution of all three thousand
mutineers; he also demanded his own
arrest.
On Wednesday the lorries carrying the
mutinous regiment arrived at
headquarters in Chaulnesmont, where the dishonor
brought on the town aroused the people
to noisy demonstration. Relatives and
LFABL£& William Faulkner. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Copyright, 1950,
1954, by William Faulkner. '
1162

friends of the mutineers knew that a
Corporal and his squad of twelve, moving in
a mysterious way behind the lines, had
succeeded in spreading their ideas about
peace on earth and good will toward men
among the troops. Four of the thirteen
men were not Frenchmen by birth;
among those only the Corporal spoke
French, and he was the object of the
crowd's fury.
This situation created uncertainty
among the allied generals because a war
ended by mutiny was not reconcilable
with military principles. To clarify the
confusion a conference took place to
which a German general was invited, and
agreement was reached for continuation
of the war.
To young Flight Officer David Levine
the unsuspected pause in war meant
tragedy. Determined to find glory in battle,
but realizing that he might miss his
opportunity, he committed suicide. To
another soldier, the Runner, the truce at
the front was a welcome sign. A former
officer, he had rejected submissive
principles and abuse of authority by
superiors, and he had been returned to the
ranks. Having heard about the Corporal
from the Reverend Tobe Sutterfield, an
American colored preacher who had
arrived under unexplainable circumstances
in France, the Runner tried to show once
again the power of the Corporal's ideas.
He forced a sentry, who profiteered by
collecting fees for life insurance among
the soldiers, to leave the trenches and join
a British battalion in a peaceful walk
toward the German line. When they
showed their empty hands, the Germans
also came unarmed to meet the French.
A sudden artillery barrage by French and
German guns killed the sentry and
crippled the Runner.
The man to decide the fate of the
mutineers was the Commander-in-Chief of
the Allied Armies, an aged French
Marshal. The orphaned son of a prominent
family, he had attended France's St. Cyr.
There his unselfish attitude combined
with his devotion to studies had made
him an outstanding and beloved student.
Especially attracted to him was the man
who was now his Quartermaster General.
After leaving school, the Marshal had
been stationed in the Sahara, where he
incurred blood-guilt by sacrificing a brutal
legionnaire to tribal justice. Later he
spent several years in a Tibetan
monastery. In the Middle East he had met a
married woman with two daughters. This
affair resulted in the birth of a son in a
stable at Christmas. The mother died in
childbirth, and Marthe, one of the
daughters, cared for the boy. When World War
I broke out, the Marshal became the
Allied commander and the hope of France.
The mutinous troops were kept in a
former factory building while awaiting
trial. The Marshal, not surprised by the
court proceedings, seemed to anticipate all
answers. Marthe and Marya, the
Corporal's half-sisters, and his wife arrived in
Chaulnesmont and in an interview with
the Marshal revealed that the Corporal
was his son. Marthe had married a French
farmer, Dumont, and the boy had grown
up on her farm. Soon after the outbreak
of war, he had enlisted in the army and
received a medal for bravery in action.
He had married a former prostitute from
Marseilles. Again the old Marshal was
not surprised and seemed to know every
detail.
On Thursday a meal was served to the
squad during which it became known
that soldier Polchek had betrayed the
Corporal. Another soldier, Pierre Bouc,
denied his leader twice. After the meal
the Corporal was called away to meet the
Marshal. On a hill overlooking the town
the Marshal tried to explain the futility
of his son's martyrdom. When he
promised a secret ocean passage to escape the
death penalty, the Corporal refused the
offer. Later the Marshal made a last
attempt to influence his son with the help
of an army priest. Recognizing his own
unworthiness before the humble Corporal
the priest committed suicide. On the same
1163

evening General Gragnon was executed
by an American soldier named Buchwald.
On Friday the Corporal was tied to a
post between two murderers. Shot, he
fell into a coil of barbed wire that
lacerated his head. The Corporal's body and
his medal were buried on the Dumont
farm near St. Mihiel. After the burial a
sudden artillery barrage plowed the earth,
leaving no trace of the Corporars grave.
After the war a unit was sent to
reclaim a body to be placed in the
Unknown Soldier's tomb under the Arc de
Triomphe in Paris. As reward they were
promised brandy. Near Verdun they
obtained a body and drank the brandy.
While they were guarding the coffin, an
old woman approached. Having lost her
mind because her son had not returned
from the war, she had sold her farm in
order to search for him. Knowing about
the mission of the soldiers, she wanted to
look at the body. Convinced that the dead
soldier was her son, she offered all her
money for the corpse; the soldiers accepted
and bought more brandy with the money.
They secured another body from a field
adjoining the Dumont farm. Thus the
body of the Corporal reached Paris. Four
years later the Runner visited the
Dumont farm and picked up the medal.
Six years later the Marshal's body was
carried to the Arc de Triomphe, with
dignitaries of the Western world
following the coffin on foot to pay their respects
to the dead leader. As soon as the eulogy
started a cripple made his way through
the crowd. It was the Runner, who threw
the Corporal's medal at the caisson before
an angry mob closed in and attacked him.
Rescued by the police he was dragged
into a side street, where a few curious
onlookers gathered around the injured
cripple. While he lay in the gutter a man
resembling the old Quartermaster
General stepped forward to comfort the
Runner, who declared that he would never
die.
1164

FABLES
Type of work: Didactic poetry
Author: Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)
First published: Books I-VI, 1668; Books VII-XI, 1673-1679; Book XII, 1694
Jean de La Fontaine was an easygoing,
absent-minded, middle-class Frenchman
who became one of the literary ornaments
of France's Golden Age. Impervious to
discipline—except in his writing—he was
a lover of pleasure, a vagabond and
dreamer, who had a special talent for
attracting the patronage and protection of
important people. Thus, he became a
hanger-on of Fouquet while that
minister of Louis XIV was still wealthy and
powerful; and when fate caught up with
Fouquet, La Fontaine drifted on to other
alliances, chiefly with women, which
allowed him to work and live in comfort
and security.
The literary career of La Fontaine was
somewhat slow in getting started. First,
he played with the idea of becoming a
churchman or a lawyer. Then he
contracted an ill-advised marriage with a
romantic adolescent ten years younger
than he. Turning his back on these early
distractions, he began to write at the age
of thirty, encouraged and stimulated by
his friendship with Racine and Moliere.
The first result of his efforts was a fairly
successful adaptation of the Eunuchus of
Terence. This was followed by various
short poems and by lively verse tales
translated from or inspired by Ariosto
and Boccaccio. La Fontaine's career was
climaxed by his election to the French
Academy, a victory somewhat dimmed
by the reaction of Louis XIV, who
withheld his confirmation until after the
Academy had first installed Boileau.
The celebrated Fables of La Fontaine,
remarkable for both their range and their
poetry, have come to be recognized as
their author's greatest achievement. These
animal stories in verse, after the style of
Aesop and Phaedrus, brought him his
greatest contemporary popularity and his
surest hold on lasting fame. Public
reaction to the Fables was immediate and
enthusiastic, though some classical critics
disapproved of La Fontaine's liberties in
versification and his use of colloquial
language. His style, however, was perfectly
fitted to his subject matter; and Charles
Perrault, a contemporary writer of fairy
stories and the originator of Mother
Goose, declared him greater than the
fable writers of antiquity.
The twelve books of the Fables were
issued at intervals over a period of years
which extended from 1668 to 1694.
Books I-VI, dedicated to the young
Dauphin appeared in 1668; Books VII-XI,
bearing a prefatory eulogy to Madame de
Montespan, occupied the period between
1673 and 1679; and the final volume,
inscribed to the young Duke of Burgundy,
was added the year before the author's
death.
Born storyteller though he was, La
Fontaine was not a particularly original
one. It is the pleasure of recognition
rather than the joy of discovery which
awaits most readers of his early fables.
A volume by Phaedrus, published in
1596, has been found to supply most of
the stories in his first six volumes, with
French folk tales providing the rest. Also,
scholars have traced many of the fables in
the last six books to translation of some
Persian tales in he Livre des Lumieres
(1644). To compensate for any lack of
originality, La Fontaine generally
improved on his sources. One critic has
summed up the appeal of his fables by
commenting on their threefold attraction:
children delight in their freshness and
vividness; adult readers recognize their
subtle reflection of life and character; and
critics admire the consummate art of their
narration.
Lessons are inherent in the fables, as
the first three are quick to show: "The
Grasshopper and the Ant" (the rewards
of diligence); "The Fox and the Crow"
1165

(the dangers of flattery); and "The Frog
Who Would Be an Ox" (the error of
striving to keep up with those higher
placed socially or financially). Yet, since
La Fontaine was obviously epicurean by
instinct, the "morals' of his fables were
far from his chief concern. Always the
shrewd, amused observer rather than the
preacher, La Fontaine devoted himself
to the pictures he could sketch and to the
truth he could disclose. Sometimes he
omitted the moral entirely; on other
occasions he gave it a new twist. For
instance, in the second fable of Book II, the
author told of the rooster who took a
pearl to a jeweler, offering to trade it for
a grain of millet. Instead of belaboring
the point of the story, La Fontaine
reinforced it by adding a parallel (and
original) example. In the latter a Blockhead
was bequeathed a valuable manuscript
which he took to a nearby connoisseur,
remarking that he would rather have a
halfpenny than the rarity which he had
inherited.
After 1668, when La Fontaine brought
out the first six books of the Fables,
several years elapsed before he resumed this
type of writing. When he eventually did,
the fables were longer and more
elaborate than the earlier ones. Often based on
Persian originals, they contained subject
matter more unfamiliar. They still,
however, served the author well in his role as
observer and critic, as the introductory
fable of Book VII demonstrates: A
terrible plague brought the animals together
to discover whose sin was being punished
by heaven. The lion admitted to serious
crimes, including the senseless killing of
sheep and shepherds, but no one dared
suggest that he be made a sacrifice to
placate the gods. Other animals, almost as
fierce and strong as the lion, told of their
misdeeds but were likewise absolved.
Finally the inoffensive ass acknowledged
that he had once nibbled grass beside a
church. Then the beasts all joined in a
clamor for his death; and La Fontaine
concluded with these words, in a biting
comparison with human courts of justice:
Thus human courts acquit the strong,
And doom the weak, as therefore wrong.
La Fontaine had apparently
abandoned his fables permanently after 1679;
however, in 1694, Volume XII appeared
in response to a request made by the
Duke of Burgundy. This final section
showed that the seventy-three-year-old
teller of tales had lost none of his former
skill. The initial poem, serving as an
introduction to the remainder, told of the
men of Ulysses* crew and of their
transformation into animals. When Ulysses
wanted them restored to human form,
they protested that they were better off
as animals. Using this incident as a
springboard, La Fontaine then offered
stories, with animals in the leading roles,
on which the duke might use his
judgment in accepting or rejecting. One of
these fulfilled a special desire of the
duke, who had asked La Fontaine to
write a fable called "The Cat and the
Mouse." In it, a young mouse tries to
argue a veteran mouser out of eating him,
only to be told:
"Youth always hopes its ends to gain,
Believes all spirits like its own:
Old age is not to mercy prone."
Works as widely read as the Fables
naturally inspired many cross currents
of discussion and comment. One
interesting speculation, now generally discounted,
was Taine's idea that La Fontaine's
parables consciously satirized the monarchy
of Louis XIV. The more plausible view,
however, is that the author was an
observer of mankind at large—a gently
humorous one, given to a tolerant attitude
and dedicated to the glorification of
common sense. Fortunately for the^effective
projection of these qualities, La Fontaine
also employed a painstaking art and care
which have placed him in the front rank
of French literary craftsmen.
1166

THE FAERIE QUEENE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599)
Type of plot: Allegorical epic
Time of plot: Middle Ages
Locale: England
First published: Books I-III, 1590; Books IV-VI, 1596
Principal characters:
Gloriana, the Fairy Queen, representing Queen Elizabeth
The Red Cross Knight, representing Holiness
Una, representing Religion
Archimago, a magician
Duessa, representing Roman Catholicism
Britomart, representing Chastity
Guyon, representing Temperance
Artegall, representing Justice
Prince Arthur, legendary English king
Critique:
The Faerie Queen was the first
sustained poetic creation after Chaucer, and
its beauty and poetic power made for it
a secure place in our literature as soon
as it was given to the world. At present
it is generally accorded a high place in
the history of English literary art. The
Spenserian stanza—nine lines, eight of
five feet and one of six, riming ababbcbcc
—is a genuine artistic innovation.
Combined with his poetic power, Spenser was
animated by a high moral purpose. Only
six books of the twelve planned by
Spenser were completed. The fragmentary
seventh book was published in 1609, ten
years after his death.
The Story:
Gloriana, the Fairy Queen, was
holding her annual twelve-day feast. As was
the custom, any one in trouble could
appear before the court and ask for a
champion. The fair lady Una came
riding on a white ass, accompanied by a
dwarf. She complained that her father
and mother had been shut up in a
castle by a dragon. The Red Cross
Knight offered to help her, and the party
set out to rescue Una's parents.
In a cave the Red Cross Knight
encountered a horrible creature, half
serpent, half woman. Although the foul
stench nearly overpowered him, the
knight slew the monster. After the battle,
the Red Cross Knight and Una lost their
way. A friendly stranger who offered
them shelter was really Archimago, the
wicked magician. By making the Red
Cross Knight dream that Una was a
harlot, Archimago separated Una from
her champion.
Una went on her way alone.
Archimago quickly assumed the form of the
Red Cross Knight and followed her to
do her harm. Meanwhile the Red Cross
Knight fell into the company of Duessa,
an evil enchantress. They met the great
giant Orgoglio, who overcame the Red
Cross Knight and made Duessa his
mistress. Prince Arthur, touched by Una's
misfortunes, rescued the Red Cross
Knight from Orgoglio and led him to
Una. Once again Una and her champion
rode on their mission.
At last they came to Una's kingdom,
and the dragon who had imprisoned her
parents came out to do battle. After two
days of fighting, the Red Cross Knight
overthrew the dragon. After the parents
had been freed, the Red Cross Knight
and Una were betrothed.
Still hoping to harm the Red Cross
Knight, Archimago told Sir Guyon that
the Red Cross Knight had despoiled a
virgin of her honor. Shocked, Guyon set
out to right the wrong. The cunning
1167

Archimago disguised Duessa as a young
girl and placed her on the road, where
she told a piteous tale of wrong done by
the Red Cross Knight and urged Guyon
to avenge her. When Guyon and the Red
Cross Knight met, they lowered their
lances and began to fight. Fortunately
the signs of the Virgin Mary on the armor
of each recalled them to their senses, and
Guyon was ashamed that he had been
tricked by the magician.
In his travels Guyon fell in with
Prince Arthur, and the two visited the
Castle of Alma, the stronghold of
Temperance. The most powerful enemy of
Temperance was the demon Maleger. In
a savage battle Prince Arthur vanquished
Maleger. Guyon went on to the Bower
of Bliss, where his arch enemy Acrasy
was living. With stout heart Guyon
overthrew Acrasy and destroyed the last
enemy of Temperance.
After sending Acrasy back to the fairy
court under guard, Guyon and Prince
Arthur went on their way until on an
open plain they saw a Knight arming
for battle. With Prince Arthur's
permission, Guyon rode against the strange
knight, and in the meeting Guyon was
unhorsed by the strong lance of his
opponent. Ashamed of his fall, Guyon
snatched his sword and would have
continued the fight on foot.
The palmer, attending Guyon, saw
that the champion could not prevail
against the stranger, for the strange
knight was enchanted. When he stopped
the fight, the truth was revealed; the
strange knight was really the lovely Brit-
omart, a chaste and pure damsel, who
had seen the image of her lover, Artegall,
in Venus' looking-glass and had set out
in search of him. With the situation
explained, Britomart joined Guyon, Prince
Arthur, and Arthurs' squire, Timias; and
the four continued their quest.
In a strange wood they traveled for
days, seeing no one, but everywhere they
met bears, lions, and bulls. Suddenly a
beautiful lady on a white palfrey galloped
out of the brush. She was Florimell,
pursued by a lustful forester who spurred his
steed cruelly in an attempt to catch her.
The three men joined the chase, but out
of modesty Britomart stayed behind. She
waited a long time; then, despairing of
ever finding her companions again, she
went on alone.
As she approached Castle Joyous she
saw six knights attacking one. She rode
into the fight and demanded to know
why they were fighting in such cowardly
fashion. She learned that any knight
passing had to love the lady of Castle
joyous or fight six knights. Britomart
denounced the rule and with her magic
lance unhorsed four of the knights. She
entered Castle Joyous as a conqueror.
After meeting the Red Cross Knight
in the castle, Britomart resolved to go on
as a knight errant. She heard from
Merlin, whom she visited, that she and
Artegall were destined to have illustrious
descendants.
Meanwhile Timias had been wounded
while pursuing the lustful forester. Bel-
phoebe, the wondrous beauty of the
Garden of Adonis, rescued him and
healed his wounds. Timias fell in love
with Belphoebe.
Amoret, the fair one, was held prisoner
by a young knight who attempted to
defile her. For months she resisted his
advances. Then Britomart, hearing of her
sad plight, overcame the two knights who
guarded Amoret's prison and freed her.
Greatly attracted to her brave rescuer,
Amoret set out with Britomart.
At a strange castle a knight claimed
Amoret as his love. Britomart jousted
with him to save Amoret, and after
winning the tourney Britomart was forced
to take off her helmet. With her identity
revealed, Britomart and Amoret set off
together in search of their true loves.
Artegall, in search of adventure, joined
Scudamour, knight errant. They met
Amoret and Britomart, who was still
disguised as a knight. Britomart and
Artegall fought an indecisive battle during
which Artegall was surprised to discover
that his opponent was his lost love,
1168

Britomart. The two lovers were reunited
at last, but in the confusion Amoret
was abducted by Lust. With the help
of Prince Arthur, Scudamour rescued
Amoret from her loathsome captor. He
wooed Amoret in the Temple of Love,
where they found shelter.
Artegall, champion of true justice, was
brought up and well-trained by Astraea.
When Artegall was of age, Astraea gave
him a trusty groom, and the new knight
set out on his adventures. Talus, the
groom, was an iron man who carried an
iron flail to thresh out falsehood. Irene,
who asked at the fairy court for a
champion against the wicked Grantorto, set out
with Artegall and Talus to regain her
heritage. With dispatch Artegall and
Talus overcame Grantorto and restored
Irene to her throne.
Later Artegall entered the lists against
a strange knight who was really the
disguised Amazon, Radigund. Artegall
wounded Radigund, but when he saw
that his prostrate foe was a comely
woman, he threw away his weapons.
The wounded Amazon then rushed on
the defenseless Artegall and took him
prisoner. Artegall was kept in shameful
confinement until at last Talus informed
Britomart of his fate. Britomart went to
her lover's rescue and slew Radigund.
Continuing his quest, Artegall met
two hags, Envy and Detraction, who
defamed his character and set the Blatant
Beast barking at his heels. But Artegall
forbade Talus to beat the hags and
returned to the fairy court.
The Blatant Beast, defamer of knightly
character and the last remaining enemy
of the fairy court, finally met his match.
The courteous Calidore, the gentlest of
all the knights, conquered the beast and
led him, tamed, back to the court of the
Fairy Queen.
1169

THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) •
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1396
Locale: Scotland
First published: 1828
Principal characters:
Henry Gow, smith and armorer of Perth
Catharine Glover, his sweetheart, the Fair Maid of Perth
Simon Glover, her father
Conachar, Simon's apprentice and heir to the chief of Clan Quhele
The Duke of Rothsay, heir fc^ Scottish throne
Sir John Ramorny, his Master of Horse
Robert III, King of Scotland
The Duke of Albany, his brother
The Earl of Douglas, the "Black Douglas"
Oliver Proudfute, a Perth burgher, a bonnet-maker, and friend of
Henry Gow
Henbane Dwining, Ramorny's physician, a Perth apothecary
Sir Patrick Charteris, provost of Perth
Critique:
Sir Walter Scott in this novel sets his
finely-drawn fictional and historical
characters against the background of the rise
to power of the Earl of Douglas, the
Scottish leader who fought against Percy at
the famous battle of Chevy Chase. The
author is justly praised for his ability to
create living beings. The characters of
The Fair Maid of Perth do not stand out
among Scott's greatest creations, but they
are believable and interesting; good and
bad exist among both the nobility and
the citizenry and are present in each
individual in varying degrees. It is his
picture of human nature that makes Scott's
novels worth rereading many times.
The Story:
As Catharine Glover and her father
Simon walked to Mass, an unidentified
young nobleman, muffled in a cloak,
joined them and asked the girl's
permission to come to her window the next
morning to take part in the traditional
Valentine ritual. When she sensibly
refused to make any alliance above her
social standing, he left her in anger.
A welcome guest, Henry Gow,
appeared at the Glovers' that evening; he
had just returned from a trip on which
he had sold armor throughout Scotland.
Although Simon approved heartily of
Henry's suit for Catharine's hand, she
was disturbed by his propensity for
quarreling. His fiery spirit led him to rise up
vigorously that evening against Conachar,
Simon's Highlander apprentice, who
jealously poured a tankard of beer on the
armorer and then tried to stab him.
Henry's martial bent was put to better
use the next morning when, coming to
present himself to Catharine as her
Valentine, he discovered a party of men
attempting to climb into her room. While
fighting them off, he severed the hand of
one assailant. Again a mysterious
nobleman was involved. When Simon heard
his voice he sent Henry into his house
and freed the other. In gratitude for
Henry's protection, Catharine agreed to
be his Valentine; but she would not
promise to marry him, even though, as
she assured him, she was not in love with
Conachar, who had just returned to his
Highland home, or any other man.
King Robert was discussing with his
confessor the rising power of the Earl
of Douglas when that great nobleman
arrived at the castle in time to see his
son-in-law, the Duke of Rothsay, kiss a
1170

traveling glee-maiden. The "Black
Douglas," infuriated, threatened to kill both
the prince and the innocent girl. The
Duke of Albany, King Robert's brother
James, and another nobleman calmed the
two men, and Rothsay committed the girl
to the care of Henry, who had just
entered the courtyard engaged in a scuffle
with some of Douglas' men. Although he
was reluctant to accept such a charge,
especially on the day he had become
Catharine's Valentine, he took the girl home
with him and sent her on to Dundee the
next morning.
The council which followed Rothsay's
foolish flirtation revealed the tensions
surrounding the weak and
easily-influenced king. After King Robert had
prevented a duel between the arch-rivals,
the earls of March and Douglas, March
stalked out to join the English. Albany
and the prince, too, were obviously
struggling for control over king and country.
As these personal conflicts smoldered,
the men discussed the enmity between
Clans Quhele and Chattan and decided
to settle it by setting the bravest men
from each group against each other in a
combat to be fought before the king.
After Douglas had gone, the king and
Albany questioned the prince about the
early morning disturbance at Simon's
house, reported to them by Sir Patrick
Charteris, provost of Perth. Confronted
with a ring found at Simon's house,
Rothsay confessed that he had been present;
the ring belonged to Sir John Ramorny,
his Master of Horse. Rothsay agreed to
dismiss Ramorny, whom both older men
regarded as an evil influence over the
young prince.
Conachar came back to Perth briefly
at Catharine's request that he give refuge
to Father Clement, her confessor, who
had been accused of heresy. The
Highlander told her that he was the son of
the chief of Clan Quhele and that his
real name was Eachin (Hector) Maclan.
As he promised protection for Father
Clement, he hinted also at his love for
Catharine.
Ramorny, owner of the hand cut off
in Perth, planned vengeance on his
assailant with Henbane Dwining, an
apothecary who was jealous of Henry's
power and influence. Having gained only
a mild revenge by spreading the tale of
Henry's association with the glee-maiden,
he was eager to help Ramorny plot
Henry's assassination.
That night, as Shrovetide revelers
milled about Perth, Oliver Proudfute, a
well-meaning but tactless burgher,
assured the still angry Simon that Henry
was not hiding the glee-maiden; he had
seen him send her to Dundee. Then,
fearing that he had made matters worse,
he escaped from a group of taunting
masquers and went to Henry to apologize.
Proudfute, who liked to think of
himself as a hero but who was really a timid
soul, avoided the subject of his visit as
long as possible. His belated and sheepish
confession served only to deepen Henry's
depression over his relationship with
Catharine; Henry ordered his friend out,
after granting the burgher's request for
his helmet and jacket to frighten away
assailants. Ironically, these garments
caused Proudfute's death, for as he
walked down the street imitating Henry's
swagger he was struck down from behind
and killed.
Rothsay, who had been among the
masquers, went to Ramorny's to rouse
him to join the gaiety. He was horrified
to learn of his missing hand, and he
suspected him of attempting revenge when
he noticed the surly murderer Bonthron
in the room. Ramorny's suggestion that
they "allow" Albany to die and force
King Robert to abdicate shocked him
further. The prince left immediately,
vowing to see Ramorny no more and
arousing the bitter hatred of his former
friend.
When the discovery of Proudfute's body
the next morning set off a rumor that
Henry was dead, Catharine flew
disheveled through the streets to see whether
he was safe. Henry's joy at this evidence
of her affection was marred by the news
1171

of the murder and his realization that he
must ignore Catharine's feelings and
declare himself the champion of Proud-
fute's widow.
The provost suspected after a brief
investigation that Proudfute's death was
the result of the enmity aroused during
the Valentine encounter between Henry
and Ramorny. The council decided to
determine the identity of the murderer
by an ancient test, the bier-right, based
on the superstition that a body bleeds
in the presence of its killer. Ramorny's
household was later marched by
Proudfute's body but with no result until
Bonthron refused the test and chose the
alternative, trial by combat. Henry
defeated the murderer, who in his
confession followed the instructions of
Ramorny and Dwining and laid the
principal blame on Rothsay. Albany
immediately put the prince in the hands of
the High Constable to protect him and
keep him out of further trouble.
Sir Patrick Charteris came to tell
Simon and Catharine that they were to
be arrested for heresy. Simon planned to
seek asylum with his old friend,
Conachar's father, in the Highlands;
however, knowing his former apprentice's
feelings, he was relieved when the
provost offered to take Catharine to Lady
Marjory, Duchess of Rothsay.
When he reached his destination,
Simon learned that his friend had died,
but he was received courteously by the
young chief. Conachar confessed to him
that he feared the coming combat with
Clan Chattan; a coward was not a fit
leader for a brave clan. He begged Simon
to let him marry Catharine, for he felt
that her love would strengthen him.
Simon refused, however, to break his
word to Henry.
Meanwhile, Ramorny had enticed
Rothsay to flee to the former residence
of his duchess by telling him that
Catharine was coming there. When the girl
arrived, thinking Lady Marjory was still
there, the prince at first tried to seduce
her, but later gave in to her appeal to his
honor. He entrusted her to Louise, the
glee-maiden, whom he had encountered
again by chance.
Ramorny and Dwining starved the
prince to death, at the same time
spreading a rumor that he was ill. Louise and
Catharine discovered what was
happening, and the glee-maiden escaped to bring
Douglas to the rescue while Catharine
tried to get food to Rothsay. Douglas
arrived in time to force Ramorny's
surrender and save Catharine's life; Dwining
poisoned himself to avoid his
confederate's fate of death by hanging.
Douglas and Albany decided to keep
Rothsay's death secret until after the
clan combat on Palm Sunday. That
morning Henry volunteered to take the place
of a missing Chattan warrior and fought
valiantly in order to have a chance to
meet Conachar, whom he believed a rival
about to wed Catharine. Conachar's foster
father sacrificed his eight sons and
himself in an endeavor to protect Conachar,
but their efforts were useless. When the
young leader faced Henry at last, the
Highlander fled across the river Tay. Late
that day he went to Catharine to tell her
of his cowardice before he plunged to his
death in the torrent.
Catharine and Henry were married a
few months later. Although she was by
that time reconciled to her husband's
warring impulses, he vowed to take up
arms again only in behalf of his country.
Their first son had as godparents the
Earl of Douglas, Lady Marjory, and Sir
Patrick Charteris.
King Robert died soon afterward,
broken-hearted by the death of one son
and the capture by the English of the
other, later James I of Scotland, whom
he was sending away to protect him from
Albany's power. Albany, acquitted by
Parliament of the charge that he was
responsible for Rothsay's death,
nevertheless did penance for his guilt. His son,
who inherited the regency, paid for his
father's sins on the scaffold when James I
came to the throne, years later.
1172

THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Type of plot: Pastoral tragicomedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Thessaly
First presented: c. 1609
Principal characters:
Perigot, a shepherd, in love with Amoret
Thenot, a shepherd, in love with Clorin
Daphnis, a modest shepherd, in love with Cloe
Alexis, a wanton shepherd, in love with Cloe
The Sullen Shepherd
Amoret, a shepherdess, in love with Perigot
Clorin, a hermitess, the faithful shepherdess
Amarillis, a shepherdess, in love with Perigot
Cloe, a wanton shepherdess
Critique:
According to John Fletcher's
introduction to the play, The Faithful
Shepherdess was unsuccessful when it was
presented on the stage. The reasons are not
difficult to find. The characters are highly
formalized and completely flat; the plot
is very intricate and yet almost entirely
predictable, and the verse, although
technically of a high order, is hardly robust
enough for public performance. Judged
by the standards of the masque, however,
the play comes off much better. Fletcher
is obviously attempting to explore
different aspects of love and to extol the virtue
of chastity. His characters thus become
symbols for certain chaste or unchaste
states and the plot a vehicle for
juxtaposing, for purposes of comparison or
contrast, various carefully balanced sets
of characters. The pleasure lies in seeing
the theme worked out on these terms, a
process which is all the more satisfying
because it is made to take place within
the narrow and artificial limitations of
the pastoral convention.
The Story:
Clorin, who had buried her
sweetheart in a woodland arbor, vowed to
forsake all of the pleasures of a
shepherd's life and devote herself to chaste
vigil over his grave, relinquishing it only
to cure sick men and beasts through her
knowledge of the secret virtues of herbs.
So great was the power of her virginity
that nothing in the woodland could harm
her, and her mere presence had tamed a
rough and brutish satyr who became her
servant. Among the other shepherds and
shepherdesses, however, love affairs of
various kinds were progressing. The
beautiful Amoret agreed to meet her
sweetheart Perigot that night within the wood
so that they could plight their troths there
beside a sacred well. But Amarillis, a
rejected admirer of Perigot, also had
plans for the evening. Hoping that
Perigot might accept her if he could only be
parted from Amoret, she promised the
Sullen Shepherd her love if he would
break up the meeting. The Sullen
Shepherd, who wanted only to satisfy his lust,
agreed to carry out any plan she might
propose.
Cloe was also seeking a partner for the
evening. First she approached Thenot,
but he declined her advances because he
was in love with the unattainable Clorin.
Daphnis, whom she next met, agreed to
meet her in the wood, but his modest
bearing promised so little that Cloe also
made an engagement with Alexis, a
youth with a much livelier manner.
After nightfall Amarillis and the
Sullen Shepherd prepared to deceive Perigot.
Following a magical formula, the Sullen
1173

Shepherd lowered Amarillis into the
sacred well, and when he drew her out
again she had taken on the form of
Amoret. In this shape she met Perigot and
attempted to seduce him, but he was so
offended by her conduct that he
attempted to kill her. Seeing her danger,
the Sullen Shepherd used another charm
to change her back into her true
appearance. Perigot rushed off into the dark
wood to find and kill the supposedly
lustful Amoret.
Cloe, meanwhile, had met Daphnis
and found his intentions to be purer than
she had hoped. Making an appointment
to meet him later at a certain hollow
tree, she went in search of Alexis. This
swain's desires were in perfect accord
with hers, but their embraces were
interrupted by the Sullen Shepherd, who
attacked and wounded Alexis.
Undoubtedly Alexis would have been killed but
for the arrival of Clorin's satyr, who
frightened both Cloe and the Sullen
Shepherd away and bore Alexis off to his
mistress to be healed. Perigot during this
time had found the true Amoret, stabbed
her, and left her for dead. In this woeful
condition she was discovered by the
Sullen Shepherd who, wishing to make sure
of his bargain with Amarillis, threw her
into the sacred well to drown. From this
fate she was saved by the river god, who
also healed her wounds.
Perigot, thinking Amoret dead, was
about to take his own life when
Amarillis, seeing that things had gone much too
far, attempted to explain the deception
that had been worked upon him. In order
to convince him, she asked only an hour
in which to reappear in Amoret's shape.
She had hardly left him, however, when
she came upon the true Amoret. Realizing
that virtuous love could not be frustrated,
she directed the unfortunate shepherdess
to the place where Perigot waited; but
when Amoret arrived, her sweetheart took
her to be Amarillis transformed and,
wishing to be revenged, he again stabbed
her. Once more the satyr arrived
opportunely. As the frightened Perigot fled,
the satyr bore Amoret off to Clorin's
arbor.
There Clorin had nearly effected
Alexis* cure by purging him of lust, but
her treatment of Amoret was interrupted
because of intemperate influences in the
atmosphere. Seeking them out, the satyr
found Daphnis and Cloe in the hollow
tree. Being innocent of lechery, the
young man was dismissed, but Cloe failed
the test of chastity to which she was put
and was kept for Clorin's ministrations.
Perigot, meanwhile, arrived to be cleared
of the blood he had shed and to his
astonishment found Amoret alive and well.
The two were happily reunited. Alexis
and Cloe, having been purged of lust,
also swore a chaste love to each other.
1174

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
Type of work: Short story
Author: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: The House of Usher
First published: 1839
Principal characters:
Roderick Usher, a madman
Madeline, his sister
The Narrator, a visitor
Critique:
One of Poe's greatest stories of terror,
"The Fall of the House of Usher"
combines plot and setting so that they seem
one. From the first sentence to the last,
the mood of desolation and impending
doom never leaves us. There seems to be
a series of climaxes, all building to the
last horrible one. Poe's choice of words
and his figures of speech, always
impressive, here seem even more than usual to
set a scene of terror and horror. It is little
wonder that this short tale should be
considered as one of the world's truly
great short stories.
The Story:
As the visitor approached the House
of Usher, he was forewarned by the
appearance of the old mansion. The fall
weather was dull and dreary, the
countryside shady and gloomy, and the old
house seemed to fit perfectly into the
desolate surroundings. The windows
looked like vacant eyes staring out over
the bleak landscape.
The visitor had come to the House of
Usher in response to a written plea from
his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. The
letter had told of an illness of body and
mind suffered by the last heir in the
ancient line of Usher, and although the
letter had strangely filled him with dread,
the visitor had felt that he must go to
his former friend. The Usher family,
unlike most, had left only a direct line of
descent, and perhaps it was for this
reason that the family itself and the house
had become one—the House of Usher.
As he approached closer, the house
appeared even more formidable to the
visitor. The stone was discolored and covered
with fungi. The building gave the
impression of decay, yet the masonry had
not fallen. A barely discernible crack
extended in a zigzag line from the roof to
the foundation, but otherwise there were
no visible breaks in the structure.
The visitor entered the house, gave his
things to a servant, and proceeded through
several dark passages to the study of the
master. There he was stunned at the
appearance of his old friend. In Usher's
cadaverous face his eyes were liquid, his
lips pallid. His web-like hair was un-
trimmed and floated over his brow. All
in all, he was a depressing figure. In
manner he was even more morbid. He
was afflicted with great sensitivity and
some strange fear. There were only a
few sounds, a few odors, a few foods,
and a few textures in clothing that did
not fill him with terror. In fact, he was
haunted incessantly by unnamed fears.
Even more strangely, he was imbued
with the thought that the house itself
exerted great influence over his morale,
that it had obtained influence over his
spirit. Usher's moodiness was heightened
by the approaching death of his sister,
Lady Madeline. His only living relative,
she was wasting away from a strange
malady which baffled the doctors. Often
the disease revealed its cataleptic nature.
The visitor saw her only once, on the
1175

night of his arrival. Then she passed
through the room without speaking, and
her appearance filled him with awe and
foreboding.
For several days the visitor attempted
to cheer the sick master of Usher and
restore him to health, but it seemed,
rather, that the hypochondria suffered by
Usher affected his friend. More and more
the morbid surroundings and the ram-
blings of Usher's sick mind preyed upon
his visitor. More and more Usher held
that the house itself had molded his spirit
and that of his ancestors. The visitor was
helpless to dispel this morbid fear and
was indeed in danger of subscribing to
It himself, so powerful was the influence
of the gloomy old mansion.
One day Usher informed his friend
that Madeline was no more. It was his
intention to bury her in one of the vaults
under the house for a period of two
weeks. The strangeness of her malady,
he said, demanded the precaution of not
placing her immediately in the exposed
family burial plot. The two men took the
encoffined body down into the burial
vault beneath the house and deposited it
upon a trestle. Turning back the lid of
the coffin, they took one last look at the
lady, and the visitor remarked on the
similarity of appearance between her and
her brother. Then Usher told him that
they were twins and that their natures
had been singularly alike. The men then
closed the lid, screwed it down securely,
and ascended to the upper rooms.
A noticeable change now took
possession of Usher. He paced the floors with
unusual vigor. He became more pallid,
while his eyes glowed with even greater
wildness. His voice was little more than
a quaver, and his words were utterances
of extreme fear. He seemed to have a
ghastly secret which he could not share.
More and more the visitor felt that
Usher's superstitious beliefs about the
malignant influence of the house were
true. He could not sleep, and his body
began to tremble almost as unreasonably
as Usher's.
One night, during a severe storm, the
visitor heard low and unrecognizable
sounds that filled him with terror.
Dressing, he had begun to pace the floor of his
apartment when he heard a soft knock
at his door. Usher entered, carrying a
lamp. His manner was hysterical, his eyes
those of a madman. When he threw the
window open to the storm, they were
lifted almost off their feet by the
intensity of the wind. Usher seemed to see
something horrible in the night, and the
visitor picked up the first book that came
to hand and tried to calm his friend by
reading. The story was that of Ethelred
and Sir Launcelot, and as he read the
visitor seemed to hear the echo of a
cracking and ripping sound described in
the story. Later he heard a rasping and
grating, of what he knew not. Usher sat
facing the door, as if in a trance. His head
and his body rocked from side to side in a
gentle motion. He murmured some sort
of gibberish, as if he were not aware of
his friend's presence.
At last his ravings became intelligible.
He muttered at first, but spoke louder and
louder until he reached a scream.
Madeline was alive. He had buried Madeline
alive. For days he had heard her feebly
trying to lift the coffin lid. Now she had
escaped her tomb and was coming in
search of him. At that pronouncement,
the door of the room swung back and on
the threshold stood the shrouded Lady
Madeline of Usher. There was blood on
her clothing and evidence of superhuman
struggle. She ran to her terrified brother,
and the two fell to the floor in death.
The visitor fled from the house in
terror. He gazed back as he ran and saw the
house of horror split asunder in a zigzag
manner, down the line of the crack he
had seen as he first looked upon the old
mansion. There was a loud noise, like the
sound of many waters, and the pond at
its base received all that was left of the
ruined House of Usher.
1176

THE FAMILY AT GILJE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jonas Lie (1833-1908)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First published: 1883
Principal characters:
Captain Jager, an army officer
Jorgen, his son
Inger-Johanna, his daughter
Thinka, another daughter
Mrs. Jager, his wife
Captain Ronnow, another officer
Arent Grip, a student
Gulckb, the sheriff
Critique:
Ranking with Ibsen and Bjornson,
among nineteenth-century Scandinavian
writers, Jonas Lie, unlike the other two,
dealt almost exclusively with realistic
effects. He was himself in many respects
a romanticist, but that part of his
personality did not often intrude into his
novels. In The Family at Gilje the
author portrayed the life of his neighbors,
not moralizing or preaching but
nevertheless changing attitudes and prejudices.
His readers seem to experience the
problems of characters in his stories, instead of
merely witnessing them. It was this ability
to project his readers into the plot that
made Lie famous in his own time as well
as in the present.
The Story:
It was obvious that Inger-Johanna was
her father's favorite. He was an army
captain, in charge at Gilje. When a fellow
officer, Captain Ronnow, stopped at the
house, Captain Jager was delighted
because the guest seemed so charmed by
Inger-Johanna. Mrs. Jager was a sister of
the governor, and Captain Ronnow told
the Jagers that he would petition the
governor's wife, with whom he was in favor,
to take Inger-Johanna into their home for
a year, so that she could learn the ways
of society in the city. Gilje was a deserted
mountain post and not at all suitable for
a young lady of Inger-Johanna's obvious
charms.
Captain Jager wanted his beloved
daughter to visit her aunt, but when he
learned the cost of the new clothing
required, he stormed at his poor wife and
could not be quieted. Perhaps his
blustering was caused by sorrow at losing his
favorite, even though he was happy that
she would have such a fine opportunity.
Before Inger-Johanna left, she met a
student named Arent Grip, the son of
an old friend of her father's. In spite of
his radical ideas, the girl found him
interesting and was glad that he too would
be in the city.
After the departure of his oldest
daughter, the captain's house was
desolate, for Thinka, another daughter, had
gone to work for a judge in Ryfylke.
Poor Jorgen, the only son, and a younger
daughter were put through hours of
lessons to ease their father's loneliness.
Each letter from Inger-Johanna was
read again and again. After her first
shyness had worn off, she loved her life in
the city. Parties and balls delighted her.
Both Captain Ronnow and Arent Grip
were present at many of the functions,
THE FAMILY AT GILJE by Jonas Lie. By permission of the publishers, The American-Scandinavian
Foundation. Copyright, 1920, by The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Renewed.
1177

her aunt having secured a place for Grip
in her husband's office. The aunt wrote
also, confiding that she secretly hoped a
match would develop between the girl
and Ronnow, who was advancing rapidly
and would be a good catch. The aunt was
not so fond of Grip. She found him too
spirited and unrestrained in expressing
his unpopular ideas. But Inger-Johanna
had completely won over her aunt, who
insisted that the girl return home for a
visit and then come back to the city for
another season.
During his daughter's visit Captain
Jager was almost gay. Grip called on the
family again and arranged to spend much
time alone with Inger-Johanna. They took
a surveying trip into the mountains with
her father and Jorgen, and Grip found
Jorgen a bright lad who deserved a better
education. In his talks with
Inger-Johanna, Grip claimed that fundamentals
were all that mattered in life, not the
external symbols of success. He wanted
people to be themselves, not influenced
by worldly values.
Inger-Johanna returned to the city
before Thinka came home for a visit. The
younger daughter had fallen in love with
a young clerk in her uncle's office, but
when her relative learned of the affair,
he fired the clerk, who was poor and
without prospects. Thinka thought often
of him after her return home. Her parents
urged her to forget him.
Sheriff Giilcke called at Gilje and found
Thinka attractive. Because his wife had
died only three months before, he could
say nothing so soon after his loss; but
during his stay he often cast an
appreciative eye toward Thinka. She, in the
meantime, wrote long letters to her sister,
to tell of her love for the poor clerk,
for whom she had promised to wait. Inger-
Johanna, tiring of balls and city life, wrote
that she remained only to please her aunt
Grip had changed her way of thinking,
making her see the uselessness of such a
life.
Jorgen went to the city to school. Grip
tutored him, but said that Jorgen should
be sent to England or to America to learn
a mechanic's trade, because that was the
field in which he had great talent. Later
Jorgen did sail for England, then to
America, a fact which Captain Jager
forever held against Grip.
Thinka was right in her fear that she
would never be allowed to marry her clerk.
Sheriff Giilcke asked for her hand, and
because she was without will to deny her
father's wishes, she accepted the older
man. After the marriage she was a good
and faithful wife, acting almost as a nurse
to her husband. He was kind to her and
gave her her every desire, but her heart
was sad. Inger-Johanna, sorry that her
sister had no will of her own, refused to
accept the idea that women were to bend
to the will of their fathers and husbands.
Inger-Johanna was soon to be tested.
Captain Ronnow wrote her father for her
hand. It was the proudest moment of
Captain Jager's life. At first Inger-Johanna
accepted, for Grip had made no proposal
and she knew that Ronnow was the man
her father desired for her. Before the
wedding, however, she returned suddenly
from the city. She admitted to herself
and to her family that she could love no
one but Grip and could not marry
Ronnow. Although her father was bitterly
disappointed, he could not force his favorite
daughter to marry against her will.
Sorrowfully he wrote his old friend his decision.
From that day on Captain Jager's health
rapidly failed. He suffered dizziness and
weakness. He was forced to take a leave
of absence from his military duties. One
day his carriage did not return home.
When the servant went to look for him,
he found the horse standing at the foot
of Gilje hill, the reins loose on the ground.
The captain of Gilje was dead.
Twenty years passed. Mrs. Jager was
dead and Jorgen doing well in America.
Inger-Johanna, a schoolteacher, taught the
children the ideas and ideals she had
learned from Grip. He, meanwhile,
wandered over the land, a drunkard and an
ascetic by turn. He carefully avoided
Inger-Johanna, but constantly sought
1178

news of her. Finally he went to her school
and stood by the window to hear the
sound of her voice. He saw her face again
as she looked out into the night. He left
then, sick with pneumonia. When word
of his illness reached Inger-Johanna, she
went to him and nursed him until his
death. Often he was irrational, at times
completely lucid. After his death she
knew that he had given her her only
reason for living, her spirit for truth and
freedom.
1179

THE FAMILY REUNION
Type of work: Drama
Author: T. S. Eliot (1888- )
Type of plot: Symbolic allegory
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1939
Principal characters:
Amy, Lady Monchensey,
Harry, her son
Agatha, her sister
Downing, Harry's servant
Mary, Amy's ward
Critique:
This play, with references and images
borrowed from the Orestes story, has
many of the attributes of Greek tragedy.
There is a chorus; the Eumenides take
a part; and the tone is fatalistic. More
than this, however, the treatment is
poetical enough to allow complex meanings
within a simple dramatic framework.
One theme is the decay of an English
gentle family, bound by conservatism.
Another is the search man makes for a way
of life. Probably the whole meaning is
to be approached only through allegory.
Eliot, in The Family Reunion, shows
those rare gifts which have made him one
of the truly great poets of our time.
The Story:
Amy, Lady Monchensey, was reluctant
to have the lights turned on. She had to
sit in the house from October until June,
for in winter the sun rarely warmed the
cold earth of northern England. Since
all she could do was measure time, she
hardly wanted to make night come too
soon.
The whole family, except her three
sons, had gathered to celebrate her
birthday, and the sons were expected that
evening. The conversation while they
waited out the time was tasteless. Gerald and
Charles, Amy's brothers-in-law, felt that
the younger generation did not accept
its responsibilities. Ivy and Violet, her
THE FAMILY REUNION by T. S. Eliot. By per
Copyright, 1939, by T. S. Eliot.
an old lady
younger sisters, agreed that youth was
becoming decadent. When they asked
Mary her opinion, as a representative of
the new generation, Amy's ward was
nettled. Nearing thirty, she had always been
poor and had remained unmarried; she
thought she belonged to no generation.
Amy lived only to keep Wishwood, the
family estate, together. Since her
husband's death, she had been head of the
house. She knew her family, settled in
its ways, was getting older; soon death
would come as a surprise for them all.
Only Agatha, her other sister, seemed to
find a meaning in death. Harry, the
oldest son, had been gone eight years. Amy
hoped he could drop back into the old
routine at the family home, but Agatha
was doubtful. The past was over; the
future could be built only on the present.
When Harry came back he could not
take up life where he left off, because he
would be a new Harry.
The others began speculating. None
had liked Harry's wife, a demanding
woman who had persuaded him to take
her away from Wishwood. On their
travels she had been lost at sea, apparently
swept overboard in a storm. Amy said
they must feel no remorse for her death.
Harry surprised them by being the first
of the sons to arrive. When he seemed
upset because the blinds were not drawn,
the others reminded him that in the coun-
ssion of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
1180

try there was no one to look in. But
Harry kept staring at the window. He
could see the Eumenides, the vengeful
spirits. They had been with him a long
time, but only at Wishwood could he see
them. He greeted the assembled company
with an effort.
Harry became impatient when the
relatives began talking of all the old things
waiting at home for him. Nothing had
ever happened to them; they had gone
through fife half asleep. Harry, however,
was doing some soul searching. In mid-
Atlantic he had pushed his wife
overboard. Now the Furies were always with
him.
Only Agatha seemed to understand
him. The others thought him overtired
and urged him to go lie down for a while.
When he left, they decided to invite Dr.
Warburton for dinner so that the family
doctor could have a look at him.
Charles and Gerald called in
Downing, Harry's servant, to question him.
Violet and Ivy objected because they
feared scandal. Agatha, however, made
no objection, because questioning
Downing was as irrelevant as calling in Dr.
Warburton. Downing seemed to be frank.
He hardly thought Harry's wife had had
the courage to commit suicide, and while
he was a little distrait, Harry had always
appeared normal. The only thing amiss
that Downing had noticed was that
Harry had always been too much with his
wife.
Mary appealed to Agatha for help in
getting away from Wishwood. She knew
that Amy wanted her to stay on and
marry Harry; in that way Amy would
have a tame daughter-in-law for a
companion. But Agatha refused help. Mary
should have had the courage to leave
earlier; since Harry had returned she
could not run away.
When Harry talked with Mary about
his fears and doubts, she tried to
understand his feeling that change was
inevitable. They reminisced of the hollow
tree in which they had played as children
and of their regret when Amy had it cut
down. Harry saw the Furies again in the
window embrasure. Startled by his
manner, Mary pulled back the curtains to
show that nothing was there.
Dr. Warburton came early for dinner
to have a confidential talk with Harry.
He tried to attack Harry's disturbance
indirectly by warning him that Amy's
health was very poor and that Harry must
take the burden of Wishwood off her
shoulders. Harry recalled the
unpleasantness of his boyhood when being good
meant pleasing Amy. Abruptly, he
demanded to know something of his
father. The old doctor assured him that
there had been no scandal. His father
and mother had just agreed to separate,
and his father had gone abroad to die.
A police sergeant came to tell the
family that John, having suffered a slight
concussion in an auto accident, could not
be there for the birthday dinner.
Although the family buzzed with the news,
Harry shocked them with his statement
that it hardly mattered because his
brother John was unconscious all the time
anyway.
A long-distance call came from Arthur,
the other brother. He had been in an
accident too, and his license had been
suspended for drunken driving.
Still troubled about his father, Harry
pressed Agatha for more details. Agatha
remembered his father's failings, but his
mother had complemented his
weaknesses. Then Agatha lost her repressions and
told the truth. While Amy was pregnant
with Harry, her husband had plotted to
kill her. Agatha had talked him out of his
scheme; she could not bear to think of
destroying the new life Amy was
carrying.
At that news Harry felt a great release,
for the curse of the house seemed
clearer. When the Eumenides appeared again,
Harry was no longer frightened. He knew
at last that the Furies were not pursuing
him; he was following them. Harry
decided to leave Wishwood.
Amy, furious at the news that Harry
was going away, blamed Agatha, the
1181

Cnger sister who had stolen her hus-
d thirty-five years ago and now was
taking her son.
Mary pleaded with Agatha to stop
Harry's departure, but to no avail;
Harry had crossed the frontier of reality.
Then Mary asked her help in getting a
situation, perhaps a fellowship, so she
could leave too. As the two women
became more confidential, they each
revealed they had also seen the Eumen-
ides. That knowledge was a bond
uniting them outside the stifling confines of
Wishwood. When they talked with
Downing, he confessed he had seen the
Furies but he had paid little attention to
them; they were Harry's ghosts.
Just before she died, Amy began to
understand what was happening at
Wishwood. Agatha and Mary brought in the
birthday cake and blew out the candles
as they circled around it. The rest of the
family began talking about the will.

FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: W. H. Hudson (1841-1922)
Type of plot: Reminiscence and nature notes
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Argentina
First published: 1918
Principal characters:
W. H. Hudson, a sensitive, imaginative boy
Mr. Hudson, his father
Mrs. Hudson, his mother
Dona Pascuala, a neighbor
Don Evaristo Penalva, another neighbor
Critique:
William Henry Hudson wrote his
autobiography while in bed during a six-
weeks' illness. On the second day of his
illness, beginning to have a clear and vivid
vision of his childhood, he decided to
write out the picture. The vision stayed
with him, and, between bouts of fever
and sleep, he continued to record the
impressions he had of his early life on the
pampas of Argentina. The result was aptly
named Far Away and Long Ago, for he
was an old man writing of his life between
the years of three and sixteen. This book,
revealing Hudson as a naturalist, a poet,
and a mystic, is written in the beautiful
and limpid prose of which he was a master.
The Story:
W. H. Hudson's father was a colonist
in South America, engaged in raising
cattle, running a store, and being so amiable
to everyone that he finally lost almost all
his possessions. The mother was a stanch-
ly religious New Englander, known in
the whole section south of Buenos Aires
as a good woman and kind friend.
Hudson's parents loved people so well that
their house became a regular stopping
place for all travelers.
Even in childhood Hudson was
interested in people of all sorts and in every
kind of bird, animal, and insect. Though
there were many children in the family,
he himself was almost a solitary wanderer.
At one time his mother, who shared his
intense love of nature, was worried
because he often stood alone and transfixed.
Finally she followed him, only to find he
was watching a bird on its nest; she was
satisfied that he was not eccentric but that
he merely wanted to be by himself.
Hudson believed that in little children
the sense of smell was as important to
their pleasure as sight and sound. To him,
as far back as he could remember, the
smells of the pampas grasses and flowers,
of the cattle and horses, of the garlic and
cumin-seed seasoning, of the Saladero or
slaughtering grounds were as vivid as the
coloring of the parakeets and flamingos,
the feel of bristly thistleweed, or the
lovely sounds of flocks of pipits.
The house in which he was born was
called "The Twenty-five Ombu Trees"
because that many huge, century-old
Ombu trees around the house made the
place a landmark on the open pampas.
There was also one other tree on the place
—an unnamed variety—which blossomed
so freely and deliciously each November
that neighbors, smelling the blossoms on
the wind, would come to beg a branch to
perfume their own houses.
When the family moved, Hudson
found around his second home many
other kinds of trees, black acacia, Lom-
bardy poplar, red willow, peach, pear.
These he came to love by smell, sight, and
FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO by W. H. Hudson. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co.,
Inc. Copyright, 1918, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1946.
1183

touch when he was still too small to
wander far from the house.
There were birds—hawks, cowbirds,
doves, pigeons, eagles, pipits—and
animals, domestic and wild, to entertain him.
There were thousands of rats nearby that
had to be smoked out periodically. One
day, while the men were pouring deadly
fumes down the rat holes, Hudson was
watching. Suddenly he saw a small
armadillo trying to escape by furiously digging
a new hole. He caught hold of its scaly
tail and tried to pull the animal
backwards. The armadillo paid no attention to
him but kept on digging, kicking the dirt
back into his face. Before long Hudson
found himself pulled to the ground as
he clung stubbornly to the animal's tail.
The contest was small-boy pride against
animal desperation, and it was not until
his arm had been pulled down into the
hole that Hudson let go.
He found snakes fascinating,
particularly a colony that lived under the
flooring of the house. As he lay in bed, he
could hear them moving around, and he
often wondered whether they would coil
around his legs if he slid to the floor. Until
he fell asleep, he could hear their
conversations go on, conversations that were a
series of sighing sounds, then twenty or
thirty ticks, then the sighing sounds again.
When he was six years old, he was
given a pony and allowed to roam at will
over the pampas. His interests in nature
increased, as did his acquaintance with
new species.
He also learned to know people better
because he learned that his neighbors
were invariably kind to a little boy who
wanted only to find out what new birds
were around.
One place he visited often was Los
Alamos, near a stream that was a delight
to him because of the running water, the
earthly odors, and the numbers of birds.
Dona Pascuala lived at Los Alamos; she
was old and wrinkled, her hair white,
and her face as brown as the cigar she
had constantly in her mouth. She was
always interested in the Hudsons. One
day she came to tell them that rain which
had fallen for weeks would surely stop
soon. Her saint was St. Anthony, and
she had always treated him well with
candles, flowers, and devotion. And this
was how he treated her! She thought it
was time he learned how so much water
felt; she had tied a string to his legs and
let him down the well with his head in
the water, and there he would stpy until
the rain stopped.
The Hudsons' nearest neighbors were
the Royds, the husband a handsome
Englishman who wanted to make his fortune
from cheese made of sheep's milk, and
the wife a huge, indolent woman, a
native of good birth. They had colored
servants and two daughters. Their younger
daughter was, Hudson thought, the most
beautiful child he had ever seen. Her
constant companion was a child of her
own age, a mulatita, as dark as the white
child was fair, with features so refined
that no on supposed her father had been
anything but a handsome Englishman-
The family and servants lived happily
together, but the native servants thought it
below them to milk sheep and the cheese
project fell through. Then Mr. Royd went
to Buenos Aires and slit his throat. His
wife considered her meeting with him in
her girlhood the great calamity of her life.
As he grew older, Hudson came to
know Don Evaristo Penalva, who was
regarded as the grand old man of the plains.
At first it was a little difficult for Hudson
to reconcile his religious teachings with
Don Evaristo's home life, but he realized
that all the countryside thought well of
the old man who, when called upon,
always responded in time of need. The
thing that worried young Hudson was
that Don Evaristo had six wives all living
happily together.
About the time Hudson was fifteen, he
caught typhus fever while on a visit to
Buenos Aires, an unsanitary town on a
plain with no water to be had other than
the silted river water bought by the buck-
1184

etful at the door. While he was ill, he
began to realize that he might have to
leave all the pleasures of childhood
behind him. Before he could reason with
himself that he could keep his reactions
to nature and make them the basis of his
life's work, he was brought down with a
case of rheumatic fever so acute that the
doctors despaired of his life. The disease
left him with a permanently weak heart.
He went through a bad time trying to
straighten out his religious beliefs until
an older brother came back from England
and brought him up-to-date on the course
of religion vs. science, the battle being
fought over Darwin's Origin of Species.
Then he worked out a philosophy of life
which convinced him that he was a
mystic. That belief served to make life easier
for a man who did not know whether he
had one or fifty years left to him.
1185

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1869-1873
Locale: "Wessex," England
First published: 1874
Principal characters:
Gabriel Oak, a shepherd
Bathsheba Everdene, mistress of Weatherbury Farm
Sergeant Troy, her first husband
Farmer Boldwood, her suitor
Fanny Robin, betrayed by Troy
Critique:
This early novel by Thomas Hardy is
less marked by the cold fate-ridden
philosophy characteristic of his later work.
The clarity and realism of the characters
hold the reader's interest throughout, and
Hardy's poetic style and constant citation
of Biblical phrase and incident give the
novel a unique quality of language and
atmosphere. Although the end of the
story has been considered contrived by
some, the general structure of the plot
leads logically to Hardy's conclusion.
The Story:
Gabriel Oak was a farmer on a small
scale, but his honesty, integrity, and
ability had won him the respect of all
his neighbors. When he heard that a
young girl named Bathsheba Everdene
had moved into the neighborhood, he
went out of his way to see her and fell
immediately in love. Gabriel was the
kind of man who had to look only once
to know that he had found the right
woman for him. After seeing her only
a few times, he went to her aunt, for
whom Bathsheba worked, and asked for
the girl's hand in marriage. Although he
was refused, he felt that it was the
relative, not Bathsheba, who had denied
him.
A short time later Gabriel's sheep dog
became excited and chased his flock
of sheep over a cliff, killing them all.
Ruined, Gabriel had to give up his farm
and go elsewhere to find work. On his
way across the country he happened to
pass a burning barn and ran to aid the
men fighting the flames. After the fire
had been put out, the owner of Weather-
bury Farm arrived, and it was suggested
that Gabriel be hired as shepherd in
return for the fine work he had done. To
his surprise, the owner of the farm was
Bathsheba Everdene, who had recently
inherited the place from her uncle.
Gabriel became her shepherd. He was
struck by the change in their positions
in such a short while. Now Bathsheba
was landowner, Gabriel the servant.
On his way to his new quarters Gabriel
met a girl standing in the woods. She
spoke to him and asked him not to say
that he had seen her, and he promised to
keep silent. The next morning, while
working at his new job, he heard that
Fanny Robin, one of Bathsheba's maids,
had disappeared, and he rightly guessed
that Fanny was the girl he had met. It
was suspected that she had gone off to
meet a soldier who had been stationed in
the area a short time before. This
suspicion was correct. Fanny had gone to
find Sergeant Troy at his new station,
for he had promised to marry her if she
came to him. A date was set tor the
wedding, but Fanny went to the wrong
church. When she finally found Troy he
refused to make arrangements for a
marriage a second time.
Weatherbury Farm prospered, for
Bathsheba was a good manager. But,
being a woman, she had her caprices.
One of these was to send an anonymous
1186

valentine to Fanner Boldwood, a
conservative, serious man who was her
neighbor. Boldwood was upset by the
valentine, especially after he learned that
Gabriel had recognized Bathsheba's
handwriting. The more Boldwood saw of
Bathsheba, however, the more deeply he
fell in love with her. One day during
the sheep-washing he asked her to marry
him, but she refused his proposal.
Nevertheless, Gabriel and the rest of the
workers felt sure that she would eventually
marry Boldwood.
About that time Sergeant Troy ie
turned to the neighborhood. Bathsheba
was attracted to him at once. Gabriel
knew enough of Troy's character to know
that he was not the man for Bathsheba
and he told her so. Not knowing the
story of Fanny Robin, Bathsheba was
Furious. She and Troy were married soon
afterward and the former sergeant became
the master of Weatherbury Farm.
With Troy running the farm, things
did not go very well. Gabriel was forced
to do most of the work of overseeing, and
often he was compelled to correct the
mistakes Troy made. Troy gambled and
drank and caused Bathsheba much un-
happiness. Gabriel and Bathsheba were
alternately friendly and unfriendly. One
day Troy and Bathsheba, riding in a
horse cart, passed a young girl walking
down the road. Troy stopped the cart
and went to talk to her. The woman was
Fanny Robin, who was feeble and ill.
Troy told her to go on to the next town
and there wait for him to come and give
her money. As soon as they arrived home,
Troy asked Bathsheba for some money.
She gave it to him after a quarrel.
Fanny went on to Casterbridge, but
she was so weak and ill when she arrived
there that she died shortly afterward.
When news of her death reached
Weatherbury Farm, Bathsheba, not knowing
that Troy had been the girl's lover, sent
a cart to bring the body to the farm for
burial. When the body arrived, Gabriel
saw scrawled on the coffin lid a message
that both Fanny and a child were
inside. He erased the last words in his
fear that the real relationship of Fanny
and Troy might reach Bathsheba's ears.
But Bathsheba, suspecting that the coffin
concealed some secret, opened the casket
late that night. At the same moment
Troy entered the room and learned of
Fanny's death and the death of his child.
Torn with grief, he told Bathsheba that
she meant nothing to him, that Fanny
had been the only woman he had ever
loved. He had married Bathsheba only
fox her looks and her money. Bathsheba
shut herself up in an attic room.
Troy had a beautiful tombstone put up
over Fanny's grave, which he covered
with roses and lilies. During the night
there was a heavy storm and water,
pouring from the church roof through the
mouth of a gargoyle, splashed on the
grave and ruined all his work. Troy
disappeared from Casterbridge. News came
shortly afterward that he had been caught
in a dangerous current while swimming
in the ocean and had been drowned.
Bathsheba did not believe that Troy
was really dead. But Farmer Boldwood,
convinced of Troy's death, did his best to
get Bathsheba to promise to marry him
if Troy did not reappear within seven
years, at the end of which time he would
be legally declared dead. One night, at
a party Boldwood gave for her,
Bathsheba yielded to his protestations of love
and said that after the time had passed she
would marry him. As she was leaving the
party, Troy entered. He had been
rescued at sea and had wandered slowly
back to Casterbridge in the character of a
strolling player.
At his entrance Bathsheba fell to the
floor in a faint. Everyone was so
concerned for her and surprised by Troy's
appearance that they did not see Bold-
wood when he took down a gun from
the wall. Boldwood aimed at Troy and
shot him in the chest. Troy died
immediately.
Boldwood was tried for the murder,
but because his mind had given way he
was committed to an institution. Gabriel,
who had made every effort to save Bold-
1187

wood from hanging, had become a leader
in the neighborhood. As Bathsheba's
bailiff, he managed her farm and that of
Boldwood as well. Of her three lovers, he
was the only one left.
One day Gabriel went to Bathsheba
and told her that he was planning to
leave her service. Bathsheba listened
quietly and agreed with all he had to say.
Later that night, however, she went to
his cottage and there told him, by gesture
more than by word, that he was the only
person left to her now and that she
needed both his help and his love. The
farmers of the district were all delighted
when Bathsheba became Mrs. Oak, and
Gabriel became the master of Weather
bury Farm.
1188

A FAREWELL TO ARMS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: World War I
Locale: Northern Italy and Switzerland
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Frederic Henry, an American serving with an Italian ambulance unit
Catherine Barkley, an English nurse
Critique:
Hemingway combines austere realism
and poetic language to present a
powerful argument against war and to tell a
touching love story at the same time.
Possessed of the most remarkable time sense
of the period between wars, his
disillusioned temperament and technical skill
have influenced a whole generation of
writers. In spite of its hard-boiled
realism of detail and its tragic ending, A
Farewell to Arms is nevertheless an
idealistic book. The novel was dramatized by
Laurence Stallings and was made into a
motion picture.
The Story:
Lieutenant Frederic Henry was a
young American attached to an Italian
ambulance unit on the Italian front. An
offensive was soon to begin, and when
Henry returned to the front from leave
he learned from his friend, Lieutenant
Rinaldi, that a group of British nurses
had arrived in his absence to set up a
British hospital unit. Rinaldi introduced
him to nurse Catherine Barkley.
Between ambulance trips to evacuation
posts at the front, Henry called on Miss
Barkley. He liked the frank young
English girl in a casual sort of way, but he
was not in love with her. Before he left
for the front to stand by for an attack, she
give him a St. Anthony medal.
At the front, as Henry and some
Italian ambulance drivers were eating in
a dugout, an Austrian projectile exploded
over them. Henry, badly wounded in the
legs, was taken to a field hospital. Later
he was moved to a hospital in Milan.
Before the doctor was able to see
Henry in Milan, the nurses prohibited his
drinking wine, but he bribed a porter to
bring him a supply which he kept hidden
behind his bed. Catherine Barkley came
to the hospital and Henry knew that he
was in love with her. The doctors told
Henry that he would have to lie in bed
six months before they could operate on
his knee. Henry insisted on seeing
another doctor, who said that the operation
could be performed the next day.
Meanwhile, Catherine managed to be with
Henry constantly.
After his operation, Henry convalesced
in Milan with Catherine Barkley as his
attendant. Together they dined in out
of the way restaurants, and together they
rode about the countryside in a carriage.
Henry was restless and lonely at nights
and Catherine often came to his hospital
room.
Summer passed into autumn. Henry's
wound had healed and he was due to
take convalescent leave in October. He
and Catherine planned to spend the
leave together, but he came down with
jaundice before he could leave the
hospital. The head nurse accused him of
bringing on the jaundice by drink, in
order to avoid being sent back to the
front. Before he left for the front, Henry
and Catherine stayed together in a hotel
room; already she had disclosed to him
that she was pregnant.
Henry returned to the front with
orders to load his three ambulances with
A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway. By permission of the author and the publishers, Charle*
Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1929, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1189

hospital equipment and go south into the
Po valley. Morale was at low ebb. Rin-
aldi admired the job which had been
done on the knee and observed that
Henry acted like a married man. War
weariness was all-pervasive. At the front,
the Italians, having learned that German
divisions had reinforced the Austrians,
began their terrible retreat from Capo-
retto. Henry drove one of the ambulances
loaded with hospital supplies. During
the retreat south, the ambulance was
held up several times by wagons, guns,
and trucks which extended in stalled
lines for miles. Henry picked up two
straggling Italian sergeants. During the
night the retreat was halted in the rain
for hours.
At daybreak Henry cut out of the long
line and drove across country in an
attempt to reach Udine by side roads. The
ambulance got stuck in a muddy side
road. The sergeants decided to leave, but
Henry asked them to help dislodge the
car from the mud. They refused and ran.
Henry shot and wounded one; the other
escaped across the fields. An Italian
ambulance corpsman with Henry shot the
wounded sergeant through the back of
the head. Henry and his three comrades
struck out on foot for Udine. On a
bridge, Henry saw a German staff car and
German bicycle troops crossing another
bridge over the same stream. Within
sight of Udine, one of Henry's group
was killed by an Italian sniper. The
others hid in a barn until it seemed safe
to circle around Udine and join the
main stream of the retreat toward the
Tagliamento River.
By that time the Italian army was
nothing but a frantic mob. Soldiers were
throwing down their arms and officers
were cutting insignia of rank from their
sleeves. At the end of a long wooden
bridge across the Tagliamento military
carabiniere were seizing all officers, giving
them drumhead trials, and executing
them by the river bank. Henry was
detained, but in the dark of night he broke
free, plunged into the river, and escaped
on a log. He crossed the Venetian plain
on foot, then jumped aboard a freight
train and rode to Milan, where he went
to the hospital in which he had been
a patient. There he learned that the
English nurses had gone to Stresa.
During the retreat from Caporetto
Henry had made his farewell to arms.
He borrowed civilian clothes from an
American friend in Milan and went by
train to Stresa, where he met Catherine,
who was on leave. The bartender of the
hotel in which Henry was staying warned
Henry that authorities were planning to
arrest him for desertion the next
morning; he offered his boat by means of
which Henry and Catherine could escape
to Switzerland. Henry rowed all night.
By morning his hands were so raw that
he could barely stand to touch the oars.
Over his protests, Catherine took a turn
at the rowing. They reached Switzerland
safely and were arrested. Henry told the
police that he was a sportsman who
enjoyed rowing and that he had come to
Switzerland for the winter sports. The
valid passports and the ample funds that
Henry and Catherine possessed saved
them from serious trouble with the
authorities.
During the rest of the fall and the
winter the couple stayed at an inn
outside Montreux. They discussed marriage,
but Catherine would not be married
while she was with child. They hiked,
read, and talked about what they would
do together after the war.
When the time for Catherine's
confinement approached, she and Henry went
to Lausanne to be near a hospital. They
planned to return to Montreux in the
spring. At the hospital Catherine's pains
caused the doctor to use an anaesthetic
on her. After hours of suffering she was
delivered of a dead baby. The nurse
sent Henry out to get something to eat.
When he went back to the hospital, he
learned that Catherine had had a
hemorrhage. He went into the room and
stayed with her until she died. There was
nothing he could do, no one he could
1190

talk to, no place he could go. Catherine
was dead. He left the hospital and
walked back to his hotel in the dark. It
was raining.

THE FATHER
Type of work: Drama
Author: August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Sweden
First presented: 1887
Principal characters:-
A Captain of Cavalry
Laura, his wife
Bertha, their daughter
Dr. Ostermark, the village physician
The Pastor, Laura's brother
Margaret, an old nurse
Nojd, a soldier
Critique:
This play deals with the problem of d
man's relationships with his mother and
his wife. Rejected by his own mother, the
captain had tried to find a mother-wife,
who, assuming that role, rejected the
lover-husband. Since the wife loathed her
role of wife, she tried to undermine the
man who had destroyed her maternal
relationship to him. The problem here is
the battle of the sexes which concerned
Strindberg in most of his work. Also a
factor in the domestic relationship is the
antagonism of science and religion, with
the wife showing ignorance and suspicion
of the former. The theme^of the play is
initiated by a relatively trivial problem;
that of Nojd's paternity, which expands
first into a study of marital differences and
then into an analysis of antagonism
between Man and Woman.
The Story:
When a trooper named Nojd got a
servant girl in trouble, the Captain sent an
orderly to bring Nojd to face the Pastor.
The culprit, vague about his affair with
Emma, hinted that the paternity of her
child was uncertain. The Pastor told
Nojd that he would have to support the
child, but the soldier claimed that Ludwig
should contribute also, since it was
possible that Ludwig was the real father. The
Captain declared angrily that the case
would go to court. After Nojd had gone,
the Captain berated the Pastor for his
gentle treatment of the soldier. The
Pastor said he thought it a pity to saddle
Nojd with the support of a child if he
were not the real father.
The Captain was married to the
Pastor's sister Laura. In his house,
complained the Captain, there were too many
women: his mother-in-law, a governess,
old nurse Margaret, his daughter Bertha.
The Captain, worried about his
daughter's education, which was being
influenced in all different directions by the
people around her, deplored the incessant
struggle between men and women.
After the Pastor had gone, Laura
entered to collect her household money. His
affairs near bankruptcy, the Captain asked
her to keep an account of the money she
spent. Laura asked him his decision about
Bertha's education. Laura objected when
he announced his intention to send her to
town to board with Auditor Safberg, a
freethinker, but the Captain reminded
her that a father had the sole control of
his children. When Laura brought up the
subject of Nojd's affair, the Captain
admitted that the paternity would be
difficult to decide. Laura scoffingly claimed
that if such were the case even the child
THE FATHER by August Strindberg. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright. All rights reserved.
1192

of a married woman could be any other
man's offspring.
Laura confided to Dr. Ostermark, the
new village doctor, her suspicion that her
husband was mentally ill. He bought
books he never read, and he tried to
fathom events on other planets by peering
through a microscope. He had become a
man who could not stand by his decisions,
although he was most vehement when he
first uttered one.
Speaking privately with his old nurse,
the Captain expressed his fear that his
family was plotting against him and that
something evil was about to happen.
The family quarrel was clearly outlined
when Bertha complained to her father
that her grandmother was trying to teach
her spiritualism and had even told the girl
that the Captain, who was a meteorologist
by profession, was a charlatan. Bertha
agreed with her father that she ought to
go away to study, but Laura boasted that
she could persuade Bertha to stay home.
She hinted again that she could prove the
Captain was not Bertha's father.
Dr. Ostermark explained to Laura that
she had been mistaken about her
husband; he had used a spectroscope, not a
microscope, to examine the elements on
other planets. Still, the doctor said, he
would watch the Captain for further signs
of insanity. Laura also told the doctor
that the Captain feared he was not
Bertha's father; quite obviously Laura had
planted this idea in the Captain's mind.
When he began to worry over his
daughter's paternity, old Margaret tried to
reassure him.
It became impossible for the Captain to
allow his wife to continue her persecution
of him. She had intercepted some of his
mail, thereby thwarting him in the
progress of his scientific ventures. He further
accused her of spreading among his
friends the idea that he was insane. Afraid
that under such provocation he might lose
his reason, he appealed to his wife's
selfishness. It would be to her best interests
for him to remain sane, he said, since
insanity might lead to his suicide, which
would invalidate her right to collect his
life insurance. She could assure his sanity
by confessing that Bertha was not his
child, a suspicion which was undermining
his sanity.
When she refused to admit a sin of
which she was not guilty, he reminded her
that in doing so she would gain sole
control of Bertha's future. The tables were
turned. Now the Captain began to believe
that Bertha was not his child and Laura
began to insist that she was. The
Captain, recalling the circumstances of
Bertha's birth, recollected how a solicitor
had told Laura that she had no right of
inheritance without a child. At that time the
Captain had been ill. WTien he recovered,
Bertha had been born.
The Captain understood the power his
wife had held over him. He had loved her
at first as he would love a mother; she had
loathed him after he became her lover.
Laura showed him a letter she had forged
in which he confessed his insanity and
said that she had sent the letter to court.
Boasting that she had employed him only
as a breadwinner, she declared that she
would use his pension for Bertha's
education. In anger, the Captain hurled a lamp
at her.
Laura succeeded in locking her
husband in another room while she examined
his private papers. Although the Pastor
saw through her scheme, she dared him to
accuse her. The doctor arrived with a
strait jacket shortly before the Captain,
armed with literary evidence of cases in
which a child's paternity had been
questioned, burst into the room. His talk was
so erratic and his raving about conjugal
fidelity so wild that when the doctor told
him he was insane, the Captain
acknowledged his own madness.
Bertha, accusing him of a deliberate
attempt to injure her mother, announced
that he was not her father if he behaved
so badly. The Captain, in reply, told her
that her soul was in two parts; one was a
reflection of his own, and to preserve it he
intended to destroy the part which was
not his. He seized a revolver but found it
1193

empty. Bertha ran out screaming.
Old Margaret soothed the raving man
by talking softly to him of his childhood,
and when he was off guard she slipped
the strait jacket on him. Seeing him
seated, helpless and dejected, on the sofa,
Laura nearly repented the course she had
taken as the Captain piteously described
his life of torment with mother, wife, and
child, all of whom had rejected him. After
she had assured him that Bertha was his
own child, the Captain, calling to old
Margaret for comfort, suffered a stroke. As
he lay unconscious Bertha ran to her
mother, who caressed her and called the
girl her own daughter.
1194

FATHER GORIOT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Honor6 de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: About 1830
Locale: Paris
First published: 1835
Principal characters:
Father Goriot, a boarder at the Maison Vauquer
Eugene de Rastignac, a young law student
Countess Anastasie de Restaud, Goriot's daughter
Baroness Delphtne de Nucingen, another daughter
Madame de Beauseant, Rastignac's cousin
Monsieur Vautrin, Rastignac's fellow boarder
Victorine Tait.t.kfer, another boarder
Critique:
This account of the subtle
transformation of Eugene de Rastignac from a
naive provincial to a Parisian gentleman
is among the most credible stories in
fiction. The story of the ruin of a
successful merchant, Goriot, because of his love
for two ungrateful daughters is effective
but less realistic. These are but a few
of the fascinating gallery of characters
Balzac assembled at Mme. Vauquer's
boarding-house.
The Story:
There were many conjectures at
Madame Vauquer's boarding-house about the
mysterious Monsieur Goriot. He had
taken the choice rooms on the first floor
when he first retired from his vermicelli
business, and for a time his landlady had
eyed him as a prospective husband.
When, at the end of his second year at
the Maison Vauquer, he had asked to
move to a cheap room on the second floor,
he was credited with being an
unsuccessful speculator, a miser, a money-lender.
The mysterious young women who flitted
up to his rooms from time to time were
said to be his mistresses, although he
protested that they were only his two
daughters. The other boarders called
him Father Goriot.
At the end of the third year, Goriot
moved to a still cheaper room on the
third floor. By that time he was the
common butt of jokes at the boarding-
house table, and his daughters visited
him only rarely.
One evening the impoverished law
student, Eugene de Rastignac, came home
late from the ball his wealthy cousin,
Madame de Beauseant, had given.
Peeking through the mysterious Goriot's
keyhole, he saw him molding some silver
plate into ingots. The next day he heard
his fellow boarder, Monsieur Vautrin,
say that early in the morning he had seen
Father Goriot selling a piece of silver to
an old money-lender. What Vautrin
did not know was that the money thus
obtained was intended for Goriot's
daughter, Countess Anastasie de Restaud,
whom Eugene had met at the dance the
night before.
That afternoon Eugene paid his
respects to the countess. Father Goriot was
leaving the drawing-room when he
arrived. The countess, her lover, and her
husband received Eugene graciously
because of his connections with Madame de
Beauseant. But when he mentioned they
had the acquaintance of Father Goriot
in common, he was quickly shown to
the door, the count leaving word with
his servant that he was not to be at home
if Monsieur de Rastignac called again.
After his rebuff, Eugene went to call
on Madame de Beauseant, to ask her aid
in unraveling the mystery. She quickly
understood what had happened, and
explained that de Restaud's house would
1195

be barred to him because both of Goriot's
daughters, having been given sizable
dowries, were gradually severing all
connection with their father and therefore
would not tolerate anyone who had
knowledge of Godot's shabby
circumstances. She suggested that Eugene send
word through Goriot to his other
daughter, Delphine de Nucingen, that Madame
de Beaus6ant would receive her.
Delphine, she knew, would welcome the
invitation, and would be grateful to
Eugene and become his sponsor.
Vautrin had another suggestion for
the young man. Under Madame Vau-
quer's roof lived Victorine Taillefer, who
had been disinherited by her wealthy
father in favor of her brother. Eugene
had already found favor in her eyes, and
Vautrin suggested that for a two hundred
thousand francs he would have the
brother murdered, so that Eugene might
marry the heiress. He was to have two
weeks in which to consider the offer.
Eugene escorted Madame de Beau-
s6ant to the theater next evening. There
he was presented to Delphine de
Nucingen, who received him graciously. The
next day he received an invitation to dine
with the de Nucingens and to go to
the theater. Before dinner he and
Delphine drove to a gambling house where,
at her request, he gambled and won
six thousand francs. She explained that
her husband would give her no money,
and she needed it to pay a debt she owed
to an old lover.
Before long Eugene learned that it
cost money to keep the company of his
new friends. Unable to press his own
family for funds, he would not stoop to
impose on Delphine. Finally, as Vautrin
had forseen, he was forced to take his
fellow boarder's offer. The tempter had
just finished explaining the duel
between Victorine's brother and his
confederate which was to take place the
following morning when Father Goriot
came in with the news that he and
Delphine had taken an apartment for
Eugene.
Eugene wavered once more at the
thought of the crime which was about
to be committed in his name. He
attempted to send a warning to the victim
through Father Goriot, but Vautrin,
suspicious of his accomplice, thwarted the
plan. Vautrin managed to drug their
wine at supper so that both slept soundly
that night.
At breakfast Eugene's fears were
realized. A messenger burst in with the news
that Victorine's brother had been fatally
wounded in a duel. After the girl
hurried off to see him, another singular event
occurred. Vautrin, after drinking his
coffee, fell to the ground as if he had
suffered a stroke. When he was carried
to his room and undressed, it was
ascertained by marks on his back that he
was the famous criminal, Trompe-la-
Mort. One of the boarders, an old maid,
had been acting as an agent for the police;
she had drugged Vautrin's coffee so that
his criminal brand could be exposed.
Shortly afterward the police appeared to
claim their victim.
Eugene and Father Goriot were
preparing to move to their new quarters, for
Goriot was to have a room over the young
man's apartment. Delphine arrived to
interrupt Goriot's packing. She was in
distress. Father Goriot had arranged with
his lawyer to force de Nucingen to make
a settlement so that Delphine would have
an independent income on which to
draw, and she brought the news that her
money had been so tied up by
investments it would be impossible for her
husband to withdraw any of it without
bringing about his own ruin.
Hardly had Delphine told her father
of her predicament when Anastasie de
Restaud drove up. She had sold the de
Restaud diamonds to help her lover pay
off his debts, and had been discovered
by her husband. De Restaud had bought
them back, but as punishment he
demanded control of her dowry.
Eugene could not help overhearing the
conversation through the thin partition
between the rooms, and when Anastasie
1196

said she still needed twelve thousand
francs for her lover he forged one of
Vautrin's drafts for that amount and
took it to Father Goriot's room. Anas-
tasie's reaction was to berate him for
eavesdropping.
The financial difficulties of his
daughters and the hatred and jealousy they
had shown proved too much for Father
Goriot. At the dinner table he looked
as if he were about to have a stroke of
apoplexy, and when Eugene returned
from an afternoon spent with his
mistress, Delphine, the old man was in bed,
too ill to be moved to his new home. He
had gone out that morning to sell his last
few possessions, so that Anastasie might
pay her dressmaker for an evening gown.
In spite of their father's serious
condition, both daughters attended Madame
de Beaus6ant's ball that evening, and
Eugene was too much under his mistress'
influence to refuse to accompany her. The
next day Goriot was worse. Eugene tried
to summon his daughters. Delphine was
still abed and refused to be hurried over
her morning toilet. Anastasie arrived at
his bedside only after Father Goriot had
lapsed into a coma and no longer knew
her.
Father Goriot was buried in a pauper's
grave the next day. Eugene tried to
borrow burial money at each daughter's
house, but they sent word they were in
deep grief over their loss and could not
be seen. He and a poor medical student
from the boarding-house were the only
mourners at the funeral. Anastasie and
Delphine sent their empty carriages to
follow the coffin. It was their final trib
ute to an indulgent father.
1197

FATHERS AND SONS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1859
Locale: Russia
First published: 1862
Principal characters:
Kirsanoff, a Russian gentleman
Pavel, his older brother
Arkady, his son
Fenichka, KirsanofFs mistress
Bazaroff, Arkady's friend
Vasily, Bazaroff's father
Madame Odintzoff, a widow
Katya, her younger sister
Critique:
Fathers and Sons is important in the
political history of Russia. Turgenev was
here the first to use the word nihilist to
describe a believer in political anarchy
at a time when nihilism was the main
current of liberal thought. There are
excellent studies of the unsettled Russian
peasants iust before their emancipation.
Beyond this historical importance, Fathers
and Sons is a novel which dramatizes the
conflict and differences between
generations. The novel is relatively
straightforward in plot and the characters are
simply drawn. These characteristics are
not common in nineteenth-century
Russian novels; the clarity of Fathers and
Sons is probably a big factor in its
popularity.
The Story:
At a provincial posting station
Kirsanoff waited impatiently for his son,
Arkady, who had completed his education
at the university in St. Petersburg.
Kirsanoff reflected that Arkady had probably
changed, but he hoped his son had not
grown away from him entirely. Arkady's
mother was dead, and the widower was
strongly attached to his son.
At last the coach appeared, rolling
along the dusty road. Arkady jumped
out. But he was not alone. Lounging
superciliously behind was a stranger
whom Arkady introduced as Bazaroff,
a fellow student. Something in Arkady's
manner told Kirsanoff that here was a
special attachment. In a low aside Arkady
begged his father to be gracious to his
guest.
Feeling some qualms about his
unexpected guest, Kirsanoff was troubled
during the trip home. He was hesitant about
his own news, but finally told Arkady
that he had taken a mistress, Fenichka,
and installed her in his house. To his
great relief, Arkady took the news calmly
and even congratulated his father on the
step. Later Arkady was pleased to learn
that he even had a little half-brother.
Very soon Kirsanoff found he had
good reason to distrust Bazaroff, who was
a doctor and a clever biologist. Arkady
seemed too much under his influence.
Worse, Bazaroff was a nihilist. At the
university the liberal thinkers had
consciously decided to defy or ignore all
authority—state, church, home, pan-Rus-
sianism. Bazaroff was irritating to talk
to, Kirsanoff decided, because he knew
so much and had such a sarcastic tongue.
Pavel, KirsanofFs older brother, was
especially irritated by Bazaroff. Pavel was
a real aristocrat, bound by tradition, who
had come to live in retirement with his
younger brother after a disappointing
career as an army officer and the lover of
a famous beauty, the Princess R—. With
his background and stiff notions of pro-
1198

priety, Pavel often disagreed with Baza-
roff.
Luckily, Bazaroff kept busy most of
the time. He collected frogs and infusoria
and was always dissecting and peering
into a microscope. He would have been
an ideal guest, except for his calmly
superior air of belonging to a generation
far surpassing Pavel's. KirsanofT, loving
his son so much, did his best to keep
peace, but all the while he regretted
the nihilism which had so affected
Arkady.
KirsanofT was harassed by other
troubles. Soon, by law, the serfs would
be freed. KirsanofT strongly approved
this change and had anticipated the new
order by dividing his farm into smaller
plots which the peasants rented on a
sharecropping basis. But with their new
independence the peasants cheated him
more than ever and were slow in paying
their rent.
Arkady and Bazaroff, growing bored
with quiet farm life, went to visit in the
provincial capital, where they had
introductions to the governor. In town they
ran into Sitnikoff, a kind of polished
jackal who felt important because he was
one of the nihilist circle. Sitnikoff
introduced them into provincial society.
At a ball the two friends met and
were greatly taken by a young widow,
Madame Odintzoff. Arkady did not
dance, but he sat out a mazurka with her.
They became friends at once, especially
when she found that Arkady's mother
had been an intimate friend of her own
mother. After the ball Madame
Odintzoff invited the two men to visit her
estate.
Arkady and Bazaroff accepted the
invitation promptly, and in a few days they
settled down to the easy routine of
favored guests in a wealthy household.
Katya, Madame OdintzofFs young sister,
was especially attracted to Arkady.
Bazaroff, older and more worldly, became the
good friend of the widow.
Although Bazaroff, as a good nihilist,
despised home and family life, he made
a real effort to overcome his scruples.
But when he finally began to talk of
love and marriage to Madame Odintzoff,
he was politely refused. Chagrined at
his rejection, he induced Arkady to leave
with him at once. The two friends then
went on to BazarofFs home,
Vasily, BazarofFs father, was glad to
see his son, whom he both feared and
admired. He and his wife did all they
could to make the young men
comfortable. At length Arkady and Bazaroff
quarreled, chiefly because they were so
bored. Abruptly they left, and
impulsively called again on Madame Odintzoff.
She received them coolly. Feeling that
they were unwelcome, they went back to
the KirsanofT estate.
Because Bazaroff was convinced that
Arkady was also in love with Madame
Odintzoff, his friendship with Arkady
became greatly strained. Arkady, thinking
all the time of Katya, returned by
himself to the Odintzoff estate to press his
suit of the younger sister.
At the KirsanofT home Bazaroff
became friendly with Fenichka. He
prescribed for her sick baby and even for
her. Fenichka, out of friendship, spent
much of her time with Bazaroff. One
morning, as they sat in a garden, Bazaroff
kissed her unexpectedly, to her distress
and confusion. Pavel witnessed the scene
by accident and became incensed all the
more at the strange nihilist.
Although Pavel did not consider
Bazaroff a gentleman, he challenged him to
a duel with pistols. In the encounter
Pavel was wounded in the leg, and
Bazaroff left the house in haste, never to
return. Pavel recovered from his wound,
but he felt a never-ending shame at
being wounded by a low nihilist. He
urged KirsanofT to marry Fenichka, and
returned to his old life. He spent the
rest of his days as an aging dandy in
Dresden.
Bazaroff stopped briefly at the
Odintzoff home. Still convinced that Arkady
was in love with Madame Odintzoff, he
attempted to help his friend in his suit.
1199

Madame OdintzofF ridiculed him,
however, when Arkady made his request for
the hand of Katya. With a sense of
futility, BazarofT took his leave and
rejoined his own family.
Vasily was the local doctor, and he
eagerly welcomed his son as a colleague.
For a time BazarofT led a successful life,
helping to cure the ailments of the
peasants and pursuing his research at the
same time. When one of his patients
came down with typhus, he accidentally
scratched himself with a scalpel he had
used. Although Vasily cauterized the
wound as well as he could, BazarofT
became ill with a fever. Sure that he would
die, he summoned Madame OdintzofF to
his side. She came gladly and helped
to ease him before his death.
Madame OdintzofF eventually made a
good marriage with a lawyer. Arkady
was happy managing his father's farm
and playing with the son born to him and
Katya. KirsanofF became a magistrate and
spent most of his life settling disputes
brought about by the liberation of the
serfs. Fenichka, at last a respected wife
and mother, found great happiness in her
daughter-in-law, Katys.
1200

FAUST
Type of work: Dramatic poem
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Type of plot: Philosophical allegory
Time of plot: Timeless
Locale: The world
First published: 1790-1831
Principal characters:
Faust, a student of all knowledge
Gretchen, a maiden
Mephistopheles, the devil
Wagner, Faust's servant
Helen of Troy
Homunculus, a spirit
Critique:
The philosophical problem of human
damnation through desire for knowledge
is here presented. Goethe, echoing the
eighteenth-century Age of Reason,
asserted that man's rationality was the
supreme truth in life. This poem
contains some of the most beautiful and
aspiring passages in all literature. Faust's
lofty, anguished cry for one moment in
life which would cause him to desire its
continuance is echoed throughout the
ages in the emotions of all men of all
times. The universal problem presented
by the play renders it impossible to place
the locale of the action or the time of
the action, for Faust exists forever and
everywhere.
The Story:
While three archangels were singing
the praise of God's lofty works,
Mephistopheles, the devil, appeared and said
that he found conditions on earth to be
bad. The Lord tacitly agreed that man
had his weaknesses, but He slyly pointed
out that His servant Faust could not be
swayed from the path of righteousness.
Mephistopheles made a wager with the
Lord that Faust could be tempted from
his faithful service. The Lord Knew that
He could rely on the righteous integrity
of Faust, but that Mephistopheles could
lead Faust downward if he were able to
lay hold of Faust's soul. Mephistopheles
considered Faust a likely victim, for Faust
was trying to obtain the unobtainable.
Faust was not satisfied with all the
knowledge he had acquired. He realized
man's limits, and he saw his own
insignificance in the great macrocosm. In this
mood, he went for a walk with his
servant, Wagner, among people who were not
troubled by thoughts of a philosophical
nature. In such a refreshing atmosphere,
Faust was able to feel free and to think
clearly. Faust told Wagner of his two
souls, one which clung to earthly things,
and another which strove toward super-
sensual things that could never be
attained as long as his soul resided within
his fleshly body. Feeling so limited in
his daily life and desiring to learn the
meaning of existence, Faust was ready
to accept anything which would take him
to a new kind of life.
Mephistopheles recognized that Faust
was ready for his attack. In the form of
a dog, Mephistopheles followed Faust
to his home when the scholar returned
to his contemplation of the meaning of
life. After studying the Bible, he
concluded that man's power should be used
to produce something useful. Witnessing
Faust's struggle with his ideas, the dog
stepped forth in his true identity. But
Faust remained unmoved by the
arguments of Mephistopheles.
The next time Mephistopheles came,
FAUST by Johann Wolfgang tod Goetbe. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1201

he found Faust much more receptive to
his plot. Faust had decided that, although
his struggles were divine, he had
produced nothing to show for them. Faust
was interested in life on this earth. At
Mephistopheles' suggestion that he could
peacefully enjoy a sensual existence,
Faust declared that if ever he could lay
himself in sloth and be at peace witn
himself, or if ever Mephistopheles could
so rule him with flattery that he became
self-satisfied, then let that be the end
of Faust. But Faust had also renounced
all things that made life worthwhile to
most men. So he further contracted with
Mephistopheles that if ever he found
experience so profound that he would wish
it to endure, then Faust would cease to
be. This would be a wager, not the
selling of a soul.
After two trials Mephistopheles had
railed to tempt Faust with cheap
debauchery. The next offering he
presented was love for a woman. First Faust
was brought to the Witch's Kitchen,
where his youth was restored. Then a
pure maiden, Gretchen, was presented to
Faust, but when he saw her in her own
innocent home, he vowed he could not
harm her. Mephistopheles wooed the
girl with caskets of jewels which she
thought came from Faust, and Faust was
so tempted that he returned to Gretchen.
She surrendered herself to him as a
fulfillment of her pure love.
Gretchen's brother convinced her that
her act was a shameful one in the eyes
of society. Troubled by Gretchen's grief,
Faust finally killed her brother. Gretchen
at last felt the full burden of her sin.
Mephistopheles showed Faust more
scenes of debauchery, but Faust's spirit
was elevated by the thought of Gretchen
and he was able to overcome the evil
influence of the devil. Mephistopheles
had hoped that Faust would desire the
moment of his fulfillment of love to
endure. However, Faust knew that
enduring human love could not satisfy his
craving. He regretted Gretchen's state
of misery, and he returned to her; but she
had killed her child and would not let
her lover save her from the death to
which she had been condemned.
Mephistopheles brought Faust to the
emperor, who asked Faust to show him
the most beautiful male and female who
had ever existed—Paris, and Helen of
Troy. Faust produced the images of
these mythological characters, and at the
sight of Helen, his desire to possess her
was so strong that he fainted, and
Mephistopheles brought him back in a swoon
to his own laboratory. Mephistopheles
was unable to comprehend Faust's
desire for the ideal beauty that Helen
represented.
With the help of Wagner,
Mephistopheles created a formless spirit of
learning, Homunculus, who could see what
was going on in Faust's mind.
Homunculus, Mephistopheles, and Faust went
to Greece, where Mephistopheles
borrowed from the fantastic images of
classical mythology one of their grotesque
forms. With Mephistopheles'
intervention, a living Helen was brought to Faust.
It seemed now, with the attainment of
this supreme joy of beauty in Helen, that
Faust would cry for such a moment to
linger forever, but he soon realized that
the enjoyment of transitory beauty was
no more enduring than his other
experiences.
With a new knowledge of himself,
Faust returned to his native land.
Achievement was now his goal, as he
reaffirmed his earlier pledge that his power
should be used to produce something
useful to man. The mystical and magical
powers which Faust had once held were
banished so that he could stand before
nature alone. He obtained a large strip
of swamp land and restored it to
productivity.
Many years passed. Now old and
blind, Faust realized he had created a
vast territory of land occupied by people
who would always be active in making
something useful for themselves. Having
participated in this achievement, Faust
beheld himself as a man standing among
1202

free and active people as one of them.
At the moment when he realized what he
had created, he cried out for this moment,
so fair to him, to linger on. Faust had
emerged from a self-centered egoist into
a man who saw his actions as a part of a
creative society.
He realized that life could be worth
living, but in that moment of perception
he lost his wager to Mephistopheles. The
de&rcl now claimed Faust's soul, but in
reality he too had lost the wager. The
Almighty was right. Although Faust had
made mistakes in his life, he had always
remained aware of goodness and truth.
Seeing his own defeat, Mephistopheles
attempted to prevent the ascension of
Faust's soul to God. Angels appeared to
help Faust, however, and he was carried
to a place in Heaven where all was active
creation—exactly the kind of after-life
that Faust would have chosen.
1203

THE FEDERALIST
Type of work: Political essays
Authors: Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804);
(1745-1829)
First published: 1788
Seventy-seven of the eighty-five essays
which comprise The Federalist were
printed serially in New York newspapers
between October, 1787, and May, 1788;
the remaining eight first appeared in the
two-volume edition published in March
and May of the latter year. In an attempt
to preserve secrecy of authorship, all were
signed with the masking signature of
"Publius." Although historians are still
in dispute over the writers of certain of
the papers, the claim has been made that
Hamilton wrote sixty; James Madison,
fourteen; John Jay, five; and Hamilton
and Madison together, sixteen. Lengthy,
repetitious, and partisan, they are
nevertheless unrivaled as the classic exposition
and defense of the principles on which
the United States of America was
founded.
In the first and concluding essays,
Hamilton declared the constitution
proposed by the Philadelphia Convention of
1787 to be energetic, perfectly
republican, conformable to the state
constitutions, and able to guarantee property and
liberty. He urged the electorate to shun
demagogues who disparaged its
proponents as the "wealthy, well-born, and the
great/' to rise above "obstinate adherence
to party," and to fulfill America's destiny
as perceived by the framers. Madison
joined him in rejecting objections that
the new constitution contained no bill
of rights or limitation on the reeligibility
of presidents. They urged its ratification
and subsequent amendment as freer or
less crippling compromises than attempts
at revision before submitting it to the
states. Madison exhorted Americans to
fulfill their limitless personal and national
personalities, to "improve and perpetuate"
the "one, great, and flourishing empire"
won by the revolutionary patriots, to com-
i:
James Madison (1751-1836), and John Jay
promise a "decent regard for former
times" with a rejection of "blind
veneration for antiquity," and to be "manly"
enough to test innovation and set a "new
and noble course." Hamilton admitted
that the new constitution was not perfect,
but he hailed it as "the best that the
present views and circumstances of the
country will permit."
Hamilton and Madison cited as
authority for the proposed constitution the
Continental Congress* summons of the
convention to establish "a firm national
government" on the one hand, "for the
sole and express purpose of revising the
articles of Confederation" on another, but
above all to achieve a constitution
"adequate to the exigencies of government
and the preservation of the Union"
Madison insisted that the new document
merely expanded on the principles of the
articles to invigorate at this "critical"
juncture the existing union with "powers
commensurate with its objects." He
averred that the new method of
ratification was more practicable and that the
old Congress and the states should not
charge with unconstitutionality the
convention which they had
unconstitutionally summoned. The proposed
constitution should be ratified, he said, if only
because "it would accomplish the views
and happiness of the people," consistent
with the assertion in the Declaration of
Independence that they could "abolish or
alter" governments to effect their safety
and happiness. Limiting this right to
changing governments by "some solemn
and authoritative act," not by transitory
whims of the populace or of legislative
"cabals," Hamilton denied "that a party
to a compact has a right to revoke that
compact" by legislative or popular acts.
He would, however, exchange the old

confederations shallow foundation of
authority delegated by the state legislatures
for the constitutions firmer basis of
"CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE."
Madison scorned "theoretic** politicians
who believed that "reducing mankind to
perfect equality in their political rights**
would equalize and assimilate their
possessions, opinions, and passions.
Pronouncing a democracy appropriate to
small areas capable of direct government
by all citizens, he endorsed a united
federal republic, governed through popular
representatives, as appropriate to the
country and its future growth. He
declared this government one of mixed
national and federal characteristics because
both central and state governments were
derived "directly or indirectly from the
great body of people*' and because the
voters* ratification of the new constitution
would not be an act by citizens of a
consolidated nation, but of independent
states. Although the central government
would be national in its operation upon
citizens as individuals, its extent would
be federal in its limitation to "certain
enumerated objects." Both Madison and
Hamilton envisaged a union more federal
than national, in which each state would
play a large corporate role in federal
elections.
Although Hamilton agreed that the
new government would deal with
"enumerated and legitimate objects,** he
emphasized that its laws would be "the
SUPREME LAW of the land.** As state
officials would be bound to its observance
by oath, they would become
"incorporated** into its operation and "auxiliary
to the enforcement of its laws.** He
discouraged "fettering the government with
restrictions that cannot be observed,** lest
one departure from the "sacred**
fundamental law breed precedent for constant
infraction. Both he and Madison believed
a military establishment necessary to
national power and harmless to the states
and people because of its dependence on
state militia and biennial congressional
appropriations. Hamilton frankly urged
the use of federal force to suppress
insurrections stirred up by demagooues and
"desperate debtors** who, like Shays in
Massachusetts, might "provoke . . . the
people to wild excesses.**
Madison foresaw federal improvement
of communication by roads and canals,
but he denied that the "general welfare**
clause added to the governments "few
and defined** powers enumerated in the
constitution. However, he and Hamilton
agreed that the "necessary and proper**
clause bred constructive and implied
powers useful in achieving the
"particular powers** and the overall goal of an
efficacious government, saying: "No
axiom is more clearly established in law,
or in reason, than that whenever the end
is required, the means are authorized/*
Although agreeing that constitutional
laws of the union were the "supreme law
of the land/* they believed that neither
that provision nor complicated and
indirect legislative devices could usurp
popular liberty, supplant state power, or cloak
encroachment on the coordinate
departments, because all government action was
ultimately limited by popular acceptance
and because the new distribution of
powers between the executive, judicial,
and legislative branches was so well-
balanced.
Hamilton and Madison agreed that the
new government should be furnished
with sure financial sources to accomplish
its goal of a more energetic government,
whose power to tax was actually less
potentially onerous than that of the old one,
which had "complete power to
REQUIRE of the States indefinite supplies
of money for the common defence and
general welfare.** Hamilton exceeded
Madison in advocating an "unqualified**
power of taxation, in dismissing
distinctions among external, internal, direct, and
indirect taxes, and in demanding a power
to tax "at least equal'* to the union's
resources and sufficient to establishing its
credit in any contingency; and he
candidly disagreed with Madison's
contention that federal taxes would fall mainly
1205

on foreign trade. He assured those fearful
of federal usurpation of taxation that "the
prudence and firmness of the people"
would safeguard "the constitutional
equilibrium between the general and the
State governments." Believing that the
states' ultimate activity and need for
revenue would become "very narrow" after
the liquidation of revolutionary debts, he
willingly conceded them "independent
and uncontrollable authority to raise their
own revenues," provided the central
government had a monopoly on external
taxation and concurrent jurisdiction in
internal taxes. He promised that the
central government would not attempt to
abridge the states' tax resources, but
would restrain itself to powers
"exclusively delegated" to it or forbidden to the
states.
Hamilton's preference for a more
centralized government and a limited
electorate made him see indirect election of
presidents and senators for rather long
terms of office, the limited presidential
veto, the life tenure of judges subject to
good behavior, and the freedom of the
states to set voting qualifications as
valuable safeguards against egalitarianism.
Although admitting that judicial review was
not "directly" authorized by the
constitution, he praised this process of measuring
legislation against that document as
consistent with colonial practice, the framers'
intent, and common sense. He considered
it to be the best means "to secure a steady,
upright, and impartial administration of
the laws," without which they would be
dead letter, and to be an "excellent
barrier" against legislative tyranny. He
declared such an independent but
coordinate judiciary could never endanger
liberty or the rights of states because of its
interdependence on the executive and
legislative branches, which were subject
to election by the people and by states.
Only such a court, he said, never realized
by the Confederation, could secure the
constitutional guarantees against ex fost
facto laws and bills of attainder. Life
tenure subject to good behavior for judges
was justified, he averred, by the scarcity
of men of "sufficient skill" and "requisite
integrity."
He considered the federal courts
essential to the maintenance of the "majesty
of the national authority," brooking
neither "NON-COMPLIANCE" nor
"DIRECT and ACTIVE RESISTANCE"
by individuals or states to the laws of
the central government, which operated
directly upon the citizens themselves, and
from compliance with which states could
relieve their citizens, not by "omission
or evasion," but only by encroaching
upon the union.
Although Madison recognized men's
economic motivation, Hamilton made
blatant appeal to their materialistic
aspirations in which he saw those of farmers
and merchants "blended and interwoven."
He promised that the new government
would multiply the national wealth by
providing uniform and sound currency,
uniform taxes (mainly on foreign goods,
disregarding his own inconsistency),
economy in government, and avoidance
of excise or sumptuary taxes.
Hamilton and Madison agreed that no
one or the "whole mass" of the powers
of the new government was unnecessary,
improper, or too dangerous to the states.
They held that the states would have a
constant advantage over the central
government through their corporate role in
elections, control of militia, and larger
bureaucracy. Madison declared that the
central government would be "more
obsequious than overbearing" toward the
states, and that this circumstance accorded
with their closer proximity to the people
and greater ability to achieve the
"supreme object" of securing the "solid
happiness" of the people. He and Hamilton
agreed that in federal-state controversies
the "predilection and probable support"
of the people would go to the states.
In such controversies, Madison held
that the "ultimate authority" for both
union and states was the "great body of
1206

citizens.** If some "madness** drove the
federal government to an "unwarrantable**
act, he believed that popular
"disquietude** and "refusal to cooperate with the
officers of the Union** would be
accompanied by "obstructions** thrown up by
state officials, neither of which the
federal government would long risk.
Madison declared the constitutional provision
for settling such controversies before the
Supreme Court to be the essential
alternative to civil war or disunion and to be
consistent with the federal nature of the
new government.
It was Madison who dubbed opponents
of the proposed constitution "Federalists.**
Unlike Hamilton, he did not fear
"faction,** which he defined as a number of
citizens united to action by common
passions or interests "adverse to the rights of
other citizens, or to the permanent and
aggregate interest of the community.**
Fearing faction less than its eradication
either by loss of liberty or imposition of
conformity, he insisted that political
diversity would best maintain a government
protective of men*s diverse and disparate
faculties. But he alleged that
governmental regulation of conflicting economic
and political interests was necessary to
achieve approximate justice through the
rule of the majority in order to avoid
either anarchy or tyranny.
Claiming that essential agreement
among the framers had caused them to
bury reservations and to sign the proposed
constitution, all three authors urged quick
ratification of that document as originally
submitted, avoiding "delays of new
experiments** and disregarding the
inconsistent and disunited critics of the federal
constitution. Only such a federal union,
they agreed, would be energetic enough
to maintain any union; only it could
achieve for Americans prosperity at home,
respect abroad, security against foreign
pressures, settlement of international
disputes, regulation of foreign trade, and
avoidance of unjust wars.
1207

FELIX HOLT, RADICAL
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880)
Type of plot: Political realism
Time of plot: 1832-1833
Locale: Rural England
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Felix Holt, the radical
Harold Transome, heir to Transome Court, a radical candidate for
Parliament
Mrs. Transome, his mother
Esther Lyon, a refined young woman
Rufus Lyon, her father, a Dissenting minister
Matthew Jermyn, a lawyer
Mr. Johnson, another lawyer hired hy Jermyn
Philip Debarry, a Tory candidate for Parliament
Sir Maximus Debarry, his father, owner of Trehy Manor
The Reverend Augustus Debarry, his brother
The Reverend John Lingon, Mrs. Transome's brother
Henry Scaddon, alias Maurice Christian Bycliffe, a servant in the De-
harry household
Critique:
Centered around a political election in
a rural area of England at the time of
the Reform Bill of 1832, Felix Holt,
Radical provides a vivid picture of the
society of the times. As always in George
Eliot's best work, all classes of the
society are included in a thorough portrait
of rural English life. The novel hinges
on character, although it also uses such
standard plot devices as an unknown
ancestry and a strange will which settles
important property in an unexpected
way. The characters are skillfully
presented: the energetic and
unconventional young radical, Felix; the sharp
and generous Dissenting minister, Rufus
Lyon; the competent, self-satisfied master
of Transome Court, Harold Transome.
In depth of insight and complexity of
character, the novel looks forward to the
later Middlemarch. Like Middle-march,
also, Felix Holt, Radical ends in the
affirmation of a transcendent love affair,
the mating of two people, Felix and
Esther, who see beyond the common and
trivial experiences of men and share a
kind of spiritual force. The romantic
hero and heroine transcend the
limitations, sympathetically depicted, of the
earthbound characters around them.
The Story:
Mrs. Transome, who had long held
Transome Court together in spite of
financial and legal difficulties and an
incompetent husband, eagerly awaited the
return of Harold, her younger son.
Harold, who had been building up a
fortune in Smyrna for the preceding fifteen
years, had been called home to take his
place as heir to Transome Court after
the death of his weak older brother,
Durfey. Harold, whose wife was dead,
also brought with him a young son.
Mrs. Transome was soon disappointed
in Harold. Although he was kind and
promised to renovate the somewhat
shabby mansion, he did not seem willing
to fit into Mrs. Transome's pattern of
genteel country life, particularly when
he announced that he intended to run
for Parliament as a Radical candidate.
He seemed, to his mother, to show a
surprising knowledge and shrewdness about
contemporary English life. In his
campaign he received the support of his
1208

family's lawyer, Matthew Jermyn, and
his uncle, the Reverend John Lingon.
Neither had thought of deserting the
Tory colors before his arrival.
More understandably committed to the
Radical cause was Rufus Lyon, the local
Dissenting minister. One day he received
a visit from one of his parishioners, a
Mrs. Holt, who complained that her son
had deliberately stopped the business in
patent medicines that she and her late
husband had painstakingly established.
Her son, Felix, claimed that the business
was fraudulent; Mrs. Holt, on the other
hand, was convinced that God would not
have allowed a fraudulent business to
prosper. The minister later sent for young
Felix, whom he found highly intelligent,
energetic, honest, and independent.
Although well educated, Felix was working
as a watchmaker in order to feel himself
close to the people. The two men soon
became close friends. At the Lyons', Felix
also met Rufus* daughter Esther, a slight,
refined girl educated abroad, who was
now teaching the daughters of the rich
and reading Byron's poems. The
energetic and socially conscious Felix railed
at Esther's refinement and aestheticism,
but as time passed a strange attraction
between the two began to grow. Esther,
although she did not know it at this time,
was not the daughter of Rufus Lyon. Her
mother had been a Frenchwoman, alone
and destitute, whom Rufus had found
wandering the English streets. Her
soldier husband had sent for her, but he had
died before she could find him. With
her child, she was befriended by Rufus
Lyon, who gave up a successful post for
her and later married her.
Harold, beginning his election
campaign, left the organizing to his lawyer,
Matthew Jermyn. Jermyn hired another
lawyer, Mr. Johnson, to go to a workers'
pub and stir the men into active support
of the Radical candidate. Felix Holt was
in the pub at the time. Although a
Radical, he objected strongly to the rabble-
rousing technique used by Johnson and
carried his protest directly to Harold.
Harold, although sympathetic to Felix' point
of view, felt himself somewhat indebted
to Jermyn, who had helped his mother
retain her property through difficult years
and an earlier lawsuit. While walking
home through the woods, Felix found a
purse belonging to Christian, one of the
Debarry servants; as a practical joke, the
purse had been stolen from his pocket
and tossed away while Christian was
asleep in the woods. Along with the
purse were some papers belonging to
Philip Debarry, the Conservative can
didate for Parliament.
When Felix took the papers to Rufus
Lyon, his friend was amazed to discover
evidence that Christian was the first
husband of Rufus' French wife and the
father of Esther. Through Jermyn,
however, Rufus learned that Christian was
really a scoundrel named Henry Scaddon
who had, in order to save himself,
exchanged identities with Maurice
Christian Bycliffe, Esther's real father, just
before Bycliffe's death. Jermyn also knew
that Bycliffe, and therefore Esther, was
the real heiress of Transome Court
should an old and senile bill-pasting
Transome, who had moved to Treby,
die. Although Jermyn kept his
information for possible use against the
Transome family, Rufus Lyon told his
daughter of her origins. Meanwhile, Harold
Transome kept on campaigning and the
friendship between Esther and Felix
grew.
On the day of the election, as Felix
had feared, the workers rioted. Felix,
hoping to quell the riot, led it for a time
in a futile effort to lead the workers
away from the town. Unsuccessful in his
purpose, he was charged with killing a
constable. Also trampled in the riot was
the old bill-pasting Transome. Esther was
now legally the heiress of Transome
Court.
Harold Transome, who had lost the
election, now turned his attention to
Transome Court. Discovering that
Jermyn and Johnson, Jermyn's henchman,
had been cheating the estate for years,
1209

he decided to get rid of Jermyn at once
and sue him. Jermyn tried to avoid the
suit by telling Harold that the estate
really belonged to Esther and that the
lawyer would remain silent if Harold
dropped proceedings against him. Harold
refused to accept the bribe. Later he and
his mother invited Esther to live with
them at Transome Court. Both were
charmed with Esther, and Harold fell in
love with her.
Meanwhile, Felix' case was announced
for trial. Rufus Lyon, Harold, and Esther
testified to Felix attempts to quell the
riot, but he had, though inadvertently,
killed a man, and so he was sentenced to
four years' imprisonment. Esther's plea
was so powerful that it moved even the
a.rch-Tory, Sir Maximus Debarry, who
helped petition Parliament to grant Felix
a pardon. Felix was soon released.
In the meantime Mrs. Transome had
been unhappy that Harold had rejected
Jermyn so thoroughly and was
attempting to sue him. Harold, claiming that
Jermyn was a thief, intended to carry out
the suit. In a final burst of fury, Jermyn
told Harold the truth: that he was
Harold's father and had, during his long
affair with Mrs. Transome, saved the
estate during several difficult times.
Harold was crushed, and only Esther
was able to reconcile him to his unhappy
mother.
Feeling his illegitimacy keenly, Harold
told Esther that he could not, as he had
intended, ask for her hand. This
declaration saved Esther much embarrassment,
for she had already acknowledged her
love for Felix. To solve problems for all
concerned, Esther signed over all her
rights to Transome Court to Harold,
returned to her father's house, and soon
married Felix.
1210

FETES GALANTES and OTHER POEMS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
Principal published works: Poemes saturniens, 1866; Fites galantes, 1869; La bonne
chanson, 1870; Romances sans paroles, 1874; Sagesse, 1881; Jadis et naguere, 1884; Amour,
1888; Parallelement, 1889; Bonheur, 1891
The importance of literary groups or
"schools" has always been greater in
France than in England or America, and
much of French literary history can best
be understood through the reaction of
one school against another. Thus, after
the great wave of Romanticism in the
1830's and 1840's, a counterwave was
inevitable. This originated in the group
known as the "Parnassians," led by Le-
conte de Lisle (1818-1894) and
continued by Jose-Maria de Heredia (1842-
1905), which first made itself known in
1866. The members of the school had
two objectives, the first of which was the
reformation of the loose metrical methods
of the disciples of Hugo and Lamartine
and a return to something like the
traditional strictness of French prosody. More
important, they were reacting against the
excessive subjectivity and emotionalism
of Romantics like Musset, who in his
verse exploited for all it was worth his
famous love affair with George Sand.
Poetry, according to the Parnassians,
should aim at an "abstract beauty" and
avoid the cultivation of "private sorrows
and their lamentation"; it should be cold
and aloof, purely objective. For
example, in the famous "Les 6l6phants," by
de Lisle, the great beasts solemnly march
across the desert of red sand and as
solemnly disappear; "and the desert resumes
its immobility." That is all. As James El-
roy Flecker, one of the group's few
disciples in England, wrote, for a Parnassian
"to overlay fine work with gross and
irrelevant egoism," as Hugo had done,
would be "abhorrent"; and had the
movement existed in England, Tennyson
"would never have published Tocksley
Hall/"
It was in the spirit of this school that
Verlaine wrote his early poems. But he
was never a thoroughgoing Parnassian;
occasionally, as in "tin dahlia," he
achieved something of the desired
objectivity; but even in his first volume there
were hints of the much more
characteristic manner that was to appear three
years later in Fetes galantes. In such a
poem as "Nuit du Walpurgis classique"
with its description of the garden
designed by Le Notre, "correct, ridiculous,
and charming," there is a distinct
foreshadowing of the eighteenth-century
fantasies of the subsequent volume. Also
included in this first book was one of
his most famous poems, "Chanson
d'automne," one of those almost
wordless little songs that are associated with
his later manner.
The publication, between 1857 and
1875, of three books by the brothers Gon-
court on various aspects of life and art
during the eighteenth century marked
another sharp break with the Romantics.
As had happened earlier in England, the
French Romantics had turned violently
against the preceding century, detesting
what they considered to be its coldness
and artificiality. But as a result of this
latest turn of the wheel of taste, this very
artificiality became the eighteenth
century's greatest charm; and some writers
were fascinated by the brilliant, stately
society that their grandfathers had
overthrown. Verlaine's Fetes
galantes—probably his best-known book outside France
—was a part of this pattern; in it, as Hol-
brook Jackson said, "Watteau became
literature." It is an evocation of the world
of Boucher and Fragonard: the formal
gardens, the silks, the fluttering of fans,
the tinkling of mandolins in the eternal
twilight or moonlight, while abb6s,
shepherdesses, Pierrot, and Columbine stroll
along the paths beside the fountains.
1211

This eighteenth-century bric-a-brac was
very charming, but it does not represent
Verlaine's most important contribution to
French poetry. His chief significance, at
least for the literary historian, lies in his
connection with the Symbolist
movement, which began as an unconscious
protest against what has been called the
"Spartan creed" of the Parnassians, and
which had links with the work of the
Impressionist painters. Arthur Symons,
who knew many of the writers involved
and who translated a few of Verlaine's
pieces, called the whole body of late
nineteenth-century French literature the
"Decadent Movement," which he then
divided into "Impressionism" and
"Symbolism." It is difficult and perhaps
unnecessary to make a distinction between
the two. According to Symons,
Impressionism gives the truth "of the visible
world to the eyes that see it"; Symbolism,
"the truth of spiritual things to the
spiritual vision." Yet Symons himself cited
Verlaine's Romances sans faroles, the
book which is usually considered the
beginning of the poet's Symbolist period, as
an example of Impressionism.
It was, then, the effort of the
Symbolists to see through outward appearances
to inward reality by trying to express "the
secret affinities of things with one's soul."
It is customary to say that the germ of
this point of view is to be found in
Baudelaire's poem "Correspondences." The
poet saw nature as a "forest of symbols"
where "perfumes, colors, and sounds
answer one another." This approach
resulted in poetry in which the "subject"
becomes unimportant or disappears
altogether. The "meaning" of the poem is of
no more significance than in a musical
composition. A remark of Pater's is
frequently quoted in this connection: "All
art constantly aspires towards the
condition of music; and the perfection of
poetry seems to depend in part on a certain
suppression of mere subject, so that the
meaning reaches us through ways not
distinctly traceable by the
understanding." "Music before everything," Verlaine
said in his "Art po£tique"; and then, "no
color, only the nuance," the finest, most
delicate shade, for it is this "nuance" that
weds "the dream to the dream." So his
later poems became almost literally
"romances sans paroles," songs without
words, in which the content consists only
of half hints and vague suggestions.
In France, this kind of poetry led to
the work of Mallarme, who carried the
method much further by composing
poems so filled with symbols within
symbols, written in a private language in
which hardly a word is to be taken in its
customary sense, that each poem can
mean almost anything—or nothing—and
the French claim that his verse is better
understood by foreigners. In England,
Verlaine was much admired by the minor
poets of the 1890's, several of whom—
Symons, John Gray, Ernest Dowson—
translated some of his poems. And it is
certainly possible to see his influence, or
that of his school, on some of the early
poems of Yeats.
Although Verlaine experienced a
religious conversion which found expression
in many of the poems in Sagesse, his life
was a tragic one. He has been called a
modern Villon. Almost everyone who has
written about him has referred to his
childlike qualities. Francois Copp£ said:
"Alas, like a child he was without any
defense, and life wounded him often
and cruelly. But suffering is the ransom
paid by genius, and this word can be
uttered in speaking of Verlaine, for his
name will always awaken the memory of
an absolutely new poetry which, in
French literature, has acquired the irji-
portance of a discovery." i
1212

THE FIELDS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Conrad Richter (1890-
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Northwest Territory, later Ohio
First published: 1946
Principal characters:
Sayward Wheeler, a woods woman
Portius, her husband
Genny Scurrah, her sister
Wyitt Luckett, her brother
Resolve,
Guerdon,
Kinzie,
Sulie,
HULDAH,
Sooth,
Libby,
Dezia, and
Mercy, her children
Jake Tench, a white runner
Mistress Bartram, a schoolteacher
Judah MacWhirter, a neighbor
Critique:
The Fields is the second novel in a
trilogy, beginning with The Trees and
ending with The Town, which traces
the growth of a pioneer settlement in
Ohio. In The Fields the primeval trees
have begun to disappear and farming
becomes important. The settlement builds
a meeting house and a school, and cabins
spring up close to each other along the
riverbank. Sayward Wheeler is still the
mainstay of her family and of the
settlement as well, but Portius, her husband,
begins to assume an important position
as a schoolteacher and a lawyer. Very
little of historical importance happens in
the novel, but the reader can feel the
gradual lightening of the pioneers' minds
as they come out from under the trees
and slowly build up their community.
The Story:
Portius Wheeler's family had written
from Boston to the trader at the post near
Sayward's cabin to inquire about the
woodsy girl Portius was living with.
Sayward told the trader to write back that
she was a woods girl, all right, and she
could not read or write, that she had
married Portius legally even if the ceremony
had taken place while Portius was drunk,
but that she was not keeping him from
returning to the Bay State because she had
not known that his family had written
Portius to come home. She said Portius
could have gone back if he had had a
mind to, but since he wanted to remain
she was staying with him.
Genny helped Sayward when the
Wheelers' first boy was born. At the time
Portius had gone on business to the
territory seat. He was away for days.
Knowing he was no woods man, Sayward
remembered stories of Indian atrocities
along the trace. When he finally came
home, he would not look at his son, but in
his powerful voice told Sayward that the
THE FIELDS by Conrad Richter. By pcrmisgion of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright,
1945, 1946, by Conrad Richter.
1213

Chillicothe convention had ratified the
constitution. Now they lived in Ohio
State. He warmed so to his subject of
politics and government in the
wilderness that he scared the baby, who yelled
until Portius had to look at his son. It
was a question of who was the more
scared, father or child. Sayward thought
Portius should get used to children
because she intended to fill the cabin with
them.
The handiest meeting place the
neighbors had when a circuit rider came around
was a sawmill, open to the sky and
hemmed in by trees, but Sayward felt
that the Lord knew it was His place when
folks gathered there. Genny felt His
presence too as she sang the hymns, with
her beautiful voice reaching out farther
than any other. Sayward could not
believe it was Genny singing; that was the
first time Genny had sung since her
husband, Louie Scurrah, went off to the
English lakes with her sister Achsa. Portius, a
disbeliever, refused to go to the meeting,
but Sayward took her son with her and
had him christened Resolve.
Sayward had three boys and a girl by
the time their township was formed. On
Old Christmas Portius asked everybody
in the settlement to come to his cabin to
make out a taxing list. That was what
Sayward liked, a lot of people in the
house, particularly in winter when a body
was not apt to see neighbors often. They
made a party of it. By the time the men
worked out the taxing list, everybody
realized that their township was a reality.
Sayward named her first girl for her
lost sister Sulie. Sayward's Sulie was the
liveliest and brightest child she had ever
seen, but she never forgot the tokens she
had had before Sulie was born. Resolve
thought he had seen a strange little black
boy, all dressed in white, peeking in the
window. The day before Sulie was born,
Resolve saw his first colored man, a new
hired man in the settlement. He could
not stop talking about Caesar's color.
When her blonde baby girl came,
Sayward could only sigh with relief. Sulie
was burned to death when she was about
three years old. Resolve, seeing her
charred body in the coffin, pulled at his
mother's skirts to show her that it was
not their Sulie lying there but the
colored boy who had peeked in the window.
The farmers complained so much
about night dogs and other wild animals
getting their stock that they banded
together for one big hunt. Men, closing
in from four sides, chased the animals
down into a low place called the Sinks.
There they fired on the beasts until
nothing moved. Wyitt, with a new rifle
much like Louie's, joined in the hunt.
Later on he realized that there would be
no more game left in the woods and he
decided to follow his father and head
west. He hated not saying goodbye to
Sayward, but he was afraid she might
keep him on the farm if he did.
The winter Sayward had five children
living and one dead followed a cold
summer when the crops could not grow. No
one had enough meal to last. Portius
took Resolve with him into Kentucky
when a number of the men from the
settlement went there to get meal on
credit. The men were gone so long that
Sayward had no food left for the
children. Weak because she had fed the
young ones instead of herself, she went
out and shot a turkey, though she could
barely hold the gun. Resolve did not
come back with Portius. He had broken
his leg and had to stay in Kentucky.
The next time the circuit rider came
around, the sawmill had been deserted
and sprouts had grown up to stand
between the meeting-folk and the preacher.
Sayward gave a piece of land, over next
to the burying ground where Jary and
Sulie lay, for a meeting house. When
the men built it she could see it from her
doorstep.
The day Resolve came home he went
with his father to Judah MacWhirter's.
Jude had been wolf-bitten by a
slobbering night dog he caught in his cattle pen.
1214

Three weeks later his fits had begun.
Between times he was rational and
wanted Portius to help him make a will. The
night Resolve was there, Jude had to be
tied to his bed because his fits were
coming faster. Resolve never forgot Jude's
dying after begging someone to kill him
before he hurt anyone he loved.
Portius and the children wanted Say-
ward to sell her place and move to the
new town upriver, but she could not leave
her fields. Instead, she persuaded Portius
to start a school, primarily because
Resolve wanted so much to learn that he
deliberately broke his leg again to have
time to read. Portius kept school for a
year until his law practice in Tateville
grew so large that he spent a good deal
of time there. About that time Sayward
decided that seven living children were
enough and she was not sleeping with
Portius.
The children heard that Portius was
seeing the new lady schoolteacher who
had taken over his school, but they could
not tell Sayward. When Mistress Bar-
tram hurriedly married Jake Tench,
Sayward insisted upon going to the wedding
because she felt sorry for a girl who had
to get married and who was obviously
not marrying her child's father. Genny
told Sayward that folks were saying
Portius was the father.
She worked out her feeling of shame
without saying anything to Portius*
When Say ward's baby Mercy was small,
Jake had a celebration for his keelboat,
the first built in the township. Sayward,
hating to face Jake's wife with the baby
that filled the gap between Dezia and
Mercy, could not stay home. She had
heard that Jake's wife seldom left her
cabin, but she was surprised not to find
her at Jake's party.
Riding down the river on the keel-
boat, Sayward realized that a real town
was springing up along the river. Now
her children no longer deviled her about
moving to Tateville. And Portius, after
making a fine speech in honor of Jake's
industry, was solicitous of her comfort on
the boat ride.
1215

FILE NO. 113
Type of work: Novel
Author: Emile Gaboriau (1835-1873)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: 1866
Locale: Paris
First published: 1867
Principal characters:
M. Andre Fauvel, a Parisian banker
Valentine, his wife
Madeleine, his niece
Prosper Bertomy, his cashier
Raoul de Lagors, Valentine's nephew
Louis de Clameran, an adventurer
Gypsy, Prosper's mistress
M. Lecoq, a detective
Fanferlot, another detective
Critique:
Gaboriau's mystery stories have always
been popular among readers of this type
of fiction, and during the latter part of
the nineteenth century he had a large
following both in France and abroad.
Many of our common conceptions of the
French Suret6 and French detectives
come from his work. In Gaboriau's
novels the detective is a brilliant individualist
who always gets his man by reasoning,
theatrics, and agility. M. Lecoq, for
instance, is always disguised; not even his
fellows at the police department have
ever seen his true appearance. Usually
he is even disguised from the reader.
Gaboriau makes full use of melodrama,
extravagant emotions, and improbable
motives.
The Story:
Prosper Bertomy, a trusted cashier,
came into the bank rather late one
morning. Louis de Clameran was impatiently
waiting, for the bank had agreed to have
his three hundred and fifty thousand
francs ready tor him that day. Prosper
hurried to the safe to get the money, but
when he opened the door he discovered
that the money was gone.
In great agitation he called for M.
Fauvel. When a search failed to reveal the
missing money, M. Fauvel called the
police. During a preliminary questioning,
it was learned that only Prosper and his
employer, M. Fauvel, had keys to the
safe. Only they knew the word to use on
the alphabetical combination. Either M.
Fauvel or Prosper had taken the money.
It was unthinkable that dignified,
upright M. Fauvel would steal from
himself. Prosper, on the other hand, had
lost heavily at the gaming tables and he
was the intimate of Raoul de Lagors, the
dissolute nephew of Mme. Valentine
Fauvel. Prosper's richly furnished
apartment was presided over by the beautiful
but notorious woman known as Gypsy.
In the light of these facts, M. Fauvel
raised no objection when the police took
Prosper off to jail.
As Prosper left the bank, he contrived
to throw a folded note to Cavaillon, a
young friend. Following the directions,
Cavaillon set off to deliver the message.
Fanferlot, a detective, followed Cavaillon
until the youth turned into an
apartment building. There the detective easily
cowed Cavaillon and took away the note,
which warned Gypsy to flee immediately.
Fanferlot, posing as Prosper's friend,
delivered the note and induced the
frightened girl to move into lodgings at the
Archangel, a hotel run by Mme.
Alexandre, secretly Fanferlot's wife. Well
pleased with himself, Fanferlot went
back to headquarters to report.
1216

The examining judge, convinced of
Prosper's guilt, pried into the cashier's
financial affairs with detailed knowledge
of that unhappy man's speculations. He
even knew that Gypsy's real name was
Chocareille and that she had 6nce been
in prison. The judge brought out the
fact that Prosper had also been the
favored suitor of Madeleine, the niece of
the Fauvels, but that the intimacy had
been broken off suddenly. Throughout
the investigation Prosper stoutly
maintained his innocence. Unable to shake
his story, the judge sent Prosper back to
his cell.
At the Archangel, Fanferlot kept a
close watch on Gypsy. One day she
received a note asking her to meet an
unknown man at a public rendezvous.
Fanferlot trailed her to the meeting and saw
her talking to a fat man with red
whiskers. When they left in a cab, Fanferlot
jumped on the springs behind them. As
soon as the horses pulled up, he withdrew
into an areaway to watch. But no one
got out. Gypsy and her escort had given
him the slip by getting in one door of
the cab and out the other. Dejected at
his failure, Fanferlot went to report to
Lecoq, his chief.
To his amazement the fat man with
red whiskers was in Lecoq's apartment.
Lecoq himself, with his great talent for
disguise, had been Gypsy's mysterious
companion. Then Lecoq showea
Fanferlot a photograph of the safe and pointed
out a scratch on the door. With sure
logic he explained that two people had
been involved in the robbery. One held
the key and started to open the door;
the second tried to draw away the hand
of the first. In the struggle the door was
scratched.
After Lecoq had convinced the judge
that there was no strong case against
Prosper, the cashier was released in the
company of Lecoq, who had become
transformed into the clownish M. Vendu-
ret. Prosper put himself completely in
the hands of his new friend and the two
of them began the work of locating the
guilty parties.
Suspicion pointed to Raoul de Lagors
and Louis de Clameran. They had a
great deal of influence in the Fauvel
household, and Valentine Fauvel seemed
greatly taken with her brilliant,
handsome nephew. Suspecting a clandestine
love affair, Lecoq went to the south of
France to ferret out the backgrounds of
Raoul and de Clameran. There he
learned that in 1841 the de Clameran
family had lived on the banks of the
Rhone near Tarascon. The family
consisted of the old marquis, his older son
Gaston, and his younger son Louis.
Across the river lived the Countess de la
Verberie and her daughter Valentine.
Between the two families there had been
a feud for generations.
Gaston, the older brother, fell in love
with Valentine and often met her
secretly. When their affair became known,
Gaston defended her honor in a public
brawl in which he killed two men. After
the fight he fled to South America. The
old marquis died from the shock, and
Louis left home to lead a life of
depravity. Within a few months Valentine
gave birth to Gaston's child in England,
and her mother sternly took the baby
away and placed him with an Englisn
family. Later Valentine married M.
Fauvel without telling him about her child.
By chance Louis de Clameran dis-
uovered Mme. Fauvel's secret. Her son,
he claimed, was the man known as Raoul
de Lagors. With de Clameran's help the
•.:onscience-stricken woman introduced
Raoul to her husband as her nephew and
made him one of the Fauvel household.
Raoul, at the instigation of de Clameran,
extorted large sums of money from her.
At last the time came when she had
neither money nor jewels left, and de
Clameran threatened to expose her.
Madeleine, overhearing his threats, loyally
stood by her aunt and promised to marry
de Clameran to buy his silence. Raoul,
playing on his mother's sympathies,
persuaded her to give him the key to the
1217

bank safe, and she even went with him
to rob her husband. At the last moment
Valentine regretted her decision, and in
her attempts to take away the key she
scratched the door. Raoul, ignoring her
pleas, took the money from the safe.
When Lecoq told the whole story to
Prosper, the cashier was shocked. He had,
in an anonymous letter, told M. Fauvel
that Raoul was Valentine's lover.
Angry and grief-stricken after reading
the letter, M. Fauvel confronted Raoul
and his wife. He was threatening to
shoot Raoul when Lecoq appeared,
unmasked Raoul as an imposter, and
returned the stolen money to M. Fauvel.
Valentine's real son had died years ago;
Raoul had been coached in the part by
de Clameran. M. Fauvel forgave his
wife's past and was reunited with her.
With his innocence established,
Prosper was free to marry Madeleine. De
Clameran went mad in prison. Lecoq at
last revealed that he had saved Prosper
merely to shame Gypsy, who had deserted
Lecoq to become Prosper's mistress.
1218

THE FINANCIER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: About 1850 to 1874
Locale: Philadelphia
First published: 1912
Principal characters:
Frank A. Cowperwood, the financier
Lillian Semple Cowperwood, his wife
Edward Butler, contractor and politician
Aileen Butler, his daughter
Henry Cowperwood, Frank's father
Critique:
In this novel characters are more
sharply drawn and more dynamic than they
are in other of Dreiser's creations.
Cowperwood himself, by contrast with Sister
Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, and Clyde
Griffiths, is more than a pawn of destiny, a
victim of society. He is an aggressive
person who fights and plans, who can adapt
himself to circumstances and
environment. He is both a realist and a fighter.
It is plain that Dreiser thought of him
as the typical capitalist, the financier.
The Story:
From his very early years Frank
Cowperwood was interested in only one thing
—making money. When he was still in
his teens he made his first successful
business transaction. While passing by
an auction sale, he successfully bid for
a lot of Java coffee, which he sold to a
grocer at a profit of one hundred per
cent. His family marveled at Frank's
ability and his wealthy uncle, Seneca
Davis, encouraged him to go into business
as soon as possible.
Through several well-paying positions
and shrewd speculation Frank acquired
enough money to open his own
brokerage house. Within a short time he was
immensely successful, one of the most
enterprising young financiers in
Philadelphia.
One day he met Lillian Semple, the
wife of a business associate. About a year
later her husband died and Frank married
the widow. By that time he had
accumulated a large fortune, and he was
familiar with local and state politicians,
among them Edward Butler, who had
risen from being a mere collector of
garbage to a leading position in local politics.
Through Butler Frank met many other
influential people as his business and
popularity increased.
Frank and Lillian had several children,
but the youngsters did not particularly
interest him. Rather, his sole interest was
his business. His father, Henry
Cowperwood, finally became president of the
bank in which he was employed. Both
Cowperwoods built expensive houses
and furnished them luxuriously. Frank
bought fine paintings and other rare
objects of art.
His home life was not satisfactory.
Lillian was older, more passive than he,
and her beauty had almost disappeared.
By contrast, Edward Butler's daughter
Aileen was tremendously appealing. She
was young, beautiful, high-spirited.
Frank fell in love with her, and in spite
of her strong religious training she
became his mistress. He rented a house
where they met and furnished it with
the paintings and statues he had bought.
Though Frank had become one of the
financial powers in Philadelphia, he had
to plan and scheme continually in order
THE FINANCIER by Theodore Dreiser. By permission of Mrs. Theodore Dreiser and the publishers, The World
Publishing Co. Copyright, 1912, by Harper & Brothers. Renewed, 1940, by Theodore Dreiser.
1219

to thwart more powerful monopolists. He
managed to acquire large sums from the
state treasury through local politicians.
The city treasurer, Stener, proved
amenable in many ways, and he and Frank
became involved in many shady
transactions. Frank bought shares in railroads
and local streetcar properties.
After the great Chicago fire, some of
Frank's investments were in a perilous
state. He went to friends and associates
and urged them to stand together in order
to avoid losses. But so widespread were
the effects of the fire that the
manipulations of the city politicians were certain
to be discovered on the eve of an election.
Something had to be done to satisfy
indignant reform groups who would
demand action when they discovered what
had occurred.
In the meantime someone had sent an
anonymous note to Edward Butler, telling
him that Frank and Aileen were living
together. When Frank went to Butler,
the contractor refused to help him, and
Frank knew that somehow he had
discovered his relationship with Aileen.
Butler, who had become his enemy, urged
the other politicians to make Frank a
scapegoat for their dishonest dealings.
As a result Frank and Stener, the city
treasurer, were indicted on charges of
embezzlement and grand larceny. Ruined
financially, Frank pleaded not guilty, but
the jury convicted both him and Stener.
He appealed, and posted bail to avoid jail.
The appeal was denied, although the
judges were not united in their decision.
As soon as the appeal had been denied,
the sheriff was supposed to take Frank to
jail until he should be sentenced. But the
sheriff was bribed, and Frank had a few
more days of freedom. Flis property was
sold to pay his debts. His father resigned
his position at the bank.
Frank and Aileen had given up the
house where they formerly met. Their
meetings now took place at a house in
another part of town. Determined to put
an end to the affair, Butler and Pinkerton
detectives entered the house and
confronted the couple. Butler tried various
schemes to make Aileen leave
Philadelphia, but all failed after Aileen learned
that her father had hired detectives to
trail her.
Frank was sentenced to four years and
nine months in the penitentiary. Aileen
remained faithful to him. When Lillian
went to visit him, Frank asked her for a
divorce. She refused.
After Edward Butler died, Frank's
friends managed to get him a parole. At
the end of thirteen months in jail, he
was freed in March, 1873. Through
Wingate, a friend and business associate,
he had succeeded in rebuilding his
business He had a bachelor apartment where
Aileen visited him. Though he was
ostensibly still living with his wife, all
of the town had long ago known of his
relationship with Aileen.
In September, 1873, the panic came.
Frank, who had bought stocks cheaply,
made a fortune. Several months later he
went with Aileen to Chicago, where he
planned to reestablish himself. Lillian
got a divorce but remained friendly with
the Cowperwood family. She lived
luxuriously; Frank, to buy his own freedom,
had provided handsomely for her and the
children.
1220

THE FINN CYCLE
Type of work: Ballad cycle
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Historical adventure
Time of plot: Third century
Locale: Ireland
First transcribed: Reputed eleventh-century manuscript
Principal characters:
Finn, leader of the Fianna Erinn
Oisin, Finn's son
Oscar, Oisin's son
Goll Mac Morna,
Dermot,
Keelta, and
Conan the Bald, Finn's men
Niam, Oisin's fairy mistress
Grania, King Cormac's daughter
Critique:
The Finn Cycle, which is also known
as the Fenian Cycle, is a series of ballad
tales celebrating the deeds of Finn, a
third century Irish hero, and his band of
warriors. Their organization, known as
the Fianna Erinn, fought and hunted
under service to the king of Ireland. The
warriors were quite respectable and
enjoyed privilege and wealth. The tone of
these ballad stories is romantic, and the
stories show a delight in sensuous details,
with deep feeling for the Irish
countryside and glen. Finn himself stands out as
a strong, courageous leader who inspired
devotion in his men, but he is not
without a touch of cunning and treachery. In
many respects he is like Robin Hood and
King Arthur—a bold hero, a capable
leader, a tender lover. Like them, he
witnesses the passing of his strength, the
dissolution of his band, and the waning
of a heroic era.
The Story:
Long ago in Ireland, Cumhal was the
leader of the Fianna Erinn, the king's
warriors. A rival clan in this group grew
envious of Cumhal, took up arms against
him, and slew him at the battle of Castle-
knock. Cumhal's wife Murna gave birth
to a boy shortly thereafter. Fearing for
his life now that Goll Mac Morna was
in power, she gave him to two wise
women to rear.
Under these two women the child
grew to be a handsome lad. He learned
to run faster than the rabbit, to kill deer
without hounds, and to bring down
birds with his sling. One day, while
roaming in the fields, he found a group
of boys playing. He joined them and it
was soon obvious that he was a match
for all of them. In envy the boys tried
to kill him, but he overcame seven of
them and chased the rest home. From
that day he was called Finn, meaning the
fair. However, his two nurses felt that
since the warriors of the Morna clan
would kill him if they found him, he
must start off on his own.
Finn gathered a group of youths about
him and began to seek adventure. His
first exploit was to avenge a woman
whose son had been killed by the Lord
of Luachar. Finn and his companions
stormed the ramparts of the chieftain's
castle, recovered jewels Cumhal had lost
in battle, and slew the Lord of Luachar
and his men. Finn then returned the
jewels to the old men who had fought
with his dead father in battle.
Finn set out to learn wisdom and the
art of poetry from the sage Finegas.
While he was with the sage, he caught
the salmon of wisdom and accidentally
tasted it. Having learned wisdom and the
1221

art of poetry, Finn composed a song in
praise of May and then set out to become
the leader of the Fianna Erinn.
At that time Conn was the ruler of
Ireland. He held an annual banquet at
which peace was declared among the
various clans. When Finn entered the
banquet hall unknown, Conn asked him
who he was. The king accepted him
immediately because he was the son of an
old friend. Soon Finn inquired whether
he would become captain of the Fianna
Erinn if he rid the royal town of the
goblin that now haunted it. The king
said yes, and Finn set out with a magic
spear to slay the goblin. The goblin
appeared with his magic harp and
enchanted Finn with the music, but with
the aid of his spear Finn slew the spirit
and returned victorious. Conn kept his
word and Finn was made captain of the
Fianna Erinn. Faced with the choice of
serving his clan enemy or leaving Ireland,
Goll Mac Morna chose to serve Finn, and
the rest of his men followed him.
Finn was a strong, generous, wise
captain who drew the best poets and
warriors of Ireland around him. There was
his gallant son, Oisin, one of the finest
fighters and poets. There was Oisin's son,
Oscar, the fiercest fighter of the group.
There was Goll Mac Morna, strong and
loyal. There was Dermot of the Love
Spot, the fair ladies' man of great
endurance and agility. There was Keelta,
another strong warrior and fine poet. There
was Conan the Bald, full of trickery,
gluttony, and sloth. There was also Mac
Luga, whom Finn instructed in the art
of courtesy, and many another brave
warrior. Finn was generous to all. But to
enter the Fianna Erinn, it was necessary,
to pass extremely rigorous tests of
strength, skill, poise, and poetic ability.
There was the time Finn and his
companions gave chase to a doe. The doe far
outstripped everyone but Finn and his
two hounds. When Finn reached the doe
he found his two hounds playing with
her and he gave orders for no one to
hurt her. That night Finn awakened to
find a beautiful woman standing by his
bed. She informed him that she had
been changed into a deer by the Dark
Druid because she would not give him
her love and that Finn had restored her
to her original form. Finn took her to live
with him as his wife. After a few months
of happiness Finn was called away to
fight the Northmen. Returning
victorious, he found his new wife gone; the
Dark Druid had come for her in the
shape of Finn and unwittingly she had
rushed to greet him and he took her
away. For three days Finn mourned
before returning to his band. Seven years
later Finn found a brave young man
fighting off a pack of hounds. On
calling off the dogs and questioning the boy,
Finn learned that this was the son he
had had by his wife and that the Dark
Druid had come again and taken her
away forever. Finn took his son and
trained him to be a great warrior-poet.
There was the time Finn and his men
were hunting and the giantess Vivionn
came seeking Finn's protection from her
scorned lover. As she was talking, her
lover appeared and thrust his spear into
her breast. While Finn and Goll stayed
by the dying giantess, the rest of the
company set out after the giant. They
chased him over hill and plain to the sea,
where he escaped after they had gained
his sword and shield. Returning, they
found the giantess dead. They buried her
and mourned her death.
There was the time Finn and his
companions were hunting and saw an ugly,
clumsy giant coming toward them with
an equally ugly old nag. The giant told
Finn in an unmannerly way that he
wanted to join his band, and Finn
reluctantly agreed. Finn's companions
turned the giant's horse out to pasture
with the other horses, and it immediately
began injuring them. Finn told one of
his men to ride the nag to death. When
the animal refused to move, thirteen men
got on its back in jest. Seeing that they
were making fun of him, the giant ran
off in fury and his nag followed with
1222

thirteen of Finn's men on its back. Finn
and the rest of his men followed, but
they were soon outdistanced when the
giant and his nag crossed the ocean.
Then Finn outfitted himself and his
men with a ship, food, and gold, and set
out across the sea in search of his missing
men. At last they came to a huge,
slippery cliff. Since Dermot was the ablest,
he was sent to investigate the land.
Before long Dermot came to a woodland
pool where for three days he fought an
armed warrior. On the third night he
dived into the pool with the warrior and
found himself in a land of wonders. He
was soon beaten by the men of this land
and left for dead. Presently Dermot was
awakened by a man who led him into a
friendlier kingdom. There he was
welcomed by the king, who himself had
served in the Fianna Erinn under Finn.
In the meanwhile Finn and his men had
entered the underground kingdom by
another route, and he and his warriors
were reunited. They learned that they
had been brought there to fight in the
service of this underground king against
the King of the Well and his allies. In
battle Finn and his men proved
matchless. After winning the enemy king's
daughter, Finn defeated the foe and
restored peace to the land. Finn asked for
no reward from the king, but when Co-
nan made a jest the king transported the
band back to the Irish hills in the space
of a second. The whole adventure seemed
but a dream.
There was the time the old feud
between Finn's clan and Goll's clan
reawakened over a dispute about booty. A
battle started in the hall and blood was shed
until Fergus, the minstrel, awoke and
reminded them with his music of the
dangers they had shared. So peace was
restored.
For many years Finn and his men
passed their lives in adventures, in hunts,
and in enchantments. But there came a
time when the Fianna Erinn began to
disintegrate, when Finn's men became
unruly and dishonest, and when Finn
lost his honor through treachery.
When Finn was an old man, he
planned to marry Grania, daughter of the
King of Ireland. Grania fell in love with
Dermot, the ladies' man, however, and
begged him to run away with her.
Dermot was extremely reluctant to do so, but
Grania bound him by the laws of Fian
chivalry and he was forced to abduct her
on her wedding night. Finn jealously
chased the pair over Ireland. At length
Dermot made peace with Finn. One day,
while Finn and Dermot were hunting, a
boar fatally wounded Dermot. The only
way to save Dermot was for Finn to bring
him water. Remembering his hurt pride,
Finn let the water fall and Dermot died.
The King of Ireland then ordered the
Fianna Erinn to disband forever. The
final blow to the company came at the
battle of Gabhra in which Oscar, Finn's
grandson, was killed and the Fenians
were all but wiped out.
Niam, a fairy princess, then came to
take Oisin to an enchanted land where
all wishes came true. She sang a magic
song to him and he bade farewell to his
companions forever. In this land Oisin
could love, hunt, and fight without
growing old. The time came, however, when
he longed to return to Ireland to see his
old companions. Niam tearfully let him
go, but warned him not to set foot on the
soil. On returning to Ireland he found a
degenerate race that was both smaller and
weaker than the lowliest men of his time.
Impetuously, Oisin dismounted from his
horse to help the weaklings move a stone
and immediately he became an old man.
He soon learned that his companions had
been dead for three hundred years. Oisin
was taken to Saint Patrick. At first there
was strong distrust between the two men,
but gradually the saint grew to love
Oisin's tales of the Fianna Erinn and
recorded them. Oisin, on his part, was
baptized into the Church.
1223

FINNEGANS WAKE
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Joyce (1882-1941)
Time: A cycle of history
Locale: Dublin
First published: 1939
Principal characters:
Humphrey Chimpden Earwhicker, also Here Comes Everybody
and Haveth Childer Everywhere, a pub keeper
Ann, also Anna Livia Plurabelle, his wife
Isobel, their daughter
Kevin, also Shaun the Postman, Chuff, Jaun, and Yawn, and
Jerry, also Shem the Penman, Dolph, and Glugg, their twin sons
From that wonderful passage of
revelation and recall as Molly Bloom hovers on
the edge of sleep in the closing section
of Ulysses, there was for James Joyce
only one short step to the conception of
Finnegans Wake. Ulysses, centering on
the events of a specific day and place,
presented an exploration of the thoughts and
myriad impressions of the waking mind.
Finnegans Wake, to which Joyce devoted
seventeen years of concentrated effort,
attempts to create a total world of
nightmare fantasies and half-conscious dream
sensations experienced in the sleeping
mind during an interval which stretches
out to enclose all space and time.
Like Ulysses, this novel has called into
being an extensive literature of criticism
and explications, a process of exegesis
needed if the majority of readers are fully
to understand Joyce's purpose and
accomplishment. In the stream-of-consciousness
content of Ulysses, however, Joyce had
kept the edges of thought and imagery
bright and sharp; here everything is
blurred and muffled by physical sleep
sensuously recorded as well as by the
kaleidoscopic nature of Joyce's dream
world and the shifting identities of his
people as the dreamer pursues erotic
fancies or is oppressed by feelings of guilt.
Baldly stated, Finnegans Wake is the
story of a man who in the course of a
single night dreams of everything that
has ever happened in the world. The
dream shapes and memories set free in
sleep float up from the subconscious not
only in accordance with Freud's
principles but also in keeping with Jung's, so
that the episodes of the novel and the
bewildering array of cross references go
beyond the experience of the individual
to reflect a state of being which may be
vaguely referred to as the collective
consciousness of the race.
Some facts about the dreamer are
easily ascertainable. He is a man,
apparently of Danish descent, named
Humphrey Chimpden Earwhicker, and he keeps
a pub, the Bristol, somewhere between
Phoenix Park and the River Liffey, in
Dublin. To Dubliners his name has
always been a matter for joking; in
addition to its foreign sound it suggests an
insect, the earwig, and he is sometimes
referred to as H. C. Earwigger. He has a
wife, Ann, and three children—Isobel, a
daughter now in her teens, and twin
sons, Kevin and Jerry. At some time in
the past Earwhicker had been involved
in a scandal which is never really
explained. Apparently he had accosted
someone in Phoenix Park, but whether
that person was a young girl or a man is
never made clear. Although the incident
happened a long time ago, Earwhicker
still fears investigation by the authorities.
Now his old feeling of guilt has been
renewed by the fact that on a rowdy
Saturday evening in the pub Earwhicker
had drunk too much. There had also
been some kind of altercation—possibly
a drunk had been forcibly ejected—in
which insults were exchanged and stones
1224

thrown; and this disturbance had
reminded Earwhicker of his earlier trouble.
When Earwhicker went to bed he was
still drunk, and the events of the day
disturb his troubled sleep. Since he and
his wife no longer feel the passion they
once had for each other, his dream does
not turn toward her but involves his
children. His feeling of guilt is again
aroused by the incestuous nature of his
dream, but the incest taboo intervenes
to transform Isobel into Iseult la Belle
and Earwhicker into Tristram, thus
severing the father-daughter relationship. By
much the same process the other figures
in the dream assume different
personalities and meanings. Toward morning
Jerry, one of the twins, calls out and the
mother goes into another room to
comfort the child. Earwhicker, only half
aware of her going, goes to sleep once
more. As the book ends day is breaking
and Earwhicker and his wife are about
to awake.
But to approach Joyce's novel in this
fashion, in terms of narrative and
character, is to do violence to his structure
and style. Finnegans Wake is composed
of many elements: an exile's memories of
Dublin in his youth, theories of modern
psychology, the substratum of myth and
legend underlying the history of the
race, and Joyce's marvelous command of
the resources and texture of language.
The book takes its structure from the
Princi'pii d'una scienza nuova by
Giovanni Battista Vico, an early eighteenth-
century Italian philosopher. According to
Vico's theory, human societies follow a
progression of three distinct cycles, the
ages of the gods, of great heroes, of
ordinary men. Vico also believed that each
cycle created its appropriate institutions
and forms of government; autocracy gives
place to democracy and democracy at lasr
becomes anarchy before the cycle begins
again. In the beginning, however, is
Godhead, revealed in lightning and the
crash of thunder, which leads man to
restrain his brutish acts and appetites.
In the opening paragraphs of Finnegans
Wake such a polysyllabled thunder-clap
suggests the Viconian cycle, but it is also
associated with the fall of Finnegan the
hod carrier. His wake is a noisy affair
satisfactorily ended, even though at one
stage the corpse, reanimated by the Gaelic
word for whiskey, threatens to rise and
walk once more. The interment of
Finnegan—the Finn MacCool of Irish legend-
fades into the landscape of Howth
Castle and Environs from which, bearing
the same initials, Humphrey Chimpden
Earwhicker emerges. Like Finnegan,
Earwhicker is a figure of mythopoeic
stature, and in the novel he takes on a more
universal significance indicated by his
successive appearances as Here Comes
Everybody and Haveth Childer
Everywhere. His transformations on the
universal and spiritual level are the essence
of the novel. At the same time he
functions on a different level indicated by
ambiguous family relationships—as Adam
fallen from grace because of the incident
in Phoenix Park, as Tristram who loved
the two Iseults, as Swift, the Irish dean
who loved Stella and Vanessa, as the
father of Shaun the Postman (Kevin)
and Shem the Penman (Jerry).
Ann the wife also undergoes a
transformation in the course of the novel. She
becomes identified with the River Liffey,
personified as Anna Livia Plurabelle, the
stream of life eternally flowing toward
the sea, the feminine principle into which
all the women in the novel finally merge,
just as in the end the river merges with
the sea. The stream is time to Earwhick-
er's history, and the Anna Livia
Plurabelle sections are not only the finest in
the novel but the particular triumph of
Joyce's poetic prose.
Joined to these figures are others who
function with only slightly less
significance in the symbolic texture of the
novel: the four old men who act as a
kind of chorus but who may be identified
at different times as the four apostles, the
four points of the compass, the four
ancient Irish kingdoms, the Four Masters
of Irish legend, the four waves of myth;
1225

Shaun the Postman, who is Kevin and
also Chuff, Jaun, and Yawn, the practical
man who carries on tradition without
knowing the nature of the message he
bears any more than the postman knows
the contents of the letter he delivers;
Shem the Penman, also Jerry, Dolph,
and Glugg, who is the writer, the maker
of tradition. These figures are at all times
surrounded by the history of past and
present, shapes of legend and symbol in
a dream vision which Joyce attempted to
convey by a dream language to which
he brought all the resources of his logo-
poeic faculty.
The style of Finnegans Wake
represents a virtual re-creation of language.
In this work Joyce exhibits every variety
of style in the range of literature and, in
order to achieve his multi-leveled effects,
a battery of technical devices—the pun,
the play on words, telescoped and
portmanteau words, parodies, and
connotations, to name only a few of the hundreds
employed. Because so much of the
understanding of the novel depends on
linguistic techniques, its effects are auditory
rather than visual. It is a book to be
heard as well as to be read, for its
structural devices within its cyclic outlines are
more those of music than of narrative
and drama.
Finnegans Wake is a bold experiment
in form, meaning, and style. It is
repetitious and irritating in its fragmented
episodes and its efforts to push language to
the limits of expression. Yet it is a
tremendous if imperfect fable of the whole
of mankind that carries man backward
through the history of his moral and
social habits to the mystery of his origin,
tells the story of his fall, and afi&rms the
promise of his rebirth. From the
unfinished final sentence of the novel to its
continuation in the first paragraph, with
its images of the flowing river, Adam and
Eve, and the circle of Howth Castle and
its environs, the cycle runs its
never-ending course of life, history, and time.
1226

THE FISHER MAIDEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Bjomstjerne Bjornson (1832-1910)
Type of plot: Pastoral romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First published: 1868
Principal characters:
Petra, the fisher maiden
Gunlaug, her mother
Pedro, her father
Hans Odegaakd, the pastor's son
Critique:
Bjornson's name stands high among
Norwegian writers. His ability seems to
come not so much from artfully contriving
a clever plot or from outhning dramatic
scenes, but rather from a deep-bodied
spiritual love for mankind which
expresses itself in the pastoral and the
romantic. In this novel one feels
tempestuous simplicity in Petra, the simplicity of
the Norwegian peasant who knows the
routine of the seasons, the poetry and
drama of the church—as reflected in the
rites of baptism, confirmation, marriage,
and death—and also the passionate
simplicity of her devotion to her dramatic art.
The Story.
Pedro Ohlsen, the son of Peter Ohlsen
and the grandson of old Per Ohlsen, was
not like either his father or his
grandfather. They had tended to their
businesses like the shrewd, practical men they
were. But Pedro was a dreamer. Scolded
from morning to night by his father and
his schoolfellows, he began to seek out the
poor children in the community for
companions, among them a sprite-like girl
named Gunlaug, whom people called the
fisher maiden.
Peter died, leaving enough money for
his widow and Pedro to live quietly
without working. Pedro devoted his time to
flute playing. He and the fisher maiden
separated after a quarrel; she thought him
a weakling. She left the town.
Nine years later she returned with a
child, Petra, a little girl who also became
known as the fisher maiden.
One day Petra, audacious as her mother
had been, went to steal apples from a tree
belonging to Pedro Ohlsen. He caught
her and identified her as the child of his
lost love. When Petra escaped, she told
her mother of the encounter. Gunlaug
told her never again to speak to Pedro
Ohlsen. tt
Hans Odegaard, the pastor's son, asked
permission to teach Petra to read, and
under his guidance she learned rapidly.
Hans was disturbed, for a tragedy had
befallen his best friend, and in his grief he
could not be persuaded to take up his
career. His indifference was a bitter thing
for his father, the old pastor. Petra wept
when at last Hans left the village. She did
not know why.
Young men came to woo Petra.
Gunnar, the sailor, was one of her suitors.
Another was a stranger who kept his name
from her and who mystified her with
strange songs and tales. Finally he gave
her a gold chain and told her his name
was Yngve Void. Unlike Gunnar, who
was poor, Yngve Void owned his own
ship. Both went suddenly to sea. At last
Yngve returned and told her that he
intended to marry her. He was the richest
man in the town. His wealth frightened
Petra, for she knew many of the
townspeople would not approve of the marriage
of the wealthy shipowner and the fisher
maiden.
At the same time Gunnar sent her a
ring and a love letter. Before she could
1227

decide^between her two suitors, however,
Hans Odegaard returned, and she realized
that he was the man she loved the most.
The next day Hans beat Yngve with
his cane for announcing his plan to marry
Petra. Hans then told Petra that his life
was ruined, for she had betrayed him.
Gunnar returned, and he, too, beat Yngve
Void. The whole town buzzed with the
gossip that Petra had three men engaged
to her, all at the same time.
A mob went to Gunlaug's house and
threw stones through Petra's window.
Gunlaug aided her daughter to escape
from the town by dressing her as a sailor,
and Pedro rowed her out to a boat that
would take her to Bergen, where she was
not known.
In Bergen, Petra was greatly
humiliated. The theater attracted her, but
because she was awkward and unlettered
no theater manager would hire her. At
last she left Bergen and made her home
among shepherds to the north. A pastor
took her in for a time. He was a friend of
Hans Odegaard; and when he learned
that Petra also knew Hans, he permitted
her to stay in his household. There, for
the next three years, she studied the great
plays under the pastor and his daughter
Signe. At last, however, the pastor
became suspicious of Petra and suspected
that she was artfully concealing secret
admirers. At that difficult time Hans arrived.
Signe had brought Hans to the village, for
in her letters she had gently explained
how much Petra had suffered.
He gradually forgave Petra the harm
she had done him and encouraged her
desire to go on the stage. Then Pedro
Ohlsen died and left Petra enough money
to begin her career. Taking her courage
from her experience with suffering and
her knowledge of life, she followed her
greatest desire, happy at the same time in
the knowledge that Signe would marry
Hans Odegaard.
1228

FIVE WOMEN WHO LOVED LOVE
Type of work: Novelettes
Author: Ibara Saikaku (c 1642-1693)
Type of plots: Sentimental romances
Time of plots: Seventeenth century
Locale: Japan
First puhlished: c. 1685
Principal characters:
Seijuro, an apprentice
Onatsu, his master's younger sister
Osen, a young wife
The Cooper, her husband
Chozaemon, a yeast maker
Chozaemon's Wife
Osan, a merchant's wife
Rin, her maid
Moemon, the merchant's clerk
Oshichi, a young girl
Her Mother
Onogawa Kichisabur6, a young samurai
Gengobet, a Buddhist monk, formerly a pederast
Hachijuro, Gengobei's former lover
Oman, a young girl
Critique:
The Japanese writer Ibara (sometimes
Ihara) Saikaku was both a poet who
wrote a prodigious number of seventeen-
syllable haiku and the leading novelist of
the Genroku Period (1600-1868) in
Japan. The subjects of his fiction fall
chronologically into three distinct types: those
dealing with matters of love and the
pleasure quarter; those dealing with life among
the warrior class; and those dealing with
the lives of the merchant class. The K6-
shoku Gonin Onna, which has been
translated as Five Women Who Loved
Love, obviously belongs to the first group,
and all five of the novelettes of which this
work is comprised are based upon actual
happenings. The work was first
published about 1685. Each story is divided
into five chapters. The plots are simple
and, with one exception, tragic. The
strength of the work lies in its evocation
of character and scene. The five heroines
are not languishing, leisurely ladies but
rather women of character who almost
seem to create their tragedies instead of
being helplessly fated. Only Oman, the
heroine of the last story, is allowed to
live happily ever after, and she, in her
charming determination to win her love,
resembles in some respects Shakespeare's
Rosalind.
The Stories:
THE FIRST STORY
Seijur6, handsome, gallant young man
disowned by his wealthy father for his
profligacies, apprenticed himself to a
shopkeeper and proved hard-working and
reliable. When Onatsu, his master's
younger sister, fell in love with him, he,
after some reluctance, at last fully
returned her affection. As an apprentice he
was far from an eligible suitor, and so the
lovers were forced to elope. Seven
hundred gold pieces disappeared at the same
time. When the lovers were discovered,
Seijur6, condemned for theft as well as
for seduction, was executed. The gold
was later found where it had been
mislaid. Onatsu went mad for a time. Later
she entered a nunnery.
1229

THE SECOND STORY
Osen, a country girl, was married
happily to a cooper. When Ch6zaemon, the
yeast maker, was planning to celebrate
the fiftieth anniversary of his father's
death, Osen offered to help in the
preparations. While she was arranging
sweetmeats, Ch6zaemon accidentally dropped
a bowl on her head, disarranging her
hair. Chozaemon's suspicious, jealous
wife accused Osen of adultery. Because
she had been unjustly accused, Osen
impulsively decided to revenge herself on
the wife by truly making love to Chozae-
mon, although she cared nothing for him.
When her husband, the cooper,
discovered the lovers, Osen committed suicide
and Chozaemon was executed.
THE THIRD STORY
Osan's husband had gone to Edo on
business. Her maid, Rin, was in love
with Moemon, a clerk. Moemon,
however, felt coldly toward Rin and only
reluctantly agreed to visit her bed.
Together, Rin and Osan decided to punish
him, and Osan took Rin's place in the
bed. The trick had other results, however,
when Osan and Moemon found
themselves hopelessly in love. After
pretending to commit suicide together, they hid
in a faraway village for a time.
Eventually they were discovered and executed.
THE FOURTH STORY
Oshichi, an innocent young girl, was
taken by her mother to find refuge in a
temple after their house had burned
down. There she met and fell in love
with Onogawa Kichisaburo, a young
samurai. When Oshichi and her mother
returned to their home, the lovers were not
able to meet in secret. Oshichi,
remembering how she first met her lover,
decided to start another fire, but she was
discovered, arrested, exposed to shame,
and burned at the stake. Kichisabur6,
who had been ill, did not know of her
death until he accidentally saw her
gravestone. At first he planned to commit
suicide, but he was persuaded to delay his
design until after a talk with his mentor
and sworn brother. As the result of his
friend's advice Kichisabur6 decided to
become a monk.
THE FIFTH STORY
Gengobei, a pederast, took priestly
vows after the death of Hachijur6, his
lover. Later he fell in love with another
boy who returned from the dead to see
him again. In his grief Gengobei retired
to a mountain hut. Meanwhile, a young
girl, Oman, had seen and fallen in love
with Gengobei. Determined to win him,
she disguised herself as a boy and visited
his retreat. There she succeeded in
winning Gengobei's love, even after her sex
had been revealed. Gengobei left the
priesthood and the lovers lived in great
poverty together until Oman's parents
finally found her. Rejoicing at her
recovery, her parents decided to have the two
lovers marry and then give their family
fortune to Gengobei. Thus Oman's love
story came to a happy ending.
1230

FLOWERS OF EVIL
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
First published: 1857
"Small hands washed, scoured, cared
for like the hands of a woman—and with
that, the head of a maniac, a voice
cutting like a voice of steel"—thus did the
observant but uncharitable Goncourt
brothers describe Charles Baudelaire,
who had already become the subject of
innumerable legends in the Paris of the
Second Empire. It was said that he had
dyed his hair green; that he had been
heard to remark in a caf6: "Have you
ever eaten a baby? I find it pleasing to
the palate!" But unfortunately for seekers
after the sensational, most of the
Baudelaire legends have been disproved by later
research. Like Poe, he enjoyed creating
mystifications about himself.
Flowers of Evil, the volume on which
Baudelaire's fame rests, was published in
1857, although some of the poems had
appeared in magazines as much as fifteen
years earlier, when the author was
ruining himself financially by attempting to
be a dandy of the boulevards. The book
immediately became famous—or notorious
—because of a prosecution brought against
author and publisher on the grounds of
offense against public morals. In the same
year a similar charge had been brought
against Flaubert for his Madame Bovary.
Possibly because of the ridiculous position
in which the government had found itself
in the earlier case, the prosecution of
Baudelaire was half-hearted, and the fine
of three hundred francs imposed was
never paid. Actually, there were only
six poems found to be objectionable (the
subject of two of them being lesbianism);
they were reprinted in a new edition
published in Belgium, and are now
included in all the standard texts and in
some of the English translations.
When Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote of
Baudelaire: "His present book is an
anonymous drama in which he takes all
the parts," he was saying no more than
that the poet was a Romantic. No young
man of his generation could escape the
"Byronic attitude" that had been the
Englishman's legacy to Europe. To be
grand, gloomy, and peculiar was
expected. But in addition to international
Byronism, Baudelaire had been exposed
to other influences at that time unusual
in France. As a boy, he had learned
English; hence, he came to know authors
such as De Quincey and the Gothic
novelists. But most important, he
encountered the works of Poe about 1846
and translated much of that work
between 1856 and 1865. It was through
this translation that Poe began to have
an influence upon French literature far
greater than any he has ever exerted in
America. Baudelaire's admiration of Poe
was immense: he called him "the
incomparable Poet, the irrefutable philosopher
—who must always be quoted in regard to
the mysterious maladies of the mind.
. . . The Master of the Horrible, the
Prince of Mystery." And yet a reading
of Baudelaire's poetry does not greatly
remind us of that of Poe; the American
was not so preoccupied with sex nor do
his ethereal, idealized females suggest
the tigerish women with smoldering
eyes whose nude charms—"ingenuousness
united to lubricity"—Baudelaire loved to
describe. What Poe gave him was a
general interest in the macabre and a feeling
for compression, the latter a welcome
reaction against the overwhelming
verbosity of much Romantic poetry.
Baudelaire's style, at least as it
appeared to a contemporary, was described
by Gautier as "ingenious, complicated,
ExS™^? 0F. ^YIL h* Charles Baudelaire. Translated by George Dillon and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Harper & B?oth permission of George Dillon. Published by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1936, by
1251

learned, full of shades and of
investigations, always pushing back the limits of
language, borrowing all technical
vocabularies, taking its colors from all palettes.
. . . This decadent style is the last word
of language called upon to express
everything and pushed to the utmost." It is a
"gamy" style like that of late Latin,
suitable for the "haggard phantoms of
insomnia." This, it must be confessed,
rather melodramatic description well
indicates the peculiar appeal that Baudelaire
held for his contemporaries, who felt that
"since Louis XIV French poetry has been
dying of correctness."
As for his subject matter, the word
"morbid" has been applied to it with
unfailing regularity. D'Aurevilly called
Baudelaire an "atheistic and modern
Dante" whose Muse descended into Hell
as surely as Dante's had ascended
therefrom. The Romantic indulgence in
sensation for its own sake he carried to the
point at which pleasure becomes
revulsion. In what is perhaps his most famous
poem, "A Voyage to Cytherea," after the
gay opening of the ship setting sail for
the island of Venus, we are brought up
sharply by
Look at it; after all, it's a poor land,
and are carried remorselessly through the
description of the gibbet from which
dangles a "ridiculous hanged man" torn
by birds, to the final stanza:
In thine isle, O Venus, I found only
upthrust
A Calvary symbol whereon mine image
hung,
—Give me, Lord God, to look upon
that dung,
My body and my heart, without
disgust!
Added to all of this was the attitude of
world-weariness inherited from Byron.
Baudelaire compares himself to a king
in whose veins "the green waters of
Lethe flow"; to someone who, in a
former life, lived among "vast porticoes,"
tended by slaves whose only task was to
discover their master's secret grief. There
were also the blasphemies ("Les Litanies
de Satan") and the meticulous
descriptions of the revolting ("Une Charogne").
Much of Baudelaire's pyrotechnics-
even that part which was sincere and not
merely intended to shock the bourgeoisie
—has lost its effect. A modern reader,
accustomed to clinically precise analyses
of sex, is not particularly shocked by his
lubricities; his blasphemies seem rather
juvenile. One wonders what all the fuss
was about. But to contemporary poets,
English as well as French, he is
important as a counter-Romantic in a
Romantic age; as the first modern. To
quote Peter Quennell: "He had enjoyed
a sense of his own age, had recognized
its pattern while the pattern was yet
incomplete." He enormously extended the
frontiers of poetry by snowing that it
need not be limited to the conventionally
"poetic." And there are few readers who
will not be forced to admit the truth
of the last line of his "Preface":
Hypocrite reader—my likeness—my
brotherl
1232

FOMA GORDYEEFF
Type of work: Novel
Author: Maxim Gorky (Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, 1868-1936)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1899
Principal characters:
Foma Gordyeeff, a gilded youth
Ignat, his father
Mayakin, his godfather
Ezhoff, a brilliant youth
Liuboff, Mayakin's daughter
Critique:
Foma Gordyeeff is a study of gilded
youth. Foma, the hero, is drawn with
profound insight. Ironically, Foma ruins
himself not by his worst instincts but
by truth and innate nobility. In a
similarly keen fashion Gorky describes the
rise of the merchant class and the
beginnings of the radical intellectuals who
gave impetus to the Russian Revolution.
Most of the scene centers around the
Volga. Although local color enters
largely into the work, the moral basis of the
novel is universal.
The Story:
Ignat began as a water pumper, but
by the time he was forty he was a rich
owner of barges and tugs and a
determined and ruthless trader on the
exchange. At times, however, he was
subject to fits of depression when he would
carouse with the dregs of the city;
sometimes he would exult fiercely when one
of his barges burned. He was a huge
man with boundless energy. His greatest
disappointment was that he had no son;
his fat wife had borne only daughters
who had died in infancy.
When he was forty-three his wife
suddenly died, and within six months he
had found a young bride. Natalya was
tall and handsome, brought up in a cult
of milk drinkers. She was dutiful but
mysterious. Although ordinarily
submissive, she had strength of character which
made boisterous Ignat afraid to beat her.
She died after the birth of Foma, Ignat's
long-desired son.
Until he was six, Foma was brought
up in his godfather Mayakin's house.
Under the watchful, stupid eye of a
female relative, he played unimaginatively
with Liuboff, Mayakin's daughter. Ignat
took back his son then, and Foma's Aunt
Anfisa looked after him. Anfisa told him
many fanciful tales which whetted the
young boy's imagination.
When he was eight Foma discussed
the family business with Ignat and was
cast down that his father was only a river
merchant instead of a pirate. To clear
up his misapprehensions, Ignat took the
boy on a business trip down the river.
Foma got along well with the peasants
until he told his father how one worker
had been uncomplimentary to the
capitalistic class. Ignat knocked the worker
down. This incident always seemed
brutal to the boy.
At school Foma made two friends:
Smolin, a fat, rich boy, and Ezhoff, a
quick-thinking poor boy. Foma kept up
rather well in his classes because Ezhoff
helped him study and prompted him
during recitations. In and out of school pranks,
Foma was a daring leader. His courage
FOMA GORDYEEFF by Maxim Gorky. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. By permission of the
publishers Charles Scribners Sons. Copyright, 1901, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed. All rights
reserved. *
1233

was due in part to his father's wealth,
but he was really honest and fearless. As
he grew up, LiubofT was the only girl he
knew. May akin hoped that they would
marry and unite the two family fortunes.
When Foma was not yet twenty, Ignat
put him in charge of a trading
expedition and told the tug captain to keep an
eye on the young man. Foma quickly
established his superiority over the older
captain and took complete command. He
did quite well, except that he was often
too generous in giving grain to the
peasants. He noticed on deck one night a
peasant woman with attractive eyes.
Although she was older than he, Foma
desired to meet her and the captain
arranged to have her come to Foma's cabin
at night. The woman was thirty,
delightfully mature to the naive Foma. He left
her with regret when Mayakin sent a
message requiring him to come home as
soon as possible.
Mayakin told Foma that his father was
in the clutches of a designing woman
who had already got large sums of money
from him. At first Foma was afraid that
Ignat had taken a mistress. To Mayakin
the situation seemed even worse;
Madame Medynsky had induced Ignat to
give liberally to charity. Mayakin had
no use for charity. The merchant class,
he thought, should use its money to make
more money.
For a time Foma helped his father and
faithfully attended to business. It was
hard work for him, although he was far
from stupid. He could see no point in
trading, no excuse for amassing a
fortune. Liuboff confused him when he
talked with her. She read books, to Foma
a foolish pastime, for in them he found
no answers to his questions. Foma never
read much; in polite society he was
always ill at ease.
When Ignat died, Foma felt more
insecure. Attending a public gathering to
dedicate a building to which his father
had contributed, he had to leave before
the ceremony was over. He did, however,
take much interest in Madame
Medynsky, the moving spirit in his father's
philanthropies. Afterward he visited her
often and she was very gracious to him, for
he was handsome as well as rich. All the
while, however, Foma felt troubled, for
she seemed to play with his affections.
When Foma heard she was an abandoned
woman, he refused to believe the tales.
In fact, one night he soundly thrashed
an official who spoke slightingly of her
chastity.
When Mayakin tried to hush up the
affair and set Foma back in the path of
commercial rectitude, Foma rebelled. He
went on a spree with several others and
finally wound up on a raft in company
with coldly attractive Sasha. Drunk
enough to be affected greatly by Sasha's
duets with her sister, he cut the mooring
lines. As the raft floated away, Sasha
swam to shore. She and Foma laughed
immoderately as the others in the party
floated helplessly down the river.
After some days he and Sasha came
upon one of his barges, and Foma forced
the captain to let him take command.
Promptly he steered the barge into a
collision and the craft sank. It was an
expensive and scandalous business to raise
it. In the midst of their liaison Sasha
left Foma. She could not stand his
continual questioning as to the purpose of
life. When Mayakin heard what had
happened to the barge, he took a power
of attorney and left Foma to his own
devices.
By chance Foma encountered Ezhoff,
now a brilliant, satirical journalist.
Fascinated by his former schoolmate, he was
puzzled because Ezhoff had had so little
worldly success. He went with Ezhoff
once when the journalist made a
revolutionary speech to a gathering of printers,
but mostly the two drank together.
At last Foma went home, soberer but
scarcely wiser. There he learned Liuboff
had become engaged to Smolin, who had
turned into an unctuous, polished trader.
Mayakin, still hoping to redeem Foma,
took him to a ship launching. As he
listened to the laudatory speeches and
1234

heard the blatant congratulations to the
owner, Foma lost control of himself. He
compelled the rich businessmen to listen
as he probed beneath their smug shells of
respectability.
One man had barely escaped trial for
seducing a little girl; another had falsely
accused his mistress and had her sent
to prison; a third had turned out his
nephews to starve; still another had kept
a bawdy house. As Foma bawled out his
terrible accusations, the men fell on him
and bound him. His godfather had him
confined in an asylum. In after years he
could be seen in the streets of the town,
shabby, half-witted, and intoxicated. He
lived in a little wing of! LiubofFs
courtyard.
1235

THE FOOL OF QUALITY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry Brooke (1703M783)
Type of plot: Didactic romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1766-1770
Principal characters:
Henry Clinton, Earl of Moreland
Mr. Fenton, his foster father
Ned, Henry's friend
Fanny Goodall, Mr. Fenton's cousin
Abenaide, Princess of Morocco
Critique:
In reality, The Fool of Quality was an
instrument whereby Henry Brooke could
expand his views on theology, politics,
government, family life, child training,
and other philosophical subjects. To these
matters he sacrificed plot and character,
but not unduly. In spite of the fact that
Brooke filled his novel with pathos and
the stilted sentiments of the time, the
book is still interesting and appealing to
any reader who can follow the threads of
the plot through a maze of moralizing,
anecdote, and illustrative fable. In many
ways his sentimentalism is less
objectionable than Mackenzie's in The Man of
Feeling. At the same time the reader can
never doubt the complete sincerity of
the author.
Tfie Story:
Put out to nurse when he was a baby,
Henry Clinton, second son of the Earl
of Moreland, saw little of his noble
parents and their favorite older son. At the
age of five and a half, young Harry, as
he was called, made the acquaintance of
an old man of the neighborhood, one Mr.
Fenton. The old gentleman was so
impressed by the innate goodness of
Harry's nature that he stole the boy away
from his nurse, after leaving a note for
the parents telling them that he would
one day return their son. It was Mr. Fen-
ton's purpose to train young Harry to
become the most accomplished and perfect
of men. The parents grieved for a short
time but soon forgot the boy in favor of
his older brother.
Mr. Fenton removed Harry to a
mansion at Hampstead. With them they took
Ned, a beggar lad whom Harry had
befriended. There Harry's education began.
Mr. Fenton, a very wealthy man, gave
Harry large sums of money and hundreds
of garments to distribute to the deserving
poor. It was Harry's task to weed out the
deserving from the rascals. At the same
time the boys were instructed in
academic subjects, body building, and other
suitable lessons. Ned had irrepressible spirits
and he constantly tormented his
teachers. Sometimes Harry joined in the fun,
but he was such a good boy that he
immediately performed a favor for anyone
who might have suffered because of Ned
or himself.
Harry was so tender-hearted that he
frequently brought whole families to live
at the mansion, and gave them money,
clothing, and work. Mr. Fenton was
highly pleased with the boy, who had
purity of heart and a willingness to be
instructed in all phases of life. The old
gentleman taught him theology, principles
of government, moral rules, and many
other forms of philosophy.
Harry became the champion of all
those who were set upon by bullies, even
though the ruffian was often larger and
1236

stronger than he. He soundly thrashed
many boys and men, then immediately
helped them to their feet and became
their friend. Once he trounced the son
of a nobleman. The mother, not knowing
Harry was also an earl's son, would have
had him severely punished, but the
father saw Harry's good character and
defended the lad. Most of the people Harry
thrashed became his devoted servants,
seeing and loving the nobility of
character he possessed.
One day Mr. Fenton called on a lady
who had issued several invitations to
him. He was delighted to learn that the
woman, now Lady Maitland, was his
cousin Fanny Goodall. They had in their
youth loved each other, but he was many
years older than Fanny and there had
been nothing but longing on the part of
each of them. Now Fanny, recognizing
Mr. Fenton, called him Harry Clinton.
He was the brother of young Harry's
father, the Earl of Moreland; thus he was
Harry's uncle. Cast out with a small
inheritance, as was the custom with
younger sons, he had made his fortune as a
merchant, married a wealthy woman, and
prospered still more. But his beloved wife,
his children, and his dear father-in-law
all died, leaving him bereft of any
emotion but sorrow. Although he gained a
great fortune on the death of his father-
in-law, he considered himself the poorest
of men. Fanny was also a widow, and the
two friends comforted each other as they
talked of their sad lives. Mr. Fenton,
seeing that Fanny was almost overcome with
grief, promised to tell her the rest of his
story later, but the good lady was called
away before she could hear more.
Harry's education continued. Mr.
Fenton, as he was known to all but Fanny,
sent him to the prisons to pay the debts
of deserving persons, thus securing their
release. He continued to take
unfortunates home with him, much to the joy
of Mr. Fenton. Ned, too, was improving
although he still did not have the
nobility of character that Harry possessed.
One day Ned's parents were found.
Harry had helped some people who had
suffered an accident nearby, and these
people became friends of the household.
By a scar which his old nurse recognized,
Ned was known to her and then to his
parents. The boy had been stolen in
infancy. It was with great joy that the
parents greeted their son. Although Ned
hated to leave Mr. Fenton and his
beloved friend Harry, he went joyfully with
his rightful parents.
Countless numbers of people became
Harry's friends because of his concern
for their well-being. Mr. Fenton sent him
and his tutor, one of Harry's charities, to
London to learn the ways of the city and
the court. Even the king was impressed
by the lad. But Harry retained his
modesty through all the adulation he received,
a fact which added to his popularity. The
queen and other noble ladies sought his
company, but he eluded them all,
making them better, however, for having
known him.
When Mr. Fenton learned of the death
of Harry's mother and brother, he
returned the boy to his father, the Earl of
Moreland. Great was that man's joy at
finding his lost son. When he learned
that the child's abductor had been his
own brother, thought dead, the earl was
filled with remorse for having treated his
brother so badly many years before. The
brothers were united publicly and
everyone learned that Mr. Fenton was in
reality the second son of the house of More-
land. The earl was grateful to his brother
for stealing the boy and making a perfect
man of him.
Mr. Clinton, as Mr. Fenton was called
from then on, told the rest of the story
of his life. After the death of his lovea
ones, he lived in sorrow for many years.
Then he married again after almost
losing his life in his suit of the girl he loved,
Louisa d'Aubigny. They had a lovely
daughter called Eloisa. But sorrow again
haunted Mr. Clinton, for Louisa died
from a fall and Eloisa was washed from
1237

a ship and seen no more. The bereaved
man had lived in solitude and misery
until he had met and abducted Harry.
Not long after learning his brother's
story, Harry's father died and the boy
became the Earl of Moreland. He now
had a huge fortune to spend for charity,
and he spent wisely so that those who
received would profit from the money in all
ways.
Before long, Mr. Clinton learned from
his dead wife's brother that he was
coming to England, accompanied by Fanny
Goodall. For Fanny had married Louisa s
brother and thus had become Mr.
Clinton's sister-in-law. The old friends
rejoiced at their reunion. Fanny was
accompanied by a dark Moorish page to
whom Harry was instantly attracted. The
boy told Harry that he had a sister Abe-
naide, as fair as he himself was dark.
She would soon accompany their father
the emperor, who was coming to
England with his wife. The boy had been
sent ahead as a page to be trained in
genteel conduct. When the girl arrived, Mr.
Clinton found her to be the daughter of
his own supposedly dead Eloisa, for
Eloisa, saved from the sea, had married
the Emperor of Morocco. The Moorish
princess was, to Harry's extreme surprise,
the same page whom he had loved so
dearly. She had been in disguise to
escape an unwanted royal lover and had
continued the deception in order to tease
Harry.
The Princess Abenaide and Harry were
married, their wedding being blessed with
the prayers of the countless hundreds the
perfect young man had befriended.
1238

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: 1937
Locale: Spain
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Robert Jordan, an American
Pablo, a guerrilla leader
Pilar, his wife
Maria, loved by Jordan
Anselmo, another guerrilla
Critique:
In order to understand Ernest
Hemingway's motive in writing For Whom the
Bell Tolls, it is necessary to know the
essence of the quotation from John
Donne, from which Hemingway took his
theme: ". . . any mans death diminishes
me, because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for
whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
Hemingway wanted his readers to feel
that what happened to the Loyalists in
Spain in 1937 was a part of that crisis
of the modern world in which we all
share. The novel tells the story of three
days in the life of a young American
who had concerned himself with the
Loyalist cause in Spain. It is a story
of courage, of loyalty, of the human will
to endure. For Whom the Bell Tolls is
a tragic novel, but one of great nobility
and compassion. Hemingway is one of
the great spokesmen of our time.
The Story:
At first nothing was important but the
bridge, neither his life nor the imminent
danger of his death—just the bridge.
Robert Jordan was a young American
teacher who was in Spain fighting with
the Loyalist guerrillas. His present and
most important mission was to blow up
a bridge which would be of great strategic
importance during a Loyalist offensive
three days hence. Jordan was behind the
Fascist lines, with orders to make contact
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS by Ernest HemingA
Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1940, by Ernest Hei
fighting with the Spanish Loyalists
with Pablo, the leader of a guerrilla band,
and with his wife Pilar, who was the
really strong figure among the partisans.
While Pablo was weak and a drunken
braggart, Pilar was strong and
trustworthy. She was a swarthy, raw-boned
woman, vulgar and outspoken, but she
was so fiercely devoted to the Loyalist
cause that Jordan knew she would carry
out her part of the mission regardless of
her personal danger.
The plan was for Jordan to study the
bridge from all angles and then to make
final plans for its destruction at the proper
moment. Jordan had blown up many
bridges and three trains, but this was the
first time that everything must be done on
a split-second schedule. Pablo and Pilar
were to assist Jordan in any way they
could, even to rounding up other bands
of guerrillas if Jordan needed them to
accomplish his mission.
At the cave hideout of Pablo and Pilar,
Jordan met a beautiful young girl named
Maria, who had escaped from the
Fascists. Maria had been subjected to every
possible indignity that a woman could
suffer. She had been starved and tortured
and raped, and she felt unclean. At the
camp Jordan also met Anselmo, a loyal
old man who would follow orders
regardless of his personal safety. Anselmo hated
having to kill but, if he were so ordered,
faithful Anselmo would kill.
Jordan loved the brutally shrewd, des-
iy. By permission of the author and the publisher*.
1239

perate, loyal guerrillas, for he knew their
cruelties against the Fascists stemmed
from poverty and ignorance. But the
Fascists' cruelty he abhored, for the
Fascists came largely from the wealthy,
ambitious people of Spain. Maria's story
of her suffering at their hands filled him
with such hatred that he could have
killed a thousand of them, even though
he, like Anselmo, hated to kill.
The first night he spent at the guerrilla
camp destroyed his cold approach to the
mission before him, for he fell deeply
in love with Maria. She came to his
sleeping bag that night, and although they
talked but little he knew after she left
that he was no longer ready to die. He
told Maria that one day they would be
married, but he was afraid of the future.
And fear was dangerous for a man on an
important mission.
Jordan made many sketches of the
bridge and laid his plans carefully. There
his work was almost ruined by Pablo's
treachery. On the night before the
blowing up of the bridge Pablo deserted after
stealing and destroying the explosives and
the detonators hidden in Jordan's pack.
Pablo returned, repentant, on the
morning of the mission, but the damage had
been done. The loss of the detonators
and the explosives meant that Jordan and
his helper would have to blow the bridge
with hand grenades, a much more
dangerous method. Pablo had tried to redeem
himself by bringing with him another
small guerrilla band and their horses.
Although Jordan despised Pablo by that
time, he forgave him, as did Pilar.
At the bridge Jordan worked quickly
and carefully. Each person had a specific
job to do, and each did his work well. First
Jordan and Anselmo had to kill the
sentries, a job Anselmo hated. Pablo and
his guerrillas attacked the Fascist lines
approaching the bridge, to prevent their
crossing before the bridge was
demolished. Jordan had been ordered to blow
up the bridge at the beginning of a
Loyalist bombing attack over the Fascist
lines. When he heard the thudding
explosions of the bombs, he pulled the pins
and the bridge shot high into the air.
Jordan got to cover safely, but Anselmo
was killed by a steel fragment from the
bridge. As Jordan looked at the old man
and realized that he might be alive if
Pablo had not stolen the detonators, he
wanted to kill Pablo. But he knew that
his duty was otherwise, and he ran to
the designated meeting place of the
fugitive guerrillas.
There he found Pablo, Pilar, Maria,
and the two remaining gipsy partisans.
Pablo, herding the extra horses, said that
all the other guerrillas had been killed.
Jordan knew that Pablo had ruthlessly
killed the other men so that he could get
cheir horses. When he confronted Pablo
with this knowledge, Pablo admitted the
daughter, but shrugged his great
shoulders and said that the men had not been
of his band.
The problem now was to cross a road
which could be swept by Fascist
gunfire, the road that led to safety. Jordan
knew that the first two people would
have the best chance, since probably they
could cross before the Fascists, were
alerted. Because Pablo knew the road to
safety, Jordan put him on the first horse.
Maria was second, for Jordan was
determined that she should be saved before
the others. Pilar was to go next, then the
two remaining guerrillas, and last of all
Jordan. The first four crossed safely, but
Jordan's horse, wounded by Fascist
bullets, fell on Jordan's leg. The others
dragged him across the road and out of
the line of fire, but he knew that he
could not go on; he was too badly injured
to ride a horse. Pablo and Pilar
understood, but Maria begged to stay with
him. Jordan told Pilar to take Maria away
when he gave the signal, and then he
talked to the girl he loved so much. He
told her that she must go on, that as
long as she lived, he lived also. But when
the time came, she had to be put on her
horse and led away.
Jordan, settling down to wait for the
approaching Fascist troops, propped him-
1240

self against a tree, with his submachine
gun across his knees. As he waited, he
thought over the events that had brought
him to that place. He knew that what
he had done was right, but that his side
might not win for many years. But he
knew, too, that if the common people
kept trying, kept dying, someday they
would win. He hoped they would be
prepared when that day came, that they
would no longer want to kill and torture,
but would struggle for peace and for
good as they were now struggling for
freedom. He felt at the end that his own
part in the struggle had not been in vain.
As he saw the first Fascist officer
approaching, Robert Jordan smiled. He was
ready.
1241

THE FORSYTE SAGA
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of flot: 1886-1920
Locale: England
First published: 1906, 1920, 1921
Principal characters:
Soames Forsyte, a man of property
Irene, his wife
Old Jolyon Forsyte, his uncle
Young Jolyon, Old Jolyon's son
June, Young Jolyon's daughter
Philip Bosinney, an architect engaged to June
Annette, Soames' second wife
Flei/r, their daughter
Jon, Irene's and Young Jolyon's son
Winifred Dartie, Soames' sister; Monty Dartie's wife
Critique:
Galsworthy's trilogy — The Man of
Property, In Chancery, To Let—concerns
an i*pper middle-class English family
and traces, through the story of a group
of related characters, the changing aspects
of manners and morals from the
Victorian age to the period between wars.
In his preface John Galsworthy points
to the general theme of the series—the
disturbance that Beauty creates in the
lives of men, as exemplified by the story
of Irene. The Forsyte Saga achieves a
high point of excellence as social history
and art.
The Story:
In 1886 all the Forsytes gathered at
Old Jolyon Forsyte's house to celebrate
the engagement of his granddaughter,
June, to Philip Bosinney, a young
architect. Young Jolyon Forsyte, June's father,
was estranged from his family because
he had run away with a governess, whom
he had married after June's mother died.
Old Jolyon complained that he saw
little of June. Lonely, he called on
Young Jolyon, whom he had not seen
in many years. He found his son
working as an underwriter for Lloyd's and
painting water-colors. By his second wife
he had two children, Holly and Jolly.
The family knew that Soames had
been having trouble with his lovely wife,
Irene. She had a profound aversion for
Soames, and had recently reminded him
of her premarital stipulation that she
should have her freedom if the marriage
were not a success. In his efforts to
please her, Soames planned to build a
large country place. Deciding that June's
fianc6 would be a good choice for an
architect, he bought an estate at Robin
Hill and hired Bosinney to build the
house.
When Soames made suggestions about
the plans, Bosinney appeared offended,
and in the end the plans were drawn as
Bosinney wished. As the work proceeded,
Soames and Bosinney argued over costs
that exceeded the original estimate.
One day Swithin Forsyte, Soames'
uncle, took Irene to see the house.
Bosinney met them, and while Swithin dozed
the architect talked to Irene alone. That
day Irene and Bosinney fell hopelessly
in love with one another. Irene's
already unbearable life with Soames
became impossible. She asked for a separate
room.
There were new troubles over the"
house. Bosinney had agreed to decorate
it, but only if he could have a free hand.
THE FORSYTE SAGA by John Galsworthy,
rifht, 1922, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copy-
1242

Soames finally agreed. Irene and Bosin-
ney began to meet secretly. As their
affair progressed, June became more
unhappy and self-centered. Finally Old
Jolyon took June away for a holiday. He
wrote to Young Jolyon, asking him to
see Bosinney and learn his intentions
toward June. Young Jolyon talked to
Bosinney, but the report he made to
his father was vague.
When the house was completed,
Soames sued Bosinney for exceeding his
highest estimate and Irene refused to
move to Robin Hill. When the lawsuit
over the house came to trial, Soames won
his case without difficulty. That same
night Bosinney, after spending the
afternoon with Irene and learning that Soames
had forced himself on her, was
accidentally run over. Irene left her husband on
the day of the trial, but that night she
returned to his house because there was
now no place else for her to go. June
persuaded her grandfather to buy Robin
Hill for Jolyon's family.
A short time after Bosinney's death
Irene left Soames permanently, settled in
a small flat, and gave music lessons to
support herself. Several years later she
visited Robin Hill secretly and there met
Old Jolyon. She won him by her
gentleness and charm, and during that summer
she made his days happy for him. Late
in the summer he died quietly while
waiting for her.
After his separation from Irene, Soames
devoted himself to making money. Then,
still hoping to have an heir, he began
to court a French girl, Annette Lamotte.
At the same time his sister Winifred was
in difficulties. Her husband, Monty
Dartie, stole her pearls and ran away
to South America with a Spanish dancer.
When he decided to marry Annette,
Soames went to Irene to see if she would
provide grounds for his suit. He found
that she had lived a model life. While
visiting her, Soames realized that he stilJ
loved her and he tried to persuade her
to come back to him. When she refused,
he hired a detective to get the evidence
he needed.
Old Jolyon had willed a legacy to
Irene, with Young Jolyon, now a widower,
as trustee. When Soames annoyed Irene,
she appealed to Young Jolyon for
protection. Irene went to Paris to avoid
Soames and shortly afterward Young
Tolyon joined her. His visit was cut
short by Jolly, who announced that he
had joined the yeomanry to fight in the
Boer War. Holly had in the meantime
fallen in love with Val Dartie, her
cousin. When Val proposed to Holly, he
was overheard by Jolly, who dared Val
to join the yeomanry with him. Val
accepted. June then decided to become
a Red Cross nurse, and Holly went with
her. Monty Dartie reappeared
unexpectedly. To avoid further scandal,
Winifred decided to take him back.
Soames went to Paris in a last effort
to persuade Irene. Frightened, Irene
returned to Young Jolyon. Before they
became lovers in deed, they were
presented with papers by Soames* lawyer.
They decided to go abroad together.
Before their departure Young Jolyon
received word that Jolly had died of enteric
fever during the African campaign. Later
Soames secured his divorce and married
Annette. Val married Holly, to the
discomfiture of both branches of the fam-
Uy.
Irene presented Jolyon with a son,
Jon. When Annette was about to give
birth to a child, Soames had to choose
between saving the mother or the child.
Wishing an heir, Soames chose to save
the child. Fortunately, both Annette and
the baby lived.
Little Jon grew up under the adoring
eyes of his parents. Fleur grew up spoiled
by her doting father.
Years passed. Monty Dartie was dead.
Val and Holly were training race horses.
One day in a picture gallery Soames
impulsively invited a young man, Michael
Mont, to see his collection of pictures.
That same afternoon he saw Irene and
her son Jon for the first time in twenty
years. By chance Fleur and Jon met.
1243

Having decided that he wanted to try
fanning, Jon went to stay with Val
Dartie. Fleur also appeared to spend
the week with Holly. Jon and Fleur
fell deeply in love.
They had only vague ideas regarding
the cause of the feud between their
respective branches of the family. Later
Fleur learned all the details from Prosper
Profond, with whom Annette was having
an affair, and from Winifred Dartie. She
was still determined to marry Jon.
Meanwhile Michael Mont had Soames'
permission to court Fleur. When Soames
heard of the affair between Annette and
Prosper, she did not deny it, but she
promised there would be no scandal.
Fleur tried to persuade Jon into a
hasty marriage. She failed because Young
Jolyon reluctantly gave his son a letter
revealing the story of Soames and Irene.
Reading it, Jon realized that he could
never marry Fleur. His decision became
irrevocable when his father died. He
left England at once and went to
America, where Irene joined him. Fleur,
disappointed, married Michael Mont.
When Timothy, the last of the old
Forsytes, died, Soames realized that the
Forsyte age had passed. Its way of life
was like an empty house—to let. He
felt lonely and old.
1244

FORTITUDE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hugh Walpole (1884-1941)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First pvhlished: 1913
Principal characters:
Peter Westcott, a young writer
Stephen Brant, a friend
Clare, Peter's wife
Bobby Galleon, a student at Dawson's
Jerry Cardillac (Cards), another student
Mr. Zanti, a bookseller
Nora Monogue, Peter's friend and adviser
Critique:
Hugh Walpole's novel is likely to
attract readers for some time to come
because of its sympathetic story. As the title
suggests, the author points to the fact
that life is not a simple process and that
fortitude is the most desirable quality for
a young man facing life.
The Story:
Peter Westcott lived with his harsh
father and his invalid mother at Scaw
House, near the town of Treliss in
Cornwall. As he grew up, Peter made friends
with Stephen Brant, a fanner who
occasionally took the child to the Bending
Mule Inn. One Christmas Eve, at the
inn, Peter watched Stephen fighting with
another man over a girl. That night he
arrived home late from the Bending Mule
and his father gave him the most severe
whipping he had yet received. On
another day, Stephen took him to the
curiosity shop operated by Zachary Tan. There
Peter was introduced to a jovial Mr.
Emilio Zanti, from London, who treated
the boy with special consideration. At
supper that night Peter's father told him
that he was to go off to school in
Devonshire.
The next phase of Peter's life revolved
about Dawson's School, where his best
friends were Bobby Galleon and Jerry
Cardillac. Bobby was the son of a famous
writer. Cardillac, called Cards, was Peter's
idol; he was everything which Peter
would have liked to have been, and was
not. After Cards left at the end of
Peter's second year, affairs did not
progress so smoothly for Peter. One day he
found Jerrard, the best bowler in school,
forcing whiskey down the throat of a
small boy. Despite the fact that it was
the eve of a big game in which Jerrard's
services were needed, Peter, in his
capacity as a monitor, turned him in to the
authorities. Jerrard was expelled, and
Dawson's lost the game. On the last day
of the term the whole school joined in
hissing Peter when he called the roll.
Bobby Galleon was the single exception.
He was spared the indignity of
returning to Dawson's when the school
was closed after the summer holidays
because of lack of funds. His father then
sent Peter to read law in the office of Mr.
Aitchinson in Treliss. Meanwhile Peter
became aware of his mother. She had
been for many years an invalid who never
left her room, and Peter was not
encouraged to visit her. One day, when his
father was away, Peter went to her room.
He found that she was dying as the result
of his father's cruel and harsh attitude
toward her, and his visit hastened her
death. A short time after her funeral
Peter again saw Mr. Zanti, who offered
FORTITUDE by Hugh Walpole. By permission of the Executors, estate of Sir Hugh Walpole, and of the
publishers, Messn, MacMillan & Co., London. Copyright, 1913, by George H. Doran Co. Renewed, 1940, by Hugh
Walpole.
1245

the lad a job in his bookshop in London.
Peter, finding life at Scaw House
intolerable, decided to leave home. On Easter
morning he met a little girl who gave her
name as Clare Elizabeth Rossiter.
According to his plans, Peter left home, but only
after fighting with his father.
In London Peter worked in Mr. Zand's
bookshop as an assistant to Gottfried
Hanz. Mr. Zanti had found him lodgings
with Mrs. Brockett, and there he met
Nora Monogue, who encouraged Peter
when he began to write. A strange aspect
of the bookshop was the great number
of people who visited it without buying
any books, visitors who passed
mysteriously into the back room of the shop. For
seven years Peter Westcott worl in
Zand's shop and wrote in his room at
Brockett's. In November, 1895, he
finished his first novel, Reuben Hallard, and
began to look for a publisher. One day
he again met Clare Rossiter, who had
come to call on Nora Monogue. Almost
at once Peter found himself falling in
love with her. Meanwhile strange things
had been happening at the bookstore.
When the Prince and Princess of Schloss
visited London, one of the visitors to
the shop threw a bomb at Queen Victoria
as the royal procession passed. Shortly
afterward Stephen Brant appeared to take
Peter away from the shop. They found
lodgings in the slums of Bucket Lane.
Neither of the two was able to find
steady employment. When Peter became
ill from lack of food, Stephen notified
Peter's friend from Dawson's, Bobby
Galleon, whom Peter had met in the city.
Peter was moved to his friend's house,
where Bobby and his wife nursed him
back to health. In a short time Reuben
Hallard was published. It was an
immediate success, and Peter Westcott
became known in literary circles. Thus he
met Mrs. Launce, who was finally
instrumental in bringing Peter and Clare
together. After they were married, they
took a house in Chelsea. There a child
was born to Clare, a son named Stephen.
But the marriage was not a success. Clare
disapproved of Stephen and Mr. Zand.
Peter's second novel brought litde money.
Back to London came Peter's old school
friend, Jerry Cardillac, and Clare became
interested in him.
The final blow to Peter's happiness
came when litde Stephen died. Peter
blamed Clare for the child's death. A
short time later she left him to join
Cardillac in France, after refusing Peter's
constant offers to try to make her life as
she wanted it. Then Peter's diird novel
proved a failure. He decided to leave
London and return to Scaw House. In
Treliss he encountered Nora Monogue;
she had been sent to Cornwall because
she could live, at the most, only a few
weeks. At Scaw House he found his
father sodden in drink and sharing the
musty house with a slatternly
housekeeper. Peter was slipping into the same
useless life. But Nora Monogue felt that
Peter, now thirty years old, could still
be a successful writer, and she used the
last of her rapidly failing strength to
persuade him to go back to London. As a
final resort, Nora admitted that she had
always loved him, and her dying request
was that he leave his father and return
to London to start writing again. So Petet
became a man, realizing for the first time
that during his whole life his attitude had
been childish. He learned fortitude from
the dying Nora, and he became the
master of his own destiny.
1246

THE FORTRESS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hugh Walpole (1884-1941)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1932
Principal characters:
Judith Paris, Rogue Hemes' daughter
Walter Herries, Judith's cousin
Jennifer Herries, another cousin
Adam Paris, Judith's son
John, Jennifer's son
Elizabeth, Walter's daughter
Uhland, Walter's son
Margaret, Adam's wife
Critique:
The Fortress is part three of the
Herries chronicle, which covers more than
two hundred years of English social
history. The present work portrays the
later life of Judith Paris and her quarrel
with Walter. The scope of the chronicle
is vast, and The Fortress alone covers a
space of over fifty years and a host of
people. Although at times The Fortress
stalls among the multitude of characters
and their gossip, it has considerable
narrative power. Walpole must be
considered a competent popular novelist.
The Story:
The quarrel between Walter Herries
of Westaways and Jennifer Herries, his
kinswoman at Fell House, went back a
long way. Christabel, Walter's weak
mother, had been insulted by Jennifer
over the breaking of a fan at a ball, and
Walter never forgot the slight to his
proud, snobbish family. He resented
also the presence of Judith Paris and her
illegitimate son, living brazenly, as he
thought, at Fell House, so near his own
fine house, Westaways. By one method
or another he had determined to drive out
the whole household. And he might have
succeeded had it not been for Judith.
Judith accused her cousin outright of
having incited a riot in which Reuben
Sun wood, another kinsman, had been
killed. Admitting the charge, Walter
Herries said he had had no way of
foreseeing Reuben's death. He proposed that
Jennifer and Judith should sell him Fell
House at a fair price and move away.
If they did not, Walter would persecute
them until they would be glad to leave.
When Judith refused, Walter bought
Ireby, a high hill overlooking Fell House.
There he planned to build a huge
mansion to dwarf Jennifer's modest home and
he would be there always to spy on the
people of Fell House and hurt them. He
also reminded Judith of Francis,
Jennifer's husband, who had committed
suicide. Walter had exposed Jennifer's lover
to him, and the coward had shot himseli
rather than the man who had defiled his
home. But Judith defied Walter's angry
boasts of his power and cunning.
At Fell House she took complete
charge and Jennifer thankfully let her
assume management of the household.
Since she was firm and headstrong, they
did not give in to Walter even when he
poisoned their cows.
Uhland and Elizabeth were Walter's
children. The girl was beautiful and
kind, but Uhland was his father's pride.
The son was lame and pampered. At an
early age he shared his father's hatred
of Judith and her close kin. One day
as he walked in the woods he saw his
THE FORTRESS
publishers, Messrs. '.
y Hugh Walpole. By permission of the Executors, estate of Sir Hugh Walpole. and of the
lacMillan & Co., London. Copyright, 1932, by Doubleday. Doran & Co.. Tnc
1247

sister Elizabeth and John, Jennifer's son,
together. He ordered his sister to see no
more of John. But Elizabeth, who had
a mind of her own, refused, knowing that
her brother could never bring himself to
tell his father. Uhland himself, lame
and pale, was much attracted to robust
Adam Paris, Judith's son.
As Adam Paris grew up into a strong,
rebelHous boy, he soon learned that he
was illegitimate and that his aunt had
taken a lover. The knowledge made him
resentful of all restraint and only by the
grace of the family name was he allowed
to remain at Rugby.
When Walter really began to build on
Ireby hill, the countryfolk named his
great mansion The Fortress. Walter had
carried out his threat to dwarf the house
of Judith and to spy on her people.
Jennifer was greatly disturbed. Her fear of
Walter made her go every day to Ireby
and survey the progress made. Finally
the strain was too much to bear; Jennifer
died quietly from sheer apprehension.
When Walter's family moved into The
Fortress they gave a big reception, but
even the crowds and the huge fires could
not warm the great stone house.
Elizabeth, especially, was unhappy in the
gloomy, rambling mansion. She and John
had agreed not to see each other any
more, as marriage seemed an impossibility
while their families were enemies.
Consequently, when she was invited to visit
her Hemes cousins in London, she
accepted gratefully. But once in fine
society, she was troubled. She felt lonely and
left out. Mr. Temple, a fat lawyer,
pursued her vigorously.
Uhland followed his sister to London.
When he saw that Elizabeth could marry
the rich and eligible Mr. Temple, he
fiercely urged the match. Elizabeth felt
more than ever estranged from her family,
and when her father wrote and
commanded the marriage, Elizabeth promptly
and vehemently refused Mr. Temple's
awkward proposal. Enlisting the help of
a friendly maid, she stole out of the
Herries house and took a job as governess
with a family named Golightly.
In her new position Elizabeth had little
to do. Her employers, however, were
common, noisy people and she soon began
to detest her place with them. Then her
ridiculous employer, old enough to be her
father, declared his love for her and his
resolution to leave his wife. Terrified,
Elizabeth wrote an appeal to John.
Forgetting their families' enmity, John and
Elizabeth were quietly married.
At the age of twenty-two Adam Paris
decided to leave Fell House. He had
been threatening to go away for five
years, but each time his mother had put
him off.
In London Adam found only
temporary employment, and in a few weeks
he was hungry and penniless. Taken in
by chance by the Kraft family, he soon
joined the Chartist movement. In that
struggle Caesar Kraft became Adam's
guide and Kraft's daughter, Margaret,
offered Adam sympathy and finally love.
The 1840's were stirring times in
England. Widespread unemployment,
poverty, and child labor made reform
necessary. The Chartists, helped by
Adam and many others, planned their
big procession to Parliament. Caesar
Kraft was a moderate man, and at a
Chartist meeting he counseled patience.
When the procession was broken up, the
hotheads blamed him for their failure,
and in the riot that followed Kraft was
clubbed to death.
Adam and Margaret were married
shortly afterward. Adam's small skill at
editing and hack writing kept them going
in a tiny apartment. On their visits to
Fell House, Margaret was very unhappy.
She saw her husband engulfed by his
mother's love and herself an outsider.
When she broke down one night and
wept, Adam began to understand her
feelings and desires. From that time
on Judith took second place with him,
even after they moved to Fell House to
stay.
In London John Herries did well, and
1248

as a parliamentary secretary his future
seemed bright. But Uhland was madly
determined to make John pay for having
the impertinence to marry his sister.
Everywhere John went he knew Uhland
was dogging his path. John was not
exactly afraid, but contact with Uhland
left him powerless before that great
hatred.
In a desperate attempt to shake off
his incubus, John met Uhland in a
deserted country house. There he
suddenly lost his terror of his tormentor
and jumped up, daring Uhland to follow
him any more. In a mad rage Uhland
seized his gun and shot John and then
killed himself. So Elizabeth was left
with Benjie, her small son. Walter's hate
had borne its final, bitter fruit.
In The Fortress Walter lived out his
drunken old age with a gaudy
housekeeper. Steadfastly he refused to answer
Elizabeth's letters or to let her call.
Finally, when she was over sixty,
Elizabeth heard that her father was seriously
ill. She stormed The Fortress, sent the
blowzy housekeeper packing, and nursed
the old drunkard back to health. So
successful was she with the chastened
old man that on Judith's hundredth
birthday Elizabeth brought her father with
her as a guest to Fell House.
1249

FORTUNATA AND JACINTA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Benito Perez Gald6s (1845-1920)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1869-1875
Locale: Madrid, Spain
Firs* published: 1886-1887
Principal characters:
Fortunata, a woman of the lower class
Juanito Santa Cruz, her lover
Maximiliano Rubin, her husband
Jacinta, Juanito's wife
Moreno Isla, her admirer
Colonel Evaristo Feij6o, Fortunata's protector
Critique:
Published in four volumes, appearing
about five months apart, this realistic
study of bourgeois life in Madrid is
considered one of the best Spanish novels of
the nineteenth century. The longest
work of the prolific Benito P£rez Galdos,
it re-creates the life of shopkeepers and
the professional class during the
restoration of the Bourbon regime. The author
wrote many sentimental and problem
novels, a series of forty-six historical
romances, and twenty plays, but his best-
proportioned story is this lengthy and
thoroughly documented novel of a
faithful heart. In addition, the book contains
his best-rounded masculine character,
Maximiliano Rubin. In every way
Fortunata and Jacinta illustrates the writer's
theory that a novel ought to be an image
of life itself.
The Story:
The Santa Cruz dry-goods store in
Madrid, established in the eighteenth
century, provided an income for Juanito
Santa Cruz. Having graduated from the
university at twenty-four, he was not yet
ready to take his place in the family
business. He wanted to enjoy life and
Barbara Santa Cruz, his mother, spoiled him.
Her chief adviser was a former clerk,
Pldcido Estupifid, who smuggled goods
into the city in his spare time.
At the home of a fellow student
Juanito met the attractive Fortunata and took
her as his mistress. Shortly afterward Es-
tupind found out about the affair, and
Juanito's mother contracted for him a
marriage with his beautiful but passive
cousin, Jacinta. They were married in
May, 1871. When the couple returned
from their honeymoon, Fortunata had
left Madrid.
The passing years showed Jacinta that
she could not have children. Learning
some details of her husband's earlier
affair with Fortunata, including the fact
that his mistress had borne him a son
nicknamed Petusin, she wondered
whether it was her duty to take care of
the child. In the meantime Juanito hadi
been told that Fortunata was back in
Madrid. He immediately began to look
for her, but his search ended when a
lung infection made him an invalid for
a long time.
Among Fortunata's admirers was the
ill-favored and schizophrenic
Maximiliano Rubin, the orphan of a goldsmith,
who, like his two brothers, was subject
to violent headaches. Thin and weak, he
had been brought up by his Aunt Lupe,
who allowed him to live in a world of his
own imagination. While studying to
become a pharmacist, he met Fortunata at
a friend's house. Because of her poverty
she overlooked his ugliness and took up
with him. When she confessed her past,
Maximiliano proposed marriage in order
to redeem her.
Hearing of his plan, Aunt Lupe sent
one of his brothers, a priest, to talk to
1250

Fortunata. The woman said frankly that
Maximiliano was the only one of her
lovers—except one now married—for
whom she had ever cared. The priest
proposed that she spend some time in a
home for wayward girls; if she benefited
by the experience, he would agree to the
marriage. After a term in the institution
Fortunata married Maximiliano on a day
when he was suffering from one of his
worst headaches.
Having known beforehand of the
proposed marriage, Juanito had taken a room
in the boarding-house Fortunata and her
husband were to occupy. At first he had
intended only to see Fortunata again, but
on the night of the wedding her husband
was ill and they resumed their old
intimacy. Maximiliano, finding out about
the affair, quarreled with Juanito, who
overpowered the puny pharmacist and
sent him to the hospital with an injured
larynx. After the fight Fortunata packed
her belongings and left her husband.
Juan Pablo, the second of Maximili-
ano's brothers, spent his afternoons in
one caf6 or another with his cronies,
among them the elderly Colonel Evar-
isto Feijoo. While watching the parade
marking the restoration of the monarchy
in 1874, one of the loiterers saw
Juanito and Fortunata sharing a balcony.
Through gossip Jacinta learned of her
husband's infidelity. When she accused
him, he aroused her sympathy for
Fortunata by telling how badly she had been
treated by her husband. But he did
promise to break off relations with the woman.
His farewell message, with an enclosure
of one thousand pesetas, so angered
Fortunata that she went to his house in
order to create a scandal. The sight of Ja-
cinta's gentle beauty tempered her anger,
however, and while she was trying to
decide what to do she saw Colonel Fei-
j6o. He pointed out that, untrained as
she was for any career, she had only
three choices: go back to her husband,
accept the attentions of any man with
money to pay her, or take him as her
protector.
She chose Feijoo as her lover, at the
same time planning to make her future
secure after his death and to reinstate
herself in the good graces of the Rubin
family. On one occasion Fortunata came
face to face with Jacinta, who did not
know her husband's former mistress. Torn
between a realization of Jacinta's beauty
and goodness and her hatred for her as
Juanito's wife, Fortunata finally blurted
out who she really was, much to Jacinta's
confusion.
Only one woman present during the
encounter knew what to do. Guillermina
Pacheco asked Fortunata to come to see
her the next day and discuss the situation.
The frank conversation between the two
women was overheard by Jacinta, who
was in the next room. The cruelest blow
to Jacinta was Fortunata's insistence that
Juanito needed her, since she had given
him the son his wife could never bear
him. When Fortunata discovered the
eavesdropper, her angry words showed
that she was still essentially of the lower
class.
Later Fortunata had a scene with
Maximiliano, who was gradually losing his
mind. At last he drove her out of the
house. Before long she and Juanito
became lovers once more.
Maximiliano, trying to earn a living,
worked in a drugstore owned by the
Widow Samaniego, but his mental state
caused him to make dangerous mistakes
in mixing drugs. His employer had two
daughters. One was Aurora, the thirty-
three-year-old widow of a Frenchman
killed while fighting the Prussians in
1870. She wore clothes with a Parisian
flair and soon caught the eye of Juanito,
as Fortunata learned to her dismay.
In the meantime Moreno Isla had
fallen violendy in love with Jacinta. Both
he and Guillermina Pacheco, bribed by
Moreno, tried to convince her that her
husband would never be faithful, but
Jacinta gave Moreno no encouragement.
At the same time Aurora, for her own
purposes, tried to convince Juanito that
his wife was in love with another man.
1251

Fortunata, pregnant, was afraid to live
with Maximiliano any longer. Because
he talked constantly of a philosophy of
death she hid herself at Aunt Lupe's
house. While looking for her,
Maximiliano discovered proof that Juanito and
Aurora were having an affair. He finally
discovered his wife's hiding place after
Estupind took the news of Fortunata's
baby son to the Santa Cruz household.
No longer wanting to kill her,
Maximiliano forced his way into Fortunata's room,
where he told her what he knew about
Juanito and Aurora. Although the
doctor had ordered her not to leave her bed,
Fortunata rushed out to revenge herself
on Jacinta's enemy and her own. The
exertion caused her death. Before she
died she sent a letter by Estupifid to
Jacinta. In it she asked Jacinta to care for
Juanito's son.
Being compelled to acknowledge his
paternity was a blow to Juanito, for it
lost him his wife's remaining esteem. He
realized sadly that his philandering had
brought him to old age in spirit while he
was still young in years, with nothing
but an empty and unhappy future before
him.
1252

THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1822
Principal characters:
Nigel Olifaunt, Lord of Glenvarloch
Richard Moniplies, his servant
George Heriot, a goldsmith, friend of Nigel's father
Margaret Ramsay, Heriot's goddaughter
The Earl of Hunttnglen, an old nobleman
Lord Dalgarno, his son
Lady Hermione, related to Nigel
Dame Suddlechop, a gossip
Trapbois, a usurer
Martha Trapbois, his daughter
James I, King of England
Critique:
In The Fortunes of Nigel, Sir Walter
Scott surpassed even his former efforts to
introduce literally dozens of characters
and plots into one novel. Although the
multiplicity of people and events and the
use of Scottish dialect may make this
novel a difficult one for some readers, the
reward in the end is worth the effort. For
this novel is an exciting tale of intrigue
and mystery, one of the great adventure
stories in the language. As is also common
in stories by Scott, the novel takes much
of its romantic atmosphere and dramatic
vigor from the author's use of many
characters drawn from the lower levels of
society. To balance these creatures of his
imagination, Scott presents also in the
figure of James I, King of England and
Scotland, his finest historical portrait.
The Story:
The threatened loss of his family estates
in Scotland sent Nigel Olifaunt, Lord of
Glenvarloch, and his servant, Richard
Moniplies, to London, there to petition
King James I for the repayment of large
loans made to the crown by Nigel's late
father. After Richie Moniplies had made
an unsuccessful attempt to deliver his
master's petition, he was followed from
the court by George Heriot, the royal
goldsmith, who went to Nigel and offered to
help him gain favor with the king. Heriot
gave as his motive friendship with Nigel's
late father. He succeeded in presenting
Nigel's petition to the king. King James,
in royal good humor, ordered Heriot to
provide Nigel with money needed to
outfit himself properly for an appearance at
court, so that he could speak in his own
behalf. The king gave Heriot a small
crown of jewels, with instructions that the
gems were to remain in Heriot's possession
until the state repaid him for the money
he would lend to Nigel. The state s
finances were seriously depleted, and the
king was forced to do business by warrant.
While dining at Heriot's house the
next day, Nigel met Margaret Ramsay,
Heriot's godchild and the daughter of
David Ramsay, the royal clockmaker.
Margaret promptly lost her heart to Nigel,
but because he was a nobleman she was
too shy to talk with him. That same night,
however, she commissioned Dame
Suddlechop, a local gossip, to find out more about
Nigel and his business. The dame already
knew that Nigel had powerful enemies in
court, enemies who were interested in
seeing that he was prevented from taking
rightful possession of his estates. On the
promise of more money in the future, the
1253

old gossip agreed to learn all she could
about Nigel and his affairs.
Dressed in clothing bought by money
advanced by Heriot, Nigel went to the
king with his petition. At first he had
difficulty in gaining admittance, but at
last he managed to see the king. The king
confessed that there were no funds
available for the debt, but he made a notation
on the petition to the Scottish Exchequer
and told Nigel that perhaps he could
borrow from money-lenders on the
strength of the royal warrant. Nigel left
the court with Heriot and the Earl of
Huntinglen, who had also befriended
him because of his father's name.
Anticipating a session with the
moneylenders, the three decided to have a paper
drawn up, a document which would allow
Nigel ample time to redeem his estates by
means of the king's warrant. Trusting
Heriot and the old earl to handle his
business, Nigel devoted himself to becoming
acquainted with the earl's young son,
Lord Dalgarno. Pretending friendship,
Dalgarno in reality began a campaign to
undermine Nigel's character and
reputation and complete his financial ruin.
Dalgarno himself hoped to gain possession
of Nigel's estate.
Dalgarno took Nigel to gaming houses
and other questionable places until
Nigel's reputation began to suffer in the
city and at court. At last even faithful
Richie asked for permission to leave his
service and return to Scotland.
Immediately after Richie's departure, Nigel
received an anonymous note, telling him of
Dalgarno's plot to ruin him. At first Nigel
refused to consider such a possibility, but
at length he decided to investigate the
charges. When he confronted Dalgarno
in the Park and accused him of knavery,
Dalgarno was so contemptuous of him
that Nigel drew his sword and struck
Dalgarno. The young courtier was not
injured. There was a severe penalty for
drawing swords in the Park, however, and
Nigel was forced to flee in order to avoid
arrest. He was befriended by a young man
he had met in a gaming house and hidden
in the house of an old usurer named Trap-
bois. His refuge was in Whitefriars,
known as Alsatia, the haunt of bravos,
bankrupts, bully-boys, thieves.
Meanwhile Margaret Ramsay was
trying to help the young Scottish lord. In
Heriot's house was a mysterious lady who
stayed apart in a secluded apartment. She
had seen Nigel once, during his first visit
at the house. This lady was Lady
Hermione, who was in seclusion in
Heriot's house following a tragic affair of
the heart. Because she was extremely
wealthy, Margaret begged her to help
Nigel out of his difficulties. Lady
Hermione revealed to Margaret that she
was of the House of Glenvarloch and thus
a distant relative of Nigel's. When
Margaret told her of Dalgarno's plot to
ruin Nigel, Lady Hermione gave her the
money, but warned her not to lose her
heart to Nigel, for he was too high-born
for a clockmaker's daughter.
Margaret arranged with an apprentice
for Nigel's escape. The apprentice was
willing to aid her because he was in love
with Margaret and had been advised by
old Dame Suddlechop that he might win
the girl's heart by helping Nigel. In the
meantime Nigel killed one of two
Russians who had murdered Trapbois. Nigel
took Trapbois' daughter Martha with him
when he escaped from Alsatia with the
help of the apprentice sent by Margaret.
Nigel sent Martha to the house of a
ship chandler with whom he had lodged
for a time and then set out to find the king
and present his own account of the quarrel
with Dalgarno. Martha, having had
difficulty in gaining admittance to the house
where Nigel had sent her, for the ship
chandler's wife had disappeared, was
discovered and protected by Richie Moni-
plies, who had returned to London to look
for his master and try to help him. Nigel,
in the meantime, tried to approach the
king. James, believing that Nigel wanted
to kill him, called out for help. His
attendants seized Nigel and carried him off
to the Tower. Dalgarno, one of the royal
party, was only too glad to see Nigel im-
1254

prisoned.
In his cell Nigel was accused by Heriot
of adultery with the ship chandler's wife
and of duplicity in the disappearance of
Martha Trapbois. Nigel denied his guilt
in either of these affairs. Heriot, while
refusing to believe him, nevertheless said
that he would again try to help Nigel for
his dead father's sake, and he asked Nigel
for the royal warrant. His plan was to
collect the money from the state and satisfy
the money-lenders who were pressing for
the repayment of Nigel's loan. Nigel was
in despair when he discovered that the
royal warrant had been taken from his
baggage.
Through a noble friend, Nigel was
cleared of the charge of treason—that is,
his supposed attempt on the king's life in
the Park. However, he still had to stand
trial for drawing his sword against
Dalgarno. Richie went to Nigel in his cell
and promised to help his master out of his
troubles.
In the meantime the king received a
letter from the Lady Hermione, in which
she charged that Dalgarno was the man
who had betrayed her. The king in an
attempt to amend the wrong forced
Dalgarno to marry Lady Hermione, but
after the ceremony Dalgarno informed the
king that he now possessed his wife's
wealth and through her a claim upon the
Glenvarloch estates. If the redemption
money were not paid by noon of the
following day, he would, he announced, take
possession of Nigel's property. Convinced
at last that Nigel was the injured party in
the affair with Dalgarno, the Icing
informed Richie that his master would be
restored to royal favor. Richie, armed with
money given to him by Martha Trapbois,
paid the mortgage on Nigel's estates.
Dalgarno, after trying to show that the
redemption papers were gained
unlawfully, proceeded on his way to Scodand
to claim the property, but on the way he
was killed by the same ruffian he had
hired to murder Trapbois some time
before. His death restored to Lady Hermione
the fortune which Dalgarno, as her
husband, had claimed. She gave a large
portion of her wealth to Margaret and the
rest to Nigel, her kinsman. Nigel and
Margaret declared their love for each
other and were married. During the
ceremony Richie appeared with Martha
Trapbois, whom he had married. Martha told
Nigel that her father had stolen his royal
warrant, and by returning the paper to
him she made his estates secure. In
gratitude to Richie for his part in restoring
honor in the court, the king made the
faithful servant a knight of the land.
1255

THE FORTUNES OF RICHARD MAHONY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry Handel Richardson (Mrs. Henrietta Richardson Robertson, 1870-1946)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Australia
First published: 1917, 1925, 1929
Principal characters:
Richard Mahony, a doctor
Polly, his wife
Purdy Smith, his friend
John Turnham, Polly's brother
Henry Ocock, Richard's solicitor
Critique:
Written and published separately as
three novels, Australia Felix, The Way
Home, and Ultima Thuley this story of
Richard Mahony has had wide
popularity, and some critics have ranked the
trilogy with the great books of this
century. The central character is a doctor
who starts his practice in humility,
reaches dizzying heights, and ends his life
a madman. It is also the story of a woman
who shared that life completely,
spending herself unmercifully in a vain
attempt to help her husband find peace of
mind. Uncompromisingly realistic, the
novel is the most distinguished work of
fiction out of Australia.
The Story:
Richard Mahony was ill-suited to life
in the Australian gold mines. A
moderately successful doctor, he had left his
practice in England and gone to the
colonies in hopes of a quick fortune.
Having found the life of digger
completely wrong for him, he had taken
what little money and goods he had left
and set up a store. But he hated the raw
country with bitter passion, and longed
for England and his native Ireland.
To that life he brought his bride, Polly
Turnham, whom he had met through an
old schoolfriend, Purdy Smith. Purdy
was as crude as Richard was fastidious.
Polly wept at her new home, but she
loved her husband, and she set about
making the best of matters. The death
of her baby matured and quieted her, but
it did not kill her spirit.
When her sister-in-law died, Polly
gladly cared for her children. Her other
brothers and sisters, separated from their
home in England, turned to her as they
might a mother, and she comforted and
encouraged them as she did her husband.
When Richard found his business
declining, he decided to sell out and take
Polly back to England. But Polly
persuaded him instead to stay in Australia
and set up a medical practice. With the
help of Polly's brother, John Turnham,
Richard borrowed enough money to get
a decent house and the necessary
medical supplies. Henry Ocock, the son of a
neighbor and a successful solicitor,
arranged a loan and in other ways advised
Richard.
Richard had a sudden stroke of luck.
On Henry Ocock's advice he had
invested a small sum in some mining stock,
Australia Felixes. The stock suddenly
boomed and Richard found himself
overnight a wealthy man. As he prospered, so
did his practice, until he had more than
he could handle. But Richard began to
assume an air that worried Polly.
Thinking his old friends uncouth and crude,
he wanted Polly to join more fashionable
circles. She did so, but she quietly re-
THE FORTUNES OF RICHARD MAHONY by Henry Handel Richardson. By permission of the
publishers, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1917, 1929, 1931, by W. W. Norton & Co., Inc. All
rights reserved.
1256

tained the old friendships as well.
After an exhausting illness, brought on
by overwork, Richard finally sold out his
practice and prepared to return to
England. He could return as he had always
dreamed he would, rich and honored.
They set sail, Richard with pride and
Polly with sorrow.
In England, and during their short
visit in Ireland, Polly and Richard Ma-
hony were welcomed and entertained.
But when Richard settled down to
practice medicine again, he was twice scorned
as a bushman from Australia, unfit to
treat or to meet socially English snobs
of the middle class. Worst of all were
the snubs to Polly. These Richard could
not tolerate, and so they returned to
Australia. There Richard learned that his
Australia Felix stocks had taken a new
turn upward; he was wealthy beyond
his wildest dreams. He bought a splendid
house and called it Ultima Thule. To
Polly's sorrow, he did not return to his
practice. Feeling that he could retire
and enjoy the quiet he had always longed
for, Richard turned to spiritualism and
spent long hours in seances with
charlatans and quacks, in spite of Polly's
remonstrances and those of his friends. In
the great house he lived at times like a
recluse with his books and fancies. Polly
resumed her old ways with her friends
and relatives. John, remarried, had been
widowed again, and Polly once more had
to care for her brother's children and
soften his bitterness toward the world.
John, successful in business and politics,
was still dependent on Polly. Even after
he married the third time, he could not
find and hold the happiness that came
naturally to his sister.
At last Polly and Richard had the
family they had hoped for. Polly gave
birth to a son and, a year later, twin girls.
Although they were getting on in years,
Polly and Richard lavished all their love
and attention on the children. But
Richard was withdrawing more and more
from the world, and it was Polly who
guided the children through their early
days. Their happiness was marred by the
death, from cancer, of Polly's brother
John. Richard, although he no longer
practiced medicine, did everything
possible to ease the sick man's pain. Then,
because of Polly's grief after John's death,
Richard decided to return to England.
Ultima Thule was sold before the family
left for the land Richard would always
call home.
In England, Richard continued his
preoccupation with spiritualism. He had for
some time, even back in Australia, been
bothered by weird dreams which became
more frequent and confusing. Richard
was convinced that he was actually
communicating with the dead, but Polly
could see that her husband was
deteriorating in body and mind.
The worst blow of all came when he
received news that the broker in charge
of his financial affairs had absconded
from Australia to America. Richard was
completely ruined. Leaving Polly and the
children to follow later, he left at once
for Australia.
On his arrival in Australia, Richard
learned that he had left only about three
thousand pounds, and he was forced to
resume his medical practice. When Polly
and the children arrived, she found that
in spite of his poverty he had lost none
of his grand ideas. As they went from
one miserable village to another,
Richard's mental deterioration increased
rapidly in the squalor in which they lived.
His temper was short; he still scorned
the old friends as louts to be avoided, and
Polly had to meet them in secret. She
herself suffered a shock that was almost
too much for her to bear when Lallie,
one of the twin girls, died a horrible,
agonizing death. The tragedy brought
Polly and Richard close £gain, Richard
being her only comfort arid strength. He
insisted that Polly take the two
remaining children for a vacation. Alone,
Richard could no longer fight his strange
dreams and illusions. His dead daughter
appeared to him often, and the servant
heard him talking to himself like a mad-
1257

man. In his depressed state of mind he
lost the pitifully few patients he had.
When Polly and the children returned,
she found her husband really ill. After
selling the house and her own few
trinkets, she moved with Richard to an even
more miserable town. There he grew
steadily worse and once attempted
suicide. Trying to manage, Polly put
Richard in a private mental hospital and took
a position as postmistress in a hovel far
removed from any home they had ever
known. When she had no more money
to pay the hospital, she placed Richard,
now mad, in a public asylum. When she
tried to visit him and learned that he
was being treated like an animal, she
turned to her old friend, Henry Ocock,
to help her get Richard out of the
institution. At all costs, Richard should not
die like a beast.
Richard went home at last. His sanity
never returned, but on his deathbed he
looked at Polly and called her his dear
wife. His words were all the reward
Polly needed for her life of sacrifice for the
husband buried in a strange land that
could never claim his soul.
1258

THE FORTY DAYS OF MUSA DAGH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Franz Werfel (1890-1945)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1915
Locale: Near Antioch, Syria
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Gabriel Bagradian, an Armenian patriot
Juliette Bagradian, his wife
Stephan Bagradian, their son
Ter Haigasun, Armenian priest of the village of Yoghonoluk
Critique:
The triumphant defense of the
stronghold of Musa Dagh by a small band of
Armenians is a moving story in itself.
It can only be added that Franz Werfel
has, with beautiful restraint, given this
narrative of sacrifice and devotion a
universal meaning.
The Story:
After twenty-three years spent in Paris,
Gabriel Bagradian returned with his
wife and child to his ancestral village of
Yoghonoluk. He had gone back to
Turkey in order to settle the affairs of his
dying brother, and after his death Gabriel
stayed on in the village to await the
end of European hostilities.
One Sunday his son's tutor told him
officials had been through the village
collecting all passports. To learn what
had happened, Bagradian saddled a horse
and started for Antioch. There the Kai-
makam, or governor, gave only evasive
answers about the passport incident. Later,
in a Turkish batn, Bagradian heard that
the Turkish war minister had ordered all
Armenians disarmed and given menial
work. From his Mohammedan friend,
Agha Rifaat Bereket, Bagradian learned
that rich and prominent Armenians
would soon be persecuted.
Gabriel was worried. On his return
to Yoghonoluk he began to collect data
on the number of men of fighting age in
the vicinity. Ter Haigasun, the
Gregorian priest, told him one day that there
had been a mass arrest in Antioch
Bagradian began a survey of Musa Dagh,
a mountain which lay between the
Armenian villages and the
Mediterranean Sea. After having maps drawn
of the terrain, Bagradian knew that the
plateau with its natural fortifications
offered a refuge for his people.
One day a friendly Turkish
policeman confided to Bagradian that in three
days the village would be ordered to
prepare for its trip into exile. Bagradian
called a meeting of the people. The
Protestant pastor, Nokhudian, and his
congregation voted to accept banishment,
the rest of the population to defend
Musa Dagh. Ter Haigasun was elected
leader. The next morning the young
men under Bagradian's directions began
the construction of trenches and other
defenses on Musa Dagh, and at night
the people carried provisions up the
mountain. Unfortunately there were not
enough rifles to go around and very little
ammunition, but the men of the village
were augmented by army deserters who
drifted in from the desert until there
were sixty armed men in the community.
On the third day the convoy escort
arrived. The village pretended to busy
itself with preparations for the trip, but
that night everyone but Pastor Nok-
hudian's flock secretly departed for Musa
Dagh.
It took five days for the Turks to
discover Bagradian's mountain retreat, for
THE FORTY DAYS OF MUSA DAGH by Franz Werfel. Translated by Geoffrey Dunloo. By permission of the
publishers. The Viking Press Inc. Copyright, 1934, by The Viking Prej» Inc.
1259

the woods were so thick and the trenches
dug so cleverly that the encampment
was not visible from below. During
that time the trenches were completed,
posts assigned, and patterns for daily
living laid down. Everyone was given a
task, and the food of the community was
held in common so that all might be
treated fairly.
The first sortie ended in a victory for
the holders of Musa Dagh. The four
hundred regulars and gendarmes who
boldly attacked, not even seeking cover,
were quickly routed and substantial
booty of badly needed ammunition, boots,
and uniforms was recovered. The second
attack came several days later. Turkish
howitzers managed to do considerable
damage, wounding six non-combatants in
the town enclosure and setting the grain
depot on fire. Sarkis Kilikian,
commander of the south bastion, rigged up a
catapult to hurl stones at the attackers.
These in turn caused a landslide which
killed or maimed half the Turkish force.
Young Stephan Bagradian and his friend,
Haik, raided the Turkish gun
emplacements. Sixteen of the defenders were
killed.
Three days later there were again signs
of activity in the valley. The Kaimakam
had imported families of Arabs to take
over the Armenian houses and farms. On
Musa Dagh a Greek-American
adventurer, Gonzague Maris, who had fled
with, the Armenians and who had since
seduced Juliette Bagradian, tried to
persuade her to flee with him under the
protection his passport afforded. She was
undecided. Bagradian and his wife had
grown apart in those troubled times. He
was burdened with military duties, and
she seemed indifferent to his fate.
Bagradian found his only companionship in
Iskuhi, a refugee from Zeitun.
The next attack was carried out by
two thousand trained Turkish soldiers.
In fierce fighting they captured the first
line of trenches below the southern
bastion. That night Bagradian had his troops
counterattack and the trenches were
retaken. The defenders also set a fire which
raced down the mountain, driving the
Turks into the valley. Musa Dagh was
again saved.
Gonzague Maris begged Juliette
several times to go away with him, but she
did not have the courage to tell her
husband she was leaving him. Then
Bagradian discovered the lovers together
and took his wife off, half-unconscious,
to her tent. She was seriously ill with
fever. The Greek disappeared of his own
accord.
That same night Stephan Bagradian
left Musa Dagh, without permission, to
accompany his friend Haik, who was
being sent to the American consul in
Aleppo to ask for intervention on behalf
of his people. Haik made his way safely
to Aleppo, but Stephan developed a fever
and had to start back to the mountain.
On the way, the Turks captured and
killed him. His body was thrown into
the cemetery yard in Yoghonoluk where
it was found by some old women who
took it to his father. The last of the
Bagradians was buried on Musa Dagh.
The next day flocks grazing beyond
the fortifications were captured by the
Turks. There was now only enough food
to last three or four days more.
On the fortieth day on Musa Dagh
the people were suffering. It was their
third day of famine. Gabriel had planned
one last desperate attack for that night,
an attempt to reach the valley with his
men, capture some high officials as
hostages, and return to the mountain. But
that afternoon, as Ter Haigasun held a
service to petition God for help, Sarkis
Kilikian and his deserters broke into the
town enclosure to steal ammunition and
food. They fled, setting fire to the
buildings to cover their escape. The Turks
took advantage of their desertion to
capture the south bastion. The next
day they would capture the plateau.
Kilikian was brought back by deserters
who felt it would be better to die with
their own people than to be captured by
the Turks. He was put to death.
1260

As the Turks prepared to advance at
dawn, a French cruiser dropped its first
shell into the valley. Its commander
had seen the fire in the town enclosure
the day before. Approaching to
investigate, he had seen the enormous flag the
Armenians were using as a distress signal.
The Turks retreated into the valley.
Bagradian led the weary defenders to
the coast and saw them safely aboard a
cruiser and a troopship. Then he started
back up the mountain for a last view of
his son's grave. Exhausted by his ordeal,
he fell asleep halfway up the
mountainside. When he awoke, the ships were
already standing out at sea. He started
to signal them but changed his mind. He
felt that his life was now complete. Up
he climbed until he reached his son's
grave. There a bullet from a Turkish
scout caught him in the temple. On
his son's grave he lay, Stephan's cross
on his heart.
1261

FOUR QUARTETS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: T. S. Eliot (1888- )
First published: 1943
Four Quartets is T. S. Eliot's last book
of nondramatic poetry. Written over a
period of eight years and published
separately, each quartet has the same
structure and helps to develop cumulatively
the same themes. Eliot has said that
transitions in poetry can be similar to
those in a symphony or quartet, and these
quartets are written in the five-movement
sonata form.
The personal and historical significance
of the place names which title the poems
are the points of departure for the themes
developed in the first part of each
quartet. The theme of "Burnt Norton"—an
old Gloucestershire house—is the nature
of time and of personal memories and
experience. "East Coker," which is the
name of the English village from which
Eliot's ancestor left for America in the
seventeenth century, is a consideration of
the meaning of history and an
explanation of the idea of spiritual rebirth.'"The
Dry Salvages," a group of rocks off the
coast of Massachusetts which Eliot knew
as a boy, continues the meditations on
time and history and includes reflections
on human endeavor and further
statements on the nature of experience. These
themes are all, again, present in "Little
Gidding," the name of an Anglican lay
community founded by Nicholas Ferrar.
All themes are thus present in each
quartet with different emphases, the
subsidiary themes are aspects of the major
ones and are directly related to them. A
difference in these poems from Eliot's
earlier verse is that here, although the
elements of surprise and rapid transition
are still present, the transitional passages
are included, whereas in The Waste
Land they were not. The same symbols
also occur in each of the quartets; their
FOUR QUARTETS by T. S. Eliot. Excerpts r«
& Co., Inc. Copyright, 1943, by T. S. Eliot.
multiple and shifting meanings are
resolved in "Little Gidding."
In "Burnt Norton" he writes:
What might have been and what has
been
Point to one end which is always
present.
Here there is no placing of experience
in time ("do not call it fixity"); it is
instead a "stillness." The stillness is the
point beyond experience "into the rose-
garden." To reach it requires the
negation of flesh and spirit. This way of
purgation is repeatedly considered and what
is required for it is release from desire
and compulsion. Meaningful experience
is both in and out of time, and life is too
full of distraction for this end to be often
attained. The description of this
distraction is a vivid realization of the
contemporary predicament:
Only a flicker
Over the strained, time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by
distraction.
The passage following these lines on
suburban Londoners presents "the way
down" towards the dark night of the soul,
"desiccation of the world of sense." But
there are times in the realm of art when
the moment can be prolonged
... as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
A further theme in the quartets, the
nature and difficulty of poetic creation,
follows in contrast to the image of the jar.
The struggle with words which "decay
with imprecision" introduces the Word
which is subject always to temptation.
"Burnt Norton" ends with a repetition
cd by permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace
1262

of the vision of hidden children laughing
in the rose-garden, a motif which
occurred in the first movement. Such
immediacy is contrasted with the usual
bleakness of existence.
Time in "East Coker" involves the
consideration of the history of man. This,
the most despairing of the quartets, comes
closest to complete and unredeemed
bitterness. The cyclic nature of life and
experience is stressed: fields give way to
factories which crumble to dust. The life
cycle of man and earth is presented as if
in a vision after the poet has gone down
the dark lane into the somnolent village.
The second section begins with a lyric
on November, which is followed by a
characteristic reversal:
That was a way of putting it . . .
A periphrastic study in a worn-out
poetical fashion.
The theme of the bitterness and
deception of time mentioned in "Burnt
Norton" is expanded here; the wisdom of old
men is really folly, and
The only wisdom we can hope to
acquire
Is the wisdom of humility.
The concrete description, which in these
poems always either immediately follows
or precedes the abstract thought, is here
that of the descent into subways, which
were also used as air-raid shelters during
World War II. Thus negation and
stillness are combined and the necessity for
"waiting" is introduced.
The fourth movement is a lyric on the
Christian paradox of life in death and
death in life. The symbols are those of
a hospital with a "wounded surgeon"
and "a dying nurse"
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care.
Fire and roses are multiple symbols of
destruction and salvation, purgation and
resurrection. After the cold fever of death
there is purgatory:
Of which the flame is roses, and the
smoke is briars.
The fifth section despairs of poetic
creation, which, at "every attempt/Is a
wholly new start" because the difficulties
once conquered are no longer those that
face the poet. The resolution of this
dilemma is similar to that for the soul:
"For us there is only the trying." The
final section inverts the opening
statement: "In my beginning is my end"; the
poet concludes, "In my end is my
beginning."
The superb pictures of the Mississippi
River and the Atlantic Ocean in "The
Dry Salvages" show an increase in the
music of the verse which is sustained in
"Little Gidding." The river is "a strong
brown god" and the sea has "Many gods
and many voices." The sea time "is not
our time"; "time stops and is never
ending." The lyric in Section II speaks of
the grief of shipwreck and of those things
thought "most reliable" which are
"therefore the fittest for renunciation." There
is no end to this pain, only the
possibility of prayer.
The pattern of the past with its
content of meaningful experience is seen
here in its historical perspective:
And approach to the meaning restores
the experience
In a different form, beyond any
meaning
We can assign to happiness.
This passage connects with the reference
to Krishna in Section III, one of the
many allusions to and quotations of other
authors in the quartets. The theory of
time is drawn from the philosopher Hera-
clitus and part of the conclusion of
"Little Gidding" from Dame Julian of
Norwich. The rose and fire symbolism is
reminiscent of Dante, and the conception
of the dark night of the soul is that of
St. John of the Cross. While awareness
of these sources adds considerably to the
enjoyment of the quartets, Eliot
integrates them so completely and so per-
1263

fectly controls their place in the poetry,
placing them where they have such an
exact significance, that the poems can
be appreciated and understood without
knowledge of source or influence. The
poet Krishna is mentioned by name,
however, and his words, "fare forward,
voyagers" instead of "fare well" are
important, as they indicate the essential
release from desires and are an
exhortation to unselfishness or selflessness.
Section V contains the meaning of the
explanation of time's paradoxical aspects:
But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the
timeless
With time, is an occupation for the
saint.
The images of flowers, sunlight, and
music which have recurred throughout
these poems symbolize the ordinary man's
experiences which, although fragmentary,
nevertheless are "hints of grace": "The
hint half guessed, the gift half
understood, is Incarnation."
The resolution of themes in "Little
Gidding" is accomplished by
semi-repetitive exposition and some further
development. The chapel at Little Gidding is a
place "where prayer has been valid." The
many allusions to writers and saints and
saints who were writers is explained:
. . . the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living.
The death of the four elements in
Section II opens the way to spiritual
resurrection. This lyric is followed by the
poet's meeting, after an air raid, with a
"familiar compound ghost"—the shade of
all his past teachers—who tells him of
the grief and failure of old age
. . . unless restored by that refining
fire
Where you must move in measure like
a dancer.
The historical theme is restated in the
relationship of the present and the past
as a reconciliation of opposites: "History
may be servitude,/History may be
freedom." And
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated.
The solution of the dilemma of the
burden of Divine care for humanity, so
bleakly felt in "East Coker," is here seen
to be love, which binds us in our desires
and alone is able to give the essential
release from them.
The end of exploration, of the
struggle with words and of all human actions
"Will be to arrive where we started/And
to know the place for the first time." The
moments of personal and historical
experience are never lost:
The moment of the rose and the
moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people
without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history
is a pattern
Of timeless moments.
The way of purgation which requires the
whole being has led to "complete
simplicity" where "the fire and the rose are
one."
For all their complexity, Four
Quartets contains Eliot's most explicit poetry.
The poems are specifically Christian,
recording the progress of the soul toward
salvation. The way in which the themes
are at various levels interwoven to
augment and illuminate one another, the
control of language and rhythm, and the
beauty and precision of the images allow
some critics to call these quartets Eliot's
finest achievement.
1264

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: 1850's
Locale: "Barsetshire" and London
First published: 1861
Principal characters:
Mark Robarts, vicar of Framley in Barsetshire
Fanny, his wife
Lucy, his sister
Lady Lufton, mistress of Framley Court, Mark's benefactress
Lord Lufton, her son, Mark's close friend
Sowerby, squire of Chaldicotes, acquaintance of Lord Lufton and Mark
Miss Dunstable, Sowerby's benefactress
Dr. Thorne, the man she married
Critique:
This novel is one of the long, leisurely
Barchester series. It contains no great
moral theme, but it does present some
delightful portraits of ecclesiastical
characters and other nineteenth-century
figures. It is marked by slowly paced
development of plot and by conversational
interruptions from the author. Without
stepping over into sentimentality, but
rather maintaining a wise, ironical tone,
the novel provides pleasant,
heart-warming entertainment.
The Story:
Mark Robarts was the vicar of
Framley, an appointment secured through
Lady Lufton of Framley, who was very
fond of him. He was ambitious,
however, and he went to a house party at
Chaldicotes, the estate of Mr. Sowerby,
of whom Lady Lufton disapproved.
Sowerby was notorious for living on other
people's money, for he had long since
run through his own fortune. While
Mark was visiting him, Sowerby played
on the vicar's sympathy to such an extent
that Mark signed his name to a note for
four hundred pounds. From Chaldicotes
Mark went to another house party at
Gatherum Castle, home of the Duke of
Omnium. The Duke of Omnium was
also an enemy of Lady Lufton. Mark
felt the contacts he would make at these
parties would help him in climbing
higher in his career.
When Mark returned home, he told
Lord Lufton he had signed a note for
Sowerby. Young Lufton could hardly
believe a man of Mark's position would
do such a thing, for Mark could not
afford to pay the note and certainly he
would never recover the money from
Sowerby. Before Mark told his wife,
Fanny, about the debt he had incurred,
his father died and his sister Lucy came
to live at Framley parsonage. During
the next three months Lucy and Lord
Lufton became very friendly. Lucy was
a small girl without striking beauty, and
inclined to be quiet, but when she was
with Lord Lufton, she found herself
talking with great ease.
When Sowerby's note came due, he
asked Mark to sign another for five
hundred pounds, a sum which would
cover the first note and allow an
additional hundred pounds for extras. Mark
saw the treachery of Sowerby's scheme,
but, unable to pay the note due, he
was forced to sign.
Lady Lufton hinted to Fanny that she
hoped to find a better match than Lucy
for her son, but by this time the two
young people had fallen in love with
each other. Disturbed also by Mark's
attentions to the Chaldicotes set, Lady
Lufton sent Mr. Crawley, a strait-laced
clergyman from the nearby austere parish
1265

of Hogglestock, to remonstrate with
Mark. After his visit Mark resolved to
act more in accordance with Lady Luf-
ton's wishes.
One day Lord Lufton declared his love
for Lucy and asked her to marry him.
Lucy, mindful of Lady Lufton's feelings,
said she could not love him. Lufton
was full of disappointment and grief.
Sowerby informed Mark that the new
prime minister had it in his power to
appoint the new precentor at Barchester
Cathedral. Through Sowerby's influence,
Mark received the appointment. He
bought a race horse from Sowerby to
show his gratitude.
Sowerby, greatly in debt to the Duke
of Omnium, was about to lose his estate.
Sowerby's sister, Mrs. Harold Smith,
was a close friend of Miss Dunstable, a
middle-aged spinster whose father had
left her a fortune made in patent
medicine. Mr?. Smith suggested that Sowerby
ask Miss Dunstable to marry him and to
say frankly that he wanted her chiefly
for her money, since Miss Dunstable
herself was a forthright, outspoken woman.
Sowerby sent his sister to propose for
him. Although Miss Dunstable refused
his proposal, she agreed to buy Chaldi-
cotes and let Sowerby live in the house
for the remainder of his life. She said
she would marry only a man who was not
interested in her money.
That man, she thought, was Dr.
Thorne, a bachelor physician from Bar-
setshire. She had informed Dr. Thome's
niece of her admiration for him and the
niece had tried to show her uncle how
wonderful life would be with Miss
Dunstable. He was shocked at the idea of
proposing. Though Miss Dunstable
talked to him alone at a party she gave
in London, Dr. Thorne said nothing at
all about marriage. Back home, he
decided that Miss Dunstable would, after
all, make an admirable wife. He wrote
her a letter of proposal and was accepted.
Lord Lufton went to Norway on a
fishing trip. While he was away, Mrs.
Crawley became ill of typhoid fever at
Hogglestock, and Lucy went to nurse her
through her sickness. The Crawley
children were taken to Framley parsonage
against Crawley's will, for he felt they
might become accustomed to comforts
he could not afford.
Sowerby's second note was coming due.
Mark could consider no plan to get him
out of his difficulty. If he had to go to
jail, he would go. If he had to forfeit
the furniture in his house, he would
forfeit it. But under no circumstances
would he ever put his name to another
note.
Lord Lufton returned from Norway
and learned from his mother that she
thought Lucy insignificant. When he
heard Lucy was at Hogglestock, he went
there and again asked her to marry him.
She replied that she did indeed love him
but she would not marry him unless his
mother approved. At first Lady Lufton
refused to consider the match, but when
she saw how determined her son was to
have Lucy, she gave in and actually asked
Lucy to become her daughter-in-law.
Meanwhile, the bailiffs had come to
Framley parsonage to take inventory of
the furniture, which was to be sold to
pay Mark's obligations. When Lord
Lufton discovered what was going on, he
dismissed the bailiffs and persuaded Mark
to accept a loan for payment of the note.
Sowerby lived at Chaldicotes for only
a short time before he disappeared, ana
Mark was relieved of worry over his
foolish debt. Miss Dunstable married
Dr. Thorne and, after the departure of
Sowerby, moved into the house at
Chaldicotes. Lucy married Lord Lufton and
became mistress, at least nominally, of
Framley Court. Fate seemed to have
for each some fair reward.
1266

FRANKENSTEIN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mary Godwin Shelley (1797-1851)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Europe
First published: 1817
Principal characters:
Robert Walton, an explorer
Victor Frankenstein, an inventor
Elizabeth, his foster sister
William, his brother
Justine, the Frankensteins' servant
Clerval, Victor's friend
The Monster
Critique:
Frankenstein: or, The Modern
Prometheus is a weird tale, a wholly incredible
story told with little skill. Although
not often read now, it is known very
widely by name. The endurance of
this Gothic romance depends on perhaps
two factors. First, Mary Shelley would
be remembered if she had written
nothing, for she was the wife of Percy Bysshe
Shelley under romantic and scandalous
circumstances. Indeed, Frankenstein was
written as a result of a conversation
between Byron and the Shelleys. Second,
the idea of creating a monster has wide
appeal. Frankenstein has become part of
the popular imagination.
The Story:
Walton was an English explorer whose
ship was held fast in polar ice. As the
company looked out over the empty ice
field,'they were astonished to see a sledge
drawn by dogs speeding northward. The
sledge driver looked huge and misshapen.
That night an ice floe carried to the ship
another sledge, one dog, and a man in
weakened condition. When the
newcomer learned that his was the second
sledge sighted from the ship, he became
much agitated.
Walton was greatly attracted to the
man during his convalescence, and as
they continued fast in the ice, the men
haa leisure to get acquainted. At last,
after he had recovered somewhat from
exposure and hunger, the man told
Walton his story:
Victor Frankenstein was born of good
family in Geneva. As a playmate for
their son, the parents had adopted a
lovely little girl of the same age. Victor
and Elizabeth grew up as brother and
sister. Much later another son, William,
was born to the Frankensteins.
Victor early showed promise in the
natural sciences. He devoured the works
of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus, and
thought in his ignorance that they were
the real masters. When he grew older,
his father decided to send Victor to the
university at Ingolstadt. There he soon
learned all that his masters could teach
him in the fields of natural science.
Engaged in brilliant and terrible research,
he stumbled by chance on the secret of
creating life. Once he had that
knowledge he could not rest until he had
employed it to create a living being.
By haunting the butcher shops and
dissecting rooms, he soon had the necessary
raw materials. With great cunning he
fashioned an eight-foot monster and
endowed him with life.
But as soon as he had created his
monster, he was subject to strange
misgivings. During the night the monster
came to his bed. At the sight of that
horrible face, he shrieked and frightened
the monster away. The horror of his act
prostrated him with a brain fever. His
1267

best friend, Henry Clerval, arrived from
Geneva and helped to nurse him through
his illness. He was unable to tell
Clerval what he had done.
Terrible news came from Geneva.
William, Victor's young brother, was
dead by the hand of a murderer. He had
been found strangled in a park, and a
faithful family servant, Justine, had been
charged with the crime. Victor hurried
to Geneva.
At the trial Justine told a convincing
story. She had been looking for William
in the countryside and, returning after
the city gates had been closed, had spent
the night in a deserted hut. But she
could not explain how a miniature from
William's neck came to be in her pocket.
Victor and Elizabeth believed the girl's
story, but in spite of all their efforts
Justine was convicted and condemned.
Depressed by these tragic events,
Victor went hiking over the mountainous
countryside. Far ahead on the glacier, he
saw a strange, agile figure that filled him
with horrible suspicions. Unable to
overtake the figure, he sat down to rest.
Suddenly the monster appeared before him.
The creature demanded that Victor
listen to his story.
When he left Victor's chambers in
Ingolstadt, everyone he met screamed and
ran away. Wandering confusedly, the
monster finally found shelter in an
abandoned hovel adjoining a cottage. By great
stealth he remained there during daylight
and at night sought berries for food.
Through observation he began to learn
the ways of man. Feeling an urge to
friendship, he brought wood to the
cottage every day. But when he attempted
to make friends with the cottagers, he was
repulsed with such fear and fury that
his heart became bitter toward all men.
When he saw William playing in the
park, he strangled the boy and took the
miniature from his neck. Then during
the night he came upon Justine in the
hut and put the picture in her pocket.
Presently the monster made a horrible
demand. He insisted that Victor fashion
a mate for him who would give him love
and companionship. The monster
threatened to ravage and kill at random if
Victor refused the request. But if Victor
agreed, the monster promised to take his
mate to the wilds of South America where
they would never again be seen by man.
It was a hard choice but Victor felt that
he must accept.
Victor left for England with his friend
Clerval. After parting from his friend
he went to the distant Orkneys and began
his task. He was almost ready to animate
the gross mass of flesh when his
conscience stopped him. He could not let
the two monsters mate and spawn a race
of monsters. He destroyed his work.
The monster was watching at a
window. Angered to see his mate destroyed,
he forcea his way into the house and
warned Victor that a terrible punishment
would fall upon the young man on his
wedding night. Then the monster
escaped by sea. Later, to torment his maker,
he fiendishly killed Clerval.
Victor was suspected of the crime.
Released for lack of evidence, he went back
to Geneva. There he and Elizabeth were
married. Although Victor was armed and
alert, the monster got into the nuptial
chamber and strangled the bride. Victor
shot at him, but he escaped again. Victor
vowed eternal chase until the monster
could be killed.
That was Victor's story. Weakened by
exposure, he died there in the frozen
North, with Elizabeth, William, Justine,
and Clerval unavenged. Then to the
dead man's cabin came the monster, and
Walton, stifling his fear, addressed the
gigantic, hideous creature. Victor's was
the greater crime, the monster said. He
had created a man, a man without love or
friend or soul. He deserved his
punishment. So saving, the monster vanished
over the ice held.
1268

FRATERNITY
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: London
First published: 1909
Principal characters:
Hilary Dallison, a well-to-do writer
Bianca, his wife, an artist
Stephen, his brother
Cecilia, Stephen's wife and Bianca's sister
Thyme, daughter of Stephen and Cecilia
Mr. Stone, father of Bianca and Cecilia
Ivy Barton, a model
Mrs. Hughs, a seamstress
Mr. Hughs, her husband
Critique:
In both his novels and his plays
Galsworthy reflected the social problems of his
age. His conscience was bothered by the
lack of understanding shown by the
members of his own class, the intellectual
and moneyed upper middle class. In this
novel, as in the others, his social satire is
expressed by a delineation of the
complacency of the upper classes, rather than by
an analysis of the lower classes and their
situation. Here also, as in other works,
his diagnosis is not profound, nor does
he attempt to offer any remedy for the
problems he shows. Some readers may
feel that this volume shows how
Galsworthy's efforts to understand his age and
his indignation at what he finds lead
to no satisfactory solution in the end. Yet
Fraternity is generally regarded as one
of Galsworthy's best works of fiction,
aside from that series of upper middle-
class novels upon which his fame rests,
The Forsyte Saga.
The Story:
Bianca Dallison had begun the chain
of events by asking her writer husband
to find a model for her painting "The
Shadow." Through a friendly artist
Hilary had located a girl from the country
who suited his wife. The girl, Ivy
Barton, was very attractive, and after she
had finished posing for Bianca the Dalli-
sons tried to help her find work. They
had also found her a place to live with
the Dallisons' seamstress, a Mrs. Hughs.
But Ivy Barton, through no fault of
her own, began to create trouble in the
Hughs household when Mr. Hughs
became enamored of her and Mrs. Hughs
became extremely jealous. One day Mrs.
Hughs told Cecilia Dallison her troubles
at home. Cecilia told Mrs. Hughs' story
to the rest of the family. The Dallisons,
all very much interested in social
problems, wished to help the girl and the
Hughs family. But the situation was a
delicate one. Their interest was
heightened by the comment of Mr. Stone that
in the lower classes each of them had a
counterpart, a shadow, and that everyone
was bound together by the bonds of
fraternity in the brotherhood of man. Mr.
Stone was writing a book on that very
subject.
Hilary Dallison found that the girl's
work as a model was not regular and that
she was finding it necessary to pose in
the nude. He found her steady
employment as a copyist for his father-in-law,
FRATERNITY by John Galsworthy. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright., 1909, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1923, by the author. Renewed, 1936, by Ada Galsworthy.
1269

Mr. Stone, who in his old age had
embarked upon his strange philosophical
work on die brotherhood of man. Bianca
Dallison did not like the idea, for Mr.
Stone lived with her and her husband.
She began to be extremely jealous of the
little model, even though it had been
years since she and her husband had
lived as man and wife.
In spite of his wife's jealousy, it was
Hilary who first investigated the trouble
at the Hughs'. He found no one but Mr.
Hughs at home. The visit only made the
situation worse, for Hughs became
convinced that Hilary was having an affair
with Ivy. Hughs began to loiter about
the Dallison house and to follow the
model home when she finished her work
with Mr. Stone. When Cecilia also
learned that Hughs was beating his wife,
the family decided that the situation was
dangerous for the model and for Hilary.
Cecilia tried to convince Hilary that the
girl should be sent away and that he
should stop trying to help Mr. and Mrs.
Hughs. He only smiled at her
suggestions.
Sometime later Hilary followed Hughs
when the latter trailed Ivy home. Hilary
was somewhat dismayed to discover that
Hughs followed only to prevent the girl
from meeting anyone else, including
Hilary. Nevertheless, Hilary met the girl in
a park after she had shaken her follower.
Ivy let Hilary notice that her clothing was
very shabby, and he, feeling sorry for her,
took her into a shop and purchased a
complete outfit for her. His deed won her
complete devotion; she was in love with
Hilary Dallison.
After leaving Ivy at the store where
they had purchased her outfit, Hilary
went to spend the evening at his club;
he knew that his wife would not mind
his absence from her. When he got home,
however, he found her in his room. They
kissed, and for a moment forgot they had
agreed not to live as man and wife. Then
the moment passed, and Bianca fled to
her room. Needing someone to talk to,
Hilary went down to Mr. Stone's room
and had a cup of cocoa.
The daughter of Stephen and Cecilia
Dallison, Thyme, also tried to help the
Hughs family. Her interest was the
Hughs' tiny baby. She also noted that
Ivy had new clothes and guessed that
her uncle had bought them for the girl.
The word quickly ran through the
family, and Stephen, trying to make Hilary
see how the others looked at the
situation, told him that Bianca was bound to
be jealous, even though they did not live
as man and wife. Hilary felt that the
celibacy she imposed on him had taken
away any grounds for jealousy she might
have.
That same afternoon Hughs went to
the Dallison home and tried to tell Bianca
about her husband's affair with Ivy.
Although she refused to listen to the man,
the incident roused her emotions and
suspicions. At least her pride was hurt. That
evening Hilary and Bianca tried to talk
over the matter, but all they succeeded
in doing was hurting each other. Bianca
refused to believe that her husband was
innocent of any intentions toward the
model and had simply bought the girl
some clothing because he felt sorry for
her.
With his sister-in-law's help, Hilary
found another room for Ivy. Hoping to
solve the problem of Bianca's jealousy,
he also told her not to come to his house
to copy for Mr. Stone. When Hughs
returned home that night and learned that
Ivy had left his house, he beat his wife
and wounded her with a bayonet. As a
result, he was put into prison for several
weeks. During the time he was in prison
the Hughs' baby died, for Mrs. Hughs
was too upset to nurse him.
Old Mr. Stone became very ill and
unhappy at the same time, for he missed
the company of the model as well as the
copying she had done for him. In an
effort to help her father, Bianca sought out
Ivy and had her return to be with the
old man part of every day. Because of
his child's death and the girl's return to
work at Hilary's house, it seemed as if
1270

the problem would still be unsolved when
Hughs returned from prison.
To avoid a repetition of the whole
distasteful situation, Hilary resolved to go
to Europe. He made up his mind that
he would go alone, even though Ivy was
in love with him and wished to go along.
His wife, because of her conscience,
resolved to help the girl in Hilary's
absence. When she went to the girl's rooms,
however, she found her belongings
packed. It dawned on her that in spite
of his resolve her husband was taking the
model with him. Bianca left the house
in a fury just as her husband arrived.
Her jealousy and anger were wasted,
however, for after she left, when Ivy
kissed him, Hilary realized that he could
never live for long with a girl from the
lower classes. Flinging all the money he
had with him on the bed, he left alone.
He took rooms for himself in London
and then sent a letter to Bianca through
his brother Stephen. He told her of his
decision to stop seeing Ivy and his
further decision not to return to a marriage
that was only a mockery.
1271

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Type of work: History
Author: Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Time: Last quarter of the eighteenth century
Locale: Paris and elsewhere in France
First published: 1837
Principal personages:
King Louis XV
King Louis XVI
Queen Marie Antoinette
Danton
Marat
Robespierre
Turgot
Napoleon Bonaparte
Count Fersen, Swedish admirer of Marie Antoinette
The French Revolution is a landmark
in the history of nineteenth-century
English literature, the work that, after the
comparative public failure of Sartor Re-
sartus (q.v.), helped to establish Car-
lyle's star in its ascendancy. In its
dramatic picture of the French Revolution
it offered the general reader an estimate
of an event that had disturbed and
shocked the consciences of his
grandparents. It offered a measure of
revolutionary and socially disruptive
movements that was neither optimistic and
blindly trustful of progress (here
Carlyle differed from Utilitarian friends) nor
pessimistic and horrified, as Edmund
Burke had been at the time of the
Revolution. Finally, and perhaps most
important for us, The French Revolution was
a more successful self-realization for
Carlyle than the comparatively nebulous
explorations of ideas which we find in
Sartor Resartus. That earlier work
presents us Carlyle's ideas in a kind of cloud
formation that conceals whatever terrain
of fact and real human experience they
float over; The French Revolution
presents the same ideas brought into
relation to and supported by a bewilderingly
rich body of facts: the day by day events
of the disturbing French years.
Impressive as is Carlyle's method of
digesting and arranging the body of facts,
still more memorable is the way he
commands the facts to do his will. Like an
Old Testament prophet, Carlyle rides the
hurricane and directs the storm of the
fall of absolute monarchy in France. He
produces not just another history of a
vexed period, full of rationalized
information. It is true of Carlyle that his view
of one period of history is always on the
verge of becoming a vision of all human
history. The French women who march
on Versailles stand for the passionate
outbreak of all oppressed human beings, and
the sorrows of Marie Antoinette in the
Conciergerie stand for the agonies of all
trivial human beings carried to their
doom by forces they cannot dominate.
It is possible to indicate some of the
means that Carlyle employs to create his
apocalyptic vision—a vision, not of last
things, but certainly of the forces that
combine to drive history onward. The
arrangement of the facts is rigorously
chronological. The book begins with the
death-pangs of King Louis XV; these are
at once represented as the death-throes
not of one aged monarch but of a regime
or way of life that once justified itself but
which is now a hollow reality. The book
continues with an account of the suicidal
follies of the young king, Louis XVI, and
his pretty and thoughtless wife, Marie
Antoinette. It notices the efforts of some
of the king's ministers, Necker, Turgot,
and others, to stem the advancing tide:
to restore financial soundness and yet
provide money for all who thought they
1272

had a right to spend it. Carlyle, often
with a somewhat uneven pace which
permits him to stop for angry or
compassionate meditation when he wishes to
point out the "inevitable" chain of
disaster and struggle, continues his year by
year and month by month account. He
tells of the meeting of the Estates
General, the Tennis Court Oath, the march
on Versailles, the various attempts to
frame a constitution, the degeneration of
the relation between the royal couple and
the Revolutionary Government, the royal
family's attempted escape to Varennes,
the successive decapitations of king and
queen, the succession of leaders who
could not lead but had to dictate by
harangue and outright terror, and, finally,
the end of the revolution at the hands
of Napoleon Bonaparte, who brought
order with a "whiff of grapeshot" in
1795.
Carlyle, at the end of his work, speaks
of a ship that finally is over the bar after
much labor and peril from counter
winds; and this is certainly the effect of
his narrative. Despite its complexity, his
story is the single account of a set of
events that give a full demonstration of
the glories and horrors of revolution, a
period of history that was inevitable but
not, because of its inevitability, admirable.
In dramatizing a mighty and perilous
passage that involved not the French na
tion alone but all humanity, Thorn?
Carlyle was able to transform his account
of actual events into an apocalyptic
statement about man that does not seem
to belong to any particular time at all.
He did so by means of his style of
presentation and by passages of direct,
explicit interpretation. Perhaps it is the
style that is most decisive. Never before
or since has an English-writing historian
written a book like this history of Car-
lyle's. The narrative is couched in the
present tense, wearing but hortatory;
what occurs happens not in a safely
distant past, but here and now. The
sentimentality of the French fhiloso'phes
and the ignorant and brutal enthusiasms
of the mob threaten us the readers, as
Carlyle drags us through mountains of
detail and event. Moreover, Carlyle
frequently interrupts the forward movement
of the narrative to harangue some of the
chief actors in his story—Dan ton, Mira-
beau, Marie Antoinette—and as we read
it seems possible that they may listen to
him and escape what we well know was
their historical fate. Some of the
harangues, of course, speak not to the
historical personages but to us and suggest
that we (even more than a century after
the appearance of the book) may escape
our historical fate if we will but listen to
Thomas Carlyle. Or if we may not
escape it, we shall understand it better after
reading The French Revolution.
Implication becomes explicit in
innumerable passages like the following
brief one:
Or, apart from all Transcendentalism,
is it not a plain truth of sense, which
the duller mind can even consider as
a truism, that human things wholly are
in continual movement, and action and
reaction; working continually forward,
phasis after phasis, by unalterable laws,
towards prescribed issues? How often
must we say, and yet not rightly lay to
heart: The seed that is sown, it will
spring! Given the summer's
blossoming, then there is also given the
autumnal withering: so is it ordered not
with seedfields only, but with
transactions, arrangements, philosophies,
societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever
man works with in this lower world.
A great body of French fact attests to
what the drifting clouds of Sartor Resar-
tus suggested. It is the "law" of life that
social forms become old clothes unless
they are worn by the people who have
some kind of faith: faith in duty, faith
in silent work, faith in, finally, the
transcendental, self-realizing movement of
some force, some kind of deity which is
realizing itself in the total movements of
human history and particularly in the
great men who rise above themselves and
command the attention of the rest of
1273

mankind, pointing a finger to show the
way all men should "now" go.
Carlyle devoted later books to such
demonstration. Cromwell, Frederick the
Great, and a whole company of great
men in On Heroes and Hero-Worship
(1841)—all of these so exhort us. The
essential tragedy of the French
Revolution, as Carlyle saw it, was that here was
a congeries of events that cried out for a
hero and found only destruction and
social chaos. It lacked, among other things,
a contemporary like Carlyle to annotate
that chaos. But the French people's loss
is our gain. Upon their agonies Carlyle
rests a view of history as a scroll of events
always on the verge of parting and
revealing to us—in the heavens or in the
depths of our beings—the essential divine
plan. The French Revolution was
actually written and rewritten at 5, Cheyne
Row, in London. In spirit, however, it
was written on the isle of Patmos in the
Aegean where, we were told, a still more
famous revelation was composed.
1274

FRIAR BACON AND FRIAR BUNGAY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Robert Greene (1558-1592)
Type of plot: Pseudo-historical chronicle
Time of plot: Thirteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: c. 1589
Principal characters:
Henry III, King of England
Edward, Prince of Wales
Lacy, Earl of Lincoln
Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar
Bungay, a Suffolk conjurer
Jaques Vandermast, a German conjurer
Elinor, Princess of Castile
Margaret, daughter of the Keeper of Fressingfield Park
Critique:
This chronicle play does not show true
dramatic structure; it is simply a series
of scenes presenting interesting
happenings. Although Greene professed to have
used historical material, the action is
pure fiction. So far as is known, neither
the Emperor of Germany nor the King
of Castile ever made a visit to England.
For the modern reader the interest of the
action lies in the magical powers of
Friar Bacon and in the love affair
between Lacy and Margaret. The
Honorable History of Friar Bacon and Friar
Bungay is regarded as one of the most
notable of pre-Shakespearean dramas.
The Story:
When Prince Edward returned from
hunting in a downcast mood, Lacy
remarked on his lord's temper. It remained
for Ralph, the court fool, to hit on the
truth. The hunting party had stopped
for refreshments at the keeper's lodge in
Fressingfield Park, and Prince Edward
had fallen in love with Margaret, the
keeper's daughter.
Plans were laid to win Margaret's love
for Edward, for the maid was modest
and would keep her virtue for her
husband. Ralph proposed that Edward
should dress in the jester's motley, and
Ralph should dress as the prince. They
would then go to Oxford and enlist the
help of Friar Roger Bacon, since only
magic would win over the girl. Lacy was
to go to the fair at Harleston to spy on
Margaret there and to press a suit on
behalf of the prince.
At Oxford, Friar Bacon and his poor
scholar Miles received a deputation of
learned doctors. Burden, their spokesman,
asked about certain rumors they had
heard. It was said that Friar Bacon had
fashioned a great head of brass and with
it he was going to raise a wall of brass
around all of England. Bacon admitted
that he planned such a project. Burden
doubted whether even Friar Bacon could
accomplish such a mighty deed.
To demonstrate his power, Friar
Bacon had a devil bring a tavern hostess
from Henley, a woman with whom
Burden had spent the previous day. Thus
the doctors were convinced of Bacon's
powers.
At Harleston, Lacy approached
Margaret. Although the earl was dressed as
a farmer, his manners were so elegant
that Margaret was attracted to him.
Lacey was minded to press a suit in his
own behalf.
At court, meanwhile, King Henry
received the King of Castile, his daughter
Elinor, and the Emperor of Germany.
Negotiations were under way to betroth
Elinor to Prince Edward. The princess,
having seen a portrait of Edward, was
much inclined to love the prince. The
1275

emperor had brought with him a
German conjurer, Vandermast, to test his
powers against the wise men of
England. The royal party departed for
Oxford to find Friar Bacon.
With the jester disguised as the prince
and Edward disguised as a gentleman in
waiting, the prince's party met the friar
and Miles at Oxford. An argument
developed* between Miles and the others.
To save his scholar, Friar Bacon froze
Edward's sword in its scabbard. After
rebuking the prince for trying to disguise
himself, he invited Edward into his cell.
There he let the prince look into a magic
glass which showed Margaret and Lacy
at Fressingfield.
Friar Bungay was revealing the secret
of Lacy's identity to Margaret as Edward
watched from afar. Margaret was
troubled, for she had fallen in love with
Lacy. When Lacy entered, he declared
at once his desire to wed Margaret. Friar
Bungay was about to perform the
ceremony on the spot, but the anguished
prince called on Friar Bacon to stop
the wedding. The friar obliged by
striking Bungay dumb and whisking him
away to Oxford.
Edward, posting to Fressingfield in
great haste, charged Lacy with treachery
and threatened to kill him. Lacy admitted
his guilt and prepared to submit, but
Margaret pleaded valiantly for the cause
of true love and begged Edward to kill
her instead. Edward, marveling at his
own weakness, changed his mind and
gave his permission for Lacy to marry
Margaret.
At Oxford, the Emperor of Germany
had Vandermast dispute with Friar
Bungay. Bungay conjured up the tree that
guarded the Garden at Hesperides. In
return Vandermast brought in Hercules
and commanded him to tear the branches
from the tree. Triumphantly the
German challenged Friar Bungay to make
Hercules stop, but Bungay had to admit
that he was vanquished. When Friar
Bacon arrived, Hercules, to the emperor's
chagrin, ceased his task immediately for
fear of Bacon. To demonstrate the
eminence of Oxford, Friar Bacon then forced
Hercules to transport Vandermast back
to Hapsburg.
Two squires came to seek the hand
of Margaret. Both were wealthy and
insistent, and the keeper asked his
daughter to choose between them. Margaret
was evasive and put off her answer for
ten days, for she was sure Lacy would
return by that time. After the squires left,
a messenger came with a letter and a
sack of gold. In the letter Margaret read
that Lacy had chosen to marry a Spanish
lady in waiting to Princess Elinor, and
he sent the gold as a dowry for her own
wedding. In great grief, Margaret gave
the gold to the messenger and vowed to
enter a convent.
Working in his cell, Friar Bacon was
at the climax of his experiments, for he
had completed with much labor the
brazen head. Tired from wrestling with
spirits, he lay down to sleep. Miles was
to watch the head and wake his master
as soon as it should speak. During the
night the head made a great noise and
said, "Time is." Thinking those words
unimportant, Miles rested on. The head
made more noise and said, "Time was."
Again Miles did not arouse the friar. A
third time the head spoke: "Time has
been." Lightning flashed and a great
hand appeared and broke the head with
a hammer.
Then Miles awoke Friar Bacon, who
knew at once that the blundering Miles
had ruined his work. No wall of brass
would ever surround England. In his
wrath the friar sent Miles to wander
homeless with a devil to torment him.
After he left Oxford, however, Miles
made the best of a bad situation. He got
on the devil's back and went with him
to Hell, where he was engaged as a
tapster.
King Henry and the King of Castile
were both pleased that Elinor and
Edward had made a match. Lacy, thinking
still of Margaret, spoke so persuasively of
her beauty that the king sanctioned theii
1276

marriage as well. Elinor was particularly
gracious in suggesting a double wedding.
The happy Lacy set out for Fressingfield
to seek his bride.
Friar Bacon broke the sad news of the
brazen head to Friar Bungay. As he
finished his tale, two young scholars came
in to ask permission to look into Friar
Bacon's glass; they wanted to see what
their fathers were doing. The fathers,
who were the two squires seeking
Margaret's hand, were fighting a duel. As
the sons watched, the squires were
stabbed to death. The sons then fought
and each mortally wounded the other. In
sorrow, Friar Bacon broke his magic
glass.
In spite of her father's remonstrances,
Margaret was preparing to enter a
nunnery when Lacy rode up to claim his
bride. Reproached for his cruel letter, he
explained he had written it to test her
constancy. Margaret, yielding to his
entreaties, accompanied him back to court.
The double wedding was solemnized
with royal pomp. Before the wedding
feast Friar Bacon made a prophecy of
the future of England. He foresaw a
period of triumph and peace under a fail
ruler who would exalt the glory of
England over all other nations. Not
understanding that reference to Queen
Elizabeth, Henry called the prophecy mystical
and led the guests to the dining hall.
1277

FRITHIOF?S SAGA
Type of work: Poem
Author: Esaias Tegn£r (1782-1846)
Type of plot: Heroic epic
Time of plot: Eleventh century
Locale: Scandinavia
First published: 1825
Principal characters:
Frithiof, a Viking adventurer and fighter
Ingeborg, a noblewoman loved by Frithiof
Helge, and
Halfdan, brother-kings in Scandinavia
Hrxng, a petty king married to Ingeborg
Critique:
Though a tale of ancient Scandinavia,
Frithiofs Saga was told in a modern spirit
by Tegn6r when he put the old story into
a narrative poem or twenty-four cantos,
each canto done in a different meter.
Frithiof himself is more akin to a modern
hero than he is to the great warriors of
other Scandinavian tales, folk heroes like
Beowulf. TegneYs effort is similar to that
of Tennyson, in that he attempted to
shape the epic material of an ancient
Norse story into nineteenth-century
poetic form. Although the poem lacks the
simplicity and power of true Norse poetry,
the imagery is memorable and the lyricism
sweet and beautiful.
The Story:
In the ancient days of Scandinavia
there was a king named Bele, who had'
two sons, Helge and Halfdan. King Bele
also had a daughter, Ingeborg, a very
beautiful girl. As King Bele grew old and
near death, he called to him his friend of
former days, Thorsten Vikingsson, who
had been loyal to the king in peace and
battle for many years and who was also
near the end of his days. The king told
his sons of the help that Thorsten
Vikingsson had given him in past days
and warned his sons to keep the
friendship of Thorsten's son, Frithiof.
Frithiof had grown up with the
companionship of King Bele's daughter
Ingeborg and loved her and her brothers.
But after the deaths of King Bele and old
Thorsten, who were both laid to rest in
burial mounds overlooking a fjord, the
sons of Bele forgot the warning that their
father had given them, and their
friendship toward Frithiof cooled.
When Frithiof, who had long loved
Ingeborg sued for her hand from her
brothers, they refused his request.
Frithiof, angered and humiliated, vowed that
he would find his revenge and that he
never would carry out his father's request
to help the brother-kings.
Not long thereafter, when King Hring
made war upon the brothers, they sent for
Frithiof to help them. Frithiof,
remembering his vows, continued to play at chess
and ignored their summons.
King Hring, successful in his campaign
against the sons of Bele, made them
promise to give him Ingeborg as his wife.
Meanwhile Ingeborg had taken refuge
in the temple of Balder. Frithiof,
disdainful of the sanctity of the temple, had
visited her there, where they exchanged
rings. Frithiof thus ran the risk of Balder's
wrath.
To punish him for violating the temple,
the brother-kings sent Frithiof to collect
tribute from the inhabitants of the Faroe
islands. Frithiof, with his foster brother,
set sail for the Faroes in Ellida, the best
ship in the North country. It was said of
Ellida that it could even understand the
speech of men.
During the trip a violent storm came up
and the ship almost foundered. Frithiof
1278

broke the ring he had received from
Ingeborg and gave the shards to his men,
so that none of the crew might enter the
kingdom of the sea-goddess without gold.
When the storm subsided, as it did after
the men had conquered a pair of sea-spirits
who rode against them on the backs of
whales, the ship reached the Faroe islands
in safety. Yarl Angantyr, ruler of the
islands, let the tribute be collected for
friendship's sake, and then Frithiof
departed again for his homeland in
Scandinavia.
Upon his return Frithiof heard that the
brother-kings had burned his hall.
Learning that the kings were celebrating the
midsummer feast at the grove of Balder,
he went there to confront them. Upon his
arrival he found few people, but among
them were Helge and his queen, who was
anointing the image of the god.
Frithiof threw the purse with the
tribute money into Helge's face with such
force that Helge's teeth were knocked out.
As Frithiof turned to leave, he saw on the
arm of Helge's queen the great ring of
gold he had given to Ingeborg when they
had exchanged vows. Frithiof snatched
the ring from the queen's arm, and when
she fell to the ground because of his
violence the god's image overturned into the
sacred fire which, blazing up, destroyed
the temple.
Helge pursued Frithiof to punish him,
but pursuit was impossible because the
royal ships had been damaged by Frithiof
and his men. In his anger Frithiof pulled
with such might upon the oars of his ship
that its powerful oars broke like kindling.
Frithiof s violence against Helge and
his queen and the double profanation of
Balder's temple made the warrior an
outcast from his homeland. A true son of the
Vikings, he took to the sea and battled
with haughty sea-kings, whom he slew.
But in spite of his outlawry he permitted
traders to travel the seaways unmolested.
When he earned great glory as a fighter
and much gold through his exploits,
Frithiof sought once again to return to his
homeland in the North.
Disguising himself as a salt-burner, he
visited the land of the brother-kings'
enemy, King Hring, who had long since
married Ingeborg, Frithiofs beloved.
Hring, recognizing Frithiof but keeping
his counsel to himself, commanded that
the warrior be seated next to him at the
head of the table.
Frithiof remained in the hall of King
Hring. Ingeborg spoke but little to him,
because she was now the wife of another
man. But she remembered that she and
Frithiof had once exchanged rings, and
she was still in love with him.
During his stay with Hring, Frithiof
saved the king and Ingeborg from death
when their sleigh fell through the ice and
went under the water. Frithiof dragged
the sleigh, with its occupants and horses,
back upon the surface of the ice.
One day, while he and the king were
alone in the woods, Frithiof was tempted
to kill Hring while he slept, but he
conquered his temptation and threw away his
sword. Awaking, the king told Frithiof,
who was still disguised, that he had
known from the first night who his guest
was.
Frithiof wished to leave the household
of Hring, but the good king would not
allow him to depart. Instead, Hring gave
up Ingeborg to Frithiof and made the
warrior guardian of the kingdom. Soon
afterward Hring died and Frithiof was named
to follow him upon the throne. When
Helge and Half dan, the brother-kings,
went to war against their old enemy, they
were defeated. Helge was slain in battle
by Frithiof, and Halfdan was made to
swear fealty to his conqueror.
1279

THE FROGS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Fifth century B.C.
Locale: Underworld
First presented: 4CT5 B.C.
Principal characters:
Bacchus, god of wine and revelry
Xanthias, his slave
Hercules, mythological hero
Charon, ferryman of Hades
Euripides, a famous Greek playwright
Aeschylus, another Greek dramatist
Critique:
So vigorous was the mind of
Aristophanes that his comedies extant today
maintain vitality which is still a sharp
and penetrating comment upon human
nature. One does not need to be a
scholar to understand and love the work
of Aristophanes. Satirist for all ages, he
wrote to expose the timeless foibles and
follies of human nature.
The Story:
Wishing to visit the underworld,
Bacchus set out with hi? slave, Xanthias, to
visit Hercules, from whom the god of the
vine hoped to get directions for his visit
to the lower regions. On the way
Xanthias continued to grumble and moan
about his many bundles. Xanthias was
really riding a donkey, but he complained
loudly until Bacchus finally lost patience
and suggested that perhaps Xanthias
would like to carry the donkey for a
while.
Hercules, when consulted, suggested
that Bacchus allow himself to be killed
and thus arrive in the land of the dead.
But Bacchus wanted to go there alive
because he was anxious to see and talk
to the great playwrights, the critics having
told him that all who were good were
dead and gone. He was particularly
anxious to meet Euripides. Hercules
advised him to be content with the
playwrights still alive. Bacchus argued tha«
none of them was good enough for hi-Ki,
and so, after getting directions from
Hercules, he started out, Xanthias still
complaining about his bundles.
They came to the River Acheron and
met Charon, who ferried Bacchus across.
The grim ferryman insisted, however,
that Bacchus row the boat, and he made
Xanthias walk around the margin of the
stream since Xanthias had dishonored
himself by not volunteering for a naval
victory. Xanthias tried to excuse himself
on the grounds that he had had sore eyes,
but Charon refused to listen.
While Bacchus and Xanthias talked
to Charon, a chorus of frogs set up a
hoarse croaking, imitating the noisy
plebeians at the theater with a senseless kind
*f hooting. Bacchus sprained his back
with his rowing and the frogs thought
his groans quite amusing.
Safely on the other side, Bacchus paid
his fare and joined his slave. The two
met a monster which Bacchus took care
to avoid until it turned into a beautiful
woman. They found their way with
difficulty to the doorway of Pluto's realm.
Xanthias still grumbled because he had
his heavy bundles.
At the entrance to Hades, Bacchus
foolishly pretended to be Hercules—a
mistake on his part, for Aeacus, the
doorman, raised a clamor over the theft of
Cerberus, the watchdog. When Aeacus
threatened all sorts of punishment,
Bacchus revealed himself as he really was.
1280

Xanthias accused him of cowardice but
Bacchus stoutly denied the charge.
Bacchus and Xanthias decided to
change characters. Xanthias pretended to
be Hercules and Bacchus took up the
bundles his slave had carried. But when
servants of Proserpine entered and offered
Xanthias a fine entertainment, Bacchus
demanded his rightful character once
more.
Aeacus returned, eager to punish
someone, and Xanthias gave him permission
to beat Bacchus. Bacchus said that he was
a deity; therefore, they should not beat
him. Xanthias countered by saying that
since Bacchus was an immortal he need
not mind the beating. Aeacus decided
they both should be beaten soundly.
Aeacus finally decided to take them
both to Pluto and Proserpine, to discover
who really was the deity. Aeacus said
Bacchus was apparently a gentleman and
Xanthias agreed wholeheartedly, saying
Bacchus did not do anything except
dissipate and carouse.
In Pluto's realm they found two dead
dramatists, Aeschylus and Euripides,
fighting for favor. The rule in Hades
was that the most famous man of any art
or craft ate at Pluto's table until some
more ♦alented man in his field should die
and come to Hades. Aeschylus had held
the seat Euripides was now claiming.
Aeacus said that the dramatists
intended to measure their plays line for
line by rules and compasses to determine
the superior craftsman. The quarreling
dramatists debated, accusing each of the
other's faults. Aeschylus said he was at
a disadvantage because Euripides' plays
died with him and were present to help
him, whereas his own plays still lived on
earth.
Bacchus offered to be the judge, and
each dramatist then began to defend
himself. In the midst of their violent
quarrel Pluto appeared. Bacchus ordered
each to recite from his own works.
Euripides seemed to have the worst of this
contest, but Bacchus wisely refused to
judge so as not to make either playwright
angry with him. Pluto wearily insisted
that he pick one winner and take his
choice back with him to the upper world
in order to stop needless rivalry in Hades.
At last Bacchus voted for Aeschylus.
Euripides complained at the choice. He
was consoled, however, when Pluto said
he might be sure of a good meal in the
underworld, while Aeschylus would be
burdened forever with the task of earning
his living by his attempts to reform folly
and evil in the world above.
1281

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: The United States
First published: 1907
Principal characters:
John Amherst, an assistant mill manager
Bessy Westmore, his first wife, owner of the mills
Justine Brent, his second wife
Mr. Langhope, Bessy's father
Dr. Wyant, Justine's former suitor
Critique:
In this novel Edith Wharton is true
to form in her investigation of a society
of constricted ideas and stillborn
inspirations, in which the women are pampered
and the men are sheltered from the
realities of basic life. More than that, the
contrast between the rich, who waste
themselves in frivolity, and the workers
is brought into painful relief by Edith
Wharton's refined but direct prose style.
The contrast is embodied in Amherst,
who wants to bring his sophisticated
intelligence to bear upon the very real
problems of the workers, and who is
therefore bound to be misunderstood.
The Story:
When Justine Brent, a nurse who was
visiting Mrs. Harry Dressel at Hanaford,
volunteered to care for Dillon, an
operator who had been injured at West-
more Mills, she was approached by John
Amherst, the assistant manager of the
mills. Amherst deplored the miserable
living and working conditions of the mill
workers and, since Dillon's accident had
been the result of these conditions,
wanted to use his case to show the need
for improvement to Bessy Westmore, the
newly widowed owner of the mills who
was due to make an inspection tour the
following day.
The next day Amherst conducted
Bessy Westmore through the mills.
Bessy, touched by Dillon's case, decided
to stay at Hanaford for a while. She
recalled that she and Justine had attended
school together before Justine's parents
had lost their wealth.
Bessy and Amherst made plans to
improve the living conditions of the
workers, and this association finally led
to their marriage. Amherst, hoping to
make Westmore Mills a model of human-
itarianism, was disillusioned to learn that
Bessy was not willing to sacrifice the time
or the money to accomplish this end.
Some time later, Justine came to Lyn-
brook, the Amherst country house, to be
a companion to Bessy, who was not
feeling well. Amherst, meanwhile, spent
most of his time at the mills in
Hanaford.
Bessy, to compensate for Amherst's
long absences, began to entertain lavishly,
at the same time confiding her bitterness
and loneliness to Justine. Later, Amherst
decided to manage a friend's cotton mill
in the South.
Justine wrote to Amherst saying that
Bessy needed him. Amherst replied that
he would not return and, in a postscript,
asked her not to permit Bessy to ride a
particularly spirited horse they owned.
Bessy, learning of his request, later took
the horse out into the frost-covered
countryside. There Bessy suffered an accident
which seriously injured her spinal cord.
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE by Edith Wharton. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's
Sons. Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed. All rights reserved.
1282

She was taken home and looked after by
Dr. Wyant, a local doctor whose proposal
Justine had refused some time before. A
surgeon and various other consultants
were also summoned. Bessy remained
paralyzed after an operation; Justine
knew that the sick woman would never
recover.
By this time Amherst was on a
business trip into a remote part of South
America, and Bessy's father was in
Europe.
One day, while Justine was caring for
her alone, Bessy regained enough
consciousness from her opiate state to plead
with Justine to relieve her pain.
Justine, convinced that she was doing the
right thing, later gave Bessy an overdose
of morphine. When Dr. Wyant came
into the room, Justine told him that
Bessy was dead. Dr. Wyant seemed to
sense what had happened.
A year and a half later, Amherst was
back at the Westmore Mills. Bessy had
left half her fortune to Cicely, her
daughter by her first marriage, and the other
half to Amherst. He lived at Hanaford
and continued his plans of reconstruction.
In the meantime Justine was taking
care of Cicely and an intimate friendship
developed between the two. Later, when
she went to visit Mrs. Dressel in
Hanaford, Justine met Amherst again, a
romance developed between them, and they
were married. Cicely went to live with
her grandfather. Justine took an active
part in Amherst's work.
Dr. Wyant, who had left Lynwood and
married, now needed money, and he
came to Justine and threatened to expose
her mercy killing of Bessy unless she
arranged to have Amherst write him a
letter of recommendation to Mr. Lang-
hope, who could give him a responsible
hospital post. Justine, realizing that Dr.
Wyant had become a narcotic addict,
could not in her conscience arrange a
recommendation for him. When she went
out of the room, Amherst came in.
Learning that Dr. Wyant was in financial
straits, Amherst wrote him a letter of
recommendation in gratitude for his
services to Bessy. On her return Justine
told her husband that Dr. Wyant was
not qualified for the hospital post. Dr.
Wyant, in retaliation, charged Justine
with the mercy killing, and left.
Intellectually, Amherst approved of
Justine. Emotionally, he was horrified at
what she had done. Their relationship
became strained.
When Dr. Wyant was appointed to
the hospital post, Amherst remembered
the letter of recommendation. He knew
that if Mr. Langhope were told about
Dr. Wyant's addiction to narcotics, the
doctor would in turn disclose Justine's
crime. Amherst told Justine that if Mr.
Langhope thought that she had been in
love with Amherst when she killed
Bessy, he and Justine would have to give
up the mills, go away, and start a new
life. Justine secretly went to New York to
see Mr. Langhope and told him the truth
about Dr. Wyant and herself. She then
promised to disappear if Mr. Langhope
would continue on his former terms with
Amherst. Mr. Langhope agreed.
Justine, returning to Hanaford, told
Amherst that Mr. Langhope had taken
the news very well. In the course of the
following months Amherst's horror of
Justine's crime caused their relationship
to deteriorate even more. At last Justine
went to Michigan to resume her nursing
career, thus fulfilling her promise to Mr.
Langhope.
A year later Cicely became ill. Mr.
Langhope, realizing that she needed
Justine's love, asked Justine to come back to
Amherst so that she could be close to
Cicely. When Amherst learned why
Justine had left him, he felt love for her
and remorse for his attitude. They
continued, however, to feel somewhat
estranged.
About a year later Amherst, speaking
at the dedication of the mill workers' new
recreational center, gave a stirring tribute
to Bessy who, he said, had herself drawn
up the plans. Justine realized that
Amherst was referring to the plans for a
1283

gymnasium that Bessy had intended for
her own pleasure at Lynbrook, in open
defiance of Amherst's wishes. Although
angry, Justine kept Bessy's secret.
As they left the dedication, Amherst
told Justine how good he felt over
improved conditions at the mill. They
walked away hand in hand.
1284

THE FUNERAL
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1701
Principal characters:
The Earl of Brumpton, a British nobleman
Lady Brumpton, his wife by a second marriage
Lord Hardy, his son by his first marriage
Mr. Campley, Lord Hardy's friend and junior officer
Lady Sharlot (Charlotte), Lord Brumpton's ward
Lady Harriot (Harriet), Shadows sister
Trusty, Lord Brumpton's servant
Critique:
The Funeral, Or, Grief cL la Mode was
Sir Richard Steele's first and
best-constructed play, but it is far less serious
than his later work. Nevertheless, the
drama has moral overtones and some
highly sincere social criticism. Through the
characterization of the hypocritical
widow who gives the play its subtitle, Steele
ridiculed manners of the time, as he was
to do so often in his later plays and in his
familiar essays. Notable in the play are
the two young army officers, Lord Hardy
and Ensign Campley, who are more
reputable and honest than most of their
dramatic predecessors, a circumstance
probably due to Steele's own career in the
military .service. Steele boasted, quite
rightly, in his preface to the play that his
drama was more innocent than the
prevalent style of comedy. In many ways his
characters and actions show an innocent
freshness quite unlike the atmosphere of
intrigue found in Restoration drama and
the comedies of the early eighteenth
century.
The Story:
Young Lady Brumpton was quite
happy when her husband, the Earl of
Brumpton, died suddenly. A second wife, many
years her husband's junior, she could
look forward to a lively life as soon as her
mourning period was over. Indeed, she
intended to begin enjoying life discreetly
long before she doffed her widow's weeds.
Meanwhile she had the enjoyment of the
earl's entire fortune, for she had
persuaded him to disown his only son, Lord
Hardy. The task had been easy. The
elderly earl, foolishly fond of his pretty
young wife, never guessed that she had
been plotting against his own best
interests and his son's.
The earl's servant, Trusty, remained
with his master's corpse when everyone
else left it. Much to his surprise and joy,
he discovered that the earl had only
lapsed into a coma, and before long the
nobleman regained consciousness and
health. Trusty, seeing an opportunity to
prove that his mistress was an intriguer
and an adulteress, persuaded the earl to
remain hidden and allow everyone to
believe he was really dead. The only person
taken into the secret was the funeral
director, who agreed to keep silent after
the earl paid him an amount equal to
what the funeral charges would have
been.
In addition to planning ways for the
enjoyment of her late husband's wealth,
Lady Brumpton also gave some thought
to the problem of ridding herself of the
earl's two teen-age wards, Lady Sharlot
and Lady Harriot. The girls were a very
real threat to her freedom and to a
portion of the earl's estate, since Lady
Sharlot was in love with the earl's son and
Lady Harriot with his friend Mr.
Campley.
1285

Despite the fact that he had been put
out of his father's house, Lord Hardy, an
officer in the army, refused to believe ill
of his father, and with Campley's help
he plotted to release the two girls from
his stepmother's clutches before some evil
should befall them. He was right in his
fear; Lady Brumpton planned to have the
girls spirited away and seduced by her
brother and a friend.
Help for Lord Hardy and Campley
came unexpectedly from Trusty, who
went to Lord Hardy's apartment and
outlined his plan to the earl's son. Lord
Hardy, he said, was to send a detachment
of troops to the earl's house and the
casket containing the earl's body would be
turned over to the soldiers. In the
meantime, with the help of Lord Hardy's
servant and a French seamstress, Campley
managed to win Lady Harriot's
confidence and persuaded her to escape with
him from the Brumpton mansion. They
escaped by dressing in the clothes of the
French seamstress and a servant girl.
The earl, hidden in the house,
eavesdropped on various conversations and
learned that his wife had abused him
terribly in her conduct with other men and
had plotted to bring his son to disfavor.
He also learned that the lawyer he had
trusted with the drafting of his.will had
written it in such a way that most of the
estate would go, not to the rightful heirs,
but to court and legal fees. The earl,
seeing his wife as she really was, resolved
to reinstate his son as his rightful heir.
When the detachment of soldiers
arrived at the house, the casket was
delivered to them, but not before a fight
between the soldiers and the servants in
order to make it seem as if the delivery
had not been voluntary. Actually, the
casket contained Lady Sharlot. The plot
was a ruse to get the girl out of the house
before she could be kidnaped and seduced
by Lady Brumpton's brother.
As soon as she discovered what had
happened and who the commanding
officer of the detachment of soldiers was,
Lady Brumpton went to confront Lord
Hardy. When she arrived, she found
Lady Harriot and Campley, who defied
her to stop his marriage to the girl. Bitter
words were spoken on both sides. At last
Lord Hardy entered, to take his turn as
the recipient of Lady Brumpton's
invective. She railed against him for taking
away his father's body and desecrating it.
When she had finished, Lord Hardy
accused her of poisoning his father, an
accusation which made her furious. They
went into another room to view the
body. When the casket was opened, Lady
Sharlot emerged, much to Lord Hardy s
joy. His stepmother then told him he had
been cut off from his father's fortune,
and she handed him the one shilling
which had been left to him according to
his father's will. She demanded again
that he and his soldiers return the body,
for she still thought that they had
somehow spirited it away. All the while the
earl was listening in another room and
gaining further evidence that his second
wife was entirely dishonorable and evil.
To Lady Brumpton's consternation, the
earl showed himself. Although her plans
for enjoying a fortune and independence
were gone, she felt that the delay was
only temporary, for she believed that she
could once again put herself in his
esteem in spite of the facts he had learned.
The earl was not happy to return to a
life with an adulteress and a shrew.
Once more Trusty saved the situation.
He produced a letter written by a man
who had married Lady Brumpton some
months before her marriage to the earl.
The earlier marriage made the later one
void, a fact which took the scheming
woman out of the earl's life. The first
husband had been induced to write the letter
when he saw the earl sitting reading in
his study. Like everyone else, he thought
that the earl was dead, and he therefore
believed the nobleman had returned to
haunt him for not telling what he knew
about Lady Brumpton's past. Instead of
being either a rich widow or a countess,
Lady Brumpton found herself the wife
of a man who had no money and who
1286

was forced to live by his wits. Her plans
were utterly undone.
The earl, overjoyed to see his son after
many years, promised to reinstate Lord
Hardy as the rightful heir to his estates.
He also gave nis blessing to the
approaching marriages between Lord Hardy
and Lady Sharlot and Campley and Lady
Harriot. He was, indeed, delighted that
his two wards were to marry his son and
his son's closest friend.
1287

THE GAMBLER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski (1821-1881)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: German watering places
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Alexey Ivanovitch, a young gambler
The General, a Russian aristocrat
Polina, his stepdaughter
Mlle. Blanche, a French adventuress
The Marquis de Grieux, a factitious French nobleman
Astley, a young English capitalist
Antontda Tarasyevitchev, the General's wealthy old aunt
Critique:
Dostoevski, having done considerable
gambling at one time in his life, wrote
this short novel with authority. His
description of the fatal attraction of
gambling to young and old alike is terrifying;
for the rest, except for Polina's
infatuation for the spurious French marquis,
and for Alexey's Slavic penchant for self-
torture, The Gambler seems a
comparative ray of sunlight in the world of
Dostoevski's art. Perhaps the background
of a fashionable German spa with its
international clientele accounts for this
effect. Aunt Antonida, if not the most
original of Dostoevski's creations, is one
of the most delightful, even though she is
little more than lightly sketched in.
The Story:
Alexey Ivanovitch returned to Roulet-
tenburg, a German resort, after two weeks
in Paris. He was tutor in the family of
a Russian general who had come to the
resort to repair his dwindling fortune.
The General wooed an apparently wealthy
young French woman, Mile. Blanche.
Polina, the General's stepdaughter, was
attracted to Mile. Blanche's alleged
distant relative, the Marquis de Grieux.
Alexey was Polina's creature; he loved
her and accepted any humiliation at her
hands.
Alexey went to the casino with money
Polina gave him. After winning a tidy
amount, he felt that his stay in Roulet-
tenburg would affect his life seriously.
Believing that he could not lose at the
gambling tables, Alexey told Polina that
henceforward he would gamble only for
himself. But Polina, knowing her power
over Alexey, easily persuaded him to share
his winnings with her.
An affluent young English capitalist,
Astley, came to Roulettenburg and,
much to the General's discomfort, diverted
the attentions of Mlle. Blanche, who was
growing tired of waiting for the General's
old aunt to die. The General telegraphed
Moscow every day to inquire about the
condition of the old lady, who, he was
sure, would leave him a fortune.
It was soon evident that Astley was in
love with Polina. Alexey, suspecting the
French pair to be imposters, wanted to get
away from the machinations of
Roulettenburg existence, but his love for Polina
held him. At the casino he lost a large
amount of Polina's money; his
possession of the money aroused renewed
interest in the General on the part of
Mile. Blanche. The General, it seems,
was deeply in debt to de Grieux.
Unable to win with Polina's money,
Alexey offered to win with his own and
lend her whatever she wanted. Alexey
hoped that he could win Polina's love
by becoming wealthy through gambling.
He confessed his ardent love for her, and
1288

when he told her that he could even
commit murder for her she impishly
ordered him to speak in French to a
stuffy German baroness who was passing
by with her husband. After Alexey brashly
insulted the Germans, he was, in spite of
his plea that he was mentally aberrant
during the escapade, discharged by the
General. Alexey managed to maintain his
self-respect when he told the General,
who had apologized to the baron for him,
that he was capable of making his own
apologies, that as the son of a nobleman
he objected to the General's patronizing
treatment. The General, fearful of the
consequences of Alexey's further
impetuosities, unsuccessfully tried to mollify the
youth.
De Grieux, as mediator, told Alexey
that any further indiscretion on his part
might spoil the chances of the General's
marrying Mile. Blanche. He also
promised that the General would re-employ
Alexey soon and would continue,
meanwhile, to pay him his salary. Alexey,
however, chose Astley to be his second
in a duel with the baron. De Grieux then
produced a letter from Polina asking
Alexey to drop the matter. The young
man obeyed, even though he knew for
certain that Polina loved de Grieux.
Astley indirectly confirmed Alexey's
suspicions that Mile. Blanche and de
Grieux were adventurers. During previous
exploits at Roulettenburg, Mile. Blanche
had made advances to the baron and, at
the direction of the baroness, had been
escorted out of the casino by the police.
Alexey suspected the General of being
indebted somehow to Mile. Blanche, and
Polina of being involved with the French
couple.
The General's old aunt, Antonida
Tarasyevitchev, arrived from Moscow
with a large retinue. Quite alive, she
wickedly chaffed the General on his
urgent solicitations and criticized him for
squandering his children's inheritance.
The General was visibly shocked by her
arrival. The old lady, accompanied by the
General's party, visited the casino and
won fabulously at the gaming tables. In
her triumph she gave money to her
servants and to beggars.
Polina became more of an enigma to
Alexey when she had him deliver a letter
to Astley. Despite the General's pleas to
the young tutor to prevent Antonida from
gambling away her fortune, Alexey and
the old lady frequented the casino
together. Obsessed with the fever to win,
she lost heavily. When she prepared to
return to Moscow, she invited Polina to
return with her. Polina declined.
Antonida, unable to resist one last try at the
gambling tables, again lost heavily. She
converted bonds into cash and again lost.
The old lady now possessed nothing but
land and the houses on it; she borrowed
money from Astley in order to return to
Moscow.
The General's inheritance having been
lost at roulette, Mile. Blanche and de
Grieux broke off relations with him and
prepared to leave Roulettenburg. The
General was a ruined man. Polina was
distracted by her impending loss of de
Grieux, but she was shaken out of her
infatuation when de Grieux offered her
consolation money from the proceeds of
the General's property, which was
mortgaged to de Grieux. In distress, Polina
turned to Alexey, who went to the casino
and won a fortune for her to hurl in de
Grieux's face. She spent the night with
Alexey in his hotel room. The next
morning she took his money, then threw
it in his face. She fled to Astley. Alexey
went with Mile. Blanche to Paris, where
he lived with her while she spent his
winnings. Tired of the life of an
adventuress, Mile. Blanche, persuaded by
Alexey, decided to marry the General.
Alexey, now a confirmed gambler, re-
"turned to the gambling tables of the
German resort towns. Once he went to jail
for debt. In Homburg he saw Astley, who
told him that Polina, recuperating from
an illness, was in Switzerland with
Astley's family. Meanwhile the General had
died of a stroke in Paris, and Mile.
Blanche had received his inheritance from
1289

Antonida, who had died in Moscow.
Alexey regretfully reminded Astley of
Polina's infatuation for de Grieux and was
momentarily hopeful when Astley told
him that Polina had sent him to Hom-
burg to bring Alexey back to her. Alexpy
knew that he had no choice, really—he
had given his heart and soul to gambling.
1290

THE GARDEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: L. A. G. Strong 0896-1958)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1931
Principal characters:
Dermot Gray, an Anglo-Irish boy who spends his holidays in Ireland
Mrs. Gray, his mother
Mr. Gray, his father
Eithne, his sister
Granny, his mother's mother
Grandpapa, his mother's father
Ben McManus, Dermot's uncle
Aunt Patricia, Ben's wife
Con, their son
Eileen, their daughter
Paddy Kennedy, a cripple
Critique:
The qualities which make this novel
a book of rare and rich experience are
the writer's exquisite, unspoiled
perceptions of childhood and his memories of
a lost world which delighted a small boy.
Behind this tale of nostalgic reminiscence
there is a subtle contrast of backgrounds
and characters, and this blending of
temperamental differences of race and
culture gives a more tangible flavor and
substance to L. A. G. Strong's biographical
novel.
The Story:
The first time Dermot remembered
coming into an Irish port he was so young
that he had to keep reminding himself
to look for his Granny. He, his younger
sister Eithne, and his mother came to
Dublin each year to spend the summer
at Granny's house. Dermot remembered
only that there had been a monkey and
a cat there the summer before.
After the trip by boat across the Irish
Sea, they rode in a carriage, a train, and
then a tram before they reached Sandy-
cove, where Grandpapa was leaning over
the gate waiting to meet them. To
Dermot, as to his mother, the cottage at
Sandycove was really home, a place they
loved as they could never love their home
in England.
Besides such delights as Paddy-monkey
and Pucker the cat, Dermot was glad to
see once more the comfortable dining-
room with its loaded table. He loved the
china, the little bone spoon with which
he ate his egg, the different foods, and
the corner where Grandpapa kept the
well-worn books he taught Dermot to
read.
Granny's garden was all mixed up in
his mind with the Garden of Eden. That
summer he spent most of his time there,
playing with Paddy-monkey who was
chained near the kitchen door, hunting
for snails among the plants, investigating
the farther reaches of the orchard which
he had not known when he was smaller,
and helping the gardener chase the half-
wild cats that tore down the bushes.
There were two things he did not like
about Sandycove. One was the walk far
out on the pier in wild weather, while
nurse wheeled Eithne. The other was to
be surrounded by Granny's gushing
THE GARDEN by L. A. G. Strong. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright,
1931, by L. A. G. Strong.
1291

friends before and after church. He felt
closer to his Grandpapa when the old
gentleman stubbornly refused to stand in
front of the church with the women but
waited instead in a park across the way.
Often on Sunday afternoons Dermot's
cousins from Dalkey came to visit,
sometimes accompanied by Uncle Ben, a
boisterous retired mariner who was also,
Dermot discovered, a strict puritan. Of Uncle
Ben's four children, two came often:
Con, a strapping lad of twenty-one, and
Eileen, a lovely girl a few years younger.
They were tremendously alive. Dermot,
who had always been considered
delicate, was exuberant when he was with
his cousins.
The McManuses lived at Delgany, on
a cliff running down to the sea. Their
house w&s full of all kinds of wonders,
such as a telescope, the dried jaws of a
whale, a painted wooden pig, a bathroom
with no taps. Uncle Ben and his family
lived a happy-go-lucky life that left
Dermot breathless; it was so unlike the
precise life he lived in England. Too, Uncle
Ben could answer Dermot's questions in
more exact detail than anyone else,
excepting perhaps Grandpapa; and even
Grandpapa was likely to go on after the
interesting part had been answered.
That year Uncle Ben, Con, and Eileen
took Dermot in a boat to an island out
from their home. There, while they were
having their picnic, they looked up to
see a ring of goats ranged on the rocks
above them. It was a picture Dermot
could not forget, and the trip was the
first of countless excursions with the
McManuses. That fall, as he sailed home
to England, he looked back as long as he
could see the Dalkey coast. Two years
passed before he came back.
In England, before the plumbers laid
a pipe in the Grays' yard, Dermot
decorated a length of it by printing the plumh
er's name. Because he had used a chisel
for the printing, he pierced the pipe.
After it had been laid, the pipe leaked
until the yard was a morass. Dermot
confessed to his mother his fears that he
had ruined the pipe but asked her not
to tell his father. She had to tell Mr.
Gray, of course, but he spoke kindly to
Dermot when he asked the boy to be
more careful the next time. A week later
Dermot was still amazed at his father's
unusual patience. To please Mr. Gray,
he decorated the halls with horses' heads
in chalk. His father blasted him for
defacing the house and Dermot slunk away,
cowed by the anger he had inadvertently
brought on. He was afraid of his father,
but when Mr. Gray became very sick
Dermot was afraid for him as well.
After two years the Grays again went
to Ireland. They did so each summer
until the year of the first World War. As
Dermot grew older his Granny hired a
crippled lad to teach the boy to fish and
to watch over him. It was a grand day
when Dermot caught his first conger.
Paddy Kennedy and his pals, Long Mike
Hogan and Peg-leg O'Shea, taught
Dermot a great tolerance for the poor people
that he could never have learned
elsewhere, but they were careful not to
allow any obscenity in his presence. That
he learned in his public school.
Mr. Gray always arrived for his holiday
just before the time came for the family
to return to England. One year he
connived with the gardener to rid the place
of the worst of the marauding cats that
Grandpapa had refused to kill. Mr. Gray,
to Dermot's surprise and delight, set the
boy to watch for Black Tom and Lord
Spenser and let him, without the old
gentleman's knowledge, shoot them.
As Eithne grew older she was asked
to accompany Dermot to Delgany. The
children thrived at the house, adoring
their cousins, until it became a ritual for
them to spend a full week there each
summer. Con, who had never really
grown up, always put himself out to
make some diversion for Dermot and his
sister. If he could think of nothing else,
he drove them around the country on
his motor bike. Eileen, too, entered into
their entertainment. For her Dermot had
a fondness verging on adoration.
1292

The last year the Grays went to
Ireland Dermot was studying to enter
Oxford. That summer Dermot, Con, and
Eileen, riding the motor hike to take
Eileen to a tennis match, all felt a strange
lowering of their spirits at the same time.
Soon afterward another bike with two
riders passed them and crashed into a
post. Con and Eileen took care of the
dead man and the injured one. Dermot,
finally grown up, realized that he could
face such a scene.
Although Eithne was only fourteen,
Con asked Dermot if he thought his
sister would have him. Dermot
recommended that Con wait. He knew, however,
that Eithne adored her cousin.
Both Dermot and Con were killed
during the war, only a day apart. When
Eithne went back to Ireland to visit
Eileen and Aunt Patricia, the only ones
left in the family, she told them that a
letter from Con had arrived just after
Dermot died, a letter written the day
before Con himself was killed. Eithne
had felt torn apart at losing the two who
had meant most to her, but she felt
better, after reading the letter, to think that
Con and Dermot were together and
surely happy.
1293

THE GARDENER'S DOG
Type of work: Drama
Author: Lope de Vega (Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, 1562-1635)
Tyfe of flat: Comedy of manners
Time of flot: Late sixteenth century
Locale: Naples
First presented: c. 1615
Princifal characters:
Diana, Countess of Belflor
Teodoro, her secretary
Fabio, a gentleman ot Naples
Marcella,
Dorotea, and
Anarda, ladies in waiting
Count Federigo, in love with Diana
The Marquis Riccardo, also in love with Diana
Count Lodovico, an old nobleman
Tristan, Teodoro's lackey
Critique:
The Gardeners Dog has proved to be
one of the favorite comedies of Lope de
Vega since its first performance, sometime
around 1615. It is based on the old tale of
the dog who would not eat its food, yet
would allow no other dog to have it. Such
was Diana. For a time, at least, she herself
did not want Teodoro, but she would not
let Marcella have him. The play is a
comedy of character and manners,
reminiscent of some of Shakespeare's work.
The technical perfection is amazing when
one remembers that this most prolific of all
writers turned out more than sixteen
hundred plays during his lifetime.
The Story:
The Countess Diana was enraged when
she heard that a man had been seen
leaving the upper chambers of the palace. He
had thrown his cap at the candle, snuffing
out the only light so that he could not be
identified. Diana sent for her ladies in
waiting and questioned them in order to
learn who had been visited by a lover
during the night. Dorotea and Anarda
pleaded innocent, but whispered to Diana
that Marcella had a lover in the palace.
He was Teodoro, secretary to the
Countess Diana herself. Marcella confessed her
love but protested that it was a pure love.
Teodoro wanted to marry her. Diana gave
her consent to the marriage but cautioned
Marcella to stay away from Teodoro until
the wedding day; otherwise passion might
consume honor. After her ladies had left
her alone, Diana realized that she too
loved Teodoro, but since he was not
highborn she could not proclaim her love.
Teodoro, who had indeed been the man
involved in the midnight escapade
investigated by Diana, feared that he would be
found out and banished or executed. But
he could not get Marcella out of his heart.
Tristan, his lackey, begged him to forget
Marcella and never see her again lest
Diana punish them both severely, for it
had been Tristan who had thrown the cap
and snuffed out the candle so that his
master would not be recognized while
escaping. Soon afterward Diana did learn
the truth of the escapade, when she
tricked Tristan into revealing his part in
the affair. She also sent for Teodoro and
subtly hinted at her love for him in a letter
she feigned was intended for someone
else.
Marcella went to Teodoro and told him
that Diana had blessed their betrothal.
Confused, Teodoro took Marcella in his
THE GARDENER'S DOG by Lope de Vega. By permission of the publishers. Charles Scribner'g Song.
Copyright, 1918, by The Poet Lore Company. Copyright, 1936, by John Garrett Underhill.
1294

arms just as Diana appeared. When he
thanked her for giving Marcella to him,
their capricious mistress ordered Marcella
locked in her room, to await Diana's
desires concerning the wedding. Then
Diana again hinted that she loved
Teodoro, and because of her words he
renounced Marcella. To himself he
regretted his rejection of Marcella, but he
could not put aside the lure of wealth and
power that would be his if Diana took
him for a husband. Meeting Marcella a
short time later, for Dorotea had let her
out of the locked room, he spurned her
love and disgraced her. Angered, Marcella
swore revenge on him and on Anarda,
who had, as Marcella learned, betrayed
her and Teodoro to Diana because Anardo
thought Marcella encouraged Fabio, a
gentleman with whom Anardo was in
love. Marcella, meeting Fabio, offered
him her love and greatly confused that
poor man by her words and actions.
Two noblemen, the Marquis Riccardo
and Count Federigo, both begged for
Diana's hand, and suddenly she sent
Teodoro to tell Riccardo that she chose
him for her husband. Deserted by the
lovely countess before she was really his,
Teodoro turned again to Marcella and
said that he loved only her. At first she
spurned him and declared that she would
marry Fabio, but at last love won out over
jealousy. Falling into Teodoro's arms, she
made him forswear Diana forever. While
the lovers called their mistress a devil, an
ass, and a bore, they did not know that
Diana and Anarda were hidden nearby
and listening to their conversation.
Suddenly they appeared, frightening the
lovers almost to death. Diana dictated a
letter to Teodoro, in which she stated that
if a noble lady loved a man he dared not
love another. When she cautioned him
to interpret its meaning correctly, Teodoro
again renounced Marcella and told her to
marry Fabio in order to please Diana.
Riccardo, appearing in answer to the
summons from Diana, was told that
Teodoro had misunderstood her words
and that she had not intended to marry
Riccardo. Teodoro, believing then that his
mistress truly loved him, declared his love
for her. Instead of listening to his pleas,
Diana berated him for daring to speak of
love when he was low-born and she a lady.
Then he asked her to give Marcella to
him, since Diana would not have him.
But, like the gardener's dog who would
allow no other dog to eat what he himself
did not want, she would not let Teodoro
have Marcella. Instead, she struck at
Teodoro with her knife. He half-believed
that she had wounded him because she
loved him, and, when she returned and
wiped the blood from his wound, he was
sure that it was love that made her cruel to
him.
Count Federigo and the Marquis
Riccardo, hearing that Diana had wounded
Teodoro, were convinced that he had
threatened her honor, and they decided to
have him killed. For their assassin they
hired Teodoro's faithful lackey, Tristan,
who took their gold and then informed
Teodoro of their plot. Tristan had other
plans for helping his master.
He had learned of one Count Lodovico,
who had lost a son named Teodoro twenty
years before. The boy had been captured
Dy the Moors and was never heard of
again. Tristan planned to convince the old
count that Teodoro was his long-lost son.
Then Teodoro would have a family of
birth and wealth and would be good
enough to wed Diana. Teodoro, too
honorable for such knavery, went to Diana
and told her that he was going to Spain,
to avoid both the death planned for him
by her suitors and the tortus he endured
while in her presence. Diana, not
knowing her own mind, alternately told him to
leave and to stay. When Marcella went to
Diana and asked for permission to
accompany Teodoro to Spain, Diana told the
girl that she must marry Fabio. ,
Meanwhile Tristan carried through his
plot to make Count Lodovico think
Teodoro his lost son, and the old man was
delighted at the prospect of having his
child returned to him. Before the old
count saw Teodoro, Diana, knowing that
1295

her true love was to leave her, told him at
last that she loved him. Still she refused to
marry him because of his humble birth.
When Count Lodovico appeared with the
announcement that Teodoro was his son,
Diana opened her arms to Teodoro and
said that they would be married that very
night. Marcella, seeing at last that she
could never have Teodoro, agreed to
marry Fabio.
Teodoro, in one last attempt to save his
honor, confessed to Diana that Tristan
had tricked the old nobleman into
believing Teodoro his own missing son. But by
that time Diana had learned that love did
not respect position. She declared that
they would marry anyway and keep the
secret between themselves and Tristan.
Federigo and Riccardo confessed their plot
to have Teodoro killed, and Diana gave
Dorotea to Tristan as his bride. So all
ended well, with honor saved and love
triumphant. The gardener's dog had made
a final choice.
1296

GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL
Type of work: Mock-heroic chronicle
Author: Francois Rabelais (1490M553)
Type of plot: Burlesque romance
Time of plot: Renaissance
Locale: France
First published: Begun 1533; first complete edition, 1567
Principal characters:
Grangosier, a giant king
Gargamelle, his wife
Gargantua, their son
Pantagruel, son of Gargantua
Panurge, a clever rascal
Friar John of the Funnels, a lusty monk
Critique:
The book Rabelais titled The Lives,
Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua
and His Son Pantagruel is a vast
panorama of an amiable dynasty of giants.
The characters are prodigious eaters and
drinkers, gay and earthy. The five books
which contain the adventures of a galaxy
of types are loosely held together by the
main actors. Discursive and monumental,
Gargantua and Pantagruel is an
astounding achievement. Rabelaisian and
gargantuan as adjectives indicate the
opinion of many readers. But Rabelais had a
serious purpose. He demonstrated
heroically his theme that the real meaning of
life is to expand the soul by knowing
all the sources of experience.
The Story:
Grangosier and Gargamelle were
expecting a child. During the eleventh
month of her pregnancy, Gargamelle ate
too many tripes and then played tag on
the green. That afternoon in a green
meadow Gargantua was born from his
mother's left ear.
Gargantua was a prodigy, and with his
first breath he began to clamor for drink.
Seventeen thousand nine hundred and
thirteen cows were needed to supply him
with milk. For his clothing the tailors
used nine hundred ells of linen to make
his shirt and eleven hundred and five ells
of white broadcloth to make his breeches.
Eleven hundred cowhides were used for
the soles of his shoes.
At first Gargantua's education was in
the hands of two masters of the old
school, Holofernes and Joberlin Bride\
Seeing that his son was making no
progress, however, Grangosier sent him to
Paris to study with Ponocrates. Aside
from some mishaps, as when he took the
bells from the tower of Notre Dame to
tie around his horse's neck, Gargantua
did much better with his studies in Paris.
Back home a dispute arose. The bakers
of Lerne' refused to sell cakes to the
shepherds of Grangosier. In the quarrel
a shepherd felled a baker, and King
Picrochole of Lern6 invaded the country
Grangosier baked cartloads of cakes to
appease Picrochole, but to no avail, for
no one dared oppose Picrochole except
doughty Friar John of the Funnels.
Finally Grangosier asked Gargantua to come
to his aid.
Gargantua fought valiantly. Cannon
balls seemed to him as grape seeds, and
when he combed his hair cannon balls
dropped out. After he had conquered the
army of Lern6, he generously let all the
prisoners go free.
All his helpers were rewarded well,
but for Friar John, Gargantua built the
famous Abbey of Theleme, where men
and women were together, all could leave
when they wished, and marriage and the
accumulation of wealth were encouraged.
When he was more than four hundred
years old, Gargantua had a son,
Pantagruel. Pantagruel was a remarkable baby,
1297

hairy as a bear at birth and of such great
size that he cost the life of his mother.
Gargantua was sorely vexed between
weeping for his wife and rejoicing for his
son.
Pantagruel required the services of
four thousand six hundred cows to nurse
him. Once he got an arm out of his
swaddling clothes and, grasping the cow
nursing him, he ate the cow. Afterwards
PantagrueTs arms were bound with
anchor ropes. One day the women forgot
to clean his face after nursing, and a
bear came and licked the drops of milk
from the baby's face. By a great effort
Pantagruel broke the ropes and ate the
bear. In despair, Gargantua bound his
son with four great chains, one of which
was later used to bind Lucifer when he
had the colic. But Pantagruel broke the
five-foot beam which constituted the
footboard of his cradle and ran around
with the cradle on his back.
Pantagruel showed great promise as
a scholar. After a period of wandering
he settled down in Paris. There he was
frequently called on to settle disputes
between learned lawyers. One day he
met a ragged young beggar. On speaking
to him, Pantagruel received answers in
twelve known and unknown tongues.
Greatly taken by this fluent beggar,
Pantagruel and Panurge became great friends.
Panurge was a merry fellow who knew
sixty-three ways to make money and two
hundred fourteen ways to spend it.
Pantagruel learned that tne Dipsodes
had invaded the land of the Amaurots.
Stirred by this danger to Utopia, he set
out by ship to do battle. By trickery and
courage, Pantagruel overcame the wicked
giants. Their king, Anarchus, he married
to an old lantern-carrying hag and made
the king a crier of green sauce. Now that
the land of Dipsody had been conquered,
Pantagruel transported there a colony of
Utopians numbering 9,876,543,210 men,
besides many women and children. All
these people were very fertile. Every
nine months each married woman bore
seven children. In a short time Dipsody
was populated by virtuous Utopians.
For his services and friendship Panurge
was made Laird of Salmigondin. The
revenue from this lairdship amounted to
6,789,106,789 gold royals a year, but
Panurge managed to spend his income
well in advance. Then, thinking to settle
down, Panurge began to reflect seriously
on marriage, and ne consulted his lord
Pantagruel. They came to no conclusion
in the matter because they got into an
argument about the virtues of borrowing
and lending money. But the flea in his
ear kept reminding Panurge of his
contemplated marriage, and he set off to seek
other counsel.
Panurge consulted the Sibyl of Pan-
zoult, the poet Raminagrobis, Herr Tripa,
and Friar John. When all the advice ne
received proved contradictory, Panurge
prevailed on Pantagruel and Friar John
to set out with him to consult the Oracle
of the Holy Bottle. From Saint Malo the
party sailed in twelve ships for the Holy
Bottle, located in Upper India. The
Portuguese sometimes took three years for
that voyage, but Pantagruel and Panurge
cut that time to one month by saihng
across the Frozen Sea north of Canada.
The valiant company had many
adventures on the way. On the Island of
the Ennasins, they found a race of
people with noses shaped like the ace of
clubs. The people who lived on the
Island of Ruach ate and drank nothing
but wind. At the Ringing Islands they
found a strange race of Siticines who had
long ago turned to birds. On
Condemnation Island they fell into the power of
Gripe-men-all, Archduke of the Furred
Law-cats, and Panurge was forced to solve
a riddle before the travelers were given
their freedom.
At last they came to the island of the
Sacred Bottle. Guided by a Lantern from
Lanternland, they came to a large
vineyard planted by Bacchus himself. Then
they went underground through a
plastered vault and came to marble steps.
Down they went, a hundred steps or
more. Panurge was greatly afraid, but
1298

Friar John took him by the collar and
heartened him. At the bottom they came
to a great mosaic floor on which was
shown the history of Bacchus. Finally
they were met by the priestess Bacbuc,
who was to conduct them to the Bottle.
Panurge knelt to kiss the rim of the
fountain. Bacbuc threw something into
the well and the water began to boil.
When Panurge sang the prescribed ritual,
the Sacred Bottle pronounced the one
word, "trine." Bacbuc looked up the
word in a huge silver book. It meant
drink, a word declared to be the most
gracious and intelligible she had ever
heard from the Sacred Bottle. Panurge
took the word as a sanction for his
marriage.
1299

THE GAUCHO: MARTIN FIERRO
Type of work: Poem
Author: Jose Hernandez (1834-1886)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Argentina
First puhlished: Part the First, 1872
Part the Second, 1879
Principal characters:
Martin Fierro, the gaucho
Cruz, his friend
Picardia, Cruz' son
Two Sons of Mart!n Fierro
Critique:
Although it is not well known in the
English-speaking world, the tale of
Martin Fierro has had great popularity
in the South American countries,
particularly in Argentina. Fierro gave hope to
a people long oppressed by the
government and cheated by corrupt officials.
He became a legend and his tale was
repeated over and over again. Hernandez
himself was identified with his hero, and
everywhere he went he was idolized as
the spokesman for the gaucho. It is said
that much of the romantic appeal of the
poem is lost in translation; nevertheless,
the English version is musical, vigorous,
and exciting.
The Story:
Martin Fierro was a gaucho, born and
raised, on the rolling plains of Argentina.
A gaucho was a mixture of the Spaniard
and the Moor, transplanted to South
America and mixed again with aboriginal
Indians. He was God-fearing, brutal,
superstitious, ignorant, lazy, and kind.
His type was but a passing one, but while
he roamed the plains he became a legend.
Martin Fierro played his guitar and sang
his songs, songs that told of his unhappi-
ness and the sorrows of the gaucho all
over the land.
There was a time when Martin had a
home and a wife and children to comfort
him. He had owned land and cattle and
a snug house. He rode the plains and
lived in peace with his neighbors. Then
officers appeared to take Martin and his
neighbors away from their homes and
families to serve the government in wars
with the Indians. Martin was among
those chosen because he had not voted
when the judge was up for election, and
the judge said that those who did not
vote helped the opposition. The
government promised that the gauchos would
serve only six months and then be
replaced. Martin took his horse and clothes
and left his wife and children.
The men lived in filth and poverty.
Complaints brought a staking out and
lashes with leather thongs. There were
no arms; the colonel kept the guns and
ammunition locked up except when the
Indians attacked. The Indians came and
went as they pleased, killing, plundering,
and taking hostages. They pulled babies
from mothers' arms and killed them for
sport. But the Indians were not much
worse than the officers. The men had no
pay, no decent food. They wore rags, and
rats crawled over them while they slept.
At last Martin escaped and returned to
his home. There he found his wife and
sons gone, the house destroyed, the cattle
and sheep sold by the government. Martin
swore revenge and set out to find his sens.
THE GAUCHO: MARTIN FIERRO by Jose Hernandez. By permission of the publishers, Rinehart &
Co., Inc. Copyright, 1936, by Rinehart & Co., Inc.
1300

He was soon in more trouble. He killed
a Negro in a fight. Another swaggering
gaucho picked a quarrel and Martin killed
him. These killings brought the police
after him. They had tracked him down
and were about to kill him when one of
their number joined him in fighting the
others. Cruz, his new friend, fought so
bravely that the two of them drove off
or killed their attackers.
Cruz, telling Martin his story, sang it
like a true gaucho. He had lost his woman
to the commandante of the army and so
had left his home. He, too, had killed a
man and been hunted by the law before
an influential friend got him a pardon and
a job with the police. But Cruz had no
heart for the police. Seeing Martin
prepared to fight against great odds, he had
decided to join him. The two decided to
leave the frontier and go to live among
the Indians.
Martin and Cruz traveled across the
desert to the land of the savages. But
before they could make friends and join
a tribe, they were captured by a raiding
party. For two years they suffered tortures
inflicted by the Indians; then they were
allowed to pitch a tent and live together,
still under guard. They had to ride with
the savages on raids against the Christians.
When smallpox ravaged the tribe, Cruz
ave his life by nursing a chief who had
een kind to them.
Martin was alone once more. At last
he escaped from the Indians. He rescued
a white woman who had been beaten
with the bowels of her own baby son.
After weeks of weary travel they returned
to the plains, where Martin left the
woman with a rancher and went on his
way. He knew by then that even the
evils of the government were better than
life with savage Indians.
Martin, returning to his homeland,
learned that he was no longer wanted by
the government. The judge who had put
him into the army was dead and no one
any longer cared about the Negro and the
gaucho he had killed in fair fights. In his
new freedom he went to a racing meet
and there was reunited with two of his
sons. From them he learned that his wife
was dead and that they had also been
tortured and cheated by the government.
The older son sang his song first. He
had been arrested and convicted for a
killing which he did not do. Beaten, starved,
abused, he spent a long time in the
penitentiary. In his loneliness he had had no
friend to share his woes. He cautioned all
who heard his tale to keep away from the
law, for the law was not for the gaucho.
The second son sang his song. An aunt
died and left him some property. The
judge appointed a tutor who robbed the
boy of his inheritance and beat him and
starved him. Penniless, Martin's son had
roamed the land like a tramp until he was
sent to the frontier with the army.
Father and sons sat singing and talking
when a stranger called Picardia appeared
and sang his song. Like the others, he had
been sent to serve in the army and endure
the tortures of the wicked officials. At the
end of his song Picardia told Martin that
he was the son of Cruz, Martin's old
friend. The friends celebrated the
meeting with wine and song, and while they
sang a Negro joined them. He and
Martin held a singing match, a common thing
among the gauchos. The Negro sang that
he was the brother of the Negro Martin
had killed long years before and that he
would avenge the death. Before they
could fight, other gauchos stepped
between them and sent Martin, his sons,
and Picardia on their way.
They rode only a short distance
together, then separated to seek new lives,
each man alone. Before they departed,
Martin Fierro gave the young men some
advice out of his own experience. He told
them to be true to their friends, to give
every man his due, to obey the law, and
never to cheat. If ever a woman should
win their hearts, they must treat her well
and be true. The four scattered, each one
taking a new name from that day on.
Martin, ending his song, commended his
1301

words to gauchos everywhere, for they Then he laid down his guitar, never to
came from the wisdom of an old man, sing again.
1302

THE "GENIUS"
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1889-1914
Locale: Alexandria, Illinois, Chicago, and New York
First published: 1915
Principal characters:
Eugene Witla, an artist, the "genius"
Thomas Witla, his father, a sewing machine agent
Sylvia, and
Myrtle Witla, his sisters
Stella Appleton, Eugene's first love
Angela Blue, a schoolteacher, later Eugene's wife
Margaret Duff, a laundry worker, Eugene's first mistress
Ruby Kenny, an artist's model
Miriam Finch, a sculptress in New York
Christina Channing, a singer in New York
M. Anatole Charles, an art dealer
Frieda Roth, a young girl in Alexandria
Carlotta Wilson, a gambler's wife, Eugene's mistress
Daniel Summerfield, head of an advertising agency
Obadiah Kalvin, head of a publishing company
Marshall P. Colfax, a publisher
Florence J. White, Eugene's associate and enemy
Mrs. Emily Dale, a wealthy socialite friend of Eugene
Suzanne, her daughter
Mrs. Johns, a Christian Science practitioner
Critique: The Story:
The "Genius" traces the career of Eu- Eugene Witla, a sensitive seventeen-
gene Witla, an artist haunted by a search year-old boy, lived with his parents and
for beauty which leads him to fall in his two sisters in Alexandria, Illinois,
love with many women during his life- Eugene had little idea of what he wanted
time. Yet the search for beauty brings no to do, although his aspirations were
more enduring peace or value than do vaguely artistic. His father, a sewing ma-
the searches for material security or social chine agent and a respectable member
success that mark other Dreiser novels, of the middle class, got him a job setting
Beauty, in Dreiser's terms, is transitory type for the local newspaper. His first
and relationships shift back and forth so enthusiasm was for a local girl named
that the artist, like the ordinary human Stella Appleton, but even this affair did
being, is unable to alter any of the sig- not keep Eugene, unhappy in his rest-
nificant circumstances of his experience lessness, from leaving the small town and
or control his own destiny. The novel going to Chicago to seek his fortune,
contains a great deal of social detail in When he first went to Chicago, Eu-
its pictures of the worlds of art and pub- gene supported himself by moving stoves,
lishing and of New York life in the early driving a laundry wagon, and collecting
years of this century. Another theme is for a furniture company. While at the
the tendency of money and commerce to laundry, he met the passionate young
corrupt art. Margaret Duff and began his first real
THE "GENIUS" by Theodore Dreiser. By permission of the publishers. The World Publishing Co. Copy-
right, 1915, by John Lane Co. Copyright, 1923, by Boni & Liveright, Inc. Copyright renewed, 1943, by
Theodore Dreiser.
1303

tove affair. About this time he also met,
through mutual friends, a schoolteacher
named Angela Blue, a fair-haired beauty
who represented everything fine and
elegant to impressionable young Eugene.
Eugene began attending art classes at
night at the Chicago Art Institute. There
he demonstrated some talent, particularly
in his class in life drawing, for he seemed
to have a special sensitivity in conveying
the beauty of the human form. While at
the Art Institute, he met a model, Ruby
Kenny, and she soon became his mistress.
But Ruby, like Margaret, was from the
lower classes and made her charms easily
available to men. Eugene finally left them
both, preferring the finer and more
fragile beauty of Angela. Engaged to the
young teacher, he left Chicago to seek his
artistic fortune in the wider world of
New York.
In New York, Eugene painted
powerful and realistic pictures of what he saw
in the city, and began, from time to time,
to sell a few of his paintings. After
several years he became moderately
successful. Some of the women he met, like
Miriam Finch and Christina Channing,
began to educate him in the well-read
and knowledgeable polish of the New
York artistic world. Christina became his
mistress for a short time; that
sophisticated affair somewhat baffled Eugene.
But in spite of his new polish and
elegance, he still remembered Angela.
Returning to the Middle West to visit her,
he seduced her and then, feeling his
responsibility, married her and took her
back to New York. Angela felt that all
her dreams of happiness had been
fulfilled.
Eugene's work impressed M. Anatole
Charles, manager of a distinguished firm
of art dealers in New York. M. Charles
held an exhibit which, a great success,
marked Eugene as a powerful and rising
young artist. Full of enthusiasm, he and
Angela went to Paris. The show held
when he returned was less successful;
people felt that his work in Paris had not
been fresh or unusual. While in Paris,
Eugene had also begun to suffer a vague
malaise, a lack of energy and purpose.
He did not, at that time, realize that his
marriage was causing his uneasy and
restless feeling.
Eugene and Angela returned to
Alexandria for an inexpensive rest. While
there, Eugene met eighteen-year-old
Frieda Roth and found her attractive.
Since he was twenty-nine by this time,
Frieda represented for him a renewed
interest in youth and beauty. Angela was
able to stop this relationship before it
advanced further than a few kisses stolen
under the trees. Afterward Eugene and
Angela left Alexandria and stayed at
several resorts until their money ran out.
Angela then returned to her parents,
while Eugene returned to New York to
reestablish his reputation as an artist.
Eugene, still restless, found himself
unable to paint, and he took a job doing
manual labor for the railroad in a town
near New York. While there, he met and
had a passionate affair with his
landlady's married daughter, Carlotta Wilson.
Again Angela heard of the affair and
came to reclaim Eugene. They decided
to try to start again in New York.
Eugene worked for a newspaper and
then as art director for an advertising
agency. His boss there, Daniel Summer-
field, was a tyrant who broke his
promises and failed to pay Eugene adequately.
Eugene left for another job with the
advertising department of the North
American Weekly, under the directorship of
Obadiah Kalvin. Successful there, he
moved to Philadelphia to accept a
$25,000 job as head of the advertising
for all books and publications directed
by Marshall P. Colfax. When Eugene
was made a vice president, the other vice
president, Florence J. White, felt that
Eugene's job and salary were
unnecessary. White was jealous of Eugene and
the two became enemies.
Eugene became greatly successful,
both financially and socially. His
marriage was hollow, but both he and
Angela seemed to accept the situation and
1304

to cope with it fairly well. Although
Eugene had money enough to retire, his
financial success had bred in him a desire
for greater financial success, and he had
lost the will to paint. His artistic lassitude
was matched by the emotional emptiness
of his marriage.
About this time Eugene met Mrs.
Emily Dale, a rich socialite. They
exchanged visits and became friendly. One
day, Mrs. Dale brought Suzanne, her
eighteen-year-old daughter, to tea.
Eugene fell in love with Suzanne at first
sight, and all the yearning of his search
for beauty returned. Soon Eugene and
Suzanne were meeting and they confessed
their love for each other. Brought up a
cultured and sophisticated young woman,
Suzanne was willing to become Eugene's
mistress. Filled with romantic ideas about
becoming an artist's mistress, she insisted,
however, on telling her mother of her
plans, for she thought that her mother
would surely approve. But Mrs. Dale did
not approve. Angela, when she
discovered the affair, decided that the only way
to hold Eugene was to have a baby,
despite the fact that doctors had warned
her against having children. Angela, who
had become a Christian Scientist,
believed that her firm faith and will would
permit her to have the child. Mrs. Dale
took her daughter to Canada to get her
away from Eugene. When he tried to
follow Suzanne to Canada, Mrs. Dale,
through Florence J. White and the threat
of scandal to the firm, was able to have
him fired from his job. Eugene, having
lost both his job and Suzanne, returned
to comfort Angela during her ordeal.
After Angela died giving birth to a
daughter, also named Angela, Eugene
had his sister Myrtle come East to help
him make a home for the child. For a
time, in his desolation, Eugene began to
read Christian Science, but he failed to
find comfort or salvation in its message.
When Eugene and Suzanne met by
accident on the street two years later,
they were each too self-conscious to
acknowledge the existence of the other.
Living sanely with his daughter and
Myrtle and her husband, Eugene began
to paint again. He had several shows,
was sponsored again by M. Charles, and
became a popular and fairly successful
artist. He began to weave romantic
dreams around his daughter Angela,
thinking of the time when she would
grow up and they could search for beauty
together. In spite of his new awareness
of man's inability to control his fate, of
the delusions that belief in beauty or
belief in Christian Science represented,
Eugene's emotional impulse toward
beauty was still strong enough to keep
him fashioning impossible dreams for
himself and his daughter.
1305

THE GENTLEMAN DANCING MASTER
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Wycherley (1640-1716)
Type of plot: Satiric comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1672
'Principal characters:
Mr. Gerrard, a young gentleman of the town
Mr. Martin, his friend and ally
Mr. Paris (Monsieur de Paris), an affected Gallophile
Mr. James Formal (Don Diego), a merchant
Hippolita, his daughter, enamored of Mr. Gerrard but engaged to her
cousin, Mr. Paris
Mrs. Caution, Mr. Formal's widowed sister
Prue, Hippolita's disingenuous maid
Mistress Flirt, a woman of the streets
Critique:
This play, the second produced by
Wycherley and the most derivative of the
four, takes its title and its general theme
from a play by Calder6n. The style of
the play, too, is somewhat in the manner
of Moliere and through him goes back to
the commedia delV arte, with its brisk
criticism of affectation and its elaboration
of the gulled father, the saucy maid, the
languorous lover, and other farcical types.
Wycherley possessed sufficient talent,
however, to convert his borrowed
materials into a play much copied in later years,
particularly by Sheridan, and one still
appealing to a modern audience or reader.
The Story:
Mr. James Formal, who made his living
in trade with the Spanish and who
admired their pride and gallantry to the
point of affecting their manners, had
confined his fourteen-year-old daughter
Hippolita, recently returned from
boarding school, to the house for a period of a
year. During his absence his sister, the
widow Caution, acted the part of a
duenna to see that Hippolita's virtue was
protected in the Spanish manner. In spite
of the soured old woman's puritanical
wishes—she was adept at sensing sin
since it was always on her mind—from
her balcony the young girl carried on a
flirtation with a young gentleman who
frequented a neighboring inn.
Several days before Mr. Formal was
due to return, Mr. Paris, his nephew and
a suitor for the hand of Hippolita,
arrived in London after a brief stay in
France which had made of him a slavish
imitator of French dress, manners, and
idiom without in the least understanding
his own ridiculousness. Since only he had
access to the young lady's presence, she
made of him a willing dupe in order to
make the acquaintance of the tall,
handsome Gerrard. As a jest, M. de Paris—
as the silly coxcomb called
himself—challenged Gerrard to contrive a meeting
with the young lady whom he had seen
only from a distance but of whom he was
enamored.
Accepting the challenge, Gerrard
broke into Hippolita's chamber,
proposed a hasty elopement, and was caught
in a near-embrace by her returning
father. Hippolita, her actions always
covered by her resourceful maid, cleverly
pretended that Gerrard, who was unable
to dance a step, was the dancing
instructor hired at the behest of her husband-to-
be, who would not have a wife without
such French refinement as the ability to
dance. The deception was further
extended by M. de Paris who, blinded as he
was by his own ego and splendor in dress
1306

and speech, helped the lovers at every
turn. Mrs. Caution, immediately
suspicious of the true situation, repeatedly
warned the affected Spanish grandee of
a father, who proudly protested that he
would never permit such an affair to
occur under his roof. Mr. Formal, in fact,
took a liking to the supposed dancing
master and urged him to come three
times a day in order that his daughter
could learn as rapidly as possible before
her imminent marriage. At the same time
he took a dislike to his ridiculous nephew
and forced that embarrassed but docile
young man to change to a Spanish
costume and English speech, a calamity in
the eyes of the young Gallophile.
Meanwhile, Hippolita carried off her flirtation
to the point of elopement, a conspiring
innocent who allowed herself to be
pursued only to become the pursuer. Paris,
in turn, had become embroiled in an
affair with Mistress Flirt, begun in the inn
where he went to scheme against Ger-
rard.
The dancing lessons were never taken,
thanks to the modesty of the young
woman who at first would not dance
before witnesses and who later plotted to
pit her father against her aunt and her
betrothed in order to get them all out of
the way. The insistence of the suspicious
aunt only aroused Mr. Formal's ire; he
was sure that he could protect the honor
of his daughter as well as manage family
affairs. His dislike for Paris, who
ridiculed his Spanish ways, dress, and
attitudes, and his admiration for the
punctual dancing master further misled the
proud father, who postponed the
wedding for another day in order that skills
might grow apace.
Plans for the elopement were hastened
by Gerrard's interest in Hippolita's
twelve hundred pounds and the hiring of
a coach and six, the romantic young girl's
dream of the perfect rig in which to flee
with her lover. The young gallant, in
spite of his attempts to learn dancing
between lessons, felt also that he would
soon be discovered as an impostor and
would then find himself the victim of
Spanish revenge. Confiding in Paris,
Hippolita begged him to maintain the
deception lest the whole compromising
situation be disclosed. Paris, ironically,
played the part of the jilted lover
without knowing it. Spanish care, prudence,
and circumspection were his allies.
Only the slight diversion of family
strife protected the lovers on the night of
the planned elopement. Mr. Formal, not
satisfied with his prospective son-in-law's
loss of French affectations, made him
learn Spanish ways as well, to the tune
of dance instructions from a blackamoor.
The ridiculous young man was so
disconsolate that he repulsed even the
advances of Hippolita's maid, the designing
Prue, who, being better acquainted with
the comforts of love, suffered more than
the others did from the household
restrictions. Sibling rivalry now reached a
climax when Mr. Formal convinced
himself that what Mrs. Caution had said all
along was true. Furthermore, Hippolita
took Gerrard's haste to elope as an
indication he was marrying her only for her
money, and she refused to leave with him
as they had planned. When Gerrard,
believing that the game was lost, revealed
to all that his plans had gone awry, his
remarks were interpreted to mean only
that his pupil would not learn. He then
escaped the threat of exposure by
breaking the strings of a fiddle which would
have proved him unmusical. Reinstated
in Mr. Formal's good graces, he was asked
to bring the musicians for the wedding
celebration.
When he appeared for the last lesson,
Gerrard and Hippolita were reconciled.
Convinced that he loved her for herself
alone, she assured him that she did, after
all, have twelve hundred pounds—a fact
she had denied earlier to test his
devotion. Gerrard, no longer needing
obsequious, dandified Paris as an ally, cuffed
him soundly, treatment which the craven
fellow did not take amiss, so sure was he
that this was his wedding day. In fact,
he blunderingly helped the lovers by
1307

protecting Hippolita, the parson, and
Gerrard from the wrath of the rightfully
indignant father and held Mr. Formal off
long enough for the marriage ceremony
to be performed.
Mr. Formal, unwilling to admit that
he had been duped, acted the part of
willing collaborator and told his spiteful
sister and the effeminate Paris that he
planned the wedding especially for their
discomfiture.
Paris was outdone a second time when
Mistress Flirt bound him to so many
illicit promises as to make matrimony
seem much less binding by comparison.
1308

THE GENTLEMAN USHER
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Chapman (c. 1559-1634)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Italy
First presented: c. 1602
Principal characters:
Duke Alphonso
Prince Vincentto, his son and rival
Margaret, a beautiful young noblewoman
Count Lasso, her father
Bassiolo, usher to Lasso
Count Strozza, Vincentio's friend
Medice, the duke's favorite
Cortezza, Lasso's sister
Critique:
Though not the equal of
Shakespeare's great comedies, The Gentleman
Usher approaches them in richness and
variety. Delightful comic scenes are
interwoven with the serious story of a
father and son's rivalry for a young girl.
The play contains a wide range of
successful characterizations; among them,
the figure of Bassiolo, the self-satisfied
and gullible usher, is especially
memorable. The action, slow in starting, moves
rapidly from the middle of the play to
the conclusion.
The Story:
Prince Vincentio was deeply in love
with Margaret, a gentlewoman of the
court, but his courtship was inhibited by
the fact that his father, Duke Alphonso,
was also in love with the girl. Since the
duke was not a man to tolerate
opposition, it was unthinkable for Vincentio to
become his father's open rival. When he
disclosed his feelings to his close friend,
Count Strozza, his friend encouraged him
to carry on his suit in secret.
Meanwhile, the duke was planning a
boar hunt near the home of Count Lasso,
Margaret's father. It was not the hunt
that interested the duke, but the
festivities at Lasso's house that would follow,
for he hoped that he would be able to
advance his cause with Margaret during
the feast. The duke's chief ally in this
cause and his favorite courtier at the
moment was Medice, a base lord noted for
his poor apparel and his illiteracy.
Contemptuous and suspicious of this upstart,
Strozza and Vincentio grasped every
opportunity to ridicule him.
When the duke arrived at Lasso's
castle, where elaborate preparations had
been made for his entertainment, he was
bound as a captive. His men, dressed in
costumes, explained to Margaret that he
was a captive to her charms. She
unbound him and, though she fully
understood the duke's intentions, treated the
matter as a compliment and jest.
Acting for his master, Medice sought
information about Margaret. Aware of
her coolness toward the duke, he
believed that she must have another lover.
To discover the name of this person, he
plied Margaret's aunt, Cortezza, with
sack. For his troubles he got some
shameless flirting from the old hag and also a
hint that Vincentio might be the guilty
person.
During the festivities Vincentio
himself was seeking the services of a
go-between. Finally, acting on Margaret's
suggestion, he approached her father's usher,
Bassiolo, a pompous fool quite susceptible
to Vincentio's flattery. Vincentio, treating
Bassiolo as an equal, embraced him and
asked that he be called Vince. He gave
the usher a jewel and hinted that Bas-
1309

siolo could expect a high position when
Vincentio became duke. Bassiolo, because
of his self-conceit, had no idea that
Vincentio was secretly laughing at him.
When the prince brought up the subject
of exchanging letters with Margaret, the
usher immediately volunteered his
services.
As arranged, Bassiolo brought
Margaret a letter from Vincentio, but she,
wishing to implicate the usher, refused it
on the grounds of her attachment to the
duke. After an argument against her
marriage to an old man, Bassiolo forced
Vincentio's letter upon her. When she
had read the letter, she told Bassiolo to
answer it. His missive, indited in a turgid
style, she declined to send, telling him
that it sounded too good for a woman's
writing. Her own letter to Vincentio, she
dictated to the usher.
Medice, angered by Strozza's mockery,
also felt that Strozza stood in the way of
his advancement. He decided, therefore,
to get rid of him by having one of his
men kill the young count during a hunt.
The man succeeded in hitting Strozza
with an arrow, but failed to kill him. The
doctor who treated him said that he
would have to cut the flesh around the
wound in order to remove the arrow,
but Strozza, in a highly agitated state,
refused this operation. Cynanche, his
wife, counseled Christian patience, but
with no immediate effect.
When Bassiolo brought Margaret's
letter to Vincentio, the prince pretended to
believe that it did not really come from
her. The usher, responding exactly as
Vincentio hoped he would, offered to
bring Margaret to prove her authorship.
Vincentio, meanwhile, had decided that
the only way to forestall his father's plans
was to marry Margaret immediately.
When she came, they performed their
own marriage ceremony by knitting a
scarf around each other's arms and
making their vows. As they were completing
their simple rite, news came of the
wounding of Strozza.
As a result of his wife's ministrations,
Strozza's spirits had improved. Freely
submitting himself to the will of heaven, he
had been relieved of pain. His humility
had also brought him new powers of
understanding. He predicted that the
arrowhead would fall out of his side on the
seventh day.
Medice, pursuing his investigations in
the meantime, had Cortezza rob
Margaret's jewel box. There the letter from
Vincentio was discovered. When the
affair was revealed to Duke Alphonso, he
thundered enraged threats against his
son. Cortezza, believing that she knew
the secret trysting place of the two lovers,
offered to reveal it, and Medice and the
duke made plans to discover Vincentio
and Margaret at their next meeting.
Lasso, in the meantime, had also
begun to suspect his daughter, and a
conversation in which he threatened her and
her supposed lover was overheard by
Bassiolo. The usher, terrified at the prospects
of punishment for his complicity, began
to suspect that the prince had been
making a fool of him. When he notified
Margaret that he intended to reveal the
truth to her father, she reminded him
that he had railed against the duke,
forced Vincentio's letter upon her, and
written a letter for her to Vincentio, a
letter still in her possession. Realizing
that he was trapped, Bassiolo claimed he
had spoken of betrayal only in jest.
When Margaret ordered him to arrange
a meeting for her with Vincentio, he
immediately complied.
Hidden in the room where the two
lovers met were Duke Alphonso, Medice,
Lasso and Cortezza. Bassiolo, again proud
of his part in the intrigue, freely insulted
the unseen duke and Medice. At last
the eavesdroppers revealed themselves.
Vincentio, warned by the usher, made
his escape. The duke, saying that his son
would suffer death or banishment,
ordered Medice to capture him. After
Medice had left and the duke had taken
time for reflection, he sent a man after
Medice to see that Vincentio was not
harmed.
1310

Margaret, determined that she would
not be forced into marriage with the
duke, borrowed from Cortezza an
ointment that would cause horrible blisters
on the skin. After covering her face with
this ointment, she visited Alphonso,
revealed her disfigurement, and denounced
him for his actions. This blow to the
duke was followed quickly by a second
one: news was brought that Medice,
against his orders, had wounded Vin-
ccntio. With Vincentio, when he was
brought in, was Strozza, who had
recovered, the arrow having fallen from his
side as he had predicted. Strozza charged
the duke with being a tyrant; and Duke
Alphonso, seeing before him the
consequences of his deeds, humbly accepted
the rebuke and expressed his fervent wish
that he could undo his actions. So
possible tragedy was averted. Vincentio,
although seriously wounded, would recover,
and he desired to marry Margaret in spite
of her terrible disfigurement. She at first
refused his offer because she felt he could
only pity her, not love her. But this
obstacle was removed when a doctor
revealed that he could remove the blisters
from her face. Bassiolo, expecting
punishment, received instead the
commendation of the duke. Medice, after admitting
that he had misrepresented himself as a
nobleman, was exiled. Duke Alphonso,
happy at the turn of events, gave his
blessing to the marriage of Vincentio and
Margaret.
1311

GEORGIA SCENES
Type of work: Short stories and sketches
Author: Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790-]
Time: 1780-1830
Locale: Georgia
First published: 1835
It was an auspicious moment for
American literature when the presses of
the Augusta State Rights Sentinel issued
a collection of pieces that had appeared
in that newspaper, for this book, born
in obscurity, was Georgia Scenes,
Characters, Incidents, &c, in the First Half
Century of the Republic by "A Native
Georgian." The author was not a
professional man of letters, but rather one
of those wonderfully versatile gentlemen
who flourished in nineteenth-century
America. Lawyer, judge, politician,
Methodist minister, newspaper publisher, and
educator (at various times president of
Emory College, Centenary College, the
University of Mississippi, and the
University of South Carolina), Augustus
Baldwin Longstreet was ideally suited to
the task of writing an informal social
history of the southwestern frontier. An
educated man (Yale), but no scholar, his
activities brought him into personal
contact with the whole range of men and
manners in the growing country.
Although Georgia Scenes now enjoys a
position as a minor classic, it appealed to
its own times as a new and exciting vein
of writing. Edgar Allan Poe heralded it
as an "omen of better days for the
literature of the South/' and the reading
public called for twelve editions by 1894.
Georgia Scenes is significant on several
counts. It is a pioneer work of realism and
one of the milestones in the local color
movement. Longstreet^ careful use of
dialect foreshadows a whole school of
writing that reached a culmination of
sorts with Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle
Remus tales. As a humorist, Longstreet is
intimately connected with the great
tradition of rough-and-tumble frontier
humorists. In this category he is a real
precursor of Mark Twain, and there is much
in Georgia Scenes that would not be out
of place in Huckleberry Finn. Finally,
Longstreet wrote with satirical intent,
and an argument can be made for his
claim to a position among the forerunners
of the revolt from the village movement.
Although he was not a literary theorist,
Longstreet seems to have worked out a
rough theory of realism. It would be folly
to consider Georgia Scenes an accidental
combination of lucky hits. The preface to
the first edition shows that the author's
aim was to record accurately the details
of the life he had observed: "They [the
sketches] consist of nothing more than
fanciful combinations of real incidents or
characters. . . . Some of the sketches
are as literally true as the frailties of
memory would allow them to be. . . .
The reader will find in the object of the
sketches an apology for the minuteness
of detail into which some of them run,
and for the introduction of some things
into them which would have been
excluded were they merely the creations of
fancy." However, Longstreet was a
reporter with a purpose; he applied realism
as the handmaiden of social criticism.
Like The Spectator, which he appears to
have admired, Longstreet exposes the
follies and vulgarities of his times for
the purpose of reforming men and
manners. A number of the sketches close with
didactic tags. But the author was too
much of "A Native Georgian" to
advocate replacing good American social
norms with foreign modes. He wishes to
see a standard of natural, unaffected
American manners prevail. Rarely, if
ever, does Longstreet miss an opportunity
to ridicule or scorn European manners or
even imported culture. On the subject of
greetings between women he remarks:
"The custom of kissing, as practised in
1312

these days by the amiahles, is borrowed
from the French, and by them from
Judas" The whole of a rather thin sketch,
"The Song," is devoted to the horrors of
Continental music and the absurdity of
American girls who study it.
The nineteen sketches of Georgia
Scenes are roughly divided into two
groups—those dealing chiefly with men
and those which deal with women. In
their original periodical publication, the
sketches appeared as two series signed
with two pseudonyms. These general
categories do not circumscribe the
material. A whole world of rural and urban
life is packed into the fairly slim volume:
brawls, shooting matches, horse races,
balls, inns, old wives, young bloods,
country schools, high society, and
Negroes. As Longstreet noted in his
preface, there is an abundance of detail. But
it is not intrusive, for these are not tightly
plotted stories. The term sketches
describes them perfectly: generally brief
descriptive pieces which excel at catching
atmosphere, very much like the form of
Washington Irvine's Sketch Book pieces.
The two best-known and most
frequently anthologized sketches in Georgia
Scenes are concerned with the cruder
aspects of rural life. In "The Horse-
Swap," a professional trader called the
"Yallow Blossom" is outduped while
trying to pass off a horse with a terrible sore
under the saddle. In this sketch Long-
street shows a sympathy for animals that
is completely characteristic of the volume.
Not only does he pity the suffering of
dumb beasts, but he also sees that savage
treatment of animals brutalizes the
human beings who inflict it. There is
probably nothing else in American literature,
before Jack London, quite like "The
Fight." In the story two bully-boys who
have always avoided an encounter are
pushed into a brawl by a disagreement
between their wives. During the course
of the knock down and drag out fight an
ear, a finger, part of a nose, and part of
a cheek are bitten off. A minor character
in "The Fight" is of considerable
interest. Ransy Sniffle is a diseased runt
whose greatest delight is starting fights
between other people. The brutality of
fights is also scored in "Georgia
Theatrics," which shows a man rehearsing all
the parts in a bloody fight.
Although Longstreet never uses a
Negro as a leading character, he takes great
pains to transcribe the speech of Negroes,
and in this respect he was ahead of his
time. The practical joker of "The
Character of a Native Georgian" asks a colored
woman to sell him half a live chicken,
and she protests: "Name o' GodI what
sort o' chance got to clean chicken in de
market-house! Whay de water for scall
um and wash urn? . . . Ech-ech! Fedder
fly all ober de buckera-man meat, he
come bang me fo* true. No, massa, I
mighty sorry for your wife, but I no
cutty chicken open." Longstreet is equally
careful to reproduce the dialect of
backwoods whites. In "A Sage Conversation"
he records the talk of three old women
sitting by the fire: "Indeed, I have a great
leanin' to sweats of verbs, in all ailments
sich as colds, and rheumaty pains, and
pleurisies, and sich; they're wonderful
good." This interest in colloquial speech
is closely associated with the author's
interest in folk customs, as can be seen in
"The Turn Out," which describes the
custom of giving pupils a holiday if they
can turn out (barricade out) the teacher.
Longstreet's crusade against the
barbarity of rural sports is most evident in "The
Gander Pulling" and "The Turf." In the
latter a Negro jockey is killed, and the
comment Longstreet puts into the mouth
of a woman spectator is worthy of Mark
Twain at his bitterest: "I declare, had it
not been for that little accident, the sport
would have been delightful."
One sketch in Georgia Scenes is not
by Longstreet. "The Militia Company
Drill," by Oliver Hillhouse Prince, gives
an account of a wildly undisciplined
muster. It is as good as the other pieces
1313

and merits inclusion in the volume.
After Augustus B. Longstreet mounted
the ladder of respectability he came to
feel that Georgia Scenes was an
undignified work. Though he continued to
write, he wrote nothing else that has
survived; only one book gives him a literary
eminence he probably never expected.
1314

GERMINAL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1885
Principal characters:
Etienne Lantier, a socialist laborer
Maheu, a miner
Maheude, his wife
Catherine,
Zacharie,
Jeanlin, and
Alzire, Maheu children
Chaval, another workman
Critique:
One of the first books written about
the conflict between capital and labor,
Germinal was based on an actual strike
that took place in France in 1884.
Completely realistic, the book manages to
exaggerate the truth without blaspheming
it. Its most commendable quality is its lack
of preaching. In a literary sense Zola
triumphs here by portraying mob scenes
with a painter's success. The emotions
and movements of masses of people are so
completely depicted that the characters in
the story become mere results of the
pressure of events around them. The idea of
socialism and the nature of the men who
uphold it is a principal theme here, yet the
book is no manifesto in spite of its social
intent.
The Story:
Etienne Lantier set out to walk from
Marchiennes to Montsou looking for
work. On the way he met Vincent Maheu,
another workman, called Bonnemort
because of successive escapes from death in
the mines. Nearing sixty, Bonnemort
suffered a bad cough because of particles of
dust from the mine pits.
Bonnemort had a son whose family
consisted of seven children. Zacharie, the
eldest son, twenty-one years old;
Catherine, sixteen years old, and Jeanlin, eleven,
worked in the mines. In the morning, as
they were dressing, they listened to the
sounds of Levaque leaving the next door
apartment. Soon afterward Bouteloup
joined the Levaque woman. Philomene
Levaque, the eldest daughter and Zach-
arie's mistress, coughed from her lung
ailment. Such was the life of those who
worked in the mine pits.
Etienne was given a job in the mine.
He descended the mine shaft along with
Maheu, Zacharie, Chaval, Levaque, and
Catherine. At first he mistook the
latter for a boy. Chaval, during lunch
time, roughly forced the girl to kiss him.
This act angered Etienne, although the
E'rl insisted that the brute was not her
ver.
The head captain, Dansaert, came with
M. N6grel, M. Hennebeau's nephew, to
inspect Etienne, the new worker.
There was bitterness among the
workers, danger lurking in the shafts, and so
little pay that it was hardly worth working.
Etienne, however, decided to stay in the
mine.
M. Gr6goire had inherited from his
grandfather a share in the Montsou mines.
He lived in peace and luxury with his
wife and only daughter, C6cile. A
marriage had been arranged between C£cile
and N£grel.
One morning Maheude, Maheu's wife,
and her small children went to the
Gr6goires to seek help. They were given
warm clothing but no money, since the
1315

Gr6goires believed working people would
only spend money in drinking and
nonsense. Maheude had to beg some
groceries and money from Maigrat, who kept a
shop and who would lend money if he
received a woman's caresses in return. He
had Catherine in mind. But Catherine,
escaping him, met Chaval that night and
allowed him to seduce her. Etienne
happened to witness the seduction and was
disillusioned by the young girl.
Etienne quickly adapted himself to the
mine, so expertly that he earned the
profound respect of Maheu. He made friends
with the other workers. Only toward
Chaval was he hostile, for Catherine now
openly showed herself the man's mistress.
At the place where Etienne lived he
would chat with Souvarine, a friendly
man who despised the company of
women. Etienne discussed a new
movement he had heard about from his friend
Pluchart, a Lille mechanic. It was a
Marxist movement to free the workers. Etienne
who had come to loathe the working
conditions and the lives of the miners and
their families, hoped to collect a fund to
sustain the forthcoming strike. He talked
about his plan to Rasseneur, with whom
he boarded.
After Zacharie married his mistress
Philomene, the mother of his two
children, Etienne came to the Maheu
household as a boarder. Night after night he
urged them to accept his socialistic point
of view. As the summer wore on he gained
prestige among the neighbors. His fund
grew. As the secretary he drew a small fee
and was able to put aside money for
himself. He began to take on airs.
The threat of strike was provoked when
the company lowered the wages of the
workers. As a final blow to the Maheus, a
cave-in struck Jeanlin, leaving him a
cripple. Catherine went to live with
Chaval, who had been accusing her of
sleeping with Etienne. In December the
miners struck.
While the Gre*goires and the Henne-
beaus were at dinner arranging the plans
for the marriage between C6cile and
N6grel, the miners' delegation came to see
M. Hennebeau, but he refused to give any
concessions. The strike wore on through
the weeks while the workers slowly
starved. Etienne preached socialism and
the strikers listened; as their misery
increased they became more adamant in
their resistance to M. Hennebeau. The
endless weeks of strike at the Montsou
mines ended in a riot when the people
advanced to other pits to force the workers
to quit their labors and join the strike. All
day the mob destroyed property and raged
against their starvation.
Catherine had remained faithful to
Chaval, but when, during the riot, he
turned renegade and ran to get the
gendarmes, she deserted him to warn her
comrades, especially Etienne.
Etienne went into hiding, assisted by
Jeanlin, who had become a street urchin
and a thief. The Maheu family fared
poorly. Crippled Alzire, one of the
younger children, was dying of starvation.
Everywhere neighbors quarreled fretfully
over trifles. Etienne frequently slipped
into Maheu's house for a visit. For the
most part he wandered alone at night.
After the strike had been going for two
months, there was a rumor that the
company was bringing strikebreakers to the
pits, Borain workers. Etienne began to
despair. He suggested to the Maheus that
the strikers bargain with M. Hennebeau,
but Maheude, who once had been
so sensible and had resisted violence,
shouted that they should not give in to
the pressure of their want.
One night at Rasseneur's, while Etienne
was discussing matters with Souvarine,
Chaval and Catherine entered. The
animosity between Etienne and Chaval
flared up, and they fought. Chaval,
overpowered, ordered Catherine not to follow
him but to stay with Etienne. Left alone,
Catherine and Etienne were embarrassed
and confused. Etienne had no place to
take the girl. It was not possible for her to
go home, since Maheude could not forgive
her for having deserted the family and for
1316

working during the strike. Resignedly,
Catherine went back to her lover. t
After Catherine had gone, Etienne
walked by the pits, where he was a
witness to the murder of a guard by little
Jeanlin. Etienne dragged the body away
and hid it.
When the strikebreakers began to
work, the strikers stormed the entrance to
the pit and threatened the soldiers who
were on guard. After a while the soldiers
fired into the mob. Maheu was among
those killed. Twenty-five workers had
been wounded and fourteen were dead.
Company officials came to Montsou to
settle the strike. The Borains were sent
away. Etienne's popularity ended. He
brought Catherine home and began to
stay at Maheu's house again. The bleak
house of mourning filled Etienne with
remorse.
Souvarine resolved to leave Montsou.
Before he went, he sneaked into the pit
and committed enough damage to cause
a breakdown in the shafts. That same
morning Etienne and Catherine decided
that they must go back to work. Chaval
managed to be placed on the same work
crew with Etienne and Catherine.
Repeatedly the two men clashed; Chaval still
wanted Catherine.
Water beganf rushing into the shaft.
Below, Chaval, Etienne, and the rest were
trapped when the cage made its last trip
up and did not come down again. The
people above waited and watched the
mine slowly become flooded by
subterranean torrents of water.
Negrel set about to rescue the
entombed workers, for as long as they were
below they must be assumed to be still
alive. At last he and a rescue party heard
faint thumpings from the trapped
workers. The men began to dig. An explosion
injured several of them and killed
Zacharie.
Meanwhile the trapped workers had
scattered, trying to find a place of safety.
Etienne and Catherine came upon Chaval
in the gallery to which he had climbed.
There the animosity between the two men
led to a fight which ended when Etienne
killed Chavel. Alone, the two lovers
heard the rescuers' tapping. For days they
continued to answer the tapping.
Catherine died before the men outside reached
them. Etienne was still alive when help
came.
After six weeks in a hospital Etienne
prepared to go to Paris, where more
revolutionary work awaited him.
1317

GERMINIE LACERTEUX
Type of work: Novel
Authors: Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1865
Principal characters:
Germinie Lacerteux, a maidservant
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, Germinie's employer
Madame Jupillon, Germinie's friend
Monsieur Jupillon, Madame Jupillon's son and Germinie's lover
Monsieur Gautruche, another lover of Germinie
Critique:
The story of Germinie Lacerteux is not
a pretty one, nor did its authors mean it
to be a pretty tale. They consciously set
out to show how the life of a very minor
figure in the city of Paris could contain
the real essence of tragedy, despite the
heroine's low station. According to Zola,
a great admirer of the Goncourt brothers,
the study of the lower classes in fiction
began with this novel. The story of
Germinie, a servant, is presented with the
clinical detachment of the dissecting
room. No details are spared the reader,
and the emotions, pains, and joys of such
a life are carefully analyzed in realistic
fashion. The authors, who neither
condemned nor praised, but simply
presented what they saw, are the literary
forerunners of such American novelists
as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and
Theodore Dreiser.
The Story:
Germinie Lacerteux, left an orphan at
the age of four years, was taken care of
by her sisters. At the age of fourteen she
was sent to Paris to live with an older
sister who had settled with her husband
in the city. Not wishing to pay for all
the expenses of the child from their own
meager income, the sister and her
husband found Germinie a job as a waitress
in a cafe*. After she had worked in the
cafe* for several months, she was seduced
by one of the waiters. Becoming
pregnant, she suffered many indignities from
her relatives because she would not say
to them that she had literally been raped;
they thought she had invited seduction.
Her child was born dead, and her sickness
almost killed Germinie. Finally a retired
actor took pity upon her and hired her as
a maid and companion. For Germinie
this was a step upward in the world;
unfortunately for her, the old actor died
within a few months. Germinie then
filled a host of positions as maid to kept
women and boarding-school mistresses.
One day the maid of Mile, de
Varandeuil died suddenly, and through the
influence of her sister Germinie was given
the position. Mile, de Varandeuil was an
old maid. Her father had prevented her
from being anything but a servant to him
until his death, so that Mile, de
Varandeuil had few friends and acquaintances.
Other members of her family had died, and
she herself was an old woman. She had a
sufficient income to live more or less
comfortably, but it could not tolerate many
extravagances. In her old age she needed
someone to look after her, as much a
companion as a maidservant.
For a time after her entry into the
service of Mile, de Varandeuil, Germinie
was a devoted Christian. She spent a
great deal of time at church and went to
confession regularly. Through her
devotions she fell in love with a young
priest, but he, sensing her state of mind,
sent her to another confessor and refused
to speak to her. When he took that course
of action, Germinie's devotions ceased.
Germinie's next devotion was to her
1318

sister's niece, who was left to Germinie's
care when the mother died. But
Germinie's happiness was short-lived, for the
child was taken to Africa by another
sister. When word came by letter that the
child was ill and the sister's husband out
of work, Germinie sent everything she
could to aid the stricken child and the
family that was taking care of her. After
depriving herself of necessities for two
years, Germinie learned that the child
had died shortly after leaving Paris and
that the letters from the aunt and uncle
were only a ruse to get Germinie's hard-
earned money.
About that time a dairy store was
opened very close to the house in which
Germinie lived with Mile, de Varandeuil.
In her dealings with the store Germinie
found a friend in Madame Jupillon, the
proprietress. Madame Jupillon had a son,
who was at a trade school learning to
become a glove maker. Germinie, quite
taken with the youngster, often went
with his mother to see him on visiting
days. One day, when Madame Jupillon
was ill, Germinie went by herself to the
school. Upon her arrival she learned that
the young man was in trouble because
some questionable books had been found
in his possession. Germinie helped him
out of his difficulty, but when she tried
to lecture hira found herself unable to
do so.
Soon Germinie realized that she had a
great deal of affection for the young man,
who was ten years her junior. In order
to be near him and to have company,
she spent a great deal of time with the
Jupillons, who took advantage of her
willingness to help in the store. She was
exceedingly jealous when Jupillon was
attracted to a woman of notoriety and did
everything she could to keep the two
apart. By her actions she left herself open
to the advances of young Jupillon, who
was not above taking advantage of her
unselfish devotion.
Germinie was extremely happy as the
lover of young Jupillon; she had a need,
both physically and psychologically, for
someone to love. But she soon discovered
that Jupillon spent much time in the
company of other women. To help keep
him for herself, Germinie spent all her
money to buy him a place in which to
open his own business, meanwhile
providing him with an apartment of his own.
But shortly after she had done so much
for him Germinie was turned away from
Jupillon's door by another woman who
had become his mistress. In the meantime
Germinie had become pregnant; a baby
daughter was born. Since it was
impossible to keep the child at home while
acting as Mile, de Varandeuil's
maidservant, Germinie farmed out the child. The
death of the baby a few months later
brought Germinie great sorrow.
Some time after she had been turned
out by Jupillon, the young man was
unfortunate enough to be called for military
service. He had no money to secure his
release, but he knew that he could get
the money from Germinie, who still
loved him. Germinie, after some
trepidation, went into debt to keep her false
lover near her. She was compelled to
borrow so much money that the bare
interest on it took everything she could
spare from her small income.
As the years passed Jupillon took less
and less interest in Germinie, so that she
finally gave him up and turned to liquor
for comfort. Drunkenness became her
one joy, although she managed to keep
the secret of her vice to herself; old Mile,
de Varandeuil never even guessed the
truth. Everyone noticed, however, that
she had become slovenly in her person
and in her work. Mile, de Varandeuil
kept her on only because the old woman
could not stand the thought of a new
servant in the house. Germinie had two
grave problems: she had no one to love,
and she was miserably in debt because of
a man who cared nothing for her.
At last Germinie found herself
approaching forty years of age. About that
time she met a man in his fifties, a
painter, and took him as a lover. She did not
love Gautruche except as an object upon
1319

which her pent-up affections could be
lavished. Before long she felt much
better, behaved much better, and was a
better servant to her mistress. But Gautruche
saw in her only a servant for himself,
and he believed that she would be only
too happy to leave her job and marry
him. Much to his surprise, she refused
his offer of marriage, and the two parted
forever. Once again Germinie was left
with no one who cared for her or upon
whom she could lavish her affections.
She turned in her desperation to picking
up any man she could find on the streets.
One night, as she roamed Paris looking
for a lover, she saw Jupillon. She
followed him to a house and spent the
night outside in the rain, while waiting
for a chance to see him again. The next
morning she was desperately ill with
pleurisy. She kept on working in spite
of her illness, until her condition
became much worse. At last Mile, de Var-
andeuil sent her to a hospital and there
Germinie died. After her death all her
secrets were revealed, for everyone to
whom she owed money attempted to
collect from her employer. At first Mile, de
Varandeuil was outraged; then she came
to realize the agony and frustration of
Germinie's life, and felt only pity for the
wretched girl.
1320

GETTYSBURG
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Elsie Singmaster (Mrs. E. S. Lewars, 1879-1958)
Types of plots: Historical chronicle and regional realism
Times of plots: 1863-1913
Locale: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
First published: 1913
Principal characters:
Mary Bowman, widowed during the tattle
Young Parsons, a recruit from Gettysburg
Colonel Frank Haskell, of the Thirty-sixth Wisconsin Infantry
Gunner Adam Criswell, a blind veteran
Frederick Daggett, a military substitute
Grandfather Myers, an aged veteran
Critique:
Gettysburg gave Elsie Singmaster's
writing its center and its roots, and this
collection of her short stories is one of
the best books ever written about the
battle fought there and its aftermath. Living
on the site of that great conflict, the
writer heard at first hand the stories of
many men and women who remembered
vividly the events of those three decisive
days of July first, second, and third, 1863.
The people of that time are dead and
buried now, but Elsie Singmaster has
preserved their recollections in this book,
to which she gave the simple yet
evocative title, Gettysburg. Her treatment is
both realistic and legendary. The book
opens with a picture of the town when
news came that a battle was to be fought
there, continues with an account of the
battle and the Confederate retreat, and
ends with a group of stories dealing with
characters whose experiences are
presented in retrospect—blind Gunner
Criswell, whose name was missing from the
roll of honor; old Daggett, the substitute
who had been cheated of honor and pay;
Grandfather Myers, who saw the
marching ranks once more before he died; Mary
Bowman, widowed during the fighting,
who saw General Early on his white
horse, the ghostly leader of that grim
retreat through wind and rain. Gettysburg
may be read as a work of fiction. The
stories, however, are based on actual
people and events.
The Stories:
Mary Bowman, scraping lint for
wound-dressings, found it difficult to keep
her mind on her work. Close by, her
three small children played that they
were General Early and his ragged
Confederate troops, who had passed through
Gettysburg several days before. Yesterday
Union soldiers had marched into town
and headed toward Chambersburg. Mary
Bowman was glad that the village was
not to see fighting, thankful that her
husband was with Hooker's unengaged
forces. But she had dreamed of marching
men in the night. Suddenly uneasy, she
went to her front door. Hannah Casey, a
neighbor, came from her garden across
the street. While they stood talking a
soldier rode by and warned them to take
shelter. The Army of Northern Virginia
was advancing from the north, the Army
of the Potomac from the south. The
women looked at each other in dismay
as cannon roared threateningly from the
ridge west of town.
For months young Parsons had
dreamed of fields filled with dead men.
Sometimes he wanted to run away.
GETTYSBURG by Elsie Singmaster. By permission of the author and the publishers, Houghton Mifflin
Co. Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons; copyright, 1907, 1909, 1911, 1912, by Harper &
Brothers; copyright, 1909, by J. B. Lippincott Co.; copyright, 1909, by The S. S. McClure Co.; copyright,
1913, 1930, by Elsie Singmaster Lewars. All rights reserved.
1321

Marching along the dusty road from
Taney town, he suddenly realized that
the army was moving toward Gettysburg,
where he had been born. Firing sounded
in the distance. As his company marched
that night past the cemetery where his
father was buried, he could stand the
thought of death and battle no longer.
Turning, he ran blindly through the
darkness to his mother's farmhouse.
Finding the door locked, he entered through
a window and crept upstairs to his own
bed. He awoke in late afternoon, to find
the house empty, his mother nowhere
about. Looking from a window, he saw
men in blue and other men in gray
skirmishing outside. His fears forgotten, he
began to fire on the Confederates. All
that afternoon he and the Union soldiers
held the strategic ground around the
Parsons house, where, toward evening,
his friends carried him with a bullet
wound in his throat. Lying on the kitchen
floor, he saw his mother as she came from
the cellar where she had hidden herself
when the firing began. On Parsons' face
was a look of peace; he had come home.
Near a clump of trees, on the third
day of the battle, Colonel Frank Haskell
waited in a stone-fenced field. Around
him were long lines of infantry,
reformed since yesterday's fighting. A mile
away, on the opposite ridge, Lee's men
also waited. The cannonading began.
Smoke drifted across the field. Men fell,
but still the Union lines waited. The
bombardment ended with heavy, ominous
silence. Then through the smoke the
Confederate ranks appeared, eighteen
thousand men, a rolling sea of gray.
Shells, shrapnel, canister failed to stop
them. When the Union lines began to
waver, the young officer drew his sword
and urged his men back. The troops
were fighting hand to hand as the smoke
closed down. Then the Confederate
charge broke. By a clump of trees
behind a stone wall Pickett's charge ended
in defeat.
Although she had been forewarned,
Mary Bowman was startled by the sound
of reveille on the morning of November
19, 1863. The night before a train from
Washington had brought President
Lincoln to Gettysburg for the dedication of a
cemetery for the dead soldiers. Out there
on the battlefield, among the unknown
dead, lay Mary Bowman's husband, for
whom she had looked in vain. Sad and
embittered by her loss, she went to the
ceremony only because the judge, a
kindly man concerned for her welfare,
insisted that she take her children. She
heard little that the orator of the day
said, for her mind was on the wounded
she had nursed, on the grim debris of the
battle she had uncovered in her search.
As she turned to leave, someone said that
the President was about to speak.
Abraham Lincoln, lank and sad-faced, spoke
only a few words, but, hearing them,
Mary Bowman took heart. It was as if he
were telling her to be of good comfort,
that her duty was to the living as well as
the dead.
The explosion which cost Gunner
Adam Criswell his eyesight on the
second day of the battle had not disabled
him. A vigorous old man, he returned to
Gettysburg with his friend, Carolus De-
pew, in September, 1910, for the
dedication of the great monument containing
the names of all Pennsylvania soldiers
who had fought in the battle. While
Carolus looked for his own name, a boy
read to the blind man the names of those
in Criswell's battery. The townspeople
had opened their homes to the old
soldiers; Criswell and Depew stayed with
Professor James and his wife. Another
guest was a pompous general who took
credit for the plan to inscribe the
veterans' names on the monument. The next
day Criswell went to the exercises with
Mrs. James. Afterward the general
offered to find the blind man's name on
the memorial tablets. Then Criswell told
them what he himself already knew. His
name had been overlooked.
Frederick Daggett had fought as a
substitute. The other man had promised him
a thousand dollars, but the money had
1322

never been paid. All Gettysburg,
knowing Daggett as a drunkard and braggart,
laughed at his foolish story. Congressman
Ellison Brant, arriving in Gettysburg on
the eve of Memorial Day, was unable to
find accommodations or a guide until
Daggett offered his services. Brant,
impatient and demanding, was dissatisfied
with the old man's efforts and tried to
pay him off contemptuously in the
crowded lobby of the Keystone Hotel.
Before all the people there, Daggett
demanded his thousand dollars, for he had
recognized Brant as the man who had
cheated him years before. The politician
reached for his checkbook before he
realized that his gesture was an admission of
guilt. Hurriedly he wrote the check.
Daggett took it and deliberately tore the
slip of paper in two. Ragged and
disreputable, he could always boast that he
had thrown away a thousand dollars.
Grandfather Myers, invalided home
after Chancellorsville, had watched the
Confederates retreating through rain and
mud from Gettysburg. Ever since, he had
regretted the illness which had kept him
from offering food or comfort to the tired,
defeated men. He himself was an old
man when the state militia held a
summer encampment on the battlefield. His
son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren
went to see the review, but Grandfather
Myers stayed at home because there was
no room for him in the buggy. That
afternoon he dressed himself in his blue
uniform. He was sitting on the front
porch when a detachment of the
National Guard came marching by on ma*
neuvers. To the old man they were Lee's
soldiers in retreat, their uniforms yellow
with dust instead of tattered and rain-
soaked. When they asked for water he
could only nod smilingly. At last he had
given Lee's men something. He could die
content.
Although Mary Bowman lived to see
the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, she
never talked of those days. But she
remembered all her life her husband, lost
on that battlefield, the voice of Abraham
Lincoln, and most vividly of all the
figure of General Early, as she had seen him
riding by on his white horse, the spectral
leader of a stumbling, ghostly host on
that rain-muffled retreat toward Hagers-
town.
1323

GHOSTS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Rosenvold, Norway
First presented: 1881
Principal characters:
Mrs. Helen Alvtng, a widow
Oswald Alving, her son, an artist
Manders, pastor of the parish
Jacob Engstrand, a carpenter
Regina Engstrand, his daughter, in Mrs. Alving's service
Critique:
Ghosts is Ibsen's effort to substitute
the modern scientific concept of heredity
for the Greek idea of Fate. But there is
more to the play than merely a study in
degenerative heredity; it is a mordant
attack upon society and the standards by
which it lives. Ibsen explicitly says that
these standards were responsible for the
tragedy of Mrs. Alving, and in so doing
he tossed a bombshell into the
conventional and even the liberal thought of his
day. The play can still be read as a
study in what has come to be known as
the science of semantics—the disruptive
effect caused when words or concepts are,
in society, divorced from the realities for
which they are supposed to stand.
The Story:
Pastor Manders called on Mrs. Helen
Alving on the eve of the tenth
anniversary of her husband's death, to discuss
certain details concerning the opening of
an orphanage in memory of her late
husband. The pastor found Mrs. Alving
in the best of spirits, for her son Oswald,
an artist, had returned from Paris to
attend the dedication of the memorial to
his father. Although he was now twenty-
six, Oswald had lived away from his
parents since he was seven, and Mrs.
Alving was delighted at the prospect of
having her son spend the entire winter
with her.
Oswald had idealized his father, for
in her letters his mother had always
pictured Captain Alving as a sort of hero.
The boy's own memories of his father
were confined to one incident in his
childhood when his father had taken
him on his knee and encouraged him to
smoke a large meerschaum pipe. Oswald
remembered this episode, and upon his
return home he took a certain pride in
lighting up his father's old pipe and
parading in front of his mother and
Pastor Manders.
Pastor Manders did not approve of
smoking; in fact, he did not approve of
anything which could even loosely be
interpreted as sin. He did not approve of
Oswald's bohemian way of life in Paris
and blamed Mrs. Alving's neglect for
her son's ideas. He reminded Mrs. Alving
that hardly a year after her marriage she
had come to him willing to leave her
husband, and that he had sent her back
to her duty. This was an act Manders
considered the greatest moral victory of
his life.
Mrs. Alving thought it high time that
Manders be informed of the truth about
her late husband. Years before, when he
advised her return to Captain Alving, the
minister had been quite aware of her
husband's profligacy. What he did not
know was that the profligacy continued
after his wife's dutiful return. Her entire
relationship with her husband consisted
largely of helping him into bed after
GHOSTS oy Henrik Ibsen. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1324

one of his drinking bouts, and on one
occasion she had surprised him making
love to her own maidservant. But the
most abominable aspect of the situation
was the fact that she had discovered, soon
after her marriage, that her husband was:
diseased and her son would have to go
hrough life with his father's curse upon
his head. Manders' religious influence
and Mrs. Alving's cowardice had
conspired to keep silence.
Now it began to look as if the moral
consequences would play themselves out.
While Mrs. Alving and the minister
calked, Oswald was attempting
familiarities in the adjoining dining-room with
the maid, Regina, his own stepsister.
To Mrs. Alving it seemed as if this act
were the ghost of her unhappy marriage,
for Regina, ostensibly the daughter of a
drunken carpenter named Jacob Eng-
strand, was actually the result of Captain
Alving's escapade with the maidservant,
the discovery of which had sent Mrs.
Alving flying to Pastor Manders for solace
and help. Engstrand had been willing to
turn Regina over to Mrs. Alving for her
education and care. Now, however, he
had other ideas for the girl's future. He
planned to enlist her aid in the
establishment of a seamen's home. But Regina
had other plans for herself, and saw no
reason why she should throw herself
away on worthless and irresponsible
sailors when she might have the heir of a
wealthy family.
Oswald himself, unaware of any blood
relationship, wanted to marry Regina.
He confided to his mother that before he
left Paris he had gone to a doctor
regarding a feeling of malaise which
cobbed him of his ambition to paint. The
doctor had commented on the sins of
fathers. Oswald, knowing only the
picture of his father that his mother's
letters had given him, was furious, and he
thought he had brought about his own
downfall. He told his mother that he
wanted to marry Regina and make what
was left of his life happy. Mrs. Alving
realized that at last she must tell the
two young people the truth. But before
she nad a chance to do so, news came
that the orphanage which was to have
been Captain Alving's memorial was
afire.
When the orphanage caught fire,
Manders and Engstrand were in the
carpenter shop nearby. After the fire,
Engstrand accused the pastor of dropping a
lighted candle wick into some shavings.
Though not guilty, Manders was
frightened because of his position in the
community. When Engstrand offered to
take the blame for the fire in return for
enough money from the remainder of
Captain Alving's fortune to build his
sailor's home, the self-righteous Manders
agreed to this blackmail and promised to
help Engstrand in the transaction.
Mrs. Alving told Oswald and Regina
the story of their late father. She tried
to explain why Alving had been doomed
from the beginning. When it was
revealed that she was really Alving's
daughter, Regina was angry, feeling that she
should have been reared and educated as
a lady. She preferred to cast her lot
with Engstrand. Alone with his mother,
Oswald revealed the final horror; an
affliction had already attacked his brain
and would result in complete regression
to childhood. Mrs. Alving assured her
son that she would always be by his side
to take care of him. Oswald urged his
mother to kill him if the need should
arise. Shocked, Mrs. Alving refused
when he showed her the morphia tablets
he had brought with him. They were
still talking at daybreak. Mrs. Alving
blew out the light. But while she stood
and looked in horror, Oswald sat crying
childishly for the sun.
1325

GIANTS IN THE EARTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: O. E. Rolvaag (1876-1931)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: The Dakotas
First published: 1924-1925
Principal characters:
Per Hansa, a Norwegian settler
Beret, his wife
Oue,
Anna Marie,
Hans Kristian, and
Peder Victorious, their children
Critique:
Giants in the Earth is a tremendous
contribution to our understanding of
pioneer life. Perhaps some day it will be
condensed into a saga, its story sharpened
down into the short, keen points of myth
and its Per Hansa viewed as an
American folk hero. It is important to realize
that Rolvaag, writing in the tradition of
Western Europe, and writing for a
European audience, was able to blend old
and new and to create a story which an
American audience would accept. The
theme of the novel is a great one: man's
struggle with the stubborn earth. This
theme is of principal importance to
Americans. It is the story of man bearing
his memory of other lands into a new
country, and out of that experience
building a new homeplace and a new people.
The Story:
Per Hansa moved all his family and
his possessions from Minnesota into the
Dakota territory. His family consisted of
his wife, Beret, and three children, Ole,
Anna Marie, and Hans Kristian. Beret
was fearful and sad, for she had been
uprooted too often and the prairie country
through which they traveled seemed
bleak, lonely, savage.
Per Hansa staked out his claim near
the family of Hans Olsa at Spring Creek.
Then Beret announced that she was
carrying another child. Money was
scarce. Per Hansa faced overwhelming
odds and thoughts of the great risks he
was taking kept him awake long after
Beret and the children slept. Being
something of a poet, Per Hansa thought
at times that the land spoke to him, and
often he watched and listened and forgot
to keep to his work as he cleared his
land and built his house. He labored
from before dawn until after dark during
those long, northern summer days.
When Indians came and drove away
the settlers' cows, only Per Hansa had the
courage to follow after them. Only he
had the sense to doctor a sick Indian.
Beret mistrusted his wisdom for
foolishness and there were harsh words between
them. The grateful Indian gave Per
Hansa a pony. Then Per Hansa went
on a buying expedition and returned
with many needed supplies and, what
was more, news of coming settlers.
The next summer Per Hansa
discovered claim stakes which bore Irish
names. The stakes were on his neighbor's
land; the homesteaders had settled where
others had already filed claim. Secretly
he removed the stakes and burned them,
but not before Beret realized what he
was doing. She began to worry over her
husband's deed. Per Hansa sold some
potatoes to people traveling through and
awoke the slumbering jealousy of his
neighbors.
GIANTS IN THE EARTH by O. E. Rolvaag. By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brother*. Copyright.
1927, 1929, by Harper & Brothers.
1326

In midsummer more people arrived,
the settlers who had set out the stakes
that Per Hansa had burned. They called
the Norwegians claim jumpers, but after
a fight they took up other land nearby.
Per Hansa managed to sell some of his
goods to them. That fall more
Norwegians came. The little community
was thriving. But Beret, depressed by the
open spaces and her fear that her husband
had done a bad thing, brewed a dark
remorse within herself. Day by day she
brooded over her lonely life, and she
covered her window at night because of
her nameless fears. At least Per Hansa
on his infrequent trips around to
different settlements met other people.
When winter came Per Hansa rested.
He could sleep long hours while the
winds blew outside, but his wife worried
and fretted. He began to quarrel with
her. Soon, however, he noticed that his
neighbors were suffering hardship and
privation. The unmarried young men
who had settled near the Hansas were
planning to desert the settlement. It
required all his ability to convince them
to stay and to face the desolate, bitter
winter to its end.
The settlers began to talk of a school
which would move from house to house
so that the parents might learn English
along with the children.
During the winter Per Hansa became
lost in a blizzard and only his tremendous
strength and courage saw him and his
oxen safely through the storm to the
Tronders' settlement. The following day,
forgetting how Beret must be worrying
about him, he stayed on and cut a load
of wood to take back home with him.
His next expedition was to bargain
with the Indians for furs. He suffered
greatly from exposure and lost two toes
through frostbite.
When spring came, Per Hansa could
not wait to get into his fields to plant
his wheat. His friends thought he was
planting too early. And so it seemed, for
snow fell the next day and freezing
weather set in. Determined not to lose
heart, Per Hansa decided to plant
potatoes in place of the wheat. Beret took to
her Bible, convinced that evil was
working its way into their lives. Then,
unexpectedly, their wheat came up.
Another couple arrived. They were
exhausted with travel, the wife saddened
by the death of her son on the prairie.
Per Hansa and Beret took them in.
When they moved on, greater
despondency seized Beret. She felt some doom
was working its way closer and closer to
her life.
That summer grasshoppers destroyed
much of the grain. Most of Per Hansa's
crop was saved, but Beret took his good
fortune only as a sign that the
underground trolls, or evil spirits, were
planning greater ruin for her and her
husband.
In the following years the scourge
of the grasshoppers returned. Many
of the settlers were ruined. Some starved.
Some went mad. One summer a traveling
Norwegian minister took up residence
with them to plan a religious service for
the whole community. His coming
worked a change in Per Hansa's
household. Per Hansa took courage from it
and consolation, but deeper and stranger
grew the reveries in Beret's mind.
Because it was the largest house in the
district the minister held a communion
service in Per Hansa's cabin.
Disconnected parts of the service floated all that
week in Beret's head. Her mind was
filled with strange fancies. She began
to think of Peder Victorious, her youngest
child, who was born on the prairie, as a
savior who would work their salvation.
As the autumn came on, the great
plains seemed hungry for the blood and
strength of those who had come to
conquer it.
That winter Hans Olsa froze his legs
and one hand. In spite of all that Per
Hansa and the others did for their
neighbor, Hans Olsa grew weaker. Beret
stood beside him, predicting that he had
not long to live. She put into the sick
man's mind the idea to send for the
1327

minister. Per Hansa thought that Hans
Olsa was weak in calling for a minister
and that the way to throw off illness was
to get out of bed and go to work. He
had never spared himself, nor had he
spared his sons. He was the man to go
for the minister, but this time he was
unwilling to set out on a long winter
journey. Hans Olsa was a good man; he did
not need a minister to help him die. The
weather itself was threatening. However,
Per Hansa reconsidered. His sons were
digging a tunnel through snow to the
pigsty. Inside, his wife was preparing a
meal for him. They watched as he took
down his skis and prepared to make the
journey for the sake of his dying friend.
He did not look back at his house or
speak farewell to Beret as he started out.
So Per Hansa, on his errand of mercy,
walked into the snowstorm. There death
overtook him.
1328

GIL BLAS OF SANTILLANE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alain Rene" Le Sage (1668-1747)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Spain
First published: 1715, 1724, 1735
Principal characters:
Gil Blas, a rogue
Scipio, his secretary
Don Alphonso, his patron
Critique:
The Adventures of Gil Bias of Santil-
lane is a long novel made up of many
disconnected episodes. One of the first
works to introduce thieves, vagabonds,
and vulgar peasantry into fiction, it is
a precursor of the realism of Flaubert and
Balzac. The setting is supposedly Spain,
but the characters and settings are in
reality French, and particularly Breton.
The appeal of this book comes from the
skilled narration of exciting tales, and
from its author's shrewd insight into the
minds of his picturesque characters.
The Story:
Bias of Santillane retired from the
wars and married a chambermaid no
longer young. After the birth of Gil,
the parents settled in Oviedo, where the
father became a minor squire and the
mother went into service.
Happily, Gil Perez, Gil Bias* uncle,
was a canon in the town. He was three
and a half feet high and enormously
fat. Without his aid, Gil Bias would
never have received an education. He
provided a tutor for his nephew and at
the age of seventeen Gil Bias had studied
the classics and some logic.
When the time came for him to seek
his fortune, the family sent Gil Bias to
Salamanca to study. The uncle provided
him with forty pistoles and a mule.
Shortly after setting out, Gil Bias was
foolish enough to join the train of a
muleteer who concocted a story that he had
been robbed of a hundred pistoles and
threatened all his passengers with arrest
and torture. His purpose was to frighten
1
the men away so that he could seduce
the wife of one of the travelers. Gil
Bias had some thought of helping the
woman, but he fled upon the arrival of
a police patrol.
Gil Bias was found in the woods by a
band of ruffians who had an underground
hideout nearby. Under Captain Rolando,
they made Gil their serving-boy. After
an unsuccessful attempt to escape, he set
out to ingratiate himself with the captain.
At the end of six months he became a
member of the gang and embarked on a
career of robbery and murder. One day
the robbers attacked a coach, killed all
the men, and captured a beautiful
woman. Since she was well-born and
modest, Gil Bias resolved to rescue her.
Waiting until the robbers were asleep,
he tied up the cook and escaped with
the woman, whose name, he learned, was
Donna Mencia. She was very grateful
for her rescue, and, dressing Gil Bias in
fine clothes, she presented him with a
bag of money. So he went on his way,
comparatively rich and comfortable.
On his travels he met Fabricio, a
former schoolmate who had become a
barber. Scornful of Gil's intention to
study, Fabricio soon prevailed upon him
to go into service as a lackey. As it
turned out, Gil was well adapted to
flattery and intrigue, and he soon became
proficient by serving a variety of masters,
among them Doctor Sangrado, a
physician. The doctor's one remedy for all
maladies was forced drinking of water
and frequent bleeding. Gil Bias won the
doctor's esteem and was permitted to at-

tend poor patients in his master's place.
During an epidemic, he made a record
as good as that of Sangrado; all of their
patients died.
Another master was Don Matthias, a
fashionable man about town. By means
of a little judicious thievery and daring,
Gil Bias found his new life highly
satisfying. Each day was spent in eating and
polite conversation, every night in
carousing. During this service Gil dressed in
his master's clothes and tried to get a
mistress among the titled ladies of the
town. An old lady who arranged these
affairs introduced him to a grand lady
who was pining for a lover. Gil was
disillusioned when he went with Don
Matthias to the house of Arsenia, an actress,
and found that his grand lady was really
a serving-maid.
After Don Matthias was killed in a
duel, Gil attended Arsenia for a time.
Later he went into service in the
household of Aurora, a virtuous young woman
who grieved because a student named
Lewis paid no attention to her charms. At
Gil's suggestion, Aurora disguised
herself as a man and took an apartment in
the same house with Lewis. Striking up
a friendship with him, Aurora skillfully
led him on. Then she received him in
her own house in her proper person, and
soon Lewis and Aurora were married.
Gil Bias left their service content with his
part in the romance.
On the road again, Gil was able to
frustrate a band of robbers who had
planned to kill Don Alphonso. Thus
Gil and the don began a lasting
friendship.
After losing a situation because he
learned that the duenna had an ulcer on
her back, Gil next took service with an
archbishop. His work was to write out
the homilies composed by the archbishop.
After he had won his master's confidence,
the churchman made Gil promise to tell
him when his homilies showed signs of
degenerating in quality. After a stroke,
the archbishop failed mentally, and Gil
told him his homilies were not up to
the usual standard. In his rage, the
archbishop dismissed Gil, who learned in this
manner the folly of being too truthful.
Engaged as secretary by the Duke of
Lerma, prime minister of Spain, Gil soon
became the duke's confidential agent.
Now Gil was in a position to sell favors,
and his avarice grew apace with his
success in court intrigue. During this
successful period, he engaged Scipio as his
servant. Gil's high position enabled him
to secure the governorship of Valencia
for Don Alphonso.
Gil became involved in high court
scandal. At the request of the prime
minister, he acted as pander for the
prince of Spain, the heir apparent. About
the same time Scipio arranged a wealthy
marriage for Gil with the daughter of
a rich goldsmith. But one night the king's
spies caught Gil conducting the prince
to a house of pleasure and Gil was
confined to prison. Faithful Scipio shared
his imprisonment. After months of
sickness, Gil was released and exiled from
Madrid. Fortunately Don Alphonso gave
Gil a country estate at Lirias, and there
he and Scipio settled to lead the simple
lives of country gentlemen. Attracted
by Antonia, the daughter of one of his
farmers, Gil married, but his happiness
was brief. After Antonia and his baby
daughter died, Gil became restless for
new fields. The prince was now king,
and Gil resolved to try court life again.
He became an intimate of the new prime
minister, Count Olivarez. Once again he
was employed to arrange a liaison for
the king, a mission that turned out badly.
Forced to resign, Gil returned for good
to Lirias.
There he made a second marriage with
a girl named Dorothea. Now content,
Gil Bias hoped for children whose
education would provide amusement for his
old age.
1330

THE GILDED AGE
Type of work: Novel
Authors: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens, 1835-1910) and Charles Dudley Warner
(1829-1900)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: United States
first published: 1873
'Principal characters:
Washington Hawkins, a young Westerner
Laura Hawkins, his adopted sister
Colonel Beriah Sellers, an improvident optimist
Philip Sterling, a young engineer
Harry Brierly, his friend
Senator Dilworthy, a member of Congress
Ruth Bolton, a Quaker
Critique:
Satire was Mark Twain's forte, and in
this novel his wit finds a wide range. In
fact, he and his co-author planned to
attack almost every aspect of contemporary
society. The weakness in the story lies
in its co-authorship; it hangs in uncertain
balance between sober reality and sheer
hilarity, with no clear demarcation
between the two attitudes. Mark Twain's
contribution can easily be recognized by
readers familiar with the humorist's style.
The book was apparently intended to do
for the novel what The Knight of the
Burning Pestle did for the drama.
Diffused in its effects, the novel does contain
one memorable element, the
unforgettable character of Beriah Sellers.
The Story:
Squire Hawkins of Obedstown,
Tennessee, received a letter from Colonel
Beriah Sellers asking Hawkins to come to
Missouri with his wife Nancy and two
Hawkins children, Emily and George
Washington. Moved by the coloners
eloquent account of opportunities to be found
in the new territory, the family traveled
West. On the journey they stopped at a
house where a young child was mourning
the death of his mother. Taking
compassion on the orphan, Hawkins offered to
adopt him. His name was Henry Clay.
The travelers boarded the Boreas, a
steamboat headed up the Mississippi. In
a race with a rival the two boats collided,
causing a fire on the other steamboat and
killing or injuring scores of passengers. In
the confusion Hawkins found a stray
child, Laura, whose parents apparently
had died in the fire. The Hawkinses,
although now burdened with four children
to care for, took hope in the promise of
Tennessee lands which they still owned.
After a tiresome journey they reached
their new home, a log cabin surrounded
by a dozen or so other ramshackle
dwellings. There Colonel Sellers helped the
Hawkinses start their new life. But Squire
Hawkins did not prosper as he had hoped
and before long his affairs became
hopelessly involved.
Ten years later found Colonel Sellers
living in Hawkeye, a town some distance
away. Squire Hawkins, by that time, was
impoverished. Clay had gone off to find
work and Laura, now a beautiful young
girl, volunteered to do so. Washington
and Emily could not decide what to da.
Clay brought money to the destitute
family and paid Washington's stagecoach
fare to Hawkeye, where he found Colonel
Sellers as poorly off as the Hawkins
family. But Colonel Sellers was a magnificent
talker. His tireless stove became a secret
invention, his meager dinner a feast, his
barren house a mansion, and under the
spell of his words Washington's dismal
prospects were changed to prospects of a
1331

glowing future. Colonel Sellers spoke
confidentially of private deals with New
York bankers and the Rothschilds. He
confided that he was working on a patent
medicine which would bring him a
fortune.
Colonel Sellers took Washington to the
real estate office of General Boswell. It
was arranged that the young man should
live with the Boswells while working for
the general. Before long he fell in love
with BoswelTs daughter Louise.
Squire Hawkins died, leaving his
family only the lands in Tennessee. Among
his papers Laura found some letters from
a Major Lackland, who apparently had
come across a man believed to be Laura's
father. Before Hawkins could get in touch
with the man, he had disappeared. Laura's
doubtful parentage made her an object
of scorn in the region.
Two young New Yorkers, Philip
Sterling and Harry Brierly, set out for
Missouri to work as construction engineers
for a railroad company. In St. Louis they
met Colonel Sellers, who entertained
them with boasts about his investments
and treated them to drinks and cigars.
When he showed embarrassment at
having lost his money, Philip relieved him
by paying the bill.
In Philadelphia, Ruth Bolton, the
daughter of Eli and Margaret Bolton,
both Quakers, received a letter from
Philip. Rebelling against the rules of the
Friends, she told her parents that she
wanted to do something different, perhaps
study medicine.
Colonel Sellers continued to befriend
the two young men in St. Louis. He went
so far as to suggest that the railroad should
be built through Stone's Landing, a small
village not along the route planned for
the road. Like the colonel, Harry was a
man of imagination. When their money
ran out, Harry and Philip went to an
engineers' camp near Hawkeye, and the
colonel joined them to plan the city to be
built there.
Philip and Harry arrived in Hawkeye
eight years after the death of Squire
Hawkins. The Civil War had been fought;
the Hawkinses were still supported by
Clay, and Laura had become a beauty.
During the war she had married a Colonel
Selby, who, already married, had deserted
her when his regiment was transferred.
After that calamity she turned her eye
upon Harry Brierly, who fell in love with
her.
When Senator Dilworthy went to
Hawkeye to investigate Colonel Sellers'
petition for funds to improve the area,
the senator met Washington Hawkins.
Thinking Washington a fine young man,
the senator hired him as a secretary. Laura
charmed Senator Dilworthy to such an
extent that he invited her to visit his
family in Washington.
Ruth Bolton was in school at Fallkill,
where she stayed with a family named
Montague. On their way to New York,
Philip and Harry stopped to see her.
Philip was disappointed in the manner in
which Ruth accepted him. Alice
Montague was kinder to him; Ruth seemed too
attentive to Harry. In Washington, Harry
saw the appropriation for Stone's Landing
passed by Congress. When the New York
office sent no money with which to pay
the workers at Stone's Landing, Harry
went to New York to investigate.
Speculation was everywhere; even Mr. Bolton
decided to buy some land near the railroad
in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Harry
learned that the cost of obtaining the
Congressional appropriation had been so high
that there was no money left to pay for
the work at Stone's Landing.
Hired by Mr. Bolton, Philip went to
develop the natural resources of a tract
of land in Ilium, Pennsylvania. He
became a frequent visitor at the Boltons*.
Senator Dilworthy invited Laura to
come to Washington, where she
immediately became a belle—much to Harry
Brierly's consternation. Many people believed
her an heiress. The senator attempted
to use her influence in getting
congressmen to vote in favor of a bill in
which he was interested. At a party Laura
saw Colonel Selby, who had come to
1BB2

Washington to claim reimbursement for
some cotton destroyed during the war.
When the former lovers met, Laura knew
she still loved Selby and the two began
to be seen about town together. When
he left Washington, Laura followed him
to a New York hotel, where she shot him.
The opening of the Ilium coal mine
found Philip and Harry hard at work.
Before they had located the main vein,
however, Mr. Bolton went bankrupt and
surrendered all his property to his
creditors, and Philip was able to buy the Ilium
tract. Ruth, graduated from medical
school, had gone to work in a Philadelphia
hospital. Harry was in New York, a
witness at Laura's murder trial. Philip, hoping
to read law in the squire's office, visited
the Montagues in Fallkill. Mr.
Montague, seeing value in Philip's mine,
offered to finance a further excavation.
Laura's trial attracted much attention.
Claiming that she was insane, her
lawyer tried to show that her mind had been
deranged from the time she lost her
parents in the river boat fire.
Senator Dilworthy's bill, a measure to
establish a university for Negroes on the
Hawkins land in Tennessee, had been for
some time in committee. Washington
Hawkins and Colonel Sellers expected to
make a fortune when the bill passed.
Then Dilworthy, up for reelection,
attempted to buy votes and was exposed,
and his bill was defeated on the floor of
the Senate. Washington and Sellers were
crestfallen.
Laura was acquitted of the murder
charge. Penniless, she tried to begin a
lecture tour, but on her first appearance she
found only an empty auditorium. On the
streets she was attacked by angry citizens
and driven home to a cold room, where
she died of grief.
Philip finally found coal in his shaft,
but his elation subsided when a telegram
from the Boltons told him that Ruth was
gravely ill. He hurried to her bedside,
where his presence helped to hasten her
recovery.
1333

THE GLASS KEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: 1930's
Locale: New York area
First published: 1931
Principal characters:
Ned Beaumont, gambler and amateur detective
Paul Madvig, his friend and the city's political boss
Senator Henry, Madvig's candidate for reelection
Janet Henry, his daughter
Shad O'Rory, Madvig's rival
Opal Madvig, Madvig's daughter
Bernie Despaxn, a gambler owing Ned money
Critique:
In this detective novel Hammett has
followed the customary pattern but has
varied the circumstances so as to give
the story an interesting twist. In
addition to tracking down the murderer, the
hero also breaks up a bootlegging gang
and gives the city officials something
about which to worry. The novel has
stylistic qualities above the ordinary.
It is an excellent example of the modern
school of hard-boiled realism.
The Story:
Ned Beaumont reported to his friend,
Paul Madvig, the political boss of the
city, that he had found the dead body
of Taylor Henry in the street. Taylor
was the son of Senator Henry, Madvig's
candidate for reelection. When Madvig
failed to show much interest, Ned told
his story to the police. Next day he went
to collect from Bernie Despain the
thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars that
he had won on a horse race and found
that Bernie had vanished, leaving
behind twelve hundred dollars worth of
Taylor's I.O.U.'s. Ned had himself
appointed special investigator in the district
attorney's office so that he could work
on Taylor Henry's case. What he really
wanted to do was to find Bernie and get
his money.
His first step was to get the help of
Madvig's daughter Opal, who had been
meeting Taylor secretly. Ned had
found no hat on Taylor the night of
the murder. Opal got one for him from
the room she and Taylor had rented.
Then Ned went to New York to a
speakeasy that Bernie frequented. Bernie
came in accompanied by a burly
bodyguard who, when Ned asked for his
money, struck Ned a terrific blow. With
the help of Jack Rumsen, a private
detective, Ned trailed Bernie from the
hotel where he was staying to a brown-
stone house on Forty-ninth Street. There
he told Bernie that he had planted
Taylor's hat behind a sofa cushion in Ber-
nie's hotel room and would leave it
there for the police to find if Bernie
did not pay him the money. Bernie
paid off.
Back from New York, Ned went t6
see Farr, the district attorney. Farr
showed Ned an envelope enclosing
paper on which were typed three
questions implicating Madvig in Taylor's
murder. Meanwhile Madvig had decided
to have the police close down several
speak-easies belonging to Shad O'Rory,
gangster and ward boss. O'Rory
reopened the Dog House, where Ned went
to get information. O'Rory had him
THE GLASS KEY by Dashiell Hammett. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. Copyrieht.
1931, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1334

tortured for several days. Finally he
escaped. He was taken to a hospital.
There he had many callers, including
Madvig and Janet Henry, Taylor's
sister. Opal Madvig went to tell Ned she
was sure her father had killed Taylor.
Ned assured her he did not believe
Madvig had committed the murder. Partly
recovered, he left the hospital against
orders.
Shortly afterward Ned and Madvig
dined with Senator Henry and his
daughter Janet. Ned made Janet admit that
she secretly hated Madvig, who was in
love with her.
Ned went to see Madvig and told him
that even his henchmen were beginning
to betray him because they thought he
had committed the murder. Madvig
admitted Taylor had followed him out of
the Henry house that night, that they
had quarreled, and that he killed
Taylor with a brown, knobby cane which
Taylor had been carrying. Madvig
claimed that he had then carried the
cane away under his coat and burned it.
Ned later asked Janet to look for the
cane. She said it was with some others
in the hall of their home. She also told
him of a dream in which she and Ned
had found a house with a banquet
spread inside; they had to unlock the
door and let out a great many snakes
before they could go in to enjoy the
food.
Ned went next to Farr's office and
signed an affidavit telling of Madvig's
confession. Then he went to a bar where
he found Jeff, O'Rory's bodyguard. In
a private room upstairs he accused Jeff
of a gangster killing planned by O'Rory.
O'Rory walked in on them and in the
ensuing quarrel Jeff strangled O'Rory.
Ned had a waiter call the police to the
scene.
Ned went to the Madvig home, where
Madvig's mother said that Madvig was
nowhere to be found and that Opal had
unsuccessfully attempted to commit
suicide. Next morning Ned went to Senator
Henry's house and told the senator that
Madvig had confessed. It was all Janet
and Ned could do to keep the senator
from rushing out to kill Madvig. The
senator asked Janet to leave him alone with
Ned. Ned told him that Janet hated
Madvig. The senator insisted he was not
going to permit the murderer of his son to
go unpunished. Then Ned accused the
senator of killing Taylor, of wanting to
kill Madvig so that he would not testify
against him, of caring more for his own
reelection than for the life of his son.
The senator confessed that he had
interfered in a street quarrel between
Taylor and Madvig and had asked the
political boss to leave him with his son.
Madvig had done so after giving him the
cane Madvig had taken away from
Taylor. The senator, angry with his son
because of the quarrel he had forced upon
Madvig, had angrily struck Taylor with
the cane and killed him. He had then
carried home the cane. After hearing
the old man's confession, Ned refused to
leave him alone because he feared the
senator would kill himself before the
police arrived.
Next day Janet begged Ned to let her
go with him to New York. She said
the key to the house in her dream had
been of glass and had shattered just as
they opened the door because they had
had to force the lock. When Madvig
came in, he learned that he had lost
Janet, that she was going away with
Ned Beaumont.
1335

THE GLASS MENAGERIE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Tennessee Williams (1914- )
Time: 1930's
Locale: St. Louis, Missouri
First presented: 1945
Principal characters:
Amanda Wingfield, a woman who lives in illusion
Tom, her son
Laura, her crippled daughter
Jim O'Connor, the gentleman caller
This drama of illusion has been much
praised for its tenderness, gentleness, and
fragile charm. The first of Williams' plays
to achieve commercial success, it launched
him upon a spectacular career in the
American theater. Some have claimed
that he never again succeeded in
regaining the height that he here attained, and
that his subsequent work, popular though
it may have been, is anticlimactic.
The action of the drama, involving
only four characters, is built around
Amanda and her effect upon her son and
daughter. Infuriating and pathetic by
turns, Amanda, an incurable romantic,
lives by and for the illusions of her youth,
when she was—or thinks she was—the
belle of a small Southern town in the
Delta region. It is the ghost of this lost
past that she constantly conjures up in
a pitiful and futile effort to obliterate the
grim reality of lower middle-class life in
St. Louis. She has been deserted by her
husband; she now lives only for her
children, for whom she sincerely wants
happiness and security. It is the irony of the
story, however, that, by her insistent
nagging, her endless repetition of anecdotes
from her romanticized version of her
girlhood, and her inability to face the
actualities of her situation, she has crushed
her daughter and alienated her son. At
one moment she can envelop herself in
exaggerated "Southern charm"; at the
next, she can be an unbearable shrew.
Laura, the daughter, is the most
pitiable of the three members of the family.
A cripple and so abnormally shy that she
cannot have even the most ordinary
relationships with people, she takes refuge
in her "glass menagerie," a collection of
small glass animal figurines that
symbolizes the fragility of her life and her
retreat from reality. She is hopelessly
inadequate to play the role of "Southern
belle" that her mother wishes her to
assume or even to make a marriage that will
give her security. She has cared for only
one boy during her life—a pompous high
school hero. Jim O'Connor is the type, to
be found in every school or college, who
never in later life measures up to his
youthful promise. He is now working in
a warehouse, trying hard to "improve
himself," but still only a clerk. When
Tom, who does not know that his sister
had ever known Jim, brings him home
to dinner, Laura has her one moment of
happiness and her one escape from the
world into which she has retreated.
After the dinner that Amanda has
produced in a desperate effort to impress
him, Jim, in his awkward fashion, does
give Laura a flash of self-confidence,
enough to enable us to see what she
might become if she could ever break out
of her shell. Too unworldly to handle the
situation, she is dazed with happiness
when Jim kisses her. But Jim, crude as
he may be, is fundamentally honest
enough to confess that Laura can expect
nothing of him, for he is engaged and
will be married soon. And so the
momentary illusion of happiness collapses around
Laura just as the illusion of success
collapses around Amanda. It is the final
irony of the play that Amanda, who
blames the entire catastrophe on her son,
1336

drives him from her in their final quarrel
with the accusation that he is a dreamer
who lives in a world of illusion.
Tom, the frustrated son, is the least
successful of the characters, for he is the
familiar type of the young man with
literary ambitions imprisoned in the deadly
monotony of a job in a warehouse.
Indeed, with his anguished revolt against
his family, his furious outcries against
his fate, and his final escape, he seems
to have stepped out of a novel by Thomas
Wolfe. We can feel desperately sorry for
him because he is burdened with the care
of a nagging mother and a crippled sister;
however, since his inner life and his
literary gifts are described rather than
seen, he remains unconvincing and
shadowy, even though the whole story of the
play is seen through his memory.
From the point of view of theatrical
technique, the play holds much of
interest. Williams uses the long and involved
stage directions first made popular by
Shaw, plus a very elaborate and
complicated set of stage devices. The question
of the validity of such technical tricks
remains an open one. Shaw's use of
elaborate stage directions, which all too
frequently turned into lengthy and tiresome
preachments, succeeded in splitting a play
into two aspects: the play as produced, in
which these little essays naturally could
not appear, and the play as published,
in which these comments were extremely
important. In the printed version of The
Glass Menagerie, Williams makes a
modified use of this device. His elaborate stage
directions comment on the situation as
well as give the reader some of the
advantages of the spectator.
He also employs the device of using
Tom as both the narrator of and
commentator on the action, somewhat as in the
role of a Greek chorus, and as a character
in the play. Further, Williams has devised
a complicated set of stage effects—rather
like the tricks used in a Dos Passos novel
—to point up the mood of his play. The
question might well be raised of how
legitimate this theatrical sleight of hand
may be. Should not a dramatist be able
to rely on the significance of his fable
without calling on so much mechanical
ingenuity to get it presented?
Although, in a pantomime scene at the
end of the play, Amanda achieves
something like dignity as she comforts Laura,
it cannot be said that the play reaches the
heights of genuine tragedy. The
characters, pathetic though they may be, are too
shallow, too trivial, to have in them the
qualities of tragic greatness. The point
has been made that this is a story of
"lives of quiet desperation" and that the
choice of the 1930's for the setting
deliberately contrasts these lives with an
increasingly violent world in which illusion
can have no place. Perhaps this is part of
the human condition of our times and
therefore the only possible subject for a
serious dramatist. Yet it remains true that
the mood of the play is pathetic, not
tragic, and that Williams has created a
drama of gentle pathos rather than one
of high tragedy.
1337

GOAT SONG
Type of work: Drama
Author: Franz Werfel (1890-1945)
Type of plot: Symbolic allegory
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: A Slavic countryside
First presented: 1921
Principal characters:
Gospodar Stevan Milic, a faimei
Mirko Milic, his son
Mirko's Mother
Stanja Vesilic, Mirko's betrothed
Juvan, a student
The Physician
Critique:
The damage that can be done by the
fear and superstition of an ignorant
people is amply demonstrated in Goat Song,
in which the rebirth of brutishness in
man is symbolized by the birth of a
human monster. In their zeal to find a
sacrifice for their sins, the peasants and
gipsies elevate the human monster to
sainthood and then sacrifice a young girl to
him. This is a dynamic plot, the horror
touched with mysticism and poetic
symbolism.
The Story:
Stanja Vesilic was the betrothed of
Mirko Milic. The parents had arranged
the marriage, as was the custom. It was
a marriage of convenience, the exchange
of money for position in the community.
It was the custom also for the bride-to-be
to stay in the groom's home for a month,
in order that she might learn the ways
of her prospective mother-in-law. Neither
Stanja nor Mirko took much interest in
the arrangements. It was to be and that
was all.
Unknown except to a very few was
the existence of another son born to
Stevan Milic and his wife. This boy,
now grown, was a human monster,
hidden from the world and his brother in a
little cottage. He crawled on all fours
like a goat and at times let out terrible
screams which had to be explained away
to passers-by. The mother had never seen
the child since his birth, he having been
suckled by a servant girl, but her heart
yearned for him even while she knew
she could never see him lest the secret
of his existence be revealed.
A physician called and urged them to
place the monster in a home for such
beings, but when Stevan learned that
his name must be registered, he would
not allow the plan to be carried through.
No one must learn the secret. At last
Stevan decided to kill his son so that the
creature would be free of his troubles
and Stevan and his wife free of worry
about him. But when Stevan took his
gun and went to the hut, he found that
the physician, who had visited the
monster in the name of science, had left the
door open and the monster had escaped.
Now he was really free.
The farmers of the area had been
plagued by vagabonds and gipsies
seeking to settle near the village. Most of
these wanderers had once lived on land
nearby and wanted a little of it again.
When their leaders went to the council
with their petition, the wealthy farmers
would not listen to their pleas. Stevan
presided at the council on the night the
GOAT SONG by Franz Werfel. Translated by Ruth Langner. By permission of Mrs. Alma Mahler
Werfel. Copyright, 1926, by Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc.
1338

monster disappeared, his mind so filled
with his own fear that he did not really
hear the pleas of the gipsies. He ordered
them away, telling them that they were
the lucky ones, smiled on by fortune. His
actions and words convinced everyone
present, even the other elders of the
council, that he was a madman.
The intellectual leader of the
vagabonds was Juvan, a student. He stirred
up his followers to kill and plunder the
farmers who would not give them land.
Stanja and Mirko talked with him. Each
hated Juvan, but Stanja was drawn to
him in spite of her hate. Feeling
compassion for Juvan's homeless people, she
wanted Mirko to join him in getting
land. But Juvan insulted Stanja, and so
the two men prepared to fight. Before
they drew blood, the gipsies found the
monster and ran to Juvan with the
news. The ignorant gipsies thought
the monster had been sent to punish
them for their greed. Juvan, who knew
the monster was the secret hidden by
SfeVan Milic, planned to use his
knowledge to enforce his will on the
landowners.
The monster was taken in bonds to
the church and installed behind the altar,
hidden from view. The gipsies secured
arms, thought by the villagers to be
provided by the monster, and attacked the
peasants. As they murdered and
plundered, thinking always that they were
appeasing the monster, Juvan used the
creature to work the mobs into a frenzy.
At last they demanded to see the
monster. Their lust for blood lessening, they
wished to see the strange god who would
avenge all their wrongs and return their
homelands.
When they gathered at the church,
Stevan, his wife, their son Mirko, Stanja,
and the elders appeared. The mob would
have killed them if Juvan had not
silenced the rioters. Stevan tried to
bargain with Juvan: if Juvan and his mob
would lay down their arms and release
the monster, the gipsies would be
forgiven and allowed to take some land.
After forcing Stevan to claim the
monster as his son in the presence of all the
people, Juvan said that the monster
would be released only to Stanja, who
was to go in and cut the creature's bonds.
Mirko and his father and mother tried
to get the girl to flee, but by that time
Juvan ruled her completely. Scorning the
words of everyone, she took the knife to
cut the bonds. Mirko attacked Juvan and
was instantly killed by a guard. Mirko's
mother was happy, without
understanding why she wanted her good son dead.
Stanja went into the sanctuary to free
the monster, while the mob sang in
ecstasy. When Juvan tried to go to Stanja,
to save her, the mob held him back and
demanded a sacrifice to the unknown
god. Suddenly the doors to the altar
opened of their own accord, and the
monster stood in the shadows before
them.
Soldiers came to the farms and villages
and drove off the gipsies. The monster
had fled into the woods and there burned,
or so they said. Juvan, taken prisoner,
was to be hanged. The farmers were now
poor, but Stevan was strangely happy.
He felt young, now that his sons were
dead. He and his wife had found each
other again after their guilty secret had
been disclosed.
Now that her betrothed was dead,
Stanja's parents came to take her home.
But Stanja, refusing to go, begged to
stay with Stevan Milic and his wife.
Because she told them that she was still
true to their son they kept the girl and
loved her as their own. When Juvan
was brought to Stanja under guard, the
privilege of the condemned, he told her
that he loved her, that she had changed
him, by her sacrifice to the monster,
from an animal knowing only lust to a
man wanting a woman's love. Stanja
loved Juvan too and wished to die with
him, but he insisted that she live so that
he would leave a part of himself on earth
when he went off to his death on the
gallows.
Later the hangman went to Stanja and
1339

the mother told them that he had found
the monster lying dead in the charred
forest but with not a hair singed. The
mother wept that there would never be
a trace of the son she had carried in
sorrow and in secret. Stanja told her she
was wrong. Before long the girl would
be delivered of the monster's child.
1340

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924)
Type of plot: Historical satire
Time of plot: 1793-1794
Locale: Paris
First published: 1912
Principal characters:
£variste Gamelin, a young painter
Maurice Brotteaux, Evariste's friend, a maker of dancing dolls
Mme. Gamelin, Evariste's mother
Mme. de Rochemaure, wife of the king's former procurer
Jean Blaise, a printseller
Elodie, his daughter
Pere Longuemare, a Barnabite monk
Jacques Maubel, a young gallant
Julie Gamelin, Evariste's sister
Athenais, a prostitute
Marat, and
Robespierre, French revolutionaries
Henry, a dragoon
Philippe Desmahis, an engraver
Critique:
The Gods are Athirst is a satire
dealing with the Reign of Terror which
followed the French Revolution. Although
the excesses of the period are satirized,
the satire also delves more deeply,
demonstrating the folly and the inhuman
brutality of a mind committed to a
political cause or party. The romantic artist,
Evariste Gamelin, begins by feeling a
genuine desire to commit himself to the
cause of the revolutionary Jacobins and
ends by ordering the execution of his
closest friend. From a rational and
humane point of view, Anatole France
deplores the idiotic barbarism of causes and
the self-righteous cruelty of those
convinced that they were reforming society.
The characters are primarily abstractions,
each designed to represent an idea
current at the time: fivariste is the foolish
romantic swayed into inhumanity by
his allegiance to the cause; his friend
Brotteaux is the atheist and intellectual,
executed because he will not join and
will not abandon his integrity; Elodie, a
kind of symbol of France itself, is purely
THE GODS ARE ATHIRST by Anatole France. Translated by Mrs. Wilfrid Jnckson. By permission of
the publishers, Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1913, by Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Renewed. All rights
reserved.
physical, without ideals or convictions or
fidelity to anything, and she, alone of the
three principal characters, survives. In
brilliantly satiric fashion, Anatole France
probed the excesses of devotion to the
cause of the state, but in probing them
he made it clear that their origin was the
brutal, self-deceiving, self-glorifying,
irrational nature of man himself.
The Story:
fivariste Gamelin, a young man who
lived with his mother, was a not very
talented pupil of Jacques David, the painter.
The only one of £variste's paintings that
gained any recognition was a canvas
depicting the story of Orestes and Electra.
People claimed that fivariste's painting of
Orestes was really a self-portrait.
An older artist, Maurice Brotteaux,
lived in the garret of the Gamelin house
in 1793. A former nobleman, he made
his living creating Punch and Judy dolls.
Evariste became an active member of
the Jacobins, genuinely believing that
1341

their success and complete control would
bring about a new and better era for all
the people in France. He even had a plan
to change playing cards from pictures of
kings, queens, and jacks to symbols of
liberty, equality, and fraternity, but his
fellow revolutionaries would not finance
his designs. Brotteaux, on the other hand,
was an atheist, an intellectual, a skeptic
without faith in the goodness of the
masses.
fivariste tried, unsuccessfully, to sell
his new designs for playing cards to Jean
Blaise, a printseller. £variste was in love
with Blaise's daughter £lodie, who finally
got fivariste, far more naive than she, to
propose to her. When £lodie confessed
that she had had a lover, £variste was
certain that it must have been a cynical
aristocrat who had used her cruelly. On
political grounds he forgave her.
One day, while Brotteaux and £variste
were waiting in a breadline, a woman
screamed that her purse was gone and
pointed to a cleric, Pere Longuemare, as
the thief. People, all excited, ran about
accusing Longuemare of being a
Capuchin, a member of an order opposed to
the Jacobins, even though, bv his speech,
he was clearly a Barnabite. Brotteaux
defended the cleric, but to no avail until
the woman found that she had had her
purse all along. The idealistic £variste
believed the incident demonstrated that,
in the new society, people were so eager
for justice they would leave their places
in the breadline to find a thief. The wiser
Brotteaux realized that they simply
wanted to accuse others. He later gave
Pere Longuemare a place of refuge in his
garret.
Mme. de Rochemaure, whose late
husband had been a procurer for the king,
was an intriguer who pretended
revolutionary ardor. She, trailed by Henry, a
young dragoon, was interested in using
her new revolutionary connections to
make more money. She wanted to meet
Marat, who she had heard was easily
swayed by flattery, to interest him in
some Swiss financial speculations, but
Marat was killed by Charlotte Corday
before Mme. de Rochemaure had her
chance. She did, however, manage to use
her connections to get £variste a post as
a juror on the Grand Tribunal, the group
of Jacobins responsible for trying political
crimes. On his first day on the Grand
Tribunal, £variste made an impassioned plea
for justice and the tribunal then voted
not to execute an innocent man. £variste
was so excited that, later, he allowed the
experienced £lodie to seduce him; the
corruption of the innocent had begun.
Tiring of Henry, Mme. de
Rochemaure wrote a letter to an old friend who
had left France. In it she quoted a few of
Brotteaux's witty remarks about the new
state. Henry, jealously believing that
Mme. de Rochemaure had become
Brotteaux's mistress again, stole the letter and
turned it over to the authorities. Both
Mme. de Rochemaure and Brotteaux
became politically suspect. In addition, the
loyal "citoyens" began to say that
Brotteaux's dolls were really meant to be
caricatures of Jacobins. When Brotteaux
was arrested, a prostitute named Athe-
na'is, whom he had once befriended,
protested and cried out, "Long live the
king!" as the soldiers took Brotteaux
away. Athenais was also arrested.
The Grand Tribunal became far less
just and bloodier. Trials were no longer
held; prisoners were brought up in lots
of fifty, convicted, and sent away to be
executed. £variste applauded the
efficiency of the new arrangement.
£variste's sister Julie had, a few years
earlier, run away to England with her
lover. When they returned to France,
they were captured and the lover was
condemned to death. Even old Mme.
Gamelin tried to intercede for Julie's
lover with Evariste. But £variste was an
adamant supporter of the new justice,
confirming the symbolic fact that his
portrait of Orestes was really a self-portrait.
Besides his cruelty to his sister, £variste
was obsessed with the desire to discover
and punish Elodie's first lover. He
thought that the man must be Jacques
1342

Maubel, a quiet but aristocratic young
gallant. There was no evidence to
support this claim, but Evariste, irritated by
MaubePs lack of faith in the people, had
Maubel arrested and executed. In reality,
Elodie's first lover had been Henry, now
a dragoon but in those days a clerk.
Elodie, the symbol of France itself, was
so impressed by Evariste's cruel power in
having Maubel killed that she loved her
tribune more than ever.
Brotteaux, Pere Longuemare, Mme.
de Rochemaure, and Athenai's were all
brought up before the Grand Tribunal,
convicted without trial, and executed in
the same lot of fifty. Evariste did not say
a word. A short time later Robespierre,
feeling that enough blood had been shed,
tried to reform the Grand Tribunal, but
the people turned on him and killed him.
Soon the mob switched again and killed
the members of the Grand Tribunal,
including Evariste. For a time, Paris was
bathed in anarchy and chaos.
The mob, as irresponsible as the
tribunes had been, killed many, both
aristocrats and peasants, political supporters
and opponents. After Paris had become
quiet and orderly again, Elodie became
the mistress of a calm, nonpolitical, young
engraver named Philippe Desmahis. Two
people entirely unconcerned with politics
or causes, governments or liberty, they
managed to survive the grim Reign of
Terror.
1343

THE GOLD BUG
Type of work: Short story
Author: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: South Carolina
First published: 1843
Principal characters:
The Narrator
William Legrand, who found the gold bug
Jupiter, his colored servant
Critique:
One of the best known of all American
short stories, "The Gold Bug" grips its
readers with the eternal fascination of
the detective story. Poe, regarded by
some critics as the greatest genius of
American literature, has here combined
romance and adventure in a tale of
buried treasure. There are inaccuracies in
geography and measurements, defects in
character portrayal, but these are quickly
forgotten in the fascinating web Poe
weaves of a mystery and its solution.
The Story:
William Legrand had been reduced to
poverty by a series of misfortunes. In
order to avoid the embarrassment of
meeting friends of his more prosperous days,
he left New Orleans and went to live on
Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South
Carolina. It was a small island, usually
uninhabited except for Legrand and his
colored servant, Jupiter. Jupiter would
not leave his master, even though he was
a free man and could have found work
to support himself in comfort.
Winters on the island were mild and
fires were usually unnecessary, but on a
night in October when a friend from
Charleston visited Legrand, he found
Legrand and Jupiter away from the house
and a fire blazing in the fireplace. The
two returned soon after from a quest for
entomological specimens. Legrand was in
rare good humor. He had stumbled upon
an entirely new specimen, a bug of gold.
On his way home he had met a
Lieutenant G——, who took the bug to
examine it. Because the friend could not
examine it before morning, Legrand took
from his pocket an old piece of
parchment and drew a picture of the specimen.
As the friend took the drawing, Le-
grand's dog entered, jumped upon the
guest, and licked his face in joy. When
the friend finally looked at the paper, he
found that the drawing resembled a
human skull. Legrand, somewhat
disgruntled at this slur on his drawing, took the
paper back and prepared to throw it into
the fire. After one last glance, however,
he paled visibly, rose and seated himself
at the table. Then he carefully placed the
paper in his wallet. As Legrand appeared
distracted and a little sulky, the friend
canceled his plans for spending the night
and returned to Charleston.
About a month later the friend
received a visit from old Jupiter. The
servant reported that his master was not well.
Going around as if in a daze, Legrand
worked constantly at a cipher. Once he
had eluded Jupiter and stayed away the
whole day. Jupiter knew that the gold
bug was to blame, for it had bitten
Legrand on the day he captured it. Jupiter
knew that the bug was the reason for
Legrand's talk about gold in his sleep.
He produced a letter from his master
begging the friend to return to the island
with Jupiter.
At the island the friend found Legrand
in a state of great excitement. Filled with
plans for an expedition to the mainland,
he asked the friend to accompany him.
After getting Legrand's promise that he
1344

Would consult a doctor before long, for
the man was obviously deranged, the
friend joined Legrand and Jupiter in
their adventure. Taking the dog with
them, they left that evening. Jupiter
carried picks and shovels for the three.
Legrand took with him the gold bug,
attached to a long cord.
After traveling about two hours, they
stopped at the foot of a huge tulip tree
situated near an almost inaccessible hill.
There Legrand commanded Jupiter to
take the bug and climb the tree to the
seventh limb. Jupiter obeyed, climbing
out to the very tip of the limb. On the
outer edge he found a human skull,
nailed to the wood. Then Legrand told
him to drop the bug through the left eye
of the skull. After this strange act,
Jupiter climbed down. Legrand, working in
feverish anxiety, then began a series of
measurements. By the light of lanterns,
the men, following Legrand's lead, dug
out a hole four feet in diameter and
seven feet deep. When they failed to
unearth the treasure Legrand obviously
thought he would find, he questioned
Jupiter again about the eye through
which he had dropped the gold bug. The
old man, they learned, had mistakenly
dropped the bug through the right eye.
Again Legrand measured and drew
circles. By that time the friend shared Le-
grand's excitement. Again they dug, and
at last they came upon an old chest, too
heavy to move. Prying open the lid, their
eyes fell upon gold and jewels of
unbelievable value. They later computed that
the total worth was over a million and a
half dollars. Leaving Jupiter and the dog
to guard what they could not carry,
Legrand and his friend took one load home.
Then they returned and with Jupiter
carried the rest of the treasure back to the
island.
Legrand told his friend in detail how
he had solved the riddle of the treasure.
The piece of parchment upon which he
had drawn the picture of the gold bug
had been found near the bug, on the
beach. Although the paper had been
blank on both sides when he drew the
picture, the friend had seen the shape of
a skull. He remembered then that the
dog had leaped on the friend, causing the
paper to come near the fire. Heat from
the fire had brought out the outline of
a skull. Legrand, seeing the skull when
he took the parchment, had begun a
feverish attempt to solve its meaning. By
dipping the paper in warm water, he had
found a numerical code. Deciphering had
long been a hobby of his, and thus after
a month he had found the secret of the
parchment. It was his belief that the
treasure was a fabulous one believed to
have been buried by Captain Kidd. Even
after he had deciphered the numbering,
transposing the figures into words, he had
had trouble finding the location of the
landmarks revealed in the writing. But
on the day he had slipped away from
Jupiter he had discovered the hill and
the tree. On the day of their search
Jupiter's mistake about the left eye had caused
an error, but the rectifying of that error
had brought the treasure to light. The
deciphered code had instructed that a
bullet was to be dropped through the left
eye of the death's head. Legrand, using
the gold bug, wished only to punish his
friend for suspecting his sanity.
1345

THE GOLDEN ASS OF LUCIUS APULEIUS
Type of work: Tale
Author: Lucius Apuleius (125?-?)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Early second century
Locrle: Greece
firrt trrrfcrihed: Second century manuscript
Principal characters:
Lucius, a traveler
Charites, a Greek lady
Lepolemus, her husband
Thrasillus, in love with
Milo, a usurer
Pamphile, his wife
Fons, her maid
Critique:
The Golden Ass is a rich repository
of gusty, fantastic anecdotes. In tone it
is bawdy and realistic; in approach it is
a mixture of fancy and shrewd
observation. An allegory runs through the story,
the maturing of man, but the symbolism
is dim and inconclusive. Two notable
themes distinguish Apuleius' work—the
metamorphosis of the hero into an ass,
which is a reworking of an earlier Greek
tale, and a lengthy retelling of the story
of Cupid and Psyche.
The Story:
When Lucius set out on his travels in
Thessaly, he happened to fall in with
two strangers who were telling unusual
stories of the mysterious life of the region.
At the urging of Lucius, one of the
strangers, a merchant named Aristomenes,
told of his strange adventure in Hippata,
the chief city of Thessaly.
Aristomenes had gone to the market
to buy honey and cheese, but he found
that a rival merchant had been there
before him and had bought up the
supply. As he turned sadly away, he
spied his friend Socrates, clad in rags,
sitting on the ground. Socrates had fallen
among thieves, who beat him and robbed
him even of his clothes. Touched by his
friend's plight, Aristomenes led him to
an inn, bathed and clothed him, and
THE GOLDEN ASS OF LUCIUS APULEIUS by Lucu
Charites
took him to his own chamber to sleep.
Socrates warned of the woman who
kept the inn, a carnal woman possessed
of magical powers. When she saw a
comely man, she wanted him for a lover;
if he refused, he was changed into a
beast or bird. Aristomenes was a little
frightened; he barred the door securely
and moved his bed against it for safety.
Socrates was already sleeping soundly.
About midnight two hags came to the
door, which fell away at their approach.
One bore a torch and the other a sponge
and sword. While the landlady stood
over Socrates and accused him of trying
to get away from her, the two hags seized
his head, thrust the sword into his throat,
and reached in and took out his heart.
They caught all his blood in a bladder.
Then they put the sponge in the gaping
throat wound.
In the morning Socrates looked like a
whole man. The two friends crept away
quietly, without arousing the landlady.
A few miles out of town, they stopped
to eat. Socrates, after eating a whole
cheese, leaned over to drink from the
stream. As he did so, the wound in his
throat opened, the sponge fell out, and
Socrates fell dead.
Warned by this story of what he might
expect in Thessaly, Lucius presented his
letter of introduction to Milo, a rich
Apuleius. Published by Liveright Publishing Corp.
1346

usurer. He was well received in Milo's
house. Attracted by Fotis, a buxom maid,
Lucius hung around the kitchen
admiring her hair and hips. She agreed
quickly to come to his room that night
as soon as she had put her mistress, Pam-
phile, to bed. Fotis was as good as her
word, and several nights were passed
agreeably enough.
In the city Lucius met a cousin, Byr-
rhaena, a rich gentlewoman. She invited
him to dine and at dinner warned him
of the witch Pamphile. Full of wine,
Lucius on his way home saw three thugs
trying to get into Milo's house. He rushed
on them and slew them with his sword.
The next day was the Feast of Laughter.
As an elaborate hoax, Lucius was
arrested and tried for murder in the public
place. At the last minute the three
"corpses" were revealed to be three
bladders, blown up and given temporary life
by Pamphile.
One night Fotis let Lucius look
through the keyhole of Pamphile's
bedroom. To his amazement, Lucius saw the
witch smear herself with ointment and
turn into an eagle that flew away in
majestic flight. Filled with envy, Lucius
demanded of Fotis that she smear him
with ointment and turn him into an
eagle. Fotis consented but with
reluctance.
At a propitious time Fotis stole a
box of ointment and smeared Lucius, but
to his horror he found himself turned
into an ass instead of an eagle. He looked
around at the mocking Fotis, who
professed to have made a mistake and
promised to get him some roses in the jtuorn-
ing. If he would only eat roses, he would
turn into a man again. So Lucius
resigned himself to being an ass for the
night.
But during the darkness thieves broke
into Milo's house, loaded much of Milo's
gold on Lucius' back, and drove him out
on the road. That morning Lucius saw
some roses along the way, but as he was
about to eat them he suddenly thought
that if he turned into a man in the
company of thieves they would surely kill
him. He trotted on until they came to
the thieves' lair, which was governed by
an old woman.
On another night the thieves took
captive the gentle Charites, whom they had
abducted from her wedding with Lepol-
emus. Charites wept bitterly. To
console her, the old hag told the story of
Cupid and Psyche.
There was a merchant who had three
daughters. The two older girls, well-
favored, were soon married off. The
youngest, a true beauty, was admired by
all who saw her. No man came to woo
her, however, for Venus had become
jealous of her beauty and had put a
spell upon the girl.
In despair, the parents consulted an
oracle, who told them to expose the girl
on a rocky cliff, where she would become
the bride of a loathsome beast. The
sorrowing couple obeyed, and the lovely
virgin was exposed one night on a cliff.
After she had been left alone, a gentle
wind whisked her down into a rich
castle.
That night a man with a caressing
voice, but whose face she never saw,
made her his wife. For a while she was
content not to see her husband, but at
last her jealous sisters persuaded her to
light a lamp in order to see his face.
When she did, she learned her husband
was Cupid, who had succumbed to her
charms when Venus had sent him to
make her fall in love with a monster.
Although the girl was pregnant, Venus
refused to recognize her son's marriage
with a mortal. Then Jupiter took pity
on her and brought her to heaven. There
he conferred immortality on her and
named her Psyche. So Cupid and Psyche
became the epitome of faithful love.
Lepolemus, the resourceful
bridegroom, rescued Charites by ingratiating
himself with the robbers and becoming
one of their band. Watching his chance,
he made them all drunk and chained
them. Setting Charites on the back of
Lucius, Lepolemus took his bride home
1347

and returned with a band of aroused
citizens, who killed all the thieves of
the den.
Lucius was given over to a herdsman
of Charites, and for a time he lived a
hard life as a mill ass. One day news
came of the death of Lepolemus, who
was killed on a hunting trip with his
friend, Thrasillus. In a dream,
Lepolemus told Charites that Thrasillus had
killed him. When Thrasillus came
wooing Charites soon afterward, she
pretended to listen to his proposals. He
came to her chamber late one night, and
there the old nurse of Charites gave him
wine. When he was drunk, Charites took
a pin and pricked out both his eyes.
These irregularities of their owners
made the shepherds uneasy. In a body
they left Charites' estate and struck out
on their own. Lucius passed through
several hands, some good owners, some
bad. He bore his lot as best he could,
but he could never be a proper ass
because he still longed to eat bread and
meat. One of his owners discovered this
peculiarity and exhibited Lucius as a
performing ass.
As a performer Lucius led an easier
life. Now that spring was approaching,
he hoped to find some roses. In the
meantime he enjoyed himself; he even
had a rich matron as his mistress for a
few nights. But when his master
proposed to exhibit him in a cage, making
love to a harlot, Lucius decided to rebel.
He escaped and sought the aid of
Queen Isis. Taking pity on Lucius, she
caused a priest to carry a garland of
roses in a parade. The priest offered the
flowers to Lucius, who ate them eagerly.
Once again Lucius became a man.
1348

THE GOLDEN BOWL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: c. 1900
Locale: England and the Continent
First published: 1904
Principal characters:
Mr. Verver, a wealthy American living in England
Maggie Verver, his daughter
Prince Amerigo, an Italian nobleman married to Maggie Verver
Charlotte Stant, a school friend of Maggie Verver
Mrs. Assingham, a friend of the Ververs and the Prince
Critique:
This novel is full of the subtleties of
the minds of cultured people. It is a
collection of psychological shades and
discriminations which are, at times,
overwhelming to the reader, and it is also a
forerunner of modern expressionism in
literature. The novel is completely aloof
from the homely realities of life. The
characters are shut off in a world of their
own, a world which will not tolerate
crudities.
The Story:
Maggie Verver was the daughter of a
wealthy American widower who had
devoted all his life to his daughter. The
Ververs lived a lazy life. Their time was
spent in collecting items to decorate their
own existence and to fill a museum which
Mr. Verver was giving to his native city
back in the United States. They had few
friends. Maggie's only confidante was
Mrs. Assingham, the American-born wife
of a retired British army officer.
It was Mrs. Assingham who introduced
the Ververs to Prince Amerigo, a
handsome, quiet young Italian nobleman who
struck Maggie's fancy. When she
informed her father that she would like to
marry the Prince, Mr. Verver provided a
handsome dowry so that the wedding
might take place.
A few days before the wedding a
painful scene occurred in Mrs. Assingham's
home, where the Prince and Charlotte
Stant, deeply in love with each other, met
to say goodbye. Each was penniless and a
marriage had been out of the question.
Since both were friends of Maggie, the
present situation was painful for them. As
a farewell lark they spent the last
afternoon in searching for a wedding present
for Charlotte to present to Maggie. In a
tiny shop they discovered a golden bowl
which Charlotte wished to purchase as a
remembrance for the Prince from her. He
refused it because of superstitious fears
that a crack in the golden bowl might
bring bad luck.
After the wedding of the Prince and
Maggie, the lives of the pair coincided
with the life that the Ververs had been
living for years. Maggie and her father
spent much of their time together. The
Prince, although he did not complain,
was really only a convenience that
they had purchased because Maggie had
reached the age when she needed to have
a husband.
After a year and a half a baby was born
to the Prince and Maggie, but the child
made no apparent difference in the
relationships between the girl and her father
or the girl and her husband. Maggie
decided that her father also needed a wife.
She went to Mrs. Assingham and told her
THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James. By permission of the agent, Paul R. Reynolds & Son, New York,
and the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1904, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed, 1932,
by Henry James, Executor.
1349

friend that she planned to have Charlotte
Stant marry her father. Charlotte was a
quiet person aware of the love between
die girl and her father, and she was the
sort of person who would be so thankful
to marry a wealthy man that she would
cause little trouble. Neither Maggie nor
Mrs. Assingham put this aspect into
words, but it was tacitly understood.
Mr. Verver, anxious to please his
daughter in this as in everything else,
married Charlotte a short time later. This
second marriage created a strange
situation. Maggie and her father both took
houses in London where they could be
together a great deal of the time. The
association of father and daughter left the
Prince and Charlotte much together.
Maggie encouraged them to go out, to
represent her and her father at balls and
dinners. But Maggie did not know that
her husband and her stepmother had
been intimate before her own marriage to
the Prince.
Several years went by in this manner,
but slowly the fact that there was
something strange in the relationships dawned
upon Maggie's sensitive feelings. She
eventually went to Mrs. Assingham and
poured out her suspicions to her. Mrs.
Assingham, in full knowledge of the
circumstances, decided to keep silence.
Maggie resolved to say nothing of her
suspicions to anyone else. But her attitude
of indifference, her insistence in
throwing the Prince and Charlotte together,
aroused their suspicions that she knew
they had been sweethearts, that she
suspected them of being lovers after
marriage.
Each one of the four speculated at
length as to what the other three knew or
suspected. Yet their mutual confidence
and love prevented each one of them from
ever asking anything of the others.
One day Maggie went shopping for
some unusual art object to present to her
father on his birthday. She accidentally
happened into the same shop where the
Prince and Charlotte had gone several
years before, and she purchased the
olden bowl which they had passed over
ecause of its flaw. The following day the
shopkeeper visited her. The name and
address had told him that she was the wife
of the Prince who had passed up the bowl
years before. He knew that the existence
of the crack would quickly come to the
attention of the Prince, and so he had
hastened to inform Maggie of the flaw
and to return part of the purchase price.
He also told her of the Prince's first visit
to the shop and of the young woman who
had been with him. Maggie then knew
that the Prince and Charlotte had known
each other before her marriage and that
they had spent an afternoon together the
day before she was married. She was
upset. Again she confided in Mrs.
Assingham.
Having learned that there was no
serious relationship between the Prince
and Charlotte, Mrs. Assingham informed
Maggie that she was making a great ado
over nothing at all. To point up her
remark, she raised the bowl above her head
and smashed it to the floor, where it broke
into several pieces. As she did so, the
Prince entered the room and saw the
fragments of the bowl. After Mrs. Assing-
ham's departure he tried to learn how
much Maggie knew. Maggie and her
husband agreed to say nothing to either
Maggie's father or to Charlotte.
Charlotte, too, began to sense that
something had disturbed Maggie, and she
shrewdly guessed what it was. Then
Maggie tried to realign the relationships
of the four by proposing that she and
Charlotte stay together for awhile and
that the Prince and her father go to the
Continent to buy art objects. This
proposal was gently put forward and as
gently rebuffed by the other three.
Maggie and her father began to realize
that their selfishness in trying to keep up
the father-daughter relationship which
they had had before her marriage was
wrong. Shortly after that selfishness had
been brought into the open and discussed
by Maggie and Mr. Verver, Charlotte told
Maggie that she wished to return to
1350

America and to take her husband with
her. She bluntly informed Maggie she
was afraid that if Mr. Verver continued to
live so close to his daughter he would lose
interest in his wife. Mr. Verver agreed to
accompany Charlotte back to the United
States. It was a difficult decision for him
to make. He realized that once he was
away, Charlotte would never agree to his
coming back to Europe to live.
On an autumn afternoon Mr. Verver
and Charlotte went to have tea with
Maggie and the Prince before leaving
England. It was almost heartbreaking to
Maggie to see her father's carriage take
him out of sight and to know that her old
way of life was really ended. The only
thing which kept her from breaking down
completely was the look on the Prince's
face as he turned her face away from the
direction her father's carriage had taken.
At that moment, seeing his eyes, Maggie
knew she had won her husband for
herself and not for her money.
1351

GOLDEN BOY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Clifford Odets (1906-1963)
Type of plot: Social allegory
Time of plot: 1930's
Locale: New York
First presented: 1937
Principal characters:
Joe Bonaparte, a prize fighter
Tom Moody, a fight manager
Lorna Moon, his mistress
Mr. Bonaparte, Joe's father
Eddie Fuseu, a gunman
Critique:
Clifford Odets began his theatrical
career as an actor with the Theatre Guild
and was later one of the founders of the
Group Theatre, which presented some
of his plays. His early work was received
with enthusiasm by the critics, but his
later efforts have proved disappointing.
Golden Boy, written in 1937, was
described by Odets as an allegory, and some
of the individual scenes and much of the
dialogue represent him at his best.
Dealing with a young Italian violinist who
becomes a prize fighter in order to gain
money and fame, the fable reflects the
fight of every individual for a place in
the world. The play has been praised as
good entertainment, but it has also been
denounced for its episodic, movie-like
construction.
The Story:
Tom Moody, a fight manager, and
Lorna-Moon, his mistress who wanted
to marry him, were having an argument
about Tom's wife, who would not give
him a divorce. Tom, wanting money for
the divorce, needed to find a winning
fighter. While they were talking, Joe
Bonaparte arrived to tell them that
Moody's fighter had broken his hand and
could not fight that night. Joe, whom
nobody knew, persuaded them to let him
substitute, and he won.
Joe, a musician, had always wanted a
good violin, and his father had bought
him one for his twenty-first birthday.
When Joe returned home, his father, who
had not been told of the fight, had read
of it in the papers and was very much
distressed. He tried to persuade Joe to
give up fighting and continue his study
of music, but Joe wanted to fight. His
father, hurt, did not give him the violin.
Joe fought well after that, but there
was a serious conflict between the
sensitive musician that he truly was and the
brutal fighter he had to be. He held back
in the ring, fearing that he would ruin
his hands for the violin. When Moody
tried to persuade him that fame and
money would be more important than
music, he succeeded only in antagonizing
Joe, who threatened to quit. Lorna agreed
to try to persuade Joe to reconsider. Joe
was basically a musician, but he had
been laughed at and hurt by people.
Fighting was not a part of his nature, but
he wanted to fight back and music could
not do that for him. While he was
explaining all this to Lorna, he had already
decided to remain in the ring.
When Joe was preparing for a fight
tour, Mr. Bonaparte asked Lorna to help
the young man find himself. When he
tried to give Joe the violin, the boy
refused it. Then he asked for a blessing
which his father refused to give.
Joe's tour was a great success except for
GOLDEN BOY by Clifford Odets. By permission of the publishers. Random House. Inc. Copyrifiht. 1937.
by Clifford Odets.
1352

one fight. He had not fought well on that
occasion because he had seen a man with
a violin and was reminded of his music
and his own past. Moody realized that
Joe had to be prevented from having any
contact with his family and his past.
The fight world changed Joe's
personality. He liked the money and the
notoriety. He bought a Duesenberg, which he
drove recklessly, and he became difficult
to manage. Eddie Fuseli, a gambler and a
gunman, wanted to buy a piece of Joe,
and Joe agreed, to Moody's dislike. He
told Lorna to take care of Joe in her own
way.
Joe fell in love with Lorna and asked
her to give up Moody. She denied loving
Joe and said that she could not leave
Moody because she felt sorry for him.
Joe knew that she was not telling the
truth when she began to cry. They talked
about their love and Joe demanded that
she tell Moody at once. She said that she
would, but when she went to tell him
she learned that his wife had agreed to a
divorce and that they could be married
in a few months. With this knowledge
she was unable to tell him about her love
for Joe. Later Joe had an argument with
Moody and demanded that Lorna tell
Moody about their love. Although Lorna
denied that there was anything between
them, she confessed the truth to Moody
when they were alone again.
One night Mr. Bonaparte came to see
Joe fight. Fuseli was disturbed because he
did not want Joe to see his father, but
Joe saw him anyway. He also saw Moody
and Lorna together. Mr. Bonaparte,
seeing that Joe had completely changed,
finally gave his blessing to Joe's career.
Joe cried after his father left. During the
fight Mr. Bonaparte went back into the
dressing room rather than see the fighters
hurt each other. Joe returned after he had
won the fight, but when his trainer
attempted to remove the gloves, Joe told
him that he would have to cut one of
them off. His hand was broken.
Now that he could never be a
musician, Joe was all fighter. Moody and
Lorna announced that they were getting
married in a few days. Because Joe was
still in love with Lorna, it was obvious
that his unhappiness was hurting his
career. While Joe was fighting badly in
his most important match, Fuseli blamed
Lorna and threatened to kill her. But
Joe returned to the dressing room a
victor. A few moments later they were all
told that the other fighter had died after
being floored by Joe's knockout punch.
Everyone left the dressing room except
Lorna and Joe. She told him that she
loved him and asked him to go back to
his music. He showed her his mutilated
hands. However, he decided to give up
fighting, and he and Lorna went for a
wild ride in order to celebrate.
Fuseli, Moody, and the others, not
knowing where Joe and Lorna had gone,
went to Joe's home and drank and talked
while they waited for his return. The
telephone rang in the middle of an
argument to decide who would own Joe
in the future. Joe and Lorna had been
killed in an automobile accident. Mr.
Bonaparte left to claim Joe's body and
bring him home where he belonged.
1353

THE GONDOLIERS
Type of work: Comic opera
Author: W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Type of plot: Humorous romance
Time of plot: 1750
Locale: Venice and Barataria
First presented: 1889
Principal characters:
The Duke of Plaza-Toro, a Grandee of Spain
The Duchess of Plaza-Toro, his wife
Casilda, their daughter
Luiz, the duke's attendant
Inez, an old nurse
Don Alhambra del Bolero, the Grand Inquisitor
Marco Palmieri, and
Giuseppe Palmieri, gondoliers
Gianetta, and
Tessa, flower girls
Critique:
Another of the favorite comic
operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan is The
Gondoliers, Or, The King of Barataria,
Unlike most of their works, which were set
in England and which poked gentle fun
at Victorian customs and institutions,
The Gondoliers has an Italian
background. But the tone is the same, light
and humorous throughout. It was the last
truly successful operetta on which
Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated before the
famous break in their personal and
business relationship.
The Story:
Twenty-four lovely maidens were in
love with two gondoliers of Venice. In
order to be fair, the two young gondoliers,
Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri, had
themselves blindfolded and then each caught
a girl. The lucky ones were Gianetta and
Tessa, and the two couples went off to
be married.
A short time later the Duke of Plaza-
Toro, a Grandee of Spain, arrived with
his duchess and his daughter Casilda.
They were accompanied by the duke's
attendant, Luiz. The duke had come to
Venice penniless, to pay his respects to
the Grand Inquisitor and to learn the
whereabouts of Casilda's husband. For
much to that young lady's surprise, her
father told her now that she had been
married when a baby to the son of the
King of Barataria. The king had become
a bigoted Wesleyan Methodist and the
Grand Inquisitor, to punish the turncoat
king, had spirited his baby son away to
Venice. Now the king was dead, killed
in an uprising of his people, and the son,
Casilda's husband, was entitled to the
throne.
Casilda heard the news with mixed
emotions. She would like to be queen
but, unknown to the duke and duchess,
she and the attendant Luiz were lovers.
Luiz knew something of the story which
had so surprised Casilda, for his mother,
Inez, had been the baby prince's nurse.
But Luiz could not persuade Casilda to
renounce the marriage; the prospect of
being a queen was stronger than love.
But when the Grand Inquisitor received
the duke and his wife and daughter, he
had confusing news. He had given the
baby to a worthy gondolier, to be reared
with that man's own son. The gondolier
had died from drink and gout, and the
children, also gondoliers, could not be
told one from another. However, the
nurse to whom the young prince had
been entrusted still lived. She would be
sent for in the hope that she could
identify the rightful king. Should she have
1354

difficulty making a decision, she would
be tortured until she chose the right one.
The Grand Inquisitor thought the
problem was almost solved. Coming upon
Marco and Giuseppe and their new
brides, he announced that one of them
was the King of Barataria. Since he was
not sure of the rightful king, a matter
which could not be determined before
the nurse arrived and settled the point,
they must both go to Barataria and rule
as one.
Marco and Giuseppe hated a
monarchy and loved a republic, but when they
found that they, as one, were kings,
they suddenly loved a monarchy as well.
Under their rule everyone would be
equal, and their fellow gondoliers would
be given important positions so that no one
would serve another. The only drawback
was that they must leave their new wives
for three months, until the nurse could
arrive and make her decision. The Grand
Inquisitor did not disclose the fact that
one of them already had another wife,
the bride of his infancy. Gianetta and
Tessa sadly bade their husbands goodbye,
each one seeing herself a queen in three
short months. The two kings sailed away
for Barataria.
Three months went by. The
government of the new rulers was indeed strange.
The kings lived in the attic and did all
the work while the gondoliers, now
officers of state, reaped all the advantages
reserved formerly for the monarch. Since
the two men were one king, they were
given only enough food for one man
until their subjects relented and gave them
a double portion. But the new rulers were
pleased with their republican monarchy
and thought it only right that they should
serve their subjects for the privilege of
being king.
Missing female company, the kings
thought often of their wives. They were
happily surprised, therefore, when
Gianetta and Tessa and the other girls arrived
in Barataria before they had been sent
for. The two wives wanted to know in
stantly who was queen, but since the
nurse had not yet appeared no decision
could be made.
When the Grand Inquisitor found the
two wives established in Barataria, he was
forced to tell Marco and Giuseppe that
one of them was a bigamist. He
explained about the infant marriage and
told them that the duke, the duchess, and
Casilda, the real queen, were even then
in Barataria. Inez, the nurse, had also
arrived and was in the torture chamber,
about to make her decision and name the
rightful king.
When Casilda saw the two gondoliers,
really one king, she told them that she
would be a dutiful wife to whomever
she married. She could never love either
of them, however, for she loved another.
The duke, disturbed by the lack of
discipline and formality around the castle,
tried to train the kings to be more
courtly. They tried, but they were after all
just simple gondoliers and could do
nothing in a regal way.
At last the Grand Inquisitor brought
forth Inez, the nurse who would identify
the rightful king. When asked who he
was, Marco or Giuseppe, she confessed
that he was neither. When the lads were
small, traitors had come to steal the prince
away and she had substituted her own
son. The real king was Luiz, the
attendant loved by Casilda. So everyone
was happy. Casilda was both a queen
and the wife of the man she loved. The
gondoliers were restored to their
profession, one they much preferred to the
responsibilities of royalty. Singing lustily,
they departed, leaving the republican
monarchy in the capable hands of King
Luiz and Queen Casilda.
1355

GONE WITH THE WIND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)
Time: 1861-1873
Locale: Atlanta and Tara Plantation, Georgia
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Scarlett O'Hara, a Georgia belle
Rhbtt Butler, an unscrupulous profiteer, her third husband
Ashley Wilkes, a sensitive neighbor, loved by Scarlett
Melanie Wilkes, Ashley's wife
Gerald O'Hara, the master of Tara Plantation, Scarlett's father
Ellen O'Hara, Scarlett's mother
Charles Hamilton, Melanie's brother, Scarlett's first husband
Frank Kennedy, Scarlett's second husband
Miss Pittypat, Melanie's maiden aunt
India, Ashley's sister
Mammy, Scarlett's nurse
Bonnie Blue, child of Scarlett and Rhett
Gone with the Wind, one of the best-
selling novels of all time, is the story of
the subjugation of a proud people by war
and the harsh "reconstruction" that
followed. Swept along with these events is
the beautiful, headstrong daughter of a
wealthy plantation owner who, when
reduced to poverty and hardship in the
wake of Sherman's cruel and vicious
destruction of the countryside, used her
feminine wiles to regain her lost wealth.
Having at last attained this goal, she was
unable to hold the one man she really
loved.
A historical romance of prodigious
proportions, this first novel by an
unknown author went through twelve
printings within two months of publication.
Its 1,037 pages enthralled millions, the
sales in a single year exceeding two
million copies. The novel has been translated
into two dozen languages and even after
more than twenty years, sales continue at
a pace brisk enough to please any
publisher. The motion picture lived up to
Hollywood's most studied superlatives
and no other photoplay has even
approached its world-wide popularity.
The unprecedented success of
Margaret Mitchell's only novel may be
attributed to a combination of the author's
style—a sustained narrative power
combined with remarkable character
delineation—and the universality of her
subject, the struggle for survival when the
accustomed security of civilized life is
abruptly swept away and the human
spirit suddenly stands alone. In spite of
the fast-moving narrative, one is aware of
this underlying thread of universality,
this familiarity with human tragedy that
all men can understand.
Perhaps the most lasting impression
one gets from the novel, however, is the
skill with which Miss Mitchell handles
her characterizations. Scarlett O'Hara is,
without question, one of the memorable
characters in fiction. So lifelike did she
become in the public mind that the
producers of the motion picture preferred
not to risk an established actress in the
role and be accused of miscasting; they
sent to England for a relatively unknown
young actress to portray the fire and
passion flashing from the tempestuous
Scarlett.
The story of Scarlett O'Hara alone
would be reason enough for a best seller;
many books have achieved such eminence
on far less. This daughter of Irish temper
and French sensibilities displays stark and
bold emotions that grip the reader. He
follows her intense, futile love for Ashley
Wilkes, her spiteful marriage to Charles
1356

Hamilton, her opportunistic stealing of
her sister's fiance Frank Kennedy, her
grasping arrangement of convenience
with Rhett Butler. He is sometimes
appalled at her callous use of her sex to
gain her ends; he looks in vain for some
sign of lofty ideals in this woman; and
yet, in spite of all this, he finds laudable
her will to survive and her contempt for
her conquerors.
Three other characters stand out,
admirably drawn but not quite inspiring
the amount of interest created by Scarlett.
Rhett Butler, dissolute son of Charleston
blue bloods, is a cynical, materialistic
blockade runner who consorts openly
with the enemy and scoffs at patriotic
ideals. Forceful, masculine, he is
accustomed to taking what he wants. His
one unfulfilled desire is the love of
Scarlett and this frustration finally breaks
his spirit. When at last, after several
years of unhappy marriage, he gains her
love as Ashley defaults, Rhett, now a
bitter, fleshy toper, has already reached
his decision to leave her.
Ashley Wilkes, the weak-willed object
of Scarlett's misguided passion, depicts
the impractical idealist dependent on a
stronger will to solve life's problems
for him. When Scarlett observes his
unstable reaction to his wife's death she is
finally able to see him as he really is.
Shorn of his cavalier manners and the
aura of courtly romance she had
bestowed upon him, he becomes in her eyes
an ineffectual weakling and the sterility
of her forbidden love is at last apparent.
Melanie, in a way the winner despite
her death at the end of the novel, found
happiness and tranquility in her
devotion to her insecure husband. Reticent,
ladylike, saccharine, but intellectually
attuned to Ashley, there is never any
question that she, not Scarlett, should be
Ashley's wife.
High-spirited Scarlett was sixteen
when the Civil War began. She fancied
herself in love with Ashley Wilkes, the
sensitive, sophisticated son at a
neighboring plantation, but he did not
acknowledge her love. Upon the
announcement of his engagement to his soft-spoken
cousin Melanie Hamilton, Scarlett
impetuously married Melanie's brother
Charles, to that surprised young man's
pride and delight. Less than a year later
Scarlett was a war widow and an
unwilling mother.
Here the novel loses the tempo of
leisurely plantation life and takes on the
urgency of a region at war. Leaving her
father's plantation, Tara, Scarlett
traveled twenty-five miles to Atlanta to stay
with her dead husband's relatives. Later,
as Atlanta was besieged by Sherman's
troops, Scarlett returned home to Tara
through the battle lines at night in a
wagon provided by Rhett. With her were
Melanie and Ashley's day-old son whom
Scarlett had delivered as guns sounded
in the distance.
Approaching Tara through the battle-
scarred countryside she saw that most of
the plantation mansions had been looted
and burned by the enemy. Tara had been
spared as a headquarters, though the
outbuildings and baled cotton had been
burned and the hogs, cows, and chickens
killed. Scarlett's mother, too ill with fever
to be moved as the soldiers approached,
died with her beloved Tara filled with
Yankee conquerors. Her father's mind,
unable to stand these shocks, was gone.
Now the sheltered Southern belle was
faced with the formidable prospect of
feeding, from a plantation stripped bare
by the ruthless invaders, her father, her
child, two sisters, Melanie, and the few
servants who remained faithfully behind
when the others ran off.
These are the events that helped to
shape the character of Scarlett O'Hara
and they explain the hardness, the
avarice, that prompted many of her actions.
For example, she was determined to hold
on to Tara and when the carpetbaggers
arbitrarily levied an extra three-hundred-
dollar tax with the expectation of taking
over the property for unpaid taxes,
Scarlett unhesitatingly married storeowner
Frank Kennedy, who was engaged to her
1357

sister Suellen, and he dutifuly paid the
three-hundred-dollar tax.
The art of Margaret Mitchell makes
such reprehensible acts seem normal
under the circumstances, for the author has
skillfully brought us along the same
harsh road Scarlett has traveled and we,
being thus exposed to the same
experiences, understand, even condone, her
responses.
Once Scarlett had learned the law of
the jungle her native abilities came into
their own. Borrowing money from Rhett,
she bought and operated successfully a
sawmill and soon was financially secure.
When Frank was killed by occupation
troops she married Rhett, who had
amassed half a million dollars during the
war as a blockade runner. But even the
birth of a child, Bonnie Blue, did not
bring happiness to this union because of
the love for Ashley to which Scarlett
absurdly clung. Rhett, always jealous
of this will-of-the-wisp emotion, was
unable to cope with what he could not
understand. Ironically, Rhett overcame
his love for Scarlett just as she was
discovering that it was he, not Ashley,
whom she loved. When she tried to tell
him this, Rhett announced brusquely
that she was too late, that he was leaving
her forever. There was no mistaking the
finality of his words but,
characteristically, Scarlett, the self-confident schemer,
would not accept them as such.
Gone with the Wind is not a happy
book. There are flicks of humor, but for
the most part a deadly seriousness
pervades the novel and in the end the
callous, grasping cynicism of the leading
characters mocks them and, properly,
only an empty loneliness remains.
A natural question concerns the
position of Gone with the Wind and its
author in world literature. On the strength
of her one novel Margaret Mitchell
certainly cannot be called a great author.
Whether her outstanding book will rank
as a great novel will not be decided
by those who consider the question at
this early date. If the work eventually
achieves first rank, it will be because
Scarlett O'Hara continues to convey to
future readers the same essence of human
behavior that we ourselves see in her
now.
1358

THE GOOD COMPANIONS
Type of work: Novel
Author: J. B. Priestley (1894- )
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: England
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Miss Trant, a well-to-do British woman
Inigo Jollifant, a teacher at a boys' school
Jess Oakroyd, a workman
Susie Dean, a comedienne
Jerry Jerningham, a dancer
Critique:
J. B. Priestley's novel is a very human
portrayal of a group of his contemporary
Britishers in the 1920's. In many ways
the novel is reminiscent of the work of
Charles Dickens, both in characterization
and in atmosphere. The descriptions of
the English countryside and towns are
particularly good. With such descriptions
the author effectively sets the locale of
the various parts of the novel. The best
character of the novel is the Yorkshire
workman, Jess Oakroyd. His northern
dialect is a source of amusement both to
the characters in the novel and to the
reader, and he is the English parallel to
the almost mythical American Yankee
who says little, thinks much, and ends
up by proving more astute than the
sophisticated people about him.
van, in which a man was attempting to
repair a battered peddler's stall. In
return for Jess' help, the owner gave him
breakfast and a ride. Jess stayed for three
days with the peddler, who sold fancy
balloons.
After leaving the balloon trade, the
Yorkshireman set out to walk the roads of
England once again. Within the hour he
came upon a stalled car and helped the
woman driver to start the motor. The
woman was Miss Trant, who had
inherited several hundred pounds from her
father. Since all her previous adventures
had been in the realm of historical novels,
Miss Trant had also decided to travel
over England. At the age of thirty-five
she was already an old maid.
While they were getting the car started,
rain began to fall, and Jess and Miss
Trant headed for a little tearoom nearby.
There they met Inigo Jollifant and an
odd-looking companion who was carrying
a banjo. Inigo had begun his adventures
on the previous Monday evening, as had
Jess and Miss Trant.
An instructor at a boys' school, Inigo
had been unhappy there because of the
petty tyranny of the headmaster and his
termagant wife. On Monday evening he
had been dismissed because he became
drunk and played the piano in
celebration of his twenty-sixth birthday. Inigo,
too drunk to do the prudent thing, had
packed a knapsack and set out on his
THE GOOD COMPANIONS by J. B. Priestley. By permission of the author, his agent A. D. Peters, London
and the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1929, by J. B. Priestley.
The Story:
Jess Oakroyd was a stolid, proper sort
of Yorkshireman, but his wife's nagging,
coupled with the sarcastic remarks of his
son, finally forced him to pack a small
basket of clothes and set off to travel
about England. His adventures began
immediately, for he got a ride in a large
van loaded with stolen goods. The driver
of the van and the driver's helper left
Jess at an inn in a small hamlet after
having robbed him while he was asleep.
Rudely awakened by the innkeeper, Jess
had no money to buy his breakfast.
Setting off afoot, he came upon another
1359

travels immediately. In the railroad
station of a small town he had met
his banjo-carrying companion, Morton
Mitcham, a professional entertainer.
In the tearoom the shrewish woman
proprietress was berating a group of
customers who were unable to pay their bill.
The banjo player recognized them as
members of a theatrical troupe stranded,
as they explained, when their manager
ran away with a young woman and
their funds.
On impulse, Miss Trant decided to
take over the stranded company. That
night they made plans for taking the
show on the road once more. The new
troupe took the name of The Good
Companions. It was made up of an elderly
comedian, a young and pretty comedienne
named Susie Dean, Morton Mitcham, a
dancer named Jerry Jerningham, a girl
singer, and an older couple who sang
duets. Miss Trant was the manager,
Inigo the accompanist, and Jess, at Miss
Trant's insistence, the handyman.
Their first appearance was in the little
town where Miss Trant had found them.
The show was not successful, but their
second engagement, at a seaside hotel,
met with obvious favor. The most
appreciated actors were Jerry Jerningham
and Susie Dean, who were aided by the
gay songs which were written for their
acts by Inigo Jollifant. For several weeks
the routine of the company was one of
rehearsals and performances, with train
rides between two or three-night
engagements in each town.
As the weeks passed, Inigo Jollifant fell
in love with Susie Dean, who laughed at
him, saying she could not fall in love and
marry until she had become a musical
comedy star and had played in London.
Miss Trant was having a delightful
experience. All her life had been spent
in the sleepy village of Hitherton in
southern England, wnere ner father had
settled upon his retirement from the
army. Her theatrical associates were far
more interesting than the small sedate
group of her father's village friends.
Next The Good Companions played
in an almost deserted mill town in the
Midlands. The mills had been shut down
for some months and the townspeople
had little money or interest in a traveling
vaudeville troupe. Since the audiences
were small and not sympathetic, the
troupe became dispirited and almost broke
up. But Jess Oakroyd persuaded the
troupe to stick with Miss Trant, since
she would lose her money if they did
not carry on with their engagements.
At last the fortunes of the troupe had
a turn for the better. Inigo Jollifant
composed new tunes for the acts which met
with great success. His love affair,
however, did not fare as well. Susie Dean
could not understand why he did not take
his music as seriously as he did his
writing for literary periodicals. She felt sure
that he was making a mistake in trying
to be a second-rate essayist when he
could be a first-rate song writer.
The Good Companions finally had a
long engagement in a series of prosperous
manufacturing towns. The large
audiences they drew began to recoup the
money Miss Trant had invested. They
became bold enough to engage a large
hall for a stand of several nights. In
the meantime Inigo went to London,
where a famous producer listened to his
new songs. Inigo, determined to help
Susie become a top-ranking musical
comedy star, refused to let the producer
use his songs unless the man went with
him to hear Susie Dean.
The first night in the large auditorium
was disastrous. The operator of the local
motion picture houses hired toughs to
start a riot and set fire to the hall during
the performance. The producer from
London was punched on the nose in the
melee and so refused to hear any more
about either Inigo's music or Susie Dean.
Miss Trant was injured during the riot.
Finally, when the future looked
darkest, an elderly woman took a fancy to
Jerry Jerningham. She married him and
put her money and influence at his
disposal. The result was that an even greater
1360

producer gave Susie Dean her chance at
musical comedy in London and bought
Inigo's music.
The troupe disbanded; but at Jerning-
ham's request the other performers found
excellent places with the same producer.
In the hospital Miss Trant met a doctor
with whom she had been in love for many
years, and she prepared to marry him as
soon as she was well. Jess Oakroyd did a
little detective work in connection with
the riot. With the help of the balloon
peddler, he discovered who had hired the
men to start the rioting and set fire to
the theater. Held responsible for the
disturbance, these men had to take over
Miss Trant's debts for the damages.
After solving the mystery of the riot,
Jess went back to his home in Yorkshire,
for he had had a telegram from his son
telling him that Mrs. Oakroyd was
seriously ill. She died shortly thereafter
and Jess made preparations to continue
his traveling. He decided to visit his
married daughter in Canada, for he had
discovered that even a man as old and
setded as he could become addicted to the
pleasures of adventuring away from home.
1361

THE GOOD EARTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pearl S. Buck (1892- )
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Northern China
First published: 1931
Principal Characters:
Wang Lung, a Chinese fanner
O-Lan, his wife
Lotus Blossom, his concubine
Pear Blossom, his slave
Nung En, Wang Lung's oldest son
Nung Wen, Wang Lung's second son
The Fool, Wang Lung's first daughter
Critiqite:
In an almost pastoral style, The Good
Earth describes the cycle of birth,
marriage, and death in a Chinese peasant
family. The book is written realistically,
without any overt attempts to awaken
sympathy for any of the characters. It
is the absorbing story of Wang Lung's
life on the farm, his trip to the city
when starvation threatens, and of his
life until it is time for him to be claimed
by the good earth.
The Story:
His father had chosen a slave girl to
be the bride of Wang Lung, a slave
from the house of Hwang, a girl who
would keep the house clean, prepare the
food, and not waste her time thinking
about clothes. On the morning he led her
out through the gate of the big house,
they stopped at a temple and burned
incense. That was their marriage.
O-lan was a good wife. She thriftily
gathered twigs and wood, so that they
would not have to buy fuel. She mended
Wang Lung's and his father's winter
clothes and scoured the house. She
worked in the fields beside her husband,
even on the day she bore their first son.
The harvest was a good one that year.
Wang Lung had a handful of silver
dollars from the sale of his wheat and
rice. He and O-lan bought new coats
for themselves and new clothes for the
baby. Together they went to pay their
respects, with their child, at the home
in which O-lan had once been a slave.
With some of the silver dollars Wang
Lung bought a small field of rich land
from the Hwangs.
The second child was born a year
later. It was again a year of good
harvest.
Wang Lung's third baby was a girl.
On the day of her birth crows flew about
the house, mocking Wang Lung with
their cries. The farmer did not rejoice
when his little daughter was born, for
poor farmers raised their daughters only
to serve the rich. The crows had been
an evil omen. The child was born
feebleminded.
That summer was dry, and for months
no rain fell. The harvest was poor. After
the little rice and wheat had been eaten
and the ox killed for food, there was
nothing for the poor peasants to do but
die or go south to find work and food in
a province of plenty. Wang Lung sold
their furniture for a few pieces of silver,
and after O-lan had borne their fourth
child, dead with bruises on its neck when
he saw it for the first time, the family
began their journey. Falling in with a
THE GOOD EARTH by Pearl S. Buck. By permission of the author, of her agent David Lloyd, and the
publishers, The John Day Co., Inc. Copyright, 1931, by Pearl S. Buck.
1362

crowd of refugees, they were lucky. The
refugees led them to a railroad, and with
the money Wang Lung had received for
his furniture they traveled on a train to
their new home.
In the city they constructed a hut of
mats against a wall, and, while O-lan
and the two older children begged, Wang
Lung pulled a ricksha. In that way they
spent the winter, each day earning
enough to buy rice for the next.
One day an exciting thing happened.
There was to be a battle between soldiers
in the town and an approaching enemy.
When the wealthy people in the town
fled, the poor who lived so miserably
broke into the houses of the rich. By
threatening one fat fellow who had been
left behind, Wang Lung obtained enough
money to take his family home.
O-lan soon repaired the damage which
the weather had done to their house
during their absence; then, with jewels which
his wife had managed to plunder during
the looting in the city, Wang Lung
bought more land from the house of
Hwang. He allowed O-lan to keep two
small pearls which she fancied. Now
Wang Lung had more land than one man
could handle, and he hired one of his
neighbors, Ching, as overseer. Several
years later he had six men working for
him. O-lan, who had borne him twins,
a boy and a girl, after their return from
the south, no longer went out into the
fields to work, but kept the new house
he had built. Wang Lung's two oldest
sons were sent to school in the town.
When his land was flooded and work
impossible until the water receded, Wang
Lung began to go regularly to a tea
shop in the town. There he fell in love
with Lotus and brought her home to his
farm to be his concubine. O-lan would
have nothing to do with the girl, and
Wang Lung was forced to set up a
separate establishment for Lotus in order
to keep the peace.
When he found that his oldest son
visited Lotus often while he was away,
Wang Lung arranged to have the boy
marry the daughter of a grain merchant
in the town. The wedding took place
shortly before O-lan, still in the prime of
life, died of a chronic stomach illness.
To cement the bond between the farmer
and the grain merchant, Wang Lung's
second son was apprenticed to Liu, the
merchant, and his youngest daughter was
betrothed to Liu's young son. Soon after
O-lan's death Wang Lung's father
followed her. They were buried near one
another on a hill on his land.
When he grew wealthy, an uncle, his
wife, and his shiftless son came to lit/*
with Wang Lung. One year there was a
great flood, and although his neighbors'
houses were pillaged by robbers during
the confusion, Wang Lung was not
bothered. Then he learned that his uncle
was second to the chief of the robbers.
From that time on he had to give way
to his uncle's family, for they were his
insurance against robbery and perhaps
murder.
At last Wang Lung coaxed his uncle
and aunt to smoke opium, and so they
became too involved in their dreams
to bother him. But there was no way
he could curb their son. When the boy
began to annoy the wife of Wang Lung's
oldest son, the farmer rented the deserted
house of Hwang and he, with his own
family, moved into town. The cousin left
to join the soldiers. The uncle and aunt
were left in the country with their pipes
to console them.
After Wang Lung's overseer died, he
did no more farming himself. From that
time on he rented his land, hoping that
his youngest son would work it after his
death. But he was disappointed. When
Wang Lung took a slave young enough
to be his granddaughter, the boy, who
was in love with her, ran away from
home and became a soldier.
When he felt that his death was near,
Wang Lung went back to live on his
land, taking with him only his slave,
young Pear Blossom, his foolish-witted
first daughter, and some servants. One
day as he accompanied his sons across
1363

the fields, he overheard them planning
what they would do with their
inheritance, with the money they would get
from selling their father's property. Wang
Lung cried out, protesting that they
must never sell the land because only
from it could they be sure of earning a
living. He did not know that they looked
at each other over his head and smiled.
1364

GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS
Type of work: Novelette
Author: James Hilton (1900-1954)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance.
Time of plot: 1870-1933
Locale: An English boys' school
First published: 1933
Principal characters:
Mr. Chips, an old schoolmaster
Mrs. Wickett, his landlady
Brookfield Boys
Critique:
This charming story of an old
schoolmaster was written when the young
journalist, James Hilton, was given an
assignment to produce a Christmas story
for an English newspaper. The almost
instantaneous success of the book
determined to a large degree the wide
public reputation of its author. The
novel consists largely of a series of happy
and sad reminiscences of a beloved and
almost legendary teacher who, sitting in
his little room one gray November day,
thinks of the many years he has spent
in a boys' school.
The Story:
Chips was old — eighty-five — but of
course, he thought, far from ill. Dr. Meri-
vale had told him he should not venture
out on this cold November day, but he
also added that Chips was fitter than the
doctor himself. What Chips did not know
was that the doctor had told the landlady,
Mrs. Wickett, to look after him; Chips'
chest clouded in bad weather.
Chips sank into his armchair by the
fire, happy in the peace and warmth. The
first thing about his remembered career
set him laughing. He had come to teach
at Brookfield in 1870, and in a kindly
talk old Wetherby, the acting head,
advised him to watch his disciplinary
measures. Mr. Wetherby had heard that
discipline was not one of Chips' strong
points. On the first day of class, when
one of the boys dropped his desk top
rather too loudly, Chips assigned him a
GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS by James Hilton. By permission of the author and the publishers, Little, Brown & Co.
Copyright, 1934, by James Hilton.
hundred lines and had no trouble after
that. The boy's name was Colley—Chips
seldom forgot a name or a face—and
years later, he remembered, he taught
Colley's son, and then his grandson, who,
he said pleasantly, was the biggest young
nitwit of them all. Chips was fond of
making little jokes about the boys, who
took his jibes well and grew to love him
for his honesty and friendliness. Indeed,
Chips' jokes were regarded as the funniest
anywhere, and the boys had great sport
telling of his latest.
Remembering these things, Chips
thought growing old was a great joke,
though a little sad. And when Mrs.
Wickett came in with his tea, she could
not tell whether Chips was laughing or
crying. Tears were spilling down his
withered cheeks.
Brookfield had known periods of
grandeur and decay. When Chips
arrived there, the school was already a
century old and regarded as a place
for boys whose lineage was respectable
but seldom distinguished. Chips' own
background was not distinguished, either,
but it had been hard for him to realize
that his mind was not the type to assume
leadership. He had longed to work his
way into the position of headmaster, but
after many failures he knew that his
role was one of teaching, and he gave up
his administrative ambitions. But he grew
to love his students. They would often
come to chat with him over tea and
crumpets. Sometimes they remarked, as
1365

they left, what a typical bachelor old
Chips was.
It was painful to Chips that no one
at Brookfield remembered his wife. He
had married Kathy Bridges at forty-eight,
and even now he wondered how the
miracle had taken place. He had seen a
girl waving from the top of a rocky ledge
one day when he was out walking, and
thinking her in trouble he set out to
rescue her. On the way he sprained his
ankle, and Kathy had assisted him. It was
a remarkable love, for she was years
younger than he. But Kathy left an
enduring mark upon Chips. He grew more
lenient with the boys, more
understanding of their problems, and more
courageous in his teaching. Ironically, Kathy
died on April first, in childbirth, and that
day, not realizing the tragedy that had
befallen Chips, the boys played April
Fool jokes on the stricken teacher.
Chips began to remember the war
years. Names of boys whose faces he
could still vizualize were read out in
chapel from the casualty lists. When the
headmaster died and no one could be
found to fill his place, Chips was asked
to head Brookfield. Standing in his
tattered gown, which was often
considered disgraceful by newcomers, he read
out the names as tears filled his eyes.
Even now, sitting in front of the fire, he
could recall that roll, and he read it over
to himself, remembering the faces that
had looked so hopefully at him in the
classroom.
One day he was meeting a Latin class
while German bombs were crashing
nearby. The boys squirmed in their seats as
the explosions sounded nearer and nearer,
but Chips quietly told them that they
should never judge the importance of
anything by the noise it made. Then,
asking one of the more courageous lads
to translate, Chips chose from Caesar a
passage which was particularly apt
because it dealt with German methods of
fighting. Later the boys told how Chips
stood steady and calm, and they
remarked that even though they might
consider Latin a dead language, it was
nevertheless valuable at times.
After the war Chips gave up his head-
mastership and returned to his room at
Mrs. Wickett's. Now, fifteen years later,
he was always asked to greet visiting:
dignitaries who came to Brookfield. He
was amused to find that many of the
barons, Parliament members, and war
heroes had been his former pupils, and
he remembered their faces, though now,
to his chagrin, he often forgot their
names. He would make amusing,
appropriate remarks, not always
complimentary, and the visitors would shake with
laughter. Sometimes during those
postwar years, he was asked to make litde
speeches at school banquets, and because
of his reputation for funny sayings his
audience would laugh uproariously, often
before Chips reached the point of his
jokes. Chips was privileged now; his
eccentricities only made him more loved
at Brookfield. Indeed, Chips was
Brookfield.
Chips thought of the rich life he had
led. There were so many things for
laughter and sorrow. Now, as he sat by
the fire, he heard a timid knock at the
door, and a youngster, much abashed,
came in. He had been told that Chips
had sent for him. The old man laughed,
knowing that this was a prank the old
boys often played on a newcomer, and he
saved the boy from embarrassment by
saying that he had sent for him. After
conversation and tea, Chips dismissed
the boy in his abrupt but kindly fashion.
The boy waved as he went down the
walk.
Later that youth thought of Chips
sadly and told his comrades that he had
been the last to tell him goodbye. For
Mr. Chips died quiedy in his sleep that
cold November night.
1366

GORBODUC
Type of work: Drama
Authors: Thomas Norton (1532-1584) and Thomas Sackville (1536-1608)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Before the Saxon invasion of England
Locale: England
First presented: 1562
Principal characters:
Gorboduc, aged King of England
Videna, his queen
Ferrex, and
Porrex, their sons
Arostus,
Philander, and
Eubulus, Gorboduc's counselors
Dordan, counselor to Ferrex
Hermon, parasite and confidant of Ferrex
Critique:
Written and put on the stage during
Elizabeth's reign, this play had direct
political implications for the time. It
pretended to show how England in the past
had been thrown into turmoil when the
land was left without a proper heir.
Certainly the authors and many of the people
who saw and read the play realized that
its hints to the heirless queen were broad
indeed. The play was first presented at
the Christmas revels of the Inner Temple,
in London, and the lawyers and
magistrates and courtiers who witnessed it must
undoubtedly have been wondering what
course the throne would take if Elizabeth
died without providing for a successor. In
the history of English drama this play is
important as the first play written in blank
verse in English and because it was among
the first English tragedies to employ a
domestic political theme. In structure it
followed the classical drama of Seneca.
The Story:
Gorboduc, King of Britain and last of
the line beginning with the legendary
Brute, decided that he would not wait
until his death before handing over the
rule of his kingdom. In addition, he
decided that he would set aside the rule of
primogeniture and divide Britain between
his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex. To
Ferrex, the older, he planned to give all lands
south of the Humber River; to Porrex, the
younger, he intended to give those lands
north of the Humber.
Calling in his chief advisers, Gorboduc
told them what was in his mind. Arostus
was in complete agreement with the king's
wishes, but Philander and Eubulus
warned of the dangers of the plan.
Although they admitted that the king would
be able to aid his sons in the early years of
their reigns, they felt that the sons might
not be willing to take advice from their
father after he had placed great power in
their hands. The advisers also warned that
when the authority of the kingdom was
divided the allegiance of the people might
be divided, and they pointed out that
Ferrex might very well resent having to share
the kingdom with a younger brother, since
custom made it the rule that the firstborn
son inherited the entire kingdom. Last
of all, they warned Gorboduc that history
had proved a kingdom divided was easier
prey to foreign conquest.
Gorboduc listened to his counselors.
When they had finished speaking,
however, he told them his mind was made up,
that he felt the advantages to be gained
by dividing the kingdom during his
lifetime outweigked the disadvantages.
Accordingly, he set his plan in operation, not
knowing that his queen, Videna, was
extremely jealous of her older son's preroga-
1367

tives and hated the younger son for
receiving a part of the kingdom which she
felt rightfully belonged in its entirety to
Ferrex.
Gorboduc sent trusted advisers of his
own with each of the princes when they
took over their separate domains, but
before long both sons began to disregard
their father's counselors. Instead, they
listened to young men who preyed upon
their vanities. Ferrex began to seek the
advice of a parasite named Hermon, a man
who flattered the young ruler's ego.
Hermon told Ferrex that as the older son
he should not have been given such a
meager part of Britain and that, according
to custom and his own ability, Ferrex
should have been made ruler of the entire
domain.
More than flattering Ferrex, Hermon
told him that the younger king beyond the
Humber was jealous of the older brother
and was plotting to invade the kingdom
of Ferrex. Dordan, the elderly counselor
sent to Ferrex by Gorboduc, prevailed
enough on the young man so that Ferrex
made only secret preparations against a
possible attack by his brother.
Meanwhile, north of the Humber, the
same situation had developed. Porrex, the
younger son, scorned the wise advice of
his father's counselor and turned to a
flattering parasite, who told Porrex about the
secret plans being made for war by
Ferrex. Porrex, who distrusted his brother,
decided that a preventive war was the best
solution to the problem, and he set out to
invade the kingdom south of the Humber.
Dordan sent a letter to Gorboduc
advising him of the state of affairs between the
two brothers. The aged father-king called
his trusted men about him to ask their
advice. While the council met to seek a
solution, word came that Porrex had
invaded the older brother's kingdom and
had murdered Ferrex with his own hand.
Queen Videna, when she heard what
had happened to her beloved older son,
swore she would be avenged on Porrex.
She vowed that he was no longer a son of
hers but a criminal to be punished for his
evil deeds.
Porrex, sent for by his father, appeared
at Gorboduc's court and readily admitted
invading his brother's kingdom and
murdering his brother-king. Porrex said that
he was genuinely sorry that the deed had
been committed, but that he still felt the
murder justified. He swore that Ferrex
had tried to have him poisoned and that
he had killed Ferrex in order to save his
own life. Gorboduc, not knowing what
to do until he had investigated the
situation further, sent Porrex from his sight
until he should send word that he wanted
the young man's presence.
Scarcely had the young man left his
father when he was killed by his mother,
who thereby avenged the murder of
Ferrex. The Britons, outraged at such
conduct on the part of their rulers, then rose
up in arms and murdered both Gorboduc
and Queen Videna.
The nobles of Britain, left without a
leader, tried to put down the uprising of
the common people. They feared that if
they did not quell the revolt at once the
country would be weakened and left prey
to some invading power. The nobles saw
themselves, their families, their lands, and
the whole country threatened by the
tragedy that had destroyed the royal
house. But even the nobles could not
agree on a course of action.
When a number of them met in a
solemn conclave to organize against the
uprisen rabble, they learned that the Duke
of Albany, filled with ambition to become
ruler, had raised an army and set out on a
campaign to make himself master of
Britain. King Gorboduc's counselors
advised the other nobles to join together to
put down the duke, since he wished to
usurp the throne. Faced by a common
danger, they at last chose a new king for
Britain, the old line having become
extinct with the deaths of Gorboduc and
his two sons.
1368

GRAND HOTEL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Vicki Baum (1888-1960)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: Berlin
First published: 1930
Principal characters:
Baron Gaigern, a gambler and thief
Elisaveta Alexandrovna Grusinskaya, a ballerina
Otto Krtngelein, a junior clerk of the Saxonia Cotton Company
Herr Generaldirektor Preysing, manager of the Saxonia Cotton Company
Dr. Otternschxag, a retired physician
Miss Flamm (Flaemmchen), a public stenographer and model
Critique:
In this novel Vicki Baum uses a time-
honored device of fiction by bringing
together a group of characters in a
particular time and place, and showing how
they react upon and influence each other.
The parallel, concurrent actions of her
characters are well synthesized into a
picture of European society in the period
between wars.
The Story:
Through the revolving doors of the
Grand Hotel in Berlin came people from
various walks of life. The meetings of
these people and their effects upon one
another thereafter were as varied as the
people themselves. Each one had his
own life, his own worries, and his own
problems, and each pursued his own
selfish ends.
Baron Gaigern was living in luxury at
the hotel. He never seemed to lack money
and he possessed well-tailored clothes.
The baron, however, was a gambler and
a thief staying at the hotel for the
purpose of stealing Elisaveta Alexandrovna
Grusinskaya's famous pearls, which had
been given to the ballerina by the Grand
Duke Sergei. Gaigern's plan to steal the
pearls was based on a timing of Grusin-
skaya's actions. One night he crawled
along the outside of the building to the
dancer's room, where she kept her jewels
in an unlocked case. That night Grusin-
GRAND HOTEL by Vicki Baum. By permission of the author and the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copy-
•ight, 1930, 1931, by Doubleday & Co., Inc.
ya returned earlier than usual and
found him in her room.
Grusinskaya, the aging ballerina, knew
that her youth was slipping away from
her. On that particular night, feeble
applause after one of her best numbers
made her leave the theater before the
performance was over and return to her room
at the hotel. When she discovered
Gaigern in her room, he convinced her
that because he loved her he had come to
sit there while she was away at the
theater. Willing to believe him, she let
him stay with her the rest of the night.
The next morning, before she awoke, he
replaced the pearls in their case.
Grusinskaya left Berlin that morning and
Gaigern promised to meet her in Vienna
three days later.
Still in need of money, Gaigern
decided to get it from the wealthy and
apparently ailing provincial in room 70.
Gaigern did not suspect that the rich
provincial, Otto Kringelein by name,
was in reality only a junior clerk of
the Saxonia Cotton Company of Freders-
dorf. Kringelein at forty-six, had learned
that he was dying, and he decided that
before his death he would see
something of life after years of being bullied
at the office by his superiors and at
home by his wife Anna. With a small
legacy left him by his father, his
savings in the bank, and a loan on his
1369

life insurance policy, he planned to live
the life of a rich man for a few weeks
before he died. On the morning Grusin-
skaya left Berlin, Gaigern met Kringelein
and took him to be outfitted by his own
tailor. In the evening they went to the
boxing matches and then to a gambling
casino. Kringelein paid for the evening's
entertainment, for Gaigern admitted that
he was without funds. Gaigern had
hoped to win enough money to pay his
way to Vienna, but he lost steadily.
Kringelein won thirty-four hundred
narks. They ended the evening at the
Alhambra, a shabby night club, where
Kringelein became ill. On the way back
to the hotel Gaigern stole Kringelein's
pocketbook. Later in Kringelein's room,
he returned it at Dr. Otternschlag's
insistence.
Dr. Otternschlag, a middle-aged
physician badly disfigured in the war, spent
one or two months every year at the
Grand Hotel. He did nothing, went
practically nowhere, and seemed to have no
interests whatsoever. He had begun to
show a slight interest in Kringelein when
Gaigern intruded. It was Otternschlag
who gave Kringelein a hypodermic to
lessen his pains, but after a polite word
of thanks to the doctor Kringelein turned
to Gaigern, whom he begged to remain
with him. Otternschlag was forgotten.
In the morning Kringelein received a
letter from his wife, complaining about
the inconveniences of the house in which
they lived, a house owned by the Saxonia
Cotton Company. Kringelein angrily
stamped down to Generaldirektor Prey-
sing's room to air his grievance. Herr
Preysing had married the daughter of the
owner of the Saxonia Cotton Company
years before and had gradually worked
himself up to the position of manager.
He was in Berlin to bring about an
amalgamation between his company and
the Chemnitz Manufacturing Company,
a merger necessary to forestall huge losses
for the Saxonia Company. When
Preysing saw that the representatives of the
Chemnitz Company were about to
reject his offer, he told a he which he
knew would win him their consent. He
assured them that a trade agreement
existed between the company and
Burleigh & Sons, importers, of Manchester,
England. The merger was then signed.
During his stay in Berlin, Preysing had
hired a stenographer, Miss Flamm, a
beautiful girl who worked part time as
a photographer's model. Preysing became
quite enamored of her. When she hinted
that she would be willing to travel with
him as his secretary, Preysing decided to
go to Manchester and confer with the
English company. He asked Flaemmchen,
as he called her, to accompany him and
she agreed, after setting her price at
one thousand marks. Preysing
immediately engaged an adjoining room for her at
the Grand Hotel.
That night Preysing was in Flaemm-
chen's room when he heard a noise in
his own room and went to see what it
was. There stood Gaigern in his pajamas.
Preysing saw that his billfold was
missing from the table where he had placed
it, and he demanded its return. Gaigern
threatened to shoot. Preysing seized a
bronze inkstand and hit Gaigern over the
head with it, killing him. Flaemmchen
ran to call for help. Kringelein heard her
and opened his door, to have her fall
unconscious into his arms. He took her
in and when she regained consciousness
he learned the whole story from her. He
then went down to Preysing's room,
gathered up Flaemmchen's clothes, and told
Preysing to call the police. When they
arrived, Preysing was arrested and his
plea of self-defense after robbery seemed
weak, for Gaigern had had no gun on
him. Preysing stayed in jail for three
months. During that time his affair with
Flaemmchen was exposed, his wife
divorced him, and his father-in-law dis^
charged him. Meanwhile Kringelein and
Flaemmchen, having become friends,
decided to go to England together.
Lives had been changed by chance
meetings. Gaigern, the strong, vital man,
was now dead. Preysing, the respectable
1370

citizen, was in jail accused of murder.
Ottemschlag, who claimed to have no
interest in life, found when he tried to
commit suicide that he wanted very
much to live. Meek, downtrodden Krin-
gelein began to assume the authority that
came with responsibility, resporsibilify in
the form of Flaemmchen. The tired and
aging ballerina, Grusinskaya, had left the
hotel feeling young and loved once
more. And as their rooms were vacated
one by one, new visitors entered the hotel
where life, mysterious or stupid or cruel,
went on.
1371

THE GRANDISSIMES
Type of work: Novel
Author: George W. Cable (1844-1925)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: 1804
Locale: New Orleans
First published: 1880
Principal characters:
Honors Grandissime, head of the Grandissimes
The Darker Honore Grandissime, his quadroon half-brother
Agricola Fusilier, Honore's uncle
Aurora Nancanou, a young widow
Clotilde Nancanou, her daughter
Joseph Frowenfeld, a young American
Dr. Keene, Joseph's physician and friend
Palmyre, a freed slave
Critique:
George W. Cable knew intimately
the Creole society of New Orleans, and
this novel re-creates for the reader a
segment of American life which has
vanished forever. Through the author's
attempt at reproducing Creole dialect, the
book acquires a unique flavor. The plot
presents the tragedy of the Negro in a
more effective and more truthful manner
than do many modern books on the
subject.
The Story:
Honor6 Grandissime and Aurora
Nancanou, both members of the Creole
aristocracy, met at a masked ball and fell in
love at first sight. Each was unaware of
the other's identity. Honor6 was a young
merchant, the head of the Grandissime
family. Aurora, a young widow, was the
daughter of a De Grapion. Honor6's
uncle, Agricola Fusilier, had killed
Aurora's husband in a duel, after he had
accused Agricola of cheating at cards.
Agricola won the duel, cleared his honor,
And collected the gambling debt, the
entire estate of Aurora's husband. Aurora
and her daughter Clotilde, were left
penniless. Agricola gave Aurora's estate to
Honor6 and made him a wealthy man.
Shortly afterward Joseph Frowenfeld,
a young American immigrant, arrived in
New Orleans with his parents and sisters.
All were stricken with fever; only Joseph
survived. The lonely young man formed
a friendship with his physician, Dr.
Keene. Joseph and Honore met by
chance one day and found a common
interest in their concern over the injustice
of slavery and the caste system of New
Orleans society. Honore's life however
depended upon these institutions. Joseph
wished to have them wiped out at once.
Deciding to earn his living as a
druggist, Joseph opened a small shop and
soon became friendly with his
aristocratic landlord. The landlord was
actually Honore's half-brother and he bore
the same name, but he was not
acknowledged as a member of the family because
he was a quadroon. He was called the
darker Honore,
Joseph found another new friend in
old Agricola. He was also struck by the
charm of Aurora and Clotilde when they
called to make purchases. He learned
more about Aurora from Dr. Keene. The
physician told him about Palmyre, a freed
slave who had once been Aurora's maid.
The girl hated Agricola. One night
Joseph was awakened by pistol shots
nearby. A few minutes later Dr. Keene
and several others entered the shop with
the wounded Agricola; he had been
stabbed, and his companions had fired
upon his assailant.
Several days later Aurora called upon
her landlord in order to make some ar-
1372

rangements about the rent she could not
pay. She knew her landlord's name was
Honors Grandissime, but she did not
connect this name with the man she
loved. Upon learning that they were
half-brothers, Aurora was upset and her
family pride caused her to be harsh with
Honored
When Dr. Keene fell sick, he asked
Joseph to attend one of his patients. The
patient was Palmyre, who had been
wounded as she ran away after stabbing
Agricola. Joseph promised Dr. Keene
to keep her trouble a secret and went
to dress the wound.
Joseph paid his last visit to the
wounded Palmyre, now almost recovered.
Palmyre begged him to help her make
the white Honor6 love her. But Pal-
myre's maid, misunderstanding the
conversation, thought that Joseph had
wronged her mistress. She struck him
over the head, and Joseph reeled groggily
into the street. Some passing pedestrians,
seeing him emerge bleeding from Pal-
myre's house, drew a natural inference,
and soon everyone knew about Joseph's
misfortune. Only Clotilde and Honor6
believed him innocent.
Public feeling was running high
against the Americans, and Joseph found
himself despised by most of the Creoles.
Both his liberal views and his trouble at
Palmyre's house were against him.
Honoris conscience bothered him. He
felt that he unjustly held Aurora's
property, but he also knew he could not
return it to her without ruining the
finances of his family. But he made his
choice. He called upon Aurora and
Clotilde and presented them with theit
property and the income from it. Now
he could not declare his love for Aurora;
if he did so, his family would think he
had returned the property because of
love instead of a sense of justice.
On his way home from Aurora's house,
Honors met the darker Honore" with
Dr. Keene. The physician had risen from
his sickbed because he had heard of
Honor's call at Aurora's house. Dr.
Keene, also in love with Aurora, was
jealous. His exertion caused a
hemorrhage of the lungs, and the two Honoris
carried him home and watched over him.
While they attended the sick man,
the darker Honore" proposed to his
brother that they go into partnership, so
that the darker Honor's money could
save the family from ruin. His brother
accepted the offer. But this action turned
Honored family against him. Agricola
led an unsuccessful lynching party to
find the darker Honored Not finding him,
the mob broke the windows of Joseph's
shop as a gesture against liberal views in
general.
Aurora set Joseph up in business again
on the ground floor of her house and
made Clotilde a partner in the store.
Brought together in this manner, the two
young people fell in love. At the same
time, the darker Honor6 lay wasting away
for love of Palmyre, who was trying to
revenge herself upon Agricola by voodoo
spells. When Agricola could no longer
sleep at night, his family determined to
catch Palmyre in her acts of witchcraft
They caught her accomplice, but
Palmyre escaped.
Meanwhile the darker Honore* went to
Joseph's store to get some medicine foi
himself. Meeting Agricola, who insulted
him, the darker Honore" stabbed Agricola
and escaped. The wounded man was
carried upstairs to Aurora's house to die;
there the two families were united again
at his deathbed. Agricola revealed that
he had once promised to Aurora's father
a marriage between Aurora and Honored
The darker Honore* and Palmyre
escaped together to France. There he
committed suicide because she still would
not accept his love.
Joseph finally declared his love for
Clotilde. But Aurora would not accept
Honor's offer of marriage because she
thought he had made it out of obligation
to Agricola. Then Honore made his offer
again as a man in love. As a last gesture
of family pride Aurora refused him, but
at the same time she threw herself into
her lover's arms.
1373

THE GRANDMOTHERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Glenway Wescott (1901- )
Type of plot: Regional chronicle
Time of plot: 1830-1925
Locale: Wisconsin
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Alwyn Tower, a young boy
Henry Tower, his grandfather
Rose Tower, his grandmother
Jim Tower, his uncle
Evan Tower, another uncle
Flora Tower, his aunt
Ralph Tower, his father
Marianne Tower, his mother
Critique:
The heritage which Alwyn Tower
studied as he pored over the family
albums is the heritage of most Americans.
The struggles of the pioneers of the
Tower family were the struggles of all
pioneers. Glenway Wescott has told a
story of the loves and hates, the madness,
the strength, and the weakness found in
the histories of all families. The
characters are vivid and authentic, the events
realistic and moving. The writer must
have loved the people about whom he
wrote; he portrays them so
sympathetically. The Grandmothers is a truly
American story.
The Story:
During his childhood, Alwyn Tower
spent many hours poring over the family
albums, for everything any of his
ancestors or relatives had done was
interesting to the boy. He begged his
Grandmother Tower to tell him stories of her
childhood and stories about her children
and other relatives. Often the old lady
could not remember what he wanted to
know, and sometimes she seemed
reluctant to talk about the past. But piece
by piece, from his Grandmother Tower,
his parents, his aunts and uncles, and
from the albums, Alwyn learned
something of what he wanted to know.
Alwyn's Grandfather Tower died when
the boy was twelve years old, and so his
memories of that old man were rather
vague. Grandfather Tower's chief
interest during his old age was his garden,
where he never allowed his grandchildren
to go without his permission. He had
failed at farming, but he was the best
gardener in that part of Wisconsin.
Grandfather Tower had come to
Wisconsin from New York. Like so many
others, he had planned to get rich in the
new West; like so many others, he had
failed. He had been a young boy full
of dreams when he first cleared the
wilderness for his farm. He fell in love
with and married Serena Cannon, and
shortly afterward went off to the Civil
War. When he returned, Serena was ill
with a fever and died soon after, leaving
a baby boy. Grandfather Tower could
never love another as he had loved
Serena. Because the boy needed a mother,
however, he married Rose Hamilton, who
had been jilted by his brother Leander.
Serena's boy died, a week before Rose
bore his first child. After that life seemed
unimportant to Henry Tower. There
were more children, some a small
pleasure to him, some a disgrace. But they
seemed to be Rose's children, not his.
Part of Grandfather Tower had died with
THE GRANDMOTHERS by Glenway Wescott.
Brothers. Copyright, 1927, by Harper & Brothers.
By permission of the author and the publishers, Harper &
1374

Serena, and although he lived to be
eighty-two years old, he had never seemed
to be completely alive as far as Alwyn
was concerned.
Grandmother Tower, too, had come
to Wisconsin when she was a child.
Growing up in the wilderness, she
suffered all the hardships of the pioneers
—hunger and cold and fear of Indians.
When she was in her early teens she met
and fell in love with Leander Tower.
When the Civil War came, Leander
enlisted, and the girl went to stay with
Serena Tower. While Serena lay ill with
fever, the young girl cared for her and
the baby. Leander returned, but he had
changed. Although he could not explain
himself clearly, Rose knew that he no
longer wanted to marry her. After
Serena's husband came home and Serena
had died, Leander went to California.
Rose married Serena's widower and bore
his children, but like him she was only
partly alive. She never ceased to love
Leander, but she was faithful to
Grandfather Tower, even after Leander
returned to Wisconsin. To Alwyn, she was
a quiet, serene woman, resigned to life,
but not unhappy with her lot.
Alwyn learned about many of his
more distant relatives as he studied the
albums and listened to the stories of
his elders. There was his Great-Aunt
Nancy Tower, who had been insane for
part of her life. There was his Great-
Aunt Mary Harris, who had been
married three times and had traveled all ovei
the world. Grandmother Tower said that
Great-Aunt Mary was a real pioneer. She
had seen her first husband killed by
Southerners because he sympathized with
the Union. Her second husband was a
drunken sot who beat her, and often she
had to beg for food to stay alive. After
her second husband divorced her, she
married one of the Tower men, and for
the first time she knew happiness and
prosperity.
Old Leander Tower seemed to be
happy only when he was helping a young
boy. His younger brother Hilary had
disappeared in the war, and it seemed almost
as if Leander were trying to find a
substitute for his brother.
Alwyn knew his father's brothers and
sisters quite well. His Uncle Jim was
a minister who had married a rich
woman, and they took Alwyn to live with
them in Chicago, giving the boy his only
chance for a good education. Uncle Jim's
wife persuaded her husband to give up
preaching. After her death he continued
to hve with her mother and sisters and to
humor their whims. Alwyn liked his
Uncle Jim, but he could not admire him.
Uncle Evan, a deserter in the Spanish-
American War, had gone west to hve
after taking a new name. Once or twice
he came home to visit his father, but
both men seemed embarrassed during
those meetings. Grandfather Tower had
always been ashamed of Evan, and
during the last visit Evan made the old man
refused to enter the house while his son
was there.
Aunt Flora was an old maid, although
she still thought of herself as a young
girl. She had had many chances to marry,
but she was afraid of the force of love,
afraid that something hidden in her
would be roused and not satisfied. It was
a mysterious thing she could not under
stand. She turned to Alwyn, giving him
her love and accepting his, for she could
love the young boy whole-heartedly,
having nothing to fear from him. When she
was twenty-nine years old, she fell ill
and died. Alwyn thought she looked
happy as she took her last breath.
Alwyn's father, Ralph Tower, had
always wanted to be a veterinarian, for
he had a way with animals. But Uncle
Jim had been the one chosen for an
education, and after Uncle Evan deserted
and went west, Ralph had to take over
the farm for his father. He was never
bitter; merely resigned. Perhaps he would
have envied Jim if it had not been for
Alwyn's mother.
His parents had one of the few really
happy marriages in the family, Alwyn
realized as he watched them together.
1375

Alwyn knew something of the girlhood of
his mother. Her parents had hated each
other fiercely, and had taken pleasure
in showing that hatred. Alwyn's mother
was a lonely child until she met Ralph
Tower. Sometimes it embarrassed Alwyn
to see his parents together because they
revealed so much of their feeling for each
other.
Alwyn realized that the Towers were
one of the last pioneer families in
America. He knew that in his heritage there
was a deep religious feeling, a
willingness to accept poverty and hardship as
the will of God. His heritage was a
disordered one; a deserter, an insane
woman, a man and a wife who hated each
other, an uncle who lived on the wealth
of his wife's mother. But these people
were just as much a part of him as were
the others. Alwyn knew that his life
would be a rearrangement of the
characters of the others. He knew that he could
understand himself if once he understood
his people.
1376

THE GRAPES OF WRATH
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Steinbeck (1902^ )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1930's
Locale: Southwest United States and California
First published: 1939
Principal characters:
Tom Joad, an ex-convict
Pa Joad, an Okie
Ma Joad, his wife
Rose of Sharon, Tom's sister
Jim Casy, a labor agitator
Critique:
In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck
has achieved an interesting contrapuntal
effect by breaking the narrative at
intervals with short, impressionistic
passages recorded as though by a motion
picture camera moving quickly from one
scene to another and from one focus
to another. The novel is a powerful
indictment of our capitalistic economy and
a sharp criticism of the southwestern
farmer for his imprudence in the care
of his land. The outstanding feature of
The Grapes of Wrath is its
photographically detailed, if occasionally
sentimentalized, description of the American
farmers of the Dust Bowl in the mid-thirties
of the twentieth century.
The Story:
Tom Joad was released from the
Oklahoma state penitentiary where he had
served a sentence for km mg a man m
self-defense. He traveled homeward
through a region made barren by drought
and dust storms. On the way he met
Jim Casy, an ex-preacher; the pair went
together to the home of Tom's people.
They found the Joad place deserted.
While Tom and Casy were wondering
what had happened, Muley Graves, a
die-hard tenant farmer, came by and
disclosed that all of the families in the
neighborhood had gone to California
or were going. Tom's folks, Muley said,
had gone to a relative's place preparatory
to going west. Muley was the only
sharecropper to stay behind.
All over the southern Midwest states,
farmers, no longer able to make a living
because of land banks, weather, and
machine farming, had sold or were forced
out of the farms they had tenanted.
Junk dealers and used-car salesmen
profiteered on them. Thousands of
families took to the roads leading to the
promised land, California.
Tom and Casy found the Joads at
Uncle John's place, all busy with
preparations to leave for California.
Assembled for the trip were Pa and Ma
Joad; Noah, their mentally backward
son; Al, the adolescent younger brother
of Tom and Noah; Rose of Sharon, Tom's
sister, and her husband, Connie; the
Joad children, Ruthie and Winfield; and
Granma and Grampa Joad. Al had
bought an ancient truck to take them
west. The family asked Jim Casy to
go with them. The night before they
started, they killed the pigs they had
left and salted down the meat so that
they would have food on the way.
Spurred by handbills which stated
that agricultural workers were badly
needed in California, the Joads, along
with thousands of others, made their
torturous way, in a worn-out vehicle,
across the plains toward the mountains.
Grampa died of a stroke during their
first overnight stop. Later there was a
1?iE ?£oPPS Pf WRATH by J°hn Steinbeck. By permission of the publishers. The Viking Pre«i Inc.
Copyright, 1939, by John Steinbeck.
1377

long delay when the truck broke down.
Small business people along the way
treated the migrants as enemies. Ana,
to add to the general misery, returning
migrants told the Joads that there was
no work to be had in California, that
conditions were even worse than they
were in Oklahoma. But the dream of
a bountiful West Coast urged the Joads
onward.
Close to the California line, where
the group stopped to bathe in a river,
Noah, feeling he was a hindrance to the
others, wandered away. It was there
that the Joads first neard themselves
addressed as Okies, another wdrd for
tramps.
Granma died during the night tri|
across the desert. After burying her, the
group went into a Hooverville, as the
migrants' camps were called. There
they learned that work was all but
impossible to find. A contractor came to the
camp to sign up men to pick fruit in
another county. When the Okies asked
to see his license, the contractor turned
the leaders over to a police deputy who
had accompanied him to camp. Tom
was involved in the fight which followed.
He escaped, and Casy gave himself up
in Tom's place. Connie, husband of the
pregnant Rose of Sharon, suddenly
disappeared from the group. The family
was breaking up in the face of its hara-
ships. Ma Joad did everything in her
power to keep the group together.
Fearing recrimination after the fight,
the Joads left Hooverville and went to
a government camp maintained for
transient agricultural workers. The camp
had sanitary facilities, a local
government made up of the transients
themselves, and simple organized
entertainment. During the Joads* stay at the
camp the Okies successfully defeated
an attempt of the local citizens to give
the camp a bad name and thus to have
it closed to the migrants. For the first
time since they had arrived in California,
the Joads found themselves treated as
human beings.
Circumstances eventually forced there
to leave the camp, however, for thero
was no work in the district. Thev drov*
to a large farm where work was being
offered. There they found agitators
attempting to keep the migrants from
taking the work because of unfair wages
offered. But the Joads, thinking only of
food, were escorted by motorcycle police
in to the farm. The entire family picked
peaches for five cents a box and earned
in a day just enough money to buy
food for one meal. Tom, remembering
the pickets outside the camp, went out
at night to investigate. He found Casy,
who was the leader of the agitators.
While Tom and Casy were talking,
deputies, who had been searching for
Casy, closed in on them.. The pair fled,
but were caught. Casy was killed. Tom
received a cut on his head, but not
before he had felled a deputy with an
ax handle. The family concealed Tom
in their shack. The rate for a box of
peaches dropped, meanwhile, to two-and-
a-half cents. Tom's danger and the
futility of picking peaches drove the
Joads on their way. They hid the
injured Tom under the mattresses in the
back of the truck and told the suspicious
guard at the entrance to the farm that
the extra man they had had with them
when they came was a hitchhiker who
had stayed on to pick.
The family found at last a migrant
crowd encamped in abandoned boxcars
along a stream. They joined the camp
and soon found temporary jobs picking
cotton. Tom, meanwhile, hid in a
culvert near the camp. Ruthie innocently
disclosed Tom's presence to another litde
girl. Ma, realizing that Tom was no
longer safe, sent him away. Tom
promised to carry on Casy's work in trying
to improve the lot of the downtroaden
everywhere.
The autumn rains began. Soon the
stream which ran beside the camp
overflowed and water entered the boxcars.
Under these all but impossible conditions,
Rose of Sharon gave birth to a dead baby.
1378

When the rising water made their
position no longer bearable, the family moved
from the camp on foot. The rains had
made their old car useless. They came to
a barn, which they shared with a boy and
his starving father. Rose of Sharon, bereft
of her baby, nourished the famished man
with the milk from her breasts. So the
poor kept each other alive in the
depression years.
1379

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1860-1861
Principal characters:
Pip, an orphan
Joe Gargery, Pip's brother-in-law
Miss Havisham, an eccentric recluse
Estella, Miss Havisham's ward
Herbert Pocket, Pip's roommate
Mr. J aggers, a solicitor
Abel Magwitch (Mr. Provis), a convict
Compeyson, a villain
Critique:
Miss Havisham was deserted on her
wedding day. Pip gave help to an
escaped prisoner hiding in a marsh. From
these two events Dickens weaves an
amazing story of vindictiveness on one
hand and gratitude on the other; and
both of these motives affected Pip's life,
for Miss Havisham had marked him as
one of her victims, and the prisoner had
sworn to reward the small boy who had
helped him in the marsh. Although an
absorbing tale, this is also a gloomy one,
not lightened by Dickens' usual
capricious characterizations. There are few
moments to relieve the reader from the
pressure of Pip's problems in Hfe.
The Story:
Little Pip had been left an orphan
when he was a small boy, and his sister,
much older than he, had grudgingly
reared him in her cottage. Pip's brother-
in-law, Joe Gargery, on the other hand,
was kind and loving to the-boy. In the
marsh country where he lived with his
sister and Joe, Pip wandered alone. One
day he was accosted by a wild-looking
stranger who demanded that Pip secretly
bring him some food, a request which
Pip feared to deny. The stranger, an
escaped prisoner, asked Pip to bring him
a file to cut the iron chain that bound
his leg. When Pip returned to the man
with a pork pie and file, he saw another
mysterious figure in the marsh. After a
desperate struggle with the escaped
prisoner, the stranger escaped into the fog.
The man Pip had aided was later
apprehended. He promised Pip he would
somehow repay the boy for helping him.
Mrs. Joe sent Pip to the large mansion
of the strange Miss Havisham upon that
lady's request. Miss Havisham lived in
a gloomy, locked house where all clocks
had been stopped on the day her
bridegroom failed to appear for the wedding
ceremony. She often dressed in her
bridal robes; a wedding breakfast mold-
ered on the table in an unused room.
There Pip went every day to entertain
the old lady and a beautiful young girl,
named Estella, who delighted in
tormenting the shy boy. Miss Havisham
enjoyed watching the two children
together, and she encouraged Estella in
her haughty teasing of Pip.
Living in the grim atmosphere of Joe's
blacksmith shop and the uneducated
poverty of his sister's home, Pip was
eager to learn. One day a London
solicitor named Jaggers presented him with
the opportunity to go to London and
become a gentleman. Both Pip and Joe
accepted the proposal. Pip imagined that
his kind backer was Miss Havisham
herself. Perhaps she wanted to make a
gentleman out of him so he would be fit
some day to marry Estella.
In London Pip found a small
apartment set up for him, and for a living
1380

companion he had a young relative of
Miss Havisham, Herbert Pocket. When
Pip needed money, he was instructed to
go to Mr. Jaggers. Although Pip pleaded
with the lawyer to disclose the name of
his benefactor, Jaggers advised the eager
young man not to make inquiries, for
when the proper time arrived Pip's
benefactor would make himself known.
Soon Pip became one of a small group
of London dandies, among them a
disagreeable chap named Bentley Drummle.
Joe Gargery came to visit Pip, much to
Pip's disturbance, for by now he had
outgrown his rural background and he
was ashamed of Joe's manners. But
Herbert Pocket cheerfully helped Pip to
entertain the uncomfortable Joe in their
apartment. Plainly Joe loved Pip very
much, and after he had gone Pip felt
ashamed of himself. Joe had brought
word that Miss Havisham wanted to see
the young man, and Pip returned with
his brother-in-law. Miss Havisham and
Estella marked the changes in Pip, and
when Estella had left Pip alone with the
old lady, she told him he must fall in
love with the beautiful girl. She also said
it was time for Estella to come to London,
and she wished Pip to meet her adopted
daughter when she arrived. This request
made Pip feel more certain he had been
sent to London by Miss Havisham to be
groomed to marry Estella.
Estella had not been in London long
before she had many suitors. Of all the
men who courted her, she seemed to
favor Bentley Drummle. Pip saw Estella
frequently. Although she treated him
kindly and with friendship, he knew she
did not return his love.
On his twenty-first birthday Pip
received a caller, the man whom Pip had
helped in the marsh many years before.
Ugly and coarse, he told Pip it was he
who had been financing Pip ever since
he had come to London. At first the boy
was horrified to discover he owed so
much to this crude ex-criminal, Abel
Magwitch. He told Pip that he had been
sent to the colonies where he had grown
rich. Now he had wanted Pip to enjoy
all the privileges he had been denied in
life, and he had returned to England to
see the boy to whom he had tried to be a
second father. He warned Pip that he
was in danger should his presence be
discovered, for it was death for a prisoner
to return to England once he had been
sent to a convict colony. Pip detested his
plight. Now he realized Miss Havisham
had had nothing to do with his great
expectations in life, but he was too
conscious of his debt to consider
abandoning the man whose person he disliked.
He determined to do all in his power to
please his benefactor. Magwitch was
using the name Provis to hide his
identity. Provis told Pip furthermore that
the man with whom Pip had seen him
struggling long ago in the marsh was his
enemy, Compeyson, who had vowed to
destroy him. Herbert Pocket, who was
a distant cousin of Miss Havisham, told
Pip that the lover who had betrayed her
on the day of her wedding was named
Arthur Compeyson.
Pip went to see Miss Havisham to
denounce her for having allowed him to
believe she was helping him. On his
arrival he was informed that Estella was
to marry Bentley Drummle. Since Miss
Havisham had suffered at the hands of
one faithless man, she had reared Estella
to inflict as much hurt as possible upon
the many men who loved her. Estella
reminded Pip that she had warned him
not to fall in love with her, for she had
no compassion for any human being.
Pip returned once more to visit Miss
Havisham after Estella had married. An
accident started a fire in the old, dust-
filled mansion, and although Pip tried
to save the old woman she died in the
blaze that also badly damaged her gloomy
house.
From Provis' story of his association
with Compeyson and from other
evidence, Pip had learned that Provis was
Estella's father; but he did not reveal
his discovery to anyone but Jaggers,
whose housekeeper, evidently, was
1381

Estella's mother. Pip had learned also
that Compeyson was in London and
plotting to kill Provis. In order to
protect the man who had become a foster
father to him, Pip with the help of
Herbert Pocket arranged to smuggle Provis
across the channel to France. There Pip
intended to join the old man. Elaborate
and secretive as their plans were,
Compeyson managed to overtake them as they
were putting Provis on the boat. The
two enemies fought one last battle in the
water, and Provis killed his enemy. He
was then taken to jail, where he died
before he could be brought to trial.
When Pip fell ill shortly afterward,
it was Joe Gargery who came to nurse
him. Older and wiser from his many
experiences, Pip realized that he need
no longer be ashamed of the kind man
who had given so much love to him when
he was a boy. His sister, Mrs. Joe, had
died and Joe had married again, this time
very happily. Pip returned to the
blacksmith's home to stay awhile, still desolate
and unhappy because of his lost Estella.
Later Herbert Pocket and Pip set up
business together in London.
Eleven years passed before Pip went
to see Joe Gargery again. Curiosity led
Pip to the site of Miss Havisham's former
mansion. There he found Estella, now a
widow, wandering over the grounds.
During the years she had lost her cool
aloofness and had softened a great deal.
She told Pip she had thought of him
often. Pip was able to foresee that
perhaps he and Estella would never have to
part again. The childhood friends walked
hand in hand from the place which had
once played such an enormous part in
both their lives.
1382

THE GREAT GALEOTO
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jose* Echegaray y Eizaguirre (1832-1916)
Spc of flotx Social satire
ne of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Madrid, Spain
First presented: 1881
Principal characters:
Don Julian, a rich Spanish businessman
Teodora, his young and beautiful wife
Ernesto, a young dramatist befriended by Don Julian
Severo, Don Julian's brother
Mercedes, Severo's wife
Critique:
A long prologue to The Great Galeoto,
spoken by Ernesto and Don Julian, clearly
expresses the purpose of the play.
Ech egaray, a rebel against the limitations
of the dramatic form, wished to place the
whole of society on the stage and to use
as motivations not the personal impulses
of members of the cast of characters, but
the nebulous motivations that arise out
of the interactions of groups of people
within the social framework. Thus it is
that in this drama Echegaray shows the
results of slander on the part of many
people against the characters placed on
the stage. The motivation for the action is
not given by the characters we see; the
whole of Madrid acts upon them behind
the scenes. The problem of dramatic
limitations upon reality, which is the basis of
The Great Galeoto, makes it immediately
comparable to another modern play
dealing with similar problems, Pirandello's
Six Characters in Search of an Author.
The Story:
Ernesto, a young playwright, was taken
into the home of Don Julian, a rich
businessman who had been a close friend of
Ernesto's father. Ernesto was working on
a great play, but he had difficulty in
putting down on paper what was in his mind.
As he told Don Julian, his play was to
include everyone and to reflect the whole
world, not simply a part of it, but the laws
of the drama made it impossible for him
to put down what he wished to say within
the space and symbols of a play. Don
Julian, a practical man, told Ernesto to
go get some sleep and be ready to go
partridge shooting the next day. After Don
Julian left, Ernesto's eye fell on a work by
Dante. From it he took the title for his
play, The Great Galeoto, after a character
in die love story of Paolo and Francesca.
The following evening Don Julian and
his wife Teodora sat watching the sunset.
Don Julian told Teodora that he was
afraid Ernesto was unhappy because they
had done so much for him, that Ernesto
felt he owed them much which could
never be repaid. Ernesto joined them and
in the ensuing conversation readily
admitted his belief that he was living on
charity and that people were talking about
him. Don Julian said the situation could
be remedied and suggested that Ernesto
become his secretary, thus repaying, in the
eyes of the world, what Julian gave him.
Ernesto was pleased by the proposal and
accepted.
Don Julian left the room. As the sun
went down and Teodora and Ernesto
continued to talk, Severo, Don Julian's
brother, entered with Mercedes, his wife.
Severo and Mercedes voiced their
suspicions of the other two to one another and
said that the whole city of Madrid was
speaking of the affair going on in Don
Julian's house between his young wife
and the young man he had befriended.
After the men left the room Mercedes
even told Teodora about the slander that
1383

was being voiced in the city. Severo went
to pass on the same information to Don
Julian.
When Don Julian rejoined his wife, he
expressed his anger that Severo should
dare to insult his honor and Teodora's by
bringing such slander into his home. Don
Julian insisted that Ernesto remain in his
house as he had before.
Ernesto, told of the slander by Severo's
son, left Don Julian's fine home to live in
a garret. At first Don Julian was glad,
thinking that there might have been some
truth in the town's gossip. Later he arrived
at a different conclusion and went to
invite Ernesto to return. While he and his
brother waited in Ernesto's garret, Severo's
son appeared with word that Ernesto was
to fight a duel with the Viscount Nebreda,
who had openly aired his malicious gossip
in Ernesto's presence at a cafe\ Don
Julian immediately left to find Nebreda to
force him to a duel in defense of his own
honor.
The boy, left behind, was searching the
apartment when Ernesto returned. In the
angry conversation that followed, Ernesto
told the boy that he and all society, with
their slanders, were no better than
Galeoto, who had been the go-between for
Lancelot and Guinevere in their infamous
affair, as told in Dante's story of Paolo
and Francesca.
After the boy had gone Teodora came
to Ernesto's quarters to see him. She had
just learned that Ernesto was leaving
Spain the following day and had come to
tell him goodbye. Learning of the duel
that Ernesto was to fight with Nebreda,
she was disturbed that he should possibly
humiliate her husband by dueling in his
place, when Ernesto was the one,
according to gossip, who had laid Don Julian's
honor open to question.
While they argued, Severo's son
returned to tell them that Don Julian had
found Nebreda, fought with him, and
had been wounded severely. He added
that Don Julian had first returned to
Ernesto's quarters to see him, but that a
servant had told Don Julian he could not
disturb Ernesto, who was with a lady.
Severo and a servant appeared, carrying
the wounded Don Julian. Teodora hid in
the bedroom, but her presence was
discovered when Don Julian asked to be
placed on the bed.
After a dreadful scene Ernesto rushed
out to find the Viscount Nebreda. He
discovered him, fought a duel, and killed
Nebreda. In the meantime Severo
removed the wounded man to his home.
After the duel Ernesto went to Don
Julian's house to tell what he had done
and to say goodbye to Don Julian and
Teodora. Mercedes and her son refused to
let him see the sick man. Ernesto told
them how Teodora happened to be in his
garret and added that she had been
trying to prevent the duel between her
husband and Nebreda.
After his departure Mercedes brutally
questioned Teodora in an effort to make
the young woman confess she was in love
with Ernesto. She failed, but Teodora
promised that Ernesto could never enter
the house again. When Ernesto returned,
he was ordered to leave, but he agreed to
do so only after Teodora had repeated the
request. As he was leaving, Severo laid
hands on Teodora. Ernesto returned and
compelled .Severo on his knees to beg
Teodora's pardon. He assured Severo that
she was innocent of any infidelity.
Don Julian, hearing the commotion,
left his sickroom. Infuriated, he slapped
Ernesto's face and threatened to kill him
in a duel. Severo and Mercedes helped
Don Julian, his strength exhausted, back
to his room, where he died a few minutes
later. Severo, refusing to let Teodora enter
her husband's room, claimed the house
was his, and after his brother's death he
tried to put Teodora out of it because of
the scandal and shame that gossip had
associated with her.
Teodora fainted. Ernesto picked her up
and told Severo that he would take her
away. He denounced Severo and society,
who had forced him and Teodora into
scandalous behavior. Society, he insisted,
was no better than a pimp, a great Galeoto,
1384

THE GREAT GATSBY
Type of work: Novel
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1922
Locale: New York City and Long Island
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Nick Carraway, a young bond salesman
Daisy Buchanan, his cousin
Tom Buchanan, her husband
Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress
Jay Gatsby, a racketeer of the Twenties
Critique:
The short life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
was long enough for that brilliant young
man to show what the United States
meant in terms of the reckless Twenties.
Prohibition and speak-easies, new
automobiles, victory abroad, popular fads,
new wealth—he understood and wrote
about all these things. Despite its
limitations of style and its imperfections in
character development, The Great Gatsby
belongs to that literature which endeavors
honestly to present the American scene
during those riotous years from the first
World War to the depression. If F. Scott
Fitzgerald's view of character was limited,
it may be because his over-all
comprehension of society was so positive. His acute
sensibility was devoted to an
understanding of the results of human action, rather
than an understanding of the reasons
for human action.
The Story:
Young Nick Carraway decided to
forsake the hardware business of his family
in the Middle West in order to sell bonds
in New York City. He took a small
house in West Egg on Long Island and
there became involved in the lives of his
neighbors. At a dinner party at the home
of Tom Buchanan he renewed his
acquaintance with Tom and Tom's wife,
Daisy, a distant cousin, and he met an
attractive young woman, Jordan Baker.
Almost at once he learned that Tom and
Daisy were not happily married. It
appeared that Daisy knew her husband was
deliberately unfaithful.
Nick soon learned to despise the drive
to the city through unkempt slums;
particularly, he hated the ash heaps and the
huge commercial signs. He was far more
interested in the activities of his wealthy
neighbors. Near his house lived Jay
Gatsby, a mysterious man of great wealth.
Gatsby entertained lavishly, but his past
was unknown to his neighbors.
One day Tom Buchanan took Nick
to call on his mistress, a dowdy, over-
plump, married woman named Myrtle
Wilson, whose husband, George Wilson,
operated a second-rate auto repair shop.
Myrtle, Tom, and Nick went to the
apartment Tom kept, and there the three
were joined by Myrtle's sister Catherine
and Mr. and Mrs. McKee. The party
settled down to an afternoon of drinking,
Nick unsuccessfully doing his best to get
away.
A few days later Nick attended another
party, one given by Gatsby for a large
number of people famous in speak-easy
society. Food and liquor were dispensed
lavishly. Most of the guests had never
seen their host before.
At the party Nick met Gatsby for the
first time. Gatsby, in his early thirties,
looked like a healthy young roughneck.
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1925, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1385

He was offhand, casual, eager to
entertain his guests as extravagantly as
possible. Frequently he was called away by
long-distance telephone calls. Some of
the guests laughed and said that he was
trying to impress them with his
importance.
That summer Gatsby gave many
parties. Nick went to all of them, enjoying
each time the society of people from all
walks of life who appeared to take
advantage of Gatsby's bounty. From time
to time Nick met Jordan Baker there, but
he began to lose interest in her after he
heard that she had cheated in an amateur
golf match.
Gatsby took Nick to lunch one day and
introduced him to a man named
Wolfshiem, who seemed to be Gatsby's
business partner. Wolfshiem hinted at some
dubious business deals that betrayed
Gatsby's racketeering activities and Nick
began to identify the sources of some of
Gatsby's wealth.
Jordan Baker told Nick the strange
story of Daisy's wedding. Before the
bridal dinner Daisy, who seldom drank,
became wildly intoxicated and announced
there would be no wedding, that she had
changed her mind and intended to go
back to an old flame, Jay Gatsby. Her
friends and family, however, had argued
with her until she finally married Tom
Buchanan. At the time Gatsby was poor
and unknown; Tom was rich and
influential.
But Gatsby was still in love with Daisy,
and he wanted Jordan and Nick to bring
Daisy and him together again. It was
arranged that Nick should invite Daisy to
tea the same day he invited Gatsby.
Gatsby awaited the invitation nervously.
On the eventful day it rained.
Determined that Nick's house should be
presentable, Gatsby sent a man to mow
the wet grass; he also sent over flowers
for decoration. The tea was a strained
affair at first, both Gatsby and Daisy shy
and awkward in their reunion.
Afterward they went over to Gatsby's
mansion, where he showed them his
furniture, clothes, swimming pool, and
gardens. Daisy promised to attend his next
party.
When Daisy disapproved of his guests,
Gatsby stopped entertaining. The house
was snut up and the bar-crowd turned
away.
Gatsby informed Nick of his origin.
His true name was Gatz, and he had been
born in the Middle West. His parents
were poor. But when he was a boy he
had become the protege of a wealthy old
gold miner and had accompanied him on
his travels until the old man died. Then
he changed his name to Gatsby and
began to dream of acquiring wealth and
position. In the war he had distinguished
himself. After the war he had returned
penniless to the States, too poor to marry
Daisy, whom he had met during the
war. Later he became a partner in a drug
business. He had been lucky and had
accumulated money rapidly. He told
Nick that he had acquired the money
for his Long Island residence after three
years of hard work.
Gatsby gave a quiet party for Jordan,
the Buchanans, and Nick. The group
drove into the city and took a room in a
hotel. The day was hot and the guests
uncomfortable. On the way, Tom,
driving Gatsby's new yellow car, stopped at
Wilson's garage. Wilson complained
because Tom had not helped him in a
projected car deal. He said he needed money
because he was selling out and taking
his wife, whom he knew to be
unfaithful, away from the city.
At the hotel Tom accused Gatsby of
trying to steal his wife and also of being
dishonest. He seemed to regard Gatsby's
low origin with more disfavor than his
interest in Daisy. During the argument,
Daisy sided with both men by turns.
On the ride back to the suburbs
Gatsby drove his own car, accompanied by
Daisy, who temporarily would not speak
to her husband.
Following them, Nick and Jordan and
Tom stopped to investigate an accident
in front of Wilson's garage. They dis-
1386

covered an ambulance picking up the
dead body of Myrtle Wilson, struck by a
hit-and-run driver in a yellow car. They
tried in vain to help Wilson and then
went on to Tom's house, convinced that
Gatsby had struck Myrtle Wilson.
Nick learned the next day from Gatsby
that Daisy had been driving when the
woman was hit. However, Gatsby was
willing to take the blame if the death
should be traced to his car. Gatsby
explained that Myrtle, thinking that Tom
was in the yellow car, had run out of
the house, and Daisy, an inexpert driver,
had run her down and then collapsed.
Gatsby had driven on.
In the meantime George Wilson,
having traced the yellow car to Gatsby,
appeared on the Gatsby estate. A few hours
later both he and Gatsby were discovered
dead. He had shot Gatsby and then
killed himself.
Nick tried to make Gatsby's funeral
respectable, but no one attended except
Gatsby's father, who thought his son had
been a great man. None of Gatsby's
racketeering associates appeared. His bar-
friends had also deserted him.
Shortly afterward Nick learned of
Tom's part in Gatsby's death. Tom had
visited Wilson and had let Wilson
believe that Gatsby had been Myrtle's lover.
Nick vowed that his friendship with Tom
and Daisy was at an end. He decided to
return to his people in the Middle West.
1387

THE GREAT MEADOW
Type of work: Novel
Author: Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1886-1941)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1775-1783
Locale: Western Virginia and Kentucky
First published: 1930
Principal characters:
Diony Hall Jarvis, a pioneer wife
Berk Jarvis, her husband
Evan Muir, married to Diony after Berk Jarvis* supposed death
Thomas Hall, Diony's father
Elvira Jarvis, Berk's mother
Critique:
Unlike most historical novels, The
Great Meadow keeps formal history in the
background. The novel is essentially a
study of a woman's place and problems in
the wilderness. Diony Hall is the central
character, and her problems are those
which beset many women in the days of
the early settlements. The need for food,
for leather and cloth, for the aid of a
husband's carpentry and farming experience
—all are problems she has to face. The
novel does not add to our knowledge of
the settlement of the Kentucky country,
but it does present a picture of life in the
wilderness quite different from that of
most writers on the subject. The style is
an unusual one for historical fiction. Miss
Roberts attempted to give insight into
Diony Hall's mind by means of
images and symbols, as in poetry, and
through a modified form of the stream-of-
consciousness technique.
The Story:
Thomas Hall, well-educated son of a
tidewater Virginia family, had settled in
upper Albemarle County after having lost
his fortune to a dishonest relative. In the
upper country he had married a young
Methodist woman who had come down
into Virginia from Pennsylvania. After
their marriage Mrs. Hall bore four
children, two boys and two girls.
Of all the children, the oldest girl was
by far her father's favorite. She had been
named Dione, out of Greek mythology,
but everyone called her Diony and spelled
her name with a "y-" Diony, with her
father's help and the use of his small
library, educated herself as best she could.
During the middle 1770's visitors
occasionally stopped at the Hall house,
really little more than a large cabin, as
they passed from the Fincastle country or
perhaps from even farther away in the
cane meadows of Kentucky. Word came
to the Halls in that manner of Boone,
Henderson, and Harrod, and of the
settlements those men had begun in the
Kentucky country. The accounts of the back
country held smaller charms for Diony
than thoughts of visiting her rich relatives
on the coasts of Virginia and Maryland;
as a girl she believed a life of balls, great
houses, carriages, and fancy clothes far
more enticing than the rigors of the
wilderness.
Among the Halls' neighbors was a
family named Jarvis. Of the several boys of
the Jarvis clan there was one who was over
six feet tall, taller even than Diony's older
brother. He was the first to succumb to
travelers' tales of the Kentucky country.
While he was gone he sent back word by
a trapper that he hoped Diony would wait
for his return before she accepted a
husband. She had one suitor, a man from the
tidewater, but Berk Jarvis so captured her
imagination that she had her father send
a letter ending the suit with the man of
THE GREAT MEADOW by Elizabeth Madox Roberts. By permission of the publishers, The Viking
Press, Inc. Copyright, 1930, by The Viking Press, Inc.
1388

wealth and position who had been seeking
her hand.
When Berk returned Diony quickly
agreed to marry him and to go with him
immediately into the wilderness, to the
new settlement called Harrodsburg in the
Kentucky country. Cloth was woven,
garments were sewed, cattle were gathered
together, kitchen utensils were selected,
and seeds for a garden packed away. At
last all was in readiness for the marriage
and the wilderness trek to follow
immediately. Thomas Hall had had the
banns cried in the Anglican Church,
according to the British law of the Virginia
colony, but the couple and Diony's
mother wanted the Methodist minister to
perform the ceremony. He did, but many
of the people, including Diony and Berk,
had some misgivings as to the legality of
the marriage, even though the argument
of the newly signed Declaration of
Independence was brought forth.
After the marriage Diony, Berk, his
mother, and a number of other Virginians
set out on the wilderness road across the
Appalachian highlands to Kentucky. They
followed the trail laid out by Daniel Boone.
Without accident, but with great
difficulty, the party reached Harrod's fort in
the wilderness. Berk bought a claim on a
farm at some distance from the fort. As
the months passed, the lives of the newly
married couple slowly took shape. Only
one shadow appeared. One day, while
Diony and her mother-in-law were out of
the fort, they were surprised by Indians.
Before Mrs. Jarvis was killed and scalped,
she managed to save Diony's life. Berk
swore that he would be avenged and kill
the Indian who had taken his mother's
scalp.
Diony recovered from injuries received
when attacked by the Indians. One day,
while Berk was purposely gone from the
fort, she gave birth to a boy whom they
named Tom. The baby was not many
weeks old when Berk set out with a party
of men to aid George Rogers Clark in his
expeditions against the British in the
Northwest Territory. Within a few weeks
one of the party came back with an injury
to his hand and the report of an Indian
ambuscade. Berk had been taken by the
Indians. Capture was at that time, even
though the British gave a higher bounty
for prisoners than for scalps, a certain
death warrant for most prisoners.
In the weeks and months which passed
after her husband's capture Diony stayed
in the cabin in the settlement and provided
for herself and the baby. Help was
forthcoming from Evan Muir, the man who
had returned with news of Berk's capture.
In return for her nursing and cooking,
Evan kept Diony and the child in meat
and leather during the summer, fall, and
winter. The following summer he farmed
the Jarvis homestead claim on a share
basis.
Gradually the people in the setdement
began to feel sure that Berk was dead, and
at last a report came in that he had been
killed. Still Diony refused to believe that
her husband would not return. Although
Evan did not press his suit for marriage,
the women of the village warned Diony
that it was not fair for her to continue
taking his labor on her behalf without giving
him the rights of a husband. Diony finally
yielded to their arguments and agreed to
marry Evan. She soon discovered that she
really loved the man and her passion for
him was greater than it had been for Berk.
Diony and Evan moved to the Jarvis
claim and lived in the house Berk had
built there. For two years they lived
happily and worked steadily to improve the
place. In that time Diony gave birth to a
child by Evan, another boy who was
named Michael.
One night a call came from the edge of
the clearing and Berk Jarvis walked up to
the door. Neither Diony, Evan, nor Berk
knew how to resolve the predicament of a
wife with two legal husbands and a child
by each of them. Berk and Evan began a
fierce argument, but they were
interrupted by visitors from the setdement.
The people from the settlement said that
the frontier law was that the wife had to
choose which of the husbands she would
1389

keep; then the other one had to leave for
good.
After the visitors left, Evan waited
silently; he felt that all he had done for
Diony, his labor of three years, would
speak for itself. But Berk began a recital
of his adventures among the Indians,
telling how he had traveled as a prisoner-
visitor as far as Sault Sainte Marie and
had finally been able to escape and return.
He described his tortures in the early
weeks of his captivity: the floggings, the
fantlet running, and the fear of being
urned at the stake.
Late in the night Berk finished
speaking. When he had, Diony said that she
had made up her mind. She chose to have
Berk remain, even though Evan had been
a steadier husband. She told them both
to leave the cabin that night, for she
wanted to be alone for a time before she
faced her new start on Hfe with her first
husband.
1390

THE GREAT TESTAMENT
Tyfe of work: Poetry
Author: Francois Villon (1431-after 1463)
First published: First edition undated; second i
In 1461 ("the thirtieth year of my
age, wherein I have drunk so deep of
shame") Francois Villon, born Montcor-
bier, wrote The Great Testament and by
so doing gave to future generations an
unrivaled glimpse into Paris at the end of
the Middle Ages and a picture of the
complete degradation of a human
personality. Also, he preserved for us, like flies
caught in amber, a score of men and
women of the fifteenth-century Paris
underworld, who, but for him, would have
been lost forever in the night of history.
By 1456, Villon had written The Little
Testament, a poem of forty eight-line
stanzas composed in the form of a mock
will in which he could bequeath to
friends and enemies gifts appropriate to
each. In The Great Testament he
employed the same device, extending the
poem to a hundred and seventy-four
stanzas interspersed with lais, rondeaux,
and ballades, the most celebrated of the
last being the "Ballad of Dead Ladies,"
familiar to us through Rossetti's
translation with the famous refrain, "But where
are the snows of yester-year?" The device
of a testament enabled Villon to pay off
old grudges by bequeathing, with mock
solemnity, legacies that would illuminate
the character of each recipient, as when
he left to the Sieur de Grigny the ruined
tower of Billy, Grigny being in all
probability a coiner and the tower an
excellent spot in which to ply his trade.
The months prior to the composition
of the poem had been unhappy ones for
Villon. Having been banished from Paris
and having barely escaped hanging, he
had fled southward, only to become
further involved with the law. The summer
of 1461 he spent as a prisoner, sentenced
by Thibault d'Aussigny, Bishop of
Orleans, to a dungeon in the castle at
Meung-sur-Loire, a dungeon below the
level of the moat, into which the prisoner
i:
lition, 1489
was lowered in a basket. The diet was
bread and water, and additional water
was supplied in the form of the dreaded
"Question"—a distressing circumstance
for a poet who did not care for water as
a beverage at the best of times. Release
had come unexpectedly when the new
king, Louis XI, passed that way and
prisoners, in accordance with custom, were
freed. Thus the eminently unattractive
Spider King won a fervent admirer.
Such, however, was not the fate of
the Bishop of Orleans. The poet holds
him up to posterity as the example of the
merciless prelate who can himself expect
no mercy. Having thus disposed of the
bishop, Villon next passes in review
before us a strange collection of figures:
pickpockets, thieves, coiners, harlots, and
murderers whom he had known in the
Parisian underworld, for it is fairly
certain that the poet belonged to a well-
organized and widely-spread gang of
criminals. Much in the poem is purely
conventional: the complaints against
fortune; the figure of Death, who brings
high and low to the same end; even the
"Ballad of Dead Ladies" is on the well-
worn theme of Time sweeping away all
beauty. But interspersed are the
vignettes of Parisian lowlife and of Villon
himself living on the earnings of Fat
Margot, "within this brothel where we
keep our state."
The popularity of Villon's poetry is
evidenced by thirty-four editions before
1542. During the neo-classic seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries he was almost
forgotten, to be resurrected as part of the
medieval revival during the nineteenth
century. His appeal to such diverse
characters as Swinburne and Stevenson is
understandable, for the nostalgie de la houe
is a common phenomenon among
members of a highly conventionalized society.
These men, moreover, could live vicari-

ously and in safety the life that Villon
had lived in grim reality. Further, he
provided a different view of the Middle
Ages; his was not the world of The
Divine Comedy or of the Arthurian
romances; it was the world of the
desperately poor and criminal classes and of the
taverns and brothels that they frequented,
and the prisons. It is the great realistic
work of the late Middle Ages.
But Villon posed a difficult problem
for the Victorian translators. The passage
of four hundred years had wrought a
great change in what might or might not
be said in poetry. His frank obscenity
graveled them; even Swinburne, in his
rendering of the "Regretz de la belle
Heaulmiere," took refuge behind six lines
of asterisks. One might translate the
charming "Ballad of Dead Ladies" or the
touching "Ballad to the Virgin" that he
wrote for his mother, but in many
English editions the "Ballade de la grosse
Margot" was omitted or discreetly
altered. This attitude is to be regretted, for,
as Stevenson remarked, in this ballade
Villon outdid Zola in naturalism four
hundred years before Nana was written;
the poem gives us an unforgettable
picture of a man who has touched the
bottom of degradation and who knows that
the cause of his abasement lies only within
himself: "Filth we love and filth follows
us." It is this very frankness that explains
much of Villon's charm. While he made
the conventional gesture of railing at
Fortune, who creates some men rich and
some poor, he clearly recognized where
the real blame should fall. For whether
one gains money by honest or by
dishonest means, where does it go?
To taverns and to harlots all!
And as for his future, he had a
shuddering foreboding that he would be one of
those
Whose neck, in the bight of a rope of
three,
Must prove how heavy my buttocks be.
Among the Victorians, there was
considerable sentimentalizing over Villon
that might have astonished that "povre
petit escollier." Of Swinburne's typically
hyperbolic statement
A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire,
the second phrase would surely have
puzzled him; the first Villon would have
understood very well.
1392

THE GREAT VALLEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mary Johnston (1870-1936)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1735-1760
Locale: Virginia and Ohio
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
John Selkirk, a Scottish Presbyterian minister
Jean Selkirk, his wife
Andrew Selkirk, their son
Elizabeth,
Robin, and
Tam Selkirk, their younger children
Colonel Matthew Burke, a wealthy Virginia landowner
Conan Burke, his son, later Elizabeth Selkirk's husband
Nancy Milliken Selkirk, Andrew Selkirk's wife
Stephen Trabue, a driver and guide
Critique:
Mary Johnston's fame in the early
decades of the twentieth century was
established by a long series of historical
romances, most of them with Virginia
backgrounds. The Great Valley is
representative of a type of fiction which, though it
has attracted scant critical attention, has
enjoyed a long popularity among
American readers.
The Story:
John Selkirk and his family, including
a spinster sister of Mrs. Selkirk, were
bound for Virginia with a number of
other immigrants in the small ship
Prudence. Mr. Selkirk, a Presbyterian
minister somewhat too liberal for his
congregation at Thistlebrae Kirk, in
Scotland, had decided to establish a new kirk
in the Shenando or Great Valley of
Virginia. Arriving in Williamsburg, where
his oldest son Andrew was already living,
he was introduced to Colonel Matthew
Burke, who was developing a large tract
of land in the valley and seeking settlers
for it. John and Andrew Selkirk together
purchased four hundred acres and
prepared to set out for the valley. John had
asked Colonel Burke how the Indians felt
about having their lands occupied by
white men but had been assured that
there would be no trouble, since the lands
had been obtained through treaties and
since many Indians had moved farther
west to find better hunting grpunds.
Stephen Trabue, a friendly driver and
guide, was to accompany the Selkirk
family on part of the journey to the valley.
As they traveled, he explained to them
many of the conditions and details of
daily living which they might expect in
their new homes. Even Nancy Milliken,
who had just become Mrs. Andrew
Selkirk, would find life in the valley very
different from that in Williamsburg, her
former home.
Seven years later John Selkirk had a
congregation of two hundred in his Mt.
Olivet Church, and Andrew had three
hundred acres, three indentured youths
to help him farm them, a grist mill, and
ambitious plans for increasing his
holdings and obtaining more helpers,
including Negro slaves. John did not favor
slavery, but Andrew saw nothing wrong
with it as long as he treated his slaves
humanely.
A few of John's Calvinist church
members objected to the joyousness in his
sermons. Liking fire-and-brimstone threats
THE GREAT VALLEY by Mary Johnston. By permission of the agent, Brandt & Brandt. Published by
Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1926, by Mary Johnston. Renewed. All rights reserved.
1393

from the pulpit, they complained that
their minister did not believe in infant
damnation and was even scornful of
those who thought that certain evil
people were capable of practicing witchcraft.
Shortly after Colonel Burke died
during a visit to the home of his son Conan,
who had married Elizabeth Selkirk and
settled in Burke's Tract, both Conan and
John Selkirk decided to move a day's
journey west into Burke's Land, an
undeveloped tract which the colonel had
also planned to fill with new settlers.
There John established Mount Promise
Church and Conan looked forward to
the growth of a thriving new community
in what had been the wilderness. Some
excitement was caused by a visit from a
young surveyor, Mr. Washington, who
reported that the French were expanding
their colonization along the Ohio River
and were moving eastward into Virginia
lands. Also, the French had stirred up the
Indians, especially the Shawnees, so that
they had become a menace to the
English and Scots living in the western
Virginia settlements.
To the grief of her family, Jean
Selkirk died after a brief illness. The Sel-
kirks were disturbed by reports of
sporadic Indian massacres and revenge
killings by whites. Yet when Andrew Selkirk
warned Conan to move back to Burke's
Tract, Conan refused, believing that if
proper precautions were taken there was
no need to fear the Indians. Not long
afterward John Selkirk was tricked into
following what he thought was a los..
lamb into the woods where he was shot
by an Indian.
The increasing frequency of Indian
attacks soon caused many settlers to flee
south into North Carolina, and those
who remained stayed on permanent
guard. No new people moved into such
areas as Burke's Land, and a guerrilla
war against the marauding Indians was
kept up by the Virginians, many of whose
Scottish and Irish forebears had fought
in much the same way to protect their
Old World homes from English invaders.
In a surprise attack on Oman's
homestead a small group of Shawnees
triumphed, murdering men, women, and
children, scalping their victims, and
taking captive Elizabeth and two of her
children, Eileen and young Andrew; Old
Mother Dick, who had come with the
family from their former home in Burke's
Tract, and two of the Burke servants. As
the Indians and their captives moved
westward, one brave, annoyed by young
Andrew's screaming, tore him from
Elizabeth's grasp and threw him over a cliff
into Last Leap River.
For some time the five remaining
captives lived with the Indians in a village
near the Ohio River. Elizabeth, who had
been taken as a squaw by Long Thunder,
bore him a son; but she was biding the
time when she might escape with Mother
Dick and Eileen, who was still too young
to be claimed by some other brave as his
squaw. Elizabeth finally managed to slip
away from camp with her daughter and
the frail but undaunted old woman. Left
behind was the half-Indian baby whom a
young Indian woman had promised to
care for if anything happened to
Elizabeth. Regretfully left with the Indians
were also the Negro, Ajax, and the white
servant, Barb, who might someday
manage to return to Virginia.
The long, painful journey and the
struggle against exhaustion and
starvation were too much for Mother Dick,
who died on the way. Elizabeth and
Eileen, continuing their journey eastward
into the rugged mountains, were
constantly on guard against roving Indian
bands and diligently seeking food from
stream or forest to allay their hunger. At
last they reached Last Leap River, into
which the baby Andrew had been thrown
so long ago. Elizabeth, peering through
bushes toward the river, saw a canoe
heading down it, going westward. It was
paddled, not by Indians as she at first
feared, but by her brother Robin, the
guide Stephen Trabue, and her husband
Conan Burke. After the joyous reunion,
Conan explained that though Elizabeth
1394

had seen him attacked by some of the
raiders and apparently killed, he had
actually been rescued by neighbors after
having been gravely wounded. His slowly
healing wounds and the continuation of
the war against the Indians and the
French had prevented his and Robin's
pushing toward the Ohio to rescue, if
possible, the Shawnees' captives. Finally
peace had come—in America, though not
yet in Europe between England and
France—and the word had spread to all
wandering bands that now it was safe to
travel in Indian territory. As soon as
possible he had set out with Robin and
Stephen to search for his loved ones. As
the happy group sat about a fire to eat a
breakfast which was like a banquet to
Elizabeth and Eileen, the famished girl
clung to the belief she had had a short
time before, when she wakened from a
deep sleep to find her mother and her
father standing above her. To her the
reunion seemed miraculously wonderful.
1395

THE GREEN BAY TREE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Louis Bromfield (1896-1956)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Middle West
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Julia Shane, a wealthy widow
Lily, and
Irene Shane, her daughters
The Governor, father of Lily's child
Hattie Tolliver, Julia Shane's niece
Ellen Tolliver, Hattie's daughter
Monsieur Cyon, Lily's husband
Critique:
This novel has a double theme. The
first is that the children of the United
States have a problem which their parents
did not face, the problem of being
pioneers with no frontier left in which to
exercise their energy and their talents.
The second theme is that all of us have
secrets of the soul which cannot be
violated. Through the book also runs a
deprecation of material progress and the
materialistic philosophy of America in
the early twentieth century. Bromfield,
however, is not carried away by the
naturalism or sharp social criticism of his
contemporaries in dealing with this aspect
of American life.
The Story:
Julia Shane was a wealthy old woman,
living with her two daughters in a
mansion which had decayed greatly since
the mills of the town had encroached
upon her grounds. Although the house
was now surrounded on three sides by
railroad yards and steel mills, Julia Shane
refused to move away. Mrs. Shane was
worried about her girls. Irene, the
younger, was, in her mother's opinion, too
pious to live. Lily, who was twenty-four
years old, had been in love with the
governor, a man twenty years older than
she. The real complication was that Lily
was going to have a baby and refused
to marry the governor despite the urg-
ings of both the man and her mother.
The Shanes were wealthy; it was easy
for Lily to leave the town for a trip
abroad. Her departure caused no talk
or scandal, although Mrs. Harrison,
whose son Lily had also refused, was
suspicious.
During the four years Lily was in
Europe, life was dull in the gloomy old
mansion. Irene taught English to the
workers in the mills and tried to
convince her mother that she wanted to
become a nun. Old Julia Shane, the last
of a long line of Scottish Presbyterians,
would hear none of such nonsense.
Then, unexpectedly, Lily came home.
Once again there were parties and dances
in the old house. Lily was much
impressed by her cousin, Ellen Tolliver, a
talented pianist, and offered to help the
girl if she would go to Paris. The day
after Christmas, Irene and Lily were
taken on a tour of the steel mills by
Willie Harrison, the mill owner, who once
again asked Lily to marry him. She
refused, disgusted with the spineless
businessman who was ruled by his mother.
When news came from Paris that her
small son had the measles, Lily was glad
to leave the town again. Shortly
afterward Ellen Tolliver also escaped from
the town by marrying a salesman from
THE GREEN BAY TREE by Louis Bromfield. By permission of the author r»<J the puW;»»>~s. Harper &
Brothers. Copyright, 1924, by Frederic* \ Stokes Co.
1396

New York.
Several years later there was a strike
in the steel mills. Only Hattie Tolliver,
Julia Shane's niece and Ellen's mother,
braved the pickets to enter the mansion.
Without her help life at the house would
have been extremely difficult. Although
Julia Shane was dying and confined to
her bed, the merchants of the town
refused to risk deliveries to a house so near
to the mills where shots were occasionally
fired and where mobs of hungry strikers
loitered. On one of her errands of mercy
Hattie Tolliver learned that her daughter,
now a widow, was in Paris studying
music.
When she heard that her mother was
dying, Lily returned from Europe. She
and Hattie Tolliver stayed with Julia
Shane until she died a few weeks later.
Irene was no help. Hattie Tolliver
shrewdly summed up Irene for Lily by
noting that the younger girl was selfish
in her unselfishness to the poor workers
and filled with pride in her lack of
ordinary worldly pride.
After her death, Julia Shane's
daughters remained in the mansion until the
estate was settled. Lily was bored, but
excitement came to her through the
strikers. Her sister had given them
permission to hold meetings in the large
park surrounding the house. Lily watched
the meetings from a darkened window.
She recognized Krylenko, a huge Russian
who had been Irene's pupil and who was
now a close friend. While Krylenko was
speaking, he was shot by a gun fired from
one of the mill sheds. Krylenko entered
the mansion with a key Irene had given
him. Lily bound up his wound. When
she almost fainted, Krylenko placed her
on the sofa. As he did so, Irene entered
and saw them. She berated them both
with all the suspicions which her sterile
mind evoked. Both she and Lily refused
to speak the next day. Lily returned to
Paris.
In Paris Lily confined herself to the
friends of her chaperon, Mme. Gigon.
It was a quiet life, but Lily was happy
with her house, her growing son, and
her lover, the officer son of an old
aristocratic family. Ellen Tolliver, who
had taken the professional name of Lily
Barr, was now a famous concert pianist
on the continent and in England, and
lived part of the time with Lily.
In 1913 Lily's lover told her that
war with Germany was inevitable. The
news increased Lily's moods of
depression which had begun to come upon
her as she approached middle age. The
news that the town wished to buy the
old Shane mansion and use the grounds
for a railroad station further aroused her
antagonism. She did not need the money
and also felt that the attempt to buy the
Elace was an intrusion into her private
fe. Later Lily's lawyer wrote that the
Shane mansion had burned down.
One day Lily unexpectedly met Willie
Harrison in Paris. He had left the mills
and sold most of his holdings. He brought
word that Irene had become a Carmelite
nun and was in France in a convent at
Lisieux.
When France entered the First World
War, Lily's lover and her son were sent
to the front. Only the son was to return,
and he was to come back a cripple.
When the Germans invaded France, Lily
was at her country house with Mme.
Gigon, who was dying. During the night
the soldiers were there Lily discovered
they were going to blow up the bridge
in the vicinity. Armed with a pistol she
had stolen from a German officer, she
killed several men and an officer and
saved the bridge, not for France
particularly, but with the hope that it might
be of some help to her lover and her
son, for she knew that their regiment
was in the area.
During the years of the war she
became closely acquainted with M. Cyon,
a French diplomat whom she married
shortly after the Armistice. During the
peace meetings at Versailles she saw the
governor whom she had refused to many
years before. She was glad she had not
married him, for he had become a florid,
1397

portly, vulgar politician. She preferred
her dignified French diplomat for a
husband, despite his white hair and greater
number of years.
Shortly after her meeting with the
governor, Lily received a letter from the
Carmelites telling her that Sister Monica
had died. For a few moments Lily did
not realize that the person of whom they
had written was Irene. Lily had come
to think of her sister as dead when she
had entered the Church; it was
something of a shock to receive word of a more
recent death.
Lily's last link with America and the
town was broken when she read in a
Socialist newspaper that Krylenko, who
had become an international labor leader,
had died of typhus in Moscow. Now her
family and old friends were all gone.
Only Lily survived. It was with pleasure
that she saw her white-haired husband
enter the garden and walk toward her.
There, at least, was peace and security,
instead of a lonely old age in a drab
Midwestern town.
1398

GREEN GROW THE LILACS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Lynn Riggs (1899-1954)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: 1900
Locale: Indian Territory (later Oklahoma)
First presented: 1931
Principal characters:
Curly McClain, a cowboy
Laurey Williams, a young farm owner
Aunt Eller Murphy, an elderly homesteader
Jeeter Fry, a hired man
Ado Annie Carnes, Laurey's friend
A Peddler
Old Man Peck, a neighbor
Cord Elam, another neighbor
Critique:
Green Grow the Lilacs, upon which
the phenomenally successful musical play
Oklahoma was based, represents
American folk drama at its best. The simple
plot is like an expansion of the story in
some mountain ballad, and the many
ballads and folk songs which are introduced
into the play greatly enhance its
alternately romantic, suspenseful, rowdy, and
sad scenes.
The Story:
Curly McClain, a tall, curly-haired
young cowboy, called at the home of
Laurey Williams and Aunt Eller
Murphy to ask if Laurey would go with him
to a play-party at Old Man Peck's.
Laurey, pretending indifference and even
scorn for Curly, turned down the
invitation and went back to her bedroom,
reappearing later to say that she was going
to the party but that Jeeter Fry, her hired
man, was taking her. At first angry, Curly
sat down at the small organ in the living-
room and played and sang the old song
"Green Grow the Lilacs," which tells of
a rejected lover. Then, quickly recovered
from Laurey's rebuff, he asked Aunt Eller
to go to the party with him in his hired
fringe-top surrey. He left, saying he
would pay a little call at the smokehouse
where Jeeter lived.
In Laurey's bedroom, a little later,
Aunt Eller announced that she was
going to the party with Curly. Laurey
showed no great interest. Instead, musing
on how much she loved her place, she
confided her fear that Jeeter might
sometime burn it down. This fear of him was
what made her accept his attentions and
go to parties with him. Aunt Eller
belittled her fears.
Ado Annie Carnes arrived with a
peddler, from whom Laurey bought for
Ado Annie a pair of garters and some
liquid powder to hide her freckles. They
were startled when they heard a shot
from the direction of the smokehouse,
and then another.
Meanwhile, before and during a card
game in the gloom and dirt of the
smokehouse, Curly had learned that Jeeter's
mind was obsessed by two things: lurid
crime, which he liked to read about, and
sex, which dominated his thinking and
his talk much of the time. As they played
cards, Jeeter's two pistols lay on the table.
Curly's persistent needling of him about
his dirty, dark thoughts and his filthy
personal habits so angered Jeeter that he
suddenly picked up one pistol and fired
at random, splintering the opposite wall.
GREEN GROW THE LILACS by Lynn Riggs. By permission of the owners and the publisher, Samuel
French, Inc. Copyright, 1930, 1931, by Lynn Riggs; Copyright, 1957, 1958 (in renewal), by Howard E.
Reinhe.mer, Executor. Application for the right to present this play should be made to Samuel French, Inc.,
of 25 West 45th St., New York 36, N. Y., or 7623 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood 46, Calif., or if in Canada to
Samuel French (Canada) Ltd., 27 Grenville St., Toronto, Ont.
1399

Curly picked up the other pistol and
fired neatly through a knothole. Aunt
Eller, Laurey, Ado Annie, and the
peddler, hurrying in to learn what the
shooting was about, were relieved to learn that
no harm had been done. After the women
left, the peddler remained to bring forth
his wares of special interest to men.
He praised the efficiency of a long-bladed
knife for Jeeter. Curly considered the
possible advantage of buying a pair of
brass knuckles—just in case.
At Old Man Peck's the party was
already in progress when Aunt Eller
arrived with Curly, followed a little later
by Laurey, Ado Annie, and Jeeter, who
complained to Laurey because she had
invited Ado Annie to go with them.
Keeping Laurey from entering the house,
he asked why she tried so hard to keep
from being alone with him. When,
tormented by desire, he caught Laurey, she
slapped him hard, then told him that he
was no longer her hired hand and that
he was to leave her place forever. He
slunk away with a dark look. Laurey
asked Ado Annie, who had come back
to complain about her tight garters, to
send Curly out.
When Laurey was finally able to tell
Curly her fear of Jeeter, he promised to
get her a new hired hand, suddenly asked
her to marry him, and as quickly found
himself accepted. Jokingly, he asked if
she would give him, a penniless
cowboy, a new saddle blanket for a wedding
present.
When the party crowd came out on
the porch, they joked about the two love
birds. Jeeter, a bottle in his hand, looked
broodingly at Laurey and Curly, started
to drink a mocking toast to them, and
then hurled the bottle across the yard,
where it crashed. The crowd, keeping
Curly and Jeeter apart, began to sing
"Skip to My Lou."
One evening, a month later, Laurey
and Curly stole quietly across a hayfield
toward the Williams house. They were
whispering that they had given the crowd
the slip after going to town and getting
married. They headed for the house,
followed, unknown to them, by a group of
men bent on shivareeing the new couple.
Their rude jokes were interrupted when
Curly, angry and with his shirt ripped,
was dragged from the house by several
men. Laurey in her nightgown,
frightened and ashamed, followed, surrounded
by a wide circle of other men. To the
accompaniment of bawdy taunts, Curly
and Laurey were made to climb the
ladder of a tall haystack; then the ladder
was thrown down.
Suddenly, amid the obscene jesting,
there was the cry of "Fire!" and Jeeter
came up with a flaming torch. As he
sprang to light the stack, Curly leaped
down and knocked the torch from his
hand. The fire was quickly doused, but
the drunken Jeeter, his knife out,
attacked Curly. In the struggle Jeeter
tripped, fell on his knife, and lay still.
Cord Elam suggested that Curly go and
explain the fight to the law.
A few nights later Aunt Eller and Ado
Annie sat in the Williams living-room
wondering when Curly would be let out
of the Claremore jail. Laurey, coming
from her room looking pale and much
older, spoke of her fears for Curly, the
shock of hearing the bawdy things the
men had said at the shivaree, and the
troubles that life brings people. Aunt
Eller, citing many troubles, explained
that one simply had to have the strength
to endure such things. The lesson sank
in, and Laurey apologized for being such
a baby.
The dog Shep began barking outside,
then suddenly stopped. A moment later
Curly came in; he had broken out of jail
the night before his trial in order to see
Laurey. His pursuers would be after him
in a little while, he said, but he had to
know that she would wait for him,
whatever might happen at the trial. When
they let him free he would forget
herding cows and learn to farm Laurey's
beautiful acres.
Old Man Peck and several other
deputies arrived to return Curly to jail, but
1400

Aunt Eller refused to let them have him early in the morning. Not too early, said
before morning. When the others showed Aunt Eller. From the bedroom came
sympathy for Curly and Laurey, who had Curly*s voice singing "Green Grow the
still not had their wedding night, Peck Lilacs."
agreed, promising to return bright and
1401

GREEN MANSIONS
Type of work: Novel
Author: W. H. Hudson (1841-1922)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: South American jungles
First published: 1904
"Principal characters:
Mr. Abel, an old man
Rima, a creature of the forest
Nuflo, an old hunter
Critique:
The only legend of its kind that has
become a modern classic, Green Mansions
owes its popularity to its mystic, religious
feeling and to the beauty of Rima's
halting, poetic expressions. Loving nature
and the wild life of the countries which
he explored, Hudson was able to express
his own deep feeling through the
character of Rima, the strange birdlike girl who
was one with the forest and whose sorrow
of loneliness was so great that she would
suffer no one to look into the depth of
her soul. Perhaps, to Hudson, nature
was like that; too lonely and sorrowful
to impart complete understanding and
knowledge of herself to mankind.
The Story:
No one in Georgetown could
remember his full name, and so he was known
only as Mr. Abel. He told a strange story
one evening as he sat talking to a friena,
a tale of his youth.
While he was living among the Indians
in the jungle, a nearby savannah caught
his fancy. The Indians claimed it was
haunted and would not go near it. One
day he set out to explore the savannah
for himself. For a long while he sat on
a log trying to identity the calls of the
birds. One particularly engaging sound
seemed almost human, and it followed
him as he returned to the Indian village.
Soon he bribed one of the Indians to
enter the haunted savannah. The Indian
became frightened, however, and ran
away, leaving Abel alone with the weird
GREEN MANSIONS by W. H. Hudson. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1916, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed, 1943, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
sound. The Indian had said that the
daughter of the spirit Didi inhabited the
forest. Abel felt sure that the nearly
intelligible language of the birdlike
sounds were associated with the one to
whom the Indian referred.
Again and again Abel returned to the
forest in his search for the source of
the warbling sound, but always it eluded
him. Then one day he saw a girl playing
with a bird. The girl disappeared among
the trees, but not before Abel had
decided that she must be connected in some
way with the warbling sounds he had
heard.
The Indians had been encouraging
him to continue his quests into the area
of mystery. He decided at last that they
were hoping he would try to kill the
creature who seemed to be haunting their
forest. He was stricken with horror at
the idea. One day he came face to face
with the elusive being. He had been
menaced by a small venomous snake, and
he was about to kill it with a rock when
the girl appeared before him to protest
vigorously in her odd birdlike warbling
language. She was not like any human
he had ever seen. Her coloring was her
most striking characteristic; it was
luminescent and it changed with her every
mood. As he stood looking at her,
fascinated by her loveliness, the snake bit him
on the leg.
He started back toward the pillage
for help, but a blinding rainstorm
overtook him on the way. After falling uncon-
Copyright,
1402

scious while tunning through the trees,
he awakened in a hut with a bearded
old man named Nuflo. The man
expressed fear and hatred of the Indians
who, he said, were afraid of his
grandchild, Rima. It was she who had saved
Abel from dying of the snake's venom
and it was she who had been following
him in the forest. Abel could not believe
that the listless, colorless girl standing in
a corner of the hut was the lovely
birdlike creature he had met. On closer
examination he could detect a likeness of
figure and features, but her luminous
radiance was missing. When Rima
addressed him in Spanish, he questioned
her about the musical language that she
emitted in the trees. She gave no
explanation and ran away.
In a few days Abel learned that Rima
would harm no living creature, not even
for her own food. Abel grew to love the
strange, beautiful, untamed girl of the
green forest. When he questioned her,
she spoke willingly, but her speech was
strangely poetic and difficult to
understand. She expressed deep, spiritual
longings and made him understand that
in the forest she communed with her
mother, who had died long ago.
Rima began to sense that since Abel,
the only person she had known except
her grandfather, could not understand
her language and did not understand her
longings, she must be unlike other human
beings in the world. In her desire to
meet other people and to return to the
place of her birth where her mother had
died, Rima revealed to Abel the name of
her birthplace, a mountain he knew well.
Rima demanded that her grandfather
guide her to Riolama Mountain. Old
Nuflo consented and requested that Abel
come also.
Before he took the long journey with
Rima and Nuflo, Abel returned to the
Indian village. There, greeted with quiet
suspicion and awe because of where he
had been, Abel was held a prisoner. After
six days' absence he returned to Rima's
forest. Nuflo and Abel made
preparations for their journey. When they
started, Rima followed them, only
showing herself when they needed directions.
Nuflo began Rima's story. He had
been wandering about with a band of
outlaws when a heavenly-looking woman
appeared among them. After she had
fallen and broken her ankle, Nuflo, who
thought she must be a saint, nursed her
back to health. Observing that she was
to have a baby, he took her to a native
village. Rima was born soon after. The
woman could learn neither Spanish nor
the Indian tongue, and the soft melodious
sounds which fell from her lips were
unintelligible to everyone. Gradually the
woman faded. As she lay dying, she
made the rough hunter understand that
Rima could not live unless she were taken
to the dry, cool mountains.
Knowing their search for her mother's
people to be in vain, Abel sought to
dissuade Rima from the journey. He
explained to her that they must have
disappeared or have been wiped out by
Indians. Rima believed him, but at the
thought of her own continued loneliness
she fell fainting at his feet. When she
had recovered, she spoke of being alone,
of never finding anyone who could
understand the sweet warbling language which
she had learned from her mother. Abel
promised to stay with her always in the
forest. Rima insisted on making the
journey back alone so that she could
prepare herself for Abel's return.
The return to the savannah was not
easy for Abel and the old man. They
were nearly starving when they came to
their own forest and saw, to their horror,
that the hut was gone. Rima could not
be found. As Abel ran through the forest
searching for her, he came upon a
lurking Indian. Then he realized that she
must be gone, for the Indian would not
have dared to enter the savannah if the
daughter of Didi were still there. He
went back to the Indian village for food
and learned from them that Rima had
returned to her forest. Finding her in a
tree, the Indian chief, Runi, had ordered
1403

his men to burn the tree in order to
destroy the daughter of Didi.
Half mad with sorrow, Abel fled to the
village of an enemy tribe. There he made
a pact with the savages for the slaughter
of the tribe of Runi. He then went to the
forest, where he found Nuflo dead. He
also found Rima's bones lying among the
ashes of the fire-consumed tree. He placed
her remains in an urn which he carried
with him back to civilization.
Living in Georgetown, Abel at last
understood Rima's sorrowful loneliness.
Having known and lost her, he was
suffering the same longings she had felt
when she was searching for her people.
1404

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Daniel Pierce Thompson (1795-1868)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1775-1776
Locale: Vermont
First published: 1839
Principal characters:
Captain Charles Warrington, a Vermont patriot
Lieutenant Selden, later Edward Hendee, his friend
Ethan Allen, leader of the Green Mountain Boys
Alma Hendee, loved by Warrington
Captain Hendee, her father
Jessy Reed, daughter of a British officer
Pete Jones, a Green Mountain Boy *
Jacob Sherwood, a Tory
Bill Darrow, Sherwood's confederate
Neshobee, a loyal Indian
The Story:
Critique:
No other novel in our literature owes
so little to the tradition of the novel as a
work of conscious art. A homespun
product, it is as native to its time and place
as the granite ledges and sugar orchards
of New England. Daniel Pierce
Thompson, lawyer, editor, and judge, had spent
his boyhood on a farm near Montpelier,
Vermont, and his knowledge of frontier
life was as extensive as Cooper's. A writer
by accident rather than by choice, he
presented in his half dozen novels a romantic
yet truthful record of the early history of
his state. Of his books, The Green
Mountain Boys is the best and the most popular.
Printed first on a small newspaper press,
it ran through more than fifty editions
by 1860. Because the story deals with
Ethan Allen and the struggle of his
Green Mountain Boys for liberty, the
book has become the classic novel of
Vermont. Thompson never strayed too
far from facts or local scenery. In this
novel Captain Warrington is Seth
Warner under a fictional disguise made
necessary by the plot. Selden and Captain
Hendee are also recognizable as real
persons. Mrs. Story, Munroe, Skene, Reed,
Mcintosh, Benedict Arnold, and Ethan
Allen appear under their own names,
familiar figures in the early annals of the
state.
In those troubled times which preceded
the Revolutionary War the Vermont
settlements were in armed dispute between
the authorities of New York and the
settlers who held their titles under
the New Hampshire Grants. Many of the
Green Mountain Boys, as the borderers
called themselves, had been outlawed for
their defiance of the New York
Assembly. Among them was a young landowner
named Captain Charles Warrington.
Early in April, 1775, Warrington and
four of the Green Mountain Boys
arrived at Lake Dunmore on their way to
aid some wronged settlers of the region.
Colonel Reed, a British officer holding
a patent purchased in Albany, had built
a log fort on the lower falls of Otter
Creek and evicted the settlers living
nearby. He had then returned to Canada,
leaving the fort garrisoned by a detachment
of former Highlanders under Sergeant
Donald Mcintosh. One attack on the
fort had been repulsed; Warrington and
his friends were planning a second
attempt.
While the men were preparing to
camp for the night, they learned that a
band of New Yorkers led by Munroe, a
York sheriff, was in pursuit. Neshobee,
a friendly Indian, brought the warning,
sent by Mrs. Ann Story, a widow who
1405

was resisting eviction from her half-
cleared farm. Forewarned, Warrington
and his men arranged an ambush for the
Yorkers and took the attackers by
surprise. Munroe and several others they
doused in the lake. Munroe's guide was
Jacob Sherwood, a settler who pretended
sympathy with his neighbors in the
Grants but who was secretly in the
employ of New York land-jobbers.
Captured by Pete Jones, one of the Green
Mountain Boys, Sherwood was treated to
a beech-sealing—a beating with beech
rods—before he was allowed to take to
his heels.
The Green Mountain Boys then
separated. Warrington and his friend Selden
went to Mrs. Story's cabin, which they
found empty. Warrington, unable to
sleep, was wandering near the cabin
when he heard muffled sinking. Because
the voice resembled that of a woman
whom he thought far from the
wilderness, he investigated further, to find that
the singing apparently came from
underground. Mystified, he returned to the
cabin and went to sleep. The next
morning Mrs. Story and her children appeared
from the forest. Questioned, she
admitted that a recent guest had departed, and
she showed Warrington an underground
chamber fashioned from a cave, a refuge
in which her family and the guest had
spent the night. To Warrington's
questions she replied cryptically that the
hedge was too high for him to leap at
that time.
Later in the morning Munroe and his
men appeared at the cabin and almost
succeeded in trapping Warrington and
Selden, who were hidden inside. Mrs.
Story confronted them with her rifle, but
the tongue lashing she gave the sheriff
was even more effective in putting that
discomfited officer to rout. Before
Warrington's departure Mrs. Story made him
promise that he would not harm the
family whom Neshobee served.
His force increased by other settlers
from the Grants, Warrington attacked
Reed's fort, but Mcintosh, warned by
Sherwood, was ready to resist the
onslaught from.behind log barricades
blocking the approach to the fort. While recon-
noitering, Warrington and Selden
discovered that the only two occupants were
Jessy Reed, the colonel's daughter, and
Zilpah, her half-Indian servant.
Climbing over the stockade, they were able to
threaten the defenders from the rear.
Mcintosh asked permission to surrender
formally, and Warrington allowed the
sergeant and his men to depart under parole
for holdings owned by Colonel Reed on
the New York side of Lake Champlain.
Jessy Reed preferred to go to the home
of some friends, the daughters of Colonel
Skene, at Skenesboro, and Selden was
delegated to convey her there safely.
On the way, impressed by her charms, he
told her something about himself. He
knew neither his name nor his birthplace.
Several families had fostered him until
at last a benevolent British nobleman had
provided for his education abroad. Tiring
of Europe, he had returned to the
colonies and had drifted into the Grants,
where he joined Warrington in his
resistance to the harsh decrees of New York
officials.
Warrington, after reestablishing the
settlers along Otter Creek and sending a
party in pursuit of a York surveyor
reported in the neighborhood, traveled
southward to the region opposite Crown
Point. His own lands lay there in the
shadow of Snake Mountain, and he was
surprised to find that a part of the
wilderness tract had been replaced by well-
tilled fields. While he stood looking
across Lake Champlain, he heard a
woman scream. In a clearing nearby a girl
was being annoyed by a soldier from
the opposite fort. The man fled when
Warrington appeared and Warrington
found himself face to face with Alma
Hendee, who addressed him as Mr.
Howard. She told him also that her
father held these lands under a York title
and that she and her parent lived in
1406

daily dread of an attack by Warrington
and his band of border ruffians.
Warrington did not reveal his true
name. Several years before, while
traveling as Mr. Howard, he had gone on a
mission to New York and there had met
Captain Hendee and his daughter. But
the family had disappeared mysteriously
and he had uncovered no trace of them.
A short time later, when he called at
the Hendee cabin, he learned more of
their story. The captain had been
compelled to leave New York suddenly
because of pressing debts. Years before
Jacob Sherwood's father had mismanaged
an estate belonging to the captain. He
had also persuaded Gilbert Hendee, the
captain's brother, to make a will naming
Sherwood the legatee if Captain Hen-
dee's small son, Edward, should die
before reaching his majority. Edward
Hendee had disappeared soon afterward; it
was believed that he had been killed or
stolen by Indians. Jacob Sherwood, after
his father had acquired Gilbert Hendee's
estate, became solicitous for the welfare
of Alma and her father. After he had
established them in the Grants he
became, with the captain's permission,
Alma's suitor. Neshobee was the Hen-
dees' servant. Mrs. Story's cryptic remark
and her request were clear to Warrington
at last.
WTiile Warrington was calling on the
Hendees, another visitor arrived, a tall,
commanding-looking man who gave his
name as Smith. He brought word that
Americans and British had fought at
Lexington and that American blood had been
shed. Before Warrington and Smith
could take their departure, some soldiers
from Crown Point entered the cabin.
They were led by Bill Darrow, who had
molested Alma in the forest. Darrow,
Sherwood's confederate, had recognized
Warrington and intended to make him a
prisoner. Because the presence of Smith
hindered his plan, Darrow tried to make
the big man drunk. Late that night Smith
and Warrington went to the barn to
sleep. Smith then revealed that he had
been pouring his drinks into his boots;
he was sober. Warrington called him
Ethan Allen. He was the leader of the
Green Mountain Boys, a greater prize
than Warrington if the soldiers had
known it.
Alma, by that time aware of
Warrington's identity, sent Neshobee to the barn
with the guns the men had been forced
to leave behind. While the soldiers were
still carousing, the two men slipped away
into the forest.
The Green Mountain Boys held a
rendezvous at the middle falls of Otter
Creek. Selden and Pete Jones arrived
with Squire Prouty, a York justice of
the peace. Another prisoner brought in
was the York surveyor. The prisoners
were sentenced to lash each other. Prouty
was allowed to return to his home, but
the surveyor was sent back across the
New York line.
Ethan Allen summoned the Green
Mountain Boys to another meeting near
Middlebury. There he reminded them
of the wrongs the settlers had suffered
and disclosed his secret project, the
capture of Fort Ticonderoga. When the
men gathered ror a muster at Castle-
ton, a dispute arose between Ethan Allen
and Benedict Arnold, who had arrived
with a force of men under his command.
Warrington settled the difficulties
between the two men and Ethan Allen
was named leader of the expedition.
Taken by surprise, Fort Ticonderoga
fell, but Warrington was not present at
the assault; he had been delayed while
obtaining boats for the militia. WTien
Ethan Allen offered him the command
for an attack on Crown Point,
Warrington said that Selden ought to be the
leader, as Miss Reed was still at Skenesboro.
The Hendees, aroused by cannonading
across the lake, saw several bateaux filled
with armed men bearing down on the
fortress at Crown Point. Through her
father's spyglass Alma saw the gates of
the fort thrown open after a brief parley
and the British flag slowly lowered. A
short time later Neshobee brought word
1407

that Warrington was in command of the
garrison. Alma, who had heard from Mrs.
Story an account of Warrington's bravery
and Sherwood's duplicity, was in
sympathy with the Green Mountain Boys,
but when Warrington sent her a note
asking her to elope with him, she refused
for her father's sake. Pete Jones brought
her also a letter from Jessy Reed, in which
Miss Reed said that she was once more
Selden's prisoner.
When Warrington renewed his visits
to the Hendee cabin, the captain gladly
received him. Jacob Sherwood, whose
treachery had been revealed, was ordered
from the house when he next appeared.
Meanwhile Jacob's father had died,
conscience-stricken, after willing back the
Hendee property to the captain. While
the will was still in the possession of the
Sherwood attorney, Jacob Sherwood
burned some incriminating papers of his
father's. Darrow reported to him that a
young officer at Crown Point bore a
striking resemblance to the lost Edward
Hendee.
Burgoyne marched his troops from
Canada, and Jacob Sherwood recruited a
band of Tories and Indians to harass
settlers in the Grants. The Hendees,
accompanied by Jessy Reed, fled, only to
be betrayed by their treacherous guide.
Captured, they were taken to the Tory
camp, where Sherwood tried to force
Alma into marriage. Neshobee, eluding
the guards, carried word of the Hendees'
plight to Warrington, who was several
miles away with the rear guard of St.
Clair's army. Selden was dispatched to
effect their rescue.
After Neshobee's escape Sherwood
hurried his captives away from the camp.
From a cliff the prisoners watched the
battle of Hubbardton. During the
engagement Selden and his men appeared
and routed Sherwood's guards. With
Sherwood and his band in close pursuit,
the fugitives, accompanied by Selden
and Pete Jones, made their way to Mrs.
Story's clearing. The women were sent
to the underground chamber, while the
men prepared to defend the cabin. When
the attackers set fire to the logs, those
inside the cabin retreated through an
underground passage to the cave. Unable
to force the entrance to the chamber,
Sherwood ordered his men to dig out the
defenders. At Captain Hendee's
suggestion a mine was rigged from some casks
of powder stored in the cave, and as a
last desperate measure of resistance the
attackers were blown up. Sherwood
escaped. Darrow, horribly mutilated by
the blast, revealed that Selden was
Edward Hendee, whom Darrow, on orders
from the older Sherwood, had kidnaped
and abandoned years before. As the guilty
man lay dying, Warrington and a troop
of horse arrived on the scene. The
soldiers escorted the fugitives to a place of
safety in one of the older settlements.
After the battle of Bennington the
company reassembled at Captain Hen-
dee's for a double wedding, the marriage
of Alma and Warrington and that of
Edward Hendee and Jessy Reed, whose
father had sent word of his consent.
Pete Jones, carried away by the spirit of
the occasion, proposed to Alma's maid,
Ruth, and was coyly accepted. Ethan
Allen decided that still one more marriage
would be in order. Bluffly he persuaded
Zilpah to accept the faithful Neshobee.
Then, having done all that man could
do, he asked the parson to do his duty.
Warrington and Edward Hendee
returned to Vermont at the war's end, to
lead long lives of service to their state.
Pete Jones and his wife prospered on
their farm, and Neshobee and Zilpah
remained with Captain Hendee for many
years. Jacob Sherwood finally found
refuge in a Tory colony in Canada, where
he died in poverty and disgrace.
1408

GRETTIR THE STRONG
Type of work: Saga
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Eleventh century
Locale: Iceland, Norway, Constantinople
First transcribed: Thirteenth-century manuscript
Principal characters:
Grettir The Strong, an outlaw
Asmund Longhair, his father
Illugi, his youngest brother
Thorbjorn Oxmain, Grettir's enemy
Thorbjorn Slowcoach, Oxmain's kinsman, killed by Grettir
Thorir of Gard, an Icelandic chief
Thorbjorn Angle, Grettir's slayer
Thorsteinn Dromund, Grettir's half-brother and avenger
Critique:
One of the most famous of all Norse
sagas is the story of Grettir, hero and
outlaw of medieval Iceland. Grettir, born
about 997, was descended from Vikings
who colonized Iceland in the second
half of the ninth century, after they
had refused to acknowledge Harold Fair-
hair as their king. Grettir emerges from
his mist-shrouded, lawless world as a
man so memorable that his story was
handed down by word of mouth for
more than two hundred years after his
death. By the time his story was finally
committed to writing, it had absorbed
adventures of other folk heroes as well;
but in the main the saga is true to the
political and social history of the age.
The Story:
Grettir the Strong was descended from
Onund, a Viking famed for enemies
killed in war and the taking of booty
from towns plundered on far sea raids.
In a battle at Hafrsfjord Onund lost
a leg and was thereafter known as Onund
Treefoot. His wife was Aesa, daughter
of Ofeig. Thrand, a great hero, was his
companion in arms. During a time of
great trouble in Norway the two heroes
sailed to Iceland to be free of injustice
in their homeland, where the
unscrupulous could rob without fear of redress.
Onund lived in quiet and plenty in the
new land and his name became
renowned, for he was valiant. At last he
died. His sons fought after his death
and his lands were divided.
Grettir of the line of Onund was born
at Biarg. As a child he showed strange
intelligence. He quarreled constantly
with Asmund Longhair, his father, and
he was very lazy, never doing anything
cheerfully or without urging. When he
was fourteen years old, grown big in
body, he killed Skeggi in a quarrel over
a provision bag fallen from his horse,
and for that deed his father paid blood
money to the kinsmen of Skeggi. Then
the Lawman declared that he must leave
Iceland for three years. In that way
the long outlawry of Grettir began.
Grettir set sail for Norway. The ship
was wrecked on rocks off the Norwegian
coast, but all got safely ashore on land
that belonged to Thorfinn, a wealthy
landman of the district. With him
Grettir made his home for a time. At
Yuletide, Thorfinn with most of his
household went to a merrymaking and
left Grettir to look after the farm. In
Thorfinn's absence a party of berserks,
or raiders, led by Thorir and Ogmund,
came to rob and lay waste to the
district. Grettir tricked them by locking
them in a storehouse. When they broke
through the wooden walls, Grettir, armed
with sword and spear, killed Thorir and
Ogmund and put the rest to flight. Some
1409

time before this adventure he had
entered the tomb of Karr-the-Old, father
of Thorfinn, a long-dead chieftain who
guarded a hidden treasure. For his brave
deed in killing the berserks Thorfinn
gave him an ancient sword from the
treasure hoard of Karr-the-Old.
Next Grettir killed a great bear which
had been carrying off the sheep. In
doing so he incurred the wrath of Bjorn,
who was jealous of Grettir's strength
and bravery. Then Grettir killed Bjorn
and was summoned before Jarl Sveinn.
Friends of Bjorn plotted to take GretnYs
life. After he killed two of his enemies,
his friends saved him from the wrath
of the jarl, who had wished to banish
him. His term of outlawry being ended,
Grettir sailed back to Iceland in the
spring.
At that time in Iceland young Thorgils
Maksson, Asmund's kinsman, was slain
in a quarrel over a whale, and Asmund
took up the feud against those who had
killed him. The murderers were
banished.
When Grettir returned, Asmund gave
him the welcome that was his due
because of his fame as a brave hero.
Shortly after his return, Grettir fought with
some men after a horse fight. The
struggle was halted by a man named
Thorbjom Oxmain. The feud might have
been forgotten if Thorbjom Oxmain's
kinsman, Thorbjom Slowcoach, had not
sneered at the hero.
Word came that a fiend had taken
possession of the corpse of Glam, a
shepherd. At night Glam ravaged the
countryside. Because he could find no man with
whom he could prove his strength,
Grettir went to meet Glam. They struggled
in the house of Thorhall and ripped
down beams and rafters in their angry
might. At last Glam fell exhausted.
Defeated, he predicted that Grettir would
have no greater strength and less honor
in arms from that day on, and that he
would grow afraid of the dark. Grettir
cut off Glam's head and burned the body
to destroy the evil spirit that possessed
the dead shepherd.
Grettir decided to return to Norway.
Among the passengers on the boat was
Thorbjom Slowcoach; they fought and
Grettir killed his foe. The travelers landed
on a barren shore where they were
without fire to warm themselves and Grettir
swam across the cove to get burning
brands at an inn where the sons of
Thorir of Gard, an Icelandic chieftain,
were holding a drunken feast. He had
to fight to get the fire he wanted, and
in the struggle hot coals set fire to the
straw on the inn floor and the house
burned. Charged with deliberately
setting fire to the inn and burning those
within, Grettir went to lay the matter
before the king. To prove his innocence
of the charge of willful burning, he was
sentenced to undergo trial by fire in the
church, but the ordeal ended when Gret
tir became angry and threw a bystander
into the air. The king then banished him
from Norway, but because no ships could
sail to Iceland before the spring Grettir
was allowed to remain in the country
that winter. He lived some time with
a man named Einar, on a lonely farm
to which came the berserk Snaekoll,
a wild man who pretended great frenzy
during his lawless raids. Grettir seized
him in his mad fit and killed the robber
with his own sword. Grettir fell in love
with Einar's beautiful daughter but he
knew that Einar would never give his
child to a man of Grettir's reputation.
Giving up his suit, he went to stay with
his half-brother, Thorsteinn Dromund.
Because they were men of the same
blood, Thorsteinn swore to avenge
Grettir if ever he were killed.
Grettir's father, Asmund, died. On
his deathbed he said that little good
would come of his son. Grettir's time of
bad luck in Iceland began. Thorbjom
Oxmain killed Atli, Grettir's brother, in
revenge for the slaying of Thorbjom
Slowcoach, and Thorir of Gard, hearing
that his sons had been killed in the
1410

burning of the inn, charged Grettir with
their murder before the court of the
Althing. By the time Grettir returned,
he had been proclaimed an outlaw
throughout Iceland. He had little worry
over his outlawry from the inn-burning.
Determined to avenge his brother, he
went alone to Thorbjorn Oxmain's farm
and killed both the man and his son.
Grettir's mother was delighted with his
deed, but she predicted that Grettir
would not live freely to enjoy his
victory. Thorir of Gard and Thorodd,
Thorbjorn Oxmain's kinsman, each put
a price of three silver marks upon his
head. Soon afterward Grettir was cap
tured by some farmers but he was
released by a wise woman named Thor-
bjorg.
Avoided by most of his former friends,
who would no longer help him, Grettir
went far north to find a place to live.
He met in the forest another outlaw
named Grim, but a short time later he
was forced to kill his companion because
Grim intended to kill him for the reward
offered for Grettir's head. About that
time there was growing upon Grettir
a fear of the dark, as Glam had
prophesied. Thorir of Gard hired Redbeard,
another outlaw, to kill Grettir, but
Grettir discovered the outlaw's plans and
killed him also. At last Grettir realized
that he could not take any forest men
into his trust, and yet he was afraid to
live alone because of his fear of the
dark.
Thorir of Gard attacked Grettir with
eighty men, but the outlaw was able
to hold them off for a time. Unknown to
him, a friend named Hallmund attacked
Thorir's men from the rear, and the
attempt to capture Grettir failed. But
Grettir could no longer stay long in any
place, for all men had turned against
him. Hallmund was treacherously slain
for the aid he had given Grettir; as he
died he hoped that the outlaw would
avenge his death.
One night a troll-woman attacked a
traveler named Gest in the room where
he lay sleeping. They struggled all
night, but at last Gest was able to cut
o£F the monster's right arm. Then Gest
revealed himself as Grettir.
Steinvor of Sandhauger gave birth to
a boy whom many called Grettir's son,
but he died when he was seventeen and
left no saga about himself.
Thorodd then tried to gain favor by
killing Grettir, but the outlaw soon
overcame him and refused to kill his enemy.
Grettir went north once more, but his
fear of the dark was growing upon him
so that he could no longer live alone
even to save his life. At last, with his
youngest brother, Illugi, and a servant,
he settled on Drangey, an island which
had no inlet so that men had to climb
to its grassy summit by rope ladders.
There Grettir, who had been an outlaw
for some sixteen years, was safe for a
time, because none could climb the steep
cliffs to attack him. For several years
he and his companions lived on the
sheep which had been put there to
graze and on eggs and birds. His enemies
tried in vain to lure him from the
island. At last an old woman cut magic
runes upon a piece of driftwood which
floated to the island. When Grettir
attempted to chop the log, his ax slipped,
gashing his leg. He felt that his end
was near, for the wound became swollen
and painful.
Thorbjorn Angle, who had paid the
old woman to cast a spell upon the
firewood, led an attack upon the island
while Grettir lay near death. Grettir
was already dying when he struck his
last blows at his enemies. Illugi and the
servant died with him. After Thorbjorn
had cut off Grettir's head as proof of the
outlaw's death, Steinn the Lawman
decreed that the murderer had cut o£F the
head of a man already dead and that he
could not collect the reward because
he had used witchcraft to overcome
Grettir. Outlawed for his deed, Thorbjorn
went to Constantinople, where he
enlisted in the emperor's guard. There
Thorsteinn Dromund followed him and
1411

cut off the murderer's head with a sword from the treasure hoard of Karr-the-Old.
which Grettir had taken, years before,
1412

LA GRINGA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Florencio Sanchez (1875-1910)
Type of plot: Social comedy
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Pampas near Santa Fe, Argentina
First presented: 1904
Principal characters:
Don Nicola, an ambitious Italian immigrant farmer
Maria, his wife
Victoria, their daughter
Horacio, their son
Don Cantalicio, an easygoing, native-born farmer
Pr6spero, his son, in love with Victoria
Critique:
In the development of Argentine
literature, many early nineteenth-century
stories and plays made fun of the foreign-
born gringo. Later dramatists, however,
realized the foreigner's contribution to
the nation's progress and made the
immigrant a figure sympathetically
presented. La Gringa—The Foreign Girl—is such
a play, written by the short-lived
Florencio Sdnchez, one of Latin America's
greatest playwrights. Born in Uruguay, he
spent most of his life on the Argentine
side of the River Plate. Leading a bo-
hemian existence, he wrote rapidly,
sometimes completing a play in a single
night. His writing time for his eight long
and twelve short dramas was only about
thirty-five days in all. But he gave a new
technique to the stage and made it a
theater of modern theses, as in La Gringa.
He saw the hope of Argentina in a
blending of the Creole, or native, spirit and
the blood of ambitious, industrious
immigrants like the Don Nicola in this play.
The Story:
Don Nicola was an immigrant
landowner who worked hard on his farm and
expected his laborers to do the same.
Privately, his workmen and less
ambitious neighbors criticized him because he
made his wife and children get up at
two o'clock in the morning to begin their
daily chores.
One of his neighbors was Don
Cantalicio, an easygoing Creole farmer deeply
in Don Nicola's debt. Pr6spero, his son,
worked for Don Nicola and cast many
languishing .glances in the direction of
Victoria, his employer's pretty daughter.
Early one morning, coming to breakfast
with the other laborers, Pr6spero seized
his chance to kiss Victoria when he found
her at her work. She offered little
resistance to his embrace. Later one of the
boys reported that he had seen the
Italian's white ox in old Cantalicio's pasture.
Pr6spero was forced to defend his
father against a charge of thievery.
Payment of a loan of forty-five
hundred pesos being about to fall due,
Cantalicio begged his neighbor for a year's
extension of credit. Don Nicola said that
he intended to foreclose on Cantalicio's
property, his reason being that his son
Horacio, then studying in Buenos Aires,
wanted the land for a farm. Cantalicio,
although unable to pay the debt, refused
to give up his property. When Prospero
commented that his father should have
planted wheat instead of trying to pasture
cattle, Cantalicio turned on his son and
accused him of becoming a gringo—a.
despised foreigner.
Not long afterward Maria, Don
Nicola's wife, discovered Pr6spero hugging
LA GRINGA by Florencio Sanchez. By permiision of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright,
1927, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1413

her daughter. Told what had happened,
the Italian discharged the boy. It did no
good for Pr6spero to ask for Victoria's
hand. Don Nicola was not making money
for any Creole son-in-law to squander!
A few days later the customers in a
nearby tavern were drinking and teasing
the waitress when a call came for the
doctor to attend a sick but penniless peon.
He refused to budge, however, until
some of the loiterers offered to pay his
fee. Into the tavern to gossip with the
manager's wife came Maria and
Victoria, who had been shopping in town
while Don Nicola discussed with his
lawyer the confiscation of Cantalicio's
property. Pr6spero also arrived, about to leave
Santa Fe\ He would not listen when
Victoria pleaded with him to stay. He
had another quarrel with his father, who
again accused him of taking the side of
foreigners against those of good
Argentine blood.
Cantalicio, having lost the lawsuit he
had brought in an attempt to keep his
property, was also preparing to leave the
district. He complained bitterly that the
immigrants were taking over all the land.
When Don Nicola appeared at the
tavern to pay him the cash difference
between the amount of the debt and the
value of the farm, Canatalicio refused to
accept a note for a part of the settlement,
even though the priest promised to see
that the note was made good. The ruined
Creole trusted no one, and he wept as he
declared that everyone was against him.
Two years later many changes had
been made on the farm taken over by
Don Nicola. To make room for a new
building, he planned to have the
workmen chop down the ancient ombu tree,
symbol of the old-time Argentine gaucho.
Horacio, now settled on the farm, was
explaining to his father the use of gravity
in connection with a new reservoir when
the listless Victoria appeared. She did
not seem interested in anything, not even
in plans for her own room in the new
house.
Old Cantalicio turned up
unexpectedly. Working for others, he was driving
oxen to a nearby town, and he stopped
to see what his old home looked like.
Every change saddened him, but he
reacted most strongly to the cutting down
of the ombu. Don Nicola had no right
to touch the tree, he asserted; it belonged
to the land.
Victoria kept trying to tell him
something, but all she could say was that she
had been for several months in Rosario.
There she had seen Pr6spero, who missed
his father. She also let slip the fact that
she was receiving letters from the boy.
Horacio had further word of Prospero;
he reported that Mr. Daples, an agent for
farm machinery in Rosario, regarded
Cantalicio's son as his most valued
employee. The brother and sister offered to
take the old man around the farm. Still
resentful, he refused and hurriedly
mounted his horse.
At that moment the auto of the man
who was building the new house chugged
over the hill. That symbol of modern
progress frightened the Creole's -horse,
throwing Cantalicio in front of the car.
Refusing the aid of everyone except
Victoria, the hurt man begged her to help
him to the ombu; he wanted to die when
it fell. He cursed Don Nicola, calling
him a gringo.
Several weeks later everything was
going well on the renovated farm. Buyers
were offering bonuses to get Don Nicola's
clean wheat as soon as the thresher
arrived to harvest it. Don Nicola told
Horacio that the contractor wanted to marry
Victoria and had asked for an answer
before he left that night. The father was
anxious to consult her as to her choice,
but she was spending most of her time
looking after Cantalicio, who had lost
his right arm through his accident. Some
of the household thought that he would
be better off in a hospital.
Overhearing their discussion,
Cantalicio announced that he would leave the
farm at once, on foot if they would not
lend him a wagon. But Victoria refused
to hear of his leaving. Breaking down,
1414

she insisted that she needed him, for she
was carrying Prosperous child.
Prospero, having been sent by Mr.
Daples to run the threshing machine,
arrived at the farm. Great was Maria's
dismay when she again caught him
embracing her daughter. When she called
for her husband to come and drive
Pr6spero off the place once and for all,
Don Nicola remarked on the young
man's industry and calculated that if the
boy married into the family they could
get their threshing done for nothing.
Even Cantalicio became reconciled to the
gringos—at least to one of them—and let
drop the announcement of his expected
grandchild. All were excited. But Don
Nicola was never one to waste time, even
for such a reason. All right, he declared;
Pr6spero could have Victoria. Meanwhile
there was the threshing to be done.
Grandchild or no grandchild, the work
came first!
1415

GROWTH OF THE SOIL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Knut Hamsun (Knut Pedersen Hamsund, 1859-1952)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First published: 1917
Principal characters:
Isak, a Norwegian peasant
Inger, his wife
Eleseus,
SlVERT,
Leopoldine, and
Rebecca, their children
Oline, Inger's relative
Geissler, Isak's friend
Axel Strom, a neighbor
Barbro, Axel's wife
Critique:
One of the great modern novels,
Growth of the Soil won for its author the
Nobel prize for literature in 1921. It is
the story of the development of a
homestead in the wilds of Norway. The
simplicity and power of the style are
reminiscent of the Bible. Reading the book
is like crumbling the earth between one's
fingers; it brings nature to life on the
printed page. The reader will not soon
forget Isak, the silent pioneer to whom
the soil is life.
The Story:
Isak left a small Norwegian village and
set out into the wilds to claim a
homestead. Carrying some food and a few rude
implements, he wandered until he found
a stretch of grass and woodland, with a
stream nearby. There he cleared his farm-
site. He had to carry everything out from
the village on his own back. He built a
sod house, procured some goats, and
prepared for winter.
He sent word by some traveling Lapps
that he needed a woman to help in the
fields. One day Inger appeared with her
belongings. She was not beautiful
because of her harelip. But she was a good
GROWTH OF THE SOIL by Knut Hamsun. Translated by W. W. Worster. By permission of the publishers,
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1921, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed, 1949, by Alfred A. Knopf, lac
worker, and she shared Isak's bed. She
brought more things from her home,
including a cow.
That winter Inger bore her first child,
Eleseus. He was a fine boy, with no
harelip. In the spring Inger's relative
Oline came to see the new family. She
promised to return in the fall to take
care of the farm while Inger and Isak
went to be married and to have the child
baptized. The farm grew through the
summer.
The harvest was not good, but potatoes
carried Isak's family through the winter
without hunger. Inger bore a second son,
Sivert. Then Geissler, the sheriff's
officer, came to tell Isak that he would have
to pay the government for his land. He
promised to make the terms as easy as
possible for Isak. But Geissler lost his
position. A new officer came to look at
the land with his assistant, Brede Olsen.
He also promised to do what he could for
Isak.
One day Inger sent her husband to
town. While he was gone, she bore her
third child, a girl with a harelip.
Knowing what the deformed child would
suffer, Inger strangled the infant and buried
1416

the body in the woods. Later she
convinced Isak she had not really been
pregnant.
But Oline had known of Inger's
condition, and when she came again she
found the grave in the woods. Inger
explained her deed as well as she could to
Isak; he was satisfied. Then Lapp
beggars told the story of the hidden grave and
the sheriff's officer heard of it. There was
an investigation. After her trial, Inger
was sent away to prison at Bergen for
eight years. For lack of anyone else,
Isak was forced to hire Oline to come and
help with the farm and the children.
Isak got the deed for his land and paid
the first installment. But there was no
joy in his farming, now that Inger was
gone. He worked only from habit and
necessity. Geissler reappeared to tell Isak
that he had seen Inger in Bergen. She
had borne a girl in prison, a child without
a blemish.
The old life was changing. Men came
through putting up a telegraph line.
Between Isak's place and the village, Brede,
the helper of the sheriff's officer, started a
farm. Other settlers appeared as the
years passed. Oline was unbearable. She
stole livestock from Isak and spent his
money for trifles. Speculating on copper
mining, Geissler bought some of Isak's
land. With the help of Geissler, Inger
was finally released from prison.
At first Inger, whose harelip had been
operated on in Bergen, was happy to
return with little Leopoldine. But she had
learned city ways, and now farm life
seemed rough and lonely. She no longer
helped Isak with his work. Eleseus was
sent to town, where he got a job in an
office. Sivert, who was much like his
father, remained at home.
Axel Strom now had a farm near Isak's.
Brede's daughter, Barbro, came to stay
with Axel and help him with his work.
Inger bore another daughter, Rebecca,
and Isak hired a girl to help with the
housework. Eleseus returned from town
to help on the farm. Geissler sold the
copper mine property and Isak also
received a large sum for the rights he had
retained on the property. He was able
to buy the first mowing machine in the
district.
Eleseus took an interest in Barbro, but
when he discovered she was pregnant, he
went back to the city. Axel bought
Brede's farm when Brede moved back to
town. One day he found Barbro down
by the brook with her drowned baby.
She said she had fallen and the baby had
been born in the water. Axel did not
quarrel with her, for fear she would leave
him.
That winter Barbro went to Bergen and
Axel had to manage the farm himself.
One day he was pinned to the ground by
a falling tree during a snowstorm. Brede,
who was angry with Axel, passed by
without offering to help. By chance, Oline
heard Axel's cries for help and released
him. Afterward she stayed to manage his
house for him, and never did she let him
forget his debt to her for saving his life.
Little by little, she learned the story of
Barbro and the baby.
A man named Aronsen built a big
store in the new neighborhood. Soon
miners moved in to begin work on the
land Geissler and Isak had sold. Then
the mine played out. Geissler owned the
additional land needed to keep the mine
working, but he asked more than the
mine owners would pay. The mine
remained idle.
The trouble about Barbro and the baby
at last came to the attention of the
authorities, and Axel and Barbro had to
appear for trial in the town. Because there
was so little evidence, Axel went free.
Barbro went to work for the wife of the
sheriff's officer, who promised to see that
Barbro behaved herself.
There seemed little hope that the mine
would reopen, for Geissler would not sell
his land. After Aronsen sold his store to
Isak, Eleseus was persuaded to return
from the city and take over the store
property. Isak was now a rich man. Then in
the spring Geissler sold his land and work
resumed at the mine. But the miners
1417

lived on the far side of the property in
another district. The village was no better
off than before.
Barbro could no longer stand the
watchfulness of the wife of the sheriff's
officer. When she returned to Axel, he
took her in again after he was sure she
meant to stay and marry him. Old Oline
would not leave Axel's farm. But she
soon grew ill and died, leaving the young
people by themselves.
Eleseus did not manage the store well.
At last, when he saw the failure he had
made, he borrowed more money from his
father and set out for America. He never
returned. Sivert and two other men
carried some of the goods from the store
to the new mine. But the mine had shut
down again. They found Geissler
wandering about the deserted mine; he
said that he was thinking of buying back
the property.
When the three men returned, Isak
was sowing corn. The copper mine and
the store, good times and bad, had come
and gone. But the soil was still there.
For Isak and Inger, the first sowers in the
wilds, the corn still grew.
1418

DER GRUNE HEINRICH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gottfried Keller (1819-1890)
Type of plot: Autobiographical romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Switzerland and Bavaria
First published: 1854-1855; revised 1879
Principal characters:
Heinrich Lee, son of an architect
Frau Lee, Heinrich's mother
Anna, daughter of Heinrich's uncle, Heinrich's first love
Judith, a well-to-do widow, who loved Heinrich
Roemer, a painter, Heinrich's teacher
Ericson, Heinrich's first friend among Munich painters
Lys, a Dutch painter, prominent among Munich painters
Schmalhoefer, a secondhand dealer
Graf Dietrich zu W . . . berg, an admirer of Heinrich's art
Dorothea, adopted daughter of Count W . . . berg
Critique:
Gottfried Keller's Der grune Heinrich
(Green Henry), one of the great German
Bildungsromane (educational novels), is
frequently compared to Goethe's Wil-
helm Meister. Its autobiographical
content is unmistakable: the book is an
almost authentic description of Keller's life
in Switzerland, his struggles in Munich,
and his disillusioned return home. The
first version of the novel, which appeared
in 1854-1855, ends with Heinrich's
death. After Keller became a respected
county official in his native country, the
second, and standard, version of Der
grune Heinrich appeared. This version,
reflecting the author's new-found security,
ends on a fatalistic but not destructive
note. Keller, as enthusiastic about
description of nature as were his romantic
contemporary writers, loved his native
surroundings; however, he added strong
realism to his stories, which was quite
shocking to his romantically inclined
audience. The value of the novel is
increased by a dry sense of humor, which
fills the basically tragic book with
contrasts. Strong dependence of the plot on
native elements may be responsible for
the absence of an English translation.
The Story:
Heinrich Lee lost his father in early
childhood. Thereafter, with great love
and a boundless faith in her son's future,
Frau Lee devoted her life to his
happiness. Methodically she used her small
inherited fortune for his education. A rich
supply of green cloth, left by the father,
was continuously used for Heinrich's
clothing, and he was nicknamed "Grune
Heinrich" (Green Henry).
After fifteen-year-old Heinrich had
been dismissed from school for his part
in a student prank, he visited relatives in
the country and fell in love with his
cousin Anna, a beautiful but frail girl.
In the same village he met Judith, a well-
to-do widow, who loved Heinrich.
Although she knew about his love for Anna,
she assured him that there was enough
room for both in Heinrich's heart. Judith
did not intend to leave their relationship
on a platonic basis only. Thus Heinrich
was drawn between his deep love for the
frail Anna and the strange attraction of
the sensual Judith.
Because it was impossible for Heinrich
to complete his course of studies, his
mother agreed to help him fulfill his
dream of becoming a painter. All friends
of Frau Lee opposed this idea; it was
unthinkable that a child of a respected
citizen should undertake such an insecure
and uncertain career. In spite of these
1419

objections Frau Lee arranged Heinrich's
apprenticeship in an etcher's studio.
Thereafter, when he visited the village
in which Anna and Judith lived, he
enjoyed being called a painter.
Anna, after a time spent in a school
in Switzerland, became ill and died.
Heinrich guarded her body during the
night before her funeral.
Before long Heinrich exhausted the
knowledge he could gain in the etcher's
studio. His luck changed when he met a
professional painter named Roemer. From
the start Roemer showed great interest
in Heinrich's work and agreed to be his
tutor for a reasonable fee. As usual, Frau
Lee was willing to help her son and again
she was in opposition to the townspeople.
Herr Roemer was regarded as completely
unreliable, and his talk about
connections with members of the aristocracy
made him unpopular among the liberal-
minded citizens. Also, Roemer's financial
situation seemed not to be as favorable
as he tried to have it appear. Proof came
when Heinrich, wanting to discontinue
his lessons, was approached by Roemer
for a loan. Heinrich received more
lessons in return for money regarded as a
loan.
One day Roemer sold a painting. He
decided to use the money for a trip to
Paris because life in the town had
become unbearable for him. Frau Lee wrote
a polite note in regard to the loan and
Heinrich tried to appeal to Roemer's
aristocratic code of honor in order to get
the money. Surprisingly, Roemer paid
without hesitation. Weeks later Heinrich
received a letter, revealing that Roemer
was dying in an insane asylum in Paris;
the payment to Heinrich had left him
without a single franc after his arrival
there. Heinrich felt guilty because he
believed that he had destroyed Roemer's only
chance for a new life. To talk to
somebody about his moral guilt he went to
Judith. She declared bluntly that
Heinrich had murdered Roemer and that he
would be forced to live with his crime.
Heinrich told Judith that he could not
meet her any more, since he wanted to
remain faithful to Anna. Disappointed,
Judith decided to emigrate to America,
taking Heinrich's diary with her.
Heinrich decided to go to Munich.
Once more Frau Lee had difficulty
persuading the trustees of Heinrich's
inheritance to release the rest of the money
for his study in Munich, and pessimistic
predictions were made about Frau Lee's
folly.
In Munich Heinrich met Ericson, a
painter with a realistic attitude toward
his art. Attracted to young and idealistic
Heinrich, he introduced the young man
to a respected Dutch painter, Lys, who
saw promise in Heinrich's drawings.
Ericson and Lys gave Heinrich the
contact he desired with the artistic world.
Ericson married a wealthy widow and left
Munich. Once Lys' irresponsible behavior
toward a girl irked Heinrich and a heated
discussion followed. The Dutch painter
was also an avowed atheist. Though
Heinrich never attended church services,
he defended his "God exists" theory so
strongly that Lys felt insulted and
challenged him to a duel. The duel was never
fought, however, for Lys left Munich.
Having lost his most valuable
connections with artistic circles, Heinrich
decided to attend lectures at the university.
Living a carefree and cheerful student
life, he soon exhausted his credit.
Realization of his financial situation caused
him to resume painting. When he
approached a well-known painter for help,
the artist looked at his work and
suggested that he show his paintings in a
gallery. There Heinrich noticed that his
work was placed in an obscure corner,
but a canvas by the other painter, based
on one of his own landscapes, hung in a
prominent place. Heinrich realized that
any other attempt to exhibit his works
would stamp him as a plagiarist.
Discouraged, he tried without success
to sell his work to small dealers. For days
he did not eat; each night he had
apocalyptical nightmares. Money from Frau
Lee brought temporary relief. After pay-
1420

ing his debts, Heinrich had little left and
he tried to sell the drawings which he
had made before leaving home. A
secondhand dealer, Schmalhoefer, took a few
of them. When Heinrich returned to the
dealer, he was told that his drawings had
been sold, and Schmalhoefer asked for
more. Later Schmalhoefer offered him
work as a flagpole painter, and he
accepted, working steadily from morning
to night. After this work came to an end
he was able to pay all his debts, with
some money left over to make a trip
home.
On the way he accidentally found
shelter at the estate of Count W . . .
berg. To his surprise, he learned that
the count was the unknown patron who
had bought his drawings. Delighted when
he learned the identity of his guest, the
count offered Heinrich a chance to paint
undisturbed. Soon Heinrich forgot his
intention to return to his mother. Also,
Count W . . . berg had an adopted
daughter, Dorothea, with whom Heinrich
had fallen deeply in love. It was
impossible for him to declare his love openly,
however, because he felt that to do so
would abuse the count's hospitality.
Having found a sponsor in Count
W . . . berg, Heinrich successfully
exhibited a painting in Munich. His old
friend Ericson, after reading an account
of the exhibit, wrote asking to buv the
painting, regardless of price. While in
Munich, Heinrich experienced another
great surprise when he was informed that
Schmalhoefer had died, leaving him a
large amount of money. The dealer had
been impressed bv an idealistic painter
who was nevertheless ready to paint
flagpoles from morning to night. The sale of
the painting, Schmalhoefer's bequest, and
additional payments by the count for the
drawings Schmalhoefer had sold to him
made Heinrich a fairly rich man. But in
spite of his good fortunes Heinrich was
still not ready to declare his love to
Dorothea. Heinrich, who had not written to
his mother for many months, decided at
last to complete his journey home. When
he arrived, he found his mother dying.
The neighbors informed him that a short
time before the police, trying to contact
him in connection with Schmalhoefer's
bequest, had asked Frau Lee to appear
at police headquarters to give
information as to her son's whereabouts. Because
the police did not reveal the reason for
their questions, his mother had believed
rumors that a criminal investigation was
the cause for the inquiries; her fears and
Heinrich's silence had broken her spirit.
After some time Heinrich was able to
regain the confidence of the townspeople
and was elected a county official. Then a
letter from the count informed him that
Dorothea, uncertain of his love, had
married another. Peace came into his life
when Judith returned from America to
be near him. A realistic woman, she
convinced Heinrich that marriage would not
be advisable, but she promised to be with
him whenever he needed her. After
twenty years Judith died and he
recovered his diary, which he used to write the
story of his life.
1421

GUARD OF HONOR
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Gould Cozzens (1903- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Three days during World War II
Locale: An Air Force base in Florida
First published: 1948
Principal characters:
Major General Ira N. "Bus" Beal, Commanding General of the
Ocanara Base
Sal Beal, his wife
Colonel Norman Ross, Air Inspector on General Bears staff
Cora Ross, his wife
Captain Nathaniel Hicks, an officer in Special Projects and an editor
in civilian life
Second Lieutenant Amanda Turck, a WAC
Lieutenant Colonel Benny Carricker, General BeaFs co-pilot
Brigadier General Nichols, assistant to the Commanding General
of the Air Force
Lieutenant Edsell, a writer, assigned to Special Projects
Lieutenant Ltppa, a WAC, in love with Lieut. Edsell
Lieutenant Willis, a Negro pilot
Mr. Willis, his father
Critique:
Within the complex structure of a
large Air Force base in wartime, James
Gould Cozzens has evoked a world in
miniature in which many of the major
conflicts of life are discussed. In a flat but
cogent style the author delineates the
problems that attach to power
relationships, to authority and suppression.
Indirectly the book is a profound indictment
of the self-willed agitator and
nonconformist; directly, it is a striking
revelation of the way various types rise to and
deal with the crises of life.
The Story:
The huge and sprawling Air Force
base at Ocanara, Florida, was almost a
world in itself. At its head was Major
General "Bus" Beal, a hero in the Pacific
theater in the early days of the war and
still, at forty-one, an energetic and
skillful flyer. To keep the operation of the
base running smoothly, the general relied
heavily on his Air Inspector, Colonel
Norman Ross, who brought to his
military duties the same resourcefulness that
had characterized his career as a judge
in peacetime. And Judge Ross needed all
his acumen to do the job.
Landing his AT-7 one night at the
Ocanara Airstrip, the general came close
to colliding with a B-17. The B-17,
piloted by Lieutenant Willis, one of the
Negro fliers recently assigned to Ocanara,
had violated the right of way. Lieutenant
Colonel Benny Carricker, General BeaPs
co-pilot, struck and hospitalized
Lieutenant Willis and in return was confined to
quarters by General Beal. The incident,
while small, triggered a complex of
problems that, in the next two days,
threatened to destroy the normal operations of
the base. On the following day several of
the Negro fliers, incensed by Lieutenant
Willis* accident and further outraeed at
the fact that a separate service club had
been set up for them, attempted to enter
the white officers* recreation building.
This action came close to starting a riot.
To complicate Colonel Ross's
difficulties further, tension had developed
between the Air Force base and some lead-
GUARD OF HONOR by James Gould Cozzens. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
Inc. Copyright, 1948, by James Gould Cozzens.
1422

ing citizens of the town. Alone of
General BeaPs staff, Colonel Ross felt the
hazards of the situation. For the others—
in particular for Colonel Mowbray and
his assistant, Chief Warrant Officer Bot-
winick—the difficulties seemed ephemeral
and routine. Even General Beal was of
little aid to Colonel Ross, for he was
brooding unhappily over the arrest of
Colonel Carricker, and was further
troubled by the recent suicide of an old
friend.
Among the members of the Air Force
base itself other forces were working to
enlarge and compound the difficulties.
For Lieutenant Edsell, the hospitalization
of the Negro pilot was the springboard
for agitation, and he helped arrange for
a visit of Lieutenant Willis* father to the
base hospital. Only a few of the base
personnel understood the difficulties Colonel
Ross faced and the skill with which he
operated. Those who did, like Captain
Nathaniel Hicks, were too concerned
with their own problems to be of much
assistance.
On the day Mr. Willis was to visit his
son, the Ocanara Base was host to
another unexpected visitor, Brigadier
General Nichols, the personal representative
of the Commanding General of the Air
Force. To the embarrassment of all
concerned, General Nichols* purpose in
coming to Ocanara was to award Lieutenant
Willis a medal for bravery.
Whatever Colonel Ross may have
dreaded from the visit, he was relieved to
find General Nichols a not
unsympathetic man, for the general had trained
himself into a stoical and tolerant frame
of mind. He understood the situation at
a glance, and at the awarding of the
medal at the hospital he conducted
himself so well that Mr. Willis himself was
charmed.
On the following day the base
prepared for a birthday celebration. In honor
of General BeaPs forty-first year, Colonel
Mowbray had organized a military
parade which was to include not only
marching men and WACS, but planes
flying in formation and parachute drops.
General Nichols shared the reviewing
stand with General Beal and his staff.
In the nearby field, near a lake. Captain
Hicks and his friend from the WAC
detachment, Lieutenant Turck, were posted
as observers.
Soon the parade began, and from their
observation post Captain Hicks and
Lieutenant Turck saw hundreds of
parachutists begin the slow descent into a
simulated conflict. Then tragedy struck.
A group of parachutists, having ill-timed
their leap, dropped into the lake instead
of hitting the field. In horror, Captain
Hicks saw them struggle briefly in the
water and then sink.
When knowledge of the disaster
reached General BeaPs office there was a
moment of furious commotion. Charges
and countercharges were flung about
with abandon. To Colonel Ross it seemed
that fate had ordained nothing but
problems for him and for Ocanara. But it was
now that General Beal shook himself out
of his gloom and took command,
directing rescue operations with precision and
skill and revealing at the same time that
throughout the hectic few days that had
passed he had not been unaware of the
conflicts going on.
That night Colonel Ross accompanied
General Nichols to the plane that was
to return him to Washington. Reviewing
the difficulties of the past three days, the
colonel saw that General Nichols was
right: one could only do one's best and,
for the rest, trust the situation to right
itself.
1423

GUEST THE ONE-EYED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gunnar Gunnarsson (1889- )
Time: c. 1900
Locale: Iceland
First published: Af Borgslaegtens Historie, 1912-1914; abridged in translation as Guest the
One-Eyed, 1920
Principal characters:
0rlygur A Borg, a well-to-do landowner
Ormarr 0rlygsson, his son
Ketill 0rlygsson, Ormarr's brother
Gudrun (Runa), Pall a Seym's daughter
Alma, the daughter of Vivild, a Danish banker
0rlygur the Younger, son of Ketill and Runa
Snebiorg (Bagga), an illegitimate girl
In his fiction Gunnar Gunnarsson
provides novels of traditional form and
nobility, made particularly fascinating by
their Icelandic setting. The atmosphere
of the ancient sagas pervades his books,
putting his characters into association
with the past while making the present
none the less convincing. The drama of
the novels is essentially moral, and the
ethical dilemmas into which the
characters fall are neither gross nor abnormal.
Gunnarsson is adept at re-creating the
Icelandic character and the Icelandic
atmosphere; the human beings about whom
he writes move with dignity and passion
across barren, stony, but none the less
attractive northern plains. One is reminded
of Thomas Hardy's dark novels in which
the brooding moors take on the pessimism
and the courage of people challenged by
fate.
Although Gunnarsson retains a tragic
view of life, regarding human beings as
helpless before forces more powerful than
themselves, he never loses sight of the
alleviating influences of love, humor, and
tradition. Generation succeeds generation
in his novels, and although individuals
fall, families persevere, so that Icelandic
traditions are strengthened and, in turn,
strengthen those who share them. The
History of the Family at Borg—in the
original Af Borgslaegtens Historie—is a
four-part novel of this enduring type.
Guest the One-Eyed, abridged in
English translation, is the story of the family
at Borg, of a father and his two sons, and
of the illegitimate child of one of his sons.
The Borg farm, portrayed as a refuge for
anyone who needed help, is the home of
0rlygur the Rich, an energetic and
compassionate Icelandic farmer sometimes
spoken of as "the King" because of the
vast number of servants he retains and
the hundreds of cattle and horses and
sheep he owns. 0rlygur hopes that one
of his sons, either Ormarr or Ketill, will
become the master of Borg, but Ormarr
is interested in playing the violin and
Ketill decides to become a priest. The
issue is resolved when Ormarr, after
throwing away an opportunity to become
a world-famous concert violinist and after
achieving a remarkable financial success-
as a shipping magnate, returns to Borg
in search of a new challenge.
Gunnarsson quickly creates extremes
of character in Ormarr and Ketill. Ormarr
is sensitive, intelligent, perceptive,
creative, and honest, while Ketill is devious,
jealous, destructive, blasphemous, and
dishonest. As the parish priest, secretly
eager to seize control of the property at
Borg, Ketill preaches a series of sermons
which slowly encourage the peasants to
believe that a great sin has been
committed by one of the community leaders.
Finally Ketill charges his own father with
being the father of a child born to Runa,
the daughter of a poor fanner, Pall a
Seyru. The charge is coupled with the
suggestion that 0rlygur also persuaded
1424

Ormarr to marry Runa in order to hide
his crime of passionate lust. The depth
of KetiU's depravity finally becomes
evident to the citizens of the community
when 0rlygur, with convincing
simplicity and wrath, reveals that the priest who
would condemn his own father is himself
the father of Runa's child.
The elements of melodrama are here,
but the effect is that of tragedy. To have
been able to portray such extremes of
character—for Ormarr sacrifices his own
concerns to marry Runa, while Ketill
sacrifices his own family to win power and
wealth—without making the characters
mere devices for the development of plot
is evidence of Gunnarsson's skill as a
novelist.
The author's audacity, so successful as
to become a sign of his eminence as a
writer, leads him to create a complete
reversal in the character of Ketill. Ketill,
the cold, scheming Icelandic Judas,
becomes someone very much like Christ.
Repenting his sins, Ketill leaves Borg
and, having rejected the idea of suicide,
becomes a wanderer, dependent for his
board and lodging on the Icelandic
farmers to whom he brings simple,
soul-restoring messages of love and compassion. He
regards himself as a guest on earth, and
"Guest" becomes his name. He has lost
his eye in saving a child from a burning
farm; hence, he is "Guest the one-eyed."
There is no more difficult task in
literature than the portrayal of a saintlike
character. Readers are ready to accept the
fact of evil, and there is no act so base
that one cannot readily believe man
capable of it. But extreme selflessness, Christ-
like love, is an ideal, hinted at in the
scriptures, and hardly to be found in the
community of men. The novelist
presuming to create a character who, having
been in the depths of sin, becomes a
lovable, living incarnation of virtue, is a
writer confronting himself with the final
challenge of his craft. Gunnarsson took
up that challenge; Guest the One-Eyed is
his victorious response.
The novel has at once the character of
a myth and the character of a modern
saga. When Ketill finally returns to
Borg, known only as Guest the one-eyed,
he carries with him the memory of the
curses that everyone has put on Ketill,
whom all believe dead. His reconciliation
with his family—something almost
beyond hope, even for a saint, since Ketiir$
lying charge from the pulpit had both
killed his father and driven Refill's wife
mad—is partly the result of his having
destroyed the old Ketill by his life as a
wanderer, but it is also a result of the
readiness of the Icelanders to forgive for
the sake of the family, that union of
strength which makes life in Iceland
possible.
Guest the One-Eyed ends affirmatively
with the prospective marriage of 0rlygur
the younger, Ketill's son, and Bagga, the
beautiful illegitimate daughter of the
woman of Bolli who, like Ketill, had
known the fire and ice of passion and
repentance. Gunnarsson's pessimism is
concerned with man's lot on earth, with
his struggle and his ultimate death; but
it is not a discouraging pessimism that
extends to the spirit of man. Iceland may
be stony, misty, barren and demanding,
but it is also a land of sunshine and
changing moods, like the characters
about whom Gunnarsson writes.
1425

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
Type of work: Simulated record of travel
Author: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: 1699-1713
Locale: England and various fictional lands
First published: 1726-1727
Principal character:
Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, sea captain, and traveler
Critique:
It has been said that Dean Swift hated
Man, but loved individual men. His
hatred is brought out in this caustic
political and social satire aimed at the
English people, representing mankind in
general, and at the Whigs in particular.
By means of a disarming simplicity of
style and of careful attention to detail
in order to heighten the effect of the
narrative, Swift produced one of the
outstanding pieces of satire in world
literature. Swift himself attempted to
conceal his authorship of the book under
its original title—Travels into Several
Remote Nations of the World, hy Lemuel
Gulliver,
The Story:
Lemuel Gulliver, a physician, took the
post of ship's doctor on the Antelope,
which set sail from Bristol for the South
Seas in May, 1699. When the ship was
wrecked in a storm somewhere near
Tasmania, Gulliver had to swim for his life.
Wind and tide helped to carry him close
to a low-lying shore where he fell,
exhausted, into a deep sleep. Upon awaking,
he found himself held to the ground by
hundreds of small ropes. He soon
discovered that he was the prisoner of
humans six inches tall. Still tied, Gulliver
was fed by his captors; then he was
placed on a special wagon built for the
purpose and drawn by fifteen hundred
small horses. Carried in this manner to
the capital city of the small humans, he
was exhibited as a great curiosity to the
people of Lilliput, as the land of the
diminutive people was called. He was
kept chained to a huge Lilliputian
building into which he crawled at night to
sleep.
Gulliver soon learned the Lilliputian
language, and through his personal charm
and natural curiosity he came into good
graces at the royal court. At length he
was given his freedom, contingent upon
his obeying many rules devised by the
emperor prescribing his deportment in
Lilliput. Now free, Gulliver toured Mil-
dendo, the capital city, and found it to
be similar to European cities of the time.
Learning that Lilliput was in danger
of an invasion by the forces of the
neighboring empire, Blefuscu, he offered his
services to the emperor of Lilliput. While
the enemy fleet awaited favorable winds
to carry their ships the eight hundred
yards between Blefuscu and Lilliput,
Gulliver took some Lilliputian cable,
waded to Blefuscu, and brought back the
entire fleet by means of hooks attached
to the cables. He was greeted with great
acclaim and the emperor made him a
nobleman. Soon, however, the emperor
and Gulliver fell out over differences
concerning the fate of the now helpless
Blefuscu. The emperor wanted to reduce
the enemy to the status of slaves;
Gulliver championed their liberty. The pro-
Gulliver forces prevailed in the
Lilliputian parliament; the peace settlement was
favorable to Blefuscu. But Gulliver was
now in disfavor at court.
He visited Blefuscu, where he was
received graciously by the emperor and the
people. One day, while exploring the
empire, he found a ship's boat washed
ashore from some wreck. With the help
of thousands of Blefuscu artisans, he
1426

repaired the boat for his projected voyage
back to his own civilization. Taking some
little cattle and sheep with him, he sailed
away and was eventually picked up by
an English vessel.
Back in England, Gulliver spent a
short time with his family before he
shipped aboard the Adventure, bound for
India. The ship was blown off course
by fierce winds. Somewhere on the coast
or Great Tartary a landing party went
ashore to forage for supplies. Gulliver,
who had wandered away from the party,
was left behind when a gigantic human
figure pursued the sailors back to the
ship. Gulliver was caught- in a field by
giants threshing grain that grew forty feet
high. Becoming the pet of a farmer and
his family, he amused them with his
human-like behavior. The farmer's nine-
year-old daughter, who was not yet over
forty feet high, took special charge of
Gulliver.
The farmer displayed Gulliver first at
a local market town. Then he took his
little pet to the metropolis, where
Gulliver was put on show to the great
detriment of his health. The farmer, seeing
that Gulliver was near death, sold him to
the queen, who took a great fancy to the
little curiosity. The court doctors and
philosophers studied Gulliver as a quaint
trick of nature. He subsequently had
adventures with giant rats the size of lions,
with a dwarf thirty feet high, with wasps
as large as partridges, with apples the
size of Bristol barrels, and with hailstones
the size of tennis balls.
He and the king discussed the
institutions of their respective countries, the
king asking Gulliver many questions
about Great Britain that Gulliver found
impossible to answer truthfully without
embarrassment.
After two years in Brobdingnag, the
land of the giants, Gulliver escaped
miraculously when a large bird carried
his portable quarters out over the sea. The
bird dropped the box containing Gulliver
and he was rescued by a ship which was
on its way to England. Back home, it
took Gulliver some time to accustom
himself once more to a world of normal size.
Soon afterward Gulliver went to sea
again. Pirates from a Chinese port
attacked the ship. Set adrift in a small
sailboat, Gulliver was cast away upon
a rocky island. One day he saw a large
floating mass descending from the sky.
Taken aboard the flying island of Laputa,
he soon found it to be inhabited by
intellectuals who thought only in the realm
of the abstract and the exceedingly
impractical. The people of the island,
including the king, were so absent-minded
they had to have servants following them
to remind them even of their trends of
conversation. When the floating island
arrived above the continent of Balnibari,
Gulliver received permission to visit that
realm. There he inspected the Grand
Academy, where hundreds of highly
impractical projects for the improvement of
agriculture and building were under way.
Next Gulliver journeyed by boat to
Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers.
By means of magic, the governor of the
island showed Gulliver such great
historical figures as Alexander, Hannibal,
Caesar, Pompey, and Sir Thomas More.
Gulliver talked to the apparitions and
learned from them that history books
were inaccurate.
From Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver went to
Luggnagg. There he was welcomed by
the king, who showed him the Luggnag-
gian immortals, or stuldbruggs—beings
who would never die.
Gulliver traveled on to Japan, where
he took a ship back to England. He had
been away for more than three years.
Gulliver became restless after a brief
stay at his home, and he signed as captain
of a ship which sailed from Portsmouth
in August, 1710, destined for the South
Seas. The crew mutinied, keeping
Captain Gulliver prisoner in his cabin for
months. At length, he was cast adrift
in a long boat off a strange coast. Ashore,
he came upon and was nearly
overwhelmed by disgusting half-human, half-
ape creatures who fled in terror at the
1427

approach of a horse. Gulliver soon
discovered, to his amazement, that he was
in a land where rational horses, the
Houyhnhnms, were masters of irrational
human creatures, the Yahoos. He stayed
in the stable-house of a Houyhnhnm
family and learned to subsist on oaten cake
and milk. The Houyhnhnms were
horrified to learn from Gulliver that horses
in England were used by Yahoo-like
creatures as beasts of burden. Gulliver
described England to his host, much to the
candid and straightforward Houyhn-
hnm's mystification. Such things as wars
and courts of law were unknown to this
race of intelligent horses. As he did in
the other lands he visited, Gulliver
attempted to explain the institutions of
his native land, but the friendly and
benevolent Houyhnhnms were appalled
by many of the things Gulliver told them.
GulHver lived in almost perfect
contentment among the horses, until one
day his host told him that the
Houyhnhnm Grand Assembly had decreed
Gulliver either be treated as an ordinary
Yahoo or be released to swim back to
the land from which he had come.
GulHver built a canoe and sailed away. At
length he was picked up by a Portuguese
vessel. Remembering the Yahoos, he
became a recluse on the ship and began to
hate all mankind. Landing at Lisbon, he
sailed from there to England. But on
his arrival the sight of his own family
repulsed him; he fainted when his wife
kissed him. His horses became his only
friends on earth.
1428

GUY MANNERING
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Scotland
First published: 1815
Principal characters:
Colonel Guy Mannering, a retired army officer
Julia Mannering, his daughter
Captain Brown, a soldier
Lucy Bertram, an orphan girl
Charles Hazlewood, Lucy's suitor
Sir Robert Hazlewood, his father
Gilbert Glossin, holder of the Bertram property
Dirk Hatteraick, a smuggler
Meg Merrilies, a gipsy
Dominie Sampson, tutor to the Bertram children
Critique:
Certainly one of the greatest abilities of
Sir Walter Scott was his flair for making
people seem real, especially those drawn
from the lower social ranks. No doubt his
human touch was based on his own
genuine love for people of all walks of Hfe.
In Guy Mannering, this familiarity with
the ways and foibles of human nature is
evident throughout. His peasants,
tradesmen, and outcasts are not too ignorant or
coarse to have fine sensibilities. Indeed, it
was the loyalty of the old gipsy, Meg
Merrilies, which was primarily
responsible for the happy outcome of this novel.
Through these people Scott gave his
readers an appreciation of the real values of
life.
The Story:
Guy Mannering, a young English
gentleman traveling in Scotland, stopped at
the home of Godfrey Bertram, Laird of
Ellangowan, on the night the first Bertram
child, a boy, was born. Mannering, a
student of astrology, cast the horoscope of the
newborn babe and was distressed to find
that the child's fifth, tenth, and twenty-
first years would be hazardous. The young
Englishman puzzled over the fact that
the boy's twenty-first year would
correspond with the thirty-ninth year of the
girl Mannering loved, which was the year
the stars said would bring her death or
imprisonment. An old gipsy, Meg
Merrilies, also predicted danger for the new
baby. Mannering, not wishing to worry
the parents, wrote down his findings and
presented them to Mr. Bertram, first
cautioning him not to open the packet until
the child had passed by one day his fifth
birthday. Then he departed.
Young Harry Bertram grew steadily
and well. He was tutored and supervised
by Dominie Sampson, a teacher and
preacher retained by his father; and at
times the child was also watched over by
the gipsy Meg, who had great love for the
boy. The child was four years old when
the laird became a justice of the peace and
promised to rid the countryside of gipsies
and poachers. After he had ordered all
gipsies to leave the district, old Meg put a
curse on him saying that his own house
was in danger of being as empty as were
now the homes of the gipsies. On Harry's
fifth birthday the prediction came true,
for the boy disappeared while on a ride
with a revenue officer hunting smugglers.
The man was killed and his body found,
but there was no trace of the child. All
search proving futile, he was at last given
up for dead. In her grief, his mother, pre-
1429

maturely delivered of a daughter, died
soon afterward.
Seventeen years passed. Old Mr.
Bertram, cheated by his lawyer, Gilbert Glos-
sin, was to have his estate sold to pay his
debts. Glossin planned to buy the
property without much outlay of money, for
the law said that when an heir was
missing a purchaser need not put up the full
price, in case the heir should return and
claim his inheritance. Before the sale Guy
Mannering returned and tried to buy the
property, to save it for the Bertram family,
but a delay in the mails prevented his
effort and Glossin got possession of the
estate. Old Mr. Bertram died before the
transaction was completed, leaving his
daughter Lucy homeless and penniless.
During these transactions Mannering's
past history came to light. Years before
he had gone as a soldier to India and there
married. Through a misunderstanding he
had accused his wife of faithlessness with
one Captain Brown, who was in reality in
love with Mannering's daughter, Julia.
The two men fought a duel and Brown
was wounded. Later he was captured by
bandits, and Mannering assumed that he
was dead. When Mannering's wife died
eight months later, the unhappy man,
having learned she had not been
unfaithful, resigned his commission and returnee}
with his daughter to England.
On learning that he could not buy the
Bertram estate and allow Lucy to remain
there with the faithful Dominie Sampson,
Mannering leased a nearby house for
them. He also brought to the house his
daughter Julia, after he learned from
friends with whom she was staying that
she had been secretly meeting an
unknown young man. What Mannering did
not know was that the man was Captain
Brown, who had escaped from his bandit
captors and followed Julia to England and
later to Scotland. Both Julia and Lucy
were unhappy in their love affairs. Lucy
loved Charles Hazlewood, but since
Lucy had no money Charles' father would
not permit their marriage.
Captain Brown, loitering near the
house, met old Meg Merrilies, who took
a great interest in him. Once she saved his
life, and for his thanks made him promise
to come to her whenever she sent for
him. A short time later Brown
encountered Julia, Lucy, and Charles
Hazlewood. Charles, thinking Brown a bandit,
pulled a firearm from his clothing. In his
attempt to disarm Charles, Brown
accidentally discharged the weapon and
wounded Charles. Brown fled.
Charles would have made little of the
incident, but Glossin, desiring to gain
favor with the gentry by whom he had
been snubbed since he had bought the
Bertram property, went to Sir Robert
Hazlewood and offered to apprehend the
man who had shot his son. Glossin,
finding some papers marked with the name of
Brown, used them in his search. He was
momentarily deterred, however, when he
was called to interview a prisoner named
Dirk Hatteraick. Dirk, a Dutch smuggler,
was the killer of the revenue officer found
dead when the Bertram heir disappeared.
Dirk told Glossin that the boy was alive
and in Scotland. Because Glossin had
planned that kidnaping, many years
before, it was to his advantage to have the
young man disappear again. He was even
more anxious to get rid of the Bertram
heir forever when he learned from Dirk
that the man was Captain Brown. Brown
—or Harry Bertram— would claim his
estate, and Glossin would lose the rich
property he had acquired for almost nothing.
Glossin finally captured Brown and had
him imprisoned, after arranging with
Dirk to storm the prison and carry Brown
off to sea, to be killed or lost.
Old Meg, learning of the plot in some
mysterious way, foiled it when she had
Harry Bertram rescued. She also secured
Mannering's aid in behalf of the young
man, whom she had loved from the day
of his birth. Bertram was taken by his
rescuers to Mannering's home. There his
story was pieced together from what he
remembered and from the memory of old
Dominie Sampson. Bertram could hardly
believe that he was the heir to Ellangowan
1430

and Lucy's brother. His sister was
overjoyed at the reunion. But it would take
more than the proof of circumstances to
win back his inheritance from Glossin.
Mannering, Sampson, and Sir Robert
Hazlewood, who heard the story, tried to
trace old papers to secure the needed proof.
In the meantime old Meg sent Bertram
a message reminding him of Brown's
promise to come should she need him. She
led him into a cave where Dirk was hiding
out and there told him her story. She had
kidnaped him for Dirk on the day the
revenue officer was murdered. She had
promised Dirk and Glossin, also one of
the gang, not to reveal her secret until the
boy was twenty-one years old. Now she
felt released from her promise, as that
period had passed. She told Bertram to
capture Dirk for the hangman, but before
the smuggler could be taken he shot the
old gipsy in the heart.
Dirk, taken to prison, would not verify
the gipsy's story, and his sullenness was
taken as proof of Bertram's right to his
inheritance. Glossin's part in the plot was
also revealed, and he too was put into
prison to await trial. When the two
plotters fought in the cell, Dirk killed Glossin.
Then Dirk wrote a full confession and
cheated the hangman by killing himself.
His confession, added to other evidence,
proved Bertram's claim, and he was
restored to his rightful position. Successful
at last in his suit for Julia Mannering, he
settled part of his estate on his sister Lucy
and so paved the way for her marriage
with Charles Hazlewood. The predictions
had come true; Mannering's work was
done.
1431

GUY OF WARWICK
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Tenth century
Locale: England, Europe, the Middle East
First transcribed: Thirteenth century
Principal characters:
Guy, a knight of Warwick
Felice la Belle, Guy's mistress
Herhaud of Ardern, Guy's mentor and friend
Rohaud, Earl of Warwick
Otous, Duke of Pavia
Morgadour, a German knight
Reignies, Emperor of Germany
Segyn, Duke of Louvain
Ernis, Emperor of Greece
Loret, Ernis' daughter
The Soudan of the Saracens
Tirri, a knight of Gurmoise
Athelstan, King of England
Colbrand, a Danish giant
Critique:
Guy of Warwick was penned by more
of an anthologist than a poet.
Undoubtedly French in origin, this metrical
romance is made up of episodes from
earlier romances, epics, and sagas. The
story was frequently rewritten
throughout the Middle Ages, later reprinted in
many languages, immortalized in a play
in 1620, and even adapted into a
popular children's adventure story in the nine-
teenth century. In order to learn of all
of Guy of Warwick's adventures, the
reader would need to consult the earlier
French poems, the English epics, the
Irish translations, innumerable exempla,
and patches of many other heroic poems
and related legends. The best edition of
the work is by the late scholar Julius
Zupitza (1844-1895), who collated the
very early Auchinleck manuscript
(believed to have been written 1330-1340)
with the most complete manuscript, now
preserved in Caius College, Cambridge
(c. 1400).
The Story:
It was love for a woman that prompted
Guy to inaugurate his long series of
remarkable exploits. Guy, son of the
steward to Rohaud, Earl of Warwick, was
a very popular and handsome young
squire. As the earl's principal cupbearer,
he was instructed, on one fateful
occasion, to superintend the service of the
ladies during dinner. Gazing on Felice
la Belle, Rohaud's beautiful and talented
daughter, he fell desperately in love with
the fair maiden. When he first declared
himself to her, he was rejected because
of his lowly birth and lack of
attainments. Later, however, when from love-
sickness he was close to death, Felice,
following the advice of an angel, offered
him some encouragement. If he became
a knight and proved his valor, she would
reward him with her hand in marriage.
After receiving knighthood, Sir Guy
set out to prove his valor. Accompanied
by his mentor, Herhaud of Ardern, he
spent an entire year attending
tournaments throughout Europe. Pitted against
some of the most renowned knights of
Christendom, Guy was indomitable; in
every encounter he took the prize. His
reputation now established, he returned
to Warwick to claim his reward from
1432

Felice. This fair lady, however, had
decided to raise her standards. After
acknowledging his accomplishments, she
notified him that he must become the
foremost knight in the world before she
would marry him.
True to the laws of chivalric love, Guy
returned to Europe to satisfy the fancy of
his mistress. Again visiting the
tournaments, again he was, without exception,
victorious. But misfortune awaited him
in Italy. His high merit having excited
their envy, seventeen knights, led by
Otous, Duke of Pavia, laid an ambush
for the English champion. Before Guy
won the skirmish, two of his closest
companions were dead, and his best friend,
Herhaud, appeared to be slain. As Guy,
himself grievously wounded, began his
return journey to England, he was filled
with remorse for having allowed the
wishes of a haughty lady to lead him to
this sad result; but in Burgundy, where
he was performing his customary deeds of
valor, his spirits were considerably
improved by his discovery of Herhaud, alive
and disguised as a palmer.
As the two friends continued their
journey homeward, they learned that
Segyn, Duke of Louvain, was being
attacked by Reignier, the Emperor of
Germany, who wrongfully claimed the duke's
lands. Assembling a small army, Guy
defeated two armies that were sent against
Segyn. With a larger force, the emperor
then encircled the city in which Guy,
Segyn, and their followers were
quartered. During this blockade Reignier, on
a hunting trip, was surprised by Guy,
who led the unarmed emperor into the
city. There, in the true spirit of chivalry,
a rapprochement was brought about
between the ruler, Reignier, and his vassal,
Segyn.
Soon after rendering these good
services to Segyn, Guy found another
occasion for the exercise of his talents.
Learning that Ernis, Emperor of Greece, was
besieged by the mighty forces of the
Saracen Soudan, Guy levied an army of a
thousand German knights and marched
to Constantinople. Received with joy, he
was promised for his efforts the hand of
Princess Loret, the emperor's daughter.
After repelling one Saracen attack, Guy
took the offensive and left on the field
fifteen acres covered with the corpses of
his enemies. But his greatest threat came
from one of his own knights, Morgadour,
who had become enamored of Loret.
Knowing that the Soudan had sworn to
kill every Christian who should fall
within his power, Morgadour duped Guy
into entering the enemy camp and
challenging the Saracen monarch to single
combat. Ordered to be executed, the
resourceful Guy cut off the Soudan's head,
repelled his attackers, and made his
escape.
The emperor, because of his great
admiration for the English knight, hastened
arrangements for the wedding of Guy
and Loret. Guy, somehow having
forgotten Felice, was agreeable to the plan,
until, seeing the wedding ring, he was
suddenly reminded of his first love. A
true knight, he resolved to be faithful to
Felice and to find some excuse for
breaking his engagement to Loret. Another
altercation with Morgadour ended with
Guy's slaying of the treacherous German.
Using the pretext that his continued
presence in the court might lead to trouble
between the Greeks and Germans, Guy
took his leave.
Guy planned an immediate return to
England, but he was destined to perform
further deeds of knight errantry before
being reunited with his beloved Felice.
While traveling through Lorraine, he
met an old friend, Sir Tirri, who was
being persecuted by their mutual enemy,
Duke Otous. The duke had abducted
Tirri's fiancee. Guy wasted no time in
rescuing the girl, but Otous did not give
up easily. After attempting and failing
to defeat Guy on the battlefield, he
resorted to foul means and succeeded in
capturing both Tirri and his fiancee.
Guy, combining trickery with valor,
killed the felon duke and freed the lovers.
Just one more incident delayed Guy's
1433

return to England. Unintentionally
entering the game preserve of the King of
Flanders, he was confronted by the king's
son and found himself compelled to kill
the dissentious prince. In an ensuing
encounter with the wrathful father, Guy
was forced to slaughter fourteen knights
before he could make his escape.
Arriving in his native country, Guy, in
accordance with chivalric practice, repaired
to the court of King Athelstan. He was
honorably received, and almost
immediately the king enlisted his services to kill
a troublesome dragon. After a long and
fierce battle, Guy in triumph carried the
monster's head to the king.
Guy's homecoming was the less joyous
upon his learning of the death of his
parents, but this sorrow was compensated for
by his immediate marriage to Felice.
They were married only forty days,
barely time to conceive a son, when
Guy's conscience, troubled over the
mischief he had done for the love of a lady,
forced him on a penitential pilgrimage.
His bereaved wife placed on his finger a
gold remembrance ring and sorrowfully
watched him depart for the Holy Land.
So great a warrior, however, could
not escape his reputation or his duty. He
interrupted his devotions to kill an
Ethiopian giant and to assist Tirri again, this
time by slaying a false accuser.
When the pious warrior returned to
England he found King Athelstan
besieged by King Anlaf of Denmark. It
had been agreed that the outcome of the
war should be determined by single
combat between Colbrand, a Danish giant,
and an English champion. In a dream
King Athelstan was advised to ask the
help of the first pilgrim he met at the
entrance of the palace, and the aging
Guy of Warwick was that pilgrim. In
this last and most famous of his fights
Guy, shorn of his weapons, appeared
certain of defeat. In his extremity he
snatched up a convenient ax, fiercely
assailed the giant, cut him to pieces, and
thereby saved the English kingdom.
Guy paid one last visit to his own
castle, where he discovered Felice
engaged in acts of devotion and charity.
Without having revealed his identity to
her, he went off to the forests of
Ardennes. When death was near, he
dispatched the gold remembrance to his
wife and begged her to supervise his
burial. Arriving in time to receive his last
breath, the faithful Felice survived him
by only fifteen days. She was buried in
the same grave as her warrior husband.
1434

GUZMAN DE ALFARACHE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mateo Alemdn (1547-1613?)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Spain and Italy
First published: 1599, 1604
Principal characters:
Guzman de Alfarache, a rogue
A Muleteer
A Cook
A Captain of Soldiers
Don Beltran, Guzmdn's uncle
A Cardinal
A French Ambassador
Sayavedra, another rogue and Guzmdn's friend
Guzman's First Wife
Guzman's Second Wife
Soto, a galley prisoner
Critique:
To readers of Alemdn's own day The
Life and Adventures of Guzmdn de Al-
farache was a book much more popular
than Cervantes' Don Quixote, its
contemporary. Thirty editions of the novel
appeared within six years of its
publication and its vogue quickly spread to
France and England, where in 1622
James Mabbe translated it into English
under the appropriate title of The Rogue.
Alemdn's novel, published in two parts
in 1599 and 1604, is typically Spanish:
realistic, comic, often coarse. As in other
picaresque narratives, Guzmdn de Alfa-
rache travels extensively and moves from
the highest ranks of society to the
lowest, all the while living by his wits and
commenting freely on the follies and
vices of mankind, Yet Guzmdn is not
wholly bad; his career is forced upon him
by the realization that in his own world
he must either trick or be tricked. Being
young and high-spirited, he chooses the
first course. What sets Guzmdn de Alfa-
rache apart from other examples of the
picaresque novel, however, is the writer's
use of philosophical and moralizing
digression. Alemdn loses no opportunity to
comment on human character or behavior,
and in his discursive passages he reveals
his own outstanding qualities: frankness,
pessimism, broad humor, wit, humility
of faith, and practical common sense. It
is unfortunate that many modern readers
have found his discourses dull or
distracting. Viewed as their author intended
them, they provide a reading of life
itself, an obbligato accompaniment to a
story which is, in narrative outline and in
character drawing, one of the best and
most diverting of the picaresque
romances.
The Story:
The ancestors of Guzmdn de Alfarache
lived in Genoa, upstart noblemen who
had grown rich in trade. Like others of
his family, Guzmdn's father was a dealer
on the exchange, resorting even to usury
in order to add to his wealth, although he
piously heard mass every morning and
owned a rosary with beads as large as
hazelnuts. His love of money led him
into his greatest adventure, for when a
partner in Seville became bankrupt and
carried away some of the money
belonging to Guzmdn's father, the Genoese
took ship for Spain in an attempt to
recover some of his lost property. On the
way the ship he sailed in was captured by
Moorish pirates and the merchant was
sold into slavery in Algiers. Seeing no
1435

other way out of his difficulty, he
embraced the faith of Allah, and so was able
to marry a rich Moorish widow. Secretly,
he took possession of her money and
jewels and fled with them to Seville.
There, after some time, he found his
former partner, recovered most of his debt,
made his peace with the Church, and
settled down to live the life of a
gentleman, trading in money for his profit and
gambling for his pleasure.
Being prosperous at the time, he
bought two estates, one in town, the
other at San Juan de Alfarache. One day
he saw the mistress of an old knight and
fell in love with her. The lady was not
unwilling to share her favors between her
two lovers, so that Guzmdn could say in
later life that at the time of his birth he
had possessed two fathers. When the old
knight died, the woman carried away all
his property and a short time later mar-
lied Guzman's true father. The
merchant did not long survive, but died a
bankrupt, impoverished by his gambling
and love of rich living. Left penniless,
Guzman decided to seek his fortune
elsewhere. Calling himself Guzm&n de
Alfarache, after his father's country estate,
he started out at fourteen to see the
world.
Unused to walking, he soon tired and
slept supperless that night on the steps of
a church not far from Seville. The next
morning his way led him to a wretched
inn, where the hostess cooked him a
breakfast omelet of eggs filled with half-
hatched chicks. He ate the mess
ravenously, but before he had traveled a league
from the inn he became violently ill. A
passing muleteer laughed heartily when
Guzmdn told his story and in his glee he
invited the boy to ride with him. As they
rode along the muleteer told how the
hostess of the inn had tried the same trick
on two lively young fellows who had
rubbed her face in the omelet and daubed
her with soot.
Meanwhile Guzm&n and the muleteer
had found two friars by the roadside.
Since they were on their way to Cacalla,
they were willing to hire two of the
carrier's mules. That night the travelers
stopped at a village inn where the
landlord fed them a freshly-killed young mule
instead of veal. The next morning, after
discovering the deception, Guzman and
the muleteer threw the whole inn into an
uproar. During the confusion two
alcaldes appeared and took the rascally
landlord into custody. Guzman and the
muleteer left the town in great haste.
Some distance beyond the village they
were overtaken by several constables
looking for a page who had stolen from
his master. Mistaking Guzm&n for the
page, they seized him, and when the
muleteer tried to interfere they bound
him as well. After the prisoners had been
severely beaten, the constables, convinced
of Guzm&n's innocence, allowed the
travelers to continue on their way. To help
Guzmdn and the carrier to forget their
aching bones, one of the priests told the
romantic story of Ozmin and Daraxa, a
tale of the Moorish wars.
By the time the story ended they were
in sight of Cacalla, where they parted
company. For Guzman's transportation
and lodging the muleteer demanded more
than the boy could pay. The two friars
decided at last upon a fair price, but the
reckoning left Guzmdn without enough
money to buy his dinner that day.
Hungry but ashamed to beg, Guzmdn
took the road to Madrid. For a time he
followed two travelers in the hope that
they would offer him some of their
dinner when they stopped to eat, but they
ignored him. A poor Franciscan friar
came by, however, and shared with the
boy his loaf of bread and piece of bacon.
That night an innkeeper gave Guzm&n
a bed in a stable and the next morning
hired him to feed the horses of the guests.
Guzmdn soon learned to cheat in
measuring oats and straw. Deciding at last
that the life was too lazy for him, he left
the inn and started once more for
Madrid.
His coppers soon spent, he was forced
to beg, but with such poor luck that it
1436

was necessary for him to sell the clothes
off his back in order to live. By the time
he reached Madrid he looked like a
scarecrow. Unable to find work because of his
poor appearance, he fell in with some
beggars who taught him knavery of all kinds.
For a time he became a porter, hiring
himself to carry provisions which
purchasers had bought at market. In this way
he met a cook who persuaded him to turn
scullion. Like the other servants, Guz-
mdn learned to steal from his master. One
day he took a silver goblet. His mistress,
discovering the loss, gave him money to
buy another like it. Guzmdn returned
the goblet and kept the money, which
he soon lost at cards. He continued his
petty thefts until his master caught him
selling provisions and cuffed him out of
the house. Then he went back to
carrying baskets in the market. Among his
customers was a trusting grocer who one
day put into his basket more than twenty-
five hundred gold reals. Escaping through
side streets, Guzm&n fled into the
country, where he lay hidden until the hue
and cry had died down. With his riches
he planned to visit his father's kinsmen
in Genoa.
When he thought the coast clear, Guz-
mdn headed for Toledo. On the way he
fell in with a young man from whom he
bought an outfit of clothing. Freshly
attired, he lived like a young gentleman of
fortune. He had little luck in his
gallantries, however, and his love intrigues
always ended with his being fleeced or
made ridiculous by ladies he courted. He
left Toledo with few regrets when he
heard that a constable was looking for a
young man recently arrived from Madrid.
At Almagro, Guzm&n found a
company of soldiers on their way to Italy.
Hoping to leave his past troubles
behind him, he enlisted. Before long he
became the captain's crony, and the two
spent their nights in gaming and
wenching. Finding himself without funds,
Guzman resorted to his old habits of
roguery; at the same time he was reduced
to serving the captain who had formerly
treated him as an equal. The captain was
perfectly willing to profit by Guzm&n's
wits. In Barcelona they gulled a miserly
old jeweler. Guzman took to him a gold
reliquary of the captain's and offered it
for sale. After much haggling they agreed
upon a price of one hundred and twenty
crowns and the jeweler promised to bring
the money to the dock. When Guzman
had the coins in his hand, he cut the
strings which held the reliquary around
his neck and handed the jewel to the old
man. Then, after passing the money to
a confederate, he shouted that the
jeweler was a thief. Because the strings of
the reliquary had been cut, and no money
was found on Guzmdn's person, his story
was believed. Guzmdn and the captain
kept both the money and the jewel.
Having no further use for Guzm&n's
services, the captain decided to abandon
the rogue after the soldiers arrived in
Genoa. Turned loose with a single coin,
Guzmdn applied to his rich relatives for
aid. But they refused to receive him and
gave him only curses and blows. Don
Beltran, his uncle, did take the boy into
his house, but only for the purpose of
setting the servants on him and having them
toss him in a blanket until he was shaken
and bruised. The next morning,
swearing revenge on his deceitful relative, Guz-
mdn started for Rome.
There he turned professional beggar
and lived by his wits, having learned how
to make bones appear disjointed and to
raise false sores that resembled leprosy or
ulcers. Only once was he beaten for his
mendacity. One day a kind-hearted
cardinal noticed an evil-looking ulcei on
Guzmdn's leg. Out of pity he had the
beggar taken to his own house and given
medical attention. The doctor summoned
to attend him soon discovered Guzmdn's
trick, but he kept silent in order to mulct
some of the prelate's gold. The sore cured,
Guzmdn became a page in the cardinal's
household. There he lived daintily
enough, but he was unable to refrain
from stealing conserves and sweetmeats
kept in a chest in the cardinal's chamber.
1437

Caught when the lid of the chest fell on
his arm, trapping him, he received a
beating. Even then the cardinal did not
discharge him, but at last the churchman
could stand his thieving and gambling no
longer and Guzmdn was dismissed.
His next employment was in the
household of the French ambassador, to whom
he was page, jester, and pimp, a rascal
whose boisterous pranks helped to clear
the ambassador's table of parasites who
abused the Frenchman's hospitality. The
ambassador, planning an intrigue with
the wife of a Roman gentleman, made
Guzmdn his go-between. Learning that
the page had seduced her maid, the
matron determined to teach him and his
master a lesson. One night, while he
waited for her answer to the ambassador,
she allowed Guzm&n to stand for hours
in a drenching rain. Blundering about in
the darkness of a backyard, he fell into a
pigsty. The next day, dressed in his best,
he went to complain to his sweetheart
about his treatment. While he was
strutting before her, a boar escaped from its
pen, ran between his legs, and carried
him through the muddy streets of Rome.
Guzmdn became the laughingstock of
the town. One day, as some urchins were
taunting him, another young man came
to his assistance. He and his rescuer, a
waggish young Spaniard named Saya-
vedra, became close friends. Anxious to
escape ridicule, Guzman decided to go to
Siena to visit a friend named Pompeyo.
While he tarried in Rome to make his
farewells, he sent his trunks on ahead.
Great was his dismay when he arrived in
Siena and learned that his trunks, filled
with clothing, money, and jewels, had
been stolen. Sayavedra had preceded him
to Siena, passed himself off as Signor
Guzmdn, and with his confederates made
off with the real Guzman's valuables.
After a search Sayavedra was arrested,
but the stolen property could not be
recovered; it had passed into the hands of
a rich thief-master named Alexandxo
Bentivoglio. Making the best of a bad
situation, Guzmdn refused to bring
charges against the wretched Sayavedra.
Since his guest was low in funds,
Pompeyo proved only an indifferent host, and
at last Guzmdn decided to go to Florence.
Not far from Siena he overtook Sayavedra
again. When the thief begged for
pardon, Guzman was filled with pity for the
rascal and readily forgave him. Together
they planned to have Guzman pass as the
nephew of the Spanish ambassador,
Sayavedra as his page. Being without shame,
they played on the credulity of all whom
they met in Florence. Guzman was about
to marry a rich young widow when a
beggar whom he had formerly known
revealed the impostor's true identity, and
he and his page were forced to flee the
city.
They went next to Bologna, where
Guzman began a suit to recover his
property from Bentivoglio. For his pains he
was thrown into jail, from which he was
released, penniless again, only after he
had withdrawn his charges. Aided by
Sayavedra, Guzman cheated two men at
cards, and with the money he won they
traveled to Milan. In that city they
entered into a conspiracy to defraud a
wealthy merchant. Although he himself
was arrested as a swindler, Guzman
convinced the city officials of the merchant's
dishonesty, and a large sum of money
gained by their scheme lined the rogues'
pockets once more.
About that time Guzmdn devised a
plan to revenge himself on his Genoese
relatives. Arriving in that city, he let it
be known that he was Don Juan de
Guzman, a gentleman of Seville, recently
come from Rome. Not recognizing the
young beggar whom they had cuffed and
insulted several years before, his relatives
outdid themselves to honor their wealthy
kinsman. On the pretext that a Castilian
gentlewoman of his acquaintance was to
be married, he borrowed jewels from Don
Beltran to dress the bride, giving in
security two trunks which the old man
believed filled with silver plate. Pretending
1438

to be temporarily out of funds, he also
secured a large loan from a cousin in
return for a spurious gold chain. Then,
having taken passage with a trusted sea
captain, he and Sayavedra sailed for Spain.
During the voyage Guzm&n was greatly
grieved when his friend became delirious
with fever and jumped overboard.
Not wishing to tarry in Barcelona,
Guzman went to Saragossa. There he
courted an heiress until the jealousy of
her other admirers and his unwise
dalliance with her kitchenmaid caused him
to leave that city and go to Madrid. Even-
tually he married, only to learn too late
that his wife's father was without a
fortune. Before long Guzman himself was
declared a bankrupt and imprisoned. His
wife died of shame. Disgusted with the
world, he decided to study for the
Church.
Shortly before he was to take orders
he met a handsome woman who became
his second wife. They returned to
Madrid, where the wife attracted the
attentions of so many wealthy men that for a
time their affairs prospered, but in the
end they were publicly disgraced and
banished. From Madrid they went to
Seville. Guzman's mother they found still
alive but stricken in years. There he lived
by his wits in a household of quarrelsome
women until his wife did him a great
favor and ran away with an Italian sea
captain. A short time later he and his
mother parted in friendly fashion. Later,
with the help of a gullible friar, Guzm&n
became steward to a gentlewoman whose
husband was in the Indies. Old habits
were too strong for him, and he began to
rob his mistress. His thefts being
discovered, he was sentenced to the galleys
for life.
Because of his smooth tongue and
pleasant ways, he was able to make
himself a favorite with the officers, thereby
arousing the jealousy and hate of his
fellow prisoners. When several of them
robbed him, the theft was discovered and
the culprits were flogged. A short time
later the captain's kinsman was robbed,
and Guzman, accused by another
prisoner named Soto, was beaten until he
was almost dead. Guzm&n was soon to
have his revenge. Discovering Soto's plot
to seize the ship and escape to the
African coast, he revealed the plan to the
captain. Soto and the chief conspirators were
executed. The grateful captain struck off
Guzm&n's chains and gave him full
liberty aboard the galley while awaiting the
pardon which had been petitioned of
the king. Guzm&n, repenting the rogue's
life he had led, resolved to mend his
ways in the future.
1439

HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Morier (1780-1849)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Persia
First published: 1824
Principal characters:
Hajji Bab a, a rogue
Osman Agha, a Turkish
Zebnab, a slave girl
Critique:
The Adventures of Hajji Baba of
Ispahan is a combination of travel book and
rogue story, and it does for Persia very
much what Le Sage's Gil Bias did for
Spain. Persia, even in this day of broad
travel, has never been widely viewed by
Americans. Moreover, the Persia of the
time of Napoleon Bonaparte was a Persia
that has now disappeared. Customs and
manners are as much a part of Morier's
entertaining narrative as the picaresque
humor of Hajji Baba's adventures and
the satire of the rogue's shrewd
comments on human nature.
The Story:
Hajji Baba was the son of a successful
barber of Ispahan. By the time he was
sixteen he had learned the barber's trade,
as well as a store of bazaar tales and
quotations from the Persian poets. With
these he entertained the customers who
came to his father's shop, among them
a wealthy Turkish merchant named
Osman Agha, who was on his way to
Meshed to buy goatskins of Bokhara. So
taken was this merchant with Hajji
Baba that he begged the young man to
accompany him on the journey. With his
father's blessing and a case of razors,
Hajji Baba set out with his new patron.
Before the caravan had been many
days on its way it was attacked by a band
of Turcoman robbers. Osman Agha had
prudently sewed fifty gold ducats in the
skullcap under his turban, but when
the caravan was captured he was stripped
of his finery and the skullcap was tossed
in a corner of the robber chief's tent.
merchant
The robbers spared Hajji Baba's life
when they learned he was a skilled
barber, and he became a favorite of the
wife of the chief. One day he persuaded
the foolish woman to let him borrow
Osman Agha's cap. He ripped the gold
pieces from the lining and hid them,
against the time when he might escape
from his captors. Osman Agha had been
sold to some camel herders.
Hajji Baba traveled with the robbers
on their raids throughout the region. One
of these raids was on Ispahan itself,
from which the robbers carried away a
rich booty. But at the division of the
spoils, Hajji Baba got only promises
and praise.
One day the robbers encountered the
armed escort of a Persian prince. When
the others fled, Hajji Baba gladly allowed
himself to be taken prisoner by the
prince's men. They mistook him for a
Turcoman, however, and cruelly
mistreated him, stripping him of his clothes
and his hidden gold. When he
complained to the prince, the nobleman sent
for the guilty ones, took the money from
them, and then kept the gold himself.
Hajji Baba went with the prince and
his train to Meshed, where he became a
water vendor, carrying a leather bag filled
with dirty water which he sold to
pilgrims with assurances that it was holy
water blessed by the prophet. Witn
money so earned, he bought some tobacco
which he blended with dung and then
peddled through the streets of the holy
city. His best customer, Dervish Sefer,
introduced him to other dervishes. They
1440

applauded Hajji Baba's shrewdness and
enterprise and invited him to become one
of their number. But one day a
complaint was lodged against him on account
of the bad tobacco he sold, and the
authorities beat his bare feet until he lost
consciousness. Having in the meantime
saved a small amount of money, he
decided to leave Meshed, which seemed
to him an ill-omened city.
He set out on his way to Teheran.
On the road a courier overtook him and
asked him to read some letters the
messenger was carrying. One was a letter
from a famous court poet, commending
the bearer to officials high at court. Hajji
Baba waited until the courier was fast
asleep, took the messenger's horse, and
rode away to deliver the courier's letters.
Through these stolen credentials he was
able to obtain a position of confidence
with the court physician.
Hajji Baba remained with the
physician, even though his post brought him
no pay. He soon found favor with
Zeenab, the physician's slave, and sought
her company whenever he could do so
without danger of being caught. Then
the shah himself visited the physician's
establishment and received Zeenab as a
gift. Hajji Baba was disconsolate, but he
was soon made happy by a new
appointment, this time to the post of
sub-lieutenant to the chief executioner of the shah.
Again he received no pay, for he was
supposed to get his money as other
members of the shah's entourage did, by
extortion. It was soon discovered that
Zeenab was in a condition which could
only be regarded as an insult to the
shah's personal honor, and Hajji Baba
was summoned to execute the girl. Soon
afterward suspicion fell on him for his
own part in the affair, and he fled to the
holy city of Koom.
In Koom he pretended to be a priest
The shah made a pilgrimage to the city,
and during his visit the chief priest
presented Hajji Baba's petition to the ruler.
Hajji Baba explained that he had acted
in all innocence because he had no idea
of the high honor to be conferred upon
Zeenab. The shah reluctantly pardoned
Hajji Baba and allowed him to return
to Ispahan.
He arrived to discover that his father
had died and that his fortune had
disappeared. Hajji Baba sold his father's
shop and used the money to set himself
up as a learned scribe. Before long he
found service with Mollah Nadan, a
celebrated priest, who planned to organize
an illegal but profitable marriage market.
Hajji Baba was supposed to find
husbands for women the mollah would
provide. When Hajji Baba visited the three
women for whom he was supposed to
find husbands, he discovered them all
to be ugly old hags, one the wife of his
former master, the physician, who had
recently died. Later, Hajji Baba
discovered his first master, Osman Agha,
who had finally escaped from the
Turcomans and regained some of his fortune.
Hajji Baba tricked Agha into marrying
one of the three women.
Mollah Nadan undertook to gain
favor by punishing some Armenians
during a drought, but he incurred the shah's
wrath and he and Hajji Baba were
driven from the city. Mollah Nadan's
property was confiscated. Hajji Baba
stole back into the city to see if any of
the mollah's property could be saved, but
the house had been stripped. He went
to visit the baths, and there he discovered
Mollah Bashi, who had been taken with
a cramp and had drowned. Hajji Baba
was afraid that he would be accused of
murder, as Mollah Bashi had helped
to bring about Mollah Nadan's ruin.
But the slave attendant failed to
recognize Hajji Baba in the darkness and Hajji
Baba escaped, dressed in the mollah's
robes. On the horse of the chief
executioner he set out to collect money
owed to Mollah Bashi. In the clothes
of the mollah and riding a fine horse,
he cut a dashing figure until he met
Mollah Nadan and was persuaded to
change robes with him. Mollah Nadan
was arrested and charged with the death
1441

of Mollah Bashi. Hajji Baba, who had
kept the money he had collected, decided
to become a merchant.
He encountered the caravan of the
widow of Mollah Bashi. She was taking
her husband's body to Kerbelai for holy
burial. When the leader of the caravan
revealed that Hajji Baba was suspected
of the murder, he began to fear for his
life. But about that time a band of
marauders attacked the caravan, and in
the confusion Hajji Baba escaped. In
Bagdad he reencountered his old master,
Osman Agha, and with him proceeded
to invest the money he had available. He
bought pipe sticks and planned to sell
them at a profit in Constantinople.
There a wealthy widow sought him
out and he decided to marry her, first,
however, intimating that ne was as
wealthy as she. He married her and
began to live on her income. But his
old bazaar friends, jealous of his good
luck, betrayed him to his wife's relatives.
Thrown out as an imposter, he was
obliged to seek the help of the Persian
ambassador. The ambassador advised him
not to seek revenge upon his former
wife's relatives, as they would surely
murder him in his bed. Instead, he found
use for Hajji Baba in an intrigue
developing among representatives of England
and France. Hajji Baba was employed
as a spy to find out what the foreign
emissaries sought in the shah's court.
Here at last Hajji Baba found favor.
He discovered that his life among
cutthroats and rogues had admirably fitted
him for dealing diplomatically with the
representatives of foreign countries, and
he was finally made the shah's
representative in his own city of Ispahan. He
returned there with considerable wealth
and vast dignity, to lord it over those
who had once thought his station in life
far below their own.
1442

HAKLUYT'S VOYAGES
type of work: Travel narratives
Author: Richard Hakluyt (c. 1553-1616)
Type of plot: Adventure and exploration
Time of plot: c. 517 to 1600
Locale: The known world
First published: 1589
Critique:
This work is an anthology of the
explorations and travels of British
adventurers down to the author's own
time. The accounts are bold and
vigorous, usually giving only the main
events of the journeys, many of them
written by the men who made the
voyages. Published by Hakluyt in
refutation of a French accusation that the
English were insular and spiritless, the
book is of value in several lights. It
gives faithful accounts of many sixteenth-
century exploratory journeys; it is an
index to the temper of Elizabethan
England; and it reflects the enthusiasm for
travel literature which was so prevalent
at the time of the original publication.
The Stories:
The first group of voyages give thirty-
eight accounts of travel and exploration
made by Britons up to the end of the
sixteenth century. The first stories go
back to the medieval ages, for the
narrative which begins the work is that of
a probably mythical voyage by King
Arthur of Britain to Iceland and the most
northern parts of Europe in 517.
The first ten narratives deal with
voyages made before 1066, the year of the
Norman Conquest. They include such
journeys as the conquest of the isles
of Man and Anglesey by Edwin, King
of Northumberland, in 624, the trips of
Octher into Norway and Denmark in
890 and 891, the voyage of Wolstan into
Danish waters in the tenth century,
the voyage of King Edgar, with four
thousand ships, about the island of
Britain, and the journey of Edmund
Ironside from England to Hungary in
1017.
The other voyages described are those
taken after the Norman Conquest. The
first of these is an account of a
marvelous journey made by a company of
English noblemen to escort the daughter
of King Harold to Russia, to marry the
Duke of Russia in 1067. The next
account is of the surprising journey of an
unknown Englishman who traveled as
far into Asia as Tartaria in the first
half of the thirteenth century.
One notable voyage describes the
adventures of Nicolaus de Linna, a
Franciscan friar, to the northern parts of
Scandinavia. The twenty-second voyage
was that of Anthony Jenkinson who
traveled to Russia from England in
order to return Osep Napea, the first
ambassador from Muscovia to Queen
Mary of England, to his own country in
1557.
Surprisingly, almost half of the
journeys described in this first collection are
those made to Russia by way of the
Arctic Ocean, around northern
Scandinavia. It is not ordinarily realized that
there was any traffic at all between
England and Russia at that time, because
of the difficulty of both water and land
transportation between the two
countries.
The final narrative of the first group
tells of the greatest event of Elizabethan
England, the meeting of the British fleet
with the great Armada which Philip II
of Spain had sent to subdue England
and win for Spain the supremacy of the
seas.
The second group of voyages describe
trips taken to the region of the Straits
of Gibraltar and the countries
surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Eleven of
1443

these accounts describe trips made before
the Norman Conquest in 1066 and fifty-
two describe trips made after that date.
The earliest story is that of Helena, the
wife of a Roman emperor and a
daughter of Coelus, one of the early kings of
Britain. Helena, famous as the mother
of Constantine the Great, who made
Christianity the official religion of Rome,
traveled to Jerusalem in 337 because
of her interest in the early Christian
church. She built several churches there
and brought back to Europe a collection
of holy relics. One of the relics was a
nail reputed to be from the True Cross.
It was incorporated some time later into
the so-called Iron Crown of Lombardy.
Another voyage which took place
before the Norman Conquest was that
of a man named Erigena, who was sent
by Alfred, King of the West Saxons, to
Greece. Alfred was one of the most
cultured of British kings in pre-medieval
times and very much interested in the
classic civilizations. His emissary,
Erigena, went as far as Athens in 885, a
long voyage for those ancient times.
Several of the post-Conquest voyages
were trips made by Englishmen to help
in the recovery of Jerusalem from the
Saracens during the Crusades. Among
the best known are those of Richard
the First, often called the Lion-Hearted,
and of Prince Edward, son of Henry
III, who went to Syria in the last half
of the thirteenth century.
Another story is a narrative of the
voyage of the English ship, Susan, which
took William Hareborne to Turkey in
1582. Hareborne was the first
ambassador sent by a British monarch to the
ruler of Turkey, who was at that time
Murad Khan.
Another interesting voyage was that
of Ralph Fitch, a London merchant.
Between the years 1583 and 1591 he
traveled to Syria, to Ormuz, to Goa in
the East Indies, to Cambia, to the River
Ganges, to Bengala, to Chonderi, to
Siam, and thence back to his homeland.
It was rare for people to travel, even in
the spice trade, as far as did merchant
Fitch during the sixteenth century.
A third group of voyages are accounts
connected with the exploration and
discovery of America. The first account is
of a voyage supposedly made to the West
Indies in 1170 by Madoc, the son of
Owen Guined, a prince of North Wales.
It is also recorded that in February of
1488 Columbus offered his services to
Henry VII of England and petitioned
that monarch to sponsor a voyage to the
westward seas for the purpose of
discovering a new route to the East Indies.
Bartholomew, brother of Columbus,
repeated the request a year later, but was
refused a second time by the English
king.
Several voyages, described are those
made to America for the purpose of
discovering a Northwest Passage to the
Orient. The early voyage of Cabot is
among them, as well as the voyages of
Martin Frobisher and John Davis. Fro-
bisher made three voyages in search of
the Northwest Passage, in the three
successive years between 1576 and 1578.
John Davis also made three fruitless
efforts to find the passage in the years
from 1585 to 1587. All of these were an
important part of the colonial effort in
Hakluyt's own time.
Several exploratory trips to
Newfoundland and the Gulf of the St. Lawrence
River are also related, the earliest the
voyage of Sir Humfrey Gilbert to
Newfoundland. The ship Grace of Bristol,
England, also made a trip up the Gulf of
St. Lawrence, as far as Assumption Island.
There are also accounts of trips made
by explorers of other European nations
in the New World, such as the journeys
made in Canada as far as Hudson's Bay
by Jacques Carrier in 1534 and 1535.
There are full accounts of all the
voyages made to Virginia in the sixteenth
century and the two unsuccessful
attempts by Sir Walter Raleigh to found
a colony there in 1585 and in 1587.
Another group of stories tell of both
English and Spanish explorations of the
1444

Gulf of California. The voyage of
Francis Drake is given, particularly that part
of his around-the-world trip during which
he sailed up the western coast of
America to a point forty-three degrees north
of the equator and landed to take
possession of what he called Nova Albion,
in the name of his monarch, Queen
Elizabeth, thus giving the British a claim
to that part of the New World.
Also described is a voyage taken under
orders of the viceroy of New Spain by
Francis Gualle. Gualle crossed the
Pacific Ocean to the Philippine Islands,
where he visited Manila. From there he
went to Macao in the East Indies and
to Japan, and returned from the Orient
to Acapulco, Mexico, in the 1580's.
Another group of stories contain short
accounts of trips by Englishmen to
various parts of Spanish America. Among
these were trips to Mexico City as early
as 1555, barely a quarter of a century
after it had been conquered by Cortez,
as well as to the Antilles Islands in the
West Indies, to Guiana, to the coast of
Portuguese Brazil, to the delta of the
Rio Plata, and to the Straits of
Magellan.
Every schoolboy knows the stories of
the first two voyages made to the Straits
of Magellan and thence around the
world, first by Magellan himself and
then by Sir Francis Drake. The third
man to sail through the Straits and then
to proceed around the world is one of
the forgotten men of history. Hakluyt
gave the credit for this trip to Thomas
Cavendish, an Englishman who circled
the globe in the years 1586 to 1588.
1445

THE HAMLET
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897- 1962)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Mississippi
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Will Varner, chief property owner in Frenchman's Bend
Jody, his son
Eula, his daughter
V. K. Ratliff, a sewing machine salesman
Ab Snopes, a newcomer to Frenchman's Bend
Flem Snopes, his son
Isaac Snopes, an idiot relative
Mink Snopes, another relative
Labove, schoolteacher at Frenchman's Bend
Henry Armsttd, a farmer
Critique:
Although more like a collection of long
short stories than an integrated novel, this
book displays Faulkner's genius in
presenting the ironic humor in the folk
legends of Mississippi. Yet Faulkner
makes these tall tales, in spite of their
definite locale, seem characteristic of
almost any section of rural America. Some
of the incidents are strung out over too
many pages, but the author's skillful style
carries them along successfully. He
withholds the climax, the final irony of each
episode, until the tale is fully exploited.
In Flem Snopes, Faulkner has created one
of his major characters—a man who is
stubborn, arrogant, and ruthless in his
drive for property and power.
The Story:
In his later years Will Varner, owner of
the Old Frenchman place and almost
everything else in Frenchman's Bend,
began to turn many of his affairs over to
his thirty-year-old son Jody. One day,
while Jody sat in the Varner store, he met
Ab Snopes, a newcomer to town, and Ab
arranged to rent one of the farms owned
by the Vamers. Jody then found out from
Ratliff, a salesman, that Ab had been
suspected of burning barns on other farms
where he had been a tenant. Jody and his
father concluded that Ab's unsavory
reputation would do them no harm. Jody
became afraid, however, that Ab might
burn some of the Varner property; as a sort
of bribe, he hired Ab's son, Rem, to clerk
in the store.
From Ratliff came the explanation of
why Ab was soured on the world. Ab's
principal grievance grew out of a horse-
trading deal he once made with Pat
Stamper, an almost legendary trader. Ab
drove a mule and an old horse to
Jefferson and, before showing them to Stamper,
he skillfully doctored up the old nag.
Stamper swapped Ab a team of mules that
looked fine, but when Ab tried to drive
them out of Jefferson the mules collapsed.
To get back his own mule Ab spent the
money his wife had given him to buy a
milk separator. Stamper also forced him
to purchase a dark, fat horse that looked
healthy but rather peculiar. On the way
home Ab ran into a thunderstorm and the
horse changed from dark to light and from
fat to lean. It was Ab's old horse, which
Stamper had painted and then fattened
up with a bicycle pump.
Will Varner's daughter, Eula, was a
THE HAMLET by William Faulkner. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Copyright,
1940, by Random House, Inc.
1446

plump, sensuous girl who matured early.
The new schoolteacher, Labove, fell in
love with her the first day she came to the
schoolhouse. An ambitious young manr
Labove rode back and forth between
Frenchman's Bend and the University,
where he studied law and played on the
football team. One day he attempted to
seduce Eula after school had been
dismissed; he failed and later was horrified to
discover that Eula did not even mention
the attempt to Jody. Labove left
Frenchman's Bend forever.
As she grew older Eula had many
suitors, the principal one being Hoacke Mc-
Carron, who literally fought off the
competition. When the Varners found out
that Eula was pregnant, McCarron and
two other suitors left for Texas. Rem
Snopes then stepped in, married Eula, and
went off on a long honeymoon.
The Snopes clan which had gathered in
the wake of Ab and Flem began to have
troubles within the family. The idiot boy,
Isaac, was neglected and mistreated; when
he fell in love with a cow, his behavior
became a town scandal. Mink Snopes,
another relative, was charged with
murdering Jack Houston, who had impounded
Mink's wandering cattle. Flem stayed
away from town throughout this trouble.
When Mink was brought to trial, Flem,
who might have helped him, ignored the
whole case. Mink was sent to jail for life.
Flem came back from his honeymoon
accompanied by Buck Hipps, a Texan,
and a string of wild, spotted horses. The
Texan arranged to auction off these horses
to farmers who had gathered from miles
around. To start things off, the Texan
gave one horse to Eck Snopes, provided
that Eck would make the first bid on the
next one. At this point Henry Armstid and
his wife drove up. Henry, in spite of his
wife's protests, bought a horse for five
dollars. By dark all but three of the horses
had been sold, and Henry was anxious to
claim his purchase. He and his wife were
almost killed in trying to rope their pony.
Hipps wanted to return the Armstids'
money. He gave the five dollars to Henry's
wife, but Henry took the bill from her
and gave it to Flem Snopes. Hipps told
Mrs. Armstid that Flem would return it
to her the next day.
When the other purchasers tried to rope
their horses, the spotted devils ran through
an open gate and escaped into the
countryside. Henry Armstid broke his leg and
almost died. Eck Snopes chased the horse
that had been given him and ran it into
a boarding-house. The horse escaped from
the house and ran down the road. At a
bridge it piled into a wagon driven by
Vernon Tull and occupied by Tull's wife
and family. The mules pulling the wagon
became excited and Tull was jerked out
of the wagon onto his face.
The Tulls sued Eck Snopes for the
damages done to Vernon and to their
wagon; the Armstids sued Flem for
damages to Henry and for the recovery of
their five dollars. The justice of the peace
was forced to rule in favor of the
defendants. Flem could not be established as the
owner of the horses, and Eck was not the
legal owner of a horse that had been given
to him.
One day Henry Armstid told Ratliff
that Flem was digging every night in the
garden of the Old Frenchman place,
which Flem had acquired from Will
Varner. Ever since the Civil War there
had been rumors that the builder of the
house had buried money and jewels in
the garden. Henry and Ratliff took a man
named Bookwright into their confidence
and, with the aid of another man who
could use a divining rod, they slipped into
the garden after Flem had quit digging.
After locating the position of buried metal,
they began digging, and each unearthed a
bag of silver coins. They decided to pool
their resources and buy the land in a
hurry. Ratliff agreed to pay Flem an
exorbitant price. At night they kept on
shoveling, but they unearthed no more
treasure. Ratliff finally realized that no bag
could remain intact in the ground for
thirty years. When he and Bookwright
examined the silver coins, they found the
1447

money had been minted after the Civil
War.
But Armstid, now totally out of his
mind, refused to believe there was no
treasure. He kept on digging, day and
night. People from all over the county
came to watch his frantic shoveling.
Passing by on his way to Jefferson, Flem
Snopes paused only a moment to watch
Henry; then with a flip of the reins he
drove his horses on.
1448

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: c. 1200
Locale: Elsinore, Denmark
First presented: 1602
Principal characters:
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The Ghost, Hamlet's father, former King of Denmark
Claudius, the present king
Gertrude, Hamlet's mother
Polonius, a courtier
Ophelia, his daughter
Laertes, his son
Critique:
Whether Hamlet is considered as
literature, as philosophy, or simply as a
play, its great merit is generally admitted;
but to explain in a few words the reasons
for its excellence would be an impossible
task. The poetry of the play is superb;
its philosophy, although not altogether
original with Shakespeare, is expressed
with matchless artistry. The
universality of its appeal rests in large measure
on the character of Hamlet himself.
Called upon to avenge his father's
murder, he was compelled to face problems
of duty, morality, and ethics, which have
been the concern of men throughout the
ages. In Hamlet himself are mirrored the
hopes and fears, the feelings of
frustration and despair, of all mankind.
The Story:
Three times the ghost of Denmark's
dead king had stalked the battlements
of Elsinore Castle. On the fourth night
Horatio, Hamlet's friend, brought the
young prince to see the specter of his
father, two months dead. Since his
father's untimely death, Hamlet had been
grief-stricken and in an exceedingly
melancholy frame of mind. The
mysterious circumstances surrounding the death
of his father had perplexed him; then
too, his mother had married Claudius, the
dead king's brother, much too hurriedly
to suit Hamlet's sense of decency.
That night Hamlet saw his father's
ghost and listened in horror to what it
had to say. He learned that his father
had not died from the sting of a
serpent, as had been supposed, but that
he had been murdered by his own
brother, Claudius, the present king. The
ghost added that Claudius was guilty not
only of murder but also of incest and
adultery. But the spirit cautioned
Hamlet to spare Queen Gertrude, his mother,
so that heaven could punish her.
The ghost's disclosures should have
left no doubt in Hamlet's mind that
Claudius must be killed. But the
introspective prince was not quite sure that
the ghost was his father's spirit, for he
feared it might have been a devil sent
to torment him. Debating with himself
the problem of whether or not to carry
out the spirit's commands, Hamlet swore
his friends, including Horatio, to secrecy
concerning the appearance of the ghost,
and in addition told them not to consider
him mad if from then on he were to
act queerly.
Meanwhile Claudius was facing not
only the possibility of war with Norway,
but also, and much worse, his own
conscience, which had been much troubled
since his hasty marriage to Gertrude. In
addition, he did not like the melancholia
of the prince, who, he knew, resented
the king's hasty marriage. Claudius
feared that Hamlet would take his throne
away from him. The prince's strange
1449

behavior and wild talk made the king
think that perhaps Hamlet was mad,
but he was not sure. To learn the cause
of Hamlet's actions—madness or
ambition—Claudius commissioned two of
Hamlet's friends, Rosencrantz and Guil-
denstern, to spy on the prince. But
Hamlet saw through their clumsy efforts and
confused them with his answers to their
questions.
Polonius, the garrulous old
chamberlain, believed that Hamlet's behavior
resulted from lovesickness for his daughter,
Ophelia. Hamlet, meanwhile, had
become increasingly melancholy.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as well as
Polonius, were constantly spying on him.
Even Ophelia, he thought, had turned
against him. The thought of deliberate
murder was revolting to him, and he
was constantly plagued by uncertainty as
to whether the ghost were good or bad.
When a troupe of actors visited Elsinore,
Hamlet saw in them a chance to discover
whether Claudius were guilty. He
planned to have the players enact before
the king and the court a scene like that
which, according to the ghost, took place
the day the old king died. By watching
Claudius during the performance,
Hamlet hoped to discover for himself signs of
Claudius' guilt.
His plan worked. Claudius became so
unnerved during the performance that
he walked out before the end of the
scene. Convinced by the king's actions
that the ghost was right, Hamlet had
no reason to delay in carrying out the
wishes of his dead father. Even so,
Hamlet failed to take advantage of his first
real chance after the play to kill
Claudius. He came upon the king in an
attitude of prayer, and could have stabbed
him in the back. Hamlet did not strike
because he believed that the king would
die in grace at his devotions.
The queen summoned Hamlet to her
chamber to reprimand him for his
insolence to Claudius. Hamlet,
remembering what the ghost had told him, spoke to
her so violently that she screamed for
help. A noise behind a curtain followed
her cries, and Hamlet, suspecting that
Claudius was eavesdropping, plunged
his sword through the curtain, killing old
Polonius. Fearing an attack on his own
life, the king hastily ordered Hamlet to
England in company with Rosencranfcr
and Guildenstern, who carried a warrant
for Hamlet's death. But the prince
discovered the orders and altered them so
that the bearers should be killed on their
arrival in England. Hamlet then
returned to Denmark.
Much had happened in that unhappy
land during Hamlet's absence. Because
Ophelia had been rejected by her former
lover, she went mad and later drowned.
Laertes, Polonius' hot-tempered son,
returned from France and collected a band
of malcontents to avenge the death of
his father. He thought that Claudius had
killed Polonius, but the king told him
that Hamlet was the murderer and even
persuaded Laertes to take part in a plot
to murder the prince.
Claudius arranged for a duel between
Hamlet and Laertes. To allay suspicion
of foul play, the king placed bets on
Hamlet, who was an expert swordsman.
At the same time, he had poison placed
on the tip of Laertes' weapon and put
a cup of poison within Hamlet's reach
in the event that the prince became
thirsty during the duel. Unfortunately,
Gertrude, who knew nothing of the king's
treachery, drank from the poisoned cup
and died. During the contest, Hamlet
was mortally wounded with the poisoned
rapier, but the two contestants exchanged
foils in a scuffle, and Laertes himself
received a fatal wound. Before he died,
Laertes was filled with remorse and told
Hamlet that Claudius was responsible
for the poisoned sword. Hesitating no
longer, Hamlet seized his opportunity to
act, and fatally stabbed the king. Then
the prince himself died. But the ghost
was avenged.
1450

A HANDFUL OF DUST
Type of work: Novel
Author: Evelyn Waugh (1903- )
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Tony Last, owner of Hetton Abbey
Brenda Last, his wife
John, their son
Mrs. Beaver, an interior decorator
John Beaver, her son
Jock Grant-Menzies, Tony's friend
Dr. Messestger, an explorer
Todd, a half-caste trader who loved Dickens
Critique.
This novel, which portrays the decline
of the English landed aristocracy, is full
of foolish people who find their lives to
be no more than "a handful of dust."
The contrasts between the Gothic
magnificence of Hetton Abbey, the lives of
Brenda and Tony, and the aspirations of
the successors to Tony's property, are
effective instruments for bringing out the
meaning of the story. The author writes
finished dialogue; the narrative moves
smoothly from beginning to end.
The Story:
John Beaver lived in London with his
mother, an interior decorator. Beaver was
a worthless young man of twenty-five
who moved in the social circles of his
mother's wealthy customers. He was not
well liked, but he was often invited to
parties and weekends to fill a space made
vacant at the last moment.
One weekend Beaver was invited to
Hetton Abbey by its young owner, Tony
Last. Tony lived in the old Gothic abbey
with his wife, Brenda, and his young son,
John. It was Tony's dream that some day
he would restore his mansion to its former
feudal glory. Brenda was bored with her
husband's attachment to the past,
however; she found relief in her weekly trips
to London.
Beaver's stay at Hetton Abbey was
rather dull, but Brenda liked him and did
her best to entertain him. On her next
trip to London she saw him again and
asked him to take her to a party. At first
Beaver seemed reluctant; then he agreed
to escort her.
Beaver and Brenda left the party early,
creating some idle gossip. In a way, the
gossipers were correct, for Brenda had
definitely decided to have an affair with
Beaver. She returned home to the
unsuspecting Tony and told him that she
was bored with life in the country. She
said that she wanted to take some courses
in economics at the university in London.
Tony, feeling sorry for her, allowed her to
rent a one-room flat in a building owned
by Mrs. Beaver. Brenda moved to
London and returned to Hetton Abbey only
on weekends.
One day, when Tony went to London
on impulse, he found that his wife
already had engagements. He was forced
to spend the evening getting drunk with
his bachelor friend, Jock Grant-Menzies.
Tony's escapade bothered his
conscience so much that when Brenda
returned for the weekend she was able to
persuade him to let Mrs. Beaver
redecorate in modern style one of the rooms
of the old house.
A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh. By permission of the author, of Brandt & Brandt, and the
publishers, Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1934, by Evelyn Waugh.
1451

Brenda's conscience bothered her also.
She tried to interest Tony in a girl she
brought down for a weekend, but it was
no use. He only wanted to have his wife
back home. However, he still trusted her
and suspected nothing of her intrigue in
London.
Things might have gone on that way
indefinitely if young John Last had not
been killed by a horse while he was fox
hunting. Tony sent Jock up to London
to break the news to Brenda. At first
Brenda thought that Jock was speaking
of John Beaver's death, for he was out of
town. When she learned the truth, she
was relieved, realizing for the first time
how much she cared for Beaver.
With young John dead, she felt that
nothing held her to Tony any longer.
She wrote, telling him everything, and
asked for a divorce. Stunned, Tony could
not believe that Brenda had been false
to him. At last he consented to spend a
weekend at Brighton with another woman
to give her grounds for divorce.
Brenda's family was against the divorce
and attempted to prevent it. Then, when
they saw that the divorce would go
through, they tried to force Tony to give
Brenda more alimony than he had
planned. He refused, for he could raise
more money only by selling Hetton
Abbey. The proposal angered him so
much that he changed his mind about the
divorce. He would not set Brenda free.
Tony, wishing to get away from
familiar faces, accompanied an explorer,
Dr. Messinger, on an expedition to find
a lost city in the South American jungles.
During the voyage across the Atlantic
Tony had a short affair with a young
French girl from Trinidad. But when
she learned that he was married she
would have nothing more to do with him.
Once the explorers had left civilization
behind them, Tony found himself
thinking of what was going on in London. He
did not enjoy jungle life at all; insect
bites, vermin, and vampire bats made
sleep almost impossible.
When Negro boatmen had taken Tony
and Dr. Messinger far up the Demarara
River, they left the explorers in the hands
of Indian guides. Then the expedition
struck out into unmapped territory.
Meanwhile, back in London, Brenda
no longer found Beaver an ardent lover.
He had counted strongly on getting a
considerable amount of money when he
married Brenda; now Brenda could get
neither the money nor a divorce.
Brenda began to grow desperate for
money. She asked Mrs. Beaver for a job,
but Mrs. Beaver thought that it would
not look well for her to employ Brenda.
A short time later Beaver decided to
accompany his mother on a trip to
California.
At last Tony and Dr. Messinger came
to a river they believed must flow into
the Amazon, and they ordered the Indians
to build canoes. The Indians obeyed, but
they refused to venture down the river.
There was nothing for the white men to
do but to continue the journey without
guides. Soon after they set out Tony
came down with fever. Dr. Messinger
left him on shore and went on alone to
find help, but the explorer drowned when
his boat capsized. Tony in his delirium
struggled through the jungle and came
by chance to the hut of a trader named
Todd, who nursed him back to health
but kept him a prisoner. Tony was forced
to read the novels of Dickens aloud to his
captor. When some Englishmen came in
search of Tony, the trader made them
believe his captive had died of fever. Tony
faced lifelong captivity to be spent
reading over and over Dickens' novels to the
illiterate half-caste, for no white man
could travel in the jungle without native
help.
Beaver left for California. Brenda
knew that their affair was over. No
news came from Tony in South America.
Without his permission, Brenda could not
draw upon the family funds.
Then Tony was officially declared
dead, and Hetton Abbey became the
property of another branch of the Last
family. The new owner of Hetton Abbey
1452

bred silver fox. Although he had even
fewer servants than his predecessor and
had shut off most of the house, he still
dreamed that some day Hetton Abbey
would again be as glorious as it was in the
days of Cousin Tony.
He erected a memorial to Tony at
Hetton Abbey, but Brenda was unable to
attend its dedication. She was engaged
elsewhere with her new husband, Jock
Grant-Menzies.
1453

HANDLEY CROSS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Smith Surtees (1803-1864)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1843; enlarged 1854
Principal characters:
John Jorrocks, a wealthy grocer
Mrs. Jorrocks, his wife
Belinda, his niece
Pigg, his huntsman
Captain Doleful, a master of ceremonies
Critique:
Handley Cross is a fairly typical ex-
imple of nineteenth-century English
sporting tales. The novel contains little
plot and little attempt at dramatic
motivation, but to an enthusiastic fox hunter
Handley Cross is fascinating because of
its gusty hunting tales and the single-
minded devotion of its characters to the
sport. Jorrocks, appearing in a number
of Surtees* works, is dear to devotees of
the hard-riding, hard-drinking sporting
set.
The Story:
For years Michael Hardy had been
the leader of the hunt in Sheepwash
Vale. While he did not pay quite all
the expenses of the sport, his personality
and vigor kept fox hunting popular in the
district. Michael was one of the old
school; his hounds were unkenneled and
boarded here and there, and the horses
were mosdy pickups. At his death it
seemed that fox hunting could no longer
be accounted an attraction in the
county-
There were some other difficulties.
The village of Handley Cross was rapidly
growing. Having discovered by chance
the curative values of the local spring,
a reprobate physician named Swizzle had
set up as a spa doctor, and in a few
years Handley Cross became a
fashionable watering place. Swizzle was a
perfect doctor for many people. He
invariably prescribed game pie and rare
beef for his patients, and advised two
quarts of port wine at dinner. He
became a familiar sight in the village, as
he buttonholed his patients on the street
and inspected their coated tongues and
gouty joints. With this new fame as
a health resort hotels and souvenir stands
sprang up to bring life to the sleepy
village.
But there is no good proposition
without competition. Another shady
practitioner, a sanctimonious doctor named
Mello, moved in. He bought land with
a small spring on it, poured epsom salts
in the water every night, and set up a
rival establishment. In no time the town
was divided into Melloites and Swizzle-
ites. The important change, however,
was in the social life of Handley Cross.
Captain Doleful, a lean, hypocritical
half-pay captain, appointed himself
master of ceremonies for the town. With
the help of august Mrs. Barnington, the
social arbiter of the fashionable set, balls
and teas soon became popular and social
eminence became the goal of the visiting
gentry.
In a resort so fashionable it was
unthinkable not to have a hunt club.
Captain Doleful and some other worthies
attempted to carry on after Michael
Hardy died, but their efforts were
unsuccessful. For one thing, the leaders of
the hunt rode in gigs, conveyances
unthinkable in Hardy's day. In addition,
the townspeople were too poor or too
parsimonious to hire a whipper-in and
a huntsman. Worst of all, subscribers
1454

to the hunt were often slow in paying;
soon there were not enough funds to
pay for damage done to crops and fences.
The fashionables decided that the
only solution was a real master of the
hunt, one not too elegant for a small
spa but rich enough to pay the difference
between subscriptions and expenses. A
committee headed by Captain Doleful
and the secretary Fleeceall decided to
invite John Jorrocks, whose fame had
spread far, to become master of the hunt.
Accordingly a letter was sent, and the
negotiations were soon brought to a
conclusion, for Jorrocks was an easy
victim.
After a life devoted to selling tea and
other groceries, Jorrocks was a wealthy
man. He had turned to hunting as a
hobby, and in spite of his Cockney
accent and ample girth, he was soon
accepted in the field. Although he had the
bad habit of selling cases of groceries to
his fellow huntsmen, in Surrey Jorrocks
soon became a fixture among the
sporting set. Now, he was to be master in
his own right. Captain Doleful secured
a lodge for him, and the date was set
for his arrival in Handley Cross.
On the appointed day, the four-piece
band turned out and the whole town
assembled at the station. Several of
the villagers carried banners bearing the
legend "Jorrocks Forever." When the
train pulled in, Captain Doleful looked
through the first-class section but found
no Jorrocks. The second-class carriages
produced no Jorrocks. Finally, on a flat
car at the end of the train, he found
Jorrocks and his family snugly sitting
in their own coach with the horses
already hitched. Loud were the cheers as
the new hunt master drove through the
streets of Handley Cross.
Jorrocks was soon installed in his new
lodging with Mrs. Jorrocks and Belinda,
his pretty niece. Belinda added greatly
to Jorrock's popularity.
The new hunt master looked over his
kennels and the few broken-down hacks
in the stable. Besides building up both
the pack and the stud, he had to have a
real huntsman. He finally hired Pigg,
chiefly because his skinny shanks and
avowed delicate appetite outweighed his
speech of such broad Scots that few
could understand what he said.
Jorrocks was quickly disillusioned about his
new huntsman. When Pigg ate his first
meal in the kitchen, there was a great
uproar. Hurrying in, Jorrocks found
Pigg greedily eating the whole supper
joint and holding the other servants at
bay. And Pigg could drink more ale
and brandy than Jorrocks himself.
Many were the fine hunts that winter.
Because Pigg was skillful and Jorrocks
persistent, the collection of brushes grew
fast. One night Jorrocks was far from
home, separated from his trusty Pigg and
the pack, and caught in a downpour of
rain. He turned into the first gate he
saw and knocked. An efficient groom took
his horse and two flunkies politely
conducted the dripping Jorrocks to his
room. On the bed were dry clothes, in
the small tub was hot water, and on the
table was a bottle of brandy. Jorrocks
peeled off his clothes and settled into
the tub. He had just started on his
third glass of brandy when some one
knocked. Jorrocks ignored the noise for
a while but the knocker was insistent.
At last a determined voice from the
hall demanded his clothes. Jorrocks
quickly got out of the tub, put on the
clothes which did not fit, and took a
firm, possessive grip on the brandy
bottle. Then he shouted forcefully that he
would keep the clothes.
When Jorrocks came down to dinner,
he was surprised to be told that he was
in Ongar Castle. His unwilling host was
the Earl of Bramber, whose servants
had mistaken Jorrocks for an invited
guest and by mistake had put him in the
room of a captain. Jorrocks looked at the
angry captain, who was wearing an
outfit of his host. Only Jorrocks* Cockney
impudence could have brazened out such
a situation.
At last the company sat down to din-
1455

ner. As usual, Jorrocks drank too much,
and while giving a rousing toast to fox
hunting he fell fast asleep on the floor
He awoke immersed in water. Calling
lustily for help, he struck out for the
shore. When a flunky brought a candle,
he saw that he had been put to bed in
the bathhouse and that while walking
in his sleep he had fallen into the small
pool. But Jorrocks was irrepressible; in
the morning he parted from the earl on
good terms.
After a hard-riding winter, spring
finally spoiled the hunting and the
Jorrocks family left for London. Pigg
stayed in Handley Cross to dispose of the
dogs and horses. Captain Doleful bought
Jorrocks* own mount for twenty-five
pounds. When the horse became sick
and died soon afterward, parsimonious
Doleful sued Jorrocks for the purchase
price. The court decided in favor of
Jorrocks, holding that no one can warrant a
horse to stay sound in wind and limb.
Jorrocks* business associates looked on
his hunting capers as a tinge of
madness. That fall Jorrocks was heard to
exclaim in delight at the sight of a
frostbitten dahlia; it would soon be fox
hunting time. But at last Jorrocks was
committed by a lunacy commission for
falling victim to the fox hunting
madness. In vain Jorrocks sputtered and
protested; his vehemence only added to
the charge against him. Poor, fat Jorrocks
spent some time in an asylum before an
understanding chancellor freed him.
Luckily he regained his freedom before
the hunting season was too far gone.
1456

HANDY ANDY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Samuel Lover (1797-1868)
Type of plot: Comic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1842
Principal characters:
Andy Rooney, a young Irish boy
Squire Edward Egan, his employer
Murtough Murphy, an attorney
Squire Gustavus O'Grady, a rival landlord
Edward O'Connor, a gentleman and poet
Critique:
Written as a series of anecdotes
published in twelve monthly installments,
Handy Andy is not a cohesive novel
insofar as plot is concerned. It is, on the other
hand, excellent in character portrayal and
atmosphere. The quality likely to hold the
modern reader is its droll wit. Rich in Irish
folkways, peppered with clever Irish tales,
enhanced by Irish songs, Handy Andy is
more than a series of tales revolving
around a political issue, a stupid lout of a
boy, and a lovable hero. Accused of
flattering his countrymen, Lover replied that as
an Irishman he was compelled to present
his land as he saw it.
The Story:
Andy Ropney was, from the day he was
born, a mischievous troublemaker. When
he was old enough to work, his mother
took him to Squire Egan of Merryvale
Hall, who hired him as a stableboy. His
literal nnnd and naive ways frequently
caused his superiors much agitation.
One day Squire Egan sent Andy to the
post-office to get a letter. Thinking the
postage unduly high, Andy stole two other
letters in order to get his money's worth.
The squire's letter was from Murtough
Murphy, an attorney, and it concerned a
forthcoming election for a county seat
held by Sir Timothy Trimmer, who was
expected to die before long. Murphy
warned Egan that although he could be
certain of most of the votes in the election,
Squire O'Grady of Neck-or-Nothing Hall
was likely to support the Hon. Sackville
Scatterbrain, another candidate. It
happened that one of the purloined letters was
addressed to Gustavus O'Grady. Peering
through the envelope, Egan made out
some unflattering words about himself. In
anger he threw the letter into the fire. To
cover up his error he burned the other
letter also and then told Andy that he
destroyed them to protect such a foolish
gossoon from detection.
Andy could never get anything straight.
When Squire Egan sent him on an errand
to get a document from Murtough
Murphy and Mrs. Egan sent him to the
apothecary shop, Andy left Murphy's
paper on the counter of the store and took
up, instead, O'Grady's packet of
medicine. The apothecary then
unknowingly gave O'Grady the document from
Murphy. On receiving O'Grady's
medicine, Squire Egan was insulted and
challenged Murphy to a duel. O'Grady,
insulted at the contents of Murphy's legal
document, challenged M'Garry, the
apothecary. The matter was soon straightened
out; Handy Andy fared the worst.
Edward O'Connor was a gallant
cavalier. Well-educated and gifted as a poet,
he was a favorite among the men of the
community. He was in love with Fanny
Dawson but had not declared himself as
yet. A misunderstanding between Fanny's
father and Edward had resulted in the
young man's banishment from the
Dawson house. After the quarrel Major
Dawson maintained an intense dislike for the
poet. Although she brooded over the ab-
1457

sence of her lover, Fanny was forced to
obey her father's wishes.
While walking one night, Andy, after
stumbling over a man stretched out in the
middle of the road, hailed a passing
jaunting car. The driver, learning that the
drunken man was his brother, stayed
behind to care for him and asked Andy to
drive his carriage. The passenger, Mr.
Furlong, said he was on his way to visit
the squire. Assuming that he meant
Squire Egan, Andy took Furlong to
Merry vale Hall. But Furlong had wanted
to see O'Grady on election business. Egan,
continuing to deceive the visitor, sent for
Murphy, and the two men contrived to
pump as much information from Furlong
as they could.
When the truth was revealed, Furlong
set out for Neck-or-Nothing Hall. There
he met with more mischief. O'Grady was
in a terrible mood, for he had discovered
that the letter announcing Furlong's
arrival had gone astray. The climax came
when O'Grady's daughter Augusta
happened into Furlong's room while he was
dressing. A moment later O'Grady's knock
at the door sent her hiding under the bed
to avoid discovery. O'Grady caught her,
however, and insisted that Furlong marry
her.
The Hon. Sackville Scatterbrain
arrived in time for the nomination speeches,
a lively affair with a great deal of shouting
and much merriment. On election day
Egan supporters succeeded in irritating
O'Grady, who had no sense of humor and
plenty of temper. Thinking the crowd too
boisterous, O'Grady aroused the people by
sending for the militia. When he ordered
the militia to fire into the angry mob,
Edward O'Connor rode into the crowd to
disperse it and prevent the militia from
firing. Impressed by his bravery, the
militia captain refused to fire. O'Grady then
challenged O'Connor to a duel. O'Connor
wounded O'Grady. When the Hon.
Sackville Scatterbrain won the election, Squire
Egan began a suit to dispute its result.
Larry Hogan, one of O'Grady's
employees, had learned about the purloining
of O'Grady's letter, which Squire Egan
had burned, and he hoped to put his
knowledge to use by intimidating the
squire. One night Andy happened to
overhear Larry, who was very drunk, talking
about his scheme. Confused, Andy went
to Father Phil, his confessor, for advice.
It so happened that the priest was
attending to the nuptials of Matty Dwyer and
James Casey. At the wedding feast Casey
failed to appear. Fearing that his
daughter would be disgraced, Jack Dwyer asked
if any of the guests present would marry
Matty. Andy boldly offered himself and
the marriage was performed. After the
couple had been left alone in their new
cottage James Casey arrived, accompanied
by a hedge-priest who performed a second
ceremony. Andy, protesting, was dragged
outside and tied to a tree.
O'Grady died from the ill effects of the
•wound O'Connor had given him. Because
the dead man had been deep in debt and
unpopular in the community, his body
was in danger of being confiscated. To
prevent such an action, the family made
two coffins; one, the true coffin, was to
be buried secretly at night. O'Connor,
stumbling upon the scene of the
clandestine burial, was struck with remorse at
his own deed, but young Gustavus
O'Grady forgave his father's slayer, who
in return pledged himself to lifelong
friendship with Gustavus.
When a beggar warned Mrs. Rooney
that someone was plotting to carry off her
niece Oonah, Andy disguised himself as
the young girl. Kidnaped, he was taken
to Shan More's cave, where Andy's wild
entreaties so aroused the pity of Shan
More's sister Bridget that she took the
distressed captive to bed with her.
Discovering her error in the morning, Bridget
lamented her lost honor, which Andy
righted by marrying her. Too late Andy
discovered that he really loved Oonah and
that he had married a woman of bad
reputation.
It was learned that Lord Scatterbrain,
disguised as a servant named Rooney, had
married Andy's mother, only to desert her
1458

before Andy's birth. After the death of the
old nobleman—the Hon. Sackville Scat-
terbrain, his nephew, did not dispute the
succession—Andy became his heir, with a
seat in the House of Lords. Off to London
he went to learn fine manners and to enjoy
his new estate. Shan More and Bridget
followed to demand a settlement for the
deserted wife. To escape the vulgar and
persistent pair, Andy gladly gave Bridget
some money.
Major Dawson met with an accident
which resulted in his death. With the
major gone, all bbstacles between Fanny
Dawson and Edward O'Connor were
removed, and O'Connor was finally able to
enter the Dawson house and to marry his
Fanny.
Shan More made an attempt upon
Andy's life. When the attempt failed
Andy went to Shan's den, where he found
a wounded man, an escaped convict, who
proved to be Bridget's true husband. Rid
of his wife, Andy was free to marry
Oonah.
1459

HANGMAN'S HOUSE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Donn Byrne (Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne, 1889-1928)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Ireland
First puhlished: 1925
Principal characters:
James O'Brien, Lord Glenmalure, Jimmy the Hangman
Connaught, his daughter
Dermot McDermot, a neighbor
The Citizen, Dinny Hogan the Irreconcilable's son
John D'Arcy, Dermot's cousin, Connaught's husband
Critique:
In Hangman's House, Donn Byrne
intended to write an Irish novel for
Irishmen, people for whom their own country
was a passion. An intense love for Irish
landscape, horse-racing, coursing, Gaelic
balladry, hunting, and the writer's
freedom-loving countrymen is evident
throughout the book. When the novel
appeared, critics may have preferred his
Messer Marco Polo or The Wind Blow-
eth, but revised judgment is likely to put
Hangman's House above the latter. The
book was written in Dublin in 1922 and
1923, while the country was still being
harried by the armed resistance of
Republican irreconcilables. The state of
Ireland at that time is presented in Byrne's
characterization of the Citizen, a splendid
man who had direct control over those
who wanted to fight for freedom. The
novel has been dramatized for the stage
and for motion pictures.
The Story:
Dermot McDermot lived in the most
pleasant homestead in the County of
Dublin. He was a serious, slight man of
twenty-five, taking after his Quaker
mother more than his Irish soldier
father except in his intense love of
Ireland and everything Irish.
Dermot's nearest neighbors were James
O'Brien, Lord Glenmalure, and his
daughter Connaught. They lived in a
rather forbidding-looking house that the
country people insisted on calling Jimmy
the Hangman's House. James O'Brien
had been a violent rebel in his youth,
but he had found it to his advantage to
make his peace with the English.
Becoming Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, he was
responsible for the hanging of many
Fenians.
When Glenmalure was stricken on the
bench, he was forced to retire. His
condition becoming worse, he called in
doctors from Dublin and then England. One
told him that he would live a month,
certainly no more than five weeks. Then
he secretly sent off a letter to John D'Ar-
cy, Dermot's cousin, son of an old friend
called Tricky Mick. Dermot thought
D'Arcy a twister; Connaught's father said
he had merely made a youngster's
mistake. Glenmalure knew John D'Arcy was
devious but ambitious, and that he might
make his way in politics with Con-
naught's money and Hangman Jimmy's
backing. In the weeks remaining to him,
Glenmalure made contacts for D'Arcy
and then married him to Connaught.
Glenmalure knew Dermot wanted to
marry Connaught but would not leave
his homestead; he thought Connaught,
strong-willed as she was, could guide
D'Arcy to a place in the world where she
might even get a title.
Glenmalure had been a rebel of the
HANGMAN'S HOUSE by Donn Byrne. By permission of the publishers, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Jm
Copyright, 1925, 1926, by The Pictorial Review Co. Copyright, 1926, by The Century Co.
1460

old days, but there were still plenty of
young men ready for a war for freedom
If the word were given. Those who
directed the movement decided there must
be no war. They sent back to Ireland
the Citizen, a commander of cavalry in
the French army, but also the son of old
Dinny Hogan the Irreconcilable, who
had fled from Ireland and gone to live
in France after the last uprising. The
Citizen was to spend a year in Ireland,
to make sure the young men would keep
in line.
He had another reason for going to
Ireland. John D'Arcy had married and
then deserted his sister Maeve. Her shame
caused her death and her son's, and their
deaths brought on Dinny Hogan's. Din-
ny's son was out for revenge.
Glenmalure died the night of Con-
naught's wedding. She and D'Arcy
returned from their honeymoon
immediately.
Dermot saw them at the Tara Hunt,
one of the best in the country. The
Citizen also turned up at the hunt and
approached D'Arcy to ask if he had been
in Paris in '95. D'Arcy, after swearing
that he had never been in Paris, went to
the police to expose the Citizen. Con-
naught could not understand why
D'Arcy had lied about being in Paris; she was
furious when she heard that he had in
formed on a hunted man.
Dermot knew D'Arcy feared the
Citizen but could not understand why. He
also heard that things were not going
well at Glenmalure, that Connaught kept
a woman relative with her constantly,
while D'Arcy spent his time gambling
with people who would never have dared
enter the house during Glenmalure's
lifetime. D'Arcy's backers in politics had
reneged after Glenmalure died, and
D'Arcy was at loose ends.
On St. Stephen's Day the first
steeplechase of the year was held at the Han-
nastown races. Connaught's Bard of
Armagh was entered. Dermot heard that
long odds were being placed oh him,
though the horse should have been
considered the best in the field. One of the
bookmakers told him that D'Arcy had
placed a large bet against the Bard, but
that there were many small bets on him
that would spell disaster to the poor
people if the Bard did not run. On the day
of the race Connaught's jockey did not
show up. Dermot rode the Bard and won.
He and Connaught found D'Arcy
sobbing afterward because he had lost
heavily. Then Dermot knew his cousin was a
weakling. That night D'Arcy killed the
Bard.
Connaught left home and even the
gamblers refused to play with a man
who had killed a horse. Connaught,
meanwhile, was miserable in England.
Dermot looked for D'Arcy to straighten
him out, to offer him money to go away
if that seemed best. D'Arcy told him that
he had married Maeve. Thinking D'Arcy
had been married to Maeve when he
married Connaught, Dermot thrashed him
and would probably have killed him if
an innkeeper had not interfered. Dermot
gave D'Arcy money and told him to leave
the country.
Connaught came home a short time
later to a house of bitterness and gloom.
After she and Dermot finally admitted
they loved each other, Dermot sought out
the Citizen to see if they might not work
out some way to keep the shame of
D'Arcy's conduct from staining
Connaught and yet dissolve that marriage so
that he and Connaught could be married.
The Citizen told Dermot that Maeve had
actually died before D'Arcy married
Connaught, though D'Arcy could not have
known it at that time, Dermot's hands
were tied.
D'Arcy, hearing that Maeve was dead,
came back to Glenmalure, and
Connaught sought refuge with Dermot and
his mother. D'Arcy, finding her there,
accused Connaught and Dermot of being
lovers. When they admitted their
feelings, he threatened to hale them into
court, but Dermot's mother prevented
him. Connaught went again to England.
Knowing that Connaught would do
1461

nothing to him, D'Arcy began to sell off
all the possessions in the house. Dermot
made arrangements in Dublin to be in-
formed whenever those things came on
the market and he bought up all of them.
One night Dermot decided to pick some
of Connaught's own roses and send them
to her. As he went toward the house
Glenmalure looked empty and forbidding.
At the gate he met the Citizen, bent on
killing D'Arcy. Dermot, not wishing the
Citizen to be soiled with the murder of
a twister like D'Arcy, tried to persuade
him to go away. But the Citizen was
determined. Dermot was afraid to let him
go in alone.
Inside they found D'Arcy dressed for
travel. The house had been stripped and
there was a smell of oil in it. Instead of
killing D'Arcy outright, the Citizen al
lowed himself to be persuaded to a duel
with pistols. D'Arcy shot before the
signal had been given and wounded the
Citizen. Then he smashed a lamp on the
floor and dashed upstairs. The lamp
started a sheet of fire that swept through the
house as Dermot and the Citizen fought
their way outside. D'Arcy caught his foot
while jumping from a window and was
dead when he hit the ground.
Dermot's mother went to Connaught
for a while. Dermot had the walls of
Glenmalure torn down and a neat
cottage built in its place. The Citizen,
recovered from his wound, went back to
his regiment. Then Connaught came
home.
1462

HARD TIMES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1854
Principal characters:
Thomas Gradgrind, a schoolmaster and a believer in "facts"
Louisa Gradgrind, his oldest daughter
Tom Gradgrind, Louisa's brother
Mr. Bounderby, Louisa's husband, a manufacturer and banker
Sissy Jupe, a waif befriended by the Gradgrinds
Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby's housekeeper
Stephen Blackpool, Bounderby's employee
James Harthouse, a political aspirant
Critique:
This novel was Dickens' first story of
outright social protest. Earlier works had
contained sections of social criticism, but
this was the first motivated entirely
by the writer's feelings about
contemporary British culture. The novel,
appropriately dedicated to Thomas Carlyle,
another critic of nineteenth-century
British society, was based upon personal
observations of life in Manchester, one of
England's great manufacturing towns and
the original for Dickens' Coketown. The
story is loaded with the bitter sincerity of
Dickens' dislike for the industrial
conditions he found in his homeland.
Unfortunately for the value of the novel as a
social document, Dickens overdrew his
portraits of the industrialists responsible
for conditions he abhorred; his
industrialists became sheer grotesques and monsters.
The Story:
Thomas Gradgrind, proprietor of an
experimental private school in Coketown,
insisted that the children under him learn
facts and only facts. He felt that the world
had no place for fancy or imagination. His
own five children were models of a factual
education. Never having been permitted
to learn anything of the humanities, they
were ignorant of literature and any
conception of human beings as individuals.
Even fairy tales and nursery rhymes had
been excluded from their education.
One day, as he walked from the school
to his home, Gradgrind was immensely
displeased and hurt to find his two oldest
children, Louisa and Tom, trying to peek
through the canvas walls of a circus tent.
Nor did it ease his mind to discover that
the two youngsters were not at all sorry
for acting against the principles under
which they had been reared and educated.
Later Gradgrind and his industrialist
friend, Mr. Josiah Bounderby, discussed
possible means by which the children
might have been misled from the study of
facts. They concluded that another pupil,
Sissy Jupe, whose father was a clown in
the circus, had influenced the young
Gradgrinds.
Having decided to remove Sissy Jupe
from the school, they set out immediately
to tell the girl's father. When they arrived
at the inn where the Jupes were staying,
they found that the clown-father had
deserted his daughter. Gradgrind, moved by
sentiment, decided to keep the girl in his
home and let her be educated at his school,
all against the advice of Bounderby, who
thought Sissy Jupe would be only a bad
influence on the Gradgrind children.
Years passed, and Louisa and young
Tom grew up. Gradgrind knew that
Bounderby had long wished to marry
Louisa. She, educated away from senti-
1463

ment, agreed to marry Bounderby, who
was thirty years her elder. Tom, an
employee in Bounderby's bank, was very glad
to have his sister marry Bounderby; he
wanted a friend to help him if he got into
trouble there. In fact, he advised his sister
to marry Bounderby for that reason, and
she, loving her brother, agreed to help him
by marrying the wealthy banker.
Bounderby himself was very happy to
have Louisa as his wife. After his marriage
he placed his elderly housekeeper in
rooms at the bank. Mrs. Sparsit, disliking
Louisa, was determined to keep an eye on
her for her employer's sake. After the
marriage all seemed peaceful at the bank,
at the Gradgrind home, and at the
Bounderby residence.
In the meantime Gradgrind had been
elected to Parliament from his district. He
sent out from London an aspiring young
politician, James Harthouse, who was to
gather facts about the industrial city of
Coketown, facts which were to be used
in a survey of economic and social life in
Britain. In order to facilitate the young
man's labors, Gradgrind had given him a
letter of introduction to Bounderby, who
immediately told Harthouse the story of
his career from street ragamuffin to
industrialist and banker. Harthouse thought
Bounderby a fool, but he was greatly
interested in pretty Louisa.
Through his friendship with
Bounderby, Harthouse met Tom Gradgrind,
who lived with the Bounderbys.
Harthouse took advantage of Tom's love for
drink to learn more about Louisa. Hearing
that she had been subjected to a
dehumanizing education, and feeling that she
would be easy prey for seduction because
of her loveless marriage to the pompous
Bounderby, Harthouse decided to test
Louisa's virtue.
Before long Harthouse gained favor in
her eyes. Neither realized, however, that
Mrs. Sparsit, jealous and resenting her
removal from the comfortable Bounderby
house, spied on them constantly.
Everyone was amazed to learn one day
that the Bounderby bank had been
robbed. Chief suspect was Stephen
Blackpool, an employee whom Bounderby had
mistreated. Blackpool, who had been seen
loitering in front of the bank, had
disappeared on the night of the robbery.
Suspicion also fell on a Mrs. Pegler, an old
woman known to have been in
Blackpool's company.
A search for Blackpool and Mrs. Peglet
proved fruitless. Bounderby seemed
content to wait; he said that the culprits
would turn up sooner or later.
The affair between Louisa and
Harthouse reached a climax when Louisa
agreed to elope with the young man. Her
better judgment, however, caused her to
return to her father instead of running
away with her lover. Gradgrind, horrified
to see what his education had done to
Louisa's character, tried to make amends
for her. The situation was complicated by
Mrs. Sparsit. She had learned of the
proposed elopement and had told Bounderby.
He angrily insisted that Louisa return to
his home. Gradgrind, realizing that his
daughter had never loved Bounderby,
insisted that she be allowed to make her own
choice. Harthouse, giving up all hope of
winning Louisa, disappeared.
Mrs. Sparsit returned to act as Bound-
erby's housekeeper during Louisa's
absence and tried to reinstate herself in
Bounderby's confidence by tracing down
Mrs. Pegler. To hex chagrin, Mrs. Pegler
turned out to be Bounderby's mother.
Bounderby was furious, for his mother
disproved his boasts about being a self-
made man. Meanwhile Louisa and Sissy
Jupe accidentally found Blackpool, who
had fallen into a mine shaft while
returning to Coketown to prove his innocence of
the robbery. After his rescue he told that
Tom Gradgrind was the real culprit.
When the young man disappeared, his
sister anu father, with the help of Sissy
Jupe, found him and placed him,
disguised, in a circus until arrangements
could be made for spiriting him out of the
country.
Before he could escape, however,
Bounderby's agents found Tom and ar-
1464

rested him. With the aid of the circus
roustabouts he was rescued and put on a
steamer which carried him away from the
police and Bounderby's vengeance.
Mrs. Sparsit, who had caused
Bounderby all. kinds of embarrassment by
producing Mrs. Pegler, was discharged from
his patronage, much to her chagrin.
Bounderby himself died unhappily in a fit
a few years later. The Gradgrinds, all of
them victims of an education of facts,
continued to live unhappily, unable to see the
human side of life.
1465

HARMONIUM
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
First published: 1923
In the case of Wallace Stevens the
proper understanding of his earlv poems
as a new dimension of poetic reality was
for the most part an exercise in hindsight.
This is not the same thing as saying that
at any time in his career he lacked the
attention of serious criticism or a body of
appreciative, well-wishing readers, only
that he was sometimes admired for the
wrong reasons.
Harmonium was published in 1923,
at a time when the French SvmbohVs—
Baudelaire, Mallarm6, Verlaine,
Rimbaud, Laforgue—were being assimilated
as influences and models, and the Imagist
movement had not yet run its course.
Because Stevens exhibited the tangential
imagery, elisions, and regard for symbolic
order of the first group and the
concentrated exactness of the second, most
readers found little in his poetry to link it
with the native tradition. Instead, they
seized upon the exotic and ornate
qualities of his verse as if these were its final
effect rather than a means to an end.
Stevens appeared to be, at first reading,
a poet whose purity of vision and
absolute integrity insulated him from the
material concerns of his society. Eliot in
England and Joyce in Paris occupied just
such positions of isolation and authority.
Closer home, the author of "Le Monocle
de Mon Oncle," "The Comedian as the
Letter C," and "Peter Quince at the
Clavier" seemed to provide a similar
image of the dedicated artist.
But Stevens, as it later developed, was
neither a master of decor for decoration's
sake—the literary dandy and Whistler in
words, as some called him—nor the
alienated poet such as the period demanded.
An aesthetic-moral writer of the highest
order, he had already in Harmonium
charted those areas of experience and
precept which were to comprise the
whole body of his work: the re-creation
of the physical world in bold and
brilliant imagery, the relation of imagination
to reality, the nature and function of art,
the poet's place in modern society,
problems of structure and style. Stevens was
not a poet of growth but of clarification,
and his later books merely ordered and
refined his vision and techniques.
Unlike most poets, who achieve only a
temporary balance between temperament and
environment, he created a total world for
his imagination and his belief in the
nourishing power of art. Perhaps the
greatest service he provided was to show
by example the possible in poetry if man
is to find a source of imaginative faith in
an age of d:sbelief or to establish once
more a sustaining relationship with the
world about him. Harmonium "makes a
constant sacrament of praise" to poetry—
the imaginative ordering of experience-
as the supreme fiction.
The unmistakable signature of these
poems is the richness of their diction, the
use of words not common to English
poetry, at least in these plain-speaking
times, a parade of brightly colored images
and sfarrling turns of phrase. Such words
as fubbed, coquelicot, barque, phosphor,
gobbet, fiscs, clavier, pannicles,
girandoles, rapey, carked, diaphanes, unburgh-
erly, minuscule, ructive, shebang, canti-
lene, pipping, curlicues, and funest
reveal the poet's delight in the unusual and
the rare. But as R. P. Blackmur pointed
out long ago, Stevens' poetic vocabulary
was not chosen for affected elegance,
coyness, or calculated obscurity. These words
give an air of Tightness and inevitability
within the contexts that frame them: it
is not the word itself but its relationship
to other words in the poem that gives
HARMONIUM by Wallace Stevens, from COLLECTED POEMS. Excerpts reprinted by permission of
the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1923, 1931, 1937, 1954, by Wallace Stevens.
1466

to Stevens' poetry its striking qualities
of style. It is the same with his images,
the strategic effectiveness of "barbaric
glass," "poems of plums," "venereal soil,"
"golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,"
"rosy chocolate and gilt umbrellas/'
"oozing cantankerous gum," "women of
primrose and purl," "the emperor of ice
cream," in conveying a luxuriance of
sense impressions. This diction of odd
angles of vision and strange surfaces gives
the impression of language revitalized as
if it were the invention of the poet
himself. It becomes a part of what Stevens
once called "the essential gaudiness of
poetry," and it is capable of a variety of
effects, as the following examples show.
The mules that angels ride come slowly
down
The blazing passes from beyond the
sun.
("Le Monocle de Mon Oncle")
or:
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!
("Bantams in Pine-Woods")
or:
. . . and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of the leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the
snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the
nothing that is.
("The Snow Man")
Stevens' diction and imagery are not
so much the verbalization of a mode of
thought but in themselves a way of
thinking. His poetry belongs to the order of
solipsism, that philosophical theory which
holds that the self is the only object of
verifiable knowledge and that all things
are re-created in the image of man in
the act of perceiving the world. In his
best poems this is the effect toward which
Stevens' floating images tend, so that
from the world of his verse one emerges
with altered perspective. There is in it a
different way of seeing, a rearrangement
of the familiar pattern of experience by
which poetry is no longer a way of
looking at life but a form of life. Thus his
images point to a passionate drive toward
material comfort and rich living, as
opposed to spiritual sterility in a world of
waste and excess. In Harmonium the
poles of his world become "our bawdiness
unpurged by epitaph" and "the strict
austerity of one vast, subjugating, final
tone." He is aware of tradition corrupted
and a world fallen into disorder, a
realization of man dispossessed of unity
between himself and his universe, of nature
violated, of old faiths gone. Out of his
knowledge he writes these lines on a Pru-
frock theme:
In the high west there burns a furious
star.
It is for fiery boys that star was set
And for sweet-smelling virgins close to
them.
The measure of the intensity of love
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.
For me, the firefly's quick, electric
stroke
Ticks tediously the time of one more
year.
And you? Remember how the crickets
came
Out of their mother grass, like little
kin,
In the pale nights, when your first
imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that
dust.
For a secular poet like Stevens, poetry
was to become the "supreme fiction" and
the imagination "the one reality in this
imagined world," a way of imposing
order on the chaos of experience. This is
the theme of "Anecdote of the Jar," one
of the simplest but most meaningful of
the poems in Harmonium:
1467

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
Here is the desire to impose order on the
wildness of nature and, indirectly, of the
world. It is not the image of the jar that
is of first importance in the poem, but
the act of placing the jar on such an
eminence that it commands the landscape, so
that
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Stevens puts Keats' Grecian urn to other
uses than those of contemplation or
revelation.
This "rage for order" is worked out in
more elaborate detail in "The Comedian
as the Letter C." A fable in six parts, the
poem is Stevens' most ambitious work
before "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"
on the relation of imagination to reality
and the poet's place and function in
society. It is characteristic of his self-satire
that he should picture the poet as a
picaresque mountebank trying to
reconcile imagination to actuality. In Part I,
"The World without Imagination,"
Crispin the subjectivist sets sail upon the sea
of life, to discover that the romantic
imagination which has given him eminence
within his own limited milieu is a world
preoccupied with things and therefore
lacking in imagination. Romanticism
being equated with egotism, Crispin in the
second section, "Concerning the
Thunderstorms of Yucatan," decides that the
only reality lies in the senses. His love
for the exotic ends when he is brought
to a realization of the overwhelming and
destructive powers of nature. The third
division, "Approaching Carolina,"
follows Crispin through a realm of the
imagination, symbolized by moonlight that
is the antithesis of the sun, which lights
up reality. Turning from the moon as a
mere reflection of reality, Crispin in Part
tV, "The Idea of a Colony," enters a
new phase of art based on the
community and regional ties. Disillusioned, he
turns in Part V, "A Nice Shady Home,"
to domesticity, and like Candide he digs
in his own garden; he will become a
philosopher. Part VI, "A Daughter with
Curls," deals with the final wisdom
Crispin found in his return to earth:
Crispin concocted doctrine from the
rout.
The world, a turnip once so readily
plucked,
Sacked up and carried overseas, daubed
out
Of its ancient purple, pruned to the
fertile main,
And sown again by the stiffest realist,
Came reproduced in purple, family
font,
The same insoluble lump.
Art, Stevens implies, cannot be made this
or that, or be pursued like a chimera; it
exists, separate and complete, in its own
substance and shape.
There are times when Stevens' search
for some standard of ultimate reality and
the forms that it may take in poetry leads
him away from concrete particularities
into the realm of abstract speculation. If
he appears at times more concerned with
meaning than with being, the reader may
also recognize in his work the power of a
contemplative writer who insists upon
the need of discipline in life as in art.
As a modern, he se^s the gap between
the potential and the actual;
consequently he must try to uncover causes, to
create a way of seeing mat his readers may
share.
Stevens himself achieves the supreme,
Active mood of contemplation and
understanding in "Sunday Morning," his best
poem and one of thd great poems of the
century. Here in the spectacle of a
woman eating her late breakfast on a
Sunday morning we have a picture of
modern boredom and uncertainty. The
woman sits in external sunlight but also
in the moral darkness of an age that has
lost faith in the spiritual nature of man:
"Why should she give her bounty to the

dead?" The poet's answer is that
happiness lies in the perception of nature,
which in its recurrent changes and
seasons creates an immortality in which man
may share.
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and
the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous
cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons
make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended
wings.
Harmonium reveals a poet of moral
and humane temper. Stevens' poems,
disciplined and perfectly articulated, reflect
a limited but significant picture of the
modern sensibility.
1469

HARP OF A THOUSAND STRINGS
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. L. Davis (1896- )
Type of plot: Historical-philosophical romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
Locale: The American prairie country, Tripoli, and Paris
First published: 1947
Principal characters:
Melancthon Crawford,
Commodore Robinette, and
Apeyahola, called Indian Jory, founders of a prairie town
Jean-Lambert Tallien, a French revolutionist
Therese de Fontenay, whom he loved
Rene de Bercy, her fiance
Anne-Joseph Theroigne, in love with de Bercy
Monsieur de Chimay, a wealthy aristocrat and merchant
The Story:
Old Melancthon Crawford had been one
of the founders of a prairie town in the
Osage country. In his last years his
eccentricities became so marked that relatives
had him sent back to his birthplace, a
Pennsylvania village he had always hated,
where they could keep an eye on him and
the disposal of his property. After his
departure on the eastbound stage
Commodore Robinette and Apeyahola, a Creek
Indian whom the settlers called Jory,
climbed to the prairie swell where
Crawford's trading post had stood. Talking
about the past, they thought back to a
decisive night the three had in common,
a night when Tripoli was being
bombarded by American naval guns during
the war with Barbary pirates.
Under cover of the bombardment the
three Americans, prisoners escaped from
the pasha's dungeons, had taken refuge
in a warehouse belonging to Thurlow
and Sons, Boston merchants. Young
Crawford was all for carrying away some
loot he found in a storeroom, but
Apeyahola and Robinette, the wounded sailor,
were against the idea. During the
argument Monsieur Tallien entered the
warehouse. One-time Citizen President of the
French National Convention, now an
obscure consular official under Napoleon,
HARP OF A THOUSAND STRINGS by H L. Davis. By permission of the publishers, William
Morrow & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1947, by H. L. Davis.
Critique:
Harp of a Thousand Strings is a novel
linking the personalities and events of
the French Revolution to the
development of the American West. Behind this
story of the naming of a prairie town lies
the author's theory that the incidents of
history are never final, that although they
may change form or significance they
continue to move like a slow ground-
swell from country to country among
people who have been affected by
history's erosions and accretions. History
itself is the thousand-stringed harp of the
title, an instrument capable of endless
vibrations and echoes. In order to present
his theme of the reverberations of history,
the writer made his novel contrapuntal
in design. The American frontier, the
Barbary wars, and the French Revolution
are introduced briefly for thematic effect,
later to be alternated and recombined.
The pattern is one of triads. The three
settings, America, Tripoli, and France;
the three Americans, each corresponding
to one of the drives in Tallien's career;
the three choices Tallien must make and
their consequences—all are essential to
the craftsmanship and design of this
unusual and rewarding historical novel.
1470

he was there to keep an appointment
with a Paris associate of Thurlow and
Sons. To pass the time while waiting, he
told the tale of his rise and eventual
ruin because of his love for the notorious
Therese de Fontenay. Crawford, Robi-
nette, and the Indian made a strange
audience. Tallien told his story, however,
because he saw each young American
marked by one phase of his own career:
vengeance, ambition, love.
Jean-Lambert Tallien, protege* of the
old Marquis de Bercy, was intended for
a career in law. During a visit to the de
Bercy estate he watched Anne-Joseph
Th^roigne being carried forcibly away
because she had attracted the interest of
Rend, the young marquis, soon to marry
the lovely Countess Therese de
Fontenay. While Tallien stood watching the
disappearing cart that carried
Anne-Joseph, Rene* rode up with the countess
and haughtily ordered the student to
open a gate. At Tallien's refusal the
young nobleman raised his whip. Tallien
struck the marquis* horse. The animal
threw his rider and dragged him,
unconscious and bleeding, by one stirrup.
Tallien hid in the woods while angry
villagers hunted him with guns and
pitchforks. Father Jarnatt, the parish priest,
saved the fugitive and sent him off to
Paris to seek his fortune in journalism.
These things happened in the year the
Bastille fell.
In Paris, Tallien again met
Anne-Joseph Th£roigne, by that time a rough-
tongued, rabble-rousing virago, the friend
of Robespierre and members of the
Jacobin Club. It was she who helped Tallien
to establish L'Ami des Citoyens, the
revolutionary newspaper with which he
placarded Paris. Because of her he led the
assault on the Tuileries during the
August riots. Later he became a deputy to
the National Convention and a
commissioner to the provinces. Anne-Joseph
helped his rise in public favor because
she expected to find him useful. Still
loving Rend de Bercy, she had secretly
aided his escape to England. Through
Tallien she hoped eventually to locate
Thdrese de Fontenay, whom she hated.
A man and a woman muffled in native
costume entered the warehouse. The man
was Monsieur de Chimay, who had come
ashore from a French ship to arrange
some trade business with Tallien. The
woman was not introduced. Since they
could not leave the warehouse before
the bombardment ended, Tallien
continued his story.
One day he heard his name called
from a cartload of prisoners. In the
wagon was Therese de Fontenay, whom he
had never forgotten. Hoping to protect
her from Anne-Joseph's fury, he
denounced the virago for her help to de
Bercy and thrust her into an angry mob
that stripped and beat her. The woman,
never recovering from that brutal
treatment, lived mad for many years.
Therese was imprisoned in the Cannes.
Through spies Tallien tried to take
measures for her safety. At last, to save her
life, he overthrew Robespierre and ended
the Reign of Terror. Telling his story, he
made it all sound simple; the others had
to guess at the bribes, the promised
reprisals, all the scheming of those three
anxious days while he held prisoners the
influential citizens of Paris and executed
the coup d'etat of Thermidor. Although
he knew that Thdrese was involved in a
plot for an emigre* invasion, he married
her later that year.
But choices made for her sake led to
other choices that he neither expected
nor wanted. Jealous of Captain Belleval,
an officer attentive to Therese while she
was in prison, he arranged to have the
captain betrayed to the rebels of the
Vendee. When the dmigrds finally
landed at Quiberon, all were captured. At
the same time the peasant who had
betrayed Belleval was taken prisoner. In
his effort to save the peasant's life
Tallien quarreled with General Hoche over
the disposition of the other prisoners, and
1471

in the end he was forced to declare them
enemies of the state and order their
execution. Among those who perished was
Rend de Bercy, who chose death with
honor rather than accept Tallien's offer
of escape to England.
When Tallien returned to Paris and
told Thdrese, haltingly, what had
happened, she said only that she knew at
last what a life was worth. Months later
Monsieur de Chimay arrived from
London with some of de Bercy's keepsakes.
De Chimay was in trade, an associate
of the powerful Thurlow firm and a
friend of Ouvrard, the influential bankei
who had become Therese's lover. The-
rese saw in the two men a power she
could use to undermine that of her
husband.
The shelling had ended; Tallien
became silent. When he and de Chimay
withdrew to transact their business, the
woman gave the three Americans a case
containing two pistols and a knife, each
decorated with die crest of a hand
holding a flower. For a moment she drew
aside her veil and they saw the face of
Thdrese de Fontenay. The Americans
went out toward the harbor, each marked
by a symbol of Tallien's defeat, but
carrying with them also a memory of The-
rese's beauty.
Years later Robinette and Apeyahola,
ragged and gaunt, were traveling
overland from the Mississippi. Wanted by
the authorities, the commodore because
of an affair of gallantry in Spanish
territory and for taking part in the Gutierrez
insurrection, Apeyahola for a murder in
Georgia, they found carved on a tree the
design of a hand holding a flower. That
crest marked their trail to Crawford's
trading post in the Indian country. There
they stayed, philanderer, murderer, and
thief. When the time came for them to
name the village growing up around the
old trading post, each remembered the
woman they had seen briefly by
candlelight in a dingy warehouse. So, out of
the turmoil and blood of the French
Revolution, Thdrese de Fontenay gave
her name to a new town on the
American prairie.
1472

THE HARP-WEAVER AND OTHER POEMS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
First published: 1922
Ten years before she was awarded a
Pulitzer prize for The Harp-Weaver and
Other Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay's
first and best-known poem, "Renascence,"
appeared in The Lyric Year, an anthology
of one hundred poems by as many poets.
The Vassar undergraduate, Vincent Mil-
lay, as her family and friends then called
her, scored a signal victory in her
contribution to the anthology, the freer form
and the liberal spirit of her work standing
out against the stilted Victorian verse and
sentimentality found in most of the
selections.
"All I could see from where I stood,"
the first line of "Renascence," begins a
poem as regular in meter, rhythm, and
rhyme as those by her romantic
predecessors. But the new hedonism and the
sharp, almost brittle metaphors based on
both land- and seascapes create a quite
different effect. The pain of omniscience,
the poet's burden, is the theme. The
imagery is dazzling in its exalted
movement to a sensuous climax in which life
is celebrated through all the senses.
"Renascence" was a promise of things
to come, for the personal lyric was Miss
Millay's forte. Her sonnets and her
ballads, held in such beautiful balance in
The Harp-Weaver, are always exact in
craftsmanship, capturing at times the
innocence of childhood and the sadness of
lost ecstasy.
The title poem, "The Ballad of The
Harp-Weaver," appearing at the end of
the second section, brings into an almost
medieval form saddened innocence and
lyric tragedy. Written mostly in the
traditional four-line ballad stanza with
alternating rhymes, the poem varies subtly in
meter and end-stopping to include
occasional stanzas with a fifth line and
shifting rhyme schemes.These last lines create
the panic, the pain, and finally the
exaltation of deep feeling. The narrative tells
in the first person the story of a young
boy of the slums living with his widowed
mother who can do nothing to make a
living and has nothing to sell except "a
harp with a woman's head nobody will
buy." In a fifth line, "she begins to cry"
for the starving boy. This was in the late
fall; by the winter all the furniture had
been burned and the boy can do no more
than watch his school companions go by,
for he has no clothes to wear. He is
disturbed by his mother's attempts to
comfort him, to dandle him on her knee
while "a-rock-rock-rocking," and to sing
to him "in such a daft way." The
counterpoint of the harp with a woman's head
and "a wind with a wolf's head" suggests
the lingering pain after the first panic.
The final exaltation, however, is
remarkable. A mystical event occurs: the mother
weaves clothes for the Christ child, just
the size of her own boy, and perishes at
the harp, "her hands in the harp strings
frozen dead." This odd juxtaposition of
the Madonna and the Magi themes with
the dance of death demonstrates Miss
Millay's versatility and expertness with
language.
Part V of the volume, "Sonnets from
an Ungrafted Tree," creates its effect by
quite opposite methods. This sequence
concerns a woman who prosaically
watches her unloved husband die and
then tries to pick up the empty pieces
of her own unloving life. He had
befriended her in school, when she would
have accepted anyone, by flashing a
mirror in her eyes; after his death she has a
flash of awareness that he had loved her
deeply, though he was in no way remark-
THE HARP-WEAVER AND OTHER POEMS by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Excerpts reprinted by per-
mission of Norma Millay Ellis. Published by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, by
Edna St. Vincent Millay. Renewed. All rights reserved.
1473

able in living or in loving. Whatever heat
was in this strange body which slept and
ate beside her is now gone, the whole
unclassified. The impact of this fact
makes of these 238 lines a taut though
expressionistic drama in which the
unreality of the death is emotionally
heightened by the very real, familiar objects
which express the widow's desolation.
These macabre themes do not go
unrelieved in Miss Millay's book. The
opening lyric is the keynote to the first part,
and "My Heart, Being Hungry"
connects this volume with the earlier
"Renascence." The lean heart feeds on
"beauty where beauty never stood," and
"sweet where no sweet lies," symbolized
by the smell of rain on tansy. She
continues the theme of the bitter-sweet, light-
dark, the opposites of nature which make
of the humblest experience something like
pain, a pain of sensitive awareness of the
tears of things. Always, however, there is
pure aesthetic pleasure gained from deep-
felt realizations, of
A rock-maple showing red,
Burrs beneath a tree
even in deepest grief, she says in 'The
Wood Road." In spite of the world's
negations, the positive things endure. 'The
Goose-Girl" summarizes this belief:
Spring rides no horses down the hill,
But comes on foot, a goose-girl still.
And all the loveliest things there be
Come simply, so, it seems to me.
If ever I said, in grief or pride,
I tired of honest things, I lied;
And should be cursed forevermore
With love in laces, like a whore
And neighbors cold, and friends
unsteady,
And Spring on horseback, like a lady!
In the second section Miss Millay
divides her poems between the goose-girl
and the lady, the first poem, "Departure,"
reflecting both. The adolescent girl, busy
with her sewing, is pensive, even in
despair over half-felt longings:
It's little I care what path I take,
And where it leads it's little I care:
But out of this house, lest my heart
break,
I must go, and off somewhere.
She indulges in the pleasant emotion of
self pity, of her dead body found in a
ditch somewhere, an adolescent drama
which is interrupted by her mother's
friendly query, "Is something the matter,
dear?" An old legend retold in "The
Pond" presents a suicide who picked a
lily before she drowned, a grasp even in
death after the beautiful.
The extremely short third section
contains all these motifs and some strange
new ones. "Never May the Fruit Be
Plucked" extends the imagery of "My
Heart, Being Hungry" to suggest that
"He that would eat of love must eat it
where it hangs," and that nothing
tangible can be taken away forever. "The
Concert" extends the internal monologue of
the sewing girl, this time a new departure
from rather than toward life and love.
"Hyacinth," however, is something new
and wonderfully strange:
I am in love with him to whom a
hyacinth is dearer
Then I shall ever be dear.
On nights when the field-mice are
abroad he cannot sleep:
He hears their narrow teeth at the
bulbs of his hyacinths.
But the gnawing at my heart he does
not hear.
This gnawing at the heart is at least a
real emotion, while in "Spring Song" a
modern nothingness has replaced the
reawakening season. The refrains suggest
that modern life has driven out spring
with its "Come, move on!" and "No
parking here!" The poem ends:
Anyhow, it's nothing to me.
I can remember, and so can you.
(Though we'd better watch out for
you-know-who,
When we sit around remembering
Spring).
We shall hardly notice in a year or
two.
You can get accustomed to anything.
1474

Part IV, the most conventional, is made
up of twenty-two unrelated sonnets.
These are rather academic in theme and
tone, containing as they do echoes of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John
Keats. The first and last illustrate this
int, though there are many sonnets in
tween which point to Miss Millay's
individuality. In the first she prophetically
reveals the sadness of life after the loss
of a beloved. In the last she celebrates
the glimpse of sheer beauty that was
Euclid's in the "blinding hour" when he had
his vision
Of light anatomized. Euclid alone
Has looked on beauty bare. Fortunate
they
Who, though once only and then but
far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on
stone.
The Harp-Weaver presents a poet with
vision unclouded by the didacticism which
mars some of her later work, for these
poems vibrate with an inner fervor that
needs no relationship to the political or
social scene.
1475

HAVELOK THE DANE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Tenth century
Locale: England and Denmark
First transcribed: c. 1350
Principal characters:
Havelok, a prince
Godard, his guardian
Goldeboru, a princess
Godrich, her guardian
Grim, a fisherman
Critique:
Medieval romances in general follow a
pattern, and Havelok is no exception. The
hero is noble, brave, and pure; the heroine
is noble, beautiful, and pure. There is a
convenient supernatural element which
helps along the plot. Virtue is rewarded
and villainy is punished. Havelok, in spite
of its adherence to the formula, is one of
the more interesting of the romances to
read, for it is reasonably concise and
coherent. Its spirit of adventure hardly
ever flags, and the plot is complicated
enough to produce some feeling of
suspense.
The Story:
Athelwold was a good king. No one
dared offer him a bribe, and throughout
all England people were at peace. He was
a particular guardian to widows, children,
and innocent maidens. A messenger might
go peacefully from town to town with a
hundred pounds of gold in a sack. Athel-
wold's only heir was a young daughter,
still a baby.
When Athelwold knew that his death
was upon him, he prayed for guidance and
then summoned his earls and barons to
his side. There was loud lamenting at the
approaching end of their honored king.
But Athelwold's chief concern was for his
daughter's care. It was decided that
Godrich, Earl of Cornwall, would be the
most trustworthy to bring up the princess.
Godrich swore a great oath to safeguard
the infant Goldeboru and to hold her
lands in trust until she could reign.
But Godrich watched the growing girl
with envious eyes. She was fair to look
upon, and Godrich could not bear to think
of the day when she would be his
sovereign. Acting then the part of a traitor, he
took her secretly from Winchester to
Dover and placed her in a remote castle.
To guard the entrance he set his most
trusted thanes with orders to let no one in
to see the princess.
In Denmark, King Birkabeyn lay near
death. He had reigned long and wisely,
but he was leaving his son Havelok and
his two little daughters without
protection. He thought of his faithful friend,
Godard, a rich man who was the most
respected noble in the kingdom. Godard
swore a great oath to guard the children
well and to see that Havelok came into his
inheritance when he became a man. After
being shriven, Birkabeyn died content.
Godard was also a false-hearted traitor.
On the seashore he cruelly slit the throats
of the two tiny girls and then seized
Havelok. The boy, terrified at what he had
been forced to witness, begged for mercy.
Instead of killing Havelok straightway,
Godard called for Grim, a fisherman, and
commanded him to bind the prince and
cast him into the sea with an anchor
around his neck. Anxious to please his
lord, Grim seized the boy and bound him
tightly. Then he took him home to wait
for night.
As Havelok dozed on the rude bed in
the fisherman's hut, a great light shone
from his mouth. Grim's wife was fright-
1476

ened and called her husband. Grim, awed,
freed Havelok from his bonds. Bundling
his wife, his five children, and Havelok
aboard his fishing boat, he set sail for
England. The group went up the Humber
to land in a likely cove. Since then the
place has been called Grimsby.
For twelve years Havelok grew rapidly.
He was an active boy and a prodigious
eater. Luckily, Grim was a good
fisherman, and he could trade his catches at
the market in Lincoln. Corn and meat
could be bought there, and ropes for the
nets. Havelok, who helped Grim in all his
labors was especially good at peddling fish.
A great famine came upon the north of
England. The crops withered and the fish
fled English shores. Day after day Grim's
family became poorer. Havelok, touched
by the suffering of his foster family,
resolved to seek his fortune in Lincoln.
Although he could ill spare it, Grim cut a
cloak from new sailcloth for Havelok and
wished him well. The prince set out for
town with his new cloak, but he had
neither shoes nor hose.
In the town Havelok starved for three
days. No one would hire him and he could
find no food. At length he heard a cry for
porters. Looking quickly around, he saw
the earl's cook with a catch of fish to carry.
In his eagerness Havelok knocked down
eight or nine other porters to get to the
cook first. Strong as a bull, the youth
carried the fish to the castle. The next day
the cook cried again for a porter, and this
time Havelok carried a huge load of meat.
In the castleyard the cook greatly
admired the strong fellow. He gave Havelok
bread and meat, as much as he could hold,
and engaged him as a steady helper.
Eating regularly and working hard, Havelok
became widely known for his strength.
On a certain feast day the retainers held
a stone-putting contest. A group of men
brought in a stone so huge one man could
barely lift it. Havelok easily heaved it
many yards.
Godrich, hearing of Havelok's fame,
decided to use the youth in his scheme to
gain control of the kingdom. Thinking
him only a churl, Godrich had Goldeboru
brought from Dover and ordered Havelok
to marry her. Both young people objected,
but Godrich had his way.
Havelok took his sorrowing bride back
to Grim's cottage. That night the groom
slept soundly but the bride stayed wakeful
from shame at being mated to a churl. All
at once a light issued from Havelok's
mouth and a voice told Goldeboru of her
husband's birth and destiny. Awaking
Havelok, she advised him to go at once to
Denmark to claim his throne.
In the morning Havelok persuaded the
three Grim brothers to go with him on the
trip to Denmark. Arriving in that land,
the impoverished group met Ubbe, a
noble who bought a ring from Havelok.
Ubbe, greatly taken with Havelok and his
beautiful bride, offered them a cottage for
the night. The couple accepted gratefully,
and soon were asleep after their long
voyage.
In the night a band of robbers tried to
break in after overpowering the guard set
by Ubbe. When Havelok awoke, he set
about him valiantly. He seized the door
bar and slew robbers right and left. This
feat won him more admiration. Ubbe
assigned the young couple to a rich bower
for the rest of the night. When Ubbe stole
in for a look at his guests, he was
astonished to see a light streaming from Have-
lok's mouth and a cross marked on his
shoulder. By these signs he knew that
Havelok was Birkabeyn's son and heir to
the Danish throne.
Calling all the barons of Denmark
together, Ubbe dubbed Havelok a knight
and proclaimed him king. The assembled
nobles passed judgment on Godard, the
traitor, who was brought before Havelok,
flayed, and hanged on a gallows with a
great nail through his feet.
Now master of Denmark, Havelok
sailed with a strong force to England to
seize that kingdom from Godrich. The
battle was joined near Lincoln. Although
Godrich fought valiantly and wounded
Ubbe, he was finally captured by the
wrathful Danes. The false Earl of Corn-
1477

wall, bound hand and foot, was brought
before Havelok for judgment. Godrich
was put upon an ass and taken into
Lincoln, where his crime was proclaimed.
Then he was taken to a nearby green and
burned to death.
Havelok married one of Grim's
daughters to the cook who had befriended him
and made the man Earl of Cornwall.
Grim's other daughter was married to the
Earl of Chester. As for Havelok and
Goldeboru, they lived together long and
ruled wisely. Their union was blessed
with fifteen children.
1478

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
Type of plot: Novel of manners
Time of plot: The 1880's
Locale: New York City
First published: 1890
Principal characters:
Basil March, editor of a literary magazine
Mr. Fulkerson, sponsor for the magazine
Conrad Dryfoos, publisher of the magazine
Mr. Dryfoos, Conrad's father, a newly rich millionaire
Henry Ltndau, a socialist
Critique:
Although the structure of this novel is
unwieldy and complex, many lovers of
Howells' fiction consider it their favorite,
perhaps because of the author's deft
characterization of a number of varied
personalities, more than one usually finds
in a Howells novel. Howells, like Basil
March in the novel, moved to New York
City after a residence of many years in
New England, and this novel is the result
of that move and the new experiences
it brought to Howells, both as a person
and as a novelist. In A Hazard of New
Fortunes, perhaps more than anywhere
else in Howells' fiction, the author's own
dissatisfaction with America and his
interest in social improvement are to be
found. In the preface to a later edition
of the book, Howells expressed the
belief that he had written it when he was
at the apex of his powers as a novelist.
The Story:
In his youth Basil March had wished
for a literary career. Family
responsibilities turned him, however, to the
insurance business, a field in which he proved
to himself and his employers that he was
but mediocre. After eighteen years with
his firm, his employers decided to
replace him and put him into a somewhat
meaningless position. Rather than be so
embarrassed, March resigned.
Fortunately for him and his family's future, Mr.
Fulkerson, a promoter of syndicated
newspaper material, who had met the Marches
years before, proposed that March take
over the editorship of a new literary
magazine that he was promoting. March at
first demurred at Fulkerson's proposal,
but the promoter, certain that March had
the necessary taste and tact to be
successful, finally persuaded him to take
the position.
Mrs. March and their children had
always lived in Boston, and so when the
prospect of moving to New York City
appeared, even though it meant a career
for the husband and father, they needed
considerable persuasion. At last Mrs.
March was convinced that the removal
to the larger city was imperative. She
and her husband went to New York to
find a flat in which they could make
themselves comfortable. After many days
of searching, Mrs. March returned to
Boston, leaving her husband to make a
decision about the editorship. He did
so a short time later.
March's problems in connection with
a staflF did not prove as difficult as he had
imagined. Fulkerson, the promoter, had
engaged an artist, Angus Beaton, to serve
as art director, procured a cover sketch
for the first issue, and made all the
financial arrangements with the magazine's
backer, Mr. Dryfoos, who had recently
made a fortune for himself through the
control of natural gas holdings. Mr.
Dryfoos, who was trying to win his son away
from a career as a minister, had
undertaken to finance the magazine in order
1479

to give his son Conrad a chance to enter
business as the ostensible publisher of
the periodical. Foreign articles and
reviews were to be handled by an old
German socialist, Henry Lindau, who had
been March's tutor and whom the
younger man had met accidentally in New
York.
Despite March's fear and lack of
confidence, the new magazine, Every Other
Week, was a success from the very first
issue; both the illustrations and the
material caught the public fancy. On the
periphery of the activities concerning the
magazine, however, there were many
complications. The Dryfoos family, who
had been simple farm folk, wanted to be
taken into society; at least the two
daughters wanted to enter society. In addition,
Christine, the older daughter, fell in
love with the art editor, who was not in
love with her. Fulkerson, the promoter,
had also fallen in love. He was busy
paying court to a southern girl who boarded
at the same house he did, and the girl's
father, a Virginia colonel, was after
Fulkerson to have the magazine print at least
a portion of his great work extolling the
merits of slavery.
Because the magazine had been a
success, Fulkerson suggested that for
publicity purposes they should give a dinner
party for members of the staff and the
press. Mr. Dryfoos, who was asked to
pay the bill for the proposed affair, vetoed
the idea, but he agreed to have a small
dinner party at his home for several of
the men connected with the magazine.
Among the guests was Henry Lindau,
who had struck the millionaire's fancy
because he had lost a hand fighting in the
Civil War. Dryfoos did not realize that
Mr. Lindau, who was doing the foreign
language work for the magazine, was a
socialist. At the dinner party the
personalities and the principles of the men
clashed openly. The next day the
millionaire told Basil March bluntly that
the old man was to be fired. March
wished to stick by the old German
socialist, but Mr. Lindau forced the issue by
refusing to do any more work for the
capitalistic owner of the magazine.
Another crisis occurred a short time
later when Mr. Dryfoos and his son,
who hated being a businessman rather
than a minister, had an open clash of
wills. The situation became so acute that
the father, calling one day when his son
was alone in the office, struck the young
man in the face. Outside the office, the
father also had trouble with his
daughter, Christine, for he had forbidden his
house to the art editor of the magazine,
with whom she was in love.
At that time there was a streetcar strike
in New York City. Young Conrad
Dryfoos was very much in sympathy with
the strikers, many of whom he knew as
a result of his church work among the
poor and sick of the city. At the
instigation of a young woman whom he
loved, he went out upon the streets to
try to bring peace among the rioting
strikers and the police. He saw Mr.
Lindau, the aged, one-armed socialist, being
beaten by a policeman; when he ran to
interfere, he was struck by a stray
bullet and was killed.
Mr. Dryfoos was heartbroken at the
loss of his son, particularly because he
felt that he had mistreated the young
man. When he learned that his son had
died trying to save Mr. Lindau from the
policeman's club, he decided to accept
the old man as a friend and to take care
of him for the rest of his life. The
decision came too late, however, for the old
man died as a result of the beating he
had received. In a last effort to show his
change of heart, Mr. Dryfoos had Mr.
Lindau's funeral conducted in his own
home.
Still wishing to try to make his family
happy, Mr. Dryfoos then swallowed his
pride and went to see Angus Beaton, the
artist. Confessing that he was sorry to
have caused the young people unhappi-
ness, he invited Beaton to resume his
calls on Christine. The young man
eventually pocketed his pride and called, but
in spite of her love for him Christine re-
1480

jected his suit forcibly and scratched his
face.
A few days later, Mr. Dryfoos resolved
to take his wife and daughters to
Europe. Before he left, he went to the
offices of the magazine, where everyone
had been wondering what the fate of the
publication would be and whether
Conrad Dryfoos' death had destroyed his
father's interest in the periodical. Mr.
Dryfoos magnanimously consented to sell
the periodical to Fulkerson and March at
a low figure and with very low interest
on the money they needed in order to
purchase it. Both March and Fulkerson
were extremely happy about the turn of
events. March saw his future secure at
last, and he also saw that he would have
a free hand in shaping the editorial policy.
Fulkerson was happy because he too
foresaw a prosperous future. As the result of
his expectations, he was able to marry
and settle down.
Some months afterward they learned
that the Dryfoos family had been taken
up promptly by at least a portion of
Parisian society. Christine Dryfoos had
even become engaged to a penniless but
proud French nobleman.
1481

HEADLONG HALL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Wales
First published: 1816
Principal characters:
Squire Headlong, the host
Mr. Foster, the optimist
Mr. Escot, the pessimist
Mr. Jenkison, champion of the status quo
Critique:
Headlong Hall is a novel of talk, a
satire on the pseudo-philosophers of the
nineteenth century. There is virtually no
plot and no character development. In
fact, the characters seem to be merely
abstract personages uttering pat phrases
assigned to them by the author. But
beneath the surface there is always keen
awareness of the ridiculous in human
behavior, dramatically presented by a writer
who was intellectually wise enough to be
tolerant of society's weaknesses.
The Story:
Squire Harry Headlong differed from
the usual Welsh squire in that he, by
some means or other, had become
interested in books, in addition to the
common interests of hunting, racing, and
drinking. He had journeyed to Oxford
and then to London in order to find the
philosophers and men of refined tastes
introduced to him in the world of
literature. Having rounded up a group of
intellectuals, he invited them to Headlong
Hall for the Christmas holidays.
Three of the men formed the nucleus
of his house party. The first was Mr.
Foster, an optimist. To him everything
was working toward a state of perfection,
and each advancement in technology, in
government, or in sociology was all for
the good. He believed that man would
ultimately achieve perfection as a result
of his progress. Mr. Escot, on the other
hand, saw nothing but deterioration in
the world. The advances which Mr.
Foster saw as improvement, Escot saw
as evidences of corruption and evil which
would soon reduce the whole human race
to wretchedness and slavery. The third
man of the trio was Mr. Jenkison, who
took a position exactly in the middle. He
believed that the amount of improvement
and deterioration balanced each other
perfectly and that good and evil would
remain forever in status quo.
These philosophers, with a large
company of other dilettantes, descended upon
Headlong Hall. Among the lesser guests
was a landscape gardener who made it
his sole duty to persuade the squire to
have his estate changed from a wild
tangle of trees and shrubs into a shaved
and polished bed of green grass. Mr.
Foster thought the grounds could be
improved; Mr. Escot thought any change
would be for the worse, and Mr. Jenkison
thought the scenery perfect as it was.
There were ladies present, both young
and old, but they did not join in the
philosophical discussions. Many of the
talks occurred after the ladies had left
the dinner table and as the wine was
being liberally poured, for Squire
Headlong was aware that the mellowness
produced by good burgundy was an incentive
to conversation. The discussions took
various turns, all of them dominated by the
diametrically opposed views of Foster and
Escot and soothed by the healing words
of Jenkison. Escot harped constantly upon
the happiness and moral virtue possessed
by the savages of the past, virtue which
1482

lessened with each encroachment of
civilization. As the savage began to build
villages and cities and to develop luxuries,
he began also to suffer disease, poverty,
oppression, and loss of morality. With
this thesis Foster could not agree. He
pointed to the achievements or
civilization in fields other than those of a
materialistic nature. Shakespeare and Milton,
for example, could not have achieved their
genius in the primitive life Escot
applauded. Escot, refusing to concede an
inch, pointed to Milton's suffering,
stating also that even if one man did profit
from the so-called advancements, fifty
men regressed because of them. Mr.
Jenkison agreed that the subject left
something to be said on either side.
Between these learned discussions the
gentlemen spent their time in attempts
to fascinate the ladies. Escot had once
been the suitor of one of the guests, but
he had offended her father during an
intellectual discussion and had fallen out
of favor. He attempted now to regain his
former place in her affection by humoring
the father. During these periods of
respite, the guests also entertained one
another with singing and recitations, the
selections being those they themselves
had composed.
The squire, planning a magnificent
ball, invited the whole neighborhood to
be his guests. At the ball the wine flowed
freely, so that even Foster and Escot
forgot some of their differences. Escot,
although he disapproved of any but
aboriginal dances, danced often with the
lady of his choice. Foster, of course,
thought the modern dance the utmost in
refinement and an expression of the
improved morality of man. Jenkison could
see points both for and against the
custom. During the evening Squire
Headlong was reminded by a maiden relative
that should he not marry soon there
would be no one to carry on the name
that had been honored for many
centuries. As his name implied, the squire was
not one to toy with an idea once it had
entered his mind. Fixing on the lady
of his choice in a matter of minutes, he
proposed and was accepted. Then he
arranged three other matches in an equally
short time. Foster and Escot were aided
in choosing brides and in getting
permission from the father of Escot's beloved.
Foster's bride, related to the squire,
presented no obstacle. Seizing on another
man, the squire told him of the plan and
promptly chose a bride for that hapless
individual.
Within a matter of days the weddings
took place. Then the guests dispersed,
after promising to gather again in August.
Foster and Escot tried to the last to
convince each other and the rest that only
one philosophy was the true one, but
Mr. Jenkison was not to fall into either
of their traps. He would join them again
in August, still convinced that there was
merit in both their arguments. Neither
was right or wrong, but each balanced
the other, leaving the world in its usual
status quo.
1483

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Carson McCullers (1917- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: The 1930's
Locale: A Georgia mill town
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Mr. Singer, a mute
Mick Kelly, an adolescent girl
Biff Brannon, a cafe proprietor
Jake Blount, a frustrated, idealistic workingman
Dr. Copeland, a Negro physician
Critique:
To read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
as a novel of social criticism is to
misinterpret the subtle yet precise art of
Carson McCullers. Her true theme in this
remarkable first novel is that sense of
moral isolation, expressed in terms of
loneliness and longing, which is both the
social evil of the modern world and the
inescapable condition of man. Four
different but related stories illuminate Mrs.
McCullers* theme through the
experiences of Mick Kelly, Biff Brannon, Jake
Blount, and Dr. Copeland. These people
are drawn to Mr. Singer, the mute,
because his physical infirmity seems to set
him apart in the same way that their own
sense of separation from the social
community makes their lives incomplete.
Mrs. McCullers is one of the most
distinguished among our younger novelists,
a writer whose fiction has both substance
and significance.
The Story:
In a small town in the South there
were two mutes, one a grossly fat Greek,
the other a tall, immaculate man named
Mr. Singer. They had no friends, and
they lived together for ten years. After
a lingering sickness the Greek became a
changed man. When he began to be
obscene in public, the cousin for whom he
worked sent him to the state insane
asylum. After that Mr. Singer was desolate.
He took all his meals at the New York
Cafe owned by Biff Brannon. Biff was a
stolid man with a weakness for cripples
and sick people. When Jake Blount, a
squat man with, long, powerful arms,
came to town, he went on a week-long
drunk at Biff's expense. Biff had to find
out what bothered Jake. Finding Mr.
Singer eating at the cafe, Jake decided
that he was the only person who could
understand the message he was trying to
give. One night Mr. Singer took Jake
home with him. It was not until after he
had slept that Jake realized Mr. Singer was
a mute. He still felt, however, that the
mute could understand him.
Mr. Singer had taken a room at the
Kellys* boarding-house, where the
daughter Mick, just entering her teens, was a
gangly girl, always dressed in shorts, a
shirt, and tennis shoes. She loved music
and would go anywhere to hear it. Some
nights she went to a big house in town
where she could hear symphonic music
through the open windows while she
crouched in the shrubbery. At home no
one realized what she wanted, until Mr.
Singer moved there and let her talk to
him when she was lonely.
Mick decided, after entering
Vocational School, that she had to have some
friends. Planning a dance, she invited
only high school students. The house was
decorated with tinsel. Mick borrowed an
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers. By permission of the author.
Copyright, 1940, by Carson Smith McCullers.
1484

evening dress and high-heeled shoes from
one of her sisters.
On the night of the party a throng of
children arrived and separated into noisy
groups. When Mick handed out the prom
cards, the boys went to one side of the
room, the girls to the other. Silence
descended. No one knew how to start
things. A boy finally asked Mick to prom
with him. Outside the house all the
neighborhood children had gathered.
While Mick and Harry walked around
the block, the neighborhood children
joined the party. By the time Mick got
back, the decorations were torn, the
refreshments gone, and the invited and the
uninvited guests mixed up so badlv that
the party was bedlam. Everyone coiigie-
gated on the street to run races and jump
ditches, the partygoers forgetful of their
nearly-grown-up state. Mick finally called
off the party after she had been knocked
breathless on a jump she could have made
easily in her tennis shoes.
Portia worked for the Kellys. Her
father was Dr. Copeland, the only colored
doctor in town. He was an idealistic man
who had always worked hard to raise the
standards of the Negro people. One dark
night Mr. Singer had stepped up and
helped him light a cigarette in the rain.
It was the first time a white man had ever
offered him help or smiled at him. When
he told Portia about a deaf-mute boy
patient of his, she assured him that Mr.
Singer would help him.
Jake, who had found a job with a
flying-jenny show, tried to rouse the
workers. He spent each Sunday with Mr.
Singer, explaining that he had first wanted
to be an evangelist until he had been
made aware of the inequality in the
world. He had unintentionally insulted
Dr. Copeland twice, but he was one of
the first to talk about doing something
for Willie, Dr. Copeland's son.
Willie had been sentenced to hard
labor for knifing a man. At the prison
camp he and two others tried to run
away. They were put in a cold shack for
three days with their bare feet hoisted up
by a looped rope. Willie lost both feet
from gangrene. Dr. Copeland, trying to
see the judge about the case, was severely
beaten up by a white crowd around the
court house and put in jail. Mr. Singer
and Portia obtained his release on bail,
and Jake went with Mr. Singer to Dr.
Copeland's house. There he argued the
ethics of the case with the doctor all
night, Jake too hysterical to be logical,
the doctor too sick.
There was a peacefulness in Mr.
Singer's face that attracted Mick. She
followed him whenever she could. He
bought a radio which he kept in his room
for her to listen to. Those were hours
of deep enjoyment for her. She felt that
she had music in her that she would
have to learn to write down.
She fascinated Biff. After his wife
died, he watched Mick begin to grow up,
but he seldom spoke to her. He was
equally quiet with Mr. Singer when he
visited at the Kelly boarding-house. Mr.
Singer considered Mick pitiful, Jake
crazy, Dr. Copeland noble, and Biff
thoughtful; but they were always
welcome to his room.
On his vacation Mr. Singer went to
see his Greek friend. He took beautiful
presents along with him, but the Greek
was petulant over anything but food.
Only there did Mr. Singer take his hands
out of his pockets; then he wore himself
out trying to tell the Greek with his
hands everything he had seen and
thought since the Greek went away.
Although the Greek showed no interest,
Mr. Singer tried even harder to entertain
him. When he left, the Greek was still
impassive.
Mr. Singer's board was the only steady
money the Kellys could depend on.
When one sister got sick, the loss of her
salary threw the whole family in a
quandary. Mick heard that a job was opening
at the five-and-ten-cent store. The family
in conclave decided she was too young
to work. The fact that for the first time
they were talking about her welfare
prompted her to apply for the job. She
1485

got it, but each night she was too tired
for anything but sleep.
It was again time for Mr. Singer to go
to see his Greek friend. Laden down with
presents, he made the long trip. When
he reached the asylum office, the clerk
told him the Greek was dead. Stricken,
he found his way back to the town, left
his luggage at the station, went to his
room, and put a bullet through his chest.
Mr. Singer's death left his four friends
confused. Dr. Copeland, still sick,
brooded over it.
Jake Blount joined in a free-for-all at
the flying-jenny grounds and, after
hearing that the police were looking for him,
left town.
Mick did not sleep well for weeks
after the funeral. All that she had left
was Mr. Singer's radio. She felt cheate4
because there was no time, no money, no
feeling anymore for music, but she could
never decide who had cheated her.
And Biff, who had watched Mr. Singer
with Jake and Mick, was still puzzling
over the relationships he had studied. He
wondered whether, in the struggle of
humanity, love might be the answer.
1486

HEART OF DARKNESS
Type of work: Short story
Author: Joseph Conrad (Teodor J6zef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-1924)
Type of plot: Symbolic romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: The Belgian Congo
first published: 1902
Principal characters:
Marlow, the narrator
Mr. Kurtz, manager of the Inner Station, Belgian Congo
The District Manager
A Russian Traveler
Kurtz's fiancee
Critique:
In one sense, Heart of Darkness is a
compelling adventure tale of a journey
into the blackest heart of the Belgian
Congo. The story presents attacks by the
natives, descriptions of the jungle and the
river, and characterizations of white men
who, sometimes with ideals and
sometimes simply for profit, invade the jungles
to bring out ivory. But the journey into
the heart of the Congo is also a symbolic
journey into the blackness central to the
heart and soul of man, a journey deep into
primeval passion, superstition, and lust.
Those who, like the district manager,
undertake this journey simply to rob the
natives of ivory, without any awareness
of the importance of the central darkness,
can survive. Similarly, Marlow, who is
only an observer, never centrally
involved, can survive to tell the tale. But
those who, like Mr. Kurtz, are aware of
the darkness, who hope with conscious
intelligence and a humane concern for
all mankind to bring light into the
darkness, are doomed, are themselves
swallowed up by the darkness and evil they
had hoped to penetrate. Conrad manages
to make his point, a realization of the
evil at the center of human experience,
without ever breaking the closely knit
pattern of his narrative or losing the
compelling atmospheric and psychological
force of the tale. The wealth of natural
symbols, the clear development of char-
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad. By permission of the Trustees of the Estate of Joseph Con*
rad; of J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; and of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1903, by Double*
day & Co., Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
acter, and the sheer fascination of the
story make this a short story that has
been frequently praised and frequently
read ever since its publication in 1902.
Heart of Darkness is, in both style and
insight, a masterful short story.
The Story:
A group of men were sitting on the
deck of the cruising yawl, The Nellie,
anchored one calm evening in the
Thames estuary. One of the seamen,
Marlow, began reflecting that the
Thames area had been, at the time of the
invading Romans, one of the dark and
barbarous areas of the earth. Dwelling on
this theme, he then began to tell a story
of the blackest, most barbarous area of
the earth that he had experienced.
Through his aunt's connections,
Marlow had once secured a billet as
commander of a river steamer for one of the
trading companies with interests in the
Belgian Congo. When he went to
Belgium to learn more about the job, he
found that few of the officials of the
company expected him to return alive.
In Brussels he also heard of the
distinguished Mr. Kurtz, the powerful and
intelligent man who was educating the
natives and at the same time sending
back record shipments of ivory.
The mysterious figure of Mr. Kurtz
fascinated Marlow. In spite of the omi-
1487

nous hints that he gathered from various
company officials, he became more and
more curious about what awaited him in
the Congo. During his journey, as he
passed along the African coast, he
reflected that the wilderness and the
unknown seemed to seep right out to the
sea. Many of the trading posts and
stations the ship passed were dilapidated
and looked barbaric. Finally, Marlow
arrived at the seat of the government at the
mouth of the river. Again, he heard of
the great distinction and power of Mr.
Kurtz who had, because of his plans to
enlighten the natives and his success in
gaining their confidence, an enormous
reputation. Marlow also saw natives
working in the hot sun until they
collapsed and died. Marlow had to wait for
ten impatient days at the government site
because his work would not begin until
he reached the district manager's station,
two hundred miles up the river. At last
the expedition left for the district station.
Marlow arrived at the district station to
find that the river steamer had sunk a
few days earlier. He met the district
manager, a man whose only ability seemed to
be the ability to survive. The district
manager, unconcerned with the fate of
the natives, was interested only in getting
out of the country; he felt that Mr.
Kurtz's new methods were ruining the
whole district. The district manager
reported also that he had not heard from
Kurtz for quite some time, but had
received disquieting rumors about his
being ill.
Although he was handicapped by a
lack of rivets, Marlow spent months
supervising repairs to the antiquated river
steamer. He also overheard a
conversation which revealed that the district
manager was Kurtz's implacable enemy, who
hoped that the climate would do away
with his rival.
The steamer was finally ready for use,
and Marlow, along with the district
manager, sailed to visit Kurtz at the inner
station far up the river. The journey was
difficult and perilous; the water was
shallow; there were frequent fogs. Just as
they arrived within a few miles of
Kurtz's station, natives attacked the vessel
with spears and arrows. Marlow's
helmsman, a faithful native, was killed by a
long spear when he leaned from his
window to fire at the savages. Marlow finally
blew the steamboat whistle and the sound
frightened the natives away. The district
manager was sure that Kurtz had lost
control over the blacks. When they
docked, they met an enthusiastic Russian
traveler who told them that Kurtz was
gravely ill.
While the district manager visited
Kurtz, the Russian told Marlow that the
sick man had become corrupted by the
very natives he had hoped to enlighten.
He still had power over the natives, but
instead of his changing them, they had
debased him into an atavistic savage.
Kurtz attended native rituals, had killed
frequently in order to get ivory, and had
hung heads as decorations outside his hut.
Later Marlow met Kurtz and found that
the man had, indeed, been corrupted by
the evil at the center of experience.
Marlow learned, from the Russian, that Kurtz
had ordered the natives to attack the
steamer, thinking that, if they did so,
the white men would run away and leave
Kurtz to die among his fellow savages in
the wilderness. Talking to Marlow, Kurtz
showed his awareness of how uncivilized
he had become, how his plans to
educate the natives had been reversed. He
gave Marlow a packet of letters for his
fiancee in Belgium and the manuscript of
an article, written sometime earlier, in
which he urged efforts to educate the
natives.
The district manager and Marlow took
Kurtz, now on a stretcher, to the river
steamer to take him back home. The
district manager contended that the area was
now ruined for collecting ivory. Kurtz,
full of despair and the realization that
devouring evil was at the heart of
everything, died while the steamer was
temporarily stopped for repairs.
Marlow returned to civilization and,
1488

about a year later, went to Belgium to see
Kurtz's fiancee. She still thought of
Kurtz as the splendid and powerful man
who had gone to Africa with a mission,
and she still believed in his goodness and
power. When she asked Marlow what
Kurtz's last words had been, Marlow lied
and told her that Kurtz had asked for her
at the end. In reality, Kurtz, who had
seen all experience, had in his final words
testified to the horror of it all. This horror
was not something, Marlow felt, that
civilized ladies could, or should, understand.
1489

THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: Scotland
First published: 1818
Principal characters:
David Deans, a dairyman
Jeanie Deans, his daughter
Effie Deans, another daughter
Reuben Butler, Jeanie's betrothed
Geordie Robertson, Erne's betrayer, in reality George Staunton
Meg Murdockson, an evil woman
The Duke of Argyle, Jeanie's benefactor
Critique:
The story of Jeanie Deans and her
great effort to save her sister's life is
supposedly based on fact. Fact or fiction,
it is an exciting story, told as only Sir
Walter Scott could tell it. The Heart of
Midlothian is filled with suspense,
mystery, and romance, and there is a
happy ending. Many consider this Scott's
greatest novel.
The Story:
The first knowledge Jeanie Deans had
that her sister Effie was in trouble came
just a few moments before officers of
justice arrived at the cottage to arrest
Effie for child murder. They told Jeanie
and her father, David Deans, that Effie
had borne a male child illegitimately and
had killed him or caused him to be killed
soon after he was born. Effie admitted
the birth of the child but refused to name
her seducer. She denied that she had
killed her baby, saying that she had fallen
into a stupor and had recovered to find
that the midwife who attended her had
disposed of the child in some fashion
unknown to Effie. In the face of the
evidence, however, she was convicted of
child murder and sentenced to be hanged.
Jeanie might have saved her sister, for it
was the law that if a prospective mother
had told anyone of her condition she
would not be responsible for her baby's
death. But Jeanie would not lie, even to
save her sister's life. Since there was no
one to whom Effie had told her terrible
secret, there was no defense for her, and
she was placed in the Tolbooth prison to
await execution.
Another prisoner in the Tolbooth was
Captain John Porteous, who was awaiting
execution for firing into the crowd
attending the hanging of Andrew Wilson, a
smuggler. Wilson's accomplice, Geordie
Robertson, had escaped, and the officers
feared that Robertson might try to rescue
Wilson. For that reason, Porteous and a
company of soldiers had been sent to the
scene of the execution to guard against a
possible rescue. Because Porteous had
fired into the crowd without provocation,
killing several people, he was to be
hanged. But when his execution was
stayed for a few weeks, a mob headed by
Robertson, disguised as a woman, broke
into the prison, seized Porteous, and
hanged him. For that deed Robertson
became a hunted man.
Meanwhile Jeanie Deans, who had
refused to lie to save her sister, had not
forsaken Effie. When she visited Effie in
prison, she learned that Robertson was
the father of her child. He had left her
in the care of old Meg Murdockson,
considered by many to be a witch, and it
must have been Meg who had killed or
sold the baby. Meg's daughter Madge
had long before been seduced by Robert-
1490

son and had lost her mind for love of
him, and Meg had sworn revenge on any
other woman Robertson might love. But
proving the old woman's guilt or Effie's
innocence was not possible, for
Robertson had disappeared, and Meg swore that
she had seen Effie coming back from the
river after drowning the baby.
Jeanie, determined to save her sister,
decided to walk to London to seek a
pardon from the king and queen. She told
her plans to Reuben Butler, a minister
to whom she had long been betrothed.
Reuben had not been able to marry her,
for he had no position other than that
of an assistant schoolmaster and his salary
was too small to support a wife. Although
he objected to Jeanie's plan, he was able
to aid her when he saw that she could
not be swayed from her purpose.
Reuben's grandfather had once aided an
ancestor of the present Duke of Argyle,
and Reuben gave Jeanie a letter asking
the duke's help in presenting Jeanie to the
king and queen.
The journey to London was a long
and dangerous one. Once Jeanie was
captured by Meg Murdockson, who tried
to kill her so that she could not save
Effie. But Jeanie escaped from the old
woman and sought refuge in the home of
the Rev. Mr. Staunton. There she met
the minister's son, George Staunton, and
learned from him that he was Geordie
Robertson, the betrayer of her sister. He
admitted his responsibility to Effie, telling
Jeanie that he had planned and executed
the Porteous incident in order to rescue
Effie from the prison. But she had
refused to leave with him. He had tried
many other schemes to save her, including
an attempt to force from Meg the
confession that she had taken the baby, but
everything had failed. He told Jeanie
that he had been on his way to give
himself up in exchange for Effie's release
when he fell from his horse and was
injured. He told Jeanie to bargain with the
Duke of Argyle, and as a last resort to
offer to lead the authorities to
Robertson in exchange for Effie's pardon.
George promised not to leave his father's
house until Effie was free.
Jeanie at last reached London and
presented herself to the Duke of Argyle with
Reuben's letter. The duke, impressed
with Jeanie's sincerity and simplicity,
arranged for an audience with the queen.
She too believed Jeanie's story of Effie's
misfortune, and through her efforts the
king pardoned Effie, with the stipulation
that she leave Scotland for fourteen
years. Jeanie secured the pardon
without revealing George Staunton's secret.
The duke was so impressed with
Jeanie's goodness and honesty that he
made her father the master of an
experimental farm on one of his estates in
Scodand, and he made Reuben the
minister of the church. Jeanie's heart was
overflowing with joy until she learned
that Effie had eloped with her lover just
three nights after her release from prison.
No one knew where they were, as the
outlaw's life was in constant danger
because of his part in the Porteous hanging.
Reuben and Jeanie were married and
were blessed with three fine children.
They prospered in their new life, and
Jeanie's only sorrow was her sister's
marriage to George Staunton. She kept
Effie's secret, however, telling no one that
George was actually Robertson. After
several years, George and Effie returned
to London, George having inherited a
tide from his uncle, and as Sir George
and Lady Staunton they were received in
court society. Effie wrote secredy to
Jeanie and sent her large sums of money
which Jeanie put away without telling
her husband about them. Even to him
she could not reveal Effie's secret.
By chance Jeanie found a paper
containing the last confession of Meg
Murdockson, who had been hanged as a
witch. In it Meg confessed that she had
stolen Effie's baby and had given him to
an outlaw. Jeanie sent this information
to Effie, in London, and before long Effie,
as Lady Staunton, paid Jeanie a visit.
Effie had used a pretext of ill health to
go to Scodand while her husband, acting
1491

on the information in Meg's letter, tried
to trace the whereabouts of their son.
Although it was dangerous for George
to be in Scotland, where he might be
recognized as Geordie Robertson, he
followed every clue given in Meg's
confession. In Edinburgh he met Reuben
Butler, who was there on business, and
secured an invitation to accompany
Reuben back to the manse. Reuben, not
knowing George's real identity, was happy
to receive the Duke of Argyle's friend.
Reuben, at that time, did not know that
Effie was also a guest in his home.
As Reuben and George walked toward
the manse, they passed through a thicket
where they were attacked by outlaws.
One, a young fellow, ran his sword
through George and killed him. It was
not until Reuben had heard the whole
story of the Stauntons from Jeanie that
he searched George's pockets and found
there information which proved beyond
doubt that the young outlaw who had
killed George was his own son, stolen
many years before. Because Effie was
grief-stricken by George's death, Jeanie
and Reuben thought it useless to add to
her sorrow by revealing the identity of his
assailant. Reuben later traced the boy to
America, where the young man continued
his life of crime until he was captured
and probably killed by Indians.
Effie stayed with Reuben and Jeanie
for more than a year. Then she went
back to London and the brilliant society
she had known there. No one but Jeanie
and Reuben ever knew the secret of
Effie and George. After ten years, Effie
retired to a convent on the continent,
where she spent her remaining years
grieving for her husband and the son
she had never known.
Reuben and Jeanie Butler, who had
been so unavoidably involved in sordid-
ness and crime, lived out their lives
happily and carried their secret with them
to the grave.
1492

THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Graham Greene (1904- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: World War II
Locale: British West Africa
First published: 1948
Principal characters:
Major Scobie, police chief in one of the colony's districts
Mrs. Scobie, his wife
Mrs. Rolt, shipwreck victim, Scohie's mistress
Wilson, a counter-intelligence agent
Yusef, a Syrian merchant
Critique:
The fears and hopes, friendships and
petty rivalries, loves and hates of
Europeans immured in a colony on the African
coast afforded Graham Greene, who
actually worked in such a place during
World War II, the material for this novel.
The book continues the study of British
people under the influence of our times
begun in Greene's earlier work. Major
Scobie, like Arthur Rowe in The Ministry
of Fear, is a relatively friendless man—a
rthat seems to have fascination for
author. Like Rowe, in the earlier
novel, Major Scobie is placed in a position
where he can choose between life or
death: the high point in both novels is
that at which the choice is made. Beyond
the immediate story, however, there are
larger implications. The Heart of the
Matter, written by one of the leading
Catholic novelists of the day, is actually a
religious story, a fable of the conflict
between good and evil. It is a drama of the
human soul in mid-passage toward
Heaven or Hell.
The Story:
For fifteen years Major Scobie, chief of
police in a British West African district
had built up a reputation for honesty.
Then he learned that in spite of his labors
he was to be passed over for the district
commissionersnip in favor of a younger
man. Those fifteen long years now seemed
to him to have been too long and filled
with too much work. Worse than his own
disappointment was the disappointment
of his wife. Mrs. Scobie needed the
encouragement that a rise in official position
would have given her, to compensate for
the loss of her only child some years before
and her unpopularity among the official
family of the district.
A love for literature, especially poetry,
had set Mrs. Scobie apart from the other
officials and their wives. Once the
difference was discerned, the other Britishers
distrusted and disliked her. They even
pitied the man whom she had married.
Nor were the Scobies much happier than
people imagined them to be. Mrs. Scobie
hated the life she led, and her husband
disliked having to make her face it
realistically. Both drank. When she found he
was not to be made district commissioner,
she insisted that he send her to the Cape
Colony for a holiday, even though
German submarines were torpedoing many
vessels at the time.
Scobie had not the money to pay
expenses of the trip. For a previous
excursion of hers from the colony he had
already given up part of his life insurance.
After trying unsuccessfully to borrow the
money from the banks, he went to Yusef,
a Syrian merchant, who agreed to lend
him the money at four percent interest.
Scobie knew that any dealings he had
THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press,
Inc. Copyright, 1948, by Graham Greene.
1493

with Yusef would place him under a
cloud, for the official British family knew
only too well that many of the Syrian's
doings were illegal, including the
shipment of industrial diamonds to the Nazis.
Pressed by his wife's apparent need to
escape the boredom of the rainy season in
the coast colony, Scobie finally took the
chance that he could keep clear of Yusef's
entanglements, even though he knew that
the Syrian hated him for the reputation of
integrity he had built up during the past
fifteen years.
To add to Scobie's difficulties, he
learned that Wilson, a man supposedly
sent out on a clerkship with a trading
company, was actually an undercover agent
working for the government on the
problem of diamond smuggling. First of all,
Scobie had no official information about
Wilson's true activities; secondly, Wilson
had fallen in love with Scobie's wife; and,
thirdly, Mrs. Scobie had bloodied
Wilson's nose for him and permitted her
husband to see her admirer crying. Any one
of the counts would have made Scobie
uneasy; all three in combination made him
painfully aware that Wilson could only
hate him, as Wilson actually did.
Shortly after his wife's departure, a
series of events began to break down Major
Scobie's trust in his own honesty and the
reputation he had built up for himself.
When a Portuguese liner was searched on
its arrival in port, Scobie found a
suspicious letter in the captain's cabin. Instead
of turning in the letter, he burned it-
after the captain had assured him that the
letter was only a personal message to his
daughter in Germany. A few weeks later
Yusef began to be very friendly toward
Scobie. Gossip reported that Scobie had
met and talked with the Syrian on several
occasions, in addition to having borrowed
money from the suspected smuggler.
One day word came that the French
had rescued the crew and passengers of
a torpedoed British vessel. Scobie was with
the party who met the rescued people at
the border between the French and
British colonies. Among the victims was a
young bride of only a few months whose
husband had been killed in the war.
While she recuperated from her exposure
in a lifeboat and then waited for a ship to
return her to England, she and Scobie fell
in love. For a time they were extremely
careful of their conduct, until one day Mrs.
Rolt, the rescued woman, belittled Scobie
because of his caution. Scobie, to prove his
daring as well as his love, sent her a
letter which was intercepted by Yusef's
agents. In payment for return of the letter
Scobie was forced to help Yusef smuggle
some gems from the colony. Wilson,
Scobie's enemy, suspected the smuggling
done by Scobie, but he could prove
nothing.
Mrs. Rolt pleaded with Scobie to show
his love by divorcing his wife and
marrying her. Scobie, a Roman Catholic, tried
to convince her that his faith and his
conscience could not permit his doing so. To
complicate matters further, Mrs. Scobie
cabled that she was already aboard ship on
her way back home from Capetown.
Scobie did not know which way to turn.
On her return Mrs. Scobie nagged him to
take communion with her. Scobie, unable
to receive absolution because he refused to
promise to give up adultery, took the
sacrament of communion anyway, rather
than admit to his wife what had
happened. He realized that according to his
faith he was damning his soul.
The worry over his sins, his uneasiness
about his job, the problem of Yusef, a
murder that Yusef had had committed for
him, and the nagging of both his wife and
Mrs. Rolt—all these made Scobie's mind
a turmoil. He did not know which way to
turn, for the Church, haven for many,
was forbidden to him because of his sins
and his temperament.
In searching for a way out of his
predicament Scobie remembered what he
had been told by a doctor shortly after an
official investigation of a suicide. The
doctor had told Scobie that the best way
to commit suicide was to feign angina and
then take an overdose of evipan, a drug
prescribed for angina cases. Carefully,
1494

Scobie made plans to take his life in that
way because he wanted his wife to have
his insurance money for her support after
she returned to England. After studying
the symptoms of angina, Scobie went to a
doctor, who diagnosed Scobie's trouble
from the symptoms he related. Scobie
knew that his pretended heart condition
would soon be common knowledge in the
colony.
Ironically, Scobie was told that he had
been reconsidered for the commissioner-
ship of the colony but that he could not
be given the post because of his illness.
To Scobie, the news made little
difference, for he had already made up his
mind to commit suicide.
To make his death appear convincing,
he filled his diary with entries tracing the
progress of his heart condition. One
evening he took his overdose of evipan, his
only solution to difficulties which had
become more than he could bear. He died,
and only one or two people even suspected
the truth. One of these was Mrs. Scobie,
who complained to the priest after he had
refused to give Scobie absolution. The
priest, knowing of Scobie's virtues as well
as his sins, cried out to her that no one
could call Scobie wicked or damned, for
no one knew God's mercy.
1495

HEARTBREAK HOUSE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Time: 1913
Locale: Sussex, England
First presented: 1920
Principal characters:
Captain Shotover, an English eccentric and visionary
Lady Ariadne Utterwood, and
Mrs. Hesione Hushabye, his daughters
Hector Hushabye, Hesione's husband
Ellie Dunn, a guest in Captain Shotover's house
Mazzini Dunn, her father
Boss Mangan, an industrialist
Randall Utterwood, Lady Ariadne's brother-in-law
Nurse Guiness, a servant
Billy Dunn, an ex-pirate and burglar
Heartbreak House has always held an
equivocal place in the Shavian canon.
Its admirers—and they are many—bracket
it with Shaw's best, beside such
acknowledged masterpieces as Man and
Superman and Saint Joan. Severer critics see it
as an unsuccessful attempt to create a
mood of Chekhovian melancholy and
fatalism within a framework of political
allegory and social satire, a mixture of
comedy, tragedy, dialectic, and prophecy
that never quite coalesces into unity of
theme or structure.
Shaw himself was as much to blame
as anyone for some of the misconceptions
regarding his play. Always ready, even
eager, to instruct his public, in this
instance he maintained an attitude of
reticence toward his work and appeared
hesitant to let it pass out of his hands.
Although part of it had been written as
early as 1913 and it was in its final form
by 1916, the play was not published
until 1919. Its first performance was the
Theatre Guild production on November
12, 1920. Even then Shaw apparently
preferred to let his work speak for itself
without mediation on his part, for when
asked on one occasion to interpret some
of his lines he answered brusquely that
he was merely the author and therefore
could not be expected to know. Perhaps
he was still smarting from the abuse he
had received following the publication
of his pamphlet, Commonsense about the
War (1915), read by the jingo-minded
wartime public as a piece of pacifist
propaganda. Under the circumstances his
reluctance to present his most sweeping
indictment of a society unable or unwilling
to bring its moral judgments and political
convictions into balance with its potential
of destruction becomes understandable.
War, Shaw seems to say, is no longer the
trade of the professional soldier or the
recreation of the feudal elite; all of
mankind is now involved in the common
catastrophe and society must perish if it
cannot realize its possibilities for good as
opposed to its capacities for destruction.
In a way that criticism has not yet
fully appraised, Heartbreak House
presents almost the whole range of Shaw's
thought, for few of his plays are more
representative or inclusive in the themes
and motifs touched upon if not explored:
war, love, society, education, religion,
politics, and science. The only element
lacking is the Shavian principle of the
Life Force. As a drama of ideas it looks
back to the earlier plays and anticipates
Saint Joan and The Apple Cart. As
comment on upper-class life it continues and
climaxes the themes Shaw presents in
Getting Married and Misalliance. Shaw
himself is present in his various manifes-
1496

tations: the recorder of that verbal
interplay which in the Shavian drama often
takes the place of conflict, the playwright
of ideas, the master of comedy, the maker
of epigrams, the teacher, the critic, the
philosopher, the parodist, the fabulist,
and the poet.
A clue to the meaning of the play is
provided in the subtitle: "A Fantasia
in the Russian manner on English
themes." Following the production of
several of Chekhov's plays in London,
Shaw had been studying the work of the
Russian dramatist and had seen in at
least three, The Cherry Orchard, The
Sea Gully and Uncle Vanya, exempla of
the theme he himself had in mind: the
disintegration of a society from within
and its final collapse in the face of forces
it had previously ignored or denied.
Allowances must be made, however, for
Shaw's habit of exaggeration where
precedents or sources are concerned. Shaw
may have begun his play with a
similarity of tone in mind—the atmosphere, he
said, was the initial impulse—but he ends
with effects quite different from those we
find in Chekhov. Partly the difference is
one of temperament, the great Russian
power of enclosing the poetry of all
experience in the s;ngle instance, partly
the fact that the haunted landscapes of
Chekhov's world have little in common
with those asDects of British middle and
upper-class life that Shaw, observed so
shrewdlv. Shaw's people exist only in the
light of his ethical and political values;
Chekhov's, entirely within the world of
their own moral and spiritual blight. The
sound of the ax echoing through the
twilight at the end of The Cherry Orchard
is more portentous and meaningful than
the bombs which rain fire and death
from the sky at the close of Hearthreak
House.
The essential differences between these
two plays are not altogether to Shaw's
disadvantage, for Heartbreak House,
although it lacks the larger expressiveness
of Chekhov's theater, exhibits all the
intellectual vigor and wild poetry, the clash
of ideas and personalities, of disquisitory
drama at its best. A thesis play, it is
admitted as such in Shaw's preface, where
he states that Heartbreak House is more
than a title: it is the Europe—or England
—of culture and leisure in the period
before World War I. As the alternative to
Heartbreak House he sees only
Horseback Hall, peopled by the gentry who
have made sport a cult. In either case,
true leadership is lacking in this world
of cross-purposes, futile desires, and idle
talk. These people have courage of a sort,
but they are able to do little more than
clench their fists in gestures of defiance
as the bombs drop from the sky.
The setting of the play is the Sussex
home, built like a ship, of Captain Shot-
over, an eighty-eight-year-old eccentric
and retired sea captain credited by
hearsay with selling his soul to the devil in
Zanzibar and marriage to a black witch
in the West Indies. Cranky, realistic,
fantastically wise, he drinks three bottles of
rum a day, strives to attain the seventh
degree of concentration, and spends his
time tinkering with death-dealing
inventions. To Ellie Dunn, a young singer
arriving as the guest of Mrs. Hesione
Hushabye, the captain's daughter, the
atmosphere of the house seems as puzzling
and unpredictable as its owner. No one
bothers to greet visitors; members of the
family are treated like strangers- strangers
are welcomed like old friends. An elderly
servant calls everyone ducky. When Lady
Ariadne Utterwood returns for a visit
after twenty-three years in the colonies
with her husband, Sir Hastings Utter-
wood, an empire builder, neither her
father nor her sister recognizes her. The
captain persists in confusing Mazzini
Dunn, Ellie's father, with a rascally ex-
pirate who had robbed him many years
before. Arriving unexpectedly, Boss Man-
gan, the millionaire industrialist whom
Ellie is to marry, is put to work in the
captain's garden.
From this opening scene of innocent,
seemingly irresponsible comedy the play
proceeds to more serious business, and by
1497

the end of the first act the characters have
assumed their allegorical identities. Lady
Ariadne is Empire, the prestige of
foreign rule. Hesione Hushabye is
Domesticity, the power of woman's love and
authority at home. Hector, her husband,
is Heroism, a man capable of brave deeds
but so tamed by feminine influence that
his only escape is through romantic
daydreams and Munchausen-like tales of
derring-do. Mazzini Dunn is the nineteenth-
century Liberal, a believer in progress
but too sentimental to be an intellectual
force; consequently he has become the
tool of Boss Mangan, a figure of
capitalistic Exploitation. Randall Utterwood,
Lady Ariadne's brother-in-law, is Pride, a
Foreign Office official symbolically in
love with his sister-in-law and filled with
snobbish regard for caste. Looming over
these figures is old Captain Shotover, the
embodiment of Old England and its
genius, no longer the captain of the great
Ship of State but the half-cracked,
drunken skipper of a house built like a
ship, suggesting his own and his
country's maritime history. Captain Shotover
is the triumph of the play. In spite of his
allegorical significance he is always
superbly himself, a figure larger than life
and yet lifelike, reliving his past and
creating his future in terms of his own
fantastic logic. These people come
together in twos and threes to speak in
their own and in their allegorical
characters. Childlike resentments, old
grievances, brooding frustrations, impossible
dreams, and unexpected disillusionments
break through their masks in the heavily
charged atmosphere that the play
generates, but all this sound and fury leads
nowhere. Heartbreak House is idleness
dramatized, impotence of mind and will
translated into speech and gesture.
In one sense Heartbreak House might
be described as the story of Ellie Dunn's
education. In the first act, although she
is engaged to Boss Mangan, she fancies
herself in love with Marcus Darnley, a
middle-aged man of romantic
background, whom she has been meeting
secretly. The discovery that Marcus is
Hector Hushabye opens her eyes to
reality and deceit. Disillusioned with
romantic love, she decides to accept Boss
Mangan and his money, only to discover
that his millions are nonexistent, that he
is simply the capitalist who uses the money
other men entrust to him. In the end she
decides that she will become the white
bride of old Captain Shotover because
his seventh degree of concentration holds
a promise of peace and happiness beyond
desire or despair. This time it is the
captain who disillusions her; his seventh
degree of concentration is rum. Ellie's
education is now complete, and she is free
to be as practical or aspiring as she
desires.
Suddenly, while these people sit on
the terrace and talk out their
predicament, planes begin to drone overhead.
Boss Mangan and a burglar—who had
turned out to be Billy Dunn the ex-pirate
now reduced to petty thievery and
sniveling confession—take refuge in a gravel
pit; a bomb falls and kills them. The
others survive. Heartbreak House still
stands.
All criticism of Heartbreak House
reduces itself to a single issue: Can
comedy, even brilliantly presented, sustain a
theme of tragic significance? Shaw, as he
declared, was only the writer. The reader
or the playgoer has been left to answer
this question for himself.
1498

THE HEAT OF THE DAY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Elizabeth Bowen (1899- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1942-1944
Locale: London
First published: 1949
Principal characters:
Stella Rodney, an attractive widow
Roderick Rodney, her son
Robert Kelway, her lover
Harrison, a British Intelligence agent
Louie Lewis, wife of a British soldier
Critique:
The wartime setting of this book is no
more than incidental, for the story treats
of contrasting faiths and loyalties which
are altogether timeless. Though the
general atmosphere is electric with danger,
the author muffles the sound of bombs
and anti-aircraft guns until they give
only a tonal background for the drama of
Stella Rodney, Robert Kelway, and the
enigmatic Harrison. The problem of
Stella Rodney is that of a woman asked to
question her own judgment of the man
she loves. Miss Bowen is at her best in
dealing with complex personal
relationships, and here she inspects some barriers
to emotional and intellectual harmony
that are embodied in a conflict between
patriotism and love. Like Henry James,
she is interested in the collision of finely-
grained personalities; and the very nature
of her subject matter demands a style
that is sensitive and involved.
The Story:
The first Sunday afternoon of
September, 1942, found Harrison sitting at
a band concert in Regent Park. But he
was not listening to the music. He was,
in fact, merely killing time until he could
see Stella Rodney at eight o'clock.
Thinking of Stella and the awkward subject
he must discuss with her, he kept
thrusting the fist of his right hand into the
palm of his left. This unconscious
morion, as well as his obvious indifference
to the music, aroused the curiosity of an
adjacent listener. This neighbor, Louie
Lewis, was a clumsy, cheaply clad young
woman with an artless and somewhat
bovine expression. Lonely without her
soldier husband and entirely a creature
of impulse, she offended Harrison by
breaking into his reverie with naive
comments which were brusquely rebuffed.
Unabashed, she trailed after him when
he left the concert, giving up only when
he abruptly left her to keep his
engagement.
Stella, in her top-floor flat in
Weymouth Street, wondered rather idly why
Harrison was late. Her attitude of
waiting was more defiant than expectant, for
she had no love for her visitor. She
hardly knew how he had managed to
insinuate himself into her life; first, he had
turned up unaccountably at the funeral
of Cousin Francis Morris, and since then
his attentions had shown a steady increase.
There had been a subde shade of menace
in his demand that she see him that
night, and a curious sense of
apprehension had prompted her to consent. As
she awaited his knock, her glance
flickered impatiently about the charming flat,
and she recalled fleetingly the facts that
gave shape to her existence: her young
son, Roderick, now in the British army;
THE HEAT OF THE DAY by Elizabeth Bowen. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc. Copyright, 1948, by Elizabeth Bowen.
1499

her ex-husband, long divorced and dead;
her own war work with Y.X.D.; and her
lover, Robert Kelway, also in
government service.
When Harrison arrived, he received
a cool and perfunctory greeting. His first
remarks were hesitant and enigmatic, but
he soon launched into words that left
Stella wide-eyed with shock and
disbelief. Her lover, he told her, was a Nazi
agent passing English secrets on to
Germany. Harrison himself was connected
with British Intelligence and he had been
assigned to cover Kelway's movements.
There was just one way to save the
traitor. Stella must give him up, switch
her interest to Harrison. Then Kelway's
fate might be averted, or indefinitely
postponed.
The blunt proposition unnerved Stella.
She refused to believe in Kelway's guilt,
for Harrison did not impress her as a man
to trust. She played for time, winning
a month's delay in which to make up
her mind. Harrison sharply advised her
not to warn Robert; the slightest change
in his pattern of action would result in
his immediate arrest. As the interview
ended, the telephone rang. At the other
end was Roderick, announcing his
arrival for leave in London. Upon
Harrison's departure, Stella pulled herself
together and made quick preparation to
receive her son.
Roderick's coming helped a little;
temporarily it deprived Stella of the time to
worry. Roderick was young and
vulnerable, and his father's early abdication had
made Stella feel doubly responsible for
her son. Roderick wanted to talk about
his new interest in life, the run-down
estate in Ireland recently bequeathed him
by Cousin Francis Morris. The boy was
determined to keep his new property,
but, until the war was over, the task of
looking after it would be largely Stella's
responsibility.
Roderick's leave expired. The next
night Robert Kelway came to Stella's
flat. She gave no hint of her inward
agitation, though she casually inquired if
he knew Harrison. Gazing at her
attractive, considerate lover, Stella silently
marveled that he should be a suspect—he,
a lamed veteran of Dunkirk! Considering,
however, that she knew nothing about
his family, she renewed her request that
they visit his mother and sister in the
country. A subsequent Saturday
afternoon at Holme Dene revealed nothing
strange about Robert's background. On
the night of her return from Robert's
home, she found Harrison waiting at her
apartment; he confirmed his
watchfulness by telling her where she had been,
and why.
Roderick's interests intervened by
summoning Stella briefly to Ireland. Robert
protested at losing her for even a few
days and they parted affectionately. In
Ireland, Stella's distrust of Harrison
received a jolt; he had been truthful, she
learned, in telling her that he had been
a friend of Cousin Francis Morris. She
resolved that she would acquaint Robert
with Harrison's accusation. When she
returned to London, Robert met her at
the station. Minutes later, in a taxi, she
revealed what she had heard; and
Robert, deeply hurt, made a complete denial.
Later that night he begged her to marry
him, but Stella, surprised and disturbed,
succeeded in parrying the proposal.
A few nights later Harrison had dinner
with Stella in a popular restaurant. She
stiffened with apprehension as he told
her that she had disobeyed him by
putting Robert on his guard. Before Stella
could learn what Harrison intended to
do, she was interrupted by the untimely
intrusion of Louie Lewis, who crudely
invited herself to their table after
spotting Harrison in the crowd. Nevertheless,
Stella managed to intimate that she
would meet Harrison's terms if he would
save Robert from arrest. Angry at Louie,
Harrison made no response; roughly
dismissing the two women, he stalked off,
leaving them to find their way home
through blacked-out London. Louie,
fascinated by the superior charm and
refinement of Stella, accompanied her to the
1500

doorway of her apartment.
Robert was at Holme Dene, so that not
until the next night did Stella have a
chance to warn him of his danger. In
the early morning darkness of Stella's
bedroom, they renewed their love and
confidence with a sense that it was to
be their last meeting. When Robert
finally revealed that he was an ardent Nazi,
prizing power above freedom, Stella
found no way to reconcile their views.
Faint footsteps, as of outside watchers,
were heard as Robert dressed and
prepared to leave. He climbed up the rope
ladder to the skylight in the roof, then
came back down again to kiss Stella
once more. He told her to take care of
herself as he hurriedly disappeared
through the skylight. The next morning
Robert's body was found lying in the
street where he had leaped or fallen from
the steeply slanting roof.
More than a year passed before Stella
saw Harrison. There were Allied landings
in Africa; there was the invasion of Italy;
there was the ever-growing prospect of
a Second Front. Finally Harrison came
back. Stella had had questions to ask
him, questions about Robert, but now it
seemed pointless to ask them. An air of
constraint hung over their conversation,
a feeling that Robert's death had
removed any real link between their lives.
Harrison made no romantic overtures; he
even seemed faintly relieved when Stella
told him that she was soon to be married.
1501

HEAVEN'S MY DESTINATION
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thornton Wilder (1897- )
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: 1930-1931
Locale: Middle West
First published: 1935
Principal characters:
George Marvin Brush, a traveling salesman
Roberta, a farmer's daughter
George Burkin, a peeping Tom
Herb, a newspaper reporter
Elizabeth, his daughter
Critique:
In George Marvin Brush, Thornton
Wilder would seem to have synthesized
the American character with its many
tragic inconsistencies. One admires
George Brush one moment and detests
him as a prig the next. The irony and the
deceptive simplicity of Heaven's My
Destination are terrifying. Although George
Brush is not the picaresque hero-type,
the novel, with its many colorful and
unprincipled characters and its episodic
form, resembles the picaresque genre.
The Story:
George Marvin Brush, a straight-laced,
clean-living non-smoker and non-drinker
of twenty-three, was a salesman for the
Caulkins Educational Press; his territory
was the Middle West. He was the
amusement and the despair of all the traveling
salesmen in the same territory who knew
him. One day Doremus Blodgett, a
hosiery salesman, caught George in the
act of penning a Bible text on a hotel
blotter and invited George up to his room
to chaff him. The righteousness of
George infuriated Blodgett, but the
hosiery man was almost reconciled when
George admitted to him that he had once
wronged a farmer's daughter.
At another time George withdrew all
his savings from the bank. In his attempt
to explain to the bank president his plan
of voluntary poverty, he insulted that
executive by saying that banks owed their
existence only to man's fear of insecurity.
Being thought mad, George was jailed,
but his ingenuousness confounded even
his jailers. One of them, after hearing
George propound his theories, withdrew
his own savings from the bank.
In Oklahoma City George again saw
Blodgett and his "cousin," Mrs. Margie
McCoy. There he talked of the injustice
of his receiving raises in pay, to the utter
confusion of Blodgett and Mrs. McCoy.
He told them that he had gone through
college and had had a religious conversion
in order to be of an independent mind.
All he wanted, he said, was a perfect girl
for his wife, six children, and a real
American home. He confessed that he
was hindered in his quest for these ideals
by his having wronged a Kansas farm
girl, one Roberta, whose farm home he
had been unable to find since he had
left it.
George went from Oklahoma City to
the Chautauqua at Camp Morgan,
Oklahoma, to see Judge Corey, a state
legislator who was interested in textbook
contracts. There he was shocked by Jessie,
a college girl who believed in evolution;
he pestered a distraught businessman who
wanted to be left alone; and he turned
down Judge Corey's offer of thirty-five
thousand dollars and a state job if he
would marry the judge's daughter,
Mississippi.
From Camp Morgan George went to
HEAVEN'S MY DESTINATION by Thornton Wilder. By permission of the author and the publishers, Harp*
& Brothers. Copyright, 1935, by Harper and Brothers.
1502

Kansas City, where he stayed in Queenie's
boarding-house with his four wild friends,
Herb and Morrie, reporters; Bat, a motion
picture mechanic; and Louie, a hospital
orderly. Accord lasted between the
four and George as long as George did
not preach his anti-tobacco and anti-
alcohol creeds. They, in turn, restrained
their actions and their speech in his
presence. Three of them and George,
who had a beautiful voice, formed an
expert barbershop quartet. In Kansas
City George became the victim of an
elaborate practical joke arranged by his
friends. After they had tricked him into
drunkenness, the five went on a rampage.
The second step in their plan to lead
George to perdition came when Herb
tricked George into going to dinner one
Sunday at a brothel. Herb represented
the house to George as an old mansion,
its proprietor, Mrs. Crofut, as a pillar of
Kansas City society, and the troop of
prostitutes as her daughters. George,
completely duped, was impressed by the
graciousness of Mrs. Crofut and by the
beauty of her daughters. He treated the
girls to a neighborhood movie.
Back at Queenie's, George would not
believe Herb when his friend told him
the truth about Mrs. Crofut's genteel
establishment. Irritated by George's prig-
gishness and stupidity, his four friends
beat him nearly to death. Later, at the
hospital, Louie told George that he ought
to live and let live.
Out of the hospital, George continued
his book selling. On a train he met an
evangelist who said that money did not
matter; however, George gave the man
money when he learned that the man's
family was destitute. In Fort Worth
George exasperated a bawdy house
proprietor posing as a medium, by telling
her that she was a fake.
Having learned that Roberta had taken
a job as a waitress in Kansas City, George
went there and forced himself upon the
girl, who wanted nothing to do with
him. He adopted Elizabeth, the daughter
of his friend Herb, who died with few
illusions about life.
In Ozarkville, Missouri, George
angered a father when he talked to the
man's young daughter in the street. Then
he went to a country store to buy a doll
for the girl and became involved in a
hold-up. Carrying out one of his strange
theories, he assisted the amazed burglar.
The storekeeper, Mrs. Efrim, thought that
George was out of his mind. Arrested,
he was put in jail, where he met George
Burkin, a movie director who had been
arrested as a peeping Tom. Burkin
explained to George that he peeped only
to observe unself-conscious human
behavior.
George's trial was a sensation in
Ozarkville. The little girl and Mrs. Efrim lied
in their testimony, and George attempted
to explain his theories of life to a
confounded court. When he explained what
he called ahimsa, or the theory of
reacting to every situation in a manner that
was the exact opposite from what was
expected, the bewildered judge released
him, telling him to be cautious, however,
because people were afraid of ideas.
After George and Burkin had left
Ozarkville in Burkin's car, they picked
up a hitchhiker who turned out to be the
burglar whom George had tried to help.
George attempted to work his radical
theory for the treatment of criminals on
the burglar, but the man only fled in
confused anger. George and Burkin argued
about George's theories, Burkin saying
that George had never really grown up,
and George claiming that Burkin had
thought too much and had not lived
enough.
Back in Kansas City, George met
Roberta and her sister Lottie for the
purpose of reaching a decision in his
relationship with Roberta. Lottie suggested that
the couple marry and get a divorce as
soon as possible, so that Roberta could
be accepted again by her family. George,
however, could not countenance divorce.
Being finally persuaded, Roberta married
1503

George and the couple moved into a flat
over a drug store. But their married life
grew more and more trying. George
found himself taking notes for topics
that he and Roberta could safely discuss.
They competed for Elizabeth's affections.
At last Roberta decided to leave George
and return to the farm.
George, unhappy, continued to sell
books. He lost his faith and began to
lead what many people would call a
normal life. At length he fell sick and
was hospitalized. In the hospital he
admitted to a Methodist pastor that he had
broken all but two of the ten
commandments but that he was glad he had broken
them. He shocked the pastor by saying
that one cannot get better and better.
While in the hospital he received a spoon
which had been willed to him by a man
whom he had never met but whom he
had admired reciprocally through a
mutual friend. He recovered, left the
hospital, and reverted to his old ways.
George Brush was incurable.
1504

HEDDA GABLER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First presented: 1890
Principal characters:
George Tesman, a scholar
Hedda Tesman, his wife
Miss Juliana Tesman, his aunt
Mrs. Elvsted, Hedda's old schoolmate
Judge Brack, a friend of the Tesmans
Ett.krt Lovberg, Hedda's former suitor
Critique:
Hedda Gahler has in it most of the
elements of good theater which Ibsen
painstakingly learned from the popular French
playwrights of the last half of the
nineteenth century. In Hedda, he created a
woman with hardly one redeeming
virtue. She is spiritually as empty as she
assumes her environment to be. Nearly
every great actress of the last half-century
has played Hedda and audiences have
always been attracted to her powerful but
ruthless personality.
The Story:
When aristocratic Hedda Gabler,
daughter of the late General Gabler,
consented to marry Doctor George Tesman,
everyone in Hedda's set was surprised
and a little shocked. Although George
was a rising young scholar soon to be
made a professor, in the university, he
was hardly considered the type of person
Hedda would marry. He was dull and
prosaic, absorbed almost exclusively in
his dusty tomes and manuscripts, while
Hedda was the beautiful, spoiled darling
of her father and of all the other men
who had flocked around her. But Hedda
was now twenty-nine, and George was
the only one of her admirers who was
willing to offer her marriage and a villa
which had belonged to the widow of a
cabinet minister.
The villa was somewhat beyond
George's means, but with the prospect
of a professorship and with his Aunt
Juliana's help, he managed to secure it
because it was what Hedda wanted.
He arranged a long wedding tour lasting
nearly six months because Hedda wished
that also. On their honeymoon George
spent most of his time delving into
libraries for material on his special field,
the history of civilization. Hedda was
bored. She returned to the villa hating
George. Then it began to look as if
George might not get the professorship,
in which case Hedda would have to
forego her footman and saddlehorse and
some of the other luxuries she craved.
George's rival for the post was Eilert
Lovberg, a brilliant but erratic genius who
had written a book, acclaimed a
masterpiece, in George's own field. Hedda's
boredom and disgust with her situation
was complete. She found her only
excitement in practicing with the brace of
pistols which had belonged to General
Gabler, the only legacy her father had
left her.
George discovered that Eilert had
written another book, more brilliant and
important than the last, a book written
with the help and inspiration of a Mrs.
Elvsted, whose devotion to the erratic
genius had reformed him. The
manuscript of this book Lovberg brought with
him one evening to the Tesman villa.
Hedda proceeded to make the most of
this situation. In the first place, Thea
HEDDA GABLER by Henrik Ibsen. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1505

Elvsted was Hedda's despised schoolmate,
and her husband's former sweetheart.
The fact that this mouse-like creature
had been the inspiration for the success
and rehabilitation of Eilert Lovberg was
more than Hedda could bear. For Eilert
Lovberg had always been in love with
Hedda, and she knew it. In the distant
past, he had urged her to throw in her
lot with him and she had been tempted
to do so but had refused because his
future had been uncertain. Now Hedda
felt a pang of regret mingled with anger
that another woman possessed what she
had lacked the courage to hold for
herself.
Her only impulse was to destroy, and
circumstances played into her hands.
When Lovberg called at the Tesman villa
with his manuscript, George was on
the point of leaving with his friend,
Judge Brack, for a bachelor party. They
invited Lovberg to accompany them, but
he refused, preferring to remain at the
villa with Mrs. Elvsted and Hedda. But
Hedda, determined to destroy the
handiwork of her rival, deliberately sent
Lovberg off to the party. All night, Hedda
and Mrs. Elvsted awaited the revelers'
return. George was the first to appear
with the story of the happenings of the
night before.
The party had ended in an orgy, and
on the way home Lovberg had lost his
manuscript, which George recovered and
brought home. In despair over the
supposed loss of his manuscript, Lovberg
had spent the remainder of the evening
at Mademoiselle Diana's establishment.
When he finally made his appearance at
the villa, George had gone. Lovberg told
Mrs. Elvsted he had destroyed his
manuscript, but later he confessed to Hedda
that it was lost and that, as a consequence,
he intended to take his own life.
Without revealing that the manuscript was at
that moment in her possession, Hedda
urged him to do the deed beautifully, and
she pressed into his hand a memento of
their relationship, one of General Ga-
bler's pistols—the very one with which
she had once threatened Lovberg.
After his departure, Hedda coldly and
deliberately thrust the manuscript into
the fire. When George returned and
heard from Hedda's own lips the fate of
Lovberg's manuscript, he was
unspeakably shocked; but half believing that she
burned it for his sake, he was also
flattered. He resolved to keep silent and
devote his life to reconstructing the book
from the notes kept by Mrs. Elvsted.
Except for two circumstances, Hedda
would have been safe. The first was the
manner in which Lovberg met his death.
Leaving Hedda, he had returned to
Mademoiselle Diana's, where instead of
dying beautifully, as Hedda had planned,
he became embroiled in a brawl in which
he was accidentally killed. The second
was the character of Judge Brack, a
sophisticated man of the world, as ruthless
in his way as Hedda was in hers. He had
long admired Hedda's cold, dispassionate
beauty, and had wanted to make her his
mistress. The peculiar circumstances of
Eilert Lovberg's death gave him his
opportunity. He had learned that the pistol
with which Lovberg met his death was
one of a pair belonging to Hedda. If the
truth came out, there would be an
investigation followed by scandal in which
Hedda would be involved. She could
not face either a public scandal or the
private ignominy or the judge's proposal.
So while her husband and Mrs. Elvsted
were beginning the long task of
reconstructing the dead Lovberg's manuscript,
Hedda calmly went to her boudoir and
with the remaining pistol she died
beautifully—as she had urged Lovberg to do
—by putting a bullet through her head.
1506

THE HEIMSKRINGLA
Type of work: Sagas
Author: Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241)
Type of plots: Historical chronicles
Time of plots: Legendary times to twelfth century
Locale: Norway
First transcribed: Thirteenth century
Principal characters:
Odin, ancestor of the Northmen
On Jorundsson, of Sweden
Halfdan the Black, of Norway
Harald the Fatrhaired, his son
Aethelstan, of England
Hakon the Good, Harald's son
Eric Blood-Ax, Hakon's brother
Olaf Tryggvesson, Christianizer of Norway
Olaf the Saint
Magnus the Good, his stepson
Harald Sigurdsson the Stern, Olaf the Saint's brother
Olaf the Quiet, Harald's son
Magnus Barefoot, Olaf's son
Eystein,
Sigurd, and
Olaf, Magnus* sons
Magnus Sigurdsson
Harald Gille, Sigurd Magnusson's half brother
Inge,
Sigurd, and
Eystein, Harald's sons
Hakon Sigurdsson
Erling Skakke, counselor to Inge
Magnus, his son
Critique:
The Heimskringla, a collection of tra-
<litional sagas of the Norwegian kings,
was first transcribed by Snorri Sturluson,
an Icelandic bard and chieftain.
Interested in the stories handed down by word
of mouth in the houses of chieftains in
the northern countries, he wrote them
down in Old Norse, the language
understood by all Scandinavian peoples at that
time. Snorri Sturluson began writing in
1220. Beginning with the Yngling Saga,
which traces the descent of the
Northmen from the legendary god Odin, The
Heimskringla contains sixteen other sagas
covering the historic period between 839
and 1177. Each saga tells of the life and
achievements of one man; in The
Heimskringla each man represented is the chief
king of Norway at a time when several
men usually fought for the title. These
are only a few of the hundreds of sagas
known to Scandinavian literature. While
the time of sagas in general runs from
the sixth to the fourteenth centuries, The
Heimskringla covers the Viking Age,
dating roughly from the eighth century,
when Norwegians came into historical
significance because of their raiding
expeditions, through the years of Norwegian
occupation of foreign lands, the
Christianizing of their own country, and finally
the consolidation of Norway.
The Stories:
In Asaland in Asia near the Black Sea
lived Odin, the conqueror of many
nations, and a great traveler, whose people
believed he would have success in every
1507

battle. When a neighboring people
beheaded his friend Mime as a spy and
sent the head to Odin, he smeared the
head with herbs to keep it from rotting
and sang incantations over it. Thereafter
the head could speak to Odin and
discover secrets for him. While the Romans
were subduing the world, Odin learned
that he was to rule the northern half.
Traveling through Russia and northern
Germany, he finally settled in the
Scandinavian peninsula. There he appeared
handsome to his friends and fiendish to
his enemies. He used magic against his
foes so that they were helpless in battle
against him, for he could change his own
shape and wish himself from place to
place. He made laws for his people: that
the dead should be burned, that blood-
sacrifice be made for good harvests, and
that taxes be paid yearly. When he was
near death, Odin said that he would go
to Valhalla and wait there for all good
warriors. Then he died quietly in his
bed, and afterward the rulers of the north-
land claimed descent from him.
The sacrifices his people made to Odin
were sometimes great. When King On
Jorundsson of Sweden was sixty years old,
he made an oracular sacrifice of a son to
Odin. His answer from Odin was that
he would live sixty years longer if he
sacrificed a son every ten years. He sacrificed
as he was told until he had given up nine
out of his ten sons. By that time he was
so old and weak that his people refused
to let the tenth son be sacrificed, and so
On died of extreme old age. After that
people dying from weakness of age were
said to have On's sickness.
After twenty generations of Yngling
rulers in the Scandinavian countries came
Halfdan the Black, born about 820, King
of Norway. In those days a king was an
intermediary between the people and the
supreme powers, whose favor he courted
by sacrifices. Halfdan was considered a
good king because the harvests were
plentiful during his lifetime. He died young
in a sleighing accident while crossing
thin ice. His people begged so hard for
his body to insure continued good
seasons that finally the body was quartered,
and each quarter and the head were sent
to separate provinces to spread his good
influence.
Harald the Fairhaired was Halfdan's
son. He sent some of his henchmen to
bring to him a girl to be his concubine,
but she refused to bow to a king of
any territory so small and sent word that
she would consider him when he ruled
all of Norway. His attendants thought
her attitude warranted punishment;
Harald considered it a challenge. Ten years
later, after he had conquered all of
Norway, he sent for the girl and married
her. He had many children by her and
other women. When he was fifty years
old, he divided his kingdom among his
sons and gave them half the revenues.
At that time Aethelstan, King of
England, sent Harald a sword. When Harald
accepted it, however, Aethelstan's
messengers claimed that he was then subject to
their king. The following summer Harald
sent his nine-year-old son Hakon to
Aethelstan to foster, as a foster father
was always subject to a real father. Each
king tried to outdo the other, but each
ruled in his own kingdom until his dying
day. When he was seventy-nine years
old, Harald died in his bed.
Hakon went from England to Norway
when he heard of his father's death. He
was then fifteen years old. At the same
time the chief Norse king had sailed west
to ravage England; he was Hakon's
brother, Eric Blood-Ax, so called because he
had slain at least four of his brothers.
Eric was killed in England and Hakon
subdued Norway. Hakon, who had been
converted to Christianity while in
England, began to practice Christian habits
of fasting and prayer in Norway.
Although he did not insist on forcing
Christianity on his followers, many of them,
out of friendship for him, allowed
themselves to be baptized. Hakon wanted to
forego sacrifices to the gods, but a
counselor persuaded him to humor the people
who still believed devoutly in blood sac-
1508

rifice. Known to his country as Hakon
the Good, he was killed in battle with
Eric's sons, to whom he left the kingdom.
The years during which Eric's sons
ruled Norway were so bad that fish as
well as corn were lacking and the people
went hungry. Among other petty kings,
the sons killed Tryggve Olafsson, whose
wife escaped to bring Olaf Tryggvesson
to birth.
As a child Olaf Tryggvesson spent six
years in slavery before his uncle learned
where marauding Vikings had sent him
after capturing the boy and his mother
as they were on their way to a place of
safety in Russia. By the time he was
twelve, Olaf himself was a Viking
chieftain. After harrying various parts of
England he made peace with Aethelred, the
English king, and thereafter always kept
the peace with England. By that time
his aim was to be a crusader, for he had
come unc}er the influence of Christianity
during his raids on England. Having
been converted and baptized by the
English priests, he wanted to Christianize his
own land as well. He set sail for Norway
in 995. Between that date and 1000,
when he was decoyed into a one-sided
battle with the kings of Denmark and
Sweden and lost his life at Svolder, he
converted all of Norway as well as many
of the outlying islands, either by the force
of his own personality, or, when that did
not suffice, by force of arms. Norway was
a Christian land by the time Olaf died,
but there was no Norwegian king strong
enough to rule its entirety while the
Danes and Swedes laid claim to various
parts of the country.
While he was very young, Olaf Har-
aldsson joined Viking expeditions to
England, Jutland, Holland, France, and
Spain. In England, where the Norwegians
were fighting the Danes who were then
in power in England, he was present at
the stoning to death of the archbishop
who had confirmed Olaf Tryggvesson. It
was said that in Spain Olaf Haraldsson
dreamed of a fearful man who told him
to give up further travel to the Holy
Land and to go back to Norwav. In 1015
he sailed for Norway to reestablish
Christianity and to regain the throne once
held by his ancestor, Harald the Fair-
haired. Though he did not have the
striking personality of Olaf Tryggvesson, Olaf
Haraldsson had persistence enough to
spread Christianity by his bands of
missionaries, to win control over Norway, and
to set up a central government. The latter
was his hardest task, as it meant taking
away some of the traditional powers of
the chieftains. He created a form of
justice that worked equally for the
chieftains and the common people, and
because of their resentment the chieftains
rose against him at last. With a superior
force they fought him at Stiklestad, in
1030, when he was cut down. His hope
for national union and independence
seemed doomed until suddenly rumors
were spread that miracles had occurred
where his body had fallen. People began
to give Olaf Haraldsson a new name,
Olaf the Saint, and the whole Norwegian
people suddenly craved the independence
he had fought for.
Olaf the Saint's stepson, Magnus,
obtained the title of King of Norway
without much trouble. Afterward he made a
treaty with King Hardacanute of
Denmark to keep the peace as long as they both
should live, the one surviving to become
the ruler of the other's country. When
Hardacanute died, Magnus thereupon
became King of Denmark. Since
Hardacanute had also become King of England
after the death of his father, Magnus laid
claim to England when Edward the Good
became the English king; but he was
prevented from invading England by trouble
stirred up in Denmark by a false friend
whom he had made earl there. Letters
were exchanged between Magnus and
Edward over Magnus' claim to England.
Edward's reply was so sensible and
courageous that Magnus was content to rule
in his own land and to let Edward reign
in England.
Greater troubles beset Magnus when
his uncle, Harald Sigurdsson, returned
1509

north after many years in Russia,
Constantinople, and the Holy Land. Harald
had left Norway after the battle of Stikle-
stad, when his brother Olaf the Saint was
killed. He plundered all through the
south lands and at Constantinople joined
the royal guard called the Vaeringer.
Meanwhile he had collected much booty,
which he sent to the Russian king for
safekeeping until he should have finished
his wanderings. When he tired of life in
Constantinople, he traveled north to
Russia. There he married Ellisiv, the king's
daughter, and then traveled with her and
his booty toward Norway. Eventually he
made a deal with Magnus. He received
half of Norway in return for half his
booty. When Magnus, called the Good,
died of illness, Harald, in contrast called
the Stern, ruled alone. He was a harsh
ruler and he met his death in England
while trying to unthrone Harald God-
winsson, Edward's successor.
Through these times miracles
continued to be credited to Olaf the Saint.
Sometimes he appeared to people in
dreams, as he did to Magnus the Good
just before his death. Sometimes a
pilgrimage to his shrine cured people who
had been crippled from birth or who had
been maimed in righting. It was even said
that Olaf could pull the root of a tongue
so that a man whose tongue had been
cut out could speak again. His shrine
was in Nidaros.
After Harald the Stern, his sons
Magnus and Olaf ruled Norway, but Magnus
soon died of a sickness. Olaf, called the
Quiet, reigned for twenty-six years. There
was peace in Norway during that time,
and the country gained in riches and
cultivation.
Thereafter Olaf's son Magnus and his
nephew, Hakon Magnusson, ruled
Norway, but Hakon soon died of an illness.
Magnus* reign was of ten years' time,
most of which he spent in expeditions
to reduce the island possessions to full
submission to the central government in
Norway. Under Magnus, for the first
time, the government became a strong
power. Because Magnus returned from
one of his expeditions to Scotland
wearing the Scottish national costume, his
people called him Magnus Barefoot. On
a foraging expedition, in 1103, Magnus
was killed in Ireland before he was thirty
years old.
From that time until 1130 peace
descended on Norway and the Church
increased its powers. In the early days the
Norwegian churches had been under the
archbishopric of Bremen, but during that
time they gained an archbishopric of
their own at Lund in Skane. Magnus'
sons, Eystein, Sigurd, and Olaf, ruled the
country, but Olaf was only a small boy.
Those years were also the period of the
crusades. Sigurd took men and ships to
the Holy Land while Eystein ruled at
home. Sigurd was gone three years and
gained much glory in England, Spain,
Constantinople, and Palestine. He was
afterward called the Crusader. When he
came back to Norway, he and Eystein
were jealous of each other's powers. Olaf
died young and Eystein died before
Sigurd. Sigurd had strange fancies before
he himself died, but he had done much
to improve the legal system of the
country by increasing the powers of the
Things. The congregation of people at
the Things became the highest authority
in the land, and even the kings argued
their cases before those representative
bodies.
Neither Olaf nor Eystein had sons.
Magnus, Sigurd's son, became king, but
his sole rule was threatened by Harald
Gille, who came from Ireland and
claimed to be Sigurd's half-brother.
Harald passed an ordeal by hot iron to prove
his paternity. After Sigurd's death Harald
was proclaimed king over part of
Norway. It was said that Magnus was
foolish, but Harald was cruel. A series of
civil wars ensued, ending when Harald
captured Magnus and had him blinded
and otherwise mutilated. Thereafter
Magnus was called the Blind. He retired to a
1510

monastery. Harald was killed by the
order and treachery of Sigurd Slembedegn,
a pretender to the throne.
In the days when Harald's sons reigned
there were more civil wars. Crippled
Inge was the most popular of Harald's
three sons. Sigurd and Eystein led
separate factions, and so there was always
unrest in the country.
In 1152, Cardinal Nicholas came to
Norway from Rome to establish an
archbishopric at Nidaros, where King Olaf
the Saint reposed. Cardinal Nicholas was
well loved by the people and improved
many of their customs. When the pope
died suddenly, Nicholas became Pope
Adrian IV. He was always friendly with
the Norsemen.
After Sigurd and Eystein had been
killed in different battles, Inge ruled
alone. He was twenty-six when he was
killed in battle with Hakon Sigurdsson,
who had claimed Eystein's part of
Norway. Hakon was little to be trusted. Er-
ling Skakke, previously a power behind
Inge's throne, then took it upon himself
to create a strong party which could put
upon the throne whomever it chose. None
of his party favored Hakon, called the
Broad-Shouldered, who was defeated in
battle within a year, when he was only
fifteen, in 1162.
Erling Skakke's party finally decided
to put Erling Skakke's son Magnus on
the throne. The child was five years old
at the time. He was a legitimate
candidate, however, for his mother was a
daughter of Sigurd the Crusader. Erling
Skakke was jealous of power, yet he gave
much of the traditional authority of the
throne to the bishops in exchange for
their blessing on Magnus as king; and he
made an agreement with King Valdemar
of Denmark under which he gave
Valdemar a part of Norway as a fief under the
Danish crown in exchange for peace. It
had been a long time since a foreign
king had claim to part of Norway. Erling
Skakke spent much of his time wiping
out the descendants of Harald Gille, and
in time he became a tyrant in order to
hold the throne safe for his child,
Magnus Erlingsson.
1511

HELEN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c. 485-c. 406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Romantic adventure
Time of plot: Seven years after the sack of Troy
Locale: Egypt
First presented: 412 B.C.
Principal characters:
Helen, wife of King Menelaus
Menelaus, King of Sparta
Theoclymenus, King of Egypt
Theonoe, a prophetess, sister of Theoclymenus
Critique:
There is some disagreement among
Greek scholars as to whether Helen is a
serious play or, because of its anticlimac-
tic happy ending, merely Euripidean self-
parody. The line of action seems to build
toward tragedy, from which it is averted
at the last moment by a dens ex machina
in the form of the Dioscuri. The story is
taken from a tradition established in the
sixth century B.C. by the Greek poet
Stesichorus, who believed that Paris had
carried off to Troy only a phantom Helen
fashioned by Hera, while the real Helen
was taken to Egypt by Hermes. H. D. F.
Kitto praises this play, asserting that it
has appropriate rhetoric throughout,
consistent characterization, and a faultless
plot. Perhaps the only exceptions to its
comic tone are the first ode of the chorus
and the murder of the fifty Egyptian
galley-men.
The Story:
Helen prayed before the tomb of
Proteus, late King of Egypt, who had
protected her from any dishonor while her
husband Menelaus was leading the Greek
hosts at the siege of Troy in the mistaken
belief that the phantom Helen carried
off by Paris, son of the Trojan king, was
really his wife. She recalled that when
the three goddesses, Hera, Cypris
(Aphrodite), and Athena had appeared before
Paris and asked him to judge which was
the fairest, Cypris had promised him
Helen as a prize for choosing her. But
Hera, enraged at being rejected, had
caused a phantom Helen to be carried
off to Troy. In Egypt the real Helen
prayed for the safety of her husband and
for protection against Theoclymenus, son
of Proteus, who was determined to marry
her.
She was accosted by Teucer, an exile
from Achaea, who brought tidings of the
end of the war, the ruin of the Greeks
seeking their homelands, the
disappearance of Menelaus and Helen, and the
suicide of Leda, Helen's mother, who
had killed herself because she could not
endure her daughter's shame. The
anguished Helen then warned Teucer not
to seek out the prophetess Theonoe, as
he intended, but to flee, for any Greek
found in Egypt would be killed. The
chorus grieved for Helen, who lamented
her miserable fate and threatened suicide.
In despair, she took the advice of the
chorus and herself sought out Theonoe.
Menelaus, shipwrecked and in rags,
appeared before the palace seeking aid,
only to be berated and sent off by a
portress who warned him that since
Theoclymenus had Helen in his possession no
Greeks were welcome in Egypt. Menelaus
was astounded, for he haa just left his
Helen secure in a nearby cave. As he
stoori there in bewilderment, Helen
emerged from her conference with
Theonoe and confronted amazed Menelaus.
Helen could not convince him that she
was indeed his wife until a messenger
brought word to Menelaus that the Helen
he had left at the cave was gone, having
1512

soared away into the air. The long
separated lovers then embraced, rejoiced, and
told each other of all the adventures that
had befallen them. But their immense
happiness was darkened by realization of
their present plight: Theoclymenus was
determined to make Helen his own, and
Menelaus was in danger of his life. The
two resolved that if they could not
concoct some scheme for escape, they would
commit suicide rather than be separated
again.
Theonoe, aware of the presence of
Menelaus, appeared to inform him that,
although Hera had relented and was now
willing to let him return to Sparta with
Helen, Cypris was unwilling to have it
revealed that she had bribed Paris to be
chosen as the most beautiful of the
goddesses. Therefore Theonoe, serving
Cypris, felt obliged to expose Menelaus to
her brother. Terrified, Helen fell to her
knees in tears and supplication, and the
enraged Menelaus threatened that they
would die rather than submit. Theonoe
relented, promised to keep silent, and
urged them to devise some way of escape.
After rejecting several of Menelaus'
desperate proposals, Helen hit upon a
scheme which she put into operation as
soon as Theoclymenus returned from a
hunting trip. Appearing before him in
mourning clothes and addressing him for
the first time as her lord, Helen told him
in a pitiful voice that a shipwrecked
Greek warrior had just brought her word
that Menelaus had drowned at sea. She
was now ready, she added, to marry
Theoclymenus if he would permit proper
burial honors, in the Greek fashion, for
her husband. Theoclymenus consented
and turned to Menelaus, who was posing
as the bearer of sad tidings, for
instructions concerning Greek burial rites for a
king drowned at sea. He was told that
there must be a blood offering, an empty
\'\er decked and carried in procession,
bronze arms, a supply of the fruits of the
earth, all to be taken out to sea in a large
ship from which the widow must commit
everything to the waters. The gullible
Theoclymenus, anxious to foster piety in
the woman who was about to become his
wife, agreed to everything, and
preparations were made for both a funeral and
a royal wedding.
Later, a breathless messenger came
running to Theoclymenus with the news
that Helen had escaped with Menelaus.
He described in detail how the Greek
stranger commanding the ship had
permitted a large number of shipwrecked
sailors to come aboard and how, when the
time came to slay the bull, the stranger,
instead of uttering a funeral prayer, had
called upon Poseidon to allow him and
his wife to sail safely to Sparta. The
aroused Egyptians sought to turn back
the ship, but they were slaughtered by
the Greek warriors whom Menelaus had
smuggled aboard. Theoclymenus,
enraged, realized that pursuit was
hopeless but resolved to avenge himself on his
treacherous sister, Theonoe. A servant
from the palace tried in vain to convince
him that he ought to accept what was
obviously an honorable treachery. Both
the servant and Theonoe were saved from
death when the Dioscuri, the twin sons
of Zeus, appeared from the sky to restrain
his rage and explain to him that Heaven
had ordained the return of Helen and
Menelaus to their homeland.
Theoclymenus was chastened, and the chorus
chanted familiar lines about the irony of
Fate.
1513

HENRY ESMOND
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Late seventeenth, early eighteenth centuries
Locale: England and the Low Countries
First published: 1852
Principal characters:
Henry Esmond, a Castlewood ward
Francis Esmond, Viscount Castlewood
Rachel Esmond, his wife
Beatrix, their daughter
Frank, their son
Lord Mohun, a London rake
Father Holt, a Jacobite spy
James Stuart, the exiled pretender
Critique:
Thackeray did not have high regard
for the average historian of his day. To
present history as he thought it should
be presented, he wrote The History of
Henry Esmond, a novel which contains
a blend of fact and fiction. There is fact
in the many historical characters of the
book. There is fiction in the love story
of Colonel Henry Esmond, who was in
love with two women. Today's reader is
likely to lose patience with Henry
Esmond, whose attempts at winning
Beatrix are so ineffectual as to be almost
ludicrous; but no reader can escape the
witchery of Beatrix's charms. In her,
Thackeray has created one of the most
delightfully puzzling and fascinating
coquettes in all English literature.
The Story:
Henry Esmond grew up at Castlewood.
He knew there was some mystery about
his birth and he dimly remembered that
long ago he had lived with weavers who
spoke a foreign tongue. Thomas Esmond,
Viscount Castlewood, had brought him
to England and turned him over to Father
Holt, the chaplain, to be educated. That
much he learned as he grew older.
All was not peace and quiet at
Castlewood in those years, when his lordship
and Father Holt were engaged in a plot
for the restoration of the exiled Stuart
king, James II. When James attempted
to recover Ireland for the Stuarts, Thomas
Esmond rode off to his death at the
battle of the Boyne. His widow fled to her
dower house at Chelsea. Father Holt
disappeared. Henry, a large-eyed, grave-
faced twelve-year-old boy, was left alone
with servants in the gloomy old house.
There his new guardians and distant
cousins, Francis and Rachel Esmond,
found him when they arrived to take
possession of Castlewood. The new
Viscount Castlewood, a bluff, loud-voiced
man, greeted the boy kindly enough. His
wife was like a girl herself—she was only
eight years older than Henry—and
Henry thought her the loveliest lady he
had ever seen. With them were a little
daughter, Beatrix, and a son, Frank, a
baby in arms.
As Henry grew older he became more
and more concerned over the rift he saw
coming between Rachel Esmond and her
husband, both of whom he loved because
they had treated him as one of the
immediate family in the household at
Castlewood. It was plain that the hard-
drinking, hard-gambling nobleman was
wearying of his quiet country life. After
Rachel's face was disfigured by
smallpox, her altered beauty caused her
husband to neglect her even more. Young
Beatrix also felt that relations between
her parents were strained.
When Henry was old enough, he went
to Cambridge, sent there on money left
Rachel by a deceased relative. Later,
1514

when he returned to Castlewood on a
vacation, he realized for the first time
that Beatrix was exceptionally attractive.
Apparently he had never really noticed
her before. Rachel, for her part, had
great regard for her young kinsman.
Before his arrival from Cambridge,
according to Beatrix, Rachel went to Henry's
room ten times to see that it was ready.
Relations between Rachel and the
viscount were all but severed when the
notorious Lord Mohun visited
Castlewood. Rachel knew her husband had
been losing heavily to Mohun at cards,
but when she spoke to the viscount about
the bad company he was keeping, he flew
into a rage. He was by no means calmed
when Beatrix innocently blurted out to
her father, in the company of Mohun,
that that gentleman was interested in
Rachel. Jealous of another man's
attentions to the wife he himself neglected,
the viscount determined to seek
satisfaction in a duel.
The two men fought in London, where
the viscount had gone on the pretext of
seeing a doctor. Henry, who suspected
the real reason for the trip, went along,
for he hoped to engage Mohun in a fight
and thus save the life of his beloved
guardian. The viscount, however, was in
no mood to be cheated out of an excuse
to provoke a quarrel. He was heavily in
debt to Mohun and thought a fight was
the only honorable way out of his
difficulties. Moreover, he knew Mohun had
written letters to Rachel, although, as the
villain explained, she had never answered
them. They fought, and Mohun foully
and fatally wounded the viscount. On his
deathbed the viscount confessed to his
young kinsman that Henry was not an
illegitimate child, but the son of Thomas,
Lord Castlewood, by an early marriage,
and the true heir to the Castlewood title.
Henry Esmond generously burned the
dying man's confession and resolved
never to divulge the secret.
For his part in the duel Henry Esmond
was sent to prison. When Rachel visited
Henry in prison, she was enraged
because he had not stopped the duel and
because he had allowed Mohun to go
unpunished. She rebuked Henry and
forbade him to return to Castlewood. When
Henry left prison he decided to join the
army. For that purpose he visited the
old dowager viscountess, his stepmother,
who bought him a commission.
Henry's military ventures were highly
successful, and won for him his share of
wounds and glory. He fought in the
campaign of the Duke of Marlborough
against Spain and France in 1702 and
in the campaign of Blenheim in 1704.
Between the two campaigns he returned
to Castlewood, where he was reconciled
with Rachel. There he saw Frank, now
Lord Castlewood, and Beatrix, who was
cordial toward him. Rachel herself
cautioned Henry that Beatrix was selfish and
temperamental and would make no man
happy who loved her.
After the campaign of 1704 Henry
returned to his cousins, who were living
in London. To Henry, Beatrix was more
beautiful than ever and even more the
coquette. But he found himself unable
to make up his mind whether he loved
her or Rachel. Later, during the
campaign of 1706, he learned from Frank
that the ravishing Beatrix was engaged
to an earl. The news put Henry in low
spirits because he now felt she would
never marry a poor captain like himself.
Henry's affairs of the heart were put
temporarily into the background when
he came upon Father Holt in Brussels.
The priest told Henry that while on an
expedition in the Low Countries, Thomas
Esmond, his father, had seduced the
young woman who was Henry's mother.
A few weeks before his child was born
Thomas Esmond was injured in a duel.
Thinking he would die, he married the
woman so that her child would be born
with an untainted name. But Thomas
Esmond did not die, and when he
recovered from his wounds he deserted his
wife and married a distant kinswoman,
1515

the dowager viscountess, Henry's
stepmother.
When Henry returned to Castlewood,
Rachel informed him she had learned his
secret from the old viscountess and
consequently knew that he, not Frank, was
the true heir. For the second time Henry
refused to accept the title belonging to
him.
Beatrix's interest in Henry grew after
she became engaged to the Duke of
Hamilton and learned that Henry was not
illegitimate in birth but the bearer of a
title her brother was using. Henry wanted
to give Beatrix a diamond necklace for a
wedding present, but the duke would not
permit his fiancee to receive a gift from
one of illegitimate birth. Rachel came
to the young man's defense and declared
before the duke, her daughter, and
Henry the secret of his birth and title.
Later the duke was killed in a duel with
Lord Mohun, who also met his death at
the same time. The killing of Rachel's
husband was avenged.
The Duke of Hamilton's death gave
Henry one more chance to win Beatrix's
heart. He threw himself into a plot to
put the young Stuart pretender on the
throne when old Queen Anne died. To
this end he went to France and helped
to smuggle into England the young
chevalier whom the Jacobites called James
III, the king over the water. The two
came secretly to the Castlewood home
in London, the prince passing as Frank,
the young viscount, and there the royal
exile saw and fell in love with Beatrix.
Fearing the results of this infatuation,
Lady Castlewood and Henry sent Beatrix
against her will to Castlewood. When
a report that the queen was dying swept
through London, the prince was nowhere
to be found. Henry and Frank made a
night ride to Castlewood. Finding the
pretender there, in the room used by
Father Holt in the old days, they
renounced him and the Jacobite cause.
Henry realized his love for Beatrix was
dead at last. He felt no regrets for her
or for the prince as he rode back to
London and heard the heralds proclaiming
George I, the new king.
The prince made his way secredy back
to France, where Beatrix joined him in
his exile. At last Henry felt free to
declare himself to Rachel, who had grown
very dear to him. Leaving Frank in
possession of the title and the Castlewood
estates, Henry and his wife went to
America. In Virginia he and Rachel built
a new Castlewood, reared a family, and
found happiness in their old age.
1516

HENRY THE EIGHTH
Type of work: Drama
Author. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1520-1533
Locale: England
First presented: c. 1612
Principal characters:
King Henry the Eighth
Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal of York and Lord Chancellor of England
Cardinal Campeius, papal legate
Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury
Duke of Buckingham
Duke of Suffolk
Duke of Norfolk
Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester
Thomas Cromwell, Wolsey's servant
Queen Katharine, wife of Henry, later divorced
Anne Boleyn, maid of honor to Katharine, later queen
Critique:
In the prologue to Henry VIII the
audience is advised that this is not a happy
play; it should be received in sadness. The
description is incomplete and the advice
somewhat misleading. True, the play is
sad in its reality of ambition, political
maneuvering, misunderstanding, and un-
happiness, but, as the story progresses,
honesty and altruism predominate. And it
is difficult to imagine a Shakespearean
audience receiving with sadness Cran-
mer's eloquent prophecy regarding the
newborn princess, known to history as
Queen Elizabeth. Henry VIII vividly
pictures British court life in its spectacular
pomp and in its behind-the-throne
humanity. Many authorities credit John
Fletcher with the part-authorship of this
play.
The Story:
Cardinal Wolsey, a powerful figure at
court during the reigns of Henry VII and
Henry VIII, was becoming too aggressive
in his self-aggrandizement. Wolsey was
of humble stock, which fact accentuated
his personal qualities. Since he had lacked
the advantages of family and ancestral
office, his political prominence was
entirely the result of his own wisdom,
manner, and persistence. Unscrupulous in
seeking his own ends, he had removed any
possible obstacle in his climb to power.
One such hindrance to his ambitious
designs was the Duke of Buckingham,
accused of high treason. When Buckingham
was brought before the court for trial,
Queen Katharine, speaking in his defense,
protested against the cardinal's unjust
taxes and informed the king of growing
animosity among his people because he
retained Wolsey as his adviser. Wolsey
produced witnesses, among them
Buckingham's discharged surveyor, who testified
to Buckingham's disloyalty. The surveyor
swore that, at the time of the king's
journey to France, the duke had sought
priestly confirmation for his belief that
he could, by gaining favor with the
common people, rise to govern England. In his
lengthy and persistent testimony the
surveyor played upon earlier minor offenses
Buckingham had committed, and he
climaxed his accusation with an account
of the duke's assertion that he would
murder the king in order to gain the throne.
In spite of Katharine's forthright
protestations against Wolsey in his presence,
and her repeated contention of false
testimony against Buckingham, the
accused man was found guilty and
sentenced to be executed. The duke, for-
1517

bearing toward his enemies, recalled the
experience of his father, Henry of
Buckingham, who had been betrayed by a
servant. Henry VII had restored the honor of
the family by elevating the present duke
to favor. One difference prevailed between
the two trials, the duke stated; his father
had been unjustly dealt with, but he
himself had had a noble trial.
Wolsey, fearing reprisal from
Buckingham's son, sent him to Ireland as a deputy;
then, incensed and uneasy because of
Katharine's open accusations, he pricked
the king's conscience by questions
regarding his marriage to Katharine, who had
been the widow of Henry's brother.
Wolsey furthered his cause against
Katharine by arousing Henry's interest in
Anne Boleyn, whom the king met at a gay
ball given by the cardinal.
The plan followed by Wolsey in
securing a divorce for Henry was not a difficult
one. In addition to his evident trust of
Wolsey, the king felt keenly the fact that
the male children born to him and
Katharine in their twenty years of marriage had
been stillborn or had died shortly after
birth. Consequently, there was no male
heir in direct succession.
The cardinal's final step to be rid of his
chief adversary at court was to appeal to
the pope for a royal divorce. When
Cardinal Campeius arrived from Rome as
counsel to the king, Katharine appeared
in her own defense. But Wolsey had once
more resorted to perjured witnesses.
Requesting counsel, Katharine was told by
Wolsey that the honest and intelligent
men gathered at the hearing were of her
choosing. Cardinal Campeius supported
Wolsey's stand.
In speeches of magnificent dignity and
honesty, Katharine denounced the
political treachery that had caused her so much
unhappiness. Later, however, Katharine,
expelled from the court and sequestered in
Kimbolton, was able to feel compassion for
Wolsey when informed that he had died
in ill-repute; and her undying devotion to
Henry was indicated in her death note to
him. Altruistic to the last, she made as her
final request to the king the maintenance
of the domestics who had served her so
faithfully. Her strength to tolerate the
injustices she had endured lay in her trust
in a Power which, she said, could not be
corrupted by a king.
But ambition overrode itself in
Wolsey's designs for power. His great pride
had caused him to accumulate greater
wealth than the king's, to use an
inscription, Ego et Rex meus, which
subordinated the king to the cardinal, and to have
a British coin stamped with a cardinal's
hat. These, among many other offenses,
were of little importance compared with
Wolsey's double-dealing against the king
in the divorce proceedings. Because
Wolsey feared that Henry would marry Anne
Boleyn instead of seeking a royal alliance
in France, Wolsey asked the pope to delay
the divorce. When his letter was delivered
by mistake to the king, Wolsey,
confronted with the result of his own
carelessness, showed the true tenacious
character of the ambitious climber.
Although he realized that his error was his
undoing, he attempted to ingratiate
himself once more with the king.
He was too late to save himself. He
could instigate the unseating and
banishment of subordinates and he could
maneuver to have the queen sequestered,
but Henry wished no meddling with his
marital affairs. Repentant that he had not
served God with the effort and fervor with
which he had served the king, Wolsey left
the court, a broken-spirited man. He was
later arrested in York, to be returned for
arraignment before Henry. He was saved
the humiliation of trial, however, for he
died on the way to London.
Henry, shortly after the divorce,
secretly married Anne Boleyn. After
Wolsey's death she was crowned queen with
great pomp. Cranmer, the new
Archbishop of Canterbury, became Henry's
chief adviser.
Jealousy and rivalry did not disappear
from the court with the downfall of
Wolsey. Charging heresy, Gardiner, Bishop of
Winchester, set out to undermine Cran-
1518

mer's position with the king. Accused as
an arch heretic, Cranmer was brought to
trial. Henry, trusting his favorite, gave
him the royal signet ring which he was
to show to the council if his entreaties and
reasoning failed with his accusers.
Cranmer, overcome by the king's kindness,
wept in gratitude.
As he stood behind a curtain near the
council room, the king heard Gardiner's
charges against Cranmer. When Gardiner
ordered Cranmer to the Tower, stating
that the council was acting on the
pleasure of the king, the accused man produced
the ring and insisted upon his right to
appeal the case to the king. Realizing
that they had been tricked by a ruse which
Wolsey had used for many years, the
nobles were penitent. Appearing before
the council, Henry took his seat at the
table to condemn the assemblage for their
tactics in dealing with Cranmer. After
giving his blessings to those present and
imploring them to be motivated in the
future by unity and love, he asked
Cranmer to be godfather to the daughter
recently born to Anne Boleyn.
At the christening Cranmer prophesied
that the child, Elizabeth, would be wise
and virtuous, that her life would be a
pattern to all princes who knew her, and
that she would be loved and feared
because of her goodness and her strength.
He said that she would rule long and every
day of her reign would be blessed with
good deeds.
1519

HENRY THE FIFTH
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Early part of the fifteenth century
Locale: England and France
First presented: 1600
Principal characters:
Henry the Fifth, King of England
Charles the Sixth, King of France
Princess Katharine, his daughter
The Dauphin, his son
Mont joy, a French herald
Critique:
In The Life of Henry the Fifth
Shakespeare skillfully combined poetry,
pageantry, and history in his effort to glorify
England and Englishmen. King Henry
himself represents all that is finest in
English royalty; and yet when Henry
notes on the eve of the battle of Agin-
court that he is also a man like other
men, Shakespeare shows us an
Englishman who possesses that quality of
humility which makes great men even greater.
Few can see or read the play without
sharing, at least for the moment,
Shakespeare's pride in England and in things
English, and without sensing the vigor
and the idealism that are part of the
Anglo-Saxon heritage.
The Story:
Once the toss-pot prince of FalstafFs
tavern brawls, Henry V was now king at
Westminster, a stern but just monarch
concerned with his hereditary claim to
the crown of France. Before the arrival
of the French ambassadors, the young
king asked for legal advice from the
Archbishop of Canterbury. The king thought
that he was the legal heir to the throne of
France through Edward III, whose claim
to the French throne was, at best,
questionable. The Archbishop assured Henry
that he had as much right to the French
throne as did the French king;
consequently, both the Archbishop and the
Bishop of Ely urged Henry to press his
demands against the Frencn.
When the ambassadors from France
arrived, they came, not from Charles, the
king, but from his arrogant eldest son,
the Dauphin. According to the
ambassadors, the Dauphin considered the
English monarch the same hot-headed,
irresponsible youth he had been before he
ascended the throne. To sb/>v- that he
considered Henry an unfit ruler whose
demands were ridiculous, the Dauphin
presented Henry with some tennis balls.
Enraged by the insult, Henry told the
French messengers to warn their master
that the tennis balls would be turned
into gun-stones for use against the
French.
The English prepared for war. The
Dauphin remained contemptuous of
Henry, but others, including the French
Constable and the ambassadors who had
seen Henry in his wrath, were not so
confident. Henry's army landed to lay
siege to Harfleur, and the king threatened
to destroy the city, together with its
inhabitants, unless it surrendered. The
French governor had to capitulate
because help promised by the Dauphin
never arrived. The French, meanwhile,
were—with the exception of King
Charles—alarmed by the rapid progress
of the English through France. That
ruler, however, was so sure of victory
that he sent his herald, Montjoy, to
Henry to demand that the English king
pay a ransom to the French, give himself
up, and have his soldiers withdraw from
1520

France. Henry was not impressed by this
bold gesture, and retorted that if King
Charles wanted him, the Frenchman
should come to get him.
On the eve of the decisive battle of
Agincourt, the English were
outnumbered five to one. Henry's troops were on
foreign soil and ridden with disease. To
encourage them, and also to sound out
their morale, the king borrowed a cloak
and in this disguise walked out among
his troops, from watch to watch and from
tent to tent. As he talked with his men,
he told them that a king is but a man like
other men, and that if he were a king he
would not want to be anywhere except
where he was, in battle with his soldiers.
To himself, Henry mused over the cares
and responsibilities of kingship. Again he
thought of himself simply as a man who
differed from other men only in cere*
mony, itself an empty thing.
Henry's sober reflections on the eve of
a great battle, in which he thought much
English blood would be shed, were quite
different from those of the French, who
were exceedingly confident of their
ability to defeat their enemy. Shortly before
the conflict began, Montjoy again
appeared before Henry to give the English
one last chance to surrender. Henry
again refused to be intimidated. He was
not discouraged by the numerical
inferiority of his troops, for, as he reasoned in
speaking with one of his officers, the
fewer troops the English had, the greater
would be the honor to them when they
won.
The following day the battle began.
Because of Henry's leadership, the
English held their own. When French
reinforcements arrived at a crucial point
in the battle, Henry ordered his men to
kill all their prisoners so that the energies
of the English might be directed entirely
against the enemy in front of them, not
behind. Soon the tide turned. A much
humbler Montjoy approached Henry to
request a truce for burying the French
dead. Henry granted the herald's request,
and at the same time learned from him
that the French had conceded defeat.
Ten thousand French had been killed,
and only twenty-nine English.
The battle over, nothing remained for
Henry to do but to discuss with the
French king terms of peace. Katharine,
Charles' beautiful daughter, was Henry's
chief demand, and while his lieutenants
settled the details of surrender with the
French, Henry made love to the princess
and asked her to marry him. Though
Katharine's knowledge of English was
slight and Henry's knowledge of French
little better, they were both acquainted
with the universal language of love.
French Katharine consented to become
English Kate and Henry's bride.
1521

HENRY THE FOURTH, PART ONE
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1400-1405
Locale: England
Yxrst presented: 1596
Principal characters:
King Henry the Fourth
Henry, Prince of Wales
John of Lancaster, another son of the king
Earl of Westmoreland, and
Sir Walter Blunt, members of the king's party
Hotspur, son of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland
Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, Hotspur's uncle
Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, Hotspur's brother-in-law and
claimant to the throne
Sm John Falstaff, a bibulous knight
Mistress Quickly, hostess of the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap
Critique:
In Part I of The History of King Henry
TV historical details and dramatic
sequences involving affairs of state are
secondary to the comic aspects of the plot.
Falstaff, Shakespeare's best humorous
character, is the figure whose entrances
have been anticipated by audiences of
every period. Here, within a historical
framework, humor exists for its own sake,
and in no sense are the humorous details a
subplot to the activities of the Crown.
Woven into and between the scenes of
court and military affairs, the antics of
Falstaff and his mates created a suitable
atmosphere for showing Prince Henry's
character. He entered into their tricks and
zaniness with an abandon equal to the
irresponsibility of the commonest of the
group. Falstaff's lies, thieving, drinking,
and debauchery made him the butt of
repeated ludicrous situations. He used any
reverse to the advantage of obtaining
another bottle of sack, of gratifying his ego
by attracting the attention of his cohorts,
or of endearing himself, with his sly
rascality, to the prince. Because of FalstafT,
comedy and history join in this play.
The Story:
King Henry, conscience-stricken
because of his part in the murder of King
Richard II, his predecessor, planned a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He declared to
his lords that war had been banished from
England and that peace would reign
throughout the kingdom.
But there were those of differing
opinions. Powerful barons in the North
remained disaffected after the accession of
the new king. Antagonized by his failure
to keep promises made when he claimed
the throne, they recruited forces to
maintain their feudal rights. In fact, as Henry
announced plans for his expedition to the
Holy Land, he was informed of the brutal
murder of a thousand persons in a fray
between Edmund Mortimer, proclaimed
by Richard as heir to the crown, and Glen-
dower, a Welsh rebel. Mortimer was taken
prisoner. A messenger also brought word
of Hotspur's success against the Scots at
Holmedon Hill. The king expressed his
commendation of the young knight and
his regrets that his own son, Prince Henry,
was so irresponsible and carefree.
But King Henry, piqued by Hotspur's
refusal to release to him more than one
risoner, ordered a council meeting to
ring the overzealous Hotspur to terms.
At the meeting Henry refused to ransom
Mortimer, the pretender to the throne,
held by Glendower. In turn, Hotspur re-
1522

fused to release the prisoners taken at
Holmedon Hill, and Henry threatened
more strenuous action against Hotspur
and his kinsmen.
In a rousing speech Hotspur appealed
to the power and nobility of
Northumberland and Worcester and urged that they
undo the wrongs of which they were
guilty in the dethronement and murder
of Richard and in aiding Henry instead
of Mortimer to the crown. Worcester
promised to help Hotspur in his cause
against Henry. Worcester's plan would
involve the aid of Douglas of Scotland, to
be sought after by Hotspur, of Glendower
and Mortimer, to be won over through
Worcester's efforts, and of the Archbishop
of York, to be approached by
Northumberland.
Hotspur's boldness and impatience
were shown in his dealing with
Glendower as they, Mortimer, and Worcester
discussed the future division of the
kingdom. Hotspur, annoyed by the tedium of
Glendower's personal account of his own
ill-fated birth and by the uneven
distribution of land, was impudent and rude.
Hotspur was first a soldier, then a
gentleman.
In the king's opinion, Prince Henry
was quite lacking in either of these
attributes. In one of their foolish pranks Sir
John Falstaff and his riotous band had
robbed some travelers at Gadshill, only to
be set upon and put to flight by the prince
and one companion. Summoning the
prince from the Boar's Head Tavern, the
king urged his son to break with the
undesirable company he kept, chiefly the
ne'er-do-well Falstaff. Contrasting young
Henry with Hotspur, the king pointed out
the military achievements of
Northumberland's heir. Congenial, high-spirited
Prince Henry, remorseful because of his
father's lack of confidence in him, swore
his allegiance to his father and declared
he would show the king that in time of
crisis Hotspur's glorious deeds would
prove Hotspur no better soldier than
Prince Henry. To substantiate his pledge,
the prince took command of a
detachment that would join ranks with other
units of the royal army—Blunt's, Prince
John's, Westmoreland's, and the king's
—in twelve days.
Prince Henry's conduct seemed to
change very little. He continued his
buffoonery with Falstaff, who had recruited
a handful of bedraggled, nondescript foot
soldiers. Falstaff's contention was that,
despite their physical condition, they were
food for powder and that little more could
be said for any soldier.
Hotspur's forces suffered gross reverses
through Northumberland's failure,
because of illness, to organize an army. Also,
Hotspur's ranks were reduced because
Glendower believed the stars not
propitious for him to march at that time.
Undaunted by the news of his reduced forces,
Hotspur pressed on to meet Henry's army
of thirty thousand.
At Shrewsbury, the scene of the battle,
Sir Walter Blunt carried to Hotspur the
king's offer that the rebels' grievances
would be righted and that anyone
involved in the revolt would be pardoned if
he chose a peaceful settlement. In answer
to the king's message Hotspur reviewed
the history of Henry's double-dealing and
scheming in the past. Declaring that
Henry's lineage should not continue on
the throne, Hotspur finally promised
Blunt that Worcester would wait upon
the king to give him an answer to his
offer.
Henry repeated his offer of amnesty to
Worcester and Vernon, Hotspur's
ambassadors. Because Worcester doubted the
king's sincerity, on account of previous
betrayals, he lied to Hotspur on his return to
the rebel camp and reported that the king
in abusive terms had announced his
determination to march at once against
Hotspur. Worcester also reported Prince
Henry's invitation to Hotspur that they
fight a duel. Hotspur gladly accepted the
challenge.
As the two armies moved into battle,
Blunt, mistaken for the king, was slain by
1523

Douglas, who, learning his error, was
sorely grieved that he had not killed
Henry. Douglas, declaring that he would
yet murder the king, accosted him after a
long search over the field. He would have
been successful in his threat had it not
been for the intervention of Prince Henry,
who engaged Douglas and allowed the
king to withdraw from the fray.
In the fighting Hotspur descended upon
Prince Henry, exhausted from an earlier
wound and his recent skirmish with
Douglas. When the two young knights fought,
Hotspur was wounded. Douglas again
appeared, fighting with Falstaff, and
departed after Falstaff had fallen to the
ground as if he were dead. Hotspur died
of his wounds and Prince Henry, before
going off to join Prince John, his brother,
eulogized Hotspur and Falstaff. The two
benedictions were quite different. But
Falstaff had only pretended lifelessness
to save his life. After the prince's
departure he stabbed Hotspur. He declared that
he would swear before any council that
he had killed the young rebel.
Worcester and Vernon were taken
prisoners. Because they had not relayed to
Hotspur the peace terms offered by the
king, they were sentenced to death.
Douglas, in flight after Hotspur's death,
was taken prisoner. Given the king's
permission to dispose of Douglas, Prince
Henry ordered that the valiant Scottish
knight be freed.
The king sent Prince John to march
against the forces of Northumberland and
the Archbishop of York. He and Prince
Henry took the field against Glendower
and Mortimer, in Wales. Falstaff had the
honor of carrying off the slain Hotspur.
1524

HENRY THE FOURTH, PART TWO
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1405-1413
Locale: England
First fresented: 1597
Principal characters:
King Henry the Fourth
Henry, Prince of Wales
John of Lancaster, another son of the king
Earl of Westmoreland, a member of the king's party
Earl of Northumberland, enemy of the king
Sir John Falstaff, a riotous old knight
Shallow, a country justice
The Lord Chief Justice, judge of the King's Bench
Mistress Quickly, hostess of the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap
Critique:
As in The History of King Henry IV,
Part I, comedy is an outstanding feature
of this sequel. The same devices—puns,
hyperbole, coarseness—are used to good
effect, and in the earlier scenes of the play
the character of Falstaff again sustains the
spirit of high comedy. He ambles his way
through this second part of Henry IV as
he did in the first, his lying, drinking, and
chicanery still useful to his own ends.
In this sequel he becomes further involved
with Mistress Quickly, and his promise to
marry her is no more binding than are any
of his other vows. At the end Falstaff goes
on breezily promising great things for his
friends, until his death. The pomp and
display common to Shakespeare's
historical chronicles permeate the serious
parts of the drama, and the deathbed scene
between Henry IV and Prince Henry is
generally considered among the best in
dramatic literature.
The Story:
After the battle of Shrewsbury many
false reports were circulated among the
peasants. At last they reached
Northumberland, who believed for a time that the
rebel forces had been victorious. But his
retainers, fleeing from that stricken field,
brought a true account of the death of
Hotspur, Northumberland's valiant son,
at the hands of Prince Henry, and of King
Henry's avowal to put down rebellion by
crushing those forces still opposing him.
Northumberland, sorely grieved by news
of his son's death, prepared to avenge that
loss. Hope lay in the fact that the
Archbishop of York had mustered an army,
because soldiers so organized, being
responsible to the Church rather than to a
military leader, would prove better fighters
than those who had fled from Shrewsbury
field. News that the king's forces of
twenty-five thousand men had been
divided into three units was encouraging to
his enemies.
In spite of Northumberland's grief for
his slain son and his impassioned threat
against the king and Prince Henry, he
was easily persuaded by his wife and
Hotspur's widow to flee to Scotland, there to
await the success of his confederates
before he would consent to join them with
his army.
Meanwhile Falstaff delayed in carrying
out his orders to proceed north and recruit
troops for the king. Deeply involved with
Mistress Quickly, he used his royal
commission to avoid being imprisoned for
debt. With Prince Henry, who had paid
little heed to the conduct of the war, he
continued his riotous feasting and jesting
until both were summoned to join the
army marching against the rebels.
King Henry, aging and weary, had
1525

been ill for two weeks. Sleepless nights
had taken their toll on him, and in his
restlessness he reviewed his ascent to the
throne and denied, to his lords, the
accusation of unscrupulousness brought
against him by the rebels. He was
somewhat heartened by the news of Glen-
dower's death.
In Gloucestershire, recruiting troops at
the house of Justice Shallow, FalstafT
grossly accepted bribes and let able-
bodied men buy themselves out of service.
The soldiers he took to the war were a
raggle-taggle lot.
Prince John of Lancaster, taking the
field against the rebels, sent word by
Westmoreland to the archbishop that the king's
forces were willing to make peace, and he
asked that the rebel leaders make known
their grievances so that they might be
corrected.
When John and the archbishop met for
a conference, John questioned and
criticized the archbishop's dual role as
churchman and warrior. Because the rebels
announced their intention to fight until
their wrongs were righted, John promised
redress for all. Then he suggested that the
archbishop's troops be disbanded after a
formal review; he wished to see the
stalwart soldiers that his army would have
fought if a truce had not been declared.
His request was granted, but the men,
excited by the prospect of their release,
scattered so rapidly that inspection was
impossible. Westmoreland, sent to disband
John's army, returned to report that the
soldiers would take orders only from the
prince. With his troops assembled and
the enemy's disbanded, John ordered some
of the opposing leaders arrested for high
treason and others, including the
archbishop, for capital treason. John explained
that his action was in keeping with his
promise to improve conditions and that to
remove rebellious factions was the first
step in his campaign. The enemy leaders
were sentenced to death. FalstafT took
Coleville, the fourth of the rebel leaders,
who was sentenced to execution with the
others.
News of John's success was brought to
King Henry as he lay dying, but the
victory could not gladden the sad old king.
His chief concern lay in advice and
admonition to his younger sons, Gloucester
and Clarence, regarding their future
conduct, and he asked for unity among his
sons. Spent by his long discourse, the king
lapsed into unconsciousness.
Prince Henry, summoned to his dying
father's bedside, found the king in a
stupor, with the crown beside him. The
prince, remorseful and compassionate,
expressed regret that the king had lived such
a tempestuous existence because of the
crown and promised, in his turn, to wear
the crown graciously. As he spoke, he
placed the crown on his head and left the
room. Awaking and learning that the
prince had donned the crown, King
Henry immediately assumed that his son
wished him dead in order to inherit the
kingdom. Consoled by the prince's strong
denial of such wishful thinking, the king
confessed his own unprincipled behavior
in gaining the crown. Asking God's
forgiveness, he repeated his plan to journey
to the Holy Land to divert his subjects
from revolt, and he advised the prince,
when he should become king, to involve
his powerful lords in wars with foreign
powers, thereby relieving the country of
internal strife.
The king's death caused great sorrow
among those who loved him and to those
who feared the prince, now Henry V. A
short time before, the Lord Chief Justice,
acting on the command of Henry IV, had
alienated the prince by banishing FalstafT
and his band, but the newly crowned king
accepted the Chief Justice's explanation
for his treatment of FalstafT and restored
his judicial powers.
FalstafT was rebuked for his conduct by
Henry who stated that he was no longer
the person FalstafT had known him to be.
Until the old knight learned to correct his
ways, the king banished him, on pain of
death, to a distance ten miles away from
Henry's person. He promised, however,
that if amends were made FalstafT would
1526

return by degrees to the king's good graces.
Undaunted by that reproof, Falstaff
explained to his cronies that he yet would
make them great, that the king's
reprimand was only a front, and that the king
would send for him and in the secrecy of
the court chambers they would indulge in
their old foolishness and plan the
advancement of FalstafFs followers.
Prince John, expressing his admiration
for Henry's public display of his changed
attitude, prophesied that England would
be at war with France before a year had
passed.
1527

HENRY THE SIXTH, PART ONE
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1422-1444
Locale: England and France
Fwst presented: c. 1592
Principal characters:
King Henry VI
Duke of Gloster, uncle of the king and Protector of the Realm
Duke of Bedford, uncle of the king and Regent of France
Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, afterward cardinal
Richard Plant agenet, who becomes Duke of York
John Beaufort. Earl of Somerset
Earl of Suffolk
Lord Talbot, a general, afterward Earl of Shrewsbury
Charles, the Dauphin, afterward King of France
The Bastard of Orleans, a French general
Margaret of Anjou, afterward married to King Henry
Joan La Pucelle, commonly called Joan of Arc
Critique:
Replete with political intrigue, courtly
pomp, grandeur of battle, and the
mystery of witchcraft, King Henry the Sixth,
Part I, is typically Shakespearean historical
drama. Also typical, but more flagrant
than in most of the other history
chronicles are the playwright's gross distortions
and inaccuracies in historical detail. A
distinguishing factor in the play is the fuller
use of melodramatic devices to further
character development in instances in
which military prowess or statecraft are
hardly adequate. Typical, atypical, or
distinctive, Henry the Sixth is a rousing play,
either in print or upon stage. It is a
revision of an earlier drama, known by
Shakespeare.
The Story:
The great nobles and churchmen of
England gathered in Westminster Abbey
for the state funeral of King Henry V,
hero of Agincourt and conqueror of
France. The eulogies of Gloster, Bedford,
Exeter, and the Bishop of Winchester,
profound and extensive, were broken off
by messengers bringing reports of
English defeat and failure in France, where
the Dauphin, taking advantage of King
Henry's illness, had raised the standards
of revolt. The gravest defeat reported was
the imprisonment of Lord Talbot, general
of the English armies. Bedford swore to
avenge his loss. Gloster said that he would
also hasten military preparations and
proclaim young Prince Henry, nine months
old, King of England. The Bishop of
Winchester, disgruntled because the royal
dukes had asked neither his advice nor
aid, planned to seize the king's person
and ingratiate himself into royal favor.
In France, the Dauphin and his
generals, discussing the conduct of the war,
attempted to overwhelm the depleted
English forces. Although outnumbered and
without leaders, the English fought
valiantly and tenaciously. Hope of victory
came to the French, however, when the
Bastard of Orleans brought to the
Dauphin's camp a soldier-maid, Joan La
Pucelle, described as a holy young girl with
God-given visionary powers. The
Dauphin's attempt to trick her was
unsuccessful, for she recognized him although
Reignier, Duke of Anjou, stood in the
Dauphin's place. Next she vanquished the
prince in a duel to which he challenged
her in an attempt to test her military skill.
The followers of the Duke of Gloster
and the Bishop of Winchester rioted in
1528

the London streets, as dissension between
Church and State grew because of
Winchester's efforts to keep Gloster from
seeing young Henry. The Mayor of London
proclaimed against the unseemly conduct
of the rioters.
When the English and the French
fought again, Lord Salisbury and Sir
Thomas Gargrave, the English leaders,
were killed by a gunner in ambush.
Meanwhile Lord Talbot, greatly feared by the
French, had been ransomed in time to
take command of English forces in the
siege of Orleans. Enraged by the death
of Salisbury, Talbot fought heroically, on
one occasion with La Pucelle herself. At
last the English swarmed into the town
and put the French to rout. Talbot
ordered Salisbury's body to be carried into
the public market place of Orleans as a
token of his revenge for that lord's murder.
The Countess of Auvergne invited
Lord Talbot to visit her in her castle.
Fearing chicanery, Bedford and Burgundy
tried to keep him from going into an
enemy stronghold, but Talbot, as strong-
willed as he was brave, ignored their
pleas. He did whisper to his captain,
however, certain instructions concerning his
visit.
On his arrival at Auvergne Castle the
countess announced that she was making
him her prisoner in order to save France
from further scourges. Talbot proved his
wit by completely baffling the countess
with double talk and by signaling his
soldiers, who stormed the castle, ate the food
and drank the wine, and then won the
favor of the countess with their charming
manners.
In addition to continued internal strife
resulting from Gloster's and Winchester's
personal ambitions, new dissension arose
between Richard Plantagenet and the
Earl of Somerset. Plantagenet and his
followers chose a white rose as their symbol,
Somerset and his supporters a red rose,
and in the quarrel of these two men the
disastrous Wars of the Roses began. In
the meantime Edmund Mortimer, the
rightful heir to the throne, who had been
imprisoned when King Henry IV usurped
the crown some thirty years before, was
released from confinement. He urged his
nephew, Richard Plantagenet, to restore
the family to the rightful position the
Plantagenets deserved.
Youthful King Henry VI, after making
Plantagenet Duke of York, much to the
displeasure of Somerset, was taken to
France by Gloster and other lords to be
crowned King of France. In Paris,
Talbot's chivalry and prowess were rewarded
when he was made Earl of Shrewsbury.
In preparation for the battle at Rouen,
La Pucelle won Burgundy over to the
cause of France by playing upon his
vanity and appealing to what she termed his
sense of justice. The immaturity of the
king was revealed in his request that
Talbot go to Burgundy and chastise him for
his desertion.
The Duke of York and the Earl of
Somerset finally brought their quarrel to
the king, who implored them to be
friendly for England's sake. He pointed out that
disunity among the English lords would
only weaken their stand in France. To
show how petty he considered their
differences he casually put on a red rose, the
symbol of Somerset's faction, and
explained that it was merely a flower and
that he loved one of his rival kinsmen as
much as the other. He appointed York a
regent of France and ordered both him
and Somerset to supply Talbot with men
and supplies for battle. Then the king and
his party returned to London.
The king's last assignment to his lords
in France was Talbot's death knell;
Somerset, refusing to send horses with which
York planned to supply Talbot, accused
York of self-aggrandizement. York, in
turn, blamed Somerset for negligence. As
their feud continued, Talbot and his son
were struggling valiantly against the
better-equipped, more fully manned French
army at Bordeaux. After many skirmishes
Talbot and his son were slain and the
English suffered tremendous losses.
Flushed with the triumph of their great
victory, the French leaders planned to
1529

march on to Paris.
In England, meanwhile, there was talk
of a truce, and the king agreed, after a
moment of embarrassment because of his
youth, to Gloster's proposal that Henry
accept in marriage the daughter of the
Earl of Armagnac, a man of affluence and
influence in France. This alliance,
designed to effect a friendly peace between
the two countries, was to be announced
in France by Cardinal Beaufort, former
Bishop of Winchester, who, in sending
money to the pope to pay for his cardinal-
ship, stated that his ecclesiastical position
gave him status equal to that of the
loftiest peer. He threatened mutiny if Gloster
ever tried to dominate him again. The
king sent a jewel to seal the contract of
betrothal.
The fighting in France dwindled
greatly, with the English forces converging for
one last weak stand. La Pucelle cast a spell
and conjured up fiends to bolster her
morale and to assist her in battle, but her
appeal was to no avail, and York took her
prisoner. Berated as a harlot and
condemned as a witch by the English, La
Pucelle pleaded for her life. At first she
contended that her virgin blood would cry
for vengeance at the gates of heaven.
When this appeal failed to move York and
the Earl of Warwick, she implored them
to save her unborn child, fathered, she
said variously, by the Dauphin, the Duke
of Alengon, and the Duke of Anjou. She
was condemned to be burned at the stake.
In another skirmish the Earl of Suffolk
had taken as his prisoner Margaret,
daughter of the Duke of Anjou. Enthralled by
her loveliness, he was unable to claim
her for himself because he was already
married. He finally struck upon the
notion of wooing Margaret for the king.
After receiving her father's permission to
present Margaret's name to Henry as a
candidate for marriage, Suffolk went to
London to petition the king. While
Henry weighed the matter against the
consequences of breaking his contract
with the Earl of Armagnac, Exeter and
Gloster attempted to dissuade him from
following Suffolk's suggestions. Their
pleas were in vain. Margaret's great
courage and spirit, as described by Suffolk,
held promise of a great and invincible
offspring.
Terms of peace having been arranged,
Suffolk was ordered to conduct Margaret
to England. Suffolk, because he had
brought Margaret and Henry together,
planned to take advantage of his
opportune political position and, through Mar-
faret, rule youthful Henry and his
ingdom.
1530

HENRY THE SIXTH, PART TWO
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1444-1455
Locale: England
First presented: c. 1592
Principal characters:
King Henry VI
Duke of Gloster, his uncle
Cardinal Beaufort, great-uncle of the king
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York
Edward, and
Richard, York's sons
Duke of Somerset, leader of the Lancaster faction
Duke of Suffolk, the king's favorite
Earl of Salisbury, a Yorkist
Earl of Warwick, a Yorkist
Bolingbroke, a conjurer
Margaret, Queen of England
Eleanor, Duchess of Gloster
Margery Jourdain, a witch
Critique:
In addition to those features contained
in the first part of King Henry the Sixth
as described in the critique of that play,
there are in this second part scenes
reflecting social implications. These scenes,
within the limits of the five acts, not only
make clear the social strata of commoners
and nobles but also point up the principal
characters. This fuller realism of
historical perspective and social content in no
way diminishes the picture of ambition,
jealousy, love, and courage among the
nobility. As is true of the first part of King
Henry the Sixth, this drama is a revision
of an earlier play.
The Story:
The Earl of Suffolk, having arranged
for the marriage of King Henry VI and
Margaret of Anjou, brought the new
queen to England. There was great
indignation when the terms of the marriage
treaty were revealed. The contract called
for an eighteen-months' truce between the
two countries, the outright gift of the
duchies of Anjou and Maine to Reignier,
Margaret's father, and omission of her
dowry. As had been predicted earlier, no
good could come of this union, since
Henry, at Suffolk's urging, had broken
his betrothal to the daughter of the Earl
of Armagnac. But Henry, pleased by his
bride's beauty, gladly accepted the treaty
and elevated Suffolk, the go-between, to a
dukedom.
The voices were hardly still from the
welcome of the new queen before the
lords, earls, and dukes were expressing
their ambitions to gain more control in
affairs of state. The old dissension
between the Duke of Gloster and Cardinal
Beaufort continued. The churchman
tried to alienate others against Gloster by
saying that Gloster, next in line for the
crown, needed watching. The Duke of
Somerset accused the cardinal of seeking
Gloster's position for himself. And these
high ambitions were not exclusively for
the men. The Duchess of Gloster showed
great impatience with her husband when
he said he wished only to serve as
Protector of the Realm. When she saw that
her husband was not going to help her
ambitions to be queen, the duchess hired
Hume, a priest, to traffic with witches and
conjurers in her behalf. Hume accepted
her money; but he had already been hired
1531

by Suffolk and the cardinal to work
against the duchess.
Queen Margaret's unhappy life in
England, her contempt for the king, and the
people's dislike for her soon became
apparent. The mutual hatred she and the
duchess had for each other showed itself
in tongue lashings and blows. The
duchess, eager to take advantage of any turn
of events, indulged in sorcery with
Margery Jourdain and the notorious Boling-
broke. Her questions to them, all pertaining
to the fate of the king and his advisers,
and the answers which these sorcerers had
received from the spirit world, were
confiscated by Buckingham and .York
when they broke in upon a seance. For her
part in the practice of sorcery the duchess
was banished to the Isle of Man; Margery
Jourdain and Bolingbroke were executed.
His wife's deeds brought new slanders
upon Gloster. In answer to Queen
Margaret's charge that he was a party to his
wife's underhandedness, Gloster, a
broken man, resigned his position as
Protector of the Realm. Even after his
resignation Margaret continued in her attempts
to turn the king against Gloster. She was
aided by the other lords, who accused
Gloster of deceit and crimes against the
State; but the king, steadfast in his loyalty
to Gloster, described the former protector
as virtuous and mild.
York, whose regency in France had
been given to Somerset, enlisted the aid
of Warwick and Salisbury in his fight
for the crown, his claim being based on
the fact that King Henry's grandfather,
Henry IV, had usurped the throne from
York's great-uncle. Suffolk and the
cardinal, to rid themselves of a dangerous rival,
sent York to quell an uprising in
Ireland. Before departing for Ireland, York
planned to incite rebellion among the
English through one John Cade, a
headstrong, warmongering Kentishman. Cade,
under the name of John Mortimer, the
name of York's uncle, paraded his riotous
followers through the streets of London.
The rebels, irresponsible and unthinking,
went madly about the town wrecking
buildings, killing noblemen who opposed
them, and shouting that they were headed
for the palace, where John Cade, the
rightful heir to the throne, would avenge
the injustices done his lineage. An aspect
of the poorly organized rebellion was
shown in the desertion of Cade's
followers when they were appealed to by loyal
old Lord Clifford. He admonished them
to save England from needless destruction
and to expend their military efforts against
France. Cade, left alone, went wandering
about the countryside as a fugitive and
was killed by Alexander Iden, a squire
who was knighted for his bravery.
Gloster, arrested by Suffolk on a charge
of high treason, was promised a fair trial
by the king. This was unwelcome news
to the lords; and when Gloster was sent
for to appear at the hearing, he was found
in his bed, brutally murdered and
mangled. Suffolk and the cardinal had hired
the murderers. So was fulfilled the first
prophecy of the sorcerers, that the king
would depose and outlive a duke who
would die a violent death.
Shortly after Gloster's death the king
was called to the bedside of the cardinal,
who had been stricken by a strange
malady. There King Henry heard the cardinal
confess his part in the murder of Gloster,
the churchman's bitterest enemy. The
cardinal died unrepentent.
Queen Margaret became more
outspoken concerning affairs of state,
especially in those matters on behalf of Suffolk,
and more openly contemptuous toward
the king's indifferent attitude.
At the request of Commons, led by
Warwick and Salisbury, Suffolk was
banished from the country for his part in
Gloster's murder. Saying their farewells,
he and Margaret declared their love for
each other. Suffolk, disguised, took ship
to leave the country. Captured by pirates,
he was beheaded for his treacheries and
one of his gentlemen was instructed to
return his body to the king.
In London, Queen Margaret mourned
1532

her loss in Suffolk's death as she caressed
his severed head. The king, piqued by
her demonstration, asked her how she
would react to his death. Diplomatically
evasive, she answered that she would not
mourn his death; she would die for him.
The witch had prophesied Suffolk's
death: she had said that he would die by
water.
Returning from Ireland, York planned
to gather forces on his way to London
and seize the crown for himself. Because
he also stated his determination to remove
Somerset, his adversary in court matters,
the king tried to appease the rebel by
committing Somerset to the Tower.
Hearing that his enemy was in prison, York
ordered his army to disband.
His rage was all the greater, therefore,
when he learned that Somerset had been
restored to favor. The armies of York
and Lancaster prepared to battle at Saint
Albans, where Somerset, after an attempt
to arrest York for capital treason, was
slain by crookbacked Richard Plantagenet,
York's son. Somerset's death fulfilled the
prophecies of the witch, who had also
foretold that Somerset should shun
castles, that he would be safer on sandy
plains. With his death the king and queen
fled. Salisbury, weary from battle but
undaunted, and Warwick, proud of York's
victory at Saint Albans, pledged their
support to York in his drive for the crown,
and York hastened to London to forestall
the king's intention to summon
Parliament into session.
1533

HENRY THE SIXTH, PART THREE
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1455-1471
Locale: England and France
First presented: c. 1592
Principal characters:
King Henry VI
Edward, Prince of Wales, his son
Louis XI, King of France
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York
Edward, York's son, afterward King Edward IV
Edmund, York's son, Earl of Rutland
George, York's son, afterward Duke of Clarence
Richard, York's son, afterward Duke of Gloster
Lord Hastings, of the Duke of York's party
The Earl of Warwick, a king-maker
Margaret, Queen of England
Lord Clifford, Margaret's ally
Lady Grey, afterward Edward IV's queen
Lady Bona, sister of the Queen of France
Critique:
Although the third part of King Henry
the Sixth is not a tragedy in the classical
sense, it is more poignant than many
tragic dramas. A revision of an earlier
play, it is an outstanding example of
writing for unity of impression. Infinite and
unswerving ambition in the characters,
and situations of plot closely knit to
reveal this unrelenting aggression are
always apparent, making this play a
masterpiece of gripping drama. The plot is
so developed that King Henry is made
a pawn to the wishes of others. The
characterization is handled with finesse, an
occasional line by King Henry showing
his true nature. The labels frequently
given him — "poltroon," "weak-willed,"
"willy-nilly"—are unjust and misapplied.
Shakespeare's King Henry in this third
part is a man caught in the mesh of
circumstances and required to exhibit the
qualities of leadership, when his only
wish was for contentment and
tranquillity. Henry's was a life spent in quiet
desperation.
The Story:
In the House of Parliament, York, his
sons, and the Earl of Warwick rejoiced
over their success at Saint Albans. Riding
hard, the Yorkists had arrived in London
ahead of the routed king, and Henry,
entering with his lords, was filled with
consternation when he saw York already
seated on the throne, to which Warwick
had conducted him. Some of the king's
followers were sympathetic toward York
and others were fearful of his power; the
two attitudes resulted in defection in the
royal ranks. Seeing his stand weakened,
the king attempted to avert disorder by
disinheriting his own son and by pledging
the crown to York and his sons, on the
condition that York stop the civil war and
remain loyal to the king during his
lifetime.
Annoyed by the reconciliation and
contemptuous toward the king because of her
son's disinheritance, Margaret deserted
the king and raised her own army to
protect her son's rights to the throne. The
queen's army marched against York's
castle as York was sending his sons to recruit
forces for another rebellion. York's sons
had persuaded their father that his oath
to the king was not binding because his
1534

contract with the king had not been made
in due course of law before a magistrate.
In a battle near Wakefield, Lord
Clifford and his soldiers killed Rutland, York's
young son, and soaked a handkerchief in
his blood. Later, as he joined Margaret's
victorious army, which outnumbered
York's soldiers ten to one, Lord Clifford
gave York the handkerchief to wipe away
his tears as he wept for his son's death.
York's sorrow was equaled by his
humiliation at the hands of Margaret, who, after
taking him prisoner, put a paper crown
on his head that he might reign from the
molehill where she had him placed to be
jeered by the soldiers. Clifford and
Margaret stabbed the Duke of York and
beheaded him. His head was set on the
gates of York.
Hearing of the defeat of York's forces,
Warwick, taking the king with him, set
out from London to fight Queen
Margaret at Saint Albans. Warwick's
qualities as a general were totally offset by the
presence of the king, who was unable to
conceal his strong affection for Margaret,
and Warwick was defeated. Edward and
Richard, York's sons, joined Warwick in
a march toward London.
King Henry, ever the righteous
monarch, forswore any part in breaking his
vow to York and declared that he
preferred to leave his son only virtuous deeds,
rather than an ill-gotten crown. At the
insistence of Clifford and Margaret,
however, the king knighted his son as the
Prince of Wales.
After a defiant parley, the forces met
again between Towton and Saxton. The
king, banned from battle by Clifford and
Margaret because of his antipathy to war
and his demoralizing influence on the
soldiers, sat on a distant part of the field
lamenting the course affairs had taken in
this bloody business of murder and
deceit. He saw the ravages of war when a
father bearing the body of his dead son
and a son with the body of his dead
father passed by. They had unknowingly
taken the lives of their loved ones in the
fighting. As the rebel forces, led by
Warwick, Richard, and Edward approached,
the king, passive to danger and indifferent
toward his own safety, was rescued by
the Prince of Wales and Margaret before
the enemy could reach him. He was sent
to Scotland for safety.
After a skirmish with Richard, Clifford
fled to another part of the field, where,
weary and worn, he fainted and died. His
head, severed by Richard, replaced York's
head on the gate. The Yorkists marched
on to London. Edward was proclaimed
King Edward IV; Richard was made
Duke of Gloster, and George, Duke of
Clarence.
King Edward, in audience, heard Lady
Grey's case for the return of confiscated
lands taken by Margaret's army at Saint
Albans, where Lord Grey was killed
fighting for the York cause. The hearing,
marked by Richard's and George's
dissatisfaction with their brother's position and
Edward's lewdness directed at Lady Grey,
ended with Lady Grey's betrothal to
Edward. Richard, resentful of his
humpback, aspired to the throne. His many
deprivations resulting from his physical
condition, he felt, justified his ambition; he
would stop at no obstacle in achieving his
ends.
Because of their great losses, Margaret
and the prince went to France to appeal
for aid from King Louis XI, who was
kindly disposed toward helping them
maintain the crown. The French
monarch's decision was quickly changed at
the appearance of Warwick, who had
arrived from England to ask for the hand
of Lady Bona for King Edward.
Warwick's suit had been granted, and
Margaret's request denied, when a messenger
brought letters announcing King
Edward's marriage to Lady Grey. King Louis
and Lady Bona were insulted; Margaret
was overjoyed. Warwick, chagrined,
withdrew his allegiance to the House of York
and offered to lead French troops against
Edward. He promised his older daughter
in marriage to Margaret's son as a pledge
of his honor.
At the royal palace in London, family
1535

loyalty was broken by open dissent when
King Edward informed his brothers that
he would not be bound by their wishes.
Told that the prince was to marry
Warwick's older daughter, the Duke of
Clarence announced that he intended to marry
the younger one. He left, taking
Somerset, one of King Henry's faction, with him.
Richard, seeing in an alliance with
Edward an opportunity for his own
advancement, remained; and he, Montague, and
Hastings pledged their support to King
Edward.
When the French forces reached
London, Warwick took Edward prisoner. The
king-maker removed Edward's crown and
took it to re-crown King Henry, who had,
in the meantime, escaped from Scotland,
only to be delivered into Edward's hands
and imprisoned in the Tower. Henry
delegated his royal authority to Warwick
and the Duke of Clarence, in order that
he might be free from the turmoil
attendant upon his reign.
Richard and Hastings freed Edward
from his imprisonment. They formed an
army in York; and while Warwick and
Clarence, who had learned of Edward's
release, were making preparations for
defense, Edward, marching upon London,
again seized King Henry and sent him
to solitary confinement in the Tower.
Edward made a surprise attack on
Warwick near Coventry, where Warwick's
forces were soon increased by the
appearance of Oxford, Montague, and Somerset.
The fourth unit to join Warwick was led
by Clarence who took the red rose, the
symbol of the House of Lancaster, from
his hat and threw it into Warwick's face.
Clarence accused Warwick of duplicity
and announced that he would fight
beside his brothers to preserve the House of
York. Warwick, a valiant soldier to the
end, was wounded by King Edward and
died soon afterward. Montague was also
killed.
When Queen Margaret and her son
arrived from France, the prince won great
acclaim from Margaret and the lords for
his spirited vow to hold the kingdom
against the Yorkists. Defeated at
Tewkesbury, however, the prince was cruelly
stabbed to death by King Edward and his
brothers. Margaret pleaded with them to
kill her too, but they chose to punish her
with life. She was sent back to France,
her original home. After the prince had
been killed, Richard of Gloster stole off
to London, where he assassinated King
Henry in the Tower. Again he swore to
get the crown for himself.
The Yorkists were at last supreme.
Edward and Queen Elizabeth, with their
infant son, regained the throne. Richard,
still intending to seize the crown for
himself, saluted the infant with a Judas kiss,
while Edward stated that they were now
to spend their time in stately triumphs,
comic shows, and pleasures of the court.
1536

HERAKLES MAD
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c. 485c 406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Thebes
First presented: c. 420 B.C.
Principal characters:
Amphitryon, married to Alcmene, the mother of Herakles
Megara, wife of Herakles and daughter of Creon
Lycus, usurper of Kingdom of Thebes
Herakles, son of Zeus and Alcmene
Theseus, King of Athens
Iris, messenger of the gods
Madness
Chorus of the Old Men of Thebes
Critique:
Herakles Mady one of the most
puzzling of Euripides' plays, begins with a
stereotyped situation and weak characters,
builds to a powerful climax in the mad
scene of Herakles, and is followed by
one of the most moving tragic
reconciliations in all drama. Some critics see in
Euripides' treatment of Herakles the
suggestion that he has been deluded all his
life and has never really performed his
twelve great labors; others have suggested
that the madness comes not from Hera,
but from Fate. In either case he reaches
heroic and tragic stature when, after
murdering his wife and children in a fit
of madness, he refuses to commit suicide
and decides to face whatever life has in
store for him.
The Story:
Amphitryon, who together with
Megara and the sons of Herakles had sought
sanctuary at the altar of Zeus, lamented
the fact that while Herakles was in
Hades performing one of his twelve
labors Lycus had murdered Creon and
seized the throne of Thebes. The
murderer was bent upon consolidating his
position by killing Megara and her
children, whose only hope lay in the
protection of Zeus until Herakles returned.
Lycus came to taunt them with the
charge that Herakles was a coward who
used a bow and killed only animals and
that, in any case, he was dead in Hades
and would never return.
Amphitryon, retorting that Lycus was
the coward in seeking to kill an old man,
a woman, and innocent children, begged
that they at least be allowed to go into
exile. Enraged, Lycus sent his servants to
fetch oak logs in order to burn the
relatives of Herakles alive in their sanctuary.
The chorus of old men vowed that they
would fight with their staves against such
a horrible sacrilege.
Megara, however, counseled that it was
folly to attempt to escape destiny;
Herakles could not emerge from Hades to
save them and since they must die they
ought to do so without being burnt
alive. Amphitryon then begged that he
and Megara be killed first so that they
would not have to witness the massacre
of innocent children, and Megara pleaded
for the privilege of dressing the children
in the proper funeral robes. Lycus
haughtily granted both wishes. As the group
left the sanctuary for the palace,
Amphitryon cursed Zeus for being a senseless
and unjust god. In their absence the
chorus chanted an ode on the glories of
Herakles and the sadness of old age.
Returning with the children, Megara
woefully recounted the marvelous plans
she had made for her sons. Meanwhile,
Amphitryon fervently prayed to Zeus for
deliverance. Suddenly they were startled
1537

bv the spectacle of Herakles approaching.
The great joy of their meeting was
darkened by the fearful tale Megara had to
tell her husband. Furious with rage,
Herakles swore that he would behead Lycus
and throw his carcass to the dogs; but
Amphitryon cautioned him to curb his
reckless haste, for Lycus rnd many allies
in his treachery. Though deeply moved
by the fear that made his children cling
to his robes, Herakles agreed to plan his
revenge carefully and led his family into
the palace. The chorus of ancients once
again lamented their old age and praised
Zeus for sending deliverance in the
person of Herakles, his son.
Lycus, upon encountering Amphitryon
emerging from the palace, commanded
that he bring Megara with him, but
Amphitryon refused on the ground that such
a deed would make him an accomplice
in her murder. Intent on dispatching
Megara, Lycus angrily stormed into the
palace. Amphitryon followed to watch
Herakles' revenge. As the chorus hailed
the death cries of Lycus, the specters of
Madness and Iris appeared from above.
Iris, the female messenger of the gods,
pronounced that although destiny had
preserved Herakles until he had finished
his twelve labors, Hera had decreed that
he must now suffer lest the powers of
man seem greater than those of the gods.
She commanded that Madness force
Herakles to murder his own wife and
children. Reluctantly, Madness sent out her
power and described the horrible seizures
of Herakles within the palace. When
the two specters disappeared, a messenger
emerged from the palace to tell how
Herakles in a frenzy of madness had
murdered his wife and children, believing
them to be the kin of his former master,
Eurystheus. Amphitryon was saved only
by the intervention of Athena, who put
the possessed hero to sleep and had him
tied to a pillar.
The doors of the palace were opened,
revealing Herakles, now awake and
puzzled by the awful scene about him.
Informed of what he had done, Herakles
crouched in shame and wailed in anguish.
Theseus, who had been rescued from
Hades by Herakles, arrived with an army
for the purpose of aiding his old friend
against Lycus. Crushed by the weight of
his dishonor, Herakles could not face his
friend, and he announced his intention to
commit suicide. His compassionate friend
Theseus pleaded with him to live and
accept his fate; he offered to take Herakles
to Athens where, after being purified of
his pollution, he would be given great
estates and high status. Though he
preferred to grow into a stone oblivious of
his horrid deed, Herakles reluctantly
agreed to harden his heart against death
and rose with profound gratitude to
accept his friend's offer. As he left, he
urged the sorrowful Amphitryon to bury
the dead and to follow him to Athens,
where they would live out the remainder
of their lives in peace.
1538

HERCULES AND HIS
Type of work: Classical myth
Source: Folk tradition
Type of plot: Heroic adventure
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Mediterranean region
First transcribed: Unknown
Principal characters:
Hercules, hero of virtue
Eurystheus, his cousin
Critique:
Hercules is the mighty hero of popular
imagination in Western culture. Art
galleries feature paintings and sculpture
of the splendid body of the hero. The
latest engines, the strongest building
materials, the most powerful utilities bear
his name. Hercules, not born a god,
achieved godhcod at the time of his death,
according to tradition, because he
devoted his life to the service of his fellow
men. Some authorities link Hercules with
legends of the sun, as each labor took
him further from his home and one of his
tasks carried him around the world and
back. His twelve labors have been
compared to the signs of the zodiac.
The Story:
Hercules was the son of a mortal,
Alcmena, and the god Jupiter. Because
Juno was hostile to all children of her
husband by mortal mothers, she decided
to be revenged upon the child. She sent
two snakes to kill Hercules in his crib,
but the infant strangled the serpents
with ease. Then Juno caused Hercules
to be subject to the will of his cousin,
Eurystheus.
Hercules as a child was taught by
Rhadamanthus, who one day punished
the child for misdeeds. Hercules
immediately killed his teacher. For this his
foster father, Amphitryon, took Hercules
away to the mountains, to be brought up
by rude shepherds. Early in youth
Hercules began to attract attention for his
great strength and courage. He killed a
lion single-handedly and took heroic part
in a war. Juno, jealous of his growing
1
TWELVE LABORS
strength
success, called on Eurystheus to use his
power over Hercules. Eurystheus then
demanded that Hercules carry out twelve
labors. The plan was that Hercules
would perish in one of them.
The first labor: Juno had sent a lion to
eat the people of Nemea. The lion's hide
was so protected that no arrow could
pierce it. Knowing that he could not kill
the animal with his bow, Hercules mel
the lion and strangled it with his bare
hands. Thereafter he wore the lion's
skin as a protection when he was fighting,
for nothing could penetrate that magic
covering.
The second labor: Hercules had to
meet the Lernaean hydra. This creature
lived in a swamp, and the odor of its
body killed all who breathed its fetid
fumes. Hercules began the battle but
discovered that for every head he severed
from the monster two more appeared.
Finally he obtained a flaming brand from
a friend and burned each head as he
severed it. When he came to the ninth
and invulnerable head, he cut it off and
buried it under a rock. Then he dipped
his arrows into the body of the hydra so
that he would possess more deadly
weapons for use in future conflicts.
The third labor: Hercules captured the
Erymanthian boar and brought it back
on his shoulders. The sight of the wild
beast frightened Eurystheus so much that
he hid in a large jar. With a fine sense
of humor the hero deposited the captured
boar in the same jar. While on this trip
Hercules incurred the wrath of the
centaurs by drinking wine which they had

claimed for their own. In order to escape
from them he had had to kill most of the
half-horse men.
The fourth labor: Hercules had to
capture a stag which had anders of gold
and hoofs of brass. In order to capture
this creature Hercules pursued it for a
whole year.
The fifth labor: The Stymphalian
birds were carnivorous. Hercules alarmed
them with a bell, shot many of them with
his arrows, and caused the rest to fly
away.
The sixth labor: Augeas, king of Elis,
had a herd of three thousand oxen whose
stables had not been cleansed for thirty
years. Commanded to clean the stables,
Hercules diverted the rivers Alpheus and
Peneus through them and washed them
clean in one day. Augeas refused the
payment agreed to and as a result
Hercules later declared war on him.
The seventh labor: Neptune had given
a sacred bull to Minos king of Crete.
Minos' wife, Pasiphae, fell in love with
the animal and pursued it around the
island. Hercules overcame the bull and
took it back to Eurystheus by making it
swim the sea while he rode upon its
back.
The eighth labor: Like the
Stymphalian birds, the mares of Diomedes fed
on human flesh. Usually Diomedes
found food for them by feeding to them
all travelers who landed on his shores.
Diomedes tried to prevent Hercules from
driving away his herd. He was killed
and his body was fed to his own beasts.
The ninth labor: Admeta, daughter of
Eurystheus, persuaded her father to send
Hercules for the girdle of Hippolyta,
queen of the Amazons. The Amazon
queen was willing to give up her girdle,
but Juno interfered by telling the other
Amazons that Hercules planned to
kidnap their queen. In the battle that
followed Hercules killed Hippolyta and
took the girdle from her dead body.
The tenth labor: Geryoneus, a three-
bodied, three-headed, six-legged, winged
monster possessed a herd of oxen.
Ordered to bring the animals to
Eurystheus, Hercules traveled beyond the
pillars of Hercules, now Gibraltar. He
killed a two-headed shepherd dog and
a giant herdsman, and finally slew Ge-
ryones. He loaded the cattle on a boat
and sent them to Eurystheus. He himself
returned afoot across the Alps. He had
many adventures on the way, including
a fight with giants in the Phlegraean
fields, near the present site of Naples.
The eleventh labor: His next laboi
was more difficult, for his task was to
obtain the golden apples in the garden
of the Hesperides. No one knew where
the garden was, and so Hercules set out
to roam until he found it. In his travels
he killed a giant, a host of pygmies,
and burned alive some of his captors in
Egypt. In India he set Prometheus free.
At last he discovered Atlas holding up the
sky. This task Hercules assumed,
releasing Atlas to go after the apples. Atlas
returned with the apples and reluctantly
took up his burden. Hercules brought the
apples safely to Eurystheus.
The twelfth labor: This was the most
difficult of all his labors. After many
adventures he brought the three-headed
dog Cerberus from the underworld. H&
was forced to carry the struggling animal
in his arms because he had been
forbidden to use weapons of any kind.
Afterward he took Cerberus back to the
king of the underworld. So ended the
labors of this mighty ancient hero.
1540

HEREWARD THE WAKE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Eleventh century
Locale: England, Scotland, Flanders
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Hereward The Wake, a Saxon thane and outlaw
Lady Godiva, his mother
Torfrxda, his wife
Alftruda, his second wife
Martin Lightfoot, a companion in his wanderings
William The Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England
Critique:
Hereward the Wake is one of the very
few stories that deal realistically and
credibly with the Anglo-Saxon period of
English history. Although elements of
the chivalric romance, in the more
academic sense of that term, are present
in this novel, Kingsley has re-created the
age and its people in a believable and
highly interesting manner. Hereward
the Wake is both an interesting story
and a valuable historical study.
The Story:
Hereward was the son of the powerful
Lord of Bourne, a Saxon nobleman of a
family close to the throne. A high-
spirited, rebellious youth, he was a source
of constant worry to his mother, Lady
Godiva. Hereward lacked a proper
respect for the Church and its priests and
lived a boisterous life with boon
companions who gave him their
unquestioning loyalty.
One day a friar came to Lady Godiva
and revealed that Hereward and his
friends had attacked him and robbed
him of what the priest insisted was
money belonging to the Church. Lady
Godiva was angry and hurt. When
Hereward came in and admitted his
crime, she said that there was no
alternative. For his own good, she maintained,
he should be declared a wake, or outlaw.
Upon his promise not to molest her
messenger, for Hereward really did not
mind being outlawed as he wished to
see more of the world, Lady Godiva sent
Martin Lightfoot, a servant, to carry the
news of Here ward's deed to his father
and to the king. Hereward was then
declared an outlaw subject to
imprisonment or death.
Before he left his father's house,
however, he released his friends from their
oath of allegiance. Martin Lightfoot
begged to be allowed to follow him, not
as his servant but as his companion.
Then Hereward set out to live among
the rude and barbarous Scottish tribes
of the north.
His first adventure occurred when he
killed a huge bear that threatened the
life of Alftruda, ward of a knight named
Gilbert of Ghent. For his valorous deed
he achieved much renown. But the
knights of Gilbert's household, jealous
of Hereward's courage and his prowess,
tried to kill him. Though he escaped the
snares laid for him, he decided that it
would be best for him to leave Scotland.
Accordingly, he went to Cornwall,
where he was welcomed by the king.
There the king's daughter was pledged
in marriage to a prince of Waterford.
But a giant of the Cornish court had
become so powerful that he had forced the
king's agreement to give his daughter in
marriage to the ogre. Hereward, with
the help of the princess and a friar, slew
the giant, whose death freed the princess
1541

to marry the prince whom she really
loved.
After leaving Cornwall, Hereward and
his companions were wrecked upon the
Flemish coast. There Hereward stayed
for a time in the service of Baldwin of
Flanders and proved his valor by
defeating the French in battle. There, too,
Torfrida, a lady wrongly suspected of
sorcery, schemed to win his love. They
were wed after Hereward had fought
in a successful campaign against the
Hollanders, and a daughter was born of
the marriage.
Meanwhile King Edward had died
and Harold reigned in England. A
messenger came to Hereward with the news
that Duke William of Normandy had
defeated the English at the battle of
Hastings and that King Harold had been
killed. Hereward then decided to return
to Bourne, his old home. There,
accompanied by Martin Lightfoot, he
found the Norman raiders encamped.
He found too that his family had been
despoiled of all its property and that his
mother had been sent away. He and
Martin, without revealing their identity,
secretly went out and annihilated all the
Normans in the area. Hereward swore
that he would return with an army that
would push the Norman invaders into
the sea.
Hereward then went to his mother,
who received him happily. Lady Godiva
accused herself of having wronged her
son and lamented the day she had
proclaimed him an outlaw. He took her to
a place of refuge in Croyland Abbey.
Later he went to the monastery where
his aged, infirm uncle, Abbot Brand, was
spending his last days on earth. There
Hereward was knighted by the monks,
after the English fashion. Hereward
went secretly to Bourne and there
recruited a rebel army to fight against
Duke William.
Although there were many men eager
to fight the Normans, the English forces
were disunited. Another king, an
untried young man, had been proclaimed,
but because of his youth he did not
have the support of all the English
factions. Hereward had been promised
help from Denmark, but the Danish
king sent a poor leader through whose
stupidity the Danes were inveigled into
positions where they were easily defeated
by the Normans at Dover and Norwich.
Then, instead of coming to Hereward's
aid, the Danes fled. Hereward was
forced to confess the failure of his allies
to his men, but tbcy renewed their
pledge to him and promised to keep on
fighting. The situation seemed hopeless
when Hereward and his men took refuge
m the isknd of Ely. There, with
Torfrida's wise advice, Hereward de*
feated Duke William's attack upon the
beleaguered island. Hereward and his
men retreated to another camp of refuge.
Shortly afterward Torfrida learned of
Hereward's infidelity with Alftruda, the
ward of Gilbert of Ghent. She left
Hereward and went to Croyland Abbey,
where she proposed to spend the last of
her days ministering to the poor and to
Hereward's mother. Hereward himself
went to Duke William and submitted
to him. The conqueror declared that
he had selected a husband for Here-
ward's daughter. In order to free herself
from Hereward, Torfrida falsely
confessed that she was a sorceress, and her
marriage to Hereward was annulled by
the Church. Hereward then married
Alftruda and became Lord of Bourne
under Duke William. His daughter,
despite her entreaties, was married to a
Norman knight.
But Hereward, the last of the English,
had many enemies among the French,
who continually intrigued against him for
the favor of Duke William. As a result,
Hereward was imprisoned. The jailer
was a good man who treated his noble
prisoner as kindly as he could, although,
for his own sake, he was forced to chain
Hereward.
One day, while Hereward was being
transported from one prison to another,
he was rescued by his friends. Freed,
1542

he went back to Alftruda at Bourne, but
his life was not a happy one. His enemies
plotted to kill him. Taking advantage
of a day when his retainers were
escorting Alftruda on a journey, a group of
Norman knights broke into Bourne
castle. Though Hereward fought
valiantly, he was outnumbered. He was killed
and his head was exhibited in victory
over the door of his own hall.
When she heard of his death, Torfrida
came from Croyland Abbey and
demanded Hereward's body. All were so
frightened, especially Alftruda, by Tor-
frida's wild appearance and her
reputation as a witch, that Hereward's first
wife got her way and the body was
delivered to her. She carried it away to
Croyland for burial. Thus did
Hereward, the last of the English, die, and
thus, too, did William of Normandy
become William the Conqueror and King
of England.
1543

A HERO OF OUR TIME
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov (1814-1841)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: 1830-1838
Locale: The Russian Caucasus
First published: 1839
Principal characters:
"I" supposedly Lermontov, Narrator One
Maksim Maksimtch, Narrator Two
Grigoriy Aleksandrovich Pechorin, Narrator Three, the "Hero of
Our Time"
Bela, a young princess
Kazbich, a bandit
Azamat, Bela's young brother
Yanko, a smuggler
Princess Mary, daughter of Princess Ligovskoy
Grushnitski, a cadet and suitor to Princess Mary
Vera, the former sweetheart of Pechorin
Lieutenant Vulich, a Cossack officer, a Serbian
Critique:
This realistic novel of social and
military life in nineteenth-century Russia well
deserves its renown because of its
colorful descriptions and sharp delineations of
character. Structurally, the novel is made
up of five related short stories, with
Narrator One (presumably Lermontov),
Maksim Maksimich, and Pechorin in the
principal roles. The narrative is skillfully
constructed. In "Bela," "I" meets Maksim
Maksimich, who refers to Pechorin.
Maksim Maksimich, Narrator Two, tells
the story bearing his name as its title.
Pechorin actually appears, but briefly. In
"Taman," "Princess Mary," and "The
Fatalist," the narrator is Pechorin himself,
the stories being told as extracts from his
journal. A second notable feature of the
writing, in addition to the involuted time
sequence, is Lermontov's habit of letting
the reader eavesdrop in order to avoid
detailed narrative. This device makes for
compact writing, since it is a convenient
means of letting the principal characters
learn of events necessary to an
understanding of the story. Lermontov felt
compelled to preface his novel with the
explanation that A Hero of Our Time was not
a biography of any Russian person, living
or dead. Rather, Pechorin was intended
to be a collective personification of all the
evil and vice then found in Russian life.
In creating his portrait of Pechorin, the
"superfluous" man, Lermontov pointed to
the development of the Russian
psychological novel.
The Story:
The Narrator met Maksim Maksimich
while on a return trip from Tiflis, the
capital of Georgia, to Russia. The season
was autumn, and in that mountainous
region snow was already falling. The two
men continued their acquaintance at the
inn where they were forced to take refuge
for the night. When the Narrator asked
Maksim Maksimich about his experiences,
the old man told of his friendship with
Grigoriy Pechorin, a Serbian who had
come from Russia about five years before
to join a company of cavalry in the
Caucasus:
To relieve their boredom on that
frontier post, the soldiers played with Azamat,
the young son of a neighboring prince.
As a result of this friendship, the prince
A HERO OF OUR TIME by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov. Translated by Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov.
By permission of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1958, by Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov.
1544

invited Maksimich and Pechorin to a
family wedding. At that celebration
Pechorin and Kazbich, a bandit, met and
were equally attracted to Bela, the
beautiful young daughter of the prince. Aza-
mat, observing this development, later
offered to give Bela to Kazbich in
exchange for the bandit's horse. Kazbich
laughed at the boy and rode away.
Four days later Azamat was back at the
camp and visiting with Pechorin, who
promised to get Kazbich's horse for the
boy in exchange for Bela. The promise
was fulfilled. Kazbich, insane with rage
at his loss, tried to kill Azamat but failed.
Suspecting that Azamat's father had
been responsible for the theft, Kazbich
killed the prince and stole his horse in
revenge for the loss of his own animal.
Weeks passed, and Pechorin became
less attentive to Bela. One day she and
Maksimich were walking on the ramparts
when Bela recognized Kazbich on her
father's horse some distance away. An
orderly's attempt to shoot Kazbich failed
and he escaped. But Kazbich had
recognized Bela, too, and a few days later,
when the men were away from camp, he
kidnapped her. As Pechorin and
Maksimich were returning to camp, they saw
Kazbich riding away with Bela. They
pursued the bandit, but as they were
about to overtake him, he thrust his knife
into Bela and escaped.
Although Pechorin seemed to be
deeply grieved by Bela's death, when
Maksimich tried to comfort him, he laughed.
The Narrator, having parted from
Maksim Maksimich, stopped at an inn in
Vladikavkaz, where he found life very
dull until, on the second day, Maksimich
arrived unexpectedly. Before long there
was a great stir and bustle in preparation
for the arrival of an important guest. The
travelers learned that Pechorin was the
guest expected. Happy in the thought of
seeing Pechorin again, Maksimich
instructed a servant to carry his regards to
his former friend, who had stopped off
to visit a Colonel N . Day turned to
night but still Pechorin did not come to
return the greeting. Dawn found
Maksimich waiting at the gate again. When
Pechorin finally arrived, he prevented
Maksimich's intended embrace by coolly
offering his hand.
Maksimich had anticipated warmth
and a long visit, but Pechorin left
immediately. Neither Maksimich's plea of
friendship nor his mention of Bela served
to detain Pechorin.
Thus Maksimich bade his friend
goodbye. To the Narrator's attempt to cheer
him the old man remarked only that
Pechorin had become too rich and spoiled
to bother about old friendships. In fact,
he would throw away Pechorin's journal
that he had been saving. The Narrator
was so pleased to be the recipient of the
papers that he grabbed them from the
old man and rushed to his room. Next
day the Narrator left, saddened by the
reflection that when one has reached
Maksim Maksimich's age, scorn from a
friend causes the heart to harden and the
soul to fold up. Later, having learned that
Pechorin was dead, the Narrator
published three tales from the dead man's
journal, as Pechorin himself had written
them:
Taman, a little town on the seacoast
of Russia, was the worst town Pechorin
had ever visited. For want of better
lodging, he was forced to stay in a little
cottage that he immediately disliked. Greeted
at the door by a blind, crippled boy,
Pechorin admitted to a prejudice against
people with physical infirmities. To
him, a crippled body held a crippled
soul. His displeasure was enhanced when
he learned there was no icon in the house
—an evil sign.
In the night Pechorin followed the
blind boy to the shore, where he
witnessed a rendezvous that he did not
comprehend. The next morning a young
woman appeared at the cottage and he
accused her of having been on the beach
the night before. Later, the girl returned,
kissed him, and arranged to meet him on
the shore.
Pechorin kept the appointment. As he
1545

and the girl sailed in a boat, she tried to
drown him; he, in turn, thrust her into
the swirling, foaming water and brought
the boat to shore. He was stunned to find
that she had swum to safety and was
talking to a man on shore. Pechorin learned
that the man was a smuggler. The blind
boy appeared, carrying a heavy sack which
he delivered to the girl and the
smuggler. They sailed away in a boat.
Pechorin returned to the cottage to
find that his sword and all his valuables
had been stolen.
Quite a different atmosphere pervaded
Pechorin's next experience, as described
in his journal. While stopping at
Elizabeth Spring, a fashionable spa, he met
Grushnitski, a wounded cadet whom he
had known previously. The two men were
attracted to Princess Mary, and Pechorin
was angry—though he pretended
indifference—because Princess Mary paid more
attention to Grushnitski, a mere cadet,
than she did to him, an officer. The men
agreed that young society girls looked
upon soldiers as savages and upon any
young man with contempt.
Pechorin opened a campaign of
revenge against Princess Mary. On one
occasion he distracted an audience of her
admirers; again, he outbid her for a
Persian rug and then disparaged her sense
of values by putting it on his horse. Her
fury at these and other offenses gave
Pechorin the satisfaction of revenge for
her favor of Grushnitski.
Grushnitski wanted Pechorin to be
friendly toward Princess Mary so that the
cadet might be accepted socially through
his association with her. Having seen
Vera, a former lover of his but now
married, Pechorin decided to court Princess
Mary as a cover for his illicit affair with
Vera.
As excitement mounted in anticipation
of the ball, the major social event of
the season, antagonism between Pechorin
and Grushnitski and Pechorin and
Princess Mary grew. Gmshnitski's excitement
and pride were the result of his
promotion; Princess Mary would see him in his
officer's uniform.
Succumbing to Pechorin's attitude of
indifference, Princess Mary consented to
dance the mazurka with him. Pechorin
did not wish to hurt Grushnitski by
divulging this news when the new officer
later boasted that he intended to have this
honored dance with the princess.
When, after the ball, it was rumored
that Princess Mary would marry
Pechorin, he fled to Kislovodsk to be with Vera.
Grushnitski followed, but not to continue
his association with Pechorin, whom he
deliberately ignored. A short time later
the princess and her party arrived in
Kislovodsk to continue their holiday.
Still furious at the affront which had
caused his disappointment at the ball,
Grushnitski enlisted the aid of some
dragoons in an attempt to catch Pechorin
in Princess Mary's room. When this effort
failed, Grushnitski challenged Pechorin
to a duel. According to the plan Pechorin
would have an empty pistol. Having
discovered the plot, Pechorin compelled
Grushnitski to stand at the edge of an
abyss during the duel. Then he coolly
shot the young officer, who tumbled
into the depths below. Pechorin labeled
Gmshnitski's death an accident.
Princess Mary's mother asked Pechorin
to marry the girl. He refused and wrote
in his journal that a soft, protected life
was not his way.
On another occasion, Pechorin and a
group of Cossack officers were ridiculing
the fatalism of the Moslems. Lieutenant
Vulich, a renowned gambler, offered to
prove his own faith in fatalism. While
Pechorin and the Cossacks watched,
aghast, Vulich aimed a pistol at his head
and pulled the trigger. No shot was fired.
He then aimed at a cap hanging on the
wall; it was blown to pieces. Pechorin was
amazed that the pistol had misfired on
Vulich's first attempt. He was sure he
had seen what he called the look of death
on Vulich's face. Within a half hour
after that demonstration Vulich was killed
in the street by a dmnken Cossack.
The next day Pechorin decided to test
1546

his own fate by offering to take the
maddened Cossack alive, after an entire
detachment had not dared the feat. He was
successful.
Later, when Pechorin discussed the
incident with Maksim Maksimich, the old
man observed that Circassian pistols of
the type which Vulich used for his
demonstration were not really reliable.
He added philosophically that it was
unfortunate Vulich had stopped a drunk
at night. Such a fate must have been
assigned to Vulich at his birth.
1547

HERSELF SURPRISED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joyce Cary (1888-1957)
Type of plot: Social comedy
Time of plot: First quarter of the twentieth century
Locale: London and the English southern counties
First published: 1941
Principal characters:
Sara Monday, a cook
Matthew (Matt) Monday, her husband
Gulley Jimson, a painter
Nina, his supposed wife
Mr. Wilcher, owner of Tolbrook Manor
Blanche Wilcher, his niece by marriage
Miss Clarissa Hipper, her older sister
Mr. Hickson, a friend of the Mondays
Critique:
Sara Monday, the life-loving,
self-indulgent, and generous cook who is the
heroine of the first volume of Cary's first
trilogy, tells her story sometimes
ingenuously, sometimes shrewdly. Both these
characteristics are portrayed with Cary's
compassion and irony. The vivid,
complete characters in Cary's novels are
presented through their reactions to
difficulties. Thus his books are crowded with
incident, but without formal plot. Cary's
prose style is simple, his language rich
and colorful. Although critics have found
it impossible to interpret his philosophy
with any certainty, he is considered one
of the foremost British novelists of his
period.
The Story:
In prison Sara Monday realized that
she was indeed guilty as charged. She
hoped that other women would read her
story and examine their characters before
their thoughtless behavior brought them
also to ruin.
Sara's first position was that of cook in
a medium-sized country house. Matthew
Monday, the middle-aged son of Sara's
employer, had been dominated all his life
by his mother and sister. Then this rather
pathetic man fell in love with Sara, who
discouraged his attentions, both because
she feared he would cause her to lose
her job and because she found him
slightly ridiculous. Nevertheless, and
somewhat to her surprise, when he
proposed marriage she accepted him.
At a church bazaar a few months after
her marriage, Sara met Mr. Hickson, a
millionaire art collector with whom
Matthew was associated in business. With
Hickson's help she was able to emancipate
Matt from the influence of his family.
Partly because she was grateful to him
for his help, Sara did not rebuke Hickson
when he tried to flirt with her. After Sara
had been forced to spend a night at Hick-
son's country house—his car had broken
down—Matt supported her against the
gossip and disapproval the episode
occasioned.
Sara's life with Matt was, except for
the death of their son in infancy, a happy
one during the first years of their
marriage. They had four daughters, and
Sara's time was filled with parties, clothes,
her nursery, and work on local
committees.
Hickson brought an artist to stay with
the Mondays. He was Gulley Jimson,
who was to compete for the commission
to paint a mural in the new town hall.
Gulley settled in quickly and soon his
forbearing wife, Nina, joined him. After
HERSELF SURPRISED by Joyce Cary. By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright,
1941, by Joyce Cary.
1548

a quarrel over a portrait of Matt, the Jim-
sons left. Soon afterward Sara visited
them in their rooms at the local inn.
In jealousy, Hickson told Matt of these
visits and the infuriated man accused his
wife of infidelity. After his outburst Matt
was very repentant and blamed himself
for neglecting Sara. However, the
incident caused him to lose all the
confidence his marriage had given him.
Sara did not see Gulley for years after
this incident. One day during Mart's last
illness he reappeared. He looked shabby
and he wanted money to buy paints and
clothes. After telling her that Nina was
dead, he asked Sara to marry him after
Mart's death. Although she was shocked,
Sara did not stop seeing Gulley
immediately. While Matt was dying Gulley
repeatedly proposed to her. Finally she sent
him away.
After Mart's death and the sale of her
house, Sara went to Rose Cottage, where
Gulley was staying with Miss Slaughter,
one of the sponsors for the church hall
in which he was painting a muraL Miss
Slaughter encouraged Sara to marry
Gulley, and at the end of a week they were
engaged. Just before they were to be
married, however, Gulley unhappily
confessed that he had a wife and had never
formally been married to Nina. Sara was
furious and also bitterly disappointed, but
in the end she agreed to live with Gulley
and to say they were married. After an
intensely happy honeymoon, they lived
with Miss Slaughter while Gulley worked
on his mural. During that time Sara tried
to persuade Gulley to accept portrait
commissions. Infuriated by her interference,
Gulley struck Sara, who then left him.
She was glad to return, however, when
Miss Slaughter came for her.
Although Gulley's completed mural
was considered unacceptable, he refused
to change it. When Sara wanted him to
repair some damage done to the painting,
Gulley knocked her unconscious and left.
Having exhausted her funds, Sara paid
their outstanding bills with bad checks,
and she was duly summonsed by the
police.
After Sara had thus lost her good
character, the only position she could obtain
was that of cook at Tolbrook Manor. The
owner, Mr. Wilcher, had a bad
reputation for molesting young girls and
seducing his women servants. Sara, however,
pitied him and liked him. Eventually Mr.
Wilcher moved Sara to his town house,
having persuaded her to serve as
housekeeper for both residences. She was glad
of the extra money because Gulley had
been writing to her asking for loans.
For many years Mr. Wilcher had had a
mistress whom he visited every Saturday.
During one of many long talks by Sara's
fireside, he told her that he was tired of
visiting this woman. When he asked
Sara to take her place, she was at first
slightly hesitant and confused, but in the
end she agreed. The arrangement worked
well enough for several years.
Mr. Wilcher became worried with
family and financial affairs and Sara
helped him by economizing on household
expenses. At the same time she managed
to falsify her accounts and send extra
money to Gulley. One day a policeman
came to the house with two girls who
had complained of Mr. Wilcher's
behavior. Mr. Wilcher disappeared, but
Sara discovered him hours later hiding
behind the chimney stacks on the roof.
The family was appalled by this incident.
After the impending summons had been
quashed, Mr. Wilcher became even
more unstable. Haunted by his past
misdemeanors, he decided to confess them to
the police. He also asked Sara to marry
him after he had served his sentence. At
this time he had an attack of sciatica.
While he was confined to his bed,
Blanche Wilcher, his niece by marriage
and a woman who had always been
suspicious of Sara, dismissed her.
Returning from a visit to her daughter,
Sara forgot that she was no longer
employed and entered Mr. Wilcher's street.
There she found that the house had
burned down in the night. Mr. Wilcher
had been taken to the house of his niece's
1549

sister Clarissa. After he had recovered
from shock he continued to see Sara and
ignored Blanche. He rushed Sara to a
registry office to give notice of their
forthcoming marriage and then took a small
new house for them to live in.
Sara had recently encountered Gulley
once more and had gradually assumed
financial responsibility for his new
household. She maintained these payments for
a time by selling to an antique shop
oddments that Mr. Wilcher had told her to
throw away.
The evening before her marriage, Sara
arrived at the new house to find Blanche
and a detective examining her possessions.
She did not protest. After they had found
receipts from the antique dealer and
grocers' bills for supplies for Gulley, she
was taken to the police station. She
received an eighteen-month prison sentence
and did not see Mr. Wilcher again.
A newspaper offered her money for her
story. With this she paid Gulley's
expenses and planned to become a cook
again after she had served her sentence.
She knew she could thus regain her
"character/* and she believed she could
keep it now that she had discovered her
weaknesses.
1550

HESPERIDES
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
First published: 1648
As thou deserv'st, be proud; then gladly
let
The Muse give thee the Delphick
Coronet.
This brief epigram, one of hundreds
Robert Herrick included in his collection
of twelve hundred poems, best describes
the pride with which he presented his
Hesperides and the recognition he
received after more than one hundred years
of neglect. His subtitle, The Works both
Human and Divine of Robert Herrick
Esq., indicates the inclusion in one
volume of his Hesperides and his Noble
Numbers, a group of ecclesiastical poems,
prayers, hymns, and apothegms dated
1647. This collection, together with
fifteen or so poems discovered by
nineteenth-century scholars and about twice
the number recovered recently in
manuscript, comprise the literary remains of
one of the finest lyricists in the English
language.
The arrangement of the poems in
Hesperides (the name itself is a conceit
based on the legend of nymphs who
guarded with a fierce serpent the golden
apples of the goddess Hera) is whimsical.
Most of the lyrics were composed in
Devonshire, where Herrick was vicar of Dean
Prior from 1629 until the Puritan
victories caused his removal from his parish
in 1647. Restored to his living in 1662,
he lived until his death in the West
Country which had inspired his pagan-
spirited, rustic verse.
The great Herrick scholar, L. C.
Martin, has discovered a chronology, from the
collation of many manuscripts, which
indicates the four general periods in which
these poems were composed, carefully
rewritten, and then painstakingly
published. From his apprenticeship to his
goldsmith uncle at least one poem
remains, "A Country Life," which may
have been one of the reasons why the
youthful poet was allowed to terminate
his service and go to Cambridge. Though
Herrick's activities during his university
period are remembered chiefly for the
letters he wrote asking his uncle for
money, he also composed a variety of
commendatory poems and memory verses.
One, the longest poem he wrote, is
addressed to a fellow student who was
ordained in 1623.
The second period, and perhaps the
most important, was from 1617 to 1627,
when he became the favorite of the
"sons" of Ben Jonson. Herrick's famous
poem, "His Fare-well to Sack,"
epitomizes these formative years of good talk,
wide reading, witty writing, and good
fellowship. In this poem too are the
names of the poets who most influenced
him—Anacreon, Horace, and by
implication, Catullus and Theocritus. The well-
known "The Argument of His Book"
echoes the pastoral strain in the poet's
declaration of his literary interests:
I sing of Brooks, of Blossomes, Birds,
and Bowers:
Of April, May, of June, and July-Flow-
ers.
I sing of May-poles, Hock-carts,
Wassails, Wakes,
Of Bride-grooms, Brides, and of their
Bridall-cakes.
I write of Youth, of Love, and have
Accesse
By these, to sing of cleanly-Wanton-
nesse.
I sing of Dewes, of Raines, and piece
by piece
Of Balme} of Oyle, of Spice, and
Amber-Greece.
I sing of Times trans-shifting; and I
write
How Roses first came Red, and Lillies
White.
I write of Groves, of Twilights, and I
sing
The Court of Mab, and of the Fairie-
1551

King.
I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
Of Heaven, and hope to have it after
all.
The Dean Prior vicar's hope for
heaven seems to be based on his "cleanly-
Wantonnesse," even if one considers his
many mistresses—Corinna, stately Julia,
smooth Anthea, and sweet Electra—as
imaginary, the idealized woman of poetic
tradition. Herrick's philosophy is
Anacreontic, the carpe d'em attitude of the
Cavalier poets. The best-known example from
his work, in his own time as well as ours,
is "To the Virgins, to Make Much of
Time," which begins: "Gather ye
Rosebuds while ye may."
That Herrick was a man of his time
may be ascertained by a glance at the
rich variety of his poetic subjects. Set in
the form of the madrigal, "Corinna's
going a Maying" catches all the excitement
of the festival in the most intricate of
singing forms. A ballad in the manner of
Campion is "Cherrie-ripe," one which
deserves to be better known:
Cherrie-Ripe, Ripe, Ripe, I cry
Full and faire ones; come and buy:
If so be, you ask me where
They doe grow? I answer, There,
Where my Julia's lips doe smile
There's the Land, or Cherry-Ile:
Whose Plantations fully show
All the yeere, where Cherries grow.
In the manner of Shakespeare he
composed "The mad Maids Song," with the
same "Good Morrows" and the strewing
of flowers for the tomb, but in this
instance the lament is for a lover killed by
a bee sting. In the style of Marlowe and
then Raleigh, Herrick continues the
Elizabethan shepherd-maiden debate in "To
Phillis to love, and live with him":
Thou shalt have Ribbands, Roses,
Rings,
Gloves, Garters, Stockings, Shooes, and
Strings
Of winning Colours, that shall move
Others to Lust, but me to Love.
These (nay) and more, thine own shal
be,
If thou wilt love, and live with me.
A Master of Arts (1620) and a
disciple of Jonson, Herrick never forgot his
classical background. As an
epigrammatist he was without peer, especially since
he injected strong originality into a
conventional and satiric form. He often
made his parishioners models for these
satiric verses, as in this comment on one
man's discomfiture:
Urles had the Gout so, that he co'd
not stand;
Then from his Feet, it shifted to his
Hand:
When 'twas in's Feet, his Charity was
small;
Now 'tis in's Hand, he gives no Almes
at all.
Nor does he spare himself and his
friends:
Wantons we are; and though our words
be such,
Our Lives do differ from our Lines by
much.
An extension of this mode is Herrick's
Anacreontic verse. In "To Bacchus, a
Canticle" he begs the god of revelry and
reproduction to show him the way,
among thousands, to have more than one
mistress. Somewhat more restrained and
in the vein of Catullus are his lyrics to
Lesbia and the epithalamia with which
he greeted his many friends and relatives
who, despite all his verses, insisted on
getting married. In "The cruell Maid" he
echoes, or is echoed by, his contemporary,
Andrew Marvell:
Give my cold lips a kisse at last:
If twice you kisse, you need not feare
That I shall stir, or live more here.
Next, hollow out a Tombe to cover
Me; me, the most despised Lover:
And write thereon, This Reader, "know,
hove kill'd this man. No more but so.
The more humble and bucolic songs of
Horace, however, were the poet's abiding
love. While he may have wished for the
1552

court rather than the parish, his best
work was composed amid peaceful
surroundings on pleasant rural subjects. His
"To Daffadills" is a more delicate and
subtle poem than the well-known lyric
by Wordsworth:
Faire Daffadills, we weep to see
You haste away so soone:
As yet the early-rising Sun
Has not attain'd his Noone.
Stay, stay,
Untill the hasting day
Has run
But to the Even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will goe with you along.
In the final period represented in
Hesperides, "His returne to London" is
a significant poem illustrating the
sophisticated side of his genius, the pomp
and circumstance which made a lasting
poetry for this faithful royalist. He sings
here of
O Place! O Peojflel Manners! fram'd to
please
All Nations, Customes, Kindreds,
Languages!
as he links himself with his Elizabethan
patron saints, the Renaissance man who
took all life and all things for their
province.
"And here my ship rides having
Anchor cast," he writes in his concluding
poems of the book which he sent forth
to find "a kinsman or a friend." He
honestly thought and in fact knew "The
Muses will weare blackes, when I am
dead." Ironically, his death went almost
unnoticed, though his verses were
recalled in oral tradition for many years
before the recovery of his work by modern
scholarship—a most appropriate tribute to
the man who gives such a vivid picture
of the folk and their wassails, harvests,
wakes, and loves.
To his Book's end this last line he'd
have plac't,
Jocund his Muse was; hut his Life was
chast.
1553

A HIGH WIND RISING
Type of work: Novel
Author: Elsie Singmaster (Mrs. E. S. Lewars, 1879-1958)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1728-1755
Locale: Pennsylvania
First published: 1942
Principal characters:
Anna Sabilla Schantz, a pioneer matriarch
Johann Sebastian Schantz, her grandson
Ottilia Zimmer, a young German immigrant, loved by Sebastian
Margaretta, and
Gertraud, their twins
Conrad Weiser, a famous interpreter and Indian agent
Shekellimy, an Oneida chief, friend of Weiser
Skelet, a half-friendly, half-treacherous Delaware
Critique:
A High Wind Rising deals with a phase
of American history which most writers
have neglected. It is a story of the
Pennsylvania settlements beyond the
Schuylkill during the decisive years when
French and English battled for control of
the Ohio and Conrad Weiser helped to
determine the fate of a continent by
keeping the Six Nations loyal to their British
allies. The writer brings the period
dramatically to life in her characterizations of
pioneers like Conrad Weiser and
Sebastian Schantz, of frontier women like
resourceful, devoted Anna Sabilla. Those
people live with no self-conscious sense
of national destiny, as do so many
pioneers in lesser fiction. Their lives
illustrate what must have been the daily
life of the frontier, the hardships and
dangers that they faced no more than a
part of their everyday existence. Other
figures great in Pennsylvania annals are
more briefly viewed in this crowded canvas
of people and events—Benjamin Franklin,
James Logan, John Bertram, Henry
Melchior Muhlenburg, Lewis Evans. The
passing of time and the pressures of
history shape the plot, but the story itself is
as simple and realistic as homely family
legend. The novel is an example of the
historical chronicle at its best.
The Story:
In 1728, Conrad Weiser, white clan
brother of the Mohawks, saw Owkwari-
owira—Young Bear—for the first time, a
naked small boy daubed with clay and
running wild in Chief Quagnant's village.
Weiser, his quick eye seeing pale skin
under the dirt and grease, bartered for the
child and took him back to the German
settlement at Schoharie. Young Bear was
baptized Johann Sebastian, and found in
Anna Eve, Conrad's wife, a second mother.
The Weisers believed that Bastian was the
grandson of Anna Sabilla Schantz, whose
daughter Margaretta had followed an
English trader into the forest.
Many of the Schoharie community
were preparing to move to Pennsylvania,
where there was rich land for thrifty,
industrious German settlers. Anna Sabilla
had already gone to her own cabin in a
clearing beside the Blue Mountains.
Sturdy, resolute, she cared for Nicholas,
her paralyzed brother, tended her garden,
called all Indians thieves and rascals, but
fed them when they begged at her door.
For trader Israel Fitch she carved wooden
puppets in exchange for salt, cloth, tools.
Weiser took Bastian to her when he went
to claim his own lands along the
Tulpehocken.
Growing up, Bastian helped his grand-
mother with plantings and harvests. From
A HIGH WIND RISING by Elsie Singmaster. By permission of the author and the publishers, Houghton
Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1942, by Elsie Singmaster Lewars.
1554

Skelet, a sickly, humpbacked Indian
whom Anna Sabilla had nursed back to
health, he learned the ways of animals and
the deep woods. When old Nicholas
died, Bastian moved into his room. Tall
and strong for his age, he was the man of
the family at fourteen.
The chiefs' road ran through the
clearing, and along the trail Delawares and
Iroquois traveled to and from the treaty
councils in Philadelphia. Bastian knew
them all— old Sassoonan of the Delawares,
loyal Shekellimy, Weiser's friend, who
ruled the Delawares for the Six Nations,
Seneca, Oneida, and Mohawk spokesmen
—and they remembered Owkwari-owira,
Sharp-tongued Anna Sabilla grumbled
when he talked with them in their own
tongues, but she raised few objections
when he went with Weiser and the chiefs
to Philadelphia for the great council of
1736.
The city was finer than Bastian had
ever imagined it. Whenever he could, he
left the State House and wandered
through the streets and along the
waterfront. He saw a shipload of German
immigrants and among them a black-haired
girl whose parents had died at sea. Because
she had no one to pay her passage, her
eyes were like those of a hurt deer, and
he gave all his money to a kindly couple
who offered to look after her. Bastian
heard only that her name was Ottilia
before a runner from Weiser summoned him
to the council. He went back to look for
her later, but the immigrants had gone.
Anna Sabilla hinted that Anna Maria,
Weiser's daughter, or the Heils' blonde
Sibby would have him quickly enough,
but Bastian remembered black hair and
dark eyes. Tramping from clearing to
clearing looking for her, he found some
passengers from the ship who remembered
that she had gone away with a family
named Wilhelm. Again he went to
Philadelphia for a treaty council. There Weiser
found the girl's name on a ship's list-
Ottilia Zimmer. Bastian's search led him
to John Bartram, the Quaker naturalist,
along the Schuylkill, beyond the Blue
Mountains. Nowhere did he get word of
Ottilia or the Wilhelms. Anna Maria
Weiser became engaged to marry Henry
Melchior Muhlenburg, a young pastor.
Anna Sabilla shook her head over Bastian;
in her old age she wanted the comfort
of another woman and children in the
cabin.
The chiefs of the Six Nations and
delegates from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and
Virginia met in Lancaster in 1744. Weiser
was there because he was needed to hold
the Long House in friendly alliance,
Bastian because, as the years passed,
Weiser counted greatly on his help. The
weather was hot, the noise deafening.
Weiser and Bastian went to a small inn
to escape feasting Indians. The waitress
had black hair and dark eyes. She was
Ottilia, and she rode home with Bastian
when the conference ended.
Humpbacked Skelet ran ahead to tell Anna
Sabilla that Bastian had found his squaw.
Settlers were moving beyond the
Susquehanna. While Delawares and Shewan-
ese signed treaties with the French, Weiser
worked to keep the Long House neutral.
Bastian went with him to Logstown on
the Ohio, where Tanacharison and
Scarouady promised to keep their tribes
friendly toward the English. As Bastian
rode home, neighbors called to him to
hurry. In the kitchen of the cabin Anna
Sabilla rocked a cradle in which slept the
newborn zwillings, Margaretta and Ger-
traud. At last, said Anna Sabilla, they
were a real family.
But winds of violence blew from the
west. Weiser gave presents at Aughwick,
at Carlisle, but his arguments, feasts, and
gifts could not hold the Shewanese and
the Delawares, angry because their
hunting grounds had been taken from them.
General Braddock, marching to force the
French from the Ohio, was ambushed.
Fitch, the trader, brought word of
burnings and killings beyond the mountains.
Because Pennsylvania lay open to war
parties of French and Indians, Bastian was
glad when Fitch decided to stay; another
man might be needed if Indians appeared
1555

on the Tulpehocken.
Bastian had gone to help a sick
neighbor when the raiders struck, burning the
cabin and barn and leaving Fitch's body
where it fell. Anna Sabilla, Ottilia, and
the twins were gone. Pretending ferocity,
Skelet had taken a small part of Ottilia's
scalp and left her unconscious. Anna
Sabilla and the twins he took with him to
Kitanning, calling Anna Sabilla his
squaw. She was indignant, but she
realized that his claims kept her alive and the
twins safe.
Reviving, Ottilia wandered through the
woods for days in company with a small
boy whose parents had been killed and
scalped. At last, with other fugitives, she
made her way to the Moravian settlement
at Bethlehem. There Bastian found her
on his journey back from Philadelphia,
where he and other settlers had gone to
demand the formation of militia units and
forts to protect the frontier. Leaving
Ottilia with the Weisers, he joined the
garrison at Fort Henry, built where Anna
Sabilla's cabin had once stood.
One night he and a friend captured a
young Frenchman who carried the carved
figure of a little girl, and Bastian,
recognizing Anna Sabilla's work, concluded that
she and the twins were still alive. He
joined a raiding party marching on
Kitanning, but Anna Sabilla and the little
girls were not among the white prisoners
freed in the attack.
Anna Sabilla and the twins were
already on the way home. Knowing that
Skelet was vain and greedy, she promised
money if he would guide them back to
the settlements. They set out, Skelet
dreaming of the rum and finery he would
buy with the old woman's gold. Then,
worn out by hardships on the trail, he
died on the ridge above her own clearing.
Suddenly Anna Sabilla smelled
chimney smoke, heard voices. She ran, urging
the girls before her. Safe within the
stockade, and grateful, she declared that the
old humpback had been a rascal but that
he had been helpful. She intended to bury
him among her people.
1556

THE HILL OF DREAMS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arthur Machen (1863-1947)
Type of plot: Impressionistic romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1907
Principal characters:
Lucian Taylor, a would-be author
The Reverend Mr. Taylor, Lucian's father, a rural clergyman
Annie Morgan, Lucian's sweetheart
Critique:
This novel by Arthur Machen, in part
an autobiography, received little notice
when it was published. During the 1920's,
after Machen's books had won him a
reputation, this novel also came in for a share
of attention and popularity. Machen
himself said, in the introduction to a later
edition of the book, that he had begun it
as proof to the world and to himself that
he was indeed a man of letters and that,
even more important, he had thrown off
the style of Robert Louis Stevenson,
whom he had been accused of imitating,
and had found a style of his own to express
his ideas. He also related that the writing
of the novel was imbedded in the work
itself: that many of the trials and weird
experiences which have been put into the
life of the fictional Lucian Taylor were, in
reality, the experiences of Machen
himself as he wrote the novel. This novel will
probably never be a popular one, for it is
a somewhat difficult study of a highly
introverted character, a man who, while
searching for a way to express life, lost
both himself and the power to understand
humanity. Although such studies are too
intense and yet too nebulous to appeal to
a widely diversified body of readers, the
book is likely to stand as a notable
example of its type.
The Story:
Lucian Taylor, son of an Anglican
rector in a rural parish, was an
extraordinary lad, even before he went to school.
THE HILL OF DREAMS by Arthur Machen. By permission of the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1922, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed.
He was both studious and reflective, so
much so that he was not accepted readily
by the boys of the neighborhood. When
Lucian went away to school he did very
well in his studies, but he formed an
acute dislike for athletics and for social
life with his fellow students. In his studies
he turned toward the less material,
preferring to learn of the dim Celtic and Roman
days of Britain, of medieval church
history, and of works in magic.
In his fifteenth year Lucian returned to
his home during the August holidays and
found it quite changed. His mother had
died during the previous year, and his
father's fortunes had sunk lower and
lower. As a result his father had become
exceedingly moody and Lucian spent
much of his time away from the house.
His habit was to wander through the
rolling countryside by himself.
One bright summer afternoon he
climbed up a steep hillside to the site of
an old Roman fort. The site was at some
distance from any human habitation, and
Lucian felt quite alone. Because of tbe
heat, he had an impulse to strip off his
sweaty clothing and take a nap. He did,
only to be awakened by someone kissing
him. By the time he had fully regained his
senses, the unknown person had
disappeared. Lucian was not sure whether some
supernatural being or Annie Morgan,
daughter of a local farmer, had awakened
him thus.
Soon afterward Lucian went back to
1557

school. At last the rector told his son that
he could no longer afford to send him to
school and that matriculation at Oxford
was out of the question. Lucian was
disappointed, but he settled down to studying
in his father's library or wandering about
the countryside in solitary fashion, as he
had done during his vacations from
school.
As the elder Taylor's fortunes had
declined, his popularity in the parish had
diminished. Lucian's own reputation had
never been high, and his failure to take a
job in some respectable business
establishment turned the local gentry against
him. Everyone felt that his studies and his
attempts to write were foolish, since they
brought in no money. Nor could the
people understand Lucian's failure to
maintain their standards of respectability
in dress and deportment.
Lucian felt, however, that he could
stand beyond such criticism of his habits,
but his self-respect suffered a blow when
he tried to sell some of his writings.
Publishers, refusing to accept his work,
pointed out to him that what they wanted
was sentimental fiction of a stereotyped
kind. Lucian, not wishing to cheapen
himself or his literary efforts, refused to turn
out popular fiction of the type desired. He
felt that he had to express himself in a
graver kind of literature.
Lucian's social and intellectual
loneliness preyed upon him, plunging him at
times into the deepest despair. One
afternoon, while sunk in a mood of depression,
he went out for a long walk. By dusk he
was far from home, or so he thought, and
in the midst of a wood. Finally fighting
his way clear of the dense brush, Lucian
blundered onto a path and there met
Annie Morgan. She sensed his mood and
fell in with it. Both of them announced
their love and pledged one another. Lucian
went home feeling better than he had in
months.
As the days passed Lucian fell into the
habit of putting himself in a world apart,
a world of the past, when Rome held
Britain as a distant province. He dreamed
that the modern town of Caermaen, near
which was his father's rectory, was once
again the Roman settlement it had been
centuries before. Lucian called his land of
make-believe Avallaunius and spent most
of his time there, peopling it with men
and women, buildings and customs, that
he had learned of through his exhaustive
studies of Roman times in Britain. He
went wandering through the modern
town, imagining that the people he met
and the scenes before his eyes were those
of ancient times. Even Annie Morgan's
announcement that she was going away
made little impression upon him, for he
felt that she had accomplished her
mission in his life by showing him how to
escape into a better world.
People wondered at the strange
behavior of the young man; even his father,
not given to noticing anything, became
worried because Lucian ate little and grew
thin. People who knew him only by sight
suspected him of being a drunkard
because of his odd behavior and absent-
mindedness.
But at last Lucian escaped physically
from Caermaen; he received notice that a
distant cousin who had lived on the Isle
of Wight had died and left him two
thousand pounds. He immediately gave
five hundred pounds to his father and
invested the remainder for himself. With
the assurance of a small, regular income,
Lucian left Caermaen behind and went
to London. There he felt he could escape
from the moodiness which had held him
prisoner in the country. He also hoped
that the different mental atmosphere
would prove helpful to him in his
attempts at writing.
Upon his arrival in the city Lucian
found himself a single room in a private
home. He soon settled down to a regular
existence, writing late each night,
sleeping late in the morning, reading over his
work of the night before, and walking, in
the afternoons. His meals were sketchy,
for he was forced to live on as little as
fifteen shillings a week. But the regular
schedule was not to hold for long. His
1558

inspiration was not a regular thing, and
Lucian felt that he had to make his
writings perfection itself. He threw away as
much as he wrote. Disappointment over
his efforts soon began to drive him into
worse moods than he had known before.
Having been impressed as a boy by the
work of De Quincey in Confessions of an
English Opium Eater, Lucian turned to
that drug for solace and inspiration.
After he began taking drugs, he knew
little that was going on in the world about
him. He spent much of his time lying
quietly in his room and reliving the past
in visions. Once he had a real inspiration
to write; his story about an amber goddess
was the product of true imagination. But
publication of the story did little to
generate ambition and the will to create;
he was too far gone in his addiction to
opium.
A heavy snow and a severe wave of cold
struck London and southern England, but
the weather made little impression on him;
he might just as well have been living in
a ghost city. Then one night he took too
much opium. His landlady, not hearing
him stir for many hours, looked into his
room and found him dead at his desk, his
writings spread about him. Even she felt
little sorrow for him, although he had
made over his small fortune to her.
1559

HILLINGDON HALL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Smith Surtees (1803-1864)
Type of plot: Comic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1845
Principal characters:
John Jorrocks, a wealthy cockney grocer and sportsman
Mrs. Jorrocks, his shrewish wife
Emma Flather, a country girl
Mrs. Flather, her mother
The Duke of Donkeyton, Jorrocks* neighbor
The Marquis of Bray, his son
Critique:
Hillingdon Hall, Or, The Cockney
Squire is the final novel of the Jorrocks
series. Here the emphasis is on country
life and its charms and oddities. John
Jorrocks, a London grocer turned
sporting country proprietor and agriculturist,
is less a clown than he was in previous
volumes, although he does meet with
many undignified adventures; and the
whole tone of the book is more
sympathetic than picaresque. There is some
good satire in the electioneering scenes
and in Emma Flather's attempts to get
a husband, and some current farming
fads come in for good-natured ridicule.
Hillingdon Hall is one of the better
constructed works in the series, and the
cockney speech, as in all of Surtees* work,
is accurately represented.
The Story:
Hillingdon Hall was a charming
example of the old-style manor house with
its many haphazard additions and types
of architecture. It was set in a pretty
village and the nearby river added to its
attractions. Mr. Westbury, the former
owner, had been an old-fashioned
gentleman of talent and learning who spent
his whole time in the country. Since he
was a kind of patriarch for the district,
the village wondered after his death who
would be the new owner of the hall.
When the carriage drew up at the
door, curious eyes were fastened on the
new arrivals. The chaise was covered
with dust. A package of apple trees lay
on the roof, the coach boy clutched a
huge geranium, and flowers and plants
of all kinds were sticking out of the
windows. A huge, fat man with roses in his
back pocket got out, followed by his wife
in stiff brocade. John Jorrocks, the new
owner, had arrived.
Mrs. Flather announced the news to
her blooming daughter Emma. The two
ladies thought it would be only
neighborly for them to call right away,
especially since there might be a son in the
family. Emma at the time had an
understanding with James Blake, who had the
living at Hillingdon, but she was
always on the alert for a better match. Mrs.
Trotter, who was, if anything, quicker at
gossip than Mrs. Flather, brought the
news that Jorrocks was old and married
and had no children.
Jorrocks tried hard to be a good
gentleman farmer. He visited his tenants
faithfully but found them a poor lot.
They could scarcely understand his
cockney accent and they were full of
complaints; besides, they knew much more
than he did about farming. Mrs. Jorrocks
got on better at first with her country
folk. Traditionally the lady of
Hillingdon Hall was the patroness of the local
school. When she visited the
establishment, she was appalled at the drab
uniforms worn by the girls. Forthwith she
1560

had a friend in London, an actress,
design new costumes in the Swiss mode.
These she forced on the protesting girls.
Unfortunately, when she had a new
sign put up at the school the spelling
was bad; it announced to the world that
the institution was "founder'd" by Julia
Jorrocks.
One memorable day a magnificent
coach drove up and an impressive
footman left a card from the Duke of
Donkey ton. The duke fancied himself as a
politician. Thinking that Jorrocks might
become a person of standing, and feeling
sure that he must be a Whig, the duke
wanted to make certain of his allegiance.
The Jorrockses were still more astounded
to receive an invitation to dine and stay
the night at Donkeyton. Although much
puzzled by the initials R. S. V. P.,
Jorrocks wrote a formal acceptance. Mrs.
Flather and Emma were also invited, but
characteristically they were thinking of
the duke's son, the Marquis of Bray, as
a possible suitor for Emma.
On the way to Donkeyton, Jorrocks
contrived to get in the same carriage with
Mrs. Flather and squeezed that poor lady
and stole a kiss or two. He continued his
boisterous tactics at the castle. The duke
was much impressed by Jorrocks* appetite
for food and drink. After dinner he made
the mistake of trying to keep up with
Jorrocks in drinking toasts; consequently,
he had to retire early and was unable to
appear in time for breakfast.
The elegant and effeminate Marquis
of Bray was quite taken with Emma. He
fell in with a scheme that Jorrocks and
the duke had for founding an
agricultural society with Bray as president and
Jorrocks as vice-president. He readily
agreed to come to an organizational
meeting, since there he would see Emma
again.
The meeting was a great success. Bray
was horrified at the amount of food put
away by Jorrocks and his farmers, but
he did his best to keep up appearances.
Jorrocks* speech sounded good, although
some of the farmers did not follow him
very well. He advocated the growing of
pineapples and the making of drain tile
with sugar as the principal ingredient.
Bray topped off the occasion by a speech
lauding the ancient Romans. Afterward
he was able to visit Emma and capture
that girl's willing heart.
For some time Jorrocks had had as
estate manager a jack-of-all-trades named
Joshua Sneakington—Sneak for short.
After he had arranged for fees and bribes
to add to his income, Sneak thought
himself well off. One morning, however,
Jorrocks rose very early and decided to make
a tour of inspection. In a secluded spot
he came upon Sneak netting pheasants.
Furious at the trickery, he had Sneak sent
to jail. His new manager was a doughty
North Countryman, James Pigg, who had
been with Jorrocks at Handley Cross.
The duke showed favor to Jorrocks by
giving him a prize bull, which won a
ribbon at a fair, and by appointing him
magistrate. Bray came again to visit,
mostly to see Emma, but Jorrocks dragged
him off to a rough farmers' masquerade.
Bray, who was a slender youth, made
the mistake of dressing as a woman. A
loutish farmer who would not be put
off tried to kiss him. The boisterous
treatment startled Bray so much that he
wandered off in the night and got lost. He
came upon a sleeping household and,
after awaking the inhabitants, found he
had blundered on the Flather's house.
After staying the night with the family,
he had a chance to flirt with Emma at
breakfast.
After that adventure Emma and her
mother confidently expected an offer
from Donkeyton. When no word came,
the desperate Mrs. Flather herself went
to the castle. The duchess was amused
at the idea of her son's marriage with a
commoner, but the duke was incensed;
he knew that Bray had conducted
himself properly, for he had read
Chesterfield. The son had no voice in the matter
at all. Later Emma and her mother had
1561

to admit he had never made an outright
profession of love.
The member of Parliament from the
district died. The duke immediately sent
out a bid for Bray to fill the vacancy, and
no opposition was expected. The Anti-
Corn-Law League wrote several times to
Bray asking his stand on repeal of the
grain tariff, but Bray knew nothing
of the matter and did not reply.
Thereupon the League put up its own
candidate, Bill Bowker, a grifting friend
of Jorrocks. To avoid a campaign, the
duke bought off Bowker for a thousand
pounds and endorsed the proposals of
the League.
It was a shocking thing for the duke
to advocate removal of tariffs on grain.
When next the farmers tried to sell theit
produce at market, they found that price*
had tumbled. In their anger they put
forth the willing Jorrocks as their
candidate. The duke was hurt that a man
to whom he had given a bull and whom
he had elevated to a magistracy should
run against his son, but Jorrocks was
obdurate. At the hustings, although the
Marquis of Bray won, Jorrocks*
supporters demanded a poll.
The farmers all worked to get every
eligible voter to vote. Pigg was a little
tricky because he persuaded the Quakers
to vote for Jorrocks on the grounds that
his candidate was a teetotaler. When the
votes were counted, Jorrocks won by a
margin of two. Elated at beating a
marquis, and glad to go back to London,
Jorrocks left Pigg in charge of Hillingdon
Hall and went on to bigger things.
1562

HIPPOLYTUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Troezen in Argolis
First presented: 428 B.C.
Principal characters:
Theseus, King of Athens
Hippolytus, son of Theseus and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons
Phaedra, wife of Theseus
Aphrodite, goddess of physical love
Artemis, goddess of spiritual love
Critique:
The Hippolytus is probably one of the
most provocative of Greek tragedies, and
Phaedra, despite her comparatively brief
appearance in the play, is one of the most
pitiful of tragic heroines. Hippolytus
himself is an insufferable prig; but because
Phaedra and Theseus are victims of
relentless fate our sympathies go out to them. It
has been said that this play is Euripides'
dramatic treatment of the conflict in the
human between physical and spiritual
love, although this theory may attribute
too much importance to the traditional
rivalry between Aphrodite and Artemis in
Greek mythology. Racine treated this
story in the baroque manner in his Phedre.
The Story:
Aphrodite, goddess of physical love,
became angry because Hippolytus, offspring
of an illicit union between Theseus and
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, alone
among the citizens of Troezen refused to
do her homage. Instead, the youth, tutored
by holy Pittheus, honored Artemis,
goddess of the chase and of spiritual love. To
punish him for his disdain of love and
marriage, Aphrodite, jealous of Artemis
and incensed at his neglect of her altars,
vowed revenge: she would reveal to
Theseus the love his wife, Phaedra, had for her
stepson.
Some time before, Hippolytus had gone
to the country of Pandion to be initiated
into the holy mysteries. There Phaedra,
seeing him, had fallen in love with the
handsome youth, and because her heart
was filled with longing she had dedicated
a temple to the Cyprian goddess. Poseidon,
ruler of the sea, had once promised
Theseus that three of his prayers to the sea god
should be answered. Through that
promise Aphrodite planned to accomplish her
revenge.
Now it happened that Theseus had
killed a kinsman, and as punishment for
his crime he had been exiled for a year in
Troezen. There Phaedra, who had
accompanied her husband when he left
Athens, was unhappy in her secret love
for the young huntsman.
Hippolytus, returning from the chase,
paid his respects with song and garlands
before the altar of Artemis. Reminded by
a servant that an image of Aphrodite stood
nearby, he answered impatiently that he
acknowledged the power of the Cyprian
goddess, but from afar. Dedicated to
chastity, he had no desire to become her
devotee. The attendant, after Hippolytus
had left the shrine, asked Aphrodite to
indulge the young man's foolish pride.
Phaedra, meanwhile, moped in her
hopeless passion for the young prince, so
much so that her servants expressed deep
concern over her illness and wondered
what strange malady affected her. A nurse,
alarmed at Phaedra's restiveness and
petulance, was the most concerned of all.
When her mistress expressed a desire to
hunt wild beasts in the hills and to gallop
horses on the sands, the nurse decided that
Phaedra was light-headed because she had
not eaten food for three days.
1563

At last the nurse swore by the Amazon
queen who had borne Theseus a son that
Phaedra would be a traitor to her own
children if she let herself sicken and die.
At the mention of Hippolytus' name
Phaedra started; then she moaned
pitifully. Thinking how horrible it was that
she had been stricken with love for her
husband's son, she bewailed the unnatural
passions of her Cretan house. At the
nurse's urging she finally confessed her
true feelings for her stepson. The nurse,
frightened at the thought of the
consequences possible because of that sinful
passion, was horrified. The attendants
mourned at what the future seemed to
hold for all concerned. Phaedra told them
that she was determined to take her own
life in order to preserve her virtue and to
save Theseus from shame.
But the nurse, having reconsidered,
advised her mistress to let matters take a
natural course; she would offend
Aphrodite if she were to resist her love for
Hippolytus. Phaedra was quite
scandalized, however, when the nurse suggested
that she even see Hippolytus. The nurse
said that she had a love charm that would
end Phaedra's malady. As it turned out,
the potion was ineffectual without a word
from Hippolytus' mouth or an item of his
clothing or personal belongings.
Phaedra's attendants melodically
invoked Aphrodite not to look askance upon
them in their concern for their mistress.
The nurse, eager to aid the lovesick
woman, went to Hippolytus and told him
of Phaedra's love. The young huntsman,
shocked, rebuked the nurse for a bawd and
expressed his dislike for all mortal
womankind. Phaedra, having overheard her
stepson's angry reproaches and his
condemnation of all women, feared that her
secret would be revealed. To make
Hippolytus suffer remorse for her death, she
hanged herself.
Theseus, who had been away on a
journey, returned to discover that Phaedra had
taken her life. Grief-stricken, he became
enraged when he read a letter clenched
in his dead wife's hand. In it she wrote
that Hippolytus had caused her death by
his attempts to ravish her. Wild with
sorrow and rage, Theseus called upon
Poseidon to grant the first of his requests:
he asked the god to destroy Hippolytus
that very day. His attendants, shocked,
implored him to be calm, to consider the
welfare of his house, and to withdraw
his request.
Hippolytus, returning at that moment,
encountered his father and was mystified
by the passionate words of Theseus.
Standing over the body of his dead wife,
the king reviled his bastard son and
showed him the letter Phaedra had
written. Hippolytus, proudly defending
his innocence, said that he had never
looked with carnal desire upon any woman.
Theseus, refusing to believe his son's
protestations, banished the young man
from his sight. Hippolytus departed, still
insisting to his friends that he was the
purest of mortals.
Going down to the seashore, Hippolytus
entered his chariot after invoking Zeus to
strike him dead if he had sinned. As he
drove along the strand, on the road
leading to Argos, an enormous wave rose out
of the sea and from the whirling waters
emerged a savage, monstrous bull whose
bellowing echoed along the shore. The
horses drawing Hippolytus' chariot
panicked and ran away, the bull in pursuit.
Suddenly one of the chariot wheels struck
a rock and the car overturned. Hippolytus,
dragged across the rocks, was mortally
injured.
Theseus, learning with indifference
that his son still lived, consented to have
him brought back to the palace. While
he waited, Artemis appeared and told him
of his son's innocence and of Phaedra's
guilty passion for Hippolytus. Aphrodite,
she declared, had contrived the young
hunter's death to satisfy her anger at his
neglect of her shrines.
Hippolytus, his body maimed and
broken, was carried on a litter into his
father's presence. Still maintaining his
innocence, he moaned with shameless self-
pity and lamented that one so pure and
1564

chaste should meet death because of his
frightened horses. They were, he said, the
principal means by which he had always
honored Artemis, goddess of the hunt.
When she told him that Aphrodite had
caused his death, he declared that he, his
father, and Artemis were all victims of the
Cyprian's evil designs.
Knowing the truth at last, Hippolyrus,
humbled, took pity on broken-hearted
Theseus and forgave his father for his
misunderstanding and rage. Theseus, arising
from the side of the dead prince, miserably
faced the prospect of living on after
causing the destruction of his innocent,
beloved son.
1565

HISTORIA CALAMITUM
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: Pierre Abelard (1079-1142)
Time: 1079-C.1132
Locale: Paris, Melun, Laon, and St. Gildas, France
First transcribed: c. 1132
Principal personages:
Pierre Abelard, philosopher, theologian, churchman
Fulbert, Canon of Notre Dame
Heloise, Canon Fulbert's niece
William of Champeaux, Abelard's teacher, a philosopher
Anselm of Laon, a teacher
Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot of Clairvaux
forced by illness to return to his native
province for several years. When he
returned to Paris, he resumed study with
William of Champeaux, but once again
Abelard's skill in overthrowing his
master's philosophy of universals gained the
enmity of that cleric. Consequently,
Abelard reestablished his school at Melun
and attracted many of William's students
to his own school. Later, he moved closer
to Paris, conducted his school on Mont
Ste. Genevieve, and carried on a
philosophical feud with William.
After the conversion of his parents to
the monastic life, Abelard decided to
study under Anselm of Laon, but he was
disappointed to discover that Anselm's
fame was more a result of custom than
of intellect. Anselm had a great flow of
words, but the words were all
meaningless. Taunted by Anselm's admirers for
his desultory attendance at the lectures,
Abelard invited the students to hear his
own exposition of the Scriptures. The
presentation was so successful that, like
William, Anselm began to persecute
Abelard for surpassing him. When
Anselm ordered Abelard to cease the work
which was embarrassing him, Abelard
returned to Paris.
In Paris he completed the glosses on
Ezekiel which he had begun at Laon.
As his philosophical fame grew and the
numbers of his students increased, his
pride and sensuality grew accordingly. At-
THE STORY OF MY MISFORTUNES by Pierre Abelard. Translated by Henry Adams Bellows. By
permission of the translator. Published by The Free Press, Glencoe, 111. Copyright, 1922, by Henry A.
Bellows. Renewed. All rights reserved.
Abelard's History of My Calamity is an
account of the romantic and intellectual
misfortunes of one of the significant
philosophers of the Middle Ages. As a
moderate realist Abelard upheld the
Aristotelian idea that names of characteristics
do not name independently real
universals but merely call attention to certain
resemblances in things. This opinion
made him a philosophical opponent of
his teacher, William of Champeaux.
Abelard's reliance on logic and dialectic
together with his love of debate resulted
in his antagonizing many churchmen,
Bernard of Clairvaux in particular, and
he was condemned for heresy. This
misfortune took second place to the castration
which he suffered as the result of having
seduced Heloise, niece of the Canon of
Notre Dame. Abelard's story of his
misfortunes is at the same time a personal
statement from the Middle Ages and a
timeless expression of human trials.
Pierre Abelard was born in the village
of Pallet, about eight miles from Nantes.
His father was a soldier who had studied
letters, and through his influence
Abelard acquired a passion for learning. In
particular, he delighted in philosophy
and in the logical exercise of disputation.
In Paris he studied under William of
Champeaux, whom he irritated by besting
him in a series of debates. Abelard set
up a school of his own at Melun and,
later, at Corbeil, near Paris, until he was
1566

tracted by Helo'ise, the young niece of a
canon named Fulbert, Abelard
determined to possess her. Having persuaded
her uncle to take him in as a lodger, he
agreed to become Heloise's tutor and
guide.
Abelard's objective was soon reached.
Pretending to be engrossed in study, the
lovers explored all the avenues of love,
and Abelard gave less and less time to
philosophy and to teaching. Instead of
writing new lectures, he wrote love
poetry which became famous among those
who loved the delights of this world.
Fulbert dismissed the rumors which came
to him because he loved his niece and
had faith in the continence of Abelard.
The truth becoming finally apparent,
even to Fulbert, the lovers were forced
to part. Their separation brought them
shame, but shame gave way to increased
desire. When Helo'ise discovered that she
was pregnant, Abelard arranged to have
her taken to his sister's house. There
Helo'ise gave birth to a son, Astrolabe.
Fulbert, nearly mad with grief, would
have killed or injured Abelard had he
not feared that Helo'ise might suffer from
the vengeance of her lover's family. Then
Abelard begged the canon's forgiveness
and declared his intention to marry H£-
loise. Fulbert agreed to the offer and
sealed their agreement with a kiss.
When Abelard told Heloise of'his
intention, she objected strenuously,
arguing that it would be a loss to the Church
and to philosophy if he were to disgrace
himself by marrying a girl he had se
duced. Furthermore, she argued, if he
were to marry he would be going against
the advice of the most eminent
philosophers, who argued that no one could
devote himself to philosophy while
compelled to listen to the disturbances of
family life. Finally she referred to the
examples provided by those who
undertook the monastic life in order to serve
God.
Abelard refusing to be convinced, he
and Helo'ise were married secretly in
Paris, the ceremony witnessed by her
uncle and a few friends. When Helo'ise
criticized her uncle for telling the secret
of her marriage, Fulbert punished her.
Abelard, hearing of the punishment, sent
Helo'ise to a convent at Argenteuil. This
act so angered the canon that he and his
kinsmen arranged to have Abelard
castrated. Two of those who perpetrated this
shameful deed were later apprehended
and, as punishment, blinded and also
castrated.
Abelard suffered not so much from the
physical injury as from the grief of the
clerics and scholars of Paris. Helo'ise took
the vows of a religious life at the
convent of Argenteuil, and Abelard became
a monk at the abbey of St. Denis. There,
deploring the scandalous life of the abbot
and other monks, he lured their students
from them by teaching secular philosophy
as well as theology.
Abelard's rivals at the abbey, through
the cooperation of Alberic and Lotulphe,
apologists for Anselm, arranged to have
him called before an ecclesiastical
council at Soissons for writing a tract
containing what they regarded as heretical views
concerning the unity and trinity of God.
Although no case against the book could
be made, Abelard's enemies convinced
the council that the book should be
ordered burned. This decision was carried
out and Abelard was sent to the abbey
of St. Me*dard as punishment. After a
short period of time, however, all who
had been involved in punishing Abelard
put the blame on others; Abelard was
allowed to return to the abbey of St. Denis.
When the envy of the monks of St.
Denis prompted more ecclesiastical
quarrels, Abelard secured permission to build
an oratory at Troyes. This he named the
Paraclete, dedicating the church to the
Holy Spirit.
Abelard was then called to be abbot
of St. Gildas at Ruits, but his suffering
continued because of the undisciplined
and immoral behavior of the monks.
When the abbot of St. Denis expelled
1567

the nuns from the abbey of Argenteuil,
where Heloise served, Abdlard arranged
to have her and some of her deposed
companions take charge of the Paraclete.
In this manner he secured Heloi'se's
happiness. Rumors began to spread that
Ab61ard was acting in her behalf because
he was moved by lust, but he defended
himself by arguing that the damage done
to his person made any base act
impossible. Furthermore, he regarded it as his
duty to supervise the nuns, and he
pointed out passages in scripture in
support of his action.
Abelard was constantly threatened by
the monks of his abbey, who attempted
to poison him and to have him murdered
by bandits. Only by exercising great care
and by excommunicating the most wicked
among the brothers was Abelard able to
survive. He wrote the letter giving an
account of his misfortunes in order to
show how much suffering is possible for
one who serves God and to argue that,
despite suffering, all persons should trust
in God's providence.
1568

THE HISTORY OF COLONEL JACQUE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Type of plot: Picaresque adventure
Time of plot: Late seventeenth century
Locale: England, France, Virginia
First published: 1722
Principal characters:
Colonel Jacque, commonly called Jack, a waif
Captain Jack, his foster brother
Major Jack, another foster brother
Will, a pickpocket
Colonel Jacque's Four Wives
Critique:
Although in our day Daniel Defoe is
remembered chiefly for Robinson Crusoe,
in its own time Colonel Jacque attained
great popularity. Defoe declared that
his twofold purpose was to show the
ruination of youth through lack of
proper training and to prove that a misspent
life may be redeemed by repentance.
The novel opens on a theme similar to that
of Oliver Twist but follows a line of
development modeled after Gil Bias.
Although a rogue, Colonel Jacque aspires
to win back his good name, and in the
end he succeeds. Defoe, in the fashion of
his day, gave the novel a grandiose title:
The History and Remarkable life of the
truly Honourable Colonel Jacque,
vulgarly called Col. Jack, who was born a
Gentleman, put 'Prentice to a
Pick-pocket, flourished six and twenty years as a
Thief, and was then Kidnapped to
Virginia; came back a Merchant, was five
times married to four Whores, went into
the Wars, behaved bravely, got
preferment, was made Colonel of a Regiment,
came over and fled with the Chevalier,
is still Abroad Completing a Life of
Wonders, and resolves to die a General. The
end of the novel does not fulfill,
however, the promise of the title.
The Story:
The illegitimate son of a gentleman
and a lady, Colonel Jack, as he was later
known, was early in his life given to his
nurse to rear. There he was brought up
with her own son, Captain Jack, and
another unwanted child, Major Jack. She
treated the boys well, but she herself had
little money and so they were forced to
fend for themselves. When Colonel Jack
was but ten years of age, the good woman
died, leaving the three boys to beg their
food. Lodging did not bother them; they
slept in ash piles and doorways in the
winter and on the ground in summer.
Captain Jack soon turned to picking
pockets for a living and was so successful
that he took Colonel Jack into
partnership. The two young rogues preyed on
wealthy men who were careless of their
money. One of the boys would take the
money, extracting only a small note from
the whole; then the other would return
the rest to its rightful owner and collect
a reward for its return. One of the men
thus duped was so grateful to honest-
seeming Colonel Jack that upon the
return of his wallet he agreed to keep the
reward money for the boy and pay him
interest on it. Since Colonel Jack had no
place to keep the stolen goods safely,
he had asked the gentleman to do him
that service. Later Colonel Jack took more
stolen money to the same man for
safekeeping and received his note for the
whole amount, to be paid only to Colonel
Jack himself. In fairness let it be said that
after the scamps had robbed a poor
woman of all her savings, Colonel Jack was
so ashamed that he later returned her
money with interest.
1569

Captain Jack, a real villain, was
apprehended and taken to Newgate Prison.
Colonel Jack then became a partner of a
thief named Will, a really vicious rogue
who plundered and robbed and at last
killed. He also was caught and taken to
Newgate to be hanged, a fate which
Colonel Jack knew Will deserved but
which made his heart sick and his own
conscience a heavy burden.
Captain Jack escaped from prison.
Colonel Jack being also in danger
because of his deeds, the two journeyed to
Scotland. They were almost caught many
times, but on each occasion Captain
Jack's foresight enabled them to elude
capture. When they were ready to
return to England, they took work on a
ship bound for London, or so they
thought. Since they were deserters from
the army, which they had joined to save
their skins, they could not afford to risk
regular means of travel. But the two who
had cheated so many were themselves
duped. Instead of sailing for England,
they found themselves on the high seas
bound for America and servitude.
Colonel Jack, knowing himself for a villain,
accepted his fate calmly, but Captain
Jack stormed against it. The defiant
Captain Jack abused his master, escaped back
to England, resumed his old ways, and
some twenty years later was hanged.
In Virginia, Colonel Jack was the
property of a good master who told him that
after he had served five years he would
be freed and given a small piece of land.
Thus, if he were industrious and honest,
he might benefit from his ill fate. Jack,
respecting his master, worked diligently
for him. Soon he was made an overseer,
and his kind heart and keen mind were
responsible for changing the Negro slaves
from rebellious fiends to loyal workers.
His master was so fond of Jack that he
bought for him a small plantation nearby
and lent him the money to supply it. He
also arranged for Jack to secure his money
left in keeping in London. The money
was converted into goods for the
plantation, goods which were lost at sea. The
master offered Jack his freedom before
the five years were up, but Jack was
loyal and continued to serve his master
until that gentleman's death.
Jack's plantation prospered. The
original two slaves given to him by his old
master were increased by several more
slaves and bonded white workers. Jack,
always a kind master, won the loyalty of
his workmen. Wanting to improve his
education, for he could neither read nor
write, he took one of his bonded men as
a tutor and soon grew to admire him as
he himself had been admired by his
former master.
Resolving to return to England after
an absence of almost twenty years, he
tried to get his tutor to travel with him.
When the man refused, Jack made him
the overseer of his large plantations. It
was some time before Jack arrived in his
native land. He was first tossed about at
sea, then captured by the French, and at
last exchanged for a prisoner held by the
English.
Soon Jack's heart was taken by a lady
who lived nearby and they were married.
But she proved unfaithful to him, as well
as being a gambler and a spendthrift,
and shortly after the birth of their child
he left her. He first attacked her lover,
however, and so had to flee for his life.
Later, learning that she was to have
another child, he divorced her and went to
France. There he joined an Irish brigade
and fought in France, Germany, and
Italy. Captured, he was sent to
Hungary and then to Italy, where he married
the daughter of an innkeeper. Eventually
he was allowed to go to Paris with his
wife. There he recruited volunteers to
fight against the English. Tiring of war,
he returned to Paris unexpectedly, only
to find that his second wife had also
taken a lover. After almost killing the
man, he fled to London and then to
Canterbury, where he lived as a
Frenchman with the English and as an
Englishman with the French.
Still desiring a happy home life, he
married again. His wife, at first beauti-
1570

ful and virtuous, became a drunkard and
finally killed herself. They had had three
children. Wishing to provide for them,
Jack married an older woman who had
cared for them and whom they loved as
a mother. But that good woman, aftei
bearing him children, died from a fall,
leaving him a widower once more. After
smallpox took all but two of his
children, he returned to Virginia. His
daughter he left with her grandfather; the
remaining son he took with him.
In Virginia he found his affairs in
good order, the tutor having made a
faithful overseer for twenty-four years.
Several slaves and servants had been added
to the plantations, and Jack found one
of them to be his first wife. Since she had
repented wholly of her sins, he married
her again and lived happily with her for
many years.
But he was not always to live in peace.
Several captive servants who knew of his
part in the rebellion, when he had served
with the Irish brigade, were brought to
neighboring plantations. His part in the
rebellion becoming known, he had to
leave Virginia until he could secure a
pardon from the king. He and his wife
went to Antigua, from which she later
returned to Virginia to await the news
of her husband's pardon. Pardoned, he
was on his way home when he was
captured by the Spanish. After many long
months as a hostage he was released,
having turned the experience into profit by
trading with some of his captors. He
continued the trade, which was illegal in the
eyes of the Spanish government, and
made thousands of pounds. He was often
in danger during his voyages, even taken,
but each time he turned the situation to
his own advantage.
At last he left danger behind, returned
to England, and sent for his beloved wife.
There they remained, leaving the
Virginia plantations in the hands of the
faithful tutor. In his old age Colonel
Jack spent many hours contemplating the
goodness of the God he had formerly
ignored. He believed that his story was one
to make others repent of their sins and
mend their broken ways.
1571

THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Type of work: History
Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)
Time: 56 B.C.-A.D. 1702
Locale: England
First published: Books I and II, 1848; III and IV, 1855; V, unfinished, 1861
Principal personages:
Charles II
James II
William III
Mary, wife of William
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough
William Penn
Macaulay knew little about English
history before the seventeenth century.
He knew almost nothing about foreign
history. He was not interested in art,
science, philosophy, or religion. As a
Whig, he had no sympathy with the
Tories and little understanding of James
II. He overlooked many of the
authoritative books covering the period about
which he was writing. Therefore, in The
History of England from the Accession
of James the Second he is sometimes
unfair to certain figures or mistaken in facts
and interpretations. The result, however,
is a vivid and eminently readable history
with vivid pictures of the actors and the
social and cultural background against
which they performed.
Macaulay was a child prodigy who
started writing early. Before he was eight,
this future historan, poet, and essayist
had completed an outline of history and
a poem in three cantos modeled after the
poetry of Scott. He went to Trinity
College, Cambridge, intending to enter law.
Before he passed his bar examinations in
1826, he had attracted attention by a
critical essay on Milton, the first of many
he contributed to the influential
Edinburgh Review. Later his essays about the
Indian question got him an appointment
on a commission to India.
While still in India, he wrote in his
diary his intention to compile a
five-volume history, the first part to cover the
thirty years from the revolution of 1688
to the beginning of Walpole's
administration. It would end with the death of
George IV and achieve unity by covering
"the Revolution that brought the crown
into harmony with the Parliament and
the Revolution which brought the
Parliament into harmony with the nation."
Further planning convinced him of the
need to precede his account of the
revolution by the story of the reign of James II.
When he returned to England, he had
barely begun his project before he was
named Secretary of War, a post which
gave him no time for literarv work until
the elections of 1841 turned him out of
office and into his study. He progressed
slowly on his history until the return of
his party to power in 1846, when he was
appointed Paymaster General. In spite of
public demands on his time the first two
volumes of The History of England from
the Access;on of James the Second
appeared in November, 1848.
The ten chapters begin with an
account of Roman times and bring the story
of England down to the crowning of
William and Mary on February 13, 1689.
Diary entries reveal Macaulay's worry
about how to begin. He had to start
somewhere and so, in the first paragraph, he
bravely announced his purpose to "offer a
slight sketch of my country from the
earliest times." Romans, Saxons, and
Danes move through the first chapter,
bringing the reader up to the general
elections of 1660 and the return of
Charles II to England. In the next
chapter Macaulay followed the career of
1572

Charles II until his death in 1685. At
this point the historian was ready to
begin his task in earnest. His announced
purpose in the third chapter was to "give
a description of the state in which
England was at the time when the crown
passed from Charles II to his brother,
James."
First, Macaulay stressed the small
population of the British Isles in 1685,
perhaps five million, with half living in
England. Then he discussed the revenue
available. Excise taxes, taxes on chimneys, and
the rest brought in hardly a fifth as much
to the crown as France was collecting.
Then follows a study of the army and the
navy on which the money was largely
spent. A discussion of agriculture and
mineral wealth introduces the country
gentlemen and the yeomanry, with a
glance at the clergy. Next, the historian's
attention fixes on the towns and their
growth, following the expansion of trade
and manufacturing, with special attention
to London. Discussion of communication
with London leads to a section on the
postal sysfem, inns, and highwaymen. A
s*udy of England's cultural status, both
literary and scientific, precedes the final
section on the terrible condition of the
verv poor.
The description of the death of Charles
II, in Chapter IV, is a sample of Macau-
lay's style. The ten pages read like a
historical novel, except that the historian has
footnotes available for the details of the
palace room, the visitors at the bedside,
and such bits as the king's dying comment
about winding the clock at his bedside.
The surreptitious visit of the priest, John
Huddleston, and the reaction of the crowd
outside the palace bring vividness to the
event.
The succession of James II to the
throne is the theme of the other six
chapters of the first two volumes. The new
monarch lacked the political acumen and
the general knowledge of the world
possessed by Charles II; otherwise, he might
not have been so easily duped by his
Jesuit adviser, for he did possess
administrative ability, more, perhaps, than Macau-
lay grants him.
The exciting part of this section tells
of James's following the invasion of
England by William of Orange and of his
capture by "rude fishermen of the Kentish
roast," who mistook the royal party for
Jesuits and the monarch for his hated
adviser, Father Petre. Then came his
flight to France, the Convention that
formulated the Declaration of Rights, and
the coronation of William and Mary.
Because of this stirring material, excitingly
told, thirteen thousand copies of the
history were sold in four months.
Such success worried Macaulay.
Attempting to make the other volumes
dealing with William as colorful, he provided
himself with a timetable: two book pages
a day, two years to finish the first draft,
and another year for revision and
polishing. He felt the need for making every
sentence clear and precise, for seeing that
his paragraphs had continuity. Such labor
took longer than he had planned. It was
nearly seven years before he had the
manuscript of Volumes III and IV ready
for the printer. Their twelve chapters
brought England's story to the end of the
war with France in 1697. The public
acceptance justified the time taken in
its composition. Within two months 26,-
500 copies were sold, and his royalties
amounted to twenty thousand pounds.
Macaulay's diary frequently voiced his
desire for fame and immortality. "I think
posterity will not let my book die," he
wrote in 1838. In addition to the wealth
it brought, the success of the work
replaced the Tory view of English history,
as voiced by Hume in his History of
England (1754-1761), with the Victorian
concept originated with Macaulay.
In the new volumes Macaulay showed
himself kindly disposed toward Mary in
her trying position between her Catholic
father and her Protestant husband, who
divided his attention between her and
Elizabeth Villiers. But William of Orange
1573

did love Mary. The last lines of Macau-
lay's history tell about "a small piece of
black silk ribbon," found next to
William's skin when his remains were being
laid out. "The lords in waiting ordered it
to be taken off. It contained a gold ring
and a lock of the hair of Mary."
Macaulay admired William. The
Dutch king had an enormous task,
organizing England, reconquering Ireland, and
subduing rebellious Scotland, all the
while carrying on a war in France.
Macaulay does seem to overestimate
William's political genius, and his account
of the king's yearning to return to
Holland and leave England for Mary to rule
is considered by some scholars an
exaggeration of William's basic
disillusionment with English life. With a rosy
picture of the prosperity amid which William
rode into London on Thanksgiving Day
in November, 1697, and with the
promise of a happier age, the volumes
published during the writer's lifetime come to
an end.
When Macaulay died he had
completed only three chapters of the
concluding volume, bringing the story up to
the prorogation of Parliament, April 11,
1700. His sister, Lady Trevelyan,
prepared this material for publication exactly
as Macaulay had left it, with "no
references verified, no authority sought for^or
examined," but she did include several
fragments, among them six pages
describing the death of William with which
Macaulay had probably intended to
conclude his work. She also compiled a
fifty-page, double-column index of the
five books.
In his presentation of his characters,
Macaulay was often biased. As one who
seemed never in doubt, who decided on
one of two conflicting stories and
frequently did not mention the existence of
the other, he saw a man as good or bad.
Historians have pointed out his failure
to do justice to William Penn. Being a
Whig, he used a more severe criterion
toward Tories, as is evident in his
discussions of James's relations with Catherine
Sedley, and William's with Elizabeth
Villiers. What was lamentable in William
was a crime in James, whom he portrayed
as a libertine and black monster.
His villains are sometimes caricatures.
The crafty Robert Ferguson and Titus
Oates, whose perjury about the Popish
Plot brought death to the innocent, are
made physically hideous. In Chapter IV,
Macaulay writes of Oates's "short neck,
his forehead low as that of a baboon, his
purple cheeks, and his monstrous length
of chin . . ." and features "in which
villainy seemed to be written by the
hand of God." For Marlborouah, even
when he was plain John Churchill,
Macaulay turned to lampoons for details,
though he must have known they were
biased. Perhaps his dislike was based on
the unproved accusation that
Marlborough had tried to overthrow William.
In a work of such magnitude, errors of
fact and interpretation were bound to
creep in, but even some that were pointed
out to Macaulay during his lifetime
remained uncorrected. In other cases, he
did not have access to the journals and
scholarly research now available. Another
source of error arose from Macaulay's
attitude toward everything outside the
British Isles. Except for India, where he
had lived for four years, he practically
ignored the colonies. American history is
brought in chiefly in connection with
happenings in England. Captain Kidd and
the piratical activities of New England
and New York appear to explain the fate
of an English ministry, while the Jamaica
earthquake of 1692 serves only as one
more reason for the unpopularity of
William's reign.
Macaulay's style has also come in for
some criticism. His efforts toward
clearness lead at times to verbosity and his
attempts to emphasize sometimes create a
paragraph where a sentence would have
served. But its basic flaw is that Macaulay
thought as an orator. His history is more
impressive when read aloud than when
read silently; it is more rhetorical than
literary.
1574

But no book lacking in inherent worth exciting story, interestingly told, they will
can outlast its century, and The History continue to read Macaulay's history with
of England remains a landmark of its both enjoyment and profit,
kind. As long as people are moved bv an
1575

THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
Type of plot: Comic romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: England
First published,: 1909
Principal characters:
Mr. Polly, a shopkeeper
Miriam, his wife
The Plump Woman
Uncle Jim, her nephew
Critique:
A timeless comedy, as funny now as
when it was first published in 1909,
The History of Mr, Polly has strangely
enough not been one of H. G. Wells'
most popular novels. It is the story of a
gentle man who rebels at last against
the insults heaped upon him by the
world and finds the peace of mind that
few achieve. Wells' special genius here
is in the quiet humor that startles even
as it amuses. This is a highly original
book, funny, moving, and pathetic.
The Story:
Mr. Polly sat on a stile and cursed.
He cursed the world, his wife, and
himself. For Mr. Polly was thirty-five and
buried alive. He hated his slovenly wife,
his fellow shopkeepers, and every other
person in the world. His life, he felt, had
been nothing but one frustration after
another, from babyhood into his middle
thirties.
Mr. Polly had been the usual adored
baby, kissed and petted by his parents.
His mother had died when he was seven.
After the routine sketchy schooling of
his class, he was apprenticed by his
father to the owner of a draper's shop.
Mr. Polly was ill-suited to work in
that shop or in any other. But he served
out his apprenticeship and then began a
progression from one shop to another,
being unable to hold one position for
very long. He hated the bleak life in
THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY by H. G. Wells.
Inc. Copyright, 1909, by Duffield & Co. Renewed, 1
dreary dormitories. He hated being told
to hustle when he wanted to dream
beautiful dreams about adventure and
romance. He spent most of his money
and all his spare time on books which
took him away from the humdrum of
socks and neckties. He did not know
what it was he really wanted, but to
anyone who might have studied him
the answer would have been simple. He
wanted companions.
When his father died, Mr. Polly found
himself in possession of several useless
bits of bric-a-brac and three hundred and
ninety-five pounds. It seemed at first that
a whole new world was open to him
with this new wealth. Various relatives
had sensible suggestions for him, most
of them centering on his opening a little
shop. He put them off, for he wanted to
spend his time in taking a holiday.
At his father's funeral, which was a
proper one, Mr. Polly had met aunts and
cousins he did not know existed. Three
of his cousins, all female, began to set
their caps for their rich relative, and
before he was sure of what had happened,
Mr. Polly found himself in possession
of a wife, his cousin Miriam, and a
draper's shop. For the next fifteen years Mr.
Polly was a respectable though unhappy
shopkeeper. He could get on with none
of his neighbors, and before long he hated
his slatternly wife as much as he hated
By permission of the publishers. Dodd, Mead & Co.,
'37, by H. G. Wells.
1576

the other shopkeepers.
For these reasons Mr. Polly sat on the
stile and cursed his luck. For the first
time in fifteen years he found himself,
in addition to his other troubles, unable
to meet the forthcoming rent. As well as
he could figure, he was in debt sixty or
seventy pounds. He knew how Miriam
would greet this news; it was just too
much for him.
At that point a plan which had been
forming in the back of his mind began
to take shape. He would kill himself.
Then the struggle would be over for him
and Miriam would be provided for by
his insurance. He would set fire to the
shop, for the fire insurance, and before
he burned up would cut his throat.
Craftily he waited until a Sunday evening,
when almost everyone was at church, and
then carried out his plan. It worked so
well that half the business area of the
village burned down. But when Mr.
Polly saw flames licking the leg of his
trousers, he forgot all about cutting his
throat and ran screaming down the street.
It was a beautiful fire, and because of
it Mr. Polly was for the first time in his
life a hero. He rescued a deaf old lady
who lived on a top floor and for whose
safety he felt responsible because he had
started the fire. When the excitement
was all over, it dawned on him that he
had forgotten to cut his throat. He felt
a little guilty.
But that one night of fighting back
against the world changed Mr. Polly
forever. Taking only twenty-one pounds
for himself and leaving the rest for
Miriam, he simply disappeared. Wandering
through the country, he enjoyed life for
the first time. He discovered the world,
the beauties of nature, the casual
friendship of passing acquaintances. It was
wonderful.
After a month Mr. Polly arrived at a
little wayside inn run by a cheerful
plump woman. They felt an instant
closeness, and she offered him a job as handy
man. His duties were endless and varied,
but there was an unhurried peace about
the plump woman and the inn that
brought joy to the soul of Mr. Polly.
There was, however, a black spot on the
peace. The plump woman had a nephew,
called Uncle Jim, who was a brute and
a villain. He had run off all other males
who had ever stopped there, and he beat
his aunt and stole her money. She knew
that he would return again when he was
out of funds. Mr. Polly knew this was
not his fight, but he had started fighting
on the night of the fire and he would
not stop now. Sometimes running when
he should have been chasing, hiding
when he should have been seeking his
adversary, Mr. Polly nevertheless bested
the scoundrel in two encounters. Then
Uncle Jim disappeared again, taking Mr.
Polly's clothing and leaving in his place
an uneasy peace.
Uncle Jim did not appear again. After
five years at the inn Mr. Polly began to
think of Miriam and her sadness at
losing her husband. Conscience-stricken, he
returned to the village and there found
that Miriam and her sisters had opened
a tearoom, untidy but successful enough
to provide their living. They thought him
dead, a body wearing his clothing having
been fished out of the river. Miriam,
recognizing him in terror, began at once
to fret about having to pay back his
insurance money. She could have spared
herself the worry, however; Mr. Polly
had no desire to reappear. He told her to
keep her mouth shut and no one would
be the wiser.
Mr. Polly made his way back to the inn
and the plump woman. With Uncle Jim
gone for good, he knew at last a mellow,
wonderful peace.
1577

A HISTORY OF NEW YORK, BY DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER
Type of work: Humorous pseudo-history
Author: Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Time: 56 B.C. to 1664
Locale: New Amsterdam (New York)
First published: 1809
Principal personages:
Hendrick Hudson, the Dutch explorer
Wouter Van Twtller, the first governor of New Amsterdam
Wilhelmus Kieft, the second governor
Peter Stuyvesant, the last governor
General Von Poffenburgh, Commander of Fort Casimir
Jan Risingh, Governor of the Province of New Sweden
The fun of reading a parody is
heightened by acquaintance with the material
burlesqued. Although Washington Irving
confessed, in the "Author's Apology"
added to the edition of 1848, that his
idea had been to parody Samuel L.
Mitchell's A Picture of New York
(1807), a knowledge of Mitchell's book
is not necessary to the enjoyment of the
Irving volume. The parody is only part
of the humor of A History of New York,
by Diedrich Knickerbocker, originally
begun as a collaboration of Washington
and his older brother Peter, and
concluded by Washington alone. The
original title was A History of New York
from the Beginning of the World to the
End of the Dutch Dynasty.
The book shows the interest of its
twenty-five-year-old author in history,
customs, and etymology, and the
burlesquing of several literary styles reveals
Irving as a literary critic. His notebook
supplies the names of some of the authors
parodied, names now largelv forgotten.
While Irving was in the course of
completing the book, his fiancee, Matilda
Hoffman, died suddenly, and at first he
was too stunned to continue his work.
Later he returned to the manuscript as an
anodyne for his grief, finished it quickly,
and delivered it to his publisher. About
the same time he conceived the idea of
ascribing the authorship of his book to an
imaginary and eccentric Dutchman. The
hoax was elaborately contrived. First
printed in the public press was a story
about the disappearance of a man named
Diedrich Knickerbocker. A short time
later an advertisement appeared,
supposedly signed by the owner of the boarding
house where Knickerbocker had lived,
offering for sale "a very curious kind of
written book," printed to reimburse the
landlord for the old gentleman's unpaid
rent.
On December 6, 1809, A History of
New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,
in seven parts and 130,000 words, was
first offered for sale. Legends about its
reception spread rapidly. A Dutch woman
in Albany threatened to horsewhip the
author for his slanderous account of an
ancestor. A number of famous New York
families were reported ready to sue the
publisher. On the other hand, Walter
Scott was reported with sore ribs from
laughing at it.
The style wanders from playful to
erudite. Evidence of Washington Irving's
wide reading appears on almost every
page, and voluminous footnotes clothe it
with pseudo-scholarship. At first readers
thought that these references were part of
the humor; later scholars began tracing
them to actual, though minor, Roman
and Greek writers.
The author's pleasantries are apparent
from the beginning. Book I, according to
him, was "learned, sagacious, and nothing
at all to the purpose/' and he suggested
that the idle reader skip it. More
precisely, as Irving embarked on a study of
cosmogony or creation of the world, he
1578

advised the reader to "take fast hold of
his skirt or take a short cut and wait for
him at the beginning of some smoother
chapter."
The first books contain more chatter
than matter. It is waggish humor. Noah
is mentioned in connection with travel
by sea, in order to get the reader to
America. In one place the author defends the
killing of the Indians because, as the
original inhabitants of America, they did not
know European procedure to improve
ground; therefore they did not use the
talents that Providence had bestowed
upon them; therefore they had proved
careless stewards; therefore they had no
right to the soil; and therefore there was
Biblical authority for their extermination.
In Book II the author proceeds to the
settlement of the Province of Nieuw
Nederlandts. He confessed that his was
the procedure of Hans von Dunderbot-
tom, who took a running start of three
miles to jump over a hill, and arrived at
it out of breath. So he "sat down to blow
and then walked over it at his leisure."
One source of humor lies in the
derivation of names. The four explorers who
passed through Hell Gate and reached
the Island of Manna-hata ("The Island
of Manna") were named Van Kortlandt
(Lack-land), Van Zandt (Earth-born),
Harden Broeck (Tough Breeches), and
Ten Broeck (Ten Breeches or Thin
Breeches). Irving usually refers to the
governors by his translation of their
names. Wouter Van Twiller becomes
"Walter the Doubter," living up to his
name by smoking his pipe and
maintaining silence in every crisis. According to
Irving, this man of wisdom, five feet six
inches in height and six feet five inches
in circumference, settled a suit between
debtor and creditor by weighing the
papers containing their claims, finding them
equally weighty, and decreeing that the
accounts were balanced. After he made
the constable pay the fees, he had no
further law trials.
His successor, Wilhelmus Kieft or
"William the Testy," defied the Yanokies
("Silent Men") from Mais-Tchusaeg and
Connecticut by bombarding them with
proclamations and by building a fortress,
garrisoned by a lusty bugler, a flag pole,
Quaker guns, and a windmill, to resist
them. One of the amusing scenes in the
book is the description of the Yankees
marching to war at Oyster Bay, where
they were defeated by the doughty
burghers, who thereupon celebrated on
oysters and wine. Later this governor
disappeared; either he was lost in the smoke
of his pipe or carried away like King
Arthur. Peter Stuyvesant, "the Headstrong,"
then became the governor.
Stuyvesant is the favorite of Diedrich
Knickerbocker; three volumes are
devoted to him. It was he who built the
Battery to hold off the Yankee invasion,
though actually their own witch hunting
diverted them from their proposed
expedition. Then he declared war on
Governor Risingh of the Colony of New
Sweden, across the Delaware. By
treachery Governor Risingh had captured Fort
Casimir. (The earlier writer who
supplied Irving's model for his flowery
description of that campaign is unknown.)
The Dutch fighters paused at noon to
eat, and the author advised his readers to
do the same. Then the battle was
resumed, the only casualty being a flock of
geese killed by a wild Swedish volley.
Stuyvesant had other troubles, first
the Yankees from Connecticut and later
the "roaring boys of Merryland"—King
Charles II of England who gave New
World territory to his brother, the Duke
of York, and lent him a fleet to conquer
it. Against the arrival of the British ships
the Dutch "fortified themselves—with
resolution" and burned everything in the
colony of British origin. But their defense
was futile. Melancholically the white-
haired Knickerbocker narrates the end of
his "beloved Island of Manna-hata" on
August 27, 1664.
In the 1812 edition of his history
Irving presents an additional account of his
imaginary author and tells of his return
1579

to New York, now a British colony, and
his death. He was buried, "say the old
records/' in St. Mark's Cemetery beside
his hero, Peter Stuyvesant.
In the revised 1848 edition Irving
added an "apology" and an explanation.
In setting down the amusing legends of
New York, he declared, he had not
intended ofFense to living descendants of
any of the old families. His purpose had
been to present the history of that remote
and almost forgotten age in the spirit
of imaginative fancy and legend. This
happy blending is his true contribution
in his history, accepted by those who
have never seen the book or heard of
the original Harmen Knickerbocker, who
came from Holland about 1674 and
settled in Albany, as well as by those who
have read with smiles and chuckles this
playful but surprisingly accurate history
of the Dutch in New Amsterdam.
1580

HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO
Type of work: History
Author: William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859)
Time: 1519-1525
Locale: Mexico
First published: 1843
Principal personages:
Don Diego Velasquez, Governor of Cuba
Hernando Cortes, conqueror of Mexico
Pedro de Alvarado, one of Cortes' lieutenants
Marina, Cortes' Indian mistress
Montezuma, Emperor of the Aztecs
Guatemozin, Montezuma's nephew and successor
Cacama, nephew of the emperor
j PAnfilo de Narvaez, Veldsquez* lieutenant
Prescott's observations on Spanish
efforts to convert the Aztecs betray his
rather marked suspicion of the Catholic
Church. His personal biases are less
pronounced in other matters. Because
Prescott deals with his narrative in dramatic
terms and with an abundance of
background material, particularly on the Aztec
civilization, his History of the Conquest
of Mexico has remained the classic
account of the death of a civilization which
in many ways rivaled ancient Egypt's.
The success of the Spanish conquest
was aided by the Aztec legend of Quet-
zalcoatl, a benevolent god who, once
having lived on earth and departed, was
expected to return: tall, white-skinned,
dark-bearded. When the first Spanish
expeditionary party, led by Juan de
Grijalva, made a preliminary exploration of
the mainland, it encountered an
unfriendly reception on landing. When the
Aztecs happened to associate the
Spaniards with the legend of Quetzalcoatl,
however, they sent Grijalva away with
rich gifts. As a result, Velisquez,
Governor of Cuba, immediately organized a
second expedition, to be led by Hernando
Cortes.
Cortes' armada left Cuba on February
10, 1519, and landed on the island of
Cozumel. At that time he acquired two
valuable aides: a Spanish soldier named
Aguilar, who had been taken captive
by the natives of Cozumel during the
Grijalva expedition, to serve as an
interpreter, and Marina, a girl from the
mainland whose mother had sold her on
Cozumel. Marina became not only an
interpreter but Cortes' mistress.
When the Spaniards moved on to the
mainland, landing on Good Friday at
what is now Vera Cruz, they stepped
ashore in a Mexico significantly
disunited. Montezuma, Emperor of the
Aztecs, was a good warrior and a just ruler,
but he was also superstitious and a lover
of pleasure, with numerous enemies.
There was in addition to this political
unrest a vague feeling among the people
that the return of Quetzalcoatl was
imminent: since the days of Columbus,
there had been rumors of the Spaniards,
and these rumors had somehow fused
with the ancient legend. Dissension
among the lesser kingdoms and tribes of
Montezuma's empire and the revival of
the Quetzalcoatl myth were of great
value to the Spaniards in their invasion
of Mexico.
Because he sensed mounting resistance
to his leadership, Cortes established Vera
Cruz as a civil colony rather than a
military base; in this way he made the
expedition responsible only to the crown, not
to the governor of Cuba. Later, when
Juan Diaz conspired to turn the
expedition back to Cuba, Cortes ordered the
destruction of his fleet. With only one
small ship left, the men had little to think
1581

about but the march forward.
Leaving some men behind to protect
the coastal settlement, Cortes began his
march toward the capital, Tenochtitlan,
now Mexico City. While one of the
original purposes of the expedition was the
conversion of the Indians to Catholicism,
the expedition, once under way, did not
delay for missionary activities. Indeed,
Father Olmedo, the expedition's priest,
persuaded Cortes not to try to convert all
of the heathen along the route.
The first pronounced resistance to the
Spaniards took place among the Tlasca-
lans, an agricultural people, but a nation
of warriors as well. Two earlier battles
with the Tlascalans were indecisive, but
a third, fought on September 5, 1519,
was in effect a victory for the Spaniards.
The Tlascalan leader, Xicotencatl,
continued, however, to threaten and to harass
the invaders. Cortes forged ahead, his
forces plundering as they went, and
finally, with Xicotencatl reconciled to
submission, the Spaniards arrived at
Tlascala itself. In the meantime
Montezuma continued in his policy of sending
gifts but barring the Spaniards from
Tenochtitlan.
At Cholula, Cortes learned through
Marina that the natives were planning
a conspiracy with Montezuma's help.
Profiting from former enmity between the
Cholulans and the Tlascalans, Cortes
stationed Tlascalans around the city and
proceeded to massacre the treacherous
Cholulans.
Suspecting still further hostility,
Cortes and his men moved on, passing
between the mountains named Iztaccihuatl
and Popocatepetl. No further resistance
was forthcoming, and the expedition was
shortly at a point where the fertile
Valley of Mexico lay before them.
Confounded by their advance and awed by
their power, Montezuma at last sent his
nephew Cacama with a message of
welcome for the conquistadors. On
November 8, 1519, Cortes and his men entered
Tenochtitlan, a city built in the middle
of a great lake, and Montezuma greeted
them with pomp and dignity. Although
the Aztecs remained outwardly friendly,
Cortes continued to be suspicious of his
host because he had received reports from
Vera Cruz of troubles instigated by the
emperor. Quauhpopoca, governor of the
coastal province, was burned for his part
in the disturbances, and Montezuma,
taken by surprise, was seized and removed
to the fortified quarters occupied by the
Spaniards. Although a hostage,
Montezuma conducted the business of the
country as usual.
In 1520, Montezuma formally
announced his subservience to Spain; the
nobles concurred, and the legend of Quet-
zalcoatl was revived among the people.
Though conditions appeared to be stable,
Cortis ordered the rebuilding of his fleet.
CorteV relations with Velasquez had
now deteriorated to such an extent that
the governor outfitted a rival expedition
under the leadership of Pdnfilo de Nar-
vdez. Gonzalo de Sandoval, the governor
appointed by Cortes at Villa Rica,
maintained a close watch over Narv&ez'
attempts to establish a settlement, but
Cortes felt compelled to deal with Narv&ez
personally. Leaving the capital in the
care of an aide, Pedro de Alvarado, he
marched to the coast with a detachment
of troops and Indian allies.
With his band of only 226 men and
five horses, Cortes surprised Narvdez and
took him prisoner. In CorteV absence,
revolt broke out in Tenochtitlan. Alvarado,
plagued by constant fears of conspiracy,
had slaughtered several hundred Aztec
nobles during the festival of Huitzilo-
potchli, the Aztec god of war. Earlier,
Cortes had allowed Montezuma's brother,
Cuitlahua, to act as the imperial
representative during Montezuma's captivity.
Bitterly vengeful after the massacre,
Cuitlahua led the Aztecs in a retaliatory
uprising against the Spaniards.
With his own band reinforced by two
thousand Tlascalans, Cortes returned
hurriedly to the capital. During the first
stages of hostilities following the return
of Cortes, Montezuma attempted to in-
1582

tercede and pacify the embattled Aztecs,
but his people turned on him and he was
fatally wounded. Broken and in despair,
Montezuma died on June 30, 1520.
During the uprising the Aztecs had
destroyed all bridges on causeways
leading to the mainland, and the Spanish
retreat from the city became chaotic, with
heavy losses. On the plains of Otumba,
however, the Spaniards and their Tlasca-
lan allies managed to put the Aztecs to
flight. The Spaniards retreated into Tlas-
calan territory, where they could feel
safe once more. But the troops were
restless after their harrowing retreat, and for
a time there seemed to be some chance
that the Tlascalans might join the Aztecs
in common cause against the invaders.
Fortunately, the Tlascalans remained
friendly; in fact, their chief, before he
died of smallpox, became a Christian—the
first successfully converted heathen.
Guatemozin, Montezuma's nephew and
successor, had sworn to drive the
Spaniards from his country. As Cortes marched
back toward the capital, however, he
gathered from friendly tribes more Indian
auxiliaries to lead against the Aztecs.
Welcomed in Tezcuco by the new prince,
Ixtlilxochitl, an enemy of Montezuma,
Cortes' forces advanced for the final
subjugation of the Aztec civilization.
More cohesive than Prescott's
companion study on the conquest of Peru,
History of the Conquest of Mexico is
the author's most brilliant work. Though
the book may lack profound
philosophical insight, it is a vivid portrayal of a
fascinating historical fact: the
subjugation of a whole people by a mere handful
of alien adventurers—cruel, daring
intriguers who played upon the religious
superstitions of their victims.
1583

THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Type of work: History
Author: Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Time: 180-1461
Locale: Italy, Persia, Germany, Constantinople, Greece, Africa, Arabia, Turkey
First published: 1776-1788
Gibbon's The History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire is the
definitive history of the Roman empire
from the end of its golden age to its
final political and physical disintegration.
The massive character of the work,
testifying to the years devoted to its
composition by its scholar-author, is the first,
but most superficial sign, of its greatness.
The style—urbane, dramatic, polished—
assures its eminent place in literature.
Finally, as history, the work stands or
falls on the accuracy and depth of its
report of events covering more than
twelve centuries; and in this respect
The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire continues to prevail as the most
authoritative study on this theme ever
written. Later scholars have challenged
minor points or added to the material of
the history, but Gibbon's work stands
as the source of all that is most relevant
in the story of Rome's declining years.
The account begins with a critical
description of the age of the Antonines.
Gibbon concentrates on the period from
96 to 180, a time which he describes as
"a happy period," during the reigns of
Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two
Antonines. The first three chapters are
prefatory to the body of the work; they
establish the claim that Rome was then
at the height of its glory as an Empire-
it was strong, prosperous, active, with
world-wide influence. After the death of
Marcus Aurelius, and with the ascent of
Commodus (180-192), the Empire began
its long and gradual decline. The body
of Gibbon's work is devoted to a careful
recital of the events that followed.
Gibbon was more interested in
recounting the principal events of the Empire's
history than he was in analyzing events
in an effort to account for the downfall
of Rome. But he did not entirely ignore
the question of causes. At the close of his
monumental history he reports four
principal causes of Rome's decline and fall:
"I. The injuries of time and nature. II.
The hostile attacks of the barbarians and
Christians. III. The use and abuse of the
materials. And, IV. The domestic
quarrels of the Romans."
It is customary for commentators on
Gibbon to emphasize the reference to the
opposing influences of Christianity and
barbarism; and, in particular, some critics
have been inclined to charge Gibbon with
a lack of sympathetic understanding of
the early Christian church. It is clear
from Gibbon's narrative and summary
statement, however, that the Christian
contribution to the eventual downfall of
Rome was only part of a complex of
causes, and it seems unlikely that the
Christian effort would have succeeded
if the Roman Empire had not already
been in decline.
In any case, it is not so much what
Gibbon says as his way of saying it that
has proved irritating. In the first place,
Gibbon writes as if he were located in
Rome; his view of events is from the
Roman perspective, although it does not
always exhibit a Roman bias. Secondly,
his objectivity, when it is achieved, has
been offensive to some who so cherish
the Christian church that they cannot
tolerate any discussion of its faults; it is
as if such critics were demanding that
Gibbon maintain historical impartiality
about the Romans but not about the
Christians.
When the Decline and Fall first
appeared, the chapters on Christianity-
Chapters XV and XVI—immediately
became the objects of critical attack.
Gibbon seems to have anticipated this
1584

response, for he wrote, "The great law
of impartiality too often obliges us to
reveal the imperfections of the
uninspired teachers and believers of the
Gospel; and, to a careless observer, their
faults may seem to cast a shade on the
faith which they professed." Perhaps this
word of caution would have pacified
the critics had not Gibbon immediately
brought into play his urbane sarcasm,
so distasteful to the insistently pious:
"The theologian may indulge the
pleasing task of describing Religion as she
descended from Heaven, arrayed in her
native purity. A more melancholy duty
is imposed on the historian. He must
discover the inevitable mixture of error and
corruption which she contracted in a long
residence upon earth, among a weak and
degenerate race of beings."
Obviously, there is no truly impartial
judge. Gibbon's tone is acceptable, even
proper, to those who share his skepticism;
but to others more emotionally involved
in the Christian faith Gibbon seems
cynical to the point of gross distortion.
Gibbon asks how the Christian faith
came to achieve its victory over Rome
and the other religions of the world. He
rejects as unsatisfactory an answer which
attributes Christianity's force to the truth
of its doctrine and the providence of God.
Five causes of the rapid growth of the
Christian church are tnen advanced: "I.
The inflexible, and, if we may use the
expression, the intolerant zeal of the
Christians. ... II. The doctrine of a
future life. . . . III. The miraculous
powers ascribed to the primitive church.
IV. The pure and austere morals of the
Christians. V. The union and discipline
of the Christian republic, which
gradually formed an independent and
increasing state in the heart of the Roman
empire."
In his comments on these five causes
Gibbon discusses Jewish influences on
the Christian faith and explains how the
Roman religion had failed to be
convincing in its mythology and doctrine of
a future life; but although he admits the
persuasive power of the Christian use of
the claim of immortality, he speaks with
skeptical condescension of the efforts of
philosophers to support the doctrine of
a future life, and he is sarcastic when
he mentions "the mysterious
dispensations of Providence" which withheld the
doctrine from the Jews only to give it to
the Christians. When he speaks of the
miracles, Gibbon leaves the impression
that the pagans failed to be convinced
because no such events actually took
place. "The lame walked, the blind saw,
the sick were healed, the dead were
raised," he writes; but he adds that "the
laws of Nature were frequently
suspended for the benefit of the church."
Gibbon argues that the emperors were
not as criminal in their treatments of the
Christians as some Christian apologists
have argued. He maintains that the
Romans acted only with caution and
reluctance after a considerable amount of
time and provocation, and that they were
moderate in their use of punishments.
He offers evidence in support of his claim
that the stories of martyrdom were often
exaggerated or wholly false, and that in
many cases the Christians sought
martyrdom by provoking the Romans to
violence. Gibbon concludes by casting doubt
on the numbers of those punished by
death, and he insists that the Christians
have inflicted more punishments on one
another than they received from the
Romans.
Discussion of Gibbon's chapters on
Christianity sometimes tends to turn
attention away from the historian's
virtues: the inclusiveness of his survey, the
liveliness of his account, and his careful
documentation of historical claims.
Gibbon did not pretend that he was without
moral bias, but his judgments of the
tyrannical emperors are defended by
references to their acts. It was not enough
for Gibbon to discover, for example, that
Septimus Severus was false and insincere,
particularly in the making of treaties; the
1585

question was whether Severus was forced,
by the imperious demands of politics, to
be deceitful. Gibbon's conclusion was
that there was no need for Severus to be
as false in his promises as he was;
consequently, he condemns him for his acts.
In similar fashion he reviews the
tyrannical behavior of Caracalla, Maximin,
and other emperors before the barbarian
invasion of the Germans.
Gibbon names the Franks, the Ale-
manni, the Goths, and the Persians as the
enemies of the Romans during the reigns
of Valerian and Gallienus, when a
weakened Empire was vulnerable to attack
both from within and without. Perhaps
the Empire would have wholly
disintegrated at that time had not Valerian and
Gallienus been succeeded by Claudius,
Aurelian, Probus, and Diocletian,
described as "great princes" by Gibbon and
as "Restorers of the Roman world."
Several chapters of this massive work
are devoted to a recital and discussion of
the acts and influence of Constantine I,
who reunited the Empire which had
been divided under Diocletian and, as a
consequence of his conversion to the
Christian faith, granted tolerance to the
Christians by the Edict of Milan. One
result of the consequent growth of
Christianity was a growing emphasis upon the
distinction between temporal and spiritual
powers; the result was not that Church
and state remained apart from each other,
but that the bishops of the Church came
to have more and more influence on
matters of state. The date 476 is significant
as marking the end of the West Roman
Empire with the ascent to power of Odo-
acer, the barbarian chieftain.
The remainder of Gibbon's classic story
of Rome's decline is the story of the
increase of papal influence, the
commencement of Byzantine rule, the reign of
Charlemagne as emperor of the West, the
sacking of Rome by the Arabs, the
retirement of the popes to Avignon, the
abortive efforts of Rienzi to restore the
government of Rome, the return of the popes
and the great schism, and the final
settlement of the ecclesiastical state.
1586

HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
Type of work: History
Author: Thucydides (455?-c. 400 B.C.)
Time: 431-411 B.C.
Locale: Greece and the Mediterranean
First transcribed: c. 431-400 B.C.
Principal personages:
Pericles, founder of Athenian democracy
Thucydides, an Athenian general and historian
Demosthenes, the famous orator
Alcibiades, an Athenian general and turncoat
Nicias, an Athenian general
Archidamus, King of Sparta
Brasidas, a Spartan general
In writing his History of the Pelopon-
nesian War, Thucydides, content to look
for human causes behind results, refused
to credit the gods with responsibility for
the acts of man. Impartially he
chronicled the clash of a military and a
commercial imperialism: the land empire of
the Spartans confronting the Athenian
maritime league. Some have attributed to
him an attitude of moral indifference,
such as is revealed in his report of the
debate between Athenian and Melian
ambassadors, but he wrote with no intention
of either moralizing or producing a
cultural history. He was a military man
interested in the vastly different political
and economic patterns of Athens and
Sparta. Seeing in the modes and ideals of
their cultures an explanation of their
ways of warfare, he wrote for intelligent
readers rather than the ignorant masses.
The eight books of Thucydides'
history, divided into short
paragraph-chapters, provide a few facts about their
author. For instance, in Book IV, he
refers to himself as "Thucydides, son of
Olorus, who wrote this history." He must
have been wealthy, for, discussing
Brasidas* attack on Amphipolis, he states that
the Spartan "heard that Thucydides had
the right of working goldmines in the
neighboring district of Thrace and was
consequently one of the leading men of
the city/' He also tells frankly of his
failure as the commander of a relief
expedition to that city and of his twenty years'
exile from Athens as punishment.
Apparently he spent the years of his exile in
travel among the sites of the battles he
describes, thereby increasing the accuracy
of his details. Students of warfare find
that he gives descriptions of the tricks
and stratagems of both siege and defense.
Not until 404, after the war had ended,
did he return to Athens. By tradition he
was killed about 400 B.C., either in
Thrace for the gold he carried, or in
Athens for publicly writing his opinions.
"Thucydides the Athenian wrote the
history of the war in which the Pelopon-
nesians and the Athenians fought against
one another" are the opening words of
this masterpiece of Greek history. "He
began to write when they first took up
arms, believing it would be great and
memorable above all previous wars." After
this beginning Thucydides drops into the
first person to explain the rivalry of
Athens and Sparta, the two great states of
Hellas then at the height of their power.
He was proud of the advances made by
his native Athens over the ways of the
barbarians. "In ancient times the
Hellenes carried weapons because their homes
were undefended and intercourse
unsafe." But swords, like the old-fashioned
linen undergarments and the custom of
binding the hair in knots, had gone out
of style by his time.
Rivalry between the two cities was an
old story; it had kept Spartans from
fighting beside Athenians at Marathon. It took
1587

a commercial form, however, when the
Lacedaemonians demanded that their
allies, the Megarians, be allowed to
market their products in Athens. Pericles,
orator, statesman, and patron of the arts,
took the first step toward breaking his own
Thirty Years' Truce, agreed upon in 445
B.C. In a fiery oration he declared that
to yield to the Spartans would reduce the
Athenians to vassals.
The final break, according to Thucyd-
ides, came later. He dates the year (431)
according to the calendars of the three
leading states: Chrysis had been high
priestess of Argos for forty-eight years;
Aenesias was ephor of Sparta; and Pytho-
dorus was concluding his archonship in
Athens. In that year Thebes, at the
invitation of disgruntled Plataean citizens,
made a surprise attack on Plataea, a
Boeotian ally of Athens.
To understand the situation fully, it
is necessary to keep in mind a clash of
political concepts that the historian does
not mention. In 445 B.C., under
Pericles, Athens had become a radical
democracy whose policy was to send help to
any democratically-inclined community.
Sparta and its allies were just as eager
to promote their conservative oligarchy.
To both, self-interest was paramount.
Violation of the truce by Thebes, says
Thucydides, gave Athens an excuse to
prepare for war. Its walled city could be
defeated only by a fleet and Sparta had
no fleet. On the other hand, landlocked
Sparta could withstand anything except
a full-scale land invasion, and Athens had
no army. The Lacedaemonians begged
their friends in Italy and Sicily to collect
and build ships, and Athens sent
ambassadors to raise armies and completely
surround Sparta. Thucydides was honest
enough to admit that public opinion
largely favored the Spartans, who posed
as the liberators of Hellas.
Sparta moved first by invading the
Isthmus of Corinth in 431 B.C. Strife
during the winter and summer of the
first year (as the historian divided his
time) consisted largely of laying waste
the fields around the fortified cities.
Like many primitive peoples, the Greeks
stopped fighting during planting and
harvesting. (The entries frequently begin
with: "The following summer, when the
corn was coming into ear.") The war was
also halted for their games, not only the
Olympic games of 428, but the Delian,
Pythian, and Isthmian games as well.
In the summer of the next year a
plague broke out in Athens and raged
intermittently for three years. Seven
chapters of Book II provide a vivid
description, "for I myself was attacked and
witnessed the suffering of others." The
seriousness of the plague protected Athens
because enemy troops were afraid to
approach its walls.
The most vivid part of Thucydides*
history deals with the Syracuse
campaign of 416. An embassy from Egesta,
Sicily, sought Athenian help against its
rival city of Selinus. The ambitious Alci-
biades thought this would be a good
excuse for Athens to annex Syracuse. With
Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus
sharing the command, the best-equipped
expeditionary force ever sent from a Greek
city sailed for Sicily with 134 triremes,
5,100 hoplites or heavy-armed infantry,
480 archers, and 820 slingers.
Alcibiades had left behind bitter
enemies who accused him of defacing sacred
statues on the day the fleet sailed. Though
there was no evidence against him, he
was ordered home to defend himself.
Fearing treachery, he fled to Sparta,
where he was warmly welcomed.
Informed of the Athenian expedition, the
Lacedaemonians sent a military adviser
to Syracuse. The Persians offered to
outfit a fleet for Alcibiades to lead against
Athens. His patriotism outweighed his
injured pride, however, and eventually
he returned to Athens and won several
victories for the city before another
defeat sent him again into exile. This
occurred, however, after the period covered
by Thucydides' history.
Meanwhile, in the campaign before
Syracuse, Nicias disregarded the advice
1588

of Demosthenes and was defeated on both
land and sea. "Of all the Hellenic actions
on record/' writes Thucydides, "this was
the greatest, the most glorious to the
victor, and the most ruinous to the
vanquished. Fleet and army vanished from
the face of the earth; nothing was saved,
and out of the many who went forth,
few returned home. This ended the
Sicilian expedition."
The account of the expedition
practically ends Thucydides' history. There is
another book, but it does not rise to the
dramatic pitch of Book VII. Though he
lived eleven years after these events and
four years after the end of the war,
Thucydides did not chronicle its last
stages, perhaps because they were too
painful. After Alcibiades had been exiled
a second time, Sparta starved the
Athenians into surrender, and with this defeat
their glory faded. For the next thirty years
Sparta was the supreme power in Hellas.
As Macaulay wrote, Thucydides
surpassed all his rivals as the historian of the
ancient world. Perhaps not as colorful as
Herodotus, "the Father of History," he
was certainly more accurate; and while
the annals of Tacitus contain excellent
character delineation, the Roman's pages
are "cold and poor." Thucydides may be
superficial in his observations and shallow
in his interpretation of events, but he
did accumulate facts and dates and he
presented them in a three-dimensional
picture of people and places. For this
reason his work has survived for more
than twenty-three hundred years.
1589

THE HISTORY OF THE PERSIAN WARS
Type of work: History
Author: Herodotus (484-c. 425 B.C.)
Time: 500-479 B.C.
Locale: Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor
First transcribed: c. 430 B.C.
Principal personages:
Croesus, King of Lydia
Solon, an Athenian statesman
Cyrus the Great, King of Persia
Darius, Cyrus' cousin
Xerxes, Darius' son and successor
Leonidas, King of Sparta
"Herodotus, beyng of the citve of Hal-
icarnassus in Greece, wrote and compiled
an History to the end that nether tract
of time might overwhelme and bury in
silence the actes of humayne kind; nor
the worthye and renowned adventures of
the Grecians and Barbarians (as well
others as chiefly those that were done in
warre) might want the due reward of
immo-tale fame." So did the unknown
"B.R." begin his translation of two of the
nine books of Herodotus, "entitled with
the names of the nine Muses/' in 1584.
As the first to use the word "history,"
Herodotus deserves Cicero's title, "Father
of History." To be sure, this son of
wealthy upper-class parents did not have
the historian's critical attitude toward his
sources. Interesting anecdotes of the wars
between the Greeks and the Persians of
the fifth century B.C. found their way
into his pages whether he could verify
them or not, but he does sometimes hedge
and tag certain items as hearsay. From
his quotations, he must have read widely.
From the details in his descriptions and
the comments like "this I saw," he must
have visited most of the places he
mentions. The true greatness of Herodotus
lies in the fact that he was the first
important writer to depart from the verse
of Homer and others, to produce Europe's
first prose literature. Some predecessors
had chronicled the beginnings of their
small communities or states, but the
writings of Herodotus embrace a vaster
panorama, not only Greece, but Egypt,
Sardis, and Babylon as well. And he
looked for the reasons back of the events.
His aim was to trace the early rivalries
between Greek and barbarian; in the
process he recounted the story of many
tribes, described the lands they inhabited,
and reported many of their interesting
customs. Those who want greater
accuracy can consult Thucydides (c.455-400
B.C.), who wrote a naif-century later.
His work is more objective, but it lacks
the color of Herodotus' account.
The Persians maintained that the
Phoenicians originally started the quarrel
by kidnapping women from Argos. Later
the Hellenes raided the port of Tyre
and abducted Europa, the king's
daughter. The wars actually started, however,
when Croesus, whose magnificent court
was visited by Solon, desired to enlarge
his empire by conquering some of the
Ionian cities of Asia Minor. When he
consulted the oracles, he was persuaded
at Delphi to gather his allies for an
attack on the mainland. The invasion
resulted in a stalemate, however, and
Croesus returned to Lydia, where his
capital, Sardis, was surprised and
captured by the Persians. Only a rainstorm,
sent by the gods, saved him as he was
being burned to death. The same miracle
persuaded Cyrus to free his captive after
taking possession of some of his vassal
states. With them, Cyrus went on to
capture Babylon. However the Massagetae,
under Queen Tomyris, were too strong
in their resistance and strategy. Book I,
1590

titled Clio, ends with the death of Cyrus.
Book II, called Euterpe, tells how
Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, became king
and planned to march against Egypt. The
rest of the book is a tourist's guide and
history of Egypt from its beginnings to
the coronation of Amasis.
Book III, called Thalia, tells how
Cambyses marched against Amasis. The
Egyptian king having died in the meantime,
the mercenary army of his son was no
match for the Persian, who then betrayed
his incipient insanity by dishonoring his
slain enemies.
Book IV, called Melpomene,
introduces Darius, cousin of and successor to
Cambyses, who let the barbarous
Scythians outwit him into making peace with
them.
The next volume, whose Muse is
Terpsichore, begins with a plan that
failed. Two Paeonian nobles, wishing to
be named rulers over their people,
brought their beautiful sister to Sardis,
where Darius saw her, carrying water on
her head, leading a horse, and spinning.
Anxious to spread such industry
throughout his empire, he had the Paeonians sent
throughout Asia Minor. But the book
deals largely with the revolt in Ionia, the
growth of Athens, and its expedition,
encouraged by Aristagoras, against Sardis.
Although the capital was captured and
burned, Darius rallied and defeated the
invaders at Salamis, in Cyprus.
Erato is the Muse of Book VI, which
tells of a battle fought between 353
Ionian triremes and six hundred
Babylonian ships. By dissension among the
enemy rather than by his strength Darius
defeated them and went on to besiege
and conquer Miletus. Again Greek
bickering helped him during his march to
Athens, but the Athenians, rallying and
with a few Plataeans, success] fully
engaged the forces of Darius at Marathon,
on September 14, 450 B.C. The Persians
were driven back with a loss of 6,400
dead. The Athenians lost only 192 in
the battle.
Book VII, named after Polymnia, Muse
of the Sublime Hymn, tells in
considerable detail how Darius prepared to
revenge his defeat. Fate delayed him;
rebellious Egypt sidetracked him, and death
ended all his plans. The uncertain Xerxes,
succeeding his father to the throne,
undertook the Egyptian campaign. After
a quick victory, at the head of twenty
thousand soldiers he marched on Athens.
It took seven days for his army to cross
the Hellespont bridge, erected by his
engineers, and he, reviewing them, lamented
that none would be alive a hundred years
hence.
Many Greek cities were quick to
surrender. Only Athens, as Herodotus boasts,
dared confront the host of Xerxes. The-
mistocles interpreted the oracle's counsel
to defend the city with "wooden walls"
as advice to use the two hundred
warships originally built for an attack on
Egypt. Nature, however, provided a
better defense in an east wind that wrecked
four hundred Persian galleys along with
uncounted transports and provision
carriers. However, neither armed forces nor
natural obstacles halted Xerxes' army
until it reached the Pass of Thermopylae.
There, for a day, the Athenians and
Spartans checked the Persian host until a
traitor revealed another path to the
invader. The next day the Persians were
again on the march, leaving all the
defenders and twenty thousand of their own
troops dead behind them.
In Book VIII, titled Urania, there is
an account of Xerxes' march into Athens
and the firing of the Acropolis. But the
"wooden walls" of the Athenian fleet
were victorious at Salamis on September
20, 480 B.C. Winner of the greatest
glory was the Persian queen Artemis, who
used the confusion of battle to get
revenge on another Persian by ramming
and sinking his ship. Because Xerxes
thought she was attacking an enemy and
the Athenians believed she had changed
loyalties, everybody lauded her.
Fearing that the Greeks might sail on
1591

to destroy his bridge, Xerxes ordered a
retreat. From the Asian mainland he sent
demands for a peace treaty, promptly
refused by both Athens and Sparta.
Calliope is the Muse presiding over
Book IX. Here the account tells how
Mardonios renewed the attack against the
Greeks in the hope of sending word of
victory back to Xerxes in Sardis. Though
temporarily checked by the Thebans, he
again entered Athens, whose citizens had
fled to Salamis to assemble their allies.
When they marched back, Mardonios
burned what was left of Athens and
retreated.
Except for cavalry skirmishes, neither
side wanted to engage in battle until the
sacrifices were propitious, but Mardonios*
patience broke first, and he fell into a trap
at Plataea, where he was killed and his
army routed; there were twenty thousand
Persian and Boeotian casualties against
ninety-one Spartans and fifty-two
Athenians killed.
At Thermopylae, Leonidas, the
Spartan king, had been crucified and
beheaded by the Persians. Certain Greeks
wanted to dishonor Mardonios in the
same way, but they were told that
dishonoring a dead enemy was worthy only
of barbarians. Some of the fleeing
Persians were pursued and killed at Mycale.
Their defeat ended Xerxes' ambitious
plan to crush the Hellenes.
Modern historians have honored
Herodotus by translating his history into
English. Littlebury's version (1709) is
outstanding in style, but reveals the
writer's imperfect knowledge of Greek.
George Rawlinson translated the work in
1858. The most satisfactory translation
is the two-volume work published by
G. C. Macaulayin 1890.
1592

HIZA-KURIGE
Type of work: Tales
Author: Jippensha Ikku (1765-1831)
Time: Late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
Locale: Japan
First published: 1802-1814
Principal characters:
Yajirobei (Yaji), a picaresque traveler
Kitahachi (Kita), his companion
The first of this series, which was
published in eight sections, was titled in
various ways, the common part being
Hiza-kurige (literally, "Knee-chestnut-
horse"), usually translated as Shank's
Mare. The publication dates of these
sections are (1) 1802; (2) 1803; (3) in
two volumes, 1803; (4) in two volumes,
1805; (5) in two volumes and a
supplement in one volume, 1806; (6) in two
volumes, 1807; (7) in two volumes,
1808; and (8) in three volumes, 1809.
The Prologue, in one volume, was
published in 1814.
This work was so popular that it is
supposed to have raised the price of paper
in the city of Edo, now Tokyo, where it
was first published. Ikku's important
contribution to Japanese literature through
this work was the creation of a fresh
type of popular literature—the comic
novel. Travel accounts had been written
ever since the tenth century, but these
early models extolled the beauties of
nature, emphasized poetry, and appealed to
readers among the educated aristocracy.
Ikku turned this form into a popular one
for the commoner.
The use of two traveling companions
was by no means a new device, but
whereas in previous works they were
merely mechanical and shadowy, Ikku's
two characters are robustly alive. They
are not even the better educated, more
refined of the commoners living and
working in the bustling streets of Edo, but
deliberately chosen stereotypes of the
lower classed Edo-ite: exuberant,
emotional, quick to anger and as quick to
forget, with little strength of character
to resist temptation, whose wit and skills
are untrained, but yet knowing and
shrewd with a shallow wisdom. By
making these two characters fall into
predicaments of their own making, Ikku created
a broad humor, often bawdy but always
good, a humor that was mirth-provoking
without the sting of satire.
The story line is extremely simple, the
treatment episodic. In downtown Edo
there lived one Yajirobei, called Yaji for
short. He had been born into a merchant
family of some means in the town of
Fuchu, in the province of Suruga (Ikku's
own birthplace), but indulgence in
worldly pleasures involving women and
wine had greatly reduced his
circumstances. Taking with him an actor named
Hana-no-suke (which in modern idiom
might be translated "Schnozzola"), later
renamed Kitahachi, or Kita for short,
whom he patronized, Yaji had come to
live in Edo. For a time he sent Kita out
in servitude, but the poverty of such
circumstances proved boring and
anyway, Kita was soon discharged. Yaji then
sold the belongings he still possessed and
with the proceeds set out with Kita on an
extended journey. The route they chose
was the Eastern Sea Circuit (T6kai-d6),
extending from Edo to Kyoto, including
a trip to Japan's holy Great Shrine of Ise,
and ending in the commercial city of
Osaka.
Ikku himself had made the same trip.
Using material from his own experience,
perhaps, he added episodes and
occurrences of which he had only heard, and
he was not above using material found
in the Kvdqen, those comic interludes
performed in programs of the N6 drama,
some almost in their entirety, others only
1593

thinly disguised. These episodes
introduce the reader to particular places of
interest along the Eastern Sea Circuit,
and each ends with a line or two of
humorous verse which greatly points up
the humor. This humor is also expressed
in play on words, puns, and the clever
use of pivotal words joining one phrase
to the next. The work has been
translated into French and into English. An
English translation by Thomas Satchell
is titled Hizakurige (Tokaido Circuit)
(Kobe, Chronicle Press, 1929). One
section of this translation is included in
Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese
Literature (New York, 1955).
The twelve parfs of the Zoku
Hizakurige (Shank's Mare, Continued) were
published under various titles, each
applicable to the part which it represented.
Only Parts 11 and 12 contain the title
Zoku Hiza-kurige. Each part is in two
volumes, with the exception of Part
12, which was published in three
volumes. The publication dates were: (1)
1810; (2) 1811; (3) 1812; (4) 1813;
(5) 1814; (6) 1815; (7) and (8) 1816;
(9) 1819; (10) 1820: (11) 1821: and
(12) 1822. This work has not yet been
translated.
In Ikku's sequel, the two companions
go to the island of Shikoku to worship
at the Kompira Shrine, back to Honshu
to visit Miyajima, then eastward over the
back way, the K:so Road, to Zenk6-ji in
Shinano Province, on to the famous
Kusi'su Hot Springs, and finally back
to Edo. The style and the format of the
continuation remain the same as in the
original series.
1594

H. M. S. PINAFORE
Type of work: Comic opera
Author: W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Latter half of the nineteenth century
Locale: Portsmouth harbor, England
First presented: 1878
Principal characters:
Josephine, the Captain's daughter
Ralph, the lowly sailor who loves Josephine
Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Josephine's suitor
The Captain, Josephine's father
Little Buttercup, who loves the Captain
Critique:
W. S. Gilbert shared the honors of this
operetta with his composer-partner, Sir
Arthur Sullivan. H. M. S. Pinafore; or,
The Lass That Loved A Sailor was
written to be sung and acted on the stage;
it was not meant to be published and read
by itself. Gilbert and Sullivan obviously
were poking fun at the extravagances of
grand opera, and at the improbable plots
in particular. The plot of Pinafore,
which effectively disregards the element
of time, is a successful vehicle of comedy
and satire. Every song, every scene is full
of mischievous and clever rhymes, adroit
and ingenious dialogue.
The Story:
Lying at anchor in Portsmouth
harbor, the Pinafore was the scene of hectic
activity, for Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B.,
First Lord of the Admiralty, had
announced his intention to visit the ship.
The sailors swabbed the decks and were
inspected by the Captain, who was as
content with them as they were with
him. One member of the crew, however,
was far from happy. Ralph, the lowly
foremast hand, was sunk in gloom and
despair. He loved Josephine, the
Captain's daughter, but because of his low
rank she repulsed his advances and
rejected his love.
Before Sir Joseph's arrival, Little
Buttercup came on board, plying her trade
as a seller of ribbons and laces, scissors
and knives, treacle and toffee. In a
conversation with the Captain she hinted
that appearances are often deceiving. The
Captain noticed that Little Buttercup had
physical charms not displeasing to him.
Sir Joseph's barge approached, and the
First Lord was soon on board,
accompanied by his sisters, his cousins, and his
aunts. After inspecting the crew, he gave
them instructions for success. His own
formula had been simple enough. He had
polished door handles, stuck close to his
desk, and never gone to sea. Sir Joseph
then proceeded to the purpose of his
visit. He had come to ask Josephine to
marry him.
Josephine had no intention of
marrying Sir Joseph, whom she disliked. Not
able to give an outright refusal, she
informed him that marriage with such a
high-ranking officer was impossible
because she was only a captain's daughter.
Sir Joseph admired her modesty, but
brushed the objection aside. Rank, he
assured her, was absolutely no barrier,
for love leveled all rank. Josephine
hastened to agree with him, and everyone
immediately assumed that a marriage
would soon take place.
Giving up all hope of winning
Josephine, Ralph put a pistol to his head
and prepared to pull the trigger. At that
moment Josephine rushed in, told him
not to destroy himself, and proclaimed
her undying love for him. At this turn of
events there was general rejoicing among
Ralph's messmates, with the exception of
an unsavory character by the name of
Dick Dead-eye.
1595

The couple laid plans to steal ashore
the next evening to be married. Once
the ceremony was performed, they
reasoned, nobody could do anything about
it. But Dick Dead-eye went to the
Captain and warned him of the plan.
Accordingly, just as the lovers and their
accomplices were quietly tiptoeing away,
the Captain entered, enraged at Ralph's
presumption and at the low company in
which he found his daughter. Ralph was
thrown into the brig.
Attracted by the Captain's swearing,
Sir Joseph came rushing up in time to
hear what had happened. The sisters, the
cousins, and the aunts weTe horribly
shocked. Sir Joseph was equally shocked,
so shocked that he administered a very
severe rebuke to the Captain. In the
midst of the argument, Little Buttercup
appeared. To the astonishment of
everyone, she announced that many years ago
she had been a baby-farmer. Two
infants had been put into her care, one of
lowly birth, the other of high position.
Because she was very fond of one of
them she had changed them around. The
Captain was really of low birth, and
Ralph was the patrician.
This astounding announcement
resulted in a very odd situation which was
quickly and amicably arranged. The
Captain changed places with Ralph, who
became captain instead. Sir Joseph
announced that he could not marry
Josephine since she was only the daughter of
a common sailor. Accordingly, Josephine
married Ralph; the Captain married
Little Buttercup, and Sir Joseph had no
one to marry except a well-born cousin.
1596

THE HOLY TERRORS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jean Cocteau (1891-1963)
Type of plot: Psychological fantasy
Time of plot: The present
Locale: Paris
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Paul, a sensitive, imaginative boy
Elisabeth, his sister
Gerald, their friend
Agatha, Gerard's wife, friend of Paul and Elisabeth
Michael, an American
Critique:
Jean Cocteau, a playwright, stage de-
s'gner, painter, film director, and poet,
has been one of the most influential
figures in the Paris art wo^ld in this
century. In this psvchological fantasy (hes
Enfants terrihles) he has drawn much on
Freudian imagery, and the book is, like
his films, informed by romantic
imagination. Written with great insight, it is a
compassionate account of the creativity
and destructiveness of adolescence. The
snow scenes at the beginning and the end
of the novel provide an imaoe of
insulation from the familiar world and of the
results of isolation that such alienation
may produce.
The Story:
Paul and Elisabeth lived with their
paralyzed mother in an old quarter of
Paris. They lived as though in a world of
vegetable instinct, dissociated from adults
by passivity, imagination, and secret,
mysterious rites.
One night, when the quarter was
transformed by snow, Paul was wandering
among the snowballing groups in search
of the school hero Dargelos, whom he
worshiped. Dargelos, who possessed g-eat
charm, was both vicious and beautiful.
As Paul mo*ed toward him, Dargelos,
perhaps accidentally, knocked him down
with a stone-packed snowball. Although
he injured Paul, he escaped immediate
punishment but was later expelled from
the school. Paul was taken home by
Gerard who loved him as much for his
weakness as Paul loved Dargelos for his
strength. Elisabeth was extremely angry
with them when they reached Paul's
home. She was then sixteen, two years
older than Paul and utterly absorbed by
him. She was frequently transported by
fury when he appeared to be leaving her
sphere of influence.
The three children went into the Room
where Paul and Elisabeth ate, slept, read,
fought, and played the Game. That Room
was the sole material reality in their lives;
the Game, their inner world. The Room
existed in an established chaos of boxes,
clothes, papers, and books. Paul left it
only for school and Elisabeth only to
look after their mother or to buy
magazines. Essentially the Game was
daydreaming, a willed withdrawal to an
imaginary world of submerged
consciousness.
After Elisabeth had sent Gerard away,
she undressed Paul and put him to bed.
Their doctor decided that Paul was
unfit to return to school, a decision which
plunged Paul into despair until he
learned of Dargelos' expulsion. After that
school held no interest for him.
The Room held hidden treasures, the
artifacts of their unconscious minds-
keys, marbles, aspirin bottles—and when
THE HOLY TERRORS by Jean Cocteau. Translated by Rosamund Lehmann. By permission of the pub-
Ushers, New Directions. Copyright, 1957, by Rosamund Lehmann.
1597

Gerard told Paul that Dargelos had
disappeared, a photograph of him dressed as
Athalie was added to the collection.
The mother died suddenly. When Paul
and Elisabeth saw her, rigid and
transfixed in her chair, staring forward, the
picture haunted them; it was the one
they retained. The mother's nurse, Ma-
riette, remained in the household,
content to care for and love Paul and
Elisabeth without altering them.
Now an accepted visitor in the Room,
Gerard was aware of the almost tangible
tension, expressed in fights,
recriminations, and reconciliations, between the
two. When Paul was well enough,
Elisabeth, surprisingly, accepted an invitation
from Gerard's uncle to take a holiday by
the sea. On the journey she watched Paul
while he was sleeping and was disgusted
by the air of weakness which his illness
had accentuated. She decided to remold
him on her own lines.
Once by the sea, they established a
Room as much like their own as possible.
Paul gained strength under Elisabeth's
tutelage, in part through stealing useless
objects from local shops while on raids
that she had planned. Their booty formed
a treasure imitating that in the Paris
Room.
When they returned to Paris, Elisabeth
was suddenly aware that Paul had
outstripped her and that she had become the
subordinate party in their relationship.
Paul spent his evenings wandering
around Montmartre, watching girls,
drinking, and finally meeting Gerard and
bringing him home for the night. On
these occasions Elisabeth would use him
as a means of tormenting Paul. The first
time she succeeded in rousing her brother
came when she declared that she too
would go into the world. Her position,
she felt, had become untenable, and she
subsequently obtained work as a
mannequin. This act enraged Paul, who
declared that she was prostituting herself;
she thought the same about his nightly
excursions.
At the dressmaker's establishment
where she worked Elisabeth met Agatha,
an orphan whose parents, drug addicts,
had committed suicide. For Agatha she
felt, for the first time, warm affection;
but the girl's introduction to the Room
precipitated Paul's and Elisabeth's
destruction when Agatha became devoted
to Paul. The photograph revealed a
startling likeness between Dargelos and
Agatha, and Paul enthralled her as he had
been in thrall to Dargelos. Agatha felt at
home in the Room, but at the same time
she recognized the strange, dreamlike
existence her friends led.
As they matured, the Game failed to
absorb Paul and Elisabeth completely.
This situation so distressed Elisabeth that
when she met Michael, an American
friend of Gerard, she transferred her
dream life to him. Paul was excluded
from this friendship with Michael, but
his anger at learning of it evaporated
when he discovered that Michael wanted
to marry Elisabeth and not, as he had
subconsciously feared, Agatha. Elisabeth
did marry Michael, but true to Gerard's
vision of her the marriage was never
consummated: Michael was killed while
driving alone in his sports car a few
hours after the wedding.
Elisabeth inherited his fortune and his
Paris house, into which the four moved.
Lonely and disoriented in separate rooms,
they gravitated to the Room that Paul
finally established in the dining hall.
Their lives moved slowly to a climax
from the moment that Paul realized he
was in love with Agatha. Afraid to tell
each other of their love, they each told
Elisabeth. Terrified that Paul might leave
her, Elisabeth moved tirelessly between
them all one night to dissuade them from
marrying. Lying, she told Paul that it was
Gerard whom Agatha loved, and told
Agatha that Paul was too selfish ever to
love anyone. She also convinced Gfrard
that by friendship he had won Agatha's
love and that it was his duty to marry
her. Elisabeth was so dedicated to the
idea of possessing Paul and so trusted by
1598

the others that she succeeded completely
in her scheme.
A short time after his marriage to
Agatha, Girard met Dargelos. The
former schoolmate sent Paul a gift, part of
his collection of poisons. Paul and
Elisabeth were delighted with the present
which, to Agatha's horror, was added to
the treasure.
Weeks later when Paris was again
covered in snow, Elisabeth dreamed that
Paul was dead. She woke to find Agatha
at the door. Agatha was convinced Paul
had killed himself; she had received a
letter from him threatening suicide. They
ran to the Room and found Paul choking
in poison fumes which filled the screened-
in corner where he lay. Although he
could barely speak, with Agatha he
reconstructed Elisabeth's scheme. When he
cursed her, she felt that her heart had
died. After admitting her guilt and
jealousy, she snatched a revolver; by that
violent act she was able to regain their
attention and thus to captivate Paul once
more. Elisabeth worked to charm him
back into their world of the Room and
the Game, far from Agatha, who seemed
less real to him than the snowstorm
outside. The two women watched each other
until Paul fell back exhausted. Thinking
him dead, Elisabeth shot herself.
Crashing against the screens, she destroyed the
Room and let in the enemy world. Paul
saw visions of snowballers crowding the
windows, watching as he died. Theirs
was the tragedy of outcasts who, unaware
that they lived on borrowed time, died
fighting for their private existence.
1599

THE HONEST WHORE, PART ONE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Dakker (c. 1572-1632?) with Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Milan, Italy
First presented: 1604
Principal characters:
Gasparo Trebazzi, Duke of Milan
Infelice, his daughter
Count Hippolito, a nobleman in love with Infelice
Matheo, his friend
Candido, a linen draper
Viola, Candido's wife
Fustigo, Viola's brother
Bellafront, a harlot
Critique:
This is a minor play by one of the minor
Elizabethan dramatists. Thomas Dekker
was an extremely prolific writer,
working often in collaboration with other
playwrights. From a passage in Henslowe's
diary, it is known that Middleton had a
hand in Part One of this play; but
scholars are uncertain as to the precise
amount that he contributed. The main
plot, as will be seen, has a strangely
inverted resemblance to that of Romeo and
Juliet, while the subplot, although the
scene is laid in Milan, gives a realistic
glimpse of London shop life of that time.
Both plots are, by modern standards,
exaggerated and improbable. Lamb found
the play "offensively crowded" with
diatribes against the harlot's profession; the
reader of today, however, will not be
shocked. Rather, unless he is a specialist
in Elizabethan drama, he is likely to be
bored, and he will hardly agree with
Hazlitt that the "contrivance" of the main
plot is "affecting and romantic/'
The Story:
In Milan, at the funeral of Infelice,
daughter of Duke Gasparo, Count
Hippolito refused to be restrained by his
friend Matheo. Frantic with grief over
the death of his beloved, he accused her
father of having killed her. After a
violent altercation between the two
noblemen, the hearse was borne off. In Milan,
also, Viola's brother, Fustigo, had
returned from sea, to find his sister
married to Candido, a linen-draper, and
unhappy because her husband was such a
model of patience and good temper. In
order to make Candido angry, Viola
proposed to Fustigo—whom Candido had
never seen—that he pretend to be her
lover, and this plan was agreed upon.
In the meantime, at the ducal palace,
it was revealed that Infelice's death was
only a trick produced by a
sleeping-potion administered at her father's
command. Duke Gasparo admitted that
Hippolito was a noble youth whom he would
have welcomed as a son-in-law had it not
been for a feud between the two families;
he had, however, devised the stratagem
of her supposed death to break up the
love affair between her and the young
count. When Infelice awoke, her father
told her that Hippolito was dead. He
then ordered her to go to Bergamo in
order that she might recover from her
grief. After she had gone, the duke's
physician offered to poison Hippolito and
thus relieve the duke's mind forever of
the fear of a reunion of the lovers. To
this plan the cold-blooded duke assented.
Meanwhile a merry group of Milanese
gallants, planning a trick to try the
famous patience of Candido, went to his
1600

shop and examined his wares, particularly
a bolt of lawn at eighteen shillings the
yard. When asked the length desired,
one of them ordered only a pennyworth
and insisted that it be cut from the
middle of the piece, thereby ruining the
entire bolt. To this fantastic order Candido
acceded, to the fury of his wife. But the
unruffled Candido served the gallants
with wine and even remained calm when
one of them walked off with a silver-gilt
beaker. He quietly sent for the constable,
got his goblet returned, and then invited
the gentlemen to dinner.
After the dinner the gentlemen went
to the house of a harlot named Bella-
front, where they were joined by Hip-
polito and Matheo. Count Hippolito had
never visited the house before and, still
in a melancholy mood, he left after a few
moments. When he returned to fetch
Matheo, he found all the gentlemen gone
and Bellafront alone. She immediately
fell in love with him, but all she got in
return was a long diatribe on the evils
of prostitution. Repulsed, she tried to
stab herself but was prevented by
Hippolito, whose love she vowed to win at
any cost.
The attempts to break the patience of
Candido continued, as Fustigo put into
execution the plan of pretending to be
Viola's lover. But the trick miscarried:
Candido refused to be offended by his
wife's behavior. His loyal apprentices,
not knowing the true situation, gave
Fustigo a thorough drubbing. Next, the
baffled Viola locked up his formal gown,
so that, when he was summoned to a
meeting of the city Senate, he lacked
the proper clothes to wear. But the
imperturbable Candido fashioned a gown
out of a tablecloth. Wearing this and
with a nightcap on his head, he went
to the meeting.
Meanwhile Bellafront, chastened by
her love for Hippolito, had resolved to
give up her shameless life, and so had
turned all the gallants out of her house.
Her first seducer had been Matheo, who
ironically told her that an honest whore
is an impossibility. Still determined to
win Hippolito's love, Bellafront gained
entrance to his house in the disguise of a
page. There she found the count gazing
at a picture of the supposedly dead In-
felice. When Bellafront revealed her
identity, he rudely repulsed her again,
and she resolved to leave Milan. As she
left the house, Hippolito received a note
from the duke's physician asking for an
interview.
During these events, the drubbed
Fustigo had hired two bullies to take revenge
upon Candido's apprentices. Viola had
ordered one apprentice to dress in his
master's clothes, but again Candido, who
returned still wearing the tablecloth,
refused to take offense and merely changed
his own clothes for those of an
apprentice. Just as his wife was declaring him
insane, the two bullies entered; seeing
Candido in the distinctive garb of an
apprentice, they started to beat the poor
old man. Again the faithful apprentices
came to the rescue, but Candido would
not let them hurt his assailants.
However, Viola entered with two officers and,
under the pretext that Candido was mad,
had him bound and carried off to Beth-
lem Monastery—that is, to the London
insane asvlum. He meekly submitted.
In the meantime the physician
informed Duke Gasparo that he had
poisoned Hippolito, but he also warned his
master that, having done this deed for
gold, he might well be hired to poison
the duke. Duke Gasparo instantly
banished him with the curt statement that
rulers often hate the man by whom their
plots are carried out. As soon as he was
alone the doctor revealed the true
situation: he had not poisoned Count
Hippolito. He also informed the count of In-
felice's feigned death and promised to
bring the lovers together in the chapel of
Bethlem Monastery, where they could
be married.
Viola, beginning to feel that she had
gone too far in her efforts to vex her
husband, had repaired to Duke Gas-
paro's palace to seek a warrant releasing
1601

Candido from the madhouse.
Unfortunately, just as the duke was about to sign
the order for the linen-draper's release, a
courier brought the news that Hippolito
was not dead and that he and Infelice
were to meet at the monastery that
afternoon for their marriage. Matheo had
carelessly revealed the secret. In a
desperate attempt to foil the lovers, Duke
Gasparo and his courtiers rode in
disguise to the monastery, leaving Viola's
warrant unsigned.
Hippolito and Infelice had already
arrived at the monastery and were
planning to be married that evening. When
Matheo arrived with the news that the
duke had learned of their intention and
was on his way to prevent the wedding,
the friar who was to marry them promised
to perform the ceremony and to get them
out of the building disguised as monks.
They were hurried out of sight just as
the duke and his followers arrived. The
situation became one of great confusion.
Bellafront entered, having come to the
monastery earlier in the day under
pretext of madness. The disguised lovers
also came into the room where the duke
was, as did Viola, her servant, and
Candido. When the various disguises had
been thrown off, the duke suddenly
relented, forgave Infelice and Hippolito,
permitted their marriage, and gave
justice to Bellafront by marrying her to
Matheo, the man who had first seduced
her. Even Viola knelt to ask Candido's
forgiveness for the vexations that she had
subjected him to. Patient to the end, he
fo-gave her and then delivered to the
assembly a long harangue on patience as
the greatest of all virtues.
1602

THE HONEST WHORE, PART TWO
Principal characters:
Gasparo Trebazzi, Duke of Milan
Infelice, his daughter
Count Hippolito, a nobleman, Infdice's husband
Bellafront, a former harlot
Orlando Friscobaldo, Bellafront's father
Matheo, Bellafront's husband
Candtdo, a linen-draper
Candido's Bride
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Dekker (c. 1572-1632?)
Type of plot: Tragi comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Milan, Italy
First presented: c. 1605
Critique:
Part One of The Honest Whore must
have been successful on the stage, for
Dekker very quickly followed it with a
sequel, written entirely by himself. He
was obviously endeavoring to capitalize
on features of the first play, since in the
second part he used all the principal
characters save one and continued the
subplot of the patient Candido. He
ended with a scene in Bridewell, a
London prison of his time, to balance the
Bethlem Scene in Part One. He also
continued the high moral tone of the
earlier play, this time, however, making
gambling as well as prostitution the
object of his strictures. The new character
of Friscobaldo, the outwardly stern yet
inwardly forgiving father, was
extravagantly admired by Hazlitt, and both
he and Ernest Rhys considered Part Two
superior to Part One. The modern reader
will perhaps find that some of the
freshness of Part One has worn off and feel
that Dekker tried to carry a good thing a
bit too far.
The Story:
One day Bellafront, a former
prostitute now married to Matheo, the former
friend of Count Hippolito, arrived at that
nobleman's house with a petition. Her
husband had killed a man, but it was in
fair fight and the man a notorious villain.
Still, Matheo has been condemned to
death. Hippolito, who was about to ride
out with his wife Infelice, stayed behind
to hear the petition. He took the
opportunity to remind Bellafront of their old
relationship and promised to help Matheo
to a pardon and, if possible, to reconcile
her with her unforgiving father. But it
was significant that Count Hippolito
showed much more interest in Bellafront
than she in him.
Meanwhile, at the palace of Duke
Gasparo, father of Infelice, the courtiers
were talking of the marriage of Candido,
an old linen-draper still famous in Milan
for his patience. Viola had died, and, to
the mystification of the gallants, Candido
was marrying a young girl. Just as they
had decided to attend the wedding feast,
Hippolito entered, followed shortly by
Orlando Friscobaldo, Bellafront's
estranged father. Their meeting gave
Hippolito an opportunity to ask the old man
about his daughter. Friscobaldo declared
that he had not seen her for seventeen
years, that her disgrace had been so great
that he no longer considered her his child.
But when Hippolito had left, with the
parting remark that Bellafront was in
dire poverty, the father relented and
resolved to rescue his daughter. To this
end, he put on the livery of a servant
and, thus disguised, went to find his
1603

offspring.
At the same time, the wedding of the
widowed Candido was taking place,
attended by some of the gallants of the
city who wTished to see what sort of bride
the old man had chosen. The first
impression was unfavorable: when the bride
was handed the wedding goblet, she
broke the glass and refused to drink.
Candido was as patient as ever, but he
did consent to allow a nobleman to
disguise himself as an apprentice so that
the disguised man might try to cure the
bride of her peevishness. The courtiers
did not wish to see Candido saddled with
another shrew.
Thanks to Hippolito, Matheo had been
released from prison and had, somewhat
unconvincingly, promised his wife to
reform and give up gambling. When Fris-
cobaldo arrived, disguised as a servant,
he pretended to be an old family retainer
discharged by Bellafront's father. He
asked Matheo for a place in his
household and insisted on turning over to the
latter, for safe-keeping, what he claimed
to be his life's savings: twenty pounds.
His offer was enthusiastically accepted
by Matheo, who took the opportunity to
abuse his father-in-law. The outburst was
interrupted by the arrival of Hippolito,
come ostensibly to congratulate Matheo
but in reality to pursue his wooing of
Bellafront. He had already sent her gifts;
he now left her a purse. To the delight
of her disguised father—who was to
convey the purse—she rejected all the gifts
and resolved to remain honest.
Meanwhile, a rather labored trick was
being played at Candido's shop. The
nobleman, disguised as an apprentice,
arrived as if looking for work. The bride
refused to prepare a room for him,
whereupon Candido took the unusual step of
vowing to tame her. He picked up a
yardstick; she armed herself with the
longer ell-wand; but before they could
come to blows, the bride asked
forgiveness and delivered a speech on the proper
obedience of wives.
In the interest of saving his daughter
from Hippolito's advances, Friscobaldo
went to the count's house and revealed
to Infelice her husband's infidelity,
surrendering to her the gifts sent to Bella-
front. When Hippolito returned, Infelice
was able to play a neat trick upon him.
Kneeling, she made a mock confession of
having committed adultery with a servant.
The enraged husband delivered a tirade
on unfaithful wives, thus giving Infelice
the opportunity to turn his own words
against him as she displayed the gifts he
had sent Bellafront. But her just
reproaches succeeded only in making her
husband the more determined to pursue
his illicit passion.
In the household of Matheo, affairs
were going from bad to worse. That
unlucky gamester had lost everything at
dice, including the money entrusted to
him by his feigned servant; so reduced
to nothing, he pawned his wife's clothes
and hinted strongly that he would be
pleased if she would return to her former
profession so as to gain a few ducats. He
was, however, temporarily rescued by a
friend, who promised to give him both
money and clothes fashionable for a
gentleman.
Candido's troubles, also, were
continuing. Two disreputable characters,
Mrs. Horseleech, a bawd, and Botts, a
pander, had designs upon his new wife
and tried to seduce her for one of their
customers; but the plot broke against her
honesty. While these events were taking
place, Matheo had received his new
clothes and was happily showing them
to his wife. In the midst of Matheo's
display old Friscobaldo appeared, this time
in his own person, to be recognized by
Bellafront, who asked his forgiveness.
The father startled Matheo by his
knowledge of the latter's shady dealings and
then left in pretended anger, vowing that
he would let the couple starve. While
Bellafront and Matheo were quarreling,
the father returned in his servant's
disguise to hear Matheo's very garbled
account of what had just happened and
his proposal that they rob Friscobaldo's
1604

house. The disguised old man agreed to
the plan.
After they had left the house, Bella-
front appeared with Hippolito, who was
still intent on his wooing. A long debate
ensued between them, Hippolito urging
his suit and Bellafront describing the
miseries of a harlot's life. When she
repulsed his advances, he swore to continue
until he had succeeded. In the meantime,
Friscobaldo had been revealing to Duke
Gasparo the villainy of Matheo. The
duke agreed to aid the plot of catching
Matheo in the robbery and also resolved
to cure Hippolito by purging Milan of
harlots by imposing such strict laws that
Hippolito would be afraid to approach a
prostitute, no matter how fair she might
be.
The young Milanese gallants, never
tired of trying to vex the patient Can-
dido, met at Matheo's house to plan
another trick. Matheo suggested that, as a
bait, he should offer to sell Candido
some lawn, thus accomplishing two
purposes at once, for he had stolen the lawn
from two supposed peddlers—actually
men hired by Friscobaldo. Candido
arrived and was persuaded to drink a glass
of wine. At that moment the constable
entered to arrest Matheo for theft and
Candido for receiving stolen goods. Both
were taken to Bridewell prison, along
with Mrs. Horseleech and Botts, who
had been present during the episode.
Duke Gasparo, attended by his court,
arrived at the prison to administer
justice. Hippolito came also, having heard
that Bellafront had been arrested in the
wholesale sweep of the harlots of Milan.
At the trial Matheo's real baseness was
revealed: he boldly admitted the robbery
but claimed that his wife had inspired it;
when this charge was disproved bv the
disguised Friscobaldo, he accused Bella-
front of being a whore and swore that
he had found her in bed with Hippolito.
To this accusation, Infelice, in order to
prolong the stratagem, added that Bella-
front had accepted presents from
Hippolito. In the midst of these charges and
countercharges Friscobaldo at last threw
off his disguise and proclaimed his
daughter's innocence and Matheo's villainy. All
ended happily when, at Bellafront's
petition, her unworthy husband was
pardoned, Hippolito and his wife were
reconciled, and Candido was shown to have
been the victim of a cruel joke.
1605

HONEY IN THE HORN
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. L. Davis (1896- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: 1906-1908
Locale: Oregon
First published: 1935
Principal characters:
Clay Calvert, a migrant worker
Wade Shiveley, his stepfather
Uncle Press Shiveley, Wade's father
Luce, Cky's woman
The Horse Trader, Luce's father
Critique:
The story told in this novel is less
important than the character studies of
some people who settled Oregon in the
early part of this century. In his
introduction the author states that he is
neither criticizing any social group nor
suggesting reforms; rather, he attempts
to give an accurate picture of the
migrants who were always seeking new
homes in better lands. The story itself
is excellent, however—fast-moving and
interestingly told. There have been
many novels of pioneers and early settlers
during the last two decades, but few
surpass Honey in the Horn.
The Story:
Wade Shiveley had killed his own
brother in a fight over a squaw and had
murdered and robbed old man Howell.
Now he had been captured. The officers
wanted Uncle Press Shiveley, Wade's
father, to try to get Wade to say where
he had hidden the money. But Uncle
Press had threatened to shoot Wade if
he ever laid eyes on him again, and so
in his place he sent Clay Calvert, the
son of one of Wade's wives. Clay did
not want to go because he also hated
Wade. Uncle Press gave Clay a gun
to slip to Wade in the jail. Having
loaded the gun with blank cartridges,
he hoped Wade would use the worthless
gun to attempt an escape and thus be
shot down by the officers.
On the way to the jail, Clay met a
horse trader and his wife and daughter.
When Clay slipped the gun to Wade
in the jail, Wade said that he had not
killed Howell, that Howell was killed
by a bullet that split when it was fired
and that such a bullet did not fit his own
gun. Wade had always been a liar, but
Clay suspected that this time he might
be telling the truth.
Clay left town to hide in Wade's
abandoned shack until after Wade had
been killed and buried. Later Uncle
Press sent a half-breed Indian to tell him
that Wade had escaped and that the
sheriff was now looking for Clay as an
accomplice. Clay left the shack with
the Indian, taking with him Wade's
rifle he had found there, and after
traveling awhile they met the horse trader and
his women again. Clay learned that the
girl was called Luce and that she traveled
around with her father and stepmother,
trading horses, racing them, and picking
hops in season. Since he wanted to get
out of the immediate territory and
because he was strongly attracted to Luce,
Clay decided to travel with the horse
trader's family. The Indian stole Wade's
rifle from Clay and ran away.
Clay and the horse trader's family
worked for a time in the hop fields. The
trader was a weak man who lost all he
and his family earned by gambling, and
Luce took trie responsibility for the
HONEY IN THE HORN by H. L. Davis. By permission of the author. Published by Harper & Brothe.s.
Copyright, 1935, Dy Harper & Brothers.
1606

family on her shoulders. Clay and Luce
liked each other very much, but they
quarreled frequently, and one day Clay
moved away from the wagon. When the
sheriff appeared at the field one day,
Clay became frightened and left
hurriedly, traveling toward the coast.
Luce and her folks found him after
awhile, and Luce and Clay decided to
stay together. There was no place for
them to get married. They spent the
winter in a little settlement on the coast,
in a cabin apart from the horse trader's.
Luce rescued some bags of flour which
had floated to shore from a wrecked
ship, and with money earned by selling
the flour to the Indians she and Clay
were able to buy a wagon and start on
their own.
Clay and Luce left for eastern Oregon,
but Clay refused to let her father and
stepmother go with them, for he could
not stand the sight of the weak horse
trader. They traveled across the
mountains and into Looking Glass
Valley, where they joined another group
of settlers led by Clark Burdon. Burdon
described to Clay a stranger who was
looking for him, and Clay knew the
man was Wade. Clay liked Burdon and
told him the story of Wade and his
killings and escape. Burdon promised
to help him get rid of Wade. That night
Clay shot a man he thought was Wade,
but the dead prowler turned out to be
the son of one of the settlers. When
Burdon and Clay declared that Wade
had shot the boy, the men formed a
posse and captured Wade. After Wade
tried to kill Clay, the men believed that
the outlaw was trying to keep Clay from
testifying against him; and the posse
vowed to hang Wade. Clay felt guilty,
for he doubted that Wade had killed
Howell and he knew that he himself
had shot the prowler. But it was his
life or Wade's, and so he kept silent.
He felt dirty and sick when he saw
Wade hanged.
The settlers traveled eastward, Clay
and Luce with them. Luce had a
miscarriage. She would not let Clay go for
a doctor, for she was terrified that he
would leave her and never come back.
The rest of the caravan had gone on
and they were alone. Clay finally left
Luce, promising to return with help as
soon as possible. He came back with an
Indian midwife, to find that Luce had
gone away in the wagon. There were
two sets of wagon wheels, and Clay
knew instinctively that her father had
come by and that Luce had left with
him. Angry and hurt by her desertion,
Clay decided to go on alone.
He rode his horse into the threshing
country and worked with a mowing
crew. There he met the half-breed from
the Shiveley ranch and told the Indian
to be on the lookout for Luce and her
father. The Indian did meet the horse
trader and made a large wager on a
race with him. The horse trader lost
the race and the Indian collected the
money. Next day the Indian was found
with a bullet in the back of his head
and no money in his clothing, and the
horse trader and Luce had disappeared.
Clay helped bury the Indian, but before
the burial he shot Wade's rifle, which
the Indian had stolen. The bullet did
not split. Clay knew then that Wade
had been telling the truth about not
killing Howell. He suspected that Luce's
father had killed and robbed both Howell
and the Indian.
Clay joined a party moving on to a
railroad construction camp. On their
way there was an accident, and one of
the horses had to be killed. When Clay
saw the horse, he recognized it as one
belonging to Luce's father, and he knew
that she was in the group. He
volunteered to shoot the horse, but first he
found Luce and asked for her rifle. With
it he killed the animal and later,
examining the bullet, he saw that it was
split. When he told her that the trader
had murdered Howell and the Indian,
she claimed she had done the killings.
1607

She said that her father, who was now
dead, had lost a lot of money to Howell
and that her stepmother and Howell
had fought. Luce had shot the old man
during the fight and had taken the
money her father had lost to him. Later
she killed the Indian because he had
won her father's money in the horse
race.
Clay suspected that Luce was trying
to protect her dead father. Besides, he
still wanted her. He climbed into her
wagon and they joined the long line of
settlers who were still seeking a place
where they could make real homes.
Whatever their past, they would
always go on together.
1608

THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edward Eggleston (1837-1902)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: About 1850
Locale: Indiana
First published: 1871
Principal characters:
Ralph Hartsook, a young schoolmaster
Bud Means, Ralph's pupil and friend
Hannah Thomson, the Means' bound-girl
Dr. Small, Ralph's enemy
Pete Jones, Dr. Small's partner in crime
Walter Johnson, Ralph's cousin, one of the robbers
Martha Hawkins, Bud Means' sweetheart
Shocky, Hannah's brother
Critique:
Eggleston wrote The Hoosier
Schoolmaster as a regional study. In it he caught
the Hoosiers of his day, with their
singular twists of phrasing, their rough
frontier conduct. His simple plots, stock
characters and thinly-disguised morality
were all subordinate to his main purpose.
If The Hoosier Schoolmaster is not a
great book, it certainly is not to be
overlooked, for its author faithfully recorded
the place and time he wished to describe.
The Story:
Ralph Hartsook had not thought
schoolteachers were judged by their
muscular ability when he applied for the
job as schoolmaster of Flat Creek,
Indiana. Before long, however, he learned
his competence would be judged by his
power to keep his pupils from driving
him out of the schoolhouse. His first step
was to make friends with Bud and Bill
Means, sons of the school trustee, in
whose house he was to board for a time.
He was tired from the ten miles he had
trudged to apply for his job, but he
walked almost the same distance that
evening when he went coon hunting
with the boys.
Ralph Hartsook held his own against
the pranks and challenges of his pupils
until the night of the big spelling-bee.
Then before most of the people in Flat
Creek he was defeated by the Means'
bound-girl, Hannah Thomson.
Finding himself strongly attracted to
the girl, he escorted her home after the
spelling-bee.
Kept awake by curiosity about
Hannah's past, Ralph had trouble sleeping
that night. At two in the morning he
got up, restless, and strolled down the
road toward the schoolhouse. Three
horsemen passed him in the darkness, one
riding a horse with white markings. A
few minutes later Dr. Small rode by,
returning, Ralph supposed, from a night
call. He went back to Pete Jones' house,
where he was staying at the time. The
next morning he discovered that the
horse with the white markings stood in
Pete's stable, and he learned from Shocky
Thomson, Hannah's young brother, that
there had been a robbery the night
before.
He decided not to tell what he knew.
He had no proof that Pete Jones was
connected with the housebreaking and
it would have been awkward to explain
his own ramblings at an early hour. To
add to his misery that day, Mirandy
Means, who had been casting sheep's eyes
at him, informed him that her brother
Bud was fond of Hannah.
Squire Hawkins invited Ralph to
spend the weekend with him. Walking
toward the squire's house with Shocky,
who took the same direction home from
1609

school, he learned from the boy that his
father was dead and his blind mother
in the poorhouse. When Hannah went
to live with the Means, he himself had
been taken in by Mr. Pearson, a basket-
maker.
That evening Ralph was surprised to
see Dr. Small's horse tied in front of
Granny Sander's cabin. She had a
reputation as a witch among the people of
Flat Creek, and she was a malicious
gossip. Ralph did not know that the
doctor was busy planting the seeds of
rumors in Granny Sander's mind, rumors
that Ralph had been a philanderer at
home, and that he was somehow
implicated in the robbery. Small disliked
Ralph, though Ralph had never been
able to find any reason for it. Rumor had
done its ugly work by Sunday morning.
At church Ralph's neighbors had little
to say to him.
On Christmas Day, which came the
following week, the toys did not follow
the custom of asking the teacher for a
holiday. Instead Bud and others of the
older pupils barricaded themselves in the
schoolhouse to keep Ralph from entering
and had to be forced out by sulphur
thrown down the chimney. Later Bud
threatened to thrash Ralph because the
schoolmaster had taken the squire's niece,
Martha, to church the Sunday before.
Bud was jealous. Ralph immediately
declared he was really inclined toward
Hannah, but had avoided seeing her because
of Mirandy's statement. He and Ralph
quickly became fast friends. Now, the
schoolmaster felt, he had a clear field for
courting.
Before Bud and Ralph finished their
talk, Shocky burst into the schoolhouse
with the news that Mr. Pearson was
about to be tarred and feathered by the
people of Flat Creek, who had been led
by Pete Jones to believe the basket-maker
was guilty of the robbery. Pearson, too,
had seen three men riding by on the
night of the robbery, and Jones had
decided the best way to divert suspicion
from himself would be to accuse Shocky's
benefactor.
Hoping to protect the old man, Bud
Means started toward the Pearson home.
On the way he met Jones to whom he
gave a sound drubbing.
That night Bud helped Pearson to
escape to his brother's home in the next
county. To thwart Pete Jones' efforts
to have Shocky Thomson bound out by
declaring the Pearsons paupers, Ralph
took the boy to stay with his friend,
Miss Nancy Sawyer, in his home town
of Lewisburg. His aunt, Mrs. Matilda
White, refused to have Shocky's mother
in her house because she was a pauper,
and so, at Miss Sawyer's own suggestion,
Mrs. Thomson was brought to the
Sawyer home to spend the weekend with
her son. Through Miss Sawyer's efforts,
a collection was taken up at church that
Sunday afternoon, and with that
donation and the money she earned knitting
socks, Mrs. Thompson was able to make
a home of her own for Shocky.
That same Sunday Bud, intending to
ask Martha to marry him, visited Squire
Hawkins' house. Suddenly bashful, he
told her only of the spelling-bee to take
place at the schoolhouse on Tuesday
night. Shortly afterward the squire
received an anonymous letter, threatening
him with the burning of his barn if
Martha associated with Bud, the
implication being that Bud was incriminated in
the robbery. The squire persuaded
Martha to ignore Bud. Chagrined by her
refusal to let him escort her home from
the spelling-bee, Bud began to cultivate
Pete Jones and his friends, among them
Dr. Small and Walter Johnson, Ralph's
cousin.
Bud soon proved he was still Ralph's
friend. One day Hannah brought Ralph
a letter Bud had sent warning him that
he was suspected of the robbery and
that there was a plan afoot to tar and
feather him that night. Ralph saved
himself from the mob by going to a
nearby town and giving himself up to
the authorities there. His trial was held
the next day.
1610

All of Flat Creek was present to sea
the schoolmaster convicted. Mrs. Means
and Pete Jones, particularly, were willing
to offer damaging testimony, the former
because Ralph had spurned Mirandas
attentions. It was Dr. Small who
vindicated Ralph, however, by overshooting
the mark in his anxiety to clear himself
of Ralph's testimony that the doctor had
been out on the night of the robbery.
Small had Walter Johnson called to
the stand to testify they had spent the
evening together in the physician's office.
But Johnson, at a prayer meeting he had
attended with Bud, had been deeply
impressed by the minister's warning of
eternal damnation for sinners.
Summoned before the court, he gave way to
his guilty conscience and declared that
he, Small, Pete Jones, and Pete's brother
had committed the robbery, and that
Ralph and Mr. Pearson were innocent.
Walter Johnson went free because of
his testimony, but Dr. Small, who had
been the ringleader of the band, was
hanged. Jones and his brother were given
prison sentences.
Ralph Hartsook returned to Lewisburg
to teach in a new academy there. Shortly
afterward he married Hannah. At Ralph's
wedding Bud found his courage at last
and proposed to Martha.
1611

HORACE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
Type of plot: Neo-classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Rome
First presented: 1640
Principal characters:
Horace, the most courageous of the Roman soldiers
Sabine, his Alban wife
Old Horace, his father, formerly a soldier
Camille, Horace's sister
Curiace, Sabine's brother, in love with Camille
Valere, a Roman soldier in love with Camille
Julie, confidante of both Sabine and Camille
Tulle, the ruler of Rome
Critique:
After the controversy which raged over
The Cid (1636), an extravagant heroic
drama, Corneille turned to Livy for his
inspiration. In Horace, a tightly
constructed play which rigorously followed
dramatic precepts, he succeeded in
producing a patriotic drama both popular
with the audience and acceptable to the
critics.
The Story:
Although formerly united by ties of
patriotism and blood, for Alba was the
birthplace of the founders of Rome,
Romulus and Remus, the cities of Rome and
Alba were at war. Sabine, the wife of
Horace, was divided in her loyalties
between the city of her birth, where her
brothers still lived, and the city of her
famous warrior-husband. The battle was
to be decided by armed combat between
three heroes from each s:de. Sabine drew
little comfort from the resolution, which
meant the defeat either of her kinsman
or of her husband. Canvlle, the
betrothed of Curiace, the Alban warrior-
brother of Sabine, felt her loyalties
divided between her loved one and her
brother Horace. Even though the oracles
had been favorable toward her coming
marriage, her dreams envisioned the im-
HORACE by Pierre Corneille, from CHIEF PLAYS OF CORNEILLE. Translated by Lacy Lockert.
By permission of the publishers, Princeton University Press. Copyright, 1952, 1957, by Princeton
University Press.
1612
minent horror.
The battle postponed, Curiace visited
Camille at the home of Old Horace, her
father. He declared his abiding love for
her, thouah he remained an Alban
patriot, loyal to his city. They commented
on the oracles and wished for a lasting
peace. When the two warriors met,
however, Horace was insistent on the
outcome of the trial by combat. Curiace,
who stressed the need for peaceful
understanding, was dismayed to hear that
his prospective brothers-in-law, Horace
and his two brothers, were to represent
the Romans. He was even more oppressed
in spirit when a messenger announced
that he and his two brothers were to
defend the honor of Alba.
Horace wanted no sympathy from
Curiace, though he bore him no ill will.
Curiace saw love of wife and family as
paramount over Horace's kind of
patriotism.
Horace then gave the lovers a moment
together before the debt of honor was to
be paid. Camille, mindful of the fact that
she was the daughter and the sister of
famous warriors, denounced the
patriotism that could make her choose between
love of family and of her future husband.
She begged Curiace to avoid a battle

which could only end in traaedv, no
matter what the outcome. His first duty,
however, was to his country, and he
brutally asserted this fact. Sabine and Ca-
mille then begged the cause of love of
home and family, while Horace and
Curiace defended honor and patriotism.
The women were unsuccessful in their
suit, and Old Horace comforted them as
the young men went off to prepare for
the combat. Young Horace, loving to his
sister and kind to his aged parent,
sought glorv in battle; Curiace, no less
patriotic, felt that he had lost wife,
brothers, and brothers-in-law by a grim turn of
fate.
Sabine, given at first to confusion and
later to bitterness, lamented her sad
position as the sister of the Alban warriors
and the wife of their adversary. When
she inquired of her friend Julie whether
her husband or her brothers had been
vanquished, she was told that no
resolution had been reached; the king had
just then arranged the combatants and
charged them to fight to the death, that
the fate of the two principalities might
be determined. Camille, wearied by her
solitary wonderings and fears, joined the
discussion. She renounced the deceptive
oracle, and neither the wife nor the
prospective bride could find solace for
their anxiety and grief. Sabine declared
that a wife was the most bereaved, to
which Camille replied that her s:ster-in-
law had never been in love. For the
moment the controversy was resolved by Old
Horace, who declared that Rome suffered
most; all else was in the hands of the
gods.
Julie then brought word that the
Alban brothers had been victorious, that
two of Old Horace's sons were dead, and
that Horace had fled the battlefield. The
old man was appalled that his son could
see his brothers die without drawing new
courage from such defeat and either go
down to death or glory. Camille felt
some relief that both her lover and
brother were for the moment spared, and
Sabine was content that her husband
was alive. Old Horace could share none
of these sentiments; his loyalties were
for honor, country, manliness.
Valere, dispatched by Tulle to bring
comfort to Old Horace, told of the
outcome of the battle. He said that Horace
had retreated as a ruse in order to attack
the Albans at a d ^advantage and that he
had killed all three. The old man, his
family honor vindicated, rejoiced in the
face of Camille's great sorrow. Left alone,
she lamented the death of her two
brothers and her lover and reviled Rome as
the symbol of patriotic infamy.
Into this scene of unrestrained grief
came the victorious warrior accompanied
by his faithful soldier-in-arms bearing the
swords of the vanquished brothers.
Displaying the arms, now the spoils of war,
which had killed their brothers, he
taunted Camille with the glory of Rome
while she declared his deed murder.
When he accused her of disloyalty, her
replies inflamed him to murder, and with
the sword of Curiace he killed his sister,
a deed which he defended as an act of
justice. Sabine, shocked by her husband's
bloody deed, was comforted crudely by
her husband, who felt that he had
performed an act of patriotism justified by
the insult to his country. The deeds of
heroism he recounted only heightened
the despair of his wife, who declared her
onlv wsh was to die.
Old Horace, proud of his son's
achievements but saddened by his vindictiveness,
was distressed over the sudden turn of
events which might now deprive him of
his last offspring. The fate of his son he
must now leave to his king. Tulle, in
response to the eloquent plea by Valere,
allowed Horace to speak for himself. The
hero and murderer wanted most to die,
knowing that his past glory had been
dimmed by the murder of his own sister.
Sabine begged the king to kill her that
her husband might live; Old Horace
wished the king to save the last of his
sons. Tulle, after he had heard all the
1613

pleas, felt that Horace's fate rested with that which he could not condone,
the gods, that a king could only pardon
1614

THE HORSE'S MOUTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joyce Cary (1888- )
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: The 1930's
Locale: London
First published: 1944
Principal characters:
Gulley Jimson, an unconventional artist
Sara Monday, his one-time model
Coker, a barmaid
Nosy, an aspiring artist
Mr. Hickson, an art collector
Professor Alabaster, a critic
Sir William Beeder, Jimson's benefactor
Critique:
The Horse's Mouth is one of several
novels depicting the life and times of
Gulley Jimson, artist and social rebel.
Told in the first person singular, the story
is a delightful combination of humor,
pathos, and down-to-earth philosophy.
Whether Gulley was a genius or the
greatest rogue in modern art circles is a
question which the writer makes no
attempt to settle, but there is no doubt that
Gulley is one of the most fascinating
figures in modern literature. Here is the
familiar picaresque romance brought up to
date and enlivened by the supple, witty
qualities of Mr. Cary's style.
The Story:
Just out of prison, Gulley Jimson looked
up his old friend Coker, the ugly
barmaid at the Eagle. Coker wanted him to
press a lawsuit over some of his
paintings, for if Gulley collected Coker would
collect from him. At last Gulley
managed to get away from her and return to
his studio in an old boat shed.
The shack roof leaked and the walls
sagged. His paints and brushes had either
been stolen or ruined bv rain and rats,
but the Fall was there. The Fall,
depicting Adam and Eve in their fall from
grace, would be his masterpiece.
Gulley had a questionable reputation
as an artist. Several years back he had
painted some nudes of Sara Monday,
startling portraits of a lovely girl in her
bath. Sara had lived with Gulley as his
wife. WTien the breakup came she had
stolen the pictures and sold most of them
to a collector named Hickson. One or two
she kept for herself. Gulley, past sixty
now, had done nothing since the Sara
nudes to add to his reputation, but he
still had faithful followers of tramps,
beggars, and young Nosy. Nosy, wanting to
be an artist, worshiped art and Gulley
Jimson.
To complete the Fall, Gulley needed
paints and brushes. In order to get
Gulley to see Sara Monday and secure
evidence for a lawsuit to compel Hickson
to return the Sara nudes, Coker bought
him some paints and brushes. Off and on
he worked on the Fall, driven sometimes
by compulsion to paint, sometimes by
desire for a beer or two.
When Coker pinned him down and
took him to see Sara, Gulley was stunned
to find her an old hag to whom he felt
drawn even while he pitied and despised
her. Sara willingly signed a statement
that she had given the stolen pictures to
THE HORSE'S MOUTH by Joyce Cary. By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright,
1944, by Joyce Cary.
1615

Hickson; then she tried to renew her
affair with Gulley. Sara had been badly
treated by a succession of men, but, like
Gulley, she had few complaints. Both
felt that the short-lived prosperity and
good times they had enjoyed were now
being paid for.'
Gulley, working intermittently on the
Fall, frequently had to trick Coker into
buying him paints. Once she forced him
to go with her to Hickson, to try to get
the pictures or a settlement for them.
When Hickson was ready to settle a small
sum on Gulley, even though he had
legitimately taken the pictures in return
for a debt, Gulley slipped some valuable
snuffboxes in his pocket and was caught
by Hickson and the police. Although that
bit of foolishness cost him six months, ht
bore no malice toward Hickson.
In jail, Gulley received a letter from
Professor Alabaster, who planned to write
a life history of the painter of the Sara
Monday pictures. Gulley thought the
idea ridiculous, until he decided there
might be money in it. He had had
another idea for another masterpiece, and
after his release he hurried back to the
boat shed to finish the Fall and get
started on his new work. He found Coker
pregnant and in possession of the shed.
Betrayed by her latest lover, her job at
the pub lost, she had moved to the shed
with her mother. Gulley had to find some
way to get the Fall out. Before he had
made any plans, he met Professor
Alabaster. Alabaster not only wanted to
write Gulley's life history but also hoped
to sell some of Gulley's work to Sir
William Beeder, a collector who admired
the paintings possessed by Hickson.
Gulley tried to interest Alabaster and Sir
William in one of the new masterpieces
he was going to do, but Sir William had
a great desire for one of the Sara nudes
or something similar.
Gulley still hoped to interest Sir William
in the Fall, but when he went again to
the boat shed he found that Coker's
mother had cut it up to mend the roof. Gulley
decided there was no use in getting his
temper up and doing something foolish;
then he would land back in jail before he
could do another masterpiece or make
a sale to Sir William. Besides, he
suddenly realized that he was tired of the Fall.
In the meantime, if Sir William
wanted a Sara nude, perhaps Gulley could
persuade old Sara to give him one of the
small ones she had kept. But Sara, still
vain, loved to take out the portraits of
her lovely youth and dream over them.
Gulley tried every trick he could think
of, without success.
When Sir William left London,
Gulley wheedled Alabaster into giving him
the key to Sir William's apartment.
Needing canvas and paints, he pawned
the furniture and art collections, and
even grudgingly let a sculptor rent one
end of the drawing-room to chip away
on a piece of marble. Gulley honestly
kept the pawn tickets so that Sir William
could redeem his possessions. He used
one wall for a weird painting he was
sure would please Sir William. But when
the owner returned unexpectedly, Gulley
decided to talk to him from a distance
and ducked out before his benefactor
found him.
With faithful Nosy, Gulley went to
the country for a time. There he worked
a new scheme to get money, but another
crook beat him up and sent him to the
hospital. While recuperating, Gulley had
another vision for a masterpiece and
wrote Sir William about his idea.
Alabaster replied for Sir William, who still
insisted on a nude and thanked Gulley
for caring for his furniture.
By the time Gulley got back to the
boat shed, Coker had had her baby and
was firmly installed there. Gulley moved
into another empty building and set
about preparing the wall for a painting
of the Creation. He was aided by Nosy
and several young art students he had
shanghaied. He tried again to get a nude
from old Sara. When Hickson died and
gave the Sara pictures to the nation,
1616

Gulley was famous. Alabaster found a
backer for the life history, and
distinguished citizens called on Gulley to see
about buying more pictures from him.
Gulley had, in the meantime, copied one
of his old pictures of Sara from the
original in the Tate Gallery and had sold it
on approval to Sir William for an
advance payment of fifty pounds.
He made one last try to get a picture
from Sara. When she refused, he pushed
her down the cellar stairs and broke her
back. Knowing the police would soon be
after him, he raced back to the Creation
and painted like a madman, trying to
finish the picture before his arrest. He
never completed the painting; his
spiteful landlord tore the building down over
his head. Thrown from his scaffold, he
came to in a police ambulance and
learned that he had suffered a stroke. He
did not grieve. Rather, he laughed at all
the jokes life had played on him, and
the jokes he had played on life.
1617

HORSESHOE ROBINSON
Type of work: Novel
Author: John P. Kennedy (1795-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1780
Locale: The Carolinas
First published: 1835
Principal characters:
Sergeant Horseshoe Robinson, a colonial patriot
Major Arthur Butler, his friend
Mr. Lindsay, a Loyalist
Mildred, Lindsay's daughter
Henry, Lindsay's son
Wat Adair, a Tory
Tyrrel, a British officer
Mary Musgrove, a patriot
John Ramsay, Mary s sweetheart
Critique:
Horseshoe Robinson, A Tale of the
Tory Ascendency is a love story and a
war story. A good narrative description of
the effect of the American Revolution on
the people of the Carolinas, the novel is
unspoiled by flag-waving sentimentality.
Horseshoe Robinson is a hunter and a
woodsman with a personality much like
that of our common story-book
conception of early American pioneers. The
love story is important in this novel, but
it is trivial compared to the importance
of the war itself. From a historical point
of view, the book makes a valuable
contribution with its portrayal of the
confusion caused by divided loyalties
between England and the Colonies.
The Story:
In the secluded back country of South
Carolina two men in the service of the
revolutionary colonial forces were
traveling together. They were Major Arthur
Butler and his shrewd sergeant, a man
known throughout the region as
Horseshoe Robinson, because of his former
occupation as a blacksmith. Although
they passed as chance travelers, they were
on a secret mission to trace the
movements of the enemy and to enlist aid for
the cause of colonial independence.
Before setting out on their dangerous
journey, Arthur Butler was moved to
stop near Dove-Cote, the residence of
Mr. Lindsay, a Loyalist gentleman who
had come to this territory to live because
he wished to avoid the conflict between
the colonists and the British government.
He himself was loyal to the crown
because of financial interests in England,
but his son Henry was sympathetic to the
American cause. Mildred, Lindsay's
daughter, was in love with Arthur
Butler, but because of the major's
connections with the colonial army Mr. Lindsay
had forbidden her to see Butler. For
this reason they met secretly in a grove
not far from Dove-Cote. After the
meeting she returned unseen to Mr. Lindsay's
house, and Butler and Horseshoe
Robinson went to the inn of Mistress Dimock,
not far away.
That night at the inn Horseshoe
encountered a Tory spy named James
Curry, a stealthy rascal who was passing
as the servant of Mr. Tyrrel, a guest at
Dove-Cote. Tyrrel, a disguised British
officer, was often at Mr. Lindsay's home,
ostensibly to secure that gentleman's aid
for the Loyalists, but in reality to court
Mildred, who despised him and
everything he stood for. Seeing Curry at the
inn, Horseshoe knew that Tyrrel was
again visiting Dove-Cote. Although he
let the fellow escape, he was afraid that
Tyrrel and Curry might cause trouble for
1618

Butler and himself on their trip through
South Carolina.
Major Butler had been sent by General
Gates on a mission to another rebel
general in Georgia. With Horseshoe as a
companion, the major felt certain that
he could complete his undertaking. .On
their first night in the forest Horseshoe
led Butler to the home of Wat Adair, an
old friend whom he thought loyal to the
rebel cause. However, Wat was not a
true friend. Having been bought off by
the Tories, he planned that night to
direct Butler and Horseshoe to an
ambush in the forest. But a relative of Wat,
Mary Musgrove, overheard Wat plotting
with another Tory, and being loyal to
the rebels she whispered to Butler the
plans she had learned.
Through her warning Horseshoe and
Butler avoided one trap, only to fall into
an ambush of some rough Tories, among
them Curry. Fearing that the drunken
crew planned to murder Butler and
himself, Horseshoe escaped, hoping to rescue
Butler later.
The family of Mary Musgrove was a
rebel family, and Horseshoe proceeded to
their home to get help in his plan. In
addition, the family of Mary's
sweetheart, John Ramsay, was a rebel family.
With the Ramsays and the Musgroves,
Horseshoe planned to engage the enemy
and bring Butler to safety. Mary,
pretending to be a vendor of fruit, was to
enter the Tory camp where Butler was
being held. There she was to
communicate with the major and give him word
of his rescuers' plans.
James Curry had charged Butler with
conspiring to murder Mr. Lindsay, a
loyal subject of the king. In order to
disprove this charge, Horseshoe returned
to Dove-Cote. Mildred's distress at the
news of her lover's arrest had caused her
father great grief, and he relented his
stern stand against Butler and assured
Mildred that he would not punish her for
her concern over the major. When
Horseshoe found Mildred and her brother
Henry at Dove-Cote, Mr. Lindsay had
gone off with Tyrrel to a meeting of
Loyalists in a nearby town. Having heard
Horseshoe's account of the charges
against Butler, Mildred resolved to go to
Cornwallis, the English general, and
plead with him for Butler's life. Mildred
was confident she could prove that
Butler could never have had designs on the
father of the girl he loved. Accompanied
by Henry Lindsay and Horseshoe
Robinson, she set out for Cornwallis'
headquarters.
John Ramsay and Mary were able to
effect Butler's escape from the camp
where he was held prisoner, but John
was killed before they reached a place of
safety. Grief-stricken by the loss of her
sweetheart, Mary attended the funeral
services, which were conducted by her
father, Allen Musgrove. While the
services were going on, they were interrupted
by some British troops, and Butler was
once again taken prisoner.
When Mildred and her two
companions succeeded in getting an interview
with Cornwallis, the courtly general gave
Mildred his promise that no harm would
befall Butler. While the general was
speaking with Mildred, he received a
message that Butler had escaped.
Mildred set out for Dove-Cote with
Horseshoe and her brother. On their way they
met Mary Musgrove, her family, and the
Ramsays, who told them of Butler's
second capture by British troops from a
nearby camp. Again Mildred resolved
to intercede on behalf of her lover, and
Henry and Horseshoe agreed to
accompany her.
While Mildred awaited an opportunity
to seek Butler, the forces of the Loyalists
and the rebels were engaging in the
battle of King's Mountain. During the
fighting Horseshoe rescued Butler and
brought him safely back to Mildred. Then
the two lovers revealed that they had
been married for over a year, in a secret
ceremony witnessed by Mistress Dimock
and Henry Lindsay.
Wat Adair was captured, and
Horseshoe saw to it that he received just pun*
1619

ishment for betraying his American
friends. Wat told Horseshoe that Tyrrel
was really an English general who had
bribed Wat to lead Butler and
Horseshoe into a trap. Henry, who had
participated in the battle, found Tyrrell
body lying among the dead and wounded.
James Curry was captured by rebel
forces. It seemed certain that the Tory
ascendency in South Carolina was at an
end.
But the happy reunion of the lovers
was clouded by the death of Mr. Lindsay.
When he learned that Mildred had gone
to see Cornwallis, he set out to find her
before the battle began. Following Tyrrel
toward the scene of the fighting, Mr.
Lindsay was fatally wounded and Tyrrel
killed. Mildred and Henry were able to
speak with their father before he died,
however, and he lived long enough to
take the hands of Mildred and Butler
and forgive them for having disobeyed
him. He died shortly afterward in a
delirium brought on by his fever.
Mildred and Butler returned to Dove-
Cote to live a long and prosperous life
together.
1620

THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin
First published: 1863
Principal characters:
Mr. Mervyn, son of Lord Dunoran
Lord Dunoran, an Irish peer convicted of murdering one
Mr. Beauclerc
Paul Dangerfield, the real murderer of Mr. Beauclerc
Zekiel Irons, Dangerfield's accomplice in the murder
Dr. Barnaby Sturk, a witness to the murder
Critique:
Le Fanu's career as a novelist dated
from the publication of this book, which
he began writing after the death of his
wife in 1858. He withdrew from society
at the time of her death and wrote to
keep himself occupied. Le Fanu's novels,
including this one, are novels of lush
life—and something more. Death,
mystery, and the supernatural are the grim
twilight materials of his fiction. Constant
speculation on death and the
supernatural enabled him to communicate a
spectral atmosphere to his novels. A master
of terror, Le Fanu has been favorably
compared in the past with such other
masters of the supernatural as Wilkie
Collins and Poe. This novel is generally
regarded as his masterpiece, although
Uncle Silas was the most popular during
his vogue.
The Story:
Lord Dunoran, an Irish peer, had been
executed after his conviction for
murdering a man named Beauclerc in London.
In addition, his estates were declared
forfeit to the crown, and his family was
left under a shadow. Eighteen years after
his death, his son, who went under the
name of Mr. Mervyn, took the body
back to Ireland and buried it in the
family vault in the Anglican church in
Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin. Following
the burial, Mervyn moved into an old
house that was reputed to be haunted;
several families had moved out of it
after having seen strange apparitions and
heard strange noises at night. Mervyn
hoped that in the neighborhood he might
pick up some clues that would lead him
to the true murderer of Beauclerc, for
the young man still believed his father
innocent of the crime for which he had
died years before.
About the same time that young
Mervyn took up residence in the haunted
house, another stranger came to
Chapelizod, a man named Paul Diangerfield, who
was looking after the affairs of a local
nobleman. Dangerfield was a very rich
man, and before long he had ingratiated
himself in the hearts of the local people
by his apparent good sense and his
liberality. Of young Mervyn, on the other
hand, the villagers were very suspicious,
for he kept to himself, and only a few
people knew his real identity.
The appearance of Paul Dangerfield
caused fears and apprehensions in the
minds of two men who lived in
Chapelizod. The two were Zekiel Irons, the
clerk at the Anglican church, and Dr.
Barnaby Sturk, a surgeon at the garrison
of the Royal Irish Artillery. Irons had
been the accomplice of the man who had
actually committed the murder of which
Lord Dunoran had been convicted. Dr.
Sturk had been a witness to the murder.
They both recognized Paul Dangerfield
to be a man named Charles Archer, a
1621

ruthless wretch who would think as
little of taking their lives as he had of
taking those of others.
Zekiel Irons, who wanted to live
without fear, resolved to help young Mervyn
discover the guilt of Archer-Dangerfield,
for Irons knew that he could never live
securely until the man was in prison or
dead. Irons had been present also when
Dangerfield had killed his other
accomplice, who had tried to blackmail Danger-
field. On two occasions Irons visited
Mervyn and imparted a portion of what
he knew; on both occasions he warned
Mervyn not to tell anyone at all, lest
his informant be killed.
Dr. Sturk, meanwhile, also
recognized Dangerfield as Charles Archer, the
man he had seen commit a murder. Dr.
Sturk, pressed for money, was trying to
become an agent for Lord Castlemallard,
who was represented by Dangerfield. Dr.
Sturk made the mistake, however, of
threatening Dangerfield with exposure
if the agency were not forthcoming. Dr.
Sturk was found terribly beaten about
the head one night. Since he was in a
deep coma, no one knew who had tried
to kill him. Evidence pointed, however,
to Charles Nutter, the man Dr. Sturk
was trying to replace as the nobleman's
agent in Chapelizod, for Nutter had
disappeared on the same night that Dr.
Sturk was attacked. There was no
evidence to indicate that Dangerfield had
been the attacker. He had been so
helpful to Dr. Sturk that he was under no
suspicion.
Dr. Sturk lingered on, and for a time
it seemed as if he might recover. Danger-
field arranged for a surgeon to come, at
a high fee, to operate on the doctor.
Dangerfield had convinced Mrs. Sturk
that the operation was the only chance
her husband had for life, but actually
Dangerfield hoped the operation would
be a failure and that Dr. Sturk would
die without revealing the identity of his
attacker. But the operation was a partial
success. Dr. Sturk regained his mind and
lived for several days, during which time
he made depositions to the magistrates
concerning the identity of his attacker
and the fact that Dangerfield had
murdered another man years before. These
events moved Zekiel Irons to go also to
the magistrates and tell what he knew
about the real identity of Paul Danger-
field and the part he himself had played
in the murder of Beauclerc. Even in the
face of that evidence, the magistrates
found it difficult to believe Dangerfield
guilty. The fact that Dangerfield had
paid for the operation and had lent money
to Mrs. Sturk, as well as the
disappearance of Charles Nutter, left them in
doubt.
But Charles Nutter, apprehended in
Dublin within one day of Dangerfield's
arrest, was able to prove that he had
been away on other business at the
time of the attack on Dr. Sturk. He had,
however, gone so close to the scene of
the crime that he had frightened off
Dangerfield before he could finish the
murder.
Nutter had not run away; he had
simply been to England and Scotland
trying to straighten out his domestic
affairs. A woman had attempted to prove
he was a bigamist because he had married
her several years before his marriage to
the woman the people in Chapelizod
knew as his wife. He had married the
woman, but she herself was a bigamist,
having been already married to another
man. Nutter had been off to find the true
husband, to prove that his marriage to
the woman was really no marriage at
all. He had been compelled to leave
secretly lest he be arrested as a bigamist
before he could gather evidence to clear
his name.
In another quarter of the village the
apprehension of Dangerfield had great
implications. He had been engaged to
the daughter of the commanding
general of the Royal Irish Artillery, even
though he was many years older than the
girl. Because of his wealth, the general
1622

was quite anxious to have his daughter
marry Dangerfield. The girl, however,
was in love with Mervyn and secretly
engaged to him. Dangerfield's arrest
prevented the general from marrying his
daughter to a man she did not love.
So far as Mervyn was concerned, the
apprehension of Dangerfield did more
than open the way for his marriage to
the general's daughter. The information
which Dr. Sturk and Zekiel Irons gave
concerning the murder of Beauclerc
cleared Mervyn's father, Lord Dunoran.
When Parliament met again, it returned
to Mervyn his good name, his title, and
the estates forfeited at the time of his
father's conviction.
Paul Dangerfield, alias Charles Archer,
was never convicted, nor was he tried
by a court. He died mysteriously in his
cell in the county gaol in Dublin while
awaiting trial, thus cheating the state
of executing him for murder. Not long
afterward, the new Lord Dunoran and
the daughter of the general commanding
the Royal Irish Artillery were married
in a great ceremony at Chapelizod.
1623

THE HOUSE BY THE MEDLAR TREE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Giovanni Verga (1840-1922)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Sicily
hirst published: 1881
Principal characters:
Padron 'Ntoni, head of the Malavoglia
Bastianazzo, his son
La Longa, Bastianazzo's wife
'Ntoni, their oldest son
Luca, their second son
Mena, their oldest daughter
Alessio, their youngest son
Lia, their youngest daughter
Uncle Crucifix Dumbbell, a local usurer
Goosefoot, his assistant
Don Michele, brigadier of the coast guard
Critique:
This novel, translated also under the
title The Malavoglia, is one of the most
interesting contributions of Italian
literature to modern realism. Its characters are
poor, simple people who can never rest
from their struggle to keep alive. The
message of the novel is that man is continually
being pulled apart by his own forces, so
that only by working together with his
fellow men can he hope to survive.
Written in a completely realistic fashion,
with no intrusion from the author, this
novel bridges the gap between realism and
naturalism.
The Story:
In the village of Trezza, on the island
of Sicily, the Malavoglia family had once
been great. Now the only Malavoglia left
were Padron 'Ntoni and his little brood
in the house by the medlar tree. But they
were happy and prosperous, living well on
the income brought in by their boat, the
Provvidenza.
When the oldest grandson, 'Ntoni, was
conscripted, the first sadness fell on the
household. In that same year other things
went badly, and the market for fish was
poor. With 'Ntoni gone, the money that
came in had to be divided with extra help
that Padron was forced to hire. Eventually
Padron 'Ntoni had to arrange a loan with
Uncle Crucifix Dumbbell to buy a
shipment of coarse black beans on credit from
him. The beans were to be resold at
Riposto by Padron's son, Bastianazzo.
Although La Longa, Bastianazzo's wife was
skeptical of this deal, she kept quiet, as
befitted a woman. Soon afterward,
Bastianazzo sailed away on the Provvidenza
with the cargo of beans aboard. All the
villagers whispered that the beans were
spoiled, that Uncle Crucifix had cheated
the Malavoglia. It was well known that
Uncle Crucifix was an old fox in all
money matters.
Nevertheless, if the beans were sold,
Padron 'Ntoni's family would be well off.
The man whose son was to marry Mena
Malavoglia rubbed his hands in
anticipation of his boy's good fortune. The women
of the village, and others too, agreed that
Mena was everything a girl should be. But
luck went against the Malavoglia family.
In the early evening a huge storm came
up. Down at the tavern Don Michele,
the brigadier of the coast guard, predicted
the doom of the Provvidenza. When word
came that the boat had been lost,
Bastianazzo with her, grief engulfed the
Malavoglia family. To add to their
troubles, Uncle Crucifix began to demand his
1624

money. All the neighbors who brought
gifts of condolence to the house by the
medlar tree looked about the premises as
if they saw Uncle Crucifix already in
possession.
Stubbornly Padron 'Ntoni and his
family set to work to repay the loan. It was
decided to have Mena married as soon
as possible. Alfio Mosca, who drove a
donkeycart and often lingered to talk with
the girl, was grieved at the news. Then
one day the Provvidenza, battered but still
usable, was towed into port. The Mala-
voglia rejoiced. At the same time 'Ntoni
arrived home. Luca, the second son, was
drafted. Each member of the family slaved
to make enough money to repay the debt.
Meanwhile Uncle Crucifix was fiercely
repeating his demands. At last he decided
to pretend to sell his debt to his assistant,
Goosefoot; then, when officers were sent
to Padron 'Ntoni's house, people could
not say that a usurer or the devil's money
had been involved in their troubles. A
short time later a stamped paper was
served on the Malavoglia family.
Frightened, they went to a city lawyer who told
them that Uncle Crucifix could do
nothing to them because the house was
in the name of the daughter-in-law, and
she had not signed the papers in the deal
of beans. Padron 'Ntoni felt guilty,
however; he had borrowed the money and it
must be paid back. When he asked advice
from the communal secretary, that official
told him that the daughter-in-law must
give dower rights on the house to Goose-
foot, who was now the legal owner of the
note. Although Goosefoot protested that
he wanted his money, he nevertheless
accepted a mortgage.
As the family began to gather money to
repay the loan, luck again went against
them. New taxes were put on pitch and
salt, two necessary commodities, and
personal relations between Goosefoot and the
family were strained when he and young
'Ntoni came to blows over a girl. In the
village there was talk of smugglers, and
the rumors involved two of 'Ntoni's close
friends. Goosefoot enlisted the aid of Don
Michele to watch 'Ntoni closely.
When Mena's betrothal was
announced, Alfio Mosca sadly left town.
Padron 'Ntoni, happy over the
approaching marriage of his granddaughter,
offered Goosefoot part of the money on the
loan. But Goosefoot, demanding all of it,
refused to be moved by the fact that Mena
needed a dowry. On top of these troubles
the Malavoglia family learned that Luca
had been killed in the war. Goosefoot
began again to send stamped papers.
When Padron 'Ntoni appealed to the
lawyer, he was told that he had been a fool
to let La Longa give up her dower rights
on the house but that nothing could be
done about the matter now. So the family
had to leave the house by the medlar tree
and move into a rented hovel.
Somewhat repaired and on a fishing
excursion, the Provvidenza ran into a storm.
When Padron 'Ntoni was injured by a
blow from the falling mast, young 'Ntoni
had to bring the boat in alone. After the
old man had recovered, 'Ntoni announced
his decision to leave home; he could no
longer stand the backbreaking, dull work
of his debt-ridden family. His mother,
grief-stricken by his departure, contracted
cholera and soon died. Meanwhile Mena's
engagement had been called off by her
betrothed's father. Everything was against
the Malavoglia. Goosefoot and Uncle
Crucifix gave the family no rest, but
insisted that they too were poor and needed
their money.
WTien young 'Ntoni returned to his
home with no fortune and clothing more
ragged than ever, the villagers laughed
with derision. Alessio, the youngest son,
now began to help with the work, and he
and 'Ntoni were able to earn a little
money to apply on the family debt. 'Ntoni,
still discontented, was often drunk coming
home from the tavern.
Don Michele told the boy's young
sister Lia, whom he secretly admired, that
she and Mena must keep their eyes on
1625

'Ntoni because he was involved with the
smugglers. Although the frightened girls
tried to remonstrate with their brother, he
refused to listen to their pleas. One night
Don Michele knocked at Lia's door and
told her that she must find her brother,
for the police were planning to ambush
the smugglers. His warning came too late
for the sisters to act, and 'Ntoni was
caught after he had stabbed Don Michele
in a scuffle during the raid.
Padron 'Ntoni spent all his savings in
an attempt to rescue his grandson. Then
he was told a false version of the incident,
that 'Ntoni had stabbed Don Michele
because he had learned of an affair between
the soldier and Lia. The old man was so
horrified by this news that he suffered a
stroke from which he never completely
recovered. Lia left home immediately,
without attempting to make known the true
facts of the case, and young 'Ntoni was
sent to the galleys for five years.
Gradually, under the direction of the
youngest son, Alessio, the affairs of the
family began to mend. Uncle Crucifix and
Goosefoot finally got their money, and
Alessio and his bride regained possession
of the house by the medlar tree.
1626

THE HOUSE IN PARIS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Elizabeth Bowen (1899- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: After World War I
Locale: France and England
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Henrietta Mountjoy, a brief visitor in Paris, eleven years of age
Leopold Moody, another visitor, nine years of age
Miss Naomi Fisher, their hostess for a day
Madame Fisher, Naomi's invalid mother
Karen Michaelis, friend of Naomi, former pupil of her mother
Max Ebhart, a young Parisian, attractive and intellectual
Critique:
Her facility in creating suspense would
have stood Elizabeth Bowen in good
stead had she chosen to write detective
novels. The House in Paris gradually
unravels a human secret which not only
the readers but also the characters of the
novel find both absorbing and oppressive.
The author's method, however, is not
to emphasize physical action but rather
to unfold complex relationships of
people, evolving slowly into a conclusion
that is logical but necessarily incomplete.
There are no pat endings to Miss Bowen's
books, no perfect dovetailing of desire
and fulfillment; as long as people live,
she convincingly and calmly implies,
there are questions that will be only
partially answered, wishes that will be only
partially granted. In this book she
presents the situation that a child creates by
merely existing: an inadvertent love and
an inadvertent begetting that become a
problem to several people. It is, in short,
the problem of an illegitimate boy, and
it has rarely been traced with more
keenness and candor.
The Story:
Henrietta arrived at the Gare du Nord
uncomfortably early in the morning. She
had never been in Paris before; and she
was not to be there long this time, for
one day only, between two night trains.
By a previous arrangement, the eleven-
year-old girl was met at the station by
Miss Naomi Fisher, an acquaintance of
Henrietta's grandmother, who would look
after her during her day in Paris.
Clutching her plush toy monkey while
the taxi bumped through gray Paris
streets, Henrietta drowsily absorbed Miss
Fisher's nervous chatter. The flow of
comments, however, was not entirely
pointless: Henrietta was presently made
to comprehend that her stopover would
be affected by some rather unusual
developments at Miss Fisher's house. For
one thing, Miss Fisher's mother was ill,
though today she was feeling better and
Miss Fisher could still hope to take
Henrietta out for a short sightseeing
expedition after lunch. A more important
complication seemed to be the presence of
Leopold.
Leopold, Miss Fisher explained with
obvious agitation, was an added
responsibility which she had not foreseen when
she agreed to meet Henrietta. He was
nine years old, and he had come from
Italy to see his mother, who was a very
dear friend of Miss Fisher. Apparently,
Henrietta gathered, he had never seen
his mother before, a fact which struck
the little girl as being quite odd and
mysterious. Miss Fisher agreed that the
circumstances were rather unusual, but she
THE HOUSE IN PARIS by Elizabeth Bowen. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1935, by Elizabeth D. C. Cameron.
1627

evaded a more direct explanation.
Leopold, she was careful to bring out, was
naturally excited and anxious; Henrietta
might play with him, if she liked—but
she must not question him about his
mother.
After arriving at the house in Paris,
Henrietta had breakfast and a nap on
the sofa before she awoke to find Leopold
standing across the salon and gazing at
her curiously. The children made wary
approaches to acquaintanceship and
tentatively compared notes on their
respective journeys. In spite of Miss Fisher's
injunction, Henrietta managed to learn
that Leopold lived at Spezia with his
foster parents. Before she could find out
more about him, she was summoned
upstairs to meet the ill Madame Fisher.
The latter seemed a queer person to
Henrietta; her manner was ironic and
penetrating, and, to her daughter's
distress, she insisted on discussing Leopold's
father. Once, Madame Fisher intimated,
he had broken her daughter's heart. Now
he was dead.
Left alone below, Leopold rummaged
through Miss Fisher's purse in a vain
search for information about his mother.
After Henrietta rejoined him, the
children had lunch and played aimlessly at
cards. While they were thus occupied,
the doorbell rang, and Miss Fisher was
heard to go to the door. A few minutes
later she entered the room, her face
suffused with regret and pity. Leopold
struggled manfully to affect nonchalance as
she told him that, after all, his mother
was not coming—she could not come.
Leopold had no way of knowing that
his mother was Karen Michaelis, now
married to Ray Forrestier. More than ten
years earlier, her engagement to Ray had
just been announced, and their friends
rejoiced in what seemed an ideal match.
The marriage was to be delayed,
however, until Ray's completion of a
diplomatic mission in the East. Shortly after
his departure from England, Karen
visited her aunt in Ireland. Returning home,
she found a pleasant surprise awaiting
her; Naomi Fisher was spending a few
days in London.
Karen and Naomi had been intimate
ever since Karen, an English schoolgirl,
had spent a year under the roof of
Madame Fisher in Paris. There she had been
housed, perfected in French, and given
Madame's keen-eyed supervision, along
with other English and American girls
who were accepted into the establishment
from time to time. There, too, she had
first become conscious of Max Ebhart,
a dark, taut, brilliant young man whose
conversation and intellect Madame
Fisher found stimulating. Rather
unaccountably, Max had now become engaged to
the unassuming Naomi and had
accompanied her to England to aid in the
settlement of an aunt's estate. Karen
welcomed the opportunity to see Naomi, but
she expressed reluctance to encounter
Max, whose strong self-possession and
penetrating mind had always affected her
strangely.
Naomi's persistence prevailed,
however, and on the final day of her stay
in London she succeeded in getting Max
and Karen together. While Naomi
prepared tea inside the almost-emptied
house of her dead aunt, Max and Karen
sat outside on the lawn. Little was said,
but both were conscious of the tension
that their presence together always
inspired. That night, as Karen said
goodbye at the station, she looked at Max, and
their eyes exchanged the mutual
admission that they were in love.
A month later the Michaelis telephone
rang. It was Max, in Paris, asking Karen
to meet him in Boulogne the following
Sunday. There they walked and talked,
the thought of Naomi shadowing their
conversation. Before they parted they
arranged to meet again, at Hythe, the next
Saturday. They spent the night together
and decided that they must marry, in
spite of their unwillingness to hurt
Naomi. Max went back to Paris to impart
the difficult news to his fiancde.
Karen never saw Max again; word of
his suicide came in a telegram from Na-
1628

omi. Weeks later Naomi herself crossed
the channel to tell Karen how Max had
slashed his wrists after a trying
interview with Madame Fisher. When Karen
confessed that she was going to bear
Max's child, the two girls considered the
plans she must make. Karen had already
tried to break off her engagement with
Ray Forrestier, but he had written that
he would never give her up.
Nevertheless, she intended to be gone when he
returned to London; she would travel to
Paris with Naomi and then go on to
Germany for perhaps a year. She and Naomi
would find a good home for the child.
Meanwhile no one else—except possibly
Karen's mother—should ever know.
These were the facts about his parents
that Leopold had never learned. Now,
his mother having failed him by not
coming to get him at the house in Paris,
he stood, for a moment, immovable,
lapped in misery. His air of resolution
and determined indifference soon gave
way. Crossing to the mantelpiece and
pressing himself against it, he burst into
sobs. Henrietta tried to comfort him, but
he ignored her. Recovering from his
spasm of grief, he was sent upstairs to
endure Madame Fisher's careful scrutiny.
He found her surprisingly sympathetic.
She told him something of his mother's
marriage to Ray Forrestier, and he
confided his determination not to return to
his foster parents in Italy. Something in
the old invalid's inner force seemed to
stiffen and encourage him.
Downstairs the doorbell rang once
more, and presently Miss Fisher came
running swiftly up the steps. She
directed Leopold to the salon where he
found a tall, pleasant-looking
Englishman. It was Ray Forrestier; overruling
Karen's doubts, he had come to accept
Leopold as his own son and to restore
him to his mother.
/
1629

THE HOUSE OF ATREUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: After the fall of Troy
Locale: Argos
First presented: 458 B.C.
Principal characters:
Agamemnon, the king
Clytemnestra, his queen
Cassandra, a Trojan captive
Aegisthus, paramour of Clytemnestra
Orestes, son of Agamemnon
Electra, his sister
Critique:
In the archonship of Philocles, in 458
B.C., Aeschylus won first prize with his
dramatic trilogy, The House of Atreus,
This story of the doomed descendants of
the cruel and bloody Atreus is one of the
great tales of classic literature.
Aeschylus, building his plays upon themes of
doom and revenge, was deeply concerned
with moral law in the Greek state. For
this reason the moral issues of the plays
aire clear and steadfast, simple and
devastating in implication, especially the
working of conscience in the character of
Orestes. Agamemnon, The
Libation-Bearers, and The Furies are the individual
titles which make up the trilogy.
The Story:
The house of Atreus was accursed
because in the great palace at Argos the
tyrant, Atreus, had killed the children
of Thyestes and served their flesh to their
father at a royal banquet. Agamemnon
and Menelaus were the sons of Atreus.
When Helen, wife of Menelaus, was
carried off by Paris, Agamemnon was
among the Greek heroes who went with
his brother to battle the Trojans for her
return. But on the way to Troy, while
the fleet lay idle at Aulis, Agamemnon
was prevailed upon to sacrifice his
daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods. Hearing of
this deed, Clytemnestra, his wife, vowed
revenge. She gave her son, Orestes, into
the care of the King of Phocis, and in
the darkened palace nursed her
consuming hate.
In her desire for vengeance she was
joined by Aegisthus, surviving son of
Thyestes, who had returned from his
long exile. Hate brought the queen and
Aegisthus together in a common cause;
they became lovers as well as plotters
in crime.
The ship of Menelaus having been
delayed by a storm, Agamemnon returned
alone from the Trojan wars. A
watchman first saw the lights of his ship upon
the sea and brought to his queen the news
of the king's return. Leaving his men
quartered in the town, Agamemnon
drove to the palace in his chariot, beside
him Cassandra, captive daughter of the
king of Troy and an augeress of all
misfortunes to come, who had fallen to
Agamemnon in the division of the spoils.
She had already warned the king that
some evil was to befall him.
Agamemnon, however, had no
suspicions of his homecoming, as
Clytemnestra came to greet him at the palace
doorway, her armed retainers about her,
magnificent carpets unrolled for the feet
of the conqueror of Troy. Agamemnon
chided his queen for the lavishness of
her reception and entered the palace to
refresh himself after his long journey.
He asked Clytemnestra to receive
Cassandra and to treat his captive kindly.
After Agamemnon had retired,
Clytemnestra returned and ordered
Cassandra, who had refused to leave the chariot,
1630

to enter the palace. When Cassandra
persisted in remaining where she was, the
queen declared she would not demean
herself by bandying words with a
common slave and a madwoman. She
reentered the palace. Cassandra lifted her
face toward the sky and called upon
Apollo to tell her why she had been
brought to this cursed house. She
informed the spectators in front of the
palace that Clytemnestra would murder
Agamemnon. She lamented the fall of
Troy, recalled the butchery of Thyestes'
children, and the doom that hung over
the sons of Atreus, and foretold again
the murder of Agamemnon by his queen.
As she entered the palace, those outside
heard the death cry of Agamemnon
within.
A moment later Clytemnestra appeared
in the doorway, the bloody sword of
Aegisthus in her hand. Behind her lay
the body of the king, entangled in the
rich carpets. Clytemnestra defended
herself before the citizens, saying she had
killed the king for the murder of Iphi-
genia, and had also killed Cassandra, with
whom Agamemnon had shamed her
honor. Her deed, she told the citizens
defiantly, had ended the bloody lust of
the house of Atreus.
Then she presented Aegisthus, son of
Thyestes, who asserted that his
vengeance was just and that he intended to
rule in the palace of Agamemnon.
Reproaches were hurled at the guilty pair.
There were cries that Orestes would
avenge his father's murder. Aegisthus
and Clytemnestra, in a fury of guilty
horror, roared out their self-justification
for the crime and defied the gods
themselves to end their seizure of power.
Orestes, grown to manhood, returned
from the land of Phocis, to discover that
his mother and Aegisthus had murdered
his father. He mourned his father's
death and asked the king of the gods to
give him ability to take vengeance upon
the guilty pair. Electra, daughter of
Agamemnon, also mourned and cursed
the murderers. Encountering her brother,
she did not at first recognize him, for
he appeared in the disguise of a
messenger who brought word of the death
of Orestes. They met at their father's
tomb, where he made himself known to
his sister. There he begged his father's
spirit to give him strength in his
undertaking. Electra assured him nothing but
evil could befall any of the descendants
of Atreus and welcomed the quick
fulfillment of approaching doom.
Learning that Clytemnestra had once
dreamed of suckling a snake which drew
blood from her breast, Orestes saw in this
dream the image of himself and the deed
he intended to commit. He went to the
palace in disguise and killed Aegisthus.
Then he confronted Clytemnestra, his
sword dripping with the blood of his
mother's lover, and struck her down.
Orestes displayed the two bodies to
the people and announced to Apollo that
he had done the deed required of him.
But he realized that he must suffer for
his terrible crime. He began to go mad
as Furies, sent by his mother's dead spirit,
pursued him.
The Furies drove Orestes from land
to land. Finally he took refuge in a
temple, but the Pythian priestess claimed
the temple was profaned by the presence
of the horrible Furies, who lay asleep
near Orestes. Then Apollo appeared to
tell Orestes that he had put the Furies
to sleep so the haunted man could get
some rest. He advised Orestes to visit
the temple of Pallas Athena and there
gain full absolution for his crime.
While Orestes listened, the ghost of
Clytemnestra spitefully aroused the
Furies and commanded them to torture
Orestes again. When Apollo ordered the
Furies to leave, the creatures accused him
of blame for the murder of Clytemnestra
and Aegisthus and the punishment of
Orestes. The god confessed he had
demanded the death of Agamemnon's
murderers. He was told that by his demands
he had caused an even greater crime,
1631

matricide. Apollo said Athena should
decide the justice of the case.
In Athens, in the temple of the
goddess, Orestes begged Athena to help him.
Replying the case was too grave for her
to decide alone, she called upon the
judges to help her reach a wise decision.
There were some who believed the
ancient laws would be weakened if evidence
were presented, and they claimed Orestes
deserved his terrible punishment.
When Orestes asked why Clytem-
nestra had not been persecuted for the
murder of Agamemnon, he was told her
crime had not been the murder of a
blood relative, as his was. Apollo was
another witness at the trial. He claimed
the mother was not the true parent, that
the father, who planted the seed in the
mother's womb, was the real parent, as
shown in the tracing of descent through
the male line. Therefore, Orestes was
not guilty of the murder of a true
member of his blood family.
The judges decided in favor of Orestes.
There were many, however, who in an
angry rage cursed and condemned the
land where such a judgment might
prevail. They cried woe upon the younger
gods and all those who tried to wrest
ancient rights from the hands of
established tradition. But Athena upheld the
judgment of the court and Orestes was
freed from the anger of the Furies.
1632

A HOUSE OF GENTLEFOLK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1858
Principal characters:
Marya Dmitrievna, a wit
Lavretzky, her cousin
Liza, her daughter
Varvara, Lavretzky's wife
Panshin, an official
Critique:
A House of Gentlefolk, sometimes
translated as A Nobleman s Nest, belongs
with the simple, powerful group of
Turgenev's romances. Here are two
characters who stand as symbols of Russia:
Lavretzky and Liza. Although their lot
is a sad one, they are presented in heroic
mold. Indeed, the author in this work
exhibits a greater degree of Slavophilism
than is usually found in his novels. In
this work Turgenev shows little patience
with the detractors of Russia, those who
exalt the worth of French and German
culture. Even the glittering Panshin must
admit the worthiness of Lavretzky's aim
to cultivate the soil.
The Story:
Marya, since the death of her husband,
had become a social leader in her small
provincial town. Her daughter Liza spoke
French quite well and played the piano.
Her other children had the best tutors
available. She delighted to receive guests,
especially Panshin, who had an important
position in Moscow. Her evening
gatherings were always entertaining when
Panshin was there to quote his own poetry.
It was rumored that Lavretzky was
returning to the district. Although he was a
cousin of the house, Marya scarcely knew
how to treat him, for Lavretzky had made
an unfortunate marriage. He was
separated from his pretty wife, who was
reputed to be fast and flighty.
But Lavretzky's visit created no
difficulties. He was a rather silent, affable man
who noticed Liza with interest. Liza was a
beautiful, religious-minded girl of
nineteen. It was very evident that the brilliant
Panshin was courting her with the full
approval of her mother. On the evening of
his visit Lavretzky was not impressed with
Panshin's rendition of his musical
romance, but the ladies were ecstatic.
The following day Lavretzky went on
to his small country estate. The place was
run-down because it had been
uninhabited since his sister's death. Lavretzky,
content to sink into a quiet country life,
ordered the gardens cleaned up, moved in
some newer furniture, and began to take
an interest in the crops. He seemed
suspended in a real Russian atmosphere close
to the land. The new life was particularly
pleasing after his residence in France and
the painful separation from his wife.
Lavretzky had had a different
upbringing. His father, disappointed by his failure
to inherit an aunt's fortune, had decided
to make his son a strong man, even a
spartan. At twelve Lavretzky was dressed
in Highland kilts and trained in
gymnastics and horsemanship. He ate only one
meal a day and took cold showers at four
in the morning. Along with the physical
culture intended to produce a natural man
according to Rousseau's doctrines, the
father filled his son full of Voltaire's
philosophy.
The father died horribly after enduring
pain for two years. During this period he
lost all his bravery and atheistic
independence; at the end he was a sniveling
1633

wreck. His death was a release to
Lavretzky, who immediately enrolled, at
the age of twenty-three, in a university in
Moscow.
At the opera one night he met the
beautiful Varvara, daughter of a retired general
who lived mostly by his wits. At first the
parents had little use for Lavretzky, for
they thought him only an unimportant
student. When they learned, however,
that he came of good family and was a
landed proprietor, they favored an early
marriage. Since Varvara wanted to travel,
Lavretzky wound up his affairs and
installed his new father-in-law as overseer
of his properties.
In Paris, Varvara began a dizzy social
whirl. Her adoring husband, content
merely to be at her side, let her indulge
her whims freely. She soon had a
reputation as a brilliant hostess, but her
guests thought her husband a
nonentity. Lavretzky had no suspicion that
his wife was anything but a devoted wife
and mother to their daughter until a letter
came by accident into his hands. From it
he learned of her lover and their sordid,
furtive meetings in obscure apartments.
Lavretzky left home immediately and took
up separate residence. When he wrote to
Varvara, telling her of the reason for the
separation, she did not deny her guilt, but
only asked for consideration. Settling an
income on his wife, Lavretzky returned to
Russia.
After spending some time on his estate,
Lavretzky began to ride into town
occasionally to call on Marya and her
family. After he became better acquainted
with Liza, the young girl scolded him for
being so hard-hearted toward his wife.
According to her religious beliefs, Lavretzky
should have pardoned Varvara for her sins
and gone on with the marriage. Lavretzky,
in turn, warned Liza that Panshin was not
the man for her. The gay young official
was a diplomat, all surface and no
substance. Lavretzky had an ally in Marfa,
the old aunt who also saw through Pan-
shin's fine manners and clever speeches.
When Panshin proposed to Liza by letter,
she postponed making a decision.
Liza's music teacher was an old, broken
German named Lemm. Although Lavret-
sky had little ear for music, he strongly
appreciated Lemm's talent. He invited die
old man to his farm. During the visit the
two men found much in common. La-
vretsky was saddened to see that the old
music teacher was hopelessly in love with
Liza.
One night, in Marya's drawing-room,
Panshin was brilliantly holding forth on
the inadequacies of Russia. The country
was much behind the rest of Europe, he
asserted, in agriculture and politics. The
English were superior in manufacture and
merchandising, the French in social life
and the arts, the Germans in philosophy
and science. His views were the familiar
theme of the aristocratic detractors of
Russia. The usually silent Lavretzky finally
took issue with Panshin and skillfully
demolished his every argument. Liza
listened with approval.
In a French paper Lavretzky came upon
a brief notice in the society section; his
wife was dead. For a while he could not
think clearly, but as the import of the
news came home to him he realized that
he was in love with Liza. Riding into
town, he gave the paper quietly to Liza.
As soon as he could be alone with her, he
declared his love. The young girl received
his declaration soberly, almost seeming to
regard their love as a punishment.
Although troubled at first by her attitude,
Lavretzky soon achieved a happiness he
had never expected to find.
That happiness, however, was
shortlived. His servant announced one day that
Varvara had returned with their daughter.
His wife told him she had been very ill
and had not bothered to correct the rumor
of her death. Now she asked only to be
allowed to live somewhere near him.
Suspecting that her meekness was only
assumed, Lavretzky arranged for her to
live on a distant estate, far from his own
house, and went to break the news to Liza.
liza was controlled. She might almost
have awaited the punishment, for she
1634

knew that sorrow was the lot of all
Russians. Varvara brazenly called on Marya
and completely captivated her with her
beauty, her French manners, and her
accomplished playing and singing. Liza met
Lavretzky's wife with grave composure.
For a time Varvara complied with her
promise to stay isolated on the distant
estate, where she frequently entertained
Panshin. In the winter, when she moved
to Moscow, Panshin was her devoted
follower. At last she went back to Paris.
Liza entered a convent. Lavretzky saw
her once from a distance as she scurried
timidly to a prayer service. Taking what
strength he could from the soil, he
remained on his farm. When he was forty-
five, he visited the house where Liza had
lived. Marya and all the older people of
the household had died. He felt ill at ease
among the younger, laughing generation.
1635

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: New York
first published: 1905
Principal characters:
Lily Bart, a social schemer
Mr. Selden, her friend
Mr. Rosedale, a financier
Percy Gryce, an eligible young man
Gus Trenor, a wealthy socialite
Judy Trenor, his wife
Bertha Dorset, who hated Lily
George Dorset, Bertha's husband
Critique:
The House of Mirth is still popular
among readers who enjoy stories about
the social life of the early part of this
century. The theme of the book is a
criticism of the emptiness and folly of
life among the idle rich. Lily Bart
sacrificed herself, her principles, her
chance for real love, and even her life,
in a vain attempt to find a life of ease
for herself. The conflict arose when her
better nature exerted itself. In that
respect she was superior to those who
scorned her, for most of them had no
redeeming qualities of character. The
story is easily read, for it is written with
Edith Wharton's usual skill.
The Story:
Selden enjoyed watching Lily Bart put
a new plan into operation. She was a
very beautiful and clever young lady,
and no matter how impromptu any
action of hers appeared, Selden knew
that she never moved without a definitely
worked out plan.
Lily had almost no money of her
own; her beauty and her good family
background were her only assets. Her
father had died soon after a reversal of
his financial affairs, and her mother had
drilled into her the idea that a wealthy
marriage was her only salvation. After
her mother's death, Lily was taken in
by her aunt, Mrs. Peniston. Mrs. Penis-
ton supplied her with fashionable clothes
and a good home, but Lily needed
jewels, gowns, and cash to play bridge
if she were to move in a social circle
filled by wealthy and eligible men.
Mr. Rosedale, a Jewish financier,
would gladly have married Lily and
provided her with a huge fortune, for
he wanted to be accepted into the
society in which Lily moved. But Lily
thought that she still had other prospects
less repulsive to her, the most likely one
being Percy Gryce, who lived protected
from scheming women by his watchful
widowed mother.
Lily used her knowledge of his quiet
life to her advantage. Selden, Lily, and
Gryce were all house guests at the home
of Gus and Judy Trenor, and the
opportunity was a perfect one for lily,
who assumed the part of a shy, demure
young girl. But when Gryce was ready
to propose, she let the chance slip away
from her, for Lily really hated the kina
of person she had become. In addition,
although Selden was poor and offered
her no escape from her own poverty, she
was attracted to him because only he
really understood her.
Gus Trenor offered to invest some of
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Son*. Copy
right, 1905, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed, 1933, by Edith Wharton.
1636

Lily's small income, and over a period
of time he returned to her more than
eight thousand dollars, which he assured
her was profit on the transaction. With
that amount she was able to pay most
of her creditors and reopen her charge
accounts. Gus seemed to think,
however, that his wise investment on her
account should make them better friends
than Lily felt was desirable.
In the meantime, Lily unexpectedly
got possession of some letters which
Bertha Dorset had written to Selden.
Bertha had once loved Selden, but George
Dorset's fortune was great and she had
left Selden for George. She continued
to write to Selden after her marriage.
When Gus Trenor began to get more
insistent in his demands for Lily's
companionship, she became really worried.
She knew that people were talking about
her a great deal and that her position in
society was precarious. She turned to
Selden for advice. He told her that he
loved her for what she could be, but
that he could give her nothing now. He
had no money, and he would not even
offer her his love because he could not
love her as she was, a scheming, ruthless
fortune-hunter.
One night Lily received a message
that Judy Trenor wanted her to call.
When she arrived at the Trenor home,
Lily found Gus there alone. He had sent
the message. Gus told her then that the
money had not been profit on her
investment, but a gift from him. When
he intimated that she had always known
the money was from him personally,
Lily was terrified, but at last she
managed to get out of the house. She knew
then that there was only one thing for
her to do. She must accept Rosedale's
offer of marriage. But before she wrote
to Rosedale accepting his offer, the Dor-
sets invited her to take a Mediterranean
cruise on their yacht. The moment of
decision was postponed for a time.
Selden also left New York. Unknown
to her, he had seen Lily leave the Trenor
bouse on the night Gus had tricked her
into thinking Judy wanted her to call.
Selden had always refused to believe
the unsavory stories circulating about
Lily, but the evidence of his own eyes,
he thought, was too plain to be ignored.
When he met Lily abroad, he treated her
with courteous disinterest.
Lily returned to New York. Her aunt,
Mrs. Peniston, had died, leaving Lily
ten thousand dollars. Lily planned to
repay Gus Trenor with her inheritance,
and she found intolerable the delay in
settling her aunt's estate. Meanwhile
Bertha Dorset's insinuations about Lily's
conduct abroad, coupled with the talk
about Lily and Gus Trenor, finished
Lily's reputation. She took various
positions, until at last she was reduced
to working in the factory of a milliner.
She had first offered to accept Rosedale's
former proposal of marriage, but she was
no longer useful to Rosedale since her
fall from favor, and he refused to marry
her. He knew that Lily had the letters
Bertha had written Selden, and he also
knew that George Dorset no longer loved
his wife and would gladly marry Lily.
It seemed to Rosedale that Lily had only
two alternatives, either to take George
Dorset away from Bertha or to go to
Bertha with the letters and force her
to receive Lily once more.
At first Lily's feeling for Selden made
her shrink from doing anything that
would harm him. Then she lost her
position. Without money to buy food
or to pay for her room in a dingy
boarding-house, she reluctantly took the letters
and started to the Dorset home. On the
way she stopped to see Selden. When
he again told her that he loved her, or
rather that he would love her if she
would only give up her greed for wealth
and position, she gave up her plan and,
unseen by him, dropped the letters into
the fireplace. Then she thanked him for
the kindness he, and he alone, had given
her, and walked out into the night.
When she returned to her room, she
found the check for the ten thousand
dollars of her inheritance. She sat down
1637

at once and wrote a check to Gus Trenor
for the amount she owed him and put
it in an envelope. In another envelope
she placed the ten thousand dollar check
and addressed the envelope to her bank.
She put the two envelopes side by side
on her desk before she lay down to
sleep.
But sleep would not come. At last
she took from her bureau a bottle of
chloral, which she had bought for those
nights when she could not sleep. She
poured the contents of the bottle into a
glass and drank the whole. Then she
lay down again upon her bed.
The next morning, feeling a sudden
need to see Lily at once, Selden went
early to her rooming-house. There he
found a doctor already in attendance
and Lily dead from an overdose of
chloral. On her desk he saw the two
envelopes. The stub of the open
checkbook beside them told the whole story
of Lily's last effort to get her accounts
straight before she died. He knew then
that his love for her had been justified,
but the words he spoke as he knelt by
her bed came too late.
1638

THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: 1850
Locale: Salem, Massachusetts
First published: 1851
Principal characters:
Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, a spinster
Clifford Pyncheon, her brother
Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, a kinsman
Phoebe Pyncheon, a distant cousin
Mr. Holgrave, Miss Hepzibah's lodger
Critique:
The theme of Hawthorne's justly
famous novel is obviously that the sins of
the fathers are passed on to the children
in succeeding generations. In the
ingenious plot of this novel the reader
watches the gradual expiation of old
Matthew Maule's curse on the Pyncheon
family, as youth in the guise of Phoebe
and Holgrave enters the old house.
Evident in the finely-written pages of The
House of the Seven Gables is the author's
lively interest in New England history,
and his increasing doubts about a
moribund New England that looked
backward to past times.
The Story:
The House of the Seven Gables was a
colonial house built in the English style
of half-timber and half-plaster. It stood
on Pyncheon Street in quiet Salem. The
house had been built by Colonel
Pyncheon, who had wrested the desirable
site from Matthew Maule, a poor man
executed as a wizard. Because Colonel
Pyncheon was responsible and because
he was taking the doomed man's land,
Maule at the moment of his execution
declared that God would give the Pyn-
cheons blood to drink. But in spite of
this grim prophecy the colonel had his
house, and its builder was Thomas
Maule, son of the old wizard.
Colonel Pyncheon, dying in his great
oak chair just after the house had been
completed, choked with blood so that
his shirt front was stained scarlet.
Although doctors explained the cause of
his death as apoplexy, the townsfolk had
not forgotten old Maule's prophecy. The
time of the colonel's death was
inauspicious. It was said he had just
completed a treaty by which he had bought
huge tracts of land from the Indians,
but this deed had not been confirmed by
the general court and was never
discovered by any of his heirs. Rumor also had
it that a man was seen leaving the house
about the time Colonel Pyncheon died.
More recently another startling event
had occurred at the House of the Seven
Gables. Jaffrey Pyncheon, a bachelor,
had been found dead in the colonel's
great oaken armchair, and his nephew,
Clifford Pyncheon, had been sentenced
to imprisonment after being found guilty
of the murder of his uncle.
These events were in the unhappy
past, however, and in 1850, the House
of the Seven Gables was the home of
Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, an elderly,
single woman, who let one wing of the
old house to a young man of radical
tendencies, a maker of daguerreotypes,
whose name was Mr. Holgrave.
Miss Hepzibah was about to open a
shop in one of the rooms of her house.
Her brother Clifford was coming home
from the state prison after thirty years,
and she had to earn money in some way
to support him. But on the first day of
her venture as a storekeeper Miss Hepzi-
1639

bah proved to be a failure. The
situation was saved, however, by the arrival
of young Phoebe Pyncheon from the
country. Soon she was operating the
shop at a profit.
Clifford arrived from the prison a
broken man of childish, querulous ways.
Once he tried to throw himself from a
big arched window which afforded him
almost his only contact with the outside
world. He was fond of Phoebe, but Miss
Hepzibah irritated him with her sullen
scowling. For acquaintances Clifford had
Uncle Venner, a handy man who did
odd jobs for the neighborhood, and the
tenant of the house, Mr. Holgrave, the
daguerreotypist.
The only other relative living in town
was the highly-respected Judge
Pyncheon, another nephew of the old Jaffrey
Pyncheon, for whose murder Clifford
had spent thirty years in prison. He was,
in fact, the heir of the murdered man
and he had been somehow involved with
Clifford's arrest and imprisonment. For
these reasons Clifford refused to see him
when the judge offered to give Clifford
and Hepzibah a home at his countryseat.
Meanwhile, Phoebe had become
friendly with Mr. Holgrave. In turn, he
thought that she brought light and hope
into the gloomy old house, and he missed
her greatly when she returned to her
home in the country. Her visit was to be
a brief one, however, for she had gone
only to make some preparations before
coming to live permanently with Miss
Hepzibah and Clifford.
Before Phoebe returned from the
country, Judge Pyncheon visited the
House of the Seven Gables and, over
Miss Hepzibah's protest, insisted on
seeing Clifford, who, he said, knew a
family secret which meant great wealth for
the judge. When at last she went out
of the room to summon her brother, Judge
Pyncheon sat down in the old chair by
the fireplace, over which hung the
portrait of the Colonel Pyncheon who had
built the house. As the judge sat in the
old chair, his ticking watch in his hand,
an unusually strong family likeness could
be noted between the stern judge and his
Puritan ancestor in the portrait.
Unable to find Clifford to deliver the judge's
message, Miss Hepzibah returned. As
she approached the door, Clifford
appeared from within, laughing and
pointing to the chair where the judge sat
dead of apoplexy under the portrait of
the old colonel. His shirt front was
stained with blood. The wizard's curse
had been fulfilled once more; God had
given him blood to drink.
The two helpless old people were so
distressed by the sight of the dead man
that they crept away from the house
without notifying anyone and departed
on the train. The dead body of the judge
remained seated in the chair.
It was some time before the body was
discovered by Holgrave. When Phoebe
returned to the house, he admitted her.
He had not yet summoned the police
because he wished to protect the old
couple as long as possible. While he and
Phoebe were alone in the house,
Holgrave declared his love for her. They
were interrupted by the return of Miss
Hepzibah and the now calm Clifford.
They had decided that to run away would
not solve their problem.
The police attributed the judge's death
to natural causes, and Clifford, Miss
Hepzibah, and Phoebe became the heirs to
his great fortune. It now seemed certain
that Jaffrey Pyncheon had also died of
natural causes, not by Clifford's hand,
and that the judge had so arranged the
evidence as to make Clifford appear a
murderer.
In a short time all the occupants of
the House of the Seven Gables were
ready to move to the judge's country
estate which they had inherited. They
gathered for the last time in the old room
under the dingy portrait of Colonel
Pyncheon. Clifford said he had a vague
memory of something mysterious
connected with the picture. Holgrave offered
to explain the mystery and pressed a
secret spring near the picture. When he
1640

did so, the portrait fell to the floor,
disclosing a recess in the wall. From this
niche Holgrave drew out the ancient
Indian deed to the lands which the Pyn-
cheons had .claimed. Clifford then
remembered he had once found the secret
spring. It was this secret which Judge
Pyncheon had hoped to learn from
Clifford.
Phoebe asked how Holgrave happened
to know these facts. The young man
explained his name was not Holgrave, but
Maule. He was, he said, a descendant
of the wizard, Matthew Maule, and of
Thomas Maule who built the House of
the Seven Gables. The knowledge of
the hidden Indian deed had been handed
down to the descendants of Thomas
Maule, who built the compartment
behind the portrait and secreted the deed
there after the colonel's death.
Holgrave was the last of the Maules and
Phoebe, the last of the Pyncheons, would
bear his name. Matthew Maule's curse
had been expiated.
1641

THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Douglas (George Douglas Brown, 1869-1902)
Type of plot: Regional realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Rural Scotland
first published: 1901
Principal characters:
John Gourlay, a wealthy merchant
Young John, his son
Mrs. Gourlay, his slovenly wife
James Wilson, Gourlay's competitor
Critique:
Disgusted with the quaint and
sentimental novels in which writers of the
kailyard school portrayed his native
Scotland, George Douglas Brown attempted
to present in his work a more realistic
picture of Scottish life in the late
nineteenth century. The House With the
Green Shutters is a forceful book, one
alive with characters that grip the reader
in their problems. Brown's purpose was
to show the true Scottish peasant as he
saw him.
The Story:
John Gourlay was proud of his twelve
wagons and his many business successes,
but mostly he was proud of his House
with the Green Shutters. Into it he had
put all the frustration he felt for his
lack of friends, his slovenly wife, his
weakling son. Gourlay's was a pride of
insolence. He would have more than his
neighbors, his betters; he would make
them acknowledge him as their superior.
Gourlay had not found a golden touch.
He had simply worked hard, turning
every shilling into pounds by any method
open to him. In the process he became
mean, stingy, boastful, and evil.
His son John had inherited all of his
characteristics except his courage. As a
schoolboy, constantly ridiculed by his
mates, he took refuge in boasting of his
father's wealth and power. He was no
good with his fists, and his only revenge
after a sound drubbing was to tell his
father. Gourlay hated his son almost
as much as he hated everyone else, but
he could not let his son be laughed at by
the sons of his enemies. Thus John was
avenged by the father who despised him.
Gourlay also hated his wife. She who
had once been a laughing, pretty lass
had become a slattern and a bore whose
son was her only reason for living. On
him she lavished all the love denied her
by her husband. There was one daughter.
She was ignored by her mother and
favored by her father, each parent taking
the opposite point of view from the other.
The whole village bowed to Gourlay,
even while they prayed that he would
one day meet his match. They were not
to be disappointed. One James Wilson
returned to the village with money he
had earned during his fifteen years'
absence. One of the first to meet Wilson
was Gourlay. When Wilson had left
years before, Gourlay had been then as
now the big man in the town. Had
Gourlay said a kind word or given one bit of
praise for the success of his former
acquaintance, Wilson would have been
flattered and would have become his
friend. But Gourlay was not such a man.
He immediately ridiculed Wilson and
laughed at the idea that he could be a
THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS by George Douglas. By permission of Thomas
Nelson & Sons, Ltd., Edinburgh. Copyright, 1901, by McClure, Phillips & Co. Renewed. All rights
reserved.
1642

success at anything. Wilson developed a
hatred that was to bring the insolent
Gourlay to ruin.
Wilson used his money to set up a
general store, which he stocked with
many items the villagers had formerly
had to send away for and pay Gourlay
to haul for them. He also delivered items
to neighboring towns and farms. Then
he started a regular carting service,
cutting prices to get business from Gourlay,
just as Gourlay had done to his
competitors. The townspeople were glad to
patronize Wilson in order to get back at
Gourlay for his years of dominance and
insolence. Indeed, they even gave
Wilson new suggestions for expanding his
trade. Gourlay's downfall started slowly,
but soon it became a landslide. The
peasants began to stand up to the old
man, even to laugh openly at him. Gour-
lay's vows of vengeance were empty talk.
Gourlay turned to his son as his only
hope. When Wilson's son went away to
high school, John was sent, even though
he had no head for books and no
ambition. John played truant frequently and
was a braggart and a coward as before,
but his father still had power enough
to keep him in school and in money and
in some way the boy was graduated.
Wilson sent his son to the university.
Gourlay decided that John must go too.
Never was a boy more miserable, for he
knew he was not suited for advanced
study. Gourlay hoped to make the lad
a minister; his hope was to recoup some
respect, if not money, for the family.
At the university John found little
stimulation for his sluggish mind. He had
one high spot in his career, indeed in his
whole life, when he won a prize for an
essay. Since that was the first honor he
ever won, he swaggered and boasted
about it for months. Because of the
prize, also, he won his first and only
word of praise from his father. In his
second term John fell to his own level
and became a drunken sot. Books were
too much for him, and people scorned
him. The bottle was his only friend.
While John was stumbling through
his second term at the university, Gour-
lay's fortunes reached their lowest ebb.
The House with the Green Shutters was
mortgaged heavily, all Gourlay's other
assets having been lost in wild
speculations to recoup his fortunes. But Gourlay
still pinned his hopes on the son he had
always hated. John would save the
family name, the lost fortune, the House.
Thus when Gourlay learned that John
had been expelled for drunkenness and
insubordination, and heard that the whole
town knew of the disgrace through a
letter of young Wilson to his father, the
news was too much for the old man. He
returned to the House with the Green
Shutters like a madman, as indeed he
was. The first sight that greeted him was
John, who had sneaked into town in
the darkness. Like a cat toying with a
mouse, Gourlay tortured his son. He
pretended to consider him a great man, a
hero. He peered at him from all angles,
waited on him with strong whiskey,
called him a fine son, a credit to the
family. Cowardly John rushed from the
house in terror, followed by the screams
of his mother and sister and the howls
of his father. Then his false courage
returned, and he went back into the
house after fortifying himself with more
whiskey. Picking up a large poker which
had been one of his father's prideful
purchases, John swung at his father and
crushed in his head.
The mother and sister convinced the
authorities that Gourlay, falling from
a ladder and striking his head, had died
accidentally. But John was lost. For days
he was haunted by red eyes glaring at
him out of space, by unknown things
coming to get him. His mother and
sister, dependent upon him for their
livelihood, tried to get him out of his madness,
but nothing soothed him except whiskey,
and that only briefly. One day he asked
his mother for money, bought his last
1643

bottle of whiskey and a vial of poison,
and ended his wretched existence.
Completely alone now, aware that
even the house must go to the creditors,
dying themselves of cancer and
consumption, the mother and daughter divided
the rest of the poison and joined Gourlay
and John in death. The pride, the lust,
the greed were gone. The House with
the Green Shutters had claimed them all.
1644

HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Richard Llewellyn (Richard D. V. Llewellyn Lloyd, 1907-
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot Nineteenth century
Locale: Wales
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Gwilym Morgan, a Welsh miner
Beth Morgan, his wife
Huw Morgan, their son and the narrator
Ivor,
Davy,
Owen,
Ianto, and
Gwilym, other sons
Angharad, their daughter
Bronwen, Ivor's wife
Marged, Gwilym's wife
Iestyn Evans, Angharad's husband
Critique:
How Green Was My Valley is a
story of the life of a Welsh boy, seen
through the eyes of an old man who has
only memory to sustain him. The novel
was published during the war years, and
perhaps the strife that was everywhere
then accounted somewhat for its great
popularity. There was trouble in the
lives of the people we meet in this story,
but the kindness of the main characters
was so great that even death seemed
gentle and not to be feared. The novel
is simply and beautifully told.
The Story:
How beautiful and peaceful the
valley looked to Huw Morgan when he was
ready to leave it! All the memories of
a long lifetime came back to him.
Huw's earliest memories were of his
father and brothers when they came
home from the mines on Saturday night.
There was trouble brewing at the mines.
The men talked of unions and
organizing, and the owners were angry.
Huw loved his family very much, and
when he learned that his brother Ivor
was to marry he was sorry to lose his
brother. But from the first moment Huw
saw Ivor's Bronwen, he loved her, and
that love for his sister-in-law stayed with
him all of his life.
Another brother, Ianto, married soon
afterward. His wife was a girl from
the village, where Ianto went to live.
Trouble came at last to the mines.
The men in the pits went on strike for
twenty-two weeks, but the owners were
the stronger because they were not
watching their families starve. The men finally
went back to work for less money than
before. After that first strike, the father
would never again join the men trying
to form a union, for he could not bring
himself to lead men out of work. Davy
and the other boys, however, were more
bitter than ever. When the father
ordered his sons never to attend another
meeting, Davey, Owen, and Gwilym left
home and took a room in a lodging-
house. Their mother cried all night, but
the father would not change his mind.
It was a miserable time for six-year-old
Huw. When his sister Angharad found
P?W <£E?? W£,S ™Z VALLEYJ»jr Richard Llewellyn. By permission of Curti. Brown, Ltd.. and the pub-
lwheri. The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1940, by Richard D. V. Llewellyn Lloyd.
1645

that the three boys were living in filth,
she went to the rooming-house to take
care of them. Then the father relented
and allowed the boys to come home, but
he said that they would be lodgers only,
not sons.
After the father became superintendent
at the mine, Huw heard some of the
miners say that his father and Ivor, who
agreed with him, might be beaten or
even killed by some of the more violent
miners. Frightened, he told his mother
what he had heard. One winter night
she and Huw went to the mountain
where the miners were meeting, and she
told the men there that she would kill
anyone who harmed her husband. On
the way home his mother slipped on the
bank of a little river. Huw, standing in
the icy water, supported his mother on
the bank until help came. After that
he knew nothing until he awoke in his
bed and his father told him that he had
saved his mother's life and the life of his
new baby sister, Huw had fever in his
legs for almost five years and never left
his bed during that time.
During his sickness Bronwen nursed
him and his brothers read to him until
he was far beyond his years in learning.
While he was in bed, he first met the
new minister, Mr. Gruffydd, who was to
become his best friend.
Huw's brother Owen fell in love with
Marged Evans. When Marged's father
found Owen kissing Marged, he said
terrible things to the boy, so that Owen
would have nothing more to do with
Marged. Gwilym married her, for he
had always loved her.
Ianto's wife died and he came home
to live. By this time Huw, well once
more, went to the National School, over
the mountain. He had many fights
before he was accepted by the other boys.
Angharad and Iestyn Evans, the son
of the mine owner, began to keep
company, but Angharad did not seem to be
happy. It was some time before Huw
learned that Angharad loved Mr.
Gruffydd but that he could not take a
wife because he was poor. Huw began
to think love caused heartache instead
of happiness.
One day he took a basket of food to
Gwilym's house, and there he found
Marged completely mad. Thinking he
was Owen, she told him she could not
live without him. Huw ran to find
Gwilym. Before he returned with his
brother, Marged had thrown herself into
the fire and burned to death. Afterward
Gwilym and Owen went away together,
no one knew where.
Iestyn Evans' father died, and soon
after Iestyn and Angharad were married
in London. Davy was married before
they came home, and for the wedding
Huw had his first long trousers.
Bronwen told him that he was now a man.
Shortly afterward Huw was put out
of school for giving the teacher a beating
because he had made a small child wear
around her neck a sign announcing that
she was Welsh. Huw went to work in
the pits with his brothers. Owen and
Gwilym had returned home and all the
boys lived again in the valley. But soon
Owen had a telegram from London
about an engine he was trying to
perfect, and he and Gwilym left again.
From London they went to America.
Soon afterward Davy went to London
on mine union business.
Angharad came home from London
alone, Iestyn having gone to Cape Town
on business. Soon gossip started because
Mr. Gruffydd and Angharad often took
carriage rides together. Finally Angharad
left the valley and went to Cape Town.
Mr. Gruffydd also left the valley.
When Ivor was killed in a cave-in at
the mine, Huw's mother sent him to live
with Bronwen in her loneliness.
Discharged from the mines for striking one
of the workmen who made a slurring
remark about Angharad and Mr.
Gruffydd, Huw became a carpenter. Ianto
had already left the pits and only his
father and Davy were left in the mines.
Davy decided to go to New Zealand.
Ianto went to Germany, where he
1646

thought he could do better in his trade.
The family was now scattered.
One day the workers flooded the mines
and Huw's father was crushed by a cave-
in. Huw crawled to his father and
stayed with him until he died. Huw's
heart was as empty as his mother's when
he told her the terrible news.
Everyone of whom Huw had thought
during this reverie was now dead. He
walked slowly away from his valley and
from his memories.
1647

HOWARDS END
Type of work: Novel
Author: E. M. Forster (1879- )
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1910
Principal characters:
Henry Wilcox, a British businessman
Ruth Wilcox, his first wife
Charles Wilcox, his older son
Paul Wilcox, his younger son
Margaret Schlegel, Henry Wilcox's second wife
Helen Schlegel, Margaret's sister
Theobald Schlegel, Margaret's brother
Leonard Bast, a poor young man
Jacky Bast, Leonard's wife
Critique:
E. M. Forster is not a prolific author.
He is well known to students of fiction,
however, as a thorough critic, as well as
an important novelist in his own right,
and his Aspects of the Novel is a major
contribution to study in that field. Prior
to his best work of fiction, A Passage
to India, Howards End was ranked as his
most mature novel. Particularly important
in Forster's fiction are his subtle and
complete characterization, his deft use of
irony, the careful plotting of action, the
eternal contrast between illusion and
reality. Howards End is second only to A
Passage to India in illustrating these
characteristics.
The Story:
The Wilcox family met Margaret
Schlegel and her sister Helen while both
families were vacationing in Germany.
Neither group expected the chance
acquaintance to amount to anything more,
but later, after all had returned to
England, Helen Schlegel was invited to visit
the Wilcox family at Howards End, their
country home near London. While there,
Helen fell in love with Paul Wilcox.
Both families disapproved of the match,
and after hard words on both sides it was
broken off.
A few months later the Wilcoxes
rented a town flat across the street from the
Schlegel home. Both young people were
out of the country. Mrs. Wilcox and
Margaret Schlegel met and became friends.
Also acquainted with the Schlegels was
a young man named Leonard Bast, a
seedy fellow whose umbrella had been
accidentally taken by Helen at a concert.
The young man had interested the girls
and their brother by his conversation
when he had called to reclaim his
umbrella. They did not know that he had
an exceedingly frowsy wife, a woman
some years older than he who had
trapped him into a distasteful marriage.
Some months after the acquaintance
between Mrs. Wilcox and Margaret
Schlegel had ripened into friendship,
Mrs. Wilcox became ill and died. Much
to her husband's and sons' surprise, she
left a note, in addition to her will,
leaving Howards End to Margaret. In their
anger at the prospect of letting the house
go out of the family, the Wilcoxes
disregarded the note, since it was not a part of
the official will.
HOWARDS END by E. M. Forster. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright
1910, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1921, by the author. Renewed. All rights reserved.
1648

Margaret Schlegel, knowing nothing of
the bequest, was really glad that the tie
between herself and the Wilcox family
had been broken, for she was afraid that
her sister was still in love with Paul
Wilcox and suffered when she came into
contact with other members of the family.
One evening, long after Mrs. Wilcox's
death, Margaret and her sister were
sitting in the park. There they met Mr.
Wilcox, who told them that the firm for
which Leonard Bast worked was
unreliable. Acting on that information, the girls
advised the young man to change jobs.
He did so. They did not know that Mr.
Wilcox, in love with Margaret, had given
them bad advice in order to get rid of
a young man he saw as a possible rival
for Margaret's love.
A few weeks later the long-term lease
on the Schlegels' house was up and they
were forced to move. Although they
searched a long time, they found nothing
suitable. Mr. Wilcox, hearing of their
predicament, sent a letter to Margaret
offering to lease them his house in
London. Margaret went with him to look at
the house. While they were there, Mr.
Wilcox declared his love. Margaret, who
was well into her thirties, was surprised,
but without embarrassment or shock. She
asked only for a few days to think over
the rental of the house and the proposal
of marriage. After considering both
problems, she agreed to marry Mr. Wilcox,
thus making any decision about the rental
unnecessary.
Before Margaret's marriage to Mr.
Wilcox, his daughter was also married at a
house owned by the Wilcoxes near Wales.
Shortly after the daughter's wedding
Helen Schlegel, who had disapproved of
Margaret's approaching marriage,
appeared at the house with Leonard Bast
and his wife. Helen had learned that
through their bad advice Bast had lost
everything he had, including his job.
Helen thought that Mr. Wilcox ought
to recompense the young man. When
Mrs. Bast was discovered, rather tipsy, on
the lawn, she revealed to Mr. Wilcox and
Margaret that she had been Mr.
Wilcox's mistress many years before.
Margaret was willing to forgive Mr. Wilcox,
but she resolved not to help the Basts.
Under the circumstances, she felt it was
unnecessary and in poor taste to do so.
Helen, who had unwittingly fallen
in love with Bast, felt sorry for him. She
spent part of one night with him and
then remorsefully left England. She tried
to give Bast five thousand pounds, most
of her fortune, but he refused to accept
her aid.
The relationship between her sister
and Leonard Bast was unknown to
Margaret, who went ahead with her marriage
to Mr. Wilcox, despite the fact that his
sons did not approve of their father's
second marriage. Helen's refusal to
return for the ceremony did not surprise
her sister. Eight months went by. Helen
still had not returned, and Margaret
began to worry about her sister.
Helen finally came back to England
and sent word that she wanted some
books stored in the house at Howards
End. She acted so mysteriously that
Margaret and Mr. Wilcox planned to
encounter her at the house. Because she refused
to see them directly, Margaret, worried,
thought that Helen might need mental
treatment. When Margaret saw Helen,
however, the reason for the mystery was
plain: Helen was pregnant as the result
of the night she spent with Leonard Bast.
Helen asked to be permitted to spend
one night with her sister in the
unoccupied house at Howards End. Mr.
Wilcox refused to allow Margaret to do so.
The two sisters stayed in the house
in spite of Mr. Wilcox's refusal. The
following morning Mr. Wilcox's older son,
Charles, went to the house to get them
out. A minute or two after his arrival
Leonard Bast came to the house in search
of Margaret, from whom he hoped to get
money. As soon as he saw him, Charles
seized a saber that hung on the wall and
struck Bast on the shoulders with the
1649

flat of the weapon several times. The
shock of seeing Helen and the beating
were too much for Bast's weak heart. He
died suddenly.
Charles was tried for manslaughter and
sentenced to three years in prison. The
disgrace was too great for his father, who
became an invalid. Margaret moved her
husband and her sister into the house
at Howards End, where Helen's child
was born. Mr. Wilcox came to love the
baby during his illness and convalescence,
and so Helen and the child, much to
the displeasure of the other Wilcoxes,
were permitted to remain. A few months
before Charles' release from prison, Mr.
Wilcox called a family conference. He
had made a new will giving all his money
to the children by his first marriage, but
the house at Howards End was to go to
Margaret and after her death to Helen's
illegitimate child. Thus the mansion,
which had played so great a part in all
their lives, eventually came to Margaret
Schlegel, just as the first Mrs. Wilcox
had wished before her death.
1650

HUASIPUNGO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jorge Icaza (1902- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Ecuador
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Alfonso Pereira, a debt-ridden landowner
Blanca, his wife
Lolita, his daughter
Don Julio, his uncle
Policarpio, an overseer
Andres Chiliqutnga, an Indian laborer
Cunshi, his wife
Padre Lomas, the village priest
Juancho Cabascango, a well-to-do Indian tenant farmer
Critique:
Stark, brutal realism overlies the
artistry of this novel of protest against the
enslavement of the Indian in rural
Ecuador. Icaza is only one of many Latin-
American novelists who, influenced by
Dostoevski, Gorky, and other European
realists, have used the indigenous theme
and shown the white man's cruelty toward
the Indian, but his Huasipungo is the
best of these polemic works. Greater as
a social document, perhaps, than as a
work of fiction, it is made up of a series
of episodes whose power lies in a graphic
account of the lives and trials of the
Indian. Icaza writes carelessly, with a
scorn of syntax, but with a keen ear that
reproduces the difficult dialect of the
Quichua-speaking inhabitants of the
Andean region near Quito. Types
symbolizing classes rather than clearly realized
individuals fill his pages, and in this
novel the avaricious, lustful priest has
been made especially hateful. In spite of
its defects Huasipungo is a powerful
novel, with many pirated editions in Spanish,
an English translation printed in Russia,
and even a version in Chinese.
The Story:
Alfonso Pereira was an Ecuadorian
landowner plagued by domestic and
financial troubles. His wife Blanca nagged
him and he was worried over his
seventeen-year-old daughter Lolita, who wanted
to marry a man who was part Indian.
Don Julio, his uncle, added to his
difficulties by demanding repayment of a
loan of ten thousand sucres, a debt
already three months overdue.
When Pereira confessed himself
unable to pay the loan, Don Julio suggested
that his nephew try to interest Mr. Chapy,
a North American promoter, in a timber
concession on Pereira's mountain estate.
Privately the old man suspected that Mr.
Chapy and his associates were on the
lookout for oil and used their lumber-
cutting activities in the region as a blind.
In order to interest the North Americans,
however, it would be necessary to build
fifteen miles of road and get possession
of two forest tracts. Also, the Indians
must be driven off their huasipungos, the
lands supplied to them in return for
working on the master's estate.
Pereira assured his uncle that such a
course would be difficult. The Indians,
having a deep affection for their lands
along both sides of the river, would never
HUASIPUNGO by Jorge Icaza. By permission of the author. Copyright, 1936, by Sol. Published by
Editorial Sol, Buenos Aires and Imprenta Nacional, Quito, Ecuador. All rights reserved.
1651

willingly give them up. Old Julio
ridiculed Pereira's sentimentality and told
him to return to the estate at Tomachi
and build the road.
Back home, Pereira discussed his
problem with Padre Lomas, the village priest.
The padre agreed to persuade the Indians
to work on the road; he would tell them
that the labor was the will of God. They
also tried to determine how many mingas,
brawls in which Indians were plied with
drink to make them willing to work,
would be necessary before the road could
be completed. Jacinto Quintana,
proprietor of the village store and saloon,
promised that he and his wife Juana would
make the home-brew for the first of the
mingas.
Andres Chiliquinga, an Indian
workman, was unhappy because Pereira had
returned, for he had gone against his
master's and the priest's wishes by taking
Cunshi as his wife. He was one of thirty
Indians sent to start cutting wood and
clearing the roadbed.
To find a wet nurse for her baby,
Blanca Pereira examined some of the
dirty Indian mothers. Their
undernourished babies were diseased, some with
malaria or dysentery; others were idiotic
or epileptic. Policarpio, the overseer,
finally chose Cunshi, mother of the
healthiest child in the village, and took her to
the Pereira house. The master, seeing the
young Indian woman, forced her to sleep
with him.
One night Andres made the long trip
home to see his wife. Finding no one in
their hillside shack, he became suspicious
and angry. The next day he deliberately
let his ax fall on his foot. The Indians
treated the cut with spiderwebs and mud,
but when the bandage was removed,
three days later, the foot was so badly
infected that Andres was sent home. A
medicine man who poulticed the sore
saved AndreV life, but the wound left
him lame.
One day, while Pereira and the priest
were at the Quintana store discussing
the building of the road, they sent
Jacinto on an errand. After his departure
both men forced Juana to accept their
attentions.
Pereira gave Padre Lomas one hundred
sucres for a big mass. Then he held a
minga and work on the road was speeded
up. Storms made life miserable for the
Indians, unprotected as they were in their
camps. Some died when they tried to
drain a swamp. Others perished in
quicksands. Pereira, choosing to risk the
Indians rather than follow a longer, safer
route, kept the workmen drunk and
entertained them with cockfights. The
ignorant laborers continued to toil.
The priest went to Juancho Cabas-
cango, an Indian with a prosperous huasi-
yungo beside the river, and asked for
one hundred sucres to pay for another
mass. When the Indian rerused, Padre
Lomas cursed him. A short time later a
flash flood drowned some of the Indians
and their cattle. Blaming the disaster on
Juancho, his superstitious neighbors beat
him to death. The priest declared the
affair the will of God and easily collected
several hundred sucres for his mass.
At last the road was completed, but
the Indians received none of the
benefits Padre Lomas had promised. He
himself bought a bus and two trucks that
took away all transport from those who
used to drive mule teams into Quito with
the products of the region. Young Indians
rode the bus to the city and there ended
up as criminals and prostitutes.
Because of easy transportation and the
possibility of a profitable sale in Quito,
Pereira decided not to give the Indians
their customary grain from his plentiful
harvest. Policarpio's protests did no good.
When the hungry Indians went to
Pereira's patio and begged their master to
relieve the hunger of their families, he
told them that their daily pay of fifty
centavos was generous enough. Besides,
the ton and a half of corn needed to
feed the Indians would help considerably
in reducing his debts. He did, however,
1652

heed his overseer's warning and asked
that guards for his estate be sent from
Quito.
Hunger stalked the region and babies
and old people perished. When one of
Pereira's cows died, the famished Indians
begged for the carcass. He refused
because they might be tempted to kill other
cows, and ordered Policarpio to bury the
dead animal. Desperate, Andres dug it
up. After he and his family ate some of
the meat, the tainted flesh killed Cunshi.
Padre Lomas demanded twenty-five su-
cres, more than the Indian could ever
earn, in payment for burying the dead
woman. That same night Andres stole
one of his master's cows and sold it to
a nearby butcher. Tracked down by dogs,
the Indian was captured and flogged in
Pereira's patio. There was no one to
protest except his small son, who was almost
killed by the white men when he tried
to help his father.
A score of foreigners arrived in To-
machi. The Indians welcomed them
timorously, thinking that these new white
men could certainly be no more cruel
than their Spanish masters. But Mr.
Chapy's first act was to order the Indians
driven from their huasi'pungos to make
room for company houses and a sawmill.
When Andres' son brought news of
the order, the Indians rebelled. They had
stolidly accepted the white man's cruelty,
even his lechery toward their women,
but they felt that the land was theirs.
Jacinto vainly tried to stop them when
they marched on the village. The enraged
Indians killed six of the white men. The
others, including Mr. Chapy, fled in their
autos.
They returned, over the road the
Indians had built, with three hundred
soldiers under a leader who had killed two
thousand Indians in a similar rebellion
near Cuenca. Troops hunted down and
machine-gunned Indians of all ages and
sexes. The few survivors, taking refuge
in AndreY hillside shack, rolled down
rocks on the soldiers and shot at them
with birdguns. Finally the soldiers set
fire to the thatched roof. When the
Indians ran from the burning house, the
troops shot them without mercy.
1653

HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens, 1835-1910)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Along the Mississippi River
First published: 1885
Principal characters:
Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer, his friend
Jim, a Negro slave
Critique:
Not to have read The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn is nearly as sad as never
having been to a circus or never having
played baseball with the neighborhood
gang. Huck is every young boy who
ever lived, and he is also an individual
worth knowing. He swears and smokes,
but he has a set of ethics of his own.
Reared haphazardly in the South, he
believes that slaves belong to their
rightful owners, yet in his honest gratitude
toward his friend Jim, he helps him
escape his slavery. Huck could not bear
to cheat the three Wilks girls, but he did
not hesitate to steal food when he was
hungry. Huck talks with a lowbrow
dialect, but he is keen-witted and intelligent.
He tells his story with a straight-faced
forwardness, but the reader finds laughter
and shrewd, sharp comment on human
nature in every chapter of his adventures
along the Mississippi.
The Story:
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
had found a box of gold in a robber's
cave. After Judge Thatcher had taken
the money and invested it for the boys,
each had a huge allowance of a dollar
a day. The Widow Douglas and her
sister, Miss Watson, had taken Huck home
with them to try to reform him. At first
Huck could not stand living in a tidy
house where smoking and swearing were
forbidden. Worse, he had to go to
school and learn how to read. But he
managed to drag himself to school almost
every day, except for the times when he
sneaked off for a smoke in the woods or
to go fishing in the Mississippi.
Life was beginning to become bearable
to him when one day he noticed some
tracks in the snow. Examining them
closely, he realized that they belonged to
the worthless father whom Huck had not
seen for over a year. Knowing that his
father would be back hunting him when
the old man learned about the six
thousand dollars, Huck rushed over to Judge
Thatcher and persuaded the judge to
take the fortune for himself. The judge
was puzzled, but he signed some papers,
and Huck was satisfied that he no longer
had any money for his father to take
from him.
Huck's father finally showed up one
night in Huck's room at Widow Doug-
las' home. Complaining that he had
been cheated out of his money, the old
drunkard took Huck away with him to
a cabin in the woods, where he kept the
boy a prisoner, beating him periodically
and half starving him. Before long Huck
began to wonder why he had ever liked
living with the widow. With his father,
he could smoke and swear all he wanted,
and his life would have been pleasant if
it had not been for the beatings. One
night Huck sneaked away, leaving a
bloody trail from a pig he had killed in
the woods. Huck wanted everyone to
believe he was dead. He climbed into a
boat and went to Jackson's Island to
HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain. Published by Harper & Brothers.
1654

hide until all the excitement had blown
over.
After three days of freedom, Huck
wandered to another part of the island
and there he discovered Jim, Miss
Watson's Negro slave. Jim told Huck that
he had run off because he had overheard
Miss Watson planning to sell him down
south for eight hundred dollars. Huck
swore he would not report Jim. The
two stayed on the island many days, Jim
giving Huck an education in primitive
superstition. One night, Huck rowed,
back to the mainland. Disguised as a
girl, he called on a home near the shore.
There he learned that his father had
disappeared shortly after the people of the
town had decided that Huck had been
murdered. Since Jim's disappearance had
occurred just after Huck's alleged death,
there was now a three hundred dollar
reward posted for Jim's capture, as most
people believed that Jim had killed Huck.
Fearing that Jackson's Island would
be searched, Huck hurried back to Jim
and the two headed down the
Mississippi. They planned to leave the raft
at Cairo and then go on a steamboat up
the Ohio into free territory. Jim told
Huck that he would work hard in the
North and then buy his wife and children
from their masters in the South. Helping
a runaway slave bothered Huck's
conscience, but he reasoned that it would
bother him more if he betrayed such a
good friend as Jim. One night as they
were drifting down the river on their
raft, a large boat loomed before them,
and Huck and Jim, knowing that the
raft would be smashed under the hull of
the ship, jumped into the water. Huck
swam safely to shore, but Jim
disappeared.
Huck found a home with a friendly
family named Grangerford. The Granger-
fords were feuding with the Shepherd-
sons, another family living nearby. The
Grangerfords left Huck mostly to
himself and gave him a young slave to
wait on him. One day the slave asked
him to come to the woods to see some
snakes. Following the boy, Huck came
across Jim, who had been hiding in the
woods waiting for an opportunity to send
for Huck. Jim had repaired the broken
raft. That night one of the Granger-
ford daughters eloped with a young Shep-
herdson, and the feud broke out once
more. Huck and Jim ran away during
the shooting and set off down the river.
Shortly afterward, Jim and Huck met
two men who pretended they were
royalty and made all sorts of nonsensical
demands on Huck and Jim. Huck was not
taken in, but he reasoned that it would
do no harm to humor the two men to
prevent quarreling. The Duke and the
King were clever schemers. In one of
the small river towns they staged a fake
show which lasted long enough to net
them a few hundred dollars. Then they
ran off before the angered townspeople
could catch them.
The Duke and the King overheard
some people talking about the death of
a Peter Wilks, who had left considerable
property and some cash to his three
daughters. Wilks' two brothers, whom
no one in the town had ever seen, were
living in England. The King and the
Duke went to the three daughters, Mary
Jane, Susan, and Joanna, and presented
themselves as the two uncles. They took
a few thousand dollars of the inheritance
and then put up the property for auction
and sold the slaves. This high-handed
deed caused great grief to the girls, and
Huck could not bear to see them so
unhappy. He decided to expose the two
frauds, but he wanted to insure Jim's
safety first. Jim had been hiding in the
woods waiting for his companions to
return to him. Employing a series of lies,
subterfuges, and maneuverings that were
worthy of his ingenious mind, Huck
exposed the Duke and King. Huck fled
back to Jim, and the two escaped on their
raft. Just as Jim and Huck thought they
were on their way and well rid of their
former companions, the Duke and King
came rowing down the river toward them.
The whole party set out again with
1655

their royal plots to hoodwink the public.
In one town where they landed, Jim was
captured, and Huck learned that the
Duke had turned him in for the reward.
Huck had quite a tussle with his
conscience. He knew that he ought to help
return a slave to the rightful owner, but,
on the other hand, he thought of all the
fine times he and Jim had had together
and how loyal a friend Jim had been.
Finally, Huck decided that he would help
Jim to escape.
Learning that Mr. Phelps was holding
Jim, he headed for the Phelps farm.
There, Mrs. Phelps ran up and hugged
him, mistaking him for the nephew
whom she had been expecting to come
for a visit. Huck wondered how he could
keep Mrs. Phelps from learning that he
was not her nephew. Then to his relief
he learned they had mistaken him for
Tom Sawyer. Huck rather liked being
Tom for a while, and he was able to tell
the Phelps all about Tom's Aunt Polly
and Sid and Mary, Tom's brother and
sister. Huck was feeling proud of
himself for keeping up the deception. When
Tom Sawyer really did arrive, he told
his aunt that he was Sid.
At the first opportunity Huck told
Tom about Jim's capture. To his
surprise, Tom offered to help him set Jim
free. Huck could not believe that Tom
would be a slave stealer, but he kept his
feelings to himself. Huck had intended
merely to wait until there was a dark
night and then break the padlock on the
door of the shack where Jim was kept.
But Tom said the rescue had to be done
according to the books, and he laid out
a most complicated plan with all kinds of
story-book ramifications. It took fully
three weeks of plotting, stealing, and
deceit to let Jim out of the shack. Then
the scheme failed. A chase began after
Jim escaped, and Tom was shot in the
leg. After Jim had been recaptured, Tom
was brought back to Aunt Sally's house
to recover from his wound. Then Tom
revealed the fact that Miss Watson had
died, giving Jim his freedom in her will.
Huck was greatly relieved to learn that
Tom was not really a slave stealer after
all.
To complicate matters still more, Tom's
Aunt Polly arrived. She quickly set
straight the identities of the two boys.
Jim was given his freedom and Tom
gave him forty dollars. Tom told Huck
that his money was still safely in the
hands of Judge Thatcher, but Huck
moaned that his father would likely be
back to claim it again. Then Jim told
Huck that his father was dead; Jim had
seen him lying in an abandoned boat
along the river.
Huck was ready to start out again
because Aunt Sally said she thought she
might adopt him and try to civilize him.
Huck thought that he could not go
through such a trial again after he had
once tried to be civilized under the care
of Widow Douglas.
1656

HUDIBRAS
Type of work: Poem
Author: Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
Type of plot: Satirical burlesque
Time of plot: 1640-1660
Locale: England
First published: 1663-1678
Principal characters:
Sir Hudibras, a Presbyterian knight
Ralpho, Sir Hudibras' squire, a religious Independent
The Widow, a wealthy woman who befriended Sir Hudibras
Sidrophel, an astrologer
Crowdero, a fiddler
Trull a, a woman who subdued Sir Hudibras
Critique:
Butler's Hudibras was intended to
ridicule the Presbyterians, Dissenters, and
others who had fought against the crown
in the conflict between Charles I and
Oliver Cromwell. Published shortly after
the restoration of Charles II, the poem
had immense popularity for a time. The
king himself, one of its most ardent
admirers, carried a copv in his pocket and
quoted from it. Hudibras has sometimes
been called a mock-epic. It is more
accurate, however, to say that the poem is to
an epic what farce is to tragic drama. The
burlesque is used with telling effect.
Mean and low persons, things, and
situations are described in pompous
language. By so doing, Butler hoped to
unmask the hypocrisy and absurdity of
Dissenting reformers in seventeenth-century
England and to show them as ridiculous,
odious, and obnoxious. He also wanted
to draw attention to the pretensions of
the false learning rampant in England
at the time. Astrology, fortune-telling,
alchemy, "sympathetic" medicine, and
other pseudo-sciences were presented in
such fashion as to show the readers of
his time the absurdity of practices and
practitioners alike. To Hudibras can be
ascribed little organization: the best
qualities of the poems lie in isolated passages
devoted to the satire.
The Story:
Sir Hudibras, a Presbyterian knight,
was one of those who had ridden out
against the monarchy during the civil
war. He was a proud man, one who
bent his knee to nothing but chivalry
and suffered no blow but that which had
been given when he was dubbed a
knight. Although he had some wit, he
was very shy of displaving it. He knew
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; indeed, his
talk was a kind of piebald dialect, so
heavily was it larded with Greek and
Latin wo-ds and tags. He was learned in
rhetoric, logic, and mathematics, and he
frequently spoke in a manner
demonstrating his learning. His notions fitted
things so well that he was often puzzled
to decide what his notions were and what
was reality.
In figure he was thick and stout, both
before and behind, and he always
carried extra victuals in his hose. He rode
a mealy-mouthed, wall-eyed, skinny old
nag whose tail dragged in the dust, and
he encouraged his horse with a single
old spur.
Sir Hudibras had a squire named
Ralpho, who was an Independent in religion
—a fact which accounted for his
partisanship and dogmatic approach to the many
discussions and arguments he had with
his master on matters of faith. Ralpho
was a tailor by trade, but his belief in the
efficacy of divine revelation to the
individual had made him something of a
religious oracle, at least in his own satisfied
1657

opinion.
Sir Hudibras and Ralpho rode forth
from the knight's home to reform what
they called sins and what the rest of the
world regarded as mild amusement. After
they had gone a few miles on their
journey they came to a town where the
people danced enjovably to a fiddle and,
worse in Sir Hudibras' eyes, indulged
themselves in the sport of bearbaiting. To
the knight's resolve to end these activities
Ralpho added his agreement that they
were certainly unchristian. When the
knight advanced, however, he was met
by an unsympathetic crowd. With the
rabble were several leaders. One was
Crowdero, a fiddler wtih one wooden
leg, who plaved his instrument for the
mob in the absence of more martial fifes
and drums. Another leader was Orsin,
the bear keeper, who led his charge at
the end of a rope fastened to the creature's
nose. Talgol, a butcher, was also in the
van, as was a woman named Trulla, an
Amazon of a damsel. When Sir Hudibras
called upon the people to disperse and
return quietly to their homes, leaving
Crowdero a prisoner, a fi^ht began.
Ralpho was soon bucked off his horse
when some one put a burr under the
animal's tail. Sir Hudibras, pulled from his
steed, fell on the bear, who became
enraged and escaped from his keeper. The
bear's escape scattered the crowd and
Crowdero was left behind, the prisoner
of Sir Hudibras and Ralpho, for the
fiddler's wooden leg had been broken in
the melee. Having swooned from fear,
Hudibras also lay helpless for a time, but
he was soon revived by Ralpho. The
pair took their prisoner to the end of the
town and placed his good leg in the
stocks. They hung his fiddle, bow, and
case above the stocks as a trophy of vic-
torv.
The people who had been dispersed by
the enraged bear, overcoming their fright,
planned to attack the knight and release
his victim. Hudibras and Ralpho sallied
out of their quarters to the attack. A
blow on Ralpho's horse caused the animal
to unhorse his rider. Hudibras, at first
frightened, summoned his courage and
changed. The crowd dispersed once again,
and Hudibras went to the aid of his
squire. When the knight's back was
turned, Trulla attacked him from behind
and quickly overpowered him. Rejoined
by her friends, the woman marched
Hudibras to the stocks to take the place
of Crowdero. Placed in the stocks,
Hudibras and Ralpho discussed and argued
their situation and what had occasioned
it. Then a widow who had heard of the
knight's plight came to see him in the
stocks. After much discussion, she agreed
to have Hudibras set free if he would
consent to a whipping. He agreed to the
condition and was released.
Sir Hudibras, once out of the stocks,
was reluctant to keep the bargain he had
made. He was anxious for her hand, too,
but for her money rather than her love.
Hudibras and Ralpho argued long about
flagellation. Hudibras suggested that the
whipping be administered to Ralpho, as
a proxy for the knight. Ralpho refused
and an argument ensued. When the two
were almost at swords' points, they heard
a terrible din. They looked about and
saw coming down the road, a party of
people making a noisy to-do over a poor
man who had let his wife take over his
authority. Sir Hudibras tried to break up
the crowd, but a volley of rotten eggs
and other filth defeated him and cooled
his ardor for reform. The knight, going
to clean himself after his most recent
encounter with sin, decided to lie to the
widow about having received a whipping.
Before approaching the widow's house,
Sir Hudibras went to consult Sidrophel,
an astrologer. Hudibras and Ralpho
agreed that a godly man might reasonably
consult with such a man if he were on a
Christian errand. Hudibras, soon
convinced that Sidrophel and his apprentice,
Whachum, were frauds, perhaps dabblers
with the devil, sent Ralpho off to find a
constable. Meanwhile, Hudibras
overcame the pair and went through the
astrologer's belongings. Instead of going
1658

for a constable, however, Ralpho
decided to go to the widow. He was afraid
that the authorities might think Hudibras
involved in black magic.
Ralpho, telling all to the widow,
revealed that Hudibras was going to lie
about having received a whipping and
that he was only after the widow's
money. When Hudibras arrived a short
time later, the widow hid Ralpho and let
the knight tell his long string of half-
truths and lies. The widow, knowing the
truth, treated him to a somewhat
frightening masquerade, with Ralpho as the
chief sprite. Hudibras and the squire
decided to escape before worse could
happen to them. They went hugger-mugger
through a window and escaped on their
saddleless horses.
The poet then turned in the last part
of the poem to talk directly about the
religious groups for which Ralpho and
Hudibras stood—the Independents and
the Presbyterians—and how they had
fallen out with one another after the end
of the Civil War and had eventually, in
their weakness, paved the way for the
Restoration of the Stuart line in the
person of Charles II.
1659

HUGH WYNNE, FREE QUAKER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1753-1783
Locale: Colonial America
First published: 1897
Principal characters:
John Wynne, a Quaker
Marie, his wife
Hugh Wynne, John's son
Jack Warder, Hugh's friend
Arthur Wynne, Hugh's cousin
Darthea Peniston, who marries Hugh
Gatnor Wynne, John's sister
Critique:
Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker is one of
the best novels of the American
Revolution. The veracity of its events in the
historical sense can be judged by any
student of history, and its faithfulness
to the social history of the time can be
judged by reading diaries and chronicles
of those who lived through the war years.
More than historical fiction, however, the
novel is a touching revelation of a child-
parent relationship and of the
consequences of too much doctrinal
discipline.
The Story:
The Wynne family had descended
from an ancient Welsh line. That part
of the family which had remained in
Wales now held the family estate of
Wyncote. The American branch, being
Quaker, had dissociated itself from the
more worldly family at Wyncote, and
Hugh Wynne grew up under the stern
discipline of John Wynne's orthodoxy.
John's sister, Gainor Wynne, had not
become a Quaker. Because Hugh was
his aunt's favorite, early in his life he
fell under the influence of those who
were outside the ways of the Quakers.
Jack Warder was Hugh's closest
friend, the two boys having gone to
school together. Aunt Gainor often
invited both boys to her home in
Philadelphia, where she was surrounded by
a worldly group of English officers, men
upon whom the Quakers frowned. Hugh
enjoyed their society, to the delight of
his aunt, who wished her nephew to
break his Quaker ties. Jack Warder,
however, did not like Gainor Wynne's
friends. When he and Hugh were old
enough to judge moral values for
themselves, their friendship became strained.
Hugh's father was never fully aware
of the way Hugh spent his time away
from home.
One night, while drinking and
gambling with his worldly friends, Hugh met
a cousin, Arthur Wynne, of the family
at Wyncote. He instinctively disliked
his relative because of his superior ways
and his deceitful manner. During the
evening Hugh became very drunk.
Suddenly his mother and Jack Warder burst
into the room.
This incident marked the beginning
of Hugh's break with his father's church
and the renewal of his friendship with
Jack Warder. Hugh, realizing his folly,
was thankful that Jack had seen him on
the streets and had led his mother to
rescue him from the drunken party. He
began to realize the depth of his mother's
love and understanding. John Wynne
HUGH WYNNE, FREE QUAKER by Silai Weir Mitchell. By permission of the publishers, Appletoa-Century-
Crofts, Inc. Copyright, 1896, by The Century Co. Renewed, 1923, by Langden Elwyn Mitchell.
1660

was quite different in his attitude. A
few nights later he took Hugh to a
Quaker meeting, where public prayers
were offered to save Hugh's soul. Hugh's
embarrassment caused him to lose all of
his love for the Quaker religion and to
bear a deep resentment against his father.
At Gainor Wynne's home, Jack and
Hugh heard much conversation about
disagreement between the Americans and
the British. Gainor was a Whig, and
under her influence Jack and Hugh
gained sympathy for their American
compatriots. Arthur Wynne too had
become part of the society that gathered
at Gainor Wynne's house. Jack and
Hugh had never liked Arthur, but now
they had a new cause for their dislike.
Arthur made no secret of his admiration
for Darthea Peniston, a schoolmate of
Jack and Hugh, and his bragging about
Wyncote seemingly won her interest,
thus arousing Hugh's jealousy. When
Hugh told Darthea of Jus love, she
insisted that she did not love him.
Meanwhile Hugh's parents went
abroad. During their absence he stayed
with Gainor Wynne. Claiming that the
time was not far off when he would need
such a skill, she urged him to take
fencing lessons. Jack practiced the sport
with his friend, although he knew it to
be contrary to the laws of the church.
Hugh and Jack both knew that soon
they would join the American cause for
liberty.
While John Wynne and his wife were
abroad, Hugh received a letter telling
that his mother had died. On his return
John showed no signs of his grief at the
loss of his wife. Hugh himself felt her
loss deeply.
At Gainor's home, where he spent
more time than ever since the death of
his mother, Hugh quarreled with an
English officer and was challenged to a
duel. With Jack as his second, Hugh
answered the challenge. As a result the
Quakers notified both boys that unless
they changed their ways and repented
for their sins, they could no longer
belong to the Society of Friends. Jack and
Hugh announced that they intended to
join the American army; fighting had
already begun at Lexington.
Jack went to join the troops. After
a short time Hugh decided to follow him,
in spite of his father's crafty excuses that
he needed Hugh to conduct his business
affairs for him. When he did join the
army, Hugh was captured by the British
and sent, wounded and sick, to a filthy
prison. In the prison Arthur Wynne,
now a Tory captain, saw his cousin, but
left Hugh to die. Hugh never forgave
him for this cruelty and for his
subsequent lie concerning the meeting.
Hugh recovered and escaped from
prison to return to Gainor Wynne's
house. Arthur Wynne was staying at
the home of John Wynne and
ingratiating himself in the eyes of the old man.
Hugh knew that there was something
mysterious in relation to the Welsh estate
of Wyncote. Supposedly Arthur's father
owned the estate, having bought it from
John's father. Gainor Wynne urged
Hugh to investigate the title of the estate.
John Wynne, it seemed, still possessed
the title, and out of sympathy for
Arthur's alleged poverty had promised to
give it to him. Hugh was unable to
change his father's decision, even after
he told of Arthur's cruel desertion when
Hugh lay near death in prison. His
father refused to believe Hugh's story.
Hugh could not tell Darthea about
Arthur's behavior, for he felt that she
would rush to Arthur's defense if he
said anything against his cousin.
Once, while Hugh was at home, his
father, thinking Hugh was Arthur,
handed him the deed to Wyncote.
Knowing that his father's mind had often
misled him of late, Hugh tried to
convince the old man that he was not
Arthur, but John insisted that Hugh take
the deed. Hugh took it to Gainor
Wynne.
After a rest of a few months, Hugh
1661

rejoined the American troops. He was
able to perform a courageous service for
General Washington, for which he
received praise and a captaincy. Jack, too,
had become an officer.
When Hugh and Jack returned to
Philadelphia on leave, Gainor Wynne
managed to expose Arthur to Darthea.
Although the young girl had lost her
earlier love for the Tory officer, she had
been unwilling to break her promise to
him. But with proof of Arthur's villainy
before her, she felt that she was free
at last to break her engagement.
Again Hugh asked her to marry him
and she surprised him by accepting. Hugh
still did not want the title to Wyncote,
and Darthea agreed with him that after
he had taken Arthur's betrothed it would
not become Hugh to take his inheritance
from him as well. Although Gainor
Wynne wished to press the legality of the
ancient deed, Darthea threw it into the
fire, and so destroyed any claim Hugh
might have upon the ancestral estate.
John Wynne, who had ceased to live
for Hugh when he had lost his mental
faculties, died soon after the war ended.
Darthea and Hugh were happily married,
and they lived long years together to
watch their children and their
grandchildren grow up unburdened by the
rigorous religious control which Hugh
had known in his youth.
1662

THE HUMAN COMEDY
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Saroyan (1908- )
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Ithaca, California
First puhlished: 1943
Principal characters:
Katey Macauley, a widow
Homer,
Ulysses, and
Marcus, her sons
Bess, her daughter
Mary Arena, Marcus* sweetheart
Thomas Spangler, manager of the telegraph office
Mr. Grogan, assistant in the telegraph office
Tobey George, Marcus' friend from the army
Lionel, Ulysses' friend
Critique:
This novel has for its theme the idea
that no human can ever die as long as
he lives in the hearts of those who loved
him. The story deals with the family of
a soldier who died in the war. Frankly
sentimental, The Human Comedy is one
of the most touching of Saroyan's works.
The Story:
Mr. Macauley was dead and his wife
and children had to take care of
themselves. When Marcus went into the
army, Homer, the next oldest, obtained
a job on the night shift in the telegraph
office at Ithaca, California. He worked
at night because he was still attending
school during the day. Little Ulysses
watched his family and wondered what
was going on, for his baby's mind could
not comprehend all the changes that had
taken place in his home.
Every morning Homer arose early
and exercised in his room so that he
would be physically fit to run the two-
twenty low hurdles at high school. After
he and Bess had eaten their breakfast,
Mary Arena, who was in love with
Marcus, came from next door, and she and
Bess walked to school together.
In the ancient history class, taught by
Miss Hicks, Homer and Hubert Ackley
the Third insulted each other, and Miss
Hicks kept the boys after school. But
Coach Byfield had picked Hubert to run
the two-twenty low hurdles that
afternoon, and Hubert told Miss Hicks that
the principal had asked that he be
excused. Indignant at the deceit, Miss
Hicks also sent Homer to run the race.
Although Hubert was the winner, Homer
felt that justice had been done.
Thomas Spangler was in charge of the
telegraph office and Mr. Grogan, an old
man with a weak heart, was his assistant.
Because Mr. Grogan got drunk every
night, one of Homer's duties was to see
to it that Mr. Grogan stayed awake to
perform his duties. A problem which
had weighed on Homer's mind ever since
he had taken his new job and had grown
up overnight was whether the war would
change anything for people. Mr.
Grogan and Homer often talked about the
world, Homer declaring that he did not
like things as they were. Seeing
everyone in the world mixed up and lonely,
Homer said, he felt that he had to say
and do things to make people laugh.
THE HUMAN COMEDY by William Saroyan. By permission of the author and the publishers, Harcourt, Brace
& Co., Inc. Copyright, 1943, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
1663

Mrs. Macauley was happy that her
children were so human. Ever since her
husband had died, Katey Macauley had
pretended to see him and discuss with
him problems that arose concerning the
rearing of her family. She felt that the
father was not dead if he lived again
in the lives of his children. One
afternoon she had a premonition of
Marcus* death, for she imagined that her
husband came to her and told her he was
going to bring Marcus with him.
Little Ulysses had a friend, Lionel,
who was three years older than Ulysses.
The older boys chased Lionel away from
their games because they said that he
was dumb. When Lionel came to Mrs.
Macauley to ask her whether he was
stupid, the kind woman assured him that
he was as good as everyone else. Lionel
took Ulysses to the library with him to
look at all the many-colored books on the
shelves. Ulysses, who spent his time
wandering around and watching
everything, was pleased with the new
experience.
Marcus wrote to Homer from an army
camp somewhere in the South, and
Homer took the letter back to the
telegraph office with him. The letter told
about Marcus' friend, an orphan named
Tobey George. Marcus had described
his family, Homer, Ulysses, Bess, his
mother, and his sweetheart, Mary, to
Tobey. Because Tobey had no family of
his own, he was grateful to Marcus
for bringing to him second-hand the
Macauley family. Marcus had told
Tobey that after the war he wanted
Tobey to go to Ithaca and marry Bess.
Tobey was not so certain that Bess
would want to marry him, but he felt
for the first time in his life that he had
a family that was almost his own.
Marcus had written to Homer, as the new
head of the family, to tell him about
Tobey George and to ask him to look
after his mother and Bess.
Homer was moved by his brother's
letter. When he had finished reading
it, he told Mr. Grogan that if Marcus
should be killed he would spit at the
world. Homer could express his love
for Marcus in no other way.
The same events repeated themselves
many times in Ithaca. Ulysses continued
to watch everything with increasing
interest. Mary and Bess sang their songs
and went for their evening walks.
Telegrams came, and Homer delivered them.
Soldiers began coming home to Ithaca,
to their mothers and to their families.
Homer had been working at the
telegraph office for six months. One Sunday
night, while he was walking downtown
with Lionel and Ulysses, he saw through
the window of the telegraph office that
Mr. Grogan was working alone. He sent
the two small boys home and went in to
see if Mr. Grogan needed him. The
old man had suffered one of his heart
attacks, and Homer ran to the drug store
to get some medicine for him. Mr.
Grogan attempted to type out one more
telegram, a message for Katey Macauley
telling her that her son Marcus had been
killed in action. When Homer returned
with the medicine, he found Mr, Grogan
slumped over the typed-out message. He
was dead. Homer went home with the
message that Marcus had been killed.
That night a soldier had got off the
train at Ithaca. He was Tobey George.
He walked around for a time before he
went to see Marcus' family. When he
came to the Macauley porch, he stood
and listened to Bess and Mary singing
inside the house. Bess came outside and
sat next to him while he told her that
Marcus had sent him to be a member
of the family. When Homer came to
the porch with the telegram, Tobey
called him aside and told him to tear
up the message. Tobey assured him that
Marcus was not dead; Marcus could
never die. Mrs. Macauley came onto the
porch, and Ulysses ran to Tobey and
took his hand. For a while the mother
1664

looked at her two remaining sons. Then walked into the house,
she smiled at her new son as the family
1665

HUMPHRY CLINKER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: England, Scotland, Wales
First published: 1771
Principal characters:
Matthew Bramble, a Welsh squire
Miss Tabitha Bramble, his sister
Lydia Melford, his niece
Jerry Melford, his nephew
Winifred Jenkins, a maid
Humphry Clinker, a servant, discovered to be Mr. Bramble's natural son
Lieutenant Obadiah Lismahago, an adventurer and sportsman
Mr. Dennison, a country gendeman
George Dennison, his son, the actor known as Wilson
Critique:
This novel, written in the form of
letters, is easy to read and continually
amusing. The characters of the writers of
the letters are shown by the variation of
their descriptions of the same events. The
picture is one of a realistic if somewhat
eccentric family, whose members display
the manners and customs of eighteenth-
century society. The Expedition of
Humphry Clinker, to use its full title,
has often been called the greatest of the
letter-novels, and an outstanding
example of English humor.
The Story:
Squire Matthew Bramble was an
eccentric and skeptical gentleman with
large estates in Wales. With him lived
his sister, Miss Tabitha Bramble, a
middle-aged maiden of high matrimonial
hopes that were greater than her
expectations. Painfully afflicted with the gout,
the squire set out for Bath to try the
waters, but with few hopes of their
healing properties. With him went his sister:
her servant, Winifred Jenkins; his own
manservant, and, at the last minute, his
niece and nephew, Lydia and Jerry
Melford.
The young Melfords were orphans and
Squire Bramble's wards. Lydia had been
in boarding-school, where, unfortunately,
she had fallen in love with an actor—a
circumstance Squire Bramble hoped she
would soon forget among the gay and
fashionable gatherings at Bath. Her
brother, who had just finished his studies
at Oxford, had tried to fight a duel with
the actor, but an opportunity to defend
his sister's honor had not presented
itself to his satisfaction.
On the way to Bath a Jewish peddler
made his way into Squire Bramble's
lodgings on the pretext of selling glasses, and
in a whisper made himself known to
Lydia as George Wilson, the strolling
player. The lovesick girl ordered
Winifred Jenkins to follow the actor and talk
with him. The maid came back in a
great flurry. He had told her that Wilson
was not his real name, that he was a
gendeman, and that he intended to sue
for Lydia's hand in his proper character.
But, alas, the excited maid had forgotten
Wilson's real name. There was nothing
for poor Lydia to do but to conjecture
and daydream as the party continued on
toward Bath.
Arriving at Bath without further
incident, the party entered the gay
festivities there with various degrees of
pleasure. Tabitha tried to get proposals of
marriage out of every eligible man she
met, and the squire became disgusted
with the supposed curative powers of the
waters which were drunk and bathed in
1666

by people with almost any infirmity in
hopes of regaining their health. Lydia
was still languishing over Wilson, and
Jerry enjoyed the absurdity of the social
gatherings. In an attempt to lighten his
niece's spirits, Squire Bramble decided to
go on to London.
They had traveled only a short way
toward London when the coach
accidentally overturned and Miss Tabitha's lap-
dog, in the excitement, bit the squire's
servant. Miss Tabitha made such loud
complaint when the servant kicked her
dog in return that the squire was forced
to discharge the man on the spot. He
also needed another postilion, as Miss
Tabitha declared herself unwilling to
drive another foot behind the clumsy
fellow who had overturned the coach. The
squire hired a ragged country fellow
named Humphry Clinker to take the
place of the unfortunate postilion, and
the party went on to the next village.
Miss Tabitha was shocked by what
she called Humphry's nakedness, for he
wore no shirt. The maid added to the
chorus of outraged modesty. Yielding to
these female clamors, the squire asked
about Humphry's circumstances, listened
to the story of his life, gruffly read him a
lecture on the crimes of poverty and
sickness, and gave him a guinea for a new
suit of clothes. In gratitude Humphry
refused to be parted from his new
benefactor and went on with the party to
London.
In London they were well entertained
by a visit to Vauxhall Gardens as well
as by several public and private parties.
Squire Bramble was disconcerted by the
discovery that Humphry was a preacher
by inclination, and had begun giving
sermons in the manner of the Methodists.
Miss Tabitha and her maid were already
among Humphry's followers. The squire
attempted to stop what he considered
either hypocrisy or madness on
Humphry's part. Miss Tabitha, disgusted with
her brother's action, begged him to allow
Humphry to continue his rermons.
The family was shocked to learn one
day that Humphry had been arrested as
a highway robber, and was in jail. When
the squire arrived to investigate the case,
he discovered that Humphry was
obviously innocent of the charge against
him, which had been placed by an ex-
convict who made money by turning in
criminals to the government. Humphry
had made a fine impression on the jailer
and his family and had converted several
of his fellow prisoners. The squire found
the man who supposedly had been robbed
and got him to testify that Humphry was
not the man who had committed the
robbery. In the meantime Humphry
preached so eloquently that he kept the
prison taproom empty of customers.
When this became evident he was
hurriedly released, and Squire Bramble
promised to allow him to preach his
sermons unmolested.
Continuing their travels north after
leaving London, the party stopped in
Scarborough where they went bathing.
Squire Bramble undressed in a little cart
which could be rolled down into the
sea, so that he was able to bath nude with
the greatest propriety. When he
entered the water, he found it much colder
than he had expected and gave several
shouts as he swam away. Hearing these
calls from the squire, Humphry thought
his good master was drowning, and
rushed fully clothed into the sea to
rescue him. He pulled the squire to shore,
almost twisting off his master's ear, and
leaving the modest man shamefaced and
naked in full view upon the beach.
Humphrey was forgiven, however,
because he had meant well.
At an inn in Durham, the party made
the acquaintance of Lieutenant Lisma-
hago, who seemed somewhat like Don
Quixote. The lieutenant, regaling the
company with tales of his adventures
among the Indians of North America,
quite captured the heart of Miss Tabitha.
Squire Bramble was also charmed with
the crusty conversation of the retired sol-
1667

dier, and made plans to meet him later
on in their journey. The group became
more and more fond of Humphry as time
went on, especially Winifred. After a
short and frivolous flirtation with Jerry*s
part-time valet, she settled down to win
Humphry as a husband.
The party continued its trip through
Scotland. In Edinburgh Lydia fainted
when she saw a man who looked like
Wilson, an action which showed her
uncle that she had not yet forgotten the
affair. After visiting several parts of
Scotland and enjoying the most gracious
hospitality everywhere, they continued by
coach back to England. As they were
traveling south, Lieutenant Lismahago
rejoined the party and Miss Tabitha
renewed her designs on him.
Just outside Dumfries the coach was
overturned in the middle of a stream.
Jerry and Lismahago succeeded in getting
the women out of the water after a
struggle, and Humphry staged a heroic
rescue of the squire, who had been
caught in the bottom of the coach. They
found lodgings at a nearby inn until
the coach could be repaired. While all
were gathered in the parlor of a tavern,
Squire Bramble was accosted by an old
college friend named Dennison, a
successful farmer of the county. Mr. Dennison
had known the squire only as Matthew
Lloyd, a name he had taken for a while
in order to fulfill the terms of a will.
When Humphry heard his master called
Lloyd, he rushed up in a flutter of
excitement and presented the squire with
certain papers he had always carried
with him. These papers proved that
Humphry was the squire's natural son.
In a gracious way, Squire Bramble
welcomed his offspring, and presented him
to the rest of his family. Humphry was
overcome with pleasure and shyness.
Winifred was afraid that his discovery
would spoil her matrimonial plans, but
Humphry continued to be the mild
religious man he had been before.
The squire was also surprised to learn
that the actor who had called himself
Wilson was really Dennison's son, a fine
proper young man who had run away
from school and become an actor only
to escape a marriage his father had
planned for him long before. He had told
his father about his love for Lydia, but
Dennison had not realized that the Mr.
Bramble who was her uncle was his. old
friend Matthew Lloyd. Now the two
young lovers were brought together for
a joyous reunion.
Lieutenant Lismahago was moved to
ask for Miss Tabitha's hand in marriage,
and both the squire and Miss Tabitha
eagerly accepted his offer. The whole
party went to stay at Mr. Dennison's
house while preparations were being
made for the marriage of Lydia and
George. The coming marriages prompted
Humphry to ask Winifred for her hand,
and she also said yes. The three
weddings were planned for the same day.
George and Lydia were a most
attractive couple. The lieutenant and Tabitha
seemed to be more pleasant than ever
before. Humphry and Winifred both
thanked God for the pleasures He saw fit
to give them. The squire planned to
return home to the tranquility of Bram-
bleton Hall and the friendship of his
invaluable doctor there.
1668

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Type of work: Novel
Author: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1831
Principal characters:
Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame
Esmerelda, a gipsy dancer
Claude Frollo, archdeacon of Notre Dame
Phoebus de Chateaupers, Esmerelda's sweetheart
Gringoire, a stupid and poverty-stricken poet
Critique:
Victor Hugo, leader of the French
romantic movement, not only could tell a
gripping story, but also could endow his
essentially romantic characters with a
realism so powerful that they have
become monumental literary figures. The
Hunchback of Notre Dame has every
quality of a good novel: an exciting story,
a magnificent setting, and deep, lasting
characterizations. Perhaps the
compelling truth of this novel lies in the idea
that God has created in man an imperfect
image of Himself, an image fettered by
society and by man's own body and soul,
but one which, in the last analysis, has
the freedom to transcend these
limitations and achieve spiritual greatness.
The Story:
Louis XI, King of France, was to marry
his oldest son to Margaret of Flanders,
and in early January, 1482, the king was
expecting Flemish ambassadors to his
court. The great day arrived, coinciding
both with Epiphany and the secular
celebration of the Festival of Fools. All day
long, raucous Parisians had assembled at
the great Palace of Justice to see a
morality play and to choose a Prince of Fools.
The throng was supposed to await the
arrival of the Flemish guests, but when
the emissaries were late Gringoire, a
penniless and oafish poet, ordered the play to
begin. In the middle of the prologue,
however, the play came to a standstill
as the royal procession passed into the
huge palace. After the procession passed
the play was forgotten, and the crowd
shouted for the Prince of Fools to be
chosen.
The Prince of Fools had to be a man
of remarkable physical ugliness. One by
one the candidates, eager for this one
glory of their disreputable lives, showed
their faces in front of a glass window, but
the crowd shouted and jeered until a
face of such extraordinary hideousness
appeared that the people acclaimed this
candidate at once as the Prince of Fools.
It was Quasimodo, the hunchback bell-
ringer of Notre Dame. Nowhere on earth
was there a more grotesque creature. One
of his eyes was buried under an enormous
wen. His teeth hung over his protruding
lower lip like tusks. His eyebrows were
red bristles, and his gigantic nose curved
over his upper lip like a snout. His long
arms protruded from his shoulders,
dangling like an ape's. Though he was deaf
from long years of ringing Notre Dame's
thunderous bells, his eyesight was acute.
Quasimodo sensed that he liad been
chosen by popular acclaim, and he was at
once proud and suspicious of his honor
as he allowed the crowd to dress him
in ridiculous robes and hoist him above
their heads. From this vantage point he
maintained a dignified silence while the
parade went through the streets of Paris,
stopping only to watch the enchanting
dance of a gipsy girl, La Esmerelda,
whose grace and charm held her audience
1669

spellbound. She had with her a little
trained goat that danced to her
tambourine. The pair were celebrated
throughout Paris, though there were some who
thought the girl a witch, so great was
her power in captivating her audience.
Late that night the poet Gringoire
walked the streets of Paris. He had no
shelter, owed money, and was in
desperate straits. As the cold night came on,
he saw Esmerelda hurrying ahead of him.
Then a black-hooded man came out of
the shadows and seized the gipsy. At the
same time, Gringoire caught sight of the
hooded man's partner, Quasimodo, who
struck Gringoire a terrible blow. The
following moment a horseman came riding
from the next street. Catching sight of
Esmerelda in the arms of the black-
hooded man, the rider demanded that he
free the girl or pay with his life. The
attackers fled. Esmerelda asked the name
of her rescuer. It was Captain Phoebus
de Chateaupers. From that moment
Esmerelda was hopelessly in love with
Phoebus.
Gringoire did not bother to discover
the plot behind the frustrated
kidnaping, but had he known the truth he
might have been more frightened than
he was, Quasimodo's hooded companion
had been Claude Frollo, archdeacon of
Notre Dame, a man who had once been a
pillar of righteousness, but who now,
because of loneliness and an insatiable
thirst for knowledge and experience, had
succumbed to the temptations of
necromancy and alchemy.
Frollo had befriended Quasimodo
when the hunchback had been left at
the gates of Notre Dame as an unwanted
baby, and to him Quasimodo was
slavishly loyal. He acted without question
when Frollo asked his aid in kidnaping
the beautiful gipsy. Frollo, having
admired Esmerelda from a distance, planned
to cany her off to his small cell in the
cathedral, where he could enjoy her
charms at his leisure.
As Quasimodo and Frollo hurried back
to the cathedral, Gringoire continued on
his way and found himself in a
disreputable quarter of Paris. Captured by
thugs, he was threatened with death if
none of the women in the thieves' den
would marry him. When no one wanted
the pale, thin poet, a noose was lowered
about his neck. Suddenly Esmerelda
appeared and volunteered to take him.
But Gringoire enjoyed no wedding night.
Esmerelda's heart belonged to Phoebus;
she had rescued the poet only out of pity.
In those days the courts of Paris often
picked innocent people from the streets,
tried them, and convicted them with
little regard for justice. Quasimodo had
been seen in his role as the Prince of
Fools and had been watched as he stood
before the gipsy girl while she danced.
It was rumored that Esmerelda was a
witch, and most of Paris suspected that
Frollo, Quasimodo's only associate, was
a sorcerer. Consequently Quasimodo was
brought into a court, accused of keeping
questionable company, and sentenced to
a severe flogging and exposure on the
pillory. Quasimodo endured his disgrace,
stoically, but after his misshapen back
had been torn by the lash, he was
overcome with a terrible thirst. The crowd
jeered and threw stones. They hated
and feared Quasimodo because of his
ugliness.
Presently Esmerelda mounted the
scaffold and put her flask to Quasimodo's
blackened lips. This act of kindness
moved him deeply and he wept. At that
same time Frollo had happened upon the
scene, caught sight of Quasimodo, and
departed quickly. Later Quasimodo was
to remember this betrayal.
One day Phoebus was entertaining a
lady in a building overlooking the square
where Esmerelda was dancing. The
gipsy was so smitten with Phoebus that
she had taught her goat to spell out his
name with alphabet blocks. When she
had the animal perform this trick, the
lady called her a witch and a sorceress.
But Phoebus followed the gipsy and
arranged for a rendezvous with her for
the following night.
1670

Gringoire, meanwhile, happened to
meet Frollo, who was jealous of the poet
because he was rumored to be Esmerelda's
husband. But Gringoire explained that
Esmerelda did not love him; she had eyes
and heart only for Phoebus.
Desperate to preserve Esmerelda for
himself, Frollo trailed the young gallant
and asked him where he was going.
Phoebus said that he had a rendezvous with
Esmerelda. The priest offered him money
in exchange for an opportunity to conceal
himself in the room where this
rendezvous was to take place, ostensibly to
discover whether Esmerelda were really the
girl whose name Phoebus had mentioned.
It was a poor ruse at best, but Phoebus
was not shy at love-making and he agreed
to the bargain. When he learned that
the girl was really Esmerelda, Frollo
leaped from concealment and wounded
Phoebus with a dagger. Esmerelda could
not see her lover's assailant in the
darkness and when she fainted Frollo escaped.
A crowd gathered, murmuring that the
sorceress had slain Phoebus. They took
the gipsy off to prison.
Now tales of Esmerelda's sorcery
began to circulate. At her trial she was
convicted of witchcraft, sentenced to do
penance on the great porch of Notre
Dame and from there to be taken to a
scaffold in the Place de Greve and
publicly hanged.
Captain Phoebus was not dead, but he
had kept silence rather than implicate
himself in a case of witchcraft. When
Esmerelda was on her way to Notre
Dame, she caught sight of him riding on
his beautiful horse, and called out to
him, but he ignored her completely. She
then felt that she was doomed.
When she came before Frollo to do
penance, he offered to save her if she
would be his; but she refused.
Quasimodo suddenly appeared on the porch,
took the girl in his arms, and carried
her to sanctuary within the church.
Esmerelda was now safe as long as she
remained within the cathedral walls.
Quasimodo hid her in his own cell,
where there was a mattress and water,
and brought her food. He kept the
cell door locked so that if her pursuers did
break the sanctuary, they could not
reach her. Aware that she would be
terrified of him if he stayed with her, he
entered her cell only to bring her his
own dinner.
Frollo, knowing that the gipsy was
near him in the cathedral, secured a key
to the chamber and stole in to see
Esmerelda one night. She struggled hopelessly,
until suddenly Quasimodo entered and
dragged the priest from the cell. With
smothered rage, he freed the trembling
archdeacon and allowed him to run away.
One day a mob gathered and
demanded that the sorceress be turned from
the cathedral. Frollo was jubilant.
Quasimodo, however, barred and bolted the
great doors. When the crowd charged
the cathedral with a battering ram,
Quasimodo threw huge stones from a tower
where builders had been working. The
mob persisting, he poured melted lead
upon the crowd below. Then the mob
secured ladders and began to mount the
facade, but Quasimodo seized the ladders
and pushed them from the wall.
Hundreds of dead and wounded lay below
him.
The king's guards joined the fray.
Quasimodo, looking down, thought that
the soldiers had arrived to protect
Esmerelda. He went to her cell, but to his
amazement he found the door open and
Esmerelda gone.
Frollo had given Gringoire the key to
her chamber and had led the poet
through the cathedral to her cell.
Gringoire convinced her that she must fly,
since the church was under siege. She
followed him trustingly, and he led her
to a boat where Frollo was already
waiting. Frightened by the violence of the
priest, Gringoire fled. Once more, Frollo
offered to save Esmerelda if she would
be his, but she refused him. Fleeing, she
sought refuge in a cell belonging to a
1671

madwoman. There the soldiers found
her and dragged her away for her
execution the next morning at dawn.
Quasimodo, meanwhile, roamed the
cathedral searching for Esmerelda.
Making his way to the tower which looked
down upon the bridge of Notre Dame,
Quasimodo came upon Frollo, who stood
shaking with laughter as he watched a
scene far below. Following the direction
of the priest's gaze, Quasimodo saw a
gibbet erected in the Place de Greve and
on the platform a woman in white. It
was Esmerelda. Quasimodo saw the noose
lowered over the girl's head and the
platform released. The body swayed in the
morning breeze. Then Quasimodo picked
up Frollo and thrust him over the wall
on which he had been leaning. At that
moment Quasimodo understood
everything that the priest had done to ensure
the death of Esmerelda. He looked at
the crushed body at the foot of the
tower and then at the figure in white
upon the gallows. He wept.
After the deaths of Esmerelda and
Claude Frollo, Quasimodo was not to be
found. Then in the reign of Charles
VIII the vault of Montfaucon, in which
the bodies of criminals were interred, was
opened to locate the remains of a famous
prisoner who had been buried there.
Among the skeletons were those of a
woman who had been clad in white and
of a man whose bony arms were wrapped
tightly around the woman's body. His
spine was crooked, one leg was shorter
than the other, and it was evident that
he had not been hanged, for his neck
was unbroken. When those who
discovered these singular remains tried to
separate the two bodies, they crumbled
into dust.
1672

HUNGER
/ ype of work: Novel
Author: Knut Hamsun (Knut Pedersen Hamsund, 1859-1952)
Type of flat: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First published: 1890
Principal character:
The Narrator, a young writer
Critique:
Hunger was the work that
immediately brought Hamsun to the attention
of a wide literary audience, and the novel
has been reprinted and translated many
times. Realistic in subject, its form and
treatment are highly impressionistic.
Hamsun has given us a striking study
of a man's mind under stress, but it is
not a clinical study; it is an artistic piece
of literature.
The Story:
T awoke at six o'clock and lay awake
in my bed until eight. Hungry, I
searched in my packet of odds and ends,
but there was not even a crumb of bread.
I knew that I should have gone out early
to look for work, but I had been refused
so often I was almost afraid to venture
out again.
At last I took some paper and went
out, for if the weather permitted I could
write in the park. There were several
good ideas in my head for newspaper
articles. In the street an old cripple with
a big bundle was using all his strength
to keep ahead of me.
When I caught up with him he turned
around and whined for a halfpenny to
buy milk. Not having a cent on me, I
hurried back to the pawnbroker's dark
shop. In the hall I too\ off my waistcoat
and rolled it in a ball. The pawnbroker
gave me one and six for it. I found the
old cripple again and gave him his
halfpenny. He stared at me with his mouth
open as I hurried away.
Two women, one of them young, were
idly strolling about When I told the
young woman that she would lose her
HUNGER by Knut Hamsun. Translated by George Egerton. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf.
Inc. Copyright, 1920, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed, 1948, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
book, she looked frightened and they
hurried on. Seeing them standing before
a shop window, I went up to them again
and told the younger woman that she
was losing her book. She looked
herself over in a bewildered way; she had
no book. I kept following them, but
they put me down as a harmless
madman.
In the park I could not write a thing.
Little flies stuck to my paper. All
afternoon I tried to brush them off. Then
I wrote an application for a job as
bookkeeper. After a day or two I went to
see the man in person. He laughed at
my desire to become a bookkeeper
because I had dated my letter 1848, years
before I was born. I went home
discouraged.
On my table was a letter. I thought
it a notice from my landlady, for I was
behind in my rent. But no, my story
had been accepted. The editor said it
would be printed right away. He had
included a half sovereign in payment.
I had written a masterpiece and I had a
half sovereign.
A few weeks later I went out for an
evening walk and sat in a churchyard
with a new manuscript. At eight o'clock,
when the gates were closed, I meant to
go straight home to the vacant tinker's
workshop which I had permission to
occupy, but I stumbled around hardly
knowing where I was. I felt feverisn
because I had not eaten for several days.
At last I sat down and dozed off. I
dreamed that a beautiful girl dressed in
silk waited for me in a doorway and
1673

led me down a hall, she holding my
hand. We went into a crimson room
where she clasped me tightly and begged
me to kiss her.
A policeman woke me up and advised
me to go to the police barracks as a
homeless man. When I got there, I lied
about my name and said that it was too
late for me to get back to my lodgings.
The officer believed me and gave me a
private room. In the morning, thinking
I was only a young rake instead of a
destitute, the police gave me no
breakfast ticket. I drank a lot of water but I
could scarcely keep it down.
Faint with hunger, I cut the buttons
from my coat and tried to pawn them,
but the pawnbroker laughed at me. On
the way out I met a friend bringing his
watch to pawn. He fed me and gave me
&ve shillings.
I went to see an editor who critically
read my sketch on Corregio. He was
kind, saying that he would like to
publish my work but that he had to keep
his subscribers in mind. He asked if ]
could write something more to the
common taste. When I prepared to leave, he
also asked me if I needed money. He
was sure I could write it out. Although I
had not eaten a real meal for some time,
I thanked him and left without an
advance payment.
A lady in black stood every night on
die corner by my tinker's garret. She
would look intently at my lodging for a
while and then pass on. After several
days I spoke to her and accompanied
her on her walk. She said she had no
special interest in my poor garret or in
me. When she lifted her veil, I saw she
was the woman I had followed and
spoken to about the book. She was
merry with me and seemed to enjoy my
company.
One night she took me to her home.
Once inside, we embraced; then we sat
down and began to talk. She confessed
that she was attracted to me because she
thought I was a madman. She was an
adventurous girl, on the lookout for odd
experiences. I told her the truth about
myself, that I acted queerly because I
was so poor. Much of the time I was
so hungry that I had a fever. She found
my story hard to believe, but I convinced
her. She was sympathetic for a moment.
I had to leave, for her mother was
returning, and I never saw her again.
I awoke sick one morning. All day I
shivered in bed. Toward night I went
down to the little shop below to buy a
candle, for I felt I had to write
something. A boy was alone in the store. I
gave him a florin for my candle, but he
gave me change for a crown. I stared
stupidly at the money in my hand for a
long time, but I got out without
betraying myself.
I took a room in a real hotel and had
a chamber to myself and breakfast and
supper. About the time my money was
gone I started on a medieval play. The
landlady trusted me for quite a while,
for I explained that I would pay her as
soon as my play was finished. One night
she brought a sailor up to my room and
turned me out, but she let me go down
and sleep with the family.
For some time I slept on a sofa in the
entryway, and once in a while a servant
gave me bread and cheese. In my nervous
condition it was hard to be meek and
grateful. The break came one evening
when the children were amusing
themselves by sticking straws into the nose
and ears of the paralyzed grandfather
who lay on a bed before the fire. I
protested against their cruel sport. The
landlady flew at me in a rage and
ordered me out.
I wandered down to the docks and
got a berth on a Russian freighter going
to England. I came back to the hotel
for my possessions and on the step met
the postman. He handed me a letter
addressed in a feminine hand. Inside
was a half sovereign. I crumpled the
envelope and coin together and threw
them in the landlady's face.
1674

HUON DE BORDEAUX
Type of work: Chanson de geste
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Ninth century
Locale: Paris, Jerusalem, Rome, the fairy kingdom of Mommui
First transcribed: First half of the thirteenth century
Principal characters:
Huon of Bordeaux, older son of the dead Duke of Guienne
Gerard, his younger brother
Charlemagne, King of France
Charlot, his older son
Earl Amaury, Chariot's evil adviser
Duke Naymes, Charlemagne's adviser
The Abbot of Cluny, uncle to Huon and Gerard
Gerames, a loyal hermit
03ER0N, king uf fairyland
Gawdis, Amir of Babylon
Claramond, his daughter
Critique:
In this lengthy example of medieval
French verse romance, we see a chanson
de geste—a "tale of a deed"—in a
developed and perhaps impure form. The
unknown author, thought to be a writer of
the first half of the thirteenth century
and perhaps a resident of the town of
St. Omer, combines in a somewhat
ununified tale different sorts of materials.
The events are supposed to take place
late in the reign of Charlemagne, after
the betrayal and defeat of Roland at
Roncesvalles and therefore early in the
ninth century. The Charlemagne of this
poem bears a celebrated historical name
but few of the attributes of the great king
of the Dark Ages. He is petulant,
suspicious, and ill-advised in important
decisions; the wisdom, temperance, and
heroism of the historical figure is gone, and
a fairy tale personage—an inferior King
Lear—remains; on his vacillating decisions
much of the story rests. Although the
imagination of the author of Huon de
Bordeaux did respond to the actual social
conditions of his time, he drew also on
conventional but highly fanciful narrative
materials to which any medieval
storyteller had access. Stories of the dwarf
fairy-king, Oberon, rise from both Celtic
tale and Germanic story. Tales about the
crusaders made available to the writer
confused details about "paynim"
countries that bulk large in the main portion
of Huon's adventures, but it is plain to
any reader that these details mask a very
sketchy knowledge. In leaving France
behind, the medieval rhymer left reality
behind; and the extensive travels of the
hero take us into realms as fantastic and
nonexistent as those of Prester John.
The Story:
King Charlemagne, grown old and
wishing to relinquish the burden of
government, summoned his court and
consulted with his nobles to determine the
succession to his throne. His plan was
to abdicate in favor of his two sons, but
the nobles of France were not willing to
accept his favorite, Chariot, partly
because of the young prince's association
with Earl Amaury, kinsman of the
infamous Ganelon who had betrayed
Roland to his death. The earl, the partisan
of Chariot, took the occasion to get
revenge on the noble house of Guienne.
His suggestion was that Chariot be given
a province to govern before he took over
the responsibilities of a state. It was called
1675

to Charlemagne's doting attention—for
the king had become violent and
unreasonable in his judgments and
punishments—that the two sons of the dead
duke had not yet come to Paris to pay
their respects and render homage. Earl
Amaury's hope was to see them
dispossessed and their lands given to Chariot.
Sent to conduct the heirs of the dead
duke to Charlemagne's court, messengers
discovered that what the king's wise
adviser, Duke Naymes, had stated was
indeed the case: the brothers, Huon and
Gerard, had been too young to come to
court before. The messengers, pleased
with their reception by the duchess, the
boys' mother, and with the manly
bearing of young Huon of Bordeaux, the
older son, returned with word that the
young noblemen would soon follow them
to swear fealty to the king.
Huon and Gerard set out on their
journey to Paris, stopping on the way at
the monastery of Cluny where their
uncle was abbot. The noble churchman
decided to accompany his nephews to
Charlemagne's court.
In the meantime Chariot had been
persuaded by Earl Amaury to ambush the
boys and kill them. Because their lands
were extensive and tempting, the prince
agreed. But in the fray Chariot was killed
when Huon struck him with his sword,
severing the prince's helmet. In spite of
the abbot's testimony, however,
Charlemagne refused to believe that Huon had
acted in self-defense and without
knowledge of his assailant's identity. In a trial
by combat with Earl Amaury, Huon
killed that wretched knight before he
could gasp out, at death's verge, a true
account of his villainy. Still
unenlightened, the angry king sent Huon on a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem and also ordered
him to kiss three times the beautiful Clar-
amond, the daughter of Gawdis, Amir of
Babylon, and to return with white hairs
from the amir's beard and teeth from his
mouth.
Obedient to Charlemagne's command,
Huon parted company with his brother
Gerard, in whose care he left his lands.
Although there had been love between
the brothers in the past, Gerard
straightway became false to his trust and plotted
great evil against his distant brother. For
Huon's return was greatly delayed.
Though fortune often favored him and
provided him with kinsmen in odd
corners of the world, the wicked paynims
abused him, imprisoned him, and on
many occasions carried him far from his
destination. Gerames, a hermit, became
his loyal follower after chance threw
them together, and he was close at
Huon's heels when the Christian knight
kissed Claramond and got the teeth and
the hair from the severed head of the
amir after that ruler had received the
bowstring from the dread Caliph of
Arabia. Huon secreted the teeth and hair
in the side of the hermit for safekeeping.
Huon was aided in his adventures by
two gifts from Oberon, the dwarf king
of the Otherworld, born of an ancient
union between Julius Caesar and Morgan
le Fay. Gerames, the wise hermit, had
warned Huon not to speak to Oberon,
but Huon, ignoring his advice, spoke to
the dwarf and so won the protection of
the white magic of that strange little
creature. Huon was able to carry with
him the gifts from Oberon. One was a
cup that rilled up at the sign of the cross
and emptied when it was held in the
hand of a wicked person. The other was
a horn which Huon was supposed to blow
to summon Oberon's help when grave
danger threatened. Huon, like the boy
who cried wolf in Aesop's fable, blew
the horn too frequently, and Oberon was
sometimes tempted not to respond.
Moreover, Huon's dignity and prudence
sometimes left him. Despite warnings, he
embraced the lovely Claramond before they
were married and so brought about an
interminable separation; and he once
imprudently allowed a giant to arm himself
before a contest. But at last, with the
combined help of the hermit and the
fairy king, Huon and Claramond reached
Rome, where their marriage was blessed
1676

by the Pope himself, who was the uncle
of Huon.
On his return to France with his bride,
Huon found that his brother was now his
foe and that well-wishers like Duke
Naymes could not protect him from the
anger and dotage of Charlemagne. But
Oberon could. The fairy king made his
appearance, humbled great Charlemagne,
and saw to it that Huon and Claramond
were secure in all their rights. Though
Huon interceded for his brother's life and
made the court weep by his display of
generosity, Oberon was obdurate, and
Gerard and his fellow conspirators were
hanged. As a final favor, Huon was
promised that he would someday inherit
Oberon's kingdom.
1677

HYDE PARK
Type of work: Drama
Author: James Shirley (1596-1666)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1632
Principal characters:
Lord Bonvile, a sporting peer
Trier, his friend, betrothed to Julietta
Fairfield, favored suitor to Mistress Carol
Rider, and
Venture, her rejected suitors
Bonavent, a merchant returned after seven years' absence
Mistress Bonavent, his wife, who thinks herself a widow
Lacy, Mistress Bonavent's suitor
Julietta, Fairfield's sister, pursued by Lord Bonvile
Mistress Carol, Mistress Bonavent's cousin and companion
Critique:
Hyde Park, the second of Shirley's
sprightly comedies, paved the way for
the later Restoration drama. The play,
honoring the opening of Hyde Park to
the public by the first Earl of Holland,
presented to the audience of that time
interesting gaming talk as well as the
manners of the fashionable world. Pepys
reports that live horses were led across
the stage in a production of Hyde Park
some years after the playwright's death
in the Great Fire of London. Though
the play itself looks forward to a more
sophisticated drama, it is still firmly
based in the delightful fancies of
Shakespeare, Jonson, and other Elizabethan and
Jacobean playwrights, of whom Shirley
was the last of note.
The Story:
Because her husband, a merchant, had
been missing for seven years, Mistress
Bonavent had for some time considered a
second marriage to Lacy, her persistent
suitor. Mistress Carol, her cousin and
companion, urged her not to give away
so lightly the independence she had won.
Mistress Carol herself swore never to
marry, even though she carried on
flirtations with Rider, Venture, and Fairfield.
Rider and Venture, vying with each
other for the lady's favor, had each
given her a gift which she in turn
presented to his rival. Comparing notes,
they concluded that Fairfield must be
the favored suitor.
Lacy, summoned by Mistress
Bonavent's servant, felt certain that his suit
was now successful. Into this confused
arena of love arrived Lord Bonvile, a
sportsman who admired both horses and
women, and Bonavent, disguised in order
to find out what had happened during
his absence.
Though Fairfield's overtures to
Mistress Carol were rejected, Lacy's to
Mistress Bonavent were accepted, and the
wedding was set for that very morning.
Mistress Carol told her cousin that she
was acting rashly, no man being worth
the candle,
Bonavent soon learned that the sound
of merriment in his own house augured
no good for that returned merchant who,
held captive by a Turkish pirate, had
only recently been ransomed. Lacy,
perhaps too merry with wine and
anticipation, bade the stranger welcome and
asked, then demanded, that he dance
with and, finally, for them. Bonavent's
dancing was ridiculed, especially by sharp-
tongued Mistress Carol. Lacy tried to
1678

make amends by inviting him to join
additional revels in Hyde Park that very
day.
In the meantime Fairfield, despairing
because of his love for Mispress Carol,
said farewell to his sister Julietta and
wished her well in her coming marriage
to Jack Trier. But it was soon apparent
to the young woman that her suitor was
not in earnest in his avowals of love, for
he introduced her to his friend Lord
Bon vile and then left them. Before his
departure Trier had whispered in the
lord's ear that he was in a sporting house
and the lady was a person of easy virtue.
As a woman of good breeding, and aware
only that her fiance had shown poor
manners, Julietta invited Lord Bonvile
to accompany her to the park, an
invitation which provided her betrothed with
an opportunity to try her chastity.
When the two aggrieved lovers, Rider
and Venture, appealed to Mispress Carol
not to make sport of them by passing
their gifts on to their rival, she declared
that she had no interest in them and had
always told them so; in their persistence,
however, they had paid little attention
to her. Fairfield, coming to say goodbye,
first asked her to swear to one
agreement without knowing what it was.
Convinced at last that the agreement would
not commit her to love, marry, or go to
bed with him, she agreed; at his request
she then swore never to desire his
company again or to love him. The oath
sealed with a kiss, he departed, leaving
her in a state of consternation.
Julietta, courted by a baffled lord
whose very propositions were turned into
pleasantries, remained aloof from her
still more baffled suitor, who could not
determine how far the flirtation had
gone in Hyde Park.
Still in disguise, Bonavent learned that
Lacy and his wife were indeed married
but that the marriage had not yet been
consummated—to the pleasure of his
informant, Mistress Carol, who by now
was distressed by affection for the
previously spurned Fairfield. She sent a
message by Trier asking Fairfield to come to
see her, but on his arrival she denied
that she had sent for him. Fairfield, in
turn, offered to release her from her oath
if she would have him, but she turned
coquette and rejected his proposal.
Consequently, he refused to believe her when
she protested that she now loved him.
Lord Bonvile, torn between his desire
to play what he thought was a sure thing
and the horses which were a gamble,
pushed his suit too far, and for his brash-
ness received a lecture on titles and good
breeding, a remonstrance which he took
to heart.
The disconsolate Mistress Carol met
Julietta, who informed the spurned one
that Fairfield was as disconsolate as she.
Mistress Carol then concocted a
stratagem at the expense of Venture, a poet,
horseman, and singer. She goaded him
into writing a poem on the lengths to
which he would go for her love, and to
this effusion she later affixed the name
of Fairfield. Meanwhile, in Hyde Park,
Bonavent hired a bagpipe and made the
bridegroom dance to the tune of a sword
at his legs, a return for the courtesy
extended at the wedding festivities. In a
note to his wife, the merchant informed
her of his return but urged her to secrecy
for the time being.
Mistress Carol, who now pretended to
believe that Venture's hyperbole was a
suicide note from Fairfield, summoned
her recalcitrant suitor. Thinking that she
was still making fun of him, he denied
any intention of doing away with
himself and in turn accused her of duplicity.
He added that he would make himself a
gelding so that women would no longer
concern him—a threat more real to
Mistress Carol than that of suicide. On the
spot she abandoned all pride and
proposed marriage to him. He immediately
accepted.
Lord Bonvile, having learned too late
from Trier that he was the victim of a
jealous lover, was accepted by Julietta
as a worthy suitor, now that his thoughts
were as lofty as his position in society.
1679

Bonavent, to show himself unresentful,
proposed a merry celebration and placed
willow garlands on the heads of the
disappointed lovers: Trier, Lacy, Rider, and
Venture. He received the good wishes of
Lacy and pledged himself to entertain
the whole party at supper with tales of his
captivity.
All this, however, had been prophesied
earlier in Hyde Park, when Lord Bon-
vile and his Julietta, Fairfield and
Mistress Carol, and Mr. and Ms'ress
Bonavent had heard the song of Philomel, the
nightingale. The others had heard only
the cuckoo.
1680

HYPATIA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Fifth century
Locale: Egypt and Italy
First published: 1853
Principal characters
Philammon, a young monk
Hypatia, a female Greek philosopher and teack«r
Raphael Aben-Ezra, a young Jew, Hypatia's puxai
Miriam, an old Jewish crone
Amal, a young Gothic chiei
Pelagia, Amars mistress
Orestes, Roman prefect of Alexandria
Critique:
In Alexandria in the fifth century
after Christ's death, there were many
forces, Pagan, Christian, and Jewish, all
struggling for the souls of men. Hypatia
is the story of that conflict, which ended
with the disintegration of a victorious
Christian faction that used violence to
gain its ends. The larger background of
the novel is the dissolving Roman
Empire.
The Story:
Philammon might never have left the
little colony of monks three hundred
miles above Alexandria if he had not
strayed into an ancient temple in search
of kindling. There, on the temple walls,
he saw paintings of a life undreamed of
in his monastic retreat, and he longed
to visit the greater outside world. That
very day, against the advice of the abbot
ana Aufugus, a monk whom he highly
respected, he started out in a small boat
and traveled down the river toward
Alexandria.
In that splendid city at the mouth of
the Nile lived Hypatia, the beautiful
philosopher and teacher, one of the last
to champion the ancient Greek gods.
As she sat with her books one day, she
was visited by the Roman prefect,
Orestes, with the news that Pelagia, a
beautiful courtesan who was Hypatia's
rival for the hearts and souls of men, had
left the city. Pelagia had transferred her
affections to Amal, a Goth chieftain, and
had joined him on a trip up the Nile
in search of Asgard, home of the old
Gothic gods.
Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, had
reported to Orestes that the Jews of the
city were about to rise and slaughter
the Christians, but Orestes chose to
ignore the matter and let events take
their course. Hypatia, who also had
reason to oppose the Christian patriarch,
suggested that Cyril make his charges
before the Roman tribunal, which would,
of course, postpone action against the
Jews.
A wealthy young Jew, Raphael Aben-
Ezra, whom Orestes met on his way to
the palace, suggested that the prefect
plead ignorance of any plot in his reply
to Cyril. Raphael disclosed to the Roman
that Heraclian, a Roman leader, had
recently sailed for Italy, where he
planned to destroy the Gothic conquerors
of Rome and make himself emperor. His
news led Orestes to think of the power
he might hold south of the Mediterranean
if the expedition succeeded.
Sailing down the Nile, Philammon
met Pelagia and the party of Goths
traveling in the opposite direction. He
helped the men kill a hippopotamus.
When he warned them that they could
never cross the cataracts to the south, the
Goths decided to turn back. Philammon
was given a place in their boat.
1681

Orestes sent Hypatia a letter delivered
by the old Jewish crone, Miriam. It
contained Raphael's news and a
proposal that Hypatia marry the prefect and
share the throne he was planning to
create for himself in Egypt. Hypatia's
reply was that she would accept the
offer if Orestes would renounce his
Christian faith and aid her in restoring
the Greek gods.
Orestes, having no desire to face
excommunication, was disturbed by her
answer. At Raphael's suggestion, he
decided to wait for a month in the hope
that Hypatia's desire to marry a future
emperor would overcome her religious
zeal.
When they arrived in Alexandria,
Philammon left the Goths and went to
deliver to the Patriarch Cyril the letters
of introduction he carried. While
waiting to see the patriarch, Philammon
overheard a plot to raid the Jewish quarter
the next day.
That night, as he lay in bed in the
patriarch's house, Philammon heard cries
that the Jews were burning Alexander's
Church. Joining a crowd of monks
hurrying toward that edifice, he was
attacked by a band of Hebrew marauders.
But the report of the conflagration was
false; it had been a trick of the Jews
to lure the Christians into ambush.
During the street fighting the Roman
constabulary, which was supposed to keep
order, remained aloof.
The next morning Miriam, who took
a mysterious interest in Raphael's
welfare, hastened to his quarters to warn
him to flee. Christians, attacking the
Jewish quarter, were pillaging the houses
and expelling their inhabitants. To
Miriam's exasperation, Raphael showed
no interest in the fate of his wealth.
Calmly exchanging his rich robes for a
Christian's tattered rags, he prepared to
leave the city. Miriam was left to save
what she could of his possessions.
Philammon was one of the Christians
who aided in despoiling the Jews. During
the rioting he began to compare the
conduct of the monks of Alexandria with
the principles of charity and good works
he himself had been taught. Hearing
of Hypatia and her teachings, he naively
went to the museum where she lectured,
in the hope of converting her to
Christianity by his arguments. Nearly put out
of the building by her pupils when he
rose to dispute with her, he was spared
at Hypatia's request. After the lecture
she invited him to visit her the following
day.
The Alexandrian monks were incensed
when they learned that one Philammon
had been to listen to the discourse of a
pagan. When he visited Hypatia again,
they accused him of being a heretic, and
the young monk barely escaped being
murdered. Philammon, charmed by
Hypatia's beauty and purity, begged to
become her pupil.
Raphael, who had fled to Italy, found
himself in a devastated Rome. Heraclian,
after his defeat by the Goths, was
preparing to reembark for Africa. After
Raphael had saved one member of the
ill-fated expedition and his daughter,
Victoria, from two barbarian soldiers, he
sailed with them from Ostia to Berenice,
a port on the coast of Africa.
Meanwhile, in Alexandria,
Philammon had become Hypatia's favorite
pupil. Aufugus, learning that the youth
had deserted his Christian brethren,
went to the city to find him. One day
the two men met in the street. Aufugus,
seeing that Philammon was determined
to remain with his mentor, declared that
the young monk was actually his slave,
and he appealed to Orestes, who was
passing by, to force Philammon to go
with his legal owner. Philammon fled
to take temporary refuge with the Goths
in Pelagia's house.
After Philammon had returned to his
own rooms, he received a summons from
Miriam. She confirmed the fact that he
was Aufugus' slave, for she had seen
Philammon bought in Athens fifteen
years before. Although Miriam had
received the report of Heraclian's defeat
1682

by fast messenger, she wrote a letter
which declared that Heraclian had been
the victor. She sent Philammon to
deliver the letter to Orestes.
The prefect immediately planned a
great celebration, in which the
beautiful Pelagia should dance as Venus An-
adyomene. Philammon hotly objected
to the plan, for when Miriam told him
he was a slave she had implied also that
Pelagia was his sister. Annoyed, Orestes
ordered the monk to be thrown into jail.
There Philammon was held prisoner
until the day of the celebration. Released,
he hurried to the arena in time to witness
the slaughter of some Libyan slaves by
professional gladiators. Orestes, with
Hypatia beside him, watched from his
box.
When Pelagia was carried into the
amphitheater by an elephant and
introduced as Venus, Orestes' hirelings tried
to raise a cry to proclaim him Emperor
of Africa. No one responded. Pelagia
danced before her audience until
Philammon, overcome by shame, could bear
the sight no longer. Running to stop her
shameful dance, he was caught up by the
elephant's trunk and would have been
dashed to death if Pelagia had not
persuaded the animal to put him down.
Pelagia left the amphitheater.
Philammon was hustled away by the guards.
Orestes, however, was determined that
his plan should succeed. When the
uproar caused by Philammon began to die
down, he stepped forward and offered
himself as emperor. As had been
prearranged, the city authorities began a
clamor for him; but hardly had they
started their outcry when a monk in the
topmost tiers shouted that Heraclian had
been defeated. Orestes and Hypatia fled.
Philammon, when he returned home,
found Pelagia in his quarters. He begged
his sister, as he now called her, to leave
the Goth, Amal, and repent her ways,
but the courtesan refused. Instead, she
entreated him to ask Hypatia to accept
her as a pupil, so that Amal, whose
affection for her was failing, would love
and respect her as the Greek woman was
respected. But Hypatia had no pity for
her hated rival. Philammon, carrying
the news of her refusal to his sister,
could not help thinking fondly of his
own religion, with its offer of pity to all
transgressors.
Hypatia knew the populace would
soon be clamoring for her blood and that
she would be forced to flee. In one last
desperate effort to hold to her creed, she
forced herself into a trance that she
might have a visitation from the gods.
The only face she saw, however, was
Pelagia's.
When Miriam visited Hypatia the
same day with the promise that she
should see Apollo that night if she
would visit the house of the Jewess,
the distraught philosopher agreed. But
the Apollo the crone showed her was
Philammon, stupefied by drugged wine.
As Miriam had foreseen, Hypatia realized
at last that the only gods she would ever
see were those that existed in her own
mind. Shamed and angry, she went
away. The final blow to fall on Hypatia
was the news Raphael brought her on
his return to Alexandria the next day.
Under the persuasion of Augustine; the
famous philosopher-monk, he had
become a converted Catholic before
leaving Berenice, and he had married
Victoria. That afternoon, as she started for
the museum to give her farewell lecture,
Hypatia was torn to pieces by some oi
Cyril's monks.
Philammon, when he learned of Hy-
patia's fate, visited Pelagia and pleaded
with her to flee with him. By chance
he met Amal, and in a struggle that
ensued they fell from a tower together,
and the Goth was killed. After Amal's
death, Pelagia was willing to leave the
city. Together they returned to the
desert, where Pelagia lived in solitary
penitence and Philammon became abbot,
eventually, of the community he had
left. Brother and sister died at the same
time and were buried in a common grave.
Before he departed from Alexandria
1683

forever, Raphael learned from Miriam
that she was his mother. A Jewess by
birth, she had been converted to
Christianity and had lived in a convent until
it was sacked by the heathen. Afterward
she had renounced her faith and had
sworn the destruction of everyone not of
her own race. Raphael had been given
to a rich Jewess, who had represented
him to her husband as her own child.
After confessing her relationship to her
son, Miriam died on his shoulder. She
had been mortally wounded by the Goths
after the death of their leader.
The victory which the Patriarch Cyril
gained by Hypatia's death was only
temporary. Though it marked the end
of her creed in Egypt, it also signified the
decline of the Egyptian Church, for the
Christians, splitting into many factions,
did not hesitate to use on each other the
same violence they had once displayed
toward the Greek philosopher.
1684

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris, France
First presented: 1673
Principal characters:
Argan, an imaginary invalid
Beline, his second wife
Angelique, Argan's daughter
Cleante, her lover
Beralde, Argan's brother
Thomas Diafoirus, the doctor's son
TorNETTE, Argan's maidservant
Critique:
Turning his satirical pen to the
medical profession, Moliere almost surpasses
even his own bitterness as displayed in
his earlier plays. The Hypochondriac (Le
Malade Imaginaire') was his last comedy,
and he was unmerciful in his attack on all
doctors and pharmacists. His usual wit
and humor are not lost in the irony, but
they are secondary to it. It is now
almost three hundred years since Mo-
liere's death, but his literary stature has
not diminished with the years. He is still
studied and imitated as he was in his own
time.
The Story:
Argan was the worst sort of
hypochondriac. Each day saw him trying a new
drug of some sort, so that the doctor and
apothecary could exist almost exclusively
on their profits from Argan. Toinette, his
maidservant, tried in vain to persuade
him to end his worries about his health,
for she was certain that there was
absolutely nothing the matter with her master.
But he would not listen to her; he was
determined to be an invalid.
He was encouraged in his supposed
illness by his doctor and by Beline, his
second wife, who used his weakness to
further her schemes to get his money.
Because the law said that a second wife
could not inherit, it was essential to
Beline that Argan make a settlement on
her while he still lived. To that end also
she tried to get him to place his two
daughters in a convent, so that they could
not interfere by claiming money for
themselves.
Argan had other plans for his older
daughter, Angelique. He was going to
force her betrothal to his doctor's son in
order to have a doctor in the family. He
told the girl that a dutiful daughter would
take a husband useful to her father. But
Angelique, loving a young man named
Cleante, begged her father not to force
her marriage to Thomas Diafoirus, the
doctor's son. Argan was firm because the
young man would also inherit a large
sum of money from his father and
another from his uncle, the apothecary. If
Angelique would not obey his wishes, he
threatened to place her in a convent, as
her stepmother wished him to do.
Toinette scolded him severely for forcing his
daughter to marry against her wishes, but
he would not be moved. Toinette,
wishing to help Angelique, got word to
Cleante that his beloved was to be given
to another.
Cleante disguised himself as the friend
of Angelique's singing-master and told
Argan that he had been sent to give her
her singing lesson. Toinette pretended to
change her mind and sympathize with
Argan's position regarding the marriage.
In that way she could offer to guard
1685

Angelique, while in reality giving the
young lovers an opportunity to be alone
together.
As the supposed teacher, CMante had
to witness the meeting between Thomas
and Angelique. Thomas was a great boob
of a boy, quoting memorized speeches to
Argan, Angelique, and Beline. His
father, the doctor, was quite proud that
Thomas had always been a little slow in
learning and that he followed blindly the
opinions of the ancients, not accepting
any of the new medical discoveries—for
example, the thesis that blood circulated
through the system.
Poor Angelique knew that she could
never marry such a stupid oaf. She
begged her father at least to give her time
to become acquainted with Thomas, but
the most he would give her was four days.
At the end of that period she must either
marry Thomas or go into a convent. In
order to be assured of Argan's money,
Beline continued to plead with him to
choose the convent for his daughter.
Argan's brother, Beralde, called on him
and also pleaded Angelique's cause. He
thought it wicked to force her to marry
against her wishes. He knew that Argan
was not really ill and did not need a
doctor in the family. In fact, he knew that the
doctor would soon cause his brother's
death by the constant "drenching" of his
abdomen. Beralde sent the medicines
away, causing the doctor to renounce his
patient and to predict his death within
four days. The apothecary canceled his
contract to give his nephew a marriage
settlement, and neither of the
professionals would be soothed by Argan's
protestations that it was his brother and not he
who had denounced them and their
treatments. Argan believed that he would
surely die without their attention.
Toinette and Beralde then schemed to
trick the hypochondriac. Toinette
disguised herself as a physician and told
Argan that his former doctor had been
entirely mistaken in his diagnosis of
Argan's illness. His liver and bowels were
not ailing, but his lungs were; he must cut
off his arm and pluck out his eye because
they were drawing all his strength to
them. Even Argan would not take such a
drastic remedy. The poor man felt that he
was doomed.
Still Argan would not relent
concerning Angelique. Since the doctor and the
apothecary had broken their marriage
contracts, Angelique must go to a convent
and become a nun. When Beralde
accused him of being influenced by his
wife, Argan agreed to Toinette's
suggestion that he allow his wife to prove her
love for him. Toinette knew the greed of
Beline, but she pretended to Argan that if
he acted dead he would see that she loved
him and not his money. In this way he
could convince his brother of Beline's true
love.
The plan was carried out, but when
Toinette cried to Beline that Argan was
dead, the wife praised heaven that she was
rid of her dirty, disgusting husband. Then
she tried to bribe Toinette to help her
keep Argan's death a secret until she
could get certain papers and money into
her possession. At that Argan rose up from
his supposed deathbed to confront his
wife. She fled in terror.
Toinette persuaded Argan to try the
same plan with his daughter. When
Angelique was told that her father was
dead, she wept for him. Cleante came
into the room and Angelique told him
that now she could not marry him. Her
father was dead, and she could make
amends for her previous refusals to obey
him only by carrying out his wishes now.
Argan again rose from his deathbed, this
time to bless his daughter for her
faithfulness. Toinette and Beralde reminded him
of his daughter's love and of his duty to
reward her by allowing her to marry the
man of her choice. Argan agreed that she
could marry Cleante if he would become
a doctor and minister to Argan's needs.
Cleante was willing, but Beralde had a
1686

better idea. Argan should become a doctor
himself; then he could give himself
constant attention. All that was needed was
for him to don cap and gown. He could
then spout gibberish and make it sound
learned. So the matter was settled, and
the old hypochondriac gave his blessing ^o
the young lovers.
1687

I, CLAUDIUS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Graves (1895- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 10 B. C.-A. D. 41
Locale: Rome
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, Emperor of
Rome after Caligula
Augustus Caesar, first Emperor of Rome
Livia, his wife, Claudius* grandmother
Tiberius, Claudius* uncle, successor to Augustus
Germanicus, Claudius* brother
Caligula. Germanicus* son, successor to Tiberius
Critique:
I, Claudius is a semi-fictional
reconstruction of an interesting period in the
history of the Roman empire. In it are
snatches of history, records of conquest,
Roman scenes, and names famous in
history books. It is told in an informal
manner, Claudius going to great lengths
to reveal plot after plot, and the narrative
method obscures in part the scholarly
research and historical accuracy of the
author.
The Story:
Claudius, Emperor of Rome, was held
in little esteem because he was a
stammerer. He was, moreover, a scholar in a
nation which worshipped soldiering. He
had compiled state histories but he
realized that they were dull, sententious
drivel. At last he decided to tell the
true story of his own life. As the source
of his inspiration he cited the Cumaean
sibyl whom he had visited in her inner
cavern. She had said that eventually he
would speak clearly.
From the beginning, the Claudian
family felt ashamed of young Claudius
because he was a lame stammerer who
seemed unlikely to carry on the family
tradition of power. For that reason he
developed into a scholarly person
interested in the lives of others. His
teachers told him stories about famous
people and from many sources he picked
up stray scraps of knowledge about them
as he grew up.
He was greatly interested in his
grandmother, the Empress Livia. Bored with
her husband, she had secured a divorce,
arranged her own marriage with the
Emperor Augustus, and poisoned
thereafter anyone who interfered with her
plans. Power was her sole delight.
Another of the infamous people about
him was Tiberius, who was for years the
successor-to-be of Augustus. Son of Livia
by an early marriage, he married the
wanton Julia, daughter of Livia and
Augustus. When Tiberius, having
offended Augustus, was banished, Livia
insisted that Julia be banished too.
Tiberius, tired of his banishment,
promised that if Livia would secure his
return he would agree with her every
wish thereafter. About that time the
two sons of Julia and Tiberius died
mysteriously.
Between Claudius* ninth and sixteenth
years he occupied himself with affairs of
his older relatives. He was married early
to a girl named Urgulanilla, who
detested him as much as he detested her.
Claudius* first love had been
mysteriously poisoned and Claudius suspected
Livia, who later forced him to marry
Urgulanilla. Claudius* scholarship and
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Grave*. By permission of the author and the publishers, Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 1934, by Harrison Smith & Robert Haas, Inc.
1688

stability eventually brought him into the
good graces of Augustus and Livia. They
made him a priest of Mars and showed
by public interest in him that he was an
accepted member of the imperial family.
Grain shortage caused rioting
accompanied by arson. Augustus distributed
grain according to the usual custom,
banished such people as did not hold
property in Rome, and rationed what
food was available. Livia staged a sword
fight in the arena to restore the good
will of the populace. Because Claudius
fainted publicly at the brutal sports,
Livia decided that never again might he
show his face in public. Soon afterward
the last of Augustus* sons was banished
for life. Tiberius was proclaimed the
adopted son and successor of Augustus.
Tiberius and young Germanicus,
brother of Claudius, campaigned against
the barbarians, but Tiberius was not
popular in spite of his victories with the
army. Augustus suffered stomach
disorders and died. Claudius knew that
about a month before his death he had
decided to restore his banished son, Pos-
tumus, grant money and honor to
Claudius, and replace Tiberius. Claudius
suspected Livia of the emperor's death.
Postumus was reported killed by a
captain of the guard which had been
placed around him. Livia slowly starved
Julia to death. Because Germanicus was
too honorable to seize the empire from
Tiberius, there remained only the proof
that Postumus was really dead to make
Tiberius safe upon the throne. When
Postumus returned, to disprove reports
of his death, Tiberius had him tortured
and killed.
Germanicus continued his successful
campaign against the Germans. Tiberius,
jealous, insisted that Germanicus
return to Rome for his triumph. In
A. D. 17 Germanicus returned. By that
time Livia suspected Claudius and
Germanicus of plotting against Tiberius. She
sent Claudius to Carthage to dedicate a
temple to Augustus, who had been deified
by the Roman Senate.
Germanicus was next dispatched to the
East to command the armies there. But
Livia and Tiberius began to fear that
Germanicus would win favor in the East
as he had already done in the West.
Germanicus was finally poisoned. His
wife, Agrippina, sought protection from
Claudius.
Claudius promised his thirteen-year-
old son in marriage to the daughter of
Sejanus, the friend of Tiberius. A few
days later his son was found dead. Again
he suspected Livia. Shortly afterward a
divorce was arranged for Claudius by
Sejanus, who was anxious to have
Claudius marry Aelia, his sister by
adoption. Claudius knew better than to
oppose the wills of those in power and
he accepted his new wife with
practically no concern.
Tiberius set Livia aside. She was now
growing old and he no longer had great
reason to fear her. Bitter at the removal
of her power, she began to make plans
for his successor. She determined that
Caligula, the son of Germanicus, should
succeed him. She called in Claudius to
declare a truce with him on the
condition that he would have her declared
a goddess after her death. In return, she
told Claudius most of her state secrets;
she said that all the murders she had
planned were committed solely for the
good of the state.
Tiberius, sixty-seven years old, seemed
destined to die before long. He was
living on Capri with a court of scholars,
doctors, confidants, and entertainers,
Sejanus having been left in Rome with
authority to rule for him. When Livia
finally died at the age of eighty-six,
Tiberius refused to return to Rome even
for her funeral.
Tiberius began a reign of terror against
all members of Livia's faction. When
Sejanus attempted to rebel against the
emperor's cruel decrees, Tiberius ordered
his execution. His children were also
put to death. Claudius was ordered to
divorce Aelia.
At last the mad Tiberius lay dying at
1689

Misenum. Macro, commander of: the
guards, and Caligula, next in line for the
throne, planned to take over the country.
Caligula, already infamous among people
who knew him, was still popular with
the Romans. In too great a hurry they
took command of the army. Then,
learning that Tiberius was still alive, they
smothered him.
In order to establish himself, Caligula
pretended sympathy and generosity, but
Claudius wrote in his history that
Caligula held the record for infamy among
princes up to that time. He began by
spending the money Tiberius and Livia
had hoarded so long. Then he fell ill.
When he began to recover, he announced
to Claudius that he had been transformed
into a god, in fulfillment of the many
prophecies that a god was soon to be
given to the earth.
Caligula celebrated his godhood by
wholesale assassination. Claudius*
mother committed suicide because of
Caligula's infamies. Soon Macro was
forced to kill himself. At last the people
began to turn against Caligula because
of levies forced from the populace and
the indescribable depravities of the palace
brothel. Caligula, deciding to become a
general, led an expedition into Germany.
On his return he forced Claudius to
marry his cousin Messalina. Calpurnia,
Claudius* only true friend, was banished.
The Romans were now plotting, almost
openly, the assassination of Caligula.
Before long he was murdered, and
Claudius, the retiring scholar, was named
Emperor of Rome.
1690

I SPEAK FOR THADDEUS STEVENS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Elsie Singmaster (Mrs. E. S. Lewars, 1879-1958)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1792-1868
Locale: Vermont, Pennsylvania, Washington, D. C.
First published: 1947
Principal characters:
Thaddeus Stevens, lawyer and statesman
Sally Morrill Stevens, his mothei
Joshua,
Morrill, and
Alanson, his brothers
Lydia Smith, his housekeeper
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Members of Congress, the Cabinet, and the Armed Forces
Critique:
I Speak for Thaddeus Stevens is a
biography in the form of a novel, a work
making understandable as a man the
complex and often contradictory
character of the famous partisan statesman of
the Civil War period. The author tells
the story of his life as a series of dramatic
episodes, each under its proper date and
each presenting some crisis, either a
triumph or a defeat, in his private affairs
or public career. Much of the material
in the book is based upon Stevens letters
and papers previously unused by
historians; the result is a carefully detailed
portrait of the man against the unsettled age
in which he lived. A native of
Pennsylvania, Elsie Singmaster has presented
faithfully in her novels and short stories
the regional patterns of Pennsylvania
German life and the history of the state
through three decisive periods in our
national life—the frontier in French and
Indian days, the American Revolution,
and the Civil War.
however, to pity Sally Morrill Stevens,
whose brave spirit was greater than her
frail body. She would care for her second
son as tenderly as she had looked after
little Joshua, his father's namesake and
a cripple at birth. She called the baby
Thaddeus, after Thaddeus Kosciusko—
a hero's name.
When Joshua Stevens, shifdess
cobbler and surveyor, disappeared at last
into the wilderness, there were two more
children in the cabin. Morrill and Alan-
son stood up straight and were quick
on their feet, but lame Thaddeus was
Sally's favorite. Ambitious for her sons,
she never complained as she worked and
planned for their future.
Thaddeus struggled to excel. One day
he limped through deep snow, his legs
cut and bleeding on the icy crust, to
speak before patrons and students of the
grammar school in Peacham. His subject
was free and universal education.
Sensitive because of his own deformity, he
learned to hate suffering and to
sympathize with the weak. Swimming and
riding gave him an athlete's body. His
teachers and books borrowed from John
Mattocks, Peacham lawyer, had trained
him well by the time he was ready for
Dartmouth College. Sally had hoped he
I SPEAK FOR THADDEUS STEVENS by Elsie Singmaster. By permission of the author and the publisher*
Houghton Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1947, by Elsie Singmaster Lewars.
The Story:
In a Vermont
cabin, on April 4,
1792, neighbor women had looked
pityingly at a sleeping young mother while
they wrapped the deformed foot of her
newborn child. There was no need,
1691

would preach. He thought of Webster,
already famous, and told her that he
wanted to be a lawyer.
Vermont seemed a sparse land to her
ambitious sons. Crippled Joshua traveled
west with his bride. Thaddeus went to
York, Pennsylvania, to teach and read
for the law. Too impatient and poor to
complete another year's residence before
he could practice in York County, he
rode south across the state line and
became a member of the Maryland bar.
Returning, he settled in Gettysburg.
At first no clients found their way to his
office and few Gettysburgians wanted to
hear his frank opinions on slavery and
education, but children flocked around
him to hear his stories of the Vermont
woods. Blacks watched him on the
street and whispered that he was their
friend as well.
Defense lawyer in a murder trial, he
lost his first case in court, but his
townsmen praised him after he made his plea
for justice and mercy. 'As his reputation
grew men could measure his success by
his fine house in Gettysburg and the
great tract of mountain land providing
ore and charcoal for Caledonia Forge,
of which he was a partner. Sally Stevens
now owned a fine farm in Peacham; he
gave openhandedly to his brothers—
Joshua in Indiana; Morrill, a doctor in
Vermont; Alanson, with Sally on the
farm. He fought Masons and Jackson
Democrats and men cheered all night
under his windows when he was elected
to the Legislature. He was forty-one.
There was still time for Washington, for
Congress, perhaps the White House.
In 1837 word came to him in
Philadelphia that the free education bill was
about to be repealed. By train and
stagecoach he hurried to Harrisburg and
risked his political future with his
proposed amendment to strike out the bill
of repeal and to insert after the clause,
"Be it enacted," the words "To establish
a General System of Education by
Common Schools." Speaking on that
motion, he saved the free school system of
Pennsylvania.
His fame spread. Men respected and
hated and feared the blunt, shrewd orator
whose voice was heard everywhere. In
Philadelphia, during the Buckshot War,
a mob attacked an assembly hall and he
and his friends escaped through a
window. Campaigning for Harrison, he
hoped for a Cabinet appointment. But
Harrison died and Tyler forgot campaign
promises. Ruined by his partner's failure
in 1842, he moved to Lancaster. There
he made money and paid his debts.
Young men begged the opportunity to
read law in his office. He became an
ironmaster, owner of a great furnace
at Caledonia. Sometimes Washington
seemed a long way off. He waited.
Free-Soil Whigs elected him to
Congress in 1848. Fighting the compromise
measures and the Fugitive Slave Law,
he spoke for gentle Sally Stevens, for
old John Mattocks, lover of justice, for
slaves fleeing northward along the
Underground Railroad. He defended the three
white men and thirty-eight Negroes
accused after the death of a Maryland
farmer in the Christiana riot; later he
was to recall how Lucretia Mott and
other Quakers had dressed the Negroes
alike, to the confusion of witnesses and
prosecution. Retired from Congress, he
traveled to Vermont in 1854. Sally
Stevens was dead, Morrill and Alanson
before her. The slander of his enemies
could never hurt her now. Joshua was
soon to die. Thaddeus was sixty-two
and failing, but men were mistaken when
they said he was too old for public life.
In 1855 he helped to launch the
Republican Party in Lancaster. In 1858
he returned to Congress. In Chicago,
in * 1860, he heard Abraham Lincoln
nominated.
He rode the war years like an eagle
breasting a whirlwind. Abraham Lincoln
was President, but Thaddeus Stevens
spoke for the Republican Party. Often
impatient with the sad-eyed, brooding
man in the White House, he steered
through Congress the bills which gave
1692

Lincoln men and money to fight the Civil
War. Lydia Smith, the decent mulatto
at whom men sneered, kept his house
on B Street. Sometimes he thought of
the Cabinet post or Senate seat he
believed his due, but usually more
important matters filled his mind.
Confederate troops, marching toward
Gettysburg, had burned Caledonia Furnace.
A nephew died at Chickamauga.
Unbowed by personal misfortune, he argued
for the Thirteenth Amendment, insisted
upon education and suffrage for the
Negro. There was little time for the
card games he loved; he read more often
when he went to bed at
night—Shakespeare, Homer, the Bible.
Hating weakness and compromise, he
fought Andrew Johnson after Lincoln's
death. Congress, he thundered, should
be the sovereign power of the nation.
Sick and weak, he proposed Article
Eleven by which the House hoped to
impeach Johnson. Too ill to walk, he
was carried into the Senate to hear that
decisive roll call. He heard around him
whispers of relief, anger, and despair as
the telling votes were cast. Friends asked
him if he wished to lie down after his
ordeal. He answered grimly that he
would not.
Although bitter in defeat, he would
not let his fellow Republicans punish
Vinnie Ream, the little sculptress
involved in Johnson's trial, and he angrily
insisted that she keep her studio in the
Capitol. His detractors claimed he was
too mean to die when he refused to take
to his bed during that hot Washington
summer, but by August the end was near.
Devoted son, generous kinsman, loyal
friend, harsh enemy, he died at midnight
on August 11, 1868. The telegraph
clicked the news to the world.
1693

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pierre Loti (Julien Viaud, 1850-1923)
Type of plot: Impressionistic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Brittany and at sea
First published: 1886
Principal characters:
Sylvester, a young Breton
Yvonne, his grandmother
Gaud, his cousin
Yann, a fisherman
Critique:
The number of translations and
editions of An Iceland Fisherman are
indicative of the warmth created by the
reading of this beautiful story. Pierre
Loti, of the French Academy,
exemplified in this unadorned tale the virtues of
French literature: clarity, simplicity,
power. The exotic always appealed to
Loti, and An Iceland Fisherman reflects
this appeal in the descriptions of the
fishing fleet in Iceland waters. The love
interest is well presented and well within
bounds. The characters of little Sylvester,
big Yann, and serious Gaud are those of
real people, whose fortunes are of
genuine concern to the reader.
The Story:
In the focVl head, a hollow, pointed
room like the inside of a gigantic sea
gull, five men were sitting around the
massive table which filled almost all the
space between the bulkheads. They were
waiting to take their turn on watch, for
it was nearly midnight. They had cracked
some biscuit with a hammer and had
eaten. Now they were drinking wine
and cider.
Around the room little pigeonholes
near the ceiling served as bedchambers,
for these fishermen were outside so much
they seemed to need no air while they
slept. A murky lamp swung back and
forth with the gentle swell of the sea.
Sylvester, who was only seventeen,
was impatient for the appearance of
AN ICELAND FISHERMAN by Pierre Loti. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Yann. They were celebrating in honor
of their patron, the Virgin Mary, and
Yann had to take part in the toasts.
Finally Yann opened the little hatch in
the deck and came down the narrow
ladder. Yann, in his late twenties, and a
giant of a man, was a hero to Sylvester.
The whole company brightened on his
arrival.
It was midnight. The toasts were
quickly drunk. Then the watch went
on deck for their turn to fish. Outside
it was daylight, for in those latitudes it
never got dark in summer. It was
monotonous and soothing to fish in the
daylight.
At the rail Yann and Sylvester baited
their hooks and dropped their lines.
Behind them William waited with sheath
knife and salt. Regularly, in turn, Yann
and Sylvester brought up • their hooks,
passed the plump cod to William, and
rebaited. Quickly William slit the fish,
cleaned them, and packed them in the
salt barrel. The pile of kegs in the hold
represented the income of whole Breton
families for a year. For his share of the
catch Yann would bring home fifteen
hundred francs to his mother.
While they were fishing Sylvester
talked of marriage. Although still a
boy, he was already engaged to Yann's
sister. He did his best, as he had done
all summer, to talk Yann into the idea of
marriage with Gaud. Always Yann shook
his head; he was engaged to the sea, he
1694

said, and some day he would celebrate
that wedding.
Gentle and serious Gaud, Sylvester's
cousin, was attracted to Yann. She was,
however, a mademoiselle with fine hands
and good clothes. Her father was rich.
Yann could scarcely help knowing that
Gaud liked him, but with Breton stub-
borness and simplicity he could not think
of pretending seriously to a young woman
of the upper class.
In September the fishing boat returned
to Paimpol in Brittany. The return of the
Iceland fleet was the signal for quickened
life among these simple folk. The women
and children and the old men spent the
whole spring and summer raising small
gardens and waiting. Then in the fall,
when the men came back, there were
weddings and engagements and feasts
and pardons. Too often a ship did not
return, and several families would wear
black that winter.
That fall there was a big wedding with
the traditional procession to the seashore
and afterward a ball. Yann went to the
ball and danced the whole evening with
Gaud. Yann told her of his life at sea
and of his big family in Pors-Even. Part
of the time Yann watched his little
sister, who danced with Sylvester. The
seriousness of the engaged children amused
Yann. Gaud was greatly pleased, for at
last Yann had unbent and his talk
seemed to her too gentle for casual
conversation.
Gaud waited all that winter in her
rich home with its fine furniture, but
Yann never came to see her. At length,
overcoming her modesty, she went on a
business errand for her father to Yann's
house, in the hope of seeing him. She
paid a sum of money to Yann's father and
waited longer than she should have, but
Yann did not come home. Later, she
knew, Yann would come to see her father
to conclude the business, and she
resolved to talk with him then. But when
Yann came to see her father, he prepared
to leave without inquiring for her. As
he came into the hall, Gaud stopped him.
Yann simply told her he could not court
her because she was rich and he was
poor.
In the spring Yann and Sylvester sailed
again with the Iceland fleet. Gaud,
during that summer, felt an occasional thrill
when she wrote letters to Sylvester for
his grandmother, Yvonne. Often the
doting old woman would dictate a short
message to Yann. So Gaud was not
completely out of touch with her simple,
stubborn fisherman.
Events were soon to bring Gaud and
Yann close together. Sylvester, the next
winter, had to leave for his military
service. His grandmother, Yvonne, visited
him once at the barracks just before he
left for French Indo-China. He was to
be gone five years, and Yvonne was
inconsolable.
Sylvester made a brave sailor in the
French navy. On shore in the East he
was sent with an armed patrol to re-
connoiter. When the small band was
surprised and surrounded by a large
detachment of Tonkinese, Sylvester led a
spirited counter-attack, until he was cut
down by a sharpshooter. He was buried
far from the rocky Breton coast in a
green, strange land. An efficient,
soulless government sent back his poor effects
to Yvonne. She was now really alone,
with only a memory growing dimmer as
time passed.
Gaud's father committed one folly after
another and lost more money trying to
recoup earlier losses. Finally, at his death,
he was a ruined man. Gaud, the rich
man's daughter, became a seamstress.
With quick sympathy she went to live
with Yvonne, so that the two bereft
women could comfort each other.
Yvonne, infirm of limb and mind, was
unmercifully teased by a group of small
boys who thought she was drunk. Falling
into the mud, she vainly tried to regain
her footing. Gaud came along to set the
old woman on her feet again and brush
the mud from her clothes. Just then
Yann happened on the scene and chased
the tormentors away. He escorted the
1695

two women home.
Yann was slowly changing his mind.
Now that Gaud was poor, he felt a
barrier between them had been removed. He
also felt a great bond of sympathy for
Yvonne because of her grandson, and
Gaud was part of that sympathy. At the
urging of his relatives and Yvonne, he
proposed to Gaud. Much of that winter
the couple sat by the fire in Yvonne's
poor hut while the old woman slept. Six
days before the fleet was to leave in
March, Gaud and Yann were married.
When the fishermen departed on their
summer cruise, Gaud for the first time
was part of the busy, weeping crowd.
Yann's ship was towed out into the
harbor to wait a favorable wind. During the
delay Yann came ashore again for a final
three hours. Gaud watched the ship
disappear in the twilight.
The summer passed uneventfully
enough. Gaud made fair wages from her
sewing, enough to refurnish Yvonne's
poor cottage. In September the fishing
fleet came straggling back. Yann's ship
was not among them. At the end of the
month Gaud still had hope. Each mas
culine step along the path sent her
scurrying to the window. Yann's father, also
worried, called to comfort her. He told
her many stories of ships delayed by fog
until December. The fall and early
winter came and went, and still Gaud
waited.
She never saw Yann again. In August
his ship had become separated from the
others and was blown north.
Somewhere off Iceland, Yann had kept a tryst,
his wedding with the sea.
1696

THE IDES OF MARCH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thornton Wilder (1897- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 45 B. C.
Locale: Ancient Rome
First published: 1948
Principal characters:
Julius Caesar
Pompeia, his second wife
Calpurnia, his third wife
Lady Clodia Pulcher, a conspirator
Catullus, a famous poet
Cleopatra, Queen ot Egypt
Marcus Brutus, another conspirator
Critique:
When an author writes a novel whose
plot is already well-known, and that
novel becomes a best seller, we must
assume that his style is superior or that
the story is so loved that we want to hear
it again and again. In The Ides of March
we have both factors. Thornton Wilder
has retold the events of the last months
of Caesar's life with warmth and depth
of feeling. From imaginary letters and
documents he has reconstructed the plots
and intrigues leading to the fatal stabbing
of the great Roman.
The Story:
There were so many different groups
plotting to assassinate Caesar that it was
impossible for him to guard himself
from all of them. Each day new leaders
rose to incite the people against him.
Many of the leaders were friends of
Caesar; some were relatives; some were
merely ambitious men; and some were
citizens who sincerely believed that Rome
was suffering under Caesar's rule and
wanted to free her. The last group had
Caesar's admiration. He knew that he
had restricted the freedom of the people,
but he knew, too, that the masses of
people shrink from accepting
responsibility for their actions. They want to be
ruled by one who will make all
important decisions for them, yet they
resent that ruler because he has taken
their freedom from them. Caesar knew
that he would one day be assassinated,
but he hoped that he would see in the
face of his murderer a love for Rome.
Among the most persistent of the
plotters was the mother of Marcus
Brutus. She had long hated Caesar and
wanted her son to assume the place of
the dictator. Many Romans said that
Brutus was the illegitimate son of Caesar,
but no one had ever been able to prove
the accusation. Brutus was loyal to
Caesar until the very end; only his
mother's repeated urging led him at last
to join the conspirators.
Another important figure among
Caesar's enemies was Clodia Pulcher, a
woman of high birth, great wealth, and
amazing beauty. Because of her
ambitions and lusts she had become a
creature of poor reputation, so much so that
her name was scribbled on public walls,
accompanied by obscene verses. She was
aided in her plots by her brother and by
Catullus, the most famous poet in Rome.
Catullus was a young man so much in
love with Clodia that he would do
anything she asked, and he wrote many
poems and tracts against Caesar. Clodia
spurned Catullus and his love, but her
ridicule of him only strengthened his
passion for her.
THE IDES OF MARCH by Thornton Wilder. By permission of the author and the publishers, Harper & Brothers
Copyright, 1948. by Thornton Wilder.
1697

While all these plots against Caesar
were taking shape, he and the rest of
Rome were preparing for the visit of
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. She, too,
suffered from a bad reputation, for her
many conquests in love were well-known
in Rome. Most of the high ladies planned
to receive her only because Caesar had
so ordered, among them Pompeia,
Caesar's wife, who knew of his earlier
relations with the queen. But at Caesar's
command Cleopatra was accorded the
honor due a queen. He visited her
many times, always in disguise, and on
one of his visits barely missed being
killed. He could never be sure whether
Cleopatra knew of the plot. Marc
Antony had begun to find favor in the eyes
of Cleopatra, and as Marc Antony was
involved in the attempted assassination,
Caesar suspected that she too might be
involved.
After Cleopatra's arrival, all Rome
began to plan for the mysteries of the
Good Goddess. This festival took place
each year on December 11, and every
Roman woman of high birth and moral
virtue took part in the ceremonies. The
Vestal Virgins participated in the
festival also, and only women whose
reputations were above reproach were allowed
to attend the mysteries. Clodia's recent
actions had given rise to the possibility
that she might be rejected. In fact,
petitions had been sent to Lady Julia
Marcia, Caesar's aunt and a directress of
the mysteries, to debar Clodia. Caesar
interfered in behalf of Clodia, however,
for just as he could understand the
reasoning of his enemies, he could
understand Clodia. She felt that she was
fated to live the life she did and blamed
the gods for her actions rather than
herself.
But Clodia was vengeful. When she
learned a compromise had been reached
—she was to be allowed to attend the
mysteries only until the Vestal Virgins
appeared—she arranged to have her
brother dress in the robes of a woman
and attend the ceremonies with her. No
man had ever been present at that sacred
rite, and the profanation was the
greatest scandal ever to reach the streets of
Rome. The two criminals, for so they
were called, were arrested, but Caesar
pardoned them, thus adding another
reason for public resentment. Once again
it was suspected that Cleopatra knew of
the plot, for she too had wanted to
attend the mysteries and had been told
she would have to leave when the
Virgins appeared. It was rumored that
Pompeia had known of Clodia's plan,
and for these rumors Caesar divorced
Pompeia, his reason being that
regardless of whether the rumors were true
Pompeia should have conducted herself
so that no rumors could be started about
her.
After his divorce Caesar married Cal-
purnia. Catullus had died in the
meantime, and Caesar reflected much on the
poet's death. He was not sure about his
own beliefs concerning the gods and
their influence on the world. Often he
felt that there were no gods, that each
man was the master of his own destiny.
He wished that he were not guided by
fear and superstition concerning life and
death, but he continued to employ
soothsayers and magicians and hoped
daily for good omens from the heavens.
There were few good omens for
Caesar at that time. His chief
soothsayer had warned him of several
dangerous days, but as all of them had passed
uneventfully Caesar began to be less
careful; and he planned to leave for the
Parthian battlefront on March 17. He
asked Brutus and his wife to care for
Calpurnia while he was gone. He knew
Brutus had been among his enemies,
but he loved the younger man and
believed that Brutus was now his friend.
Brutus promised Caesar to care for
Calpurnia; but Brutus was to play a
different role within a few days. The
fateful Ides of March came. Caesai
walked to the Senate chambers to make
his farewell speech before leaving for
the war. Approaching the capitol, he
1698

was surrounded by the conspirators. One
plunged his dagger into Caesar's throat
as the others closed in. Caesar was
stabbed twenty-three times. When he
saw that he was surrounded, he sat down
and wrapped his robe about him. He
did not cry out, but there are those who
say that when he saw Brutus he said,
"You, too, Brutus?" and ceased to
struggle. Perhaps he was satisfied with his
assassin.
1699

THE IDIOT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski (1821-1881)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: St. Petersburg, Russia
First published: 1868-1869
Principal characters:
Prince Lbf Nicolaievttch Myshkin
Parpen Rogozhtn, friend of the prince
Mme. Epanchin, friend and relative of the prince
Aglaya Epanchtn, her daughter
Natasya Filipovna, Aglaya's rival
Ganya Ardalionovitch, secretary to General Epanchin
Critique:
Recause this book was written by the
author of Crime and Punishment and
The Brothers Karamazov, it will always
have a significant place in literature. Like
so many characters in Russian fiction,
however, the people in this novel exhibit
a behavior so foreign to the American
temperament that the majority of readers
may find the entire story rather
incredible. Perhaps the most serious handicap
lies in the author's portrayal of Prince
Myshkin. It would seem that he is meant
to be the foil for the other characters,
the person who seems foolish but is, in
reality, very wise and good. Rut the fact
that the prince suffers from epilepsy
confuses the issue, and one wonders if he
really is an idiot. However, as a
panorama of Russian morals, manners, and
philosophy of the period, The Idiot is an
interesting and informative novel.
The Story:
After four years spent in Switzerland,
where he was treated for epilepsy at a
sanitarium, Prince Myshkin returned to
St. Petersburg. On the train the
threadbare shabbiness of his clothing attracted
the attention of the other passengers.
One of these, Parfen Rogozhin, began to
question him. Ry the time they reached
St. Petersburg, the prince and Rogozhin
were well-informed about one another,
and Rogozhin offered to take the prince
to his home and to give him money.
Myshkin, however, first wanted to
introduce himself to General Epanchin,
whose wife was distantly related to him.
At the Epanchin home he met the
general and his secretary, Ganya, who
invited him to become one of his mother's
boarders. The prince interested the
general, who gave him some money, and he
also fascinated the general's wife and
three daughters. His lack of
sophistication, his naivete^ his frankness, charmed
and amused the family. Soon they began
to call him "the idiot," half in jest, half
in earnest, but he remained on good terms
with them.
Ganya, a selfish young man given to
all kinds of scheming, wanted to marry
the beautiful Aglaya Epanchin, chiefly
for her money. At the time he was also
involved in an affair with the notorious
Natasya, an attractive young woman
who lived under the protection of a man
she did not love. Extremely emotional
and neurotic, Natasya was really innocent
of the sins charged against her. Myshkin
realized her helplessness and pitied her.
At a drinking party one night soon after
his arrival, he asked her to marry him,
saying that he had received an
unexpected inheritance. She refused,
declaring that she had no desire to cause his
THE IDIOT by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski. Published by The Modern Library, lac.
1700

ruin. Instead she went with Rogozhin,
who had brought her a hundred thousand
roubles.
More than ever, Natasya became the
object of spirited controversy among the
Epanchins and their circle. Myshkin
alone remained unembittered and always
kind-hearted. Ganya and Rogozhin
poured out their troubles to him, bared
the sordidness and shamelessness of their
lives, and swore undying friendship for
him. Nevertheless, they distrusted
Myshkin and plotted against him. When
Natasya left Rogozhin, he swore that he
would kill "the idiot" because he was
sure that Natasya had fled from him
because she really loved Myshkin.
Myshkin then became the victim of
an extortion attempt. During a violent,
repugnant scene, at which the Epanchins
were present, he successfully refuted the
charge that he had deprived Rogozhin*s
supposed illegitimate son of his rightful
heritage. Having proved that the
individual who sought the money was not
the illegitimate son, he then, to the
disgust of Mme. Epanchin, offered to give
money to the extortionist and to become
his friend. Mme. Epanchin considered
the prince more of an idiot than ever.
Meanwhile, Aglaya Epanchin fell in
love with Myshkin, but she continued
to treat him scornfully and at first
refused to admit that she was in love with
him. When her true feelings at last
became apparent, Mme. Epanchin gave
reluctant consent to their betrothal and
planned an evening party to introduce
Myshkin to St. Petersburg society.
Worried lest he should commit some social
blunder, she and her daughter advised
him to sit quietly and to say nothing
during the evening. But at the party
Mme. Epanchin herself drew out the
prince, so that he was soon launched on
one of his wild and peculiar
conversations. The staid, conservative guests were
astounded. In the midst of the discussion
he knocked over a huge and priceless
vase, then stared at the debris like "an
idiot." A few minutes later he fell into
an epileptic fit and had to be carried to
his home. For several days the
Epanchins were cold to him, but Mme.
Epanchin finally relented and invited him to
their home once more.
In the meantime Aglaya had been
corresponding with Natasya, and a
friendship had strangely developed between
them. One evening Aglaya asked
Myshkin to go with her to see Natasya.
In Natasya's apartment a hectic and
turbulent argument developed, so that
the two women showed their anger and
bitterness against each other. For the
first time Aglaya revealed fully her love
for Myshkin. During the argument
Natasya fainted. When Myshkin rushed to
her aid, Aglaya considered herself
rejected and angrily left the house. The
scene between the two women became a
scandal, and the Epanchins barred their
home to Myshkin. Natasya agreed to
marry him and made preparations for the
wedding. But on the day of the
wedding, while Myshkin waited at the
church, Natasya fled with Rogozhin, still
haunted by her own helplessness and his
terrible possessiveness.
Myshkin received the news calmly.
Although there were many who laughed
at "the idiot," there were some who were
sorry for him when he attempted to
discover Natasya's whereabouts. He left
the village where the ceremony was to
have been performed and went to the
city. There he inquired among Natasya's
acquaintances, but nobody knew where
she was. Finally he went to Rogozhin's
apartment and learned from a porter
that Rogozhin had slept there the previ'
ous night. Myshkin continued his search,
convinced that Rogozhin would kill him
if he could. But Rogozhin himself
stopped him on the street and took him
to the apartment, where Myshkin found
Natasya lying on the bed. Rogozhin
had killed her.
Filled with compassion for the
miserable Rogozhin, Myshkin spent that night
1701

with the body of Natasya and her
murderer. At daybreak Natasya's worried
friends and the police broke into the
apartment. Rogozhin confessed to the
murder. Myshkin was questioned by the
police, but he was not implicated in the
crime. He was sent back to the sanitarium
in Switzerland, where he was visited,
from time to time, by the Epanchin
family and other friends. There was
little hope that he would ever recover
from his epilepsy.
1702

THE IDYLLS OF THE KING
Type of work: Poem
Author: Alfred, Lord Tennyson CI809-1892)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Fifth century
Locale: England
First published: Separately, 1859-1885
Principal characters:
King Arthur
Queen Guinevere
Sir Lancelot,
Gareth,
Geratnt,
Baltn,
Balan,
Gawatn,
Sir Galahad,
Sir Bors,
Sir Pelleas,
Sir Percivale,
Sir Modred,
Sir Tristram, and
Sir Bedivere, Knights of the Round Table
Merlin, a magician
Lynette, who married Gareth
Enid, who married Geraint
Vivien, an enchantress
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat
Ettarre, loved by Pelleas and Gawain
Isolt, of the white hands, Tristram's wife
Critique:
Divided into twelve sections, each ly afterward King Uther died. Ygerne's
symbolic of one month of the year, these son, Arthur, was born at a time when
poems present to the reader the span of he could have been the son of Gorlois
a man's life, extending from the coming or the son of Uther born too soon,
of Arthur to his passing. If one cared The birth of Arthur was shrouded
to search into the symbolism of this long in great mystery. Merlin the magician
narrative poem, he would find it filled reared the prince until it was time for
with mystic and spiritual meanings. Al- him to take over Uther's kingdom and
though Tennyson's stories of King Arthur to receive from the Lady of the Lake the
and the Knights of the Round Table lack magic sword, Excalibur. After the mar-
the realism and vitality of Malory's riage of Arthur and Guinevere, the king
tales, The Idylls of the King have a and his loyal members of the Round
poetic compactness and allegorical signifi- Table, in twelve battles, drove the enemy
cance lacking in the original. out of the kingdom.
GARETH AND LYNETTE
Tfec Stories: Bellicent, Arthur's sister, allowed her
the coming OF Arthur youngest son to join his two brothers in
Gorlois and Ygerne had borne one King Arthur's court on the condition
daughter, Bellicent. King Uther over- that Gareth serve as a kitchen knave
came Gorlois in battle and forced the under the surly directions of Sir Kay
widow to marry him immediately. Short- the seneschal. When the young boy pre-
1703

sented himself to King Arthur, Gareth
made the king promise to give him the
first quest which came along without
revealing his identity. One day Lynette
came to the court asking for Sir Lancelot
to save her sister from wicked knights
who held her captive. King Arthur sent
Gareth questing with Lynette, who
grumbled disdainfully at the kitchen
knave ordered to serve her.
The first knight Gareth overcame was
the Morning Star. Lynette still sneered
at the knave. After Gareth had defeated
another knight, Lynette began to relent.
When he conquered a third strong
knight, she allowed him to ride at her
side. Next Gareth encountered a
terrible knight, Death, who proved to be
a mere boy forced by his brothers to
assume a fierce appearance. Gareth
returned to the Round Table victorious
and married Lynette.
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT
and GERATNT AND ENID
Geraint, on a quest for Guinevere,
came to the impoverished castle of Earl
Yniol and his daughter Enid, a girl
whose faded brocades spoke of former
wealth and family pride. There Geraint
learned that the rejected suitor of Enid
had caused the ruin of Yniol. The earl
gave Geraint Enid for his wife.
Geraint, fearing that the sin of the
queen's love for Lancelot would taint
Enid's love, went to his own castle and
there idled away the hours in company
with his wife until neighbors began to
gossip that Geraint had lost his courage.
Enid feared to tell her lord about the
gossip, and Geraint, observing her strange
attitude, decided that she had fallen in
love with some knight of the Round
Table. One morning, bidding Enid to
don her faded brocade gown, Geraint
set out with his wife after ordering her
not to speak to him. Riding ahead of
Geraint, Enid encountered men who
would attack her husband, and each time
she broke his command by warning him
of his danger. After a while Enid was
able to prove her love to her suspicious
husband. They returned to Camelot,
where Guinevere warmly welcomed Enid
to the court.
BALIN AND BALAN
Balan left the care of Balin, his mad
brother, and went on a mission to quell
King Pellam, who had refused to pay
his yearly tribute to King Arthur. With
his brother gone, Balin was left alone
in his gloomy moods. He worshipped
the purity of Lancelot and the
faithfulness of Guinevere until one day he saw
his two idols speaking familiarly in the
garden. Disillusioned, Balin fled to the
woods. There he met Vivien, a wanton
woman of the court, who further
poisoned his mind against Lancelot and
Guinevere. He left hanging on a tree
the shield Guinevere had given him
years before. Hearing Balin's mad shrieks
among the trees, Balan rushed at Balin,
whom he did not recognize without the
shield of Guinevere. In the struggle
Balin killed Balan and then was crushed
by his own horse.
VIVIEN
Vain and coquettish Vivien set out
to ensnare the most chivalric man in
all the kingdom, King Arthur, but her
wiles failed to win the attention of a
king whose mind could harbor no evil
thoughts. Vivien then turned to
Merlin, who she knew possessed a magic
spell. She tried to charm the magician
with her beauty, pretending to love the
ancient, bearded man, but he knew that
she was not to be trusted. When she
asked him to teach her the spell, he
refused. But Vivien was not to be denied.
At last, tricked by her beauty, Merlin
taught her his magic powers. She
enchanted him and caused him to
disappear forever, a prisoner in a hollow
tree.
LANCELOT AND ELAINE
Lancelot in disguise went to Astolat,
where he left his shield with Elaine and
rode off with her brother Lavaine to the
tournaments. Lancelot won the jousts;
1704

then, wounded, he fled before anyone
could discover who he was. King Arthur
sent Gawain to search for the winner of
the tournament. Gawain rode to Asto-
lat, where he lingered because he had
fallen in love with Elaine. She told him
that she loved the knight who had left
his shield with her. When Gawain saw
the shield, he identified it as that of
Lancelot.
Elaine nursed Lancelot back to health
in the hope that he would return her
love. Recovered, he sadly told her that
he could never marry any woman. After
he had gone, Elaine became ill and
finally died in her grief. Her dying wish
was to be put into a boat and sent to
Camelot, in her hand a letter to
Lancelot.
In Camelot Guinevere coldly rejected
Lancelot, for Gawain had told of the
affair between Lancelot and Elaine. When
the body of Elaine floated to Camelot,
King Arthur and Lancelot found the
beautiful maiden in her boat, the letter
in her hand.
Lancelot authorized a fitting burial for
the lily maid. He unhappily lamented
his hopeless love for the queen, not
knowing that he would die a monk.
THE HOLY GRAIL
One day while Sir Galahad, the
youngest and purest of all the knights,
sat in Merlin's chair, the Holy Grail
descended upon the Round Table in a
flash and then was gone. When the
knights swore to go on a quest for the
Holy Grail, King Arthur gloomily
predicted that the search would end in
disaster for many of his knights because
none was pure enough, save Galahad or
Percivale, to see the holy vessel.
To Galahad the Grail appeared in
all its splendor. Percivale, who followed
him, also saw the holy sign. Sir Bors
returned to King Arthur to report that
he had viewed the Grail; but Lancelot
had seen only a sign of it. Some of the
other knights never returned to the
Round Table from their perilous quest.
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE
Pelleas had given Ettarre a trophy he
had won in a tournament, but she,
scorning the young knight, barred him from
her court. Gawain, meeting Pelleas in
his despair, offered to help him. After
telling the knight to hide in the forest,
Gawain went to Ettarre and told her
he had killed Pelleas. As the days passed,
Pelleas became impatient. One night,
stealing into the castle, he found Gawain
and Ettarre sleeping together and placed
his naked sword across the throats of the
sleeping lovers. Then in a mad rage he
rode through the forest until he met
Percivale, who accidentally revealed to
Pelleas the scandal about Lancelot and
Guinevere. Disillusioned, the young
knight returned to the Round Table,
where his rude manner to the queen
foreshadowed evil to Lancelot and
Guinevere. Sir Modred saw that the ruin of
the Round Table was near at hand.
THE LAST TOURNAMENT
To a tournament at Camelot came
Tristram, who had left his bride, Isolt
of the white hands. Her name was the
same as that of his beloved, Isolt, the
wife of King Mark of Cornwall.
Lancelot, laboring under the guilt of his sinful
love for Guinevere, decided to fight with
the similarly guilty Tristram, who won
the tournament. Tristram then went to
Isolt of Cornwall. King Mark was away
on a hunting trip. He returned
unexpectedly, found the lovers together,
and killed Tristram.
In the north a knight rebelled against
King Arthur's rule and charged that the
Round Table was a thing of falseness
and guilt where harlots and adulterers
lived disguised as ladies and knights.
King Arthur rode to quell the revolt and
the guilty man was killed; but King
Arthur was heavy in heart when he
returned to Camelot.
GUINEVERE
Fearing exposure of her love for
Lancelot, Guinevere asked him to leave
Camelot. On the night of their fare-
1705

well Modred trapped the lovers
together, and Guinevere, feeling that she
was shamed forever, went to Almesbury
and took refuge in a nunnery. There
she recalled how Lancelot had brought
her from her father's home to marry
Arthur, how she had thought Arthur
cold and had fallen in love with the
courtly, gay Lancelot.
King Arthur went to Almesbury. To
Guinevere he spoke of his pride in the
marvelous truths which the Round Table
had upheld, and which Guinevere had
inspired. Now all was lost, but he
forgave Guinevere before he went off to
fight against Modred and his traitor
knights.
Filled with remorse, Guinevere asked
the nuns to accept her in their order.
There she gave her services until they
made her abbess. After three years in
that rank she died.
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR
In Modred's revolt King Arthur was
wounded. As he lay dying he told Sir
Bedivere to cast the sword Excalibur
into the lake. When Bedivere finally
brought to King Arthur the tale that
amid flashing and strange sights an arm
reached out from the lake to receive the
sword, King Arthur knew that Bedivere
had truly sent Excalibur back to the
Lady of the Lake. Next King Arthur
told Bedivere to carry him to the shore.
There three maidens came in a barge
to take King Arthur away. As Bedivere
stood weeping, King Arthur assured him
that the old order of the Round Table
must pass to give way to something new.
So King Arthur passed, in the manner
of his legendary beginning, back across
the waters to Avalon, but many men
believed that some day he would return
to his people in their need. Bedivere
watched on the shore until the wintry
dawn broke bringing a new year.
1706

IF WINTER COMES
Type of work: Novel
Author: A. S. M. Hutchinson (1879- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1912-1919
Locale: Southern England
First published: 1920
Principal characters:
Mark Sabre, an idealist
Mabel Sabre, his wife
Lady Nona Tybar, a friend
Mr. Fortune, Mark's employer
Mr. Twynxng, a business associate
Harold Twyning, Twyning's son
Effie Bright, Sabre's friend
Critique:
The very least that can be said about
If Winter Comes is that it is a beautiful
and heart-warming novel. It is the story
of a man who loved all humanity, but
who was persecuted and betrayed by
those who did not understand him.
Although the book makes no pretensions
to great literature, it is a perennial
favorite among all classes of readers.
The Story:
Most of his friends thought Mark
Sabre a queer sort, in spite of the normal
life he led. He was married to a girl
of his own class and he worked in the
very respectable firm of Fortune, East,
and Sabre, suppliers for the best churches
and schools in England. It was his
attitude toward life that seemed queer. He
had no definite convictions about
anything, and he could always see both
sides of any controversy. He hated the
restrictions that convention placed on
people, but at the same time he believed
that conventions were based on sound
principles. Mabel Sabre, one of the most
conventional women alive, was totally
unable to understand anything her
husband tried to discuss with her.
The only person who understood him
well was Lady Nona Tybar, with whom
Sabre had once been in love. Nona's
husband, Lord Tybar, was a charming
man, but completely without moral
principles. When he flaunted other women
in Nona's face, she turned to Sabre for
comfort in his friendship, but Mabel,
Sabre's wife, could not understand their
friendship any better than she could
understand anything else about her
husband. After five years of marriage Mabel
and Sabre were living almost as strangers
under one roof. Mark Sabre's employer,
Mr. Fortune, and his business associate
Mr. Twyning, despised him because they
did not understand him, and so Sabre
felt that he lived only as he bicycled
between his home and his office, for then
he could know himself as he really was.
Sabre felt that there was a mystery to
life which he could unlock if he found
the right key. And his life was almost
dedicated to finding that key.
In addition to Nona, Sabre had three
friends with whom he liked to spend
his time. They were his neighbors, Mr.
Fargus and old Mrs. Perch and her son.
When the war came, young Perch
wanted to enlist, but he could not leave
his invalid mother alone. Sabre knew
that Effie Bright, daughter of an
employee at his office, wanted a position
as a companion, and he arranged to have
her stay with Mrs. Perch after her son
IF WINTER COMES by A. S. M. Hutchinson. By permission of the author and the publishers, Little, Brown
& Co. Copyright, 1921, by A. S. M. Hutchinson. Renewed, 1949, by A. S. M. Hutchinson
1707

went to the army. Young Perch was
killed, and when his mother received
the news she died too. Shortly after
the old lady's death, Sabre himself joined
the army. Because Mabel did not want
to stay alone, she employed Effie to stay
with her. However, she treated Effie as
a servant.
Lord Tybar was a hero in the war,
winning the Victoria Cross before he
was killed. Nona went to France after
her husband's death and drove an
ambulance for the rest of the war years.
When Sabre came home on leave, Mabel
discharged Effie. She said that the girl
was impertinent and unreliable.
Late in 1917, Sabre was wounded and
sent home to stay. Mabel took no more
interest in him than she had before,
until the day she received a letter from
Effie. Effie begged to come back to the
Sabres. She now had an illegitimate
child and no one, including her father,
would take her in. Mabel was
righteously angry at the proposal, and when
Sabre tried to defend the girl she began
to suspect that he might have a reason
to help Effie. Before they reached a
decision Effie, having no other place to
go, arrived with her baby. When Sabre
insisted that she stay, Mabel left,
declaring she would not return until the
girl and her baby had gone. Mr. Fortune
and Mr. Twyning, who had been made
a partner in the firm, would not allow
Sabre to return to the firm unless he sent
Effie away. They feared scandal would
hurt their business. But Sabre would not
be forced to do what he felt would be
an injustice and a sin. For he had found
the key to the puzzle; he knew that the
solution to the mystery of the world is
simply that God is love. Love for one's
fellow men could set the world right
again. He loved Effie as he loved all
mankind, as he loved even his wife and
the others who hated him.
But keeping Effie in the face of
criticism brought only disaster to him and
to the girl. Mabel sued for divorce on
grounds of adultery, naming Effie. Sabre
was away from his home when the
papers were served, and before he could
quite comprehend that his wife could
believe such a foul thing he was arrested
Effie had taken poison, first killing hei
baby. She had learned of Mabel's suit
and thought she could help Sabre best
by committing suicide. Sabre's enemies
were not satisfied. He was taken to
court and accused of being responsible
for her death. Effie's father, Mabel, and
Mr. Twyning all claimed that he was the
father of Effie's baby and that he had
bought the poison which she drank. It
was proved that he could have been the
father of the child. Only one voice was
raised in his defense. Nona returned
from France and appeared at the trial.
But there was litde she could do.
The verdict made Sabre responsible
for Effie's suicide. Sabre went home,
but he would not allow Nona to go with
him. In his house he found a letter
from Effie. In it she told him that she
was taking her life and that of her baby
because she had caused him so much
trouble. She also named the father of
her baby; it was Harold Twyning, the
son of Sabre's enemy. The boy had been
afraid of his father's anger and had not
claimed his responsibility.
Enraged, Sabre went to his old office
prepared to kill Mr. Twyning. But when
he reached the office, he learned that his
enemy had just received word of
Harold's death in batde. Sabre dropped
Effie's letter in the fire and offered his
sympathy to the man mainly responsible
for ruining him. Then he went into his
old office and collapsed from a cerebral
hemorrhage. Nona found him there
and took him home. For many months
he could remember nothing that had
happened to him, but gradually he
began to piece together the sordid, tragic
story. He learned that Mabel had secured
her divorce and remarried. He learned
to know Nona again, but he asked her
to go away because he had accepted
disgrace rather than reveal the story or
Effie's letter. Nona refused to leave him,
1708

and after a year they were married. Sabre dark season of life before winter gives
knew then that he had really found the way to spring,
key to the mystery of existence in that
1709

THE ILIAD
Type of work: Poem
Author: Homer (c. ninth century B. C.)
Type of plot: Heroic epic
Time of plot: Trojan War
Locale: Troy
First transcribed: Sixth century B. C.
Principal characters:
Priam, King of Troy
Hector, a Trojan warrior, Priam's son
Helen of Troy
Paris, Hector's brother and Helen's lover
Menelaus, Helen's husband
Agamemnon, Menelaus' brother
Achilles, a Greek warrior
Patroclus, Achilles' friend
Critique:
Homer has been hailed as the father
of all poetry, and the Iliad has survived
as a masterpiece for all time. The Iliad,
within a three-day period of the Trojan
wars, tells the story of the wrath of
Achilles against King Agamemnon. The
battle episodes reveal the true characters
of the warriors, their strength and their
weaknesses. These figures step out of
unrecorded history as human beings,
not of one era, but of all eras and for all
time.
The Story:
The Greeks were camped outside the
walls of Troy, in the tenth year of their
siege on that city. Agamemnon, king of
the Achaians, wanted the maid, Briseis,
for his own, but she was possessed by
Achilles, the son of Zeus. When
Achilles was forced to give up the maid, he
withdrew angrily from the battle and
returned to his ship. But he won from
Zeus the promise that the wrong which
he was enduring would be revenged
on Agamemnon.
That evening Zeus sent a messenger to
the Greek king to convey to him in a
dream an order to rise and marshal
his Achaian forces against the walls of
Troy. When the king awoke, he called
all his warriors to him and ordered them
to prepare for battle. All night long the
men armed themselves in battle array,
making ready their horses and their
ships. The gods appeared on earth in
the disguise of warriors, some siding with
the Greeks, some hastening to warn the
Trojans. With the army mustered,
Agamemnon began the march from the
camp to the walls of the city, while all
the country around was set on fire. Only
Achilles and his men remained behind,
determined not to fight on the side of
Agamemnon.
The Trojan army came from the gates
of the city ready to combat the Greeks.
Then Paris, son of King Priam and
Helen's lover, stood out from the ranks
and suggested that he and Menelaus
setde the batde in a fight between them,
the winner to take Helen and all her
possessions, and friendship to be
declared between the warring nations.
Menelaus agreed to these words of his
rival, and before the warriors of both
sides, and under the eyes of Helen, who
had been summoned to witness the scene
from the walls of Troy, he and Paris
began to battle. Menelaus was the
mightier warrior. As he was about to
pierce his enemy, the goddess Aphrodite,
who loved Paris, swooped down from
the air and carried him off to his
chamber. She summoned Helen there to
minister to her wounded lord. Then the
victory was declared for Menelaus.
In the heavens the gods who favored
1710

the Trojans were much disturbed by this
decision. Athena appeared on earth to
Trojan Pandarus and told him to seek
out Menelaus and kill him. He shot an
arrow at the unsuspecting king, but the
goddess watching over Menelaus
deflected the arrow so that it only wounded
him. When Agamemnon saw that
treacherous deed, he revoked his vows
of peace and exhorted the Greeks once
more to battle. Many Trojans and many
Greeks lost their lives that day, because
of the foolhardiness of Pandarus.
Meanwhile Hector, son of King Priam,
had returned to the city to bid farewell
to Andromache, his wife, and to his
child, for he feared he might not return
from that day's battle. He rebuked
Paris for remaining in his chambers
with Helen when his countrymen were
dying because of his misdeeds. While
Paris made ready for battle, Hector said
goodbye to Andromache, prophesying
that Troy would be defeated, himself
killed, and Andromache taken captive.
Then Paris joined him and they went
together into the battle.
When evening came the Greeks and
the Trojans retired to their camps.
Agamemnon instructed his men to build a
huge bulwark around the camp and in
front of the ships, for fear the enemy
would press their attack too close. Zeus
then remembered his promise to Achilles
to avenge the wrong done to him by
Agamemnon. He summoned all the gods
and forbade them to take part in the
war. The victory was to go to the
Trojans.
The next day Hector and the Trojans
swept through the fields slaughtering the
Greeks. Hera, the wife of Zeus, and
many of the other goddesses could not
be content to watch the defeat of their
mortal friends. But when they attempted
to intervene, Zeus sent down his
messengers to warn them to desist.
Fearing his armies would be destroyed
before Achilles would relent,
Agamemnon sent Odysseus to Achilles and begged
the hero to accept gifts and be
pacified. But Achilles, still wrathful,
threatened to sail for home at the break of
day. Agamemnon was troubled by the
proud refusal of Achilles. That night he
stole to the camp of the wise man,
Nestor, to ask his help in a plan to
defeat the Trojans. Nestor told him to
awaken all the great warriors and
summon them to a council. It was decided
that two warriors should steal into the
Trojan camp to determine its strength
and numbers. Diomedes and Odysseus
volunteered. As they crept toward the
camp, they captured and killed a Trojan
spy. Then they themselves stole into
the camp of the enemy, spied upon it,
and as they left, took with them the
horses of one of the kings.
The next day the Trojans pressed
hard upon the Greeks with great
slaughter. Both Diomedes and Odysseus
were wounded and many warriors killed.
Achilles watched the battle from his ship
but made no move to take part in it. He
sent his friend Patroclus to Nestor to
learn how many had been wounded.
The old man sent back a despairing
answer, pleading that Achilles give up
his anger and help his fellow Greeks. At
last the Trojans broke through the walls
of the enemy, and Hector was foremost
in an attack upon the ships.
Meanwhile many of the gods plotted
to aid the Greeks. Hera lulled Zeus to
sleep, and Poseidon urged Agamemnon
to resist the onrush of the Trojans. In
the battle that day Hector was wounded
by Aias, but as the Greeks were about to
seize him and bear his body away the
bravest of the Trojans surrounded their
hero and covered him with their shields
until he could be carried to safety.
When Zeus awakened and saw what
had happened, his wrath was terrible,
and he ordered Apollo to restore Hector
to health. Once again the walls were
breached and the Trojans stormed toward
the ships, eager to fire them. Zeus
inspired the Trojans with courage and
weakened the Greeks with fear. But he
determined that after the ships were set
1711

afire he would no longer aid the Trojans
but would allow the Greeks to have the
final victory.
Patroclus went to his friend Achilles
and again pleaded with him to return to
the fight. Achilles, still angry, refused.
Then Patroclus begged that he be
allowed to wear the armor of Achilles so
that the Greeks would believe their hero
fought with them, and Achilles
consented. Patroclus charged into the fight
and fought bravely at the gates of the
city. But there Hector mortally wounded
Patroclus and stripped from his body
the armor of Achilles.
All that day the battle raged over the
body of Patroclus. Then a messenger
carried to Achilles word of his friend's
death. His sorrow was terrible, but he
could not go unarmed into the fray to
rescue the body of Patroclus.
The next morning his goddess mother,
Thetis, brought him a new suit of armor
from the forge of Hephaestus. Then
Achilles decked himself in the glittering
armor which the lame god of fire had
prepared for him and strode forth to the
beach. There he and Agamemnon were
reconciled before the assembly of the
Greeks, and he went out to battle with
them. The whole plain was filled with
men and horses, battling one another.
Achilles in his vengeance pushed back
the enemy to the banks of the River
Xanthus, and so many were the bodies
of the Trojans choking the river that at
length the god of the river spoke to
Achilles, ordering him to cease throwing
their bodies into his waters. Proud
Achilles mocked him and sprang into
the river to fight with the god. Feeling
himself overpowered, he struggled out
upon the banks, but still the wrathful
god pursued him. Achilles then called
on his mother to help him, and Thetis,
with the aid of Hephaestus, quickly
subdued the angry river god.
As Achilles drew near the walls of
Troy, Hector girded on his armor. Amid
the wailing of all the Trojan women
he came from the gates to meet the
Greek warrior. Not standing to meet
Achilles in combat, he fled three times
around the city walls before he turned
to face Achilles' fatal spear. Then
Achilles bound Hector's body to his chariot
and dragged it to the ships, a prey for
dogs and vultures.
In the Trojan city there was great
grief for the dead hero. The aged King
Priam resolved to drive in a chariot to
the camp of Achilles and beg that the
body of his son Hector be returned to
him. The gods, too, asked Achilles to
curb his wrath and restore the Trojan
warrior to his own people, and so
Achilles received King Priam with
respect, granted his request, and agreed to
a twelve-day truce that both sides might
properly bury and mourn their dead.
Achilles mourned for Patroclus as the
body of his friend was laid upon the
blazing funeral pyre. In the city the
body of mighty Hector was also burned
and his bones were buried beneath a
great mound in the stricken city.
1712

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
Type of work: Dialogues
Author: Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
First published: 1824-1848
Landor once said, "Poetry was always
my amusement, prose my studv and
business." When he was forty-five, after
having devoted many years to poetic
composition, he began the Imaginary
Conversations, and in this work he found the
form best suited to the peculiar aim and
direction of his art. His poetry, although
some of it attains a gem-like perfection,
suffers by comparison with the work of
his more famous contemporaries. While
the major Romantic writers, with their
emphasis on imagination, were bringing
new life to poetry, Landor chose not to
go beyond ideas that could be clearly
grasped. Thus his poetry lacks the
emotional appeal necessary to the highest
attainment in this form. In prose
writing, however, where clarity and restraint
are more to be desired, Landor deserves
consideration with the best of his age.
By the very nature of his character
Landor was drawn for guidance and
inspiration to the classical tradition. One
side of his personality admired balance,
moderation, and precision, qualities
admirably displayed in his writing. The
other side was irascible, impractical, and
impulsive; these traits are revealed in
some of his personal relationships. Like
Mozart, Landor appears to have found
in his restrained and faultless art a
counterpoise to his external world of
turbulence.
Landor was a true classicist, not a
belated adherent of neo-classicism with its
emphas's on rules over subsfance. He was
rigorously trained in youth and
continued his scholarly pursuits throughout his
adult life. His knowledge was no mere
surface phenomenon; he was so
immersed in the ancients that he took on
their characteristic habits of thought.
Thus the volumes of the Imaginary
Conversations not only make use of events
and characters from the Greco-Roman
civilization, but are infused with
classical ideals of clarity and precision in
style and tough intellectualism in
content.
The Imaginary Conversations, written
in five series, are grouped into class:cal
dialogues, dialogues of sovereigns and
statesmen, dialogues of literary men,
dialogues of famous women, and
miscellaneous dialogues. The conversations,
usually between two people, cover many
centuries, ranging from the time of the
Trojan War to Landor's own period, and
they include people from many
geographical areas. Many of the scenes are based
on suggestions from history or mythology,
but the actual remarks of the individuals
are never used. Landor did not attempt
to re-create a sense of the past by use of
artificial or archaic language. He did,
however, endeavor to represent faithfully
the spirit of the age and the essential
nature of the personage presented.
In the Imaginary Conversations,
Landor was above all concerned with
interpretation of character. While he displayed
brilliant insights into human nature, his
aim was not toward fully developed
characters, but for abstractive idealizations.
They are products not of observation
directly reported but of observation,
especially that gained from reading, filtered
through a long process of reflection.
Never are the predilections of the author
—his sympathies and his aversions—far
from the surface.
The manly, heroic character is
depicted in many of the dialogues. Two
examples of this type are found in "Mar-
cellus and Hannibal." History records
the death of Marcellus in the Second
Punic War and the respect paid him by
Hannibal. Landor created a scene in
which Marcellus survived long enough
to converse with the Carthaginian leader.
When the wounded Marcellus was
1713

brought to the camp, Hannibal made
every effort to save his life and to make
him comfortable. A contrast to
Hannibal's chivalric behavior was provided by
that of his ally, a Gallic chief who
thought only of revenge and of glory to
Gaul. Marcellus welcomed death as an
escape from capture and politely declined
Hannibal's request that Rome agree to a
peace treaty. Although under great
suffering, he avoided any outward
expression of pain. In return for Hannibal's
kindness, Marcellus presented him with
a ring that might benefit him with the
Romans, if his fortunes changed. As
Marcellus was dying, the two men were more
closely united by their common nobility
and respect for nobility in others than
were they divided by the exigencies of
war.
Women of praiseworthy character are
depicted in several of the conversations.
In "Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt,"
Landor portrayed the remarkable
idealism of two women who were condemned
to death for sheltering adherents of
Monmouth. They had acted through simple
Christian charity. Confronted with a
choice between the law of the king and
the commandment of Jesus, they
embraced the latter. Lady Lisle had no
blame for the jury that under duress
had convicted her. Elizabeth, serene about
her own fate, felt sorrow for her
companion. Betrayed by the very man she
had concealed, she felt no anger toward
him, but pitied him for his having to
suffer a guilty conscience. Both viewed
execution as the avenue to eternal bliss
and wished that others might have their
perfect serenity.
A more complex character study is
found in "Oliver Cromwell and Walter
Noble." Cromwell was controlled by
conflicting emotions—ambition, pride,
compassion, vindictiveness, humility, fear. In
response to the practically irrefutable
arguments of Noble against regicide,
Cromwell constantly shifted position and
even contradicted himself. As a last
refuge, he justified his proposed action as
the carrying out of God's will.
Although I^andor sometimes used
crucial situations | as settings for his
conversations, he seldom revealed character in
truly dramatic i fash ion. His dialogues,
unlike Browning's monologues, do not have
a close causal I relationship between the
stresses of the moment and the
disclosures of the speaker. Nor do Landor's
speakers often i reveal their inner natures
unwittingly. While Browning's works are
subtle and require reading between the
lines, Landor's I are direct and leave little
to implication, i In the treatment of
characters with whom he was unsympathetic,
Landor used a*i irony that is
unmistakable, even too I obvious at times.
In some of I the dialogues, especially
the long discursive ones, the characters
are not important in themselves, but
serve as vehicles for the ideas of the
author. Not a systematic philosopher nor
a highly original thinker, Landor was
alive to the whole range of man's thought,
past and present. A wise and judicious
man, he expressed his opinions
felicitously, i
Love of freedom is a leading theme
in the Imaginary Conversations. Fighters
for liberty, such as Washington and
Kosciusko, who1 combined modesty with
valor, evoked Landor's highest
admiration. Equally fervid was his detestation
of tyrants, as expressed, for example, in
"Peter the Grea^t and Alexis," a dialogue
in which PeteJ, having failed to make
his son as brutal as he, callously orders
the boy's execution. Landor believed in
a republican form of government and
opposed pure democracy because of the
corruption, inteinperance, and anti-intel-
lectualism that 'such a system fostered.
His expression bf political ideas seldom
went beyond a statement of general
principles. !
Landor was often critical of religious
leaders and he showed his antipathy to
fanaticism in su^ch dialogues as
"Mahomet and Sergiusj and "Melanchthon and
1714

Calvin." Hypocrisy is attacked in other
dialogues, such as "Fra Filippo Lippi and
Pope Eugenius IV," which is, in part,
a satire on the Pope, who makes an
outward show of piety and displays great
zeal in maintaining the forms of religion,
but who is essentially a worldly and
sensual man. Also, in this conversation, the
Christian-spirited barbarians of Tunisia
are, with heavy irony, contrasted with the
barbaric Christians of Rome. Landor
favored a simple religion that stayed
close to its basic tenets. Believing in the
limitation of human reason in such
matters, he disliked dogmatism and
theological quibbling.
His philosophy was influenced by
Epicurus and by the Stoics. He believed in
meditation, in detachment, in freedom
from the ambition and envy of the
world. These sentiments are expressed in
"Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa."
Feeling that man's happiness depends on his
use of reason to overcome doubts and
worries, in many of his character
portrayals Landor revealed his belief in self-
control, fortitude, sympathy, and humani-
tarianism.
A significant part of the Imaginary
Conversations is devoted to literary
criticism. Classical standards were Landor's
guide. He disapproved of unnecessary
ornamentation in writing. "Never try to
say things admirably, try only to say them
plainly." "Whatever is rightly said, sounds
rightly." But Landor was not a narrow
classicist in his tastes; he admired a
variety of authors, his favorites being
Milton, Bacon, Shakespeare, Dante, and
Pindar. Among his contemporaries he
most respected Wordsworth and Southey.
Landor predicted that only a small,
select group of people would prize his
writings. He was correct. One reason for
the failure of the Imaginary
Conversations to attract a large audience is the
fact that the dialogues lack direction and
cohesive development. The absence of
dramatic motivation and the presence of
disconcerting gaps and shifts in
argument create difficulties for the reader.
This weakness, which is a considerable
one, has prevented the high merits of
the Imaginary Conversations from being
widely appreciated. The aphorisms
scattered throughout the work are among the
best in the language. The range of Lan-
dor's thought is impressive. His prose
style is unexcelled in vigor and purity.
1715

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST
Type of work: Religious meditations
Author: Thomas a Kempis (c. 1380-1471)
First transcribed: c. 1400
Although arguments have been brought
forward through the centuries in an
effort to show that Thomas a Kempis did
not really write The Imitation of Christ
(Jmitatio Christt), evidence to the
contrary has never been widely accepted and
Thomas a Kempis is usually regarded as
the author of the famous work. Aside
from the Bible, The Imitation of Christ is
undoubtedly the most famous religious
work of the Christian world, having been
translated into more than fifty languages
and printed in more than six thousand
editions. Widely known in manuscript,
it was being circulated as early as 1420.
Its first publication in English was in
1696. The original language of The
Imitation of Christ was Latin, not the
classical Latin of Rome, but medieval Latin
considerably changed from the language
of Cicero and Vergil. Many later writers
have praised it. Fontenelle said it was the
finest piece of writing ever done by man.
John Wesley thought so highly of it that
he published an English translation under
the title The Christians Pattern (1735).
Matthew Arnold thought that it was,
next to the Bible, the most eloquent
expression of the Christian spirit ever
penned.
The substance of The Imitation of
Christ is that God is all and man is
nothing, that from God flows the eternal
Truth which man must seek, and that by
imitating the spirit and actions of Christ
man may be helped to achieve a state
of grace with God. But as many writers
have pointed out, the greatness of
Thomas a Kempis7 book does not lie in
any originality, for there is little that is
new in the matter of the work. It is the
expression of a spirit that makes The
Imitation of Christ a piece of great
religious literature. Traceable are most of the
strands of Christian philosophy and
theology of the time, including those which
Christians took over, at least in part, from
the great pagan thinkers of Greece and
Rome. The book has sometimes been
described as a mosaic of matter and ideas
taken from the early and medieval
Christian mystics, the Bible, and writings of
the Church fathers. Borrowings from St.
Bernard, St. Gregory, St. Ambrose, St.
Thomas Aquinas, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca,
and even Ovid can be found within the
pages of The Imitation of Christ, each
contributing in a way to the spirit of
Christian example. No reader can ever
miss, even within a few pages, the
eloquence and sincerity of the author. The
religious feeling has been expressed so
ardently that it is unmistakably a call to
the reader to heed the call of Christ and
to follow in His steps.
Although he calls the reader to a
Christian, hence otherworldly, life, Thomas a
Kempis is eminently practical in his
insights into human beings, their
motivations, and their psychology. More than
once the author points out that virtue is
only to be claimed by those who have
been tempted and have proved themselves
equal to denying worldly vanities and
other devil's snares in order to remain in
act, thought, and spirit a follower of
Christ's doctrines and example. Thomas
a Kempis also realized that established
custom is not easily relinquished by the
individual or the community and is thus
always a means of keeping one from a
Christian life. Thomas certainly was not
a man to truckle to the moment;
relativism and Christianity could not go hand
in hand in his philosophy. Though strict
in his admonitions that there was no
worldly good, nor any love of man, which
could be sufficient reason for doing evil,
he admitted that for the help of the
suffering, or for a better work, a good work
1716

might sometimes be postponed.
The palpable faith of Thomas in
philosophical idealism is constantly before
the reader. There may be doubt, however,
as to whether this idealism is entirely
Christian or whether there is a direct
influence from Plato or the later neo-
Platonists of Alexandria. Though the
author's faith in the ideal of God is a mystic
belief, intuitive in nature, with little of
the rational core of thought behind it
upon which Plato insisted, Thomas a
Kempis, like Plato, believes that the real
world, the world of ideality, is the only
true world. But in Thomas' case the
method by which Truth is achieved is not
through reason; rather, the immediate
source is grace acquired through the
sacraments of the Church, and through
revelation acquired by abstinence from
worldly matters, the application of
prayer, and the use of contemplation. In
answer to his own rhetorical question as
to how the Christian saints became so
perfect, Thomas points out the fact that
their perfection lay in their contemplation
of divinity. The greatness of the saints,
he adds, came from the fact that they
steadfastly sought to abstain from all
worldly considerations and to cling with
their whole hearts to God and thoughts
of Him.
The power of God is, for Thomas a
Kempis, in divine love, a good above all
others which makes every burden light
and equalizes all opportunity. He wrote:
Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant,
gende, strong, patient, faithful, prudent,
long-suffering, manly, and never
seeking her own; for wheresoever a man
seeketh his own, there he falleth from
love. Love is circumspect, humble, and
upright; not weak, not fickle, nor intent
on vain things; sober, chaste, steadfast,
quiet, and guarded in all senses. Love
is subject and obedient to all that are
in authority, vile and lowly in its own
sight, devout and grateful towards God,
faithful and always trusting in Him
even when God nideth His face, for
without sorrow we cannot live in love.
The pious author suggests in The
Imitation of Christ that there were four rules
for the accomplishment of peace and true
liberty: that we should try to do another's
will rather than our own, that we should
seek always to have less than more, that
we should seek the lowest place, and that
we should wish and pray always to fulfill
the will of God.
The Imitation of Christ was arranged
in four parts. Book I deals with
"Admonitions Profitable for the Spiritual Life";
Book II, "Admonitions Concerning the
Inward Life"; Book III, "On Inward
Consolation"; Book IV, "Of the Sacrament of
the Altar." The last, a kind of manual for
the devout, gives instruction, advice, and
guidance on preparing for the sacrament
of communion. In the third book are
many prayers noted for their eloquence
and sincerity of devotion. The last
paragraph of a prayer for the spirit of
devotion is one of the best examples:
How can I bear this miserable life
unless Thy mercy and grace strengthen
me? Turn not away Thy face from me,
delay not Thy visitation. Withdraw not
Thou Thy comfort from me, lest my
soul 'gasp after Thee as a thirsty land.'
Lord, teach me to do Thy will, teach
me to walk humbly and uprightly
before Thee, for Thou are my wisdom,
who knowest me in truth, and knewest
me before the world was made and
before I was born into the world.
Although a monk, devoted to his order,
his vocation, and God's service through
most of his life, Thomas a Kempis was
gifted with a keen insight into the world
and what it can do to men. He inculcated
submission to divine will and recognized
at the same time that most men would
have difficulty in making such
submission. He advocated an ascetic,
otherworldly life and point of view, and yet
he also recognized the worth of practical
goodness. The rules and suggestions he
wrote in The Imitation of Christ are
clear-sighted; the analysis is keen; the
tone is humane. The seriousness of its
1717

message, the sincerity of its tone, and the great devotional work has held in the
humility and compassion of its author hearts of men for generations,
make understandable the place that this
1718

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
Type of work: Drama
Author: Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: London and Hertfordshire
First presented: 1895
Principal characters:
Algernon Moncrieff (Algy), a man about town
Lady Augusta Bracknell, his aunt
Gwendolen Fairfax, her daughter
Jack Worthing, in love with Gwendolen
Cecily Cardew, his ward
Miss Letitia Prism, Cecily's governess
The Reverend Canon Chasuble, D.D.
Critique:
This play is built on a pun and the plot
turns on a misunderstanding over the
name Ernest. The theme is an attack on
earnestness, that is, the Victorian
solemnity of a false seriousness which results
in priggishness, hypocrisy, and so-called
piety. Unlike Shaw, who used his
conventional plots to reinforce his
iconoclastic ideas, Wilde used his wit as an
ironic counterpoint to the absurdity of the
action.
from this atmosphere of restraint, he
invented an imaginary brother named
Ernest, who was supposed to be quite a
reprobate, and whose name and general
mode of behavior Jack took over during
his frequent trips to London.
To complicate matters, Jack had fallen
in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, the
The Story:
Algernon Moncrieff, nephew of the
aristocratic Lady Bracknell, was
compelled by necessity to live a more or less
double life, or he would have been
completely at the mercy of his Aunt Augusta.
To escape from her incredibly dull dinner
parties, he had emulated that lady's
husband by inventing a wholly fictitious
friend named Bunbury, whose precarious
state of health required Algy's absence
from London whenever his aunt
summoned him to attendance.
Algy's friend, Jack Worthing, was also
forced by circumstances into a similar
subterfuge for quite a different reason.
He had under his care a young ward
named Cecily Cardew, who lived at Jack's
country place in Hertfordshire under the
admirable tutelage of a stern governess,
Miss Prism. Jack thought it necessary to
preserve a high moral tone in the presence
of Cecily and her governess. To escape
daughter of Algy's aunt, Lady Bracknell.
Moreover, Gwendolen had fallen in love
with him, particularly with his name,
Ernest, of which she was very fond. When
Lady Bracknell learned "Ernest's"
intentions toward Gwendolen, she naturally
wanted to know something of his family
history. But since "Ernest* could supply
nothing more definite than the fact that
he had been found in a leather bag at the
Victoria Railway Station, and that his
true parentage was quite unknown, Lady
Bracknell refused to consider his marriage
to her daughter.
Jack realized that the time had come to
put an end to Ernest. He even went so far
as to appear at the manor house in
Hertfordshire in deep mourning for his
brother Ernest. But his friend Algy,
"Bunburying" as usual, had preceded
him, posing as Ernest. Cecily took an
immediate interest in Algy, the supposed
brother of her guardian. When Jack and
Algy came face to face, Jack promptly
announced that his brother Ernest had been
unexpectedly called back to London and
was leaving at once. But Algy, having
1719

fallen in love with Cecily, refused to
leave. Cecily, in turn, confessed that it
had always been her dream to love
someone whose name was Ernest.
Algy, realizing that his hopes of
marrying Cecily depended on his name, decided
to have himself rechristened Ernest,
and to that effect he called upon the
local clergyman, the Reverend Canon
Chasuble, D.D. But Jack had preceded
him with a like request. Dr. Chasuble had
an engagement for two christenings at
five-thirty that afternoon.
In the meantime Gwendolen arrived at
the manor house. Because of the mix-up
in names, both Gwendolen and Cecily
believed that they were in love with the
same man, the non-existent Ernest.
When Jack and Algy appeared
together, the real identities of the two
pretenders were established. Both girls
became furious. At first Jack and Algy
upbraided each other for their mutual
duplicity, but they finally settled down to
tea and consoled themselves by vying
with one another to see who could eat the
last muffin on the plate. Cecily and
Gwendolen at last decided to forgive
their suitors, after Algy had admitted that
the purpose of his deception was to meet
Cecily, and Jack maintained that his
imaginary brother was an excuse to go to
London to see Gwendolen. Both girls
agreed that in matters of grave
importance—such as marriage—style and not
sincerity was the vital thing.
Lady Bracknell, arriving in search of
her daughter, discovered her nephew
engaged to Cecily. Afraid that the girl, like
her guardian, might possibly have only
railway station antecedents, Lady
Bracknell demanded to know Cecily's origin.
She was informed that Cecily was the
granddaughter of a very wealthy man and
the heiress to one hundred and thirty
thousand pounds. When she willingly
gave her consent to the marriage, Jack
refused to allow the match, pointing out
that Cecily could not marry without his
consent until she came of age, and that
according to her grandfather's will she
would not come of age until she was
thirty-five. However, he said he would
give his consent the moment Lady
Bracknell approved of his marriage to
Gwendolen.
There were, however, some objections
to Jack as a suitable husband for
Gwendolen, the main one being the question of
his parentage. But the mystery was
cleared up to Lady Bracknell's satisfaction
by the revelation that Miss Letitia Prism,
Cecily's governess, was the nurse who had
left Lord Bracknell's house with a
perambulator containing a male infant which
she had placed in a leather handbag and
left in the cloakroom of the Victoria
Station. The infant was the son of Lady
Bracknell's sister, a circumstance which
made Jack Algy's older brother. Jack's
Christian name still had to be
determined. It turned out to be—Ernest. The
Reverend Chasuble was relieved of his
two christenings that afternoon, and
Gwendolen was happy that she was
actually going to marry a man named
Ernest.
1720

IN DUBIOUS BATTLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Steinbeck (1902- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: The 1930's
Locale: California
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Mac, a Communist labor organizer
Jim Nolan, his assistant and friend
London, leader of the fruit pickers
Doc Burton, a friend of the strikers
Al Townsend, a man sympathetic to the strikers
Critique:
With the possible exception of The
Grapes of Wrath, In Dubious Battle is
the most successful proletarian novel yet
written in the United States. More sharply
focused than the former, and more vivid
in its characterizations, its effect is
probably more forceful. Although the story
springs directly from the clash of social
and economic forces during the early part
of the depression decade, it remains
considerably more than a propaganda piece.
An intensely vital narrative, exhibiting
both the social awareness and artistic
craftsmanship of the author, this book
stands among the best of Steinbeck's
novels.
The Story:
Jim Nolan's father was a workingman
driven to his death by the blows of police
clubs and pistol butts. As a youngster
Jim witnessed both his father's courage
and his despair; he saw his mother lose
even her religious faith as poverty and
starvation overwhelmed the family.
Older, but still keenly remembering
his youth, with the scars of brutality and
starvation deeply embedded in his heart,
Jim Nolan became a member of the
Communist Party. He was assigned to work
with Mac, an able, experienced organizer.
Together they became fruit pickers, at a
time when the fruit growers had cut
wages even lower than the workers
had thought possible. A strike was
brewing and Mac and Jim determined to hurry
it along and to direct its course.
Luck was with them. Shortly after
their arrival at the camp of the workers,
Mac, by giving the impression that he
was a doctor, delivered Lisa, daughter of
the camp leader, of a baby. Word of his
accomplishment spread throughout the
area. After Mac and Jim became friendly
with London, leader of the camp, and the
other workers, they persuaded the fruit
pickers to organize and to strike for higher
wages and better living conditions. This
was not easy to do. As usual, the orchard
owners had made effective use of
Communism as a bogey. Furthermore, the
vigilantes were a constant menace, not to
mention deputies, troops, and
strikebreakers, all hirelings of the fruit growers.
In addition, the authorities could always
close down the camp by maintaining that
it violated the sanitation laws and was a
menace to public health. There was also
the problem of money and food; the poor
migrant workers desperately needed work
to supply their daily necessities.
But at last a strike was called. On the
night that the strikers were to sneak out
to meet the strikebreakers called in by
the owners, Mac and Jim were ambushed
IN DUBIOUS BATTLE by John Steinbeck. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press, Inc.
Copyright, 1936, by John Steinbeck.
1721

by vigilantes. They succeeded in
escaping, but Jim was shot in the arm. Word
of their plan for the next morning had
leaked out, and they suspected that a stool
pigeon was in their midst. Nevertheless,
the next day they marched out to meet
the strikebreakers at the railroad station,
and to implore them not to fight against
their fellow workers.
Although the police had assembled in
force, they seemed afraid of the strikers.
During the encounter, Joy, an old and
crippled comrade, was shot and killed.
The strikers carried the body back to the
camp, and over the body of their
comrade Mac delivered a fiery and eloquent
speech, exhorting the strikers to carry on
and to fight to the finish. This action
proved to be the best of all possible spurs
to bring the workers together, and the
strikers were aroused to carry on the
struggle even more fiercely.
Luck was with them in other ways.
They had persuaded the father of Al
Townsend, who owned a lunch cart and
gave handouts to Party members, to allow
them to camp on his farm, after they
promised him that his crop would be
picked and that his property would be
protected. Doc Burton, a philosopher and
skeptic, took charge of the sanitation, thus
protecting the camp against the health
inspectors. Dick, a handsome comrade,
used his charms on women in order to
get money and food for the strikers.
Meanwhile the owners tried everything
to break up the strike. They attempted to
intimidate the workers, to divide them,
to bribe London, but all their efforts
failed. Then another problem arose. The
owners had an article published in which
it was stated that the county was feeding
the strikers. The report was not true, but
those who sympathized with the strikers
believed it and stopped helping them
altogether. Dick was getting far fewer
results from his endeavors, and the situation
became desperate.
Mac was often on the point of losing
his head, of letting his anger get the best
of him, so that the strategy of the strike
was sometimes imperiled. By contrast,
Jim grew more able, more hardened. He
ignored the women of the camp who
sought to lure him into their tents, and
did not allow his feeling for Lisa to
become anything more than a casual,
friendly relationship. Thus he provided
a sort of balance for his emotional
comrades.
Conditions grew worse. The strikers
had practically no money, no food. Dick
finally managed to get a cow and some
beans, but the food sufficed for only a few
days. Meanwhile, Doc Burton had
vanished. Without his help, the sick and the
wounded could not be attended to, and
the sanitation of the camp grew
progressively worse. One night someone
managed to outwit the guards and set a barn
afire. The barn and an adjacent kennel
housing some favorite pointers were totally
destroyed. The next day the owner called
in the sheriff to evict the strikers.
The strike seemed lost. The spirits of
the men were at a very low ebb, and they
gave signs of yielding. On the following
night a boy came and told Jim and Mac
that Doc Burton was lying wounded in
a field. They rushed out, only to realize,
when they were fired upon, that they had
fallen into a trap. Mac called out a word
of warning and fell to the ground. When
he got up, after the firing had stopped,
he called out to Jim. He got no answer.
Jim was dead. By that time the shots had
aroused the others and they came
forward. Over the body of his comrade and
friend, Mac made a strong and rousing
speech, urging the workers to stick
together, to fight on, and to win the strike.
1722

IN THE WILDERNESS
Type of work: Novel
Author. Sigrid Undset (1882-1949)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Early fourteenth century
Locale: Norway
First published: 1927
Principal characters;
Olav Audunsson, master of Hestviken
Eirik, his heir
Cecilia, Olav's daughter
Bothild Asgersdatter, Olav's foster daughter
Lady M^erta, Bothild's grandmother
Torhild Bjornsdatter, mother of Olav's son Bjorn
Sira Hallbjorn, a priest
Critique:
When Sigrid Undset was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928, that
award was made, according to the citation,
"principally with regard to her powerful
pictures of Northern life in medieval
times." No one who has read Kristin
Lavransdatter or The Master of Hestviken
will deny the justice of that statement.
Those not familiar with her novels must
be prepared to find a writer who, while
true to the life and spirit of a past age,
pays little attention to the historical
personages and actual events so necessary to
the historical romancer. Madame Undset's
stories of medieval life are so full-bodied
and rich in detail that there is little need
in her books for a parade of names and
dates. In the Wilderness, the third volume
of the Hestviken series, is the one
exception to her usual practice, however, for
the closing episode of this novel deals
with the invasion of Norway by Duke
Eirik of Sweden in 1308.
The Story:
Olav Audunsson had little desire to stay
on at Hestviken through the summer
following his wife's death, and when the
sons of the English armorer in Oslo asked
him to be shipmaster of their boat on a
trading voyage to London it was plain
that the idea pleased him. Eirik, Ingunn's
son by the Icelander, wanted also to go
on the trip, but Olav told him nay—he
must remain at Hestviken and be
companion to little Cecilia, the daughter
Ingunn had borne in her last years.
In England two adventures befell Olav.
At evensong in the Dominican's church
he saw a woman so much like dead
Ingunn that for a moment his breath failed
him. So like she was, and yet young
enough to be his daughter. With her was
a blind man, apparently her husband.
Olav saw her again, at mass and evensong,
and after a time they began to exchange
glances and smiles. One night her serving-
woman stopped him after the service and
led him to a great house outside the walls.
The strange woman was in the garden, her
only dress a thin silk shift. For a moment
Olav felt that he was about to clasp
Ingunn again. Then he realized that she
was only a wanton wife seeking sport
with a stranger. Thrusting her from him,
he ran away.
At another time he went with his
shipmates to a famous shrine north of London.
Separated from his companions, he
wandered in the woods until he encountered
some men beside a brook. That night they
attacked him for his rich dress and jewels.
While Olav fought with the robbers in
IN THE WILDERNESS by Sigrid Undset. By permission of the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1929, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1723

the dark, he felt the battle-surge he had
known in his outlawed youth. Later it
seemed to him that he had been tempted
by pleasures of the flesh and of violence,
sent to lead him from the path of
redemption he must follow to atone for the secret
slaying of Teit, Eirik's father.
When Olav sailed home in late
summer, he found Eirik grown taller and
strong for his age and Cecilia fairer than
ever, with promise of great beauty.
Resolving that Liv, the slatternly serving-
woman, was unfit to train the daughter of
Hestviken, he wed Liv to Arnketil, his
house-carl, and sent the pair to live at
Rundmyr, the farm he carried on for
Torhild Bjomsdatter, who had borne him
a son out of wedlock two years before.
One day he went across the fjord to
Auken, where Torhild was living, to
discuss his arrangement. Seeing his son and
Torhild again, he was minded to ask the
woman to return and keep his house, but
he sadly put the thought out of his mind.
After Liv and Arnketil moved to
Rundmyr, the place began to have a bad
reputation because of the dicing, wenching, and
worse that went on there. At last Sira
Hallbjorn, the priest, warned Olav to keep
Eirik away from that thieves' den. For
years Olav had been of two minds about
Eirik. He wanted to like the boy whom he
had claimed as his heir, yet he could not
abide Eirik's insolence and boasting. He
realized that he should give more time to
his training but shrank from that duty
because of the old clash of wills between
them. Urged to marry again, he wanted
no other wife beside him at table and bed.
His problem was solved in part when
Asger Magnusson, an old friend, died in
Tunsberg after asking Olav to foster his
daughter Bothild and provide for his
mother-in-law, Maerta Birgersdatter. Lady
Maerta was grim and gaunt but capable.
Never had Hestviken been better kept
than it was under her charge. Cecilia and
Bothild, close in age, lived as sisters. Lady
Maerta dressed them well, and people said
that in the whole southland there were no
fairer maids than those at Hestviken.
But Eirik set himself against Lady
Maerta from the first, and Olav was always
angry when he was drawn into their
rows and forced to rebuke the boy for the
sake of a stranger. In the winter of Eirik's
sixteenth year they quarreled after Olav
found him in rude sport with a serving-
girl. That night Eirik left Hestviken
without farewell. There was no report of him
at Rundmyr or among Olav's distant kin,
but at last word came that he was in Oslo,
among the men-at-arms who served Sir
Ragnvald Torvaldsson. Knowing Sir
Ragnvald a gentle knight from whom
Eirik would learn the skills of weapons
and courtly ways, Olav was satisfied. He
went to Oslo and gave the runaway money
and a squire's gear. There was much
kindness between them when they parted,
Olav almost in envy for Eirik's youth.
Three years passed more quietly than
any Olav had known since boyhood.
Cecilia was his great delight, with little in
her nature to recall her weak-willed, sickly
mother. One night some men from
another parish came to Hestviken. After the
drinking in the hall one of the men tried
to seize Bothild and Cecilia. Bothild was
terrified, but Cecilia drew her knife and
slashed at the man until the blade was red.
Olav felt that she should have been the
boy of the house.
Olav, beginning to grow restless, was
often in the company of Sira Hallbjorn, a
priestly lover of falconry and hunting. One
night, while they supped at a wedding
feast, Olav's ancient Viking ax, Kin-fetch,
rang. For a moment they saw in one
another's eyes old pagan stirrings that
neither could have spoken aloud. Riding
home later that night, Olav went into the
graveyard and called to Ingunn to arise.
On another day he went to Auken, where
he found Torhild married to Ketil, a
young man on the farm. Olav asked her
to send Bjorn, their son, to live with
1724

him. She refused.
The snows lay deep that December
when Duke Eirik crossed the border from
Sweden to lead his troops against his
father-in-law, King Haakon. Torhild
brought word of the invasion to Hestviken
one frosty dawn. After sending Cecilia,
Bothild, and Lady Maerta to Auken for
safety, Olav rode off to warn his
neighbors. When the franklins tried to ambush
the Swedes, they were routed by the
mailed horsemen. Olav and Sira Hallbjorn
were among the few who made their way
to the manor at Sundrheim and there
spent the Yule. Meanwhile the Swedes
occupied Oslo and besieged Akershus, the
royal fortress. Olav was in that great fight
at Aker church and at Frysja bridge,
where there was hard fighting to keep
Duke Eirik from taking the castle. Sira
Hallbjorn was killed at the bridge, and in
the press a crossbow-bolt shattered Olav's
jaw.
Olav lay in fever for days. After Duke
Eirik withdrew from the siege, a merchant
took Olav into Oslo and cared for him
there. One day he looked at himself in a
mirror. His cheek was furrowed and
scarred and his hair was gray. When he
went back to Hestviken in the spring,
Olav felt that he had become an old man.
1725

INAZUMA-BYOSHI
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sant6 Kyoden C1761-1816)
Type of plot: Feudal romance
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: Japan
First published: 1806
Principal characters:
Sasaki Sadakuni, feudal Lord of Yamato Province
Sasaki Katsura, his first-born son, by his deceased first wife
Sasaki Hanagata, his second son, by his present wife
Kumode no Kata (Lady Spider), his present wife, Hanagata's mother
Ich6 no Mae (Lady Ginkgo), Katsura's wife
Tsukiwaka (Young-moon), son of Katsura and Lady Ginkgo
Fuwa Doken (Road-dog), steward to the House of Sasaki
Fuwa Banzaemon, D6ken's son
Hasebe Unroku, a disloyal retainer
Nagoya Saburozaemon, a loyal retainer
Nagoya Sansaburo, his son
Fujinami (Wisteria-wave), a dancing girl
Sasara Sampachiro, a loyal retainer, also known as Namuemon
Kuritaro (Chestnut-son), his son
Kaede (Maple), his daughter
Yuasa Matahei, Fujinami's brother
Umezu Kamon (Good-gate), a recluse
Sarujiro (Monkey-son), Sampachiro's servant
Shikaz6 (Deer), Sansaburo's servant
Critique:
Using the central theme of rivalry for
succession to a great feudal house, and
the triumph of good over evil, right over
wrong, Santo Kyoden took his materials
from traditional Kabuki plays and wrote
Inazuma-byoshi (Trouble in the House
of Sasaki) with stage production
obviously in mind. The scenes change rapidly,
and the plot is complicated by the
appearance of a large number of secondary
characters who disrupt the unity of the
story. Thus the principal theme tends to
move away from the succession intrigues
to a depiction of the feudal loyalty of a
secondary character, Sasara Sampachir6.
That this novel was soon produced on
the Kabuki stage was a matter of course,
and it was staged under various titles,
the first being in Osaka in 1808, and in
Edo in 1809. As a novel the work
comprised a unit in itself, but Kyoden wrote
a sequel, the Honcho Sui-bodai Zenden,
which was published in 1809. This later
work, making greater use of syllabic
meter, has little in connection with the
original, and is thin in plot; but it carries
the reader on through the author's sheer
writing ability.
The Story:
During the mid-fifteenth century,
under the shogunship of Ashikaga Yoshi-
masa, there lived a warrior lord by the
name of Sasaki Sadakuni, lord of the
Province of Yamato. He had two sons.
One, twenty-five years old and named
Katsura, was the son of Sadakuni's first
wife; the other, twelve-year-old Hanagata,
was the son of Sadakuni's second and
present wife, Lady Spider. Katsura, a
handsome young man, was taken into
the luxurious and self-indulgent service
of the shogun at Kyoto. There, at the
instigation of one of Katsura's retainers,
Fuwa Banzaemon, Katsura fell in love
with a dancing girl, Wisteria-wave, and
began to lead a life of pleasure.
A retainer of the House of Sasaki,
1726

Nagoya Sansabur6, was sent to Kyoto to
present a treasured painting to the sho-
gun. Learning how matters stood with
Katsura, he did his best to make the
young lord mend his ways, but to no
avail. Meanwhile, Banzaemon himself
had been discovered to be in love with
Wisteria-wave, and he was discharged
from feudal service. Sansaburo was sent
back to the Sasaki provincial
headquarters. At the same time a loyal retainer,
Sasara Sampachird, killed Wisteria-wave
and went into hiding. On the same night
a disloyal retainer, Hasebe Unroku, stole
the treasured painting and disappeared.
The next day Banzaemon's father,
Road dog, steward to the House of Sasaki,
arrived as Sadakuni's emissary, severely
reprimanded Katsura for his dissolute
ways, and discharged Katsura's retinue
as being disloyal. Behind Road-dog's
outwardly righteous actions lay a deeper
plan, a plot to take over his lord's domain
with the connivance of Governor General
Hamana. Knowing Lady Spider's hope
that her own son Hanagata would
succeed to the lordship of Sasaki, Road-dog
had joined forces with her. With the
backing of an evil sorcerer, the two
attempted to do away with Katsura's wife,
Lady Ginkgo, and her son Young-moon,
who were living in the Sasaki villa in
Heguri, guarded by Sansabur6 and his
father, Nagoya Saburozaemon. Although
their plot failed, Sadakuni was deceived
and troops were dispatched against Lady
Ginkgo and her young son.
In the meantime Banzaemon, who held
a grudge against Sansaburo, killed
Saburozaemon. Sansaburo placed Young-moon
in the care of Young-moon's elderly nurse
and helped them escape; he himself
fought valiantly in defense of Lady
Ginkgo, but in spite of his courage and
efforts his lord's lady was abducted. He
himself escaped into Kawachi Province.
The old woman in charge of Young-
moon had met with difficulty in escaping
with her charge. Young-moon was saved,
however, by Sasara Sampachird, who
meanwhile had changed his name to
Namuemon, and was hidden in Tamba
Province.
Namuemon was still haunted by the
spirit of the dead Wisteria-wave whom he
had killed for the sake of his lord; his
son, Chestnut-son, became blind, and his
daughter Maple was haunted by a
serpent. When it was known that
Namuemon was secretly watching Road-dog's
movements with the idea of killing him,
warriors were sent against Namuemon,
who beheaded his own son and then, in
order that Young-moon's life might be
spared, identified the head as Young-
moon's. Namuemon's daughter Maple
sold herself fox the painting. Namuemon,
with his wife and Young-moon, sought
refuge in Kawachi Province. Leaving the
two in a place of safety, he himself set
out to find his master Katsura and
Katsura's wife, Lady Ginkgo.
Meanwhile, Lady Ginkgo, who had
fallen into Road-dog's hands, was about
to be murdered, but she was saved by a
hero-recluse by the name of Umezu
Good-gate. Katsura, who had become an
itinerant Buddhist priest, was about to
meet his death at a temple festival in
Omi Province, when his life was saved
by Monkey-son, Sansaburo's son who had
become a street preacher. After his
delivery Katsura was hidden in the home
of Wisteria-wave's older brother, Yuasa
Matahei, a painter living in Otsu. By
chance, Namuemon was also staying
there. Matahei, becoming aware that
Namuemon was his own sister's
murderer, was at the same time deeply
impressed by the quality of Namuemon's
loyalty. Matahei's wife confessed that six
years ago she had attempted to hang
herself because a ruffian had robbed her
of twenty pieces of gold. At the time
Namuemon had not only saved her from
death but he had even given her twenty
gold pieces to make up for her loss. Torn
between revenge and gratitude, Matahei
drew his sword, cut Namuemon's
traveling hat in place of Namuemon's head,
and offered the sundered hat to
Wisteria-wave's departed but still vengeful
1727

spirit. With past wrongs thus redressed,
Matahei repaid his gratitude by bringing
Namuemon to Katsura. At that point
Hasebe Unroku appeared on the scene
and was recognized by Matahei's wife
as the man who had robbed her six
years before. Namuemon forced Unroku
to commit suicide to expiate his sins.
Maple, meanwhile, had joined a
traveling theatrical troupe which had come to
those parts. Namuemon, now revealed as
Sampachir6, met his daughter, whose
affliction from serpents that always
accompanied her had been healed by the
painting she had so dearly bought.
Matahei, for the first time, realized that he
had attained the inner secret which he
had striven for in his art—its magical
power.
On the following day Katsura and his
farty left Otsu for Kawachi Province,
le acquired a book on military strategy
and tactics belonging to Good-gate, who
had saved Lady Ginkgo's life. Intending
to seek the assistance of the new
governor general, Katsumoto, the party arrived
at Good-gate's secluded abode on
Diamond Mountain to find that Katsumoto
was already there in an attempt to
persuade Good-gate to accept the position of
chief of military strategy. It was also
revealed that Good-gate was related to
Katsura by marriage. Katsura was reunited
with Ladv Ginkgo, who had been staving
there under Good-gate's protection. With
the governor general's and Good-gate's
backing, Katsura prepared to return to
his home province of Yamato.
Meanwhile, in Kyoto, Sansaburo,
accompanied by his faithful servant Deer,
had been searching for Fuwa Banzaemon
and his gang in the brothels of that city.
Finally he found them and with the
assistance of a courtesan and Good-gate,
who had been a friend of his slain father
Saburozaemon, Sansabur6 achieved his
revenge. Good-gate, appointed the
governor general's deputy, received orders to
go to the headquarters of the House
of Sasaki. Requesting the attendance of
Sadakuni's wife, Lady Spider, and his
steward, Road-dog, as well, Good-gate
told Lord Sasaki Sadakuni that Katsura
had not only mended his former ways but
had displayed great military valor. He
requested Sadakuni to pardon his son and
to name Katsura his heir and successor;
Sadakuni would then retire in Katsura's
favor as head of the clan. Good-gate also
revealed Lady Spider's and Road-dog's
plot to take over the House of Sasaki by
conniving for the succession of the
second-born, Lady Spider's son Hanagata.
With Road-dog under arrest in a caged
carriage, and his mission accomplished,
Good-gate took his leave amid the low
and reverent bows of the House of Sasaki.
1728

INDEPENDENT PEOPLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Halldor Laxness (1902-
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Iceland
First published: 1934-1935
Principal characters:
Bjartur, a crofter
Rosa, his first wife
Finna, his second wife
Asta Sollilja, Rosa's daughter
Gvendur, Bjartur's son
Nonni, his younger son
Ingolfur Arnarson, Asta's father
Critique:
Independent People is one of the few
novels to give us a faithful and artistic
picture of the essentially unrewarding
life in bleak, small Iceland. In addition
to the background, Laxness has written
in a style and with a scope approaching
the epic. We get some of the feeling of
the traditions of the Vikings, and we see
the old give way to the new. Only the
hard, barren life of the crofter is
unchanging, for the Icelander in the
remoter sections of his country lives on
about the plane of the primitive savage.
The Story:
After working for eighteen years for
Bailiff Jon, Bjartur was at last able to
buy, with a heavy mortgage, the croft
called Winterhouses. Proud of his new
status as a landowner and fiercely
independent, Bjartur promptly renamed
the place Summerhouses. It was a poor
place, fit only for sheep grazing. The
house, which Bjartur rebuilt, consisted
of one room over the stable. The walls
were of sod, and the roof was made of
a few sheets of corrugated iron covered
with turf. But it was his own place, and
Bjartur was determined to be hired
workman for no man and to put his trust in
sheep.
For his wife he chose the twenty-six
INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Halld6r Laxness. Translated by J. A. Thompson. By permission of the
publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1946, by Halldor Laxness.
year-old Rosa, a small sturdy girl with
a cast in one eye, who had also been in
service to the bailiff.
Rosa was disappointed in her house,
and Bjartur was disappointed in Rosa.
He soon found that she was far from
innocent, and worse, she was already
pregnant. He suspected, and was sure
much later, that the man had been the
bailiff's son, Ingolfur.
After a few months of marriage
Bjartur left on a cold winter day to look for
his sheep. Seeing a buck reindeer in the
woods, he jumped on the animal's back
and attempted to subdue him. But the
reindeer was too strong and took off in
mad flight for the river. With Bjartur
still holding on, the animal swam
downstream and finally landed on the other
shore. Bjartur, nearly frozen to death,
stayed to recuperate at a nearby croft.
He returned home after several days
to find his wife dead from childbirth and
a baby daughter still alive. Disregarding
the parentage of the girl, he proudly
named her Asta Sollilja. The bailiff's
wife sent pauper Finna and her mother
to look after Bjartur and the baby. Finna
was nearly forty but strong and well
preserved. To settle the problem of the
child's care, Bjartur married her.
Each year Finna had another child,
1729

usually stillborn. But after some years
there were Helgi, Gvendur, and Nonni,
and their sister Asta. The croft was
crowded, and the beds were all dirty and
filled with vermin, but the land was
clear of debt.
A southerner came to the croft one
day to ask permission to camp and hunt.
The stranger delighted Asta, who was
awkward and uncouth but bursting with
love. The stranger hardly noticed her,
however, and each night he was gone
most of the night. The reason for his
visit came out later, when the bailiff's
daughter left the country in great haste.
After little Helgi was lost on the moor,
the tie between Asta and Bjartur became
closer. When Finna died from poor diet
and rapid childbearing, the father tried
his best to make life easier for the girl.
He refused to let Asta go to school, but
he did teach her much of the old
Icelandic poetry.
Bjartur took Asta on his yearly trip
to town, where, after doing the shopping,
they stayed overnight in a lodging-house
for country folk. To save money, father
and daughter both slept in the same
bed. Asta was unhappy. The town
people had laughed at her homely
clothes, and the snores of the drunken
farmers in the nearby beds were
terrifying. She snuggled closer to her father
and kissed him. He put his arms around
her, but to his horror found that she
was kissing him repeatedly. Abruptly
Bjartur got up and went out for their
horse. Father and daughter left for home
in the rainy night.
Then a series of misfortunes, which
the Icelanders laid to a witch buried
near Summerhouses, greatly reduced
Bjartur's flock of sheep, and he went to
town to work. Trying to meet his
obligations to his children, Bjartur sent a
schoolmaster to instruct Asta, Gvendur,
and Nonni during the winter. But
Bjartur 's choice of teacher was unfortunate.
After getting drunk one night the
schoolmaster took Asta. When Bjartur came
home in the spring, Asta was pregnant.
In his rage Bjartur cast out his daughter,
who went gladly, full of romantic notions
of her lover. She walked to his fine
town house, which turned out to be a
shack. There she learned that he had
many children and that his wife was
again pregnant.
Nonni, just before the World War,
went to America to join his uncle. Only
Gvendur and Bjartur were left, in
addition to the old mother-in-law. The
war boom raised the price of lambs and
Bjartur prospered. He now had two cows
and three horses. At the same time, a
cooperative movement, with Ingolfur at
its head, was organized. In the parish
only Bjartur held out; he remained loyal
to the merchants who had been gouging
him for years.
Nonni sent two hundred dollars from
America to pay for Gvendur's passage.
In spite of his father's objections,
Gvendur, who was seventeen and big and
strong for his age, decided to emigrate.
He put on his best clothes and went to
town to take the coastal steamer. There
he was admired because he was going
to America. During the day and night
Gvendur had to wait before his ship
sailed, he met the bailiff's granddaughter.
She took him riding on the moor, where
they spent the night together. Hoping
to win her love, Gvendur renounced his
emigration and went back to Summer-
houses.
In spite of the depression following the
war, Bjartur resolved to build his new
house. He went deeply into debt to buy
great supplies of stone and timber. That
year he got the walls and roof completed,
but there were no doors and windows.
Before he could finish the house, the
mortgage was foreclosed and Summer-
houses passed into the hands of the
bank.
The only place left for the family was
the mother-in-law's old croft, long since
abandoned. During the moving Bjartur
met Asta and was reconciled to her. Asta
1730

had a second child by another man, and
she was carrying a third. The family was
complete again, except for Nonni.
Asta, like Bjartur, was independent.
Ingolfur, now rich and a member of
Parliament, had revealed to her that he
was her father. His offer of support had
been soundly rejected.
Bjartur fell in with some strikers who
had struck against the government's low
wages. For a while he was sympathetic
with the men, who were, in a way,
Communist led. Gvendur was even more
sympathetic. But they both rejected in
principle the idea of collective action.
They were independent farmers and
herders.
So they moved to the wretched hovel
far to the north, with only Blesi, their
twenty-five-year-old horse, to do the
hauling. By hard work they could
continue their old way of life. They would
have one room in a turf-covered hut.
Their diet would be refuse fish. With
luck they would be only a little less
comfortable than savages in a jungle.
1731

INDIAN SUMMER
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Shortly after the American Civil War
Locale: Florence, Italy
First published: 1886
Principal characters:
Theodore Colville, a middle-aged bachelor
Mrs. Lina Bo wen, a middle-aged friend of Colville
Imogene Graham, a girl chaperoned by Mrs. Bowen
Effie Bowen, Mrs. Bowen's thirteen-year-old daughter
Mr. Morton, an admirer of Imogene Graham
Critique:
Many readers will find echoes in this
novel of A Hazard of New Fortunes
and the novels Howells wrote featuring
Mr. and Mrs. Basil March in their later
lives. In novels dealing with cultured
older people, Howells was considerably
more successful at sympathetic
characterization than he was in such novels as
The Rise of Silas Lapham. That he was
infringing on the realm of Henry James,
the master of fiction featuring American
expatriates in Europe, Howells was well
aware, for he comments jokingly about
their work in one passage of this novel. As
ever, Howells is in this novel a master of
the realism of the commonplace. The
details of life in the American colony in
Florence at the time, the events of the
pre-Lenten carnival season, and the
background of the city are set forth explicitly.
The Story:
Theodore Colville studied architecture
as a young man and in order to continue
his professional education he spent some
months in Italy. While there he went
about with two young women and fell
in love with one of them. The girl
rejected his suit. Soon afterward he went
back to the United States at the request
of his older brother, who had recently
purchased a newspaper. Returning to
America, Colville became the editor of
his brother's paper and finally purchased
it. He entered politics in his fortieth
year. After his defeat he left his home
in Indiana and went at once again to
Italy.
In Italy he tried to resume the study
of architecture, but his interest was soon
diverted by his meeting with Mrs.
Bowen, who had been one of his
companions in Italy years before, the one
with whom he had not fallen in love.
Mrs. Bowen, now a widow, invited
Colville to visit at her home. When he went
there, Colville met Mrs. Bowen's
thirteen-year-old daughter Effie, who quickly
became fond of him, and Imogene
Graham, a twenty-year-old American
woman whom Mrs. feowen was
chaperoning.
In company with Mrs. Bowen,
Imogene Graham, and Effie Bowen, Mr.
Colville spent a number of pleasant days
and evenings. At first Imogene regarded
him as an old man, since he was twice
her age, but she soon realized that she
enjoyed his company much more than
that of many men her own age. In an
effort to be companionable with her,
Colville danced and went about socially as
he had not done for many years. Mrs.
Bowen also enjoyed Colville's company;
the result was that they were together
a great deal.
Mrs. Bowen chose carefully the places
where she and her charges went. During
the carnival season she permitted
Colville to take them all to a masked ball.
At the ball little Effie became ill and
had to be taken home unexpectedly. As
1732

a result, Imogene and Colville were
together unchaperoned during much of the
evening. At that time they began to
realize their affection for each other.
Mrs. Bowen quickly realized that a
love affair was developing. She also
realized that no one, least of all herself, had
expected it. She tactfully pointed out
to Imogene the differences between the
girl and a man so much older. When
she said, rather less tactfully, that she
thought Colville had been trying only to
be amusing, the girl reported the
conversation to Colville. Hurt, he went to
Mrs. Bowen and talked with her, finally
agreeing to her suggestion that for
propriety's sake he leave Florence.
Unfortunately, it was a weekend, and Colville,
having insufficient funds to leave the city
after settling his hotel bills, was forced
to wait until the following Monday. By
that time Imogene had decided that it
was unfair to make him leave the city
because of her. She requested that he
stay. He decided to do so.
A few days later Colville and Imogene
met accidentally in a public park.
Quickly coming to an agreement that they
loved one another, they went back to
Mrs. Bowen's residence and told her that
they had decided to be married. Mrs.
Bowen, as Imogene's chaperone, told
them she would be forced to write
immediately to the girl's parents to inform
them of this recent development. The
lovers, agreeing to her plan, also
promised to say nothing about an official
engagement until they heard from America.
Imogene warned her chaperone,
however, that she would marry Colville, even
without her parents' consent.
While they were awaiting word from
America, a young minister named
Morton, also in love with Imogene, returned
to Florence to pay her court. Both
Colville and Mrs. Bowen wished to let the
young man know the state of affairs, but
the girl refused to permit them to tell
Mr. Morton of her engagement. To make
the situation appear normal, the four-
Mrs. Bowen, Mr. Morton, Imogene, and
Colville—went about together. Finally
word came from Imogene's parents. Her
mother had decided to sail for Europe, to
see Colville for herself before giving her
decision.
During the intervening days before
Mrs. Graham's arrival, the four people
went on an excursion to Fiesole to see
the Etruscan ruins there. At one
interval Colville and the young minister
walked a short distance beside the
carriage. While they were doing so, a
peasant driving a band of sheep came over
the brow of a hill. The horses, frightened
at the sight of the sheep, began to back
the carriage dangerously close to a
precipitous drop at the side of the road. The
two men rescued the women from the
carriage. While Mr. Morton was taking
Imogene from the vehicle, Colville ran
to the horses' heads in an attempt to hold
them. Unable to do so, and with his
hand caught in the curb strap, he was
dragged with the team when the
carriage plunged over the edge of the road.
For two weeks Colville lay very ill.
When he was finally able to have visitors,
Imogene's mother came to see him. She
told him that she was taking her
daughter to America immediately, even though
she felt that Colville had acted as a
gentleman in the entire affair. She then
gave her reason for preventing the
marriage. Her daughter, she said, was not
really in love with Colville, although she
thought too much of him to break the
engagement. The shock was a great one
to Colville, but he immediately saw that
the girl's departure was the only answer
to the problems that the situation had
developed. After her mother left,
Imogene herself came into the sickroom and
bade Colville a hasty goodbye.
Some time later Mrs. Bowen and
Colville talked over the affair. During the
conversation they both admitted their
love for each other. Mrs. Bowen refused
to marry Colville, however, because of
the embarrassing position in which she
1733

had been placed during his aflFair with
Imogene. She had hated herself the
whole time she tried to prevent the affair
because, although she hoped she could
see the situation objectively, she had
always feared that her actions and
thinking had been colored by her feeling for
Colville.
Little Effie Bowen, having formed a
very strong attachment for Colville,
refused to hear of his departure. Within
a few months, under the influence of
their mutual love and Effie's attitude
toward her mother's suitor, Mrs. Bowen
was reconciled to a marriage. They were
married quietly and then moved to Rome,
where no one who knew them could
spread gossip about the affair with
Imogene. Not long after their marriage they
heard that Mr. Morton, who had been
deeply in love with Imogene, had been
appointed to a church in a community
near Buffalo, where the Grahams lived.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Colville hoped that he
and Imogene Graham would make a
match of their own.
1734

INDIANA
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Sand (Mme. Aurore Dudevant, 1804-1876)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1832
Principal characters:
Indiana, a young Creole
Monsieur Delmare, her husband
Noun, her foster sister and maid
Rodolphe Brown (Sir Ralph), Indiana's cousin
Raymon de Ramiere, her lover
Critique:
Written at the height of the French
romantic movement, Indiana exhibits all
the conventions and idiosyncrasies of the
most pronounced romanticism. For this
reason modern readers find the characters
unbelievable, their words and actions
more laughable than tragic, despite the
basic tragedy underlying the greater part
of the story. The chief value of the book
derives from the fact that it typifies a
popular literary form and a philosophy which
still survive, though in lesser degree, in
contemporary literature.
The Story:
Indiana was married to pompous,
quicktempered Monsieur Delmare, a retired
army officer no longer young. Loyal to her
suspicious and jealous husband, she had
lived a discontented, uneventful life. Her
cousin, Sir Ralph Brown, himself
unhappy and frustrated, was her only
companion. Although Monsieur Delmare kept
a watchful eye over the young couple,
there was nothing untoward in the
relationship between them. As a matter of
fact, Sir Ralph had secured the good
graces of Monsieur Delmare and was
accepted as one of the household. If not an
intimate friend, he was at least a close
companion. Indiana was as reserved in her
behavior toward Sir Ralph as she was
toward her husband, but to a close
observer it was clear that in a friendly,
inarticulate manner, Sir Ralph was fond of
Indiana.
The submerged tensions of the
household erupted one evening when someone
was discovered scaling the garden wall
and entering the grounds of the estate.
Monsieur Delmare rushed out and fired
in the darkness at the intruder. When the
wounded prowler was brought into the
house, he revealed himself as Raymon de
Ramiere, a young man who, so he
maintained, wished to see Monsieur Delmare
about the latter's manufacturing
enterprise. De Ramiere said that his brother
had a similar business in another part of
the country and would profit by Delmare's
information.
Delmare's suspicions were dissolved.
He had not, however, noticed the behavior
of Noun, Indiana's friend and maid. Noun
had become extremely agitated at the
entrance of de Ramiere, a fact which
nobody noticed in the excitement. She knew
that de Ramiere had come to the estate not
to see Delmare on business, but to keep
a rendezvous with her. Noun had been
his mistress for some time. Once in the
house, however, he was immediately
attracted to Indiana, especially so since he
was already tiring of Noun.
De Ramiere began systematically his
suit for Indiana's affections and to that
end he enlisted the aid of both his mother
and Indiana's aunt. Before long Indiana
began to reciprocate his attentions and
the affair became the subject of much
discussion in Parisian salons. Delmare
remained ignorant of the gossip. But in spite
of de Ramiere's urgent avowals and
protestations, Indiana refused to yield herself
1735

to him because she preferred a pure and
spiritual love. Upset by her refusals, de
Ramiere contracted a fever which kept
him confined to his bed for several days.
Indiana, too, was strongly affected and
experienced several spells of swooning.
One night, impatient to achieve his
desire, de Ramiere impetuously entered the
Delmare house. Indiana was away, but
Noun was there awaiting the return of
her mistress. The two met in Indiana's
room and Noun, as passionate as ever,
enticed the young man's surrender. Aroused
by the return of Indiana, Noun escaped,
leaving de Ramiere to face her mistress
alone. Indiana, disturbed to find her
suitor in her room, ordered him to leave
before his presence was discovered.
A short time later, Noun's body was
discovered floating in a nearby stream.
Pregnant, she had taken her life because
of de Ramiere's refusal to marry her or
even to continue their relationship.
Indiana was broken-hearted at the death of
her maid and de Ramiere himself was
greatly perturbed. By that time he had
tired of his pursuit of Indiana and had
determined to forget her. One night Indiana,
having decided at last to become his
mistress in fact, went to his rooms. Learning
that he was not at home, she waited until
he returned at dawn. Then she offered
herself to him. Unfortunately, while they
were talking, dawn broke. Compromised
by her presence in de Ramiere's rooms at
that hour, Indiana returned to her home,
where Delmare, agitated by the discovery
of her absence, received her with cold
suspicion.
Soon afterward Delmare suffered
business reverses and faced complete ruin.
Indiana contritely went with him to the Isle
of Bourbon, where he hoped to make
another fortune. Unhappy in her new home,
she lived only for the letters de Ramiere
wrote her. At last she decided to leave
Delmare and arranged for her secret
passage back to France. On her arrival in
Paris, she learned that fickle de Ramiere
had recently married.
For weeks she lived a miserable
existence. Penniless and starving, she decided
to die. When she and Sir Ralph, who had
followed her to Paris, were strangely
reunited, they agreed to commit suicide by
drowning. At the last minute, however,
they changed their minds. Moved by Sir
Ralph's devotion, Indiana realized that he
was the man she truly loved. Together
they forsook civilization and lived as
recluses, away from all people and society,
but satisfied and happy at last.
1736

INES DE CASTRO
Type of work: Drama
Author: Antonio Ferreira (1528M569)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: 1354-1360
Locale: Portugal
First presented: c. 1558
Principal characters:
Alfonso IV, King of Portugal
Prince Pedro, his son
Ines de Castro, secretly married to Pedro
Secretary to the Prince
Diogo Lopes Pacheco,
Pero Coelho, and
Gonzalves, King Alfonso's advisers
Critique:
The love story of In&s de Castro was
popular with poets and historians long
before a Lisbon humanist dramatized it
as the first dramatic tragedy in
Portuguese, and preceded in all European
literature by only one other, Sofonisba
(1515), by the Italian Gian Trissino
(1478-1550). The dramatist, Ant6nio
Ferreira, was the younger son of a noble
at the court of the Duke of Coimbra. In
construction, Inis de Castro follows Greek
models, with a chorus that appears in all
five acts, both as Ideal Spectator and as
the Voice of Fate. This tragedy has flaws.
The lengthy exposition by Ines in blank
verse is hardly inspiring, and the simple
plot allows little on-stage action. Even
the murder of Ines must be inferred from
the words of the Chorus and the
messenger's report. But there are, in spite of
these defects, moments of dramatic
brilliance and scenes of suspense and charged
emotion, with moving poetry to give the
drama other reasons for permanence
besides its interest as a pioneer effort.
The Story:
On a lovely spring day in the middle
of the fourteenth century, In£s de Castro
felt especially happy as she walked in
her garden in Portugal. Though an
illegitimate daughter of a famous Galician
noble, she had won the love of Prince
Pedro, son of Alfonso IV of Portugal; at
last she felt sure the world was about to
learn that he loved her too. Theirs had
been a star-crossed love. Pedro's father,
trying his best to destroy his son's love
for a woman unsuitable to rule Portugal,
had compelled his heir to marry the
Princess Constanza of Castile. But, as
In£s confided to her nurse, fate had been
on the side of true love. The birth of
Constanza's son, heir to the crown of
Portugal, had cost his mother her life. At
last Pedro was free. He had carried out
his father's command. He had insured a
continuation of the dynasty, and now he
was coming back to the woman he really
loved. Surely King Alfonso would now
relent. The beauty of the day seemed an
omen, and Ines was weeping with joy as
she waited for her lover to appear.
The old nurse was less sure, however,
that her mistress' tears were an omen of
joy; they might be a foreboding of
tragedy. She begged Ines not to count on
happiness until everything was settled. In£s,
hearing Pedro approaching, would listen
to no warnings.
The prince greeted her with an
assurance that all would go well. To
himself, however, he wondered why he was
not loved by the common people of
Portugal and why his father had been so
incensed by his sincere love for In£s.
Nevertheless, he was confident, like Ines, that
their four children would move the stern
old king to pity. Pedro hoped for the
royal acceptance of the love between
1737

them and a state wedding to show King
Alfonso's recognition of his
grandchildren.
Pedro's secretary tried to disillusion
him. In spite of the nobility of her famous
father, the irregularity of Ines' birth was
cause enough for King Alfonso's repeated
orders that Pedro must put her out of his
mind. The secretary begged Pedro, for
the good of the state, to let reason
conquer desire and to give up the passion
that enslaved him and made him
disobedient to the royal will. The prince
refused. He had obeyed his father in
marrying Constanza. Events had proved that
Ines was fated to be his real wife.
King Alfonso, meanwhile, was pacing
his throne room. His three advisers, Diogo
Lopes Pacheco, Pero Coelho, and Gon-
zalves, were deaf to his complaints that
a king had more woes than pleasures.
They preached the obligation of power,
pointing out that an officially sanctioned
marriage between Pedro and In£s, whose
children were older than the recently-
born son of Constanza's, might jeopardize
the succession of the young child. One of
the advisers, the dominating Pacheco,
argued that the removal of In£s would solve
all difficulties. In spite of King Alfonso's
basic agreement with the suggestion,
much argument was needed before the
king finally gave the trio orders to kill
his son's mistress.
That night Ines had a dream in which
she was about to die. She interpreted it
as proof that Pedro was dead; otherwise
he would have been quick to defend her.
Before she could discover what truth
there was in her dream, the king arrived
with a sentence of death. He was
accompanied by Pacheco, who intended to
block any appeals for royal mercy. In£s
pleaded so touchingly, however, insisting
on her innocence and the helplessness of
her four children related through Pedro
to King Alfonso, that the king, reminded
of his love for his own child, finally
agreed to spare her.
But the reprieve did not last long.
Once more the king's advisers, selfishly
hoping for more gratitude from the King
of Castile than revenge by a mere Gali-
cian nobleman, worked on the king, in
their determination that Constanza's child
should inherit the throne. Though they
could not get his consent to the death of
Ines, King Alfonso did not actually
forbid it. Twisting his indefiniteness into
permission, the evil trio hurried away to
murder the innocent In£s de Castro.
In the meantime Pedro, hurrying
eagerly to join her and confident that the
king would consider his son's happiness
and permit their official marriage, was
met by a messenger who told the prince
that the three advisers had sought out
Ines and killed her. Out of his mind with
grief, Pedro swore to have revenge on all
concerned, including his father. He would
cast him from the throne and then hunt
down and torture the three evil
murderers, and he would not only see to it
that a child of Ines should be named his
successor, but when he was crowned he
would also have Ines' corpse exhumed
and seated on the throne beside him to
receive the honors of a royal coronation.
1738

THE INFORMER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Liam O'Flaherty (1896- )
Type of plot: Psychological melodrama
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: Dublin
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Francis Joseph McPhillip, a political murderer
Gypo Nolan, the informer
Dan Gallagher, a revolutionist
Katie Fox, a prostitute
Critique:
The Informer, an outstanding example
of modern Irish realism and a masterpiece
of suspense, has had a popular as well
as a critical success. Part of its merit
consists of its adherence to the classical
unities of time, place, and action, for the
entire story covers only a single night in
Dublin. O'Flaherty has given a realistic
picture of the slum and its people, and
of the tight-knit revolutionary
organization which could flourish so completely
only in Ireland.
The Story:
Francis McPhillip came to the door
of the public lodging-house. He was
unobtrusively and shabbily dressed. With
the caution born of necessity, he waited
in the doorway until he was sure he was
not followed. He kept his hand inside
his raincoat to touch the reassuring butt
of his pistol. For six months he had been
a hunted man, hiding out in the wild
mountains.
It was in October that he had killed
the secretary of the Farmers, Union. He
had orders from the revolutionary
organization to use his gun only if he had to;
after the killing the organization had
disavowed his act and expelled him. So
he had been a lone fugitive. Now he
was back in Dublin to see his family
once more.
He searched among the public rooms
crowded with Dublin's poor. In the
dining-room he found the man he had come
to see: Gypo Nolan. Gypo was eating
from a huge plate of cabbage and bacon
he had stolen from a locker. Francis sat
down and inquired hoarsely of Gypo if
the police were still watching his
parents' house. Gypo gave only grunts at
first, and then said he thought the coast
was clear. After eating voraciously from
Gypo's plate, Francis slipped out.
Gypo thought stolidly of his former
companion in the organization. Then he
thought bitterly of his empty pockets;
he could not buy a bed tonight. He tried
to link up these two facts, but Gypo
thought only with great difficulty. The
organization had expelled him too, for
he had been Francis' companion at the
time of the murder. Without Francis'
agile brain he could make no plans. At
last a light came. He marched off to the
police station and told the officers where
they could find Francis. For his
information he received twenty pounds. Shortly
afterward, Francis shot himself as police
officers surrounded his father's house.
In a public house Gypo met Katie Fox,
a prostitute who took care of him
occasionally when he was destitute. He
bought her a few glasses of gin and told
her he had no need of her bed that night.
She was suspicious because he was in
funds and accused him of robbing a
church. During the quarrel she
accidentally let drop the word "informer." Gypo
THE INFORMER by Liam O'Flaherty. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1925, by Liam O'Flaherty. Renewed, 1953, by Liam O'Flaherty.
1739

was startled. He was glad to leave her
and go out in the night.
To keep up appearances, Gypo went
to the McPhillip house. He quarreled
with Francis' father, who blamed him for
the wild life Francis had led. Francis*
mother and his sister Mary, however,
upheld Gypo for his visit of sympathy. As
he left he gave Mrs. McPhillip four
silver coins.
Bartly followed him out. Bartly was
an organization member sent out to bring
Gypo in. After Bartly made a taunting
reference to the coins he had given
Francis' mother, Gypo choked Bartly, and
only the arrival of an armed friend saved
his life. By threats and persuasion Gypo
was led to the organization headquarters,
where he met the feared and respected
Dan Gallagher, the revolutionists' leader.
Because of his stupidity and his great
strength, Gypo had no fear of men or
guns, but Dan was intelligent and soon
overcame Gypo's hostility. If Gypo could
only give them a lead on the person who
had informed the police of Francis'
return, he would be taken back into the
organization. Dan brought out a bottle
and gave Gypo several drinks. Under
their influence Gypo concocted a story:
Rat Mulligan had a grudge against
Francis for betraying his sister, and Gypo
declared he had seen Rat following Francis
away from the lodging-house. Though he
was skeptical, Dan sent for Rat and
ordered Gypo to appear for the hearing
that night at one-thirty.
Followed by his shadow Bartly, Gypo
went out confidently. In a street fight
he knocked out a policeman from sheer
exuberance. Trailed by an admiring rabble,
he went to a lunch stand and bought
food for all his admirers. In the
confusion he slipped away from Bartly.
Gypo was elated. He had money; he
was safe; he would be back in the
organization. He went to a superior brothel
and spent money recklessly. A well-
dressed woman with a scar on her face
held aloof. She refused Gypo's advances,
saying she was the wife of an army
officer and wanted to get back to London.
Gypo gave her the fare and accepted the
companionship of another girl, Maggie.
Bartly found him with her and reminded
him of the inquiry. Gypo gave Maggie a
pound to take to Katie and followed Bartly
willingly.
Meanwhile Dan had been at the
McPhillip house to take the family's
statements. He made love briefly to Mary and
induced her to accompany him to the
inquiry, a kangaroo court held in the
wine cellar of a ruined house. Dan acted
as prosecutor and three of his men were
judges.
First Rat Mulligan was questioned, but
it soon developed that Rat could not
possibly have been the informer. When
Gypo was brought in, Dan made a
convincing case: Gypo knew where Francis
was going, Gypo had left the lodging-
house at the right time, Gypo had been
squandering money all night. At last
Gypo broke down and confessed his guilt.
Dan had him imprisoned in a cellar room
with armed guards at the door.
Long ago Francis had discussed with
Gypo how to get out of the cell. In the
ceiling there was a trapdoor covered with
dirt. Exerting his great strength, Gypo
seized an iron ring with his hands, and
with his legs forced up both trapdoor and
covering earth. As he scrambled out the
alerted guards shot at him, but he got
away. Dan was terrified. Gypo might go
to the police and the secret organization
would be broken up. Mary was
astonished at the weakness of resourceful Dan.
When he pulled himself together, he sent
agents to cover the roads leading out of
the area. Gypo was trapped.
Every time Gypo tried to leave the
slum district, he found waiting guards.
His only refuge was Katie's room. She
let him stay, and he thankfully fell into
brutish sleep. Somehow Katie began to
think of her own lost and vicious life,
and she identified her misery with Gypo.
With a notion that she would be
canonized, she crept off to inform the
organization of Gypo's hiding place.
1740

As four armed men closed in on him,
Gypo awoke just in time to fight them
off. He crippled two of them in a
struggle on the stairs, but he was wounded
several times as he ran to escape
execution.
Gypo became weaker as he fled. Dan
saw him but shrugged as he turned away.
He knew the informer was done for. In
growing confusion Gypo went into a
church where early mass was being
celebrated. With dimming vision he made
out Mrs. McPhillip. He fell in front of
her seat and confessed his treachery.
When she forgave him, Gypo stood up
and in a loud voice called to Francis that
his mother had forgiven him. With a
gurgle he fell forward and shivered as
blood gushed from his mouth.
1741

THE INNOCENT VOYAGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Rfchard Hughes (1900- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Jamaica, the high seas, England
First published; 1929
Principal characters:
Mr. Bas-Thornton, a plantation owner in Jamaica
Mrs. Bas-Thornton, his wife
John,
Emily,
Edward,
Rachael, and
Laura, their children
Margaret Fernandez, Emily's friend
Harry Fernandez, her brother
Captain Jonsen, captain of a pirate ship
A Dutch Sea Captain, murdered by Emily
Critique:
The Innocent Voyage, equally well-
known under its alternate English title,
A High Wind in Jamaica, is an unusual
novel on which the author has
realistically shown the effect—or lack of effect
—of a series of horrible experiences upon
the minds of seven young children. These
experiences include a hurricane, capture
by pirates, seduction, murder, and a trial
at Old Bailey. Written with varied
humor that runs from macabre playfulness
to biting satire, the novel ranks as a
minor classic because of its convincing
insights into the childhood psyche. For
the world of childhood, as the writer
makes plain, is quite different from the
adult one, and also different from what
most grownups suppose. The
Bas-Thornton children are not young monsters, as
some mistaken readers have supposed.
They are children protected and
insulated by the amorality of their own
innocence from an adult world of
compulsions, frustrations, and fears.
The Story:
Five young Bas-Thorntons lived on the
family's run-down sugar plantation in
Jamaica. On the day after Emily's tenth
THE INNOCENT VOYAGE by Richard Hughes. By permission of the author's agent, Ann Watkins,
Inc. Copyright, 1929, by Richard Hughes.
birthday they were allowed to make their
first visit away from home. They went
to meet Margaret and Harry Fernandez,
children of Creole neighbors, on a
nearby plantation. The Fernandez children
often ran around barefoot, like Negroes;
Emily thought it quite wonderful.
During their visit the region was shaken by
a slight quake. Emily, wildly excited,
galloped her pony into the sea. For the
first time she realized that there were
forces in the world over which neither
she nor adults had any control.
If the earthquake was the most
thrilling event of Emily's life, the death of a
pet cat was soon to be the most terrible.
The next evening, back home, a
hurricane struck the island. While the house
shook under the force of wind and rain,
Tabby streaked through the house and
dashed out into the storm pursued by
a pack of wild jungle cats. That night
the house and the surrounding
countryside were blown flat, but the destruction
was nothing compared with the mystery
of Tabby's horrible fate.
Mr. and Mrs. Bas-Thornton had no
way of knowing what was passing
through the children's minds. Fearing
1742

that the hurricane must have been a shock
to them, the parents reluctantly decided
to send them back to England to school.
They and the Fernandez children were
shortly put aboard the Clorinda, in care
of Captain James Marpole.
Off the Cuban coast pirates boarded the
vessel. Her stores and valuables were
seized, and the children removed to the
marauder for their supper. Captain Mar-
pole, mistaking efforts to return the
children for the splash of bodies thrown
overboard, left the scene under full sail.
Later he wrote the Bas-Thorntons that
the pirates had callously murdered the
children. Actually, Captain Jonsen,
leader of the pirate crew, was surprised to find
himself the custodian of seven young
travelers.
The Clorinda s cargo was auctioned
off at Santa Lucia, Cuba. While playing,
Emily's older brother John fell forty feet
to his death from a warehouse doorway.
The vessel presently put to sea with the
surviving children.
For weeks the pirate ship sailed
aimlessly over the ocean in search of booty.
The children, allowed to do much as they
pleased, amused themselves with two pigs
and a monkey the vessel carried. Emily
began to be aware of her identity as a
separate personality; shipboard life which
she had accepted unquestioningly at first
began to disturb her. One night Captain
Jonsen, drunk, came into the children's
quarters. When he tried to stroke Emily's
hair she bit his thumb. Margaret, more
mature, was sick after the incident, but a few
days later she went to the captain's cabin
to live. From that time on she avoided the
other children.
As both bore an individual weight of
guilt, Emily and the captain evaded each
other after the drunken incident, until a
thigh wound Emily received from a mar-
lin spike dropped by Rachel brought
about a reconciliation. Captain Jonsen
carried her to his cabin, dressed the gash,
and gave her his bunk.
Emily was still confined to bed, her
wound healing, when the pirates
captured a Dutch steamer carrying a cargo
of wild animals. Her captain was bound
and left tied on the floor of Emily's
cabin while Captain Jonsen and his crew
amused themselves with the animals
aboard their prize.
While Emily screamed futilely, the
Dutch captain managed to roll toward a
knife lying in a corner. He was not a
handsome man. He seemed to have no
neck and he reeked of cigar smoke; the
fact that he was tied up like an animal
added to Emily's terror. His fingers were
groping for the blade when she threw
herself out of her bunk. Seizing the
knife, she slashed at him until he was
covered with wounds. Leaving him to
bleed to death, she then hurled the
weapon toward the door and dragged herself
back to the bunk.
Margaret was the first to enter the
cabin, and so the first boatload of pirates
to return from the captured steamer
thought she had committed the crime.
Horrified, they dropped her overboard to
drown. The freebooters in the second
boat, assuming that she had accidentally
fallen in, picked her up. In the
excitement caused by the murder no one
noticed her come aboard, and she was not
disturbed when she rejoined the younger
children in the hold.
With the captain's death hanging over
their heads, intimacy between children
and pirates came to an end. Realizing the
wantonness of her deed, Emily had to
bear the double burden of her conscience
and the fear that Margaret would
identify the real culprit.
The sight of a man-of-war on the
horizon finally brought Captain Jonsen to
a decision; it was time he and the
children parted company. With his ship
disguised as a shabby cargo vessel, the Lizzie
Green, he persuaded the captain of a
passing steamship to relieve him of his
young passengers. The children were
laying their own plans for capturing
another prize when the mate called Emily
aside to coach her in what he hoped
would be the children's story. Emily
1743

willingly promised to say that the captain
of the Lizzie Green had rescued them
from pirates; but it was she who, in a
childish burst of confidence to the
stewardess aboard the steamer, told the secret
of the pirate vessel. On that information,
a gunboat apprehended Captain Jonsen
and his men; they were imprisoned in
Newgate. The young Bas-Thorntons were
reunited with their parents, who had sold
the plantation and moved to England.
Margaret arid Harry Fernandez went to
stay with relatives.
Although Emily had revealed their
captors' identities readily enough, the
prosecuting attorney had good reason for
doubting his ability to obtain a
conviction. The children told about the pirates'
monkey and some turtles the Clorinda
had carried, but of life aboard the pirate
ship they had little to say. All memory
of John seemed obliterated from their
minds. It was accepted by the grownups,
and gradually by the children, that he
had died trying to protect the girls. This
conclusion was substantiated by
Margaret's condition of shock and loss of
memory.
Emily became the chief witness for the
Crown. Asked about the Dutch captain
and the possibility that he had been
murdered, she became hysterical but
managed to say she had seen him lying in a
pool of blood. Her statement was enough
for a conviction. As she left the
courtroom she saw in Captain Jonsen's eyes
the same desperate and despairing look
she had seen in Tabby's the night of the
hurricane. Captain Jonsen was
condemned to be hanged.
A few days later Emily was taken to
her new school by her parents. The head
mistress spoke feelingly of the experiences
Emily had undergone, but anyone else,
looking at her, would have found that
Emily's innocent young face blended
perfectly with the others as she stood
chattering with the quiet-mannered young
ladies who were to be her new friends.
1744

THE INSPECTOR GENERAL
Type of work: Drama
Author: Nikolai V. Gogol (1809-1852)
Type of plot: Political satire
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First presented: 1836
Principal characters:
Anton Antonovich Skvozntk-Dmukhanovsky, prefect of a small
provincial town
Anna, his wife
Maria, his daughter
Ivan Alexandrovich Hlestakov, a traveler
Osip, Ivan's servant
Critique:
This comedy, the high point of Gogol's
work in the drama, represents an effective
protest on his part against the fumbling,
venal bureaucracy of Russia's small towns.
Under the tsars, favoritism was rife, and
the practice of giving and accepting bribes
and favors is here satirized. The characters
in the play are numerous but
unimportant. The situation, which is credibly
presented, and the system of government
portrayed are what make this comedy live.
The resemblances to modern manners and
customs are close enough for us to enjoy
the basic similarity to bureaucratic
institutions in our own time.
The Story:
The prefect of the town, Anton
Antonovich, had received a disquieting letter. A
friend wrote that an inspector was coming
to visit the province and particularly his
district. The inspector would probably
travel incognito. The friend advised the
prefect to clean up the town and hide
evidence of any bribes that might discredit
him. Anton in haste called a meeting of
the local dignitaries and instructed them
how to make a good impression on the
official from the capital.
Artemy Filippovich Zemlyanika, the
hospital manager, was advised to put
clean nightcaps on the patients and take
away their strong tobacco for a time. The
manager was thoughtful; he had always
proceeded on the theory that if a patient
were going to die, he would die anyway.
He decided, however, to clean up both the
patients and the hospital and to put up a
sign in Latin over each bed to tell the
patient's malady.
Ammos Fedorovich Lyapkin-Tyapkin,
the judge, spent most of his time hunting.
He kept a whip and other sporting
equipment in his courtroom, and in the
vestibule the porter kept a flock of geese. His
assessor always smelled of liquor. Ammos
protested that the assessor was injured as
a baby and had smelled of brandy ever
since. Anton suggested that he be made to
eat garlic to cover the smell.
Luka Lukich Hlopov, the head of the
school, was advised to cover up the more
obvious foibles of his teachers. The one
with a fat face, for instance, always made
horrible grimaces when a visitor came and
pulled his beard under his necktie, and
the history teacher jumped on his desk
when he described the Macedonian wars.
Piqued by a recital of their weaknesses,
the others turned on Anton and reminded
him that he took money bribes and only
recently had had the wife of a
noncommissioned officer flogged. During the
wrangle the postmaster came in to see if
they had had any news of the inspector's
arrival. Anton advised the postmaster to
open all letters in an attempt to discover
who the inspector might be and when he
would arrive. The advice was superfluous,
for the postmaster always read all the let-
1745

ters anyway.
Two squires of the town, Bobchinsky
and Dobchinsky, rushed in with exciting
news. A mysterious stranger, obviously a
high-born gentleman, was at that moment
lodging in the local inn, and had been
there a fortnight. His servant had let it
out that his master was from St.
Petersburg. Sure that the stranger was the
inspector, the company trembled to think
what he might already have learned. They
scattered to repair any damage they could.
At the inn Osip was lying on his
master's bed and ruminating on the queerness
of gentlefolk. His gentleman was always
gambling, always broke, always selling his
clothes to get funds. They were stuck in
this wretched inn because there was no
money to pay their bill. At this point,
Ivan Alexandrovich burst in, loudly
calling for supper.
When the waiter was summoned, he
insolently refused to serve Ivan until the
guest had paid his bill. After a long
argument, some watery soup and a tough
hen were brought, and perforce Ivan
dined poorly. As the dishes were being
removed amidst a tussle between Osip and
the waiter for the remains of the supper,
visitors were announced.
Nervous and apologetic, the prefect
stood before Ivan's august person. Ivan
thought, however, that he was to be put in
jail. For a time the conversation was at
cross purposes, but Ivan had the nimbler
wit and allowed the prefect to do most of
the talking. When he began to suspect
what Anton was trying to say, he coolly
accepted two hundred roubles to pay his
bill, an invitation to stay at the prefect's
house, and a nomination as the guest of
honor at an official dinner at the hospital.
Anna and Maria were arguing about
clothes, as usual, when Dobchinsky
rushed in to announce the arrival of the
inspector and his fine condescension in
coming to stay at their house. Dobchinsky
thought that he was being honest when he
assured them their guest was a general.
Thrilled at the idea of entertaining a
general, the two ladies began to primp and
preen.
When the men came in, Anton tried to
impress the inspector by saying that he
never played cards. Ivan approved; he
especially abhorred gambling. Osip
snickered at his master's remark, but
fortunately he was not noticed. To impress the
household Ivan then informed them that
he was an author; besides writing for the
papers he composed poetry and novels.
When he referred casually to his high
political connections, his hearers were
agog, particularly the ladies. Meanwhile
Ivan was steadily drinking wine. At last
he fell into a drunken sleep in his chair.
With only Osip remaining, Anton tried
to pump the servant as to his master's
habits and tastes, while the ladies tried
to find out something about Ivan's love
life. Since Anton kept giving him money,
Osip obliged by telling many details of his
master's place in high society.
Ivan was put to bed to sleep off the
wine. When he awoke, the dignitaries of
the town waited on him one by one.
Ammos, the judge, introduced himself
and asked for the inspector's orders. Ivan
carelessly promised to speak well of the
judge to his friends, and just as carelessly
borrowed money from his suppliant. The
postmaster was impressed with Ivan's
friendliness and was glad to lend him
three hundred roubles. Both Luka and
Artemy were glad to lend the inspector
three or four hundred roubles, but
Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky together
could raise only sixty-five roubles.
When the petitioners left, Osip begged
his master to leave while the pickings were
still good. Ivan, agreeing that immediate
departure might be prudent, sent the
servant to make arrangements. Osip wangled
the best coach the town could offer. In
the meantime several shopkeepers also
came in to protest against the prefect, who
was making them pay tribute. From them
Ivan borrowed five hundred roubles.
When Maria came in, Ivan was so
elated at his successes that he made love
to her and finally kissed her on the
shoulder. The daughter scurried away as her
1746

mother came in, and Ivan ogled the older
lady, too. The daughter came back, full of
curiosity, and in his confusion Ivan
proposed marriage to Maria, who accepted
him graciously. After writing a letter to a
friend, in which he detailed his humorous
adventures, Ivan left town. He promised,
however, to return the next day.
In the morning Anton and his wife
received the envious congratulations of
friends. The ladies, green with envy,
assured Maria that she would be a belle in
St. Petersburg society. The parents, much
taken with the idea, decided that their
new son-in-law would insist on taking the
whole family to live in the capital. Anton
was sure that he would be made a general
at least.
At that moment the postmaster arrived
with Ivan's letter. When he read the
frank descripfion of the pretended
inspector's love-making and his franker opinion
of the muddle-headed town officials, the
tremendous hoax gradually dawned on
the company.
As the crestfallen crowd was counting
up the losses, a gendarme came in with an
official announcement. An inspector from
St. Petersburg had just arrived and
desired them all to wait upon him
immediately. He was staying at the inn.
1747

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
Type of work: Psychological study
Author: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
First published: 1900
In March, 1931, in a foreword to the
third English edition of The
Interpretation of Dreams, Freud expressed the
opinion that the volume contained the
most valuable of all the discoveries he
had been fortunate enough to make.
The author's estimation of his work
concurs with that of most students and
critics. The ideas that dreams are wish-
fulfillments, that the dream disguises the
wishes of the unconscious, that dreams
are always important, always significant,
and that they express infantile wishes—
particularly for the death of the parent
of the same sex as that of the dreamer-
all appear in this masterpiece of
psychological interpretation. Here the Oedipus
complex is first named and explained and
the method of psychoanalysis is given
impetus and credibility by its application to
the analysis of dreams.
It is common criticism of Freud to say
that the father of psychoanalysis,
although inspired in this and other works,
went too far in his generalizations
concerning the basic drives of the
unconscious. Freud is charged with regarding
every latent wish as having a sexual
object, and he is criticized for supposing
that dreams can be understood as
complexes of such universally significant
symbols as umbrellas and boxes.
Although Freud argues that repressed
wishes that show themselves in disguised
form in dreams generally have something
to do with the unsatisfied sexual cravings
of childhood—for dreams are important
and concern themselves only with matters
we cannot resolve by conscious
deliberation and action—he allows for the dream
satisfaction of other wishes that reality
has frustrated: the desire for the
continued existence of a loved one already dead,
the desire for sleep as a continuation of
the escape from reality, the desire for
a return to childhood, the desire for
revenge when revenge is impossible.
As for the charge that Freud regarded
dreams as complexes of symbols having
the same significance for all dreamers,
this is clearly unwarranted. Freud
explicitly states that "only the context can
furnish the correct meaning" of a dream
symbol. He rejects as wholly inadequate
the use of any such simple key as a dream
book of symbols. Each dreamer utilizes
the material of his own experience in his
own way, and only by a careful analytical
study of associations—obscured by the
manifest content of the dream—is it
possible to get at the particular use of
symbols in an individual's dream. It is worth
noting, Freud admits, that many symbols
recur with much the same intent in many
dreams of different persons; but this
knowledge must be used judiciously. The
agreement in the use of symbols is only
partly a matter of cultural tendencies; it
is largely attributable to limitations of the
imagination imposed by the material
itself: "To use long, stiff objects and
weapons as symbols of the female
genitals, or hollow objects (chests, boxes, etc.)
as symbols of the male genitals, is
certainly not permitted by the imagination."
It is not surprising that most of the
symbols discussed by Freud, either as
typical symbols or as symbols in
individual cases, are sexually significant.
Although Freud did not regard all dreams
as the wish-fulfillments of repressed
sexual desires, he did suppose that a greater
number of dreams have a sexual
connotation: "The more one is occupied with the
solution of dreams, the readier one
becomes to acknowledge that the majority
of the dreams of adults deal with sexual
material and give expression to erotic
wishes." But Freud adds, "In dream-
interpretation this importance of the
sexual complexes must never be forgotten,
though one must not, of course, exag-
1748

gerate it to the exclusion of all other
factors/'
The technique of dream-interpretation
is certainly not exhausted, according to
Freud, by the technique of symbol
interpretation. Dreams involve the use of
the images dreamed, the manifest dream-
content, as a way of disguising the
unconscious "dream-thoughts" or latent
dream-content. The significance of a
dream may be revealed only after one has
understood the dramatic use of the
symbolism of the dream, the condensation
of the material, the displacement of the
conventional meaning of a symbol or
utterance, or even a displacement of the
"center" of the dream-thoughts; i.e., the
manifest dream may center about a
matter removed from the central concern of
the latent dream. As Freud explains the
problems of dream-interpretation, making
numerous references to dream examples,
it becomes clear that dream interpretation
must be at least as ingenious as dream-
work—and there is nothing more
ingenious.
Freud begins The Interpretation of
Dreams with a history of the scientific
literature of dream problems from ancient
times to 1900. He then proceeds to make
his basic claim: that dreams are inter-
pretable as wish-fulfillments. To illustrate
his point, he begins with an involved
dream of his own, justifying his
procedure by arguing that self-analysis is
possible and, even when faulty, illustrative.
A problem arises with the consideration
of painful dreams. If dreams are wish-
fulfillments, why are some dreams
nightmares? Who wishes to be terrified?
Freud's answer is that the problem arises
from a confusion between the manifest
and the latent dream. What is painful,
considered as manifest, may, because of
its disguised significance, be regarded as
satisfactory to the unconscious. When one
realizes, in addition, that many
suppressed wishes are desires for
punishment, the painful dream presents itself
as a fulfillment of such wishes. To
understand the possibility of painful dreams
it is necessary to consider Freud's
amended formula: "The dream is the
(disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed,
repressed) wish."
In describing the method most useful
in enabling a person to recall his dream
both by facilitating memory and by
inhibiting the censorship tendency of the
person recounting the dream, Freud
presents what has become familiar as the
psychoanalytic method of free
association. He suggests that the patient be put
into a restful position with his eyes
closed, that the patient be told not to
criticize his thoughts or to withhold the
expression of them, and that he continue
to be impartial about his ideas. This
problem of eliminating censorship while
recounting the dream is merely an
extension of the problem of dealing with the
censorship imposed by the dreamer while
dreaming. The dreamer does not want to
acknowledge his desires; for one reason
or another he has repressed them. The
fulfillment of the suppressed desire can
be tolerated by the dreamer only if he
leaves out anything which would be
understandable to the waking mind.
Consequently, only a laborious process of
undoing the dream-work can result in some
understanding of the meaning the censor
tries to hide.
Among the interesting subsidiary ideas
of Freud's theory is the idea that the
dream-stimulus is always to be found
among the experiences of the hours prior
to sleeping. Some incident from the day
becomes the material of the dream, its
provocative image. But although the
dream-stimulus is from the day preceding
sleep, the repressed wish which the dream
expresses and fulfills is from childhood,
at least, in the majority of cases: "The
deeper we go into the analysis of dreams,
the more often are we put on to the track
of childish experiences which play the
part of dream-sources in the latent dream-
content." To explain the difficulty of
getting at the experiences in childhood
which provide the latent dream-content,
Freud argues for a conception of dreams
1749

as stratified: in the dream layers of
meaning are involved, and it is only at the
lowest stratum that the source in some
experience of childhood may be
discovered.
Among the typical dreams mentioned
by Freud are the embarrassment dream
of nakedness, interpreted as an
exhibition dream, fulfilling a wish to return to
childhood (the time when one ran about
naked without upsetting anyone); the
death-wish dream in which one dreams
of the death of a beloved person,
interpreted as a dream showing repressed
hostility toward brother or sister, father or
mother; and the examination dream in
which one dreams of the disgrace of
flunking an examination, interpreted as
reflecting the ineradicable memories of
punishments in childhood.
Of these typical dreams, the death-wish
dream directed to the father (by the son)
or to the mother (by the daughter) is
explained in terms of the drama of
Oedipus by Sophocles. In the old Greek play,
Oedipus unwittingly murders his own
father and marries his mother. When he
discovers his deeds, he blinds himself and
exiles himself from Thebes. The appeal
of the drama is explained by Freud as
resulting from its role as a wish-fulfillment.
The play reveals the inner self, the self
which directed its first sexual impulses
toward the mother and its first jealous
hatred toward the father. These feelings
have been repressed during the course of
our developing maturity, but they remain
latent, ready to manifest themselves only
in dreams somewhat more obscure than
the Oedipus drama itself. Freud
mentions Hamlet as another play in which
the same wish is shown, although in
Hamlet the fulfillment is repressed. Freud
accounts for Hamlet's reluctance to
complete the task of revenge by pointing out
that Hamlet cannot bring himself to kill
a man who accomplished what he
himself wishes he had accomplished: the
murder of his father and marriage to his
mother.
In his discussion of the psychology of
the dream process, Freud calls attention
to the fact that dreams are quickly
forgotten—a natural consequence, if his
theory is correct. This fact creates
problems for the analyst who wishes to
interpret dreams in order to discover the
root of neurotic disturbances. However,
the self that forgets is the same self that
dreamed, and it is possible by following
the implications of even superficial
associations to get back to the substance of
the dream.
Realizing that many persons would be
offended by his ideas, Freud attempted
to forestall criticism by insisting on the
universal application of his theory and
by claiming that dreams themselves—
since they are not acts—are morally
innocent, whatever their content.
There seems little question but that
Freud's contribution to psychology in
The Interpretation of Dreams will remain
one of the great discoveries of the human
mind. Whatever its excesses, particularly
in the hands of enthusiastic followers,
Freud's central idea gains further
confirmation constantly in the experiences of
dreamers and analysts alike.
1750

INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: Early 1930's
Locale: Jefferson, Mississippi
First published: 1948
Principal characters:
Charles ("Chick") Mallison, a sixteen-year-old boy
Gavin Stevens, his uncle, a lawyer
Lucas Beauchamp, an old Negro
Aleck Sander, Chick's young colored friend
Miss Habersham, an old woman
Hope Hampton, the sheriff
Critique:
In Intruder in the Dust, Faulkner
juxtaposed his views regarding the problem
of the Negro in the South against a
bizarre tale involving murder, grave
robbing, and lynching. Before the
publication of this novel, in such works as "The
Bear" and Light in August, he had only
hinted at his concept of the problem,
with the result that his views were often
misunderstood, but in Intruder in the
Dust he set forth his views boldly, often
reinforcing them with italics and using
one of his characters as his spokesman.
Faulkner's main tenet, developed by
Lawyer Gavin Stevens, is that the South
must be left alone to solve its own
problem; that any interference in the form
of federal legislation will only strengthen
the South's historic defiance of the
North. Lifted from context, however, the
plot resembles nothing so much as a
rather far-fetched murder mystery;
isolated, Gavin Stevens' commentaries on
the plot sound like so much propaganda.
But within the framework of the novel
the plot is credible and Lawyer Stevens'
harangues are appropriate. After all, the
story is oriented around a boy. It is quite
conceivable that a sixteen-year-old could
get himself into just such a situation; it
stands to reason that a rhetorical lawyer
should try to clarify a confused nephew's
thinking. Intruder in the Dust is a
successful novel because Faulkner succeeds
in making the reader believe in its
central character, understand him, and
sympathize with him.
The Story:
On a cold afternoon in November,
Chick Mallison, twelve years old,
accompanied by two Negro boys, went rabbit
hunting on Carothers Edmonds' place.
When he fell through the ice into a
creek, an old Negro, Lucas Beauchamp,
appeared and watched while the boy
clambered awkwardly ashore. Then Lucas
took the white boy and his companions
to the old colored man's home. There
Chick dried out in front of the fire and
ate Lucas' food. Later, when Chick tried
to pay the old man for his hospitality,
Lucas spurned his money. Chick threw it
down, but Lucas made one of the other
boys pick it up and return it. Chick
brooded over the incident, ashamed to be
indebted to a black man, especially one
as arrogant as Lucas Beauchamp. Again
trying to repay the old man, he sent
Lucas' wife a mail-order dress bought with
money he had saved; again refusing to
acknowledge payment and thus admit his
inferiority as a Negro, Lucas sent Chick
a bucket of sorghum sweetening.
Some four years later when Lucas was
accused of shooting Vinson Gowrie in
the back, Chick still had not forgotten his
unpaid debt to the Negro. Realizing that
INTRUDER IN THE DUST by William Faulkner. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 1948, by Random House, Inc.
1751

Vinson's poor-white family and friends
were sure to lynch Lucas, Chick wanted
to leave town. But when Sheriff Hope
Hampton brought Lucas to the jail in
Jefferson, Chick, unable to suppress his
sense of obligation, was standing on the
street where the old colored man could
see him. Lucas asked Chick to bring his
uncle, Gavin Stevens, to the jail.
At the jail the old man refused to tell
Stevens what happened at the shooting,
whereupon the lawyer left in disgust. But
Lucas did tell Chick that Vinson Gowrie
had not been shot with his gun—a forty-
one Colt—and he asked the boy to verify
this fact by digging up the corpse.
Although the body was buried nine miles
from town and the Gowries would be
sure to shoot a grave robber, Chick agreed
to the request; he knew that Lucas would
undoubtedly be lynched if someone did
not help the old man. Barbershop and
poolroom loafers had already gathered
while waiting for the pine-hill country
Gowries to arrive in town.
Stevens laughed at the story, so Chick's
only help came from a Negro boy—Aleck
Sander—and Miss Habersham, an old
woman of good family who had grown up
with Lucas' wife, now dead. And so
the task of digging up a white man's
grave in order to save a haughty,
intractable, but innocent Negro was left to two
adolescents and a seventy-year-old woman
who felt it her obligation to protect those
more helpless than she. The three
succeeded in opening the grave without
incident. In the coffin they found not
Vinson Gowrie but Jake Montgomery, whose
skull had been bashed in. They filled the
grave, returned to town, wakened
Stevens, and went to the sheriff with their
story.
This group, joined by old man Gowrie
and two of his sons, reopened the grave.
But when they lifted the lid the coffin
was found to be empty. A search
disclosed Montgomery's body hastily buried
nearby and Vinson's sunk in quicksand.
When the sheriff took Montgomery's
body into town, the huge crowd that had
gathered in anticipation of the lynching
of Lucas Beauchamp soon scattered.
Questioning of Lucas revealed that
Crawford Gowrie had murdered his
brother Vinson. Crawford, according to
the old Negro, had been cheating his
brother in a lumber deal. Jake
Montgomery, to whom Crawford had sold the
stolen lumber, knew that Crawford was
the murderer and had dug up Vinson's
grave to prove it. Crawford murdered
Montgomery at the grave and put him
in Vinson's coffin. When he saw Chick
and his friends open the grave, he was
forced to remove Vinson's body too.
Sheriff Hampton soon captured
Crawford, who killed himself in his cell to
avoid a trial.
At last, Chick thought, he had freed
himself of his debt to the old Negro. A
short time later, however, Lucas appeared
at Stevens' office and insisted on paying
for services rendered. Stevens refused
payment for both himself and Chick but
accepted two dollars for "expenses."
Proud, unhumbled to the end, Lucas
Beauchamp demanded a receipt.
1752

THE INVISIBLE MAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1897
Principal characters:
Griffin, the Invisible Man
Mr. Hall, landlord of the Coach and Horses Inn
Mrs. Hall, his wife
Dr. Kemp, a Burdock physician
Colonel Ayde, chief of the Burdock police
Marvel, a tramp
Critique:
The Invisible Man belongs to that
series of pseudo-scientific romances which
H. G. Wells wrote early in his literary
career. The plot is one of sheer and
fantastic invention, but it achieves an
ail of probability by means of the homely
and realistic details with which it is
built up. The characters involved in
Griffin's strange predicament are also in
no way remarkable; their traits, habits,
and fears are revealed convincingly. The
novel has outlived the time of its
publication because of the psychological
factors arising from the central situation
and the suspense created by the
unfolding of an unusual plot.
The Story:
The stranger arrived at Bramblehurst
railway station on a cold, snowy day in
February. Carrying a valise, he trudged
through driving snow to Iping, where
he stumbled into the Coach and Horses
Inn and asked Mrs. Hall, the hostess,
for a room and a fire. The stranger's
face was hidden by dark-blue spectacles
and bushy side-whiskers.
He had his dinner in his room. When
Mrs. Hall took a mustard jar up to him,
she saw that the stranger's head was
completely bandaged. While she was in
his room, he covered his mouth and
chin with a napkin.
His baggage arrived the next day—
several trunks and boxes of books and a
crate of bottles packed in straw. The
drayman's dog attacked the stranger,
tearing his glove and ripping his trousers.
Mr. Hall, landlord of the inn, ran
upstairs to see if the stranger had been
hurt and entered his room without
knocking. He was immediately struck on the
chest and pushed from the room. When
Mrs. Hall took up the lodger's supper,
she saw that he had unpacked his trunks
and boxes and set up some strange
apparatus. The lodger was not wearing
his glasses; his eyes looked sunken and
hollow.
In the weeks that followed the
villagers made many conjectures as to the
stranger's identity. Some thought he
suffered from a queer disease that had
left his skin black-and-white spotted.
Unusual happenings also mystified the
village. One night the vicar and his
wife were awakened by a noise in the
vicar's study and the clinking of money.
Upon investigation, they saw no one,
although a candle was burning and they
heard a sneeze.
In the meantime Mr. Hall found
clothing and bandages scattered about
the lodger's room; the stranger had
disappeared. The landlord went downstairs
to call his wife. They heard the front
door open and shut, but no one came
into the inn. While they stood wonder-
THE INVISIBLE MAN by H. G. Wells. By permission of the Executors, estate of H. G. Wells and the
publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1897, by H. G. Wells. Renewed, 1924.
1753

ing what to do, their lodger came down
the stairs. Where he had been or how
he had returned to his room unnoticed
was a mystery he made no attempt to
explain.
A short time later, the stranger's bill
being overdue, Mrs. Hall refused to serve
him. When the stranger became abusive,
Mr. Hall swore out a warrant against
him. The constable, the landlord, and
a curious neighbor went upstairs to
arrest the lodger. After a struggle, the
man agreed to unmask. The men were
horror-stricken; the stranger was invisible
to their view. In the confusion the
Invisible Man, as the newspapers were soon
to call him, fled from the inn.
The next person to encounter the
Invisible Man was a tramp named Marvel.
The Invisible Man frightened Marvel
into accompanying him to the Coach
and Horses Inn to get his clothing and
three books. They arrived at the inn
while the vicar and the village doctor
were reading the stranger's diary. They
knocked the two men about, snatched up
the clothes and books, and left the inn.
Newspapers continued to print stories
of unnatural thefts; money had been
taken and carried away, the thief
invisible but the money in plain view.
Marvel always seemed to be well-
supplied with funds.
One day Marvel, carrying three books,
came running into the Jolly Cricketers
Inn. He said that the Invisible Man
was after him. A barman, a policeman,
and a cabman awaited the Invisible
Man's arrival after hiding Marvel. But
the Invisible Man found Marvel, dragged
him into the inn kitchen, and tried to
force him through the door. The three
men struggled with the unseen creature
while Marvel crawled into the bar-parlor.
When the voice of the Invisible Man was
heard in the inn yard, a villager fired
five shots in the direction of the sound.
Searchers found no body in the yard.
Meanwhile, in Burdock, Dr. Kemp
worked late in his study. Preparing to
retire, he noticed drops of drying blood
on the stairs. He found the doorknob
of his room smeared with blood and red
stains on his bed. While he stared in
amazement at a bandage that was ap-
parendy wrapping itself about nothing
in midair, a voice called him by name.
The Invisible Man had taken refuge in
Kemp's rooms.
He identified himself as Griffin, a
young scientist whom Kemp had met at
the university where both had studied.
Griffin asked for whiskey and food. He
said that except for short naps he had
not slept for three days and nights.
That night Kemp sat up to read all the
newspaper accounts of the activities of
the Invisible Man. At last, after much
thought, he wrote a letter to Colonel
Adye, chief of the Burdock police.
In the morning Griffin told his story
to Kemp. He explained that for three
years he had experimented with
refractions of light on the theory that a
human body would become invisible if
the cells could be made transparent.
Needing money for his work, he had
robbed his father of money belonging
to someone else and his father had shot
himself. At last his experiments were
successful. After setting fire to his room
in order to destroy the evidence of his
research, he had begun his strange
adventures. He had terrorized Oxford
Street, where passersby had seen only
his footprints. He discovered that in his
invisible state he was compelled to fast,
for all unassimilated food or drink was
grotesquely visible. At last, prowling
London streets and made desperate by
his plight, he had gone to a shop selling
theatrical supplies. There he had stolen
the dark glasses, side-whiskers, and
clothes he wore on his arrival in Iping.
Griffin planned to use Kemp's house
as a headquarters while terrorizing the
neighborhood. Kemp believed Griffin
mad. When he attempted to restrain
Griffin, the Invisible Man escaped, and
shordy thereafter a Mr. Wicksteed was
found murdered. A manhunt began.
The next morning Kemp received a
1754

note which announced that the reign of
terror had begun; one person would be
executed daily. Kemp himself was to
be the first victim. He was to die at
noon; nothing could protect him.
Kemp sent at once for Colonel Adye.
While they were discussing possible
precautions, stones were hurled through
the windows. The colonel left to return
to the police station for some
bloodhounds to set on Griffin's trail, but
outside the house Griffin snatched a
revolver from Adye's pocket and wounded
the police officer. When Griffin began
to smash Kemp's kitchen door with an
ax, the doctor climbed through a window
and ran to a neighbor's house. He was
refused admittance. He ran to the inn.
The door was barred. Suddenly his
invisible assailant seized him. While they
struggled, some men came to the doctor's
rescue. Kemp got hold of Griffin's arms.
A constable seized his legs. Someone
struck through the air with a spade.
The writhing unseen figure sagged to the
ground. Kemp announced that he could
not hear Griffin's heartbeats. While the
crowd gathered, Griffin's body slowly
materialized, naked, dead. A sheet was
brought from the inn and the body was
carried away. The reign of terror was
ended.
1755

IOLANTHE
Type of work: Comic opera
Author: W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
Virst presented: 1882
"Principal characters:
The Lord Chancellor
Strephon, an Arcadian shepherd
Queen of the Fairies
Iolanthe, Strephon's fairy mother
Phyllis, a shepherdess and ward in Chancery
The Earl of Mountararat, and
Earl Tolloller, her suitors
Private Willis, a palace guard
Critique:
The story of a shepherd lad, the top
of him a fairy but his feet mired in
human form, Iolanthe, Or, The Peer and
the Peri is a light-hearted satire on many
human foibles. In particular, the drama
pokes fun at the House of Lords, but it
is such gentle fun that no one in
Victorian England could take offense.
Iolanthe is a delightful comedy, one of
many from the pen of Sir William
Schwenck Gilbert, whose name will
always be associated with that of his
composer-collaborator, Sir Arthur Seymour
Sullivan.
The Story:
The Fairy Queen had banished
Iolanthe because she had married a
mortal. Normally the punishment for such
an act was death, but the queen so loved
Iolanthe that she had been unable to
enforce a penalty so grave. Iolanthe had
been sentenced to penal servitude for
life, on the condition that she never see
her mortal husband again. At last the
other fairies begged the queen to relent,
to set aside even this punishment, for
Iolanthe had served twenty-five years of
her sentence by standing on her head at
the bottom of a stream.
The queen, unable to resist their pleas,
summoned the penitent Iolanthe and
pardoned her. Iolanthe explained that she
had stayed in the stream to be near her
son Strephon, an Arcadian shepherd who
was a fairy to his waist and a human
from the waist down. While they spoke,
Strephon entered, announcing that he
was to be married that day to Phyllis, a
ward of Chancery. The Lord Chancellor
had not given his permission, but
Strephon was determined to marry his
Phyllis anyway. He was delighted when he
learned that his mother had been
pardoned, but he begged her and all the
fairies not to tell Phyllis that he was half
fairy. He feared that she would not
understand.
The queen determined to make
Strephon a member of Parliament, but
Strephon said that he would be no good in
that august body, for the top of him
was a Tory, the bottom a Radical. The
queen solved that problem by making
him a Liberal-Unionist and taking his
mortal legs under her particular care.
Phyllis talked with Strephon and
warned him that to marry her without
the Lord Chancellor's permission would
mean lifelong penal servitude for him.
But Strephon could not wait the two
years until she was of age. He feared
1756

that the Lord Chancellor himself or one
of the peers of the House of Lords would
marry her before that time had passed.
Strephon's fears were well founded;
the Lord Chancellor did want to marry
his ward. Fearing that he would have to
punish himself for marrying her without
his permission, however, he decided to
give her instead to one of the peers of the
House of Lords. Two were at last
selected, the Earl of Mountararat and Earl
Tolloller, but there was no agreement as
to the final choice. Phyllis herself did not
wish to accept either, for she loved only
Strephon. Then she saw Strephon
talking with Iolanthe, who, being a fairy,
looked like a young and beautiful girl,
even though she was Strephon's mother.
Phyllis was filled with jealousy,
augmented by the laughter of the peers when
Strephon in desperation confessed that
Iolanthe was his mother. Weeping that
he had betrayed her, Phyllis left
Strephon. No one had ever heard of a son who
looked older than his mother.
The Fairy Queen herself told the Lord
Chancellor and the peers that they would
rue their laughter over Iolanthe and her
son. To punish them, Strephon would
change all existing laws in the House of
Lords. He would abolish the rights of
peers and give titles to worthy
commoners. Worst of all, from then on peers
would be chosen by competitive
examinations. Strephon would be a foe they
would not soon forget.
The queen's prediction came true.
Strephon completely ruled the House of
Lords. Every bill he proposed was passed,
the fairies making the other members
vote for Strephon even when they
wanted to vote against him. The peers
appealed to the fairies, but although the
fairies admired the peers, they could not
be swayed against Strephon.
The Earl of Mountararat and Earl
Tolloller tried to decide who should have
Phyllis. Each wanted the other to
sacrifice himself by giving up all rights to
her. Both had a family tradition that
they must fight anyone who took their
sweethearts, and since a fight meant that
one of them would die and the survivor
would be left without his friend, each
wanted to make the sacrifice of losing his
friend. At last the two decided that
friendship was more important than love.
Both renounced Phyllis.
Strephon and Phyllis met again, and
at last he convinced her that Iolanthe was
really his mother. Phyllis still could not
believe that Strephon looked like a fairy,
and she could not quite understand that
his grandmother and all his aunts looked
as young as his mother. She was
sensible, however, and promised that
whenever she saw Strephon kissing a very
young girl she would know the woman
was an elderly relative. There was still
the Lord Chancellor to contend with.
When they went to Iolanthe and begged
her to persuade him to consent to their
marriage, Iolanthe told them that the
Lord Chancellor was her mortal
husband. He believed her dead and himself
childless, and if she looked on him the
queen would carry out the penalty of
instant death.
Iolanthe could not resist the pleas of
the young lovers. As she told the Lord
Chancellor that she was his lost wife,
the queen entered and prepared to carry
out the sentence of death against
Iolanthe. Before she could act, however, the
other fairies entered and confessed that
they too had married peers in the House
of Lords. The queen grieved, but the law
was clear. Whoever married a mortal
must die. But the Lord Chancellor's great
knowledge of the law saved the day. It
would now read that whoever did not
marry a mortal must die. Thinking that
a wonderful solution, the queen took
one of the palace guards, Private Willis,
for her husband. Knowing that from now
on the House of Lords would be recruit-
1757

ed from persons of intelligence, because that they were of httle use. Sprouting
of Strephon's law, the peers could see wings, they all flew away to Fairyland.
1758

ION
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c. 485-c. 406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: The temple of Apollo at Delphi
First presented: Fifth century B.C.
Principal characters:
Hermes, speaker of the prologue
Ion, son of Apollo and Creusa
Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, King of Athens
Xuthus, Creusa's husband
Aged Slave to Creusa
A Priestess of Apollo
Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom
Chorus of Creusa's Handmaidens
Critique:
In Ion, Euripides fashioned a curious
and compelling drama out of a legend
which, so far as we know, no other
ancient playwright touched. Although
several lines of action threaten to culminate
in tragedy, as when the outraged Creusa
sends her slave to poison Ion and when
Ion attempts to retaliate, the play ends
happily and must be described as a
comedy. Indeed some critics claim that the
technique of the recognition scene, the
identity of Ion being established by his
miraculously preserved swaddling clothes,
is the basis of the New Comedy which
developed in the fourth century B.C. A
tantalizing ambiguity in Ion concerns
Euripides' attitude toward the gods. On
the one hand the action of the play
demands that we accept Apollo's existence
and his power; on the other, the sly way
in which he is presented seems to suggest
that he is ridiculously anthropomorphic,
a knave caught cheating and forced to
concoct a way out for himself.
The Story:
(Years before Phoebus Apollo had
ravished Creusa, daughter of King
Erechtheus, who subsequently and in secret
gave birth to a son. By Apollo's command
she hid the infant in a cave where
Hermes was sent to carry him to the
temple of Apollo. There he was reared as
a temple ministrant. Meanwhile, Creusa
had married Xuthus as a reward for his
aid in the Athenian war against the Eubo-
eans, but the marriage remained without
issue. After years of frustration, Xuthus
and Creusa decided to make a pilgrimage
to Delphi and ask the god for aid in
getting a son.)
At dawn Ion emerged from the temple
of Apollo to sweep the floors, chase
away the birds, set out the laurel boughs,
and make the usual morning sacrifice.
Creusa's handmaidens came to admire the
temple built upon the navel of the world
and to announce the imminent arrival of
their mistress. At the meeting of Creusa
and Ion, Creusa confirmed the story that
her father had been drawn from the earth
by Athena and was swallowed up by the
earth at the end of his life. The
credulous Ion explained that his own birth,
too, was shrouded in mystery, for he had
appeared out of nowhere at the temple
and had been reared by the priestess of
Apollo. The greatest sorrow of his life,
he said, was not knowing who his mother
was. Creusa sympathized and cautiously
revealed that she had a friend with a
similar problem, a woman who had borne
a son to Apollo, only to have the infant
disappear and to suffer childlessness for
the rest of her life.
Ion, shocked and outraged at the insult
to his god, demanded that Creusa end
her accusation of Apollo in his own tem-
1759

pie, but the anguished woman assailed
the god with fresh charges of injustice,
breaking off only at the arrival of her
husband. Xuthus eagerly took his wife
into the temple, for he had just been
assured by the prophet Trophonius that
they would not return childless to Athens.
The perplexed Ion was left alone to
meditate on the lawlessness of gods who
seemed to put pleasure before wisdom.
Xuthus, emerging from the temple, fell
upon the startled Ion and attempted to
kiss and embrace him. He shouted
joyfully that Ion must be his son, for the
oracle had said that the first person he
would see upon leaving the temple would
be his son by birth. Stunned and
unconvinced, Ion demanded to know who his
mother was, but Xuthus could only
conjecture that possibly she was one of the
Delphian girls he had encountered at a
Bacchanal before his marriage. Ion,
reluctantly conceding that Xuthus must be
his father if Apollo so decreed, begged
to remain an attendant in the temple
rather than become the unwelcome and
suspicious heir to the throne of Athens—
for Creusa would surely resent a son she
had not borne. Xuthus understood his
anxiety and agreed to hide his identity;
however, he insisted that Ion accompany
him to Athens, even if only in the role
of distinguished guest. He then gave
orders for a banquet of thanksgiving and
commanded that the handmaidens to
Creusa keep their silence on pain of
death. As they departed to prepare the
feast, Ion expressed the hope that his
mother might still be found and that she
might be an Athenian.
Accompanied by the aged slave of her
father, Creusa reappeared before the
temple and demanded from her handmaidens
an account of the revelation Xuthus had
received from Apollo. Only under
relentless cross-examination did the fearful
servants reveal what had passed between
Xuthus and Ion. Overcome by a sense of
betrayal, Creusa cursed Apollo for his
cruelty but dared not act upon the old
slave's suggestion that she burn the
temple or murder the husband who had, after
all, been kind to her.
But the murder of the usurper, Ion,
was another matter. After some
deliberation Creusa decided upon a safe and
secret method of eliminating the rival of
her lost son. From a phial of the Gorgon's
blood which Athena had given to Creusa's
grandfather and which had been passed
down to her, the old slave was to pour
a drop into Ion's wineglass at the
celebration feast. Eager to serve his master's
daughter, the slave departed, and the
chorus chanted their hope for success.
Some time later a messenger came
running to warn Creusa that the authorities
were about to seize her and submit her
to death by stoning, for her plot had been
discovered. He described how at the feast
a flock of doves had dipped down to
drink from Ion's cup and had died in
horrible convulsions and how Ion had
tortured a confession out of the old slave.
The court of Delphi had then sentenced
Creusa to death for attempting murder
of a consecrated person within the sacred
precincts of the temple of Apollo. The
chorus urged Creusa to fling herself upon
the altar and remain there in sanctuary.
A short time later Ion arrived at the
head of an infuriated crowd, and he and
Creusa began to hurl angry charges and
counter-charges at each other. Suddenly
the priestess of the temple appeared,
bearing the cradle and the tokens with which
the infant Ion had been found years
before. Slowly and painfully the truth
emerged: Ion was the lost son of Creusa
and Apollo. Creusa was seized with a
frenzy of joy, but the astounded Ion
remained incredulous. As he was about to
enter the temple to demand an
explanation from Apollo himself, the goddess
Athena appeared in mid-air and
confirmed the revelation. She urged that
Xuthus not be told the truth so that he
might enjoy the delusion that his own
son was to be his heir, while Creusa and
Ion could share their genuine happiness.
Creusa renounced all her curses against
1760

Apollo and blessed him for his ultimate Athens the chorus called upon all men
wisdom. As she and Ion departed for to reverence the gods and take courage.
1761

IPHIGENIA IN AULIS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Beginning of Trojan War
Locale: Aulis, on the west coast of Euboea
First presented: 405 B.C.
Principal characters:
Agamemnon, King of Mycenae
Clytemnestra, his wife
Iphigenia, their daughter
Achilles, a Greek warrior
Menelaus, King of Sparta
Critique:
In Iphigenia in Aulis, Agamemnon,
the co-commander of all the Greek forces
in the Trojan War, impresses one as being
essentially the civilian executive, the
upper middle-class husband and father
who would rather be dictating business,
nut military policies. Likewise,
Clytemnestra, his wife, resembles the society-
conscious suburban matron, rather than a
queen. Hence, despite its heroic
background and despite the nominally heroic
aspects of its characters, the play is in
many respects a domestic tragedy.
Lacking are the terrible and compulsive
passions which motivate the story of
Clytemnestra and Agamemnon in the dramas of
Aeschylus.
The Story:
At Aulis, on the west coast of Euboea,
part of Greece, the Greek host had
assembled for the invasion of Ilium, the war
having been declared to rescue Helen,
wife of King Menelaus, after her
abduction by Paris, a prince of Troy. Lack of
wind, however, prevented the sailing of
the great fleet.
While the ships lay becalmed,
Agamemnon, commander of the Greek forces,
consulted Calchas, a seer. The oracle
prophesied that all would go well if
Iphigenia, Agamemnon's oldest daughter,
were sacrificed to the goddess Artemis. At
first Agamemnon was reluctant to see his
daughter so destroyed, but at last
Menelaus, his brother, persuaded him that
nothing else would move the
weatherbound fleet. Agamemnon wrote to
Clytemnestra, his queen, and asked her to
conduct Iphigenia to Aulis, his pretext
being that Achilles, the outstanding
warrior among the Greeks, would not embark
unless he were given Iphigenia in
marriage.
The letter having been dispatched,
Agamemnon had a change of heart; he
felt that his continued popularity as co-
leader of the Greeks was a poor exchange
for the life of his beloved daughter. In
haste he dispatched a second letter
countermanding the first, but Menelaus,
suspicious of his brother, intercepted the
messenger and struggled with him for
possession of the letter. When
Agamemnon came upon the scene, he and
Menelaus exchanged bitter words.
Menelaus accused his brother of being weak
and foolish, and Agamemnon accused
Menelaus of supreme selfishness in urging
the sacrifice of Iphigenia.
During this exchange of charge and
countercharge a messenger announced the
arrival of Clytemnestra and Iphigenia in
Aulis. The news plunged Agamemnon
into despair; weeping, he regretted his
kingship and its responsibilities. Even
Menelaus was affected, so that he
suggested disbanding the army. Agamemnon
thanked Menelaus but declared it was too
late to turn back from the course they had
elected to follow. Actually, Agamemnon
was afraid of Calchas and of Odysseus,
1762

and he believed that widespread
disaffection and violence would break out in
the Greek army if the sacrifice were not
made. Some Chalcian women who had
come to see the fleet lamented that the
love of Paris for Helen had brought such
stir and misery instead of happiness.
When Clytemnestra arrived,
accompanied by Iphigenia and her young son,
Orestes, she expressed pride and joy over
the approaching nuptials of her daughter
and Achilles. Agamemnon greeted his
family tenderly; touching irony displayed
itself in the conversation between
Agamemnon, who knew that Iphigenia was
doomed to die, and Iphigenia, who
thought her father's ambiguous words had
a bearing only on her approaching
marriage. Clytemnestra inquired in motherly
fashion about Achilles' family and
background. She was scandalized when the
heartbroken Agamemnon asked her to
return to Argos, on the excuse that he could
arrange the marriage details. When
Clytemnestra refused to leave the camp,
Agamemnon sought the advice of Calchas.
Meanwhile the Chalcian women forecast
the sequence of events of the Trojan War
and hinted in their prophecy that death
was certain for Iphigenia.
Achilles, in the meantime, insisted that
he and his Myrmidons were impatient
with the delay and anxious to get on with
the invasion of Ilium. Clytemnestra,
meeting him, mentioned the impending
marriage, much to the mystification of
Achilles, who professed to know nothing
of his proposed marriage to Iphigenia. The
messenger then confessed Agamemnon's
plans to the shocked Clytemnestra and
Achilles. He also mentioned the second
letter and cast some part of the guilt upon
Menelaus. Clytemnestra, grief-stricken,
prevailed upon Achilles to help her in
saving Iphigenia from death by sacrifice.
Clytemnestra then confronted her
husband, who was completely unnerved
when he realized that Clytemnestra was
at last in possession of the dreadful truth.
She rebuked him fiercely, saying that she
had never really loved him because he had
slain her beloved first husband and her
first child. Iphigenia, on her knees,
implored her father to save her and asked
Orestes, in his childish innocence, to add
his pleas to his mother's and her own.
Although Agamemnon was not heartless, he
knew that the sacrifice must be made. He
argued that Iphigenia would die for
Greece, a country and a cause greater than
them all.
Achilles, meanwhile, spoke to the army
in behalf of Iphigenia, but he admitted his
failure when even his own Myrmidons
threatened to stone him if he persisted in
his attempt to stop the sacrifice. At last he
mustered enough loyal followers to defend
the girl against Odysseus and the entire
Greek host. Iphigenia refused his aid,
however, saying that she had decided to
offer herself as a sacrifice for Greece.
Achilles, in admiration, offered to place
his men about the sacrificial altar so that
she might be snatched to safety at the last
moment.
Iphigenia, resigned to certain death,
asked her mother not to mourn for her.
Then she marched bravely to her death in
the field of Artemis. Clytemnestra was
left in prostration in her tent. Iphigenia,
at the altar, said farewell to all that she
held dear and submitted herself to the
sacrifice.
The Chalcian women, onlookers at the
sacrifice, invoked Artemis to fill the Greek
sails now with wind so that the ships
might carry the army to Troy to achieve
eternal glory for Greece.
1763

IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Several years after the Trojan War
Locale: Tauris, in the present-day Crimea
First presented: c. 420 B.C.
Principal characters:
Iphigenia, a priestess of Artemis
Orestes, her brother
Pylades, Orestes' friend
Thoas, King of Tauris
Athena, goddess of the hunt
Critique:
Actually, Iphigenia in Tauris is not a
tragedy in the classic sense at all; instead,
it is a romantic melodrama. Iphigenia,
after years in a barbaric land, may still
have felt hatred for the Greeks, but her
sentimental longing to return to Argolis,
her birthplace and the scene of her happy
childhood, was intense. Her feelings are
described most touchingly by Euripides.
The play abounds in breathtaking
situations of danger and in sentimental
passages of reminiscence. The recognition
scene is perhaps the most thrilling, if not
the most protracted in the classic Greek
drama. Goethe dramatized this story in
his Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787).
The Story:
When the Greek invasion force,
destined for Ilium, was unable to sail from
Aulis because of a lack of wind,
Agamemnon, the Greek commander, appealed
to Calchas, a Greek seer, for aid. Calchas
said that unless Agamemnon gave
Iphigenia, his oldest daughter, as a sacrifice
to Artemis, the Greek fleet would never
sail. By trickery Agamemnon succeeded
in bringing Clytemnestra, his queen, and
Iphigenia to Aulis, where the maiden was
offered up to propitiate the goddess. At
the last moment, however, Artemis
substituted a calf in Iphigenia's place and
spirited the maiden off to the barbaric
land of Tauris, where she was doomed to
spend the rest of her life as a priestess
of Artemis. One of Iphigenia's duties was
to prepare Greek captives—any Greek
who was apprehended in Tauris was by
law condemned to die—for sacrifice in the
temple of the goddess.
Iphigenia had been a priestess in
Tauris for many years when, one night,
she had a dream which she interpreted
to mean that her brother Orestes had met
his death; now there could be no future
for her family, Orestes having been the
only son.
Orestes, however, was alive; in fact,
he was actually in Tauris. After he and
his sister Electra had murdered their
mother to avenge their father's death at
her hands, the Furies had pursued Orestes
relentlessly. Seeking relief, Orestes was
told by the Oracle of Delphi that he must
procure a statue of Artemis which stood
in the temple of the goddess in Tauris
and take it to Athens. Orestes would then
be free of the Furies.
Orestes and his friend Pylades reached
the temple and were appalled at the sight
of the earthly remains of the many Greeks
who had lost their lives in the temple.
They resolved, however, to carry out their
mission of stealing the statue of Artemis.
Meanwhile Iphigenia, disturbed by
her dream, aroused her sister priestesses
and asked their help in mourning the
loss of her brother. In her loneliness she
remembered Argos and her carefree
childhood. A messenger interrupted her reverie
with the report that one of two young
Greeks on the shore had in a frenzy
slaughtered Taurian cattle which had
been led to the sea to bathe. The slayer
1764

was Orestes, under the influence of the
Furies. In the fight which followed
Orestes and Pylades held off great
numbers of Taurian peasants, but at last the
peasants succeeded in capturing the two
youths. The Greeks were brought to
Thoas, the King of Tauris.
Iphigenia, as a priestess of Artemis,
directed that the strangers be brought
before her. Heretofore she had always been
gentle with the doomed Greeks and had
never participated in the bloody ritual of
sacrifice. Now, depressed by her dream,
she was determined to be cruel.
Orestes and Pylades, bound, were
brought before Iphigenia. Thinking of
her own sorrow, she asked them if they
had sisters who would be saddened by
their deaths. Orestes refused to give her
any details about himself, but he
answered her inquiries about Greece and
about the fate of the prominent Greeks
in the Trojan War. She learned to her
distress that her father was dead by her
mother's treachery and that Orestes was
still alive, a wanderer.
Deeply moved, Iphigenia offered to
spare Orestes if he would deliver a letter
for her in Argos. Orestes magnanimously
gave the mission to Pylades; he himself
would remain to be sacrificed. When he
learned that Iphigenia would prepare
him for the ritual, he wished for the
presence of his sister to cover his body
after he was dead. Iphigenia, out of pity,
promised to do this for him. She went to
bring the letter. Orestes and Pylades were
convinced that she was a Greek. Pylades
then declared that he would stay and die
with his friend. Orestes, saying that he
was doomed to die anyway for the murder
of his mother, advised Pylades to return
to Greece, marry Electra, and build a
temple in his honor.
Iphigenia, returning with the letter,
told Pylades that it must be delivered to
one Orestes, a Greek prince. The letter
urged Orestes to come to Tauris to take
Iphigenia back to her beloved Argos; it
explained how she had been saved at
Aulis and spirited by Artemis to Tauris.
Pylades, saying that he had fulfilled the
mission, handed the letter to Orestes.
Iphigenia, doubtful, was finally
convinced of Orestes' identity when he
recalled familiar details of their home in
Argos. While she pondered escape for the
three of them, Orestes explained that first
it was necessary for him to take the statue
of Artemis, in order to avoid destruction.
He asked Iphigenia's aid.
Having received a promise of secrecy
from the priestesses who were present,
Iphigenia carried out her plan of escape.
As Thoas, curious about the progress of
the sacrifice, entered the temple,
Iphigenia appeared with the statue in her
arms. She explained to the mystified
Thoas that the statue had miraculously
turned away from the Greek youths
because their hands were stained by
domestic murder. She declared to King
Thoas that it was necessary for her secretly
to cleanse the statue and the two young
men in sea water. She commanded the
people of Tauris to stay in their houses
lest they too be tainted.
When Orestes and Pylades were led
from the temple in chains, Thoas and
his retinue covered their eyes so that they
would not be contaminated by evil.
Iphigenia joined the procession and marched
solemnly to the beach. There she ordered
the king's guards to turn their backs on
the secret cleansing rites. Fearful for
Iphigenia's safety, the guards looked on.
When they beheld the three Greeks
entering a ship, they rushed down to the vessel
and held it back. The Greeks beat off the
Taurians and set sail. The ship, however,
was caught by tidal currents and forced
back into the harbor.
Thoas, angry, urged all Taurians to
spare no effort in capturing the Greek
ship. Then the goddess Athena appeared
to Thoas and directed him not to go
against the will of Apollo, whose Oracle
of Delphi had sent Orestes to Tauris to
get the statue of Artemis. Thoas meekly
complied. Iphigenia, Orestes, and Pylades
returned to Greece, where Orestes, having
1765

set up the image of the Taurian Artemis in a new temple, to be a priestess ol
in Attica, was at last freed from the Artemis,
wrath of the Furies. Iphigenia continued,
1766

ISRAEL POTTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: 1774-1826
Locale: Vermont, Massachusetts, England, France, the Atlantic Ocean
First published: 1855
Principal characters:
Israel Potter, a wanderer
Israel's father
King George III
Benjamin Franklin
John Paul Jones
Ethan Allen
Squire Woodcock, an American agent
The Earl of Selkirk
Critique:
Facetiously dedicated to the Bunker
Hill Monument, Israel Potter is a mock
picaresque novel. The hero, Israel
Potter, wanders about America and Europe
for over fifty years, never settling, never
successful, providing a vehicle through
which Melville satirizes a great many
ideas and institutions. The pious morality
of Benjamin Franklin, tidied into sugar-
coated aphorisms, is one of Melville's
principal targets. Other targets are the
brutality of all wars, the idiocy of
jingoistic patriotism, the barbarous quality
lurking behind supposedly civilized
behavior; neither American energy nor
European polish can protect man from
brutality or from the ridiculous patriotism
around him. Despite the serious nature of
Melville's theme, the novel is frequently
very funny. Israel, the innocent,
frequently stumbles into difficult situations
and out of them by changing clothes,
masquerading as a ghost, feigning
madness, or pretending a polite worldliness
he does not possess. The novel was not
well received when it was written, for
mid-nineteenth-century American taste
did not relish the picaresque or the
mocking treatment of America's noble fight for
freedom. Although generally appreciated
by those who have read it, Israel Potter
has not yet received the attention
accorded to many of Melville's other novels
nor the attention that it deserves because
of its genuine comedy and its astringent
defense of civilized values.
The Story:
Born among the rugged stones of the
New England hills, in the Housatonic
Valley, Israel Potter grew up with all the
virtues of the hard, principled, new land.
After an argument with his father over a
girl whom his stern parent did not think
a suitable match, Israel decided to run
away from home while his family was
attending church. He wandered about
the countryside, hunting deer, farming
land, becoming a trapper, dealing in furs.
During his wanderings he learned that
most men were unscrupulous. He also
hunted whales from Nantucket to the
coast of Africa.
In 1775, Israel joined the American
forces and took part in the Battle of
Bunker Hill. He fought bravely, but the
battle, as he saw it, was simply
disorganized carnage. Wounded, Israel enlisted
aboard an American ship after his
recovery. Once at sea, the ship was
captured by the British. Israel was taken
prisoner and conveyed to England on the
British ship, but on his arrival in London
he managed to make his escape.
Wandering about London, Israel met
various Englishmen who mocked his
1767

American accent. Some of the English
were kind and helpful to him; others
curled him about and berated the
scurrilous Yankee rebels. He found various
odd jobs, including one as a gardener
working for a cruel employer. He escaped
from this job and found one as a gardener
on the king's staff at Kew Gardens. One
day Israel met King George III. The
king, completely mad, realized that Israel
was an American and was ineffectually
kind to him. Eventually, in a slack
season, Israel was discharged. He then
worked for a farmer, but when
neighboring farmers discovered that he was an
American, he was forced to run away.
Israel met Squire Woodcock, a wealthy
and secret friend of America, who sent
him on a secret mission to Benjamin
Franklin in Paris. Israel carried a message
in the false heel of his new boots. On his
arrival in Paris, while he was looking
for Benjamin Franklin, a poor man tried
to shine his boots on the Pont Neuf.
Israel, in fright, kicked the man and ran
off. At last he found Benjamin Franklin,
who took the message and then insisted
that Israel return and pay damages to
the bootblack.
In this fashion Israel, under the
tutelage of Franklin, learned his first lesson
in European politeness and consideration.
From this incident Franklin proceeded
to instruct Israel in the ways of proper
behavior, deriving many of his lessons
from the simple maxims in Poor
Richard's Almanack. Israel, still innocent,
absorbed the teaching carefully, although
none of it ever applied to his later
experiences. Franklin promised that Israel
would be sent back to America, if he
would first return to England with a
message. While still in Paris, Israel met
the stormy and ferocious Captain John
Paul Jones, who also visited Franklin.
John Paul Jones found Israel a bright
and likely young man.
Israel made his way back across the
Channel and went to Squire Woodcock.
The squire urged him to hide in the
dungeon cell for three days, since their
plot was in danger of discovery. When
Israel emerged from the cell, he
recognized that the good squire must have
been killed for his activities in the
American cause.
Having appropriated some of the
squire's clothes, Israel masqueraded as
Squire Woodcock's ghost and escaped
from a house filled with his enemies. He
then traded clothes with a farmer,
wandered to Portsmouth, and signed on as a
foretopman on a British ship bound for
the East Indies. In the Channel, his ship
met another shjp whose captain had
authority to impress some of the men; Israel
was among those taken. That same night
the ship was captured by an American
ship under the command of John Paul
Jones. Having revealed himself to his old
friend, Israel soon became the
quartermaster of the Ranger. With John Paul
Jones, Israel engaged in piracy,
capturing and looting ships.
In Scotland they called on the Earl
of Selkirk in order to rob him, but the
nobleman was not at home. Israel
impressed the earl's wife with his Parisian
manners, drank tea with her, and
assured her that he and John Paul Jones
did not intend to do the lady any harm.
The crew, however, insisted that plunder
was a part of piracy, and so Israel and
John Paul Jones were forced to allow the
men to take the family silver and other
valuables. Israel promised to restore all
articles of value, and when he received a
large sum of money from another exploit,
he and John Paul Jones bought back all
the earl's articles from the men and
returned them to the Selkirk family.
Other adventures did not end so
cheerfully. The sea fight between the Bon
Homme Richard and the Serayis was a
violent and bloody battle, fought along
national lines and devoid of all the
amenities of piracy. Both ships were lost, and
Israel and John Paul Jones, still hoping
to get to America, sailed on the Ariel.
The Ariel was captured by the British
and Israel was again impressed into the
British Navy. By feigning madness to
1768

hide his Yankee origins, he got back to
England safely.
In England, Israel met Ethan Allen, a
strong, heroic, Samson-like figure, held
prisoner by the English. Israel tried to
help Allen escape but was unsuccessful.
Disguised as a beggar, he went to
London, where he remained for over forty
years. During that time he worked as a
brick-maker and laborer, always hoping
to save enough money to return to
America but never finding the economic
situation in London stable enough to permit
saving. A wanderer in an alien land, he
became part of the grime and poverty of
London. During those years he married
a shopgirl who bore him a son. Finally,
in 1826, he secured some credit and,
with the help of the American consul,
sailed for America with his son.
Israel arrived in Boston on July 4,
during a public celebration of the Battle of
Bunker Hill. No one recognized him or
acknowledged his right to be there.
Instead, people laughed at him and thought
he was mad. He returned to his father's
farm, but the homestead had long since
disappeared. Old Israel, his wanderings
ended, found no peace, comfort, or
friendship in his old age. Although
heroes of the Revolution were publicly
venerated, the aged man could not even get
a small pension.
1769

IT IS BETTER THAN IT WAS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pedro Calder6n de la Barca (1600-1681)
Type of plot: Cape-and-sword comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Vienna
First presented: 1631
Principal characters:
Carlos Colona, son of the Governor of Brandenburg
Don Cesar, a Viennese magistrate
Flora, his daughter
Laura, Flora's friend
Fabio, Laura's brother
Arnaldo, Laura's suitor
Dinero, Carlos' servant
Critique:
In his early days, Calderon, as the
inheritor of the good and the bad of
sixteenth-century drama, followed Lope de
Vega's formula for comedy, but with a
tightening of the plot and the
illumination of some of the extra threads. His
cape-and-sword plays dealt with veiled
women, secret rooms, and the
hoodwinking of fathers and guardian brothers by
sweethearts who, like Lope's heroines,
are frequently motherless, lest fooling a
mother might be regarded as disrespect
for womanhood. Calder6n's servants,
derived from the gradoso invented by Lope,
are a combination of a shrewd rascal
faithful to his master and a character
added to the cast to provide humor.
During his ten years of service in Spanish
armies (1625-1635) Calder6n sent back
from Flanders and Italy about ten plays,
including It Is Better than It Was, an
optimistic contrast to the earlier It Is Worse
than It Was. In the celebrated letter
to the Duke of Veragua, written ten
months before his death and listing the
111 plays from his pen, Calder6n
mentioned it as among those still unpublished.
There is little philosophy in this drama,
aside from the shrewd wisdom and salty
comments of the skeptical servant. It is a
comedy of love-making among the
nobility, with the outcome not definitely
known until the lines spoken just before
the hero puts in a good word for the
author to end the play.
The Story:
Flora and her friend Laura, both
motherless, went out veiled into the streets of
Vienna to witness the city's welcome to
the Spanish princess Maria.
Unfortunately, they were recognized by Arnaldo,
in love with Laura, and by Licio, chosen
by Flora's father as the future husband
of his daughter. Flora became intrigued
by the attempts of a handsome stranger
to talk to her. When a quarrel between
him and Licio seemed imminent, both
ladies fled to their homes.
Into Flora's home rushed the stranger,
Carlos Colona, in search of asylum. He
said that he had been forced into a duel
over a veiled woman and had killed his
challenger. Without identifying herself,
Flora promised him protection and hid
him in a closet as Arnaldo appeared,
seeking to kill the man who had murdered
Licio. Her father, Don C£sar, also came
in, having learned from Dinero, the
stranger's servant, that the murderer was
the son of his old friend, the Governor
of Brandenburg. He faced a predicament.
His ties of friendship required that he
help the young fugitive, but as magistrate
he must hunt him down and execute
him.
In the meantime Arnaldo had carried
the news to Laura as an excuse to enter
1770

her house without objections from her
brother and guardian, Fabio; but Fabio
warned the young man never again to try
to talk to Laura while she was unchap-
eroned. Then, seeing in Flora's grief a
chance to further his own courtship,
Fabio left to visit her and in doing so
interrupted her plans to get Don Carlos to
a place of safety.
Because there were too many people
around the house, visitors come to see
the magistrate, Flora and her servant
Silvia decided to hide Don Carlos in the
tower of the building, formerly the town
jail. Later Silvia returned to tell the
fugitive that a heavily muffled woman
wanted to talk to him. Flora, the caller,
knew that it was impossible for her to
go openly calling on the man who had
just killed her fiance\ Don Carlos decided
that the women of Vienna were kind to
strangers. The visitor, after making him
promise not to try to discover her
identity, explained that she had come because
she was the cause of all his trouble, the
motive for the duel, and she wanted to
make amends. He answered that he was
leaving Vienna as soon as possible in
order not to harm her reputation. But the
arrival of Dinero again delayed his
escape. The servant, learning Flora's
identity, prevented her father's discovery of
her secret by claiming that he had
brought a cloak which the girl was merely
trying on.
Don C£sar having gone to post guards
at the gates, Don Carlos gave Flora a
jewel as a token and then slipped over
the wall into the next house. There he
interrupted the love-making of Arnaldo
and Laura, but he won their sympathy
by telling a story about fleeing from a
jealous husband. Arnaldo, having boosted
the fugitive over a high fence to safety,
was himself caught by Don C6sar, who
was pursuing the fugitive, and by Fabio,
who had been awakened by the noise.
By keeping muffled, Arnaldo tricked the
magistrate into believing him the escaping
Don Carlos. Don Ce*sar ordered a jailer
to return the fugitive to the tower prison.
Don Carlos had already taken refuge
there, convinced it was the safest place
in which he could hide. The young man's
presence now offered Don Cesar a triple
problem of honor: his conflicting duties
as father, friend, and magistrate.
Meanwhile, Arnaldo, finding Don Carlos in
the tower, started a quarrel. The noise of
the fight brought Don Cesar to the scene.
He scoffed at Arnaldo's accusations that
the young man was secretly visiting
Flora; his own jailer had brought the
young man there. Denounced as a
scandalmonger, Arnaldo was thrown out of
the house.
Laura, veiled, was an early morning
visitor to the tower. At first Flora, also in
disguise, saw in her friend a possible
rival; but Laura, thinking that the
prisoner was Arnaldo, had come to confess
her indiscretion, if necessary, in order to
free him. The others, bursting in, found
the two veiled women. Arnaldo, realizing
that one was Laura, confessed his
misdeeds and asked to marry her, but only
after he had killed Don Carlos. The
prisoner then concocted a story that placated
everybody. Laura's honor was now safe.
Don Carlos also assured Don C6sar that
he had sought asylum in the house- of
his father's friend, not of his sweetheart's
father; and he pointed out his marriage
to Flora would resolve all problems. So
all ended happily with a double wedding.
1771

IT IS WORSE THAN IT WAS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pedro Calder6n de la Barca (1600-1681)
Type of plot: Cape-and-sword comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Gaeta, Italy
First presented: 1630
Principal characters:
Cesar Ursino, a fugitive from justice
Camacho, his servant
Flerida Colona, whom C£sar loves
Juan de Arag6n, Governor of Gaeta
Lisarda, his daughter
Celia, her servant
Don Juan, Lisarda's suitor and Cesar's friend
Critique:
In his early days, Calder6n imitated
the complicated plots of Lope de Vega's
cape-and-sword plays with their disguises
and mistaken identities. A good example
is It Is Worse than It Was (Peor estd
que estaba), first presented in 1630 and
appearing in the first "Parte" of twelve
plays by Calder6n published in 1635.
Later it was corrected and reprinted in
1682 by Calder6n's friend, Juan de Vera
Tassis. Because many seventeenth-century
Spanish dramatists were competing with
Lope for popularity, the Jesuit-trained
Calder6n, to make his plays different,
added an interest in philosophy and logic.
His characters, as one critic has put it,
make love like debaters. Lisarda,
inquiring how C£sar can love her without
having seen her, is answered by an
exposition of how blind people can admire
what they cannot see. For additional
differentiation, Calder6n borrowed from the
Gongoristic literary practice, then
popular, and provided word puzzles for his
audiences, as when he refers to a diamond
bribe given a servant as an "errant star,"
or played with metaphors, as when C6sar
speaks of the dawn "crowned with roses
and carnations." But Calder6n was also
a skilled poet and dramatist, even in his
early days. His thoughts are clothed in
word music, and his plots, in spite of
their complications, are mechanically
correct and exciting to follow.
The Story:
When Juan de Arag6n, Governor of
Gaeta, received a letter from his old
friend Alonso Colona of Naples, saying
that his daughter had run off with a
murderer, Ce*sar Ursino, that official was
so upset and incoherent that his daughter
Lisarda was sure that her own guilty
secret had been discovered, for she had
been going veiled to assignations with a
romantic wooer. This gallant, who called
himself Fabio, was really C£sar. He was
deeply interested in the veiled girl whom
he was meeting, much to the dismay of
his servant Camacho, who remonstrated
with his master and reminded him that
he was to marry Florida.
One day C£sar ran across his old friend,
Don Juan, who had returned from
Flanders to visit an old soldier friend of his
and to pay court to Lisarda. About the
same time F16rida Colona arrived in
Gaeta from Naples and appealed for help
to the governor's daughter. Calling
herself Laura, she explained that her
sweetheart was in flight after having killed a
man who had molested her, and that she
was following him.
During her next meeting with C£sar,
Lisarda was persuaded to unveil herself.
Her maid Celia, flirting with Camacho,
also revealed herself. At that moment they
were discovered by the governor, who was
searching for C£sar. The fugitive
declared: "Things are worse than they
were." The governor sent him a prisoner
1772

to the tower, and ordered the veiled girl,
whom he took for the daughter of his
old friend, to be taken under guard to
his own house.
Returning home before her father, Li-
sarda was able to make him believe on
his arrival that his captive had been
Florida, the girl whom Lisarda was already
sheltering in the house. Satisfied with the
way matters had turned out, the governor
dispatched a messenger to his friend in
Naples and promised to keep the
runaway girl out of mischief until she was
safely married. Meanwhile, Don Juan had
been accepted as Lisarda's suitor and was
being entertained in the governor's house.
Lisarda, remorseful that Cdsar had been
jailed because of his passion for her, sent
Celia to him with a note arranging for
another meeting that night. The servant
found him and Camacho comparing
Florida and his new lady. C6sar, immediately
accepting the invitation, promised to bribe
the jailer for a night of freedom. Bribery
was not necessary, however. Don Juan,
on his arrival to visit the prisoner,
announced that the jailer was his old
military comrade, who would let C6sar out on
parole. Cesar had hoped to keep his friend
from learning about the veiled woman,
but was glad of Don Juan's help when
his pistol went off unexpectedly,
revealing his presence in Lisarda's room. Don
Juan, who was staying in the governor's
house, arrived first on the scene,
recognized Cesar, and aided him to escape.
Don Juan debated all night whether
to challenge C£sar as a rival or to aid him
as a friend. Unable to make up his mind,
he hesitated about accepting the
governor's offer of immediate marriage to
Lisarda. While he was debating with
himself, the early-rising Flerida found him in
the patio. Her general remarks about C&
sar and their adventures together in the
past convinced Don Juan that she had
been the girl in Cesar's company the
night before. During their discussion
Florida learned for the first time that Cesar
was in the Gaeta jail.
When her attempts to visit him aroused
Lisarda's jealousy, the governor,
overhearing part of the conversation between the
girls, almost uncovered the truth about
Lisarda's secret meetings. But Lisarda
managed to keep her secret from her
father. She also promised Flerida a full
explanation of everything that had
happened.
Once more Don Juan visited C6sar in
jail. Camacho, by his quick wit, managed
to save Lisarda's good name, but all was
nearly discovered when the governor
arrived with news that he had made
arrangements for Cesar's immediate
marriage to Florida. Unable to understand
the young man's surprise at news of his
sweetheart, he insisted that he had found
them together the previous night.
To get the truth, Don Juan gathered
everyone concerned at the governor's
house. There Lisarda, to escape scandal,
was compelled to see Florida paired off
with Cesar while she had to be satisfied
with Don Juan. To complete the round
of weddings, Celia and Camacho were
paired off with each other.
1773

THE ITALIAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of plot: 1758
Locale: Italy
First published: 1797
Principal characters:
Vincentio di Vivaldi, a young nobleman of Naples
Ellena di Rosalba, loved by Vincentio
The Marchess di Vivaldi, and
The Marchesa di Vivaldi, VincenuVs parents
Schedoni, the marchesa's confessor, formerly the Count di Bruno
Signora Bianchi, Ellena's aunt
Sister Olivia, formerly the Countess di Bruno
Paulo Mendrico, Vincentio's faithful servant
Critique:
In The Journal of a Tour, an account
of a journey through Holland and
Germany with her husband in 1794, Mrs.
Radcliffe told how on her trip up the
Rhine she had encountered two
Capuchins "as they walked along the shore,
beneath the dark cliffs of Boppart, wrapt
in the long black drapery of their order,
and their heads shrouded in cowls, that
half concealed their faces. . . ." She
saw them as "interesting figures in a
picture, always gloomily sublime." This
vision is commonly believed to have
inspired the character of Schedoni, the
most sinister villain in that gallery of
villains, the Gothic novel. As in her other
books, The Italian, or, The Confessional
of the Black Penitents mingles the wild
or idyllic beauty of nature with scenes
of nightmare and terror. The novel is
wholly a work of the romantic
imagination, lacking both the fantastic super-
naturalism and the turgid sensationalism
of her rivals in this specialized genre.
The Story:
Vincentio di Vivaldi saw Ellena di
Rosalba for the first time at the Church
of San Lorenzo in Naples. So impressed
was he by the sweetness of her voice and
the grace of her person that at the end of
the service he followed the girl and her
elderly companion in the hope that the
fair unknown would put aside her veil
so that he might catch a glimpse of her
features. When the elderly woman
stumbled and fell, Vivaldi seized the
opportunity to offer her his arm, a gallant
gesture which gave him the excuse to
accompany the two women to the Villa
Altieri, their modest home on an
eminence overlooking the bay of Naples.
The next day he returned to ask after
the health of Signora Bianchi, as the
older woman was named. Although the
matron received her guest courteously,
Ellena did not appear. Thrown into a
mood of despondency by her absence,
he inquired of his acquaintances into the
girl's family, but learned only that she
was an orphan, the niece and ward of
her aged relative.
That night, resolved to see Ellena
again, he left a reception given by his
mother and repaired to the Villa Altieri.
The hour was late and only one window
was lighted. Through a lattice he saw
Ellena playing on net lute while she
sang a midnight hymn to the Virgin.
Entranced, he drew near the lattice and
heard her pronounce his name; but when
he revealed himself the girl closed the
lattice and left the room. Vivaldi lingered
in the garden for some time before
returning to Naples. Lost in reverie, he
was passing under a shattered archway
extending over the road when a shadowy
figure in a monk's robe glided across his
Eath and in a ghostly whisper warned
im to beware of future visits to the
1774

villa.
Thinking that the warning had been
given by a rival, he returned the next
night in the company of his friend
Bdnorma. Again the dark figure appeared
and uttered a sepulchral warning. Later,
as the two young men were passing under
the arch, the figure showed itself once
more. Vivaldi and Bonorma drew their
swords and entered the ancient fortress in
search of the mysterious visitant. They
found no trace of anyone lurking in the
ruins.
Still believing that these visitations
were the work of a rival, Vivaldi decided
to end his suspense by making a
declaration for Ellena's hand. Signora Bianchi
listened to his proposal and then
reminded him that a family as old and
illustrious as his own would object to an
alliance with a girl of Ellena's humble
station. Vivaldi realized that she spoke
wisely, but with all the fervor of a young
man in love he argued his suit so
eloquently that at last Signora Bianchi
withdrew her refusal. After Vivaldi had made
repeated visits to the villa, a night came
when the aged woman placed Ellena's
hand in his and gave them her blessing.
To Vivaldi's great joy it was decided that
the marriage would be solemnized during
the coming week.
The Marchese and Marchesa di
Vivaldi, in the meantime, had not remained
in ignorance of their son's frequent visits
at the Villa Altieri. On several occasions
the marchese, a man of great family pride
and strict principles, had remonstrated
with his son and assured him that any
expectation of marriage to one so far
below him in station was impossible. To
this argument Vivaldi answered only that
his affections and intentions were
irrevocable. F lis mother, a haughty and
vindictive woman, was equally determined to
end what she regarded as her son's
foolish infatuation. Realizing that the young
man could not be moved by persuasion
or threats, she summoned her confessor
and secret adviser, the monk Schedoni,
and consulted him on measures to
separate Ellena and Vivaldi.
Schedoni, a monk at the Convent of
the Santo Spirito, was a man of unknown
family and origins. His spirit appeared
haughty and disordered; his appearance
conveyed an effect of gloom that
corresponded to his severe and solitary
disposition. Because of his austere manners,
brooding nature, and sinister appearance
he was loved by none, hated by many,
and feared by most. Vivaldi disliked the
monk and avoided him, even though he
had no presentiment of what Schedoni
was preparing for him and Ellena.
On the morning after his acceptance
as Ellena's suitor Vivaldi hastened to the
villa. In the darkened archway the
ghostly figure again appeared and told
him that death was in the house. Deeply
disturbed, Vivaldi hurried on, to learn on
his arrival that Signora Bianchi had died
suddenly during the night. When
Beatrice, the old servant, confided her
suspicions that her mistress had been
poisoned, Vivaldi grew even more concerned.
His own suspicions falling on Schedoni,
he confronted the monk in the marchesa's
apartment on his return to Venice, but
the confessor cleverly parried all the
questions Vivaldi put to him. Vivaldi,
apologizing for his conduct and accusing
speech, failed to realize that he had made
an enemy of Schedoni and that the monk
was already planning his revenge.
Meanwhile, it had been decided that
Ellena was to find a sanctuary in the
Convent of Santa Maria della Pieta after
her aunt's funeral, and Vivaldi was in
agreement with her desire to withdraw
to that shelter during her period of
mourning. While Ellena was packing in
preparation for her departure the next
day, she heard Beatrice screaming in
another room. At that same moment three
masked men seized Ellena and in spite of
her protests carried her from the house.
Thrust into a closed carriage, she was
driven throughout the night and most of
the next day into the mountainous
region of Abruzzo. There her captors
conducted her to a strange religious
establishment where she was turned over to
the care of the nuns. Almost distracted,
1775

the girl was led to a cell where she was
at last able to give way to the extremities
of her terror and grief.
Knowing nothing of these events,
Vivaldi had decided that same night to
explore the ruined fortress and to discover,
if possible, the secret of the strange
visitant he had encountered there. With
him went Paulo Mendrico, his faithful
servant. When they were within the
archway the figure of the monk suddenly
materialized, this time telling Vivaldi that
Ellena had departed an hour before.
Paulo fired his pistol, but the figure
eluded them. Following drops of blood,
Vivaldi and Paulo came at last to a
chamber into which the figure had
disappeared. As they entered, the great door
shut behind them. In the chamber they
found only a discarded, bloody robe.
During the night they spent as prisoners
in that gloomy room Paulo told his
master of a muffled penitent who had
appeared at the Church of Santa Maria del
Pianto and made a confession apparently
so strange and horrible that Ansaldo
di Rovalli, the grand penitentiary, had
been thrown into convulsions. During
this recital they were startled by hearing
groans close by, but they saw no one. In
the morning the door of the chamber
stood open once more, and Vivaldi and
Paulo made their escape.
Alarmed for Ellena's safety, Vivaldi
went at once to the villa. There he found
Beatrice tied to a pillar and learned from
her that her mistress had been carried
off by abductors. Convinced that the
strange happenings of the night were
part of a plot to prevent his intended
marriage, he again confronted Schedoni
at the Convent of the Santo Spirito and
would have assaulted the monk if others
had not seized the distraught young man
and restrained him by force. That night,
by accident, Vivaldi heard from a
fisherman that early in the day a closed
carriage had been seen driving through Bra-
celli. Hopeful that he could trace the
carriage and find Ellena, he set off in
pursuit in the company of faithful Paulo.
On the fourth day of her
imprisonment Ellena was conducted to the parlor
of the abbess, who informed her that she
must choose between taking the veil or
the person whom the Marchesa di
Vivaldi had selected as her husband. When
Ellena refused both offers she was taken
back to her cell. Each evening she was
allowed to attend vespers and there her
attention was attracted to Sister Olivia,
a nun who tried to reconcile her to the
hardships of her confinement. For this
reason, perhaps, Sister Olivia was the
nun chosen by the abbess to inform
Ellena that if she persisted in refusing a
husband proper to her station she must
take holy orders immediately.
Vivaldi, meanwhile, was continuing
his search for Ellena. On the evening
of the seventh day he and Paulo fell in
with a company of pilgrims on their
way to worship at the shrine of a
convent about a league and a half distant.
Traveling with this company, Vivaldi
arrived at the convent in time to witness
the service at which Ellena was to be
made a novitiate. Hearing her voice
raised in protest, he rushed to the altar
and caught her as she fainted. Unable to
secure Ellena's freedom, Vivaldi left the
convent in order to try another plan to
set her free. Though he did not know it,
there was need of haste; the abbess had
decided to punish Ellena by confining
her in a chamber from which none had
ever returned alive. Alarmed for the girPs
life, Sister Olivia promised to help her
escape from the convent that night.
Dressed in the nun's veil, Ellena
attended a program of music given in
honor of some distinguished strangers
who were visiting the convent. There
Vivaldi, disguised as a pilgrim, passed
her a note in which he told her to meet
him at the gate of the nuns' garden.
Guided by Sister Olivia, Ellena went to
the gate where Vivaldi was waiting with
Brother Jeronimo, a monk whom he had
bribed to lead them from the convent by
a secret path. Brother Jeronimo tried to
betray them, however, and Ellena would
have been recaptured if an aged monk
whom they disturbed at his solitary
1776

prayers had not pitied them and unlocked
the last door standing between the lovers
and freedom.
Once in the open air, Vivaldi and
Ellena descended the mountains to the
place where Paulo waited with the horses
for their escape. Instead of taking the
road toward Naples, the fugitives turned
westward toward Aquila. That day, as
they were resting at a shepherd's cabin,
Paulo brought word that they were
being pursued by two Carmelite friars.
Eluding their pursuers, they rode toward
Lake Celano, where Ellena took refuge
for the night in the Ursuline convent and
Vivaldi stayed in an establishment of
Benedictines.
While these events were taking place,
the marchese, who knew nothing of his
wife's scheming with Schedoni, was
suffering great' anxiety over his son's possible
whereabouts and welfare. The marchesa,
on the other hand, was apprehensive only
that Ellena would be found and her plans
undone. When Schedoni suggested in his
sly, indirect fashion that Ellena be put
out of the way for good, she was at first
horrified by his suggestion. Later she
reconsidered and at last she and the sinister
monk came to an understanding. Ellena
was to die. Schedoni, who had spies
everywhere, was not long in locating the
fugitives. As Vivaldi and Ellena were
about to be married in the chapel of San
Sebastian at Celano, armed men broke
into the church and arrested the two
under a warrant of the Holy Inquisition.
Ellena was charged with having broken
her nun's vows and Vivaldi with
having aided her escape. Vivaldi, although
wounded in his struggle to prevent
arrest, was carried to Rome and after a
short hearing before the Inquisitor was
imprisoned to await future trial and
possible torture to extort a confession. Paulo,
protesting against separation from his
master, was also confined.
After the agents of the Inquisition had
taken Vivaldi and Paulo away, Ellena's
guards put her on a waiting horse and
set out on a road which led toward the
Adriatic. After traveling with little
interruption for two nights and two days they
came to a lonely house on the seashore.
There she was turned over to a
villainous-looking man whom the guards called
Spalatro and locked in a room in which
the only furnishing was a tattered
mattress on the floor. Exhausted, she fell
asleep. Twice during the next day
Spalatro came to her room, looked at her with
a gaze that seemed a mixture of
impatience and guilt, and then went away.
At another time he took her to walk on
the beach, where she met a monk whose
face was hidden by his cowl. The monk
was Schedoni. When he spoke to her,
Ellena realized that he was neither a
friend nor a protector but an enemy; and
she fainted. Revived, she was returned
to her room.
Schedoni was determined that Ellena
should die that night. When Spalatro
confessed pity for the girl and refused
to be the executioner, Schedoni swore
to do the deed himself. Going to the
room where the girl was sleeping, he
stood, dagger in hand, over her.
Suddenly he bent to look closely at a
miniature she wore about her neck. Agitated,
he awoke Ellena and asked her if she
knew whose portrait she wore. When she
answered that it was the miniature of
her father, Schedoni was even more
shaken. He was convinced that he had
discovered his lost daughter.
Overcome by remorse for his
persecution of Ellena and the accusation which
had exposed Vivaldi to the tortures of
the Inquisition, Schedoni now tried to
make amends. He and Ellena traveled
as quickly as possible to Naples. After
leaving the girl at the Villa Altieri, the
monk hastened to the Vivaldis' palace
and in an interview with the marchesa
begged, without disclosing his connection
with Ellena, that objections to Vivaldi's
suit be withdrawn. When the marchesa
proved inattentive, he determined to
solemnize, without her consent, the nuptials
of Vivaldi and Ellena.
Called a second time before the
tribunal of the Inquisition, Vivaldi heard
again among those present at the trial
1777

the voice which had warned him on
earlier occasions against his visits to the
Villa Altieri. That night a strange monk
visited him in his cell and asked how
long he had known Schedoni. The monk
then instructed Vivaldi to reveal to the
Inquisition that Schedoni was actually
Count Ferando di Bruno, who had lived
fifteen years in the disguise of a
Dominican monk. He was also to ask that An-
saldo di Rovalli, the grand penitentiary
of the Black Penitents, be called to testify
to a confession he had heard in 1752.
When Vivaldi was again brought before
the Inquisition he did as he had been
told, with the result that Schedoni was
arrested on his way to Rome to intercede
for Vivaldi's freedom.
At Schedoni's trial the mystery that
linked the sinister father confessor and
the two lovers was made clear. Years
before, Schedoni, then a spendthrift
younger son known as the Count di
Marinella, had schemed to posses
himself of his brother's title, his
unencumbered estate, and his beautiful wife. He
had arranged to have his brother, the
Count di Bruno, assassinated by Spalatro
and had contrived a story that the count
had perished while returning from a
journey to Greece. After a proper season
of mourning he had solicited the hand of
his brother's widow. When she rejected
him his passion had caused him to carry
her off by force. Although the lady had
retrieved her honor by marriage, she
continued to look on her new husband with
disdain, and in his jealousy he became
convinced that she was unfaithful. One
day, returning unexpectedly, he found
a visitor with his wife. Drawing his
stiletto with the intention of attacking the
guest, he struck and killed his wife
instead. This was the confession which
had so agitated the grand penitentiary,
for he himself had* been the guest and for
him an innocent woman had died.
Further proof was the dying confession
of Spalatro, whose death had been caused
by a wound inflicted by Schedoni.
Condemned to die for plotting his brother's
death, Schedoni still persisted in his
declaration that Ellena was his daughter.
This mystery was cleared up by Sister
Olivia, who in the meantime had
removed to the Convent of Santa Maria
della Pieta; the nun was the unfortunate
Countess di Bruno and the sister of
Signora Bianchi. Her wound had not
been mortal, but the report of her death
had been given out in order to protect
her from her vengeful husband. Wishing
to withdraw from the world, she had
entrusted her daughter by the first Count
di Bruno and an infant daughter by the
second to Signora Bianchi. The infant
had died within a year.
Ellena, who knew nothing of this
story, had been mistaken in her belief
that the miniature was that of her father,
and it was on her word that Schedoni
had claimed her as his daughter. It was
also revealed that Father Nicola, who
had collected the evidence against
Schedoni, had been the mysterious monk
whose ghostly warnings Vivaldi heard
under the arch of the old fortress.
Appalled by the father confessor's villainy,
he had turned against him after being
wounded by Paulo's pistol on the night
of the midnight search.
Schedoni had his final revenge. In
some manner he administered a fatal dose
of poison to Father Nicola and then died
of the same mysterious drug. In his last
moments he boasted that he was
escaping an ignominious death at the hands
of the Inquisition.
Because of Schedoni's dying
confession, Vivaldi was immediately set free.
During his imprisonment the marchesa
had died repentant of the harm she had
plotted against Ellena. Now the mar-
chese, overjoyed to be reunited with his
son, withdrew all objections to Vivaldi's
suit. With all doubts of Ellena's birth
and goodness removed, he went in
person to the Convent of Santa Maria della
Pieta and asked Sister Olivia for her
daughter's hand in the name of his son.
Vivaldi and Ellena were married in the
convent church in the presence of the
marchese and Sister Olivia. As a mark
of special favor Paulo was allowed to be
1778

present when his master took Ellena for
his wife. If it had not been for the holy
precincts and the solemnity of the
occasion the faithful fellow would have
thrown his cap into the air and shouted
that this was indeed a happy day.
1779

THE ITCHING PARROT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jose* Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi (1776-1827)
Type of plot: Picaresque satire
Time of plot: The 1770's to 1820's
Locale: Mexico
First published: 1816
Principal characters:
Pedro Sarmiento, The Itching Parrot, or Poll, a young Mexican
Don Antonio, Poll's prison mate and benefactor
Januario, Poll's schoolmate
An Army Colonel, Poll's superior and benefactor
Critique:
This novel, written by the most rabid
controversialist among Mexican authors
during the unsettled years when Mexico
was seeking to become independent of
Spain, was suppressed after the
publication of the eleventh chapter in 1816, and
the complete novel was not published
until three years after the author's death.
Scholars have viewed it as the first
Spanish-American novel, and it is reputed
to have sold over one hundred million
copies. Lizardi managed to smuggle into
the novel most of the polemical tracts
which had earned him nationwide fame
as The Mexican Thinker, pamphlets
directed against whoever sat at the head of
the Mexican government, whether he was
Spanish viceroy or revolutionist dictator.
Lizardi, like his fictional hero, spent many
months in jail. He considered himself a
no-party man, and many Mexican regimes
resorted to prison sentences to silence
him; but Lizardi, always placing Mexico
above its rulers, alternately satirized and
advised them.
The Story:
Pedro Sarmiento was born to upper
middle-class parents in Mexico City
between 1771 and 1773; of the actual date,
he was not sure. As a child he was willful,
and his mother's excessive devotion only
made him worse. He became such a scamp
that at last his father sent him off to
school. At school he was nicknamed
Parrot. A little later, when he contracted the
itch, his schoolmates nicknamed him The
Itching Parrot, or Poll for short, and
the name stuck to him through most of his
life.
In addition to his nickname, Poll
acquired many vicious habits from his
schoolfellows. Poll's father resolved to put Poll
out as an apprentice in a trade, but Poll's
mother, not wishing her son to disgrace
her family by becoming a vulgar
tradesman, insisted that the boy be sent to
college. Against his better judgment, the
father agreed, and so Poll was sent off to
study for a college degree. After learning
some Latin, some Aristotle, some logic,
and a little physics, Poll was awarded a
baccalaureate degree by the College of
San Ildefonso.
Shortly after receiving his degree, Poll
went into the countryside to visit a
hacienda owned by the father of a former
schoolmate. At the hacienda he earned the
hatred of his schoolmate, Januario, by
making advances to the latter's cousin,
with whom Januario was infatuated.
Januario took his revenge by tempting
Poll into a bullfight. Poll, who lost both
the fight and his trousers, became the
laughingstock of the hacienda. Still
unsatisfied, Januario tricked Poll into trying
to sleep with the girl cousin. Through
Januario, the girl's mother discovered the
attempt, beat Poll with her shoe, and sent
him back to Mexico City in disgrace.
THE ITCHING PARROT by Jose* Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi. By permission of the publishers, Double-
day & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1942, by Doubleday & Co., Inc.
1780

Upon his return to the city Poll was
told by his father that he had to find some
means of earning a livelihood. Poll,
searching for the easiest way, decided he would
study theology and enter the Church.
Theology quickly proved uninteresting,
and Poll gave up that idea. Trying to
escape his father's insistence that he learn
a trade, Poll then decided to enter a
Franciscan monastery. There he soon
found that he could not stand the life of a
monk; he was glad when his father's death
gave him an excuse to leave the
monastery. After a short period of mourning Poll
rapidly exhausted his small inheritance
through his fondness for gambling,
parties, and women. The sorrow he caused
his mother sent her, also, to an early death.
After his mother died, Poll was left alone.
None of his relatives, who knew him for
a rogue, would have anything to do with
him.
In his despair Poll fell in with another
schoolmate, who supported himself by
gambling and trickery. Poll took up a
similar career in his schoolmate's
company. A man he gulled discovered Poll's
treachery and beat him severely. After his
release from the hospital Poll went back
to his gambling partner and they decided
to turn thieves. On their very first attempt,
however, they were unsuccessful. Poll was
caught and thrown into prison.
Because he had no family or friends to
call upon, Poll languished in jail for
several months. He made one friend in jail
who helped him; that friend was Don
Antonio, a man of good reputation who
had been unjustly imprisoned. Although
Don Antonio tried to keep Poll away from
bad company, he was not entirely
successful. When Don Antonio was freed, Poll
fell in with a mulatto who got him into
all kinds of scrapes. By chance Poll was
taken up by a scrivener who was in need
of an apprentice and was pleased with
Poll's handwriting. The scrivener had Poll
released from prison to become his
apprentice.
Poll's career as a scrivener's apprentice
was short, for he made love to the man's
mistress, was discovered, and was driven
from the house. The next step in Poll's
adventures was service as a barber's
apprentice. He left that work to become a
clerk in a pharmacy. After getting into
trouble by carelessly mixing a
prescription, Poll left the pharmacy for the employ
of a doctor.
Having picked up some jargon and a
few cures from his doctor-employer, Poll
set out to be a physician. Everything went
well until he caused a number of deaths
and was forced to leave the profession.
Trying to recoup his fortunes once
more, Poll ieturned to gambling. In a
game he won a lottery ticket which, in its
turn, won for him a small fortune. For a
time Poll lived well; he even married a girl
who thought he had a great deal of money.
But the life the couple led soon exhausted
the lottery money, and they were almost
penniless again. After his wife died in
childbirth, Poll set out once again in
search of his fortune. His work as a
sacristan ended when he robbed a corpse.
Poll then joined a group of beggars.
Finding that they were fakers, he reported
them to the authorities. One of the
officials, pleased with Poll, secured him a
place in government service.
For a time all went well, but Poll, who
was left in charge of the district when
his superior was absent, abused his
authority so much that he was arrested and
sent in chains to Mexico City. There he
was Tied, found guilty of many crimes,
and sent to the army for eight years.
Through his good conduct and pleasing
appearance, Poll was made clerk to the
colonel of the regiment. The colonel
placed a great deal of trust in Poll. When
the regiment went to Manila, the colonel
saw to it that Poll was given an
opportunity to do some trading and save up a small
fortune. Poll completed his sentence and
prepared to return to Mexico as a fairly
rich man. All his dreams and fortune
vanished, however, when the ship sank
and he was cast away upon an island. On
1781

the island he made friends with a Chinese,
in whose company Poll, pretending all the
while to be a nobleman, returned to
Mexico. When they reached Mexico the lie
was discovered, but the Chinese continued
to be Poll's friend and patron.
Poll stayed with the Chinese for some
time, but he finally left in disgrace after
having introduced prostitutes into the
house. Leaving Mexico City, Poll met the
mulatto who had been his companion in
jail. Along with the mulatto and some
other men, Poll turned highwayman but
barely escaped with his life from their first
holdup. Frightened, Poll went into retreat
at a church, where he discovered his
confessor to be a boy he had known years
before in school. The kind confessor found
honest employment for Poll as an agent
for a rich man. Poll became an honest,
hardworking citizen, even being known as
Don Pedro rather than Poll or The
Itching Parrot. Years passed quickly. Then
one day Don Pedro, befriending some
destitute people, found the man to be his
old benefactor of prison days, Don
Antonio. The other people were Don
Antonio's wife and daughter. Don Pedro
married the girl, thus completing his
respectability. He lived out the rest of his
days in honesty, industry, and respect.
1782

IVANHOE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1194
Locale: England
First published: 1820
Principal characters:
Cedric the Saxon, of Rotherwood Grange
Wllfred of Ivanhoe, his disinherited son
The Lady Rowena, his ward, loved by Ivanhoe
Isaac of York, a Jewish money-lender
Rebecca, his daughter
Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, a Norman Knight Templar
King Richard I, returned from the Third Crusade
Robin Hood, an outlaw
Critique:
For over a hundred years Ivanhoe has
held its charm in the popular mind as the
epitome of chivalric novels. It has among
its characters two of the most popular of
English heroes, Richard the Lion-Hearted
and Robin Hood, and tells a story of
chivalric romance. It has sufficient action
and color to appeal to a great number of
people. Although Ivanhoe may not be
Scott's greatest novel, it is without doubt
his most popular.
The Story:
Night was drawing near when Prior
Aymer of Jorvaux and the haughty
Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, overtook a
swineherd and a fool by the roadside and
asked directions to Rotherwood, the
dwelling of Cedric the Saxon. The
answers of these serfs so confused the
Templar and the prior that they would
have gone far afield had it not been for
a pilgrim from the Holy Land whom they
encountered shortly afterward. The
pilgrim was also traveling to Rotherwood,
and he brought them safely to Cedric's
hall, where they claimed lodging for the
night. The custom of those rude days
afforded hospitality to all benighted
travelers, and so Cedric gave a grudging
welcome to the Norman lords.
There was a feast at Rotherwood that
night. On the dais beside Cedric the
Saxon sat his ward, the lovely Lady
Rowena, descendant of the ancient Saxon
princes. It was the old man's ambition to
wed her to Athelstane of Coningsburgh.
of the line of King Alfred. Because his
son, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, had fallen in
love with Rowena, Cedric had banished
him, and the young knight had gone
with King Richard to Palestine. None in
the banquet hall that night suspected that
the pilgrim was Ivanhoe himself.
Another traveler who had claimed
shelter at Rotherwood that night was
an aged Jew, Isaac of York. Hearing
some orders the Templar muttered to
his servants as the feast ended, Ivanhoe
warned the old Jew that Bois-Guilbert
had designs on his moneybag or his
person. Without taking leave of their host
the next morning, the disguised pilgrim
and Isaac of York left Rotherwood and
continued on their way to the nearby
town of Ashby de la Zouche.
Many other travelers were also on their
way to the town, for a great tournament
was to be held there. Prince John,
Regent of England in King Richard's
absence, would preside. The winner of
the tournament would be allowed to
name the Queen of Love and Beauty and
receive the prize of the passage of arms
from her hands.
Ivanhoe attended the tournament with
1783

the word Disinherited written upon his
shield. Entering the lists, he struck the
shield of Bois-Guilbert with the point
of his lance and challenged that knight
to mortal combat. In the first passage
both knights splintered their lances but
neither was unhorsed. At the second
passage Ivanhoe's lance struck Bois-Guil-
bert's helmet and upset him. Then one
by one Ivanhoe vanquished five knights
who had agreed to take on all comers.
When the heralds declared the
Disinherited Knight victor of the tourney,
Ivanhoe named Rowena the Queen of
Love and Beauty.
In the tournament on the following
day Ivanhoe was pressed hard by three
antagonists, but he received unexpected
help from a knight in black, whom the
spectators had called the Black Sluggard
because of his previous inactivity. Ivanhoe,
because of his earlier triumphs during
the day, was named champion of the
tournament once more. In order to
receive the gift from Lady Rowena,
Ivanhoe had to remove his helmet. When he
did so, he was recognized. He received
the chaplet, his prize, kissed the hand of
Lady Rowena, and then fainted from loss
of blood. Isaac of York and his daughter,
Rebecca, were sitting nearby, and
Rebecca suggested to her father that they
nurse Ivanhoe until he was well. Isaac
and his daughter started for their home
with the wounded knight carried in a
horse litter. On the way they joined the
train of Cedric the Saxon, who was still
ignorant of the Disinherited Knight's
identity.
Before the travelers had gone far,
however, they were set upon and captured
by a party led by three Norman knights,
Bois-Guilbert, Maurice de Bracy, and
Reginald Front de Boeuf. They were
imprisoned in Front de Boeufs castle of
Torquilstone. De Bracy had designs upon
Lady Rowena because she was an heiress
of royal lineage. The Templar desired
to possess Rebecca. Front de Boeuf hoped
to extort a large sum of money from the
aged Jew. Cedric was held for ransom.
The wounded knight was put into the
charge of an ancient hag named Ulrica.
Isaac and his daughter were placed in
separate rooms. Bois-Guilbert went to
Rebecca in her tower prison and asked
her to adopt Christianity so that they
might be married. But the plot of the
Norman nobles with regard to their
prisoners was thwarted by an assault
on the castle by Richard the Lion-
Hearted, The Black Sluggard of the
tournament at Ashby, in company with Robin
Hood and his outlaws. Ulrica aided the
besiegers by starting a fire within the
castle walls. Robin Hood and his men
took the prisoners to the forest along with
the Norman nobles. In the confusion,
however, Bois-Guilbert escaped with
Rebecca, and Isaac made preparation to
ransom her from the Templar. De Bracy
was set free and he hurried to inform
Prince John that he had seen and talked
with Richard. John plotted to make
Richard his prisoner.
Isaac went to the establishment of the
Knights Templar and begged to see Bois-
Guilbert. Lucas de Beaumanoir, the
grand master of the Templars, ordered
Isaac admitted to his presence. Isaac was
frightened when the grand master asked
him his business with the Templar.
When he told his story, the grand master
learned of Bois-Guilbert's seizure of
Rebecca. It was suggested that Bois-Guilbert
was under a spell cast by Rebecca.
Condemned as a witch, she was sentenced
to be burned at the stake. In desperation
she demanded, as was her right, a
champion to defend her against the charge.
Lucas de Beaumanoir agreed and named
Bois-Guilbert champion of the Temple.
The day arrived for Rebecca's
execution. A pile of wood had been laid
around the stake. Rebecca, seated in a
black chair, awaited the arrival of her
defender. Three times the heralds called
upon her champion to appear. At the
third call a strange knight rode into the
lists and announced himself as Rebecca's
champion. When Bois-Guilbert realized
1784

that the stranger was Ivanhoe, he at first
refused combat because Ivanhoe's wounds
were not completely healed. But the
grand master gave orders for the contest
to begin. As everyone expected, the tired
horse of Ivanhoe and its exhausted rider
went down at the first blow, so that
Ivanhoe's lance merely touched the shield
of the Templar. Then to the
astonishment of all, Bois-Guilbert reeled in his
saddle and fell to the ground. Ivanhoe
arose from where he had fallen and drew
his sword. Placing his foot on the breast
of the fallen knight, he called upon Bois-
Guilbert to yield himself or die on the
spot. There was no answer from Bois-
Guilbert, for he was dead, a victim of
the violence of his own passions. The
grand master declared that Rebecca was
acquitted of the charge against her.
At that moment the Black Knight
appeared, followed by a band of knights
and men-at-arms. It was King Richard,
come to arrest Rebecca's accusers on a
charge of treason. The grand master saw
the flag of the Temple hauled down and
the royal standard raised in its place.
King Richard had returned in secret
to reclaim his throne. Robin Hood
became his true follower. Athelstane
relinquished his claims to Lady Rowena's
hand so that she and Ivanhoe could be
married. Cedric the Saxon, reconciled at
last with his son, gave his consent, and
Richard himself graced their wedding.
Isaac and Rebecca left England for
Granada, hoping to find in that foreign
land greater happiness than could evet
be theirs in England.
1785

JACK OF NEWBERRY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Deloney (1543M607?)
Type of plot: Picaresque adventure
Time of plot: Reign of Henry VIII
Locale: England
First published: 1597
Principal characters:
Jack Winchcomb, a weaver
Jack's Master's Widow
Jack's Second Wife
Henry VIII, King of England
Queen Catherine, his wife
Cardinal Wolsey, Lord Chancellor of England
Critique:
Jack of Newberry, originally titled The
Pleasant Historie of John Winchcomb, in
his Younger Yeares called Jack of
Newberry, the Famous and Worthy Clothier
of England, is an important work
because it marks the first successful attempt
of any writer to use the material found
in the lives of ordinary working people
as the material for prose fiction. For this
reason Dcloney's book marks a great step
toward the novel as we know it today.
In a day when authors were writing
about the gentry and nobility and were
dedicating books to them, Thomas
Deloney wrote about the lower classes and
dedicated his volumes to them. Since
almost no original copies of his
publications have come down to modern times,
it is a fairly safe guess that Deloney
found a ready audience for his materials.
Even the style in which he wrote
smacked of the language of the people,
rather than the absurdly elevated and
involved style of such authors as Lyly,
author of Euphues, and Sir Philip Sidney.
Like his own Jack of Newberry, Deloney
was a man of the people and a cloth
weaver by trade. The pictures Deloney
gave of bourgeois England were
exaggerated, but highly entertaining. The real
Jack of Newberry is known to have died
there in 1519.
The Story:
In the days of King Henry VIII there
lived in the English town of Newberry
a young weaver named Jack Winchcomb.
As a young man he was something of a
prodigal, spending as much as he made
and having a reputation as a gay young
fellow, known in all the county of
Berkshire as Jack of Newberry. But after his
master died, Jack changed his ways, for
his mistress, having acquired a fondness
for the young man, entrusted to him the
entirety of her husband's business. Jack
became a careful man, both with his
mistress* affairs and with his own, and soon
lost his reputation for prodigality. In its
place he acquired a reputation as an
honest, hardworking, and intelligent
businessman.
His mistress thought so highly of Jack
that she even made him an adviser in
affairs of the heart. His advice was of
little value to her, however, for she had
already made up her mind, despite the
difference in their years, to marry Jack
himself. She tricked him into agreeing
to further her marriage with an unknown
suitor. When they arrived at the church,
Jack found that he was the man; thus
Jack became her husband and the master
of her house and business.
The marriage went none too smoothly
at first, for despite her love for Jack the
woman did not like to be ordered about
by the man who had once been her
servant. But at last they came to an
understanding and lived happily for several
years, at which interval the good woman
died, leaving Jack master of the business
1786

and rich in the world's goods.
Not long after his first wife died, Jack
remarried, the second time to a young
woman. The wife was a poor choice,
even though he had the pick of the
wealthy women of his class in the
county. Not many months passed after the
marriage, which had been a costly one,
before James, King of Scotland, invaded
England while King Henry was in
France. The justices of the county called
upon Jack to furnish six men-at-arms to
join the army raised by Queen Catherine.
Jack, however, raised a company of a
hundred and fifty foot and horse, which
he armed and dressed at his own expense
in distinctive liveries. Jack himself rode
at the head of his men. Queen Catherine
was greatly pleased and thanked Jack
Winchcomb personally for his efforts,
although his men were not needed to
achieve the English victory at Flodden
Field. In reward for his services, Jack
received a chain of gold from the hands
of the queen herself.
In the tenth year of his reign King
Flenry made a trip through Berkshire.
Jack Winchcomb introduced himself in
a witty way to the king as the Prince of
the Ants, who was at war with the
Butterflies, a sally against Cardinal Wolsey.
The king, vastly pleased, betook himself
to Newberry, along with his train, where
all were entertained by Jack at a
fabulous banquet. After the banquet the king
viewed the weaving rooms and
warehouses Jack owned. Upon his departure
the king wished to make Jack a knight,
but the weaver refused the honor, saying
he would rather be a common man and
die, as he had lived, a clothier.
In his house Jack of Newberry had a
series of fifteen paintings, all denoting
great men whose fathers had been
tradesmen of one kind and another, including
a portrait of Marcus Aurelius, who had
been a clothier's son. Jack kept the
pictures and showed them to his friends and
workmen in an effort to encourage one
and all to seek fame and dignity in spite
of their humble offices in life.
1/
Because of the many wars in Europe
during King Henry's reign, trade in
general was depleted. The lot of the clothiers
and weavers being particularly bad, they
joined together and sent leaders to
London to appeal to the government on their
behalf. One of the envoys they sent was
J3* k Winchcomb of Newberry. The king
/emembered Jack and in private audience
assured him that measures would be
taken to alleviate the hardships of the
clothiers. Another man who had not
forgotten Jack was the Lord Chancellor,
Cardinal Wolsey. In an attempt to
circumvent the king's promise, he had Jack
and the other envoys thrown into prison
for a few days. Finally the Duke of
Somerset intervened and convinced the
cardinal that the clothiers meant no harm.
Some time later an Italian merchant
named Benedick came to the house of
Jack of Newberry to trade. While there,
he fell in love with one of Jack's
workers, a pretty girl named Joan. But she
paid no attention whatever to Benedick
and asked a kinsman to tell the Italian
not to bother her. When the kinsman
did as he was asked, he angered the
Italian, who vowed to make a cuckold of the
kinsman for his pains. With gifts and fair
speech the Italian finally had his way with
the weaver's wife, although the woman
was immediately sorry. She told her
husband, who had his revenge on the
Italian by pretending that he would see to
it that the Italian was permitted to go
to bed with Joan. The Italian fell in with
the scheme and found himself put to bed
with a p;g, whereupon all the
Englishmen laughed at him so heartily that he
left Newberry in shame.
Jack's second wife was a good young
woman, but she sometimes erred in
paying too much attention to her gossipy
friends. At one time a friend told her
that she was wasting money by feeding
the workmen so well. She cut down on
the quantity and the quality of the food
she served the workers, but Jack, who
remembered only too well the days when
he had been an apprentice and journey-

man forced to eat whatever was placed
in front of him, became very angry and
made her change her ways again. His
workers were gratified when he said that
his wife's friend was never to set foot
in his house again.
At another time Jack of Newberry
went to London, where he found a
draper who owed him five hundred pounds
working as a porter. Learning that the
man, through no fault of his own, had
become a bankrupt, Jack showed his
confidence in the man by setting him up in
business again. Friends warned him that
he was sending good money after bad,
but Jack's judgment proved correct. The
man paid back every cent and later
became an alderman of London.
Jack was always proud of his workers.
One time a knight, Sir George Rigley,
seduced a pretty and intelligent girl who
worked for Jack. Jack vowed that he
would make it right for her. He sent the
woman, disguised as a rich widow, to
London. There Sir George fell in love
with her, not knowing who she was, and
married her. The knight was angry at
first, but he soon saw the justice of the
case and was very well pleased with the
hundred pounds Jack gave the girl as a
dower. Still knowing their places in life,
Jack and his wife gave precedence to
Sir George and his new lady, even in
their own house.
1788

JACK SHEPPARD
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: 1702-1724
Locale: London and its environs
First published: 1839
Principal characters:
Jack Sheppard, a housebreaker and popular jailbreaker
Joan Sheppard, his mother
Owen Wood, a London carpenter
Mrs. Wood, his wife
Winifred, their daughter
Sir Rowland Trenchard, an aristocrat
Thames Darrell, Sir Rowland's nephew and foster son of Owen Wood
Jonathan Wild, a thief-taker
Blueskin, devoted henchman of Jack Sheppard
Critique:
Jack Sheppard differs from most of
Ainsworth's work in that it has a rogue
instead of a historical figure for its title
character. Extremely popular in its own
day, it has remained the most widely read
of this author's novels. The plot is based
on the life of a famous English criminal
who so appealed to the public imagination
that both Hogarth and Sir James Thorn-
hill used him as a model in their paintings.
Abounding in characters, circumstantial
incident, obviously delineated protagonists
and antagonists, and scattered references
to historical incident, the novel illustrates
the typically Victorian treatment of the
rogue theme in fiction. Thackeray, critical
of Ainsworth's characterization of
Sheppard, wrote Catherine in protest against
this book.
The Story:
When Owen Wood went to offer his
condolence to Joan, the widow of Tom
Sheppard, who had been executed for
stealing from Wood, he found the woman
living in misery near the Old Mint, a
haven for mendicants, thieves, and
debtors. Joan told Wood that Van Galgebrok,
a Dutch seaman and conjurer, had
prophesied that her baby, Jack, would be
executed as his father had been. The
prophecy was based on the presence of
a mole behind Jack's ear. Wood offered
to take the infant out of that sordid
environment in order to avert fulfillment of
the prophecy, but the mother refused to
part with her child.
Left alone with the infant while Joan
went to the attic to get a key which her
deceased husband had ordered given to
Wood, the carpenter was accosted by a
mob led by Sir Rowland Trenchard, in
pursuit of a young man named Darrell. In
the confusion Jonathan Wild, a thief-
taker, picked up the key which Joan was
to return to Wood.
While a great storm raged, Darrell, the
fugitive, with a baby in his arms, was
again pursued by Sir Rowland. The chase
continued to the flooded Thames, where
Darrell was drowned after a struggle with
Sir Rowland. Wood, on his way home,
rescued the baby from drowning. Some
falling bricks saved him and the baby
from Sir Rowland's wrath. Wood,
understanding little of the night's strange
events, took the child home with him. He
named the boy Thames Darrell.
Twelve years later Wood had taken
Jack Sheppard as an apprentice in his
carpenter shop, but he found the boy
indifferent and listless in his work. Thames
Darrell, reared by the Woods, was a model
apprentice. A third child in the
household was Winifred, Wood's daughter, a
charming, beautiful girl. The three
1789

twelve-year-olds were very fond of each
other.
Mrs. Wood, a termagant, had long
berated her husband for his kindness to
Jack and to Joan Sheppard, who lived
modestly and respectably in Willesden.
Following an episode in which Thames
was injured while trying to prevent injury
to Jack, Mrs. Wood reprimanded Jack and
predicted that he would come to the same
end that his father had met. Her
chastisement was strong enough to arouse a spirit
of misdemeanor and criminality in Jack.
Jonathan Wild, who had hanged Tom
Sheppard, boasted that he would hang the
son as well. A resolute and subtle plotter,
he worked slyly to bring about the boy's
ruin. One day he gave Jack the key which
he had found on the floor of the Mint
twelve years before. It was Wood's master
key; his hope was that Jack would rob the
carpenter. Investigating Thames'
parentage, Wild learned also that Thames was
the child of Sir Rowland Trenchard's
sister, Lady Alvira, whose husband Sir
Rowland had drowned and whose child
he had tried to destroy on the night of the
great storm. Later Lady Alvira had been
forced to marry her cousin, Sir Cecil Traf-
ford. Lady Trafford was dying, in which
event the estates would revert to her
brother if she left no other heir. Wild
promised Sir Rowland that he would
remove Thames in order that Sir Rowland
could inherit the entire estate. As a hold
over the nobleman, he told him also that
he knew the whereabouts of Sir Rowland's
other sister, Constance, carelessly lost in
childhood to a gipsy.
Wild and Sir Rowland trapped Thames
and Jack in Sir Rowland's house and
accused them of robbery. Imprisoned, Jack
and Thames made a jail break from Old
Giles' Roundhouse, the first of
innumerable and difficult escapes for Jack, and the
last for Thames, who was sent of! to sea
to be disposed of by Van Galgebrok, the
Dutch seaman and conjurer.
Jack was soon fraternizing with the
patrons of the Mint, much to the pleasure
of the derelicts, prostitutes, and gamblers,
who gathered there. It was in this
environment that Joan saw Jack as the
criminal he had become. When she went
there to admonish her son to live a life of
righteousness, she was answered by the
taunts and sneers of the patrons, who
reminded her that she had at one time
enjoyed the life of the Mint. Jack, egged on
by two prostitutes, spurned her pleas.
Joan returned to her little home in
Willesden to pray for Jack.
Jonathan Wild, having rid himself of
Thames, one obstacle in the thief-taker's
scheme to get control of the fortune of Sir
Montacute Trenchard, Thames'
grandfather, set about to remove Sir Rowland
as well. Wild, plotting against the
aristocrat, had him arrested for treason in
connection with a proposed Jacobite uprising
against the crown.
Jack Sheppard used the key given him
by Wild to rob Wood's house. Caught and
jailed in the Cage at Willesden as he was
going to visit his mother, he soon escaped
from the supposedly impregnable
structure. At his mother's house Jack declared
his undying love for her but announced
that he could not return to honest living.
Questioned by Joan as to how long he
would wait to execute his threat against
Jack, Wild, who had followed Jack to
Willesden, answered boldly and
confidently, "Nine."
Nine years later, in 1724, Jack had
become the most daring criminal and jail-
breaker of the day. By that time the
Woods were affluent citizens living in
Willesden. Joan Sheppard, insane because
of worry over Jack, had been committed to
Bedlam, a squalid, filthy asylum. Sir
Rowland had been released from prison.
Thames Darrell, thrown overboard by
Van Galgebrok, had been picked up by a
French fishing boat and carried to France,
where he was employed by and
subsequently commissioned by Philip of
Orleans. Wild had continued in his
pleasures of execution and collecting
keepsakes of his grisly profession.
1790

Jack Sheppard and Blueskin, one of
Wild's henchmen, quarreled with Wild
because he would not help Thomas Dar-
rell get his rightful share of the estate
which Sir Rowland had confiscated, and
Blueskin became Jack's loyal henchman.
The two robbed the Wood home again,
Blueskin slashing Mrs. Wood's throat as
she attempted to detain him.
Jack went to see his mother, a haggard,
demented object of human wreckage, in
chains and on a bed of straw. Wild
followed Jack to the asylum. During a brawl
Wild struck Joan and the blow restored
the poor woman's senses. After her release
from Bedlam, Wild divulged to Sir
Rowland Trenchard the fact that Joan was his
long-lost sister and an heir to the
Trenchard estates.
Wild disposed of Sir Rowland by
bludgeoning him and throwing him into
a secret well. Sir Rowland, almost dead
from the beating, attempted to save
himself by catching hold of the floor around
the opening of the well, but Wild
trampled his fingers until the nobleman
dropped to his watery grave. The thief-
taker, still plotting to secure the Trenchard
wealth, took Joan captive, but she killed
herself rather than be forced into a
marriage with the villain. At her funeral Jack
was apprehended after a jail break that
required passage through six bolted and
barred doors and the removal of
innumerable stones and bricks from the prison
walls.
In the meantime Thames Darrell had
returned from France to visit in the Wood
household. Through information
contained in a packet of letters which reached
him in circuitous fashion, he learned that
his father, the fugitive known only as
Darrell, had been the French Marquis de
Chatillon. His paternity proved, he
inherited the Trenchard estates as well. He
married Winifred Wood.
Jack Sheppard, after his seizure at his
mother's funeral, was executed at Tyburn.
As his body swung at the end of the rope,
Blueskin cut him down in an attempt to
save his life. A bullet from Wild's gun
passed through Jack's heart. The body was
buried beside Joan Sheppard in Willesden
cemetery; and in later years the Marquis
de Chatillon and his wife tended the grave
and its simple wooden monument.
Jonathan Wild eventually paid for his crimes;
he was hanged on the same gallows to
which he had sent Jack Sheppard and his
father.
1791

JALNA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mazo de la Roche (1885-
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: Canada
first published: 1927
Principal characters:
Renny Whiteoak, head of the family
Meg, his sister
Eden,
Piers,
Finch, and
Wakefield, their half-brothers
Pheasant Vaughan, Piers' wife
Maurice Vaughan, her father
Alayne Archer, Eden's wife
Grandma Whiteoak
Critique:
One of a series of novels dealing with
the Whiteoak family, Jalna describes the
violent passions of a household that is as
familiar to many readers as John
Galsworthy's fictional Forsytes. The brothers
and sisters are strangely different from
each other, but all are bound together
by family ties which few of them can
understand. Over all towers the somewhat
frightening figure of Grandma Whiteoak,
binding them to her with the uncertain
terms of her will and her unyielding
spirit. This indomitable old woman is a
character lifting the Jalna novels above
the level of popular fiction.
The Story:
The Whiteoaks of Jalna were quite a
family. The parents were dead, and the
children, ranging in age from eight to
over forty, were held together by Renny,
the oldest son, and tyrannized by
Grandma Whiteoak, a matriarch of ninety-nine
years. The family estate of Jalna had been
founded by Grandfather Whiteoak, but
it had dwindled somewhat from its
original greatness. By common consent Renny
managed the farms and the family,
although he frequently encountered
resistance from both.
Meg, the oldest daughter, had in her
youth been engaged to Maurice Vaughan,
a neighbor and a friend of the family.
But while he waited out the long
engagement insisted upon by Meg, he had
become entangled with a low-class girl and
fathered a child, Pheasant. The girl had
disappeared and Maurice had grudgingly
raised Pheasant. Meg, deaf to the pleas
of Maurice and her family for a
forgiving heart, had broken the engagement and
gone into almost complete retirement.
Maurice was never allowed at Jalna again,
although he and Renny served in the
war together and remained friends.
Renny had remained a bachelor, the
head of the family, and a man with quite
a reputation with the women. Only his
passions had been involved in these
affairs, however, and thus it seemed that
he would never marry. Renny accepted
his power and his position but seemed
not greatly to enjoy either.
The rest of the children were half-
brothers to these two. Eden was a poet
and a dreamer. Farm life disgusted him,
and since he had recently had a book
of poetry accepted by a New York pub-
JALNA by Mazo de la Roche. By permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1927,
y Little, Brown & Co.
1792

lisher, he hoped to get away from Jalna
and make his way with his writing.
However, work of any kind was so distasteful
to Eden that it seemed unlikely he could
ever break the ties which held him to
Jalna.
Piers was a plodder, with no flights
of fancy or dreams of grandeur. Doing
most of the manual work on the farms,
he took orders from Renny in a lethargic
way. Renny, learning that Piers had been
seen with Pheasant Vaughan, warned
the boy that such an alliance could lead
only to trouble for both.
Finch was the real problem. Still in
school, he barely managed to return each
term. Different from the rest, he had no
ambition, no drive of any kind. The
family obviously considered him useless, but
they stuck by him because he was family.
Finch brooded. On his lonely walks
through the woods and fields, he often
saw through matters other members of the
family tried to conceal.
Wakefield was just eight, and thus
greatly spoiled. He had a heart condition
which allowed him to get his own way
without effort.
Over them Grandma Whiteoak held
a whip. Her will had been made—and
often changed—to be used as a weapon
over the children and her two sons, who
also lived at Jalna. She was ninety-nine
and a despot. In many ways she was evil,
using her power to force the children to
obey her whims.
The first to cause a real stir at Jalna
was Piers. He and Pheasant eloped.
When they returned home, both Maurice
and the Whiteoaks scorned them. Meg
became hysterical and swore she would
not have Maurice's daughter in her house.
Grandma hit Piers over the head with
her cane and would have hit Pheasant,
but Renny quieted them and said that
Pheasant was now part of the family and
would be treated accordingly. Instantly
everyone, even Meg, accepted his
authority.
Eden went to New York to see his
publisher and there met and married
Alayne Archer, a reader for the
publishing house. She felt she had discovered
him through his poetry and could inspire
him. An orphan, she looked forward to
being part of such a large family. But
when they reached Jalna, she felt an
unexplained coldness. She was warmly
welcomed by all but Piers, who resented the
difference between her reception and
Pheasant's, but she could feel tensions
that were just under the surface.
Grandma was revolting to the gentle Alayne,
who knew she must make the old tyrant
like her if she was to know any peace
at Jalna.
With Alayne, Finch found his first
real happiness. Seeing the artistic need
in the boy, she tried to encourage the
others to help him. Only Renny listened
to her, and because of her arranged to
have Finch take music lessons from a
good teacher. The boy drove the rest of
the family crazy with his practicing, but
for the first time he began to be less
restless.
Eden, reluctant to get down to serious
writing, began to accuse Alayne of
nagging him when she tried to encourage
him. She wanted to get away from Jalna,
for the place was exerting an uneasy hold
on her. Worse, she and Renny were
unwillingly drawn to each other. He kissed
her once, and although they both
pretended it was only a brotherly kiss, each
knew it was more. At last they confessed
their love for each other, but both knew
that they would never bow to it because
Eden was Renny's brother.
Eden grew troublesome about
working at his writing or anything else. When
he was injured in a friendly family
scuffle, Alayne nursed him tenderly, hoping
to hurry him back to health so that they
could leave Jalna and Renny. Pheasant
also helped nurse Eden, spending hours
in his room. When they fell in love,
they too tried to fight it because
Pheasant's husband was family. At last Eden
was able to be about again. Finch, during
one of his wanderings, saw Pheasant in
Eden's arms. He ran to Piers and told
1793

him about his wife and brother. Piers
went prepared to kill them, but Pheasant
escaped to her father's house. Renny and
Piers followed her there. Piers, deciding
that she was his wife and therefore his
responsibility, took her back to Jalna,
where he locked her in her room and
allowed no one to see her for weeks.
Eden fled, leaving Pheasant and Alayne
to face disgrace alone.
When Piers took Pheasant back to
Jalna, Meg, refusing to stay in the same
house with Pheasant, moved into an
abandoned hut on the farm. After a few
weeks, Maurice Vaughan went to see
hei and persuaded her to forgive him
his old sin. Soon afterward they were
married, trying to make up quickly for
all the years they had lost. Alayne
prepared to return to New York alone. There
would be no divorce, no marriage to
Renny. The scandal would be too much
for the family — whose pattern would
never change.
1794

JANE EYRE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: 1800
Locale: Northern England
First published: 1847
Principal characters:
Jane Eyre, an orphan
Mrs. Reed, mistress of Gateshead Hall
Bessie Leaven, a nurse
Edward Rochester, owner of Thomfield
St. John Rivers, a young clergyman
Mary, and
Diana Rivers, his sisters
Critique:
Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre
under the pseudonym of Currer Bell, a
name chosen, she said, because it was
neither obviously feminine nor
masculine. But the emotions behind the book
are purely feminine. Literary criticism
may point to the extravagance, melodrama,
and faulty structure of the novel, but
lasting popularity is sufficient evidence
of its charm and character for generations
of readers. Charlotte Bronte wrote wisely
when she cast her novel in the form of
an autobiography. The poetry and
tension of Jane Eyre marked a new
development in adult romanticism, just as
Jane herself brought to English fiction
a new type of heroine, a woman of
intelligence and passion.
The Story:
Jane Eyre was an orphan. Both her
father and mother had died when Jane
was a baby, and the little girl passed
into the care of Mrs. Reed of Gateshead
Hall. Mrs. Reed's husband, now dead,
had been the brother of Jane Eyre's
mother, and on his deathbed he had
directed Mrs. Reed to look after the orphan
as she would her own three children. At
Gateshead Hall Jane knew ten years of
neglect and abuse. One day a cousin
knocked her to the floor. When she
fought back, Mrs. Reed punished her by
sending her to the gloomy room where
Mr. Reed had died. There Jane lost
consciousness. Furthermore, the
experience caused a dangerous illness from
which she was nursed slowly back to
health by sympathetic Bessie Leaven, the
Gateshead Hall nurse.
Feeling that she could no longer keep
her unwanted charge in the house, Mrs.
Reed made arrangements for Jane's
admission to Lowood School. Early one
morning, without farewells, Jane left
Gateshead Hall and rode fifty miles by
stage to Lowood, her humble possessions
in a trunk beside her.
At Lowood, Jane was a diligent
student, well-liked by her superiors,
especially by Miss Temple, the mistress, who
refused to accept without proof Mrs.
Reed's low estimate of Jane's character.
During the period of Jane's schooldays
at Lowood an epidemic of fever caused
many deaths among the girls. It resulted,
too, in an investigation which caused
improvements at the institution. At the
end of her studies Jane was retained as
a teacher. When Jane grew weary of hei
life at Lowood, she advertised for a
position as governess. She was engaged by
Mrs. Fairfax, housekeeper at Thomfield,
near Millcote.
At Thomfield the new governess had
only one pupil, Adele Varens, a ward of
Jane's employer, Mr. Edward Rochester.
From Mrs. Fairfax, Jane learned that
Mr. Rochester traveled much and seldom
came to Thomfield. Jane was pleased
1795

with the quiet country life with the
beautiful old house and gardens, the
book-filled library, and her own
comfortable room.
Jane met Mr. Rochester for the first
time while she was out walking, going to
his aid after his horse had thrown him.
She found her employer a somber, moody
man, quick to change in his manner
toward her, brusque in his speech. He
commended her work with Adele,
however, and confided that the girl was the
daughter of a French dancer who had
deceived him and deserted her daughter.
Jane felt that this experience alone could
not account for Mr. Rochester's moody
nature.
Mysterious happenings occurred at
Thornfield. One night Jane, alarmed by
a strange noise, found Mr. Rochester's
door open and his bed on fire. When she
attempted to arouse the household, he
commanded her to keep quiet about the
whole affair. She also learned that
Thornfield had a strange tenant, a woman
who laughed like a maniac and who
stayed in rooms on the third floor of the
house. Jane believed that this woman
was Grace Poole, a seamstress employed
by Mr. Rochester.
Mr. Rochester attended numerous
parties at which he was obviously paying
court to Blanche Ingram, daughter of
Lady Ingram. One day the inhabitants
of Thornfield were informed that Mr.
Rochester was bringing a party of house
guests home with him. In the party was
the fashionable Miss Ingram. During
the house party Mr. Rochester called
Jane to the drawing-room, where the
guests treated her with the disdain which
they thought her humble position
deserved. To herself Jane had already
confessed her interest in her employer, but
it seemed to her that he was interested
only in Blanche Ingram. One evening
while Mr. Rochester was away from
home the guests played charades. At the
conclusion of the game a gipsy
fortuneteller appeared to read the palms of the
lady guests. Jane, during her interview
with the gipsy, discovered that the so-
called fortune-teller was Mr. Rochester
in disguise.
While the guests were still at
Thornfield, a stranger named Mason arrived to
see Mr. Rochester on business. That
night Mason was mysteriously wounded
by the strange inhabitant of the third
floor. The injured man was taken away
secredy before daylight.
One day Robert Leaven came from
Gateshead to tell Jane that Mrs. Reed,
now on her deathbed, had asked to see
her former ward. Jane returned to her
aunt's home. The dying woman gave
Jane a letter, dated three years before,
from John Eyre in Madeira, who asked
that his niece be sent to him for
adoption. Mrs. Reed confessed that she had
let him beheve that Jane had died in the
epidemic at Lowood. The sin of keeping
from Jane news which would have meant
relatives, adoption, and an inheritance
had become a heavy burden on the
conscience of the dying woman.
Jane went back to Thornfield, which
she now looked upon as her home. One
night in the garden Edward Rochester
embraced her and proposed marriage.
Jane accepted and made plans for a
quiet ceremony in the village church.
She wrote also to her uncle in Madeira,
explaining Mrs. Reed's deception and
telling him she was to marry Mr.
Rochester.
Shordy before the date set for the
wedding Jane had a harrowing
experience. She awakened to find a strange,
repulsive-looking woman in her room.
The intruder tried on Jane's wedding veil
and then ripped it to shreds. Mr.
Rochester tried to persuade Jane that the
whole incident was only her imagination,
but in the morning she found the torn
veil in her room. At the church, as the
vows were being said, a stranger spoke up
declaring the existence of an
impediment to the marriage. He presented an
affirmation, signed by the Mr. Mason
who had been wounded during his visit
to Thornfield. The document stated that
1796

Edward Fairfax Rochester had married
Bertha Mason, Mr. Mason's sister, in
Spanish Town, Jamaica, fifteen years
before. Mr. Rochester admitted this fact;
then he conducted the party to the third-
story chamber at Thornfield. There they
found the attendant Grace Poole and her
charge, Bertha Rochester, a raving
maniac. Mrs. Rochester was the woman Jane
had seen in her room.
Jane felt that she must leave Thorn-
field at once. She notified Mr. Rochester
and left quietly early the next morning,
using all her small store of money for the
coach fare. Two days later she was set
down on the moors of a north midland
shire. Starving, she actually begged for
food. Finally she was befriended by the
Reverend St. John Rivers and his sisters,
Mary and Diana, who took Jane in and
nursed her back to health. Assuming
the name of Jane Elliot, she refused to
divulge anything of her history except
her connection with the Lowood
institution. Reverend Rivers eventually found
a place for her as mistress in a girl's
school.
Shortly afterward St. John Rivers
received from his family solicitor word that
John Eyre had died in Madeira, leaving
Jane Eyre a fortune of twenty thousand
pounds. Because Jane had disappeared
under mysterious circumstances, the
lawyer was trying to locate her through the
next of kin, St. John Rivers. Jane's
identity was now revealed through her
connection with Lowood School, and she
learned, to her surprise, that St. John
and his sisters were really her own
cousins. She then insisted on sharing her
inheritance with them.
When St. John decided to go to India
as a missionary, he asked Jane to go with
him as his wife—not because he loved
her, as he frankly admitted, but because
he admired her and wanted her services
as his assistant. Jane felt indebted to him
for his kindness and aid, but she
hesitated to accept his proposal.
One night, while St. John was
awaiting her decision, she dreamed that Mr.
Rochester was calling her name. The
next day she returned to Thornfield by
coach. Arriving there, she found the
mansion gutted—a burned and
blackened ruin. Neighbors told her that the
fire had broken out one stormy night, set
by the madwoman, who died while Mr.
Rochester was trying to rescue her from
the roof of the blazing house.
Mr. Rochester, blinded during the fire,
was living at Ferndean, a lonely farm
some miles away. Jane Eyre went to him
at once, and there they were married.
For both, their story had an even happier
ending. After two years Mr. Rochester
regained the sight of one eye, so that
he was able to see his first child when
it was put in his arms.
1797

JASON AND THE GOLDEN FLEECE
Type of work: Classical legend
Source: Folk tradition
Type of plot: Heroic adventure
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Ancient Greece
First transcribed: Unknown
Principal characters:
Jason, Prince of Iolcus
King Pelias, his uncle
Chiron, the Centaur who
JEetes, King of Colchis
Medea, his daughter
Critique:
The story of Jason and the Golden
Fleece has been repeated in story and
song for more than thirty centuries. Jason
lived when great heroes lived and gods
supposedly roamed the earth in human
form. The story of the golden ram and
his radiant fleece is read and loved by
adults as it is by children. The story
has been told in many different forms,
but its substance remains unchanged.
The Story:
In ancient Greece there lived a prince
named Jason, son of a king who had
been driven from his throne by a wicked
brother named Pelias. To protect the
boy from his cruel uncle, Jason's fathef
took him to a remote mountaintop wherf;
he was raised by Chiron the Centaur,
whom many say was half man and half
horse. When Jason had grown to young
manhood, Chiron the Centaur told him
Pelias had seized his brother's crown.
Jason was instructed to go and win back
his father's kingdom.
Pelias had been warned to beware of
a stranger who came with one foot
sandaled and the other bare. It happened
that Jason had lost one sandal in a river
he crossed as he came to Iolcus, where
Pelias ruled. When Pelias saw the lad
he was afraid and plotted to kill him.
But he pretended to welcome Jason. At
a great feast he told Jason the story of
the golden fleece.
In days past a Greek king called Ath-
17
reared Jason
amas banished his wife and took another,
a beautiful but wicked woman who
persuaded Athamus to kill his own children.
But a golden ram swooped down from
the skies and carried the children away.
The girl slipped from his back and fell
into the sea, but the boy came safely to
the country of Colchis. There the boy
let the king of Colchis slaughter the ram
for its golden fleece. The gods were
angered by these happenings and placed
a curse on Athamus and all his family
until the golden fleece should be returned
to Colchis.
As Pelias told Jason the story, he could
see that the young prince was stirred,
and he was not surprised when Jason
vowed that he would bring back the
golden fleece. Pelias promised to give
Jason his rightful throne when he
returned from his quest, and Jason trusted
Pelias and agreed to the terms. He
gathered about him many great heroes of
Greece—Hercules, the strongest and
bravest of all heroes; Orpheus, whose
music soothed savage beasts; Argus, who
with the help of Juno built the beautiful
ship Argo; Zetes and Calais, sons of
the North Wind, and many other brave
men.
They encountered great dangers on
their journey. One of the heroes was
drawn under the sea by a nymph and
was never seen again by his comrades.
They visited Salmydessa where the blind
King Phineus was surrounded by Har-

pies, loathsome creatures, with the faces
of women and the bodies of vultures.
Zetes and Calais chased the creatures
across the skies, and the heroes left the
old king in peace.
Phineus had warned the heroes about
the clashing rocks through which they
must pass. As they approached the rocks
they were filled with fear, but Juno held
the rocks back and they sailed past the
peril. They rowed along the shore until
they came to the land of Colchis.
JEetes, King of Colchis, swore never
to give up the treasure, but Jason vowed
that he and his comrades would do battle
with -^etes. Then yEetes consented to
yield the treasure if Jason would yoke to
the plow two wild, fire-breathing bulls
and sow a field with dragon's teeth.
When a giant warrior sprang from each
tooth, Jason must slay each one. Jason
agreed to the trial.
^Eetes had a beautiful daughter
Medea, who had fallen in love with the
handsome Jason, and she brewed a magic
potion which gave Jason godlike strength;
thus it was that he was able to tame
the wild bulls and slay the warriors.
y^etes promised to bring forth the fleece
the next day, but Jason saw the
wickedness in the king's heart and warned his
comrades to have the At go ready to sail.
In the night Medea secured the seven
golden keys that unlocked the seven doors
to the cave where the golden fleece hung
and led Jason to the place. Behind the
seven doors he found a hideous dragon
guarding the treasure. Medea's magic
caused the dragon to fall asleep, and
Jason seized the fleece. It was so bright
that night seemed like day.
Fearing for her life, Medea sailed
away from her father's house with Jason
and the other heroes. After many months
they reached their homeland, where
Jason placed the treasure at the feet of
Pelias. But the fleece was no longer
golden. Pelias was wrathful and swore
not to give up his kingdom. But in the
night the false king died. Afterward
Jason wore the crown and the
enchantress Medea reigned by his side.
1799

JAVA HEAD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Hergesheimer (1880-1954)
Type of plot: .Period romance
Time of plot: 1840's
Locale: Salem, Massachusetts
First published: 1919
Principal characters:
Gerrit Ammidon, a Yankee sea captain
Taou Yuen, Gerrit's Chinese bride
Nettie Vollar, Gerrit's former sweetheart
Edward Dunsack, Nettie's uncle
Jeremy Ammidon, Gerrit's father
Critique:
Java Head is a novel of colorful
detail and romantic incident, its scene laid
in a historic port town during the period
when the clipper ship was making
America the mistress of the seas. In this
novel Hergesheimer recaptures the spirit
of an era, and by placing the exotic Taou
Yuen against a late Puritan background
he presents also a contrast of civilizations.
One of the interesting features of the
book is the fact that each chapter is
written from the point of view of a
different character.
The Story:
In Salem, Massachusetts, one spring
in the early 1840's, there was concern
because the ship Nautilus, owned by
Ammidon, Ammidon, and Saltonstone,
was seven months overdue. The captain
of the ship was young Gerrit Ammidon,
son of Captain Jeremy Ammidon, senior
partner of the firm. Nettie Vollar grew
more disturbed as the weeks passed. On
the day the Nautilus left Salem, her
grandfather had ordered Gerrit from the
house before he reached the point of
announcing his love for Nettie and
asking her to marry him. The old man's
reason for his action had been that Nettie
was an illegitimate child and, as such,
did not deserve to be married and lead a
normal life. His theory was that the girl
had been placed on earth only as a
punishment for her mother.
JAVA HEAD by Joseph Hergesheimer. By permission of the author and the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1918, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed, 1946, by Joseph Hergesheimer.
Old Jeremy Ammidon also awaited
the return of the Nautilus, for Gerrit
was the favorite of his two sons. The
other son, William, was primarily a
tradesman interested in making money.
Old Jeremy and William clashed
regularly over the kind of trade the firm was
to take, the liberty to be given its
captains in trading, and whether the ships
of the firm should be replaced by the
swift new clippers that were
revolutionizing the Pacific trade. William had
never told old Jeremy that the firm had
two schooners engaged in carrying opium,
a cargo the older man detested. The
atmosphere at Java Head, the Ammidon
mansion in Salem, was kept more or less
in a state of tension because of the
disagreements between the father and
son. Rhoda Ammidon, William's
cheerful and sensible wife, was a quieting
influence on both men.
Not many days later the Nautilus
was sighted. When it cast anchor off the
Salem wharves, Gerrit asked that the
Ammidon barouche be sent to carry him
to Java Head. The reason for his request
became clear when the carriage
discharged at the door of the mansion not
only Gerrit but also his Manchu wife,
Taou Yuen. The sight of her resplendent
clothes and lacquered face was almost too
much for Gerrit's conservative New
England family. Only William's wife was
able to be civil; the father said nothing,
1800

and William declared that the painted
foreign woman was an unpleasant
surprise.
Gerrit's first difficulty came when he
assured his family that the Chinese
marriage ceremony which had united him
with Taou Yuen was as binding as the
Christian service of William and Rhoda.
The people of Salem wished to look
upon the Chinese noblewoman as a
mistress rather than as a wife. Nor did they
understand that Taou Yuen was from
one of the finest families of China, as
far removed from the coolies and trading
classes of Chinese ports as the New
Engenders themselves.
The first Sunday afternoon after the
arrival of the Nautilus Edward Dunsack
appeared to thank Gerrit Ammidon for
bringing a chest from China for him.
The sight of Taou Yuen stirred Dunsack,
largely because he was homesick for
China. When he left Java Head, his
mind was filled with a sense of injustice
that Gerrit Ammidon should have the
Manchu woman as his bride instead of
Edward Dunsack and that Gerrit had
married the Chinese woman instead of
Dunsack's niece, Nettie Vollar.
Back in port, Gerrit saw to the
refitting of the Nautilus. He did not see
Nettie Vollar. Then, on the Fourth of
July, the Ammidons met Nettie on the
street and took her back to Java Head
for the evening, lest she be injured or
insulted by rough sailors on the streets.
She did not see Taou Yuen, however,
for the Chinese woman had remained
in her room during the day. When it
was time for Nettie to return home,
Gerrit escorted her. It was the first time
they had been alone together since he had
been ordered from her home months
before. Gerrit returned to the Ammidon
house realizing that he had done Nettie
a great wrong when he married Taou
Yuen.
The following morning misfortune
struck the Ammidons. Old Jeremy
accompanied his son William down to
the offices of the firm to inspect the
specifications for two new clipper ships,
and among some papers he discovered
a bill of lading for one of the firm's two
schooners engaged in the opium trade.
His anger was roused to such an extent
that his heart could not carry the strain.
He collapsed and died in the office.
After die funeral, Gerrit, sick of the
life ashore, took the Nautilus as his share
in the estate, left the company, and
prepared to return to sea as an independent
trader. Even his wife had become
unbearable to him since he had renewed his
friendship with Nettie. Nevertheless, he
determined to take Taou Yuen back with
him and to establish their household in
Shanghai, where he would no longer face
the complications which arose from
residence in Salem.
One day Edward Dunsack appeared
at the Ammidon home to ask Gerrit to
pay a call on his niece Nettie, who had
been severely injured by a carriage.
Gerrit left immediately, and Dunsack
took the opportunity to attempt the
seduction of Taou Yuen. Failing in his
design, he poisoned her mind with an
account of the love affair between his
niece and Gerrit. In the meantime
Gerrit, after a regretful interview with
Nettie, had gone down to the Nautilus to
regain his peace of mind.
The next day Taou Yuen was driven
in the Ammidon carriage to pick up
Rhoda Ammidon at the Dunsack home,
where die latter had made a call on
Nettie Vollar. Rhoda had already left. On
an impulse Taou Yuen went into the
house to see her rival. Angered because
she thought Nettie commonplace and
plain, Taou Yuen began to contemplate
suffocating the girl. Suddenly Edward
Dunsack, drug-crazed, entered the room
and locked the door. Nettie fainted.
When Taou Yuen repelled Edward, he
threatened to strangle her so as to leave
marks on her throat. To escape such
disfiguration, forbidden by Confucius,
Taou Yuen quickly swallowed some
opium pills lying on the table beside
the invalid Nettie's bed.
1801

When help came a short time later,
Taou Yuen was already unconscious.
She died soon afterward. Edward Dun-
sack had gone mad.
Several days later, after the Christian
burial of Taou Yuen, the Nautilus sailed
from Salem harbor. It carried its young
captain and his new wife, Nettie, to
what they hoped would be a happier
life.
1802

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Romain Rolland (1866-1944)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: Germany, France, Switzerland
First published: 1904-1912
Principal characters:
Jean-Christophe Krafft, a musician
Melchior, his father
Jean Michel, his grandfather
Louisa, his mother
Antoinette, a French girl
Olivier, her brother
Grazia, Jean-Christophe's friend
Critique:
Jean-Christophe is a two-thousand-page
novel originally published in ten volumes,
the painstaking record of the artistic
development of a musical genius. Romain
Rolland set out to portray the adventures
of the soul of his hero and succeeded
magnificently; in addition he broke down
the artistic barrier between France and
Germany. The experiences of Jean-
Christophe are those of every genius
who turns from the past to serve the
future. In 1915 Rolland was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature, in great
part for Jean-Christophe.
The Story:
Melchior Krafft was a virtuoso, his
father Jean Michel a famous conductor.
It was no wonder that Melchior's son,
Christophe, should be a musician.
Louisa, Melchior's wife, was a stolid
woman of the lower class. Her father-
in-law had been furious at his son for
marrying beneath him, but he was soon
won over by the patient goodness of
Louisa. It was fortunate that there was
a strong tie between them, for Melchoir
drank and wasted his money. Often the
grandfather gave his little pension to
Louisa because there was no money for
the family.
Melchior by chance one day heard his
three-year-old Christophe playing at the
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE by Romain Rolland. Translated by Gilbert Cannan. By permission of the publisher*,
Henry Holt & Co.. Inc. Copyright. 1910. 1911. 1913, 1938, by Henry Holt & Co., Inc.
piano. In his drunken enthusiasm,
Melchior conceived the idea of creating a
musical prodigy. So began Christophe^
lessons. Over and over he played his
scales; over and over he practiced until
he was letter perfect. Often he
rebelled. Whipping only made him more
rebellious, but in the end the piano
always pulled him back.
His grandfather noticed that he would
often improvise melodies as he played
with his toys. Sitting in a different room,
he would transcribe those airs and
arrange them. Christophe showed real
genius in composition.
At the age of seven and a half
Christophe was ready for his first
concert. Dressed in a ridiculous costume,
he was presented at court as a child
prodigy of six. He played works of some
of the German masters and then
performed with great success his own
compositions gathered into an expensive
privately printed volume, The Pleasures
of Childhood: Aria, Minuetto, Valse, and
Marcia, Opus 1, by Jean-Christophe
Krafft The grand duke was delighted
and bestowed the favor of the court on
the prodigy.
Before reaching his teens, Christophe
was firmly installed as official second
violinist in the court orchestra, where
his father was concert master. Rehearsals,
1803

concerts, composition, lessons to give
and take—that was his life. He became
the mainstay of the family financially,
even collecting his father's wages before
Melchior could get his hands on them.
All the other phases of his life were
neglected; no one even bothered to teach
him table manners.
When Melchior finally drowned
himself, his death was a financial benefit to
the Kraffts. But when Jean Michel died,
it was a different matter. Christophe's
two brothers were seldom home, and
only Louisa and her musician son were
left. To save money, they moved into
a smaller, more wretched flat.
Meanwhile Christophe was going
through a series of love affairs which
always terminated unhappily because of
his unswerving honesty and lack of
social graces. In his early twenties he
took Ada, a vulgar shop girl, for his
mistress. Because of gossip, he found it much
harder to get and keep pupils. When
he dared to publish a criticism of the
older masters, he lost his standing at
court. He had almost decided to leave
Germany.
At a peasant dance one night he
protected Lorchen, a farm girl, from a group
of drunken soldiers. In the ensuing
brawl, one soldier was killed and two
were seriously injured. With a warrant
out for his arrest, Christophe escaped to
Paris.
Once in France, a country he greatly
admired, Christophe found it difficult to
acclimate himself. He met a group of
wealthy and cynical Jews, Americans,
Belgians, and Germans, but he judged
their sophistication painful and their
affectations boring. His compositions,
although appreciated by a few, were not
generally well received at first.
After a time, with increasing
recognition, he found himself alternately
praised and blamed by the critics. But
he was noticed, and that was the
important thing. Although he was received
in wealthy homes and given
complimentary tickets for theaters and concerts, he
was still desperately poor.
At the home of the Stevens family,
where he was kindly received, he
instructed Colette, the coquettish daughter,
and the younger, gentler Grazia, her
cousin. Without falling in love with
Colette, he was for a time her teacher
and good friend. Grazia, who adored
him, was only another pupil.
One night a blushing, stammering
young man of letters was introduced to
him. It was Olivier, who had long been
a faithful admirer of Christophe's music.
Christophe was immediately attracted to
Olivier, although at first he was not
quite sure why. Olivier's face was only
hauntingly familiar.
It turned out that Olivier was the
younger brother of Antoinette, a girl
whose image Christophe cherished.
Before he left Germany, a Jewish friend had
given Christophe tickets for a box at the
theater. Knowing no one to ask to
accompany him, he went alone and in the
lobby saw a French governess who was
being turned away from the box office.
Impulsively, Christophe took her in with
him. The Grunebaums, the girl's
employers, had expected to be invited also,
and they were angry at the fancied
slight. Antoinette was dismissed from
their employ.
As she was returning to France,
Christophe caught a glimpse of her on the
train. That was all the contact he ever
had with Antoinette. Now he learned
that she had worn herself out by
supporting Olivier until he could enter the
Ecole Normale. When he finally passed
the entrance examinations, she had
already contracted consumption, and she
died before Christophe came to Paris.
Finding a real friend in Olivier,
Christophe took an apartment with him. The
house was only middle-class or less; but
in that house and its inhabitants, and
with Olivier's guidance, Christophe
began to find the real soul of France. Away
from the sophisticated glitter of Paris,
the ordinary people lived calm and
purposeful lives filled with the ideal of
1804

personal liberty.
Olivier became a champion of
Christophe and helped establish his reputation
in the reviews. Then some one, an
important person, worked anonymously on
Christophe's behalf. In a few years he
found himself famous in France and
abroad as the foremost composer of the
new music.
Olivier's marriage to the shallow
Jacqueline separated the two friends. In
his eventful life Christophe made many
more friends, but none so dear as Olivier.
He did, however, discover his anonymous
benefactor. It was Grazia, no longer in
love with him and married to a secretary
of the Austrian legation.
Jacqueline left Olivier, and he and
Christophe became interested in the
syndicalist movement. They attended a
May Day celebration which turned into
a riot. Olivier was fatally stabbed. After
killing a soldier, Christophe fled the
country.
During his exile in Switzerland,
Christophe went through an unhappy love
affair with Anna, the wife of a friend,
and the consequent sense of guilt
temporarily stilled his genius. But with the
help of the now widowed Grazia,
Christophe spent ten fruitful years in
Switzerland.
When he returned to France, he was
sought after and acclaimed. He was
vastly amused to find himself an
established master, and even considered out
of date by younger artists.
Although Grazia and Christophe never
married, they remained steadfast and
consoling friends. Grazia died in Egypt,
far from her beloved Christophe. He
died in Paris. To the end, Christophe
was uncompromising, for he was a true
artist.
1805

JENNIE GERHARDT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: The last two decades of the nineteenth century
Locale: Chicago and various other Midwestern cities
First published: 1911
Principal characters:
Jennie Gerhardt
William Gerhardt, her father
Mrs. Gerhardt, her mother
Sebastian Gerhardt, her brother
Senator Brander, Jennie's first lover
Vesta, Jennie's daughter
Mrs. Bracebridge, Jennie's employer in Cleveland
Lester Kane, a carriage manufacturer, Jennie's second lover
Robert Kane, Lester's brother
Mrs. Letty Pace Gerald, a widow, Lester's childhood sweetheart,
later his wife
Critique:
Jennie Gerhardt, like other of Dreiser's
novels, tells the story of a beautiful and
vital youna girl who is beaten by the
forces of life. Jennie's nobility, her
willingness to sacrifice herself for her family
and others, is part of the reason why she
finds herself cast off by society and
victimized by the accident of her humble
birth. The forces that defeat Jennie are
not malign or cruel (her seducers, for
example, do not toy with her cynically
and cast her aside); rather, these forces
are accidental and inevitable, yielding
the notion that all human life is diverted
from its purpose and its self-control by
the casual forces of nature. Jennie, in
Dreiser's terms, neither sins nor is
overwhelmingly sinned against; things simply
do not work out happily for the heroine
in Dreiser's naturalistic world. This novel
again demonstrates the inevitable play of
external forces that are stronger than
man's will or purpose. The full social and
economic details of the work provide an
interesting picture of urban life in the
Middle West at the end of the nineteenth
century.
The Story:
Jennie Gerhardt, the beautiful and
virtuous eighteen-year-old, was the eldest
of six children of a poor, hard-working
German family in Columbus, Ohio, in
1880. Her father, a glass blower, was ill,
and Jennie and her mother were forced
to work at a local hotel in order to
provide for the younger children in the
family. Jennie did the laundry for the kind
and handsome Senator Brander (he was
fifty-two at the time), and attracted his
eye. Senator Brander was kind to Jennie
and her family. When he was able to
keep Jennie's brother Sebastian out of
jail for stealing some needed coal from
the railroad, Jennie, full of gratitude,
allowed him to sleep with her. Senator
Brander, struck by Jennie's beauty, charm,
and goodness, promised to marry her. He
died suddenly, however, while on a trip
to Washington.
Left alone, Jennie discovered that she
was pregnant. Her father, a stern
Lutheran, insisted that she leave the house,
but her more understanding mother
allowed her to return when her father,
now in better health, left to find work
in Youngstown. Jennie's child was a
daughter whom she named Vesta. At
JENNIE GERHARDT by Theodore Dreiser. By permission of the publishers, The World Publishing Co.
Copyright, 1911, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1923, by Horace Liveright, Inc. Copyright, 1926, by
Theodore Dreiser. Copyright renewed, 1939, by Theodore Dreiser.
1806

Sebastian's suggestion, the family moved
to Cleveland to find work. While her
mother looked after Vesta, Jennie found
a job as a maid in the home of Mrs.
Bracebridge. One of Mrs. Bracebridge's
guests, Lester Kane, the son of a
rich carriage manufacturer, found
Jennie temptingly attractive. When he tried
to seduce Jennie, the girl, though greatly
attracted to him, managed to put off his
advances.
Mr. Gerhardt was injured in a glass-
blowing accident and lost the use of
both of his hands. Again, the family
needed money badly, and Jennie decided
to accept Lester's offer of aid for her
family. The price was that she become
his mistress, go on a trip to New York
with him, and then allow him to establish
her in an apartment in Chicago. Although
Jennie loved Lester, she knew that he did
not intend to marry her because his
family would be horrified at such an alliance,
but once again she sacrificed her virtue
because she felt that her family needed
the offered aid. After Jennie had become
Lester's mistress, he gave her family
money for a house. Jennie was afraid,
however, to tell Lester about the
existence of her daughter Vesta.
Jennie and Lester moved to Chicago
and lived there. Her family began to
suspect that, contrary to what Jennie had
told them, she and Lester were not
married. When Mrs. Gerhardt died, several
years later, Jennie moved Vesta to
Chicago and boarded the child in another
woman's house. One night Jennie was
called because Vesta was seriously ill,
and Lester discovered Vesta's existence.
Although upset at first, when Jennie told
him the story, Lester understood and
agreed to allow Vesta to live with them.
They soon moved to a house in Hyde
Park, a middle-class residential district
in Chicago. Mr. Gerhardt, now old and
ill and willing to accept the situation
between Jennie and Lester, also came to
live with them and to tend the furnace
and the lawn.
Although they were constantly aware
of the increasing disapproval of Lester's
family, Jennie and Lester lived happily
for a time. Lester's father, violently
opposed to the relationship with Jennie,
whom he had never met, threatened to
disinherit Lester if he did not leave her.
Lester's brother Robert urged his father
on and attempted to persuade Lester to
abandon Jennie. Nevertheless, Lester felt
that he owed his allegiance, as well as
his love, to her, and he remained with
her in spite of the fact that they were
snubbed by most of Lester's society
connections.
When Lester's father died, still
believing that his son's relationship with
Jennie demonstrated irresponsibility, he
left Lester's share of the estate in trust
with Robert. Lester was given three
alternatives: he could leave Jennie and
receive all his money; he could marry
Jennie and receive only $10,000 a year
for life, or he could continue his present
arrangement with the knowledge that if
he did not either abandon or marry
Jennie within three years, he would lose his
share of the money. Characteristically,
Lester hesitated. He took Jennie to
Europe, where they met Mrs. Letty Pace
Gerald, a beautiful and accomplished
widow who had been Lester's childhood
sweetheart and who was still fond of him.
In the meantime Robert had expanded
the carriage business into a monopoly and
eased Lester into a subordinate position.
When Lester returned to Chicago, he
decided to attempt to make an
independent future for himself and Jennie. He
put a good deal of money into a real
estate deal and lost it. Mrs. Gerald also
moved to Chicago in pursuit of Lester.
After old Mr. Gerhardt died, Jennie
found herself in a difficult situation.
Lester, out of the family business
because of her, was finding it difficult to
earn a living. Mrs. Gerald and Robert's
lawyers kept pressing her to release him,
claiming this suggestion was for his own
economic and social good. Jennie, always
altruistic, began to influence Lester to
leave her. Before long both were con-
1807

vinced that separation was the only
solution so that Lester could return to the
family business. Finally Lester left
Jennie. Later he set up a house and an
income for her and Vesta in a cottage
an hour or so from the center of Chicago.
Once more established in the family
business, Lester married Mrs. Gerald. Six
months after Lester had left Jennie, Vesta,
a fourteen-year-old girl already showing
a good deal of sensitivity and talent, died
of typhoid fever.
Jennie, calling herself Mrs. Stover,
moved to the city and adopted two
orphan children. Five years passed.
Jennie, although still in love with Lester,
accepted her quiet life. At last she was
able to cope with experience in whatever
terms it presented itself to her, even
though she had never been able to
impose her will on experience in any
meaningful way.
One night, Lester, having suffered a
heart attack while in Chicago on some
business matters, sent for Jennie; his
wife was in Europe and could not reach
Chicago for three weeks. Jennie tended
Lester throughout his last illness. One
day he confessed that he had always loved
her, that he had made a mistake ever to
permit the forces of business and family
pressure to make him leave her. Jennie
felt that his final confession, his
statement that he should never have left her,
indicated a kind of spiritual union and
left her with something that she could
value for the rest of her life. Lester died.
Jennie realized that she would now be
forced to live through many years that
could promise no salvation, no new
excitement—that would simply impose
themselves upon her as had the years in the
past. She was resolved to accept her
loneliness because she knew there was
nothing else for her to do.
Jennie went to see Lester's coffin loaded
on the train. She realized then, even
more clearly, that man was simply a stiff
figure, moved about by circumstance.
Virtue, beauty, moral worth could not
save man; nor could evil or degeneracy.
Man simply yielded and managed the
best he could under the circumstances of
his nature, the society, and the economic
force that surrounded him.
1808

JERUSALEM DELIVERED
'Type of work: Poem
Author: Torquato Tasso (1544-1595)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Middle Ages
Locale: The Holy Land
First published: 1580-1581
Principal characters:
Godfrey de Bouillon, leader of the Crusaders
Clorinda, a female warrior
Argantes, a pagan knight
Erminia, princess of Antioch
Armida, an enchantress
Rinaldo, an Italian knight
Tancred, a Frankish knight
Critique:
Jerusalem Delivered is one of the great
poems to come out of the Italian
Renaissance, and since that time the work has
remained a landmark of heroic literature.
The treatment of the Crusades is highly
romantic, with both God and Satan freely
taking an active part and magicians,
angels, and fiends frequently changing the
course of events. The descriptions of the
fighting are in the typical romantic, chiv
alric vein. The action is rapid, scene
following scene in kaleidoscopic review. In
all, we have here an absorbing tale.
The Story:
For six years the Crusaders had
remained in the Holy Land, meeting with
success. Tripoli, Antioch, and Acre were
in their hands, and a large force of
Christian knights occupied Palestine.
Yet there was a lassitude among the
nobles; they were tired and satiated with
fighting. They could not generate enough
warlike spirit to continue to the real
objective of their Crusade, the capture
of Jerusalem.
In the spring of the seventh year, God
sent the Archangel Gabriel to Godfrey
de Bouillon, ordering him to assemble all
his knights and encouraging him to
begin the march on Jerusalem. Obeying
the Lord's command, Godfrey called a
council of the great nobles and reminded
them stirringly of their vows. When
Peter the Hermit added his exhortations,
the Crusaders accepted their charge, and
all preparations were make to attack the
Holy City.
Within the walls of Jerusalem the
wicked King Aladine heard of the
projected attack. At the urging of Ismeno
the sorcerer he sent soldiers to steal the
statue of the Virgin Mary, hoping to
make the Christian symbol a palladium
for Jerusalem. But next morning the
statue had disappeared. Enraged when
he could not find the culprit who had
spirited away the statue, Aladine ordered
a general massacre of all his Christian
subjects. To save her co-religionists, the
beautiful and pure Sophronia confessed
to the theft. Aladine had her bound to
the stake. As her guards were about to
hght the fire, Olindo, who had long
loved Sophronia in vain, attempted to
save her by confessing that he himself
had stolen the statue.
Aladine ordered them both burned.
While they were at the stake, Sophronia
admitted her love for Olindo. They were
saved from burning, however, by the
arrival of Clorinda, a beautiful woman
warrior who knew that both were
admitting the theft to save the other Christians
from death. Released, Sophronia and
Olindo fled from the city.
Clorinda was a great warrior who
scorned female dress. On a previous
1809

campaign she had met Tancred, a mighty
Christian noble, and Tancred had fallen
in love with her; but she rejected his
love. On the other hand, Erminia of
Antioch had become enamored of
Tancred when he had taken her city, but
Tancred felt only friendship for her.
The Christians came within sight of
Jerusalem. A foraging party encountered
first a small force under Clorinda. She
was so valorous that she defeated them.
The King of Egypt, whose army was
advancing to the aid of Jerusalem, sent
Argantes to parley with Godfrey. The
Crusader chief haughtily rejected the
overtures of the Egyptians, and Argantes
angrily joined the infidel defenders of
the Holy City. Although the Crusaders
met with some initial successes, Argantes
was always a formidable opponent.
Satan was annoyed at the prospect of
the fall of Jerusalem. He induced Ar-
mida, an enchantress, to visit the
Christian camp and tell a false story of
persecution. Many of the knights succumbed
to her wiles and eagerly sought
permission to redress her wrongs. Godfrey was
suspicious of her, but he allowed ten
knights chosen by lot to accompany her.
In the night forty others slipped away
to join her, and she led the fifty to her
castle where she changed them into
fishes. Their loss was a great blow to
Godfrey because the pagans were slaying
many of his men.
Rinaldo, one of the Italian knights
among the Crusaders, sought the
captaincy of a band of Norwegian
adventurers. Gernando, who sought the same
post, quarreled with him, and in a joust
Gernando was killed. For this breach of
discipline Rinaldo was banished.
When Argantes challenged to personal
combat any champion in the Crusaders'
camp, Tancred was chosen to meet him.
On the way to the fight, Tancred saw
Clorinda and stopped to admire her.
Otho, his companion, took advantage of
his bemusement and rushed in ahead to
the battle. Otho was defeated by
Argantes and taken prisoner. Then
Tancred, realizing what had happened,
advanced to meet the pagan knight. Both
men were wounded in the mighty,
daylong duel. They retired to recuperate,
agreeing to meet again in six days.
When Erminia heard of Tancred's
wounds, she put on Clorinda's armor and
went to his camp to attend him. He heard
of her coming and waited impatiently,
thinking his beloved Clorinda was
approaching. But Erminia was surprised
by the sentries, and in her maidenly
timidity she ran away to take refuge
with a shepherd.
When the supposed Clorinda did not
arrive, Tancred went in search of her
and came to the castle of Armida, where
he was cast into a dungeon.
Godfrey received word that Sweno,
Prince of Denmark, who had been
occupying Palestine, had been surprised by
pagan knights and killed with all his
followers. The messenger announced
that he had been divinely appointed to
deliver Sweno's sword to Rinaldo.
Although Rinaldo was still absent,
Godfrey set out to avenge the Palestine
garrison.
Godfrey and his army fought valiantly,
but Argantes and Clorinda were fighters
too powerful for the shaken Christians
to overcome. Then Tancred and the
fifty knights, who had been freed from
Armida's enchantment, arrived to rout
the pagans with great losses. Godfrey
learned that the missing men had been
liberated by Rinaldo. Peter the Hermit
was then divinely inspired to foretell the
glorious future of Rinaldo.
In preparation for the attack on
Jerusalem the Christians celebrated a solemn
mass on the Mount of Olives before they
began the assault. Wounded by one of
Clorinda's arrows, Godfrey retired from
the battle while an angel healed his
wound. The Christians set up rams and
towers to break the defense of the city.
At night Clorinda came out of the city
walls and set fire to the great tower by
which the Christians were preparing to
scale the wall. She was seen, however,
1810

by the Crusaders, and Tancred engaged
her in combat. After he had run his
sword through her breast, he discovered
to his sorrow that he had killed his love.
He had time to ask her pardon and
baptize her before her death.
Godfrey was taken in a vision to
heaven where he talked with Hugh, the
former commander of the French forces.
Hugh bade him recall Rinaldo, and
Godfrey sent two knights to find the
banished Italian. On the Fortunate Islands
the messengers discovered the Palace of
Armida where Rinaldo, having fallen in
love with the enchantress, was dallying
with his lady love. The sight of the two
knights quickly reminded him of his
duty. Leaving his love, he joined the
besieging forces of Godfrey.
With the arrival of Rinaldo, the
Christians were greatly heartened. Then the
Archangel Michael appeared to Godfrey
and showed him the souls of all the
Christians who had died in the Crusades.
With this inspiration, the Crusaders
redoubled their efforts to capture Jerusalem.
The walls of the city were breached.
Tancred met Argantes and killed him in
single combat. Finally the victorious
invaders stormed through the streets and
sacked the Holy City. When the
Egyptians arrived to help the pagan defenders
of Jerusalem, they too were beaten and
their king was slain by Godfrey. Armida,
all hope gone, surrendered herself to
Rinaldo, who had been the most
valorous of the conquerors.
After the fighting was over, Godfrey
and all his army worshipped at the Holy
Sepulchre.
1811

THE JEW OF MALTA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: Malta
First presented: c. 1589
Principal characters:
Barabas, a Jewish merchant
Abigail, his daughter
Ithamore, a slave
The Governor of Malta
Critique:
The Machiavellian character of Bara-
bas dominates The Jew of Malta; the
other characters are merely sketched in.
The plot of the play seems to have come
wholly from the fertile mind of Marlowe,
whose exotic plots and romantic heroes
set a pattern which was followed by
subsequent Elizabethan playwrights, including
Shakespeare. Mechanically, The Jew of
Malta begins well, but it degenerates
into an orgy of blood after the second
act.
The Story:
Barabas, a Christian-hating merchant
of Malta, received in his counting-house
a party of merchants who reported the
arrival of several vessels laden with
wealth from the East. At the same time
three Jews arrived to announce an
important meeting at the senate.
The import of the meeting was that
the Turkish masters of Malta had
demanded tribute long overdue. The
Turkish Grand Seignior had purposely let the
payment lapse over a period of years so
that the Maltese would find it impossible
to raise the sum demanded. The Maltese
had a choice of payment or surrender.
The Christian governor of the island,
attempting to collect the tribute within
a month, decreed that the Jews would
have to give over half of their estates or
become Christians. All of the Jewish
community except Barabas submitted to
the decree of the governor in one way or
another. The governor seized all of
Barabas* wealth as punishment and had the
Jew's house turned into a Christian
convent.
Barabas, to avoid complete ruin,
purposely failed to report part of his treasure
hidden in the foundation of his house.
Then he persuaded his daughter, Abigail,
to pretend that she had been converted
to Christianity so that she might enter
the convent and recover the treasure.
Abigail dutifully entered the nunnery as
a convert and subsequently threw the
bags of money out of the window at night
to her waiting father.
Martin Del Bosco, vice-admiral of
Spain, sailed into the harbor of Malta for
the purpose of selling some Turkish slaves
he had aboard his ship. The governor
was reluctant to allow the sale because
of the difficulties he was having with
the Grand Seignior. Del Bosco, by
promising military aid from Spain, persuaded
the governor to defy the Turks and to
permit the sale.
Barabas bought one of the slaves, an
Arabian named Ithamore. During the
sale, Barabas fawned upon Don Lodo-
wick, the governor's son, and Don Mathi-
as. He invited the two young men to
his house and ordered Abigail, now
returned from the convent, to show favor
to both. In his desire for revenge,
Barabas arranged with each young man,
separately, to marry his daughter. He then
sent forged letters to Don Lodowick and
Don Mathias, and provoked a duel in
which the young men were killed.
Meanwhile Barabas trained his slave,
Ithamore, to be his creature in his plot against
1812

the governor and the Christians of Malta.
Because of her father's evil intentions,
Abigail returned to the convent. Barabas,
enraged, sent poisoned porridge to the
convent as his gesture of thanks on the
Eve of St. Jacques, the patron saint of
Malta. All in the convent were poisoned,
and Abigail, before she died, confessed
to Friar Jacomo, disclosing to him all that
Barabas had done and all that he planned
to do.
When the Turks returned to Malta to
collect the tribute, the governor defied
them and prepared for a siege of the
island.
Meanwhile the friars, in violation of
canon law, revealed the information they
had gained from Abigail's confession.
Barabas, again threatened, pretended a
desire to become a convert and promised
all of his worldly wealth to the friars
who would receive him into the Christian
faith. The greediness of the friars caused
differences to arise among them; Barabas
took advantage of this situation and with
the help of Ithamore strangled a friar
named Bernardine. He then propped up
Bernardine's body in such a way that
Friar Jacomo knocked it down. Observed
in this act, Friar Jacomo was accused of
the murder of one of his clerical brothers.
Ithamore met a strumpet, Bellamira,
who, playing upon the slave's pride and
viciousness, persuaded him to extort
money from his master by threatening to
expose Barabas. His master, alarmed by
threats of blackmail, disguised himself as
a French musician, went to the
strumpet's house, and poisoned Bellamira and
Ithamore with a bouquet of flowers.
Before their deaths, they managed to
communicate all they knew to the
governor, who, despite his preoccupation
with the fortifications of Malta, threw
Barabas into prison. By drinking poppy
essence and cold mandrake juice, Barabas
appeared to be dead. His body was placed
outside the city. Reviving, he joined the
Turks and led them into the city. As a
reward for his betraying Malta, Barabas
was made governor. He now turned to
the conquered Maltese, offering to put
the Turks into their hands for a
substantial price.
Under the direction of Barabas,
explosives were set beneath the barracks
of the Turkish troops. Then Barabas
invited the Turkish leaders to a banquet
in the governor's palace, after planning
to have them fall through a false floor
into cauldrons of boiling liquid beneath.
On signal, the Turkish troops were blown
sky-high, but the Christian governor,
who preferred to seize the Turkish leaders
alive, exposed Barabas' scheme. The Jew
of Malta perished in the trap he had set
for the Turks.
1813

THE JEWESS OF TOLEDO
Type of work: Drama
Author: Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872)
Type of plot: Historical tragedy
Time of plot: About 1195
Locale: Toledo and vicinity
First presented: 1872
Principal characters:
Alfonso VIII, King of Castile
Eleanor of England, daughter of Henry II, his wife
Isaac, the Jew
Esther, and
Rachel, his daughters
Manrique, Count of Lara, Almirante of Castile
Don Garceran, his son
Dona Clara, lady in waiting to the queen
Critique:
Few writers since Shakespeare have
managed to use the dramatic form with
the poetic clarity and tragic force
exhibited by the Austrian playwright, Franz
Grillparzer. Usually the form is too much
for the content or the content
overburdens the play, giving to exposition the
prominence that the expression of passion
should have. Grillparzer avoids these
faults, and contributes new psychological
and moral perspectives which give his
work its distinctive quality. The Jewess
of Toledo tells of a monarch's lapse from
duty because of his sudden passionate
affection for a beautiful but vain young
Jewess. With a simplicity of effect that
defies analysis, Grillparzer makes the
king's discovery of his own foolish
bondage credible, without in the least
detracting from the impression that Rachel,
the Jewess, for all her faults, was
undeniably charming and even to be pitied.
The Story:
Isaac, a Jew, found himself in the
royal gardens of Toledo with his two
daughters, Rachel and Esther. Realizing
that the king was about to visit the
gardens and that no Jews should be there
during the royal outing, he urged his
daughters to hurry from the gardens.
Rachel laughingly refused, declaring that
she would stay and see if the king was
as young and handsome as she had heard.
Isaac answered that Rachel was like her
mother, for his second wife had found
the Christians charming and had had eyes
for nothing but fine clothing, jewels, and
banquets. Esther, on the other hand, was
like her mother, Isaac's first wife, who
had been as good as she was poor.
Rachel sang and danced about while
waiting for the king. She told her father
that perhaps the monarch would find her
charming, would pinch her cheek, and
make the queen jealous. Isaac, frightened
more than ever, hastened to leave the
gardens with Esther.
When King Alfonso appeared, he
invited the crowds to draw near him. He
explained that the people had made him
king while he had been still a child, that
they had rallied around him in order to
depose his uncle, a tyrant, and that they
had then taught him the duties of one
who would be just and good. Count
Manrique turned to Queen Eleanor and
told her of the people's affection for their
ruler. The count declared that the present
king was the noblest of all who ever ruled
in Spain, turning aside petty criticism
with wisdom and justice. The king, half
jesting, replied that he might be an even
better king if he were forced to overcome
THE TEWESS OF TOLEDO by Franz Grillparzer. Translated by Arthur Burkhard. By permission of the
publishers, Register Press, Yarmouth Port, Mass. Copyright, 1953, by Register Press.
1814

some fault. He suggested that the
protection of the people might have kept
him from developing the moral strength
a ruler should have.
The king also urged everyone to enjoy
the respite between wars, for the Moors
were about to start another attempt to
invade Spain. He called his wife's
attention to the English-type garden he had
ordered; he was disappointed that she
had not noticed it.
A messenger, Don Garceran, the son
of Count Manrique, brought news of the
military preparations being made by
Jussuf, the ruler of Morocco. Don
Garceran was making his first appearance
before the king since being assigned to a
frontier post for having stolen into the
women's quarters of the palace to view
Dona Clara, his betrothed.
When the king suggested that the
peasants pray to God for victory, Don
Garceran replied that the churches were
crowded, such was the religious zeal of
the people. One sign of mistaken zeal,
however, was the rough treatment
sometimes given the Jews.
As the king was vowing to protect the
Jews and all other of his subjects, he
received word that a Jew and two girls
were being pursued by the guards. Rachel
came running to the group for protection.
When Queen Eleanor refused to take her
hands, she threw down her bracelet and
necklace as ransom and clasped the king's
knees. King Alfonso asked Esther, who
had joined them, whether Rachel was
always timid, and Esther replied that her
sister was often too bold, too much the
clown. The king, attracted by Rachel,
ordered Don Garceran to shelter her in
one of the garden houses until night,
when there would be no danger of mob
action.
After Don Garceran had escorted Isaac
and his daughters to a shelter in the
garden, the king accosted Don Garceran,
questioning him about the family,
praising the Jews for their long history, and
begging for information about the art of
casual love. Isaac, scolding his daughters
for not attempting to leave, came from
the garden house. He told Don Garceran
that Rachel was her old self again,
laughing and singing, and amusing herself by
dressing herself as a queen with some
masquerade costumes she had found.
Vowing Don Garceran and Isaac to
silence, the king entered the garden house
in time to observe Rachel, dressed as a
queen, pretending to address a portrait
of Alfonso which she had removed from
its frame. In the role of the queen,
Rachel accused the king in the portrait of
having been attracted to the Jewess. The
monarch interrupted this play and assured
the frightened girl that he did indeed like
her and that after the war he might ask
for her. He asked her to return the
portrait to its frame, but she refused. At
that moment the arrival of the queen and
the royal party forced the king to hide in
another room. Count Manrique would
have discovered him had not Don
Garceran intercepted his father and, in the
king's name, put an end to the search.
When the king reappeared after the
queen's departure, he realized how he
had already shamed himself because of
the Jewess, and he asked her to return
the portrait and leave with Don
Garceran. After she had gone, he found that
she had put her own portrait in the
frame. The king was instantly stirred by
the picture as if some magical spell
surrounded it. In confusion, he first ordered
his servant to go after Don Garceran and
demand the return of his portrait; then
he decided to go himself. He also asked
about the Castle Retiro where a former
king had kept a Moorish girl, but he
could not copy such baseness. Finally,
giving in to his passion, he went after
Rachel.
Later, at Castle Retiro, Isaac was
dealing with petitioners to the king, forcing
them to pay heavily for the privilege of
having their messages conveyed. Rachel
complained that King Alfonso did not
give enough time to her, and she was
upset because her dallying with Don
Garceran did not make him jealous. Esther ar-
1815

rived with the news that Queen Eleanor,
Count Manrique, and other noblemen
were joining in counsel, apparently
plotting a revolt against the king. The king,
already feeling guilty about neglecting
the preparation for war, quickly left with
Don Garceran for Toledo. Rachel,
convinced that the king had never loved her,
found no satisfaction in her perfumes
and jewels.
Count Manrique and the noblemen,
with the queen present, considered how
to deal with the Jewess. Buying her off
with gold was suggested, but the king
had gold to give her. Imprisoning her
would be useless, for the king had the
power to release her. Finally, Count
Manrique turned to the queen, who
softly suggested that death was the
answer, death for the woman who had
broken the laws of God. Don Garceran
interrupted the proceedings with an order
from the king to dissolve the meeting.
Count Manrique, dismissing the nobles,
told them to be prepared for action. He
then urged his son to join the rebellion,
but Don Garceran refused. The count
and the others left.
The king then prevailed upon the
queen to listen to him. In a heartfelt
conversation he admitted his guilt, calling
attention to the changes of heart and
mind that are inevitable for man. But
the queen was reluctant to place the
entire blame on her husband. She accused
the girl of using shameless magic. In
anger, King Alfonso defended Rachel as
one who, for all her faults, had never
pretended to a lifeless virtue that made
life empty of warmth. He criticized the
queen for encouraging his nobles to
conspire against him.
The king discovered that the queen
had left while he was talking. In
growing apprehension he pursued the vassals
to Castle Retire He arrived too late.
The castle was in ruins, and Isaac and
Esther told him that Rachel had been
killed. To fire his desire for vengeance,
the king viewed her body, but the sight
of her reminded him not of her charm
but of her wanton guile. Reaffirming his
duty to the people, he forgave Count
Manrique and the others when they
appeared, swordless, to learn their
punishment. He made his infant son king, with
the queen as regent, and set forth for
war against the Moors. Esther, at first
cynical about the quick atonement of the
Christian king, was appalled to find that
her father was more concerned about his
gold than he was over the tragic event
that had involved them all. She
confessed that she, her father, and Rachel
were as guilty as the Christians.
1816

JOANNA GODDEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sheila Kaye-Smith (1888- )
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Rural England
First published: 1921
Principal characters:
Joanna Godden, a wealthy landowner
Ellen Gqdden, her younger sister
Arthur Alce, Joanna's perennial suitor
Martin Trevor, Joanna's betrothed
Albert Hill, Joanna's betrayer
Critique:
Joanna Godden is the powerful story
of a strong and vibrant woman who ruled
her sister and her farm with an iron hand.
She herself, however, was often
bewildered by emotions she did not
understand. When tragedy involved her, she
did not let it ruin her as it might have
lesser women. She simply marshaled all
her forces and went to meet it. That was
Joanna's way. The novel is also notable
for its atmosphere of the English
countryside in all weathers and seasons.
The Story:
After her father's funeral, Joanna
Godden took immediate command of her
sister Ellen and of the prosperous farm,
Little Ansdore. She had always had many
notions about making the farm even more
productive, and she proposed now to
execute these ideas, even though her
neighbors and her advisers thought her a
stubborn and foolish woman. Her
perennial suitor, Arthur Alce, stuck by her,
although he knew he could never change
Joanna's mind about the farm or about
accepting him as a husband.
In addition to the farm, her sister Ellen
consumed much of Joanna's energy. Ellen
must be a lady. To this end she was sent
to school and humored in many other
ways. But Joanna was the boss. No
matter how much she babied Ellen, Joanna
still made all decisions for her. Ellen was
pliable, but she secretly planned for the
day when she could escape her sister's
heavy hand.
Little Ansdore prospered under Joanna.
She shocked her neighbors by painting
her house and wagons in bright colors
and by appearing in loud clothing and
jewels as soon as the period of mourning
was over. In spite of their distrust of her,
they were forced to admire her business
acumen. Many men failed while she
accumulated money in the bank. Through
it all, Arthur stood by her and ran her
errands. Once she felt stirrings of passion
for one of her farm hands, but she
quickly subdued the feeling because the
ignorant lad was unsuitable. Joanna knew
vaguely that she was missing something
every woman wanted, something she did
not completely understand but still longed
for.
When Joanna met Martin Trevor, the
son of a neighboring squire, she knew
almost at once that Martin was the kind
of man she had waited for. Although they
were at first antagonistic, they soon were
drawn together in real love and
announced their engagement. Joanna was
happy; Martin made her feel she was
a woman first and a successful farmer
second. The sensation was novel for
Joanna. Martin's father and clergyman
brother accepted her, in spite of a social
position lower than theirs. Poor Arthur
JOANNA GODDEN by Sheila Kaye-Smith. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1922, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1949, by Sheila Penrose Fry.
1817

Alee grieved to lose her, even though
he had never possessed more than her
friendship. He sincerely wished her
happiness.
The only thing that dimmed their
happiness was Joanna's insistence upon
waiting for the wedding until there
should be a slack time on the farm.
Martin knew that if he gave in to her
he would forever play second fiddle to
Ansdore. On a walk, one rainy day, he
begged her to marry him at once, both
to please him and to show him that he
was first in her heart. She refused, but
at home a few nights later she knew
that she must give in, for herself as well
as for Martin. When she hurried to his
home to see him the next day, she found
Martin gravely ill. He had not been
strong and the walk in the rain had
caused a serious lung congestion. Joanna,
realizing that her happiness was not to
last, felt no surprise when Martin died.
Her grief was so deep that she could feel
nothing, only numbness. She felt that
she had missed the only real happiness
of her life.
The farm claimed her once more, and
to it she gave all her energy and hope.
Ellen also felt Joanna's will. Seventeen and
finished with school, she was a lady. But
Joanna was not pleased with her. Ellen
had more subdued taste than Joanna, and
the two girls clashed over furnishings,
clothing, manners, and suitors for Ellen.
Ellen usually submitted, but her one
ambition was to get out from under Joanna's
domination. Marriage seemed her only
course. When Joanna began to ask Arthur
to escort Ellen various places so that the
young girl would not be so bored, Ellen
thought it would be a good joke to take
Arthur away from Joanna. However,
Joanna herself thought a match between
Ellen and Arthur would be a good thing.
Unknown to Ellen, she asked Arthur
to marry her sister. Arthur protested that
he loved and would always love Joanna.
She, in her usual practical way, overrode
his objections and insisted that he marry
Ellen. Finally he proposed to Ellen and
was accepted. Ellen believed that she
had stolen her sister's lover.
At first Ellen was happy with Arthur,
for she was genuinely fond of him, but
she resented his continuing to run errands
for Joanna. She attributed these acts to
Joanna's domineering ways, never
realizing that her husband still loved her sister.
Because Ellen also resented not meeting
any of the gentlefolk of the area, Joanna
arranged for her to meet Squire Trevor,
Martin's father. It was an unfortunate
meeting. Ellen became infatuated with
the old man, left Arthur, and followed
the squire to Dover. When she asked for
a divorce, Arthur refused. Joanna was
alternately furious with Ellen for her
immorality and sorry for her heartbreak.
At last Ellen went home to Little
Ansdore. Joanna took her in and treated her
like a little girl again.
When a neighboring estate, Great
Ansdore, was put on the market, Joanna
bought it. Her triumph was now
complete; she was the wealthiest farmer in
the area. New power went with the land.
She chose the rector for the village church
and in other ways acted as a country
squire. But she still longed for Martin;
or perhaps only for love. At any rate,
when Arthur refused to stay after Ellen
came home, Joanna for the first time saw
him as a man she might love. Too
sensible to risk more trouble from that
quarter, however, she brushed off his goodbye
kiss and turned her mind back to
Ansdore.
After a time Arthur was killed in a
hunting accident at his new home. His
will, leaving his old farm to Joanna, made
Ellen dependent on her sister as before.
Ellen was furious, but Joanna could see
no harm in Arthur's having left his money
to his friend rather than to his faithless
wife. Meanwhile Joanna would take care
of Ellen, who would no doubt marry
again.
Time began to take its toll of Joanna.
Following her doctor's advice, she
combined a business trip and a vacation.
During that time she met Albert Hill, a
1818

young man thirteen years her junior.
Thinking herself in love with Albert,
Joanna the strong, the moral, the
domineering, gave herself to the young man.
They planned to marry, but Joanna, on
second thought, realized that she did not
love Albert, could never marry him.
Learning that she was pregnant, she
confessed to Ellen, who demanded that she
marry Albert to protect their family name.
But Joanna wanted her baby to grow
up in happiness and peace, not in the
home of parents who did not love each
other. She would sell Ansdore and go
away. As she made her plans, Martin's
face came back to her and gave her
strength. He would have approved. The
past seemed to fuse with the years ahead.
Joanna Godden, her home, her sister,
her good name, and her lover all gone,
still faced the years with courage and
with hope.
1819

JOHN BROWN'S BODY
Type of work: Poem
Author: Stephen Vincent Ben6t, (1898-1943)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1859-1865
Locale: The United States
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Jack Ellyat, a soldier from Connecticut
Clay Wingate, a soldier from Georgia
Luke Breckinridge, a Southern mountaineer
Melora Vilas, Jack Ellyat's beloved
Sally Dupre, Clay Wingate's fiancee
Lucy Weatherby, Sally's rival
Shippy, a Union spy
Sophy, a Richmond hotel employee
Critique:
John Brown's Body, which won the
Pulitzer Prize for 1929, tells, in free and
formal verse, the tragic story of the Civil
War and its effects upon the nation.
Ben6t achieves an effective counterpoint
by weaving several small plots concerned
with fictional characters into the main
plot which we know as the actual history
of the time. He manipulates his
characters so that important phases of the war
are interfused with his minor plots, and
the two are carried forward
simultaneously. His re-creation of the
atmosphere of a burgeoning, adolescent
United States is excellent.
The Story:
Jack Ellyat, a Connecticut youth, had
premonitions of trouble as he walked
with his dog in the mellow New
England Indian summer. He and his family
were Abolitionists. The influence of
Emerson and Thoreau was felt in
Concord, where they talked about an ideal
state. But in Boston Minister Higgin-
son and Dr. Howe waited for reports of
a project planned for Harper's Ferry. In
Georgia young Clay Wingate also
received a premonition of impending
disaster and great change.
John Brown, rock-hard fanatic,
believing he was chosen by God to free the
black man in America, led his troop of
raiders to seize the United States arsenal
at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. The first
man killed in the fracas was Shepherd
Heyward, a free Negro. The South was
alarmed. Federal troops under Robert
E. Lee subdued the Brown party in
fifteen minutes; all was ended but the
slow, smoldering hates and the deaths
to come.
At Wingate Hall in Georgia all was
peaceful. Sally Dupre* and Clay
Wingate were expected to marry. When
Cudjo, the major-domo of the Wingate
plantation, heard of the Harper's Ferry
raid and John Brown, he opined that
the Negro's business was not the white
man's business. In Connecticut Mrs.
Ellyat prayed for John Brown.
Brown was tried at Charles Town,
Virginia. During the trial he denied
the complicity of anyone but himself
and his followers in the raid. He
insisted that he had done what he thought
was right. A legend grew around his
name and mushroomed after he was
hanged. Songs were sung. John Brown's
body rested in its grave, but his spirit
haunted the consciences of North and
South alike.
JOHN BROWN'S BODY by Stephen Vincent Benet. By permmion of Brandt & Brandt and the publisher!.
Rinehart & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1927, 1928, by Stephen Vincent Benet.
1820

Fort Sumter surrendered, and the
Confederate States of America elected
gaunt, tired Jefferson Davis president.
Lank, sad-faced Abraham Lincoln, the
frontier wit and small-time politician,
was President of the United States. He
ordered conscription of fighting men.
Clay Wingate, loyal to Dixie, joined the
Black Horse Troop and rode away to
the war. Jack Ellyat marched off with
the Connecticut volunteers.
Raw soldiers of North and South met
at Bull Run under the direction of
Generals McDowell, Johnston, and
Beauregard. Congressmen and their ladies
drove out from Washington to watch
the Union victory. While they watched,
the Union lines broke and retreated in
panic. A movement to treat with the
Confederacy for peace got under way
in the North. Lincoln was alarmed, but
he remained steadfast.
Jack Ellyat was mustered out after
Bull Run. Later he joined the Illinois
volunteers in Chicago and became known
as "Bull Run Jack." Near Pittsburg
Landing, in Tennessee, he lost his head
and ran during a surprise attack. He
was captured but escaped again during
a night march. Hungry and worn out,
Jack arrived at the Vilas farm, where he
stayed in hiding and fell in love with
Melora Vilas. At last he left the farm
to seek the manhood he had lost near
Pittsburg Landing, but not before he
had got Melora with child. He was
recaptured soon afterward.
Meanwhile Clay Wingate returned
to Georgia on leave. At Wingate Hall
the war seemed far away, for the
successful running of the Union blockade
of Southern ports made luxuries still
available. Lucy Weatherby, a Virginian
whose sweetheart had been killed at
Bull Run, attended a dance at Wingate
Hall and replaced Sally Dupr6 in Clay's
affections. Spade, a slave on the nearby
Zachary plantation, escaped that same
night.
New Orleans was captured. Davis
*md Lincoln began to bow under the
burdens of the war. McClellan began
his Peninsular campaign. Lee inflicted
defeat after defeat on the Army of the
Potomac. Jack Ellyat was sent to a
prison in the deep South. The fortunes
of the Union were at their lowest ebb
after the Confederate victory at the
Second Manassas, and the spirit of John
Brown was generally invoked by editors
and preachers. Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation. In the meantime,
Spade made his way north and swam
across a river to freedom, but when he
arrived in the land of the free he was
railroaded into a labor gang. McClellan
was relieved by Burnside, who, in turn,
was relieved by Hooker, as commander
of the Army of the Potomac. Jack Ellyat,
sick, was returned to the North in an
exchange of prisoners of war.
Slowly the Confederacy began to feel
the effects of the blockade and the
terrible cost of war. Clay Wingate thought
of his next leave—and of Lucy Weather-
by. Jack Ellyat spent the dark winter of
1862-63 convalescing at his home in the
cold Connecticut hills. He had been
assigned to the Army of the Potomac
as soon as his recovery was complete. In
Tennessee, Melora Vilas gave birth to
a baby boy.
Grant and Sherman led the Union
forces to victory in the West; Vicksburg
was surrounded. Hunger and
anti-inflation riots broke out in Richmond
America, meanwhile, was expanding
New industries sprang up in the North,
and the West was being developed. In
Richmond, Shippy, a Union spy posing
as a peddler, promised Sophy, a servant
at the Pollard Hotel, to bring her some
perfume from the North. Sophy knew
that Clay Wingate and Lucy Weatherby
had stayed together in the hotel. Luke
Breckinridge, Sophy's rebel suitor, was
a member of a patrol that stopped Shippy
to search him. When they found
incriminating papers in his boots, Luke
gloated, for he was jealous of Shippy.
Stonewall Jackson was killed by his
own pickets, and Lee, desperate for pro-
1821

visions, invaded the North. Jack Ellyat
was in the Union army that converged
on Gettysburg and was wounded during
a battle there. After three days of bloody
fighting at Gettysburg, Lee fell back to
Virginia. Then Vicksburg surrendered.
Defeated, the South continued to hang
on doggedly. Sheridan marched through
the Shenandoah Valley and left it bare
and burned. Petersburg was besieged.
Luke, along with thousands of other
rebel troops, deserted from the
Confederate Army, and when he headed back
toward his laurel-thicket mountains he
took Sophy with him. Melora and hei
father, John Vilas, traveled from place
to place in search of Jack Ellyat; they
became a legend in both armies.
General Sherman captured Atlanta
and marched on to the sea. During
Sherman's march, Wingate Hall caught
fire accidentally and burned to the
ground. Clay Wingate was wounded
in a rear-guard action in Virginia. The
war came to an end when Lee
surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.
Spade, who had gone from the labor
gang into the Union Army and who
had been wounded at the Petersburg
crater, hired out as a farm laborer in
Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Clay
Wingate returned to his ruined home in
Georgia, where Sally Dupre was waiting.
And in Connecticut Jack Ellyat heard
stories of strange gipsy travelers who
were going from town to town looking
for a soldier who was the father of the
child of the woman who drove the
creaking cart. One day he was standing
beneath the crossroads elms when he
saw a cart come slowly up the hill. He
waited. The woman driving was Melora.
1822

JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. George Craik, 1826-1887)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Turn of the nineteenth century
Locale: Rural England
First published: 1857
Principal characters:
John Halifax, one of Nature's gentlemen
Ursula, his wife
Guy, their oldest son
Maud, a daughter
Abel Fletcher, John's benefactor
Phtneas Fletcher, his invalid son
Lord Ravenel, a landowner
Critique:
The story of John Halifax is one
depicting the simple pleasures of lower middle-
class life in rural England. In the book
there is also a plea that a man be judged
by his merits, not by his social class or
his birth. But primarily the story is one
of simple domesticity, of the real love
that exists among members of a simple
family who place the happiness and
security of others above themselves. The
theme was common among nineteenth-
century authors, one that found
immediate reception from readers who were
slowly awakening to a new social order.
Shortly after its publication the book was
translated into French, German, Italian,
Russian, and Greek.
The Story:
When Phineas Fletcher and his
father, Abel, first saw John Halifax, they
were immediately struck with his honest
face and worthy character. For although
the boy was only fourteen and an orphan,
he would accept help from no one.
Instead, he preferred to make his own way,
even though it meant that he was
always half-starved. Phineas, just sixteen,
and an invalid, would have enjoyed
having John for a companion, but Abel
Fletcher, a wealthy Quaker, put the boy
to work in his tannery. Although Abel
was a real Christian and wanted to help
others, he knew that the boy would be
better off if he helped himself. Then,
too, there was a class distinction between
Phineas and John that even Abel could
not entirely overlook.
Phineas and John became good friends,
the orphan being the only friend Phineas
ever loved as a brother. John rose rapidly
in the tannery because of his honesty
and his willingness to work at any job.
He also had the ability to handle men,
an ability ably proved when a hungry
mob would have burned down the
Fletcher home and the mill which the Quaker
owned. John arranged to have the workers
get wheat for their families, and from
then on they were loyal to him through
any crisis.
When they were in their early
twenties, Phineas and John took a cottage in
the country so that Phineas might have
the advantage of the country air. While
there they met a lovely girl, Ursula
March, who had taken her dying father
to the same spot. John was from the first
attracted to the modest girl, but since
she was a lady he felt that he could not
tell her of his feelings. After the death
of her father, it was learned that she
was an heiress, and to John even more
unattainable. However, John knew
himself to be a gentleman, even if others
did not, and at last circumstances brought
him an opportunity to let her know his
heart. When Ursula saw his true charac-
1823

ter and gladly married him, everyone was
shocked but Phineas. Ursula's kinsman,
a dissolute nobleman, refused to give her
her fortune, and John would not go to
court to claim the fortune, as was his
legal right as Ursula's husband.
After the death of Abel Fletcher,
Phineas lived with John and Ursula and
their children, the oldest of whom was
a lovely blind girl. Abel had made John
a partner in the tannery, and since John
did not like the tan-yard and also since
it was losing money, he sold it and put
the money into the operation of the
mill. Times were often hard during the
next few years, but finally, for political
reasons Ursula's kinsman released her
fortune to John. After settling a large
amount on his wife and children, he
used the rest to lease a new mill and
expand his business interests. His hobby
was a steam engine to turn the mill, and
before long he began to see his project
materialize. The family moved to a new
home in the country and lived many long
years there in peace and happiness. John,
becoming influential in politics, used his
power by choosing honorable men for
office. He made some powerful enemies
too, but his concern was only for the
right. During this time his income grew
until he was a very wealthy man. He
continued to use his money to help others.
The steam engine, built and put into
operation, gave John new advantages,
but he provided generously for his
workmen so that they would not suffer
because of the machine. Then tragedy
struck the family. Shortly after the birth
of their last child, a daughter, the blind
child was taken by death. It was a
sorrow from which John never completely
recovered. The years brought other
troubles to his household. Two of his sons
loved the same girl, the governess of
their little sister. The brothers had a
bitter quarrel, and the loser, who was
the oldest son, Guy, left home and went
abroad, almost breaking his mother's
heart. After two or three years they
learned that Guy had almost killed a
man in Paris and had fled to America.
From that time on, Ursula aged, for
Guv was her favorite son.
Shortly afterward, John learned from
Lord William Ravenel that that
nobleman was in love with the youngest
daughter, Maud. Lord Ravenel was not only
the son of a worldly family; he himself
had led a useless and sometimes wild
life. John would not listen to the man's
pleas, and Lord Ravenel, agreeing that
he was unworthy of her, left without
telling Maud of his love. But John was
to revise his opinion somewhat when,
after the death of his fa?VT- Lord Ravenel
gave up his inherited fortune to pay his
father's debts. After this incident Lord
Ravenel was not heard from for many
years. Maud did not marry. Her parents
knew that she had never lost her
affection for Lord Ravenel, although she did
not know that he had returned her
feelings.
Years passed. The married children
gave John and Ursula grandchildren.
John could have had a seat in
Parliament, but he rejected it in favor of
others. He continued to do good with
his money and power, even when
suffering temporary losses. And always he
longed for his lost blind child, just as
Ursula longed for her missing oldest son.
Their own love grew even deeper as
they reached their twilight years. John
often suffered attacks that left him
gasping in pain and breathlessness, but in
order to spare his family any unnecessary
worry he kept this information from all
but Phineas.
Then came wonderful news: Guy was
coming home. All of the family rejoiced,
Ursula more than any other. They had
six anxious months when he did not
appear and his ship was not accounted
for, but at last he arrived. He had been
shipwrecked and lost, but had eventually
made his way home. With him was Lord
Ravenel, who had gone to America aftei
being rejected by John. Both men had
done well there, but had lost everything
in the shipwreck. In their happy reunion,
1824

the money seemed of little importance.
John knew now that Lord William Rav-
enel had proved himself worthy of Maud,
and the two lovers were at last allowed
to express their love for each other. Guy,
too, began to show interest in a
childhood friend, and another wedding in the
family seemed likely.
John felt that his life was now
complete, his peace and happiness being
broken only by longing for his dead
child. He was soon to join her. One day
he sat down to rest, and so his family
found him in the peaceful sleep of death.
That night, as she sat by her husband's
body, Ursula must have felt that she
could not lose him, for the children and
Phineas found her lying dead beside
her husband. They were buried side by
side in the country churchyard.
1825

JOHN INGLESANT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Henry Shorthouse (1834-1903)
Type of plot: Historical-philosophical romance
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: England and Italy
First published: 1881
Principal characters:
John Inglesant, an Englishman interested in spiritual affairs
Eustace Inglesant, his materialistic twin brother
Father St. Clare, a Jesuit and John's mentor
Charles I, King of England, who used John's services as an agent
Lauretta Capece, John's Italian wife
Cardinal Chigi, John's Italian patron
Critique:
John Inglesant, a philosophical and
historical romance, was done, according to
its author, in the style of the great
American writer of romances, Nathaniel
Hawthorne. In all literature there is probably
no better picture of the complicated
political and ecclesiastical affairs in England
iuring the stormy years of the reign of
Charles I and the ensuing Civil War. In
this novel many of the historical
personages of the time—King Charles,
Archbishop Laud, John Milton, Thomas
Hobbes, and others—make their
appearance, adding to the realism of the story
and demonstrating the parts they played
in seventeenth-century England. While
Shorthouse, in his author's introduction
to the second edition, laid the greatest em
phasis on the philosophical content of the
novel, the modern reader is likely to find
the historical aspects considerably more
important and certainly more interesting
than the nebulous philosophical gropings
adumbrated in the story.
The Story:
The family of Inglesant had long been
loyal to the British crown, which had
conferred lands and honors upon it, and
yet the family also had strong leanings
toward the Roman Catholic Church. Such
inclinations were dangerous during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when
the whole of England was forced to
change religions several times, according
to the monarch who sat on the throne. In
1622 two sons were born to the family,
twins whose mother died at their birth.
One was named Eustace, after his father;
the other, born a few minutes later and
therefore the younger son of the family,
was named John.
In boyhood the twins saw little of one
another. Eustace, the older, was given a
worldly training, for his father, outwardly
conforming to the Anglican Churcn
under James I and Charles I, wished him
to make a place for himself at court. The
younger son, John, was given bookish
training in the classics and philosophy by
various tutors. At the age of fourteen, John
was placed under the tutelage of Father
St. Clare, who was in England on a
political and ecclesiastical mission for his order.
The priest saw in the highly intelligent
and cultured young lad the prospects of
a fine instrument that his order might
use; in addition, he felt that the boy
deserved the training which would make
him fitted for that unquestioning
discipline of the highest order, as the Jesuits
saw it: the discipline that is enforced from
within the individual but controlled from
without.
After several years of study and
training, John Inglesant became a page in the
train of the queen at the court or Charles
I. Father St. Clare had sent him to court
that he might come to the attention of the
Roman Catholic nobles and serve to fur-
1826

ther the interests of the Roman Church in
England.
As the country became more and more
troubled, and civil war threatened because
of rivalry between the Puritans and the
adherents to the crown and the Anglican
Church, the Roman Catholics felt
themselves in a rather strong position with the
king and everyone loyal to him. It was
the dream of Father St. Clare, as a
member of the Society of Jesus, to return
England to the domination of Rome. With
that end in view, he did all he could to
aid the crown against the Puritans.
Because John Inglesant, who came from a
family long noted for its loyalty to the
king, was active as an agent between
Roman Catholic leaders and the crown, he
was often employed on secret missions by
the king. Father St. Clare, who saw
Inglesant as having greater value as an
Anglican communicant with papist
leanings, advised the young man against
conversion to the Roman Church. Inglesant,
puzzled, followed his mentor's wishes.
When fighting broke out between the
Cavaliers and the Puritans, Inglesant
spent much of his time on missions for
the king and Father St. Clare. Eustace
Inglesant, after marrying a rich woman
some ten years his senior, believed the
king's cause doomed to failure and left
England for France. John Inglesant was
sent on a secret mission to Ireland, where
Lord Glamorgan was attempting to raise
an Irish army to aid the royal cause in
England. From Ireland, young Inglesant
was sent to bear tidings of imminent relief
to the royal garrison at Chester, which
was under siege.
Inglesant reached Chester and gave his
message to Lord Biron, the commander.
Weeks went by, but the relief did not
appear. At last the garrison learned that the
king had been forced to deny any part in
the plan for an Irish invasion of England,
because of popular outcry against the
project. Chester was given up to the
Puritans, and Inglesant, wishing to protect his
monarch, permitted himself to be sent to
London as a prisoner charged with
treason.
Weeks turned into months; still
Inglesant languished in prison. Meanwhile the
Puritans were trying to implicate the king
in the charge against Inglesant. Finally
the king's forces were utterly defeated and
Charles I was taken prisoner. In an effort
to make him give evidence against the
king, Inglesant was condemned and
actually taken to be executed, but, true to
his Jesuit training, he remained steadfast.
Through the good offices of Father St.
Clare, Inglesant was released after the
beheading of Charles I. One day Eustace
Inglesant, who had returned to England
under the protection of his wife's Puritan
kinsmen, brought his brother's pardon to
the Tower of London. Immediately, the
two brothers set out for the estate of
Eustace's wife.
Eustace, in the meantime, had been
warned by an astrologer that his life was
in danger, and he was murdered during
the journey by an Italian, an enemy whom
he had encountered while traveling in
Italy years before. John Inglesant, after
a period of sickness and recuperation spent
at his sister-in-law's estate, left for France,
where he hoped to find Father St. Clare
and to gather information about his
brother's murderer, whom he had resolved
to kill in revenge.
Arriving in France, he was not
immediately successful in finding Father St.
Clare. In the interval he tried to evaluate
his spiritual life. A Benedictine
acquaintance tried to encourage him to enter that
order, but Inglesant felt that his spiritual
answers did not lie in that direction. He
believed that somehow he had been
singled out by heaven to find salvation
more independently. When he finally
found Father St. Clare, the priest told him
to go to Rome and there continue his
spiritual search under the protection of the
Jesuits, who were indebted to him for the
many missions he had undertaken in their
cause.
On the way to Rome, a journey taking
1827

several months, Inglesant stopped many
times. He spent several weeks in Siena as
a guest of the Chigi family. One of the
Chigis was a cardinal who had hopes of
being elected pope when the incumbent
died. From Siena, Inglesant journeyed to
Florence. There he met Lauretta Capece,
with whom he fell in love.
After his eventual arrival in Rome,
Inglesant was sent to the Duke of Umbria
on a mission by influential Jesuits who
wished the nobleman to turn his lands
over to the Papal See after his death. His
mission accomplished, Inglesant married
Lauretta Capece. He returned to Rome
as a temporary aide to Cardinal Chigi
during the conclave to elect a new pope. The
cardinal was elected. Inglesant retired to
an estate given to him by the Duke of
Umbria.
Inglesant and his wife lived in Umbria
for several years, until a great plague broke
out in Naples. Inglesant went to that
city in an effort to save his brother-in-law,
who had been in hiding there. In Naples,
also, he found his brother's murderer; the
man had become a monk after having
been beaten and blinded by a mob. Now,
with his brother's murderer in his power,
Inglesant had lost his desire for revenge.
In company with the blind monk, he
continued his search and finally discovered
his dying brother-in-law. After the sick
man had died, Inglesant returned home,
only to learn that his family had been
wiped out by the plague.
Once again he journeyed to Rome in
search of spiritual consolation, but because
of his independent attitudes he got into
serious trouble with the Inquisition.
Because of Jesuit influence, he was not
condemned to prison or death. Instead, he was
sent back to England, where he lived out
his days in philosophical contemplation.
1828

JONATHAN WILD
Type J>f work: Novel
Author: Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late seventeenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1743
Principal characters:
Jonathan Wild, a "great man"
Laetttta, his wife
La Ruse, a rogue
Heartfree, a good man
Mrs. Heartfree, his good wife
Critique:
Although The History of Jonathan
Wild the Great is possibly the least known
of Fielding's novels, it is the one likely
to appeal most to those who enjoy barbed
satire and pure irony. Jonathan was a
"great man"—not a good man. Fielding
makes it quite clear that greatness and
goodness are never to be found in one
person. A "great man" is a pure villain,
with none of the minor virtues with
which ordinary villains are endowed.
The characters are vivid; the plot is sure
and swift. Jonathan Wild is, in all ways,
a delightful book.
The Story:
Jonathan Wild was prepared by nature
to be a "great man." His ancestors were
all men of greatness, many of them
hanged for thievery or treason. Those who
escaped were simply shrewder and more
fortunate than the others. But Jonathan
was to be so "great" as to put his
forefathers to shame.
As a boy he read about the great
villains of history. At school he learned little,
his best study being to pick the pockets
of his tutors and fellow students. When
he was seventeen, his father moved to
town, where Jonathan was to put his
talents to even better use. There he met
the Count La Ruse, a knave destined to
be one of the lesser "greats." La Ruse
was in prison for debt, but Jonathan's skill
soon secured his friend's freedom.
Together they had many profitable ventures,
picking the pockets of their friends and
of each other. Neither became angry
when the other stole from him, for each
respected the other's abilities.
Jonathan, for unknown reasons,
traveled in America for seven or eight years.
Returning to England he continued his
life of villainy. Since he was to be a truly
"great" man, he could not soil his own
hands with too much thievery because
there was always the danger of the
gallows if he should be apprehended. He
gathered about him a handful of lesser
thieves who took the risks while he
collected most of the booty. La Ruse joined
him in many of his schemes, and the two
friends continued to steal from each other.
This ability to cheat friends showed true
"greatness."
Jonathan admired Laetitia Snap, a
woman with qualities of "greatness"
similar to his own. She was the daughter of
his father's friend, and she too was skilled
in picking pockets and cheating at cards.
In addition, she was a lady of wonderfully
loose morals. But try as he would,
Jonathan could not get Laetitia to respond
to his passion. The poor fellow did not
at first know that each time he approached
her she was hiding another lover in the
closet. Had he known, his admiration
would have been even greater.
Jonathan's true "greatness" did not
appear until he renewed his acquaintance
with Mr. Heartfree, a former schoolmate.
Heartfree would never be a "great" man
1829

because he was a good man. He cheated
no one, held no grudges, and loved his
wife and children. These qualities made
him the sort of person Jonathan liked to
cheat. Heartfree was a jeweler who by
hard work and honest practices had
become moderately prosperous. With the
help of La Ruse, Jonathan was able to
bring Heartfree to ruin. They stole his
jewels and his money and hired thugs to
beat him unmercifully, all the time
convincing the good man that they were his
friends.
La Ruse approached the greatness of
Jonathan by leaving the country after
stealing most of their booty. Poor Heart-
free was locked up for debt after the two
scoundrels had ruined him. Then
Jonathan performed his greatest act. He had
also a strong passion for Mrs. Heartfree,
a good and virtuous woman, and he
persuaded her that her husband had asked
him to take her and some remaining
jewels to Holland until her husband
could obtain his release. So cleverly did
he talk that the woman did not even tell
her husband goodbye, though she loved
him dearly. Instead, she put her children
in the hands of a faithful servant and
accompanied the rogue on a ship leaving
England immediately.
When a severe storm arose, Jonathan
was sure that death was near. Throwing
caution aside, he attacked Mrs. Heartfree.
Her screams brought help from the
captain. After the storm subsided, the captain
put Jonathan adrift in a small boat. The
captain did not know that Jonathan was
a "great" man, not destined to die in
ignoble fashion. After a while he was
rescued. He returned to England with tall
tales of his adventure, none of which were
the least bit true.
In the meantime Heartfree had begun
to suspect his friend of duplicity. When
Jonathan returned, he was for a time
able to persuade Heartfree that he had
done everything possible to help the
jeweler. He told just enough of the truth to
make his story acceptable, for in
"greatness" the he must always contain some
truth. But Jonathan went too far. He
urged Heartfree to attempt an escape from
prison by murdering a few guards. Heart-
free saw his supposed friend as the rogue
he was and denounced Jonathan in
ringing tones. From that time on Jonathan
lived only to bring Heartfree to complete
destruction.
While Jonathan was plotting Heart-
free's trip to the gallows, Laetitia's father
finally gave his consent to his daughter's
marriage to the rogue. It took only two
weeks, however, for his passion to be
satisfied; then the couple began to fight
and cheat each other constantly.
After his marriage Jonathan continued
in all kinds of knavery, but his most
earnest efforts were directed toward sending
Heartfree to the gallows. At last he hit
upon a perfect plan. He convinced the
authorities that Heartfree himself had
plotted to have his wife take the jewels
out of the country in order to cheat his
creditors. Mrs. Heartfree had not returned
to England. Although Jonathan hoped
she was dead, he thought it better to
have her husband hanged at once in
case she should somehow return. Before
Heartfree's sentence was carried out,
however, Jonathan was arrested and put in
jail. He was surprised by a visit from
Laetitia. She came only to revile him.
She, having been caught picking pockets,
was also a prisoner. Her only wish was
that she could have the pleasure of seeing
Jonathan hanged before her turn came
to die on the gallows.
On the day that Heartfree was to be
hanged his wife returned. After many
adventures and travel in many lands, she
came back in time to tell her story and
to save her husband from hanging. She
had brought with her a precious jewel
which had been given to her by a savage
chief she met on her travels. Heartfree
was released and his family was restored
to prosperity. It was otherwise with
Jonathan, whose former friends hastened to
hurry him to the gallows. On the
appointed day he was hanged, leaving this
world with a curse for all mankind. His
1830

wife and all his friends were hanged, save was a "great" man because he was a com-
one. La Ruse was captured in France and plete villain,
broken on the wheel. Jonathan Wild
1831

JORROCKS' JAUNTS AND JOLLITIES
Type of work: Tales
Author: Robert Smith Surtees (1803-1864)
Type of plot: Comic romance
Time of plot: The 1830's
Locale: England and France
First published: 1838
Principal characters:
Jorrocks, a grocer and sportsman
Mr. Stubbs, a Yorkshireman
The Countess Benvolio
Critique:
This volume of Jorrocks* adventures
differs from the others in that there is no
connecting plot; the work is simply a series
of tales given unity by the irrepressible
and immortal Jorrocks. The satire here is
double-edged; first there is the pretentious
cockney aping his aristocratic betters;
second, sporting life comes in for
uncomfortably keen depiction. The wealth of detail
furnishes us with a good contemporary
account of town and country life in
Victorian England.
The Story:
When they went out to hunt, the
members of Jorrocks* Surrey fox hunt did not
always keep their minds on the sport. As
they gathered, their talk included shouts
to the dogs and quotations on the price of
cotton, advice on horses, and warnings of
bank policies. While waiting for the dogs
to run the fox closer, they all eagerly
pulled out bread and meat from their
capacious pockets.
One morning a swell joined the veteran
Surrey hunters. He was plainly an
aristocrat. While the others were paunchy and
stooped, he was thin and straight. His
handsome mount contrasted sharply with
their skinny nags. They all watched him
enviously. He was new in Surrey
evidently, for he drove his horse at a fast clip
through the bottom lands, heedless of the
numerous flints. The riders were glad
when he had to retire from the chase with
a lame horse.
As he left, Jorrocks rushed up with the
news that the stranger was no less a
personage than a Russian diplomat. The
whole hunt joined in heartily wishing him
back in Russia for good.
In town Jorrocks ran into agreeable Mr.
Stubbs, a footloose Yorkshireman and
invited him to go to the hunt on Saturday
morning. So long as Jorrocks paid the
bills, the Yorkshireman was glad for any
entertainment. On the appointed foggy
morning Jorrocks was on time. He was
riding his own bony nag and leading a sorry
dray horse for his guest. The fog was so
thick that they bumped into carriages and
sidewalk stands right and left. The
Yorkshireman would have waited for the fog to
lift, but doughty Jorrocks would
countenance no delay. Mrs. Jorrocks had a fine
quarter of house-lamb for supper and her
husband had been sternly ordered to be
back at five-thirty sharp. Jorrocks was
never late for a meal.
On the way Jorrocks' horse was nearly
speared by a carriage pole. The
resourceful hunter promptly dismounted and
chaffered a bit with a coach driver. When
he remounted, he had a great coach lamp
tied around his middle. Thus lighted, the
two horsemen got safely out of town.
The hunt that day held an unexpected
surprise for both of them. Thinking to
show off a little for his younger friend,
Jorrocks put his horse at a weak spot in a
fence. He wanted to sail over in good time
and continue after the fox. Instead, he
landed in a cesspool. His bright red coat
was covered with slime and mud for the
rest of the day. But the Yorkshireman
noted that Jorrocks carried on till the end
1832

of the hunt and got home in time for his
house-lamb.
As usual, Jorrocks went hunting in
Surrey on a Saturday. When his horse
went lame, he stopped at the smith's shop
for repairs, and his five-minute delay
made him lose sight of the pack.
Consequently, he lost out on a day s sport. As
he sat in a local inn nursing a grouch and
threatening to withdraw his subscription
to the Surrey hunt, in came Nosey
Browne. Jorrocks was delighted to see his
old friend and willingly accepted an
invitation to a day's shooting on Browne's
estate.
A few days later he collected the York-
shireman and set out eagerly for the
shooting. He was dashed to find that Nosey's
big estate was little more than a cramped
spot of ground covered with sheds and
other outbuildings. Squire Cheatum,
learning that Nosey was a bankrupt, had
forbidden his neighbor to hunt in his
woods, and so Jorrocks was forced to hunt
in the yard behind sheds. Soon he saw a
rabbit. In his excitement he took a step
forward and shot the animal. As he was
about to pick up his prize, a gamekeeper
arrived and accused him of trespassing.
After an extended argument it was shown
that Jorrocks' toe had indeed at the
moment of shooting been over the line on
Squire Cheatum's land; and so the
wrathy Jorrocks was fined one pound one.
He was no man to accept calmly a fine
so obviously unfair. He hired a lawyer and
appealed the case to the county court.
On the day of the trial Jorrocks beamed as
his own attorney pictured him as a
substantial citizen with a reputation for good
works. He squirmed as the squire's lawyer
described him as a cockney grocer who
was infringing on the rights of
countryfolk. At the end the judges woke up and
sustained the fine.
After the fox-hunting season ended,
Jorrocks accepted an invitation to a stag
hunt. The Yorkshireman came to
breakfast with him on the appointed morning.
Jorrocks led him down into the kitchen,
where the maid had set out the usual fare.
There were a whole ham, a loaf of bread,
and a huge Bologna sausage. There were
muffins, nine eggs, a pork pie, and kidneys
on a spit. The good Betsy was stationed at
the stove, where she deftly laid mutton
chops on the gridiron.
As the two friends ate, Mrs. Jorrocks
came in with an ominous face. She held
up a card, inscribed with a woman's name
and address, which she had found in her
spouse's pocket. Jorrocks seized the card,
threw it into the fire, and declared it was
an application for a deaf and dumb
institute.
The men set out for the hunt in
Jorrocks' converted fire wagon. Ahead of
them was a van carrying a drowsy doe.
They were shocked to learn on arriving
that their "stag" was that same tame deer
imported for the day. She had to be chased
to make her stop grazing on the common.
Jorrocks' disappointment was complete
when he learned that he had been invited
only for his contribution to the club
fund.
Abandoning the hunt for a while,
Jorrocks took a boat trip to Margate with the
Yorkshireman. That expedition was also a
failure, for he left his clothes on the beach
when he went for a swim and the tide
engulfed them. The unhappy grocer was
forced to go back to London in hand-me-
downs.
Seeing numerous books for sale at fancy
prices, Jorrocks determined to write a four-
volume work on France that would sell for
thirty pounds. With little more ado he
collected the Yorkshireman and set out for
Dover.
He was charmed with Boulogne, for
the French were gay and the weather was
sunny. On the coach to Paris he met the
Countess Benwolio, as Jorrocks, in cockney
fashion, called her. She was quite
receptive to the rich grocer. The countess
seemed a beautiful, youthful woman until
she went to sleep in the coach and her
teeth dropped down. Once in Paris,
Jorrocks was snugly installed as the favored
guest in her apartment. He began to
collect information for his book.
1833

The countess was avid for presents, and
before many days Jorrocks began to run
short of money. He tried to recoup at the
races, but the Frenchmen were too shrewd
for him. Finally he offered to race fifty
yards on foot, with the Yorkshireman
perched on his shoulders, against a fleet
French baron who was to run a hundred
yards. Jorrocks took a number of wagers
and gave them to the countess to hold. He
won the race easily. When he regained his
breath and looked about for the countess,
she had disappeared.
With little money and no French, the
Englishmen were quite some time getting
back to the countess* apartment. By the
time they arrived, a gross Dutchman was
installed as her favorite. When Jorrocks
tried to collect his wagers, she presented
him with a detailed board bill. Pooling his
last funds with the Yorkshireman^ hoard,
he was barely able to pay the bill.
Chastened by his sojourn among the French,
Jorrocks returned to England.
1834

JOSEPH ANDREWS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Type of plot: Comic epic
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1742
Principal characters:
Joseph Andrews, a footman to Lady Booby
Pamela Andrews, his sister, wife of Squire Booby
Lady Booby, aunt of Squire Booby
Fanny, Joseph's sweetheart
Mrs. Slipslop, Lady Booby's maid
Parson Adams, parson of Booby parish and friend of Joseph
Critique:
The History of the Adventures of
Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr.
Abraham Adams is the full title of the
work often called the first realistic novel
of English literature. Henry Fielding
turned aside from the episodic
sentimental writing of the age to give an
honest picture of the manners and customs
of his time and to satirize the foibles and
vanities of human nature. In particular,
he ridiculed affectation, whether it
stemmed from hypocrisy or vanity.
Although the structure of the novel is loose
and rambling, the realistic settings and
the vivid portrayal of English life in the
eighteenth century more than
compensate for this one weakness. Joseph is
presented as the younger brother of
Samuel Richardson's heroine, Pamela.
The Story:
Joseph Andrews was ten or eleven
years in the service of Sir Thomas Booby,
uncle of the Squire Booby who married
the virtuous Pamela, Joseph's sister.
When Lord Booby died, Joseph remained
in the employ of Lady Booby as her
footman. This lady, much older than her
twenty-one-year-old servant, and ap-
aiently little disturbed by her husband's
leath, paid entirely too much attention
to pleasant-mannered and handsome
Joseph. But Joseph was as virtuous as his
famous sister, and when Lady Booby's
advances became such that even his
innocence could no longer deny their
true nature, he was as firm in resisting
her as Pamela had been in restraining
Squire Booby. Insulted, the lady
discharged Joseph on the spot, in spite of
the protests of Mrs. Slipslop, her maid,
who found herself also attracted to the
young man.
With very little money and fewer
prospects, Joseph set out from London
to Somersetshire to see his sweetheart,
Fanny, for whose sake he had withstood
Lady Booby's advances. The very first
night of his journey, Joseph was attacked
by robbers, who stole his money, beat
him soundly, and left him lying naked
and half dead in a ditch. A passing
coach stopped when the passengers heard
his cries, and he was taken to a nearby
inn.
Joseph was well cared for until the
innkeeper's wife discovered that he was
penniless. He was recognized, however,
by another visitor at the inn, his old
tutor and preceptor, Parson Adams, who
was on his way to London to sell a
collection of his sermons. He paid Joseph's
bill with his own meager savings; then,
discovering that in his absent-mindedness
he had forgotten to bring the sermons
with him, he decided to accompany
Joseph back to Somersetshire.
They started out, alternately on foot
and on the parson's horse. Fortunately,
Mrs. Slipslop overtook them in a coach
on her way to Lady Booby's country
place. She accommodated the parson in
1835

the coach while Joseph rode the horse.
The inn at which they stopped next
had an innkeeper who gauged his
courtesy according to the appearance of his
guests. There Joseph was insulted by the
host. In spite of the clerical cassock he
was wearing, Parson Adams stepped in to
challenge the host, and a fist fight
followed, the ranks being swelled by the
hostess and Mrs. Slipslop. When the
battle finally ended, Parson Adams was
the bloodiest looking, since the hostess
in the excitement had doused him with a
pail of hog's blood.
The journey continued, this time with
Joseph in the coach and the parson on
foot, for with typical forgetfulness the
good man had left his horse behind.
However, he walked so rapidly and the coach
moved so slowly that he easily
outdistanced his friends. While he was resting
on his journey, he heard the shrieks of
a woman. Running to her rescue, he
discovered a young woman being cruelly
attacked by a burly fellow, whom the
arson belabored with such violence that
e laid the attacker at his feet. As some
fox hunters rode up, the ruffian rose from
the ground and accused Parson Adams
and the woman of being conspirators in
an attempt to rob him. The parson and
the woman were quickly taken prisoners
and led off to the sheriff. On the way the
parson discovered that the young woman
whom he had aided was Fanny. Having
heard of Joseph's unhappy dismissal from
Lady Booby's service, she had been on her
way to London to help him when she
had been so cruelly molested.
After some uncomfortable moments
before the judge, the parson was
recognized by an onlooker, and both he and
Fanny were released. They went to the
inn where Mrs. Slipslop and Joseph were
staying.
Joseph and Fanny were overjoyed to
be together once more. Mrs. Slipslop,
displeased to see Joseph's display of
affection for another woman, drove off in the
coach, leaving Parson Adams and the
young lovers behind.
None of the three .had any money to
pay their bill at the inn.. Parson Adams,
with indomitable optimism, went to visit
the clergyman of the parish in order to
borrow the money, but with no success.
Finally a poor peddler at the inn gave
them every.penny he had, just enough
to cover the bill.
They continued their trip on foot,
stopping at another inn where the host
was more courteous than any they had
met, and more understanding about their
financial difficulties. Still farther on their
journey, they came across a secluded
house at which they were asked to stop
and rest. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were a
charming couple who gave their guests a
warm welcome. Mr. Wilson entertained
the parson with the story of his life. It
seemed that in his youth he had been
attracted by the vanity of London life,
had squandered his money on foppish
clothes, gambling, and drinking, and had
eventually been imprisoned for debt.
From this situation he was rescued by a
kindly cousin whom he later married.
The two had retired from London to this
quiet country home. They had two
lovely children and their only sorrow, but
that a deep one, was that a third child,
a boy with a strawberry mark on his
shoulder, had been stolen by gipsies and
had never been heard of since.
After a pleasant visit with the kindly
family, the travelers set out again. Their
adventures were far from ended. Parson
Adams suddenly found himself caught in
the middle of a hare hunt, with the
hounds inclined to mistake him for the
hare. Their master goaded on the dogs,
but Joseph and the parson were victorious
in the battle— They found themselves
face to face with an angry squire and his
followers. But when the squire caught
sight of the lovely Fanny, his anger
softened, and he invited the three to
dine.
Supper was a trying affair for the
parson, who was made the butt of many
Eractical jokes. Finally the three travelers
;ft the house in great anger and went
1836

to an inn. In the middle of the night,
some of the squire's men arrived,
overcame Joseph and the parson, and
abducted Fanny. On the way, however, an
old acquaintance of Fanny, Peter Pounce,
met the party of kidnapers, recognized
Fanny, and rescued her.
The rest of the journey was relatively
uneventful. When they arrived home
however, further difficulties arose. Joseph
and Fanny stayed at the parsonage and
waited eagerly for the publishing of their
wedding banns. Lady Booby had also
arrived in the parish, the seat of her
summer home. Still in love with Joseph,
she exerted every pressure of position
and wealth to prevent the marriage. She
even had Fanny and Joseph arrested. At
this point, however, Squire Booby and
his wife Pamela arrived. That gentleman
insisted on accepting his wife's relatives
as his own, even though they were of a
lower station, and Joseph and Fanny were
quickly released from custody.
All manner of arguments were
presented by Pamela, her husband, and Lady
Booby in their attempts to turn Joseph
aside from his intention of marrying
Fanny. Her lowly birth made a
difference to their minds, now that Pamela had
made a good match and Joseph had been
received by the Boobys.
Further complications arose when a
traveling peddler revealed that Fanny,
whose parentage until then had been
unknown, was the sister of Pamela. Mr.
and Mrs. Andrews were summoned at
this disclosure, and Mrs. Andrews
described how, while Fanny was still a
baby, gipsies had stolen the child and
left behind them a sickly little boy she
had brought up as her own. Now it
appeared that Joseph was the foundling.
However, a strawberry mark on Joseph's
chest soon established his identity. He
was the son of the kindly Wilsons.
Both lovers were now secure in their
social positions, and nothing further
could prevent their marriage, which took
place, to the happiness of all concerned,
soon afterward.
1837

JOSEPH VANCE
Type of work: Novel
Author: William De Morgan (1839-1917)
Type of plot: Simulated autobiography
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1906
Principal characters:
Joseph Vance, who wrote his memoirs
Mr. Christopher Vance, his father
Dr. Randall Thorpe, Joseph's foster father
Lossie Thorpe, Dr. Thorpe s daughter
Joe Thorpe (Beppino), her brother
Violet Thorpe, her sister
Nolly Thorpe, another brother
Bony Macallister, Joseph's business partner
General Desprez, Lossie's husband
Janey Spencer, Joseph's wife
Pheener, a maid
Critique:
Joseph Vance is an early example of
the now popular type of autobiographical
novel. It is the story of the life of
Joseph Vance from his earliest
recollections until the last years of his life. As
the author tells us through the words
of his main character, there is much that
might have been left out, since there
are many threads of the plot which are
unimportant to the story. Humor and
pathos are successfully mixed; the humor
particularly is the quiet kind that makes
us chuckle to ourselves. It comes
largely from the character of Vance's father,
whose firm belief it is that to be a success
a person must know absolutely nothing
about doing the job he is hired to do.
De Morgan gave his novel a subtitle, An
Ill-Written Autobiography, but few of
his readers will agree with him.
The Story:
Joseph Vance's father was more often
drunk than sober. But he was a good
man, never mean when he was drunk.
Having lost several positions because of
his drinking, he was in no way
depressed. He took Joe with him to visit
a pub on the night of his discharge
from his last position, and while there
he quarreled with a chimney sweep and
had the poor end of the fight. Forced
to spend some time in the hospital after
the affair, he decided to give up his
excessive drinking.
After his release from the hospital
he set himself up as a builder and drain
repairman, by virtue of acquiring a
signboard advertising the possessor as such
a workman. Mr. Vance knew nothing
about the building trade, but he believed
that it was his ignorance which would
cause him to be a success at the business.
He appeared to be right. His first job
was for Dr. Randall Thorpe, of Poplar
Villa, and Dr. Thorpe was so pleased
with the work that he recommended
Mr. Vance for more jobs until his
reputation was such that he was much in
demand. Mr. Vance took Joe with him
on his first call at Poplar Villa, and there
Joe met Miss Lossie Thorpe, the first real
young lady he had ever seen. At this
time Joe was nine and Lossie fifteen, but
he knew from the first meeting that she
was to be his lady for the rest of his
life.
When Dr. Thorpe learned that Joe
JOSEPH VANCE by William De Morgan. By permission of the publishers, Henry Holt ft Co., Inc. Copyrttht.
1906, by Henry Holt & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1934, by Mary Beatrice De Morgan.
1838

was a bright boy, he sent him to school
and made him almost one of the family.
Lossie was like a sister to him; in fact,
she called him her litde brother and
encouraged him in his studies. In the
Thorpe household were also young Joe
Thorpe, called Beppino, a sister Violet,
and another brother named Nolly. With
these young people Joe Vance grew up,
and Dr. Thorpe continued to send him
to school, even to Oxford when he was
ready. Although Dr. Thorpe had hoped
that Joe Vance might excel in the
classics, the boy found his interest in
engineering. Beppino did grow up to be a
poet, but he wrote such drivel that his
father was disgusted. Meanwhile a deep
friendship had developed between Joe
Vance and Lossie, a brother-and-sister
love that made each want the other's
happiness above all else.
Mr. Vance's business prospered so
much that he and his wife took a new
house and hired a cook and a maid.
After Joe had finished at Oxford, he
joined his old school friend, Bony Macal-
lister, and they established an
engineering firm. Their offices were in the same
building with Mr. Vance. By that time
Lossie had married General Desprez, a
wealthy army officer, and had moved
with him to India. Joe suffered a great
deal at the loss of his dear friend, but
he knew that General Desprez was a
fine man who would care for Lossie
and love her tenderly.
Shordy after Lossie sailed for India,
Joe's,mother died, and his father began
to drink once more. Joe tried to think of
some way to help his father. Joe thought
that if ne married his wife might
influence his father, and he asked Janey
Spencer, a friend of Lossie, to marry him.
She accepted, but when she learned that
Joe wanted to marry her only for the
sake of his father, she broke the
engagement and did not relent until two years
later. By that* time Joe knew he really
loved her, and she married him. In the
meantime, Joe's father had married
Pheener, his housemaid, and for a time
she kept him from the bottle.
After Janey and Joe had been married
for five years, they took a trip to Italy.
The ship caught on fire and almost all
on board were lost. When Janey refused
to get into a lifeboat without her
husband, they tried to swim to shore. Janey
was drowned. Joe's life was empty
without her, and only his visits with Dr.
Thorpe and his letters from Lossie gave
him any comfort.
Joe's business prospered, as did his
father's. But one day Mr. Vance, while
drunk, caused an explosion and a fire
in the building. He was seriously
injured, and he seemed to be ruined
because he had let his insurance lapse.
But before the catastrophe he had given
Pheener a tiara worth fifteen thousand
pounds, and with the money received
from the sale of the jewels he was able
to start his business anew.
In the meantime Beppino was
grieving his family by an affair with a
married woman. For the sake of the Thorpes,
Joe took Beppino to Italy. On Joe's
return Beppino remained behind. When
Beppino returned, he met and married
Sibyl Perceval, an heiress, and the
family believed he had changed his ways.
But Beppino died of typhoid fever
shortly after his marriage, and then Joe
learned what Beppino had done while
in Italy. He had married an Italian girl,
using the name of Joe Vance, and she
had had a child. The Italian girl had
died, too, and her relatives wrote to Joe
in the belief that he was the father.
Joe told General Desprez of Beppino'*
duplicity, the General and Lossie having
come home for a visit, and the two men
agreed that Lossie must never know of
her brother's deed. Joe went to Italy
and told the girl's relatives that he was
a friend of the baby's father. He arranged
to send money for the boy's care.
Shortly afterward Joe went to Brazil
on an engineering project. While there,
he sent for Beppino's boy and adopted
him. The next twenty years of his life
he spent in Brazil. He heard from
1839

Lossie and Dr. Thorpe frequently, but
otherwise he had no connection with
England. His father died and Pheener
remarried. While Joe was in Brazil,
Lossie heard rumors from Italy that he
was the baby's real father. She was so
disappointed in her foster brother that
she never wrote again. Joe returned to
England. Living near Lossie, he did not
see her or let her know he was back
in the country. The boy was attending
school in America. Lossie's husband died
without telling the real story about the
child, and Joe would not tell the truth
even to save himself in Lossie's fyes. He
wrote the story in his memoirs, but left
his papers to be burned after his return
to Brazil.
But a maid burned the wrong
package, and a publisher's note completed
Joe's story. Lossie found a letter from
Beppino in some of her husband's
papers and surmised the truth. She
found Joe Vance before he left for
Brazil and made him confess that he had
acted only to save her feelings. She
begged Joe to forgive her. Reunited, the
two friends went to Italy and spent their
remaining days together.
1840

JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Louis-Ferdinand Celine (Louis Ferdinand Destouches, 1894-1961)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: World War I and following years
Locale: France
First published: 1932
Principal characters:
Ferdinand, a rogue
Leon, his friend
Madelon, engaged to Leon
Critique:
In tone Journey to the End of the
Night is pessimistic, in style abrupt and
whittled down, in form experimental.
The action is seen through the eyes of
a neurotic narrator who reduces all his
experience to a cynical level. In a way
the approach can be called symbolical;
that is, impressions are suggested rather
than realistically described. The abrupt,
fragmentary recounting of important
events lends a tough, terse quality to the
work. The philosophy is that of
postwar disillusionment.
The Story:
Ferdinand, an indifferent student of
medicine in Paris, was violently pacifistic,
even anarchistic in his reaction to
authority. Just prior to World War I he
was expounding his cynical disregard
for nationalistic pride in a cafe. Down
the street came a colonel at the head of
a military band. Because the music and
the uniforms captured Ferdinand's fickle
fancy, he rushed off to enlist. During
the fighting he was a runner constantly
exposed to scenes of savage brutality and
to dangerous errands. On one mission
he met L6on, who was always to be a
kind of incubus to him.
When Ferdinand suffered a slight
wound in his arm, he was given
convalescent leave in Paris. There he met
Lola, an American Red Cross worker who
idolized the French. She romanticized his
wound, became his temporary mistress,
and filled him with stories of the United
States. When she finally discovered
Ferdinand's cowardice and cynicism, she
left him.
The thought of losing Lola was more
than Ferdinand could bear. When his
mind gave way, he was sent to a variety
of mental hospitals, where he quickly
learned to ingratiate himself with the
psychiatrists by agreeing with everything
they said. His tactics at last procured
his release as cured but unfit for active
duty.
In Paris he led a precarious life for
a time, but later he bettered his existence
considerably by acting as a go-between for
Musyne, a dancer who was greatly sought
after by rich Argentine meat dealers.
The thought of all that beef to be sold
at high prices was too much for Ferdinand
after some months with Musyne, and he
left for Colonial Africa.
In French West Africa he was
assigned to a trading post far in the
interior. He made the ten-day trip by
canoe into the hot, lush jungle, where
his trading post turned out to be a cozy
shack anchored by two big rocks. The
mysterious trader he had come to relieve
was frankly a thief, who told Ferdinand
that he had no goods left to trade, very
little rubber, and only canned stew for
provisions. The rascal gave Ferdinand
three hundred francs, saying it was all
he had, and left in the direction of a
Spanish colony. Only after he had gone
did Ferdinand realize that his predecessor
had been L6on.
JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT by Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Translated by John H. P. Marks.
permission of the present publishers. New Directions. Copyright, 1934, by Little, Brown & Co.
By
1841

After several weeks of fever and canned
stew, Ferdinand left the trading post. The
shack having accidentally burned, his
only baggage was the three hundred
francs and some canned stew. His
overland safari was a nightmare. His fever
rose dangerously high, and during much
of the trip he was delirious. At last his
black porters stole his money and left
him with a Spanish priest in a seaport.
The priest, for a fee, delivered him to a
captain of easy scruples. Ferdinand, still
sick, was shanghaied on a ship bound for
the United States.
When he attempted to jump ship in
New York, he was caught by the
immigration authorities. Pretending to be an
expert on flea classification, he was
put to work in a quarantine station
catching and sorting fleas for the Port
of New York. After gaining the
confidence of his chief, he was sent into
the city to deliver a report, although
technically he was still under detention.
In New York he looked up Lola, now
older but still attractive, who gave him
a hundred dollars to get rid of him. With
the money he took a train to Detroit.
Soon he was employed by the Ford
Motor Company.
In Dearborn he fell in love with
Molly, who lived in a brothel. Each day
he escorted her to the bordello in the
early evening. Then he rode streetcars
until she was through for the night.
On one of his nightly trips he met L6on
again. L6on was unhappy in America
because he could not learn enough
English to get along. He had to be content
with a janitor's job. Ferdinand learned
that L6on also wished to return to France.
Although he loved Molly very much,
Ferdinand left her and Detroit to go
back to Paris. Completing his medical
course, he was certified as a doctor, and
he settled down to practice in a poor
suburb. All his patients were poor and
rarely paid him. Mostly he was called in
on shady abortion cases.
One day the Henrouilles summoned
him to attend the old grandmother who
lived in a hut behind their house. They
hated to spend the money necessary to
feed the old woman and Mme. Henrou-
ille offered Ferdinand a thousand francs if
he would certify that the grandmother
was insane. Through conscience or fear,
Ferdinand refused. Then L£on was called
in on the same case. He agreed to set a
bomb next to the old woman's hut so
that she would kill herself when she
opened the door. But clumsy L6on
bungled the job; he accidentally
detonated the bomb and lost his sight.
With the help of the Abbe" Protiste,
the family worked out a scheme to get
rid of both the old woman and L6on.
They proposed to send the two to
Toulouse, where there was a display of
mummies connected with a church. L6on
would be a ticket seller and old Mme.
Henrouille would be the guide. For
persuading L6on to accept the
proposition, Ferdinand received a fee of a
thousand francs.
Ferdinand's practice grew smaller. At
last he went to the Montmartre section
of Paris, where for a time he was well
pleased with his job as supernumerary
in a music hall. The Abbe* Protiste
looked him Up after some months and
offered to pay his expenses to Toulouse,
where Ferdinand was to see if L6on were
likely to make trouble for the
Henrouilles on the score of attempted murder.
In Toulouse Ferdinand learned that
L6on was regaining his sight. He had
also become engaged to Madelon. The
old lady was a vigorous and successful
guide. Ferdinand dallied a little with the
complaisant Madelon, but decided to
leave before their intimacy was
discovered. Old Mme. Henrouille fell, or
was tripped, on the stairs and was killed
in the fall. It was a good time for
Ferdinand to leave—hurriedly.
Dr. Baryton ran a genteel madhouse.
By great good luck Ferdinand was hired
on his staff. He ingratiated himself with
his employer by giving him English
lessons. Dr. Baryton read Macaulay's
History of England and became so enamored
1842

of things English that he departed for
foreign lands and left Ferdinand in
charge. Shortly afterward L6on showed
up, broke and jobless. He had run away
from Madelon. Ferdinand took him in
and gave him a job.
Madelon came looking for L£on and
haunted the hospital gate. Hoping to
appease her, Ferdinand arranged a Sunday
party to visit a carnival. In the party
were L£on, Madelon, Ferdinand, and
Sophie, Ferdinand's favorite nurse. After
a hectic day they took a taxi home. On
the way Leon declared he no longer
loved Madelon. The spurned girl took
out her revolver and killed him.
Ferdinand knew that the time had arrived for
him to move on once more.
1843

JOURNEY'S END
Type of work: Drama
Author: Robert C. Sherriff (1896- )
Type of flat: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: March, 1918
Locale: A battlefield in France
First presented: 1929
Principal characters:
Captain Dennis Stanhope, a British company commander
Lieut. Osborne, Stanhope's middle-aged second-in-command
Lieut. Raleigh, Stanhope's school friend, his fiancee's brother
2nd Lieut. Hibbert, a cowardly officer in Stanhope's company
Critique:
Originally Robert Sherriff had no
literary ambitions, and Journey's End was
written to be used by a group of amateurs
who were interested in dramatics. At that
time Sherriff was an insurance claims
adjuster. The play grew out of letters
Sherriff had written to his family during
World War I, when he served as an
officer in the British Army. On a chance
suggestion, Journey's End was sent to
George Bernard Shaw, who helped to
get the play produced. It was an immense
success; at one time there were nine
companies playing it in the United States
and England. The play made the author
famous, and he became a professional
writer. Although he has written other
plays and novels, none has been as
successful as Journey's End.
The Story:
Captain Stanhope's infantry company
entered the front lines on Monday, March
18, 1918, at a time when the Allied
Powers were expecting a strong German
attack near St. Quentin. Lieutenant
Osborne, a middle-aged officer who had
been a schoolmaster in civilian life, met
Lieutenant Raleigh, a new officer, when
the latter arrived at the headquarters
dugout. Discovering that Raleigh was an
ardent hero worshiper of Captain
Stanhope, who was absent at the time,
Osborne tried to make the new officer
realize that Stanhope's three years in the
lines had made a different man of him.
Raleigh could barely realize just how
much his friend had changed. Stanhope
had become a battle-hardened, cynical
infantry officer who drank whiskey
incessantly in order to keep his nerves together.
After supper that evening Stanhope
confided to Osborne that he was fearful
of young Raleigh's opinion, and he
declared that he meant to censor all the
young officer's mail, lest Raleigh reveal
to his sister the kind of man Stanhope,
her fiance\ had become. Stanhope was
bitter that Raleigh had landed in his
company when there were so many others
in France to which he might have been
assigned. He was also concerned over
Lieutenant Hibbert, another officer who
was malingering in an effort to get sent
home to England. Stanhope, who hated
a quitter, resolved that Hibbert should
be forced to stay.
The following morning the company
prepared for the expected German attack.
Stanhope sent out parties to put up a
barbed wire enclosure in case neighbor-
ing units were forced to withdraw.
Stanhope, having received orders to stand,
meant to do so. During the morning
Raleigh and Osborne had a long talk and
became very friendly. After their talk
JOURNEY'S END by Robert C. Sherriff. By permission of the publishers, Coward-McCann, Inc. Copy-
right, 1929, by R. C. Sherriff. K/
1844

Raleigh went to write a letter to his
sister. When he finished, Stanhope made
him hand it over for censoring. Raleigh,
after some bitter words, did so. Stanhope,
angry with himself for insisting, could
not bring himself to read the letter.
Osborne, anxious to keep harmony in the
company, read it and reported to
Stanhope that Raleigh had written only praise
of the captain to his sister.
That afternoon word from regimental
headquarters reported that the German
attack was sure to occur on Thursday
morning, and Stanhope hurried up
preparations for the expected attack. As he
finished a conference with his sergeant
major, the colonel commanding the
regiment stepped into the company
headquarters for a conference. He had come
because the matter was a serious one; he
wanted Stanhope to send a raiding party
to capture prisoners, from whom the
colonel expected to gain information about
the Germans' disposition for the attack.
The raid would be a dangerous one
because it had to be made in daylight.
The officers selected to lead the raid
were Osborne, because of his experience,
and Raleigh, because of his youthful
vitality. Stanhope hated to send either, for
he needed Osborne and he was afraid
that Raleigh was too inexperienced. Above
that, there was the possibility that they
would never return.
After the colonel had gone, Hibbert
told Stanhope that he was going to the
doctor to be relieved from duty. Stanhope,
realizing that the man was feigning
illness, threatened to shoot him if he left.
Having bullied the man into behaving
himself, Stanhope, to show that he held
no ill will, promised to stand duty with
Hibbert that night.
Later in the afternoon Osborne and
Raleigh were told the details of the
proposed raid. Osborne was quiet, knowing
what they were in for; Raleigh, not
knowing how dangerous the raid would be,
took the assignment as a great adventure.
By the next afternoon preparations for
the raid had been completed. A gap had
been made in the barbed wire between
the lines by trench mortars. The
Germans, to let the British know they realized
what was coming, had gone out and
hung red rags on the gap, and they had
zeroed in their machine guns on the gap.
Stanhope tried to get the raid called off,
but the colonel insisted that it was
necessary. The mortars laid down a barrage
of smoke shells to hide the rush of the
raid. While Osborne and his party went
to the German parapet and kept the way
clear, Raleigh and another group of men
clambered into the trench to capture a
prisoner.
The raid went as well as could be
expected. Raleigh and his men returned
with a prisoner from whom they obtained
valuable information on the disposition
of German troops. Osborne and several
of his enlisted men had been killed by
the Germans, and Raleigh was crushed
by the death of his newly made friend
The other officers, trying to pass off the
incident, had a chicken dinner with
champagne that night to celebrate the
success of the raid. Raleigh, thinking
them barbarous in their conduct,
remained away from the dugout. He could
not see that>the other officers were simply
trying to forget what had happened; any
one of them might be killed during the
next raid.
After the dinner Stanhope gave
Raleigh a violent tongue-lashing for his
conduct and tried to explain to the young
officer why it had been necessary for the
living to celebrate, even though Osborne
had been killed.
The next morning the German attack
began. During the first bombardment
several men in the company, including
Raleigh, were wounded. Stanhope
ordered Raleigh to be brought into the
dugout, where the captain tried to
comfort him with word that the wound was
serious enough to require evacuation to
1845

England for treatment and convalescence.
For the first time since Raleigh's arrival
at the company the two were able to
meet as friends. Their renewed
friendship was short-lived, however, for Raleigh
was wounded so severely that he died
within a few minutes. Stanhope, turning
his back on his friend's body, went out
to direct the defense against the Germans.
1846

A JOVIAL CREW
Type of work: Drama
Author: Richard Brome (M652 or 1653)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: England
First presented: 1641
Principal characters:
Oldrents, a country squire
Springlove, his steward
Rachel, Oldrents' older daughter
Meriel, his younger daughter
Vincent, Rachel's lover
Hilliard, Meriel's lover
Master Clack, a justice
Amie, the justice's niece
Critique:
A Jovial Crew; or, The Merry Beggars
is a good-natured, unpretentious comedy.
It presents a world filled with pleasantly
unreal problems that permit equally
unreal solutions, a world populated with
eccentric gentry and philosophic beggars.
Light, gay entertainment was the author's
goal, and he attained it.
The Story:
Squire Oldrents had ample reason to
be happy: he owned a large estate from
which he received a good income; he
was beloved by the rich for his warm
hospitality and by the poor for his
generosity; he had two lovely daughters who
were being courted by two very
presentable young gentlemen. But the joy that
he derived from these blessings was
suddenly destroyed by a fortune-teller's
prediction that Oldrents' daughters would
become beggars. Oldrents' friend Hearty,
a gentleman who had seen better days but
who always looked on the bright side of
things, tried to cheer up the old man.
As a result of his persuasiveness, Oldrents
resolved to put on, at least, an outward
show of good spirits.
A second source of worry for the squire
was his steward, Springlove. As a youth
Springlove had been a beggar, until Old-
A JOVIAL CREW by Richard Brome, from ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS OTHER THAN
SHAKESPEARE. By permission of the publishers, Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved.
rents took him in and schooled him.
During winters, Springlove had always been
very diligent in his work. But with the
arrival of May, every year he found some
pretext to leave home. One year Oldrents
met Springlove begging on the highway
and thus discovered how his summers
were spent. To break the young man of
his wanderings, Oldrents had made him
his steward, a position in which
Springlove had done well. But now it was nearly
May again, and Springlove announced
that the call of nature was too insistent,
and he must go a-begging.
One of Oldrents' charities was the
maintenance of an old barn as a guest
house for wandering beggars. Rachel and
Meriel, his daughters, had long watched
these beggars and envied them their
complete freedom. The girls were bored with
their home life and further depressed by
the low spirits of their father. Thus
developed their plan for going with the
beggars. Their two lovers, Vincent and
Hilliard, who were afraid of losing the
girls, agreed to accompany them. When
they announced their intention to
Springlove, he revealed the prophecy Oldrents
had received. Now the girls felt that a
brief sojourn with the beggars would have
the additional advantage of bringing peace
1847

of mind to their father. In a letter to the
old man they disclosed their project, but
he, fearing that its contents might destroy
his resolution to be happy, refused to
open it.
The first night on the road dispelled
any romantic notions that the four
amateur beggars had about their new life.
The two men, having spent an uneasy
and sleepless night, would have gladly
returned home, but they did not wish to
give the appearance of softness. The girls,
having been housed in a pigsty, were
equally disillusioned, but they resolved
not to be the first to show signs of
weakening.
Despite Springlove's instructions, the
amateurs had little success in their first
attempts at begging because they lacked
the requisite humility. Approaching two
gentlemen, Vincent, after first being
tongue-tied, asked for such a large sum
that they drove him off with their swords.
Hilliard, also asking for a large sum, was
switched; thereupon, in very unbeggarly
manner, he demanded satisfaction of his
chastiser, a man named Oliver. This same
Oliver had noticed the two girls and had
been filled with lust. Finding them alone,
he gave them money, kissed them, and
then tried to drag Rachel behind some
bushes. But his intentions were frustrated
by the arrival of the men in response to
her screams. After he had restrained
Vincent and Hilliard, Springlove, knowing
that Oliver would be too ashamed to do
so, suggested that he get a beadle to
punish the girls.
The next travelers the beggars
encountered were Martin and Amie. Amie
had left home to escape marriage with
Master Talboy, a marriage that her uncle,
Master Clack, had tried to force upon
her. Martin, the justice's clerk, seeing a
chance to advance his own position, had
agreed to run away with her. Now that
she had had a better opportunity to
observe Martin, she had begun to doubt
the wisdom of her action. When they
encountered the beggars, they were hungry
and unhappy. Springlove gave them food
and offered to get a curate to marry them.
Amie, impressed by his solicitude,
decided to remain temporarily with the
beggars.
Meanwhile, a search for the runaways
was in progress. Among the searchers was
Oliver and the rejected lover, Talboy.
Their pursuit brought them to the home
of Oldrents. The squire, still doggedly
attempting to banish sorrow from his life,
despite the loss of his daughters,
welcomed them with song and drink. But
Talboy, with his incessant weeping and
sighing, disturbed the old man. On a
sudden whim, Oldrents decided to visit
Master Clack, who he had heard was an odd
character.
Officials, in the meantime, stopped and
questioned the beggars on suspicion of
harboring the fugitives. This trouble with
the law was the final blow to the four
amateurs, who now gave up any further
pretense of liking this kind of life. When
the constable threatened to beat
Springlove until he disclosed Amie's
whereabouts, she, having fallen in love with
him, revealed herself. Amie was then
returned home, and the beggars were
arrested.
When the beggars were brought to
Master Clack's home, Oldrents was there.
The justice at first contemplated dire
punishment for the vagrants; but, when
he heard that they could present a drama,
he saw a chance to entertain Oldrents
without expense. In a play concerning
two lost daughters and a vagrant steward,
Rachel, Meriel, and Springlove played
the leading roles. Oldrents was ecstatic at
being reunited with his daughters, and
his joy was increased by the revelation
that Springlove was, in reality, his
illegitimate son. Springlove, because of this
disclosure and because of his intention of
marrying Amie, announced that he would
beg no more. Thus, the last of Oldrents*
worries was over, and the old man again
had his full measure of contentment.
1848

JUDE THE OBSCURE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Hardv (1840-1928)
Type of plot: Philosophical realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Wessex
First published: 1894
Principal characters:
Jude Fawley, a stonemason
Arabella Donn, a vulgar country girl
Sue Bridehead, Jude's cousin, a neurotic free-thinker
Little Father Time, Jude's son by Arabella
Richard Phillotson, a schoolmaster
Drusilla Fawley, Jude's great-grandaunt
Critique:
Jude the Obscure marks the peak of
Hardy's gloom and deterministic
philosophy. Sunshine never breaks through the
heavy clouds of tragedy that smother
this narrative of war between the flesh
and the spirit. The gloom becomes
steadily heavier as circumstances conspire
to keep the hero from realizing any
happiness he seeks. The plot is believable;
the characters are three-dimensional. The
story itself is a vehicle for Hardy's
feelings toward contemporary marriage laws
and academic snobbery. His sexual
frankness, his unconventional treatment
of the theme of marriage, and his use of
pure horror in scenes like the deaths of
Little Father Time and the younger
children outraged readers of his
generation.
The Story:
In the nineteenth century eleven-year-
old Jude Fawley said goqdbye to his
schoolmaster, Richard Phillotson, who
was leaving the small English village of
Marygreen for Christminster, to study
for a degree. Young Jude, hungry for
learning, yearned to go to Christminster
too, but he had to help his great-grand-
aunt, Drusilla Fawley, in her bakery.
At Christminster, Phillotson did not
forget his former pupil. He sent Jude some
classical grammars which the boy studied
eagerly.
Anticipating a career as a religious
scholar, Jude apprenticed himself, at
nineteen, to a stonemason engaged in
the restoration of medieval churches in
a nearby town. Returning to Marygreen
one evening, he met three young girls
who were washing pigs' chitterlings by
a stream bank. One of the girls, Arabella
Donn, caught Jude's fancy aird'he
arranged to meet her later. The young
man was swept off his feet and tricked
into marriage, but he soon realized that
he had married a vulgar country girl
with whom he had nothing in common.
Embittered, he tried unsuccessfully to
commit suicide; when he began to drink,
Arabella left him.
Jude, now free, decided to carry out
his original purpose. With this idea in
mind, he went to Christminster, where
he took work as a stonemason. He had
heard tjiat his cousin, Sue Bridehead,
lived in Christminster, but he did not
seek her out because his aunt had warned
him against her and because he was
already a married man. Eventually he
met her and was charmed. She was an
artist employed in an ecclesiastical
warehouse. Jude met Phillotson, again a
simple schoolteacher. Sue, at Jude's
suggestion, became Phillotson's assistant.
The teacher soon lost his heart to his
bright and intellectually independent
young helper. Jude was hurt by evi-
JUDE THE OBSCURE by Thomas Hardy. By permission of the publishers, Harper ft Brothers. Copyright.
1895, by Harper & Brother*. Renewed, 1923. by Thomas Hardy.
1849

dence of intimacy between the two.
Disappointed in love and ambition, he
turned to drink and was dismissed by his
employer. He went back to Marygreen.
At Marygreen Jude was persuaded by
a minister to enter the church as a
licentiate. Sue, meanwhile, had won a
scholarship to a teacher's college at Mel-
chester; she wrote Jude asking him to
come to see her. Jude worked at stone-
masonry in Melchester in order to be
near Sue, even though she told him she
had promised to marry Phillotson after
her schooling. Dismissed from the
college after an innocent escapade with
Jude, Sue influenced him away from
the church with her unorthodox beliefs.
Shortly afterward she married Phillotson.
Jude, despondent, returned to Christmin-
ster, where he came upon Arabella
working in a bar. Jude heard that Sue's
married life was unbearable. He
continued his studies for the ministry and
thought a great deal about Sue.
Succumbing completely to his
passion for Sue, Jude at last forsook the
ministry. His Aunt Drusilla died, and
at the funeral Jude and Sue realized
that they could not remain separated.
Phillotson, sympathizing with the lovers,
released Sue, who now lived apart from
her husband. The lovers went to Ald-
brickham, a large city where they would
not be recognized. Phillotson gave Sue
a divorce and subsequently lost his
teaching position. Jude gave Arabella a divorce
so that she might marry again.
Sue and Jude now contemplated
marriage, but they were unwilling to be
joined by a church ceremony because
of Sue's dislike for any binding contract.
The pair lived together happily, Jude
doing simple stonework. One day
Arabella appeared and told Jude that her
marriage had not materialized. Sue,
jealous, promised Jude that she would
marry him. Arabella's problem was
solved by eventual marriage, but out of
fear of her husband she sent her young
child by Jude to live with him and Sue,
This pathetic boy, nicknamed Little
Father Time, joined the unconventional
Fawley household.
Jude's business began to decline, and
he lost a contract to restore a rural
church when the vestry discovered that
he and Sue were unmarried. Forced to
move on, they traveled from place to
place and from job to job. At the end
of two and a half years of this itinerant
life, the pair had two children of their
own and a third on the way. They were
five, including Little Father Time. Jude,
in failing health, became a baker and
Sue sold cakes in the shape of Gothic
ornaments at a fair in a village near
Christminster. At the fair Sue met
Arabella, now a widow. Arabella reported
Sue's poverty to Phillotson, who was
once more the village teacher in
Marygreen.
Jude took his family to Christminster,
where the celebration of Remembrance
Week was under way. Utterly defeated
by failure, Jude still had a love for the
atmosphere of learning which pervaded
the city.
The family had difficulty finding
lodgings and they were forced to separate.
Sue's landlady, learning that Sue was
an unmarried mother and fearful lest she
should have the trouble of childbirth in
her rooming-house, told Sue to find other
lodgings. Bitter, Sue told Little Father
Time that children should not be brought
into the world. When she returned
from a meal with Jude, she found that
the boy had hanged the two babies and
himself. She collapsed and gave
premature birth to a dead baby.
Her experience brought about a change
in Sue's point of view. Believing she
had sinned and wishing now to conform,
she asked Jude to live apart from her.
She also expressed the desire to return
to Phillotson, whom she believed, in her
misery, to be still her husband. She
returned to Phillotson and the two
remarried. Jude, utterly lost, began drinking
heavily. In a drunken stupor, he was
1850

again tricked by Arabella into marriage.
His lungs failed; it was evident that his
end was near. Arabella would not
communicate with Sue, whom Jude
desired to see once more, and so Jude
traveled in the rain to see her. The lovers
had a last meeting. She then made
complete atonement for her past mistakes by
becoming Phillotson's wife completely.
This development was reported to Jude,
who died in desperate misery of mind
and body. Fate had grown tired of its
sport with a luckless man.
1851

JUDITH PARIS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hugh Walpole (1884-1941)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1931
Principal characters:
Judith Hermes, later Judith Paris, daughter of Rogue Herries
David Herries, her half-brother
Francis Herries, her nephew
Jennifer, Francis* wife
Reuben Sunwood, Judith's cousin
Georges Paris, Judith's husband
William Herries, Francis' brother
Christabel, William's wife
Walter Herries, William's son
Critique:
Judith Paris is the second of four
novels dealing with the history of the
Herries family. Like the others, it
contains many characters and covers about
half a century. While Judith Paris is
an independent novel, it should be read
in sequence with the others, or many of
the allusions may confuse the reader.
Like the preceding Rogue Herries and
the succeeding The Fortress and
Vanessa, Judith Paris is long and
comprehensive in scope, with many references to
the political and social background of
the period.
The Story:
On the wild winter night Judith
Herries was born in the gloomy old house
at Herries in Rosthwaite, her aged father
and young gipsy mother both died. The
country midwife laid out the parents
with as much respect as she thought
Rogue Herries and his strange wife
deserved. The baby she wrapped up
warmly, for it was bitterly cold. Then to
fortify her own thin blood she sat down
with a bottle of strong drink. The wind
rose and a loose windowpane blew in.
The snow drifted in upon the cradle, but
the midwife slept on.
Squire Gauntry, tough and taciturn,
came by tired from hunting. He stopped
when he heard the child's thin wail
above the howling wind. Failing to
arouse the stupid countrywoman, he took
the baby home to his masculine hall until
her half-brother, David Herries, arrived
to claim he^
Judith Herries grew up at Fell House,
near Uldale, with David Herries and
his family. But David was fifty-five years
older than Judith and often he clashed
with his young sister. She was spanked
many times; the most serious
punishment came when she danced naked on
the roof. Judith frequently visited Stone
Ends, Squire Gauntry's place, where
there were no restrictions.
One significant visit came in her
eleventh year, when she ran away from
Fell House after being punished for
disobedience. Rough Gauntry welcomed
her to a strange gathering. With the
gentlemen who were drinking and
playing cards, there were two women. One
was vast Emma, Gauntry's mistress, who
was always to be Judith's friend, and the
other was beautiful Madame Paris, the
mother of Georges. Georges, only a year
or so older than Judith, came up to her
JUDITH PARIS by Hugh Walpole. By permission of the Executors, estate of Sir Hugh Walpole, and the
publishers, Messrs. MacMillan & Co., London. Copyright, 1931, by Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc.
1852

and enticed her away on a childish prank.
He kissed her soundly and she slapped
his face.
That night, when Judith went to bed,
she entered the room she usually slept in
at Stone Ends. There she saw Georges'
beautiful mother standing naked beside
the bed. On his knees before her, dressed
only in his shirt, knelt a gendeman who
was kissing Madame Paris' knees. From
that night on Judith thought as a
woman.
When she was fourteen, she saw
Georges again at a display of fireworks
by the lake. Disobeying orders, she
went out in a boat with him. His kisses
that night were more grown-up.
When she was seventeen, Judith
married Georges. It was a bad match in
every way, except that Judith really
loved her husband. Georges installed her
at Watendlath, a remote northern farm.
There she lived a lonely life. Georges, a
smuggler, spent little time at home.
After some years Georges and Judith
went to London, where the smuggler
turned gambler and intriguer to recoup
their fortunes. During a comparatively
harmonious interval, they attended the
famous ball given by Will Herries.
Jennifer Cards was the belle of the
ball. She was a strikingly beautiful
woman of twenty-six, still single by
preference. Many of the married Herries men
followed her like sheep. Christabel,
Will's wife, was much upset and scolded
Jennifer for being without a chaperon.
Jennifer answered roughly and in her
anger she seized Christabel's fan and
broke it. That was the occasion for the
great Herries quarrel. Ever after Will
and then his son Walter were intent on
destroying Jennifer.
Their quarrel eventually involved
Francis, Judith's well-loved nephew, for
Francis, thirty-six years old and a
pathetic, futile man of deep sensibility,
married Jennifer soon afterward.
Georges at last seemed to be serious
in attempting to advance his fortunes.
Judith n«?ver knew exacdy what he was
doing, but part of his project meant
standing in well with Will Herries, who
was a real power in the city. Mysterious
men came and went in the Paris' shabby
rooms. Stane was the one whom Judith
distrusted most, and often she begged
Georges to break with him. Her
suspicions were verified one day when
Georges came home exhausted and in
wild despair. All his projects had failed,
and Stane had lied his way into Will's
favor.
Despondent, Georges and Judith went
back to Watendlath, and Georges
returned to smuggling. After one of his
mysterious trips Georges appeared
haggard and upset, to tell her that off
Norway he choked Stane to death. Then he
had overturned the small boat, to make
the death appear an accident, and swam
ashore. Although Georges was
unsuspected, he needed Judith now. She had
him to herself at last.
Then old Stane came, professing to
seek shelter with his dead son's friend.
When he had satisfied his suspicion of
Georges' guilt, the powerful old man
threw Georges over the rail and broke
his back, killing him.
Now a widow, Judith left Watendlath
and at their strong urging went to stay
with Francis and Jennifer. The beautiful
Jennifer now had two children, John
and Dorothy. Since she had never loved
Francis, Jennifer felt no compulsion to
keep his love. She gave herself to
Fernyhirst, a neighbor. Although most
of the people in the neighborhood knew
of her infidelity, Francis shut his eyes
to it.
Then came the news that Will Herries
had bought Westaways, only eight miles
away from Fell House, where Judith
lived in the uneasy home of Jennifer and
Francis. They were sure that Will meant
to harm them for the slight to his wife
years before, and indeed Will hated them
savagely. It was Walter, however, who
was to be the agent for his father's hate.
Warren Forster brought the news of
Will's plans to Fell House. He was a
1853

tiny, kindly man who had long admired
Judith. The two went riding one day,
and out of pity and friendship Judith
gave herself to Warren, whose wife had
left him years before.
When Judith, who was nearly forty,
knew that she was carrying Warren's
child, she went to Paris with blowzy
Emma, now on the stage. It was just
after Waterloo, and Paris was filled with
Germans and Englishmen. When
Warren finally found them, he was a sick
man. In their little apartment, he died
with only Judith and Emma to attend
him.
One night, while Judith was dining in
a caf£, a vengeful Frenchman shot a
Prussian sitting at the next table. The
shock unnerved Judith, and there,
behind a screen, her son Adam was born.
In England, Walter was determined to
harm Jennifer. He knew of her affair
with Fernyhirst and he knew also of a
journey Francis was taking. After he
sent a note of warning to the inn where
Francis was staying, Francis returned
unexpectedly to Fell House. There he
found his wife's lover in her room and
fell on him savagely. Later he overtook
the fleeing Fernyhirst and fought a duel
with him, but Fernyhirst ran away. In
futile despair Francis killed himself.
Now Judith had to manage a shaken
and crumpled Jennifer and fight a savage
Walter. A riot, incited by Walter,
caused the death of Reuben Sunwood,
Judith's kinsman and staunch friend,
and a fire of mysterious origin broke out
in the stables. Judith gave up her plan
to return to Watendlath. For Jennifer's
sake she and Adam went back to FeU
House to stay.
1854

JULIUS CAESAR
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: 44 B.C.
Locale: Rome
First presented: 1601
Principal characters:
Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome
Marcus Antonius, his friend
Marcus Brutus, a conspirator against Caesar
Caius Cassius, another conspirator against Caesar
Portia, wife of Brutus and Cassius7 sister
Calpurnia, Caesar's wife
Critique:
Actually, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
tells the story of Brutus rather than that
of Caesar. At Shakespeare's hands the
mighty dictator of Rome emerges as little
more than a braggart whose chief
activity, at least in this play, is a consistent
refusal to read the handwriting on the
wall. Brutus himself is a forerunner of
Hamlet. Since Cassius, the so-called
villain of this play, is presented rather
sympathetically, some of our respect for
Brutus is lost near the end of the play.
The Story:
At the feast of Lupercalia all Rome
rejoiced, for the latest military triumphs of
Julius Caesar were being celebrated
during that holiday. Yet tempers flared and
jealousies seethed beneath this public
gaiety. Flavius and Marallus, two
tribunes, coming upon a group of citizens
gathered to praise Caesar, tore down their
trophies and ordered the people to go
home and remember Pompey's rate at the
hands of Caesar.
Other dissatisfied noblemen discussed
with concern Caesar's growing power and
his incurable ambition. A soothsayer,
following Caesar in his triumphal procession,
warned him to beware the Ides of March.
Cassius, one of the most violent of Caesar's
critics, spoke at length to Brutus of the
dictator's unworthiness to rule the state.
Why, he demanded, should the name of
Caesar have become synonymous with
that of Rome when there were so many
other worthy men in the city?
While Cassius and Brutus were
speaking, they heard a tremendous shouting
from the crowd. From aristocratic Casca
they learned that before the mob Marcus
Antonius had three times offered a crown
to Caesar and three times the dictator had
refused it. Thus did the wily Antonius
and Caesar catch and hold the devotion
of the multitude. Fully aware of Caesar's
methods and the potential danger that he
embodied, Cassius and Brutus, disturbed
by this new turn of events, agreed to meet
again to discuss the affairs of Rome. As
they parted Caesar arrived in time to see
them, and suspicion of Cassius entered
his mind. Cassius was not contented-
looking; he was too lean and nervous to be
satisfied with life. Caesar much preferred
to have fat, jolly men about him.
Cassius' plan was to enlist Brutus in a
plot to overthrow Caesar. Brutus himself
was one of the most respected and beloved
citizens of Rome; if he were in league
against Caesar, the dictator's power could
be curbed easily. But it would be difficult
to turn Brutus completely against Caesar,
for Brutus was an honorable man and not
given to treason, so that only the most
drastic circumstances would make him
forego his loyalty. Cassius plotted to have
certain false papers denoting widespread
public alarm over Caesar's rapidly
growing power put into Brutus' hands. Then
Brutus might put Rome's interests above
his own personal feelings.
1855

Secretly, at night, Cassius had the
papers laid at Brutus' door. Their purport
was that Brutus must strike at once against
Caesar to save Rome. The conflict within
Brutus was great. His wife Portia
complained that he had not slept at all during
the night and that she had found him
wandering, restless and unhappy, about
the house. At last he reached a decision.
Remembering Tarquin, the tyrant whom
his ancestors had banished from Rome,
Brutus agreed to join Cassius and his
conspirators in their attempt to save Rome
from Caesar. He refused, however, to
sanction the murder of Antonius, planned
at the same time as the assassination of
Caesar. The plan was to kill Caesar on
the following morning, March fifteenth.
On the night of March fourteenth, all
nature seemed to misbehave. Strange
lights appeared in the sky, graves yawned,
ghosts walked, and an atmosphere of
terror pervaded the city. Caesar's wife
Calpurnia dreamed she saw her husband's
statue with a hundred wounds spouting
blood. In the morning she told him of the
dream and pleaded that he not go to the
Senate that morning. When she had
almost convinced him to remain at home,
one of the conspirators arrived and
persuaded the dictator that Calpurnia was
unduly nervous, that the dream was
actually an omen of Caesar's tremendous
popularity in Rome, the bleeding wounds
a symbol of Caesar's power going out to
all Romans. The other conspirators then
arrived to allay any suspicion that Caesar
might have of them and to make sure that
he attended the Senate that day.
As Caesar made his way through the
city, more omens of evil appeared to him.
A paper detailing the plot against him was
thrust into his hands, but he neglected to
read it. When the soothsayer again cried
out against the Ides of March, Caesar paid
no attention to the warning.
At the Senate chamber Antonius was
drawn to one side. Then the conspirators
crowded about Caesar as if to second a
petition for the repealing of an order
banishing Publius Cimber. When he
refused the petition, the conspirators
attacked him, and he fell dead of twenty-
three knife wounds.
Craftily pretending to side with the
conspirators, Antonius was able to
reinstate himself in their good graces, and in
spite of Cassius' warning he was granted
permission to speak at Caesar's funeral
after Brutus had delivered his oration.
Before the populace Brutus, frankly and
honestly explaining his part in Caesar's
murder, declared that his love for Rome
had prompted him to turn against his
friend. Cheering him, the mob agreed that
Caesar was a tyrant who deserved death.
Then Antonius rose to speak. Cleverly
and forcefully he turned the temper of
the crowd against the conspirators by
explaining that even when Caesar was most
tyrannical, everything he did was for the
people's welfare. Soon the mob became so
enraged over the assassination that the
conspirators were forced to flee from
Rome.
Gradually the temper of the people
changed, and they became aligned in two
camps. One group supported the new
triumvirate of Marcus Antonius, Octavius
Caesar, and Aemilius Lepidus. The other
group followed Brutus and Cassius to
their military camp at Sardis.
At Sardis, Brutus and Cassius quarreled
constantly over various small matters. In
the course of one violent disagreement
Brutus told Cassius that Portia,
despondent over the outcome of the civil war, had
killed herself. Cassius, shocked by this
news of his sister's death, allowed himself
to be persuaded to leave the safety of the
camp at Sardis and meet the enemy on
the plains of Philippi. The night before
the battle Caesar's ghost appeared to
Brutus in his tent and announced that
they would meet at Philippi.
At the beginning of the battle the forces
of Brutus were at first successful against
those of Octavius. Cassius, however, was
driven back by Antonius. One morning
Cassius sent one of his followers, Titinius,
1856

to learn if approaching troops were the
enemy or the soldiers of Brutus. When
Cassius saw Titinius unseated from his
horse by the strangers, he assumed that
everything was lost and ordered his
servant Pindarus to kill him. Actually, the
troops had been sent by Brutus. Rejoicing
over the defeat of Octavius, they were
having rude sport with Titinius. When
they returned to Cassius and found him
dead, Titinius also killed himself. In the
last charge against Antonius, the soldiers
of Brutus, tired and discouraged by these
new events, were defeated. Brutus,
heartbroken, asked his friends to kill him.
When they refused, he commanded his
servant to hold his sword and turn his face
away. Then Brutus fell upon his sword
and died.
1857

THE JUNGLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Upton Sinclair (1878- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Chicago
First published: 1906
Principal characters:
Jurgis Rudkus, a stockyards worker
Antanas Rudkus, his father
Ona, Jurgis' wife
Elzbieta, Ona's stepmother
Jonas, Elzbieta's brother
Marija, Ona's orphan cousin
Critique:
The Jungle is an indignant book,
written in anger at the social injustices of
the meat-packing industry, and from this
anger the novel derives its power. At the
time of publication the book served its
purpose in arousing public sentiment
against unfair practices in the meat
industry. It is still an honestly told and
gripping story.
The Story:
While he was still a peasant boy in
Lithuania, Jurgis Rudkus had fallen in
love with a gentle girl named Ona. When
Ona's father died, Jurgis, planning to
marry her as soon as he had enough
money, came to America with her
family. Besides the young lovers, the
emigrant party was composed of Antanas,
Jurgis' father; Elzbieta, Ona's stepmother,
Jonas, Elzbieta's brother; Marija, Ona's
orphan cousin, and Elzbieta's six children.
By the time the family arrived in
Chicago they had very little money. Jonas,
Marija, and Jurgis at once got work in
the stockyards. Antanas tried to find
work, but he was too old. They all
decided that it would be cheaper to buy
a house on installments than to rent. A
crooked agent sold them a ramshackle
house which had a fresh coat of paint
and told his ignorant customers that it
was new.
Jurgis found his job exhausting, but he
thought himself lucky to be making forty-
five dollars a month. At last Antanas
also found work at the plant, but he
had to give part of his wages to the
foreman in order to keep his job. Jurgis
and Ona saved enough money for their
wedding feast and were married. Then
the family found that they needed more
money. Elzbieta lied about the age of
her oldest son, Stanislovas, and he too
got a job at the plant. Ona had already
begun to work in order to help pay for
the wedding.
Antanas worked in a moist, cold room
where he developed consumption. When
he died, the family had scarcely enough
money to bury him. Winter came, and
everyone suffered in the flimsy house.
When Marija lost her job, the family
income diminished. Jurgis joined a union
and became an active member. He went
to night school to learn to read and speak
English.
At last summer came with its hordes
of flies and oppressive heat. Marija
found work as a beef trimmer, but at
that job the danger of blood poisoning
was very great. Ona had her baby, a
fine boy, whom they called Antanas
after his grandfather. Winter came
again, and Jurgis sprained his ankle at
the plant. Compelled to stay at home
THE JUNGLE by Upton Sinclair. By permission of the author and the publishers, The Viking Press, Inc.
Copyright. 1905, 1906, 1933, 1946, by Upton Sinclair.
1858

for months, he became moody. Two
more of Elzbieta's children left school to
sell papers.
When Jurgis was well enough to look
for work again, he could find none,
because he was no longer the strong man
he had been. Finally he got a job in a
fertilizer plant, a last resource, for men
lasted only a few years at that work.
One of Elzbieta's daughters was now old
enough to care for the rest of the
children, and Elzbieta also went to work.
Jurgis began to drink. Ona, pregnant
again, developed a consumptive cough
and was often seized with spells of
hysteria. Hoping to save the family with
the money she made, she went to a
house of prostitution with her boss,
Connor. When Jurgis learned what she
had done, he attacked Connor and was
sentenced to thirty days in jail. Now that
he had time to think, Jurgis saw how
unjustly he had been treated by society.
No longer would he try to be kind,
except to his own family. From now on
he would recognize society as an enemy
rather than a friend.
After he had served his sentence,
Jurgis went to look for his family. He found
that they had lost the house because they
could not meet the payments, and had
moved. He found them at last in a
rooming-house. Ona was in labor with
her second child, and Jurgis frantically
searched for a midwife. By the time he
found one, Ona and the child had died.
Now he had only little Antanas to live
for. He tried to find work. Blacklisted
in the stockyards for his attack on
Connor, he finally found a job in a
harvesting machine factory. Shortly afterward
he was discharged when his department
closed down for a lack of orders.
Next he went to work in the steel
mills. In order to save money he moved
near the mills and came home only on
weekends. One weekend he came home
to find that little Antanas had drowned
in the street in front of the house. Now
that he had no dependents, he hopped a
freight train and rode away from
Chicago. He became one of the thousands
of migratory farm workers; his old
strength came back in healthful
surroundings.
In the fall Jurgis returned to Chicago.
He got a job digging tunnels under the
streets. Then a shoulder injury made
him spend weeks in a hospital.
Discharged with his arm still in a sling, he
became a beggar. By luck he obtained
a hundred-dollar bill from a lavish drunk.
When he went to a saloon to get it
changed, however, the barkeeper tried
to cheat him out of his money. In a
rage Jurgis attacked the man. He was
arrested and sent to jail again. There
he met a dapper safe-cracker, Jack Duane.
After their release, Jurgis joined Duane
in several holdups and became
acquainted with Chicago's underworld. At last
he was making money.
Jurgis became a political worker.
About that time the packing plant
workers began to demand more rights through
their unions. When packing house
operators would not listen to union
demands, there was a general strike.
Jurgis went to work in the plant as a scab.
One day he met Connor and attacked
him again. Jurgis fled from the district
to avoid a penitentiary sentence. On the
verge of starvation, he found Marija
working as a prostitute. Jurgis was
ashamed to think how low he and
Marija had fallen since they came to
Chicago. She gave him some money so that
he might look for a job.
Jurgis was despondent until one night
he heard a Socialist speak. Jurgis
believed that he had found a remedy for the
ills of the world. At last he knew how the
workers could find self-respect. He found
a job in a hotel where the manager was
a Socialist. It was the beginning of a
new life for Jurgis, the rebirth of hope
and faith.
1859

THE JUNGLE BOOKS
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Type of plot: Beast rabies
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: India
First published: 1894,1895
Principal characters:
Mowgli, an Indian boy
Father Wolf
Mother Wolf
Shere Khan, the tiger
Akela, leader of the wolf pack
Bagheera, the black panther
Baloo, the bear
Kaa, the rock python
The Bandar Log, the monkey people
Hathi, the elephant
Messua, a woman who adopted Mowgli for a time
Messua's Husband
Buldeo, a village hunter
Gray Brother, a young wolf
Critique:
Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel
Prize in 1907, wrote these stories for
children while living in Brattleboro,
Vermont. The ]ungle Book and The Second
]ungle Book are children's classics
which attempt to teach the lessons of
justice, loyalty, and tribal laws. It is
evident from reading these books that
here is a master writer who loved children
and could tell them a good story with
an underlying meaning that adults can
appreciate as well.
The Stories:
Shere Khan, the tiger, pursued a small
Indian boy who had strayed from his
native village, but Shere Khan was lame
and missed his leap upon the child.
When Father Wolf took the boy home
with him to show to Mother Wolf, Shere
Khan followed and demanded the child
as his quarry. Mother Wolf refused.
The tiger retired in anger. Mowgli, the
frog, for such he was named, was reared
by Mother Wolf along with her own
cubs.
Father Wolf took Mowgli to the
Council Rock to be recognized by the
wolves. Bagheera, the panther, and
Baloo, the bear, spoke for Mowgli's
acceptance into the Seeonee wolf pack.
Thus Mowgli became a wolf.
Baloo became Mowgli's teacher and
instructed him in the lore of the jungle.
Mowgli learned to speak the languages
of all the jungle people. Throughout his
early life the threat of Shere Khan hung
over him, but Mowgli was certain of
his place in the pack and of his friends'
protection. But some day when Akela,
the leader of the wolves, would miss his
kill, the pack would turn on him and
Mowgli. Bagheera told Mowgli to get
the Red Flower, or fire, from the village
to protect himself. When Akela missed
his quarry one night and was about to
be deposed and killed, Mowgli attacked
all of their mutual enemies with his fire
sticks and threatened to destroy anyone
who molested Akela. That night
Mowgli realized that the jungle was no place
for him, and that some day he would
THE JUNGLE BOOKS by Rudyard Kipling. By permission of Mrs. George Bambridge and the publishers,
Doubleday ft Co., Inc. Copyright, 1893, 1894, 1932, by Rudyard Kipling. Renewed, 1940, by Elsie Kip)in*
Bambridge.
1860

go to live with men. But that time was
still far off.
One day Mowgli climbed a tree and
made friends with the Bandar-Log, the
monkey tribe, who because of their
stupidity and vanity were despised by the
other jungle people. When the Bandar-
Log carried off Mowgli, Bagheera and
Baloo went in pursuit, taking along Kaa,
the rock python, who loved to eat
monkeys. Mowgli was rescued at the
old ruined city of the Cold Lairs by the
three pursuers, and Kaa feasted royally
upon monkey meat.
One year during a severe drought in
the jungle, Hathi the elephant
proclaimed the water truce; all animals
were allowed to drink at the water hole
unmolested. Shere Khan announced to
the animals gathered there one day that
he had killed a Man, not for food but
from choice. The other animals were
shocked. Hathi allowed the tiger to
drink and then told him to be off. Then
Hathi told the story of how fear came
to the jungle and why the tiger was
striped. It was the tiger who first killed
Man and earned the human tribe's
unrelenting enmity, and for his deed the
tiger was condemned to wear stripes.
Now for one day a year the tiger was
not afraid of Man and could kill him.
This day was called, among jungle
people, the Night of the Tiger.
One day Mowgli wandered close to a
native village, where he was adopted
by Messua, a woman who had lost her
son some years before. Mowgli became
a watcher of the village herds, and so
from time to time he met Gray Wolf,
his brother, and heard the news of the
jungle. Learning that Shere Khan
intended to kill him, he laid plans with
Akela and Gray Brother to kill the tiger.
They lured Shere Khan into a gully and
then stampeded the herd. Shere Khan
was trampled to death. Stoned from the
village because he was believed to be a
sorcerer who spoke to animals, Mowgli
returned to the jungle resolved to hunt
with the wolves for the rest of his life.
Buldeo, the village hunter, followed
the trail of Mowgli, Gray Brother, and
Akela. Mowgli overheard Buldeo say
that Messua and her husband were
imprisoned in their house and would be
burned at the stake. Messua's husband
had saved some money and he had one
of the finest herds of buffaloes in the
village. Knowing that the imprisonment
of Messua and her husband was a scheme
for the villagers to get their property,
Mowgli laid plans to help his friends.
Entering the village, he led Messua and
her husband beyond the gates in the
darkness. Then the jungle people began
to destroy, little by little, the farms, the
orchards, and the cattle, but no villager
was harmed because Mowgli did not
desire the death of any human. Finally,
just before the rains, Hathi and his three
sons moved into the village and tore
down the houses. The people left and
thus the jungle was let into the village.
Kaa took Mowgli to Cold Lairs to meet
the guardian of the king's treasure, an
old white cobra who had expressed a
desire to see Mowgli. The old cobra
showed them all the treasure, and when
he left Mowgli took a jeweled elephant
goad, a king's ankus, with him, even
iLovj>h the cobra had said it brought
death to the person who possessed it.
Back in the jungle Mowgli threw the
ankus away. Later that day he went
with Bagheera to retrieve the ankus and
discovered that it was gone. They
followed the trail of the man who had
picked it up and found that altogether six
men who had had possession of the ankus
had died. Believing it to be cursed,
Mowgli returned the ankus to the treasure
room in the Cold Lairs.
Sometimes fierce red dogs called dholes
traveled in large packs, destroying
everything in their paths. Warned of the
approach of the dholes, Mowgli led the
marauders, by insults and taunts, toward
the lairs of the Little People, the bees.
Then he excited the bees to attack the
dholes. The destruction of the red dogs
that escaped the fury of the bees was
1861

completed by the wolves lying in
ambush a little farther down the river
which flowed under the cliffs where the
Little People lived. But it was the last
battle of old Akela, the leader of the
pack when Mowgli was a little boy. He
crawled out slowly from under a pile
of carcasses to bid Mowgli goodbye and
to sing his death song.
The second year after the death of
Akela, Mowgli was about seventeen years
old. In the spring of that year Mowgli
knew that he was unhappy, but none
of his friends could tell him what was
wrong. Mowgli left his own jungle to
travel to another, and on the way he
met Messua. Her husband had died,
leaving her with a child. Messua told
Mowgli that she believed he was her
own son lost in the jungle years before
and that her baby must be his brother.
Mowgli did not know what to make of
the child and the unhappiness he felt.
When Gray Brother came to Messua's
hut, Mowgli decided to return to the
jungle. But on the outskirts of the
village he met a girl coming down the
path. Mowgli melted into the jungle
and watched the girl. He knew at last
that the jungle was no longer a place
for him and that he had returned to the
Man-pack to stay.
1862

JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sean O'Casey (1884- )
Type of plot: Satiric realism
Time of plot: 1922
Locale: Dublin
First presented: 1924
Principal characters:
"Captain" Jack Boyle, a ne'er-do-well
Juno Boyle, his wife
Johnny Boyle, their son
Mary Boyle, their daughter
"Joxer" Daly, the Captain's pal
Jerry Devine, Mary's suitor
Charlie Bentham, a schoolteacher
Mrs. Maisie Madigan, a neighbor
"Needle" Nugent, a tailor
Critique:
Sean O'Casey's plays mark the
culmination of the Irish dramatic renaissance,
which had begun as a part of the
European movement toward realistic theater
in opposition to the French romantic
drama, but which diverged from the
dramaturgic techniques of Ibsen and
Shaw. Believing that Continental and
English dramas were too intellectualized,
O'Casey, along with his compatriots Yeats
and Synge, tried to make the drama
individualistic and realistic by drenching it
in Irish local color. Formlessness—ignoring
formal dramatic technique to reflect the
vigor and vitality of life—was O'Casey's
unique contribution to the Irish
movement. In ]uno and the Paycock he reached
a new peak of realism. He dispensed with
an elaborate plot, ideas, and consistency
of character, content merely to show
characters, Irish characters, in action.
The Story:
Waiting for "Captain" Jack Boyle to
come in from his morning visit to the pub,
Mary Boyle and her mother, Juno,
discussed the newspaper account of the
murder of Robbie Tancred, a fanatic Irish
Republican. Johnny Boyle, who himself
had been shot in the hip and had lost an
arm fighting against the Free State, left
the living room of the tenancy after
denouncing the two women for their
morbid insensitivity. Juno scolded Mary for
participating in the Trades Union Strike,
especially at a time when the family was
in debt tor food; but Mary defended her
activities, and her brother's as well, as
matters of principle.
When Jerry Devine rushed in with a
message from Father Farrell, who had
found a job for Boyle, Juno sent Jerry to
look for her husband at his favorite bar.
Soon afterward she heard her husband
and his crony, "Joxer" Daly, singing on
the stairs. She hid behind the bed
curtains so as to catch them talking about
her. Disclosing herself, she frightened
Joxer away and berated her husband for
his laziness and malingering. Jerry
returned and delivered his message to
Boyle, who immediately developed a case
of stabbing pains in his legs. Juno, not
deceived, ordered him to chance into his
working clothes. She then left for her
own jol
JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK by Sean O'Casey. By permission of the publishers, St. Martin'i Press, Inc.,
and Macmillan & Co., Ltd. Copyright. All rights reserved.
1863

Jerry accosted Mary, complained of her
unfriendliness, and once again proposed
to her. Although Jerry offered her love
and security, Mary refused him, and both
left in a huff.
Ignoring his wife's instructions to
apply for the job, Boyle, leisurely
proceeding to get his breakfast, was rejoined by
Joxer. Absorbed in their talk, they
refused to acknowledge a loud knocking at
the street door, though the continuance
of it seemed to upset young Johnny Boyle.
Their rambling discourse on family life,
the clergy, literature, and the sea was
interrupted by Juno and Mary, who had
returned with Charlie Bentham, a
schoolteacher and amateur lawyer, to announce
that a cousin had bequeathed £2,000 to
Boyle. Boyle declared that he was through
with Joxer and the like, whereupon Joxer,
who had been hiding outside the
window, reappeared, expressed his
indignation, and left.
Two days later the two cronies had
been reconciled, Joxer having served as
Boyle's agent for loans based on
expectations of the inheritance. The entrance
of Juno and Mary with a new
gramophone was followed by that of Bentham,
now Mary's fiance\ Over family tea,
Bentham explained his belief in theosophy
and ghosts. Johnny, visibly upset by this
conversation about death, left the room
but quickly returned, twitching and
trembling. He was convinced that he had
seen the bloody ghost of Robbie Tancred
kneeling before the statue of the Virgin.
The arrival of Joxer with Mrs. Madi-
gan, a garrulously reminiscent neighbor,
smoothed over the incident. A party
featuring whiskey and song ensued. The
revelry was interrupted by Mrs. Tancred
and some neighbors, on their way to
Robbie Tancred's funeral. Soon tnere-
after the merriment was again dispelled,
this time by the funeral procession in the
street. A young man, an Irregular
Mobilizes came looking for Johnny, whom he
reproached for not attending the funeral.
He ordered Johnny to appear at a
meeting called for the purpose of inquiring
into Tancred's death.
Two months later, Juno insisted on
taking Mary to the doctor, for the girl
seemed to be pining away over Bentham,
who had disappeared.
After the women had left, Joxer and
Nugent, a tailor, slipped into the
apartment. Having learned that Boyle would
not receive the inheritance, Nugent had
come to get the suit which he had sold
to Boyle on credit. Taking the suit from
a chair, Nugent scoffed at Boyle's
promise to pay and his order for a new topcoat
as well.
Joxer, who had sneaked out unseen,
returned, hypocrite that he was, to
commiserate with Boyle. Mrs. Madigan, who
had also heard that Boyle would not
receive his inheritance, arrived to collect
the three pounds she had lent him.
Rebuffed, she appropriated the gramophone
and left, followed by Joxer.
News of Boyle's misadventure spread
rapidly; two men arrived to remove the
new, but unpaid-for, furniture. Mrs.
Boyle ran out to find her husband.
Mary having returned, Jerry Devine
came to see her. Again he proposed.
Although he was willing to forget that Mary
had jilted him for Bentham, he recoiled
at her admission that she was pregnant.
Left alone with the two moving men,
Johnny imagined that he felt a bullet
wound in his chest. At that moment two
armed Irish Irregulars entered the
apartment and accused Johnny of informing
on Robbie Tancred to the gang that had
murdered him. Ignoring Johnny's
protestations of innocence and loyalty, the
men dragged him out. A little later, Mrs.
Madigan notified Mary and Juno that
the police were waiting below, requesting
that Juno identify a body. Juno and Mary
left, vowing never to return to the
worthless Boyle.
Soon Boyle and Joxer stumbled into
the abandoned apartment, both very
1864

drunk and unaware of Johnny's death or
Juno and Mary's desertion. Joxer stretched
out on the bed; Boyle slumped on the
floor. With thick tongues they stammered
out their patriotic devotion to Ireland,
and Boyle deplored the miserable state of
the world.
1865

JURGEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Branch Cabell (1879- )
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Middle Ages
Locale: Poictesme, a land of myth
First published: 1919
Principal characters:
Jurgbn, a middle-aged pawnbroker
Damb Lisa, his wife
Dorothy la Desires, his childhood sweetheart
Queen Guenevere
Dame Anaitis
Chloris, a Hamadryad
Queen Helen of Troy
Mother Sereda
Koshchei, the maker of things as they are
Critique:
Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice, is one of
a series dealing with the mythical
country of Poictesme. Although it was once
charged in the courts with being an
obscene book, it is by no means merely an
erotic tale. This novel can be read on
many levels; as a nanative of fantastic
love and adventure, as a satire, and as
a philosophic view of life. The book is
an interesting product of a romantic
imagination and a critical mind.
The Story:
Once in the old days a middle-aged
pawnbroker named Jurgen said a good
word for the Prince of Darkness. In
gratitude, the Prince of Darkness
removed from the earth Dame Lisa, Jur-
gen's shrewish wife. Some time later
Jurgen heard that his wife had returned
to wander on Amneran Heath; conse-
3uently the only manly thing for him to
o was to look for her.
It was Walburga's Eve when Jurgen
met Dame Lisa on the heath. She led
him to a cave, but when he followed her
inside she disappeared and Jurgen found
a Centaur instead. Jurgen inquired for
his wife. The Centaur replied that only
Koshchei the Deathless, the maker of
things as they are, could help Jurgen in
his quest. The Centaur gave Jurgen
a beautiful new shirt and started off
with him to the Garden between Dawn
and Sunrise, the first stopping place of
Jurgen's journey to find Koshchei.
In the garden Jurgen found Dorothy
la D6sir6e, his first sweetheart, who
retained all the beauty he had praised in
his youthful poetry. She no longer knew
him, for she was in love only with
Jurgen as he had been in youth, and he
could not make her understand that in
the real world she also had become
middle-aged and commonplace. So he parted
sadly from her and found himself
suddenly back in his native country.
His friend the Centaur had now
become an ordinary horse. Jurgen mounted
and rode through a forest until he came
to the house of Mother Sereda, the
goddess who controlled Wednesdays and
whose job it was to bleach the color out
of everything in the world. By flattery
Jurgen persuaded her to let him live
over a certain Wednesday in his youth
with Dorothy la D6sir6e. But when the
magic Wednesday ended, Dorothy la
D6sir6e turned into the old woman she
really was, and Jurgen quickly departed.
He wandered again to Amneran Heath
and entered the cave to look for Kosh-
JURGEN by James Branch Cabell. By permission of the author. Copyright. 1919, by Robert M. McBride Co.
Renewed, 1946, by James Branch Cabell.
1866

chei and Dame Lisa. There he found
a beautiful girl who said that she was
Guenevere, the daughter of King Gogyr-
van. Jurgen offered to conduct her back
to her home. When they arrived at the
court of King Gogyrvan, Jurgen,
pretending to be the Duke of Logreus, asked for
the hand of Guenevere as a reward for
her safe return. But she had already
been promised to King Arthur. Jurgen
stayed on at court. He had made the
discovery that he still looked like a young
man; the only trouble was that his
shadow was not his shadow; it was the
shadow of Mother Sereda.
King Arthur's envoys, Dame Anaitis
and Merlin, had arrived to take
Guenevere to London. Jurgen watched her
depart for London without feeling any
sorrow because of a magic token Merlin
had given him. Then Dame Anaitis
invited Jurgen to visit her palace in Co-
caigne, the country where Time stood
still. There Jurgen participated with
her in a ceremony called the Breaking
of the Veil, to learn afterwards that it
had been a marriage ceremony and that
Dame Anaitis was now his wife. Dame
Anaitis, a myth woman of lunar legend,
instructed Jurgen in every variety of
strange pleasures she knew.
Jurgen visited a philologist, who said
that Jurgen had also become a legend;
consequendy he could not remain long
in Cocaigne. When the time came for
him to leave the country, Jurgen chose
to go to Leuke, the kingdom where
Queen Helen and Achilles ruled. Jur-
gen's reason for wishing to go there was
that Queen Helen resembled his first
sweetheart, Dorothy la Desir6e.
In Leuke, Jurgen met Chloris, a
Hamadryad, and married her. He was still
curious about Queen Helen, however,
and one evening he entered her casde
and went to her bedchamber. The
sleeping queen was Dorothy la D6sir6e, but
he dared not touch her. Her beauty,
created from the dreams of his youth,
was unattainable. He left the castle and
returned to Chloris.
Shordy afterward the Philistines
invaded Leuk6 and condemned all its
mythical inhabitants to limbo. Jurgen
protested because he was flesh and blood
and he offered to prove his claim by
mathematics. Queen Dolores of the
Philistines agreed with him after he had
demonstrated his proof to her by means
of a concrete example. However, he was
condemned by the great tumble-bug of
the Philistines for being a poet.
After Chloris had been condemned to
limbo, Jurgen went on to the hell of his
fathers. There he visited Satan and
learned that Koshchei had created hell
to humor the pride of Jurgen's
forefathers. Then he remembered that he
was supposed to be looking for Dame
Lisa. Learning that she was not in hell,
he decided to look for her in heaven.
Mistaken for a pope by means of the
philologist's charm, he managed to gain
entrance to heaven. Dame Lisa was
not there. St. Peter returned him to
Amneran Heath.
On the heath he again met Mother
Sereda, who took away his youth and
returned him to his middle-aged body.
Actually, it was a relief to Jurgen to be
old again. Then for the third time he
entered the cave in search of Dame
Lisa. Inside he found the Prince of
Darkness who had taken her away. The
Prince was really Koshchei; Jurgen was
near the end of his quest. He asked
Koshchei to return Dame Lisa to him.
Koshchei showed him Guenevere,
Dame Anaitis, and Dorothy la D6sir6e
again. But Jurgen would not have them.
He had had his youth to live over, and
he had committed the same follies. He
was content now to be Jurgen the
pawnbroker.
Koshchei agreed to return Jurgen to
his former life, but he asked for the
Centaur's shirt in return. Jurgen gladly
gave up the shirt. Koshchei walked with
him from the heath into town. As they
walked, Jurgen noticed that the moon
was sinking in the east. Time was
turning backward.
1867

It was as if the past year had never
been. For now he approached his house
and saw through the window that the
table was set for supper. Inside, Dame
Lisa sat sewing and looking quite as if
nothing had ever happened.
18'68

JUSTICE
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1910
Locale: London
First presented: 1910
Principal characters:
William Falder, a solicitor's clerk
Cokeson, a senior clerk
Ruth Honeywiix, with whom Falder is in love
Critique:
Since 1910, when this play was
written, prison reforms have progressed
considerably. The play is a protest against
dehumanized institutionalism, with
particular attention directed toward the
evils of solitary confinement and the
strict parole system. The problem of
making a convicted man into a useful
citizen once more is complex. Galsworthy
thought rehabilitation likely only if all
who came into contact with the man
accepted their share of the responsibility.
The Story:
Cokeson, managing clerk for the firm
of James and Walter How, solicitors,
was interrupted one July morning by a
woman asking to see tne junior clerk,
Falder. The woman, Ruth Honeywill,
seemed in great distress, and though it
was against office rules, Cokeson
permitted her to see Falder.
Falder and Ruth Honeywill were
planning to run away together. Ruth's
husband, a drunken brute, had abused her
until she would no longer stay with
him. Falder arranged to have Ruth and
her two children meet him at the railway
station that night. Ruth left and Falder
went back to work.
Young Walter How came to the office.
Cokeson was skeptical of the young
man's desire to keep the firm not only on
the right side of the law but also on the
right side of ethics. James How entered
from the partners' room. He and Walter
began to check the firm's balance, which
they decided was below what they
remembered it should have been. Then
they discovered that a check written the
previous Friday had been altered from
nine to ninety pounds.
The check had been cashed on the
same day that another junior clerk,
Davis, had gone away on some firm
business. Cokeson was quickly cleared. When
it became certain that the check stub
had been altered after Davis had started
on his trip, suspicion fell on Falder.
The bank cashier was summoned. He
recognized Falder as the man who had
cashed the check. James How accused
Falder of the felony. Falder asked for
mercy, but How, convinced that the
felony had been premeditated, sent for
the police. Falder was arrested.
When the case came to court, Frome,
Falder's counsel, tried to show that
Falder had conceived the idea and
carried it out within the space of four
minutes, and that at the time he had
been greatly upset by the difficulties of
Ruth Honeywill with her husband.
Frome callea Cokeson as the first
witness, and the managing clerk gave the
impression that Falder had not been
himself on the day in question. Ruth
Honeywill was the most important
witness. She indicated that Falder had
altered the check for her sake. Cleaver,
the counsel for the prosecution, tried his
utmost to make her appear an undutiful
wife.
In defense of Falder, Frome tried to
JUSTICE by John Galsworthy, from PLAYS by John Galsworthy. By permission of the publishers, Charles
Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1909, 1910, by John Galsworthy, 1928, by Charles Scribner's Son*.
1869

press the point that Falder had been
almost out of his mind. Cleaver questioned
Falder until the clerk admitted that
he had not known what he was doing.
Then Cleaver declared Falder had known
enough to keep the money he had
stolen and to turn in the sum for which
the check originally had been written.
The jury found Falder guilty and the
judge sentenced him to three years.
At Christmas time Cokeson visited the
prison on Falder's behalf. He attempted
to have Falder released from solitary
confinement and asked for permission
to bring Ruth Honeywill to see Falder.
Cokeson's visit accomplished nothing.
Both the chaplain and the prison
governor were indifferent to his appeal.
When Falder was finally released on
parole, Ruth Honeywill went to
intercede for him at How's office. She
intimated that she had kept herself and
her children alive by living with another
man after she left her husband. Falder
went to tell Cokeson that his relatives
wanted to give him money to go to
Canada. He was depressed and ill at
ease; he had seen Ruth only once since
his release. James How made it clear
that if Falder refused to abide by strict
standards of justice there would be no
hope that the firm would take him back.
James How, aware that Ruth
Honeywill had been living with another man,
crudely broke the news to Falder. He
did, however, give Falder and Ruth an
opportunity to talk over their
predicament. While they were talking in a
side room, a detective sergeant came
looking for Falder. Falder was to be
arrested again because he had failed to
report to the police according to the
parole agreement. Although How and
Cokeson refused to disclose Falder's
whereabouts, the detective discovered
Falder in the side room. As he was
rearresting Falder, the clerk suddenly
broke loose and killed himself by
jumping from the office window.
1870

THE KALEVALA
Type of work: Poem
Author: Elias Lonnrot (1802-1884)
Type of plot: Folk epic
Time of plot: Mythological antiquity
Locale: Finland and Lapland
First published: 1835
Principal characters:
Vainamoinen, the Son of the Wind and the Virgin of the Air, the
singer-hero
Ilmarinen, the smith-hero
Lemminkainen, the warrior-hero
Loum, ruler of Pohjola, the North Country
Aino, a young Lapp maiden
Joukahainen, a Laplander, Aino's brother
Kullervo, an evil, sullen slave, very powerful
The Daughter of Loum, Ilmarinen s wife
Critique:
The Kalevala, which may be roughly
translated as "The Land of Heroes," is a
long narrative poem fashioned by the
Finnish scholar, Elias Lonnrot, from the
folk legends and oral traditions of his
country. It is the national epic of
Finland and as such ranks with those of
other nations whose mythologies are
better known. In legend, the ancestor of
all the heroes is Kaleva, but he never
appears in the stories. Aside from giving
the poem its title, Kaleva constitutes one
of its few unifying principles; for, like
most folk epics, the work lacks unity and
cohesion, being the product of many
hands and voices over hundreds of years.
Nevertheless, the tales of Vainamoinen,
Ilmarinen, and Lemminkainen are told
with great beauty, simplicity, and poetic
force. Lonnrot performed a tremendous
task in gathering the many tales, editing
them, arranging them, and even writing
connective material. From a purely
literary standpoint, his monumental
production, peculiar because of its relatively
late formation, stands as a worthy
representation of the early culture of a
civilization little known to Western readers.
The Story:
After his mother had created the land,
the sun, and the moon out of sea duck
eggs, Vainamoinen was born, and with
the help of Sampsa Pellervoinen he made
the barren land fruitful by sowing seeds
and planting trees. By the time
Vainamoinen was an old man he had gained
great fame as a singer and charmer.
When a brash young man named
Joukahainen challenged him to a duel of magic
songs, Vainamoinen easily won and forced
the young man to give him his sister
Aino for a wife. But Aino was greatly
saddened at having to marry an old man
and so she drowned herself, to Vaina-
moinen's sorrow. He looked all over the
sea for her and found her at last in the
form of a salmon, but in that form she
escaped him forever.
In time he heard of the beautiful
daughters of Louhi in the far North
Country and he decided to seek them
out. On the way to Pohjola, the land of
Louhi, his horse was killed by the bold
young man whom he had defeated in
the duel of songs, and Vainamoinen was
forced to swim to Pohjola. Louhi, the
witch, found him on the beach, restored
his health, told him that he would have
to forge a magic Sampo in order to win
a daughter, and then sent him on his
way.
Vainamoinen found one of Louhi's
daughters seated on a rainbow and asked
her to become his wife. She gave him
three tasks to do. After completing two,
1871

he was wounded in the knee while
trying to complete the third. The wound,
which bled profusely, was healed by a
magic ointment prepared under the
directions of an old man skilled in leechcraft.
Vainamoinen went home and raised a
great wind to carry Ilmarinen, the mighty
smith who had fr.rned the sky, into the
North Country to make the Sampo for
Louhi. Ilmarinen forged the Sampo, but
still Louhi's daughter refused to marry
and leave her homeland. Ilmarinen, also
in love with the maiden, went sadly home.
A gallant youth, Lemminkainen, was
famous for winning the love of women.
Having heard of Kyllikki, the flower of
Saari, he was determined to win her for
his wife. When he arrived in Esthonia
she refused him, and he abducted her.
They lived happily together until one
day she disobeyed him. In retaliation he
went north to seek one of Louhi's
daughters as his wife. In Pohjola,
Lemminkainen charmed everyone except an evil
herdsman whom he scorned. Like
Vainamoinen, he was given three tasks and
performed the first two without much
difficulty; but while trying to complete
the third he was slain by the evil
herdsman. Alarmed by his long absence, his
mother went searching for him, found
him in pieces at the bottom of a river,
and restored him finally to his original
shape.
Meanwhile, Vainamoinen was busy
building a ship by means of magic, his
third task for Louhi's daughter, when he
found that he had forgotten the three
magic words needed to complete the
work. He searched everywhere for them
and was almost trapped in Tuonela, the
kingdom of death. Then he heard that
the giant Vipunen might know them.
When they met, Vipunen swallowed
him, but Vainamoinen caused the giant
so much pain that the creature was
forced to release him and reveal the
magic charm. With the charm
Vainamoinen completed his ship and again
set sail for Pohjola.
Ilmarinen, learning of Vainamoinen's
departure, started after him on horseback.
When they met they agreed to abide by
the maiden's choice. On their arrival at
Pohjola, Louhi gave Ilmarinen three tasks
to perform: to plow a field of snakes, to
capture a bear and a wolf, and to catch
a great pike. Ilmarinen performed these
tasks. Since Vainamoinen was old, Louhi's
daughter chose Ilmarinen for her
husband. There was great rejoicing at the
marriage. Vainamoinen sang for the
bridal couple. A gigantic ox was slain and
mead was brewed, and the bride and
groom were both instructed in the duties
of marriage. At last Ilmarinen took his
new bride to his home in the south.
Meanwhile, Lemminkainen had not
been invited to the festivities because of
his quarrelsome nature, and he was
therefore angry. Although his mother warned
him of the dangers he would have to face
on the journey and of Louhi's treachery,
he insisted on going to Pohjola. With his
magic charms he was able to overcome
all dangers along the way. In Pohjola,
Louhi tried to kill him with snake-
poisoned ale, but Lemminkainen saw
through the trick. Then he and Louhi's
husband engaged in a duel of magic
which ended in a tie. Finally they fought
with swords and Lemminkainen slew
Louhi's husband. Lemminkainen then
turned into an eagle and flew home. In
fear of retribution he took his mother's
advice and went to live for several years
on an obscure island where the only
inhabitants were women, their warrior
husbands being away from home.
Forced to flee when the time came for
the husbands to return, Lemminkainen
set out for his own land in a boat. The
craft turned over and he was forced to
swim to shore. On reaching home he
found the country desolate and his mother
missing. At last he found her hiding in
the forest. Swearing to avenge himself
on the warriors of Pohjola who had
desolated the land, he set sail with Tiera, a
warrior companion, but Louhi sent the
frost to destroy him. Although
Lemminkainen managed to charm the frost, he
1872

and his companion were shipwrecked
and were forced to retreat.
The wife of Kalervo had been carried
off by her brother-in-law, Untamoinen,
who then laid waste to Kalervo's land. In
the cradle Kullervo, born to Kalervo's
wife, swore to be avenged on his uncle.
Kullervo grew up strong, but so stupid
and clumsy that he broke or ruined
everything he touched. He tried to kill his
uncle and his uncle tried to kill him.
Finally, the uncle gave him to Ilmarinen.
Ilmarinen's wife immediately disliked the
boy and gave him a loaf of bread with a
stone in it. In return, while Ilmarinen
was away from home, Kullervo had her
killed by wild beasts. He then fled into
the forest, where he found his parents
and lived with them for a long time. He
performed all his chores badly. After a
time he set out on a journey. Two
women having refused him, he ravished
a third, only to learn that she was his
sister. In anguish she killed herself and
Kullervo returned home in sorrow. When
his family rejected him, he set off to
attack Untamoinen." After killing his
uncle he returned to find his family dead
and the countryside desolate. He
wandered off into the forest and killed
himself by falling on his sword.
Ilmarinen, after weeping for his dead
wife, made up his mind to get another
in his forge. He fashioned a woman out
of gold and silver, but she remained cold
and lifeless; so Ilmarinen went north
again to Pohjola. When Louhi refused
to give him a wife, he abducted one of
her daughters. This wife soon proved
unfaithful and in anger he turned her into
a seagull.
Meanwhile, Vainamoinen had been
thinking about the Sampo, that magic
mill which ground out riches.
Determined to steal it from Louhi, he built a
ship and Ilmarinen forged a sword for
him, and the two heroes started for
Pohjola. On the way Lemminkainen called
to them from the shore and asked to
accompany them. They took him along.
During the voyage the boat struck a giant
pike. Vainamoinen killed the great fish
and from its bones fashioned a harp with
which he sang everyone in Pohjola to
sleep. With the help of an ox the three
heroes took the Sampo and sailed for
home. In the meantime Louhi had
awakened and sent fog and wind after the
heroes. During the storm Vainamoinen's
harp fell overboard.
Louhi and her men followed in a war-
boat. The two boats met in a great battle.
Although Vainamoinen was victorious,
Louhi dragged the Sampo from his boat
into the lake. There it broke into pieces,
most of which sank to the bottom. Only
a few smaller pieces floated to shore. After
making violent threats against Kalevala,
Louhi returned home with only a small
and useless fragment of the Sampo.
Vainamoinen collected the pieces on the
shore and planted them for good luck;
the land became more fruitful. Having
searched in vain for his lost harp,
Vainamoinen made another of birchwood and
his songs to its music gave joy to
everyone.
Vexed because her land was barren
after the loss of the Sampo, Louhi sent
a terrible pestilence to Kalevala, but
Vainamoinen healed the people by magic
and salves. Next she sent a great bear
to ravish the herds, but Vainamoinen
killed the savage beast.
Louhi stole the moon and the sun,
which had come down to earth to hear
Vainamoinen play and sing. She also
stole the fire from all the hearths of
Kalevala. When Ukko, the supreme god,
kindled a new fire for the sun and the
moon, some of it fell to earth and was
swallowed by a fish in a large lake.
Vainamoinen and Ilmarinen finally found
the fish and Ilmarinen was badly burned.
The fire escaped and burned a great area
of country until it was at last captured
and returned to the hearths of Kalevala.
Ilmarinen, recovered from his burns,
prepared great chains for Louhi and
frightened her into restoring the sun and the
moon to the heavens.
Marjatta, a holy woman and a virgin,
1873

swallowed a cranberry and a son was born
to her in a stable. The child was baptized
as the King of Carelia despite Vaina-
moinen's claim that such an ill-omened
child should be put to death. Angered
because the child proved wiser than he,
Vainamoinen sailed away to a land
between the earth and the sky, leaving
behind him, for the pleasure of his
people, his harp and his songs.
1874

DAS KAPITAL
Type of work: Political economy
Author: Karl Marx (1818-1883)
First published: Vol. I, 1867; Vols. II and III, t
If Marx was right, the Russian
revolution was inevitable and the world-wide
growth of communism is also inevitable;
therefore, even if Das Kapital had never
been written, the world would have been
split by revolution and by the emergence
of communism as a dynamic political
force. But it may be that Marx was
mistaken, and that the emergence of
communism would not have been possible
had it not been for the labors of Marx in
the British Museum which resulted in
the writing and publication of Das
Kapital. Even if economic unbalance had
resulted in a revolutionary uprising of
the proletariat in Russia or elsewhere, it
probably would not have taken the form
it did, or occurred when it did, or had the
subsequent world-wide effect that it has
had, had Marx not written Das Kapital.
To write that this book has been world-
shaking, then, is but to speak the truth.
Many of Marx's revolutionary ideas
tad already been expressed in the
Communist Manifesto (1848) which he
wrote with Friedrich Engels, but Das
Kapital was more than another call to
arms; it was an attempt to base
communism on a theory of political economy
which could be scientifically and dialec-
tically defended. The Manifesto is a
passionate document, an outline of a
political philosophy, and something of a
prophecy; but Das Kapital is a scholar's
treatise, the product of years of research
and reflection, a work of economic theory
that continues to challenge professional
economists. This contrast is illuminating,
for the Communist movement has always
been characterized by contrast: the
intellectual leads the laborers; the reasoned
defense is supplemented by violence and
murder, and the scholar's program comes
alive in revolution and the threat of war.
In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels
argued that the history of all societies has
litedby Friedrich Engels, 1885-1894
been a history of class struggles, that the
struggle had become one between the
bourgeois class and the proletariat, that
all the injustices of society result from the
economic advantage the bourgeoisie have
over the proletariat, that the proletariat
would finally rebel and take over the
means of production, forming a classless
society, a dictatorship of the proletariat.
In Das Kapital, Marx uses a dialectic
method which was inspired by Hegel,
even though it is put to a different use.
Marx claimed that his dialectic method
was the "direct opposite" of Hegel's, that
with Hegel the dialectic "is standing on
its head" and "must be turned right side
up again, if you would discover the
rational kernel within the mystical shell."
The method is not mysterious; it involves
attending to the conflicting aspects of
matters under consideration in order to
be able to attain a better idea of the
whole. Thus, Marx describes his
"rational" dialectic as including "in its
comprehension and affirmative recognition of
the existing state of things, at the same
time, also, the recognition of the
negation of that state, of its inevitable
breaking up. . . ." He went on to maintain
that his account regarded "every
historically developed social form as in fluid
movement, and therefore takes into
account its transient nature not less than
its momentary existence. . . ."
In Marx the dialectic method led to
"dialectical materialism," the theory that
history is the record of class struggles,
the conflict of economic opposites.
Das Kapital begins with a study of
commodities and money. Marx
distinguishes between use value and value, the
latter being understood in terms of
exchange value but involving essentially
the amount of labor that went into the
production of the commodity; thus, "that
which determines the magnitude of the
1875

value of any article is the amount of
labour socially necessary, or the labour-
time socially necessary for its production."
Money results from the use of some
special commodity as a means of
exchange in order to equate different
products of labor. Money serves as "a
universal measure of value." According to
Marx, it is not money that makes
commodities commensurable, but the fact of
their being commensurable in terms of
human labor that makes money possible
as a measure of value.
Money begets money through the
circulation of commodities: this is Marx's
general formula for capital. Money is
the first form in which capital appears
precisely because it is the end product of
a circulatory process which begins with
the use of money to purchase
commodities for sale at higher than the purchase
price.
Capital would not be possible without
a change of value. If money were used
to purchase a commodity sold at the
initial price, no profit would be made, no
capital made possible. To explain the
surplus value that emerges in the process,
Marx reminds the reader that the
capitalist buys labor power and uses it. The
material of production belongs to the
capitalist; therefore the product of the
productive process also belongs to him.
The product has a use-value, but the
capitalist does not intend to use the
product; his interest is in selling it for
a price greater than the sum of the costs
of its production, including the cost of
labor. The realization of surplus value is
possible, finally, only by some sort of
exploitation of the laborer; somehow or
other the capitalist must manage to make
the cost of labor less than the value of
labor.
One way of increasing surplus value is
by increasing the productiveness of labor
without decreasing the work day, but the
problem which then arises is the
problem of keeping the price of commodities
up. One solution takes the form of using
large numbers of laborers and dividing
them for special tasks. The capitalist
takes advantage of lower prices of
commodities by paying labor less and
purchasing materials more cheaply. At the
same time, through a division of labor,
he achieves greater productiveness
without a corresponding rise in labor cost. In
other words, the capitalist hires an
individual and puts him to work in coop
eration with others; he pays for the labor
power of that individual, but he gains
the value that comes from using that
power cooperatively.
Marx rejects the idea that machinery
is introduced in order to make work
easier. He argues that "Like every other
increase in the productiveness of labour,
machinery is intended to cheapen
commodities, and, by shortening that portion
of the working day, in which the
labourer works for himself, to lengthen the
other portion that he gives, without an
equivalent, to the capitalist. In short, it is
a means for producing surplus value."
Marx concluded that the possibility of
the growth of capital depended upon
using labor in some way that would free
the capitalist from the need to pay for
the use of labor power. He decided that
capital is "the command over unpaid
labour. All surplus value ... is in
substance the materialisation of unpaid
labour."
Capitalist production, according to
Marx, "reproduces and perpetuates the
condition for exploiting the labourer. It
incessantly forces him to sell his labour-
power in order to live, and enables the
capitalist to purchase labour-power in
order that he may enrich himself."
Accordingly, the division between men
which is described in terms of classes is
inevitable in a capitalistic society.
Marx explains the self-destruction of
the capitalistic society by arguing that
from the exploitation of laborers the
capitalist, if he has the economic power,
passes to the exploitation of other
capitalists and, finally, to their expropriation.
"One capitalist always kills many." The
monopolistic tendencies of capitalists
1876

finally hinder the modes of production,
and the mass exploitation of workers
reaches such a peak of misery and
oppression that an uprising of the proletariat
destroys the capitalist state. Thus,
"capitalist production begets, with the
inexorability of a law of Nature, its own
negation." The transformation into the
socialized state is much quicker and easier
than the transformation of the private
property of the workers into capitalist
private property, for it is easier for the mass
of workers to expropriate the property of
a few capitalists than for the capitalists
to expropriate the property of the laborers.
Das Kapital has often been criticized
as an economic study written in the style
of German metaphysics. It is generally
regarded, particularly by those who have
never read it, as an extremely difficult
book, both in content and style. By its
nature it is a complex, scholarly work,
but it is also clear and direct in the
exposition of Marx's ideas; and it is
lightened by numerous hypothetical cases
which illustrate in a vivid manner the
various points which Marx makes. In its
consideration of the work of other
scholars it is respectful if not acquiescent.
Perhaps the primary fault of this momentous
work is not that it is too difficult, but
that it is too simple. To argue that capital
is made possible by exploitation of labor
may be to ignore the ways in which profit
can be realized and labor paid to the
satisfaction of both the capitalist and the
laborer. But impartial criticism of such a
thesis is impossible. Whether a capitalist
economic system gives cause for
revolution is something that is shown by history
but only recommended by men.
1877

KATE FENNIGATE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Booth Tarkington CI869-1946)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: The Middle West
First published: 1943
Principal characters:
Kate Fennigate, a managing woman
Aunt Daisy, her aunt
Mary, Aunt Daisy's daughter
Ames. Lanning, Mary's husband
Celia, their daughter
Laila Capper, Kate's schoolmate
Tuke Speer, Ames' friend
Mr. Roe, owner of Roe Metal Products
Critique:
Twenty years intervene between the
publication of Alice Adams and Kate
Fennigate. By comparing the two, ont
observes the great improvement of the
latter over the former. A single
protagonist is offered to the reader in each
novel; but the technique of Kate
Fennigate is vastly superior to that of Alice
Adams. In Kate Fennigate the chief
characters have more of a third
dimension; the background seems more
realistic, and, as a whole, the novel is a
more unified work.
The Story:
Kate Fennigate was a manager, even
as a young child; she influenced her
mother, her schoolmates, and,
particularly, her father. But because of her good
manners Kate was never offensive in
her desire to lead. Her father, who had
showed great promise as a lawyer when
he was young, had permitted both
women and liquor to interfere with his
career. Mrs. Fennigate had no great
interest in life except eating, and Mr.
Fennigate had no great interest in her.
Kate grew into a pretty, quiet, well-
mannered girl with a managing complex.
Her only intimate was Laila Capper, a
self-centered, unintelligent, but
beautiful girl who attended Miss Carroll's day
school with Kate. Kate found it
flattering to help Laila with her homework,
and to get for her invitations to parties to
which Laila would not otherwise have
been invited.
At a school dance, just before she
graduated, Kate first became aware of
her love for Ames Lanning, her cousin
Mary's husband. Not long after Kate's
graduation, her mother died, and she
and her father sold the house and went
to Europe for two years. Her father,
who had been ill even before they left
America, died and was buried in Europe.
When Kate returned home, Aunt
Daisy, the tyrant of her family, insisted
that Kate stay with her. With the excuse
of protecting Kate, she made a
household drudge of her. Kate was nurse to
Mary, Aunt Daisy's daughter, governess
to Mary's child, Celia, and maid-of-all-
work about the house. In return, she
received only her room and board. Kate
realized what Aunt Daisy was doing, but
she preferred to stay on. She wanted
to help Ames make something of his
talents as a lawyer and to get him from
under his mother-in-law's thumb.
Ames introduced Kate to Tuke Speer,
his friend. But Laila also took an
interest in Tuke, who fell deeply in love
with Kate's friend. Aunt Daisy taunted
KATE FENNIGATE by Booth Tarkington. By permission of Brandt ft Brandt and the publishers. Doubled*!
ft Co., Inc. Copyright, 1943, by Booth Tarkington.
1878

Kate for losing out to Laila, but since
Aunt Daisy did not guess where Kate's
true feelings lay, the girl did not mind.
When Mary, a semi-invalid for years,
died, Aunt Daisy was inconsolable. Her
whole life had been wrapped up in
her child, her money, and her house.
The first of her interests was gone. Kate
convinced Ames that he could now take
the position he wanted with Mr. Bort-
shleff, an established lawyer. The second
blow fell on Aunt Daisy not long
afterward, when the stock market crashed
and she lost everything. Her mind
broken, she had a fall from the roof
and lay an uncomprehending invalid for
years afterwards.
Kate obtained a position at the Roe
Metal Products. She and Ames shared
the expenses of caring for Aunt Daisy
and the house, which no one would buy.
Tuke asked Kate to renew her friendship
with Laila because Laila would need
someone now that her family was moving
out of town. Laila became a frequent
visitor at the house and soon tried her
wiles on Ames. When he asked Laila
to marry him, she agreed, but later
she changed her mind and eloped with
Tuke Speer. Ames, hurt and
disillusioned, asked Kate to marry him. She
accepted.
Ten years later their life together
was running smoothly enough. Officially,
Ames was Mr. Roe's chief adviser at
the plant. War was threatening, and
Roe Metal Products, which had been
expanding all during the depression,
would soon open its fifth plant. Mr. Roe
thought highly of both Ames and Kate,
and they planned a party to introduce his
twin grandchildren, Marjie and Marvin,
to society. Miley Stuart, a new young
engineer at the plant, met Celia at the party
and the two became good friends. After
the party Ames informed Kate that he was
tired of her efforts to manage his life.
She then and there silently resolved to
offer him no more suggestions.
Laila, who in the passing years had
lost none of her beauty, had also lost
none of her selfishness. She had hounded
poor Tuke for more money and a better
position, until the good-looking young
redhead he had been was no longer
visible in the gaunt, hollow-cheeked,
graying man. Laila tormented Tuke by once
again trying her charms on Ames.
Having built up among their friends the
idea that she was a martyr to Tuke's
drunken moods, she nagged him into an
insulting remark while they were calling
on the Lannings. Laila turned to Ames
for comfort. He took her into the library,
where she threw herself, weeping, into
his arms. Ames tried to console her
and ended up by kissing her. Two
interested observers of that scene were
Tuke, who was looking in the window
from outside, and Celia, who was passing
the library door. Celia also saw Tuke's
face while he watched Laila and Ames
in each other's arms.
Celia, thoroughly frightened, asked
Miley Stuart to keep an eye on Tuke
for fear he would do something violent.
Planning to divorce Tuke, Laila asked
Ames to divorce Kate so that he would
be free to marry her. When she revealed
her intention to Ames in his office, he
was aghast, for he regarded her only as
a good friend who needed help. Laila
was furious when he refused to do as
she wished, and she threatened to ruin
him with false gossip.
It was necessary for Kate to become a
manager once more, to save Ames from
disaster. She proposed to Ames and Mr.
Roe that Tuke be offered the opportunity
of managing the New York office for the
firm. Tuke accepted the position, which
provided enough money to allow Laila
to live in the manner she desired. It
also took her far away from Kate and
Ames.
1879

KENILWORTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1575
Locale: England
First published: 1821
Principal characters:
Dudley, Earl of Leicester
Richard Varney, his master of horse
Amy Robs art, wife of Dudley
Edmund Tressilian, a Cornish gendeman, friend of Amy Robsart
Wayland Smith, his servant
The Earl of Sussex
Queen Elizabeth
Sir Walter Raleigh
Michael Lambourne, nephew of Giles Gosling, an innkeeper
Doctor Doboobie, alias Alasco, an astrologer and alchemist
Dickie Sludge, alias Flibbertigibbet, a bright child and friend of Wayland Smith
Critique:
Kenilworth is evidence that Scott spoke
the truth when he said that the sight of
a ruined castle or similar relic of the
medieval period made him wish to
reconstruct the life and times of what he
saw. Scott spends much time and space
in setting the stage for the action.
However, this scene setting is not without
literary merit, for it offers a detailed
historical background for his novel.
Although the plot itself is very slight, the
characters are well portrayed.
The Story:
Michael Lambourne, who in his early
youth had been a ne'er-do-well, had just
returned from his travels. While
drinking and boasting in Giles Gosling's inn,
he wagered that he could gain admittance
to Cumnor Place, a large manor where
an old friend was now steward. It was
rumored in the village that Tony Foster
was keeping a beautiful young woman
prisoner at the manor. Edmund
Tressilian, another guest at the inn, went with
Michael to Cumnor Place. As Tressilian
had suspected, he found the woman there
to be his former sweetheart, Amy
Robsart, apparently a willing prisoner. At
Cumnor Place he also encountered
Richard Varney, her supposed seducer, and a
sword fight ensued. The duel was broken
up by Michael Lambourne, who had
decided to ally himself with his old friend,
Tony Foster.
Contrary to Tressilian's idea, Amy was
not Varney's paramour but the lawful
wife of Varney's master, the Earl of
Leicester, Varney being only the go-
between and accomplice in Amy's
elopement. Leicester, who was a rival of the
Earl of Sussex for Queen Elizabeth's
favor, feared that the news of his
marriage to Amy would displease the queen,
and he had convinced Amy that their
marriage must be kept secret.
Tressilian returned to Lidcote Hall to
obtain Hugh Robsart's permission to bring
Varney to justice on a charge of
seduction. On his way there he employed as
his manservant Wayland Smith,
formerly an assistant to Dr. Doboobie, an
alchemist and astrologer. Later he visited
the Earl of Sussex, through whom he
hoped to petition either the queen or the
Earl of Leicester in Amy's behalf. While
there, Wayland Smith saved Sussex's life
after the earl had been poisoned.
When the earl heard Tressilian's story,
he presented the petition directly to the
queen. Confronted by Elizabeth,
Varney swore that Amy was his lawful wife,
and Leicester, who was standing by,
confirmed the he. Elizabeth then ordered
1880

Varney to present Amy to her when she
visited Kenilworth the following week.
Leicester sent a letter to Amy asking
her to appear at Kenilworth as Varney's
wife. She refused. In order to have an
excuse for disobeying Elizabeth's orders
regarding Amy's presence at Kenilworth,
Varney had Alasco, the former Dr. Do-
boobie, mix a potion which would make
Amy ill but not kill her. This plan was
thwarted, however, by Wayland Smith,
who had been sent by Tressilian to help
her. She escaped from Cumnor Place and
with the assistance of Wayland Smith
made her way to Kenilworth to see
Leicester.
When she arrived at Kenilworth, the
place was bustling in preparation for
Elizabeth's arrival that afternoon. Way-
land Smith took Amy to Tressilian's
quarters, where she wrote Leicester a
letter telling him of her escape from
Cumnor Place and asking his aid. Way-
land Smith lost the letter and through a
misunderstanding he was ejected from the
castle. Amy, disappointed that Leicester
did not come to her, left her apartment
and went into the garden. There the
queen discovered her. Judging Amy to
be insane because of her contradictory
statements, she returned Amy to the
custody of Varney, her supposed husband.
Leicester decided to confess the true
story to the queen. But Varney, afraid
for nis own fortunes if Leicester fell from
favor, convinced the earl that Amy had
been unfaithful to him, and that
Tressilian was her lover. Leicester, acting
upon Varney's lies, decided that the death
of Amy and her lover would be just
punishment. Varney took Amy back to
Cumnor Place and plotted her death.
Leicester relented and sent Michael Lam-
bourne to tell Varney that Amy must not
die, but Varney killed Lambourne in
order that he might go through with his
murder of Amy. Leicester and Tressilian
fought a duel, but before either harmed
the other they were interrupted by Dickie
Sludge, the child who had stolen Amy's
letter. Reading it, Leicester realized that
Amy had been faithful to him and that
the complications of the affair had been
caused by the machinations of Varney.
Leicester immediately went to the
queen and told her the whole story.
Elizabeth was angry, but she sent
Tressilian and Sir Walter Raleigh to bring
Amy to Kenilworth. Unfortunately,
Tressilian arrived too late to save Amy.
She had fallen through a trapdoor so
rigged that when she stepped upon it
she plunged to her death.
Tressilian and Sir Walter Raleigh
seized Varney and carried him off to
prison. There Varney committed suicide.
Elizabeth permitted grief-stricken
Leicester to retire from her court for several
years but later recalled him and installed
him once more in her favor. Much later
in life he remarried. He met his death
as a result of poison he intended for
someone else.
1881

KIDNAPPED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1751
Locale: Scodand
First published: 1886
Principal characters:
David Balfour, who was kidnapped
Ebenezer Balfour of Shaw, his uncle
Mr. Rankeillor, a lawyer
Alan Breck, a Jacobite adventurer
Critique:
For a tale of high adventure, told
simply but colorfully, there are few to
equal Kidnapped. Stevenson was a master
story-teller. He wove this tale around the
great and the small, the rich and the
poor, men of virtue and scoundrels, and
each character was truly drawn. A stolen
inheritance, a kidnapping, a batde at
sea, several murders—these are only a
few of the adventures that befell the hero.
It is easily understood why Kidnapped
is a favorite with all who read it.
The Story:
When David Balfour's father died, the
only inheritance he left his son was a
letter to Ebenezer Balfour of Shaw, who
was his brother and David's uncle. Mr.
Campbell, the minister of Essendean,
delivered the letter to David and told him
that if things did not go well between
David and his uncle he was to return
to Essendean, where his friends would
help him. David set off in high spirits.
The house of Shaw was a great one in
the Lowlands of Scotland, and David was
eager to take his rightful place among
the gentry. He did not know why his
father had been separated from his
people.
As he approached the great house, he
began to grow apprehensive. Everyone
of whom he asked the way had a curse
for the name of Shaw and warned him
against his uncle. But he had gone too
far and was too curious to turn back
before he reached the mansion. What
he found was not a great house. One
wing was unfinished and many windows
were without glass. No friendly smoke
came from the chimneys, and the closed
door was studded with heavy nails.
David found his Uncle Ebenezer even
more forbidding than the house, and he
began to suspect that his uncle had
cheated his father out of his rightful
inheritance. When his uncle tried to
kill him, he was sure of Ebenezer's
villainy. His uncle promised to take David
to Mr. Rankeillor, the family lawyer, to
get the true story of David's inheritance,
and they set out for Queen's Ferry.
Before they reached the lawyer's office,
David was tricked by Ebenezer and
Captain Hoseason into boarding the
Covenant, and the ship sailed away with David
a prisoner, bound for slavery in the
American colonies.
At first he lived in filth and starvation
in the bottom of the ship. The only
person who befriended him was Mr. Riach,
the second officer. Later, however, he
found many of the roughest seamen to be
kind at times. Mr. Riach was kind when
he was drunk, but mean when he was
sober; while Mr. Shuan, the first officer,
was gentle except when he was drinking.
It was while he was drunk that Mr.
Shuan beat to death Ransome, the cabin
boy, because the boy had displeased him.
After Ransome's murder, David became
the cabin boy, and for a time life on the
Covenant was a litde better.
One night the Covenant ran down a
small boat and cut her in two. Only one
man was saved, Alan Breck, a High-
1882

lander of Scotland and a Jacobite with
a price on his head. Alan demanded that
Captain Hoseason set him ashore among
his own people, and the captain agreed.
When David overheard the captain and
Mr. Riach planning to seize Alan, he
warned Alan of the plot. Together the
two of them held the ship's crew at bay,
killing Mr. Shuan and three others and
wounding many more, including Captain
Hoseason. Afterwards Alan and David
were fast friends and remained so during
the rest of their adventures. Alan told
David of his part in the rebellion against
King George and of the way he was
hunted by the king's men, particularly by
Colin of Glenure, known as the Red
Fox. Alan was the king's enemy while
David was loyal to the monarch, yet out
of mutual respect they swore to help
each other in time of trouble.
It was not long before they had to
prove their loyalty. The ship broke apart
on a reef, and David and Alan, separated
at first, soon found themselves together
again, deep in the part of the Highlands
controlled by Alan's enemies. When
Colin of Glenure was murdered, the
blame fell on Alan. To be caught meant
they would both hang. So began their
attempt to escape to the Lowlands and
to find Mr. Rankeillor, their only chance
for help. They hid by day and traveled
by night. Often they went for several
days without food and only a flask of rum
for drink. They were in danger not only
from the king's soldiers, but also from
Alan's own people. There was always the
danger that a trusted friend would betray
them for the reward offered. But David
was to learn what loyalty meant. Many
of Alan's clan endangered themselves to
help the hunted pair.
When David was too weak to go on
and wanted to give up, Alan offered to
carry him. They finally reached Queen's
Ferry and Mr. Rankeillor. At first Mr.
Rankeillor was skeptical when he heard
David's story, but it began to check so
well with what he had heard from others
that he was convinced of the boy's
honesty; and he told David the whole story
of his father and his Uncle Ebenezer.
They had both loved the same woman,
and David's father had won her.
Because he was a kind man and because
Ebenezer had taken to his bed over the
loss of the woman, David's father had
given up his inheritance as the oldest
son in favor of Ebenezer. The story
explained to David why his uncle had tried
to get rid of him. Ebenezer knew that
his dealings with David's father would
not stand up in the courts, and he was
afraid that David had come for his
inheritance.
With the help of Alan and Mr.
Rankeillor, David was able to frighten his
uncle so much that Ebenezer offered him
two-thirds of the yearly income from the
land. Because David did not want to
submit his family to public scandal in
the courts, and because he could better
help Alan if the story of their escape
were kept quiet, he agreed to the
settlement. In this way he was able to help
Alan reach safety and pay his debt to his
friend.
So ended the adventures of David Bal
four of Shaw. He had been kidnapped
and sent to sea; he had known danger
and untold hardships; he had traveled the
length of his native island; but now he
had come home to take his rightful place
among his people.
1883

KIM
Type of work: Novel
Author: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: British India
First published: 1901
Principal characters:
Kimball O'Hara (Kim), a street boy
A Tibetan Lama, Kim's teacher
Mahbub Ali, a horse trader
Colonel Creighton, director of the British Secret Service
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, a babu
Critique:
Kim gives a vivid picture of the
complexities of India under British rule. It
shows the life of the bazaar mystics, of
the natives, of the British military. The
dialogue, as well as much of the indirect
discourse, makes use of Indian phrases,
translated by the author, to give the
flavor of native speech. There is a great
deal of action and movement, for
Kipling's vast canvas is painted in full detail.
There are touches of irony as well as a
display of native shrewdness and
cunning.
The Story:
Kim grew up on the streets of Lahore.
His Irish mother had died when he
was born. His father, a former color-
sergeant of an Irish regiment called the
Mavericks, died eventually of drugs and
drink, and left his son in the care of a
half-caste woman. So young Kimball
O'Hara became Kim, and under the
hot Indian sun his skin grew so dark
that one could not tell he was a white
boy.
One day a Tibetan lama, in search of
the holy River of the Arrow that would
wash away all sin, came to Lahore.
Struck by the possibility of exciting
adventure, Kim attached himself to the
lama as his pupil. His adventures began
almost at once. That night, at the edge
of Lahore, Mahbub AH, a horse trader,
gave Kim a cryptic message to deliver
to a British officer in Umballa. Kim did
not know that Mahbub was a member
of the British Secret Service. He
delivered the message as directed, and
then lay in the grass and watched and
listened until he learned that his message
meant that eight thousand men would
go to war.
Out on the big road the lama and Kim
encountered many people of all sorts.
Conversation was easy. One group in
particular interested Kim, an old lady
traveling in a family bullock cart
attended by a retinue of eight men. Kim
and the lama attached themselves to hei
party. Toward evening, they saw a
group of soldiers making camp. It was
the Maverick regiment. Kim, whose
horoscope said that his life would be
changed at the sign of a red bull in a
field of green, was fascinated by the
regimental flag, which was just that, a
red bull against a background of bright
green.
Caught by a chaplain, the Reverend
Arthur Bennett, Kim accidentally jerked
loose the amulet which he carried around
his neck. Mr. Bennett opened the
amulet and discovered three papers folded
inside, including Kim's baptismal
certificate and a note from his father asking
that the boy be taken care of. Father
Victor arrived in time to see the papers.
When Kim had told his story, he was
informed that he would be sent away
KIM by Rudyard Kipling. By permission of Mrs. George Bambridge and the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc
Copyright, 1900, 1901, by Rudyard Kipling. Renewed, 1927, by Rudyard Kipling.
1884

to school. Kim parted sadly from the
lama, sure, however, that he would soon
escape. The lama asked that Father
Victor's name and address, and the costs
of schooling Kim, be written down and
given to him. Then he disappeared.
Kim, pretending to prophesy, told the
priests what he had heard at Umballa.
They and the soldiers laughed at him.
But the next day his prophecy came
true, and eight thousand soldiers were
sent to put down an uprising in the
north. Kim remained in camp.
One day a letter arrived from the
lama. He enclosed enough money for
Kim's first year at school and promised
to provide the same amount yearly. He
requested that the boy be sent to St.
Xavier's for his education. Meanwhile
the drummer who was keeping an eye
on Kim had been cruel to his charge.
When Mahbub Ali came upon the two
boys, he gave the drummer a beating,
and began talking to Kim. While they
were thus engaged, Colonel Creigh-
ton came up and learned from Mahbub
Ali, in an indirect way, that Kim would
be, when educated, a valuable member of
the secret service.
At last Kim was on his way to St.
Xavier's. Near the school he spied the
lama, who had been waiting a day and
a half to see him. They agreed to see
each other often. Kim was an apt pupil,
but he disliked being shut up in
classrooms and dormitories. When vacation
time came, he went to Umballa and
persuaded Mahbub Ali to let him return
to the road until school reopened.
Traveling with Mahbub Ali, he played
the part of a horse boy and saved the
trader's life when he overheard two
men plotting to kill the horse dealer.
At Simla, Kim stayed with Mr. Lurgan,
who taught him a great many subtle
tricks and games and the art of make-up
and disguise. For, as Mahbub Ali had
said, he was now learning the great
game, as the work of the secret service
was called. At the end of the summer
Kim returned to St. Xavier's. He studied
there for a total of three years.
In conference with Mr. Lurgan and
Colonel Creighton, Mahbub Ali
advised that Kim be permitted once more
to go out on the road with his lama.
Kim's skin was stained dark and again
he resumed the dress of a street boy.
Given the password by Hurree Chunder
Mookerjee, a babu who was another
member of the secret service, Kim set
out with his lama after begging a train
ticket to Delhi.
Still seeking his river, the lama moved
up and down India with Kim as his
disciple. The two of them once more
encountered the old woman they had
met on the road three years before. A
little later Kim was surprised to see the
babu, who told him that two of the five
kings of the north had been bribed
and that the Russians had sent spies
down into India through the passes that
the kings had agreed to guard. Two
men, a Russian and a Frenchman, were
to be apprehended, and the babu asked
Kim's aid. To the lama Kim suggested
a journey into the foothills of the
Himalayas, and so he was able to follow
the babu on his mission.
During a storm the babu came upon
the two foreigners. Discovering that one
of their baskets contained valuable
letters, including a message from one of
the traitorous kings, he offered to be
their guide, and in two days he had led
them to the spot where Kim and the lama
were camped. When the foreigners tore
almost in two a holy drawing made by
the lama, the babu created a disturbance
in which the coolies, according to plan,
carried off the men's luggage. The lama
conducted Kim to the village of Sham-
legh. There Kim examined all of the
baggage which the coolies had carried
off. Everything except letters and
notebooks he threw over an unscalable cliff.
The documents he hid on his person.
In a few days Kim and the lama set
out again. At last they came to the
house of the old woman who had
befriended them twice before. When she
1885

saw Kim's emaciated condition, she put
him to bed, where he slept many days.
Before he went to sleep, he asked that
a strongbox be brought to him. In it he
deposited his papers; then he locked
the box and hid it under his bed. When
he woke up, he heard that the babu
had arrived, and to him Kim delivered
the papers. The babu told him that
Mahbub Ali was also in the vicinity.
They assured Kim that he had played
his part well in the great game. The old
lama knew nothing of these matters.
He was happy because Kim had brought
him to his river at last, a brook on the
old lady's estate.
1886

A KING AND NO KING
Type of work: Drama
Authors: Francis Beaumont (1585M616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Indefinite
Locale: Armenia and Iberia
First presented: 1611
Principal characters:
Arbaces, King of Iberia
Tigranes, King of Armenia
Gobrias, Lord-Protector of Iberia and Arbaces* father
Bacurius, an Iberian nobleman
Mardonius, an honest old captain in Arbaces' army
Bessus, a cowardly braggart
Lygones, an Armenian courtier, Spaconia's father
Arane, Queen-Mother of Iberia
Panthea, her daughter
Spaconia, an Armenian lady, Tigranes, sweetheart
Critique:
A good example of baroque sensibility,
A King and No King depends for its
success on an extremely skillful manipulation
of emotional effects rather than on the
moral or logical implications of the
narrative. For this reason the play employs
an impressive array of technical devices
for the creation and maintenance of
emotional intensity. Chief among these are
contrasts and parallels of character,
sudden emotional reversals within scenes, the
speeding up or retarding of action with
little reference to narrative logic, and the
use of surprise information which
resolves serious difficulties in the plot. So
cleverly were these devices used that A
King and No King was one of the most
popular plays of its time, possibly ranked,
after Philaster, as Beaumont and Fletcher's
most successful tragi-comedy. It has been
unfavorably criticized because of its
neglect of the moral issues raised and
particularly because the tragic dilemma is
avoided by means of a trick. But
Beaumont and Fletcher were not much
concerned with the solution of moral
problems; rather, they were interested in
providing entertainment for a sophisticated
audience.
The Story:
Arbaces, the valiant young king of
Iberia, had just ended a long war against
Armenia by defeating in single combat
Tigranes, the king of that country. But
Arbaces, though a hero in war, was also
an intensely passionate man; honest and
outspoken Mardonius commented that he
was capable of the wildest extremities of
emotion and that he could move through
the entire emotional range with the
greatest speed. Inflamed by his victory,
Arbaces illustrated the qualities Mardonius
ascribed to him. In a series of blustering
speeches he showed himself to be
inordinately proud. When Mardonius took
him to task for boasting, he became, after
a few gusts of ranting, temporarily
contrite and amiable, and he resolved to give
his beautiful, virtuous sister Panthea,
whom he had not seen since her
childhood, in marriage to the defeated but
valorous Tigranes. But Tigranes protested
because he had already plighted his troth
to Spaconia, a lady of his own land.
Messages arrived from Gobrias, in
whose care the government of Iberia had
been left, telling that a slave sent by
Arane to poison Arbaces had been taken
and executed. Instead of flying into a
rage, Arbaces, in a burst of magnanimity
and pity, forgave the queen-mother's
unnatural act. Thus he swung from the
objectionable boastfulness of moments be-
1887

fore to the opposite emotional pole.
Meanwhile, Tigranes, who was to
accompany Arbaces home as a prisoner,
arranged with Bessus, a fatuous and
cowardly captain in the Iberian army, for
him to convey Spaconia to Iberia and
secure for her a place as one of Panthea's
ladies in waiting. There, according to
Tigrane's plan, it was to be Spaconia's
task to set the princess' heart against a
match with him.
In Iberia, where Arane had been put
under guard for her attempt on Arbaces*
life, Panthea was deeply torn between
her love for her mother on the one hand
and her loyalty and devotion to the king,
her brother, on the other. Although the
reason for Arane's crime was unexplained,
her conversation with Gobrias revealed
that there were secrets between them
having an important bearing on her
relationship with Arbaces. Bessus, accompanied
by Spaconia, arrived with messages from
the king, including a pardon for Arane.
Importuned by the courtiers, the braggart
gave an amusing account of the duel
between Arbaces and Tigranes, contriving
to make himself the central figure.
Panthea, interrupting Bessus' tale frequently,
revealed agonized concern for her
brother's safety. Even though she had not yet
seen him, she nevertheless felt a
powerful attraction to him. Spaconia then
revealed to Panthea her reason for coming
to Iberia, and the virtuous princess vowed
to reject the proposed match with
Tigranes.
After a triumphal passage through the
city, Arbaces and his company arrived at
the court. When Panthea presented
herself to her brother, Arbaces, overwhelmed
by her beauty, realized that at first sight
he had fallen hopelessly in love with her.
Frantically he tried to convince himself
that she was not really his sister but a
lady of the court; however, he was unable
to escape the guilty feeling that he had
become the victim of an incestuous love.
At last, succumbing to his passion, he
kissed her; then, overcome with guilt and
shame, he violently ordered the weeping
Panthea imprisoned. But as time passed,
his love for Panthea increased, and at
last he begged Mardonius to act as his
bawd. When Mardonius indignantly
rejected Arbace's plea, the king turned to
Bessus, whom he found more willing to
undertake such a task. Revolted by
Bessus' ready acquiescence, and probably
also by the image of himself that he saw
in the minion, Arbaces swore to keep his
sin within his own breast in spite of the
torture his desire inflicted upon him.
Bessus, meanwhile, discovered that the
reputation for bravery he had created for
himself had serious drawbacks. Now that
he was worthy of challenge, he was being
called to account by all of the gentlemen
he had insulted before leaving for the
wars. He was just dismissing the second
of his two hundred and thirteenth
challenger when Bacurius appeared,
demanding satisfaction for a past wrong. Bessus,
attempting to put him off, pleaded a lame
leg; but Bacurius, recognizing the
braggart's poltroonery, browbeat him
unmercifully and took away his sword. Bessus,
after enlisting the aid of two professional
swordsmen who were in reality as absurd
and as cowardly as he, allowed himself to
be convinced by a very peculiar exercise
in logic that he was, after all, a valiant
man. He was on the way to deliver this
news to Bacurius when he encountered
Lygones, who had journeyed from
Armenia in search of his daughter Spaconia.
Believing him to be Spaconia's seducer,
Lygones gave Bessus a drubbing before
the braggart could explain. Parting from
Lygones, bruised Bessus located Bacurius,
who, over Bessus' loud protests that he
was no coward, mocked his logic and
cudgeled his two hired companions.
During this time Lygones had located
Spaconia and Tigranes in prison; and he
learned joyfully that his daughter, whom
he had thougnt guilty of a disgraceful
alliance with Bessus, was actually to be
married to Tigranes and thus was to
become the queen of Armenia.
Indirectly urged on by Gobrias and
nearly mad with desire, Arbaces visited
1888

Panthea in her prison and at once begged
her to yield and not to yield herself to
his lust. Although she rejected his
proposal, she confessed that she too had felt
unsisterly desire for him. After they
parted, Arbaces attempted to govern
himself but finally concluded wildly that he
could bear the situation no longer. He
resolved to murder Mardonius, ravish
Panthea, and then kill himself. At that
moment, however, Gobrias and Arane
revealed their secret: Arbaces was really the
son of Gobrias. As an infant he had been
adopted for political reasons by the barren
Arane, who later conceived and bore
Panthea. He was thus "no king/' But
Gobrias, who had protected his son against
Arane's attempts to dispose of him so that
Panthea could rule and who had subtly
encouraged Arbaces* love for Panthea,
found his complicated plan a success.
Arbaces, now totally without pride of
majesty, was overjoyed to learn that he was
actually an impostor. His and Panthea's
passion now became legitimate, and by
marrying her he would once more assume
the crown. Thus a happy ending was
brought about, and to fill the moment
completely Tigranes and Spaconia were
released from prison and reunited.
1889

KING JOHN
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Bale (1495-1563)
Type of plot: Historical allegory
Time of plot: Early thirteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: c. 1548
Principal characters:
England, a widow
King John,
Nobility,
Clergy,
Civil Order, and
Communality, betrayers of King John
Sedition, the Vice
Dissimulation
Private Wealth
Usurped Power
The Pope (Innocent III)
Treason
Verity
Imperial Majesty
Stephen Langton, churchman and statesman
Cardinal Pandulphus
Critique:
John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, one of
the most outspoken champions of the
English Reformation, claimed to have
written some forty plays in his lifetime.
Of these, five are extant, and of these five
King John is the most important.
Although far too long and tedious for
dramatic effectiveness, being in structure
two plays or one play in two parts, it is
interesting as a scathing and
uncompromising attack on the Church of Rome and
as a version of history different from that
usually accepted. Challenging those
historians—Polydore Virgil in particular—
who made King John a knave, Bale
depicts the king as a virtuous protector of
the realm who was betrayed by the cov-
etousness and viciousness of the Church.
Bale's history may be altered and revised
to suit his cause, but the fact that he used
it at all is of concern to us, for King John
announces the beginning of the great
tradition of the English history play. It is,
actually, a piece that shows the transition
from the old to the new—an allegorical
play using the techniques of the medieval
morality (Sedition, for instance, is an
example of the morality "vice"), but
using them to dramatize historical events.
The Story:
England complained to King John that
she had been stripped of her rights and
her wealth by the rapacious clergy who
had driven her husband, God, from the
realm. King John promised to right her
wrongs but was mocked by Sedition, the
comic vice, and the foremost agent of
the Church.
Sedition, demonstrating the way in
which he and the Church subverted the
government of kings, introduced
Dissimulation, his right-hand man.
Dissimulation worked with Private Wealth and
Usurped Power. Private Wealth was the
darling of the religious orders; he gave
strength to Usurped Power, who
sustained the arrogance of Popes.
King John defied Sedition and his
cohorts. He called Nobility, Clergy, and
Civil Order to him and prevailed on them
for their support. Nobility and Civil
1890

Order gave theirs willingly, but Clergy
was reluctant. King John had been too
harsh on him. When the king reminded
him of the temporal rights of rulers as
outlined in the Gospel, Clergy, still
reluctant, consented.
The allegiance of the three was
shortlived, however, for Sedition and his
minions had little trouble convincing
them that the actual power of Rome was
stronger than any abstract claim based on
the Gospel. Besides, the Church had the
sole right of interpreting the Gospel.
Nobility, Clergy, and Civil Order were
forsworn.
King John, now bereft of his three
strongest allies, placed all his hopes on
Communality, his one sure support. Com-
munality, the true son of England, was
brought to King John by his mother, and
the king was dismayed to learn that he
was both impoverished and blind. He was
impoverished, his mother explained,
because the Church had stolen all his goods;
his blindness symbolized his spiritual
ignorance, an ignorance in which he was
kept by the conspiracy of Clergy who
was supposed to open his eyes. Still, for
all his failings, Communality was
faithful to the king who had always seen to
his welfare. He willingly reasserted his
faith.
In the end, however, he was no more
stanch than his more exalted brothers.
Clergy had too strong a hold on him,
and he too became a victim of Sedition's
plottings.
King John now stood alone in his
attempt to save the widow England.
Assured now of his vulnerability, the Pope
sent his agents to bring the king to his
knees. King John's old enemy, Stephen
Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
returned. The interdict was proclaimed
with bell, book, and candle, and the
vindictive Cardinal Pandulphus arrived to
enforce it.
Still King John stood firm, defying the
Pope to do his worst. Claiming that he
would not betray England, he turned to
history and the scriptures to defend his
rights; he pointed out the ways in which
the Church perverted the true faith and
he cited the corruptions of the holy
orders. Sedition mocked him and
promised that his defiance would end.
End it did, for the Pope gathered a
strong alliance and threatened to invade
England. Rather than see his country
devastated and his people killed, King
John submitted. He surrendered his
crown to the Pope and received it back
as a fief of the Holy See. When England
protested, she was reviled by Sedition
and his aides.
King John ruled for a number of years
as the vassal of the Pope. If he tried to
assert his power, Sedition and his agents
were on hand to thwart it. Treason ran
through the land with impunity, and
when the king tried to punish him he
pleaded benefit of clergy and was
released. Nevertheless, King John was
determined to hang him.
Cardinal Pandulphus and Sedition
conceived a plan to curb King John's power.
Cardinal Pandulphus would not release
England from the interdict until King
John had handed over to the Papacy a
third of his lands as a dowry for the
bride of Richard, his late brother.
Although King John protested, Cardinal
Pandulphus insisted on these harsh terms.
Providentially, the king was released
when it was announced that Julyane,
the lady in question, was dead.
The forces of the Church were now
determined to get rid of King John
completely. Dissimulation, in the guise of
Simon of Swinsett, a monk, concocted a
poison cup from the exudations of a
toad. When he offered John the draught,
the king forced the monk to drink first
and then drained the cup. Both died in
agony.
Upon the death of King John, Verity
appeared and proclaimed that all the
evils that had been attributed to King
John were false, the lies of slandering
monks. He listed all of the good things
the king had done for the benefit of the
1891

common people and asserted that for
three hundred years that good had been
undone by the corrupt Church. But now,
he announced, Imperial Majesty
(symbolizing Henry VIII) had arrived to
crush the Church and save the widow
England.
imperial Majesty confronted Nobility,
Clergy, and Civil Order. Verity pointed
out to them the error of their ways, and,
contrite, they swore their eternal
allegiance to Imperial Majesty. England was
safe from the evils of Rome.
1892

KING JOHN
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Early thirteenth century
Locale: England and France
First presented: c. 1594
Principal characters:
John, King of England
Prince Henry, his son
Arthur of Bretagne, the king's nephew
William Mareshall, Earl of Pembroke
Geffrey Fitz-Peter, Earl of Essex
William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury
Hubert de Burgh, Chamberlain to the king
Robert Faulconbridge, an English baron
Philip Faulconbridge, his half-brother, and natural son of King Richard I
Cardinal Pandulph, papal legate
Louis, Dauphin of France
Elinor, King John's mother
Constance, Arthur's mother
Blanch of Castile, King John's niece
Critique:
The Life and Death of King John,
based on a play of which the authorship
is unknown, has as its strongest feature
the depiction of character. In a number of
long, unbroken scenes, this aspect of the
play is achieved by the stream-of-
consciousness presentation. Mother-love
plays a major part in this superficial plot
of political vacillation. King John, one of
the earliest histories by Shakespeare, is
one of his weaker dramas.
The Story:
King John sat on the throne of England
without right, for the succession should
have passed to Arthur of Bretagne, the
fourteen-year-old son of King John's older
brother. John and Elinor, his mother,
prepared to defend England against the
forces of Austria and France, after
Constance of Bretagne had enlisted the
aid of those countries to gain the throne
for her son Arthur.
As John and Elinor made ready for
battle, Philip Faulconbridge, the natural
son of Richard the Lion-Hearted by Lady
Faulconbridge, was recruited by Elinor to
serve John's cause in the war. The
Bastard, weary of his half-brother's slights
regarding his illegitimacy, willingly
accepted the offer and was knighted by King
John.
The French, Austrian, and British
armies met at Angiers in France, but the
battle was fought with words, not swords.
To John's statement that England was
ready for war or peace, King Philip of
France answered that for the sake of right-
doing France would fight for Arthur's
place on the throne. When Elinor accused
Constance of self-aggrandizement in
seeking the throne for her son, Constance
accused her mother-in-law of adultery. The
Bastard and the Archduke of Austria
resorted to a verbal volley.
Louis, the Dauphin of France, halted
the prattle by stating Arthur's specific
claims, which John refused to grant. The
citizens of Angiers announced that they
were barring the gates of the city to all
until they had proof as to the actual
kingship. The leaders prepared for a battle.
After excursions by the three armies,
heralds of the various forces appeared to
announce their victories to the citizens of
Angiers, but the burghers persisted in
their demands for more definite proof. At
last the Bastard suggested that they batter
1893

the walls down and then continue to fight
until one side or the other was conquered.
Arrangements for the battle brought on
more talk, for the citizens suggested a
peace settlement among the forces and
promised entrance to the city if Blanch of
Castile were affianced to the Dauphin of
France.
John gladly offered certain provinces
as Blanch's dowry, and it was agreed the
vows should be solemnized. The Bastard
analyzed John's obvious motives: it was
better to part with some parcels of land
and keep the throne than to lose his
kingdom in battle.
Constance, displaying the persistence
and tenacity of a mother who wished to
see justice done her child, doubted that
the proposed alliance would succeed; she
wished to have the issue settled in battle.
Her hopes rose when Cardinal Pandulph
appeared to announce John's
excommunication because of his abuse of the
Archbishop of Canterbury. John, unperturbed
by the decree of excommunication,
denounced the pope. The alliance between
France and England, the outgrowth of
Louis' and Blanch's marriage, could not
stand, according to Pandulph, if France
hoped also to avoid excommunication.
King Philip wisely decided that it would
be better to have England as an enemy
than to be at odds with Rome.
His change of mind made war
necessary. The battle ended with the English
victorious. The Bastard beheaded the
Archduke of Austria. Arthur was taken
prisoner. When Hubert de Burgh pledged
his unswerving support to the king, John
told him of his hatred for Arthur; he asked
that the boy be murdered.
Grieved by her separation from Arthur,
Constance lamented that she would never
see her son again. Even in heaven, she
said, she would be denied this blessing
because Arthur's treatment at the hands of
the English would change him from the
gracious creature he had been.
Pandulph, unwilling to let John have
easy victory, persuaded Louis to march
against the English forces. The cardinal
explained that with Arthur's death—and
news of French aggression would
undoubtedly mean his death—Louis, as
Blanch's husband, could claim Arthur's
lands.
In England, Hubert de Burgh had been
ordered to burn out Arthur's eyes with hot
irons. Although Hubert professed loyalty
to John, he had become attached to Arthur
while the boy was in his charge. Touched
by Arthur's pleas, he refused to carry out
King John's orders. After hiding Arthur
in another part of the castle, he went to
tell John of his decision. On his arrival
at the palace, however, he found
Pembroke and Salisbury, in conference with
the king, pleading for Arthur's life. The
people, they reported, were enraged
because of John's dastardly action; they
threatened to withdraw their fealty to the
cruel king. John's sorrow was increased
by the information that a large French
army had landed in England and that
Elinor was dead.
The Bastard, who had been collecting
tribute from monks, appeared with Peter
of Pomfret, a prophet. When Peter
prophesied that John would lose his crown
at noon on Ascension Day, John had Peter
jailed and ordered his execution if the
prophecy were not fulfilled.
Told of Hubert de Burgh's refusal to
torture Arthur, the king, overjoyed, sent
his chamberlain in pursuit of Pembroke
and Salisbury to tell them the good news.
But Arthur, fearful for his welfare, had
attempted escape from the castle. In
jumping from the wall, he fell on the stones
and was killed. When Hubert overtook
the lords and blurted his tidings, he was
confronted by information and proof that
Arthur was dead. Pembroke and Salisbury
sent word to John that they could be
found with the French.
Harried at every turn—deserted by his
nobles, disowned by his subjects, attacked
by his former ally—John, on Ascension
Day, surrendered his crown to Cardinal
Pandulph, thus fulfilling Peter's proph-
1894

ecy. He received it back only after he had
acknowledged his vassalage to the pope.
In return, Pandulph was to order the
French to withdraw their forces. Opposed
to such arbitration, however, the Bastard
secured John's permission to engage the
French. King Louis rejected Pandulph's
suit for peace. His claim was that officious
Rome, having sent neither arms, men, nor
money for France's cause in opposing
John's hereticism and deviltry, should
remain neutral.
Under the direction of the Bastard, the
English made a strong stand against the
French. The defaulting barons, advised
by Melun, a dying French lord, that the
Dauphin planned their execution if
France won the victory, returned to the
king and received his pardon for their
disloyalty. But John's graciousness to his
barons and his new alliance with Rome
brought him only momentary happiness.
He was poisoned at Swinstead Abbey and
died after intense suffering.
After his death Cardinal Pandulph was
able to arrange a truce between the
English and French. Prince Henry was named
King of England. King Louis returned
home to France. The Bastard, brave,
dashing, vainglorious, swore his allegiance to
the new Icing. His and England's pride
was expressed in his words that England
had never been and would never be at a
conqueror's feet, except when such a
position might lead to future victories.
1895

KING LEAR
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: First century B.C.
Locale: Britain
First presented: c. 1605
Principal chatacters:
Lear, King of Britain
King of France
Duke of Cornwall
Duke of Albany
Earl of Kent
Earl of Gloucester
Edgar, Gloucester's son
Edmund, natural son of Gloucester
Goneril,
Regan, and
Cordelia, Lear's daughters
Critique:
Despite the 300-year-old debate
regarding the lack of unity in the plot of King
Lear, it is one of the most readable and
gripping of Shakespearean dramas. The
theme of filial ingratitude is so keenly
S>resent in the depiction of two different
amilies, although circumstances do
eventually bring the families together to
coordinate the plot for unity, that King Lear
is not only an absorbing drama but a
disturbing one as well. The beauty of diction
and the overwhelming pathos of the
treatment given to innocence and goodness add
to the tragic sadness of this poignantly
emotional play. Like the great tragic
dramas, the story of Lear and his folly
purges the emotions by terror and pity.
The Story:
King Lear, in foolish fondness for his
children, decided to divide his kingdom
among his three daughters. Grown senile,
he scoffed at the foresight of his advisers
and declared that each girl's statement of
her love for him would determine the
portion of the kingdom she would receive as
her dowry.
Goneril, the oldest and the Duchess of
Albany, spoke first. She said that she loved
her father more than eyesight, space,
liberty, or life itself. Regan, Duchess of
Cornwall, announced that the sentiment
of her love had been expressed by Goneril,
but that Goneril had stopped short of the
statement of Regan's real love. Cordelia,
who had secretly confided that her love
was more ponderous than her tongue, told
her father that because her love was in her
heart, not in her mouth, she was willing
to sacrifice eloquence for truth. Lear
angrily told her that truth alone could be
her dowry and ordered that her part of the
kingdom be divided between Goneril and
Regan. Lear's disappointment in
Cordelia's statement grew into a rage against
Kent, who tried to reason Cordelia's case
with his foolish king. Because of Kent's
blunt speech he was given ten days to
leave the country. Loving his sovereign,
he risked death by disguising himself and
remaining in Britain to care for Lear in
his infirmity.
When Burgundy and France came as
suitors to ask Cordelia's hand in marriage,
Burgundy, learning of her dowerless fate,
rejected her. France, honoring Cordelia
for her virtues, took her as his wife, but
Lear dismissed Cordelia and France
without his benediction. Goneril and Regan,
wary of their father's vacillation in his
weakened mental state, set about to
establish their kingdoms against change.
Lear was not long in learning what
Goneril's and Regan's statements of their
1896

love for him had really meant. Their
caustic comments about the old man's
feebleness, both mental and physical,
furnished Lear's Fool with many points
for his philosophical recriminations against
the king. Realizing that his charity to his
daughters had made him homeless, Lear
cried in anguish against his fate. His
prayers went unanswered, and the abuse
he received from his daughters hastened
his derangement.
The Earl of Gloucester, like Lear, was
fond of his two sons. Edmund, a bastard,
afraid that his illegitimacy would deprive
him of his share of Gloucester's estate,
forged a letter over Edgar's signature,
stating that the sons should not have to wait
for their fortunes until they were too old
to enjoy them. Gloucester, refusing to
believe that Edgar desired his father's death,
was told by Edmund to wait in hiding
and hear Edgar make assertions which
could easily be misinterpreted against
him. Edmund, furthering his scheme, told
Edgar that villainy was afoot and that
Edgar should not go unarmed at any time.
To complete his evil design, he later
advised Edgar to flee for his own safety.
After cutting his arm, he then told his
father that he had been wounded while
he and Edgar fought over Gloucester's
honor. Gloucester, swearing that Edgar
would not escape justice, had his son's
description circulated so that he might be
apprehended.
Edmund, meanwhile, allied himself
with Cornwall and Albany to defend
Britain against the French army mobilized
by Cordelia and her husband to avenge
Lear's cruel treatment. He won Regan and
Goneril completely by his personal
attentions to them and set the sisters against
each other by arousing their jealousy.
Lear, wandering as an outcast on the
stormy heath, was aided by Kent,
disguised as a peasant. Seeking protection
from the storm, they found a hut where
Edgar, pretending to be a madman, had
already taken refuge. Gloucester,
searching for the king, found them there and
urged them to hurry to Dover, where
Cordelia and her husband would
protect Lear from the wrath of his unnatural
daughters.
For attempting to give succor and
condolence to the outcast Lear, Gloucester
was blinded when Cornwall, acting
on information furnished by Edmund,
gouged out his eyes. While he was at his
grisly work, a servant, rebelling against
the cruel deed, wounded Cornwall. Regan
killed the servant. Cornwall died later as
the result of his wound. Edgar, still
playing the part of a madman, found his father
wandering the fields with an old retainer.
Without revealing his identity, Edgar
promised to guide his father to Dover,
where Gloucester planned to die by
throwing himself from the high cliffs.
Goneril was bitterly jealous because
widowed Regan could receive the full
attention of Edmund, who had been made
Earl of Gloucester. She declared that she
would rather lose the battle to France than
to lose Edmund to Regan. Goneril's hatred
became more venomous when Albany,
whom she detested because of his
kindliness toward Lear and his pity for
Gloucester, announced that he would try
to right the wrongs done by Goneril,
Regan, and Edmund.
Cordelia, informed by messenger of her
father's fate, was in the French camp near
Dover. When the mad old king was
brought to her by faithful Kent, she cared
for her father tenderly and put him in the
care of a doctor skilled in curing many
kinds of ills. Regaining his reason, Lear
recognized Cordelia, but the joy of their
reunion was clouded by his repentance for
his misunderstanding and mistreatment of
his only loyal daughter.
Edgar, protecting Gloucester, was
accosted by Oswald, Goneril's steward, on
his way to deliver a note to Edmund. After
Edgar had killed Oswald in the fight
which followed, Edgar delivered the letter
to Albany. In it Goneril declared her love
for Edmund and asked that he kill her
1897

husband. Gloucester died, feeble and
broken-hearted after Edgar had revealed
himself to his father.
Edmund, commanding the British
forces, took Lear and Cordelia prisoners.
As they were taken off to prison, he sent
written instructions for their treatment.
Albany was aware of Edmund's
ambition for personal glory and arrested him
on a charge of high treason. Regan,
interceding for her lover, was rebuffed by
Goneril. Regan, suddenly taken ill, was
carried to Albany's tent. When Edmund,
as was his right, demanded a trial by
combat, Albany agreed. Edgar, still in
disguise, appeared and in the fight mortally
wounded his false brother. Learning from
Albany that he knew of her plot against
his life, Goneril was desperate. She went
to their tent, poisoned Regan, and killed
herself.
Edmund, dying, revealed that he and
Goneril had ordered Cordelia to be
hanged and her death to be announced as
suicide because of her despondency over
her father's plight. Edmund, fiendish and
diabolical always, was also vain. While he
lay dying he looked upon the bodies of
Goneril and Regan and expressed pleasure
that two women were dead because of
their jealous love for him.
Albany dispatched Edgar to prevent
Cordelia's death, but he arrived too late.
Lear refused all assistance when he
appeared carrying her dead body in his arms.
After asking forgiveness of heartbroken
Kent, whom he recognized at last, Lear, a
broken, confused old man, died in
anguish.
Edgar and Albany alone were left to
rebuild a country ravaged by bloodshed and
war.
1898

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER
Type of work: Fairy tale
Author: John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Type of plot: Heroic adventure
Time of plot: The legendary past
Locale: Stiria
First published: 1851
Principal characters:
Schwartz, and
Hans, evil brothers
Gluck, their good brother
The South-West Wind
The King of the Golden River
Critique:
First written for the enjoyment of a
little girl and not intended for
publication, The King of the Golden River, Or,
The Black Brothers, a Legend of Stiria
has become one of the most popular of
Ruskin's works. The plot is not new: the
good youngest brother triumphs after the
evil older brothers fail and are punished.
But just as the stories of Cinderella and
Aladdin are always new, so is this story
of ancient Stiria and Treasure Valley.
The Story:
In the ancient country of Stiria, there
lay a beautiful and fertile valley called
Treasure Valley. Surrounded on all sides
by high mountainous peaks, the region
never knew famine. No matter what
droughts or floods attacked the land
beyond the mountains, Treasure Valley
produced bountiful crops of apples, hay,
grapes, and honey. Above the valley
beautiful cataracts fell in torrents. One
of these shone like gold in the sunlight
and thus was named the Golden River.
Treasure Valley was owned by three
brothers, Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck.
Schwartz and Hans, the older brothers,
were stingy and mean. They farmed the
valley and killed everything that did not
bring them money. They paid their
servants nothing, beating them until the
servants could stand no more and then
turning them out without wages. They
kept their crops until they were worth
double their usual value in order to sell
them for high profits. Gold was stacked
up on the floors, yet they gave never a
penny to charity. Often people starved
at their doorstep without receiving even
a morsel of food. Neighbors nicknamed
them the Black Brothers.
The youngest brother, Gluck, was a
good and honest lad of twelve. Although
his heart was filled with pity for the poor,
he was helpless against his brothers. He
did all their scrubbing and cooking,
getting nothing for his pains but an
educational cuffing or kicking. One year, when
all the country was flooded and only the
brothers had a harvest, Schwartz and
Hans left Gluck alone one day to turn
the roast. A terrible storm was raging.
Suddenly Gluck was startled to hear a
knock at the door. Investigating, he saw
the most peculiar little man imaginable,
a creature only about four feet six inches
tall, dressed in queer, old-fashioned
clothing, who begged to come in out of the
rain. Gluck, knowing what his brothers
would do if they returned and found a
stranger using their fire for warmth, was
afraid to open the door. But his heart was
so good and tender that he could not
long refuse the stranger. The little man
dripped so much water that he almost
put out the fire. When he asked for
food, Gluck feared to give him any.
However, his brothers had promised him one
slice of the mutton, and he prepared to
give the stranger that piece. Before he
could finish cutting it, the brothers came
1899

home. Furious, they attempted to throw
the stranger out, but when Schwartz
struck at him, the stick was thrown from
his hand. Each of the evil brothers
attempted to strike the old man, only to
be thrown back upon the floor.
Wrapping his long cloak about him, the old
man told them that he would come back
at midnight, and then never call again.
That night the evil brothers awoke to
hear a terrible storm. The roof was gone
from their room, and in the darkness,
bobbing around like a cork, was the old
man. He told them that they would find
his calling card on the kitchen table. At
dawn they went downstairs to find that
the whole valley was in ruin; everything
had been flooded and swept away. Their
cattle, crops, and gold were all gone. On
the table they found a card. Their caller
had been the South-West Wind.
He was true to his word. Neither he
nor the other winds blew again to bring
rain to the valley. The land became a
desert, the brothers penniless, and at last
they left the valley and went to the city
to become goldsmiths, taking with them
all that was left of their inheritance,
some curious pieces of gold plate. When
they mixed copper with the gold to fool
the public, the people would not buy the
substitute. What little they did make
they spent for drink, and soon there was
no money left. At last their only
possession was a drinking mug belonging to
Gluck. On the mug was a face which
seemed to peer at whoever was looking
at the mug. It broke Gluck's heart when
his brothers told him to melt down the
mug, but he knew better than to refuse.
After they left him to go to the tavern,
Gluck put his mug into the furnace. To
his surprise he heard a voice speak to
him from the flames. Gluck had thought
aloud that it would be wonderful if the
Golden River really turned to gold, but
the voice told him that it would not be
good at all. Opening the furnace, Gluck
saw the face on the mug emerge on
another little man. When the man came
out of the furnace, he told Gluck that
he was the King of the Golden River.
Imprisoned on the mug by a rival, he was
now free because of Gluck. Then he told
Gluck that whoever should climb to the
top of the mountain and cast three drops
of holy water into the Golden River
would turn the river to gold. But the first
attempt must succeed, and should
anyone cast unholy water into the river,
he would be turned to a black stone. So
saying, the king evaporated.
The brothers returned and beat Gluck
unmercifully for losing the last of the
plate. When he told them the story,
however, they decided to try their luck, and
they got into a terrible fight to see who
should go first. The constable, hearing
the noise, went to arrest them. Hans
escaped, but Schwartz was carried off to
prison. Then Hans stole some holy
water, for no priest would give any to such
a scoundrel, and journeyed to the
mountain. There he found almost impossible
obstacles, but he climbed on. Three times
he stopped to drink some of the holy
water, for he was about to die of thirst.
Each time, as he started to drink, a child
or an old man or a dog appeared on the
path and begged for a few drops of
water, for each was dying of thirst. But
Hans scorned them and drank the water
himself. At last he reached the top and
threw the water into the river. Instantly
he was turned to a black stone.
Back home, good Gluck worked to pay
his brother's fine. When he was freed,
Schwartz also left for the Golden River.
He bought holy water from a bad priest.
Like his brother, he was beset with many
difficulties. And like his brother, he met
the three who begged a few drops of
water; but he passed on, keeping the
water for himself. Then he reached the
top and threw his three drops into
the stream. He too was turned to black
stone.
When Schwartz did not come back,
Gluck decided to try his luck. A priest
gladly gave him holy water, for he was a
1900

ood boy. The mountain was even more
ifficult for him than it had been for
his brothers, for he was young and weak.
But when he stopped to drink and the
old man appeared and asked for water,
Gluck shared with him. His way grew
lighter. He stopped again and saw the
child lying in the path. Again he shared
his water, and again the way became less
difficult. When he had almost reached
the top, he saw the dog gasping for
breath, needing water. He had very little
left and at first thought he would pass
by, but then he looked into the beast's
eyes and his heart was moved. He poured
the remaining drops into the dog's open
mouth. Then the dog disappeared and in
his place stood the King of the Golden
River. He told Gluck that his brothers
had been turned to stone because their
water had been unholy through their
refusal to help the we^k and the dying.
Then the king plucked a flower
containing three drops of dew and told Gluck to
cast them into the river. As he did so the
king disappeared. At first Gluck was
disappointed because the river did not turn
to gold. Instead, it began to disappear.
Descending into the valley, as the king
had told him to do, he heard the water
gurgling under the ground. Green grass
and plants began to grow as if by magic.
Then Gluck understood that the river
had turned to gold by making the land
fertile and valuable again. He went to
live in the valley and prospered. The
poor were always welcomed at his door.
To this day the people point out the spot
where the river turned into the valley,
a place still bordered by the two black
brothers.
1901

THE KING OF THE MOUNTAINS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edmond Francois About (1828-1885)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Greece
First published: 1856
Principal characters:
Hermann Schultz, a botanist
John Harris, a fellow lodger and friend
Photini, a Greek girl
Dmitri, a Greek boy who loves Photini
Hadgi-Stavros, a Greek bandit
Mrs. Simons, an Englishwoman
Mary Ann, her daughter
Critique:
Practically unknown in this country,
About's novel deserves to be more widely
read, for it is ingenious, clever, and witty.
Edmond About, who was well-known
and honored in his own country, is the
equal of many French writers whom we
consider great. It would be difficult to
find a book by any of his contemporaries
that is so completely enjoyable as this
one.
The Story:
While the German botanist, Hermann
Schultz, was lodging with a Greek
family in Athens, he learned of a notorious
Greek bandit so powerful that the
government could not destroy his band and
so cruel that he had decapitated two
young girls he had been holding for
ransom. Hadgi-Stavros, the King of the
Mountains, was greatly feared, but he
was also greatly admired by many of his
countrymen. John Harris, an American
who was Hermann's fellow lodger,
snorted in disgust as the landlord recited with
admiration all the exploits of the bandit
Harris was so indignant he was unaware
that when he spoke Photini, a young
Greek girl who came to the house in
order to learn foreign languages from the
lodgers, looked at him with love in her
eyes.
The newspapers announced the defeat
of Hadgi-Stavros and his brigands, and
Hermann believed it safe to leave Athens
in order to continue his botanical
research. Unfamiliar with the territory,
however, he lost his way. Finally he met
the landlord's son, Dmitri, who was
acting as guide for two Englishwomen, Mrs.
Simons and her daughter Mary Ann.
Hermann joined their party. When Mrs.
Simons, arrogant and querulous,
demanded that they stop to eat, Dmitri told her
they could find food at the next village.
But when they arrived there, the village
was deserted; everyone had fled. Dmitri
said they could stop at a monastery, only
a ten-minute walk away. At the
monastery a monk told them that bandits were
in the district and he advised them to
flee for their lives.
A few minutes later the brigands
appeared and surrounded them, despite
Mrs. Simons' indignant assertion that she
was English. They were led to the
hideout of the chief, where Hadgi-Stavros
was sitting dictating letters to business
firms, to clients, to his daughter who was
away at school. When he was through,
he ordered food for the captives and Mrs.
Simons felt much better.
By clever questioning, Hadgi-Stavros
learned that Mrs. Simons was extremely
wealthy, and he ordered that she should
be held for ransom. When Hermann
protested that he was without money or
influential friends, Hadgi-Stavros said that
he could take Mrs. Simons' note back to
1902

Athens. But when the bandit learned
that Hermann was a scientist, a learned
man, he decided to hold him for ransom
as well.
Mrs. Simons insisted that she would
pay nothing, that the soldiers would
follow and rescue them. Hermann was
discouraged, for he knew that the soldiers
would do nothing of the kind. One day
a troop of soldiers appeared, and the
leader, Captain Pericles, was received with
affection. While the bandits went off on
a raid, Pericles kept guard over the
prisoners. Pretending that he had rescued
them, he collected as evidence against
the bandit the valuables of the two
women. When Hermann protested, he was
put under guard. Only after the brigands
had returned and were seen in friendly
activity with the soldiers was Mrs.
Simons convinced that Captain Pericles was
in league with Hadgi-Stavros.
Hermann planned to escape by going
down a ravine and across a stream, but
the plan was abandoned because he
could help only one of the women down
the steep slope to safety. Later he had
another idea. He had heard Hadgi-Stavros
dictate to his English bankers, the
company owned by Mrs. Simons and her
brother. He had Hadgi-Stavros sign two
receipts, one for the ransom of Mrs.
Simons and Mary Ann, another for his
own. The idea was that the banker would
deduct the sum from Hadgi-Stavros*
account and by the time the bandit
discovered that he had been swindled they
would be far away. The plan worked,
except that Mrs. Simons' brother did not
honor the receipt for the botanist.
Hermann was condemned to stay. But Mrs.
Simons, who had hinted at matrimony
for her daughter and Hermann, told him
that surely he could escape. She
insisted that the first thing he must do
when he returned to Athens was to call
on her.
Hermann's opportunity to escape came
a few days later, when the bandit
allowed him, in company with two guards,
so go out looking for plants. Hermann
ran away fiom the guards and would have
outdistanced his pursuers if his
suspenders had not broken. He was recaptured
and put under guard. Then he
succeeded in getting his guard drunk and
escaping across the ravine. Coming face to
face with one of the dogs guarding the
camp, he fed it some of the arsenic he
carried in his specimen box. In his
escape he had accidentally drowned his
drunken guard, and when the man's
body was discovered the bandits set out
in pursuit. Hermann was captured once
more. Hadgi-Stavros ordered Hermann
struck twenty times across the toes and
twenty times across the fingers. In anger
and pain Hermann told Hadgi-Stavros
that he had been duped in the payment
of the ransom money. The bandit was
furious. Hermann had robbed him,
ruined him, he declared.
He offered a reward to any of his men
who would devise horrible tortures for
Hermann. Meanwhile the prisoner had
his hair plucked from his head; later he
was put near an open fire to roast.
While there, he succeeded in putting
arsenic into the food. Then Dmitri arrived
in the camp with a letter from John
Harris. Hadgi-Stavros read it and turned pale.
Harris was holding his daughter as a
hostage aboard a ship until Hermann was
released, and the daughter was the
homely Photini who had loved Harris since
she met him at the boarding-house. In
anxiety for his daughter, Hadgi-Stavros
ordered Hermann to be treated for his
wounds and then set free. Beffire
Hermann left the camp, however, Hadgi-
Stavros and those who had eaten fell iU,
poisoned by the arsenic.
Fighting broke out among the bandits.
Some wished to kill the unconscious king
and Hermann as well. Those loyal to
Hadgi-Stavros defended their leader
while Hermann attempted to cure the
sick bandit. The fighting ended when
Harris and* some friends arrived to rescue
Hermann and the king.
Hadgi-Stavros went back to Athens
1903

and Photini. At a ball Harris and
Hermann saw Mrs. Simons and Mary Ann,
but Mrs. Simons treated Hermann with
icy politeness. The next day Harris and
Hermann went to call on them, but the
women had left suddenly for Paris.
Hermann gave up all hopes of marriage with
the beautiful Mary Ann.
1904

KING PARADOX
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pio Baroja (1872- )
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Spain, Tangier, and the imaginary Bu-Tata, in Uganga, Africa
First published: 1906
Principal characters:
Silvestre Paradox, a modern adventurer
Avelino Diz, his skeptical friend
Arthur Sipsom, an English manufacturer of needles
Eichthal Thonelgeben, a scientist
HardibrAs, a crippled soldier
Ugu, a friendly Negro
Bagu, a jealous medicine man
Critique:
Pfo Baroja y Nessi believes that fiction
must parallel life. Therefore his writing
is abrupt, episodic, simple, unrevised,
with a wealth of unselected details. His
Basque temperament shows in his
underlying melancholy and pessimism. At the
same time he has deep sympathy for the
underdog and the disinherited; he has
written a great deal about the needy and
the oppressed. His plots, lacking
proportion, are not unified or well rounded, and
his ideas often become the chief
protagonists in his books. Three times he
stops King Paradox with interludes
which, like classical Greek choruses, tie
the story together, and in frequent
soliloquies he points out that life is a
commonplace, monotonous melody played before
a Hmitless horizon. Even in his imaginary
Utopia it is impossible to escape the evils
of contemporary culture and civilization.
Except for a series of twenty-two volumes
called Memories of a Man of Action, the
story of a nineteenth-century soldier of
fortune related to the author, Baroja
conceived most of his books as trilogies. One
of the nine he has written is The
Fantastic Life, of which Paradox Rey is the
third and best volume.
The Story:
After many adventures Dr. Silvestre
Paradox, a short, chubby man of about
forty-five, settled in a small Valencian
town. Tiring at last of his quiet life, he
announced one morning to his friend,
Avelino Diz, his intention of taking a
trip to Cananf, on the Gulf of Guinea.
A British banker, Abraham Wolf, was
setting out on his yacht Cornucopia with
a party of scientists and explorers for the
purpose of establishing a Jewish colony
in Africa, and he had invited Paradox to
go with him. Paradox suggested that Diz
join the expedition.
In Tangier they met several other
members of the party, including General
P£rez and his daughter Dora, and a
crippled, scarred soldier named Hardibrds.
They drank to the success of the venture
in whiskey. When one of the company
fed whiskey to a rooster, the fowl broke
into human speech and deplored what
humans drink. Paradox declared that only
Nature is just and honorable. He was
eager to go where people lived naturally.
They boarded the yacht, Hardibrds
swinging himself aboard by the hook he
wore in place of his lost hand. There
Paradox and Diz met others of the
expedition: Mingote, a revolutionist who
had tried to assassinate the King of
Portugal; Pelayo, who had been Paradox'^
secretary until his employer fired hin
KING PARADOX by Pio Baroja. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1937,
by The Macmillan Co.
1905

for crooked dealings; Sipsom, an
English manufacturer; Miss Pich, a feminist
writer and ex-ballet dancer, and "The
Cheese Kid," a former French cancan
dancer. Wolf himself was not on board.
He was conferring with Monsieur Cha-
bouly, a French chocolate king who was
also Emperor of Western Nigritia, in an
attempt to establish peaceful diplomatic
relations between Chabouly's domain
and the new state of Canani.
The yacht put out to sea. On the third
day stormy waves washed the captain
overboard. Because the mate and the
crew were drunk, Paradox and two
others were forced to take over the yacht.
Paradox, alone at the wheel, conversed
with the wind and the sea, who told him
that they had wills of their own. Yock,
his dog, admired his master's resolution
and strength, and declared that he wars
almost worthy of being a dog.
The storm increasing in fury, the mast
broke and crashed upon the deck.
Paradox called the passengers together and
suggested that one of them, Goizueta, be
made captain because of maritime
experience he had had. Goizueta was elected.
His first act, after saving one bottle of
brandy for medicine, was to throw the
rest overboard.
For a week they sailed through heavy
fog that never lifted to reveal their
position. At last the coal gave out and they
drifted. One night some of the passengers
and crew, Miss Pich, Mingote, and Pe-
layo among them, stole the only lifeboat
and deserted the ship.
When the fog lifted, the passengers
saw a beach not far away. The yacht
struck a rock, but all were able to save
themselves on rafts which they loaded
with supplies from the ship. The next
morning the yacht broke up, leaving the
party marooned on a desert island.
It was then proposed that Paradox be
put in charge. After modestly protesting,
he accepted and assigned jobs to all the
survivors. But he failed to make provisions
for their defense. The next night a band
of Negroes came in two canoes, surprised
the sleepers, and took them bound to
Bu-Tata.
The first demand Prime Minister Fu-
nangue" made was for rum. One of the
party, Sipsom, explained that they could
provide rum only if they were allowed to
return to their base of supplies. In his
greed Funangue* decided to ignore the
advice of Bagu, the medicine man, who
wanted all the whites slain. A friendly
native, Ugu, was assigned to instruct the
prisoners in tribal language and customs.
From Ugu the captives learned Bagu's
prejudices and superstitions. When the
witch doctor later appeared, Sipsom
declared that one of the prisoners was a
wizard fated to die on the same day as
Bagu. If Bagu sided with them, however,
the white magician would help the
medicine man to marry Princess Mahu, King
Kiri's daughter. Bagu agreed.
King Kiri, engaged in his favorite
pastime of killing subjects whom he
disliked, paused in his diversion long
enough to receive the prisoners. After a
conversation about vested interests, he
ordered that their lives be spared. Giving
them permission to get supplies from theii
camp, he dispatched them under guard
in two canoes. During the trip the
prisoners, having lulled the suspicions of the
guards, were about to take their guns
and free themselves, but Paradox
objected. He said that he had other plans,
Diz scoffed at the way his friend put on
airs.
After damaging one canoe, the
prisoners used the delay to impress the Negroes
with their white superiority by working
magic tricks. A Frenchman in the party
led a discussion on the rights of man.
The scheme worked. After two weeks
the Negroes agreed to desert their king
and accompany the whites to Fortunate
Island, a defensible plateau suggested by
Ugu. Although Paradox preached the
virtues of life out of doors, the others
built Fortune House, a communal dwell-
1906

ing.
When King Kiri's army appeared,
Paradox's machine gun quickly repulsed
them and a searchlight finally put the
natives to flight. Peace having come to
Fortune House, the Negroes built huts
and spent their evenings at magic-lantern
shows. The Fortune House Herald
began publication.
Prime Minister Funangue* and two
attendants, appearing under a flag of
truce, brought King Kiri's appeal for
help. The Fulani were attacking Bu-
Tata. Paradox and Thonelgeben, the
engineer, returned to the capital with the
Negroes. At Paradox's suggestion, the
river was dynamited to turn Bu-Tata into
an island. Bagu objected to such
interference with nature and discussed the
change with fish, serpents, and frogs.
Only the bat refused to voice an opinion.
One day warriors from Bu-Tata
appeared at Fortune House with the head
of King Kiri and begged one of the whites
to become their ruler. At a meeting all
debated monarchial theories. When they
failed to agree, Sipsom showed Paradox
to the natives and announced that he
had been chosen by popular vote. All
returned to Bu-Tata for a coronation feast.
But by that time Paradox, reconciled
to the advantages of civilization over life
close to nature, was tired of Africa. At a
session of Congress he argued against
state support of art and criticized formal
education.
Pelayo and Mingote, captured by
Moors after the storm, arrived in Bu-
Tata. Miss Pich had been violated by
savages. The others had been eaten.
Political life continued. Two couples
of the whites got married. Sipsom held
law court and gave judgment in
complicated cases. Then the French captured
Bu-Tata and burned it. The whites were
released at the request of "The Cheese
Kid." Bagu was shot.
Three years later an epidemic filled
the Bu-Tata Hospital. French doctors
declared the outbreak the result of
civilization, for one of the doctors had
unknowingly taken smallpox to a native
village while fighting another epidemic.
Civilization had also driven Princess Ma-
hu to dancing nude in a night club. As
an enterprising journalist stated in L'Echo
of Bu-Tata, the French army had
brought civilization to that backward
country.
1907

KING SOLOMON'S MINES
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Africa
First published: 1886
Principal characters:
Allan Quatermain, an English explorer
Sir Henry Curtis, his friend
Captain John Good, Curtis' friend
Umbopa, a Zulu, in reality Ignosi, hereditary chieftain of the Kukuanas
Twala, ruler of the Kukuanas
Gagool, a native sorceress
Critique:
This story of the search for King
Solomon's legendary lost treasure, hidden
in the land of the Kukuanas, provides
absorbing reading for children and adults
alike. The slaughter provoked by the
cruelty of King Twala and the character
of the ancient sorceress, Gagool, make
King Solomons Mines a book which is
not soon forgotten.
The Story:
Returning to his home in Natal after
an unsuccessful elephant hunt, Allan
Quatexmain met aboard ship Sir Henry
Curtis and his friend, retired Captain
John Good. Sir Henry inquired whether
Quatermain had met a man named
Neville in the Transvaal. Learning that
he had, Sir Henry explained that Neville,
was his younger brother, George, witfc.
whom he had quarreled. When Si]
Henry inherited his parents' estate.
George had taken the name Neville anc
had gone to Africa to seek his fortune
He had not been heard from since.
Quatermain said that Neville was
reported to have started for King Solomon's
Mines, diamond mines reputed to lie
far in the interior. Ten years before he
himself had met a Portuguese, Jose Sil
vestre, who had tried unsuccessfully to
cross the desert to the mines and had
dragged himself into his camp to die.
Before he expired, Jose* had given him
a map showing the location of the
treasure. It was written on a piece of
a shirt which had belonged to his relative,
another Jose* Silvestre, three hundred
years before. That Silvestre had seen
the mines, but had died in the mountains
while trying to return. His servant had
brought the map back to his family, and
it had been passed down through
succeeding generations of the Silvestre
family. By the time the ship reached Natal,
Quatermain had agreed to help Sir Henry
Curtis find his brother.
In Natal, Quatermain got their
equipment together, and the trio chose the
five men who were to go with them.
Besides the driver and the leader for the
oxen which were to pull their cart, they
hired three servants; a Hottentot named
Ventvogel, and two Zulus, Khiva and
Umbopa. Umbopa explained that his
tribe lived far to the north, in the
direction in which they were traveling, and
that he was willing to serve for nothing
if he might go with the party.
Quatermain was suspicious of the native's offer,
but Sir Henry agreed to take Umbopa
as his servant.
On the journey trom Durban they
lost Khiva when, trying to save Captain
Good from attack by a wounded bull
elephant, the native was torn in two by
the animal. At Sitandra's Kraal, at the
edge of the desert, the men left all the
equipment they could not carry on their
backs. Quatermain's plan was to travel
at night so as to avoid the heat of the
sun and to sleep during the day. On
1908

the third day out, however, the men
could find no shelter from the heat.
They decided that trekking was more
comfortable than trying to rest. By the
fourth day they were out of water, but
on the following day Ventvogel
discovered a spring. Refreshing themselves,
they started off again that night. At the
end of the next night they reached the
lower slope of a mountain marked on
the map as Sheba's left breast. On the
other side of the mountain lay King
Solomon's road, which was supposed to
lead to the diamond mines.
The climb up the mountain was not
an easy one. The higher they ascended,
the colder it grew. At the top of the
ridge they found a cave and climbed
into it to spend the night. Ventvogel
froze to death before morning.
Ventvogel was not the only dead man
in the cave. The next morning, when
it grew light, one of the party saw the
body of a white man in its rocky recesses.
Quatermain decided that it was the body
of the first Jose" Silvestre, preserved by
the cold.
Leaving the bodies in the cave, the
remaining men started down the
mountain slope. As the mist cleared they could
distinguish fertile lands and woods
below them. Reaching King Solomon's
road, they followed it into the valley.
The road was a magnificent engineering
feat which crossed a ravine and even
tunneled through a ridge. In the tunnel
the walls were decorated with figures
driving in chariots. Sir Henry declared
the pictures had been painted by ancient
Egyptians.
When Quatermain and his party had
descended to the valley, they stopped
to eat and rest beside a stream. Captain
Good undressed to shave and bathe.
Suddenly Quatermain realized that they
were being observed by a party of natives.
As the leader of the band, an old man
stepped up to speak to them,
Quatermain saw that he greatly resembled Um-
bopa.
If it had not been for Captain Good's
peculiarities, the four men would surely
have been killed. Luckily, Captain
Good's false teeth, bare legs, half-shaven
face and monocle fascinated the savages
so that they were willing to believe
Quatermain's story that he and his
friends had descended from the stars.
To make the story more credible, he shot
an antelope with what he declared was
his magic tube. At Quatermain's
insistence, the old man, whose name was
Infadoos, agreed to lead the men to
Twala, King of the Kukuanas. After
a three-day journey Quatermain and his
party reached Loo, where Twala was
holding his summer festival. The white
men were introduced to the hideous one-
eyed giant before an assemblage of
eight thousand of his soldiers.
Before Twala's annual witch hunt
began that evening, the four travelers
had a conference with Infadoos. From
him they learned that Twala and his
son, Scragga, were hated for their
cruelty. Umbopa then revealed that he was,
in reality, Ignosi, son of the rightful
king, whom Twala had murdered. On
the death of her husband his mother
had fled across the mountains and desert
with her child. As proof of his claim,
Ignosi displayed a snake which was
tattooed around his middle. The snake
was the sign of Kukuana kingship.
All the men, including Infadoos,
agreed that they would help him
overcome Twala and gain the throne.
Infadoos declared that he would speak to
some of the chiefs after the witch hunt
and win them to Ignosi's cause. He was
certain that they could have twenty
thousand men in their ranks by the next
morning.
That night Gagool and her sister
sorceresses helped Twala search out over
a hundred of his men charged with evil
thoughts or plots against their sovereign.
When in their wild dances they stopped
before any one of the twenty thousand
soldiers who were drawn up in review,
the victim was immediately stabbed to
death. Gagool did not hesitate, in her
1909

blood thirst, to stop in front of Ignosi.
Quatermain and his friends fired their
guns to impress Twala and persuade
him that Ignosi's life should be spared.
Infadoos was true to his word. He
brought the chiefs he could muster, and
Ignosi again exhibited the tattooing
around his waist. The men feared he
might be an impostor, however, and
asked for a further sign. Captain Good,
who knew from his almanac that an
eclipse of the sun was due, swore that
they would darken the sun the
following day.
King Twala. continuing his festival,
had his maidens dance before him the
next afternoon. When they had finished,
he asked Quatermain to choose the most
beautiful, it being his custom to have
the loveliest of the dancers slain each
year. The girl Foulata was selected, but
before she could be killed the white men
interfered on her behalf. As they did
so, the sun began to darken. Scragga,
mad with fear, threw his spear at Sir
Henry, but the Englishman was luckily
wearing a mail shirt, a present from
Twala. Seizing the weapon, he hurled
it back at Scragga and killed him.
Quatermain and his friends, including
Infadoos and the girl, took advantage of
the eclipse to flee from the town with
the chiefs who had rallied to them. On
a hill about two miles from I^oo
approximately twenty thousand men
prepared for battle.
Twala's regiments, numbering about
thirty thousand soldiers, attacked the
next day. They were driven back and
then set upon by their enemies who,
driving at them from three directions,
surrounded and slaughtered many of
the Kukuanas. The vanquished Twala
was slain in a contest with Sir Henry,
who lopped off his head with a battle-
ax.
In return for the help which his white
friends had given him, the new king,
Ignosi, ordered Gagool to lead them to
King Solomon's mines, which lay in the
mountains at the other end of the great
road. Deep into the hills they went, past
three enormous figures carved in the
rock, images which Quatermain believed
might be the three false gods for whom
Solomon had gone astray. To reach the
treasure room they had to pass through
a cave which Gagool called the Place of
Death. There, seated around a table,
were all the dead kings of the Kukuanas,
petrified by siliceous water dripping upon
them.
While the men stood dumbfounded
by the sight, Gagool, unobserved moved
a lever which caused a massive stone to
rise. On the other side of it were boxes
full of diamonds and stores of ivory.
As the men stood gloating over the
treasure, Gagool crept away. After
stabbing Foulata fatally, she released a lever
to bring the door down again. Before
she could pass under it to the other
side, however, it dropped and crushed
her.
For several hours Quatermain and his
friends believed that they were buried
alive, for they had no idea where to find
the secret of the door. At last, in the
dark, they found a lever which
disclosed a subterranean passage. Through
it they found their way once more to the
outside and to Infadoos, who was waiting
for them.
A few weeks later some of Ignosi's men
guided them out of Kukuanaland, across
the mountains, and on the first stage of
their trip back across the desert. The
only treasure thev had with them was
a handful of diamonds Quatermain had
stuffed into his pockets before they found
a way out of the treasure room.
Their guides who knew of a better
trail than that by which the travelers
had come, led them to an oasis from
which they could pass on to other green
spots along their way.
On their return trip they found, near
the bank of a stream, a small hut and in it
Sir Henry's lost brother, George. He had
been badly injured by a boulder, two
years before, and had not been able to
travel since that time. Quatermain and
1910

his friends supported George across the
desert to Sitandra's Kraal, and then on to
Quatermain's home. According to their*
agreement before setting out on the
expedition, the diamonds were divided. He
and Captain Good each kept a third, and
the rest of the stones they gave to
George, Sir Henry's brother.
1911

THE KING, THE GREATEST ALCALDE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Lope de Vega (Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, 1562-1635)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Spain
First presented: 1635
Principal characters:
Sancho, a poor laborer
Nuno, a farmer
Elvira, his daughter
Don Tello de Neira, a nobleman
Feliciana, his sister
Pelayo, a swineherd
Don Alfonso VII, King of Leon and Castile
Critique:
Today we would call The King, the
Greatest Alcaldet a social drama, for it
portrays vividly the struggle of the peasantry
against the nobility. The power is on the
side of the aristocracy, but honor on the
side of the poor. There is tragedy here,
the tragedy of honor lost in spite of bitter
fighting to retain it. But there is comedy
also, Pelayo being one of the best clowns
in all literature. That Lope de Vega loved
the common people is evident throughout
the play. Justice triumphs in the end, but
too late to save the honor of the virtuous
Elvira. The playwright intended that his
audience should weep for her and for all
the poor of his country, even while
rejoicing at the happy conclusion of the
story.
consent and their blessing, and declared
that they themselves would attend the
wedding.
But when Don Tello saw the beautiful
Elvira, he was filled with such passion for
her that he decided to postpone the
wedding, take Elvira to satisfy his own lust,
and then give her to Sancho for his wife.
Dismissing the priest, he told the
assembled guests that the wedding must
wait until the next day. Sancho and Elvira
felt themselves already married, however,
since the priest had heard them declare
their true love for each other, and Sancho
planned to go to Elvira's room that night.
When Elvira opened her door, she
confronted not her lover but Don Tello and
his attendants, all masked, who carried
her off to the castle.
Sancho and Nuno, learning of this
betrayal, were ready to die. Nuno
cautioned Sancho not to despair, however,
for he knew his daughter would die rather
than lose her honor. Nuno knew his
daughter well. Although Don Tello
pleaded with her and threatened her, she
would not give herself to him. Feliciana
begged him to remember his good name
and his honor and not to force the girl.
Sancho and Nuno, going to Don Tello,
pretended that they had heard but could
not believe that he had stolen Elvira away.
THE KING, THE GREATEST ALCALDE by Lope de Vega. By permission of the publishers, Charles
Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1918, by The Poet Lore Company. Copyright, 1936, by John Garrett Underhill.
The Story:
Sancho, a poor peasant, was in love
with an equally poor girl, Elvira, the
daughter of Nuno, a farmer. When the
old man gave Sancho permission to wed
his daughter, he insisted that Sancho
secure also the consent of Don Tello,
master of all the surrounding lands, and of
Don Tello's sister, Feliciana. In obedience
to Nuno, Sancho went with Pelayo, a
swineherd, to the castle to ask his lord's
approval of the marriage. Both Don Tello
and his sister Feliciana readily gave their
1912

Don Tello pretended also that he was
outraged at such a story and would have
whipped those who told such lies to
defame his honor. But when Elvira entered
the room, Don Tello flew into a rage and
ordered Sancho and Nuno beaten to
death. They fled for their lives. Don Tello
then vowed that he would force Elvira to
submit to him or be killed. Again Sancho
wanted to die, but once more Nuno
persuaded him that there was still hope. He
sent Sancho and Pelayo to the court of
Alfonso, King of Castile, for the king was
a good man and well-known for his
justice in dealing with high and low alike.
When the king heard Sancho's story,
he immediately wrote a letter to Don
Tello, ordering him to release Elvira at
once. Don Tello ignored the letter and
declared that on his own land his people
would do only his will. Pelayo assured
Sancho that Don Tello had not yet
possessed Elvira, for he would have obeyed
the king had his lust been satisfied.
Sancho and Pelayo went again to the king,
to tell him that Don Tello had not obeyed
his orders. The king promised to go in
person to Don Tello and force him to
return Elvira to her father and husband-
to-be. He intended to go in disguise,
taking with him only two attendants.
Don Tello, filled with wild rage and
passion at Elvira's refusal to accept him,
swore that he would take her by force.
Nuno spoke with her through the bars
of the room where she was confined and
told her that Sancho had gone for help,
and she promised again to die rather than
lose her virtue. When Sancho and Pelayo
returned with word that the king was
sending help, Nuno was not much
encouraged, for he knew that Don Tello
kept his* castle well guarded and could
not be overcome by just three men. What
Nuno did not know was that the king
himself was coming, even though Pelayo
was hard put to it to keep the secret.
When King Alfonso arrived, he
questioned Nuno's servants and was convinced
that Sancho and Nuno told the truth.
Then he went in disguise to Don Tello's
castle. There he was rudely received by
that haughty nobleman. At last the king
revealed himself and ordered Elvira
brought before him. Elvira told her story,
of her pure love for Sancho, of obtaining
her father's and Don Tello's permission,
of her seizure by Don Tello and his men,
and finally of her lost honor. For Don
Tello had carried out his vow. He had
ordered her taken into a wood and there,
even though she fought until she was
weak, he had ravished her. She declared
that she could never know joy again, for
her honor was lost forever.
The king ordered Don Tello beheaded,
both for his treatment of the innocent girl
and for his failure to obey the king's
command sent in his earlier letter. Although
Feliciana pleaded for her brother, the king
refused to be moved by her tears. Don
Tello confessed that he deserved the
penalty, for he had sinned twice, against
his own honor and against the king. Then
the king pronounced his final sentence.
He would wed Elvira to Don Tello, then
execute him. As his widow Elvira would
inherit half his lands and gold. These
would be her dowry when she married
Sancho. Feliciana he would take to court,
to wait on the queen until a noble
husband could be secured for her. The
peasants blessed the king's wisdom and actions,
for he had righted all their wrongs.
1913

THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Type of work: Drama
Author: Gregorio Martinez Sierra (1881-1947)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Spain
First presented: 1915
Principal characters:
Sister Gracia
Don Lorenzo, her influential father
Maria Isabela, her worldly mother
Sister Manuela, Mother Superior of the old men's asylum
Trajano,
Gabriel, and
Liborio, old men in the asylum
Margarita,
Candelas, and
Quica, three unwed mothers
Dr. Enrique, the physician at the maternity home
Sister Cristina, Mother Superior of the maternity home
Sister Dionisia, cook and housekeeper of the orphanage
Felipe, a rebellious orphan
Juan de Dios, a bullfighter from the orphanage
Critique:
Though perhaps less widely known
and admired than the author's Cradle
Song, The Kingdom of God is in some
respects an even more interesting play.
Among its features are a large canvas and
the wide range of its characterizations;
but the chief source of its appeal is a
vital theme, relentlessly pursued through
three carefully presented scenes. This
theme is illustrated in the career of Sister
Gracia; it strongly asserts that mankind
must not turn a deaf ear to the sufferings
of the unfortunate, that the aged, the
sinners, and the orphans make claims on
the rest of humanity which can neither
be denied nor evaded. The scenes of the
play show three stages in Sister Gracia's
devotion to what she considers her duty.
She appears first as a girl of nineteen,
then as a woman of twenty-nine, and
finally as an old woman of seventy.
Though the vows of her particular s:s*er-
hood are not irrevocable, being
renewable annually, she feels bound to her
work by unbreakable threads of
conscience and consecration. Her moving
story is in the Maeterlinckian mold of
quiet drama, "the theatre of kindliness,"
which made the Spanish stage of the
early twentieth century one of
international importance.
The Story:
A beautiful young girl, daughter of a
prominent family, Gracia had decided to
renounce the world in order to enter the
benevolent order of St. Vincent de Paul.
Her first assignment was in a home for
poverty-stricken old men. Among these
aged pensioners, her favorite was Gabriel,
formerly valet to her own grandfather;
but she gave freely of her love and
energy to them all. Gradually she became
well acquainted with Trajano, a
superannuated anarchist, and with Liborio, a
half-witted Cuban, whose only escape
from melancholy was accomplished by
THE KINGDOM OF GOD by Gregorio Martinez Sierra. Translated by Helen and Harley Granville-
Barker. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1923, by E. P. Dutton & Co.,
Inc. Copyright renewed, 1951, by C. D. Medley, Executor of the Estate of Harley Granville-Barker.
1914

Gracia's gifts of cigars and the personal
attention she gave him.
She found true happiness in this
unselfish service, but her family felt
otherwise about her choice of a career. They
thought that Gracia was wasting herself
on old men who were dull and repulsive
—her mother and sister did not see how
she could bear to go near them. Visiting
Gracia at the institution, they begged her
to return home. Her father, whom Gracia
dearly loved and respected, added his
pleas; but the girl, though shaken by this
emotional tug of war, still firmly declared
that she must dedicate her life and
happiness to help atone for the world's misery.
Ten years passed. Gracia was no longer
at the asylum for old men. Halfway
through this period of time, she had been
transferred to another institution, this one
a maternity home for unwed mothers.
Here her fidelity to her vows met a stern
test, for Gracia found herself sorely tried
by the confusion and heartbreak which
she saw all about her. The outcasts of
society to whom she tried to minister were
all different—even though it was the same
kind of misstep which had brought them
to the home—and they reacted to her
advances in ways which were painfully
unpredictable. Some of the girls were
incorrigible; Quica, for example, was a
perennial visitor, shedding the reproaches
of the good sisters as casually as a duck
sheds water. Others were girls whose
characters were fundamentally good, like
the fiercely independent Candelas.
Neither Quica nor Candelas, however,
presented such a problem as the aristocratic
and embittered Margarita, whose wall of
resentment could no longer be pierced by
any gesture of compassion or sympathy.
In trying to cope with the hysteria of
Margarita, Sister Gracia underwent such
strain that she herself soon reached the
verge of emotional collapse.
At that point young Dr. Enrique, the
physician at the home, decided that it
was time to intervene. He had long loved
Gracia in silence, respecting her vow,
but now he urged her to marry him and
leave an atmosphere which was proving
so harmful to her. In becoming his wife,
he pointed out, Gracia could take up
another life as selfless and charitable as the
one she now led, but it would be in a
domestic framework much more
wholesome and natural.
Gracia could not help recoiling at the
doctor's suggestion. Still unnerved by her
ordeal with Margarita, she d:d not think
it possible or seemly to speak of love amid
such surroundings, and she repeated to
the doctor those views on life and service
that she had expressed to her parents ten
years before. As Dr. Enrique regretfully
withdrew, she heard Candelas S'nging a
ballad of love. Gracia could endure no
more; frantically she rushed to Sister
Cristina, her Mother Superior, and asked
for a transfer, offering the reason that it
was a matter of conscience.
The years crept up on Sister Gracia,
but never again was she tempted to turn
her back on the life which she had
adopted. At seventy she was still battling
the problems found in an imperfect
world. By now she herself was a Mother
Superior, in charge of an orphanage
which was sadly neglected bv its
indifferent directors. Unperturbed, the old
woman made the best of the situation.
Aided only by the rather earthy Sister
Dionisia, Sister Gracia sheered the
institution through one small crisis after
another. Indignantly, she protected a small
orphan from the mistreatment of h's
brutal employer, a drunken tailor.
Another situation involved two orphans, an
older boy and a girl who had become
sweethear's and were on the point of
eloping. This affair of the heart was
handled with an amused tolerance which
softened—without completely disguis'ng
—the firmness of Sister Gracia's decision
that marriage must wait.
Once in a while a colorful interlude
would lighten the orphanage routine. One
day, to the great delight of the children,
a former inmate of the orphanage came
back to pay his respects. Now an aspiring
bullfighter, Juan de Dios brought with
1915

him the ears of his first bull; these, with
a flourish, he presented to Sister Gracia.
The latter managed a suitable response
to this rather unexpected offering, though
she could not resist adding to her
expression of gratitude a few gentle
admonitions to the ebullient young man; then
she was swept to the outside gate in
triumph. It was a great occasion and the
sister was moved by Juan's open pride
in ha vino been one of her foundlings,
even if the bull's ears seemed a gift of
rather dubious value. More to the
purpose, she considered ruefully, was the
young bullfighter's promise to buy a good
dinner for the whole orphanage after his
next victory.
But Sister Gracia was soon brought
back to everyday reality by a sudden
revolt of the older bovs. Touched off by
their meager fare and led by the fiery
Felipe, the mutiny threatened to flare
into real trouble as the rebels set off to
steal good food and to break any heads
or doors which they found in their way.
Undaunted, though hard pressed, Sister
Gracia rallied all her resources of
authority and faith. She commanded the
bovs to return to their unpalatable soup
and to be thankful for what they had.
To Felipe she gave earnest assurances—
God did not condone injustice, she told
him, but the way to overcome injustice
was through love. Finally she led the
orphans in an inspired prayer, pledging
them all to God's love. When they
became adults, later, they must not allow
children to be forsaken or mothers to be
wronged, and they must help build on
this earth the Kingdom of God. As the
chastened children left the table, Sister
Gracia offered additional counsel to the
despondent Felipe. Men do not cry or
complain, she told him. Even though
they suffer, they must always work and
hope.
1916

KINGS IN EXILE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897)
Type of plot: Political romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1879
Principal characters:
Christian II, exiled King of Hlyria
Frederica, Queen of Illyria
Prince Leopold, their son
Elysee Meraut, the prince's tutor
Sephora Levis, Christian's mistress
Critique:
More tragic than its successors, Kings
in Exile is a forerunner of the highly
imaginative and popular Graustarkian
romance. As a novel, this book is interesting
and satisfying. Daudet's style is a
marvelous combination of the simple and the
grand, the archaic and the new.
The Story:
When a revolution broke out in Illyria,
King Christian II and Queen Frederica
fought bravely against the rebels, and
after the story of the siege of Ragusa
became known throughout Europe much
was said about the wonderful bravery of
the king. In reality, most of the credit
for the defense of the city should have
gone to Frederica, who was in every way
a queen. Christian was a king who had
never had any great desire to wear the
crown or occupy the throne.
At last the deposed rulers fled to Paris,
where they took rooms in a hotel. There
they were greeted by the Duke of Rosen,
his son, and his daughter-in-law. Three
years before, the duke, a former Illyrian
minister, had been deposed by the king
to placate the liberal elements of the
country. Now he had come to offer his
services to his sovereign once more. They
were accepted.
The monarchs thought that their stay
in Paris would be brief, that the new
republic would soon collapse and the
monarchy be restored. Accordingly,
Frederica refused to unpack anything. There
was an air of the temporary and transitory
about their lodgings.
Later it became clear that the republic
would last and that the monarchy was
doomed. Frederica resigned herself to a
long exile from Illyria. The royal family
purchased a house and settled down to
wait. As time passed, Christian became
more and more a frequenter of Parisian
theaters and cafes until his activities were
known all over the city and the subject
of much conversation and scandal. The
Duke of Rosen's daughter-in-law became
his mistress.
Following the recommendations of two
priests, the queen had engaged a tutor
for the young prince. He was Elysee
Meraut, who was supposed to teach the
prince all that he would need to know
to be a good sovereign. But the prince
was not particularly intellectual.
Furthermore, his father did not encourage the
lessons, for he had given up all hope of
ever regaining his lost throne; in fact, he
was glad to escape the responsibilities of
the crown.
Although the Duke of Rosen tried to
do his best with the royal finances, the
monarchs were, in reality, bankrupt.
Elys6e discovered that fact when he
learned that the king was selling
decorations, citations, and military orders to
cover his debts. When the queen learned
of the situation, she consulted the duke,
who admitted that he had been using his
own funds to support the monarchs in
1917

a regal style. She forbade him to
continue his expenditures and the household
took on an air of austerity.
In the meantime the king had given
up his mistress and had become enamored
of S^phora Levis, the wife of Tom Levis,
a broker who posed as an Englishman
and who had made a fortune out of
catering to the whims and needs of exiled
royalty. Sephora did not love the king. She
promised him, however, that she would
become his mistress after he had abdicated
his throne. She wished to show him, she
insisted, that she loved him for himself
and not for his title. In reality, Se*phora,
Levis, and one of the king's councillors
were involved in a plot to profit
handsomely by Christian's abdication, for the
Illyrian diet had offered the king a large
private fortune if he would renounce the
throne for himself and his descendants.
At first the king was unwilling to
abdicate because he enjoyed too much the
privileges of royalty without being willing
to assume the responsibilities of his
position. But at last he gave Sephora a title
and promised her that he would give up
his claim to the throne. Elys6e, learning
of his intention, notified the queen. She
and Leopold went at once to the king's
room, where he had just signed the act
of renunciation. After informing him of
a plan to invade Illyria, a plot hitherto
kept from the pleasure-loving monarch,
Frederica threatened to jump from the
window with her child unless Christian
destroyed the document he had signed.
The king yielded to her desperate
demands.
But the invasion attempt failed, for
the Illyrian authorities had been warned
in advance of the conspirators in Paris.
Frederica came to the conclusion that
there was only one course for Christian
to take; he should abdicate in favor of
his son. The king signed an act of
abdication by which the young prince became
King Leopold V of Illyria and Dalmatia.
Meanwhile a feeling very close to love
had grown up between the neglected
queen and the loyal tutor. One day, while
the prince and Elysee were shooting at
a mark in the garden, Leopold was
accidentally wounded in one eye. The queen,
in sorrow and anger, banished the tutor,
and he went back to his dingy apartment.
Frederica took her son to consult a
famous Parisian oculist. The doctor told
her that the prince had lost the sight of
one eye, that he would certainly lose the
sight of the other eye, and that an
operation was impossible because it would
imperil his life. The queen was in despair.
A short time later she heard that Elyse^e
M£raut was dying. As he lay on his
deathbed, he heard the door open. Then there
came to him a familiar voice—the voice
of the young King Leopold, whom the
loyal monarchist had loved. Frederica had
brought him to see his old tutor. Elys£e
M£raut died a happy man.
1918

KING'S ROW
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry Bellamann (1882-1945)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: The Middle West
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Parris Mitchell, of King's Row
Drake McHugh, Parris* friend
Randy Monaohan, who married McHugh
Cassandra Tower (Cassie), Parris' friend
Elise Sandor, newcomer to King's Row, Parris' friend
Critique:
Although Parris Mitchell is the hero of
this novel, the story is also that of his
home town, King's Row. For the struggle
is always between Parris and the town.
Life in King's Row is more tragic than
happy, and Henry Bellamann has vividly
depicted the town and its people. The
result is an extremely skillful and moving
story.
The Story:
Parris Mitchell lived with his German-
bom grandmother. Speaking English
with a decided accent, he seemed
different from the other boys his own age,
and he was, consequently, much alone.
He had only a few friends. There was
Jamie Wakefield, whom Parris Hked but
who made him feel uncomfortable.
There was Ren6e, with whom he went
swimming and experienced his first love
affair. Renee suddenly moved away.
Later Cassandra Tower gave herself to
him. Although he always remembered
Ren£e, he was also in love with Cassie.
But his best friend was another orphan
like himself, Drake McHugh, a young
idler whose life was almost completely
concerned with women.
Parris studied with Cassie's father, Dr.
Tower, a mysterious figure in King's
Row, but a doctor who other physicians
admitted was superior to them in
knowledge. Parris* grandmother, Madame von
Eln, saw to it, too, that he studied the
piano with Dr. Perdorff. His
grandmother arranged her affairs so that he
could go to Vienna for his medical
studies.
He knew that his grandmother was
dying because Cassie Tower told him so.
Shortly after her death, Cassie herself
died, shot by Dr. Tower, who later
committed suicide, leaving his money and
property to Parris. Parris went to stay
with Drake McHugh, who lived by
himself following the deaths of his aunt and
uncle. Drake told Parris not to mention
to anyone his connection with the
Towers. No one knew why Dr. Tower
had killed himself and Cassie. While
going through Dr. Tower's papers, Parris
discovered that Dr. Tower had been
having incestuous relations with his
daughter.
While Parris was in Europe, Drake
continued his life of pleasure. His
romance with Louise Gordon, daughter
of a local doctor, was forbidden by her
parents. Drake made plans to invest in
a real estate development. In the
meantime, he became friendly with Randy
Monaghan, daughter of a railroad
employee. Then Drake's guardian
absconded with his money and he was
left penniless. For weeks he haunted the
RING'S ROW by Henry Bellamann. By permission of Ann Watkioi, Inc. Published by Simon & Schuster. Inc.
wopyright, 1940, by Henry Bellamann.
1919

saloons and drank heavily. One morning,
unkempt and weary, he went to Randy's
home. Shortly afterward Randy's father
got him a job on the railroad. One day
he had an accident. Dr. Gordon was
summoned, and he immediately
amputated both of Drake's legs.
Meanwhile Parris had known nothing
of what had happened to his friend, for
Drake asked Randy and Jamie Wakefield
not to mention his misfortunes in their
letters to Parris. But after the accident
Randy wrote to Parris, who answered
and gave instructions for taking care of
Drake. A short time later, Randy and
Drake were married. Parris cabled
congratulations and turned over the Tower
property to them.
With that money, Drake and Randy
went into the real estate business. Then
Parris came back to King's Row as a
staff physician at the insane asylum.
Louise Gordon suddenly accused her
father of having been a butcher, of
having performed needless operations and
amputations. When Mrs. Gordon called
in Dr. Mitchell to attend Louise, he was
advised by his superior, Dr. Nolan, that
Louise would fall in love with him. In
fact, local gossip was already linking
Dr. Mitchell's name with Louise.
Parris investigated Louise's charges and
found them to be true. With that
discovery, he realized that Drake's legs
had been cut off perhaps needlessly.
Parris told Randy that at the bottom of
every tragedy in King's Row the hand
of Dr. Gordon could probably be found.
Drake and Randy made Parris a silent
partner in their business. While he was
away on another trip to Europe, a local
newspaper published a story charging he
had profited from the sale of land to the
hospital. Following the advice of Dr.
Nolan, Parris kept silent and nothing
came of the charges.
Parris became friendly with Elise
Sandor, whose father had bought his
grandmother's house, and soon he was
spending much of his time there. Then
Drake McHugh became seriously ill, and
it seemed clear that his illness resulted
from the amputation. Parris knew that
his friend had no chance to survive.
Drake died several weeks later.
Randy, only thirty-two years old, was
a widow. She decided to sell the
business and look after her brother Tod, who
was mentally incompetent. Those
happenings were all matters of concern to
Dr. Parris Mitchell on the night he
walked towards the Sandor home where
Elise was waiting for him.
1920

KIPPS
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1905
Principal characters:
Arthur Kipps, a simple soul
Ann Pornick, a neighbor girl
Helen Walsingham, a "lady"
Mr. Chitterlow, Kipps' friend
Critique:
When H. G. Wells gave Kipps a
subtitle, The Story of a Simple Soul, he
summarized the novel briefly and concisely.
Kipps was certainly simple, but he was
also delightful. His rise in the world
brought little change in his character,
although he tried valiantly to make the
change. Thus his downfall caused him
little heartache and in one sense brought
him happiness, for he could be himself
at last.
The Story:
Young Arthur Kipps knew there was
something mysterious about his birth, but
his memories of his mother were so vague
that they were all but meaningless. He
knew only that she had gone away,
leaving him in the care of his aunt and uncle
and providing a small sum for his
education. His was a bleak childhood spent
in a wretched school in which he learned
nothing. His vacations were dominated
by his aunt's notions of what was proper.
His unhappy childhood was lightened
somewhat, however, by his friendship
with a boy of "low" class and the boy's
sister, Ann Pornick. One day he and
Ann tore a sixpence note in two, each
keeping a half. This was Kipps* first
venture in love, but it was short-lived.
When he finished school he was
apprenticed to a draper. Soon afterward the
Pornicks moved away and Ann went into
domestic service.
His life as an apprentice was as dull
as his childhood. After seven years he
was given a position in the firm at twenty
pounds a year. He was engaged several
times, that being the custom among his
friends. But his next real infatuation,
after Ann, was for Miss Helen
Walsingham, a lady in the true sense. She taught
woodcarving in a class he attended for
self-improvement. Kipps felt keenly his
ignorance about the ways of the world.
Helen was so far above him in station
that he could only stare at her in awe,
for he could neither talk nor act in any
way other than clumsily.
But Kipps' fortunes were soon to
change. Through an accident he made
the acquaintance of Mr. Chitterlow, a
would-be playwright and actor. Because
Chitterlow poured whiskey into Kipps
at an alarming rate, the young man got
drunk and stayed away from his
residence, which was also his business
address, all night, and he found himself
the next morning with a month's notice.
As he cursed himself for a fool,
Chitterlow burst upon him again with news
that a person answering Kipps*
description was being advertised for by a solici-
5.1P?S fey ?• G; Yells-.?y P«™»ssion of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1905, by
Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed, 1933, by H. G. Wells.
1921

tor. When Kipps investigated, he found
that he had inherited a fortune, twelve
hundred pounds a year and a handsome
house, to be exact. He learned then that
he had been the illegitimate son of a
gentleman whose father would not let
him marry Kipps* mother. Both his
parents were dead, as was his grandfather.
The old gentleman had relented before
his death and left his fortune to his
unknown grandson.
Bewildered by his new wealth, Kipps
could do nothing constructive for some
time. He felt a great need for knowledge
of things of which he was dismally
ignorant. He was besieged by requests for
charity and by salesmen of all
descriptions. Chitterlow persuaded him to buv
a quarter interest in a play which he
was writing, and his uncle invested
money for him in all sorts of bargains
in antiques which might one day be
valuable.
Soon after he became wealthy Kipps
met Helen Walsingham again. He felt
as unsure of himself as ever, but there
was a definite change in her attitude.
Formerly she had been aloof; now she
was warm and friendly. Before long she
had maneuvered him into a proposal and
agreed to teach him the things he needed
to know in his new position. Kipps found
himself scrutinized and instructed on
every move he made, for Helen attempted
to change his speech, his habits of dress,
his social manners, and his attitudes. At
first he was grateful, but although he was
not aware of it, his infatuation was
changing to gloom. Helen even persuaded him
to change solicitors and to give his
business to her brother, who had a short time
before opened an office.
While visiting his aunt and uncle,
Kipps met Ann Pornick again, She was
not aware of his new fortune, even
though he had recently seen her brother
and told him the news. Pornick had
turned Socialist, and his contempt for
Kipps' new wealth, coupled with
jealousy, had prevented his telling Ann of
his old friend's good luck. Ann, acting
naturally with Kipps, made him yearn
for the simple life he had once known.
The fact that she was in service bothered
his new feeling of class superiority,
however, and he tried to put her out of his
mind. When he met her again, as a
servant in the house in which he was
a guest, he could control himself no
longer. He threw caution and caste to
the winds and asked her to marry him.
She, having now learned of his position,
protested feebly at the difference in their
stations, but soon succumbed to his pleas
and married him.
Their married life settled into the
humdrum made necessary by idleness. He
had let his fine house, and they prepared
to build a home. Ann wanted a small
house in which she could do her own
work, but Kipps planned a larger one
of about six rooms. But by the time the
architect and Kipps' uncle finished with
him, he found himself committed to a
house of eleven bedrooms. Ann felt so
inferior to him and longed so much for
a simpler life that she often wept. Kipps
felt the same longings but, convinced
that he ought to live well and in society,
did not identify them as such.
An abrupt change took place in their
lives when he learned from Helen
Walsingham that her brother had used Kipps*
money for speculation and had lost
everything before fleeing the country.
Expecting to be penniless again, Kipps and Ann
were satisfied when they learned that they
still had about four thousand pounds,
perhaps more. He fulfilled an ambition
of some duration by opening a little
bookshop. He knew nothing about books
but he prospered enough to meet their
now simple wants. The unfinished
mansion was sold, and the happy couple
settled down to a simple life that pleased
them both. Then Chitterlow hit a stroke
of luck and sold his play in which Kipps
had bought a quarter interest. The play
was a huge success, and Kipps collected
many times his original investment of
1922

one hundred pounds.
When Ann presented him with a son,
Kipps* joy was overflowing. Although he
was almost as rich as he had been when
he had his twelve hundred a year, he
longed no more for self-improvement. He
thought himself the happiest man alive.
Who knows? Perhaps he was.
1923

THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Francis Beaumont (1584M616)
Type of plot: Mock-heroic comedy
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: England and Moldavia
First presented: c. 1607
Principal characters:
George, a London greengrocer
Nell, his wife
Ralph, an apprentice to George
Venturewell, a London merchant
Jasper Merrythought, his apprentice
Master Humphrey, a slow-witted youth
Luce, Ventureweirs daughter
Merrythought, a carefree old gendeman
Critique:
Francis Beaumont, the son of a knight,
could well have been cruel in a dramatic
treatment of the workaday citizens of
London, but in The Knight of the Burning
Pestle, he reveals, beneath the hilarious
burlesque of the plot, a warm sympathy
for and a large understanding of the
London lower middle classes, as represented
by George, the greengrocer, his wife Nell,
and Ralph, their apprentice. An
outstanding feature of the play is the farcical
audience participation. This device, a
startling innovation in 1607, survives to
the present day in semi-dramatic
situations of broad humor. The Knight of the
Burning Pestle was probably written
under the influence of the keen interest
taken by the literate of James I's time in
Spanish prose fiction; surely Beaumont
had heard of, if he had not read,
Cervantes* Don Quixote, echoes of which
mark the play.
The Story:
A production in a London theater was
abruptly interrupted when George, a
greengrocer, declared that he wanted to
see a new kind of play, one in which the
common man of London was glorified.
Sitting beside him in the audience,
George's wife Nell further suggested that
there be a grocer in the play and that he
kill a lion with a pestle. The indulgent
speaker of the prologue agreed to these
demands after George had offered his own
apprentice, Ralph, to play the part of
the commoner-hero. So the play began.
For presuming to love Luce Venture-
well, the daughter of his master,
apprentice Jasper Merrythought was discharged.
Old Venturewell had chosen Master
Humphrey, a foolish young citizen, for
his daughter, but Luce, in league with
Jasper, told the gullible Humphrey that
to win her love he must abduct her
and take her to Waltham Forest, where
she planned to meet Jasper. (In the
audience, Nell, the grocer's wife, commented
that Humphrey was a fine young man.)
In a grocer's shop Ralph read a chival-
ric romance and, yearning for the olden
times, determined himself to become a
knight-errant. He enlisted his two
apprentices, Tim and George, to be his foils;
the one, his squire; the other, his dwarf.
Dubbing himself The Knight of the
Burning Pestle, Ralph explained the
rules of knight-errantry to his amused
followers. (Nell, pleased with Ralph's
first appearance on the stage, clamored
for his immediate return.)
In the meantime Jasper went home
and collected his patrimony—aU of ten
shillings—from his indigent but carefree
father, old Merrythought. Mrs.
Merrythought, sick of hard times, packed her
few valuables into a small chest and, with
her younger son, Michael, left home to
1924

seek a better fortune. (In the pit, George
and Nell grew impatient for the
reappearance of Ralph, their prodigious
apprentice.)
Simple-minded Humphrey told old
Venturewell of Luce's whimsical
conditions for their marriage, and the old man
consented to the plan.
Mrs. Merrythought and Michael,
traveling afoot, arrived in Waltham Forest.
While resting, they grew frightened and
ran away when Ralph, as the Knight of
the Burning Pestle, appeared with his
retainers. (George and Nell, from their
places at the edge of the stage, shouted
a welcome to Ralph.) Ralph, assuming
that Mrs. Merrythought had fled from
some evil knight, followed her in order
to rescue her from her distress. Jasper,
arriving in the forest to meet Luce, picked
up the casket containing Mrs.
Merrythought's valuables. (Nell, scandalized,
declared that she would tell Ralph what
Jasper had done.)
When Mrs. Merrythought reported her
loss to Ralph, he, in extravagantly
courteous language, promised to assist her in
regaining her valuables. (George and Nell
commended themselves for having trained
such a polite and virtuous apprentice.)
Humphrey and Luce came also to the
forest, where they found Jasper waiting.
Jasper, after thrashing Humphrey
soundly, departed with Luce. (George and
Nell, sorry for Humphrey, offered to caU
back Ralph to fight Jasper. The protests
of the theater boy notwithstanding, the
grocer and his wife wanted to change the
plot to see Jasper properly punished.)
Ralph immediately abandoned his search
for Mrs. Merrythought's valuables and set
out after the runaways. Overtaking them,
he challenged Jasper in the language of
knight-errantry. (Nell, at this juncture,
exhorted Ralph to break Jasper's head.)
Jasper, taking Ralph's pestle from him,
knocked down the Knight of the Burning
Pestle. (George tried to explain Ralph's
defeat by saying that Jasper was endowed
with magical powers.)
Ralph, his retainers, Mrs.
Merrythought, and Michael put up for the night
at the Bell Inn in Waltham. When they
mistook the inn for a castle, the
innkeeper indulgently joined them in their
make-believe.
Humphrey, meanwhile, had returned
to old Venturewell, to whom he
complained of his treatment at the hands of
Jasper. Irate, Venturewell went to old
Merrythought and threatened to kill
Jasper. (George and Nell at this point were
so taken with the plot of the play that
they believed it to be real.) Old
Merrythought, carefree as usual, paid no heed
to Venturewell's vengeful threats.
That night, while Luce was asleep in
Waltham Forest, Jasper decided to test
her love for him. Drawing his sword, he
aroused the girl with threats that he
intended to kill her because her father had
discharged him. (Nell excitedly urged
George to raise the London watch, to
prevent what appeared to her to be
certain violence.) As Luce trustingly
submitted to Jasper's threats, Venturewell,
Humphrey, and their men appeared and
rescued her. Jasper, hopeful that he might
somehow explain his behavior to Luce,
followed them.
Next morning, at the Bell Inn, Ralph,
unable to pay the reckoning, was
threatened by the landlord. (George gave Ralph
twelve shillings so that he could pay.)
Mrs. Merrythought and Michael,
disenchanted, went home. But Ralph, still
in search of romantic adventure, was
directed by the innkeeper to a barber shop
in the town, where, he said, a giant
named Barbaroso committed enormities
every day. (At this point Mrs.
Merrythought returned to the stage, only to be
dragged off by George and Nell, who
could not wait to see Ralph's fight with
the barber.)
Ralph, after challenging the barber to
mortal combat, knocked him down. While
he begged for mercy, Ralph directed his
retainers to liberate the barber's victims.
One was a knight whose face was
covered with lather. Another was a man on
whom the barber had done minor surgery.
1925

As other victims appeared, the barber was
spared on the condition that he no longer
subject humans to such indignities.
(George and Nell beamed with pride at
Ralph's conquest of the giant Barbaroso,
and Nell allowed Mrs. Merrythought and
Michael to appear on the stage.)
Mrs. Merrythought despaired because
she was unable to get old Merrythought
to have a serious thought. (Nell, furious
at the old man's carefree indifference,
ordered a beer to calm her temper. Then
the action of the play became somewhat
too pedestrian for the tastes of George and
Nell. The couple next requested that
Ralph be involved in a truly exotic
adventure.)
Ralph suddenly found himself an
honored guest at the court of
Moldavia. Courteously rejecting Princess Pom-
piana's favors, he declared that he was
promised to Susan, the daughter of a
cobbler in London. (George gave Ralph a
handful of small coins to distribute as
largess to the royal household. Nell
commended Ralph's loyalty and patriotism in
preferring a London girl to a princess of a
foreign land.)
Luce, meanwhile, was confined to her
room with the prospect of marriage to
Humphrey in three days' time. Mrs.
Merrythought sought aid, unsuccessfully,
from old Venturewell. Venturewell
received a letter of repentance from Jasper,
allegedly written by the youth as he lay
dying of a broken heart, with the request
that his body be conveyed to Luce. Hard
upon the letter came a coffin, which was
carried to Luce's room. Jasper, quite alive,
sprang from the coffin, made explanations
to Luce, placed her in the coffin, and had
it removed from the room. He hid in the
closet. Venturewell, still vengeful,
ordered the coffin to be delivered to old
Merrythought, who by that time was
penniless, although still merry. (George,
no respecter of plot, demanded that Ralph
appear again.) Ralph, in the guise of May-
lord, presented the month of May to the
city of London.
Jasper, meanwhile, covered his face
with flour and, appearing as a ghost, told
old Venturewell that he would never see
his daughter again. Thoroughly
frightened and repentant of his past actions, the
old man thrashed Humphrey, who had
come to see Luce, and sent him away.
(George and Nell, their interest flagging,
demanded diversion in which Ralph
would be the center of attention.) Ralph
appeared as a highly efficient captain
leading a parade of London volunteers.
The coffin containing Luce was
delivered to old Merrythought, who
continued to be indifferent. When Jasper
appeared and revealed Luce's presence,
the young people prevailed upon old
Merrythought to take back Mrs.
Merrythought and Michael. Venturewell, still
mindful of Jasper's ghost, told old
Merrythought that he forgave all Jasper's
transgressions. Jasper and Luce then confronted
Venturewell, who offered them his
blessings. (George and Nell, unaware of
dramatic proprieties, asked for the stage
death of Ralph so that the play could end
properly.) Ralph, with a forked arrow
through his head, delivered an absurd
speech about Princess Pompiana and
Susan. (Highly pleased with the sad
ending, Nell invited the audience to partake
of tobacco and wine at her house.)
1926

THE KNIGHTS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Political satire
Time of plot: Fifth century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 424 B.C.
Principal characters:
Demus, a slave master, a personification of the Athenian people
Demosthenes, slave of Dermis
Nicias, another slave
Cleon the Paphlagonian, a favorite slave and a personification
of the Athenian tyrant
A Sausage-seller, later called Agoracritus
Critique:
In 426 B.C., Cleon, tyrant of Athens,
accused Aristophanes of fraudulently
using the privileges of his citizenship. In
this play, presented two years later, the
playwright attacked and ridiculed his
powerful enemy, whom he presents as a
fawning slave to his master but insolent
and arrogant to his fellow slaves. As
political satire, the play is one of wit and
wisdom. Aristophanes* message is that as
long as men will not look beyond their
noses, they will continue to sell each
other short, never realizing that at the
same time they are giving themselves the
shortest weight.
The Story:
Demus, a selfish and irritable old man,
a tyrant to his slaves, had purchased a
tanner, who was nicknamed the
Paphlagonian. This slave, a fawning, foxy
fellow, quickly ingratiated himself with
his new master, to the dismay of all the
other slaves in Demus* household,
Demosthenes and Nicias in particular.
Because of the Paphlagonian's lies,
Demosthenes and Nicias received many
floggings. The two at one time considered
running away, but decided against this
course because of the terrible
punishment they would receive if caught and
returned to their owner. They also
considered suicide, but in the end they
decided to forget their troubles by tippling.
Going for the wine, Nicias found the
Paphlagonian asleep in a drunken stupor.
While the drunken man slept, Nicias
stole the writings of the sacred oracle
that the Paphlogonian guarded carefully.
In the prophecies of the oracle,
Demosthenes and Nicias read that an oakum-
seller should first manage the state's
affairs; he should be followed by a sheep-
seller, and he in turn should be followed
by a tanner. At last the tanner would
be overthrown by a sausage-seller.
As they were about to set out in search
of a sausage-seller, a slave of that butcher's
trade came to the house of Demus to sell
his wares. Nicias and Demosthenes soon
won him over to their cause, flattering
him out of all reason and assuring him
that his stupidity and ignorance fitted
him admirably for public life.
When the Paphlagonian awoke, he
loudly demanded the return of the oracle's
writings. The Sausage-Seller, however,
was able to out bawl him. Spectators
became involved. Some of the citizens
protested against the Paphlagonian's
unjust accusations of the Sausage-Seller.
Others claimed that the state was
falling into ruin while this shameless name-
calling continued. Others accused the
Paphlagonian of deafening all Athens
with his din. The Sausage-Seller accused
the Paphlagonian of cheating everybody.
A few citizens gloated that someone even
more arrogant and dishonest than the
Paphlagonian had been found in the
person of the Sausage-Seller. Others feared
that this new demagogue would destroy
1927

all hope of defending Athens from her
enemies.
While the citizens clamored, the
Sausage-Seller and the Paphlagonian
continued to out-boast, out-shout, and out-
orate each other. The Sausage-Seller said
that he would make meatballs out of the
Paphlagonian. Demus' pampered slave
threatened to twitch the lashes off both
the Sausage-Seller's eyes. Demosthenes
broke in to suggest that the Sausage-Seller
inspect the Paphlagonian as he would a
hog before butchering it.
At last both began to clamor for
Demus, asking him to come out of his
house and decide the merits of their
claims. When he answered their calls,
both boasted of a greater love to do him
service. Convinced by the assurances of
the Sausage-Seller, Demus decided to
dismiss the Paphlagonian and demanded
that his former favorite return his seal of
office. Both continued their efforts to
bribe Demus for his favor. At last the
rivals ran to consult the oracles, to prove
to Demus the right of their contentions.
Each brought back a load of prophetic
writings and insisted upon reading them
aloud to Demus. In their prophecies
they continued to insult one another, at
the same time flattering Demus. The
Sausage-Seller related a dream in which
Athena had come down from Ciympus
to pour ambrosia upon Demus and the
sourest of pickles upon the Paphlagonian.
Demus sent them off on another
foolish errand, laughing meanwhile because
he had duped both of them into serving
him. But at last the Sausage-Seller
convinced the Paphlagonian that he had the
right of stewardship by the word of an
ancient oracle in whom both believed.
Having won his victory, the Sausage-
Seller, now calling himself Agoracritus,
began to browbeat his new master and
to accuse him of stupidity and avarice.
He boasted that he would now grow
wealthy on bribes the Paphlagonian had
formerly pocketed. To show his power,
he ordered Cleon the Paphlagonian to
turn sausage-seller and peddle tripe in
the streets.
1928

THE KREUTZER SONATA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
Vasyla Pozdnishef, a Russian aristocrat
Mme. Pozdnishef, his wife
Trukhashevsky, lover of Mme. Pozdnishef
Critique:
This book has been much
misunderstood as representing Tolstoy's own views
on marriage and the relationships of the
sexes in Russian society. Actually, the
story is the confession of an insane man
who had murdered his wife in a fit of
jealousy brought on by his insanity. Most
important, however, is the Christian
aspect of sexual morality which underlies
the book. Explaining his novel, Tolstoy
said that he wanted to do away with
the false conception that sexual
relationships were necessary for health, to bring
to public attention the fact that sexual
immorality was based in part on a wrong
attitude toward marriage, and to restore
the birth of children to a proper place
in the sphere of marriage.
The Story:
One spring night a railway train was
speeding across Russia. In one of the
cars a sprightly conversation about the
place of women, both in public and in
the home, was in progress among a group
of aristocrats. One of the listeners finally
broke into the conversation with the
statement that Russians married only for
sexual reasons and that marriage was a
hell for most of them unless they, like
himself, secured release by killing the
other party to the marriage. With that
remark he left the group and retired to
his own seat in the car. Later on he
told his story to his seat companion.
His name was Pozdnishef and he was a
landed proprietor. As a young man he
had learned many vices, but he had
always kept his relationships with women
on a monetary basis, so that he would
have no moral responsibility for the
unfortunates with whom he came in
contact. His early life had taught him that
people of his class did not respect sex.
The men looked on women only in terms
of pleasure. The women sanctioned
such thoughts by openly marrying men
who had become libertines; the older
people by allowing their daughters to be
married to men whose habits were known
to be of a shameful nature.
At the age of thirty Pozdnishef fell in
love with a beautiful woman of his own
class, the daughter of an impoverished
landowner in Penza. During his
engagement to the girl he was disturbed
because they had so little about which
to converse when they were left alone.
They would say one sentence to each
other and then become silent. Not
knowing what should come next, they would
fall to eating bonbons. The honeymoon
was a failure, shameful and tiresome at
the beginning, painfully oppressive at
the end. Three or four days after the
wedding they quarreled, and both
realized that in a short time they had grown
to hate each other. As the months of
marriage passed, their quarrels grew more
frequent and violent. Pozdnishef became
persuaded in his own mind that love was
something low and swinish.
The idea of marriage and sex became
an obsession with him. When his wife
secured a wet-nurse for their children, he
felt that she was shirking a moral duty
1929

by not nursing her offspring. Worse,
Pozdnishef was jealous of every man who
came into his wife's presence, who was
received in his home, or who received a
smile from his wife. He began to
suspect that his wife had taken a lover.
The children born to Pozdnishef and
his wife were a great trouble to him in
other ways as well. They were
continually bothering him with real or fancied
illnesses, and they broke up the regular
habits of life to which he was accustomed.
They were new subjects over which he
and his wife could quarrel.
In the fourth year of their marriage,
the couple had reached a state of
complete disagreement. They ceased to talk
over anything to the end. They were
almost silent when they were alone, much
as they had been during their
engagement. Finally the doctors told the woman
she could have no more children with
safety. Pozdnishef felt that without
children to justify their relations, the only
reason for their life together was the other
children who had been born and who
held them like a chain fastening two
convicts.
In the next two years the young
woman filled out and bloomed in health,
after the burden of bearing children was
taken from her. She became more
attractive in the eyes of other men, and her
husband's jealousy sharply increased.
Mme. Pozdnishef had always been
interested in music, and she played the
piano rather well. Through her musical
interest she met a young aristocrat who
had turned professional musician when
his family fortune had dwindled away.
His name was Trukhashevsky. When he
appeared on the scene the Pozdnishefs
had passed through several crises in their
marriage. The husband had at times
considered suicide and the wife had tried
to poison herself. One evening, after
a violent scene in which Pozdnishef had
told his wife he would like to see her
dead, she had rushed to her room and
swallowed an opium compound. Quick
action on the part of the husband and a
doctor had saved her life, but neither
could forget her desperate attempt.
One evening Trukhashevsky came to
Pozdnishef's home in Moscow. He and
Mme. Pozdnishef played during the
evening for a number of guests. The
first piece they played together was
Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. The first
movement, a rapid allegro, worked upon
the highly-strung emotions of the
husband until he began to imagine that there
was already an understanding between
the musician and his wife. The idea
obsessed him so that he could hardly wait
until the other man was out of the house.
Never in his life had music affected
Pozdnishef in that manner. Between it and
his jealousy, he was almost violently
insane.
Two days later Pozdnishef left Moscow
to attend a meeting. He went away
fearful of what might happen while he was
gone. On the second day of his absence,
Pozdnishef received a letter from his wife
saying that the musician had called at
the house.
Jealousy immediately seized the
husband. He rushed back to Moscow as
fast as carriage and trains could carry
him. He arrived at his home after
midnight. Lights were burning in his wife's
apartment. Taking off his shoes, he
prowled about the house. He soon
discovered the musician's overcoat. He went
to the nursery and the children's rooms,
but found everyone there asleep.
Returning to his study, he seized a dagger and
made his way to his wife's apartment.
There he found his wife and the musician
seated at a table, eating. He rushed at
the man, who escaped by ducking under
the piano and then out the door.
Pozdnishef, beside himself with anger and jeak
ousy, seized his wife and stabbed her.
When she dropped to the floor, he ran
from the room and went to his study.
There he fell asleep on a sofa.
A few hours later his sister-in-law
awakened him and took him to see his
1930

dying wife. Shortly afterward the
authorities carried Pozdnishef away to
prison. He went under police escort to
his wife's funeral. It was only after he
had looked at the waxen face of the
corpse that he realized he had committed
a murder. Then, at his trial, Pozdnishef
was found innocent because he had
murdered while in the heat of anger at
finding his wife unfaithful to him.
Now judged insane, Pozdnishef
declared that if he had it to do over, he
would never marry. Marriage, he insisted,
was not for true Christians with strong
sensibilities and weak moral restraints.
1931

KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER
Tyve of work: Novel
Author: Sigrid Undset CI882-1949)
Type of Plot: Historical chronicle
Time of flat: Fourteenth century
Locale: Norway
first published: 1920-1922
Principal characters:
Kristin Lavransdattbr
Lavrans Bjorgulfson, Kristin's father, owner of Jorundgaard
Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter, Kristin's mother
Ulvhild, and
Ramborg, Kristin's sisters
Erlend Nikulausson, owner of Husaby
Simon Andresson, son of a neighboring landowner
Lady Aashild, Erlend's aunt
NlKULAUS (NaAKVE),
BjORGULF,
Gaute,
Skule,
IVAR,
Lavrans
Munan, and
Erlend, sons of Erlend and Kristin
Critique:
Kristin Lavransdatter is a trilogy—
The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of
Husaby, and The Cross—for which
Sigrid Undset received the Nobel Prize in
Literature. Madame Undset's work is
characterized by consummate artistry in
her delineation of character, in her
selection of detail, and above all in her
ability to tell a story. These three novels
laid in medieval Norway, a period little
known to the general reader, make
possible the reader's acquaintance with
many characters who lived long ago,
but who faced many of the same great
problems that the world knows today.
The Story:
Lavrans Bjorgulfson and his wife
Ragnfrid Ivarsdatter were descended
from powerful landowners. Although
Kristin had been born at her father's
manor Skog, she spent most of her
childhood at Jorundgaard, which fell to
Lavrans and Ragnfrid upon the death of
Ragnfrid's father. Kristin's childhood
was exceedingly happy.
A second daughter, Ulvhild, was
crippled at the age of three. Lady
Aashild, a declared witch-wife, was sent
for to help the child. Kristin became
well acquainted with Lady Aashild that
summer.
When she was fifteen, Kristin's father
betrothed her to Simon Andresson of
Dyfrin. One evening Kristin slipped
away to bid goodbye to a childhood
playmate, Arne Gyrdson, and on her way
home Bentein, Sira Eirik's grandson,
accosted her. She escaped after a fight
with him, physically unharmed but
mentally tortured. Later that year Arne was
brought home dead after having fought
with Bentein over Bentein's sly
insinuations regarding Kristin. Kristin
persuaded her father to put off the betrothal
feast and permit her to spend a year in
a convent at Oslo.
Soon after entering the Convent of
Nonneseter, Kristin and her bed-partner,
Ingebjorg Filippusdatter, went into Oslo
KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER by Sigrid Undset. Translated by Charles Archer and J. S. Scott. By permission
of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1923, 1925. 1927, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1932

to shop, accompanied by an old servant.
When they became separated from the
old man, they were rescued by a group
of men riding through the woods. In
that manner Kristin met Erlend Niku-
lausson, the nephew of Lady Aashild.
In July, Kristin and Erlend met once
more at the St. Margaret's Festival and
that night vowed to love each other.
The following morning Kristin learned
from Ingebjorg of Eline Ormsdatter,
whom Erlend had stolen from her
husband, and by whom Erlend had had two
children. Later that summer, while
visiting her uncle at Skog, Kristin and Erlend
met secretly and Kristin surrendered to
Erlend. During the following winter
Kristin and Erlend managed to meet
frequently. In the spring, Kristin told
Simon of her love for Erlend and hei
desire to end their betrothal. He agreed,
much against his will. Lavrans and Ragn-
frid unwillingly accepted Kristin's and
Simon's decision.
When Erlend's kinsmen brought suit
for Kristin's hand in marriage, Lavrans
refused. During the winter Erlend and
Kristin planned to elope to Sweden.
While they were making their plans at
Lady Aashild's home, Eline Ormsdatter
overtook them. Discovered by Erlend
when she was trying to give poison to
Kristin, she stabbed herself. Erlend and
Sir Bjorn, Lady Aashild's husband, put
her on a sled and took her south to be
buried. Kristin returned home.
The following spring Erlend's
relatives again made a bid for Kristin's hand,
and worn out with suffering—Ulvhild's
death and Kristin's
unhappiness—Lavrans agreed to the betrothal. During
Erlend's visit at Whitsuntide, Kristin
became pregnant. On the night of the
wedding Lavrans realized that Kristin
already belonged to Erlend. He had
given to Erlend what Erlend had already
possessed.
After her marriage Kristin moved to
Erlend's estate at Husaby. She was quick
to notice the neglect everywhere evident.
In the next fifteen years she bore
Erlend seven sons—Nikulaus, Bjorgulf,
Gaute, the twins Ivar and Skule,
Lavrans, and Munan. At the same time she
struggled to save her sons' inheritance
by better management of Husaby. But
Erlend, intent on becoming a great man,
sold land to pay his expenses and granted
tenants free rent in exchange for supplies
for his military musters.
Simon Andresson who lived at Formo
with his sister Sigrid and his illegitimate
daughter, Arngjerd, made suit to
Lavrans for Kristin's youngest sister, Ram-
borg. The following year Lavrans died,
followed two years later by Ragnfrid.
Kristin's part of the inheritance was
Jorundgaard.
There was much unrest in the country
at that time. A boy, Magnus VII, had
been named king of both Sweden and
Norway, and during his childhood Er-
ling Vidkunsson was made regent of
Norway. When Magnus reached the age of
sixteen, Sir Erling resigned and soon
Norway had little law or order. During those
years of unrest Erlend conspired to put
another claimant on the throne of
Norway. Arrested, he was tried for treason
by a king's-men's court. Erlend came off
with his life, but he had to forfeit all
his lands.
Erlend went with Kristin and his sons
to Jorundgaard to live; but he cared
little for farming or for the people of
the dale, and the neighbors avoided
Jorundgaard. As the children grew to
manhood, Kristin became more fearfu)
for their future. In her desire to further
their fortunes, she and Erlend came to
harsh words and she told him he was not
a fit lord of Jorundgaard. He left her
and went to Haugen, the farm where
Lady Aashild had spent her last days.
Kristin, although she longed to have
Erlend back, felt that she had been in the
right and struggled along with the help
of Ulf, a servant, to make Jorundgaard
produce.
The following winter her brother-in-
law Simon died as a result of a cut on
the arm, sustained while separating two
1933

drunken fighters. Before he died, he
asked Kristin to go to Erlend and settle
their quarrel. Kristin promised to do so.
Ramborg gave birth to her son six weeks
early, and upon Simon's death named
the child Simon Simonsson.
Kristin kept her promise and went to
Haugen to ask Erlend to return to
Jorundgaard, but he refused. She stayed
at Haugen that summer and then
returned home to her sons. Finding
herself again with child, she sent her
sons to tell her husband. When the child
was born, Erlend still did not come to
her. The child died before it was three
months old. Soon thereafter, when
Bishop Halvard came to the parish, Jard-
trud, Ulfs wife, went to him and charged
Ulf with adultery with Kristin. Lavrans,
unknown to the rest of the family, rode
to Haugen to get his father. Erlend
returned immediately with his son, but in
a scuffle in the courtyard he was wounded
and he died. The same year Munan
died of a sickness which went around the
parish. Thus Kristin was left with six
sons, each of whom must make his way
in the world.
Ivar and Skule, the twins, took
service with a distant kinsman. Ivar married
Signe Gamalsdatter, a wealthy young
widow. Nikulaus and Bjorgulf entered
the brotherhood at Tautra. Gaute fell in
love with Jofrid Helgesdatter, heiress of
a rich landowner. The two young people
eloped and were not married until the
summer after the birth of their child,
Erlend. During that winter they lived
at Jorundgaard and after their marriage
Kristin relinquished the keys of the
manor to Jofrid. Lavrans took service
with the Bishop of Skaalholt and sailed
to Iceland.
Kristin, who felt out of place in her
old home after she was no longer
mistress there, decided to go to Nidaros and
enter a convent. In the year 1349, after
Kristin had been in the cloister for about
two years, her son Skule went to see
her. From him she received the first
news of the Black Plague. The disease
soon engulfed the whole city, carried off
her two sons in the convent, Nikulaus
and Bjorgulf, and finally caused Kristin's
own death.
1934

THE LADY FROM
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: A small town in northern Norway
First presented: 1889
Principal characters:
Doctor Wangel, a physi
Elltda, his second wife
Boletta, and
Hilda, his daughters by a
Arnholm, a schoolmaster
Lyngstrand, a sculptor
A Stranger
Critique:
The Lady from the Sea was the first
of the psychological dramas written by
Ibsen, who had formerly devoted himself
almost entirely to social criticism. Here
the characters are not merely part of a
class, for they are strongly and finely
drawn in their own right. Also, there are
two subplots, another departure from the
great dramatist's usual style. Technically,
the play does not measure up to the
perfection of the social dramas, largely
because the treatment of his material was
new to Ibsen. The story is intensely
moving, however, and worthy of the attention
of all readers. The drama was published
in 1888, prior to its first presentation.
The Story:
There was no real affection between
Ellida Wangel and her two stepdaughters,
Boletta and Hilda. She had married their
father, Doctor Wangel, several years
before, soon after the death of his first wife.
He had met Ellida in the seacoast town
in which she lived, a town she loved
because it was near the sea. In fact, the sea
seemed to dominate her whole life, and
she felt stifled in her new home, which
was surrounded by mountains.
Arnholm, Boletta's former tutor, paid a
visit to the Wangel home. He had known
and loved Ellida before her marriage to
Doctor Wangel, but she had refused his
suit because, as she told him, she was
THE SEA
former marriage
betrothed to another. As the two former
friends talked, a traveling sculptor,
Lyngstrand, stopped to tell them of a group he
hoped to model. Lyngstrand had been at
sea and there had met a sailor who told
him a strange story. The sailor had
married a woman who had promised to wait
for him, but three years ago he had read
that his wife had married another man.
The sailor had told Lyngstrand that his
wife was still his, that he would have her
even though she had broken her vows.
This strange tale moved Ellida, seemed
even to frighten her. Her moodiness
following the telling of the story made her
husband believe she was unhappy because
she was away from the sea, and he offered
to move his family to the seashore so that
Ellida could regain her peace of mind.
But Ellida knew that this move would not
bring her happiness, while it would make
him and the girls unhappy to leave their
home. And so she told him the real cause
of her misery.
Some years before she had come under
the spell of a sailor whose ship was in
port for only a few days. He too loved
the sea and seemed to be part of it.
Indeed, he and Ellida seemed to be animals
or birds of the sea, so closely did they
identify themselves with the vast waters.
Then the sailor murdered his captain, for
a reason unknown to Ellida, and he was
forced to flee. Before he left, he took his
1935

ring and one from her hand, joined
them together, and threw them into the
sea. He told her that his act joined them
in marriage and that she was to wait for
him.
At the time she seemed to have no will
of her own in the matter, but to be
completely under his spell. Later she regained
her senses and wrote to tell him that
all was over between them, that the
joining of the rings was not a lasting bond.
But he ignored her letters and continued
to write that he would come back to her.
Ellida told her husband that she had
forgotten the sailor until three years ago,
when she was carrying the doctor's child.
Then, suddenly, the sailor seemed very
close to her. Her child, who lived only a
few months, was born—or so she believed
—with the eyes of the stranger. She had
felt such guilt that from that time on
she had not lived with her husband as
his wife. The anguish she had suffered
was affecting her mind and she feared
that she would go mad. She loved her
husband, but she was drawn to the man
of the sea whom she had not seen in
ten years.
Doctor Wangel, trying to comfort his
wife, was also worried about her sanity.
One day a Stranger appeared in their
garden. He was the sailor, come to claim
Ellida. He told her that he had come to
hold her to the vow she had taken years
before. Ellida said that she could never
leave her husband, but the Stranger would
not listen. Then the doctor told the
Stranger that he would never allow his
wife to leave him, that the Stranger could
not force her to go against her will. The
Stranger said that he would never force
her, but she would come to him of her
own free will. Those words, of her own
free will, seemed to fascinate Ellida. She
repeated them over and over and gained
strength from them. The Stranger left,
saying that he would return for her answer
the next night and telling her that if she
refused to join him, she would never
see him again.
Ellida begged her husband to save her
from he Stranger. He tried to persuade
her that her mind had been conditioned
by the story of the sailor and his
unfaithful wife that Lyngstrand had told her.
He reminded her also that the sailor did
not e^en look as she had remembered
him. But Ellida would not be comforted.
She told her husband that there was only
one way she could ever make the right
decision and save her sanity. The doctor
must release her from her marriage vows,
not by divorce but only by a verbal release.
Then she would be free to choose between
her husband and the Stranger. She said
that sne had never been free. First she
had been under the will of the Stranger,
then under the will of her husband.
The doctor refused her request because
he thought he must save her from the
Strangir and from herself. He felt that
the Sqanger had an evil influence over
his wife, and he wanted to save her from
disasteiL He promised her, however, that
after the Stranger left, he would release
her frqm her vow to him and give her
the freedom she wished.
The next night the Stranger came
again, is he had promised, and Ellida and
her husband met him in the garden.
When the Stranger asked Ellida to come
with hip of her own free will, the doctor
ordered the Stranger to leave the country
or be exposed as a murderer. The Stranger
showed them a pistol which he said he
would use to take his own life rather than
give up his freedom.
TheA Ellida told her husband again
that he must release her from her marriage
vows, tor although he could keep her
body tied in this place he could not fetter
her soul and her desires. Seeing that she
was right and that his refusal would drive
his wife out of her reason, the doctor
told her that he would release her from
her bargain with him. She saw that he
loved her enough to put her happiness
above his own. She turned to the Stranger,
who was pleading with her to leave with
him on| the ship standing offshore, and
19B6

told him that now she could never go
with him. The Stranger, realizing that
there was something between these two
that was stronger than his will, left them
after promising never to return again.
Ellida assured her husband that her
mind was whole once more and that she
would never again long for the Stranger
or the sea. The unknown no longer had
a power over her, for at last she had made
a decision of her own free will. Because
she had been free to choose or reject the
fascination of the Stranger, she had found
the will to reject him. Now she could go
with her husband and live again as his
wife. She knew too that she could win
his daughters to her and think of them
as her own. Ellida would never again feel
like the wild, eager birds of the sea. She
would bind herself forever to the land,
and in her bondage she would find
freedom.
1937

LADY INTO FOX
Type of work: Novelette
Author: David Garnett (1892- )
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: 1880
Locale: England
First published: 1923
Principal characters:
Mr. Richard Tebrick
Silvia Fox Tebrick, his
Critique:
Lady Into Fox is a story in which its
author, like Coleridge in The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner, attempts to make
the unreal seem probable. Perhaps many
a bridegroom, and as suddenly, has found
himself married to a vixen. The book is
fantasy, but fantasy written with
scrupulous regard for realistic detail. So far as
the book's underlying meaning is
concerned, the reader may make whatever
interpretation he will. It is first of all an
entertaining story.
The Story:
Silvia Fox married Richard Tebrick in
1879 and went to live with him at Ry-
lands, near Stokoe, Oxon. The bride
was oddly beautiful, a woman with small
hands and feet, reddish hair, brownish
skin, and freckles. Early in the year
1880, while the two were still very
much in love, Silvia accompanied her
husband on a walk. Hearing the sounds
of a hunt, Mr. Tebrick pulled his bride
forward to get a good view of the hounds.
Suddenly she snatched her hand away
and cried out. Beside him on the ground
where his wife had stood Mr. Tebrick
saw a small red fox.
Even in her changed form, he could
still recognize his wife. When she began
to cry, so did he, and to soothe her he
kissed her on the muzzle. Waiting until
after dark, he buttoned her inside his
coat and took her home. First he hid her
in the bedroom; then he announced to
the maid that Mrs. Tebrick had been
LADY INTO FOX by David Garnett. By permisiioa
Copyright, 1923, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
wife
called to London. When he carried her
tea to the bedroom and found his poor
fox trying to cover herself with a dressing
gown, he dressed her properly, set her up
on some cushions, and served her tea,
which she drank daintily from a saucer
while he fed her sandwiches.
Because the dogs had all that time
been making a clamor, he went out into
the yard and shot them. Then he
dismissed the servants and retired to bed,
sleeping soundly with his vixen in his
arms. The next morning their daily
routine started. First he would cook
breakfast; later he would wash and brush
his wife. Next they would eat
breakfast together, the same food Silvia had
enjoyed before her transformation. Once
he started reading to her from Clarissa
Harlowe, but he found her watching a
pet dove in its cage nearby. Soon Mr.
Tebrick began to take his vixen
outdoors to walk. On such occasions her
chief joy was chasing ducks near the
pond.
One day after tea she led him to the
drawing-room with gestures that showed
she wished him to play the piano. But
when she continued to watch the bird,
he freed the dove from its cage and tore
his wife's picture into bits. He also
found himself disgusted by the way
she ate a chicken wing at the table. One
night she refused to share his bed and
pranced about the room all night.
The next morning the poor husband
the author and the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1938

tried an experiment. From town he
brought her a basket containing a bunch
of snowdrops and a dead rabbit. Silvia
pretended to admire the flowers; but
when her husband left the room
purposely, she devoured the rabbit. Later
she repented and showed by motions that
she wanted him to bring out the
stereoscope so that she could admire the views.
She refused to sleep with him again that
night. Next day she pulled off her
clothes and threw them into the pond.
From that time on she was a naked
vixen, and Richard Tebrick drank
frequently to drown his sorrows.
At last Mr. Tebrick decided that to
avoid scandal he must move to another
location with his vixen, and he chose
the cottage of Nanny Cork, Silvia's old
nurse, as his place of retreat. He drove
over in a dog cart with his wife in a
wicker basket on the seat beside him.
The best feature of their new home was
a walled garden in which the fox could
enjoy the air without being seen, but
she soon began to dig under the walls
in her attempts to escape. Once, thwarted
in an attempt to escape, she bit her
husband on the hand. Finally he gave his
vixen her freedom, and allowed her to
run wild in the woods.
Stricken with grief over the loss of his
wife, Mr. Tebrick hired a jockey named
Askew to follow the hunts and report
on the foxes killed. He shot two fox
hounds who strayed on his land.
One night Mr. Tebrick heard a fox
bark. He heard the barking again in the
morning. His vixen had returned to lead
him to her earth and proudly display
her litter of five tiny cubs. Mr. Tebrick
was jealous, but at last he overcame his
scruples and went each day to visit the
young foxes. Able to identify the cubs
by that time, he christened them Sorel,
Kaspar, Selwyn, Esther, and Angelica.
Of the whole litter, Angelica was his
favorite because she reminded him of her
mother.
The Reverend Canon Fox arrived to
visit Mr. Tebrick. After hearing Mr.
Tebrick's story, the clergyman decided
that the man was insane. As the cubs
grew older, Mr. Tebrick spent most of
his time in the woods, hunting with the
vixen and her young by day and sleeping
outside with them at night. Once he
purchased and brought to them a beehive
of honey.
One winter day Mr. Tebrick was
outside listening to the sounds of a hunting
chase that ended at his own gate.
Suddenly the vixen leaped into his arms,
the dogs so close after her that Mr.
Tebrick was badly mauled. Silvia was
dead. For a long time Mr. Tebrick's
life was despaired of; but he recovered
to live to a hale old age, and may be
still living.
1939

THE LADY OF THE LAKE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Semihistorical romance
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Scottish Highlands
First published: 1810
Principal characters:
James of Douglas, a banished nobleman
Ellen Douglas, his daughter
Malcolm Graeme, loved by Ellen
Roderick Dhu, a rebel Highland chief
James Fitz-James, a nobleman of royal birth
Allan-Bane, a minstrel
Critique:
As the poet of Scottish history and
legend Sir Walter Scott stands in a class
alone. His poetry is in a sense painting,
for his descriptions are so vivid and
intense that his readers cannot fail to see
the scenes he reveals to them. It is
obvious that he loved the locale he described
and understood the people who inhabited
the wild Highlands. In The Lady of the
Lake he delved into Gaelic history, to
retell a legend that had been popular for
generations. The result was one of his
best-known poems, loved by readers of
all ages.
The Story:
As he followed a stag during a hunt,
James Fitz-James became lost in the
Highlands. He wandered around until he came
to Loch Katrine, a beautiful lake
surrounded by steep mountains. There he
met the lovely Ellen, who told him that
his coming had been foretold by Allan-
Bane, an ancient minstrel who served her
father. When she offered the hunter food
and shelter for the night, Ellen did not
volunteer to tell him her name or
anything of her family history, and courtesy
forbade his asking questions. Fitz-James
was disturbed, however, because she bore
such a marked resemblance to members
of the Douglas clan, a family banished
by the king. When he departed the next
morning, he still knew nothing about the
young girl whose beauty and grace had
deeply touched his heart.
Fitz-James was correct in his fear that
Ellen was of the Douglas clan. Her father
was James of Douglas, once a powerful
friend of the king, but now hunted and
with a price on his head. He and Ellen
and his sister were protected by Roderick
Dhu, a rebel against the king and the
leader of a large and powerful Highland
clan. Roderick Dhu wanted Ellen's hand
in marriage, but although she honored
him for the aid he gave her father she
detested him for his many cruel and
merciless deeds. He killed and plundered at
will, trying to avenge himself on the king
and the Lowlanders who he felt had
robbed him and his people of their land
and wealth. Among the men he hated
was Malcolm Graeme, a young nobleman,
Ellen's former suitor, whom she loved.
After Ellen's refusal of his proposal,
Roderick Dhu called his clan together to fight
Malcolm and the other supporters of the
king. His excuse was that he feared
Malcolm would lead the king to the hiding
place of Douglas.
Like lightning, burning beacons and
swift-riding messengers carried through
the Highlands word that the clan was
gathering. Young men left their brides
at the church door and mere boys replaced
fathers who had died since the last
gathering. The women and children were
placed on a lonely and protected island
for safety, for a fierce and dangerous battle
was to be fought. A hermit monk
prophesied that the party who spilled the first
1940

foe's blood would be the victor. The
prophecy suited Roderick Dhu, whose
men had seen a spy lurking in the
mountains and even now had lured the stranger
into paths which would lead him into
a trap. He would be killed by Roderick
Dhu's men and thus the Highlanders
would be assured of victory.
James of Douglas left Ellen. Although
he did not tell her his destination, she
knew that he had gone to give himself
up to the king in order to prevent the
bloodshed of a great battle. Allan-Bane
tried to cheer Ellen by telling her that
his harp sang of glad tidings, but she
would not hear him. As she sat grieving,
Fitz-James appeared again. Ellen knew
that he had been tricked by Roderick
Dhu's men, for no one could gain entrance
to a place so hidden and secret without
their knowledge. But Fitz-James, refusing
to heed her warning, asked her to return
to the court with him. She refused,
telling him of her love for Malcolm Graeme.
Then Fitz-James gave her his ring which
had been given to him by the king. He
said the king owed him a favor and would
grant any request made by the bearer of
the ring. It would also promise a safe
journey through the Lowlands to anyone
wearing it. Fitz-James placed the ring on
Ellen's finger and then departed quickly.
His guide led him through the
mountain paths until they came upon a crazed
woman who sang a warning song to Fitz-
James. The guide thrust his sword into
her. Fitz-James then killed the guide and
returned to the side of the crazed woman
who, before she died, told him that
Roderick Dhu had killed her lover and caused
her to lose her sanity. Fitz-James vowed
that he would meet Roderick Dhu and
avenge the woman. Having been warned
by her as well as by Ellen, he was
traveling cautiously when he stumbled on a
guard stationed by a watch fire. The
sentry called him a spy, wanted by
Roderick Dhu, but offered him rest and
safety, for the laws of the clansmen
demanded courtesy even to one's enemy.
The guard, after promising to lead Fitz-
James safely through Roderick Dhu's
lines, kept his word, even though Fitz-
James called Roderick Dhu a coward and
a murderer. When they reached a place
of safety, the sentry revealed himself as
Roderick Dhu. His promise fulfilled, he
then challenged Fitz-James to a duel. In
personal combat Roderick Dhu proved
the stronger, but Fitz-James, who was
more skilled, overcame the rebel. Then
Fitz-James blew his horn and called his
men to carry Roderick Dhu to a prison
cell.
In the meantime James of Douglas
went to the court to give himself up.
First, however, he took part in some
games being staged that day and won
every event he entered. The whisper went
through the crowds that only a Douglas
could possess such skill and strength.
Then Douglas offered himself to the king
as a ransom for his friends and clansmen.
When the king ordered him thrown into
prison, the people sided with Douglas and
would have risen against the king.
Douglas quieted them, for he would not act
against his monarch, and allowed
himself to be taken. The king sent messengers
to the Highlanders with word that there
was no need to fight; Douglas had
surrendered and Roderick Dhu was a
prisoner.
Ellen and Allan-Bane went to the court
to seek the release of her father. The ring
given her by Fitz-James afforded her
safety along the way. Before news came
that a truce had been arranged, Allan-
Bane went to Roderick Dhu's cell and
sang to him of a fierce battle that had been
fought. Roderick Dhu died with a smile,
for he believed that his clansmen had
fought bravely.
Ellen prepared for her audience with
the king. Fitz-James went to her quarters
to conduct her to the court, but when
they arrived she noted that everyone
bowed before Fitz-James. It was not until
then that she knew Fitz-James was in
reality the king. He told her to claim the
favor promised by the ring, but there
was nothing she could ask. The king had
1941

already restored her father to favor and
Roderick Dhu was dead, so that she could
not plead mercy for him. She tried to
stammer something about Malcolm Graeme,
but the king read her heart and called
Malcolm to her side. He forgave Malcolm
for trying to aid the rebels and redeemed
the ring Ellen wore by joining her with
her beloved.
1942

LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1892
Principal characters:
Lady Windermere, a proper woman
Lord Windermere, her husband
Lord Darlington, a man about town
Mrs. Erlynne, an adventuress
Lord Augustus Lorton, Mrs. Erlynne's fianc£
Critique:
This play is noted for one of the
wittiest and best constructed first acts in
the history of drama. The exposition,
terse and interesting, leads inevitably to
the scene in which Lady Windermere
threatens to strike with a fan her own
mother, whose true relationship she does
not know. The plot of the drama is dated
today, but it still conveys, to an amazing
degree, Wilde's central idea that the
"good woman" often costs a great deal
more than she is worth.
The Story:
On her birthday Lord Windermere
presented his wife with a very beautiful
and delicately wrought fan with her
name, Margaret, engraved upon it. She
intended to carry the fan at a ball she
was giving that evening, a ball to which
everyone of importance in London had
been invited.
That afternoon the Duchess of
Berwick called on Lady Windermere, to
tell her friend of a rumored affair
between Lord Windermere and Mrs.
Erlynne, a fascinating but notorious woman
not received in the best houses.
According to the duchess* story, Lord
Windermere had for some months been
supplying Mrs. Erlynne with funds for her
support, and the old dowager's
suggestion was that Lady Windermere should
take immediate steps to learn the
relationship between the two.
Lady Windermere was naturally upset.
Determined to find out if there were
any truth in the gossip, she opened her
husband's desk. In a locked bank book,
which she ripped open, she found
evidence of her husband's duplicity, a record
of checks issued to Mrs. Erlynne over a
long period of time.
Angry and hurt at Lord Windermere's
apparent failure to appreciate love and
virtue, she turned on him the moment
he appeared. His main concern was
annoyance that his wife had dared tamper
with his property behind his back. He
informed her that his relations with
Mrs. Erlynne were perfectly honorable,
that she was a fine but unfortunate
woman who wished to win the regard of
society once more. Moreover, Lord
Windermere explicitly ordered his wife
to send Mrs. Erlynne an invitation to the
ball. When Lady Windermere refused,
her husband wrote an invitation. Angered
at his act, Lady Windermere threatened
to strike Mrs. Erlynne with the fan if she
dared cross the threshold of Windermere
House.
But when Mrs. Erlynne appeared at
the ball, Lady Windermere lost her
resolution and let the fan drop to the floor.
The guests, believing that Mrs. Erlynne
had been invited by Lady Windermere
herself, naturally accepted her. She was
lionized by all the men, and the women,
curious because of the many stories they
had heard, wanted to see at first hand
what she was really like. Among her
special admirers was Lord Augustus
Lorton, the Duchess of Berwick's disrepu-
1943

table brother, to whom she had just
become engaged to be married. Mrs.
Erlynne was not the only woman greatly
admired that evening. Lord Darlington
was persistently attentive to Lady
Windermere. Mrs. Erlynne's presence at the
ball having put Lady Windermere into
a reckless mood, Lord Darlington
succeeded in persuading his hostess to leave
her husband and come to him.
After the guests had gone, Lady
Windermere had a violent struggle with
herself, the outcome being a letter
informing Lord Windermere that she was
leaving his house forever. She gave the
letter to a servant to deliver and left for
Lord Darlington's apartments.
Mrs. Erlynne, who with Lord
Augustus had remained behind to talk with
Lord Windermere, discovered the letter
Lady Windermere had written, and the
thought of that lady's rash act brought
back old memories. Twenty years
before Mrs. Erlynne had written a similar
letter to her husband, and had left him
and their child for a lover who had
deserted her. Her years of social ostracism
had made her a stranger to her own
daughter. Perhaps, however, she could
keep her daughter from making the same
mistake. Lady Windermere should never
feel the remorse that her mother, Mrs.
Erlynne, had known.
Mrs. Erlynne took Lady Windermere's
letter and hurried to Lord Darlington's
apartments, first persuading Lord
Augustus to take Lord Windermere to his club
and keep him there for the rest of the
night. In Lord Darlington's rooms,
without revealing her identity, Mrs. Erlynne
managed to persuade Lady Windermere
to think of her child and go back to her
husband. Out of the depths of her own
bitter experience, Mrs. Erlynne insisted
that Lady Windermere's first duty was
not to her husband but to her child.
As Lady Windermere was leaving,
Lord Darlington returned, accompanied
by Lord Windermere and Lord
Augustus. Mrs. Erlynne, after hurrying her
daughter to a waiting carriage, remained
to face the gentlemen. It was an ordeal,
for in her haste Lady Windermere had
forgotten her fan and Lord Windermere,
discovering it, became suspicious. Mrs.
Erlynne appeared from behind a curtain
with the explanation that she had taken
the fan in mistake for her own when she
left Windermere House. Her explanation
saved Lady Windermere at the cost of
her own reputation. Lord Windermere
was furious, for he felt that he had in
good faith befriended and helped a
woman who was beneath contempt. Lord
Augustus promptly declared that he could
have nothing further to do with Mrs.
Erlynne.
Lady Windermere alone defended Mrs.
Erlynne. She realized at last that by some
strange irony the bad woman had
accepted public disgrace in order to save
the good one. Lord Windermere,
knowing nothing of what had happened, re*
solved to learn the whole truth when
Mrs. Erlynne arrived to return the fan.
But the mother, not wanting to shatter
Lady Windermere's illusions, refused to
reveal herself to the daughter.
Waiting for Mrs. Erlynne outside the house,
however, was Lord Augustus, who had
accepted her explanation that his own
interests had taken her to Lord
Darlington's rooms. Lord Windermere felt that
Lord Augustus was marrying a very
clever woman. Lady Windermere
insisted that he was marrying someone
rarer, a good woman.
1944

THE LADY'S NOT FOR BURNING
Type of work: Drama
Author: Christopher Fry (1907- )
Type of plot: Poetic comedy
Time of plot: About 1400
Locale: The small market town of Cool Clary
First presented: 1948
Principal characters:
Richard, an orphaned clerk
Thomas Mendip, a discharged soldier
Hebble Tyson, mayor of Cool Clary
Margaret Devize, his sister
Nicholas, and
Humphrey, her sons
Alizon Eliot, betrothed to Humphrey
Jennet Jourdemayne, a witch
Critique:
A poetic drama set in the late Middle
Ages, The Lady's Not for Burning is a
strange mixture of comedy and poetry.
The excellent humor is in the lines of
the play, however, as much as in The
development of situation and plot. The
discharged soldier, egoist and
misanthrope, is a character whom Shaw might
have created, but the situation into which
he projects himself is one of un-Shavian
whimsy and symbolism. The play has
been successful here and abroad.
Christopher Fry has restored poetry and humor
to the modern stage.
The Story:
Thomas Mendip wanted to be hanged,
but he could get no one to take an
interest in his case because everyone in
Cool Clary was interested in a witch who
was accused of having turned old Skipps,
the rag and bone man, into a dog. Thomas
begged the mayor's clerk, Richard, to
get him an audience with the mayor so
that he could confess his crime. But
Richard had other things on his mind. The
mayor's nephew, Humphrey Devize, had
been betrothed to Alizon Eliot, and the
girl was due to arrive any minute. No
one had time for a fool who wanted to
be hanged.
Alizon was one of six daughters whose
father feared he had too many girls to
marry off. He had placed Alizon in a
convent, but after he had got rid of his
other daughters easily enough he changed
his mind about her and promised her
to Humphrey. Humphrey's brother
Nicholas had read in the stars that Alizon
belonged to him, however, and so he
knocked his brother down, hoping to
kill him and take Alizon for himself.
Humphrey, although he was not dead,
lay still. He had not knocked himself
down and so he would not pick himself
up. Their mother, Margaret Devize,
sister of the mayor, sometimes thought
motherhood was too much for any
woman. Since the boys had become untidy
from lying in the rain and mud, she
feared Humphrey's unclean linens might
discourage Alizon.
When Mayor Hebble Tyson found
Thomas waiting to be hanged, he was
very much upset. Hebble was a little
tired of strangers dropping into town
with such ridiculous requests. It was all
very irregular. Suspecting that someone
was making a mockery of his authority,
he threatened to have Thomas tortured
if he did not go away and stop his bother.
But Thomas held out for hanging or
nothing. He confessed to killing old
Skipps and a worthless pander. He did
THE LADY'S NOT FOR BURNING by Christopher Fry. By permission of the publishers, Oxford
University Press, Inc. Copyright, 1949, 1950, by Oxford University Press, Inc.
1945

not expect to get the favor of hanging
for nothing; he knew the rules, all right.
Thomas' interview with Hebble was
interrupted by the announcement from
Nicholas that a witch was waiting to
see the mayor. Poor Hebble, upset at that
news, insisted that he would not have
his honor toyed with.
The witch was young and beautiful.
Her name was Jennet Jourdemayne, a
wealthy young orphan whose property
would be confiscated if she were
condemned for witchcraft. Jennet thought
the accusations a joke, for she had been *
accused of turning old Skipps into a
dog and of doing other evil deeds besides.
She had come to Hebble for the
protection of his laughter at the crimes of
which the mob outside accused her.
Hebble, not amused, sent for the
constable to arrest her. Thomas tried to divert
attention from her to himself by insisting
that he had murdered Skipps and the
pander, but no one paid the least
attention to him. He even told all assembled
that the end of the world would come
that night. All he got for his pains was
to be thrown into the cellar with Jennet,
to await her burning on the morrow.
Hebble and his associates had a
problem on their hands. Jennet would admit
nothing and Thomas would not stop
confessing. Thomas was a poor ex-soldier
and Jennet had property; she had to be
the guilty one. At last Hebble had an
idea. They would leave the two together
while he and the others listened at an
open door. The two were brought forth
from the cellar, Thomas still wearing
thumb screws to make him stop
confessing. Jennet told Thomas of her father,
a scientist who had given his life to his
dreams. She would have no such
nonsense. Facts and facts alone would rule
her life—until tomorrow, when she would
be burned. Fancy and imagination, she
said, had caused her present trouble.
Overhearing this conversation, Hebble
was convinced that Jennet was a witch.
At any rate she was wealthy, and her
property would go to the city when she
was burned.
From the conversation Hebble also
learned that Thomas wanted to be hanged
because he found life mean and dull.
Therefore his punishment was to spend
the night in joy and revelry at the party
which would announce the betrothal of
Humphrey and Alizon. Thomas would
not agree to attend until Jennet was
allowed to go to the party with him. Dressed
in one of Margaret's old gowns, she was
sent to the party, where Humphrey, the
bridegroom-to-be, no longer wanted
Alizon. Since Humphrey would not claim
her, neither would Nicholas. Unknown
to them, Alizon had found that she loved
Richard and that Richard returned her
love. They slipped away and were
married by the priest who had found Richard
in the poor box when he was just a tiny
baby.
Unhappily for Thomas, he had fallen
in love with Jennet and she with him.
He had no wish to be in love; life was
miserable enough. Jennet, on the other
hand, did not want to renounce her
factual world for one of love and fancy.
But Jennet knew now that Thomas had
not committed murder, that he had
heard the mobs accusing her of turning
Skipps into a dog and said he murdered
the ragman only to divert suspicion from
her. Then Humphrey went to Jennet
and offered to get her free from the
charge of witchery if she would
entertain him in her cell that night. Although
her body loved the thought of living, her
mind and heart rebelled, and she turned
down his offer. She loved Thomas too
much to take life at such a price.
Fortunately for all, old Skipps was
found alive. Hebble, still coveting
Jennet's property, would not be satisfied, but
a soft-hearted justice allowed Thomas
and Jennet to slip out of town in the
dark. Thomas hated to face living again,
but he decided to forego the pleasure of
dying for another fifty years and spend
his time of waiting with Jennet.
1946

L'AIGLON
Type of work: Drama
Author: Edmond Rostand (1868-1918)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1830-1832
Locale: Austria
First presented: 1900
Principal characters:
Franz, Duke of Reichstadt and Napoleon's son, called L'Aiglon
Emperor Franz, his grandfather
Marie-Louise, Duchess of Parma, his mother
Countess Camerata, his cousin
The Archduchess, his aunt
Prince Metternich, an Austrian statesman
Seraphin Flambeau, one of Napoleon's soldiers
Count Sedlinsky, director of police
Therese of Lorget, a French exile whom Franz loved
Fanny Elssler, a dancer
Critique:
Edmond Rostand's sympathetic
treatment of sensitive people is as evident in
his portrait of Napoleon's idealistic but
hesitant son as it is in that of his ugly
but unselfish Cyrano de Bergerac.
L'Aiglon is a verse drama in six acts,
much of which must be cut, because of
time limitations, when the play is
presented on the modern stage. Either way,
in print or on the stage, VAiglon is an
impressive play. Perhaps the reason
Cyrano de Bergerac is better known is
that the historical feeling is not there so
binding, whereas in L'Aiglon the
character presented will always be known in
history as the weak son of a dominant
father.
The Story:
Marie-Louise, daughter of the
Emperor Franz of Austria, had rented a villa at
Baden, near Vienna, for herself, her
retinue, and her son Franz. Franz had
been given the title of Duke of
Reichstadt by the Austrians as a sop to his
feelings when they all but imprisoned
him in that country to keep him from
arousing the French to follow Napoleon's
son as they had followed Napoleon
himself,
Marie-Louise pretended a greater
sorrow for her husband's death than she
truly felt; actually she would have been
happy enough living again at the
Austrian court if it had not been for Franz,
whose sorrow was so deep that he took
no interest in anything his mother
suggested.
Count Metternich was Franz's official
jailer, though such a term was never
used. It was he who arranged the police
guard, under Count Sedlinsky, to spy on
every move L'Aiglon made. Metternich
allowed Franz to ride his horses where
he would, but always there was an
unseen guard along. Metternich also
provided tutors for the lad, but they were
warned never to speak Napoleon's name.
Even the boy's history lessons were given
without mention of Napoleon's exploits.
L'Aiglon was then a frail, blond lad
of eighteen. He was not strong, his
cough leaving him strength only to ride
the horses he loved and to find a way to
learn his father's history. But there were
many people in Austria who were willing
to back his bid to return as Francois,
Emperor of France. The Austrian soldiers
in his regiment admired his spirit and
were known to cry out, "Long live Na-
L'AIGLON by Edmond Rostand. Translated by Louis N. Parker. By permission of the publishers,
Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1900, by Robert Howard Russell. Renewed. All rights reserved.
1947

poleon!" against the orders of those who
wanted them to call out only, "Long live
the duke!" The French exiles, hoping
against hope, noted in reports from Paris
that all the theaters were running plays
about Napoleon, and that there was a
cry going up to take his ashes back to
Paris. The tailor and the fitter L'Aiglon's
mother brought from Paris turned out
to be Bonapartists, the fitter being his
cousin, the Countess Camerata. But the
real history of his father he learned from
a little dancer, Fanny Elssler, who
memorized the stories of Napoleon's
campaigns and recited them to him.
A year later, after he had found a
cache of books on Napoleon in Franz's
room at Schoenbrunn, Metternich
allowed Franz to read all the books he
pleased, but he set the guards even
stronger around the young duke. For a while
he deprived Franz of Prokesch, a Bona-
partist friend, but Franz's aunt, the
archduchess, persuaded Metternich to let
Prokesch come back. In return she
exacted a promise from Franz that he
would ask the emperor, his grandfather,
to let him go back to France before he
made any other plans with his friends.
Franz and Prokesch began plotting,
however, using wooden soldiers on a
table top to map battle strategy. The
soldiers, which had been in Austrian
colors heretofore, were now painted in
French uniforms, exact to the last button.
Metternich surprised the boys while they
planned their battles and had the
soldiers thrown away. At the same time
Franz realized that the lackey who had
guarded him most was also a friend, a
man who had been a foot soldier in
Napoleon's army for seventeen years. He
had repainted the wooden soldiers and he
raised the most hope in Franz's heart.
Though Franz himself knew he was like
a child with his nose pressed against a
glass wishing for things in a store
window, Flambeau, the lackey, gave him
enough confidence to vow that he would
return to France.
In the meantime Emperor Franz,
having come to Schoenbrunn, held an
audience for his subjects. In a grandfatherly
way he granted many requests including
one from his disguised grandson, who
asked to go to his father's land. When
Franz threw off his Tirolean disguise, the
emperor closed the audience chamber.
Just as Franz had persuaded his
grandfather to let him go back to France as
emperor, Metternich appeared. He
seemed to agree that Franz might rule
in France, but he set up so many
obstacles that Franz realized he had been
tricked.
That night Franz left one of his
father's old tricorn hats on his table as a
signal to Flambeau that he would enter
the plot to return to Paris. Overjoyed at
seeing the hat, Flambeau took off his
lackey's suit to show his old French
uniform beneath. Metternich, having come
into the room with his private key, was
almost persuaded by Flambeau that
Napoleon himself was sleeping in the next
room. The shock of seeing the slender,
trembling Franz instead of his heavy-set
father appear was nearly as bad for
Metternich as it was for Flambeau. Flambeau
escaped through a window.
Then Metternich tore Franz's pride to
ribbons as he stood the boy in front of
the mirror and pointed out how weak
he looked, how feeble his brow and hands
were, how like the Hapsburgs—but not
at all like Napoleon.
Metternich gave a fancy dress ball in
the Roman ruins in the park at
Schoenbrunn. Among the costumed crowds it
was easy for Franz's confederates,
Flambeau and Fanny Elssler, to have him
change cloaks with his cousin, the
Countess Camerata, who was dressed in a
uniform exactly like L'Aiglon's. While the
ever-vigilant guards followed her, Franz
went with Flambeau to Wagram Field,
where horses were to be waiting for their
escape.
But they were early and the horses
were not ready. Then, as Franz was get-
1948

ting into his saddle to ride for the
border, he heard of a plot against him.
Realizing that the killers would find the
countess in his place, he started to turn
back. The countess herself, having
escaped, came up begging him to flee. Too
late he realized that the police had caught
up with him. His fellow conspirators
crept away, except for Flambeau, who
killed himself rather than face a firing
squad. As he was dying, Flambeau
thought he was back in the thick of the
battle fought on Wagram Field many
years before. Franz, carrying on the
pretense, told him where each regiment
stood, which advanced, which won, how
Napoleon raised his hand in sign of
victory. As Flambeau breathed his last, voices
of Napoleon's long-dead troops sounded
across the field. Franz realized he would
have to make a great sacrifice to match
those the French soldiers had made there
long ago.
A short time later, as Franz lay on his
deathbed, his family tried to keep from
him the seriousness of his condition. He
realized something was wrong when the
archduchess got up from her own
sickbed to see him. When Franz and his
aunt went into a smaller room for mass,
the Austrian royal family gathered
quietly in his bedroom; it was the Austrian
custom for the whole family to be
present at a royal death. Prokesch came with
the countess, bringing Therese, the little
French exile Franz loved. An old
general, who had been the duke's aide,
watched at the door to see when Franz
would partake of the Holy Bread. Then
he opened the door quietly so the
family could see the lad for the last time. A
sob, escaping from Therese, reached the
duke's ears and he realized that his time
had come.
After sending away the Austrian
family, but keeping the Frenchmen with
him, Frangois, Prince of France, had the
old general read to him the account of
the christening in Paris of Napoleon's
son. With the Te Deum following that
account, Frangois died.
1949

LALLA ROOKH
Type of work: Poem
Author: Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Type of plot: Oriental romance
Time of plot: c. 1700
Locale: India
First published: 1817
Principal characters:
Aurungzebe, Emperor of Delhi
Lalla Rookh, Aurungzebe's daughter
Feramorz, a young poet of Cashmere
Abdalla, King of Lesser Bucharia
Aliris, young King of Bucharia and Abdalla's son
Fadladeen, chamberlain of the harem
Critique:
A fitting description of this romantic
tale told in poetry and prose may be
borrowed from Leigh Hunt's description
of the author of the piece. Hunt wrote
that Moore's "face, upon the whole, is
bright, not unruffled with care and
passion; but festivity is the predominant
expression." Moore's writing is festive with
rich descriptions of persons and places;
his style is graceful; his narrative is never
broken. The romantic interest is
admirably sustained, with continued humor.
Fadladeen's abilities as a pseudo-critic
add to the real pleasure of the whole
story.
The Story:
Aurungzebe, Emperor of Delhi,
entertained Abdalla, who had recently
abdicated his throne to his son Aliris and was
on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the
Prophet. Aurungzebe had promised his
daughter Lalla Rookh (Tulip Cheek) in
marriage to Aliris. The lonely princess
was to journey to Cashmere, where she
and Aliris would meet and be married.
Lalla Rookh's caravan, of the finest
and most comfortable equipment, was
manned by the most loyal and efficient of
servants, the entire cavalcade having been
sent by Aliris to conduct his bride to him.
Among the servants sent by Aliris was
a young poet of Cashmere, Feramorz.
Feramorz captivated all the women
with his beauty and charming musical
ability as he sang and recited to the
accompaniment of his kitar. Lalla Rookh,
not immune, became enamored of the
young poet.
Fadladeen, the chamberlain traveling
as Lalla Rookh's protector, was a
bumptious, all-knowing, perspicacious
authority on any subject: food, science, religion,
and literature. And his criticisms were so
detailed and harsh that the person being
assessed was reduced to a virtual
ignoramus. He expressed himself freely after
Feramorz told the tale of "The Veiled
Prophet of Khorassan": Azim and Zelica
were young lovers who lived in the
province of Khorassan. After Azim went off
to fight in the wars in Greece, Zelica
was enticed into the harem of Mokanna,
the "veiled prophet of Khorassan," in the
belief that she would gain admission into
Paradise; there she would be reunited
with Azim, whom she believed killed in
the Greek wars. Mokanna was a
dastardly, cruel ruler, who had gained the
throne through his powers of magic.
When Azim learned, in a dream, of
Zelica's plight, he returned to his
country to join the army of the veiled prophet.
Discovering that his vision of Zelica's
unhappy state was true, he joined the troops
of an enemy caliph and fought against
Mokanna.
Mokanna, defeated, committed suicide
by plunging into a vat of corrosive
poison. In her remorse for having become
Mokanna's wife and by sadness in seeing
her young lover but not being able to
1950

be his, Zelica put on the veil of Mokanna
and confronted the caliph's army. Azim,
mistaking her for Mokanna, killed her.
The lovers exchanged vows of devotion
and forgiveness as Zelica died. Azim grew
old grieving by Zelica's grave, where he
finally died after another vision in which
Zelica appeared and told him she was
blessed.
Feramorz, unaccustomed to criticism,
was taken aback by Fadladeen's reactions
to this beautiful love poem. For Fadla-
deen was caustic. He belabored the
subject of long speeches by the characters in
the story; he contrasted Feramorz' poem
with the fluency and tone of poems of
other writers of the day; he analyzed the
meter of specific lines in the poem.
Feramorz did not attempt another story for
some days.
Encouraged to sing by Lalla Rookh, he
began his second poem only after an
appealing look at Fadladeen as he explained
that this tale, "Paradise and the Peri,"
was in a lighter and humbler vein than
the first: The Peri, wishing to be
admitted to Paradise, was told to bring as
her passport the gift most treasured by
heaven. Her first offering was a drop of
blood from a dying Indian patriot; this
unacceptable gift was followed by the
last sigh of an Egyptian maiden as she
died of grief at the loss of the lover whom
she had nursed through the plague.
Rejected for this gift, the Peri was finally
admitted to Paradise when she presented
the penitential tear of a hardened
criminal of Balbec. The criminal's tear had
been shed as he heard a child's prayer.
Fadladeen, even more outspoken in his
criticism of Feramorz' second story,
combined petty sarcasm and scholarly jargon
in his comments. He refused to be halted
by Lalla Rookh.
By the time the party had arrived in
Lahore, Lalla Rookh realized that not
only was she in love with Feramorz but
also that the handsome singer was in love
with her, and she resolved that he should
not be admitted to her presence again.
Although the heart she was to give to her
bridegroom would be cold and broken,
it must be pure.
As they journeyed on, the travelers
came upon the ruins of an ancient tower,
a structure that aroused the curiosity of
the entire group. Fadladeen, who had
never before been outside Delhi,
proceeded learnedly to show that he knew
nothing whatever about the building.
Despite Lalla Rookh's admonition that
Feramorz not be called to identify the ruins
for them, he was brought before her.
The tower, he said, was the remains of
an ancient Fire-Temple, built by Ghe-
bers, or Persians, of an old religion, who
had fled to this site from their Arab
conquerors in order to have liberty in a
foreign country rather than persecution
in their own land. This historical detail
gave rise to Feramorz' third song, "The
Fire-Worshippers": Hafed, the leader of
the resisting Gheber forces in the
mountains, fell in love with Hinda, the
daughter of the Arabian emir who had come
to rout out the insurrectionists. Hafed,
his identity concealed, gained access to
Hinda's quarters and won her love before
he was captured by the Ghebers.
The Arabs defeated the Ghebers in a
sudden attack, and Hafed sacrificed
himself on a funeral pyre. As Hinda was
being escorted back to her father's camp,
she plunged into a lake and was drowned.
On this occasion Fadladeen decided to
forego criticism of Feramorz' tale, but
to report the profane reciting to Aliris.
He hoped in this manner to bring about
punishment for Feramorz and to secure
for himself a place in Aliris' court.
In the tranquil, beautiful valley of
Hussun Abdaul, Feramorz sang his last
song, "The Light of the Haram." This
was an account of married love reconciled
after a misunderstanding between
husband and wife:
The "light of the haram" was Sultana
Nourmahal, the favorite wife of the
Emperor Selim, son of the great Acbar.
During the celebration of the Feast of
Roses, Nourmahal quarreled with Selim.
The couple's period of sadness and re-
1951

morse because of their harsh words to
each other ended when Nourmahal
learned a magic song from an
enchantress, Namouna. Masked, Nourmahal
sang the song to Selim at the emperor's
banquet, and they were reunited in
undying love for eacn other.
After considerable hardship the party
crossed the mountains that separate
Cashmere from the rest of India. At a temple
where they rested, the young king came
to welcome his bride into his kingdom.
Lalla Rookh, seeing his face full view
for the first time, fainted. The king was
the young singer, Feramorz. Disguised as
a poet. Aliris had traveled from Delhi
with the party in order to win Lalla
Rookh's love.
Learning the real identity of the man
whose songs he had criticized so
caustically, Fadladeen recanted immediately
and declared that Aliris was the greatest
poet of all time. In his new position of
prestige, bestowed on him by Aliris,
Fadladeen recommended the whip for
anyone who questioned Aliris' poetic ability.
It was reported that to her dying day,
Lalla Rookh never called the king by any
name other than Feramorz.
1952

L'AMOROSA FIAMMETTA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Fourteenth century
Locale: Naples
First transcribed: 1340-1345
Principal characters:
Fiammetta, a lady of Naples (Maria d'Aquino)
Panfilo, a poet (Boccaccio)
Critique:
In the tradition of the Italian masters
of literature, Boccaccio found inspiration
in the love of a lady. Unlike Petrarch and
Dante, however, he pursued his lady to
her bedchamber and entered upon a
passionate romance. She was Maria d'Aquino,
rumored to be the daughter of King
Robert of Anjou. In her youth she had
considered a religious life, but her beauty
drew many admirers who soon awakened
her interest in more worldly matters. She
was married, but she discovered that love
outside the bonds of marriage had a
delightful charm of its own. Boccaccio
discovered her in church and ambushed her
in her chamber while her husband was
absent. Although she grew weary of him
and took another lover, Boccaccio wrote
VAmorosa Fiammetta partly to argue that,
in fact, it was he who left her. The novel,
which presents little action, is
distinguished by its psychological revelation of
Fourteenth-century life and manners. The
study of Fiammetta, who is Boccaccio's
Maria, reveals her as a passionate but
sensitive woman, intelligent and fanciful.
Despite Boccaccio's imitative style and his
labored references to mythological figures,
VAmorosa Fiammetta manages to present
a realistic image of two lovers in
fourteenth-century Naples.
The Story:
Fiammetta had a dream that a serpent
bit her while she was lying in a meadow
and that, as darkness came, the wound
festered and brought her close to death.
When she woke she discovered that she
had no injury and, failing to realize that
the dream was a warning and a prophecy,
she dismissed it from her thoughts.
Fiammetta was admired by the ladies
and gentlemen who surrounded her when
she went to church on a certain festival
day, but of all her admirers none struck
her fancy until she saw a young
gentleman leaning against a marble pillar of the
church. The glances which she and the
young man exchanged proved that the
attraction was mutual.
Fiammetta, realizing that she had been
overtaken by love, spent hours in her
chamber picturing the young man and
hoping to see him again. As other chance
meetings increased her interest in him,
she became so disturbed and changed by
love that her nurse commented on it and
warned her of the dangers of passion and
of betraying her husband. But Fiammetta,
too much enamored of the young man
to heed her nurse's warnings, imagined
in a dream that Venus came to her and
told her of the delight and power of love,
urging her to ignore the nurse's warnings
and to submit to love's promptings.
Encouraged by her fond glances, the
young man became familiar with Fiam-
metta's friends and with her husband, so
that he and Fiammetta might converse
together and hide their love. The young
man taught her by his example how to
converse in the company of others so as
to reveal their love only to each other; he
pretended to be telling of two Grecian
lovers, Fiammetta and Panfilo, in order
to show how deeply his own passion
moved him. Although Fiammetta herself
g-ew adept at this word game, she knew
1953

that their love could not forever be kept
within the bounds of reason.
Despite Fiammetta's refusals, which
Panfilo took as coy signs of
encouragement, he finally gained what all lovers
desire. He and Fiammetta spent
innumerable nights together, learning new
delights of love. Nothing else mattered to
Fiammetta. She thanked Venus for
encouraging her in love, and she laughed at
other gentlewomen who imagined that
thev knew what passion was.
But there was to be an end to her hap-
piness. One night, while Fiammetta and
Panfilo were together in her chamber,
Fiammetta awoke to find Panfilo
weeping. She hesitated to inquire into the
cause of his distress for fear that he would
reveal some other love for whom he was
secretly longing. Pretending that she had
not seen him weeping, she suddenly cried
out as if in her sleep. When he wiped
his tears and turned to her, she told him
that she had suddenly feared that she had
lost him. He answered that neither
fortune nor death could change his love for
her; he then began to sob and sigh again.
Answering her question concerning his
sorrow, Panfilo told her that he must
leave Naples for four months because of
his father's illness.
Fiammetta argued that if he loved her
he would not leave her. Now that she
knew his love, she could not bear to part
with it; as one so desperately in love, she
deserved his presence more than his
father did. She feared for his health and
safety if he were to leave her. Finally, she
concluded, a storm was coming; no man
of sense would go out in such weather.
In spite of her protests Panfilo insisted
that it was his duty to see his dying
father, but he assured her that he would
return at the end of four months. After
a long and loving farewell she
accompanied him to the gate. Then, overcome
with sorrow, she fainted and had to be
revived by her maid.
During the first four months of Pan-
filo's absence Fiammetta spent her days
remembering the delights she had shared
with him, wondering whether he was
falling in love with someone else,
counting the days and scolding the moon for
being slow in its course, and imagining
and dreaming that he had returned to her.
Even the satisfaction of daydreaming
was denied to Fiammetta when she
learned from the conversation of a
merchant that Panfilo was married. She was
plunged into jealousy and grief, but as
time went on she began to hope that
Panfilo might not find happiness with his
wife; and she offered prayers to Venus
asking that he be stricken again with love
for her so that he would return.
Fiammetta's husband noticed that she
had lost her appetite and was having
difficulty sleeping. Ignorant of the cause,
he at first had medicines prescribed for
her and then took her on a vacation to
some beautiful islands. But the medicines
had no effect on her passion, and the
islands only reminded her of the delightful
times she had spent with Panfilo. Feasts
and shows failed to please her, and she
spent her days sighing and praying to the
gods of love and fortune.
From one of her servants Fiammetta
learned that Panfilo was not married, as
she had supposed from the merchant's
tale, but was in love with a beautiful
gentlewoman who loved him. Her misery
intensified more than ever by this news,
she found no comfort in her husband's
loving and compassionate words, nor
could her nurse bring her to her senses.
She considered many ways of suicide, all
of which seemed too painful or difficult
to be considered. She then reasoned that
if she killed herself she would never see
Panfilo again. Finally, fearing that worse
torments were to come, she attempted to
leap from the house, but she was stopped
by the nurse and other servants.
After her nurse told her that Panfilo
was returning to Naples, Fiammetta, for
a time, hoped to see him again. But the
rumor had confused her Panfilo with
another man having the same name, and
1954

Fiammetta was forced to realize that she than they. Finally she told her story in
had lost him forever. She compared her order that others might take it as an ex-
condition to that of other betrayed lovers, ample of what misery may befall an am-
supposing herself to be more unfortunate orous gentlewoman.
1955

THE LAST ATHENIAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Viktor Rydbera (1829-1895)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Fourth century
Locale: Athens
First published: 1859
Principal characters:
Chrysanteus, archon of Athens, a pagan and a philosopher
Hermtone, Chrysanteus' daughter
Peter, Bishop of Athens, enemy of Chrysanteus
Annaeus Domitius, Roman proconsul at Athens
Charmides, a young Epicurean, lover of Hermione
Clemens, a young priest, foster son of Bishop Peter
Critique:
Rydberg has been translated into
English more than any other Swedish
novelist of the nineteenth century. In addition
to this historical novel dealing with the
early history of Christianity, he wrote
several non-fictional volumes about the
Church Fathers and the history of
Christianity. The obvious doctrine of this
novel is a strong plea for freedom of
religious conscience and worship. While it
is a glorification of the Greek ideals of
reason, wisdom, truth, and harmony, it
is not an anti-Christian novel directed
against the principles and ideals of
Christianity. It is really a thesis against
bigotry, cruelty, and intolerance, as personified
in the early leaders of the Church in
Athens.
The Story:
Athens in the fourth century, during
the reign of the Roman Emperor Con-
stantius, was divided by three factions.
Dominant among the three was one
Christian faction headed by Bishop Peter
of Athens. Opposing them, though less
in number, was the faction which
adhered to the heresy of Athanasius. The
third faction was the group which still
clung to the gods of ancient Greece and
the reasonable philosophy of Plato. The
last group was headed by Chrysanteus,
archon of Athens and its richest citizen.
Representing Rome in the city was
Annaeus Domitius, the proconsul, who by
traveling a middle path hoped to keep
some semblance of order in and about
the city. His efforts were hindered by the
fact that Julian the Apostate was about
to succeed Constantius as the emperor
of Rome; Constantius, a Christian, had
favored the non-Athanasian Christians,
but Julian, who was a pagan, favored
the people who clung to the old gods.
Under the favor of Constantius, Bishop
Peter and his followers practically ^ ruled
Athens and dictated orders to the
proconsul. When the Athanasians were
accused of killing Bishop Peter's father, a
hermit who lived at the top of a pillar,
Domitius turned over the troops of Rome
to the bishop and discreetly left Athens
to evade responsibility for what might
happen. He did not want to take sides
in the quarrel, and he feared that the
hatred of the Christians might be turned
against the pagans, including
Chrysanteus. Domitius knew that if Constantius
succeeded in retaining the empire,
Chrysanteus* death would be of little
moment; but if Julian were to succeed in
becoming emperor, his old tutor, for
Chrysanteus had been that, would be a
very important person, one whom the
proconsul did not want as a corpse about
his neck.
As Domitius feared, riot and slaughter
broke out in Athens, for Bishop Peter
turned the troops and his followers
against the heretic Christians and against
the pagans. Word came to Domitius at
his country villa, however, that Julian
1956

was emperor, Constantius having died.
Domitius immediately went back to
Athens with the news, arriving in time
to prevent a Christian mob from
entering Chrysanteus' dwelling to pillage and
murder. Within a few hours the Roman
troops, returned to the proconsul's
command, restored quiet in Athens and
published Julian's order that freedom of
worship and belief were to be accorded all
men. Bishop Peter and his Christian
faction were reduced, to all appearances, to
a position no better than that of any
other group. They were ordered to restore to
the pagans all the temples they had taken
over and to replace treasures they had
plundered and destroyed.
Actually, the bishop was more
dangerous than ever. He had many spies
within and without the city; he had, in
addition, a large body of devoted and
obedient fanatics at his call. Furthermore,
he had as his foster son a young man
who was actually Chrysanteus' long-lost
son, Clemens. Reared as a Christian, the
boy had become a priest. Through
Clemens, Bishop Peter plotted to destroy
Chrysanteus. The bishop also plotted to
convert Hermione, Chrysanteus*
daughter, to Christianity, not through any
pious motives but simply to undermine the
position of Chrysanteus and to secure
his immediate wealth.
Fate seemed to go against Bishop Peter
when Chrysanteus discovered, quite by
chance, that Clemens was his son and
that Bishop Peter was an escaped slave
who had once belonged to the household
of Chrysanteus. The bishop was thrown
into prison by the archon and Clemens
was restored to his father's home. But
Clemens was so fanatic a Christian that
he soon left his father's house and
became a hermit, dwelling in a cave on the
outskirts of the city.
In the meantime Charmides, an
Epicurean betrothed to Hermione, fell into
the bad graces of both Hermione and her
father because of his profligate habits.
He also fell prey to a Jewish broker, to
whom he owed large sums of money, for
the Jew became his enemy when he
learned that his daughter was in love
with Charmides. At the moment of his
greatest despair, he was befriended by
Bishop Peter, whose followers had
succeeded in securing his release from prison.
Bishop Peter saw in Charmides another
tool in his battle against paganism and
Chrysanteus. Upon Charmides' promise
to turn Christian, the bishop interceded
with the Jew, showing the Jew that a
reformed Charmides would still have
an opportunity to marry Chrysanteus'
daughter. The Jew, seeing a chance to
recoup all the money he had lent to the
penniless Charmides, agreed to the
bishop's plan.
The plan worked smoothly. Charmides,
reformed, was received again by
Chrysanteus and Hermione, and a date was
set for the wedding. Nothing was said of
the fact that Charmides had been
baptized as a Christian. But on his wedding
night Charmides was killed, murdered
by a young Jew who had discovered that
Charmides had seduced the usurer's
daughter, to whom the assassin had been
betrothed. After the death of Charmides,
much to Chrysanteus' discomfiture, the
Christians claimed the body of
Charmides for burial and proved by
documents that the dead man had been one
of their number.
Further disaster overtook pagan
Chrysanteus when his son went mad after
being attacked by another hermit. As if
that were not enough, Julian the
Apostate was killed in a battle with the
Persians. The new emperor, Jovian, was not
only a Christian, but also an adherent to
that branch of the Church represented
by Bishop Peter. The bishop, supported
by Roman troops and the proconsul, was
again the real ruler of Athens.
Immediately upon hearing of Julian's
death, Chrysanteus and Hermione fled
to the mountains, where they were
befriended by another small sect of
Christians, a group that had been declared
1957

heretics by the bishop and consequently
had no love for him. Learning that Chry-
santeus and Hermione had taken asylum
with the outcasts, Bishop Peter, still
avaricious for Chrysanteus' great wealth,
prevailed upon the proconsul to lead a
crusade into the mountains against the
heretics. Domitius was willing to do so,
hoping thereby to win acclaim and
honors from the new emperor. There was a
short but bloody campaign. In it, Chry-
santeus was killed and Hermione taken
prisoner. Hermione was forced to
submit to baptism. Rather than remain alive
as a Christian under those circumstances,
she killed herself immediately. Her death
left the wealth of Chrysanteus in the
hands of Bishop Peter. A short time later
his reasons for desiring the wealth
became known; with it he intended to buy
the bishopric of Rome, which even then
was regarded as the seat of the Church.
His superior at Constantinople suspected
that Bishop Peter must intend to turn
heretic, for the bishopric of Rome had
turned to the beliefs of the Athanasians.
These suspicions being confirmed by
agents sent to Athens, orders were sent to
Bishop Peter's fellow priests to kill him.
He was given a draught of poison which
did not cause immediate death; he lived,
ironically enough, to receive emissaries
from Rome who offered him the coveted
bishopric just before he died.
1958

THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: "Barsetshire," England
First published: 1867
Principal characters:
Mr. Crawley, Curate of Hogglestock
Mrs. Crawley, his wife
Grace Crawley, their daughter
Mr. Proudie, Bishop of Barchester
Mrs. Proudie, bis wife
Henry Grantly, Grace's suitor
Lily Dale, Grace's friend
John Eames, Lily's suitor
Critique:
To readers who are familiar with Trol-
lope's novels the shire of Barset
undoubtedly exists and should be shown
on the maps. Barchester and its
towers, Plumstead Episcopi, and Hogglestock
seem as real as if they had actually
stood for a thousand years. Mrs. Proudie,
the Thornes of Ullathorne, Archdeacon
Grantly and his wife, and the weak
Quiverfuls are among Trollope's
characters who make up an ever-living
community. The genius of Anthony Trollope
lies in his understanding of human
wisdom and human ignorance.
The Story:
In the community of Hogglestock the
citizens were upset because Mr. Crawley,
the curate, had been accused of stealing a
check for twenty pounds. In Archdeacon
Grantly's home, where there was
concern lest Henry Grantly might marry
Grace Crawley, the curate's schoolteacher
daughter, feeling was high.
Bishop Proudie and his wife were set
against the unfortunate Crawley. Mrs.
Proudie, who exerted great power over
her husband, persuaded the bishop to
write a letter forbidding Mr. Crawley to
preach in his church until the case should
have been settled one way or another. Mr.
Crawley refused the injunction. Mr. and
Mrs. Proudie quarreled over the answer,
and Mr. Proudie sent for Mr. Crawley to
attend him in the bishop's palace at once.
When Mr. Crawley arrived, he was hot
and tired from walking. He repeated what
he had stated in his letter and left the
bishop and his wife amazed at his
boldness.
Mr. Crawley was not kept from
performing his duties on Christmas morning.
Since he could not recall how he had
come into possession of the money in
question, he informed his wife that he
had but two choices—either to go to jail
or to bedlam.
At last Henry Grantly decided to ask
Grace Crawley to marry him, even though
he should be going against his parents'
wishes. At the same time Lily Dale, Grace
Crawley's friend, was being wooed by
young John Eames, a clerk in the Income
Tax Office in London and a suitor, once
rejected, whom Lily's mother favored.
Eames was the friend of a London artist
named Conway Dalrymple, who was
painting a portrait of Miss Clara Van
Siever, a mutual friend, in the sitting-
room of Mrs. Dobbs Broughton. Mean-
1959

while the aged Mrs, Van Siever was
engaged in forcing Dobbs Broughton to
pay money he owed to her.
Not long afterward John Eames met
Henry Grantly. Neither liked the other at
first. John, meeting Lily in Lady Julia de
Guest's home, where Grace was also a
guest, discussed his unfavorable meeting
with Henry -Grantly in front of Grace.
When Henry proposed to Grace, she
refused him and returned home to be with
her father during his trial. Lily told John
that she planned to die an old maid, her
heart having been broken by Adolphus
Crosbie, a former suitor.
Mr. Toogood, a distant relative, was
to defend Mr. Crawley. John Eames was
brought into the Crawley case by Mr.
Toogood, who wanted John to go to
Florence and attempt to persuade Mr.
Arabin, an influential clergyman, to come
to Mr. Crawley's rescue. There was
another reason why Arabin should return to
England. Mrs. Arabin's father, Mr.
Harding, was ailing and growing weaker each
day.
Conway Dalrymple worked on Miss
Van Siever's picture, which was still a
secret from Dobbs Broughton, in whose
house it was being painted. Although
Broughton had ordered the artist out of
his house, Mrs. Broughton wanted the
picture painted, regardless of her jealous
husband's reactions.
The clerical commission summoned by
Bishop Proudie reached no decision
concerning Mr. Crawley. It was resolved that
nothing should be done until the civil
courts had decided his case.
Archdeacon Grantly tried to engage
the help of Lady Lufton to prevent the
marriage of his son to Grace Crawley, but
Lady Lufton refused. The archdeacon
finally promised that he would no longer
oppose the marriage if Mr. Crawley
should be found innocent of any crime.
Dobbs Broughton was being pressed
hard for money by old Mrs. Van Siever.
Clara Van Siever was to marry Mussel-
boro, Broughton's former partner.
Dalrymple, still hoping to marry Clara, was
putting the last touches to the canvas
when Mrs. Van Siever entered the
Broughton house. At her word he
destroyed the portrait. Over Clara's
objections, Mrs. Van Siever announced that
her daughter was to marry Musselboro.
After the Van Sievers left, Musselboro
arrived with news that Dobbs Broughton
had killed himself that morning. Clara
and Dalrymple resolved to face Mrs. Van
Siever's wrath together.
Mrs. Proudie continued her fight to
have Mr. Crawley removed. After a
quarrel between the bishop and Mrs. Proudie,
she retired to her room and there died of a
heart attack. True to the resolution
imposed upon him by Mrs. Proudie before
her death, Mr. Crawley preached a final
sermon in his church and never again
entered it as the curate.
On the continent John Eames learned
from Mrs. Arabin the cause of Mr,
Crawley's troubles. Mrs. Arabin, who had
received the check from a tenant, had
turned it over to Mr, Crawley without
telling her husband, the dean, of the
transaction. She had only recently heard
of the charges and she was hurrying home
to England to do what could be done to
straighten out the matter. In the
meantime Mr. Toogood traced the theft of the
check to the tenant who had forwarded it
to Mrs. Arabin.
Mr. Toogood and Henry Grantly took
the good news to Mr. and Mrs. Crawley.
When she heard their story, Mrs.
Crawley, who had defended her husband
from the beginning, broke into tears. The
messengers had to explain the situation
carefully to Mr. Crawley, who could not
at first believe that his innocence was
about to be proved. Then Mr. Harding,
the aged incumbent in St. Ewold's, died.
Archdeacon Grantly offered the living to
Mr. Crawley as a recompense for all
he had suffered. In midsummer Grace
Crawley became Mrs. Henry Grantly.
John Eames did not marry Lily Dale
1960

after all, for Lily was unable to make her
decision, but Dalrymple married Clara
Van Siever as he had planned. Mussel-
boro, who had lost Clara, proceeded to
marry the widow of his old partner and
thus Mrs. Broughton's sorrows were
brought to an end.
1961

THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: A.D. 79
Locale: Pompeii
First published: 1834
Principal characters:
Glaucus, a wealthy young Greek
Arbaces, Egyptian priest of Isis
Ione, his Greek ward
Apaecides, her brother
Nydia, a blind flower girl
Critique:
This novel has found many readers
among those who are interested in the
classical civilization which ended when
barbarians took over the Mediterranean
world. Bulwer-Lytton's handling of plot,
character, and passion followed a
tradition which has not maintained its hold.
It is the tradition of nineteenth-century
drama, direct, obtuse, fiery. Concerned
with indirection today, the reader finds
the descriptions of the characters' thoughts
unrealistic. Their passions are too
apparent, their actions too much explained.
Cast in a different mold from novels of
today, The Last Days of Pompeii offers
one of the longest, most sustained views
of the world we call classic.
The Story:
Late one afternoon in the ancient city
of Pompeii the fashionable rich young
men were congregating for the daily rite
of the public baths. Among them were
Clodius, a foppish Roman, and Glaucus,
a popular young Greek. Together the
two strolled toward the baths, mingling
with slaves bearing bronze buckets, idlers
gowned in purple robes. Along the way
diey saw the beautiful blind flower girl,
Nydia. She, too, was from Greece and
for that reason Glaucus took an interest
in her. It was still too early for the baths,
and the two friends walked along the sea
front as Glaucus described a Neapolitan
girl of Greek birth with whom he had
fallen in love. Unfortunately, he had
lost contact with the girl and was now
morose. While they talked, Arbaces, the
evil-looking Egyptian priest of Isis,
intercepted them. The two young men
were barely able to conceal their dislike
for the Egyptian.
Arbaces secretly defied the Romans
and the Greeks, and prayed for the day
when Egypt would once more be
powerful. He revealed to a lesser priest his
interest in the brother and sister,
Apaecides and Ione, his wards. He hoped to
make a priest of Apaecides, and he
planned to marry Ione. They had been
in Naples, but recently he had brought
them to Pompeii, where he could
influence them.
Glaucus met Ione at a party. She was
the girl he had seen and lost in Naples.
At the same time Arbaces developed his
hold over Apaecides, who was growing
more and more confused after coming in
contact with the sophistries of the
corrupt priest of Isis. Meanwhile the blind
flower girl, Nydia, was falling hopelessly
in love with Glaucus.
It happened that Glaucus and Clodius
were loitering in the establishment of
Burbo, the wine-seller, when the
innkeeper and his wife were beating Nydia,
whose slave she was. Glaucus, hearing
the girl's cries, bought her; he planned to
give her to Ione. Nydia realized Glaucus
could never love her after he gave her
a letter to deliver to Ione. In this letter
he accused Arbaces of false imputations.
On reading his letter, Ione decided to
go at once to Arbaces' palace and to face
1962

him with Glaucus* charges.
Knowing the danger to lone at
Arbaces' palace, Nydia warned both Ione's
brother and Glaucus. Glaucus hurried
to the palace to confront the priest. An
earthquake interrupted the quarrel
between the two men. When the goddess
Isis fell from a pedestal, striking Arbaces,
Glaucus and lone ran from the building
to join the throng in the street. Alone,
deserted, the bhnd slave wept bitterly.
The next day, the earthquake having
passed with but little damage, the people
of Pompeii took up again the threads of
their varied lives. Apaecides became a
convert to Christianity. Glaucus and
lone remained together.
Julia, daughter of a wealthy freedman
named Diomed, was also in love with
Glaucus and sought to interfere between
him and lone. She went to the house of
Arbaces, where the two plotted together.
Arbaces had a drug prepared which was
administered to Glaucus. The drug
drove him- into a demented stupor so that
he ran from his house into a cemetery.
To this cemetery came Apaecides and
Arbaces. They quarreled and Arbaces
stabbed Apaecides, killing him. Then,
hoping to kill Glaucus indirectly, the
priest summoned the crowd and declared
that Glaucus in his drunken rage had
killed Apaecides. Glaucus and a
Christian who attempted to defend him were
arrested. They were condemned to be
given to wild beasts at the public games.
After the funeral of her brother, lone
resolved to declare her belief in the
innocence of Glaucus. But before she
could carry out her plan Arbaces had
seized her and carried her off to his
palace. The only one who knew of Arbaces*
guilt was a priest who was also his
prisoner. But Arbaces reckoned without
Nydia, who as a dancing girl had learned
most of the secrets of his palace. Nydia,
contacting the priest imprisoned by
Arbaces, agreed to carry his story to the
authorities. Unfortunately, she too was
captured. She persuaded a slave to carry
the message to Sallust, a friend of Glau
cus. But the message was delivered while
Sallust was drunk and he refused to
read it.
The last day of Pompeii arrived. It
was also a day of celebration in the
arena, for which the populace had been
waiting. The games began with
gladiatorial combat which the audience
watched listlessly, bored because the
deaths did not come fast enough or with
enough suffering. After one combat an
unpopular gladiator was condemned to
death by the action of the crowd. His
body was dragged from the arena and
placed on the heap with those previously
slain. Unfortunately for the crowd's
amusement, the lion turned loose in the
arena with Glaucus crept with a moan
back into its cage. Before the Hon could
be prodded into action Sallust appeared
demanding the arrest of Arbaces. A slave
had called his attention to Nydia's letter,
which he had thrown aside the night
before. Reading it, he had hurried to lay
his information before the praetor. The
mob, not to be cheated after Glaucus
had been set free, demanded that Arbaces
be thrown to the lion.
Then the famous fatal eruption began.
The whole gladiatorial scene became
chaos as terrified thousands poured out
of the doomed amphitheater, crushing
the weakest in their hurry to escape.
Looting began in the temples. Nydia reached
Glaucus. Together they hurried to the
house of Arbaces to discover and save
lone. It was too dark to see, but Nydia,
accustomed to darkness, was able to lead
lone and Glaucus through the streets.
Arbaces was killed in the earthquake. At
last Glaucus, lone, and Nydia gained the
safety of the seaside and put out to sea
in a small ship.
All night they slept in the boat. In the
morning Glaucus and lone discovered
that before they had awakened, the
heartbroken Nydia had cast herself into the
sea.
1963

THE LAST OF SUMMER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Kate O'Brien (1897-
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1939
Locale: Eire
First published:
1943
Principal characters:
Angele Maury, an actress
Hannah Kernahans, her aunt
Tom Kernahans, and
Martin Kernahans, Hannah's sons
Norrie O'Byrne, in love with Tom
Critique:
Against a background of imminent
war, Angele Maury struggled against the
iron will of the aunt who had never
admitted her existence and who was
determined to keep this stranger out of her
family and her life. The story is a
dramatic one, tense and stark, but told with
great restraint and simplicity. The
personal struggle between Angele and
Hannah seems only to reflect the greater
struggle between those peoples who
wanted to be free and the political despots
who would not let go their hold.
The Story:
Angele Maury was an actress, half
French, half Irish, who had taken her
mother's name as her stage name in
preference to Kernahans, her Irish father's
name. Both her parents were dead. On
an impulse she stopped to visit her
father's people when her company toured
Ireland. She found her aunt, Hannah
Kernahans, strangely hostile to her and
learned that Aunt Hannah had never told
her three children of their uncle's
marriage or of his daughter.
It was obvious that Aunt Hannah was
fiercely jealous of any intruders from the
outside world. She loved all her children,
but Tom, the oldest son, was tied to her
by a silver cord so strong it seemed
unlikely the bond would ever be broken.
Tom had long been loved by Norrie
O'Byrne, but he was not sensitive to her
love. Martin, the second son, had grown
up quite independent. A student, he
had traveled all over Europe on
scholarships and had lived wildly at times. His
mother either could not or did not care
to tie him to her so closely.
What none of the children knew, and
Angele did not learn, was that her
father and their father had both loved Aunt
Hannah. She had accepted Angele's
father, but before the wedding he had
discovered her steel will and had asked
to be released from the engagement. She
then married his brother, giving the
impression that it was she who had changed
her mind. But she never forgave Angele's
father for embarrassing her, and she
would never forgive Angele for being her
father's child. She sensed in Angele an
enemy to the isolated life she lived with
Tom.
Soon after her arrival Martin told
Angele that he wanted her and offered
her anything but marriage; he was not
yet ready for those ties. Angele, not
taking him seriously, thought that she was
only someone new whom he would soon
forget. The fact that they were first
cousins also stood in the way of a serious
proposal. But Martin brooded over her
treatment of him and worried also about
the impending wai. Hitler, having taken
Czechoslovakia, stood on the threshold
THE LAST OF SUMMER by Kate O'Brien. By permission of the author's agent, Ann Watkins, Inc.
Published by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1943, by Kate O'Brien.
1964

of Poland. Ireland was neutral, but
Martin knew that he could not stand idly
by while the world blew up under his
feet. Only Martin and Angele took the
war seriously. Knowing that her mother's
people would be deeply affected by the
war, she was annoyed to see Aunt
Hannah brush aside the whole affair with
a shrug. Tom refused to see that no one
could remain completely neutral when
war finally came.
One day Tom told Angele that he
loved her. Unused to strong emotion,
he had not recognized his feelings until
they were too intense to ignore. Angele,
returning his love, realized that Aunt
Hannah would not like their engagement,
lest Tom get away from her. Aunt
Hannah was clever enough to make Tom
believe she was delighted, but she subtly
put obstacles in their way. Since they
were first cousins, they would have to
get special dispensations from Rome.
Angele wanted to return to France on
their honeymoon, in spite of the dangers
of war. Aunt Hannah used her weapons
cleverly, fooling Tom but not deceiving
Angele at all. She sensed that it would
take more will power than Tom had
ever shown for him to overcome these
obstacles and see his mother's hold on
him. Angele's hope was that Tom would
shake off his chains and be free and
independent.
Martin brought matters to a head. It
angered him to hear Angele talk of
returning to France before war broke out,
for he realized that Germany would soon
march into Poland. If Angele wanted to
see France, to act like a Frenchwoman,
she should return to her people and help
them in their time of crisis. Aunt Hannah
encouraged the idea, all the time acting
considerate and loving. She knew that
if she could once get Angele away from
Tom, he would come back to the fold
easily enough. Martin, of course, hoped
for the separation so that he could have
time to make Angele love him. He knew
that she could never win against his
mother, and he sincerely felt that she
and Tom were not suited to each other.
When Church officials failed to hurry
dispensation proceedings, Angele fretted
at the time lost. She even considered
going by herself to France. Aunt Hannah
tried to goad her into leaving alone, but
she did not wish to hurt Tom just to
please his mother. Tom kept promising
Angele that he would find a way to
hurry matters, but she took little hope;
fast action was not in his nature.
Martin, too Irish to sign up with the
British, prepared to leave to join the
French army. Angele even wished that
she were a man so that she would have
to go back to France. Then the issue
would be clear, not muddled in
emotional reactions. Before he left, Martin told
Angele again that he loved her. He told
her too that she did not really love his
brother, that she was too strong a person
to love anyone as weak as Tom. He
warned her that Hannah would win,
that she would never let Tom go. Martin
begged her to return to France with him
the next day. Although she rejected the
plan, Angele thanked Martin for his
honesty and allowed him to kiss her
goodbye.
In the meantime Hannah made her
final play for Tom. Pretending to feel
sorry for Angele because she was so torn
between Tom and France, she told him
that Angele and Martin were the same
kind, that Martin was desperately in
love with his cousin. She said also that
Angele had fallen in love with Tom
because he was attractive and because
she thought that he and Martin were
much alike. Although it hurt her to tell
him, Hannah declared, she knew that
Angele would never be happy with Tom
in Ireland, and it was only the girl's
sense of obligation that made her stick
to her promise. Hannah, knowing that
she could handle that problem when she
got to it, played too on the suitability of
Norrie O'Byrne.
Shortly after his talk with his mother
Tom saw Martin and Angele kissing
goodbye. He thought then that his mother
1965

had been right, as usual. He went to
Angele, released her from her betrothal
to him, and apologized for being a selfish
fool in taking her love. Angele knew then
that she was beaten. She told Tom that
she really loved him but that she realized
their marriage would never work out. It
was futile to try to make him see his
mother as she really was.
Angele also told Aunt Hannah why
she was leaving—that she did love Tom
but knew she could never fight the bond
or restore Tom's confidence in himself.
She went away with Martin, to return
for good to France, and left Tom lost
forever, the silver cord unbroken.
1966

THE LAST OF THE BARONS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1467-1471
Locale: England
First published: 1843
Principal characters:
Earl of Warwick, the kingmaker
Isabella, his older daughter
Anne, his younger daughter
Katherine de Bonville, his sister
Edward IV, King of England
William de Hastings, a royal chamberlain
Adam Warner, an alchemist
Sibyll, his daughter
Nicholas Alwyn, a goldsmith
Marmaduke Nevile, kinsman of the Earl of Warwick
Critique:
The Last of the Barons is a complex,
involved, and fascinating novel of a
troubled period in English history. After
the Wars of the Roses the House of York
seemed secure, the leaders of the House
of Lancaster being dead or in exile.
Edward IV was a popular ruler who might
have enjoyed a peaceful reign if he had
not insulted the Earl of Warwick, the
last of the great lords whose power
overshadowed the king's. A dramatic moment
in history has been recaptured by Bulwer-
Lytton in this novel.
The Story:
Just outside London a crowd had
gathered to watch an archery contest.
Several shot at the white cloth on the
butt, but no one hit the mark squarely.
Then in a haughty and preoccupied way
a commoner stepped up, fitted his arrow,
and pierced the center of the white field.
While his fellow tradesmen applauded,
he dropped back into the crowd.
A young noble, who was not entered
in the contest, borrowed a bow. With
sure aim he hit fairly the little peg that
secured the cloth to the butt. Gallantly
he returned the bow and strode away.
As he was leaving, the commoner who
had hit the cloth stopped him. At once
their recognition was mutual, and they
began to talk delightedly of past times.
The commoner was Nicholas Alwyn,
a goldsmith who had been the younger
son of a good family. He had rejected
the monk's habit, the usual lot of younger
sons, and had chosen to go into trade.
He was shrewd enough to see that the
future greatness of England lay in the
prosperous middle class and that the
day of feudal nobility was nearly over.
He had taken part in the tournament
simply to advertise his profession, not
through love of decadent sport. The
young noble, who was his foster brother,
was Marmaduke Nevile. He had come
from his northern estate to seek service
with his kinsman, the powerful Earl of
Warwick, who was known as the
kingmaker.
On Alwyn's advice, Marmaduke went
up to Lord Montagu, the Earl of
Warwick's brother, and made known his
errand. The nobleman repulsed
Marmaduke in full view of his retinue, for
Marmaduke's father had fought on the
side of Lancaster in the recent wars,
and the Warwicks had successfully
supported the Yorkists.
Feeling abashed, Marmaduke
accompanied Alwyn into the city. Alwyn ad-
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vised him to go to see the earl in person,
and Marmaduke resolved to do so the
very next day.
On the road to his inn he met a
gentle girl surrounded by a screaming
mob of women who earned their living
by dancing and playing timbrels for fair
crowds. Accusing the girl of trying to
earn money by playing her gittern at
the tournament, they would have harmed
her if Marmaduke had not come to her
rescue. He escorted the frightened girl
away, but through faint-heartedness he
did not take her all the way home. As
soon as he left her, the women set upon
her again. She was rescued by an older
man, a true knight who saw her to her
ruined dwelling.
It was dusk when Marmaduke left the
city. Shortly afterward he was attacked
by a band of robbers who slashed him
severely and left him to die. He
managed to make his way to a nearby house,
and there he was cared for by the girl
whom he had deserted a short time
before. She was Sibyll Warner, daughter
of Adam Warner, a philosopher and
alchemist who spent all his time in his
laboratory. He had, after years of labor,
nearly completed a crude model of a small
steam engine. In those superstitious days
Adam was accounted a sorcerer and his
daughter was suspected of witchcraft.
During his convalescence Marmaduke
was greatly attracted to Sibyll, but her
superior learning was a barrier between
them. Alwyn, who came to the house
many times, also fell in love with the
girl. But Sibyll thought always of the
great knight who had brought her to
her door.
WTien Marmaduke was well and able
to leave the house, he at once sought an
audience with the mighty Earl of
Warwick. Warwick welcomed him and made
him a courtier. There he met Isabelle,
Warwick's haughty older daughter, and
Anne, her gentle young sister.
Warwick was preparing to go to France
on a mission to the court of Louis XI.
On Warwick's advice, King Edward IV
had agreed to marry his sister Margaret
to one of the French princes. During
Warwick's absence Marmaduke served
in the king's household.
As soon as Warwick had left the
country, Edward's wife and all her
kinsmen of the Woodville family began to
work on the king's pride. The Wood-
villes, intensely jealous of Warwick,
encouraged the king to defy the
kingmaker's power. They proposed that
Edward hastily affiance his sister to the
Duke of Burgundy. Edward, persuaded
by his wife, at once invited the
illegitimate brother of the Burgundian ruler
to England and concluded the alliance.
Warwick, hurrying back when he
heard the news, felt keenly the slight to
his honor. When he found Edward at
a hunting party, he immediately
demanded Edward's reasons for his step.
Edward was frightened, but he assumed
an air of confidence and declared that
he had followed what seemed the best
policy of diplomacy. Although he was
much mortified, Warwick magnanimously
forgave the king and withdrew. His
many followers sought him out and
offered to rebel, but Warwick withdrew
entirely from court and went into
seclusion on his own estate.
Meanwhile Adam Warner had been
brought to the court as alchemist to the
Duchess of Bedford. Sibyll fitted in well
with court life, and Lord Hastings
became attached to her. In time they
became engaged, and Lord Hastings awaited
only the king's permission to marry her.
Katherine de Bonville, Warwick's sister,
had been his first love, but Warwick had
refused his consent to a marriage because
Lord Hastings then was not powerful
enough to aspire to a connection with the
Warwicks. Although Katherine had later
married another, Lord Hastings still loved
her; his attachment to Sibyll was only
temporarily the stronger.
As Warwick had forseen, the Duke of
Burgundy proved an unworthy ally of
England and the incensed French lung
never ceased to make trouble for the
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English. At last Edward had to confess
that he could not rule the kingdom
without Warwick to advise him. The king
swallowed his pride and invited
Warwick back to London with more honors
and power than he had held before. The
gallant earl, as a gesture of friendship,
brought his daughter Anne to live in the
queen's retinue.
Anne chose Sibyll as her companion
and the two girls became close friends.
One night the lecherous Edward
accosted Anne in her bedroom. The girl
screamed with fright and ran to Adam
Warner for help. There the king found
her and abjectly begged her pardon, but
Anne was still hysterical. Marmaduke
smuggled Anne out of the castle and told
her father what had happened.
Warwick at once put Marmaduke at
the head of a hundred men who tried
to capture the king, but Edward stayed
secure in his tower. Warwick then
withdrew his followers from the court and
embarked for France.
In London, Lord Hastings and Sibyll
continued to meet. Then Katherine de
Bonville's husband died and she was
free once more. Lord Hastings' old love
revived and he married her secretly in
France.
Margaret of Anjou, the Lancastrian
queen in exile, joined forces with
Warwick in France. When the mighty earl
returned to England, the people
welcomed him and joined his cause.
Edward fled without fighting a battle.
Warwick restored Henry VI to the throne.
The success of his kingmaking made
Warwick careless. Edward's power lay
not with the nobles but with the
merchants, and a coalition of the rich
merchants and the adherents of the House of
York soon put Edward back into power.
On the battlefield of Barnet Warwick
was killed and his chiefs were either
executed or exiled. Somehow Adam
Warner and Sibyll died together in the same
fight. Alwyn, an adherent of Edward,
took Marmaduke prisoner but later tried
to secure his freedom. History does not
tell whether he succeeded.
1969

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time off lot: 1757
Locale: Northern New York State
First published: 1826
Principal characters:
Natty Bumppo, a frontier scout known as Hawkeye
Chtngachgook, Hawkeye's Indian friend
Uncas, Chingachgook's son
Major Duncan Heyward, an English soldier, Hawkeye's friend
Magua, a renegade Huron
Cora Munro, daughter of the commander of Fort William Henry
Alice Munro, her sister
Critique:
The battles and exciting pursuits
which constitute the plot of The Last of
the Mohicans are rounded out by
interesting Indian lore and the descriptive
style of the author. In spite of Cooper's
awkward characterizations, this novel
remains the most popular of the Leather-
stocking Tales, a classic story of the
French and Indian wars.
The Story:
Major Duncan Heyward had been
ordered to escort Cora and Alice Munro
from Fort Edward to Fort William
Henry, where Colonel Munro, father of
the girls, was commandant. In the party
was also David Gamut, a Connecticut
singing-master. On their way to Fort
William Henry they did not follow the
military road through the wilderness.
Instead, they placed themselves in the
hands of a renegade Huron known as
Magua, who claimed that he could lead
them to their destination by a shorter
trail.
It was afternoon when the little party
met the woodsman, Hawkeye, and his
Delaware Mohican friends, Chingach-
gook and his son Uncas. To their
dismay, they learned they were but an
hour's distance from their starting point.
Hawkeye quickly decided Magua had
been planning to lead the party into a
trap. His Mohican comrades tried to
capture the renegade, but Magua took
alarm and fled into the woods.
At Heyward's urging the hunter agreed
to guide the travelers to their destination.
The horses were tied and hidden among
some rocks along a river. Hawkeye
produced a hidden canoe from among some
bushes and paddled the party to a rock
at the foot of Glenn's Falls. There they
prepared to spend the night in a cave.
That night a band of Iroquois led by
Magua surprised the party. The fight
might have been a victory for Hawkeye
if their supply of powder and ball had
held out. Unfortunately, their
ammunition had been left in the canqe which,
unnoticed until it was too late, was stolen
by one of the enemy who had ventured
to swim the swirling river. The only
hope then lay in the possibility of future
rescue, for the capture of the rock and
the little group was a certainty. Hawkeye,
Chingachgook, and Uncas escaped by
floating downstream, leaving the girls and
Major Heyward to meet the savages.
Captured, Cora and Alice were allowed
to ride their horses, but Heyward and
David were forced by their captors to
walk. Although they took a road
paralleling that to Fort William Henry,
Heyward could not determine the destination
the Indians had in mind. Drawing close
to Magua, he tried to persuade him to
betray his companions and deliver the
1970

party safely to Colonel Munro. The
Huron agreed, if Cora would come to live
with him among his tribe as his wife.
When she refused, the enraged Magua
had everyone bound. He was threatening
Alice with his tomahawk when Hawkeye
and his friends crept silently upon the
band and attacked them. The Iroquois
fled, leaving several of their dead behind
them. The party, under David's
guidance, sang a hymn of thanksgiving, and
then pushed onward.
Toward evening they stopped at a
deserted blockhouse to rest. Many years
before it had been the scene of a fight
between the Mohicans and the Mohawks,
and a mound still showed where bodies
lay buried. While Chingachgook watched,
the others slept.
At moonrise they continued on their
way. It was dawn when Hawkeye and
his charges drew near Fort William
Henry. They were intercepted and
challenged by a sentinel of the French under
Montcalm, who was about to lay siege
to the fort. Heyward was able to answer
him in French and they were allowed to
proceed. Chingachgook killed and scalped
the French sentinel. Then, through the
fog which had risen from Lake George,
and through the enemy forces which
thronged the plain before the fort, Hawk-
eye led the way to the gates of the fort.
On the fifth day of the siege, Hawkeye,
who had been sent to Fort Edward to
seek help, was intercepted on his way
back and a letter he carried was captured.
Webb, the commander of Fort Edward,
refused to come to the aid of Munro.
Under a flag of truce, Montcalm and
Munro held a parley. Montcalm showed
Webb's letter to Munro and offered
honorable terms of surrender. Colonel Munro
and his men would be allowed to keep
their colors, their arms, and their
baggage, if they would vacate the fort the
next morning. Helpless to do otherwise,
Munro accepted these terms. During one
of the parleys Heyward was surprised to
see Magua in the camp of the French.
He had not been killed during the earlier
skirmish.
The following day the vanquished
English started their trip back to Fort
Edward. Under the eyes of the French
and their Indian allies they passed across
the plain and entered the forest.
Suddenly an Indian grabbed at a
brightly-colored shawl worn by one of the women.
Terrified, she wrapped her child in it.
The Indian darted to her, grabbed the
child from her arms, and dashed out its
brains on the ground. Then under the
eyes of Montcalm, who did nothing to
discourage or to hold back his savage
allies, a monstrous slaughter began.
Cora and Alice, entrusted to David
Gamut's protection, were in the midst of
the killing when Magua swooped down
upon them and carried Alice away in his
arms. Cora ran after her sister, and
faithful David dogged her footsteps. They
were soon atop a hill, from which they
watched the slaughter of the garrison.
Three days later, Hawkeye, leading
Heyward, Munro, and his Indian
comrades, traced the girls and David with the
help of Cora's veil which had caught on
a tree. Heyward was particularly
concerned for the safety of Alice. The day
before the massacre he had been given
her father's permission to court her.
Hawkeye, knowing that hostile
Indians were on their trail, decided to save
time by traveling across the lake in a
canoe which he discovered in its hiding
place nearby. He was certain Magua
had taken the girls north, where he
planned to rejoin his own people.
Heading their canoe in that direction, the five
men paddled all day, at one point having
a close escape from some of their
intercepting enemies. They spent that night
in the woods and next day turned west
in an effort to find Magua's trail.
After much searching Uncas found the
trail of the captives. That evening, as the
party drew near the Huron camp, they
met David Gamut wandering about. He
told his friends that the Indians thought
1971

him crazy because of his habit of
breaking into song, and they allowed him to
roam the woods unguarded. Alice, he
said, was being held at the Huron camp.
Cora had been entrusted to the care of
a tribe of peaceful Delawares a short
distance away.
Hey ward, disguising his face with
paint, went to the Huron camp in an
attempt to rescue Alice, while the others
set about helping Cora. Heyward was
in the camp but a short time, posing as
a French doctor, when Uncas was
brought in, a captive. Called to treat an
ill Indian woman, Heyward found Alice
in the cave with his patient. He was
able to rescue the girl by wrapping her
in a blanket and declaring to the Hurons
that she was his patient, whom he was
carrying off to the woods for treatment.
Hawkeye, attempting to rescue Uncas,
entered the camp disguised in a medicine
man's bearskin he had stolen. Uncas
was cut loose and given the disguise,
while the woodsman borrowed David
Gamut's clothes. The singer was left to
take Uncas' place while the others
escaped, for Hawkeye was certain the
Indians would not harm David because of
his supposed mental condition. Uncas
and Hawkeye fled to the Delaware camp.
The following day Magua and a group
of his warriors visited the Delawares in
search of their prisoners. The chief of
that tribe decided the Hurons had a just
claim to Cora because Magua wished to
make her his wife.
Under inviolable Indian custom, the
Huron was permitted to leave the camp
unmolested, but Uncas warned him that
in a few hours he and the Delawares
would follow his trail.
During a bloody battle Magua fled
with Cora to the top of a cliff. There,
pursued by Uncas, he stabbed and killed
the young Mohican, and was in his turn
sent to his death by a bullet from Hawk-
eye's long rifle. Cora, too, was killed by
a Huron. Amid deep mourning by the
Delawares, she and Uncas were laid in
their graves in the forest. Colonel Munro
and Heyward conducted Alice to English
territory and safety. Hawkeye returned
to the forest. He had promised to remain
with his sorrowing friend Chingachgool
forever.
1972

THE LAST OF THE VIKINGS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Johan Bojer (1872- )
Type of plot: Regional realism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First published: 1921
Principal characters:
Kristaver Myran, owner of the fishing boat Seal
Lars, his son
Elezeus Hylla,
Henry Rabben,
Kaneles Gomon, and
Arnt Awson, fishermen with Kristaver
Peter Suzansa, owner of the Sea-fire
Jacob Damntt-all-with-a limp, owner of the Sea-bird
Critique:
The Last of the Vikings tells the story
of a Lofoten fisherman, Kristaver Myran,
as simply as Knut Hamsun tells the story
of Isak, the farmer and builder in Growth
of the Soil. Both types are obsolete in
the modern world since the fisherman
now goes to sea in a motor-driven ship
and the farmer has little new land to
break to his plow, but both characters
are powerfully drawn. It is hard to
forget the rigors of the Lofoten fishing
season after reading about Kristaver and
his crew. The novel is as simple in
design and style as it is compelling in its
picture of people, local in time and place,
but universal in their qualities of
courage and endurance.
The Story:
When Kristaver Myran brought home
his own Lofoten boat, his oldest son Lars
was tall and strong enough to join the
next fishing trip to the islands off the
coast of Norway. Lofoten men thought
of their boats as descendants of dragon-
prowed Viking ships, and Lars dreamed
that he was an early Norseman who
would do battle when the time came to
sail north.
Kristaver had bought the Seal cheaply
at auction, though even that low price
was more than he could pay without
guarantors. People said he must want to
die early, to have bought that boat which
had capsized during the last three winters.
Kristaver was sure he could tame her.
His crew consisted of Lars; Elezeus
Hylla, a brother-in-law; Henry Rabben,
who was always combing his beard;
Kaneles Gomon, boyish except for his
yellow mustache; and Arnt Awson, a
shoreman who had never before sailed
on a Lofoten boat. The boats to travel
with them were Peter Suzansa's Sea-fire,
Andreas Ekra's Storm-bird, and Jacob
Damnit-all-with-a-limp's Sea-bird.
Kristaver has some trouble keeping the Seal
up with the other boats as they sailed
through the fjord to the open sea. As
he and the rest lay in the long bunk on
deck after their first day's sailing, he
slept, but even in sleep he was working
on his problem. Half-awake, he got up
and moved some of the cargo back a few
yards. The next day the boat, in better
humor, pleased Kristaver's crew as she
plowed steadily past the other boats. For
days they sailed through the snow and
anchored at night. The men began to
look alike, snow-covered, and to learn
to stand wind and cold.
As they passed Helgeland, the Nord-
1973

land boats came out to join them. Soon
the waters were covered with sailing ships
and a few steamers. Held over by the
weather at Bodo, Jacob was nearly killed
in a fight. Henry Rabben carried him
on board and the next day Jacob was
sailing along with the rest. Whenever the
Southlanders met the Nordlanders, there
was likely to be a fight in which
everybody joined.
One day, across the West Fjord, they
sighted Lofoten, a long chain of snow-
streaked mountains. At the foot of the
mountain wall lay the fishing station
from which rose the odor of fish-oil, pitch,
and fish. Peter's crew and Kristaver's
were to share a hut there for the winter.
When the Inspector raised the signal-
flag for the first sea-going day, everybody
was ready to head for the banks. It was
a great day when they first put out the
nets. Each man knew that only plenty
of cod in those nets could make it worth
while to bear the wind, snow, and sea
for months in that frozen place. The first
day's catch was poor, and the men were
discouraged when bad weather kept them
imprisoned at the station. They slept all
day. When it was time for supper, each
man went to his own chest to take out
the flat bread, cheese, and butter his own
wife or mother had put in for him; the
fishermen felt that they were paying a
short visit home. After the storm they
found their nets torn and tangled; a
bad beginning.
When the cod came, there was no
time for rest. The men pulled on their
nets and filled their boats until they lay
far down in the water. There was hardly
time to rest after cleaning the fish before
Kristaver had the men out for the next
day's fishing. Even with their big woolen
gloves, their hands were rubbed raw, and
ice clung to their clothes. But, with
fourteen hundred cod in a day, each man
figured he would be wealthy by spring.
They worked until Saturday night, when
they dropped into a heavy sleep that
lasted until dark on Sunday. Then,
rousing themselves, they called for "Melja,"
a dish fit for a wedding. They broke flat
bread, put boiled fish-liver over it, then
grated goat's milk cheese, and long
streams of treacle. They had lived on
coffee and bread for so long they could
not get enough "Melja," and Henry
Rabben had to make more and more for
them.
Lars was not yet a full-fledged Lofoten
man; he was a "scaurie" until he stood
treat. To save him embarrassment, his
father gave him money to buy French
brandy for all who came to the hut. Then
he could hold up his head among the
fishermen.
As the fishing slackened, the men
began to wonder whether this would be
a golden year after all. After weeks passed
with no cod running, Kristaver listened
to the inner voice that had led him right
before; this time it told him to turn east.
He spoke to Peter about it and then led
his men silently down to the Seal at
night to row away. As dawn came, they
saw a host of boats coming out of harbors,
all hurrying as though they had news
of fish. Then they saw a whale spouting.
Where there is a whale, there are herring;
where there are herring, there are cod.
After the whale had been driven into
a fjord, trouble began because the
steamers came and blocked the entrance to
keep the fishermen out. The fishermen,
seeing shoals of fish just inside the fjord,
were frantic to get them. The cod were
gold just outside their reach. Men
cannot stand back under such circumstances,
and so they began to fight the men on
the steamers. Driven back by streams
of boiling water from hoses, the
fishermen were about to give up when Kaneles
swam under the steamer and came up
on the other side to turn the hoses on
the steamer men. Then the fight started
all over the ships until the fishermen
drove their little boats past the steamers.
Soon the fjord was packed with boats.
The fish were so thick that nets filled
immediately, but the boats were so close
1974

that the nets fouled. Not until the next
day, when the Inspector brought law
into the fjord, could the fishermen pull
in their nets. Then Arnt came into his
own. He built a cabin on the shore so
that Kristaver's men would not freeze
while they slept at night. Elezeus was
nearly frozen that first night and he never
recovered, but Henry Rabben gave him
the sacrament and he died in peace.
Sailing back to the fishing station, the
Seed heeled over in a storm. Kaneles was
knocked unconscious, but Kristaver held
him while the others clung to the keel.
Peter Suzansa, in the Sea-fire, was swept
by them in the storm. Jacob Damnit-all-
with-a-limp was able to tack around and
drive his boat over the keel while his
own men pulled in the survivors, all
but Kaneles.
When his boat was recovered after the
storm, Kristaver put his new mast four
inches farther aft than it had been
before. After that he was able to make her
stand up. When he sailed home in the
fair spring winds, he felt that she was
a Viking ship and he a chieftain.
1975

THE LAST PURITAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Santayana (1863-1952)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Connecticut, Massachusetts, England
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Oliver Alden, the last puritan
Peter Alden, his father
Harriet Alden, his mother
Fraulein Irma Schlote, Oliver's governess
Jim Darnley, Oliver's friend
Rose Darnley, Jim's sister
Mario Van de Weyer, Oliver's cousin
Edith Van de Weyer, another cousin
Bobby, Jim's illegitimate son
Critique:
Although he is best known as a
philosopher and essayist, George Santayana
has invaded the field of fiction with great
success. The Last Puritan is his first
novel; but, unlike most first novels, it is
the work of a mature mind. In the story
of Oliver Alden, Santayana has given us
a character sketch of an almost extinct
type of American, a puritan.
The Story:
Young Peter Alden was educated in
America but left Harvard before he had
completed his studies and went abroad
with a tutor. After he had come of age
and had inherited his money he wandered
aimlessly about the world, studying
occasionally. He was in his early middle
years before he completed any one course.
Licensed to practice medicine, his
practice was limited to himself, for he had
burdened himself with many ills, some
real but most of them imaginary. Once
he consulted Dr. Bumstead, a
psychiatrist whose main concern was Peter's
money. Dr. Bumstead convinced Peter
that a home and a wife would be the
best treatment possible and, as a
consequence, Peter married the doctor's
daughter Harriet. Oliver was their only
child.
Little Oliver was a puritan from the
beginning. He accepted things as they
were, never complaining, never
wondering why. There were no other children
with whom he could play because his
mother feared that other children might
be dirty or vulgar. And there were no
stories, songs, or prayers for the boy, as
Mrs. Alden would not have him filled
with nonsensical ideas. His father was
no more than a polite stranger to little
Oliver, for he spent most of his time
traveling about the world.
Fraulein Irma Schlote, a German,
became Oliver's governess, and from her
he had what little brightness there was
in his childhood. On their long walks
together, Irma instilled in Oliver his first
love of nature and a love for the
German language. But even with Irma,
Oliver remained a stoical little puritan.
If he were tired or his foot hurt, there
was no use to complain. They had come
for a walk, and they must finish that
walk. One must do his duty, even an
unpleasant one. As he grew older,
Oliver hated human weakness with the
hatred of a true puritan.
When Oliver was fifteen, he went to
high school, where he excelled in
scholarship and in athletics because it was his
THE LAST PURITAN by George Santayana. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1936, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1976

duty to keep his body strong and because
it was his duty to do everything that
the school demanded.
During one holiday season Oliver
joined his father on his yacht. There
he met Jim Darnley, the captain, who
had been a British sailor before he
became involved in a scandal. Jim was an
entirely new type of person in Oliver's
world. Oliver knew that the sailor was
worldly and had no sense of duty, but
strangely enough Oliver was always to
consider Jim his dearest friend.
After his graduation from high school,
Oliver joined his father and Jim in
England. There, while visiting Jim's family,
he learned to respect Jim's minister father
and to enjoy the company of Rose, Jim's
young sister. He learned also that Jim
had an illegitimate child, Bobby, who
lived with Mrs. Bowler, his
tavern-keeping mother.
While in England, Oliver also met
his distant cousin, Mario Van de Weyer,
a worldly young man dependent upon his
rich relatives for his education and
livelihood. Mario also puzzled Oliver. Mario
had nothing, not even much real
intelligence, yet he was happy. Oliver,
who had everything, was not consciously
happy; he merely lived as he felt it his
duty to live.
Before they left England, Oliver's
father committed suicide. He felt that
Oliver needed to be free of him and as
much as possible of his own mother.
Rather than see the boy torn between his
conflicting duties to both parents, Peter
took his own life.
Back in America, Oliver entered
Williams College. While playing football,
he broke his leg. In the infirmary he
was visited by his cousin Mario and
another cousin, Edith Van de Weyer.
Mario, who attended Harvard on Oliver's
money, seemed to feel no reluctance
about living extravagantly on his cousin's
bounty. Oliver began to think of Edith
as a possible wife. Like his father, he
did not consider love an important
element in marriage, but he felt it his
duty to marry and have children.
In his last year of college, Oliver
transferred to Harvard University. There
he spent much time with Mario, until
that young man was forced to leave
college because he had been found in his
room with a young woman. When he
went to Edith's home to tell her about
Mario, Oliver found that Edith's family
had already heard the story from Mario
and had forgiven him. Oliver also learned
that Edith had great affection for Mario.
But because he thought a match between
himself and Edith a sensible one, he
proposed to her anyway, forgetting to
mention love. Edith refused him. She knew
that marriage with Oliver would be a
dutiful experience only, and she wanted
more than duty.
When he had finished college, Oliver
took a cruise around the world. Then
he settled in England and lived for a
time near Jim Darnley's family. War was
coming closer, but Oliver felt no duty
toward either side. Mario enlisted at
once, for Mario was romantic. The war
became more personal for Oliver when
he learned that Jim had been killed.
Jim's death seemed proof of war's
useless waste. More practically, Jim's death
meant that Bobby and Rose were now
Oliver's responsibility.
When the United States entered the
war, Oliver felt that it was his duty to
go home and join the army. After his
training he was sent to France. Before
he went to the front, he wrote to Rose
Damley, asking her to marry him at
once, so that she would be his wife and
would be cared for if he were killed.
But Rose, like Edith, wanted love, and
she refused to marry him. She knew,
too, that Oliver should never marry,
because love should be unreasoning and
illogical at times, conditions which Oliver
could never accept.
After Rose's refusal, Oliver seemed
free for the first time. No one needed
him any longer. Jim was dead. Mario
was in the army and provided for in case
of Oliver's death. Bobby had been made
1977

secure financially. Edith was engaged to
be married. Rose was provided for in
Oliver's will. All his life he had acted
in accordance with duty, in his parental
relations, in school, in the army. At
least he would not be a dutiful husband.
Now he need be true only to himself.
That night he slept peacefully.
Oliver was killed, but not in battle.
He was a post-Armistice casualty, the
victim of a motorcycle accident. His will
told the story of his life. He had left
adequate, but not extravagant, provisions
for Mario, Rose, Mrs. Darnley, Fraulein
Irma, and Bobby. The bulk of his
fortune he left to his mother because he
had believed it his duty to provide for
her.
So Oliver Alden ended his life a true
puritan, doing what must be done
without flinching, taking little pleasure in
worldly things, yet not withdrawing from
the world. He did not believe in puri-
tanism, for he knew that those who
lived selfishly were often more happy
than he. He was not a prig. He had
been a puritan in spite of himself, and
for that reason, perhaps, the last true
puritan.
1978

THE LAST TYCOON
Type of work: Novel
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: The 1930's
Locale: Hollywood
First published: 1941
Principal characters:
Monroe Stahr, a film producer
Kathleen Moore, his mistress
Pat Brady, Stahr's partner
Cecilia Brady, his daughter
Critique:
This unfinished novel is perhaps the
most highly regarded fragment in
American literature, for in it Fitzgerald's prose
is said to have achieved its greatest power,
flexibility, and economy. As edited by
Edmund Wilson, The Last Tycoon has six
completed chapters (about half the book),
a summary conclusion, and a selection
of the author's notes; but since
Fitzgerald was a painstaking reviser, it is by
no means certain that the completed
chapters are in their final form.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the heart of the
novel is the deathly tired Stahr's poignant
love affair with Kathleen. Of considerable
technical interest is the use of Cecilia as
a narrator who is allowed to imagine fully
events she does not actually witness.
The Story:
Cecilia Brady was flying to California
for a summer vacation from college. On
the plane she met Wylie White, an
alcoholic screenwriter, and Schwartz, a
ruined producer. Monroe Stahr, the
partner of Cecilia's father, was also aboard,
though traveling as Mr. Smith. When
the plane was grounded at Nashville,
Schwartz sent a note to Stahr, warning
him about Pat Brady, Cecilia's father.
When the plane took off again, Schwartz
stayed behind and committed suicide.
Stahr had been the boy wonder of the
film industry. He had been in charge of
the studio in his twenties, almost dead
from overwork at thirty-five. Indeed, he
was half in love with death for the sake
of his dead wife, Minna Davis, a great
star with whom he had been deeply in
love. Since her death he had increased
his work load, often remaining in his
office around the clock. In contrast to
Stahr's highly developed sense of
responsibility, Brady was mean and selfish.
Lacking taste and understanding little of
the technical end of the industry, Brady
had acquired his share of the studio
through luck and had retained it through
shrewdness.
One night, while Cecilia was visiting
the studio, there was an earthquake.
Stahr, working with his trouble-shooter,
Robinson, to clear away the mess, saw a
sightseer perched on top of a floating idol.
The girl reminded him of his dead wife,
and he tried to discover her identity. That
night Cecilia also fell in love with Stahr,
but she felt that her attachment was
hopeless.
A self-made, paternalistic employer,
Stahr personally managed almost every
detail at the studio, from picking the
stories to passing on the rushes. Though
not an educated man, he had raised the
artistic level of the movies and did not
hesitate to make good pictures that would
lose money. As a result he had incurred
the distrust of the stockholders, exploiters
THE LAST TYCOON by F. Scott Fitzgerald. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1925, 1926, 1935, 1941, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1979

who saw the movies only as a business.
Their distrust, however, was mixed with
a genuine respect for the producer's many
abilities. In addition to the opposition of
the stockholders, Stahr was concerned
because Communists were trying to
organize the writers; he worked closely
with his writers and wanted them to trust
him. Wylie White, in particular,
enjoyed his favor, although White resented
him. At this time White hoped to marry
Cecilia for the sake of her father's
influence. Typical of Stahr's interest in his
employees was his investigation of the
attempted suicide of a cameraman, Pete
Zavras. Stahr learned that Zavras had
been unable to find work because of a
rumor that he was going blind. Stahr was
able to scotch the rumor by providing
Zavras with a statement from an oculist.
By this time Stahr had succeeded in
locating the girl who resembled his wife.
She was Kathleen Moore. Though she
was at first reluctant to meet him, they
later had a brief, passionate affair. Stahr
learned that she had been the mistress
of a deposed monarch who had
undergone a personality deterioration and that
now she was about to marry an American
who had rescued her from that situation.
Stahr realized that marriage to Kathleen
could give him the will to go on living.
While he hesitated, her fiance* arrived
ahead of schedule, and she went through
with the marriage from a sense of
obligation.
Cecilia, knowing nothing of these
matters, was still desperately hoping to
attract Stahr, her pull toward him
increased by a break with her father after
she had discovered him with his nude
secretary. At Stahr's request she arranged
a meeting with a Communist organizer.
Then Stahr got drunk and tried to beat
him up.
At this point the manuscript ends, but
the rest of the story may be pieced
together from the author's notes. Because
the studio had been in financial
difficulties, Brady had tried to push through
a wage cut. Stahr, opposing this plan,
had gone east to convince the other
stockholders to postpone the wage slash.
Brady cut the salaries and betrayed the
writers while Stahr was sick in
Washington. Although he broke with Brady
after that, Stahr agreed to go along with
Brady's plan for a company union, chiefly
because Stahr felt personally responsible
for the welfare of his employees. Wylie
White had also turned on Stahr.
In the meantime Kathleen and Stahr
resumed their relationship. When Brady
tried to blackmail Stahr, the producer
threatened him with some information
about the death of Brady's wife. At one
time Fitzgerald had considered having
Brady persuade Robinson to undertake
Stahr's murder; however, Fitzgerald
rejected this idea in favor of having Brady
inform Kathleen's husband, a movie
technician involved with the union organizers,
of Kathleen's affair with Stahr. An
alienation-of-affection suit resulted from
that, but Stahr was somehow saved by
Zavras, the cameraman.
Stahr became alienated from Kathleen
and was no longer able to dominate his
associates at the studio. Nevertheless, he
continued to oppose Brady. Finally Stahr
felt that he had to eliminate Brady before
Brady had him killed. After hiring
gangsters to murder Brady, Stahr flew east to
provide himself with an alibi; but he
chanced his mind on the plane and
decided to call off the killers at the next
airpot. The plane crashed before he
could carry out his intention.
Fitzgerald was uncertain about
including an episode in which the plane's
wreckage was plundered by th^ee chil-
dren who discovered it, the idea being
that each child's personality was reflected
by the items he stole. Stahr's funeral
would have been a powerful, detailed,
ironic arraignment of Hollywood sham.
It would have included the incident of a
has-been cowboy actor who was invited
to be a pallbearer by mistake and
consequently enjoyed a return of good fortune.
Cecilia later had an affair, probably
with Wylie White, and then suffered a
1980

complete breakdown. At the end of the was telling the story while a patient in a
novel the reader was to learn that she tuberculosis sanitorium.
1981

THE LATE GEORGE APLEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: John P. Marquand (1893-1960)
Type of plot: Simulated biography
Time of plot: Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: Boston
First published: 1937
Principal characters:
George Apley, a proper Bostonian
John, his son
Eleanor, his daughter
Catharine, his wife
Mr. Willing, George Apley's biographer
Critique:
Satire has been said to require the
utmost of great minds. In a sense it
requires a man to have two visions: one
of society as it might be and one as it is.
The range between those two points
offers the opportunity for satirical
comparisons. In The Late George Apley the
satire is double-edged because of the
method of telling the story. The novel
is sub-titled "A Novel in the Form of a
Memoir." Mr. Willing, the supposed
biographer of these memoirs, is as much
a source of satire as George Apley
himself, for without Mr. Willing, the staid,
polished, and politely-dull annotator, the
book would be only one more realistic
novel.
The Story:
George William Apley was born on
Beacon Hill, on January 25, 1866. The
Apleys were an old family in
Massachusetts. Thomas, known in the old records
as Goodman Apley, had emigrated from
England to America and settled in Rox-
bury in 1636. Goodman Apley's son,
John, had graduated from Harvard in
1662. From his time there had been an
Apley in Harvard in each succeeding
generation. John Apley's son, Nathaniel,
established himself in Boston. A later
Apley, Moses, became a shipping master
and laid the foundation of the Apley
fortune. Moses Apley was George Apley's
nx*, LATE GEORGE APLEY by John P. Marquand.
Brown & Co Copyright, 1937. by John P. Marquand.
grandfather.
George Apley grew up in a quiet
atmosphere of wealth and social position.
He learned his parents' way of living
calmly and with fortitude. In an orderly
way he was introduced to the polite
world, at first through visits to relatives;
later, through study at Harvard.
His Harvard days were probably the
high point of his life. He was sent to
Harvard to weld those qualities of
gentlemanly behavior which private grammar
school and parents together had tried
to encourage. His parents were anxious
that he should make friends with the
right people. George was carefully
instructed in the ways of high-minded
gentlemen. His training was indicated
by a theme in which he wrote a
description of a Boston brothel in terms
expressing his repulsion and shock. In the
gymnasium George won distinction as a
boxer. Moreover, he became a member
of the Board of the Harvard Lampoon.
He was taken into the Club, an honor
his father appreciated greatly. In his
junior and senior years he took part in
the musical extravaganzas of the Hasty
Pudding Club. In spite of these activities
he never neglected his studies and he
was known as a respectable student with
grades placing him in the middle of his
class at graduation.
While in college, he fell in love with
By permission of the author and the publishers, Little
1982

an impossible girl, Mary Monahan. The
affair was cut short by the Apleys and
never referred to publicly. Shortly
thereafter his family prescribed a sea voyage
for him. When he returned home he
took up the study of law, and became
a member of the board for the Boston
Waifs' Society.
George was instructed in the shrewd
businesslike manners and knowledge of
tne Apleys. He was sent to work with
his Uncle William for one summer.
William sensed that his nephew would never
make a good businessman and advised
that George should be put into law or
made a trustee of other peoples' money,
not his own. As a result George, like
many of his friends, never went actively
into business, but spent his lifetime
clipping coupons.
In February, 1890, George followed
his parents' wishes and suitably became
engaged to Catharine Bosworth. Both
his father-in-law and his own father saw
to it that the young couple had a
summer cottage and a house for the winter.
The two mothers were equally solicitous.
George discovered that he had married
not only Catharine but also her family.
As the years passed, George devoted
his time to charitable groups, learned
societies, and to writing for his clubs.
One of his papers, "Jonas Good and Cow
Corner," was said to be among the best
papers read before the Browsers in fifty
years.
His first child's name was a subject
for debate in his own and Catharine's
family. The name, John, common to
both families, was finally chosen. His
second child was a daughter, Eleanor.
Shortly after his sister Amelia's
marriage, George's father died of an
apoplectic stroke. He left a million dollars to
Harvard, other large sums to his charities,
and the remainder of his fortune in
trust for his family. George had to pay
a sum of money to a woman who claimed
she had borne a son to his father.
Although he did not believe the charge, he
paid rather than cause scandal in the
family.
George invested in a place known as
Pequod Island and there he took his
friends when he wanted to get away
from Boston. On the island he and his
friends condescended to share the camp-
fire with their guides. Planned as a male
retreat, the island was soon overrun with
literary lights of the times invited by
George's wife and sister.
As his son grew up, George noted
an increasing desire on the part of the
younger generation to be wild and
careless with money. Later, George began
to realize that he and his generation
had let much slip and that Boston was
going to the Irish. He gave his name
to the "Save Boston Association" as he
considered his membership an Apley
duty. He also interested himself in
bird lore and philosophy and took as
much personal concern as possible in the
affairs of his children. When his mother
died in 1908, George counted her death
one of his most poignant tragedies.
When George's son entered Harvard,
George took a new interest in the
university and noted many changes he did
not like.
Old Uncle William, now over eighty,
still controlled the Apley mills and held
out successfully against the new labor
unions. One day the old man shocked
his family by marrying his nurse, a Miss
Prentiss.
His daughter Eleanor's marriage was
completely unsatisfactory to George
because she did not induce her husband to
give up his job for a position in the Apley
mills and to take up residence near her
family. But George was proud of his
son John for his service at the front.
George himself belonged to the Home
Guards. When John married a girl of
good connections after the war, George
was doubly pleased.
At last George came into opposition
with a man named O'Reilly, whom George
planned to have brought before criminal
court on charges of extortion. However,
1983

O'Reilly tricked George into a scandal.
George intended to have the whole case
cleared in court, but before the trial
he received a note from his one-time
sweetheart, Mary Monahan. After an
interview with her, he settled the case
quietly and bought off his opponents.
In 1928 he became a grandfather. As
soon as the baby had been born, Georg
telegraphed Groton to include his grand
son's name among the entrance aj
plicants.
In his last years George took interest
in the new novels, condemning those
too blatant in their description of sex
and fighting against the inclusion of
some of them in the Boston libraries.
His own copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover
he hid in the silver safe to keep his
daughter from seeing it. He defied
prohibition as an abuse of his rights and
kept a private bootlegger on principle
because he thought it important to help
break the prohibition law.
He thought, too, that the colossal
fortunes being gathered by the
uneducated should be handed over to the
government. In the autumn of 1929 he and
his wife made a trip to Rome, where
they visited Horatio Apley, recently
appointed to a diplomatic post there. George
was absent from America when the stock
market crash came. His financial affairs
did not suffer greatly, but, his health
breaking, he began to plan his will and
his funeral.
George Apley died in December, 1933,
1984

THE LATE MATTIA PASCAL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Italy
First published: 1904
Principal characters:
Mattia Pascal, a young Italian
Roberto Pascal, his brother
Romilda Pescarone, MathYs wife
Malagna, manager of the Pascal estates
Adriana, a young girl in love with Mattia
Critique:
Outside of Italy, Pirandello has been
much better known for his dramas than
for his novels, although his fiction has
always been highly regarded in his native
land. In this particular case, part of the
plot of the novel was also used in a play,
as the first part of the novel formed the
basis for Pirandello's Sicilian comedy,
Liola. When the novel appeared, some
critics objected to it, saying that the
action was impossible in terms of real life.
In 1921, Pirandello wrote a preface to
the book in which he pointed out that
a similar happening had actually occurred
in Buffalo, New York, in that same year.
He went on to state that it was his
opinion this type of criticism should not be
used in evaluating a work of the creative
imagination; he said that the novel, like
any other medium of art, dealt not with
individuals but with mankind and all of
the incidents and individuals which make
up the total composite of man. He felt
that the illusion of the present might
very possibly be the reality of the future.
er confided all her business affairs. One
by one the farms and city property
belonging to the Pascals were mortgaged
and then sold. Everyone except the
widow Pascal realized how dishonest
Malagna was. Her confidence in her agent
enabled him to rob her of everything over
a period of many years.
When he was in his teens, Mattia
Pascal fell in love with a beautiful young
girl, Romilda Pescarone. Unfortunately
for the affair, Malagna, whose two wives
had failed to give him any children, had
his eye on Romilda for himself. A bad
situation developed when Romilda
became pregnant; her mother, a termagant
who seized any opportunity to improve
her position, saw a chance to capitalize
on the evil. She advised Romilda to take
Malagna as her lover and let him think
the child was his. The mother thought
that he would be so happy to have his
impotence seemingly disproved that he
would at least make Romilda, her
mother, and the child very comfortable.
Although Romilda told Malagna the
truth, the two kept the whole affair a
secret. Malagna's wife discovered, through
Mattia Pascal, what had happened. In
revenge on her husband, whom she had
suspected of playing her false, she in turn
became pregnant by Mattia. The
husband, realizing what had happened as
soon as his wife told him of her preg-
THE LATE MATTIA PASCAL by Luigi Pirandello. Translated by Arthur Livingston. By permission
of Robert Lantz and the estate of Luigi Pirandello. Copyright, 1923, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Re>
ncwed. All rights reserved.
The Story:
As boys, Mattia Pascal and his brother
Roberto lived an easy life with their
wealthy widowed mother. While the
boys were growing up, however, the
fortune their merchant father had left them
was gradually acquired by a dishonest
man named Malagna, to whom the moth-
1985

nancy, was furious. In his anger he
refused to help Romilda, saying it was bad
enough that he should be compelled to
support one of Mattia Pascal's bastards.
In a way the prospect pleased him, for
the Pascal fortune he had stolen would
now go eventually to Mattia's child by
Malagna's wife.
Mattia and Romilda were married, but
their marriage was a most unhappy one.
Because Malagna had foreclosed on the
last bit of property owned by the
Pascals, the newlyweds and Mattia's
mother were forced to move into the hovel
owned by Romilda's mother. Mattia's
aunt finally took pity on his mother and
took her away, but Mattia, who was
unable to find a job, and his wife continued
to live with his shrewish mother-in-
law. Their situation was relieved
somewhat by Mattia's success in getting a
political appointment as the caretaker of a
municipal library in the town. The post
was a sinecure; Mattia spent most of his
time reading and catching rats that
infested the place.
Mattia's mother and his child both
died suddenly and within a day of one
another. A few days after his mother's
burial Mattia received several hundred
lire from his brother, who had married
into a rich family. The funeral expenses
were already paid for and Mattia put the
money away. One day he suddenly
decided to travel. He took the money his
brother had sent and went to Monte
Carlo. There he won a fortune. Although
he lost most of it again, he stopped
playing after seeing the corpse of a destitute
young gambler who had shot himself.
On his way home with the eighty-two
thousand lire he had won, Mattia read
in a newspaper an account of his death
and burial. The people in his village, it
appeared," had discovered a body some
days after his secret departure, and his
relatives had identified it as his. When
the shock of the story wore off, Mattia
realized how lucky he was: he had been
released suddenly from an unhappy
marriage and a mountain of debts; in
addition, he had enough money in his pockets
to live comfortably for many years.
Instead of going back to his native
village, Mattia went to Rome and assumed
a new identity. He shaved off his beard,
had his hair cut shorter, and called
himself Adriano Meis. The only part of his
appearance he could not change was a
crossed eye; to disguise that identifying
characteristic, he began wearing dark
glasses.
As Adriano Meis, Mattia rented a room
in a private home and spent his days
walking and reading. But he gradually
discovered that his lack of a past was
bothersome; he hated to live a literal He.
He discovered also that without an
official record, any proof of identity, he was
limited in his activities. He could not
even buy a dog, lest he get into trouble
in buying a license for it. At the same
time he could not afford to have his real
identity become known because he
would be sent to prison for deserting his
wife and evading his debts. Most
discouraging of all, he fell in love with the
daughter of his landlord, a girl named
Adriana. He could not marry her,
however, for he could not prove his own
existence. His life was that of a shadow in
the world of men.
The circumstance which finally
convinced him that he could not go on
masquerading as Adriano Meis was the theft
of twelve thousand lire by his landlord's
son-in-law. Everyone knew that the man
had taken the money, but the victim was
unable to go to the police, for fear they
would investigate him and ask
embarrassing questions. When he did not go
to the police, everyone became suspicious,
even the girl who loved him. Mattia took
his money one evening and wandered
about town while he tried to decide what
to do with himself. He reahzed that his
position was untenable; he could not go
on living as he had.
As he was about to leap into the river
and commit suicide, Mattia had a bril-
1986

liant idea. Deciding to die as Adriano
Meis and return to his identity as Mattia
Pascal, he left his hat and other evidence
to make it seem as if Adriano Meis had
jumped into the river. Within a day or
two the newspapers carried accounts of
the suicide of Adriano Meis. Quite
happy to regain his original identity, Mattia
went to visit his brother Roberto. At his
brother's home Mattia learned that Ro-
milda had married a childhood
sweetheart and had had a child. Mattia was
even more disconcerted to learn that he
would have to take his wife and her
mother back again. According to the law,
his return from the dead voided the
second marriage.
Disturbed by that news, Mattia
returned to his native village. There he
found his wife and her new husband
quite happy and his hateful mother-in-
law alive. In spite of the law they all
decided that it was best for the current
arrangements to continue, and so Mattia
relinquished unofficially his marital rights
and responsibilities. He found himself
some rooms in the village and lived there
quietly, spending his days reading and
preparing an account of his strange
adventures, a story which was to be
published after what he termed his third
and final death.
1987

LAVENGRO
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Henry Borrow (1803-1881)
Type of plot: Simulated autobiography
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England, Scodand, Ireland
First published: 1851
Principal characters:
Lavengro, a scholar, journalist, and tinker
John, his brother
Jasper Petulengro, his gipsy friend
Mrs. Herns, an old crone
The Flaming Tinman, a bully of the roads
Isopel Berners, Lavengro's companion
Peter Williams, an evangelist
Winifred, his wife
Critique:
Lavengro; The Scholar—The Gipsy—
The Priest is a long novel, in part
fiction and in part the autobiography of
its eccentric author, which gives an
interesting and unusual picture of England
during the early part of the last century.
The autobiographical method of the
narrative has aroused the interest of scholars
as to what is fact in the book and what
pure imagination. To the general
is
reader, Lavengro is most interesting for its
accounts of nomadic gipsy life and
character studies of tinkers, beggars, and
thieves who roamed the English highways
more than a hundred years ago.
The Story:
Lavengro was the son of an army officer
who had fought against Napoleon, and
the boy spent his early years at army
garrisons in various parts of England,
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. When he
was six years old, Lavengro discovered
Robinson Crusoe, a book which
stimulated his imagination and aroused in him
a desire to read and to study languages.
One day, wandering on the outskirts of a
garrison town, he met a group of gipsies
Who threatened to do him harm. They
drew back, however, when he showed
them a tame snake which he was
carrying. The gipsies, becoming friendly,
nicknamed him Sapengro, or snake tamer.
A young gipsy named Jasper declared that
they would always be brothers. He met
also at the gipsy camp a Romany whom
he saw hanged fifteen years later at
Newgate.
A few years later he began the study
of Latin. About the same time his father
was ordered to Edinburgh. In Scotland,
Lavengro took part in several bickers, or
fights, with his schoolmates and learned
mountain climbing. Then in 1815 his
father was ordered to Ireland. Lavengro
went to a seminary at Clonmel and
studied more Latin and Greek and, in an
incidental fashion, learned to speak Irish.
His brother John was made an ensign
and transferred to a post some few miles
away. After peace was signed with the
French, opportunities for military
employment were few. John had always
wanted to paint; therefore, his father
allowed him to go to London to study
his art.
Lavengro again met Jasper, his gipsy
friend, and discovered that Jasper's last
name was Petulengro. Jasper was now
a Romany Krai—or gipsy king—a horse-
shoer, pugilist, jockey, and soothsayer.
Through Jasper, Lavengro made the
acquaintance of a malignant old crone
named Heme, who hated him because
she believed that he was stealing the
Romany tongue. It was Jasper who
named him Lavengro, which means
"word-master," because he learned the
1988

gipsy language so rapidly. All of the
gipsies departed for London, except Mrs.
Heme, who went to Yorkshire.
Lavengro remained at home with his parents
while his father tried to decide what to
do with him. It was finally agreed that
Lavengro would enter a solicitor's office
to study law. But Lavengro neglected his
Blackstone while he studied Welsh and
translated the poetry of Ab Gwilym.
About the same time, Lavengro obtained
a Danish book and learned to read it by
first studying the Danish Bible. One day
Lavengro was sent to deliver a thousand
pounds to a magistrate with whom he had
a very entertaining conversation
concerning the manly art of self-defense. In spite
of the magistrate's fondness for boxing,
however, he refused a place on his land
for a match.
Lavengro met Jasper again and put on
the gloves with him for a friendly bout.
Later he returned home and discovered
that his father was seriously ill. I lis
brother John also arrived home just
before his father died. Shortly afterward
Lavengro went to London to seek his
fortune as a writer, taking with him a
letter of introduction to a noted
publisher. The publisher seemed delighted
to be able to employ him, but was not
interested in such things as Lavengro's
translations of the songs of Ab Gwilym
and his translations of Danish songs.
Lavengro was informed that the reading
public scoffed at works like these.
Instead, the publisher recommended a story
somewhat along the line of The Dairy-
mans Daughter.
While walking through Cheapside one
day, Lavengro climbed upon the
balustrade of a bridge in order to see
something below. An old woman selling
apples nearby thought he was trying to
commit suicide and begged him not to
fling himself over. The old lady had a
partiality for a book about the "blessed"
Mary Flanders. Lavengro returned from
time to time to see her and to talk with
her.
Lavengro, invited to dinner at the
publisher's house one Sunday, discovered
that the pubHsher did not believe in
eating meat or drinking wine. After dinner
Lavengro heard what was to be his new
assignment since the publisher had now
decided not to publish anything like The
Dairyman's Daughter. He was to
prepare a collection of the stories of the
lives and trials of famous criminals
incarcerated at Newgate. In addition, he
was to translate the publisher's book of
philosophy into German and to write
*n article about it for the Review.
In the company of an acquaintance
foamed Francis Ardry, Lavengro visited
taany of the underworld spots of London
and this experience, together with the
series on criminals which he was pre-
aring, gave him a wide and practical
nowledge of the underworld. Then
Lavengro's brother came to London and
Introduced him to a painter of the heroic.
The peculiar thing about this painter's
pictures was the short legs of the people
in his paintings. When Lavengro's stories
of crime were finished, he took them to
the publisher. But the publisher was
displeased because Lavengro had omitted
several of the publisher's favorite
criminal histories.
Lavengro went to visit the apple-
woman again and his despondent
appearance led her to think that he had been
caught stealing. The apple-woman never
became aware of Lavengro's profession.
He talked her into letting him read her
cherished copy of the life of Mary
Flanders.
The publisher's speculations failed and
left Lavengro without money, but
Lavengro finally obtained all the wages that
were due him. Taggart, the publisher's
assistant, told Lavengro that Glorious
John, another printer, would publish his
ballads and the songs of Ab Gwilym. But
Lavengro never offered his ballads to
Glorious John. In midwinter he went
again to visit the apple-woman and found
that she had moved her stall to the other
side of the bridge. He promised to take
1989

her book and trade it in for a Bible.
However, he lost the book and had
nothing to trade. He decided to purchase
a Bible and never let her know about his
negligence.
About this time Lavengro saved an
Armenian from pickpockets. The
Armenian wished him to translate some
Armenian fables into English, but
Lavengro refused. The Armenian, who had
inherited a hundred thousand pounds
from his father, was intent upon doubling
the amount through his speculation. The
Armenian ran into a bit of luck and came
into possession of two hundred thousand
pounds. Lavengro's advice to the
Armenian was to take his fortune and fight
the Persians.
Lavengro decided, when his money got
short, to do the translations for the
Armenian but the man had already
departed to invest his money in a war
against the Persians.
Lavengro left London after having
some small success writing fiction. He
met and talked with many and various
people on his travels about England. On
his rambles he heard the stories
concerning the Flaming Tinman, who held a
great repute as a fighter and who had
forced Jack Slingsby, another tinker, out
of business on threats of death. Lavengro
met Slingsby and bought him out. He
decided to become a tinker himself in the
hope of meeting the Flaming Tinman.
One day, while he was mending pots
and pans, he encountered Mrs. Heme
and Leonora, a thirteen-year-old girl who
was traveling with the old woman.
Leonora brought him cakes made by Mrs.
Heme. He ate one of them and that
night became seriously ill. When the
evil old crone came to gloat over him, he
realized that the cakes had been poisoned.
Then the sound of wheels frightened the
old woman away, and Lavengro was
saved by the timely arrival of Peter
Williams, a traveling Welsh preacher,
and Winifred, his wife. Peter Williams
told Lavengro the sad story of his life
and related how he had been led to
commit the sin against the Holy Ghost,
a sin for which there was no redemption.
Peter had become a preacher to warn
other people against the unforgivable sin.
Lavengro journeyed with Peter and his
wife as far as the Welsh border, where
he left them to join Jasper Petulengro
and his band of gipsies.
Jasper told Lavengro how Mrs. Heme
had hanged herself because of her failure
to poison him. Since Jasper was a blood-
kinsman of Mrs. Heme, it was required
by Romany law that he obtain revenge
from Lavengro. Lavengro, however, was
really only indirectly responsible for the
old woman's death, a fact of which Jasper
was well aware. They retired to a place
where they could fight, and there Jasper
received full satisfaction when he made
Lavengro's nose bleed.
Soon after his friendly tussle with
Jasper, Lavengro met the Flaming
Tinman, Moll, his wife, and Isopel Berners,
child of a gipsy mother and a noble
father and now a free woman of the
roads. Isopel was responsible for
Lavengro's victory in a brawl with the Flaming
Tinman, for she had told him to use his
right hand and to strike at the bully's
face. The Flaming Tinman and Moll
departed, leaving the territory to Lavengro
the tinker, but Isopel remained behind
with her belongings. The story of the
Flaming Tinman's defeat was soon known
throughout the neighborhood, and
Lavengro became a hero of the roads. At a
public house he met a priest whom he
called the Man in Black. He and
Lavengro had many conversations concerning
religion and the attempt to establish
Catholicism as the religion in England.
On a wild stormy night Isopel and
Lavengro helped a coachman right his
coach which had overturned. Later the
coachman told them the story of his
life, and his tale was proof that in those
days romance journeyed on the highways
and adventure waited around the turn of
any English lane.
1990

THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL
Type of work: Poem
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Semihistorical romance
Time of plot: Mid-sixteenth century
Locale: The Scottish Border
First published: 1805
Principal characters:
Lady Buccleuch, widow of the Lord of Branksome
Margaret, her daughter
The Master of Buccleuch, her son
Lord Cranstoun, Margaret's lover
Sm William of Deloraine, a knight in Lady Buccleuch's service
The Dwarf, an evil magician
The Ghost of Michael Scott, a wizard
Critique:
As Scott himself tells us in his
introduction to The Lay of the Last Minstrel,
his purpose was to describe the manners
and the scenery of the Scottish Border
country during the middle of the
sixteenth century. He was concerned more
with these than he was with the story
itself and often left the narrative for
several stanzas in order to portray customs of
the Scottish clans. As in his other metrical
romances, Scott had here the touch of the
artist; the scenes he painted are as real to
us as if we were seeing them for ourselves.
Scott's ability to tell a picturesque,
rousing story in verse is almost as great as his
achievement in the novel.
The Story:
As an old minstrel, the last of his kind,
wandered through the country, he was
treated kindly by a duchess at whose
mansion he asked food and shelter. Later he
rewarded her by singing a song of days
gone by. This is the tale he sang:
Bold Lord Buccleuch had been killed
in battle with the English, but his widow
and children were well protected in their
castle at Branksome by a group of brave
knights who had followed their dead
leader. Although a truce had been
declared, there were skirmishes between the
English and the Scots throughout the
Border country.
The widow, Lady Buccleuch, was the
daughter of a magician; before he died he
had taught her to talk with the spirits.
One night she heard the spirits predicting
that the stars would show no favor to
Branksome castle until pride should die
and make love free. Lady Buccleuch
knew this omen was meant for her, for
her daughter Margaret loved the young
Lord Cranstoun, who had fought against
Lord Buccleuch. But Lady Buccleuch
swore that Margaret should never wed a
foeman, no matter what the spirits might
say. She sent William of Deloraine to
Melrose Abbey, there to secure the
mystic book of Michael Scott, a wizard
long dead and buried in the abbey crypt.
She ordered William of Deloraine not to
look into the book on peril of his life.
The monk at the abbey, although
he quavered at the request made by
Deloraine, obeyed without question Lady
Buccleuch's command. Leading him deep
into the vaults, he took the knight to the
wizard's tomb. Deloraine, bravest of
knights in battle, shivered with dread as
he looked at the body of the magician.
The man lay as if he had not been dead a
day, and when the knight took the book
from his hand, he seemed to frown. As
Deloraine left the vault, he heard noises
like the laughter and sobbing of fiends.
On the same day, while Deloraine
went to the abbey, Margaret slipped out
df the castle to meet her lover, Lord
1991

Cranstoun. Cranstoun was accompanied
by a Dwarf, who had some time before
attached himself to Cranstoun and now
would not leave his side. Since the
Dwarf served him well, Cranstoun had
ceased his efforts to rid himself of the
little page. The Dwarf warned the lovers
of the approach of a horseman. The
traveler was Deloraine, returning from his
mission, and while Margaret fled, the two
knights battled. Deloraine was seriously
wounded. Cranstoun ordered the Dwarf
to take Deloraine to Branksome Hall so
that his wounds could be properly tended.
The Dwarf found the book but could not
open it until after he had smeared the
cover with the blood of Deloraine, who
was almost an infidel. While he was
reading one of the spells described in the
book, an unseen hand struck him on the
cheek and knocked him to the ground.
The book snapped shut and could not be
opened again. The Dwarf, hiding it
under his cloak, proceeded to Branksome
Hall with the wounded Deloraine.
At the castle the Dwarf spied the young
Master of Buccleuch. Changing himself
and the boy into dogs, he led the child
into the woods. There, after they had
resumed their real shapes, the child was
captured by the English soldiers
patrolling the Border. At the castle his absence
was not known, for the Dwarf returned
there and, taking the child's shape, made
mischief for everyone. Lady Buccleuch,
busy tending the wounds of her faithful
Deloraine, failed to notice the child's
strange behavior.
Suddenly watchers in the castle sighted
signal fires. Their meaning was clear; the
English were gathering to attack the
Scots. From the castle messengers were
sent hurriedly to summon friendly clans
of the Border to the defense of Branksome
Hall. In the confusion the Dwarf, still in
the form of the Master of Buccleuch,
escaped from the knight assigned to watch
him.
The English, arriving before the
castle, made their demands. They wanted
Deloraine turned over to them, for they
accused him of murdering the brother of
one of their group. They also demanded
that two hundred English knights be
quartered in Branksome, to prevent the
Scotsmen from making raids on the
English side of the Border. If these demands
were not met, they declared, the castle
would be stormed and the young heir of
Buccleuch, who was held by the English,
would be sent to the English court to
serve as a page.
Lady Buccleuch would not meet the
demands. She could not send her faithful
knight to his doom, though her deed
might cost her her son, her castle, and
perhaps her life. She proposed that Deloraine
meet the brother of the slain man in
combat and settle the dispute in that knightly
fashion. The English leaders, refusing to
accept these terms, were preparing to
attack the castle when one of their number
brought word that strong Scottish clans
were approaching the castle. Fearful of a
trap, the English agreed to accept the
proposal for a settlement by mortal
combat between the two knights concerned,
or by the wronged man and a substitute
for Deloraine should his wounds not be
healed by the next day. Then English
and Scots joined together in feasting and
revelry until the time appointed for the
combat.
As the time approached, other knights
argued over the right to represent
Deloraine, who was still weak from his
wounds. But at the last minute Deloraine
appeared in full armor, ready to defend
himself. The fighting was long and fierce,
and both knights lost much blood before
the Englishman fell wounded. Deloraine,
standing triumphantly over his victim,
did not remove his visor. Then the
spectators saw with amazement that
Deloraine was approaching from the
castle. Quickly the supposed Deloraine
was uncovered. In his place stood young
Lord Cranstoun. He had stolen Delo-
raine's armor so that he might defend the
home and save the brother of Margaret.
At first Lady Buccleuch would not greet
him, but at last she thought of the proph-
1992

ecy of the spirits and knew that she must
forget pride and allow love to prevail.
Yielding, she gave her daughter to the
knight who had been her husband's
enemy. She also swore to herself that she
would return the book to Michael Scott's
tomb.
At the wedding feast the Dwarf
continued to make trouble. In order to undo
the mischief he caused, all the minstrels
sang songs of days gone past. As the last
song died away, the banquet hall grew
suddenly dark. A great flash of lightning
streaked through the room and struck the
Dwarf. The evil page was seen no more.
Deloraine was terrified, for in the
unearthly light he had seen the shape of the
dead wizard. Lady Buccleuch renounced
forever the magic of her father, and all
the knights made pilgrimages to pray for
peace and rest for Michael Scott's soul.
Thus ended the song of the ancient
minstrel.
1993

LAZARILLO DE TORMES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Spain
First published: 1553
Principal character:
Lazarillo de Tormes, an adventurer
Critique:
This early work is the first of many
picaresque tales. The Life of Lazarillo de
Tormes antedates Cervantes, and LeSage
in Gil Bias drew heavily on this
entertaining story of a rogue. The narrator, in a
series of brief sketches, gives a vivid
picture of the stratagems used by the poor
merely to stay alive. Without a trace of
self-pity he shows us the humorous side of
continual penury and want. The tales are
scarcely developed into a unified whole.
This novel was once credited to the
sixteenth-century writer, Diego Hurtado
de Mendoza, but his authorship is now
regarded as extremely doubtful.
The Story:
Lazarillo's surname came from the
peculiar circumstance of his birth. His
mother happened to stay the night at the
mill where his father was employed.
Lazarillo was born on the mill floor just
over the river Tormes, after which he was
named.
He had reached his ninth year when
his father was caught taking flour from
customers' sacks. After being soundly
punished, the father joined an army
getting ready to move against the Moors. He
became a mule driver for a gentleman
soldier and was killed in action.
Lazarillo's mother opened an eating
house near a nobleman's estate. The
widow soon made the acquaintance of
Zayde, a colored groom who frequently
visited them. At first Lazarillo was afraid
of the black man, but he quickly learned
that Zayde's visits meant food and
firewood. One consequence was a bit
displeasing: Lazarillo acquired a small, dark
brother to look after.
The nobleman's steward began to miss
horseshoes and brushes as well as other
supplies. When he was asked directly
about the thefts, Lazarillo told all he
knew of Zayde's peccadillos. Zayde was
soundly flogged and boiling fat was
poured on his ribs. Lazarillo's mother, to
avoid further scandal, set up a new eating
house in a different neighborhood.
When Lazarillo was fairly well grown,
his mother apprenticed him to a blind
man who wanted a boy to lead him about.
Though old, the blind man was shrewd
and tough. As they were leaving the city,
they passed by a stone bull. When the
blind man told the boy to put his ear to
the statue and listen for a peculiar noise,
Lazarillo obeyed. Then the old man
knocked the boy's head sharply against
the stone, hard enough so his ears rang for
three days. Lazarillo was forced to learn
a few tricks for himself in order to survive.
The blind man, when they squatted
over a fire to cook a meal, kept his hand
over the mouth of his wine jug. Lazarillo
bored a tiny hole in the jug, and, lying
down, let the liquid trickle into his
mouth. Then he stopped up the hole with
beeswax. But when the suspicious old
man felt the jug, the wax had melted and
he found the hole. Giving no sign, the
next night he again put the jug in front of
him and Lazarillo again lay down
expecting to guzzle wine once more. Suddenly
the blind man raised the jug and brought
it down with great force in Lazarillo's
face. All the boy's teeth were loosened.
1994

On another occasion Lazarillo seized
a roasting sausage from the spit and
substituted a rotten turnip. When the blind
man bit into his supposed sausage he
roared with rage and scratched the boy
severely with his long nails. Resolved to
leave his master, Lazarillo guided him to
the shores of a brook. Telling the blind
man he must run and leap, he placed his
master behind a stone pillar. The old man
gave a mighty jump, cracked his head
on the stone, and fell down senseless.
Lazarillo left town quickly.
His next master was a penurious priest
who engaged him to assist at mass.
Unfortunately, the priest watched the
collection box like a hawk, and Lazarillo had no
chance to filch a single coin. For food, the
priest allowed him an onion every fourth
day. If it had not been for an occasional
funeral feast, the boy would have starved
to death.
The priest kept his fine bread securely
locked in a chest. Luckily, Lazarillo met a
strolling tinker who made him a key.
Then to avoid suspicion, he gnawed each
loaf to make it look as if rats had got into
the chest. The alarmed priest nailed up
the holes securely, but Lazarillo made
new holes. Then the priest set numerous
traps from which Lazarillo ate the cheese.
The puzzled priest was forced to conclude
that a snake was stealing his bread.
Fearing a search while he was asleep,
Lazarillo kept his key in his mouth while
he was in bed. One night the key shifted
so that he was blowing through the
keyhole. The resulting whistle awoke the
priest. Seizing a club, he broke it over
Lazarillo's head. After his head had been
bandaged by a kind neighbor, Lazarillo
was dismissed. Thinking to find
employment in a larger city, he sought further
fortune in Toledo.
One night while his pockets were full
of crusts he had begged on the city streets,
a careless young dandy, a real esquire,
engaged Lazarillo as a servant. Thinking
himself lucky to have a wealthy master,
Lazarillo followed him to a bare, mean
house with scarcely a stick of furniture.
After waiting a long time for a meal, the
boy began to eat his crusts. To his surprise
his master joined him. So the days went
by, both of them living on what Lazarillo
could beg.
At last the esquire procured a little
money and sent Lazarillo out for bread
and wine. On the way he met a funeral
procession. The weeping widow loudly
lamented her husband and cried out that
the dead man was going to an
inhospitable house where there was no food or
furniture. Thinking they were going to
bring the corpse to his esquire's house,
Lazarillo ran home in fear. His master
disabused him of his fear and sent him
back on his errand.
At last the master left town and
Lazarillo was forced to meet the bailiffs
and the wrathful landlord. After some
difficulty he persuaded the bailiffs of his
innocence and was allowed to go free.
His next master was a bulero, a dealer
in papal indulgences, who was a most
accomplished rogue. Rumors began to
spread that his indulgences were forged,
and even the alguazil accused him
publicly of fraud. The wily bulero prayed
openly for his accuser to be confounded,
and forthwith the alguazil, falling down
in a fit, foamed at the mouth and grew
rigid. The prayers and forgiveness of the
bulero were effective, however, and little
by little the alguazil recovered. From that
time on the bulero earned a rich harvest
selling his papal indulgences. Lazarillo,
now wise in roguery, wondered how the
bulero worked the trick; but he never
found out.
Four years of service with a chaplain
who sold water enabled Lazarillo to save
a little money and buy respectable clothes.
At last he was on his way to some
standing in the community. On the strength of
his new clothes he was appointed to a
government post which would furnish
him an income for life. All business
matters of the town passed through his hands.
The archpriest of Salvador, seeing how
.affluent Lazarillo had become, gave him a
wife from his own household. The
1995

woman made a useful wife, for the arch-
priest frequently gave them substantial
presents. Lazarillo's wife repaid the holy
man by taking care of his wardrobe. But
evil tongues wagged, and the archpriest
asked Lazarillo if he had heard stories
about his wife. Lazarillo disclosed that he
had been told that his wife had borne
three of the archpriest's children. The
archpriest advised him sagely to think of
his profit more and his honor less. So
Lazarillo was content, for surely the
archpriest was an honorable man.
Lazarillo was now so influential that it
was said that he could commit any crime
with impunity. His happiness increased
when his wife presented him with a baby
daughter. The good lady swore that it
was truly Lazarillo's child.
1996

LEAVES OF GRASS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
First published: 1855
The total effect of Walt Whitman's
Leaves of Grass has been compared to
that of a symphony, with interwoven and
recurring themes that are scored for a
full orchestra, from gentle strings to
raucous brass; actually, if one compares
his poetry to music, Whitman's work
seems closer to a Wagnerian opera, for
Wagner employs not only the great
melodic themes and the contrast of soft
and harsh music but also a human
element, the actors and singers on the stage.
And while Whitman is famed as a
champion of democratic ideas, he rarely
presents them in the abstract, rarely strays
from the individual man or woman.
Even the en-masse "I" of his "Song of
Myself" becomes particular in the
dramatic incidents of the runaway slave who
is "limpsy and weak" from his journey, of
the woman who peeks from behind the
blinds of her windows and mentally
projects herself among the twenty-eight
young men who splash naked on the
seashore, and of the brave captain in the sea
battle who has just begun to fight.
Whitman is also like Wagner in that his
triumphs and failures are similar to those
of the composer; both are capable of
unmatched eloquence and both fail when
they become overblown and pretentious.
So broad is Whitman's scope in Leaves
of Grass that any short discussion of his
work must be divided into compartments
(which may be arbitral and incomplete)
or degenerate into random comments. Ee-
cause of his breadth, Whitman may be
considered as four men: philosopher,
propagandist, humorist, and poet.
Whitman the Philosopher: In the short
poem which opens Leaves of Grass
Whitman bluntly states the core of his
philosophy:
Ons's-Self I sing—a simple, separate
Person;
Yet utter the word Democratic, the
word En-masse.
Of Physiology from toe to toe I sing;
Not physiognomy alone, nor brain
alone, is worthy for the muse—I say
the Form complete is worthier far;
The Female equally with the male I sing.
0 Life immense in passion, pulse, and
power,
Cheerful—for freest action form'd, under
the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.
Having stated the paradox, the dilemma,
Whitman expands uron this theme so
persuasively that by the time the reader
has finished the volume he accepts the
paradox as reasonable and true. Tn the
strident "Song of the Open Road,"
Whitman seems to emphasize the individual at
the expense of society, telling us to throw
off all conventions and responsibilities, to
strike out on our own:
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the
open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me,
leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune—I
am good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more,
postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open
road.
The earth—that is sufficient,
1 do not want the constellations any
nearer,
I know they are very well where they
are,
I know they suffice for those who
belong to them.
Still here I carry my old delicious
burdens,
1997

I carry them, men and women—I carry
them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get
rid of them,
I am filled with them, and I will fill
them in return.
In "Crossing the Brooklyn Ferrv," the
individual merges into crowds that in
turn merge with the stream of life. When
Whitman examines his position in "I
Hear It Was Charged Against Me," he
seems to evade the paradox by
proclaiming that he has nothing to do with any
institution except that "of the dear love
of comrades"; but the reader may reflect
that these comrades are the individuals
who make up a complex world rociety.
Many themes appear in Leaves of
Grass. Whitman celebrates the
brotherhood of man, democracy, America as a
symbol of both brotherhood and
democracy, and Lincoln as a symbol of the
lonely individual deeply involved in
humanity; as natural outgrowths of these
themes come Whitman's insistence on
the "normality" of sex, the equality of
male and female, and the oneness of
man with all things in the universe, from
great stars to tiny ants. All these ideas
are consistent with the poet's viewpoint,
all a part of the primary dilemma. One
of his greatest poems, "When Lilacs Last
in the Doorya^d Bloom'd," presents
Lincoln as the solitary figure who is also the
man of the people; and when the funeral
train slowlv bears his body across the
country, Whitman describes not only the
great grief of the masses but also the
mourning of the poet, the individual:
Coffin that passes through lanes and
streets,
Through day and night, with the great
cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inloop'd flags,
with the cities. drap^d in black,
With the show of the States themselves,
as of crapeveil'd women, standing.
With processions long and winding,
and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit—with the
silent sea of faces and the unbared
heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving
coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with
the thousand voices rising strong and
solemn;
With all the mournful voices of the
dirges, pour'd around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the
shuddering organs—
Where amid these you journey,
With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual
clang;
Here! coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
Whitman the Propagandist: In this
role, Whitman, like his contemporary
Whittier, seems least successful. While it
is natural for a poet in a time of crisis to
feel his responsibilities, to turn his talent
to a cause, only rarely does he produce
great poetry in so doing. The section of
Leaves of Grass called "Memories of
President Lincoln" is above the realm of
propaganda and ranks with the finest
elegies written in the English language;
but many of the selections in "Drum-
Taps," which is concerned with the Civil
War, are "forced" poems, written as if the
poet felt himself compelled to comment
on the events taking place. For instance,
in "Beat! Beat! Drums!" the first few
lines are:
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors
—burst like a force of ruthless men,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the
congregation;
Into the school where the scholar is
studying:
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no
happiness must he have now with
his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace,
ploughing his field or gathering his
grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound, you
drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
Here Whitman is merely superimposing
the spirit and technique of "Song of the
1998

Open Road" on an entirely different
subject. However, in a few of the war poems
—such as "Come Up from the Fields
Father" and "Give Me the Splendid
Silent Sun," in which Whitman is writing
about the fringes of the war—he seems
more at ease and is consequently more
successful.
Whitman the Humorist: This aspect
of Whitman's talent is rarely recognized
and almost never discussed fully. Leaves
of Grass contains much sly humor, many
passages in which the reader suspects
Whitman of poetic playfulness. Although
Whitman wrote no purely comical poems,
he often expresses his ideas in a witty
manner. In "To a Common Prostitute" he
seriously accepts the girl as a part of the
human scene, but surely in the last line
he has his tongue in his cheek: "Till then
I salute you with a significant look that
you do not forget me." The first line
of "Salut au Monde"—"O take my hand
VValt Whitman"—and the other passages
in which the poet talks to himself and
makes poetry of his own name are
certainly the affectation of a "character."
Even the justly celebrated section in
"Song of Myself" about the nature of
grass can become, with a slightly
unsympathetic reading, a deadpan masterpiece
of comic simplicity. And Whitman's
humor is intentional. In Richard Chase's
Walt Whitman Reconsidered, the poet is
quoted as having said to his Camden
friends: "I pride myself on being a real
humorist underneath everything else."
Here is a poet who is alternately comic
and serious—and sometimes both at the
same time. Whitman will always be
chiefly remembered as a poet of force
and eloquence, a prophet of high ideals,
but his wit must also be reckoned a part
of his genius.
Whitman the Poet: The range of
Whitman's skill in poetic technique is
remarkable. In his carol in praise of
death, from "When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom'd," he creates an effect
as soft as a summer night; and in the love
song of the grieving bird in "Out of the
Cradle Endlessly Rocking" the music is
gentle, poignant, haunting:
Soothe! Soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave he-
hind,
And again another hehind, embracing
and lapping, every one close,
But my love soothes not me.
Low hangs the moon—it rose late,
O it is lagging—O 1 think it is heavy
with love.
O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With love—with love.
O night!
O do 1 not see my love fluttering out
there among the breakers?
What is that little black thing I see
there in the white?
O rising stars!
Perhaps the one I want so much will
rise with some of you.
At other times he sounds his "barbaric
yawp," which many casual readers have
labeled the uncontrolled outpourings of
an undisciplined poet. True, there are
times when the repetition, the ceaseless
cataloguing, the too Biblical rhythms, the
artificial combination of Quakerisms and
first-reader French seem hardly worth
wading through; but these passages
contain the flaws to be found in the collected
works of any poet. At his best Whitman
is a master of precise diction. The
opening twenty-two lines of "Out of the
Cradle Endlessly Rocking" not only
contain a stirring rhythm and a perfectly
timed climax but also are characterized
by an exquisite choice of words. In a
much shorter poem, "When I Heard the
Learn'd Astronomer," Whitman's form is
the usual heavily accented free verse, but
here again there seems hardly a word
that could be changed or omitted.
Whitman has been called a "line poet"
because among his many virtues is the
ability to pack the memorable into a sin-
1999

gle line. Frequently these lines open his
poem and he lets them double as titles:
"As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's
Woods," "Give Me the Splendid Silent
Sun," "I Hear America Singing,"
"Goodbye My Fancy," and "I Sing the Body
Electric." Whitman is so famed as the
breaker of tradition, the iconoclast who
broke the way for the "modern poetry" of
our time, that we tend to forget his rank
among the master craftsmen of English
verse. Whitman underestimated himself
when he said, in "Poets To Come,"
I but write one or two indicative words
for the future,
I but advance a moment, only to wheel
and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along,
without fully stopping, turns a casual
look upon you, and then averts his
face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.
Many of these "main things" are already
fulfilled in Leaves of Grass.
2000

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN
Principal characters:
Chaucer, the dreamer
Cupid
Alceste, wife of Admetus, King of Pherae
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
Thisbe, loved by Pyramus
Dido, Queen of Carthage
Hypsipyle, Queen of Lemnos, betrayed by Jason
Medea, princess of Colchis, betrayed by Jason
Lucretia, Roman matron ravished by Tarquin
Ariadne, Cretan princess betrayed by Theseus
Philomela, Athenian princess ravished by Tereus
Phyllis, Greek maiden betrayed by D^mophon
Hypermnestra, daughter of Danaiis, King of Egypt
Type of work: Poem
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
First transcribed: 1380-1386
The Legend of Good Women, a poem
recounting the stories of women from
history and myth who were martyrs to
love, is written in the tradition of
medieval love poetry. Unlike Chaucer's
masterpieces, Troilus and Criseyde and The
Canterbury Tales, this work only
occasionally rises above the limitations
imposed by the artificial conventions of the
times and is, therefore, inferior to these
other works. Chaucer's greatness as a
poet resulted not so much from his ability
to perfect the current modes of writing
as it did from his capacity to transcend
them. Although his debt to contemporary
thought and literary practice was
considerable, his high position among
English writers depends largely on his gift
for bringing reality to a literature that
was customarily unrealistic. In The
Legend of Good Women, however, he
constructed a framework so restricting that
he was unable to infuse it with the
richness and subtle shadings of human
existence.
The most engaging part of the poem
is the prologue, in which Chaucer
revealed his elation at the arrival of spring.
He delighted in roaming through the
meadows, listening to the small birds,
and gazing at the flowers. He was
especially attracted to the daisy, which he
could observe for hours without becoming
bored. One spring day, after a walk in
the fields, he fell asleep and had a vision
in which the God of Love and the
beautiful Alceste, dressed in the colors of
the daisy, appeared before him. Cupid
denounced the dreamer for committing
heresy against the laws of love by writing
of Criseyde's infidelity and by translating
The Romance of the Rose with ifs d's-
paraging remarks about womankind. But
Cupid's companion (the same Alceste
whom Hercules rescued from Hades after
she had given her life to redeem her
husband from death) rose to the poet's
defense by contending that he, having
appropriated his plots from other writers,
acted out of ignorance, not malice. She
concluded that he might gain Cupid's
forgiveness by writing a legendary of wives
and maidens who had been faithful in
love all their lives.
The prologue is filled with literary
devices popular in the fourteenth century.
The religion of love—with its s'ns,
penances, self-abnegation, and sanctity, with
its Cupid and Alceste analogous to God
and the Virgin Mary—closely paralleled
the Christian religion. The daisy, having
recently replaced the rose, was the
symbol of love. The question of whether the
flower or the leaf was superior, apparently
a hotly debated issue in courtly circles,
Chaucer touches upon, but without com-
2001

mitting himself. The dream-vision used
here had been a very popular device ever
since the appearance of The Romance of
the Rose, Chaucer himself employing it
in several works. Despite this elaborate
machinery, which today is mainly of
historic interest, the prologue has about it a
universal appeal; cheerfulness, humor,
and a tinge of ironic detachment
preserve it from mediocrity. Also of special
excellence is Chaucer's expression of his
delight in nature.
According to the prologue, Chaucer
planned to write twenty tales concerning
good women. He fhrshed eight and left
a n'nth just short of completion. The
theme of all the legends is the fidelity of
women in love. All the heroines suffer
for, and the majority die for, the'r love.
All are treated as wholly admirable, even
saintly, without regard to the illicit nature
of some of the relationships presented.
Events in their lives not concerned with
their fidelity are omitted or hastily
summarized. With the exception of the first
two legends, the women suffer as the
result of the treachery of men, who
generally are as thoroughgoing in their
villainy as the women are in their virtue.
The longest and one of the best of the
legends retells the story of Dido's love
for Aeneas. After Aeneas had landed on
the Libyan coast, he met Venus, his
mother, who instructed him to go to the
court of Dido, Queen of Carthage. Dido
greeted him cordially and, knowing his
flight from Troy, felt great pity for the
disinherited hero. And with her pity,
came love. For comfort and entertainment
during his visit, she provided everything
riches could command.
One day, when Aeneas, Dido, and her
retinue were hunting, a thunderstorm
burst upon them. Everyone rushed for
shelter, and Dido and Aeneas found
themselves in the same cave. There the
perfidious Aeneas protested his love for
her; and she, upon much importuning,
had pity and yielded herself to him. For
a time, Aeneas performed all the duties
of a courtly lover, but finally, becoming
weary, he made plans to leave. When
Dido, noting his lessened ardor, asked
what was wrong, he told her of a vis:on
(a pure fabrication, Chaucer implied) in
which his father reminded him of his
destiny to conquer Italy. Ignoring her
pleas, Aeneas stole away to his ships
without her. As soon as she d'scovered
his absence, she had her sister build a
funeral pyre upon which, using Aeneas'
sword, she stabbed herself.
Chaucer's principal source for this tale
was Vergil's Aeneid. With slight
modifications of the plot, Chaucer made
substantial changes in characterization. Dido,
who did not escape Vergil's censure, was
made blameless by Chaucer, mainly by
his elaboration of the scene in the cave.
With a minimizing of the intervention of
the gods and a degrading of his motives,
the pious Aeneas of Vergil became in
Chaucer's hands a mere seducer. Thus a
story of tragic struggle between love and
duty was transformed into one of man's
treachery and woman's loyalty.
Chaucer's source for "The Legend of
Lucretia" was Ovid's Fasti, which he
followed rather closely. To prove the
virtues of his wife Lucretia, Collatinus
offered to accompany Tarquin, the king's
son, to Rome to see her. Secreted outside
her chamber door, they found her
spinning among her servants and expressing
concern for her husband's safety.
Tarquin, observing her natural beauty,
conceived a great desire for her. The next
day, his lust increasing, he determined to
return to Collatinus' house and make
Lucretia his lover. Stealing into her room
at night, he threatened her at sword's
point and, while she lay in a swoon,
ravished her. After he had left, Lucretia
dressed in mourning, called her friends
about her, and revealed to them the vile
deed. Telling them that her husband
should not gain a foul name from her
guilt, she brought forth a knife and
stabbed herself.
"The Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea"
recounts the double treachery of Jason.
On his expedition to recover the Golden
2002

Fleece, Jason, accompanied by Hercules,
stopped at the island of Lemnos, where
they met Queen Hypsipyle, and conspired
in capturing her affections for Jason.
While Jason counterfeited modesty, his
virtues were extolled by Hercules. Thus
Hypsipyle was ensnared and consented
to marry him. After making use of her
wealth and begetting two children upon
her, he left. Although he ignored her
letter imploring him to return, she remained
true to him and died of a broken heart.
Arriving at Colchis, Jason was
entertained by King Aeetes. Medea, the king's
daughter, became enamored of Jason and
revealed to him that the Golden Fleece
could be secured only with her help.
They agreed to marry, and Jason made
a solemn promise never to be untrue.
Later, after the expedition had been
successful, Jason again proved false and left
her to marry Creiisa.
Toward the end of The Legend of
Good Women, Chaucer indicated a
definite weariness with his subject. By
adhering to his original plan, he wrote tales
that have a tiresome sameness about them.
Committed to perfect women and, in
most instances, evil men, he found it
difficult to develop his characters. A
further deterrent to good characterization
was his effort to keep the tales brief;
some, as a result, are little more than
plot summaries. Upon Dido he lavished
more attention than on his other
heroines, and she is his most lifelike portrait.
There are good touches in other female
characters; for example, the pathos of
Lucretia in her death scene and the
mingled fear and courage of Thisbe. His
men, however, are little more than
abstractions.
These tales mark a step toward
Chaucer's later work, for in this poem he first
used the decasyllabic couplet, afterward
employed so successfully in The
Canterbury Tales. His juxtaposing of The
Legend of Good Women with Troilus and
Criseyde prepared him for the more
subtle contrasts of the Marriage Group. The
work may have been left unfinished
because of Chaucer's growing absorption
with The Canterbury Tales. Although
The Legend of Good Women is not
without merit, this redirection of his efforts
can hardly be regretted.
2003

THE LEGENP OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
Type of work: Tale
Author: Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: New York State
First published: 1819-1820
Principal characters:
Ichabod Crane, a schoolteacher
Katrina Van Tassel, a rustic heiress
Abraham Van Brunt, known as Brom Bones
Critique:
Washington Irving, the first
professional writer in America, was by
inclination an amused observer of people and
customs. By birth he was in a position
to be that observer. Son of a New York
merchant in good financial standing, he
was the youngest of eleven children,
several of whom helped him to take
prolonged trips to Europe for his health and
fancy. He was responsible for two trends
in American literature: one, toward the
local color, legendary tale; the other,
toward the historical novel. "The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow" belongs to the first
trend, Tt was first published in Irving's
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
Gent., the book which established his
reputation at home and abroad.
The Story:
Near Tarry Town on the Hudson is
a little valley which, years ago, was the
quietest place in the world. A drowsy
influence hung over the place and people
so that the region was known as Sleeny
Hollow, and the lads were called Sleepy
Hollow bovs. Some said that the valley
was bewitched. True it was that marvelous
stories were told there.
The main figure to haunt the valley
was one on horseback, without a head.
Some said the specter was the apparition
of a Hessian horseman who had lost his
head to a cannon ball, but, whatever it
was, it was often seen in the valley and
adjacent countryside in the gloom of
winter nights. The specter was known to all
as the Headless Horseman of Sleepy
Hollow.
In the valley, years ago, there lived a
schoolteacher called Ichabod Crane. He
looked like a scarecrow because of his
long, skinny frame and his snipe-like
nose.
As was the custom in that fertile Dutch
countryside, he boarded with the parents
of his pupils a week at a time.
Fortunately for him the Dutch larders were full
and the tables groaning with food, for
the schoolmaster had a wonderful
appetite. He was always welcome in the
country homes because in small ways he made
himself useful to the farmers. He was
patient with the children, and he loved
to spend the long winter nights with the
families of his pupils, exchanging tales
of ghosts and haunted places while ruddy
apples roasted on the hearths.
Ichabod believed heartily in ghosts,
and his walks home after an evening of
tale-telling were often filled with fear.
His only source of courage at those times
was his voice, loud and nasal as it made
the night resound with many a psalm
tune.
The schoolteacher picked up a little
odd change by holding singing classes.
In one of his classes he first became aware
of a plump and rosy-cheeked girl named
Katrina Van Tassel. She was the only
child of a very substantial farmer, and
that fact added to her charms for the
ever-hungry Ichabod. Since she was not
only beautiful but also lively, she was a
great favorite among the lads in the
neighborhood.
2004

Abraham Van Brunt was Katrina's
favorite squire. The Dutch first
shortened his name to Brom, and then called
him Brom Bones when he became known
for the tall and powerful frame of his
body. He was a lively lad with a fine
sense of humor and a tremendous amount
of energy. When other suitors saw his
horse hitched outside Katrina's house on
a Sunday night, they went on their way.
Brom Bones was a formidable rival for
the gaunt and shaggy Ichabod. Brom
would have liked to carry the battle into
the open, but the schoolteacher knew
better than to tangle with him physically.
Brom Bones could do little but play
practical jokes on lanky Ichabod.
The whole countryside was invited one
fall evening to a quilting-frolic at
Mynheer Van Tassel's. For the occasion
Ichabod borrowed a horse from the farmer
with whom he was then living. The
horse, called Gunpowder, was as gaunt
as Ichabod himself, but the steed still had
a fair amount of spirit. The two of them
were a sight as they jogged happily along
to the party.
Ichabod was well pleased by every
prospect he saw on the Van Tassel farm, the
most prosperous holding for miles around.
Perhaps Ichabod might be able to sell it
and, with the proceeds, go farther west.
It was a pretty picture he saw as he passed
fields full of shocks of corn and
pumpkins, granaries stuffed with grain, and
meadows and barnlots filled with sleek
cattle and plump fowls.
The party was a merry one with many
lively dances. Ichabod was at his best
when he danced with Katrina. After a
time he went out on the dark porch with
the men and exchanged more Sleepy
Hollow ghost stories. But the food was
best of all. Ichabod did credit to all the
cakes and pies, meats and tea.
After the others left, he tarried to pay
court to Katrina, but it was not long
before he started home crestfallen on the
gaunt Gunpowder. All the stories he had
heard came back to him, and as he rode
along in the darkness he became more
dismal. He heard groans as the branches
of the famed Major Andre" tree rubbed
against each other. He even thought he
saw something moving beneath it.
When he came to the bridge over
Wiley's Swamp, Gunpowder balked. The
harder Ichabod urged him on, the more
the horse bucked. Then, on the other
side of the marsh, Ichabod saw something
huge and misshapen.
The figure refused to answer him when
he called. Ichabod's hair stood straight
on end. Because it was too late to turn
back, however, the schoolmaster kept to
the road. The stranger—it looked like a
headless horseman, but it seemed to hold
its head on the pommel—kept pace with
him, fast or slow. Ichabod could not
stand going slowly and he whipped
Gunpowder to a gallop. As his saddle
loosened, he nearly lost his grip, but he
hugged the horse around the neck. He
could not even sing a psalm tune.
When he reached the church bridge,
where by tradition the headless specter
would disappear in a flash of fire and
brimstone, Ichabod heard the horseman
close in on him. As he turned to look, the
spirit threw his head at him. Ichabod
tried to dodge, but the head tumbled him
into the dust.
In the morning a shattered pumpkin
was found near the bridge. Gunpowder
was grazing at the farmer's gate nearby.
But Ichabod was never seen in Sleepy
Hollow again. In the valley they say that
Brom Bones, long after he had married
the buxom Katrina, laughed heartily
whenever the story was told of the
horseman who had thrown his head at the
schoolteacher during that ghostly
midnight pursuit.
2005

LEGEND OF THE MOOR'S LEGACY
Type of work: Tale
Author: Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Type of plot: Folklore
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Granada, Spain
First published: 1832
Principal characters:
Pedro Gil, called Peregil, a water carrier
His Wife
A Moorish Shopkeeper
Pedrillo Pedrugo, a prying barber
The Alcade
A Constable
Critique:
In 1829, during his first visit to Spain,
Washington Irving lived for three months
in the Alhambra, the historic fortress
from which the Moors had been expelled
by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492.
Irving's interest in Spanish history and
legend appears in many of his writings,
but his Spanish material received its most
finished form in The Alhamhra,
published in 1832. The book, a collection
of stories drawn from actual history and
from folk imagination, includes the well-
known "Legend of the Moor's Legacy."
Like the more familiar "Rip Van Winkle"
and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,"
this tale shows Irving's love of the
picturesque and his interest in the fantastic
and legendary stories of many lands. The
combined qualities of reverie, genial
humor, and romantic imagination made him
a perfect writer of traveler's tales. This
legend undoubtedly goes back beyond its
Spanish origins to the unknown
storytellers of The Arabian Nights'
Entertainments.
The Story:
In the Square of the Cisterns, fronting
the royal palace in the fortress of the
Alhambra, was a deep Moorish well of
clear, cold water. So famous was the well
throughout all Granada that to it
repaired water carriers from every quarter
of the city, some bearing great earthen
jars on their own sturdy shoulders,
others, more prosperous, driving donkeys
similarly burdened. The well was also a
great place for meeting and gossip. Each
day housewives, lazy servants, beggars-
idlers of every age and
condition—gathered on the stone benches to talk over
the doings of their neighbors and to
exchange rumors which were afloat in the
city.
Among the carriers who drew water from
the ancient well of the Alhambra there was
once a strong-backed, bandy-legged little
fellow named Pedro Gil, called Peregil for
short. He had begun his trade with only
a single water jar, but since no one in
all Granada was more industrious than
he, it was not long before he was able to
purchase a donkey to do his carrying for
him. All day long he trudged the streets
calling his wares, and for every woman,
old or young, he had a merry smile and
a pleasing compliment. It was not
surprising that everyone thought him the
happiest of men. But Peregil's heart was
often heavy and sad. He had a brood of
ragged children who were ravenous as
young birds, so that it was all he could
do to fill their mouths with food. His
wife, grown slatternly and fat, nagged
poor Peregil even while she spent his
hard-earned money for fripperies they
could not afford. Subdued to patience by
2006

his matrimonial yoke, Peregil made the
best of things and concealed his frequent
dejection with merry quips and songs.
Late one summer night he made one
last trip to the well in hopes of adding
to his small store of coppers for meat to
put in the Sunday pot. He found the
square empty except for a stranger in
Moorish dress. When the man said that
he was a traveler taken suddenly ill,
Peregil, touched with compassion, gave
the stranger a ride back to the city on his
donkey. On the way the man confessed
that he had no lodgings in the town, and
he asked that he be allowed to rest
under Peregil's roof. He promised that the
carrier would be well repaid.
Peregil had little desire to deal in this
manner with an infidel, but in the
kindness of his heart he could not refuse aid
to the stranger. Ignoring his wife's
protests, the carrier spread a mat in the
coolest part of his hovel for the sick man.
Before long the Moor was seized with
convulsions. Knowing that his end was
near, he gave Peregil a small sandalwood
box and told him that it contained the
secret to a great treasure. He died before
he could reveal the nature of the secret.
Peregil's wife, afraid that the body
would be found in their house and that
they would be charged with murder,
railed at her husband for his folly.
Equally disturbed, the carrier tried to mend
matters by taking the dead Moor, under
cover of darkness, to the bank of the
river and there burying it.
Now it happened that Peregil lived
opposite to a barber named Pedrillo
Pedrugo, whose greatest pleasure was to
spy on his neighbors and tattle their
affairs. Having seen Peregil arriving with
the Moor, he was still on watch when
the carrier took away the body of the
dead man. Following stealthily, he spied
on the secret burial. Early the next
morning he hurried off to the alcalde, who was
one of his daily customers, and told
what he had seen.
The alcalde, who put so high a value
on justice that he sold it only for gold,
sent a constable to bring Peregil before
him. Frightened, the water carrier called
upon the saints to witness his innocence
and frankly related the whole story.
When he produced the sandalwood box,
the alcalde expected to find it filled with
gold or jewels. Instead, it contained only
a parchment scroll and the end of a wax
taper. Disappointed, he returned the box
to Peregil, but kept the carrier's donkey
to pay for the trouble the poor wretch
had caused.
At home, Peregil became so disgusted
with his wife's taunts over the loss of his
donkey that he threw the sandalwood
box to the floor. When the parchment
rolled out, he picked it up and found
on it some writing in Arabic. Curious to
know what the meaning might be, he
took it to a Moorish shopkeeper of his
acquaintance. The Moor said that the
scroll contained an incantation for the
recovery of a treasure hidden under
the Alhambra.
At first Peregil was skeptical. Several
days later, however, he heard loiterers by
the well talking about a treasure supposed
to be buried under the Tower of the
Seven Floors in the old fortress. Once
more he went to the Moor and proposed
that they search for the treasure together.
The Moor replied that the incantation
was powerless without a magic candle to
burn while the charm was being read.
Peregil said that tne taper was also in his
possession.
Later that night he and the Moor went
secretly to the Tower of the Seven Floors
and descended into the damp, musty
vault beneath. There they Ht the taper
and the Moor began to read the words
on the parchment. As he finished, the
floor opened with a noise like thunder.
Descending the steps thus revealed, they
found themselves in another vault, where
stood a chest and several great jars filled
with gold coins and precious stones, over
2007

which two enchanted Moorish warriors
stood guard. Amazed and fearful, they
filled their pockets with valuables. Then
they climbed the stairs and blew out the
taper. The floor closed again with a
ponderous crash.
Peregil and the Moor hoped to keep
their secret safe, but the carrier could
conceal nothing from his wife. She
bought herself expensive clothing and
put on so many fine airs that her
neighbors became curious. One day the
barber saw her after she had decked herself
with some of the jewels Peregil had
found. Once more Pedrillo hurried to
the alcalde to tell his story. The alcalde,
convinced that Peregil had tricked him,
ordered the trembling water carrier
dragged into his presence.
After Peregil's story had been
confirmed by the Moor, the alcalde's greed
for gold became almost more than he
could bear. That night, taking Peregil
and the Moor with them as prisoners,
the alcalde, the constable, and the prying
barber went to the tower. With them
they took the donkey Peregil had once
owned. There in the vault the taper was
lighted and the Moor read the
incantation. Again the floor rolled aside,
revealing the treasure vault beneath. The
alcalde and his friends were too frightened
to descend, but they ordered Peregil to
bring up two immense jars filled with
gold and gems and to strap them on the
donkey which they had brought to carry
away the spoils. When they learned that
the vault also contained a chest filled
with treasure, the alcalde, the constable,
and the barber overcame their fears
sufficiently to go down the stairs to secure
the riches for themselves. After they had
entered the lower vault, the Moor blew
out the taper, and the floor closed over
the men below, leaving them entombed
in darkness. The Moor, assuring Peregil
that such was the will of Allah, threw
away the magic taper.
Peregil and the Moor divided the
treasure equally between them. A short time
later the Moor returned to his native city
of Tangier. Peregil, with his wife, his
brood of children, and his sturdy donkey,
went to Portugal, where his wife used his
riches to make him a man of
consequence, known to all as Don Pedro Gil.
As for the greedy alcalde, the constable,
and the prying barber, they remain
under the Tower of the Seven Floors to
this day.
2008

THE LEGEND OF TYL ULENSPIEGEL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Theodore Henri de Coster (1827-1879)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: The Low Countries
First published: 1867
Principal characters:
Tyl Ulenspiegel, the wanderer
Claes, his father
Soetkin, his mother
Nele, his wife
Lamme Goedzak, his companion
Katheline, a midwife
Hans Dudzeele, Katheline's betrayer
Philip, King of Spain
Critique:
The glorious adventures of Tyl
Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak are well-
known to readers of most countries of the
world. De Coster's book is a heroic epic
based on folk legend and history, a story
complete with visions, high adventures,
traitors, and heroes. Ulenspiegel was the
spirit of his native land, and he had been
born to deliver her from her oppressors.
Always the parallel between him and
King Philip is carefully drawn: Philip a
destroyer and Ulenspiegel a savior. De
Coster preserved the old legends of
Flanders, and his account of the Flemish hero
maintains its great popularity even today.
The Story:
Tyl Ulenspiegel was born with two
marks, one the sign of a lucky star, the
other the print of the devil's finger.
Katheline, the midwife, had a vision in
which she saw Ulenspiegel as the
incarnated spirit of his native Flanders. At
the same time Philip of Spain was born.
In her vision Katheline saw Philip as the
butcher of Flanders. She was afraid.
As a boy Ulenspiegel roamed the fields
of Flanders. His playmate was Nele,
illegitimate daughter of Katheline the
midwife. But as the children played, gloom
gathered over the lowlands. The father of
Philip fished in the pockets of the people,
and each day new edicts announced
torture and death for heretics. The
Inquisition was beginning, and neighbor turned
against neighbor in order to inherit half
his possessions. Katheline was tortured as
a witch on the complaint of a neighbor. As
a result of this experience the poor woman
went mad.
Ulenspiegel, as a young man living by
his wits, traveled into many lands.
Sometimes he was hard pressed to escape with
his life, but his high spirit and great
strength served him well. When he
returned at last to his homeland he had to
put his youthful follies behind him, for
trouble had come to his family. Claes had
been convicted of heresy on the testimony
of a fishmonger who wanted to inherit
part of his wealth. The good man was
tortured and burned to slow death. Soetkin
and Ulenspiegel wept, helpless to save
him. Ulenspiegel took ashes from Claes*
heart and wore them in a bag around his
neck after swearing eternal vengeance
upon the murderers. Because Soetkin and
Nele had hidden Claes' money, the
searchers looked for it in vain. Then
Soetkin and Ulenspiegel were put to
torture, but although they were broken on
the wheel and burned they would not
reveal their secret. Meanwhile Claes' ashes
beat against Ulenspiegel's heart.
In spite of their courage the money was
lost. Mad Katheline told Hans, her evil
lover, and Nele's father, where the money
was hidden. Hans and a friend robbed
2009

the widow and son of their inheritance.
Then Hans, not knowing that mad Kathe-
line watched him, killed his accomplice.
Ulenspiegel, meeting the lying
fishmonger, threw his enemy into the water.
Philip, now King of Spain, robbed and
murdered his people and the people of
Flanders.
After Soetkin died of her grief and her
torture, Ulenspiegel vowed to avenge her
and Claes and all of his loved homeland.
Mad Katheline conjured up a vision from
which Ulenspiegel learned that he could
be avenged if he sought and found the
Seven. Not knowing who the Seven were,
he left Nele to seek them. With him went
Lamme Goedzak, a fat buffoon seeking his
wife, who had left him because she had
been told by a monk to give up lusts of
the flesh and enter a nunnery. Lamme
drowned his grief in food and wine, but
the ashes of Claes burned against Ulen-
spiegel's heart. Knowing no peace, he
looked only for the Seven.
He and Lamme joined the army of
William of Orange, leader of the forces against
Philip and the Inquisition. They traveled
over many lands, sometimes alone and
sometimes with Prince William's troops.
Often they were in danger of death by
torture, but God protected them and kept
them safe. Several times Lamme or
Ulenspiegel caught glimpses of Lammes wife,
but Lamme could not catch up with her.
The two friends saw much blood spilled,
until they were weary of war and torture.
Still Ulenspiegel looked for the Seven.
Ulenspiegel served Orange well. In
spite of all resistance, however, Philip
conquered all of the Low Countries and
the people suffered and starved. When
Hans returned to Katheline for more
money, the mad woman, not knowing
what she did, accused him of witchery.
He was tortured and condemned to slow
death by fire. Katheline, too, was given a
witch's trial by water. Although she sank
to the bottom, proving her innocence, the
poor madwoman died three days later from
the chill and the shock.
Nele, now an orphan, left Flanders and
traveled to Holland. There she saved the
life of Ulenspiegel, who was on the
gallows for accusing his commander of false
promises. The two lovers were married.
Together they traveled with Lamme, who
continued to seek his wife. Still the
robbery and killings went on, and still
Ulenspiegel searched for the Seven who could
tel him how to avenge his family and save
Flanders. William of Orange began to
gain victories. Philip, enraged, demanded
more and more bloodshed.
Ulenspiegel was placed in command of
a ship, with Lamme for his cook. After a
battle in which Lamme was injured, they
brought on board a captive monk who was
fat and lustful. His torture was that he
must eat all that Lamme prepared for him,
seven times a day, and he must live in a
cage just big enough to enclose his great
bulk. Before Lamme could get the monk
fat enough to burst, Lamme's wound
reopened and in his delirious condition he
had to be tied to the ship so that he would
not fall into the sea.
One night Lamme's wife came aboard
the ship, treated his wound, and cured it.
He pursued her as she fled in her boat,
caught her, and heard her story. A monk,
the one whom Lamme had imprisoned in
a cage, had preached to her and ordered
her to give up lusts of the flesh and follow
him. In her innocence she had deserted
her husband and gone away with the
monk. Lamme feared that she had given
herself to the monk, but when he learned
that she had not, he took her again as his
wife. The two happy lovers left
Ulenspiegel and Nele and went to restore their
lost home.
After William of Orange lost his life,
his son carried on the battle for liberty
and the lowlands were soon freed. In a
vision Nele and Ulenspiegel saw at last
the Seven that were and the Seven that
should be, if their native land was to be
free. The Seven that were now were
Pride, Gluttony, Idleness, Avarice, Anger,
Envy, and Lust. In the vision Ulenspiegel
was told to burn the Seven. When he
burned them, they were reduced to ashes
2010

and blood ran. Then from Pride came
forth Noble Spirit; from Gluttony,
Appetite; from Idleness, Reverie; from
Avarice, Economy; from Anger, Vivacity;
from Envy, Emulation, and lastly from
Lust sprang forth Love. Then a mighty
hand hurled Nele into space and came
again and hurled Ulenspiegel into space
after her. Nele awoke from the vision, but
Ulenspiegel lay as one dead for two days
and two nights. When a priest passed by
on the way to a burial, he ordered a grave
dug that Ulenspiegel might be buried by
the church. But Ulenspiegel rose up from
the grave and threw off the dirt, for he
knew that his motherland was free at last.
The new Seven would be her salvation.
He knew, too, that Nele was the heart and
he was the spirit of the new Flanders, and
that they could never die.
2011

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER
Type of work: Epistolary essays
Author: Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecaeur CI735-1813)
First published: London, 1782; Philadelphia, 1793
When, in 1759, Voltaire published his
Candide, Crevecceur was already
planning to cultivate his garden, hewn out of
the Pennsylvania frontier. Like Voltaire's
naive hero, he had seen too much of the
horrors of the civilized world and was
more than ready to retire to his bucolic
paradise, where for nineteen years he
lived in peace and happiness until the
civilized world routed him and his family
with the outbreak of the American
Revolution. The twelve essays that make up
his Letters from an American Farmer are
the crude, occasionally eloquent,
testimony of a man trying desperately to
convince himself and his readers that it was
possible to live the idealized life
advocated by Rousseau.
With a becoming modesty, appropriate
to a man who had learned English at
sixteen, Crevecceur begins with a confession
of his literary inadequacy and decides
simply to write down what he would say.
But his style is not smoothly colloquial.
Except in a few passages in which
conviction generates enthusiasm, one senses
the strain of the unlettered man wielding
an unfamiliar pen. The opening letter
presents the central theme quite clearly:
the decadence of European civilization
makes the American frontier one of the
great hopes for a regeneration of
mankind. He wonders why men travel to
Italy to "amuse themselves in viewing the
ruins of temples . . . half-ruined
amphitheatres and the putrid fevers of the
Campania must fill the mind with most
melancholy reflections." By contrast, he
delights in the humble rudiments and
embryos of societies spreading everywhere
in the colonies, men converting large
forests into pleasing fields and creating
thirteen provinces of easy subsistence and
political harmony. He has his interlocutor
say of him, "Your mind is ... a Tabula
rasa where spontaneous and strong
impressions are delineated with felicity/'
Similarly, he sees the American
continent as a clean slate on which men can
inscribe a new society and the good life.
It may be said that Crevecceur is a
Lockian gone romantic, but retaining just
enough practical good sense to see that
reality is not rosy. "Men are like plants;"
he says, "the goodness and flavour of the
fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and
exposition in which they grow."
The first image Crevecceur presents is
perhaps a bit too idyllic for modern taste.
He dandles his little boy on the plow
as his wife sits at the edge of the field
knitting and praising the straightness of
the furrows, while birds fill the air with
summer melodies. "Who can listen
unmoved to the sweet love tales of our
robins told from tree to tree?"
Nevertheless, this is the testimony of a man
who for nineteen years actually lived at
the edge of the wilderness, three
hundred miles from the Atlantic. He was no
Thoreau at Walden Pond within easy
walking distance of friends, family, and
a highly developed New England culture
at Concord. He was, instead, a
responsible man, who cleared 371 acres of
virgin land and raised enough crops and
animals to provide for his family, Negro
hands, and all peaceful strangers who
chanced to appear at his door. Also
unlike Thoreau (with whom he inevitably
invites comparison), he was acutely
aware of his social responsibilities and
enormously proud of the superior way in
which they could be fulfilled in the New
World. No doubt it was the third epistle,
"What Is An American?" that caught the
attention of Benjamin Franklin and the
Europeans of the Age of Enlightenment:
[America] is not composed, as in
Europe, of great lords who possess every-
2012

thing, and of a herd of people who
have nothing. Here are no aristocratical
families, no courts, no kings, no
bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no
invisible power giving to a few a very
visible one; no great manufacturers
employing thousands, no great refinements
of luxury. The rich and the poor are
not so far removed from each other as
they are in Europe. . . . We are the
most perfect society now existing in the
world.
Enthusiastic as this description is, it is
not as extravagant as it might be; Creve-
cceur does not claim that the colonies had
founded the best of all possible worlds.
He is, for example, acutely aware of the
paradox that religious influence gradually
declines as one goes west; instead of
liberating men, it reduces them to a
perfect state of war, man against man. Yet
he rejoices that there are almost no
concentrated religious sects preying upon
each other: "Zeal in Europe is confined
... a grain of powder enclosed; here it
burns away in the open air, and
consumes without effect."
Furthermore, not every man succeeds
after arriving in the New World—only
the sober, the honest, the industrious. In
his "History of Andrew, the Hebridean,"
Crevecceur presents a case history of the
Horatio Alger hero in primitive America,
the story of a simple illiterate Scotchman
who after four years of sweat and toil
became a prospering freeholder. Franklin
had occasion to caution his friends in
France that Crevecceur's was a highly
colored account.
Part of the coloring is contributed by
the pervasive nature imagery. The
freedom and beauty of birds seem to
symbolize the condition man might achieve
when he immerses himself in nature.
Crevecceur describes hours spent in quiet
admiration of the hummingbirds, tells
regretfully of shooting a kingbird to rescue
bees (of 171 removed from its craw, 54
returned to life), describes the feeding
and care of quail in the winter. Insects,
too, fascinated him; he kept a hornet's
nest in the house. The letter on rattlers
and copperheads is as horrendous and
awesome as anything in Bartram. Here
Crevecceur tells of copperheads enticing
birds by the power of their eyes, of a
defanged rattler trained as a pet, of a
pair of snakes in mortal combat. Most
curious of all is the account of a farmer
who kicked away a snake that had thrust
its fangs into his boot. After pulling off
his boots that night, he suddenly became
violently ill, writhed horribly, and d ed.
His son, inheriting the boots, suffered
the same fate. A neighbor, next in
succession, almost died, too, but was saved
when a shrewd doctor located the poison-
filled fangs stuck in the boot. Crevecceur
in these passages reveals an exciting
narrative power.
Apart from the agricultural life inland,
Crevecceur praises most the industry and
sobriety of the coastal fishing
communities at Nantucket and Martha's
Vineyard, where "perfect equanimity prevails."
At Nantucket (which, oddly, he locates
north of Boston), five thousand
prosperous people inhabited a place which in
Europe would have housed a few simple
fishermen. Their Yankee ingenuitv and
sound business sense had enabled them
to build—beginning with one whale boat
—a whaling fleet that ranged even to the
South Seas. And Martha's Vineyard was
already the "nurserv" of seamen for the
entire east coast. So detai*ed is
Crevecceur's description of the chase, the
ferocity of the whale's struggle, the
dangers from sharks and thrasher whales,
the processing of blubber into whale oil
—in short, the entire experience, that one
wonders how Melville could have
overlooked it in compiling the extracts in
Moby Dick (1851).
Crevecceur found Nantucket such a
model community that it contained only
one minister (a Presbyterian, for the
Quakers, much to Crevecceur's delight,
do not have special ministers), two
doctors, one lawyer (seldom employed), no
soldiers, no governors. "HapDv the peo-
2013

pie who are subject to so mild a
government; happy the government which has
to rule over such harmless and such
industrious subjects! ... I wish I had it
in my power to send the most persecuting
bigot I could find in to the whale
fisheries; in three or four years you would
find him a much more tractable man and
therefore a better Christian." But
colonial Nantucket was apparently not
perfect; the Quakers persisted in their un-
grammatical English, did not tolerate any
deviation from their sober customs and
homespun dress, sternly prohibited music,
singing, and dancing. "Such an island
... is not the place where gay
travellers should resort in order to enjoy the
variety of pleasures the irore splendid
towns of this continent afford." Creve-
coeur also reports, obviously misled by
some notorious gossip, that the women
were addicted to opium. "But," he
philosophizes, "where is the society perfectly
free from error and folly?"
Crevecceur's criticism is reserved for
the most European of American cities,
Charles-Town, "gayest in America . . .
centre of our beau monde." Lawyers,
planters, and merchants make up the
population, all addicted to dangerous
excesses of all kinds. At the heart of this
social conruption, Crevecceur finds the
brutal institution of slavery. He tells the
ho-rifying tale of his chance encounter
with a Negro who had been driven to
kill an overseer. As his punishment he
had been suspended from a tree in a cage
for two days. Vicious birds had already
plucked out his eyes and bared his
cheekbones. No sooner were the birds
dispersed than swarms of insects covered
him. The miserable man begged for water
and hoped it was poisoned. "Gracious
God!" cries Crevecceur, "to what end is
the introduction of so many beings into
[such] a mode of existence! ... Is there
then no superintending power who
conducts the mo^al operations of the world?"
Some of Crevecceur's faith is restored
by the spectacle of the humble, kind, and
generous aspect of William Bartram, the
Quaker botanist, whose Negroes were
salaried free men, workers on his
plantation, companions at his table, and
worshipers at the Friends' meeting house.
But the Letters from an American
farmer end in ominous tones of
impending tragedy. Unwilling to commit his
allegiance to either the British or the
colonists, Crevecceur finds it necessary to
flee: "Must I in order to be called a
faithful subject, coolly and philosophically say
it is necessary for the good of Britain that
my children's brains should be dashed
against the walls of the house in which
thev were reared; that my wife should be
stabbed and scalped before my face; that
I should be either murdered or
captivated?" To escape such a fate,
Crevecceur develops an intricate plan to take
his family to join an Indian settlement
in the uncultivated wilderness (a plan
which he never actually carried out). It
is, of course, tragically iconic that this
mild Frenchman's absolute certainty of
the blessings of life in the colonies should
be so violently shattered after nineteen
years of expending all his energies to
make a decent life possible. But it is also
ironically appropriate that his final im^
pulse is to immerse himself deeper into
nature by joining the Indians. Whatever
flaws it may have, Letters from an
American Farmer is the most sympathetic and
thoughtful of all eighteenth-century
analyses of frontier life and its shaping
influence on the emerging American
character.
2014

LETTERS FROM THE UNDERWORLD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski (1821-1881)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: St. Petersburg, Russia
First published: 1864
Principal characters;
The Narrator
Simonov, his acquaintance from school days
Zverkov, a young Russian officer
Liza, a prostitute
Critique:
Letters from the Underworld,
sometimes called also Notes from
Underground, is actually more than an extended
and bitter prose fiction. The first part
constitutes a philosophical statement; the
second part is the morbid illustration from
life of this statement. The "underworld"
of the title apparently is the depths of
degradation and humiliation to which the
too acutely conscious human being can
descend because of a perverse human
quality, a factor which, according to
Dostoevski, scientists will never neatly
label. This quality resists fruition,
completion, and whatever we tend to call the
normal state of happiness. Dostoevski's ar-
restingly paradoxical affirmation, in the
first part of this work, of the stupendous
force of individuality in human nature
may provide consolation for the present-
day man who feels that modern social
forces are molding him more and more
into an uncomfortable sameness with his
neighbors. The book was written after
Dostoevski's return from exile in Siberia.
It serves as an arrow to point the direction
of his later novels.
The Story:
The Narrator, addressing an imaginary
group of acquaintances, declared that
after many years of life as a rude and
spiteful government official, and after many
years as a recluse, he was not really bitter
in his heart. Something perverse in him,
his acute consciousness, had led him to
find pleasure in the pain of humiliating
experiences.
From experience, he advised against
intellectual acuteness. The intellectual,
when faced with revenge, surrounded
himself with a legion of doubts; then he
would crawl into his self-imposed rat's
nest and torture himself with petty spite.
The direct man, in wreaking revenge,
might with dispatch hit his head against a
wall, but he would accept the wall. But
the intellectual would not accept the wall.
Indeed, he would feel responsibility for
the presence of the wall.
The Narrator declared that he had
always had to feign taking offense and that
he had had, in the face of life's transiency,
to pretend to love. Life to him was a
colossal bore. He could never avenge wrongs
done him because the culprit, the culprit's
motives, and the very misdeed itself were
all phantoms in his doubting intellect.
Given another chance at life, he would
have chosen a career of complete laziness,
one in which he might have reveled
among good and beautiful things. He
declared that even if man knew absolutely
what things in life were to his best
advantage, he would perversely avoid these
things.
The Narrator advanced the idea that
man may be destined for creativeness, and
for this reason, conscious of his fate, he
perversely practiced destruction to in-
LETTERS FROM THE UNDERWORLD by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski. By permission of the
publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. From EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY. All rights reserved.
2015

dividuate himself. Perhaps man was
fearful of completion, of perfection; perhaps
he found final attainment distasteful: life
consisted in the attaining, not in the
attainment. He concluded his philosophical
soliloquy by pointing out that conscious
inertia was the ideal state. He
provocatively insisted that he did not believe a
word he had written, that he had written
only because the written word seemed
imposing and dignified. He was oppressed
by memories which were evoked by the
fall of snow outside.
At the age of twenty-four the Narrator
had an inchoate character. He talked to no
one. His intense self-consciousness caused
him to be vain at one moment and self-
loathing the next. He tried to look
intelligent and feared any eccentricity in
himself. This acute awareness of self made
him lonely, yet he felt superior to others.
He became a recluse. He read voraciously
and began to walk the streets at night.
One night he saw a man thrown out of
the window of a billiard parlor. In envy,
he went into the parlor in the hope that
he, too, might be thrown out. He was
humiliated when an officer shoved him
aside without noticing him. He returned
the next night, but, morally fearful that
all the fools in the parlor would jeer at his
being thrown out, he did not enter.
Dedicated to revenge, he followed the officer
about for months. He learned the officer's
name and wrote a satirical novel in which
the officer was the principal character.
The novel was rejected; its style was out
of date.
Two years passed. He wrote a letter
challenging the officer to a duel, but he
did not mail the letter. Instead, he began
to take regular walks along the river
promenade, where he reveled in his
resentment. One Sunday he was rudely
pushed aside by the officer. Maddened at
his weakness, he conceived the idea of not
giving way next time. He gloated over his
idea. He practiced pushing aside an
imaginary officer. His courage had failed him
once, but he finally stood his ground when
the officer tried again to push him aside.
Actually, the officer did not notice him at
all, but he was delirious with happiness
in having gained back his self-respect.
The Narrator now began to daydream.
In his fantasies, he brought beauty and
good to the world. During the fever pitch
of his dream life, feeling the need of
companionship, he visited his immediate
superior, Anton, and sat in silence with
Anton's family for hours.
He called on an old schoolmate,
Simonov, and found Simonov planning,
with two other old schoolmates, a farewell
dinner for Zverkov, a fellow student of
the direct, not too acutely-conscious type,
whom he hated. Zverkov, a wealthy man,
was successful in the army. The
Narrator, greeted coldly by his boyhood
acquaintances, invited himself to the dinner party.
The other young men agreed reluctantly;
he was obviously not a favorite with them.
Later he detested himself for consciously
having opened himself up to humiliation,
but secretly he rather enjoyed having
discomfited his companions.
The next day he dressed for the dinner
with doubt and misgiving. He wanted to
make a great impression; he wanted to
eclipse the popular Zverkov. Yet he knew
that he really did not want to do this
either. He arrived too early and was
humiliated by his wait. During the
dinner he antagonized everyone and drank
incontinently. Having thoroughly
degraded himself, he offered conciliation
and sought the love of his companions.
When he apologized to Zverkov for
insulting him, Zverkov humiliated him by
saying that such as he could not possibly
insult him. Filled with a wild,
unreasonable intention of slapping Zverkov and
fighting a duel with him, he followed the
others to a brothel.
Here, a young girl was brought into
the parlor to him; he was pleased with the
prospect of being repulsive to her. He
slept off his drunkenness, awoke, and
delivered a bookish, insincere sermon to
Liza, the prostitute, on the hazards of her
profession. He was attitudinizing and he
knew it to his shame. He told her of the
2016

importance of human love, something
about which he actually knew nothing.
Liza, to prove to him that she was not
entirely lost, showed him a love letter that
she had received from a young gentleman.
He gave her his address and left her.
The next day he regretted having given
Liza his address. He hated himself for his
insincerity with her; he feared her
coming. But she did not come. He imagined
an idyllic relationship between himself
and Liza. He would be her tutor and
would mold her into a perfect creature.
When Liza finally came, she was
confused by the wretched conditions in the
poor Narrator's rooms. She said that she
had left the brothel. Alarmed, he
confessed his insincerity and declared that he
had sought power over someone because
he himself had been humiliated. Liza
understood his inner turmoil and took him in
her arms.
Liza's intuition soon told her, however,
that he was despicable and that he was
incapable of love. After she left his rooms,
he ran after her to seek her forgiveness, but
he never saw her again. He derived some
consolation from the thought that her
resentment of him would give her pleasure
for the rest of her life.
2017

THE LETTERS OF WALPOLE
Type of work: Letters
Author: Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
Collected editions puhlished: Letters, edited by Peter Cunningham, 1857-1859 (9 vols.);
Letters, edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee, 1903-1905 (16 vols.); The Yale Edition of
Horace Walpole's Correspondence, edited by W. S. Lewis, 1937-continuing
No s'udent, not even a general reader,
interested in the eighteenth century and
its cuhure in England can afford to
overlook Horace Walpole and his works.
Walpole's life spanned eighty years of
that century, and the man himself
engaged in most of the activities of the
times in one way or another. His interes's
lay in many areas—political, literary,
artistic, antiquarian, horticultural,
architectural, and social. He was novelist,
playwright, historian, member of Parliament,
the son of a prime minisfer, an arbiter
of artistic excellence, a publisher, a
collector, and, amono other things, an
inveterate letter writer. It is anticipated
that the monumental collected edition of
the letters, the Yale edition now in
progress, will eventually reach a total of fifty
volumes.
In the realm of literature alone,
Walpole had an amazing record of production,
even for an age notorious for its prolific
writers. Walpole wrote a novel, a
comedy, a tragedy, some poetry, memoirs of
the eighteenth-century Hanoverian kings
of England, a volume on the career of the
infamous Richard III, a catalogue of
royal and noble English authors, a work
on painting in England, and other
writings. Although his novel, The Caslle of
Otranto, has always had some vogue, his
letters have received more attention in the
past hundred years. Walpole would
probably approve, for he himself said that
letters were the best key to the history of an
age. Indeed, it seems that he wrote his
correspondence with posterity in mind
and according to something resembling a
plan. That the letters have had continued
popularity is due to their intrinsic worth,
as well as their historical significance.
Walpole had a pleasant style, and it must
have been a pleasure to have been a
recipient of h's letters, as Horace Mann
was, for example, over a period of more
than fortv years.
The language of Walpole's letters
seems modern, for the idiom is attractive
and anything but dated. And they are
never boring. One reason for their effect
is the fact that the letters are seldom
about the author himself. Walpole wrote,
rather, about the world, its main outlines
as he knew them and its details as he
observed them. He saw the world in its
larger relationships, but he also had an
eve and mind that were cognizant of
little things. A chronic victim of the gout
in later life, he seldom used his letters
to indulge in self-pity. Though a
thoughtful man, he did not inject into the letters
a mass of subjective philosophizing;
though an active man, he did not
expatiate upon his activities from a
personal point of view. There is always a
conversational tone to the letters. They
read much the same way that an
eighteenth-century salon conversation probably
sounded. Occasional improprieties, slight
bursts of anger, the gossip, the wit, even
the diction, are those which one probably
would have heard among the well-bred
people with whom Walpole was familiar.
The subject matter of the letters is
almost universal, though centered in the
strata of the world that Walpole knew,
the world of the Whig aristocracy of
eighteenth-century England, a gay,
intelligent, if somewhat superficial world
from the twentieth-century viewpoint.
Certain letters have achieved eminence
above others. In the main, they are those
letters frequently referred to as "set
pieces." They include the letters
describing the trial of rebellious Jacobite
peers, after the abortive revolution of
1745, of which Walpole gives an almost
2018

day-to-day account. They include a
description of the executions, which
Walpole apparently did not witness, of Bal-
merino and Lord Kilmarnock. Two
funerals are also famous in Walpole's
correspondence: one the funeral of
George II of England, the other the
funeral in Paris of the Duke de Tresmes,
governor of Paris and a marshal of
France.
While the "set pieces" have their
place, it is the very bulk and scope of
subject matter that is most important
in Walpole's letters, a bulk which is
impossible merely to catalogue, for
somewhere in the letters Walpole seems to
have hit upon almost every subject
significant (and some not so significant)
in his time. Highwaymen, prisons,
slavery, Strawberry Hill, the ins and outs of
politics, London gossip, dueling,
Benjamin Franklin, George Washington,
General Howe and his army, marriages,
divorces, masquerades, dinner parties, the
weather (usual and unusual), balloons,
Captain Cook's voyages, sea-bathing, the
French Revolution—all these and many
more are to be found as subjects in the
letters. Some readers may argue that the
correspondence is too large in bulk and
too slightly organized, but perhaps those
supposed weaknesses are the very strength
of the Letters. Plato wrote his philosophy
in the form of dialogues so that the reader
would have to participate and learn
actively; in somewhat similar fashion the
reader of Walpole's letters must in a
sense participate in the writer's account
of eighteenth-century life, filling in the
larger outline from the smaller items
presented.
Walpole's purposes in writing the
letters now seems clear. He was reporting
the age to selected friends, many of
whom were recipients of his letters for
many years. At the same time Walpole
seems to have been careful to write so
that a larger audience might eventually
appreciate what he wrote. He lived in an
age when letter writing was decidedly an
art, and yet the polish of his letters, the
careful selection of details, and the
superb control of the prose rhythms in many
of them indicate that extraordinary care
was lavished upon his correspondence, so
that it became in Walpole's mind the best
means for presenting a history of his time,
being immediate, flexible, and open to
varying levels of formality and tone. The
letters were written in the main to
selected people, a circumstance which
made it easier for him to write what he
did and as he did. And scholars have
pointed out, in a sense Walpole's
correspondence substituted space for time. The
largest number of letters went to Horace
Mann, British envoy at Florence.
Writing to a man he met but once, a man who
lived at considerable distance, culturally
as well as geographically, Walpole had a
fine recipient for letters containing what
may be termed the main strand of his
social history.
In the letters to Mann, the outlines of
the social history could be given, while
specific areas of interest could be, and
apparently were, allotted to other
recipients of portions of the correspondence.
The various friends who received large
numbers of Walpole's letters were each
written to from a somewhat different
viewpoint. Thomas Gray, the poet, a
lifelong friend of Walpole (despite
occasional differences), received letters on
matters of artistic and antiquarian
interest. When Gray died, the man who
became his biographer, the Reverend
William Mason, became the recipient, so
that the thread was not broken. Lady
Ossory received letters containing gossip,
especially after the death of George
Montagu, who had for some years been a
Walpole correspondent.
Although there is a certain element of
satire in the letters, Walpole was almost
never bitter. He had the well-bred man's
ability to see the humor and the absurdity
in human conduct without having to
regard foolishness as wickedness. For
more than fifty years Walpole recorded
2019

what he saw, and in such a manner that
the reader feels the immediacy of what
happened long ago. On the scene
himself at the time, Walpole was able to
write for the modern reader, as well as
for the eighteenth-century recipients of
the correspondence, and in such fashion
that the glow of reality lights up the
history.
2020

LETTERS TO HIS SON
Type of work: Courtesy letters
Author: Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)
First published: 1774
On the periphery of literature exists a
valuable and fascinating genre, the
personal letter which, like the private diary,
reveals a man and an age far more
intimately than any other form of writing.
Probably no era practiced the epistolary
art more widely than the eighteenth
century and no man more skillfullv than the
fourth Earl of Chesterfield. Though the
good earl had served his country unim-
peachably as a member of Parliament,
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and
ambassador to Holland, and though his name
designates an overcoat and a couch, it is
generally conceded that Lord
Chesterfield would have remained an
inconspicuous figure in the eighteenth-century
historical scene had it not been for the
unintended publication of some four
hundred letters to his illegitimate son, Philip
Stanhope. No doubt the very fact that
these letters were strictly private,
intended to develop the education and
manners of a young man who was expected
to take a significant place in government
and cultivated society, endows them with
a frankness and honesty that betrays the
cultivated self-seeking and the
hypocritical morality of the upper-class society of
the time. Eugenia Stanhope, whose
secret marriage with young Philip was only
one of the many disappointments Lord
Chesterfield suffered at the hands of his
intractable son, was so incensed at being
excluded from the earl's will that against
the family's wishes she sold the Letters
to Dodsley for £1,575, thus infuriating
English society and securing for Lord
Chesterfield minor but recognized
importance in the history of English prose.
The early letters are charmingly
didactic essays addressed to a pre-adolescent
mind, expected to become "not only the
best scholar but the best bred boy in
England of your age." "Dear boy," they all
begin, and then proceed to shape little
lessons on language, literature, geography,
history, and good manners. They
conclude with admonitions to obey Maittaire,
his seventy-year-old tutor, and promises
of "very pretty things" to reward him for
industrious study. There is irony in Lord
Chesterfield's explanation of
irony—"Suppose that I were to commend you for your
great attention to your book, and for your
retaining and remembering what you
have once learned; would you not plainly
perceive the irony, and see that I laughed
at you?" Reasons for such laughter were
to come, but it was never bitter or
audible ("there is nothing so illiberal, and
so ill-bred as audible laughter"). Lord
Chesterfield's optimism and faith in
rationalism may have diminished somewhat,
but it was never extinguished completely.
After his failure in making an
outstanding figure of young Philip, in 1761 he
began the whole process over again with
his godson, to whom he wrote almost
three hundred letters in a decade.
It is not the early letters to his son but
the later ones—addressed to "My Dear
Friend"—that have aroused controversy.
A strong believer in Locke's educational
theory that a man's mind is wax to be
molded into shape by environmental
influences, Lord Chesterfield sent his son
at fourteen not to a university but on the
grand tour accompanied by a new tutor,
the Reverend Walter Harte, supplied with
letters of introduction into the highest
social circles of great European cities, spied
upon by the earl's agents, and pursued
by affectionate but earnest epistles from
an anxious father. How earnest they were
can be gauged from this excerpt written
to Lausanne in 1746: "I do not so much
as hint to you how absolutely dependent
you are on me; and that, as I have no
womanish weakness for your person, your
merit must and will be the only measure
of my kindness." Nevertheless, it would
2021

be unfair to observe that even if the
father never displayed warmth, love, or
understanding, his kindness far exceeded
the boy's merit.
The controversy concerns Lord
Chesterfield's realistic observations on those
aspects of life that he constantly urges his
son to explore:
Search, therefore, with the greatest
care, into the characters of those whom
you converse with; endeavor to discover
their predominant passions, their
prevailing weaknesses, their vanities, their
follies, and their humours, with all the
right and wrong, wise and silly springs
of human actions, which make such
inconsistent and whimsical beings of us
rational creatures. . . . This is the true
knowledge of the world; and the world
is a country which nobody ever yet
knew by description; one must travel
through it oneself to be acquainted with
it.
Having well-traveled that country,
Lord Chesterfield could advise his son
with a somewhat cynical sophistication.
A man who never knew love and who
married for a dowry that would repair
his fortunes, he wrote: "Women are
merely children of a larger growth. . . .
A man of sense only trifles with them
.... They will greedily swallow the
highest [flattery], and gratefully accept
the lowest . . . [but] They have, from
the weakness of men, more or less
influence in all courts. It is therefore necessary
to manage, please and flatter them." It is
this worldly self-interest that constitutes
the dominant tone of the letters,
"without some dissimulation no business can
be carried on at all." There was no trace
of mysticism or sentimentality about him;
"religion must still be allowed to be a
collateral security, at least, to Virtue."
But virtue, apparently, was not an end
in itself. Rather, it was a means to worldly
success, a dependable means, if Lord
Chesterfield's own career based on
honesty and integrity is any measure.
Nevertheless, worldly success was the goal and
though "learning, honour, and virtue are
absolutely necessary to gain you the
esteem and admiration of mankind,
politeness and good breeding are equally
necessary to make you welcome and agreeable
in conversation and common life."
Elsewhere he urges his son to be neat and
clean, to avoid obesity, to care for his
teeth, and never under any circumstances
to stick his finger into his nose.
The ultimate purpose was that young
Stanhope should become—at the very
least—a successful diplomat; but the
principal objective of that occupation was "to
get into the secrets of the court at which
he resides" through any means including
flattery or intimacy with a king's or
minister's mistresses.
On the Continent, publication of the
Letters was met with acclaim, their
greatest admirer probably being Lord
Chesterfield's old friend Voltaire: "I am not
certain that it is not the best book on
education which has ever been written." But
in England the reaction was sternly
condemnatory, even virulent. One periodical
declared that as a man, he was "certainly
solely actuated by pride, vanity, and
ambition," and in her own letters Mrs.
Montagu expressed her belief that "tho'
many admired, no one ever esteem'd Lord
Chesterfield."
2022

LEVIATHAN
Type of work: Philosophy of politics
Author: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
First published: 1651
To appreciate the range of Hobbes*
subject matter in the Leviathan one may
first consider the entire title: Leviathan,
or the Matter, Form, and Power of a
Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil.
In considering the "matter, form, and
power" of the commonwealth, or state,
Hobbes was doing far more than
describing governments as he found them.
His goal was to explain the origin of
political institutions and to define their
powers and right limits. To this end he
thought it necessary to draw an analogy
between the art of nature, productive of
man, and the art of man, productive of
the commonwealth. In drawing the
analogy he first explained man himself, giving
to the description a thoroughly
mechanistic bias. He then proceeded to explain
the state as man's artful creation,
designed to put an end to the war of all
against all.
The state, "that great Leviathan,'* is
but an "Artificial Man," wrote Hobbes.
The sovereign is an artificial soul, the
officers of the state are artificial joints,
reward and punishment are nerves,
wealth and riches are strength; the
people's safety is the business of the artificial
man; the laws are its reason and will;
concord, its health; sedition, its sickness;
and civil war, its death.
All of men's ideas originate in sense,
according to Hobbes—that is, they are
derived From sense impressions. All
sensation is a result of external bodies
pressing upon the sense organs. Imagination
is "nothing but decaying sense" the
effect of sense impressions after the
external body has ceased to press upon the
o-gans. If we want to emphasize the past
cause of the impression, we call the
fading image a "memory" image; but if
We want to emphasize the image as one
not now related to any present cause,
we call it "fancy" or "imagination."
Hobbes was led by his mechanistic
psychology to deny content to such a
term as "infinite." He argued that when
we say sonething is infinite we merely
show that we cannot conceive its
boundaries. Consequently, such a term as
"God" is used not to conceive any being,
but only to honor something
incomprehensible.
Common names, such as "man,"
"horse," and "tree" may be applied to
a number of individual things, yet there
is nothing universal but names. In
making this claim Hobbes was denying the
Platonic belief that individual objects
share a certain common character, or
universal, in virtue of which they are
similar. According to Hobbes, then,
reasoning is simply the manipulation—
the addition and subtraction—of names.
The passions are the "interior
beginnings of voluntary motions," writes
Hobbes. Since he argued that everything
can be understood in terms of bodies in
motion, it is not surprising that even the
emotions are simply notions inside the
body. Motion toward something is
desire; motion away, aversion. In terms of
these two basic motions Hobbes defined
the other passions.
After considering the intellectual
virtues and defects, the two kinds of
knowledge (knowledge of observed fact, and
the conditional knowledge of science),
and the powers and manners of men,
Hobbes turned his analytical mind to
religion. Religion, he writes, is man's
invention, the result of his ignorance and
fear. Religious power and dogma are used
to serve the interests of the priests. It is
not surprising that, with these views,
Hobbes was constantly in trouble both
at home and abroad.
When Hobbes finally comes to the

point of declaring that men are by nature
equal, he does so with no tone of
ringing idealism. He means only that the
differences between men are not so
marked as the similarities, and he means
also that there is no natural sanction for
one man's assuming authority over
another. Because men are similar, they
sometimes come to desire the same thing;
and if they cannot both enjoy the object
of their desire, they become enemies and
war over the object. There are three
principal causes of fights between men:
competition, diffidence, and glory. While
men have no common power over them
to keep them all in check, they are in
"that condition which is called Warre;
and such a warre, as is of every man,
against every man/' There are many
inconveniences to war, and the fact that
in a state of war there is no injustice
(since there is no natural law governing
action) in no way makes that state of
affairs satisfactory. In order to secure
peace men enter upon certain
agreements by which they bring about a
transferring of rights. It is possible for men to
make such agreements, or contracts,
because they have certain natural rights to
use their power however they choose in
order to preserve themselves.
Having discussed men, their nature,
and their rights, Hobbes argued, in the
second part of Leviathan, that the
commonwealth is brought into being in order
to enable men to escape from the state of
war. Loving liberty and dominion over
others, men agree to make some person
sovereign over them all to work for their
peace and benefit. The sovereign is not
bound by the contract or covenant; the
contract is among those who are to be
ruled. If the ruler turns out to be a
despot, it must be remembered that it is
better to be ruled in a commonwealth
than to be in a state of nature and,
consequently, a continual state of war.
Hobbes considers three kinds of
commonwealth: monarchy, democracy, and
aristocracy, the latter being ruled by an
assembly of part of the commonwealth.
There are certain advantages to the mo-
narchial form of government, according to
Hobbes: a monarch combines the private
and public interest; he is better able to
consult with men who have knowledge
he needs; the only inconstancy the
monarch has to put up with is his own; he
cannot disagree with himself; and
although it is sometimes inconvenient to
have power vested in one man,
particularly when the monarch may be an
infant because of succession, the
disadvantages are no greater than they are in
other forms of government.
The subjects in a commonwealth are
not entirely subject to the sovereign.
The basic principle is that they cannot
be compelled to act against that natural
inclination toward self-preservation which
the commonwealth is supposed to serve.
They cannot be bound to injure
themselves or to wage war—although this is a
dubious right since the sovereign is free
to imprison or execute them for
disobedience. If the sovereign is not able to
protect his subjects, the subjects are
absolved of obedience to him.
The civil law of a commonwealth is
made up of all those rules which
prescribe what is right and wrong for the
subjects; and since the commonwealth
itself is no lawmaker, the sovereign must
be the legislator. He is not subject to
civil law, and only he can abrogate the
law. Since an undeclared law is no law
at all, and since law is not binding
unless it is clearly commanded by the
sovereign, the sovereign must make the law
known and understood, and he must see
to it that it be known as his law. The
only laws that need not be published are
laws of nature, and they can be
contained in one sentence: "Do not that to
another, which thou thinkest
unreasonable to be done by another to thy selfe."
Hobbes regarded crime as resulting
from some defect of the understanding,
or from some error of reasoning, or from
some force of the passions. He declares
that "No law, made after a Fact done,
can make it a Crime," and that although
2024

ignorance of natural law is no excuse,
ignorance of civil law may excuse a man
provided he had not the opportunity to
hear the law declared. Punishment is not
fundamentally retributive in Hobbes*
scheme: "A Punishment, is an Evill
inflicted by publique Authority, on him
that hath done, or omitted that which is
Judged by the same Authority, to be a
Transgression of the Law; to the end that
the will of men may thereby the better be
disposed to obedience."
Like anything made by men, a
commonwealth can perish. Its infirmities
result from what Hobbes calls an
"Imperfect Institution"—errors in the
creation of the commonwealth. Perhaps the
sovereign is not given enough power, or
every man is allowed to be a judge, or
conscience is authoritative in moral
judgment, or supernatural inspiration is given
precedence over reason, or the sovereign
is held to be subject to civil law, or it is
supposed that every man has some
absolute property which the sovereign
cannot touch, or it is supposed that sovereign
power can be divided. Other difficulties,
such as the lack of money, the presence
of monopolies and corrupt politicians, the
popularity of certain subjects, the
greatness of a town, or the invasion by a
foreign power can lead to the dissolution
of the commonwealth.
Part III of Leviathan is concerned
with showing the relations between a
Christian commonwealth and
commonwealths in general. Hobbes uses
hundreds of Biblical references, as
interpreted by him, to support his conclusion
that it is possible to reconcile our
obedience to God with our obedience to a
civil sovereign, for the sovereign is either
a Christian or he is not. If he is a
Christian, then, even if he may sometimes err
in supposing that some act is God's will,
the proper thing for the subject, who has
no right to judge, is to obey. If the
sovereign is an infidel, then the subject
must obey because the law of nature
justifies the sovereign's power in a
commonwealth, and to disobey would be to
disobey the laws of nature which are the
laws of God. No church leader, even a
Pope, can rule the sovereign; and this
situation is not contrary to God's law, for
the Church works through civil
government.
The concluding section, "Of the King-
dome of Darknesse," argues that spiritual
darkness has not been completely
eliminated from the Church—by which
Hobbes means the Church of Rome. His
principal attack on the Church of Rome
is based on his claim that the Scripture
is misinterpreted in order to justify the
assumption of temporal power by the
Popes.
Although Hobbes maintains that his
entire argument is based upon a study of
nature and of man's natural inclinations,
it is clear that a large part of his
discourse is an expression of his own
preference for absolute monarchy. On this
account he tends to overlook the possibility
of restraining the power of a sovereign
by democratic procedures. Nevertheless,
the Leviathan is a remarkable attempt to
explain and justify the institution of
government, and it remains one of the
masterpieces of political thought.
2025

LIBER AMORIS
Type of wtrk: An autobiographical account of a love affair
Author: William Hazlitt 0778-1830)
Time: 1820 1822
Locale: London and Scotland
First published: 1823
Principal personages:
H. (William Hazlitt), the lover, a writer
S. (Sarah Walked), the beloved
M. W. (Micaiah Walker), her father, a landlord and tradesman
C. P. (Peter George Patmore), Hazlitt's friend
J. S. K. (James Sheridan Knowles), another of Hazlitt's friends
Since William Hazlitt was a writer, it
was not enough that he found himself
passionately attracted to his landlord's
daughter; he had to write about it. Liber
Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion
appeared in 1823, slightly disguised by
initials in place of names, as the
anonymous account of a writer's foolish
passion; but it was not long before the
secret was out. A reviewer for John Bull
claimed that the review in the Times,
favo-able to the book, had been written
by Hazlitt himself, and an effort was
made to picture the girl of the account as
a young, innocent child and Hazlitt as
an "impotent sensualist."
The fact is that Liber Amoris was
properly subtitled The New Pygmalion, for
Hazlitt allowed his quite natural passion
for an attractive and compliant young
lady to lead him into flights of creative
imagination whereby he sought to give
her traits of character and depth of
feeling to match her physical charms. His
conversations with the landlord's
daughter, delightfully transcribed at the
beginning of the work, show Hazlitt to
have been as much dazzled by his own
literary facility in expressing her charms
as he was with the charmer herself,
seated upon his lap day after day and
returning his kisses. By the end of the
affair, after he had discovered that she
was no more than a flirt—and not an
innocent one at that—what* impressed him
most of all was that she was not what
she had seemed. What she seemed to be
is what, in his writer's imagination, he
made her; and what he discovered, when
he realized her true nature, was that
reality does not bother to copy the images
of poets, even when they write a Liber
Amoris.
The Pygmalion theme is never
explicitly developed in the hook, but
Hazlitt speaks of Sarah as "the statue." In
the first of his letters to C. P., Esq.
written from Scotland, Hazlitt wrote in a
footnote, "I have begun a book of our
conversations (I mean mine and the
statue's) which I call Liber Amoris."
Later, in Letter XIII, the next to last
letter of Part II of the Liber Amoris, he
wrote to Patmore again concerning Sarah:
"Since I wrote to you about making a
formal proposal, I have had her face
constantly before me, looking so like some
faultless marble statue, as cold, as fixed
and graceful as ever statue did. . . ."
The book begins with a series of
conversations, apparently the result of
Hazlitt's attempt to re-create the substance
and feeling of amatory moments spent
with Sarah. Then a series of letters to
Patmore carry the narrative forward,
telling of Hazlitt's hopes and doubts while
in Scotland awaiting a divorce from his
wife. The book closes with some letters
to J. S. K. which, unlike the letters to
Patmore, were never actually sent but
were composed to complete the book.
Hazlitt became acquainted with Sarah
Walker after his separation from his wife.
Sarah, the second daughter of his
landlord, Micaiah Walker, a tailor, was in
her late teens when he met her. Ac-
2026

cording to the Liber Amoris account,
Sarah let him kiss her the first time they
met, and during the first week of their
acquaintance she sat upon his knee, and,
in his words to her, "twined your arms
round me, caressed me with every
mark of tenderness consistent with
modesty. . . ."
Later Hazlitt was to tell her father that
Sarah had made a habit of sitting on his
knee and kissing him. The father had
supposed that the occasion upon which
he had surprised the two lovers together
was perhaps the only time such a thing
occurred, but Hazlitt, trying to win
sympathy for himself when he could not
convince Sarah to marry him, assured Walker
that "It was a constant habit; it has
happened a hundred times since, and a
thousand before. I lived on her caresses as
my daily food, nor can I live without
them."
The conversations are convincing and
lively, more self-revealing than Hazlitt
probably supposed. They show a man
convinced of his ability to charm with
language one whom he had so often kept
busy with embraces. By the brief
answers which Sarah gives we can guess
that she found him something of a
chatterbox and wished that he would pay
more attention to the physical side of
love and less to the spiritual and literary
aspects of the experience.
For Hazlitt the overwhelming problem
of his affair with Sarah was how to
reconcile their hours of intimacy with her
refusal to marry him or, at least, to live
with him "in friendship." He asks her
for an answer; he asks his friends; he
asks her mother and father. But Sarah
had the answer all along, only he lacked
the ability to recognize its truth: "I told
you my regard could amount to no more
than friendship." Of course, it was the
friendship of a healthy girl who enjoyed
nothing more than being fondled by the
lodgers in her father's house; but Hazlitt
had the conventional notion that a girl
who seems innocent and demure makes
love only because she wishes to signify
an intention to accept a proposal of
marriage.
The course of the affair is simply told.
Hazlitt met the tailor's daughter, kissed
her on their first meeting, and held her
on his lap. The entertainment continued
for hundreds of performances. Hazlitt, as
a writer, spent a good part of the time
expressing his love in elaborate, literary
ways which, for the most part, Sarah
failed to appreciate. He kept making the
effort to win from her a declaration of
love to match his own, but she insisted
that he could never be mo~e than a
friend to her. He gave her various books,
including several he had written—and a
small bronze figure of Napoleon which
she treasured because it reminded her of
a man she had cared for, a nobleman who
considered the social distance between
himself and Sarah too great to be
overcome.
After Hazlitt went to Scotland to
await a divorce from his wife, he wrote
entreating letters to Sarah which were
either not answered or were answered
perfunctorily. His doubts and hopes were
expressed at great length in letters to his
friend Patmore.
Upon returning to London, after the
divorce, Hazlitt again tried to persuade
Sarah to marry him; but on the
pretext that he had insulted her in a quarrel
before his journey, when he had
suggested vaguely that she was easy in her
favors, she not only refused to marry
him but returned the books and the
statuette, which he promptly smashed.
He finally discovered that she was
playing the same game with another
gentleman, C , and that she had been
doing so during the very period when he
thought he had her embraces to himself
alone. His final opinion of her,
contrasting with the image of her as she
seemed to be, was that she was "a
practiced, callous jilt, a regular lodging-house
decoy, played off by her mother upon the
lodgers, one after another, applying them
to her different purposes, laughing at
them in turns, and herself the probable
2027

dupe and victim of some gallant in the
end."
Despite Hazlitt's literary flights shown
in both the conversations and the letters,
Liber Amoris is a convincing and
compelling account of an ordinary love
affair. The style is mannered, in the fashion
of a time when literary elaboration of
ordinary passion was as much a sport as
holding the landlord's daughter on one's
knee. Yet beneath the poetry and the
banter there is something of the English
spirit and attitude which gives a dignity
to what would otherwise be too trivial
to be worth writing about, whatever the
joys and pains of the participants. Haz-
litt shows himself to be a divided man,
wordly enough to realize that the girl,
for all her demureness, allowed him
liberties which she could not have allowed
were she all she seemed to be, yet
romantic enough and idealistic enough to
suppose that somehow the fault was in
himself and that all he had to do was
to make himself worthy of her love and
esteem. In this division of self Hazlitt
shows himself to be the romantic
Englishman—cynical and hopeful at the same
time.
It is not enough to say that the
portrait of Hazlitt and his "statue" is
convincing and typical. Considered as a
piece of literary work, Liber Amoris is
remarkable in that it sustains interest
with material so slight. What accounts
for Hazlitt's success is the spirit of the
piece; it is amusing, lively, sophisticated,
and revealing of human foibles—all at
once. It is a minor piece, and perhaps it
is better to remember Hazlitt as a critical
essayist; but it is from such minor pieces
that English literature acquires its
distinctive flavor and enduring charm.
2028

LIEH KUO CHIH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Feng Meng-lung (1574M645?)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 770-220 B.C.
Locale: China
First published: Probably early seventeenth century
Principal personages:
K;ng Yu, the last king of the Western Chou dynasty
King P'ing, the first king of the Eastern Chou dynasty
Duke Huan of Ch'i, the first overlord
Kuan Chung, a philosopher and statesman
Duke Wen of Chin, an overlord
King Chuan of Ch'u, an overlord
Duke Hsiao of Ch'in, a powerful feudal lord
Shang Yang, a statesman and political reformer
Su Ch'in, a diplomat
Chang I, a diplomat
Ching K'o, an assassin
Shih-huang-ti, "The First Emperor" of Ch'in, a tyrant
Critique:
A popularized history, based entirely
on Chinese classics, the Lieh Kuo Chih
or Tung Chou Lieh Kuo Chih
(Chronicles of Divers Feudal States under the
Eastern Chou Dynasty*) contains no
fictitious figures. Its dramatis personae are
numerous, including almost all the kings,
princes, feudal lords, heroes, and villains
throughout China from the early eighth
century to the end of the third century
B.C. This period of 550 years is probably
the most important in Chinese history.
We see how feudalism flourished, how
the seven "contending kingdoms" fought
bloody wars, and how China was
reunified under the tyrant Ch'in Shih-huang.
Much of the political institutions and
strategic ideas of the succeeding
centuries had their origins in the statesmen
and generals of this period, just as Lao-
tzu, Confucius, and leaders of other
schools, all of whom appear in the text,
marked the beginnings of systematic
philosophical thought in China. Side by side
with the shocking accounts of political
assassination, incest, and massacre, heroic
actions and noble deeds are recounted,
to be remembered by posterity as the
supreme lessons of practical morality. The
classic version of this novel is credited
to Feng Meng-lung, a prolific anthologist
who edited and rewrote earlier fiction
and drama, interspersing them with
original work of his own.
The Story:
For hundreds of years the kings of
Chou ruled China. King Yu-wang (781-
771 B.C.) had a beautiful concubine
whom he loved dearly. But the girl
always looked depressed. The king would
pay any price to make her smile. One
day he lighted the fire beacon, a signal
to announce the approach of an enemy.
As the feudal lords with their troops
hurried to the rescue, they found the
king drinking with his concubine. They
were forced to lead their troops back. The
concubine enjoyed the practical joke so
much that for the first time she gave a
hearty laugh.
The Marquis of Shen, father of the
lawful queen, resented the treatment of
his daughter and grandson by the king,
and he allied himself with the barbarians.
Together they marched on the capital.
The fire beacon was again lighted, but
this time no rescuing troops appeared.
King Yu-wang was killed and the
beautiful concubine carried away by the bar-
2029

barians.
The capital was also sacked and
destroyed. When the heir-apparent, P'ing-
Wang, was raised to the throne, he moved
the government to Loyang, a city to the
east. This was the beginning of the
Eastern Chou dynasty (770 B.C.). From
that time on, the royal house was
weakened, and several feudal states rose to
unprecedented power. The territory in
the west, the present province of Shensi,
was given up to the State of Ch'in, which
gradually aggrandized itself as a result
of the conquest of the neighboring tribes
of barbarians, and became the force to
reunify China centuries later.
The first feudal lord to attain to
imperial importance was Duke Huan of
Ch'i (685-643 B.C.) who occupied the
northeast of the present province of
Shangtung. His prime minister, Kuan
Chung, on whom the duke relied heavily,
launched a program of economic
reconstruction. With his people enjoying
economic prosperity at home and placing
full confidence in him, the duke began
a series of diplomatic moves which
successfully bound various other states by
treaty and he became an overlord, the
leader of the feudal lords, defender of
the royal house, and protector of weaker
states.
The great menace to the allied states,
with the King of Chou as their nominal
head, was Ch'u, occupying, roughly, the
present provinces of Hupeh and Hunan,
a mere viscountship in the south,
generally considered barbarous, but grown
so formidable in its military strength and
vast in its territory that its rulers defied
the royal house and called themselves
kings. The utmost Duke Huan of Ch'i
accomplished with regard to the
potential enemy in the south, though he had
chased the barbarians in the northeast up
to the border of Manchuria during a
military campaign to help the much harassed
state of Yen, was to bring about a pact
of amity. The smaller states, under the
pressure of circumstances, were often
compelled to choose between joining the
allies led by Ch'i or paying allegiance to
Ch'u.
The first severe blow to Ch'u was dealt
by Duke Wen of Chin, another prince
who had become an overlord. Nearly a
thousand chariots of war on either side,
each with its allies, were engaged in a
battle at a place called Ch'engp'u (632
B.C.) and Ch'u was defeated. This was
the first great battle in Chinese history,
and it is said to have saved Chinese
civilization. Chin (occupying the present
province of Shansi) for two centuries
remained a great state in the north, but the
power of the duke was usurped by his
hereditary ministers until he had as little
authority over his retainers as did the
King of Chou over the feudal lords. The
retainers fought fiercely among
themselves and the houses of Wei, Han, and
Chao emerged as the victors. These three
retainers were recognized as hereditary
feudal lords by the king, in 403 B.C. In
376 B.C. they divided among them the
territory of Chin.
The power and prestige of Ch'u
reached its zenith under King Chuan
(613-591 B.C.), who defeated Chin. A
hundred years later two other states in
the south, hitherto obscure, extended
their influence to the north. The first was
Wu (now Kiangsu) whose armies in one
campaign reached as far as the capital
of Chu (506 B.C.) but were forced to
withdraw before the intervention of Ch'in
from the northwest. Though it had also
defeated Ch'i, the glory of Wu soon
faded; it was conquered by Yueh (now
Chekiang) in 473 B.C., and in 334 B.C.
Yueh was annexed by Ch'u.
After endless internal disturbance
within most of the states and wars among
them, seven "great powers" were left:
Ch'in, Ch'u, Ch'i, Wei, Han, Chao, and
Yen. The smaller and weaker states
gradually became extinct, to the
aggrandizement of the powers. The authority of the
royal house was now utterly disregarded.
The potentates of the great powers
followed the once-detested example of Ch'u
to assume kingship in the fourth cen-
2030

tury B.C. It was an age of the test of
s'rength, when each state had to fight
wirh every possible resource, military,
diplomatic, material, and ideological, for
survival if not to win supremacy.
Of the seven, Ch'in was considered
geographically unassailable. Having
annexed a large territory in the west, it was
ready to bid for supremacy in China.
Under Duke Hsiao (361-338 B.C.),
organization of the peoples, which had been
remarkable, was further strengthened by
the policies of the prime minister, Shang
Yang. The foundations of a totalitarian
empire had been laid.
The military strength of Ch'in having
struck such terror into the other states,
their main problem was how to deal with
the power in the west. At one time an
alliance of six was formed to contend
against Ch'in, acting upon the strategy of
the diplomat Su Ch'in, who also became
the chancellor of the confederation. But
Su's scheme was obstructed by his former
fellow-student, Chang I, who was
working hard for Ch'in. With crafty
maneuvers, bribery, and threats, Ch'in
succeeded in dividing the allies who were
either to accept defeat or to place their
inter-allied jealousy above their common
cause. In 317 B.C. Su Ch'in was
assassinated.
The conquest of the six states by
Ch'in was delayed by the efforts of the
Four Statesmen of Ch'i, Ch'u, Chao and
Wei. Able administrators and diplomats,
they also gained great fame as patrons
who threw open their doors to the scholars
and men of ability who were wandering
all over China seeking employment. Their
popularity and ability enabled their states
to hold out against Ch'in while they
lived; after their deaths, none was able
to stop the advance of the conqueror.
Ching K'o of Yen made a heroic
attempt to assassinate the man then sitting
on the throne of Ch'in (227 B.C.). His
effort failed, however, and the king of
Ch'in was crowned as Shih-huang-ti,
"The First Emperor," known to posterity
as the builder of the Great Wall and the
burner of the books, after the conquest
of his six rivals (220 B.C.). The last
shadow monarch of the Chou Dynasty
died in 256 B.C.
2031

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN
Type of work: Allegorical dialogue
Author: John Bunyan (1628-1688)
First published: 1680
Principal characters:
Mr. Badman, a sinner
Mr. Wiseman, who tells about Badman's career
Mr. Attentive, a listener
Practically every literate speaker of
English has heard of The Pilgrim's
Progress and its author, John Bunyan. Less
well-known to readers, however, are Bun-
yan's other writings, including The Life
and Death of Mr. Badman. There are
reasons, of course, for modern neglect of
Bunyan's other works. For one, there are
relatively few readers attracted to the vast
bulk of seventeenth-century religious
writings in our time. For another, The
Life and Death of Mr. Badman, being a
didactic work, seems to the modern reader
sententious and dull. Thirdly, the moral
viewpoints expressed by Bunyan in The
Life and Death of Mr. Badman sound
strange in this century, so foreign are the
writer's ideas to those prevalent in our
time.
Yet in one sense The Life and Death
of Mr. Badman is a companion piece to
The Pilgrim's Progress. The latter work
shows the Christian, devoted and
obedient, winning his way to the rewards of
righteousness, while the former illustrates
what happens to the sinner who
steadfastly refuses to acknowledge his evil
ways and insists upon leading a depraved
existence throughout a life that can be
characterized only as evil, regardless of
whether one agrees wholeheartedly with
Bunyan's code of ethics in its entirety.
The protagonist of the story, as it is
related in dialogue, is Mr. Badman. He has
all the evil in his heart one could possibly
ask. Unlike the typical hero of picaresque
fiction, Mr. Badman has no aspect which
can endear him to the reader. Bunyan
expected his readers to feel that the sooner
Mr. Badman received punishment the
better; there is no need to shed tears over
such a character.
Bunyan's technique in presenting the
story of Mr. Badman is to have Mr.
Wiseman, the author's spokesman, relate the
story of Badman's life shortly after the
sinner's death. Mr. Wiseman's listener,
aptly named Mr. Attentive, not only
listens carefully but also draws out the
details of the narrative when Mr. Wiseman
lags. The dialogue form is an old one,
used for ages to bring edifying material
to the reader and force him into the role
of a passive participant.
Possibly the most striking characteristic
in The Life and Death of Mr. Badman
is the insistence upon moral free choice
and the assurance on the part of John
Bunyan that all moral responsibility rests
with the individual. Bunyan had no room
in his theories for environmental
determinism. The idea that the environment
—family, the community, society in
general—could be blamed for an individual's
wrongdoing could not be fitted into
Bunyan's moral philosophy. In the early pages
of the dialogue between Mr. Wiseman
and Mr. Attentive, putting the words
into Mr. Wiseman's mouth as he speaks
of Mr. Badman, Bunyan wrote:
"I will tell you that from a child he
was very bad; his very beginning was
ominous, and presaged that no good end
was in likelihood to follow thereupon.
There were several sins that he was
given to when he was but a little one,
that manifested him to be notoriously
infected with original corruption; for
I dare say he learned none of them of
his father or mother, nor was he
admitted much to go abroad among other
children that were vile, to learn to sin
of them; nay, contrariwise, if at any
time he did get abroad amongst others,
he would be as the inventor of bad
2032

words and an example in bad actions.
To them all he used to be, as we say,
the ringleader and master sinner from a
child."
To this kind of theory voiced by Mr.
Wiseman, Mr. Attentive agrees
wholeheartedly, saying that certainly evil ways
come from within the individual rather
than, as most people believe today, from
without.
The burden of the career of Mr. Bad-
man is that one sin begets another. As a
small child Badman, who has, says
Bunyan, a host of equivalents in every
generation, begins by lying and stealing from
other members of the household, and he
goes on to invest himself with almost the
entire catalogue of sinfulness. Swearing,
whoring, drinking, faithlessness in
marriage, hypocrisy, and many other sins are
committed by Badman during his
lifetime.
Each mention of a new sin as the story
of Mr. Badman's life progresses sends Mr.
Wiseman or Mr. Attentive off into a kind
of sermon or into a series of examples.
Scholars have pointed out that the
examples Bunyan used in the dialogue were
often borrowed from other writers, in
whose books Bunyan had found them
during his own reading. Bunyan accepted
the stories he used as examples as fact,
just as Cotton Mather was willing to
accept signs of "Divine Providences" when
they helped him to prove a point to his
congregation or his readers.
There is no need to wonder why
Bunyan wrote this dialogue of a sinner's
progress, for he makes his purpose
abundantly clear in an address to the
"Courteous Reader." The world, says Bunyan
again and again, is full of sinful people,
and Mr. Badman has his relatives in every
family and household. Convinced that
there are so many sinners, Bunyan hopes
to spread a word that may either convert
or confound. Even Bunyan's Courteous
Reader is viewed by the author as a
possible (even probable) sinner, and he is
asked to consider carefully whether he is
treading in Mr. Badman's path to
perdition.
2033

LIFE IN LONDON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pierce Egan (1772-1849)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: London
First published: 1821
Principal characters:
Corinthian Tom, a man of fashion
Jerry Hawthorn, his cousin
Bob Logic, their friend
Critique:
Tom and Jerry is a title commonly
given to Pierce Egan's Life in London;
or the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry
Hawthorn, Esq., and his Elegant Friend,
Corinthian Tom, accompanied hy Boh
Logic, the Oxonian, in their Ramhles
and Sprees Through the Metropolis. The
book is a minor masterpiece. Any student
of history who wishes to know of life in
Regency London must read it, tor it is the
best single source of its kind. Pierce
Egan, a sporting gentleman who observed
keenly the life around him, put into his
picaresque narrative a detailed account
of boxing, cock fighting, masquerades,
and taverns. In this work can be found
much of the slang of the day—some of
it still seems new—carefully explained in
footnotes. At the time of publication the
innumerable puns added to the liveliness
of the novel, but to most modern readers
the plays on words are often obscure and
they can be disregarded. Egan's comic
spirit made him a forerunner of Surtees
and Dickens.
The Story:
Corinthian Tom, as he was later
known, had been born into a rich family
with loving parents, who watched after
his welfare and provided for his every
want. As he grew older he was a little
uneasy at their solicitude, for the gay life
in the capital appealed to him; and he
would have liked to savor life without
restrictions of any kind. Gradually
instances of the many different facets of
London life came under his observation:
the hungry man who counted the trees
in St. James's Park to while away the
dinner hour; tht rake who crossed the
street to avoid his tailor; the pawnshop
customers. As Tom's knowledge
increased, his impatience to savor the whole
of life became keener.
He became very friendly with Bob
Logic, a one-time student at Oxford.
That merry fellow, with a comical face
and an aptitude for puns, was rich, and
he had already been orphaned. With no
strictures of purse or parents, Bob's life
was one long prank. For a time Tom
envied him.
Tom's mother died first, and when his
father also passed away, Tom's grief was
genuine. With rare tact, Bob left him
to face his sorrow alone, but after a
decent wait he turned up again with his
usual jests and puns. Tom then
embarked on the life he most desired
under Bob's shrewd tutelage. In short order
Corinthian Tom was known at boxing
matches, the society parades, the opera,
and in slum dens. His career was crowned
by the acquisition of the most desirable
mistress in town, lovely and talented
Catherine. As their connection became
known, inevitably she was called
Corinthian Kate.
His gay life was halted, temporarily,
when Tom fell ill. He called in Doctor
Pleas'em, a knowing doctor with the
perfect approach for gay young blades.
Doctor Pleas'em prescribed a country rest for
2034

his weary patient. Searching through his
invitations, Tom found one from an
uncle who lived at Hawthorn Hall, and
immediately he set out to visit him.
At the hall Tom met his young cousin
Jerry, a strong and quick lad who was
dazzled by his city relative. Soon country
life worked its wonders, and on the last
day of his stay Tom accompanied Jerry
on a twenty-six mile fox hunt. Both
young men were in at the kill. That
afternoon, when an agreeable party met to
say their farewells to Tom, it was
decided that Jerry should return to London
with his cousin to acquire a city polish.
Jerry, much impressed by the
appointments of Corinthian House, was a
willing pupil in learning social graces. The
first step was to call in a good tailor.
Tom's man was Mr. Primefit, who was
the most accomplished tailor in town.
Mr. Primefit had built up his vast
custom by never pressing for a bill; in
return, the young blades never questioned
the amount of a bill when they finally
paid it. In his new clothes Jerry saw his
first panorama of society when Tom took
him riding in Rotten Row and Hyde
Park.
With Tom and Bob as guides, Jerry
saw the gambler, the tradesman, the
sharper—all decked in finery well beyond
their purses. The lively Lady Wanton
and her sister, Miss Satire, were
attracted by Jerry's fresh face and manly
bearing. When Miss Satire made an unkind
remark about Jerry's lack of polish, Lady
Wanton warmly defended Jerry. The
most beautiful woman they saw was the
dazzling Duchess of Hearts. With his
happy felicity for knowing everyone^
Tom introduced Jerry to her. Jerry was
struck dumb: her lovely face, her
intelligent eyes, her warm heart were too
much for him to comprehend.
Another person they met was Trifle,
the thinnest and slightest dandy in
London. To Jerry he seemed an absolute
oddity. Then a calm older woman, warm
of smile and respectable of appearance,
drove by with three bewitching girls.
Jerry hoped for an introduction to the
charming family, for they spoke to Bob.
But he learned that introductions were
not in order; the woman, madam of a
select bawdy house, was advertising three
of her most recent acquisitions.
Jerry's rusticity wore off quickly.
Every afternoon and evening Bob and Tom
took him out. They attended gatherings
of all sorts. One afternoon Tom proposed
an evening visit to the theater. Jerry
assented eagerly, but Bob begged off; the
theater was a bit high-toned for him.
That evening Tom and Jerry went to
Drury Lane. There Tom took a quick
look at the stage and a longer one at
the audience. Seeing few friends, the
two cousins went on to Covent Garden,
where the company seemed more
congenial. After a glance at the play, they
pushed into the Saloon. Jerry was struck
by the crowds of laughing girls who were
so very friendly. Tom had to tell him
that the girls were on the lookout for
customers.
Although Jerry was reluctant to leave
the Saloon, Tom induced him to visit a
coffee house. There the raffish hangers-
on decided to have a bit of fun with the
two swells. In the fight that followed
Tom and Jerry were acquitting
themselves well when the watch broke up the
riot. Unfortunately, the cousins
continued to battle the watch. They were
finally subdued and hauled off to jail.
Released on bail, they had to appear before
a magistrate the next day. Their fine was
supposed to pay the watch for the
damage they had done.
In turn Tom, Jerry, and Bob went to
a boxing establishment, a fencing salon,
the dog fights, the condemned yard at
Newgate. A highlight was a masquerade
supper at the opera. Jerry, attracted by a
coquettish woman dressed as a nun, was
importunate in trying to learn her name.
Finally the nun wrote an acrostic to
supply the information. With Bob's help,
Jerry finally learned that his companion
had been Lady Wanton.
Tom was reluctant for some time to
2035

introduce Corinthian Kate, but he finally
arranged a meeting with her for Bob and
Jerry. Kate, glad to see them, presented
her very good friend Sue. Jerry was
interested in analyzing the two women,
both beautiful. Kate was self-possessed
and inclined to dramatic settings; an
accomplished belle. Sue seemed much
warmer and more genuinely sympathetic.
While Bob played the piano for them,
Jerry and Sue had a pleasant t£te-a-t£te.
Jerry was reluctant to leave.
Tom arranged a special trip for the
two ladies about which he was quite
mysterious. He warned them to be
dressed by eleven sharp, for the success
of the trip depended on punctuality, and
so the ladies were ready when Tom and
Jerry called. They were whisked away
in a cab to Carleton Palace. There the
friends went through the succession of
fine rooms and examined the
appointments at their leisure.
One of their memorable jaunts was
an evening spent among cadgers.
Disguising themselves as beggars, they
visited a tavern frequented by professional
alms takers, where they saw the
crippled woman descend a ladder in a
lively manner without her crutches. All
manner of frauds came to light in that
dismal gathering.
But all pleasant excursions were
drawing to an end; Bob was put in debtors'
prison. Although he was as merry as ever
when Tom and Jerry went to see him, he
did promise to put his affairs in better
order, for he was confident he would
soon be released. When Jerry caught a
cold which he could not seem to get rid
of, Doctor Pleas'em told him that he
could not expect to lead such a life
indefinitely, and he must return to
Hawthorn Hall for a rest. Then he could
come back and plunge into London life
once more. Vowing to be back soon, and
asking Tom to give his best wishes to
Sue, Jerry returned to the country.
2036

LIFE IS A DREAM
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pedro Calder6n de la Barca (1600-1681)
Type of plot: Romantic melodrama
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Poland
First presented: 1635
Principal characters:
Basilio, King of Poland
Segismundo, his son
Astolfo, Basilio's nephew and a duke of Muscovy
Estrella, the infanta, Basilio's niece
Clotaldo, a Polish general
Rosaura, a Russian noblewoman disguised as a man
Fife, her servant
Critique:
Before Calder6n's La vida es sueno was
freely adapted by Edward Fitzgerald in
1853, it had been known to most English
and European readers through the
medium of French translations from the
original Spanish. In spite of their richness
of imagination, however, Calder6n's plays
are still little known outside the Spanish-
speaking world. All of this playwright's
work has vigor and brilliance; in Life Is a
Dream, for example, he used his Polish
setting and period as freely as Shakespeare
used the seacoast of Bohemia or the forest
of Arden. There is also a Gothic quality
in the mountain scenes which suggests the
popular atmosphere of much eighteenth-
century fiction, and there is considerable
psychological insight into character as
well. This play reveals admirably the
personality of its writer, who was a soldier,
an ardent patriot, an artist, and a devout
son of the Church. It has also been
translated as Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made
Of.
The Story:
One night, in the wild, mountainous
country between Poland and Russia, a
Russian noblewoman, Rosaura, and her
servant, Fife, found themselves in distress.
Their horses had bolted, and they feared
that they would have to make on foot the
remainder of their journey to the royal
court of Poland. Rosaura, for protection
through that barbarous frontier country,
was disguised as a man.
Their weary way brought them at last
to a forbidding fortress. There they
overheard a young man, chained to the
doorway of the castle, deliver a heart-rending
soliloquy in which he lamented the
harshness of his life. Rosaura approached the
youth, who greeted her eagerly, with the
excitement of one who had known little
of sympathy or kindness during his brief
span ot years. At the same time he warned
her to beware of violence. No sooner had
he spoken these words than a shrill
trumpet blast filled the night. Rosaura
tossed her sword to the captive before she
and Fife hid themselves among the rocks.
Clotaldo, a Polish general and the
keeper of the youth, galloped up to the
young man. Seeing the sword in his
prisoner's hand, he ordered his men to
seek the stranger who must be lurking
nearby. Apprehended, Rosaura explained
that she and Fife were Russian travelers
on their way to the Polish court and that
they were in distress because of the loss of
their horses. Fife inadvertently hinted that
Rosaura was really a woman. But the
sword interested Clotaldo most of all, for
he recognized the weapon as one which he
had owned years before and which he had
left in the keeping of a young noblewoman
with whom he had been deeply in love.
He decided that Rosaura must be his own
2037

son, but, torn between his sworn duty to
his king and his paternal obligation
toward his supposed son, he decided at
last to say nothing for the time being. The
fact that Rosaura possessed the sword
obligated him to protect the travelers and to
escort them safely through the mountains.
Meanwhile, in King Basilio's royal
castle, the problem of succession to the
Polish throne was to be decided. To this
purpose, the king welcomed his nephew
Astolfo and his niece Estrella, cousins.
The problem of the succession existed
because it was generally believed that the
true heir, King Basilio's son, had died
with his mother in childbirth many years
before. The need for a decision was
pressing; both Astolfo and Estrella were
supported by strong rival factions which in
their impatience were threatening the
peace of the realm.
King Basilio greeted his niece and
nephew with regal ceremony and then
startled them with the news that his son
Segismundo was not really dead. The
readings of learned astrologers and horrible
portents which had accompanied Segis-
mundo's birth had led the superstitious
king to imprison the child in a mountain
fortress for fear that otherwise the boy
might grow up to be a monster who would
destroy Poland. Now, years later, King
Basilio was not sure that he had done
right. He proposed that Segismundo be
brought to the court in a drug-induced
sleep, awakened after being dressed in
attire befitting a prince, and observed
carefully for evidence of his worthiness to
wear his father's crown. Astolfo and
Estrella agreed to that proposal.
In accordance with the plan,
Segismundo, who dressed in rough wolfskins in
his captivity, was drugged, taken to the
royal castle, and dressed in rich attire.
Awaking, he was disturbed to find himself
suddenly the center of attention among
obsequious strangers. Force of habit
caused him to recall sentimentally his
chains, the wild mountains, and his former
isolation. Convinced that he was
dreaming, he sat on the throne while his father's
officers and the noble courtiers treated
him with the respect due his rank. When
they told him that he was the heir to the
throne, he was mystified and somewhat
apprehensive, but before long he began
to enjoy his new feeling of power.
Clotaldo, his former guard and tutor,
appeared to confirm the fact that
Segismundo was really the prince. The young
man then demanded an explanation of his
lifelong imprisonment. Clotaldo patiently
explained King Basilio's actions in terms
that Segismundo might understand, but
the youth, blinded by the sudden change
in his fortunes, could see only that he had
been grievously mistreated by his father.
Declaring that he would have revenge for
his unwarranted imprisonment, he seized
Clotaldo's sword, but before he could
strike the old general Rosaura appeared
out of the crowd, took the weapon from
him, and reproved him for his rashness.
Segismundo, in a calmer mood, was
introduced to Astolfo, whose courtly
bearing and formal speech the prince could
not bear. Sick of the whole aspect of the
court, he ordered the guards to clear the
audience hall. But again he was mollified,
this time by the appearance of Estrella and
her ladies in waiting. Unaccustomed to
feminine society, he behaved in a boorish
manner, even attempting to embrace
Estrella. The courtiers advised him to
behave in a manner befitting a prince, and
Astolfo, who hoped to marry his beautiful
cousin, cautioned Segismundo about his
behavior toward the princess. Unfamiliar
with the formalities of court life,
Segismundo lost all patience. Holding all
present responsible for his long exile, he
reminded them of his exalted position and
defied anyone to touch Estrella. When
Astolfo did not hesitate to take her by the
hand, Segismundo seized Astolfo by the
throat.
At this crucial moment in Segismundo's
test, King Basilio entered the throne room
and saw his son behaving like a wild
beast. Crushed, he feared that the
forecast had been true after all. Segismundo
faced his father with shocking disrespect.
2038

Pressed for an explanation of his son's
imprisonment, the king tried to prove that
it had been written in the stars. Segis-
mundo scoffed at the folly of man in
putting responsibility for his actions on
the disinterested heavens. Then he cursed
his father and called the guards to seize
the king and Clotaldo. But at a trumpet
blast the soldiers quickly surrounded
Segismundo himself and took him
prisoner.
Having failed the test of princehood,
Segismundo was drugged and returned in
chains to the mountain fortress. In his
familiar surroundings once more, he had
full opportunity to reflect on his late
experiences. When he spoke to Clotaldo
about them, the old general assured him
that all had been a dream. Since the prince
had been drugged before he left the
fortress and before he returned, he was quite
convinced that he had suffered an
unpleasant dream. Clotaldo assured him
that dreams reveal the true character of
the dreamer. Because Segismundo had
conducted himself with violence in his
dream, there was great need for the young
man to bridle his fierce passions.
Meanwhile Rosaura, aware of Segis-
mundo's plight and anxious to thwart the
ambitions of Astolfo, who had once
promised to marry her, stirred up a faction
to demand the prince's release. The rebels
invaded the mountains and seized the
fortress* they failed, however, to seize
Clotaldo, who had already returned to the
royal castle to report to King Basilio.
When the rebel army carried the
sleeping Segismundo out of the fortress and
awakened him with trumpet blasts, the
unhappy prince would not be persuaded
that his new experience was real, and he
doubted the assurance that he had been
rescued from his imprisonment. The rebel
leader finally convinced him that it would
be well for him to join the dream soldiers
and fight with them against King Basilio's
very real army, which was approaching.
Clotaldo was taken prisoner by Segis-
mundo's forces, but the young prince,
remembering the advice to curb his passions,
ordered the old general's release. A great
battle then took place, in which
Segismundo proved his princely valor and
chivalric bearing. King Basilio, defeated
but refusing Clotaldo's and Astolfo's pleas
to flee to safety, in admiration surrendered
his crown to his son.
King of Poland in his own right,
Segismundo ordered the marriage of Astolfo
to Rosaura, who had, in the meantime,
been revealed as Clotaldo's daughter.
Estrella became Segismundo's queen. The
young king made Clotaldo his trusted
adviser.
2039

LIFE OF NELSON
Type of work: Biography
Author: Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Time: 1758-1805
Locale: England, the British colonies, the Continent, the high seas
First puhlished: 1813
Principal personages:
Viscount Horatio Nelson, English naval hero
Edmund Nelson, his father
Lady Emma Hamilton, his mistress
Lady Frances Nelson, his wife
Maurice Suckling, Nelson's uncle, a naval captain, later Comptroller
of the Navy
Sir William Hamilton, English ambassador to Naples
Thomas Troubridge,
Alexander Ball,
Samuel Hood,
Benjamin Hallowell,
Hyde Parker,
Thomas Graves,
Earl St. Vincent (Sir John Jervis), and
CuTHBERT Collingwood, English naval officers
"What has poor Horatio done, who is
so weak, that he, above all the rest [of
your children], should be sent to rough
it out at sea? But let him come, and the
first time we go into action, a cannon-
ball may knock off his head, and provide
for him at once."
Had Nelson's uncle, Captain Maurice
Suckling, been prophetic in this letter to
Nelson's father, the course of Enghsh
history subsequent to the Napoleonic
Wars (1803-1815) might well have been
quite different from what it has been.
The weakness of the twelve-year-old
Horatio that Captain Suckling referred to
was only physical. Weak though he was,
Nelson had already given proof of the
resoluteness of heart and nobleness of
mind that were to characterize his
distinguished career.
Always a stranger to fear and a
companion of honor, Nelson led the
exemplary life that his father foresaw for his
son. Nelson's father had always marked
him for success in whatever profession
he might follow. Through his
indomitable spirit, his seafaring abilities, and
his acumen in personal relationships,
Nelson was a lieutenant at nineteen, a
captain at twenty-one, and an admiral
before he was thirty.
From his maiden voyage to India early
in his career, Nelson, reduced almost to
a skeleton by tropical disease, was
returned home. Dejected by his physical
condition and the diminished promise of
success in his career, he considered
suicide for a time. But from this state of
mind he suddenly rallied with a feeling
bordering on the religious, so obsessed
was he by the "sudden glow of
patriotism . . . presented by king and country
as my patron."
Southey's explanation of this fervor
and determination that spurred Nelson
on to become a hero is compatible in its
beauty with the exquisite qualities of a
man who surmounted obstacles to have
his name become as well known as that
of the country for which he achieved
heroism:
He knew to what the previous state of
dejection was to be attributed; that an
enfeebled body, and a mind depressed,
had cast this shade over his soul; but
he always seemed willing to believe,
that the sunshine which succeeded bore
with it a prophetic glory, and that the
2040

light which led him on was "light from
heaven."
Though heroes are often seen in an
aura of celestial light and divine
guidance, Nelson was most cognizant of
mundane matters that need attending to,
even though one confides in Providence.
His readiness in political strategy was a
factor in the first of his three greatest
naval successes, the defeat of Napoleon's
fleet at Aboukir in 1798. For more than
a month Nelson's fleet had sought the
French fleet in the Mediterranean.
Thwarted at every attempt to get
information concerning the French position
or to secure supplies, Nelson turned at
last to Lady Emma Hamilton, the wife
of the English ambassador to Naples.
Through her influence with the Queen
of Naples, Nelson secured supplies at
Syracuse and began again his pursuit of
the French.
Contrary to his command to his men
that they obey orders implicidy without
questioning their propriety, Nelson,
sometimes seeing circumstances in a different
light from that of his superiors, did not
always obey orders. In the victory at
Copenhagen, in 1801, against the armed
neutrality of the Baltic, Nelson, second
in command, ignored his commander's
order to cease action. Putting his
telescope to his blind eye when he was told
the signal giving the order had been
raised (Nelson had lost the sight of one
eye in battle at Calvi), he continued the
attack, saying he could not see the signal.
Acting without orders from his
commander, Sir John Jervis, Nelson was
largely responsible for the defeat of the
Spanish fleet at Cape St. Vincent (1797).
In that engagement the enemy fleet far
outnumbered the English ships, twenty-
seven to fifteen. This victory destroyed a
threatened invasion of England.
Another practical personal qualification
contributing to Nelson's success was his
ability as a leader, especially his
attention to effective communication. He had
marked confidence in his officers' abilities,
but he was sure in every case possible
that everyone knew his principles of
tactics.
In keeping with his confidence in
Providence, Nelson seemed obsessed with the
assurance of victory. This attribute was
inculcated into his men. Quite pleased
with the scope of the plan of an attack
against the French, one of Nelson's
captains asked, "If we succeed, what will the
world say?" "There is no if in the case,"
Nelson exclaimed. "That we shall
succeed is certain: who may live to tell the
story is a very different question."
After destroying thirteen French ships
* at Aboukir, making useless the French
army in Egypt, placed there in
preparation for Napoleon's projected conquest of
the East, Nelson became an international
hero. He was showered with
congratulations, rewards, and honors by all
countries which, because of his military
success, had escaped Napoleon's aggression.
Such accolades, received before he was
thirty, were to become commonplace to
England's greatest naval hero.
Southey's biography is no mere
chronological recital of events. His descriptions
of naval battles are sufficiently developed
and detailed enough to provide the
excitement of adventure stories. But in
these, as in the more ordinary incidents,
emphasis is on persons—their abilities and
weaknesses, their hopes and
disappointments. The writing has a poet's tone and
spirit without poetic devices. This quality
in the prose serves to convey the spirit of
self-reliance, nonconformity, and courage
that constitutes a hero. Clarity and
conciseness are the keynotes of the style.
In his choice of biographical detail,
Southey never lost sight of the fact that
Nelson was first a man and then a naval
hero. The strong bond of love and
admiration between Nelson and his father,
for example, is a warming thread
throughout the book. The son's deliberate
adherence to his father's counsel and the
father's pride in the son's
accomplishments add to the stature of the hero. It
2041

was fitting, in the lioht of this lifelong
devotion between Nelson and his father,
that a few months before the father's
death the older Nelson came to accept
Nelson's affair with Lady Hamilton.
Perhaps in blind love for his son, he saw in
his sqn's mistress a woman described by
Southey as "a character which, both in its
strength and in its weakness, resembled
his own." This reconciliation meant much
to Nelson because his association with
Ladv Hamilton had brought sorrow and
displeasure to his father, especially when
Nelson was separated from Lady Nelson.
Southey treats Nelson's marital
situation in a matter of fact manner as another
facet of the admiral's life. This is no love
idyl, developed by a poet.
The affair began in Naples, where Sir
William Hamilton was English
ambassador and Nelson was in charge of a
squadron during the French occupation of
Naples (1798-1799). Nelson and the
Hamiltons became inseparable friends;
they returned to England together in
1800. At Sir William's death, he was
holding Nelson's hand and entrusting
Lady Hamilton to his care.
Nelson did arrange a pension for
Lady Hamilton and Horatia Nelson
Thompson, "believed to be his [Nelson's]
daughter," as Southey discreetly
identified the child, born to Lady Hamilton
about the time Nelson wes separating
from Lady Nelson.
Nelson's third and last great victory
was the sea battle fought off Cape
Trafalgar, where in 1805 he destroyed both the
French and Spanish fleets. This success
culminated two yeafs of strategic naval
maneuvering and warfare, with Nelson
in command of the fleet in the
Mediterranean. During that time he blockaded
the French fleet at Toulon for twenty-two
months. The English victory at Trafalgar
resulted in the capture of twenty enemy
ships—not an English vessel was lost—
and the end of Napoleon's power of the
sea. But in that battle Nelson lost his
life. His immortal words "England
expects that every man will do his duty"
were among his last.
Nelson's stature is admirably
established in Southey's description of his
death:
The most triumphant death is that of
the martyr; the most awful, that of the
martyred patriot; the most splendid,
that of the hero in the hour of
victory; and if the chariot and the horses
of fire had been vouchsafed for
Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have
departed in a brighter blaze of glory.
He has left us, not indeed his mantle
of inspiration, but a name and an
example, which are at this hour inspiring
hundreds of the youth of England: a
name which is our pride, and an
example which will continue to be our
shield and our strength.
The eminence of the subject and the
cogency of Southey's writing make it
easy to see why the American
government published a special edition of the
Life of Nelson and issued a copy to
every seaman and officer in the
American navy.
Although Southey was poet laureate
of England for thirty years, he is
remembered for only a few of his vigorous short
poems, "The Battle of Blenheim" being
one of his best. Ironically, the poet is
best known today for his prose writing,
this model among short biographies and
a classic in English literature.
2042

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
Type of work: Biography
Author: James Boswell (1740-1795)
Time: The eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1791
Principal personages:
Samuel Johnson, author, critic, and lexicographer
James Boswell, the biographer, Johnson's friend
David Garrick,
Sir Joshua Reynolds,
Mr. and Mrs. Thrale,
David Hume, and
Oliver Goldsmith, members of the Johnson circle
James Boswell's life of Samuel
Johnson has usually been considered the
greatest biography yet produced in the
English language, and it has undoubtedly
commanded more readers than any other
biography written in English. There are
more massive biographies in our literature,
such as David Masson's Life of Milton
and J. G. Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life
of Sir Walter Scott, but none has ever
achieved the critical acclaim or the
popularity or the prestige lavished justly upon
Boswell's biography of Samuel Johnson.
During his lifetime Boswell published
three great works: The Life of Samuel
Johnson, LL.D., The Journal of a Tour
to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson,
LL.D., and An Account of Corsica: The
Journal of a Tour to That Island; and
Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. Of these three
works, the Life of Johnson stood out as
the greatest for almost a century and a
half. Within the last thirty years,
however, a new estimate of James Boswell's
work has had to be taken, for much of
Boswell's writing was lost in manuscript
until the 1920's. During the period
between 1927 and 1949 Colonel Isham, an
American and a collector, brought
together the papers which had been stored
at Malahide Castle, near Dublin, Ireland,
and the Forbes collection, which had
accidentally passed into the hands of one
of Boswell's executors and descended to
the latter's heirs. Some of the papers were
published by Isham, who sold the entire
collection to Yale University in 1949 and
1950. The university has published
several volumes of the papers under the
general title of The Yale Editions of the
Private Papers of James Boswell. Through
such volumes of Boswell's writing as
Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763
(1950), Boswell in Holland, 1763-1764
(1952), and Boswell on the Grand Tour:
Germany and Switzerland, 1764 (1953),
Boswell has emerged as a splendid writer
of journals. This fact, however, does not
yet detract from his stature as the author
of the biography of Johnson, nor will
these newer works replace the biography
as the most important of Boswell's books,
even though critical opinion may be
modified to grant him greater stature in
literature than he once had.
We now know that the Life of
Johnson was based upon what Boswell had
recorded in copious journals which he
kept during the greater part of his adult
life. This is not to say, however, that the
biography was merely a transcription of
materials from those journals. From
present knowledge of the papers it can be
seen that Boswell was an artist in
biography, choosing carefully what suited his
needs and goals. Even those who feel that
Boswell intruded himself too much into
the biography must now recognize that he
was at some pains to omit much material
about Johnson in which he himself
figured. Those who felt that Boswell
intruded too much into the work possibly
2043

overlooked the fact that during Johnson's
life Boswell was Johnson's friend and
spent from four hundred to five hundred
days with his subject, thus becoming
himself a part of Johnson's life and the
Johnsonian environment.
Boswell's method was to record
materials about Johnson in his journals.
Sometimes the material was recorded
daily, but on occasion Boswell fell behind
and had to rely upon his memory—a
phenomenal one—to recall materials he
had garnered in a period of four or five
days and evenings. It is notable, too, that
Boswell was careful to prompt Johnson
into conversation, often asking what seem
to be obvious or absurd questions in order
to goad Johnson into making remarks
worthy of record. One such question
noted by critics is that in which Boswell
asked Johnson what he would do if given
the solitary care of a small infant; the
question, seemingly absurd, led Johnson
to reply in such fashion as to comment
on rearing and educating children and to
set forth a philosophy of education. The
more we learn about Boswell and his
work, the more we understand that he
was not a mere transcriber, as critical
legend held for some time, but that he
was a skillful writer who shaped his
materials in every way he could, instead of
accepting them as he found them. The
casual reader may even miss some of the
more obvious points of care and artistry,
such as notations on how Johnson looked
and spoke when delivering comments and
opinions.
Johnson was a man of many
achievements. He single-handedly brought forth
the first recognized dictionary of the
English language; he also made himself
famous as a writer by means of The
Rambler papers, his tragedy Irene, his poetry,
and his moral essays. As a moralist
Johnson also won fame as the author of the
didactic novel, The History of Rasselas,
Prince of Abyssinia. As a critic he was
famous for his Lives of the Poets and his
preface to an edition of Shakespeare's
plays. People great and small admired
Johnson, including many of the famous
and remarkable Englishmen of his time,
men like Hume, Reynolds, Goldsmith,
and Garrick. In addition, he was a
picturesque, at times even ludicrous, figure,
and this fact Boswell did not attempt to
hide, taking to himself the task of writing
"not his panegyrick, which must be all
praise, but his Life; which great and good
as he was, must not be supposed to be
perfect." In further defense of his way
of writing biography, Boswell wrote near
the beginning of his biography:
I am fully aware of the objections
which may be made to the minuteness
on some occasions of my detail of
Johnson's conversation, and how
happily it is adapted for the petty exercise
of ridicule by men of superficial
understanding, ana ludicrous fancy; but I
remain firm and confident in my opinion,
that minute particulars are frequently
characteristick, and always amusing,
when they relate to a distinguished
man. I am therefore exceedingly
unwilling that anything, however slight,
which my illustrious friend thought it
worth his while to express, with any
degree of point, should perish.
Boswell realized, as we know from
what he himself said and wrote, that the
function and art of biography is to focus
on the subject and keep him constantly
before the reader. This Boswell did in
his biography of Johnson. To do so he
carefully gathered together more than
what he knew at first-hand of the man
who was his friend and subject. He
exercised diligence and care in collecting
letters written by Johnson, including the
text of the famous letter to Lord
Chesterfield. He collected, too, letters written
about Johnson, as well as anecdotes about
his subject's life, trying at the same time
to establish the authenticity of these
reports he had of Johnson. These materials
. are presented in the biography in
chronological order. If the results have some
defects, the defects are more or less
forgivable in view of their sparseness. Seldom
did Boswell record facts which later
biographers needed to correct.
2044

If the account of Johnson's life before
meeting Boswell is relatively short, this
fact may be excused on the ground that
Boswell used only what information about
Johnson's early life that he could gather
and trust. Naturally, he had a much
larger fund of materials from the period
during which he knew Johnson
personally. Some critics have noted Boswell's
reluctance to interpret. Of this reluctance,
it must be said that interpretation was
not Boswell's way. Upon occasion he
generalized upon Johnson perceptively, but
he preferred, as he carefully stated, to
present the particulars, rather than the
generalizations. The result is that
Johnson is "alive" in the Life as few
biographical subjects are, with his
personality and character borne out by his own
spoken and written words. On occasion
the reader may feel that Johnson's
written words, usually letters, have been
inserted where they fit none too well,
seeming to interfere with the flow of the book.
And yet they are a part of the scheme
Boswell worked out and put together.
Samuel Johnson has been the subject
of many biographies; five, for example,
appeared after Johnson's death and before
Boswell's work. Others have been written
since, but none has ever equaled in merit
Boswell's Life of Samuel ]ohnson, LL.D.
2045

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
Type of work: Reminiscence
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens, 1
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Mississippi River region
first published: 1883
Principal characters:
Mark Twain
Mr. Bixby, a river pilot
Critique:
It is extraordinary that a book with
so many defects should have become one
of the classics of our national heritage.
There is, for example, a sharp and
obvious division between the first twelve or
fourteen chapters and the rest of the
book. It is clear that it was not written
all at one time, and the effects of bad
composition are evident. The chapters are
badly organized and there are many
labored passages. Despite this lack of
craftsmanship, Life on the Mississippi is
a vivid, dramatic, and extremely
interesting collection of reminiscences. Like the
mighty river with which it is concerned,
the book has become part of the American
tradition, part of our national pride and
history.
The Story:
When Mark Twain was a boy, he and
his comrades in Hannibal, Missouri, had
one great ambition; they hoped to
become steamboatmen. They had other
ambitions, too, such as joining the circus
or becoming pirates, but these soon
passed. Only the ambition to be a steam-
boatman remained, renewed twice each
day when the upriver and the
downriver boats put in at the rickety wharf
and woke the sleepy village to bustling
life. Through the years, boy after boy
left the river communities, to return
later, swaggering in his importance as a
worker on a steamboat. Mark Twain saw
these boys often, and the fact that some
of them had been considered as
undeniably damned in the eyes of the pious
folk shook Twain's convictions pro-
M910)
foundly. He wondered why these boys
who flouted Sunday School maxims and
ran away from home should win the
rewards of adventure and romance that
meeker town boys never knew.
Mark Twain, too, had this dream of
adventure. His ambition was a lofty one.
He determined to become a cub-pilot.
While in Cincinnati, he heard that a
government expedition was exploring the
Amazon. With thirty dollars he had saved
he took a boat bound tor New Orleans.
His intention was to travel on to the
headwaters of the Amazon. But the
ship was grounded at Louisville, and
during the delay Mark came to the
attention of Mr. Bixby, the most famous
pilot on the Mississippi River. He
prevailed upon Bixby to teach him how to
navigate.
At first the adventure was a glorious
one. But soon Mark found that the more
he knew about the river, the less
romantic it seemed. Though he was a
dutiful student, he discovered that he could
not remember everything Bixby told him,
regardless of how important this
information seemed to be. Furthermore, to his
astonishment and despair, his instructor
told him that the river was changing its
course continually; that there were no
such things as permanent landmarks; that
the river channel was never the same, but
always variable. There were times when
the young cub-pilot was frightened,
especially when he narrowly missed
hitting another ship, or trimmed the boat
too close to shore. But worse was the
experience of piloting in the dead of
2046

night, with no landmarks to observe and
only deep blackness all around.
Bixby claimed the secret of navigation
was not to remember landmarks, which
changed, but to learn the shape of the
river, and then to steer by the shape in
one's head.
It was undeniably an interesting life.
The pilot had to be on the lookout for
rafts sailing the river at night without
lights. Often a whole family would be
on a raft, and they would shout
imprecations at the steamboat which had just
barely missed dumping them all into the
river. Then there was the fascinating
behavior of the river itself. Prosperous
towns would be isolated by a new cut-off
and reduced to insignificance; towns and
islands in one state would be moved up
or down and into another state, or, as
sometimes happened, into an area that
belonged to no state at all!
The river pilot reigned supreme on
his boat. The captain was theoretically
the master; but as soon as the boat got
under way, the pilot was in charge, and
only a very foolhardy captain would have
interfered. The importance of the pilot
in river navigation eventually led to the
formation of a pilots' association. At first
the idea seemed ridiculous. But the
union grew as, one by one, all the good
pilots joined. As a result pilots could
make their own terms with the owners.
Not only were wages guaranteed, but
pilots secured better working conditions,
pensions, and funds for their widows and
orphans. Within a few years the
association was the most indestructible
monopoly in the country. But its days
were numbered. First of all, the railroads
came in and river transportation was
gradually abandoned in favor of rail
traffic. Then, too, the Civil War reduced
navigation to a mere trickle and dealt
a deathblow to river commerce. The
steamboat was no longer an important
means of transportation.'
From then on the river was different. It
seemed very different to Mark Twain
when he returned after many years away
From it, and saw the changes with
nostalgic regret. He traveled once more on
the Mississippi, but this time as a
passenger and under an assumed name. He
listened tolerantly to the man who told
him wild and improbable stories about
the river, and to a fellow traveler who
explained, very explicitly, how
everything worked.
Mark Twain decided to search for a
large sum of money left by a murderer
whom he had met in Germany. He and
his companions made plans about the ten
thousand dollars soon to be in their
possession, and they asked to get off their
boat at Napoleon to look for it.
Unfortunately, the Arkansas River, years
before, had swept the whole town into the
Mississippi!
On his return to the river, Mark
Twain learned many things he had not
known. He witnessed the vast
improvements in navigation and in the
construction of the boats, improvements that made
navigation easier and safer. He talked to
the inhabitants of Vicksburg, who
described their life during the
bombardment of the town by Union forces. He
visited Louisiana and expressed horror at
the sham castles that passed for good
architecture. He read Southern
newspapers and saw in them, as in so many
Southern traditions, the romantic
sentimentality of Sir Walter Scott, an
influence that he regretted, hated, and held
responsible for the South's lack of
progress. He came in contact with a cheerful
and clever gambler; he heard about
senseless feuds that wiped out entire families;
he saw new and large cities that had
grown up since he had left the river;
he met such well-known writers as Joel
Chandler Harris and George W. Cable;
he had an experience with a spiritualist
who grew rich on the credulous and the
superstitious; he witnessed tragedy, and
lost friends in steamboat explosions.
The river would never be the same
again. The age of mechanization had
arrived to stay. The days of the old river
2047

pilots, such as Mr. Bixby, were now a romance of the Mississippi had faded
thing of the past. America was growing forever,
up, and with that growth the color and
2048

LIFE WITH FATHER
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Clarence Day, Jr., (1874-1935)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: New York City
First published: 1935
Principal characters:
Clarence Day, Sr.
Mrs. Clarence Day, his wife
Clarence Day, Jr., the narrator
Critique:
This narrative of personal recollections
is a humorous commentary on American
manners in the Victorian age. Father
is a domestic tyrant whose bark is
considerably worse than his bite. His
crotchety behavior is the last resort of masculine
aggressiveness in a woman-dominated
world.
The Story:
The Day household existed under the
eccentric domination of Clarence Day,
Sr., a Wall Street businessman who was
convinced that he was always right. His
son stood in awe of him. The boy's
greatest treat was to be taken to his
father's office on Saturday mornings.
With Father dressed formally in silk hat
and tailed coat, they rode downtown on
the elevated and the boy gaped curiously
into the windows of flophouses and
wished that he could enjoy the luxury
and freedom of being a tramp. That
ambition he did not reveal to his father.
Once he ventured to suggest that he
would like to be a cowboy, but Father
retorted that cowboys were shiftless
people.
Father's office seemed very mysterious
to the boy, and he enjoyed the privilege
of filling inkwells and running errands.
Later there would be luncheon at Del-
monico's. Father and his favorite waiter
always chatted in French about the
menu, and Father enjoyed himself
greatly. But the boy did not think highly
of the food. There was too little of it,
scarcely enough to satisfy his appetite.
Seeing the starved look on his face,
Father would order a large chocolate
Eclair for him.
One of Father's chief worries was the
fear of becoming fat. The members of
his club recommended long walks, but
Father was already taking long walks.
Then they suggested horseback riding.
Accordingly, Father became a member
of the Riding Club on East Fifty-eighth
Street. Apart from stabling conveniences,
the club had a park for riding, really
only a little ring. But it was tame enough
for Father, who liked things to be
orderly and suitably arranged for his use.
In a very short time he felt as if the
park belonged to him, and if the leaves
were not raked, if papers were lying
around, he would take the neglect as a
personal affront.
The first horse Father bought was an
independent, rebellious creature. There
was little love lost between them. The
climax came one morning when the
horse refused to obey. It reared and
reared until Father gave up in disgust
and went back to the club. Since the
rest of the family wanted a horse of
their own, Father gave them that one.
He bought another for himself.
Having never been sick, Father
became very annoyed whenever anybody
else was ill; and he had no sympathy
whatever for people whose illnesses he
LIFE WITH FATHER by Clarence Day, Jr. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright,
1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1933, 1934, 1935, by Clarence Day, Jr.
2049

considered to be simply imaginary.
Whenever he was unlucky enough to
catch a cold, his method of treating it
was to blow his nose loudly or to sneeze.
Whenever he had a sick headache, he
would not eat. After he had starved out
his illness, he would eat again and
triumphantly light up a cigar.
Father's laws were regarded as edicts
not to be challenged. Accordingly, young
Clarence was amazed when anyone did
not respond to Father's whims and
orders. While out in the country one
summer, the family ran out of ice.
Because Father's wine must always be
chilled, the crisis was a grave one.
Nothing the family could do was successful.
But when Father came home, he went
down to the village, intimidated a
dealer into selling him an icebox, provided
he would somehow get it filled with ice,
and argued the iceman into delivering
a load immediately.
Father got things done in his own
way. The family could never keep
servants for very long. One day the cook
left. Father stormed into an employment
agency, looked over the assembled girls,
and then, over the manager's protests,
picked out the one he liked. Although
she had not wanted to be a cook, the
girl went with him meekly and stayed on
in the Day household for twenty-six
years. Her name was Margaret.
In the summer Margaret always stayed
in New York to look after the house,
and each year there arose the problem
of a temporary cook during the time
that the family was in the country. One
year they hired Delia. Before long Father
insisted that she was starving him to
death. Delia was replaced by a Japanese.
At the first meal prepared by the
Japanese, Father moaned with pain and
declared that he was poisoned. Margaret
was hastily summoned from the city,
and Father was happy again.
What really vexed Father was
Mother's inability to keep household accounts
according to the system he tried to teach
her. The money always inexplicably
disappeared, and the bills were always high.
In addition, Mother was fond of charge
accounts. It was so easy to buy things
that way, and the first of the month
seemed far off in the distance. When
the bills came in, however, Father always
raged—and then gave in.
When Mother went on a trip to Egypt,
Father could not understand why she
should want to go off to the far corners
of the world just to see pyramids. When
she came back with part of her expense
money unaccounted for, Father was
curious. At last Mother admitted that
she had not spent it, but intended to
keep it. Father, wanting to know what
good it would do her to keep it,
demanded its return. But again he lost
out. Mother kept the money.
Young Clarence witnessed many
examples of Father's behavior. He was
urged to be prompt for breakfast and
bribed with the offer of a watch. He
suffered whenever Father opened his
mail, particularly when the letters were
from young ladies. Father could never
understand that letters could ever be
for anyone else. When Father finally
agreed to have a telephone installed, he
likewise assumed that all calls were for
him. Once he was very perturbed when
a young lady, thinking she was
speaking to young Clarence, invited him to
lunch.
Women, Father insisted, did not know
anything about politics. When Mother
came under the influence of Miss Gulick,
an emancipated young woman, he
snorted contemptuously. Though he liked to
dine out with friends, he did not like
company in his own house. Once he
startled a group of Mother's friends by
uttering a lone, monosyllabic word as
he stamped past the dining-room on his
way upstairs.
Because he had disliked some
members of his family buried in the family
plot in the cemetery, he did not wish to
be buried there after his death. Mother
reminded him that such matters are not
important to the dead. But Father in-
2050

sisted that he was going to buy a new ishment. She whispered to young Clar-
plot in the cemetery, one all for him- ence that she almost believed he could do
self, and in a corner where he could it.
get out. Mother looked at him in aston-
2051

LIGEIA
Type of work: Short story
Author: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Germany and England
First published: 1838
Principal characters:
The Narrator
Ligeia, his first wife
Lady Rowena Trevanion, his second wife
Critique:
Poe himself called "Ligeia" his best
story. It is a tale of terror combined with
pure fantasy. As always in the prose tales
of this genius of American literature, plot,
character, and setting are fused into one.
It was Poe's literary creed that all
elements should be subordinated to the total
effect desired. Nowhere does he better
demonstrate this belief than in the
fantastic story of Ligeia. Many critics have
read deeper moral significance into this
Gothic work.
The Story:
He could not remember when he had
first met Ligeia, and he knew nothing
of her family except that it was old.
Ligeia herself, once his wife, he could
remember in every detail. She was tall
and slender. Ethereal as a shadow, her
face was faultless in its beauty, her skin
like ivory, her features classic. Crowning
the perfect face and body was raven-
black, luxuriant hair. But her eyes, above
all else, held the key to Ligeia's
mystery. Larger than ordinary, those black
eyes held an expression unfathomable
even to her husband. It became his all-
consuming passion to unravel the secret
of that expression.
In character, Ligeia possessed a stern
will that never failed to astound him.
Outwardly she was placid and calm, but
she habitually uttered words of such wild-
ness that he was stunned by their
intensity. Her learning was immense. She
spoke many tongues, and in metaphysical
investigations she was never wrong. Her
husband was engrossed in a study of
metaphysics, but it was she who guided
him, she who unraveled the secrets of his
research. With Ligeia he knew that he
would one day reach a goal of wisdom
undreamed of by others.
Then Ligeia fell ill. Her skin became
transparent and waxen, her eyes wild.
Knowing that she must die, he watched
her struggles against the grisly reaper,
a conflict frightening in its passion.
Words could not express the intense
resistance with which she fought death.
He had always known she loved
him, but in those last days she
abandoned herself completely to love. From
her heart she poured fourth phrases of
idolatry. And on the last day of her life
she bade him repeat to her a poem she
had composed not long before. It was a
morbid thing about death, about the
conquering of Man by the Worm. As he
finished repeating the melancholy lines,
Ligeia leaped to her feet with a shriek,
then subsided on her deathbed. In a
scarcely audible whisper she repeated a
proverb that had haunted her before:
that man did not yield to death save
through the weakness of his own will.
So Ligeia died.
Crushed with sorrow, her husband left
his desolate home by the Rhine and
retired to an old and decayed abbey in a
deserted region in England. The exterior
of the building he left in its sagging state,
but inside he furnished the rooms
lavishly and weirdly. He had become the slave
of opium, and the furnishings took on
the shapes and colors of his fantastic
dreams. One bedchamber received the
2052

most bizarre treatment of all, and to this
chamber he led his new bride, the blue-
eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tre-
maine.
The room was in a high turret of the
abbey. It was of immense proportions,
lighted by a single huge window. The
pane had a leaden hue, giving a ghastly
luster to all objects within the room. The
walls, the floors, the furniture were all
covered with a heavy, arabesque tapestry,
black figures on pure gold. The figures
changed as one looked at them from
different angles, their appearance being
changed by an artificial current of air
that stirred the draperies constantly.
In rooms such as this he spent a bridal
month with Lady Rowena. It was easy
to perceive that she loved him but little,
and he hated her with a passion more
demonic than human. In his opium
dreams he called aloud for Ligeia, as if
he could restore her to the earthly life
she had abandoned. He reveled in
memories of her purity and her love.
In the second month of her marriage
Rowena grew ill, and in her fever she
spoke of sounds and movements in the
chamber, fantasies unheard and unseen
by her husband. Although she recovered,
she had recurring attacks of the fever and
it became evident that she would soon
succumb. Her imaginings became
stronger, and she grew more insistent about
the sounds and movements in the
tapestries.
One night in September she became
visibly weaker and unusually agitated.
Seeking to calm her, her husband stepped
across the room to get some wine. But
he was arrested midway by the sense of
something passing lightly by him. Then
he was startled to see on the gold carpet
a shadow of angelic aspect. Saying
nothing to Rowena, he poured the wine into
a goblet. As she took the vessel, he
distinctly heard a light footstep upon the
carpet and saw, or thought he saw, three
or four drops of a ruby-colored liquid fall
into the goblet from an invisible source.
Immediately Rowena grew worse, and
on the third night she died. As he sat by
her shrouded body in that bridal
chamber, he thought of his lost Ligeia.
Suddenly he heard a sound from the bed
upon which the corpse of his wife lay.
Going closer, he perceived that Rowena
had a faint color. It was unmistakable;
Rowena lived. Unable to summon aid,
he watched her with mounting terror.
Then a relapse came, and she subsided
into a death pallor more rigid than
before. All night this phenomenon
recurred. Rowena returned briefly from
the dead, only to sink once more into
oblivion. Each time he saw again a
vision of Ligeia.
Toward morning of that fearful night
the enshrouded figure rose from the bed
and tottered to the center of the
chamber. Terrified, he fell at her feet. She
unwound the burial cerements from her
head and there streamed down raven-
black hair unknown to the living
Rowena. Then the spectral figure slowly
opened her eyes. He screamed in one
last mad shout. He could not be
mistaken. Staring at him were the full black
eyes of his lost love, the Lady Ligeia.
2053

LIGHT IN AUGUST
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Mississippi
First published: 1932
Principal characters:
Joe Christmas, a white Negro
Doc Hines, his grandfather
Mr. McEachern, his foster father
Joanna Burden, his benefactress and mistress
Joe Brown, alias Lucas Burch, his partner
Lena Grove, mother of Brown's child
Byron Bunch, in love with Lena
Critique:
This novel makes a study of the race
problem in the South and psychological
obsession with the Civil War. It is a
fascinating narrative told with little
regard for strict time sequence. Sometimes
the author's sentence structure becomes
obscure; sometimes the exact meaning
of his poetic compression is lost. But the
novel is important in its vivid treatment
of a theme of widespread social signfi-
The Story:
Joe Christmas was the illegitimate son
of a circus trouper of Negro blood and a
white girl named Milly Hines. Joe's
grandfather, old Doc Hines, killed the
circus man, let Milly die in childbirth,
and put Joe—at Christmas time; hence
his last name—into an orphanage, where
the children learned to call him
"Nigger." Doc Hines then arranged to have
Joe adopted by a religious and heartless
farmer named McEachern, whose
cruelties to Joe were met with a matching
stubbornness that made of the boy an
almost subhuman being.
One day in town McEachern took Joe
to a disreputable restaurant, where he
talked to the waitress, Bobbie Allen.
McEachern told the adolescent Joe never
to patronize the place alone. But Joe
went back. He met Bobbie at night and
became her lover. Night after night,
while the McEacherns were asleep, he
would creep out of the house and hurry
to meet her in town.
One night McEachern followed Joe
to a country dance and ordered him
home. Joe reached for a chair, knocked
McEachern unconscious, whispered to
Bobbie that he would meet her soon, and
raced McEachern's mule home. There
he gathered up all the money he could
lay his hands on and went into town.
At the house where Bobbie stayed he
encountered the restaurant proprietor and
his wife and another man. The two men
beat up Joe, took his money, and left
for Memphis with the two women.
Joe moved on. Sometimes he worked.
More often he simply lived off the money
women would give him. He slept with
many women and nearly always told
them he was of Negro blood.
At last he went to Jefferson, a small
town in Mississippi, where he got work
shoveling sawdust in a lumber mill. He
found lodging in a long-deserted Negro
cabin near the country home of Mis*
Joanna Burden, a spinster of Yankee
origin who had few associates in
Jefferson because of her zeal for bettering
the lot of the Negro. She fed Joe and,
when she learned that he was of Negro
blood, planned to send him to a Negro
LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner. By permission of the author and the publishers. Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 1932, by William Faulkner.
2054

school. Joe was her lover for three years.
Her reactions ranged from sheer
animalism to evangelism, in which she tried to
make Joe repent his sins and turn
Christian.
A young man who called himself Joe
Brown came to work at the sawmill, and
Joe Christmas invited Brown to share
his cabin with him. The two began to
sell bootleg whiskey. After a while Joe
told Brown that he was part Negro;
before long Brown discovered the
relations of Joe and Miss Burden. When
their bootlegging prospered, they bought
a car and gave up their jobs at the
lumber mill.
One night Joe went to Miss Burden's
room half-determined to kill her. That
night she attempted to shoot him with
an antiquated pistol that did not fire.
Joe cut her throat with his razor and
ran out of the house. Later in the
evening a fire was discovered in Miss
Burden's house. When the townspeople
started to go upstairs in the burning
house, Brown tried to stop them. They
brushed him aside. They found Miss
Burden's body in the bedroom and
carried it outside before the house burned
to the ground.
Through a letter in the Jefferson
bank, the authorities learned of Miss
Burden's New Hampshire relatives,
whom they notified. Almost at once word
came back offering a thousand dollars
reward for the capture of the murderer.
Brown tried to tell the story as he knew
it, putting the blame on Joe Christmas,
so that he could collect the money. Few
believed his story, but he was held in
custody until Joe Christmas could be
found.
Joe Christmas remained at large for
several days, but at last with the help of
bloodhounds he was tracked down.
Meanwhile old Doc Hines had learned
of his grandson's crime and he came with
his wife to Jefferson. He urged the white
people to lynch Joe, but for the most
part his rantings went unheeded.
On the way to face indictment by the
grand jury in the courthouse, Joe,
handcuffed but not manacled to the deputy,
managed to escape. He ran to a Negro
cabin and found a gun. Some volunteer
guards from the American Legion gave
chase, and finally found him in the
kitchen of the Reverend Gail Hightower,
a one-time Presbyterian preacher who
now was an outcast because he had driven
his wife into dementia by his obsession
with the gallant death of his
grandfather in the Civil War. Joe had gone
to Hightower at the suggestion of his
grandmother, Mrs. Hines, who had had
a conference with him in his cell just
before he escaped. She had been advised
of this possible way out by Byron Bunch,
Hightower's only friend in Jefferson.
The Legionnaires shot Joe down; then
their leader mutilated him with a knife.
Brown now claimed his reward. A
deputy took him out to the cabin where
he had lived with Joe Christmas. On
entering the cabin, he saw Mrs. Hines
holding a new-born baby. In the bed
was a girl, Lena Grove, whom he had
slept with in a town in Alabama. Lena
had started out to find Brown when she
knew she was going to have a baby.
Traveling most of the way on foot, she
had arrived in Jefferson on the day of
the murder and the fire. Directed to the
sawmill, she had at once seen that
Byron Bunch, to whom she had been
sent, was not the same man as Lucas
Burch, which was Brown's real name.
Byron, a kindly soul, had fallen in love
with her. Having identified Brown from
Byron's description, she was sure that
in spite of his new name Brown was
the father of her child. She gave birth
to the baby in Brown's cabin, where
Byron had made her as comfortable as
he could, with the aid of Mrs. Hines.
Brown jumped from a back window
and ran away. Byron, torn between a
desire to marry Lena and the wish to
give her baby its rightful father, tracked
Brown to the railroad grade outside town
and fought with him. Brown escaped
aboard a freight train.
2055

Three weeks later Lena and Byron
took to the road with the baby, Lena
still searching for Brown. A truck driver
gave them a lift. Byron was patient, but
one night tried to compromise her. When
she repulsed him, he left the little camp
where the truck was parked. But next
morning he was waiting at the bend of
the road, and he climbed up on the
truck as it made its way toward
Tennessee.
2056

LILIOM
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ferenc Molnar (1878-1952)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Budapest
First presented: 1909
Principal characters:
Liliom, a merry-go-round barker
Mrs. Muskat, his employer
Julie, his wife
Marie, her friend
Wolf, Marie's husband
Mrs. Hollunder, Julie's aunt
Ficsur, Liliom's friend
Linzman, the cashier whom Ficsur suggests robbing
Louise, daughter of Julie and Liliom
Critique:
This play is a popular favorite on the
stages of Europe and America. The
author's purpose was to tell a story of
love and loyalty among the working
classes. As literature the play is not
profound, but as an entertainment piece it
will probably enjoy a long life.
Liliom, to show his independence,
announced that he was going to get some
beer. While he was collecting his
belongings, Marie disclosed to Julie that
she was in love with a man in a
uniform, a porter, however, not a soldier.
When Liliom returned, he turned Marie
away and began to discuss love with
Julie, bragging and bullying all the
while. Julie showed that she was deeply
in love, for she had forfeited her job by
staying out so late. Two policemen
looking for vagrants interrupted their
conversation. After asking routine questions
and warning Julie that Liliom was a
notorious ne'er-do-well, the policemen
continued on their rounds. Though Julie
protested that she did not love Liliom, it
was obvious that she did. So they were
married.
They moved into a run-down
photographer s shop operated by the Hollunders,
mother and son, at the edge of the park.
Mrs. Hollunder, Julie's aunt, provided
them not only with shelter but also with
food and fuel. She grumbled all the
time, but she was good-hearted beneath
her gruffness. Marie, meanwhile, was
falling more deeply in love with Wolf,
the porter. One day, while the two girls
were exchanging confidences, Mrs. Hol-
LILIOM by Ferenc Molnar. Translated by Benjamin F. Glazer. By permission of the author and his agent Df.
Edmond Pauker, of Paramount Pictures, Itac, and the publishers, Liveright Publishing Corp. Copyright, 1921,
by Boni & Liveright, Inc. Renewed, 1949, by Ferenc Molnar.
The Story:
Liliom was a barker for Mrs. Mus-
kat's merry-go-round at an amusement
park on the edge of Budapest. As a
barker he was a great success, for he had
a stock of funny jokes that kept the
customers laughing, and he had a
playful way with the girls.
One day two young servant girls,
Marie and Julie, came to the merry-go-
round. To Mrs. Muskat's indignation,
Liliom followed Julie onto the merry-go-
round and put his arm around her. Mrs.
Muskat warned Julie that if she ever
came near the merry-go-round again she
would be thrown out, as she did not wish
to lose her license because of questionable
behavior in the park. Liliom, however,
told Julie to come back any time and
she would be welcome. Although Mrs.
Muskat was reluctant to let Liliom go,
she could not ignore his insolence, and
she dismissed him.
2057

lunder came in and said that JuhVs
other suitor, a widowed carpenter with
two children and a respectable income,
still wanted to take her out of the poverty
in which she lived. Julie preferred to
stay where she was. Then Mrs. Muskat
came and offered to take Liliom back,
but he refused. He and a friend named
Ficsur had a scheme for getting a great
deal of money; he was no longer
interested in his old job at the merry-go-
round.
Ficsur was planning a robbery. Each
Saturday a cashier for a leather factory
passed a nearby railway embankment,
with the workmen's wages in a leather
bag. Liliom was to accost the man and
ask him what time it was while Ficsur
was to come up from behind and stab the
man. Ficsur encouraged Liliom to steal
a knife from Mrs. Hollunder's kitchen.
Julie, knowing that the two men were
up to no good, begged Liliom not to go
out with Ficsur, for she had arranged to
have the carpenter come that evening
and offer Liliom work. After Liliom had
gone, Mrs. Hollunder missed her knife
and suspected Liliom of taking it. Julie
lied, saying that she had gone through
Liliom's pockets and had found only a
pack of cards.
Liliom and Ficsur arrived at the
embankment just as the six o'clock train
passed. Being early, they started a game
»f twenty-one and Ficsur won from
Liliom his share in the loot they hoped
to take from the cashier. Liliom accused
Ficsur of cheating. Then their victim
appeared and Liliom accosted him. As
Ficsur was about to strike, however, the
cashier seized Ficsur's arm. He pointed
a pistol at Liliom's breast. Ironically, he
had come from the factory, where he had
just finished paying off the workers, and
if Ficsur had killed him the robbers
would have got no money. As the
cashier called out to two policemen in the
distance, Liliom broke away and stabbed
himself with the kitchen knife.
The policemen attempted to take him
to a hospital, but his condition was too
critical. They took him back to the
photographer's studio, where he died with
Julie by his side holding his hand.
Dying, Liliom had a vision. Two
heavenly policemen came to him and
told him to follow them. They reminded
him that death was not the end, that
he was not through with earth until his
memory had also passed away. Then they
led him to the heavenly court assigned
to suicide cases. There he learned that
after a period of purification by fire,
suicides were sent back to earth for one
day to see whether they had profited by
their purification. Liliom was sentenced
to sixteen years in the fires.
At the end of that time Liliom
returned to earth to find his wife and
sixteen-year-old daughter Louise about to
lunch in the garden of their dilapidated
little house. Liliom was unrecognized.
Julie gave him some food. He learned
from Louise that her father, a handsome
man, had gone to America before she
was born, and had died there. When
Liliom accused her husband of having
struck her, Julie denied that he had ever
mistreated her, and she dismissed Liliom
as an ungrateful wretch. Liliom tried to
please his daughter with card tricks and
with a beautiful star which he had stolen
from heaven, but Louise would have
nothing more to do with him. As he left
he struck her hard on the hand, but the
blow felt as tender as a caress to her.
Her mother told her that there had been
times when she, too, had experienced
that sort of reaction from a blow. So
Liliom left in the company of the two
policemen, who shook their heads in
profound regret at Liliom's failure.
2058

THE LINK
Type of work: Drama
Author: August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Sweden
First presented: 1893
Principal characters:
Baron Sprengel
Baroness Sprengel, his wife
The Judge
The Pastor
Alexandersson, a farmer
Twelve Jurors
Critique:
The Link, a one-act play in sixteen
scenes, is one of Strindberg's briefer
attempts to deal dramatically with the
problems of marriage and divorce—problems
which concerned him personally
throughout his adult life. (He had experienced
the first of his three divorces in 1891,
and there are undoubtedly
autobiographical connections here.) The "link," which
gives the play its title, is the child of the
two people who wish to be separated.
The child holds them together when
everything else is gone between them;
the desire to prevent the child from
becoming a ward of the court unites them,
their old antagonisms still alive, in a
common bond of enmity against the
unfeeling powers of the state. In this, the
play becomes something more than merely
a commentary on divorce. It becomes an
expose* of modern justice. Once the
conflict of Baron Sprengel and his wife is
placed before the court, it is no longer
theirs. In the hands of the youthful Judge
and the callous jurors, it is stripped of its
human qualities and reduced to the cold
terms of abstract argument. This is a
social evil, but the ever-present moralist in
Strindberg seems to imply that it is fit
punishment for the sins of the erring
husband and wife.
The Story:
The courtroom was crowded, for
popular interest in the two cases about to be
heard—a false accusation charge brought
against the farmer Alexandersson by his
servant girl, Alma Jonsson, and a
separation suit between Baron and Baroness
Sprengel—was running high. The young
Judge, only twenty-seven years old, was
uneasy: he was taking the bench for the
first time. He conferred at length with
the Pastor before opening the proceedings.
The Alexandersson-Jonsson case was
first. The old farmer admitted accusing
the girl of theft; he had, he claimed,
caught her red-handed. There were,
however, no witnesses; and, as the charges
could not be proved, his accusations were
false—so the girl's lawyer asserted. While
the court was cleared, Judge and jury
conferred. All agreed that the farmer,
though actually in the right, was
nevertheless technically guilty. Had he denied
accusing the girl, nothing could have been
done to him; by being honest, however,
he had lost his case. Finally the Judge
called Alexandersson in and sentenced
him to a fine of a hundred crowns-
enough, Alexandersson claimed, to cause
the loss of his farm.
The divorce case came next. The
Sprengels had planned to handle things
as amicably as possible. The baron was
to bring the complaint against his wife,
charging her with a disposition
incompatible with his. She was to have a sizable
THE LINK by August Strindberg, from PLAYS BY AUGUST STRINDBERG. Translated by Edwin
Bjorkman. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1912, by Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. Renewed. All rights reserved.
2059

annuity and the custody of their one
child, a son. The baron, however, was to
retain the right to supervise the child's
education. These were to be the terms,
and none of the personal details of their
quarrel were to be brought out.
Such was their agreement; but, once
the proceedings began, they found that
the agreement was not to be honored. The
court, the young Judge curtly informed
them, would decide the disposition of the
child. Meanwhile, the separation case
must be decided: the husband, as
complainant, must substantiate his claim.
Confused by the attitude of the court
and sensing the possibility of losing her
child, the baroness responded
emotionally to the planned charges of her
husband. The baron, realizing that his right
to have charge of the boy's education was
threatened by the attitude of the court,
asserted that the baroness, by her
feminine methods of child-rearing, was
undermining the boy's masculinity.
Here the agreement for an amicable
settlement broke down completely.
Under the goading of the court, the two
became overt enemies. All of the sordid
details were dragged into the open. The
baroness, turning complainant, charged
the baron with adultery and produced
letters to prove her accusation. The baron
met this charge with a stream of
vilification, which the baroness emotionally
returned. Enraged, the baron announced a
countercharge of adultery. The baroness
defied him to prove his accusation. The
baron promised that he would.
At that point the young Judge
adjourned the proceedings and sought help
from the elderly Pastor. The Judge,
despairing of doing justice, threatened to
give up his profession. The Pastor
advised him always to adhere to the strict,
abstract letter of the law and never to
consider the human involvements in a
case—else he would go mad. Meanwhile,
the baron and the baroness were
exchanging personal vituperations.
When the proceedings resumed, the
baroness agreed to testify under oath that
she was not guilty of adultery. Technical
quibblings on her right to testify
followed. Then the farmer Alexandersson,
probably as a false witness, piqued by the
injustice done him, arose and claimed
that he had actually observed the
baroness' infidelities. While the validity of his
testimony was being argued, the baron
produced copies of incriminating letters,
the originals of which the baroness had
seen him destroy.
Again the court was cleared so that
Judge and jury could confer. As they
waited, the husband and wife realized
that they both had lost, that they both
had been defeated by the inhuman forces
of a hostile society. Their child, they
knew, would be taken from them and
brought up ignobly in the name of
peasant morality. This realization brought
them temporarily together. The baron
left to take the child to his mother, out
of the court's hands.
He returned just in time to hear the
verdict. The two were to be separated for
a year and the child placed in the
custody of a peasant couple. The baron
informed his wife that he had not spirited
the child away but had left him at the
Pastor's house in preparation for
appealing the verdict to a higher court. He
predicted the wranglings and heartaches
they would endure in the course of the
appeal and suggested that it all was a
judgment of God upon them for the years
that they had lived together unmarried
before the child had been born.
2060

THE LION OF FLANDERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hendrik Conscience (1812-1883)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1298-1305
Locale: Flanders
First published: 1838
Principal characters:
Peter Deconinck, dean of the clothworkers' guild at Bruges
Jan Breydel, dean of the butchers' guild at Bruges
Count Robert de Bethune, called the Lion of Flanders
Count Guy of Flanders, Count Robert's elderly father
Lady Matilda, Count Robert's daughter
Adolf of Niewland, a Flemish knight in love with Lady Matilda
Critique:
Hendrik Conscience is regarded as the
father of modern Flemish literature, for
it was he who first used the Flemish
language in his fiction, thus reviving what
was a dying literary language. Writing
soon after Belgium had become a nation,
before his death Conscience gained
recognition as a leader of culture in that
country, honored by his government in many
ways. His books, including The Lion of
FlanderSy his first great success, have been
translated into other languages. Like other
novels by Conscience, this work presents
a period in the history of Flanders and the
Flemish-speaking people in a manner
similar to that of Sir Walter Scott in his
fiction; and in its ample historical detail and
pageant-like descriptions, it is typical of
Conscience's work. Students of Flemish
culture assert that the pictures of
medieval life in Flanders are highly accurate.
Others will find that plot and atmosphere
combine to give the book a romantic
sweep that adds to the interest and
pleasure of the reader.
The Story:
At the beginning of the fourteenth
century Philip the Fair ruled as King of
France, along with his queen, Joanna of
Navarre. At the time the French treasury
was almost depleted from the cost of
many wars, and Philip hoped to refill it
with treasure and tax money from the rich
cities of Flanders. The burghers, jealous
of their privileges, refused to pay, even
when asked to do so by Count Guy of
Flanders, who was Philip's vassal. Count
Guy found himself the victim of the
king's displeasure, with his lands
confiscated and his daughter Philippa
imprisoned in the Louvre. In hopes of aiding
Count Guy, Charles de Valois, King
Philip's brother, took the Flemish barons
to the king to effect a reconciliation.
Despite the safe conduct guaranteed by his
brother, the king imprisoned the nobles.
He was led to that unworthy deed by his
queen, who hated the Flemings, nobles
and commoners alike. Chagrined by his
royal brother's unknightly conduct,
Charles de Valois broke his sword and
vowed not to serve France until his
brother's reign was ended.
Only one Flemish noble, Sir Diederik
die Vos, nicknamed the Fox, escaped.
Disguising himself as a palmer, he set out
to return to his native province where he
hoped to lay plans to help his fellow
Flemings. The French took over Castle
Wynandael, the home of Count Guy.
Lady Matilda, Count Robert's daughter,
fled to Bruges and found asylum in the
home of Adolf of Niewland. Another of
her protectors was Peter Deconinck,
powerful dean of the great clothworkers'
guild in the city.
At the time the Flemings were divided
into three groups. One, the Lilyards,
2061

favored collaboration with the French.
Another, made up chiefly of commoners,
favored supporting Count Guy and
independence, even though the count was the
French king's prisoner; this group was
known as the Clawards, after the claws of
the heraldic device of Flanders, a lion.
The third group, made up of nobles, held
back from participation in the
disagreements; because the commoners were
involved they did not consider this a conflict
in which they could become involved
with honor.
Determined to subjugate the Flemings,
Philip the Fair entered Bruges with a
military force and appointed his queen's
uncle governor of Flanders. After the king
left a per capita tax was laid on the
citizens to pay for the cost of the visit. Peter
Deconinck advised his clothworkers not
to pay the tax; for his rebellious counsel
he was placed in prison. To Deconinck's
rescue went Jan Breydel, dean of the
butchers, and freed him. In retaliation the
Lilyards and the French governor planned
to hang both Deconinck and Breydel as
the first step in forcing the guilds and the
people to submit entirely. The two deans
of the guilds made battle plans and met
force with force. The Lilyards were
forced into the confines of the castle, but
at last the threat of pillage by the French
forces outside the city forced the
Clawards to submit. The French entered the
city, freed the Lilyards, and held the
people of Bruges at their mercy.
One day as Adolf of Niewland walked
in the countryside outside the city walls
he met Sir Diederik die Vos in the
disguise of a friar. The nobleman brought
word that the French vassal who guarded
Count Robert de Bethune, called the
Lion of Flanders, was willing to grant
Count Robert freedom for a time if
someone else would take his place. Adolf of
Niewland agreed to do so.
Some weeks later the French, led by
a disloyal clothworker, arrested Lady
Matilda and prepared to take her off to
prison in France. Lady Matilda had
displeased Queen Joanna, and this was the
queen's revenge. As soon as he learned
what had happened, Jan Breydel set off
to rescue Lady Matilda. Captured, he
managed to escape. Returning with
several hundred followers, he burned the
castle at Male. A small band of French
knights escaped, taking Lady Matilda
with them. A short time later they met a
knight in black armor who rescued the
girl. The knight was Count Robert in
disguise. He was so pleased with the
conduct of Deconinck and Breydel that he
left word that they were to be knighted
at the first opportunity.
On his return to Bruges, Breydel found
that many citizens were fleeing to the
country, the Clawards deeming it unsafe
to remain in the city. They were led by
Deconinck, who hoped to join forces with
some nobles who were ready to support
actively the cause of Count Guy of
Flanders. At a council of war Count Robert
advised that they prepare as quickly as
possible as large a force as they could,
for the French king was gathering an
army of seventy thousand men to subdue
Flanders. He also brought word that his
sister Philippa had been poisoned in
prison.
Meanwhile, the Clawards left in
Bruges were badly mistreated. On May
13, 1302, in an attempt to cow the
population, the French governor and the
Lilyards picked out eight men to be
hanged. Only one of the eight was saved
—the father of Jan Breydel, rescued by
his son at the last minute. In immediate
retaliation the French killed all the
Clawards they could find and pillaged their
homes; among the victims were the
mother and sister of Jan Breydel. Then
the Clawards returned to the city in force
and killed seven thousand Frenchmen and
many Lilyards. Only a handful of the
French escaped. When the city was
restored to order, Lady Matilda and Adolf
of Niewland returned to the latter's home.
Soon after, Lord Guy, the younger
brother of Count Robert, arrived with a
2062

body of troops to help protect the city.
Philip the Fair, undaunted by the
setback at Bruges, raised a large army for
the invasion of Flanders. The Flemings,
seeing that their land must be laid waste
by the French or defended to the utmost,
took an oath to stand together and
gathered their forces to resist the French.
Soon the two armies, each in excess of
sixty thousand men, advanced to meet in
battle. The Flemish took up a defensive
position before the city of Courtrai.
There, in full view and hearing of all,
Lady Matilda and Lord Guy, her uncle,
invested Peter Deconinck and Jan Brey-
del with knighthood, as Count Robert had
commanded. The French army,
meanwhile, had camped near Lille. The
French leader, Count Robert d'Artois,
was so eager to do battle that he failed
to reconnoiter the Flemish position. His
vows of bloody revenge were so terrible
that part of his force deserted, preferring
to fight with the Flemings rather than
dishonor themselves.
The French advanced from Lille to
the attack. At first the advantage was on
their side, but their failure to make a
reconnaissance left a trap for their cavalry.
Before the city of Courtrai was a large,
deep marsh, into which wave after wave
of the French horsemen sank, to be
ridden over by their comrades who followed
and to be decimated by weapons of the
Flemish forces. Even so, for a time the
battle seemed to go against the Flemings,
until a knight in gold appeared. He was
Count Robert, the Lion of Flanders, freed
again from his prison for a time and
hurrying to the aid of his people. Under his
leadership the Flemings won the victory.
After the battle Count Robert returned
to his prison, knowing that the French
would not dare kill him, lest hostages
held by the Flemish army be killed in
reprisal. Before he left, Count Robert
promised that Lady Matilda should
become the bride of Adolf of Niewland.
The young knight had fought bravely in
the battle. Badly wounded, he was
recovering in the monastery in which Lady
Matilda had taken refuge.
After the battle at Courtrai, called the
Battle of the Golden Spurs, Flanders was
safe; trade and commerce flourished
again. The French still tried to subdue
the Flemish people, but several such
attempts ended in failure. Philip the Fair
dishonored himself in one truce to write
a treaty, but additional French defeats
forced him finally to give up all hope of
subduing the stubborn, independent
Flemish. Old Count Guy of Flanders died
while waiting for the treaty to be signed
and so was never released from his prison.
But Count Robert, the Lion of Flanders,
was set free after the signing of the treaty
in 1305, and until his death seventeen
years later he ruled over his free people.
2063

THE LITTLE CLAY CART
Type of work: Drama
Author: Shudraka (fl. 100 B.C.)
Type of plot: Tragicomedy
Time of plot: Fifth century B.C.
Locale: Ancient Hindu city of Ujjayini
First presented: Unknown
Principal characters:
Charudatta, an impoverished young Brahmana
Vasantasena, a courtesan in love with Charudatta
Maitreya, a poor Brahmana, Charudatta's friend
Samsthanaka, King Palaka's brother-in-law
Aryaka, an exiled prince
Saiwilaka, a Brahmana and a thief
Madanika, Vasantasena's slave and confidante
Critique:
The Little Clay Cart is regarded by
students of literature in the Western
world as one of the two best extant
Sanskrit plays, the other being Kalidasa's
Sakuntala. Many critics have pointed
out that The Little Clay Cart is more like
Western drama than any other Sanskrit
play, in structure, characterization, and
tone. This similarity to Occidental drama
may account for the fact that its Indian
critics have been less enthusiastic than
those of the Western world. The Little
Clay Cart is noteworthy for being the
only known Sanskrit play to show a
courtesan in love with a Brahmana, as it
is the only known one also to contain
important characters from various strata of
Hindu society, not from the upper castes
only. It is the seemingly realistic and
vivid presentation of these characters
which probably has appealed most to
Western readers.^In the original the title
is Mrcchahatikd.
The Story:
Charudatta was a Brahmana who had
impoverished himself by spending his
substance on the public welfare and in
helping those individuals who sought his
aid. Though dwelling in poverty in a
broken-down house, he still enjoyed a fine
reputation in Ujjayini as an honest and
upright man of rare wisdom. This
reputation eased somewhat the fact that he had
been deserted by most of his friends and
was embarrassed by his lack of wealth.
Although married happily and the
proud father of a small son, Rohasena,
Charudatta was enamored of Vasantasena,
a courtesan of great wealth and
reputation who, having seen him at a temple,
was also in love with him. One evening
as Charudatta and his friend Maitreya sat
discussing Charudatta's misfortunes and
the efficacy of devotion to the gods,
Vasantasena round herself pursued by
Samsthanaka, a half-mad brother-in-law of
King Palaka, and one of his henchmen.
The men offered to do violence to
Vasantasena, but she escaped from them in the
darkness and found safety in the house of
Charudatta, where a meeting between the
two increased the love they already felt
for each other. The courtesan, before
she left to return to her own palace,
entrusted a casket of jewelry to Charudatta,
as an excuse to see him again.
During the night a thief, Sarvilaka,
entered Charudatta's house and stole the
jewelry to buy his love, Madanika, who
was Vasantasena's slave and confidante.
The courtesan accepted the jewels and
freed Madanika to marry Sarvilaka,
intending to see that Charudatta should
learn that the jewels had been recovered.
In the meantime, Charudatta sent a rare
pearl necklace of his wife's to
Vasantasena to recompense the courtesan for the
2064

loss of the less valuable jewels. His friend
Maitreya, fearing that Vasantasena's
attentions could bring only bad luck and
disaster, cautioned Charudatta against
doing so. Maitreya, knowing courtesans,
believed that Vasantasena was merely
scheming to take from Charudatta the
few possessions he still had.
After leaving Vasantasena's palace with
his newly freed bride, Sarvilaka learned
that his friend, Prince Aryaka, had been
arrested by King Palaka and placed in a
dungeon. The king, neither a popular nor
a just monarch, feared that the people
might rise up, as a soothsayer had
predicted, to place Prince Aryaka on the
throne. After Sarvilaka succeeded in
freeing the prince from prison, Aryaka sought
help from Charudatta, who aided him in
escaping the pursuing guards.
Vasantasena, having proved her love
for Charudatta by becoming his mistress,
met his small son and gave him some
jewels with which to purchase a golden
toy cart to replace the unsatisfactory clay
cart Charudatta had been able to afford.
She made arrangements to meet
Charudatta in Pushpakarandaka Park, outside
the city, for a day's outing, but by
mistake she entered the wrong vehicle and
found herself in the gharri belonging to
Samsthanaka, who still pursued her and
was madly jealous of the love and favors
she bestowed freely upon Charudatta.
When Vasantasena arrived at the park,
she was discovered in the gharri by
Samsthanaka, who at first was overjoyed at
seeing her because he thought she had
come to him voluntarily. When she
spurned him and declared her love for
Charudatta, Samsthanaka tried to make
his henchmen kill her, but they refused.
Samsthanaka sent his followers away and
choked her himself. Believing her dead,
he hid the body under a pile of leaves.
Then, hoping to escape the penalty for
his crime, Samsthanaka decided to go to
a court and accuse Charudatta of
murdering Vasantasena.
When Samsthanaka first appeared at
court, the judges, who knew him to be
somewhat mad, refused to see him or take
him seriously; but when he threatened to
go to King Palaka, the judges became
frightened and sent for Charudatta.
Falsely accused, Charudatta proclaimed
his innocence. But circumstances were
against him. He admitted having been in
the park, and the jewels of Vasantasena
were found at his home, offering a
motive for the poverty-stricken man to have
killed the girl. The judges, in spite of
his previous reputation, were forced to
find Charudatta guilty. Although his
status as a Brahmana exempted him from
the death penalty for any crime, King
Palaka ordered Charudatta put to death.
No one knew that the body identified as
Vasantasena's was that of another woman
or that Vasantasena, befriended by a
Buddhist monk, was recovering near the
park from Samsthanaka's attack.
Charudatta was taken through the city
by two executioners, who stopped several
times to announce the name of the
condemned man and the nature of his crime.
Although the people of the city loved
Charudatta, they dared not intervene on
his behalf, even though he steadfastly
maintained his innocence. Samsthanaka's
slave tried to tell that his master had
really committed the crime, but no one
believed him, and so Charudatta and his
executioners, accompanied by a crowd,
continued on their way to the place of
execution, a cemetery south of the city.
The executioners, thinking to be
merciful, offered to decapitate Charudatta,
but a miracle prevented their sword from
touching him, and so they prepared the
victim for the slow, agonizing death by
impalement upon a pike. Fortunately,
Vasantasena, seeing the excited crowd as
she made her way back to the city,
intervened in time. When she told who had
really attacked her, though
unsuccessfully, Samsthanaka was arrested. The
excitement was not ended, however, for
word came that Charudatta's wife,
believing herself a widow, was about to cast
herself upon a funeral pyre. Charudatta
reached her in time to prevent her death,
2065

and she and Vasantasena met and
accepted one another. Word came, too, that
Prince Aryaka had deposed King Palaka
and was now king. One of his first deeds
was to restore Charudatta's fortune and
make him an important official of the
court. Charudatta, still a man of
conscience and charity, forgave Samsthana-
ka's villainy and caused him to be set
free.
2066

LITTLE DORRIT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1855-1857
Principal characters:
Little Dorrit, a child born and reared in debtors' prison
William Dorrit, her father
Fanny, her older sister
Arthur Clennam, Little Dorrit's friend
Mrs. Clbnnam, Arthur's mother and Little Dorrit's employer
Monsieur Blandois, a blackmailer
Mr. Merdlb, a banker and Fanny Dorrit's father-in-law
Critique:
This book, which has never had the
popularity of most of Dickens' other
novels, was the product of the author's
"middle period," which came prior to his
great successes with A Tale of Two Cities
and Great Expectations. To a modern
reader the book is dreary because of the
scenes in the Marshalsea debtors' prison.
In addition, the very concept of a debtors'
prison is so far removed from modern
experience that we have difficulty in
picturing the setting. To Dickens'
contemporaries, however, there was probably a great
deal of interest in the sections dealing
with the red tape and inefficiency of the
Circumlocution Office, by which Dickens
satirized the inefficiency of the British
government during the Crimean War.
The Story:
Amy Dorrit, or, as she was better
known, Little Dorrit, was born while her
mother stayed with her father, a bankrupt,
in Marshalsea debtors' prison. Although
her mother died soon after, the little girl,
along with her older brother and sister,
continued to live in the prison. As she
became older, Little Dorrit went outside
the prison to do sewing, for only the debtor
himself was not permitted to leave the
place.
One of the women for whom Little
Dorrit sewed was Mrs. Clennam, a widow
carrying on a place of business, even
though she had been confined to her room
by illness for fifteen years. Mrs. Clen-
nam's son, who was forty, had gone to the
Orient twenty years before and had joined
his father, who looked after the company's
business in the East. After his father's
death Arthur Clennam returned. He told
his mother that he would take his part of
the inheritance and fend for himself; he
did not want to remain in the business
with his miserly, grasping, and rather
inhuman mother. Mrs. Clennam, confronted
by her son's decision, took her old clerk
into partnership with her.
While he was staying at his mother's
house, Arthur noticed Little Dorrit and
made inquiry about her. Having been
struck by the girl's sweet disposition and
appearance, he went to Marshalsea
debtors prison and tried to help the Dorrit
family. He even said that he would try
to get Mr. Dorrit out of the place.
Everyone thought such a course impossible, for
some of Mr. Dorrit's debts were owed
through the Circumlocution Office, a
place of endless red tape, to the crown.
Arthur found that he had a confederate,
though an unusual one, in a clerk named
Pancks, a queer creature who collected
rents for Arthur's former fiancee's father.
Pancks was aided in turn by John
Chivery, the son of a turnkey, who was
also in love with Little Dorrit, and by Mr.
Rugg, an elderly lawyer.
In addition to helping Little Dorrit by
putting in motion action to have her father
2067

released from prison, Arthur aided her by
getting her more sewing clients, by getting
her brother out of trouble, and by sending
small amounts of money to defray the
expenses of the Dorrit household in the
prison.
At last Pancks brought unusual advice.
He had discovered that Mr. Dorrit, who
had been in prison over twenty years, was
the only surviving heir to a large fortune
which had gone unclaimed for years.
Within a short time Mr. Dorrit was
released, his debts having been paid, and he
immediately set himself up as a man of
fortune. Mr. Dorrit and his two oldest
children, determined to live up to the new
social position that their fortune had given
them, tried to forget everything in the
past. They even convinced themselves
that Arthur Clennam had insulted them
and refused to have anything more to do
with the man. Only Little Dorrit
remained unspoiled, merely surprised at the
good fortune which had been thrust upon
them.
^s quickly as possible the Dorrit family
went to the continent, where they could
successfully carry out the fiction that they
had never seen a debtor's prison. Because
of their money they were admitted to the
society of Britons who were living away
from England. Fanny Dorrit, the older of
the two daughters, was pursued by Mr.
Sparkle, stepson of Mr. Merdle, who was
supposed to be the richest and most
influential banker in England. Fanny,
although not in love with Sparkle,
considered with pleasure the prospect of
marrying into a wealthy family. The
Merdles, who saw only that the Dorrits
had a fortune, agreed to the match, even
though Mrs. Merdle was well aware of
the fact that her son had fallen in love
with Fanny when the latter was a dancer
on the stage in London.
After the marriage Fanny and her
husband went to live in London. Mr. Dorrit
visited them there and became a close
friend of Mr. Merdle. The banker even
proposed to help Mr. Dorrit increase his
already large fortune through shrewd and
well-paying investments. Mr. Dorrit, the
former debtor, was in seventh heaven
because of his new prospects.
Little Dorrit wondered at the change
in her family but remained her own self.
She wrote to Arthur at intervals, for she,
at least, was still grateful for all he had
done to help her. Besides, she was in love
with him.
Arthur, still in London, was trying to
fathom certain mysterious people who had
been seen about his mother's house and
also attempting to keep his own business
on solid financial ground. Neither task
was easy. Mrs. Clennam was visited on
two occasions by a Monsieur Blandois,
whom Arthur knew to be a knave and
probably a murderer. He wondered what
business his mother could have with such
a person. He also distrusted Flintwinch,
the clerk who had become his mother's
partner. Flintwinch, a grubbing miserly
fellow who mistreated his wife, had taken
a great dislike to Arthur.
While trying to unravel the mystery,
Arthur became financially insolvent. Like
many others, he had become convinced
that the business ventures of Mr. Merdle
were the safest and quickest way to make
a fortune. As a result, he had put his
money and his company's money into
Merdle's ventures. When Merdle and his
bank failed, Arthur became a bankrupt
and was sent to the Marshalsea debtors'
prison, where he was housed in Mr. Dor-
rit's old quarters.
Mr. Rugg and Pancks did their best to
make Arthur's imprisonment a short one,
but he seemed to have lost all desire to
live, much less to leave the prison. Only
after Little Dorrit returned to England
and took up quarters within the prison,
to comfort him as she had comforted her
father, did Arthur take any interest in
life.
Learning that Monsieur Blandois had
disappeared from Mrs. Clennam's house,
Pancks tracked down the man and brought
him back to London. Then the reason for
his attempt to blackmail Mrs. Clennam
was revealed. Mrs. Clennam, ^ realizing
2068

that she had to make known the mystery
to her son unless she intended to pay
blackmail, rose from her wheelchair and
left her house for the first time in almost
twenty years. She went to the prison to
tell Arthur that he was not her child and
that she had for many years been keeping
money from him and from Little Dorrit.
When that mystery had been solved,
and the money was forthcoming, Arthut
was soon released from prison. Shortly
afterward he and Little Dorrit were
married. Little Dorrit, after a quarter century
of misfortune, was at last about to embark
upon a quiet and comfortable life.
2069

THE LITTLE FOXES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Lillian Hellman (1905- )
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: 1900
Locale: The Deep South
First presented: 1939
Principal characters:
Regina Giddens, a predatory woman
Benjamin Hubbard, and
Oscar Hubbard, her brothers
Horace Giddens, her husband
Alexandra, daughter of Regina and Horace
Birdie Hubbard, Oscar's wife
Critique:
The Little Foxes is usually considered
the major achievement of Lillian HeU-
man, and many critics place it high on
the list of American plays. In the first
place, it is technically a well-knit piece
of writing: her dialogue crackles and her
characters convince; there is no
extraneous matter present, so that The Little
Foxes is brilliantly compact and effective
theater. Secondly, in the chicanery of the
Hubbard family, we have what is
probably an accurate picture of one aspect of
the rise of industrialism in the post-Civil
War South.
The Story:
William Marshall, a Chicago
businessman, came South to negotiate with
Benjamin and Oscar Hubbard and their
sister, the striking Regina Giddens, over
matters concerning the construction of a
cotton mill. The Hubbard brothers and
Regina foresaw a glittering future for
them all. No longer would the cotton
have to come to the machines; instead,
at long last, it would be the other way
around. They firmly believed that
millions awaited them: the Hubbards would
be the richest family in the South. Ben
foresaw a stable of race horses, Oscar
speculated on a new home, and the
hapless Birdie, whom Oscar had married for
her father's cotton fields, longed to see
Lionnet, her old family home, restored to
its former grace and beauty. Birdie
continually sought a return to the genteel,
refined behavior of earlier days, before
the rise of materialistic ruthfuiness.
Later, certain difficulties arose. The
brothers lacked seventy-five thousand
dollars, Regina's third of the sum which the
Hubbards were to put up. Presumably
this amount would come from Horace,
Regina's husband, who lay in a Baltimore
hospital with a fatal heart ailment.
Though Regina had given Ben and
Oscar her promise that Horace would put
up the money, no word had yet reached
them. Horace, away five months, had
failed to acknowledge Regina's demands
for his return. Regina suggested,
however, that he was possibly holding out
for a larger share of the profits; when
one's money was badly needed, one
should be entitled to a bigger share of
the eventual returns. After crafty
manipulation, Regina extracted from Ben a
promise of a greater share of the profits
if she could get Horace home within two
weeks. Regina immediately dispatched
Alexandra, her daughter, to Baltimore.
When Horace arrived a week later, in
response to his daughter's summons, the
Hubbards and Regina descended on him.
No one in his right mind, the argument
ran, would refuse a seventy-five thou-
THE LITTLE FOXES by Lillian Hellman. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Copy
right, 1939, by Lillian Hellman.
2070

sand dollar investment that would garner
a million. Ben explained how water
power would be cheap and how the men
of the mountains and small towns would
be happy to work for low wages. Thus
the profits would be tremendous. But
Horace, though sourly admitting that the
venture was a good deal for the Hub-
bards, stated that he and Regina had
enough money already. The truth was
that Horace had had enough of his
scheming wife and her equally conniving
family, who, having made a sizable sum
already through their exploitation of the
poor, were now on their way to greater
fortune in identical fashion.
Regina protested furiously, but to no
avail. However, Ben and Oscar were not
too upset. Oscar's son Leo, through a
young banking employee, had discovered
that Horace had eighty-eight thousand
dollars in bonds in his safe deposit box,
securities which he checked only once in
six months. Assuming that Horace would
never miss them for a few months, Ben
had Oscar seize the bonds—more than
enough to meet the sum required by
Marshall—and leave for Chicago to
complete negotiations. Regina, after a fierce
argument with Horace, learned that
Oscar had gone. Ben now held the upper
hand; he simply told Regina that
everything had been settled. Horace, an
onlooker, was quietly amused. Now, he
thought, he would not be a party to the
wrecking of the town. He would at least
die honestly. To the watching
Alexandra's horror, Regina calmly informed him
that she hoped he would indeed die as
quickly as possible.
Two weeks later, Horace went to his
now estranged wife's part of the house.
Knowing that he was to be short-lived,
he had had his deposit box brought to
him, and had discovered the theft. This
he told Regina, along with his accurate
suspicions as to the thieves' identity. To
Regina's surprise, however, he stated that
he intended to say nothing unless forced
to, and then he would simply call the
theft a loan. Horace planned to make a
new will, leaving Regina eighty-eight
thousand dollars in bonds. Thus she
would eventually inherit his bonds, but
she would not receive a single cent of the
millions Ben and Oscar prophesied for
the Hubbard family. For once Horace
had tied the hands of his cunning wife.
Recalling their unhappy married life,
Regina shrewishly revealed her contempt
for Horace from the start. Horace, feeling
an attack coming on, broke his bottle of
medicine. Regina, hoping that his efforts
to climb the stairs would prove fatal,
cruelly refused to go upstairs for his
second bottle. Horace staggered from his
wheelchair and collapsed on the stair
landing.
In an interview with her brothers after
Horace was carried to his room. Regina
revealed what she had learned from her
husband. Should he die, she would
blackmail them for a seventy-five percent share
of the profits in exchange for the bonds.
Soon word came, in the person of the
silent Alexandra, that Retina's plan had
worked. Horace was dead. Regina then
announced her plans for seeing the judge
the next day. Any jury would be swaved
by a woman whose brothers had stolen
from her. Regina also declared that there
were not twelve men in the state whom
the brothers had not cheated. A
philosophical Ben gave in to Regina's demands,
but as he left he was wondering what
Horace, who had been in a wheelchair,
was doing on the landing. Perhaps in the
future he might find out. And when he
did, he would let Regina know.
Realizing that Alexandra loved her
father very much, Regina tried to be
sympathetic. However, her saddened,
sickened daughter defied her plans for
their future in Chicago. Alexandra
announced her final departure from Regina
and the Hubbards because she believed
that her father would have wanted it
that way.
2071

THE LITTLE MINISTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: James M. Barrie (1860-1937)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: The village of Thrums in Scotland
First published: 1891
Principal characters:
Gavin Dishart, the litde minister of Thrums
Margaret Dishart, his mother
Mr. Ogixvy, the schoolmaster, Margaret's second husband, and the narrator
Rob Dow, a drunkard converted by Gavin
Babbie, a gipsy who loves Gavin
Nanny Webster, an old woman saved from the poorhouse by Babbie
Lord Rintoul, Babbie's guardian and her betrothed
Critique:
Barrie's sensitivity and deep
appreciation of human values explain the
popularity of this novel. The quiet, reserved
humor appeals to the intellect and the
heart rather than to a ludicrous sense of
buffoonery, and the frequent note of
sentiment is delicate and restrained. The
book displays Barriers gift for character
portrayal and his lack of
self-consciousness in his whimsical, ironic style.
The Story:
Mr. Ogilvy, the schoolmaster of Glen
Quharity, had not seen Margaret
Dishart for eighteen years until that day
when he stood in the crowd that had
gathered to welcome Gavin Dishart, the
new minister of Auld Licht parish in
Thrums. When the dominie saw
Margaret again, he knew that all her
happiness lay in her son Gavin. The
schoolmaster did not allow Margaret to see
him, as he never would even in the
disturbed days to come. He knew that he
was best out of her life, that he could
bring her only unhappiness. When he
heard Gavin deliver his first sermon at
Auld Licht, the dominie knew that the
little minister, who was just twenty-one,
had indeed received the "call."
Lord Rintoul's castle stood in the Spit-
tal on the hill above Glen Quharity.
It was rumored that he had in his
household a young girl whom he expected to
THE LITTLE MINISTER by James M. Barrie. Published by Charles Scribner'i Sons
marry soon, but no one had seen the
girl except the sheriff of Thrums, who
stopped at the castle to tell Lord Rintoul
that a detachment of militia was coming
to Thrums to arrest some insurgent
weavers. Dressed as a gipsy, the young
bride-to-be ran to the village to warn the
people that soldiers were on their way.
Gavin Dishart met her that night as
he was walking through Windyghoul
toward Caddam. She ran dancing and
singing, and laughed at him as she
darted past him toward Thrums. When
Gavin caught up with her, they became
rivals as Gavin attempted to calm the
workers whom the gipsy had aroused
against the soldiers. Her activities on
the night the militia came was a topic
of discussion in Thrums for days
afterward—this mysterious gipsy whose origin
no one could guess. Even Gavin spent
more hours than was proper pondering
over the girl who had brazenly claimed,
when the soldiers had tried to arrest her,
that she was his wife.
Gavin's next meeting with the gipsy
was in the cottage of old Nanny
Webster, a parish charge. This story the
schoolmaster heard through village
gossip. The story of how Gavin had gone
with Dr. McQueen to take old Nanny
to the poorhouse, and how the gipsy
girl, Babbie, interrupted the proceedings
2072

by offering to provide Nanny with an
income for the old woman's support,
reached the dominie only in rumor. Most
of the villagers believed that the little
minister had done the good work; few
knew about the gipsy's part in the story.
Gavin could have avoided ever seeing
Babbie again, but he did not. He even
went so far as to tell her when he would
be walking through Caddam woods.
Babbie was not like the people of Thrums.
She horrified old Nanny with her
impertinence to the little minister of Auld
Licht. She embarrassed Gavin by
teasing him about his height, a fact which
had caused him great distress all his life.
Ever on the lookout for the pair was
Rob Dow, who skulked among the pines
of Windyghoul spying on his beloved
minister and the witch who had cast a
spell on Gavin. Rob, a drunkard whom
Gavin had converted, feared for his
minister after he had seen the gipsy
nearly succeed in her attempt to make
the minister kiss her. Rob jealously
guarded his secret, for he was no gossip. To
his death, Rob protected the little
minister who had saved him from drink.
While the dominie feared lest
Margaret be hurt by this woodland
courtship, Gavin was troubled by his love for
the brazen gipsy. As she gradually
became aware of his devotion, the gipsy
girl began to love him in turn. No one
had ever loved her before. Lord Rin-
toul only played at watching her beauty.
When Gavin stated that he would marry
her, Babbie protested that he would be
banished from Thrums and so break
his mother's heart.
One night the lovers walked together
through Windyghoul. Unknown to
anyone, the dominie, Mr. Ogilvy, often
strolled through the same wood so that
he could gaze at the manse where
Margaret lived. That night he met Gavin
and Babbie. Immediately sensing their
relationship and thinking only of
Margaret, Ogilvy stepped into the affair and
there he remained until it ended, not
for Gavin's sake but for Margaret's
protection. There were no words exchanged
that night, but each knew that the
dominie was aware of the love between Gavin
and Babbie.
In Windyghoul, the next day, Babbie
met Micah, Rob Dow's small son.
Sobbing, the child told her that his father
had taken to drink again because the
little minister had been bewitched by the
gipsy. If only she would go away, Rob
could regain his faith in the minister
and stop his drinking once more.
Babbie realized then that Gavin's duty called
him from her. She never laid eyes again
on her lover until the terrible day of the
great rain.
On the day of the great rain plans
were being made at the Spittal for Lord
Rintoul's wedding to his young bride. On
this same day there was a fight in
Thrums, and false news spread that Gavin
had been killed by a drunken
Highland piper. When the news traveled as
far as the Spittal, Babbie, alarmed for
Gavin and Margaret, ran to Mr. Ogilvy
to ask his aid. The schoolmaster went
with her to Windyghoul, where they
encountered Gavin. When the two lovers
were reunited, Babbie told Gavin that
this was the day of her wedding to Lord
Rintoul. Again Gavin asserted that he
would marry her.
They hurried away to a gipsy camp
and there the gipsy king married them
over the tongs. Meanwhile Lord Rintoul,
searching for his bride, had followed her
in time to witness the ceremony. In the
confusion of the gipsy camp, Babbie
cried out to Gavin that she heard Lord
Rintoul's voice. As Gavin rushed to
encounter his rival, Babbie was suddenly
snatched away. Assuming that Lord
Rintoul would bring her back to the
Spittal, Gavin headed toward Glen Qu-
harity. The increasing rain drove him
to Mr. Ogilvy's house for shelter.
The dominie ordered Gavin to end
his fruitless pursuit, but the little
minister insisted that he would take Babbie
back to the manse as his bride. Then
Mr. Ogilvy had to tell Gavin about
2073

Margaret. The schoolmaster—his name
was Gavin also—had married Margaret
after her first husband, Adam Dishart,
had disappeared at sea. Six years after
little Gavin's birth Adam Dishart had
returned to claim his wife and little
Gavin as his own. Mr. Ogilvy,
perceiving the sorrow in Margaret's eyes as she
faced the two men who claimed her, had
disappeared and had sworn never to allow
Margaret to know of his existence again.
It was too late for the little minister and
his real father to find any filial love after
the schoolmaster's painful revelation.
Gavin acknowledged his father, but he
claimed that it was more God's will that
he find Babbie again. As Gavin set out
toward the Spittal, Mr. Ogilvy started
toward Thrums to protect Margaret from
village gossip that might reach her.
Babbie had not been captured by
Lord Rintoul. Rob Dow, resolved to
destroy the cause of his minister's
downfall, had seized her. The gipsy eluded
him during the severe storm, however,
and ran to the manse to find Gavin.
Gavin, meanwhile, had lost all trace
of Lord Rintoul in the rain-swept
darkness. While he was making his way
across the storm-flooded countryside, he
came upon a ravine where some men
shouted to him that Lord Rintoul was
stranded on a small islet which was
being washed away by the swiftly-flowing
water. He could be saved if a man
would jump down onto the island with
a rope. Although he had no rope, Gavin
jumped in the hope that he could help
Lord Rintoul to maintain his foothold
on the tiny piece of dwindling turf. As
the villagers gathered at the brink of
the ravine, their minister shouted to
them that he had married Babbie the
gipsy and that Mr. Ogilvy was to carry
the news of his death to his mother and
his wife. Then a man leaped into the
ravine with a rope. It was Rob Dow,
who performed his last living act to save
the little minister whom he loved.
Gavin, followed by his admiring
congregation, returned to the manse. There
he found his mother and Babbie, who
now could reveal herself, not as the wild
gipsy of Windyghoul, but as the lady
whom Lord Rintoul had planned to
wed. Gavin and Babbie were married
again under the prayers of a real
minister, but Gavin always felt that he had
really married her under the stars in the
gipsy camp.
Mr. Ogilvy told the story of Gavin and
Babbie to the eager little girl who was
the daughter of the little minister and
his wife. At the schoolmaster's request,
Margaret Dishart had never learned of
his part in Gavin's love affair. But after
her death Gavin Ogilvy heard Babbie's
and Gavin's daughter call him grand'
father.
2074

LITTLE WOMEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Louisa May Alcott CI832-1888)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: A New England village; New York City; Italy
First published: 1868
Principal characters:
Meg,
Jo,
Beth, and
Amy, the March sisters
Mrs. March (Marmee), their mother
Mr. March, their father
Theodore Lawrence (Laurie), a young neighbor
Professor Bhaer, a tutor, in love with Jo
Critique:
Little Women is one of the best-loved
books of all time, as popular today as
when it was written eighty years ago.
M.though it is actually a children's book,
it appeals to grownups as well, who see
in it a mirror of their own childhood, or
at least the childhood they would have
preferred. The story is largely
autobiographical, the March girls being Louisa's
own sisters, with herself as Jo.
The Story:
The March family lived in a small
house next door to the Lawrence
mansion, where young Theodore Lawrence
and his aged grandfather had only each
other for company in the great house.
Old Mr. Lawrence was wealthy and he
indulged every wish of his grandson, but
often Laurie was lonely. When the lamp
was lit and the shades were up in the
March house, he could see the four
March girls with their mother in the
center seated around a cheerful fire. He
learned to know them by name before
he met them, and in his imagination he
almost felt himself a member of the
family.
The oldest was plump Meg, who had
to earn her living as governess of a
group of unruly youngsters in the
neighborhood. Next was Jo, tall, awkward,
and tomboyish, who liked to write, and
who spent all her spare time devising
plays and entertainments for her sisters.
Then there was gentle Beth, the
homebody, content to sit knitting by the fire,
or to help her mother take care of the
house. The youngest was curly-haired
Amy, a schoolgirl who dreamed of
someday becoming a famous artist like
Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci.
At Christmas time the girls were
confronted with the problem of what to do
with the dollar Marmee, as they called
their mother, had said they might spend.
At first each thought only of her own
pleasure, but all ended by buying a gift
for Marmee instead. On Christmas
morning they insisted on sharing their
breakfast with the Hummels, a poor family
in the neighborhood, and for this
unselfishness they were rewarded when rich
Mr. Lawrence sent over a surprise
Christmas feast consisting of ice cream,
bonbons, and four bouquets of flowers for the
table.
Many happy days followed, with
Laurie, who had met Jo at a fashionable
New Year's Eve dance, becoming a part
of the March family circle. But in
November of that same year a telegram
brought a message that their father, an
army chaplain in the Civil War, was
LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott. Published by Little, Brown & Co.
2075

critically ill. Mrs. March did not know
what to do. She felt that she should go
to her husband at once, but she had
barely five dollars in her purse. She was
hesitant about going to wealthy, irascible
Aunt March for help. Jo solved the
problem by selling her beautiful, long,
chestnut hair, which was her only vanity, for
twenty-five dollars. She made the
sacrifice willingly, but that night, after the
others had gone to bed, Meg, who
thought Jo was asleep, heard her weeping
softly. Gently, Meg asked if Jo were
crying over her father's illness, and Jo sobbed
that it was not her father she was crying
for now, but for her hair.
During Marmee's absence dark days
fell upon the little women. Beth, who
had never been strong at best, contracted
scarlet fever, and for a time it looked as
if Jo were going to lose her dearest sister.
Marmee was sent for, but by the time
she arrived the crisis had passed and her
little daughter was better. By the next
Christmas, Beth was her old contented
self again. Mr. March surprised them all
when he returned home from the front
well and happy. The little family was
together once more.
Then John Brooke, Laurie's tutor, fell
in love with Meg. This fact was
disclosed when Mr. Brooke surreptitiously
stole one of Meg's gloves and kept it in
his pocket as a memento. Laurie
discovered the glove and informed Jo. To his
great surprise, she was infuriated at the
idea that the family circle might be
disturbed. But she was quite reconciled
when, three years later, Meg became
Mrs. Brooke.
In the meantime, Jo herself had grown
up. She began to take her writing
seriously, and even sold a few stories which
helped with the family budget.
Her greatest disappointment came
when Aunt Carrol, a relative of the
Marches, decided she needed a companion
on a European trip, and asked not Jo but
the more lady-like Amy to accompany
her. Then Jo, with Marmee's permission,
decided to go to New York. She took a
job as governess for a Mrs. Kirke, who
ran a large boarding-house. There she
met Professor Bhaer, a lovable and
eccentric German tutor, who proved to be
a good friend and companion.
Upon her return home, Laurie, who
had always loved Jo, asked her to marry
him. Jo, who imagined that she would
always remain an old maid, devoting
herself exclusively to her writing, tried to
convince Laurie that they were not made
for each other. He persisted, pointing
out that his grandfather and her family
both expected them to marry. When she
made him realize that her refusal was
final, he stamped off, and shortly
afterward went to Europe with his
grandfather. In Europe he saw a great deal
of Amy, and the two became close friends,
so that Laurie was able to transfer to her
younger sister a great deal of the feeling
he previously had for Jo.
In the meantime Jo was at home
caring for Beth, who had never fully
recovered from her first illness. In the
spring, Beth died, practically in Jo's arms,
and after the loss of her gentle sister Jo
was lonely indeed. She tried to comfort
herself with her writing, and with Meg's
two babies, Daisy and Demi, but not
until the return of Amy, now married to
Laurie, did she begin to feel her old
self again. When Professor Bhaer stopped
off on his way to a university
appointment in the Midwest, Jo was delighted.
One day, under an umbrella he had
supplied to shield her from a pouring rain,
he asked her to marry him, and Jo
accepted. Within a year old Aunt March
died and willed her home, Plumfield, to
Jo. She decided to open a boys' school,
where she and her professor could
devote their lives to instructing the young.
So the little women reached maturity,
and on their mother's sixtieth birthday
they all had a great celebration at Plum-
field. Around the table, at which there
was but one empty chair, sat Marmee,
her children and her grandchildren.
2076

When Laurie proposed a toast to her, she
replied by stretching out her arms to
them all and saying that she could wish
nothing better for them than this present
happiness for the rest of their lives.
2077

LIVES OF THE CAESARS
Type of work: Biography
Author: Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c. 70-c. 140)
Time: c. 86 B.C.-A.D. 96
Locale: The Roman world
First transcribed: c. 120
Principal personages (in historical order):
Julius Caesar (Catus Julius Caesar), c. 102-44 B.C.
Augustus (Caius Octavius), 63 B.C.-A.D. 14
Tiberius (Tiberius Claudius Nero), 42 B.C.-A.D. 37
Gaius Caligula (Catus Caesar Germanicus), 12-41
Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Drusus), 10 B.C.-A.D. 54
Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar), 37-68
Galba (Servius Sulpicius Galba), 3 B.C.-A.D. 69
Otho (Marcus Salvius Otho), 32-69
Vitellius (Aulus Vitellius), 15-69
Vespasian (Trrus Flavius Vespasianus), 9-79
Titus (Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus), 41-81
Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus), 51-96
Perhaps Suetonius, like other
biographers and historians, made mistakes;
perhaps he retained ancedotes and bits of
gossip that a less lively writer would have
discarded; but he made the Caesars
mortal men, though some of them carried the
title of god, and he showed them in defeat
and victory, virtue and vice, as they were
or, at least, as some men reputed them to
be. So colorful are the details of murders
and lustful acts that even the most
extravagant of Hollywood representations
of ancient Rome are calm and temperate
by comparison.
The beginning of the life of Julius
Caesar is missing, the account beginning
in his sixteenth year, but otherwise the
book is complete. Like the other
biographies there is more emphasis on Julius
the person and on his relationships with
the people about him than there is on
the great historical moments of his life.
But the major events were bound to be
reported in great detail in ordinary works;
Suetonius performs the sendee of filling
out the cold lines of history with an
impartial account of the personal traits of
the Caesars.
After the death of his father, Julius
married Cornelia, daughter of the consul
Cinna, who bore him a daughter, Julia.
Since by this act—which allied Julius
with the popular party—he irritated the
dictator Sulla, he was forced to go into
hiding; but Caesar's friends interceded
for him and at last he was fo-given. Sulla
warned, however, tint Caesar would "one
day deal the death blow to flie cause of
the aristocracy."
Brief statements are made about
Caesar's campaiens in Asia and about his
service in Cilicia under Servilius Isauri-
cus. Julius then returned to Rome and
began his political career by bringing a
charge of extortion against Cornelius
Dolabella. After Dolabella had been
acquitted Caesar went to Rhodes to study
oratory under Apollonius Molo. On the
way he was kidnapped by pirates; after
being freed upon payment of ransom, he
returned to capture and punish the
pirates.
Julius became military tribune and
gained an increasing reputation as an
orator. After the death of his wife he
married Pompeia, but he divorced her
on suspicion that she had committed
adultery with Publius Clodius.
By his political acts Caesar made
himself popular with the masses, an
advantage he made secure by arranging
gladiatorial shows and stage plays for their
amusement. By resorting to bribery, he
won the election to the office of pontifex
2078

maximus. His efforts to secure mercy for
Catiline after the conspiracy was detected
almost cost him his life, for the address
of Marcus Cato kept the Senate
committed to the extreme penalty and Julius
was threatened by the Roman knights
who stood as guards in the Senate.
After becoming consul in 60 B.C.,
Caesar made a compact with Gnaeus Pom-
peius and Marcus Crassus, thus securing
power over the Senate.
Suetonius carefully describes the
political moves by which Julius continued to
increase his own power while battling for
the popular party against the Senate.
After the nine-year campaign in Gaul,
Caesar decided that only civil war could
settle the political dissension. Crossing
the Rubicon, he marched on Rome. After
his victory he rewarded his troops,
entertained the masses with shows, and
undertook a reform of the Senate and of the
calendar. His victory over Pompey, who
had led the opposition, made the
subsequent defeat of the senatorial party an
easier task. As dictator, Caesar began with
reforms but ended with such an
assumption of power and infallibility, together
with complete disdain of the Senate, that
a conspiracy was formed against him
which included Brutus, Cassius, Cimber,
Casca, and other friends of Caesar who
had turned against him. He died by their
daggers on the Ides of March, after being
warned by a series of signs.
Suetonius devotes the bulk of his essay
on Julius to an account of Caesar's
personal characteristics. Julius is described
as having been "tall of stature, with a fair
complexion, shapely limbs, a somewhat
full face, and keen black eyes. ... He
was somewhat overnice in the care of
his person, being not only carefully
trimmed and shaved, but even having
superfluous hair plucked out. . . ."
Lengthy consideration is given to the
charge that Julius had been intimate with
King Nicomedes. Suetonius writes that
he will take no account of various
invectives and reproaches made against Caesar
on this matter: he then proceeds to quote,
with great detail, all gossip he disdains.
Julius drank very little wine, according to
Suetonius; he seduced many women, had
love affairs with queens—including
Cleopatra—excelled in the art of war, wrote
his memoirs with simplicity and skill,
rode a horse that was "almost human,"
treated his friends with kindness and
consideration, and was so merciful that when
he captured the pirates who had
kidnapped him, he cut their throats before
crucifying them. Suetonius declares that
Julius Caesar "was numbered among the
gods, not only by a formal decree, but
also in the conviction of the common
people."
The life of Augustus, like that of
Julius, is first summarized by Suetonius, who
then proceeds to tell of Augustus the
man. Born Caius Octavius, he inherited
power from Julius, although he had to
join with Antony and Lepidus and fight
a series of battles in order to become
undisputed ruler of the Empire. The name
"Augustus" was a title conferred by the
Senate to honor him.
Suetonius mentions some of the acts
Augustus committed while triumvir, deeds
by which he incurred "general
detestation." He ordered a Roman knight
stabbed to death for taking notes; he so
abused Tedius Afer, consul elect, that
Afer "hurled himself headlong,"
committing suicide; he tortured Quintus Gal-
lius because of the suspicion that Gallius
had a sword under his cloak, and he tore
out the man's eyes with his own hands
after ordering his execution.
On the more constructive side,
Augustus is credited with having built many
public works, revising the wards of the
city and the system of night watches,
building up a library of Sibylline books
after burning prophetic writings of little
repute, adding to the public security,
revising existing laws, rebuilding roads,
and surpassing his predecessors in the
magnificence of public shows.
He won the affection of the people
2079

and the Senate, and was named "Father
of his Country" by the latter. He had
few friends, but he was faithful to them.
He gambled and made love to other men's
wives, although this latter practice is
partly excused by Suetonius on the
ground that it was pursued not from
passion but from a desire for information
about the ladies' husbands. In other
respects he was temperate, furnishing his
house simply and eating simple food. He
is described as handsome, although he had
teeth that were "wide apart, small, and
ill-kept. . . ." Augustus died painlessly
and without disturbance, as he had
wished, from an illness.
Suetonius' treatment of the lives of the
other Caesars is similar to that of Julius
and Augustus, although with most of the
Caesars, beginning with Tiberius,
murders and sexual excesses were so common
that most of the accounts are taken up
with a recital of monstrous deeds.
Although Nero is the most infamous of the
Caesars—and probably deserves to be
remembered as almost entirely depraved-
it would be difficult to decide which of
the others was the worst.
After a few years of attention to the
duties of emperor, Tiberius openly gave
way to his vices, drowning himself in
wine, consorting at banquets attended by
nude girls, killing those who offended
him or who were about when something
angered him, and finally arranging
matters so that every day was execution day
and every crime a capital one. He drove
his sister-in-law to suicide by starvation.
He devised elaborate systems of torture
and, to insure the death of his victims,
had them thrown over a cliff to the rocks
where guards broke up the bodies with
boathooks. When he died there was
general rejoicing and cries of "Tiberius to
the Tiber!"
After writing of some of Caligula's
accomplishments—great public games, the
building of public works—Suetonius
comments, "So much for Caligula as emperor;
we must now tell of his career as a
monster." He demanded that he be
worshipped as a god; he built temples to
himself and invited the moon to his embraces.
He lived in incest with his sisters, stole
the wives of other men, and had a series
of wives. He murdered his friends and
those who helped him to power. He
matched worthless gladiators against wild
beasts, and in random fashion chose
prisoners to be devoured by savage animals
in the arena. He enjoyed watching
executions while eating his lunch, and at a
banquet he ordered the hands of a slave
cut off and hung about his neck so that
the wretched man could be led about
the banquet hall as a warning against
stealing. These are simply samples of
Caligula's deeds. He was stabbed to death
when he was twenty-nine years old, after
almost four years of rule.
Claudius began his rule in such
manner that he won the love and devotion
of his subjects, and he accomplished
many worthwhile objectives; but he was
a cruel and suspicious man, and he died
by poison.
Even a summary statement of Nero's
crimes is difficult. He was cruel, vain, and
lustful. Ordinary entertainment and
ordinary modes of sexual intercourse were
displaced by extravagant orgies of various
sorts. Regarding himself as a musician
and singer, he forced great audiences to
listen to him for hours on end, forbidding
anyone to leave, so that women
sometimes gave birth to children while he
performed. He enjoyed fires and burned
great sections of Rome. He wandered the
streets in disguise, indulging in revels
and fights. Boys, men, married women,
prostitutes, and wives—all fed his lust,
sometimes in violent and dramatically
contrived ways. He murdered his mother
after several attempts, and it was
Suetonius' opinion that he had something to
do with the poisoning of Claudius.
Hundreds of other persons—his family, his
companions, and others—died by his hand
or by his orders. Suetonius writes that
Nero "showed neither discrimination nor
2080

moderation in putting to death
whomsoever he pleased on any pretext
whatsoever." When the Senate finally sent men
to capture him for execution, he killed
himself by cutting his own throat, but
only after considerable wailing and
postponement.
Nero was the last Caesar by family
connection; the others bore the name
"Caesar" as a designation of rank.
Suetonius' account of the remaining
Caesars—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian,
Titus, and Domitian—gives considerably
less space to their exploits; but the style
continues to be lively and informative.
2081

LIZA OF LAMBETH
Type of work: Novel
Author: W. Somerset Maugham CI874- )
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1897
Principal characters:
Liza Kemp, a street girl
Tom, who loved her
Jim Blakeston, Liza's lover
Sally, her friend
Critique:
Liza of Lambeth is the first novel of
W. Somerset Maugham. One of the least
known to readers of his more popular
novels, it belongs to the school of naturalism
which flourished in English fiction about
the turn of the century. There is
virtually no development of character, and the
plot is no more remarkable than the
commonplace lives of the people in the novel.
Here, more than in any other of his
novels, Maugham drew directly upon his
own observations and experiences as a
young doctor serving his interneship
among the poor of the London slums.
The novel is as blunt and unsparing as
a clinical report.
The Story:
Liza Kemp spent most of her free time
on the streets of Lambeth. She was not
exactly a loose girl, but her dress and
actions provoked whistles and jeers
whenever she appeared. Liza's father was dead,
and her mother, living on a small
pension, earned enough as a charwoman to
keep herself in beer. She never spoke a
kind word to her daughter, although she
expected Liza to hand over all her money
and spend all her time with her mother.
Like most girls of her class, Liza worked
in a factory and made only enough
money to live and to buy a few items of cheap
finery.
After a gay dance in the streets of
Lambeth, Liza was chased by several
young men trying to kiss her. As she
fled, only half in earnest, she ran straight
into the arms of a stranger and was
soundly kissed. Flouncing off, she found
herself strangely moved by the
unexpected experience. That night Tom, her
earnest and persistent suitor, called on her
as usual. Liza liked Tom but she did not
love him, and so she tried to send him
away without hurting his feelings. But
Tom was stubborn. He begged her to
take time to consider his proposal. When
he asked her to go on an outing the next
day, she refused. She did not want him
to spend his money or his hopes on her.
Later her friend Sally also begged her
to go on the outing. When she learned
that the stranger who had kissed her
would be one of the party, Liza relented,
but against her better judgment. She had
learned that the stranger was Jim
Blakeston, a married man and the father of
five children. Jim's wife went on the
outing too, but Jim paid little attention to
her. Instead, he spent most of his time
following Liza and Tom around. Jim's
actions angered Tom, but that poor young
man was too much in love to blame Liza
for encouraging the older man.
After the excursion Jim followed Liza
home and kissed her passionately. She
knew that she should be angry, but she
was also flattered and pleased. From that
night on Liza was lost. When Jim asked
her to walk with him or to meet him at a
LIZA OF LAMBETH by W. Somerset Maugham. By permission of the author, of A. P. Watt & Son,
London, and of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright. 1936, by Doubleday, Doran & Co.. Inc.
All rights reserved.
2082

show, she refused; then she kept the
appointment anyway. Although she knew
they were both wrong, she seemed
powerless to withdraw from his influence.
They tried to avoid people they knew,
but Liza was afraid that they would be
seen sooner or later. At last, grown
reckless, she allowed Jim to seduce her.
The next few weeks were heaven for
Liza. She loved Jim deeply, and he
returned her love. But Liza knew that
people were beginning to talk about her.
Young men and girls yelled insults after
her. Even Tom cut her once, and that
fact hurt her because she knew that Tom
was good and kind and she hated to lose
his former opinion of her. Her love was
too strong, however, to be permanently
affected by the insults she received. Jim
even offered to leave his wife and take
her away to another part of the city, but
Liza knew that they would always be in
danger of being caught. She also realized
that Jim loved his children and would be
unhappy away from them. Furthermore,
Liza felt that she could not leave her
mother. Although the old woman had
never been much of a mother, Liza
thought it her duty to stay with her.
There seemed nothing for Liza and Jim
to do but to continue as they were or to
part entirely. Neither could think of
parting.
After Liza's friend Sally was married,
her happiness made Liza even more
miserable in her own shame. Later she
learned that Sally's happiness was only
superficial. Her husband beat her
regularly, but the girl was too proud to let
anyone but Liza know. Liza also had a
shock. Once she was late for an
appointment with Jim and he drank too much
while he waited for her. When she tried
to keep him from going back into the
pub for more beer, he struck her in the
eye. He was instantly contrite, but
the damage to Liza's heart never quite
mended.
Sally warned Liza one day that Jim's
wife was looking for her. To avoid a
public scene, Liza tried to keep clear of Mrs.
Blakeston, who was much the larger and
stronger of the two. In a fight, Liza
realized, she would be bested. But at last
they met and Mrs. Blakeston gave Liza
a horrible beating. Outclassed from the
beginning, the girl fought gamely. Tom
and Jim appeared almost simultaneously
and stopped the fight, Tom carrying Liza
home tenderly and Jim threatening to
kill his wife for hurting Liza.
Tom loved Liza so much that he
wanted to marry her, although he knew all
the gossip about her; he had cut her in
the past because of his hurt. Even when
she told him that she was going to have
Jim's baby, Tom still wanted to have her
for his wife. Liza refused him again,
however; Tom was too good to be tied to a
woman of her reputation.
Jim himself almost killed his wife. He
was prevented from doing so only by the
intervention of a neighbor woman.
Later that night Liza awoke with a
burning fever and intense pain. For the
next day or two she suffered terribly,
and at last her mother became worried
enough to send for a midwife. The
woman knew at once that Liza had miscarried
and was gravely ill. Although they sent
for a doctor, the midwife knew that there
was little hope for the girl. Tom called
regularly, out of his mind with worry.
Liza, when she was conscious, looked
only for Jim. He came as soon as he heard
about her condition, but he was too late
to give any comfort to the dying girl.
She lay unconscious for several hours,
then quietly died. As the doctor
covered her face, Jim turned away, weary
and defeated.
2083

THE LONG JOURNEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Johannes V. Jensen (1873-1950)
Type of plot: Cultural epic
Time of plot: The Age of Man
Locale: The world
First published: 1923-1924
Principal characters:
Fyr, typical of the earliest users of fire
Carl, typical of the early Stone Age man in the glacial period
White Bear, typical of the later Stone Age man
Wolf, typical of the horse-riding and horse-breeding man
Norna Gest, typical of the man who entered the Iron Age and
lingered to the fall of the Roman Empire
Christopher Columbus, typical of the Renaissance man
Charles Darwin, typical of modern man
Critique:
In 1944 the Nobel Prize in Literature
was awarded to Johannes V. Jensen
"because of the exceptional vigor and
fertility of his poetic imagination, combined
with an all-embracing intellectuality and
bold creative expression." All those
qualities are certainly manifest in The Long
Journey, a prose epic published in
translation as Fire and Ice (1923), The
Cimhrians (1923), and Christopher
Columbus (1924). Yet to call The Long
Journey a novel is to understate its value;
rather, it is a great work of cultural
mythology, a new integration and an
ultra-sensitive reinterpretation of the
progress Man has made in the world since
that remote age when he first began to
walk upon the earth. At least one writer
has termed it a "bible of evolution."
Perhaps no less comprehensive category can
hold a work which ranges from before the
Ice Age to the twentieth century. This
work was published in Denmark as six
novels over the period 1909 to 1922.
The Story:
In the north of what is now Europe,
in the prehistoric days before the glaciers
came from the North, Man lived in fear
and trembJing—in fear of the elements,
the beasts of the jungles, and his own
primitive leaders. Into one of those
herdlike groups was born a boy who was
named Fyr. As the child grew older he
was seized with a desire to climb to the
top of Gunung Api, a vast volcano quiet
but not extinct. There on the slopes of
the volcano, wandering by himself, Fyr
learned to make use of the flames and
their heat to keep himself warm, to cook
his meat, to provide himself with a deity,
and to enhance his own importance.
Attracted first by his songs and then
by his person, women joined Fyr, until
he, like other leaders, was the head of
a primitive family group. After the
women came children and, finally, other men
who made themselves subservient to Fyr.
Under his leadership the tribe became
a band of hunters, using the pits, spears,
and bows which Fyr devised for them.
Wherever they went, they took with them
burning wood to re-create their god and
household symbol: the fire. Soon all the
forest folk bowed to the authority of
Fyr, bound to him by his fire and by the
tools of wood and stone which he
created to make their lives more bearable.
One day, however, the god seemed to
demand a sacrifice, and the people,
making Fyr their scapegoat, placed him in
the fire he had brought them. Although
he was roasted and eaten, he lived on,
a representative of human ingenuity
THE LONG TOURNEY by Johannes V. Jensen. Translated by A. G. Chater. By permission of the
publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1923, 1924, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed. 1952, b*
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
2084

which they could not understand.
As ages passed, Gunung Api became
extinct. Still later, the northern ice cap,
beginning to move over the land, brought
cold to the tropic jungles. After other
ages had passed, a small band of hunters
lay crouched in the same forest. The
seasons were much colder, and the tribe
and most of the animals had moved to
the South, until a hunting expedition
had biought them back to the old
territory. One of their number, Carl, was the
fire-tender. He was thrown out of the
band, an outcast, when he let the fire die.
Carl fled to the North, somehow
keeping himself alive in the winter by
wrapping himself in skins and burrowing into
the ground or building rude huts of
stone. High on the extinct volcanic cone
he traveled. Everywhere he saw only
desolation and ice. He sought for the
enemy of his tribe, the cold, but did not
find him. He was joined in his
wanderings by a dog; the animal slowly joined
into a comradeship with the man,
although not without some trembling and
hesitancy on the part of each. As the
winters passed, Carl learned to prepare
for them by laying in a supply of food
and building a shelter. He even learned
to foretell when the great cold was
coming and where he would find food and
shelter as its ice and snows moved
gradually to the South. When he did find an
occasional human being, the encounter
served only as an opportunity for Carl
to eat a different kind of meat. One day
he gave chase to a human being who
turned out to be a woman. He captured
her by the sea, and the lure of the sea
was to call him again.
Carl's wife was Mam. She brought
new habits of gathering and storing, as
well as children. She added vegetables
to Carl's diet, and their home became a
permanent one. Carl was still aware of
fire, a possession which he had lost and
not regained. Gathering many stones, he
chipped them against one another in his
efforts to strike fire from them. At last,
successful, he bequeathed fire to his
children.
The children of Carl and their wives
added pottery work to their skills; with
ceramics came boiling, a new way of
cooking. Among the descendants of Carl
there arose a group of priests, against
whom rebels were sometimes pitted. Such
a rebel was White Bear. Denied a
certain woman for his wife, he killed the
leader of the priestly clan. Like Carl
before him, White Bear became an outcast,
taking May, his woman, with him. White
Bear became a seaman, building small
boats and sailing them, in company with
his sons, while May and the daughters
remained at home to farm and care for
the cattle.
White Bear began to use horses. He
built a chariot, with horses to draw it.
His sons, more adventurous, learned to
ride. One of the sons, Wolf, became so
enamored of the horses that he rode them
away to become a nomad, forerunner of
the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan.
Ages later a new man appeared. He
was Noma Gest, son of the matriarch
Gro. While he was still a young boy
dwelling at the edge of the sea on an
island, he built himself a dugout canoe
and sailed away, carrying with him a
young girl who was, after a time, to
become his mate. They and their child
explored a new land to the north, now
Sweden, but returned to the home
island in after years. Gest himself was not
an ordinary mortal; he was to live as long
as he kept a partially burned candle.
After his return to his original home, he
and his companions went on many
voyages and made use of sails as well as
paddles.
As years passed, Gest found he had
outlived his companions. He awoke one
day to find himself in a changed Sea-
land, a place where men were either
thralls or earls. Disturbed at the changes
and despised because he had taken a new
wife in the person of a milkmaid, one of
the thralls, he wandered sadly about the
2085

land.
Unhappy in the changed Sealand,
Gest and his bondwoman-wife sailed to
Sweden to found a new colony in which
they were to be the leaders. With them
they took new techniques of smelting
and forging metals. In their new home
they gradually acquired domestic animals
—horses, sheep, and cattle. Their sons
and daughters married, and thus the
colony grew. The mother died, and one
day Gest disappeared, to wander again
over the globe. Unnoticed but noticing,
he traveled through central Europe and
floated down the Danube. He traversed
the Mediterranean lands, where his life
began in the early Stone Age. Finding
something wanting in the lands of the
South, Gest turned his face once again
toward his homeland, where he became
a wandering skald.
Arriving in Jutland, he was
welcomed by Tole, a leader who was
guardian of the ancient god of the Jutlanders.
This was a wooden idol which Tole
wished to enclose in a great bronze bull.
Tole welcomed Gest as the bringer of
skills with metals and as a man of great
wisdom. The two men made plans to
cast the bronze bull at the time of the
great spring festivals, before the flocks
and herds were taken up to the summer
pastures. The bull was successfully cast,
and the festivities ended with human
sacrifices of slaves and thralls. Gest
wandered off afoot after the festival.
In later years floods rose up in the seas
about Jutland, and the younger men
wished to leave the country to search for
a homeland safe from the
ever-encroaching sea. The entire tribe left, except for
elderly Tole. With the tribe went the
bronze bull, destined now to long
journeying across the face of central and
southern Europe.
Back and forth across the lands went
the Cimbrians, enlisting other tribes in
their search for better lands. At last they
traveled far enough to come to the
notice of the Romans.
Failing to obey the warning of the
Romans to remain out of their dominions,
the Cimbrians and their allies of the
North became enemies of the Empire. As
enemies they decided to strike at Rome
itself. Victorious at first, they became
proud and reckoned not at all on the
strategy of the Roman generals, strategy
which defeated them. In their defeat the
Cimbrians and their allies were ruined.
Those who were not killed or who did
not commit suicide were sold into
bondage to the Romans, to live miserably as
captives in the South, where eventually
their blood blended with the blood of
their conquerors.
Noma Gest saw these things
happening. Finally, knowing that his time was
at an end, he once again left Rome in
his boat and glided slowly toward the
sea, there to burn his candle to its end.
After the fall of the Roman Empire,
barbarians from the North were
gradually assimilated into the Christian religion.
The ancient ship of the North,
inverted on land, became the Gothic
cathedral, a compound of the mariner's vessel
and the stately forests through which
earlier man had roamed. Among the
descendants of the barbaric tribes of the
North were the Langobards. One of the
descendants of the latter group was a man
named Christopher Columbus, who was
to lead mankind farther on its journey
of discovery across the seas and into a
whole new hemisphere then undreamed
of, or at least forgotten by the
descendants of the early Northmen who had once
visited it.
Columbus saw himself as a veritable
Christopher, one who carried the Christ
into the world. While others caroused
before setting out across the ocean with
him, he prepared himself by attending
masses in the cathedral. He had faith in
divine help and a divine purpose. When
the qualities which his faith gave him
proved insufficient to meet the demands
of leadership, he could also call upon an
amazing strength of body which his
2086

northern forebears had bequeathed him.
Although he reached the islands of the
West Indies, other men carried man's
long journey into the New World;
Columbus was doomed to be only a leader
pointing the way. To later conquistadors,
men like Cortds and Pizarro, went the
credit for gaining the mainland for
European culture. Those men faced the odds
of sheer numbers when they met the
strength of the late Stone Age men, the
followers of Montezuma and the Incas,
who still existed in America, savages
caught in the lag where European
culture had left them many ages before. In
Mexico, for example, Cortes was to find
human sacrifices and worship of volcanic
spirits, examples of culture-progress which
had long since ceased to exist in the Old
World. The light which Columbus saw
from his ship at night was a symbol of
the fire worship met throughout the New
World.
The Indians believed that the coming
of the white men marked the return of
their great sun god, Quetzalcoatl.
Perhaps the god might have been Noma
Gest, visiting the New World during his
travels. But the savages soon lost their
superstitious awe of men with fair skins
and hair, and many Europeans were
sacrificed on the altars of Mexico and other
southern countries.
The great battle of the New World
was fought in Mexico. There the journey
of the European culture was most
seriously threatened. In the north the
Indians seemed to fade away before the white
culture; in the West Indies disease had
killed them like summer flies at the first
autumn frost. But in Mexico there was
warfare between the eagle and the
serpent, symbols of Man's migrations and
his conflicting cultures. Cortes and his
soldiers were like eagles swooping down
on the snake, insignia of the Aztecs.
Even though Cortes was temporarily
successful, with the help of a woman who
turned against her own people, and even
though he was able to send the idol of
Huitzilopochtli toppling down the long
flights of stairs which led to its temple,
the Spaniards were doomed to temporary
defeat. Cortes had to hack his way out
of Tenochtitldn while the screams of
Spaniards sacrificed alive echoed in his
ears.
Years later a young man named
Darwin, a naturalist on H. M. S. Beagle, was
to become a new symbol in man's journey
from the past, through the present, into
the future. Those on the Beagle thought
they saw the Flying Dutchman. Perhaps
that dread captain, doomed to sail
forever, will become the symbol of Man's
long journey as it continues. Or perhaps
the long journey is now almost ended.
No one knows.
2087

THE LONG NIGHT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Andrew Lytle (1902- )
Tyve of 'plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1857-1862
Locale: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Lawrence McIvor, the narrator, William Mclvor's son
Cameron McIvor, his grandfather, an Alabama planter
Pleasant, Cameron Mclvor's favorite son and avenger
William, and
Levi, Pleasant's brothers
Eli McIvor, Pleasant's uncle
Tyson Lovell, leader of a gang of slave speculators
Lieutenant Roswell Ellis, Pleasant's friend
Albert Sidney Johnston, Confederate general
Critique:
A remarkable first novel based in part
on actual characters and events, The
Long Night is a work of originality and
true historical imagination. After the
murder of his father by a gang of
desperadoes modeled more or less upon the
notorious Murrell gang of actual history,
a young Alabaman embarks upon a grim
career of revenge, but with the outbreak
of the Civil War his desire for private
vengeance becomes submerged in the
greater and bloodier issues of that conflict. At
last, facing a tragic dilemma, he makes
his own desperate and separate peace
and goes into hiding. In spite of minor
structural defects the novel achieves its
purpose with considerable stylistic vigor
and imaginative power, and the account
of the battle of Shiloh is a vivid piece of
war reporting. In addition, the writer
presents a realistic and convincing
regional picture of ante-bellum life on the
southern frontier. These qualities
combine to give The Long Night its definite
distinction among more conventional
novels dealing with the Civil War theme.
The Story:
Lawrence McIvor was twenty-two
when he heard his family's story for the
first time. Just out of college, he had been
summoned to his Uncle Pleasant's house
deep in the coves of Winston County,
Alabama. There through all of one dark
winter night he listened to his kinsmen's
tale of hatred and grim vengeance.
The McIvor troubles began in Georgia,
at a militia muster where powerful old
Cameron McIvor refused to wrestle one
of the reckless Caruthers twins. Several
days later Job Caruthers attacked
McIvor and the planter broke the young
man's arm. After his recovery Job and his
brother Mebane returned a borrowed
team of horses in a wind-broken
condition. Furious, McIvor shot Job. The
brother then started a lawsuit which left
the planter almost ruined. McIvor
decided to move to Texas. Pleasant, his favored
son, was sixteen at the time.
The Mclvors traveled by wagon, with
their cattle and remaining slaves. Near
Wetumpka, Alabama, they met Tyson
Lovell, a wealthy landowner who offered
McIvor five hundred acres of good land
to crop on shares. Not long after they
had settled in their new home William,
the oldest son, married a storekeeper's
daughter and went to live in town.
Pleasant and his younger brother Levi helped
their father and the hands in the fields.
There was something mysterious and
THE LONG NIGHT by Andrew Lytle. By permission of the author and the publishers. The Bobbs-
Merrill Co., Inc. Copyright, 1936, by The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc.
2088

minister about Lovell. After Mclvor and
Pleasant, tracking a lost mule, found a
ihack in which two neighbors named Wil-
ton were guarding several strange slaves,
the father became convinced that Lovell
was a speculator, head of a gang of slave
stealers and horse thieves, an organization
to which most of their neighbors belonged.
Lovell, becoming alarmed, tried to
frighten the Mclvors into leaving the country,
first by having the sheriff discover two
stolen slaves in the planter's smokehouse,
later, after Mclvor and Lovell quarreled,
by swearing out a bench warrant which
named Mclvor an outlaw.
Defying Lovell, the planter waited for
Bis enemy to act. William came to stay
at the farm, but he was called away
suddenly by false news of his wife's illness.
That night Pleasant was waylaid and
locked in an old church. Before daylight
armed men broke into the Mclvor house.
While the Wilton brothers held the old
planter in his bed, a man named Fox
shot him.
The Mclvor kin gathered in secret. A
few, William among them, argued that
the murderers should be punished by the
law. Others clamored for an open feud.
Grief-crazed over his father's death,
Pleasant revealed that he had tracked the
gang to its meeting place and learned
the names of its forty members. After
the court dismissed charges brought by
Mclvor's widow, she and her family
quietly left the country. Pleasant, a young
uncle named Eli, and Bob Pritchard, a
cousin, swore to answer violent death
with violence.
Pleasant and his kinsmen began to
terrorize the region. A dishonest district
attorney, Lovell's tool, was killed in a
fall from an inn balcony. One Wilton
was dragged to death by his horse.
Another was found shot. Lovell's house
burned, his overseer's charred body in the
ruins. Fox ran away. After Sheriff Bot-
terall's posse trapped and killed
Pritchard, Pleasant resolved to kill secretly
and alone. Forcing Botterall into a wild
stallion's stall, he lashed the animal until
it trampled Lovell's henchman to death.
Several of the gang fled to Texas, but
Pleasant followed and killed them. He
and Eli built a cabin in the wilds of
Winston County. From there he planned
to carry on his stealthy, deadly raids
around Wetumpka.
Two years after his father's death he
went one night to a house Lovell owned
near Buyckville. In hiding, he had not
known that Fort Sumter had been fired
on until he found Lovell in his study
and learned from his mocking enemy
that the Civil War had begun- Lovell
declared that the army would soon swallow
the survivors of his gang; besides,
Pleasant had walked into a trap. Hearing
bloodhounds baying in the distance,
Pleasant boasted that he still intended
to make Lovell the last of his victims*
After knocking the man unconscious with
a pistol, he ran from the house before his
trackers could surround it.
Pleasant and Eli joined the
Confederate Army, and as a result Pleasant
continued his work of revenge. At Corinth,
while on outpost duty, he killed a
sergeant and four men from Lovell's gang
and arranged the bodies to make them
appear as if shot by Federal scouts.
Summoned to General Albert Sidney
Johnston's headquarters to give his version of
the attack, he met Lieutenant Roswell
Ellis, on the staff of Colonel Armistead
Mclvor, Pleasant's cousin from Kentucky.
In an army in which there were few
binding distinctions of rank Pleasant and
Ellis became friends. Pleasant learned
that Fox, his father's murderer, had
offered to have Andrew Johnson
assassinated and that General Johnston had
scornfully rejected the offer. Knowing
that Fox was in the neighborhood, he
bided his time.
The march toward Shiloh Church
began through pouring rain. Two nights
before the battle Pleasant and Ellis were
detailed to scout duty along the Federal
lines. After Ellis returned to report,
Pleasant spent the night in the woods.
All the next day he watched the Federal
2089

encampment and waited for the battle
to begin. But there were delays in
bringing up Confederate troops and
equipment and the battle or Shiloh was not
joined until Sunday morning, April 6,
1862. Pleasant, wandering through the
acrid battle haze, round his own
company in time to join in a wild charge
in which Eli was killed. The Federal
troops retreated. Pleasant, shot in the
hand, spent the night with a wounded
major from Ohio. The next day the
reinforced Federal lines advanced and the
Confederates, with General Beauregard
in command after General Johnston's
death, began their retreat to Corinth.
Pleasant was with the army at Mur-
freesboro when he heard that his brother
William had been killed. Levi, after
nursing his wounded brother, died three
days later. Pleasant went to meet his
mother at Chattanooga when she drove
throuoh the Federal lines to claim her
sons' bodies. On his way back to Mur-
freesboro, Pleasant was glad to have Ros-
well Ellis' friendship. Ellis was of the
living, and Pleasant had seen too many
deaths. After Shiloh woods he was
beginning, despairingly, to doubt his vows of
hatred and revenge.
Scouting near La Vergne, Pleasant did
not return to camp immediately because
he was on the track of a Lovell man
named Awsumb, but when he looked at
his enemy through his gunsights he was
unable to pull the trigger. On his arrival
at headquarters he learned that after his
failure to report at once a brigade had
been sent to test the enemv strength at
La Vergne. Fllis had been killed in the
engagement. Pleasant felt that his delay
had caused his friend's death. Ellis had
given him back his humanity and he had
destroyed his friend. Following dark and
bloody trails of reprisal, he had loved the
dead too much and the living too little,
and he himself was doomed. He thought
ot the hills and hidden coves of Winston
County. There a deserter from whatever
cause he fled could hide forever.
2090

THE LONGEST JOURNEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: E. M. Forster (1879- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1907
Principal characters:
Rickie Elliot, a student at Cambridge
Agnes Pembroke, an old friend
Herbert Pembroke, her brother
Stewart Ansell, a friend of Rickie at Cambridge
Emily Failing, his aunt
Stephen Wonham, his half-brother
Critique:
In this novel Forster is primarily
concerned with the story of a sensitive young
man and the problems he encounters on
his introduction into the world. The
author is somewhat satiric as he views his
characters but, as usual, he does not
present the world as a completely dreary and
uninteresting place. Men, in general, are
portrayed as rather weak individuals who
are fighting against superior forces, but
the reader is not meant completely to lose
his love and respect for them. Here, in
a novel which is probably
autobiographical in part, we see several characters who
try without success to live happily in a
world of weak and misguided ideals.
The Story:
Frederick Elliot, who was a student at
Cambridge and almost alone in the world,
had finally attained some degree of
contentment in his life after a rather
unhappy childhood. He had been born with
a lamed left foot which kept him from
most of the normal activities of children,
and he had grown up virtually without
friends. Early in his life his father had
begun to call him Rickie because of its
close similarity to rickety, and the name
had stayed with him. Besides his
deformity there was another, more serious,
difficulty. He found out quite early that his
father and mother did not love each other
and that he was loved not at all by his
father and only a little by his mother.
Both his parents died when he was
fifteen, leaving him comfortably well off so
far as finances were concerned but
without anyone who wanted to give him a
home.
At Cambridge he had shown himself
to be a capable student but one without
any scholarly pretensions. He had made
several friends among the non-athletic
groups and spent much of his time in long
discussions on topics of literary or
philosophical interest. One day, during such a
discussion, he was interrupted by the
arrival of his old friends, Agnes and
Herbert Pembroke, whom he had invited for
the weekend. In the meantime he had
completely forgotten about them.
Because these two people were part of that
very small group which took an interest
in Rickie's career, they spent a great part
of their time at Cambridge encouraging
him to decide on a particular course for
his life, even if he did nothing more than
write, the only thing he admitted having
an interest in. They pointed out that
money was not important as long as he
met a certain standard of ideals.
At Christmas of that same year Rickie
saw his friends again. He had stayed
several days with Stewart Ansell, a friend
THE LONGEST JOURNEY by E. M. Forster. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1922, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
2091

from Cambridge, but felt it was necessary
to spend a part of his vacation with the
Pembrokes as well. He rather dreaded
this part of his vacation because Agnes'
fiance\ a man whom Rickie had known
at public school, was to be there. Rickie
not only disliked Gerald Dawes but he
also hated to witness the lovers'
happiness; he felt that such happiness was
forever to be denied him because of his'lame
foot which he considered a hereditary
disorder. During this time Gerald was killed
while playing football, and it was Rickie
who was able to offer the most comfort
to Agnes by convincing her that she
should suffer since her love for Gerald
had been the greatest thing she could
ever experience.
Two years later, when she came again
to visit him at Cambridge, Rickie
realized that he was also in love with Agnes,
although he still felt thit he could never
marry because of his deformity. She
convinced him, however, that thev should
be married. Rickie was about to finish his
work at Cambridge, but they felt a long
engagement was necessary for him to
settle himself. Ansell immediately opposed
the marriage because he sensed that
Agnes was not a sincere person. She laid
constant claim to honesty and forthright-
ness, but Ansell could not be convinced
that these qualities revealed the true
Agnes. He knew immediatelv that she
would force Rickie into a dull and
conventional life, convincing him at the
same time that he was taking the proper
step.
Soon after their engagement Rickie
and Agnes visited his aunt, Mrs. Emily
Failing, at her countrv home. Rickie had
never particularly liked his aunt, but since
she was his onlv known relative he and
Agnes felt that they should go to see her.
Mrs. Failing was a woman who liked for
people to do what she wanted and she
was never happier than when they were
obviously uncomfortable while carrying
out her desires. While there they also
saw Stephen Wonham, a young man
whom Rickie had met before but whose
relation to Mrs. Failing had never been
made clear. However, after Rickie had
been so bold as to engage in an argument
with his aunt, she informed him that
Stephen was actually his brother. It was
not until later that Rickie found out that
Stephen was the son of his mother, whom
he had loved very much, and not of his
father. Not even Stephen himself knew
who he was, but the matter had never
greatly concerned him.
After their marriage Rickie and Agnes
went to live with Herbert at Sawston
School. The arrangement had been
worked out between Herbert and Agnes
because Herbert needed help in his
duties as a house master. Although Rickie
soon realized that Herbert was basically
stupid and that they disagreed on many
points, he adapted himself to whatever
course Herbert and Agnes chose. His
marriage, in which he had hoped to find
certain spiritual ideals, never reached a
very intimate level, and before long his
life became a shell. Ansell would have
no more to do with him, and he was cut
off from the one intellect at the school
because of Herbert's feelings and
aspirations.
Two years later, after Rickie had
apparently succumbed completely to the
forces playing on him, Stephen Wonham
again entered his life. It became apparent
immediately that Agnes, who had kept
up a connection with Mrs. Failing, had
been instrumental in having Stephen
thrown out of her house, all because of
her desire to inherit the money from the
estate. Rickie was furious but again he
submitted. Stephen, who had finally been
told the truth about himself, came to
Sawston expecting to find the kind of
love which he had never known before.
But when Rickie refused to see him and
Agnes offered him money never to say
anything about his parentage, he left
immediately.
Stephen wandered around London for
several days doing odd jobs and
supporting himself as well as he could. Before
2092

long he had saved enough money for a
drunken spree. During his drunkenness,
determined to wreck Rickie's house, he
returned to Sawston. In the process he
might have killed himself if Rickie had
not saved him. By this time Rickie,
under the influence of Ansell, had begun to
see how foolish he had been. Now he
decided to give Stephen a home.
Although Stephen would have none of this
idea, he managed to convince Rickie that
thev should go away together.
Thus Rickie began the regeneration of
his soul. Unfortunately it was of short
duration. On a subsequent visit to his
aunt, at which time Stephen insisted on
accompanying him, he again saved
Stephen's life but lost his own. Stephen,
who had promised not to drink, got drunk
and collapsed on the railroad crossing.
Rickie managed to get him off, but he
himself was killed. Just before he died
he realized that he had been betrayed a
second time by his belief in the
individual.
2093

LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: 1900 to 1920
Locale: North Carolina
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Eugene Gant
Eliza Gant, his mother
Oliver Gant, his father
Ben Gant, his brother
Margaret Leonard, his teacher
Laura James, his first sweetheart
Critique:
The work of Thomas Wolfe contains
two invariable elements. One is a
reliance on characters of exceptional
brilliance and vitality. The other is the
portrayal of a central character who is the
sensitive artist isolated in a hostile world.
The latter character is generally Thomas
Wolfe himself. In his fiction Wolfe
attempted to re-create the whole American
experience in his own image, and
beneath the sprawling, often chaotic mass
of his novels there are firm outlines o£
the naked and innocent story of the
American land and its people. Although
his emotional range is limited to the
adolescent and the romantic, he stands
plainly in the succession of American
writers who have expressed in their work
the symbols of a haunted inner world of
thought and feeling.
The Story:
Eugene, the youngest child in the
Gant family, came into the world when
Eliza Gant was forty-two years old. His
father went on periodic drinking sprees
to forget his unfulfilled ambitions and
the unsatisfied wanderlust which had
brought him to Altamont in the hills of
old Catawba. When Eugene was born,
his father was asleep in a drunken
stupor.
Eliza disapproved of her husband's
debauches, but she lacked the imagination
to understand their cause. Oliver, who
had been raised amidst the plenty of a
Pennsylvania farm, had no
comprehension of the privation and suffering which
had existed in the South after the Civil
War, the cause of the hoarding and
acquisitiveness of his wife and her Pent-
land relations in the Catawba hill
country.
Eliza bore the burden of Oliver's
drinking and promiscuousness until
Eugene was four years old. Then she
departed for St. Louis, taking all the
children but the oldest daughter, Daisy,
with her. It was 1904, the year of the
great St. Louis Fair, and Eliza had gone
to open a boarding-house for her visiting
fellow townsmen. The idea was
abhorrent to Oliver. He stayed in Altamont.
Eliza's sojourn in St. Louis ended
abruptly when twelve-year-old Grover
fell ill of typhoid and died. Stunned,
she gathered her remaining children to
her and went home.
Young Eugene was a shy, awkward
boy with dark, brooding eyes. He was,
like his ranting, brawling father, a
dreamer. He was not popular with his
schoolmates, who sensed instinctively that he
was different, and made him pay the
LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL by Thomas Wolfe. By permission of Edward C. Aswell, Administrator, Estate
of Thomas Wolfe, and the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1929, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
2094

price; and at home he was the victim
of his sisters' and brothers' taunts and
torments. His one champion was his
brother Ben, though even he had been
conditioned by the Gants' unemotional
family life to give his caresses as cuffs.
But there was little time for Eugene's
childish daydreaming. Eliza believed
early jobs taught her boys manliness and
self-reliance. Ben got up at three o'clock
every morning to deliver papers. Luke
had been a Saturday Evening Post agent
since he was twelve. Eugene was put
under his wing. Although the boy loathed
the work, he was forced every Thursday
to corner customers and keep up a
continuous line of chatter until he broke
down their sales resistance.
Eugene was not yet eight when his
parents separated. Eliza had bought the
Dixieland boarding-house as a good
investment. Helen remained at the old
house with her father. Daisy married
and left town. Mrs. Gant took Eugene
with her. Ben and Luke were left to
shift for themselves, to shuttle back and
forth between the two houses. Eugene
grew to detest his new home. When
the Dixieland was crowded, there was
no privacy, and Eliza advertised the
Dixieland on printed cards which Eugene
had to distribute to customers on his
magazine route and to travelers arriving
at the Altamont station.
But although life at the boarding-
house was drabness itself, the next four
years were the golden days of Eugene's
Cuth, for he was allowed to go to the
onards' private school. Margaret
Leonard, the tubercular wife of the
schoolmaster, recognized Eugene's hunger for
beauty and love, and was able to find in
literature the words that she herself had
not the power to utter. By the time he
was fifteen Eugene knew the best and
the greatest lyrics almost line for line.
Oliver Gant, who had been fifty when
his youngest son was born, was beginning
to feel his years. Although he was never
told, he was slowly dying of cancer.
Eugene was fourteen when the World
War broke out. Ben, who wanted to join
the Canadian Army, was warned by his
doctor that he would be refused because
he had weak lungs.
At fifteen, Eugene was sent to the
university at Pulpit HiU. It was his
father's plan that Eugene should be well
on his way toward being a great
statesman before the time came for old Oliver
to die. Eugene's youth and tremendous
height made him a natural target for
dormitory horseplay, and his shy,
awkward manners were intensified by his
ignorance of the school's traditions and
rituals. He roomed alone. His only
friends were four wastrels, one of whom
contributed to his social education by
introducing him to a brothel.
That summer, back at the Dixieland,
Eugene met Laura James. Sitting with
her on the front porch at night, he was
trapped by her quiet smile and clear,
candid eyes. He became her lover on a
summer afternoon of sunlit green and
gold. But Laura went home to visit her
parents and wrote Eugene that she was
about to marry a boy to whom she had
been engaged for nearly a year.
Eugene went back to Pulpit Hill that
fall, still determined to go his way alone.
Although he had no intimates, he
gradually became a campus leader. The
commonplace good fellows of his world
tolerantly made room for the one who
was not like them.
In October of the following year
Eugene received an urgent summons to
come home. Ben was finally paying the
price of his parents' neglect and the
drudgery of his life. He was dying of
pneumonia. Eliza had neglected to call a
competent doctor until it was too late, and
Oliver, as he sat at the foot of the dying
boy's bed, could think only of the expense
the burial would be. As the family kept
their vigil through Ben's last night,
they were touched with the realization
of the greatness of the boy's generous
soul. Ben was given, a final irony, the
best funeral money could buy.
With Ben went the family's last pre-
2095

tenses. When Eugene came back to the
Dixieland after graduation, Eliza was in
control of Oliver's property and selling it
as quickly as she could in order to use
the money for further land speculations.
She had disposed of their old home.
Oliver lived in a back room at the
boarding-house. His children watched
each other suspiciously as he wasted
away, each concerned for his own
inheritance. Eugene managed to remain un-
embroiled in their growing hatred of each
other, but he could not avoid being a
target for that hatred. Helen, Luke, and
Steve had always resented his
schooling. In September, before he left for
Harvard to begin graduate work, Luke
asked Eugene to sign a release saying
that he had received his inheritance as
tuition and school expenses. Though his
father had promised him an education
when he was still a child and Eliza was
to pay for his first year in the North,
Eugene was glad to sign. He was free,
and he was never coming back to Alta-
mont.
On his last night at home he had a
vision of his dead brother Ben in the
moonlit square at midnight; Ben, the
unloved of the Gants, and the most
lovable. It was for Eugene as well a vision
of old, unhappy, un forgotten years, and
in his restless imagination he dreamed
of the hidden door through which he
would escape forever the mountain-
rimmed world of his boyhood.
2096

LOOKING BACKWARD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edward Bellamy (1850-1898)
Type of plot: Utopian romance
Time of plot: A.D. 2000
Locale: Boston, Massachusetts
First published: 1888
Principal characters:
Julian West, a traveler in time
Edith Bartlett, his nineteenth century fiancee
Dr. Leete, a twentieth century citizen
Edith Leete, his daughter
Critique:
The main value of Looking Backward:
2000-1887 lies in its credible
presentation of a socialist Utopia, and the book
has served to introduce many famous
people to the theory of socialism.
Bellamy was not merely a follower of Marx
and other economists; he rationalized for
himself the case for economic revolution.
The prophecies he makes for the world
by A.D. 2000 are sometimes strikingly
shrewd, and his judgments made of
modern society are pointed and witty.
Bellamy's idea was to present the ideas
of socialism, as he saw them, in a way
which would appeal to a wide reading
public, both of yesterday and today.
The Story:
Julian West had a hard time sleeping.
In order to have complete quiet he had
built a sound-proof room with thick
cement walls in the cellar of his house.
He was also in the habit of having a
quack doctor named Pillsbury put him
to sleep by hypnosis.
One night he went to dinner with his
fiancee's family and spent an enjoyable
evening with Edith and her father, Mr.
Bartlett. He went home, had the doctor
give him a treatment, and went to sleep.
He awoke to find strange people in the
room. They asked him who he was, and
when he had gone to sleep. Julian was
amazed when he reahzed that he had
been asleep one hundred and thirteen
years, three months, and eleven days.
From much questioning, Julian learned
what must have happened. During the
night that he last remembered, his house
had burned down except for the sealed
room in which he slept; and apparently
everyone assumed that he had died in
the fire. Because of his hypnotic state,
his body had remained the same. He was
still a young man of thirty when he was
discovered by Dr. Leete in the year 2000.
Dr. Leete and his daughter, Edith, were
very kind to their guest from the past and
tried to explain the changes in the world
since he had last seen it.
Boston was a new city with only the
bay and the inlets as he remembered
them. The city was beautiful, with
attractive buildings and spacious parks.
The strikes and labor troubles of the
nineteenth century had resulted in a
bloodless revolution, and now a socialized
government controlled all business. There
was no smoke because all heating was
done by electricity. All the people were
healthy and happy.
Dr. Leete tried to explain the world
of A.D. 2000. There was no money.
The state gave everyone, no matter what
his job, a card which contained the same
amount of credit for a year's expenses.
There was no chance, however, for
anyone to spend his credit foolishly and
starve. If a person proved incapable of
handling his credit card intelligently, the
government took care to see that he was
supervised. Julian was taken to one of
the big stores to see how goods were sold.
The store had nothing but samples,
representing every type of material made in
or imported by the United States. The
2097

buyer picked out the items he wanted,
called a clerk, gave the order, and the
clerk relayed the order to the central
warehouse from which the item was
delivered to the buyer's home before he
returned from the store. Julian was much
impressed with this system.
He learned from Dr. Leete how
education was handled. Everyone was given
a full education until he was twenty-one.
A broad cultural course was taught so
that there was no intellectual snobbery
among the people. At twenty-one, the
student went into menial service for
three years. During this time he waited
on tables in the large public eating
houses, or did some other simple task.
After three years, he was given an
examination to qualify him for one of the
government professional schools. If he
failed, he was helped to find the job for
which he was best suited and which he
would most enjoy. If this job proved to
be the wrong one, he could change his
position. In order that all necessary jobs
would be chosen by enough people to do
the essential work, the jobs were
arranged so as to be equally attractive. If
one job was so boring that few people
would want to choose it, the hours were
made shorter so that enough applicants
could be found. Whether a citizen was
a doctor or a bricklayer, he was given
the same amount of credit for his work.
Crime was treated as a mental disease;
criminals were put in hospitals and
treated as mental cases. Julian learned
that crime had been cut down amazingly
as soon as money was abolished. Theft
became silly when everyone had the
right and power to own the same things.
At the head of the government was the
President, who was controlled by
Congress. Education and medicine were
controlled by boards made up of older
professional advisers to the President. A
woman chosen by the women of the
country had the power to veto any bill
concerning the rights of the female
population. There was no public
discontent with government, and there was
wonderful international cooperation.
Julian asked Dr. Leete what he had
done in life, and learned that the doctor
had practiced medicine until he was
forty-five years old. At that time he had
retired. Now he studied and enjoyed
various kinds of recreation.
Edith Leete took great pleasure in
showing Julian the various advances the
world had made in culture since his day.
She showed him how music was carried
into all the homes in the country by
telephone. She showed him the public
libraries in which Julian learned that his
old favorites were still read. Dickens was
especially popular, as the new world
thought him one of the wisest men in
judging the sadness of the old capitalistic
system. When an author wrote a book,
it was published at his own expense by
the government. If it proved a success,
he received royalties in additional credit
cards. Works of art were voted on by the
public in the same way. When Julian
commented that this plan would not have
worked in his day because of the lack of
public taste, Edith told him that with
general education the taste of the people
had developed greatly. Julian became
very fond of Edith, and thought how
strange it was that she should have the
same name as his long-dead fiancee.
When Julian became worried about a
means of support, Dr. Leete told him
that he had arranged for him to take a
college lectureship in history, as Julian
knew much about the past which even
historians would be delighted to learn.
Knowing that he was secure in this new
world, Julian asked Edith to marry him.
She told him that she had always loved
him.
When Julian asked how this was
possible, she explained that she was the
great-granddaughter of Edith Bartlett.
She had found some of Julian's old love
letters to the other Edith, and had been
charmed by them. She had always told
her parents that she would marry only a
man like the lover who had written them.
Julian was pleased at this unexpected
2098

turn of affairs, and the two planned to world of the twenty-first century,
marry and live happily in the wonderful
2099

LORD JIM
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Conrad (Teodor J6zef Konrad Korzeniowsld, 1857-1924)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Ports and islands of the East
First published: 1900
'Principal characters:
Lord Jim, a British sailor
Marlow, his friend
Stein, a trader
Datn Waris, a native
Critique:
Lord Jim first ran as a magazine serial
that puzzled many readers. Conrad
claimed that he had planned the
narrative as a novel. Critics claimed that
he had written a short story which had
run away from him. The fact remains
that the story is told in a unique
framework. At its beginning it seems to skip
haphazardly backward and forward
through time at no one's direction. It is
told partly by Conrad, partly in narrative
by Marlow, and partly through a letter
written by Marlow. The reader must
solve for himself the problem of Jim's
character. Certainly, Conrad was
attempting to illustrate in Jim's weakness
and strength the mystery of human
character and to reveal the hidden springs of
human conduct
The Story:
Jim was an outcast, a wanderer. Hired
as water clerk in seaports throughout the
East, he would keep his job only until
his identity became known. Then he
would move on. The story of Lord Jim
began when he determined to leave
home to go to sea. Accordingly, his father
obtained a berth for him as an officer
candidate and he began his service.
Although he loved the sea, his beginning
was not heroic. Almost at once he was
injured and was left behind in an
Eastern port. When he recovered, he
accepted a berth as chief mate aboard an
ancient steamer, the Patna, carrying
Moslem pilgrims on their way to Mecca.
The steamer was unseaworthy, her
German captain a gross coward, her chief
engineer liquor-soaked. One sultry night
in the Red Sea the ship struck a floating
object. The captain sent Jim to check.
A month later Jim testified in court
that when he went to investigate he
found the forward hold rapidly filling
with sea water. Hearing his report, the
captain declared the Patna would sink
quickly and gave orders to abandon ship.
At first Jim was determined to stand by
his post. At the last minute, on sudden
impulse, he jumped to join the other
white men in the lifeboat they had
launched. The pilgrims were left aboard
the sinking vessel.
But the Patna had not sunk. A French
gunboat overtook the vessel and towed
it and the abandoned passengers into
port without its chief officers aboard.
Marlow, a white man, sat at the
inquiry. Later, he took up the thread of
the story as he had learned it from Jim.
Something in Jim was fixed to Marlow's
memory so that he was forced to recall
the event and to tell the story to friends
as long as he lived; it became a part
of his own life.
It always began the same way. First
there had come a cable from Aden tell-
-PRD JIM by Joseph Conrad. By permission of J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., agents for the trustees of the estate
f Joseph Conrad. Published by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1899, 1900, by Joseph Conrad, 1921. by
>oubleday, Page & Co. Renewed, 1926, by Jessie Conrad.
2100

ing that the Patna, abandoned by its
officers, had been towed into port. Then
two weeks later the captain, the two
engineers, and Jim had come ashore, their
boat having been picked up by a steamer
of the Dale Line. They were whisked
into court at once for the investigation.
The captain lost his papers for deserting
his ship, and he stormed away declaring
that his disgrace did not matter; he would
become an American citizen.
The chief engineer went to a hospital.
There, raving in delirium tremens, he
declared he had seen the Patna go down.
The Patna was full of reptiles when she
sank, he declared. He also declared that
the space under his bed was crammed
with pink toads. The second engineer,
his arm broken, was also in the hospital.
Neither was called to testify.
Jim, with his recollection of his
family and his fathers teaching, as well as
his own deeply established sense of
honor, was a marked man for the rest
of his life. Marlow told how he had
dinner with Jim during the trial. The
boy seemed of a different stamp from
the other officers of the Patna. Marlow
was determined to fathom the boy's
spirit, just as Jim was determined to
regain his lost moral identity.
Jim told Marlow how the disgraceful
affair had happened. After he had
investigated the damage, he had felt that
the ship could not remain afloat, for her
plates were rust-eaten and unable to
stand much strain. There were eight
hundred passengers and seven boats, and
not enough time to get into the boats
the few passengers who could be carried
to safety. Shortly afterward he discovered
the captain ana the engineers making
ready to desert the ship. They insisted
that he join them; the passengers were
doomed anyway. The acting third
engineer had a heart attack in the
excitement and died. Jim never knew when—
or why—he had jumped into the
lifeboat the other officers had launched. Jim
told Marlow how they had agreed to
tell the same story. Actually, he and his
companions thought that the Patna had
gone down. Jim said that he had felt
relief when he had learned that the
passengers were safe. The whole story made
sailor-talk in all ports where seamen met
and talked. After the inquiry Marlow
offered to help Jim, but Jim was
determined to become a wanderer, to find out
by himself what had happened to his
soul.
Jim began his wanderings, to Bombay,
to Calcutta, to Penang, Batavia, and the
islands of the East. For a time he found
work with an acquaintance of Marlow's,
but he gave up his job when the second
engineer of the Patna turned up
unexpectedly. Afterward he became a
runner for some ship chandlers, but he left
them because he had heard one of the
owners discussing the case of the Patna.
He moved on, always toward the East,
from job to job.
Marlow continued his efforts to help
Jim. He sought out Stein, a trader who
owned a number of trading posts on the
smaller islands of the East Indies. Stein
made Jim his agent at Patusan, an out-
of-the-way settlement where he was sure
Jim might recover his balance. There,
in that remote place, Jim tried to find
some answer to his self-hatred.
Determined never to leave Patusan, he
associated with the natives, and by his
gentleness and consideration became their
leader. They called him Tuan Jim—
Lord Jim. Dain Wans, the son of Dora-
min, the old native chief, was his friend.
The rumor spread in the ports that
Jim had discovered a valuable emerald,
and that he had presented it to a native
woman. There was a story about a native
girl who loved him and who had given
him warning when some jealous natives
came to murder him.
Marlow followed Jim to Patusan.
When Marlow prepared to leave, Jim
accompanied him part of the way. He
explained to Marlow that at last he felt
as though his way had been justified.
Somehow, because the simple natives
trusted him, he felt linked again to the
2101

ideals of his youth. Marlow felt there
was a kind of desperateness to his
conviction.
The end came when Gentleman
Brown, a roving cutthroat, determined
to loot Lord Jim's stronghold. He arrived
while Jim was away. Led by Dain Waris,
the natives isolated Brown and his
marauders on a hilltop but were unable
to capture them. Lord Jim returned and
after a long talk with Brown became
convinced that Brown would leave
peaceably if the siege were lifted. He
persuaded the reluctant natives to
withdraw. The vicious Brown repaid Lord
Jim's magnanimity by vengefully
murdering Dain Waris. Lord Jim went
unflinchingly to face native justice when
he ofiFerea himself to the stern old
chieftain as the cause of Dain Waris' death.
Doramin shot Jim through the breast.
Marlow, who had watched Jim's life
so closely, felt that Jim had at last won
back his lost honor.
2102

LORNA DOONE
Type of work: Novel
Author: R. D. Blackmore O825-1900)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Late seventeenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1869
"Principal characters:
John Ridd, yeoman of the parish of Oare in Somerset
Sir Ensor Doone, head of the outlaw Doone clan
Lorna Doone, his ward
Carver Doone, his son
Tom Faggus, a highwayman
Jeremy Stickles, king s messenger
Reuben Huckaback, John Ridd s great-uncle
Critique:
R. D. Blackmore, in his preface to
Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor,
was content to call his work a "romance,"
because the historical element was only
incidental to the work as a whole. Secret
agents, highwaymen, clannish marauders,
and provincial farmers figure against a
background of wild moor country. A
feeling for the old times, for great,
courageous people, for love under duress
made the novel popular with Victorian
readers. People who have read it in their
youth remember it with nostalgia, for the
book has a penetrating simplicity. Told
in the first person by John Ridd, the
main character in the novel, it has an
authentic ring, the sound of a garrulous
man relating the adventures of his youth.
The Story:
John Ridd was engaged in a schoolboy
fight in the yard of old Blundell's school
when John Fry, employed by Ridd's
father, called for the boy to summon him
home. Before the two left, however,
young John completed his fight by
knocking out his opponent. On their way home
through the moorlands they were nearly
captured by members of the outlaw
Doone band, who had been ravaging the
countryside, stealing and killing. When
John Ridd reached his father's farm, he
learned that only a few days before, the
LORMA DOONE by R. D. Blackmore. Published by Dodd, Mead ft Co., lac.
Doones had set upon and murdered his
father. This incident stimulated the
desire for revenge by all the members of
the parish of Oare, for the murdered man
had been greatly respected.
John settled down to the
responsibilities which the death of his father had
thrust upon him. At first his time was
greatly taken by farm work, as he grew
and matured into the largest and strongest
man in the Exmoor country. As he grew
up, John learned much about the wild
Doone clan. There was one Doone,
however, for whom he felt no animosity.
This was the beautiful child of the man
supposed to be the murderer of John's
father. At first sight John had been
stirred by the beauty of Lorna Doone.
Thereafter he was in great conflict
when he understood that his passion was
directed toward the girl whom he ought
for his father's sake to hate.
When John's great-uncle, Master
Reuben Huckaback, was attacked and robbed
by the Doones, he went with John to
swear out a warrant for their arrest, but
he had no luck because the magistrates
were unwilling to incur the enmity of
the Doones.
John was drawn deeper into his
relationship with Lorna Doone. At their
secret meetings in Doone Valley she told
him the story of her life with the out-
2103

laws; how she always had loved her
grandfather, Sir Ensor Doone, but feared
and lately had come to hate the rough,
savage sons, nephews, and grandsons of
Sir Ensor. This hatred was increased
when Carver Doone cold-bloodedly
murdered Lord Alan Brandir, a distant
relative, who had come to take her away from
the Doones.
About this time John was called to
London to serve the cause of James II's
tottering throne. There he disclosed all
he knew of the Doones* activities and of
the false magistrates who seemed to be
in league with them. He was warned
that Tom Faggus, a highwayman who
was John's own cousin, might go to
the gallows before long. He returned
to his mother and his farm no penny
richer or poorer than when he left,
because of his refusal to accept bribes or
to become the dupe of sly lawyers in the
city.
In the meantime concern over Loma,
who had two suitors among the Doones
themselves, had almost unhinged John's
mind. He was delighted to discover that
Loma, still only seventeen, held off the
two Doones. At the same time he feared
more than ever his chance of winning
the ward of the outlaws he was pledged
to help the king destroy. However, he
at last won Lorna over to his suit, and
with her agreement he felt nothing could
stop him.
At home the love of his sister Annie
for her cousin, Tom Faggus, reminded
John of his duties as his father's son and
plunged him into the worries over his
mother and Annie and the farm. John's
mother had other plans for his marriage,
but when he revealed the only course his
love must take, he won her over. In the
meantime Master Jeremy Stickles brought
news of the rising of the Duke of
Monmouth and of troubles brewing for the
king.
Suddenly, Lorna's signals stopped.
John made his will and descended into
the Doone hideout and there at great
risk discovered that Lorna had been kept
in her rooms because she would not
marry Carver Doone. John managed to
talk to her and she pledged never to give
in to her family. He narrowly escaped
capture, and at the same time managed
to save the life of Jeremy Stickles, king's
messenger, by overhearing the outlaws
as they plotted to kill Jeremy when he
should be crossing the valley bridge. The
Doones' plot to kill Stickles brought
further plans for retaliation from the
king's men.
Old Sir Ensor Doone was close to
death. Before he died, he gave John
Ridd and Lorna Doone his blessing and
to Lorna he presented the glass necklace
he had kept for her since childhood.
Then John took Lorna home with him to
his mother's farm. Jeremy Stickles went
south to muster forces for the destruction
of the Doone clan.
The counselor of the Doones took
advantage of his absence to visit the Ridd
farm in order to make a truce with John
Ridd. His offer was rejected, but he
threw trouble into the paths of the lovers
by telling them that Lorna's father had
murdered John's father and that his own
father was the murderer of Lorna's
father. Moreover, he tricked them out
of Lorna's necklace, which by now,
through the word of Tom Faggus, they
knew to be made of diamonds.
Uncle Reuben Huckaback grew
interested in having John marry his
granddaughter Ruth, and took John to see the
gold mine he had just bought. Upon his
return, John learned that Lorna had
disappeared. She had been taken away by
the Dugals, who claimed her as their
missing heiress.
When Tom Faggus joined the rebels
against the king, John, at his sister
Annie's request, went to find him and to
bring him back to safety. John
discovered Tom almost dead. John was taken
prisoner and was nearly executed. He
was saved only by the arrival of his
friend, Jeremy Stickles.
2104

John went to London and there saw
Lorna. By good chance and virtue of
his great strength he overcame two
villains who were attempting to rob and
kill a nobleman. The man happened to
be Lorna's relative. In return for this
deed, the king gave John the title of
knight. Moreover, he had the court of
heralds design a coat of arms for John's
family. The coat of arms was soundly
made and the queen herself paid for it,
the king declining.
When John returned from London,
covered with honors, he discovered the
Doones had been raiding once more.
Then came the long awaited revenge.
The Doones were routed, their houses
were burned, and their stolen booty
was divided among those who put in
claims for redress. The counselor
revealed that it was Carver Doone who
had killed John's father. The necklace
was recovered.
Arrangements for the wedding of John
and Lorna were made. At the end of the
ceremony in the church, Carver Doone,
out of his great jealousy, shot Lorna.
Without a weapon in his hand, John
rushed out in pursuit of Carver and found
him at Barrow Down. There took place
the greatest battle between two men ever
told of in books. It was a fight of giants.
As John felt his ribs cracking in Carver's
tremendous hug, he fastened his own
iron grip upon his enemy's arm and
ripped it loose. Then he threw his
crushed and bleeding enemy into the
bog and saw Carver Doone sucked down
into its black depths.
Thus the greatest enemy of John Ridd
was at last destroyed and John returned
to his bride to find that she might live.
She did survive and in peace and plenty
John Ridd lived among his friends to a
hearty old age.
2105

LOST HORIZON
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Hilton (1900-1954)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1931
Locale: Tibet
First published: 1933
Principal characters:
Hugh Conway, a British consul
Rutherford, his friend
Henry Barnard, an American embezzler
Miss Brtnklow, a missionary
Captain Mallison, another British consul
Chang, a Chinese lama
Father Perrault, the High Lama
Critique:
Shangri-La, the name for the setting
of this novel, has come to mean to most
Americans a place of peace and
contentment. Such was the strange Utopia
James Hilton described in Lost Horizon,
making it seem like a real place, peopled
by living beings, rather than the land of
an impossible ideal.
The Story:
When Rutherford had found Hugh
Conway, a former schoolmate, suffering
from fatigue and amnesia in a mission
hospital, Conway had related a weird
and almost unbelievable story
concerning his disappearance many months
before.
Conway was a member of the
consulate at Baskul when trouble broke out
there in May, 1931, and he was
considered something of a hero because of
the efficiency and coolness he displayed
while white civilians were being
evacuated. When it was his turn to leave,
he boarded a plane in the company of
Miss Roberta Brinklow, a missionary;
Henry Barnard, an American, and
Captain Charles Mallison, another member
of the consulate. The plane was a special
high-altitude cabin aircraft provided by
the Maharajah of Chandapore. Conway,
thirty-seven years old, had been in the
consular service for ten years. His work
had not been spectacular and he was
expecting to rest in England before being
assigned to another undistinguished post.
After the plane had been in the air
about two hours, Mallison noticed that
their pilot was the wrong man and that
they were not headed toward Peshawur,
the first scheduled stop. Conway was
undisturbed until he realized they were
flying over strange mountain ranges.
When the pilot landed and armed
tribesmen refueled the plane before it took
off again, Conway began to agree with
Malhson and Barnard, who thought they
had been kidnaped and would be held
for ransom.
When Conway tried to question the
pilot, the man only pointed a revolver at
him. A little after midnight the pilot
landed again, this time narrowly averting
a crackup. Climbing out of the plane, the
passengers found the pilot badly injured.
Conway believed that they were high
on the Tibetan plateau, far beyond the
western range or the Himalaya
Mountains. The air was bitterly cold, with no
signs of human habitation in that region
of sheer-walled mountains. The pilot
died before morning, murmuring
something about a lamasery called Shangri-
La. As the little group started in search
of the lamasery, they saw a group of
men coming toward them.
LOST HORIZON by James Hilton. By permission of the author and the publishers, William Morrow A
Co., Inc. Copyright, 1933, 1936, by William Morrow & Co., Inc. sorrow a
2106

When the men reached them, one
introduced himself in perfect English; he
was a Chinese named Chang. Following
the men, Conway and his friends arrived
at the lamasery of Shangri-La that
evening. There they found central heat,
plumbing, and many other luxuries more
commonly found only in the Western
Hemisphere. They were given fine rooms
and excellent food. They learned that
there was a High Lama whom they
would not be privileged to meet.
Although Chang told them porters would
arrive in a few weeks to lead them back
to the outer world, Conway had the
strange feeling that their coming had
not been an accident and that they were
not destined soon to leave.
Presently Chang told them that
Conway was to be honored by an interview
with the High Lama. Mallison begged
him to force the High Lama to provide
guides for them, for Mallison had learned
that Barnard was wanted for fraud and
embezzlement in the United States and
he was anxious to turn Barnard over to
the British authorities. But Conway did
not discuss their departure with the High
Lama, whom he found a very intelligent,
very old man. Instead, he listened to
the lama's remarkable story of Father
Perrault, a Capuchin friar lost in the
mountains in 1734, when he was fifty-
three years old. Father Perrault had
found sanctuary in a lamasery and had
stayed there after adopting the Buddhist
faith. In 1789 the old man lay dying,
but the miraculous power of some drugs
he had perfected, coupled with the
marvelous air on the plateau, prolonged his
life. Later tribesmen from the valley
helped him build the lamasery of
Shangri-La, where he lived the life of a
scholar. In 1804 another European came
to the lamasery; then others came from
Europe and from Asia. No guest was
ever allowed to leave.
Conway learned then that the
kidnaping of their plane had been deliberate.
But, more important, he learned that
the High Lama was Father Perrault and
that he was two hundred and fifty years
old. The old man told Conway that all
who lived at Shangri-La had the secret
of long life. He had sent the pilot for
new people because he believed a war
was coming which would destroy all
known civilization and Shangri-La would
then be the nucleus of a new world. His
picture of life in the lamasery pleased
Conway. He was content to stay.
Conway, knowing that the others
would find it hard to accept the news, did
not tell them that they could never leave.
Mallison continued to talk of the coming
of the porters, but Barnard and Miss
Brinklow announced that they intended
to pass up the first opportunity to leave
Shangri-La and wait for a later chance.
Barnard faced jail if he returned, and
Miss Brinklow thought she should not
miss the opportunity to convert the lamas
and the tribesmen in the valley.
The weeks passed pleasantly for
Conway. He met a Frenchman called Briac,
who had been Chopin's pupil. He also
met Lo-Tsen, a Chinese girl who seemed
quite young, but Chang told him she
was really sixty-five years old. Conway
had more meetings with the High Lama;
at one of them the old man told Conway
that he knew he was going to die at last
and that he wanted Conway to take
his place as ruler of the lamasery and the
valley and to act wisely so that all culture
would not be lost after war had destroyed
Western civilization.
While he was explaining these
matters, the old lama lay back in his chair,
and Conway knew he was dead. Conway
wandered out into the garden, too
moved to talk to anyone. He was
interrupted by Mallison, with the news
that the porters had arrived. Although
Barnard and Miss Brinklow would not
leave, Mallison had paid the porters to
wait for him and Conway. Mallison
said that the Chinese girl was going
with them, that he had made love to
her and that she wanted to stay with
him. Conway tried to tell Mallison that
the girl was really an old woman who
2107

would die if she left the valley, but
Mallison refused to listen. At first
Conway also refused to leave Shangri-La, but
after Mallison and the girl started and
then came back because they were afraid
to go on alone, Conway felt that he was
responsible for them as well and he left
the lamasery with them. He felt that
he was fleeing from the place where he
would be happy for the rest of his life,
no matter how long that life might be.
Rutherford closed his manuscript at
that point, for Conway had slipped away
and disappeared. Later Rutherford met
a doctor who told him that Conway had
been brought to the mission by a woman,
a bent, withered, old Chinese woman.
Perhaps, then, the story was true.
Convinced that Conway had headed for the
hidden lamasery, Rutherford hoped that
his journey had been successful, that
Conway had reached Shangri-La.
2108

LOST ILLUSIONS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Angouleme, France
First published in three parts: 1837, 1839, 1843
Principal characters:
David Sechard, a printer
Eve, his wife
Lucien Chardon, his brother-in-law
Madame de Bargeton, loved by Lucien
Critique:
This longest of all Balzac's novels is a
study of a hero who is too innocent even
to understand all the machinations of his
enemies. The tone is somber and cynical.
Virtue is rewarded in a way, but chicanery
is always triumphant. Although the plot is
marred by the lavish details with which
the past histories of the characters are
presented, Balzac has achieved in this novel
considerably more suspense than usual.
Lost Illusions is perhaps the high point of
the author's "Scenes of Country Life."
The Story:
Angouleme was divided into two social
classes: the aristocrats of fashionable
society and the bourgeois. David Sechaid
and Lucien Chardon were scarcely aware
that they belonged to the less privileged
class. Lucien was the brilliant, handsome,
unstable son of a chemist. David was the
sober, kind son of a printer.
David's father had sent him to Paris to
learn all the latest innovations in
the printing trade. The illiterate father,
avaricious and mean, hoped that David
would learn how to make more money
from the old-fashioned printery shop of
Sechard and Son. When David returned
from Paris, his father quickly sold him the
business at a high price and retired to his
vineyard.
Partly because of his friendship for
poetic Lucien and partly because of his
temperament, David did not prosper. He
was always discussing a grand project with
Lucien or dreaming of Eve, Lucien's
beautiful sister.
Lucien wrote some verses which
attracted attention. Even the aristocrats of
the town heard of him, and Madame de
Bargeton, a woman of thirty-six married
to an old husband, invited him to one of
her famous evening gatherings. Eve
scrimped to buy Lucien the proper clothes
for the occasion. The evening was not an
entire success. Few except Madame de
Bargeton listened to Lucien's poetry, but
he made a real conquest of his hostess.
While Lucien did his best to break into
society and win the heart of Madame de
Bargeton, David and Eve were quietly
falling in love. David strained his
resources to the utmost to furnish rooms over
the print shop for his wife-to-be, a room
at the rear for his mother-in-law, and a
comfortable room on the street for Lucien.
David had determined to promote Lu-
cien's literary talent by supporting him.
Two days before the wedding, Lucien
was surprised in Madame de Bargeton's
boudoir. Her husband, old as he was,
fought a duel with a man who had
gossiped about Madame de Bargeton. Not
wishing to face the scandal, Madame de
Bargeton decided to go to Paris, and
Lucien was to follow her. With a heavy heart,
for he knew Lucien's weaknesses, David
drove his friend at night along the Paris
road. Safely away from Angoul&me,
Lucien joined his mistress.
David and Eve, married, settled into
their new rooms. Eve was a devoted wife,
though foolishly fond of her scapegrace
brother. Before her child was born she
began to grow uneasy. Lucien wrote very
2109

seldom and David paid little attention to
his business. He was too busy working on
an experiment to find a new way to make
paper without rags. If he could invent a
new process they would all be rich.
Meanwhile the family was desperately in need,
for Lucien's demands for money kept
them poor. At last Eve herself took charge
of the print shop.
She had her first small success when
she hit on the idea of printing a
Shepherd's Calendar, a cheap almanac to
peddle to farmers. But the firm of Cointet
Brothers, rivals in the printing trade, gave
her so much unfair competition that she
made only a small profit from her printing
venture. After her baby came she had to
give up her efforts for a while. David was
more than ever wrapped up in his
attempts to find a new process for making
paper.
Meanwhile Lucien had failed
completely to make his way in Paris. He had
quarreled with his rich mistress, and they
had parted. He could find only odd jobs
as a journalist. He borrowed continually
from David to lead the dissolute life of a
man-about-town. Finally, when he went
to live onenlv with Coralie, an actress, he
lost all chances for any real success.
Pressed for money, Lucien forged
David's name to notes for three thousand
francs. When the firm of Cointet Brothers,
acting as bankers, presented the notes to
David for payment, he was unable to raise
the money. The law suit that followed
disturbed Eve so much that she had to
hire a wet nurse for her baby; in that small
French town she was disgraced.
Cointet Brothers promised a rich
marriage to Petit-Claud, David's lawyer, if he
would prolong the suit, increase the costs
to David, and eventually force him into
debtor's prison. During the delays Eve and
David both appealed to his father for help,
but the old miser refused aid to his son.
He was mainly interested in collecting
rent for the building where David had his
shop. With all help denied, David went
into hiding and worked feverishly on his
paper process.
In Paris, Coralie died, leaving Lucien
without a place to live. Having no money,
he began the long walk home. One night
he caught a ride among the trunks of a
carriage and went to sleep on his
precarious perch. When he awoke the
carriage had stopped. As he got off he saw
that he had been riding with his former
mistress, Madame de Bargeton, now
Madame la Comtesse Chatelet, wife of the
new prefect of the district. She and her
husband laughed openly as the disheveled
Lucien stalked away.
A few miles from Angoul£me Lucien
became ill and sought refuge with a
miller. Thinking him about to die, the miller
sent for a priest. When Lucien begged
for news of his family, the priest told him
of David's troubles. Lucien hurried to
town to see what he could do for the
brother-in-law he had helped to ruin.
In Angouleme, Lucien was sorrowfully
received by his sister. To add to the
distress of David and his family, Cointet
Brothers published in the paper a glowing
account of Lucien's successes in Paris.
There was a parade in Lucien's honor, and
the du Chatelet's even invited him to
dinner.
Realizing that he still had a hold over
Madame du Chatelet, Lucien tried to get
David released from his debts through her
influence. Meanwhile, after seeing some
samples of David's work, the Cointets
offered to pay off his debts, buy his print
shop, and develop his invention for him.
The offer was intended, however, to bring
David out of hiding. Then a letter from
Lucien to his friend was intercepted and
a forged note substituted, appointing a
place of meeting. David, on the way to
the meeting, was arrested and thrown into
prison.
Lucien, after a despairing farewell to
his sister, left Angouleme. I le intended to
kill himself, but on the road he was picked
up by a Spanish priest, an emissary
traveling between Madrid and Paris. The
envoy saw promise in Lucien and offered
2110

him fifteen thousand francs in return for
Lucien's promise to do as the priest
wished. The Spaniard meant to acquire
power through Lucien's attraction for
women and his poetic fervor. The bargain
sealed, Lucien sent the fifteen thousand
francs to David.
The money arrived just after David
had signed away his shop and his paper-
making process to the Cointets. David
and Eve retired to the country and in due
time inherited money and a vineyard from
his father. Petit-Claud, the double
crossing lawyer, became a famous prosecutor.
The Cointets made a great fortune from
David's process, and one of them became a
deputy and a peer.
2111

A LOST LADY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Willa Cather (1876-1947)
Type of plot: Regional realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Nebraska
First published: 1923
Principal characters:
Captain Forrester, a railroad constructor
Mrs. Forrester, his wife
Judge Pommeroy, his friend and legal adviser
Niel Herbert, the judge's nephew
Ivy Peters, a shyster lawyer
Critique:
This book, which is marked by a
studied attention to form, achieves an
epic-like tone. In part this is derived
from the theme as well as from the
viewpoint of the novel. The theme expresses
a feeling of admiration which most
Americans share for the builders who
opened the West, a herculean task which
could not be done twice. The viewpoint
is that of a young man whose youth
claims the right of sentimental ardor
which makes youth so delightful.
Moreover, Miss Cather captured the tone of
many women of the generation about
which she was writing. Mrs. Forrester
possessed more valiant self-reliance than
many of her contemporaries. As such she
was able to be a lost lady and still keep
her own personality intact.
The Story:
The Forrester home at Sweet Water
was a stopping off place for railroad
magnates riding through the prairie states
along the Burlington line. Old Captain
Forrester liked to drive his guests from
the station and watch them as they
approached his estate. He enjoyed their
praise of his stock farm and their delight
when his charming wife met them at the
front door. Everyone from railroad
presidents to the village butcher boy and the
kitchen maids liked Mrs. Forrester; her
manner was always one of friendliness
and respect.
Niel Herbert's acquaintance with Mrs.
Forrester began when he fell from a
tree while playing with some village
boys on the captain's property and Mrs.
Forrester summoned a doctor. He did
not know it at the time, but Mrs.
Forrester had already singled him out from
the others because he was Judge
Pommeroy's nephew. After his recovery he
was often invited to the Forrester home
with his uncle.
The boy who had caused Niel's fall
was Ivy Peters. He had winged a
woodpecker and then had slit its eyes. The
bird had fumbled back into its hole, and
Niel was trying to reach the creature to
put it out of its misery when he lost his
balance and fell.
During a period of hard rimes Niel's
father went out of business and left
Sweet Water. Niel stayed on to read
law in his uncle's office. A few days
before Christmas, Mrs. Forrester invited
Niel to her home to help entertain
Constance Ogden, the daughter of one of the
captain's friends, who was coming to
spend the holidays with the Forresters.
Also included in the party was Frank
Ellinger, a bachelor of forty. The dinner
was a gay one. Niel decided that
Constance was neither pretty nor pleasant.
It was plain that she had designs on
Frank Ellinger.
The following day Niel was asked to
stay with Constance during the after-
A LOST LADY by Willa Cather. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. Copyright. 1923. by
Willa Cather.
2112

noon, while Mrs. Forrester and Frank
took the small cutter and went after
cedar for the Christmas decorations. The
Blum boy, out hunting, saw Mrs.
Forrester and Frank after he came upon the
deserted cutter beside a thicket, but he
did not give away their secret. The
doings of the rich were not his concern
and Mrs. Forrester had been kind to
him on many occasions.
During that winter Judge Pommeroy
and his nephew often went to play caras
with the Forresters. One night, during a
snowstorm, Mrs. Forrester revealed to
Niel how much she missed the
excitement and glamour of former winters
at fashionable resorts. She mocked the
life of quiet domesticity in which she
and the captain were living.
In the spring the captain went to
Denver on business and while he was gone
Frank Ellinger arrived for a visit. One
morning Niel cut a bouquet of wild roses
to leave outside the windows of Mrs.
Forrester's bedroom. Suddenly he heard
from the bedroom the voices of Mrs.
Forrester and Frank Ellinger. The first
illusion of his life was shattered by a
man's yawn and a woman's laugh.
When the captain came home from
Denver, he announced that he was a poor
man. Having satisfied his creditors, he
had left only his pension from the Civil
War and the income from his farm.
Shortly afterward the captain had a
stroke.
Niel continued to visit the sick man
and his wife. He realized that Mrs.
Forrester was facing her new life with terror
she tried to hide for her husband's sake.
Niel, having decided to become an
architect, left Sweet Water to spend two years
at school in the East. When he returned,
he learned that Ivy Peters, shrewd and
grasping, had become an important
person in the town. Niel, who despised
Peters, was disappointed to learn that
Peters, now the captain's tenant, had
drained the marsh where the boys had
gone fishing years before. The captain
himself had become wasted and old.
Most of the time he sat in his garden
staring at a strange sundial he had made.
Niel learned that Mrs. Forrester, who
seemed little older, was still writing to
Frank Ellinger. He observed, too, that
Mrs. Forrester treated Peters with easy
familiarity, and he wondered how she
could be on friendly terms with the
pushing young lawyer.
That summer a storm flooded the
fields along the creek. Niel went to
Judge Pommeroy's office to read. He
thought of an item he had seen in the
Denver paper earlier in the day; Frank
Ellinger had finally married Constance
Ogden. Close to midnight Mrs.
Forrester, drenched to the skin, appeared at
the office. At her demand Niel made
the telephone connection with Ellinger
in Colorado Springs. Mrs. Forrester
began to talk politely, as though
complimenting Ellinger on his marriage. Then
she became hysterical. When she began
to scream reproaches, Niel cut the wires.
Mrs. Forrester recovered after her
collapse, but the gossipy town telephone
operator pieced together a village scandal
from what she had managed to
overhear.
Captain Forrester died in December.
None of his wealthy friends attended
the funeral, but old settlers and former
employees came to do honor to the
railroad pioneer who had been one of the
heroes of the early West.
One day Mr. Ogden stopped in Sweet
Water. He thought that Judge
Pommeroy ought to send to Washington a
claim to have Mrs. Forrester's pension
increased. Niel was forced to explain
that Mrs. Forrester had turned her affairs
over to Ivy Peters.
After her husband's death Mrs.
Forrester began to entertain Ivy Peters and
other young men from the village. At
her urging Niel went to one party, but
he was disgusted with the cheap
manners of both hostess and guests. He could
not bear to see the old captain's home
thus abused.
Niel felt that an era was ending. The
2113

great old people, such as the judge and
the captain and their friends, were
passing, the men who had built the railroads
and the towns. The old men of gallant
manners and their lovely ladies had gone
forever. In their place was a new type
of man, the shrewd opportunist, like Ivy
Peters. On the day Niel saw Peters
putting his arms around Mrs. Forrester,
he decided to leave Sweet Water.
As long as his uncle lived, however,
he had news of Mrs. Forrester. The
judge wrote that she was sadly broken.
Then his uncle died and Niel heard no
more for many years.
A long time afterward a mutual friend
told him what had happened to his lost
lady. She had gone to California. Later,
she had married a rich Englishman and
had gone with him to South America.
She had dyed her hair and had dressed
expensively in an effort to keep her
youth.
Finally, one year, the G.A.R. post
received a letter from Mrs. Forrester's
English husband. It enclosed money for the
continued care of Captain Forrester's
grave. His gift was a memorial to his
late wife, Marian Forrester Collins.
2114

THE LOST WEEKEND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Jackson O903- )
Type of plot: Psychological melodrama
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: New York City
First published: 1944
Principal characters:
Don Birnajm, an alcoholic
Wick, his brother
Helen, his friend
Critique:
Although The Lost Weekend is in
some respects more a case history than
a novel, it is nevertheless a vivid and
convincing story of a maladjusted
personality. Jackson shows considerable
insight into alcoholism as a social problem
without destroying the personal quality
of his hero's experience and the
desperation of his struggle during a long
weekend when he is thrown upon his
own resources. In this novel the drama
remains objective; the underlying cause
of Don Birnam's alcoholism is dramatized
rather than analyzed.
The Story:
Don Birnam was an unsuccessful
writer who drank too much. Time and
again, his brother Wick and his friend
Helen tried to break him of the habit.
They kept money out of his reach so that
he could not buy liquor. They warned
neighbors and bartenders against his
habits. They sent him to a rest farm
for the cure. But even there he managed
to get something to drink.
One weekend Don was left alone
while Wick went to the country. As
soon as his brother had gone, Don took
the money Wick had left for the
housekeeper and went out to buy liquor. He
went into a bar and chatted with Gloria,
the hostess. He told her about his life,
about his wife who was frigid, his
children, and other details all equally
fantastic and imaginary. He asked Gloria
to meet him later. After being convinced
THE LOST WEEKEND by Charles Jackson. By pern
& Co., Inc. Copyright, 1944, by Charles Jackson.
that he was not joking, she accepted.
That night Don went into another bar
and began drinking heavily. While there,
idly watching a young couple, he
suddenly decided to steal the girl's purse.
He would do it only as a joke, he told
himself. Later he could return the purse
and they would all laugh at his prank.
He picked up the purse and slipped it
under his coat, acting calmly and
naturally all the time, but as he was walking
out a waiter stopped him. Luckily, the
girl did not want to press charges. Don
was pushed out into the street.
He went from one bar to another.
When he drifted back to Sam's bar,
Gloria was angry because he had
forgotten his date with her. He could not
understand why she asked him about his
wife and his children, because he had
neither. Next morning he found that his
money had disappeared and that there
was no money in the apartment. He
decided to pawn his typewriter. He
walked up and down the streets, but all
the pawnshops were closed because it
was a Jewish holiday. He went home,
changed his clothes, and borrowed ten
dollars from a nearby merchant. He went
out to drink again. Coming back, he
fell down a flight of stairs and lost
consciousness.
When he awoke, he was in the
alcoholic ward of a hospital. With him were
a doctor and Bim, a male nurse. He
wanted his clothes, he insisted; he wanted
jion of Brandt & Brandt and the publishers, Rinehart
2115

to go home. At last the doctor told him
that he could go if he would sign a
paper absolving the hospital of all
responsibility.
Leaving the hospital, Don went
straight to his apartment, where he fell
asleep. The ringing of the telephone
awoke him. He could not remember
when he had last eaten. When he tried
to get up, he almost collapsed, and he
sank, exhausted, into a chair. After a
while he heard a key in the lock. It
was Helen, coming to see how he was
getting along while Wick was away.
She helped him to get dressed and took
him to her apartment. When the maid
came in, Helen went out on an errand.
Don tried to get the key to the closet, but
the maid pretended that she had no idea
where it was. Don was growing more
and more desperate for liquor. Before
Helen left the apartment, he had called
to her in terror because he thought a
bat was devouring a mouse in the room.
His thirst was growing worse. Seeing
Helen's fur coat, he seized it and ran
out of the apartment. He pawned the
coat for five dollars and bought several
pints of whiskey. He went back to his
own apartment. Afraid that Wick might
return, he hid one bottle in the bathroom
and suspended the other on a string
outside his window.
He lay down on the bed and took
a long drink of whiskey. He felt
wonderful. The ordeal was over; he had come
through once more. There was no
telling what might happen the next time,
but he saw no reason to worry now.
He wondered why Wick and Helen
made such a fuss about it all.
2116

LOVE FOR LOVE
Tvf e of work: Drama
Author: William Congreve (1670-1729)
Type of plot: Comedv of manners
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1695
Principal characters:
Sir Sampson Legend, a foolish old gentleman
Valentine, his son, an indigent gallant
Benjamin, another son, a sailor
Foresight, an old man given to astrology
Angelica, his niece
Prue, his daughter
Mrs. Foresight, his young second wife
Mistress Frail, her sister
Critique:
Love for Love, generally considered
one of Congreve's finest plays, is marked
by a relatively simple but not particularly
original plot. For the most part, the
Restoration writers of comedy seemed to
be content to follow their Elizabethan and
Jacobean predecessors in matters of plot
and of stock characters. Whatever gross-
ness—and it is comparatively trifling—is
present in this play is far overbalanced by
clever and amusing dialogue and by
several pairs of well-conceived and variously-
contrasted characters. Surely Ben Jonson's
theory of humors is quite alive in Sir
Sampson Legend's penchant for tall tales
of travel and in old Foresight's obsession
for prognostication.
The Story:
Young Valentine Legend, having
squandered all of his money in riotous
living, was destitute and deeply in debt.
With no property left but his books, he
declared his intention of becoming a
playwright, for his love for Angelica had
indeed compelled him to take desperate
measures. On hearing of his intention,
Jeremy, his knavish manservant, showed
alarm and said that Valentine's family
would surely disown him.
Among Valentine's creditors was Trap-
land, a lecherous old scrivener who
persisted in dunning him. When Valentine,
who had been joined by his friend
Scandal, subtly threatened Trapland with
blackmail concerning a wealthy city
widow the old man suddenly forgot the
money owed him.
Sir Sampson Legend's steward told
Valentine that he could be released from
all debts by signing over his rights as Sir
Sampson's heir to Ben, his younger
brother. If he signed, he would receive
four thousand pounds in cash.
In the meantime Foresight, an old fool
given to the science of prognostication,
recalled Prue, his bumpkin daughter, from
the country. Foresight planned to marry
her to Ben Legend.
Angelica, wealthy, young, and clever,
reproved her uncle for his belief in
astrology. Irate, Foresight threatened to
end her friendship with Valentine.
Angelica, piqued, insinuated that Mrs.
Foresight, the old man's young second
wife, was not true to him.
Sir Sampson Legend, a great teller of
tall tales of world travel, arranged with
Foresight for the marriage of Ben and
Prue. When Sir Sampson playfully
hinted to Foresight that Mrs. Foresight
might not be a faithful wife, Foresight
threatened to break off the marriage
agreement. Sir Sampson quickly made amends.
Valentine, seeking Angelica,
encountered his father at Foresight's house. He
was indignant when his father disowned
him as a son and he begged his father to
2117

change his mind about the conditions
under which he could be freed of debt.
When Mrs. Foresight rebuked her
sister for her indiscretion in frequenting the
haunts of gamesters and gallants, Mistress
Frail revealed her knowledge of Mrs.
Foresight's own indiscretions. Mistress
Frail then declared her intention of
marrying Ben and enlisted her sister's aid in
the project. Prue, meanwhile, found
herself charmed by Tattle, a voluble young
dandy. When Mrs. Foresight and Mistress
Frail encouraged Tattle to court Prue, he
was mystified because he knew of the
marriage arranged between Prue and Ben.
Even so, he gave Prue a lesson in the art
of love, a lesson which progressed as far
as her bedchamber. Tattle, having grown
tired of dalliance with the rude country
girl, was relieved when Prue's nurse found
them.
Ben, returning from a sea voyage,
declared that marriage did not interest him
at the moment, but he visibly changed
his mind when Mistress Frail flattered
him. Left alone, he and Prue expressed
dislike for each other. Ben declared that
he talked to Prue only to obey his father.
Scandal, in Valentine's behalf,
ingratiated himself with Foresight by
pretending a knowledge of astrology. His
scheme succeeding, he convinced
Foresight that it was not in the stars for
Valentine to sign over his inheritance 01 for Ben
and Prue to marry. Attracted to Mrs.
Foresight, Scandal hoodwinked old Foresight
in order to pay gallant attentions to his
young wife. Meanwhile Ben and Mistress
Frail confessed their love and decided to
marry.
Because Scandal had reported that
Valentine was ill, Angelica went to his
lodgings. In spite of Scandal's insistence that
her acknowledgment of love for
Valentine would cure the young man, she
quickly detected a trick and departed. Sir
Sampson and a lawyer named Buckram
arrived to get Valentine's signature to the
documents they had prepared. Jeremy
insisted that Valentine was out of his mind.
Buckram said that the signature would
be invalid under the circumstances, but
Sir Sampson forced his way into his son's
presence. Valentine, pretending complete
lunacy, called himself Truth and declared
that he would give the world the lie.
After the frightened Buckram left,
Valentine showed clarity of mind, but, when
the lawyer was called back, Valentine
again seemed to lapse into lunacy.
Mistress Frail, having learned that
there was little chance of Ben's getting
the whole estate, broke off their
engagement. Sir Sampson, frustrated by
Valentine, decided to marry and beget a new
heir. Mrs. Foresight plotted with Jeremy
to marry Mistress Frail, disguised as
Angelica, to Valentine during one of his
fits of madness. When Jeremy revealed
the scheme to Valentine and Scandal, the
friends, in their turn, planned to marry
Mistress Frail to Tattle by means of
another disguise.
After Valentine had confessed his
feigned madness to Angelica, she
expressed disappointment; she had thought
him really mad for love of hei. She then
went to Sir Sampson, learned his new
state of mind, and suggested that he and
she go through with a mock marriage
ceremony in order to bring Valentine to his
senses. When foolish Sir Sampson
suggested that they actually get married so
that she could inherit his estate, Angelica
said that his plan would not be advisable
since the papers leaving the estate to Ben
were already drawn up.
Jeremy tricked foolish Tattle into
believing that he, disguised as a friar, might
marry Angelica, who would be disguised
as a nun. Prue, forsaken by Tattle,
asserted that she would marry Robin, the
butler, who had professed his love for hei.
Mistress Frail, thinking that she was
marrying Valentine, and Tattle, thinking
that he was marrying Angelica, were thus
tricked into wedlock. Told by Angelica
that she intended to marry his father,
Valentine in despair declared that he was
ready to sign over his inheritance.
Impressed by this indication of his love for
her, Angelica tore up the bond, which Sir
2118

Sampson had given her, and she brought
the doting old man to his senses by
revealing that she had always intended to
marry Valentine. Sir Sampson and old
Foresight consoled each other; they
admitted that they had acted like fools.
2119

LOVE IN A WOOD
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Wycherley (1640-1716)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1671
Principal characters:
Mr. Ranger, a young man about town
Lydia, his cousin and betrothed
Mr. Valentine, a gallant lately returned to London
Christina, his betrothed
Mr. Vincent, a confidant of all the lovers
Alderman Gripe, an elderly usurer
Mistress Martha, his daughter
Lady Flippant, his sister, in London to find a husband
Sir Simon Addleplot, an indomitable fortune hunter
Mr. Dapperwit, a fop and a would-be gentleman
Mrs. Joyner, a matchmaker and procuress
Mrs. Crossbite, a blackmailer and procuress
Lucy, her daughter
Critique:
The first of three satiric comedies,
Love in a Wood; or, St. James's Park, as
it was popularly known, shows brilliantly
the genius of William Wycherley, who
gained his insight as an intimate in high
society on both sides of the Channel. It
was this play which gained for the young
man the favor of a king and the love of
the king's mistress, the Duchess of
Cleveland.
The Story:
Lady Flippant, a widow disappointed
in her efforts to find a new husband,
berated her matchmaker, Mrs. Joyner,
for not finding a wealthy young man to
relieve her impecunious position. The
lady's brother, Alderman Gripe, had
grown tired of her foppish visitors,
especially the witless Mr. Dapperwit.
Sir Simon Addleplot, at the suggestion
of the cozening Mrs. Joyner and the
double-dealing Dapperwit, disguised
himself and gained employment as a clerk
to the miserly Gripe in order to woo the
usurer's daughter Mistress Martha and
through her to secure her father's
fortune. Not realizing that he had been
gulled into becoming Jonas the clerk,
Sir Simon was again duped into believing
that he was loved by Lady Flippant, who
was really enamored of Dapperwit.
Mr. Ranger, with Mr. Vincent, his
friend and confidant, was about to go
into St. James's Park in search of some
amorous adventure when his cousin and
betrothed, Lydia, discovered his
whereabouts. He avoided her, however, and
dined for diversion with the gulled Sir
Simon, Dapperwit, and Lady Flippant
in order to watch the work of Mrs.
Joyner, who had already made twenty
crowns through introductions and would
obtain a hundred if Sir Simon got
Mistress Martha or fifty if he got Lady
Flippant. The widow spurned Sir Simon,
flirted with Dapperwit, and hinted at
matrimony to both the young gallants,
Ranger and Vincent.
Later, all promenaded through St.
James's Park in the hope of discovering
one another's intrigues. Lydia,
recognizing Ranger, ran into the house of her
friend Christina in order to avoid a
compromising meeting with her betrothed.
Ranger pursued her, only to become
enamored of Christina, who was
faithfully waiting the return to London of
2120

Mr. Valentine, her fiance\ Christina, in
order to help Lydia, had pretended to
be the young woman he had pursued
from the park. Her little act quickly
over, she sent the impertinent Ranger
away. Ranger, in despair because he had
not learned the fair unknown's name, did
not know that Lydia had heard his gallant
speeches to Christina.
Ranger went to the home of his friend
Vincent. Valentine, in danger of his lift*
from a rival, was in hiding there; he
wished no one else to know of his return
from France before his loved one did.
Valentine, concealed, overheard Ranger
ask the name of the young woman whom
he pursued into her apartment. When
Vincent named the apartment as
Christina's, Valentine became convinced that
his beloved one had been untrue to him.
In contrast to this sequence of
mistaken and confused identities, the busy
Mrs. Joyner was more positive in
identifying Lucy, the daughter of her friend
Mrs. Crossbite, as the object of
hypocritical old Gripe's lust. The solicitous
mother, pleased with this development,
ordered her recalcitrant daughter to give
up her love for Dapperwit. When
Dapperwit, thinking to cure Ranger's
melancholy over Christina, brought him to see
Lucy, the girl repulsed him for his
infidelity and what she thought was his
intention of procuring her for Ranger. The
jilted fop recovered his spirits, however,
when he received a message delivered by
Jonas, the supposed clerk. The message
held out the promise of a later
assignation which might lead, Dapperwit hoped,
to a wedding.
As the gallants departed, the ever-
busy Mrs. Joyner brought furtive
Alderman Gripe to see Lucy. His hasty lust
frightened the lass, however, and she
screamed. Though he dickered for the
sake of salving his miserly conscience,
Gripe was coerced into paying five
hundred pounds of hush money to Mrs.
Crossbite. Lady Flippant, at the same
time, was making advances to the
defenseless Dapperwit, and the nimble-
footed lovers, Ranger and Lydia, were
busy at double deception. Lydia denied
that she had been in the park jealously
searching for him; Ranger assured her
that he had called for her as he had
promised.
The Gripe household was at this time
in an uproar. The sly old man was busily
attempting to hide his shame and regain
his money, and Mrs. Joyner virtuously
pretended horror at the treatment he had
received at the hands of Mrs. Crossbite.
Jonas, meanwhile, made love to Lady
Flippant, who protested only after she
learned that her seducer was really Sir
Simon Addleplot, the man she hoped
finally to marry. So the poor man,
undone by his own deceit, lost Mistress
Martha through his dissembling ways and
Dapperwit's roguery.
Lydia, desirous of testing Ranger, sent
him a letter to which she signed
Christina's name, asking the gallant to meet
her that evening at St. James's Gate.
The wronged Christina, however, had
since learned of her lover's return, and
Valentine was at that time trying to
reassure himself of her innocence.
Overhearing Ranger's new plans unsettled him
again, though his eavesdropping on a
conversation between Christina and
Vincent and then on one between Christina
and her supposed lover finally set his
mind at rest. Lydia also confessed her part
in this lovers' plot and counterplot. The
two couples, thus reunited, decided that
matrimony was the only sure solution
to love's equation.
But the false lovers found no such
easy solution, so addle-witted and dapper-
plotted had their intrigues become. Sir
Simon, still passing as Jonas, escorted
Mistress Martha to Dapperwit; he thought
their embraces inopportune and
inappropriate. But Sir Simon's arrangements for
a parson, a supper, and a reception in
nearby Mulberry Garden were not
completely wasted. Propelled to the same
garden by the two scheming procuresses,
Alderman Gripe married Lucy to be
revenged on his son-in-law, that Dapperwit
2121

who took a bride six months pregnant.
Sir Simon took widowed Lady Flippant
as his wife, just as she had intended.
Thus were all the honest ladies made
wives and all the bawds made honest, up
in St. James's Park.
2122

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Navarre, Spain
First presented: c. 1594
Principal characters:
Ferdinand, King of Navarre
Berowne,
Longaville, and
Dumaine, lords of Navarre
Don Adriano De Armado, a foolish Spaniard
Costard, a clown
The Princess of France
Rosaline,
Maria, and
Katherine, ladies attending the princess
Jaquenetta, a country wench
Critique:
There is little wonder that Love's
Labour's Lost is not among the popular
favorites of most readers of Shakespeare. The
play is slow-moving, in places dull, and
it shows neither the perfection of plot nor
the fineness of characterization which
distinguish most of the later plays. At the
same time it is filled with clever talk and
it exhalts, in the romantic manner of the
sonneteers, the theme of love. The note of
seriousness apparent beneath the surface
cleverness of the dialogue makes this play
an early comedy of manners, in which the
ladies try to teach the young noblemen
the value of sincerity and faithfulness to
vows. The foolish Armado and the stupid
clown enliven many of the scenes with
their wit. All in all, this drama is not a
poor play; an early work, it is not so good
as most readers expect from the master
dramatist.
The Story:
The King of Navarre had taken a
solemn vow and forced three of his
attending lords to take it also. This vow was
that for three years they would fast and
study, enjoy no pleasures, *and see no
ladies. None of the three noblemen
wanted to take the vow; Berowne, in
particular, felt that it would be impossible
to keep his promise. He pointed out this
fact to the king by reminding him that
even at that very time the Princess of
France was approaching the court . of
Navarre to present a petition from her
father, who was ill. The king agreed that
he would be compelled to see her, but he
added that in such cases the vow must be
broken by necessity. Berowne foresaw
that "necessity" would often cause the
breaking of their vows.
The only amusement the king and his
lords would have was provided by
Costard, a clown, and by Don Adriano De
Armado, a foolish Spaniard attached to
the court. Armado wrote the king to
inform him that Costard had been caught
in the company of Jaquenetta, a country
wench of dull mind. Since all attached
to the court had been under the same
laws of abstinence from earthly pleasures,
Costard was remanded to Armado's
custody and ordered to fast on bran and water
for one week. The truth was that Armado
also loved Jaquenetta. He feared the king
would learn of his love and punish him
in the same manner.
The Princess of France arrived with
her three attendants. All were fair and
lovely, and they expected to be received
at the palace in the manner due their rank.
2123

But the king sent word that they would be
housed at his lodge, since under the terms
of his vow no lady could enter the palace.
The princess, furious at being treated in
this fashion, scorned the king for his bad
manners. When she presented the
petition from her father, she and the king
could not agree, for he vowed he had not
received certain monies she claimed had
been delivered to him.
At that first meeting, although each
would have denied the fact, eight hearts
were set to beating faster. The king
viewed the princess with more than
courteous interest. Berowne, Longaville,
and Dumaine, his attendants, looked with
love on the princess* ladies in waiting,
Rosaline, Maria, and Katherine. A short
time later Berowne sent a letter to
Rosaline, with Costard as his messenger.
But Costard had also been given a letter
by Armado, to be delivered to Jaquenetta.
The obvious happened. Costard, mixing
up the letters, gave Taquenetta's to
Rosaline and Rosaline's to the country
wench.
Berowne had been correct in thinking
the vow to leave the world behind would
soon be broken. Hiding in a tree, he heard
the king read aloud a sonnet which
proclaimed his love for the princess. Later
the king, in hiding, overheard Longaville
reading some verses he had composed to
Maria. Longaville, in turn, concealed
himself and listened while Dumaine read a
love poem inscribed to Katherine. Then
each one in turn stepped out from hiding
to accuse the others of breaking their
vows. Berowne all that time had remained
hidden in the tree. Thinking to chide
them for their broken vows, he revealed
himself at last and ridiculed them for their
weakness, at the same time proclaiming
himself the only one able to keep his vow.
But at that instant Costard and Jaquenetta
brought to the king the letter Berowne
had written Rosaline, the letter Costard
had mistakenly delivered to the country
girl.
Then all confessed that they had broken
their vows. Berowne provided an excuse
for all when he declared that one could
learn much by studying women and the
nature of love. Their honor saved, the
four determined to woo the ladies in
earnest, and they made plans to entertain
their loves with revels and dances.
Each lover sent his lady a token to wear
in his honor. But when the ladies learned
from a servant that the lovers were, for a
joke, coming in disguise to woo the
princess and her companions, the girls in turn
planned to discomfit the king and the
three lords by masking themselves and
exchanging tokens. The men arrived, also
masked and disguised as Russians. Each
man tried to make love to the lady wearing
his token, but each was spurned and
ridiculed. The ladies would not dance or
sing, but would only mock the bewildered
gentlemen.
Finally the suitors departed, hurt and
indignant at the treatment they had
received. Before long they returned in their
own dress. The ladies then unmasked and
told of the lunatic Russians who had
called on them. Although the men
confessed their plot and forswore all such
jokes forever, the ladies still did not stop
teasing them. Since each man had made
love to the wrong girl because of the
exchange of tokens, the ladies pretended to
be hurt that each man had broken his
vows of love and constancy by protesting
love for another. The poor suitors suffered
greatly for their merriment before they
learned that the ladies had anticipated
their coming in disguise and thus had
planned a joke of their own.
The king ordered a play presented for
the entertainment of all. But in the midst
of the gaiety word came that the princess'
father, the King of France, had died. She
must sail for home immediately,
accompanied by her attendants. When the king
and his lords pleaded With the ladies to
stay in Navarre and marry them, the ladies
refused to accept their serious
protestations of love; they had jested too much to
be believed. Each man vowed that he
would remain faithful, only to be
reminded of the former vows he had broken.
2124

Then each lady made a condition which,
if met, would reward her lover a year
hence. The king must retire for twelve
months to a hermitage and there forsake
all worldly pleasures. If at the end of that
time he still loved the princess, she would
be his. In the same fashion the other three
lords must spend a year in carrying out the
wishes of their sweethearts. Even the
foolish Armado was included in the plan. He
joined the others, announcing that
Jaquenetta would not have him until he
spent three years in honest work.
Thus all the swains tried with jests end
fair speech to win their ladies, but
without success. Now as the price of their folly
they must prove in earnest that they
deserved the hearts of theii beloveds.
2125

LOVING
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry Green (Henry Vincent York, 1905- )
Type of plot: Domestic comedy
Time of plot: World War II
Locale: Eire
First published: 1945
Principal characters:
Charley Raunce, an English butler
Mrs. Tennant, Raunce's employer
Mrs. Jack Tennant, Mrs. Tennant's daughter-in-law
Edith, a maid in love with Raunce
Albert, Raunce's assistant
Critique:
The novels of Henry Green have not
found favor with American readers as
readily as they have in Great Britain.
Green combines modern techniques with
Dickensian humor and sly social
criticism. In this novel he conducts his
readers to the little known world below stairs,
the world of the servants which few
masters or mistresses ever see. The
qualities of depth and perception revealed in
this and other of Green's books have made
him a novelist better known to other
writers than he is to the public at large.
The Story:
The great mansion owned by Mrs.
Tennant had been thrown into turmoil
by the death of old Eldon, the butler.
In the servants' quarters no one knew
quite what arrangements would be made
after his death, for the mansion and its
inhabitants formed an isolated bit of
England in Eire. None of the servants
could guess what Mrs. Tennant, who
was a widow and very vague, might do
in rearranging their duties. Only the
footman, Charley Raunce, kept any
purpose in his behavior.
Immediately after Eldon's death,
Raunce went into the butler's room and
took two small notebooks, one filled with
the butler's monthly accounts and the
other containing a set of special
memoranda about visitors to the mansion,
information which had helped the old man
to solicit generous tips from Mrs. Ten-
nant's guests. That same day Raunce
went to his mistress and asked for the
post of butler. She agreed to give him
the post, but without any extra pay.
Raunce knew, however, that by juggling
the accounts he could make up whatever
pay rise he deemed sufficient. That
evening he solidified his position by
successfully taking over the old butler's place
at the head of the table in the servants*
dining-room.
There were two upstairs maids in the
Tennant mansion, Edith and Kate.
Raunce insisted that Edith, with whom
he was in love, continue her practice of
bringing the butler his morning tea. The
housekeeper, Mrs. Burch, was
scandalized, but was forced to give in.
Raunce's usurpation of the old butler's
position immediately upon the latter's
death soon appeared a minor matter, for
a scandal rocked the mansion within a
few days. Mrs. Tennant's daughter-in-
law, Mrs. Jack, was found in bed with
a neighbor, Captain Davenport. The
discovery was made by Edith, who went to
open the curtains and lay out Mrs. Jack's
clothes in the morning. Even though
Mrs. Tennant was unaware of her
daughter-in-law's indiscretion, the episode
created consternation and nervousness in
the servants' quarters.
LOvTNC hv Henry Green. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1945,
by Henry Green.
2126

To add to the uneasiness among the
servants, a blue sapphire ring belonging
to Mrs. Tennant disappeared. Mrs.
Tennant, who was always losing valuables,
did not blame the servants, but the loss
made them feel ill at ease.
A few days afterward Mrs. Tennant
and her daughter-in-law went to
England to visit Jack Tennant, who had been
given a few days' leave from military
duty. The English servants almost gave
their notice when they learned that they
were being left in sole charge of the
mansion, for they were well aware of
the unfriendly attitudes of the Irish about
the countryside and were also in fear
of an invasion of the district by German
troops. Raunce, who had a great sense
of duty, as well as a realization of what
a good place he had, prevailed upon them
to remain, despite the general
dissatisfaction.
In Mrs. Tennant's absence Raunce*
paid court to Edith and discovered that
she was in love with him. They spent
many pleasant hours together, for Raunce
was kept from his duties by a sore throat
and Edith spent much of her time
nursing him. They, like the other
servants, were worried by the absence of
their mistress and by their failure to
find Mrs. Tennant's missing ring. Edith
finally found it, but she and Raunce were
at a loss to know where to keep it until
Mrs. Tennant's return. They decided to
hide it in the upholstering of a chair.
Much to their dismay, the ring was
taken from the chair. Shortly after they
discovered its loss a second time, an
investigator from an insurance company
called at the mansion. All the servants
refused to answer his questions, for his
presence during their mistress' absence
bothered them and they did not know
what to say in order to protect her and
her interests. The investigator left in a
suspicious mood, saying that his company
would not pay for the loss. After his
departure the servants discovered that
the initials of the insurance company
were like those of the militant,
revolutionary Irish Republican Army. The
discovery almost panicked them
completely. Only the thought of military
service and short rations in England kept
them from giving up their jobs
immediately.
In the remaining days before Mrs.
Tennant's return, Edith learned that Mrs.
Tennant's grandchildren and the cook's
nephew had found the sapphire ring
while playing. Not realizing the value
of the piece of jewelry, the youngsters
had taken it out and hidden it on the
lawn. By pretending to want it as a
wedding present from one of the little
girls, Edith persuaded the child to bring
it to her.
When Mrs. Tennant returned, the
ring was restored to her, and the matter
of its loss and the ugliness of the
insurance investigator soon became matters
of the past, almost forgotten after
Raunce's helper, a young lad named
Albert, gave his notice and left the
mansion because Mrs. Tennant had implied
that he had taken the ring in the first
place. He went back to England to enter
the military service and become an aerial
gunner.
Raunce was made restless by the
realization, brought home to him by Albert's
departure, that he had no part in the
war effort. He also felt remorseful
because his mother, who was exposed to
the bombings by the Germans, refused
to come to Ireland to live with her son
and Edith after their marriage. These
influences, plus the many dissensions
among the servants and the domestic
crises that were occurring at the mansion,
assumed larger and larger proportions as
he thought about them. At last he
admitted to Edith that he was dissatisfied
and wanted to leave. His announcement
made Edith unhappy, for she thought
at first that he was trying to get out of
marrying her.
When he convinced her that he
wanted her to go with him, they decided that.
2127

unlike good servants, they would leave One night they eloped and went back to
without giving notice to Mrs. Tennant. England to be married and to live.
2128

THE LOWER DEPTHS
Type, of work: Drama
Author: Maxim Gorky (Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, 1868-1936)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First presented: 1902
Principal characters:
Kostilyoff, the landlord
Vassilisa, his wife
Natasha, her sister
Vaska, a young thief
Kleshtch, a locksmith
Anna, his wife
Nasty a, a street-walker
The Baron, a former nobleman
Luka, a tramp
Satine, a cardsharp
The Actor, an alcoholic
Critique:
The Lower Depths, also translated as A
Night's Lodging and At the Bottom, is
generally accounted the best of Gorky's
plays and one of the most vital of Russia's
dramatic pieces. The play was pure
naturalism in its day, but to modern taste it
may appear more romantic. Gorky
presents little of positive affirmation, but he
observes shrewdly an unfortunate people.
Perhaps more than any other document,
the play explains the Russian revolution
of 1917.
The Story:
The cellar resembled a cave, with only
one small window to illuminate its dank
recesses. In a corner thin boards
partitioned off the room of Vaska, the young
thief. In the kitchen lived Kvashnya, a
vendor of meat pies, the decrepit Baron,
and the streetwalker Nastya. All around
the room were bunks occupied by a
succession of lodgers.
Nastya was reading a story called Fatal
Love. She was absorbed in the novel with
her head bent down. The Baron, who lived
largely on her earnings, seized the book
and read its title aloud. Then he banged
Nastya over the head with it and called
her a lovesick fool. Satine raised himself
painfully from his bunk at the noise. His
memory was vague, but he knew he had
been beaten up the night before. Bubnoff
cruelly told him he had been caught
cheating at cards. The Actor stirred in his bed
on top of the stove. He predicted that some
day Satine would be beaten to death.
The Actor awakened enough to remind
the Baron to sweep the floor. The
landlady was strict and made them clean every
day. The Baron loudly announced that
he had to go shopping. He and Kvashnya
left to make the day's purchases.
The Actor climbed down from his bunk
and declared that the doctor had told him
he had an organism poisoned by alcohol.
Sweeping the floor would be bad for his
health.
Anna coughed loudly in her bunk. She
was dying of consumption and there was
no hope for her. Kleshtch, her husband,
was busy at his bench, where he fitted old
keys and locks. Anna sat up to call her
husband. Kvashnya had left her some
dumplings in the pot, and she offered them
to her husband. Kleshtch agreed there was
THE LOWER DEPTHS by Maxim Gorky. By permission of the publishers. Coward-McCann, Inc. Copy-
rxtfht, 1922, by Morris Gest. Renewed.
2129

no use to feed a dying woman, and so
with a clear conscience he ate the
dumplings.
The Actor helped Anna down from her
high bed and out to the draughty hall. The
sick woman was wrapped in rags. As they
went through the door, the landlord,
Kostilyoff, nearly knocked them over.
KostilyofT looked around the dirty cellar
and glanced several times at Kleshtch,
working at his bench. The landlord
asserted loudly that the locksmith occupied
too much room for two roubles a month
and henceforth the rent would be two
roubles and a half. Then Kostilyoff edged
toward Vaska's room and inquired
furtively if his wife had been in. He had good
reason to suspect that Vassilisa was
sleeping with Vaska.
At last Kostilyoff got up enough
courage to call Vaska. The thief came out and
denounced the landlord for not paying
his debts, saying that Kostilyoff still owed
seven roubles for a watch he had bought.
Ordering Kostilvoff to produce the money
immediately, Vaska sent him roughly out
of the room.
The others admired Vaska for his
courage and urged him to kill Kostilvoff and
marry Vassilisa; then he could be landlord.
Vaska thought over the idea for a time,
but decided that he was too soft-hearted
to be a landlord. Besides, he was thinking
of discarding Vassilisa for her sister
Natasha. Satine asked Vaska for twenty
kopecks, which the thief was glad to give
immediately; he was afraid Satine would
want a rouble next.
Natasha came in with Luka. She put
him in the kitchen to sleep with the three
already there. Luka was a merry fellow
who began to sing, but he stopped when
all the others objected. The whole group
sat silent when Vassilisa came in, saw the
dirty floor, and gave orders for an
immediate sweeping. She looked over the
new arrival, Luka, and asked to see his
passport. Because he had none, he was
more readily accepted by the dissolute
company.
Miedviedeff, who was a policeman and
Vassilisa's uncle, entered the cellar to
check up on the lodging. He began to
question Luka, but when the tramp called
him sergeant, Miedviedeff left him alone.
That night Anna lay in her bunk while
a noisy, quarrelsome card game went on.
Luka talked gently to the consumptive
woman as Kleshtch came from time to
time to look at her. Luka remarked that
her death would be hard on her husband,
but Anna without emotion accused
Kleshtch of causing her death. She hoped
for the rest and peace she had never
known. Luka assured her there would be
peace after her death.
The card players became louder and
Satine was accused of cheating. Luka
quieted the rioters; they ali respected him
even if they thought him a liar. He told
Vaska he could reform in Siberia, and he
assured the Actor that at a sanatorium he
could be cured of alcoholism.
Vassilisa came in. When the others left,
she told Vaska that if he would kill
Kostilyoff and set her free she would give
him three hundred roubles. Then Vaska
would be free to marry Natasha, who at
the moment was recovering from a
beating given by her jealous sister. Vaska was
about to refuse when Kostilyoff entered in
search of his wife. He was violently
suspicious, but Vaska pushed him out of the
cellar.
There was a noise on top of the stove.
Luka had overheard the whole thing. He
was not disturbed greatly, and he even
warned Vaska not to have anything to do
with the vicious Vassilisa. Walking over
to Anna's bunk, Luka saw that she was
dead. When they got Kleshtch out of the
saloon, he came to look at the body of
his dead wife. The others notified him
that he would have to remove the body,
because in time dead people smell.
Kleshtch agreed to take her outside.
The Actor began to cavort in joy, and
he talked excitedly. He had made up his
mind to go to the sanatorium for his
health. Luka had told him he would even
2130

be cured at state expense.
In the back yard that night, as Natasha
was telling romantic stories to the crowd,
Kostilyoff came out and gruffly ordered
Natasha in to work. When she went in,
Vassilisa poured boiling water on her feet.
Vaska went to the rescue of Natasha and
knocked Kostilyoff down. Somehow in the
brawl Kostilyoff was killed. At once
Vassilisa blamed Vaska for the murder as the
crowd slunk away. Natasha thought that
Vaska had murdered Kostilyoff for the
sake of Vassilisa. Natasha was almost in
delirium as she wandered about accusing
Vaska of murder and calling for revenge.
In the excitement Luka wandered off;
he was never seen again. Vaska escaped a
police search. Natasha went to the
hospital. In the lodging things went on much as
they had before. Satine cheated at cards,
and the Baron tried to convince the others
of his former affluence. They all agreed
that Luka was a kind old man, but a great
liar.
During a bitter quarrel with Nastya, the
Baron stepped out in the yard. Satine and
the others struck up a bawdy song. They
broke off when the Baron hurried back to
announce that the Actor had hanged
himself. Satine thought the suicide was too
bad—it broke up the song.
2131

LOYALTIES
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early 1920's
Locale: London
First presented: 1922
Principal characters:
Ferdinand De Levis, a rich young Jew
Captain Ronald Dancy, D. S. O., retired
Mabel, his wife
Critique:
Loyalties is one of the first plays to
deal honestly and openly with the
problem of anti-Semitism. Galsworthy takes
such pains to deal fairly with both sides
of the question, however, that he comes
close to destroying his own thesis. The
most completely drawn character is
probably Captain Dancy, a man of action
trying to adjust himself to a static society
and finding an outlet in anti-social
behavior. Although he does not ask us to
condone Dancy's behavior, Galsworthy
certainly enables us to understand it.
The Story:
Having retired from His Majesty's
service, young Captain Ronald Dancy,
D.S.O., was at loose ends as to what
to do with himself. Accustomed to a life
of action, he at first absorbed himself
in horses and women, but he found in
neither the violent excitement he craved.
His stable was so expensive that he was
at last forced to give his Rosemary filly
to his friend, Ferdinand De Levis,
because he could no longer afford to keep
her. As for his women, he decided to
throw them all over and marry a woman
who admired him, and who had the
spirit which Ronny desired in his wife.
In spite of the fact that he was
obviously penniless, Ronny managed to keep
his memberships in his favorite London
clubs, and friends invited him and his
wife to their weekend parties in the
country. At Meldon Court, the home of
his old friend, Charles Winsor, Ronny
discovered that De Levis had sold for
a thousand pounds the horse Ronny had
given him. He was naturally embittered
by the discovery, and later in the
evening his resentment prompted him to
bet De Levis ten pounds that he could
jump to the top of a bookcase four feet
high. He won his bet, but De Levis
was contemptuous of a man who would
indulge in such parlor games for the sake
of a little money.
Around midnight, Winsor and his
wife were awakened by De Levis, who
announced that the thousand pounds he
had received for the sale of the filly had
been stolen from under his pillow. De
Levis demanded an investigation. The
Winsors were reluctant to incriminate
either their servants or their guests, but
at the insistence of De Levis the police
were called.
Ronny*s friends immediately arrayed
themselves against De Levis for his
tactlessness in handling the matter. He
instantly interpreted their attitude as the
result of prejudice because he was a
Jew, and Ronny substantiated his
conclusion by taunting De Levis with his
race. Although they tried desperately to
be fair, Ronny's friends had to admit that
De Levis had behaved badly, and they
suddenly remembered that his father had
sold carpets wholesale in the city. After
all, De Levis was a little too pushing; in
spite of his money he did not exactly
belong to the Maytair and country set.
De Levis carried into the club to which
LOYALTIES by John Galsworthy, from PLAYS by John Galsworthy. By permission of the publishers, Charles
Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1909, 1910, by John Galsworthy, 1928, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
2132

both men belonged the enmity aroused
by Ronny's insult to his race, and he
openly accused Ronny of the theft. Ron-
ny immediately challenged him to a duel,
but since such barbaric customs were no
longer tolerated among gentlemen, De
Levis was saved.
Ronny urged his wife Mabel to go
with him to Nairobi. But she, beheving
in her husband's innocence, begged him
to remain and fight for his good name.
Realizing that to do otherwise would
be an admission of guilt, Ronny
consulted a lawyer and entered a suit
against De Levis for defamation of
character. However, the lawyer selected
to defend Ronny's case was the worst
choice that a man in Ronny's position
could possibly have made. Old Jacob
Twisden, senior partner of the firm of
Twisden and Graviter, was a lawyer of
the old school who believed that simple
justice should take precedence over all
loyalties, whether they were racial,
economic, social, political, or merely
personal.
In addition to the fact that he had
stolen De Levis's money, Ronny had also
withheld from his wife and his friends
his relations with an Italian girl before
his marriage. The girl's father, a wine
dealer named Ricardos, had threatened
to inform Ronny's wife of the
relationship unless he provided for the girl.
Out of fear, Ronny had been prompted
to make a daring jump from his room
to that of De Levis to obtain the money
with which to pay Ricardos. The stolen
notes were eventually identified as
having passed through these different hands.
When Twisden learned the true
circumstances on which the case he was
defending were based, he advised Ronny to
drop the suit and leave the country as
soon as possible. In that proposal he was
seconded by Ronny's own superior
officer, General Canynge, who offered
Ronny a way out with a billet in the
Spanish war.
When De Levis discovered that the
suit was to be dropped, he appeared
willing to let bygones be bygones because
he felt that he had been vindicated; he
wanted no money in return. But Ronny's
problems were still unsolved. When he
confessed to his wife the truth about
all that had happened, she at first refused
to believe his story. At last she agreed
to follow Ronny wherever he might
choose to go. Before Ronny could make
his escape, however, the police arrived
with a warrant for his arrest. He fled to
his room and called to the officers to come
and get him. Before they could reach
him, he had shot himself.
What Ronny never knew was that
both he and De Levis were victims of
social conventions. Because Ronny
belonged, his friends had been loyal. But
loyalty, as they now realized, was not
enough.
2133

LUCIEN LEUWEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle, 1783-1842)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: The 1830's
Locale: France
First published: 1894
Principal characters:
Lucien Leuwen, a serious young man
Monsieur Leuwen, his father
Madame de Chasteller, a beautiful widow
Madame Grandet, an ambitious woman
Dr. du Poirier, a physician
Critique:
Published posthumously, Lucien
Leuwen is a long unfinished work divided
into two novels: The Green Huntsman
and The Telegraph. In it Stendhal gives
a subtle, penetrating analysis, Freudian
in tone, of a young commoner in the
difficult days after the revolution of 1830.
Lucien is considered an idealized
portrait of Stendhal. The novel, though
rewarding, is frustrating, for Stendhal never
revised the manuscript; indeed, parts of
the narrative were not completed. The
grand passion of Lucien for Bathilde, for
example, is not concluded; from his
notes we know that the author intended
them to marry. Despite these
imperfections the novel is regarded in France as
Stendhal's third masterpiece.
The Story:
The revolution of 1830 was not a
success; the armed rabble were victorious in
the fighting, but afterward the rich
bourgeoisie came to power. Although the
king had lost much of his authority,
France was not yet a true republic. The
absolute monarchists remained loyal to
the vanished power of the Bourbons, the
people still hoped for a democratic rule,
and the middle class steered a cautious,
unsatisfactory path between the two
extremes.
Lucien, son of a rich banker, had mild
republican leanings. For daring to air
his views, he was expelled from the
Ecole Polytechnique, and for a time he
remained idle at home. His indulgent,
wealthy father tried to induce him to
work in the family bank, and his mother
presented him to the polite, gay society
of her Parisian salon. But Lucien was
dull and preoccupied. In despair his
father filled his pockets with money and
bade him entertain the light ladies at
the Opera.
As a way out, Lucien took a
commission as second lieutenant in a regiment
of lancers going to maintain order in
Nancy. Lucien liked his uniform with
the magenta stripes, but he found his
fellow officers insufferable. His
lieutenant-colonel, especially, was a man of
honorable reputation, but a bore. Only
the soldiers in the ranks seemed genuine
and unaffected.
The regiment was depressed on
entering the town of Nancy. The land was
flat; sewage ditches ran down the
narrow, crooked streets, and the houses were
mean.. Lucien felt that he made an un-
soldierly appearance because his mount,
furnished by the regiment, was a mean-
looking nag. As they passed a more
pretentious house, a woman standing at an
upstairs window seemed interested in
Lucien, but as luck would have it, he
LUCTEN LEUWEN by Stendhal. Translated by Louise Varese. By permission of the publishers, New
Directions. Book I, THE GREEN HUNTSMAN, copyright, 1950, by Louise Varese. Book II, THE
TELEGRAPH, copyright, 1950, by Louise Varese.
2134

was thrown from his horse just as he
was trying to see her more clearly.
Lucien soon bought a good horse and
rented a comfortable apartment, once
occupied by a lieutenant-colonel who
had left the regiment. In spite of his
servants, his wine, and his stable, he was
quite unhappy. His commandinq officer,
resenting his wealth, made his life
miserable; the other officers had little to do
with him. The townspeople held aloof
from the military. One faction consisted
of the aristocrats who were opposed to
the moderate monarchy, and the other
faction was the republican majority who
smarted under any kingly rule. None of
the officers was received in society; few
of the enlisted men made friends with
people of the suspicious working class.
Backed by his father's money and his
own Parisian graces, Lucien set out
determinedly to be accepted by the nobility. He
cultivated the wily Dr. du Poirier, the
leader of the monarchist set. Little by
little Lucien was welcomed to the various
salons. Only his military life irked him
now. Government spies even reported
that he had gone into a republican
reading room; to quiet rumors of political
unreliability Lucien fought and won two
duels.
Several of the salons were presided
over by beautiful, high-born women who
accepted Lucien on friendly terms. The
most beautiful of all, however, was
Madame de Chasteller; and for long
Lucien did not meet her. He heard of her
in some detail, however, a rich widow
dominated by a miserly father. She had
had only one lover, so the gossips said, the
lieutenant-colonel whose apartment
Lucien had rented. When he finally met
her, Lucien was smitten. Bathilde de
Chasteller was lonely, proud, and shy.
Bathilde was an aristocrat, Lucien a
commoner. As their love grew, they were
both troubled. Bathilde felt that a
marriage was impossible, and Lucien
hesitated to try to make her his mistress.
Unhappy much of the time, they were
together so much that gossip soon spread.
At a dinner at a country tavern, The
Green Huntsman, they came to an open
confession of their love.
The aristocratic young men were much
displeased. They were afraid that Lucien,
a commoner, would marry the rich
Bathilde and take her away. Some of the
more hot-headed ones proposed to
challenge Lucien to a duel. Scheming Dr.
du Poirier guaranteed to rid them of the
hated Lucien.
Bathilde, ill for days, was under the
treatment of Dr. du Poirier, and Lucien
had been given permission to visit her.
As he waited in the hall, the doctor
brought a baby in swaddling clothes
from Bathilde's chamber. From a
conversation Lucien understood that
Bathilde's illness had been a confinement. Sure
that the lieutenant-colonel was the father,
Lucien obtained leave and left Nancy.
In Paris, through his father, he secured
his release from the army. Then, through
his father's influence, he obtained a post
as Master of Petitions in the Ministry of
the Interior. Although he could not
forget lovely Bathilde, Lucien threw
himself into politics and soon was a valuable
aid to the minister. At first he had little
idea of the trickery so common in high
office, but his knowledge grew rapidly.
The minister had speculated successfully
with money borrowed from M. Leuwen.
When there was some danger the
transaction would come to light, Lucien
managed to hide all traces of the affair.
Another incident added to his
standing. The government hired agents
provocateurs to harass the military. One
agent made the mistake of trying to
intimidate a sentry, who shot him in the
abdomen. Gravely wounded, the agent
was taken to a hospital. Afraid that he
would make a deathbed statement as
to who had employed him, a government
spy tried to induce a doctor to poison the
wounded man. When the doctor
objected, the minister gave Lucien the job of
hushing up the scandal. Lucien succeed-
2135

ed in bribing the dying man and his
wife so that they both maintained silence.
Lucien was sent to Caen to try to
influence an election. On the way he was
set upon by a mob and spattered with
mud. Heartsick at the way people
reacted to the corrupt government, he
nevertheless did his best. By paying a
hundred thousand francs to bribe the
legitimist party, he almost prevented the
election of a favored candidate.
The minister showed his displeasure
by passing over Lucien on the honors
list. Not willing to have his son slighted,
M. Leu wen went into politics himself
and became a deputy. With his wealth
and charm, he soon was powerful enough
to dictate who should be in the cabinet.
He arranged to have the fatuous
Grandet made a minister if his beautiful and
ambitious wife would become Lucien's
mistress. Madame Grandet accepted the
proposition and soon fell really in love
with Lucien.
M. Leu wen made the mistake of
revealing the bargain to Lucien, who
thought he had won by his own merit
the most beautiful woman in Paris. He
was greatly upset and even thought
himself unfaithful to his lost Bathilde.
Taking leave from the ministry, he left for
a stay in the country.
M. Leu wen died suddenly, leaving his
affairs in bad state. Lucien, insisting on
paying all creditors in full, saved only
a modest income for his mother and
himself. He got an appointment to the
embassy at Capel. He was happy in his new
post, and felt only a faint melancholy for
Bathilde.
2136

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP AND OTHER SKETCHES
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Bret Harte (1836-1902)
Time: 1850-1865
Locale: California
First published: 1870
Relatively few authors ever achieve
the astonishing literary success that Bret
Harte did during his lifetime. His stories
of California life, enormously popular,
were in great demand by magazine
editors all over the country, and the Atlantic
Monthly bid the unheard-of amount of
ten thousand dollars for the sole rights
to one year of Harte's literary production.
However, this flash in the pan
popularity is seldom consistent with a lasting
literary reputation, and in Harte's case
the line between literary value and
entertainment is often thin. That Harte
reached his artistic maturity at the age of
thirty-one and began to decline five years
later indicates this fact. During these
few years Harte produced some stories of
genuine literary value. The majority of
them are collected in The Luck of
Roaring Camp and Other Sketches, and it is
mainly on this volume that Harte's
literary reputation rests.
Harte's vision of life goes far to explain
the meteoric popularity of his stories. The
local color, the picturesque characters,
and the trick endings all added to Harte's
attraction, certainly, but they were surface
attractions. The heart of his success lay
in his particular vision of life and his
ability to convey that vision to his readers.
Harte was, essentially, an optimist and
an uplifter. This does not mean that
Harte believed in a shallow doctrine of
social or moral reform. Rather, he
believed in the potential goodness of man
and in the possibility of redemption for
every sinner. Harte saw life as a
purgatory for the human soul. He saw life as
a test for men, as a trial in which the
ultimate goal is salvation. Salvation,
however, was to be achieved in this life,
although, paradoxically, it was frequently
to be gained at the cost of death. In other
words, death, rather than being an end of
the trial, was to be seen as the final
consummation of the trial, as a selfless act of
devotion on the part of his heroes.
Redemption for Harte was an act of selfless
heroism, of love, of devotion. Such an
act lifted one above the petty world of
grasping self-interest and redeemed one
from the sin of self-involvement. This is
the spirit that pervades Harte's most
memorable stories.
This spirit raises Harte's best characters
from local stereotypes and picturesque
caricatures to people of real feelings and
semi-heroic stature, and it helps to
explain Mark Twain's statement that "Bret
Harte got his California and his Califor-
nians by unconscious absorption, and put
both of them into his tales alive." He
wove the experiences of his people into
his private theme of redemption and
thereby gave them life.
The people Harte wrote about were
people seeking salvation from
themselves, people who longed to wipe their
past clean, and people who had come
West to lose their identity, as is
indicated by the fact that very few of his
characters retained their given names.
His characters have had their identities
and pas*s wiped clean with names like
Cherokee Sal, Kentuck, Yuba Bill,
Tennessee's Partner, and the Duchess. People
like these were ripe material for
redemption by virtue of their self-dissatisfaction.
In order to be saved, one must first have
sinned.
This theme is the core of Harte's most
successful stories. In the title story of
the collection, "The Luck of Roaring
Camp," which first appeared in the
Overland Monthly in 1868, a dissolute
prostitute works out her salvation by giving
birth to a baby and dying. The miners
in the camp work out their salvation by
giving the baby love and generous gifts
2137

in the absence of a mother.
One miner in particular, Kentuck,
works out his salvation by giving his life
in a futile attempt to save the baby. The
baby, of course, is incidental because of
its innocence. What matters is that the
baby brought out the generous qualities
of the people involved and thereby
redeemed them from their own pettiness.
In the second story of the collection,
"The Outcasts of Poker Flat," the theme
is the same. A gambler and two
prostitutes are saved from themselves by virtue
of their devotion to a pair of innocent
youngsters who had eloped. In the third
story, "Miggles," a pretty young woman
is redeemed by virtue of her devotion
to a helpless invalid.
The theme of love's power to save
turns Harte's best stories into human
interest tales, which Harte did a good deal
to popularize. This theme was the source
of Harte's uplift, optimism, and
popularity.
Harte's vices as well as his virtues can
be attributed to this same theme. It
quickly lapses into sentimentalism, and
it also tends to gloss over the sharp
frictions and discordances of everyday life
with a nonexistent glamor and romance.
In "Brown of Calaveras" the image of
gambler Jack Hamlin riding off into the
rosy sunset after having handsomely
refused to run away with a man's beautiful
young wife certainly strikes one as
unnecessarily romantic and sentimental.
Again, this theme of redemption through
love and death lends itself too easily to
theatrical endings in which death seems
to be an easy way to end the story.
At his best, however, Harte avoids
these tendencies. The sentimentality of
the story is balanced frequently by an
ironic, humorous narrative style. In his
most memorable stories Harte employs
an ironic prose that maintains a distance
between himself and his subject matter.
This prose is clear and restrained, giving
his fiction a sweet-sour flavor that blends
well with his vision of things. Thus hi;;
skillful prose gives the reader the
impression that his characters do not deserve
one's full sympathy until they succeed
in redeeming themselves. It reminds us
that his characters are human and, as
such, are subject to human failings. This
fact does not mean that Harte is ever
self-righteous. On the contrary, he was
always humane in his treatment of
character. It was just that he realized human
limitations as well as human virtues. In
his preface to The Luck of Roaring Camy
he wrote:
I might have painted my villains of
the blackest dye. ... I might have
made it impossible for them to nave
performed a virtuous or generous action,
and have thus avoided that moral
confusion which is apt to rise in the
contemplation of mixed motives and
qualities. But I should have burdened myself
with responsibility of their creation,
which ... I did not care to do.
Even in his preface Harte's use of irony
is skillful. Actually, he was a shrewd
judge of character with a talent for "the
contemplation of mixed motives and
qualities."
Harte put this talent to good use in his
sketches. He was an admirable
craftsman in blending virtue and vice, humor
and pathos, the ridiculous and the
sublime. He had a good eye for contrasts,
particularly for the contrast between
nature and man. Nature, like man, was
ambivalent for Harte. On the one hand,
he saw nature as serene, remote, and
passionless; on the other, it could be
violent, deadly, and passionate. In Harte's
stories the moods of nature are usually
in juxtaposition to the moods of his
people. In "The Luck of Roaring Camp,"
for example, nature becomes still for a
moment at the birth and the first cry of
the baby. Later, when everything in the
human realm seems calm and settled,
nature in the form of a flood overwhelms
the mining camp and takes several lives,
including the baby's. The same occurs
in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat." When
the gambler, the thief, and the two
prostitutes are driven out of town, everything
2138

is calm, but when these four begin to find
some measure of peace, a snowstorm
overwhelms them and their two innocent
companions.
It has been pointed out that Harte's
literary techniques were borrowed from
writers like Irving and Dickens. To be
sure, Harte did adapt his techniques from
the Eastern writers and from Europeans.
Also, he had a romantic tradition behind
him. Harte was, essentially, an Easterner
who had come West for his literary
materials. But to hold the fact that Harte
borrowed from other writers against him is to
miss the point. Harte transformed these
techniques with his own personal merits
and limitations. He transmuted them with
his own personal vision of life.
Both Harte's virtues and vices as a
storyteller derive from his optimistic
vision of human redemption. On the
debit side, his bitter-sweet endings are
patently stylized, and there is a tendency
to coat his situations with sentiment. On
the asset side, Harte's endings have a
good measure of dramatic impact. Then,
too, he frequently balances the
sentiment and glamor with a healthy humor
and irony. Again, Harte was an effective
stylist and his sentences are sharp and
lucid. Furthermore, Harte opened the
field for human interest and local color
stories, thus paving the way for a
flourishing school of regional fiction. Finally,
Harte's happy talent for characterization
and caricature blended very well with his
style of writing and his personal outlook
on life, thus forming a fortunate fusion
of form and content. For these reasons
he retains an assured place in a minor
tradition.
2139

THE LUSIAD
Type of work: Poem
Author: Luis Vaz de Camoens (1524M580)
Type of -plot: Epic
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: Europe, Africa, and Asia
First published: 1572
Principal characters:
Vasco da Gama, Portuguese sea captain and explorer
Venus, goddess of love, patroness of the Portuguese
Bacchus, god of revelry, patron of Asia
Critique:
Descended from an ancient Galician
family, Camoens was distantly related to
the hero of his epic narrative. In addition,
the author had covered part of Vasco da
Gama's route when he went to the Orient
as an agent of the crown. On his return
trip from Macao Camoens was
shipwrecked, saving nothing but a faithful
Javanese slave and the manuscripts of The
Lusiad. The poem was, like all great epics,
the product of a man of action during a
period of great national activity, at a time
when the national spirit of Portugal had
reached a high point. In the epic tradition,
the poem finds the gods of Olympus
siding for and against the Portuguese heroes;
there is a descent into the underworld of
Neptune. The "famous weapon" in this
poem is the Portuguese ships' cannon. All
of the other hallmarks of the epic are
present, too, for those who would seek
them.
The Story:
The gods and goddesses, called together
by Jove, assembled on Olympus. When
they had taken their places, Jove
announced to them that the Fates had
decreed that the men of Lusitania, or
Portugal, should outdo all the great
conquerors of ancient times by sailing
around Africa to Asia, there to become the
rulers of a new continent. Of all the
assembled pantheon only Bacchus, who
looked upon Asia as his own, dissented.
Venus, friendly toward the Portuguese,
however, took their side, aided by Mars.
Vasco da Gama was the captain chosen
to head the voyage of exploration. Having
sailed southward to the Cape of Good
Hope, the Portuguese ships made their
way around it and then sailed northward
along the African coast, until they arrived
at the island of Mozambique. The natives
of that island pretended friendliness but
tried to ambush the sailors when they put
ashore for water; fortunately, the
Portuguese escaped. Leaving the island behind,
da Gama sailed northward along the
African coast in search of India. He tried
to land on another coast but there, too,
the natives were unfriendly. When they
tried to lay an ambush, Venus interceded
on behalf of da Gama and his men.
Guided by Mercury, da Gama set sail
for a point still farther north. Arriving
off Mombassa, the Portuguese ships
dropped sails and anchors. The Moorish
King of Mombassa made the Portuguese
welcome to his domain, as Jove had told
Venus he would, and gave the men of
Portugal needed supplies. While paying a
visit to da Gama's ship, he asked the
Portuguese leader to tell him about
Portugal's history and the history of the voyage
thus far. Da Gama was only too glad to
give an account of his long and
troublesome voyage and to tell of his nation's
history.
Da Gama told the king where Portugal
lay on the map of Europe and related how
the Moors had at one time overrun the
land. He described the great battles of
Portuguese kings against the Moors: how
the first Alphonso had first pushed the
Moors back toward the shores of the
Mediterranean and how his grandson, also
named Alphonso,'had continued the wars
2140

against the Moors and defeated with a
small army five hosts of Moors under five
Moorish kings. The second Alphonso was
succeeded by Sancho, who, continuing
the wars against the Moors, drove them
from Europe and then fought against
them in the Holy Land. Da Gama also
told of the wars between the Spanish
kings and the descendants of the great
Alphonsos.
After ending his narrative of the
martial history of Portugal, da Gama
described his own adventures since leaving
the mouth of the Tagus River. He told
how his ships had sailed past the Canary
Islands, past the Hesperides, and past the
mouth of the mighty Congo. He told the
king of the strange waterspouts they had
seen, the terrible storms they had
endured, and the awesome sea creatures they
had met. He related how they had tried
to make friends of the black people of the
African coast by giving them odd knick-
knacks and how the blacks in return had
tried to kill them after pretending
friendship. Da Gama told of the experiences of
one of his men, Veloso, who had
wandered too far inland and had almost been
killed by blacks, and how Veloso had
claimed that he returned quickly only
because he thought the ships in danger.
Da Gama also narrated his adventure
with the spirit of the Cape of Good Hope.
The spirit appeared to the Portuguese as
his ships sighted the cape and told them
that they were the first men to sail in
those waters. In return for their daring,
the spirit prophesied, some of them would
have to die, and that many of these men
who followed them would also die for
venturing so far into strange lands. The spirit
told da Gama that he was one of the
Titans who had fought against Jove and
that his name had been Adamastor. The
Titan had pursued a nymph, a chase
which ended when divine wrath changed
him into a range of mountains forming
the cape at Africa's foot.
Da Gama next told of the plague which
had struck his crew, of the shortage of
drinking water, of the loss of necessary
food through spoilage. He also told of
battles and ambushes in which the
Portuguese fought with unfriendly natives of
the east African coast.
After hearing his account of Portuguese
history and da Gama's fabulous voyage,
the king thought he could not do enough
to show his friendliness toward the great
men who represented Portugal. The
Mombassans sent a pilot to da Gama and
also the provisions and water necessary for
a voyage across the Indian Ocean to the
city of Calcutta.
Bacchus, meanwhile, was furious at the
success of da Gama and his ships.
Determined to prevent Asia from falling into
the hands of the Portuguese, Bacchus
went into the depths of the sea to the court
of Neptune, there to seek the aid of the
sea god. He told Neptune that the men of
Portugal were despoiling his kingdom and
that the Portuguese spoke of the ruler of
the sea only in terms of insolence.
Neptune, angered at the report, sent storms
to destroy their ships, but Venus
interceded once more on behalf of the
Portuguese and .saved them from the storms
unleashed by Neptune.
The Portuguese, arriving on the Indian
coast, landed on the shore near Calcutta.
One of the first to meet the men of
Portugal was a Mohammedan who was glad to
see them because he himself was from
the northwestern part of Africa. He sent
word to the Emperor of Malabar,
informing him of the white strangers and of the
distance they had traveled. The emperor
quickly gave audience to da Gama, who
told the ruler that he wished to trade for
products of the eastern lands.
Arrangements went forward to exchange
Portuguese goods for spices and other products
of India. The Mohammedan peoples in
India became aroused and tried to bribe
the king's council to halt the trading.
Failing in that plan, they tried to delay da
Gama's departure, for they hoped to
destroy the Portuguese ships in battle with a
fleet sailing from Arabia. Da Gama out-
2141

witted his enemies, however, and set out
on the return voyage before the Arabian
fleet had arrived.
As the Portuguese ships sailed
westward toward home, Venus moved an
island into their path. Needing a rest from
their travels, da Gama and his men
anchored off the island and went ashore.
There, under the guidance of Venus,
nymphs charmed away the hours for the
sailors, and the goddess herself took da
Gama to a castle high on a hill and showed
him a vision of the future in which he saw
later Portuguese—Albuquerque, Sampoyo,
Noronia, and others—completing the
conquest of Asia for their king and nation.
2142

LYSISTRATA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Utopian comedy
Time of plot: Fifth century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 411 B.C.
Principal characters:
Lysistrata, an Athenian woman
Cleonice, her friend
Lampito, a Spartan woman
Myrrhine, a Greek woman
A Magistrate
Cinesias, a Greek husband
Old Men of Athens, the Chorus
Critique:
The basic assumption on which the
Lysistrata is based is highly comic; indeed,
Aristophanes reveals, in the very
weakness of the average woman in the play, his
knowledge that the supposition was not
only comic but also impossible. Yet the
assumption that women, by concerted
determination not to lie with their men, could
effect peace and government reform is not
entirely comic. This idea was probably an
ancient one even in the time of
Aristophanes, but he was able to blend the
alarming logic and the delightful illogic of it
to produce an amusing if somewhat bawd-
ily skeptical work of art. Lysistrata herself
is the archetype of the militant feminist,
the woman who has managed through the
ages to keep alive the war of the sexes.
The Story:
The Second Peloponnesian War was in
progress when Lysistrata, an Athenian
woman, summoned women from Athens,
Sparta, and all other Greek cities involved
in the war. She wished to have them
consider her carefully thought out plan for
ending hostilities between Athens and
Sparta. The women arrived one by one,
curious about the purpose of the meeting.
Since their husbands were all away at
war, they looked with enthusiasm for any
scheme which would bring their men back
to them.
Lysistrata declared that the war would
end immediately if all the Greek women
refrained, from that time on, until the
fighting stopped, from lying with their
husbands. This suggestion took the
women by complete surprise, and they
objected strenuously. But Lampito, a
Spartan woman, liked the idea. Although
the others finally agreed to try the plan,
they did so without enthusiasm.
Over a bowl of Thracian wine,
Lysistrata led her companions in an oath
binding them to charm their husbands and
their lovers, but not to lie with them
unless forced. Some of the women
returned to their native lands to begin their
continent lives. Lysistrata went to the
Acropolis, citadel of Athens.
While the younger women had been
meeting with Lysistrata, the older women
had marched upon the Acropolis and
seized it. The old men of the city laid
wood around the base of the Acropolis
and set fire to it with the intention of
smoking out the women, who, in turn,
threatened the old men with pots of water.
During an exchange of scurrilous
vituperation the women threw water on their
opponents.
When a magistrate and his men
attempted to break open a gate of the citadel,
Lysistrata, now in command, emerged
and suggested that the magistrate use
common sense. When the indignant
magistrate ordered his Scythians to seize
2143

Lysistrata and bind her hands, the
Scythians advanced reluctantly and were
soundly trounced by the fierce defenders.
Asked why they had seized the
Acropolis, the women replied that they had done
so in order to possess the treasury. Since
they now controlled the money, and since
it took money to wage war, they believed
that the war must soon end.
The male pride of the old men was
deeply wounded when Lysistrata declared
that the women had assumed all civil
authority and would henceforth provide
for the safety and welfare of Athens. The
magistrate could not believe his ears when
he heard Lysistrata say that the women,
tired of being home-bodies, were
impatient with the incompetence of their
husbands in matters which concerned the
commonweal. For rebuking the women,
the magistrate received potfuls of water
poured on his head. The ineffectual old
men declared that they would never
submit to the tyranny of women. The women
answered that the old men were worthless,
that all they could do was to legislate the
city into trouble.
Despite their brave talk and their bold
plan, however, the women proved to be
weak in the flesh, and disaffection thinned
their ranks. Some, caught as they
deserted, offered various excuses in the hope
of getting away from the strictures
imposed by Lysistrata's oath. One woman
simulated pregnancy by placing the sacred
helmet of Athena under her robe. Some
of the women claimed to be frightened
by the holy snakes and by the owls of the
Acropolis. As a last desperate measure,
Lysistrata resorted to a prophecy, which
was favorable to their project, and the
women returned reluctantly to their
posts.
When Cinesias, the husband of Myr-
rhme\ one of Lysistrata*s companions,
returned from the war and sought his wife,
Lysistrata directed Myrrhine* to be true
to her oath. Begging Myrrhine* to come
home, Cinesias used various appeals,
without success. Although Myrrhine*
consented to his request for a moment of
dalliance with her, she put him off with
trifling excuses. At last, in spite of his
pleas, she retired into the citadel.
A messenger arrived from Sparta,
where Lampito and her cohorts had been
successful, and declared that the men of
Sparta were prepared to sue for peace.
As the magistrate arranged for a peace
conference, the women looked once more
upon the old men of Athens with a
kindness that cooled the ire of the indignant
old fellows.
On their arrival in Athens, the Spartan
envoys were obviously in need of the
favors of their wives. Indeed, so desperate
were they that they were ready to agree
to any terms. Lysistrata rebuked the
Spartans and the Athenians for warring
upon each other; they had, she declared,
a common enemy in the barbarians, and
they shared many traditions. While she
spoke, a nude maiden, representing
the goddess of peace, was brought
before the frustrated men. Lysistrata
reminded the men of the two countries that
they had previously been friends and allies
and again insisted that war between the
two was illogical. The men, their eyes
devouring the nude maiden, agreed
absently with everything Lysistrata said, but
when she asked for an agreement
contention immediately arose because one side
asked for conditions unsatisfactory to the
other.
The women, seeing that any appeal to
reason was futile, feasted the envoys and
filled them with intoxicating liquors.
Sated, and eager for further physical
satisfaction, the men signed a peace
agreement and dispersed hastily, with their
wives, to their homes.
2144

THE MABINOGION
Type of work: Tales
Author: Unknown
Type of plots: Heroic romances
Time of plots: The Middle Ages
Locale: Arthurian Britain, mainly Wales
First transcribed: Twelfth and thirteenth centuries; first translation published, 1838-1849
Principal characters:
Pwyll, Prince of Dyved
Rhiannon, his wife
Pryderi, their son
Kiev a, Pryderi's wife
Bendigeid Vran, King of the Island of the Mighty, Llyr's son
Branwen, Llyr's daughter
Matholwch, King of Ireland, Branwen's husband
Manawydan, another of Llyr's sons, Pryderi's stepfather
King Math
Gwydion, one of King Math's warriors
Llew Llaw Gyffes, Gwydion's favorite son
Blodeuwedd, Llew Llaw Gyffes' elfwife
Macsen Wledig, Emperor of Rome
Lludd, King of Britain
Llevelys, his brother, King of France
King Arthur
Kilhwch, one of King Arthur's knights
Ysbaddaden, a crafty giant
Olwen, his daughter, loved by Kilhwch
Rhonabwy, a dreamer
Owain, the new Knight of the Fountain
Peredur, one of King Arthur's knights
Gerint, another of King Arthur's knights, later a king
Enid, his wife
Critique:
Paradoxically, the title of this colleo- wizards, and warlocks—a world of chival-
tion of Welsh tales, written in the twelfth ric romance and harsh brutality. Un-
and thirteenth centuries and preserved in doubtedly, this world and these stories
the fourteenth-century manuscript titled have their roots in primitive Celtic my-
Red Book of Hergest, is a relatively mod- thology that was translated into folk-
ern one. When Lady Charlotte Guest, lore and eventually into romantic tales,
the translator, called these tales The Although the poet-authors are unknown,
Mabinogion she used a misnomer for the they show considerable artistry and crafts-
most part, for her title applies only to manship in the treatment of their sub-
the first four stories. These tales, among jects.
the finest of medieval literature,
represent the best of Celtic culture. The world The Stories:
they disclose to our modern eyes is one
of great heroes, black villains, incompa- PWYLL> PMNCB OF DYVBD
rable battles, women of great beauty, old Pwyll, the Prince of Dyved, was caught
crones, magnificent splendor, wretched stealing a dying deer. In order to redeem
squalor, landscapes of matchless glamour, himself Pwyll agreed to exchange lands
THE MABINOGION. Translated by Gwyn Jones. By permission of the translator. Published by J. M.
Dent & Sons, Ltd. Copyright, 1949. Ail rights reserved.
2145

and appearances with the chieftain who
had caught him and to slay the
chieftain's enemy after a year's time. That
year each prince ruled the other's land
wisely and well, and each remained
faithful to his own true wife. At the year's
end Pwyll slew the enemy, returned
home on good terms with the other
prince, and eventually gained the other's
lands. From a hill one day Pwyll saw
a lovely lady ride by. She eluded him
three times, but on die fourth he spoke
to her. She told him that her name was
Rhiannon and invited him to her castle
a year from that day. Pwyll went with
his men, subdued her other suitor, and
won the lady. Some time thereafter
Rhiannon bore a son who disappeared
the first night after his birth. The women
on watch accused her of killing it, and
so Pwyll made her pay a heavy penance.
Meanwhile, a farmer had taken the baby
from a monster. Eventually he restored
the boy to Pwyll, who then released his
wife from her penance and named his
son Pryderi.
BRANWEN, DAUGHTER OF LLYR
Bendigeid Vran, son of Llyr and King
of the Island of the Mighty, made a pact
with Matholwch, King of Ireland, and
gaw him his sister Branwen to wed.
When the King of Ireland suffered an
insult at the hands of one of Bendigeid
Vran's men, Bendigeid Vran made good
the loss; but because of the insult
Matholwch and Branwen were made to
suffer heavily at the hands of the Irishmen.
Bendigeid Vran learned of their
treatment, sailed to Ireland, and made war
on the Irish. Both sides suffered great
losses. Bendigeid Vran was killed by a
poisoned spear; his last request was that
his head be buried in the White Mount
in London. Branwen died of sorrow.
Finally, only seven of Bendigeid Vran's
men were left alive to bury the heads
of their chief, and only five pregnant
Irish women.
MANAWYDAN, SON OF LLYR
Two of the men left living after
the war in Ireland were Pryderi and
Manawydan, the brother of Bendigeid
Vran. These two went to live on Pry-
deri's lands, and Manawydan married
Pryderi's mother. The two men and their
wives, for Pryderi had a wife named
Kicva, lived pleasantly until the
countryside was magically laid desolate and
everyone else had disappeared. They left
their lands and tried to earn a living at
various trades, but were always driven
off by their envious competitors. When
they returned to their own lands,
Pryderi and his mother entered a magic
castle that vanished with them.
Manawydan then tried farming, and again his
crops were magically desolated.
Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery,
Manawydan stayed up to watch his last
field. When he saw thousands of mice
ravaging the field, he caught one and
declared that he would hang it. Pryderi,i
wife tried to dissuade him along with
three churchmen, but he .was still
determined to hang the mouse. At last the
third churchman disclosed himself as the
one who had cursed Manawydan and his
friends in revenge for an insult from
Pryderi's father years before. He promised to
restore everything, including Pryderi and
his mother, if Manawydan would release
the mouse. Manawydan insisted that the
magician never touch his lands again,
and he returned the mouse, who
happened to be the churchman's wife.
Everything was restored, and the four
companions returned to their former
happiness.
MATH, SON OF MATHONWY
Gwydion's brother, Gilvaethwy, loved
King Math's footmaiden, Goewin.
Hoping to secure the maiden for his brother,
Gwydion tricked Pryderi into exchanging
some pigs for twelve phantom steeds and
twelve phantom greyhounds. Pryderi and
his men pursued them. While King Math
and his men were preparing to fight this
2146

army, Gwydion and his brother raped
the footmaiden before they returned to
the fight and won the battle for King
Math. The king then punished the
brothers by turning them into animals
•for three years. After his penance
Gwydion had two sons. Their mother cursed
Gwydion's favorite son, named Llew Llaw
Gyffes, by saying that he would never
have a human wife. To thwart this
curse King Math and Gwydion created
for him an elf wife, Blodeuwedd, out of
flowers. The wife proved unfaithful by
taking a lover. Determined to get rid
of her husband, she asked him how he
might be killed. Foolishly, he told her
and she told her lover, who tried to kill
Llew Llaw Gyffes. Gwydion's son did
not die, however, but was turned into an
eagle. Gwydion then searched for his
son, found him, and restored him to his
former shape. Gwydion and Llew Llaw
Gyffes then took revenge on the wife
and her lover by turning her into an owl
and killing him.
THE DREAM OF MACSEN WLEDIG
Macsen Wledig, the Emperor of Rome,
dreamed one night of a lovely maiden in
a strange and wonderful land. Awaking,
he sent his messengers all over the world
in search of her. After wandering in
many lands they found her in a castle
in Britain, and they guided the emperor
to her. He found everything as it had
been in his dream. The maiden accepted
him, and for her maiden portion he gave
her father the island of Britain and
caused three castles to be built for her.
Macsen Wledig lived with his wife in
Britain for seven years. Meanwhile, the
Romans had chosen a new emperor, who
sent a note to Wledig warning him not
to return. Wledig then marched on Gaul,
fought his way through Italy, and
reconquered Rome.
LLUDD AND LLEVELYS
Three plagues ravaged Britain. The
first was a crafty foreign people; the
second was a yearly midnight scream that
made everything barren; and the third
was the habitual disappearance of food
at the king's court. Lludd, the great King
of Britain, asked help from his wise and
well-beloved brother, Llevelys, who was
King of France. Llevelys told him to
mash insects in water and sprinkle the
solution over the foreigners to kill them.
To get rid of the screaming dragon Lludd
would have to lure it with mead, put it in
a sack, and bury it in a stone coffer. To
keep the food Lludd would have to
capture a magician who put everyone to
sleep. The king performed these tasks
and Britain was rid of the plagues.
KILHWCH AND OLWEN
Kilhwch's stepmother had spitefully
prophesied that Kilhwch would not have
a woman until he won Olwen, the
daughter of Ysbaddaden, a crafty and powerful
giant. Straightway, Kilhwch, who had
fallen in love with Olwen without having
seen her, set out for King Arthur's court,
where King Arthur accepted the young
man as his knight. Kilhwch then set out
to seek Ysbaddaden; with him went all
of King Arthur's qallant warriors. After
a long journey Kilhwch met Olwen, the
most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
He and King Arthur's men proceeded to
Ysbaddaden's court to ask for Olwen.
After fighting for three days and
wounding the giant three times, Kilhwch
learned that he could win Olwen and
slay her father after performing forty
nearly impossible tasks for the giant. By
dint of brute force, cunning, and magic,
Kilhwch, King Arthur, and his men
succeeded in completing the tasks. Kilhwch
then slew Ysbaddaden, married Olwen,
and lived happily ever after.
THE DREAM OF RHONABWY
While seeking a man who had ravaged
the land, Rhonabwy and his companions
found themselves in a dark hall where the
floors were covered with dung. After
trying to talk to the strange people
inhabiting the hall and failing, Rhonabwy lay
down on an ox-skin and began to dream.
2147

He dreamed of the heroic Arthurian age
when men were demigods who lived in
splendor in a land where life was full.
He found himself in King Arthur's court
watching a game between King Arthur
and Owain. While the game was in
progress, three servants informed Owain that
his ravens were being killed by King
Arthur's men, but the king insisted that
the game continue. Owain told his men
to raise his banner, whereupon the ravens
revived and began to slaughter the men.
Three servants came to tell King Arthur
how his men were being killed, but
Owain insisted that the game continue.
At last the king begged Owain to call
off the ravens. He did so and there was
peace. Many men then brought tribute
to King Arthur. At that point Rhonabwy
awakened.
THE LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN
While at King Arthur's court Owain
learned from Kynon of a powerful Knight
of the Fountain who overthrew all
challengers. Upon being taunted by Kai,
Owain went in search of this knight,
challenged him, and slew him. Then with
the help of a maiden Owain escaped the
angry townsmen who were seeking to
avenge the death of their lord and he
married the dead knight's wife. He ruled
the land well for three years. Meanwhile,
King Arthur and his knights had come
in search of Owain. Upon arriving at the
fountain, King Arthur's men all
challenged the new Knight of the Fountain
and were overthrown by him. The king
and Owain were finally reunited, and
Owain returned to King Arthur's court
after promising his wife that he would
return at the end of three years. Owain
was reminded of his promise when his
wife came to King Arthur's court and
removed the ring which she had given
him as a token by which to remember
her. Then Owain went in search of his
wife. After restoring a lady's kingdom,
killing a serpent about to destroy a lion,
saving the maiden who had aided him
six years earlier, and killing her
tormentors, Owain was restored to his wife.
Another feat was defeating and
transforming the Black Oppressor. Thereafter
Owain and his wife lived happily at King
Arthur's court.
PEREDUR, SON OF EVRAWG
Peredur lived a sheltered life with his
mother; nevertheless he grew up strong
and swift. Although his mother did not
want him to become a knight, nothing
could keep him from fulfilling his desire.
When he prepared to leave his mother
and journey to King Arthur's court, she
instructed him in the chivalric code.
Peredur was an ungainly sight as he entered
King Arthur's court, for he was still
awkward and naive. However, he soon
showed his prowess in battle, and through
many adventures he acquired polish and
skill in the arts of hunting, war, and
love. Many reports of his strength and
bravery reached King Arthur's ears.
Peredur spent his time defending and loving
maidens, restoring kingdoms to the
wronged, avenging insults, killing
monsters and evil men, protecting the weak,
and ridding the land of plagues. In short,
he was a matchless knight. When, in the
course of his adventures, he inadvertently
caused a kingdom to wither and grow
barren, he restored it to fertility by dint of
strength and courage. In the end he rid
the land of seven evil witches.
GERINT, SON OF ERBIN
While King Arthur and his men were
hunting, Gerint rode with the queen and
her maids. When a dwarf insulted Gerint
and one of the maids, the knight
challenged the dwarf's lord to a contest and
defeated him. Afterward Gerint restored
a kingdom to its proper lord and won the
king's daughter, Enid, as his wife. Gerint
then traveled back to King Arthur's court
and received a stag head for his reward.
In time Gerint, having inherited a
kingdom from his father, went with Enid to
rule the land. Because he devoted more
time to his wife than he did to jousts or
battles, his subjects complained bitterly.
2148

When Enid learned of their grievance,
she inadvertently told him. In anger,
Gerint set out on a journey with his wife
to prove his strength and valor. He
performed superhuman feats and slaughtered
belligerent knights and caitifiFs in vast
numbers, but he nearly died in the
attempt. Finally, having proved himself to
his wife and subjects, he returned home
to rule once more.
2149

MACBETH
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare CI564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Eleventh century
Locale: Scotland
First presented: 1606
Principal characters:
Macbeth, a Scottish thane
Lady Macbeth, his wife
Duncan, King of Scodand
Malcolm, his son
Banquo, a Scottish chieftain
Macduff, a rebel lord
Critique:
The Tragedy of Macbeth, one of
Shakespeare's shortest dramas, is the story
of a highly imaginative, ambitious and
conscience-stricken nobleman whose wife
drove him to murder. Macbeth, at first
a man of honor and integrity, had one
major flaw — ambition. When the
opportunity for power was presented to
him, he committed his first crime. Later
he was forced into utter degradation in
order to conceal that first evil step. The
macabre settings of Macbeth, the gloomy
castle and the eerie heath, are in keeping
with the weird tone of the whole play.
The Story:
On a lonely heath in Scotland, three
witches sang their riddling runes and
said that soon they would meet Macbeth.
Macbeth was the noble thane of
Glamis, recently victorious in a great
battle against Vikings and Scottish
rebels. For his brave deeds, King Duncan
intended to confer upon him the lands
of the rebellious thane of Cawdor.
But before Macbeth saw the king, he
and his friend Banquo met the three
weird witches upon the dark moor. The
wild and frightful women greeted
Macbeth by first calling him thane of Glamis,
then thane of Cawdor, and finally, King
of Scotland. Too, they prophesied that
Banquo's heirs would reign in Scotland
in years to come.
When Macbeth tried to question the
three hags, they vanished. Macbeth
thought very litde about the strange
prophecy until he met one of Duncan's
messengers, who told him that he was
now thane of Cawdor. This piece of
news stunned Macbeth, and he turned
to Banquo to confirm the witches'
prophecy. But Banquo, unduped by the
witches, thought them evil enough to
betray Macbeth by whetting his ambition
and tricking him into fulfilling the
prophecy. Macbeth did not heed Banquo's
warning; the words of the witches as
they called him king had gone deep into
his soul. He pondered over the
possibility of becoming a monarch and set his
whole heart on the attainment of this
goal. If he could be thane of Cawdor,
perhaps he could rule all of Scodand as
well. But as it was now, Duncan was
king, with two sons to rule after him.
The problem was great. Macbeth shook
off his ambitious dreams to go with
Banquo to greet Duncan.
A perfect ruler, Duncan was kind,
majestic, gende, strong; Macbeth was
fond of him. But when Duncan
mentioned that his son, Malcolm, would
succeed him on the throne, Macbeth saw
the boy as an obstacle in his own path,
and he hardly dared admit to himself
how this impediment disturbed him.
On a royal procession, Duncan
announced that he would spend one night
at Macbeth's casde. Lady Macbeth, who
2150

knew of the witches' prophecy, was even
more ambitious than her husband, and
she saw Duncan's visit as a perfect
opportunity for Macbeth to become king.
She determined that he should murder
Duncan and usurp the throne.
That night there was much feasting
in the castle. After everyone was asleep,
Lady Macbeth told her husband of her
plan for the king's murder. Horrified at
first, Macbeth refused to do the deed.
But on being accused of cowardice by
his wife, and having bright prospects of
his future dangled before his eyes,
Macbeth finally succumbed to her demands.
He stole into the sleeping king's chamber
and plunged a knife into his heart.
The murder was blamed on two
grooms whom Lady Macbeth had smeared
with Duncan's blood while they were
asleep. But the deed was hardly without
suspicion in the castle, and when the
murder was revealed, the dead king's
sons fled — Malcolm to England, Donal-
bain to Ireland. Macbeth was proclaimed
king. But Macduff, a nobleman who had
been Duncan's close friend, also carefully
noted the murder, and when Macbeth
was crowned king, Macduff suspected
him of the bloody killing.
Macbeth began to have horrible
dreams; his mind was never free from
fear. Often he thought of the witches'
second prophecy, that Banquo's heirs
would hold the throne, and the
prediction tormented him. Macbeth was so
determined that Banquo would never
share in his own hard-earned glory that
he resolved to murder Banquo and his
son, Fleance.
Lady Macbeth and her husband gave
a great banquet for the noble thanes of
Scotland. At the same time, Macbeth
sent murderers to waylay Banquo and his
son before they could reach the palace.
Banquo was slain in the scuffle, but
Fleance escaped. Meanwhile in the large
banquet hall Macbeth pretended great
sorrow that Banquo was not present. But
Banquo was present in spirit, and his
ghost majestically appeared in Macbeth's
own seat. The startled king was so
frightened that he almost betrayed his
guilt when he alone saw the apparition.
Lady Macbeth quickly led him away and
dismissed the guests.
More frightened than ever, thinking
of Banquo's ghost which had returned to
haunt him, and of Fleance who had
escaped but might one day claim the
throne, Macbeth was so troubled that
he determined to seek solace from the
witches on the dismal heath. They
assured Macbeth that he would not be
overcome by man born of woman, nor
until the forest of Birnam came to Dun-
sinane Hill. They warned him to beware
of Macduff. When Macbeth asked if
Banquo's children would reign over the
kingdom, the witches disappeared. The
news they gave him brought him cheer.
Macbeth felt he need fear no man, since
all were born of women, and certainly
the great Birnam forest could not be
moved by human power.
Then Macbeth heard that Macduff
was gathering a hostile army in England,
an army to be led by Malcolm, Duncan^s
son, who was determined to avenge his
father's murder. So terrified was
Macbeth that he resolved to murder
Macduff's wife and children in order to bring
the rebel to submission. After this
slaughter, however, Macbeth was more
than ever tormented by fear; his twisted
mind had almost reached the breaking
point, and he longed for death to release
him from his nightmarish existence.
Before long Lady Macbeth's strong
will broke. Dark dreams of murder and
violence drove her to madness. The
horror of her crimes and the agony of being
hated and feared by all of Macbeth's
subjects made her so ill that her death
seemed imminent.
On the eve of Macduff's attack on
Macbeth's castle, Lady Macbeth died,
depriving her husband of all courage she
had given him in the past. Rallying,
Macbeth summoned strength to meet
2151

his enemy. Meanwhile, Bimam wood
had moved, for Malcolm's soldiers were
hidden behind cut green boughs, which
from a distance appeared to be a moving
forest. Macduff, enraged by the slaughter
of his innocent family, was determined to
meet Macbeth in hand-to-hand conflict.
Macbeth went out to batde filled with
the false courage given him by the
witches' prophecy that no man born of
woman would overthrow him. Meeting
Macduff, Macbeth began to fight him,
taunting him at the same time about his
having been born of woman. But
Macduff had been ripped ahve from his
mother's womb. The prophecy was
fulfilled. Macbeth fought with waning
strength, all hope of victory gone, and
Macduff, with a flourish, severed the
head of the bloody King of Scotland.
2152

McTEAGUE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Frank Norris (1870-1902)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1890's
Locale: San Francisco and Death Valley
First published: 1899
Principal characters:
McTeague, a dentist
Trina, his wife
Marcus Schouler, McTeague's friend and Trina's cousin
Critique:
McTeague, generally considered the
best of Norris' novels, falls into the
category of naturalism, a mode popular
in the early 1900's. Two characteristics
of this school were the hero of much
brawn and few brains, and the influences
of heredity and environment upon
character. McTeague, Trina, and Marcus are
drawn inevitably to catastrophe through
their own inherited qualities acted upon
by environmental forces. The novel is
at once powerful and terrifying.
The Story:
McTeague, born in a small mining
town, worked with his unambitious father
in the mines. But his mother saw in
her son a chance to realize her own
dreams. The opportunity to send him
away for a better education came a few
years after McTeague's father had died.
A traveling dentist was prevailed upon
to take the boy as an apprentice.
McTeague learned something of
dentistry, but he was too stupid to
understand much of it. When his mother died
and left him a small sum of money, he
set up his own practice in an
office-bedroom in San Francisco. McTeague was
easily satisfied. He had his concertina
for amusement and enough money from
his practice to keep him well supplied
with beer.
In the flat above McTeague lived his
friend, Marcus Schouler. Marcus was
in love with his cousin, Trina Sieppe,
whom he brought to McTeague for some
dental work. While they were waiting
for McTeague to finish with a patient,
the cleaning woman sold Trina a lottery
ticket.
McTeague immediately fell in love
with Trina. Marcus, realizing his friend's
attachment, rather enjoyed playing the
martyr, setting aside his own love in
order that McTeague might feel free to
court Trina. He invited the dentist to
go with him to call on the Sieppe family.
From that day on McTeague was a steady
visitor at the Sieppe home. To celebrate
their engagement, McTeague took Trina
and her family to the theater. Afterward
they returned to McTeague's flat, to find
the building in an uproar. Trina's
lottery ticket had won five thousand
dollars.
In preparation for their wedding,
Trina was furnishing a flat across from
McTeague's office. When she decided to
invest her winnings and collect the
monthly interest, the dentist was
disappointed, for he had hoped to spend the
money on something lavish and exciting.
But Trina's wishes prevailed. With that
income and McTeague's earnings, as well
as the little that Trina earned from her
hand-carved animals, the McTeagues
could be assured of a comfortable life.
Marcus slowly changed in his attitude
toward his friend and his cousin. One
day he accused McTeague of stealing
Trina's affection for the sake of the five
thousand dollars. In his fury he struck
at his old friend with a knife. McTeague
McTEAGUE by Frank Norris. By permission of the publisher*, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1899, by
Doubleday & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1926, by Jeannette Preston.
2153

was not hurt, but his anger was
thoroughly aroused.
In the early months after their
wedding, McTeague and Trina were
extremely happy. Trina was tactful in
the changes she began to make in her
husband. Gradually she improved his
manners and appearance. They both
planned for the time when they could
afford a home of their own. Because of
those plans they had their first real
quarrel. McTeague wanted to rent a
nearby house, but Trina objected to the
high rent. Her thriftiness was slowly
turning into miserliness. When
McTeague, unknown to her, rented the
house, she refused to move or to
contribute to the payment of the first month's
rent which signing of the lease entailed.
Some days later they went on a picnic
to which Marcus was also invited.
Outwardly he and McTeague had settled
their differences, but jealousy still
rankled in Marcus. When some wrestling
matches were held, Marcus and the
dentist were the winners in their bouts.
It now remained for the two winners to
compete. No match for the brute strength
of McTeague, Marcus was thrown.
Furious, he demanded another match.
In that match Marcus suddenly leaned
forward and bit off the lobe of the
dentist's ear. McTeague broke Marcus'
arm in his anger.
Marcus soon left San Francisco.
Shortly thereafter an order from City Hall
disbarred McTeague from his practice
because he lacked college training.
Marcus had informed the authorities.
Trina and McTeague moved from
their flat to a tiny room on the top floor
of the building, for the loss or Mc-
Teague's practice had made Trina more
niggardly than ever. McTeague found
a job making dental supplies. Trina
devoted almost every waking moment to
her animal carvings. She allowed
herself and the room to become slovenly,
she begrudged every penny they spent,
and when McTeague lost his job she
insisted that they move to even cheaper
lodgings. McTeague began to drink,
and drinking made him vicious. When
he was drunk, he would pinch or bite
Trina until she gave him money for
more whiskey.
The new room into which they moved
was filthy and cramped. McTeague
grew more and more surly. One
morning he left to go fishing and failed to
return. That night, while Trina was
searching the streets for him, he broke
into her trunk and stole her hoarded
savings. After his disappearance Trina
learned that the paint she used on her
animals had infected her hand. The
fingers of her right hand were amputated.
Trina took a job as a scrub woman,
and the money she earned together with
the interest from her five thousand
dollars was sufficient to support her. Now
that the hoard of money that she had
saved was gone, she missed the thrill of
counting over the coins, and so she
withdrew the whole of her five thousand
dollars from the bank and hid the coins
in her room. One evening there was a
tap on her window. McTeague was
standing outside, hungry and without a
I)lace to sleep. Trina angrily refused to
et him in. A few evenings later, drunk
and vicious, he broke into a room she
was cleaning. When she refused to give
him any money, he beat her until she
fell unconscious. She died early next
morning.
McTeague took her money and went
back to the mines, where he fell in with
another prospector. But McTeague was
haunted by the thought that he was
being followed. One night he stole away
from his companion and started soutn
across Death Valley. The next day, as
he was resting, he was suddenly accosted
by a man with a gun. The man was
Marcus.
A posse had been searching for
McTeague ever since Trina's body had
been found, and as soon as Marcus heard
about the murder he volunteered for
the manhunt. While the two men stood
facing each other in the desert, Mc-
2154

Teague's mule ran away, carrying on its
back a canteen bag or water. Marcus
emptied his gun to kill the animal, but
its dead body fell on the canteen bag
and the water was lost. The five
thousand dollars was also lashed to the back
of the mule. As McTeague went to
unfasten it, Marcus seized him. In the
struggle McTeague killed his enemy with
his bare hands. But as he slipped to the
ground, Marcus managed to snap one
handcuff to McTeague's wrist, the other
to his own. McTeague looked stupidly
around, at the hills about a hundred
miles away, and at the dead body to
which he was helplessly chained. He
was trapped in the parching inferno of
the desert that stretched away on every
side.
2155

MADAME BOVARY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1857
Principal characters:
Charles Bovary, a provincial doctor
Emma, his wife
Leon Dupuis, a young lawyer
Rodolphe Boulanger, a wealthy landowner
Critique:
Flaubert's genius lay in his infinite
capacity for taking pains, and Madame
Bovary, so true in its characterizations, so
vivid in its setting, so convincing in its
plot, is ample testimony to the realism
of his work. This novel was one of the
first of its type to come out of France, and
its truth shocked contemporary readers.
Condemned on the one hand for
picturing the life of a romantic adulteress,
he was acclaimed on the other for the
honesty and skill with which he handled
his subject. Flaubert does not permit
Emma Bovary to escape the tragedy
which she brings upon herself. Emma
finds diversion from the monotony of her
life, but she finds it at the loss of her own
self-respect. The truth of Emma's
struggle is universal and challenging.
The Story:
Charles Bovary was a student of
medicine who married for his own
advancement a woman much older than himself.
She made his life miserable with her
nagging and groundless suspicions. One
day Charles was called to the bedside of
M. Rouault, who had a broken leg, and
there he met the farmer's daughter,
Emma, a beautiful but restless girl whose
early education in a French convent had
given her an overwhelming thirst for
broader experience. Charles found his
patient an excellent excuse to see Emma,
whose charm and grace had captivated
the young doctor. But his whining wife,
H61oise, soon began to suspect the true
reason for his visits to the Rouault farm.
She heard rumors that in spite of Emma's
peasant background, the girl conducted
herself like a gentlewoman. Angry and
tearful, Heloise made Charles swear that
he would not visit the Rouault home
again. Then Heloise's fortune was found
to be non-existent. There was a violent
quarrel over her deception and a stormy
scene between her and the parents of
Charles brought on an attack of an old
illness. H61oise died quickly and quietly.
Charles felt guilty because he had so
few regrets at his wife's death. At old
Rouault's invitation, he went once more
to the farm and again fell under the
influence of Emma's charms. As old
Rouault watched Charles fall more deeply
in love with his daughter, he decided that
the young doctor was dependable and
perfectly respectable, and so he forced
the young man's hand, told Charles he
could have Emma in marriage, and gave
the couple his blessing.
During the first weeks of marriage
Emma occupied herself with changing
their new home, and busied herself with
every household task she could think of
to keep herself from being utterly
disillusioned. Emma realized that even
though she thought she was in love with
Charles, the rapture which should have
come with marriage had not arrived. All
the romantic books she had read during
her early years had led her to expect more
from marriage than she received, and the
dead calm of her feelings was a bitter
2156

disappointment. The intimacy of
marriage disgusted her. Instead of a
perfumed, handsome lover in velvet and
lace, she found herself tied to a dull-
witted husband who reeked of
medicines and drugs.
As she was about to give up all hope
of finding any joy in her new life, a
noble patient whom Charles had treated
invited them to a ball at his chateau. At
the ball Emma danced with a dozen
partners, tasted champagne, and received
compliments on her beauty. The
contrast between the life of the Bovarys and
that of the nobleman was painfully
evident. Emma became more and more
discontented with Charles. His futile
and clumsy efforts to please her only made
her despair at his lack of understanding.
She sat by her window, dreamed of
Paris, moped, and became ill.
Hoping a change would improve her
condition, Charles took Emma to Yon-
ville, where he set up a new practice and
Emma prepared for the birth of a child.
When her daughter was born, Emma's
chief interest in the child was confined
to laces and ribbons for its dresses. The
child was sent to a wet nurse, where
Emma visited her, and where,
accidentally, she met L£on Dupuis, a law clerk
bored with the town and seeking
diversion. Charmed with the youthful mother,
he walked home with her in the
twilight, and Emma found him sympathetic
to her romantic ideas about life. Later
L£on visited the Bovarys in company
with Homais, the town chemist. Homais
held little soirees at the local inn, to
which he invited the townsfolk. There
Emma's acquaintance with Lion ripened.
The townspeople gossiped about the
couple, but Charles Bovary was not acute
enough to sense the interest Emma took
in L£on.
Bored with Yonville and tired of
loving in vain, L£on went to Paris to
complete his studies. Broken-hearted, Emma
deplored her weakness in not giving
herself to L£on, fretted in her boredom, and
once more made herself ill.
She had not time to become as
melancholy as she was before, however, for a
stranger, Rodolphe Boulanger, came to
town. One day he brought his farm
tenant to Charles for bloodletting.
Rodolphe, an accomplished lover, saw in
Emma a promise of future pleasure.
When he began his suit, Emma realized
that if she gave herself to him her
surrender would be immoral. But she
rationalized her doubts by convincing herself
that nothing as romantic and beautiful
as love could be sinful.
Deceiving Charles, Emma met
Rodolphe, rode over the countryside with
him, listened to his urgent avowals of
love, and finally succumbed to his
persuasive appeals. At first she felt guilty,
but later she identified herself with
adulterous heroines of fiction and
believed that, like them, she had known
true romance. Sure of Emma's love,
Rodolphe no longer found it necessary to
continue his gentle lover's tricks. He no
longer bothered to maintain punctuality
in his meetings with Emma; and though
he continued to see her, she began to
suspect that his passion was dwindling.
Meanwhile Charles became involved
in Homais' attempt to cure a boy of a
clubfoot with a machine Charles had
designed. Both Homais and Charles were
convinced that the success of their
operation would raise their future standing in
the community. But after weeks of
torment, the boy contracted gangrene, and
his leg had to be amputated. Homais*
reputation was undamaged, for he was
by profession a chemist, but Bovary, a
doctor, was looked upon with suspicion.
His practice began to fall away.
Disgusted with Charles' failure, Emma,
in an attempt to hold Rodolphe, scorned
her past virtue, spent money recklessly
on jewelry and clothes, and involved her
husband deeply in debt. She finally
secured Rodolphe's word that he would
take her away, but on the very eve of
what was to be her escape she received
from him a letter so hypocritically
repentant of their sin that she read it with
2157

sneers. Then, in horror over the
realization that she had lost him, she almost
threw herself from the window. She
was saved when Charles called to her.
But she became gravely ill with brain-
fever, and lay near death for several
months.
Her convalescence was slow, but she
was finally well enough to go to Rouen
to the theater. The tender love scenes
behind the footlights made Emma
breathless with envy. Once more, she dreamed
of romance. In Rouen she met L£on
Dupuis again.
This time L6on was determined to
possess Emma. He listened to her
complaints with sympathy, soothed her, and
took her driving. Emma, whose thirst
for romance still consumed her, yielded
herself to L6on with regret that she had
not done so before.
Charles Bovary grew concerned over
his increasing debts. In addition to his
own financial worries, his father died,
leaving his mother in ignorance about
the family estate. Emma used the excuse
of procuring a lawyer for her mother-in-
law to visit Lion in Rouen, where he had
set up a practice. At his suggestion she
secured a power of attorney from Charles,
a document which left her free to spend
his money without his knowledge of her
purchases.
Finally, in despair over his debts, the
extent of which Emma only partly
revealed, Charles took his mother into
his confidence and promised to destroy
Emma's power of attorney. Deprived of
her hold over Charles' finances and
unable to repay her debts, Emma threw
herself upon Ldon's mercy with all disregard
for caution. Her corruption was so
complete that she had to seek release and
pleasure or go out of her mind.
In her growing degradation, Emma
began to realize that she had brought
her lover down with her. She no longer
respected him, and she scorned his
faithfulness when he was Unable to give her
money she needed to pay her bills. When
her name was posted publicly for a debt
of several thousand francs, the bailiff
prepared to sell Charles' property to settle
her creditors' claims. Charles was out of
town when the debtj was posted, and
Emma, in one final act of self-abasement,
appealed to Rodolphe for help. He, too,
refused to lend her money.
Knowing that the framework of lies
with which she had deceived Charles was
about to collapse, Emma Bovary resolved
to die a heroine's death and swallowed
arsenic bought at Homais' shop. Charles,
returning from his trip, arrived too late
to save her from a slow, painful death.
Charles, pitiful in his grief, could
barely endure the sounds of the hammer
as her coffin was nailed shut. Later,
feeling that his pain oyer Emma's death
had grown less, he opened her desk, to
find there the carefully collected love
letters of L£on and Rodolphe. Broken
with the knowledge of'his wife's
infidelity, scourged with defy, and helpless in
his disillusionment, Charles died soon
after his wife, leaving a legacy of only
twelve francs for the support of his
orphaned daughter. The Bovary tragedy
was complete.
2158
I

MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Th^ophile Gautier (1811-1872)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1835
Principal characters:
M. d'Albert, a young esthete
Rosette, his mistress
Theodore de Serannes, in reality Mademoiselle Madelaine de Maupin
Critique:
France, in the 1830's, was going
through one of those occasional periods of
high morality which at intervals excite the
world, and Gautier, disgusted with the
hypocrisy of many of the period's
defenders, wrote this romance of passion as
his challenge to the period. In a long
and boastful preface he pleads the cause
of moral freedom in art. The novel is
highly sensual, its plot based partly on
history and partly on Shakespeare's As
You Like It.
The Story:
D'Albert was a young Frenchman of
twenty-two, handsome, well-educated,
artistic, and well-versed in the affairs of
the world. He loved beauty, especially
female beauty. All his life he had
•dreamed of women, but he had never
met the girl of his dreams, who would
combine the beauty of a Ruben's nude
with that of a Titian nude. It was litde
wonder that he had not found her.
The one thing lacking in d'Albert's
life was a mistress. One day his friend
de C offered to take him around
the town and discourse on the various
ladies of his acquaintance so that d'Albert
could make a choice. The expedition
was a delightful one, as de C seemed
to have precise and full information on
every beauty, not only on her outward
circumstances, but also on the very
quality of her mind. D'Albert, after
some hesitation, finally decided to lay
siege to Rosette, a beautiful young
woman who seemed the most hkely to bring
his romantic and poetic mind down to
earth.
It did not take d'Albert long to win
the love of Rosette, and they were soon
acknowledged lovers. Rosette was pliable,
versatile, and always entertaining. She
did not let d'Albert alone long enough
for him to go off into musing daydreams.
Variety was the spice of their love.
For five months the two continued to
be the happiest of lovers, but at last
d'Albert began to tire of Rosette. As
soon as she noticed the cooling of his
ardor, Rosette knew that she must do
something different if she wished to keep
his love. If he were growing tired of
her in the solitary life they were
leading, perhaps he would regain his interest
if he saw her among a group of people.
For this reason Rosette took d'Albert to
her country estate for a visit. There
she planned parties, dinners, and visits
to keep him amused, but he remained
bored.
One day a visitor, an old friend of
Rosette, arrived. The guest was an
extremely handsome young man named
Theodore de Sdrannes, whose
conversation, riding, and swordsmanship all
entranced d'Albert. The two men met
every day and went hunting together, and
the more d'Albert saw of Th6odore the
more fascinated he became. In time
d'Albert was forced to admit to himself
that he was in love with Theodore.
He was in love with a man, and yet
he always thought of him as a woman.
D'Albert's mind grew sick with the
2159

problem of Theodore's true identity.
Some days he would be sure that
Theodore was a woman in disguise. Then,
seeing him fencing or jumping his horse,
d'Albert would be forced to conclude that
Theodore was a man. Rosette, he knew,
was also in love with Theodore, and her
infatuation kept her from noticing
d*Albert's interest in the same young man.
One day d'Albert mentioned that his
favorite play was Shakespeare's As You
Like It The rest of the company
immediately decided to present the play.
At first Rosette was chosen for the part
of Rosalind, the heroine who dressed as
a man in order to escape from her uncle,
but when she refused to wear men's
clothes the part was given to Theodore.
As soon as d'Albert saw Theodore
dressed in woman's clothes, he guessed
rightly that Theodore really was a
woman. What he did not know was that
Theodore, who was really named Made-
laine de Maupin, had decided that she
would have nothing to do with men until
she had found a good and noble lover.
She knew that as a woman she would
have no chance to see men as they really
were, and so she had hit upon the device
of learning about them by dressing as
a man. But she had found perfidy and
falseness in every man she met.
Mademoiselle de Maupin had with amusement
seen d'Albert fall in love with her, and
she had watched the tortures of his mind
when he could not decide whether she
was male or female.
As the rehearsals of the play went on,
the parallels between the play and real
life became even more amusing to both
d'Albert and Mademoiselle de Maupin.
At last, after the play had been
presented, d'Albert wrote Mademoiselle de
Maupin a letter. In it he said that he
was sure she was a woman, and that he
loved her deeply.
She took so long to reply to his letter
that d'Albert again became afraid that
she really was a man. One night,
however, as d'Albert stood at a window a
hand gently touched his shoulder. He
looked around and beheld Mademoiselle
de Maupin dressed in her costume as
Rosalind. He was struck dumb with
amazement. Mademoiselle de Maupin
told him her story, and said that since
he was the first man to see through her
disguise, he should be the man to first
have her as a woman.
That night d'Albert learned that she
was truly the woman of his dreams. In
the morning he found himself alone.
Mademoiselle de Maupin had gone,
leaving a letter in which she told d'Albert
and Rosette that they would never see
her again. She wrote to d'Albert that
they had known one perfect night. She
had answered his dream, and to fulfill a
dream once was enough. Her letter ended
by telling d'Albert to try to console
Rosette for the love she had wasted on
the false Theodore, and she hoped that
the two would be very happy for many
years to come.
2160

THE MADRAS HOUSE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1910
Principal characters:
Henry Huxtable
Katherine, his wife
Constantine Madras, Katherine's brother
Amelia Madras, his wife
Philip Madras, their son
Jessica, Philip's wife
Major Hippisly Thomas, Philip's friend
Marion Yates, an employee at the Madras House
Eustace Perrin State, an American, a prospective buyer of the
Madras House
Miss Chancellor, and
Mr. Brigstock, also employees at the Madras House
Critique:
The Madras House is a dramatic work
still interesting in the contemporary
theater. A problem play of the type
popularized by Ibsen and Shaw at the turn of
the century, it attempts to deal
realistically with several related themes: the
contrast between sexual honesty and
sexual hypocrisy, the contrast between
bourgeois respectability and real honesty in
human dealings, the inevitability of social
change even in connection with a long-
established commercial institution like
the Madras House, and the contrast in all
personal relations between expressed
motive and real motive. As in his other
works, the playwright asked his
audiences to think about themselves and the
standards of the world which they at the
time were far too likely to take for
granted. If Granville-Barker's dramas
seem a little old-fashioned to some
persons today, the causes are simple: we
enjoy certain freedoms because the
characters on his stage talked about them
at length. Further, we have had full
experience of enjoying those freedoms
and find that pursuit of them may at
one and the same time free us from old
restrictions and plunge us into new ones,
ambiguities of human action that the
author of The Madras House did not
foresee.
The Story:
Henry Huxtable, his wife, and six
spinster daughters lived in dreary middle-
class respectability, supported by the
income from a great store, the Madras
House. Their lives were in sharp contrast
to that of the sales persons who were
required to "live in" at store dormitories
closely supervised to make sure that the
store was actually as respectable as it
seemed to be. Another owner was
Constantine Madras, Katherine Huxtable's
brother, who had retreated from England
and respectability and had lived for many
years in Moslem countries.
The time had come for the sale of
the Madras House; such a sale had been
necessitated by confusion in family affairs.
On an October Sunday, Philip Madras,
Constantine's son, heard that his father
had returned to England, and he was
distressed by this news of the reappearance
of the elderly black sheep. But this was
T*H5 M^pRAS HOUSE by Harley Granville-Barker. By permission of Field Roscoe & Co., Trustees
of the Estates of Harley and Helen Granville-Barker. Copyright, 1911, by Harley Granville-Barker.
Renewed. All rights reserved.
2161

not the only problem that Philip wished
to discuss with his uncle, Henry Hux-
table. The morale of the store had been
upset by the discovery that one of the
closely supervised girls at the store,
Marion Yates, was pregnant. It was
suspected that her betrayer was Mr.
Brigstock, another sales person, for he
had been seen kissing the disgraced girl.
The old immorality of Constantine—who,
it was soon learned, had lived as the
master of a harem in Arabia—and the current
immorality of Marion were threats to
what the Huxtables called decency.
First, the Marion Yates situation was
inquired into. It was immediately
apparent that the young woman would refuse
to name the father of her child. Instead,
she planned to bear it and bring it up as
her nephew or niece; the child, at least,
would not be affected by family pressures
for which the Huxtables stood.
Another problem that came up
concerned the prospective buyer of the store,
an American named State. Mr. State
distressed everyone by talking in excessively
naive terms. All his phrases—such as "the
Needs of the Gentler Sex" and "Woman's
Noble Instinct to Perpetuate the Race"—
seemed to come from his mouth in capital
letters; he was a grotesque representative
of an early stage of modern advertising.
Furthermore, he insultingly believed that
his methods were in advance of British
ones and that his presence in England
would change for the better the English
system of merchandising.
To State's unconscious hypocrisy and
to the self-conscious respectability of the
Huxtables, Constantine Madras opposed
himself and his own nature. At great
length he defended his own pattern of
life, one in which man was free to do
what he liked and in which woman
learned to like what man did. He pointed
out that Arabian culture had not been
feminized and intellectualized as, he
claimed, had happened in England. To
all such remarks, his hearers lent a
shocked ear.
A further complication arose when
Philip learned that he had a problem of
his own: his wife Jessica felt neglected
and was ready to fall in love with Philip's
best friend, Major Thomas. For the first
time Philip was forced to recognize that
his wife was a woman and an individual
as well as a wife. His reaction to Jessica's
problem was complicated by the fact that
he felt contempt for sentimentalities
displayed during his mother's fruitless
interview with her estranged husband
Constantine.
Philip's moderately respectable soul
was still more disturbed when he learned
that his father was the father of Marion
Yates's unborn child. But Constantine
did not blush at this revelation; he
merely demanded care and protection for
Marion and favored the company with
a discourse on English priggishness. But
Constantine, in turn, was distressed when
Marion refused any assistance from him.
Confused by her lack of social docility
and feminine meekness, Constantine
retreated to a cab and, eventually, to his
Arabian household.
Still unresolved was the relationship
between Philip and his wife. He finally
recognized her as a person. To please her
as well as himself, he gave up his interest
in the Madras House, leaving it to Mr.
State, the American. His plan was to talk
matters over with his wife and to engage
in activities useful to society. Both he and
Jessica found themselves united by a hope
that they could work together to improve
the conditions of a faulty society which
the sale of the Madras House had called
to their attention.
2162

THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)
Time: A little before noon in the spring of next year
Locale: The Chaillot District of Paris
First presented: 1945
Principal characters:
Countess Aurelia, the Madwoman of Chaillot
Mme. Constance, the Madwoman of Passy
Mlle. Gabrielle, the Madwoman of St. Sulpice
Mme. Josephine, the Madwoman of La Concorde
The Ragpicker
The President
The Baron
The Broker
The Prospector
In The Madwoman of Chaillot, Jean
Giraudoux orchestrates three of his most
constantly recurring themes: the
inscrutability of woman, the love of humanity,
and the abhorrence of materialism. For
one who is familiar with all of Girau-
doux's plays, the anti-war theme is
implied in the latter. Stylistically, Giraudoux
employs two of his favorite devices: the
fantastic parable and the duality of
character. The resulting impact of The
Madwoman of Chaillot is that it possesses a
remarkable unity of both form and idea,
the unifying theme being the writer's
love and faith in the triumph of the
human entity in a time of despair.
As in several of Giraudoux's other
plays, The Madwoman of Chaillot
extends into the realm of fantasy, leaving
irritating reality far behind. It differs
from his other plays, however, in that
it involves some forty acting parts and
depends to some extent upon mere
motion rather than upon typical plot
complications for its effect.
The basic framework of the plot is
simple. A mighty syndicate of financiers
wishes to exploit the untouched deposits
of oil under the streets of Paris, and
they ignore humanity, beauty, and truth
in the process. The free souls of Paris
oppose them and eventually triumph by
literally removing them from the scene.
In depicting the opposing forces in
the battle for humanity, Giraudoux has
weighted the scales in favor of the human
element. On the one side are Presidents,
Prospectors, Barons, Press Agents,
Brokers, and Ladies of the Street. On the
other side are the Waiter, the Little Man,
the Street Singer, the Flower Girl, the
Shoelace Peddlar, the Ragpicker, and
other folk. In the middle, and
significantly devoted to the gentle souls, is the
Madwoman of Chaillot, aided by her
compatriots, the Madwomen of Passy,
St. Sulpice, and La Concorde. The
capitalistic forces are stereotyr>es who
function as well-oiled machine y; they are
devoid of characteristics which would
set them apart or elicit for them the least
bit of empathic reaction. The people of
Paris are all recognizable types, but each
possesses some quality of individuality.
Their vocations are of little concern; what
matters is their love of life and mankind.
The situation is basically mad, for the
forces are utterly extreme.
The Madwoman tips the scales. She
is both mad and frighteningly sane. Hers
is an almost obligatory characterization,
and Giraudoux has constructed the fabric
of Countess Aurelia in such a fashion as
to envelop the viewer in the sheer logic
of her reasoning, making him captive
of her every move. At the same time
he suspends his belief in the situation
through its sheer madness, so that a
detachment from reality is effected.
(Giraudoux's plays usually abound in under-
2163

stated truths made in situations of
extreme agitation or tension.) He endows
Countess Aurelia with telling powers of
observation. Her comments are frequently
so simply and mercilessly clear and true
that we wish we might have said them
ourselves. But our sanity renders us
incapable of such guileless simplicity.
A less facile playwright than Girau-
doux might easily have succumbed to the
practice of constructing the parable with
idealized characters lacking reality and
acting within a metaphysical framework.
Or another writer might have developed
the situation realistically, carefully
couching his thesis among the intricacies of
plot and character relationships. Although
The Madwoman of Chaillot is not exactly
a compromise between these two
extremes, Giraudoux employs the best
techniques of both. In this play he shows the
value of revealing two levels of thought
within the same character.
Countess Aurelia's very insanity is
sane, for she is caught up in a moment
of fantastic ideals, of powerful and
inhuman forces, of incredible economic
stratagems which require sanity of a kind.
Success ignores life and beauty in a
headlong momentum toward some indefinable
goal. The mad countess has captured and
held her sanity in an attempt to love life
and beauty to the fullest. For this gentle
woman, time has stopped when life was
at its loveliest.
The Madwoman encounters the
menace in the form of the President, the
Baron, the Prospector, and the Broker at
a sidewalk cafe in the Chaillot district.
Her friends are all aware that something
terrible is afoot and inform her of the
plot to drill for oil beneath the streets.
The Prospector has sent his agent with a
bomb to destroy the city architect, the
only obstacle to the drilling. Pierre, the
young assassin, is rescued by the
Policeman as he is about to throw himself into
the river rather than carry out his task.
He is revived and convinced by the
Madwoman that life is really worth living.
It is apparent to the Madwoman that
the only way to combat the encroachment
of the materialistic interests is to
annihilate them. Because she and her friends
have little chance of opposing them if
commonly interpreted methods of justice
were used, she decides upon an infallible
plan and sends her confederates
scurrying about on errands to help her carry
it out.
She retires to her quarters in the Rue
de Chaillot where she will receive the
delegation of capitalists. They dare not
resist her invitation, for she has informed
them that a large deposit of oil rests under
her basement. To prove it, she has
prepared a sample; a bottle of mixed
kerosene and mange cure is waiting for the
Prospector, who professes to be able to
detect the existence of oil deposits by
merely sniffing the air.
Some years before, the Madwoman
had rescued a Sewer Man who promised
to show her a secret entrance from her
basement into the sewers of Paris. She
summons him now and he willingly
presses the stone concealing the entrance.
The other Madwomen, Mme. Constance,
who takes her invisible lap dog with her
everywhere; Mile. Gabrielle, who talks to
nonexistent friends; and Mme. Josephine,
who is an expert at jurisprudence because
her brother-in-law was a lawyer, all arrive
for a delightful tea scene. They are
indeed mad, but this in no way prejudices
the trial which follows.
Mme. Josephine is called upon to
conduct a court, for it is only just and proper
that the financiers have a fair hearing
before they are sent to oblivion. The
Ragpicker agrees to speak in their defense,
and a damning testimony it is, with
money at the root of this materialistic evil.
The verdict of the tribunal is unanimous;
the accused are guilty on all charges. The
Madwoman may proceed with the
extermination.
The guests begin to arrive, and in a
wonderful scene of comic irony each
group in turn is sent through the door
into the sewer. First come the Presidents,
next the Prospectors, then the Press
2164

Agents, and so on until all, like sheep,
have followed the infallible nose of the
Prospector down the dark stairway, never
to return again.
Immediately all the wrongs of the
world are righted. Giraudoux ends his
play with a paean to the Madwoman of
Chaillot and to life itself. The pigeons
fly again; the air is pure; the sky is
clear; grass sprouts on the pavements;
complete strangers are shaking hands.
Humanity has been saved, and the friends
of friendship thank the Madwoman, the
triumphant feminine force, who expresses
Giraudoux's philosophy in a simple
statement that any sensible woman can set
right in the course of a single afternoon
whatever is wrong in this muddled world.
2165

MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: New York
First published: 1893
Principal characters:
Maggie, a girl of the slums
Jimmy, her brother
Pete, Jimmy's friend and Maggie's lover
The Mother
Critique:
The importance of Maggie is primarily
historical, for it was the first novel to
deal realistically and straightforwardly
with the sordid life of the slums. It is,
therefore, the first naturalistic novel in
America of any real value, and in spite
of its many faults of style and structure
it gave rise to the naturalistic fiction of
our day. For this contribution to our
literature we owe Stephen Crane a great
debt.
and exciting. One nignt he took her
out to show her the night life of the
city. Maggie's wonder knew no bounds,
for to her the experience was the height
of luxury. On the doorstep she allowed
Pete to kiss her goodnight. Pete was
disappointed, but not discouraged. He
took Maggie out again. The next time
she surrendered and went to live with
him.
But Pete soon grew tired of Maggie,
and she was compelled to return home.
In furious indignation, her mother
ordered her out of the house. She had
done everything, the mother insisted, to
bring Maggie up to be a fine, decent girl.
She had been an excellent mother and
had spared no pains to keep her daughter
on the path of virtue. Now her daughter
would be dead to her. The neighbors
joined in, denouncing Maggie. Jimmy,
the seducer of other men's sisters, became
indignant. He and a companion went
to the bar where Pete worked, intent
upon beating him up. When they failed,
Jimmy contented himself by shrugging
his shoulders and condemning his sister.
Maggie was now homeless and
penniless. She went to see Pete, but he
sent her away, irritated and fearful lest
he should lose his job. She turned to
prostitution, plying her trade by night,
accosting poor and wealthy alike. But
she did not have much luck. One night
she walked forlornly and unsuccessfully
in the waterfront district. Resignedly she
MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS, by Stephen Crane. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc.
The Story:
In the slum section of New York
City, Maggie and her two brothers grew
up in the squalor and corruption, both
moral and physical, of that poverty-
stricken area. Her father usually came
home from work drunk, and her mother,
too, was fond of the bottle. The children
were neglected. When the drunken
parents ranted at each other, the children
hid in terror under the table or the bed.
Somehow Maggie managed to remain
untouched by that sordidness. Her
younger brother died. Jimmy, her older
brother, went to work after the father
died. He fought, drank, and had many
affairs with women. From time to time
he was hounded by some of the women,
who demanded support for themselves
and the illegitimate children he had
fathered. Jimmy brushed them aside.
When Jimmy brought his best friend
home with him, Maggie fell in love.
Pete, a bartender, was handsome, flashy,
2166

trudged on, toward the pier and the
black, murky depths of the river.
A short time later, Jimmy came home
from one of his prolonged absences.
Maggie, the mother wailed, was dead.
With the neighbors around her, she
sobbed and moaned. What the Lord had
given the Lord had taken away, the
neighbors told her. Uncomforted,
Maggie's mother shrieked that she forgave
her daughter; oh yes, she forgave
Maggie her sins.
2167

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Mann 0875-1955)
Type of plot: Philosophical chronicle
Time of plot: 1907-1914
Locale: Davos, Switzerland
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Hans Castorp, a German engineer
Joachim Ziemssen, his cousin
Settembrini, a patient at Davos
Naphta, Settembrini's friend
Clavdia, Hans' friend
Critique:
The Magic Mountain is a novel
concerned with perspectives of history and
philosophy in our time. In it the modern
age has become the International
Sanatorium Berghof high in the Swiss Alps,
and to this institution gravitate various
and conflicting currents of thought and
activity in the persons of a group of
invalids exiled by disease to a pinnacle
of the "magic mountain." The magic it
exercises in their lives is to cut them off
from calendar time. Time flows through
their days and years with quiet
nothingness and perceptions of reality stretch
into eternity. Modern ideologies and
beliefs are represented by characters like
the Italian humanist, the absolutist
Jewish Jesuit, a German doctor, a Polish
scientist, and hedonistic Mynheer Peeper-
korn. The magic mountain is the sick
world of Europe, and its people are
various aspects of the modern consciousness.
The Story:
Hans Castorp had been advised by his
doctor to go to the mountains for a rest.
Accordingly, he decided to visit his
cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who was a patient
in the International Sanatorium Berghof
at Davos-Platz in the mountains of
Switzerland. He planned to stay there
for three weeks and then return to his
home in Hamburg. Hans had just passed
his examinations and was now a qualified
engineer; he was eager to get started
in his career. His cousin was a soldier
by profession. His cure at the sanatorium
was almost complete. Hans thought;
Joachim looked robust and well.
At the sanatorium, Hans soon
discovered that the ordinary notions of time
did not exist. Day followed day almost
unchangingly. He met the head of the
institution, Dr. Behrens, as well as the
other patients, who, at dinner, sat in
groups. There were, for instance, two
Russian tables, one of which was known
to the patients as the bad Russian table.
A couple who sat at the latter table
had the room next to Hans. Through
the thin partitions, he could hear them—
even in the daytime—chase each other
around the room. Hans was rather
revolted, inasmuch as he could hear every
detail of their love-making.
There was another patient who
interested him greatly, a gay Russian
woman, supposedly married, named Clavdia
Cauchat. Every time she came into the
dining-room she would bang the door,
an act which annoyed Hans a great deal.
Hans also met Settembrini, an Italian, a
humanist writer and philosopher.
Settembrini introduced him to a Jew,
Naphta, who turned out to be a converted
Jesuit and a cynical absolutist. Because
the two men spent their time in endless
discussions, Settembrini finally left the
sanatorium to take rooms in trie village,
in the house where Naphta lodged.
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN by Thomas Mann. Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. By permission of the authof
nJid the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1927, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
2168

From the very first day of his
arrival, Hans felt feverish and a bit weak.
When his three weeks were almost up,
he decided to take a physical
examination. The examination proved that he
had tuberculosis. So he stayed on as a
patient. One day, defying orders, he
went out skiing and was caught in a
snowstorm. The exposure aggravated his
condition.
His interest in Clavdia was heightened
when he learned that Dr. Behrens, who
liked to dabble in art, had painted her
picture. Further, the doctor gave Hans
an X-ray plate of Clavdia's skeletal
structure. The plate Hans kept on his bureau
in his room.
Most of his free time he spent with
Joachim or with Settembrini and
Naphta. The Italian and the Jesuit were given
to all sorts of ideas, and Hans became
involved in a multitude of philosophical
discussions on the duration of time, God,
politics, astronomy, and the nature of
reality. Joachim, who was rather
humorless and unimaginative, did not enjoy
those talks. But Hans, since he himself
had become a patient at the sanatorium,
felt more at home and was not quite so
attached to Joachim. Besides, it was
Clavdia who interested him.
On the occasion of a carnival, when
some of the restrictions of the sanatorium
had been lifted, Hans declared his love
for Clavdia. She thought him foolish
and refused his proposal. The next day
she left for Russia. Hans was in despair
and became listless. Joachim grew even
more impatient with the progress of his
cure when the doctor told him that he
was not yet well and would have to
remain on the mountain for six more
months. Wanting to rejoin his regiment,
Joachim, in defiance of the doctor's
injunctions, left the sanatorium. The
doctor told Hans that he could leave too;
but Hans knew that the doctor was angry
when he said it, and he remained.
Before long Joachim returned, his
condition now so serious that his mother
was summoned to the sanatorium. He
died shortly afterward. Clavdia Cauchat
also returned. She had been writing to
the doctor and Hans had heard of her
from time to time. But she did not return
alone. As a protector, she had found
an old Dutchman named Mynheer Peep-
erkorn, an earthy, hedonistic planter from
Java. Hans became very friendly with
Peeperkorn, who soon learned that the
young engineer was in love with
Clavdia. The discovery did not affect their
friendship at all, a friendship that lasted
until the Dutchman died.
For a time the guests amused
themselves with spiritualist seances. A young
girl, a new arrival at the sanatorium,
claimed that she was able to summon
anyone from the dead. Hans took part
in one meeting and asked that Joachim
be called back from the dead. But Dr.
Krokowski, the psychologist at the
sanatorium, was opposed to the seances and
the sessions broke up. Then Naphta and
Settembrini got into an argument. A
duel was arranged between the two
dialecticians. When the time came, the
Italian said he would fire into the air.
When he did so, Naphta became more
furious than ever. Realizing that
Settembrini would not shoot at him, Naphta
turned the pistol on himself and pulled
the trigger. Dying, he fell face
downward in the snow.
Hans Castorp had come to the
sanatorium for a visit of three weeks. That
stay turned out to be more than seven
years. During that time he saw many
deaths, many changes in the institution.
He became an old patient, not just a
visitor. The sanatorium became another
home in the high, thin air of the moun-
taintop. For him time, as measured by
minutes, or even years, no longer existed
Time belonged to the flat, busy world
below.
Then an Austrian archduke was
assassinated. Newspapers brought the world
suddenly to the International Sanatorium
Berghof, with news of war declared and
troop movements. Some of the patients
remained in neutral Switzerland. Other*
2169

packed to return home. Hans Castorp
said goodbye to Settembrini, who was
his best friend among the old patients,
and the disillusioned humanist wept at
their parting. Hans was going back to
Germany to fight. Time, the tragic hour
of his generation, had overtaken him at
last, and the sanatorium was no longer
his refuge. Dodging bullets and bombs
in a front line trench, he disappeared
into the smoky mists that hid the future ci
Europe.
2170

MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA
Tyfe of work: History
Author: Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
Time: 1620-1698
Locale: New England
First published: 1702
Cotton Mather's Magnolia Christi
Americana; or The Ecclesiastical History
of New England from Its First Plantingy
in the Year 1620, Unto the Year of Our
Lord 1698 is commonly referred to, and
dismissed, as a fairly authoritative and
substantial picture of the Puritan
theocracy in New England. It is a history of
Puritanism in the New World and much
of it is true; but it is the product of a
dogmatic, neurotic, tyrannical clergyman
who failed to discriminate between facts
and legends, the laws and the
superstitions, of the early colonial period. Mather
gives as much prominence and weight
to accounts of witches and repentant
criminals as he does to the biographies
of church leaders, and the entire history
is conditioned by the belief that God's
will was done in early New England.
If the book is taken not as a history but
as an impassioned product of the Puritan
character in all of its dedication and its
blindness, the experience of reading the
book becomes a time-experiment by which
one can gaze into the working of a mind
three hundred years removed from our
own. Great writers do not allow such
strange, backward glimpses; their
comments have a timelessness that makes
their minds contemporary. But Mather
is no great writer, and when he speaks
he reveals himself as his times made him:
pedantic, intemperate, and superstitious,
yet an educated, religious man. From
such personalities much of the distinctive
character of America developed, and if
the historian uses the Magnalia as source
material for a study of the early
American character and its formative influence,
more will be gained than if the book is
taken as simply an account of New
England Calvinism in its beginnings.
Mather was pastor of the North
Church in Boston only after the book
appeared; during its writing he was
assistant minister. He was a prolific writer,
and critics generally agree in recognizing
the quantity of his work without granting
any worth, other than ordinary, to its
literary quality.
The Magnalia is divided into two
volumes; the first contains three books,
the second, four. The first book, titled
"Antiquities," reports, in Mather's words,
"the design where-on, the manner
wherein, and the people where-by the several
colonies of New England were planted."
The second book contains the lives of the
gbvernors and the names of the
magistrates of New England, and the third
presents the lives of "sixty famous
divines." Volume II begins with an
account of the history of Harvard
College, proceeds to an account of the "acts
and monuments" of the New England
churches, their discipline and principles,
then records a number of "illustrious
discoveries and demonstrations of the Divine
Providence"—including "sea-deliverances
. . . remarkables done by thunder . . .
an history of criminals, executed for
capital crimes; with their dying speeches,"
—and concludes with "the wonders of the
invisible world, in preternatural
occurrences. . . ." The last book, "A Book
of the Wars of the Lord," deals with
early religious controversies, with the
"molestations given to the churches of
New England by that odd sect of people
called Quakers," with impostors who
pretended to be ministers, and with an
account of the Indian wars.
The historical account of the discovery
and founding of New England begins
with a critical consideration of- the claims
of various countries as discoverers of the
New World. Mather finally gives the
2171

Cabots of England the credit for the
discovery of the North American continent,
but he declares that regardless of who
first discovered America, it was the
English who did the most for the new
colonies.
Mather writes of the early settlements
in Florida and Virginia and of their
difficult days. He then provides a
dramatized recital of the voyage of the
Mayflower. The landing at Cape Cod is taken
by Mather as a sign of God's providence;
had the voyagers landed somewhere along
the Hudson River, he declares, they
would have been massacred by the
Indians.
Mather's story of the founding of the
various colonies is enlivened by zestful
and partly imaginary accounts of Indian
raids, of storms and droughts, and of
quarrels with England and among the
colonists themselves. The difficulties of
the early settlers are interpreted as signs
of God's providence working to produce
men of strong faith in a new land. To
the history of the establishment of the
colonies and of churches within the
colonies Mather attaches an "ecclesiastical
map" which is a list of the
congregations and ministers in the Plymouth,
Massachusetts, and Connecticut colonies
in 1696. The churches were erected,
Mather writes, "on purpose to express
and pursue the Protestant Reformation."
After some "historical remarks" on
Boston, a lecture given in 1698 and
designed to warn the Bostonians that their
town had fallen on evil ways and that
only with the help of God could it be
returned to its former state of power and
piety, Mather presents the lives of the
governors of the colonies, commencing
with William Bradford, governor of
Plymouth colony. Other governors whose
lives are included are John Winthrop,
governor of Massachusetts colony;
Edward Hopkins, the first governor of
Connecticut colony; Theophilus Eaton,
governor of New Haven colony; John
Winthrop (jhe son), governor of
Connecticut and New Haven, and other
successors.
His stories of the clergy are so
punctuated with moralizing passages and
anecdotes that it is difficult to distinguish one
divine from another. Despite Mather's
pious tone, it is possible to appreciate the
courage and religious devotion of the
colonial ministers.
Mather is at his informative best in
recording the decisions of the early
churchmen concerning matters of faith.
He objected to the opinion that the
churches of New England simply
followed the doctrines professed in
England. A copy is given of the "Confession
of Faith" agreed upon at Boston on May
12, 1680. The predominant feature of the
document is the declaration of reliance
on Holy Scripture, which is taken to be
the word of God, interpretable by
reference to the Scripture itself. Man's
corruption is definitely admitted and is
related to the fall of Adam, as seduced by
Satan. Christ is the mediator between
God and man. Man has free will, but
since he does not always will the good,
he is a sinner, to be saved only by the
grace of God. The laws of God are for
the direction of man, but they do not
bind God Himself. The report of these
points of dogma is supplemented by an
account of the practices of the churches
concerning such matters as church
membership, election of officers, ordination,
and the communion of churches with one
another.
Mather becomes more human, almost
gay, in the section titled "Remarkables
of the Divine Providence." He begins
with sea-deliverances: "I will carry my
reader upon the huge Atlantick, and,
without so much as the danger of being
made sea-sick, he shall see 'wonders in
the deep.'" The first story concerns
Ephraim Howe, who lost two sons
during a voyage from New Haven to Boston,
was buffeted by storms for weeks, was
shipwrecked and forced to live on gulls,
crows, and ravens, and was rescued only
2172

after his friends had died and he had
been isolated on an island near Cape
Sables for over three months. Other tales
of deliverances after prayer include the
story of a man preserved on the keel of
an overturned boat, an incident of "twelve
men living five weeks for five hundred
leagues in a little boat/' and several
incidents of rescue at sea involving the
calming of storm-tossed waters, the changing
of wind, or the chance passage of a
rescuing boat.
To his accounts of sea-deliverances
Mather adds stories of other acts of God
—of flocks of birds arriving to end a
plague of caterpillars, of the relief of
droughts and floods, of persons rescued
from drowning or other dangers. Mather
was impressed by wounds which would
have been fatal, in his opinion, had not
Divinity intervened. He tells, for
example, of Abigail Eliot:
One Abigail Eliot had an iron struck
into her head, which drew out part of
her brains with it: a silver plate she
afterwards wore on her skull where the
orifice remain'd as big as an half crown.
The brains left in the child's head
would swell and swage, according to
the tides; her intellectuals were not
hurt by this disaster; and she hVd to be;
a mother of several children.
In the hope of correcting ordinary
sinners, Mather included a number of
dying speeches of criminals. A verbatim
report is given of the conversation
between Hugh Stone, who cut his wife's
throat, and a minister. The conversation
was lengthy, but the criminal continued
his confession of sins in a discourse and
prayer almost as long as the
conversation. He directed his remarks to "young
men and maids," and warned that "If you
sav, when a person has provok'd you, 1
will kill him;' 'tis a thousand to one but
the next time you will do it."
In writing of witches, Mather had few
reservations concerning the truth of the
charges against them. He believed in
molestations from evil spirits, as directed
by Satan, and he regarded the evidence
of such possession as beyond any
reasonable doubt. He wrote of women who
claimed to have made pacts with the
devil, who rode on broomsticks and put
curses on others, causing endless trouble.
Execution was the proper punishment
for such persons, according to Mather—
although he did admit that there was "a
going too far in this affair."
Perhaps the wonder is that the
Christian spirit survived the passionate
dogmatism and superstitions of colonial days.
Mather's Magnolia is a curious and
fascinating hodgepodge of rrstory,
didacticism, and fatal error combining to give
an authentic reflection of a seventeenth-
century American mind.
2173

THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION
Type of work: Novel
Author: Lloyd C. Douglas (1877-1951)
Type of plot: Quasi-mysticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Detroit and Europe
First puhlished: 1929
Principal characters:
Dr. Wayne Hudson, a famous brain surgeon
Helen Brent Hudson, the doctor's second wife
Joyce Hudson, the doctor's daughter and Helen's school friend
Robert Merrick, a physician
Nancy Ashford, superintendent at the Hudson Clinic
Critique:
The author accomplishes in The Mag-
nificient Obsession one of the most
difficult problems in novel-writing, the
exposition of an idea, and he makes an
excellent case for the theory of extending
personality and gaining moral power by
doing good for other individuals. The
motive behind the novel is, of course,
to prove that Christian teachings can be
applied to modern life, even in the case
of the selfish materialist.
The Story:
The staff at the Hudson Clinic was
worried about the head of the hospital,
Dr. Wayne Hudson. The doctor had
suddenly become nervous and haggard,
a bad condition for an eminent
practicing surgeon, and his staff tried to advise
the doctor to take six months away from
his work. The doctor himself surprised
his staff by announcing that he was about
to marry his daughter's school friend,
Miss I felen Brent. The couple were
married within a short time and went
to live at the doctor's lakeside cottage.
Soon afterward a shocking tragedy
occurred at the lake. Dr. Hudson drowned
because the inhalator that might have
saved his life had been dispatched across
the lake to resuscitate a wealthy young
playboy, Robert Merrick.
While he was recuperating from his
experience, young Merrick felt that the
doctors and the nurses at the Hudson
clinic resented him. He did not yet
know that it was at the expense of the
life of the hospital's chief surgeon that
he himself was alive. He questioned the
superintendent of the clinic, Nancy
Ashford, who had been in love with her
chief, Doctor Hudson, but Miss Ashford
did not give him a satisfactory answer.
Later, overhearing a conversation,
Merrick discovered why the people at the
hospital seemed to despise him. He talked
again to Nancy Ashford, who told him
the only way he could ever make amends
would be to take Dr. Hudson's place in
life by becoming a great surgeon.
After weeks of pondering on the idea
of going to medical school, Merrick
decided that he would try to fill Dr.
Hudson's place. When he went back to
Nancy Ashford to tell her of his plans,
she told him the story of the doctor'*
many philanthropies. She also gave him
a book which the doctor had written in
code. After many days and nights of
perseverance, the young man managed
to break the cipher. When he had done
so, it seemed to him that the doctor,
whom he had come to look upon as an
ideal, had been a lunatic, for the book
was a strange, mystic tract about doing
good. From Nancy Ashford he learned
that the deceased doctor had been a
great mystic, believing that his gift as a
THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION by Lloyd C. Douglas. By permission of the author and the publishers
Houghton Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1929, by Houghton Mifflin Co.
2174

surgeon came to him from what he called
the Major Personality. That power was
earned by doing good unknown to others,
philanthropy that would aid the recipient
in leading a valuable life of service.
During the next few years Merrick
attended the state medical school. One
night, as he sat studying, he suddenly
felt a call to go to a night club where
he knew Joyce Hudson, the doctor's
daughter, was to be. After rescuing her
from a drunken scene, he took her home.
There he met the doctors widow.
That semester Merrick almost failed
at medical school. Discouraged with his
own efforts, he decided to experiment
with the knowledge he had gained from
the dead surgeon's manuscript. He aided
a fellow student, Dawson, who was about
to leave school because he lacked funds.
Immediately he felt renewed hope and
plunged into his work with enthusiasm.
Helen Hudson, the doctor's widow,
had gone to Europe, where she remained
three years. Near the end of that time
she discovered that the cousin who was
handling her affairs was dishonest.
Needing funds, she wrote to Nancy Ashford
to ask if her stock in the Hudson Clinic
could be sold. Nancy told Merrick, now
a doctor at the clinic. He sent Helen
twenty-five thousand dollars and sold
some of the stock for her. Toward the
end of her stay in Europe Helen met
Mrs. Dawson, wife of the medical
student whom Merrick had helped through
medical school. Merrick had asked Mrs.
Dawson to learn something of Helen's
financial losses so that he might put her
affairs in order. After telling Mrs.
Dawson her troubles, Helen discovered an
envelope Mrs. Dawson had addressed to
Merrick. Helen promptly disappeared.
Merrick went to the cousin who was
managing Helen's financial affairs. The
man had robbed Helen of about one
hundred thousand dollars. Merrick made
good the loss and sent the man out of
the country, bringing no charges against
him because he was related to Helen.
Before the cousin left, he learned
Merrick's theory of personality projection
and made up his mind to lead an honest
life.
Tired from overwork, Merrick took
a vacation in the country for several
weeks. Then he returned to his
laboratory and began a program of hard work.
His meals were returned to the kitchen
almost untouched. His labors were at
last successful, for he perfected a scalpel
which automatically cauterized by
electricity. The device opened a new field
of brain surgery because it prevented
hemorrhage as it cut into the tissue.
About Christmas Helen returned to
the United States. In Detroit she went
to her trust company and asked to see
the shares of stock which they held in
her name. As she suspected, they had
been transferred from Merrick. When
she left the bank, she did not know
whether to feel thankful or insulted.
Helen went from the bank to the
Hudson Clinic, where she asked to see
Merrick immediately. Her confusion was
even greater when he told her he could
not take back the money. He tried to
explain the transfer of her stock, but
she was in no mood for explanations.
As he took her to the door they met her
stepdaughter. Joyce complicated the tense
situation by proposing a theater party
for the next day. In order not to create
gossip, both Helen and Merrick agreed
to go to dinner and the theater
afterward. As he handed Helen into the
taxi, Merrick managed to murmur that
he loved her.
The next evening at dinner Merrick
asked Helen not to tell all she had done
for a needy Italian family at Assisi. He
added that the philanthropy would
thereby lose its value if the story were told.
The following summer Merrick went
to Europe to visit eminent surgeons in
Vienna and to demonstrate his
cauterizing scalpel to them. While he was in
Paris he heard that Helen had been
injured in a train wreck near Rome.
Hurrying to Rome, he operated on the injured
woman and saved her life. Then, in
2175

quixotic fashion, he left Rome before
anyone could tell her who had
performed the delicate operation. Helen
guessed Merrick's identity, however, from
the few words he had mumbled in her
presence. Weeks later, when she disr
covered that he was planning to visit
her, Helen, ashamed of her previous
attitude toward his interest in her affairs,
arranged to leave for the United States.
But Merrick flew to Le Havre ahead of
her, arranged for their marriage, and met
her on the dock. When she saw him
waiting, she walked into his arms. She
did not have to be told why he had
come.
2176

THE MAHABHARATA
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Heroic epic
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Ancient India
First transcribed: Fifth century B.C. GO
Principal characters:
King Dhritarashtra, father of the Kauravas
King Pandu, his brother and father of the Pandavas
YuDHISHTHIRA,
Bhima,
Arjuna,
Nakula, and
Sahadeva, the five sons of King Pandu
DaAUPADi, wife of the Pandavas
Duryodhana, oldest son of Dhritarashtra
Critique:
This tremendous poetic effort is one
of two national epics of the Hindu
peoples, the second being the Ramayana. In
its present form in Sanskrit, the Mahab-
harata runs to some 200,000 verses in
couplets (slokas), in eighteen sections or
books, though there is credible evidence
to assume that earlier versions were
considerably less extensive. Of the present
version, only about one-third to one-
quarter of the whole relates to the central
story, that of a civil war between two
great royal houses of India. Not a unified
epic poem in the sense that the Iliad and
the Odyssey were conceived, the Mahab-
harata is a massive collection of
fascinating heroic and mythological legends,
sermon-like essays, worldly and spiritual
advice to the warrior class on appropriate
conduct for military prowess and
reverential duties, material constituting codes
of law, popular apothegms and proverbs,
and moral tales for the edification of its
reader audience. Authorship of the poem
is nominally attributed to Vyasa, but
since this name means "the arranger" or
"the reviser," it seems evident that the
identity of the original poet or poets has
been long since lost. From the state of
the poem as it now exists, it is readily
apparent that succeeding minstrels, copyists,
and zealous adapters have worked
conscientiously to include records, fables,
favorite stories of mythological characters,
rules for conduct, and the like as a means
of preserving whatever they deemed most
appealing and valuable for their
contemporaries and posterity to know and
understand about the glorious past. For these
reasons the Mahabharata is both a history
of prehistoric times and a compendium
of materials that throw light on the
religious, social, political, ethical, and moral
ideals and practices of an old and
memorable people.
The Story:
Among the descendants of King Bha-
rata (after whose name India was called
Bharata-varsha, land of the Bharatas)
there were two successors to the throne of
Hastinapura. Of these, the elder,
Dhritarashtra, was blind and gave over the reins
of government to his younger brother
Pandu. But Pandu grew weary of his
duties and retired to hunt and enjoy
himself. Again Dhritarashtra took control,
aided by the advice and example of his
wise old uncle, Bhishma. Upon Pandu's
death, his five sons were put under the
care of his younger brother, who had one
hundred sons of his own.
At first the king's household was
peaceful and free from strife, but gradually it
became apparent that Pandu's sons were
far more capable of ruling than any of
Dhritarashtra's heirs. Of the Pandavas,
the name given to the five descendants
2177

of Pandu, all were remarkably able, but
the oldestr Yudhishthira, was judged most
promising and therefore was chosen heir-
apparent to the throne of the old blind
king. To this selection of their cousin as
the future king, the king's own sons took
violent exception. Accordingly, they
persuaded their father to allow the Pandavas
to leave the court and live by themselves.
From a trap set by the unscrupulous Du-
ryodhana, leader of the king's sons, the
five brothers escaped to the forest with
their mother. There they spent some time
in rustic exile.
In the meantime King Drupada had
announced that the hand of his daughter,
Princess Draupadi, would be given to the
hero surpassing all others in a feat of
strength and skill, and he had invited
throngs of noblemen to compete for his
daughter's hand. In disguise, the
Pandavas set out for King Drupada's court.
More than two weeks were spent in
celebrating the approaching nuptials of
the princess before the trial of strength
which would reveal the man worthy of
taking the lovely princess as his wife. The
test was to grasp a mighty bow, fit an
arrow, bend the bow, and hit a metal
target with the arrow. Contestant after
contestant failed in the effort to bend the
huge bow. Finally Arjuna, third of the
sons of Pandu, came forward and
performed the feat with little effort to win
the hand of the princess. But in curious
fashion Princess Draupadi became the
wife of all five of the brothers. At this
time, also, the Pandavas met their cousin
on their mother's side, Krishna of Dva-
raka. This renowned Yadava nobleman
they accepted as their special counselor
and friend, and to him they owed much
of their future success and power.
Hoping to avert dissension after his
death, King Dhritarashtra decided to
divide his kingdom into two parts, giving
his hundred sons, the Kauravas, one
portion and the Pandavas the other. Thus it
came about that Dhritarashtra's sons ruled
in Hastinapur and the five sons of Pandu
in Indraprastha.
The dying king's attempt to settle
affairs of government amicably resulted in
peace and prosperity for a brief period.
Then the wily Duryodhana, leader of
the Kauravas, set another trap for the
Pandavas. On this occasion he enticed
Yudhishthira, the oldest of the brothers,
into a game of skill at dice. When the
latter lost, the penalty was that the five
brothers were to leave the court and
spend the next twelve years in the forest.
At the end of that time they were to
have their kingdom and holdings once
again if they could pass another year in
disguise, without having anyone
recognize them.
The twelve-year period of rustication
was one of many romantic and heroic
adventures. All five brothers were
concerned in stirring events; Arjuna, in
particular, traveled far and long, visited the
sacred stream of the Ganges, was courted
by several noble ladies, and finally
married Subhadra, sister of Krishna.
When the long time of exile was over,
the Pandavas and Kauravas engaged in a
war of heroes. Great armies were
assembled; mountains of supplies were
brought together. Just before the fighting
began, Krishna stepped forth and sang
the divine song, the Bhagavad-Gita, in
which he set forth such theological truths
as the indestructibility of the soul, the
necessity to defend the faith, and other
fundamental precepts of the theology of
Brahma. By means of this song Arjuna
was relieved of his doubts concerning the
need to make his trial by battle.
The war lasted for some eighteen
consecutive days, each day marked by fierce
battles, single combats, and bloody
attacks. Death and destruction were
everywhere—the battlefields were strewn with
broken bodies and ruined weapons and
chariots. The outcome was the
annihilation of all the pretensions of the Kauravas
and their allies to rule over the kingdom.
Finally Yudhishthira came to the throne
amidst great celebrations, the payment of
rich tribute, and the ceremonial horse
sacrifice.
2178

Later the death of their spiritual and
military counselor, Krishna, led the five
brothers to realize their weariness with
earthly pomp and striving. Accordingly,
Yudhishthira gave up his duties as ruler.
The five brothers then banded together,
clothed themselves as hermits, and set out
for Mount Meru, the dwelling place of
the gods on high. They were accompanied
by their wife Draupadi and a dog that
joined them on their journey. As they
proceeded, one after the other dropped
by the way and perished. At last only
Yudhishthira and the faithful dog re-
mained to reach the portals of heaven.
But when the dog was refused admission
to that holy place, Yudhishthira declined
to enter without his canine companion.
Then the truth was revealed—the dog was
in reality the god of justice himself, sent
to test Yudhishthira's constancy.
But Yudhishthira was not content in
heaven, for he soon realized that his
brothers and Draupadi had been required
to descend to the lower regions and there
expiate their mortal sins. Lonely and
disconsolate, he decided to join them until
all could be united in heaven. After he
had spent some time in that realm of
suffering and torture, the gods took pity
on him. Along with his brothers and
Draupadi, he was transported back to
heaven, where all dwelt in perpetual
happiness.
2179

THE MAID OF HONOUR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Philip Massinger (1583-1640)
Type of plot: Tragicomedy
Time of plot: The Renaissance
Locale: Palermo and Siena, Italy
First presented: c. 1623
Principal characters:
Roberto, King of Sicily
Ferdinand, Duke of Urbin
Bertoldo, a natural brother of Roberto and a Knight of Malta
Gonzaga, a Knight of Malta, general to the Duchess of Siena
Astutio, a counselor of state to the King of Sicily
Fulgentio, the favorite of King Roberto
Adorni, a Sicilian gentleman, in love with Camiola
Aurelia, Duchess of Siena
Camiola, the "Maid of Honour"
Critique:
In The Maid of Honour Massinger
wrote a play which, though by no means
great, contains perhaps two memorable
characters and a certain amount of
dramatic poetry of at least the second rank.
The figure of Camiola has been much
admired for her noble unselfishness; and
the self-sacrificing lover, Adorni, has also
received a measure of praise. Although
the play contains many of the improba*
bilities common to the drama of the
period, the author's skill in dramatic
construction is apparent. As Arthur Symons
phrased it, Massinger was so unfortunate
as to appear "at the ebb of a spent wave,"
after the great Elizabethans; nevertheless,
his plays have experienced a certain
revival of popularity as the result of the
renewed interest in the Jacobean and
Caroline dramatists.
The Story:
At the court of Roberto, King of Sicily,
at Palermo, where the arrival of an
ambassador from the Duke of Urbin was
momentarily expected, the conversation of
those waiting had turned to discussion of
the sinister influence of Fulgentio, the
king's unworthy favorite, and of the
soldierly qualities of Bertoldo, the king's
illegitimate half-brother. Upon the arrival
of the ambassador, the political situation
was explained: the Duke of Urbin, in
love with the Duchess of Siena but
rejected by her, had attacked her
territories. On the verge of defeat at the hands
of the Sienese, he was appealing to Sicily
for aid on the basis of a treaty of mutual
assistance. King Roberto, however,
maintained that the treaty had been rendered
void by the aggressive action of the duke
and that Sicily was not obligated to come
to the rescue. This pacifistic attitude was
abhorrent to the king's half-brother
Bertoldo, who in a fiery speech accused the
king of cowardice, claimed that Sicily's
honor demanded intervention, and urged
the nobles to follow him to the relief of
the duke. The king, angered by the
speech, replied that any might volunteer
who wished, but that they would then
cease to be his subjects and could expect
no protection from him if fortune went
against them.
On that same day, at the house of
Camiola, the maid was being plagued by
the suit of one Sylli, a man of almost
unbelievable conceit. He, however, left upon
the arrival of Bertoldo, who had come to
say farewell and to declare his own love.
But in spite of her evident love for
Bertoldo, Camiola rejected his suit because,
as a Knight of Malta, he was vowed to
celibacy, nor could she be moved bv his
2180

suggestion that a dispensation could be
obtained. He left for the war with the
determination to have honor as his only
mistress.
The next day King Roberto learned of
Bertoldo's departure with his volunteers
and was displeased at the news. Fulgentio,
however, was delighted, for with Bertoldo
gone he could pursue his own wooing of
Camiola. On his arrival at her house he
behaved in an overbearing manner toward
all present, particularly her other suitors,
Sylli and Adorni. Sylli fainted, but
Adorni was prepared to fight until
restrained by Camiola. In a series of frank
and witty speeches, Camiola told
Fulgentio exactly what she thought of him
and outlined his despicable character. He
left, vowing to avenge himself by ruining
her reputation by spreading scandal about
her.
Meanwhile, in the territories of Siena,
the forces of the Duke of Urbin were still
faring badly. Bertoldo and his Sicilian
volunteers had arrived, but they could not
change the fortunes of war. In the
ensuing battle they were captured. When
Gonzaga, the Sienese general, recognized
Bertoldo as a Knight of Malta, he tore
the cross from his prisoner's cloak, for
Bertoldo had broken the vows of the order
by attacking the duchess in an unjust
war. Further, when Astutio came as
ambassador from King Roberto to disclaim
his sovereign's part in the attack, Gon-
zaga agreed to accept the usual ransom for
all the Sicilian nobles except Bertoldo,
for whom he demanded fifty thousand
crowns. Astutio bore the news that the
king would pay nothing for his half-
brother and had, in fact, confiscated the
unfortunate man's estates. Unable to pay
the ransom, Bertoldo faced a lifetime of
imprisonment.
In Sicily, Adorni had challenged
Fulgentio for his treatment of Camiola but
the cowardly favorite had declined the
challenge. On Camiola's birthday, in the
midst of the celebration, Adorni entered
bleeding. He had been wounded in the
fight that he had finally forced uron
Fulgentio, but he had compelled the
latter to sign a paper repudiating the
slanders he had been spreading about
Camiola. Adorni then confessed his We for
Camiola, but she rejected him with the
admonition that he must not aspire so
high. Yet when, through the agency of
the ransomed Sicilian noblemen, she
learned of Bertoldo's plight, she was ready
enough to send Adorni with the fifty
thousand crowns to ransom the man she
loved. Adorni promised to execute the
commission faithfully, although he felt
that he would not survive for long, and
departed for Siena to bring happiness to
his rival. Bertoldo, in ecstasies at the
goodness of Camiola, gladly agreed to
sign the contract of betrothal that she
had demanded. It was his tragedy,
however, to be sent for by the victorious
Duchess of Siena, who had heard of his
martial prowess. Almost instantly she fell
violently in love with him: and he, after
a short struggle against the sin of
ingratitude, fell equally in love with her
and promised to marry her.
While this surprising event was in
progress at Siena, an equally unexpected
change of fortune was taking place in
Sicily. The king and his favorite arrived
at Camiola's house; the former, with
seeming sternness, rebuked her for
disobedience in refusing Fulgentio's suit and
for urging Adorni to attack him. Camiola
defended her conduct and accused
Fulgentio of having slandered her. King
Roberto then ordered Fulgentio out of
his sight, threatened him with death, and
praised the behavior of Camiola. Thus the
villain was discomfited.
Camiola, informed by the faithful
Ado-ni of Bertoldo's perfidy, made plans
accordingly. At a reunion in the palace
at Palermo, the king forgave his half-
brother and consented to his marriage to
the Duchess of Siena. But Camiola
entered and, after promising Fulgentio to
try to secure his peace with the king,
asked the monarch for justice on Bertoldo.
Producing the contract of betrothal that
he had signed, she made such a noble
2181

plea for her rights that even the love-
smitten duchess acknowledged her
superiority and yielded Bertoldo to her,
while he admitted his falseness and
confessed himself branded with disloyalty
and ingratitude. Camiola forgave him and
announced her approaching marriage.
The entrance of a group of friars
provided another surprise for the gathering.
Camiola announced that she had
determined to become the bride of the Church;
by entering a religious order she was to
become, in another sense, the Maid of
Honour. As her last act, she gave Adorni
a third of her estate and returned to
Bertoldo the cross of the Knights of Malta,
bidding him to redeem his honor by
fighting against the enemies of the faith. As
she departed for the convent, King
Roberto stated admiringly that she well
deserved her title of Maid of Honour.
2182

THE MAID'S TRAGEDY
Type of work: Drama
Authors: Francis Beaumont (1584M616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Type of plot: Revenge tragedy
Time of plot: The legendary past
Locale: Rhodes
First presented: c. 1610
Principal characters:
The King of Rhodes
Melantius, a soldier
Evadne, his sister
Amintor, his noble young friend
Calianax, a lord of Rhodes
Aspatia, his daughter, betrothed to Amintor
Critique:
Although The Maid's Tragedy is
marred by sentimentality and by
improbabilities, it is a tightly constructed play
that never falters in its development from
beginning to end. The plot was original
with Beaumont and Fletcher; it is not
surprising, however, since both men were
educated playwrights, that scholars have
found scenes which echo Shakespeare
and Valerius Maximus. Evadne bids fair
to become an unforgettable female
Machiavellian, but her repentance and her
suicide make her, in the end, little more
than a shadowy counterpart of Lady
Macbeth.
The Story:
Melantius, a military hero, returned
to Rhodes from the wars. There he found
himself involved in a difficult situation.
The King, ostensibly to show his
gratitude, had given the hand of Evadne,
Melantius' sister, to Amintor, a young
courtier and a dear friend of Melantius.
The difficulty lay in the fact that Amintor
had already promised himself to Aspatia,
daughter of Calianax, an old lord.
Preparations were being made for
elaborate nuptial festivities. Aspatia
grieved. In the royal banqueting hall, just
before the presentation of the marriage
masque, Melantius encountered Calianax,
who insulted him. The King's entrance
checked animosities. A masque followed,
after which the King, wishing the
wedded couple goodnight, asked Amintor to
father a boy who would grow up to
defend the kingdom.
As Evadne prepared to retire, Aspatia,
who was present, could not share the
general enthusiastic anticipation of the
marriage night, and she expressed her
belief that she would soon be dead of a
broken heart. Amintor, coming into the
apartment received a kiss from Aspatia
before she departed. He suffered
momentary misgivings for having forsaken
her, but he forgot her when he saw
Evadne. His bride, as he soon discovered,
did not appear to be interested in the
consummation of their marriage. In fact,
she told Amintor that she hated him and
would never share his bed. Threatened
by Amintor, she finally confessed that
she had already given herself to the King.
Amintor was deeply injured when she
revealed to him that the marriage was
merely a means to make legitimate any
children born of that affair. Determined
to make the marriage seem to be normal,
however, he slept in her bedchamber, on
the floor.
Aspatia, meanwhile, returned to her
home, where she warned her maids never
to trust their hearts to men and
recounted classical stories of women who, much
to their distress, gave their hearts away.
Old Calianax, always a coward at heart,
vowed to be valiant in avenging the slight
to his daughter.
2183

The next morning Amintor, emerging
from the bedchamber, encountered
Melantius, whom he puzzled with
ambiguous remarks about the virtues of the
soldier's family. Later Amintor's assumed
manner aroused the King's suspicions; in
private he accused Evadne of
faithlessness. To prove her steadfastness to the
King, she provoked Amintor into
revealing that the marriage had not been
consummated. Amintor was overcome by the
enormity of the way he had been treated,
but he refused to draw his sword on the
King. Still, he vowed to avenge the
insult somehow.
Melantius, meanwhile, pondered on
Amintor's peculiar behavior. Dismissing
a foolish challenge from Calianax, he
encountered Amintor, whom he
persuaded to unburden his heart of its troubles.
When Amintor revealed that Evadne was
the King's mistress, Melantius, incapable
of believing Amintor's story, drew his
sword and threatened to kill his friend.
When Amintor seemed to welcome death,
Melantius, convinced, sheathed his sword
and swore to avenge his sister's disgrace.
But Amintor, who felt that it was he
who should do the avenging, challenged
Melantius to fight. Melantius refused,
calmed the youth, and promised that the
two could effect a scheme to right the
wrongs done them.
Melantius directed his brother Di-
philus to prepare his armor for battle.
He also asked Calianax, the castellan of
Rhodes, to deliver the garrison to him.
The old man, promising permission
within the hour, hastened to report the
rebellion to the King.
Melantius went to Evadne and
confronted her with his knowledge of her
transgression. Upon asking her to name
her seducer, she pretended to be
insulted and suggested that he tend to his
military affairs. When Melantius threatened
to kill her, she confessed the truth. Then,
realizing the extent of her disgrace, she
promised Melantius that she would kill
the King. She also expressed her remorse
to Amintor and begged him for
forgiveness. Amintor kissed her and cautioned
her never to sin again.
Meanwhile, at a dinner in the palace,
Calianax told the King of Melantius'
scheme to kill him and to escape to the
fortress of Rhodes. The King, doubting,
called Amintor into the dining chamber,
where with leading questions he tested
Amintor and Evadne, as well as
Melantius, who accompanied them. Melantius
maintained his poise. When the King
disclosed his knowledge of the plot,
Melantius continued to dissemble and stated
that Calianax was an irresponsible,
foolish old man. The King was convinced
that Melantius was innocent. When
Melantius, in asides, importuned Calianax
about the fortress, the old man tried to
convince the King that Melantius was
making overtures under his very eyes,
but the ruler suggested that someone put
the weak-minded old man to bed. The
thoroughly confounded lord submitted
reluctantly to Melantius' demands for
the fortress.
The night for revenge having come,
Diphilus took command of the fortress.
Amintor, encountering Melantius, asked
his assistance in killing the King.
Melantius, fearful lest his plans fail, reminded
Amintor that the King's person was
sacred.
Evadne, going to the King's
bedchamber, tied the sleeping monarch to the
bed. Awaking, the King thought at first
that his bondage was a pretty joke of
Evadne's, but he was filled with
apprehension when he saw her draw a knife.
Reciting his villainy toward her, she
stabbed him to death; then she forgave
him.
Soon afterward, the death of the King
having been discovered, the King's
brother Lysippus and his followers went to the
citadel, where Melantius and his people
were in control. Melantius affirmed his
loyalty to Rhodes, but declared that if
he were not given amnesty he could very
easily destroy the city. Lysippus and Me-
2184

lantius agreed to a general amnesty.
Meanwhile Aspatia, disguised as a
man, entered Amintor's apartment, where
she told Amintor that she was Aspatia's
long-lost brother, returned to avenge his
sister. In her disguise, Aspatia challenged
Amintor to a duel. When he refused, she
struck him. Goaded to action, Amintor
drew and wounded Aspatia.
Evadne, bloody dagger in hand,
entered and told Amintor that she had
killed the King. When she asked
Amintor to recognize her as his wife, he,
appalled, refused and left her. Evadne
stabbed herself to death. Aspatia,
meanwhile, had revived long enough to reveal
her true identity to Amintor, who
declared his unworthiness and his shame
for the way that he had treated her. When
Aspatia died, Amintor, having nothing
more to live for and wishing to be with
his true love, stabbed himself.
Melantius, entering, was so overcome
by the sight of his dead sister and his
dying friend that he attempted to take his
own life. Calianax, upon recognizing his
daughter, the dead Aspatia, was
reconciled to Melantius. Lysippus, the new
ruler, looked upon the scene as an object
lesson to kings to be chaste.
2185

MAIN STREET
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: c. 1910-1920
Locale: Small Midwestern town
First published: 1920
Principal characters:
Carol Kennicott, an idealist
Dr. Will Kennicott, her husband
Critique:
To puncture the egos of smug, self-
satisfied Americans who consider their
home towns flawless, Sinclair Lewis wrote
Main Street, a novel which deals with
the life of Gopher Prairie, a fictitious,
small, and supposedly typical Midwestern
town in Minnesota. Carol Kennicott is
intent upon reforming not only her
husband, a doctor in Gopher Prairie, but also
the town. Lewis speaks blunt truths
about the inadequacies of small-town life,
but his satire is rarely vicious; and if the
reader sees himself or his town reflected
in the author's pages, he cannot help
admitting that much that Lewis says is
true, uncomfortable as truth may be.
The Story:
When Carol Milford was graduated
from Blodgett College in Minnesota, she
determined to conquer the world.
Interested in sociology, and village
improvement in particular, she often longed
to set out on a crusade of her own to
transform dingy prairie towns to
thriving, beautiful communities. When she
met Will Kennicott, a doctor from
Gopher Prairie, and listened to his praise
of his home town, she agreed to marry
him. He had convinced her that Gopher
Prairie needed her.
Carol was essentially an idealist. On
the train, going to her new home, she
deplored the run-down condition of the
countryside and wondered about the
future of the northern Middle West.
Will did not listen to her ideas
sympathetically. The people were happy, he
said. Through town after town they
traveled, Carol noting with sinking heart
the shapeless mass of hideous buildings,
the dirty depots, the flat wastes of prairie
surrounding everything, and she knew
that Gopher Prairie would be no
different from the rest.
Gopher Prairie was exactly like the
other towns Carol had seen, except that
it was a little larger. The people were
as drab as their houses, as flat as their
fields. A welcoming committee met the
newlyweds at the train. To Carol, all
the men were alike in their colorless
clothes; over-friendly, over-enthusiastic.
The Kennicott house was a Victorian
horror. But Will said he liked it.
Introduced to the townsfolk at a party
held in her honor, Carol heard the men
talk of motor cars, train schedules, "fur-
riners," and praise Gopher Prairie as
God's own country. The women were
interested in gossip, sewing, and cooking,
and most of them belonged to the two
women's clubs, the Jolly Seventeen and
the Thanatopsis Club. At the first
meeting of the Jolly Seventeen, Carol brought
wrath upon her head when she stated
that the duty of a librarian was to get
people to read. The town librarian
staunchly asserted that her primary trust
was to preserve the books.
Carol did many things which were to
cause her great unhappiness. She hired
a maid and paid her the over-generous
sum of six dollars a week. She gave
a party with an Oriental motif.
Sometimes she even kicked off a slipper under
MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis. By permission of the author and the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., lac
Copyright, 1920, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1948, by Sinclair Lewis.
2186

the table and revealed her arches. The
women frowned on her unconventional
behavior. Worse, she redecorated the
old Kennicott house and got rid of the
mildew, the ancient bric-a-brac, the dark
wallpaper. Will protested against her
desire to change things.
Carol also joined the Thanatopsis
Club, for she hoped to use the club as
a means of awakening interest in social
reform. But the women of Gopher
Prairie, while professing charitable
intentions, had no idea of improving social
conditions. When Carol mentioned that
something should be done about the poor
people of the town, everyone firmly
stated that there was no real poverty in
Gopher Prairie. Carol also attempted to
raise funds for a new city hall, but no
one could see that the ugly old building
needed to be replaced. The town voted
against appropriating the necessary funds.
Will Kennicott bought a summer
cottage on Lake Minniemashie. There Carol
enjoyed outdoor life and during the
summer months almost lost her desire for
reform. But when September came she
hated the thought of returning to Gopher
Prairie.
Carol resolved to study her husband.
He was well thought of in the town, and
she romanticized herself as the wife of
a hard-working, courageous country
doctor. She fell in love with Will again on
the night she watched him perform a
bloody but successful operation upon a
poor farmer. But Carol's praise of her
husband had little effect. Will was not
the romantic figure she had pictured. He
accepted his duties as a necessary chore,
and the thought that he had saved the
life of a human being did not occur to
him. His interest in medicine was
identical with his interest in motor cars.
Once more Carol turned her attention
to Gopher Prairie.
Carol, trying to interest the
Thanatopsis Club in literature and art, finally
persuaded the members to put on an
amateur theatrical. But enthusiasm soon
waned. Carol's choice of a play, Shaw's
Androcles, was vetoed, and The Girl
from Kankakee put in its place. Carol
considered even that choice too subtle for
Gopher Prairie, but at least the town's
interest in the theater had been revived.
After three years of marriage, Carol
discovered that she was pregnant.
Almost immediately the neighborhood
became interested in her condition. When
her son was born, she resolved that some
day she would send little Hugh away
from Gopher Prairie, to Harvard, Yale,
or Oxford.
With a new son and the new status
of motherhood, Carol found herself more
a part of the town, but she devoted nine-
tenths of her attention to Hugh and had
little time to criticize the town. She
wanted a new house, but she and Will
could not agree on the type of building.
He was satisfied with a square frame
house. Carol had visions of a Georgian
mansion, with stately columns and wide
lawns, or a white cottage like those at
Cape Cod.
Then Carol met a tailor in town, an
artistic, twenty-five-year-old aesthete, with
whom she imagined herself in love. She
often dropped by his shop to see him,
and one day Will warned her that the
gossip in town was growing. Ashamed,
Carol promised she would not see him
again. The tailor left for Minneapolis.
Carol and Will decided to take a trip
to California. When they returned three
months later, Carol realized that her
attempt to escape Gopher Prairie had
been unsuccessful. For one thing, Will
had gone with her. What she needed now
was to get away from her husband. After
a long argument with Will, Carol took
little Hugh and went off to Washington,
where she planned to do war work. But
hers was an empty kind of freedom. She
found the people in Washington an
accumulation of the population of
thousands of Gopher Prairies all over the
nation. Main Street had merely been
transplanted to the larger city.
Disheartened by her discovery, Carol had
too much pride to return nome.
2187

After thirteen months, Will went to
get her. He missed her terribly, he said,
and begged her to come back. Hugh
was overjoyed to see his father, and
Carol realized that inevitably she would
have to return to Gopher Prairie.
Home once more, Carol found that
her furious hatred for Gopher Prairie
had burned itself out. She made friends
with the clubwomen and promised
herself not to be snobbish in the future.
She would go on asking questions—she
could never stop herself from doing that
—but her questions now would be asked
with sympathy rather than with sarcasm.
For tne first time she felt serene. In
Gopher Prairie she felt at last that she
was wanted. Her neighbors had missed
her. For the first time Carol felt that
Gopher Prairie was her home.
2188

MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Hamlin Garland (1860-1940)
Time: Late nineteenth century
Locale: The Middle West
First published: 1891
In 1887, Hamlin Garland traveled from
Boston to South Dakota through farming
country he had not seen in three years,
to visit his mother and father, whom he
had not seen in six. According to his own
account, the trip was a revelation.
Although he had been brought up on a
farm, he had never realized how wretched
the life of the farmer was. The farther
west he traveled, the more oppressive
became the bleakness of the landscape and
the poverty of its people. When he
reached his parents' farm and found his
mother living in hopeless misery,
Garland's depression sank into bitterness, a
mood which inspired a series of short
stories about farm life in the Middle
West, the book titled Main-Travelled
Roads.
One of these stories, "Up the Coolly,"
re-creates the mood of Garland's trip
under circumstances slightly similar in some
respects. Howard McLane, after years
spent traveling with his own theatrical
troupe, returned to the West for a
surprise visit with his mother and brother.
He found them living in poverty on a
small, unproductive farm, the family
property having been sold to pay off a
mortgage. Although his mother and his
sister-in-law greeted him with warmth,
Grant, his brother, soon made it plain
that he blamed Howard for the loss of the
farm, that Howard, had he shared his
apparent wealth, could have saved the
farm and spared his mother a great deal
of misery. Howard's attempt to win the
friendship of his brother resulted only in
alienation until Howard finally admitted
his selfishness and neglect and offered to
buy the farm back. The brothers were
reconciled, but the story ends in despair
with Grant's refusal of assistance.
Not many of Garland's stories end on
so despondent a note; in fact, most of
them end hopefully, and some happily.
But none of Garland's principal characters
is spared a bitter sense of failure, though
most of them overcome it. Thus, in "A
'Good Fellow's' Wife," Jim Sanford lost
all the savings of the farmers who had
invested in his bank. In "A Branch
Road," Will Hannon lost the beautiful
girl he loved and regained her only when
she was prematurely old and wasted.
And in "Under the Lion's Paw," Tim
Haskins was forced to pay double for a
farm because he himself had doubled its
value by hard work.
Even in the stories which are lighter in
tone, the characters are made to taste of
the bitterness of life. Thus, in "The
Creamery Man," which is about a young
man's carefree courtship, Claude
Williams won not Lucindy Kennedy, the
lovely daughter of a prominent farmer,
but Nina Haldeman, the unrefined
daughter of an immigrant. And in "Mrs.
Ripley's Trip," Gran'ma Ripley made a
journey back East where she had been
born, but not without a sense of guilt for
leaving her husband, even for so short a
time.
In addition to reflecting the bitterness
which Garland himself felt, many of the
stories set forth a disillusioning contrast
between the farm life he remembered and
the reality he found when he returned
after a long absence. "The Return of a
Private," for instance, pictures the return
of a Civil War soldier to his farm.
Expecting the farm to be as prosperous as
he had left it, Private Smith found it
"weedy and encumbered, a rascally renter
had run away with his machinery . . .
his children needed clothing, the years
were coming upon him, he was sick and
emaciated. . . ." In "God's Ravens,"

Robert Bloom, who had moved to the
country because he felt stifled by city life,
went through an apprenticeship of miser)'
before the country people finally accepted
him and made him feel at home.
It is possible, however, to
overemphasize Garland's disillusionment; practically
all the stories in Main-Travelled Roads
have a hopeful ending in that the
characters' love for the land and their trust in it
are ultimately justified. It is clear that
Private Smith by hard work will restore
his farm to its former prosperity. Robert
Bloom discovers that the cause of his
discontent is within himself, not in the
hearts of his farmer neighbors. Tim Has-
kins, robbed by one man, is set on his
feet by another. It is true that Garland's
realistic portrayal of hardship and poverty
did much to shatter any romantic illusions
about an American pastoral idyl, but its
somber tone was not enough to discredit
the traditional view of the farmer as a
doughty, virtuous frontiersman. Rather.
Garland's accomplishment was to expose
the pathos, perhaps tragedy, of people
who felt the futility and injustice of farm
life, but who were unable to change that
life and so accepted it with fortitude and
resignation.
Main-Travelled Roads is more than a
social document. No less a figure than
William Dean Howells recognized that
it was important in the development of a
new American literature. In an essay
which was reprinted as an introduction
to later editions of Main-Travelled Roads,
he commended Garland for the social
significance of his work and then went on
to praise his "fine courage to leave a fact
with the reader, ungarnished and
unvarnished, which is almost the rarest trait
in an Anglo-Saxon writer, so infantile and
feeble is the custom of our art. . . ."
Singled out for special praise was the
ending of "A Branch Road," in which
Will Hannon persuaded Agnes Dingman
to leave her husband and the farm to lead
a life of comfort and ease. Such an
ending Howells deemed immoral but
justifiable, since for these characters it was
probable and realistic. Howells* judgment
was sound. It is for Garland's contribution
to the rise of American realism as well as
for his social commentary that his works
are still read.
2190

MAJOR BARBARA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Time: Early twentieth century
Locale: London
First 'presented: 1905
Principal characters:
Sir Andrew Undershaft, a munitions tycoon
Lady Britomart Undershaft, his domineering wife
Barbara, their older daughter, a major in the Salvation Army
Sarah, their younger daughter
Stephen, their son, a correct young man
Adolphus Cusins, a professor of Greek
Charles Lomax, Sarah's suitor
Snobby Price,
Rummy Mitchens,
Bill Walker, and
Peter Shirley, members of the lower classes
In writing Major Barhara, Shaw faced
essentially the same problems that had
confronted the earliest English dramatists,
the authors of the medieval miracle and
mystery plays. Like those writers, Shaw
considered drama to be only a means, not
an end, and like them he used drama as
a means of educating the great ignorant
public. But the problems confronting
Shaw were considerably more formidable
than those posed by the dramatization of
Biblical stories. Instead of stories which
were intrinsically dramatic and which
provided ready-made plots, Shaw
dramatized themes: philosophical themes, moral
themes, social, economic, historic, and
even biological themes, most of which
were intrinsically non-dramatic and un-
entertaining. No one but a college
sophomore or a genius would have dared inflict
on a theater audience, intent only on an
evening's entertainment, the doctrines of
Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, or, for that
matter, Ernest Belfort Box. This is not
to deny that earlier dramatists had
successfully woven philosophical themes into
their plays. But in Shaw's plays the theme
is not merely an integral part of the
characters and action; as often as not it is a
topic of conversation which the
characters, sitting in their parlors or standing on
the streets, discuss and explore.
Shaw's problem, then, was clear-cut:
to create characters who were so
interesting and lively that the audience would
not mind listening to them preach. For
Shaw's characters do preach, and
nowhere quite so vociferously as in Major
Barhara.
Major Barhara is a sermon. The
subject is salvation of society and salvation
of the human soul; the text, blessed are
the poor. As might be expected, Shaw's
message is diametrically opposed to the
lesson taught by Christian ethics. Shaw
believed that the poor were unblessed.
Since poverty was obviously the source
of sin, no poor man could possibly hope
to enter the kingdom of heaven. More
important to Shaw, perhaps, was the fact
that poverty was also the source of crime.
To eliminate poverty, then, was a social
as well as a moral imperative.
A play built on such a theme could
easily have sunk either into the depths
of naturalism or drifted into the zone of
platitudinous propaganda. Instead, since
Shaw was the author, the play turned out
to be outrageously funny. In fact, Major
Barhara is one of the funniest plays Shaw
wrote and therefore one of the most
effective.
As in all Shaw's plays, the focus is on
a conflict between the forces of
conventionality and the power of a superior
being—the Shavian hero. Ironically, since
2191

Shaw was a Socialist, the hero, Andrew
Undershaft, is a multimillionaire
capitalist, a manufacturer of munitions. Pitted
against him is his daughter Barbara, a
major in the Salvation Army. Undershaft
is the apostle of Shaw's secular morality.
Realizing that poverty breeds social
discontent and thus constitutes a threat to
capitalism, he uses his immense power to
eliminate poverty, at least among his own
workers. Barbara he recognizes to be a
superior person possessed of true, but
misguided, moral energy. She has deluded
herself into thinking that the converts
she wins through her work in the
Salvation Army have truly reformed, that the
Army truly wins souls to the kingdom of
God. Undershaft undertakes to convert
her. On the other hand, Barbara deplores
her father's profession, believing that he
is dedicated to the destruction rather than
the salvation of mankind. She
undertakes to convert him.
The battle is one-sided, short, and
decisive. Undershaft merely has to show
Barbara that he, a dealer in death and
destruction, can buy the Army's good
graces for the price of a donation. He
shows that he and others like him—a
distiller, for instance—provide the
financial backing without which the Army
would collapse. Crushed by her father's
cynicism and what she considers the
Army's hypocrisy, she turns in her
uniform.
The play ends on a note of sardonic
optimism. Undershaft's destruction of
Barbara's faith is only a preliminary step;
he must now convert her to his own
creed. This conversion he accomplishes
by taking Barbara and the rest of his
family on a tour of his factory and Peri-
vale St. Andrews, the town in which his
workers live. The town turns out to be
a workingman's paradise. Instead of the
misery and squalor which Barbara
expects, she finds prosperity and sanitation.
Realizing at last that it is impossible to
save hungry men's souls, she resolves to
devote her energies to saving the souls of
the well-fed.
Directly involved in this struggle for
Barbara's soul is her suitor, Adolphus
Cusins, a professor of Greek, who, to
please Barbara, neglects his studies to play
the bass drum in the Salvation Army
band. Cusins is important, too, in the
thematic structure of the play because
he is the third member of the triumvirate
which is to save society. Undershaft,
following the tradition of his predecessors
in the munitions business, disinherits his
own son Stephen and adopts Adolphus as
his protege and heir. To Undershaft's
power and Barbara's moral fervor,
Adolphus adds intellect. In this combination,
presumably, lay Shaw's hope for the
salvation of society.
The minor characters serve both to
act out the message of the play and to
provide much of the humor. They are
divided into two classes: rich and poor.
The poor class is represented by the
rascals and reprobates who frequent
Barbara's Salvation Army shelter. Of these,
by far the most typical are Snobby Price
and Rummy Mitchens, both of whom
feign a desire for spiritual sustenance and
testify to their conversion to Christianity
in return for free meals. The most
pathetic is Peter Shirley, who at forty-five
has been thrown out of work because
he has a streak of gray in his hair. A
disciple of Thomas Paine, he swallows
his pride to accept a free meal only when
he is starving. By far the meanest and
funniest is Bill Walker, who comes to
the shelter to pommel his girl friend
because she deserted him when she was
converted. A bully and ruffian, he
provides the funniest scene of the play when,
after blackening the eye of one of
Barbara's young female assistants, he is
shamed into an excruciating sense of guilt
by Barbara's reproofs. His role as a foil
to Undershaft is apparent when Bill tries
to atone for the black eye by giving a
donation to the Army.
The idle rich are represented by
Undershaft's wife, son, younger daughter,
and the latter's suitor. Lady Britomart
and her son Stephen reek of conventional
2192

morality. A typical domineering mother,
Lady Britomart abhors her husband's
immorality but does not hesitate to capitalize
on it, accepting his money to ensure her
children's comfortable place in society.
Stephen, though cowed at first by his
mother, declares his independence toward
the end of the play and is rewarded with
a career in journalism by his amused
father. Charles Lomax, Sarah's suitor,
demonstrates the utter frivolity and
vacuity of the rich. Although these are stock
characters borrowed from Oscar Wilde's
drawing-room comedies, they are vigorous
and funny.
Shaw's success in creating such
thoroughly delightful characters is the key
to the success of Major Barbara. Without
the relief of the humor which each and
every character provides, the moralizing
and preaching would be tedious. It is by
no means certain, however, that Shaw
converted anyone to his brand of secular
morality by using such a dramatic
technique. The play is so amusing that it is
difficult to take the theme seriously. But
in the process of entertaining his
audiences, Shaw was able at least to acquaint
them with serious ideas. Surely he did
not expect to accomplish more.
2193

THE MALCONTENT
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Marston (1576-1634)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Thirteenth century
Locale: Genoa, Italy
First presented: 1604
Principal characters:
Giovanni Altofronto, disguised as the Malcontent, sometime Duke of
Genoa
Pietro Jacomo, Duke of Genoa
Mendoza, a court minion
Ferneze, a young courtier
Aurelia, Pietro Jacomo's wife
Maria, Altofronto's wife
Bilioso, an old Marshal
Maquerelle, an old panderer
Celso, a friend of Altofronto
Emilia, and
Biancha, Amelia's attendants
Critique:
Although Marston called The
Malcontent a comedy, it has more the
qualities of a tragi-comedy. The pandering in
connection with cuckoldry and the court
toadies are treated as comedy in the
Elizabethan sense; but the principal issue of
the play, restoration of the rightful, and
right, state leadership, is not amusing;
nor is it handled as humor in this play.
In style, The Malcontent is unsatisfying
when compared with other Elizabethan
dramas. Marston seems to have tried to
impress his audience with his facility of
language, and his use of descriptive phrases
and figures of speech is extended to the
point of monotony. Also, the play comes
more to life in scenes implying tragedy
than in those purporting comedy.
Marston dedicated The Malcontent to Ben
Jonson, his close friend and sporadic
literary feudist. John Webster collaborated
to the extent of developing additions for
presentation on the stage by the King's
Players. ,
The Story:
Duke Altofronto had been banished
from Genoa and a political coup, staged
by Mendoza with the help of the
Florentines, had brought weak Pietro Jacomo to
power through his marriage to Aurelia,
the daughter of a powerful Florentine
leader. Altofronto, disguised as the
Malcontent, prepared to bide his time until
the state wearied of Pietro. His devoted
duchess, Maria, waited faithfully in
prison for his return. Celso acted as
Altofronto's secret informant on matters of
state.
As the Malcontent, Altofronto was
described as a likable person of marked
intelligence and straightforward honesty.
He would not flatter as others did. On
the negative side, however, he was
described as more monster than man, more
discontented than Lucifer in his Fall, a
man living on the vexations of others and
at variance with his own soul. This
mixture, making him seem most
unpredictable, served Altofronto well in plotting
against his adversaries. This description
of the former duke came from Pietro,
strangely attracted to the erratic
individual known as the Malcontent. It was
Altofronto who told Pietro that he was
being cuckolded by Mendoza. This
condition, Altofronto declared, was most
unnatural in that a cuckold was a creation
of woman and not of God. Altofronto
2194

used such means to torment Pietro and to
inflame him against Mendoza.
Incensed by Altofronto's report of
Mendoza's relationship with Aurelia, Pietro
confronted the minion with accusations
and threats to kill him, but Mendoza
placated the duke with disparagement of
women and their habits, absolving
himself of Pietro's accusations by telling him
that Ferneze was the offender against the
duke's marital rights. To prove his point
he suggested that Pietro break into Au-
relia's room that night; then, should
Ferneze try to escape, Mendoza would kill
him. The situation resolved itself as
Mendoza planned. Ferneze was discovered in
Aurelia's room and was, as the minion
believed, killed in his attempt to flee.
Later, when Mendoza and Aurelia
were alone, they planned Pietro's murder.
Aurelia promised to use her influence to
have Mendoza made Duke of Genoa.
Unknown to them, however, Ferneze had
not been killed. Wounded, he attracted
the attention of Altofronto, who revived
and hid the young courtier.
Knowing that Pietro had gone hunting,
Mendoza hired the Malcontent to pursue
and murder the duke. Taken in by
Altofronto's apparent willingness to aid him
in his villainy, Mendoza outlined the
remaining steps to his ultimate goal. With
Pietro removed and his alliance with
Aurelia established, he would be ready to
make his real bid for power. The
banishment of Aurelia would be an easy step
because he would publicize her infidelity
to the Florentines. Then he intended to
marry Maria, Altofronto's imprisoned
wife, whose friends would strengthen
Mendoza and his faction.
Assured by Mendoza's admission that
he did not love Maria, that she too was
only a pawn to him, Altofronto took heart
in his assurance that Maria was still true
to him, as Celso had reported. Altofronto
suggested to Mendoza that they hire some
wretch or holy man to report that he had
seen Pietro, bereft of reason because of
his wife's infidelity, throw himself into
the sea. Also, he offered to act as
Mendoza's emissary in winning Maria's favor.
Instead of murdering Pietro, Altofronto
divulged to him the plot against his life
and provided him with the disguise of the
hermit who was to report his suicide.
Pietro, in disguise, gave a vivid
description of his own anguished demise as he
lamented Aurelia's unfaithfulness.
Mendoza immediately banished Aurelia. He
then instructed Altofronto to negotiate
with Maria.
Duped by the earnestness of the
supposed hermit, Mendoza sent him after
Altofronto, with orders to poison the
Malcontent at supper. When Altofronto
returned for a letter that would admit
him to Maria's quarters in the citadel,
he in turn received Mendoza's
instructions to poison the hermit.
Altofronto and Pietro, encountering
banished Aurelia, found her in abject
grief because of her indiscretions and her
love for Pietro. Altofronto eased the hurt
of Pietro's inadequacy in his relationship
with Aurelia by reminding him that many
great men have had unfaithful wives.
Among them he named Agamemnon,
King Arthur, and Hercules.
Maria's faithfulness to Altofronto was
proved beyond doubt when Maquerelle
and the disguised Altofronto waited upon
her to deliver Mendoza's offer of
marriage. In answer to their proposal and
the promise of great riches if she would
accept Mendoza, she announced that she
already had a husband. Banished or in
power, present or absent, Altofronto was
still her true lord.
Mendoza's only remaining threat to
power was Altofronto, who in the
disguise of the Malcontent knew too much
of the usurper's malice. To be rid of him,
Mendoza planned to use the contents of
one of the two boxes given him by his
intended victim. These boxes, according
to the giver, contained fumes that on
being breathed would either put the
person to sleep for twelve hours or kill him
suddenly. Mendoza, not knowing the
contents of either box, used the one that
merely put Altofronto into a sleep re-
2195

sembling death. Later he appeared at a
masked ball given by Mendoza to
celebrate the deaths he had planned. In the
meantime, spurned by Maria, Mendoza
accused her of murdering the hermit—the
disguised Pietro—whom Altofronto had
reported dead. Condemned to die, the
faithful wife welcomed death, a fate
better than damnation in being married to
the usurper.
At the ball Altofronto chose Maria as
his partner. Revealing his identity, he
asked her to remain composed so that
others would not recognize him. Pietro
danced with Aurelia, who, repenting of
her past deeds, vowed her undying
devotion to him. Then, at the signal of a
musical flourish, Mendoza's three
supposed victims—Altofronto, Pietro, and
Ferneze—revealed themselves, to the
consternation of Mendoza and the joy of the
assemblage. Immediately acclaimed,
Altofronto was restored to his rightful place
as Duke of Genoa.
Denying Mendoza's plea to live long
enough to do penance for his sins,
Altofronto ordered the minion to take his own
life. Aurelia and Pietro were given the
blessing of the court. Maquerelle was
allowed to carry on her pandering in the
suburbs. Bilioso, a sycophant who chose
to stand with the wrong rather than fall
with the right, was summarily dismissed
from any further court favor. And
Altofronto and Maria were reunited in
happiness.
2196

THE MALTESE FALCON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: San Francisco
First published: 1930
Principal characters:
Sam Spade, detective
Brigid O'Shaughnessy, his client
Casper Gutman, her employer
Wilmer, Gutman's bodyguard
Joel Cairo, Gutman's one-time agent
Miles Archer, Spade's partner
Floyd Thursby, Brigid's murdered accomplice
Critique:
The Maltese Falcon is a detective
novel of the hard-boiled school. Its
distinction lies in the fact that the detective
himself becomes involved in crime
through a large bribe. Written in racy,
colloquial language, the book pretends
to no more than pure entertainment, but
it is a classic example of its type.
The Story:
Brigid O'Shaughnessy went to the
office of Sam Spade and Miles Archer,
detectives, to ask them to trail a Floyd
Thursby. Archer, who undertook the
job, was killed the first night. About
an hour later Thursby himself was killed
in front of his hotel. The police were
inclined to suspect Spade of the murder
of his partner, for it was known that
Iva Archer had been wanting a divorce
so that she could marry Spade.
Brigid left word at Spade's office that
she wanted to see him. She had changed
hotels because she was afraid. She said
she could not tell Spade the whole story,
but that she had met Thursby in the
Orient and that they had arrived in
San Francisco the week before. She
said she did not know who killed Thurs-
by.
When Spade returned to his office,
Joel Cairo was waiting for him. He
asked Spade where the statuette of the
black bird was and offered five thousand
dollars for the recovery of the ornament.
That night Spade was trailed by a small
young man in a gray overcoat and cap.
Spade eluded his pursuer long enough to
slip into Brigid's hotel unseen. There
he learned that Brigid was connected in
some way with a mysterious black bird,
an image of a falcon. Later she went
with Spade to his apartment, to meet
Cairo. She told Cairo that she did not
have the prize, that he would have to
wait possibly a week for its return.
When the police arrived to question
Spade about his relations with Iva, they
discovered Cairo and Brigid in the
apartment. Spade introduced Brigid as an
operator in his employ and explained that
he had been questioning Cairo about the
murders of Archer and Thursby. After
Cairo and the police had gone, Brigid
told Sam that she did not know what
made the falcon so important. She had
been hired to get it away from a
Russian named Kemidov in Constantinople.
Next morning, before Brigid was
awake, Spade went out to get groceries for
breakfast and incidentally to search her
hotel room for the falcon, which he failed
to find. He was certain that Brigid knew
where the falcon was. Brigid was afraid
THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1929, 1930, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
2197

of what Cairo might do, however, and
Spade arranged for her to stay a few
days at the home of his secretary.
Because, in explaining to Cairo how
Thursby was killed, Brigid had outlined
the letter G in the air, Spade knew that
there was some special significance
attached to the letter. He again saw the
young man trailing him in the corridor
of a hotel and went up to him. Spade
said that someone would have to talk,
and G might as well know it. Shortly
afterward a Mr. Gutman called and asked
Spade to go see him. Spade told him
that Cairo was offering him ten thousand
dollars, not five, for the return of the
falcon. Gutman laughed derisively; the
bird was obviously worth an enormous
fortune. Angry because Gutman would
tell him no more, Spade left, saying he
would give Gutman until five-thirty to
talk. * *
From a taxi driver Spade learned that
Brigid had gone to the Ferry Building
and not to his secretary's house and that
she had stopped on the way to buy a
newspaper. When he returned to Gut-
man's hotel, he learned that the falcon
was an old ornament, made in Malta,
encrusted with precious gems and covered
with black enamel for protection.
Gutman had traced it to the Constantinople
home of Kemidov, where Gutman's
agents had got it. Now Gutman was
wondering where it was.
Next day Spade searched Cairo's hotel
room and found that the ships' schedules
had been torn out of a newspaper of the
day before. He bought a copy of the
paper and saw that the ship La Paloma
had arrived from Hongkong.
Remembering that Brigid had mentioned the Orient,
he associated her going to the Ferry
Building with the arrival of the ship.
Later he learned that Cairo had checked
out of his hotel room. Meanwhile Spade
had gone aboard the La Paloma and had
learned that Gutman, Cairo, the strange
young man, and Brigid had had a long
conference with Jacobi, the captain.
While Spade was telling his secretary
of his discoveries, a man came in, held
out a bundle to Spade, and dropped over
dead. Spade opened the package and
discovered the falcon. Spade was sure
that the man was Jacobi. He had his
secretary call the police while he checked
the package in a station nearby. The
key he mailed to his post-office box. He
then went to answer a distress call from
Brigid, but she was not in her room.
Instead, Spade found Gutman's
daughter, who sent him to the suburbs on a
wild-goose chase. When he returned to
his apartment, he met Brigid waiting
outside, obviously frightened. Opening
the door, he found Gutman, the young
man, and Cairo waiting for him.
Spade realized that his wild-goose
chase had been planned to get him out of
the way long enough to give these people
a chance to find Jacobi before he
returned. Since they were all together,
Spade said he would give them the
falcon in return for ten thousand dollars
and someone on whom to blame the
murders. He suggested the young man,
whose name was Wilmer, as the suspect.
Spade explained that if Wilmer were
hanged for the murder of Thursby, the
district attorney would drop the case,
taking it for granted that Jacobi had been
murdered by the same person. Gutman,
sure that Thursby had killed Archer,
finally consented to make Wilmer the
victim.
Gutman produced ten one-thousand-
dollar bills. Then Spade called his
secretary and asked her to get the claim check
from the post-office and redeem the
falcon. After she had delivered the
package to Spade's apartment, Gutman
untied it and, to make sure he had the
genuine falcon, began to scratch away
the enamel. The falcon was a lead
imitation. Kemidov had tricked him. Spade
gave back nine thousand dollars.
Then he called the police and told them
that Wilmer had killed Jacobi and
Thursby.
2198

Knowing that Gutman would tell
about his and Brigid's part in the plot,
Spade made Brigid confess to him that
she had drawn Archer into an alley that
first night and had killed him with a
pistol borrowed from Thursby. He told
Brigid that he intended also to turn her
over to the police. He had to clear
himself of suspicion of killing his partner,
and he could not let a woman stand in
his way.
2199

THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-193 5)
First published: 1916
One of the most difficult of American
poets to pigeonhole is Edwin Arlington
Robinson. If critics try to file him away
under the label of the prolix and wordy
poets, he refutes them with the sparkling
simplicity of such character sketches as
"Bewick Finzer" and "Richard Cory"; if
they decide he is coldly intellectual, they
need only read Tristram to discover a
warm and passionate love story; if they
try to stuff him into that compartment
occupied by poets who take themselves
too seriously, such witty masterpieces
as "Miniver Cheevy" and "Mr. Flood's
Party" will laugh at them forever. Yet
in spite of these many talents, Robinson
has somewhat grudgingly been given the
status of a major American poet, and
critics who specialize in "modern" poetry
tend to omit him from their discussions
or to brush him off with a word or two.
Possibly the very fact that he cannot be
pigeonholed and does not belong to any
school or movement accounts for this
strange neglect. And strange neglect it
is, for Robinson is one of the most
interesting and readable poets of our time.
In The Man Against the Sky, the
early volume that first brought him the
critical acclaim that now seems to be
waning, Robinson is at his best; and
nearly all the types of poetry he was
to write are skillfully represented here.
Only his talent for handling long
narratives, as found in his Arthurian trilogy
and his novels in verse, such as Caven-
ders House, is lacking, and perhaps even
this aspect of this work is foreshadowed
in miniature by "Llewellyn and the
Tree," the triangle story of a man, his
shrewish wife, and Fate.
The light touch that created Miniver
Cheevy and Mr. Flood introduces us in
this volume to "Old King Cole":
THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Excerpts reprinted by permission of the
publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1916, 1924, by
The Macmillan Co. Renewed. All rights reserved.
No crown annoyed his honest head,
No fiddlers three were called or needed;
For two disastrous heirs instead
Made music more than ever three did.
The story of the old man cursed with
two wild and worthless sons is essentially
a tragic one, but Robinson lets the old
fellow take such a merry and
philosophical 'attitude toward his troubles that the
reader is amused rather than saddened.
This effect is a variation on a well-
known skill of Robinson's: in his
character sketches he celebrates people who
would ordinarily be judged as failures
and charmingly turns defeat into a
contented, if not glorious, triumph.
Robinson is likely to be remembered best for
these short poems which are alive with
strange and interesting characters. In
The Man Against the Sky we first meet
Flammonde, that "Prince of Castaways"
who comes to Tilbury Town "from God
knows where." Flammonde finally is able
to make the townspeople see the good
points in a woman of bad reputation, to
help them raise money for the education
of a gifted boy, and to patch up a quarrel
between two citizens of the town. But
Flammonde himself remains a mystery,
an apparent failure in life. In "The Gift
of God" we are introduced to the fond
and foolish mother who in her dreams
ennobles a son who is just an average
young man; but her triumph comes in
the very nobility of that dream. "The
Poor Relation" is less subtle than many
of Robinson's sketches, but it is an
effective portrait of an old woman who is
"unsought, unthought-of, and unheard."
And, of course, there is Bewick Finzer,
the man of wealth whose brain crumbles
when he loses all his money; a sad
reminder to the more fortunate, he comes
begging for loans:
2200

Familiar as an old mistake,
And futile as regret.
Still another fine short poem is "John
Gorham," but this one differs from
Robinson's other sketches in its ballad-like
form. Two young people, Gorham and
Jane Wayland, speak to each other in
alternating stanzas; they break off their
romance in most surprising fashion.
The piece de resistance of the volume
is the long dramatic monologue, "Ben
Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford."
Using the few known facts of
Shakespeare's life and the many hints found
in the plays and sonnets, the poet gives
us as fine a characterization of
Shakespeare as can be found anywhere.
Robinson's setting is a simple one: Ben Jonson
meets an alderman from Stratford and
treats him to a few drinks in a London
tavern. While drinking, Ben talks about
"this mad, careful, proud, indifferent
Shakespeare." The poem is centered
around the bard's very human wish to
retire to the finest house in Stratford and
live out his life as a country squire. In
developing this theme, Robinson credits
Ben with some astute observations on
Shakespeare's skill as a playwright, on his
troubles with women, on the contrast
between his simple ambitions and his
tremendous success as a writer, and on his
feelines toward "a phantom world he
sounded and found wanting." Part of the
pleasure in reading this poem comes
from recognizing the sources from which
Robinson has drawn his material; for
instance, Shakespeare's troubled love life
derives from the recorded facts of his
strange marriage to Anne Hathaway and
from the "dark lady" of the sonnets; for
Shakespeare's outlook on life Robinson
draws chiefly on the graveyard scene in
Hamlet, an interesting source because
Robinson has definitely "weighted" his
poem so that it becomes a sort of literary
triple-play—Shakespeare to Jonson to
Robinson—and he makes Robinson the
key man. Here is a passage in which
Jonson, when he meets Shakespeare
"down Lambeth way," quotes the bard as
philosophizing in a gloomy mood. This
could undoubtedly be Shakespeare
speaking, but might it not also be pure
Robinson?
"Your fly will serve as well as anybody,
And what's his hour? He flies, and flies,
and flies,
And in his fly's mind has a brave
appearance;
And then your spider gets him in her
net,
And eats him up and hangs him up to
dry.
That's Nature, the kind mother of us
all.
And then your slattern housemaid
swings her broom,
And where's your spider? And that's
Nature, also.
It's Nature, and it's Nothing. It's all
Nothing. . . ."
This type of philosophy has its
counterpart in the title piece of Robinson's
volume. The poet has been called a
"muddy thinker," but a careful reading
of "The Man Against the Sky" reveals
not muddiness but the honest outlook of
a man who, like so many others, is unsure
of the meaning of birth, life, and death.
Robinson is not the first to suggest that
man, in his search for the answer to the
riddle, will find that the problem is a
personal one, that "mostly alone he goes."
Robinson places his Man on a hill against
the red glare of the sunset and then
speculates on the forces that brought him
there and the fate that lies ahead of him:
Whatever dark road he may have taken,
This man who stood on high
And faced alone the sky,
Whatever drove or lured or guided
him,—
A vision answering a faith unshaken,
An easy trust assumed of easy trials,
A sick negation born of weak denials,
A crazed abhorrence of an old
condition,
A blind attendance on a brief
ambition,—
Whatever stayed him or derided him,
His way was even as ours;
2201

And we, with all our wounds and all
our powers,
Must each await alone at his own
height
Another darkness or another light. . . .
Aside from its philosophical import, this
poem also illustrates well the style that
is so definitely Robinson's: without
straining, he combines a colloquial rhythm that
is smooth and offhand with a scholarly
choice of words that does not fear the
polysyllable. In "The Man Against the
Sky" such words as "atrabilious" and
"hierophants" are slipped in as if they
were inevitable.
The Man Against the Sky is not a
perfect volume by any means. There are
flat poems (after all, the level of "Eros
Turannos" and "Bewick Finzer" is a
difficult one to sustain) and even in some of
the best ones there are lines that string
together a series of what might be called
"bland" words, the kind that get a poem
started or keep it moving but contribute
almost nothing of connotative value.
Robinson's diction is usually so effective
that these lapses seem especially
egregious. Sometimes, too, Robinson sacrifices
the exact word in order to make a rhyme;
for example, in the third stanza of "Old
King Cole" the poet has chosen "affair"
to rhyme with "pair"; the choice tends
to blur the meaning. These objections are
minor ones, however, when set against
the overall effectiveness of the volume.
It seems certain that Robinson, aided by
a universality that lifts him above any
school, movement, period, or region (the
New England flavor blends in like a
tart but unobtrusive spice) will survive
his current critical neglect and emerge
as one of the finest of American poets.
2202

MAN AND SUPERMAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bernard Shaw O856-1950)
Time: c. 1900
Locale: England and Spain
First presented: 1905
Principal characters:
Jack Tanner, an eloquent anarchist and social philosopher
Ann Whitefield, his ward and pursuer
Roebuck Ramsden, her co-guardian
Octavius Robinson, her suitor
Violet Robinson, Octavius' sister
Hector Malone, her husband
Henry Straker, Jack's chauffeur
Mendoza, a bandit
Don Juan
Dona Ana de Ulloa, a Spanish noblewoman
Don Gonzalo, her father
The Devil
Frequently the subtitles of Shaw's plays
are just as informative as the prefaces.
They are often just as clever; they are
always more to the point. Such is the case
with Heartbreak House, which is
subtitled A Fantasia in the Russian Manner
on English Themes; Fanny's First Play,
An Easy Play for a Little Theatre; and
"In Good King Charles's Golden Days,"
A True History that Never Happened,
So, too, with Man and Superman, which
is subtitled simply but significantly A
Comedy and a Philosophy. For Man and
Superman, though it was written early
in Shaw's career, represents the
culmination of Shaw's theory that the drama is
but a device—a trick, if you like—for
getting the public to listen to one's
philosophy: social philosophy, political
philosophy, economic philosophy—Shavian
philosophy. With the possible exception of
Back to Methuselah, Man and Superman
is Shaw's most philosophical play.
In its simplest terms, the philosophical
meaning of the play is that in the war
between the sexes, woman always emerges
conqueror, even if man, her antagonist,
be a superman; that in a battle between
instinct and intelligence, instinct always
wins. To develop this theme, Shaw
claimed to have written a modern,
philosophical interpretation of the Don Juan
story, which means that Don Juan is
reincarnated as a Shavian hero in England
at the turn of the century. The closest
resemblance between Shaw's hero and the
libertine celebrated in music and
literature lies in their names: John Tanner,
Don Juan Tenorio. Any other similarity
is purely coincidental, for Shaw
transformed literature's most notorious
libertine into a man of moral passion, a Nie-
tzschean superman who lives a life of
pure reason in defiance of the traditions
of organized society. As a Shavian hero,
Tanner is, of course, impeccably moral,
even chaste. The philosophical meaning
of the play arises from the fact that
Tanner, representing the good man, is
unsuccessful in defending his chastity.
Pitted against a scheming female who
embodies the sexual, maternal drive,
Tanner is forced to surrender his control of
sexual instinct. He capitulates and
marries. In effect, he commits moral suicide
by succumbing to conventionality.
On one level, this theme is worked out
in a contrived, almost trivial, but
nevertheless hilarious plot. In his will, Ann
Whitefield's father appointed Jack
Tanner and Roebuck Ramsden joint
guardians of his daughter. Ramsden objects to
sharing the guardianship on the grounds
that Tanner, as the author of "The Revo-
2203

lutionist's Handbook and Pocket
Companion," is an anarchist and profligate;
Tanner objects on the grounds that Rams-
den is a prig and a hypocrite. Both,
however, accede to the wishes of the
deceased, little realizing that Ann had
dictated the terms of the will in an elaborate
scheme to make Tanner her husband.
Upon realizing that Ann has designs on
him, Tanner flees to the Continent, is
detained by bandits, is ultimately caught by
the pursuing Ann. They agree to marry.
On another, more esoteric level, the
philosophical implications of the theme
are developed at length. Tanner has a
dream—a play within the play—which
turns out to be no less than a Platonic
dialogue: "Don Juan in Hell." In this
scene, four of the principals are re-
embodied as historical or mythical
personages and are universalized as moral
forces. Tanner appears as Don Juan, the
man of moral passion; Ann, as Dona Ana
de Ulloa, the eternal maternal female:
Ramsden, as Don Gonzalo, the man of
pleasure; and Mendoza (leader of the
bandits), as the Devil. These four engage
in a debate which Don Juan, speaking
for Shaw, monopolizes with a series of
lengthy monologues. Herein the theme of
the play is recapitulated in abstract but
certain terms. The subject is Man. The
end of man, Don Juan argues, is the
cultivation of intellect, for only by
exercising it dispassionately can man discover
his purpose, and discovering it, fulfill it.
Therefore, the good man, the man of
moral passion, will eschew anything that
subverts the life of reason. Woman,
however, will not be eschewed, and it is
woman, with her relentless desire to
propagate, and marriage, the instrument by
which she domesticates, that undermine
man. If man surrenders to woman, he is
doomed.
The conclusion of the play is, then, a
gloomy one for Shaw. By marrying Ann,
Tanner admits that woman, bolstered by
the "Life Force," is bound to triumph;
that man, even the superman, is bound
to abandon the pursuit of his own goal
to serve woman in her goal of
perpetuating the race.
Although the ending is gloomy and
the dream play verbose, the prevailing
tone of the play is comic and light. In
spite of its philosophy, the drama is
playable—including the dream
play—principally because Shaw succeeded in
making his characters gloriously human and
therefore funny. Tanner, for instance, is
moral, intensely moral; but he is fallible,
even a bit ridiculous, as Ann delights in
proving when she punctures his eloquent
utterances with the charge of political
aspiration. Ann herself is as engaging a
heroine as any in Shaw's plays. An
incorrigible liar, an inveterate hypocrite,
she is charming because she is thoroughly
female.
The minor characters were just as
obviously invented to fit into the thematic
framework of the drama, but they too
contribute to the fun. Both Ramsden and
Mrs. Whitefield represent the authority
of the old order which Tanner is trying
to overthrow; both, however, have
distinctly comic personalities. Believing that
a man's duty lies in protecting the weaker
sex, Octavius serves primarily as a foil
to Tanner but provides many laughs as a
lovesick youth. Mendoza, the bandit;
Straker, the impudent chauffeur; and
Malone, the senile American millionaire
—all figure in Shaw's design. All,
moreover, as humorous persons, relieve the
tedium of that design.
Considered as a whole, with the
"Epistle Dedicatory," which serves as a preface,
and "The Revolutionary's Handbook,"
which is an appendix of sorts, Man and
Superman is one of Shaw's most
important plays. It is not Shaw's masterpiece,
nor is it his best play. It is too obviously
a piece of propaganda for such accolades.
It is, however, central to Shaw's
philosophy, and philosophy is always central to
Shaw's plays.
2204

THE MAN OF FEELING
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1771
Principal characters:
Mr. Harley, a very sensitive young Englishman
Miss Walton, a rich heiress
Edwards, a farmer befriended by Harley
Miss Atkins, a prostitute befriended by Harley
Harley's Aunt
Critique:
In the last half of the eighteenth
century the function of the English novel
was the study of man and his manners,
particularly the emotions and sentiments
of a man of great sensibility. Such is the
subject matter of Henry Mackenzie's
The Man of Feeling. In addition, this
novel is a splendid example of the
studied formlessness of many late-eighteenth-
century novels. In it the reader finds such
peculiarities as editorial notes which state
that the first fourteen chapters are
missing, as well as the addition of so-called
"Fragments" at the end of the story. The
pretended incompleteness is actually not
present, and the entire story is actually
told, although in a somewhat disjointed
fashion. Like so many of his
contemporaries in the field of fiction, Mackenzie
filled his novel with the loneliness of
the delicate mind, the unhappiness of
love beyond one's station, the vainglory
of riches, the hardships of the poor, and
the glorification of benevolence.
The Story:
One day, in early September, a rural
clergyman took hunting with him a
friend from town. When they stopped
to rest, the friend found some
indecipherable initials carved on the bark of
a tree. The curate said they were
probably the work of a young man named
Harley, a former resident of the parish.
The clergyman added that he had in
his possession a manuscript telling the
greater part of Harley's story, a work he
thought of no great value, and so he
used the papers for wadding in his gun.
The manuscript had been found among
the possessions of a former parishioner,
a friend of Harley's. Upon request, the
clergyman gave the bundle of
disconnected papers to his friend, who after
his return to town pieced together the
melancholy story which the rambling
narrative unfolded.
Mr. Harley, an orphan reared by a
maiden aunt, was descended from a
good family among the country gentry
in England. Passing years had taken toll
of the family's fortunes, however, until
he had only a very modest income
derived from his small estate by the time
he reached manhood. The young man,
who was extremely virtuous, did not
feel that he needed any more money, but
his friends insisted that he could, with
very little trouble, secure the use of some
adjoining lands belonging to the crown.
At his friends* insistence, and because
he was very much in love with Miss
Walton, an heiress, Harley set out for
London to attempt to get a lease to the
lands, which would give him a
handsome increase to his fortunes in return
for a cheap rental.
Once in London, Harley had some
amazing adventures, partly because he
was willing to believe all people good
until he found them bad and partly
because he wished to help anyone who
2205

needed aid from another human being.
These adventures took place over several
weeks, for Harley found that the baronet
who was to help him in his suit for
the lease was not an easy man to see.
On the occasion of one visit to see the
baronet, Harley met a young man who
pretended to be quite a man about town.
Harley, who wished to know more about
London, spent the evening with the
young man, only to learn that the fellow
was a former footman who served as a
pander for several wealthy men.
A short time later an unnamed friend
of Harley's invited him to go with a
party to the asylum at Bedlam. There
Harley was much affected by the insane,
particularly by a young woman who had
gone mad after her lover's death; she
touched Harley's heart when she cried
out that he resembled her dead lover. As
the party left the young lady, a gentleman
offered to tell Harley about some of the
inmates. Harley assented, only to find
within a few minutes that his guide was
himself a madman who imagined himself
to be an Oriental potentate.
A few evenings later Harley went for
a walk through the park. While there,
he met an elderly gentleman who invited
him to partake of a glass of cider at a
nearby public house. Harley, impressed
by the gentleman's attitude of
benevolence to a beggar, agreed. Once in the
house, Harley was invited to take a hand
in a friendly game of cards, during which
the old gentleman and a*n accomplice
swindled the good-hearted Harley out
of a substantial sum of money. Leaving
the place and still unaware of the
swindle, Harley was accosted by a prostitute
who begged him for something to eat
and drink. Harley, hating to see another
human in distress, let himself open to
severe criticism by taking the girl, a Miss
Atkins, to a brothel where she might
get some nourishment. When she poured
out a tale of seduction to him, he agreed
to help her if he could, and promised
to see her the following day.
The next morning he went to see Miss
Atkins. She told him she wanted only
to return to her father, a retired army
officer. Just as she had finished telling
her story, her father appeared. He
misjudged the scene and almost did violence
to Harley and his daughter. A fainting
spell on the part of Miss Atkins gave
Harley a chance to explain everything
to the father, who then forgave his
daughter and took her back into his good graces.
Harley's London adventures were cut
short by a notice from the baronet that
someone else had been granted the crown
lands Harley sought. The successful
petitioner turned out to be the pander
Harley had met at the baronet's house.
Discouraged, Harley took a coach to
return home.
The coach took Harley to within a
day's walk of his home. From there,
rather than wait for a public conveyance,
the young man set out for his house on
foot. On the way he met an elderly
soldier, who turned out to be a farmer
named Edwards, whom Harley had
known as a child. Edwards told Harley
how it was he happened to be in the
garb he wore. The enclosure acts by
Parliament had given Edwards' landlord
an excuse to move the farmer and his
family from a good farm to a poor one.
Bad crops had climaxed the poor man's
ill luck, and he and his married son had
been forced to become tenants on a tiny,
depleted bit of ground. As if that were
not enough, a press gang had seized
Edwards' son. The only way to secure
the younger man's release had been for
Edwards himself, an old man, to enter
the service in his son's place, after
buying off the officials with the little money
he had left.
While a soldier in the East Indies,
Edwards had befriended an aged Hindu,
who made him a present of some gold.
Upon his release from the service,
Edwards had returned to England and was
now on his way to visit his son. When
he and Harley arrived in Edwards' old
2206

neighborhood, they found that disaster
was still striking at the old fellow, for
his son and daughter-in-law had died,
leaving two small children. Harley
promised the old man a farm on his own
estates, and, with the two orphans,
Harley and Edwards continued their journey.
Home once more, Harley saw the old
gentleman comfortably established on a
small farm. But unhappiness soon
overtook Harley himself. Miss Walton, with
whom he was very much in love, was
affianced by her father to a rich man.
Harley, although he had never declared
his love to Miss Walton or anyone else,
was heartbroken. He took to his bed
with a severe illness. After many weeks
of illness, the doctors and his friends
despaired of his life. Miss Walton
herself, hearing of his illness, came to visit
him, hoping to cheer up the young man,
for whom she had a great deal of estee&i,
more, indeed, than anyone had evei
guessed.
A very tearful and touching scene
occurred when Miss Walton appeared at
Harley's sickbed. Harley, knowing he
was near death, told Miss Walton of his
love for her. Even though she was
promised to another, she told of her love for
him, whereupon she fainted and he died.
He was buried near his mother, as he
had once told his aunt he wished to be.
For her part, Miss Walton remained
single, preferring not to marry after
Harley 's death. For many years she was often
seen walking or reading near the place
where Harley's house had stood.
2207

THE MAN OF MODE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sir George Etherege (1634M691)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: The 1670's
Locale: London
First presented: 1676
Principal characters:
Dorimant, a young man about town
Lady Loveit, Dorimant's mistress
Bellenda, in love with Dorimant
Young Bellair, Dorimant's friend
Old Bellair, Young Bellair's father
Emilia, in love with Young Bellair
Harriet Woodvill, a young countrywoman of fortune who
loves Dorimant
Sm Fopling Flutter, a dandy
Critique:
Most critics give Sir George Etherege
credit for trying to do for the manners
of fashionable London what Moliere had
done for the manners of fashionable
Paris; that is, to portray the follies of the
time in such a way as to give some hope
of improving them. So true was the
picture of the times in The Man of Mode,
Or, Sir Fopling Flutter, that the London
wits tried to attach the names of real
people to the characterizations: Dorimant
for Rochester and Sir Fopling Flutter for
Mr. Hewitt. That such an attempt was
made is assuredly a tribute to the au
trior's capture of the very spirit of the
age. Those who would carp at the play
for immorality, particularly with respect
to the love affairs of Dorimant, must keep
in mind the fact that the author portrayed
-only what he saw in the world about
him. One should search the play, not for
virtue, but for realism and wit.
The Story:
One morning Dorimant was lounging
in his room when an orange-woman
made her appearance. In the course of
buying some fruit, Dorimant, who had a
remarkable reputation as a lover,
discovered that a young woman of quality and
fortune from the country had fallen in
love with him at sight, despite her
mother's attempts to keep her daughter away
from thoughts of loving any heartless
man of the fashionable world. Dorimant,
although he was in the process of
dropping one mistress, Lady Loveit, and
taking on a new one named Bellinda, was
interested. Shortly afterward he received
his friend Bellair, a fop who was very
much in love with a young woman
named Emilia and wished to marry her
instead of the wealthy bride his father
had picked out for him. The father's
choice was Harriet, the girl who had
been so taken with Dorimant.
To complicate matters for young
Bellair, his father had arrived in town to
hasten the marriage. Lodging in the same
house with Emilia, and not knowing his
son's affection for the girl, the old
gentleman had fallen in love with her and
wished to make her his own bride. Young
Bellair, with the help of his aunt, Lady
Townley, hoped to win his father's
consent to marriage to Emilia.
Meanwhile Lady Loveit, Dorimant's
mistress, was beside herself at the neglect
she suffered at the hands of her lover.
She complained bitterly to Bellinda, not
knowing that it was Bellinda who had
won the recent attentions of Dorimant
and was about to become his mistress.
2208

True to his promise to Bellinda, Dori-
mant came that afternoon and notified
Lady Loveit that he was finished with
her. His actions frightened Bellinda,
although the deed was done at her request.
At Lady Woodvill's lodgings that day,
the lady herself was preparing Harriet to
meet young Bell air, for Harriet's mother
was as anxious for her daughter to marry
him as his father was for the match.
That Harriet did not wish to marry him
made little difference to the mother.
When the two young people met, they
quickly made their dislike of the match
known to one another. Then they
proceeded to make a mock love scene for
the benefit of the parents, to throw the
oldsters off the track.
That same afternoon Bellinda and
Dorimant met at the home of Lady
Townley. Dorimant made Bellinda
promise to have Lady Loveit walk on the Mall
that evening so that Dorimant could
confront her with Sir Fopling Flutter, a fool
of a fop, and accuse her of being
unfaithful. As they spoke, Sir Fopling Flutter
entered the company and proceeded to
demonstrate what a fool he was by the
oddities and fooleries of his dress,
deportment, and speech.
That evening young Bellair and
Harriet went walking on the Mall. There
they met Dorimant, who was forced to
leave upon the appearance of Harriet's
mother. Lady Loveit appeared, tried to
make Dorimant jealous by flirting, but
only succeeded in bringing Dorimant's
reproaches on her head.
Later that same night theie was a party
at Lady Townley's house. Dorimant was
one of the group, under the alias of
Courtage, so that Harriet's mother would
not realize that he was the gallant who
was trying to woo her daughter. Under
his false name Dorimant succeeded in
ingratiating himself with the mother.
Harriet, trying to hide her love and
admiration from him, showed that her wit was
as sharp as Dorimant's. Sir Fopling
Flutter joined the party late and made
himself more of a fool in everyone's eyes than
he had been before.
By the time the party broke up, it was
five o'clock in the morning. Dorimant
had to hurry home in order to keep a
rendezvous he had made with Bellinda,
for she had promised to spend part of the
night with him in his rooms. In the
morning she was almost caught there, as
she was ready to leave, when several of
Dorimant's friends appeared. Bellinda
escaped by going down the back stairs
and stepping into a sedan chair. Her
danger was not past, however, for the
carriers, accustomed to taking Lady Loveit
from Dorimant's house, took Bellinda to
the former's lodging. Lady Loveit, still
awake, saw Bellinda step from the chair.
Only quick wit on the part of Bellinda,
who told the men to say they had picked
her up elsewhere, prevented her
assignation with Dorimant from being known
to Lady Loveit. The woman did not
suspect that Bellinda was her rival.
A few minutes afterward Dorimant
arrived and berated Lady Loveit in
highhanded fashion, only to be embarrassed
when Bellinda appeared from an
adjoining room. He was so discomfited that he
could only mutter excuses and leave the
house.
Early that morning, at Lady Townley's
house, young Bellair and Emilia were
married, the bridegroom taking that
drastic step before his father could force him
into marriage with Harriet. As the
ceremony was ending, Lady Woodvill,
Harriet, old Bellair, and an attorney arrived.
They had come to meet with young
Bellair and to sign the marriage contract
between the two families. Not knowing
what to do, Lady Townley temporarily
hid the clergyman in a closet. In the
confusion of the moment, Emilia asked
Harriet if she were in love with Dorimant.
Harriet refused still to admit that she
was, saying that she only hated to think
of leaving the pleasures of the town to
be made a prisoner in the country. At
that point, while the others were off in
2209

another room to go over the terms of the
marriage contract, Dorimant himself
arrived. When he confessed his love to
Harriet, she admitted also that she was
in love with him.
The others then returned. Old Bellair,
anxious to have the marriage celebrated,
called for a parson. The clergyman,
released from the closet, declared that he
had already performed one ceremony
when he married young Bellair to Emilia.
Old Bellair was thunderstruck.
Just then Lady Loveit and Bellinda
arrived in pursuit of Dorimant. He made
his excuses to Lady Loveit by telling her
that he intended to marry Harriet and
thus improve his fortunes. Lady Loveit,
who knew the value of money, admitted
that under the circumstances she could
only wish him well. Bellinda was
grateful because his excuse concealed her
affair with him and kept her honor intact.
Lady Woodvill, overhearing the
conversation, was furious with Dorimant for
capturing Harriet's heart, but when she
learned that his intentions were
honorable and that he was the same Courtage
whom she had admired the evening
before, she was mollified to the extent of
inviting him to visit the Woodvill estate
in Hampshire.
Old Bellair, not to be outdone in
graciousness, gave his grudging blessing
to his son, who had gone against his
will in marrying Emilia. The only
person completely dismayed was Lady
Loveit, who vowed that she would never again
trust a man or go out in society.
2210

THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
Type of plot: Symbolic allegory
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: London
First published: 1908
Principal characters:
Lucian Gregory, an anarchic poet
Gabriel Syme, a poet-policeman
The Secretary, Monday in the council
Gogol, Tuesday
Marquis de St. Eustache, Wednesday
Professor de Worms, Friday
Bull, Saturday
Sunday
Critique:
At first the reader takes The Man Who
Was Thursday for a pleasant adventure
tale, but the allegory soon becomes more
evident. The story, a fable in keeping
with Catholic thought and idiom, is
concerned to point out the place of Sunday
as the true Sabbath. Chesterton himself
does not try to make the meaning of the
allegory explicit and clear; the reader is
expected to supply his own
interpretation. For those not interested in religious
morality, the chief interest of the story
lies in the rapid-moving, adventurous plot.
Chestertonian puns and epigrams add
to the humor of the book.
The Story:
Gregory was in the habit of declaiming
his anarchistic views at his pleasant garden
parties where his sister acted as hostess.
Among the ladies particularly he seemed
a thrilling poet, but his anarchism was
surely only a pose. By chance Syme visited
one of the parties and disagreed
thoroughly with Gregory. In Syme's view the
real wonder lay in order; anarchists hoped
only to shock others—and deceive
themselves— bv their nihilistic views.
The dispute grew so warm that
Gregory invited Syme to see for himself that
there were real anarchists who were
intent on destroying the world. Syme swore
never to tell the authorities in return for
Gregory's revelations.
The two took a cab to a slum
restaurant. There Syme was surprised to eat an
excellent dinner. Then Gregory took him
down a subterranean passage lined with
firearms to a council room filled with
bombs. This room was the meeting place
of the group of anarchists to which
Gregory belonged. There was to be an election
that night, and Gregory was sure that he
would be elected to the post of Thursday
on the Central Anarchist Council, the
inner ring presided over by the
redoubtable Sunday.
Before the meeting convened, however,
Syme confided that he was really a
detective. Gregory was filled with confusion
and made a poor speech to the assembly.
The members grew suspicious of
Gregory's private convictions and elected Syme
to act as Thursday on the Council.
Syme had become a detective in an
unusual way. One day he met a
policeman who had gone to school at Harrow.
The policeman said he was one of the
new force recruited to combat intellectuals
who were out to destroy law and order.
Syme, interested, wished to join the new
force. He was taken to a pitch dark room
in Scotland Yard, where a man he could
not see gave him a job.
Now, as an elected member of the inner
council, he was taken down the Thames
THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY by Gilbert Keith Chesterton. By permission of the publishers,
Dodd, Mead & Co. Copyright, 1908, by Dodd, Mead & Co. Renewed, 1935, by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.
2211

River on a tug. Landing, he was met at
the top of the stairs by the Secretary,
who took him to the meeting being held
on a balcony in open view. There huge,
menacing Sunday was presiding at the
banquet table. As Syme surveyed the
crowd, he was struck by the crooked grins
of the members.
The business at hand was the
assassination of the Tsar of Russia and the
President of France. The bombing was to be
done by the dapper Marquis de St.
Eustache, called Wednesday. Suddenly
Sunday shut off debate and announced
that there was a spy present. Bull was
appointed to take care of the council's
business alone, and Sunday then
unmasked Gogol as a police spy. Gogol left
hurriedly.
As Syme left the meeting, he was
shadowed by the aged Professor de Worms.
In spite of his best efforts, de Worms easily
kept up with him. Then in a tavern, de
Worms told him that he was really a
young actor disguised as the professor.
He was another police spy.
The two fellow spies resolved to visit
Bull, who was apparently the man in
charge of plots. In Bull's apartment they
persuaded him to take off his dark
spectacles. From his kindly eyes they deduced
that he was in reality no anarchist; Bull
confessed that he too was a police spy.
The three Scotland Yard men decided
to cross the Channel and prevent St.
Eustache from bombing the tsar and the
president. They came upon St. Eustache
in a cafe in Calais. Syme, having decided
to insult the Frenchman and provoke him
to a duel, tried to pull his nose. The angry
man's challenge was accepted. Because
the duel was to be fought near a railroad
station, Syme thought the place had been
chosen so that St. Eustache could board
a Paris train immediately afterward.
Hoping that St. Eustache would miss the train,
Syme did his best to prolong the duel.
St. Eustache grew impatient and
offered to end the duel by letting Syme
pull his nose. Then, as the train came,
St. Eustache pulled off his own nose and
removed his wig; he too was a police spy.
A menacing masked mob got off the train,
led by the Secretary, and gave chase to
the men from Scotland Yard. The four
confessed spies began to run.
The chase was a mad one. The
pursued used horses and a car to seek safety
with the police, but the well-disciplined
mob kept up with them. At last the spies
were crowded onto a pier. Arrayed against
them was the mob, firing rifles and pistols.
To their horror they saw the police also
lined up against them with their enemies.
But, as matters turned out, the
Secretary was still another Scotland Yard man,
attempting to capture the others because
he wanted to thwart the bombing. The
five returned to London, where they
picked up Gogol. They were determined
to confront Sunday, the leader.
When they found him, Sunday began
to run with surprising speed and grace.
He used several hansom cabs and a fire
engine in his flight, and he even
commandeered an elephant from the zoo. On
the outskirts of London he jumped into
the basket of a balloon and floated out
of their reach.
The six spies pursued Sunday in spite
of the rough countryside. When his
balloon came to earth, they thought they had
overtaken him at last. A servant met them,
however, and showed them to a carriage.
They were taken to a nearby castle and
royally received. A valet laid out costumes
for them symbolizing the days of the
week. Syme was given a gown
embellished with a sun and a moon, for
according to Genesis the Lord created the sun
and the moon on Thursday.
They learned that Sunday had been
the Scotland Yard official who had
employed them all. By now the huge Sunday
seemed beneficent. At a party in the
garden the councilors were seated on thrones.
Sunday was gowned in pure white,
symbolizing the sanctity of the Sabbath. He
lectured them on the Sabbath as a holy
day; they should use it to gather strength
and comfort for the week's work. When
Gregory came to the party he was
denounced as the real enemy—he was an
intellectual anarchist.

MAN WITH A BULL-TONGUE PLOW
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Jesse Stuart (1907-
First published: 1934
)
Jesse Stuart's Man with a Bull-Tongue
Plow is a book of regional and personal
poetry come freely from the heart of its
author, a book by a man informed with
great natural wisdom and one on intimate
terms with life close to the land.
I am a farmer singing at the plow
And as I take my time to plow along
A steep Kentucky hill, I sing my song—
A one-horse farmer singing at the plow.
Thus he describes himself, introduces
himself to the reader in the opening lines
of this book of 703 sonnets which, taken
together, tell not only Stuart's own story,
but the story of the hill country of
eastern Kentucky, past and present,
people among whom Stuart grew up and
still lives.
These are poems written without
artifice, and Jesse Stuart speaks the literal
truth when he writes lines like these:
I do not sing the songs you love to hear;
My basket songs are woven from the
words
Of corn and crickets, trees and men and
birds.
I sing the strains I know and love to
sing.
And I can sing my lays like singing
corn,
And flute them like a fluting gray corn-
bird;
And I can pipe them like a hunter's
horn-
All of my life these are the songs I've
heard.
Here in these simple, unpretentious,
yet profoundly moving sonnets, Stuart
has caught the land we love, the people
we know, the moments of beauty which
are man's lot in his journey through life.
Here are the warmth of the sun and the
wind's voice in the leaves, the cloying
musk of the grainfields, the honest sweat
of the plowman, the vespers of the birds,
the talking of mountain brooks.
He writes here with great sincerity in
a book of such remarkable achievement
for a first work, that critical comparison
of Stuart with Burns is perfectly apropos.
Yet Stuart speaks in his own tongue; he
is that rarity among American writers—
an original, in the pages of whose book
beats the pulse of the soil under the
creative passion of a poet who knows that,
of all the possessions of man, his land is
the last to pass away. This book
celebrates the poet's deep and abiding love
of his native earth. It is one rich in
bucolic scenes, filled with the beauty of
Jesse Stuart's land, and replete with
portraits of men and women who have lived
and died in that part of America. It is a
book about all mankind, wherever men
have tilled the soil, and these sonnets
are distinguished for that universality
which is the province of all great art.
Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow is a
book of unabashed emotion. The pure
music, the great gusto and joy of living
which are so evident here are designed
for every reader—not alone the one who
is devoted to poetry. Open the book
anywhere; the lines draw and hold you with
their clarity, their simplicity, their instant
application to life as you yourself know
it, their humility and beauty. Listen to
Jesse Stuart sing his love of life:
Ah, we get out to work in early April.
We brave our bodies to the wind and
sun.
We swing the plow around the rugged
hill
From break of day until the setting sun.
MAN WITH A BULL-TONGUE PLOW by Jesse Stuart. Excerpts reprinted by permission of the author.
Pubished by E P Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1934, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Revised Edition
published by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1959, by Jesse Stuart.
2213

We break the earth to plant in corn and
cane.
We canvas burley-beds upon the hill.
Season follows season in these poems. In
August "the whispering of the corn/Is
fine to hear on any summer morn," and
sunset brings "red-evening clouds"
"Riding at ease above the corn and timber."
Here is a picture of autumn:
When golden leaves begin to shiver
down
Among the barren brush beneath the
trees,
And scarlet leaves and yellow and light-
brown
Begin to play in wind and pepper down
To earth—these clean and frosted leaves
drip down.
Then it is time the corn is in the stack,
Potatoes in the hold—hay in the mows.
This is the time rust has grown on the
plows;
The time to haul the pumpkins to the
shed,
Since frosts have come and pumpkin
vines are dead.
Winter is the season when "We saw the
crows go flying cross the land,/Up in the
icy heavens with the leaves,/We saw the
crows fly over gray-starved land/When
winter winds sighed in the last year
leaves." In Jesse Stuart's world the lives
of men are joined to the great cycle of
nature:
Fields will be furrowed time and time
again.
They will be furrowed by tall men
unborn
As they were furrowed by men now
forlorn
In dust And fences will be built
again
By men like me and fields be cleaned
of brush
By men like me only to grow again.
There is a natural roughness in these
poems, from a technical perspective; but
it is this very quality of the primitive
which gives them their greatest strength.
In the spontaneity, the wonder, the
resignation to sadness, the joy in earth's beauty
so patent in these poems lies their
essential effectiveness. They see life whole.
They span man's time, from birth to
death. There is no mawkishness, no
sentimentality here. They are faithful to a
world where happiness and grief are alike
the welcome experience of every man
who is whole in his mortality, who
understands that life is the greatest privilege
he may know, and who knows by this
understanding that he ought to spend
life as profitably as he can. This is the
theme of "Marcus Phelps":
I hate to leave the world, for I have
found
Such joy in life—So many things to
love:
The sky, the wind and dead leaves on
the ground
And wild geese flying through the
clouds above.
I've loved the color of the autumn
leaves,
And color of the frozen corn-field
stones;
And I have loved a winter wind that
grieves
And dwindling autumn water's
monotone.
Earth is too great to lose—earth is too
vast!
Life is too great to lose—life is too vast!
I hate to part with life and things I love;
I hate to leave the earth and skies
above.
And life must pass, but surely Earth
will last.
All life must end—the ending must be
vast.
Whether he writes of nature or of
man—and they are not distinguished in
Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow by any
sharp demarcation—Stuart celebrates
simple existence, praising all of life and all
of death. His book is not only filled with
songs about the deeply satisfying beauty
of the land, but also with epitaphs set-
ing forth in terse lines the lives of the
men and women of the hill country, be
2214

they successful lives, or failures, happy
lives, or sad—lines like these:
I always loved Kentucky's lonesome
water,
And when I went away I wanted to
return.
Just something to Kentucky's lonesome
water
Makes me remember and my burnt
heart burn-
Though Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow
is a regional book, it is limitless in its
application. It should take ultimate rank
as one of the finest, most spontaneous of
books about man and his earth. This
rugged, painfully honest collection of
sonnets, with its clean, powerful lines, with
its roughness and its gentleness, with
its sincere, wholly natural verse has an
everlasting freshness. It is a book through
the pages of which ring the song of the
high hills and the rune of mountain
water, through which the heartbeats of
men and women mingle with the pulse
of earth. These are poems of life and
love and death, by a poet in love with
life, a poet filled with the humbling
wonder and beauty of earth and sky, and
a man filled with respect for his fellow
men and understanding of their lives.
Open Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow
at any page and read poems of singular
simplicity and great power—and hear the
turning of the soil beneath the blade,
hear the wind in the treetops, and keep
pace unforgettably with man eternally
making his mortal mark upon his little
plot of earth.
2215

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
Type of work: Short story
Author: Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: United States and the high seas
First published: 1863
Principal character:
Philip Nolan
Critique:
Written originally as propaganda for
the bitterly-contested presidential
campaign of 1864, The Man Without a
Country has become a classic of our
literature. No story better expresses the spirit
of American nationalism. Cut off from
his native land, Philip Nolan wished
himself dead rather than to experience
the exile which he was forced to endure
because of his youthfully rash statement
and deed.
The Story:
Few people noticed in the newspaper
columns of 1863 the report of the death
of Philip Nolan. Few people would have
recognized his name, in fact, for since
Madison's administration went out in
1817, it had never been mentioned in
public by any naval officer and the
records concerning his case had been
destroyed by fire years before his death.
When he was a young officer in Texas,
Philip Nolan met Aaron Burr and
became involved in Burr's infamous plot
against the United States Government.
When Burr's treason was revealed and
the rebels were brought to trial, Nolan
was indicted along with some of the lesser
figures of the plot. Asked at his trial
whether he had any statement to make
concerning his loyalty to the United
States, Nolan, in a frenzy, cursed the
name of his country. Shocked, Colonel
Morgan, who was conducting the court-
martial, sentenced Philip Nolan never
again to hear the name of his native land.
The Secretary of the Navy was
requested to place the prisoner aboard a
naval ship with a letter to the captain
explaining Nolan's peculiar punishment.
For the remainer of his life Nolan and
this letter went from one ship to another,
Nolan traveling alone, speaking only to
officers who guarded their country's name
from his ears. None of the officers wanted
to have him around because his presence
prevented any talk of home or of politics.
Once in a while he was invited to the
officers' mess, but most of the time he
ate alone under guard. Since he wore an
irmy uniform with perfectly plain
buttons, he became known as "Plain
Buttons."
The periodicals and books he read had
to be edited in order to delete any naming
of or allusion to the United States. One
incident was marked well by those who
witnessed it. Some officers were gathered
on deck one day reading aloud to one
another Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel.
When it came his turn, Nolan took up
the poem at the section which contained
the lines, "This is my own, my native
land!" He colored, choked, and threw
the book into the water as he ran to his
room. He did not emerge for two months.
Nolan altered considerably as timft
passed, and he lost the bragging air of
unconcern he had assumed at first. After
the incident of the poem he became shy
and retiring, conversing with few people
and staying in his quarters most of the
time. He was transferred from ship to
ship, never coming closer than a hundred
miles to the land whose name he was
forbidden to hear. Once Nolan came
close to gaining his freedom from this
bondage of silence. It happened during
a naval battle with a British ship. A good
2216

shot from the enemy struck one of the
ship's guns, killing the officer in charge
and scattering the men. Unexpectedly
Nolan appeared to take command of the
gun, heroically ignoring his own safety
and aiding in the defeat of the English
ship. He was highly praised by the
captain, who promised to mention him in
his naval report. Nolan's case had been
so forgotten in Washington that there
seemed to be no orders concerning him.
His punishment was being carried on
simply by repetitious habit and naval
form.
During his extensive studies Nolan
kept scholarly notebooks. For diversion
he began to collect organic specimens of
wild life, which were brought to him
by ship's men who went ashore. He was
never known to be ill, and often he nursed
those who were. So the expatriate passed
his years, nameless, friendless, loveless. If
there were any record of him in
Washington, no evidence of such papers could
ever be uncovered. So far as the
government was concerned, Nolan did not exist.
Stories about the lonely man circulated
through mess halls, but many were untrue.
During the last fifteen years of his
life Nolan aged rapidly. The men whom
he had known when he first began his
endless journey in 1807 had retired, and
younger men took their places on the
ships. Nolan became more reserved than
ever, but he was always well regarded
by those who knew him. It is said that
young boys idolized him for his advice
and for his interest in them.
Constantly the men were on guard
never to reveal to their prisoner any news
about the United States. This secrecy
was often difficult to maintain, for the
nation was growing rapidly. With the
annexation of Texas there arose a strained
incident. The officers puzzled over the
removal of that state from Nolan's maps,
but they decided that the change would
give him a hint of westward expansion.
There were other inconvenient taboos.
When the states on the west coast joined
the Union, the ships which bore Nolan
had to avoid customary landings there.
Although Nolan suspected the reason for
this change in his habitual itinerary, he
kept silent.
When Nolan lay dying, the captain of
the ship came to see him. He found that
Nolan had draped the *tars and stripes
around a picture of Washington. On one
bulkhead hung the painting of an eagle
grasping the entire globe in its claws,
and at the foot of the bed was a map of
the United States which Nolan had
drawn from memory. When the dying
man asked for news from home, the
captain, who liked and pitied Nolan, told
him about the progress of the United
States during the more than fifty yean;
of Nolan's exile. Seeing Nolan's joy at
the news of his country, the captain could
not bring himself, however, to tell the
dying man that the United States was
engaged in the Civil War.
Philip Nolan died in 1863. His last
request was that he be buried at sea, his
only home.
2217

MANETTE SALOMON
Type of work: Novel
Authors: Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1867
Principal characters:
Naz de Coriolis, a young painter
Anatole Bazoche, his close friend, another painter
Manette Salomon, a model, CoriohV mistress
Garnotelle, a painter of the classical school
Chassagnol, a painter of the modern school
Critique:
This novel is representative of the
mature fiction of the Goncourts, pioneers
of the naturalistic movement in France.
Here they treat with characteristically
minute detail the Parisian artists' world,
personifying its many facets by
following the careers of several young painters.
As in the earlier Charles Demailly, the
major theme concerns the effect of love
on the creative powers of an artist, in
this case the painter Coriolis. But here
the writers have disciplined their talents
to convey more successfully the sense of
actual life: they set one detail beside
another with deliberate lack of emphasis
and kaleidoscopic swiftness; they expunge
all trace of the melodramatic or
unrealistic from events. Interest focuses on the
psychological delineation of the artistic
temperament and on aesthetic theory
itself. The vividly pictorial style is
admirably suited to the milieu of the plot, for
it constantly transmutes into language
the painter's vision of the world.
The Story:
From the Paris zoo one had a
magnificent view of the city. Visitors to the
zoo were startled one day by a young
man, who seemed to be a guide, pointing
out landmarks below in terms which
might have been used to describe the
zoo itself. The young man, Anatole
Bazoche, delighted in such pranks; he
was studying art at Langibout's studio
and kept everyone in constant uproar.
The son of a stolid bourgeoise widow, he
had become an artist over her protests;
although he had talent, he was content to
dissipate it in bright, superficial paintings.
His gift for farce symbolized the age,
which, disillusioned and effete, laughed
at everything. Art had become restless
eclecticism, turning increasingly to a
romanticism that was essentially literary.
In the same studio were Chassagnol,
a compulsive talker who hoped for a
new vision; Garnotelle, a quiet little
peasant who tried earnestly to follow rules for
good painting; and Naz de Coriolis. Of
Italian and Creole descent, Coriolis was
feared for his temper and pride, and
envied for his money. Caring for nothing
but his painting, he remained aloof from
all but Anatole.
Coriolis, becoming dissatisfied with this
Bohemian world, filled with talk and
pranks, decided to travel in the Near East
for a time. As he and Anatole sat
talking before his departure, a woman
brought her child to his door and asked
if he needed a model. Taken by the
child's extraordinary beauty, he caught
her up in his arms. As he swung her
down again, she pulled his gold watch
and chain to the floor. Laughing, he let
her keep it.
Garnotelle, who had left the studio,
won the Prix de Rome for his careful (if
mediocre) academic art. Cut off from his
funds by his mother, Anatole,
experiencing a series of ups and downs, took on
2218

any hack jobs that came his way until
his uncle invited him to go to Marseilles
and from there to Constantinople.
Unfortunately, the uncle became jealous of
Anatole's charm and left him in
Marseilles. He joined a circus after helping
in a cholera epidemic. Then he met
Coriolis, now on his way back to Paris.
Coriolis, who had inherited great wealth,
generously invited Anatole to share a
studio with him. There the two began
painting. Coriolis had vowed never to
marry; he felt that marriage and
fatherhood destroy the artist because they
attach creativity to a lower order of things.
He knew, too, that his lazy, Creole
temperament needed even more discipline
than most.
Coriolis' first paintings, fruits of his
travels, were not favorably received.
Volatile, filled with light, they did not
conform to the fashionable critical notions
of Near Eastern landscapes. Naively
astonished, Coriolis discovered that critics
and public preferred Garnotelle's sterile
work. Determined to prove his own worth
as more than an exotic colorist, he set
himself to painting nudes.
During his search for a model he saw
a young Jewish girl, Manette Salomon,
and through Anatole he obtained her
services. Manette was absolute
perfection; her body had a pliant beauty that
seemed the quintessence of the female.
Coriolis, obsessed by her beauty, wanted
to keep her all to himself, but she, a true
Parisian Bohemian, wanted only to be
free. Her frank, ignorant nature
delighted him; her serenity gave him peace.
Jealous, he once followed her, but she
went only to the synagogue. This
experience made him suddenly aware of her
Jewishness, a strange, foreign element
akin to something he had found in his
travels. One day, however, he saw a
watch chain she had and realized that
she had been the child he had admired
so long ago. Remembering her
benefactor, she tenderly vowed never to leave
him.
Coriolis* painting of Manette, in which
he captured her glorious flesh tones, was
a huge success, and its purchase bv a
museum restored his faith in himself.
Feeling herself famous, Manette began to
change: the praise of the picture Coriolis
had painted of her raised a feeling of
pride in her that was almost love. Like
most artists, Coriolis thought of his
mistress as a charming, necessary little
animal.
Soon afterward he fell ill and Manette
nursed him back to strength, never
leaving his side. To speed his convalescence,
Coriolis went with Manette and Anatole
to the country near Fontainebleau.
Manette, completely city bred, was delighted
by her strange new world and plunged
into it eagerly. Coriolis found nature
soothing and inspiring, yet he grew bored
and missed the comforts of his studio.
Anatole luxuriated in the freshness of the
countryside, falling under its spell, but
livened his stay by tricking, mocking,
and entertaining the other guests at the
little inn.
Manette, accepted by this bourgeois
group as Coriolis' wife, found her new
status attractive and ignorantly believed
this bourgeois world worthy of entering.
Then a new arrival, sensing her true
relationship to Coriolis, snubbed her. Hurt
and resentful, Manette wanted to leave.
The three moved to a small house near
the landscapist Crescent and his wife, an
ample, friendly woman who took
Manette to her heart. The two young artists
learned from the old peasant Crescent.
But Mme. Crescent, learning that
Manette was Jewish, cooled toward her,
sensing (partly through peasant
superstition, partly through a kind of animal
instinct) something hidden, profound,
and destructive in the girl's nature.
Shortly thereafter, Coriolis, who could
not agree with the moralistic basis of
Crescent's art, decided to return to Paris.
After their return to Paris, Manette
became pregnant and her body took on
new languor. When Coriolis' son was
born, Manette acquired a new outlook on
life. The carefree Bohemian had become
2219

the mother; her stubborn pride and greed
for success came to the fore.
Coriolis had begun to work again, this
time on a new kind of painting—an
attempt to create art through the truth of
life. He did not mean to imitate
photography but to make of the harmonies
available in painting a re-creation
unfolding the inner realities of contemporary
life. His two paintings, particularly one
of a wedding, were scoffed at. Manette,
seeing his failure, cooled toward him.
Coriolis, doting on his son, watched
him play and sketched him. As time
passed, however, he was unable to work
and sank into inactivity and despair. He
could not understand a world which
rewarded Garnotelle, now supremely
fashionable with his superficial, heartless
paintings.
Manette decided that for the sake of
their child and her own growing desire
for respectability, Coriolis should rid
himself of such Bohemian friends as Anatole
and Chassagnol, and of the failures which
they encouraged, and model himself on
Garnotelle. She set about arousing
Coriolis' suspicions concerning Anatole and
herself. She then persuaded Coriolis to
go to the country for his lingering cough,
taking the child and some new servants,
her relatives. There was no room for
Anatole. Coriolis, meanwhile, had grown
more and more dependent on Manette,
counting on her to run his home, tend
his wants, and make his decisions. He
was too weak to struggle against her.
Left alone, Anatole became a true
Bohemian, living from day to day on
handouts and forgetting his art entirely.
On Coriolis' return, Manette set about
alienating his friends in earnest. They
ceased to visit him, cutting him off from
valid artistic communication. Though
Manette understood the artist's life and
was able to adapt herself to it, she was
fundamentally ignorant. Her ambitions
were for money and success. To her, art
was a business; to Coriolis, a religion.
Yet he did not oppose her. Her mother
came to live with them and feminine
domination began to affect his health; but
as his psychosomatic illness increased, so
did his dependence on Manette. He
painted as she wanted him to and became
filled with self-loathing. Always eager for
more money, she persuaded him to sell
some of his "failures." Surprisingly, a
connoisseur recognized their true artistic
merit and purchased them at a
fantastically high price. Again Coriolis was
famous.
In despair, he turned on Manette,
accused her of destroying a number of his
canvases, and ordered her out of the
house. She calmly went on as though she
had never heard him—she had beaten
him. A broken man, he was still strong
enough in his belief to refuse a medal he
had won for a wedding picture because
he felt he was unworthy of the award.
Manette scornfully removed herself still
further from him. But he could not leave
her.
Sometime later, Anatole heard that
Garnotelle had married a princess, with
Coriolis as the best man. He saw
Coriolis from afar, with Manette and several
dreadful bourgeois types following him.
Though love had long been over between
Manette and Coriolis, fthey were
married and her ambitions fulfilled. Coriolis
painted almost nothing and became
increasingly ill.
Anatole, visiting the zoo again,
watched the lions in their cages. He
lazed on the grass, feeling himself a part
of all nature and completely free.
2220

MANFRED
Type of work: Poem
Author: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: No set time
Locale: The Alps
First published: 1817
Principal characters:
Manfred, a lonely, guilt-haunted magician
A Chamois Hunter
The Abbot of St. Maurice
Critique:
Manfred is Byron's first great poem of
revolt, and readers familiar with the poet's
life will find in Manfred an embodiment
of the autobiographical urge which
prompted much of Byron's poetry. The
rationalization of his social ostracism, his
failure to cope with the outraged virtue of
English society, and, more directly, his
disturbance at being separated from
Augusta Leigh lay behind his romantic
brooding in this particular poem. There
are parallels between Manfred and
Goethe's Faust: the wild mountain
scenery, the ability of a man of learning to
summon other-world spirits, the symbolic
adventures of the hero, and the
philosophical references. Only in the end is
Manfred unlike Faust. Because he has not
contracted with evil, he dies free of
hell's power. If one can separate the poem
from its author, Manfred becomes a study
of an isolated individual who cannot seek
deliverance from any external social
machinery, but who must work out his own
destiny.
The Story:
Alone in a Gothic gallery at midnight,
Manfred meditated deeply about his life.
He had undergone many experiences,
but none had profoundly affected him.
When he called upon the spirits of the
universe to appear before him, none came.
Three times he summoned them. At the
third call, a summons in the name of his
own cursed soul, the spirits arose.
The first was the Spirit of Air. The
Spirit of Interior Fire next appeared,
followed by the Spirit of Ocean. The spirits
of Earth, Exterior Fire, and Night arose
in succession, each demanding to knQw
what the mortal magician wished. Finally
the star, Manfred's own star of ill-fated
destiny, joined the spirits.
Manfred's reply was that he desired
forgetfulness. When the Spirit of Air
sought further explanation, Manfred
could not reveal what he wanted to forget.
Surely, he insisted, spirits that controlled
earth, sky, water, mountains, winds,
night, and destiny, could bring the
oblivion he sought. But the spirits replied that
they had no powers beyond their own
realms. When Manfred, failing in his
hopes, asked the spirits to take bodily
forms, the seventh spirit, the star of his
destiny, took the shape of a beautiful
woman. At sight of her Manfred, hinting
at a former love, attempted to hold her,
but she vanished, leaving him senseless.
In her place came a formless voice, the
voice of himself as a magician, uttering
a long incantation, mysterious and
despairing.
Next morning, alone on a cliff of the
Jungfrau Mountain, Manfred mourned
the failure of his magic powers to assist
him. Marveling at the surrounding beauty
of the mountain, he weighed the
possibility of leaping from the cliff. A passing
hunter saw the lonely man and wondered
what Manfred was doing so high on the
mountain, where even the best hunters
could not climb. Fearing that Manfred
2221

would lose his footing when the morning
mist arose, the hunter approached him
cautiously, for Manfred appeared to be
tottering. Actually Manfred was about to
jump when the hunter caught hold of him
and led him down the steep slope.
In his cottage in the Bernese Alps, the
hunter urged Manfred to rest a while
before journeying on. Manfred, refusing
guidance, declared that he would go on
alone. When the hunter offered Manfred
his best wine, Manfred exclaimed in
horror that he saw blood, symbolic of
Manfred's alienation from social contact, on the
rim of the cup. The hunter, thinking
Manfred mad, suggested that the wretched
man seek comfort in contemplation and in
the Church. Manfred, spurning the
suggestion, said that he wished he were mad,
for then, his mind would be tortured by
unrealities instead of the truths which
now beset him. He envied the hunter's
simple life, but when the hunter, noting
Manfred's high-born appearance, wonder-
ingly asked if his guest would then wish
to change stations in life, Manfred
replied that he would not wish any human
to suffer his own wretchedness. To this
the hunter said that surely a man capable
of such tenderness could not harbor a soul
belabored by evil. Manfred, departing,
protested that the evil was not within
himself; he had destroyed those whom he
loved.
Below, the Witch of the Alps answered
Manfred's summons that she share the
loveliness of nature with him. To her he
described his past spiritual life, when he
had lived among men but not with them.
Preferring solitude, he had studied
ancient mysteries and had loved and
destroyed with love a woman said to have
resembled him. The Witch promised to
aid him if he would swear obedience to
her, but he refused her offer and she left
him.
The three destinies and Nemesis
gathered for a festival in the Hall of Arimanes,
Spirit of Evil, Prince of Earth and Air.
Manfred, daring to approach, was
recognized as a magician. He told them he had
come in quest of Astarte, the symbol of
his sin. When she had been summoned
from her tomb, she prophesied only that
the next day would end his despair.
Back in his castle, Manfred felt a
sublime calm. The Abbot of St. Maurice,
having heard that Manfred had practiced
witchcraft, arrived to save his soul. To
Manfred's bitter assurance that his sins
lay between heaven and himself, the abbot
urged that Manfred turn to the Church
for help. Manfred explained that he had
always lived alone and would remain
alone. The abbot mourned that he could
not help such a noble man.
While the servants gossiped about then-
master's strange behavior, Manfred stood
alone in his tower. There the abbot came
once more in a last vain attempt to save
Manfred. Warned that a dangerous spirit
was approaching, the abbot insisted that
he would confront the spirit, who had
come to summon Manfred. Manfred,,
however, defied the summons; he was
willing to die but not to join the spirits of
hell, to whom he owed nothing.
As the demon disappeared, Manfred!
died, still lonely and unconquerable to all
but death itself.
2222

MANHATTAN TRANSFER
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Dos Passos (1896- )
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: World War I
Locale: New York City
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Ellen Thatcher, an actress
Congo, a French sailor who later became a wealthy bootlegger
Gus McNiel, a milkman who later became an assemblyman
Jimmy Herf, a newspaper reporter
George Baldwin, a lawyer
Joe Harland, a drunk
Joe O'Keefe, a young labor organizer
Stan Emery, whom Ellen loves
Critique:
In this novel Dos Passos presents a
panoramic portrait of New York City.
The book is composed of many episodes
in the lives of many different characters.
Some of the episodes are connected; others
stand by themselves. The author's style
is abrupt; the scene shifts without
warning. The complexity of the plot
realistically reflects the complexity of
metropolitan life.
The Story:
Ed Thatcher and his wife Susie had
their first child, a girl named Ellen. After
the birth of the child, Susie became
neurotic; she wanted to die.
Congo and Emile, two French boys,
came to New York to make their
fortunes. Emile married a widowed
Frenchwoman who owned a delicatessen.
Congo did not like New York and went to
sea again.
Gus McNiel, a milkman, was run over
by a train. George Baldwin, a young
lawyer, took Gus* case against the
railroad and obtained a settlement for the
injured man. While Gus was in the
hospital recovering from the accident,
George had an affair with Gus* wife,
Nellie.
Jimmy Herf arrived from Europe with
his widowed mother, who was in delicate
health. One evening she had a heart
attack; not long afterward she died.
Jimmy's rich Uncle Jeff and Aunt Emily
Merivale then became his legal
guardians. One evening at their house Jimmy
met Joe Harland, the drunken black
sheep of the family, who had won and
lost several fortunes on Wall Street.
Susie Thatcher died, and Ed worked
hard for little Ellen. He stayed at the
office until late each evening, working
and dreaming of all the fine things he
would do for his daughter some day.
Ellen grew up, went on the stage, and
married John Oglethorpe, a competent
but lazy actor. Her married life was
unhappy, for she discovered that her
husband was a homosexual.
Jimmy Herf's Uncle Jeff tried to get
him interested in business, but Jimmy
would have none of it. He got a job as a
reporter and became acquainted with
Ruth Prynne, a young actress who lived
in the boarding-house where Ellen and
John Oglethorpe stayed.
George Baldwin had forgotten Nellie
McNiel. He was now interested in
Ellen. One afternoon, as he and Ellen
sat together at tea, a drunken college boy
MANHATTAN TRANSFER by John Dos Passos. By permission of the author and the publishers, Houghton
Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1924, by John Dos Passos.
2223

stopped at their table. George introduced
him to Ellen as Stan Emery.
Joe Harland, the black sheep relative
of the Merivales and Jimmy Herf, was
now forty-five and almost broke. He
spent his last money on a few shots of
whiskey to bring back memories of the
old prosperous days on Wall Street.
Ellen and Stan fell in love. When
she was with him, she was happy. But
when she went home to John, she was
miserable. Ellen decided that she and
John could no longer live together. She
packed her things and moved to a hotel.
Stan Emery came to Jimmy Herf's
room. Stan was on a long drunk after
being expelled from college. Later in the
day they met John and Ellen drinking
tea together. Stan left, but Jimmy stayed
to talk with Ellen.
George Baldwin sat at breakfast with
his wife, Cecily. He had married her
for social position; they were not happy.
Cecily knew of his other affairs. George
did all he could to keep her from
leaving home because a scandal vould
ruin him in the business world.
Ellen moved from her hotel to an
apartment. She was supporting herself
well now, for she had become a success
on Broadway.
Joe Harland had finally got a job as
a night watchman. One evening he was
visited by a young labor organizer, Joe
O'Keefe. The older man warned him
against getting mixed up in labor troubles.
But O'Keefe said that Gus McNiel, now
an assemblyman, was on the side of
labor.
Harry Goldweiser, a rich Broadway
producer, fell in love with Ellen. He
asked her to marry him. She refused,
but in a friendly way, for her career
depended upon Goldweiser.
Gus McNiel retained George Baldwin
as his lawyer throughout his rise to
political power. George warned him
against getting mixed up with labor
because, as a member of a conservative law
firm, George could not help Gus with
labor troubles.
Ellen wanted Stan to stop drinking
so much, but he would not reform.
Drink was the only means by which he
could adjust himself to the world.
One evening Ellen went out to
dinner with George Baldwin. Everyone was
excited about the beginning of the
World War. But George could think
only of Ellen, and in a fit of rage he
threatened her with a gun. Gus
McNiel, who was nearby, took away the
gun and hushed up the incident. Jimmy
Herf, who had been talking to the
bartender, Congo, took Ellen outside and
sent her home in a taxi.
Ellen finally obtained a divorce from
John, and Harry Goldweiser renewed his
attentions. One evening Ellen and Harry
met Stan dancing with a girl named
Pearline. Stan revealed that he and
Pearline had been on a long drunk and
had been married. Later Stan came home
drunk, disgusted with his life and with
Pearline. He poured kerosene around
the apartment and set fire to it. Pearline
returned just in time to see the firemen
carry Stan from the burning building.
Ellen was crushed by Stan's death,
for he was the only man she had really
loved. To be with Jimmy Herf gave her
some comfort because he had been Stan's
friend. But Jimmy wanted to be more
than a friend to Ellen; he still loved her.
She told him that she was going to have
Stan's baby; she wanted to leave show
business and rear the child. But she
had an abortion instead. Ellen and Jimmy
went to Europe to do Red Cross wort
during the war. Finally they were
married. They returned from France with
their baby.
Joe O'Keefe came back from the war
with a chip on his shoulder. He thought
the veterans deserved a bonus because
they had lost out on the big money at
home. He had another reason for
feeling bitter: somewhere overseas he had
caught syphilis.
George Baldwin's home life was still
troubled. Having post-war political
ambitions, he turned against his old friend,
2224

Gus McNiel, and ran for mayor on a
reform ticket. Meanwhile Jimmy and
Ellen drifted apart. Jimmy became
despondent and quit his job. George
Baldwin finally got a divorce. He proposed
to Ellen. Too weary of her muddled
life to resist him, she accepted his
proposal.
One night Jimmy Herf was walking
the streets when a car drew up beside
him and stopped. In it was the
Frenchman, Congo, now a wealthy bootlegger.
He took Jimmy home with him and tried
to cheer him up. Late one evening after
a party Jimmy Herf wandered down by
the river. As he waited for a ferry to
take him from Manhattan, he realized
that he felt gay and happy for the first
time in many months. Morning found
him walking along a concrete highway,
penniless but still happy. He did not
know where he was going; he knew only
that it would be a long way.
2225

MANON LESCAUT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Abbe Pr&vost (Antoine Francois Pr&vost d'Exiles, 1697-1763)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: 1700
Locale: France and New Orleans
First published: 1731
Principal characters:
Manon Lescaut, a courtesan
The Chevalier des Grieux, her lover
Tiberge, his friend
M. de G— M—, a wealthy nobleman
M. Lescaut, Manon's brother
Critique:
The Story of Manon Lescaut and the
Chevalier des Grieux is an early example
of the sentimental romance and as such
it has had a considerable influence on
romantic fiction in different literatures. The
book is not widely read today, but the
popular operatic version of the story is
familiar enough. Despite its importance
in the history of fiction, the modern
reader is apt to be out of sympathy with
its swashbuckling hero and its
sentimental heroine. Trie Abbe" PreVost would
have the reader sympathize with these
characters, but many readers will feel
that the pair received much less
misfortune than their conduct deserved.
The Story:
While the young Chevalier des Grieux
was a student of philosophy at Amiens,
he became friendly with a fellow student
named Tiberge. One day he stood idly
with his friend and watched the arrival
of the Arras coach. Among the
passengers was a beautiful young girl who
attracted the chevalier's attention. Politely
introducing himself, he learned that her
name was Manon Lescaut and that she
had come to Amiens under the
protection of an elderly man. Against her will
she was to enter a convent. She accepted
the chevalier's offer to set her free from
such an irksome life, and after skillfully
and untruthfully disposing of her escort
she went with the young student to an
inn. On the morrow they planned to
flee to Paris. Tiberge argued with his
friend against this folly, but the chevalier
was hopelessly infatuated. In Paris he
and Manon took a furnished apartment,
where for three weeks they were absorbed
in each other.
The idyll came to an end when the
young lover discovered that his mistress
had also bestowed her affections on M.
de B—. But the chevalier's love for
Manon was so great he forgave her. Then
three lackeys, sent by the chevalier's
father, came to the apartment and took
the young man home. There his father
tried in vain to persuade him that Manon
had behaved treacherously. Finally the
father locked his son in his room for a
period of six weeks. During this time
Tiberge came to visit him, bringing him
news that Manon was being kept at the
expense of M. de B—. Finally Tiberge
persuaded the young man to enroll at the
Seminary of Saint-Supplice as a student
of theology. With his father's permission,
he entered the school where he became
an outstanding student. Manon was
present to hear his declamation at the public
disputation at the Sorbonne, and after
the ceremonies she came to visit him. A
single passionate embrace made him
forget his future in the Church. The
chevalier escaped from school without any
money; his mistress furnished the funds
to set up quarters at Chaillot, outside
Paris.
Then began a life of extravagance and
riotous living far beyond their slender
means. In Paris they met Manon's
2226

brother, M. Lescaut of the Royal Guards,
who did not scruple to install himself
in their house. When a fire destroyed all
their money and possessions, the brother
suggested that Manon sell her charms to
some free-handed nobleman. The
chevalier rejected this proposal, but
consented to become a professional gambler
in order to support Manon. He borrowed
from Tiberge enough money to begin his
career as a card cheat. For a time his
luck held, but their period of prosperity
ended when a maid and a valet fled with
all the valuable possessions of the new
household. Urged by her brother, Manon
consented to become the mistress of the
old and wealthy M. de G—M—, who
had promised her a house, servants, and a
large sum of money.
The young couple decided to play on
Manon's protector by introducing the
chevalier into the household as her
brother. Having duped the man to make
his settlement on Manon, they ran away
with the jewels and money he had given
her. But they were followed by the police,
apprehended, and imprisoned—Manon
at the Common Hospital; the chevalier
at Saint-Lazare.
Once lodged at Saint-Lazare, the
chevalier began to plan his escape. He
cultivated his superiors and made a show of
reading theology. M. de G—M—,
hearing of the chevalier's studious habits,
came to visit him. But when the young
man heard, for the first time, that Manon
was also imprisoned, he seized the old
man by the throat and tried to throttle
him. The monks stopped the fight and
saved the old man's life.
The chevalier now wrote to Tiberge,
asking his old friend to visit Saint-Lazare.
To Tiberge he entrusted a note addressed
to M. Lescaut. Using a pistol which
Manon's brother brought him soon
afterward, the chevalier escaped, killing a
turnkey in his flight. Later, by bribing
the attendants at the hospital, he was
able to arrange for Manon's escape.
Manon, wearing men's clothing, was
safely conveyed to her brother's house,
but just as the happy pair descended from
the carriage M. Lescaut was shot by a
man whose fortune the guardsman had
won at cards. Manon and the chevalier
fled to the inn at Chaillot to escape
apprehension for the murder.
In Paris the next day the chevalier
borrowed a hundred pistoles from
Tiberge. He also met M. de T—, a friend,
whom he invited to Chaillot for supper.
During the meal the son of old M. de
G—M— arrived at the inn. The
impetuous young chevalier wanted to kill
him at once to get revenge on the father,
but M. de T— persuaded him rather to
meet young de G—M— in a friendly
manner over the supper table. The young
man was charmed with Manon, and like
his father offered to maintain her
handsomely. But Manon and her lover had
made plans to deceive the gullible young
man, in order to get revenge on his father.
She accepted his rich presents. The
chevalier planned to have street ruffians
capture and hold the infatuated young man
while Manon and the chevalier enjoyed
the supper and the bed de G—M— had
arranged for himself and his mistress,
But the young man's father learned of
the scheme and Manon and the chevalier
were surprised by the police, who hurried
them off to the Chatelet.
The young chevalier then appealed to
his father, whose influence was great
enough to secure his son's release. He
refused to interest himself in Manon,
however, and she was sentenced to exile on
the next shipload of convicts to be sent
to the penal colony in Louisiana. After a
feeble attempt to rescue her from the
prison guards, the chevalier accompanied
his mistress on the trip from the prison
to Havre-de-Grace. He also gained
permission to accompany her on the voyage
to America. On shipboard and on their
arrival in New Orleans they passed as
man and wife.
In New Orleans they settled in a rude
shelter. After the chevalier secured hon-
2227

orable employment, Manon desired above
all things that they become legally man
and wife. The chevalier appealed to the
governor for permission to marry and
admitted his earlier deceit. The governor
refused, for his nephew M. Synnelet,
had fallen in love with Manon. As a
result, the chevalier fought a duel with
Synnelet. Thinking that he had killed
his opponent, he and Manon left the
colony, but on the journey Manon, ill
from fatigue, died in a lonely field. The
chevalier was disconsolate.
Tiberge followed his friend to America
and persuaded him to return to France.
Back home, the chevalier resolved to turn
to God in penance.
2228

MAN'S FATE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Andre Malraux (1895- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1927
Locale: Shanghai, China
First puhlished: 1933
Principal characters:
Ch'en, a Chinese terrorist
Kyo, a Communist organizer of French and Japanese parentage
Gisors, Kyo's father
May, Kyo's German wife
Baron de Clappique, a French adventurer
Katov, a Russian revolutionist
Hemmelrich, a German revolutionist
Ferral, a French businessman
Konig, chief of Chiang Kai-shek's police
Critique:
Maris Fate is in part an eye-witness
account of a troubled period of crisis in
China's troubled history. Malraux,
himself a revolutionary at the time, was first
of all a literary artist in the writing of
this novel. His characters are the melting
pot of cosmopolitan Shanghai. The
episodic plot is significant chiefly as an
illustration of leftist dialectics in modern
fiction.
The Story: •
The Reds, a revolutionary group with
a nucleus of Moscow agents, had made
a temporary alliance with Chiang Kai-
shek, their immediate object being to
control Shanghai with the help of the
Kuomintang. But the alliance was an
uneasy one, for neither side trusted the
other. The Reds had completed their
plans to seize Shanghai, ostensibly as
part of Chiang Kai-shek's campaign, but
they intended to put a Communist in
control before the Blue army arrived. On
their part, the Blues hoped to use the
Communists to seize the city and
afterwards disperse the revolutionaries.
Ch'en, the terrorist, stood ready to
strike through the mr^quito netting and
kill the sleeper in the bed. Nerving
himself for his first murder, he plunged
his dagger into the man's heart. Quickly
from the dead man he took a paper which
would authorize the dehvery of arms
now aboard the Shantung, at anchor
in the harbor. The Reds counted on
these arms to seize control of the city
before government troops arrived.
Ch'en took the document to Hemmel-
rich's phonograph shop, where Kyo was
waiting. There they all congratulated
him, Kyo, Katov, and Hemmelrich. Kyo
and Katov tested their new code of
paralleled phonograph records. One record
gave an innocent language lesson, the
other gave a loud hiss which covered all
but the key words on the first record.
Satisfied with their work, they planned a
final check of their revolutionary cells.
Hemmelrich refused to go with them; his
wife and child were sick.
Kyo and Katov visited their two
hundred units. A general strike at noon
would paralyze the city. At the same
time saboteurs would wreck the railway
so that the government could not send
reinforcements from the battle front.
Other groups would take over police
stations and army posts and seize all
firearms. With the grenades already on
hand, they would be equipped to resist
even tanks.
MAN'S FATE by Andre Malraux. Translated by Haakon M. Chevalier. By permission of the author's agent
William Aspenwall Bradley, Paris, his publishers, Messrs. Gallimard, Paris, and of Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 1934, by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc.
2229

Kyo went to the Black Cat, a night
club where he knew he could find de
Clappique. The Frenchman was drunk,
but he had to be trusted. De Clappique
was commissioned to take a forged order
to the Shantung, directing her to shift
anchorage.
Tired and tense, Kyo went home.
Gisors, his father, was still awake, and
Kyo told him a few details of the plan.
Then May, Kyo's wife, came home
exhausted from her hospital work. She
was one of the few women doctors in all
Shanghai, a woman with advanced views
on marriage relationships. She and Kyo
quarreled because of her affair with
another doctor. During the quarrel de
Clappique came to report that the
Shantung had moved. A messenger recalled
Kyo to headquarters.
Dressed as government soldiers, Kyo
and Katov with ten others boarded the
Shantung and got the arms, but only
after seizing the captain and holding him
prisoner. Now the revolutionaries could
plan with confidence.
Meanwhile Ferral, head of the French
Chamber of Commerce, decided to throw
his support to Chiang Kai-shek. After
giving orders to send funds to the Blues,
he retired with his mistress Valerie. It
was arranged that she would see him
the following night at her hotel. He was
to bring her a pet bird in a cage. At
the appointed time Ferral asked for
Valerie at the hotel desk. To his
surprise, she was out. A young
Englishman was also waiting for * her with a
caged bird. To revenge himself, Ferral
bought the entire stock of a pet store
—forty birds and a kangaroo, and set
them loose in Valerie's room.
The uprising took place as planned.
Ch'en seized one police station with
ease and armed his small band. The
second station was better defended, and
grenades failed to dislodge officers
barricaded on the top floor. Ch'en set fire
to the building, killing the resisters as
well as his own wounded comrades.
The feeble central government could
not fight both Chiang and the Reds at
the same time. While the government
forces were occupied with the Blues, the
Reds easily took control of the city.
Two days later the Blues under Chiang
approached Shanghai. The general had
been shrewd enough to send his first
division, composed largely of
Communists, to another front; consequently the
Communists found themselves
confronting an unsympathetic Blue army which
in turn took over the city. Many of the
Communists were arrested. When
Moscow ordered all armed Communists to
surrender their weapons to Chiang's
police, dissension broke out among the
Reds. Many of the Chinese deserted the
Moscow party and embarked on a
terroristic campaign of their own.
Ch'en conceived the idea that he must
kill Chiang in order to free China. With
two companions he lay in wait to throw
a bomb into the general's car. His first
attempt having failed, Ch'en went to
Hemmelrich's shop. Hemmelrich refused
to shelter him. In a second attempt,
Ch'en threw himself with his bomb under
the automobile. The car was wrecked
and Ch'en was killed, but Chiang was
not in the car.
Chiang's police destroyed Hemmel-
rich's shop, accidentally killing his wife
and baby. Believing his cowardice was
the cause of Ch'en's action and the
subsequent riot, Hemmelrich seized a rifle
and joined the rioters. He was quickly
killed by Chiang's police.
Now in complete control, Chiang's
police chief, Konig, began to round up
the Communists, Katov among them.
WTien the word went out that Kyo was
to be arrested, Gisors begged de
Clappique to intervene because the baron
was Konig's good friend. Instead of
warning Kyo, de Clappique lingered in
a gambling house until after Kyo had
been arrested. Later de Clappique went
to Konig to ask for Kyo's release. The
Frenchman was given only forty-eight
hours to leave China.
In prison Katov gave his cyanide tab-
2230

let to Kyo, who poisoned himself. Katov
and his revolutionary group were
executed.
Each of the survivors sought safety in
his own way. Gisors returned to Japan
to teach painting. May went to Moscow
to practice medicine. By disguising
himself de Clappique got aboard the same
French liner that was taking Ferral back
to France. So the Communists and their
sympathizers were destroyed by
relentless Chiang and the vacillating policy of
Moscow. Yet there was good news from
China for the survivors; the quiet work
of revolution had already started again.
2231

MANSFIELD PARK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: F'arly nineteenth century
Locale: Northamptonshire, England
Pirst published 1814
Principal characters:
Fanny Price, a poor relation at Mansfield Park
Sir Thomas Bertram, owner of Mansfield Park
Lady Bertram, his wife
Tom,
Edmund,
Maria, and
Julia Bertram, Fanny's cousins
Mrs. Norris, a busybody
Henry Crawford, a self-centered young gentleman
Mary Crawford, his sister
Mr. Rushworth, Maria Bertram's suitor
Mr. Yates, a young man of fashion
Critique:
Mansfield Park is the most obviously
didactic of Jane Austen's novels: virtue is
universally rewarded and vice just as
certainly punished. The characterization,
(also, is inclined more to black and white
than is true of her greater works. As
always, the feminine characters are more
convincing than the men. The heroine,
Fanny Price, is appealing and sweet,
while Mrs. Norris is a masterly satirical
sketch of the universal type of busybody.
The Story:
Of the three Ward sisters, one had
married very well to a baronet, one very
badly to a lieutenant of the marines, and
one neither too badly nor too well to a
clergyman. The fortunate sister, Lady
Bertram, agreed at the instigation of the
clerical sister, Mrs. Norris, to care for one
of the unfortunate sister's nine children.
Accordingly, Fanny Price, ten years old,
and a shy and sensitive child, came to
make her home at Mansfield Park.
Among her four Bertram cousins, Tom,
Edmund, Maria, and Julia, Fanny found
a real friend only in Edmund. The
others usually ignored her except when
she could be of use to them, but Edmund
comforted her, and advised her. He alone
seemed to recognize her good qualitie
cleverness, grace, and a pleasant
disposition. Besides Edmund's attentions, Fanny
received some of a very different kind
from her selfish and hypocritical Aunt
Norris, who was constantly calling
unnecessary attention to Fanny's dependent
position.
When Fanny was fifteen, Sir Thomas
Bertram went to Antigua to look after
some business affairs. With him went
his oldest son, who was inclined to
extravagance and dissipation, and the
family was left to Edmund's and Lady
Bertram's care. During Sir Thomas' absence,
his older daughter, Maria, became
engaged to Mr. Rushworth, a young man
who was rich and well-connected but
extremely stupid.
Another event of importance was the
arrival in the village of Mary and Henry
Crawford, the sister and brother of Mrs.
Grant, whose husband had become the
rector after the death of Mr. Norris. Both
of the Bertram girls liked Henry im-
mensely, but since Maria was engaged,
he rightfully belonged to Julia. They
also became close friends with Mary
Crawford, who in turn attracted both
Tom, now returned from abroad, and
Edmund.
Fanny regretted the Crawfords* com-
2232

ing, for she saw that Edmund, whom she
herself loved, was falling in love with the
shallow, worldly Mary, and that her
cousin Maria was carrying on a most
unseemly flirtation with Henry. The less
observant, like Mrs. Norris, saw only
what they wished to see and insisted that
he was paying particular attention to
Julia.
At the suggestion of Mr. Yates, a
pleasure-loving friend of Tom, the young
people decided to engage in some private
theatricals and chose for their
entertainment the sentimental "Lovers' Vows."
Fanny opposed the scheme from the start,
for she knew Sir Thomas would have
disapproved. Edmund tried to dissuade
the others, but finally let himself be
talked into taking a part because there
were not enough men for all the roles.
Rehearsals and preparations went
forward, the plan growing more elaborate
as it progressed. However, the
unexpected return of Sir Thomas put an end
to the rehearsals. The house was soon
cleared of all theatrical gear, including
Mr. Yates, whose trifling, affected ways
Sir Thomas had disliked immediately.
Maria, willing to break her
engagement to Mr. Rush worth, had hoped her
father's return would bring a declaration
from Henry. Instead of declaring
himself, he announced his departure for a
stay in Bath. Although her pride was
hurt, Maria resolved that Henry
Crawford should never know she had taken
their flirtation seriously. She was duly
married to Mr. Rush worth.
Julia went to Brightontwith the Rush-
worths. With both the Bertram sisters
gone, Henry began an idle flirtation with
Fanny and ended by falling in love with
her. One of his plans for winning her
favor was a scheme for getting her
beloved brother William, who had just
visited her at Mansfield Park, a
promotion in the navy. Although Fanny was
grateful for this favor, she refused him
promptly when he proposed. In doing
so, she incurred the serious displeasure
of her uncle, Sir Thomas, who regarded
as sheer perversity the sentiments which
made her turn down such an
advantageous match. Even Edmund
encouraged her to change her mind, for he
was too preoccupied with his attachment
to Mary Crawford to guess that Fanny
had more than a cousinly regard for him.
Edmund had just been ordained as a
clergyman, a step which Mary Crawford
had ridiculed, and he was not sure she
would accept him as a husband. He
persisted in believing, however, that her
frivolous dislike of the clergy was only
a trait she had acquired from worldly
friends, and that her opinion could be
changed.
About this time Fanny went to
Portsmouth to visit her family. The stay was
a depressing one, for she found her
family, with the exception of William,
disorderly and ill-bred, by Mansfield Park
standards. Also, several catastrophes
occurred at Mansfield Park to make her
long to be helpful there. Tom, the oldest
son, had such a serious illness that his
recovery was uncertain; Maria, now Mrs.
Rushworth, ran away with Henry, who
forgot his love for Fanny long enough
to commit an irrevocable indiscretion;
and Julia eloped with Mr. Yates. The
Bertram family, crushed under this series
of blows, at last realized Fanny's value
and dearness to them, and welcomed her
back to Mansfield Park with tenderness
that touched her deeply.
Mrs. Norris, as spiteful as ever, said
that if Fanny had accepted Henry
Crawford as she should have, he would never
have run away with Maria. But Sir
Thomas gave Fanny credit for seeing
Henry's character more clearly than he
had, and forgave her for having refused
Henry. He blamed himself for Maria's
downfall, for he realized he had never
taken the trouble to know his children
well.
But good came from all this evil. Tom's
illness sobered him, and he proved a
better son thereafter. Mr. Yates, though
not a great match for Julia, had more
income and fewer debts than Sir Thomas
2233

had anticipated, and seemed inclined to
settle down to quiet domesticity. Henry
and Maria separated after spending a few
unhappy months together. Sir Thomas
refused to receive her at Mansfield Park,
but provided a home for her in another
part of the country. There Mrs. Norris
went to live with her favorite niece, to
the great relief of everyone at Mansfield
Edmund had finally realized Mary
Crawford's frivolous and worldly nature
when she treated his sister's and her
brother's affair quite lightly. Her levity
shocked him, and made it easier for him
to give up thoughts of an unsuitable
marriage. Eventually he fell in love with
Fanny, who had loved him so long. They
were married and lived at the parsonage
near Mansfield Park.
2234

THE MARBLE FAUN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Type of plot: Allegorical romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Rome
First published: 1860
Principal characters:
Miriam, an artist
Hilda, another artist, friend of Miriam
Kenyon, an American sculptor
Donatello, a young Italian
Critique:
A romance filled with moral and
symbolic overtones and undertones, The
Marble Faun, or, The Romance of Monte
Beni exhibits Hawthorne's preoccupation
with the problem of evil. Hawthorne
himself was a complex person, and some
of the psychological concerns of his own
character are reflected in this novel. The
book is a study of the birth of the human
conscience, the consequences of a sin
committed by a simple, pagan spirit who
through his unthinking deed releases a
new sense of intellectual and moral
responsibility. The Marble Faun is one of
the American classics, eloquent testimony
to the ability and insight of one of our
greatest native writers.
The Story:
Nothing at all was known about
Miriam. In the artistic world of Rome,
she lived without revealing anything
about herself and without arousing the
curiosity or suspicion of those living
around her. With a New England girl,
Hilda, and Kenyon, a sculptor, she
enjoyed a friendship which even her
mysterious origin did not shadow, so complete
was their understanding and trust of one
another.
One day the three friends,
accompanied by Donatello, a young Italian, saw
a statue of the faun by Praxiteles. Struck
by the resemblance of the statue to
Donatello, they asked jokingly to see if the
Italian also had pointed ears under his
golden locks. Indeed, Donatello was very
much like a faun in his character. He had
great agility, cheerfulness, and a sunny
nature unclouded by melancholy or care.
He was deeply in love with Miriam.
On another occasion, the trio went to
visit the catacombs. While there, Miriam
disappeared for a moment. When she
came back, she returned with a strange
individual whom she had met inside one
of the tombs. This person followed her
for months to come. No one knew
anything about him. He and Miriam had
conversations together, and he spoke of
the hold he had on her, of their life
together in a mysterious past. Miriam
became more and more unhappy. She told
Donatello—who was ever ready to
defend her—that he must go away, for she
would bring doom and destruction upon
him. But Donatello stayed, as ardent as
ever.
Her persecutor appeared everywhere,
followed her wherever she went. One
day Miriam went to Hilda and left a
packet for Hilda to deliver on a certain
date to the address she would find written
on the outside. Shortly afterward, the
friends went out one night and climbed
the Tarpeian Rock, over which the old
Romans used to throw their criminals.
As they were getting ready to return
home, Miriam's persecutor appeared.
Miriam went with him, followed by
Donatello. Donatello attacked the man and
with the stranger secure in his grasp
looked at Miriam. Her eyes gave him his
answer. He threw the tormentor over a
2235

cliff to his death.
United by this crime, Miriam and
Donatello also became united in love.
But they did not know that Hilda had
witnessed the murder, that she was
suffering because of it. They had all agreed
to visit the Church of the Capuchins the
following afternoon in order to see a
painting which supposedly bore a
resemblance to Miriam's tormentor. But
Hilda did not keep the appointment. The
others went, to find a mass for the dead
in progress. The dead man was Miriam's
persecutor. Later, when Miriam went to
see Hilda, the American girl told Miriam
that their friendship was over.
Donatello, too, had changed. He was
no longer the unworried faun, but a
person with a very guilty conscience. He
began to avoid Miriam, even to hate her.
He left Rome and went back to his
ancestral home. Kenyon went there to visit
his friend. Hilda stayed in Rome by
herself, lonely, distraught.
At Donatello's country home, Kenyon
learned the local tradition about his
friend's family, a legend that Donatello
was, in fact, descended from a race of
fauns who had inhabited the countrvside
in remote times. He learned, too, of
Donatello's feeling of guilt, but he,
unaware of the killing, did not know the
reason for Donatello's changed spirit.
When Miriam followed Donatello to his
home, he would not see her. Kenyon told
her Donatello still loved her, however,
and she agreed to meet both of them later
on. When they met in the city square,
Miriam stood quietly, waiting for
Donatello to speak. At last he spoke her name,
and she went to him. So they were
united once more, but the union was
haunted by their sin.
In the meantime Hilda had gone to
deliver the packet Miriam had left in her
keeping. The address was that of one
high in the affairs of the government.
Kenyon looked for Hilda everywhere, for
he had seen her but briefly since his
return. Realizing at last that he was in
love with her, he was worried about her
disappearance. During the carnival
season he met Donatello and Miriam, who
promised him he would soon see Hilda
again. He did, on the day the carnival
was at its height and the streets were
filled with a merry-making throng.
Hilda told him her story. Her
knowledge of the crime had weighed so heavily
upon her that at last she had gone to
confession in St. Peter's and had poured
out the tale to a listening priest. Later
she had delivered the packet, as Miriam
had requested her, and afterward she
had been detained in a convent until the
authorities were satisfied she had taken
no part in the murder on the Tarpeian
Rock. She had just been released from
her strange captivity. While they stood
talking, there was a commotion in the
crowd nearby. The police had seized
Donatello and were taking him to jail.
For his crime Donatello was sentenced
to prison. Miriam was not brought to
trial, for her only crime had been the
look in her eyes which had told Donatello
to murder her persecutor. But Miriam's
history was finally revealed. Although
she herself was innocent, her family had
been involved in a crime which made
its name infamous. She had gone to
Rome and attempted to live down the
past, but evil had continued to haunt
her, and the past had reappeared in the
form of a tormentor who had dogged her
footsteps, threatening to make her
identity known to the world, until
Donatello had thrown him over the cliff.
Kenyon and Hilda were married. Once
again they saw Miriam, kneeling in the
Pantheon before the tomb of Raphael.
As they passed, she stretched out her
hands to them in a gesture that both
blessed them and repulsed them. They
left her to her expiation and her grief.
2236

MARCHING ON
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Boyd (1888-1944)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: The Civil War period
Locale: North Carolina
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
James Fraser, a farm boy
Stewart Prevost, a rich planter's daughter
Colonel Prevost, her father
Charles Prevost, her brother
Critique:
When James Boyd wrote Marching
On, he obviously had two motives: one,
to depict the spirit of the soldiers who
fought heroically for a lost cause, and,
two, to show how the spirit of one boy,
James Fraser, kept marching on to the
point where he could hold up his head
proudly among those he had once thought
of as his superiors. Both parts of the plot
have been developed in an interesting
and challenging manner. Marching On
is not one of the best-known Civil War
novels, but it is a good story, well told.
The Story:
When James Fraser fell in love with
Stewart Prevost, he loved her in a
hopeless way. He was the son of a poor
farmer who lived in the swamps of
North Carolina, and Stewart was the
daughter of Colonel Prevost, a
gentleman planter. Although Colonel Prevost
was always courteous and friendly with
the Frasers, his friendliness was reserved;
James knew that he must keep his place.
James loved his father and mother,
both hard-working, God-fearing people
who toiled endlessly with meager reward.
But he felt that he must somehow rise
above their station in life, that he must
gain an equal footing with the planters
and other gentlemen toward whom he
was forced to show a servile attitude. On
nights when he was filled with despair
and confusion, he slipped out of the
house and played his fiddle. Into his
MARCHING ON by James Boyd. By permission of
by Charles Scribner's Sons.
music he could pour his dreams without
fear of ridicule.
James first saw Stewart when he
delivered a load of wood to her father.
She said only a few words in greeting,
but to James the words were as beautiful
as the ringing of bells. During the
next weeks he saw her often; it seemed
to him that she was always on the road
leading to the plantation as he passed
with a load of wood. When he was
alone, he cursed himself for a fool; no
girl in Stewart's position would purposely
seek out an awkward, uncouth farm boy.
He swore to himself that he would avoid
her. At last Stewart began to talk with
him about life. When he told her that
he would like to go away and work on
the railroad, she offered to give him
money to start him on his way. He
bitterly decided that she only wanted to get
rid of him.
For a few days James avoided the
plantation. Then his pride forced him
to call at Stewart's home and ask to see
her. Colonel Prevost answered the door
and went to call Stewart. He returned
to tell James that Stewart was busy—
and would be busy in the future. Trying
to save his dignity, the boy stumbled
blindly down the steps. The next
morning he told his father and mother that
he was going away.
James went to Wilmington and took
a job on the railroad. His interest in
machines and his determination to suc-
the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1927,
2237

ceed made him an excellent worker. He
lived well and sent money home each
week. He made friends, but the vision
of Stewart would not leave him and he
was lonely. The men with whom he
associated were all concerned over the
coming election, for they believed that
there would be trouble if Abraham
Lincoln were elected. Everywhere he went,
abolition and war were the main topics
of conversation. Not long after Lincoln
had been elected, the Secession began.
In April, after Fort Sumter had been
attacked, James went home to join the
company being formed by Colonel Pre-
vost. Stewart's brother Charles was to
be the captain, for he had attended
Virginia Military Institute. On the night
before the company was to leave the
plantation James wrote Stewart a note
and asked her to meet him. His love
was greater than his pride, and for that
he would always be grateful; Stewart
swore to him that her father had never
told her that James had come to see her
once before, and she said regretfully that
her offer of money had been thoughtlessly
given. She promised to write to him, and
she asked him to look after her brother
Charles, for she had a premonition that
he would be killed.
The next three years were later to
Teem to James like one continuous
nightmare. Their company engaged in battle
with the Yankees only three or four
times, but the men marched and marched
until they slept as they walked. Most of
the time they were starving. When their
shoes wore out, they wrapped their
swollen feet in rags. Still they went on.
Charles was killed. Although James
killed the men who had attacked Charles,
he feared that Stewart would not
forgive him for failing in his promise. He
wrote her, but it was two years before
her answer reached him. By that time
he was a prisoner. Her letter was the
only thing that kept him sane during
his years in prison. All the prisoners
were gaunt and sick, unbelievably thin
and emaciated. The Yankees were fairly
kind, but there was not enough food and
clothing for anyone in those terrible
years. James tried to keep a record of
the number of days he had been a
prisoner, but the problem was too great
for his fuzzy mind. To him only
Stewart's letter was real.
Released at last in an exchange of
prisoners, James went immediately to
the Prevost plantation. He was dirty
and in rags and too weak to walk without
help, but Stewart drew him like a
magnet. When he climbed the long steps
to her house, she was waiting for him
at the top.
James stayed at the plantation until he
was stronger. Stewart told him she loved
him and would marry him. Although
Colonel Prevost was courteous and
gracious, James knew that the old
gentleman still considered him little better
than a poor white cracker and would be
glad when he went to his own home.
At last James went back to his father
and mother.
James had been home only a short
time before he learned that the Union
army was attacking a town close to the
plantation. Because the Fraser farm
was off the main path of the soldiers,
he went to the plantation to bring
Stewart and her father home with him.
The colonel could not believe that
Southern troops would be defeated again and
he did not want to leave his house.
While James was there, the old man
apologized for his attitude and told the
boy that he was pleased that Stewart
was going to marry him. He honored
James by showing him a picture of
Stewart's dead mother, his most prized
treasure.
The town fell. James and Stewart
went to his home, with the colonel's
promise that he would follow them as
soon as he had arranged for the
protection of his slaves and overseers. But
he never came. James returned to the
plantation after he had taken Stewart
to safety. There he found that Yankees
had ransacked the house and killed the
2238

colonel as he tried to save his wife's
picture. Filled with a desire to avenge
the colonel's death, James started down
the road after the troops. He wanted to
kill any Yankee he saw. He had an
opportunity to kill three of them, but he
suddenly changed his mind when he saw
that the men were released prisoners.
They had fought for what they thought
was right, just as he had. He could think
of them only as brothers who had
suffered in the same war. He put his gun
away and gave them the little food he
had. Then he started back to Stewart. He
was going home.
2239

MARDI
Type of work: Novel
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Svmbolic allegory
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: The islands o£ the Western Pacific
First published: 1849
Principal characters:
The Narrator, later called Taji, a young American sailor, mistaken for
a god by the islanders
Yillah, a blonde native, beloved of Taji, symbolizing Good
Hautia, a dark native queen, in love with Taji, symbolizing Evil
Jarl, Taji's sailor companion
Samoa, a native companion
Media, a native king
Yoomy, Media's minstrel
Babbalanja, Media's court philosopher
Critique:
Mardi and a Voyage Thither was
Herman Melville's answer to those people
who refused to believe that his first two
travel books—Omoo and Typee—wreie
anything but sailor's yarns that Melville
had spun for the credulous. Actually,
those books were based on Melville's own
adventures in the South Seas. In this
book, a true romance, he thought he
might make people take fiction for fact,
since they had been so obstinate in taking
fact for fiction in earlier volumes. The
second part of Mardi, the account of a
mystical voyage through the world, is so
filled with symbols that one finds it
difficult to state what much of the symbolism
means. Obviously the moral teaching of
the novel is that one should avoid the
vanity of human wishes—a message
painted in such vivid colors that one loses
sight of the didacticism. The characters,
most of them supposedly Polynesian,
discuss for Melville almost every topic
thought of, from a belief in the hereafter
for whales to Spanish customs and
manners.
The Story:
The Narrator of the story, a young
American sailor, was picked up at Rava-
vai, a Pacific island, by a whaling vessel,
the Arcturion. The voyage of the Arc-
turion was not a successful one, and when
the ship began to head for the cold climate
of the Bay of Kamchatka, the young
Narrator and his special friend in the
forecastle, Jarl, decided to leave the ship.
Knowing the captain would not land them
anywhere, they provisioned a small boat
and in it escaped from the ship under
cover of darkness.
Heading westward, the two men hoped
to reach some hospitable islands. After
sailing for many days they came upon a
drifting, ship that seemed to be a derelict.
Finding it in fairly seaworthy condition,
they boarded it. The following morning
a native man and woman were found in
the rigging, where they had hidden from
the Narrator and Jarl. With the help of
the natives, who had escaped with the ship
from an unfriendly tribe of islanders after
the latter had killed the ship's crew, the
Narrator and Jarl continued their voyage
in search of land.
After many days of voyaging the vessel
was becalmed. In the storm which
followed, the vessel was wrecked. Jarl and
the Narrator, with the native man, Samoa,
set out in a little whaleboat. The
native woman had been killed during the
storm.
Many days later they saw a sail in the
distance. Taking up their oars to aid the
force of the sail, they slowly closed in on
the craft they had spotted. As they drew
2240

close, they saw it was a strange
arrangement of two native canoes with a
platform built over them. After some
discussion between the native priest in charge
of the craft and the Narrator, the sailor
and Samoa boarded the native vessel.
Once aboard the craft, they discovered a
beautiful blonde girl, but they had to
force a passage through the natives in
order to regain the whaleboat. In the
scuffle they took two of the natives
prisoners. From the natives they learned that the
blonde girl was the priest's prisoner.
Going back aboard the native craft, the sailor
and Samoa rescued the girl and escaped
with her from the natives.
The girl, whose name was Yillah,
wished to return to her native islands. The
Narrator soon fell in love with her, and
the girl, in native fashion, returned his
affection. The Narrator then decided that
he would remain with her on her island
home.
Sighting a group of islands at last, the
party headed for the nearest beach.
Before they reached the shore, however,
natives swam out to the whaleboat and
gave them an excited welcome. Towinje
the boat into shallow water, the natives
picked it up and carried it ashore on their
shoulders. The visitors were completely
puzzled by their reception until they
learned that the Narrator had been
mistaken for the natives' god, Taji, who,
according to an ancient prophecy, would one
day revisit them in human form. The
natives also thought that the other three
occupants of the whaleboat were semi-deities
whom Taji had brought from another
world for companionship.
Media, king of the atoll, made the
guests welcome, and Taji, as the Narrator
was now called, decided to make the best
of his position, as long as his godhood put
him under no particular constraints. He
and Yillah, housed in a splendid grass
house, lived a life of tranquil happiness,
doing no more than the islanders, who in
their turn had little to do to make life
comfortable. Then, suddenly, unhappiness
struck the island and Taji. He awoke one
morning to find Yillah gone without a
trace.
Within a few days of Yillah's
disappearance, Taji received a visit from a
portentously disguised messenger, who
gave the young sailor a set of flower
symbols from Queen Hautia, the dark queen
of a group of distant islands.
The natives interpreted the flower
symbols from Hautia to mean that the queen
loved Taji, wished his presence, and bade
him not look for Yillah, his lost love. Not
to be dissuaded, however, Taji,
accompanied by King Media and a party of his
courtiers, including Yoomy the poet-singer
and Babbalanja the philosopher, set sail
in a huge, ornate native canoe in search of
Yillah.
Before the voyagers had journeyed far
on the ocean they met a black canoe
containing more emissaries sent to Taji from
Queen Hautia. The messengers, again
using flower symbols interpreted by
Yoomy, bade Taji forget his quest of the
fair love and turn his canoe toward the
kingdom of Hautia. Taji refused and
continued on his quest.
His first stop was on the island of Juam,
where Taji made a friend of King Don-
jalolo, a monarch who tried to escape
reality by moving from one bower to
another in his island kingdom and by
taking no heed of anyone's happiness but
his own and that of people who were in
his company. Donjalolo aided Taji in his
quest by sending messages throughout his
island kingdom to ask for news of Yillah.
After the petty princes had come to Don-
jalolo's court to report that they knew
nothing of the girl, Taji decided to set out
once more in the canoe, in the company of
Media and his courtiers, to continue his
search for his lost love. Again, this time in
more menacing fashion, he was accosted
at sea by a canoe-load of emissaries from
Queen Hautia, who demanded that he go
to her immediately. Again Taji refused.
After many days and* nights, during
which Taji and his companions had
lengthy conversations on manv branches
2241

of knowledge and philosophy, they
touched at an island where they visited
the temple of Oro and learned of the
Polynesian prophet, Alma, who had many
years before, according to legend, brought
peace, serenity, ana love to the islands.
Continuing their voyage through the
archipelago of Mardi, representing the
world and all its ideas, Taji and his party
visited Vivenza, modeled on the United
States, passed the Cape of Capes, saw
many other islands, regaled one another
with many philosophical conversations
during the long hours at sea, and were
finally becalmed. After the calm a death-
cloud passed them. Following that
adventure they landed at Serenia, a land which
proved too quiet -and too good for them.
At last the only place left to look for
Yillah, who had not been found on any
one of the many atolls Taji and his
companions had visited, was the bower of
Queen Hautia herself. Babbalanja the
philosopher, who remained in Serenia,
told Taji he would never find the
unattainable Yillah, but Taji went on until
three emissaries from Queen Hautia met
him and guided him to her land. Taji
found himself entranced by Hautia, who
seemed in some strange way connected
with Yillah, though she invited him to
sin. But still he asked in vain for word of
Yillah. He was left in that land by the
companions of his travels.
2242

MARIA CHAPDELAINE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Louis Hemon (1880-1913)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Northern Quebec
First published: 1916
Principal characters:
Maria Chapdelaine, a French-Canadian farm, girl
Samuel Chapdelaine, her father
Mrs. Chapdelaine, her mother
Francois Paradis, a trapper
Eutrope Gagnon, a farmer-pioneer
Lorenzo Surprenant, a factory worker
Critique:
This novel is, in part, autobiographical.
Hdmon, born, reared, and educated in
France, emigrated to the Canadian Lake
St. John country in 1912. There he worked
as a laborer for eight dollars a month on a
farm near Peribonka, the village which
is named in Maria Chapdelaine and
which forms part of the background of the
novel. On a neighboring farm lived a
young woman, Eva Bouchard, who
became the heroine of Hemon's novel. Maria
Chapdelaine^ parents were modeled on
Samuel Bedard and his wife, the owners
of the farm on which Hemon was
employed. The novel had astounding success
during the early 1920's, although the
author, killed by a train shortly after posting
the manuscript, did not live to see that
success. As a result of the popularity of
this novel, a search was made of Hemon's
manuscripts and four other volumes were
published.
The Story:
Maria Chapdelaine was a French-
Canadian girl whose family lived in the
northern part of Quebec province near
Lake St. John, a country to which spring
came very late in the year and the winters,
always severe, came too soon. Maria'*
father, Samuel Chapdelaine, had moved
his family several times to new locations
in the north country. Each time he hoped
to get away from neighbors and
civilization, for he was a man who took great
delight in the hard work of clearing land
from the wilderness but disliked to farm
that land after it had been won.
When she was in her late teens, Maria
Chapdelaine was sent to spend part of one
winter with relatives in town. Her father
met her on her return to Peribonka, the
settlement nearest to the farm, and they
stayed in the village overnight in order
to attend church before leaving for their
home in the wilderness. At church they
met Francois Paradis, a young man who
had lived near the Chapdelaines in
another location some years before. Young
Francois Paradis instantly fell in love with
Maria and promised to visit the family on
his way into the back country to trade for
furs with the Indians.
The following summer was one of hard
work for the entire Chapdelaine family.
The women, including Maria, had their
part in putting away food for the winter
and taking care of the men's needs as they
reclaimed farmland from the forest by
cutting away the trees and underbrush
and removing the stumps that were left.
The first break in the difficult and tedious
work came near the end of July, when
the blueberries ripened. At that time
everyone stopped work to go on a berrypick-
ing expedition.
The night before the berrypicking,
MARIA CHAPDELAINE by Louis H6mon. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co.
Copyright, 1921, by The Macmillan Co. Renewed, 1949.
2243

Francois Paradis arrived at the
Chapdelaine cabin. The next day he and Maria
wandered off from the rest of the berry-
pickers. After they had filled their large
pails with berries, they sat down to rest.
Francois, in an offhand manner that
betrayed the emotion he felt, asked Maria to
marry him the following year. He told her
that he would be back to visit her once
again before going off into the woods to act
as foreman of a logging crew during the
winter.
The summer passed with all the hard
work attendant on carving a farm from
the Canadian forests. Before long the
winds of winter began to blow, and soon
afterward deep snow fell. Francois Paradis
went to the logging camps, as did many
of the men, including the two oldest
brothers of Maria Chapdelaine.
In the meantime two other suitors
for Maria's hand presented themselves.
Eu trope Gagnon was a hardworking
young man who, like Maria's father, was
trying to hew a farm from the wilderness.
The other, Lorenzo Surprenant, was a
young French-Canadian who had
emigrated to the United States to work in a
factory. The first of the suitors said very
little, knowing he had small chance
against Francois Paradis. The second
talked a great deal about the easier life in
cities of the United States far to the south.
Maria barely listened to his wily talk.
Shortly after Christmas, word came of
the tragic death of Francois Paradis.
Leaving the lumber camp to visit Maria and her
family during the holidays, he had arrived
at a railroad line only to learn that trains
were not running. He then set out on foot
across barren wastes and forests to reach
the Chapdelaine farmstead, but he had
lost his way and died of exposure. Maria
was greatly saddened by his death, even
though their engagement had been only
between themselves and no word had been
given to her parents or the parish priest.
Because of her grief, her father was forced
to take her to the village to get advice
from the priest. After talking to him,
Maria seemed outwardly composed.
The following summer was a bad one
for the district, including the Chapdelaine
family. Spring came late, drought
occurred during the summer, and the snows
of winter came several weeks early.
Everyone, including Maria, began to wonder if
life were worth the struggle against the
elements in northern Quebec.
During the second winter, Gagnon and
Surprenant still spoke to Maria about
marriage, and she, apathetically, listened to
them. Gagnon said much less than the
other suitor, for he knew that if Maria
married him she would merely exchange
the hard life on her father's farm for a
similar life on his farm. But Surprenant
spoke glowingly of life in the
Massachusetts city in which he worked and told how
much easier urban life in a warmer climate
was than rural life in the far north. Maria
heard him patiently and with some
interest, for the northern wilderness which had
swallowed Francois Paradis had become an
enemy to her.
At Christmas time Surprenant made a
special trip north to see Maria and to tell
her once more how much happier, she
could be. Almost, but not quite, Maria
made up her mind to accept his offer of
marriage and leave the wilderness. For
Gagnon she had few words; she felt that
there was little he had to offer.
Soon after Christmas, Maria's mother
fell ill, and nothing the family could do
for her seemed to help. At last Samuel
Chapdelaine decided to brave the wintry
storms to get a doctor. He was successful
in reaching the settlement, but when the
doctor arrived and examined Mrs.
Chapdelaine, he could find nothing to help her,
and he advised that they send for the
priest. While Chapdelaine went for the
priest, the rest of the family decided to call
in a skillful bonesetter in whom they had
great faith. He, like the doctor, told them
he knew of nothing to help the ailing
woman. The priest finally arrived and
administered the last rites of the Church
to Mrs. Chapdelaine, who died soon
afterward.
Sitting up with the corpse, to keep her
father company during the long hours of
night, Maria listened to her father's stories
2244

of the aid her mother had given him
during his long struggle to carve first one
farm and then another from the
wilderness. Maria, listening avidly, finally
resolved that she, like her mother, could
stand the hardships of wilderness life.
When Eutrope Gagnon again spoke of
marriage, telling her how he could work
in the lumber camps for a winter to earn
the money needed to set up housekeeping,
Maria agreed that she would wait and
marry him when he returned.
2245

MARIA MAGDALENA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Germany
First presented: 1844
Principal characters:
Anthony, a cabinetmaker
Anthony's Wife
Clara, his daughter
Karl, his son
Leonard, Clara's fiance
The Secretary, a second suitor for Clara's hand
Critique:
Friedrich Hebbel was a playwright
and literary critic who has only in recent
years been recognized for his important
place in the literature of his country. Of
his literary work, his dramas are the most
important, and this play is generally
considered one of his best. In his plays, as
in Shakespeare's, we find the tragedy of
man as an individual. The consequences
that befall his characters are a result of
the incurable defects in humans, rather
than the results of evils in an entire
society. In Maria Magdalena, however, we
find the tragedy of the individual fused
with a new type of realism that was new
to all literature of the time and especially
the drama. There is an abundance of the
details of everyday life in a lower middle-
class German household under older
family traditions of Germanic culture.
The play anticipates the later realism of
Ibsen.
The Story:
After a long illness, from which she
was not expected to recover, Anthony's
wife, a woman in her fifties, felt that she
had been given another chance to make
herself worthy of heaven. To show her
gratitude for another chance, she dressed
herself in her wedding gown, which was
also to be her shroud, and went to church
the first Sunday morning she was able.
Before she went, she and her daughter
Clara had a heart-to-heart talk, during
which the mother disclosed her fears
about her son Karl, who spent too much
time drinking and playing, and not
enough time working steadily. The
mother felt that his attitudes and his conduct
were her fault, but still she refused to
believe he was really a bad young man.
The mother and Clara also discussed
Clara's fiance^, a young clerk named
Leonard, who had only a little money
and very poor prospects. The mother
told Clara that she hoped the girl could
find a better man. Shortly after the
mother left for church, Leonard came to see
Clara and explained that he had not seen
her for two weeks for a particular reason.
During that time he had been attentive
to the mayor's daughter in an effort to
get himself a job as clerk for the city.
Leonard also accused her of being in
love with another man, even though a
very short time before Clara had given
herself to Leonard in order to prove her
love. After they had straightened out the
situation, Leonard told Clara he had
come to ask her father for her hand in
marriage. Clara assured him that they
must soon be married, unless her sin were
to show. Even so, she had some
misgivings about him when she learned of the
chicanery he had executed in securing
MARIA MAGDALENA by Friedrich Hebbel. Translated by Barber Fairley. From THREE PLAYS
BY FREDERIC HEBBEL. contained in EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY. By permission of the publishers,
£. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
2246

his position as town clerk.
Her father, when he learned of the
proposed marriage and Leonard's
prospects, seemed agreeable to the marriage.
Then the young man, knowing that old
Anthony had a large sum of money out
at interest, brought up the question of
a dowry. He was surprised to learn,
however, that Anthony had called in his
money and paid it to help an old man
who had befriended him in his youth.
When the man had died, Anthony
refused to collect from the widow and put
the dead man's note in his casket.
Leonard began to think that, pregnancy or no,
Clara was not a desirable wife for him.
At that time the mother came home
from church and told of having seen a
newly prepared grave at the churchyard,
a grave the sexton dug as an extra, in case
it were needed while he was on a
holiday. Old Anthony viewed it as an evil
omen. Then the talk turned to a jewel
robbery at the home of a rich merchant
in town. Anthony recalled that his
worthless son Karl had done some work at the
house on the day of the robbery. Hardly
had he said so when bailiffs knocked at
the door and demanded permission to
search the house for the stolen goods.
The shock was so great that the mother
swooned and died. Leonard, who was
already none too eager to marry Clara,
seized upon the charge as an excuse to
break his betrothal to the girl.
As the days passed Anthony's house
was a place of wretchedness. All evidence
seemed to point to Karl's guilt in the
matter of the theft, even though the
jewels were not discovered in the house.
And Anthony began to suspect that Clara
had strayed from the paths of virtue. He
told her that he wished he had the
courage to kill himself, now that everyone in
the town was sneering at him for rearing
such terrible children. Clara, not wanting
to be the cause of her father's death,
decided to commit suicide before her
father could do away with himself. One
day, while Anthony was away visiting a
deaf old woodcutter who had not heard
of his family's disgrace, the rich
merchant appeared at the house with word
that Karl was not guilty, that the jewels
had been discovered in his own home,
where the merchant's own mad wife had
hidden them.
Clara, pleased to learn that Karl had
been exonerated, believed also that
something would occur to make her life right
again. Her belief seemed to come true
when a childhood sweetheart called to
tell her that he still loved her and wished
to marry her. Even after Clara told him
of her fall from virtue, he said he loved
her and would make her his wife. But
he also swore that he would arrange a
duel with Leonard and seek to kill the
man who had seduced Clara. Since the
man had a good job as a secretary, Clara
knew that her father would be glad to
see her married to him. After the
secretary left, however, all Clara's doubts
again assailed her, and she once more
began to think of suicide.
At last Clara decided to go to see
Leonard, whom she found planning to fulfill
his ambitions by marrying the mayor's
daughter. Clara confronted him with the
letter he had written her on the day of
her mother's death, a letter telling her
that he found it impossible to unite
himself with the sister of a thief. Even though
her brother had been cleared of the
charges, Leonard still did not want to
marry her, for he knew that a marriage
with the mayor's daughter held greater
prospects for him. When Clara told him
of her father's plans for suicide, Leonard
said the old man thought too well of life
to take his own. Even though Clara told
him she herself contemplated death, he
shrugged off her threat, telling her she
was not the first woman to be faced with
the prospect of producing an illegitimate
child. While they spoke, a boy entered
with a challenge from the secretary in
love with Clara. After Leonard had again
refused to marry her, Clara left.
Shortly after her departure the
secretary appeared with a pair of pistols, and

forced Leonard to leave with him. As
they went to fight a duel, Clara, at home,
met her brother, who told her of his plans
to go to sea. He asked Clara to get him
something to eat. She complied and then
went to the well, ostensibly to get some
fresh water, but actually to drown
herself. While she was gone, Anthony
returned from his visit with the
woodcutter. Soon afterward the secretary,
mortally wounded from the duel, staggered to
the door. He told how Leonard had been
killed and asked old Anthony to forgive
the girl. Just as Anthony began to
realize that he had been too harsh with
Clara, the neighbors came to tell that she
had drowned in the well. The
secretary pointed out to Anthony that his
own weakness and pride had caused him
to talk of suicide and thus send his
daughter to her death, lest her sin be a
reflection on her father. All old Anthony could
say was that he no longer understood the
world.
2248

MARIANNE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688-1763)
Type of plot: Novel of manners
Time of plot: Late seventeenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1731-1741
Principal characters:
Marianne, Countess of , a virtuous orphan
M. de Climal, Marianne's benefactor and Mme. de Valvule's brother
M. de Valville, affianced to Marianne
Mme. de Valville, his mother
Mlle. Varthon, loved by Valville
Mlle. de Tervire, now a nun
Critique:
In his
own day, the author of
Marianne: or, The Life of Countess ■
was considerably more famous as a
playwright than novelist. During his ousy
career he wrote some thirty to forty very
popular and successful plays, and his
three best-known dramas, Le ]eu de
Xamour et du hasard (1730), Les Legs
(1736), and Les Fausses confidences
(1737), are still kept in the repertoires
of French dramatic companies. Many
critics have asserted that Marivaux was
the founder of modern "drawing room"
comedy; and others maintain that he was
among the first to introduce recognizable
features of the modern psychological
novel to French prose. His two most
significant novels are Marianne and Le
Paysan parvenu (1735), both left
incomplete. Both were written in the first
person, and each concerned the fortunes of
the major character. Like Le Sage, his
contemporary, Marivaux created episodic
plots and was fully as much interested
in moral tales, philosophizing, and
analysis as he was in the story itself. In
Marianne, centered about everyday
situations and ordinary people, Marivaux
pictured life in France with careful detail.
Moreover, the style that he used is still
remarkable for its subtleties, its precise
but unusual and mannered diction, and
its refinement of phrase; in this respect
he ranks high among eighteenth-century
writers of prose. These qualities make
Marianne a leisurely-paced but
interesting story of an extraordinary woman,
enlivened by amiable irony and modest
gaiety and charm.
The Story:
The writer, shortly after he rented a
country house near Rennes, came upon a
manuscript in several notebooks
containing the story of a lady, presented in her
own handwriting. At the request of his
friends the author agreed to edit and
publish her account.
Marianne, for this was the name the
lady in the autobiography gave herself,
was a countess, about fifty years of age
at the time she was writing. She
explained that she was describing her past
because her dear friend had entreated
her to tell the full story of her life.
While still an infant, Marianne had
been orphaned in an attack by brigands
on the coach in which she and her
parents were traveling. Since she was the
only survivor of this brutal encounter on
the highroad, her identity was unknown.
Passersby rescued the child and put her
in the care of the sister of the local priest.
Marianne remained the ward of that kind
person until she was fifteen years old.
At that time she accompanied her foster
mother on a visit to Paris.
Misfortune came to her almost
immediately. An epidemic broke out, and all
those intimately concerned with
Marianne's welfare were fatally stricken.
Soon another benefactor appeared, M. de
Climal, who offered to aid her out of
charitable piety. Marianne was by this
2249

time a beautiful young woman, and
Climal showed his fondness by buying
her expensive clothing and arranging for
her lodging with a widowed shopkeeper,
Mme. Dutour. Marianne objected
strongly to the bourgeois atmosphere of her new
home, but her circumstances gave her no
other choice. For a religious holiday, she
dressed in her finery and strolled about
the city after church. The young blades
ogled her; one, in particular, was
especially attracted to her and she to him,
although no words passed between them.
Bemused by the encounter, Marianne
stepped into the path of a moving
carriage and was knocked down.
Her unknown admirer, who was M. de
Valville, came immediately to her
assistance. At the time neither learned the
other's identity, for M. de Climal arrived
and jealously insisted on taking his charge
home. Beside himself, Climal declared
his undying love and offered to set
Marianne up in an apartment. Proudly
refusing this hypocritical proposal and
also his protection, she went to a nearby
convent to live. Meanwhile, Valville set
about to learn her name and
whereabouts. Successful in his search, he
arrived at the convent soon after Marianne
had acquired a loving benefactress who
turned out to be the mother of Valville.
Upon the disclosure of their mutual
attraction, Mme. de Valville agreed that
her son and Marianne could well be in
love, but she counseled delay in the
affair. In the meantime Climal had
succumbed to a fatal illness; as an act of
repentance, he bequeathed one-third of
his estate to Marianne. The remainder
was to go to his nephew, Valville.
As soon as Valvule's noble and
influential relatives found out about Marianne's
dubious parentage and her brief stay with
a shopkeeper, they took steps to stop
the marriage. In an elaborate abduction
scheme, they succeeded in luring
Marianne away from the convent. Then she
was told that she had two choices: to
become a nun or marry a young man they
had provided. In the hope of gaining
time, she agreed to talk with the
prospective bridegroom. Her decision was,
however, that she would wed no one but
Valville, and she so informed her captors.
At that moment, Mme. de Valville and
her son caught up with the plot and
arrived to defend Marianne. At last
the relatives, convinced of Marianne's
strength of character, nobility, and
worthiness, withdrew their objections to the
marriage of Valville and Marianne.
Accordingly, plans for the wedding
were made and within a few weeks
Marianne was to leave the convent and
become a bride. Then a chance call upon
friends brought a Mile. Varthon to the
attention of Valville. During a brief
illness when Marianne was confined,
Valville became infatuated with Mile.
Varthon. who promptly told Marianne of
her love for the young man. Deeply
grieved by her son's infidelity, Mme. de
Valville assured Marianne of her own
love and affection, which she continued
to shower upon the unfortunate girl until
death ended her acts of kindness a short
time later. Once more Marianne was
alone in the world.
To take Marianne's mind off her
misfortunes and to give her a perspective on
the curious happenings that befall human
beings, a nun who had become very
friendly with her suggested that she tell
Marianne the story of her own life.
Depressed and lonely, Marianne agreed to
listen to her account.
The nun, the daughter of M. de Ter-
vire and Mile, de Tresle, had learned
early in life that her father was dead.
Sometime later her mother married a
grand seigneur of the court, and the
young girl was left to the care of a
farmer. Although her mother sent money
for her support and promised again and
again to bring her daughter to live with
her in Paris, the invitation was constantly
delayed. When she was seventeen years
of age, Mile, de Tervire was sought in
marriage by Baron de Sercour. An
unscrupulous trick by the baron's heir
disgraced the bride-to-be, however, and the
marriage never took place. Mme. de
Dursan then became the young girl's
2250

foster mother. She willed her estate to
Mile, de Tervire, but an estranged son
turned up as Mme. de Dursan was dying
and the will was changed. When
relatives of Mme. de Dursan refused to give
the girl her one-third of the property, as
had been promised, she decided to go to
Paris.
On the stagecoach, she met a Mme.
Darcire. Ultimately Mile, de Tervire
discovered that Mme. Darcire knew her
mother well. From a lawyer, they learned
that Mme. la Marquise, the girl's mother,
had been persuaded to turn her estates
over to her son. He in turn took all the
property and abandoned his mother to
poverty. Furious at this turn of events,
for the marquise was very ill, Mile, de
Tervire went to her sister-in-law and
demanded that her half-brother take proper
care of their parent.
(Here the story of Marianne breaks off,
for Marivaux never completed his novel.
He left Marianne alone and jilted, and
the nun still had not ended her life story.
In a concluding section, added in 1766
by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, Marianne
finally married Valville after years of
tribulation and learned also that she was
of noble birth. The nun's story was
terminated with the recounting of a
disastrous love affair and her ultimate decision
to take the veil.)
2251

MARIUS THE EPICUREAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Walter Pater (1839-1894)
Type of plot: Philosophical romance
Time of plot: Second century
locale: The Roman Empire
First published: 1885
Principal characters:
Marius, a young Roman of pagan tradition
Flavian, a close friend of Marius at school
Cornelius, a Roman army officer and friend of Marius
Marcus Aurelius, Philosopher-emperor of Rome
Cecilia, a friend of Cornelius and a Christian leader
Critique:
Pater's novel was an answer to those
who had misunderstood his views on art
and philosophy. The novel is, in great
part, a fictional rendering of Pater's own
struggle for a philosophical position, and
the personality of Marius is a reflection of
the author himself. The volume is also an
appreciation of the culture of the second
century of the Christian era in Roman
Italy. Pater's careful study of the
environment, while sharply criticized by
historians of fact, has caught the spirit of the
times and the people. No one who has not
some familiarity with the writers of the
time, and before, can read with signal
success the intellectual adventures and
development of the young Roman who is the
central figure ot the book; the work is, to
some extent, a veritable patchwork of
ideas and even quotations from the
classical authors who would be the basis of
knowledge for a young Roman studying
seriously in the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
The Story:
Marius was a young Roman whose
family had for many years lived on an estate
in northern Italy. On that estate, White-
nights, Marius had grown to adolescence
in an atmosphere of pagan piety and rural
simplicity. The family led a relatively
simple life because Marius' grandfather
had squandered much of the family
fortune. In that atmosphere of his childhood
Marius found a great joy in worshiping
the household gods and in overseeing the
work on the estate. His life one of
contemplation rather than one of activity, his
idealism and religiosity were almost
morbid in their extreme.
While still in his teens, young Marius
was taken to a temple of Aesculapius in
the Etrurian hills for the cure of a
childhood disease. There the quiet, fresh
atmosphere of the place, as well as the
teachings of Galen, the great Roman
physician, gave him a new outlook on life.
Upon his return home, Marius found his
mother's health failing. She died shortly
afterward, and the effect of her passing on
Marius was to turn him into a skeptic, a
young man who questioned all aspects of
life as they presented themselves to him.
Soon afterward relatives sent young
Marius to Pisa, where he attended school.
While there, he conceived the idea of
becoming a poet of the intellectual school.
His inclination in that direction was
stimulated by his friendship with a young
boy named Flavian, a schoolmate. Flavian,
three years older than Marius, had great
influence over the younger boy. The two
read all of the literature and philosophy
they could find. Among the works they
pored over was the Metamorphoses of
Apuleius, the ornate style of which was
a source of great joy to Marius.
But the studies in literature and
philosophy which the two young men planned
were short-lived, for Flavian became sick
after an excursion he and Marius made;
he died soon after of a plague brought
back to Italy by the armies of Marcus
Aurelius, who had just returned from a
2252

campaign into the eastern reaches of the
Empire. After Flavian's death Marius,
needing an intellectual crutch to carry him
through the agony of seeing his young
friend die, was attracted to the study of
mysticism. But at last he put aside the
desire to turn to Oriental mystic lore and
turned to early Greek philosophers to find,
if he could, some answer to his problems
in their writings and thought.
One of the first writers he studied was
Heraclitus, who taught him to limit his
labors, lest he lose everything by trying to
master all knowledge at once. From
Heraclitus he turned to the teachings of
Aristippus of Cyrene, founder of the
Epicurean school. From his study of
Cyrenaic philosophy Marius came to the
conclusion that knowledge was limited to
experiences received through the senses,
and he thought therefore that he owed it
to himself to have many sensuous
experiences in order to reach the highest possible
point of wisdom.
The idea appealed to Marius because of
the immensely practical ethics that the
whole concept implied. Life as the
primary end of life was the code which
Marius found himself professing; it was,
of course, an antimetaphysical meta-
physic. Through it Marius hoped to find,
by means of cultural knowledge, the
secret of the present in the everchanging
universe, that he might discover all of the
subtle realizations implied in each
moment of life. Like epicureans of that time
and since, Marius found there were those
who misinterpreted his credo and believed
that he sought pleasure as an end in itself;
yet hedonism, the search for pleasure as
the purpose of life, was farthest from his
mind. Such a life would have been too
gross for one of Marius* pietistic
background.
During his search for an answer to life,
Marius had turned from poetry to prose,
for he felt that his nature and his studies
had fitted him better for the latter.
About the time that his-epicureanism
became crystallized in his mind, Marius felt
some pangs of regret that his emotional
life seemed to have become stunted. He
wondered why it was that he felt more
inclined to research of the mind than to
normal human emotions. He could not
feel the necessity of pursuing feminine
company and did not regret that he had
not found it a matter of urgency that he
acquire a wife. Love, in the ordinary sense
of the word, did not seem to be a part of
his makeup.
At a time when that problem was
disturbing him, he had a summons to Rome
which interrupted his worries. He was
sent for to become secretary and editor to
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a prolific
writer and a patron of the arts and
philosophy. He had been working for
some time on a memoir and a series of
disconnected meditations which he wished
someone to put into edited form. That
task was assigned to Marius.
On the way to Rome, Marius met a
young officer of the army named
Cornelius, an officer of the famed Twelfth
Legion, who was returning to Rome after
service in the farther reaches of northern
Europe. Under the tutelage of Cornelius,
Marius quickly made himself at home in
the city. Fortunately, Marius* family had
a house in Rome, although it had not been
used in many years. To the young
epicurean, Rome was a wonderful place
in which to live and for several years
Marius was happy there. Experiences of
the richest nature were his, for he moved,
thanks to his family background and the
emperor's patronage, in the best of circles.
There was, however, something which
Marius could not fathom. His friend
Cornelius seemed much happier than he.
Since Cornelius was not a simple
materialistic person, Marius could not understand
why his friend was so much happier. One
day, as they were returning from a trip
away from Rome, Cornelius took Marius
into a rich home on the Appian Way. It
was the residence of the widow of Cecilius,
and the Cecilia who was its mistress was a
Christian, as was Cornelius. From that
moment Marius began to comprehend
something of the new religion that was
making converts in the Empire. He found
a strange kind of happiness in attending

mass in the home of Cecilia, and he
noticed too that he felt a strange attraction to
Cecilia herself.
Some months later, when Cornelius
and Marius were once again away from
Rome, the small town in which they had
stopped was shaken by an earthquake.
After the first tremors of the quake
had passed, Cornelius, accompanied by
Marius, joined a group of Christians who
were publicly thanking the Deity for their
escape from death. The pagans of the
town, fearing that the Christians had been
the cause of the earthquake, assaulted
them. Marius and Cornelius, because of
their rank, were arrested and sent to
Rome. On the way their captors learned
that one of them was not a Christian. In
order to save his friend, Marius said that
the non-Christian was Cornelius, who was
then set free. Marius himself became
violently ill before he and his guards
reached Rome. He was left behind to die,
but some villagers, who were also
Christians, found him and nursed him. He
died with Christian prayers in his ears.
2254

MARKET HARBOROUGH
Type of work: Novel
Author: George J. Whyte-Melville (1821-1878)
Type of plot: Sporting romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1861
Principal characters:
John Standish Sawyer, country gentleman and ardent fox hunter
Isaac, Sawyer's groom and horse handler
The Honorable Crasher, Sawyer's friend and hunting companion
Cecilia Dove, with whom Sawyer falls in love
Parson Dove, Cecilia's fox-hunting father
Tiptop, The Honorable Crasher's groom and horse handler
Critique:
Whyte-Melville was an ardent hunter
and a recognized authority on fox
hunting in England. Market Harhorough,
like other sporting novels he wrote, is
therefore regarded as an authentic
account of that sport. Yet the twentieth-
century reader, accustomed to
naturalistic fiction, will not find here the
realism of fact to which he is accustomed;
there is very little specific information,
as compared to what one would expect in
a novel by Dreiser or Norris. Market
Harhorough was, however, Whyte-Mel-
ville's most popular novel. From a literary
point of view, the novel is simply a series
of hunting episodes fastened together by
the presence of a single character. An
interesting sidelight is that the author
used his literary earnings to aid charity.
The Story:
John Standish Sawyer, a hard-riding,
fox-hunting country gentleman whose
farm lay not far from London, decided
one fall afternoon that he had too little
and too poor hunting in his own country.
He also wished to show himself off as
a horseman and hunter among a better
class of hunters than those in his own
vicinity. That evening he sat in his study
alone, being a bachelor, and tried to
decide, with the help of numerous glasses
of brandy and water, what hunting
community he would visit during the
remainder of the season. He finally decided
that he would go to Market Harhorough,
which had a good season and good
attendance.
The following morning Mr. Sawyer
walked to a neighboring farm to buy
himself a new horse for hunting, since
he had only two hunters in his stable.
At the neighboring farm, whose owner
was more a horse-trader than an
agriculturist, Sawyer found a beautiful roan that
was just what he wanted. Returning to
his own farm, The Grange, Sawyer went
out to the stables and informed old Isaac,
the groom, that he was to bring the new
horse home and then prepare to take
the inmates of the stable by railway to
Market Harhorough. Isaac, knowing his
master, did not argue, although he did
not quite approve of the journey.
Two days later Isaac and the horses
arrived at Market Harboroughj where
Sawyer joined them after traveling down
to London to outfit himself with new,
stylish boots and riding clothes. On the
train from London to Market
Harhorough, Sawyer met a tired-seeming young
gentleman, also an ardent fox hunter,
named the Honorable Crasher. At the
time, neither made much of an
impression on the other, even though, from
Sawyer's position, the Honorable
Crasher was quite a fashionable figure.
The first morning after Sawyer's arrival
at Market Harhorough was a very foggy
one. Nevertheless, Sawyer had his groom
prepare one of his hunters and joined
a group of hunters, one of whom was
the Honorable Crasher. When the fog
refused to break, the two new friends
2255

were invited to lunch with the parson
of the neighborhood, Mr. Dove, who was
also an ardent hunter. The luncheon was
a pleasant one, especially for Sawyer,
who was much taken with Cecilia Dove,
the parson's pretty young daughter, a girl
greatly devoted to fox hunting. The girl,
finding Sawyer to be a pleasant chap with
a respectable estate, was also quite taken
with him.
Several weeks went by swiftly.
Sawyer proved himself to be as good as or
better than the other riders at Market Har-
borough. In addition, there were plenty
of foxes to be hunted, most of which
gave the hounds and the hunters a
lengthy and swift chase. Sawyer's new
horse, the roan, proved as good as he
had expected. Sawyer found himself
thrown into the company of some gay
bachelors who enjoyed life to the utmost
and respected him. In addition, he saw
quite a bit of pretty Cecilia Dove, who
was as captivated with Sawyer as he
was with her.
Word went around one day that a
steeplechase was being planned as a main
event of the hunting season. The fox
hunters of Sawyer's group at first scoffed
at the idea, since there would be no fox,
but at last they fell in with the plan;
the event would provide an opportunity
to show off horse and rider, to make a
reputation, and to win some money by
riding and betting. Sawyer, who really
had no horse good enough for the race,
kept very quiet with respect to the event;
privately, he wanted to enter it.
Old Isaac, Sawyer's groom, knowing
his master wanted to get in the race, hit
upon a plan that involved a new horse.
In Sawyer's stable there was a
fine-looking bay which ate well, never got sick,
but was a poor hunter. It was this
animal that Isaac planned to palm off on
the Honorable Crasher. To that end he
dropped mysterious hints to Tiptop, the
Honorable Crasher's groom. Tiptop fell
for the bait and suggested to Isaac that
the bay race with one of the Honorable
Crasher's horses to see which was the
faster.
Early one morning the two met.
before sunup, to try out the two horses.
The race was to be for a half mile. The
two grooms raced and Isaac's horse, even
though it was covered with a flowing
sheet, won by several lengths. Little did
Tiptop realize that Isaac had taken out
another horse under the sheet and had
won the race illegally, from a very strict
moralist's standpoint. Isaac hurried to
Sawyer and told his master that he was
sure that the Honorable Crasher would
ask to buy the unwanted bay.
Isaac was right. That very morning the
worthless horse was sold for a
tremendous price. When the Honorable Crasher
and his groom tried to get speed out of
the horse in training him for the
steeplechase, however, he could scarcely run.
The new owner and his groom were
mystified, but Isaac and Sawyer did not
breathe a hint of what had happened.
With the money from the sale of the
worthless bay, Sawyer bought a fine,
fast hunter, with which he hoped to win
the steeplechase. In honor of Cecilia
Dove, of whom he was growing fonder
each day, he named the horse Wood-
Pigeon.
Before the steeplechase was run, a
ball was given by the racing set at
Market Harborough. Sawyer, dressed as
neatly and dandyishly as a tailor could turn
him out, attended in order to dance with
Cecilia. She was very coquettish during
the evening, however, and by acting
warm and cool by turns she angered
Sawyer, who finally left the ball. Such
treatment was just what the coquette needed
to make her realize that she loved Sawyer
very much.
The day of the great steeplechase
arrived. Six horsemen, all gentlemen,
were entered, including Sawyer on
Wood-Pigeon. Sawyer, in honor of his
love, wore a plum-colored silk shirt,
plum being Cecilia's favorite color. It
was Sawyer's first steeplechase, but he
was a fine horseman on a fine horse,
and well coached on the nature of the
course by Isaac the groom, who had
ridden over it on a reconnaissance run.
2256

Sawyer did not win. In fact, he took
an ugly fall near the end of the course,
although up to that time he had ridden
a fine race. In the fall he suffered a
broken collarbone. Cecilia, watching the
race, decided then and there that she
would marry Sawyer, who had proved
himself a courageous gentleman. During
his convalescence the engagement was
announced, and not long afterward
Sawyer and Cecilia Dove were married.
Sawyer's new wife succeeded in stopping his
hunting; he even sold his horses in the
flush of married bliss. But one day a
friend saw him reading a book about
hunting and guessed that before long
he would be back with the hounds again.
2257

MARMION
Type of work: Poem
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Semihistorical romance
Time of plot: Early sixteenth century
Locale: The Scottish Border
First published: 1808
Principal characters:
Lord Marmion, an English knight
Ralph de Wilton, wronged by Marmion, disguised as a
Clare Fitz-Clare, loved by de Wilton
Constance de Beverley, betrayed by Marmion
Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus
Critique:
Ranking with The Lay of the Last
Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake as one
of Scott's best-known dramatic poems,
Marmion lacks some of the perfection of
detail that marks the other two. It was
hurriedly written and published, and its
effects are often melodramatic. In this
poem Scott did not do the careful revising
that was his usual custom. He detracted
from the unity of his story by writing for
each canto an introduction which has
little bearing on the action or the mood.
These introductions, addressed to various
of Scott's friends, dealt with his daily
activities and thoughts. But in spite of its
faults, Marmion has the lyrical beauty
and the flow of brisk and exciting action
which we associate with Scott's metrical
romances.
The Story:
Wherever Lord Marmion went, he was
welcomed and honored as a brave and
valiant knight. The English king had sent
him to the Scottish court to try to persuade
that country's king to end armed raids
throughout the Border country. Marmion
asked a Scottish lord to furnish him a
guide, someone peaceful appearing, and
since there was no one else available the
lord sent a palmer, a holy man who had
made many pilgrimages to religious
shrines.
At the same time an abbess,
accompanied by several nuns, was making a sea
voyage to Cuthbert Isle to hold an
inquisition over two prisoners of the Church.
One of the young nuns aboard, still a
novice, was Clare Fitz-Clare, a lovely young
girl who entered the abbey after her lover,
dishonored, was believed dead. One of the
accused was Constance de Beverley, a nun
who had broken her vows and run away
from the convent. Before she was put to
death, Constance told the abbess and her
other accusers the story of her fall from
grace.
Her betrayer had been Lord Marmion.
Believing his protestations of love for her,
she had escaped from the convent and
followed him for three years as his page.
Then Marmion met lovely Clare Fitz-
Clare, and because she was an heiress of
great wealth he abandoned Constance to
seek Clare for his bride. The king
promised him that he should have Clare, but
she loved another knight, Ralph de
Wilton. Marmion forged papers which
offered false proof that Wilton was not true
to the king. The two knights fought a
duel, and Wilton was left for dead.
Constance, soon to die, gave the papers
proving the forgery to the abbess and implored
her to get the papers to the king in order
to save Clare from a hateful marriage.
Although the girl had entered a convent
rather than marry Marmion, the king
would force the marriage if Clare were
found, for Marmion was a great favorite
at court. Even though her judges pitied
her, Constance was put to a horrible death
after she had told her story.
Marmion continued on his way to the
court. Guilty thoughts of Constance wor-
2258

fied him; he had been responsible for her
capture by the Church. But he soothed his
conscience with the belief that she would
not be severely punished. One night as
they stayed at an inn a young boy sang a
ballad about the soul's disquiet of every
man who would betray a maid. At the end
of the song Marmion thought he heard
the tolling of a death bell. When the
knight mentioned the tolling sound he
heard, the palmer spoke his first words,
saying that it was the toll of death for a
friend. That night Marmion, unable to
sleep, went out into the dark to ride.
There he was attacked by what seemed a
devil, for the man had the face of Wilton,
long dead. The strangest part was that Mar-
mion's mysterious adversary could have
killed him, but instead sheathed his sword
and rode off into the night.
As Marmion and his men rode through
the Border country, they noticed
everywhere huge numbers of armed clansmen
readying for battle. On their arrival at the
Scottish court, Marmion could not
persuade King James to halt preparations for
battle. The Scots, claiming that the
English had wronged them, demanded
vengeance. Courtesy required that
Marmion be given safe conduct during his
mission, however, and so the king put him in
the care of Archibald Douglas, one of the
most powerful of all the lords of Scotland.
Douglas also was charged with the care of
the abbess and her nuns, who had been
taken captive by the Scots, for they were
to be returned safely to their convent. But
the abbess feared for Clare's safety if
Marmion should learn that she was among
the party of nuns. To save Clare from a
forced and hated union, the holy woman
gave the papers proving Marmion's
forgery to the palmer and begged him to
deliver them to the English king.
Marmion, learning the girl's identity,
secured an order directing him to take
Clare to her home, with Douglas for an
escort. Separated from the abbess, Clare
feared for her safety with Marmion, but
he planned not to press his suit until she
had been returned to her kinsmen, who
would be dominated by the king.
Marmion and Clare were quartered in Tantal-
lon Castle, owned by Archibald Douglas,
Earl of Angus, to await the impending
battle between English and Scottish
troops.
Clare, lonely and afraid, walked out
onto the battlements of the castle. There
she met a young knight who proved to be
de Wilton. From his lips Clare heard his
story. He had not been mortally wounded
in his combat with Marmion, but had
been healed and cared for by one of his
servants. The loyal servant asked one boon
for saving his life, that should de Wilton's
deadliest enemy fall beneath his sword
that enemy should be spared. The young
knight wandered far, his name scorned by
all who once loved him because he was
now branded as a traitor. At last he
disguised himself so well that no one
recognized in the lowly palmer the once-proud
knight. It was de Wilton who had so
frightened Marmion during his midnight
ride, but he had kept his promise to his old
servant and spared the life of the man
who had ruined him. The young man had
told Douglas his story, which was
confirmed by the papers given him by the
abbess. That night Douglas restored de
Wilton to his knightly honors, and the
next day de Wilton would join the
English troops.
Marmion, unable to resist the spectacle
of troops drawn up for battle, defied
Douglas and rode off to join the fight.
Having learned from one of his company
the palmer's true identity and fearing that
he would lose Clare, he took the girl to a
place of safety behind the English lines.
When the battle began, Marmion was
mortally wounded. Clare, pitying the man
she hated, tended him gently. Before he
died, Marmion learned of the death of
Constance and repented all his sins.
The English defeated the Scots in that
bloody battle on Flodden Field. De Wilton
was everywhere in the thick of the fight
ing. After the battle, his lands and his
titles were returned to him and Clare was
given to him with the king's blessing. The
proud name of de Wilton was known
2259

again through the land. Marmion, as he deserved, lay in an unmarked grave.
2260

MARRIAGE A LA MODE
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Dryden (1631-1700)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Sicily
First presented: 1673
Principal characters:
Rhodophil, captain of the king's guards
Doralice, his wife
Palamede, a courtier
Melantha, his betrothed
Polydamas, King of Sicily
Palmyra, his daughter
Leonidas, the true prince
Critique:
Marriage a la Mode is a curious
mixture of heroic tragedy and comedy of
manners. One plot concerns the seventeenth-
century playful attitude toward married
love; another, court intrigue and romance.
Since the two plots are only superficially
connected, one cannot escape the
impression that Dryden was more interested
in the popular success of the play than
in its artistic unity. Skillful
characterization, especially in the comic plot, has
saved the play from oblivion.
The Story:
Palamede, a courtier who had just
returned to Sicily after an absence of five
years, overheard Doralice singing a song
which justified inconstancy in marriage.
Smitten by her great beauty, Palamede
promptly declared his love. Doralice's
announcement that she was married did not
abate Palamede's ardor; instead, the news
prompted him to confess that he himself
was to be married in three days. The two
resolved to meet again. Having been
informed that Rhodophil, her husband, was
approaching, Doralice abruptly departed.
Rhodophil welcomed Palamede back to
court and sympathized with him over the
approaching marriage. He complained
that he himself had found no joy in
marriage after the first six months. Palamede
advised him to take a mistress, a remedy
which Rhodophil said he was already
trying to effect. He had found a woman
whom he desired, but her obsession with
court society had prevented her from
keeping her assignations. The
conversation ended with the approach of Arga-
leon, the king's favorite, who brought a
message summoning Rhodophil to the
king.
Amalthea, sister to Argaleon, discussed
with a court lady the reason for the king's
visit to so remote a section of Sicily. King
Polydamas was searching for his son.
Many years before, when Polydamas
usurped the throne, the former king's
wife had fled with an infant son. To
Polydamas* amazement his pregnant wife,
Eudoxia, fled with the queen. No news
had been heard of them until recently,
when Polydamas was led to believe that
his wife had died but that their child
still lived.
Polydamas ordered brought before him
a fisherman in company with a youth
and a maid whom the fisherman claimed
were his children but who looked too
noble to be a peasant's offspring. The
fisherman turned out to be Hermogenes,
who had fled with Eudoxia and the
queen. Under threat of torture,
Hermogenes asserted that the queen, her son,
and Eudoxia had died, but that Polv-
damas' son still lived and was, in fact
2261

Leonidas, the youth who accompanied
him. Hermogenes insisted, however, that
the girl Palmyra was his own daughter.
The king accepted Leonidas as his son
and decreed that Palmyra should live at
court so as not to be separated from her
foster brother.
Later, Palamede presented himself to
Melantha, the woman his father had
ordered him to marry. Much to his regret,
he found Melantha to be just such an
affected lady as Rhodophil had described
as his mistress. Indeed, Palamede soon
learned that Melantha was Rhodophil's
mistress—at least in name—and that Do-
ralice was RhodopmTs wife. The
confusion was compounded when Rhodophil
learned that his mistress was to be Pala-
mede's wife.
Meanwhile royal affairs were also
entangled. Polydamas ordered Leonidas to
marry Amalthea. When Leonidas refused,
Polydamas threatened banishment but
was temporarily dissuaded by Amalthea
from carrying out his intentions. In
private, Leonidas swore to Palmyra that he
would wed none but her. When spies
informed the king that Leonidas loved a
commoner, Polydamas ordered Palmyra
to be set adrift in a boat. Hermogenes
saved her from this fate by producing
evidence that she, not Leonidas, was the
king's child. Although Polydamas offered
to confer nobility on Leonidas, the youth
chose to live in poverty with
Hermogenes.
In the meantime Palamede had
arranged an assignation with Doralice, and
Rhodophil with Melantha, both at the
same time, in the same place. At the tryst,
when each couple discovered the other,
all four parties fabricated excuses which
each pretended to believe, so that
Palamede left with his intended, and
Rhodophil with his wife.
Amalthea informed Leonidas that her
brother, Argaleon, had arranged to marry
Palmyra and to have Leonidas banished.
Although Amalthea loved Leonidas, she
agreed to help him see Palmyra by taking
him to the masquerade that evening.
There Leonidas arranged an assignation
with Palmyra at Hermogenes* house, not,
however, without being recognized by
Argaleon.
Both Doralice. and Melantha planned
to attend a masquerade dressed as boys,
but they got only as far as an eating house
where they exchanged insults, much to
the delight of their lovers, who hugged
and kissed them at each unflattering
remark. The game was ended by a message
summoning Rhodophil to the king. The
two "boys" were left to fend for
themselves.
At Hermogenes, house Eubulus, a
former governor who had helped Eudoxia in
her escape, informed Palmyra that
Leonidas was in reality Theagenes, the son
of the late king. Leonidas told Palmyra
of a plan to unseat the king, her father,
and made her a prisoner when she
opposed the plan. But before the conspiracy
could be carried out, Polydamas arrived
with his guards and seized the rebels.
Palamede received news that his father
expected him to marry Melantha at once;
therefore he solicited the advice of Philo-
tis, her maid, concerning the best means
to woo the lady. Philotis supplied him
with a list of French words, of which the
lady was inordinately fond. Won by these
words, Melantha accepted Palamede as
her suitor and they agreed to marry.
Following this development Palamede and
Rhodophil pledged to respect each other's
wife, and Rhodophil and Doralice were
reconciled.
Affairs in the royal household ended
just as happily for most of those
concerned. Suspecting that Leonidas was the
true heir to the throne, Argaleon advised
the young man's immediate execution,
advice which Polydamas decided to
follow in spite of Palmyra's pleas for mercy.
The sentence would have been carried
out had not Amalthea revealed Leonidas'
true identity, whereupon Rhodophil and
Palamede fought successfully to free the
prince. The new king forgave Polydamas
and asked for Palmyra's hand in
marriage, a request gratefully granted. Hav-
2262

ing rejected Leonidas' offer of clemency, das, declared her intention to spend her
Argaleon was sentenced to life imprison- life in prayer and mourning,
ment. Amalthea, still in love with Leoni-
2263

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Spain
First presented: 1784
Principal characters:
Figaro, a bridegroom-to-be
Count Almaviva, his master
Countess Almaviva, his master's wife
Dr. Bartholo, former guardian of the countess
Suzanne, lady in waiting to the countess
Marceline, the housekeeper
Cherubin, a page
Critique:
Continuing the merry tale of the little
barber of Seville, Beaumarchais takes
Figaro through more intrigues and
adventures in The Marriage of Figaro, or to use
the complete title of the drama, The
Follies of the Day of the Marriage of Figaro.
Again the shrewd and clever barber
matches wits with those who would
suppress him. The story is pure romance, for
the lovers must overcome many obstacles
planted by their more powerful enemies.
But the high good humor and clever wit
of Figaro are a match for all. Beaumarchais
was the first of many dramatists to use
the comic style of this play. Although the
style was often copied by other writers
of his day, it was never surpassed.
The Story:
Three years after Figaro, the clever
barber, had helped Count Almaviva steal his
loved one from her guardian, Dr. Bartholo,
the count tired of his lovely wife. Instead,
he desired Suzanne, the countess' lady in
waiting, who was betrothed to Figaro. The
count, in fact, desired almost every
beautiful girl he saw, but Suzanne in particular
stirred his passions. His plan was to send
Figaro as a messenger to France so Figaro
would be out of the way and not
interfere with the count's pursuit of the lovely
Suzanne. Figaro knew of the count's plot
and swore to prevent it. He was especially
incensed because it was he who had aided
the count to win his countess only a short
time before.
Figaro had trouble from still another
source. Marceline, the housekeeper, had
his note for some money she had lent him.
The note agreed that Figaro would pay
her the money or else marry her. Marceline
wanted only to get married; any husband
would do. Because Figaro was the only
man over whom she held power, he was
the likeliest prospect. Figaro was young
and Marceline old, but her desires were
nonetheless strong. She had an ally in Dr.
Bartholo, who was still seeking revenge
on the count and Figaro for outwitting
him.
The count had a page, Cherubin, an
amorous young lad in love with all
women. The countess was his special
desire, and when the count learned of his
passion, he banished the page from the
castle after ordering him to join the count's
regiment. But Figaro had other plans for
the page. His plot was to dress the page in
Suzanne's clothing and send him to keep
a tryst with the nobleman. Figaro
believed that the count would appear so
ridiculous when it was learned he had
been tricked that he would no longer try
to outwit Figaro. Figaro also sent the count
an anonymous letter saying that the
countess had a lover. When the count burst into
his wife's chambers, he found no one but
Suzanne. The page, who had been in the
chamber a few minutes before, jumped
out a window. Figaro was delighted when
2264

the count was forced to beg his wife's
pardon for his unfounded suspicions.
Figaro did not get a chance to send the
page to keep a tryst with the count; the
countess and Suzanne, meanwhile, were
plotting to foil the count's plan to have
Suzanne for his own. He had told
Suzanne that he would not permit her to
marry Figaro unless she met him at a
pavilion on a certain night. She consented
to meet him only after she and the
countess had made plans to outwit him.
Before the time appointed for the tryst
Marceline took to court her case against
Figaro. Since he wanted to harm Figaro,
the count himself presided at the hearing.
He ruled that Figaro must either pay
Marceline the money he owed her or else
marry her, according to the terms of the
note. After the sentence had been
pronounced, however, Marceline discovered
that Figaro was her son by Dr. Bartholo.
She said that this relationship was the
reason for the love which had made her want
to marry Figaro. Marceline and Dr.
Bartholo were then married, but Dr.
Bartholo was not happy to have his worst
enemy for his son.
The countess and Suzanne, carrying
out their plan, exchanged clothing in
preparation for fooling the count. Figaro,
who had not been told of the plot, heard
that Suzanne was to meet the count and
hid himself in the pavilion to observe her
treachery. Dr. Bartholo and Marceline
accompanied him. The countess, disguised
as Suzanne, met the count and permitted
him to woo her. The count, protesting his
love for her, compared her with the
countess, to the detriment of his wife. Figaro,
angered by what he believed was
Suzanne's duplicity and thinking that the
woman in the countess' clothing was his
mistress, also eavesdropping, asked the
countess for her favor. Suzanne, revealing
her true identity, slapped him soundly for
trying to be unfaithful to her. Figaro was
happy in the knowledge that Suzanne had
not been false to him and that the count
had betrayed himself to his wife.
After a confusing scene, during which
the chagrined count did not know which
way to turn, the situation was untangled.
After some persuasion the count won back
the favor of his wife, but with no choice
except to give his consent to the marriage
between Suzanne and Figaro. At the same
time Ch^rubin, who it seemed would
forever plague the count, was matched with
a maid who had long loved him. Dr.
Bartholo and Marceline joined in good
wishes for all the happy couples. Both
the count and the countess gave heavy
purses to Figaro and his bride. Figaro
thought himself far removed from the
humble barber he had once been. He was
now blessed with a mother, a father, a
fortune, and a beautiful wife.
2265

MARSE CHAN
Type of work: Short story
Author: Thomas Nelson Page (1853-1922)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Civil War period
Locale: Virginia
First published: 1887
Principal characters:
Sam, Marse Chan's Negro servant
Marse Chan, a young Virginian
Anne Chamberlin, his sweetheart
Critique:
"Marse Chan," from In Ole Virginia,
is typical of much local color writing in
its use of dialect and a regional setting.
It is an idealized narrative of Old
Virginia, highly romanticized, but
emotional in its appeal. Its author was a
diplomat as well as a novelist, and served as
U. S. ambassador to Italy during World
War I.
The Story:
When the baby was born, there was a
great ceremony on the Channing
plantation. Mr. Channing brought out the baby
and let colored Sam hold him. Then he
told the young Negro boy that he was
to be the baby's body servant from that
day on.
When Marse Chan, as Sam called
him, grew up and went to school, he
carried Anne Chamberlin's books and
they were very close friends. The two
neighboring families hoped that the
friendship would result in a marriage to
unite the two families. One day, when
the river rose suddenly and Anne was in
danger from the high water, Marse Chan
waded in and carried her to safety. Mr.
Channing was so pleased that he gave his
son a pony.
The friendship between the two
families was broken soon afterward. When
Mr. Channing declared himself a
candidate for Congress, Colonel Chamberlin
was nominated to oppose him. Mr.
Channing lost the election, and from that day
on there was enmity between the families.
One day Colonel Chamberlin
announced that he intended to sell some of
his slaves. Mr. Channing wanted to buy
Maria because her husband was one of
his own slaves, but the colonel asked far
too much for her. Learning of Mr.
Channing's intention, the colonel sent
someone to bid against him at the auction, but
Mr. Channing was successful in buying
Maria. Then followed a series of
lawsuits between the families.
In the meantime Marse Chan had
been going to college. During vacations,
in spite of family opposition, his romance
with Anne flourished. One day a barn
on the Channing plantation caught fire.
Old Mr. Channing, in an effort to
release the trapped animals, went into the
burning structure. He was so badly
burned that he lost the use of his eyes.
A short time later Colonel Chamberlin
and Marse Chan became involved in a
public debate on secession. Marse Chan,
in the crowd's opinion, was the victor,
and he was lustily cheered. The colonel
was so angry that he challenged Marse
Chan to a duel. Marse Chan fired over
the colonel's head and said that he was
making a present of him to his family,
The colonel was furious.
When the war broke out, Marse Chan
was called up for service. He sent a note
to Anne and the night before he left he
met her in the garden of her home. In
reply to his pleadings, she told him that
she did not love him. The next day
Marse Chan went off to fight for the
South. He was accompanied by Sam, his
servant since birth. While at the front,
Marse Chan met a fellow soldier who
spoke disrespectfully of Colonel Cham-
2266

berlin. The two men had a fight and
Sam promptly wrote to his wife Judy to
tell her about it. Judy just as promptly
informed Anne of the incident. At last
Colonel Chamberlin, aware that Anne
was suffering and that she really loved
Marse Chan, told her to attempt a
reconciliation. Accordingly, Anne wrote to
Marse Chan that she still loved him.
Marse Chan read the letter again and
again with great pleasure.
He was killed in battle the next day.
Sam took his body back to his home and
his family. Then Sam hurried over to the
Chamberlin estate because he felt sure
that was what Marse Chan would have
wanted him to do. After he had told his
story^ Anne set out with him for the
Channing home. Mrs. Channing, who
had found Anne's letter in one of Marse
Chan's pockets, was on the porch to greet
her. They fell into each other's arms and
the feud between the families was over.
From that day on Anne lived with the
Channings and took care of old Mr.
Channing and his wife as long as they
lived. After the old Channings died
Anne went to work in a military hospital.
Shortly before the fall of Richmond she
became ill with a fever and died. She
was buried next to Marse Chan in the
Channing graveyard.
Sam, the servant, lived on. Whenever
anyone came along the path and saw him
with the dog that constantly followed
him, he would tell the passerby about
Marse Chan. The dog had been Marse
Chan's dog; they were the ones,
according to Sam, who remembered Marse
Chan best.
2267

MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Sentimental-mystery romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England and America
First published: 1843-1844
Principal characters.
Martin Chuzzlewit, a selfish old man
Martin Chuzzlewit, his grandson
Mary Graham, old Martin s ward
Anthony Chuzzlewit, old Martin's brother
Jonas Chuzzlewit, his son
Mr. Pecksniff, a hypocrite
Charity, and
Mercy, his daughters
Tom Pinch, young Martin's friend
Ruth Pinch, his sister
Mark Tapley, another friend of young Martin
Mrs. Sarah Gamp, a bibulous cockney
Critique:
Martin Chuzzlewit is a novel
complicated in plot but rich in characterization
and Dickensian humor. In addition, this
book contains the writer's most outrageous
caricatures, in those scenes dealing with
young Martin Chuzzlewit's experiences in
America. Dickens himself had been
disappointed in the United States, and his
account of the land and its people is far
from flattering. The pictures of rude
frontier life fade, however, beside his
portraits of Mr. Pecksniff, the arch-hypocrite,
and the cockney vitality of Mrs. Gamp,
perhaps the author's best humorous
character,
The Story:
Selfishness was the quality which set
the Chuzzlewits apart from all other men,
and the two aged brothers, Martin and
Anthony, were not lacking in that strong
family trait. From his cradle Jonas
Chuzzlewit, Anthony's son, had been taught to
think only of money and gain, so that in
his eagerness to possess his father's wealth
he often grew impatient for the old man
to die. Elderly Martin Chuzzlewit
suspected the world of having designs on his
fortune, with the result that his distrust
and lack of generosity turned his
grandson, his namesake, into a model of
selfishness and obstinacy.
Perhaps old Martin's heart was not as
hard as it seemed, for he had taken into
his house as his companion and ward an
orphan named Mary Graham. Although
he told her that she would have a
comfortable home as long as he lived but
that she could expect nothing at his death,
his secret desire was that love might grow
between her and his grandson. But when
young Martin told him that he had
already chosen Mary for his own, he was
displeased, afraid that the young couple
were acting in their own interests. A
disagreement followed, and the old man
harshly turned his grandson loose in the
world.
Thrown upon his own resources, young
Martin decided to become an architect. In
a little Wiltshire village, not far from
Salisbury, lived Mr. Pecksniff, architect
and land surveyor, whose practice it was
to train two or three pupils in return for
a large premium and exorbitant charges
for board and lodging. Mr. Pecksniff
thought highly of himself as a moral man,
and he had a copybook maxim to quote for
every occasion. Although he and Mr.
Chuzzlewit were cousins, there had been
bad feeling between them in the past. But
Mr. Pecksniff saw in Martin a possible
2268

suitor for one of his daughters, and he
accepted him as a student without
payment of the customary fee.
Mr. Pecksniff had never been known
to build anything, a fact which took
nothing away from his reputation for
cleverness. With him lived his two affected
daughters, Charity and Mercy, as
hypocritical and mean-spirited as their father.
His assistant was a former pupil named
Tom Pinch, a meek, prematurely aged
draftsman who looked upon Mr. Pecksniff
as a tower of knowledge.
Arriving in Wiltshire, young Martin
took the place of John Westlock in Mr.
Pecksniff's establishment. Westlock had
never been a favorite in the household;
his contempt for Mr. Pecksniff was as
great as his regard for honest, loyal Tom
Pinch. At first Martin treated Tom in a
patronizing manner. Tom, accustomed to
the snubs and ridicule of Charity and
Mercy, returned Martin's slights with
simple good-will, and before long the two
became close friends.
One day Mr. Pecksniff and his
daughters departed suddenly for London,
summoned there by Mr. Chuzzlewit. The old
man called on them at Mrs. Todgers'
shabbily genteel rooming house and
accused Martin of deceiving the worthy man
who sheltered him. Mr. Pecksniff was
pained and shocked to learn that Mr.
Chuzzlewit had disowned his grandson,
but he was cheered when the visitor hinted
at present good-will and future
expectations if the architect would send the young
man away at once.
Although Mr. Chuzzlewit's proposal
was treacherous and his language
insulting, Mr. Pecksniff agreed eagerly enough
to the conditions imposed. Returning to
Wiltshire, he virtuously announced that
Martin had ill-treated the best and noblest
of men and taken advantage of his own
unsuspecting nature. His humble roof, he
declared, could never shelter so base an
ingrate and impostor.
Homeless once more, Martin made his
way to London in hopes of finding
employment. As the weeks passed, his small
store of money dwindled steadily. At last,
when he had nothing left to pawn, he
decided to try his fortunes in America. A
twenty-pound note in a letter from an
unknown sender gave him the wherewithal
for his passage. With him on his
adventure went Mark Taplev, hostler of the
Blue Dragon Inn in Wiltshire, a jolly
fellow with a desire to see the world. Martin
could not leave London, however, without
seeing Mary Graham. He read her a letter
he had written to Tom Pinch, in which
he asked his friend to show her kindness
if the two should ever meet, and he
arranged to write to Mary in care of Tom.
As passengers in the steerage Martin
and Mark had a miserable voyage to New
York. Martin did not care much for the
bumptious, tobacco-chewing Americans
he met, but he was excited by accounts
of the fortunes to be made out West.
Taken in by a group of land promoters,
he wrote to Mary telling her of his bright
prospects.
Old Anthony Chuzzlewit died
suddenly in the presence of his son, Mr.
Pecksniff, and a faithful clerk, Chuffey.
Mrs. Sarah Gamp was called in to prepare
the body for burial. She was a fat, middle-
aged cockney woman with a fondness for
the bottle and the habit of quoting
endlessly from the sayings of Mrs. 'Arris, a
friend whom no other of her
acquaintances had ever seen. Jonas Chuzzlewit
was disturbed by Chuffey's conduct at the
funeral. Mrs. Gamp declared that Jonas
bore himself in a manner that was filial
and fitting.
After the burial Jonas went with Mr.
Pecksniff to Wiltshire, for his cautious
inquiries had revealed that Mr. Pecksniff was
prepared to make a handsome settlement
on his daughters when they married, and
Jonas was ready to court one or the other.
A short time later old Martin Chuzzlewit
and Mary Graham arrived to take rooms
at the Blue Dragon Inn in the village.
There Tom Pinch met Mary and in his
humble manner fell deeply in love with
her. Only his friendship for Martin kept
him from declaring himself.
2269

Mr. Pecksniff had hoped that Jonas
would marry Charity, his older daughter,
but Mercy was the suitor's choice, much
to her sister's dismay. After the ceremony
Mr. and Mrs. Jonas Chuzzlewit returned
to London, where, before long, he began
to treat his bride with ill-humor and
brutality. Having some business to
transact at the office of the Anglo-Bengalee
Disinterested Loan and Life Insurance
Company, he discovered that Mr.
Montague, the president, was in reality
Montague Tigg, a flashy speculator whom
Jonas had previously known as an
associate of his rascally cousin, Chevy Slyme.
Lured by the promise of huge profits,
Jonas was persuaded to invest in the
company and become a director. Tigg,
however, had little trust for his new partner.
He told Nadgett, his investigator, to learn
whatever he could about Jonas.
Jonas had a guilty secret. Before his
father's death he had obtained some poison
from a debt-ridden young doctor and had
mixed it with old Anthony's medicine.
Actually, his father had not taken the
dose, but the circumstances, known also to
Chuffey, the clerk, would have
incriminated Jonas had they been revealed.
This secret, uncovered by Nadgett, gave
Tigg a hold over his partner.
In Wiltshire, old Martin Chuzzlewit's
condition grew worse. When the
invalid's mind seemed to fail, Mr. Pecksniff
saw his own opportunity to get control
of his kinsman's fortune. Hoping to make
his position doubly secure, he planned to
marry Mary Graham. But Mary found
his wooing distasteful. At last she told
Tom Pinch about his employer's
unwelcome attentions, and Tom, for the first
time, realized that Mr. Pecksniff was a
hypocrite and a villain. Having overheard
the conversation, Mr. Pecksniff
discharged Tom after telling Mr. Chuzzlewit
that the young man had made advances to
Mary.
Tom went to London to see his sister
Ruth. Finding her unhappily employed as
■ governess, he took her with him to hired
lodgings and asked John Westlock, his old
friend, to help him in finding work.
Before Westlock could go to his assistance,
however, an unknown patron hired Tom
to catalogue a library.
In America, meanwhile, young Martin
and Mark fared badly. They had bought
land in Eden, but on their arrival they
found nothing more than a huddle of rude
cabins in a swamp. Martin fell ill with
fever. When he recovered, Mark became
sick. While he nursed his friend, Martin
had time to realize the faults of his
character and the true reason for the failure
of his hopes. More than a year passed
before the travelers were able to return to
England.
John Westlock had also become
interested in Jonas Chuzzlewit. He had
befriended Lewsome, the young doctor from
whom Jonas had secured the poison, and
from Mrs. Gamp, who nursed the
physician through an illness, he learned
additional details to make him suspect the
son's guilt in old Anthony's death.
While old Martin seemed in his dotage,
his grandson and Mark went to Mr.
Pecksniff's house, where Mr. Chuzzlewit was
staying. Martin tried to end the
misunderstanding between them, but Mr. Pecksniff
broke in to say that the grandfather knew
the young man for a villain, a deceiver
who would not be allowed to wrong the
sick old man as long as Mr. Pecksniff
lived. Old Martin said nothing. Young
Martin and Mark went to London. There
they found Tom Pinch and Ruth and
heard from John Westlock his suspicions
of Jonas Chuzzlewit.
Jonas became desperate when Tigg
forced him into a scheme to defraud Mr.
Pecksniff. On their journey into
Wiltshire, Jonas made plans for disposing of
the man he hated and feared. After Mr.
Pecksniff had agreed to invest his money
in the company, Jonas returned to
London, leaving Tigg to handle the transfer of
securities. That night, disguised as a
workman, he went secretly to the village and
assaulted Tigg, who was walking back to
his room at the inn. Leaving the body in
a wood, he took a coach to London and
arrived there at daybreak. But Nadgett,
2270

ever on watch, had seen Jonas leave and
return, and he followed the murderer
when he tried to dispose of the clothing
he had worn on his journey.
Old Martin Chuzzlewit. miraculously
restored in body and mind, arrived
unexpectedly in London for the purpose of
righting many wrongs and turning the
tables on hypocritical Mr. Pecksniff.
Having heard Westlock's story, he went with
him to confront Jonas with their
suspicions. A few minutes later police officers,
led by Nadgett, appeared to arrest Jonas
for Tigg's murder. Trapped, the wretched
man took the rest of the poison he had
obtained from Lewsome.
The next day old Martin met with all
concerned. It was he who had hired Tom
Pinch, and it was he who now confessed
that he had tested his grandson and Mary
and found them worthy. When Mr.
Pecksniff entered and attempted to shake the
hand of his venerable friend, the stern old
man struck him to the floor with a cane.
The passing years brought happiness to
the deserving. Young Martin and Mary
were married, followed a short time later
by Westlock and Ruth Pinch. Mark
Tapley won the mistress of the Blue
Dragon Inn. Old Martin, out of pity,
befriended Mercy Chuzzlewit. He himself
rejoiced in the happiness of his faithful
friends. But there was no joy for Mr.
Pecksniff. When news of Tigg's murder
had reached the city, another partner in
that shady enterprise had run away with
the company funds. Mr. Pecksniff, ruined,
became a drunken old man who wrote
begging letters to Martin and Tom and
who had little comfort from Charity, the
shrewish companion of his later years.
2271

THE MASTER BUILDER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First presented: 1892
Principal characters:
Halvard Solness, the master builder
Aline, his wife
Doctor Herdal, his physician
Knut Brovik, in Solness' employ
Ragnar Brovik, his son
Kaia Fosli, Solness' bookkeeper
Hilda Wangel, Solness' inspiration
Critique:
The Master Builder belongs to & series
of dramas which were a departure from
the earlier types written by Ibsen. In this
play the bitter satire of the social dramas
is not present; instead, the play is
mysterious, symbolic, lyrical. Ibsen here deals
with the human soul and its struggle to
rise above its own desires. The idea had
been in Ibsen's mind for many years
before he actually wrote the play, which is
one of the most original of his works.
The Story:
Halvard Solness had risen to his high
position as a master builder because of a
fire which had destroyed the ancestral
estate of his wife's family. On the site he
had built new homes which won him
fame and assured success in his
profession. The fire had given him his chance,
but he made his own opportunities, too,
by crushing all who got in his way.
Knut Brovik, employed by Solness, had
once been a successful architect, but
Solness had crushed him and then used
him as he had many others. Ragnar,
Brovik's son, was a draftsman in Solness'
office, and it was Brovik's only wish that
before his own death his son should have
a chance to design something of lasting
value. Although Ragnar had drawn plans
for a villa which Solness did not wish to
bother with, the builder would not give
him permission to take the
assignment. Ragnar was engaged to Kaia Fosli,
Solness' bookkeeper, and he could not
marry her until he had established
himself. Ragnar did not know that Kaia had
come under the spell of the master, as had
so many other young girls. Solness
pretended to Kaia that he could not help
Ragnar because that would mean losing
her; in reality he needed Ragnar's brain
and talent and could not risk having the
young man as a competitor.
Solness' physician, Dr. Herdal, and his
wife feared that the builder was going
mad. He spent much time in
retrospection and also seemed to have morbid fears
that the younger generation was going to
ruin him.
But not all of the younger generation
frightened Solness. When Hilda Wangel
appeared at his home, he was at once
drawn to her. He had met Hilda ten years
before when he had hung the traditional
wreath atop the weather vane on a church
he had built. She had been a child at the
time. Now she told him that he had called
her his princess and had promised to come
for her in ten years and carry her off to
build her a kingdom. Since he had not
kept his promise, she had come to him.
Sol Iness, who could not remember the
incident, decided that he must have wished
it to happen and thus made it come to
pass. This, he believed, was another
example of his power over people, and it
frightened him.
When Hilda asked to see all he had
built, especially the high church towers,
2272

he told her that he no longer built
churches and would never build one
again. Now he built homes for mothers
and fathers and children. He was
building a home for himself and his wife, and
on it he was building a high tower. He
did not know why he was putting the
high tower on the house, but something
seemed to be forcing him. Hilda insisted
that he complete the tower, for it seemed
to her that the tower would have great
meaning for her and for him.
Hilda told Solness that his need of her
was the kingdom he had promised her and
that she would stay near him. She wanted
to know why he built nothing but homes,
and he told her of the fire that had given
him his chance. At the time of the fire, he
and his wife had twin baby boys.
Although all had been saved from the fire,
the babies died soon afterward from the
effects of the fevered milk of their mother.
Solness knew that his position and his
fame were based on the tragedy of the fire
and on his wife's heart-rending loss, but
he believed also that he had willed the
fire in order to have his chance. Whatever
he willed happened, and afterward he
had to pay somehow the horrible price
for his almost unconscious desires. And so
he built homes for others, never able to
have a real home himself. He was near
madness because his success was based
on his and his wife's sorrow.
Solness seemed to have power over
human beings as well as events. Brovik was
one man who served him, his son Rag-
nar another. Solness, afraid of Ragnar's
younger generation, believed that it would
crush him as he had crushed others.
Hilda, begging him to give Ragnar and
the other young people a chance, said
that he would not be crushed if he
himself opened the door to them. She told
him that his near-madness was caused by
a feeble conscience, that he must
overcome this weakness and make his
conscience robust, as was hers. She persuaded
him to give Ragnar the assignment the
young man wanted. She wished Solness
to stand completely alone and yet be the
master. As final proof of his greatness, she
begged Solness to lay the traditional
wreath on the high tower of his new home
and she scoffed at a builder who could not
climb as high as he could build.
Hilda alone wanted Solness to climb
the tower, and only she believed that he
would do so. Once she had seen him
standing on a church tower, and his
magnificence had thrilled her. She must
have the thrill again. On that other day
she had heard a song in the sky as the
master builder shouted into the heavens,
but it was not until now that she learned
what he had shouted. He told her that as
he had stood at the top of the church he
had known why God had made the fire
that destroyed his wife's estate. It was to
make Solness a great builder, a true artist
building more and more churches to
honor God. God wanted him to have no
children, no real home, so that he could
give all his time to building churches. But
Solness had defied God that day. He had
shouted his decision to build no more
churches, only homes for mothers and
fathers and their children.
But God had taken His revenge. There
was little happiness in the homes Solness
built. From now on he would build only
castles in the air, with Hilda to help him.
He asked Hilda to believe in him, to have
faith in him. Hilda, however, demanded
proof. She must see him standing again,
clear and free, on the top of the tower.
Then his conscience would be freed and
he would still be the master builder. He
would give her the kingdom he had
promised.
Even though his wife and others
pleaded with him not to make the ascent,
Solness was guided by Hilda's desire. As
he climbed higher and higher, she heard
a song in the air and thrilled to its
crashing music. But when he reached the top
of the tower, he seemed to be struggling
with an invisible being. He toppled and
fell to the ground, lifeless. Then Hilda
heard music in the sky. Her master
builder had given her her kingdom.
2273

THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: Scotland, India, France, America
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
James Durrie, Master of Ballantrae
Henry Durrie, James' brother
Aijson Graeme, Henry's wife
Mr. Mackellar, factor of Durrisdeer
Secundra Dass, James' servant
Critique:
The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter's
Tale is considered by many to be
Stevenson's best novel, although it probably is
not as well known as Treasure Island or
Kidnapped, The story is engrossing,
moves with commendable speed, and
generally does not seem incredible.
However, the novel is lacking in background
detail, the author's chief aim, apparently,
being a delineation of character.
The Story:
When the Stuart Pretender landed in
Scotland in 1745, to assert his right to
the throne of England by force of arms
if necessary, the Durries of Durrisdeer
decided to steer a middle course. One
son would fight for the exiled Stuart, the
other would bide at home in loyalty to
King George. James, Master of
Ballantrae and his father's heir, won the toss of
a coin and elected to join the Stuart
cause. The younger son, Henry, stayed
at Durrisdeer. By this means it was hoped
by their shrewd old father that either way
the struggle went, the family estate would
remain intact.
Soon after came word of the defeat of
the Scottish forces at Culloden and the
news of James* death. Henry became
the Master of Ballantrae. In 1748, he
married Alison Graeme, who had been
betrothed to James. But even after a
daughter and a son had been born to
them, their marriage was overshadowed
by the spirit of the former Master of
Ballantrae. James had been the favorite
son. Old Lord Durrisdeer had denied
him nothing, and Alison had loved him.
This feeling led to domestic difficulties,
and later the village gossips idolized James
and accused Henry of selling out the
Stuart cause.
Colonel Francis Burke, an Irishman,
came into this strained situation and
announced that he and James had escaped
together from the field at Culloden. The
old lord was exceedingly happy with this
news; Henry felt frustrated; Alison
seemed pleased. Burke's mission was to
get money from the estate to take to
James, who was living in France. Henry
arranged to send him money by Burke.
Burke described his association with
James and their adventures after leaving
Scotland. The ship on which they
escaped was boarded by pirates, and James
and Burke were taken aboard the pirate
ship. The pirates, under the leadership
of Teach, their captain, were a drunken,
incompetent, ignorant lot.
James bided his time, and when the
ship put in for repairs, he escaped with
Burke and several members of the crew,
after robbing the store chest of money
and treasure Teach had accumulated.
With their spoils James and Burke
eventually arrived in New York, where they
met Chew, an Indian trader. They took
off with him into the wilderness. When
Chew died, they were left without a
guide. James and Burke quarreled and
separated. James buried the treasure he
had and set off through the wilderness
for Fort St. Frederick. When he arrived
at the fort, he again met Burke, who wel-
2274

corned him as a long-lost brother and
paid his fare to France.
In France, James served in the French
army and became a man of consequence
at the French court because of his adept-
ness at politics, his unscrupulousness, and
the money from his inheritance in
Scotland. His demands finally put the estate
in financial difficulties, for over a period
of seven years he demanded and obtained
a sum amounting to more than eight
thousand pounds. Because he practiced
strict economy to provide funds for his
brother, Henry acquired a reputation as
a miser and was upbraided by his wife.
Then in 1756 Alison learned the true
state of affairs from Mackellar, Henry'u
factor.
After that matters ran more smoothly
in the household until James returned
suddenly from France aboard a smuggler's
lugger. His father was overjoyed to see
his favorite son, who during his stay at
Ballantrae was known as Mr. Bally.
James* hatred for Henry was known only
to Henry and Mackellar. In the presence
of the household James seemed to be on
the friendliest terms with his brother, but
when no one was around he goaded
Henry by subtle innuendoes and
insinuations. Henry bore this state of affairs as
best he could because James, even in
exile, was the true Master of Ballantrae.
As a further torment for his patient
brother, James paid marked attention to
Alison, and it really seemed she preferred
his company to Henry's.
Matters came to a head one night when
James casually mentioned to Henry that
there never was a woman who did not
prefer him when Henry was around.
When this assertion was made, there
was no one present but Mackellar, Henry,
and James. Henry struck James and hot
words quickly led to drawn swords. The
brothers ordered Mackellar to carry
candles into the garden. They went
outside, Mackellar remonstrating all the
while, but he could not stop the duel.
The air was so still that the light of the
candles did not waver as the brothers
crossed swords. From the onset Henry
became the aggressor, and it was not long
before James realized he stood to lose the
fight. He then resorted to trickery. As
Henry lunged, James seized his brother's
blade in his left hand. Henry saved
himself from James' stroke by leaping to one
side, and James, slipping to one knee
from the force of his lunge, impaled
himself on Henry's sword. Mackellar ran
to the fallen James and declared him
dead.
Henry seemed stupified and made off
toward the house at a stumbling pace.
Mackellar took it upon himself to tell
Alison and the old lord what had
happened. The four decided that the first
thing to do was to remove James' corpse.
But when they arrived at the scene of the
duel, the body had disappeared. They
decided that smugglers, attracted by the
light of the candles in the shrubbery,
had found the body and taken it away,
and their belief was confirmed by blood
stains they found on the boat landing
the next morning. Mr. Bally was reported
in the neighborhood to have left Dur-
risdeer as suddenly as he had arrived.
As the affair turned out, James had
been found alive but seriously wounded.
He was taken aboard a smuggler's ship,
and when he recovered he went to India.
After he made a fortune there, he
returned once more to Scotland in the
company of an Indian named Secundra
Dass.
They arrived at Durrisdeer early one
morning. That night Henry with his
wife and two children left the house
secretly and took the next ship to New
York. James, having learned of Henry's
plans through the eavesdropping of
Secundra Dass, sailed for New York three
weeks later, and Mackellar, hoping to
help his master, went with James and
his servant. When they arrived in New
York, Mackellar was pleased to learn that
Henry had already taken precautions to
forestall any claims which James might
make.
When James' allowance from his
brother proved insufficient for him to
live in the style he desired, he set up
2275

shop as a tailor, and Secundra Dass
employed himself as a goldsmith. Hatred
for James gradually became an obsession
with Henry. He reveled in the fact that
after many years of humiliation and
distress he had his wicked brother in his
power.
To recoup his fortunes, James made
plans to recover the treasure which he
had previously hidden in the wilderness.
He asked Henry to lend him the money
to outfit an expedition, but Henry
refused. Mackellar, although he hated
James, could not bear to see a Durrie
treated in such a haughty manner;
therefore, he sent to Scotland for his own
savings to assist James. But Henry had
plans of his own, and he conspired with
a man of unsavory reputation to guide
James into the wilderness and there kill
him. Again Secundra Dass overheard a
chance conversation and warned his
master of danger. Then James sickened and
died. He was buried, and his guide
returned to report his death to Henry.
Henry, however, believed his brother
James to be in league with the devil, with
the ability to die and return to life
seemingly at will. With Mackellar and a
small party, he set out for James' grave.
They arrived one moonlit night in time
to see Secundra Dass in the act of
exhuming James* body and they gathered
around to see what would happen. After
digging through the frozen earth for a
short distance, Secundra Dass removed
his master's body from the shallow grave.
Then the Indian began strange
ministrations over the corpse. The moon was
setting. The watchers imagined that in
the pale light they saw the dead man's
eyelids flutter. When the eyes opened
and James looked full into his brother's
face, Henry fell to the ground. He died
before Mackellar could reach his side.
But the Indian trick of swallowing the
tongue to give the appearance of death
would not work in the cold American
climate, and Secundra Dass failed to
bring James completely to life. James,
the Master of Ballantrae, and his brother
were united in death in the wilderness of
America.
2276

MASTRO-DON GESUALDO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Giovanni Verga (1840-1922)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: First half of the nineteenth century
Locale: San Giovanni, Sicily
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
Gesualdo Motta, an ambitious peasant
Donna Bianca Trao, one of the poor gentry
Don Diego Trao, and
Don Ferdinando Trao, her brothers
Nunzio Motta, Gesualdo's father
Santo Motta, Gesualdo's brother
Speranza Motta, Gesualdo's sister
Fortunato Burgio, her husband
Baroness Rubiera
Baron Nin* Rubiera, her son, Bianca Trao's cousin
Baron Zacco, one of the Trao relatives
Donna Sarina (or Cirmena), a poor aunt of the Trao family
Donna Marianna Sganci, a rich aunt
Diodata, Gesualdo's servant girl
Nani l'Orbo, a peasant, Gesualdo's servant
Canon-priest Lupi
Corrado La Gurna, Donna Cirmena's nephew
Critique:
Giovanni Verga, author of the short
story, "Cavalleria Rusticana," which was
used as the libretto for Mascagni's opera,
is generally regarded as the finest
Italian novelist since Manzoni. Mastro-don
Gesualdo is the second in an unfinished
triology, the first being I Malavoglia
(1881), translated as The House by the
Medlar Tree. The series, titled I Vinti
(The Defeated*), was to have included a
third novel, about the Sicilian aristocracy,
titled La Duchessa di Leyra. Mastro-don
Gesualdo is a naturalistic study of the
rise and fall of an ambitious Sicilian
peasant. His efforts to elevate himself
place Mastro-don (workman-gentleman)
Gesualdo between two worlds—the
peasantry and the gentry—and his marriage to
one of the Trao family, who are of the
gentry, only widens the gap between him
and the others on either side.
Giovanni began ringing. There was a
fire in the Trao house, and the
village awakened to answer the summons.
Through the smoke the villagers saw the
frantic faces of Don Ferdinando and Don
Diego, and a voice called out that there
were thieves in the house as well. At
the same time Don Diego called for his
sister, Bianca, who was somewhere in the
burning building. Mastro-don Gesualdo
appeared, showing great concern about
his own house nearby, and other Mottas,
including Gesualdo's brother Santo and
his sister Speranza, came running both
to witness the spectacle and to protect
their own property.
Don Diego discovered, to his dismay,
that the stranger in the house was not a
thief but his sister's lover, the young
Baron Nini Rubiera. After the fire had
been extinguished, Don Diego went to
the baron's mother, the Baroness
Rubiera, one of the Trao relatives, and
meekly requested that Nini marry Bianca.
MASTRO-DON GESUALDO by Giovanni Verga. Translated by D. H. Lawrence. By permission of the
publishers, The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1923, by Thomas SelUer. Copyright, 1951, by Frieda
Lawrence.
The Story:
Shortly after sunrise the bells of San
2277

The baroness refused. Any girl who
married her son, she declared, must
come prepared with a large dowry. Since
Bianca's brothers were poor, though
proud of their family heritage, there was
no hope of convincing the baroness to
change her mind. Consequently, after
great persuasion, they agreed to allow
Bianca to.marry Gesualdo Motta, a
peasant who by his cleverness in business and
industry had managed to make himself a
rich landowner. Gesualdo had for some
time been happy with Diodata, a servant
girl, as his mistress, but now he hoped
to elevate himself socially by marrying
one of the gentry.
The gentry were aroused to anger by
the news that Gesualdo intended to bid
for the communal lands at the auction
for the taxes on land which had been in
the hands of Baron Zacco, another of the
Trao relatives. They commented that
wealth, not family, was what counted in
Sicily. When Mastro-don Gesualdo
hesitantly attended a gathering at the Sganci
house he was welcomed into the house
but put off to one side, even though it
was known he was to marry Bianca.
Bianca, heartbroken, talked to the young
Baron Nini about his mother's plan to
marry him to Fifi Margarone, one of the
daughters of Don Filippo Margarone, the
political leader in the village. Knowing
that his mother's mind was made up, the
young man finally managed to escape
from Bianca.
Mastro-don Gesualdo continued to
work with his laborers, fulfilling
contracts to build walls, roads, and bridges.
As he sweated with the men and
supervised their work, he thought of his
father's complaints about losing his
position as the head of the family. The elder
Motta, Nunzio, had even taken on
contracts, using his son's money, in order
to reestablish himself as master of his
house; but his ventures had been
unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Nunzio continued
to criticize his son's enterprises and to
make things difficult for him.
Gesualdo, returning home from work,
always found faithful Diodata, who
greeted him humbly and made him
comfortable. When he told her of his plan
to marry Bianca Trao, she replied that
he was the master; it was apparent,
however, that she would never be happy
without him. When she was finally
married off to another servant, Nani l'Orbo,
the children she bore him had been
fathered by Gesualdo. Nani took
advantage of his position to force Gesualdo
to support him with money and property.
A major blow to Gesualdo's fortunes
came when a bridge he was building
under contract to the town collapsed.
His father complained that the failure
was Gesualdo's fault, and the villagers
who were jealous of Gesualdo's wealth
exulted over his misfortune. Only
Diodata, who had not yet married Nani
l'Orbo, was sympathetic.
Despite the objections of her brothers,
Don Diego and Don Ferdinando, Bianca
persisted in going ahead with the plan to
marry Gesualdo. The brothers finally
agreed, only because it was hopeless to
forbid her. Bianca knew that she would
never marry Baron Ninl Rubiera, and
she hoped that by marrying a rich man
she could ease the burden on her
brothers.
When the wedding was held in the
old house of the La Gurna family, which
Gesualdo had leased, only Donna Cir-
mena came to represent the Trao family.
When Gesualdo was alone with Bianca
he was afraid to touch her, and they
talked to each other apprehensively, as if
they could never overcome the distance
between them.
At the tax auction of the communal
lands an effort was made to convince
Mastro-don Gesualdo that for the sake
of harmony between the Motta and the
Trao families he should divide the land
with Baron Zacco and the Baroness
Rubiera. When Gesualdo refused, Don
Filippo Margarone pretended that there
was no guarantee that Gesualdo would
be able to pay the bid with his own
money. For the time being the auction
was called off. The Trao family
attempted to put pressure on Bianca to dis-
2278

suade her husband from bidding on the
communal lands, but she refused to take
part. In the meantime the canon-priest
Lupi tried to ingratiate himself with
Gesualdo by criticizing the business
tactics of the Trao family and by warning
Gesualdo that an effort was being made
to stir the laborers to revolt against him.
Gesualdo began to realize that his money
was not bringing him the satisfaction he
had hoped for and which he had always
associated with wealth.
An uprising of the peasants was quelled
by the nobility with military aid. During
the trouble Gesualdo sought shelter with
Nani l'Orbo, who took advantage of the
moment to demand land from Gesualdo
as payment for harboring him and for
having married Diodata. Until peace was
restored Gesualdo was in danger from
both the laborers and the police. One
result of the disturbance was that Baron
Zacco allied himself with Gesualdo, for
the peasants were angry at anyone who
had anything to do with the communal
lands.
When news came that Don Diego was
dying, Bianca hurried to the house where
her brothers lived. Her arrival caused a
great disturbance among the relatives,
and matters were further complicated
when Bianca fell into a faint because her
child was about to be born. In the midst
of the uproar Don Ferdinando walked
about talking of documents which he
claimed proved that the Traos were
entitled to royal lands.
Although Baron Nini Rubiera was
engaged to be married to Donna Fifi Mar-
garone, he became infatuated with an
actress, Signora Aglae, and sent a note
to her, composed by Ciolla, a local
troublemaker who had stirred up the peasants
to revolt. The note was intercepted by
Master Titta, the barber, who gave it to
Fifi, and as a result of that disclosure
the engagement was ended. The young
baron's mother was furious with him—
not so much because of the scandal as
because Baron Nini had gone deeply
into debt with Gesualdo in order to
entertain the actress.
Bianca's child was christened Isabella.
There were rumors that since the child
arrived seven months after the marriage
and since she looked so much like a
Trao, it was possible that Mastro-don
Gesualdo was not the father.
Baron Nini, finally becoming disgusted
with Signora Aglae, returned home to
a furious scene with his mother. The
baroness accused him of trying to
impoverish them all by his dealings with
Gesualdo, and in her frenzy she suffered
a stroke and became paralyzed. After his
mother's stroke Baron Nini found
himself hopelessly entangled by his debts
to Gesualdo. In desperation he married
a rich widow, Madame Giuseppina Alosi,
but even that was not enough to save
him. He then tried to get help from
Bianca. Although she was affected by his
presence, she refused to yield to his
appeal.
At school Isabella suffered from taunts
that she was a peasant's daughter, and
in defense she finally called herself a
Trao. Gesualdo allowed the change of
name because he loved her more than his
own pride.
Wh en a cholera epidemic threatened
San Giovanni, Gesualdo brought Isabella
home from college; and he then moved
his family to Mangalavite. But Don
Ferdinando, Nunzio, Speranza, and Burgio
chose to stay. At the last moment Donna
Cirmena joined the Gesualdo Motta
group, bringing with her Corrado La
Gurna, who had been orphaned in a
cholera epidemic.
At Mangalavite, Isabella fell in love
with Corrado, but Gesualdo finally put
an end to the romance by sending
Isabella to a convent and by putting out an
order for the arrest of Corrado. Later he
signed a marriage contract, giving his
daughter to the Duke di Leyra, a high-
living lord who promptly exhausted
Isabella's dowry and used up whatever
other resources he could get from
Gesualdo.
From then on Mastro-don Gesualdo's
downfall was rapid. His father had died
of fever and the Motta relatives, quarrel-
2279

ing over the inheritance, demanded that
Gesualdo divide his property among
them. His wife being ill with
consumption, the servants left for fear of
catching the disease. When the laborers
revolted again, Gesualdo hardly paid
attention to them, for by that time Bianca was
dying and his own life was losing its
meaning.
After Bianca's death Gesualdo was
hurried from place to place to hide him
from the rebelling mob. His lands and
houses were raided and sacked. At last,
wearying of turncoat friends like Baron
Zacco, Gesualdo allowed himself to be
controlled by his relatives. He lay in
bed with a cancerous disease while his
son-in-law, the duke, exercised the power
of attorney he had wrested from Gesualdo
in order to despoil more of his property.
One by one his lands disappeared into the
hands of others. When he made a last
appeal to his daughter to use some of
the remaining money for those to whom
he owed much, she looked at him from
a distance; she was a Trao and he a
Motta. After his death the servants,
knowing little of his life, commented
enviously that Gesualdo must have been
born lucky since he died in fine linen
like a prince.
2280

MAX HAVELAAR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Multatuli (Eduard Douwes Dekker, 1820-1887)
Type of plot: Political satire
Time of plot: 1857
Locale: Java
First published: 1860
Principal characters:
Max Havelaar, a conscientious Dutch colonial administrator
Batavus Drystubble, a Dutch coffee broker of Amsterdam
Mr. Verbrugge, an administrator subordinate to Max Havelaar
Radhen Adhipatti Karta Natta Negara, the native regent of Lebak,
Havelaar's district
Shawlman, a schoolmate of Batavus Drystubble and a writer
Mr. Slimering, Havelaar's superior officer
Critique:
Like his hero in Max Havelaar, Eduard
Douwes Dekker was an administrator in
the Dutch East Indies. As the Resident
of Bantam, in Java, he had seen at first
hand the scandalous situation which
existed there and he devoted himself in
later life to the reform of the Dutch
government's treatment of the Javanese
and the inhabitants of other colonies in
the East Indies. Within the novel itself
Dekker compared his work to Harriet
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Toms Cahin, but
in recent years critics have tended to
believe that Dekker really wrote Max
Havelaar as a satire on colonial
maladministration of all kinds, governmental
blundering, and the smugness and
hypocrisy of middle-class Europeans. Max
Havelaar is but one of Dekker's writings
devoted to satire against these things; a
drama, a series of fictional love letters,
and a string of articles and pamphlets
follow the same vein.
The Story:
Batavus Drystubble, a self-proud coffee
broker of Amsterdam, was accosted one
day on the street by a former schoolmate
who had obviously fallen on evil times.
The Shawlman, as Drystubble called him,
pressed his prosperous former
schoolfellow to look over a bundle of manuscripts,
in hopes that Drystubble might be willing
MAX HAVELAAR by Multatuli. Translated by W. Siebenhaar. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1927, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed. All right! reserved.
to help him have some of them published.
Drystubble, thinking he might have a
book written about the coffee trade,
turned over the manuscripts to a clerk
in his firm to edit. The clerk agreed to
make a book of the materials, after
securing a promise from his employer not to
censor the results before publication. Out
of the bundle of manuscripts came the
story of Max Havelaar, a Dutch
administrator in Java, in the Dutch East Indies.
Max Havelaar was an idealist who
believed in justice for everyone, even the
poor Javanese who labored in the fields.
When he arrived at Rangkas-Betoong to
take over the post of Assistant Resident
of Lebak, a section of the residency of
Bantam, in Java, he found the situation
much worse than he had anticipated, for
the Dutch administrators, despite their
oath to protect the poor and lowly, had
acquiesced in the robbery and
mistreatment of the native Javanese by the
Javanese nobility, through whom the Dutch
ruled the island. The Adhipatti of Lebak
was a relatively poor man because his
region did not produce many of the
exports that the Dutch wanted. In order
to keep up appearances befitting his rank
and to support a large and rapacious
family, the Adhipatti extorted goods,
materials, and services from the people, who
felt helpless because of the treatment
2281

they would suffer from the native chief
if they complained to the Dutch officials.
Being a man who loved a good fight
for justice's sake, Max Havelaar was glad
he had been assigned to Lebak. In his
opening speech to the Adhipatti and the
lesser chiefs he declared that justice must
be done, and he began trying to influence
the Adhipatti by advancing him tax
money in hopes that the chief would be
less exacting on his people. Suggestions
and help were of little use, however, for
the same evil practices continued. The
people, learning that Havelaar wished to
see justice done, stole to his home under
cover of darkness to lodge their
complaints and give the assistant resident
information. Havelaar rode many miles to
redress complaints. He also gave an
example to the chiefs by refusing to use more
native labor than the law allowed, even
to letting the grounds of the residency
go largely untended and revert to jungle.
He realized what he was fighting against,
for he was a man in his middle thirties
who had spent seventeen years in the
Dutch colonial service.
His faithful adherent in his battle
against injustice was his wife Tine, who
was devoted to her husband and knew
he was in the right. Of less help was
Verbrugge, the controller serving under
Havelaar. He knew the Javanese were
being exploited, but he hated to risk his
job and career, with their concomitant
security, by fighting against the tide of
complacency of Dutch officialdom.
Verbrugge realized that Havelaar's superiors
were interested only in keeping peace, in
submitting reports that bespoke
prosperity, and in providing wealth for the
homeland—regardless of what happened
to the Javanese.
One example was the story of Saidyah,
the son of a small Javanese rice farmer.
One by one the fathers possessions were
taken from him by extortion, even the
buffalo that had faced a tiger to save the
boy's life. Finally Saidyah's father ran
away to escape punishment for failing to
pay his taxes, and Saidyah himself left
his home village to seek work in Batavia,
vowing to his beloved that he would
return in three years' time to marry her.
When he returned as he had promised,
however, he found that she and her
family had been forced to flee and had joined
rebellious Javanese on another island.
Saidyah finally found his beloved, but
only after she had been killed and
mutilated by Dutch troops. Saidyah
himself, overcome with grief, rushed upon
the troops and was impaled on their
bayonets.
As time went on, Havelaar realized
he could expect but little help from
Mr. Slimering, the Resident of Bantam
and his immediate superior. Yet
Havelaar hoped optimistically that some
support would be forthcoming from that
quarter. Havelaar learned that his
predecessor had probably been poisoned
because he had sought to stop the
exploitation of the population by the native
chiefs. Havelaar learned this from his
predecessor's native wife, who still lived
at the official residence.
Having finally gained what he deemed
sufficient information against the
Adhipatti, Max Havelaar lodged an official
protest with Mr. Slimering. He requested
that the Adhipatti and his subordinate
chiefs be taken into custody and removed
from Rangkas-Betoong, lest their presence
intimidate the people and prevent their
giving testimony of the abuses. Instead of
acceding to any part of the request, Mr.
Slimering came to Havelaar's district,
denounced Havelaar's actions, and even
gave money to the Adhipatti. Havelaar,
hoping to find support higher up in the
administration, appealed to the Governor-
General, saying that unless he received
some support to eradicate the injustices
he had found he would have to resign
after seventeen years of faithful service
to the colonial administration.
(At this point in the mss. was inserted
a section supposedly written by Batavus
Drystubble, who expressed the views of
a complacent Dutch businessman in
the homeland. Drystubble said that he
had been royally entertained by retired
colonial officials who assured him that the
2282

charges made in Shawlman's manuscripts
were groundless. Drystubble added, too,
that he felt as a religious man that the
heathen Javanese were given their just
deserts for not being Christians and that
the Dutch were profiting at the expense
of the Javanese because the former were
decent, God-fearing, and obedient
Christian people who deserved divine favor.)
After waiting a month, Max Havelaar
learned that he had been relieved of his
post in Lebak; he was ordered to another
part of Java. This official action he could
not accept, knowing that he would have
the same fight all over again, a losing
battle, in a new assignment. He left
Lebak after his successor arrived and
went to Batavia to lay his case personally
before the Governor-General. That
worthy man, too busy to see him, put off
Havelaar with one pretext after another.
On the eve of the Governor-General's
departure for Holland, Havelaar wrote an
angry letter as a last hope. That stinging
letter did no good; the Governor-General
sailed for home, leaving Havelaar poor
and forsaken.
(At the end of the novel Multatuli
stepped in to break off the story and
speak in his own voice, dismissing the
clerk from Drystubble's office and Shawl-
man, who as fictional characters had been
writing the novel. Multatuli, after
expressing his loathing of the hypocritical,
money-grabbing Drystubble, went on to
say that he wished to leave an heirloom
for Havelaar's children and to bring his
appeals to the public. The author said
that he knew his book was not well
written, but all that mattered was that people
learn how the Javanese were being
mistreated, thirty millions of them, in the
name of King William of the
Netherlands.)
2283

THE MAXIMS
Type of work: Epigrams and aphorisms
Author: Francois, Due de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
First published: 1665-1678
La Rochefoucauld described his
Maxims (Reflections or Moral Maxims') as a
"portrait of the human heart." He wrote
in the preface to the first edition that
these reflections on human conduct would
probably offend many persons because the
aphorisms were "full of truths" that
would be unacceptable to human pride.
Ironically, he wrote that the reader
should suppose himself to be the sole
exception to the truth revealed and should
avoid the tendency to have his opinion
influenced by amour-propre, or self-love,
which would prejudice his mind against
the maxims.
The reference to self-love, the basic
concern for self by which the value of
any action, person, or thing is presumed
to be judged, is characteristic of La
Rochefoucauld. Critics generally describe
this great French writer as a cynic and
take as evidence his maxims in which he
attributes to self-love the central role in
human conduct. But a mere cynic is one
who hopes for a better world than the
one in which he finds himself; he
constantly compares what could be and what
ought to be with what is—and the
disparity makes him bitter. Consequently,
everything the cynic says is a statement
of the truth as he sees it; and as he sees
it, it is worthy only of a sneer. La
Rochefoucauld, on the other hand, takes self-
love to be an undeniable fact of human
existence, and he does not hope for
anything better. Consequently, his view of
the world is that of a man amused to see
the difference between what men
conceive themselves to be and what they are;
his delight is in a witty revelation of the
facts of life. Throughout the Maxims,
as in the refreshing self-portrait with
which the collection begins, La
Rochefoucauld reveals an intelligent sense of
humor which takes the sneer out of what
critics sometimes choose to call his
cynicism.
"My normal expression is somewhat
bitter and haughty," he writes in his
initial "Portrait"; his expression "makes most
people think me supercilious, though I
am not the least so really." He goes on
to describe himself as "inclined to
melancholy" but not from temperament alone:
"it is due to . . . many other causes."
He calls himself an intellectual who
delights in the conversation of cultured
persons, in reading, in virtue, and in
friendship. His passions are moderate and under
control. He is neither ambitious nor afraid
of death. He has given up "light amours"
and wonders why so many men waste
their time paying "pretty compliments."
The portrait concludes with the assurance
that were he ever to love, he would love
with the strong passion that is a sign of
noble character; however, he doubts that
his knowledge of the value of strong
passion will ever "quit my head to find a
dwelling in my heart."
The first maxim is important as a
summary statement of La Rochefoucauld's
central conviction: "So-called virtue is
often merely a compound of varied
activities and interests, which good fortune
or our own assiduity enables us to
display to advantage; so it is not always
courage that makes the hero, nor modesty
the chaste woman."
And with the second, the author names
the concern that is essential to the
human heart: "Amour-propre is the arch-
flatterer."
In many of the maxims La
Rochefoucauld expresses his conviction that virtue
is the accidental result of an exercise of
the passions; acts undertaken passionately
to satisfy the demands of a pervasive self-
concern are interpreted in other ways, as
signs of nobility of character. Thus he
writes that "Illustrious deeds, of dazzling
brilliance, are represented by politicians
as the outcome of great aims, whereas
they are usually the result of caprice or
2284

passion" (7). Similarly, "The clemency
of princes is often nothing more than a
political artifice designed to secure the
goodwill of their subjects" (15). And,
"Such clemency, though hailed as a
virtue, is the product sometimes of vanity,
sometimes of indolence, not infrequently
of timidity, and generally of all three
combined" (16).
One way of expressing La
Rochefoucauld's philosophy is by saying that, to
him, virtue is usually passion
misunderstood. A man does something because his
own irresistible self-love drives him to it;
the world observes the power of his act
and mistakes it for the grandeur of
courageous virtue.
Not all of the maxims develop this
theme, however. Many of the author's
comments are both wry and true, and in
their pithiness deserve the prominent
place so many persons give to the unread
sign, "Think." Thus, "The desire to
appear clever often prevents our being so"
(199); "We all have enough strength to
bear the misfortunes of others" (19);
"Flattery would do us no harm if we did
not flatter ourselves" (152); and "Thee
is no fool so troublesome as a fool with
brains" (451).
There is a positive strain to some of the
maxims, an appeal to the honesty by
which men may lessen the damage their
self-love does. Whenever a man finds it
possible to recognize another's worth and
to do so sincerely, whenever a man knows
his own limitations and acknowledges
them, whenever a man admits that his
show of virtue is often an empty show-
there is hope for him. The author respects
such honesty, and it is apparent that the
Maxims are confessional as well as
didactic.
La Rochefoucauld found through his
own experience certain truths which
writers of all ages have expressed in various
ways and which gain power through
repetition. In several maxims he develops the
idea that it is doing a man an injury to
be so much concerned about his welfare
that he finds himself burdened with the
necessity of being grateful. He recognizes
that we tend to be free with advice to
others, but not eager to accept it for
ourselves. We admit certain shortcomings,
such as a poor memory, in order to hide
others, such as a lack of intelligence.
La Rochefoucauld's psychology is that
of the sophisticated courtier. He was too
much aware of his own disguises ever
to have acquired the knowledge that
would have led to a more objective and
more scientific psychology. His
psychology, like his philosophy, if not that of the
man in the street, was at least that of the
man at court—clever enough to see behind
the masks of those who traveled in high
society, but not tolerant enough of
possibilities to be willing to admit that what
he called "honest" men were more
common than he supposed. When his
psychology has the strong ring of truth, it
is more by accident than discernment; and
when it is false, he seems embittered to
distortion—hence the charge of
"cynicism."
Nevertheless, certain maxims do define
something of the human character: "To
disclaim admiration is to desire it in
double measure" (149); "We easily
forget our faults when they are known only
to ourselves" (196); "Excessive eagerness
to discharge an obligation is a form of
ingratitude" (226); and "If we were
faultless ourselves, we should take less
pleasure in commenting on the faults of
others" (31).
Behind the revealing wit of La
Rochefoucauld there is the murmur of an
injured man. Who can discern the falsity of
others better than a man who believes
himself betrayed, who finds himself
timid, who longs for recognition and
gratitude and receives not enough of
either? And who, finally, is scornful of
grand passion who has not become bored
with his own cleverness and isolation and
longs to be transformed, even at the
expense of becoming a fool? La
Rochefoucauld reveals himself when he reveals the
desperate amour-propre which moves all
men.
2285

THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: "Wessex," England
First published: 1886
Principal characters:
Michael Henchard, the mayor of Casterbridge
Susan Henchard-Newson, his abandoned wife
Elizabeth-Jane Newson, his stepdaughter
Richard Newson, a sailor
Donald Farfrae, a grain merchant
Lucetta Lb Sueur, loved by Henchard, later Farfrae's wife
Critique:
Despite contrived events, the plot of
The Mayor of Casterbridge works out
well. Descriptions of the Wessex
countryside are excellent. Hardy's simple
country people are realistic and sometimes
funny, if not always sympathetic. The
modern reader is likely to question the
melodramatic and spectacular opening
scenes of the novel, in spite of Hardy's
insistence that such occurrences did take
place in rural districts during the last
century. The plot illustrates Hardy's
belief that "in fiction it is not
improbabilities of incident but improbabilities of
character that matter."
The Story:
One late summer afternoon, early in
the nineteenth century, a young farm
couple with their baby arrived on foot
at the village of Weydon-Priors. A fair
was in progress. The couple, tired and
dusty, entered a refreshment tent where
the husband proceeded to get so drunk
that he offered his wife and child for
sale. A sailor strange to the village bought
the wife, Susan, and the child, Elizabeth-
Jane, for five guineas. The young woman
tore off her wedding ring and threw it
in her drunken husband's face; then,
carrying her child, she followed the sailor
out of the tent.
When he awoke sober the next
morning, Michael Henchard, the young
farmer, realized what he had done. After
taking an oath not to touch liquor for
twenty years, he searched many months
for his wife and child. In a western
seaport he was told that three persons
answering the description he gave had
emigrated a short time before. He gave up
his search and wandered on until he came
to the town of Casterbridge. There he
stayed to seek his fortune.
Richard Newson, the sailor, convinced
Susan Henchard that she had no moral
obligations to the husband who had sold
her and her child. He married her and
moved with his new family to Canada.
Later they returned to England. Susan,
meanwhile, had learned of the illegality
of her marriage to Newson, but before
she could make a positive move Newson
was lost at sea. Susan and Elizabeth-Jane,
now eighteen and attractive, returned to
Weydon-Priors. There they heard that
Henchard had gone to Casterbridge.
Henchard, in the intervening period,
had become a prosperous grain merchant
and the mayor of Casterbridge. When
the women arrived in the town they
heard that Henchard had sold some bad
grain to bakers and restitution was
expected. Donald Farfrae, a young Scots
corn expert who was passing through
Casterbridge, heard of Henchard's
predicament and told him a method for
partially restoring the grain. Farfrae so
impressed Henchard and the people of the
town that they prevailed on him to
remain. Farfrae became Henchard's
manager.
2286

At the meeting of Susan and Hench-
ard, it was decided Susan and her
daughter would take lodgings and Henchard
would pay court to Susan. Henchard,
trusting young Farfrae, told the Scot of
his philandering with a young woman
named Lucetta Le Sueur, from Jersey.
He asked Farfrae to meet Lucetta and
keep her from coming to Casterbridge.
Henchard and Susan were married.
Elizabeth-Jane developed into a beautiful
young woman for whom Donald Farfrae
had a growing attraction. Henchard
wanted Elizabeth-Jane to take his name,
but Susan refused his request, much to
his mystification. He noticed that
Elizabeth-Jane did not possess any of his
personal traits.
Bad feeling came between Henchard
and Farfrae over Henchard's harsh
treatment of a simple-minded employee.
Farfrae had succeeded Henchard in
popularity in Casterbridge. The complete
break came when a country dance
sponsored by Farfrae drew all the populace,
leaving Henchard's dance unattended.
Farfrae, anticipating his dismissal, set up
his own establishment but refused to
take any of Henchard's business away
from him. Henchard, antagonized, would
not allow Elizabeth-Jane and Farfrae to
see each other.
Henchard received a letter from
Lucetta saying she would pass through
Casterbridge to pick up her love letters.
When Lucetta failed to keep the
appointment, Henchard put the letters in his
safe. Susan fell sick and wrote a letter
for Henchard to open on the day
Elizabeth-Jane was married. Soon afterward
she died and Henchard told the girl that
he was her real father. Looking for some
documents to corroborate his story, he
found the letter his wife had left in his
keeping for Elizabeth-Jane. Henchard,
unable to resist, read Susan's letter and
learned that Elizabeth-Jane was really
the daughter of Newson and Susan, his
own daughter having died in infancy.
His wife's reluctance to have the girl
take his name was now clear, and
Henchard's attitude toward Elizabeth-Jane
became distant and cold.
One day Elizabeth-Jane met a strange
woman at the village graveyard. The
woman was Lucetta Templeman,
formerly Lucetta Le Sueur, who had
inherited property in Casterbridge from a
rich aunt named Templeman. She took
Elizabeth-Jane into her employ to make it
convenient for Henchard, her old lover,
to call on her.
Young Farfrae came to see Elizabeth-
Jane, who was away at the time. He and
Miss Templeman were immediately
attracted to each other, and Lucetta
refused to see Henchard after meeting
Farfrae. Elizabeth-Jane overheard
Henchard berate Lucetta under his breath for
refusing to admit him to her house; she
was made further uncomfortable when
she saw that Farfrae had succumbed to
Lucetta's charms. Henchard was now
determined to ruin Farfrae. Advised by a
weather prophet that the weather would
be bad during the harvest, he bought
grain heavily. When the weather stayed
fair, Henchard was almost ruined by low
grain prices. Farfrae bought cheap. The
weather turned bad late in the harvest,
and prices went up. Farfrae became
wealthy.
In the meantime, Farfrae continued
his courtship of Lucetta. Henchard,
jealous, threatened to expose Lucetta's past
unless she married him. Lucetta agreed.
But an old woman disclosed to the
village that Henchard was the man who had
sold his wife and child years before.
Lucetta, ashamed, left town. On the
day of her return, Henchard rescued her
and Elizabeth-Jane from an enraged bull.
He asked Lucetta to give evidence to a
creditor of their engagement. Lucetta
confessed that in her absence she and
Farfrae had been married. Henchard,
utterly frustrated, again threatened to
expose her. Elizabeth-Jane, upon
learning of the marriage, left Lucetta's service.
The news that Henchard had sold his
wife and child spread through the
village. His creditors closed in, and he be-
2287

came a recluse. He and Elizabeth-Jane
were reconciled during his illness. Upon
his recovery he hired out to Farfrae as
a common laborer.
Henchard's oath having expired, he
began to drink heavily. Farfrae planned
to set up Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane
in a small seed shop, but the project
did not materialize because of a
misunderstanding. Farfrae became mayor of
Casterbridge despite the desire of Lucetta
to leave the village.
Jopp, a former employee of Henchard,
blackmailed his way into the employ of
Farfrae through Lucetta, whose past he
knew, because he had lived in Jersey
before he came to Casterbridge.
Henchard, finally taking pity on Lucetta, gave
Jopp the love letters to return to her.
Before delivering them, Jopp read the
letters aloud in an inn.
Royalty visited Casterbridge.
Henchard, wishing to retain his old stature in
the village, forced himself among the
receiving dignitaries, but Farfrae pushed
him aside. Later, Henchard got Farfrae
at his mercy, during a fight in a
warehouse loft, but the younger man shamed
Henchard by telling him to go ahead and
kill him.
The townspeople, excited over the
letters they had heard read, devised a
mummery employing effigies of Henchard and
Lucetta riding back to back on a donkey.
Farfrae's friends arranged to have him
absent from the village during the
mummers' parade, but Lucetta saw it and was
prostrated. She died of a miscarriage
that night.
Richard Newson, not lost after all,
came to Casterbridge in search of Susan
and Elizabeth-Jane. He met Henchard,
who sent him away with the information
that both Susan and Elizabeth-Jane were
dead.
Elizabeth-Jane went to live with
Henchard in his poverty. They opened
a seed shop and began to prosper in a
modest way. Farfrae, to the misery of
the lonely Henchard, began to pay court
to Elizabeth-Jane, and they planned to
marry soon. Newson returned, obviously
knowing he had been duped. Henchard
left town but returned for the marriage
festivities, bringing with him a goldfinch
as a wedding present. When he saw
that Newson had completely replaced
him as Elizabeth-Jane's father, he went
sadly away. Newson, restless, departed
for the sea again, after Farfrae and his
daughter were settled. Henchard pined
away and died, ironically enough, in the
secret care of the simple-minded old man
whom he had once tyrannized.
2288

THE MAYOR OF ZALAMEA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Zalamea, Spain
First presented: c. 1640
Principal characters:
Philip II, King of Spain
Don Lope de Figueroa, commander of a Spanish regiment
Don Alvaro de Ataide, a captain
Pedro Crespo, a fanner of Zalamea
Juan, his son
Isabel, his daughter
Rsbolledo, a soldier
Chispa, his mistress
Critique:
The Mayor of Zalamea constitutes
Calder6n's finished and in many ways
original reworking of a play by his
illustrious predecessor, Lope de Vega.
Calderon, who was himself a soldier,
delineates in this play the military life of
seventeenth-century Spain. He also
portrays with sympathy the proud,
independent, and canny farmer of the provinces.
There are hints of two subplots in the
prominence given to several secondary
characters at the beginning of the play,
but these subplots never fully develop.
The Story:
As the troops of Don Lope de Figueroa
approached the village of Zalamea, old
campaigner Rebolledo grumbled in true
veteran fashion about the hardships of
the march. Quite ready to stop and relax
in the village, Rebolledo predicted that
the mayor of the village would bribe the
officers to march the regiment through
and beyond the little community. When
he was taken to task by his fellows for
this unsoldierly talk, Rebolledo declared
that he was mainly concerned for the
welfare of his mistress, Chispa, who
accompanied the troops. Chispa retorted
that although she was a woman she could
endure the march as well as any man.
To cheer up the men, she broke into a
marching song.
Chispa's song was barely finished when
the column reached Zalamea. It was
announced that the troops would be billeted
in the village to await the imminent
arrival of their commander, Don Lope. The
captain of the column was pleased to
learn that he would be billeted in the
home of a proud farmer whose daughter
was reputed to be the beauty of the
neighborhood.
At the same time that the troops
entered Zalamea, a down-at-heels squire,
Don Mendo, accompanied by his servant,
Nufio—the pair bore a marked
resemblance to Don Quixote and Sancho Pan-
zo—came to the village also. Don Mendo
sought the favors of Isabel, the daughter
of the proud farmer, Pedro Crespo. Isabel
banged together the shutters of her
window when Don Mendo greeted her in
foolishly extravagant terms. Crespo and
his son Juan found the presence of Don
Mendo highly objectionable.
When the sergeant announced to
Crespo that the captain, Don Alvaro de
Ataide, would be quartered in Crespo's
house, the farmer graciously accepted this
imposition; Juan, however, was displeased
and suggested to his father that he
purchase a patent of gentility so that he
might avoid having to billet troops in
his home. Crespo declared that as long
as he was not of gentle blood he could
see no point, even though he was rich,
in assuming gentility.
Isabel and her cousin Ines, having
learned of the presence of the troops,
2289

went to the attic of the house, where
they would remain as long as the
soldiers were in the town.
On the captain's arrival, the sergeant
searched the house but was unable to
find Isabel. However, he reported that
a servant told him the girl was in the
attic and would stay there until the
troops departed. The captain planned to
win Isabel by any means.
Rebolledo asked the captain for the
privilege of officially conducting
gambling among the soldiers. The captain
granted the privilege in return for Rebol-
ledo's help in his plan to discover Isabel.
The captain and Rebolledo then
pretended to fight; Rebolledo, feigning great
fright, fled, followed by the captain, up
the stairs to the attic. Isabel admitted him
to her retreat and in pleading to the
captain for his life she presented such a
charming aspect to the young officer that
he was completely smitten.
The clamor of the pretended fight
drew Crespo home. He and Juan, with
swords drawn, raced upstairs to the attic.
Juan sensed the trick and hinted as
much, but Crespo, impressed by the
captain's courtesy, was duped. Insulted by
Juan's innuendoes, the captain was about
to come to blows with Juan when Don
Lope, the regimental commander,
entered. When he demanded an
explanation of the scene, the captain said that
Rebolledo's insubordination had been the
cause. Rebolledo, in denial, explained that
the disturbance had been intended to
discover Crespo's daughter. Don Lope
ordered the captain to change his quarters
and the troops to remain in their billets;
he himself chose to stay in Crespo's
house.
Crespo, jealous of his honor, declared
that he would give up all of his worldly
goods in submission to the will of the
king, but that he would destroy the man
who would jeopardize his good name.
The captain, stricken with desire for
Isabel, courted her under her window;
she remained disdainful. Don Mendo,
hearing what had happened, armed
himself and set out to meet the captain on
the field of honor. Meanwhile the captain
had prevailed upon Rebolledo to assist
him further in his suit. Rebolledo,
reconciled, suggested that Isabel could be
overcome with song.
At Crespo's, the proud farmer,
mollified by Don Lope's seeming gentility,
invited the commander to sup in the
garden. Don Lope, wounded in the leg in
the Flemish wars, so that he was in
constant pain, played upon his infirmity in
order to arouse Crespo's pity. When he
requested the company of Isabel at
supper, Crespo readily assented, assuring
Don Lope that he would be proud to
have his daughter wait on such a fine
gentleman. After Isabel had joined Don
Lope, the sound of a guitar and a vocal
serenade came from the street outside.
Those in the garden were so disturbed
by the serenade that the supper came
abruptly to an end.
Outside, armed Don Mendo could
barely refrain from attacking the
captain and his followers, but as long as
Isabel did not appear in her window he
did not attack. As Chispa sang a
particularly vulgar song, Crespo and Don Lope,
swords drawn, fell upon the serenaders
and scattered them. In the fray, Don
Lope belabored Don Mendo, who had
somehow become involved. A short time
later the captain reappeared with soldiers
in an official capacity to maintain the
peace. Don Lope commended the captain
and assured him that the trouble was of
no moment. Since dawn was
approaching, Don Lope told the captain to order
the regiment out of Zalamea.
The next day, the troops having left,
the captain expressed his determination
to stay and make a last attempt to enjoy
Isabel's favors. Further encouraged by
the news that Juan had decided to
become a soldier and that he would leave
that day with Don Lope, he ordered
Rebolledo to accompany him and the
sergeant on his mission. Chispa declared
that she would go along, disguised as a
man.
Toward sundown, Don Lope said his
2290

farewell to Crespo and gave Isabel a
diamond brooch. Crespo gave fatherly
advice to Juan. As father and daughter
watched Don Lope and Juan gallop
away, Isabel observed that this was the
day for the election of municipal
officers. Suddenly the captain and his
followers came upon them. The captain
seized Isabel; the sergeant and Rebolledo
seized Crespo.
Later that night, in the forest near
Zalamea, distracted Isabel came upon her
father tied to a tree. She told how Juan
had come upon the scene of her
violation and had fought the captain.
Frightened, she had run away from the fight.
Crespo, comforting Isabel, vowed
revenge. As the old man and his daughter
started home, they encountered the town
notary, who announced that Crespo had
been elected mayor. He added that the
wounded captain was in the village.
In Zalamea, Crespo confronted the
captain in private. He suggested that the
captain, having disgraced tide family
honor, take Isabel as his wife, but the
captain, not fearing a provincial mayor,
scoffed at Crespo s request. Crespo then
ordered his officers to place the captain
and his followers in jail to await the
judgment of the king, who was
approaching Zalamea.
Returning to his house, Crespo found
Juan prepared to take Isabel's life, to
wipe out the disgrace she had innocently
brought on her family. Crespo, sternly
just, ordered his officers to take Juan to
jail for having fought his superior officer,
the captain.
Don Lope, on the highway, was
informed that the captain had been jailed
by the mayor of Zalamea. He returned to
the village, went to Crespo, and, unaware
that Crespo had been elected mayor,
declared that he would thrash the town
official for arresting one of the king's
officers. Crespo revealed that he was the
mayor and that he fully intended to see
the captain hanged. Don Lope ordered
the regiment to return to the public
square of Zalamea.
The soldiers having returned, a pitched
battle between them and the townspeople
of Zalamea seemed imminent when King
Philip II entered the village with his
entourage. Don Lope explained the
situation to the king, and Crespo showed his
majesty depositions taken from the
captain's associates. The king agreed that the
captain's crime was vile; he declared,
however, that Crespo had authority
neither to judge nor to punish an officer of
the king. When Crespo revealed that
the captain had already been garroted in
his cell and that no one knew who had
strangled him, the king, unable to deny
that Zalamea had meted out true justice
upon the captain, appointed Crespo
perpetual mayor of the village.
Crespo, after declaring that Isabel
would take the veil of a nun, released
Rebolledo, Chispa, and Juan from jail,
and returned Juan to the charge of his
military mentor, Don Lope.
2291

MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564*1616)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Vienna
First presented: c. 1603
Principal characters:
Vincentio, Duke of Vienna
Angelo, the Lord Deputy
Escalus, an ancient counselor
Claudio, a young gendeman
Lucio, his friend
Isabella, Claudio's sister
Mariana, Angelo's former sweetheart
Juliet, Clauaio's fiancee
Critique:
This often-overlooked play by
Shakespeare is probably his most contemporary
offering, since its theme is sociological.
Dealing with political and governmental
affairs, it reveals, more than any other of
his works, Shakespeare's real attitude
toward the society of his day. One of the
so-called "dark" comedies, it presents the
thesis that honesty and common sense are
the basis of good government. A
remarkable feature of the play is the deep
psychological probing of its chief figure,
Angelo.
The Story:
The growing political and moral
corruption of Vienna were a great worry to
its kindly, temperate ruler, Duke
Vincentio. Knowing that he himself was as
much to blame for the troubles as anyone
because he had been lax in the
enforcement of existing laws, the duke tried to
devise a scheme whereby the old
discipline of civic authority could be
successfully revived.
Fearing that reforms instituted by
himself might seem too harsh for his people
to accept without protest, he decided to
appoint a deputy governor and to leave
the country for a while. Angelo, a
respected and intelligent city official,
seemed just the man for the job. The duke
turned over the affairs of Vienna to
Angelo for a temporary length of time and
appointed Escalus, a trustworthy old
official, second in command. The duke then
pretended to leave for Poland, but actually
he disguised himself in the habit of a
friar and returned to the city to watch the
outcome of Angelo's reforms.
Angelo's first act was to imprison
Claudio, a young nobleman who had
gotten his betrothed, Juliet, with child.
Under an old statute, now revived,
Claudio's offense was punishable by
death. The young man was paraded
through the streets in disgrace and finally
sent to prison. At his request, Lucio, a
rakish friend, went to the nunnery where
Isabella, Claudio's sister, was a young
novice about to take her vows. Through
his messenger, Claudio asked Isabella to
plead with the new governor for his
release. At the same time Escalus, who had
known Claudio's father well, begged
Angelo not to execute the young man.
But the new deputy remained firm in
carrying out the duties of his office, and
Claudio's well-wishers held little hope for
their friend's release.
The duke, disguised as a friar, visited
Juliet and learned that the punishment of
her lover was extremely unfair, even
under the ancient statutes. The young
couple had been very much in love, and
been formally engaged, and would hav*
been married, except for ths fact that
Juliet's dowry had become a matter of
legal dispute. There was no question of
seduction in the case at all.
2292

Isabella, going before Angelo to plead
her brother's cause, met with little success
at first, even though she had been
thoroughly coached by the wily Lucio.
Nevertheless, the cold heart of Angelo was
somewhat touched by Isabella's beauty,
and by the time of the second interview
he had become so passionately aroused as
to forget his reputation for saintly
behavior. After telling Isabella frankly that
she could obtain her brother's release only
by yielding herself to his lustful desires,
Angelo threatened Claudio's death
otherwise.
Shocked at these words from the
deputy, Isabella asserted that she would
expose him in public. Angelo, amused,
asked who would believe her story. At her
wit's end, Isabella rushed to the prison
where she told Claudio of Angelo's
disgraceful proposition. When he first heard
the deputy's proposal, Claudio was also
revolted by the idea, but as images of
death continued to terrify him he finally
begged Isabella to placate Angelo and give
herself to him. Isabella, horrified by her
brother's cowardly attitude, lashed out at
him with a scornful speech, but was in
terrupted by the duke in his disguise as a
friar. Having overheard much of the
conversation, he drew Isabella aside from her
brother and confided that it would still
be possible for her to save Claudio
without shaming herself.
The friar told Isabella that, five years
before, Angelo had been betrothed to
Mariana, a high-born lady. The marriage
had not taken place, however, because
Mariana's brother, with her dowry, had
been lost at sea. Angelo had consequently
broken off his vows and hinted at
supposed dishonor in the poor young woman.
The friar suggested to Isabella that she
plan the requested rendezvous with
Angelo in a dark and quiet place, ana
then let Mariana act as her substitute.
Angelo would be satisfied, Claudio
released, Isabella still chaste, and Mariana
provided with the means to force Angelo
into marriage.
Everything went a* arranged, with
Mariana taking Isabella's place at the
assignation, but cowardly Angelo, fearing
public exposure, broke his promise to
release Claudio and ordered the young
man's execution. Once again the good
friar intervened. He persuaded the
provost to hide Cl&udio and then to announce
his death by sending Angelo the head of
another prisoner who had died of natural
causes.
On the day before the execution a
crowd gathered outside the prison and
discussed the coming events. One of the
group was Lucio, who accosted the
disguised duke as he wandered down the
street. Very furtively Lucio told the friar
that nothing like Claudio's execution
would have taken place if the duke had
been ruler. Lucio went on confidentially
to say that the duke cared as much for
the ladies as any other man and also drank
in private. In fact, said Lucio, the duke
bedded about as much as any man in
Vienna. Amused, the friar protested
against this gossip, but Lucio angrily
asserted that every word was true.
To arouse Isabella so that she would
publicly accuse Angelo of wrong-doing,
the duke allowed her to believe that
Claudio was dead. Then the duke sent
letters to the deputy informing him that
the royal party would arrive on the
following day at the gates of Vienna and would
expect a welcoming party there. Also, the
command ordered that anyone who had
had grievances against the government
while the duke was absent should be
allowed to make public pronouncement of
them at that time and place.
Angelo grew nervous upon receipt of
these papers from the duke. The next day,
however, he organized a great crowd and
a celebration of welcome at the gates of
the city. In the middle of the crowd were
Isabella and Mariana, heavily veiled. At
the proper time the two women stepped
forward to denounce Angelo. Isabella
called him a traitor and virgin-violator;
Mariana claimed that he would not admit
her as his wife. The duke, pretending to
be angry at these tirades against his
deputy, ordered the women to prison and
asked that someone apprehend the rascally
2293

friar who had often been seen in their
company.
Then the duke went to his palace and
quickly changed to his disguise as a friar.
Appearing before the crowd at the gates,
he criticized the government of Vienna
severely. Escalus, horrified at the fanatical
comments of the friar, ordered his arrest
and was seconded by Lucio, who
maintained that the friar had told him only the
day before that the duke was a drunkard
and a frequenter of bawdy houses. At last,
to display his own bravado, Lucio tore
away the friar's hood. When the friai
stood revealed as Duke Vincentio, the
crowd fell back in amazement.
Angelo, realizing that his crimes would
now be exposed, asked simply to be put
to death without trial. The duke ordered
him first to marry Mariana. After telling
Mariana that Angelo's goods, legally hers,
would secure her a better husband, the
duke was surprised when she entreated for
Angelo's pardon. Finally, because Isabella
also pleaded for Angelo's freedom, the
duke relented. He did, however, send
Lucio to prison. Claudio was released and
married to Juliet. The duke himself asked
Isabella for her hand.
2294

MEDEA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Corinth
First presented: 431 B.C.
Principal characters:
Medea, a sorceress
Jason, her lover
Creon, King of Corinth
Glauge, daughter of Creon
Aegeus, King of Athens
Critique:
Medea is justly one of the best known
of Greek tragedies, for although it was
written more than two thousand years
ago it has meaning and significance today.
Jason and Medea are purely human and
even without the intervention of
supernatural agencies, tragedy is implicit in
their characters. Their story is a
perennial caution against excess of emotion and
a stern warning against bitter vengeance.
The Story:
When Medea discovered that Jason
had deserted her and married Glauce, the
daughter of Creon, she vowed a terrible
vengeance. Her nurse, although she
loved Medea, recognized that a frightful
threat now hung over Corinth, for she
knew that Medea would not let the
insult pass without some dreadful revenge.
She feared especially for Medea's two
sons, since the sorceress included her
children in the hatred which she now
felt for their father.
Her resentment increased still further
when Creon, hearing of her vow, ordered
her and heir children to be banished from
Corinth. SUyly, with a plan already in
mind, Medea persuaded him to allow her
just one day longer to prepare herself
and her children for the journey. She
had already decided the nature of her
revenge; the one problem that remained
was a place of refuge afterward. Then
Aegeus, King of Athens and a long-time
friend of Medea, appeared in Corinth
on his way home from a journey.
Sympathetic with her because of Jason's
brutal desertion, he offered her a place
of refuge from her enemies in his own
kingdom. In this manner Medea assured
herself of a refuge, even after Aegeus
should learn of the deeds she intended
to commit in Corinth.
When the Corinthian women came to
visit her, Medea told them of her plan,
but only after swearing them to absolute
secrecy. At first she had considered
killing Jason, his princess, and Creon, and
then fleeing with her children. But after
she had considered, she felt that revenge
would be sweeter should Jason live to
suffer long afterward. Nothing could
be more painful than to grow old without
a lover, without children, and without
friends, and so Medea planned to kill
the king, his daughter, and her own
children.
She called Jason to her and pretended
that she forgave him for what he had
done, recognizing at last the justice and
foresight he had shown in marrying
Glauce. She begged his forgiveness for
her earlier rage, and asked that she be
allowed to send her children with gifts
for the new bride, as a sign of her
repentance. Jason was completely deceived
oy her supposed change of heart, and
expressed his pleasure at the belated
wisdom she was showing.
Medea drew out a magnificent robe
and a fillet of gold, presents of her
grandfather, Helios, the sun god, but before
she entrusted them to her children she
smeared them with a deadly drug. Shortly
afterward, a messenger came to Medea
2295

and told her to flee. One part of her
plan had succeeded. After Jason and
the children had left, Glauce had dressed
herself in her wonderful robe and walked
through the palace. But as the warmth
and moisture of her body came in
contact with the drug, the fillet and gown
clung to her body and seared her flesh.
She tried frantically to tear them from
her, but the garments only wrapped
more tightly around her, and she died in
a screaming agony of flames. When
Creon rushed in and saw his daughter
writhing on the floor, he attempted to
lift her, but was himself contaminated
by the poison. His death was as
agonized as hers had been.
Meanwhile the children had returned
to Medea. As she looked at them and
felt their arms around her, she was torn
between her love for them and her hatred
of Jason; between her desire for revenge
and the commands of her mother-instinct.
But the barbarian part of her nature—
Medea being not a Greek, but a barbarian
from Colchis—triumphed. After reveling
in the messenger's account of the deaths
of Creon and his daughter, she entered
her house with the children and barred
the door. While the Corinthian women
stood helplessly outside, they listened to
the shrieks of the children as Medea
killed them with a sword. Jason
appeared, frantically eager to take his
children away lest they be killed by Creon's
followers for having brought the dreadful
gifts. When he learned Medea had killed
Liis children, he was almost insane with
grief. As he hammered furiously on the
barred doors of the house, Medea
suddenly appeared above, holding the bodies
of her dead children, and drawn in a
chariot which Helios, the sun god, had
sent her. Jason alternately cursed her
and pleaded with her for one last sight
of his children as Medea taunted him
with the loneliness and grief to which he
was doomed. She told him that her own
sorrow would be great, but it was
compensated for by the sweetness of her
revenge.
The chariot, drawn by winged dragons,
carried her first to the mountain of the
goddess Hera. There she buried her
children. Then she journeyed to Athens,
where she would spend the remainder
of her days feeding on the gall and
wormwood of her terrible grief and revenge.
2296

MEDITATIONS
Type of work: Philosophical discourse
Author: Marcus Aurelius (121-180)
First transcrihed: c. 167-180
Although the Greek philosopher Zeno
is generally given the credit for creating
the school of philosophy called Stoicism,
its greatest fame arises from the
popularity and widespread influence of the
utterances of two later figures: Epictetus, a
slave, and Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of
Rome. Of the two, Marcus Aurelius, born
just four years before the death of
Epictetus in 125, has probably achieved the
greater fame; and this fame results almost
entirely from his Meditations, one of the
most famous philosophical books in the
world.
For the average reader, however, there
is a disturbing characteristic in the work,
which is obscure and often seemingly
unrelated; there are passages which suggest
that the book has come down to us in a
disorganized, even careless, form. One
widely accepted cause that has been
suggested for this difficulty is the possible
intention of Marcus that his writings
should be read by no one else, that these
recorded thoughts were intended only for
their author. It is certain that the
Meditations was written during the period
between Marcus* accession to the imperial
rank in 161 and his death in 180; it is
equally certain that the various books
were indited during rigorous military
campaigns and trying political crises.
Although these facts explain in part the
irregularity of the book, other scholars feel
that there is clear evidence of the
emperors design to publish at least parts
of the work.
If this is so, and if Marcus did not
merely keep a private journal, then the
reason for the present form of the
Meditations probably lies in errors and
misunderstandings by copyists and later editors
of the text. In either event, the reader
finds in this book two generally different
styles side by side: a nearly casual,
sometimes aphoristic, way of writing, and a
more literary, more carefully planned,
technique. Throughout the twelve books
that make up the whole there are passages
that read like admonitions addressed by
the author to himself; in contrast to these
are sections that sound as if Marcus were
offering philosophical advice to the
Romans or to all mankind in general.
Despite these irregularities, and in
spite of the absence of an organized
system of thought, a careful reading reveals
that the emperor presents to the world
some of the sagest suggestions for leading
the good life and some of the most
effective expressions of the tenets of later
Stoicism to be found anywhere.
To say, however, that Marcus Aurelius
can be given credit for profound original
thinking is going too far. Like many great
contemplative books, the Meditations was
not written in a vacuum. It rephrases and
reinterprets much of that which is
usually considered the best of ancient Greek
and Roman philosophy. The author
acknowledges his debt to his teachers and
his wise forbears; his quotations from, and
references to, the leading thinkers of his
and earlier times prove his wide reading
and careful study—his injunction to
throw aside one's books and to live one's
philosophy notwithstanding.
Perhaps the fact that Marcus did live
by his philosophy, one that was tested
by almost continually difficult
circumstances, is one of the chief charms of his
book. There is very little in the
Meditations that the emperor probably did not
find occasion to think of in relation to his
own life. Much of practical philosophic
value can be found here. His advice at
the opening of Book II, for instance, to
begin each day with the thought that one
will meet during that day men who are
arrogant, envious, and deceitful, but to
remember that these men are so because
of their ignorance of the good and the
2297

right, is surely a sound practical
application of the Platonic idea that evil is only
the absence of knowledge.
Many readers have found the
Meditations their surest guide-to living by Stoic
principles. Although happiness must
surely come by the pursuit of Stoic virtue,
duty is the greatest good in the Stoic
view. The word duty appears rarely in
the book, but the emperor's conviction
that a man must face squarely his
responsibilities is implicit in almost every
paragraph. Often a note of Roman
sternness appears, as in the beginning of
paragraph 5 of Book II:
Every moment think steadily as a
Roman and a man to do what thou hast
in hand with perfect and simple
dignity, and feeling of affection, and
freedom, and justice; and to give thyself
relief from all other thoughts.
To achieve true virtue, the emperor
says, one must live in accord with nature;
that is, with both kinds of nature, the
nature of man and the nature of the
universe. The book departs from a commonly
held view of the philosopher as an
isolated dreamer in its insistence that a man
must live wisely with his fellow men; he
should not be a hermit. Since a man
partakes of the same divinity, in his soul,
with other men, he must live and work
with them; certainly such is the divine
intention, and this, then, is one's social
duty. The duty one has to the universe
is to perceive the informing intelligence
that pervades and guides it. Here Marcus
is close to pantheism.
With this foundation in mind, the
reader can easily understand the
emperor's notion of evil as something that
cannot harm or disturb the great plan of
the universe; it is simply ignorance and
harms only the doer. Thus, no man can
be harmed by a force outside himself;
only he can do himself real injury. The
advice of the Meditations, along with that
of other Stoic writings, is to accept calmly
what cannot be avoided and to perform
to the best of one's ability the duties of a
human being in a world of humans.
Since we cannot understand the workings
of the great force that rules the universe,
it is our part simply to do what we can
in our own sphere.
Though he believes the world to be
divinely guided, Marcus has no illusions
about life. Therefore, he scorns fears of
death. Life is full of trouble and
hardship, and no one should be sorry to leave
it. In Paragraph 14 of Book II the author
says that however long or short a
person's life, he loses at death only the
present moment because he does not possess
the past and the future; further, since the
progress of time is simply a revolution,
and all things have been and will be the
same, a man loses nothing by an early
death. This passage displays something
of the occasional coldness of the emperor's
thought, but it is one of many sections
devoted to the consolation of men for the
hard facts of existence.
Regardless of the varied character of
the writing and the thinking in these
paragraphs, it is clear that a reasonably
consistent philosophy inspired them.
Certainly the statement that a man rarely
comes to grief from not knowing what is
in another man's soul, that true misery
results from not understanding what lies
within oneself, is of a piece with the rest
of the book.
Some readers have found in Marcus
Aurelius a basically Christian spirit, and
they believe that the Meditations
adumbrates in many passages later religious
writings. Considerable doubt exists as to
his feeling about the Christians or to the
extent of his responsibility for their
persecution during his reign; but there is
little question that a great deal of his
thinking is closely allied with that of
later spiritual leaders. The book is often
compared with other philosophic works
of consolation, such as Pascal's Pensees
and the Confessions of Saint Augustine.
Beyond doubt, the readership and
influence of this book by perhaps the
greatest pagan ruler who ever lived is as-wide
as those of any other work of its kind,
and far greater than those of most.
2298

MEEK HERITAGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Frans Eemil Sillanpaa (1888- )
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: 1857-1917
Locale: Finland
First published: 1919
Principal characters:
Jussi Toivola, a mild peasant
Rxna, his wife
Benjamin, his father
Kallb, Rina's son
Critique:
Meek Heritage conveys the
atmosphere of a brooding folk epic. Jussi, the
protagonist, symbolizes the lower-class
Finn who is jostled and led by fate. The
harsh climate, the grubbing toil, the cruel
class cleavages are his natural lot. Even
the birth and death cycles are indifferent
to him. His redeeming virtue is his
ability to work hard under direction. Over
the whole novel lies a tone of
melancholy. The style is discursive and
penetrating. Sillanpaa was awarded the Nobel
prize for literature in 1939.
The Story:
Benjamin was an old man who had
already buried two wives. His overtures
to Maja, the servant girl, were matter-of-
fact, but somehow Maja saw in this
tobacco-dribbling tyrant an opportunity for
improvement. She had borne one child
out of wedlock and she longed for
position. When they were married, the
parson was at some pains to refer to Maja
as a maidservant.
As she awaited Jussi's birth, she
thought that now she might be like other
farm wives. Benjamin drank far too much
and quarreled incessantly. The night her
labor started, he went to drink with Ol-
lila, a neighbor. Maja was left with only
Lovisa, the cupper-woman, to look after
her. Lovisa was sharp-tongued but
competent; before Maja came to the farm as
mistress, she herself had enjoyed
Benjamin's favors. In fact, when Benjamin
stumbled home long after his son Was
born, he called for Lovisa.
While Jussi was little, he stayed in his
cradle fretting at the lice. As he grew
older, he drank coffee sometimes. He
early learned to avoid his father, who
for fun would poke plug tobacco into
his protesting mouth. He played with
poorer children on top of Pig Hill and
was initiated into many mysteries. He
looked forward to his confirmation, for
he believed it was the dividing line
between childhood and man's estate.
A period of drought seriously impaired
the family fortunes. Maja was no longer
afraid of Benjamin. Too old and weak
to beat her, he continued to drink with
Ollila and to borrow money from him.
When things got too bad, he took his
deeds to Ollila and returned bearing food
and money. The sheriff came to take
possession of Benjamin's farm the night
the old man died. Maja and Jussi set out
for her brother's farm on foot. Maja left
Jussi at Tuorila with her reluctant
brother while she looked for work; she, too,
died soon afterward.
While he lived with his uncle, Jussi
was confused. For one thing, the house
was so big and clean. And he was neither
servant nor family. Although he received
many orders, he understood few of them.
He would have liked to run errands for
his aunt, but he could never find things.
He finally became a herdsman, a job he
could do fairly well.
MEEK HERITAGE by Frans Eemil Sillanpaa. Translated by- Alexander Matson. By permission of the
publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1938, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
2299

After hfs first confirmation Jussi was
disappointed because people still treated
him like a child. Little by little,
however, his uncle gave him more
responsibility. One fall evening he was sent
to round up crofters for the harvest.
Luckily, he found most of them at a
harvest celebration. At the merriment
Jussi was treated like everyone else: he
was given ale to drink and he danced
with a boy his age. Later he was in a
group that escorted Manda, a farm girl,
back to Tuorila. The men made so much
noise trying to follow Manda up to her
loft that they awoke Jussi's uncle. The
master came with a sack and beat the
revelers.
Tuorila prospered and the family
decided to invite the gentry to a social
gathering. Jussi had die job of looking
after the horses and carriages. A comrade,
Gustav Toivola, loosened the wheel nuts
on the guests' rigs. Jussi's uncle blamed
him for the accidents and cast him out.
Jussi found a temporary home at Toivola
with Gustav's parents.
At Toivola, Jussi was not exactly
welcome, but he stayed on, helping where
he could. A kind of liberation came with
the arrival of the timber cutters. The
foreman, Keinonen, hired Jussi and
helped him keep his wages away from
the Toivola family. When the timber
cutters left, Jussi went with them. For
years, working on the lakes and shores,
he earned a litde money but not enough
to put anything by. Sometimes, although
he was too shy to pursue women, he
went on sprees with the other men.
After a time the logging slacked off.
The best Jussi could do was to go back
to his native countryside and take a job
as farmhand at Pirjola. Rina, the maid,
slept on the other side of the fireplace.
She was a slack girl and loose-natured.
Jussi often thought of going over to
her bed, but he lacked the courage. One
Sunday in July, however, he drank some
liquor he had bought and slept in Rina's
bed. She was willing enough, for she was
pregnant and it would be better if her
child had a father.
Jussi and Rina were given an old cabin
in the swamp. Although they were not
regular crofters, for they had no
contract, they could raise what they wished
on an acre of ground allowed them. Jussi
worked for his rent when the master of
Pirjola needed him. Rina's first child
was born soon afterward. From the
beginning Kalle did not seem to belong to
the family. Then Jussi's children, Hilda
and Ville, came, and much later Lempi
and Marti. Once Jussi was prosperous
enough to have a horse and a cow, but
alter the horse died he never had enough
money to buy another. Rina, not a good
manager, often sold the bread Jussi
brought home.
Kalle, always a strange child, hit Ville
with a rail and paralyzed his younger
half-brother. Medicine for Ville took all
Jussi's money until the child died. Kalle
was sent away to work as soon as he
was big enough. Hilda, a quiet girl, went
into service in a distant town. She
drowned herself when only the son of
the house was at home. Rina, always
tired from farm work and weak after the
birth of her last child, died of a
mysterious feminine complaint.
As he grew old and bald, Jussi's teeth
crumbled. Working less and less, he
spent more time in the village. Lempi
and Marti brought themselves up as best
they could. Only on sufferance did Jussi
keep his land. Kalle, now a cab driver
in the city, sent home newspapers which
Jussi had someone read to him. The
unrest caused by the war resulted in
changes. The working day was now only
twelve hours instead of sixteen, and there
was agitation for more reforms. Because
he had become garrulous, Jussi gained
a reputation for frank speaking. When
the Socialists began to rule that section
of Finland, he was even a member of a
delegation.
During the strikes the Socialists posted
armed guards and requisitioned what they
needed from the farms. Jussi was made
2300

a sentry at Paitula and given a rifle.
Everyone else knew the strike was ending,
but Jussi stayed on, faithful to his
assignment. When Paitula was looted, the
fleeing Socialists killed a landowner. At last
suspecting something, Jussi threw down
his rifle and went home.
Government officials came to the farm
for Jussi. In the house they found only
the two crying children, but in the barn
they captured the cowering Jussi. There
was a trial which Jussi did not
understand very well, and the judge was in a
hurry to restore order. Jussi was one of
fourteen led out to an open grave and
shot
2301

MELMOTH THE WANDERER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1820
Principal characters:
John Melmoth, a young Irishman
Melmoth the Wanderer, young Melmoth's ill-starred ancestor
Alonzo Moncada, a Spaniard shipwrecked in Ireland
Young Melmoth's Unclb
Critique:
Maturin's novel has been called by
many literary scholars the greatest of the
novels of terror so popular in English
fiction during the early years of the
nineteenth century. In addition, other writers
have admired and have been influenced
by Melmoth the Wanderer, partly because
of the striking qualities of the plot and
partly because of the theme of the never-
ending life which it describes. Balzac
wrote a sequel to Maturing novel entitled
Melmoth Reconciliated. Among the
admirers of the novel were Edgar Allan Poe,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Baudelaire.
Oscar Wilde, after his disgrace in the
1890's, took for himself the name of
Sebastian Melmoth, which combined the
idea of the wanderer with that of the
arrow-pierced saint. Interestingly enough,
Maturin, in his preface, said that he was
ashamed of appearing as a novelist but
that his profession as a clergyman did not
pay him enough to avoid such shameful
activities as writing novels.
The Story
In the autumn of 1816, John Melmoth,
a student at Trinity College, Dublin> left
his school to visit an uncle, his only
surviving relative, who was dying. Melmoth's
uncle was particularly glad to see his
young nephew, for the old man was
fearfully afraid of something which he had
not revealed to anyone else. The uncle
died, leaving all his money and property
to John Melmoth. At the end of the will
was a note telling John Melmoth to
destroy the hidden portrait of an earlier John
Melmoth, a painting dated 1646, and a
packet of letters to be found in a secret
drawer.
The day after his uncle's death young
John Melmoth made inquiries to learn
whether his uncle had been a man of
superstitious nature. He was told that the
uncle was not a superstitious man, but
that in recent months he had insisted that
a strange man appeared and disappeared
about the manor house.
Young Melmoth destroyed the portrait,
as the will requested, but opened the
packet of manuscript, which contained a
strange story about the man whose portrait
he had destroyed. The document, telling
how the original John Melmoth had been
seen many times after his reported death
in Germany, had been written by an
Englishman named Stanton, who had actually
met Melmoth the Wanderer in Spain.
The Wanderer, apparently angered by
Stanton's curiosity, had prophesied that
Stanton would be confined in Bedlam,
even though he was sane. The prediction
having come true, the Wanderer appeared
to Stanton in his misery and promised the
miserable man his freedom if he would sell
his soul to the devil. Stanton refused, and
the Wanderer disappeared. Stanton wrote
down his experiences and left the
manuscript with the Melmoth family when he
visited Ireland in order to discover more
about the man who had tempted him.
After reading the manuscript, young
Melmoth went to bed. That night he, too,
saw the Wanderer. His strange ancestor
paid the young man a visit and as proof
2302

of his appearance left a bruise on John
Melmoth's wrist.
The next night a ship was wrecked on
the Irish coast not far from the Melmoth
estate. When young Melmoth and his
retainers went to help rescue the sailors,
Melmoth saw the Wanderer high on a
rock overlooking the ruined ship and
heard him laugh derisively. Young
Melmoth tried to ascend the rock but fell into
the sea, from which he was rescued by
Alonzo Moncada, a Spaniard who escaped
from the doomed ship. Young Melmoth
and the Spaniard returned to the manor
house. A few days later the Spaniard
disclosed that he, too, knew the Wanderer.
Moncada told young Melmoth a series
of stories about the activities of the
Wanderer in Spain. The first story was
about the Spaniard himself, who was an
exile from his country, even though he
was descended from a noble family.
Moncada, having been born out of
wedlock, could not inherit the ducal title of his
ancestors. As a means of getting him out of
the way, lest his presence tarnish the
proud name of his house, his family had
destined him for a monastery. Moncada
did not want to be a monk, but his wishes
in the matter were ignored by his family,
including his own mother.
After a few years Moncada's brother
had a change of heart and tried to secure
the monk's release from his vows and
thereby called down the hatred of the
Church upon both Alonzo and himself.
Failing to secure a release legally, the
brother then arranged for Moncada's
escape. Monastery officials, learning of the
scheme, had the brother killed and
denounced Moncada to the Inquisition.
While he lay in prison, Moncada was
visited by Melmoth the Wanderer, who
tempted him to secure release by selling
his soul to Satan. Moncada refused; he
escaped later when the prison of the
Inquisition burned.
Moncada found refuge with an old
Jewish doctor who had become interested
in the history of the Wanderer. From the
Jew Moncada learned the story of still
another person whom the Wanderer had
tempted.
The Jew told how Don Francisco di
Aliaga, a Spanish nobleman, had lost his
daughter in a shipwreck while she was
still little more than a baby. The child and
her nurse had been cast upon an unknown
and uninhabited island. The nurse died,
but the baby grew up alone on the island,
to become a beautiful girl. To her the
Wanderer appeared on several occasions,
each time tempting her to sell her soul
to Satan in order to gain knowledge of
the world. Strangely enough, the girl and
the Wanderer fell in love. She refused to
marry him, however, under any auspices
but those of the Church.
Soon afterward the girl was found and
returned to her family in Spain. There
the Wanderer saw her again. Their love
being still great, they were, unknown to
anyone, married in what was actually a
Satanic ceremony. Meanwhile the
Wanderer, conscience-stricken by fears that he
would bring sorrow to the one he loved,
had appeared to Don Aliaga and warned
him, by stories of the Wanderer's Satanic
activities, of dangers surrounding the girl.
The Wanderer told Don Aliaga of the
temptation of a father whose children
were starving, and of a young woman,
during the reign of Charles II of England,
who had been tempted in order to have
the man she loved. In both cases, however,
those tempted had refused to pay the price
of damnation in return for earthly
happiness. Don Aliaga recognized the meaning
of these tales, but pressing business affairs
kept him from acting at once.
When Don Aliaga finally returned to
his home, he brought with him the young
man he had selected to be his daughters
husband. Unknown to all, however, the
girl was about to give birth to a child by
the Wanderer. When the Wanderer
appeared to claim her at a masked ball, her
connection with the accursed guest was
revealed and she was turned over to the
Inquisition. Shortly after giving birth to
her child she died, her dying words the
wish that 'she, and the Wanderer too,
would enter Heaven.
Such was the tale the Jewish doctor told
2303

to Alonzo Moncada, who was escaping
from Spain when he was shipwrecked on
the Irish coast. The tale ending, the
Wanderer suddenly appeared in the room with
them. He told his horrified listeners that
he had returned to his ancestral home to
end his earthly wanderings. His fate had
been to roam the earth for one hundred
and fifty years after his death, under a
terrible command to win souls for the
devil. Everyone he had tempted, however,
had refused to exchange earthly happiness
for eternal damnation.
The Wanderer then asked that he be
left alone to meet his destiny. A short
time later young Melmoth and the
Spaniard heard strange voices and horrible
noises in the room where they had left the
Wanderer. The next morning the room
was empty. The only sign of the
Wanderer was a scarf caught on a bush at the
place where he had plunged or had been
thrown into the sea.
2304

THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING
Type of work: Novel
Author: Carson McCullers (1917- )
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: 1945
Locale: Georgia
First published: 1946
Principal characters:
Berenice Sadie Brown, colored cook in the Addams household
Frankie Addams, a twelve-year-old girl
Mr. Addams, her father
Jarvis, her brother, a corporal in the army
John Henry West, her cousin
Janice Evans, fiancee of Jarvis
Honey Camden Brown, Berenice's foster brother
A Soldier
Critique:
All of Carson McCullers' fiction turns
on the theme of loneliness and longing
as the inescapable condition of man. In
The Member of the Wedding the issues
of the larger world are reflected in the
experiences of the twelve-year-old girl
trapped in the confusion of her own
adolescence. The novel tells the story of
several decisive days in the life of
Frankie Addams, and much of the meaning
of her plight is made clear in her
random talk with Berenice Sadie Brown
and John Henry West as the three sit
around the table in the kitchen of the
Addams house. Frankie seizes upon her
soldier brother's approaching wedding to
will herself into the social community,
only to discover that the bride and groom
must by necessity reject her and that she
must learn to fend for herself. In the
story of Frankie Addams the writer has
reduced the total idea of moral isolation
to a fable of simple outlines and a few
eloquently dramatic scenes, set against
a background of adolescent mood and
discovery familiar to us all. It is easy enough
to understand why this novel has also
been a success in dramatic form. The
play of the same name, written by Mrs.
McCullers, is a sympathetic study of
Inward conflicts. It received both the
Donaldson Award and the New York
Drama Critics Prize in 1950.
The Story:
In the summer of her twelfth year
Frankie Addams felt that she had
become an unjoined person. She was a
lanky girl with a crew haircut and
skinned elbows. Some of the older girls
she had played with the year before
had a neighborhood club and there were
parties with boys on Saturday nights, but
Frankie was not a member. That summer
she got herself into so much trouble that
at last she just stayed home with John
Henry West, her little cousin, and
Berenice Sadie Brown, the colored cook.
Through long, hot afternoons they
would sit in the dingy, sad Addams
kitchen and play cards or talk until their
words sounded strange, with little
meaning.
Berenice Sadie Brown was short and
black and the only mother Frankie had
ever known, her own mother having
died when she was born. The cook had
been married four times and during one
of her marriages she had lost an eye
while fighting with a worthless husband.
Now she owned a blue glass eye which
always interested John Henry West. He
THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING by Carson McCullers. By permission of the author and the
publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1946, by Carson McCullers.
2305

was six and wore gold-rimmed glasses.
Sometimes Frankie grew tired of him and
sent him home. Sometimes she begged
him to stay all night. Everything seemed
sc mixed up that she seldom knew what
she did want.
Then, on the last Friday in August,
something happened which made life
wonderful once more. Her brother Jar-
vis, a soldier home from Alaska, had
come to dinner with Janice Evans, a
girl who lived at Winter Hill. They were
n> be married there on Sunday, and
Frankie and her father were going to the
wedding. After dinner Janice and Jarvis
returned to Winter Hill. Mr. Addams
went downtown to his jewelry store.
Later, while she sat playing cards with
Berenice and John Henry, Frankie
thought of her brother and his bride.
Winter Hill became all mixed up in her
mind with snow and icy glaciers in
Alaska.
Jarvis and Janice had brought Frankie
a doll, but she had no time for dolls any
more. John Henry could have it. She
wished her hair were not so short; she
looked like one of the freaks from the
Chattahoochee Exposition. Suddenly
angry, she chased John Henry home. When
Berenice teased her, saying that she was
jealous of the wedding, Frankie declared
that she was going to Winter Hill and
never coming back. For a minute she
wanted to throw a kitchen knife at the
black cook. Instead, she hurled it at the
stairway door.
Berenice went out with Honey
Camden Brown, her foster brother, and T. T.
Williams, her beau. Because Honey was
not quite right in the head, Berenice was
always trying to keep him out of trouble.
T. T. owned a colored restaurant. Frankie
did not know that the cook's pity for the
unhappy, motherless girl kept her from
marrying T. T.
Left alone, Frankie wandered around
the block to the house where John Henry
lived with Aunt Pet and Uncle Eustace.
Somewhere close by a horn began to play
a blues tune. Frankie felt so sad and
lonely that she wanted to do something
she had never done before. She thought
again of Jarvis and Janice. She was going
to be a member of the wedding; after the
ceremony the three of them would go
away together. She was not plain Frankie
Addams any longer. She would call
herself F. Jasmine Addams, and she would
never feel lonely or afraid again.
The next morning, with Mr. Addams'
grunted permission, Frankie went
downtown to buy a new dress and shoes. On
the way she found herself telling
everyone she met about the wedding. That was
how she happened to go into the Blue
Moon, a cheap cafe* where she knew
children were not allowed. But F. Jasmine
Addams was no longer a child, and so she
went in to tell the Portuguese proprietor
about the wedding. The only other
person in the cafe" was a red-headed soldier
from a nearby army post. Frankie
scarcely noticed him at the time, but she
remembered him later when she saw him
on the street. By that time he was drunk
and trying to buy an organ-grinder's
monkey. The soldier bought Frankie a beer
and asked her to meet him that night at
the Blue Moon.
When Frankie finally arrived home,
she learned that Berenice and John Henry
were also to attend the wedding. An
aged kinsman of the Wests had died and
Aunt Pet and Uncle Eustace were going
to the funeral at Opelika. Berenice,
dismayed when she saw the orange silk
evening dress, the silver hair ribbon, and
the silver slippers Frankie had bought to
wear at the wedding, tried, without much
success, to alter the dress for the gawky
young girl. Afterward they began to talk
about the dead people they had known.
Berenice told about Ludie Freeman, the
first husband she had truly loved. The
story of Ludie and the three other
husbands made them all feel lonesome and
sad. Berenice held the two children on
her knees as she tried to explain to them
the simple wisdom life had taught her.
They began to sing spirituals in the half-
dark of the dingy kitchen.
2306

Frankie did meet the soldier that night.
First she went with John Henry to Big
Mama's house and had her palm read.
Afterward she told John Henry to go on
home; she did not want him to know she
was meeting someone at the Blue Moon
The soldier bought two drinks. Frankie
was afraid to taste hers. He asked her to
go up to his room. Frightened when he
tried to pull her down beside him on the
bed, she picked up a glass pitcher and hit
him over the head. Then she climbed
down the fire escape and ran all the way
home. She was glad to get into bed with
no one but John Henry by her side.
The wedding next day turned into a
nightmare for Frankie. Everything was
lovely until the time came for the bride
and groom to leave. When they carried
their bags out to the car, she ran to get
her own suitcase. Then they told her, as
kindly as possible, that they were going
away alone. She grasped the steering
wheel and wept until someone dragged
her away. Riding home on the bus, she
cried all the way. Berenice promised her
a bridge party with grown-up refreshments
as soon as school opened, but Frankie
knew that she would never be happy
again. That night she tried to run away.
Not knowing where else to go, she went
to the Blue Moon. There a policeman
found her and sent for her father.
But by November Frankie had almost
forgotten the wedding. Other things had
happened. John Henry had died of
meningitis. Honey Camden Brown, drug-
crazed, had tried to hold up a drugstore
and was in jail. Mary Little John had
become her best, real friend. She and her
father were leaving the old house and
going to live with Aunt Pet and Uncle
Eustace in a new suburb. Berenice,
waiting to see the last of the furniture taken
away, was sad, for she knew that Frankie
would depend on her no longer. Frankie
—she wanted to be called Frances—was
thirteen.
2307

MEMOIRS
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798)
Time: 1725-1773
Locale: Europe and the Near East
First published: 1826-1838
Principal personages:
Casanova, the narrator
Teresa, an actress who became the traveling companion of Casanova
for a time
C. C, a young Venetian woman who loved Casanova
Madame la Marquise d'Urfe, an aged French noblewoman duped by
Casanova
Therese Trenti, also called Th6rese Imer and Madame Cornelys, an
actress, adventuress, and mother of one of Casanova's illegitimate
children
M. de Bragadin, a Venetian senator and Casanova's benefactor
In his Memoirs (Memoires ecrits par
lui-mime), Casanova, who took for
himself the additional name of Seingalt, set
forth his amazing life of adventures as
he remembered them in his old age. Not
everything in his reminiscences tallies
with discoverable historical fact, either
because the writer's memory was faulty in
his old age or because he colored the
truth for the sake of a better story. In his
autobiography Casanova reveals himself
as a man ruled by pleasure, passion, and
a delicate sense of revenge. He was
superficial, amoral, proud, and sometimes
extremely foolish. As he tells the story, he
was also a brave man. He faced poverty,
ill fortune, imprisonment, and even
possible death with fortitude. The only
situation before which he quailed was
marriage, a state which would have put an
end to his unconventional way of life.
Although Italian was his mother tongue,
he wrote his Memoirs in French. In the
work there is perhaps less philosophizing
than one might expect from an old man.
Casanova seems generally to have thought
his life a full and generous one, over
which there was little need to ponder or
grieve because of past follies or mistakes.
Casanova was the oldest child of
Gaetan Joseph Jacques Casanova and
his wife Zanetta, the beautiful daughter
of a Venetian shoemaker. When a child,
he was left with his maternal
grandmother while his parenfs continued their
careers on the stage. Rather strangely,
Casanova could remember nothing of his
life before he was eight years old. His
earliest recollection was of a terrible
nosebleed from which he suffered and for
which his grandmother took him to see
an old woman who performed a strange
cure, apparently by witchcraft, for his
malady.
At his father's death Casanova, one of
three children, was taken in hand by the
Abbe" Grimani, who placed the boy in
a strict school. Though he hated his
siudies, he was precocious by nature and
at the age of sixteen he became a Doctor
of Law. Returned to Venice, he was
befriended by M. de Malipiero, a retired
senator. While visiting in Passan, Casa-
nova met a young girl named Lucy,
whom he admired and respected. When
he revisited the town again a few months
later, he learned that the girl had eloped
with another. Disappointed and resentful,
he decided that he might as well make
love to women instead of treating them
with devotion and respect.
At seventeen Casanova entered a
seminary, from which he was shortly expelled.
Later he fell in with a Franciscan friar
named Brother Stephano, with whom he
had several adventures. On one
occasion he was presented to Pope Benedict
XIV, who treated him kindly. For a time
Casanova stayed in the household of
Cardinal Acquaviva, but an adventure with
2308

a girl put the police on his trail and he
went to Constantinople, where he had
several amorous adventures. On the way
to Turkey he met Teresa, an actress who
had disguised herself as a boy. The young
woman left her family and went with
Casanova to become his mistress for a
time. Soon afterward Casanova assumed
the dress of a military officer. In
Constantinople a noble Turk, pleased with
the young Venetian, offered him a
fortune and his daughter's hand in marriage
if Casanova would only become a
Moslem. On his return to Europe, Casanova
stopped at Corfu, where he actually
became an officer. Not entirely happy in
military service, he left it before long
and returned to Venice.
With his fortunes at a low ebb,
Casanova took up the profession of a fiddler at
the Theater of Saint Samuel. One day he
had the opportunity to befriend M. de
Bragadin, a Venetian senator, when the
old man was suddenly taken ill. The
senator, a wealthy man, took Casanova into
his home and treated him as his son. He
and two of his wealthy friends were soon
convinced that Casanova had occult
powers. Realizing their gullibility, Casanova
hoaxed the old men into marrying off for
him a young girl with whom he had had
a very interesting affair.
Casanova then left Venice and traveled
to Milan and Cesena. In the latter place
he met a woman named Henriette, who
abandoned her lover to accompany
Casanova to Parma. She turned out to be a
noblewoman who soon had to return to
her family. During a period of reform
which followed this adventure, Casanova
became a Freemason and later went to
Paris. After various adventures,
including one in which he passed himself off as
a doctor, he went to Dresden. There a
tragi-comedy he had written had some
success on the stage. On his return to
Venice he met C. C., a beautiful heiress
with whom he fell in love. He was
overjoyed to find his love reciprocated. Her
family did not approve of the match,
however, partly because of the girl's
youth, and she was placed in a convent.
One day when he visited the convent
Casanova impressed one of the nuns, a
very beautiful and worldly woman. The
nun, M. M., arranged through her lover
for an affair with Casanova. During
many months of 1753 they met outside
the convent and had a very happy time,
until the woman's lover, M. de Bernis,
the French ambassador to Venice,
returned to Paris. Soon afterward M. M.
and C. C. learned that they loved the
same man; much to Casanova's anger and
discomfiture, they changed places one
night.
As his affair with M. M. was drawing
to a close, Casanova was arrested by the
state Inquisition, which confined him in
the notorious prison known as The Leads
because of his supposed heresy and his
dabbling in black magic. After some
months in the prison, Casanova found a
bolt from which he made a combination
tool and weapon. He was almost ready
to escape when a change in cells brought
his plan to light. He started all over
again, with accomplices inside the prison,
and eventually made a daring escape
with a man named Balbi; the two escaped
by making a daring passage over the
roofs of the prison itself. Casanova
succeeded in making his way from Venice to
Munich, but his companion was captured
and returned to The Leads.
From Germany, Casanova went to
Paris, arriving there in January, 1757,
shortly after Damiens had attempted to
assassinate King Louis XV. While in
Paris, Casanova raised several million
francs for the crown by means of a
lottery and thus came into favor in court
circles. He met Madame la Marquise
d'Urfe, a wealthy and elderly
noblewoman fascinated by the occult arts.
Becoming the old woman's companion in
experiments in magic and alchemy, he
was able to fleece her of a great deal of
money.
On a trip to Amsterdam, Casanova
again met Th6rese Trenti, whom he had
known some years before as Therese
Imer. Now an actress, she was the mother
of Casanova's daughter and of a son by

another father. Casanova took the boy
back to Paris and put him in the care of
Madame d'Urfe. In Paris he also helped
out Mile. X. V. C, who had become
pregnant and feared her family's wrath.
For his pains he fell afoul of the police,
although he himself was innocent of any
wrongdoing.
After he had cleared himself he
traveled to Holland vmd then to Germany,
having many adventures in love on the
way and making some money, most of it
by gambling. In Cologne he had an
amusing affair with the wife of the
burgomaster. From there he went to Wiirtemburg,
where he was cheated and robbed by
three army officers who then betrayed
their victim to the police and charged
him with unlawful gambling. With the
help of two pretty women Casanova made
his escape and went to Zurich,
Switzerland. At Zurich he had several pleasant
affairs, including one with a pretty
French widow named Dubois, who
served as his housekeeper. In the
summer of 1760 Casanova went to Geneva
to visit Voltaire, whom he found a
charming man but too much addicted to
republicanism for Casanova's taste.
From his visit to Voltaire, Casanova
went to Aix-en-Savoie, where he had an
interesting experience with a nun who
much resembled his M. M. Having
become pregnant, the nun had arranged to
leave her convent with a supposed illness
that could be treated by the waters at
Aix. He helped her through her
confinement and then returned her to her order.
Casanova went on to Rome, where he
was received by the Pope, who promised
to help him obtain a pardon from the
Venetian authorities. Nothing came of
the promise, but the pontiff did bestow
the Cross of the Order of the Golden
Spur on Casanova.
Leaving Rome, Casanova visited
Bologna, Modena, Parma, Turin, and
Chambdry. At Chambdry he arranged for
a banquet with the second M. M., whom
he had sent back to her convent. Finally
back in Paris, Casanova found Madame
d'Urfe" hopeful of being reborn as a male
child through certain occult rites.
Casanova, seeing the woman was set in her
ideas, promised to help her. Much of his
time for almost two years was spent in
occult pursuits which enabled the
adventurer to make himself a small fortune
at the noblewoman's expense.
In Milan the adventurer tried to have
an affair with a Spanish countess who
retaliated by trying to take his life with
magic. Casanova had greater success with
the Countess Clementina at the chateau
of San Angelo, where he was the guest
of Count Ambrose. He won the countess'
love and then, as usual, proceeded to
leave her. He always had adventures and
affairs, but his next great exploits took
place in England. He went to London,
where he found Thdrese Trenti, who
now called herself Madame Cornelys,
and her children an unhappy domestic
combination. To relieve his boredom and
gloom he advertised for a woman to rent
an apartment in his house. Pauline, a
Portuguese noblewoman who had taken
refuge in England, answered the
advertisement. Casanova and Pauline had an
affair which lasted until she was
compelled to return to her homeland. After
Pauline's departure, Casanova met Miss
Charpillon, an adventuress who proved
more than a match for him, even driving
him to contemplate suicide. After this
disaster, Casanova often lived a seedy
and wretched existence as he drifted
about Europe from Russia to Spain. At
the time of writing his Memoirs, in 1773,
he was still waiting to receive from the
Venetian authorities the pardon which
would allow him to return to the city and
republic he loved.
2310

THE MEMOIRS OF A CAVALIER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1630-1648
Locale: England and the Continent
First published: 1720
Principal characters:
The Cavalier, the unidentified second son of a landed family in
England
Captain Fielding, the Cavalier's friend and traveling companion
Sir John Hepburn, the Cavalier's friend in the Swedish army
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden and Protestant champion in the
Thirty Years' War
Charles I, King of England, served by the Cavalier in the English
Civil War
Critique:
The year 1720 was an eventful one in
the career of Daniel Defoe, for in that
year he published three works: The
Memoirs of a Cavalier, Captain
Singleton, and his Serious Reflections of
Robinson Crusoe. Like the other book-length
narratives by Defoe, The Memoirs of a
Cavalier did not originally carry the
author's name, a circumstance apparently
intended to lend an air of authenticity to
his realistic work. Over the years
attempts have been made to prove that
Defoe merely edited the memoirs of some
real person, but scholars are now in
agreement that this book, along with others by
Defoe, was his own creation and that he
probably had no specific person in mind
as the original for his fictional narrator-
protagonist. One interesting feature of
the novel is that its hero is a member of
the upper class, while the usual Defoe
hero is taken from the middle or lower
classes, groups that Defoe knew at first
hand, as he did not know the life of the
upper class. The Cayalier who narrates
the story is similar to other Defoe
creations in that, uninterested in religion as
a young man, he is worldly and
materialistic. Also noteworthy is the fact that
Defoe, a Protestant himself and a
Dissenter from Anglicanism, glorifies the
Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War
but has little to say for the English
Protestants who rebelled against the monarchy
and the Anglican Church during the
1640's.
The Story:
The Cavalier was the son of a landed
gentleman in the county of Salop, born,
according to his own report, in 1608.
As a child he was taught by good tutors;
as a young man he was sent to Oxford
University, where he spent three years
deciding that he was not interested either
in continuing academic life or entering
one of the professions—law, the Church,
or medicine. His father hoped the young
man, who was his favorite son, would
settle down near his home. He even
agreed to settle an estate worth two
thousand pounds per year upon the 'young
man, but the Cavalier, much as he loved
his father and appreciated the offer,
decided, with his father's permission, to
travel on the Continent.
In 1630 the Cavalier crossed the
Channel and began his adventures in life.
With him went a college friend named
Fielding. Because of his martial bearing
the friend had been nicknamed the
"Captain," and the name stuck to him. After
some minor adventures on the road, the
Cavalier and his friend arrived in Paris.
Their stay in that city was cut short when
the Cavalier killed a man in a swordfight
and the two friends left the city hurriedly
to escape the authorities. They journeyed
to Italy and traveled there for some time,
returning later to France to observe how
2311

Cardinal Richelieu was administering
that country for his king. Again the two
Englishmen found themselves in trouble
from which they were extricated by the
Queen Mother, who gave them a pass
that enabled them to travel on to see the
fighting between the French forces and
those of the Duke of Savoy. Unimpressed
in Italy by the antiquities of Rome and
by the Italian people, who seemed much
degenerated from their Roman ancestors,
the Cavalier and his friend traveled
northward into central Europe, arriving in
Vienna in 1631 and then going on into
Bavaria. In Germany they had a chance
to see the fighting between the Protestant
Germans, led by the Elector-Duke of
Saxony, and the Catholic forces headed by
Emperor Ferdinand. One of the dreadful
experiences the two Englishmen had was
to observe the end of the siege of
Magdeburg. The fall of that city was marked
by terrible looting, rape, and murder; the
city itself was almost completely
destroyed, and the population reduced to a
mere handful from an original population
of more than 25,000 souls.
After the fall of Magdeburg to the
Catholic forces, the Cavalier and Fielding
journeved on until they encountered the
invading army of Gustavus Adolphus,
King of Sweden, who had joined the
Protestant Germans against Emperor
Ferdinand. The Cavalier was quite
impressed with the Swedish army and the
person of the Swedish king, to whom he
was introduced by Colonel Hepburn, a
friend of the Cavalier's father who had
taken service in the Swedish army.
Fielding joined the Swedish forces, as did the
Cavalier himself after a time, serving
ftrst as a gentleman volunteer and later
as a commissioned officer. The,Cavalier
distinguished himself many times in the
Swedish service. His father raised a
regiment of cavalry and, with the consent
of the English king, sent it to Gustavus
Adolphus, who made the Cavalier its
colonel. In addition to his service as a
commander, the Cavalier also became a
special attendant to the king and
sometimes his emissary. Captured bv the
Imperial forces sho-tly before the Battle of
Lutzen, in which Gustavus Adolphus lost
his life, the Cavalier w?s allowed to
continue his travels after he had given his
parole.
In 1635, the Cavalier found himself
in Holland, where he observed the Dutch
army under its famous commander,
Prince Maurice, opposing the forces of
Spain. Later in the same year the
Cavalier returned to England, where he rested
for some months until he was called from
his inactivity by Charles I, who asked
the Cavalier to enter his service in the
campaign against the Scots. Serving as a
gentleman volunteer rather than as a
commissioned officer, he found the
campaigns against the Scots little to his
liking, inasmuch as there was little real
action, only minor skirmishes, and the
war was over religious dissent, a cause in
which the Cavalier could see little reason.
At the outbreak of the English Civil
War the Cavalier had little feeling about
war from a moral standpoint. He
considered himself a professional soldier who
did his duty honorably, not worrying
particularly about the causes of war or the
countryside that was devastated or the
injuries done to its populace. As the war
continued, however, he saw that England*
as a country was losing, whether victory
fell to King Charles or to the
Parliamentary forces which opposed the monarchy.
When the Civil War broke out in
1642, the Cavalier was still serving
Charles I in the Scottish campaigns. He
continued to follow the monarch, even
though he recognized that the king was
ill-prepared to battle for his throne.
Rather than take a commission, the
Cavalier still fought as a gentleman volunteer
in the royal troop of guards. Later, when
his father was injured, the Cavalier took
the command of the royalist force his
father Jiad recruited.
Fighting in many of the minor battles
of the Civil War, the Cavalier saw most
of the action as the armies marched and
countermarched, sometimes to do battle,
sometimes to escape it. During the great
battle at Edgehill, however, the Cavalier
2312

realized that he had a greater stake in
the war than the interests of a
professional soldier. From that time on he
wished that an honorable peace could be
arranged between King Charles and
Parliament.
During his vears of campaigning for
the monarchy the Cavalier had many
adventures, but he was fortunate to escape
with no serious injury. Even a dangerous
mission as a disguised spy turned out
well. One effect of the war which
angered the Cavalier was the activity of the
Scots against King Charles. The Cavalier
thought that the Scots had no call to
make war on the monarch, who had
acceded to all their demands, even to
abolishing the episcopacy in favor of the
Scots* native Presbyterianism.
Toward the end of the war the
Cavalier's father was taken prisoner bv
Parliamentary forces. The Cavalier offered to
take his father's place, but his father was
able to buy his freedom by giving his
parole and paying four thousand pounds.
A short time later the Cavalier was cut
off from the royal army. He and a group
of companions managed to escape,
making their way by sea to Cornwall, where
they joined Lord Hopton's forces. When
the king surrendered to the Scots, who
later turned him over to the Parliament,
Lord Hopton's troops also surrendered.
The Cavalier, like other royalists, was
given the choice of leaving the country
or peaceably going home. The Cavalier
returned to his home, content that he
had served his king, his country, and his
honor as best he could. Having given his
parole that he would take no further part
in the war, he retired from active life.
2313

MEMOIRS OF A FOX-HUNTING MAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Siegfried Sassoon (1886- )
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1895-1916
Locale: England and France
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
George Sherston, the fox-hunting man
Aunt Evelyn, with whom he lived
Tom Dixon, Aunt Evelyn's groom
Denis Milden, George's friend and master at Ringwell, later at Packlestone
Stephen Colwood, George's schoolmate and friend
Mr. Pennett, George's trustee i
Dick Tiltwood, George's friend in the army
Critique:
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is
the scarcely concealed autobiography of
the author. The tone of the book is
nostalgic. The passages concerning
cricket and the more technical passages about
fox hunting are somewhat tedious, but
for the most part this sensitive record
of a young man's quiet, well-ordered
life in pre-war England is interesting and
illuminating. The class distinctions may
be difficult for an American reader to
understand, but Sassoon indicates that
later in life he himself came to be more
liberal in his feeling about people of
lower social ranks.
The Story:
George Sherston was orphaned so early
that he could not remember when he
had not lived with his Aunt Evelyn at
Butley. At the age of nine he became
the possessor of a pony, bought at the
urgent request of Aunt Evelyn's groom,
Tom Dixon. Aunt Evelyn would not
let George go to school until he was
twelve, and his early training was given
him by an incompetent tutor, Mr. Star.
Dixon, however, taught him to ride, and
this training he valued more highly than
anything Mr. Star taught him. Because
George's early life was often lonely, he
welcomed the diversion of riding.
At last Dixon thought George was
ready to see some fox hunting. Since
there was no hunting in the Sherston
neighborhood, they had to ride some
nine miles to the Dumborough Hunt,
where George was thrilled by the color
and excitement of the chase. He saw a
boy of about his own age who carried
himself well and was obviously one to
be imitated. The next Friday at a dance
George saw the boy again and was pleased
that the boy, Denis Milden, remembered
seeing him at the hunt.
After his first year in school at
Balloon)' George was happy to be back at
Aunt Evelyn's. Dixon met him at the
station witn the word that he had secured
a place for George on the village cricket
team, which would play next day at the
Flower Show Match. George had played
good cricket at school, but he did not
know how he would show up facing
players of long experience. The next
day, learning that he was to be last at
bat, he spent the afternoon trying to
forget his nervousness. Once in the
game, he suddenly gained confidence and
brought his side the victory.
George's trustee and guardian, Mr.
Pennett, was disturbed when his ward
quit Cambridge without a degree. George
settled down with Aunt Evelyn at
Butley. He played some cricket and some
golf. He ordered a great many books
from London. Dixon began to revive
George's interest in hunting, but Mr.
MEMOIRS OF A FOX-HUNTING MAN by Siegfried Sassoon. By permission of the author and the publisher*,
Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1931, by Coward-McCann Inc.
2314

Pennett would not give George the full
amount of his annual income and so
George could not afford the kind of
horse he wanted. Dixon, however, soon
found a suitable horse within the limits
of George's budget, a hunter named
Harkaway. The season was well on, and
George was out only three days. Later
in the spring he attended the Ringwell
Hunt Point-to-Point Races, where
Stephen Colwood, a friend whom he had
known at Ballboro', won the Heavy-
Weigh t Race.
The following autumn George made
one of his rare trips to London. There
he heard a concert by Fritz Kreisler and
bought some clothes suitable for a
foxhunting man. His first hunting was
with the Potford Hunt, an experience
he found much more exciting than that
he had known with the Dumborough.
He also went down to Sussex to stay
with Stephen at his father's rectory.
While visiting Stephen, George bought
another horse, Cockbird, in defiance of
Mr. Pennett. When he returned to But-
ley with his new horse, his Aunt Evelyn,
realizing that he could not afford
the hunter, sold one of her rings and
gave George the money for Christmas.
Cockbird was more than a satisfactory
horse. Riding him with the Ringwell
Hounds, George qualified for the
Colonel's Cup Race. One of his
competitors was riding a horse owned by
Nigel Croplady, a noisy young braggart
liked by very few people. Another
competitor was his friend Stephen. During
the race Stephen was forced to drop
back, but he encouraged George so much
that George came in to win. As the
afternoon came to a close, someone drew
his attention to the new master of the
Ringwell Hounds. It was Denis Milden.
That summer George played in a
number of cricket matches. Stephen, now
in the artillery, spent a weekend at But-
ley. As autumn drew on, George became
impatient for the hunting season to
begin. Stephen, now stationed near his
home, asked George to spend some time
at the rectory and ride with the Ring-
well Hounds. Nothing could have
pleased George more, for he was a great
admirer of Denis. The two became good
friends, and George sometimes stayed
at the kennels with Denis. Denis
proved to be an excellent master, skillful
in the hunt and careful and patient with
his hounds.
Early in the following season,
however, Denis resigned to become master
of the Packlestone Hunt, and he
insisted that George go up to the Midlands
with him. To ride with the Packlestone
Hounds would be an expense George
knew he could not afford, but he went
for the first season. He was always
embarrassed, for he knew that his new
friends were unaware of his economic
limitations. The year was 1914.
War was declared. George, aware of
his incompetency as a soldier, had turned
down two opportunities to be an officer,
and was serving in the army as a
cavalryman. To have to salute Nigel
Croplady made him feel silly. One day
the horse George was riding threw him,
and he broke his arm. Two months
later he was sent home to allow his arm
to heal. One afternoon he went to see
his neighbor, Captain Huxtable, and
asked that he be recommended for a
commission in the infantry. The
commission came through. George proceeded
to his new camp. There he made friends
with Dick Tiltwood, a pleasant young
man not long out of school.
They crossed the Channel together
and were assigned to a battalion coming
back from the front for a rest. Dick and
George spent many hours sightseeing
and talking and reading. George toot
Dick out riding frequently. They would
pretend they were fox hunting. George,
assigned to headquarters, felt rather
shaken when Dick was sent to the
trenches without him. Word reached
George that Stephen had been killed.
Dixon, who was also in service and who
wanted to be transferred to George's
company, died of pneumonia. Then when
George learned that Dick had died of a
throat wound, he asked to be transferred
2315

to the trenches. There he served bravely, away his best friends,
always angry at the war which had taken
2316

MEMOIRS OF A MIDGET
Type of work: Novel
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1921
Principal characters:
Miss M., a midget
Mrs. Bowater, her landlady
Fanny Bowater, Mrs. Bowater's daughter
Mrs. Monnerie, Miss M.'s patroness
Mr. Anon, a dwarf
Critique:
Memoirs of a Midget is a highly
original novel which mingles poetry and
social criticism. Exquisitely written, it
has an unfailing charm and interest.
Remarkable is the careful and exact use of
the proper perspective throughout the
thoughtfully executed work. Nor can
the reader fail to note the veiled criticisms
of society which the author puts into the
mouth of tiny Miss M.
The Story:
Miss M., a perfectly-formed midget,
was born to normal parents and in
pleasant surroundings. Until her eighteenth
year she was brought up in seclusion.
Then her mother died, followed shortly
thereafter by her father, and tiny Miss
M. was left alone in the world. Her
godmother offered to take her in, but the
girl, having inherited a modest fortune,
decided to take lodgings instead. She
made her first humiliating excursion in
public when she moved to her new
home.
Her lodgings were in the home of
Mrs. Bowater, a stern woman, who
nevertheless had a great affection for her small
roomer. At Mrs. Bowater's Miss M. met
Fanny, the daughter of her landlady.
A teacher in a girls' school, Fanny was
both charming and clever. Because of
the friendship between the two, the
midget became involved in the love
affair of Fanny Bowater and the curate,
an affair which ended with the curate's
wiicide when Fanny rejected his suit.
After a time Miss M. began to go out
in society. She became the friend of Lady
Pollacke, whose friendship she was never
to lose. At their home she met the
wealthy Mrs. Monnerie, the youngest
daughter of Lord B. Mrs. Monnerie
took such a fancy to the tiny girl that
she invited her for a vacation at Lyme
Regis, a fashionable watering place in
Dorsetshire.
Before she left on her vacation Miss
M. accidentally met a new friend, Mr.
Anon, a deformed and hunchbacked
creature only a few inches taller than
Miss M. Miss M., unaware of the ways
of the world, introduced Mr. Anon to
Mrs. Bowater, who approved of him in a
grudging way. They saw each other
frequently, and Miss M. once solicited his
aid when she wanted to secure money
for Fanny while she was away at Lyme
Regis. Soon after they returned from
their holiday, Mrs. Monnerie invited
Midgetina, as she called Miss M., to
visit at her elaborate town house in
London.
Miss M. accepted the invitation and
became another prized possession Mrs.
Monnerie could exhibit to her guests.
In London she met the niece and nephew
of her patroness. Percy Maudlen was a
languid, ill-mannered youth whom the
small girl disliked. Susan Monnerie was
a pleasant person of whom Miss M.
became very fond. After a visit of six
MEMOIRS OF A MIDGET by Walter de la Mare. By permission ol the author and the publishers, Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1922, by Walter de la Mare.
2317

weeks, Miss M. returned briefly to Mrs.
Bo water's. There she received a letter
from Fanny, begging her to try to use
her influence with Mrs. Monnerie to
secure a position for Fanny as a
governess. During Miss M.'s stay with Mrs.
Bowater she again met Mr. Anon, who
declared his love for her. The midget
told him that she was not able to return
his love.
Before long Miss M. returned to
London, where her pampered way of living
did much to spoil her. During her stay
Mrs. Bowater came with the news that
she was going to South America to nurse
her sick husband, a sailor. Shortly
afterward Miss M.'s solicitors informed her
that her small inheritance had dwindled
because of the gifts and trifles she had
bought and because of her loans to
Fanny. When Miss M. confessed her
troubles to Sir Walter Pollacke, he
consented to become both her guardian and
financial adviser. Meanwhile, Miss M.
had not forgotten Fanny Bowater's
request. Through the little person's
persuasion, Mrs. Monnerie found a place
for Fanny as morning governess and
invited the girl to stay with her.
Mr. Anon wrote and proposed
marriage, but Miss M. was horrified at the
idea of repeating the performance of
Tom Thumb and Mercy Lavinia Bump
Warren. Then it became evident that
Mrs. Monnerie was no longer amused by
her little charge, for Fanny had become
her favorite. To celebrate Miss M.'s
birthday, Percy Maudlen planned a banquet
in her honor, but the party was a dismal
failure so far as Miss M. was concerned.
The menu disgusted her, and when Percy
proposed a toast Miss M. responded by
drinking down her glass of chartreuse
at a single gulp and staggering drunk-
enly down the table. In this condition
she hurled at Fanny a reference to the
unfortunate suicide of the curate.
Such actions deserved punishment.
Mrs. Monnerie sent Miss M. in disgrace
to Monks' House, her summer place in
the country. One afternoon Miss M.
saw the caravans of a circus passing the
gate. Because she knew that she could
no longer count on Mrs. Monnerie for
support, Miss M. was desperate and
she suddenly decided to hire herself to
the circus. The owner engaged her to
ride a pony in the ring, and she agreed
to appear for four nights for fifteen
guineas. She also told fortunes. She
was a great success, the most popular
attraction of the circus.
Her solitude during the day at Monks'
House was interrupted by the arrival of
Fanny Bowater. Fanny seemed to know
of her escapades at the circus, and the
two quarreled violently. Then Mrs.
Monnerie arrived. She was in a high state
of excitement over the news of the
midget who was so popular at the circus.
She had even made up a party to attend
the performance on the last night. When
Miss M. flatly refused to perform, Mrs.
Monnerie sent her, like a child, to bed.
At the last minute Miss M. felt
that she must appear at the circus to
keep her contract. Setting out on foot,
she encountered Mr. Anon, and they
went on to the circus together. Although
he tried to persuade her not to appear,
she exhibited herself in the tent,
unrecognized, in her disguise, by all of the
members of Mrs. Monnerie's party except
Fanny. Mr. Anon, determined that he
would take her place in the riding act,
put on her costume and rode into the
ring. Thrown from the pony, he died in
Miss M.'s arms.
Through a legacy from her
grandfather, Miss M. became financially
independent, and settled down at Lyndsey
with Mrs. Bowater as her housekeeper.
But one night Miss M. disappeared
mysteriously, leaving a note saying that
she had been called suddenly away. She
was never seen again, and her memoirs
were eventually presented to the public
by her faithful friend, Sir Walter
Pollacke.
2318

MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Paris and environs
First pnhlished: 1846-1848
Principal characters:
Baron de Taverney
Philippe, his son
Andree, his daughter
Gilbert, in love with Andre"e
King Louis XV of France
M. de Choiseul, the king's minister
Madame Jeanne du Barry, the king's favorite
Armand de Richelieu, a political opportunist
Joseph Balsamo (Count de Fenix), a sorcerer and revolutionary
Lorenza Felictani, his wife
Althotas, his instructor in magic
M. de Sartines, a lieutenant of police
Jean Jacques Rousseau, the philosopher
Critique:
Memoirs of a Physician is an intricate
plot of court intrigue in the closing days
of the reign of Louis XV, with dramatis
personae as diverse as the scheming Due
de Richelieu, the philosopher Rousseau,
and the favorite-dominated king.
Manipulating all these by means of his magical
control of natural forces and the power
invested in him as a representative of the
secret brotherhood of Freemasonry is the
mysterious figure of Joseph Balsamo. The
climax is as lurid as any modern thriller.
For its full historical value this volume
should be read as one of a series of five,
all concerned with the court life of
France at the time of Louis XV and XVI.
Called the Marie Antoinette romances,
the novels are Memoirs of a Physician
(including Joseph Balsamo),The Queen's
Necklace, The Taking of the Bastille,
The Countess de Charny, in that order,
and, lastly, The Chevalier of the Maison-
Rouge.
The Story:
At the court of Louis XV of France the
Due de Richelieu plotted with Madame
du Barry, the king's favorite, to replace
M. de Choiseul as the king's minister.
They consulted a Count de Feriix, who
turned out to be the reputed sorcerer
Joseph Balsamo; ten years earlier the
necromancer had predicted that Madame du
Barry would one day be queen of France.
Balsamo used his wife Lorenza as an
unwilling medium for his sorcery. Through
her he was able to give Richelieu and
Madame du Barry compromising
information contained in a letter sent by the
Duchess of Grammont to her brother, de
Choiseul, showing that the minister was
encouraging the revolt of parliament
against the king and attempting to bring
about war with England. Fortified with
this information, Richelieu forced the
king to dismiss his minister.
The philosopher Rousseau, standing
in the crowd gathered outside the palace
after the king at a "bed of justice" had
defied parliament, was urged to a.ttend
a secret meeting where he would be
initiated into the mystic order of
Freemasonry. Rousseau declared he could do
more for the world by not joining the
order. The chief of the council, who was
Balsamo, read a communication from
Swedenborg which warned them of a
traitor in their midst.
In order to demonstrate to the surgeon
Marat, a member of the secret fraternity,
2319

that body and soul can be separated and
then reunited and that the soul has a
greater knowledge than the body, Bal-
samo hypnotized one of Marat's patients.
As the patient's crushed leg was
amputated, Balsamo made the patient sing. He
also hypnotized Marat's maid, drew from
her an admission of the theft of her
master's watch, and, still in the condition of
sleep, made her repeat the contents of
a letter she could not read while awake.
Andree, daughter of the impoverished
Baron de Taverney, had recently been
saved from the violence of a mob by
Gilbert, a son of the people, but she was
ignorant of this circumstance because
Balsamo had brought her home in his
carriage. After the girl had been settled
at the Trianon through the request of the
dauphiness, her beauty charmed the king
completely, and he commissioned
Richelieu to present her with a necklace worth
several million livres, but she declined
the gift. Richelieu, escorting de Taverney
through the gardens after they had
supped with the king, was heard by
Gilbert, hidden in a dense thicket, advising
the baron to send his daughter to a
convent. Philippe, AndreYs brother, who
held a commission in the royal army, paid
a farewell visit to his sister; she confided
to him her fears and forebodings. After
his departure, Andr£e threw herself on a
bench and wept. Gilbert approached and
declared his love for her, but Andr£e
rebuffed him.
In his mansion, Balsamo was
summoned to Lorenza's room, where she
begged him to release her so that she
could retire to a convent. When he
refused, she plunged a dagger into her
breast. After commanding Lorenza to
sleep, Balsamo ascended to the chamber
of the alchemist Althotas, who reminded
him that in a week the aged man would
be one hundred years old, by which time
he must have the last three drops of
blood of a child or a young female to
complete the elixir which would preserve
him for another half century. Balsamo,
having promised his help, was returning
to the sleeping Lorenza when he was
interrupted by the arrival of Richelieu, who
had come for a special sleeping draught
for AndreY Richelieu had already left
instructions that a love potion be given
the king which would cause him to fall in
love with the first woman he saw on
waking.
Gilbert overheard Nicole, AndreYs
maid, tell her lover that Richelieu had
arranged for them to escape together after
first drugging Andr£e and leaving her
door unlocked; later he saw them ride
off. Andr£e, plunged into a hypnotic
sleep by the drink, descended the stairs
of her apartment in a trance and passed
the astounded Gilbert. A flash of
lightning disclosed the concealed figure of
Balsamo, who ordered Andr£e to tell
what had happened at his house in
Paris after Lorenza had tried to kill
herself and he had put her to sleep. AndreY
describing Lorenza's flight, told how she
had taken with her a box of papers and,
on reaching the street, had inquired the
address of the lieutenant of police, M. de
Sartines. At this news Balsamo leaped to
his horse and without releasing Andr£e
from her trance, dashed off for Paris.
AndreY left alone, sank to the ground.
Gilbert, a witness of this scene at a
distance, rushed toward her, lifted her up,
and carried her back to her chamber. As
he placed her on the couch he heard a
step. Hastily he blew out the candle.
Realizing that the visitor was the king,
Gilbert fled. King Louis, seeing Andr£e
lying pale and immobile and thinking her
dead, also fled in panic.
Balsamo, riding toward Paris, knew
that his only hope of preventing Lorenza
from revealing his secrets to the police
lay in his magic power over her. Abruptly
he reined in his horse and with all the
force at his command willed Lorenza to
fall asleep wherever she was. From
Sevres, he sent a hasty note to Madame
du Barry in Paris. Lorenza, meanwhile,
had arrived at the office of the police, but
before she could give him Balsamo's
address she fell to the floor, overcome by a
strange dizziness. A valet carried her into
an adjoining room. M. de Sartines burst
2320

open the coffer, however, and a clerk
deciphered the secret papers which
implicated Balsamo in plans affecting the king
and the government.
At that moment Balsamo, under the
name of the Count de F£nix, was
announced. Seeing that the coffer had been
opened, he threatened to blow out M.
de Sartines' brains. Madame du Barry,
acting quickly on receipt of Balsamo's
letter, arrived at that moment, and M.
de Sartines surrendered the coffer to her.
She in turn handed it to Balsamo with
all the papers intact.
On his return to his chambers Balsamo
found Lorenza there in convulsions. His
determination to kill her ebbed as he
gazed on her beauty, and an
overpowering love for her swept his being and
caused him to feel that if he surrendered
his control over her he might still earn
some heavenly recompense. For three
days the very thought plunged him into
a happiness he had never before
experienced, while in her trance Lorenza
dreamed aloud her own mysterious love.
On the third day, after she had asked
him to test her ability still to see through
space in spite of intervening material
obstacles, Balsamo willed her to report
what Madame du Barry was doing.
Lorenza reported that the king's favorite
was on her way to see him.
Balsamo put Lorenza into a still deeper
sleep. As he was leaving her he fancied
he heard a creak. Looking back, he saw
only her sleeping form. In her sleep
Lorenza thought she saw part of the ceiling
of her room descend, and from this
moving trap a Caliban-shaped creature creep
toward her. Powerless to escape, she felt
him place her on the circular trap, which
then ascended slowly toward the ceiling.
Madame du Barry, worried because she
had been followed, told Balsamo that she
had saved him from arrest when M. de
Sartines had handed the king the
deciphered names from the coffer. In
appreciation, Balsamo presented her with a
vial containing a draught which would
ensure her twenty years of additional
youth. After her departure Balsamo
returned to Lorenza's couch, only to find
her gone. He ascended to his instructor's
room and there discovered the body of
Lorenza. To his horror he realized that
Althotas drained from her the blood
needed for his elixir.
Cursing his master, from whose hands
the vial with the precious liquid slipped
and broke, Balsamo fell unconscious on
the lifeless body of his wife. He stirred
only when notified by his servant that
"the five masters" were waiting to see
him. They had come from the secret
fraternity to pronounce sentence on him as
a traitor. Having watched his movements,
they had seen Lorenza leave his home
with a coffer which contained secret
names in cipher. Later he himself had
arrived at the police office, and Lorenza
had departed alone; but he had left with
Madame du Barry, whom he had
summoned there to receive the secret
information for which he was paid. The paper
which had revealed their secrets had been
left with the police, they charged, but
Balsamo had brought away the coffer in
order to avoid implication. As a result of
this betrayal, five of their prominent
agents had been arrested. Balsamo did
not defend himself. When he asked only
for a few minutes to bring proof that
would speak for him, they let him go. He
returned, bearing the body of Lorenza
which he let slip from his arms to fall at
their feet. In consternation, his judges
fled.
Althotas, enraged at his pupil and
fearing death for himself, set fire to his
precious manuscripts and perished in the
flames. All night the fire roared in the
rooms above, while Balsamo, stretched
beside Lorenza's body, never moved. The
vaulted walls were thick, however, and
the fire finally burned itself out.
Andr6e recovered from her prostration
and retired to a convent. Baron de Taver-
ney, repudiated by the king and
Richelieu, slunk back to his impoverished
estate. Philippe sailed for America, and
Gilbert followed. Balsamo vegetated in his
mansion, from which he was supposed to
have reappeared during the violence of
2321

the French Revolution. As for the king,
on May 9, 1774, his physician
pronounced him suffering from smallpox.
His daughter, Madame Louise of France,
left her convent cell to attend him, and
he was given extreme unction. Madame
du Barry was sent to the chateau of the
Duchess d'Aiguillon. The next day the
king died, and Louis XVI came to a
throne about to be engulfed in the flames
of rebellion and anarchy.
2322

MEMOIRS OF AN INFANTRY OFFICER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Siegfried Sassoon (1886- )
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1916-1917
Locale: France and England
First published: 1930
Principal characters:
George Sherston, an infantry officer
David Cromlech, his friend
Aunt Evelyn, his aunt
Critique:
This novel—the second of a series
which also includes Memoirs of a Fox-
Hunting Man and Sherston s Progress—
is almost a caricature of what many
people regard as typical English behavior.
The war is a very casual, very personal
thing, almost devoid of import and
strategy. The officers who meet Sherston
briefly are men who exhibit just the
right amount of detachment and regard
for good form. Underneath the well-bred
tolerance for the real discomfort and
danger of trench warfare there is a thread
of revolt which culminates in Sherston's
letter informing his colonel that the
war is needlessly being prolonged. Even
the authorities, however, are too well-
bred to take the letter seriously, and
Sherston falls back into nonchalance. The
book is quiet but effective satire on upper-
class English life.
The Story:
Spring arrived late in 1916 in the
trenches near Mametz. Sherston had
made up his mind to die, because under
the circumstances there seemed to be
little else to do. The battle of the Somme
had exhausted him. Colonel Kinjack
could see that Sherston was looking for
trouble and so, to forestall any
unpleasantness, he sent Sherston to the
Fourth Army School at Flix^court for
a month's training.
The beds at the school were clean and
comfortable, and the routine was not
too onerous. Sherston settled back to
forget the war. He attended a big game
hunter's lectures on sniping and
practiced with a bayonet. To him it was a
little incongruous to listen to advice
from civilians and army men who had
never been close to real war. All the
instructors concentrated on open warfare;
they were sure that the trenches would
soon be abandoned.
One hot Saturday afternoon he went
back to his outfit, where the talk was
all of an impending raid. There seemed
to be some jealousy involved, for a
Canadian raid a short time before had
been a great success.
Sherston, sure he would accompany
the raiders, wrote a farewell letter to
his Aunt Evelyn, a letter in which he
slyly assumed die attitude of the "happy
warrior." Entering a dugout, he was
a little surprised to see the raiders putting
burnt cork on their faces. Their
appearance reminded him ridiculously of
a minstrel show. Requested to take the
raiders up to headquarters, he jumped
at the opportunity to present his plea
to the commanding officer.
To his disappointment, Colonel
Kinjack brusquely told him he had to stay
behind to count the raiders when they
returned. So he was condemned to
stand in the trench and wait.
As soon as the raiders were well over
the parapet, the explosions began. The
men struggled back defeated when the
second belt of German wire proved
invulnerable. They had all tossed their
bombs and retired. Sherston began to
30 out into No Man's Land to bring
MEMOIRS OF AN INFANTRY OFFICER by Siegfried Sassoon. By permission of the authoi and the pub-
lishers, Doubleday & Co., lac. Copyright, 1930, by Coward-McCann Inc.
232S

in the casualties. A gray-haired lance
corporal was glad of his wound, for he
had been waiting eighteen months for
a chance to go home. O'Brien, the major,
was killed, and Sherston had to drag
him out of a shell crater. Luckily the
Germans, perhaps out of pity, stopped
firing.
The result of the raid was two killed
and ten wounded. In the newspapers,
the account Tiras somewhat changed.
Aunt Evelyn read that the party entered
the German trenches without difficulty,
displayed admirable morale, and witn-
drew after twenty-five minutes of hand-
to-hand fighting.
The big push, the summer offensive,
was in the air. Before Sherston really
had time to think much about
impending events, he was given a leave. At
first it was strange to be back in England,
where everyone seemed to know about
the projected onslaught. Out of
deference to one who would take part in it,
however, they seldom mentioned it.
Aunt Evelyn soon found out about the
raid when Sherston grandly announced
that he was due for a military cross.
She was horrified, for she thought her
nephew was still in the transport
service.
On his way back to France he stopped
in the Army and Navy Store and bought
two pairs of wire cutters. Then, because
he was late in returning from leave,
he bought a salmon and two bottles of
brandy to appease his colonel.
When the offensive began, Sherston's
company advanced fifteen hundred yards
in four hours. Then the guides became
confused, and all forward progress
stopped. According to the General Staff,
the Germans were supposed to be out
of the Mametz Woods, but they were
still there. The company waited.
Sherston was going along a
communications trench when his companion, Ken-
die, was killed by a sniper. Furious at
the unexpected killing, Sherston took a
mills bomb in each hand and went over
the top. After a while he was looking
down into a well-ordered trench filled
with Germans. Fortunately they were
just leaving, and he jumped into Wood
Trench, until lately the German front
line. Then he lost his perspective. Not
knowing what to do with the trench, he
returned to his own lines. His colonel
reproved him severely for not
"consolidating" the trench or even reporting the
incident.
During the battle of Bazentin Ridge
Sherston was kept in reserve in the
transport lines. In this brief respite, he
met his old friend, David Cromlech. For
a while they shared experiences, but
both were reluctant to talk about the
battle of the Somme. David irritated
the other officers greatly by his habit
of making bold pronouncements about
sacred things. For instance, he said that
all sports except boxing, football, and
rock climbing were snobbish and silly.
When Sherston was finally recalled
to his battalion, it was with the
expectation that he would go into action at
once. As it turned out, however, he
came down with enteritis before he
arrived in the front lines. It was an escape,
really, for he was removed to the base
hospital and eventually was sent back
to England.
At the military hospital in Oxford,
Sherston recovered enough to go
canoeing occasionally. By the end of August
he was back with Aunt Evelyn on a
month's sick leave with a possibility of
extension. Several letters from fellow
officers kept him informed about his
battalion, mostly reports on men killed.
He remained fairly cheerful, however,
by riding in the local fox hunts. In
February he went back to Rouen.
The Germans were retreating from
the Hindenburg Line, and the British
were on the offensive in the battle of
Arras. To his surprise and gratification,
Sherston was put in charge of a
hundred bombers who were clearing the
trenches. He carried out his task with
great skill and bravery. When the
mission was nearly accomplished, he was
struck by a rifle bullet.
Back in England again, he rebelled
2324

against going into action a third time.
With the help of Tyrrell, a pacifist
philosopher, he composed a defiant letter to
his colonel, saying that he refused to
take part in the war any longer because
he was sure it was being unnecessarily
continued by those in power. He was
sure, above all, that the Germans would
surrender if the Allies would publish
their war aims. Expecting to be court-
martialed for this breach of discipline,
he was resolved to accept even execution.
To his chagrin, the superiors refused
to take him seriously. He went before
a board which investigated his sanity.
Then David Cromlech was called in to
talk to him at Clitherland Camp. Unable
to persuade him to recant by any other
means, David finally told Sherston that
if he refused to retract his statements he
would be confined in a lunatic asylum for
the duration of the war. Sherston knew
David was only telling a friendly lie,
but he did not want to see his friend
proved a liar. He decided to admit his
mistake and see the war through to its
finish.
2B25

THE MENAECHMI
Type of work: Drama
Author: Titus Macdus Plautus (c. 255-184 B.C.)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Third century B.C.
Locale: Epidamnum, a city of Macedonia
First presented: Late third or early second century B.C.
Principal characters:
Menaechmus of Epidamnum
Menaechmus Sosicles, his twin brother
Messenio, Menaechmus Sosicles' servant
Wife of Menaechmus of Epidamnum
Erotium, a courtesan, Menaechmus of Epidamnum's mistress
Peniculus, a parasite, hanger-on to Menaechmus of Epidamnum
Critique:
The Menaechmi is one of the best-
known of Plautus' plays (Shakespeare
leaned heavily on it for The Comedy of
Errors (1592-1594). Although its plot is
not remarkably complex, Plautus handles
the action with considerable histrionic
dexterity, carefully signaling in advance
so that the audience may always be in a
position to relish the misunderstandings
and confusion of the characters. Binding
itself to a very narrow unity of time and
place, the action takes place before the
house of Erotium in little more than the
time actually represented. This limitation
creates a number of problems in
verisimilitude, but the play moves so rapidly
that the audience has no opportunity to
grow uneasy at the improbable
coincidences or the obtuseness of the
characters. The Menaechmi has no apparent
social or moral theme, but it manifests
good showmanship throughout.
The Story:
When the two Menaechmi were seven
years old, one, later to become
Menaechmus of Epidamnum, accompanied his
merchant father from their home in Syracuse
to Tarentum. There, fascinated by the
confused activity, the boy wandered away,
became lost, and was finally picked up
by another merchant who took him to
the merchant's own home in Epidamnum
and adopted him. The boy's family was
so grief-stricken at his loss that his name
was given to the remaining son. This
boy, Menaechmus Sosicles, grew up,
and when he came of age and inherited
his father's property, he went out to
pursue an aimless quest of his brother.
Menaechmus of Epidamnum had by
this time inherited nis foster father's
wealth, married a somewhat shrewish
woman, and acquired a mistress. On the
day Menaechmus Sosicles arrived in
Epidamnum on his undirected search,
Menaechmus of Epidamnum had
quarreled with his suspicious wife and had
Earted from her, secretly bearing one of
er robes as a gift to Erotium, his
mistress. Delivering the robe, he instructed
Erotium to prepare an elaborate meal for
their evening's entertainment; then he
left to attend to some business at the
Forum.
Shortly afterward, Menaechmus
Sosicles happened to arrive before Erotium's
house and, much to his dismay, was
addressed familiarly, first by one of her
servants and then by Erotium herself.
Confusion followed, but Menaechmus
Sosicles finally decided that this was
merely Erotium's way of trying to seduce
him; and so he gave his servant
Messenio his wallet for safekeeping and
accompanied the courtesan into the house.
When he came back out later, having
consumed the food which Menaechmus
of Epidamnum had ordered for himself
and his parasite, Erotium gave him the
robe so that he could have it altered for
2326

her. As he walked away, intent on selling
the robe for his own gain, he was
accosted by Peniculus, Menaechmus of Epi-
damnum's parasite, indignant at having
missed a banquet to which he had been
invited only a short time before and
convinced that he had been purposely
affronted. Menaechmus Sosicles finally
dismissed Peniculus with an insult, and
the latter, believing himself grievously
treated by his erstwhile benefactor, went
to Menaechmus of Epidamnum's wife
and revealed to her that her husband was
not only keeping another woman but
had given his mistress his wife's robe
as well. When Peniculus had finished,
Menaechmus of Epidamnum came by
on his way from the Forum to Erotium's
house, and, in concealment, the two
overheard him soliloquizing in a way that
substantiated Peniculus' whole story.
Satisfied with what she heard, the wife
stepped forward and accosted her
husband. There followed a confused
argument in which Menaechmus of
Epidamnum alternated between dissembled
ignorance regarding the theft of the robe and
genuine dismay regarding his assumed
presence at the banquet Erotium had
given. At last, seeing that Peniculus had
revealed all, he agreed to get the robe
and return it. When he went to Erotium
and, unaware that Menaechmus Sosicles
had already taken the robe, tried to
explain his dilemma, she assumed he was
trying to defraud her, grew angry, and
slammed her door in his face.
Meanwhile, Menaechmus Sosicles, still
carrying the robe, met the angry wife,
who assumed that he was Menaechmus
of Epidamnum returning the robe as he
had promised. While the whole situation
was still in confusion, the wife's father
arrived to take her part. Menaechmus
Sosicles decided to feign madness to get
rid of the two and was so successful in
his attempt that they went off in search
of a physician and men to restrain him.
But when these people were assembled,
they met Menaechmus of Epidamnum
instead of his brother. They would have
carried him off if Messenio had not
happened along and, mistaking Menaechmus
of Epidamnum for his brother, beaten off
the assailants. When the others had fled,
Messenio asked for his freedom in
return for saving his "master's" life; his
request was granted by the amazed
Menaechmus of Epidamnum, and
Messenio went off to collect his master's
belongings and return them.
On the way, however, he met
Menaechmus Sosicles. Gradually the nature
of the confusion came to light. The two
brothers finally confronted each other
and exchanged the information that was
a necessary prelude to formal recognition.
Menaechmus of Epidamnum decided to
sell his property and return to Syracuse
with his brother. Messenio was freed
again, this time by his own master, and
was made auctioneer for the sale of the
property. Everything was to be
converted into cash, including Menaechmus
of Epidamnum's wife.
2327

LE MENTEUR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1643
Principal characters:
Dorante, a student newly arrived in Paris
Geronte, his father
Cliton, his valet and confidant
Alcippe, his friend, engaged secretly to Clarice
Philiste, a friend to both Alcippe and Dorante
Clarice, a young precieuse, betrothed to Alcippe
Lucrece, her friend and fellow conspirator
Sabine, the maid and confidante of Lucrece
Critique:
Although Corneille began his career
at the famous H6tel de Bourgogne with
Melite in 1629, his reputation as a writer
of comedy rests solely on he Menteur
(The Liar), based on an episode from
Truth Suspected, by Juan Ruiz de
Alarc6n (c. 1581-1639). The
actor-producer-manager of the Royal Players,
Pierre Le Messier, acted the title role
with great success, though he was known
chiefly as a tragedian. Written in
Alexandrines—six iambic feet per line with
rhyming couplets—the play has not been
satisfactorily translated into English.
Another reason for the play's diminished
effectiveness in English lies in the clever
play on words and the use of double
meanings which defy exact translation.
The Story:
Dorante, a young gallant who had
come to Paris in order to get his social
education and not to take a wife as his
father Geronte wished, hired Cliton, a
valet who had military and amatory
connections, as his mentor. The young man
wished to be schooled in the ways of the
world, though the only advice he ever
took from his man was to spend freely.
Quite by planned accident Clarice,
tired of waiting for her lethargic lover
Alcippe to conclude their secret
arrangements to marry, tripped onto the
waiting arm of the newly arrived student.
Although a rustic, Dorante immediately
accommodated himself to the situation
and exchanged euphemistic compliments
with the young coquette, much to his
valet's despair. The brazen liar
captivated not only Clarice but her
companions, especially Lucrece, who was
silent throughout, by his false accounts
of the wars he had fought in and the
deeds he had accomplished in Germany
during the last four years.
The arrival of Alcippe put the girls to
flight, but not before Alcippe saw Clarice
talking to his old friend Dorante—who
quite ecstatically informed his companions
that he had had amazing amatory
adventures during his month's stay in Paris.
Last night, for example, he had
entertained a beautiful lady and five
companions on five boats with four choirs of
instruments playing all night and with
dancing until dawn after a sumptuous
repast of six courses, and so on. Cliton
attempted to break into this mad
monologue, but with no result, for Dorante's
philosophy was to tell the big lie of wars
and adventures in order to be believed.
His stories were so plausible and his
manner so persuasive that the two young
ladies fell in love with him, his friend
Alcippe burned with jealousy because he
thought his fiancee had been on the
LE MENTEUR by Pierre Corneille, from CHIEF PLAYS OF CORNEILLE. Translated by Lacy Lock-
ert. By permission of the publishers, Princeton University Press. Copyright, 1952, 1957, by Princeton
University Press.
2328

barge, and his friend Philiste was
completely mystified when he tried to
reconcile the tales with what he later found
to be the unvarnished and unromantic
truth. The one flaw in the liar's plans
was that in his conversation with Cliton,
who had gained information about the
young women from a coachman, Dorante
confused Clarice with Lucrece.
Into this confused web of mendacity
and misplaced affections came the good-
natured Geronte, who without his son's
knowledge pressed the young man's suit
for marriage with the daughter of an old
friend. The girl was Clarice, ready and
willing to be wooed after all the time she
had spent waiting for Alcippe's advances.
The old man and the young girl
contrived a meeting that evening under
her balcony and incognito, though she
doubted that she could judge her suitor's
character from such a distance and under
such unintimate circumstances. A friend
then suggested that she receive him at
Lucrece's house and as Lucrece.
Alcippe, consumed with jealousy,
angrily accused Clarice of infidelity.
Although she denied his charges, she
refused to seal their engagement with two
kisses, her hand, and her faith. Alcippe,
thinking himself the injured party, swore
revenge.
Meanwhile, the tolerant father
retracted his offer of his son's hand in
marriage to Clarice because the young
scoundrel had invented a touching story
to escape the wedding planned for him.
The story, a cape-and-sword melodrama,
concerned his marriage to a poor girl
whose father found them alone; in his
anxiety to disguise their presence his gun
went off, his sword was broken, his
barricade smashed, and her reputation threat-
could he do but marry sweet Orphise?
Cliton's despair changed to admiration,
now that he realized how useful his
master's ability at lying could be. Though
Cliton tried to acquaint him with his
mistake about the shy, virtuous, and
quiet Lucrece with whom Dorante had
not spoken, the bewitched swain swore
he would keep his appointment under her
balcony. Alcippe wrote a letter breaking
off his friendship with Dorante and
demanding satisfaction. In one short day,
his second in the big city, the provincial
student had quarreled, made love, and
reported a marriage. To lie effectively,
Cliton observed, one must have a good
memory.
Confronted by his accuser, Dorante
told Alcippe and Philiste that he had
known Clarice for several years but was
not interested in her; he had, he said,
taken a beautiful married woman with
him on the barge, a woman whom
Alcippe could not possibly know. He
cautioned Alcippe not to believe all he
heard and not to be led by the green-
eyed monster. When Philiste revealed to
Alcippe that the young dandy had only
yesterday arrived from the college at
Poitiers—proof that while he might be
valorous, his deeds were
imaginary—Alcippe asked the innocent scoundrel's
pardon.
Clarice, by the time she had exchanged
places on the balcony with Lucrece, also
knew about the lies Dorante had told.
Lucrece thought his actions a sign of
love. Confronted, Dorante denied ajf
accusations save one; he declared that he
had pretended marriage in order to wed
his Lucrece—at this point there was
consternation on the balcony—whom he
would marry that next day as proof of
his sincerity. By group action he was
ordered hence, so shocked were the young
ladies at his effrontery—or naivete\
Dorante now promised Cliton not to
lie any more, or at least to give a signal
when he did. He immediately lied by
saying that the rumor of his fight with
Alcippe was true and that the
unfortunate challenger had been left for dead.
He lied again when he claimed that the
secret of Alcippe's recovery lay in the
magic of a Hebrew word. Hebrew, he
claimed, was one of his ten languages.
He lied also to Sabine, the servant, in
order to get back in Lucrece's good graces,
and he invented new names so that his
2329

father could send his daughter-in-law his
good wishes; the duped father was pleased
to learn a grandchild was even now six
months along. His lies were met by
counter-lies told by the clever Sabine,
who lied for money and kept herself in
constant employment by delivering letters
and arranging assignations.
By now neither Dorante, Lucrece, nor
Clarice knew whom they loved. Clarice
declared herself in favor of Alcippe,
whose father finally settled the marriage
arrangements. Dorante then observed that
she had only been flirtatious and curious,
while the real Lucrece—he declared that
he had fallen in love with a name and
henceforth changed only the face to fit
it—was much deeper. The father,
declaring as he did so that he would never
again help his scoundrel of a son,
arranged quite docilely for his marriage.
Lucrece, who swore she would love the
liar when she could believe him, was
suddenly converted to belief when she
saw that his avowals were true in spirit.
Cliton, of course, knew as much all along.
2B30

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare C1564-1616)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Venice
First presented: c. 1596
Principal characters:
Shylock, a Jewish money-lender
Portia, a wealthy young woman
Antonio, an impoverished merchant, Shylock's enemy, championed by Portia
Bassanio, Portia s husband, Antonio's friend
Nerissa, Portia's waiting-woman
Gratiano, Nerissa's husband, Bassanio's friend
Jessica, Shylock's daughter
Lorenzo, Jessica's husband
Critique:
Though the closing scenes of The
Merchant of Venice keep it from
becoming a tragedy, it is essentially a
serious study of the use and misuse of
wealth, of love and marriage. The
encounter between the greedy, vengeful
Jew, Shylock, and the wise and fine
Portia, gives the play a theme of grave
beauty.
The Story:
Bassanio, meeting his wealthy friend,
Antonio, revealed that he had a plan for
restoring his fortune, carelessly spent,
and for paying the debts he had incurred.
In the town of Belmont, not far from
Venice, there lived a wealthy young
woman named Portia, who was famous
for her beauty. If he could secure some
money, Bassanio declared, he was sure
he could win her as his wife.
Antonio replied that he had no funds
at hand with which to supply his friend,
as they were all invested in the ships
which he had at sea, but he would
attempt to borrow some money in Venice.
Portia had many suitors for her hand.
According to the strange conditions of
her father's will, however, anyone who
wished her for his wife had to choose
among three caskets of silver, gold, and
lead the one which contained a message
that she was his. Four of her suitors,
seeing that they could not win her except
under the conditions of the will,
departed. A fifth, a Moor decided to take
his chances. The unfortunate man chose
the golden casket, which contained only
a skull and a mocking message. For his
failure he was compelled to swear never
to reveal the casket he had chosen and
never to woo another woman.
The Prince of Arragon was the next
suitor to try his luck. In his turn he
chose the silver casket, only to learn
from the note it bore that he was a fool.
True to his promise to Bassanio,
Antonio arranged to borrow three
thousand ducats from Shylock, a wealthy Jew.
Antonio was to have the use of the
money for three months. If he should
be unable to return the loan at the end
of that time, Shylock was to have the
right to cut a pound of flesh from any
part of Antonio's body. In spite of
Bassanio's objections, Antonio insisted on
accepting the terms, for he was sure his
ships would return a month before the
payment would be due. He was
confident that he would never fall into the
power of the Jew, who hated Antonio
because he often lent money to others
without charging the interest Shylock
demanded.
That night Bassanio planned a feast
and a masque. In conspiracy with his
friend, Lorenzo, he invited Shylock to
be his guest. Lorenzo, taking advantage
of her father's absence, ran off with the
Jew's daughter, Jessica, who did not
hesitate to take part of Shylock's fortune
with her.
2331

Shylock was cheated not only of his
daughter and his ducats but also of his
entertainment, for the wind suddenly
changed and Bassanio set sail for
Belmont.
As the days passed, the Jew began to
hear news of mingled good and bad
fortune. In Genoa, Jessica and Lorenzo
were making lavish use of the money she
had taken with her. The miser flinched
at the reports of his daughter's
extravagance, but for compensation he had the
news that Antonio's ships, on which his
fortune depended, had been wrecked at
sea.
Portia, much taken with Bassanio when
he came to woo her, would have had
him wait before he tried to pick the
right casket. Sure that he would fail
as the others had, she hoped to have
his company a little while longer.
Bassanio, however, was impatient to try
his luck. Not deceived by the ornate-
ness of the gold and silver caskets, but
philosophizing that true virtue is inward
virtue, he chose the lead box. In it was
a portrait of Portia. He had chosen
correctly.
To seal their engagement, Portia gave
Bassanio a ring. She declared he must
never part with it, for if he did it would
signify the end of their love.
Gratiano, a friend who had
accompanied Bassanio to Belmont, spoke up.
He was in love with Portia's waiting-
woman, Nerissa. With Portia's delighted
approval, Gratiano planned that both
couples should be married at the same
time.
Bassanio's joy at his good fortune was
soon blighted. Antonio wrote that he
was ruined, all his ships having failed
to return. The time for payment of the
loan being past due, Shylock was
demanding his pound of flesh. In closing,
Antonio declared that he cleared
Bassanio of his debt to him. He wished only
to see his friend once more before his
death.
Portia declared that the double
wedding should take place at once. Then
her husband, with her dowry of six
thousand ducats, should set out for
Venice in an attempt to buy off the Jew.
After Bassanio and Gratiano had gone,
Portia declared to Lorenzo and Jessica,
who had come to Belmont, that she and
Nerissa were going to a nunnery, where
they would live in seclusion until their
husbands returned. She committed the
charge of her house and servants to
Jessica and Lorenzo.
Instead of taking the course she had
described, however, Portia set about
executing other plans. She gave her
servant, Balthasar, orders to take a note
to her cousin, Doctor Bellario, a famous
lawyer of Padua, in order to secure a
message and some clothes from him. She
explained to Nerissa that they would go
to Venice disguised as men.
The Duke of Venice, before whom
Antonio's case was tried, was reluctant
to exact the penalty which was in Shy-
lock's terms. When his appeals to the
Jew's better feelings went unheeded, he
could see no course before him except
to give the money-lender his due.
Bassanio also tried to make Shylock relent
by offering him the six thousand ducats,
but, like the Duke, he met only a firm
refusal.
Portia, dressed as a lawyer, and
Nerissa, disguised as her clerk, appeared in the
court. Nerissa offered the duke a letter
from Doctor Bellario. The doctor
explained that he was very ill, but that
Balthasar, his young representative, would
present his opinion in the dispute.
When Portia appealed to the Jew's
mercy, Shylock answered with a demand
for the penalty. Portia then declared
that the Jew, under the letter of the
contract, could not be offered money in
exchange for Antonio's release. The only
alternative was for the merchant to
forfeit his flesh.
Antonio prepared his bosom for the
knife, for Shylock was determined to
take his portion as close to his enemy's
heart as he could cut. Before the
operation could begin, however, Portia,
examining the contract, declared that it
contained no clause stating that Shylock
2332

could have any blood with the flesh.
The Jew, realizing that he was
defeated, offered at once to accept the
six thousand ducats, but Portia declared
that he was not entitled to the money
he had already refused. She stated also
that Shylock, an alien, had threatened
the life of a Venetian citizen. For that
crime Antonio had the right to seize
half of his property and the state the
remainder.
Antonio refused that penalty, but it
was agreed that one half of Shylock's
fortune should go at once to Jessica
and Lorenzo. Shylock was to keep the
remainder, but it too was to be willed the
couple. In addition, Shylock was to
undergo conversion. The defeated man
agreed to those terms.
Pressed to accept a reward, Portia
took only a pair of Antonio's gloves and
the ring which she herself had given Bas-
sanio. Nerissa, likewise, managed to
secure Gratiano's ring. Then the pair
started back for Belmont, to be there
when their husbands returned.
Portia and Nerissa arrived home
shortly before Bassanio and Gratiano
appeared in company with Antonio.
Pretending to discover that their husbands'
rings were missing, Portia and Nerissa at
first accused Bassanio and Gratiano of
unfaithfulness. At last, to the surprise
of all, they revealed their secret, which
was vouched for by a letter from Doctor
Bellario. For Jessica and Lorenzo they
had the good news of their future
inheritance, and for Antonio a letter,
secured by chance, announcing that some
of his ships had arrived safely in port.
2BBB

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: England
Firat nmettted: c. 1597
Principal characters:
Sir John Falstaff, a rogue
Fenton, a young gentleman
Slender, a foolish gentleman
Ford, and
Page, two gentlemen living at Windsor
Doctor Caius, a French physician
Mistress Ford, Ford's wire
Mistress Page, Page's wife
Anne Page, daughter of the Pages
Mistress Quickly, servant of Doctor Caius
Critique:
Never was there a more lovable, merrier
rogue than Sir John Falstaff. Indeed he
has become the very essence of all
stumbling, drunken scoundrels, but scoundrels
against whom no one can long hold a
grudge. It is to Falstaff that The Merry
Wives of Windsor owes its great
popularity. The plot is simple but highly amusing,
a story of women plotting toward the
ruination of one man and the complete
subjection of another. The resulting situations
are hilarious. The subplot of love
conquering all is another favorite of the theater.
But it is Falstaff, the lovable oaf, who
brings the reader back to this play again
and again.
The Story:
Sir John Falstaff was, without doubt,
a rogue. True, he was fat, jolly, and in a
way lovable, but he was still a rogue. His
men robbed and plundered the citizens of
Windsor, but he himself was seldom
taken or convicted for his crimes. His
fortunes being at low ebb, he hit upon a
plan to remedy that situation. He had met
Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, two good
ladies who held the purse strings in their
respective houses. Falstaff wrote identical
letters to the two good ladies, letters
protesting undying love for each of them.
The daughter of one of the ladies, Anne
Page, was the center of a love triangle.
Her father wished her to marry Slender,
a foolish gentleman who did not love her
or anyone else, but who would marry any
girl that was recommended to him by his
cousin, the justice. But Mistress Page, on
the other hand, would have her daughter
married to Doctor Caius, a French physi
cian then in Windsor. Anne herself loved
Fenton, a fine young gentleman who was
deeply in love with her. All three lovers
paid the doctor's housekeeper, Mistress
Quickly, to plead their cause with Anne,
for Mistress Quickly had convinced each
that she alone could persuade Anne to
answer yes to a proposal. Mistress Quickly
was, in fact, second only to Falstaff in her
plotting and her trickery.
Unknown to poor Falstaff, Mistress
Ford and Mistress Page compared the
letters received from him, alike except for
the lady's name. They decided to cure him
of his knavery once and for all. Mistress
Ford arranged to have him come to her
house that night when her husband would
be away. Mistress Page wrote that she
would meet him as soon as she could
cautiously arrange it. In the meantime two
former followers of Falstaff had told the
two husbands of that knave's designs on
their wives. Page refused to believe his
wife unfaithful, but Ford became jealous
and planned to spy on his wife. Disguising
himself as Mr. Brook, he called on Fal-
2334

staff. His story was that he loved Mistress
Ford but could not win her love, and he
came to pay Falstaff to court her for him.
His stratagem was successful; he learned
from Falstaff that the knight already had
a rendezvous with the lady that very
night.
At the appointed time, having
previously arranged to have several servants
assist in the plot, the two ladies were ready
for Falstaff. While Falstaff was trying to
make love to Mistress Ford, Mistress Page
rushed in and said that Ford was on his
way home. Quickly the ladies put Falstaff
in a clothesbasket and had him carried out
by the servants, to be dumped into the
Thames. Ford did arrive, of course, for,
unknown to his wife, he knew Falstaff was
to be there. But after looking high and low
without finding the rogue, he apologized
to his wife for his suspicions. Mistress
Ford did not know which had been the
most sport, having Falstaff dumped into
the river or listening to her husband's
discomfited apologies.
The ladies had so much fun over theii
first joke played on Falstaff that they
decided to try another. Mistress Ford then
sent him another message, this one saying
that her husband would be gone all of the
following morning, and she asked
Falstaff to call on her at that time so that she
could make amends for the previous affair
of the basket. Again Ford, disguised as
Brook, called on Falstaff, and again he
learned of the proposed assignation. He
learned also of the method of FalstafFs
previous escape and vowed the old
roisterer should not again slip through his
fingers.
When Mistress Ford heard from
Mistress Page that Ford was returning
unexpectedly, the ladies dressed Falstaff in the
clothes of a fat woman whom Ford hated.
Ford, finding the supposed woman in his
house, drubbed the disguised knight
soundly and chased him from the house.
Again Ford searched everywhere for
Falstaff, and again he was forced to apologize
to his wife in the presence of the friends
he had brought with him to witness her
disgrace. The two ladies thought his
discomfiture the funniest part of their joke.
Once more the wives planned to plague
poor Falstaff, but this time they took their
husbands into their confidence. When
Mistress Page and Mistress Ford told
about the letters they had received from
Falstaff and explained the details of the
two adventures already carried out, Ford
felt very contrite over his former
suspicions of his wife. Eagerly the husbands
joined their wives in a final scheme
intended to bring Falstaff to public shame.
The ladies would persuade Falstaff to
meet them in the park at midnight.
Falstaff was to be disguised as Heme the
Hunter, a horned legendary huntsman
said to roam the wintry woods each
midnight. There he would be surrounded by
Anne Page and others dressed as fairies
and elves. After he had been frightened
half to death, the husbands would accost
him and publicly display his knavery.
But a quite different event had also
been planned for that night. Page plotted
to have Slender seize Anne in her
disguise as the fairy queen and carry her
away to marry her. At the same time
Mistress Page arranged to have Doctor Caius
find Anne and take her away to be
married. But Anne had other plans. She and
Fenton agreed to meet in the park and
under cover of the dark and confusion flee
her parents and her two unwelcome
suitors.
All plans were put into effect. Falstaff,
after telling the supposed Brook that on
this night he would for a certainty win
Mistress Ford for him, donned the horns
of a stag and met the two ladies at the
appointed place. Quickly the fairies and
witches surrounded him, and the women
ran away to join their husbands and watch
the an. Poor Falstaff tried to pretend that
he was asleep or dead, but the merry
revelers burned his fingers with tapers
they carried, and pinched him
unmercifully. When Falstaff threw off his
disguise, Ford and Page and their wives laid
hold of him and soundly scolded him for
his silly gallantry and bombast. The wives
ridiculed his fat and his ugliness and
2335

swore that none would ever have such a
fool for a lover. But such was Falstaff's
nature that no one could hate him foi
long. After he had admitted his guilt and
his stupidity they all forgave him.
While all this merriment was going on,
Anne and Fen ton had stolen away to be
married. They returned while the rest
were busy with Falstaff. But Page and his
wife were in such good humor over all
that had occurred that they forgave the
young lovers and bestowed on them their
blessing. Then the whole company,
Falstaff with them, retired to Page's house,
there to laugh again over the happenings
of that night.
2336

MESSER MARCO POLO
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Donn Byrne (1889-1928)
Type of plot: Exotic romance
Time of plot: Thirteenth century
Locale: Venice and China
First published: 1921
Principal characters:
Marco Polo, the Venetian
Kubla Khan, Emperor of China
Golden Bells, Kubla Khan's daughter
Li Po, court poet
Sanang, court magician
Critique:
A mixture of three elements gives this
simple tale a unique flavor. A modern
Irishman tells the adventures of a
Christian Italian in pagan China. Irish
mysticism mingles with the mystery of the
East to produce a romantic and tragic
love story based upon the visit of Marco
Polo to the court of Kubla Khan. The
author succeeds in bringing together, in
one framework, folk tale, history, and
imagination. His simple narrative style
is of a kind very rarely found among
modern authors; it suggests the fireside
stories and poems of the past which
passed from generation to generation by
word of mouth.
The Story:
On the first night of spring young
Marco Polo deserted his work in his
father's counting-house and wandered
restlessly through the streets of Venice.
He entered a wine shop in the hope of
talking with some of the foreign people
gathered there. The people inside were
gambling and drinking, except for one
man who sat by himself at a table. Marco
recognized him as a Chinese sea captain
and sat down to talk to him. In a friendly
argument over the merits of their native
countries, the sea captain got the better
of young Marco by describing the beauty
of Golden Bells, the daughter of Kubla
Khan.
From that night on, the image of
Golden Bells haunted Marco Polo. When
his father and uncle, Nicholas and
Matthew Polo, returned from China, Marco
told them that he wished to go with
them on their next trip. Kubla Khan
had told the Polos to bring a Christian
missionary back with them from Venice,
and they chose young Marco to play the
part. He was delighted, for he had
convinced himself that it was his mission
to convert Golden Bells to Christianity.
The wise old Pope gave his blessing
to Marco as he started out for China, but
he warned the young man not to expect
to convert many pagans. Marco, his
uncle, and his father set out with their
camel caravan for the court of Kubla
Khan. Marco saw on the way many
strange countries and cities. At last the
travelers came to the Desert of the
Singing Sands. Many deserted or died until
there were only six of the caravan left.
When a great sandstorm came upon
them, Marco struggled until his strength
gave out and he lay down to die.
Meanwhile Golden Bells sat in the
garden of Kubla Khan and talked with
Li Po, the court poet. Sanang, the court
magician, joined them. He told Golden
Bells that he could see in his crystal
ball the troubles of Marco Polo. Golden
Bells felt pity for the young man and
begged Sanang to save him from death
in the Desert of the Singing Sands.
Through his magic power Sanang called
upon the Tartar tribesmen to rescue
Marco. Golden Bells was joyful when
MESSER MARCO POLO by Donn Byrne. By permission of the publishers, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
Copyright, 1921, by The Century Co. Renewed, 1949, by Dorothea Craig.
2337

the old magician assured her the young
man had been saved. Li Po smiled and
said he would write a marriage song for
her. She said that she was in love with
no one, but she refused to sing any
more the sad "Song of the Willow
Branches."
The desert tribesmen brought Marco
before Kubla Khan and Golden Bells.
The emperor asked him to tell something
about the Christian religion. Marco
quoted the Beatitudes and related the
life of Christ, but Kubla Khan and his
court were not impressed by that story
of gentleness and love. Golden Bells
alone, of all the court, told Marco that
she was his convert.
Marco began to instruct Golden Bells
and told her all the Bible stories he knew.
She was charmed by his voice. He tried
to explain to her what sin was, but
she could not believe that the beauty of
a woman was a curse. Finally, when
he had told her all he knew of
Christianity, he spoke of returning to Venice.
Golden Bells was heartbroken. At last
Marco took her in his arms.
For three years they lived happily;
then Golden Bells died. Marco remained
on for fourteen years in the service of
the emperor. One evening Kubla Khan
came to Marco with Li Po and Sanang
and told him that he should return to
Venice, for some of the people in the
land were jealous of Marco's power. It
was for his own good that he should
return.
Marco refused to go. He did not wish
to leave the place where he had been
happy. Only a sign from the dead Golden
Bells would make him leave. Then
Sanang cast a magic spell and Li Po
sang a magic song. A ghostly moonlight
appeared at the end of the palace
garden, and there, slim in the moonlight,
stood Golden Bells. With her pleading
eyes and soundless lips she begged Marco
to return to Venice; then she
disappeared. Marco was overcome with grief,
but he promised to go. As he took leave
of his three old friends, he said that he
was going home to be an exile in his
own land. The sunshine and the rain
of China—and the memory of Golden
Bells—would be always in his heart.
2338

THE METAMORPHOSES
Type of work: Collection of narrative poems
Author: Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 B.C.-j
First transcribed: Before A.D. 8
Unlike most Greek and Roman
authors, Ovid wrote almost entirely to
entertain. The tone of the literature of the
ancient world, whether written by Greeks
or Romans, is ordinarily edifying, but that
tradition Ovid discarded. For this reason,
and because of the subject matter of
Ovid's Ars amatoria (Art of Love),
Europeans and Americans have usually been
doubtful of Ovid's true literary stature.
Anyone who has read Ovid seriously will
usually agree, however, that to take his
writings as they were intended—to
entertain—opens the door to granting his
writings a conspicuous place in Roman
literature.
The Metamorphoses is generally
conceded to be Ovid's finest work. In this
collection of poems Ovid managed to
draw together artistically most of the
stories of Greek and Roman legend. More
than two hundred of the myths of the
ancient world have been rendered into an
organic work, the unifying theme being
that of transformation from one kind to
another, as Jove changed himself into a
swan, Narcissus was transformed into a
flower, Tereus was turned into a bird,
and Midas was given the ears of an ass.
These stories were arranged by Ovid into
fifteen books, containing in the original
Latin almost twelve thousand lines of
sweetly flowing verse written in the
dactylic hexameters common in classical
poetry. The poems were written when
Ovid was a mature man of perhaps fifty,
shortly before Augustus Caesar banished
him to the little town of Tomi on the
shores of the Black Sea, far from the city
that Ovid loved. Although Ovid wrote
that he destroyed his own copy of the
Metamorphoses, apparently because he
was dissatisfied with his performance, he
also seemed to feel that the work would
live after him. In his epilogue to the
Metamorphoses he wrote:
l.D. 18)
Now I have done my work. It will
endure,
I trust, beyond Jove's anger, fire, and
sword,
Beyond Time's hunger. The day will
come, I know,
So let it come, that day which has no
power
Save over my body, to end my span of
life
Whatever it may be. Still, part of me,
The better part, immortal, will be borne
Above the stars; my name will be
remembered
Wherever Roman power rules
conquered lands,
I shall be read, and through all
centuries,
If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,
I shall be living, always.
As if it were necessary for a work of
literary art to have some edifying or moral
purpose, the poems have sometimes been
regarded primarily as a useful handbook
on Greek and Roman mythology.
Certainly the work does contain a wealth of
the ancient legends, and many later
writers have become famous in part
because they were able to build on the
materials Ovid put at their disposal.
However, the Metamorphoses deserves
remembrance as a work of art in its own right.
Modern writers view stories about the
gods of the pagan Pantheon in a
different light from that in which such tales
were regarded in the time of Ovid and
Augustus Caesar. Where we can smile,
Ovid's light, even facetious, tone must
have been regarded by serious Romans
as having more than a little touch of
blasphemy. Perhaps his irreverent
attitudes may even have been a partial cause
for his exile, for rulers have always been
sensitive people and Augustus was at the
time attempting moral reforms. It must
be kept in mind, too, that Ovid, after
treating good-humoredly of the other
gods, turned at the end of the Meta-

morphoses to describe the transformation
of Julius Caesar to godhood. How
seriously he meant to be taken, from the tone
of the poem, is open to question.
Ovid began the collection with a
description of how the universe came into
being with the metamorphosis of Chaos,
the unshaped stuff, into Cosmos, the
ordered universe. Having described how the
Lord of Creation, 'Whatever god it was,"
established order in the universe, he
proceeded to give a picture of the four ages.
Like other ancients, Ovid had a different
concept of the past from that of modern
times. He began his account with the
Golden Age, when justice and right
existed everywhere, when law and
punishment were absent because they were
unnecessary. When Saturn was sent to the
land of shadowy death, wrote Ovid, and
Jove became chief of the gods, then came
the Age of Silver, when men first built
houses to guard themselves against the
seasons and planted fields to provide
themselves with a harvest. Next came the
Age of Bronze, when warlike instincts
and aggression came into being, to be
succeeded in its turn by the Iron Age,
when modesty, truth, and righteousness
were displaced by trickery, violence, and
swindling. So bad was this age that Jove
struck down the living and nature
brought forth a new race of men who
were, as Ovid put it, "men of blood."
Of this race, all except Deucalion and
Pyrrha, a righteous man and woman,
were wiped from the face of the earth by
Jove, who with Neptune's aid caused a
flood to cover the globe. Ovid's stories of
the Creation and the Flood, told in a
pagan environment, are strikingly similar
to the stories of the same phenomena
told, in keeping with Judaic tradition, in
the Old Testament.
Much of Ovid's poetry in the
Metamorphoses deals with love. It is not
romanticized, sentimentalized love that Ovid
presented, however, for he recognized the
physical reality of men and women for one
another, and his gods and goddesses
exhibit human passions. In love, as Ovid
described it, there is often found a strain of
cruelty and brutality; the veneer of
civilization is thin enough to let his readers
sense the savagery of violence, revenge,
and cruelty underlying human culture. In
this connection one recalls Lycaon boiling
and broiling the flesh of a human hostage
before the altar of Jove, Tereus raping
Philomela and then cutting out her
tongue to keep the deed a secret, a satyr
being flayed alive by Apollo, the son of
Latona, for trying to surpass him at
playing the flute, sixteen-year-old Athis
having his face battered to mere splinters of
bone by Perseus, and Pelias' daughters'
letting their father's blood at the behest
of Medea. In these stories gory details are
described in the account of each brutal
act; brains, blood, broken bones, and
screams of agony and hate fill the lines.
Love and hate, both powerful, basic
human emotions, are close in Ovid's
Metamorphoses.
Mere enumeration does not do Ovid's
collection of stories in the Metamorphoses
the justice it deserves. Practically every
phase of the Graeco-Roman mythology is
at least represented in the fifteen
divisions of the work. The stories are artfully
drawn together with consummate skill.
Yet the noteworthy fact in assessing
Ovid's mastery of his materials and craft
is that he himself was a skeptic who did
not believe in these stories as being true
in the sense of really having happened.
Without the sincerity of belief, he
nevertheless wrote in such a way that he
induces in the reader that mood which
Coleridge, almost two thousand years
later, described as the "willing suspension
of disbelief."
Ovid placed in his pages believable
personalities. His men and women, his
gods and goddesses, hate and love as
human beings have always done. The
twentieth-century reader recognizes in himself
the same surges and flows of emotion that
he finds in Ovid's poetry. Our world is,
in this way, little different from the
Roman empire of Ovid and Augustus,
despite technological advances.
Another element of Ovid's style that
comes through in translation is the large
2340

amount of specific detail. At almost any
point in the Metamorphoses there is a
vivid picture of the people or the action,
as when Myrrha, in "Cinyras and Myr-
rha," flings herself, face down, to cry into
her pillow; when Pygmalion lavishes gifts
of pet birds, sea shells, lilies, and lumps
of precious amber on his beloved statue;
or when Dorylas, in "The Battle of the
Centaurs," is wounded by Peleus and
dies trailing his entrails, treading and
tangling them with his centaur's hoofs.
We are reminded in such stories that
Ovid's Rome had a culture that included
not only greatness in art but also the grim
and bloody scenes of death by violence
within the confines of the arena at the
Coliseum.
2341

MICAH CLARKE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Late seventeenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1888
Principal characters:
Micah Clarke, an English youth
Joseph Clarke, his father
Decimus Saxon, an old soldier
Reuben Lockarby, Micah's friend
Sir Gervas, a Cavalier
The Duke of Monmouth, pretender to the throne
Critique:
Micah
historical
Clarke is one of
romances by the
a group of
writer who
will always be best known for his
creation of Sherlock Holmes. Micah Clarke
is a stirring adventure story as well as a
careful reconstruction of the events of
1685, when the Duke of Monmouth
attempted to seize the English throne.
The pictures of the determined
Protestants who preferred death to a Catholic
king are unforgettable.
The Story:
At Havant, near Portsmouth, young
Micah Clarke grew up under the
domination of his strong Puritan father, Joseph
Clarke. He led a vigorous, active life,
but he spent much time praying and
hymn singing. From his father he heard
many tales of Cromwell and the Puritans,
for Joseph had fought in the wars of
those troubled times. Save for a year
at an Established Church school, Micah's
education was taken in hand by his
father himself. At the age of twenty,
Micah was the strongest man in the
village.
As was their custom, Micah and his
good friend Reuben set out to fish in
Langston Bay. They pulled up to their
favorite fishing ground just as the sun
was setting, threw out the large anchor
stone, and set their lines. Not far away
a king's ship stood in for the channel.
The two youths watched her until their
attention was drawn to a large brig not
over a quarter mile distant. The ship
seemed to be out of control, for she
yawed as if there were no hand at the
tiller. While they watched, they heard
two musket shots aboard the brig. A few
minutes later a cannon shot sounded and
the ball passed close to their boat as the
brig came about and headed down the
channel. Reuben urged his friend to pull
hard, for there was a man in the water.
They could soon see him swimming
easily along, and as they came alongside
the swimmer expertly hoisted himself
aboard. He was a tall, lean man, over
fifty but wiry and strong. Their
passenger looked them over coolly, drew out
a wicked knife, and ordered them to
head for the French coast. But when
Micah lifted his oar and threatened to
knock the man over the head, their
passenger gave in meekly and handed over
his knife with good grace. He told them
that he had jumped overboard from the
brig after he and his brother, the
captain, had exchanged musket shots during
a quarrel.
As they headed shoreward, the stranger
heard Reuben use the name Clarke.
Instantly the man became interested and
asked Micah if he were the son of
Joseph Clarke. When Micah replied
that he was, the stranger pulled out his
pouch and showed them that he carried
a letter for Joseph Clarke, as well as for
twenty others in the district. Reassured,
Micah took the man home, where he
learned that the stranger was Decimus
Saxon, a mercenary soldier recruiting
soldiers for the army of the Duke of
Monmouth, the Protestant pretender who
2342

was coming to wrest his throne from
Catholic King James. Joseph was too
old to fight, but mindful of his duty he
permitted Micah to go to the wars. With
many prayers Micah set out in Saxon's
company to meet Monmouth, who was
soon to land somewhere in Devonshire.
Even though he was a good member of
the Church of England, Reuben went
with them for friendship's sake.
Saxon soon threw off his
sanctimonious manner, and to Micah's dismay
showed himself a hardened man of the
world. One night at an inn Saxon fought
a king's officer over a card game and
they were forced to flee, pursued by a
body of horsemen and dogs. Only by
stout courage and luck were they able
to kill the dogs and go on their way.
That night they found shelter in the
hut of a recluse, Sir Jacob Clancy. The
hermit had lost all his estates through
helping Charles II to gain his throne.
Now renounced by the Stuart kings, he
worked at his alchemy in solitude. When
he heard that his guests were going to
join the rebel Monmouth, he pressed on
Micah some bars of gold to give to the
Protestant pretender, and also a scroll
on which was written:
"When thy star is in the trine
Between darkness and shine
Duke Monmouth, Duke Monmouth
Beware of the Rhine."
On another night the trio stayed at
an inn kept by a buxom widow. The
landlady cast sheep's eyes at Saxon, and
that soldier seemed mightily interested.
Reuben and Micah listened anxiously
as he muttered to himself the advantages
of keeping an inn. Saxon was shocked
when a powdered and perfumed knight
came into the tavern and kissed the
widow heartily. In anger he left the
table and the newly-arrived fop took
his seat.
Micah soon learned that the
newcomer was Sir Gervas, a London dandy
who had gambled and drunk away all
his estates. When Sir Gervas heard
that Micah was going to join Monmouth,
he nonchalantly agreed to go with them.
Afterward Saxon returned to the dining-
room. No longer thinking of settling
down as an innkeeper, he welcomed Sir
Gervas as a good recruit to the cause.
The Protestants were rallying at
Taunton, the strong center of the
Dissenters. The mayor, Stephen Timewell,
was a wealthy wool merchant and a
staunch enemy of Rome, and so in
Taunton the ragged but rugged horde of
Dissenters found a secure headquarters.
On their arrival, Saxon was made a
colonel and Micah and Reuben became
captains of infantry. Sir Gervas headed
a hundred musketeers. In all the
turmoil of drill and inspections, the most
prominent figures were the gowned
clergy, who intoned prayers and hymns
for the godly rebels who were to fight
the Lord's battles against Papist King
James.
Micah thrilled to see the arrival of
Monmouth at the head of his small but
growing army. Because of his strength
and manly bearing, Micah soon found
his way into Monmouth's inner circle.
At a council meeting Micah gave over
the gold and the scroll entrusted to him
by Sir Jacob Clancy. Monmouth blanched
at the prophecy, but after nervously
exclaiming he would be fighting in
England, not in Germany, he ignored the
warning.
The Protestants needed at least one
great and powerful lord to support their
cause. So far Monmouth had rallied
the peasants, the ministers, and a few
reckless cavaliers. He knew, however,
that his forces were too weak to meet
the royal army. After prolonged debate
the Protestants decided that the Duke
of Beaufort was the most likely convert.
Lord of all Wales, he had always been an
enemy of Catholicism, and he was under
obligations to Monmouth. Micah was
chosen to bear a message to the noble
lord.
Micah set off alone to make the long
trip from Taunton to Bristol. Near the
channel he half dozed on his horse
during the night. Suddenly he was knocked
from the saddle, bound, and dragged
2343

to a cave, where he learned that
smugglers had kidnaped him because they
had mistaken him for a tax collector.
When he was able to establish his
identity and errand, the smugglers
changed their attitude; they even took
him and his horse in a lugger up the
channel to Bristol.
Micah tried to talk to Beaufort alone,
but he was forced to deliver his papers
in full sight of the duke's court.
Beaufort became very angry at the idea of
deserting King James and had Micah
imprisoned in a dungeon. Expecting to
be hanged as a traitor, Micah resigned
himself to his last night on earth. But
during the night a rope dropped
mysteriously from an opening in the ceiling.
Climbing up, Micah saw that his
deliverer was Beaufort himself. The duke
explained that he had not dared say
anything in council, but if Monmouth could
get to Bristol Beaufort would join him.
Micah carried the news back to
Monmouth, who announced his immediate
decision to march toward Bristol. The
ragged army encamped at Sedgemoor and
decided to make a stand there. As
Monmouth looked over the battlefield, he
was startled to hear the natives refer
to a big ditch nearby as the "rhine."
Indeed the rhine was an omen, for the
small band of Protestant zealots proved
no match for the king's men. As the
battle raged, Monmouth fled in a vain
attempt to save his own skin.
Micah himself was captured and
sentenced to be sold as a slave. Saxon
saved his life. Using money which he
had blackmailed from Beaufort, Saxon
bought Micah's release. Thankfully
Micah set out for the continent to
become a man-at-arms in the foreign wars.
2344

MICHAEL AND HIS LOST ANGEL
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929)
Type of plot: Social tragedy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England and Italy
First presented: 1896
Principal characters:
The Reverend Michael Feversham, vicar at Cleveheddcm
Andrew Gibbard, a parish clerk
Rose Gibbard, his daughter
Audrie Lesden, Michael's mistress
Sir Lyolf Feversham, Michael's uncle
Father Hilary, a priest
Critique:
Although Michael and His Lost Angel
was not one of Henry Arthur Jones' most
popular plays at the time of its
presentation, he himself considered it his most
serious and best work. The play, which
has become a familiar anthology piece, is
the tragic story of a man's loss of faith in
himself, for the death of Audrie Lesden
is secondary to the disintegration of
Michael Feversham's own soul. The
character development is excellent, accurately
portrayed, with deep insight into a
minister's struggle with his own conscience.
The Story:
The Reverend Michael Feversham
regretted that he must deal harshly with
Rose, the daughter of his clerk, Andrew
Gibbard. Because the girl had sinned,
and Andrew had lied about Rose and her
now dead child, Michael sternly insisted
upon a public confession before the whole
congregation of Cleveheddon Church.
Only in that way, he believed, could
Andrew and his daughter be absolved of
their sin and deceit. Later Michael sent
the girl away to an Anglican religious
house where she could start life anew.
Andrew owed everything he had in
life to Michael, but he could not forgive
him for exposing Rose to the scorn of
the smug, self-righteous parishioners. He
Recognized, however, the moral fervor
which had prompted Michael's attitude
and convictions.
Michael, having dedicated his life to
his church and his people, felt that he
was watched over by his dead mother,
whose picture hung in his study. She
was his guardian angel, he thought,
knowing everything he said or did. He
knew he must try always to be worthy of
her guardianship.
When Audrie Lesden came to his
parish, he was afraid he would be unworthy
of his guardian angel's love and care.
Audrie was a wealthy woman, reported a
widow, who had been attracted to
Michael because of a book he had written.
Although she subscribed large sums for
Michael's project of restoring the
minster of Saint Decuman, an ancient Gothic
church at Cleveheddon, she was a
worldly woman, one torn in half by her
emotions and desires. She wanted to be a
good woman, to be worthy of Michael,
but she wished also to enjoy the pleasures
of the world. Sir Lyolf Feversham,
Michael's kinsman, warned the young
clergyman against her. Michael, thinking her
possessed of great possibilities for good
or evil, fought against her influence and
pleaded with her to use him only as her
spiritual adviser. At the same time he
found himself almost helpless against her
charm.
Andrew Gibbard watched Michael's
struggle with an evil pleasure which he
too fought against. He knew that the
vicar had acted as he thought right in
his daughter's case, but he was human
enough to enjoy seeing a saintly man
2345

learn what temptations of the flesh were
like.
The ancient shrine on Saint
Decuman's Island in the Bristol Channel was
a place to which Michael often went for
study and meditation. One day Audrie
took an excursion steamer to the island
and remained behind after the boat had
returned to the mainland. It was then
impossible for her or Michael to return
to Cleveheddon before the next day. She
and Michael spent the night on the
island. Although he did his best to resist
her, he found himself weak. They sinned,
just as Rose Gibbard had sinned.
Afterward Michael tried to conceal the truth,
more to protect Audrie than himself, but
Andrew finally uncovered the clergyman's
secret. He did not reproach Michael; in
fact, he promised to keep silent. For the
next several months, however, Michael
could sense Andrew's scorn because the
vicar did not make the same confession
he had forced from Andrew and his
daughter.
Audrie went to Michael with some
disturbing news. She had heard from her
husband, whom she had allowed
everyone to believe dead. Their married life
had been wretched, she said, and at last
che had paid him to go to America and
never bother her again. Now he was
returning to England. Michael advised her
to go back to her husband; that course,
he said, was the road to true repentance
for their sin. After Audrie had left
Cleveheddon she continued to send him money
for the restoration of the minster.
Although the money was sent anonymously,
Michael knew the gifts came from her.
Andrew also guessed the source of the
donations.
When the minster of Saint Decuman
had been restored, Michael sent for Rose
Gibbard. Having decided that he could
no longer live with his own conscience
if he did not confess publicly, he wanted
the girl to witness his disgrace so that she
would know that he could be just and
unsparing with himself as well. Andrew
tried to dissuade him from his plan, but
Michael was firm. Then Andrew really
forgave Michael and blessed him.
At the church, shortly before the
dedication service, Audrie came to Michael
again. Her husband had died and she
hoped that she and Michael might love
each other honorably at last. But Michael
felt that their sin had been too great
ever to allow them happiness with each
other. He sent her away after making
her promise not to attend the service the
next day.
Before the reconsecration of the
minster the next morning, Michael bared his
sin to his congregation. He told them
that he could no longer be their vicar
because he was not worthy, and he asked
the people to pray for him after he left
the parish.
A year later Michael was living in a
monastery at Majano, Italy. He was
almost ready to change his faith and join
the Catholic Church in order to find
peace of mind. Also at Majano were Sir
Lyolf and Father Hilary, a priest whom
Michael had known at Saint Decuman's
shrine. Longing for Audrie had made the
young clergyman almost physically ill.
Even his mother's picture brought him no
happiness; he felt that his guardian angel
had justifiably deserted him because of
his wickedness.
During his absence from the monastery
Audrie arrived. She was sick and soon to
die, and she wanted to see Michael once
more. Sir Lyolf was greatly concerned
over her condition. When Michael
returned, Sir Lyolf reminded him of his
promise that ne would go to Audrie if
she ever needed him. Michael was almost
beside himself when he saw her and
realized that she was dying. Audrie, still
torn between love for him and love for
the world, said that she would become
his guardian angel, that they would never
part again. His mother, she whispered,
would forgive. As she died in his arms,
Michael threw himself on her body and
2346

cried to Father Hilary that he was willing again. He asked the priest to help him to
to suffer all but that he must meet Audrie believe.
2347

MID-CHANNEL
Type of work: Drama
Author: Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934)
Time:c. 1900
Locale: London
First presented: 1909
Principal characters:
Theodore Blundell, a stockbroker
Zoe Blundell, his wife
Leonard Ferris, Zoe's friend
Ethel Pierpoint, Zoe's protege
Realistic drama tends to depend upon
motivational interrelationships of
characters within a specific environment or
society for its impact. Henrik Ibsen, by
his careful and selective writing and
arrangement, made a place for realism in
the modern theater. Believability of
character was important, but more significant
was the door that Nora slammed at the
end of Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879).
Its impact was heard around the world.
Thereafter a new and important use was
to be made of the theater, and the social
thesis play became a recognized and
valuable adjunct to the literature of the stage.
By the end of the nineteenth century
many playwrights were following Ibsen's
example. Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur
Wing Pinero, Bernard Shaw, and others
cast their works in the selectively
realistic mold of the Norwegian. The success
of these writers and the durability of
their works depend on their language and
characterization, not on their plots, many
of which are remarkably similar. Upon
reading the plays of Pinero and Jones, in
particular, one is struck by their old-
fashioned language and by their
stereotyped characters. On the other hand,
Shaw's brittle wit and absolute addiction
to the language itself keeps his plays as
fresh and true today as when they were
written.
Pinero, writing concurrently with
Shaw in an England that was still
relatively ignorant of modern drama,
achieved, in 1893, his first real success
with The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, which
remains his most durable play. He
became known as a craftsman of the well-
made play, chiefly concerned with social
commentary. However, time has
heightened a certain pretentiousness in his
plays and in his concern with what were
then accepted as ultrarealistic characters.
Pinero's plays depend heavily upon
plot complications rather than the
inevitability of circumstance for their action.
WHhat should seem headlong and
unavoidable is rather a series of deviously
contrived twists of storytelling designed
to keep the spectator at all times
interested. Pretentiously tragic, his plays now
seem merely melodramatic. The
transparent and pat endings remove the total
impact of a higher, more energizing form
of theater; resolutions are mechanical and
forced.
The late nineteenth-century dramatists
were unconsciously setting a trap for
their successors, for the melodramatic
form which they evolved almost
automatically continues to harass playwrights
to this day. Escapes from it have been
few. Shaw managed because of his wit,
deliberate artifice, and a rebellious spirit.
Those who inadvertently copied Ibsen in
search of tragedy were almost invariably
doomed to conventions of theme and
situation.
Mid-Channel appeared in 1909, after
Pinero had written a series of successes
that began with The Second Mrs.
Tanqueray in 1893. As theater, it abounds
in plot complications and moral
preachments which make for interest but remove
a unifying force from the play. The
central character, Zoe Blundell, does
contribute a certain cohesiveness, but
because of the monotony of Pinero's prose,
2348

interest in her lags.
Zoe and Theodore Blundell are
wealthy and fashionable, but their
marriage is in mid-channel; there is little
love in their relationship, and there are
no children. To amuse herself, Zoe has
taken on a series of men younger than
she, whom she calls her tame robins.
They squire her about in the social
world and sip endless cups of tea while
they amuse and entertain her. One of
them, Leonard Ferris, makes the mistake
of falling in love with her. She and
Theodore finally agree to separate after
another of their petty quarrels, and when
Zoe goes to Italy to forget, Leonard
follows her. Theodore takes a mistress
during her absence.
When Zoe returns in bad health, a
mutual friend tries to effect a
reconciliation; but the old bickering begins again,
making an adult relationship impossible.
In the meantime Zoe's young friend,
Ethel Pierpoint, has confessed her love
for Leonard. Leonard, on the rebound
from Zoe, goes to Ethel and they plan
marriage. Zoe admits having had an
affair with Leonard while they were in
Italy, and Theodore swears that he will
divorce Zoe and force Leonard to marry
her. When Zoe finds that Leonard is
committed to Ethel, she ends it all by
throwing herself from an upstairs window
in her estranged husband's flat.
Zoe has some fascination as a
tormented character. Wealthy and spoiled,
childless and unhappy, she presents a
rather touching picture of a woman
approaching middle age who has never
fulfilled her place as wife and mother. Yet
she seems constantly at fault and unable
to control herself as a social being.
Interesting relationships exist between Zoe
and her tame robins. They are her
favorites until they become involved with
other women; then, petulantly and
jealously, they are dismissed. She exerts
considerable control over them, while they,
spineless and lacking in ambition, do her
bidding.
Zoe and Theodore are characters
caught in a circumstance of their own
making. They are in mid-channel and
must go one way or the other, or sink.
They are both pictured as intelligent
people, aware of their own shortcomings,
yet they seem powerless to do anything
about their failing marriage. Pride,
ambition, thoughtlessness, and coldness all
enter into their union, but on a petty,
commonplace level. They are people of
few redeeming qualities except for charm
and money.
Zoe's suicide at the end of the play is
an action difficult to explain in the light
of all that has gone before. Pinero
suggests that she has no choice, having been
provided with all the possibilities for
happiness but finding herself unable to use
them. Actually, it is more Pinero the
playwright than Zoe the character who
has no choice but to come to this ending.
Ibsen might have left it all unresolved,
with the events of the future left to the
imagination of the viewer, but with
careful hints presented along the way to
suggest other possibilities. But in the
English theater of sensibility, a satisfactory
conclusion to all entanglements was
demanded. Theatergoers were not yet ready
to face reality unless it condoned a
fulfillment of moral obligations. The
realistic form was a new and foreign thing,
provocative and unpleasant; its
redeeming feature was the lesson it taught.
As a stylist, Pinero lacked the
technique of handling the inevitability of
action in his plots. Circumstances
invented rarely have as much force and
impact as circumstances which inevitably
flow from other events. Predictable
actions are never as convincing as actions
that arise from character itself. Zoe is,
ultimately, an unsuccessful character
because she reacts within a carefully
structured framework, lacking the motivation*
that make for believability and
importance as an individual caught up in an
unavoidable turmoil.
2349

MIDDLEMARCH
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1871-1872
Principal characters:
Dorothea Brooke, an idealistic girl
Edward Casaubon, her scholarly husband
Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's cousin
Tertius Lydgate, a doctor
Rosamond Vincy, whom he married
Celia, Dorothea's sister
Sir James Chettam, Celia's husband
Critique:
In this story of the provincial English
life of the mid-nineteenth century,
George Eliot has contrived a work of art
that exemplifies a theme both noble and
coherent. The lives of her characters, as
she reveals them, indicate the truth of
the writer's statement that ideals are
often thwarted when applied to an
imperfect social order. This novel is an
ample picture of many aspects of English
social life during the Victorian period.
The Story:
Dorothea Brooke and her younger
sister, Celia, were young women of good
birth, who lived with their bachelor
uncle at Tipton Grange near the town
of Middlemarch. So serious was
Dorothea's cast of mind that she was reluctant
to keep jewelry she had inherited from
her dead mother, and she gave all of it
to her sister. Upon reconsideration,
however, she did keep a ring and bracelet.
At a dinner party where Edward
Casaubon, a middle-aged scholar, and Sir
James Chettam both vied for her
attention, she was much more attracted to
the serious-minded Casaubon. Casaubon
must have had an inkling that his chances
with Dorothea were good, for the next
morning he sought her out. Celia, who
did not like his complexion or his moles,
escaped to other interests.
That afternoon Dorothea,
contemplating the wisdom of the scholar, was
walking and by chance encountered Sir
James; he, in love with her, mistook her
silence for agreement and supposed she
might love him in return.
When Casaubon made his proposal of
marriage by letter, Dorothea accepted
him at once. Mr. Brooke, her uncle,
thought Sir James a much better match;
Dorothea's acceptance merely confirmed
his bachelor views that women were
difficult to understand. He decided not to
interfere in her plans, but Celia felt that
the event would be more like a funeral
than a marriage, and frankly said so.
Casaubon took Dorothea, Celia, and
Mr. Brooke to see his home so that
Dorothea might order any necessary changes.
Dorothea, intending in all things to defer
to Casaubon's tastes, said she would make
no changes in the house. During the visit
Dorothea met Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's
second cousin, who seemed to be hardly
in sympathy with his elderly cousin's
marriage plans.
While Dorothea and her new husband
were traveling in Italy, Tertius Lydgate,
an ambitious and poor young doctor, was
meeting pretty Rosamond Vincy, to
whom he was much attracted. Fred
Vincy, Rosamond's brother, had indicated
that he expected to come into a fine
inheritance when his uncle, Mr. Feather-
stone, should die. Vincy, meanwhile, was
pressed by a debt he was unable to pay.
Lydgate became involved in petty local
politics. When the time came to choose
a chaplain for the new hospital of which
2350

Lydgate was the head, the young doctor
realized that it was to his best interest
to vote in accordance with the wishes of
Nicholas Bulstrode, an influential banker
and founder of the hospital. A
clergyman named Tyke received the office.
In Rome, Ladislaw encountered
Dorothea and her middle-aged husband.
Dorothea had begun to realize too late
how pompous and incompatible she
found Casaubon. Seeing her unhappi-
ness, Ladislaw first pitied and then fell
in love with his cousin's wife. Unwilling
to live any longer on Casaubon's charity,
Ladislaw announced his intention of
returning to England and finding some
kind of gainful occupation.
When Fred Vincy's note came due, he
tried to sell a horse at a profit but the
animal turned out to be vicious. Caleb
Garth, who had signed his note, now
stood to lose a hundred and ten pounds
because of Fred's inability to raise the
money. Fred fell ill, and Lydgate was
summoned to attend him. Lydgate used
his professional calls to further his suit
with Rosamond.
Dorothea and her husband returned
from Rome in time to hear of Celia's
engagement to Sir James Chettam. Will
Ladislaw included a note to Dorothea in
a letter he wrote to Casaubon. This
attention precipitated a quarrel which was
followed by Casaubon's serious illness.
Lydgate, who attended him, urged him
to give up his studies for the time being.
To Dorothea, Lydgate confided that
Casaubon had a weak heart and must be
guarded from all excitement.
Meanwhile all the relatives of old Mr.
Featherstone were waiting impatiently for
his death, but he hoped to circumvent
their desires by giving his fortune to Mary
Garth, daughter of the man who had
signed Fred Vincy's note. When she
refused it, he fell into a rage and died soon
afterward. When his will was read, it
was learned he had left nothing to his
relatives; most of his money was to go
to a Joshua Riggs, who was to take the
name of Featherstone, and a part of his
fortune was to endow the Featherstone
Almshouses for old men.
Plans were made for Rosamond's
marriage with Lydgate. Fred Vincy was
ordered to prepare himself finally for the
ministry, since he was to have no
inheritance from his uncle. Mr. Brooke, having
gone into politics, enlisted the help of
Ladislaw in publishing a liberal paper.
Mr. Casaubon had come to dislike
Ladislaw intensely after his cousin had rejected
further financial assistance, and he had
forbidden Ladislaw to enter his house.
Casaubon died suddenly. A codicil to
his will gave Dorothea all of his property
as long as she did not marry Ladislaw.
This strange provision caused Dorothea's
friends and relatives some concern
because if publicly given out, it would
appear that Dorothea and Ladislaw had
been indiscreet.
Mr. Brooke, on the advice of his Tory
friends, gave up his liberal newspaper
and thus cut off his connection with
Ladislaw. The latter realized that
Dorothea's family was in some way trying to
separate him from Dorothea but he
refused to be disconcerted about the matter.
He resolved to stay on in Middlemarch
until he was ready to leave. When he
heard of the codicil to Casaubon's will,
he was more than ever determined to
remain so that he could eventually
disprove the suspicions of the village
concerning him and Dorothea.
Meanwhile Lydgate and Rosamond
had married, and the doctor had gone
deeply in debt to furnish his house.
When he found that his income did not
meet his wife's spendthrift habits, he
asked her to help him economize. He
and his wife began to quarrel. His
practice and popularity decreased.
A disreputable man named Raffles
appeared in Middlemarch. Raffles knew
that Ladislaw's grandfather had amassed
a fortune as a receiver of stolen goods and
that Nicholas Bulstrode, the highly
respected banker, had once been the
confidential clerk of Ladislaw's ancestor.
More than that, Bulstrode's first wife had
been his employer's widow. Upon money
inherited from her, money which should
2351

have gone to Ladislaw's mother,
Bulstrode had built his own fortune.
Already blackmailed by Raffles,
Bulstrode reasoned that the scoundrel would
tell Ladislaw the whole story. To
forestall trouble, he sent for Ladislaw and
offered him an annuity of five hundred
pounds and liberal provision in his will.
Ladislaw, feeling that his relatives had
already tainted his honor, refused,
unwilling to be associated in any way with
the unsavory business. Deciding to leave
Middlemarch, Ladislaw went to London
without the assurance that Dorothea
loved him.
Lydgate drifted deeper into debt.
When he wished to sell what he could
and take cheaper lodgings, Rosamond
managed to make him hold on, to keep
up the pretense of prosperity a little
longer. At the same time Bulstrode gave
up his interest in the new hospital and
withdrew his financial support.
Faced at last with the seizure of his
goods, Lydgate went to Bulstrode and
asked for a loan. The banker advised
him to seek aid from Dorothea and
abruptly ended the conversation. But
when Raffles, in the last stages of
alcoholism, returned to Middlemarch and
Lydgate was called in to attend him,
Bulstrode, afraid the doctor would learn the
banker's secret from Raffles' drunken
ravings, changed his mind and gave Lydgate
a check for a thousand pounds. The loan
came in time to save Lydgate's goods and
reputation. When Raffles died, Bulstrode
felt at peace at last. But it soon became
common gossip that Bulstrode had given
money to Lydgate and that Lydgate had
attended Raffles in his final illness.
Bulstrode and Lydgate were publicly accused
of malpractice in Raffles' death. Only
Dorothea took up Lydgate's defense. The
rest of the town was busy with gossip
over the affair. Rosamond was anxious
to leave Middlemarch to avoid public
disgrace. Bulstrode also was anxious to leave
town after his secret, which Raffles had
told while drunk in a neighboring village,
became known. But he became ill and
his doctors would not permit him to
leave his bed.
Dorothea, sympathetic with Lydgate,
determined to give her support to the
hospital and to try to convince Rosamond
that the only way Lydgate could recover
his honor was by remaining in Middle-
march. Unfortunately, she came upon
Will Ladislaw, to whom poor Rosamond
was pouring out her grief. Afraid
Rosamond was involved with Ladislaw,
Dorothea left abruptly. Angered at the false
position Rosamond had put him in,
Ladislaw explained that he had always loved
Dorothea, but from a distance. When
Dorothea forced herself to return to
Lydgate's house on the following morning,
Rosamond told her of Ladislaw's
declaration. Dorothea realized she was willing
to give up Casaubon's fortune for
Ladislaw's affection.
In spite of the protests of her family
and friends, they were married several
weeks later and went to London to live.
Lydgate and Rosamond lived together
with better understanding and prospects
of a happier future. Fred Vincy became
engaged to Mary Garth, with whom he
had long been in love. For a time
Dorothea's family disregarded her, but they
were finally reconciled after Dorothea's
son was born and Ladislaw was elected
to Parliament.
2352

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Athens
First presented: 1595
Principal characters:
Theseus, Duke of Athens
Lysander, and
Demetrius, in love with Hermia
Bottom, a weaver
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons
Hermia, in love with Lysander
Helena, in love with Demetrius
Oberon, king of the fairies
Titania, queen of the fairies
Puck, fairy page to Oberon
Critique:
The capriciousness, the changeableness
of lovers is obviously the theme of the
perennially romantic and entertaining
comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Shakespeare presents a group of lovers so
irresponsible in their actions that their
freakish behavior can be explained only
by the intervention of supernatural
beings. All of the lovers in the play switch
their affections from time to time, but
they are not responsible for their
infidelity; love makes them irrational. The
play is a delightful comedy, one of the
favorites by the master dramatist. It
enjoys frequent revivals by noted producers
and actors and will undoubtedly always
retain its popularity.
The Story:
Theseus, the Duke of Athens, was to
be married in four days to Hippolyta,
Queen of the Amazons, and he ordered
his Master of the Revels to prepare
suitable entertainment for the nuptials. But
other lovers of ancient Athens were not so
happy as their ruler. Hermia, in love with
Lysander, was loved also by Demetrius,
who had her father's permission to marry
her. When she refused his suit, Demetrius
took his case to Theseus and demanded
that the law be invoked. Theseus upheld
the father, which meant that Hermia
must either marry Demetrius, be placed in
a nunnery, or be put to death. Hermia
swore that she would enter a convent
before she would consent to become
Demetrius' bride.
But Lysander plotted with Hermia to
steal her away from Athens, take her to
the home of his aunt, and there marry
her. They were to meet the following
night in a woods outside the city. Hermia
confided the plan to her good friend
Helena. Demetrius had formerly been
betrothed to Helena, and although he had
switched his love to Hermia he was still
desperately loved by the scorned Helena.
Helena, willing to do anything to gain even
a smile from Demetrius, told him of his
rival's plan to elope with Hermia.
Unknown to any of the four young
people, there were to be others in that
same woods on the appointed night,
Midsummer Eve. A guild of Athenian laborers
was to meet there to practice a play the
members hoped to present in honor of
Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. The
fairies also held their midnight revels in
the woods. Oberon, king of the fairies,
desired for his page a little Indian prince,
but Oberon's queen, Titania, had the boy.
Loving him like a son, she refused to give
him up to her husband. In order to force
Titania to do his bidding, Oberon ordered
his mischievous page, called Puck or
Robin Goodfellow, to secure the juice of
2353

"Love in Idleness," a purple flower once
hit by Cupid's dart. This juice, when
placed in the eyes of anyone sleeping,
caused that person to fall in love with
the first creature seen on awakening.
Oberon planned to drop some of the
juice in Titania's eyes and then refuse
to lift the charm until she gave him the
boy.
While Puck was on his errand,
Demetrius and Helena entered the woods.
Making himself invisible, Oberon heard
Helena plead her love for Demetrius and
heard the young man scorn and berate her.
They had come to the woods to find the
fleeing lovers, Lysander and Hermia.
Oberon, pitying Helena, determined to
aid her. When Puck returned with the
juice, Oberon ordered him to find the
Athenian and place some of the juice in
his eyes so that he would love the girl
who doted on him.
Puck went to do as he was ordered,
while Oberon squeezed the juice of the
flower into the eyes of Titania as she
slept. But Puck, coming upon Lysander
and Hermia as they slept in the woods,
mistook Lysander's Athenian dress for that
of Demetrius and poured the charmed
juice into Lysander's eyes. Lysander was
awakened by Helena, who had been
abandoned deep in the woods by
Demetrius. The charm worked perfectly;
Lysander fell in love with Helena. That
poor girl, thinking that he was mocking
her with his ardent protestations of love,
begged him to stop his teasing and return
to the sleeping Hermia. But Lysander,
pursuing Helena, left Hermia alone in the
forest. When she awakened she feared
that Lysander had been killed, for she
believed that he would never have
deserted her otherwise.
Titania, in the meantime, awakened to
a strange sight. The laborers, practicing
for their play, had paused not far from
the sleeping fairy queen. Bottom, the
comical but stupid weaver who was to play
the leading role, became the butt of
another of Puck's jokes. The prankstei
clapped an ass's head over Bottom's own
foolish pate and led the poor fool a merry
chase until the weaver was at the spot
where Titania lay sleeping. Thus when
she awakened she looked at Bottom, still
wearing the head of an ass. She fell
instantly in love with him and ordered the
fairies to tend his every want. This turn
pleased Oberon mightily. When he
learned of the mistake Puck had made in
placing the juice in Lysander's eyes,
however, he tried to right the wrong by
placing love juice also in Demetrius' eyes, and
he ordered Puck to have Helena close by
when Demetrius awakened. His act made
both girls unhappy and forlorn. When
Demetrius, who she knew hated her, also
began to make love to her, Helena thought
that both men were taunting and
ridiculing her. And poor Hermia, encountering
Lysander, could not understand why he
tried to drive her away, all the time
protesting that he loved only Helena.
Again Oberon triea to set matters
straight. He ordered Puck to lead the two
men in circles until weariness forced them
to lie down and go to sleep. Then a potion
to remove the charm and make the whole
affair seem like a dream was to be placed
in Lysander's eyes. Afterward he would
again love Hermia, and all the young
people would be united in proper pairs.
Titania, too, was to have the charm
removed, for Oberon had taunted her about
loving an ass until she had given up the
prince to him. Puck obeyed the orders
and placed the potion in Lysander's eyes.
The four lovers were awakened by
Theseus, Hippolyta, and Hermia's father,
who had gone into the woods to watch
Theseus' hounds perform. Lysander again
loved Hermia and Demetrius still loved
Helena, for the love juice remained in his
eyes. Hermia's father persisted in his
demand that his daughter marry Demetrius,
but since that young man no longer
wanted her and all four were happy with
their partners, he ceased to oppose
Lysander's suit. Theseus gave them
permission to marry on the day set for his own
wedding to Hippolyta.
Titania also awakened and, like the
2354

others, thought that she had been
dreaming. Puck removed the ass's head from
Bottom and that poor bewildered weaver
made his way back to Athens, reaching
there just in time to save the play from
ruin, for he was to play Pyramus, the
hero. The Master of the Revels tried to
dissuade Theseus from choosing the
laborers play for the wedding night.
Theseus, however, was intrigued by a play
that was announced as both tedious and
brief as well as merry and tragic. So
Bottom and his troupe presented Pyramus
and Thishe, much to the merriment of all
the guests.
After the play all the bridal couples
retired to their suites, and Oberon and
Titania sang a fairy song over them,
promising that they and all their children
would be blessed.
2B55

THE MIKADO
Type of work: Comic opera
Author: W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Middle Ages
Locale: Titipu, Japan
First presented: 1885
Principal characters:
Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner of Titipu
The Mikado of Japan
Nanki-Poo, his son, disguised as a minstrel
Pooh-Bah, Lord High Everything Else
Yum-Yum, Pitti-Sing, and Peep-Bo, wards of Ko-Ko
Katisha, an elderly lady in love with Nanki-Poo
Pish-Tush, a noble lord
Critique:
The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu,
is one of the many works of the famous
light opera collaborators, Sir William
Gilbert and Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan
(1842-1900). Although they began their
creative careers independently, their
greatest fame is the result of the work
they did as co-workers, Gilbert as
librettist and Sullivan as composer, after 1871.
The Mikado is a comic opera in two
acts. Like most of the Gilbert and
Sullivan productions, it contains much light
humor and pointed satire.
The Story:
Ko-Ko had become the Lord High
Executioner in the town of Titipu in old
Japan, and to his courtyard came many
knights and lords to flatter and cajole the
holder of so dread and august an office.
One day a stranger appeared at Ko-Ko's
palace, a wandering minstrel who carried
his guitar on his back and a sheaf of
ballads in his hand. The Japanese lords
were curious about his presence there,
for he was obviously not of noble birth
and therefore could expect no favors
from powerful Ko-Ko. At last Pish-Tush
questioned him about his business with
Ko-Ko. Introducing himself as Nanki-
Poo, the minstrel announced that he
sought Yum-Yum, the beautiful ward of
Ko-Ko, with whom he had fallen in love
while playing the second trombone in
the Titipu town band a year before. He
had heard that Ko-Ko was to be executed
for flirting, a capital offense in the land of
the Mikado, and since Ko-Ko was to die,
he hoped that Yum-Yum would be free
to marry him.
Pish-Tush corrected the rash young
man, telling him that the Mikado had
revoked the death sentence of Ko-Ko and
raised him at the same time to the great
and noble rank of the Lord High
Executioner of Titipu. Nanki-Poo was
crestfallen, for he realized that the ward of
an official so important would never be
allowed to marry a lowly minstrel.
Pooh-Bah, another nobleman, secretly
resented the fact that he, a man of
ancient lineage, had to hold minor office
under a man like Ko-Ko, previously a
mere tailor. But Pooh-Bah was interested
in any opportunity for graft; he was even
willing to betray the so-called state secret
of Ko-Ko's intention to wed his beautiful
ward. Pooh-Bah advised Nanki-Poo to
leave Titipu and by all means to stay
away from Yum-Yum.
Meanwhile, Ko-Ko had been preparing
a list of the types of criminals he intended
to execute—autograph hunters, people
who insist upon spoiling tete-S-tetes,
people who eat peppermint and breathe
in one's face, the man who praises every
country but his own, and apologetic
statesmen.
Uncertain of the privileges of his new
office, the Lord High Executioner
consulted the Lord High Everything Else
about the money to be spent on his im-
2356

pending marriage. Pooh-Bah advised
him, first as Private Secretary, and gave
one opinion; then as Chancellor of the
Exchequer he expressed a contrary point
of view. He had a different opinion for
every one of his many offices and official
titles. They were interrupted, however,
by the appearance of Yum-Yum and her
sisters Peep-Bo and Pitti-Sing. Ko-Ko
attempted to kiss his bride-to-be, but she
openly expressed her reluctance and
distaste.
When the three sisters saw Nanki-Poo
loitering nearby, they rushed to greet
him, astonished to find him in Titipu.
Ko-Ko, baffled and displeased by their
schoolgirl mirth, demanded an
introduction to the stranger.
When Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo had
a few moments alone with each other, the
minstrel revealed his true identity as the
son of the Mikado, and confessed the
reasons for his flight from court. Katisha,
a middle-aged woman in the court, had
misunderstood acts of Nanki-Poo as
overtures of romance. She mentioned them
to the Mikado. He in turn misunderstood
his son's conduct and requested that
Nanki-Poo marry Katisha. Nanki-Poo,
already in love with Yum-Yum, fled the
court in the disguise of a minstrel and
went to Titipu.
That same day Ko-Ko received from
the Mikado a communication which
instructed him to execute somebody within
a month. Otherwise the office of Lord
High Executioner would be abolished;
Ko-Ko would be beheaded for neglecting
his duties, and the city of Titipu would
be ranked as only a village. Perplexed
by this sudden and unhappy news, Ko-
Ko saw no solution until he discovered
Nanki-Poo carrying a rope with which to
hang himself. Seeing a way of escape,
Ko-Ko bargained with Nanki-Poo,
promising him a luxuriant life for thirty days,
if at the end of that time the minstrel
would allow himself to be executed
officially. Nanki-Poo agreed on the condition
that he could marry Yum-Yum at once.
This acceptable solution was upset,
however, by the arrival of Katisha, who
recognized Nanki-Poo and tried to claim
him for her husband. When she learned
that he was to marry Yum-Yum, she
attempted to reveal his true identity, but
her voice was not heard above the singing
and shouting instigated by Yum-Yum.
Hearing of the proposed marriage of
Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo, Pooh-Bah
informed Ko-Ko that the wife of a
beheaded man must be buried alive, a law
which would mean Yum-Yum's death if
Nanki-Poo were executed. Again lost as
to a way out of his problem, Ko-Ko was
spurred to action by the unexpected
arrival of the Mikado himself. Desperate,
he concealed Nanki-Poo and showed the
Mikado a forged certificate of Nanki-
Poo's execution.
But when the Mikado read the name
of the victim, he announced that the
heir-apparent had been executed.
According to law, Ko-Ko's life must now be
forfeited.
Luckily for Ko-Ko, Nanki-Poo and
Yum-Yum appeared at that moment.
Man and wife at last, they were ready
to start on their honeymoon. Seeing his
son happily married and not dead as he
had supposed, the Mikado forgave
everyone concerned in Ko-Ko's plot—the
unfortunate Lord High Executioner,
however, only after he had wed the jilted
Katisha.
2357

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1860
Principal characters:
Mr. Tulliver, owner of the mill on the Floss
Mrs. Tulliver, his wife
Tom Tulliver, their son
Maggie Tulliver, their daughter
Aunt Glegg, and
Aunt Pullet, sisters of Mrs. Tulliver
Philip Wakem, Maggie's suitor
Lucy Deane, cousin of Tom and Maggie
Stephen Guest, Lucy's fianc^
Critique:
This book is more than a revelation of
manners and conventions. It is the happy
union of knowledge with sympathy, of
understanding with determination to
reveal some of the real differences between
people. There is also bitterness in this
book, a kind of grimness which is basic.
People who get on in the book are those
who are iron-willed, who go after what
they want and subdue all emotions and
desires that lie close to the heart. Those
who try to live both by bread and by
spirit end tragically, as do Tom and
Maggie Tulliver, both unfitted for the
roles life chose for them.
The Story:
Dorlcote Mill stood on the banks of the
River Floss near the village of St. Ogg's.
Owned by the ambitious Mr. Tulliver,
it provided a good living for him and his
family, but he dreamed of the day when
his son Tom would climb to a higher
station in life.
Mrs. Tulliver's sisters, who had
married well, criticized Mr. Tulliver's
unseemly ambition and openly predicted
the day when his air castles would bring
himself and his family to ruin. Aunt
Glegg, richest of the sisters, held a note
on his property, and when he quarreled
with her over his plans for Tom's
education, Mr. Tulliver determined to
borrow the money and repay her.
For Tom, who had inherited the placid
arrogance of his mother's people, life was
not difficult. He was resolved to be just
in all his dealings and to deliver
punishment to whomever it was due. His sister
Maggie grew up with an imagination
beyond her years of understanding. Her
aunts predicted she would come to a bad
end because she was tomboyish, dark-
skinned, dreamy, and indifferent to theii
wills. Frightened by ill luck in her
attempts to please her brother Tom, her
cousin Lucy, and her mother and aunts,
Maggie ran away, determined to live with
the gipsies. But she was glad enough to
return. Her father scolded her mother
and Tom for abusing her. Her mother
was sure Maggie would come to a bad
end because of the way Mr. Tulliver
humored her.
Tom's troubles began when his father
sent him to study at Mr. Stelling's school.
Having little interest in spelling,
grammar, or Latin, Tom found himself
wishing he were back at the mill, where he
might dream of someday riding a horse
like his father's and giving orders to
people around him. Mr. Stelling was
convinced that Tom was not only
obstinate but also stupid. Returning home
2358

for the Christmas holidays, Tom learned
that Philip Wakem, son of a lawyer who
was his father's enemy, would also enter
Mr. Stelling's school.
Philip Wakem was a cripple, and so
Tom was not able to beat him up as he
should have liked at first. Philip could
draw, and he knew Latin and Greek.
After they overcame their initial reserve,
the two boys became useful to one
another. Philip admired Torres arrogance
and self-possession and Tom needed
Philip's knowledge to help him in his
studies. But their fathers' quarrel kept
a breach between them. Tom felt that
Philip needed to be watched, that he was
the son of a rascal.
When Maggie came to visit Tom, she
met Philip, and the two became close
friends. Then, after Maggie had been
sent away to school with her cousin Lucy,
Mr. Tulliver became involved in a
lawsuit. Because Mr. Wakem defended the
opposition, Mr. Tulliver said his children
should have as little as possible to do
with Philip.
Mr. Tulliver lost his suit and stood to
lose all his property as well. In order
to pay off Aunt Glegg, he had borrowed
money on his household furnishings.
Now he hoped Aunt Pullet would lend
him the money to pay the debt against
which his household goods stood forfeit.
He could no longer afford to keep Maggie
and Tom in school. Then Mr. Tulliver
learned that Mr. Wakem had bought up
his debts, and the discovery brought on
a stroke. Tom made Maggie promise
never to speak to Philip Wakem again.
Mrs. Tulliver wept because her
household things were to be put up at auction.
In the ruin which followed, Tom and
Maggie rejected the scornful offers of
help from their aunts.
Bob Jakin, a country lout with whom
Tom had fought as a boy, turned up to
offer Tom partnership with him in a
venture where Tom's education would
help Bob's native business shrewdness.
But both were without capital. For the
time being Tom took a job in a
warehouse and studied bookkeeping each
night.
Mr. Wakem bought the mill but
permitted Mr. Tulliver to act as its
manager for wages. It was Wakem's plan
eventually to turn the mill over to his
son. Tulliver, not knowing what else to
do, stayed on as an employee of his
enemy, but he asked Tom to sign a
statement in the Bible that he would wish
the Wakems evil as long as he lived.
Against Maggie's entreaties, Tom signed
his name. Finally Aunt Glegg gave Tom
some money which he invested with Bob
Jakin. Slowly Tom began to accumulate
funds to pay off his father's debts.
Meanwhile Maggie and Philip had
been meeting secretly in the glades near
the mill. One day he asked Maggie if
she loved him. She put him off. Later,
at a family gathering, she betrayed her
feeling for Philip in a manner which
aroused Tom's suspicions. He made her
swear on the Bible not to have anything
more to do with Philip, and then he
sought out Philip and ordered him to stay
away from his sister.
Shortly afterward Tom showed his
father his profits. The next day Mr.
Tulliver thrashed Mr. Wakem and then
suffered another stroke, from which he
never recovered.
Two years later Maggie, now a teacher,
went to visit her cousin, Lucy Deane,
who was also entertaining young Stephen
Guest in her home. One difficulty Lucy
foresaw was that Philip, who was friendly
with both her and Stephen, might absent
himself during Maggie's visit. Stephen
had already decided that Lucy was to be
his choice for a wife, but at first sight
he and Maggie were attracted to one
another. Lucy, blind to what was
happening, was pleased that her cousin
Maggie and Stephen were becoming good
friends.
Maggie asked Tom's permission to see
Philip Wakem at a party Lucy was
giving. Tom replied that if Maggie should
ever consider Philip as a lover, she must
expect never to see her brother again.
2359

Tom stood by his oath to his father. He
felt his dignity as a Tulliver, and he
believed Maggie was apt to follow the
inclination of the moment without giving
consideration to the outcome. He was
right. Lacking the iron will which marked
so many of her relatives, Maggie loved
easily and without restraint.
Meanwhile Lucy's father had promised
to try to buy back the mill for Tom.
Learning of this plan, Philip hoped to
persuade his father to sell the mill. For
this service Philip felt sure Tom would
forget his old hatred.
At a dance Stephen Guest tried to
kiss Maggie. She evaded him and the
next day avoided Philip Wakem as well.
She felt she owed it to Lucy not to allow
Stephen to fall in love with her, and
she felt that she owed it to her brother
not to marry Philip.
She was carried along by the tide. Her
relatives would not let her go back into
teaching, for Tom's good luck continued
and he repossessed his father's mill. Both
Stephen and Philip urged her to marry
them without the knowledge of each
others aims. Certainly, Lucy did not
suspect Stephen's growing indifference to
her.
One day Stephen took Maggie boating
and tried to convince her to run away
with him and be married. She refused
his offer. Then the tide carried them
beyond the reach of shore and they were
forced to spend the night in the boat.
Maggie dared the wrath and judgment
of her relatives when she returned and
attempted to explain to Lucy and the
others what had happened. They refused
to listen to her. Tom turned her away
from the mill house, with the word that
he would send her money but that he
never wished to see her again. Mrs.
Tulliver resolved to go with Maggie, and
Bob Jakin took them in.
Maggie slowly began to realize what
ostracism meant, for one by one people
deserted her. Only Aunt Glegg and Lucy
offered any sympathy. Stephen wrote to
her in agony of spirit, as did Philip.
Maggie wanted to be by herself. She
wondered if there could be love for her
without pain for others.
That autumn a terrible flood ravaged
St. Ogg's. Knowing that Tom was at
the mill, Maggie attempted to reach him
in a boat. The two were reunited and
Tom took over the rowing of the boat.
But the full force of the flood
overwhelmed them and they drowned,
together at the end as they had been whei?
they were children.
2360

THE MILL ON THE PO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Riccardo Bacchelli (1891- )
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1812-1872
Locale: The region of the Po River, near Ferrers
First published: 1938-1940
Principal characters:
Lazzaro Scacerni, a miller on the Po
Dosolina, his wife
Giuseppe, his son
Cecilia, his daughter-in-law
Critique:
The epic sweep and poetic fervor of
The Mill on the Po give Bacchelli's novel
a significant place in Italian fiction of the
twentieth century. Its story fills two
volumes of a projected trilogy and embraces
the stormy period of Italian unification.
Political events, however, are not the prime
consideration of the author, except as they
affect the lives of people who are caught
in the backwash of historical events. His
chief interest is centered in the obscure
heroes who struggle to obtain peace and
security without becoming submerged by
the mighty forces of history and nature.
The Story:
In 1817a new water mill appeared on
the Po River, near the city of Ferrara. Its
owner was young Lazzaro Scacerni, who
had become a miller in an odd fashion
indeed. Nevertheless, he was no stranger
to the river—his father had been a
ferryman at Ariano before dying in the peasant
uprising of 1807. Shortly afterward the
boy Lazzaro had been sent, along with
other orphans, to serve as cabin boy in
the navy. When he became older, he went
over to the army pontoniers, and in 1812
he found himself a part of Napoleon's ill-
fated Russian campaign.
It was in Russia that the story of the
mill really started. During the terrible
retreat, a dying captain gave Lazzaro a
mysterious receipt, which the illiterate young
Scacerni could not read. He guarded it
closely, however, as he straggled
homeward from a debacle in which fourteen
out of every fifteen Italian soldiers had
perished. Finally regaining the
neighborhood of Ferrara, Lazzaro led a hand-to-
mouth existence while waiting for a
chance to make use of his one asset. He
learned to read well enough to decipher
the name and address attached to the
receipt, and subsequent search led to Ezekiel
the Jew, in Ferrara's ghetto. The receipt
was for jewels, plundered from Spanish
churches by Lazzaro's benefactor. His
windfall once assured, Lazzaro cannily
pondered its best use. Millers, he decided,
were least affected by times of adversity,
and he arranged with a friendly old
shipwright to build him a mill. In due time it
was finished, christened St. Michael's,
and put into operation.
As the years passed, the miller
prospered. One, two, and finally three boys
were hired for helpers as his trade grew.
His success inspired more envy than
affection among his neighbors, but not a
few of their wives and daughters
succumbed to his dashing gallantries. Nearly
forty and wearying ot bachelorhood,
Lazzaro fell in love with Dosolina, poor but
delicately beautiful and twenty years his
junior. Lazzaro bought a house, married
Dosolina, and settled down to enjoy his
prosperity.
But fate was not always to smile. Floods
came, the bane of the Po River millers,
and smugglers, crossing between Italy and
Austria, insolently adopted his mill for a
THE MILL ON THE PO by Riccardo Bacchelli. By permission of the publishers. Pantheon Books Ice.
Copyright, 1950, by Pantheon Books Inc.
2361

rendezvous. On the birth night of his son
Giuseppe, Lazzaro's troubles reached a
climax. While Dosolina was writhing in
difficult labor, the desperate Lazzaro
fought to save his mill from the swollen
menace of the Po. Slipping on the wet
deck, he broke a leg but continued to
direct his helpers, two of whom worked
manfully. The third was malformed
Beffa, who secretly hated his master and
who had become a tool of the smugglers.
Shedding all restraint, Beffa openly
exulted over his master's plight and
scornfully asserted that the miller had been
cuckolded—whereupon Lazzaro reached
out, seized Beffa with his muscular arms,
and hurled him into the river.
Dosolina recovered, and the mill was
saved; but Beffa's damp dismissal caused
Lazzaro to receive disturbing threats from
Raguseo, king of the smugglers. A gang
feud, however, broke out among the
outlaws soon afterward, disposing of both
Raguseo and Beffa. Lazzaro breathed
more easily thereafter. One danger was
over, but another seemed constant, for
intermittent floods continued to threaten St.
Michael's Mill. One day a large mill
washed ashore near Lazzaro's own, its
only occupant a young girl orphaned by
the flood. To Cecilia her mill meant home;
she was very happy when the Scacernis
befriended her and reestablished her mill
alongside theirs. From that time on
Lazzaro regarded the girl almost as his own
daughter.
He was much less pleased, however,
with the character and disposition of his
own son. Bandy-legged, crafty, and
cowardly, Giuseppe cared nothing about his
father's trade except its profit. He early
showed great skill, as well as great avarice,
in business dealings of any kind, and he
was held in contempt, except by his
mother. During the late 1840's he began
successfully trafficking in grain with the
hated Austrians, but the same years
brought new distress to his family.
Roving bands of partisans, now Italian and
now Austrian mercenaries, infested the
countryside and disturbed the peace and
security of the Scacernis. Finally, both
mills were commandeered by the
Austrians, and Lazzaro and Cecilia were
required to transfer them to the opposite
side of the river.
After a few months the mills were
allowed to return, but the political
atmosphere was still cloudy and confused
among the rival claims and interests of
the papacy, the Italian nationalistic
movement, and Austria. Lazzaro, who was
growing old and querulous, found much
to complain about. Only at the mills, in
the company of his helpers and Cecilia,
did he feel comfortable; and even there
he sometimes railed at the open smuggling
which carried scarce grain across the river
to Austria. He was outraged when he
learned that Giuseppe took a leading role
in such transactions.
Suddenly an unexpected family affair
arose which gave concern to both the elder
Scacernis, though for entirely different
reasons. Giuseppe, apparently inattentive
to women, had long slyly coveted Cecilia
for his wife, in spite or her obvious
indifference to him. Not daring to risk her
mockery by a proposal, he went about
winning his goal by characteristic
trickery. Meanly playing on her fondness for
his father, Giuseppe blandly announced
that Lazzaro had broken a law by
possessing concealed firearms. His son could
exert influence to head off his arrest and
punishment—but only for a price,
Cecilia's consent to marry him. Cecilia, taken
by surprise, was confused, angry, and ig-
norantly fearful. Her devotion to Lazzaro,
however, was greater than her repugnance
for his son, and in the end Giuseppe had
his way.
Lazzaro, unaware of Cecilia's sacrifice,
'telt baffled and hurt by what he
considered her poor judgment. In turn, Dosolina
regarded her new daughter-in-law as little
better than a river gipsy and quite
unworthy of her son. Neither of the parents,
however, had long to lament the marriage.
In 1855 Dosolina was the victim of a wave
of cholera which swept all Europe. The
next morning Lazzaro was found dead
beside her.
The structure of Italy changed: time
2362

was bringing Austrian defeat, the end of
papal rule, and the dawn of a united
nation. These things, of course, meant little
to Cecilia Scacerni. But the small warmth
of her nature found, at last, a suitable
outlet. Her first-born and favorite, Lazzarino,
was vigorous and intelligent, a reminder
of his grandfather in more than name.
Even his grasping, mean-natured father
openly adored him.
But Lazzarino was not destined to
match his grandfather in years. Miserable
at mockery of his father's cowardice, he
ran off to join Garibaldi's volunteers.
News of his death staggered Cecilia, but
its effect on Giuseppe was catastrophic.
Grief gnawed at his reason, and the
destruction of his house and crops by flood
completed his downfall. Howling
obscenely, he was carted off to the asylum.
Left alone, Cecilia looked about her with
calm courage. There was work to do, and
she would see that it was done.
2363

THE MINISTRY OF FEAR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Graham Greene (1904- )
Type of plot: Psychological melodrama
Time of plot: World War II
Locale: London and environs
first published: 1943
Principal characters:
Arthur Rowe, a middle-aged Englishman who has killed his wife
Anna Hilfe, an Austrian refugee
Willi Hilfe, Anna's brother and a fifth-column leader
Dr. Forester, English dupe of Willi Hilfe
Critique:
This novel records a train of incidents
(halfway between horror and insanity,
while demonstrating how fifth-column
agents worked in England during World
War II. The ministry of fear was, of
course, an organization of fascist agents
operating in England and using as their
tools people who had something in their
pasts which they preferred to hide. In
addition, there are descriptions of the blitz
of 1940, when the German bombers
obliterated a large section of London. The
scenes describe not only the destruction
and the confusion attendant upon it but
also the reactions of Londoners who
suffered through the raids day after day and
night after night. As a whole, the novel
captures the madhouse-like quality which
hung for so many years over England and
the rest of the world; the very disruption
of values in human life is brought home
to even an insensitive reader.
Tfee Story:
Arthur Rowe, a middle-aged
Englishman, happened one day onto a f£te in
blitz-torn London. In an effort to recapture
some spirit of the brighter past, he entered
the grounds. While there he had his
fortune told, and the seer told him the weight
of a cake which was to go to the person
who guessed the weight correctly. Rowe
won the cake and started to leave, but the
clergyman who was in charge of the affair
tried to get the cake back again. Rowe,
angered, gave a pound note to the cause
and left.
That same night, just before the
German bombers flew up the Thames to
terrorize the city, Rowe had his first visitor in
months, a man who had just rented rooms
in the same house. The visitor behaved
very oddly. When given a piece of cake
by Rowe, he crumbled it as if looking
for something. Then, while Rowe was out
of the room, the man slipped something
into Rowe's tea. Rowe, returning, smelled
the peculiar odor of the tea, but before
he could say or do anything a bomb fell
wrecking the house. He regained
consciousness to find the house demolished.
The next day the worried Rowe, who
had few friends to whom he could turn
because he had killed his wife in a mercy
killing, went to a detective agency, where
he hired a man named Jones to watch
after him and discover why someone
wished to take his life. Rowe then went
to the relief office which had been in
charge of the f£te at which he had won
the cake. There he found a young woman,
Anna Hilfe, and her brother Willi in
charge of the office. The two said they
were Austrian refugees. Willi Hilfe went
with Rowe to the home of the
fortuneteller in an effort to uncover the reason
for the attempt on Rowe's life.
At the fortune-teller's home the two
men were invited to stay for a seance.
During the seance the man sitting next to
Rowe was murdered with Rowe's knife.
THE MINISTRY OF FEAR by Graham Greene. By permission of the publishers. The Viking Press. Inc,
Copyright, 1943, by Graham Greene.
2364

Rowe, with Willi's aid, escaped from the
house before the police arrived. He went
to an air-raid shelter and remained there
through the night. He wrote a letter to
the police, but before he posted it he
called Anna, who told him that "they"
were still after him. "They" were
supposed to be Nazi agents. Still Rowe could
net understand why he had become a
marked man. Anna agreed to aid Rowe
and told him to send an address where
he could be reached.
After talking to her, Rowe called the
detective agency, only to find that Jones,
the man he had hired, had disappeared
and that the head of the agency had called
the police in on the case. Rowe wandered
aimlessly about the city until the
afternoon, when he met a man who asked
him to take a valise full of books to a Mr.
Travers at a hotel. When Rowe arrived at
the hotel, he was escorted to Travers'
room. There he found Anna waiting for
him. In fear of their lives, the two waited
for the air raids to begin. They believed
that Nazi agents would kill them during
the noise and confusion of the raids.
Then a bomb fell on the hotel. Rowe
awoke in a private nursing home without
any memory beyond his eighteenth year.
Anna visited him several times in the
nursing home, and Rowe fell in love with
her during the visits. She would not tell
him of his past, and claimed that the head
of the institution, Dr. Forester, wanted
the recovery to be slow enough not to
cause shock. One day a military officer
being treated in the home confided that he
had seen someone digging on the island in
a pond on the grounds. The officer was
immediately put into a strait jacket, while
Rowe was confined to his room without
newspapers or his clothes on the pretext
that he had suffered a mild relapse.
Convinced that some evil was afoot,
Rowe escaped from the room and visited
the officer. His visit with the officer
confirmed his suspicions. Within a few hours
the doctor returned and, extremely angry
at Rowe, threatened him, too, with a strait
jacket. With the help of an attendant,
Rowe escaped and went to Scotland Yard.
He turned himself in as the murderer of
the victim at the seance, but to his
surprise he was told that no one had been
murdered there. The police turned him
over to a counter-intelligence agent, who
told Rowe that the murder had been a
fraud to drive him into hiding and that
the nursing home was actually a front for
fifth-column activities.
The agent, Rowe, and a man from the
hotel where Rowe had been injured went
to the tailor shop run by the man who
had supposedly been murdered. During
the interview the tailor placed a phone
call and after it was completed killed
himself. The agent, angry at losing the man
before learning any information, told
Rowe that he had inadvertently been
given a cake containing secret film which
had been taken by Nazi agents from
British documents.
Rowe and the agent then went to the
home of the fortune-teller. There they
failed to find the film, and they got no
information. The last stop of the trip was
at the nursing home. There they found
the military officer dead, killed by Dr.
Forester, who, Rowe now remembered,
had been at the fortune-teller's home on
the night of the supposed murder. The
doctor was also dead, having been killed
by the attendant who had helped Rowe
to escape.
Without telling the
counter-intelligence agent, Rowe called the number he
had seen the tailor dial. When the call
was answered, he found Anna at the other
end. Going to her apartment, Rowe
discovered that it was her brother Willi who
was the head of the fifth-column ring.
With Anna's help Rowe almost got the
film. Anna, torn between love for her
brother and for Rowe, allowed Willi to
escape. Rowe, whose memory was almost
complete, followed Willi and regained
the film at the railroad station. He
returned Willi's gun to him with but one
bullet in it. Willi then went to the
washroom and killed himself, but not before
he had revealed the last piece of informa-
2365

tion which Rowe had failed to remember,
the fact that Rowe had killed his first wife
to put her out of pain. With the film in his
possession, ready to give to the police,
Rowe returned to Anna's apartment to
tell her of her brother's death and to
declare his love to her. Anna, even though
he had driven her brother to his death,
pledged her love for him as well.
2366

MINNA VON BARNHELM
Type of work: Drama
Author: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Germany
First presented: 1767
Principal characters:
Major von Tellheim, a discharged officer
Just, his servant
Paul Werner, his sergeant
Minna von Barnhelm, in love with Tellheim
Franziska, her maid
Critique:
Minna von Barnhelm is important for
two reasons. First, it was a beginning of
a drama native to Germany, with much
appeal for its original audience: the
historical background touched their
patriotism; its treatment of German soldiers
and German women aroused their
sympathy; and its amusing blend of comedy
and pathos touched their hearts.
Secondly, it ranks high in Lessing's canon.
Modern readers follow the action easily, for
the unity of plot and setting keeps the
play in small compass.
The Story:
Major von Tellheim had been
wounded in the right arm, and after heroic
deeds he had been discharged from the
army. Crippled and poor, he had been
put out of his room at the inn; in his
absence his effects had been placed in a
mean chamber with no view. The
landlord had perhaps been justified. Two
ladies had arrived asking for good
accommodations, and Tellheim was behind
in his rent.
Tellheim's servant, Just, sat in the inn
parlor muttering about the injustice done
to his master. The landlord came in and
gave Just several drinks, but the worthy
servant would not cease his complaints.
Tellheim, entering in time to hear some
of the dispute, ended the controversy by
saying that the bill would be paid and
that he would move out immediately.
The landlord declared he was not afraid
the bill would not be paid, for he had
found a rich purse in Tellheim's writing
desk.
When they were alone, Tellheim
explained to Just that the money in the
purse belonged to Werner, his sergeant;
it was a trust. For immediate needs
Tellheim asked his servant to pawn a ring
for eighty louis. He tried to dismiss Just
with a month's wages, but the servant
preferred to work on for nothing. Then
a widow came in to repay a loan
Tellheim had made to her dead husband.
Tellheim sent her away, vowing her
husband owed him nothing. Wernei
tried to help the major by giving him
all he could realize from the sale of his
farm, but Tellheim would accept no
help.
The ladies who had taken Tellheim's
rooms were Minna von Barnhelm, a rich
girl of twenty-one, and Franziska, her
maid. Minna was agitated, for she had
come in search of Tellheim. They had
been betrothed, but she had had no word
from him since the peace.
The landlord, who was inquisitive
about his guests, came to their room to
fill out an official form. When his
questions became too personal, Minna, to
turn the conversation, asked about the
soldier whose room they had taken. The
landlord contemptuously declared that
he was only a discharged officer and
showed her the ring Just had pawned
with him. Minna recognized it at once
as the ring she had given Tellheim. In
the joy of her recognition, she put money
2367

to redeem it on the table and asked the
landlord to bring in Tellheim at once.
When Tellheim first saw Minna, he
spoke to her as a lover; but he promptly
recovered himself and addressed her
more formally. Hurt, Minna demanded
a direct answer as to whether he still
loved her. Tellheim admitted that he did.
Crippled as he was, however, penniless,
and discharged from service, he was no
longer a suitable husband.
Tellheim wrote a note to Minna in
which he explained fully why he could
no longer expect to marry her. While
Just was delivering the note, he fell into
conversation with Franziska, who asked
about the rest of Tellheim's servants. Just
admitted that he alone was left. The valet
had decamped with Tellheim's
wardrobe; the huntsman had been imprisoned
for treachery during the war, and the
footman had run up debts in Tellheim's
name.
The curious landlord attempted to get
the story behind the reunion of Minna
and Tellheim, but Franziska gave him
little satisfaction. When he attempted to
get a hundred louis for the pawned ring,
she reminded him tartly that the loan
was only eighty louis.
Werner returned to the inn with his
pockets full of money. He emphatically
denied that Tellheim was poor; all the
sergeant's money really belonged to the
major. When Franziska told him about
the pawned ring, Werner tried to pass
off the matter by saying that so many
women give rings to soldiers.
Undoubtedly Tellheim had twenty rings.
Franziska left in anger, but she left Werner
meditating on her charms.
Werner, meeting Tellheim, tried to
give him the money he had collected by
selling all his goods. He was put out by
Tellheim's refusal because he felt old
comrades in arms should help each other.
Franziska brought Tellheim's letter to
Minna back to the major with word that
Minna had not read it. Instead, she
expected him to take her riding. Werner,
seeing that the major was really fond of
Minna, confessed to Franziska his
falsehood about the twenty rings. She teased
him coquettishly about his ready tongue.
When she went back to Minna, her
mistress told her she had a plan to
recapture Tellheim.
Minna's scheme was to let Tellheim
think that she, too, was poor after being
disinherited; Franziska would tell him
that her uncle, Count von Bruchsal, had
cut her off because he objected to her
marriage to Tellheim. In preparation for
the plot, Minna took off the ring
Tellheim had given her and put on the ring
she had redeemed from the landlord.
Lieutenant Riccaut, seeking Tellheim,
arrived at the inn. He announced that
he was a great friend of Tellheim's and
that he had good news for the major. A
high government official had told him
that Tellheim would soon have a letter
from the king restoring his commission
and righting his financial troubles.
Minna, delighted with the news, questioned
Riccaut about himself. He was a gambler
who had had bad luck for a long time.
Minna gave him money to start up a
bank again. Riccaut promised to repay
the money and let her have a third of the
profits. As their talk continued, Minna
was repelled to realize that Riccaut was
a sharper rather than a gentleman
gambler.
Tellheim had a long interview with
Minna. He rehearsed again his
misfortunes and added that he was under
suspicion by the war ministry. Instructed to
levy a war tax on the people in Minna's
neighborhood, he had nobly advanced
the money out of his own fortune. After
the peace he had tried to collect from
the government, but he was discharged
under suspicion of double-dealing.
Obviously he could not marry Minna and
be dependent on her.
Minna pretended anger at his
reasoning and gave him back the ring she had
recovered from the landlord. After she
left, Franziska told Tellheim that Minna
was also poor. In great relief he
straightway went in search of her to get her
2368

back.
Thinking Minna destitute, Tellheim
asked Werner for all the money he could
get. Soon Tellheim would go to the wars
in Asia as a mercenary soldier, and
Werner and Minna would go with him to
the Orient. The delighted Werner
brought in all the gold he could lay his
hands on.
The plan never materialized, however.
An orderly brought a letter from the king
in which Tellheim learned his bill
against the government would be
honored and that he was recommissioned in
the army. Tellheim's jubilation ended
when he learned that Minna had not
given him back her engagement ring
after all, but rather the ring he had
pawned. He interpreted her redemption
of the pledge as proof that Minna had
sought him out to break the engagement.
The lovers were reconciled, however, by
the arrival of Count von Bruchsal. The
count declared his love for them both
and sanctioned their marriage.
Werner thought he had as good luck
as his master, for he became engaged to
Franziska.
2369

A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Esther Forbes (1894?- )
Tyfe of flot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Massachusetts
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Jared Bilby, an English sea captain
Hannah, his wife
Doll, his adopted daughter
Mr. Zacharias Zelley, a minister
Titus Thumb, in love with Doll
Labour and Sorrow Thumb, twins, his sisters
Goody Greene, an old herb woman
The Bloody Shad, her pirate son and Doll's demon prince
Mr. Kleaver, the surgeon
Critique:
Esther Forbes is probably the
outstanding woman writer of historical novels in
America today. She is primarily
interested in New England, where sne lives
and where her ancestors have lived since
Massachusetts was settled. She was
peculiarly equipped to write A Mirror for
Witches, since witches are common to the
folklore and history of her region and it
is said that one of her ancestors died in
jail after being charged with witchcraft.
While the nineteenth-century Hawthorne
used this kind of material symbolically,
and others have used it romantically or
sentimentally, Esther Forbes has written
originally and brilliantly in making A
Mirror for Witches a psychologically
realistic novel. Under the same title, a
successful modern ballet has been based on
this tale of demonism and witchcraft in
early Puritan times.
The Story:
Mr. Jared Bilby, captain of an English
brig, landed his ship in Britanny on a
day when the French burned over two
hundred witches and warlocks. Attracted
by the holocaust, he saw a tiny girl trying
to pass the guards in order to reach her
burning mother. Bilby sheltered the child
and took her home. He thought she
would forget her past, for she lay in a
swoon for days. But she remembered
only the evil of the years before she met
Bilby.
Bilby called the little one his dolly and
soon the child was known as Bilby's Doll.
They adored each other, but Bilby's wife
Hannah hated the child as soon as she
saw her. Hannah, who had been barren
for years, had recently become pregnant.
One searing look from Doll withered
Hannah to the marrow, and she believed
thereafter that Doll had blasted her
unborn child.
Bilby took his family to America. On
the ship they met Mr. Zelley, a minister
who became friendly and settled close
to them at Cowan Corners, near Salem.
Goody Greene, a kindly woman looked
on with disfavor by the townspeople
because'she associated with Indians in her
search for herbs, was called to account by
the churchmen because she had let fall
in church a poppet she had made for
Doll. No one would visit her, but
suspicion fell away from her and centered
on Doll when Hannah became strangely
ill. Hannah told everyone that Doll was
a witch who had cast a spell on Bilby so
that it pleased him to pamper and fondle
her. Mr. Zelley also befriended the girl.
To join their properties, Bilby
proposed a marriage between Doll and Titus,
A MIRROR FOR WITCHES by Esther Forbes. By permission of the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co.
Copyright, 1928, by Esther Forbes Hoskins.
2370

the son of Deacon Thumb. Titus, a
virtuous young man, was attracted to Doll
and willing to wed. One day the Thumbs'
black bull Ahab was missing. Titus got
up early the next morning to catch the
animal at a watering hole. The bull,
ridden by an Indian, came crashing down
to the water. Titus called out and shot
at the Indian. In the twinkling of an eye
Doll stood before him, her hands over
her heart. Titus knew the bullet had gone
through her, but there was no blood on
her gown. He wanted to make love to
Doll, but he felt only like a protecting
big brother until after he had left her,
when again he greatly desired her. From
then on he began to pine away.
Bilby wished to speed the marriage.
When Titus came courting, Doll
frantically locked up the house, but at last she
let him in. When he asked her to marry
him, she bit his hand. He flung her away
so hard that she hit her head and lay
helpless. Titus wept.
Without telling Doll, Bilby had the
marriage banns proclaimed the next
Sunday. After Mr. Zelley had announced
them, Doll screamed at her foster father.
Cursed as he was, he took to his bed and
died four days later. Doll kept herself
hidden during his illness, but on the
fourth day she went looking for Goody
Greene. Tracing the herb woman's
footsteps into the woods, Doll became lost.
Lying down to sleep, she was startled to
hear her father calling her. Then she
knew that he was dead and she offered
herself to the Evil One if he would only
release Bilby's soul. Before and after
sleeping she saw a host of evil signs and
knew that she was a witch with powers
for evil. On her return home Mr. Zelley
assured her that her father had died from
natural causes.
No one came to see Hannah and Doll
during the winter except Mr. Zelley,
who spoke to each separately because the
women kept apart. When spring came,
Doll noticed that by thought she could
make the bull Ahab rush at Titus, and
by twisting her fingers compel the deacon
to break into fits of coughing. She kept
looking for an agent of the Devil to
instruct her in arts of evil.
Doll was lonely. The only house in
which she was welcome was Goody
Greene's. When she went there, Doll
could feel a presence in the room which
the woman would not identify. She
could even see a bulge against the bed
curtains. In the cellar, where she went
for herbs, Doll was frightened by a little
imp that looked like an Ethiopian.
In May there was a fire at the Thumbs'.
Fascinated but terrified because fires
reminded her of her parents' death, Doll
went to watch the blaze. Ahab, penned
in the burning barn, came thundering
out as the roof fell in. Doll ran up a short
ladder to the top of a haystack. There
she found her demon prince, dressed like
a sailor and carrying the imp she had seen
in the cellar. The fiend called his imp
the Bloody Shad.
Doll spent the summer nights happily
with her demon lover, who taught her
to say her prayers backwards. He told her
that her parents were safe in hell and
that she would have a short life, then life
everlasting. Before he left her for good
he told her that he would come back to
be with her when she lay dying.
Shortly afterward three pirates were
caught and executed at Boston harbor.
One, called the Bloody Shad, carried a
monkey that resembled a tiny imp.
Without her demon, Doll was lonely
again. She spent much time in the
Thumbs' pasture talking to Ahab, who
was friendly with her but savage with
anyone else. At last Titus' mother
persuaded him to pen the beast. One day
Doll met Titus' small twin sisters and
gave them pumpkin seed poppets.
Without telling their mother about them, the
children ate the seeds and became deathly
sick. Mrs. Thumb was sure Doll had
withered the children's vitals when she
learned that Doll had given them the
poppets. The children screamed that
Doll was visiting them and pinching
them, but no one could see her. Strange
things blamed on Doll happened to
people in nearby towns. Convinced that Doll
2371

was a witch, Deacon Thumb and Mr.
Kleaver, the surgeon, had her jailed.
At her trial the judges were at first
convinced that Hannah's hatred for Doll
had produced all the complaints against
the girl. The twins, brought into the
court, went into convulsions at the sight
of her. When she touched them, the devil
went out of them into her and they
quieted. Then Doll, in reciting the Lord's
prayer, said the last half backwards.
When Doll spoke of her lover, Goody
Greene claimed that he had been her
pirate son, but the old woman was thrown
out of court. The judges seemed so
sympathetic that Doll told them why she
thought she was a witch. She insisted,
however, that she had never harmed the
twins.
Held for a jury trial, Doll was put in
irons. Mr. Zelley, going to comfort her,
was confused by a third presence he
could feel in the cell. Doll told him that
her demon had come back to be with her.
When she was found dead one dismal
morning, her face was peaceful.
2372

THE MISANTHROPE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1666
Principal characters:
Alceste, in love with Celimene
Philinte, friend of Alceste
Oronte, in love with Celimene
Ce'limene, a young widow
Eliante, cousin of Celimene
Critique:
Moliere, born Jean Baptiste Poquelin,
is the outstanding French writer of
comedies, above all, comedies of manners;
and he is sometimes compared in the
breadth and humanity of his genius with
Shakespeare. The Misanthrope is a
comedy with a rather sad conclusion; but the
merit of the play rests on its depiction of
manners. We can see in The
Misanthrope Moliere's objective analysis of his
own time, for he exposes to die public
eye the frivolity and inconsistency of his
contemporaries.
The Story:
Alceste had been called a misanthrope
by many of his friends, and he took a
rather obstinate delight in the name.
This characteristic led him to quarrel
heatedly with his good friend Philinte,
who accepted uncritically the frivolous
manners of the day. When Philinte
warmly embraced a chance acquaintance,
as was customary, Alceste maintained
that such behavior was hypocritical,
especially since Philinte hardly knew the
man.
Philinte reminded Alceste that his
lawsuit was nearly ready for trial, and that
he would do well to moderate his
attitude toward people in general. His
opponents in die suit were doing
everything possible to curry favor, but Alceste
insulted everyone he met and made no
effort to win over the judges.
Philinte also taunted Alceste on his
love for Celimene, who, as a leader in
society, was hypocritical most of the time.
Alceste had to admit that his love could
not be explained rationally.
Oronte interrupted the quarrel by
coming to visit Alceste, who was puzzled by
« visit from suave and elegant Oronte.
Oronte asked permission to read a sonnet
he had lately composed, as he was
anxious to have Alceste's judgment of its
literary merit.
After some affected hesitation, Oronte
read his mediocre poem. Alceste, too
honest to give false praise, condemned
the verses and even satirized the poor
quality of the writing. Oronte instandy
took offense at this criticism, and a new
quarrel broke out. Although the
argument was indecisive, there were hints of
a possible duel.
Alceste then went to call on Celimene.
As soon as he saw her, he began
perversely to upbraid her for her frivolous
conduct and her hypocritical attitude
toward other people. Although Celimene
could slander and ridicule with a keen
wit and a barbed tongue while a person
was absent, she was all flattery and
attention when talking with him. This
attitude displeased Alceste.
The servant announced several callers,
including Eliante. To Alceste's dismay,
they all sat down for an interminable
conversation. The men took great delight
in naming over all their mutual
acquaintances, and as each name was mentioned,
Celimene made unkind remarks. The
only gende person in the room was
Eliante, whose good sense and kind heart
were in striking contrast with Celimene's
2373

caustic wit. Eliante was overshadowed,
however, by the more brilliant Celimene.
The men all declared they had nothing
to do all day, and each swore to outstay
the other, to remain longer with
Celimene. Alceste determined to be the last
to leave.
A guard appeared, however, to
summon Alceste before the tribunal.
Astonished, Alceste learned that his quarrel
with Oronte had been noised about, and
the authorities intended to prevent a
possible duel. Loudly protesting that
except for an order direct from the king
nothing could make him praise the poetry
of Oronte, Alceste was led away.
Arsino6, an austere woman who made
a pretense of great virtue, came to call on
Celimene. She took the opportunity to
warn Celimene that her conduct was
creating a scandal, because her many suitors
and her sharp tongue were hurting her
reputation. Celimene spoke bitingly of
Arsinoe^s strait-laced character.
Arsino6 decided to talk privately with
Alceste, with whom she was half in love.
She comforted him as best she could for
being so unfortunate as to love Celimene,
and complimented him on his plain
dealings and forthright character. Carried
away by the intimacy of her talk, Arsino6
offered to do much for Alceste by
speaking in his favor at court. But the two
concluded that the love of Alceste for
Celimene, though unsuitable from almost
every point of view, was a fast tie.
Eliante and Philinte were in the
meantime discussing Alceste and his habit of
antagonizing his friends through his
frankness. Philinte told her of Alceste's
hearing before the tribunal. He had
insisted that Oronte's verses were bad, but
he had nothing more to say. £liante and
Philinte began to discover a mutual
liking. If Eliante ever lost her fondness for
Alceste, Philinte intended to offer
himself as a lover.
Alceste received an unflattering letter,
purporting to come from Celimene, which
described him in malicious terms. After
much coy hesitation, Celimene admitted
that she nad sent the letter and expressed
surprise at Alceste's indignation. Other
suitors appeared, each holding a letter
and each much upset. On comparing
notes, they found that they had all been
ridiculed and insulted.
Meanwhile, Alceste had made up his
mind to ask Eliante to marry him, but
reconsidered when he realized that his
proposal would seem to spring from a
desire to avenge himself on Celimene.
To the misanthrope there seemed to be
no solution except to go into exile and
live a hermit's life.
When C^limene's suitors clamored for
an explanation, she told them that she
had written the letters because she was
tired of the niceties of polite
conversation. For once she decided to say what
she really thought. This confession was
shocking to the suitors who thought
frankness and rudeness were
unpardonable crimes. Hypocrisy, flattery, cajolery,
extravagances—these were the marks of
a gentle lady. Protesting and disdainful,
they left together, never to return.
Only Alceste remained. Even the
coquettish and malicious heart of Celimene
was touched. When Alceste repeated his
vows of fidelity and asked her once more
to marry him, she almost consented. But
when Alceste revealed that he wanted
them to go into exile and lead quiet,
simple lives, she refused. Celimene could
never leave the false, frivolous society
she loved.
Now completely the misanthrope,
Alceste stalked away with the firm resolve
to quit society forever, to become a
hermit, far removed from the artificial sham
of preciosity. Philinte and Eliante, more
moderate in their views, however,
decided that they would marry.
2374

MISCELLANIES
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Abraham Cowley Q618-1667)
First published: 1656
Abraham Cowley and his works are
difficult to classify. Cowley himself was
essentially a pre-Restoration poet, but his
verse does not fit well into the
classifications normally made of poetry in the
period between 1600 and 1660. At
various times his work has been compared to
that of John Donne and John Milton.
The comparison of Cowley's poetry to
Donne's has been made because of
the conceits to be found in both, to
Milton's because of Cowley's use of Biblical
subject matter in his Davideis, an
unfinished epic poem.
Most representative of Cowlev's work
is the 1656 edition titled Miscellanies, a
volume published shortly after the poet's
return to England from France. Cowley,
dispossessed of his fellowship at
Cambridge University had joined friends
among the followers of Charles I at
Oxford during the early years of the Civil
War. When many of the Royalists fled to
France, Cowley was among them. In
exile he assisted the English queen in her
correspondence with the king in
England. The Miscellanies volume,
according to Cowley's preface, was an attempt
on his part to preserve in print all his
poetical works that he considered worth
keeping for posterity. His avowed
motivation was that he intended to write no
more verse, and he wished to publish his
own edition, lest after his death an
edition containing spurious or inferior
writings be foisted upon the public, as had
already happened in the cases of
Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson.
The Miscellanies consists of four parts.
The first is a collection of poems on a
variety of themes, some written when
Cowley was quite voung; the second
includes the poems Cowley had published
earlier as The Mistress, a series dealing
with love in various aspects; the third
part he labeled Pindarique Odes,
translations from Pindar and free imitations in
English of that poet's work; the fourth
and last portion of the volume contains
the four books of the Davideis.
In the first section there are odes on
wit, on the king's return from Scotland,
on Prometheus, on the pleasures of wine
over the pangs of love, on friendship, and
also imitations, in English, of both
Horace and Martial. A light but pleasant
poem is "The Chronicle," an example of
vers de societi dealing with the
experiences of a young man in love with a long
series of young women. Of note also is a
poem celebrating the publication of the
first two books of Sir William Davenant's
Gondibert (1651). The best, certainly
the sincerest poems of the Miscellanies
group, are those written on the deaths of
persons the poet had known and
respected in life. The most outstanding of
these is "On the Death of Mr. William
Hervey." Although the poem may seem
to the twentieth-century reader
extravagant in its tone, diction, and imagery, it
compares favorably with the best elegiac
poetry of the time. Other elegiac poems
in the collection are those on Sir Henry
Wotton; Mr. Jordan, a master at
Westminster School; Van Dyck, the painter,
and Richard Crashaw, the poet. Of httle
interest, other than historic, are some
English paraphrases of Anacreon.
Most critics have been less inclined to
favor The Mistress, or Several Coynes of
Love Verses, first published in 1647 and
included in the Miscellanies. Like much
of the love poetry of the earlier part of
the seventeenth century, The Mistress
is bound too closely by conventions in
many respects. It supposedly deals with
a courtship and the lady's reception of
the suit over a period of three years. That
Cowley actually loved a woman of higher
social rank and courted her with this
poetry is doubtful, for the suffering lover,

the stand-offish lady of higher degree,
and extravagant protestations of love are
typical of the love poetry of the time-
usually mere convention. Cowley's
unusual figures of speech, written
apparently under the influence of John Donne,
have until recent years been the target
of critics. With the revived interest and
renewed sympathy for the metaphysical
poets and their techniques, however,
Cowley's exercise of his exceptionally
learned and fertile fancy has been viewed
less stringently. In this section the poem
entitled "The Spring" represents Cowley
at his best, while "Written in Juice of
Lemmon" shows him at his poorer level
of performance.
For about a century the ode,
particularly the Pindaric ode as it was
established by Cowley, was a favorite verse
form among English poets and poetasters
until the eighteenth century, when Dr.
Samuel Johnson, literary arbiter of the
era, pronounced against it. Undoubtedly
the freedom of meter exercised by
Cowley in his Pindarique Odes and
introduced by him was a decisive factor in the
popularity of the form, for as they were
written by Cowley the odes appear
deceptively easy. Current literary opinion
is against Cowley's odes, declaring them
too flat and imitative.
The last portion of the Miscellanies is
taken up with the unfinished Davideis,
four of the twelve books originally
planned on the model of the Aeneid.
Cowley's strong religious convictions led
him to choose the figure of David,
traditional ancestor of Jesus, as the hero for
an epic poem. In these four books he
packed much of his learning, often in
wide and only loosely connected
digressions. Critics have argued the fitness of
the subject; Cowley himself seems to
have changed his mind about its
suitability, since he left the work unfinished.
As he announced in the preface to
the Miscellanies, Cowley wrote almost no
poetry after publication of that edition.
In the twentieth century his poetry
attracts little attention beyond that given
by students of literature. The poems seem
to have little to say to modern readers that
has not been said better by other poets.
2376

THE MISER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris, France
First presented: 1668
Principal characters:
Harpagon, a miser
Cleante, his son
Elise, his^ daughter
Valere, Elise's lover
Mariane, loved by Cl6ante and Harpagon
Anselme, father of Valere and Mariane
Critique:
The genius of Moliere has not been
dimmed by time, for his plays are as
popular today as they were to past generations.
Almost every year sees a major theatrical
company producing one of his dramas.
The Miser (JJAvare^) ranks with his best.
Filled with satire, humor, and love
interest, it meets all requirements for
romance and comedy. Harpagon is often
compared with Shylock as his equal in
avarice and miserliness. All of the
characters are clear-cut and well presented. The
Dlot is exciting and fast-moving. It is little
wonder that this and the other plays of
Moliere never lose their popularity.
The Story:
Valere, the steward of Harpagon's
house, was^ in love with his employer's
daughter Elise. Valere was sure that he
was of a good family, but until he could
find his relatives he had little hope that
Harpagon would give his consent to a
marriage between his daughter and his
steward. Harpagon was a miser of such
great avarice and stinginess that he loved
nothing but money. He lived in constant
fear that someone would rob him of the
large sum he had buried in his garden.
Valere knew that his only hope lay in
insinuating himself into Harpagon's
affection by flattering the old man beyond
belief.
Harpagon's son Cleante was also in
love. The object of his love was Mariane,
a poor girl who lived with her widowed
mother. But Cleante's loye was as
hopeless as that of his sister Elise and Valere.
Since Mariane had no money, Harpagon
would not consent to a marriage, and
Cleante kept his love for the girl from his
father. What he did not know was that
his father had seen Mariane and wanted
her for himself. He had been a widower
for many years and the young girl's
beauty made him desire her. He must
first, however, secure a dowry for her; his
miserliness was stronger than his love.
Elise learned from her father that
against her wishes she was to be married
to Anselme, a wealthy man of fifty. The
fact that Anselme would take his
daughter without a dowry was too good
a# proposition for Harpagon to pass by.
Elise appealed to Valere for help. The
clever lad pretended to agree with her
father while he whispered to her to take
heart and trust him to prevent the
marriage. If all else failed, he and Elise would
flee from the house and be married
without her father's consent.
Cle*ante was so determined to marry
Mariane that he arranged through an
agent to borrow from a money-lender.
Never was a higher rate of interest
demanded. Cl£ante was to pay twenty-five
percent interest and take part of the loan
in goods which he must sell. With no
choice but to agree, he went to meet the
money-lender. He was horrified to find his
own rather. Harpagon was equally angry
that his son should be such a spendthrift
2377

that he must borrow money at such high
rates. The two parted without completing
the loan, Cleante to try to arrange a loan
elsewhere and Harpagon to try to secure
a dowry for Mariane.
Harpagon arranged a party in honor of
Mariane, whom he had not as yet met. He
cautioned the servants to be very sparing
with the food and drink, as it was an
injustice to one's guests to stuff them full.
Although Mariane found Harpagon
repulsive, she was bound by her poor
mother's wish to take a rich husband.
When Mariane learned that Harpagon
was the father of her beloved Cleante, she
detested him more than ever. Cleante got
a small measure of revenge on his father
by taking a huge diamond ring from
his father's finger and presenting it to
Mariane after telling her that Harpagon
wanted her to have it. The miser was
helpless; he could not get it back unless
he admitted his stinginess to the girl he
wished to marry.
After Harpagon tricked Cleante into
admitting his love for Mariane, the old
man vowed more than ever to have her for
himself. Cleante cursed his father and
swore that the old miser should never
have the girl, and Harpagon disinherited
his son. Then a servant rushed in with
the news that Harpagon had been robbed
of his buried money. All else was
forgotten by the miser as he cried out for
help. He suspected everyone of stealing
the money, even himself. He would have
the whole household hanged, and if the
money were not found he would hang
himself.
A jealous servant told Harpagon that
Valere had taken the money. Harpagon
ordered the magistrate to arrest the
steward, even though there was no true
evidence against him. Anselme arrived in
time to hear Valere shouting to Harpagon
that he would marry Elise in spite of the
miser's objections. Anselme said that he
would bow out of the courtship, for he
had no desire to take the girl against her
wishes. Harpagon was furious. Where
else could he find a wealthy son-in-law,
particularly one who would demand no
dowry? He pressed the magistrate to
arrest Valere, but that young man stopped
the official with the announcement that
he was the son of Don Thomas d'Alburci,
a nobleman of Naples who had had to flee
his native city.
Valere said that he and a manservant
had survived a shipwreck and made their
way to Paris. He produced the
family seals to prove his identity. Then
Mariane rushed to him and told him that
she was his sister, that she and her mother
had also been saved from the wreck and
had thought the rest of the family dead.
But there was more joy to come for the
reunited brother and sister. Anselme was
their father, the former Don Thomas
d'Alburci, who had also been saved.
Thinking his loved ones dead, he had
settled in Paris under the name of
Anselme.
These revelations made no difference
to Harpagon. He still insisted that Valere
return his money. While he was ranting,
Cleante entered the room and said that
he had found the money and would
return it to his father as soon as his father
gave him permission to marry Mariane.
That was no hard choice for Harpagon
to make. He would gladly exchange
Mariane, even his own children, for his
money. Anselme also gave his consent to
the marriage. Harpagon insisted that
Anselme pay for both weddings. This the
kind father was willing to do, and the
happy couples and Anselme went off to
tell Mariane's mother the glad news.
Harpagon had an errand of his own. He
went to examine his cashbox, the true
love of his mean and stingy nature.
2378

LES MISERABLES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: About 1815 to 1835
Locale: France
First published: 1862
Principal characters:
Jean Valjean, also known as Father Madeleine
Fantine, a woman befriended by Valjean
Cosette, her daughter
M. Javert, inspector of police
Marius Pontmercy, in love with Cosette
M. Thenardier, known also as Jondrette, a rogue
Eponine Thenardier, his daughter
Critique:
Les Misirahles is a romantic novel,
packed with exciting incidents. It is also
a sociological study of poverty and slum
life. Victor Hugo spent fourteen years on
the book, a fact which probably accounts
for the numerous digressions and
additions to the story. The core of this
extremely long novel is the life story of a
criminal, Jean Valjean, who serves as an
example of the misery and contradictions
of society with which the author was
especially concerned at the time of
writing. Les Miserables is both a powerful
social document and an extremely
interesting and dramatic narrative. Hugo's
masterpiece, it is one of the great novels
of the world.
The Story:
In 1815, in France, a man named Jean
Valjean was released after nineteen years
in prison. He had been sentenced to a
term of five years because he stole a loaf
of bread to feed his starving sister and
her family, but the sentence was later
increased because of his attempts to
escape. During his imprisonment he
astonished others by his exhibitions of unusual
physical strength.
Freed at last, he started out on foot
for a distant part of the country.
Innkeepers refused him food and lodging
because his yellow passport revealed that
he was an ex-convict. Finally he came to
the house of the Bishop of Digne, a
saintly man who treated him graciously,
fed him, and gave him a becj. During the
night Jean stole the bishop's silverware
and fled. He was immediately captured
by the police, who returned him and the
stolen goods to the bishop. Without any
censure, the priest not only gave him
what he had stolen, but also added his
silver candlesticks to the gift. The
astonished gendarmes let the prisoner go.
Alone with the bishop, Jean was
confounded by the churchman's attitude, for
the bishop asked only that he use the
silver as a means of living an honest life.
In Paris, in 1817, lived a beautiful
girl named Fantine. She gave birth to
an illegitimate child, Cosette, whom she
left with M. and Mme. Thenardier to
bring up with their own children. As
time went on, the Th£nardiers demanded
more and more money for Cosette's
support, yet treated the child cruelly and
deprived her even of necessities. Fantine,
meanwhile, had gone to the town of M—
and obtained a job in a glass factory
operated by Father Madeleine, a kind and
generous man whose history was known
to no one, but whose good deeds and
generosity to the poor were public
information. He had arrived in M— a poor
laborer, and by a lucky invention he was
able to start a business of his own. Soon
he built a factory and employed many
workers. After five years in the city he
was named mayor and was beloved by all
the citizens. He was reported to have
2379

prodigious strength. Only one man,
Javert, a police inspector, seemed to watch
him with an air of suspicion. Javert was
born in prison. His whole life was
influenced by that fact and his fanatical
attitude toward duty made him a man to
be feared. He was determined to discover
the facts of Father Madeleine's previous
life. One day he found a clue while
watching Father Madeleine lift a heavy
cart to save an old man who had fallen
under it. Javert realized that he had
known only one man of such prodigious
strength, a former convict named Val-
jean.
Fantine had told no one of Cosette,
but knowledge of her illegitimate child
spread and caused Fantine to be
discharged from the factory without the
knowledge of Father Madeleine. Finally
Fantine became a prostitute in an effort
to pay the increasing demands of the
Thenardiers for Cosette's support. One
night Javert arrested her while she was
walking the streets. When Father
Madeleine heard the details of her plight, and
learned that she had tuberculosis, he sent
Fantine to a hospital and promised to
bring Cosette to her. Just before the
mayor left to get Cosette, Javert
confessed that he had mistakenly reported
to the Paris police that he suspected
Father Madeleine of being the ex-convict,
Jean Valjean. He said that the real Jean
Valjean had been arrested at Arras under
an assumed name. The arrested man was
to be tried two days later.
That night rather Madeleine struggled
with his own conscience, for he was the
real Jean Valjean. Unwilling to let an
innocent man suffer, he went to Arras
for the trial and identified himself as
Jean Valjean. After telling the
authorities where he could be found, he went
to Fantine. Javert came there to arrest
him. Fantine was so terrified that she
died. After a day in prison Jean Valjean
escaped.
Valjean, some time later, was again
imprisoned by Javert. Once more he
made his escape. Shortly afterward he
was able to take Cosette, a girl of eight,
away from the Thenardiers. He grew to
love the child greatly, and they lived
together happily in the Gorbeau tenement
on the outskirts of Paris. When Jarvert
once more tracked them down, Valjean
escaped with the child into a convent
garden, where they were rescued by Fau-
chelevant, whose life Valjean had saved
when the old peasant fell beneath the
cart. Fauchelevant was now the convent
gardener. Valjean became his helper,
and Cosette was put into the convent
school.
Years passed. Valjean left the convent
and took Cosette, her schooling finished,
to live in a modest house on a side street
in Paris. The old man and the young
girl were little noticed by their neighbors.
Meanwhile the blackguard Th£nardier
had brought his family to live in the
Gorbeau tenement. He now called himself
Jondrette. In the next room lived Marius
Pontmercy, a young lawyer estranged
from his aristocrat grandfather because of
his liberal views. Marius was the son of
an officer whose life Th£nardier had
saved at the battle of Waterloo. The
father, now dead, had asked his son some
day to repay Th£nardier for his deed.
Marius never suspected that Jondrette
was really his father's benefactor. When
the Jondrettes were being evicted from
their quarters, however, he paid their
rent from his meager resources.
During one of his evening walks
Marius met Cosette and Valjean. He fell in
love with the girl as he continued to
see her in the company of her white-
haired companion. At last he followed
her to her home. Valjean, noticing
Marius, took Cosette to live in another house.
One morning Marius received a
begging letter delivered by Eponine
Jondrette. His neighbors were again asking
for help, and he began to wonder about
them. Peeping through a hole in the
wall, he heard Jondrette speak of a
benefactor who would soon arrive. When the
man came, Marius recognized him as
Cosette's companion. From Eponine he
later learned Cosette's address, but
before he saw Cosette again he overheard
2380

the Jondrettes plotting against the man
whom he believed to be Cosette's father.
Alarmed, he told the details of the plot
to Inspector Javert.
Marius was at the wall watching when
Valjean returned to give Jondrette money.
While they talked, numerous heavily-
armed men appeared in the room.
Jondrette then revealed himself as Th£nard-
ier. Marius, horrified, did not know,
whom to protect, the man his father had
requested him to befriend or the father
of Cosette. Threatened by Th£nardier,
Valjean agreed to send to his daughter
for more money, but he gave a false
address. When this ruse was discovered,
the robbers threatened to kill Valjean.
Marius threw a note of warning through
the hole in the wall as Javert appeared
and arrested all but Valjean, who made
his escape through a window.
Marius finally located Cosette. One
night she told him that she and her
father were leaving for England. He tried
to get his grandfather's permission to
marry Cosette. It was refused. In
despair, he returned to Cosette and found
the house where she had lived empty.
Eponine met him there and told him
that his revolutionary friends had begun
a revolt and were waiting for him at the
barricades. Because Cosette had
disappeared, he gladly followed Eponine to
the barricades, where Javert had been
seized as a spy and bound. During the
fighting Eponine gave her life to save
Marius. As she died, she gave him a
note which Cosette had given her to
deliver. In it Cosette told him where she
could be found.
In answer to her note, Marius wrote
that his grandfather would not permit his
marriage, that he had no money, and that
he would be killed at the barricade.
Valjean discovered the notes and set out
for the barricades. Finding Javert tied
up by the revolutionists, he freed the
inspector. The barricades fell. In the
confusion Valjean came upon the
wounded Marius and carried him into
the Paris sewers.
After hours of wandering he reached
a locked outlet. There Th£nardier,
unrecognized in the dark, met him and
agreed to open the grating in exchange
for money. Outside Valjean met Javert,
who took him into custody. Valjean
asked only that he be allowed to take
Marius to his grandfather's house. Javert
agreed to wait at the door, but suddenly
he turned and ran toward the river.
Tormented by his conscientious regard for
duty and his reluctance to return to prison
the man who had saved his life, he
drowned himself in the Seine.
When Marius recovered, he and
Cosette were married. Valjean gave Cosette
a generous dowry, and for the first time
Cosette learned that Valjean was not her
real father. Valjean told Marius only that
he was an escaped convict, believed dead,
and he begged to be allowed to see
Cosette occasionally. But gradually Marius
banished him from the house. Then
Marius learned from Th£nardier that it
was Valjean who had rescued Marius at
the barricade. Marius and Cosette
hurried to Valjean's lodgings, to find him
on his deathbed. He died knowing that
his children loved him and that all his
entangling past was now clear. He
bequeathed the bishop's silver candlesticks
to Cosette, with his last breath saying that
he had spent his life in trying to be
worthy of the faith of the Bishop of
Digne. He was buried in a grave with
no name on the stone.
2381

MISS JULIE
Type of work: Drama
Author: August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: A country estate in Sweden
First presented: 1888
Principal characters:
Miss Julie, a headstrong gentlewoman of twenty-five
Jean, Miss Julie's lover and her father's valet
Christine, a cook, fiancee of Jean
Critique:
Strindberg termed this long, one-act
play a naturalistic tragedy in his author's
preface to the drama, which represented
an effort on his part to popularize the
naturalism of French literature in the
literature of Sweden. In his preface
Strindberg declared that the impetus for
the play's content came from his reading
of the novels of the Goncourt brothers
rather than the fiction of Zola, who is
generally considered the fountainhead of
naturalism in European literature.
Readers will quickly note the emphasis which
Strindberg placed on the environment of
the three characters in this play,
especially on the importance environment played
in the shaping of Julie's personality. Such
elements of determinism are, of course,
the hallmarks of naturalism.
The Story:
Miss Julie's broken engagement to the
county attorney was quite a scandal to
the servants in the house. Miss Julie,
daughter of a count, had made the man
actually jump over her horsewhip several
times, giving him a cut with the whip
each time. He had finally put an end to
such conduct and the engagement by
snatching the whip, breaking it, and
striding away from the manor.
On Midsummer Eve, a great holiday
held throughout the Swedish
countryside a few weeks later, Miss Julie entered
into the festivities and danced with the
servants. She dared to do so because her
father had gone to the city and was not
expected to return. Although the servants
disliked her entrance into their fun, they
were powerless to make their dislike
known; she was their mistress. Her
father's valet, Jean, left the festivities after
dancing once with Miss Julie. He
retreated to the kitchen, where his fiancee,
Christine the cook, gave him a little
supper.
But Miss Julie gave Jean no peace.
She came into the kitchen and dragged
him out to dance with her again, even
though she knew that he had promised
to dance with Christine. After dancing
another time with Miss Julie, Jean
escaped once more to the kitchen. He was
afraid that Christine was angry. She
assured him, however, that she did not
blame him for what had happened. Just
then Miss Julie returned to the kitchen
and demanded that Jean dance with her
again after he had changed from his
livery into a tailcoat. While he was
changing, Christine fell asleep in a chair.
When he returned Miss Julie asked him
to get her something to drink. Jean got
a bottle of beer for her and another for
himself.
After finishing the beer, Miss Julie
teased Christine by trying to wake her
up. Christine, moving as if asleep, went
to her own room. After she had gone,
Miss Julie began to ogle Jean, who
warned his mistress that it was dangerous
to flirt with a man as young as he. But
MISS JULIE by August Strindberg, from PLAYS BY AUGUST STRINDBERG, SECOND SERIES.
Translated by Edwin Bjorkman. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1913,
by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed, 1941, by Edwin Bjorkman.
2382

Miss Julie paid no attention to him. Jean,
falling in with her mood, told about his
early life as a cotter's child and how,
even as a small child, he had been in love
with his young mistress. They talked so
long that the other servants came to look
for the valet. Rather than expose
themselves to the comments and the scandal
of having drunk together in the kitchen,
Jean and Miss Julie went into Jean's room.
They were there a long time, for the
servants stayed in the kitchen and danced
and sang. During that time Miss Julie
gave herself to Jean.
After the servants had gone, neither
Jean nor Miss Julie knew just what to do.
They agreed only that it was best for
them to leave the country. Jean
suggested that they go to Como, Italy, to open
a hotel. Miss Julie asked Jean to take her
in his arms again. He refused, saying that
he could not make love to her a second
time in her father's house, where she was
the mistress and he the servant. When
she reminded him of the extravagant
language he had used a little while before,
he told her the time had come to be
practical.
To cheer her, Jean offered Miss Julie
a drink of wine from a bottle he had
taken from the count's cellar. She saw
whose it was and accused Jean of
stealing. An argument followed, with bitter
words on both sides. When they had both
calmed a little, Miss Julie tried to tell
Jean how she had come to be what she
was. She said that she had been brought
up to do a man's work by her mother,
because the mother had hated to be a slave to
men. She told also how her mother had
revenged herself on Miss Julie's father by
taking a brick manufacturer as her lover
and how her mother's lover had stolen
great sums of money from the count. From
her mother, said Miss Julie, she had
learned to hate men and to wish to make
them her slaves. He understood then why
she had treated her fiance* as she had with
the whip. Miss Julie ended her recital
with the recommendation that she and
Jean go abroad at once. To her
suggestion that when they ceased enjoying one
another they should commit suicide, Jean,
far more practical, advised her to go away
by herself. Miss Julie, helpless in the
urgency of the situation, did as Jean
suggested and prepared to leave.
While Miss Julie was upstairs
dressing, Christine came into the kitchen. It
was morning. Seeing the glasses on the
table, she knew that Miss Julie and Jean
had been drinking together. She guessed
the rest, and Jean admitted what had
happened. Christine, angry at Miss Julie,
told Jean that fine people did not behave
so with the servants. Christine urged him
to go away with her as soon as possible.
Loving him, she did not intend to lose
him to her mistress.
Christine persuaded Jean to get ready
to go to church with her, since it was
Sunday morning. When they were both
dressed, Miss Julie and Jean met in the
kitchen. The mistress carried a bird cage.
When Jean said she could not take her
pet finch with her, she ordered him to
kill it. Seeing her bird die, Miss Julie's
love turned to hate. Despising him for
killing in cold blood the pet she had
loved so much, she raged at Jean and
told him that her father would soon
return. Then he would learn what had
happened. Miss Julie declared she would
welcome her father's discovery; she wished
now only to die.
When Christine appeared ready for
church, she told Miss Julie bluntly that
she would not allow her mistress to run
off with the man who had promised to
become her husband. Miss Julie then
tried to persuade Christine to go with
them to Como. While the two women
talked, Jean left the room. He returned a
few moments later with his razor.
Christine, refusing to join in the flight, left
for church after saying that she had
spoken to the men at the stables about
not letting anyone have horses until the
count's return.
After Christine's departure Miss Julie
asked Jean what he would do if he were
in her position. He indicated the razor in
2383

his hand. At that moment the valet's bell
rang. The count had returned. Jean,
answering the bell, received instructions to
have boots and coffee ready in half an
hour. His master's voice reduced Jean
once again to the mental attitudes of a
servant. Miss Julie, almost in a state of
trance, was filled with ecstasy at the
thought of freeing herself by committing
suicide. She took the razor Jean gave her
and left the kitchen with it in her hand.
2384

MISS LONELYHEARTS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Nathanael West (Nathan Weinstein, 1903?-1940)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Late 1920's
Locale: New York City
First published: 1933
Principal characters:
Miss Lonelyhearts, an advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist on the New
York Post-Dispatch
Betty, his girl friend
Willie Shrike, the paper's feature editor, his boss
Mary Shrike, the boss's wife
Peter Doyle, a cripple
Fay Doyle, his wife
Critique:
If it took seventeen years after his
early death for the works of Nathanael
West to achieve either critical or popular
success, one may say with some assurance
that the present acclaim is on fairly solid
ground. Of the four novels in his
Complete Works (1957), Miss Lonelyhearts
is regarded most highly. Bitter in its
satire, brief, episodic and unique in its
treatment, ironic and hopeless in its
outlook, Miss Lonelyhearts is not so much a
tale of newspapering as it is West's
grotesque picture of the miserable,
monstrous, often disgusting life man has made
for himself in his despair.
The Story:
Miss Lonelyhearts found it hard to
write his lovelorn column in the New
York Post-Dispatch: the letters were not
funny, there was no humor as desperate
people begged for help. Sick-of-it-all, for
example, with seven children in twelve
years, was pregnant again and ill, but
being a Catholic she could not consider
an abortion and her husband would not
let her alone; Desperate, a sixteen-year-
old girl, a good dancer with a good shape
and pretty clothes, would like boy friends,
but cried all day at the big hole in the
middle of her face (should she commit
suicide?); Harold S., fifteen, wrote that
his sister Grade, thirteen, deaf, dumb,
and not very smart, had something dirty
done to her by a man, but Harold could
not tell their mother Grade was going
to have a baby because her mother would
beat her up. Shrike, the feature editor
and Miss Lonelyhearts* tormentor, was no
help at all: instead of the same old stuff,
he said, Miss Lonelyhearts ought to give
his readers something new and hopeful.
At Delehanty's speak-easy, where Miss
Lonelyhearts went to escape his problems,
his boss still belabored him about
brooding and told him to forget the Crucifixion
and remember the Renaissance.
Meanwhile, he was trying to seduce Miss Far-
kis, a long-legged woman with a childish
face. He also taunted the columnist by
talking of a Western sect which prayed
for a condemned slayer with an adding
machine, numbers being their idea of the
universal language.
Miss Lonelyhearts' bedroom walls were
bare except for an ivory Christ nailed
with large spikes, and the religious figure
combined in a dream with a snake whose
scales were tiny mirrors in which the
dead world took on a semblance of life.
First he was a magician who could not
move his audience by tricks or prayer;
then he was on a drunken college spree
with two friends. Their attempt to
sacrifice a lamb before barbecuing it, with
Miss Lonelyhearts chanting the name of
MISS LONELYHEARTS by Nathanael West. By permission of the publishers, Farrar, Straus & Cudahy,
Inc. Copyright, 1933, by Nathanael West.
2385

Christ, miscarried when the blade broke
on the altar and the lamb slipped out of
their bloodied hands. When the others
refused to go back to put the lamb out
of its misery, Miss Lonelyhearts returned
and crushed its head with a stone.
One day, as he tried to put things in
order, everything went against him:
pencils broke, buttons rolled under the bed,
shades refused to stay down, and instead
of order on the skyline he found chaos.
Miss Lonelyhearts remembered Betty,
who could bring order into his world,
and he went to her apartment. But he
realized that her world was not the world
and could never include the readers of his
column; his confusion was significant and
her order was not. Irritated and fidgety,
he could neither talk to her nor caress
her, although two months before she had
agreed to marry him. When she asked if
he were sick, he could only shout at her;
when she said she loved him, he could
only reply that he loved her and her
smiling through tears. Sobbing that she
felt swell before he came and now felt
lousy, she asked him to go away.
At Delehanty's he listened to talk of
raping a woman writer, and as he got
drunker he heard friends mock Shrike's
kidding him; but whiskey made him feel
good and dreams of childhood made the
world dance. Stepping back from the bar,
he collided with a man holding a beer.
The man punched him in the mouth.
With a lump on his head, a loose tooth
and a cut lip, Miss Lonelyhearts walked
in the fresh air with Ned Gates. In a
comfort station they met an old man with
a terrible cough and no overcoat, who
carried a cane and wore gloves because
he detested red hands. They forced him
to go to an Italian wine cellar. There
they told him they were Havelock Ellis
and Krafft-Ebing and insultingly mocked
him with taunts of his homosexuality.
When Miss Lonelyhearts twisted his arm
—imagining it was the arm of Desperate,
Broken-hearted, or Sick-of-it-all—the old
man screamed, and someone hit the
columnist with a chair.
Instead of going to the office after
Shrike phoned him, Miss Lonelyhearts
went to the speak-easy; he knew Shrike
found him too perfect a butt for his jokes
to fire him. Needing a woman, he phoned
Mary, Shrike's wife, whom he had never
seduced, although she hated her husband
and used Miss Lonelyhearts to arouse
Shrike. At a night club, in a cab, and
at her apartment door, Miss Lonelyhearts
tried to talk Mary into sleeping with him;
but Shrike opened the door, ending that
scheme.
The next day Miss Lonelyhearts
received a letter from Fay Doyle,
unhappily married to a cripple, asking for an
appointment. Although he first threw the
letter away, he retrieved it, phoned her
to meet him in the park, and took her to
his apartment. In the intervals of making
love, she told of her married life and her
child Lucy, whose father was not Doyle.
Physically sick and exhausted in his
room for three days, he was comforted
by Betty, who tried to get him to quit his
Lonelyhearts job. He said he had taken
the job as a joke, but after several months
the joke had escaped him. Pleas for help
made him examine his values and he
became the victim of the joke. While Betty
suggested he go to the country with her,
Shrike broke into the room, taunted him
to escape to the South Seas, hedonism,
art, suicide, or drugs, and ended by
dictating an imaginary letter from the
columnist to Christ.
After he had been ill for a week, Betty
finally persuaded Miss Lonelyhearts to
go with her to her aunt's Connecticut
farm. They camped in the kitchen, sat
near a pond to watch frogs, deer, and a
fawn, and slept on a mattress on the
floor. They walked in the woods, swam
in the nude, and made love in the grass.
After several days they returned to the
city. Miss Lonelyhearts knew that Betty
had failed to cure him; he could not
forget the letters. He vowed to attempt to
be humble. In the office he found a
lengthy letter from Broad Shoulders,
telling of her troubles with a crazy husband.
About a week later, while Shrike was
pulling the same familiar jokes in Dele-
2386

hanty's, the bartender introduced Miss
Lonelyhearts to Peter Doyle, a cripple
whose wife wanted the columnist to have
dinner at their house. After labored
conversation, Doyle gave him a letter about
his problems: he must pull his leg up
and down stairs for $22.50 a week; his
wife talked money, money, money; a
doctor prescribed a six months' rest. When
their hands touched under the table,
they were at first embarrassed, but then
held hands in silence.
As they left the speak-easy, very drunk,
to go to Doyle's, the cripple cursed his
wife and his foot. Miss Lonelyhearts was
happy in his humility. When Mrs. Doyle
tried to seduce the columnist, he failed
to respond. Meanwhile, her husband
called himself a pimp and at his wife's
request went out to get gin. Failing to
find a message to show Mrs. Doyle her
husband loved her, and disgusted by her
obscene attempts to get him to sleep with
her, Miss Lonelyhearts struck her again
and again before he ran out of the house.
Following a three days' illness, Miss
Lonelyhearts was awakened by five
people, including Shrike and his wife, all
drunk, who wanted to take him to a
party at the editor's home. Betty was one
of the party. Shrike wanted to play a
game in which he distributed letters from
Miss Lonelyhearts' office file and made
taunting comments. When the columnist
could stand it no longer, he followed
Betty out, dropping unread the letter
given him, which Shrike read to the
crowd. It was from Doyle, accusing Miss
Lonelyhearts of trying to rape the
cripple's wife.
Miss Lonelyhearts told Betty he had
quit the Lonelyhearts job and was going
to look for work in an advertising agency.
She told him she was going to have a
baby. Although he persuaded her to
marry him and have the baby instead of
an abortion, by the time he left her he
did not feel guilty; he did not feel, in
fact, for his feeling, conscience, sense of
reality, and self-knowledge were like a
rock.
The next morning he was in a fever.
The Christ on his wall was shining, but
everything else in the room seemed dead.
When the bell rang and he saw Doyle
coming up the stairs, he imagined the
cripple had come to have Miss
Lonelyhearts perform a miracle and make him
whole. Misunderstanding the outspread
arms, Doyle put his hand in a newspaper-
wrapped package as Betty came in the
door. In the struggle the gun Doyle car*
ried went off and Miss Lonelyhearts fell,
dragging the cripple with him.
2387

MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION
Type of work: Novel
Author} John William De Forest (1826-1906)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of vlot: The Civil War period
Locale: New England and Louisiana
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Captain Colburne, a Federal officer
Colonel Carter, his superior
Lillie Ravenel, a Southern belle
Dr. Ravenel, her father
Mrs. Larue, a relative of the Ravenels
Critique:
It is unfortunate that Miss RaveneVs
Conversion from Secession to Loyalty has
been neither well-known nor widely read,
for in its war scenes and in its fidelity to
human nature it is, as William Dean
Howells said, "of an advanced realism
before realism was known by that name."
Without labored detail, it presents civil
war; without grisly enterprise, it depicts
civil war. With an artist's fine sensitivity
it unfolds a tender love story. De Forest's
style and tastes are quite modern; possibly
these facts account for the failure of his
novel to achieve popularity when first
published and for its later obscurity. But
it is a versatile book, well-developed in
plot, character, and background. Much to
the writer's credit is his skillful handling
of character and situation so that Lillie
Ravenel's final acceptance of Colburne is
without loss of dignity or womanliness.
The Story:
Edward Colburne, of New Boston, met
Miss Lillie Ravenel shortly after the
outbreak of the Civil War and not long
after she had come to New England with
her father, Dr. Ravenel, who had been
forced to leave Louisiana on account of
his refusal to support the Confederacy.
Lillie was a loyal daughter of the South,
Colburne an equally adamant supporter
of the North.
Among Lillie's acquaintances was
Lieutenant Colonel Carter, on leave because
of an injury. Colonel Carter was a general
favorite with the ladies, and Colburne
could find only one defect in his attractive
personality; he drank too much. Carter,
foreseeing that the war would be a long
one, hoped to enlist more troops. Colburne,
a loyal Yankee, agreed to recruit a
company of his own.
Lillie's flirtation with Carter alarmed
her father. He liked Colburne, instead,
but his daughter did not encourage that
young man's attentions.
After saying farewell to Lillie, Colonel
Carter and Captain Colburne set out
under orders which eventually led them
to New Orleans. Some time later Dr.
Ravenel and Lillie returned to their
former home. Lillie found the city
changed; women spoke bitterly about the
Yankee soldiers. When Dr. Ravenel,
having no other practice in the city, accepted
a position as head of a hospital held by
Union forces, he added further insult to
the pride of the local citizens. Because
Colonel Carter had tried to help the doctor
find employment, his efforts gained him a
welcome in the Ravenel house, although
the doctor did not approve of the officer's
attraction for Lillie.
Dr. Ravenel's kinswoman, Mrs. Larue,
was attracted to Carter. When the doctor
reproved her, she turned her attentions
to Colburne. Because the captain
innocently rebuffed her attempted flirtation,
Mrs. Larue took her revenge by telling
MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION by John William De Forest. By permission of the publishers, Harper
& Brothers. Copyright. 1939, by Harper & Brothers.
2388

Lillie that he had dined with the
Meurices, a Creole family that had aided
the Northern invaders.
Colonel Carter, preparing to drive a
Southern regiment from the area,
declared his love to Lillie before he left. Dr.
Ravenel, adamant, would not consent to
Carter's proposal, for he thought the
officer's character questionable. Lillie wept
and her father suffered. After the
engagement Carter, for his heroism, was
appointed Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana
and stationed in New Orleans. A constant
visitor in the Ravenel house, he gradually
overcame the doctor's distrust, and at last
he and Lillie became engaged. Carter was
again ordered to active duty. Returning to
New Orleans on leave, he hurriedly
married Lillie before rejoining his troops.
Dr. Ravenel left his post at the hospital
in order to take charge of a plantation in
nearby Taylorsville, where he hoped to
rehabilitate freed slaves. To Lillie's horror,
he asked her to teach his charges how to
read. Letters came quite frequently from
Carter, and Lillie waited for his return.
Colburne, wounded in the arm, was
hospitalized for a short time. When Dr.
Ravenel found Colburne in the hospital,
which reeked of sickness and decay, he
took his young friend to the plantation.
There Colburne had to endure Lillie's
constant prattle about her husband. Col-
burne's visit was interrupted by a
Confederate raid. Taking command, the
captain secured the Ravenels and the
Negroes in a nearby fort. In command
was Major Gazaway, a cowardly and
uncertain officer who urged surrender when
the Southerners attacked. Colburne
literally took command while Gazaway
huddled in a protected spot with Lillie. After
the Confederate troops had been repulsed,
Dr. Ravenel attended the wounded. Lillie
had been impressed by Colburne's
courage.
Reporting to Carter, Colburne found
him celebrating a victory with whiskey
and women. The young man felt sorry
for Lillie. A few days later Carter
established his wife in a local cottage, and Dr.
Ravenel returned to head the hospital in
New Orleans. Colburne spent much time
with the Carters. Carter, however, was
gradually sinking under his debts. A
summons to Washington took Colonel Carter
away from his wife after he had borrowed
two hundred dollars from Colburne.
Another passenger on the ship with Carter
was Mrs. Larue. Although he berated
himself for his infidelity, Carter carried
on an affair with Lillie's aunt.
Carter did try, unsuccessfully, to obtain
a promotion for Colburne. In Washington
he himself bowed to custom and beguiled
senators and officials until he was
promised promotion to the rank of a brigadier
general. He called on Mrs. Larue in New
York. They traveled together to New
Orleans on the return trip. Carter
borrowed one hundred dollars from the
widow.
After his return Carter sank more
deeply into debt. He and Mrs. Larue met
frequently in a private room behind his
office. When Lillie's baby was born,
however, he promised himself to have nothing
more to do with Mrs. Larue.
To alleviate his indebtedness. Carter
began to speculate with government
funds. Shortly afterward he received his
appointment as brigadier general and was
recalled to active duty. At that time Dr.
Ravenel found and read a letter written
to him by Mrs. Larue. Heartsick, the
doctor tried to hide the news from Lillie.
Unfortunately, she came upon the same
letter and, accustomed to reading her
father's mail, read it.
When Lillie became seriously ill, her
father took her and the baby on a sea
voyage, his intention being to take Lillie
north after her recovery. The letter he
wrote to his son-in-law, informing him of
that decision, was delivered on the eve of
a battle in which Carter was mortally
wounded. Colburne grieved for the fallen
officer and for the bereaved wife.
Gradually Lillie readjusted herself and
devoted her time to her child. When
Colburne, worn out and sick, returned to
New Boston near the end of the war, Dr.
2389

Ravenel undertook to cure him. During
his convalescence, Colburne renewed his
friendship with Lillie, who more and more
began to display her old charm. Still in
love with her, he was too hesitant to speak
up boldly. When he finally asked her to
marry him, Lillie realized that she truly
lovea him, better than she had loved any
other.
2390

MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: World War I
Locale: England
First published: 1916
Principal characters:
Mr. Direck, an American
Mr. Britling, an English writer
Hugh, Mr. Britling's oldest son
Teddy, Mr. Britling's secretary
Letty, Teddy's wife
Cissie, Letty s sister and Mr. Direck's sweetheart
Heinrich, the Britling children's tutor
Critique:
In this book the author tries to show
the effect of World War I upon the
mind of one man. Mr. Britling passes
from optimism to despair and back to
optimism as he ponders questions of war,
religion, morality, and social reform. For
anyone who enjoys novels of theme this
is a rewarding and inspiring book.
The Story:
Mr. Direck, secretary of a Boston
cultural society, was in England for the
purpose of persuading Mr. Brithng, a
famous writer, to deliver a series of
lectures in the United States. Direck found
England all that he had expected, as he
traveled from London to Matching's Easy
in Essex to meet Mr. Brithng. However,
Mr. Britling did not support the illusion.
He neither dressed like an Englishman
nor acted like an intellectual, and Direck
was disappointed. But Mr. Britling's
family and friends aroused his interest.
Mr. and Mrs. Brithng had three boys.
The oldest, Hugh, was the son of Mr.
Britling's first wife. In addition to the
immediate family, an old aunt and a
young German tutor, Heinrich, lived
in the house. Mr. Britling's secretary
Teddy, his wife Letty, and her sister
Cissie, lived in a cottage nearby. Direck
fell in love with Cissie, a vivacious and
intelligent girl.
Largely because of Cissie, Direck
entered with zest into the entertainments
of the Brithng household, and at times
he almost forgot the real reason for his
visit. Several times, however, he and
his host had serious discussions. Once
they spoke about possible war with
Germany. Mr. Brithng said the idea was
nonsense; it had been expected for a
long time and had never happened.
Unknown to Direck and Mr. Britling,
however, an attempt was at that moment
being made to kill Archduke Francis
Ferdinand of Austria. The fatal march
of events had begun.
One morning Mr. Britling took Direck
on a ride around the countryside. Mr.
Britling, a poor driver, was involved in
an accident with a motorcycle. He was
not hurt, but Direck broke his wrist.
He saw in the accident an opportunity
to prolong his stay at Matching's Easy.
Meanwhile, war brewed behind the
scenes. France was unsettled. The
British were troubled with civil war in
Ireland. Heinrich anxiously questioned
Mr. Britling about the war. Mr. Britling
was still confident that Germany could
not be so foolish as to fight the rest of
the world.
When the time finally came for Direck
to leave Matching's Easy, he decided
that he could not go without confessing
his love to Cissie. Because she had not
yet made up her mind about her love
MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH by H. G. Wells. By permission of the Executors, estate of H. G. Wells,
and the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1916, by H. G. Wells. Renewed, 1944, by H. G. WelU.
2391

for him, Direck left for a tour of Europe.
He felt hopeful because Cissie had not
definitely rejected him.
Mr. Britling, too, was involved in a
love affair. He and bis wife had ceased
to love each other years before, but they
cooperated admirably to run their
pleasant household. Life ran smoothly at
home. Away from home there was Mrs.
Harrowdean, a widow. The love affair
between her and Mr. Britling did not
run smoothly. At the time they had
ceased to see each other and were
quarreling by mail.
The threat of war crept forward. Hein-
rich was called home for mobilization.
He left sadly. He did not believe in
war. The Britlings urged him to stay,
but he said that he must serve his coun*
try.
Germany invaded France, and Russia
invaded Germany. Although forced to
readjust his thinking. Mr. Britling firmly
believed that Germany could never win.
With a troubled mind he drove into the
country, half-determined to call on Mrs.
Harrowdean, but on the way he began
to think of what the war would mean
to the world. Instead of going to see
Mrs. Harrowdean, he returned home to
his writing desk. The war had arrived
to fill the mind of Mr. Britling to the
exclusion of everything else.
When the Germans attacked Belgium,
England declared war. Direck, who had
been in Germany when war was
declared, returned immediately to England,
where he found Cissie thinking only of
England and the war. Direck, being an
American, remained only an interested
spectator.
Gradually it dawned on Mr. Britling
that Germany could not easily be beaten.
The Britling household slowly became
involved in the war. First Teddy
volunteered, then Hugh. Mr. Britling at last
got a job as a constable guarding bridges
and public works. Mrs. Britling worked
for the Red Cross. A Belgian refugee
and his family came to live with them
for a time. Later two squads of soldiers
were billeted in their barn.
Mr. Britling did a lot of thinking in
his attempt to adjust his mind to
Germany's attitude in the war. To most
Englishmen, the war was a game to be
played and won against an honorable
enemy; to many Germans, the war was
a campaign of hate. Mr. Britling thought
often of Heinrich. There had to be other
Germans as good as Heinrich, for not
all of them could be evil. Then he
realized that the British were growing
as cruel and hardened as the enemy.
This war, after all, was no different from
the ones that had gone before, and men
on both sides were victims of their own
foolishness and stupidity.
Hugh lied about his age and managed
to be sent to the front in Flanders. Teddy
was there too, and one day Letty received
a telegram which said that he was
missing. Mr. Britling was so disturbed
that writing was now impossible. Direck,
still a civilian, left for the continent to
learn news of Teddy. Then a telegram
announced that Hugh had been killed.
The war was leaving its mark upon Mr.
Britling of Matching's Easy.
Although Direck had found almost
certain evidence that Teddy had been
killed, Letty still believed him to be
alive. Cissie tried to make her sister
face the truth. Convinced, Letty went
alone out into the fields with her grief.
There she met Mr. Britling. He had
become reconciled to Hugh's death
because he had convinced himself that the
boy had not died in vain. A better world
was in the making; after the war things
would be different.
Letty returned home, strangely quieted
by what Mr. Britling had told her; she,
too, had become reconciled to the idea
of death. Suddenly she saw a familiar
figure in front of the cottage. It was
Teddy. He was alive, with one hand
gone. Now it was Cissie who must begin
to worry. Direck had volunteered in the
Canadian Army.
Some weeks later Mr. Britling learned
that Heinrich had died. He tried to
compose a letter to Heinrich's parents,
but the effort was useless. He wrote all
2392

night without being able to express what
he felt. Hugh and Heinrich had both
died for a reason. With the promise of
a better world to come, now was not
the time for despair. Mr. Britling rose
from his desk and watched the morning
begin. His mind was calm. It seemed
as if the whole world was bathed in
sunrise.
2393

MR. FACEY ROMFORD'S HOUNDS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Smith Surtees (1803-1864)
Type of plot: Picaresque satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1865
Principal characters:
Facey Romford, a self-made M. F. H.
Lucy Sponge, nee Glitters, an actress and sportswoman
Mr. Watkins, owner of Dalberry Lees
Mrs. Watkins, his wife
Cassandra Cleopatra, their daughter
Mr. Hazey, master of the Hard and Sharp Hunt
Mrs. Hazey, his wife
Anna Maria, their daughter
Bill, their son
Miss Betsy Shannon, an actress
Lovetin Lonnergan, her suitor
Goodhearted Green, a sharp horse-trader
Critique:
Published a year after the writer's
death, Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds is
the most involved of Surtees' novels and
in part a sequel to Mr. Sponge's Sporting
Tour. A number of characters from the
earlier novel appear in this posthumous
work, notably Facey Romford, who
played only a minor role in Sponge's
adventures, and Mrs. Sponge, the former
Lucy Glitters, that dashing actress and
sportswoman. Like its predecessors, the
novel belongs to the great comic tradition
in English fiction. Unlike the others, it is
less episodic in form, showing that
Surtees at the end of his career was working
toward the novel of plot. The story is
boisterous, aggressive, and satirical.
Surtees, who wrote about life as he saw it,
was an unappreciated novelist of
manners as well as a chronicler of sport, and
his downright honesty and hearty humor
won for him the dislike of the
fox-hunting fraternity, a prejudice which in
criticism at least exists to this day. Yet
Surtees reflected an age and a whole society
in his books, and we go back to him for
our best picture of one important
segment of that society, country sporting
life. At a time when most of the
nineteenth-century writers have been
reclaimed and evaluated, the comparative
neglect of Surtees' novels is difficult to
understand.
The Story:
Facey Romford had the reputation of
being the most impudent man in the
country. Because his first name was
Francis and he kept a hound or two, strangers
sometimes mistook him for the rich and
sporting Francis Romford, Esq., owner of
Abbeyfield Park. Facey, always willing
to profit by the other Mr. Romford's name
and reputation, never contradicted that
false impression. In fact, he kept for use
on some of his own correspondence a
broad seal of the right Mr. Romford's
crest, a turbot sitting on its tail on a cap
of dignity, taken from an envelope in
which Squire Romford had redirected a
dunning shoemaker's bill intended for
Facey but delivered in error at Abbey-
field Park.
Facey lived on expectations. Early in
life he had elected himself heir to his
cattle-jobbing uncle, Mr. Francis Gilroy,
whose farm he was supposed to look after
during the old man's business trips.
Living in lodgings in the village, Facey spent
his days hunting and fishing on other
2394

men's properties, his evenings playing on
his flute or estimating the amount he
would someday inherit. On occasion,
under the influence of a third glass of gin,
the figure rose as high as thirty thousand
pounds.
Uncle Gilroy died suddenly, leaving
all his worldly goods to the wife and
numerous progeny he had been
maintaining secretly in a London suburb.
When his sharp-tongued widow arrived
with her brood to take possession of the
farm, Facey realized there was no hope
for him in that quarter. But he was never
one to let the grass grow under his feet.
Before word of the Widow Gilroy's
coming could spread through the district he
carried word of his uncle's death to Mr.
Jogglebury Crowdey, a neighbor, secured
a check for fifty pounds from that unwary
gentleman, cashed it, and set out
immediately for London.
There his first act was to look up
Soapey Sponge, an old acquaintance who
had once tricked him out of seven pounds
ten in a card game. In palmier days
Soapey had married Lucy Glitters, the
actress, and set up a cigar and betting
establishment. When an unfeeling
government passed laws against betting
houses, however, the business ceased to
prosper. Although lovely Mrs. Sponge
never sold her husband's cheap cigars
under sixpence or gave change for a
shilling, they had a hard time making ends
meet. Facey found the shop but no Mr.
Sponge, for Soapey, seeing the caller first,
went out the back way. Whether Facey
called early or late, Soapey was never at
home, and since he called frequently he
spent much of his time in Mrs. Sponge's
company.
One day, while looking into a saddlery
window, Facey had his great idea. He
would become a master of hounds. A
short time later Bell's Life in London
carried an advertisement stating that a
gentleman was prepared to treat a
country where he could enjoy shooting and
fishing as well. In the correspondence
which followed, Facey's letters sealed with
the rurbot crest proved sufficiently
impressive to members of the Heavyside
Hunt. Their wives, learning from Burke
that Francis Romford, Esq., was a
bachelor, decided that he was a possible match
for unmarried daughters, and without
further delay Facey became master of the
Heavyside hounds. To celebrate, he
bought Mrs. Sponge a tiara of brilliants,
but when he went to deliver his gift he
was greeted by the news that Soapey had
bolted for Australia with all the loose
cash on hand. On Facey's advice Lucy
sold the furnishings of the store to a
secondhand dealer, packed her clothes,
and went to stay with her mother while
she waited for something to turn up.
At Minshull Vernon, meanwhile,
Facey found the Heavyside hounds a
splay-footed, crooked-legged pack. On his
first day out he was forced to ride a
borrowed mount, but even so his daring
horsemanship put to shame the fat, timid
huntsman, Jonathan Lotherington. The
members were so enthusiastic about their
new M. F. H. that few cared when the
disgruntled huntsman resigned. Facey
immediately appropriated Lotherington's
horses, the property of the hunt, for his
own use. Planning to improve his pack,
he wrote, under the rurbot crest, to the
huntsmen of the best packs in the
kingdom and engaged their draughts. In this
way he secured a fine lot of hounds
without the necessity of paying for them, for
some of the huntsmen were pleased to
oblige Francis Romford, Esq., without
cost and those who presented bills
received such abusive letters denouncing
their hounds as overrunning,
sheep-worrying beasts that they were ashamed to
press their demands further.
Facey next consulted Mr. Goodhearted
Green, a shady horse-trader, and bought
from him three mounts of good
appearance but vicious habits, Honest Robin,
Brilliant, and Leotard. At Tattersall's he
hired two disreputable grooms and whip-
pers-in, Daniel Swig and Tom Chowey.
Although his horses and grooms were
such as only he could manage, Facey
might have had a long career with the
Heavyside Hunt if he had not been
2395

tempted to make a handsome profit bv
selling Leotard to Mrs. Rowley
Rounding. After Leotard had dumped his new
mistress into a mud puddle, the horse
was sent back to Facey. Insisting that the
sale had been without condition and to
Colonel Chatterbox, the lady's
intermediary, he refused to return the money.
Because some of the hunt sided with Mrs.
Rounding, Facey planned to prove
Leotard a suitable lady's mount by having
Lucy Sponge, a magnificent horsewoman,
ride him in the next meet.
Having been drunk the night before,
Swig and Chowey were in no condition
to ride on the day of the hunt, and Facey
asked Lucy to act as whipper-in. His
scheme had unforeseen results. Lucy,
dressed in a fashionable London habit,
rode with such ease and skill that the
members unanimously judged Leotard a
perfect horse for a lady. But if she won
the approval of the gentlemen, Lucy also
aroused the envy and dislike of their
wives. Claiming that her performance and
presence were an outrage to the
proprieties, they insisted that the M. F. H. must
go. Facey was not to be bought off
lightly, however, and as a result he found
himself with fifty excellent hounds in
his kennels and money in his pockets.
Deciding 'hat the way to fortune was to
keep hounds, hunt a country, and get
his sport at the expense of others, he
advertised his services once more.
As luck would have it, the Larkspur
Hunt in Doubleimupshire needed a
M. F. H. for the remainder of the
season. Again the turbot seal did its work,
and before long Facey was engaged for
a subscription of two thousand pounds a
year. The seal also brought offers from
people anxious to let their houses to the
new master. At last Facey decided on
Beldon Hall, the property of Lord
Viscount Lovetin, who, living abroad,
vaguely remembered a Francis Romford at
Eton. Supposing Facey to be the same
Romford, and without consulting his
agent, Mr. Lonnergan, his lordship
announced his willingness to rent his house
at a nominal fee to so desirable a tenant.
Lucy had enjoyed her taste of country
life at Minshull Vernon. Having no
intention of returning to London, she
persuaded Facey that it would be to his
advantage for him to have a lady exhibit
his horses. Finally it was decided that
she would pass as his half-sister, Mrs.
Somerville, the widow of an Indian
officer, and that her mother, to be known
as Mrs. Sidney Benson, would be
installed at Beldon Hall to keep her
daughter company. To prepare for their
venture into society, Facey ordered new
outfits for himself and his grooms, while
Lucy required the newest creations of
London dressmakers and milliners. The
turbot seal and Lord Viscount Lovetin's
address did the rest. There was no
question of payment on the part of tradesmen,
little intention to pay on the part of the
new tenants of Beldon Hall.
Wishing to convert some coach houses
into kennels, Facey sent Proudlock, the
keeper, to ask Mr. Lonnergan's
permission to make the change. The agent was
away but his son, Lovetin Lonnergan,
sent back word that Mr. Romford might
do as he liked. Acting on that reply,
Facey broke open the nobleman's wine
cellar. He also wrote to Goodhearted
Green and bought six more horses of
uncertain habits to add to the three already
in his starting stud. Lucy, meanwhile,
had opened the rooms of the mansion
and bullied Mrs. Mustard, the
housekeeper, and her three slatternly
daughters, locally called the Dirties, into
somewhat presentable appearance and
behavior.
The whole country was eager to meet
the new M. F. H. and his sister. Among
the early callers were Mr. and Mrs. Wat-
kins and their daughter Cassandra
Cleopatra, of Dalberry Lees. In his seedy
younger days Watkins had emigrated to
Australia. There he had struck it rich
in the diggings, even richer when he
married the daughter of an ex-convict
who had made a fortune in land
speculation. Anxious to display their wealth
and to find Cassandra's equal in
marriage, they had returned to England to
2396

establish themselves as a landed family.
Mrs. Watkins was not one to hold back
when opportunity arose to exhibit her
daughter's simpering charms to an
eligible bachelor.
Facey's first day out with the
Larkspur Hunt was a great success. The
hounds raised a fox in a wood near
Pippin Priory and after the long, spirited
chase Facey showed his mettle when he
put his horse to a flooded river, leaving
the others to ride around by the bridge.
The hunt was delighted with the day's
run and their new master. Reports of
Facey's prowess finally reached Mr.
Hazey of Tarring Neville, a shrewd horse-
trader and master of the Hard and Sharp
Hunt. So great was his curiosity that he
and his son Bill rode over to Beldon Hall
to pay their respects.
Enterprising Mrs. Watkins invited
Facey and Lucy to dine with them and
stay overnight for a meet at Dalberry
Lees the next morning. The dinner and
the hunt breakfast were on a grand scale,
but the lady's plans came to nothing
because the fox she had ordered for a draw
in her gardens failed to arrive on time.
Facey, who had nothing but contempt
for bag foxes, rode away disgusted.
Returning home that evening, he found the
fox, sent to him with Mrs. Watkins'
compliments, caged in his front hall. He gave
orders that the animal was to be turned
loose early in the morning, when he and
Lucy would ride after it with only a few
hounds.
The next day's chase carried them as
far as Tarring Neville, where they
breakfasted after the fox had gone to earth.
Mr. and Mrs. Hazey made much of their
unexpected guests, and their daughter
Anna Maria, forewarned by her anxious
mother, was especially attentive to the
Larkspur M. F. H. A few days later
came an invitation asking Facey and
Lucy to dine at Tarring Neville and
hunt with the Hard and Sharp pack the
next day. They went, but Facey formed
no high opinion of the Hard and Sharp
hounds or their master.
Mrs. Watkins, not to be outdone by
Hazey hospitality, decided to organize
a stag hunt. Mr. Stotfold and his stag
were engaged for the occasion and the
chase was started from Dalberry Lees.
The affair was a fiasco. The stag created
havoc on the premises of a young ladies'
finishing school and mired itself at last
in the mud of a tilery. Facey decided to
stick to fox hunting.
Christmas promised to be a gay season
at Beldon Hall. Lucy had invited down
from London a good friend of her
theatrical days, buxom, jolly Betsy Shannon.
Introduced to the gentry as Miss
Hamilton Howard, she soon had the swains of
the neighborhood vying for her smiles.
Betsy's success led Lucy to her great
resolution—she would give a party. Once
more the turbot seal worked its magic.
Caterers came from London with great
hampers of food and drink, for a simple
at home had become in the planning an
elaborate ball. Facey, who had voted for
a few people with rabbit-pie and cheese
or sandwiches and sherry, was dismayed
when he estimated the cost of Lucy's
expensive entertainment, but after several
glasses of champagne he unbent so far
as to entertain the guests with several
tunes on his flute. Disaster threatened
when the coachmen and grooms, tired of
waiting in the cold outside, invaded the
house and carried away the food laid for
a second supper, but not even that
rumpus dashed the spirits of the guests.
Everyone agreed that the ball had been
the affair of the season.
The next day Goodhearted Green
showed up unexpectedly with a
prospective new horse for Facey. At the infirmary
ball, a short time later, he was presented
to the country as Sir Roger Ferguson.
And on that memorable night voung
Lovetin Lonnergan made his offer to
Miss Hamilton Howard and was
accepted.
Once more Leotard was to involve
Facey in difficulties. Mr. Hazey, having
admired the horse and Lucy's
performance in the saddle, wished to purchase
the mount for a third-hand sale to the
2397

Countess of Caperinston. Lucv finally
agreed to part with the animil for one
hundred and fifty pounds. The countess
paid two hundred guineas for a
headstrong horse that first carried his mistress
afield and then threw her over his tail.
During the wrangling for refund of the
Caperington guineas the countess
decided to see for herself the famous Mrs.
Somerville who rode Leotard with such
ease. Attending a meeting of the
Larkspur Hunt, she recognized Lucy as a
former friend of the days when she
herself had been the cigar-smoking, actress-
wife of dissipated Sir Harry Scattercash.
The countess greeted her old friend
haughtily, calling her Mrs. Sponge and
a pernicious woman.
The awkward situation might have
been explained away if Lord Lovetin had
not chosen that particular time to return
to England, where to his surprise he
found the wrong Mr. Romford
comfortably installed in Beldon Hall. Disputing
the possession of the premises with his
lordship, Facey demanded a large bonus
if he was to leave the house
immediately. During the proceedings he continued
to hu'nt his hounds as usual, but Lucy
went to stay with Betsy, who in the
meantime had married young Lonnergan. The
opinion of the Larkspur Hunt was
divided, some of the members declaring
that their Mr. Romford might be the
wrong man for Lord Lovetin but that he
was the right Mr. Romford for them.
Among his defenders were the Watkins-
es. Having recently lost much of their
wealth through unfortunate speculations
in Australia, they saw in Facey their
final hope for Cassandra Cleopatra. At
last Facey, deciding that he could hunt
from Dalberry Lees as easily as he could
from Beldon Hall, led the eager Miss
Watkins to the altar.
When both parties realized that they
had been tricked, and harsh words had
been spoken, it was decided that Facey
and his bride should go to Australia and
there try to save the wreck of Mr. Wat-
kins' fortune. Facey, who had prudently
collected his subscription money, was
willing. In Melbourne he accidentally
ran into his old acquaintance Soapey
Sponge, who had done uncommonly well
for himself in the mines. When news of
Soapey's prosperity reached England,
Lucy dropped the name of Somerville in
favor of Sponge and sailed to share her
husband's prosperity. Last reports stated
that all parties were happily reunited in
Australia and that Soapey and Facey had
established a private bank. Everyone
expected them to set up next a pack of
hounds.
2398

MR. MIDSHIPMAN EASY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Frederick Marryat (1792-1848)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Napoleonic wars
Locale: Mediterranean Sea and European coastal waters
First published: 1836
Principal characters:
Jack Easy, a midshipman
Gascoigne, another midshipman
Mesty, an Ashantee Negro
Agnes Rebiera, Easy's Sicilian sweetheart
Critique:
Marryat wrote from experience, having
himself been a captain in the British
navy, and his book gives a fully detailed
account of life aboard a war vessel,
including vivid accounts of several battles
at sea. Unlike many other stories about
the British or American navy in the early
nineteenth century, he did not charge the
naval system of discipline with being too
harsh. Rather, he tried to show that it
developed the best that was in a man.
Marryat thought poorly of the theories
of equality which had been popularized
in France during the French Revolution.
The Story:
Jack Easy was the son of a wealthy
landowner in the county of Hampshire,
England. Jack's father and mother had
almost spoiled the boy for any good in
the world, the former by his
over-simplified philosophy of equality, and the latter
by her doting. Fortunately for the young
lad, the family physician, Doctor Middle-
ton, rescued him from his home and put
him in a school where he began to learn
that the survival of the fittest was the
way of the world. When he left school,
it was decided he should go to sea as
midshipman with Captain Wilson, a poor
relation who was indebted to Mr. Easy
for a loan of one thousand pounds and
who was in command of the warship
Harpy.
Jack soon made friends aboard the
Harpy through the use of his fists in
beating down bullies .among the ship's
company and through the obvious
goodwill which the captain showed him. It
was hard at first for the young man to
become accustomed to life aboard the
warship. The duties of a midshipman kept
him busy, but the small living quarters
and the discipline proved irksome to the
son of a philosopher who preached a
doctrine of equality.
Jack's first naval adventure occurred
when the ship was not far from
Tarragona. In command of a boat during the
capture of a Spanish vessel by a
boarding party, he was left behind when the
Harpy sailed away. Captain Wilson
thought that Easy's boat had been sunk
with all hands. The following night
Easy's boat captured another Spanish
vessel by boarding. Easy ordered the
crew and passengers, including an elderly
Sicilian and his wife and two beautifuJ
daughters, overboard into a small boat.
A few days later, after Easy had vainly
tried to find the Harpy, the crew landed
on an island and refused to return to
the captured ship. But an Ashantee
Negro, Mesty, was loyal to Easy because
the midshipman had befriended him and
had treated him as an equal. Through
the efforts of Mesty, the men were
brought back on board in a docile
condition and Easy again set sail to look for
the Harpy. After a week had passed,
Easy and his crew found the British
warship engaged with a Spanish vessel.
The timely aid of gunfire from Easy's
prize helped the Harpy take its opponent.
Everyone, including Captain Wilson,
was amused at the flag which Easy had
flown in the engagement. Having no
British flag aboard the prize, he had
2399

hoisted a lady's green petticoat.
The first stop for the Harpy in the
Mediterranean was at Malta. There
Easy fought a duel. Thinking he had
killed his man, he and a fellow
midshipman, Gascoigne, ran away in a native
boat they had hired. A storm drove their
small craft to the Sicilian shore, where,
the two voung sailors hid in a cart and
there fell asleep. When they awakened
they found themselves in the yard of a
great house. Hearing loud cries, they
rushed into the house in time to prevent
the owner from being murdered by two
relatives. The man and his family proved
to be the passengers whom Easy had put
into a small boat when he had taken his
prize a month earlier. Before Don Rebi-
era sent them to Palermo, Easy had fallen
deeply in love with the Sicilian
nobleman's daughter, Agnes.
At Palermo the two midshipmen went
aboard a British frigate which took them
back to Malta to rejoin the Harpy. Since
Easy's opponent in the duel had not died,
Captain Wilson forgave their escapade.
A few weeks later the Harpy was
sailing off the coast of Africa. In another
battle to board a vessel, Easy
distinguished himself a second time. The prize
was taken back to Malta, where Captain
Wilson learned that he had been
promoted to the command of a larger ship,
the Aurora. When he left the Harpy,
Captain Wilson took Easy, Gascoigne,
and Mesty with him.
Separated from the fleet during a
storm, the Aurora was struck by
lightning and set afire. Many of her officers
and men were killed or injured. Both
Easy and Gascoigne were heroic in their
efforts to help stop the blaze and get the
ship seaworthy enough to reach Malta for
repairs. Back at Malta, Easy and
Gascoigne had still further adventures.
Chosen to accompany a Sicilian
nobleman who was visiting the ship, they
recognized him as one of the men who had
tried to assassinate Don Rebiera. The
impostor was arrested by the authorities and
returned to Sicily.
Several weeks later the Aurora sighted
a galley, filled with criminals, sinking
off the Sicilian coast. A party was sent
to release the prisoners and set them
ashore. During the operation Easy
recognized the man who had attempted to
assassinate Don Rebiera and who had
been sent to the galleys just a few weeks
before. He notified Captain Wilson, who
immediately informed the authorities on
the island and then permitted Easy,
Gascoigne, and Mesty to go ashore to warn
their friends. Easy and his companions
arrived at Don Rebiera's home in time
to warn the household of its danger. A
battle of a day and a night ensued. At
the end of that time Sicilian troops
arrived and rescued the besieged house and
its defenders from the band of escaped
galleyslaves under the leadership of Don
Rebiera's enemy.
The next day Easy asked Agnes' father
if he might marry her. The father,
indebted to Easy and knowing that his
daughter loved the young midshipman,
could not give his permission immediately
because of the Church. His family
confessor threatened excommunication if the
marriage took place.
Not to be daunted, Easy and
Gascoigne, with the help of Mesty, pretended
to have broken their legs in a carriage
accident. Captain Wilson was forced to
leave them behind to convalesce when
the Aurora left port. As soon as the ship
had sailed, Mesty was sent with a bribe
to the confessor. The priest, in his turn,
tried to get Mesty's aid in poisoning
Easy in order to prevent the marriage.
Mesty promised to help the priest but
administered the poison to the confessor
instead. Don Rebiera then withdrew his
objection to the marriage if he could
have the written permission of the
midshipman's father, since Easy was still
under age. Easy eagerly reported to the
Aurora to resign from the navy and
return to England to get his father's
permission to marry.
Back in England, Easy learned that
his mother had died and his father had
become insane. While the son was
straightening out the affairs of the fam-
2400

ily, the father also died, leaving Easy a
large fortune. Since the seas were not a
safe place to travel as a passenger in a
merchant vessel, Easy bought a small
ship. Armed with cannon and letters of
marque, he sailed for Sicily. There he
married Agnes.
He and his bride returned to England
after Easy had helped to secure
Gascoigne^ resignation from the navy.
Neither Easy nor Gascoigne went to sea
again, but settled down as country
gentlemen on Easy's large estate in Hampshire.
2401

MISTER ROBERTS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Heggen (1919-1949)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Last months of World War II
Locale: Southwest Pacific
First published: 1946
Principal characters:
Douglas Roberts, First Lieutenant, U. S. S. Reluctant
Captain Morton, skipper of the Reluctant
Ensign Keith, USNR
Bookser, a seaman
Frank Thompson, radio man
Critique:
Mister Roberts, first published serially
in The Atlantic Monthly, became a
national best seller soon after its appearance
in book form. The subject matter offers
relief from the general run of war
literature; the style ranges from almost poetic
prose to screaming farce. An air of lusty
masculinity pervades the narrative.
Heggen has perfectly reproduced the
uninhibited idiom of men at war. The
success of the novel led Heggen, with
Joshua Logan, to dramatize it into an
equally successful play. Heggen's artistic
motive in writing the novel must surely
have been his wish to show the public
that the backwashes of the war also
have their tragedy and comedy, and even
their romance, despite their apparent lack
of color.
The Story:
Douglas Roberts, First Lieutenant on
the Reluctant, a U. S. Navy supply ship
in the Pacific, was the guiding spirit of
the crew's undeclared war against the
skipper, Captain Morton, an officious,
childish, and unreasonable officer. The
Reluctant was non-combatant, plying
among islands left in the backwasn of
the war. None of its complement had
seen action, and none wanted action
except Roberts, who had applied without
success for transfer to a ship of the line.
In the continuously smoldering
warfare between the captain and the other
officers and the men of the ship, Robert*
scored a direct hit on the captain's
fundament with a wad of lead-foil shot from
a rubber band while the captain was
watching movies on board. Ensign Pul-
ver, who spent most of his time devising
ways of making the skipper's life
unbearable, manufactured a giant
firecracker to be thrown into the captain's
cabin at night. The premature and
violent explosion of the firecracker put
the entire Reluctant on a momentary
battle footing. Ensign Pulver was burned
badly.
Ensign Keith came to the Reluctant
by way of middle-class Boston, Bowdoin
College, and accelerated wartime naval
officer training. He was piped aboard in
the blazing sunshine of Tedium Bav,
hot in his blue serge uniform but self-
assured because Navy Regulations
prescribed blues when reporting for duty.
Despite the discomfort of a perspiration-
soaked shirt and a wilted collar, Ensign
Keith immediately showed the crew that
they would have to follow naval
regulations if he had his way aboard ship.
One night, however, while he was on
watch, he came upon a drinking and
gambling party presided over by Chief
Dowdy. Keith was hoodwinked by the
men into trying some of their drink.
Not much later, under the influence of
Chief Dowdy's "pineapple juice," Keith
had become roaring drunk, all regula-
MISTER ROBERTS by Thomas Heggen. By permission of the author and the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co.
Copyright, 1946, by Thomas Heggen.
2402

tions and service barriers forgotten. His
initiation completed, Ensign Keith never
again referred to rules and regulations.
At a forward area island base, where
the Reluctant had docked to unload
cargo, the crew quickly learned that the
military hospital was staffed by real live
nurses. Every available binocular,
telescope, and range-finder on board was soon
trained on the nurses' quarters. Interest
rose to fever-pitch when it was
discovered that a bathroom window shade
in quarters was never lowered. Officers
and men soon came to know the nurses
by their physical characteristics, if not by
formal introduction. One day a nurse
came aboard and overheard two seamen
making a wager concerning her physical
characteristics. That same day the
bathroom shade was lowered, never to be
raised again.
For days in advance the ship's
complement planned their shore leave in
Elysium, a civilized port of call. Seaman
Bookser, the spiritual type, was the butt
of many jokes concerning his liberty
plans. At Elysium half of the men
were given shore leave. From sundown
until the following dawn they were
brought back by jeep and truck. They
had fought with army personnel,
insulted local citizens, stolen government
property, wrecked bars and saloons, and
damaged the house of the French consul.
Further shore leave was canceled.
Bookser, the spiritual seaman, was driven up
to the dock in a large car on the day
of departure. Beside him was a beautiful
young woman whom he kissed long and
passionately before leaving her.
Astonished at Bookser and proud of him at the
same time, the crew made him the hero
of the stop at Elysium.
Roberts listened to V-E Day reports
on the ship's radio. The apathy of his
fellow officers toward events happening
in Europe led him to pitch the captain's
pet potted palm overboard late that
night. At the same time Roberts stirred
up the noise-hating captain by slamming
a lead stanchion against a stateroom
bulkhead. Roberts was not caught, nor
did he give himself up during the
captain's mad search for the culprit. The
crew manufactured a medal and
presented it to Roberts for valor above and
beyond the call of duty—a seaman had
seen Roberts in action on V-E night.
Frank Thompson, a radio man and
the ship's monopoly expert, was informed
by wire that his baby, whom he had
never seen, had died in California.
Thompson, anxious to go to the funeral
and to be with his wife, applied for
permission to fly to the States. The
captain refused. Roberts advised him to go
to a nearby island to see the chaplain
and the flag secretary. Thompson went,
but he was told that no emergency
leave could be permitted without his
captain's approval. He then walked
alone in a deserted section of the island
for several hours before he returned to
the Reluctant and took his usual place
at the head of the monopoly table.
Not long after V-E Day, Roberts
received orders to report back to the States
for reassignment. The night before he
left the Reluctant he spent with his
special friends among officers and men,
drinking punch made of crew-concocted
raisin brew and grain alcohol from
dispensary supplies. The effect of Roberts'
leaving the ship was immediate. No
longer was there a born leader aboard.
All functions and activities in ship's
routine went wrong; no longer was there
any one man upon whom the officers
could depend to maintain their balance
in the tedium of a dull tropic supply
run. No longer did the enlisted men
have an officer upon whom they could
depend as a link between them and the
ship's authorities.
Roberts was assigned to duty aboard
a destroyer which was part of a task
force bombarding the Japanese home
islands. Not long before V-J Day,
Ensign Pulver received a letter from a
friend aboard the same ship. The letter
stated that a Japanese kamikaze plane
had broken through anti-aircraft de-
2403

fenses and had crashed into the bridge the officers' mess drinking coffee with
of the destroyer. Among those killed in another officer. Mr. Roberts had seen
the explosion was Roberts, who was in action at last.
2404

MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Smith Surtees (1803-1864)
Type of plot: Picaresque satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1853
Principal characters:
Mr. Soapet Sponge, a cockney sportsman
Lucy Glitters, an actress
Jawleyford, a sportsman
Puffington, another sportsman
Jogglebury, a carver or canes
Critique:
Mr. Sponges Sporting Tour is one of a
number of novels dealing with the lower
classes who are striving to emulate the
aristocracy. This novel differs somewhat
from the others in two ways: it has a
reasonably coherent plot, and it is much more
picaresque in tone. Sponge is quite plainly
a sharper, out to live well on the bounty
of his fellows. He is the one character we
follow rather closely in a number of
related situations. The hero is different from
Surtees' renowned and clumsy Jorrocks in
that Sponge is a skillful, dedicated hunter
of foxes.
The Story:
Soapey Sponge led a remarkably
consistent life while he was in London. Each
day he appeared at the same pub or
betting stall at exactly the same time. No man
had a better knowledge of London's
streets and transportation. In fact, he
spent all his spare time studying his street
guide. He affected loud clothes, and he
was intimate with grooms and horse
dealers.
Just outside London was a small farm
run by Buckram, a sharp horse trader.
Sponge, in need of mounts for the
hunting season, decided to visit him. Buckram
had two horses to show, Hercules and
Multum in Parvo; both could be bought
cheaply, for they were incurably vicious.
Sponge, an expert horseman, concluded a
deal whereby he could take the horses on
an installment basis. Since he would need
a groom if he were to cut a figure among
fox hunters, he engaged Leather,
Buckram's slippery factotum. Leather had
neither morals nor standing, but Sponge
believed he could make him behave
acceptably.
The hunt at Laverick Wells had
become popular among certain of the
sporting fraternity, and Sponge decided to try
his luck there first. He sent Leather and
the horses on ahead to prepare for his
coming. Leather was too efficient,
however; he puffed his master up too much.
He extolled Sponge's rich wardrobe and
extensive stables to such an extent that
the whole town was sick of Sponge before
he even arrived.
Waffles, the master of the hunt,
determined to show up the newcomer by
substituting a drag hunt for the real fox hunt.
All the town knew of the substitution and
secretly hoped Sponge would come to
grief. On the day of the hunt Sponge
mounted Hercules in private. By the time
he joined the crowd the horse was
considerably subdued. The drag hunt was
thrilling. The pack ran through all the
bogs and flinty pastures, through all the
stout fences. The casualties were
numerous, but Sponge kept on bravely. Riding
ahead of Waffles, he was first at the
supposed kill.
The daring horsemanship of Sponge
changed the atmosphere a great deal; now
he was admired and his horse was praised.
2405

Waffles made indirect overtures to buy
Hercules; by pretending indifference
Sponge closed the deal at three hundred
guineas. As a favor, Waffles allowed a
friend to ride Hercules soon afterward.
That animal, vicious as always, took the
bit in his teeth and crashed through the
window of a drapery shop.
After four weeks Waffles was heartily
sick of his bargain and told people of his
unlucky deal. When Buckram turned up
and offered twenty pounds for Hercules,
Waffles was glad to let the horse go. But
Sponge pretended that Lord Bullfrog,
Hercules' former owner, was incensed at
the report that he had sold Sponge a
vicious horse. Sponge supposedly agreed
to return Hercules and get his money
back. Waffles had to admit the horse was
gone, he knew not where. To avoid a
lawsuit for slander, he paid over two hundred
and fifty pounds to Sponge to quiet Lord
Bullfrog.
At Laverick Wells, Sponge had met
Jawleyford, a boaster who had invited him
to Jawleyford Court to hunt with Lord
Scamperdale's hounds. Jawleyford had
invited Sponge in so general a way that he
never expected him to accept. But Sponge,
thick-skinned, wrote a note announcing
his acceptance and then appeared before
Jawleyford could think up a good excuse
for putting off the visit. The host and
hostess consoled themselves with the idea that
Sponge was rich and might make a match
with one of their daughters.
Sponge was a most disagreeable guest.
His appetite was prodigious. He smoked
cigars in the house, read his beloved guide
to London's streets, and paid no attention
at all to the daughters. The family was
relieved every time he rode out to hunt with
Scamperdale's pack.
Sponge's mount was quite
unmanageable on the first hunt. In spite of Sponge's
best efforts he ran among the hounds and
hurt some of them. Scamperdale was
furious. He had no love £or Jawleyford and his
guest seemed a dangerous man to have
around. Back at Jawleyford Court, rumor
eventually began to circulate that Sponge
was no rich hunter but a penniless
adventurer. As hints to leave became stronger,
Sponge was relieved to have an invitation
from Puffington, a neighbor who kept his
own pack of hounds.
At Puffington's house, a rich bachelor
establishment, Sponge was well situated
for a time. He was puzzled for a while by
the cordiality of his reception, but Sprag-
gon, Lord Scamperdale's man, soon made
the situation clear. Somehow Puffington
had the notion that Sponge was a sports
writer intent on gathering material for
hunting stories. Spraggon induced
Puffington to give Sponge thirty pounds to
secure a flattering writeup. After pocketing
the commission Sponge gladly paid him
for his help, Spraggon sat down to
dictate a story on the Puffington hounds.
As it turned out, Spraggon had no
definite ideas on writing a hunting story.
Sponge used a blotchy pen. In addition,
neither of them knew much about
spelling. They sent their completed effort to
the local weekly paper, where it was
edited by a spinster who had only contempt
for hunting. When Puffington saw the
garbled story, he was furious. Learning
that Sponge had written it, he retired to
his room with a supposed illness and
instructed the butler to give strong
indications that Sponge was to leave.
In the nick of time Jogglebury came
over to invite Sponge for a visit. Joggle-
bury was no hunter; he was too fat and
asthmatic even to stoop over. But he had a
young son due to be christened, and Mrs.
Jogglebury badly wanted a rich godfather.
So Sponge was invited.
Jogglebury was a niggardly host. When
he agreed to take Sponge to a neighboring
hunt, he stopped so often to hack out
likely looking saplings that they missed
the pack completely. Jogglebury lived
only for his hobby of carving canes in the
likeness of famous men. Sponge could
scarcely stay long with the Joggleburys;
he detested children, and his hosts soon
gave him to understand that he was
wearing his welcome thin.
At last Sponge found a refuge with Sir
Harry Scattercash, a rake married to a

former actress who smoked cigars. Sir
Harry and his party were much more
interested in liquor than in hounds, but
Sponge stayed on long enough to fall in
love with Lucy Glitters, an actress whom
he admired greatly for her daring riding in
the field. After their marriage, Lucy and
Sponge stayed on with Sir Harry until the
bailiffs arrived to attach the property.
Then they set out for London, where
Sponge opened up a betting establishment
and seemingly prospered. It was soon
commonly supposed that he was a rich man.
2407

MR. WESTON'S GOOD WINE
Type of work: Novel
Author: T. F. Powys (1875-1953)
Type of plot: Quasi-mysticism
Time of plot: November 20, 1923
Locale: Folly Down, a village in western England
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Mr. Weston, a wine merchant and author
Michael, his trusted assistant
The Reverend Mr. Grobe, rector at Folly Down, a disbeliever in God
Tamar Grobe, the rector's daughter
Mr. Grunter, a sexton
Mr. Bunce, the innkeeper in Folly Down
Jenny Bunce, his daughter, in love with Mr. Bird
Mr. Bird, a teacher of the gospel to animals, in love with Jenny Bunce
Critique:
T. F. Powys has said of himself that
he thinks too much of God, and this
novel, like most of his literary endeavors,
reflects his preoccupation with things
religious. Like his other novels, also, this
one presents a small English village as a
microcosm of the earth's macrocosm. An
invalid for a large part of his life, Powys
has had to limit his literature to his
experience in a small portion of the world.
It would seem, however, that his works
bear out Thomas Hardy's doctrine that
the humanity of a small district can
reflect the universality of mankind.
Certainly the portrayal of the Deity and His
attitudes toward the earth and man, as
found in Mr. Weston's Good Wine,
reflect an unorthodox set of religious
doctrines, a position which Powys presents
but does not try to justify.
ing was forecast to the village of Folly
Down by an electrical sign displayed
atop the car.
Down in the village many people
noticed the sign on the hill; they could
scarcely avoid seeing it, for it lit up the
sky. As the men gathered in the inn for
their evening beer, they began to speak
of the peculiar sign, but the conversation
drifted to the cause of all the pregnancies
among the village maidens. Most of the
men blamed M Grunter, the sexton,
but Mr. Bunce blamed God. While they
argued the question, the men noticed the
clock had stopped. Mr. Grunter
announced that eternity had come. He
seemed to be correct, for all over the
village time stood still at seven o'clock.
Mr. Weston arrived in the parlor of the
inn and announced his wares. Although
no one was interested in buying, they all
felt an affection for the man and believed
that they had known him somewhere
before. When asked if he knew whether
God or Mr. Grunter was responsible for
the misfortunes of the village maidens,
Mr. Weston referred them to Mr. Grobe,
the rector, and then went himself to visit
the clergyman.
Mr. Grobe was a melancholy man, for
the accidental death of his vivacious and
pretty wife had proved to him,
clergyman though he was, that there was no
MR. WESTON'S GOOD WINE by T. F. Powys. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press. Inc.
Copyright, 1928, by The Viking Press, Inc.
The Story:
On the evening of November 20, 1923,
an old Ford car stopped on a hill
overlooking Follv Down, a village in western
England. Within the car Mr. Weston, a
wine merchant, conferred with Michael,
his assistant, about possible customers in
the village. They had a large book which
listed the names of the inhabitants, and
Michael had detailed knowledge about
them which only a supernatural being
could possess. As they talked, their com-
2408

God Life weighed heavily upon him that
evening; his bottle of London gin was
empty. From Mr. Weston he ordered
a bottle to try. He did not see the
merchant leave a bottle, but after Mr.
Weston's departure Mr. Grobe found, in
place of his large Bible, a vast flagon of
delicious wine, a flagon that remained
full as long as he drank. Much later,
although the clocks still pointed to seven
o'clock, Mr. Weston appeared with a
small bottle which he said gave eternal
peace. After being assured he would meet
his long-dead wife, Mr. Grobe drank from
the small bottle and died peacefully.
While he was gone from the rectory,
Mr. Weston had seen a number of the
village people and transacted business
with them. He had seen Tamar Grobe,
who had looked all her life for an angel
to marry, in whose arms she would be
so happy that she would die. Mr.
Weston sent her to see his assistant Michael,
who waited under an old oak tree, the
village trysting place where so many of
the maidens had lost their virtue. There,
in Michael's company, Tamar found
happiness. They went to the church, where
Mr. Weston married them and entered
their names in the register.
After the couple had gone, Mr. Grun-
ter found the wine merchant in the
church. He thought at first that Mr.
Weston was the devil, but he soon
discovered that Mr. Weston had every right
to be there. He agreed to aid Mr.
Weston in some further transactions that
evening.
Mr. Weston met Jenny Bunce, a
simple-hearted girl who wanted only to mar
ry a good man, like Mr. Bird, and care
for him as long as she lived. But her
father thought Mr. Bird a fool and had
said that they could marry only when
Mr. Bird's well ran with wine. Mr.
Weston told Jenny to curl up in his car and
wait while he went to see Mr. Bird. Mr.
Weston found Mr. Bird an honest,
virtuous man who preached the gospel to
animals as well as men, when they would
listen. Like Mr. Grunter and Mr. Grobe,
Mr. Bird recognized Mr. Weston.
Unlike the other two, Mr. Bird was willing
to listen to a chapter from the book Mr.
Weston had written long before he
became a wine merchant. Mr. Weston
recited to him the One Hundred Fourth
Psalm.
Then Mr. Weston asked for a drink
from Mr. Bird's well, which, much to
the owner's surprise, ran wine. Jenny
Bunce's father happened along and in
his surprise agreed to the wedding. Mr.
Weston took Jenny Bunce and Mr. Bird
to church and married them.
Two men whom Mr. Weston visited
while the clocks stood still were the
rascally sons of Squire Mumby. Because
they were responsible for the large
number of illegitimate children in Folly
Down, Mr. Weston took them to the
churchyard to see the corpse of a girl
who had committed suicide after she
had been with them. Failing to recognize
Mr. Weston or understand his motives,
they left him in a huff. Before they had
gone far they were chased by a wild beast
that had hoofs and a roar like a lion's,
a beast which Mr. Weston controlled on
a very light chain.
The Mumby boys were so frightened
that they ran to the cottage of the evil
woman who pandered to their desires
and, finding two of their victims there,
promised to marry the girls. The strange
beast walked about the cottage for
several minutes. The evil old woman died
crying out that the devil was taking her
down to hell.
After the Mumby boys had left the
churchyard, Mr. Weston helped Mr.
Grunter bury the corpse of the dead girL
The interment depressed Mr. Grunter
until Mr. Weston told him to look at the
sky. There, among a band of angels, Mr.
Grunter saw the dead girl's soul singing
happily. On his way home Mr. Grunter
passed the oak tree which had seen the
dead girl's downfall. Thinking
sorrowfully of her life's end, Mr. Grunter called
down a curse in her name. The effect was
instantaneous; lightning struck and
shattered the tree. The lightning also killed
2409

Tamar Grobe, who was lying beneath its
branches with Michael. Unscathed,
Michael gave a signal, whereupon two
angels appeared and carried the dead girl
to heaven.
A short time later Michael and Mr.
Weston met and decided that their
business in Folly Down was complete.
Climbing into the battered old car that had
brought them, they drove out of the
village by the same road they had come.
As they left Folly Down, all the clocks
again began telling time. Much to
everyone's surprise, it was only ten o'clock.
At the top of the hill, where they had
sat discussing the inhabitants of the
village some time before, Mr. Weston
stopped the car and turned off the motor
and lights. Mr. Weston remarked that
the beast in the rear of the car might like
to return to his element in fire, and so
Michael set a match to the gas tank.
When the flames died away, everything
had disappeared. Mr. Weston and
Michael were gone from human sight.
2410

MRS. DALLOWAY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Virginia Woolf CI882-1941)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: London
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Clarissa Dalloway
Richard Dalloway, her husband
Peter Walsh, a former suitor
Elizabeth, Mrs. Dalloway's daughter
Miss Kilman, Elizabeth's friend
Sally Seton, an old friend of Clarissa and Peter
Critique:
Mrs. Dalloway is a cleverly written
book. The author has used the stream-
of-consciousness method, encompassing
within a single day the activities of
Clarissa Dalloway's life and the lives of other
people as well. There is little action but
much intense probing of memory.
The Story:
Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway went to make
last-minute preparations for an evening
party. During her day in the city she
enjoyed the summer air, the many sights
and people, the general bustle of
London. She met Hugh Whitbread, now a
court official, a handsome and
sophisticated man. She had known Hugh since
her youth, and she knew his wife,
Evelyn, as well, but she did not
particularly care for Evelyn. Other people
came down to London to see paintings, to
hear music, or to shop. The Whitbreads
came down to consult doctors, for Evelyn
was always ailing.
Mrs. Dalloway went about her
shopping. While she was in a flower shop,
a luxurious limousine pulled up outside.
Everyone speculated on the occupant
behind the drawn curtains of the car.
Everywhere the limousine went, it was
followed by curious eyes. Mrs.
Dalloway, who had thought that the queen
was inside, felt that she was right when
the car drove into the Buckingham
Palace grounds.
The sights and sounds of London
reminded Mrs. Dalloway of many things.
She thought back to her youth, to the
days before her marriage, to her husband,
to her daughter Elizabeth. Her daughter
was indeed a problem and all because
of that horrid Miss Kilman who was
her friend. Miss Kilman was something
of a religious fanatic, who scoffed at the
luxurious living of the Dalloways and
felt sorry for Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs.
Dalloway hated her. Miss Kilman was not
at all like the friend of her own girlhood.
Sally Seton had been different. Mrs.
Dalloway had really loved Sally.
Mrs. Dalloway wondered what love
really was. She had loved Sally, but she
had loved Richard Dalloway and Peter
Walsh, too. She had married Richard,
and then Peter had left for India. Later
she learned that he had married
someone he met on shipboard. She had heard
little about his wife since his marriage.
But the day was wonderful and life
itself was wonderful. The war was over
and she was giving a party.
While Mrs. Dalloway was shopping,
Septimus Smith and his wife were
sitting in the park. Septimus had married
Lucrezia while he was serving in Italy,
and she had given up her family and
her country for him. Now he frightened
her because he acted so queerly and
MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & CoM Inc. Copyright
1925, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
2411

talked of committing suicide. The
doctor said that there was nothing wrong
with him, nothing wrong physically.
Septimus, one of the first to volunteer
for war duty, had gone to war to save
his country, the England of Shakespeare.
When he got back, he was a war hero
and he was given a good job at the
office. They had nice lodgings and
Lucrezia was happy. Septimus began
reading Shakespeare again. He was
unhappy; he brooded. He and Lucrezia
had no children. To Septimus the world
was in such horrible condition that it
was unjust to bring children into it.
When Septimus began to have
visitations from Evans, a comrade who had
been killed in the war, Lucrezia became
even more frightened and she called in
Dr. Holmes. Septimus felt almost
completely abandoned by that time. Lucrezia
could not understand why her husband
did not like Dr. Holmes, for he was so
kind, so much interested in Septimus.
Finally she took her husband to Sir
William Bradshaw, a wealthy and noted
psychiatrist. Septimus had had a
brilliant career ahead of him. His employer
spoke highly of his work. No one knew
why he wanted to kill himself. Septimus
said that he had committed a crime, but
his wife said that he was guilty of
absolutely nothing. Sir William suggested
a place in the country, where Septimus
would be by himself, without his wife.
It was not, Sir William said, a question
of preference. Since he had threatened
suicide, it was a question of law.
In the meantime Mrs. Dalloway
returned home. Lady Bruton had invited
Richard Dalloway to lunch. Mrs.
Dalloway had never liked Millicent Bruton;
she was far too clever. Then Peter
Walsh came to call, and Mrs. Dalloway
was surprised and happy to see him
again. She introduced him to her
Elizabeth. He asked Mrs. Dalloway if she
were happy; she wondered why. When
he left, she called out to him not to
forget her party. Peter thought, Clarissa
Dalloway and her parties! That was
all life meant to her. He had been
divorced from his wife and had come to
England. For him, life was far more
complicated. He had fallen in love with
another woman, one who had two
children, and he had come to London
to arrange for her divorce and to get
some sort of a job. He hoped Hugh
Whitbread would find him one,
something in the government.
That night Clarissa Dalloway's party
was a great success. At first she was
afraid that it would fail. But at last
the prime minister arrived and her
evening was complete. Peter was there, and
Peter met Lady Rossetter. Lady Rosset-
ter turned out to be Sally Seton. She
had not been invited, but had just
dropped in. She had five sons, she told
Peter. They chatted. Then Elizabeth
came in and Peter noticed how beautiful
she was.
Later, Sir William Bradshaw and his
wife entered. They were late, they
explained, because one of Sir William's
patients had committed suicide. For
Septimus Smith, feeling altogether
abandoned, had jumped out of a
window before they could take him into the
country. Clarissa was upset. Here was
death, she thought. Although the suicide
was completely unknown to her, she
somehow felt it was her own disaster,
her own disgrace. The poor young man
had thrown away his life when it became
useless. Clarissa had never thrown away
anything more valuable than a shilling
into the Serpentine. Yes, once she had
stood beside a fountain while Peter
Walsh, angry and humiliated, had asked
her whether she intended to marry
Richard. And Richard had never been
prime minister. Instead, the prime
minister came to her parties. Now she was
growing old. Clarissa Dalloway knew
herself at last for the beautiful,
charming, inconsequential person she was.
Sally and Peter talked on. They
thought idly of Clarissa and Richard, and
wondered whether they were happy
together. Sally agreed that Richard had
improved. She left Peter and went to
talk with Richard. Peter was feeling

stiange. A sort of terror and ecstasy took denly. It was Clarissa, he thought. Even
hold of him, and he could not be cer- after all these years, it must be Clarissa,
tain what it was that excited him so sud-
241B

MRS. DANE'S DEFENCE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of flot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Near London
First presented: 1900
Principal characters:
Mrs. Dane, a woman of questionable reputation
Sir Daniel Carteret, a distinguished jurist
Lionel Carteret, his adopted son, in love with Mrs. Dane
Mrs. Bulsom-Porter, a gossip
Mr. James Risby, her nephew
Lady Eastney, Mrs. Dane's friend
Janet Colquhoun, her niece
Critique:
Mrs. Dane's Defence belongs to the
period of dramatic literature which saw
the introduction of naturalism into the
English theater. The attempt to portray
people as they really are was coupled
with another new tendency in drama—
humanitarianism. Although Mrs. Dane's
sin was not condoned, her weakness was
forgiven by those who were really her
friends. Henry Arthur Jones was one of
the early so-called Modern dramatists, the
school founded by Ibsen just before the
turn of the century.
The Story:
Young Lionel Carteret was madly in
love with Mrs. Dane, a woman three
years older than he. The difference in
their ages was not too important to those
who loved the young man, but the nature
of Mrs. Dane's reputation made them try
to dissuade Lionel from his attachment.
Mrs. Bulsom-Porter, a local gossip, had
been told by her nephew, James Risby,
that Mrs. Dane was actually one Felicia
Hindemarsh.
Miss Hindemarsh had, five years
previously, been involved in a horrible
scandal in Vienna, when she had had an
affair with a married man for whom she
worked as governess. The wife, learning
of the affair, had committed suicide; the
man himself was still in an insane
asylum. Risby, however, had since told Mrs.
Bulsom-Porter that he had been
mistaken. Although he at first thought that
Mrs. Dane was Felicia Hindemarsh, he
was now completely convinced that he
had been wrong. In fact, he declared that
Mrs. Dane did not even much resemble
the sinful Miss Hindemarsh. But his
retraction meant little to Mrs.
Bulsom-Porter, who knew absolutely nothing of Mrs.
Dane except that she was attractive and
charming. Those qualities were enough
to make Mrs. Bulsom-Porter hate her,
and she continued to spread the story
about Mrs. Dane's past, without
admitting that there might be some doubt
about her story.
Lionel had the year before been
deeply in love with Janet Colquhoun, but had
been persuaded by Sir Daniel Carteret,
his foster father, to wait before he asked
her to marry him. Sir Daniel tried to
make Lionel see that his latest
infatuation might also pass away, but Lionel
would not listen to that well-meaning ad
vice. He accused Sir Daniel of never
having known love. What the young man
did not know was that many years
before Sir Daniel had been in love with a
MRS. DANE'S DEFENCE by Henry Arthur Jones. By permission of the publishers, Samuel French.
Copyright, 1905, by Henry Arthur Jones. Copyright renewed, 1932, by Dorinda Thorne. Application for
the right to present this play should be made to Samuel French, of 25 West 45th Street, New York 36,
N. Y., or 7623 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood 46, Calif., or if in Canada to Samuel French (Canada) Ltd.,
27 Grenville St., Toronto, Ont.
2414

married woman. They had decided to
defy the conventions and go away
together, but on the night of their
departure her son had become dangerously
ill. She had stayed with her child, and
she and Sir Daniel had then renounced
their affections. The woman had been
Lionel's mother. After her death, and the
subsequent death of her husband, Sir
Daniel had adopted Lionel, giving him
his name and his love. The young man
was so dear to Sir Daniel that he could
not stand to see the boy ruin his life by
marrying Mrs. Dane, at least while she
had a cloud on her reputation.
Sir Daniel and Lady Eastney, Mrs.
Dane's friend, set about to try to solve
the mystery once and for all. Although
Risby had retracted his story, Mrs.
Bulsom-Porter would not stop spreading the
scandal until she was proved wrong
beyond a doubt. Mrs. Dane herself would
do nothing to stop the gossip, but at last
Sir Daniel persuaded ner to tell him
enough about her background to allow
an investigation. While he was trying to
piece together the facts, Mrs. Bulsom-
Porter employed a detective to go to
Vienna and find evidence to prove Mrs.
Dane was Miss Hindemarsh.
When the detective returned from
Vienna, Mrs. Dane met him first and
begged him to declare her innocence. She
offered him any sum not to reveal what
he had learned. Consequently, when he
was asked by Mrs. Bulsom-Porter and Sir
Daniel to reveal his findings, he said that
those in Vienna who had known Felicia
Hindemarsh swore that there was
absolutely no resemblance between her and
the photograph of Mrs. Dane which he
had shown them. His account satisfied
everyone but Mrs. Bulsom-Porter. Sir
Daniel, Lady Eastney, and even her own
husband insisted that she sign a
retraction and a public apology, but she
refused. She still hoped to catch Mrs. Dane
in a lie.
Because it might be necessary for Mrs.
Dane to sue Mrs. Bulsom-Porter for
slander, Sir Daniel continued his own
investigation. He talked again with Mrs.
Dane in an attempt to find out
everything about her history. She told him
that she had lived in Canada for several
years, a fact which made it difficult to
trace her past. Then she betrayed herself
by mentioning her uncle's name, for
when Sir Daniel looked up that name
and her relative's place of residence, he
found a reference to a Reverend Mr.
Hindemarsh.
At first Mrs. Dane claimed that Felicia
Hindemarsh was her cousin, and that she
had tried to conceal the fact because of
the disgrace, but at last she was forced
to confess that she was in reality Felicia.
Risby and the detective had known the
truth but had shielded her because they
thought she had suffered enough for hei
sin.
Because Mrs. Bulsom-Porter was a
troublemaker who needed to be cured of
her vicious ways, and because no one else
wished to make Mrs. Dane suffer more,
Sir Daniel and Lady Eastney forced Mrs.
Bulsom-Porter to make a public apology
for the scandal she had caused. No one
would ever know that she had been right
all the time. Lionel wanted to marry Mrs.
Dane anyway, but Sir Daniel persuaded
her to forsake him, even though she
loved him sincerely. Mrs. Dane had had
a child as a result of her unfortunate
earlier affair, and Sir Daniel knew that even
though Lionel loved her he would
forever remember that she had lied once
and might lie again. Also, the man in
the case was still living, though insane,
and the wise Sir Daniel knew that these
facts were no foundation for a
successful marriage. Since Lionel would never
forsake her, Mrs. Dane must use her
love for him wisely and disappear from
his life forever. She agreed, never
doubting the wisdom of Sir Daniel's decision,
and left the region without telling Lionel
goodbye.
Because Sir Daniel had been so kind
and wise in dealing with Mrs. Dane and
Lionel, Lady Eastney accepted the
proposal that Sir Daniel had made to her
sometime before. She knew that she
would always feel secure with him. Al-
2415

though Lionel thought that he could
never be happy or fall in love again, he
promised to try to carry out his foster
father's wishes.
Janet, who had tried hard to pretend
that their last year's love was over, kissed
Lionel understandingly, promising him
better times to come.
2416

THE MISTRESS OF THE INN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: Florence, Italy
First presented: 1752
Principal characters:
Mirandolina, mistress of the inn
The Cavalier di Ripafratta, a woman-hater
The Marquis di Forlipopoli, in love with Mirandolina
The Count D'Albafiorita, also in love with Mirandolina
Fabricius, a serving-man, also in love with Mirandolina
Critique:
This play, La Locandiera in the
original, is one of the sprightliest comedies to
flow from any dramatist's pen. From
beginning to end the situations and dialogue
are sparkling and vivacious. Nowhere in
the play do the misogyny of the Cavalier
di Ripafratta and the wiles of
Mirandolina become vicious or biting. Because an
atmosphere of gaiety pervades the entire
work, no reader can take the pretensions
of the noblemen with anything but
delight. Goldoni's characters are only
creatures of the stage, but during the reading
there is enough of what Coleridge called
"a willing suspension of disbelief to
make the comedy entirely plausible.
While the play is unpretentious, it does
reveal the ability of Goldoni to construct
a well-knit plot that holds together in
every respect.
The Story:
A Florentine innkeeper died and left
his young and pretty daughter,
Mirandolina, mistress of his inn. The girl
continued to run the hostelry with much
success, for she was as shrewd as she was
pretty. On his deathbed her father had
made her promise to many Fabricius, a
faithful young serving-man in the inn.
She had promised the father to obey his
wishes, but after her father's death she
made excuses for not marrying. She told
Fabricius that she was not yet ready to
THE MISTRESS OF THE INN by Carlo Goldoni. Translated by Helen Lohmann. By permission of the
publishers, Longmans, Green & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1926, 1927, by Helen I^onmann.
settle down to married life, although she
loved him very much. Actually,
Mirandolina liked to have men fall in love with
her, and she did her best to make fools of
them in every way possible. She took all
and gave nothing.
A short time after her father's death
two noblemen staying at her inn fell in
love with her. One was the Marquis di
Forlipopoli, a destitute man who, despite
his lack of money, was excessively proud
of his empty title. The other love-smitten
lodger was the Count D'Albafiorita, a
wealthy man who boasted of his money.
The two men were constantly at odds
with each other, each feeling that his
suit should be viewed more favorably by
Mirandolina. In private she laughed at
both of them.
The Count gave Mirandolina
expensive diamond brooches and earrings, and
he also spent a great deal of money as
a patron of the inn. The Marquis,
having no money to spend, tried to impress
Mirandolina with his influence in high
places and offered her his protection.
Occasionally he gave Mirandolina small
gifts, which he openly stated were much
better than the Count's expensive
presents because little gifts were always in
the best taste.
Pleased at the attentions of the Count,
the Marquis, and her faithful Fabricius,
Mirandolina was somewhat taken aback
2417

when a guest of another kind stopped at
her inn. Her new guest, the Cavalier di
Ripafratta, professed to be a woman-
hater. Even when he received a letter
telling of a beautiful girl with a great
dowry who wished to marry him, he
became disgusted and angry and threw
away the letter. Although his attitude
toward Mirandolina was almost boorish,
she seemed much taken with a man who
was immune to her charms. More than
a little piqued by his attitude she vowed
to make him fall in love with her.
Seizing an opportunity presented by
the Cavalier's demand for better linens,
Mirandolina went to his room and by
engaging him in conversation struck up a
friendship of sorts. She told him that she
admired him for being truly a man and
able to put aside all thoughts of love.
The Cavalier, struck by her pose, said
that he was pleased to know such a
forthright woman, and that he desired her
friendship.
Mirandolina followed up her initial
victory by cooking extra dishes for the
Cavalier with her own hands and
serving them to him in his room with her
own hands, much to the displeasure of
the Marquis and the Count because the
former was of much greater rank and
the latter was far more wealthy. Miran-
dolina's strategy began to have immediate
success. Within twenty-four hours the
Cavalier found himself in love with the
woman who served him so well and was
so agreeable to his ways of thinking.
The Cavalier, however, was much
disturbed by his new-found love and vowed
that he would leave for Leghorn
immediately. He believed that out of Miran-
dolina's sight he would soon forget her.
He had already given orders to his
servant to pack for his departure when
Mirandolina learned of his plans. She
herself went to present his bill and had
little trouble in beguiling him to stay a
little longer. At the end of the interview,
during which the Cavalier professed his
love, Mirandolina fainted. The Marquis
and the Count ran into the room to see
what had happened. The Cavalier,
furious at them for discovering Mirandolina
in his room, threw the bottle of
restorative at them. The Marquis vowed to
have satisfaction, but when the Cavalier
accepted his challenge the Marquis
showed his cowardice by refusing to fight
a duel.
The Cavalier, now almost beside
himself with love, sent a solid gold flask to
Mirandolina, who refused to accept it
and threw it into a basket of clothes to
be ironed. Fabricius, seeing the flask,
became jealous. He was also displeased by
the offhanded treatment he had been
receiving from the girl who had promised
to marry him. Mirandolina finally
appeased him by saying that women always
treat worst those whom they love best.
Later in the day, while Mirandolina
was busy ironing the linen, the Cavalier
came to her and asked why she had
rejected his suit. He refused to believe that
she had been playing a game with him,
just as she had been doing with the
Count and the Marquis. In addition, he
became angry because Fabricius
continually interrupted the interview by bring
ing in hot flatirons for Mirandolina to
use on the linen. After a lengthy
argument, during which the Cavalier became
furious and refused to let Fabricius bring
in the irons, Mirandolina left the room.
After Mirandolina left, the Marquis
entered and began to taunt the Cavalier
for having fallen victim to the
innkeeper's charms. The Cavalier stormed out of
the room. Looking about, the Marquis,
very much embarrassed for money, saw
the gold flask. Intending to sell it, he
picked it up and put it in his pocket.
At that moment the Count entered and
the two began to congratulate themselves
on Mirandolina's success in making a fool
of their latest rival. They could not help
remembering, however, that she had done
things for him that she had not done for
them: cooked special foods, provided new
bed linen, and visited with him in his
room. Finally, having come to the
conclusion that they were as foolish as the
2418

Cavalier, they resolved to pay their bills
and leave the inn.
While Mirandolina was bidding them
goodbye, the Cavalier pushed his way
into the room and tried to force a duel
upon the Count. But when he seized the
Marquis' sword and attempted to pull it
from the scabbard, he found only the
handle. Mirandolina tried to calm him
and send all three away. She bluntly told
the Cavalier that she had simply used her
wiles to make him love her because he
boasted of being a woman-hater. Then,
declaring her promise to her father that
she would marry Fabricius, she took the
serving-man by the hand and announced
her betrothal to him. The Cavalier left
angrily, but the Count and the Marquis
received the news more gracefully. The
Count gave the newly betrothed couple
a hundred pounds, and the Marquis,
poor as he was, gave them six pounds.
Both men left the inn wiser in the ways
of women than they were when they
arrived.
2419

MITHRIDATE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
Type of plot: Historical tragedy
Time of plot: First century B.C.
Locale: Nymphee, on the Bosphorus
First presented: 1673
Principal characters:
Mithridate, King of Pontus
Monime, betrothed to Mithridate and already declared queen
Pharnace, and
Xiphares, sons of Mithridate by different wives
Arbate, Mithridate's confidant and governor of Nymphe"e
Phoedime, Monime's confidante
Arcas, a servant
Critique:
Presenting a theme borrowed from
history, Mithridate is a tragedy which
conforms absolutely to Racine's literary
ideal: a simple action with few events.
In this work Racine was much more
faithful to actual fact than he had been
in his earlier plays. He simply added a
love story to the historical pageant to
turn it into a drama: an old man in love
with a young woman and jealous of his
two sons. The two main characters are
interesting in their complexity. Mithridate
offers a contrast between the indomitable
will power of the warrior and the
blindness and confusion of the unhappy lover.
Monime seems to combine harmoniously
all the gentleness and strength of
Racine^ heroines. The style is versatile.
Rhetorical and sometimes epic in
Mithridate's speech, it also takes on an
exquisite softness to express the subtlest
shades of sentiments. Mithridate is the
only one of Racine's tragedies with a
happy ending.
The Story:
Mithridate, the Pontine king who had
been fighting against the Romans for
forty years, had just been defeated and
was believed dead. Xiphares, the son
who was, like his father, an enemy of
Rome, deplored sincerely the loss of
Mithridate. The other son, Pharnace,
favorable to the Romans, was all the
more pleased because he was in love with
Monime, the old king's betrothed; now he
hoped to win her for himself.
Xiphares had told Arbate that he had
no claims to the states Pharnace was to
inherit and that his brother's feelings
toward the Romans were of little interest
to him. His concern for Monime was
another matter. The truth was that Xiphares
himself had long been in love with
Monime, even before his father saw her.
Although he had remained silent as long
as she was betrothed to his father, he
was now determined that Pharnace would
be compelled to kill him in order to have
her.
When Monime begged Xiphares to
protect her against Pharnace, whom she
did not love, Xiphares finally declared
his love to her. At first he was afraid that
she might receive his avowal with anger.
Monime, however, was secretly in love
with Xiphares. They might have opened
their hearts to each other at that time if
Pharnace had not appeared.
Pharnace urged Monime to support
his cause in Pontus. She thanked him
but explained that she could not favor
a friend of the Romans who had killed
her father. When Pharnace hinted that
another interest was prompting her,
Xiphares confirmed his suspicions by
defending Monime's freedom. The brothers
then realized that they were rivals.
At that moment Phoedime, Monime's
confidante, arrived to tell them that the
2420

report of Mithridate's death was false
and that the king was returning. Monime
and Xiphares, each having sensed at last
the other's feelings, were stunned.
Monime deliberately bade them farewell and
left. Now Phamace knew that Monime
and Xiphares loved each other, and
Xiphares knew that Phamace loved
Monime and was expecting the arrival of
the Romans. Both, afraid of their father'}
anger, would be forced to keep each
other's secret when they met him.
After everyone had gone to meet
Mithridate at the harbor, Phoedime was
surprised to find Monime still in the
palace. Monime explained her realization
that Xiphares had suffered as much as
she did all the time they had been
separated after their first meeting in
Greece. Aware that she had betrayed
her love without even speaking, she felt
that she could never see Xiphares again
because she also feared Mithridate's
anger. She left hurriedly because she heard
the noise of Mithridate's arrival and she
did not want to face him.
The king was surprised to find his
sons in Nymphee instead of in their own
states. Suspiciously, he asked whether
they were in love with Monime and
inquired of Arbate why he had allowed
them to enter the city. The governor told
him that Phamace had declared his love
to Monime. Arbate said nothing,
however, about Xiphares' feelings.
Mithridate, relieved that his favorite son had
remained faithful, was afraid that
Monime might have responded to Pharnace's
love. At that moment Monime appeared
and he asked to be left alone with her.
Mithridate told her that he wished to
have their wedding performed as soon as
possible. Seeing her sad resignation and
suspecting that she was in love with
Phamace, he summoned Xiphares and
asked his trusted son to try to rum her
affections away from his brother.
Xiphares also feared that Monime
might love Phamace. Aware of his fear,
Monime was unable to hide her true
feelings. At the same time she declared
her intention to follow her duty to
Mithridate.
A short time later Mithridate called
for his two sons and explained to them
his plan to attack the Romans in Italy.
Phamace would leave on a mission to the
Parthians, his purpose being to marry the
daughter of their king, with whom
Mithridate wished to make an alliance
necessary to his plans. When Phamace refused,
his resistance aroused his father's anger.
Phamace, thinking that his brother had
betrayed him, tried to get revenge by
disclosing the love of Xiphares for
Monime.
At first Mithridate refused to listen
to Phamace. Then, tortured by jealousy,
he resorted to a stratagem in order to
learn the truth. He announced to
Monime his desire to have her marry
Xiphares. When she showed surprise,
asking if he were trying to test her love,
he pretended to believe that she wanted
to marry Phamace instead. He declared
that he would go with Xiphares to find
death in battle, while she would stay
with Phamace. Monime, misled by the
king's apparent sincerity, admitted that
she loved Xiphares and was loved by him.
After her departure Mithridate prepared
to take a terrible revenge on his son.
When Xiphares came to bid Monime
farewell, she accused herself of having
caused his ruin by her weakness. Hearing
the king approaching, he left hurriedly.
Monime then reproached Mithridate for
his infamous stratagem. Ordered to marry
him at once, she gently but firmly re
fused.
At that point Mithridate was in a
quandary over killing Xiphares, the son
who was not only his rival in love but
also his best ally against the Romans.
While he was debating with himself,
Arbate appeared with the announcement
that Phamace, aided by the Romans, had
risen in revolt. Believing that Xiphares
had also betrayed him, the king ordered
Areas, his faithful servant, to kill
Monime.
Meanwhile, convinced that Xiphares
2421

was dead, Monime had attempted to
strangle herself, but Phoedime had
prevented her. Still wishing to die, she
welcomed the poison Areas brought her.
Before she could drink it, however, Ar-
bate came on the run and took the potion
away from her. He brought word that
Xiphares had routed the Romans and
that Mithridate was dying. The king,
believing himself defeated, had chosen
to die by his own sword.
Forgetting all jealousy, Mithridate
blessed Monime and Xiphares, the
faithful son who would succeed to the throne
and avenge his father's death.
2422

MOBY DICK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of flot: Symbolic allegory
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: The high seas
First published: 1851
Principal characters:
Ishmael, the narrator
Queequeg, a savage harpooner
Ahab, captain of the Pequod
Stabbuck, the first mate
Stubb, the second mate
Fbdaulah, Captain Ahab's Parsee servant
Critique:
Moby Dick, or, The White Whale is
undoubtedly one* of the finest novels in
American literature. On one level it has
an appeal for children, and on another a
deep and penetrating significance for all
men. Melville intended to indicate in
this work the disaster which must result
when man constitutes himself a god and
sets out to eliminate a force established
by God throughout the universe. The
whale symbolizes evil, but Ahab, in
believing that alone he could hope to
destroy it, was also evil. Here is a universal
problem, handled with skill and
understanding.
The Story:
Ishmael was a schoolmaster who often
felt that he must leave his quiet existence
and go to sea. Much of his life had been
spent as a sailor, and his voyages were
a means for ridding himself of the
restlessness which frequently seized him.
One day he decidecl that he would sign
on a whaling ship, and packing his
carpetbag he left Manhattan and set out,
bound for Cape Horn and the Pacific.
On his arrival in New Bedford he went
to the Spouter Inn near the waterfront
to spend the night. There he found he
could have a bed only if he consented
to share it with a harpooner. His strange
bedfellow frightened him when he
entered the room, for Ishmael was certain
that he was a savage cannibal. After a
few moments, however, it became
evident that the native, whose name was
Queequeg, was a friendly person, for he
presented Ishmael with an embalmed
head and offered to share his fortune of
thirty dollars. The two men quickly
became friends, and decided to sign on
the same ship.
After some difficulty, they were both
signed on as harpooners aboard the
Pequod, a whaler out of Nantucket.
Although several people seemed dubious
about the success of a voyage on a vessel
such as the Pequod was reported to be;
under so strange a man as Captain Ahab,
neither Ishmael nor Queequeg had any
intention of giving up their plans. They
were, however, curious to see Captain
Ahab,
For several days after the vessel had
sailed there was no sign of the captain,
as he remained hidden in his cabin. The
running of the ship was left to Starbuck
and Stubb, two of the mates, and
although Ishmael became friendly with
them, he learned very little more about
Ahab. One day, as trie ship was sailing
southward, the captain strode out on
deck. Ishmael was struck by his stern,
relentless expression. In particular, he
noticed that the captain had lost a leg
and that instead of a wooden leg he now
wore one cut from the bone of the jaw
of a whale. A livid white scar ran down
one side of his face and was lost beneath
his collar, so that it seemed as though he
were scarred from head to foot.
2423

For several days the ship continued
south looking for the whaling schools.
The sailors began to take turns on
masthead watches to give the sign when a
whale was sighted. Ahab appeared on
deck and summoned all his men around
him. He pulled out an ounce gold piece,
nailed it to the mast, and declared that
the first man to sight the great white
whale, known to the sailors as Moby
Dick, would have the gold. Everyone
expressed enthusiasm for the quest
except Starbuck and Stubb, Starbuck
especially deploring the madness with which
Ahab had directed all his energies to this
one end. He told the captain that he
was like a man possessed, for the white
whale was a menace to those who would
attempt to kill him. Ahab had lost his
leg in his last encounter with Moby
Dick; he might lose his life in the next
meeting. But the captain would not
listen to the mate's warning. Liquor was
brought out, and at the captain's orders
the crew drank to the destruction of
Moby Dick.
Ahab, from what he knew of the last
reported whereabouts of the whale,
plotted a course for the ship which would
bring it into the area where Moby Dick
was most likely to be. Near the Cape
of Good Hope the ship came across a
school of sperm whales, and the men
busied themselves harpooning, stripping,
melting, and storing as many as they
were able to catch.
When they encountered another
whaling vessel at sea, Captain Ahab asked for
news about the white whale. The
captain of the ship warned him not to
attempt to chase Moby Dick, but it was
clear by now that nothing could deflect
Ahab from the course he had chosen.
Another vessel stopped them, and the
captain of the ship boarded the Pequod
to buy some oil for his vessel. Captain
Ahab again demanded news of the whale,
but the captain knew nothing of the
monster. As the captain was returning
to his ship, he and his men spotted a
school of six whales and started after
them in their rowboats. While Starbuck
and Stubb rallied their men into the
Pequod's boats, their rivals were already
far ahead of them. But the two mates
urged their crew until they outstripped
their rivals in the race and Queequeg
harpooned the largest whale.
Killing the whale was only the
beginning of a long and arduous job. After
the carcass was dragged to the side of the
boat and lashed to it by ropes, the men
descended the side and slashed off the
blubber. Much of the body was usually
demolished by sharks, who streamed
around it snapping at the flesh of the
whale and at each other. The head of
the whale was removed and suspended
several feet in the air, above the deck of
the ship. After the blubber was cleaned,
it was melted in tremendous try-pots, and
then stored in vats below deck.
The men were kept busy, but their
excitement increased as their ship neared
the Indian Ocean and the probable
sporting grounds of the white whale. Before
long they crossed the path of an English
whaling vessel, and Captain Ahab again
demanded news of Moby Dick. In
answer, the captain of the English ship
held out his arm, which from the elbow
down consisted of sperm whalebone.
Ahab demanded that his boat be lowered
at once, and he quickly boarded the deck
of the other ship. The captain told him
of his encounter, and warned Captain
Ahab that it was foolhardy to try to
pursue Moby Dick. When he told Ahab
where he had seen the white whale last,
the captain of the Pequod waited for no
civilities, but returned to his own ship
to order the course changed to carry him
to Moby Dick's new feeding ground.
Starbuck tried to reason with the mad
captain, to persuade him to give up this
insane pursuit, but Ahab seized a rifle
and in his fury ordered the mate out of
his cabin.
Meanwhile, Queequeg had fallen ill
with a fever. When it seemed almost
certain he would die, he requested that
the carpenter make him a coffin in the
shape of a canoe, according to the
custom of his tribe. The coffin was then
2424

placed in the cabin with the sick man,
but as yet there was no real need for it.
Queequeg recovered from his illness and
rejoined his shipmates. He used his
coffin as a sea chest and carved many
strange designs upon it.
The sailors had been puzzled by the
appearance early in the voyage of the
Parsee, Fedallah. His relationship to the
captain could not be determined, but
that he was highly regarded was evident.
Fedallah had prophesied that the captain
would die only after he had seen two
strange hearses for carrying the dead
upon the sea, one not constructed by
mortal hands, and the other made of
wood grown in America. But he said that
the captain himself would have neither
hearse nor coffin for his burial.
A terrible storm arose one night.
Lightning struck the masts so that all
three flamed against the blackness of the
night, and the men were frightened by
this omen. It seemed to them the hand
of God was motioning them to turn from
the course to which they had set
themselves and return to their homes. Only
Captain Ahab was undaunted by the
sight. He planted himself at the foot
of the mast and challenged the god of
evil which the fire symbolized for him.
He vowed once again his determination
to find and kill the white whale.
A few days later a cry rang through
the ship. Moby Dick had been spotted.
The voice was Captain Ahab's, for none
of the sailors, alert as they had been,
had been able to sight him before their
captain. Then boats were lowered and
the chase began, with Captain Ahab's
boat in the lead. As he was about to
dash his harpoon into the side of the
mountain of white, the whale suddenly
turned on the boat, dived under it, and
split it into pieces. The men were thrown
into the sea, and for some time the
churning of the whale prevented rescue.
At length Ahab ordered the rescuers to
ride into the whale and frighten him
away, so he and his men might be picked
up. The rest of that day was spent
chasing the whale, but to no avail.
The second day the men started out
again. They caught up with the whale
and buried three harpoons in his white
flanks. But he so turned and churned
that the lines became twisted, and the
boats were pulled every way, with no
control over their direction. Two of them
were splintered, and the men hauled out
of the sea, but Ahab's boat had not as
yet been touched. Suddenly it was lifted
from the water and thrown high into the
air. The captain and the men were
quickly picked up, but Fedallah was
nowhere to be found.
When the third day of the chase began,
Moby Dick seemed tired, and the Pe-
quod's boats soon overtook him. Bound
to the whale's back by the coils of rope
from the harpoon poles they saw the body
of Fedallah. The first part of his
prophecy had been fulfilled. Moby Dick,
enraged by his pain, turned on the boats
and splintered them. On the Pequod
Starbuck watched and turned the ship
toward the whale in the hope of saving
the captain and some of the crew. The
infuriated monster swam directly into the
Pequod, shattering the ship's timbers.
Ahab, seeing the ship founder, cried out
that the Pequod—made of wood grown
in America—was the second hearse of
Fedallah's prophecy. The third prophecy,
Ahab's death by hemp, was fulfilled
when rope from Ahab's harpoon coiled
around his neck and snatched him from
his boat. All except Ishmael perished. He
was rescued by a passing ship after
clinging for hours to Queequeg s canoe-cor-
fin, which had bobbed to the surface as
the Pequod sank.
2425

THE MOCK ASTROLOGER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pedro Calder6n de la Barca (1600-1681)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Madrid
First presented: c. 1624
Principal characters:
Maria, a girl of Madrid
Juan de Medrano, an impoverished young nobleman
Don Carlos, his friend
Don Diego, a wealthy nobleman in love with Maria
Mor6n, his servant
Beatriz, Maria's servant
Leonardo, Maria's father
Dona Violante, a woman in love with Juan
Critique:
If Lope de Vega wrote plays at an
early age, Calder6n was no less
precocious. When his El mejor amigo, el rnu-
erto (Death, the Best Friend) was
published in 1657, it was announced as the
work of a nine-year-old boy. And in his
letter of 1680 to his friend the Duke of
Veragua, he stated that EI carro del cielo
(Cart of Heaven) was completed when
he was thirteen. Very likely he was
practicing the art of play writing before he
was graduated from the University of
Salamanca in 1619—certainly
immediately afterward. At any rate, Hartzen-
busch dates The Mock Astrologer before
1622 because of its mingling of Tirso de
Molina and Lope de Vega, and all critics
put it before 1625, when Calder6n went
into military service. Because of the many
pirated copies by publishers and actors, it
quickly appeared in several authorized
versions before being included, with
additional scenes, in Part II of his Collected
Plays in 1637, a volume reissued
posthumously by Calder6n's friend, Juan de
Vera Tassis, in 1682. In this satire on
grafters and impostors there is no deep
philosophy and little beyond a fast
moving farce. The first scene of Act II
provides a good sample of the belabored
language of Gongorism as Diego pleads his
love in baroque style and Maria replies
in language no less flowery and figurative.
Only the servant brings the speakers
down to earth. There is no moral lesson,
unless Mor6n's insistence that one
cannot trust a woman with a secret is so
regarded.
The Story:
Looking from the balcony of her
Madrid home, Marfa watched Juan de
Medrano ride by, courting her from a
distance as he had been doing for two years,
and she was moved to confess to her
servant Beatriz that she much preferred
him to the more aggressive Don Diego.
But Juan was at last tired of seeing Maria
only at a distance. That afternoon he
came to call, with the excuse that next
day he was leaving for the wars in
Flanders. Marfa postponed their farewells
until that night, when Beatriz would
bring Juan to her mistress* room.
Don Diego, also deciding on direct
action, next arrived with a highly
rhetorical demand for her affections.
Claiming inability to understand his proposal,
Maria turned him down in the same kind
of jargon. Angered, Don Diego directed
his servant Mor6n to try to learn from
Beatriz how his mistress might be
approached. Though the gift of a gold chain
did not open her mouth, the gracioso
knew she would in time tell him
everything.
Juan had another secret. He wanted
his friend Don Carlos to spread the story
of his departure for the army, while really
providing him with lodgings. The first
2426

step was to send his farewells to Dona
Violante, an errand gladly performed by
Don Carlos because with Juan away he
thought he could win the lady for him-
The next morning, as she was
sneaking Juan out of Maria's house,
materialistic Beatriz reflected on how silly
aristocratic ladies were. They would not be
seen talking to a man on the street for
fear of gossip; instead, they entertained
him secretly in their rooms. But this time
the secret was not kept. Mor6n wormed
out of Beatriz all the details of Juan's
visit and ran with them to his master.
Don Diego elaborated on the story while
passing it on to his friend Antonio, and
it grew greater as the latter tried to get
the true facts from Don Carlos.
Exasperated and resentful, Don Diego
decided to confront Maria and levy on her
affections.
When Don Diego mentioned Juan's
nocturnal visit to Maria, the girl was
sure that her servant had gossiped
indiscreetly. To protect Beatriz, whom he
loved, Mor6n explained that Don Diego
was an astrologer who could summon up
demons and who knew the past and the
future. Don Diego did not deny this
claim. In fact, when Maria's father
Leonardo came up to them, he was
predicting an impoverished husband for her.
The father, having had experiences with
magicians, did not believe in them, and
he would have unmasked Don Diego if
Mor6n had not cleverly saved his master
from disclosure.
Don Diego's friends, passing on the
story, convinced Dona Violante of Don
Diego's powers, and she begged him to
materialize the absent Juan. To his
protest that his power could not cross water,
she replied that, according to a letter just
delivered by Don Carlos, he was in Zara-
goza. At Don Diego's prompting, Dona
Violante wrote Juan a letter inviting him
to visit her. The note, mysteriously
delivered by Don Carlos, brought Juan to
her house. There he frightened her and
he himself became thoroughly confused,
since he knew nothing about the
pretended astrologer.
Juan was more eager than ever to see
Maria. Since Leonardo did not know him,
he presented himself as a friend of
Leonardo's brother, just arrived from Zara-
goza. Maria gave him a ribbon with a
costly pin and told him to sell it in order
to provide himself with spending money.
Then, scheming to bring him back to her,
she told her father that the pin had been
stolen. Leonardo hurried to consult Don
Diego. Since Beatriz had already babbled
the new developments to Moron, Don
Diego appeared to have miraculous
powers, and Leonardo went in search of
Juan. Discovered and fearing for Maria's
reputation, Juan confessed to the theft.
Angered, Leonardo refused Juan's
request to marry Maria.
His supposed magic prowess brought
Don Diego nothing but trouble. Even
his servant was claiming a share in his
strange powers and was trying to send
another servant on an aerial journey to
his home town. Then Don Diego angered
Dona Violante by refusing her a spell
that would kill Juan and Maria.
Meanwhile, he was no further advanced in
his own courtship. The conflicting
prophesies he had given, hoping that some
might come true, caused everyone to turn
against him. Then Beatriz explained how
he had secured his information. Finally,
the mock astrologer renounced all claims
to magic powers, but not before he had
accomplished one good deed. His action
in the jewel robbery reunited Maria and
Juan after the whole truth had been
revealed.
2427

MODERN CHIVALRY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816)
Type of plot: Picaresque satire
Time of plot: First years of the United States
Locale: Pennsylvania
First published: 1792-1815
Principal characters:
Captain John Farrago, a gentleman of Pennsylvania
Teague O'Regan, the captain's Irish servant, a rascal
Duncan Ferguson, another servant of the captain
Critique:
The application of the term novel to
Modern Chivalry is almost incorrect; it
is, rather, a bulky, episodic narrative that
is almost completely devoid of plot. The
real importance of the novel lies in the
fact that it heralded the appearance of
something new in early American fiction:
satire. It is a brilliant and ironic inquiry
into the faults and weaknesses of
political activities during the first years of
the United States, written by a man who
had taken part in the incidents of those
years, including the Whiskey Rebellion.
Like all great satires, it was written, not
with the aim of simply finding fault, but
with the aim of improving what the au-
hor saw as weaknesses in the persons
and institutions of mankind. Currish as
the satire is, and unkind as it sometimes
appears to be to the Irish as they are
seen in the person of Teague O'Regan,
the book is also humorous in a quizzical
and often reflective way. Among other
things, Modern Chivalry brought the
spirit of Cervantes, Rabelais, and
Montaigne to the American frontier.
The Story:
Captain John Farrago, a Pennsylva-
nian in his fifties, decided to get on his
horse and, accompanied by his servant
Teague O'Regan, to travel about the
country. He wanted to see how things
were getting on and to observe human
nature.
His first adventure was at a horse-race.
After the race the crowd became
embroiled in arguments. When the
captain tried to calm them, in the name of
reason, he had his head broken for his
pains. Starting out again the next
morning, Captain Farrago came to a village
where the election of a legislator was
taking place. The candidate, a weaver,
was not, in the captain's opinion, worthy
of the office, and so he spoke out against
the backwoods politician. Much to his
dismay, the villagers wanted to send
Teague, Captain Farrago's servant, as
their elected representative. The captain
finally convinced his Irish servant, who
had far more brawn than brains, that he
was better off as a servant of one man
than as the servant of many.
A short time later the captain found
the carcass of a very large owl. Upon
taking it to a town, he met a philosopher
who offered to have him made a member
of the philosophical society on the basis
of his discovery. When Captain Farrago
refused, the philosopher asked if the
servant Teague might be made a
member. Once again the captain had to
convince simple Teague that he was better
off as a private servant than he would
be chasing over the country after
dangerous animals.
That same night Teague got into a
scrape at an inn, where he tried to get
into bed with a girl who raised a great
hue and cry. Teague, a cunning chap,
shifted the blame to a young
clergyman by claiming that the clergvman
had attempted to molest the girl and that
he, Teague, had been her rescuer. The
tale got out, and Captain Farrago finally
had to bribe Teague with half a crown
2428

to tell the truth to the presbytery in order
to clear the innocent preacher's good
name. Teague, by means of blarney and
flattery, convinced the presbytery that he
wished to be a candidate for the
ministry; only the captain's intercession with
an explanation that Teague would have
to give up his vices and enter into a war
with the devil himself prevented the
gullible clergymen from taking Teague,
ignorant as he was, into the ministry.
Sometime later Captain Farrago met a
Miss Fog. In his efforts to court the
young lady, who had a considerable
fortune, Captain Farrago only managed to
insult her. Miss Fog's other suitor, Jacko,
then challenged the captain to a duel.
Captain Farrago, after warning the man
who delivered the challenge that such
conduct was against the law, kicked him
out of his quarters. Calling in Teague,
the captain offered to let him fight the
duel if he wished; Teague, a coward,
refused to do so, whereupon Captain
Farrago sent a letter telling Jacko that he
would not duel because one of them
might be hurt or killed for no reason at
all. That was the end of the matter.
Not long afterward a man approached
Captain Farrago and asked to hire
Teague from the captain. The man, a
maker of treaties with the Indians,
wanted to use Teague as a bogus chief of the
Kickapoo tribe. He pointed out that the
government wanted treaties and that he
was going to provide treaties; he received
a good salary for his work, in addition
to making money from the gifts that were
given to his bogus chieftains. Captain
Farrago, an honest man, refused to be a
party to the scheme. Fearing that Teague
might take to the idea of easy money,
Captain Farrago told him to stay away
from the maker of treaties, lest the
latter take Teague's scalp. Simple-minded
Teague, fearful for his life, stayed his
distance, and the man gave up his
fraudulent plan.
Having kept his servant from
becoming everything thus far, the captain soon
faced a new problem. Teague imagined
himself in love with a beautiful young
woman considerably above his station,
and nothing Captain Farrago could say
swayed him from his illusion. In a final
effort to bring Teague to his senses,
Captain Farrago told the girl's brother what
was happening. The brother, by a
judicious and heavy application of a
horsewhip, cured Teague of his matrimonial
aspirations for the time being.
Later in their wanderings the captain
and Teague stopped overnight at the
home of a widow who took a fancy to
Teague. Teague, anxious to improve his
lot, flattered the woman, and the two
quickly decided to get married, much to
Captain Farrago's disgust. Only the
captain's friendly warning to Teague that_
the widow might prove to be a witch or
sorceress, so quickly had she won his
affection, turned the servant away from
the probability of marriage. As it was, he
was anxious to be gone, lest some spell
be cast upon him.
Shortly afterward Teague disappeared
while he and Captain Farrago were in a
city. All the captain's efforts, including
a visit to a house of prostitution, were in
vain so far as locating Teague was
concerned. At last the Irishman was
discovered by the captain in a theater, where
Teague was being used in place of a
comedian who imitated the Irish. Teague
was anxious to keep his place, until the
theater manager gave him a cudgeling
for paying attentions to the manager's
mistress.
Captain Farrago determined to make
something better of his servant while
they were in the city. Dressing him
smartly and impressing on him some
semblance of manners improved Teague
so .much that the Irishman was given the
post of exciseman in the customs service.
Having lost Teague, Captain Farrago
found himself a new servant, a Scot
named Duncan Ferguson, who had
recently arrived in America.
Teague, acting as an excise officer, was
badly treated by the populace, who tarred

and feathered him when he tried to
collect duties in outlying towns. He
returned hastily to Captain Farrago. Then
the captain, upon the advice of a French
friend, sent Teague to France. Arriving
in France, Teague was taken up as a
great common citizen, since there was
no taint of the nobility about him. But
Teague soon tired of France and
returned to Captain Farrago's employ in
America. Accompanied by his servant,
the captain once again began his travels
to observe human nature.
One day the captain arrived at a town
where there was considerable discussion
over the local newspaper. The citizens,
dissatisfied with the editor, decided to let
Teague write the editorials. When he
proved unsatisfactory and was quickly
dismissed, the town was glad to have the
original editor return. Shortly afterward,
with the captain's help, Teague wrote
his memoirs. So successful was the
volume that Teague was suggested for the
professorship of rhetoric at the local
college. Only the outrage of the faculty
kept the plan from going through.
Teague's adventures finally proved too
much for the Pennsylvania village, and
so the captain, accompanied by Teague
and a retinue of hangers-on, moved
westward. Because of his learning and good
sense, Captain Farrago soon became
governor of a new territory, which he
attempted to set to rights according to
Greek and Roman tradition. Thus ended
his travels, for he now found himself in
such a position of responsibility that he
had to cease his aimless wanderings in
favor of a settled life.
2430

A MODERN COMEDY
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1922-1926
Locale: England and America
First published: 1924, 1926, 1928
Principal characters:
Soames Forsyte, the man of property
Fleur Mont, his daughter
Michael Mont, his son-in-law
Jon Forsyte, Fleur's former lover
Marjorie Ferrar, an acquaintance of Fleur
Critique:
A Modem Comedy is part of the
Forsyte Chronicles (1886-1926), in
which Galsworthy pictures the life of
a large, upper middle-class family against
a carefully detailed background of
English life. Solid and very readable, this
novel is important as a social document
aside from its value as literature. The
volume is composed of three long
sections—The White Monkey, The Silver
Spoon, and Swan Song—originally
published as separate novels, and two
interludes. Galsworthy's social history is
valuable as a record of the various currents
of British life in the 1920's.
The Story:
Soames Forsyte was a member of the
board of the Providential Premium
Reassurance Society. Against his better
judgment, the society had invested much
of its holdings in foreign securities.
Because the European exchange was so
unstable, Soames insisted that the report
to the stockholders be detailed. Not long
afterward, Butterfield, a clerk in the
P.P.R.S. office, overheard a conversation
between Elderson, the manager, and a
German. The German insisted that
Elderson, who had received commissions
on the society's investments in Germany,
should see to it that the board made
good any losses if the mark fell in value.
Accused of bribery, Elderson denied the
charge and dismissed Butterfield. When
pressed, however, Elderson escaped to the
continent. The stockholders were
outraged that the board had permitted Elder-
son to get away. Although Soames
explained that any early revelation of the
manager's dishonesty would have been
futile, he received very little support
from his listeners. He resigned from the
board.
Michael Mont, Soames' son-in-law, was
a publisher. When Butterfield lost his
job with the P.P.R.S., Soames asked
Michael to give the clerk employment.
Butterfield prospered as a salesman of
special editions.
Michael's wife, Fleur, had been spoiled
by her father. She was restless,
passionate, and not in love with her
husband. Wilfred Desert, an artist, was
deeply in love with her, but she knew
that he could provide only adventure,
not love. Wilfred finally left the country
for Arabia. For a time the relationship of
Michael and Fleur appeared happier,
and Fleur gave birth to a son, whom they
named Christopher.
Before she married Michael, Fleur
had been in love with her cousin, Jon
Forsyte, but because of a family feud
she could not marry him. Jon had gone
to America, where he fell in love with
a Southern girl, Anne Wilmot, and
married her.
A year or so after Christopher's birth,
Michael entered Parliament. To help
her husband and to provide her?elf with
diversion, Fleur entertained many prom-
A ^R??^ C9ME5X by John Galsworthy. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1928, by John Galsworthy.
2431

inent people. One night Soames
overheard one of Fleur's guests, Marjorie
Ferrar, speak of her as a snob. He asked
Marjorie to leave the house. Fleur was
impatient with her father for interfering,
but she criticized Marjorie for creating
an unpleasant scene. Marjorie demanded
an apology. After an offer of settlement
from Soames, Marjorie still insisted on
the apology and took her suit into court,
Soames and his lawyer managed to prove
that Marjorie was a woman of
irresponsible morals. Fleur won the case, but the
victory brought her so many snubs from
former friends that she was more unhappy
than ever.
Francis Wilmot, whose sister Anne
had married Jon, arrived from America
to see what England was like. He stayed
for a time with Fleur and Michael but,
having fallen in love with Marjorie
Ferrar, he moved out after the
unpleasantness between Marjorie and Fleur.
Marjorie refused to marry him, however,
and go to what she felt would be a dull
life in America. Francis contracted
pneumonia in a lonely hotel and would have
died but for the kindliness of Fleur.
He recovered and went back to America.
Fleur, discontented with her life in
London, persuaded Soames to take her
on a trip around the world. Michael
could not leave until the current session
of Parliament had adjourned. He was
fostering Foggartism—a plan for a
return to the land and for populating the
dominions with the children of the
British poor—and he felt that he must remain
in London. It was arranged that he
would meet Reur and Soames in
Vancouver five months later. Meanwhile,
little Christopher would be in the care
of his grandmother, Soames' wife.
While in Washington, Fleur, Michael,
and Soames stayed at the hotel where
Jon Forsyte and his mother, Irene, were
also staying. It was Soames' first sight of
his divorced wife in many years. He
kept discreedy in the background,
however, and saw to it that Fleur did not
encounter Jon.
Back in London, with the Marjorie
Ferrar affair almost forgotten, Fleur was
eager for activity. When the general
strike of 1926 began, she opened a
canteen for volunteer workers. One day she
saw Jon there. He had come over from
France to work during the strike. Jon's
conscience would not let him fall in love
again with Fleur, but she managed to
be near him as often as she could. After
a single night together, Jon wrote that
he could not see her again.
Foggartism having met with high
disfavor and unpopularity, Michael became
interested in slum improvement. Fleur,
still smarting from Jon's rebuff,
established a country rest home for working
girls. Michael's work had taught him
that the poor would never have
consented to part with their children, even
though keeping them would always mean
privation and suffering. He realized that
he was well out of Foggartism.
Soames, unhappy in an
environment of post-war confusion and family
unrest, spent more and more time among
his collection of great paintings. One
night, awakened by the odor of smoke,
he discovered that his picture gallery
was on fire. With the aid of his
chauffeur, he managed to save many of his
pictures by tossing them out the window.
At last, when they could stay in the room
no longer, they went outside, where
Soames directea the firemen as well as
he could. Then he saw that one of his
heavily framed pictures was about to fall
from the window above. He also saw
that Reur was deliberately standing
where the frame would fall on her. He
ran to push her out of the way, and
received the blow himself. He died from
exhaustion and from the injury. Reur
was further desolated because she knew
that her own desire for death had killed
her father. The death of Soames brought
her to her senses, however. Michael was
assured that her affair with Jon was
over forever.
2432

A MODERN INSTANCE
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: New England
First published: 1882
Principal characters:
Marcia Gaylord, a small-town girl
Squire Gaylord, her father
Bartley Hubbard, her husband
Atherton, a Boston lawyer
Ben Halleck, a moral man
Kinney, a vagabond
Critique:
William Dean Howells had a long and
distinguished career, and he was the
author of nearly seventy books and
countless shorter pieces. In his time his
reputation as a man of letters was high.
Although modern criticism places less
value upon his work, A Modern Instance
is representative of his restrained realism
and still widely read for its sympathetic
analysis of human character.
The Story:
In the little town of Equity, in
northern New England, Bartley Hubbard was
an up-and-coming young man. An orphan
whose life had so far been one of great
promise, he had a free and easy way about
him and a ready tongue that made him a
general favorite. Squire Gaylord was well
Eleased with his work as editor of the vil-
ige paper, the Free Press, but not so well
pleased when Bartley became engaged to
Marcia Gaylord, the squire's only
daughter.
One afternoon Bartley and Marcia
went for a sleigh ride. In a swamp they
met another cutter which overturned in
deep snow while trying to pass them on
the narrow trail. The women in the
overturned vehicle were Mrs. Morrison and
her daughter Hannah, who worked in
the office of the Free Press. Bartley
jumped out to help them. Mrs. Morrison
got into the cutter by herself. Because
Bartley lifted Hannah Morrison to her
place, Marcia was angry enough to
precipitate their first quarrel.
Hannah was the daughter of the town
drunkard. Young Bartley encouraged her
greatly, thinking to improve the quality
of her work, but she interpreted his
interest as love. Her father called on
Bartley one morning, drunk as usual, and
asked Bartley's intentions toward his
daughter. The young editor was so vexed
and infuriated that he ejected Hannah's
father bodily. His foreman, Henry Bird,
in his turn accused Bartley of stealing
Hannah's affections. When he hit Bartley
in the face, the latter retaliated with an
open-handed slap. Henry fell, suffering a
concussion when his head hit the floor.
The scandal was immense. Squire
Gaylord took a legal view of the possibility
that Bird might die. Marcia took the
fight as proof of an affair between Bartley
and Hannah and broke their engagement.
Bartley resigned his job, even though Bird
soon recovered. Bartley went to stay with
Kinney, a crackerbox philosopher who
cooked in a nearby logging camp.
At the camp Willett, the owner, came
to visit with a fashionable party. Mrs.
Macallister, one of the guests, flirted
with Bartley, and he tried to curry favor
by poking fun at the quaint Kinney. That
same night Bartley and Kinney parted in
anger, and the young man walked back
to town.
After selling his horse and cutter,
Bartley went to the station to catch the
Boston train. Marcia caught up with him
at the depot. Asking his forgiveness, she
begged him to take her back. They were
2433

married that same day and left for Boston
together.
In the city Bartley went to work. He
turned his visit to the logging camp into a
feature article which he sold for twenty-
five dollars. That was the start of his
fairly comfortable, although uncertain,
income as a free-lance writer. Marcia and
he could afford only one room, but they
were happy together. Marcia's father,
Squire Gaylord, came to see her once, to
make certain she was married. He refused
to meet her husband again.
About the time Marcia learned that
she was pregnant, Bartley was offered a
job as managing editor of Events, whose
publisher was a shrewd, unprincipled
man named Witherby. With a regular
salary at last, Bartley moved his wife into
a private house.
In college Bartley had known Ben Hal-
leck, a member of one of Boston's older
families. Marcia knew no one at all,
and she often wondered why Bartley
did not resume his acquaintance with
the Hallecks. Now that Bartley had
a better job, he did call on the
Hallecks, and they at once befriended the
Hubbards. Through them the young
couple also got acquainted with Mr.
Atherton, a conservative lawyer. Halleck
cared no more for Bartley than he ever
had, but he was sorry for trusting Marcia,
saddled with a shallow husband. After
the birth of her child Flavia, Marcia saw
less and less of Bartley, who spent many
of his evenings away from home.
Witherby offered to sell some stock in
the newspaper. For this deal Bartley
borrowed fifteen hundred dollars from
Halleck. Before long he had assumed a
prosperous air, and his drinking added
greatly to his girth. After a quarrel with
Marcia, one night, he stayed out late and
became quite drunk. Halleck saw him on
the street and rescued him from a
policeman. When Halleck took the drunken
man back to Marcia, his pity for the poor
wife increased.
Kinney, visiting the Hubbards,
entertained Bartley and another
newspaperman with stories of his picturesque life.
After he left, Bartley wrote up the tales
and sold them to another paper without
Kinney's permission. Witherby was upset
at seeing Bartley's work in a rival
newspaper, and when he learned that his
managing editor had written the article in
violation of ethical considerations he
dismissed Bartley.
Bartley returned to free lancing.
Halleck was absent from the city-, hence
Bartley could not repay the fifteen
hundred dollars. He intended to do so, but he
gambled with the money and before long
lost several hundred dollars. Atherton
and Halleck were confirmed in their
suspicions of Bartley's moral weakness.
Marcia, returning from the Halleck
house one evening, saw a drunken woman
on the street. To her surprise she
recognized Hannah Morrison. When she tried
to talk with Hannah, the latter insisted
that Bartley was to blame for her present
status in life. Suspecting and believing
the worst of Bartley, Marcia rushed home
and accused him of having seduced
Hannah. During the ensuing quarrel they
separated, and Bartley took a train for
Cleveland.
On the train Bartley's wallet was
stolen; in consequence he was unable to
send money back to Halleck. In Boston,
Marcia regretted her hasty conclusions
and stayed on at their house awaiting her
husband's return. When creditors began
to hound her, she enlisted Atherton's
sympathetic aid. He and Halleck
continued to look after the deserted wife. In
time she thought of Bartley as dead, and
Halleck wondered when he would be free
to speak to her of his love.
By chance a western newspaper came
into Halleck's hands, a paper in which
Bartley had given notice of suit for
divorce. Marcia, her small daughter, Squire
Gaylord, and Halleck took a train to
Indiana to contest the suit. They arrived
in time to have the divorce set aside, but
during the trial Marcia's father had a
2434

stroke from which he never recovered.
After the trial Bartley drifted farther west
and became the editor of a weekly paper
in Whited Sepulchre, Arizona. He was
shot there by a citizen of the town. When
Bartley's death was reported, Halleck
wondered whether morally he was free to
ask Marcia to marry him.
2435

A MODERN MIDAS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Maurus J6kai (1825-1904)
Type of plot: Philosophical romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Hungary
First published: 1872
Principal characters:
Michael Timar, a modern Midas
Ali Tschorbadschi (Euthryn Trikaliss), a Turkish political
refugee
Timea, his daughter
Therese, a trader on No Man's Land
Naomi, her daughter
Athanas Brasowitsch, a prosperous Hungarian trader
Athalie, his daughter
Lieutenant Imre Katschuka, betrothed to Athalie
Critique:
The name of Maurus J6kai is
inseparably connected with the course of
Hungarian history in the nineteenth century.
He began his career as a writer largely
through patriotic motives, and at one
time he was exiled because his books
were so highly regarded in the
revolutionary circles of Hungarian Youth. Later he
served as a member of the Hungarian
Parliament and in the House of
Magnates. Although Hungarian has never
been a popular literary language, J6kai's
works were widely read and translated
into many languages during his lifetime.
Influenced chiefly by the romantic
writers of England and France, he excelled
in the field of the imaginative romance,
one which depended for its effect upon a
wealth of incident and character, an
involved plot mingling the ideal and the
fantastic, and an idyllic, pastoral
atmosphere. A Modern Midas, the work of a
master of storytelling and romantic
atmosphere, is typical of J6kai at his best.
The Story:
In the season of autumn gales a man
calling himself Euthryn Trikaliss and his
young daughter Tim£a took passage up
the Danube on the Saint Barbara, a cargo
boat owned by Athanas Brasowitsch,
the wealthy merchant of Komorn, in
Hungary. Although Trikaliss posed as a
Greek trader, proprietor of the cargo of
grain carried by the vessel, the crew felt
that there was some mystery about him
and his lovely daughter, a suspicion
confirmed when a Turkish gunboat was
sighted in pursuit. By quick wit and
daring, Michael Timar, supercargo of the
Saint Barbara, outwitted the pursuing
brigantine, brought the craft safely
through the perilous rocks of the Iron
Gate, and anchored it near an unnamed
island on the left bank of the river.
Seeing signs of habitation on the
island, Michael went ashore in hopes of
buying fresh provisions for the Saint
Barbara. In the midst of several acres of
cultivated ground lived a woman who
gave her name only as Therese and her
daughter Naomi. Thirese agreed to
supply fruits, flour, kids, and cheese, but
refused to take any money in return. She
and her daughter, she explained, lived by
barter, trading with farmers and
smugglers of the district. When Michael
returned to the boat for grain to offer in
exchange for Th£rese's goods, he brought
Tim£a and her father ashore with him.
During their overnight stay on the
island another visitor, apparently an
unwelcome one, appeared. He was
Theodore Kristyan, who announced himself
as Naomi's betrothed. That night Michael
heard Kristyan demanding money of
Therese and threatening to report the
existence of the island to the Turkish
2436

government if she refused. Since she had
no money to give him, he took a bracelet
which had been Timea's present to
Naomi.
The next morning, after Kristyan's
departure, Therese told Michael her story.
Twelve years before her husband had
endorsed the older Kristyan's note to
Athanas Brasowitsch. Defaulting, the
older Kristyan had run away, and Th£-
rese's husband had been ruined when he
was forced to satisfy Brasowitsch's claims
on his property. The unfortunate man
committed suicide. Penniless, the widow
had found a refuge for herself and her
child on the island which she called No
Man's Land. There they lived happily,
persecuted only by the infrequent visits
of Theodore Kristyan, to whom Naomi
had been betrothed before his father's
disgrace and her own father's death.
Euthryn Trikaliss seemed despondent
when the Saint Barbara resumed the
voyage up the river. That night the
passenger called Michael to his cabin. After
telling that he had taken a fatal dose of
poison, he confided that he was not a
Greek trader but Ali Tschorbadschi, a
Turkish government official fleeing in
disgrace from the sultan's wrath. Having
recognized Kristyan as a spy of the
sultan, he knew that the informer would
hurry ahead to carry the news of Ali's
coming, and he preferred death to
capture. He asked Michael to take Timea
to Brasowitsch, a distant kinsman. Then,
muttering some strange words about a
red crescent, he died.
Ali was buried in the river. His fears
proved correct. At Panscova Turkish
officials came aboard the boat and
demanded the person of Ali Tschorbadschi,
but after Michael had reported the
circumstances of his passenger's death and
burial the Saint Barbara was allowed to
proceed. Another disaster was to follow.
Not far from Komorn the boat struck a
snag and sank. Only at the risk of his
own life was Michael able to save a small
casket containing the thousand ducats
which Ali had entrusted to him as
provision for Timea's future.
Brasowitsch was furious when he heard
that his ship had foundered with its
valuable cargo of grain, and he had only a
surly welcome for Timea, who was still
dazed by grief over her father's death.
He and his vulgar wife having agreed
that the orphan was to become a servant
in their household, he paid no attention
to Michael's suggestion that the grain
be salvaged for Timea's sake. He did,
however, give Michael power of attorney
to dispose of the cargo.
Among Michael's friends was
Lieutenant Imre Katschuka, betrothed to Athalie,
Brasowitsch's daughter. The officer
informed Michael that army maneuvers
were to be staged near Komorn, and he
suggested that the sunken grain could be
used to make bread for the troops. Acting
on information supplied by Katschuka,
Michael underbid Brasowitsch on the
bread contract for the army and later,
having purchased the cargo cheaply at a
public auction, he proceeded to salvage
the grain from the Saint Barbara. During
the operations he found one sack marked
with a red crescent instead of a black
wheel. Opening the bag in private, he
found in it a fortune in gold and jewels.
This, then, was Timea's real fortune,
which he had bought at auction for ten
thousand gulden.
Michael's first impulse was to take the
fortune to Brasowitsch, as TimeYs
guardian. His second was to keep the treasure
and eventually provide for Timea
without allowing Brasowitsch to profit by
using it in his own -speculations. Having
decided on the second course, he began
a series of operations which soon made
him the great man of the region. After
disproving Brasowitsch's charges of
bribery over the bread contract he offered
the government a generous rental for the
vacant Levetinczy estate. As Baron
Michael Timar von Levetinczy he planted
and bought and sold so shrewdly and
successfully that he became known
throughout all Hungary as a modern
Midas.
2437

Meanwhile he continued to visit the
Brasowitsch household, where Tim6a
was ridiculed and humiliated by Braso-
witsch's spiteful wife and arrogant
daughter. Their crudest jest was to let the poor
child believe that she was the bride
intended for Katschuka, with whom she
had innocently fallen in love. The
approaching wedding gave Michael an
opportunity to plot Brasowitsch's ruin.
Because Katschuka refused to marry Athalie
without a dowry of one hundred
thousand gulden, Brasowitsch, acting on hints
supplied by Michael, mortgaged all his
possessions to buy land where it was
rumored the government intended to build
a new fort. The merchant's intention
was to resell the ground to the
government at a high price. But on the day of
the wedding the officials informed him
that the fort was to be built on other
lands owned by Michael. Brasowitsch
had a stroke and died. Katschuka refused
to go through with the wedding.
When the house and furnishings of
dead Brasowitsch were sold at auction,
Michael bought the property and
presented it to Timea with his offer for her
hand. He was overjoyed when she
accepted, for he believed that he was returning
to her at last all that was hers by right.
One stipulation Tim£a made was that
Athalie and her mother were to occupy
the house as before. Michael reluctantly
agreed to the request.
But the marriage proved unhappy.
Tim£a, although grateful to her husband,
was still in love with Katschuka, and he
with her. Ungrateful Athalie, hating all
three, informed Michael of the true state
of affairs and so added to his
wretchedness. Wanting TimeVs love more than
anything else, he tried in every way,
but unsuccessfully, to win her unasked
affection. Tim£a was a faithful and
dutiful wife, but no more.
During a visit to the Levetinczy estate
Michael had a sudden impulse to return
to No Man's Land, which he had secretly
secured for Th£rese and Naomi. During
his visit Kristyan appeared and ordered
Th^rese to sign a contract which would
have stripped the island of its valuable
timber. To silence his threats, Michael
informed him that he had secured from
the Turkish and Hungarian governments
a deed giving the rental of the island to
the present colonists for ninety-nine years.
When Michael left the island Kristyan
tried to shoot him. Forgiving the act,
Michael offered Kristyan an opportunity
to make an honest living by acting as his
South American agent in a new project,
the shipment of Hungarian flour to
Brazil.
The next spring Michael returned to
No Man's Land. When Naomi frankly
offered him her love, he accepted it
without telling her that he was wealthy and
already married. He returned to his home
in the fall, to learn that Tim£a had
managed his enterprises during his absence
and added greatly to his wealth. On his
return to the island the next year he
found that Naomi had borne his child,
a boy named Dodi. Their grief was great
when the baby died. Michael himself
almost succumbed to fever. He was sad
when the time came for him to leave
the island in the fall, but he rejoiced to
find another Dodi in the cradle when he
returned the next year.
At last Michael decided that he could
bear his double life no longer. For a time
he thought of committing suicide and
willing all his possessions to Tim£a, but
he found it impossible to contemplate
giving up forever his idyllic life with
Naomi. While he was trying to find a
way out of his dilemma he went to
inspect one of his fishing enterprises. There
Kristyan arrived to accuse him of theft.
Kristyan, having abused Michael's trust,
had been sent to the galleys in Brazil
and from his father, a fellow prisoner,
he had heard the full story of Tschorbad-
schi's activities. Suspecting the source of
Michael's wealth, he had returned to
denounce his benefactor. He offered to hold
his tongue, however, if Michael would
give up No Man's Land and Naomi.
While the two men talked, Kristyan,
scoffing at all promises of great wealth
2438

for himself, took off his own ragged
clothing and put on a suit belonging to
Michael. Then he started off across a frozen
lake to make his accusations. Michael
followed with the intention of drowning
himself. As he approached a crack in the
ice he saw Kristyan's floating body. The
knave had accidentally fallen in and had
drowned.
The body found at the time of the
spring thaws was identified as Michael's
because of the suit the dead man wore
and a purse in one of the pockets.
Everyone mourned the death of the great
Baron Levetinczy, who was honored by
an impressive state funeral. After a
proper period of mourning Tim6a married
Katschuka. Jealous Athalie went to prison
after an attempt to kill Tim6a on her
wedding day. And on No Man's Land,
surrounded by three generations of their
descendants, Michael and Naomi lived to
a contented and peaceful old age. All
trade of the colony was carried on by
barter. Wise old Michael would never
allow money, the breeder of selfishness,
misery, and crime, to be used or kept on
the island where he ruled as a beloved
patriarch.
2439

MOLL FLANDERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: England and the American colonies
First published: 1722
Principal characters:
Moll Flanders, a female rogue
Robin, her first husband
A Sea Captain, Moll's half-brother and husband
Jemmy £., a rogue
Critique:
The complete original title of this
remarkable volume was as follows: The
Fortunes and Misfortunes of the famous
Moll Flanders, who was born in
Newgate, and during a life of continued
variety, for threescore years, besides her
childhood, was twelve years a Whore, five
times a Wife (thereof once to her own
brother), twelve years a Thief, eight
years a transported Felon in Virginia, at
last grew rich, lived honest, and died a
penitent. Written from her own
Memorandums. As this title suggests, the
heroine of the story is perhaps the world's
best-known female picaroon. Like the
story of Robinson Crusoe, this book is so
convincingly written, with such a wealth
of intimate detail, the reader feels it must
be true.
The Story:
When her mother was transported to
the colonies as a felon, eighteen-month-
old Moll Flanders was left without family
or friends to care for her. For a time she
was befriended by a band of gipsies,
who deserted her in Colchester. There
the child was a charge of the parish.
Becoming a favorite of the wife and
daughters of the mayor, Moll received gentle
treatment and no little attention and
flattery.
At the age of fourteen Moll Flanders
was again left without a home. When her
indulgent instructress died, she was taken
in service by a kindly woman of means,
receiving instruction along with the
daughters of the family. In all but wealth
Moll was superior to these daughters.
During her residence there she lost her
virtue to the oldest son of the family and
secretly became his mistress. Later when
Robin, the youngest son, made her a
proposal of marriage, she accepted him. At
the end of five years Robin died. Soon
afterward Moll married a spendthrift
draper, who quickly went through her
savings and was imprisoned. In the
meantime Moll took lodgings at the Mint.
Passing as a widow, she called herself
Mrs. Flanders.
Her next venture in matrimony was
with a sea captain with whom she sailed
to the Virginia colony. There she
discovered to her extreme embarrassment
that she was married to her own half-
brother. After eight years of residence
in Virginia she returned to England to
take up her residence at Bath. In due
time she became acquainted with a
gentleman whose wife was demented.
Moll helpfully nursed him through a
serious illness. Later she became his
mistress. When she found herself with
child she made arrangements for her
lying-in, sent the child to nurse, and
rejoined her companion. During the six
years in which they lived together, she
gave birth to three children and saved
enough money to support herself after
the gentleman had regretted his
indiscretions and left her.
Next the ambitious girl met a banker
2440

with whom she carried on a mild
flirtation. However, she left him to many an
Irishman named Jemmy E., supposedly
a very wealthy gentleman of Lancashire.
Moll had allowed him to believe she had
means. She soon learned that her new
husband was penniless. He had played
on her the same trick she had used on
him. Both rogues, they were a congenial
couple, but eventually they decided to
separate; he to follow his unlawful
profession of highway robbery, she to
return to the city. After Jemmy had left
her, Moll found that she was again to
become a mother. Lying-in at the house
of a midwife, Moll was delivered of a
healthy boy who was boarded out.
In the meantime Moll Flanders had
been receiving letters from her admirer,
the bank clerk. They met at an inn and
were married there. On the day after
the ceremony she saw her Lancashire
husband, the highwayman, in the
courtyard of the inn, and she was able to save
him from arrest. For five years, until his
death, Moll lived with the banker in
great happiness. After his death she sold
her property and took lodgings. Forty-
eight years old and with two children
as dependents, she was prompted by the
devil to steal a bundle from an
apothecary shop. Next she stole a necklace
from a pretty little girl on her way home
from dancing school. Thus Moll Flanders
embarked on a twelve-year period as a
thief. Sometimes she disguised herself
in men's clothing. A chance encounter
with a gentleman at Bartholomew Fair
resulted in an affair which the two
carried on for some time. Moll became,
after a period of apprenticeship, the
richest thief in all England. Her favorite
disguise was that of a beggar woman.
Finally she was seized while trying to
steal two pieces of silk brocade and was
imprisoned in Newgate prison. There
she saw again her former husband, the
highwayman, committed at Newgate for
a robbery on Hounslow Heath. Before
going up for trial and sentence, Moll
repented of her sins; nevertheless she was
sentenced to death by the court. Bui
through the kind offices of a minister,
Moll 1 landers, now truly repentant, was
given a reprieve. The next day she
watched her fellow prisoners being
carried away in carts for the fate which had
been spared her. She was finally
sentenced to transportation to America.
The highwayman, with whom she had
become reconciled, was awarded a like
sentence. The pair embarked for
Virginia in the same ship, having made all
arrangements for a comfortable journey,
and stocked themselves with the tools and
materials necessary for running a
plantation in the new world. Forty-two days
after leaving an Irish port they arrived
in Virginia. Once ashore, Moll found
that her mother had died. Her brother,
whom she had once married, and her son
were still living near the spot where she
had disembarked.
Not yet wishing to meet her relatives,
and not desiring to be known as a
transported criminal in America, she arranged
for transportation to the Carolina colony.
After crossing Chesapeake Bay, she and
the highwayman found the ship already
overloaded. They decided to stay in
Maryland and set up a plantation there.
With two servants and fifty acres of land
under cultivation, they soon prospered.
Then Moll arranged an interview with
her son in Virginia across the bay.
In due course she learned that her
mother had willed her a plantation on
the York River, a plantation complete
with stock and servants. To her son she
presented one of the stolen watches which
she had brought from London. After
five weeks she returned to Maryland,
where she and her husband became
wealthy and prosperous planters of good
repute throughout all the colonies. This
prosperity was augmented by the arrival
of a second cargo of goods from England,,
for which Moll had arranged before she
sailed. In the meantime the man who
had been both brother and husband to
Moll died and she was able to see her
2441

son without any embarrassment.
At the age of seventy years, Moil
returned to England. Her husband soon
joined her there, and they resolved to
spend the rest of their lives in repentance
for their numerous sins.
2442

THE MONK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of vlot: The Spanish Inquisition
Locale: Madrid, Spain
First published: 1795
Principal characters:
Father Ambrosio, the monk
Matilda (Rosario), his evil mistress
Lorenzo de Medina, a young nobleman
Agnes, his sister
Antonia, a virtuous maiden
Elvira, her mother
The Marquis Raymond de las Cisternas, a wealthy relative of Elvira
Mother St. Agatha, prioress of St. Clare Convent
Virginia de Villa Franca, a beautiful heiress
Critique:
Although not widely read today,
Ambrosio, Or, The Monk won instant
fame for its twenty-year-old author when
it was first published, and it was one of the
most popular books of its day. An excellent
example of Gothic horror, the book is by
modern standards fantastic, crude, and
stilted. Lewis, attacked bv many for his
immorality, was praised by others for his
honesty and his vividness of description.
The story is pure romance, filled with
mystery and terror. The book is important
because its plot was the forerunner of later
novels of mystery and romance.
The Story:
Whenever Father Ambrosio talked in
the church, all Madrid went to hear him.
He was the most learned, the most
virtuous, the most admired monk in the
city. Such was his own purity that he
would tolerate no sin in others, and he
berated the worshipers viciously. In the
audience one day was a young girl named
Antonia. The girl and her mother had
come to Madrid to seek the financial aid of
their relative, the Marquis Raymond de
las Cisternas. At the church Antonia met
Lorenzo de Medina, a wealthy young
nobleman who, charmed by her
sweetness, promised to petition Raymond in her
behalf. Before he left the church, Lorenzo
saw Raymond and learned that he was the
man who had supposedly spurned
Lorenzo's sister Agnes and caused the
heartbroken girl to enter the convent of St.
Clare. Lorenzo challenged his former
friend, but Raymond begged him to hear
the story and then make his judgment.
The marquis did not know the fate at
that moment befalling Agnes. Father
Ambrosio had intercepted a note written
to Agnes by Raymond, acknowledging
that the child she would soon bear was his
and laying plans for her escape from the
convent. Ambrosio summoned Mother St.
Agatha, the prioress, and Agnes was
carried away to torture and probable death.
The young girl begged Ambrosio for
mercy, but he was cold to her pleas. Then she
cursed him, calling on him to remember
her when he himself yielded to temptation.
Ambrosio was to remember Agnes'
words when he yielded to the passions of
Matilda, an evil woman who had
disguised herself as a novice at the monastery
and who was known to the monks as
Rosario. Ambrosio struggled with his
conscience, but his lust overcame him and he
surrendered himself completely to
Matilda. He could not let the monks learn
that a woman was in the monastery,
however, for then he would be exiled and
reviled by all who now honored him.
After hearing Raymond's story, Lorenzo
forgave his friend for his supposed
betrayal of Agnes. Agnes, persuaded by
unscrupulous relatives that Raymond had
2443

deserted her, had in her sorrow entered
the convent of St. Clare. Raymond found
her there and by bribing the gatekeeper
managed to see her each night. When she
found that she was to have his child, she
sent a note to him, and it was his note, in
reply, planning the escape and their
subsequent marriage, that Ambrosio had
intercepted. Neither of them aware of the
fate that had befallen her, Lorenzo joined
with Raymond in the plan to rescue Agnes.
Before the proposed rescue, Lorenzo
paid court to Antonia, but her mother
Elvira, fearing that his family would not
permit his union with a girl without noble
family or fortune, begged him not to call
again until he should secure his family's
permission to marry Antonia. He was
unable to consult his family until after his
sister's rescue. When Agnes did not
appear at the appointed time, Lorenzo went
to the convent and demanded to see her.
For several days Mother St. Agatha told
him that Agnes was too ill to receive him.
When he insisted, the prioress told him
the girl had died while delivering a
stillborn child. Wild with anger, Lorenzo and
Raymond swore vengeance on the
prioress. Raymond would not believe his
beloved really dead.
In the meantime Ambrosio, satiated by
his lust, learned to his horror that Matilda
worked magic and consorted with the
devil. Although his desire for Matilda was
gone, his passion for women was still
great and he turned his attention toward
Antonia, who had come to beg him to go
to her sick mother. The innocent girl did
not suspect his intentions, but her mother
did. Elvira came upon them once when
the monk was attempting to ravish
Antonia, but the girl was so innocent that
she did not understand the monk's
actions. Matilda came to his aid and cast
a spell so that he could ravish Antonia as
she slept. The plan would have succeeded
if Elvira had not come into the room.
When Elvira tried to call out for help,
Ambrosio strangled her to death.
Raymond became ill after learning of
Agnes' fate. Lorenzo, learning from
another nun that Mother St. Agatha had
murdered Agnes, laid plans to have the
prioress seized. Ambrosio, meanwhile, had
not given up his plan to possesss Antonia.
With the aid of a magic potion mixed by
Matilda, he took the girl to a dungeon
in the monastery and there ravished her.
Immediately afterward he was penitent
and begged her forgiveness, but she would
not hear his pleas and tried to escape from
him. Fearing her escape, he plunged a
dagger into her heart. She lived only long
enough to die in the arms of Lorenzo, who
had suddenly appeared upon the scene.
Lorenzo had obtained from the cardinal
an order to arrest Mother St. Clare and to
have her tried for the murder of Agnes.
News of the arrest turned the fury of
the mob against the prioress and she and
several of the other nuns were killed by
the crowd. While the mob stormed the
convent, Lorenzo was led by screams for
help into the cellar of the convent. There
in the darkness he found a pitiful figure
clutching a baby. The woman's ravings
were almost insensible, and she was all
but dead of starvation. Lorenzo sent her to
the home of Virginia de Villa Franca, a
beautiful heiress. Searching the rest of the
crypt, he came upon dying Antonia.
Ambrosio and Matilda were arrested by
the Inquisition. Lorenzo and Raymond
learned that the pitiful woman they had
saved from death was Agnes, who had
been imprisoned and starved by the
prioress. The love of Raymond and the kind
ministering of Virginia restored her to
health, and she and Raymond were
married. Lorenzo for a long time lay ill of
grief for his lost Antonia, but at last the
kindness of Virginia healed his spirit, and
those two were married also.
The Inquisitors tortured Matilda and
Ambrosio to make them confess their
crimes and their sorcery. Matilda
confessed and was condemned to death by
fire. Ambrosio, refusing to confess, was to
be tortured again the following day. That
night Matilda came to his cell a free
woman. The devil had released her and
she begged the monk to give his soul to
2444

Lucifer and thus escape death. The monk
wrestled with his conscience until his fear
of the torture overcame his fears of hell,
and he sold his soul to the devil.
His freedom was short-lived. Lucifer
took him through the sky to a high
precipice. There he taunted him with the
knowledge that he would have been
released by the Inquisition had he been true
to his faith. The monk heard also that
through the accident of a mixed-up family
relationship Antonia was his own sister
and Elvira his mother. Ambrosio himself
was to die. The devil had promised him
only release from prison in exchange for
his soul—not freedom. Lucifer held the
monk high in the heavens, then dashed
him to death on the rocks below.
2445

MONKEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Wu Ch'eng-en (c. 1505-c. 1580)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Seventh century
Locale: China, India, and various mythical regions
First published: Sixteenth century
Principal characters:
Monkey, a monster with miraculous powers
Buddha, the founder of Buddhism and Lord of the Western Paradise
Kwan-yin, a Bodhisattva (commonly known as the Goddess of Mercy)
Hsu an Tsang (Triptitaka), a Chinese Buddhist priest
Tai Tsung, the great Chinese emperor of the Tang Dynasty
Pigsy, and
Sandy, monsters, Triptitaka's disciples
Critique:
Known in Chinese as the Hsi Yu Chi
(Record of a Journey to the West),
Monkey was inspired by the pilgrimage of the
Chinese priest Hsuan Tsang to India in
the seventh century. Except for the priest
and a few other historical personages,
the novel is fantastic, with the whole
mythical universe as its background. It is
interpreted as a satire, with the rebellious
monkey against the bureaucratic heavenly
government, and as an allegory, a
Buddhist Pilgrim's Progress, For centuries,
however, the Chinese, adults and
children alike, have loved this absurd story
of monsters simply because of its
imagination, humor, and profound nonsense.
Arthur Waley has translated thirty out
of the original one hundred chapters,
omitting many of the calamities the
pilgrim and his disciples encountered. The
story before the start of the pilgrimage
is preserved almost in its entirety and this
alone makes interesting reading. Wu
Ch'eng-en was a sixteenth-century
magistrate as well as a novelist.
The Story:
In the beginning there was a rock.
The rock gave birth to a stone egg and
the egg developed into the shape of a
monkey. The monkey became alive and
played with other monkeys. He was made
their king.
One day, troubled by the thought of
death, he bade farewell to the monkey
tribe and set out on a journey to seek
immortality. He became a pupil of the
Patriarch Subodhi, from whom he
learned seventy-two transformations and
the cloud trapeze. When he showed off
his newly learned magic of
transformation by changing into a pine tree, this
public display of magic enraged his
master, who disowned him. Monkey went
back to his cave. But now he did not
have to travel over mountains and rivers.
One leap carried him head over heels a
hundred and eight thousand leagues.
He killed the demon who had
molested his "little ones" during his absence.
He got the magic iron staff from the Sea
Treasury of the Dragon King. The
weapon could reduce, at his will, to the size
of an embroidery needle. In spite of all
these powers, however, his allotted life
span of 342 years had come to an end.
In a dream he was taken to the Land of
Darkness. Furiously, he crossed out his
name in the Registers of Death, together
with whatever names of other monkeys
he could find.
His disturbance at the Palace of the
Dragon King and the Court of Death
having been reported to the Jade
Emperor, Monkey was summoned to Heaven
so that he could be constantly watched.
MONKEY by Wu Ch'eng-en. Translated by Arthur Waley. By permission of the publishers. The John
Day Co., Inc. Copyright, 1943, by The John Day Co., Inc.
2446

At first he was happy to have an
appointment from the emperor, but upon
learning how humble his position as groom in
the heavenly stables really was, he
returned to his monkeys.
As a rebel, he called himself "Great
Sage, Equal of Heaven," and he
defeated the heavenly hosts sent off to
arrest him. The Jade Emperor consented
to appoint him to the rank he wished.
Then he disturbed the Peach Banquet,
to which he was not invited. By the joint
effort of the gods he was caught and
imprisoned in the crucible of Lao Tzu,
where for forty-nine days he was burned
with alchemical fire before he escaped. It
seemed nothing could stop him until
Buddha came to help the heavenly
powers. Monkey was placed under a five-
peaked mountain, originally the five
fingers of Buddha's hand, where he was to
serve his penance.
Now Buddha wished that some
believer from sinful China would come to
the Western Continent to fetch the True
Scriptures. Kwan-yin volunteered to help
the man accomplish his journey.
The man was Hsiian Tsang. His
father, a young scholar, had been murdered
while on his way to take up his duties as
governor of Chiang-chou. The murderer,
a ferryman, assumed the dead man's
name and took his wife and office. The
wife would have committed suicide but
for her unborn child. Immediately after
the boy was born, she tied him to a plank
with a letter written in blood tucked to
his breast, and pushed the plank into the
river. The child was picked up by the
abbot of a temple, who learned the tragic
story of the boy's birth from the blood-
letter.
Hsiian Tsang was brought up as a
monk. He did not know of his parentage
until he was eighteen years old; then he
met his mother and made plans to avenge
his father. The false governor was
executed, on the spot where he had
committed his evil deed. Suddenly a body
came floating up through the water. It
was Hsiian Tsang's father, whom
everyone had thought dead, but who had been
saved by the Dragon King of the River.
Thus the family was reunited. Hsiian
Tsang chose to remain a monk.
The Emperor T'ai Tsung of T'ang
made a visit to the World of Darkness.
He had promised to celebrate a great
mass for the salvation of the hungry
ghosts, and Hsiian Tsang was chosen to
preside over the ceremonies. Kwan-yin,
appearing in the disguise of a ragged
priest, interrupted the service by
pointing out that there were Three Baskets
(or Triptitaka) of Mahayana scriptures
for a pilgrim to bring from India. Then
she revealed herself in her glory and
vanished. Hsiian Tsang volunteered to
undertake the quest in spite of the length
and perils of the journey. His request
granted, he was given a new name,
Triptitaka.
He had passed several dangers before
he arrived at the mountain where
Monkey had been imprisoned for five
hundred years, waiting for the man who,
according to Kwan-yin, would release
him and whom he was to follow and
protect and obey as his master. When
Triptitaka said a prayer, the seal of the prison
was lifted into the air and Monkey was
freed.
Three other monsters had received
similar instructions from Kwan-yin to
wait for the priest of T'ang at three
different places. Because they did not know
the man when they saw him, they had to
be defeated in battle before they joined
the pilgrimage. A young dragon
devoured Triptitaka's horse, but, learning
his mistake, he allowed himself to be
changed into a horse to serve the priest.
Pigsy, a banished marshal of the heavenly
hosts, now reincarnated in the shape of a
pig, had to be driven away from his
human wife and father-in-law. The last to
join was Sandy, a man-eating monster
with red hair and a blue face, also a
banished heavenly marshal.
Monkey and Pigsy sometimes created
trouble. Pigsy was cowardly, lazy, self-
indulgent, clumsily shrewd, and jealous
of the much more powerful Monkey. But
he seemed to be Triptitaka's favorite. The
2447

brilliant Monkey could not be a paragon
of obedience and on several occasions he
quarreled with his master. But the priest
needed only to say a certain spell, and
the fillet on the monkey's head began to
hurt him by becoming tighter. He had
been tricked into wearing the cap with
the fillet and now he could not take it
off. This was the only control Triptitaka,
with Kwan-yin's help, held over unruly
Monkey.
The travelers passed the kingdom of
Cock-crow, where a Lion Demon had
murdered the king and, disguised as the
monarch, usurped the throne. The ghost
of the dead king asked help from
Triptitaka. After the king had been fished up
from a well and miraculously revived, the
usurper was forced to flee. He turned out
to be the gelded lion in the service of the
Bodhisattva Manjusri.
The travelers came also to Cart-slow
Kingdom, where Taoists were the
privileged class and Buddhists were
persecuted. Monkey challenged three Taoist
magicians, who had won full confidence
of the king, to a contest of miracles. The
first magician could not recover his head,
chopped off in the contest, and he fell
dead, leaving the corpse of a headless
tiger. The second magician was found to
be only a white deer, now dead, since he
was not able to close his ripped-open
belly. The third was fried to death in
boiling oil, leaving in the caldron the
bones of a ram. Monkey survived every
one of the ordeals.
Monkey and Pigsy changed into a boy
and a girl as bait for the Great King of
Miracles, who demanded annual human
sacrifice. Although the monster proved
no match for Triptitaka's disciples, he
captured the priest and brought him
down to the River That Leads to Heaven.
There the monster, caught at last, in
Kwan-yin's basket, turned out to be a
golden fish. A big turtle carried
Triptitaka across the river. The turtle had been
perfecting himself for more than one
thousand years, but he was worried
because he could not yet achieve human
form. Triptitaka promised to ask Buddha
about the turtle's wish.
The travelers, finally arrived in the
Blessed Region of Buddha, began to
carry the scriptures to China. But
Triptitaka had forgotten to ask about the
turtle's prospects. The turtle, annoyed, took
a dive, leaving the pilgrims, who had
been riding on his back to recross the
river, and the scriptures in the water.
The pilgrims were all saved, but a part
of the scriptures was lost. This was the
"eighty-first calamity."
Carried back to paradise after
completing their mission, Triptitaka and
Monkey were both made Buddhas and
Pigsy was promoted to be Cleanser of the
Altar. Sandy, Golden Bodied Arhat, and
the white horse, who had also aided
Triptitaka, were set among the eight senior
Heavenly Dragons. And Buddhism
prospered in China.
2448

MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Booth Tarkington CI869-1946)
Type of plot: Period romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: Bath, England
First published: 1900
Principal characters:
Louis-Phillepe de Valois, Duke of Orleans, alias Victor, M. Beaucaire,
and M. de Chateaurien; nephew of King Louis XV of France
Duke de Winterset, an English scoundrel
Lady Mary Carlisle, a shallow aristocrat
Molyneaux, a sympathetic Englishman
Beau Nash, social arbiter of Bath
Critique:
Booth Tarkington achieved
international fame with the appearance of this
slight and romantic story of disguise and
intrigue. The truism embodied in
Monsieur Beaucaire—that a man's name is
unimportant, that it is the man himself
who is important—is proved delightfully
enough, not by a nobody but by a real
Erince, and at the expense of a snob-
ish English aristocracy. Beaucaire duels
twice in Tarkington's Bath; in the
historical Bath duehng was outlawed by social
arbiter Beau Nash. The story was
dramatized in 1901.
before Winterset as an entirely different
person. He declared that he would be
Monsieur le Due de Chateaurien.
It was dawn when the ball ended.
The gallant M. de Chateaurien,
assisting Lady Mary to her sedan chair,
begged her for a rose. She refused but
managed to drop a flower to the ground
for him to retrieve. Within a short time
M. de Chateaurien became, along with
Winterset, the cynosure of Bath society.
But Winterset planned revenge for the
way in which this upstart barber had
blackmailed him. Unable to expose
Beaucaire without ruining his own reputation,
Winterset had a captain in his debt
provoke M. de Chateaurien by insulting
French womanhood. In the ensuing
duel, Chateaurien was victorious; he sent
Winterset a basket of roses. Another of
Winterset's minions then daringly
suggested that M. de Chateaurien was an
impostor. The Frenchman, avowedly
fighting to defend the honor of his
sponsor, Winterset, was victorious a second
time.
All the while M. de Chateaurien
gained favor with Lady Mary. After a
grand fete he was granted the privilege
of riding beside her coach. As they
talked, Lady Mary more than tacidy
confessed her love for the supposed duke.
Armed and masked horsemen suddenly
attacked M. de Chateaurien and shouted
that they intended to kill the barber. He
MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE by Booth Tarkington. By permission of Brandt & Brandt and the publishers. Harper
& Brothers. Copyright, 1899, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Renewed, 1926, by Booth Tarkington.
The Story:
Victor, alias Monsieur Beaucaire, the
barber of the French ambassador to
England, gambled with the socially elite of
Bath for any amount. It was the early
eighteenth century, when Bath society
was under the leadership of Beau Nash.
One night M. Beaucaire caught the
English Duke de Winterset cheating at
his table. But instead of hush money,
Beaucaire exacted Winterset's promise
to take him, a barber in disguise, to Lady
Malbourne's ball, and there to introduce
him to the young and beautiful Lady
Mary Carlisle.
Winterset was disgusted beyond words,
for he was sure the barber would be
recognized and he himself shamed
before his acquaintances. Beaucaire then
shed the disguise he wore and appeared
2449

defended himself skillfully, but was
finally overcome by superior numbers. As
he was being prepared for a lashing, his
servants rode up in force and dispersed
the attackers. Winterset, who was the
leader of the attackers, returned to the
coach and disclosed to Lady Mary that
M. de Chateaurien was an impostor who
had blackmailed Winterset into
sponsoring his introduction to Bath society.
To the horror of Lady Mary, M. de
Chateaurien confessed that he was really
a barber. Also he promised to see Winter-
set at the assembly in a week's time.
The assembly progressed under the
watchful eye of Beau Nash. The
Chateaurien affair was on every tongue, and
Winterset, now the hero of Bath, was
again Lady Mary's favorite. Beau Nash
assured Winterset that the house and
grounds were being guarded, that it
would be impossible for the ridiculous
barber to enter.
As the Marquis de Mirepoix, the
French ambassador, and the Comte de
Beaujolais entered the house, Lady Mary
retired to a side room where she
discovered Molyneaux, a Bath dandy, and
M. de Chateaurien playing cards. She
vilified Molyneaux for associating with a
common barber, and she refused to heed
M. de Chateaurien's plea to her to
consider him not as a name, but as a man.
Winterset, upon being told of the
barber's presence at the assembly,
prepared to eject the impostor forcibly. The
decorations and orders on the
Frenchman's chest aroused indignation among
the English gentry. Molyneaux returned
from the ballroom with the Comte de
Beaujolais, who addressed M.de
Chateaurien as Phillipe. It soon became evident
that M. de Chateaurien and de Beaujolais
were brothers, and that de Beaujolais had
come to England to escort Phillipe back
to France now that certain family
problems had been resolved.
M. de Chateaurien, or Prince Louis-
Phillipe de Valois, Duke of Orleans,
shamed the Englishmen present for their
blindness. He said that the humblest
French peasant would have recognized
his high nobility if he had seen the
sword fight of a week previous. He
exposed Winterset as a base coward and
a cheat. When Lady Mary asked the
prince's forgiveness, he said that he
would return to France and marry the
lady that his uncle, King Louis XV, had
chosen for him; he was sure that she
would accept him whether he were
Victor, the barber; M. Beaucaire, the
gambler; M. Chateaurien, the gentleman, or
Prince Louis-Phillipe, nephew of the
king.
2450

MONSIEUR D'OLIVE
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Chapman (c. 1559-1634)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: An imaginary dukedom near France
First presented: 1604
Principal characters:
Vandome, a gentleman
Monsieur d'Olive, a fop
St. Anne, a count
Marcellina, a countess
Eurione, her sister
Critique:
The most entertaining part of this
drama is the subplot, which is concerned
with the action, or inaction, of d'Olive,
a fluent, self-assured fop. D'Olive's ill-
fated mission to France is a satire on
certain English embassies of the seventeenth
century that were distinguished by
magnificent preparations and long delays.
Also ridiculed is King James's wholesale
creation of knights. Although these events
are of little interest today, Chapman's
treatment of them retains its power to
amuse, mainly because of the delightful
character of d'Olive.
The Story:
On returning home after three years
of travel, Vandome was greeted with two
pieces of bad news. First, he heard that
his friend Marcellina, the wife of Count
Vaumont, had gone into voluntary exile:
shutting herself in her curtained
chamber, she had resolved never again to be
seen in the light. This unusual behavior
had been her response to the unjust
accusations of her husband. Before Vandome
left on his travels, Marcellina had carried
on with him a circumspect and perfectly
acceptable platonic affair. When he left,
she had spoken of him with such passion
that Vaumont had been filled with
jealousy and had asserted that the
relationship went beyond the purely spiritual.
Vaumont later realized that he had made
an error, but it was too late to dissuade
Marcellina from her action.
Vandome's second piece of bad news
concerned the equally eccentric behavior
of the Count St. Anne. St. Anne's wife,
who was Vandome's sister, had died. His
devotion to her was so great that he
refused to have the corpse buried.
Instead, he had her body embalmed and
placed in a chair in his chamber. With
sad music playing in the background, he
was weeping out his life at her feet.
When Vandome learned of these
problems, he determined to find solutions.
Forcing his way past the servants, he
entered Marcellina's chamber. He called
her course of action stupid and implored
her to abandon it, but she was unmoved
and refused to answer him. Sharing her
isolation was her sister Eurione, who had
been a close friend of St. Anne's wife.
Eurione claimed that she had gone into
seclusion in honor of the dead woman.
In reality, however, she had become a
recluse because of her love for St. Anne,
a love that developed from her
observation of the amazing fidelity of the
bereaved husband for his dead wife.
Eurione now revealed to Vandome her feeling
toward St. Anne, and asked his help.
Meanwhile, measures to help St. Anne
were being contemplated in another
quarter. Duke Philip had decided to ask the
King of France to intervene. He planned
to petition the king, who was the uncle
of St. Anne's wife, to demand the burial
of the corpse. Since it was necessary to
send an emissary to the king, Monsieur
d'Olive was recommended for the post.
Two courtiers, Roderigue and Mugeron,
2451

had suggested d'Olive, partly for
selfish reasons and partly for amusement.
D'Olive—an idler, wit, and man about
town—had agreed to consult with the
duke, mostly for amusement. In his
interview with Duke Philip, d'Olive
declined to accept advice about the mission.
Instead, he gave a learned talk on the
advantages and disadvantages of using
tobacco. Duke Philip, pleased with his
wit, appointed him the ducal envoy.
Vandome, who had a marked physical
resemblance to his dead sister, used this
fact to establish a bond with St. Anne on
his first visit to the widower. While St.
Anne readily accepted the friendship of
Vandome, he was deaf to suggestions that
he seek a new love or that he bury his
wife's body. On his second visit, Van-
dome declared love for Eurione and
appealed to St. Anne for his help. The
count, out of affection for his brother-in-
law, agreed to visit Eurione and try to
advance the suitor's cause.
D'Olive proceeded slowly with his
preparations for his journey. Having
dismissed St. Anne's affliction as stupidity,
he turned his attention to the more
important business of forming a retinue.
He had no difficulty in collecting
followers; in fact, they soon became a nuisance
to him. Many people felt that a trip to
France as members of an embassy would
revolutionize their lives, that they would
return with exquisite manners and
newfound wisdom. After Mugeron had
collected bribes from the applicants, d'Olive
assigned them, according to his whim,
to the rank of gentleman or yeoman.
When St. Anne visited Eurione, she
adroitly succeeded in acting and speaking
as the dead woman had done in life.
Suddenly St. Anne discovered that all his
deep emotions had been transferred to
Eurione. After leaving her, he spoke
aloud to himself of his passion, and was
overheard by Vandome. Vandome, after
first calling St. Anne a traitor, revealed
that he had only feigned love for Eurione,
that she was, in reality, in love with St.
Anne.
All the attention that d'Olive had
received as a result of his ambassadorship
began to go to his head. While he was
congratulating himself on his great fame
Roderigue came and told him that the
trip had been canceled because St. Anne
had buried his dead wife. Mugeron
rebuked d'Olive for having taken such a
long time with his preparations. D'Olive,
after first refusing to believe the news,
decided to sever completely his
connection with the court. His followers, he
said, could take care of themselves.
Roderigue and Mugeron, who profited
from having d'Olive in the court, were
now faced with the problem of getting
him back. They decided that his most
vulnerable side was his interest in women.
Accordingly, they forged a love letter to
him from Hieronime, a lady of the court
whom he liked. The letter told him to
come in disguise to her chamber between
two and three o'clock.
Vandome, having successfully solved
St. Anne's problem, now turned his
attention to Marcellina. Standing outside
her window, he shouted that he brought
bad news and that she must come out.
When she had reluctantly come from her
room, he told her that her husband had
become a libertine. With help from
Eurione, he fabricated a lurid story of Vau-
mont's activities. He claimed that
Hieronime was the current object of his las-
civiousness, and that she, disliking his
attentions, was planning to expose him to
public shame. When it was suggested that
Vaumont might suffer castration or death
for his behavior, Marcellina decided that
she would break her vows in order to
save him.
When Vandome's group arrived
outside Hieronime's chamber, d'Olive was
there, preparing to enter. Hidden nearby
were Mugeron, Roderigue, and Duke
Philip. Now that Marcellina's vows were
fully broken, Vandome revealed his
trickery, but to insure that she did not hurry
back to her room he told Duke Philip
that she had come out of seclusion to see
2452

the duke's wife, who was ill. When Mu-
geron and Roderigue revealed themselves
to d'Olive, he was furious with them.
The duke brought peace by stepping
forth and assuring d'Olive that his
services would be desired in the future.
245B

MONSIEUR LECOQ
Type of work: Novel
Author: fimile Gaboriau (1835-1873)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1869
Principal characters:
M. Lecoq, a young detective
Father Absinthe, an old detective
M. d'Escorval, an examining judge
M. Segmuller, another judge
May, a suspect
Tabaret, a consulting detective
Critique:
Monsieur Lecoq is of special interest
to detective story fans. In this novel we
find an exciting incident in the early
career of the greatest of French
detectives in fiction. The exposition of the
methods and persistence of Lecoq is
painstakingly detailed, and we see in
embryo the future pride of the French
Surete\ The novel is better in some
respects than much of Gaboriau's work
because there is not such an abundance of
the melodramatic and the theatrical. But
the inconclusive ending and the problem
left in the air may prove a disappointment
to readers familiar with the well-plotted
detective story of modern times.
The Story:
A party of police agents left the Bar
riere d'ltalie to make their nightly round*
in a tough, sparsely settled district
inhabited by thugs and cheap crooks. In
that precinct the police were careful
always to go in groups. Their leader was
old Gevrol, an unimaginative, fearless
inspector.
About a hundred yards from Mother
Chupin's wineshop they heard some loud
cries, and the whole party rushed
forward over the rough ground. The house
was closed up tight; only bands of light
through the shutters gave evidence of
life within. One eager young officer
climbed up on a box to peer through the
shutters, and his evident horror at what
he saw caused the officers to hasten their
attempt to break into the house.
At Gevrol's order two men battered
down the door. Inside on the mud floor
were three bodies, two men dead and
one wounded. Swaying on his feet was
a stocky man with a revolver in his hand.
On the stair hysterical Mother Chupin
hid her face in her apron. One agent
seized the murderer and disarmed him,
while another man knelt beside the
wounded victim, who was clothed in a
soldier's uniform. Murmuring that he
had received his just deserts, the man
died.
Gevrol, diagnosing the affair as a
drunken brawl, was pleased that the
murderer had been so quickly caught. But
the young officer who had peered through
the shutters expressed doubts about the
case. Gevrol patronizingly asked him if
he suspected some mystery. When the
young man said he did, Gevrol told him
he could stay with the bodies until
morning and investigate to his heart's content.
After the doctors had gone and a
wagon had taken away the accused murderer
and Mother Chupin, the young man
stayed behind with a stolid, seasoned
companion, grizzled Father Absinthe.
The young detective was Lecoq, who,
after drifting from one job to another for
several years, had decided to join the
police force. With Father Absinthe to
help him, he eagerly looked around the
house.
His first find was an earring, half buried
2454

in the mud on the floor. It was a diamond
earring, jewelry too expensive to be found
in Mother Chupin's establishment.
Encouraged, Lecoq went outside. There was
enough snow on the ground for him to
reconstruct some of the happenings prior
to the murders. Two women, one young
and one older, had come to the house.
They had been running when they left.
A man had met them outside the
garden and had led them to a cab. There
the traces were lost. Lecoq remembered
also what the suspect had said when he
was captured, "Lost! It is the Prussians
who are coming!" Only a man who knew
Napoleonic history would have used that
allusion. He evidently had been
expecting someone to return and help him.
Lecoq presented his lucid report to the
examining judge in the morning. M.
d'Escorval was greatly impressed with
Lecoq's report. In spite of Gevrol's
insistence that the case was merely a
wineshop brawl, M. d'Escorval agreed with
Lecoq and prepared to look fully into the
affair. Disgruntled and jealous, Gevrol
ever afterward was Lecoq's enemy.
As soon as the preliminaries were over,
Lecoq hurried to the police station to
attend the examination of the prisoner.
To his disappointment, M. d'Escorval
brusquely ordered him to wait in the
corridor. Lecoq overheard enough of the
examination to realize that the judge
seemed unwell or upset. He asked only
a very few routine questions, and the
prisoner's answers were almost
nonsensical. In a very short time the judge
hurried out and drove rapidly away.
Lecoq was curious. Looking into the
prisoner's cell, he surprised the man in
the act of strangling himself. Lecoq
removed the band from the prisoner's throat
just in time. Continuing his
investigation, he learned that the night before,
after the murders, a drunken man had
created a disturbance outside the jail. He
was locked up for the night, in the same
cell with the murderer. In the morning
the police let him go. From the
description, Lecoq believed him the accomplice,
the man who had waited outside the
wineshop and helped the two women to their
cab.
The next morning Lecoq had a fresh
disappointment. M. d'Escorval fell and
broke his leg while descending from his
carriage. There was more delay while a
new judge was assigned to the
examination. The new examiner, M. Segmuller,
listened attentively to Lecoq's analysis
and agreed that there was a mystery
behind the case. At last the prisoner was
brought in for formal examination.
The murderer, giving his name as
May, irritatingly insisted he had no given
name. He said he was a circus performer,
and he gave convincing imitations of a
barker in French, English, and German.
His story was that he had been attacked
by the three men, and had shot them in
self-defense. May was returned to his
cell and Lecoq continued his patient
investigation.
The quest for the murderer's identity
was a long hunt. Lecoq and Father
Absinthe, working for weeks on fruitless
clues, were never successful in tracing
the diamond earring. They found the cab
that had picked up two women at the
scene of the crime, but the women had
left the cab at an apartment house, gone
into the courtyard, and disappeared
through a back door.
So it went with all clues. A visitor
came to see the prisoner and showed a
pass issued to a relative of Mother Chu-
pin. Father Absinthe tried to trail the
visitor but lost him. Lecoq learned of the
visit later. He was sure the man was the
drunk who had been locked up with the
murderer that first night, the man whose
general build Lecoq had reconstructed
from the footprints in the snow. Then,
by spending six days hidden in the
garret above May's cell, Lecoq learned that
the prisoner received cipher notes from
the outside rolled in bits of bread. Lecoq
even suspected Gevrol of helping May,
but he could prove nothing.
In despair Lecoq pulled the old trick
of letting the prisoner escape; then he
2455

followed him closely. May joined his
accomplice outside a high wall. Lecoq
watched while the accomplice boosted
May over the wall into the garden of the
Duke of Sairmeuse. The accomplice was
captured, but no trace of May could be
found, although Lecoq searched the
duke's house thoroughly. He learned
nothing from May's accomplice, an ex-convict.
As a last resort Lecoq consulted old
Tabaret, the oracle of the force. The
sage listened eagerly. Then he explained
logically Lecoq's errors. M. d'Escorval
had conveniently broken his leg because
he knew who the prisoner was and did
not dare prosecute him. Lecoq could not
find May in the Duke of Sairmeuse's
house because May was the duke.
Lecoq had to agree; an obscure
detective could do nothing against a duke
who undoubtedly was engaged in some
mysterious intrigue. If he persisted in
trying to arrest so great a noble, Lecoq
himself would be convicted as a
madman. Lecoq gave up the case, but he was
determined that sooner or later he would
get to the bottom of the whole affair.
2456

MONT-ORIOL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Auvergne, France
First published: 1887
Principal characters:
Christiane Andermatt, a young married woman
Paul Bretigny, Christiane's lover
William Andermatt, Christiane's husband
Gontran de Ravenel, Christiane's brother
Father Oriol, a wealthy peasant landowner
Charlotte, and
Louise, Orioles daughters
Critique:
There are two stories told in Mont-
Oriol. One deals with the love intrigues
of Christiane Andermatt, her brother, and
her lover. The other describes the
financial scheming of William Andermatt,
Father Oriol, and the physicians at the
health resort. The fact that the love
affair carried on by Christiane and Paul
Bretigny is often melodramatic and
unconvincing is more than compensated
for, however, by the skill and humor with
which some of the minor characters, such
as the crafty Oriol and Christiane's witty
brother Gontran, are drawn.
The Story:
The Marquis of Ravenel, who was an
enthusiastic patron of the baths at Enval,
persuaded his young daughter
Christiane and her husband, William
Andermatt, to join him. On the advice of one
of the doctors at the spring, Christiane
agreed to take a series of baths, internal
and external, in the hope that they would
cure her childlessness.
When the young couple arrived, they
were joined by Christiane's spendthrift
brother Gontran and his friend, Paul
Bretigny, who had come to the country
to recover from a disappointing love
affair. During their stay, learning that
Father Oriol, a wealthy peasant
landowner of the district, was going to blast
out a huge rock which hindered
cultivation of his fields, the party went to watch
the event.
To everyone's surprise, a spring came
gushing from the ground after the
explosion. Andermatt decided that if the
water were of medicinal value he would
make Oriol an offer for it, for he hoped
to build an establishment that would give
the existing baths heavy competition.
That same evening Andermatt,
accompanied by Gontran, went to the Oriol
house and placed his proposal before
the peasant.
Oriol, whose bargaining ability was
also one to be reckoned with, decided
that he would have to be careful not
to ask too much for the spring and the
fields around it; on the other hand, he
would not let the possibility of obtaining
great wealth slip from his grasp. To
inflame Andermatt's desire, he engaged a
beggar named Clovis to help him. Clo-
vis, who engaged in poaching by night
and feigned rheumatism by day to escape
the attentions of the police, was to bathe
in the spring for an hour each day—
for a fee. At the end of a month he was
to be examined. If he were cured of
his rheumatism, his condition would
prove the medicinal value of the spring.
The unsuspecting Andermatt was
enthusiastic about the projected plan, and
he himself agreed to pay Clovis for
undergoing treatment. Meanwhile he
2457

and Oriol agreed to sign a promise of
sale.
In order that the Oriol family might
be won over to his project, Andermatt
decided to hold a charity f&te and a
lottery, in which the Oriol girls and
Christiane would participate.
Andermatt returned to Paris, leaving
Christiane at the baths. She and her
family, accompanied by Paul Bretigny
and the Oriol girls, made numerous
excursions about the countryside. Paul
began to confide in her, to tell her of
his adventures, his love affairs. As their
conversations became more intimate, she
realized that he was paying court to
her. To inflame his desire, she held him
at arm's length until finally, as they
were starting back from a jaunt at
nightfall, he caught at her shawl while she
walked in front of him and kissed it
madly. She had all she could do to
master her agitation before she joined
the others in the carriage.
A few days later, when the party went
to view the ruins of a nearby castle by
moonlight, Paul threw himself at
Christiane's feet and she submitted to
him.
The following morning Andermatt
returned. Losing no time, the financier
set about reaching an agreement with
Oriol. According to the terms decided
upon after much discussion, the company
which Andermatt had formed was
assigned the lands along the newly-created
stream and the crest and slope of* the
hill down which it ran. In return, Oriol
was to receive one fourth of the profits
to be made.
Andermatt rushed back to Paris after
completing his arrangements. That night
Paul went to Christiane's room. During
Andermatt's absence they had nearly
a month for uninterrupted lovemaking.
It was a blow to both of them when they
learned that Andermatt was arriving
within a few days and that he was
planning to take Christiane back to Paris
with him when he left.
The financier brought several
members of the newly-formed company with
him. The terms of the purchase were
read and signed before the village notary,
and Andermatt was elected president of
the company, over the dissenting votes
of Oriol and his son. It was agreed that
the baths should be known as Mont-
Oriol.
That night Paul sorrowfully said
goodbye to his love. He felt that,
although they might meet later in Paris,
part of the enchantment of their affair
would be gone forever. Christiane, on
the other hand, was full of plans for
future meetings and ways of evading the
notice of her servants.
The first of July in the following year
was set as the dedication date for the
new baths at Mont-Oriol. Christiane,
big with child, walked with her father
and brother and Paul to watch the
dedication of the three new springs. They
were to be known as the Christiane,
Charlotte, and Louise springs, the latter
two named after the Oriol girls. But
Clovis, who had seemed so successfully
cured the previous summer, was again
doubled up by his assumed rheumatism.
He threatened to become a serious
menace to business, for he declared to the
guests who would listen that the waters
had ultimately done him more harm
than good. At last Andermatt was forced
to reckon with him, and Clovis finally
agreed to undergo treatment every year.
It was decided that his return annually
for the same treatment would only prove
to the public the medicinal value of the
baths.
Andermatt had planned an operetta
and a display of fireworks for that
evening. Gontran, observing that his sister
was suffering from the heat of the room
in which the entertainment was
beginning, sneaked out and set off the rocket
which was the signal for the fireworks
display to start. Everyone dashed out, to
Andermatt's disgust, but he took
advantage of the unexpected interlude to
have a serious conversation with
Gontran. Having been informed that Oriol
intended to give the lands around Mont-
Oriol as his daughters' dowries, Ander-
2458

matt proposed that Gontran, who was
deeply in debt, should recoup his finances
by marrying either Charlotte or Louise.
Gontran, after meditating for a few
moments, announced that he would open
the ball to be held later that evening by
dancing with Charlotte Oriol, the
younger and prettier of the two sisters.
Christiane, too, made use of the
interruption. She proposed to Paul that
they walk along the road on which they
had said goodbye the previous year.
At that time he had fallen to his knees
and kissed her shadow. Her hopes that
he would repeat the act were dashed,
for although the child she was carrying
was his, her shadow betrayed too clearly
her changed form.
Gontran paid court to Charlotte Oriol
at the ball and the news of his interest
in her soon became common gossip at the
springs. The innocent girl responded so
freely that Christiane and Paul, who
were fond of her, began to fear that
she would eventually find herself
compromised. They were satisfied, however,
when Gontran confided to them his
intention to ask for her hand. When he
asked Andermatt to sound out Oriol,
the crafty peasant, realizing that his
younger daughter would be easier to
dispose of than the older, said that he
planned to endow her with the lands on
the other side of the mountain. Because
those lands were of no use to Andermatt
at the moment, Gontran realized that he
would have to change his tactics.
He persuaded Louise that he had
courted Charlotte only to arouse the
older sister's interest. He managed to
meet her frequently at the home of one
of the doctors and on walks, and when
the time seemed ripe he sent Andermatt
once more to talk to Oriol. As the reward
for his efforts he received a signed
statement which assured him a dowry and
the promise of the girl's hand.
Paul, unaware of Gontran's and
Andermatt's designs, had been incensed
by the sudden desertion of Charlotte.
Gradually his feeling grew to love. One
day her father found them together.
Partly because he was in love, and partly
because he did not want to compromise
Charlotte, his immediate reaction was
to propose. When he agreed to sign a
statement as to his satisfactory income,
the peasant gave his consent to the
marriage.
The next morning Christiane learned
that Paul was to marry Charlotte. Her
informant was the doctor who came to
examine her, for she felt ill. As soon
as she heard that her lover was to marry,
she went into labor from the shock.
Fifteen hours later a little girl was born.
She would have nothing to do with
the baby at first, but when Andermatt
brought the child to her she found the
infant irresistible, and wanted it kept
near her.
Because there was no one else to nurse
her, the doctor's wife was chosen to
keep Christiane company during her
recovery. The talkative woman knew
the Oriols well, and Christiane was able
to learn from her most of the details of
Paul's courtship. Upset by the
realization that he had given Charlotte the same
attentions she had once received, she fell
into a delirium for a day. The next day
her condition began to improve.
When the baby was a few days old,
Christiane asked that Paul be sent to
see her. He went, planning to beg her
pardon, but he found there was no need
to do so. Christiane, engrossed in the
child, had only a few conventional words
for him. Although he had hoped to see
the infant that was partly his, he noted
that the curtains of the cradle were
significantly fastened in the front with
some of Christiane's pins*
2459

A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)
Type of plot: Realistic comedy
Time of plot: The 1840's
Locale: Russia
First presented: 1850
Principal characters:
Arkady Islayev, a wealthy landowner
Natalya (Natasha), his wife
Kolya, their son
Vera, Natalya's ward
Lizaveta, a companion
Rakitin, a family friend
Belyayev, a young tutor
Shpigelsky, a doctor
Critique:
This play is comedy barbed with
psychological realism and social satire.
Turgenev has presented a timeless interlude
with a little Russian coloring, for the
kind of atmosphere found in Chekhov's
work is only lightly sketched in. The
characters run a range from a
near-cuckolded husband to a buffoon doctor. The
main action concerns the struggle
between Natalya, an older woman, and her
young ward, Vera. The courtship of a
neighbor and the affairs of Lizaveta and
the doctor are side actions. The play
reads well, but it is a little long for
modern staging.
The Story:
In her drawing-room, Natalya, a
twenty-nine-year-old wife and mother,
was talking confidentially to her good
friend Rakitin. She admitted that her
husband Islayev had one fault: he went
into things too enthusiastically. He was
with his workmen constantly, and he
himself demonstrated how they should
do their work. Her complaint ended, she
bade Rakitin go on reading The Count
of Monte Cristo to her. She really had
no interest in the book, but it was being
discussed by her friends.
It was read aloud in the big room,
where a card game was in progress.
Schaaf, the German tutor, had been
winning until Lizaveta, companion to Is-
layev's mother, made a mistake; the
German grumbled at her ineptness. The
doctor, Shpigelsky, breezed in and, as was
his wont, told a long, pointless story. He
had really come to discuss privately with
Natalya a friend of his who wished to
marry Vera. Natalya, claiming that at
seventeen Vera was too young, put off
a definite answer.
Kolya, Natalya's little son, came
running up, full of news about Belyayev's
doings. Now the energetic young tutor,
who had been there nearly a month, was
making a kite. Vera, also coming from
play, told how Belyayev could climb trees
as nimbly as a squirrel. Islayev tried to
induce Natalya and Rakitin to look over
his new blowing machine, but only
Rakitin was interested.
As the room gradually cleared, Natalya
had a chance to talk with Belyayev at
some length. She complimented him on
his good singing voice and asked about
his family. She was touched to learn that
his mother was dead and that he had
a sister also named Natalya. In spite of
her friendly attitude, Belyayev was
nervous and persisted in being formal and
A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY by Ivan Turgenev, from THE PLAYS OF IVAN S. TURGENEV.
Translated by M. S. Mandell. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1924,
by The Macmillan Co. Renewed, 1952, by Dora Mandell.
2460

polite with her.
In the garden Katya, the maid, was
listening to the butler's proposal. She had
some trouble in fending him off, and the
arrival of Schaaf made matters a little
more complicated. Schaaf archly sang a
love song and tried to kiss her. She
escaped by running into a raspberry patch.
Vera and Belyayev called her out after
Schaaf left. They were working on the
kite and, as they worked, they com-
panionably shared Katya's raspberries.
Belyayev told Vera much of his past life,
of his studies in Moscow, of his poverty.
Vera described her loneliness without
friends her own age. Interrupted by the
arrival of Natalya and Rakitin, they
slipped out of the garden.
Natalya professed to Rakitin her
uneasiness about Vera; the girl was very
young and probably should not be so
much alone with Belyayev. Rakitin
began to suspect what was happening.
Natalya had always been so frank and
tender with him. Now she seemed
preoccupied and talked distractedly. She even
accused him of having a languid mind,
and she no longer cared for his
descriptions of nature.
Rakitin sought out Belyayev to get
better acquainted with him. He was
troubled when he discovered that the
young tutor hid such an engaging
manner underneath his gawky exterior.
Although Belyayev thought of Natalya only
as an older woman and his employer,
Rakitin sensed a possible rival.
Shpigelsky brought Bolshintsov, a
neighbor of forty, to the house and
coached him carefully on what he was
to say. Bolshintsov was shy with women,
but, having decided to make an offer to
Vera, he had enlisted the busybody
doctor as an intermediary. If the match came
off, Shpigelsky was to get three horses as
his reward.
When Natalya could not disguise her
increasing coldness toward Rakitin, he
accused her of being attracted to
Belyayev. Although she proclaimed that she
still loved Rakitin, she could not deny
the young tutor's charms. Rakitin
delicately hinted that she owed her love to
her husband and suggested that both he
and Belyayev should leave the house.
With Vera, Natalya assumed a sisterly
air and told her of Bolshintsov's proposal.
She did not press the point too much
after Vera laughed at the idea of
marrying such a funny old man. Instead, with
mature skill, she probed into her ward's
feelings and got her to confess her love
for Belyayev. Her suspicions confirmed,
she was torn between her inclinations as
a woman and her duty as wife and
guardian.
Natalya, sending for Belyayev, warned
him that Vera was quite immature and
that it was easy for her to misinterpret
friendship. When the young man finally
understood that Vera was in love with
him, he was amazed; he had no notions
of love at all. He resigned his job and
offered to leave the house immediately.
Natalya, unable to bear his willingness
to leave the house, asked him to defer
his decision for a while.
Meanwhile, Shpigelsky was
impressing Lizaveta by diagnosing the ills and
attitudes of members of the family. He
reminded her that she would not want
to remain a companion all her life; hence
he would make her an offer of marriage.
Lizaveta, adopting a coquetish manner,
began a coy reply, but the doctor kept
on talking. He insisted on telling her all
his faults and the extent of his fortune,
and then proved to her he was a fine
fellow because he had confessed his faults.
Lizaveta promised to give him an answer
the next day. To her surprise, Shpigelsky
sang a peculiar song about a gray goat.
Vera made an effort to save the
situation by telling Belyayev that she knew
how Natalya had warned him of the girl's
love. Bitter over Natalya's efforts to get
her married off to Bolshintsov, she hoped
that Belyayev would confess his love for
her. The young man was unresponsive.
Then Vera assured him that Natalya
herself was in love with him.
When Natalya found them, Vera was
openly reproachful. She accused her
guardian of treating her as a child when

she was a grown woman. Henceforth
they would be equals and probably rivals.
She left in an emotional state. When
they were alone, Natalya confirmed that
she was in love with Belyayev.
Overwhelmed by her declaration, he could
think only of going away.
Islayev began to suspect that all was
not well in his household, for he knew
that Rakitin had been much in his wife's
company. Being a forthright man, he
asked Rakitin outright if he were in love
with Natalya. Rakitin admitted that he
was, and he added that he was going
away immediately. Islayev scarcely
wanted him to leave, but his departure did
seem a good solution. Rakitin made no
mention of Natalya's infatuation for
Belyayev.
Vera told Shpigelsky that she would
accept Bolshintsov's offer because she
could no longer remain under the same
roof with Natalya. Belyayev, not
trusting himself to meet Natalya, sent a
farewell note by Vera. To Islayev, it seemed
peculiar that so many people were
leaving at once. Lizaveta also commented to
Islayev's mother that she too would be
going away one of these days.
2462

THE MOON AND SIXPENCE
Type of work: Novel
Author: W. Somerset Maugham (1874- )
Type of plot: Fictional biography
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England, France, Tahiti
First published: 1919
Principal characters:
Charles Strickland, an artist
Dirk Stroeve, his friend
Blanche Stroeve, Dirk's wife
Ata, Strickland's Tahitian wife
Amy Strickland, Strickland's English wife
Critique:
A fictionalized biography of the French
artist, Paul Gauguin, this novel attempts
to portray the character of a pure artist,
a man of renunciation. The material
world meant nothing to Strickland; man
meant nothing to him, either. He lived
ruthlessly for his art. There is shrewd
comment on the world's attitude toward
a man who passes by the material and
the sensual to fulfill some spiritual need.
If by chance his intent is to help
mankind, then he is proclaimed a saint; but
if he is like Charles Strickland, and
ignores mankind, he is vested with the
spirit of the devil. Maugham passes no
judgment on this painter. He merely
presents him as he was.
Strickland was living in a shabby
hotel; his room was filthy, but he
appeared to be living alone. Much to the
discomfort of the friend, he candidly
admitted his beastly treatment of his
wife, but there was no emotion in his
statements concerning her and her
future welfare. When asked about the
woman with whom he had allegedly run
away, he laughed, explaining to Mrs.
Strickland's emissary that he had really
run off to paint. He knew he could
if he seriously tried. The situation was
incredible to Mrs. Strickland's friend.
Strickland said he did not care what
people thought of him.
Stubbornly, Strickland began to take
art lessons. Although his teacher laughed
at his work, he merely shrugged his
shoulders and continued to paint in his
own way. Back in England, the friend
tried to explain to Mrs. Strickland the
utter hopelessness of trying to reconcile
her husband. She could not realize her
defeat at first. If Strickland had gone
off with a woman, she could have
understood him. She was not able to cope with
an idea.
Dirk Stroeve, a very poor painter with
a delicate feeling for art, had married
an Englishwoman and settled in Paris.
Impossible as it seemed, Dirk, who had
become acquainted with Strickland,
thought the red-haired Englishman a
great painter. But Strickland did not
THE MOON AND SIXPENCE by W. Somerset Maugham. By permission of the author and the publishers,
Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1919, by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1946, by W. Somerset Maugham.
The Story:
Charles Strickland, a dull stockbroker,
lived in England with his wife and two
children. Mrs. Strickland was a model
mother, but her husband seemed bored
with her and with his children. To
everyone else, it was Strickland himself
who seemed commonplace. The family
had spent the summer at the seashore,
and Strickland had returned ahead of
his wife. When she wrote him that she
was coming home, he had answered
from Paris, simply stating that he was
not going to live with her any more.
With singleness of intention, Mrs.
Strickland dispatched a friend to Paris to bring
back her husband.
2463

want any man's opinion. Indifferent to
physical discomfort, he had not tried to
sell his paintings in order to eat. When
he needed money, he found odd jobs in
and around Paris.
It was apparent that the Stroeves were
very much in love. A buffoon and a
fool, Dirk was constantly berating
himself, but Blanche seemed to hold him in
high esteem. When Strickland became
very ill, Dirk rushed home to Blanche
and pleaded with her to nurse the sick
artist back to health. She bitterly
professed her hatred of the man who had
laughed at her husband's paintings, and
she tearfully begged Stroeve not to bring
that monster near her. Nevertheless,
Dirk was able to persuade her to allow
Strickland to come to their home.
Although she and Strickland rarely
spoke to each other, Blanche proved a
capable nurse. There seemed to be
something electrifying in the air when
they were together in the same room.
Strickland recovered. Because he
admired Strickland's work, Dirk was
anxious that he stay and work in Dirk's
studio. Strickland took possession of the
studio. When Dirk finally gathered
enough courage to ask him to leave,
Blanche said that she would leave also.
Dirk fell before her, groveling at her
feet, and pleaded with her to stay, but
his adoring demonstrations only bored
her. When he saw that she would indeed
return with Strickland to the filthy hovel
which was the Englishman's studio,
Dirk's generous soul could not bear to
think that his beloved Blanche should
live in such poverty. He said that she
need not leave; he would go. Thanking
her for having given him so much
happiness, he left her with half of what
he owned.
Dirk hung around Paris waiting for
the time to come when Blanche would
need him again after Strickland had
tired of her. Once he followed her when
she went shopping. He walked along
with her, telling her of his devotion; she
would not speak to him. Suddenly she
slapped him in the face and walked
away. One day the police informed
Dirk that Blanche had swallowed oxalic
acid. After she died, Dirk felt
compelled to return to his studio. There
he found a nude portrait of his wife,
evidently the work of Strickland. In a
mad passion of jealousy he started to
hack at the picture with a knife, but
he was arrested by the obvious fact that
it was a wonderful piece of art. No
matter what he felt, Dirk could not
mutilate the painting. He packed his
belongings and went back to Holland to
live with his mother.
Strickland had taken Blanche Stroeve
because he thought she had a beautiful
body to paint. When he had finished
the picture, he was through with her.
Thinking that the picture was not
satisfactory, he had left it in the studio.
The death of Blanche and the misery
of Dirk did not move him. He was an
artist.
After Blanche's death Strickland went
to Marseilles, and finally, after many
wanderings, to Tahiti. There he painted
his vivid awkward-looking pictures and
left them with people all over the island
in payment for lodging and food. No
one thought the pictures worth
anything, but years later some who had
saved the pictures were pleasantly
surprised to sell them for enormous sums
of money to English and French
collectors who came to the island looking
for the painter's work.
At one of the hotels in Tahiti,
Strickland had been befriended by a fat old
woman, Tiare, who looked after his
health and his cleanliness. She even
found him a wife, a seven teen-year-old
native girl named Ata. For three years
Ata and her husband lived together in
a bungalow just off the main road.
These were perhaps the happiest years
in Strickland's life. He painted, read,
and loafed. Ata had a baby.
One day Ata sent to the village fox
a doctor. When the doctor came to the
artist's bungalow, he was struck with
2464

horror, for to his experienced eye
Strickland bore the thickened features of a
leper. More than two years passed. No
one went near Strickland's plantation,
for the natives knew well the meaning
of Strickland's disease. Only Ata stayed
faithfully with him, and everyone
shunned her just as they shunned
Strickland. Two more years passed. One of
Ata's children died. Strickland was now
so crippled by the disease that he would
not even permit the doctor to see him.
He was painting on the walls of his
bungalow when at last he went blind.
He sat in the house hour after hour,
trying to remember his paintings on the
walls—his masterpieces. Caring nothing
for the fame his art might bring,
Strickland made Ata promise to destroy this
work upon his death, a wish she
faithfully carried out.
Years later a friend of Strickland, just
returned from Tahiti, went to call on
Mrs. Strickland in London. She seemed
little interested in her husband's last
years or his death. On the wall were
several colored reproductions of
Strickland's pictures. They were decorative,
she thought, and went so well with her
Bakst cushions.
2465

THE MOONSTONE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: 1799-1849
Locale: India and England
First published: 1868
Principal characters:
John Herncastle, an adventurer
Lady Verinder, his sister
Rachel Verinder, his niece
Franklin Blake, Lady Verinder's nephew
Godfrey Able white, a charity worker
Dr. Candy, a physician
Sergeant Cuff, an inspector from Scodand Yard
Rosanna Spearman, a maid
Critique:
The Moonstone is often called the first
and best of detective stories. The true
story of the theft of the Moonstone is
told by several different hands who were
judged best able to describe the various
phases of the solution of the plot. These
papers have been brought together and
studied by one of the suspects, and in
due time the mystery is solved. There
is not as much true detection in this
novel as there is in the later detective
story, but the fine characterization and
the humor of the book compensate for
any loss.
The Story:
In the storming of Seringapatam in
India, in the year 1799, John Herncastle,
a violent and cruel man, stole the sacred
Hindu diamond called the Moonstone.
The jewel had been taken years before
from the forehead of the Moon-God in
its Brahmin shrine, and Hemcastle's theft
was only one of a series. Since the stone
had first been stolen three faithful
Hindus had followed its trail, sworn to
recover the gem and return it to the statue
of the Moon-God. Herncastle took the
gem to England and kept it in a bank
vault. He saved himself from murder
by letting the Hindus know that if he
were killed the stone would be cut up into
smaller gems, thus losing its sacred
identity. Herncastle left the jewel to his
niece, Rachel Verinder, at his death.
The stone was to be presented tc
Rachel on her birthday following her
uncle's death, and young Franklin Blake,
Lady Verinder's nephew, was asked by
Hemcastle's lawyer to take the gift to
his cousin. Franklin took the stone to
his cousin's estate and barely missed death
at the hands of the Hindus before
reaching his destination. On the advice of
Gabriel Betteredge, the Verinders' old
family servant, Franklin put the gem in
the vault of a bank nearby until the
birthday arrived, as the Hindus had been
seen in the neighborhood about three
weeks before. Franklin and Rachel fell
in love, and even the appearance of
Godfrey Ablewhite, a handsome and
accomplished charity worker, failed to weaken
Rachel's affection. Godfrey had been
asked to attend the birthday celebration,
together with a number of guests,
including Dr. Candy, the town physician, and
Mr. Bruff, the family lawyer.
While the guests at the birthday
dinner were admiring the beauty of the
jewel, they heard the beating of a drum
on the terrace. Three Hindus had
appeared, disguised as jugglers. One of the
guests was Mr. Murthwaite, a famous
traveler in the Orient, and at a sharply
spoken word from him the Indians
retreated. Watchdogs were released to
protect the house that night. There was
no disturbance to alarm the household,
however, and everyone thought all had
2466

gone well until Rachel announced the
jewel had disappeared from an unlocked
cabinet in her dressing-room.
Over Rachel's protests, Franklin Blake
insisted the police be called in. The
Hindus were arrested and put in jail,
but to the astonishment of everyone they
were able to prove an alibi for the entire
night.
Little about the crime was discovered
until Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard
arrived. He decided that some fresh
paint from the door in Rachel's dressing-
room must have come off on someone's
clothes. Rachel, for some unknown
reason, refused to allow a search for the
stained clothing. Sergeant Cuff
suspected that Rachel had staged the theft
herself, and her actions seemed to
substantiate his theory. He also thought
that Rosanna Spearman, a maid with a
criminal record, was a party to the plot,
for he learned that Rosanna had made
a new nightdress shortly after the theft.
Sergeant Cuff guessed it was to take the
place of another dress which was stained.
Because the Verinders opposed his efforts,
he dropped the case. The only other
clue he had was that Rosanna might have
hidden something in the rocks by the
seashore. He suspected it was the stained
dress. Rosanna committed suicide soon
afterward by throwing herself into a pool
of quicksand. Betteredge discovered she
had left a letter for Franklin, who had
departed from the country by the time it
was found.
Rachel went to London with her
mother, and in time became engaged to
Godfrey Ablewhite. When Mr. Bruff
told her Godfrey had secretly learned the
terms of her mother's will before asking
for her hand, Rachel broke the
engagement. Franklin returned to England later
in the year and went to visit Betteredge,
who told him about Rosanna's letter.
Franklin got the letter and learned from
it that she had thought him guilty of
the crime. The letter also gave him
directions for recovering a box which, as
Sergeant Cuff had thought, she had
buried by the sea. The box proved to
have the stained nightgown in it, but
it was not Rosanna's nightgown. On the
contrary, it was Franklin's!
Unable to account for this strange
fact, Franklin returned to London, where
he had a long talk with Mr. Bruff about
the case. Mr. Bruff informed Franklin
that the Moonstone must be in a certain
bank in London, deposited there by a
notorious pawnbroker named Luker. A
mysterious attack upon the money-lender
seemed to confirm this belief. Franklin
told Mr. Bruff of the strange discovery
of the nightgown. Mr. Bruff planned a
surprise meeting between Franklin and
Rachel, at which Franklin learned that
Rachel had actually seen him come into
the room and steal the stone. Because
she loved him she had refused to let
the investigation go on. Franklin tried
to convince her he had no memory of the
deed.
On Mr. BrufFs advice, Franklin
returned to the country place and tried to
discover what had happened to him that
night. From Dr. Candy's assistant, Ezra
Jennings, he learned that the doctor had
secretly given him a dose of laudanum
on the night of the theft, so that
Franklin, suffering from insomnia, would get
a good night's sleep. Jennings suggested
administering a like dose to Franklin
again, in the same setting, to see what he
would do. Mr. Bruff and Rachel came
down from London to watch the
experiment.
With the help of Betteredge the scene
was set and Franklin given the laudanum.
Under its influence he repeated his
actions on the night of the theft. Rachel
watched him come to her room and take
out a substitute stone. She was now
convinced that his original act had been
an attempt to protect her from the
Hindus by removing the stone to another
room. Before Franklin could recollect
what he did with the stone after he left
Rachel's room, however, the drug took
full effect and he fell sound asleep.
The experiment explained how the
stone disappeared from Rachel's room,
but not how it got into a London bank

through the hands of Luker. Mr. BrufF
suggested that the gem might shortly
be redeemed from Luker: Sergeant Cuff
was called back into the case, and a watch
set on the bank. One day Luker came
into the bank and claimed the stone.
On his way out he could have passed it
to any of three people. All three men
were followed. Two proved to be
innocent citizens. BrufFs office boy trailed
the third, a bearded man who looked like
a sailor, to an inn where the suspect took
lodgings for the night.
When Franklin and Sergeant Cuff
arrived at the inn, they found the sailor
dead and the box from the bank empty.
Sergeant Cuff examined the dead man
closely and then tore away a false wig
and beard to expose the features of
Godfrey Ablewhite. From Luker they learned
that Godfrey had seen Franklin go into
Rachel's room the night of the robbery,
and that Franklin had given Godfrey
the stone with instructions to put it in
the bank. Since Franklin had
remembered nothing of this request the next
day, Godfrey kept the jewel. The
mystery solved, Rachel and Franklin were
happily reunited.
Several years later Mr. Murthwaite,
the explorer, told them of a great festival
in honor of the Moon-God which he
had witnessed in India. When the idol
was unveiled, he saw gleaming in the
forehead of the stone image the long-lost
treasure of the god—the sacred
Moonstone.
2468

LE MORTE D'ARTHUR
Type of work: Chronicle
Author: Sir Thomas Malory (1400?-1471)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Golden Age of chivalry
Locale: Britain
First published: 1485
Principal characters:
Arthur, King of Britain
Queen Guinevere, his wife
Sir Mordred, his natural son
Sir Launcelot,
Sir Tristram, and
Sir Galahad, knights of the Round Table
Critique:
Le Morte d* Arthur is a monumental
work which made the Arthurian cycle
available for the first time in English.
Malory took a body of legends which had
gone from the folklore of Celtic Britain
into French literature by way of Brittany,
gave these tales a typically English point
of view, and added, amended, and
deleted for his own purposes, to produce
a work which has had tremendous
influence on literature ever since. Because of
the episodic nature of its contents, the
romance concerns itself at great length
with figures associated with King Arthur,
to the extent that Arthur, as a man, never
quite materializes. But Arthur, as the
symbol of knighthood at its full flower,
pervades the book.
The Story:
King Uther Pendragon saw and loved
Igraine, the beautiful and chaste Duchess
of Cornwall. His desires being checked
by Igraine's husband, King Uther made
war on Cornwall and in that war the
duke was killed. By means of magic,
King Uther got Igraine with child; the
couple were subsequently married. The
child, named Arthur, was raised by a
noble knight, Sir Ector. After the death
of King Uther, Arthur proved his right
to the throne by removing a sword from
an anvil which was imbedded in a rock.
From the Lady of the Lake he received
his famous sword, Excalibur. When the
independent kings of Britain rebelled and
made war on the young king, they were
defeated. Arthur ruled over all Britain.
King Arthur married Guinevere, the
daughter of King Leodegrance, who
presented to Arthur as a wedding gift the
Round Table and a hundred knights.
Merlin the magician was enticed by one
of the Ladies of the Lake into eternal
imprisonment under a rock.
Five foreign kings invaded Arthur's
realm and were defeated after a long
war. To show his gratitude to God for
his victory, King Arthur founded the
Abbey of the Beautiful Adventure at the
scene of his victory.
Sir Accolon, the paramour of Morgan
Le Fay, enchantress sister of King Arthur,
fought Arthur with Excalibur, which
Morgan had procured from Arthur by
black magic. Arthur was nearly
overcome, but in the fight their swords were
accidentally exchanged and the king
defeated Accolon.
King Lucius of Rome sent
ambassadors to Britain to demand tribute of King
Arthur. When Arthur refused to pay,
he was promised aid in war by all of the
knights of his realm. In the war that
followed, the British defeated Lucius
and conquered Germany and Italy.
Arthur was crowned Emperor of Rome.
Back in England, Sir Launcelot, a
knight of the Round Table and Queen
Guinevere's favorite, set out on
adventures to further the honor and glory of
himself and of his queen. After many
LE MORTE cP ARTHUR by Sir Thomas Malory. Published by Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
2469

long and arduous adventures, all of them
triumphant, Sir Launcelot returned to
Camelot, the seat of King Arthur, and
was acclaimed the first knight of all
Christendom.
Elizabeth, queen of King Meliodas of
Liones, died in giving birth to a son, who
was named Tristram because of the sad
circumstances surrounding his birth.
Young Tristram was sent with his
preceptor, Gouvernail, to France, where he
was trained in all the accomplishments
of knighthood. When the king of Ireland
demanded tribute from King Mark of
Cornwall, Sir Tristram, defending the
sovereignty of King Mark, his uncle, slew
the Irish champion, Sir Marhaus, but was
wounded in the contest. He was nursed
by Isolde, princess of Ireland. Tristram
and Isolde fell in love and promised to
remain true to each other. Later, King
Mark commissioned Sir Tristram to
return to Ireland to bring back Isolde,
whom the king had contracted to marry.
During the return voyage from Ireland
to Cornwall, Tristram and Isolde drank
a love potion and swore undying love.
Isolde married King Mark, and Sir
Tristram later married Isolde La Blanche
Mains, daughter of King Howels of
Brittany. But Tristram, unable to remain
separated from Isolde of Ireland, joined
her secretly. At last, fearing discovery
and out of his mind for love of Isolde,
Tristram fled into the forest. In a pitiful
condition he was carried back to the
castle, where a faithful hound revealed
his identity to King Mark. King Mark
then banished Tristram from Cornwall
for ten years. The knight went to
Camelot, where he won great renown at
tourneys and in knightly adventures. King
Mark, hearing of Tristram's honors, went
in disguise to Camelot to kill Tristram.
Sir Launcelot recognized King Mark and
took him to King Arthur, who ordered
the Cornish sovereign to allow Sir
Tristram to return to Cornwall. In Cornwall,
King Mark attempted unsuccessfully to
get rid of Tristram. But Tristram
managed to avoid all the traps set for him,
and he and Isolde escaped to England
and took up residence in Castle Joyous
Guard.
An old hermit prophesied to King
Arthur that a seat which was vacant at
the Round Table would be occupied by
a knight not yet born—one who would
win the Holy Grail.
After Sir Launcelot was tricked into
lying with Elaine, the daughter of King
Pelles, the maid gave birth to a boy
named Galahad. Some years later there
appeared in a river a stone with a sword
imbedded in it. A message on the sword
stated that the best knight in the world
would remove it. All the knights of the
Round Table attempted to withdraw the
sword, without success. Finally an old
man brought a young knight to the
Round Table and seated him in the
vacant place at which the young knight's
name, Sir Galahad, appeared magically
after he had been seated. Sir Galahad
withdrew the magic sword from the stone
and set out, with other of Arthur's
knights, in quest of the Holy Grail.
During his quest, he was joined part of the
time by his father, Sir Launcelot. Sir
Launcelot tried to enter the Grail
chamber and was stricken for twenty-four
days as penance for his years of sin. A
vision of Christ came to Sir Galahad,
who, with his comrades, received
communion from the Grail. They came to a
near-Eastern city where they healed a
cripple. Because of this miracle they
were thrown into prison by the pagan
king. When the king died, Sir Galahad
was chosen king; he saw the miracle of
the Grail and died in holiness.
There was great rejoicing in Camelot
after the questing knights returned. Sir
Launcelot forgot the promises he had
made during the quest and began to
consort again with Guinevere.
One spring, while traveling with her
attendants, Guinevere was captured by
a traitorous knight, Sir Meliagrance. Sir
Launcelot rescued the queen and killed
the* evil knight. Enemies of Launcelot
reported to King Arthur Launcelot's love
for Guinevere. A party championing the
king's cause engaged Launcelot in com-

bat. All members of the party except
Mordred, Arthur's natural son, were
slain. Guinevere was sentenced to be
burned, but Sir Launcelot and his party
saved the queen from the stake and
retired to Castle Joyous Guard. When King
Arthur besieged the castle, the Pope
commanded a truce between Sir Launcelot
and the king. Sir Launcelot and his
followers went to France, where they
became rulers of that realm. King Arthur
invaded France with the intent of
overthrowing Sir Launcelot, and in Arthur's
absence Mordred seized the throne of
Britain and tried to force Guinevere to
become his queen. Guinevere escaped to
London, where she took refuge in the
Tower. King Arthur, hearing of the
disaffection of Sir Mordred, returned to
England and in a great battle drove the
usurper and his false knights back tc
Canterbury.
At a parley between King Arthur and
Sir Mordred, an adder caused a knight
to draw his sword. This action brought
on a pitched battle in which Mordred
was killed and King Arthur was mortally
wounded. On his deathbed King Arthur
asked Sir Bedivere to cast Excalibur back
into the lake from which the sword had
come. Sir Bedivere hid the sword twice,
but was reproached by the king each time.
Finally, Sir Bedivere threw the sword
into the lake, where it was caught by a
hand and withdrawn under the water.
King Arthur died and was carried on
a barge down the river to the Vale of
Avalon. When Sir Launcelot returned
from France to avenge his king and
queen, he learned that Guinevere had
become a nun. Sir Launcelot retired to
a hermitage and took holy orders. Sir
Constantine of Cornwall was chosen king
to succeed King Arthur.
2471

THE MOTHER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Grazia Deledda (1872-1936)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Sardinia
First published: 1920
Principal characters:
Paul, a priest
Maria Maddalena, his mother
Agnes, his sweetheart
Critique:
The Mother is a searching study of
a human problem, the age-old conflict
arising out of the struggle between
authority and inclination. The scene, as in
most of this writer's work, is the island
of Sardinia, with its poor peasants, its
inbred superstitions, and its
church-directed religion. The structure of the
novel is compact in that the dramatic action
covers only two days. The tragic ending
is inevitable. The character of Maria
Maddalena dominates the book, but Paul
and Agnes become sympathetic creations.
Grazia Deledda was awarded the Nobel
prize for literature in 1926.
The Story:
Maria Maddalena had been an orphan,
brought up in drudgery by aunts. Part
of her work was to bring flour from the
mill. If there were no other customers,
the old man who waited on her would
follow her out and kiss her by force
behind the bushes. His whiskers pricked
her. When her aunts learned what was
happening, they forbade the girl to go
near the mill again. To their surprise,
the old man came to the house one day
and asked for Maria in marriage.
Maria continued to live in her aunts'
house; her husband stayed at the mill.
Each day, when she visited him, he
would steal flour and give it to her.
Widowed shortly after she became pregnant,
she supported her son by working as a
servant. She refused to sully herself with
the demanding servants and masters of
the places in which she worked, for she
wished to make her son a priest and she
felt purity was required of her as well.
When her son Paul went to the
seminary, she worked there to be near him.
The bishop often commanded Paul to
seek out his sacrificing mother and kiss
her hand. During vacation periods they
sometimes went back to their native
village. One summer Paul visited the town
prostitute several times. He was
fascinated by her white skin; he thought it was
so pale because her house was in constant
shade. After that summer Paul threw off
desires of the flesh and felt himself
sanctified.
His studies completed, Paul was
assigned to the remote village of Aar, a
mountainous town where strong winds
blew all the time. The mother was proud
that her dreams were coming true as the
population gathered in the square to meet
the new priest. She settled down placidly
in the presbytery to keep house for her
son.
Aar had had no priest for some time.
The former priest had been a drunkard
and a gambler; some people said a
sorcerer. They had half-liked him,
however, and had never complained to the
bishop because they were afraid of his
magic. Prudently Maria had bars in the
form of a cross put on the front door to
ward off the evil eye, for it was common
knowledge that the old priest had sworn
to drive away any successor. But then,
Maria was an ignorant woman.
THE MOTHER by Grazia Deledda. Translated by Mary G. Steegmann. By permission of the
publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1923, by The Macmillan Co. Renewed. All rights reserved.
2472

One night Maria was desperately
afraid. For some time Paul had had a
mirror in his room; he cleaned his nails
and washed with scented soap. He even
let his hair grow long and tried to comb
it over his tonsure. She knew what was
happening. Agnes was the only member
of the family left in the big house; Paul
had begun to visit her on his parish
rounds. From the sounds in his bedroom,
Paul was again getting ready to go out
that night.
Paul left hurriedly. Ashamed but
desperate, his mother followed after him.
She saw him go to the side gate of the
big house and disappear inside. Finding
the gate locked, she circled the grounds;
all the entrances were shut. She returned
home to wait for Paul.
Dozing as she waited, she thought the
wicked old priest was sitting beside her,
leering at her from his whiskered face.
He drew off his socks and ordered her to
mend them. Calmly enough, she asked
him how she could mend socks for a dead
man. The priest declared he was not
dead; furthermore, he would drive them
out of the village. When she called him
wicked, he argued with her that God had
put us on earth to enjoy ourselves.
With a start she awoke looking about
her for the socks. She thought she heard
ghostly footfalls leaving the presbytery.
Earlier she had considered denouncing
Paul to the bishop. Not sure of his guilt,
however, she resolved to face the
problem at once.
When Paul came in, he curtly told his
mother that he had been calling on a sick
person. Maria was determined, however,
to leave the village, never to see him
again unless he broke with Agnes. She
wondered if her own son could be so
selfish that he could not see he was
endangering Agnes' soul as well as his own.
In his chamber Paul fell into a troubled
sleep after calling on God for help.
In the morning his mother waked him
early. Before he left his room he wrote a
letter renouncing Agnes. With a pale
face he gave it to his mother and told
her to deliver it to the girl in person.
After hearing confessions, he said mass.
His sermon was cutting. The
congregation was growing smaller each day; only
on Sunday were the pews filled.
Afterward he learned that Agnes had received
his letter.
During the morning word came that
King Nicodemus was dying. Nicodemus
was a wild hunter who lived far up the
mountain, where he had removed
himself so he could do no harm to man. His
relatives had brought him into the
village when he was far gone in sickness.
Paul, with his server Antiochus, went to
the hut to give the hunter extreme
unction. To their surprise, Nicodemus had
disappeared. With his last strength he
had left the hated village, to die in his
own mountain cabin.
Later a woman brought to Paul a
little daughter who was having a tantrum.
The mother thought the girl possessed of
a demon, for it took force to get her into
the presbytery. Humoring the
superstitious mother, Paul read the parable of
the Gadarene swine. As he read, the girl
became quiet and receptive. Maria and
the others were sure Paul had exorcised
an evil spirit.
The people of the village, believing
him a miracle worker who could cast out
demons, held a celebration for Paul. He
was thankful when some of the
merrymakers went home with him. He needed
help that night to keep him from going
to Agnes.
Antiochus lingered after the rest of the
company to remind Paul of a promise to
visit the boy's mother. Antiochus wanted
to be a priest, and Paul had promised to
speak about the plan. Wearily he set out.
While he was impressing on his server's
mother the sacrifices demanded of the
priesthood, one of Agnes' servants came
with the news that Agnes had fallen and
was bleeding at the nose. Accepting his
fate, Paul went to see her again.
Agnes was pale and older looking but
not ill. She reproached him for the
letter and inquired about his promise to
marry her and take her away. Paul
declared only a brother's love for her. An-

gry, Agnes said that he came at night
and seduced young girls. She would so
denounce him in church if he did not
leave the village before morning.
Paul told his mother of the threat.
Both were apprehensive of going to
church; they were thankful to see Agnes'
pew empty. But toward the end of the
service she appeared, looking straight at
Paul. As the services were ending he
heard a cry. His mother had dropped
dead. Paul went to her side. He saw
Agnes staring at him.
2474

MOTHER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Maxim Gorky (Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, 1868-1936)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: First decade of the twentieth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1907
Principal characters:
Pelagueya Vlasova, a revolutionary heroine
Pavel Vlasov, her son
Andrey,
Rybin,
NlKOLAY IVANOVICH,
SOFYA,
Sashenka, and
Natasha, the Vlasovs' revolutionary friends
Critique:
Although Maxim Gorky wrote
primarily about the proletariat and in a
naturalistic vein, he was not
fundamentally concerned with politics, and
his works exhibit a marked lyric talent
that gives his writing a haunting poetic
quality. Gorky's basic concern was with
strong, vital, memorable characters rather
than with dogma or morality. He
envisioned a future in which these vigorous
people would free themselves from their
economic degradation and live as free,
independent spirits. He was a visionary
rather than a dogmatist. This fact is
particularly evident in his novel Mother, in
which Pelagueya Vlasova, through the
love of her son, becomes converted to
the revolutionary cause and gradually
comes to love all the people as her
children. Gorky was strongly attracted
to these self-made people, to men and
women with the courage to carry out
their plans, and he makes the reader
admire them as well. The lyric sweep
of Gorky's vision in this novel is
compelling.
The Story:
The factory workers in the small
Russian community of Nizhni-Novgorod
were an impoverished, soulless, brutal
lot. Their work in the factory
dehumanized them and robbed them of their
energy; as a result they lived like beasts.
When Michael Vlasov, a worker, died,
his wife Pelagueya felt that her son
Pavel would lead the same anguished,
brutal life. But gradually she noticed
with joy and apprehension that Pavel
was turning out differently, that he was
given to reading. One day Pavel informed
his mother that he was reading
subversive literature and that a group of his
Socialist friends were coming one
evening to visit him. Pelagueya was naturally
frightened, but when his friends arrived
she noticed that they were much warmer,
much more gentle than the people she
had lived with all her life. Though they
engaged in heated arguments, no one
seemed to get angry at the others. Pavel's
friends seemed full of hope and vitality,
and Pelagueya quickly warmed up to
them. She liked Pavel's friend, Andrey,
in particular, for he was big-hearted and
full of laughter. She liked Natasha too,
a frail, gentle girl who read aloud during
the meetings. Other members of the
group were Sashenka, a commanding girl
who loved Pavel, and Vyesovshchikov,
the village misanthropist. They were an
idealistic crowd, hopeful about the future
of the workingman, and prepared to put
their ideas into action. Gradually Pavel's
home became the center of their
activities, and Pelagueya agreed to take Andrey
in as a roomer out of her motherly love
for him.
Eventually Pavel's house became the
2475

center of village suspicion as well. Pavel
and his comrades had printed and
distributed among the workmen leaflets
which made plain their miserable
conditions. Rumors were spread that the police
were coming to search the house. Soon
afterward the police dropped in
unexpectedly and arrested Andrey and Vye-
sovshchikov. Several others had been
arrested as well.
While the workers were generally
hostile to Pavel because of his strangeness,
he also inspired a certain confidence in
them by virtue of his stern intelligence.
Pelagueya was flattered that the sharp
peasant, Rybin, an old bear of a man,
should go to her son for advice. One day
the workers were notified that their pay
was going to be cut. The workers were
behind Pavel when he made a speech
to them and to the manager in protest
against the cut; however, because of the
speech, Pavel was arrested and sent to
jail.
Pelagueya, distressed by her son's
arrest, learned that about sixty others had
been arrested along with him and that
Andrey sent her his regards from prison.
Deciding at last to become involved in
her son's activities, she took a job as a
caterer to the factory laborers and under
cover of her work she distributed
revolutionary literature. Meanwhile, she
continued to see Pavel's Socialist friends.
Soon afterward Andrey was released
from prison, and he returned to
Pelagueya, who welcomed him with open
arms. Rybin, claiming that the peasants
were no better off than the workers,
went to the country to stir up the
peasantry against their oppressive masters.
With Andrey living in her house,
Pelagueya felt happier, and under his
friendly goading she learned to read and
write. She visited Pavel in prison and
slyly told him of her activities in
distributing leaflets. Pelagueya's world
expanded greatly now that she was involved
in the Socialist cause; she had something
to hope for beyond her selfish interests.
In the spring Pavel was released from
prison. The Vlasov household continued
to be the hub of the local Socialist
activities, and Pavel announced his intention
of marching with the banner in the
coming May Day parade, even though to do
so would mean another jail sentence.
Not long afterward one of Pavel's
friends rushed in to report that a spy had
been murdered in the street. At first
Pelagueya feared that Vyesovshchikov
had committed the crime; later Andrey
revealed that he had accidentally killed
the spy and felt guilty about his deed.
After two weeks of inquiring into the
matter the police gave up the
investigation.
May Day arrived and Pavel and
Andrey were up early. The crowds had
gathered in the streets and the two men
walked through them with Pelagueya
close behind. After they had made an
abortive attempt to rouse the workers
with speeches and songs, soldiers
appeared, forced back the crowd, and
arrested Pavel, Andrey, and their
companions.
Pelagueya felt depressed after their
arrest. In answer to her loneliness Nikolay
Ivanovich came to her and invited her
to live with him in the city. She
accepted his invitation and moved to his
apartment. Nikolay and his sister Sofya
were well-bred Socialists. They treated
Pelagueya with affection and respect,
and she came to love them as though
they were members of her own family.
Pelagueya and Sofya dressed as
pilgrims and in that disguise distributed
propaganda throughout the city and
surrounding countryside. While delivering
books to Rybin, Pelagueya saw the
hardships of peasant life and the cruelty of
the masters. She proved useful in aiding
Vyesovshchikov to hide out from the
police after he had escaped from prison.
She nursed a dying comrade and during
a riot at his funeral she helped a wounded
boy at some danger to herself. She also
visited Pavel in prison.
Learning that many of her comrades
had been arrested, she decided to go
alone to deliver her pamphlets in the
country village. On arriving there she
2476

saw that Rybin had been arrested and
cruelly beaten. That night she stayed
with sympathetic peasants and gave them
copies of her leaflets.
Returning to the city, she aided a
fugitive peasant and told Nikolay about
her trip. Shortly thereafter she helped a
comrade to escape from prison. Her
efforts for the workers made her realize
how family allegiances could interfere
with loyalty to the cause; she
understood now why Pavel would never get
married.
After about six months in jail Pavel
and his comrades were finally brought to
trial. The judges were cold, impersonal,
and aloof. Several of Pavel's friends
declined to testify in his defense. As the
trial proceeded Pavel made a rousing
speech in which he denounced the
decadence of the masters and praised the
youth and vision of the Socialists. After
An drey had further taunted the judges,
Pavel and his companions were finally
sentenced to exile in Siberia.
In the meantime the police were
hunting down the Socialists. Nikolay was
arrested shortly after the trial. PavePs
speech had been printed and Pelagueya
had promised to deliver copies to a
remote town. On the train she recognized
a police spy and knew she had been
trapped. When the police tried to arrest
her, she shouted to the other
occupants of the train about her mission
and their servitude. She opened her bag
and handed out the leaflets even while
the police were beating her.
2477

MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Shordy after the Civil War
Locale: New England
First presented: 1931
Principal characters:
Ezra Mannon, a Civil War general
Christine, his wife
Orin, his son
La vinia, his daughter
Captain Adam Brant, Christine's lover
Hazel Niles, and
Peter Niles, cousins of the Mannons
Seth, die Mannon caretaker
Critique:
The plot of Mourning Becomes Electra
is based on the Greek tragedy of Electra
and her brother Orestes. In keeping with
the nature of the story, O'Neill chose for
his time and setting the Civil War era,
a period not too far off to be forgotten
by the American public and yet remote
enough to be viewed in legendary aspect.
The Orestes of the Greek plays had killed
his mother because she had murdered his
father. According to Greek ethics, it was
a son's duty to avenge his father, and
Orestes had acted justly according to the
gods, who in the end saved him from
punishment. Because such a conclusion
would not be acceptable to a modern
audience, O'Neill created Orin's madness to
complete his tragedy. The separate parts
of this trilogy are entitled Homecoming,
The Hunted, The Haunted,
The Story:
The Civil War was over, and in their
New England home Christine and La-
vinia Mannon awaited the homecoming of
old Ezra Mannon and his son Orin. La-
vinia, who adored her father, detested
Christine because of Ezra's love for his
wife. Christine, on the other hand,
jealously guarded Orin's love because she
hated her husband and her daughter. In
this house of hidden hatred, Seth, the
gardener watched the old mansion and
saw that Lavinia also despised Captain
Brant, who was a steady caller at the
Mannon home.
The Mannons, descended from old
New England stock, had their family
skeleton. Dave Mannon, Ezra's brother,
had run off with an Indian woman named
Marie Brant6me. Seth, seeing the
antagonism between Lavinia and her mother,
disclosed to Lavinia that Captain Brant
was the son of Marie and Dave Mannon.
Embittered by her mother's illicit
romance with Brant and jealous of
Christine's hold on Ezra, Lavinia forced
Christine to send her lover away. But Christine
was too powerful a woman to succumb to
her daughter's dominance. She urged the
grudge-bearing Brant to send her some
poison. It was common knowledge that
Ezra had heart trouble, and Christine was
planning to rid herself of the husband
whom she hated so that she would be free
to marry Brant. Lavinia cruelly reminded
her mother that her favorite offspring was
Orin, who was born while Ezra had been
away during the Mexican War.
The family jealousies were obvious by
the time Ezra came home. Ezra, a kind,
just man, realized that Christine shrank
from him while she attempted to pretend
concern for his health. That night in their
MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA by Eugene O'Neill. By permission of the publishers. Random
House, Inc. Copyright, 1931, by Horace Lireright, Inc.
2478

bedroom Ezra and Christine quarreled
over their failing marriage. Ezra had a
heart attack, and when he gasped for his
medicine Christine gave him the poison
instead. As he lay dying in Lavinia's arms,
the helpless man feebly but incoherently
accused Christine of guilt in his murder.
Lavinia had no proof, but she did
suspect her mother's part in Ezra's death.
Peter and Hazel Niles, cousins of the
Mannons, came to the mansion after
Ezra's death. Peter was a rejected suitor
of Lavinia, and Hazel was in love with
Orin. Lavinia spied upon her mother
constantly. When Orin came home, the two
women vied for his trust, Lavinia trying
to create suspicion against her mother and
Christine attempting to regain her son's
close affection. Uncomfortable under her
daughter's looks of silent, sneering
accusation, Christine finally realized that
Lavinia had found the box of poison. While
Hazel, Peter, and Christine tried to make
a warm welcome for Orin, Lavinia
hovered over the group like a specter of gloom
and fatality. Able to get Orin alone
before Lavinia could speak to him,
Christine told her son about Lavinia's
suspicions concerning Captain Brant and Ezra's
death, and she tried to convince Orin that
Lavinia's distraction over Ezra's death had
warped her mind.
Orin, whose affection for his mother
had made him dislike Ezra, believed
Christine, but the returned soldier swore
that if he ever discovered that the story
about Captain Brant were true, he would
kill Brant. Desperately Christine told
Lavinia that Orin s trust had been won, that
Lavinia need not try to take advantage
of his credulity; but Lavinia stared at her
mother in silent defiance. Under her
daughter's cold stare Christine's
triumphant manner collapsed into a pathetic
plea that Lavinia should not endanger
Brant's life, for Orin had threatened to
kill him.
Lavinia slyly hinted the truth to Orin,
and his old childhood trust in his sister
led him to believe her story in part,
unwillingly however, for he was still
influenced by love for his mother. Lavinia
hinted that Christine might run to Brant at
the first opportunity. Orin agreed to wait
for proof, and if sufficient proof were
offered, then to kill Brant. Lavinia
instructed Orin to maintain his pretense
that he believed her to be mad.
Shortly after Ezra's funeral, Christine
did go to Brant. Orin and Lavinia had
pretended to be paying a call on a nearby
estate, but they followed their mother to
Brant's ship, where they overheard the
lovers planning to run off together.
Although Orin was consumed with jealous
hatred of Brant, Lavinia restrained him
from impulsive action. When Christine
had gone, Orin went into the cabin and
shot Brant. Then the brother and sister
rifled the ship's cabin and Brant's pockets
co make the death appear to have been
a robbery and murder.
Orin and Lavinia returned to the
Mansion mansion and told Christine what
they had done. At the sight of his mother's
grief Orin fell to his knees, pleading with
her to forgive him and to give him her
love. Fearing he had lost his mother's
affection, the bewildered boy rushed from
the room, but Lavinia faced her mother
victoriously. Christine went into the house
and shot herself. Orin, in a frenzy of
grief, accused himself of his mother's
murder.
Lavinia took her brother on a long
sea trip to help him overcome his feeling
of guilt. When they returned, Orin was
completely under Lavinia's control,
reciting in toneless speech the fact that
Christine had been an adulteress and a
murderess, and that Orin had saved his mother
from public hanging. He was changed
in appearance and spirit; it was plain that
strange thoughts of grief and guilt preyed
on his mind. During the trip Lavinia had
grown to look and behave like Christine.
Lavinia was now able to accept Peter's
love, but when Orin saw his sister in
Peter's embrace, he became angered for
a brief moment before he congratulated
Peter and Lavinia. When Orin became
2479

engaged to Hazel, Lavinia was afraid to
leave Orin alone with the girl for fear he
would say too much about the past.
Orin began to write a family history,
urged by a remorseful desire to leave a
record of the family crimes. Becoming
jealous of Lavinia's engagement to Peter,
he threatened to expose her if she married
him. Orin kept hinting to Lavinia that,
like Christine, she was planning to poison
him as Christine had poisoned the man
who held her in bondage. Finally, driven
to distraction by Orin's morbid possessive
attitude toward her and by his incessant
reminding of their guilt, Lavinia
suggested to the crazed mind that he kill
himself. As Peter held Lavinia in his
arms, Orin went to the library to clean
his pistol. His death was assumed to have
been an accident.
Hazel suspected some vile and sinister
fact hidden in Orin's accidental death.
She went to Lavinia and pleaded with her
not to ruin Peter by marrying him, but
Lavinia denied that there was any reason
to put off the marriage. While she spoke,
however, Lavinia realized that the dead
Mannons would always rule her life. The
others had been cowards, and had died.
She would live. She sent Peter away.
Then she ordered Seth the gardener to
board up the windows of the mansion.
Alone, the last surviving Mannon,
Lavinia entered the old house to spend the
rest of her life with the dead.
2480

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Thirteenth century
Locale: Italy
First presented: 1598
Principal characters:
Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon
Don John, his bastard brother
Claudio, a young lord of Florence
Benedick, a young lord of Padua
Leonato, Governor of Messina
Hero, Leonato's daughter
Beatrice, Leonato's niece
Dogberry, a constable
Critique:
One of the most brilliant of
Shakespeare's plays, Much Ado about Nothing
is nevertheless not among the favorites
of most readers. The plot and the dialogue
are artfully conceived and executed, but
the comedy is often so near tragedy that
it does not have the flavor of many of the
other comedies. It was the first of his plays
in which the comic and serious plots were
so woven together that the outcome of one
was dependent upon the other. This work
was one of the last comedies Shakespeare
wrote; it is thought that his awakening
moral consciousness, evidenced here,
forced him into the tragedies which were
based so completely on themes of moral
transgression and human frailty.
The Story:
Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon, arrived
in Messina accompanied by his bastard
brother, Don John, and his two friends,
Claudio and Benedick, young Italian
noblemen. Don Pedro had been
successful over his brother in battle. Reconciled,
the brothers planned to visit Leonato
before returning to their homeland. On
their arrival in Messina, young Claudio
was immediately smitten by the lovely
Hero, daughter of Leonato. In order to
help his faithful young friend in his
suit, Don Pedro assumed the guise of
Claudio at a masked ball and wooed Hero
in Claudio's name. Thus he gained
Leonato's consent for Claudio and Hero
to many. The bastard Don John tried to
cause trouble by persuading Claudio that
Don Pedro meant to betray him and keep
Hero for himself, but the villain was
foiled in his plot and Claudio remained
faithful to Don Pedro.
Benedick, the other young follower of
Don Pedro, was a confirmed and bitter
bachelor who scorned all men willing to
enter the married state. No less opposed to
men and matrimony was Leonato's niece,
Beatrice. These two were at each other
constantly, each one trying to gain
supremacy by insulting the other. Don
Pedro, with the help of Hero, Claudio,
and Leonato, undertook the seemingly
impossible task of bringing Benedick and
Beatrice together in matrimony in the
seven days remaining before the marriage
of Hero and Claudio.
Don John, thwarted in his first attempt
to cause disharmony, now formed another
plot. With the help of a serving-man, he
arranged to make it appear that Hero was
unfaithful to Claudio. The serving-man
was to gain entrance to Hero's chambers
when she was away. In her place would
be her attendant, assuming Hero's clothes.
Don John, posing as Claudio's true
friend, would inform him of her
unfaithfulness and lead him to-Hero's window
to witnesss her wanton disloyalty.
In the meantime Don Pedro carried out
his plan to get Benedick and Beatrice to
stop quarreling and fall in love with each
2481

other. When Benedick was close by,
thinking himself unseen, Don Pedro,
Claudio, and Leonato would talk of their
great sympathy for Beatrice, who loved
Benedick but was unloved by him. To
each other, the three told sorrowful tales
of the love letters Beatrice wrote to
Benedick and then tore up. Sadly they
said that Beatrice beat her breast and
sobbed over her unrequited love for
Benedick. Meanwhile Hero and her
serving-woman would, when Beatrice was
nearby but thought herself unseen, tell
tales of poor Benedick, who pined and
sighed for the heartless Beatrice. Thus
both the unsuspecting young people
decided not to let the other suffer. Each
would sacrifice principles and accept the
other's love.
As Benedick and Beatrice were ready to
admit their love for each other, Don John
was successful in his base plot to ruin
Hero. He told Claudio that he had learned
of Hero's duplicity and he arranged to
take him and Don Pedro to her window
that very night, when they might witness
her unfaithfulness. Dogberry, a constable,
and the watch apprehended Don John's
followers and overheard the truth of the
plot, but in their stupidity the petty
officials could not get their story told in time
to prevent Hero's disgrace. Although Don
Pedro and Claudio did indeed witness the
feigned betrayal, Claudio determined to
let her get to the church on the next day
still thinking herself beloved. There,
instead of marrying her, he would shame her
before all the wedding guests.
All happened as Don John had hoped.
Before the priest and all the guests
Claudio called Hero a wanton and
forswore her love for all time. The poor girl
protested her innocence, but to no avail.
Claudio said that he had seen with his
own eyes her foul act. Then Hero
swooned and lay as if dead. Claudio and
Don Pedro left her thus with Leonato,
who also believed the story and wished his
daughter really dead in her shame. But
the priest, believing the girl guiltless,
persuaded Leonato to believe in her too. The
priest told Leonato to let the world believe
Hero dead while they worked to prove her
innocent. Benedick, also believing in her
innocence, promised to help unravel the
mystery. Then Beatrice told Benedick of
her love for him and asked him to kill
Claudio and so prove his love for her.
Benedick challenged Claudio to a duel.
Don John had fled the country after the
successful outcome of his plot, but
Benedick swore that he would find Don
John and kill him as well as Claudio.
At last Dogberry and the watch got to
Leonato and told their story. Claudio and
Don Pedro heard it also, and Claudio
wanted to die and to be with his wronged
Hero. Leonato allowed the two sorrowful
men to continue to think Hero dead. In
fact, they all attended her funeral.
Leonato said that he would be avenged if
Claudio would marry his niece, a girl
who much resembled Hero. Although
Claudio still loved the dead Hero, he
agreed to marry the other girl in order to
let Leonato have the favor he had so much
right to ask.
When Don Pedro and Claudio arrived
at Leonato's house for the ceremony,
Leonato had all the ladies masked. He
brought forth one of them and told
Claudio that she was to be his wife. After
Claudio promised to be her husband, the
girl unmasked. She was, of course, Hero.
At first Claudio could not believe his
senses, but after he was convinced of the
truth he took her to the church
immediately. Then Benedick and Beatrice finally
declared their true love for each other.
They too went to the church after a dance
in celebration of the double nuptials to
be performed. Best of all, word came that
Don John had been captured and was
being brought back to Messina to face his
brother, Don Pedro. But his punishment
must wait the morrow. Tonight all would
be joy and happiness.
2482

MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
Type of work: Drama
Author: T. S. Eliot (1888- )
Type of plot: Religious chronicle
Time of plot: 1170
Locale: Canterbury, England
First presented: 1935
Principal characters:
Archbishop Thomas Begkbt
Priests
Tempters
Knights
Chorus of Women of Canterbury
Critique:
This liturgical drama dealing with the
assassination of Thomas Becket is
essentially an impartial representation. Eliot
shows the politics, both temporal and
churchly, which lay behind the murder;
and he presents the archbishop as a man
torn between acting and suffering. Most
of the drama is in poetic form, with
effective expression by the chorus. The
archbishop's sermon is in prose, as are
the anachronistic speeches of justification
by the knights. Murder in the Cathedral
was written for the Canterbury Festival,
June, 1935.
The Story:
The women of Canterbury had been
drawn to the cathedral. Instinctively,
they knew that they had been drawn
there by danger; there was no safety
anywhere. But they had to come to bear
witness. Archbishop Thomas Becket had
been gone seven years. He had always
been kind to his people, but he really
should not return. During the periods
when the king and the barons ruled
alternately, the poor had suffered all kinds
of oppression. Like common people
everywhere, the women had tried to keep
their households in order and to escape
the notice of the various rulers. Now
they could only wait and witness.
The priests of the cathedral were well
aware of the coming struggle for power.
The archbishop had been intriguing in
France, where he had enlisted the aid
of the pope. Henry of Anjou was a
stubborn king, however, and these struggles
for power would hurt someone. The
priests knew that the strong rule by
force, the weak by caprice; and the only
law was to seize power and hold it.
A herald announced to them that the
archbishop was nearing the city. They
were to prepare at once for his coming.
With great interest they asked if there
would be peace or war, whether the
archbishop and the king had been reconciled.
The herald was of the opinion that there
had been only a hasty compromise. He
did not know that when the archbishop
had parted from the king, the prelate had
said that King Henry would not see him
again in this life.
After the herald left, one priest ex-
pressed the pessimism felt by all. When
Thomas Becket was chancellor and in
temporal power, he had been flattered
and fawned on by courtiers, but even
then he had felt insecure. It would be
better if the king were stronger or if
Thomas were weaker. For a time,
however, they dispelled their fears; Thomas
was returning to lead them. The women
thought the archbishop should return to
France. He would still be their spiritual
leader, and in France he would be safe.
As the priests started to drive out the
babbling women, the archbishop arrived
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL by T. S. Eliot. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace
& Co., Inc. Copyright, 1935, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
248B

and bade them remain.
Thomas Becket told his priests of the
difficulties he had encountered, for
rebellious bishops and the barons had
sworn to have his head. They had sent
spies to him and intercepted his letters.
At Sandwich he had barely escaped with
his life. His enemies were waiting to
pounce.
The first tempter came to talk with
Thomas. When he was chancellor,
Thomas had known worldly pleasure and
worldly success. Many had been his
friends, and at that time he knew how
to let friendship oversway principles. To
escape his present hard fate, he needed
only to relax his severity and dignity,
to be friendly, to overlook disagreeable
principles. Thomas had the strength to
give the tempter a strong refusal.
The second tempter reminded Thomas
of his temporal power as chancellor. He
could be chancellor again and have
lasting power. It was well known that the
king only commanded, while the
chancellor ruled, and ruled richly. Power was
a present attribute; holiness was more
useful after death. Real power had to be
purchased by wise submission, and his
present spiritual authority led only to
death. Thomas asked about rebellious
bishops whom he had excommunicated
and barons whose privileges he had
curtailed. The tempter was confident that
these dissidents would come to heel if
Thomas were chancellor with the king's
power behind him. Again Thomas had
the strength to say no.
The third tempter was easier to deal
with. He represented a clique intent on
overthrowing the throne. If Thomas
would lead them, they could make the
power of the Church supreme. No more
would both the barons and the bishops
be ruled by a king. Thomas declined the
offer to lead the malcontents.
The fourth tempter was unexpected.
He showed Thomas how he could have
eternal glory. As plain archbishop, the
time would come when men would
neither respect nor hate him; he would
become a fact of history. So it was with
temporal power, too: king succeeds king
as the wheel of time turns. Shrines are
pillaged and thrones totter. But if
Thomas would only continue in his present
course, he would become a martyr and
a saint, to dwell forevermore in the
presence of God.
Thus the archbishop's dilemma came
to him. No matter if he acted or suffered,
he would sin against his religion.
Early on Christmas morning Thomas
preached a sermon on peace. Christ left
us his peace, but not peace as the world
thinks of it. Spiritual peace did not
necessarily mean England at peace with other
countries or the barons at peace with the
king.
After the Christmas time had passed,
four knights came to Canterbury on
urgent business. Refusing all hospitality,
they began to state charges against
Thomas, saying that he owed all his
influence to the king. Thomas, they argued,
had been ignobly born, and his eminence
was due solely to King Henry's favor.
The knights tried to attack Thomas, but
the priests and attendants interposed
themselves.
The charges were publicly amplified.
Thomas had gone to France to stir up
trouble in the dominion and to intrigue
with the King of France and the pope.
Yet in his charity King Henry had
permitted Thomas to return to his see.
Thomas had repaid that charity by
excommunicating the bishops who had
crowned the young prince; hence the
legality of the coronation was in doubt.
The knights then pronounced his
sentence: he and his retinue must leave
English soil.
Thomas answered firmly. In France he
had been a beggar of foreign charity,
and he would never leave England again.
He had no dislike for the prince; rather,
he had only carried out the pope's orders
in excommunicating the bishops.
These words availed little. In the
cathedral proper, the knights fell on
Thomas Becket and slew him.
2484

In turn the knights gave their reasons
for the slaying. It looked like four against
one, and the English believed in fair
play; but before deciding, the people
should know the whole story. First, the
four knights would not benefit from the
murder. The king, for reasons of state,
would deplore the incident, and the
knights would at least be banished. And
really, it was hard for a good churchman
to kill an archbishop.
Secondly, Thomas had been an able
chancellor. The king had hoped, in
elevating him to the archbishopric, to unite
temporal and spiritual rule and to bring
order to a troubled kingdom. But as soon
as Thomas was elevated, he became more
priestly than the priests and refused to
follow the king's orders.
Thirdly, he had become an egotistical
madman. There was evidence that
before leaving France he had clearly
prophesied his death in England. He was
determined to sufiFer a martyr's fate. In the
face of this provocation, the people must
conclude that Thomas had committed
suicide while of unsound mind.
After the knights left, the priests and
populace mourned. Their only solace was
that so long as men will die for faith the
Church will be supreme.
2485

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY
Type of work: Novel
Authors: Charles Nordhoff (1887-1947) and James Norman Hall (1887-1951)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: South Pacific and Tahiti
First published: 1932
Principal characters:
Lieutenant William Bugh, captain of H.M.S. Bounty
Roger Byam, a midshipman
Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny
George Stewart, midshipman friend of Byam
Tehani, a Tahitian girl
Critique:
Written in the form of a novel and
completely romantic in temper, Mutiny
on the Bounty is a great story of
adventure based upon actual fact. The story
of the voyage of the Bounty, which
sailed from England in 1787, the mutiny
aboard her, the exploit of Captain Bligh
in piloting a small boat across thirty-six
hundred miles of open sea, the trial of
the mutineers, and the final refuge of
others on bleak Pitcairn Island, are all
matters of record. The authors* free
arrangement of their material is designed
to give to factual narrative the drama
and romantic atmosphere of fiction.
The Story:
In 1787.Roger Byam accepted
Lieutenant Bligh's offer of a berth as
midshipman on H. M. S. Bounty, a ship
commissioned by the English government
to carry the edible breadfruit tree of
Tahiti to English possessions in the West
Indies, to be used there as a cheap food
supply for the black slaves of English
planters. Byam's special commission was
to work at the task of completing a
study of Tahitian dialects for the use of
English seamen. After filling the ship's
roster and getting favorable weather, the
Bounty set sail, and Midshipman Byam
began to learn the ways of a ship at
sea. He also began to learn, when only
a few days -from England, of the many
traits of his captain which were to lead
eventually to mutiny. Bligh's fanaticism
rested on discipline, which he often
enforced at the cost of justice through
excessive floggings of the seamen aboard
the Bounty, However, the principal
objection the men had was their captain's
exploitation of them and their rations
for private graft.
When the Bounty arrived in Tahiti,
the crew was given the freedom it
deserved. Making use of the native
custom, each of the men chose for
himself a taio, or special friend from among
the natives, who, during the sailor's stay
in Tahiti, would supply him with all
the delicacies the island had to offer.
During the stay at Tahiti, Byam,
living ashore, collected information for his
language study. Most of the sailors found
women with whom they lived and to
whom some of them were later married.
Fletcher Christian chose Maimiti, the
daughter of Byam's taio. George Stewart
chose a Tahitian girl named Peggy.
Byam saw Tehani, later his wife, only
once during his stay on the island, but
from this one appearance he was highly
impressed with the beauty of the
princess.
Captain Bligh, on the Bounty, had
continued to practice the cruelties which
the men considered not only unfair but
also illegal. One practice was the
confiscation of gifts which the islanders had
brought to the men on shipboard and
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. By permission of Mrs. Laura
Nordhoff, Mr. James Norman Hall, and the publishers, Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1932, by Little, Brown
* Co.
2486

which rightfully belonged to those men.
The gifts he ordered to be put into the
ship's stores. He had further jflaced the
men on salt pork rations, amid all the
plentiful fresh fruits of the island. Just
before leaving Tahiti, Bligh falsely
accused Christian of stealing a coconut.
Collection of the breadfruit trees was
finally completed and the Bounty left
for England, but not before four of the
chagrined crewmen had attempted
desertion. They were caught, returned, and
flogged before the crew. This was one
more incident to add to the already sullen
attitude of the sailors. Feeling continued
to run high against Bligh during the
early part of the voyage, until that
fateful night when a sudden impulse led
Christian into mutiny. With his muti-
neering friends he gained control of the
ship and subsequently set Bligh adrift
in the Bounty's launch, in the company
of as many of the loyal crewmen as
that boat would hold. The launch was
too small to hold all of the loyal hands
and so seven had to stay behind, among
them Byam and Stewart, his close friend.
The mutiny left the Bounty manned by
twenty-three men, including the seven
loyal men.
With Christian in command, the
Bounty sailed about in the South Seas,
the mutineers searching for a suitable
island on which to establish a permanent
settlement. After several attempts, all
balked by unfriendly natives, Christian
rerurried with the crew to Tahiti. By a
show of hands, the crew again split,
some of the men continuing with
Christian their search for a permanent
home, the others, including Byam and
Stewart, remaining at Tahiti. They
expected eventually to be picked up by
an English vessel and returned home
to continue their naval careers.
After Christian and his crew had
sailed to an unknown destination, Byam
and his friend established homes on
the island by marrying the native girls
with whom they had fallen in love
during the first visit to the island. Byam
went to live in the home of Tehani, his
wife, and there continued his language
studies. During that idyllic year on
the island, children were born to the
wives of both Byam and Stewart. Then
H. M. S. Pandora arrived, searching for
the lost Bounty. Unaware that Bligh,
who had miraculously reached England,
had not distinguished between mutineer
and loyal sailor among the men who
remained on the Bounty, Byam and
Stewart, anxious for some word of home,
eagerly met the newly arrived ship.
They were promptly placed in irons and
imprisoned. They saw their wives only
once after imprisonment, and had it not
been for the ship's doctor on the
Pandora they would have suffered greatei
hardship than they had experienced on
the Bounty. The doctor made it possible
for Byam to go on with his studies, a task
which gave the prisoners something to
do and kept them from losing their
minds.
The Pandora sailed for England with
a total of seven prisoners, four of whom
were not guilty of mutiny. They suffered
many unnecessary hardships, the greatest
occurring during a storm in which the
Pandora was sunk. The captain delayed
releasing the men from their irons until
the last possible moment, an act which
cost the life of Stewart, who was unable
to get clear of the sinking Pandora and
drowned.
The survivors, gathered on a small
island, were forced into a decision to
try to make the voyage to Timor, in the
Dutch East Indies, the nearest island
of call. Their experiences in open boats,
with little or no water and food, were
savagely cruel because of the tropic sun,
the madness from lack of water, and
the foolish attempts of the Pandora's
captain to continue to treat the prisoners
as prisoners. Eventually the group
reached Timor and there found passage
on a Dutch ship bound for England.
Returned to England, the prisoners
awaited court-martial for mutiny. The
loyal men, falsely accused, were Byam,
Morrison, and Muspratt. Three of the
mutineers with them were Ellison, Burk-
2487

itt, and Millward, sailors who were
convicted of their crime and hanged. The
evidence concerning the innocent men
finally reached a point where the
decision rested upon the testimony of Robert
Tinkler, another midshipman on the
Bounty. Tinkler was believed lost at
sea, but he turned up in time to save
the lives of Byam, Muspratt, and
Morrison.
Byam continued his naval career and
eventually he became the captain of his
own ship. In 1810 he returned to
Tahiti. Tehani, his wife, was dead. His
daughter he found alive and the image
of her mother. In a last romantic gesture,
he saw that he could not make himself
known to her, and he left Tahiti without
telling her he was her father. To him
that beautiful green island was a place
filled with ghosts of younger men, and
young Midshipman Byam was one of
them.
2488

MY ANTONIA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Willa Cather (1876-1947)
Type of plot: Regional chronicle
Time of plot: Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: Nebraska prairie land
First published: 1918
Principal characters:
Jim Burden, the narrator and Antonia's friend
Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian peasant girl
Critique:
Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of
this book is its disarming simplicity.
There are no witty phrases, no
complicated characters; indeed, there is
scarcely any plot. And yet there is a
quiet, probing depth in Miss Cather's
writing. My Antonia is the story of a
Bohemian girl whose family came from
the old country to settle on the open
prairies of Nebraska. While she lives
on her farm and tills the soil, she is a
child of the prairie, almost as much a
part of her setting as the waving grass
and the tall corn. But Antonia goes also
to the city, and there she knows
heartbreak. She finds peace and meaning in
life only after her return to the land
which is her heritage.
The Story:
Jim Burden's father and mother died
when he was ten years old, and the
boy made the long trip from Virginia
to his grandparents' farm in Nebraska
in the company of Jake Marpole, a hired
hand who was to work for Jim's
grandfather. Arriving by train late at night
in the prairie town of Black Hawk, the
boy noticed an immigrant family
huddled on the station platform. He and
Jake were met by a lanky, scar-faced
cowboy named Otto Fuchs, who drove
them in a jolting wagon across the empty
prairie to the Burden farm.
Jim grew to love the vast expanse of
land and sky. One day Jim's
grandmother suggested that the family pay
a visit to the Shimerdas, an immigrant
family just arrived in the territory. At
first the newcomers impressed Jim
unfavorably. The Shimerdas were poor and
lived in a dugout cut into the earth.
The place was dirty. The children were
ragged. Although he could not
understand her speech, Jim made friends with
the oldest girl, Antonia.
Jim found himself often at the
Shimerda home. He did not like Antonia's
surly brother, Ambrosch, or her grasping
mother, but Antonia, with her eager
smile and great, warm eyes won an
immediate place in Jim's heart. One day
her father, his English dictionary tucked
under his arm, cornered Jim and asked
him to teach the girl English. She
learned rapidly. Jim respected Antonia's
father. He was a tall, thin, sensitive
man, a musician in the old country. Now
he was saddened by poverty and burdened
with overwork. He seldom laughed any
more.
Jim and Antonia passed many happy
hours on the prairie. Then tragedy struck
the Shimerdas. During a severe winter,
Mr. Shimerda, broken and beaten by the
prairie, shot himself. Antonia had loved
her father more than any other member
of the family, and after his death she
shouldered his share of the farm work.
When spring came, she went with
Ambrosch into the fields and plowed
like a man. The harvest brought money.
The Shimerdas soon had a house, and
with the money left over they bought
plowshares and cattle.
Because Jim's grandparents were grow-
MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather. By permission of the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co. Copyright. 1918. by
Willa S. C.ther. Renewed, 1946, by Willa S. Cather.
2489

ing too old to keep up their farm, they
dismissed Jake and Otto and moved to-
the town of Black Hawk. There Jim
longed for the open prairie land, the
gruff, friendly companionship of Jake
and Otto, and the warmth of Antonia's
friendship. He suffered at school and
spent his idle hours roaming the barren
gray streets of Black Hawk.
At Jim's suggestion, his grandmother
arranged with a neighbor, Mrs. Harling,
to bring Antonia into town as her
hired girl. Antonia entered into her tasks
with enthusiasm. Jim saw a change in
her. She was more feminine; she laughed
oftener; and though she never shirked
her duties at the Harling house, she
was eager for recreation and gaiety.
Almost every night she went to a
dance pavilion with a group of hired
girls. There, in new, handmade dresses,
the immigrant girls gathered to dance
with the village boys. Jim Burden went,
too, and the more he saw of the hired
girls, the better he liked them. Once
or twice he worried about Antonia, who
was popular and trusting. When she
earned a reputation for being a little too
gay, she lost her position with the Har-
lings and went to work for a cruel
moneylender, Wick Cutter, who had a
licentious eye on her.
One nighc, Antonia appeared at the
Burdens and begged Jim to stay in her
bed for the night and let her remain at
the Burdens. Wick Cutter was supposed
to be out of town, but Antonia suspected
that, with Mrs. Cutter also gone, he
might return and harm her. Her fears
proved correct, for as Jim lay awake in
Antonia's bed Wick returned and went
to the bedroom where he thought Antonia
was, sleeping.
Antonia returned to work for the
Harlings. Jim, eager to go off to college,
studied hard during the summer and
passed his entrance examinations. In the
fall he left for the state university and
although he found there a whole new
world of literature and art, he could
not forget his early years under the
blazing prairie sun and his friendship
with Antonia. He heard little of
Antonia during those years. One
of her friends, Lena Lingard, who had
also worked as a hired girl in Black
Hawk, visited him one day. He learned
from her that Antonia was engaged to
be married to a man named Larry
Donovan.
Jim went on to Harvard to study law,
and for years heard nothing of his
Nebraska friends. He assumed that
Antonia was married. When he made
a trip back to Black Hawk to r see his
grandparents, he learned that Antonia,
deceived by Larry Donovan, had left
Black Hawk in shame and returned to
her family. There she worked again in
the fields until her baby was born.
When Jim went to see her, he found
her still the same lovely girl, though her
eyes were somber and sne had lost her old
gaiety. She welcomed him and proudly
showed him her baby.
Jim thought that his visit was probably
the last time he would see Antonia. He
told her how much a part of him she
had become and how sorry he was to
leave her again. Antonia knew that Jim
would always be with her, no matter
where he went. He reminded her of
her beloved father, who, though he had
been dead many years, still lived nobly
in her heart. She told Jim goodbye and
watched him walk back toward town
along the familiar road.
It was twenty years before Jim Burden
saw Antonia again. On a Western trip
he found himself not far from Black
Hawk, and on impulse he drove out in
an open buggy to the farm where she
lived. He found the place swarming with
children of all ages. Small boys rushed
forward to greet him, then fell back
shyly. Antonia had married well, at
last. The grain was high, and the neat
farmhouse seemed to be charged with
an atmosphere of activity and happiness.
Antonia seemed as unchanged as she
was when she and Jim used to whirl
over the dance floor together in Black
Hawk. Cusak, her husband, seemed
to know Jim before they were introduced.
2490

for Antonia had told all her family about
Jim Burden. After a long visit with the
Cuzaks, Jim left, promising that he would
return the next summer and take two
of the Cuzak boys hunting with him.
Waiting in Black Hawk for the train
that would take him East, Jim found it
hard to realize the long time that had
passed since the dark night, years before,
when he had seen an immigrant family
standing wrapped in their shawls on the
same platform. All his memories of the
prairie came back to him. Whatever
happened now, whatever they had missed,
he and Antonia had shared precious
years between them, years that would
never be forgotten.
2491

MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: James Thurber (1894-1961)
Time: Early twentieth century
Locale: Columbus, Ohio
First published: 1933
Principal personages:
James Thurber
Charles, his father
Mary, his mother
Herman, and
Roy, his brothers
His Grandfather
To say that there are two worlds—the
World of Ordinary Men and another
known as the World of Thurber, which
orbits erratically through our atmosphere
and occasionally bumps into the
countryside or blunders down a city street like
a low-flying blimp—is a cliche* which
would never be tolerated by Mr. Thurber
himself, for one of the charms of his style
is a scrupulous avoidance of anything
resembling the trite. One suspects that
among his many phobias there must exist
the dread of turning a corner in a
sentence without first myopically peering
around to make sure there is no cliche*
about to waylay him. His precision of
language and careful attention to detail
are the qualities which give his writing
its interest and charm, his ability to
impose a world of fantasy on a world of
reality and to achieve an
inter-relationship of the external and the internal, the
factual and the imaginative. Such
Thurber touches are what his followers have
come to expect in all his work.
In his preface to My Life and Hard
Times, Thurber apologizes for writing
an autobiography before he had reached
the age of forty and for not conforming
to Ford Madox Ford's dictum that one's
memoirs should paint a picture of one's
time. Thurber more or less admits that
he has no time, that all he intends to tell
is what happened to one writer. Since
all that follows could happen to no one
but Thurber, he thus admits, but without
saying so, the existence of the Thurber
world.
This world reaches beyond the
boundaries of the real or the commonplace and
extends into a region of fable, peopled
by such figures as Emma Inch, the cook,
and her asthmatic dog Feely; colored
Delia, who made cretonnes for the soup
and whose brother worked in an
incinerator where they burn refuge; Barney
Haller, the hired man, whom thunder
followed like a dog; and Walter Mitty,
that frusfrated, comic Prufrock with his
impossible dreams of heroism and glory.
Strange things happen in this world
because James Thurber sees it that way:
an old woman with a parasol is seen to
walk through a truck; a cat goes rolling
across the street atop a striped barrel; an
admiral in full uniform rides a bicycle
across the highway in the path of an
oncoming car. That these things are
never what they seem but fragments of
the ordinary world suddenly revealed in
a new light or a different perspective is
the secret of Thurber's humor. It is a
form of humor little concerned with the
conventional or the obvious. It arises
quite naturally from a recognition of the
inner, emotional chaos of a sensitive,
individualistic man trapped in the affairs
of the practical, demanding world, with
no weapon of defense but his own
resistances and inferiorities.
Hence that air of the fabulous which
invests Thurber's drawings as well—the
meek, rotund men whose poses are those
of resignation and whose faces reveal
long-thwarted efforts to think and act
in a positive manner; the aggressive,
rather frightening women who never
seem disturbed by doubts as to their

superiority; the huge, sadly patient dogs.
They belong in a world in which life has
grown complicated for men and animals,
from which one way of escape leads into
a Cloud-Cuckoo Land where the illogical
becomes the logical and the fantastic
reveals the dilemma of modern man facing
the psychological confusion and insecurity
of his place in a world almost devoid of
sense and meaning.
Nowhere does James Thurber display
to better advantage his genius for
uncovering the incongruous in the everyday
affairs of men, the daydream escapes from
personal confusion or catastrophe, than
he does in the nine episodes which center
(perhaps the proper word is eccenter)
around Thurber's youth in Columbus,
Ohio, as told in My Life and Hard Times.
"The Night the Bed Fell" is about
the night the bed did not fall on
Thurber's father while he slept in the attic
where grandfather was supposed to sleep.
But grandfather, who refused to believe
that the Army of the Potomac was not
still trying to take Richmond, had
wandered off some days before; eventually
he would turn up with profane
criticism of the campaign, its military
leaders, and the administration in
Washington. Actually, James Thurber rolled out
of his cot; his mother was convinced that
the bed had fallen on father and he must
be pulled from the wreckage; a visiting
cousin poured a glass of camphor over
himself, and father was sure that the
house was on fire. Mother, who always
called it the night on which the bed fell
on father, was looking on the bright side
of things when she said she was glad
grandfather had not been there.
"The Car We Had to Push" is about
all sorts of things, but mostly about
grandfather's brother Zenas, who
contracted the chestnut tree blight and died
of that strange malady in 1866.
"The Day the Dam Broke" is about the
day the dam did not break. Expected
catastrophes have a way of not
happening in the Thurber world, but the effects
are very much the same. The citizens of
Columbus thought it had broken and
they fled in panic, hysterical at the time
but hilarious in the retelling.
The police were summoned to the
Thurber household on "The Night the
Ghost Got In," and grandfather shot one
policeman in the shoulder under the
hallucinated impression that the men in
blue uniforms were deserters from
General Meade's army.
"More Alarms at Night" deals with
brother Roy's feigned delirium; even at
the best of times Roy was likely to sing
"Onward, Christian Soldiers" or
"Marching Through Georgia" in his sleep. He
awakened father in the small hours,
called him Buck, and announced that his
time had come. Father, a mildly nervous
man, aroused his family. Everyone
assured him that he had had a bad dream.
The sketch also deals with another night
when James awoke poor father to get help
in remembering the name of a New
Jersey city, Perth Amboy. Sure that his son
had gone mad, father ran from the room.
"A Sequence of Servants" deals with
just what the title indicates. There were
162 of these servants, including a colored
one, Vashti, who told her lover that he
must never tangle with her jealous step
father, who had married her mother just
to be near Vashti. But Thurber (the
writer) cannot stay away from the
negative; it turns out that Vashti had
invented her stepfather to pique the lover.
A memorable Airedale named Muggs
is "The Dog That Bit People." When
he died, after biting almost everybody
in Ohio—including Lieutenant-Governor
Malloy—mother wanted to bury him in
the family plot under "Flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest" or some equally
misappropriate inscription. The family
dissuaded her, however, and Muggs was
interred along a lonely road beneath
an epitaph of Thurber's choice: "Cave
canem." Mother was always quite pleased
with the classic dignity of that simple
Latin phrase.
"University Days" presents Bolen-
ciecwcz, star tackle on the Ohio State
football team, whom an economics
professor tried to make eligible for the Illi-
2493

nois game by asking him to name one
means of transportation; after hints,
prods, and auditory and visual
demonstrations by the professor and the whole
class, Bolenciecwcz mentioned a train
and the day was saved. There is also an
agricultural student named Haskins, who
wanted to be a journalist and whose beat
for campus news covered the cow barns,
the horse pavilion, the sheep house, and
the animal husbandry department in
general.
The final sketch, "Draft Board Nights,"
finds Thurber being incessantly called
before the board which always turned
him down because of poor eyesight, and
then, through some repetitive mistake,
kept calling him back. He eventually
drifted into service, not in the army, but
as an unauthorized and undetected
examiner of draftees—a pulmonary man, to
be exact. What put a merciful end to it
all was the Armistice.
For critics to debate the place of
Thurber in contemporary literature is useless.
His humor, which creates its effects
according to the laws of its own logic and
yet always with a savoring of common
sense, is superbly his own, as his would-
be imitators have discovered. His manner
is nimble without being racy; it has poig-
nance without sentimentality. His touch
with words is delicate yet precise. Best of
all, he illustrates his own books with his
inimitable drawings which, like his prose
pieces, distort the familiar into the
fantastic without—again, this is Thurber's
secret—losing touch with reality.
2494

THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Eugene Sue (1804-1857)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: France and Germany
First published: 1842-1843
Principal characters:
Rodolph, Grand Duke of Gerolstein
Fleur-de-Marie, his daughter by Lady Sarah Macgregor
Lady Sarah Macgregor, his morganatic wife
Clemence d'Harville, wife of one of Rodolph's friends
La Chouette, and
Schoolmaster, two Paris criminals
Jacques Ferrand, a hypocritical and cruel lawyer
Madame Georges, befriended by Rodolph
Rigolette, Fleur-de-Marie's friend
Critique:
The Mysteries of Paris is a novel
which was written mainly to arouse
public opinion for reform of the penal system
and the poor laws. The descriptions of
the poor, the needy, and the afflicted
among the unfortunates of Paris are
many and vivid. The novel is
interspersed with short tales of misfortune
and comments by the author as to how
many of the difficulties could be
remedied by new laws and new charities.
The story which allows full freedom to
the expression of these ideas is an
amazing one. It contains almost a hundred
main characters, to say nothing of the
numerous minor character studies. Almost
every minor plot contains enough
material for a novel, and the major plot is
intricate and detailed.
The Story:
Rodolph, the Grand Duke of
Gerolstein, a small German state, was a
handsome young man in his thirties in 1838.
Behind him lay a strange past. As a
youth he had been brought up in his
father's court by an evil tutor named
Polidori, who had done his best to warp
and confuse the young prince's mind.
Polidori had been urged on by the
beautiful but sinister Lady Sarah Macgregor,
who had been told in her youth that she
was destined some day to be a queen.
Sarah had decided that Rodolph, heir
to a duchy, would be the perfect
husband for her, and with the aid of Polidori
she had forced Rodolph into a secret
morganatic marriage. In England, where
she had fled, she gave birth to a daughter.
Rodolph's father was furious, and he
had the marriage annulled. One day,
after he had threatened to kill his father,
Rodolph was sent into exile. Before
long Sarah lost all interest in her child
and paid her Paris lawyer, Jacques
Ferrand, to find a home for the girl.
Ferrand gave the child into the care of some
unscrupulous child-takers and after a few
years falsely wrote to Sarah that the
child had died. Sarah forwarded the
letter to Rodolph.
Rodolph moved to Paris where he
amused himself by roaming through the
slums in disguise. Although he was
strong, agile, and a fine fighter, the
young duke was always followed by his
faithful servant, Sir Walter Murphy.
Together they ferreted out the secrets
and mysteries of Paris streets. One night
Rodolph chanced to save a young girl
who was being attacked. When he had
heard her story, he was so touched by it
that he decided to help her. Fleur-de-
Marie, as she was called, was an orphan
who had been brought up by gangsters
and had been in prison. Freed, she was
recognized by her old tormentors and
captured by them, drugged, made a
2495

prisoner, and compelled to suffer the
greatest indignities. Feeling that she was
really innocent of the crimes into which
she had been forced, Rodolph took her
to the farm of Madame Georges. The
girl's beauty, her sad plight, and the
fact that she was the age his dead
daughter would have been, aroused his
interest and pity.
Madame Georges was likewise a
woman whom the duke had befriended.
Her criminal husband had deserted her,
taking their son with him. Rodolph had
searched the streets of Paris for a clue
to the whereabouts of Madame Georges'
son. At the farm Fleur-de-Marie soon
developed into a devout and delightful
young woman.
Rodolph continued to live his double
life. He attended diplomatic balls and
the parties of thieves, and on both
planes he found much to do to help
people to live better lives. At last, in
order to learn better the secrets of Paris,
he took lodgings in a boarding-house
in one of the poorer sections of town.
There he met many needy families, and
in countless ways he helped them all.
One of the occupants of the house was
a girl named Rigolette, who had been
Fleur de-Marie's friend in prison.
Rigolette was hard-working and kind, and
Rodolph learned a great deal about the
people of the house from her.
One day he learned that Clemence
d'Harville, the wife of one of his good
friends, was involved in an intrigue with
a lodger in the house. It did not take
him long to discover that the person
behind this affair, plotting the
destruction of d'Harville and his wife, was
Lady Sarah Macgregor. As soon as he
could, Rodolph warned Clemence and
saved her from her folly. Clemence was
unfortunate in that she had been forced
into marriage with d'Harville by her
mother-in-law, for she did not love her
husband. Because he and their daughter
were subject to epileptic fits, her life
was an unhappy one. D'Harville by
chance learned of his wife's unhappiness,
and contrived to commit suicide in such
a way that everyone thought his death
accidental. By this act he saved Clemence
from greater unhappiness and atoned for
the evil he had committed in marrying
her.
While staying at the lodging-house,
Rodolph had learned of the numerous
evil deeds of the hypocritical lawyer,
Jacques Ferrand. When Rodolph learned
that Ferrand was planning the murder
of Clemence's father, he and Sir Walter
Murphy succeeded in thwarting the
lawyer's evil scheme. Ferrand was also
responsible for the imprisonment of
Rigolette's lover. In order to get to the
bottom of Ferrand's plans, Rodolph
remembered Cicely, a beautiful woman
who had once been married to his private
doctor, but who later became a depraved
creature. Rodolph secured her release
from prison and had her introduced into
Ferrand's household, where she could
spy on his activities and learn his secrets.
Meanwhile Sarah had asked Ferrand
to find a young girl whom she could
claim was really her child by Rodolph,
for she hoped that if she could produce
the dead girl she could effect a
reconciliation, now that Rodolph was the
reigning duke of Ge;olstein. Ferrand,
learning the whereabouts of Fleur-de-Marie,
hired La Chouette, an ugly one-eyed
woman, and a criminal called the
Schoolmaster to kidnap the girl from the farm
of Madame Georges. When the
Schoolmaster arrived at the farm, he discovered
that Madame Georges was his wife, the
woman he had deserted. He did not
succeed in getting Fleur-de-Marie.
Instead, she was put in jail for failing to
give testimony concerning a crime she
had witnessed before Rodolph had saved
her from the slums. By chance,
Clemence found the girl while on a
charitable errand. Not knowing that Fleur-de-
Marie knew Rodolph, she tried to make
the girl's life more pleasant in prison.
When Sarah learned that Fleur-de-
Marie had been under the care of
Rodolph's friends, she became jealous
and made arrangements to have her
killed as soon as she could be released
2496

from the prison. Ferrand, entrusted with
plans for her death, had her released
from prison by an accomplice who
pretended to be an agent of Clemence
d'Harville. On leaving the prison, Fleur-
de-Marie met Rigolette and told her old
friend of her fortune. Rigolette, who
knew Clemence through Rodolph, was
pleased. After they parted, Fleur-de-
Marie was seized by Ferrand's hirelings
and taken into the country, where she
was thrown into the river. But some
passersby saw her in the water and
pulled her ashore in time to save her life.
In the meanwhile La Chouette,
learning that Fleur-de-Marie was really the
daughter of Rodolph and Sarah, had
hurried to Sarah with her information.
Sarah was shocked at the discovery. La
Chouette, seeing a chance to make more
money by killing Sarah and stealing her
jewels, stabbed her protector. The
attacker escaped with the jewels and
returned to the Schoolmaster to taunt
him with her success. The two got
into a fight, and the Schoolmaster
killed La Chouette. He was captured
and put into prison.
Through Cicely, Rodolph had also
learned that his daughter was not really
dead. Cicely had had little difficulty in
uncovering Ferrand's past. As soon as
he knew what Sarah had done, Rodolph
went to see her, and despite her terrible
wound he accused her violently of the
shameful and criminal neglect of her
daughter.
On returning home, Rodolph was
surprised to hear that Clemence had visited
him. Clemence had had the fortune to
find Fleur-de-Marie in the home where
she had been cared for after her escape
from drowning, and she had brought the
girl to Rodolph. Clemence did not know
that events had proved that Fleur-de-
Marie was Rodolph's daughter, and so
the reunion of father and child was not
without pain as well as pleasure, for
Clemence and Rodolph had long secretly
known that they loved each other.
Rodolph begged Clemence to marry him
and be a mother to his child. He felt
sure that Sarah would die, and the way
would thus be clear for their happy life
together.
Rodolph remarried Sarah on her
deathbed so that their daughter could
be called truly legitimate. Information
that Rodolph had received from Cicely
also made it possible for him to free
Rigolette's lover from prison, and it
turned out that he was the long-lost son
of Madame Georges. With these problems
solved, Rodolph planned to return to
Germany. First, however, he used his
knowledge of Ferrand's activities to force
the lawyer to establish many worthy
charities. His money gone, Ferrand went
into a decline and died soon afterward.
Rigolette's lover became administrator
for one of the charities, and after their
marriage he and Rigolette lived happily
with Madame Georges.
Rodolph returned to Germany with
Fleur-de-Marie as his legitimate daughter
and Clemence as his wife. For a time
the three lived together with great
happiness. Then Rodolph noticed that Fleur-
de-Marie seemed to have moods of
depression. One day she explained,
weeping, that his goodness to her was without
compare, but that the evil life that she
had led before he had rescued her from
the slums preyed constantly on her
mind. She begged to be allowed to
enter a convent. Seeing that nothing he
could say would change her mind,
Rodolph gave his permission.
While serving as a novice at the
convent, Fleur-de-Marie's conduct was so
perfect that when she was admitted to
the order she immediately became the
abbess. This honor was too much for
her gentle soul to bear, or for her weak,
sick body to withstand, and that very
night she died. Rodolph, noting that
the day of her death was the anniversary
of the day on which he had tried to kill
his father, felt that the ways of fate
are strange.
2497

THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of plot: Late sixteenth century
Locale: France and Italy
First published: 1794
Principal characters:
Emily St. Aubert, a young French aristocrat
Signor Montoni, a villainous Italian married to Emily's aunt
Valancourt, Emily's sweetheart
Count Morano, a Venetian nobleman in love with Emily
Madame Montoni, Emily's aunt
Critique:
The Mysteries of Udolpho is the most
famous of the Gothic novels extremely
popular at the end of the eighteenth
century. The mysterious elements of the
story are always explained in some
natural way, for Mrs. Radcliffe was too
much of an eighteenth-century rationalist
to succumb completely to the
supernatural. The characters in the book are
stilted both in action and conversation.
Mrs. Radcliffe was at her best only when
describing scenery, such as the rugged
Pyrenees and Apennines, or when
describing an atmosphere of suspense in
creating her effects of terror.
The Story:
After the death of his wife, Monsieur
St. Aubert, a French aristocrat, took his
daughter on a trip in the Pyrenees
Mountains. High on a mountain road the St.
Auberts met a young nobleman dressed
in hunting clothes. He was Valancourt,
the younger son of a family with which
M. St. Aubert was acquainted. Joining
the St. Auberts on their journey, the
young man soon fell in love with
eighteen-year-old Emily St. Aubert, and the
girl felt that she, too, might lose her
heart to him.
St. Aubert became desperately ill and
died in a cottage near the Chateau-le-
Blanc, ancestral seat of the noble Villeroi
family. After her father's burial at the
nearby convent of St. Clair, Emily
returned to her home at La Vallee and
promptly burned some mysterious letters
which her father had requested her to
destroy. With the letters she found a
miniature portrait of a beautiful
unknown woman. Since she had not been
told to destroy the portrait, she took it
with her when she left La Vallee to
stay with her aunt in Toulouse.
Valancourt followed Emily to Toulouse
to press his suit. After some
remonstrance, the aunt gave her permission
for the young couple to marry. Then, a
few days before the ceremony, the aunt
married Signor Montoni, a sinister
Italian, who immediately forbade his new
niece's nuptials. To make his refusal
doubly positive, he took Emily and her
aunt to his mansion in Venice.
There Emily and Madame Montoni
found themselves in unhappy
circumstances, for it soon became apparent that
Montoni had married in order to secure
for himself the estates of his new wife
and her niece. When he tried to force
Emily to marry a Venetian nobleman,
Count Morano, Emily was in despair.
Suddenly, on the night before the
wedding, Montoni ordered his household to
pack and leave for his castle at Udolpho,
high in the Apennines.
When the party arrived at Udolpho,
Montoni immediately began to repair the
fortifications of the castle. Emily did
not like the dark, cold, mysterious castle
from which the previous owner, Lady
Laurentini, had disappeared under
mysterious circumstances. Superstitious
servants claimed that apparitions flitted about
2498

the halls and galleries of the ancient
fortress.
Soon after Montoni and his household
had. settled themselves, Count Morano
attempted to kidnap Emily. Foiled by
Montoni, who wounded him severely in
a sword fight, Morano threatened
revenge.
A few days later Montoni tried to
force his wife to sign over her estates to
him. When she refused, he caused her
to be locked up in a tower of the castle.
Emily tried to visit her aunt that night.
Terrified at finding fresh blood on the
tower stairs, she believed her aunt
murdered.
Ghostly sounds and shadows about
Udolpho began to make everyone
uneasy. Even Montoni, who had organized
a band of marauders to terrorize and
pillage the neighborhood, began to believe
the castle was haunted. Emily heard
that several hostages had been taken. She
was sure that Valancourt was a prisoner
because she had heard someone singing
a song he had taught her and because one
night a mysterious shadow had called
her by name. Her life was made one long
torment by Montoni's insistence that she
sign away her estates to him, lest she
suffer the same fate as her aunt.
The aunt had not been murdered, as
Emily found out through her maid, but
had become so ill because of harsh
treatment that she had died and had been
buried in the chapel of the castle.
Morano made another attempt to steal
Emily away from the castle, this time
with her assistance, as she was now
afraid for her life. But Montoni and his
men discovered the attempt in time to
seize the abductors outside the castle
walls. Shortly afterward Montoni sent
Emily away, after forcing her to sign the
papers which gave him control of her
estates in France. At first she thought
she was being sent to her death, but
Montoni sent her to a cottage in Tuscany
because he had heard that Venetian
authorities were sending a small army to
attack Udolpho and seize him and his
bandits. His depredations had caused
alarm after the villas of several rich
Venetians had been robbed.
When Emily returned to the castle,
she saw evidence that there had been a
terrible battle. Emily's maid and
Ludovico, another servant, disclosed to Emily
on her return that a prisoner who knew
her was in the dungeons below. Emily
immediately guessed that the prisoner
was Valancourt and made arrangements
to escape with him. But the prisoner
turned out to be Monsieur Du Pont, an
old friend of her father. Emily, Monsieur
Du Pont, the girl's maid, and Ludovico
made their escape and reached Leghorn
safely. There they took ship for France.
Then a great storm drove the ship ashore
close to the Chateau-le-Blanc, near which
Emily's father had been buried.
Emily and her friends were rescued by
Monsieur Villefort and his family. The
Villeforts had inherited the chateau and
were attempting to live in it, although it
was in disrepair and said to be haunted.
While at the chateau Emily decided to
spend several days at the convent where
her father was buried. There she found
a nun who closely resembled the
mysteriously missing Lady Laurentini, whose
portrait Emily had seen at the castle of
Udolpho.
When Emily returned to the chateau
she found it in a state of turmoil because
of weird noises that seemed to come from
the apartments of the former mistress of
the chateau. Ludovico volunteered to
spend a night in the apartment. Although
all the windows and doors were locked,
he was not in the rooms the next
morning. When the old caretaker came to tell
Emily this news, she noticed the
miniature Emily had found at La Vallee. The
miniature, said the servant, was a portrait
of her former mistress, the Marquise de
Villeroi. More than that, Emily closely
resembled the portrait.
Meanwhile Valancourt reappeared and
once again made plans to marry Emily,
but Monsieur Villefort told her of
gambling debts the young man had incurred
and of the wild life he had led in Paris
while she had been a prisoner, in Italy.
2499

Because of that report Emily refused to
marry him. She returned in distress to
her home at La Vallee to learn that
Montoni had been captured by the
Venetian authorities. Since he had criminally
secured the deeds to her lands, the court
now restored them to her, and she was
once again a young woman of wealth and
position.
While Emily was at La Vallee, the
Villefort family made a trip high into
the Pyrenees to hunt. Almost captured
by bandits, they were rescued by Ludo-
vico, who had so inexplicably disappeared
from the chateau. He had been
kidnaped by smugglers who had used the
vaults of the chateau to store their
treasure, and he disclosed that the noises in
the chateau had been caused by the
outlaws in an effort to frighten away the
rightful owners.
Informed of what had happened, Emily
returned to the chateau to see her
friends. While there, she again visited
the convent of St. Clair. The nun whom
she had seen before, and who resembled
the former mistress of Udolpho, was
taken mortally ill while Emily was at the
convent. On her deathbed the nun
confessed that she was Lady Laurentini, who
had left Udolpho to go to her former
lover, the Marquis de Villeroi. Finding
him married to M. St. Aubert's sister,
she ensnared him once more and made
him an accomplice in her plot to poison
his wife. When the marquis, overcome
by remorse, fled to a distant country and
died there, she had retired to the convent
to expiate her sins.
Emily's happiness was complete when
Monsieur Du Pont, who had escaped
with her from Udolpho, proved that Val-
ancourt had gambled only to secure
money to aid some friends who were on
the brink of misfortune. Reunited, they
were married and went to La Vallee,
where they lived a happy, tranquil life
in contrast to the many strange
adventures which had parted them for so long.
2500

THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jules Verne (1828-1905)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1865-1869
Locale: An island in the South Pacific
First published: 1870
Principal characters:
Captain Cyrus Harding, an engineer
Nebuchadnezzar, his Negro servant
Gideon Spilett, a reporter
Jack Pencroft, a sailor
Herbert Brown, an orphan
Ayrton, a mutineer
Captain Nemo, captain of the Nautilus
Critique:
The Mysterious Island is in a sense a
sequel to Jules Verne's famous Twenty
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, for in
this work Verne describes the death of
Captain Nemo; but it is primarily a story
of survival and a celebration of the
adaptability and ingenuity of intelligent,
hardworking, God-fearing man. Verne shows
the great satisfaction that can be derived
from personal accomplishment. The
wealth of detail and description and the
valid explanations of mysterious
happenings create a sense of realism.
The Story:
On March 24, 1865, a balloon
carrying five persons who were escaping from
Richmond, capital of the Confederacy
during the War Between the States, fell
into the sea. Caught in a storm, the
balloon had flown some seven thousand
miles in five days. The five passengers
were Captain Cyrus Harding, an
engineer in General Grant's army; his Negro
servant, Nebuchadnezzar; Gideon
Spilett, a reporter; Jack Pencroft, a sailor; and
Herbert Brown, the fifteen-year-old
orphan son of one of Pencroft's former sea
captains.
The balloon fell near an uncharted
island, and Harding, together with his
dog Top, was washed overboard. Its load
lightened, the balloon then deposited the
other travelers on the shore of the island.
The next morning Nebuchadnezzar, who
was known as Neb, went to look for his
master while the others explored the
island.
The next day Herbert, Pencroft, and
Spilett took stock of their resources,
which consisted of the clothes they wore,
a notebook, and a watch. They suddenly
heard Top barking. The dog led them to
Captain Harding who, having been
unconscious, was at a loss to explain how
he had arrived at a place more than a
mile away from the shore.
When Harding was stronger, the
group decided to consider themselves
colonists rather than castaways, and they
called their new home Lincoln Island.
Harding found on the island samples of
iron, pyrite, clay, lime, coal, and other
useful minerals. The colonists made
bricks which they used to construct an
oven for the making of pottery. From
Top's collar they were able to make two
knives, which enabled them to cut bows
and arrows. Eventually they were able to
make iron and steel tools.
Under the brilliant direction of
Harding, who seemed to know a great deal
about everything, the colonists worked
constantly to improve their lot. After
discovering a cave within a cliff wall they
planned to make this their permanent
residence; they called it Granite House.
They made a rope ladder up the side of
the cliff to the door of the cavern, which
they equipped with walls of brick, fur-
2501

niture, and candles made from seal fat.
One day Pencroft found washed up on
the beach a large chest containing many
useful items, including books, clothes,
instruments, and weapons. On another
occasion the colonists returned to Granite
House to find that their home had been
invaded by orang-utans, who suddenly
became terrified at something and began
to flee. The colonisfs killed all but one
that they domesticated and called Jup.
The colony prospered. They
domesticated various animals, used a stream to
power an elevator to Granite House, and
made glass windows. They built a boat
designed by Harding and named it the
Bonadventure. As they were sailing it
they found a bottle with a message,
saying that there was a castaway on nearby
Tabor Island. Pencroft, Spilett, and
Herbert sailed to Tabor Island, where
Herbert was attacked by a strange wild man.
Pencroft and Spilett succeeded in
capturing the creature and they took him
back to Lincoln Island, where he began
to become civilized again. One day he
confessed with shame that his name was
Ayrton, that he had attempted mutiny on
one ship, had tried to seize another, and
had finally been put ashore on Tabor
Island by one Captain Grant, of the
Duncan. Ayrton, who repented his past
life, was accepted by the colonists as one
of them. He lived at a corral which the
colonists had built some distance from
Granite House.
One day the colonists sighted a pirate
ship. A battle between the pirates and
the colonists developed, and just when
things were going badly for the colonists,
the pirate ship seemed to explode. Later
the colonists found the remains of a
strange torpedo that had destroyed the
ship.
A short time later the colonists
discovered that the telegraph system which
Harding had built to the corral had
broken down. When they went to the
corral to investigate, they were attacked
by some of the pirates who had not
perished with their ship, and Herbert was
seriously wounded. Ayrton, moreover,
was gone. While the colonists were
trying desperately to keep Herbert alive,
the pirates set fire to the mill and sheds
close by Granite House and destroyed
the plantation. By the time the colonists
were able to make their way back to
Granite House, Herbert had weakened
seriously. The one thing needed for his
recovery, sulphate of quinine, was
lacking on the island, but on the crucial
night, which might have been Herbert's
last, the colonists found a box of quinine
beside Herbert's bed, and the medicine
enabled him to recover.
Finally the colonists set out to find
their mysterious benefactor and to
exterminate the pirates. When the
expedition arrived at the corral, they found
Ayrton, who had been tortured by the
pirates but who was still alive. Top then
discovered the corpses of all the
remaining pirates, who had been killed in a
mysterious way.
The colonists made plans to build a
ship large enough to carry them back to
civilization. When they discovered smoke
rising from the crater of the volcano, they
redoubled their efforts to complete the
boat.
One day the colonists received a call
on the telegraph telling them to go to
the corral immediately. There they found
a note which told them to follow the
wire that had been attached to the
telegraph line. They followed the wire into a
hidden cove, where they found the
fantastic submarine Nautilus and its captain,
their benefactor, Captain Nemo. He told
them how he had been a rich nobleman
in India, how he had been defeated in
his fight for the independence of his
country, and how he and his followers,
disgusted with the ways of man, had
built a gigantic undersea craft. His
followers having died, Nemo, old and
alone, had taken the Nautilus to Lincoln
Island, where he had lived for the past
six years, giving aid to the colonists
because he believed them to be good
people. After presenting Harding with a box
of jewels and pearls and making a last
request that he be buried in his ship,
2502

he died. The colonists sealed the
Nautilus with Captain Nemo's body inside
and then opened the flood valves to sink
the ship.
Following some advice Captain Nemo
had given him, Harding investigated the
caverns beneath the island and saw that,
as soon as the sea water penetrated to
the shaft of the volcano, the entire island
would explode.
The colonists worked with all haste to
complete work on the boat. By March of
their fourth year on the island the hull
had been built, but on the night before
the launching the entire island was
shattered with a tremendous roar. All that
was left of Lincoln Island was a small
rock formation. The colonists had all
been able to reach safety there, but their
ship had vanished. The colonists stayed
on the rock formation for nine days.
On March 24 they sighted a ship. It
was the Duncan, which had come to
rescue Ayrton after his exile of twelve years
on Tabor Island. The colonists went to
America, and with the treasure Captain
Nemo had given them they bought land
in Iowa. They colonized it and prospered
in their new home.
2503

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1870
Principal characters*.
Edwin Drood, a young engineer
Jack Jasper, Edwin's young uncle and guardian
Rosa Bud, Edwin's fiancee
Neville Landless, an orphaned young man
Helena Landless, Neville's sister and Rosa Bud's schoolmate
Durdles, a stonemason and friend of Jack Jasper
Mr. Crisparkle, Neville Landless' tutor and friend
Critique:
The Mystery of Edwin Drood was
Charles Dickens' last novel, begun when
the author was already sick and exhausted.
It was not finished, and no notes to
indicate what the solution in Dickens' mind
might have been have ever been
discovered. Many people have tried to
hypothesize a probable ending and to write a
conclusion, but no solution has been
satisfactory; Dickens' secret died with
him. One of the most interesting theories,
however, finds Mr. Jasper the murderer
and relates the death of Edwin Drood to
the secret society of Thugs in India, a sect
that murdered by strangulation. This
novel is almost entirely a murder mystery.
Although some of Dickens' earlier novels
had contained elements of a mysteiy plot,
this book is the only one to be so
completely of that type. It was probably
inspired bv the work of Dickens' friend,
Wilkie Collins, a famous author of
mysteries.
The Story:
Mr. Jack Jasper was the young
choirmaster of the cathedral at Cloisterham.
Young as he was, he was also the guardian
of his orphan nephew, Edwin Drood, who
was only a few years Jasper's junior. In
spite of his positions of trust, Jasper was
an opium addict. Edwin Drood was an
apprentice engineer who would one day
become a partner in the firm that em'
ployed him, for his father had been one
of the owners. Drood's profession took
him all over the world, but he came back
at every opportunity to Cloisterham to see
his uncle and his fiancee.
Drood's fiancee, Rosa Bud, was
attending a finishing school in Cloisterham. She
had been there for several years, for both
her parents were dead. The fathers of the
two young people had been extremely
close friends and each had requested in
his will that the two be engaged and, at
the proper time, married. As the years
passed, however, the two young people
realized that they were not in love and,
contrary to their parents' wishes, had no
desire to marry. In Rosa's last year at the
finishing school they agreed that they
would remain friends, but they put aside
all ideas of marriage.
No one except Rosa realized that Jasper
was in love with her. Rosa was very much
afraid of Jasper, so afraid that she dared
not tell anyone of Jasper's infatuation. But
she almost gave her secret away when she
ceased taking music lessons from him, lest
he annoy her during the hours when they
were alone.
During one of Drood's visits to
Cloisterham a young couple from Ceylon,
Englishmen who had been orphaned in
that far-off island, came to the city. The
girl, Helena Landless, who was Rosa
Bud's age, entered the finishing school;
the young man, who was the age of Edwin
Drood, began studies under one of the
2504

minor officials at the cathedral, Mr.
Crisparkle. Crisparkle, a friend of Jasper
and Drood, introduced his charge, Neville
Landless, to the two men in the hope that
they would all become fast friends.
It turned out, however, that young
Landless was very much affected by Rosa
and was irritated by Drood's casual
attitude toward her. The very first evening
that they were together in Jasper's
lodgings, the two quarreled, and Jasper
realized that if he had not interceded
Landless would have killed Drood in a fit
of rage.
Rosa and Helena did become close
friends, and Rosa confessed to Helena
that she was in love with the latter's
brother. Although she did not tell Jasper,
he soon discovered the truth for himself
and became exceedingly jealous. Jasper,
who was extremely mysterious at times,
and more than a little peculiar because of
his addiction to opium, became
acquainted with another peculiar man,
Durdles, a stonemason. Durdles took
Jasper about the cathedral and pointed
out the various old tombs under the
ancient edifice. On one of those visits, which
took place in the dead of night, Durdles
became very drunk. While he was asleep,
Jasper took the key to an underground
tomb from Durdles' pocket. What he did
with it later on remained a mystery.
During the next Christmas season Mr.
Crisparkle tried to patch up the quarrel
between Landless and Drood. He
proposed that they meet together at Jasper's
lodgings and, after mutual apologies, have
a congenial evening together. The two
young men agreed. On Christmas
morning, however, Drood was reported missing
by his uncle, with whom the nephew was
staying. Jasper said that late the night
before the two young men had walked out
of his lodgings and turned toward the
river. No one had seen them afterward.
When Mr. Crisparkle appeared, he
reported that young Landless had left
earlier that morning on a solitary walking
trip. A searching party set out after him
and brought him back to Cloisterham.
Young Landless was unable to convince
anyone of his innocence, although there
was not enough evidence to convict him
of any crime. Indeed, the body of Drood
was not found, although Mr. Crisparkle
discovered his watch and tie pin in the
river.
At first only Rosa and Helena were
convinced of Landless* innocence. Soon
they won Mr. Crisparkle over to their
side, and he aided Landless to leave
Cloisterham for a refuge in London.
Jasper vowed that he would unearth
evidence that would incriminate the
murderer. He also intimated that he had
some evidence that Landless was the
guilty person. Publicly, however, there
was no indication that Edwin Drood had
actually been killed.
After a few months Jasper appeared at
the school and requested an interview
with Rosa. As they walked in the school
gardens, Jasper told of his love for her and
warned her that he had sufficient evidence
to send Neville Landless to the gallows.
He also implied that he would use his
knowledge unless Rosa returned his love.
After he had gone, Rosa left the school
and went to London, where she sought
the protection of her guardian, Mr.
Grewgious, an odd man but one who
loved her because he had been in love
with her mother years before. Mr.
Grewgious arranged to have Rosa remain
in safe lodgings in London. Mr. Crisparkle
arrived the next day and began to lay
plans to extricate Landless and Rosa from
their troubles.
One day a white-haired stranger
arrived in Cloisterham. His name, he let it
be known, was Datchery, and he was
looking for quiet lodgings where he could
end his days in comfort and peace.
Looking for a place of residence that would
reflect the quaintness of the past, he took
rooms across from Jasper's home in the
old postern gate. Passersby would see him
sitting by the hour behind his open door.
Every time he heard some remark about
2505

Jasper, he made a chalk mark, some long,
some short, on the inside of his closet
door.
A short time later Jasper was followed
about, almost haunted, by a haggard old
woman from whom he had bought opium.
She had learned something about the
choirmaster, apparently, and suspected a
great deal more. Datchery, noting her
interest in Jasper, followed her to a cheap
hotel. The next morning he and the
strange woman attended a service in the
cathedral. When the woman told him that
she knew Jasper, old Datchery returned
home and added another chalk mark to
those behind his closet door. . . .
(Here the story ends, for Dickens died
suddenly, leaving the novel incomplete,
with no notes among his papers to show
how he intended to end the story.)
2506

THE NAKED YEAR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Boris Pilnyak (Boris Andreyevich Vogau, 1894- )
Type of plot: Regional chronicle
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1922
Principal characters:
Donat Ratchin, a merchant's son, a young revolutionist
Nastia, a chambermaid
Arkhip, a peasant member of the party
Arkhipov, his father
Natalia Ordynin, a young doctor
Boris,
Gleb, and
Egor, her brothers
Catherine, and
Lydia, her sisters
Andrey, a fugitive
Critique:
The importance of The Naked Year
is historical. During World War I and
its aftermath of revolution, Russian prose
almost ceased to exist, although some
types of poetry flourished. This novel
is the first prose work of any stature to
be published after the hiatus. Pilnyak is
strongly under the influence of poetical
tenets; that is, this work exalts manner
over matter. Quite literally there is no
plot, nor are there characters in the usual
sense. Rather the author gives a series of
impressions of revolution-torn Russia
during one year of civil war, pestilence,
blockade, and change, just before the
Soviets gained firm control in 1921. The
reading is irritatingly obscure at times,
but effective in its blending of lyricism
and realism.
The Story:
Ordynin Town was a citadel which
had for years lived a normal life. That is
to say, poets, artisans, and merchants
dwelt there, busy with their tasks. The
Ratchin family had been merchants for
two hundred years, and for much of
that time they had leased the salt trade.
Donat, a curly-headed youth, was the
youngest son. Already he counted on
taking his place in the market, on buying
and selling and ruling his clerks.
The monastery held an important
place in the lives of the people, for its
bells regulated their lives. At nine
o'clock the town went to bed. Anyone
up and about after that hour had to
identify himself to the watch. Pranks
of boys and dwarfs provided the only
excitement, and the stationer's store was
the intellectual center of the town.
Donat at fifteen fell in love with a
chambermaid named Nastia. Every
evening he went to her kitchen and read
church history aloud to her. When Ivan,
his autocratic father, heard of the
attachment, he had both Donat and Nastia
whipped; that same night Ivan sent his
housekeeper to Donat's bed. Afterward
Donat learned how to get out of the
house at night. For a while he clambered
out of a window and went to see the
persecuted widow of a rich money-lender.
In 1914 war came, and in 1917
revolution. From ancient Ordynin the
inhabitants were called up to learn the
craft of murder, to kill and die. Donat
was sent to the Carpathians. The first
THE NAKED YEAR by Boris Pilnyak. Translated by Alec Brown. By permission ol the publishers,
Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1929, by Payson & Clarke.
2507

casualty of Ordynin was Classic-Spark,
a loafer who committed suicide when the
vodka ran out. Because the merchants of
Ordynin refused to pay a sufficient bribe
to the engineers who were laying the
railroad tracks, the railway station was
put some distance away. Ordynin was
doomed to remain in the backwash of
progress and change.
The Ratchin house was requisitioned
by the Red Guard, and the salt market
was broken up. Donat returned from the
war full of hatred for the old order. He
ordered that the salt building was to be
destroyed and a house for the people
erected in its place.
In the monastery Oily Kuntz printed
blank orders for arrest and imprisonment.
Arkhip, a peasant unused to writing, was
in command, and frequently he
laboriously penned orders of execution.
Comrade Laitis took Oily to the cinema and
saw her home. Later he came back with
his soldiers to arrest Andrey, a lodger,
but Andrey cleverly gave them the slip
and got away. The soldiers broke into
Oily's room when they searched the
building, and Oily wept out of sympathy for
Andrey. Semyon, a bookish man
interested in masonry, was much impressed
by Andrey's cleverness.
Old Arkhipov, Arkhip's father, went
to see the doctor. His fears were
confirmed when the doctor and Natalia
Ordynin, his assistant, told him he had
cancer of the stomach. At the moment
Arkhipov decided that he must die,
Arkhip was signing an execution warrant.
That evening the father asked Arkhip's
advice, and on his son's suggestion he
shot himself in the mouth.
After two years Gleb returned to the
manor. No one could remember whether
the town was named for the Ordynin
family or whether the family took its name
from the town. At any rate the Ordynins
had been lords for a long time; now the
seal of Cain was on them. In the
rundown house no one greeted Gleb, but
soon Egor, his brother, half-naked and
dirty, came stumbling in with the
servant Martha. Martha had found her
master in a brothel and brought him home.
Egor had paid for the spree by selling
his sister Natalia's coat.
Gleb learned bad news. Earlier Boris,
his older brother, had locked Egor in his
room and then had raped Martha. Since
Egor was half in love with her, the crime
seemed serious. When Boris came into
Gleb's room, Boris announced gloomily
that he was suffering from syphilis, a
family disease. Then Gleb thought of his
lunatic father, a religious fanatic in his
old age, and of the brothers and sisters
who had died in infancy.
Anna, the mother, sold clothes and
furniture to make ends meet. Natalia,
already suspected of too much fondness
for Arkhip, alienated herself from the
family by going to live at the hospital
where she worked. Catherine, the
youngest daughter, was pregnant, and Lydia,
the other sister, advised her to have an
abortion. To her dismay, Catherine
learned that she also had syphilis, but
when she ran to Lydia for comfort, her
sister, under the influence of morphine,
paid little attention to her.
Andrey joined a brotherhood near the
Black Streams. The peasant girls called
him out to their dances at night and
he was happy for a time. Aganka, the
gayest and hardest-working of the girls,
attracted him greatly, but she died during
the hot summer. Smallpox and typhus
broke out and all Russia suffered from
pestilence and famine and war. Andrey
became Irina's betrothed, although the
comrades frowned on marriage as
sentimental nonsense. Donat Ratchin was
the unbending leader of their anarchistic
commune.
The commune ceased to be a haven
when the band of strangers arrived.
Armed, they killed most of the men at
the instigation of Harry, their English
leader, and then rode on to join an
uprising in the Ukraine. Andrey was lucky
to get away.
Boris was furious at first when Ivan,

president of the poverty committee,
requisitioned the Ordynin manor. He had
known Ivan for years and despised him
as an unlettered peasant. In a spirit of
bravado Boris left home on foot. A
friendly peasant gave him shelter the first
night, but the apprehensive peasant made
him leave early the next morning. Later
that day Boris found space in a refugee
wagon.
The famine became worse. The old
men would barter with traveling me*-
chants because there was no money to
use in buying. There were no young men
left to work; they had all gone off with
the Reds or the Whites. People did
anything they could for bread. At Mar
Junction, the railway station, the Red
Guards would often requisition young
women who came in on the refugee train.
The Whites occupied Ordynin, and
when they left the Reds swarmed back.
All over the town committees and
commissions sprang up. The Moscow
functionaries even reopened a mine outside
the town. Although the mine was a
deathtrap because of its antique
equipment, men were forced to work in it.
Arkhip, busy with his many duties,
felt keenly his lack of education.
Natalia, the only normal Ordynin, was a
doctor under the new government.
Arkhip had long known Natalia, and at last,
needing an educated partner and
wanting children, he asked her to marry him.
Natalia thought of her university days,
when she had been in love. It was a
painful memory. She would welcome
this new kind of mating, with no love
and with no pain. But in spite of her
resolutions she felt herself close to
Arkhip and talked of the coziness of their
union.
Arkhip went home and thumbed in
vain through his dictionary. He did not
know the word coziness, nor could he
find it.
2509

NANA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1860's
Locale: Paris and rural France
First published: 1880
Principal characters:
Nana, a beautiful courtesan
Fauchery, a dramatic critic
Steiner, a wealthy banker
George Hugon, a student
Philippe Hugon, his brother, an officer
Fontan, an actor
Count Muff at de Beuville,
Sabine, his wife
Marquis de Chouard, and
Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, well-known figures of the Parisian
world of art and fashion
Critique:
Nana, one of Zola's Rougon-Macquart
series of novels picturing French life and
society in the period from 1852 to 1870,
was written to portray a successful
courtesan not sentimentally or romantically
but realistically. As Zola presents her,
Nana is moronic, vulgar, greedy, and
cruel, and her story is a sermon warning
men against a devotion to lust. The
aovel is a powerful indictment of the
social decay which marked the reign of
Napoleon III.
The Story:
M. Fauchery, theatrical reviewer for
a Paris paper, was attending the premiere
of The Blonde Venus at the Variety
Theatre because he had heard rumors of
Nana, Venus of the new play.
Smart Paris was well represented at
the theatre that night, and Fauchery
and his cousin Hector de la Faloise noted
a few of the more interesting people. In
the audience were Steiner, a crooked but
very rich banker who was the current
lover of Rose Mignon, an actress in The
Blonde Venus; Mignon, who served as
procurer for his own wife; Daguenet, a
reckless spender reputed .to be Nana's
lover for the moment; Count Xavier de
Vandeuvres; Count Muffat de Beuville
and his wife, and several of the city's
well-known courtesans.
The play, a vulgar travesty on the life
of the Olympian gods, was becoming
boresome when Nana finally appeared,
and with beautiful golden hair floating
over her shoulders walked confidently
toward the footlights for her feature song.
When she began to sing, she seemed
such a crude amateur that murmurs and
hisses were beginning to sound. But
suddenly a young student exclaimed
loudly that she was stunning. Every one
laughed, including Nana. It was as
though she frankly admitted that she
had nothing except her voluptuous self
to offer. But Nana knew that was
sufficient for her audience. As she ended
her song she retired to the back of the
stage amid a roar of applause. In the
last act, Nana's body was veiled only by
her golden locks and a transparent gauze.
The house grew quiet and tense. Nana
smiled confidently, knowing that she had
conquered them with her marble-like
flesh.
Thus Nana, product of the streets of
Paris, started her career as mistress of
the city. To get money for her scrofulous
little son, Louis, and for her own
extravagant wants, she sold herself at vary-
2510

ing prices to many men. She captivated
Steiner, the banker, at an all-night party
after her initial success as Venus. He
bought her a country place, La Mignotte,
a league from Les Fondettes, home of
Madame Hugon, whose seventeen-year-
old son George had called Nana stunning
the opening night of The Blonde Venus
and who had been enraptured with her
at Nana's party. Nana, making no
pretense of belonging exclusively to Steiner,
invited a number of friends to visit hei
at La Mignotte.
Madame Hugon entertained Count
Muffat, his wife Sabine, and their
daughter Estelle at her home in September.
George, who had been expected several
times during the summer, suddenly
came home. He had invited Fauchery
and Daguenet for a visit. M. de Van-
deuvres, who had promised for five years
to come to Les Fondettes, was likewise
expected. Madame Hugon was unaware
of any connection between the coming
of Nana to La Mignotte and the
simultaneous visits of all these men to Les
Fondettes.
George escaped from his doting mothef
and went in the rain to Nana, whc
found him soaking wet as she was
gathering strawberries in her garden. While
his clothes were drying, he dressed in
some of Nana's. Despite Nana's feeling
that it was wrong to give herself to such
an innocent boy, she finally submitted to
George's entreaties — and she was
faithful to him for almost a week.
Muffat, who had lived a circumspect
life for forty years, became increasingly
inflamed by passion as he paid nightly
visits to Nana's place, only to be rebuffed
each time. He talked with Steiner, who
likewise was being put off by Nana with
the excuse that she was not feeling well.
Meanwhile Muffat's wife attracted the
attention of Fauchery, the journalist.
Eleven of Nana's Parisian friends
arrived in a group at La Mignotte. George
was seen with Nana and her friends by
his mother, who later made him promise
not to visit the actress, a promise he had
no intention of keeping. His brother
Philippe, an army officer, threatened to
bring him back by his ears if he had
anything more to do with Nana.
Being true to George was romantically
pleasing, but financially it was unwise,
and Nana at last gave herself to the
persistent Muffat the night before she
returned to Paris to see whether she could
recapture the public that had acclaimed
her in The Blonde Venus.
Three months later Muffat, who had
taken the place of castoff George, was
involved in financial troubles. During a
quarrel with Nana he learned that his
wife Sabine and Fauchery were making
a cuckold of him. Nana, by turns
irritated or bored by Muffat and then sorry
for him, chose this means of avenging
herself on Fauchery, who had written a
scurrilous article entitled The Golden
Fly, obviously about Nana herself.
Having broken with Muffat and
Steiner, Nana gave up her place in the
Boulevard Haussmann and went to live
with the actor Fontan. But Fontan
became increasingly difficult and even
vicious, beating her night after night and
taking all her money. Nana returned to
her old profession of streetwalking to
pick up a few francs. After a close brush
with the police, Nana grew more
discreet. Also, she left the brutal Fontan
and sought a part as a grand lady in a
new play at the Variety Theatre. Given
the part, she failed miserably in it; but
she began to play the lady in real life in
a richly decorated house which Muffat
purchased for her. Despite Nana's
callous treatment of him, Muffat could not
stay away from her.
In her mansion in the Avenue de
Villiers Nana squandered money in great
sums. Finding Muffat's gifts insufficient,
she added Count Xavier de Vandeuvres
as a lover. She planned to get eight or
ten thousand francs a month from him
for pocket money. George Hugon
reappeared, but he was less interesting
than he had once been. When Philippe
Hugon tried to extricate his young
brother from Nana's net, he also was
caught. Nana grew bored. Frdm the
2511

streets one day she picked up the slut
Satin, who became her vice.
In a race for the Grand Prize of Paris
at Longchamps, Nana won two
thousand louis on a horse named for her. But
de Vandeuvres, who owned the filly
Nana as well as the favorite Lusignan,
lost everything through some crooked
bettina. He set fire to his stable and died
o
with his horses.
Muffat found Nana in George's arms
one evening in September and from that
time he ceased to believe in her sworn
fidelity. Yet he became more and more
her abject slave, submitting meekly
when Nana forced him to play woolly
bear, horse, and dog with her, and then
mocked his ridiculous nudity. Muffat
was further degraded when he discovered
Nana in bed with his father-in-law, the
ancient Marquis de Chouard.
George, jealous of his brother
Philippe, stabbed himself in Nana's
bedroom when she refused to marry him.
He died of his self-inflicted wound and
Nana was briefly sorry for him. This
utterly evil woman also broke Philippe.
He was imprisoned for stealing army
funds to spend on her.
Nana thrived on those she destroyed.
It was fate which caught her at last.
Visiting her dying son after a long
absence and many conquests in foreign
lands, she caught smallpox from him
and died horribly in a Paris hospital.
The once-beautiful body which had
destroyed so many men lay like a rotting
ruin in a deserted room as outside there
sounded the French battlecry. The
Franco-Prussian war of 1870 had begun.
2512

THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Late twentieth century
Locale: London
First published: 1904
Principal characters:
Auberon Quinn, King of England
Adam Wayne, Provost of Notting Hill
Mr. Turnbull, a general
Buck, Provost of North Kensington
Critique:
Although The Napoleon of Notting
Hill is at first glance an amiable fantasy
and satire on staid government, its appeal
to romance is a solid criticism of
seriousness. In the early twentieth century, when
Great Britain was at the height of a
peaceful prosperity, it seemed that law and
order would eventually swallow up
eccentricity and puckish fun. Chesterton
rebelled against orderly progress from
precedent to precedent and struck a
vigorous blow for human worth. As prediction
his novel is undoubtedly false, but what
he envisioned as desirable is far preferable
to what we have in our own time.
The Story:
Although they were his friends, Barker
and Lambert often considered Quinn a
fool, even a dangerous man, for he
persisted in seeing the ludicrous where they
saw only the grave. On this particular
afternoon Quinn was walking behind his
two friends, and as he saw the buttons on
their tail coats, he thought them very
much like dragon's eyes. Forever
afterward he thought of their backs as two
dragons shuffling to the rear.
By the end of the twentieth century
such imagination was scarcely
appreciated. The whole world had become
orderly. The smaller nations had
disappeared, and among the larger nations
Great Britain was by far the most
extensive and best organized. The king was
now chosen by lot instead of by heredity
on the theory that anybody could be a
good king. Parliament was only a memory
of the days when government was a
tedious process. As a reflection of the times,
every one wore sober, uniform clothing.
Armies and wars were almost forgotten.
During their walk Quinn and his
friends were astonished to see a fine
looking man in a green military uniform
decorated with many insignia. The man was
attracting a good deal of attention, for the
people had never seen brilliant clothes
before. When Lambert and Barker invited
the man to dinner, they learned that he
was the ex-president of Nicaragua, the
last small state to be conquered. They
considered the ex-president an affable,
saddened man. He still believed firmly in the
right of individuals and of states to be
different, but he was obviously very old-
fashioned in his thinking. In fact, after
they argued with him and showed him
the current reasoned view, he went out
and committed suicide.
Quinn, later on, was as usual
entertaining his friends with pointless quixotic
stories. Barker and Lambert listened
patiently at first, but the meaning of the
vague stories always eluded them. At last,
in exasperation, they told Quinn to go
stand on his head. To their surprise,
Quinn did so, and competently. While he
was thus attracting attention from the
passers-by, some policemen came up.
Thinking they were to be reprimanded,
all began to apologize. But the policemen
brought word that Quinn had been
chosen king. Barker protested loudly that
THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL by Gilbert Keith Chesterton. By permission of the publishers,
Podd, Mead & Co. Copyright, 1904, by John Lane & Co. Renewed.
2513

Britain had no need to choose a buffoon
as king. Quinn, however, was quite
willing to be a king. He immediately styled
himself King Auberon.
One day the king was taking a stroll
when a boy of nine in a cocked hat struck
him smartly with a wooden sword. Instead
of punishing the boy, Auberon gave him
a coin and complimented him on his
knightly bearing. The sight of the boy in
his make-believe armor gave the king an
idea for bringing life and joy to staid
London.
As soon as he could, he appeared before
a histoiical society with his great
innovation. All the districts of London which had
been cities in earlier days were to be
returned to their former autonomy. North
Kensington, South Kensington, Notting
Hill—all were to have a provost as their
chief official. The provosts were to be
garbed in medieval splendor and were to
be accompanied by an honorary guard
armed with halberds. Although the
announcement was received with
incredulity at first, the people humored their
fanciful king. One provost objected to the
guards, however, on the grounds that
when he was obliged to take a bus, often
there were no seats for his henchmen.
Ten years later the plan was still in
effect. One day the Provost of North
Kensington, who was in private life Mr.
Buck, a linen draper, came to the king
with a serious and angry face. A new
highway through London was being
planned, and the Provost of Notting Hill
refused to sell the land necessary for a
right of way. Soon other provosts came in
to second Mr. Buck's complaint. The
Provost of Notting Hill, they complained,
was taking his office much too seriously;
the offer for the land was more than fair,
and anyway Notting Hill was little more
than a slum. The king in a puckish mood
upheld the independence of Notting Hill.
He was interested to hear that the
stubborn provost was Adam Wayne, once a
nine-year-old boy with a wooden sword.
The difficulty arose from the fact that
young Wayne had never been out of
London, and he thought Notting Hill the
25
most beautiful place in the world.
Imbued with chivalric ideals, he had no
intention of allowing a modern highway to
run through his beloved narrow streets.
To get help in his fight to preserve his
domain, he visited the merchants in his
territory. He found them apathetic to
their peril. They were interested only in
making money.
The one kindred spirit he found was
Mr. Turnbull, who kept a toy shop. Mr.
Turnbull had a collection of lead soldiers
and a brick model of Notting Hill. With
the enthusiastic toy dealer, Wayne sat
down to plan the defense of Notting Hill.
Cooperation was the easier to get because
Wayne promised to make Turnbull a high
officer in the army.
Mr. Buck reasoned out that Notting
Hill could muster at best only two
hundred defenders. If he could lead five or six
hundred men against them, it was
mathematically certain that the Notting Hill
stronghold could be taken and the
highway would go through. At dusk, thinking
to have an easy conquest, he marched his
men against the district. But Wayne had
shut off the gas and plunged the streets
into* darkness. The cunning defenders of
Notting Hill then fell on the attackers
with halberds and swords.
After this defeat the other provosts
combined a larger force and in broad davlight
attacked again. This time they could find
no opposition. While they were searching
everywhere for the small Notting Hill
forces, Wayne again used superior
strategy. Giving a half crown to all boys he
could find, he ordered the urchins to hire
hansom cabs and have the drivers come
to the heart of Notting Hill. Then Wayne
kept the horses and used the carriages to
construct a barricade around the center of
his district. Amply provisioned, the
defenders prepared to sit out a siege.
As more attackers came to join battle, it
looked at last as if Notting Hill must fall.
Once again Wayne was equal to the
occasion. He sent out word that if the he-
siegers did not withdraw at once, he would
open the reservoir and flood the narrow
streets.
14

Sullenly the men from the other
districts acknowledged their defeat for the
time being. Again they prepared for a
fresh attack. At last all of London was
ready. With banners flying and with axes
and halberds held high, the soldiers closed
in on Notting Hill. Wayne knew his
defeat was at hand. King Auberon, admiring
the resurgence of local pride, went into
the thick of things as a reporter. He was
knocked down and left for dead on
the ground. Wayne also fell mortally
wounded. And so Notting Hill was taken.
Afterward, as disembodied voices,
Auberon and Wayne compared notes.
The king had brought laughter to
London, Wayne had brought love. They were
content.'
2515

THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM
Type of work: Short story
Author: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: High seas
First published: 1838
Principal characters:
Arthur Gordon Pym, an adventurer
Augustus Barnard, his friend
Dirk Peters, a sailor
Critique:
Presented as the journal of Arthur
Gordon Pym, this story is one of those
celebrated literary hoaxes so well suited
to Poe's talents and taste. The model of
the story is the Gothic tale of horror, and
in its effects of terror and the
unbelievable it equals any other of Poe's tales.
It includes such matters as the eating
of human flesh and the discovery of
human life in regions where the map of
the world shows only sea waste. In all
other respects the story illustrates the
remarkable ability of the writer to
simulate the truth when dealing with the
unnatural or the supernatural.
The Story:
Arthur Gordon Pym was born the son
of a respectable trader at Nantucket.
While still young he attended an
academy and there met Augustus Barnard,
the son of a sea captain, and the two
became close friends. One night after a
party Augustus awoke Pym from his
sleep and together they set off for the
harbor. There, Augustus took charge
of a small boat and they headed out to
sea.
Before long, Pym, seeing that his
companion was unconscious, realized the
sad truth of the escapade. Augustus had
been drunk, and now in the cold weather
was lapsing into insensibility. As a
result their boat was run down by a whaler
and the two narrowly escaped with their
lives. They were taken aboard the ship
which had run them down and returned
to port at Nantucket.
The two friends became even more
intimate after this escapade. Captain
Barnard was at that time preparing to
fit out the Grampus, an old sailing hulk,
for a voyage on which Augustus was
to accompany him. Against his father's
wishes, Pym planned to sail with his
friend. Since Captain Barnard would
not willingly allow Pym to sail without
his father's permission, the two boys
decided to smuggle Pym aboard and hide
him in the hold until the ship should
be so far at sea the captain would not
turn back.
At first everything went according to
schedule. Pym was hidden below in a
large box with a store of water and food
to last him approximately four days.
Great was his consternation to discover,
at the end of the fourth day, that his
way to the main deck was barred. His
friend Augustus did not appear to
rescue him. In that terrible state he
remained for several days, coming each
day closer to starvation or death from
thirst.
At last his dog, which had followed
Pym aboard the ship, found his way to
his master. Tied to the dog's body was a
paper containing a strange message
concerning blood and a warning to Pym to
keep silent if he valued his life.
Pym was sick from hunger and fever
when Augustus at last appeared. The
story he had to tell was a terrible one.
Shortly after the ship had put to sea
the crew had mutinied, and Captain
Barnard had been set adrift in a small
boat. Some of the crew had been killed,
and Augustus himself was a prisoner of
2516

the mutineers. Pym and Augustus
located a place of comparative safety where
it was agreed Pym should hide.
Pym now began to give his attention
to the cargo, which seemed not to have
been stowed in accordance with the rules
for safety. Dirk Peters, a drunken
mutineer, helped both Pym and Augustus
and provided them with food.
When the ship ran into a storm, some
of the mutineers were washed overboard.
Augustus was once more given free run
of the ship. Augustus, Pym, and Peters
planned to overcome the other mutineers
and take possession of the ship. To
frighten the mutineers during a drunken
brawl, Pym disguised himself to resemble
a sailor recently killed. The three killed
all of the mutineers except a sailor named
Parker. Meanwhile a gale had come up,
and in a few hours the vessel was
reduced to a hulk by the heavy seas.
Because the ship's cargo was made up of
empty oil casks, there was no possibility
of its sinking from the violence of the
heavy seas. When the storm abated, the
four survivors found themselves weak
and without food or the hope of securing
stores from the flooded hold. One day
a vessel was sighted, but as it drew near
those aboard the Grampus saw that it
was adrift and all of its passengers were
dead.
Pym tried to go below by diving, but
he brought up nothing of worth. His
companions were beginning to go mad
from strain and hunger. Pym revived
them by immersing each of them in the
water for awhile. As their agony
increased, a ship came near, but it veered
away without coming to their rescue.
In desperation the men considered the
possibility of eating one of their
number. When they drew lots, Parker was
chosen to be eaten. For four days the
other three lived upon his flesh.
At last they made their way into
the stores and secured food. Rain fell,
and the supply of fresh water, together
with the food, restored their hope.
Augustus, who had suffered an arm
injury, died. He was devoured by sharks
as soon as his body was cast overboard.
A violent lurch of the ship threw
Pym overboard, but he regained the ship
with Peters' help just in time to be
saved from sharks. The floating hulk
having overturned at last, the two
survivors fed upon barnacles. Finally, when
they were nearly dead of thirst, a British
ship came to their rescue. It was the
jane Guy of Liverpool, bound on a
sealing and trading voyage to the South
Seas and Pacific.
Peters and Pym began to recover.
Within two weeks they were able to look
back upon their horrible experiences with
almost the same feeling with which one
recollects terrible dreams.
The vessel stopped at Christmas
Harbor, where some seals and sea elephants
were killed for their hides. The captain
was anxious to sail his vessel into
Antarctica on a voyage of exploration.
The weather turned cold. There was
an adventure with a huge bear which
Peters killed in time to save his
companions. Scurvy afflicted the crew. Once the
captain decided to turn northward, but
later he foolishly took the advice of Pym
to continue on. They sailed until they
sighted land and encountered some
savages whom they took aboard.
The animals on the island were strange,
and the water was of some peculiar
composition which Pym could not readily
understand. The natives on that strange
coast lived in a state of complete savagery.
Bartering began. Before the landing
party could depart, however, the sailors
were trapped in what seemed to be an
earthquake, which shut off their passage
back to the shore. Only Pym and Peters
escaped, to learn that the natives had
caused the tremendous earth slide by
pulling great boulders from the top of
a towering cliff. The only white men
left on the island, they were faced by
the problem of evading the natives, who
were now preparing to attack the ship.
Unable to warn their comrades, Pym
and Peters could only watch helplessly
while the savages boarded the Jane Guy
and overcame the six white men who had
17

remained aboard. The ship was almost
demolished. The savages brought about
their own destruction, however, for in
exploring the ship they set off the
ammunition and the resulting explosion
killed about a thousand of them.
In making their escape from the island
Pym and Peters discovered ruins similar
in form to those marking the site of
Babylon. When they came upon two
unguarded canoes, they took possession of
one and pushed out to sea. Savages
chased them but eventually gave up the
pursuit. They began to grow listless and
sleepy when their canoe entered a warm
sea. Ashy material fell continually
around and upon them. At last the boat
rushed rapidly into a cataract, and a
human figure, much larger than any
man and as white as snow, arose in the
pathway of the doomed boat. So ended
the journal of Arthur Gordon Pyrn.
2518

A NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF DAVID CROCKETT
Type of work: Autobiography
Author: David Crockett (1786-1836)
Type of plot: History and adventure
Time of plot: 1780-1834
Locale: Tennessee
First published: 1834
Principal character:
David Crockett, the narrator
Critique:
Davy Crockett has long been a familiar
figure in American history. As a hunter
and frontiersman he is often likened to
Daniel Boone, and his heroic death at
the Alamo has stirred our imaginations.
Whatever charm this autobiography may
have must rest in the reader's interest in
Crockett himself, for the book is almost
graceless. Crockett seldom locates places,
gives dates, or names people. Even his
two wives are never called by name. The
sections dealing with the Creek War are
almost completely flat. We see Crockett as
a petulant hater of Andrew Jackson and
a slaughterer of bea,rs. Yet because of the
author, and the picture of frontier life he
presents, the book is an important
document in our American past.
The Story:
Crockett claimed that he wrote his own
story because a spurious autobiography
had been circulated concerning his
exploits. He had never had much schooling,
and the writing was likely to be ungram-
matical. But Crockett had become a figure
by reason of his frontier life and his
election to Congress. Those people who
admired a real man who was no follower
of Andrew Jackson were asked to take
the narrative kindly.
John Crockett was born either in
Ireland or on a ship bound for America.
The earlier part of his life was spent in
Pennsylvania. Rebecca Hawkins was born
in Maryland. After John served in the
Revolutionary War, he and Rebecca
settled in Tennessee, a dangerous and
troubled region. John's parents were killed
by the Creek Indians, one of his brothers
was captured, and anothei was wounded.
David, son of John and Rebecca, was
born on August 17, 1786. His earliest
recollection was of a near tragedy. He was
playing on the bank of a river with his
four older brothers and a. older friend
of fifteen. The five bigger boys got into
the Crockett canoe for a lark. All would
have been well if any of the Crockett
boys had been paddling, but the fifteen-
year-old asserted his authority and took
the paddle. David watched from the shore
as the boy let the canoe drift closer to
a rapids. Fortunately, a neighbor working
nearby saw the danger and waded out
just in time to keep the canoe out of the
treacherous rapids.
The Crockett family, dirt poor in that
border area, moved several times before
David was twelve, each time seeking a
better living. At last John established a
tavern on the road to Knoxville. The
customers were largely wagoners. One day a
Dutchman driving a herd of cattle stopped
by, and John bound David over to him.
The boy made a trip of over four
hundred miles on foot to help the Dutchman
deliver cattle.
At the end of the trip David was paid
five or six dollars. He wanted to go home
then, but his master ordered him to stay.
Not knowing any better, David thought
himself forced to remain with the
Dutchman. But the plucky boy watched his
chance and told his story to some friendly
wagoners. They agreed to take him home
if he could escape the Dutchman. In the
middle of the night David crept away,
and by riding in the wagons and walking
a great deal, he eventually got back home.
2519

John thought David should get some
book learning. A neighbor had opened a
school nearby, and David attended classes
for four days. Then he had a fight with
a bigger boy and was afraid of the beating
the teacher would administer. Each day
he hid out in the woods when he was
supposed to be in school. When John
discovered what David had been doing, he
took after the boy with a hickory stick.
David ran away, determined to avoid a
beating.
Finding work here and there, David
lived somehow. For months he helped a
wagoner who kept his meager pay in
trust for him. When the wagoner made
a trip to the neighborhood of Baltimore,
David resolved to look over the city. He
was enchanted by the large ships in the
harbor. Screwing up his courage, he went
aboard a ship and had a talk with the
captain. When he was offered a place as
cabin boy on a voyage to England, he
accepted joyfully. But when he returned to
the wagoner to quit and collect his wages,
his employer kept him by force from
leaving and refused to turn over the money.
After some time he got away from his
brutish wagoner and started the long trip
home. Obtaining employment with a
kindlier wagoner, David told his woes.
Sympathetic people collected a purse of
three dollars, and David thought himself
amply provided for. Finally after a long
succession of odd jobs, he got back home.
He was fifteen years old. The family
was still scrimping to get along in the
tavern.
David worked out for various
neighbors to pay off debts contracted by his
father. At the end of a year his father
was free and clear, but David kept on
working for wages, as his clothes were
worn out. One of his employers was a
Quaker with a pretty niece to whom
David paid court. When she at last told
him she was already engaged, David was
quick to leave his job.
Next he courted a neighbor girl who
seemed pleased with his advances. When
David proposed to her, she accepted and
set a date for the wedding. The day
before the marriage Was to take place,
David went part way to her house to stay
overnight with another neighbor. There
his intended's sister met him with the
news that his fiancee had been married
the day before to another man.
Nothing daunted, David with the help
of friends was introduced to an Irish
family with a marriageable daughter.
Although at first the mother liked David,
she turned against him as a son-in-law.
She relented only after David prepared to
take the girl away to be married at his
house. With some calves, a few store
articles, and his gun David settled his
bride in an outlying cabin.
After the birth of his second son news
came that the Creeks were on the
warpath. Even though his wife objected,
David left to join the militia. Soon his
superior marksmanship and his
knowledge of the woods made David a leader
of the soldiers pursuing the Creeks.
During the campaign the greatest hardship
was hunger. In one engagement the
militia trapped and burned to death forty-six
Creeks in a log cabin. Afterward, hearing
that potatoes had been stored in the cellar,
David went back and rescued the supplies.
For nearly a year the whites pursued
the Indians, killing all the Creeks they
could find and burning their towns. At
the end of the year the rebellion was
crushed. Having had his fill of fighting,
David returned home.
When his wife died, David was left
with two sons and an infant daughter.
Finding it impossible to live without a
helpmate, he married a widow with two
children. She had a tidy farm and David
became a man of substance. In spite of
his lack of education, he was successively
a magistrate and a member of the
legislature. He had good ability at vote getting,
chiefly because he offered liquor and
chewing tobacco to his constituents and
told them racy stories.
By that time David had a mill and a
distillery. During the spring floods his
buildings were washed away. Once more
a poor man, David took up new land
farther west. There he gained great renown
2520

as a bear hunter, killing one hundred and
five bears in a year. He was also elected
to the legislature from his new territory.
David's reputation as a hunter and
story-teller kept him in politics for a long
time. He was shrewd enough to learn
something of government by listening,
and at last he passed for an able man.
After being defeated once, he was elected
to Congress, where he fought valiantly
for the interests of his border region. He
was proudest of the fact that he voted
according to his conscience only, and put
foremost the interests of his beloved
Tennessee. Above all, he was one man who
never knuckled down to Andrew Jackson.
2521

NATHAN THE WISE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Type of plot: Philosophic humanism
Time of plot: Twelfth century
Locale: Jerusalem
First published: 1779
Principal characters:
Nathan, a Jewish merchant
Recha, his adopted daughter
Sultan Saladin, son of the ruler of all the Saracens
Sittah, his sister
Conrad von Stauffen, a Templar who was spared by the Sultan
Daja, a Christian woman and Recha's companion
Critique:
Nathan the Wise is a fitting climax
to a great career, a deeply humane verse
drama expressing Lessing's philosophy of
enlightenment and tolerance. The
protagonist, a rich Jewish merchant, is based
on and a tribute to the playwright's good
friend, the humanitarian Moses
Mendelssohn, grandfather of the composer. The
high point of this interesting play occurs
when Nathan relates the famous folk
parable, found in both the Decameron
and the Gesta Romanorum, of the three
rings which represent the three major
religious faiths. The true faith (ring) is
that one which best serves mankind,
Lessing suggests, thereby writing an
eloquent plea for religious tolerance and
freedom.
The Story:
Nathan, a wealthy Jewish merchant,
had just returned to Jerusalem from
Babylon when Daja, the deeply prejudiced
Christian companion to the Jew's adopted
daughter, a girl orphaned during the
Third Crusade, told him of the dramatic
rescue of his beloved Recha from their
burning house. Nathan, in spite of the
fact that he had suffered severely at the
hands of Christians and Saracens alike,
wished to reward the young man who
had so courageously saved the girl's life.
His benefactor proved to be a young
Templar who recently had been pardoned
by the sultan.
Each day, at Recha's urging, Daja had
attempted to thank and reward the brave
young man as he made a daily visit to
Christ's tomb, but each time he rudely
repulsed her. Recha, as the result of shock
over her narrow escape as much as from
gratitude to her benefactor, suffered
hallucinations in which she believed that
the young Templar was her guardian
angel. Nathan thought it miraculous that
Sultan Saladin should spare a Christian
knight's life or that the Templar would
desire to be so spared. The truth was that
the Saracen's leniency had been based on
the young man's resemblance to his own
dead brother Assad.
Daja, told by Nathan to seek out the
young man and invite him to their home,
found him in a bad mood after rejecting
a friar's request from King Philip that he
spy on and murder Saladin, a treacherous
deed he vehemently refused to consider.
The knight again told Daja that he had
performed his rescue of Recha through
whim and therefore would accept no
reward. Nathan then met with and begged
the youth, a penniless stranger in a
strange land, to accept aid and friendship.
Boorish though the young knight was,
he offered to let Nathan buy him a
mantle to replace his own burned in the fire.
At this suggestion the Jew shed a tear and
dissolved the intolerant Templar's
disdain and suspicion. On this note they
shook hands, friends. Nathan learned that
the young man was Conrad von Stauffen,
a name somehow associated in the Jew's
mind with the name Filneck, but before
he could inquire further the Jew received
2522

a message demanding his presence at the
sultan's palace.
The young knight, in the meantime,
called on Recha. Something immediately
drew them together, some mutual feeling
not unlike romantic love. He hastened
off, however, to avert any disaster which
might befall Nathan at the hand of Sa-
ladin, who had summoned the Jew to
obtain from him money to replenish the
treasury so that the war against the
crusaders might continue. To put the Jew
somewhat at a disadvantage, Saladin
asked enlightenment from this man called
the Wise (which Nathan denied he was)
on the paradox of the several "true"
religions.
Nathan then told the story of the
father who possessed a ring traditionally
passed on to the favorite son who would
then be lord of the house. Since he loved
his three sons equally well (as the Father
in heaven loves us all, said Nathan), the
father made exact copies of the ring and
gave one to each son. None knew which
was the true ring, and after the father's
death a controversy arose. But the
problem of the "true" ring could be resolved
no more than the argument over the
"true" faith—Jewish, Christian, or
Mohammedan. A judge suggested that each
son act as if his were the true ring and
live and rule as well as he could. Finally,
generations hence, it would be decided
in a higher, greater court, with religions
as with the ring, which was the true one.
When Nathan returned from the
palace, young Conrad von StaufFen asked
for Recha's hand in marriage. Astounded,
Nathan said that he could not consent
without due reflection. Daja, on an
amorous mission, told the Templar that
Recha had been born Christian but had
been reared as a Jewess, a crime
punishable by death. The Templar assumed that
she had been stolen from her proper
parents. Dismayed by Daja's story, the knight
guardedly asked counsel of the Patriarch
of Jerusalem, who said that in such a case
the Jew must die at the stake for holding
back salvation from an innocent child.
Perplexed and unhappy, the young man
went to confer with the sultan.
Saladin, amazed at such accusations,
refused to believe ill of Nathan and asked
the Christian to exercise prudence and
charity. As the young Templar left to
save Nathan from the patriarch's wrath,
the sultan and his sister remarked the
resemblance the young man bore to their
long-lost brother, believed dead.
In the meantime a friar sent to spy on
Nathan revealed that eighteen years ago
he, the friar, then a squire, delivered
Recha to the Jew for his master, Lord
Wolf von Filneck, who was later killed
in battle; the child's mother, a von Stauf-
fen, was already dead. Nathan confided
that his own wife and seven sons had
been killed by Christians only shortly
before he adopted Recha as his own, an
act which saved his sanity and restored
his faith in God.
Saladin, who favored the marriage of
the two young people, then learned from
Nathan that Wolf von Filneck's breviary,
turned over to Nathan by the friar,
contained a strange story. Crusader Filneck's
rightful name was Assad. The sultan's
brother, having married a Christian and
accepted her faith, had left his son to
his deceased wife's brother, Conrad von
StaufFen, after whom he was named. The
boy's sister he left indirectly to Nathan.
The Jewish child and the Christian child
both were Mohammedans; their uncle
was a sultan, and their godfather was a
wise man and a Jew.
2523

NATIVE SON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Richard Wright (1908-1960)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1930's
Locale: An American city
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Bigger Thomas, a young Negro
Mr. Dalton, Bigger's employer
Mrs. Dalton, Mr. Dalton's wife
Mary Dalton, their daughter
Jan Erlone, Mary's sweetheart
Britten, Dalton's private detective
Bessie Mears, Bigger's mistress
Buckley, state prosecutor
Boris A. Max, Bigger's lawyer
Critique:
Written in simple, unadorned English,
Native Son succeeds in unfolding
human emotions of the most primitive and
sensuous nature. Richard Wright
attempts in this story to create mutual
understanding between his own race
and the white. Bigger Thomas is not
merely one twenty-year-old boy; he is an
entire race. Native Son shows that the
underprivileged Negro is either the
church-loyal, praying, submissive type or
the embittered, criminal type. The
sociological pleading of the novel is
subordinate, however, to the drama of a boy who
finds freedom through killing and who
learns the meaning of life by facing
death.
The Story:
In a one-room apartment Bigger
Thomas lived with his brother, sister,
and mother. Always penniless, haunted
by a pathological hatred of white people,
driven by an indescribable urge to make
others cringe before him, Bigger had
retreated into an imaginary world of
fantasy.
Through the aid of a relief agency he
obtained employment as a chauffeur for
a wealthy family. His first assignment
was to drive Mary Dalton, his employer's
daughter, to the university. Mary,
however, was on her way to meet Jan Erlone,
her sweetheart. The three of them, Mary
and Jan, white people who were
crusading with the Communist Party to help
the black people, and Bigger, a reluctant
ally, spent the evening driving and
drinking. When Bigger brought Mary
home, she was too drunk to take herself
to bed. With a confused medley of hatred,
fear, disgust, and revenge playing within
his mind, Bigger helped her to her
bedroom. When Mary's blind mother entered
the room, Bigger covered the girl's face
with a pillow to keep her from making
any sound that might arouse Mrs. Dal'
ton's suspicions. The reek of whiskey
convinced Mrs. Dalton that Mary was
drunk, and she left the room. Then
Bigger discovered that he had smothered
Mary to death. To delay discovery of
his crime, he took the body to the
basement and stuffed it into the furnace.
Bigger began a weird kind of
rationalization. The next morning in his
mother's home he began thinking that
he was separated from his family because
he had killed a white girl. His plan
was to involve Jan in connection with
Mary's death.
When Bigger returned to the Dalton
home, the family was worrying over
Mary's absence. Bigger felt secure from
NATIVE SON by Richard Wright,
by Richard Wright.
By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1940,
2524

incrimination because he had covered his
activities by lying. He decided to send
ransom notes to her parents, allowing
them to think Mary had been kidnaped.
But there were too many facts to
remember, too many lies to tell. Britten,
the detective whom Mr. Dalton had
hired, tried to intimidate Bigger, but
his methods only made Bigger more
determined to frame Jan, who in his
desire to protect Mary lied just enough
to help Bigger's cause. When Britten
brought Bigger face to face with Jan
for questioning, Bigger's fear mounted.
He went to Bessie, his mistress, who
wrung from him a confession of murder.
Bigger forced her to go with him to hide
in an empty building in the slum section
of the city. There he instructed her to
pick up the ransom money he hoped to
receive from Mr. Dalton.
Bigger was eating in the Dalton
kitchen when the ransom note arrived. Jan
had already been arrested. Bigger clung
tenaciously to his lies. It was a cold
day. Attempting to build up the fire,
Bigger accidentally drew attention to the
furnace. When reporters discovered
Mary's bones, Bigger fled. Hiding with
Bessie in the deserted building, he
realized that he could not take her away
with him. Afraid to leave her behind
to be found and questioned by the
police, he killed her and threw her body
down an air shaft.
When Bigger ventured from his
hideout to steal a newspaper, he learned that
the city was being combed to find him.
He fled from one empty building to
another, constantly buying or stealing
newspapers so that he could know his
chances for escape. Finally he was
trapped on the roof of a penthouse by a
searching policeman. Bigger knocked him
out with the butt of the gun he had
been carrying with him. The police
finally captured Bigger after a chase
across the rooftops.
In jail Bigger refused to eat or speak.
His mind turned inward, hating the
world, but he was satisfied with himself
for what he had done. Three days later
Jan Erlone came to see Bigger and
promised to help him. Jan introduced
Boris A. Max, a lawyer from the
Communist front organization for which Jan
worked.
Buckley, the prosecuting attorney, tried
to persuade Bigger not to become
involved with the Communists. Bigger
said nothing even after the lawyer told
him that Bessie's body had been found.
But when Buckley began listing crimes
of rape, murder, and burglary which had
been charged against him, Bigger
protested, vigorously denying rape and Jan's
part in Mary's death. Under a steady
fire of questions from Buckley, Bigger
broke down and signed a confession.
The opening session of the grand jury
began. First Mrs. Dalton appeared as
a witness to identify one of her daughter's
earrings, which had been found in the
furnace. Next Jan testified, and under
the slanderous anti-Communist
questioning, Max rose in protest against the
racial bigotry of the coroner. Max
questioned Mr. Dalton about his ownership
of the high-rent rat-infested tenements
where Bigger's family lived. Generally,
the grand jury session became a trial
of the race relations which had led to
Bigger's crime rather than a trial of the
crime itself. As a climax to the session
the coroner brought Bessie's body into
the courtroom in order to produce
evidence that Bigger had raped and
murdered his Negro sweetheart. Bigger was
returned to jail after Max had promised
to visit him. Under the quiet questioning
of Max, Bigger at last was able to talk
about his crime, his feelings, his reasons.
He had been thwarted by white people
all his life, he said, until he had killed
Mary Dalton; that act had released him.
At the opening session of the trial
Buckley presented witnesses who attested
Bigger's sanity and his ruthless character.
The murder was dramatized even to the
courtroom reconstruction of the furnace
in which Mary's body had been burned.
Max refused to call any of his own
witnesses or to cross-examine, promising to
act in Bigger's behalf as sole witness
2525

for the defense. The next day in a long
speech Max outlined an entire social
structure, its effect on an individual such
as Bigger, and Bigger's particular inner
compulsions when he killed Mary Dal-
ton. Pleading for mitigation on the
grounds that Bigger was not totally
responsible for his crime, he argued that
society was also to blame.
After another race-prejudiced attack
by Buckley, the court adjourned for one
hour. It reopened to sentence Bigger
to death. Max's attempts to delay death
by appealing to the governor were
unsuccessful.
In the last hours before death Bigger
realized his one hope was to communicate
his feelings to Max, to try to have Max
explain to him the meaning of his life
and his death. Max helped him see that
the men who persecuted Negroes, poor
people, or others, are themselves filled
with fear. Bigger could forgive them
because they were suffering the same
urge that he had suffered. He could
forgive his enemies because they did not
know the guilt of their own social crimes.
2526

caf£, only to find that Franchise was gone
for a time. He sat down to listen to some
music on a battered old phonograph and,
for the first time, the Nausea crept upon
him in a place where there were bright
lights and many people; even more
horrible, it seemed as if the sickness were
outside himself, in other objects.
Strangely enough, as the days passed,
The Self-Taught Man made an effort to
be friendly with Roquentin. Learning
that the latter had traveled a great deal, he
asked to see some of the photographs
Roquentin had collected and to hear some
of Roquentin's adventures. He even went
to Roquentin's rooms one evening for that
specific purpose. These friendly overtures
were not entirely welcomed by Roquentin,
who was immersed in his psychological
problems, but he acquiesced in setting a
date to have dinner with The Self-Taught
Man a few days later.
In the interval before the dinner
engagement, the book about the Marquis de
Rollebon came to a halt. One day
Roquentin suddenly stopped writing in
the middle of a paragraph and knew that
he would write no more, although he had
spent more than three years' labor on the
work. Roquentin suddenly felt cheated, as
if his very existence had been stolen by
the Marquis de Rollebon during those
years, so that the marquis had been living
in place of himself. The feeling was caused
partially by the discovery on Roquentin's
part that he could never know for certain
the truth about the notorious marquis,
who had used men for his own ends
during his life.
But with the discovery that he was
going to write no more, Roquentin also
Found that there was little or no purpose in
his life. Indeed, there seemed to be no
reason for his existence at all. For three years
Roquentin had not reacted to his own
existence because he had been working;
now it was thrust upon him with
disquieting abruptness.
One Wednesday Roquentin and The
Self-Taught Man met for their dinner
engagement. During the dinner, a rather
stiff affair, The Self-Taught Man tried to
convince Roquentin that he, like The
Self-Taught Man, ought to be a humanist,
that in the humanity of the world was to
be found the true reason for the universe.
Roquentin became so disquieted that the
Nausea came over him during the
discussion, and he abruptly left the restaurant.
A day or two later Roquentin received
an unexpected letter from Anny, the letter
having been forwarded from his old
address in Paris. She wrote that she was to
be in Paris for a few days and wished to
see him. Roquentin looked forward to
seeing her and planned to leave Bouville for
the first time in three years to visit with
her in Paris. When the day arrived, he
presented himself at her address.
Anny was no longer the same, for she
had become fat, but the changes that
bothered him most were those he felt
rather than saw. The interview was a
dismal failure; Anny accused him of being
worthless to her and finally thrust him
from the room. Later he saw Anny getting
on a train with the man who kept her, and
he went back to Bouville with a sense of
numbness. He believed that both he and
Anny had outlived themselves. All that
was left, he felt, was eating and sleeping,
an existence not unlike that of an
inanimate object.
Roquentin remained in Bouville only a
few days more. Unhappy and lonesome,
he sought out The Self-Taught Man,
finding him in the library. Because The Self-
Taught Man was reading to two young
boys, Roquentin also sat down to read
until The Self-Taught Man had finished.
He never did get to open the conversation,
for in the ensuing minutes The Self-
Taught Man revealed himself as a
homosexual and was brutally ejected from the
library by the librarians. The only other
person to whom Roquentin wished to say
goodbye was the congenial woman who
owned the Rendezvous des Cheminots.
When he went to see her, however, she
could give him only a moment, for
another patron claimed her time.
Roquentin went to the railway station
for the train that was to take him to Paris.
His only hope was that he might write a
2528

NAUSEA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jean-Paul Sartre (1905- )
Type of plot: Philosophical realism
Time of plot: The 1930's
Locale: France
First published: 1938
Principal characters:
Antoine Roquenttn, a French historian
Anny, Roquentin's former sweetheart
Ogier P., "The Self-Taught Man," an acquaintance of Roquentin
FRANgoisE, congenial owner of a cafe and Roquentin's friend
Critique:
Nausea, Sartre's first novel, was
heralded as marking the advent of a
twentieth-century Dostoevski, for the
novel contains an intense revelation of a
mind, strikingly similar to those revealed
in the Russian author's works. For many
readers, however, the excellence of
Sartre's novel is distorted by the presence
of the philosophical points of
Existentialism, a modern-day French
philosophy unpalatable to many. As a fictional
presentation of Existentialism, Nausea is
more lucid than Sartre's later novels and
some of the nonfictional expositions he has
attempted. Nausea has received high
praise for its forceful description of setting
and character, but the ultimate position of
the novel will be determined by the
philosophy it delineates and the success of
that delineation.
The Story:
Antoine Roquentin, a thirty-year-old
Frenchman, after traveling through
Central Europe, North Africa, and the
Orient, settled down in the seaport town
of Bouville to finish his historical research
on the Marquis de Rollebon, an
eighteenth-century figure in European politics
whose home had been at Bouville. For
three years Roquentin searched the
archives of the Bouville library in order to
reconstruct the nobleman's life. All
Roquentin's energies were concentrated
on his task; he knew few people in
Bouville, except by sight, and he lived
NAUSEA by Jean-Paul Sartre. By permission of the publishers, New Directions. Copyright. All rights
reserved.
more in the imaginary world he had
created for the Marquis de Rollebon than
in the actual world.
In the third year of his residence in
Bouville, during the winter of 1932,
Roquentin began to have a series of
disturbing psychological experiences which
he termed the Nausea. He felt that there
was something new about commonplace
articles; even his hands seemed to take on
new aspects, to have an existence all their
own. It was then that Roquentin's
loneliness seemed a terrible thing to him, for
there was no one to whom he could speak
of ins experiences. His only acquaintances
were Ogier P., nicknamed by Roquentin
The Self-Taught Man because he was
instructing himself by reading all the
books in the library, and a woman named
Franchise, who operated a cafe* called the
Rendezvous des Cheminots. Francoise,
who had become fond of Roquentin, was
the outlet for his physical sexuality,
beyond which their acquaintance had not
gone. Roquentin, in his loneliness, began
to think of Anny, an English girl who had
traveled with him some years before and
whom he had loved; but he had not heard
from her in more than three years. Worst
of all, the Nausea came oftener and of-
tener to plague Roquentin; it passed from
objects into his body through his hands,
and the only way he could describe it was
that it seemed lite a sweetish sickness.
One evening, shortly after the Nausea
had first appeared, Roquentin went to the
2527

THE NAZARENE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sholem Asch (1880-1957)
Type of plot: Religious chronicle
Time of plot: First and twentieth centuries
Locale-. Poland, Italy, Palestine
First published: 1939
Principal characters:
Pan Viadomsky, a learned man, an antiquarian, who believes himself
a reincarnation of Cornelius the Ciliarch, Hegemon of Jerusalem
A Jewish Student
Yeshua, Jesus
Pontius Pilate
Judah Ish-Kibiot, a disciple of Yeshua
Miriam of Migdal, Mary Magdalene
Bab Abba, a rebel robber
Critique:
The Nazarene attempts to tell the
story of Christ as an eyewitness account,
and the author's knowledge of historical
background and his consummate artistry
in handling character, plot, and action
make for one of the better novels of our
time. Part one is related by Pan
Viadomsky, who believes himself to be the
reincarnation of Cornelius the Ciliarch, the
military governor of Jerusalem undei
Pontius Pilate. Part two purports to be
the Gospel according to Judas Iscariot.
Part three is narrated by a young Jewish
scholar whom Pan Viadomsky calls Jo-
sephus, who later imagines himself a
reincarnation of Jochanan, a student
under Nicodemon.
The Story:
Pan Viadomsky had a peculiar
reputation in Warsaw. He was generally
accounted a great classical scholar—and
a trickster. He earlier had been a
frequent contributor to the journals of Latin
and Greek, and often he settled
controversial matters with a curiously minute
and cunning knowledge of the ancients.
But after several years he went too far:
he talked and wrote of hidden or obscure
events with a maddening air of
superiority. He announced the discovery of
ancient manuscripts, but he would allow
no competent scholar to examine the
documents.
On an expedition to Mediterranean
lands, Pan Viadomsky pretended that he
had found old documents of great worth.
Some of his colleagues, however, found
him in the company of a notorious forger.
The learned world then began to
discount Pan's scholarship, and gradually
many people thought of him as a simple
trickster.
Still, Jochanan the Jew was glad to
work with Pan, even though he was a
vindictive anti-Semite, after the Jew had
heard of Pan's Hebrew manuscript and of
his desire for a Hebrew scholar to read
it with him. Jochanan became well
acquainted with the famous Pan, even
indispensable to him, and little by little
a strange friendship grew between them.
On his side Pan sneered at all Jews but
he sometimes made an exception for
Jochanan; on his side Jochanan was
awe-struck by Pan's detailed knowledge
of Jewish history, particularly of the time
of Christ.
One day, almost against his will, Pan
told part of his secret, the source of his
detailed and exact knowledge. He
announced that he was in reality the
reincarnation of the Hegemon of Jerusalem,
Pontius Pilate's right hand man! At first
THE NAZARENE by Sholem Asch. Translated by Maurice Samuel. By permission of the author and the
publishers, G. P. Putnam't Sons. Copyright. 1939, by Sholem Asch.
2530

book, perhaps a novel, which would make
people think of his life as something
precious and legendary, though he knew that
the work on such a book, unlike his
attempts at the history of the Marquis de
Rollebon, could not keep from him the
troublesome problems of existence.
2529

The Hegemon had been perturbed by
Yeshua. He thought the rabbi was
inciting the people to rebellion. The
Hegemon went to the High Priest and de
manded that Yeshua be tried for treason.
Both the Pharisees and the Saducees
agreed that Yeshua was innocent of any
crime, but under the urging of the
Hegemon, the High Priest brought Yeshua
before Pilate. Pilate, little aware of what
was going on, hesitated to order Yeshua's
crucifixion. He decided to let the people
choose whether Yeshua or Bar Abba, a
robber, should be released. When the
crowd shouted for the release of Bar
Abba, Pilate had no choice. He ordered
the Hegemon to crucify Yeshua. With
zest and Roman thoroughness, the
Hegemon carried out the sentence.
Now the story was over. Pan Viadom-
sky sank back exhausted. Jochanan was
still in a whirl, trying to separate the old
from the new.
Then Pan confessed the rest of his
secret. At the crucifixion Yeshua had
conquered the Hegemon's spirit. As
retribution and penance the Hegemon's soul
remained on earth, inhabiting different
bodies. Now Pan Viadomsky was ready
to die, but his spirit would stay on in
another body. The Hegemon of
Jerusalem had to live forever.
2532

Jochanan took the story for an old man's
babbling, but he listened to the tale with
increasing belief.
Pontius Pilate had been a great soldier
of Rome, one of the best lieutenants of
Germanicus. But in Romt Pilate
discredited his former commander, and
doughty Germanicus retired from official
life a ruined man. Then Pilate cast
covetous eyes on Judea, a poor place,
but a land where he could get rich
through bribery. He sought and won
the hand of Claudia, the debauched
daughter of Tiberius Caesar. After the
marriage Pilate was appointed Procurator
of Judea. He took with him his friend,
a young soldier, as Hegemon of
Jerusalem.
Once in Jerusalem Pilate ordered the
Hegemon to display the hated Roman
eagle in the sacred temple of the Jews.
The pious Jews were astounded and
aroused, for by law Roman authority
did not extend to religious matters. Rut
Pilate was firm and the Hegemon cruelly
beat back the attempts of the Jews to
storm his fortress. At last the Jews
gave in, and the crafty High Priest of
the Temple paid an enormous bribe to
Pilate.
Afterward the Hegemon visited around
in Judea a great deal. He met and was
drawn to the great courtesan and dancer,
' Miriam of Migdal. He was in the castle
of Herod Antipater that infamous night
when Salome danced, and the Hegeman
saw the head of Jochanan the Baptist
brought in on a platter. He visited K'far
Nahum and heard the new Rabbi Yeshua
preach. The Hegemon was strangely
drawn to this young rabbi of Nazareth,
but a real Roman could not deign to
listen to a poor Jew, the fanatical son of
a carpenter.
Jochanan had to believe Pan, this
scholar who knew so much. Pan Viadom-
sky was really the Hegemon come back
to life!
Now that the secret was out, Pan
finally showed him his great
manuscript. Jochanan looked at the strange
document with wonder, and then he
examined it with searching care. There
could be no doubt that it was in fact
what Pan said it was. Jochanan had
before him the true manuscript that
had been carefully deposited in the tomb-
cave of Sepphoris in Galilee. It was the
record of Judah Ish-Kiriot, written with
his own hand, the story of Judah's time
with Yeshua! Through reading it,
Jochanan learned more of the great story.
Judah was young and impetuous, and
he followed his Rabbi Yeshua with much
love. In return Yeshua made Judah
treasurer for the little band of disciples.
Judah went everywhere with Yeshua.
He even went on that terrible journey
into Zidon, where Yeshua was appalled
at the sin and suffering and shame of
the gentiles. On their return to
Jerusalem Yeshua preached with more
learning and with more purity than before.
When Yeshua preached before Pharisees
and Saduccees he was especially
inspired.
The small band of twelve grew in
number. Miriam, Yeshua's mother, came
to be near her son, and Miriam of
Migdal repented of her sins and ministered
to the needs of Yeshua. But always there
was fear among them. Was Yeshua really
the Messiah? Would he deliver Judea
from the Romans?
Here the manuscript broke off. When
he had finished the reading, Jochanan
was troubled. Why did these scenes seem
so real? Pan Viadomsky's face peered
forth through a haze, and Pan's look was
triumphant. So that was it! Jochanan had
a vivid racial memory of that other
Jochanan, the young pupil of Nicodemon.
With the transformation backward in
time, Jochanan and the Hegemon
finished together, from their joint memories,
the story of Yeshua.
Judah had been one of Rabbi Nico-
demon's pupils, but he spent more and
more time with Yeshua. Judah was sure
Yeshua was the Messiah, and that
impetuous feeling finally led him to point
out Yeshua for the Romans. Judah did
it merely to test his rabbi; he expected
Yeshua to annihilate the Romans.
2531

well, was his tutor, and Nicholas
himself was rough. For long there was
debate over Leo's future as a doctor or a
gentleman farmer. Leo had little
preference, but when he was sent to Limerick
to study with Dicky, his doctor cousin, he
went willingly enough.
Nicholas, influential in molding the
boy's sympathies, accompanied him on
the journey. Because the tutor had told
him of the past insults and atrocities by
the aristocracy, Leo was hot at the
injustices suffered by the poor farmers. In
Limerick the two called on Frankie
O'Donnell, Leo's uncle, a tavernkeeper
who was a revolutionary at heart. The
rough welcome there was in sharp
contrast with his treatment at Doctor Dicky's
house. The old doctor was a gruff
Protestant and a teetotaler. In his country
clothes Leo was out of place. After a
trial term Leo was sent home in disgrace;
he had no head for medicine.
For years Leo lived an idle and
dissolute life. After his aunts died, he became
the owner of Foxehall. Taking no care
of the property, he hunted and caroused
and chased girls. One, Philly Cashen,
was turned out of old Mag Keene's house
because of her pregnancy. Distraught,
Philly went to Foxehall. Judith, although
she knew that Leo was guilty, refused to
help the girl. At last Judith left her
youngest son and his fine house and went
back to live with James. Philly was not
the only girl Leo ruined. Another was
Julie Keene, too young to resist him
successfully.
The Fenian spirit pervaded the
countryside. Mad Leo, although a landowner,
joined the plotters and led a raid on the
police post. Julie by chance saw them and
ran off to warn another sweetheart, a
detective. The plotters were seized and
Leo was sentenced to fifteen years in
jail. While he was in prison his mother
died, but Leo did not know of her death;
his family never wrote to him. A change
of government brought an amnesty and
after ten years Leo was released.
Julie was still unmarried. Holding no
grudge against her, Leo courted her
again, and when she became pregnant he
mortgaged his land to raise money to
send her to Dublin. Julie bore her son,
gave him away, and returned as gay as
ever. Leo, continuing his shiftless ways,
eventually lost his land to his grasping
brother James. Finally, with the help of
a neighborhood priest, Leo was bullied
into marrying Julie, and the strange
couple set themselves up in a small
paper shop in Rathkeale.
After a time Bid, Julie's pretty
youngest sister, came to live with them. Before
long she was walking out with Johnny
Hussey, a policeman. After innocent Bid
went to visit the police barracks with
Johnny, Leo questioned her closely
about the visit, for at the age of sixty he
was still an ardent Fenian. Bid assured
Leo the policeman had said nothing about
him, but she half guiltily remembered
some joking remarks she had heard. Leo
was perturbed.
Julie, almost hysterical, demanded that
Leo bring back their lost son. To quiet
her, he found Johno O'Donnell, now a
twenty-year-old sailor, and brought him
as a nephew to Rathkeale.
After Johnny searched Leo's room and
found suspicious letters, the police
began to watch Leo carefully. Still a fiery
patriot, Leo planned with his son Johno
to bring into a river port a shipment of
rifles which Johno had smuggled aboard
his ship. Leo, with a few Fenians, was
waiting with a skiff to take them off when
the police came upon them. Leo fired a
warning shot. When an officer was
wounded, the conspirators quickly rowed
out into the foggy harbor and got away.
Leo landed on the other shore. Returning
to Rathkeale, he was arrested and
sentenced to five years.
Meanwhile Johnny had married Bid.
When he was transferred to Cork, they
took Julie, now old and broken, with
them. After Leo's release from prison
the old couple could see nothing to do
but to live with Johnny, who had been
promoted to the post of acting sergeant.
Johno and his wife completed the
family circle.
2534

A NEST OF SIMPLE FOLK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sean O'Faolain (1900- )
Type of plot: Regional chronicle
Time of plot: 1854-1916
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1933
Principal characters:
Leo Foxe-Donnell, an Irish patriot
Judith, his mother
Julie, his wife
Johno O'Donnell, son of Julie and Leo
Johnny Hussey, a policeman
Bid, his wife
Denis, son of Bid and Johnny
Critique:
Sedn O'Faoldin, a distinguished
member of the Irish Academy, here presents
a study of the fortunes of one man. Leo,
the central character, is far from
admirable, but he does have one
outstanding characteristic: his persistent fighting
and plotting for Irish independence. He
and Johnny, the policeman, are
symbolic. Like the divided Irish population,
the patriot and the police spy live
together in a semblance of accord. In tone
this novel is intense and somber. The
only bright ray in the grim events is the
hope of change.
The Story:
Foxehall was a bleak, remote manor
house, and the family that owned it kept
to themselves. Rachel and Anna Foxe
were content to live prim maiden lives,
poverty-stricken remnants of a landed
family. Judith Foxe, however, married
Long John O'Donnell, a close secretive
farmer. For marrying beneath her Judith
was cut off with a dower of five fields,
and for seventeen years she did not see
her sisters.
The marriage was a good one for
Long John. Poor as he was, Judith's five
fields were good pay for taking an
unattractive wife. Judith had hips like a
brood mare's. When her tenth child,
Leo, was born, Rachel condescended to
A NEST OF SIMPLE FOLK by Se4n O'Faotein.
Inc. Copyright, 1934, by The Viking Press, Inc.
sponsor him. Afterward it seemed to
Judith that Leo was her only true son.
When her husband was near death she
was determined that Leo should be the
heir.
James, the oldest son, had worked like
a servant for his harsh father. As the
oldest, he would inherit the home farm.
Phil was next in line; by rights he should
have the five fields. Long John had
obstinately refused to make a will, but as
he grew weaker Judith harried him into
telling a lawyer how the property should
go. By dressing Leo in Phil's clothes,
she tricked her weak and sinking
husband into pointing to Leo as the heir
to the five fields. By her deed James
inherited only the heavily mortgaged home
farm and the obligation to marry off his
numerous sisters, Leo the five free fields,
and Phil only what James would share
with him.
After the funeral James drove the
family home. Young Leo, sensing his state
of mind, offered to give James all the
land, an offer which infuriated the older
brother. James whipped Leo savagely
and drove him off the farm. Leo went
to live with his maiden aunts.
Rachel and Anna did their best to
make a gonteel aristocrat of their rough
and surly nephew. Nicholas, a ne'er-do-
By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press,
2533

NEW ATLANTIS
Type of work: Essay
Author: Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Type of plot: Utopian voyage
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: New Atlantis, an island in the Pacific Ocean
First published: 1627
Principal characters:
The Narrator, an English traveler
The Governor of the House of Strangers
The Father of Salomon's House
Critique:
For centuries writers have delighted in
presenting their conceptions of the ideal
state, and the English Renaissance
produced two outstanding works of this type:
Thomas More's Utopia, describing a
communistic community, and Sir Francis
Bacon's New Atlantis. As one would
expect, since the author is regarded as one
of the originators of the scientific method,
the well-being of Bacon's model state
depended upon the application of scientific
experiments carried on by its wisest
citizens. Bacon succeeded in giving New
Atlantis a semblance of truth by writing
it as an account of his personal
experiences. Although the work lacks some of
the force of Utopia because it is not
aimed at the England of Bacon's time,
it is nevertheless fascinating for its
speculations on society and science.
The Story:
Traveling from Peru to the Orient,
the Narrator and his companions seemed
hopelessly lost in the South Sea when
they came upon an island and sailed into
the harbor of one of its large cities. Its
inhabitants stood on the shores with
clubs, as if warning them not to land.
A small boat came toward them, carrying
a governmental official who presented
them with a scroll inscribed in Hebrew,
Latin, Greek, and Spanish, promising any
assistance they might tneed, but
forbidding them to land. Noticing with
amazement and joy that the document bore the
sign of the cross, the travelers asked
permission to bring their sick companions to
land. The voyagers offered merchandise
in return for aid.
A few hours later another citizen,
evidently of high rank, invited the whole
company to land, if they would swear as
Christians that they were not pirates and
had killed no one in the past three
months. They were given rooms in the
city at the House of Strangers, where
special cells and medicines were provided
for the sick crew members.
The Governor of the House of
Strangers, impressed by their gentlemanly
behavior, invited them to remain in the city
for six weeks and offered to answer their
questions about his country. He was
delighted when they inquired about his
homeland's conversion to Christianity.
He told them that one night, about
twenty years after Christ's ascension, a
large cross on a pillar of light appeared
on the sea. The people of the city of
Renfusa rowed out toward it, only to find
that they could not move closer than
about sixty yards away. A wise man
prayed for an explanation of the sign
and was able to sail on. The cross
disappeared, but he found a chest
containing the Old and New Testaments, even
the books not written at that time, and
a letter from Saint Bartholomew
explaining that he had been ordered in a vision
to send the ark to sea. The Testaments
were themselves miraculous; they could
be understood by everyone, no matter
what his language, and through them
the kingdom was converted.
On succeeding days the Governor told
how his people knew the languages and
literature of Europe, yet remained un-
2536

Denis, Bid's oldest boy, was always
prim. Because Leo and Johno were gusty
and loud, Johnny encouraged his son to
be difFerent. Bid, thinking of Denis as a
scholar, planned for his education. Old
Leo had a small shop where he
sometimes took bets. As always, he knew what
was going on among the revolutionaries.
Bid took in lodgers to get money for
the boy's schooling. Although she was
always tired, the effort seemed
worthwhile. But Denis was a disappointment
to her. Having no head for studies, he
gave up his ambitions after he had failed
the civil service examination three times.
Worse than that, he quarreled with his
father. All over Ireland rifles were
cracking. When an uprising broke out in
Dublin, Denis, after helping Leo and
Johno to escape arrest, called his father
a police spy and went to take shelter
with the O'Donnells. Like Ireland, his
was a house divided.
2535

THE NEW GRUB STREET
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Gissing (1857-1903)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1891
Principal Characters:
Jaspar Milvain, a writer
Alfred Yule, a literary hack
Marian Yule, Alfred's daughter
Amy Reardon, Alfred's niece
Edwin Reardon, Amy's husband
Dora Milvain, and
Maud Milvatn, Jaspar's sisters
Critique:
Jaspar Milvain may be classed as an
egoist. At any rate, he is a mercenary
whose literary aspirations tend only
toward the material but pretend to be
striving for the artistic. The new Grub
Street portrayed by Gissing is not a place
for talented but poor writers; it is a
ruthless contest among moneymongers.
The Story:
There had been three Yule brothers.
John, the oldest, had gone into a
profitable paper manufacturing business; he
abhorred the relatively impoverished
state of his brother Alfred, a writer.
Edmund Yule, the third brother, died,
leaving only a small income to his wife,
his daughter Amy, and his son John.
Amy married Edwin Reardon, a man
with much promise as a writer, but who
had little success after his first bwk.
Jaspar Milvain was Edwin's friend.
Jaspar spent most of his time writing small
pieces for different publications and
making friends among people who
counted in the world of letters. He
believed, as Amy did, that Edwin would
some day become financially successful
in his work.
Alfred Yule had married a poor
woman of a lower class, who, because of
her lack of breedings had become a
drawback to his career. An unfortunate
quarrel with an editor named Fadge had
caused Alfred to hate Fadge and those
associated with him. When Jaspar
Milvain accepted his first literary
appointment from Fadge, Alfred did not want to
invite the young man to call at his home
in London, although Marian, his
daughter, wished him to do so.
Jaspar's mother died, leaving his two
sisters, Dora and Maud, with no means
of support, so Jaspar brought the girls
to London to live with him. When his
sisters arrived in London, Jaspar called
at Alfred Yule's home to ask Marian if
she would become friends with them.
Marian was happy to meet Dora and
Maud, as she had no close friends of her
own.
Because of her calls on his sisters,
Jaspar was able to see Marian frequently.
Aware of their brother's selfishness, Dora
and Maud viewed with trepidation their
new friend's affection toward Jaspar.
He was looking for a rich wife to
support him while he made his way in the
world of letters. If Marian suspected
Jaspar's mercenary motives, she did not
admit them to herself. Her great sorrow
was that her father hated Jaspar along
with his enemy, Fadge.
Edwin Reardon's personality was such
that he succumbed easily to adversity.
When he became discouraged, Amy, who
loved her husband, tried to push him
back to work. Edwin became irritable,
and depended more and more for
inspiration on Amy's love. They began to
quarrel until they hardly spoke a civil
word to one another.
2538

known to its inhabitants. About three
thousand years before, he said, navigation
was widespread, and his country traded
with Phoenicia, China, and the mighty
kingdom of Atlantis, later named
America. But within one hundred years
Atlantis was destroyed by flood and only a
few mountain-dwelling savages survived.
The bulk of New Atlantis' commerce
ceased, and its wise king, Salomon,
perceiving that his land was self-sufficient,
forbade communication with foreigners.
He set strict regulations on the entrance
of strangers and allowed only a chosen
few to visit other nations.
To improve the welfare of his country
he established Salomon's House, a society
of scientists named for the Hebrew king,
to study all "the works and creatures of
God/' and he ordered that every twelve
years six fellows of the House should go
to gather information from other
countries and bring back "books, instruments,
and patterns of every kind." The
Governor added that he was not permitted to
tell how these men concealed theis
identity during their travels.
The Narrator was invited to a great
family feast, given in honor of every
man who had thirty living descendants.
The tersan, the father, sat in state under
a canopy of ivy decorated with silver and
silk. As his family stood around him, a
herald presented a scroll announcing
honors from the king and a cluster of
gold grapes, one for each descendant.
The latter was given to the worthiest son,
henceforth called the Son of the Vine.
A second outstanding occasion for the
Narrator was a visit from a father of
Salomon's House, who described his-
society, founded for "the knowledge of
causes and secret motions of things and
the enlarging of the bounds of human
empire to the effecting of all things
possible."
Among the elaborate experiments the
society used to extend knowledge were
processes of refrigeration, the production
of artificial metals, the study of soils,
grafting, and crossbreeding of plants and
animals.
The fathers of Salomon's House
studied the weather from tall observation
towers; heat, in a variety of furnaces;
light and color in "perspective houses" in
which they also developed powerful
telescopes and fine microscopes. They
conveyed sound in trunks and pipes over
long distances, and they had "some
degrees of flying in the air," as well as
"boats for going under water." In
Salomon's house each member was assigned
a function: traveling, collecting
experiments from books, making them,
compiling results, finding practical applications
for results, formulating laws and axioms
from experimental data.
The father of Salomon's House
completed his discourse, blessed the
Narrator, and gave him permission to write
down these revelations about his order.
2537

wealth to attain his goals in the literary
world, and Amy recognized that a
successful man must know how to use his
social and financial advantages. They
were married after a very brief courtship.
With Amy's help and with Jaspar's
wise manipulations, the Milvains soon
achieved the success which Jaspar had
coldly calculated when he had proposed
to Marian Yule. Shortly after their
marriage, Jaspar was appointed to the
editorship which Fadge had vacated. Jaspar
and Amy accepted with mutual
admiration and joy their unexpected success in
life together, both satisfied that they
were perfectly mated.
2540

One day Amy and Edwin realized that
they would be starving within a month,
for there was no hope that Edwin could
produce a profitable story in time to save
them. Edwin felt he could no longer
write. Having been before his
marriage, a clerk in a charitable institution,
he resumed his former occupation as a
means of saving himself from ruin, both
spiritual and financial. Amy was furious
to think her husband would degrade
himself by accepting the position of a mere
clerk. She had believed that she had
married a clever writer; Edwin as a clerk
did not appeal to her. Finally they
parted, Amy to return to her mother's
home, and Edwin to assume his clerical
job.
Jaspar hesitated to become too much
involved with Marian Yule. Although
he found her well suited to himself in
temperament and intellect, he could not
marry her because she was poor.
Suddenly fortune fell upon all these
confused people. John Yule died,
leaving a large sum of money to his nieces,
Amy and Marian. Jaspar immediately
proposed to Marian. Convincing herself
that Jaspar's proposal came from the love
he bore her rather than from her new
wealth, Marian promised to marry him.
Her greatest problem was to reconcile
Alfred to his future son-in-law.
Amy was so stunned by the money
that John had left her that at first she
failed to realize her problems were at an
end. The legacy would make it possible
for her to return to Edwin, who could
now write with no fear of poverty
resulting from literary failure. But Edwin
refused her aid. In the first place, he
was sure he had lost his ability to write.
Furthermore, his pride would not allow
him to accept Amy's kindness, since he
felt he had lost ner love. His health
broke. When he retired at last to his bed
because of a serious congestion in his
lungs, he would not allow his friends
to tell Amy of his condition. He did not
want her to come to him out of pity, or
through a sense of duty.
Marian soon saw Jaspar's love put to
a test when she learned that because of
unfortunate investments she could
receive only a small part of the original
inheritance. Jaspar, hearing the news,
said they should not consider marriage
until he could establish himself.
Meanwhile Alfred Yule learned his eyesight
was failing, so that in a short while he
would be blind and incapable of earning
enough money to support his wife and
his daughter. Planning to retire to a
small institution with his wife, he called
Marian to him and told her that
henceforth she must try to earn her own
income in anticipation of the time when
he could no longer support her.
Edwin received a telegram from Amy,
asking him to come to ner immediately
because their son, Willie, was sick.
Edwin went back to his wife. The two, in
their sorrow over their son's danger, were
reconciled. Willie died, and Amy went
with Edwin to nurse him in his own
illness. His last few days were lightened
by her cheerfulness and devotion.
Jaspar's situation became more
uncomfortable; Marian without her money was
a luxury impossible for him to
contemplate. While his sister Dora disdainfully
looked on, Jaspar secretly proposed to
another woman of his acquaintance, a
woman who had both money and
connections. When the woman refused his
proposal, Jaspar went to Marian and
insisted that she marry him immediately.
Because her blind father was now totally
dependent upon Marian for support,
Jaspar hoped to break the engagement
by forcing Marian to make a decision
between him and her parents. Marian
desperately tried to hold the love she had
always imagined that Jaspar had for her.
But at last she saw him as he really was
and broke their engagement.
A posthumous publication of the works
of Edwin Reardon occasioned a very
complimentary criticism from the pen of
Jaspar Milvain, and a series of grateful
letters from Amy Reardon sealed the
friendship which had once existed
between Jaspar and the wife of his former
friend. Jaspar realized that he must have
2539

not far off, made Julie very ill. Only a
visit from Saint-Preux, smuggled into
the sickroom by Claire, saved the girl's
life.
After Julie's recovery there followed
more than a year of surreptitious meetings
between the lovers. As her passion waxed,
Julie's fear of her father grew less, until
she even had Saint-Preux stay with her
throughout the night. Neither of the
young people believed that they were
committing sin, for they honestly felt that
they were already married in the eyes of
heaven and that only the father's attitude
kept them from living together publicly
and with outward virtue.
In the meantime both young people
had met Lord Edward Bomston, a British
peer living in Switzerland. Saint-Preux
and Lord Bomston became friends, even
though Lord Bomston sought Julie's hand
in marriage. The peer failed, however, in
his suit. One night, while he and Saint-
Preux were drinking, Bomston charged
that someone had already found
Julie's favor. Saint-Preux challenged Lord
Bomston to a duel, but Julie, mindful of
her reputation, sent a letter to Lord
Bomston, telling him about Saint-Preux
and herself and warning him that her fate
and Saint-Preux's rested in his hands. She
knew that Saint-Preux would be killed
and that the duel would provoke enough
scandal to ruin her and drive her to
suicide. Lord Bomston, moved by her plea,
called off the duel and publicly apologized
to Saint-Preux. Again the two men
became the firmest of friends.
Shortly afterward Lord Bomston,
interceding on Saint-Preux's behalf with Baron
d'Etange, urged that the baron permit a
marriage between Julie and Saint-Preux.
The baron refused, vowing that he would
never break his promise to de Wolmar and
that he never would, in any case, permit
Julie to marry an adventurer. When the
baron refused, Lord Bomston proposed
that Julie and Saint-Preux elope to
England and spend the rest of their lives as
his pensioners on his estate in Oxfordshire.
But Julie absolutely refused to leave her
home without her father's consent.
Claire, Julie's cousin, in the meantime,
had married a man friendly with both
Lord Bomston and Saint-Preux. The
tutor was forced to leave Julie's vicinity
after her father had refused to permit their
marriage. Through Claire's husband,
however, the two lovers managed to keep up
a correspondence.
Saint-Preux, after spending some
months in France and England, returned
to Switzerland to find that Julie was about
to marry de Wolmar. He was so overcome
that Lord Bomston spirited him away to
England and arranged for him to embark
with an expedition leaving England to
travel around the world. Julie, meanwhile,
reconciled herself to her father's will. Her
mother, who might have permitted
marriage to Saint-Preux, had recently died.
Four years passed before Saint-Preux
returned to Europe. By that time Julie and
her husband had two children and were
settled into domestic tranquillity. De
Wolmar, eager to see his wife happy,
invited Saint-Preux to visit their home.
During the visit it became obvious that the
two lovers of years past had become more
or less recopriled to their situation. Both
seemed so filled with virtue that de
Wolmar requested Saint-Preux to remain
as tutor to his children. Saint-Preux,
anxious to please everyone and to be near
Julie, agreed to take on the responsibility,
providing Lord Bomston did not need his
services elsewhere. Saint-Preux felt that
he could never adequately repay the
Englishman for keeping him from crime,
madness, and possible death at the time of
Julie's marriage.
It turned out that Lord Bomston did
need Saint-Preux's aid for a short time.
The Englishman was traveling to Italy,
where he had hopes of marrying a
marchioness, and he wished Saint-Preux's
aid in the affair. Saint-Preux, however,
showed Lord Bomston that the woman was
vicious and prevented the^marriage; he also
prevented a second attempt at marriage
between the Englishman and a woman of
doubtful reputation. During their absence
Julie discovered that Claire, who had
been widowed some time before, was in
2542

THE NEW HELOISE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Type of plot: Philosophical romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: Switzerland
First published: 1760
Principal characters:
Julie d'Etange, a beautiful and virtuous young girl
Baron d'Etange, her father
Saint-Preux, her tutor
Claire, her cousin
Lord Edward Bomston, Saint-Preux's patron and benefactor
Monsieur de Wolmar, Julie's husband
Critique:
Julie: Or, The New Hiloise, a novel
written in epistolary form, owed a great
deal to the English novels of seduction and
sentiment published shortly before by
Samuel Richardson. In addition, it owed
more than a little to Rousseau's own life,
for there are many parallels between the
careers of Saint-Preux and Rousseau. The
author could never resist an opportunity to
become didactic. As a result, the novel is
filled with sermons on virtue, control of
the passions, and the need for religion, as
well as short essays setting forth
Rousseau's ideas on education, his belief in
natural love, his faith in the simple life,
and his hopes for the triumph of man's
innate goodness. All of the characters in
the novel break into a didactic tone at the
slightest opportunity. Indeed, many of the
letters are simply tracts included to carry
Rousseau's ideas to the reader.
The Story:
Saint-Preux, a young Swiss with
unusual talents and sensibilities, was
accepted by Madame d'Etange as tutor for
her daughter Julie and Claire, Julie's
cousin. Under Saint-Preux's instruction
the girls made excellent progress, until
Claire went away to visit her own family,
about a year after Saint-Preux had been
selected as tutor. During her absence
Saint-Preux revealed his love for Julie.
The girl, after some solicitation, admitted
that she, too, was hopelessly in love. Both
the young people viewed their situation
as desperate, for the Baron d'Etange,
Julie's father, had promised her as the
bride of his friend, de Wolmar. In
addition, the baron was a lineage-proud man
who never would hear of his daughter's
marriage to a commoner like Saint-Preux,
regardless of the latter's abilities.
Julie, who feared that she might fall
victim to her love for Saint-Preux, wrote
to Claire and asked her to return as a
protector. She wrote to her cousin because
she was afraid that Madame d'Etange, if
she suspected the truth, would
immediately send the young man away. Claire
returned, and for a time the romance
continued to blossom. At last Claire and
Julie decided that Saint-Preux ought to
leave until the baron returned from an
absence which had kept him from home for
well over a year. The girls feared that he
might dismiss Saint-Preux unless the way
were paved by someone for the young
man's continuation as tutor. Saint-Preux
left. The girls showed themselves off to
the baron when he returned, and he was
so pleased with the progress of their
education that he had Saint-Preux recalled.
Once again the love between Saint-
Preux and Julie grew. In spite of her
virtue, however, Julie fell victim to Saint-
Preux's pleas and became his mistress. A
short time later Saint-Preux was dismissed
because the baron was planning to marry
Julie to his friend, de Wolmar. The shocK
of seeing her lover depart, plus the news
from her father that her marriage day was
2541

A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Philip Massinger (1583-1640)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: England
First presented: c. 1625
Principal characters:
Frank Wellborn, a prodigal young man of good family
Sir Giles Overreach, Wellborn's uncle, a grasping miser
Margaret Overreach, Sir Giles' beautiful daughter
Lord Lovell, Margaret's suitor
Lady Allworth, a rich young widow
Tom Allworth, Lady Allworth's stepson and Lord Lovell's page
Marrall, a hanger-on of Sir Giles
Critique:
A new way to pay old debts is to use
that priceless boon, credit. It is credit,
seen in the actions of Lady Allworth,
which enables the prodigal Wellborn to
establish himself once again in the
respectable world after having been cozened
by his uncle, who resembles nothing so
much as the dishonest city boss who
operates in the background and uses public
officers as his tools. The uncle, Sir Giles
Overreach, was modeled after a famous
extortioner of seventeenth-century
England, Sir Giles Mompesson, who was
discovered in his crimes and convicted a
decade before the play appeared. The
formula of the play, trickery to fool a
criminal, was not a new one with Mas-
singer, but he gave his theme dramatic
interest and clever satire.
The Story:
Frank Wellborn, who by his
prodigality had gone through a fortune and Tost
most of his friends, was at a point where
even the alehouses refused to give him
food or drink. One morning, as he was
about to be thrown from an alehouse, he
met a young page whom he had once
befriended. The boy, Allworth, offered to
lend him money, but Wellborn refused,
knowing how little the boy had. Allworth
confided to Wellborn that he was in love
with Margaret, daughter of Sir Giles
Overreach, who had despoiled young
Wellborn in earlier days.
Later in the morning Wellborn went
to see Allworth's widowed, wealthy young
stepmother, Lady Allworth. When the
lady promised to help him restore his
reputation, his only request was that she
receive him as a gentleman in her house.
Meanwhile Sir Giles Overreach was
laying plans for his daughter's marriage,
and for his own as well. After he had
married Margaret to the rich Lord Lovell, he
himself planned to marry Lady Allworth.
Overreach was angered to discover that
Lady Allworth, who refused to be at home
to him, had entertained the prodigal
Wellborn as if he were a suitor. His anger was
somewhat dissipated, however, by the fact
that Lord Lovell was coming to visit. He
realized also that if Wellborn got his
hands on Lady Allworth's fortune, he, as
the young man's uncle and creditor, might
take it away.
Lovell, who had promised to visit
Overreach's country place, knew of the love
between Margaret and his page, Allworth,
and he promised the page to do all he
could to further the affair. Upon his
arrival at the Overreach estate, he told
Margaret of his plans, and the two pretended
to carry on a courtship to deceive her
father.
During Lovell's visit, Lady Allworth,
accompanied by Wellborn, arrived also.
Overreach, who was not in love with Lady
Allworth but only desired her money, was
pleased by his prospects of marrying his
2544

love with Saint-Preux. Hoping to help
both Claire and Saint-Preux find
happiness, Julie wrote to the tutor and told him
of Claire's love. Saint-Preux replied that,
although he esteemed Claire, he could
not marry her, for he still loved Julie. Julie
still hoped that she could arrange the
match upon Saint-Preux's return from
Italy.
Before his return an accident occurred.
One day, while Julie and her family were
walking alongside a lake, Julie's little boy
fell in. In saving him from death, Julie
suffered severe shock and exhaustion. The
results were fatal to her. Before dying,
however, she wrote a letter to Saint-Preux
and asked him to take over the education
of her children and Claire's. Her cousin,
wrote Julie, would take her own place in
making Saint-Preux's life complete.
2543

THE NEWCOMES
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1854-1855
Principal characters:
Colonel Thomas Newcome, Anglo-Indian soldier
Clive Newcome, the colonel's son
Brian Newcome, the colonel's half-brother
Hobson Newcome, another half-brother
Lady Ann, Brian's wife
Barnes, Brian's son
Ethel, Brian's daughter
Lady Kew, Lady Ann's mother
James Binnie, the colonel's friend
Mrs. Mackenzie, Binnie's half-sister
Rosey, Mrs. Mackenzie's daughter
Lady Clara, Barnes' wife
Critique:
In true Victorian style Thackeray tells
this story with zest and skill. The ladies
are either virtuous or wicked. Many
admirers of Thackeray have insisted that
Colonel Newcome is the most perfect
gentleman in fiction. Thackeray meant
to show the reader the evil effect of
certain social conventions of the nineteenth
century, such as parental marriage
choices, the over-indulgence in the
accumulation of wealth, and the worldliness
of the upper classes. Ethel, the heroine,
goes through all these experiences, but
withal she emerges at the end a happy
woman.
The Story:
The elder Thomas Newcome married
his childhood sweetheart, who died after
bearing him one son, named for his
father. Thomas remarried, and his
second wife bore two sons, Brian and
Hobson. Young Thomas proved to be a trial
to his stepmother. When he was old
enough, he went to India where he later
became a colonel. He married and had
a son, Clive, whom he loved with a
passion far beyond the normal devotion of
a father. Having lost his mother, little
Clive was sent to England to begin his
education.
Brian and Hobson Newcome had
inherited their mother's wealthy banking
house. Brian married Lady Ann, who
was well-known in London for her lavish
parties. When little Clive had spent
about seven years in England, his
impatient father crossed the ocean to join
him. He expected to receive a warm
welcome from his two half-brothers,
Brian and Hobson. Much to the
colonel's bewilderment, the bankers received
him politely but coldly and passed on
the responsibility of entertaining him to
young Barnes, Brian's son, a youthful
London swell and a familiar figure at
the city's clubs.
Colonel Thomas Newcome's late wife
had a sister and a brother. The sister,
Miss Honeyman, ran a boarding-house
in Brighton, where little Alfred and
Ethel came with their mother, Lady Ann,
for a vacation. There Colonel Newcome
and Clive had also arrived for a visit.
Mr. Honeyman lived in another house in
Brighton, where the keeper's young son,
John James Ridley, delighted in drawing
pictures from the story-books which he
found in Mr. Honeyman's room. While
Clive, who aspired to be an artist,
delighted in Ridley's drawings, Ethel
became extremely fond of the colonel and
2546

daughter to a nobleman and getting his
hands on Lady Allworth's fortune through
her possible marriage to his prodigal
nephew. He even offered money to
Wellborn, so that the latter could pay off his
debts and appear once again as a
respectable gentleman.
After the party had left Overreach's
estate, Lovell released young AUworth from
his position and told of further plans to
help the page's suit. He intended to send
the young man, ostensibly as a letter
carrier, every day to the girl.
Overreach had revealed his true
character to Lovell by promising him anything if
the nobleman would but marry his
daughter. The miser had even offered lands
belonging to Lady AUworth, who was
highly esteemed by LoveU. When told
that those were not his to give, Overreach
had explained to LoveU how he had
acquired a fortune and would accumulate
another. LoveU, indignant at what he
heard, promised himself to right the many
wrongs Overreach had done. Hence his
decision to aid young AUworth's suit.
Lovell told Lady AUworth that he could
never marry into the Overreach family.
He added that he had an honorable
motive in the pretense she had seen.
Meanwhile the suspected marriage
between Lady AUworth and Wellborn,
which had no basis in fact except that she
treated him as a friend, had caused WeU-
born's debtors to drop their claims against
him. Wellborn paid his debts, however,
with the money his uncle had lent on the
strength of the supposed marriage.
One of Overreach's hangers-on, Mar-
rail, promised to help Wellborn regain his
lands, which his uncle had fraudulently
taken from him for a fraction of their
value. Marrall told Wellborn to ask
Overreach to present the deed.
At Overreach's house young AUworth
had supposedly carried a letter to Mar-
Saret and thus had a chance to talk with
er. Overreach, reading the letter, learned
that Lovell asked Margaret to marry him
forthwith. Overjoyed, the miser sent a
letter of command to his manor priest,
telling the chaplain to marry Margaret to
the gentleman who accompanied her with
the letter. The young people, of course,
went off and were immediately married,
the letter acting as a means of getting the
clergyman to perform the private
ceremony.
Lady AUworth, in the meantime, told
Lovell that she had helped Wellborn to
regain his former position because WeU-
born had aided her dead husband in years
gone by. That action made clear, Lovell
asked her to marry him. Lady AUworth
consented.
A short time later Overreach appeared,
driving Marrall before him and
questioning him about a document that had
disappeared. Overreach was also hunting for
his daughter, who had failed to return
home the night before. In his anger,
Overreach asked for the thousand pounds
he had lent to Wellborn. Wellborn, in
turn, demanded an accounting of his
estates. Overreach took his strongbox and
removed a parchment which proved to be
only a sealed paper with no writing on it.
MarraU had removed the true deed.
Scarcely had Overreach realized that he
no longer had any legal right to Well-
born's lands than his daughter and young
AUworth, married the day before, arrived
to tell of their marriage, in which
Overreach had unconsciously aided them by
sending a letter to his clergyman.
Overreach, angered beyond measure,
would have killed his daughter with his
sword, had not Lovell stopped him. Lord
Lovell then announced his intended
marriage to Lady AUworth and promised to
speed the unraveling of Overreach's
affairs so that Wellborn could regain his
estates and Margaret and her husband have
their rightful portion of the miser's
wealth.
2545

ward Lady Kew announced Ethel's
engagement to Lord Farintosh. Then,
suddenly, Lady Kew died, leaving her
immense fortune to Ethel, whose only
concern was that the money should go
to her younger brothers and sisters.
Barnes* marriage to Lady Clara Pul-
leyn had never been happy. Soon after
they were married he had begun to
mistreat his wife, who at last decided that
she could no longer stand his bullying
treatment. She ran off with her first
lover, leaving her small children behind.
The shock of the scandal and the
subsequent divorce opened Ethel's eyes to
dangers of loveless marriages. Realizing
that she could never be happy with Lord
Farintosh because she did not love him,
she broke her second engagement.
Ethel retired from her former social
life to rear Barnes' children. Clive,
meanwhile, had succumbed to the wishes
of Mr. Binnie and his own father.
Before the news of Ethel's broken
engagement with Lord Farintosh had reached
the colonel and his son, Clive had
married sweet-faced Rosey Mackenzie.
Clive's marriage was gentle but bare.
The colonel was Rosey's chief protector
and her greater admirer. Clive tried to
be a good husband, but inwardly he
longed for more companionship. Once
he admitted to his father that he still
loved Ethel.
The colonel had been handling the
family income very unwisely since his
return from India. Shortly after the
birth of Clive's son, Thomas, an Indian
company in which the colonel had heavy
investments failed, and he went
bankrupt. Clive, Rosey, and Colonel New-
come were now nearly penniless. Rosey's
mother, Mrs. Mackenzie, descended upon
them, and in a few months she began
ruling them with such tyranny that life
became unbearable for the colonel. With
the help of some friends he retired to a
poorhouse and lived separated from his
beloved son. Clive faithfully stayed with
Rosey under the forceful abuse of hi?
mother-in-law. He was able to make a
meager living by selling his drawings.
When Ethel learned of the pitiful
condition of the old colonel, whom she had
always loved, and of Clive's distress, she
contrived a plan whereby she was able
to give them six thousand pounds
without their knowing that it came from her.
Rosey had been very ill. One night
Ethel visited Clive, and Mrs. Mackenzie
raised such an indignant clamor that
Rosey was seriously affected. She died
the following day. The colonel, broken
in spirit, also grew weaker from day to
day, and soon afterward he too died.
Clive had never lost his love for Ethel
through all the years of his unfortunate
marriage to Rosey. Many months after
the death of his wife, he went once more
to Baden with little Thomas. There it
was said, by observers who knew the
Newcomes, that Clive, Ethel, and little
Tommy often were seen walking together
through the woods.
2548

his unaffected mannerisms. The
colonel's great love for children caused him
to be a favorite with all the Newcome
youngsters, but it was fair-haired little
Ethel who won the colonel's heart with
her simple, adoring ways and her
sincerity.
Colonel Newcome bought a house in
London, where he lived with Clive and
Mr. James Binnie, the colonel's friend.
Clive was given a tutor, but the young
man neglected his studies to sketch
everything he saw and everyone he knew. If
the colonel was disappointed by Clive's
choice of career, he said nothing, but
allowed Clive to attend art school with
his friend Ridley. Clive was becoming
a kind, generous and considerate young
man. The colonel himself was satisfied
that his son was growing up to be the
fine man that the retired officer wished
him to be. He spent a great deal of
money fitting up a well-lighted studio
for Clive in a house not far from his
own. Meanwhile Mr. Binnie had taken
a fall from a horse and was laid up in
bed. Binnie's widowed half-sister, Mrs.
Mackenzie, and her daughter, Rosey,
came to stay with the bedridden Binnie
in the colonel's house.
After a time the colonel found
himself financially embarrassed. Realizing
that he could no longer live on his
income in London, he planned to return
to India until he reached a higher grade
in the army. Then with the increased
pension he could afford to retire in
London.
Ethel Newcome grew into a beautiful
and charming young lady, and the
colonel dreamed of a match between Ethel
and Clive, but Lady Ann placed an early
prohibition on such a match. She told
her brother-in-law that Ethel had been
promised to Lord Kew, a relative of Lady
Kew, Lady Ann's mother. The other
Newcomes thought that Rosey
Mackenzie would be a fine wife for Clive.
After Colonel Newcome had returned
to India, leaving Clive with a substantial
income, Clive and Ridley, now a
successful artist, went to Baden. There
Clive met Ethel and the other Newcome
children vacationing without the
dampening presence of Lady Ann or her
aristocratic mother. Ethel and Clive enjoyed
a short period of companionship and
innocent pleasure, and Clive fell in love
with his beautiful cousin. When Lady
Ann and Lady Kew arrived, Clive was
warned that he must not press his suit
with Ethel any longer, for Ethel must
marry in her own station of life. Clive
was reminded that the family had
assumed him to have found in Miss Rosey
Mackenzie a woman of his own social
level. Bitterly Clive took his leave and
went to Italy with Ridley.
Ethel, beginning to rebel against the
little niche that had been assigned to her
in society, defied social custom and
defended Clive against the charges her
brother Barnes repeatedly hurled at
him. Finally she broke her engagement
to young Lord Kew. When Clive learned
of the broken betrothal, he returned to
England to press his own suit once more.
In London Clive had little time for
his art. He was fast becoming a favorite
in London society, whose fashionable
hostesses thought him the only son of a
wealthy officer in India. Against the
wishes of her grandmother, Lady Kew,
Ethel arranged frequent meetings with
Clive, and at last Clive proposed
marriage. But Ethel sadly explained that
she would not inherit Lady Kew's
fortune unless she married properly. Ethel
claimed that her younger brothers and
sisters were in need of the money, for
after her father's death Barnes Newcome
had selfishly kept the family fortune for
himself. Meanwhile Lady Kew was
wooing Lord Farintosh for Ethel.
After three years' absence Colonel
Newcome returned to London. During
his absence the colonel had amassed a
large fortune for his son, and armed with
this wealth Colonel Newcome went to
Barnes with a proposal of marriage
between Ethel and Clive. Barnes was
polite but non-committal. Shortly after
2547

use his forces in overcoming the Saxons,
and in the battle he led his knights and
Gunther's troops to a great victory. In
the following days there were great
celebrations at which Queen Uta and her
daughter Kriemhild appeared in public.
On one of these occasions Siegfried and
Kriemhild met and became betrothed.
King Gunther, wanting to marry
Brunhild, Wotan's daughter, told
Siegfried that if he would help him win
Brunhild then he might wed Kriemhild.
Gunther set out at the head of a great
expedition, all of his knights decked in
costly garments in order to impress
Brunhild. But her choice for a husband was
not for a well-dressed prince but for a
hero. She declared that the man who
would win her must surpass her in feats of
skill and strength. With Siegfried's aid
Gunther overcame Brunhild, and she
agreed to go with Gunther as his bride.
Siegfried was sent on ahead to
announce a great celebration in honor of
the coming marriage of Gunther to
Brunhild. A double ceremony took place, with
Kriemhild becoming the bride of
Siegfried at the same time. At the wedding
feast Brunhild burst into tears at the
sight of Kriemhild and Siegfried
together. Gunther tried to explain away
her unhappiness. But once more
Gunther needed Siegfried's aid, for Brunhild
had determined never to let Gunther
share her bed. Siegfried went to her
chamber and there overpowered her.
She, thinking she had been overcome by
Gunther, was thus subdued to Gunther's
wit and will.
Brunhild bore a son who was named
for Siegfried. As time passed she wished
once more to see Siegfried, who had
returned with Kriemhild to his own
country. Therefore, she instructed Gunther
to plan a great hunting party to which
Siegfried and Kriemhild should be
invited.
At the meeting of the two royal
families there was great rivalry between
Brunhild and Kriemhild. They vied
with each other by overdressing their
attendants and then fell to arguing as to
the place each should have in the royal
procession. Finally, Kriemhild took
revenge when she told Brunhild the true
story of her wedding night. Accusing
Brunhild of acting the part of a harlot,
she said that Brunhild had slept first
with Siegfried, then with her husband,
Gunther. For proof, she displayed
Brunhild's ring and girdle, both of which
Siegfried had won from Brunhild the
night he had overcome her. Brunhild,
furious and desirous of revenge, sought
out her husband and confronted him
with the story of her humiliation and
betrayal.
Gunther and Siegfried soon settled to
their own satisfaction the wanton quarrel
between the two women. But Hagen,
the crafty one, stirred up trouble among
Gunther's brothers with his claim that
Siegfried had stained the honor of their
house, and they plotted to trap Siegfried
and destroy him. When it was reported
that the Saxons were to attack Gunther's
knights, Kriemhild unwittingly revealed
Siegfried's one vulnerable spot. While
bathing in the dragon's blood, he had
failed to protect a portion of his body the
size of a linden leaf because a leaf had
fallen down between his shoulders. The
villainous Hagen asked her to sew a
token on the spot so that he could
protect Siegfried during the fighting.
Hagen sent men to say that the Saxons
had given up the attack. Then, the fear
of battle over, Gunther rode out to hunt
with all his knights. There, deep in the
forest, as Siegfried was bending over a
spring to drink, he was struck in the
fatal spot by an arrow from Hagen's bow.
Before he died Siegfried cursed the Bur-
gundians and their tribe forever.
Indifferent to the dying man's curse, Hagen
carried home the body of the dead hero.
He placed Siegfried's body in the path
where Kriemhild would see it on her
way to church, but a chamberlain
discovered the body before she passed.
Kriemhild knew instinctively whose
hand had done the deed. A thousand
knights headed by Siegmund, his father,
mourned the dead hero, and everyone
2550

THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Type of work: Saga
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Heroic epic
rime of plot: The Siegfried story is legendary. The Burgundian story is based on historical
events of about 437.
Locale: North Central Europe
First transcribed: c. 1200
Principal characters:
Siegfried, son of Siegmund and Sieglind
Kriemhild, Burgundian princess, Siegfried's wife
Gunther,
Gernot, and
Giselher, brothers of Kriemhild
Hagen, their retainer
Brunhild, wife of Gunther
Etzel (Attila), Kriemhild's second husband
Dankwart, Hagen *s brother
Critique:
Chief among the battle sagas of
Germanic peoples, The Nibelungenlted has
merged and remerged with countless other
legends and myths. In it are echoes of
the ancient worship of the pagan gods as
well as Christian ritual. In it are tales,
like the battle of Siegfried and the dragon,
that go back to prehistoric myths. In it
are names and themes that seem to run
into the substructure of Western civiliza-
Even in modern times the saga
person.
sists in poetry and music. Its revelation of
hatred and greed, of honor and glory,
stands changeless, indifferent to the
passing of time.
The Story:
In Burgundy there lived a noble
family which numbered three brothers and
a sister. The sons were Gunther, who
wore the crown, Gernot, and Giselher;
the daughter was Kriemhild. About
them was a splendid court of powerful
and righteous knights, including Hagen
of Trony, his brother Dankwart and
mighty Hunold. Kriemhild dreamed one
night that she reared a falcon which
then was slain by two eagles. When she
told her dream to Queen Uta, her
mother's interpretation was that
Kriemhild should have a noble husband but
that unless God's protection followed
him he might soon die.
Siegfried was born in Niderland, the
son of King Siegmund and Queen
Sieglind. In his young manhood he heard
of the beautiful Kriemhild, and,
although he had never seen her, he
determined to have her for his wife.
Undeterred by reports of her fierce and
warlike kinsmen, he made his armor
ready for his venture. Friends came from
all parts of the country to bid him
farewell, and many of them accompanied
him as retainers into King Gunther's
land. When he arrived at Gunther's
court, Hagen, who knew his fame, told
the brothers the story of Siegfried's first
success, relating how Siegfried had killed
great heroes and had won the hoard of
the Nibelung, a treasure of so much
gold and jewels that five score wagons
could not carry all of it. He also told
how Siegfried had won the cloak of
invisibility from the dwarf Albric, and
how Siegfried had become invincible
from having bathed in the blood of a
dragon he had slain.
Gunther and his brothers admitted
Siegfried to their hall after they had
heard of his exploits, and the hero
stayed with them a year. But in all that
time he did not once see Kriemhild.
The Saxons led by King Ludger
threatened to overcome the kingdom of
the Burgundians. Siegfried pledged to
2549

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1838-1839
Principal characters:
Nicholas Nickleby, a gendemanly young Englishman with no money
Kate Nickleby, his sister
Mrs. Nickleby, his mother
Ralph Nickleby, his miserly uncle
Smike, a boy befriended by Nicholas
The Cheeryble Brothers, employers of Nicholas
Wackford Squeers, a vicious schoolmaster
Frank Cheeryble, in love with Kate Nickleby
Madeline Bray, in love with Nicholas
Critique:
During the 1830*5 the English heard
many rumors that certain private schools
in the north of England were badly
mismanaged. Dickens made a trip to
investigate the terrible conditions said to
exist. The results of his findings appear
in the academy run by Wackford Squeers
in Nicholas Nickleby, a school where
boys were not taught a thing, but were
simply whipped, starved, and cowed in
order to keep their spirits and the
proprietor's expenses down. It has been claimed
that to Dickens alone can be given the
credit for arousing the wave of
indignation that forced many institutions to close
or to change. This novel, which also
contains the Cheeryble brothers, the first of a
series of exceptionally virtuous characters,
was the first of Dickens* novels to have a
truly complex plot. As such, it was a
fitting antecedent for such later novels as
A Tale of Two Cities and Great
Expectations.
The Story:
When Nicholas Nickleby was nineteen
years old, his father died a bankrupt.
A short time after their bereavement,
Nicholas, his sister Kate, and their mother
went to London. There they hoped to get
aid from the late Mr. Nickleby's brother
Ralph. But Ralph Nickleby, a
moneylender and miser, refused to help them
except on his own terms. Ralph and his
ways had to be accepted by the other
Nicklebys, although they were not sure
where life was taking them with Ralph as
their protector.
Ralph Nickleby first secured a position
for Nicholas as assistant to Wackford
Squeers, who operated a boys' boarding
school in Yorkshire. When Nicholas
arrived at the school, he found it a terrible
place where the boys were starved and
mistreated almost beyond human
imagination. But Nicholas had to put up with
the situation, for his uncle had warned
him that any help given to his sister and
mother depended upon his remaining at
the school where he had been placed. A
crisis arose, however, when Wackford
Squeers unmercifully beat an older boy
named Smike, who was little better than
an idiot. Nicholas interfered by taking the
whip from Squeers and beating the
schoolmaster in place of the boy. Immediately
afterward Smike and Nicholas left the
school and headed toward London.
In London, meanwhile, Mrs. Nickleby
and Kate had been lodged in an old
weatherbeaten cottage belonging to Ralph
Nickleby, who hoped to use Kate to attract
young Lord Verisopht into borrowing
money at high rates. He also found work
for Kate in a dressmaking establishment,
where there was a great deal of labor and
almost no pay. Kate did not mind the
work at the dressmaker's, but she bitterly
2552

claimed vengeance. The widow gave
vast sums of money to the poor in honor
of Siegfried. When Siegmund prepared
to leave for Niderland, he asked Kriem
hild to go with him, but she refused
allowing him, however, to take
Siegfried's son with him. She herself was
determined to stay with the Burgundians.
Queen Brunhild, however, offered no
compassion. The Nibelungen hoard was
given to Kriemhild, for it was her
wedding gift. However, by order of Hagen,
who planned to get possession of the
treasure, all of it was dropped to the
bottom of the Rhine. In the years that
followed Kriemhild remained in
mourning for Siegfried.
At last the mighty Etzel, King of the
Huns, sought to marry Kriemhild. After
a long courtship he won Kriemhild and
cook her to his land to be his wife. Etzel
was rich and strong, and after her long
years of mourning Kriemhild again
occupied a position of power and honor. Now
she began to consider how she might
avenge herself for the death of Siegfried.
Hoping to get Hagen in her power, she
sent a messenger to her brothers, saying
that she longed to see all of them again.
When they received her message, the
brothers and Hagen set out. Old Queen
Uta told them that in a dream she had
seen a vision of dire foreboding, but the
Burgundians refused to heed her
warning. Furthermore, Hagen received a
token from some mermaidens, who said
none of the knights would return from
Hunland. He disregarded the prediction.
Then a quarrel broke out among the
Burgundians, and Dankwart slew Gel-
frat. Three evil omens now attended
the coming journey, but still the brothers
refused to turn back. At last the
Burgundians came to Etzel's castle.
Gunther and his brothers were put
into separate apartments. Dankwart and
Hagen were sent to other quarters.
Warned by Sir Dietrich that Kriemhild
still plotted vengeance for Siegfried's
death, Hagen urged them all to take
precaution. When Kriemhild asked them
to give her their weapons, Hagen replied
that it could not be. The Burgundians
decided to post a guard to prevent a
surprise attack while they slept.
The court went to mass. At the
services the Huns were displeased to see that
Gunther and his party jostled Queen
Kriemhild.
In honor of the Burgundians, a great
tournament was held for all the knights.
So bad was the feeling between the
Burgundians and the Huns that King
Etzel was forced to intervene in order
to keep the peace. To appease the
brothers, Etzel gave them Kriemhild's
small son, Ortlieb, as a hostage. But Sir
Bloedel pressed into Dankwart's quarters
demanding justice for Kriemhild.
In a few minutes he had aroused the
anger of Dankwart, who rose from his
table and killed Bloedel. For this deed
the angered Huns killed Dankwart's
retainers. Dankwart, at bay, ran to Hagen
for help. Hagen, knowing that he would
not live to seek his vengeance on
Kriemhild later, slaughtered the little prince,
Ortlieb. Then followed a mighty battle
in which Hagen and Gunther managed
to kill most of -their adversaries.
Kriemhild now urged her heroes to
kill Hagen. The first to take up the
challenge was Iring. After he had wounded
Hagen, he rushed back to Kriemhild for
praise. Hagen recovered quickly and
sought Iring to kill him.
The battle continued, many knights
from both sides falling in the bloody
combat. Outnumbered, the Burgundians
fell one by one. Kriemhild herself slew
Hagen, the last of the Burgundians to
survive. He died without revealing the
location of the treasure.
King Etzel grieved to see so many
brave knights killed. At a sign from him,
Hildebrand, one of his retainers, lifted
his sword and ended the life of
Kriemhild as well.
So died the secret of the new hiding
place of the Nibelungen treasure hoard.
2551

went home and hanged himself.
Nicholas, thinking that Frank
Cheeryble was in love with Madeline, asked the
Cheeryble brothers to see that she was
taken care of elsewhere. Kate, who also
believed that Frank was in love with
Madeline, gave up seeing him. The
Cheeryble brothers, in their good-hearted
way, took the situation under observation
and soon learned the true state of affairs.
They then proceeded to unravel the
lovers' troubles. They revealed to Nicholas
that Frank was in love with Kate, and
Frank readily admitted his love. While
one Cheeryble brother did that, the other
told the girls how matters stood. All four
were, of course, exceedingly glad to have
their affairs in order, and they were
married shortly thereafter.
Years passed and both couples
prospered. Nicholas had invested his wife's
fortune in the Cheeryble brothers' firm,
and he later, along with Frank Cheeryble,
became a partner in the house. Newman
Noggs, the Nickleby clerk who had helped
Nicholas so many times, was restored to
respectability; he had been a wealthy
gentleman before he had fallen into
Ralph Nickleby's hands. Old Gride, who
had tried to marry Madeline for her money,
was murdered by robbers; Lord Verisopht
was killed in a duel, and Sir Mulberry
Hawk came to a violent end. Thus the
righteous prospered and the villains
received their just deserts.
2554

resented the leers which she had to endure
when invited to her uncle's home to dine
with Lord Verisopht and Sir Mulberry
Hawk. Not long after she had taken the
job, the dressmaker went bankrupt; Kate
then found work for herself as companion
to a rich but neurotic woman.
When Nicholas arrived in London, he
sought out Newman Noggs, his uncle's
clerk, who had promised aid if it became
necessary. Newman Noggs helped
Nicholas to clear himself of false charges
brought by Wackford Squeers and Ralph
Nickleby, for the latter denounced
Nicholas as a thief.
With some notion of becoming sailors,
Nicholas and Smike decided to go to
Bristol. On the way they met Vincent
Crummies, a theatrical producer, and
joined his troupe. Both Smike and
Nicholas were successful as actors. In addition,
Nicholas adapted plays for the company
to produce. After some weeks, however,
Nicholas received a letter from Newman
Noggs warning him that his presence was
required in London. Upon his arrival in
London, Nicholas accidentally met Sir
Mulberry Hawk and Lord Verisopht at a
tavern, where they were speaking
maliciously of Kate. Nicholas, remonstrating
with them, caused Sir Mulberry's horse to
bolt. The baronet, thrown from his
carriage and severely injured, vowed to take
revenge.
Kate, meanwhile, had been exposed to
the continued attentions of Sir Mulberry
and Lord Verisopht, for Mrs. Nickleby,
who failed to see them as villains, courted
their favor and invited them into Kate's
company. The future seemed very bleak
indeed, until Nicholas, while looking for
work at an employment agency, fell in
with a kindly man who offered him a
job. The man turned out to be one of the
Cheeryble brothers, great workers of
philanthrophy. The Cheeryble brothers
gave Nicholas a job in their counting-
house at a decent salary, rented him a
cottage reasonably, and helped him to
furnish it for himself, Kate, and their
mother. Suddenly the fortunes of the little
family seemed much improved.
One day a beautiful young woman
came into the Cheeryble brothers' office,
and Nicholas fell in love with her. Shortly
afterward Kate also fell in love with Frank
Cheeryble, nephew of Nicholas'
employers. Only Smike seemed unhappy; he, too,
had fallen in love with Kate. Worse
adventures were in store for him,
however, for Wackford Squeers and Ralph
Nickleby conspired to have Smike sent
back to Squeers' school. Smike,
recaptured after one escape, ran away a
second time, and Nicholas managed to keep
the lad from Squeers' clutches, much to
the idiot's relief. But Smike's new
happiness was short-lived. Sick with
tuberculosis, he died a few months later.
By then Nicholas had discovered that
his beloved's name was Madeline Bray
and that her father was a bankrupt
ne'er-do-well who lived off the little
income she made by sewing and painting.
Unknown to Nicholas, Ralph Nickleby
and a fellow miser, Arthur Gride, were
planning to force Madeline into a
marriage with Gride, who was seventy years
old. Fortunately, Madeline's father died
just an hour before he was to hand his
daughter over to the old miser. Nicholas
arrived on the scene and took the girl to
his home, to be cared for by Kate and his
mother.
Meanwhile Gride's housekeeper, an old
crone, left in a fit of jealousy and stole
some of her employer's papers. One of the
documents was a will which, if known,
would have made Madeline Bray a rich
woman. Ralph, learning of the will, had
Squeers steal it from her. When he did,
however, Frank Cheeryble and Newman
Noggs caught him and turned him over
to the police. The prisoner then confessed
his part in the plot and also the conspiracy
between Ralph and Gride to get
Madeline's fortune.
As if Ralph Nickleby's fortunes were
all against him, an old employee appeared
and revealed to the Cheeryble brothers
that Smike had been Ralph's son. Having
always believed that the child had died
in infancy, Ralph, when given that news,
2553

that his brothers fell in battle the child
burned to death in the home of her
foster mother. The major then adopted his
nephew and niece and repeatedly
declared his intention of making them his
heirs. Young Roland Forrester forfeited
his share of the inheritance, however,
when he enlisted in a troop of Virginia
horse. Shortly after Yorktown he returned
to find his cousin destitute. On her
uncle's death no will making her his
heiress could be found. Richard Braxley, the
major's lawyer and agent, had produced
the original will and taken possession of
the estate in the name of the major's
daughter, who was, he claimed, still alive
and soon to appear and claim her
heritage. Having no funds to contest the
will, Roland decided to move to
Kentucky, his plan being to place Edith in
the care of a distant pioneer relative at
the Falls while he himself carved from
the wilderness a fortune which would
allow him to marry his lovely cousin.
Colonel Bruce, the commander of the
station, welcomed the emigrants with
hearty frontier hospitality, greeting the
Forresters with special warmth and
insisting that they share his cabin. Having
served under Major Forrester in earlier
Indian wars, he told many stories of
those border campaigns. Mrs. Bruce,
equally voluble, bustled about giving
orders to her daughters and telling them
to be as circumspect as Telie Doe, who
remained quietly at her loom after a
startled glance up from her work when
she heard the name of Roland Forrester
mentioned. When the others escorted
Edith into the cabin she remained on the
porch, where Roland was explaining his
intention of pushing on toward the Falls
the next day. The colonel, while
deploring his guest's haste, said that there was
no danger from Indians on the trace. At
last the colonel noticed Telie and ordered
her into the house. She was, he said, the
daughter of a white renegade named Abel
Doe. Out of pity the Bruces had taken
her into their own home.
At that moment Tom Bruce, the
colonel's oldest son, appeared with news that
the Jibbenainosay had been active again;
some hunters had found an Indian with
a split skull and a slashed cross on his
breast. The colonel explained. The
Jibbenainosay, whom the settlers also called
Nick of the Woods, was a mysterious
avenger who had killed many Indians
and marked them thus. The Shawnees,
believing that he was either a ghost or a
devil, had given him his name, which
meant Spirit-that-walks. Some claimed to
have seen him, a giant with horns and
matted hair, always accompanied by a
devil that looked like a small black bear.
The news of the Jibbenainosay's latest
killing had been brought to the station by
Roaring Ralph Stackpole, a swaggering
braggart calling himself a ringtailed
squealer whose middle name was Fight.
When he challenged anyone in the
settlement to a trial of strength, the rough
frontiersmen decided to match him with
Nathan Slaughter, a Quaker trapper
derisively nicknamed Bloody Nathan
because of his peaceful ways and gentle
speech. Nathan, as thin as his horse and
as meek-looking as his dog, finally
consented to try a friendly fall. Much to the
surprise of the crowd, he lifted the bully
and threw him to the ground. Roaring
Ralph, admitting that he had been fairly
beaten, asked to borrow a horse so that
he could continue his journey to Logan's
Station. The Quaker trapper told the
settlers that the Miami Indians were
gathering, a threat of trouble on the frontier.
When the others refused to take his news
seriously, he exchanged his furs for lead
and powder and quietly left the station.
That night Telie Doe begged Edith to
let her go with the emigrants as a
servant. When Edith refused, the girl crept
sadly away. Roland slept with Bruce's
sons on the porch of the cabin. Aroused
from sleep during the night, he thought
he heard a whispering voice telling him
he was to cross Salt River by the lower
ford. Only half awake, he decided that
he was still dreaming.
The next morning there was great
confusion at the station. Roaring Ralph
had sneaked back into the settlement and
2556

NICK OF THE WOODS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Montgomery Bird (1806-1854)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1782
Locale: Kentucky
Firs* published: 1837
Principal characters:
Captain Roland Forrester, a veteran of the Revolutionary Wat
Edith Forrester, his cousin
Colonel Bruce, commander of Brace's Station
Tom Bruce, his son
Nathan Slaughter, a Quaker trapper
Roaring Ralph Stackpole, a frontier braggart and horse thief
Pardon Dodge, a pioneer
Abel Doe, a renegade white man
Telie Doe, his daughter
Richard Braxley, a Virginia lawyer
Wenonga, a Shawnee chief
Critique:
Nick of the Woods, Or, The Jihhen-
ainosay remains one of the famous
stories of the American frontier. A tale of
Kentucky in the days when that state
was the dark and bloody ground of
border history and legend, it was written in
part to counteract Cooper's heroic and
sentimentalized characterization of the
Indian and in part to retell a romantic
story which had its foundation of truth
in the early history of Pennsylvania. Dr.
Bird, a Philadelphia physician, showed
his deep interest in the historical
development of his country in this book and in
other of his novels and plays. The
influence of Scott is apparent. The hero and
heroine are the conventional lovers of
romantic tradition, and the true interest
of the novel centers about the wandering
Quaker, Nathan Slaughter, a man driven
to personal bloody vengeance against the
Shawnees. Settlers like Colonel Bruce,
Pardon Dodge, and Ralph Stackpole, a
braggart of the breed of Mike Fink and
other ringtail-roarers, add to the
vividness and variety of the novel, which has
appeared in almost thirty editions since
the date of its original publication.
The Story:
The sun was still high, on a sultry
August afternoon in 1782, when a train
of emigrants emerged from the gloom of
the forest and rode slowly toward Bruce's
Station, one of the principal forts in the
District of Kentucky. The travelers,
consisting of men, women, and children,
were accompanied by loaded pack-horses,
cattle, and slaves, the whole giving the
appearance of a village on the march. In
the position of responsibility at the end
of the cavalcade rode a young man of
scarce twenty-three, whose five years in
the camps and battles of the Revolution
showed in his military bearing and in
the mature gravity of his features. The
beautiful young woman at his side was
sufficiently like him in appearance to
suggest their kinship. They were
followed by two slaves, both mounted and
armed.
Captain Roland Forrester and his
cousin Edith were on their way to the Falls
of the Ohio. The orphaned children of
twin brothers who had died early in the
Revolution, they had been reared as
wards of their stern, wealthy uncle,
Major Roland Forrester. A stanch Tory, the
major had never forgiven his younger
brothers for supporting the cause of the
American patriots, and to keep them from
inheriting his estate, for he was
unmarried, he had executed a will in favor of
an illegitimate daughter. About the time
2555

His arms bound, Roland was tethered
to the Piankeshaw's saddle and, restrained
on both sides by two younger warriors,
forced to make a long, wearying march
before his captors decided to camp for
the night. Unable to sleep because of his
cramped limbs, he was startled to hear an
explosion close at hand, followed by
crashing and the sounds of pursuit.
Horrified when one of the Piankeshaws, his
face shot away, fell across his prostrate
body and died, Roland lost consciousness.
He revived to find Nathan Slaughter
bending over him, rubbing his chafed
limbs. Another dead Piankeshaw lay
nearby.
The Quaker, lurking in the forest
while the Indians divided the spoils, had
overheard the renegade and another white
man discussing the price to be paid for
the capture of Roland and Edith.
Convinced by Nathan's account that his
cousin had fallen into Braxley's hands,
Roland wished to start at once to the main
Indian village after the Quaker told him
that the old chief must have been We-
nonga, a Shawnee chieftain notorious
for his brutality and the atrocities he had
committed. On their way to the Shawnee
camp Roland and the Quaker found five
Indians capering about a white
prisoner bound to a tree. While they
struggled with the savages, the prisoner broke
his bonds and aided them in killing the
warriors. He was Roaring Ralph, the
horse thief.
When they reached the Indian village,
the Quaker daubed himself like a brave
and went stealthily among the houses to
find Edith. Peering through the chinks
in one cabin, he saw Braxley and Abel
Doe, and from the conversation he
learned that Braxley had in his possession
Major Forrester's second will. Having
disposed of Roland, the lawyer was now
planning to marry Edith and get her
wealth. While he searched for Edith's
place of imprisonment, Nathan found old
Chief Wenonga lying drunk in the grass.
He was about to plunge his knife in the
savage's breast when he heard Edith's
voice nearby. Leaving the chief, he went
to a skin tent where he found Braxley and
his prisoner. Taking the other man by
surprise, the Quaker seized and bound him.
With the will safe on his own person,
Nathan was carrying Edith to safety when
a clamor broke out in the Indian
encampment.
Roaring Ralph, ordered to steal four
horses upon which Edith and her
rescuers could make their escape, had
attempted to drive off the whole herd, and the
stampeding horses ran through the
village, arousing the warriors. Unable to
escape, the party was captured. Roland
and Roaring Ralph were bound and
taken to separate wigwams. Nathan, dragged
before the drunken old chief, defied
Wenonga with such ferocity that the Quaker
worked himself into an epileptic fit. The
spasm, together with his fantastic
disguise, convinced the Shawnee that his
white prisoner was a great medicine man.
Doe and Braxley still had not reached
an agreement over the renegade's pay.
What Braxley did not know was that
Doe had taken the will when he had
searched the Quaker after his capture.
The next day the renegade went to
Roland and offered him his freedom and
the estate if he would consent to marry
Telie. Roland refused, but offered Doe
half the estate if he would save Edith.
The man left sullenly.
That night old Wenonga had the
Quaker brought before him. After
bragging of the white women and children
he had killed and the scalps he had taken,
the chief offered the prisoner his freedom
if he would use his powers as a medicine
man to put the Jibbenainosay in the
power of the Shawnee. Nathan promised
to do so if his bonds were cut. Freed, he
revealed himself as the Jibbenainosay, a
friendly settler whose wife and children
Wenonga had treacherously killed years
before. Seizing the chief's ax, he sank it
into the savage's head. Then, after
cutting away Wenonga's scalp lock and
gashing the dead man's chest, the Quaker
2558

stolen Roland's blooded brown horse.
Knowing that the fugitive could not get
far on the tired animal, Bruce's sons had
ridden in pursuit. While the emigrant
train started on ahead, Roland, Edith, and
one of the slaves stayed at the station to
await the return of the horse. The animal
was found, wandering loose along the
trail, and brought back by one of the
boys. He said that the others were
tracking the thief, intending to make him an
object of frontier justice. As the travelers
were about to set out to overtake the
emigrant party, a horseman arrived with word
that Indians had attacked Bryant's
Station. The need to muster every fighting
man in the settlement left Roland and
his cousin without an escort;
nevertheless, they announced their intention of
starting with only one surly frontiersman
to guide them. On the way their guide
deserted them to return and join in the
fighting. The travelers were relieved
from their predicament when Telie Doe
appeared and offered to act as their guide.
When they came to the branch to the
two fords, Roland insisted on following
the road to the upper ford, in spite of
Telie Doe's pleadings. On the way they
were startled by an unearthly yelling,
and they found Roaring Ralph, his arms
bound and a noose around his neck,
astride a horse in such fashion that one
movement of the animal would hang the
rider from a limb overhead. Left to
perish in that manner after the pursuers
from Bruce's Station had overtaken him,
he was grateful to his rescuers and
offered to devote his life to Edith's service.
Roland curtly sent the braggart and thief
on his way.
Not far from the upper ford they met
a fleeing settler named Pardon Dodge,
who told them that Indians on the
warpath blocked the road ahead. In their
attempt to reach the lower ford they
became lost. Riding in a circle, they found
a dead Indian with a cross gashed on his
breast. While they waited for the dread
Jibbenainosay to appear, they saw
harmless Nathan Slaughter, his faithful hound
at his heels, coming through the forest.
Hearing that Indians were close by, the
Quaker became terrified. He promised to
guide the party only if he were not called
upon to fight.
The travelers took refuge at last in a
ruined cabin near the flooded river.
Indians attacked the cabin during the night,
but after a savage hand-to-hand struggle
they were repulsed. During the lull the
Quaker suggested that he should try to
evade the warriors and bring help to the
besieged. Roland agreed. Shortly before
daylight Roaring Ralph came down the
river in a small dugout. It was
desperately decided that the braggart was to
take Edith and Telie across the flooded
stream in his canoe, while Roland, Dodge,
and the slave would try to follow on
horseback. When Dodge's mount came
ashore without his rider, the others
decided that he had been washed from the
saddle and drowned.
Later that morning the fugitives
encountered another band of Indians.
Edith was captured. Roaring Ralph
escaped by rolling down the bank to the
river; the slave was killed. Roland,
knocked unconscious during the fight,
awoke to find himself wounded and
tightly bound. While he was wondering
what had happened to Edith, a band of
Kentuckians, led by young Tom Bruce,
appeared and engaged the savages. When
Roaring Ralph climbed the bank and
joined in the fight, the Kentuckians,
believing that they were seeing the ghost
of the man they had hanged, scattered in
confusion. Roaring Ralph, throwing
wounded Tom Bruce over the saddle,
rode away on Roland's horse.
The victorious Indians proceeded to
divide a store of arms, cloth, and various
trinkets, the distribution being made
under the directions of an old chief by a
brave whom Roland thought a half-breed.
He learned the man's identity when
Telie ran up to protest because Roland
himself had been given to a Piankeshaw
warrior. The light-skinned savage was Abel
Doe, the renegade.
2557

NIELS LYHNE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Denmark
First published: 1880
Principal characters:
Niels Lyhne, the hero
Erik, his friend
Fru Boyle, a widow
Fennimore, Niels' cousin
Gbrda, Niels' wife
Critique:
Niels Lyhne is somber in tone and
poetic in style. Perhaps some of the
emotional overtones in the novel come from a
rough parallel between the protagonist's
and the author's lives. The plot, while
complete and even tense at times, is
always subordinated to the feelings of
Lyhne as he goes through the quietly
tragic experiences which were his lot. The
pictures of Lyhne and Erik, Lyhne and
Gerda, Lyhne and Fru Boyle are
powerfully drawn. Always the reader seems to
be inside the people, feeling as they feel.
The Story:
Bartholine was not like her family.
They were common types, not desirous
of knowledge or power, seeing little
beyond the daily routine. But Bartholine
loved beauty, lived in poetry. When
Lyhne came to woo her, she accepted him
as a matter of course, for he was of a
family of poets and travelers. Her
husband disappointed her, however; he was
the youngest and all gifts of insight had
been given to his older brothers.
When Niels was born, she put her
hopes in him. Her son must be a real poet.
She brooded on her boy and dreamed
dreams for him. But Niels remained an
ordinary insentient boy until he began to
play with the pastor's son. The two
youngsters played at the usual imaginative
childhood games, but they had one special
pastime. They told each other, rum. and
NIELS LYHNE by Jens Peter Jacobsen. By i
Foundation. Copyright, 1919, by The American-!
turn about, an interminable story which
continued for months. Then Erik, a little
older and a little stronger, became their
leader. He had no time for stories; their
play now was of pirates and secret caves.
When Niels was twelve years of age,
two new people came to the Lyhne farm,
Herr Bigum, a tutor, and Edele, Lyhne's
unmarried sister. The tutor was forty and
insignificant; he had failed to pass his
examinations for the priesthood. Edele was
a belle from Copenhagen. Her gay social
life had ruined her health, and she had
been sent to the country to recuperate.
Niels, strongly attracted to his aunt,
followed her constantly. One day he heard
the ridiculous tutor declare his hopeless
love for Edele. When Edele died, her
death filled Niels with melancholy. He
became quieter and more imaginative.
Since Erik was older, he went away to
school first. He early showed promise as
an artist. When Niels visited him, he
found his old friend already a sculptor
with a studio covered with dust. That first
day Fru Boyle was in Erik's studio. She
and Erik were laughing heartily over a
book of poetry. Fru Boyle was a
voluptuous widow of thirty. Her husband, who
was in his sixties when they were married,
had been dead for some three years. She
led a Bohemian life, entertaining students
and artists, and she was estranged from
her family.
ssion of the publishers, The American-Scandinavian
inavian Foundation. Renewed, 1946.
2560

retrieved the scalps of his children and
with a triumphant cry disappeared into
the night.
The next morning, finding the Jib-
benainosay's mark on their dead chief,
the Shawnees were roused to wild fury.
Roland and Roaring Tom were tied to
the stake, timber heaped about them.
The fires were lighted, but before the
flames could reach them the sound of
gunfire echoed' above the yells of the
savages and a band of Kentuckians rode
through the smoke to set the prisoners
free. Braxley struck spurs into his horse
and rode away with Edith in his arms.
The resistance ended when Nathan,
with Wenonga's scalp at his belt,
appeared striking right and left with his
steel ax. The Indians scattered and ran,
but the rejoicing of the Kentuckians was
dimmed by the death of heroic Tom
Bruce, who in spite of wounds he had
suffered earlier had insisted on joining
the attacking party.
During the confusion Pardon Dodge
rode up with Edith on the saddle before
him. Washed downstream in the flooded
river, he had escaped on a raft and
arrived back at Bruce's Station in time to
enlist in the rescue party. Seeing
Braxley riding away with Edith, he had
mistaken the lawyer for an Indian and had
shot him. Doe, mortally wounded, gave
Roland the missing will, and the young
Virginian promised to look after Telie
with a brother's care.
Roland and Edith, preparing to return
to Virginia to claim her inheritance,
assured Nathan that they owed life as well
as fortune to his bravery and daring.
Although they begged him to return with
them, he stoutly refused. But the work of
the Jibbenainosay was done, and after a
time the Quaker disappeared quietly into
the woods. Roaring Ralph lived to cheat
the law for many years. No one in the
neighborhood of Bruce's Station ever
heard of Nathan Slaughter again.
2559

called for her pastor. When his son also
died soon afterward, it seemed to Niels
that there was nothing left in life for
him.
After he had joined the army, he felt
strengthened somehow to belong to
something. During a battle he was fatally
wounded in the chest. On his deathbed he
rejected religion finally. In his memory
he saw the people he had known. Had
he been faithful to them? Were they
worth caring about? Questioning to the
last, he died a bitter death.
2562

Niels, neglecting his duties as a
student, spent most of his time with the
widow. Wiser than he, she had no desire
for a real love affair. Niels, too sensitive
to push his love, was content to have their
intimacy remain poetic and platonic.
From time to time he felt guilty about
his neglected studies and about his almost
forgotten parents, to whom he seldom
wrote. He was abruptly brought back to
duty when he was notified of his father's
sudden death.
Niels was alarmed when he saw how
sad and aged his mother had grown. To
please her he planned a trip so that she
could see the places she had dreamed of so
long. She agreed to go on the journey, buf
with many misgivings. They settled down
in Clarens for the winter, a spot rich in
memories of Rousseau. Bartholine grew
weaker steadily, but she lived to see the
gentle spring come to the Savoyard
countryside. Niels buried her in Clarens.
Back in Copenhagen, he learned that
Fru Boyle had closed up her town house
to move into the country to be nearer her
family. He resolved not to see her, but
she wrote him an urgent note setting a
meeting time for the next day. When
they met, he embraced her ardently. At
first she seemed to return his ardor, but
after a while she drew away and told him
she was engaged to be married. Niels left
her for good, upset that she had forsaken
him.
He took Erik with him to visit his
uncle, a prosperous merchant who had
an estate near the sea. There the two
friends were comfortable, loafing and
loving nineteen-year-old Fennimore, Niels*
cousin, an eager girl with eyes only for
Erik. Resignedly Niels gave way to his
friend, who had already achieved some
reputation as a painter rather than a
sculptor. Niels attended the wedding in a
melancholy spirit.
In the city Niels avoided his former
friends. His only intimate was an atheistic
doctor who influenced him strongly.
Gradually Niels came to see that a
personal God was a rationalized fiction, that
Rousseau's innate nobility of man was a
philosophic speculation.
Erik wrote him an appealing letter.
Since his marriage he could no longer
paint; his country companions gave him
no inspiration. On a visit to his old friend,
Niels found that his Erik had become a
dissipated squire, drinking and gambling
night after night. Niels* arrival induced
him to stay home occasionally for a while,
but soon Erik went back to his old haunts.
He seemed to have no more ambition.
Niels was thrown much in the company
of Fennimore who had come to despise
her husband. The cousins became lovers.
Fennimore seemed not to mind their
secret kisses and their troubled
rendezvous. One night, as she waited for Niels
to come, word was brought that Erik had
been in an accident. His carriage had
overturned and his head had been
smashed against a stone wall. The news
threw her into a torment of grief and
remorse. When Niels arrived she turned on
him savagely for having despoiled the
noble, dead Erik. Again saddened but
resigned, Niels went back to his own estate.
For a while he was busy with farm
affairs, content to learn about crops and
rents. From time to time he visited a
neighbor, a man with five children. The
oldest was seventeen-year-old Gerda. By
accident Niels came upon a curious
scene: he saw the four younger brothers
and sisters mimicking Niels* big city ways
and unmercifully teasing Gerda, who
defended him against his tormentors. Niels
quietly went to her father to ask for her
hand.
With Gerda he was very happy. At last
Niels seemed to have found a haven.
Charmed by his young wife's avid desire
for knowledge, he patiently led her away
from her old anthropomorphic God to his
own independent humanism, and soon
she was more convinced than he. Their
son brought a new joy to them and bound
them closer together.
After two years Gerda became gravely
ill. Realizing that she was going to die,
she renounced her advanced views and
2561

out of Bombay the ship began to put her
nose into the heavy waves, instead of
riding over. Gear blew loose, and the men
were tossed about the deck. At sunset
all sail was shortened in preparation for
a terrific gale. That entire night nothing
seemed left in the universe except
darkness and the fury of the storm. In the gray
morning half of the crew went below to
rest. The remainder of them and the
officers of the ship stayed on deck.
Suddenly a great wall of water loomed out
of the mist. The ship rose with it, as a
gust of wind lay the vessel on its side.
The watch below decks rushed out of
the forecastle and crawled aft on hands
and knees to join their comrades already
on deck. The ship lay on its side for
hours, while the men huddled against the
various projections on the deck to which
they had lashed themselves. At last
someone asked about Wait. Another man
shouted that he was trapped in the
deckhouse, now half under water, and had
drowned, because the heavy wave had
jammed the door.
With five volunteers the bosun inched
forward along the deck to see if the Negro
might still be alive. Once above the side
of the deckhouse they let go and slid
down to it as the backwash of the heavy
seas foamed around them. They crawled
into the carpenter's shop next to the
deckhouse cabin. One of the sailors
drummed on the bulkhead with a piece
of iron. When he stopped, they heard
someone banging on the opposite side.
Wait was still alive. He began to scream
for help. Someone on deck found a
crowbar and passed it below. The men in
the tiny carpenter's shop battered at the
planks until there was a hole in the
bulkhead. Wait's head appeared in the hole
and interrupted the work. Finally, on
threat of being brained with the crowbar,
he got out of the way. In another minute
or two the men had made a hole large
enough to pull him out. With great
difficulty they carried him aft and lashed
him tight. When he recovered his breath
and began to lose his fear, he began to
berate his rescuers for not being more
prompt. The men hated and pitied him.
The day passed and night came. The
ship still was afloat, but with half her
deck under water. An icy wind from the
Antarctic began to numb the men who
had lain in the open for twenty-four hours
without food. At dawn, the captain
prepared to bring some order to the ship, for
the wind was subsiding. Slowly the ship
began to turn and gather way, with the
decks still half under. At every lurch the
crew expected the ship to slide from under
them to the bottom of the sea. But when
the wind was directly aft, the ship rose
and was no longer at the mercy of wind
and pounding seas.
The sailors were put to work, tired
though they were, to make sail, to pump
out the bilges, and to make the vessel
shipshape once again. When they went
below, they found the forecastle a ruin.
Most of their gear had floated away.
A fair wind pushed the ship northward
up the Atlantic under a blue sky and a
dancing sea. Wait was again established
in the deckhouse. Once more the doubt
that he was really dying pervaded the
ship, although no one dared say so. The
captain went to interview him because
he had to be sure. The crew was in an
ugly mood. The captain, certain the man
was dying, refused to let him go back to
work. But the crew, convinced that the
Negro was well enough to share in their
labors, threatened mutiny. Sure that Wait
would die, the captain wanted to let him
die in peace. He persuaded the men that
Wait was dying, and their mutterings
ended.
As the ship drove northward Wait
seemed to fade. His cheeks fell in, his
skull lost its flesh; his appearance
hypnotized the crew. Once again, pitying him
in his dying, they humored his whims.
He was always in their talk and their
thoughts. The ship seemed too small to
everyone; they could not get away from
death.
As the ship approached the Flores
islands Wait seemed better. But the older
sailors shook their heads; it was common
superstition that dying men on shipboard

THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Conrad (Teodor J6zef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-1924)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Bombay to London
First published: 1897
Principal characters:
James Wait, a Negro sailor on the Narcissus
Donkin, a fellow sailor
Old Singleton, another sailor
Mr. Baker, the first mate
Critique:
The Nigger of the Narcissus is more
than a story of a sea voyage. It is a
chronicle of character revealed by means of a
dying Negro who brought Death aboard
ship as a passenger. The tension of
imminent death brought out the best and
the worst in the crew of the Narcissust
and Conrad succeeded in capturing all
the nuances of the situation for the reader.
In this book there is a clue to the depth
of Conrad's own understanding of human
character under the tests of endurance
and survival at sea. The author frequently
said of this book that upon it he was
willing to stand or fall, not as a novelist but
as an artist striving for sincerity of
expression.
The Story:
The British freighter Narcissus lay in
Bombay harbor on a hot, sticky tropical
night in the 1890's. Already loaded, it
was to sail the next morning on its
homeward voyage. The last crew member to
come aboard was a huge Negro, James
Wait. The Negro, who had a severe
cough, asked his shipmates to help him
in stowing his gear. A little later the men
were in their bunks, and the only sound
was snoring, interrupted at times by
Wait's fits of coughing.
At daylight the Narcissus sailed. That
evening, as the sailors gathered in little
groups about the deck, the laughter and
yarn spinning ceased at the sound of a
weak rattle in Wait's bunk. It ended with
a moan. The black man climbed up on
deck, looked about, and made the men
miserable by berating them for making so
much noise that he, a dying man, could
have no rest. It seemed, after a few days,
that the Negro looked upon the
approaching death as a friend. He paraded his
trouble to everyone, railing bitterly at the
salt meat, biscuits, and tea at mealtime.
All the men in the forecastle were
touched by the dying man and his fits
of coughing. There was nothing that they
would not do for him, even to stealing
pie for him from the officers' mess. Even
Donkin, a Cockney who thought that
no one was ever right but himself, catered
to Wait. The Negro did no work after
they were a week at sea. The first mate
finally ordered him below to his bunk,
and the captain upheld the mate's order.
Each morning the men carried the invalid
up on deck. Finally he was put in one
of the deckhouse berths. He never let
anyone doubt that his death was
imminent. He fascinated the officers and
tainted the lives of the superstitious
sailors, even those who grumbled that his
illness was a fraud.
As the Narcissus approached the Cape
of Good Hope, heavier sails were set, the
hatches were checked, and everything
loose on deck was securely lashed in place
in preparation for the winds that were
sure to come. On the thirty-second day
THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS by Joseph Conrad. By permission of the publishers, J. M. Dent &
Sons, Ltd., London, agents for the trustees of the estate of Joseph Conrad. Published by Doubleday & Co..
Inc. Copyright, 1914, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Renewed, 1942, by John Alexander Conrad.
2563

NIGHT FLIGHT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exup£ry (1900-1944)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early 1930's
Locale: South America
First published: 1931
Principal characters:
Riviere, director of the air-mail service
Robineau, the inspector
Fabien, the lost pilot
Mme. Fabien
Pellerin, a pilot
Roblet, a former pilot
The Wireless Operator
Critique:
A novel concerning the early days on
the mail routes of South America, Night
Flight deals with the dangers and
difficulties of flying at night. The hero,
Riviere, is a man determined to make
night flying regular, despite the dangers
of weather, disrupted communication,
and inadequate machinery. The novel
becomes a conflict between the sense of
purpose and achievement in carrying out
night flights and the warm, domestic
comfort that nights spent with wives
represent. The conflict finds a strong and
dramatic focus within the character of
Riviere, an unbending man determined
to keep the mail route going but sensitive
enough to venerate his pilots as men.
The novel, written in a dense, evocative,
poetic style, is in Saint-Exup£ry's hands
an excellent medium for combining the
poetic and philosophic reflections with
praise for a life of action and purpose.
For this writer-flyer the pilots of the early,
difficult days of the mail routes
represented genuine heroes, men of
achievement in terms of both thought and
action.
The Story:
Fabien, along with his wireless
operator, was flying at sunset, bringing the
mail from Patagonia to Buenos Aires.
Two other mail planes, one from Chile
and one from Paraguay, were also headed
for Buenos Aires, where another plane
was to take off, about two in the
morning, with a cargo of South American mail
intended for Europe. Fabien's wireless
operator, hearing reports of storms ahead,
urged Fabien to land in San Julian for
the night; but Fabien, looking at the clear
sky and the first stars, refused and headed
for Buenos Aires.
At Buenos Aires, Riviere, the head of
the mail service, was pacing the airport.
Worried about the safety of his three
planes, he was pleased when the plane
from Chile landed safely early in the
evening. Pellerin, the pilot of the plane from
Chile, told of flying through a great storm
in the Andes. Although Pellerin had not
experienced great difficulty, he was still
shaken by his experience. Both men
seemed certain, at this point, that the
storm would not cross the Andes.
Robineau, the inspector at Buenos Aires,
somewhat resentful of Riviere's severity
and unwillingness to relax discipline,
revealed more pity for Pellerin's experience
than Riviere had shown. Robineau went
out to dinner with Pellerin, a meal over
which they could chat about women and
domestic concerns, away from the
tension of the airfield.
When Robineau returned to the field,
Riviere criticized him for making a friend
NIGHT FLIGHT by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. By permission of the
publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1932, by The Century Co. Copyright, 1942, by Reynal &
Hitchcock. All rights reserved.
2566

waited until they were in sight or land
to breathe their last. Wait died as the
Flores islands came over the horizon, and
he was buried at sea. As the board on
which his body lay was lifted to let the
corpse slide into the sea, something
caught. The men lifting the board held
their breath. Everyone seemed in a trance
until the corpse slid slowly downward
and then plunged over the rail. The ship
suddenly seemed lighter, as thouoh
relieved of the burden of Death itself.
2565

world realized the necessity for carrying
on with a minimum of expressed
emotion. Riviere felt that this loss might be
used as evidence for the governments to
curtail night-flying operations. At the
same time he believed strongly that these
operations must continue, that man must,
in spite of disaster, carry on. He ordered
the next plane to take off on schedule.
2568

of Pellerin. Riviere went on to point out
that supervisors, who had to order men to
what might be their deaths, could not
become friendly with the men under
them; the supervisors had to maintain
discipline, impersonality, because the
success of the project, the conquest of space
at night, depended on firm and
immediate control. Riviere, although mastering
the pain in his own side only with great
difficulty, maintained severe discipline on
the airfield all the time. He deprived
pilots of bonuses if planes were not on
time, no matter what the reason; he
disciplined old Roblet severely for any
minor infraction, even though Roblet had
been the first man in Argentina to
assemble a plane; he fired an electrician for
some faulty wiring in a plane.
The wife of the pilot who was to fly
from Buenos Aires to Europe received a
phone call. She awakened her husband
and he prepared for the flight. She was
aware, as he was dressing, that he was
already part of another world, that he
had already lost interest in home,
domesticity, herself. He then reported to Riviere
who reprimanded him for turning back
on a previous flight. Riviere was severe,
although he silently admired the man's
skill.
Meanwhile, the plane from Patagonia,
piloted by Fabien, entered a violent
storm. As the storm became more serious,
Fabien tried to find a place to land, for
he could see nothing; but all the airfields
nearby were completely closed in by the
storm. Riviere became more and more
concerned. Unable to contact Fabien by
radio, he alerted police and emergency
services throughout the country. Fabien s
wife of only six weeks, accustomed to
having him arrive for dinner by a certain
hour, telephoned the airfield. Riviere,
feeling strong emotion, tried to reassure
her that all would be well, but knew he
could not honestly say so.
When Fabien, in deep distress and
thinking he might try a crash landing,
threw out his only landing flare, he
found that he had been blown off course
by the storm and was now over the ocean.
He turned sharply west. After a time he
noticed a clearing above and climbed to
it. The storm was still solid beneath him,
however, and he could find no airfield
open for a landing. He had gas for only
thirty minutes. Buenos Aires informed
him that the storm covered the whole
interior of the country and that no
airfield within thirty minutes* flying time
was open. Riviere, realizing that Fabien
could not fly to safety, could only hope
for a lucky crash landing through the
storm.
Mme. Fabien, distraught, arrived at
the airfield. Riviere, knowing that he
could not comfort her, was too wise to
try; but he sympathized with her distress
as he tried to explain the enormous effort
men must make in order to conquer the
skies. He did not speak melodramatically
to her; rather, he was matter-of-fact in
what he said, and they understood each
other.
At last they received a blurred message
from Fabien reporting that he was
coming down and entering the rain clouds.
They did not know whether the fuel had
already run out or whether he was
attempting to guide the plane through the
storm to some safe spot.
The plane from Paraguay, in the
meantime, had arrived safely, just
skirting the edge of the storm. Robineau
watched Riviere closely enough to realize
that Riviere was enormously concerned,
that his sense of discipline was not
callousness but a dedicated sense of the
purpose in his mission. Robineau came
into Riviere's office with some papers
and, for a moment, there was a sense of
understanding, of communion, between
the two men.
As time passed, everyone realized that
Fabien was lost. Although some sign of
him might still turn up the next day,
there was nothing to do now and little
hope that he and his wireless operator
could be found alive. The pilot of the
plane from Paraguay passed the pilot of
the plane going to Europe. They
exchanged a few words about Fabien, but
there was no sentimentality, for the pilots'
2567

When "He" departed, Rose took Elise
with him and went to his lodgings. There
Rose died mysteriously, leaving no trace
as to the exact manner of his death.
In his rooms there were evidences of
the presence of a woman but nothing
else of importance except the diary he
had written.
2570

A NIGHT IN T]
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915)
Type of plot: Rationalized mysticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1906
Principal characters:
M. James Sandy Rose,
"He"
Elise
Critique:
Remy de Gourmont was accused of
blasphemy and indecency as a result of
this book. Certainly de Gourmont lacked
no honesty in presenting his views of
the world based upon personal
observation of certain facts. In any case,
immorality and indecency depend upon the
point of view of the reader. For those
readers who think and who are not
disturbed at facing the reality of ideas
this book could well be a revelation.
The Story:
When James Sandy Rose, foreign
correspondent for the Northern Atlantic
Monthly, died, the newspapers printed
only a part of the circumstances
surrounding his death. Among his personal affects
was a diary which threw more light upon
his private experience and belief. In
this diary Rose related how he had gone
to the Luxembourg and had noticed a
peculiar light shining through the
windows of the Church of Saint-Sulpice. His
curiosity aroused, he went into the
church and discovered a man standing
before the statue of the Virgin. At
first glance the man was very ordinary
looking, but when he looked at Rose
there was something striking and
attractive in his appearance. Rose merely
called the man "He" in long passages
of the diary that reported a discussion
between them on philosophical and
religious subjects.
Little by little, it became apparent to
Rose that this strange man was really
Christ. Rose followed the man out into
A NIGHT IN THE LUXEMBOURG by Remy de Gc
ft Co.
LUXEMBOURG
a journalist
the garden, which had suddenly become
clothed in summer foliage. There they
met three beautiful women, one of whom
was called Elise. In that pastoral
setting their conversations concerning
divinity, religion, and philosophy
continued. In a short interlude between
discussions Rose and Elise had an affair.
"He" informed Rose that Epicurus
and Spinoza were nearer to "Him" than
anyone else, including the saints. "He"
told the reporter also that the gods are
superior but not immortal—they merely
live longer. Destiny is the creator and
the regulator of the world. There is no
truth because the world is perpetually
changing. The Acts of the Apostles
were no more miraculous than those in
"Aladdin and the Marvelous Lamp,"
but the men who wrote of those Acts
touched God with their hands. Man's
superiority to the animal world,
particularly the termites, was brought about by
the lowering of the world's temperature.
Civilizations came into being because of
the discoveries of fire and leisure.
Lucretius' poem concerning Epicurus would
have been a greater book for mankind
than the Bible. Men will perhaps never
recover from the wound given them by
Christianity. Great hypocrites are always
the chosen masters of the world. Suicide
is not an act of cowardice. Happiness
for men is not possession but desire.
The difference between the girl of a
public harem and a goddess is only a
difference created by social custom and its
conception of sin.
mont. By permission of the publishers, John W. Lace
2569

Celinda, a young woman then studying
abroad, as a good match for Scythrop.
With dowry's hearty approval Toobad
went to London to meet his daughter
and return with her to Nightmare
Abbey. But Celinda, refusing to have a
husband chosen for her, fled from her
domineering father. Toobad appeared at
the abbey and left again, vowing to all
that he would find his unruly daughter.
The house party at Nightmare Abbey
grew larger. Mr. Flosky, a poet of the
supernatural, came and spread confusion
with his metaphysical paradoxes. Listless,
a bored dandy, came with Fatout, his
French valet, who was the guardian of his
mind and body. Another addition to the
party was Mr. Asterias the ichthyologist,
engaged in tracing down rumors of
mermaids in the vicinity of the abbey. It was
not clear what a mermaid would do in the
fens around the abbey, but Mr. Asterias
had faith. That faith was rewarded one
night when dimly Mr. Asterias perceived
the form of a woman clad in black. As he
rushed across the moat, the mysterious
figure disappeared.
Scythrop took as much delight as he
could in Marionetta's company. But
Listless was the gayest person in the room
when Marionetta was present. As far as
his languid airs would permit, he followed
her about with great eagerness.
Watching Scythrop's affection for
Marionetta, Glowry decided that he had been
too harsh with his son, and he suddenly
announced his approval of their betrothal.
To his father's surprise, Scythrop
stammered that he did not want to be too
precipitate. So the generosity of the father
went unrewarded.
There was some mystery about
Scythrop. For some time he had been more
distraught than usual; now he practically
refused marriage with his beloved. More
than that, every time Glowry went to
his son's rooms, he found the aoor locked
and Scythrop slow in answering his
knock. Always, before the door opened,
a strange, heavy thud sounded in the
room.
One evening, while the whole
company was sitting in the drawing-room,
a tall and stately figure wearing a bloody
turban suddenly appeared. Listless rolled
under the sofa. Glowry roared his Viwrm
in Toobad's ear, and Toobad tried to
run away. But he mistook a window for
a door, and fell into the moat below. Mr.
Asterias, still looking for a mermaid,
fished him out with a landing net.
These mysteries went back to the
night Mr. Asterias thought he saw the
mermaid. Scythrop was sitting alone in
his library when the door opened softly
and in stepped a beautiful, stately
woman. She looked at Scythrop carefully,
and reassured by what she saw, she sat
down confidently. The bewildered man
could only sit and stare. Gently the
mysterious stranger asked him if he were
the illustrious author of the pamphlet,
"Philosophical Gas." Flattered, Scythrop
acknowledged his authorship of that
profound work, only seven copies of which
had been sold. Then the girl asked his
protection from a marriage that would
make her the slave of her sex. Already
smitten, Scythrop agreed to hide her in
his secret apartment.
Then Scythrop began his dual
romance. The serious girl, who called
herself Stella, talked night after night of the
German metaphysicians and quoted
German tragedy. On the other hand,
Marionetta was always gay and lively. Scythrop
did not know whom to choose.
One night his father demanded entry
into his room while Stella was there.
Stella decided to show herself, regardless
of consequences. Toobad recognized his
long-lost daughter Celinda. Scythrop
now had to choose either Celinda or
Marionetta. But he hesitated to make a
choice, feeling that he could not
relinquish either. The next day, however,
the decision was made for him.
Marionetta had accepted Listless and Celinda
would soon be Mrs. Flosky. Stoically,
Glowry reminded his son that there were
other maidens. Scythrop agreed, and
ordered the Madeira.
2572

NIGHTMARE ABBEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1818
Principal characters:
Christopher Glowry, master of Nightmare Abbey
Scythrop, his son
Mr. Flosky, a visitor
Marionetta, dowry's niece
Mr. Toobad, Glowry's friend
Celtnda, his daughter
Listless, a dandy
Critique:
Peacock is one of the interesting minor
novelists of his time. Apart from his
own writings, he is remembered for his
friendship with Shelley. Many of the
literary figures of his time are but thinly
disguised in his novels. Peacock, in
Nightmare Abbey, has written light
comedy with a heavy touch, and has satirized
many of the customs of his day. The
title of the novel suggests the influence
of the popular Gothic horror tale.
The Story:
Refused by one young lady in his
youth, Glowry immediately married
another. His wife was cold and gloomy,
and Nightmare Abbey was a fitting name
for her house. Glowry found relief from
his unhappy life in food and drink, and
when his lady died, he was easily
consoled by increasing his consumption of
food and wine. She left one son,
Scythrop, who was gloomy enough to suit
his father and Nightmare Abbey. A
university education had so stripped
Scythrop of his thin veneer of social
graces that he was rapidly becoming a
country boor like his father.
While his father was away in London
attending to an important lawsuit,
Scythrop amused himself by constructing
miniature dungeons, trapdoors, and
secret panels. One day he discovered by
chance an apartment in the main wing
of the abbey which had no entrance or
exit; through an error in construction,
the apartment had remained hidden for
many years. He imported a dumb
carpenter and together they constructed a
cunning secret panel through which one
could step from the library into the
hidden apartment. Then, Scythrop had
a private refuge for his gloomy
meditations.
Miss Emily Girouette declined
decidedly to marry Scythrop. In
consequence, when his cousin Marionetta
came to visit, she rapidly conquered the
heart of that sad young man. But
Marionetta had no fortune, and Glowry
refused to hear of the marriage. Scythrop,
however, grew more enamored daily of
his coquettish cousin.
Glowry viewed the increasing
attachment of Scythrop and Marionetta with
great concern. Finally, he told Scythrop
the girl would have to leave. Furious,
Scythrop rushed to his tower and filled
a human skull with Madeira wine.
Confronting his father and holding high the
skull, he declared in ringing tones that
if Marionetta ever left Nightmare Abbey
except of her own free will, he would
drink the potion. Convinced that the
skull contained poison, his father
consented to have Marionetta stay on as a
guest. Scythrop drank the wine with
gusto.
Glowry confided his troubles to his
friend, Toobad, who agreed that marriage
with Marionetta was unsuitable in every
way. He proposed his own daughter
2571

big telescreen the face of Goldstein, the
enemy of the Party, would appear, and
a government speaker would work up the
feelings of the viewers. Goldstein
supposedly headed a great conspiracy against
Oceania, and Winston loudly and
dutifully drummed his heels as he took part in
the group orgasm of hate.
A bold, dark-haired girl, wearing the
red chastity belt, seemed often to be
near Winston in the workrooms and in
the commissary. He was afraid that she
might be a member of the thought
police. Seeing her outside the ministry, he
decided she was following him. For a
time he played with the idea of killing
her. One day she slipped a note to him
at work; the little paper announced that
she loved him.
Winston was troubled. He had been
married, but his wife belonged to the
Anti-Sex League. For her, procreation
was a Party duty. When they produced
no children, his wife left him. Now this
girl, Julia, spoke of love. Carefully
making their conversation look like chance,
Winston had a few private words with
her in the lunchroom. She quickly
named a country rendezvous. Winston
met her in a woods, far from a telescreen,
and she eagerly took him for a lover.
Julia boasted that she had been the
temporary mistress of several Party
members and that she had no patience with
the Anti-Sex League, although she
worked diligently for it. She also bought
sweets on the black market.
On another visit to Mr. Charrington's
antique shop, the proprietor showed
Winston an upstairs bedroom still
preserved as it was before the Revolution.
Although it was madness, Winston
rented the room. Thereafter he and Julia had
a comfortable bed for their brief
meetings. Winston felt happy in the old room;
there was no telescreen to spv on them.
Sometimes, while at work, Winston saw
O'Brien, a kindly-looking member of the
Inner Party. From a chance remark
Winston deduced that O'Brien was not
in sympathy with all the aims of the
Party. When they could, Winston and
Julia went to O'Brien's apartment. He
assured them that Goldstein was really
the head of a conspiracy and that
eventually the Party would be overthrown. Julia
told him of her sins against Party
discipline, and Winston recounted his
evidence that the Party distorted facts in
public trials and purges. O'Brien then
enrolled them in the conspiracy and gave
them Goldstein's book to read.
After an exhausting hate week
directed against the current enemy, Eurasia,
Winston read aloud to the dozing Julia,
both comfortably lying in bed, from
Goldstein's treatise. Suddenly a voice rang
out, ordering them to stand in the middle
of the room. Winston grew sick when he
realized that a hidden telescreen had
spied on their actions. Soon the room
was filled with truncheon-wielding
policemen. Mr. Charrington came in, no
longer a kindly member of the simple
proletariat, but a keen, determined man
of thirty-five. Winston knew then that
Mr. Charrington belonged to the thought
police. One of the guards hit Julia in the
stomach. The others hurried Winston off
to jail.
Winston, tortured for days, was
beaten, kicked, and clubbed until he
confessed his crimes. He willingly admitted
to years of conspiracy with the rulers of
Eurasia and told everything he knew of
Julia. In the later phases of his torture
O'Brien was at his side constantly.
O'Brien kept him on a kind of rack with
a doctor in attendance to keep him alive.
He told Winston that Goldstein's book
was a Party production, written in part
by O'Brien himself.
Through it all the tortured man had
one small triumph; he still loved Julia.
Then O'Brien, knowing Winston's fear
of rats, brought in a large cage filled with
rodents and fastened it around Winston's
head. In his unreasoning terror Winston
begged him to let the rats eat Julia,
instead.
Only one hurdle was left. Winston
still hated Big Brother and said so.
2574

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Orwell (Eric Blair, 1903-1950)
Type of plot: Political satire
Time of plot: 1984
Locale: London
First published: 1949
Principal characters:
Winston Smith, a Party functionary
Julia, a rebellious girl
O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party
Mr. Charrington, one of the thought police
Critique:
Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of the
keenest pieces of satire to be written in
modern times, a dreadful warning of
things that may come. In this queer,
distorted society of Oceania, no institution
or practice is without at least a
rudimentary counterpart in our world.
Television, thought control, the big lie, mass
hysteria—all have been an
accompaniment of the ills of the present. To present
a picture of a completely totalitarian
society, as Orwell has done here, is a
painstaking accomplishment, and the result is
a picture too credible for the thoughtful
reader's comfort.
The Story:
In externals, at least, Winston Smith
was well adjusted to his world. He drank
the bitter victory gin and smoked the vile
victory cigarettes. In the morning he did
his exercises in front of the telescreen,
and when the instructor spoke to him
over the two-way television, he bent with
renewed vigor to touch the floor. His flat
was dingy and rickety, but at thirty-nine
he was scarcely old enough to remember
a time when housing had been better. He
had a fair job at the Ministry of Truth,
since he had a good mind and the ability
to write newspeak, the official language.
He was a member of the outer ring of
the Party.
One noon, by giving up his lunch at
the ministry, he had a little free time to
himself. Going to an alcove out of reach
of the telescreen, he furtively took out
his journal. It was a noble book with
paper of fine quality unobtainable at
present. It was an antique, bought on an
illicit trip to a second-hand store run by
old Mr. Charrington. While it was not
illegal to keep a diary, for there were
no laws in Oceania, it made him suspect.
He wrote ploddingly about a picture he
had seen of the valiant Oceania forces
strafing shipwrecked refugees in the
Mediterranean.
Musing over his writing, Winston
found to his horror that he had written
a slogan against Big Brother several times.
He knew his act was a crime, even if
the writing was due to gin; even to think
such a slogan was a crime. Everywhere
he looked, on stair landings and on store
fronts, were posters showing Big Brother'^
all-seeing face, and citizens were
reminded a hundred times a day that Big
Brother was watching every move.
At the Ministry of Truth, Winston
plunged into his routine. He had the job
of rewriting records. If the Party made
a wrong prediction on the progress of the
war, if some aspect of production did not
accord with the published goals of the
ninth three-year plan, Winston corrected
the record. All published material was
constantly changed so that all history
accorded with the wishes and aims of the
Party.
There was a break in the day's routine
for a two-minute hate period. On the
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George OrwelK By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace &
Co., Inc. Copyright, 1949, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
2573

NO NAME
Type of work: Novel
Author: Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1862
Principal characters:
Andrew Vanstone, a country gentleman
Mrs. Vanstone, his wife
Norah, and
Magdalen, their daughters
Noel Vanstone, a cousin, whom Magdalen married
Captain Wragge, a distant relative
Miss Garth, a nurse
Mr. Clare, a neighbor
Frank Clare, his son
Captain Kirke, Magdalen's second husband
Critique:
No Name rivaled The Woman in
White and The Moonstone in popularity
among readers of Collins' own day.
Judged by modern taste, the novel is still
one which diverts the reader and offers
an excellent picture of Victorian customs
and manners, domestic life, and morals.
Its effectiveness lies chiefly in its
presentation of character and in its realistic
criticism of laws which often worked to
the disadvantage of those whom they
should have served. Magdalen Vanstone
is presented as a headstrong but capable
girl who fights for rights she believes are
hers. Her sister Norah, a quiet, less
determined girl, works out her future
according to her own nature. The amiable
Captain Wragge is one of the most
delightful rogues in English fiction.
The Story:
The Vanstone house at Combe Raven
was one of contentment and ease. In
it were two lovely and charming
daughters^—Norah and Magdalen—Andrew
Vanstone and his wife, and a wise, kindly
nurse and governess, Miss Garth. It
was a household in which cook and
servants enjoyed immunity from scolding,
pets were allowed to range freely, and
the affairs of the house ran as smoothly
as an old but trustworthy clock.
One morning Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone
broke the quiet routine of the household
with the announcement that they must
go immediately to London on urgent but
secret business. This announcement came
after the arrival of a letter postmarked
New Orleans. They were gone for
almost a month. On their return they
refused to reveal by any statement or
hint the nature of their trip.
Shortly after their return a stranger
made his appearance in the
neighborhood. The girls learned only that his
name was Captain Wragge and that he
was distantly connected with Mrs. Van-
stone's family. She sent him away
without revealing to her husband the
circumstances of his arrival or departure.
It was apparent that Captain Wragge
was attempting to obtain money from
his kinswoman.
The Vanstones had an eccentric and
surly neighbor, Mr. Clare, a scholar and
cynic who frequently asserted that he
hated most of mankind. Frank, his son,
had been the childhood playmate of
Magdalen Vanstone, and for him Mr.
Vanstone had secured a position in a
commercial house in London. Mr. Clare
held a low opinion of his son's abilities;
consequently he was not disappointed
when Frank was dismissed by his
employers as being of little account in the
business. In spite of his shortcomings,
2576

O'Brien patiently explained that the
Party wanted no martyrs, for they
strengthened opposition; nor did the
leaders want only groveling subjection.
Winston must also think right. The
proletariat, happy in their ignorance, must
never have a leader to rouse them. All
Party members must think and feel as
Big Brother directed.
When Winston was finally released,
he was bald and his teeth were gone.
Because he had been purged and because
his crime had not been serious, he was
even given a small job on a
sub-committee. Mostly he sat solitary in taverns and
drank victory gin. He even saw Julia
once. She had coarsened in figure and
her face was scarred. They had little to
say to each other.
One day a big celebration was going on
in the tavern. Oceania had achieved an
important victory in Africa. Suddenly the
doddering Winston felt himself purged.
He believed. Now he could be shot with
a pure soul, for at last he loved Big
Brother.
2575

ding was set. As that day approached
Magdalen shrank from carrying through
the scheme she had so carefully planned,
but at the last minute she stiffened her
resolution and married Noel.
Mrs. Le Count arrived in Zurich and
there realized the trick played on her.
She returned to England and began a
search for Noel. Tracing him to
Scotland, she arrived there shortly after
Magdalen had gone to London to see her
sister. Noel was shocked when the
housekeeper revealed the conspiracy of
which he had been a victim. Never in
good health, he grew rapidly worse and
died after making a new will which gave
his fortune to Admiral Bartram, a distant
kinsman. Mrs. Le Count had also
persuaded him to write a codicil by which
George Bartram, the admiral's nephew,
was to inherit the money if he married,
within a specified time, a woman
approved by the admiral. Magdalen,
notified that her husband had died suddenly
without providing for her, was also
informed that the will was valid only if
the codicil were properly executed.
Meanwhile George Bartram had met
Norah and had become engaged to her.
His uncle had no objections to his
nephew's marriage to Norah, but the
inquiries he made so hurt the girl's pride
that she refused to marry George within
the time specified in the codicil. The
delay made Noel's will invalid.
Not knowing the nature of the codicil
but hoping that its terms might work
to her advantage, Magdalen hired out
as a parlormaid in the admiral's
household in order to search for the document.
She found it eventually, but by that
time the situation had grown even more
complicated. Admiral Bartram died and
left his fortune, including his inheritance
from Noel Vanstone, to his nephew.
Too proud to ask for her share of the
money and without funds, she contracted
a fever and was desperately ill. While
she was being taken to a London hospital,
she was recognized by Captain Kirke, an
admirer little regarded when she was
planning to marry Noel for his money.
He provided for her until word of her
illness could be carried to her sister and
Miss Garth.
Good fortune came to her during her
convalescence. Norah wrote to say that
the codicil had been discovered and that
by its terms the money bequeathed by
Noel Vanstone was legally hers. Captain
Wragge appeared to announce that he
had grown prosperous through the
manufacture of a patent medicine. Mr. Clare
wrote to say that Frank had married a
wealthy widow. Magdalen felt that
Frank's marriage broke her last tie with
her unhappy past. She could look
forward to the future as Captain Kirke's
wife.
2578

however, Magdalen was still attracted
to her old playmate. Mr. Clare
commented ironically that some people
always flocked after the worthless of the
world—a view he felt confirmed when
Mr. Vanstone arranged to have Frank
given another chance in the business
firm in London, rather than have him
sent to China to work in the tea and
silk trade.
Magdalen and Frank played in some
private theatricals given in one of the
country houses nearby. Magdalen did
so well in her role that a theatrical agent
who saw her performance gave her his
card as a reference in case she should
ever decide upon a career in the theater.
Mr. Vanstone was unexpectedly killed
in a train wreck. His wife, overcome by
grief, died before she could put her
name to a paper which her husband's
lawyer was anxious to have her sign.
Then the mystery of the Vanstones
came to light. Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone
had been married during their hurried
trip to London. They had not been able
to do so before because of Mr. Vanstone's
earlier marriage to an adventuress whose
death had been reported at last from New
Orleans. Because Mr. Vanstone had
died before he could make a new will,
the legitimacy of his daughters was not
recognized in the English courts;
therefore the Vanstone fortune reverted to an
uncle, a selfish and bad-tempered old man
who refused to recognize his brother's
daughters or to share the inheritance
with them.
Frank Clare could no longer look
forward to marriage with Magdalen after
she had lost her fortune. Without Mr.
Vanstone to back him, he was forced to
take the offer of work in China.
Miss Garth took Norah and Magdalen
with her to her sister's home for a time.
There it was decided that the girls should
find employment as governesses. One
day Magdalen suddenly disappeared.
Captain Wragge discovered her after a
reward had been offered for news of her
whereabouts, but instead of claiming the
reward he took her home to Mrs. Wragge,
a sad giantess of a woman. Learning of
Magdalen's desire to be an actress, he
promised to train her and act as her
manager.
The uncle who had inherited the
Vanstone fortune died. Magdalen, disguised
to resemble Miss Garth, went to see his
son, Noel Vanstone. He proved to be a
weak, miserable creature, as miserly as
his father had been.
At last Magdalen received a letter
from Frank Clare, a cruel whining
message in which he reproached her for
allowing him to leave England and
repudiated his engagement to her.
Magdalen went on the stage. Without
revealing her whereabouts or her occupation,
she corresponded infrequently with
Norah and with Miss Garth. Norah, in
the meantime, had hired out as a
governess.
Having been hurt by Frank Clare's
selfish and spiteful letter, Magdalen
decided to marry Noel Vanstone and thus
secure the fortune she believed rightfully
hers and her sister's. Using the money
she had earned as an actress, she
established Captain Wragge in a cottage near
Noel's house. She herself passed as Miss
Bygrave, the captain's niece.
Noel was completely under the
influence of his housekeeper, Mrs. Le
Count, who was suspicious of the sup
posed Miss Bygrave from the beginning.
Convinced that the girl was the person
who had impersonated the elderly Miss
Garth some time before, the woman was
unable to confirm her suspicions. She
was successful, however, in thwarting
Magdalen's attempt to win a proposal
from Noel. At last Captain Wragge
tricked the housekeeper into going to
Zurich to visit a supposedly dying
brother. Before she departed, Mrs. Le
Count learned from Captain Wragge's
stupid wife the details of the conspiracy
in which the captain was involved, and
she wrote Noel a letter to warn him
against Magdalen. Captain Wragge
intercepted the letter. A date for the wed-
2577

more indignant when Dame Pluche
upheld Camille in her refusals. Perdican,
with relief, renewed his acquaintance
with Rosette, a pretty peasant girl who
had been Camille's foster sister.
Maitre Blazius, attempting to discredit
his rival, told the Baron that Maitre Bri-
daine had drunk three botdes of wine at
dinner and was now walking about on
unsteady feet. The Baron could scarcely
listen because Maitre Blazius' breath was
so strong. Then Maitre Bridaine hurried
up to tell the Baron that Perdican was
walking with Rosette on his arm and
throwing pebbles about wildly.
Perdican was puzzled by Camille's
coldness toward him. When Maitre
Blazius reminded him that the marriage was
a project dear to the Baron's heart, the
young man was willing to try again, but
Camille was resolute. She would permit
no holding of hands, and she even
refused to talk to him* about their
childhood. She had come back only to receive
her inheritance; the next day she would
return to the convent. After Perdican left
her, Camille asked the scandalized Dame
Pluche to take a note to him.
Maitre Bridaine was very unhappy.
His rival was seated next to the Baron at
mealtime, and Maitre Blazius took all
the choice morsels before he passed on
the serving plate. In despair Maitre
Bridaine felt that he would be forced to
give up his frequent visits; henceforth,
though the prospect was repugnant, he
would devote his time to parish work.
On a friendly walk Rosette complained
to Perdican that women were kissed on
the forehead or cheek by their male
relatives and on the lips by their lovers;
everyone kissed her on the cheek. Not
displeased to oblige her, Perdican gave her
a lover's kiss.
Dame Pluche was angry but she did
take the note to Perdican. On the way
she was spied on by Maitre Blazius, who
reported to the Baron that Camille un
doubtedly had a secret correspondent.
Since Perdican was making love to a girl
who watched the turkeys, surely Camille
was looking for a more satisfactory
husband.
Invited to meet Camille at the
fountain, Perdican found his cousin changed.
She willingly kissed him and promised
to remain a good friend. Then she
frankly asked Perdican if he had had
mistresses. Embarrassed, he admitted that he had.
When she wanted to know where his
latest was, Perdican had to admit he did
not know. Camille, acquainted with no
men except Perdican, had loved him
until recently, when an older nun at the
convent had changed her inclinations.
The nun had been rich and beautiful
and much in love with her husband.
After he took a mistress, she had taken
a lover. At last she had retired to a
convent. Her experience had convinced
Camille that men were always unfaithful.
She forced Perdican to admit that if they
were married both of them might be
expected to take other lovers.
Perdican valiantly defended earthly
love, saying that it was worth all the
trouble it caused and that of the two
hundred nuns at the convent most of
them would probably be glad to go back
to their husbands and lovers. Seeing at
last the futility of his argument, he told
Camille to return to the nunnery.
Meanwhile Maitre Blazius was
unhappy because the servants reported that he
was stealing bottles of wine. In addition,
the Baron had decided that he had made
up the story of Camille's secret
correspondent. Disgusted with his second
priest, the Baron forthrightly dismissed
him. Not knowing that Maitre Bridaine
had fallen from favor too, Maitre Blazius
asked him to intercede with the Baron.
Maitre Bridaine refused; he thought the
Baron would now reinstate him in favor.
Maitre Blazius thought he saw a
chance to regain lost ground when he
met Dame Pluche carrying a letter.
While he was trying to take the missive
from her by force, Perdican arrived on
the scene, took the letter, and read it out
of curiosity. It was from Camille to a nun
at the convent. In it Camille said she
2580

NO TRIFLING WITH LOVE
Tyfe of work: Drama
Author: Alfred de Musset (1810-1857)
Tyfe of flot: Tragi-comedy
Time of flot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First presented: 1864; first published: 1834
Principal characters:
The Baron, a French nobleman
Perdican, his son
Camille, his niece
Rosette, Camille's foster sister
Maitre Blazius, Perdican's tutor
Maitre Bridaine, a village priest
Critique:
Alfred de Musset did not write his
plays for the stage; he used the dramatic
form rather as a vehicle for lyric
expression. No Trifling With Love (On
ne Badine fas Avec VAmour), reflecting
the writer's love affair with George
Sand, is a romantic defense of love; but
considered only as stage drama it has
serious weaknesses. The chorus of
peasants is a cumbersome device and
extraordinary characters are mingled helter-
skelter. The two priests are buffoons,
Camille is very stubborn for a young girl,
and Rosette dies in an unconvincing
manner. This piece was classified by de
Musset as a comedy, but its true merit
lies in Perdican's defense of romantic
love.
The Story:
Maitre Blazius, with his three chins
and round stomach, was proudly
awaiting the arrival of Perdican whom he had
tutored. Perdican had recently received
a doctorate at Paris, and Maitre Blazius
felt that the credit was due to the boy's
tutor. Gulping a huge bowl of wine
presented by the chorus of listening
peasants, he announced that Camille, niece
of the Baron, was also expected home
from the convent. The Baron was anxious
to see his son Perdican married to
Camille; he knew they had been in love
since childhood.
Dame Pluche, chaperone of Camille,
arrived out of breath. After drinking
some vinegar and water, she announced
that Camille was on her way. She told
of Camille's education in the best
convent in France and of the inheritance
she was to get that day from her mother's
estate. But she did not mention the
projected marriage.
The Baron brought Maitre Bridaine to
the house. Since he expected the
marriage to take place that day, he wanted
the priest to perform the ceremony. To
impress Camille, he arranged with Maitre
Bridaine to speak some Latin to Perdican
at dinner; no matter if neither one
understood it. Maitre Bridaine was
agreeable to the plan, but he was hostile at
once to Maitre Blazius, for he smelled
wine on his breath.
When Perdican and Camille met,
something seemed amiss. Perdican
wanted to embrace his pretty cousin, but
Camille spoke formally to her childhood
sweetheart and refused a kiss. She was
chiefly interested in looking at a
portrait of her great-aunt, who had been a
nun.
At dinner the two priests, Maitre
Bridaine and Maitre Blazius, vied jealously
with each other. Both were gourmets as
well as gourmands, and they were
apprehensive that there was no place for two
priests in the luxurious household. After
dinner Camille again refused a friendly
talk with Perdican and even excused
herself from walking in the garden. The
Baron, upset at her coldness, grew even
2579

NOCTURNE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Frank Swinnerton (1884- )
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: London
First published: 1917
Principal characters:
Jenny Blanchard, a milliner's assistant
Emmy Blanchard, her sister
Pa Blanchard, their invalid father
Alf Rylett, Jenny's suitor
Keith Redington, Jenny's beloved
Critique:
Nocturne is almost a play, for the
entire novel is written in the form of
duologues. Swinnerton has adhered
strictly to the classical dramatic unity
of time and only a little less strictly to
the unities of place and action. The
author reveals a shrewd insight into
the psychological kinship in frustration
of two sisters who had nothing in
common in the way of physical appearance,
personality, or character. The form of
this compact novel is so fascinating that
it sometimes obscures the content and
the sympathetic picture of human
experience presented.
The Story:
At six o'clock one afternoon Jenny
Blanchard, a milliner's assistant, returned
on the tram from her place of work in
London's West End to her home in Ken-
nington Park, a suburb south of the
Thames River. As the tram passed over
the dark Thames, she felt a sense of
great unhappiness and frustration; but
the mysterious quality of her reflection in
the tram window gave her momentary
satisfaction.
The Blanchard house was one of a
row of identical houses in Kennington
Park. There Jenny and her sister Emmy
took care of their semi-invalid father,
who lived on a pension and on money
that Jenny earned at the milliner's shop.
Emmy, older than Jenny, was the
housekeeper; she stayed at home to prepare
meals and to look after Pa Blanchard.
The sisters were quite different in
personality, character, and appearance.
Jenny was thin, tall, rather beautiful, and
of an independent nature. Emmy was
plain, domestic, and dependent. The
sisters shared, however, a frustration
brought on by commonplace routine and
dull existence.
Jenny began a quarrel when she
expressed her intense dislike for their
supper of stew and bread pudding; she
felt, somehow, that she was entitled to
better fare, but she was sure that the
colorless Emmy enjoyed stew and
pudding. Jealousy and frustration gave
rise to bitter words between the two.
Emmy was upset, too, because Jenny
kept company with Alf Rylett, whom
she herself wanted. Jenny, disdainfully
offering Emmy her share of Alf, said
that she kept company with him only
for diversion.
After supper, as Jenny was preparing
to remake a hat, Alf entered and told
her that he had two tickets to the
local theater. Jenny tricked Alf into
asking Emmy to go with him. While
Emmy was changing, Jenny parried Alf's
protestations of love. Emmy, appearing
actually lovely after her change,
swallowed her pride and went with Alf, whom
she idolized. It was eight o'clock.
Jenny put Pa to bed and resumed
NOCTURNE by Frank Swinnerton. By permission of the author and the publishers, Doubleday ft Co., Ioc
Copyright, 1917, by George H. Dor an Co. Renewed, 194S, by Frank Swi nnerton.
2582

would soon be back; her young man was
hurt and his pride wounded, just as they
had foreseen. To Perdican the letter
meant that the whole affair with Camille
had been arranged in advance at the
convent, and he resolved to spite her by
courting Rosette seriously.
After writing a note to Camille to
arrange a rendezvous, he brought Rosette
to the fountain. Camille, hiding behind
a tree, heard Perdican offer his heart to
Rosette. As proof of his love, he gave
her a chain to wear around her neck and
threw a ring Camille had given him into
the water.
Camille retrieved the ring and told
Rosette to hide behind a curtain while
she talked with Perdican. During the
interview he confessed that he loved
Camille. Camille then threw aside the
curtain; Rosette had fainted. Perdican
decided to go ahead in reality with his
marriage to the peasant girl.
The Baron, told of his son's intention
to marry Rosette, was angry, but in spite
of his father's displeasure Perdican made
arrangements for the ceremony. Camille,
in despair, threw herself down before an
altar and prayed for help. Coming in
unexpectedly, Perdican, unnerved by her
distress, clasped her in his arms while
they confessed their love for each other.
Suddenly they heard a cry behind the
altar. Investigating, they found Rosette,
dead. Camille was the first to realize their
guilt in her death. To acknowledge that
guilt, she said a final goodbye to
Perdican.
2581

NORTHANGER ABBEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1818
Principal characters:
Catherine Morland, an imaginative reader of Gothic romances
Mrs. Allen, her benefactress
Isabella Thorpe, her friend
John Thorpe, Isabella's brother
James Morland, Catherine's brother
Henry Tilney, admired by Catherine
General Tilney, his father
Captain Tilney, his brother
Eleanor Tilney, his sister
Critique:
Northanger Abbey follows a more
conventional pattern than most of Jane
Austen's novels. In it an unspoiled girl meets
a wholesome boy but is deterred from
romance by an attractive cad. A lesser plot
is a gleeful parody of the fantastic Gothic
romances of Mrs. RadclifFe and other
popular writers of the period. In the
experiences of Catherine Morland the
writer burlesques the misadventures and
terrifying mishaps of the Gothic heroine.
At the same time the novel presents a
background picture of middle-class life
in nineteenth-century England. The
scenes laid in Bath, fashionable watering
place of the day, are particularly good.
The Story:
Catherine Morland, though a plain
girl, thought herself destined to become a
heroine like those in her favorite Gothic
novels. She might, however, have spent
her entire life in Fullerton, the small
village in which she was born, had not Mrs.
Allen, wife of a wealthy neighbor, invited
her to go to Bath. There a whole new
world was opened to Catherine, who was
delighted with the social life of the colony.
It was at Bath that she met Isabella
Thorpe, who became her best friend.
Isabella was more worldly than Catherine
and took it upon herself to instruct
Catherine in the ways of society.
Isabella also introduced Catherine to
her brother, John Thorpe. He and
Catherine's brother, James Morland, were
friends, and the four young people spent
many enjoyable hours together.
Catherine, however, had in the meantime met
Henry Tilney, a young clergyman, and
his sister Eleanor, with whom she was
anxious to become better acquainted.
John thwarted her in this desire, and
Isabella and James aided him in deceptions
aimed at keeping her away from Henry
and Eleanor. After Isabella and James
became engaged, Isabella doubled her
efforts to interest Catherine in her brother
John. Although Catherine loved her
friend dearly, she could not extend this
love to John, whom she knew in her heart
to be an indolent, undesirable young man.
While James was at home arranging for
an allowance so that he and Isabella could
be married, Henry Tilney*s brother,
Captain Tilney, appeared on the scene. He
was as worldly as Isabella. More important
to her, he was extremely wealthy.
Catherine was a little disturbed by the manner
in which Isabella conducted herself with
Captain Tilney, but she was too loyal to
her friend to suspect her of being
unfaithful to James.
Shortly after Captain Tilney arrived
in Bath, Catherine was invited bv Eleanor
Tilney and her father, General Tilney, to
visit them at Northanger Abbey, their old
country home. Catherine was delighted,
for she had always wanted to visit a real
abbey, and she quickly wrote for and re-
2584

ceived a letter of permission from her
parents. Henry aroused her imagination with
stories of dark passageways and mysterious
chests and closets.
When the party arrived at Northanger
Abbey, Catherine was surprised and a
little frightened to find that his
descriptions had been so exact. Mrs. Tilney had
died suddenly several years previously,
and in her fear Catherine began to suspect
that the general had murdered her. At the
first opportunity she attempted to enter
the dead woman's chambers. There
Henry found her and assured her that his
mother had died a natural death.
Catherine was almost disappointed, for this news
destroyed many of her romantic
imaginings about Northanger Abbey.
For more than a week after this event
Catherine worried because she had had no
letter from Isabella. When she received a
letter from her brother James, she learned
the reason for Isabella's silence. He wrote
that Isabella had become practically
engaged to Captain Tilney. Catherine was
almost ill when she read the news, and
Henry and Eleanor Tilney were as
disturbed as she. They knew that only greed
and ambition drew Isabella from James to
their wealthier brother and they feared for
his happiness. They thought, however,
that the captain was more experienced
with such women and would fare better
than had James.
They were right. Shortly afterward
Catherine had a letter from Isabella
telling the story in an entirely different light.
She pretended that she and James had just
had a misunderstanding, and she begged
Catherine to write to James in her behalf.
Catherine was not to be taken in. She
wasted no time in sympathy for her
onetime friend and thought her brother
fortunate to be rid of such a schemer.
A short time later the general had to go
to London on business and Eleanor and
Catherine were alone at the Abbey,
Henry's clerical duties compelling him to
spend some time in his nearby parish. One
night, soon after the general's departure,
Eleanor went to Catherine's room. In a
state of great embarrassment and agitation
she told Catherine that the general had
returned suddenly from London and had
ordered Catherine to leave the Abbey
early the next morning. Because she loved
Catherine and did not want to hurt her,
Eleanor would give no reason for the
order. In great distress Catherine departed
and returned to her home for the first time
in many weeks. She and her family tried
to forget the insult to her, but they could
not help thinking of it constantly. Most
of Catherine's thoughts were of Henry,
whom she feared she might never see
again.
Soon after her return home, Henry
called on her and explained why his father
had turned against Catherine. When the
Tilney family first met Catherine, John
Thorpe had told the general that she was
the daughter of a wealthy family and that
the Allen money would also be settled on
her. He had bragged because at the time
he himself had hoped to marry Catherine.
But when Catherine rebuffed him, and
after his sister Isabella was unable to win
James again, John spitefully waited for
the first opportunity to do her harm. He
met the general in London and lost no
time in telling him that Catherine had
deceived him. Although she had never in
any way implied that she was wealthy,
the general gave her no chance to defend
herself.
After Henry had told his story, he asked
Catherine to marry him. Her parents gave
their consent, with the understanding that
the young couple must first win over the
general. Henry returned home to wait.
Eleanor's marriage to a wealthy peer
proved an unexpected aid to the lovers.
The general was so pleased at having his
daughter a viscountess that he was
persuaded to forgive Catherine. When he
learned also that the Morland family,
though not wealthy, would aUow
Catherine three thousand pounds, he gladly gave
his consent to the marriage. In less than
a year after they met, and in spite of many
hardships and trials, Catherine Morland
married Henry Tilney with every prospect
of happiness and comfort for the rest of
her life.
2585

THE NORTHERN LASS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Richard Brome (M652 or 1653)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1632
Principal characters:
Sir Philip Luckless, an indiscreet gentleman
Master Tridewell, Sir Philip's kinsman
Mistress Fitchow, Sir Philip s fiancee
Master Widgine, her brother
Anvile, Widgine's boastful tutor
Sir Paul Squelch, a justice and friend of Mistress Fitchow
Constance, the northern lass, Squelch's niece
Mistress Traynwell, her governess
Constance Holdup, a cunning prostitute
Critique:
Richard Brome, first the servant and
later the friend of Ben Jonson, wrote
fifteen plays, alternating between
romantic comedy and comedy of manners. The
Northern Lass, catalogued in the latter
group, often borders on pure farce
because of its ridiculous situations and
practical jokes. The plot twists and winds
until it appears impossibly complicated,
but Brome manipulates its several threads
with great skill. The play does not
concern itself very actively with social
comment, though its romantic situations
involve some indirect gibes at marriage
customs and standards among the English
upper middle class.
The Story:
Sir Philip Luckless, engaged to marry
the rich widow, Mistress Fitchow,
refused to listen to the protests of his
companion, Master Tridewell. Tridewell
insisted that the lady was too old and too
domineering for the match to be
successful, but his warning made no impression
upon his friend and kinsman. Doubts did
begin to enter the mind of Sir Philip,
however, when he was presently brought
face to face with Master Widgine, the
foolish brother of his bride-to-be, and
with Widgine's equally foolish tutor, the
braggart Anvile.
The encounter between this pair and
Sir Philip was soon interrupted by the
abrupt arrival of a stranger, Mistress
Traynwell, who upset Sir Philip by the
charge that, in marrying Mistress Fitchow,
he was ignoring a prior marriage contract
with a young girl under Mistress Trayn-
well's care. To strengthen this accusation,
the gentlewoman handed him a note
signed with the single name, Constance.
Sir Philip, confused, immediately thought
of a prostitute named Constance Holdup,
with whom he had had some previous
acquaintance; he hastily assumed that
Mistress Traynwell was the prostitute's
unscrupulous agent and unceremoniously
dismissed her, calling her a bawd.
Meanwhile, Tridewell boldly decided
to intervene in the affairs of Sir Philip by
paying a visit to Mistress Fitchow. Hoping
to find some way to block the impending
marriage, he began to criticize the
character and habits of Sir Philip; but
Mistress Fitchow proved too clever to be
taken in by his line of attack. Instead,
she assumed an attitude of such sweet
reasonableness and such devoted
constancy to her lover that Tridewell,
completely deceived, found himself falling in
love with the woman whom he had
previously scorned.
Sir Philip, still nervous from his
interview with Mistress Traynwell, decided to
forestall what he considered blackmail by
hastening his marriage. Consequently, he
took a coach to the house of his fiancee
2586

and sent in word of his desire to wed
immediately. Somewhat surprised, but not
unwilling, Mistress Fitchow made
preparations to leave the house and join her
lover in the coach. While completing her
toilette she took the necessary time to
inform her brother Widgine of her desire
to marry him to a northern lass named
Constance, the niece of Sir Paul Squelch,
a well-known justice. Widgine, though
he had never even heard of Constance
before, became enthusiastic when he learned
that the girl would receive a large dowry
from her childless uncle.
The attractive subject of this
conversation, the northern lass, was meanwhile
being questioned by her governess,
Mistress Traynwell. To the latter's chagrin,
she discovered that the young girl had
mistaken flowery compliments from Sir
Philip for an actual marriage proposal.
As they talked, they were disturbed by
an odd train of events which they
eventually perceived to be a hoax planned by
Pate, Sir Philip's servant. Pate, having
observed his master's treatment of
Mistress Traynwell and concluding that she
was of the same ilk as Constance Holdup
and therefore to be held in light regard,
had prompted the boorish Anvile to call
upon Mistress Traynwell and make
improper advances to her. Constance and
her governess, resenting the affront,
tricked him into entering a closet, where
they held him prisoner while awaiting
the arrival of Tridewell. The latter, who
thoroughly detested Anvile, beat him
until he confessed not only the hoax but also
Sir Philip's hasty marriage. This news
dismayed, for different reasons, both
Tridewell and Constance; but Tridewell
asked the women to trust him in his
efforts to salvage the situation, especially
since Sir Philip's marriage would not be
irrevocable until it had been
consummated.
When Sir Philip and his bride
returned to her house, they were greeted
by Sir Paul Squelch and others. Squelch,
in a peevish mood because his niece was
not present, reaffirmed his intention of
marrying her to Master Nonsense, a
Cornish gentleman, instead of to Widgine.
Disguised as masquers, Constance,
Tridewell, Mistress Traynwell, and Anvile
presently entered and entertained the
company; after they had finished, Anvile
lingered behind the others for the purpose
of revealing their true identities.
Learning that Constance had been present gave
Sir Philip a shock; he quickly realized
that it had been she, rather than
Constance Holdup, who had fallen in love
with him. Mistress Fitchow, so recently
transformed into Lady Luckless, grew
angry at Sir Philip's obvious interest in
Constance and flounced off in a huff.
A note from Constance increased Sir
Philip's feeling that his hasty marriage
might have been a terrible mistake. A
gleam of hope appeared, however, when
he received the news, through Widgine,
that Mistress Fitchow had barred her door
against the bridegroom. Reacting swiftly
to this information, Sir Philip and
Tridewell began to confer, with the object of
bringing about a divorce.
Even though Constance found Master
Nonsense inarticulate and empty-headed,
Squelch insisted that she yield to his suit;
at Mistress Traynwell's importunity,
however, it was decided that Constance could
have more time to become amenable to
this courtship. Squelch demonstrated his
obstinacy in still other ways. Enamored
of Mistress Traynwell, he had secretly
intended to make her his wife. When,
however, she had the misfortune to anger
him inadvertently, his pique was so great
that he decided to throw his fortune away
on merrymaking and self-indulgence.
Because of this fit of spleen, Squelch fell
victim all the more easily to a practical
joke which was planned and executed
with elaborate care by Tridewell and Sir
Philip. It involved the justice's deception
by the prostitute, Constance Holdup, who
was coached in her words and actions by
the two jokesters.
While his reckless mood still prevailed,
Squelch was persuaded that Constance
Holdup, of whom he had been cleverly
made aware, was a simple country girl
who would accept his amorous advances.
2587

Installing her, soon afterward, in an
inconspicuous apartment, he instructed her
to assume the identity of his niece so that
his visits to her would attract no
comment. But Widgine, in his determination
to win the real northern lass, succeeded
in locating this hideaway of Constance
Holdup. Since he had never seen
Squelch's niece, the real object of his
search, except as a masquer, he was now
convinced that his pursuit had
successfully ended. The prostitute, spying
unexpected dividends from this turn of the
game, responded to his advances and
agreed to elope with him.
Meanwhile, her irritation with Sir
Philip led Mistress Fitchow to declare
that she would allow him to divorce her
only after Constance—whom she
suspected to be the real object of his
affection—was safely married to someone else.
This person, she hoped, would be her
own brother. She was greatly pleased,
therefore, when Tridewell brought her a
report that Widgine and Constance had
succeeded in eloping. Not so pleased,
naturally, was Squelch, who had heard
the same report but who, as yet, did not
realize just which Constance had flown
with Widgine. Squelch took the occasion
to upbraid Mistress Fitchow for being her
brother's accomplice; they occupied
themselves in trading violent insults while
Tridewell sought vainly to restrain them.
Squelch, disguised as a Spaniard, went
to keep a previously made assignation
with Constance Holdup. He still did not
know that Widgine had spirited her
away; least of all did he suspect that
Mistress Traynwell, disguised, was waiting
in her place as part of the plot to cozen
him still further. By prearrangement, a
constable broke in on them, arrested the
supposed Spaniard and his companion,
and took them to Squelch's own house for
arraignment. There the rest of their
acquaintances awaited them, masked as
merrymakers.
After sufficiently enjoying Squelch's
confusion, Mistress Traynwell disclosed
her identity and persuaded him that she
was, after all, the right mate for him. The
others also unmasked and began to set
straight their tangled relationships. First,
Widgine purchased his freedom from
Constance Holdup for a hundred pounds.
Then both Sir Philip and Mistress
Fitchow were surprised to learn that their
marriage ceremony had been performed
by a prankish impostor, rather than a
licensed minister; consequently, both Sir
Philip and Tridewell were free to wed
the ladies of their choice.
2588

NOSTROMO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Conrad (Teodor J6zef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-1924)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: "Costaguana," on the north coast of South America
First published: 1904
Principal characters:
Charles Gould, manager of the San Tome" silver mine
Emily Gould, his wife
Gian' Battista, called Nostromo, Italian leader of the stevedores
Linda Viola, to whom he proposed
Giselle Viola, her sister
Giorgio Viola, father of Linda and Giselle
Martin Decoud, a newspaper editor
Dr. Monygham, town physician and friend of the Goulds
Critique:
Nostromo is a well-told tale of
adventure. Like many other Conrad novels,
it begins in the middle of things and then
by means of frequent flashbacks and an
occasional glimpse ahead gradually
reveals the information that the reader is
eager to know, for Conrad is a master of
suspense. Conrad wanted to make a study
of what would happen to a man of good
reputation, a victim of revolution, if he
had a chance at great wealth. Nostromo
is the result. The scene, as in much of
Conrad's work, plays an important role,
for the mist-hidden mountains, the
brooding plain, and the San Tome" mine are
an inscrutable background for the
movements of little men.
The Story:
The Republic of Costaguana was in
a state of revolt. Rebel troops, under the
leadership of Pedrito Montero, had taken
control of the eastern part of the country.
When news of the revolt reached Sulaco,
the principal town of the western section
which was separated from the rest of the
country by a mountain range, the leaders
began to lay defense plans.
The chief interest of the town was the
San Tome' silver mine in the nearby
mountains, a mine managed by Charles
Gould, an Englishman who, though
educated in England, had been born in
Sulaco, his father having been manager
before him. Gould had made a great
success of the mine. The semi-annual
shipment of silver had just come down from
the mine to the custom house when the
telegraph operator from Esmeralda, on the
eastern side of the mountains, sent word
that troops had embarked on a transport
under command of General Sotillo, and
that the rebels planned to capture the
silver ingots as well as Sulaco.
Gould decided to load the ingots on a
lighter and set it afloat in the gulf
pending the arrival of a ship that would take
the cargo to the United States. The man
to guide the boat would be Gian*
Battista, known in Sulaco as Nostromo—our
man—for he was considered incorruptible.
His companion would be Martin Decoud,
editor of the local newspaper, who had
been drawn from Paris and Kept in Sulaco
by the European-educated Antonia Avel-
lanos, to whom he had just become
engaged. Decoud had incurred the anger of
Montero by denouncing the revolutionist
in his paper. Also, Decoud had conceived
a plan for making the country around
Sulaco an independent state, the
Occidental Republic.
When Nostromo and Decoud set out in
the black of the night, Sotillo's ship,
NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad. By permission of the publishers, J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., London,
agents for the trustees of the estate of Joseph Conrad. Published by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1904,
by Harper & Brothers. Renewed, 1931, by Mrs. Jessie Conrad.
2589

approaching the port without lights,
bumped into their lighter. Nostromo made
for a nearby uninhabited island, the Great
Isabel, where he cached the treasure.
Then, leaving Decoud behind, he rowed
the lighter to the middle of the harbor,
pulled a plug, and sank her. He swam
the remaining mile to the mainland.
Sotillo, on discovering that the silver
had been spirited away, took possession
of the custom house, where he conducted
an inquisition. The next day Sulaco was
seized by Montero, who considered Sotillo
as of little worth.
When the Europeans and high-born
natives who had not fled the town
discovered that Nostromo was back, they
took it for granted that the silver had
been lost in the harbor. They asked
Nostromo to take a message to Barrios, who
commanded the loyalist troops on the
eastern side of the mountains. In a
spectacular engine ride up the side of the
mountain and a subsequent six-day
horseback journey through the mountain
passes, Nostromo succeeded in delivering
his message, and Barrios set out with his
troops by boat to relieve the town of
Sulaco.
Coming into the harbor, Nostromo
sighted a boat which he recognized as the
small craft attached to the lighter which
had carried him and Decoud to Great
Isabel. He dived overboard and swam to
the boat. Barrios went on to Sulaco and
drove the traitors out. Gould, meanwhile,
had planted dynamite around the silver
mine to destroy it in case of defeat, for
he was determined to keep the mine
from the revolutionists at any cost.
Nostromo rowed the little boat over to
Great Isabel, where he discovered that
Decoud was gone and that he had taken
four of the ingots with him. He correctly
guessed that Decoud had killed himself,
for there was a blood stain on the edge
of the boat. Decoud, left to himself when
Nostromo returned to the mainland, had
each day grown more and more lonely
until finally he dug up four of the ingots,
tied them to himself, went out in the
boat, shot himself, and fell overboard,
the weight of the ingots carrying him to
the bottom of the harbor. Nostromo
could not now tell Gould where the silver
was, for he would himself have been
suspected of stealing the four missing
ingots. Since everyone thought the
treasure was in the bottom of the sea,
he decided to let the rumor stand and sell
the ingots one by one, and so become rich
dowly.
In gratitude for his many sendees to
the country, the people provided
Nostromo with a boat in which he hauled
cargo as far north as California.
Sometimes he would be gone for months while
he carried out his schemes for disposing
of the hidden silver. One day on his
return he saw that a lighthouse was being
built on Great Isabel. He was panic-
stricken. Then he suggested that the
keeper be old Giorgio Viola, in whose
daughter Linda he was interested. He
thought that with the Violas on the
island no one would suspect his frequent
visits.
Linda had a younger sister, Giselle, for
whom the vagabond Ramirez was
desperate. Viola would not allow her to
receive his attentions and kept her under
close guard. He would not permit Ramirez
to come to the island.
To make his comings and goings more
secure, Nostromo one day asked Linda to
be his wife. Almost at once after that he
realized that he was really in love with
Giselle. In secret meetings he and Giselle
confessed their mutual passion. Linda
grew suspicious. Giselle begged Nostromo
to carry her away, but he said he could
not do so for a while. He finally told her
about the silver and how he had to
convert it into money before he could take
her away.
Obsessed by hate of Ramirez, Viola
began patrolling the island at night with
his gun loaded. One night, as Nostromo
was approaching Giselle's window, old
Viola saw him and shot him. Hearing
her father say that he had shot Ramirez,
2590

Linda rushed out. But Giselle ran past
her and reached Nostromo first. It was
she who accompanied him to the
mainland. Nostromo, in the hospital, asked for
the kindly Mrs. Gould, to whom he
protested that Giselle was innocent and that
he alone knew about the hidden treasure.
Mrs. Gould, however, would not let him
tell her where he had hidden it. It had
caused so much sorrow that she did not
want it to be brought to light again.
Nostromo refused any aid from Dr.
Monygham and died without revealing
the location of the ingots.
Dr. Monygham went in the police
galley out to Great Isabel, where he
informed Linda of Nostromo's death. She
was thoroughly moved by the news and
whispered that she—and she alone—had
loved the man, that she would never
forget Nostromo. Dr. Monygham observed,
as Linda in despair cried out Nostromo's
name, that triumphant as Nostromo had
been in life this love of Linda's was the
greatest victory of all.
The region about Sulaco finally did
become the Occidental Republic. The
San Tom6 mine prospered under Gould's
management, the population increased
enormously, and the new country
flourished with great vigor. Though Decoud,
the country's first planner, and Nostromo,
the hero of its inception, were dead, life
in the new country went on richly and
fully.
2591

NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA
Type of work: Essays on American culture
Author: Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
First published: 1784-1785
Thomas Jefferson's universality is best
evinced in his Notes on the State of
Virginia, which he began writing in 1780
in answer to inquiries from the French
government about conditions in Virginia.
Then Governor of Virginia, Jefferson's
far-reaching interests ranged over all of
what he called America's empire of
liberty. The Notes are not restricted,
therefore, to the boundaries of Virginia as they
existed before 1781, including, in
addition to the present commonwealth the
territory now covered by the states of West
Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, and part of Pennsylvania. The
writing of the Notes was made easier because
Jefferson for some twenty years had
collected colonial maps, legislative journals,
newspapers, and explorers' accounts. He
had made and continued to make
investigation of Virginia's institutions, economy,
flora, fauna, fossils, meteorological
conditions, and Indian culture. No dry,
statistical account, although containing
plenty of facts, the Notes deal with
culture in its widest sense. They include so
many of Jefferson's comments about
social phenomena that they comprise in
capsule his political and social
philosophy, his intellectual, scientific and ethnic
beliefs.
The book, with 260 pages of text and
appendices, is arranged arbitrarily by the
queries of Francois Marbois, secretary of
the French legation in Philadelphia.
Jefferson's essays in reply vary in length
from one page each on Sea Ports and
Marine Force to the forty-five pages
accorded Virginia's Productions, Mineral,
Vegetable and Animal. Essays between
ten and twenty pages consider her
Aborigines, Constitution, Laws, and
Jefferson's Draught of a Fundamental
Constitution.
Besides writing celebrated descriptions
of Harper's Ferry and Natural Bridge,
Jefferson speculated on the physical
characteristics of beasts and mankind as well
as on the natural resources of his state.
He convincingly refuted the contention
of the French naturalist Buffon that there
were fewer species of mammals in
America than in Europe and that the American
ones had degenerated as a result of the
inferior climate. With spirit, he
contradicted Buffon's disparagement of the
American Indian, hailing the noble red
man as superior to the white in fortitude,
as equal in physical conformation, and as
potentially equal in sexual prowess and
mental talent. The Indian's limitations
were, insisted Jefferson, only those which
resulted from inadequate diet and a
cultural lag which he compared with that
of the Gauls before the Roman conquests
north of the Alps. In response to the Abbe*
Raynal's lament that America had
produced no good poet, mathematician, or
scientist, Jefferson asserted with pride his
claims for Franklin in physics, for Ritten-
house in astronomy, for Catesby in
ornithology, and for the Indian Logan in
eloquence. As for other cultural
achievements, Jefferson pleaded for time in
which American liberty might achieve
what he considered its certain promise.
Although Jefferson did not write a
separate essay on the subject of
education, he outlined fully his views in the
Notes. In doing so, he concealed with
typical modesty the personal role he had
played in the reform of the College of
William and Mary and in proposing a
system of primary and grammar school
education. Preoccupation with religion
at the college was transferred during the
Revolution to emphasis on science; at the
same time Latin and Greek gave ground
to modern languages, but interest in
mathematics and moral philosophy was
continued. Jefferson's schemes for pre-
college education were not so extreme as
is sometimes thought. He did urge free
education of all children in the Three R's

and in mathematics, but only the best
student of a school district six miles
square would study at the state's expense
in an intermediate or grammar school,
whose six-year curriculum afforded
instruction in Greek, Latin, geography, and
mathematics. By the end of the second
year of grammar school, the unfit were
to have been rigorously pruned. At the
end of the sixth year the upper fifty
percent would have been selected by
examinations and given scholarships for college.
At any stage in this educational pyramid,
a prosperous parent could continue his
child's education at private expense if the
child did not meet the high standards set
for state scholars.
Similarly, Jefferson praised the
disestablishment of the colonial Church, but
he failed to mention his own part in that
accomplishment. Reliant on reason, sure
that a neighbor's belief in plural gods or
in none could hurt no other, he was
happy at the increasing sectarian
diversity of the Old Dominion, but he urged
suspicion of zealots, whom he believed
always responsible for persecutions in the
name of uniformity. Jefferson's eloquence
in the cause of freedom of conscience was
later on turned against him, and his
enemies twisted his statements in the Notes
to condemn him as an anti-Christ.
The ideal of a simple, frugal, agrarian
republic is nowhere better stated than in
Jefferson's essays on Manufactures. His
conviction that "those who labour in the
earth are the chosen people of God" was
accompanied by the corollary that "the
great mobs of great cities" corrupted both
humans and governments. To preserve
Virginia's arcady, therefore, he
discouraged construction of "satanic" mills and
factories, saying "let our work-shops
remain in Europe." As a scientific farmer,
he gleefully asserted that on the eve of
the Revolution Virginia had so diversified
her economy that wheat almost equaled
tobacco as her staple, and he was by no
means loath to see her primacy in tobacco
pass to more southernly states.
On grounds of republicanism,
incentive, and efficiency Jefferson admonished
his fellow citizens that slavery was
injurious to both master and slave, and he
hoped for a voluntary increase in Negro
emancipation and deportation to Africa,
whither he would also have consigned
Negro criminals at the expense of the
state. More than six pages were devoted
to consideration of Negroes in his essay
on Manufactures, in the course of which
Jefferson concluded that they were
inferior to the white race when judged on
their accomplishments, unlike the white
slaves of Greek or Roman times, who had
surpassed their masters in that respect. He
lamented the lack of study of Negroes as
"subjects of natural history," and he
advanced the "suspicion only" that the
Negro was indeed "inferior to the whites
in the endowments both of body and of
mind." Friendly to the plight of the
Negro, anxious for his emancipation, this
future president of that American
Colonization Society which founded Liberia was
adamant on one point: "When freed, he
is to be removed beyond the reach of
mixture."
Jefferson's policies as President of the
United States were also foreshadowed in
the Notes. Desiring to "cultivate the
peace and friendship of every nation," he
wished "to throw open the door of
commerce to all." With conviction in
peaceful progress, he advocated minimum
military or naval forces on two grounds:
American financial resources could not
maintain a force to stand against that of
a European power without bankrupting
the country; and the expenditure of such
funds would be more beneficially applied
to the improving of the arts and
handicrafts of America.
In his essay on Virginia's Constitution,
Jefferson provided a brief historical
account of the Old Dominion, for which
he also compiled a bibliography of
charters and legislative acts. Stressing the
continuum of Virginian history, he praised
such historians as Captain John Smith
and Robert Beverley. Doubtless he
considered that he was more factual than a
propagandist in insistence on his theme
of royal and parliamentary subversion of
2593

legislative assemblies and those rights of
freeborn Englishmen guaranteed by the
ancient charters which he cited. He laid
heavy emphasis on the injustice of James
Fs revocation of the Virginia Company
charter, of the diminution of the colony's
extent by proprietary grants made by the
king out of her domain, and of
Parliament's illegal assumption of control over
colonial foreign trade during the 1650's.
Indeed, contended JefFerson, the colonists
had every right to believe that their
capitulation to the Cromwellian military
forces in 1651 had secured reaffirmation
of ancient boundaries, upon which
Maryland impinged, and of freedom in foreign
trade. In view of contemporary
disputation over Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, it is
interesting to observe that JefFerson makes
no reference to that event in this formal
historical essay. As might be supposed,
JefFerson, in bringing the history of the
Old Dominion down to his own time,
placed the heaviest blame for the wrongs
she suffered on George III and his
parliaments. Revolution in 1776 is presented
as inevitable, as honorable resistance
instead of unconditional submission to
tyranny.
JefFerson has been in our history an
ideologue claimed by almost all political
parties. Unlike much of his profuse
personal and official correspondence, his
Notes on the State of Virginia was a
formal, considered work, more important to
knowledge of the man, his ideas, and his
America than momentary effusions from
his pen, such as private letters.
Jefferson's only other book published
during his lifetime was his parliamentary
Manual. The Notes were first published
in English at Paris in 1785. During his
lifetime he made corrections,
emendations and addenda to that text with an
eye to authorizing the new, corrected, and
enlarged edition which was finally
published at Richmond in 1853 and which
will remain standard until the editors of
the Princeton edition of The Papers of
Thomas Jefferson publish their version of
the Notes as one of the last of its fifty-odd
volumes.
With good reason twentieth-century
scholars have looked with renewed
interest on the Notes on the State of Virginia
as one of the first masterpieces of
American literature and possibly the most
important scientific and political book
written by an American before 1785.
2594

O PIONEERS!
Type of work: Novel
Author: Willa Cather CI876-1947)
Type of plot: Regional chronicle
Time of plot: 1880-1910
Locale: Nebraska
First published: 1913
Principal characters:
Alexandra Bergson, a homesteader
Oscar,
Lou, and
Emil, her brothers
Carl Ltndstrum,
Marie Tovesky, and
Frank Shabata, neighbors
Crazy Ivar, a hired man
Critique:
O Pioneers! is more of a literary
landmark than many of its readers realize.
Aside from its plot and the fact that
it deals with an important part of
American history, there is the matter of the
author's concept of her art. In this
nove] we find both the old chronological
arrangement of circumstances and
evidences of newer writing freedoms. It is
a novel of local color and realistic
reporting. In comparison with anothei
book on the pioneer theme, Giants in the
Earth, this book stands on a completely
different plane. Giants in the Earth is
more mystical. O Pioneers! is a realistic
study of people who made a success of
their efforts and who fathered a new na
tion that was both heroic and mediocre
The Story:
Hanover was a frontier town huddled
on the windblown Nebraska prairie. One
winter day young Alexandra Bergson and
her small brother Emil went into town
from their new homestead. The Bergsons
were Swedes. Their life in the new
country was one of hardship because
the father was sick and the children were
too young to do all the work on their
prairie acres. Alexandra went to the
village doctor's office to get some medicine
for her father. The doctor told her
there was no hope for Bergson's recovery.
Emil had brought his kitten to town
with him. He was crying on the street
because it had climbea to the top of the
telegraph pole and would not come down.
When Alexandra returned, she met
their neighbor, Carl Lindstrum, who
rescued the cat. The three rode toward
home together and Carl talked of his
drawing. When Alexandra and Emil
arrived home, their supper was waiting
and their mother and father were anxious
for their return. Shortly afterward
Bergson called his family about him and told
them to listen to Alexandra, even though
she was a girl, for she had proved her
abilities to run the farm capably. Above
all, they were to keep the land.
Alexandra was still a girl when her
father died, but she assumed at once
the family's domestic and financial
troubles; she guided everything the
family did, and through her resourcefulness
she gained security and even a measure
of wealth for her brothers and herself.
Emil, the youngest brother, remained
the dreamer of the family, in his
mooning over Marie Tovesky, whom he had
first loved as a little child. Marie had
married Frank Shabata. Frank was wildly
possessive and mistrusted everyone who
showed the slightest kindness to Marie.
O PIONEERSl by Willa Cather. By permission of the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co. Copyright 1913 by
Willa S. Cather. Renewed, 1941, by Willa S. Cather. ^* * .»«.■!
2595

Alexandra was in love with Carl Lind-
strum, whose father gave up his farm
because the new, stubborn land seemed
too hard to subdue. He returned to more
settled country and took Carl with him
to learn the engraver's trade.
Alexandra depended upon Crazy Ivai
for many things. He was a hermit,
living in a hole dug into the side of a
river bed. The kinder Swedes claimed
he had been touched by God. Those
who were unsympathetic were sure he
was dangerous. Actually, he was a kind-
hearted mystic who loved animals and
birds and who let his beard grow
according to the custom of ancient prophets.
Through his lack of concern for worldly
matters he lost his claim, and Alexandra
gave him shelter on her own farm, much
to the dismay of her brothers and their
wives. They demanded that she send
Crazy Ivar to an institution, but she
refused. She respected Crazy Ivar as she
did few other people.
In the same way, Alexandra defended
Carl Lindstrum. After an absence of
sixteen years he came back to their
settlement. He had studied much, but in
the eyes of the thrifty Swedes his life
was a failure because he had not
married, because he had no property, because
he seemed willing to marry Alexandra,
who was by now quite wealthy. Her
brothers, Oscar and Lou, told Alexandra
that she must not marry Carl, and she
ordered them from her house. Carl,
hearing of the disagreement, set out for
the West at once.
Alexandra applied herself to new
problems. She paid passage for other
Swedes to come to America; she
experimented with new farming methods. She
became friendlier with Marie Shabata,
whose husband was growing more
jealous. She saw to it that Emil received
an education, let him go off to the
university despite the criticism of the other
brothers. By now Emil knew he loved
Marie Shabata, and he went away to
study because he felt that if he stayed
in the community something terrible
would happen. Even attending the
university did not help him. Other girls he
met seemed less attractive. His secret
thoughts were always about Marie.
Frank Shabata discharged hired hands
because he suspected them. He followed
Marie about everywhere. Even at the
Catholic Church he was at her heels
scowling at every one to whom she
talked. His jealousy was like a disease.
At the same time he treated her coldly
and insulted her publicly in front of
their friends. She, on her part, was
headstrong and defiant.
At last Emil returned from college.
His friend Am6d6e became ill while
working in his wheat fields and died
shortly afterward. Following the funeral,
Emil resolved to see Marie, to say
goodbye to her before leaving the
neighborhood permanently. He found her in
her orchard under the mulberry tree.
There for the first time they became
lovers.
Frank returned from town slightly
drunk. Finding a Bergson horse in his
stable, he took a weapon and went in
search of Emil. When he saw the two
he fired, killing both. Then Frank, mad
with horror, started to run away.
Crazy Ivar discovered the dead bodies
and ran with the news to Alexandra.
For the next few months Alexandra
seemed in a daze and spent much of
her time in the cemetery. She was caught
there during a terrible storm, and Crazy
Ivar had to go after her. During the
storm she regained her old self-possession.
Frank Shabata, who had been captured
soon after the shooting, had been tried
and sentenced to prison. Alexandra
determined to do what she could to secure
his freedom. If she could no longer
help her brother, she would help Frank.
While trying to help Frank, she
heard that Carl Lindstrum had returned.
He had never received her letter telling
of the tragedy, but on his return from
Alaska he had read of the trial and had
hurried to Alexandra. His mine was a
promising venture. The two decided
that they could now marry and bring
their long separation to an end.
2596

OBLOMOV
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1858
Principal characters:
Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov, a slothful Russian landowner
Andrey Stolz, Oblomov's only real friend
Tarantyev, a parasitical friend of Oblomov
Olga Ilyinsky, beloved of Oblomov
Zahar, Oblomov's valet
Critique:
Goncharov's study of sloth in a Russian
landowner is second in Russian literature
only to the tremendous studies of Russian
psychology found in the work of
Dostoevski. To the American reader the novel
must inevitably stand as an indictment of
the Russian mind in the nineteenth
century. The one admirable character in the
book is Stolz, who we are given to
understand many times was half German and
for this reason partly free from class
prejudice and racial bias. Looking backward,
an American is apt to feel that if all
Russian landowners were as stupid as
Goncharov portrayed them in Oblomov it is small
wonder that the revolution of 1917
occurred. The novel strikes the reader as
satire even more bitter than that found in
Sinclair Lewis' novels about America
during the 1920's.
The Story:
Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov was a Russian
landowner brought up to do nothing. As a
child he had been pampered in every way
by his parents, even to the point where a
valet put on and took off his shoes and
stockings for him. The elder Oblomovs
lived a bovine existence. Their land,
maintained by three hundred serfs, provided
them with plenty of money. Their days
were taken up with eating and sleeping;
they did nothing until an absolute
necessity arose.
The chief influence on Oblomov
during his childhood came from a German, a
steward on a neighboring estate, who
acted also as a tutor. Young Oblomov went
to school at his home and there found his
only boyhood friend, the German's son,
Andrey Stolz. When the boys grew up,
their lives seemed from the first destined
to different ends. Stolz was sent off by his
father with a few resources to make his
way in the world, but among those
resources was a great deal of practical
experience. Stolz was able, within a few
years, to amass considerable wealth for
himself and to become a respected, vital
businessman.
Oblomov, on the other hand, finished
college after doing just enough work to
get his diploma. He then became a clerk
in a government office, one of the few
positions considered an honorable post for
a gentleman in Russia. Before three years
had elapsed he resigned from his post,
ostensibly because of ill health but
actually because he could not bring himself
to accomplish all his duties; he felt that
the work was simply too much trouble for
a gentleman. Having retired from the
government, he began to do nothing during
the daytime. The indolence, spreading
like a poison, finally made him extremely
inactive.
By his thirtieth birthday Oblomov was
no farther along in life than he had been
at his twentieth; he was, in fact, much
OBLOMOV by Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co.. Inc.
From EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY. All rights reserved. *
2597

worse off than before. His rooms were
filthy and unkempt, for he was unable
to control his valet, Zahar. Oblomov had
no ambition whatever. Because he seldom
left his rooms, he had no social life. Even
at home he did nothing but lie around in
a dressing gown and eat and sleep. How
much money he got from his estates in
southern Russia he did not know, for it
would have been too much trouble to keep
accounts. His bailiff, knowing his master
would not stir out of Moscow, cheated
Oblomov consistently, as did everyone
else. Oblomov did not mind the cheating,
so long as people did not disturb him.
At last two misfortunes, as Oblomov
saw them, befell him. The bailiff reported
by letter that only a few thousand roubles
could be sent in the next year, and the
landlord sent word that he needed Oblo-
mov's apartment for a relative. Help, in
the form of a parasitical friend, Tarantyev,
seemed a godsend to Oblomov, for
Tarantyev promised to find another apartment
and to see what could be done about a new
bailiff for the estates.
On the same day Stolz came to visit his
boyhood friend and was aghast at the
state in which he found Oblomov. His
horror was increased when he learned that
the doctors had told Oblomov he had only
a few years to live unless he began to lead
a more active life. Stolz hustled about,
taking Oblomov with him everywhere and
forcing his friend to become once more
interested in life. When Stolz left on a
trip to western Europe, he made Oblomov
promise to meet him in Paris within a few
more weeks.
Fate intervened so that Oblomov never
kept his promise. Stolz had introduced
him to Olga Ilyinsky, a sensitive
vivacious, vital young woman. Oblomov had
fallen in love with Olga and she with him.
Visiting and planning their life together
after marriage kept both of them busy
throughout the summer, during which
Oblomov was partly reclaimed from his
apathy. But as winter drew on the actual
wedding was no closer than it had been
months before. Even for his marriage,
Oblomov could not expend a great deal of
effort; the habit of sloth was too deeply
ingrained in him. Tarantyev had found
an apartment for him in an outlying
quarter of Moscow, with a thirty-year-old
widow, and Oblomov lived there in
comfort. Nor could he have given up the
apartment, for without reading the
contract he had signed it, and he was bound
to keep the apartment at an exorbitant
price.
Although concerned over his estates,
Oblomov was unable to find anyone to set
them in order, and he refused to make the
journey home. He told himself he was too
much in love to leave Olga; actually, he
was too apathetic to travel twelve hundred
miles to Oblomovka. Olga finally realized
that she was still in love with the man that
Oblomov could be, but that he would
never become more than a half-dead idler.
In an extremely pathetic scene she told
him goodbye.
Following his dismissal by Olga,
Oblomov took to his bed with a fever. His valet,
the valet's wife, and the landlady did all
they could to help him, and so Oblomov
slipped again into the habit of doing
nothing. He realized the apathy of his mind
and body and called it shameful, giving it
the name of "Oblomovism." Tarantyev,
the parasitical friend, planned to keep
Oblomov in his clutches. First of all, he
sent a friend of his to look after Oblomov's
estates, but most of the money went into
Tarantyev's pockets. Secondly, he tried
to bring together the cowlike landlady and
Oblomov; this second plot was easy, since
the low-born woman was already in love
with her gentlemanly tenant.
Meanwhile Olga had gone with her
aunt to France. In Paris they met Stolz,
who was there on business. Stolz,
observing the great change in Olga, at last
learned what had happened in Moscow
after his departure. Having always loved
Olga, he soon won her over and they were
married. Realizing that Olga was still in
love with Oblomov, however, Stolz
returned to Moscow and tried to aid
Oblomov by renting the estates and sending the
2598

money to Oblomov. Tarantyev, furious,
recouped his losses by making Oblomov
appear as the seducer of his landlady. The
landlady gave a promissory note to Taran-
tyev and her brother, and they got one
on her behalf from Oblomov. Tims Oblo-
mov's income continued to pass into Ta-
rantyev's hands, until Stolz learned of the
arrangement and put an end to it.
Years passed. Olga asked her husband
to look up Oblomov and find out if he had
ever recovered from his terrible apathy.
Stolz did so; Oblomov, he learned, had
married his landlady and still did nothing.
As the doctors had warned, he had
suffered a slight stroke. He did ask Stolz to
take care of his son, born of the landlady,
after his death. Stolz agreed and not long
afterward received word that he was to go
for the boy. Oblomov had passed away as
he had lived much of his life, sleeping.
2599

ODE TO APHRODITE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Sappho (A. c. 600 B.C.)
First transcribed: Sixth century B.C.
The Ode to Aphrodite, a representative
introduction to the poetry of Sappho, may
be summarized thus: The poetess,
Sappho, invokes the attention of Aphrodite,
goddess of love, and invites her to leave
the house of Zeus, mount her chariot,
and let her doves bear her to the earth.
The poetess imagines their meeting: the
goddess will inquire who it is that
troubles Sappho by fleeing from her, by
refusing to reciprocate the ardors of love.
That person—Sappho imagines the
promise of the goddess—will soon suffer as
Sappho now suffers. The vision, briefly
and movingly expressed, concludes, and
in the last lines Sappho takes up the
prayer with which the poem begins. It
is a prayer to an absent being—a goddess
who may or may not be gracious.
This ode, a brilliant specimen of the
six hundred lines of Sappho's poetry that
remain, is characteristic of a body of
work very distant from us and yet
modern. Sappho's poetry once consisted of
nine books of some twelve thousand lines,
but all except a few fragments are
supposed to have been destroyed by Church
leaders in Constantinople and Rome.
Some of her work, fortunately survived
because it was quoted by grammarians
who used her passionate verse to illustrate
a syntactical point. Other fragments,
written on papyrus, were discovered in 1897
at Oxyrhyncus in Egypt. Ancient coffins
had been lined and stuffed with Sappho's
living verse.
Out of such materials scholars have
labored to reconstitute the reputation and
the effect of a woman whom the Greeks
called "the poetess" just as they called
Home "the poet." Plato, in the Phaedrus,
declared that she was worthy to rank
with the nine muses. Out of references in
the poems and also from confusing,
transmitted tradition, some sort of biography
of the writer may be put together, and
is not uninteresting to us because the
voice of passion is always the voice of a
living person. Born shortly before the
beginning of the sixth century B.C. on the
island of Lesbos in the Aegean, Sappho
grew up in a civilization that was rich
and relaxed, epicurean before the time
of Epicurus. The luxury of the life which
her class enjoyed stirred the merchants of
the island to revolt; they supported a
"tyrant" named Pittacus. Sappho was
twice exiled from her native town, the
second time as far away as Sicily. During
her exile she married, bore a daughter,
was widowed, and returned to Lesbos.
Here, for a time at least, she put
masculine affection behind her, even though
her fellow exile, Alcaeus, had expressed
a warm interest in her. Instead, Sappho
set up a sort of academy; here she was
the mistress and guiding spirit of young
women whose self-cultivation and loves
she supervised. The charms of the young
women were celebrated in Sappho's verse;
and their departure to other places or
to the marriage altar caused Sappho to
lament. Of this section of her mature life
the Ode to Aphrodite, the Ode to Anac-
toria, the Farewell to Anactoria, and other
poems seem to speak.
There is also a record of Sappho's
objection to the marriage her brother made
with an Egyptian courtesan. Ancient
tradition also tells how Sappho, no longer
preoccupied with her group of lovely
girls, leaped from a cliff because Phaon
the sailor would not respond to her
affection. Yet another fragment touchinely
shows us Sappho pointing to her wrinkles
when someone speaks to her of love.
Whatever her tastes, Sappho was
certainly "love's creature"; she tells us she
served a goddess who could make the
limbs sweat and tremble as well as stir
with joy. When Sappho speaks of a
girl as the sweet apple remaining alone
on a high twig, perceived by the
gatherer but unreached, or when she tells us

of a girl who cannot mind her spinning
because her fingers ache with love's
desire, Sappho is initiating a tradition of
sensual frankness in Western poetry.
Moreover, when Sappho's laments mark
the departure of Atthis or some other
friend from the charmed and charming
circle of girls who used to wander
through the gardens of Lesbos, we can
hear in Sappho's lines the authentic voice
of passion and desperation.
At such moments, Sappho's odes and
fragments do not testify to mere
convention. They record an experience of life
that is as fresh and troubled today as it
was six centuries before Christ. "Never
shall I see Atthis again. If this is so,
should I not die?" Human devotion,
distressed attachment—a whole significant
part of the possible human adventure is
explored in Sappho's poems.
2601

THE ODYSSEY
Type of work: Poem
Author: Homer (c. Ninth century B. C.)
Type of plot: Heroic epic
Time of plot: Years immediately following Trojan War
Locale: Greece and Mediterranean lands
First transcribed: Sixth century B. C.
Principal characters:
Odysseus, the wandering hero of the Trojan War
Penelope, his faithful wife
Telemachus, his son
Critique:
Such a wealth of material has grown
around the name of Homer that the
legendary blind bard might just as well
himself be included in the Greek
pantheon of gods about whom he wrote so
well. The Iliad, an epic poem concerned
with an incident in the Trojan War, and
the Odyssey, concerned with Odysseus'
difficulties in getting home after the war
had been won by the Greeks, are the
great epic masterpieces of Western
literature and a storehouse of Greek folklore
and myth. The Odyssey, with its
sagacious and always magnificent hero, its
romantic theme, and its frequent change
of scene, has enjoyed greater popularity
through the ages than has the Iliad.
The Story:
Of the Greek heroes who survived the
Trojan War only Odysseus had not
returned homevfor he had been detained
by the god Poseidon because of an
offense that he had committed against the
god of the sea.
At a conclave of the gods on Olympus
Zeus decreed that Odysseus should be
allowed at last to return to his home and
family in Ithaca. The goddess Athene
was sent to Ithaca where, in disguise,
she told Telemachus, Odysseus' son, that
his father was alive. She advised the
youth to rid his home of the great
number of suitors suing for the hand of his
mother, Penelope, and to go in search
of his father. The suitors refused to
leave the house of Odysseus, but they
gave ready approval to the suggestion
that Telemachus begin a quest for his
father, since the venture would take him
far from the shores of Ithaca.
The youth and his crew sailed to Pylos,
where the prince questioned King Nestor
concerning the whereabouts of Odysseus.
Nestor, a wartime comrade of Odysseus,
advised Telemachus to go to Lacedae-
mon, where Menelaus, who reigned there
as king, could possibly give him the
information he sought. At the palace of
Menelaus and Helen, for whom the
Trojan War had been waged,
Telemachus learned that Odysseus was a
prisoner of the nymph Calypso on her island
of Ogygia, in the Mediterranean Sea.
Meanwhile Zeus sent Hermes, the
messenger of the gods, to Ogygia, with
orders that Calypso was to release
Odysseus. When the nymph reluctantly
complied, the hero constructed a boat in
four days and sailed away from his island
prison. But Poseidon, ever the enemy
of Odysseus, sent great winds to destroy
his boat and to wash him ashore on the
coast of the Phaeacians. There he was
found by Nausicaa, daughter of King
Alcinoiis of the Phaeacians, when she
went down to the river mouth with her
handmaidens to wash linen. The naked
Odysseus awoke, saw Nausicaa and her
maidens, and asked them where he was.
Frightened at first by this stranger hiding
behind the shrubbery, Nausicaa soon
perceived that he was no vulgar person.
She told him where he was, supplied
him with clothing, and gave him food
and drink. Then she conducted him to
the palace of King Alcinoiis and Queen
Arete. The royal pair welcomed him
2602

and, at his asking, promised to provide
him with passage to his native land. At
a great feast the minstrel Demodocus
sang of the Trojan War and of the
hardships suffered by the returning Greeks,
and Alcinous saw that the stranger wept
during the singing. At the games which
followed the banquet and songs,
Odysseus was goaded by a young Phaeacian
athlete into revealing his great strength.
Later, at Alcinous' insistence, Odysseus
told the following story of his
wanderings since the war's end.
When Odysseus left Ilium he was
blown to Ismarus, the Cicones' city,
which he and his men sacked. Then
they were blown by an ill wind to the
land of the Lotus-eaters, where
Odysseus had difficulty in getting his men to
leave a slothful life of ease. Arriving in
.the land of the Cyclops, the one-eyed
monsters who herded giant sheep,
Odysseus and twelve of his men were caught
by a Cyclops, Polyphemus, who ate the
men one by one, saving Odysseus until
last. But the wily hero tricked the giant
into a drunken stupor, blinded him with
a sharpened pole, and fled back to his
ship. On an impulse, Odysseus disclosed
his name to the blinded Polyphemus as
he sailed away. Polyphemus called upon
his father, Poseidon, to avenge him by
hindering the return of Odysseus to his
homeland.
Odysseus' next landfall was Aeolia,
where lived Aeolus, the god of the winds.
Aeolus gave Odysseus a sealed bag
containing all the contrary winds, so that
they could not block his homeward
voyage. But the crew, thinking that the
bag contained treasure, opened it,
releasing all the winds, and the ship was
blown to the land of the Laestrigonians,
half-men, half-giants, who plucked
members of the crew from the ship and
devoured them. Most managed to escape,
however, and came to Aeaea, the land
of the enchantress Circe. Circe changed
the crew members into swine, but with
the aid of the herb, Moly, which Hermes
gave him, Odysseus withstood Circe's
magic and forced her to change his crew
back into men. Reconciled to the great
leader, Circe told the hero that he could
not get home without first consulting the
shade of Teiresias, the blind Theban
prophet. On the shore Odysseus dug a
deep pit and in it sacrificed sheep.
Thereupon appeared spirits from Hades,
among them the shade of Teiresias, who
warned Odysseus to beware of danger
in the land of the sun god.
On his homeward way Odysseus was
forced to sail past the isle of the Sirens,
maidens who by their beautiful voices
drew men to their death on treacherous
rocks. By sealing the sailors' ears with
wax and by having himself tied to the
ship's mast, Odysseus passed the Sirens
safely. Next, he sailed into a narrow
sea passage guarded by the monsters,
Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla's six
horrible heads seized six of the crew, but the
ship passed safely through the narrow
channel. On the island of the sun god,
Hyperion, the starving crew slaughtered
some of Hyperion's sacred cows, despite
a warning from their leader. The sun
god caused the ship to be wrecked in a
storm, all of the crew being lost but
Odysseus, who was ultimately washed
ashore on Ogygia, the island of Calypso.
His story finished, Odysseus received
many gifts from Alcinous and Arete.
They accompanied him to a ship they
had provided for his voyage to Ithaca
and bade him farewell, and the ship
brought him at last to his own land*
Odysseus hid in a cave the vast
treasure he had received from his Phaeacian
hosts. The goddess Athene appeared to
him and counseled him on a plan by
which he could avenge himself on the
rapacious suitors. The goddess, after
changing Odysseus into an old beggar,
went to Lacedaemon to arrange the
return of Telemachus from the court of
Menelaus and Helen.
Odysseus went to the rustic cottage of
his old steward, Eumaeus, who
welcomed the apparent stranger and offered
him hospitality. The faithful servant
disclosed the unpardonable behavior of
Penelope's suitors and told how Odys-
2603

seus' estate had been greatly reduced by
their greed and love of luxury.
Meanwhile, Athene advised Telema-
chus to leave the ease of the Lacedaemon
court and return home. On his arrival
he went first to the hut of Eumaeus in
order to get information from the old
steward. There, Athene having
transformed Odysseus back to his heroic self,
son and father were reunited.
After pledging his son to secrecy,
Odysseus described his plan of attack.
Eumaeus and Odysseus, again disguised
as a beggar, went to Odysseus' house
where a meal was in progress. Reviled
by the suitors, who had forgotten that
hospitality to a stranger was a practice
demanded by Zeus himself, Odysseus
bided his time, even when arrogant
Antinous threw a stool which struck
Odysseus on the shoulder.
Odysseus ordered Telemachus to lock
up all weapons except a few which were
to be used by his own party; the women
servants were also to be locked in their
quarters. Penelope questioned Odysseus
concerning his identity but Odysseus
deceived her with a fantastic tale. When
Eurycleia, ancient servant of the king,
wasted the beggar's feet and legs, she
recognized her master by a scar above
the knee, but she did not disclose his
secret.
Penelope planned an impossible feat
of strength to free herself of her suitors.
One day, showing the famous bow of
Eurytus, and twelve battle-axes, she said
that she would give her hand to the
suitor who could shoot an arrow through
all twelve ax handles. Telemachus, to
prove his worth, attempted, but failed to
string the bow. One after another the
suitors failed even to string the bow.
Finally Odysseus asked if an old beggar
might attempt the feat. The suitors
laughed scornfully at his presumption.
Then Odysseus strung the bow with ease
and shot an arrow through the twelve
ax hafts. Throwing aside his disguise,
he next shot Antinous in the throat.
There ensued a furious battle, in which
all the suitors were killed by Odysseus
and his small party. Twelve women
servants who had been sympathetic with
the suitors were hanged in the
courtyard.
Penelope, in her room, heard what
Odysseus, the erstwhile beggar, had
done, and husband and wife were
happily reunited after years of separation.
2604

OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sophocles (495?-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of flot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Colonus, near Athens
First presented: 405 B.C.
Principal characters:
Oedipus, former King of Thebes
Antigone, and
Ismene, his daughters
Theseus, King of Athens
Creon, former regent of Thebes
Polynices, older son of Oedipus
Elders of Colonus
Critique:
It was probably inevitable that
Sophocles, a great Greek patriot, should have
written Oedipus at Colonus, a story
dealing with the legendary past of his
birthplace. Indeed, two of the high points of
the play are magnificent odes in praise of
Attica and Colonus. The Oedipus at
Colonus is believed to be one of the last plays,
if not the last play written by Sophocles,
who died at the age of eighty-nine. The
play represents the culmination of
Sophocles' handling of the Cadmean myth. At
the same time it is his last powerful
affirmation of human dignity in the face of an
incomprehensible universe.
The Story:
Many years had passed since King
Oedipus had discovered to his horror that he
had murdered his father and had married
his own mother, who had given birth to
his children. Having blinded himself and
given up his royal authority in Thebes, he
had been cared for by his faithful
daughters, Antigone and Ismene. When internal
strife broke out in Thebes, Oedipus,
believed to be the cause of the trouble
because of the curse the gods had put upon
his family, was banished from the city.
He and Antigone wandered far. At last
V they came to an olive grove at Colonus,
a sacred place near Athens. A man of
Colonus warned the strangers that the grove
in which they had stopped was sacred to
the Furies. Oedipus, having known
supreme mortal suffering, replied that he
knew the Furies well and that he would
remain in the grove. Disturbed, the man
of Colonus stated that he would have to
report this irregularity to Theseus, King
of Athens and overlord of Colonus.
Oedipus replied that he would welcome the
king, for he had important words to say
*o Theseus.
The old men of Colonus were upset at
Oedipus' calm in the grove of the Furies,
whom they feared. They inquired, from a
discreet distance, the identity of the blind
stranger, and they were horror-stricken to
learn that he was the infamous King of
Thebes, whose dreadful story the whole
civilized world had heard. Fearing the
terrible wrath of the gods, they ordered him
to be off with his daughter. Oedipus was
able to quiet them, however, by
explaining that he had suffered greatly, even
though he had never consciously sinned
against the gods. Furthermore, to the
mystification of the old men, he hinted that
he had strange powers and that he would
bring good fortune to the land that would
provide for him a place of refuge.
Ismene, another daughter of Oedipus,
arrived in the grove at Colonus after
searching throughout all Greece for her
father and sister. She brought to Oedipus
the unhappy news that his two sons,
Polynices and Eteocles had fought for
supremacy in Thebes. Polynices, defeated,
had been banished to Argos, where he
was now gathering a host to return to
2605

Thebes to regain control. Ismene also
informed her father that the Oracle of
Delphi had prophesied that Thebes was
doomed to terrible misfortune if Oedipus
should be buried anywhere but in that
city. With this prophecy in mind, the
Thebans hoped that Oedipus would
return from his exile. But Oedipus, mindful
of his banishment and of die
faithlessness of his sons, declared to Ismene that
he would remain in Colonus and that the
land of Attica would be his tomb.
Having been informed of the arrival of
Oedipus, Theseus went to Colonus and
welcomed the pitiful old man and his
daughters. Oedipus, offering his body to
Attica and Colonus, prophesied that
Attica would have good fortune if he were
buried in its soil. Theseus, who had also
known exile, was sympathetic; he
promised to care for Oedipus and to protect the
fearful old man from seizure by any
Theban interloper.
After Theseus had returned to Athens,
Creon, the former regent of Thebes, came
to the grove with his followers.
Deceitfully he urged Oedipus to return with him
to Thebes, but Oedipus, aware of Creon's
motives, reviled him for his duplicity.
Oedipus cursed Thebes for the way it had
disavowed him in his great suffering.
Creon's men, at the command of their
leader, seized Antigone and Ismene and
carried them away. Blind Oedipus and the
aged men of Colonus were too old and
feeble to prevent their capture. Then
Creon attempted to seize Oedipus. But by
that time the alarm had been sounded,
and Theseus returned to confront
treacherous Creon and to order the rescue of
Antigone and Ismene. Asked to explain
his actions, Creon weakly argued that he
had come to rid Attica of the taint which
Oedipus surely would place upon the
kingdom if its citizens offered shelter to any
of the cursed progeny of Cadmus.
Having checked Creon, Theseus rescued the
two daughters of Oedipus.
In the meantime Polynices, older son
of Oedipus, had been searching for
Oedipus. Hoping to see the prophecy of the
Delphic Oracle fulfilled, but for his own
selfish ends, the young man came to the
olive grove and with professions of
repentance and filial devotion begged Oedipus
to return with him to Argos. Oedipus,
knowing that his son wished only to
ensure the success of his expedition against
his brother Eteocles, who was in authority
at Thebes, heard Polynices out in silence;
then he scathingly denounced both sons
as traitors. Furthermore, with vehement
intensity he prophesied that Polynices and
Eteocles would die by violence. Polynices,
impressed by his father's words but still
ambitious and arrogant, ignored
Antigone's pleas to spare their native city. He
departed, convinced that he was going to
certain death.
Three rolls of thunder presaged the
impending death of old Oedipus.
Impatiently, but at the same time with a certain air
of resignation, Oedipus called for Theseus.
Guiding the king and his two daughters
to a nearby grotto, he predicted that as
long as his burial place remained a secret
known only to Theseus and his male
descendants Attica would successfully resist
all invasions. After he had urged Theseus
to protect Antigone and Ismene, he
dismissed his daughters. Only Theseus was
with him when Oedipus suddenly
disappeared. Antigone and Ismene tried to
return to their father's tomb, but Theseus,
true to his solemn promise, prevented
them. He did, however, second them in
their desire to return to Thebes, that they
might prevent the dreadful bloodshed
which threatened their native city because
of Polynices and Eteocles.
2606

OEDIPUS TYRANNUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sophocles (495?-406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Thebes
First presented: c. 429 B. C.
Principal characters:
Oedipus, king of Thebes
Jocasta, his wife
Creon, Jocasta *s brother
Teiresias, a seer
Critique:
Oedipus Tyrannus is Sophocles'
masterpiece and considered by many the
greatest of classic Greek tragedies.
Aristotle referred to it continually in his
Poetics, pointing out features of the ideal
tragic poem. Character and action are in
nearly perfect harmony. The fall of the
king is made doubly horrifying by
Sophocles' extremely effective use of dramatic
irony. The play probably was written for
production at one of the periodic drama
competitions held in Athens.
The Story:
Thebes having been stricken by a
plague, the people asked King Oedipus
to deliver them from its horrors. Creon,
brother of Jocasta, Oedipus' queen,
returned from the oracle of Apollo and
disclosed that the plague was punishment
for the murder of King Laius, Oedipus'
immediate predecessor, to whom Jocasta
had been wife. Creon further disclosed
that the citizens of Thebes would have
to discover and punish the murderer
before the plague would be lifted. The
people, meanwhile, mourned their dead,
and Oedipus advised them, in their own
interest, to search out and apprehend
the murderer.
Asked to help find the murderer,
Teiresias, the ancient, blind seer of
Thebes, told Oedipus that it would be
better for all if he did not tell what he
knew. He said that coming events would
reveal themselves. Oedipus raged at the
seer's reluctance to tell the secret until
the old man, angered, said that Oedipus
was the one responsible for the
afflictions of Thebes, that Oedipus was the
murderer, and that the king was living
in intimacy with his nearest kin.
Oedipus accused the old man of being in
league with Creon, whom he suspected
of plotting against his throne. Teiresias
answered that Oedipus would be ashamed
and horrified when he learned the truth
about his true parentage, a fact Oedipus
did not know. Oedipus defied the seer,
saying that he would welcome the truth
as long as it freed his kingdom from the
plague. Suspicious, Oedipus threatened
Creon with death, but Jocasta and the
people advised him not to do violence on
the strength of rumor or momentary
passion. Oedipus yielded, and Creon
was banished.
Jocasta, grieved by the enmity
between her brother and Oedipus, told her
husband that an oracle had informed
King Laius that he would be killed by
his own child, the offspring of Laius
and Jocasta. Jocasta declared Laius could
not have been killed by his own child
because soon after the child was born
it was abandoned on a deserted
mountainside. When Oedipus heard from
Jocasta that Laius had been killed by
robbers at the meeting place of three roads,
he was deeply disturbed. Learning that
the three roads met in Phocis, he began
to suspect that he was, after all, the
murderer. Hesitating to reveal his crime, he
became more and more convinced of his
own guilt.
Oedipus told Jocasta he had believed
himself the son of Polybus of Corinth
and Merope, until at a feast a drunken
2607

man had announced that the young
Oedipus was not really Polybus* son.
Disturbed, he had gone to consult the
oracle of Apollo, who had told him he
would sire children by his own mother
and he would kill his own father.
Leaving Corinth, at a meeting place of three
roads, Oedipus had been offended by a
man in a chariot. He killed the man and
all of his servants but one. Thereafter
he had come to Thebes and had become
the new king by answering the riddle
of the Sphinx, a riddle which asked
what went on all fours before noon, on
two legs at noon, and on three legs after
noon. Oedipus had answered, correctly,
that Man walks on all fours as an infant,
on two legs in his prime, and with the
aid of a stick in his old age. With the
kingship, he also won the hand of Jo-
casta, King Laius* queen.
The servant who had reported that
King Laius had been killed by robbers
was summoned. Oedipus awaited his
arrival fearfully. Jocasta assured her
husband that the entire matter was of no
great consequence, that surely the
prophecies of the oracles would not come true.
A messenger from Corinth announced
that Polybus was dead and that Oedipus
was now king. Because Polybus had
died of sickness, not by the hand of his
son, Oedipus and Jocasta were at ease
for the time being. Oedipus told the
messenger he would not go to Corinth
for fear of siring children by his mother,
Merope, thus fulfilling the prophecy of
the oracle.
The messenger then revealed that
Oedipus was not really the son of
Polybus and Merope, but a foundling whom
the messenger, at that time a shepherd,
had taken to Polybus. The messenger
related how he had received the baby
from another shepherd, who was a
servant of the house of King Laius. Jocasta,
realizing the dreadful truth, did not wish
any longer to see the old servant who
had been summoned, but Oedipus,
desiring to have the matter out regardless
of the cost, called again for the servant.
When the servant appeared, the
messenger recognized him as the herdsman
from whom he had received the child
years before. The old servant then
confessed he had been ordered by King
Laius to destroy the boy, but out of pity
he had given the infant to the Corinthian
to raise as his foster son.
Oedipus, now all but mad from the
realization of what he had done, entered
the palace to discover that Jocasta had
hanged herself by her hair. He removed
her golden brooches and with thenr
pierced his eyes. Blinded, he would not
be able to see the results of the horrible
prophecy. Then he displayed himself,
blind and bloody and miserable, to the
Thebans and announced himself as the
murderer of their king and the defiler
of his own mother's bed. He cursed the
herdsman who had saved him from death
years before.
Creon, having returned, ordered the
attendants to lead Oedipus back into the
palace. Oedipus asked Creon to have
him conducted out of Thebes where no
man would ever see him again. Also,
he asked Creon to give Jocasta a proper
burial and to see that the sons and
daughters of the unnatural marriage should
be cared for and not be allowed to live
poor and unmarried because of any
shame attached to their parentage. Creon
led the wretched Oedipus away to his
exile of blindness and torment.
2608

OF HUMAN BONDAGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: W. Somerset Maugham (1874- )
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1915
Principal characters:
Philip Carey, an orphan boy
William Carey, his uncle
Louisa Carey, his aunt
Miss Wilkinson, Philip's first love
Mildred Rogers, a waitress
Thorpe Athelny, Philip's friend
Sally Athelny, his daughter
Critique:
Without question, Of Human
Bondage is one of the few classics of the
present day. In this novel Maugham tells
of a young man's search for a way of
life. It is the story of the thoughts and
actions of a bitter, confused, warped boy,
and it is a story told with the mature
wisdom of an author who had suffered
some of the same tangled emotions in
his own youth. Maugham tells us that
the emotions are his own, with the events
and situations drawn partly from his own
life and partly from experiences of his
friends. Many critics believe that Of
Human Bondage is Maugham's greatest
contribution to prose fiction.
The Story:
Philip Carey was nine years old when
his mother died and he was sent to live
with his aunt and uncle at the vicarage
of Blackstable, forty miles outside
London. Uncle William Carey was a penny-
pinching smugly religious man who
made Philip's life miserable. Having
been born with a clubfoot, Philip was
extremely sensitive about his deformity,
and he grew up bitter and rebellious.
The only love he was shown was given
to him by his Aunt Louisa, who had
never been able to have children of her
own.
At school Philip's clubfoot was a
source of much ridicule, for children
are cruel. Philip was so sensitive that
any reference to his foot, even a kind
reference, caused him to strike out at
the speaker.
Wiien he was eighteen, Philip, with
a small inheritance of his own, went to
Berlin to study. He took rooms in the
home of Professor and Frau Erlin. There
he studied German, French, and
mathematics with tutors from the University
of Heidelberg. He met several young
men, among them Weeks, an American,
and Hayward, a radical young
Englishman. From their serious discussions on
religion Philip decided that he no longer
believed in God. This decision made
him feel free, for in discarding God he
subconsciously discarded his memories
of his cold and bitter youth at the
vicarage.
Shortly after his return to the Black-
stable, Philip became involved with a
spinster twice his age, a Miss Emily
Wilkinson who was a friend of his
Aunt Louisa. She was not attractive to
him, but he thought a man of twenty
should experience love. It was typical
of Philip's attitude that even after they
became lovers he continued to call the
woman Miss Wilkinson.
OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham. By permission of the author and the publishers,
Ooubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1915. by Doubleday & Co.. Inc. Renewed. 1942. by W. Somerset
Maugham.
2609

Not long after that affair Philip went
to London to begin a career as a clerk
in an accounting firm. Dissatisfied, he
worked only a year; then he went to
Paris to study art. But two years later
he gave up the idea of becoming an
artist and returned to London for his
third great start on a career. He had
decided to study medicine.
In London, Philip met Mildred
Rogers, a waitress. She was really nothing
more than a wanton, but in spite of the
fact that Philip saw her for what she
was, he loved her and desired her above
all else. He gave her presents which
were extravagant for his small income.
He neglected his studies to be with her.
She gave him nothing in return. When
he asked her to marry him, for it seemed
that that was the only way he could
ever possess her, she told him bluntly
that he did not have enough money for
her and that she was marrying someone
else. Philip loved her and hated her so
much that he was almost consumed by
his emotions.
He had begun to forget Mildred, in his
affection for another girl, when she
returned to London. Alone and penniless,
she told him that the other man had not
married her, that he already had a wife
and children. She was pregnant. Philip
forgot the other girl and took Mildred
back again. He paid her hospital bill
and her lodging bills and sent her to
the coast to rest. Mildred repaid him by
going off for a holiday with a man
Philip considered his good friend. They
used Philip's money to pay their
expenses. Despising himself, he begged
Mildred to come back to him after her
trip with the other man; he could not
overcome his insane desire for her. But
Mildred did not come back.
Philip forced himself to study harder
than ever then. He met Thorpe Athel-
ny, a patient in the hospital where he
was studying, and the two men became
good friends. Philip visited the Athelny
home almost every Sunday. It was a
noisy house, filled with happy children
and with love and kindness, and the
cheerful atmosphere filled an empty place
in Philip's heart.
One evening Philip saw Mildred
again. She was highly painted and
overdressed, and she was sauntering slowly
down the street with a vulgar swing of
her hips. She had become a common
street-walker. Although Philip knew
then that he had lost his desire for her,
out of pity he took her and her child
into his home. Mildred was to act as
his housekeeper. Because Philip's funds
were small, they were forced to live
frugally. Mildred once again took all he
had to offer and gave him nothing in
return. Her only payment was an
unknowing one, for Philip loved her child
very much and he had many hours of
pleasure holding the baby girl in his
arms. Mildred tried again and again to
resume their old relationship, but each
time Philip repulsed her. At last she
became insanely angry and left his
apartment with her baby. Before she
left, however, she completely wrecked
the apartment, ripped his clothing and
linens with a knife, smashed furniture
and dishes, and tore up his pictures.
A short time later Philip lost what
little money he had in a bad
investment. The Athelny family took him
into their home, and Thorpe obtained
work for him as a window dresser in
the store where Thorpe himself was
employed. Philip had to give up his studies
at the hospital because of lack of money.
Then, when he was thirty, his Uncle
William died and left him enough money
to finish his medical education. When
he walked down the steps with his
diploma in his hand, Philip thought that
he was ready at last to begin his real
life. He planned to sign on as a ship's
doctor and sail around the world before
he settled down to a permanent
practice.
But before he accepted a position,
Philip went on a holiday trip with the
Athelnys. While on that holiday he
realized with a distinct shock that one
2610

of the Athelny girls whom he had always
thought of as a child had definitely
grown up. As they walked home
together one night, he and Sally Athelny
became lovers. Back in London, a few
weeks later, Sally told him that she
thought she was pregnant. Philip
immediately gave up his dreams of
traveling over the world and accepted a small-
salaried practice in a little fishing village,
so that he and Sally could be
married. But Sally's fears proved
groundless. Free to travel and be his own
master, Philip suddenly realized that
what he really wanted was a home and
a family and security. He had never
been normal because of his deformity,
and he had never done what he wanted
to do but always what he thought he
should do. He had always lived in the
future. Now he wanted to live in the
present. And so he asked Sally to marry
him, to go with him to that little fishing
village. He offered her nothing but his
love and the fruit of the lessons he had
learned from hard teachers, but Sally
accepted his proposal. Philip felt that
he was his own master after his bleak,
bitter years of mortal bondage.
2611

OF MICE AND MEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Steinbeck (1902- )
Type of plot: Sentimental melodrama
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Salinas Valley, California
First published: 1937
Principal characters:
Lennie Small, a simple-minded giant
George Milton, his friend
Candy, swamper on the ranch on which George and Lennie worked
Curley, the owner's son
Slim, the jerkline skinner on the ranch
Crooks, the colored stable buck
Critiqute:
Written in terms of theatrical
melodrama, the compact, tragic story of
Of Mice and Men spins itself out in
only three days. In that brief time
Curley has his hand smashed, his wife
Is murdered, the old swamper's dog is
killed, Lennie loses his life, and George
shoots his best friend. The effect of the
tightly-knit story is heightened by the
naturalness of the setting and the men's
talk, and by the underlying sympathy
Steinbeck has for all of his creations,
even the meanest.
The Story:
Late one hot afternoon two men
carrying blanket rolls trudged down the path
that led to the bank of the Salinas
River. One man—his companion called
him George—was small and wiry. The
other was a large, lumbering fellow whose
arms hung loosely at his sides. After
they had drunk at the sluggish water
and washed their faces, George sat back
with his legs drawn up. His friend
Lennie imitated him.
The two men were on their way to
a ranch where they had been hired \p
buck barley. Lennie had cost them
their jobs at their last stop in Weed,
where he had been attracted by a girl's
red dress. Grabbing at her clothes, he
had been so frightened by her screaming
that George had been forced to hit hirri
over the head to make him let go. They
had run away to avoid a lynching.
After George had lectured his
companion about letting him talk to their
new employer when they were
interviewed, Lennie begged for a story he had
already heard many times. It was the
story of the farm they would own one
day. It would have chickens, rabbits,
and a vegetable garden, and Lennie
would be allowed to feed the rabbits.
The threat that Lennie would not be
allowed to care for the rabbits if he did
not obey caused him to keep still when
they arrived at the ranch the next day.
In spite of George's precautions, their
new boss was not easy to deal with. He
was puzzled because George gave
Lennie no chance to talk.
While the men were waiting for the
lunch gong, the owner's son Curley came
in, ostensibly looking for his father, but
actually to examine the new men. After
he had gone, Candy, the swamper who
swept out the bunkhouse, warned them
that Curley was a prizefighter who
delighted in picking on the men and that
he was extremely jealous of his slatternly
bride.
Lennie had a foreboding of evil and
wanted to leave, but the two men had
no money with which to continue their
wanderings. But by evening Lennie was
happy again. The dog belonging to
Slim, the jerkline skinner, had had pups
the night before, and Slim had given
OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press. Inc.
Copyright, 1937, by John Stehxbeck,
2612

one to simple-minded Lennie.
Slim was easy to talk to. While George
played solitaire that evening, he told
his new friend of the incident in Weed.
He had just finished his confidence
when Lennie came in, hiding his puppy
inside his coat. George told Lennie to
take the pup back to the barn. He said
that Lennie would probably spend the
night there with the animal.
The bunkhouse had been deserted
by all except old Candy when Lennie
asked once more to hear the story of
the land they would some day buy. At
its conclusion the swamper spoke up.
He had three hundred and fifty dollars
saved, he said, and he knew he would
not be able to work many more years.
He wanted to join George and Lennie
in their plan. George finally agreed, for
with Candy's money they would soon
be able to buy the farm they had in
mind.
Lennie was still grinning with
delighted anticipation when Curley came
to the bunkhouse in search of his wife.
The men had been taunting him about
her wantonness when he spied Lennie's
grin. Infuriated with the thought that
he was being laughed at, Curley attacked
the larger man. Lennie, remembering
George's warnings, did nothing to
defend himself at first. Finally he grabbed
Curley's hand and squeezed. When he
let go, every bone had been crushed.
Curley was driven off to town for
treatment, with instructions from Slim
to say that he had caught his hand in a
machine. Slim warned him that the
truth would soon be known if he failed
to tell a convincing story.
After the others had started to town
with Curley, Lennie went to talk to
Crooks, the colored stable buck, who
had his quarters in the harness room
instead of the bunkhouse. Crooks'
coolness quickly melted before Lennie's
innocence. While Lennie told the colored
man about the dream of the farm, Candy
joined them. They were deep in
discussion of the plan when Curley's wife
appeared, looking for her husband. The
story about her husband and the machine
did not deceive her, and she hinted that
she was pleased with Lennie for what
he had done. Having put an end to the
men's talk, she slipped out noiselessly
when she heard the others come back
from town.
Lennie was in the barn petting his
puppy. The other workmen pitched
horseshoes outside. Lennie did not
realize that the dog was already dead from
the mauling he had innocently given
it. As he sat in the straw, Curley's
wife came around the corner of the
stalls., He would not speak to her at
first, afraid that he would not get to feed
the rabbits if he did anything wrong,
but the girl gradually managed to draw
his attention to her and persuaded him
to stroke her hair.
When she tried to pull her head
away, Lennie held on, growing angry
as she tried to yell. Finally he shook
her violently and broke her neck.
Curley's wife was lying half-buried
in the hay when Candy came into the
barn in search of Lennie. Finding
Lennie gone, he called George, and while
the latter went off to get a gun the
swamper spread the alarm. The
opportunity to catch the murderer was
what Curley had been looking for.
Carrying a loaded shotgun, he started
off with the men, George among them.
It was George who found Lennie
hiding in the bushes at the edge of a
stream. Hurriedly, for the last time, he
told his companion the story of the
rabbit farm, and when he had finished
Lennie begged that they go at once to
look for the farm. Knowing that Lennie
could not escape from Curley and the
other men who were searching for him,
George put the muzzle of his gun to
the back of his friend's head and pulled
the trigger. Lennie was dead when the
others arrived.
2613

OF TIME AND THE RIVER
Type of work Novel
Author: Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: Harvard, New York, France
First published: 1935
Principal characters:
Eugene Gant, a young student and writer
Bascom Pentland, his uncle
Francis Starwick, a friend
Ann, and
Elinor, Starwick's friends
Robert Weaver, Eugene's friend
Critique:
With this novel, his second, Thomas
Wolfe became a more mature craftsman.
The book is a happy blend of the best
aspects, the enthusiasm and freshness of
Look Homeward, Angel and of Wolfe's
growing ability as a writer. Thomas
Wolfe had his limitations. Yet what he
gave contains some of the best writing
America has produced. Wolfe was not
a sophisticated novelist. He wrote of
life, of the pains, hungers, sorrows, of
the common people. More than any
other writer in America, he has
succeeded m vividly describing the sights,
smells, fears, and hopes of our nation
and our people. Of Time and the River
is a masterpiece of which Americans
can be proud.
The Story:
Eugene Gant was leaving Altamont
for study at Harvard. His mother and
his sister Helen stood on the station
platform and waited with him for the
train that would take him north. Eugene
felt that he was escaping from his strange,
unhappy childhood, that the train would
take him away from sickness and worry
over money, away from his mother's
boarding-house, the Dixieland, away from
memories of his gruff, kind brother Ben,
away from all ghosts of the past. While
they waited, they met Robert Weaver,
who was also on his way to Harvard.
Mrs. Gant said that Robert was a fine
boy, but that there was insanity in his
family. She told Eugene family scandals
of the town before the train came
puffing in.
Eugene broke his trip in Baltimore to
visit his father, who was slowly dying
of cancer. Old Gant spent much of his
time on the sunlit hospital porch,
dreaming of time and of his youth.
At Harvard, Eugene enrolled in
Professor Hatcher's drama class. Hungry for
knowledge, he browsed in the library,
pulling books from the library shelves
and reading them as he stood by the
open stacks. He wrote plays for the
drama workshop. Prowling the streets
of Cambridge and Boston, he wondered
about the lives of people he met, whose
names he would never know.
One day he received a note from
Francis Starwick, Professor Hatcher's
assistant, asking Eugene to have
dinner with him that night. As Eugene
had made no friends at the university,
he was surprised by Starwick's
invitation. Starwick turned out to be a
pleasant voung man who welcomed Eugene's
confidences but returned none.
In Boston Eugene met his uncle,
Bascom Pentland, and his wife. Uncle
Bascom had once been a preacher, but
he had left the ministry and was now
working as a conveyancer in a law office.
OF TIME AND THE RIVER by Thomas. Wolfe. By permission of Edward C. Aswell, Administrator, Estate
of Thomas Wolfe, and the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1935, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
2614

One day Eugene received a telegram
telling him that his father was dying.
He had no money for a ticket home, and
so he went to see Wang, a strange,
secretive Chinese student who roomed in the
same house. Wang gave him money and
Eugene went back to Altamont, but he
arrived too late to see his father alive.
Old Gant died painfully and horribly.
Only with his death did his wife and
children realize how much this ranting,
roaring old man had meant in their lives.
Back at Harvard, Eugene and
Starwick became close friends. Starwick
always confused Eugene when they were
together; Eugene had the feeling that
everything Starwick did or said was like
the surface of a shield, protecting his
real thoughts or feelings underneath.
One night Robert Weaver came to
Eugene's rooms. He was drunk and
shouting at the top of his voice. He
wanted Eugene to go out with him, but
Eugene finally managed to get him to
bed on a cot in Wang's room.
Eugene dreamed of becoming a great
playwright. After he had completed his
course at Harvard, he went back to
Altamont and waited to have one of
his plays accepted for production on
Broadway. That was a summer of un-
happiness and suspense. His plays were
rejected. While visiting a married sistei
in South Carolina, he ran into Robert
Weaver again. The two got drunk and
landed in jail.
In the fall Eugene went to New
York to become an English instructor
at a city university. After a time Robert
Weaver appeared. He had been living
at a club, but now he insisted thai
Eugene get him a room at the
apartment hotel where Eugene lived. Eugene
hesitated, knowing what would happen
if Weaver went on one of his sprees.
The worst did happen. Weaver smashed
furniture and set fire to his room. He
also had a mistress, a woman who had
married her husband because she knew
he was dying and would leave her his
money. One night the husband found
his wife and Weaver together. There
was a scuffle. The husband pulled a gun
and attempted to shoot Weaver before
he collapsed. It looked very much as if
Eliza Gant's statement about insanity
in the Weaver family were true.
Eugene also renewed a college
friendship with Joel Pierce, the son of a
wealthy family. At Joel's invitation he
went to visit at the magnificent Pierce
estate along the Hudson River. Seeing
the fabulously rich close at hand for
the first time, Eugene was both fascinated
and disappointed.
At vacation time Eugene went abroad,
first to England, where he lived with
the strange Coulson family, and then to
France. In Paris he met Starwick again,
standing enraptured upon the steps of
the Louvre. Starwick was doing Europe
with two women from Boston, Elinor
and Ann. Elinor, who had left her
husband, was mistakenly believed by her
friends to be Starwick's mistress. Eugene
went to see the sights of Paris with
them. Ann and Elinor paid all of
Starwick's bills. One night, in a cabaret,
Starwick got into an argument with a
Frenchman and accepted a challenge to
duel. Ann, wanting to end the ridiculous
affair, paid the Frenchman money to
satisfy him for damages to his honor.
Eugene attempted to make love to
Ann, but when she resisted him he
realized that she was in love with
Starwick. What made the affair even more
tragic was Eugene's discovery that Ann's
love was wasted because Starwick was
a homosexual.
Disgusted with the three, Eugene
went to Chartres by himself. From
Chartres he went to Orleans. There he
met an eccentric old countess who
believed that Eugene was a correspondent
for the New York Times, a journalist
planning to write a book of travel
impressions. She secured for him an
invitation to visit the Marquise de Mornaye,
who was under the mistaken impression
that Eugene had known her son in
America.
Eugene went to Tours. There in that
old town of white buildings and narrow,
2615

cobble-stoned streets, memories of
America suddenly come flooding back to him.
He remembered the square of Altamont
on a summer afternoon, the smell of
woodsmoke in the early morning, the
whistle of a train in the mountain
passes. He remembered the names of
American rivers, the parade of the states
that stretched from the rocky New
England coastline across the flat plains and
the high mountains to the thunder of
the Pacific slope, the names of battles
fought on American soil. He remembered
his family and his own childhood. He
felt that he had recaptured the lost dream
of time itself.
Homesick, he started back to America.
One day he caught sight of Starwick and
his two women companions in a
Marseilles caf6, but he went away before
they saw him.
He sailed from Cherbourg. On the
tender taking passengers out to the
great ocean liner he suddenly heard an
American voice above the babble of
the passengers grouped about him. He
looked. A woman pointed eagerly toward
the ship, her face glowing with an
excitement as great as that Eugene himself
felt. A woman companion called her
Esther. Watching Esther, Eugene knew
that she was to be his fate.
2616

THE OLD AND THE YOUNG
Type of work: Novel
Author: Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1891-1892
Locale: Sicily and Rome
First published: 1913
Principal characters:
Flaminio Salvo, a Sicilian capitalist
Capolino, a politician friend
Roberto Auriti, Capolino's political opponent
Prince Gerlando Laurentano, Auriti's cousin, a Socialist
Prince Ippolito Laurentano, Gerlando's father and fianc6 of Salvo's sister
Dianella Salvo, Salvo's daughter
Aurelio Costa, Dianella's lover
Mauro Mortara, an old man who had followed Garibaldi
Critique:
The story of The Old and the Young
is as hectic as the bitter politics of Italy
were at the end of the nineteenth
century, when families were still divided
because of the revolutions of 1848 and
1860. Outstanding passages in the novel
are the scene in which a mob seizes
and destroys two victims and the scene
which describes the visit of two
Socialists to a cemetery where they are allowed
to inspect the bodies of several people
slain by troops during a Socialist-incited
demonstration.
The Story:
As late as the last decade of the
nineteenth century the political air of
Italy and Sicily was troubled by the
events of the Garibaldi uprisings of 1848
and 1860. There were still people of
influence who looked back a half century
to the time when the Bourbons had
dominated Italy. There were also those
who had followed Garibaldi in his
revolution, and now, among the younger
people, there were those who had become
Socialists and took to heart all the
preachings of that doctrine. Italian politics
were as confused as they were corrupt.
In Sicily, where a representative to
the Chamber of Deputies had died, a
campaign was under way for a successor
to represent the district of Girgenti. One
of the candidates was Roberto Auriti,
who at twelve years of age had been
with Garibaldi in Rome and whose father
had been a Garibaldist leader. Auriti
was opposed by Capolino, who was
backed by the clerical party and Flaminio
Salvo, a capitalist who owned the coal
and sulphur mines in the district.
The situation was particularly strained
for Salvo because he wanted to marry
his spinster sister to Auriti's uncle, Prince
Ippolito Laurentano, an old man who
still believed in the Bourbon influence
and lived apart from the world on his
Sicilian estate. Salvo's plans for the
marriage were blocked because the old
man refused to submit to the civil
ceremony of a government he had never
recognized. The prince swore he would
have only the Church officiate at his
wedding. Salvo was also disturbed
because the old man's grown son, Gerlando
Laurentano, declared that he would not
attend his father's wedding, thus
withholding his sanction. Since Salvo was
after money and power, it was necessary
for his honor that young Laurentano
be at his father's second marriage
ceremony.
To complicate the affairs of Salvo
even more, there was a real effort to
foster discontent among his workers by
the Socialists, under the leadership of
THE OLD AND THE YOUNG by Luigi Pirandello. Translated by C. K. Soott-Moncriefi. Bv i*naUak~
of the publishers* E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1928, by E. P. Dutt**) & CV. lor.
2617

Gerlando Laurentano. His activities did
not endear young Laurentano to the
financier, who stood to lose much by
the young man's refusal to agree to terms
that Salvo thought reasonable and proper.
When the election returns had been
counted and the excitement of the
election had begun to die down, it was
found that Capolino had been elected
to represent the district in which Salvo's
interests were located. Salvo was soon
to discover, however, that the government
did not take kindly to his candidate
because of the backing which Capolino had
also received from the clericals. Capolino
was reduced to a place among the
minority opposition in the Chamber of
Deputies.
Meanwhile Capolino's wife, Nicoletta,
a woman much younger than her
husband, had formed an attachment for
another deputy, a scapegrace named
Corrado Selmi, who owed a great deal
of money and who had been Auriti's
backer in the election. In addition to
being a source of trouble to her husband,
Nicoletta was a source of vexation to
Salvo, her husband's patron.
After the election most of the
principals returned to Rome, where further
intrigues, political and amorous, began
to develop. During the election Auriti's
mother, who had not seen her brother,
Prince Ippolito Laurentano, for over
forty years, had gone to him and asked
him to support her son. The prince
had refused because of the marriage
pending between himself and Salvo's
sister. In Rome it developed that there
was in existence an incriminating letter
which would make Auriti responsible for
forty thousand lira misappropriated by
Corrado Selmi, who was about to be
impeached by his fellow deputies for
bribery and misuse of government funds.
Giulio, Roberto Auriti's brother,
appealed to Capolino and then to his
cousin, Gerlando Laurentano, for aid. Both
refused to have anything to do with the
affair, despite the protestations of old
Mauro Mortara. Mortara was an aged
Garibaldist, a comrade of Gerlando Lau-
rentano's grandfather and Roberto
Auriti's father, when all three had followed
Garibaldi in '48 and '60. The old
veteran could not realize that the
descendants of his old revolutionary comrades
were so divided in their politics that they
would not aid each other when they
were in need.
Selmi committed suicide and left a
note admitting his guilt in the matter
of the forty thousand lira. But Auriti
had already been imprisoned. When his
mother learned of the dishonor to the
Auriti family, she died of grief.
Meanwhile the Socialists planned a
coup in Sicily. When a strike had been
called in the district of Girgenti, Salvo
had closed his mines in an attempt to
starve out the workers. His
superintendent, Aurelio Costa, had been summoned
to Rome to receive orders. Costa had been
befriended by Salvo after he had saved
the capitalist from drowning. Dianella
Salvo, his daughter, was in love with
Costa, but Salvo refused to permit their
marriage because Costa had no money.
In an effort to be rid of the
superintendent, Salvo sent Costa back to Sicily
to face the angry strikers. Planning to
leave Salvo's employ, Costa returned to
Sicily with the wife of Deputy Capolino.
On their return they were murdered
before Costa could explain to the mob
that he wanted to join forces with the
strikers.
When word of the double murder
reached Rome, Capolino rushed to Salvo's
home and told Dianella Salvo what her
father had done by forcing Costa to
return. Dianella went mad and had to
be locked up. The only person who
could calm her was old Mauro Mortara,
who had become friendly with the
woman during the election campaign.
Gerlando Laurentano had become
more deeply embroiled in Socialist
activities in Italy and Sicily. When word
came of the strike at Girgenti, he went
with members of a committee of his
party to investigate the trouble in Sicily
and to learn how the Socialists might
benefit from the strike. He was horrified
2618

at the hunger and poverty among the
strikers.
In spite of Socialist attempts to aid
the peasants, the people did not want a
Socialist government. At mass meetings
the workmen carried pictures of the
king and queen and images of the cross.
The government, on the other hand, took
advantage of the rioting to send troops
and police to quell all disturbances.
Gerlando Laurentano was finally forced
to flee from Sicily at night because the
authorities had discovered that he was
a Socialist organizer. During his flight
he encountered Mauro Mortara. The
old veteran was ashamed that the
grandson of a Garibaldist leader would be
involved in Socialist troubles. Shot when
troops opened fire on a crowd, the dying
Mortara wondered what was wrong in
Italy, since even in his old age the peace
and freedom for which he and his
generation had fought were not secure. The
young people seemed to have made just
as great a turmoil in his native land as
had his own revolutionary generation.
2619

THE OLD BACHELOR
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Congreve (1670-1729)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1693
Principal characters:
Heartwell, an old bachelor
Belinda, a young woman of fashion
Araminta, her cousin
Bellmour, a young bachelor in love with Belinda
Vainlove, his friend, in love with Araminta
Silvia, Vainlove's former mistress
Sir Joseph Wittol, a fool
Captain Bluffe, his parasite
Fondlewife, a banker
Labtttia, his young wife
Critique:
The Old Bachelor was Congreve's first
play and an immediate success. In it the
twenty-three-year-old dramatist gave the
dissolute Restoration theater audience
the same comic fare that they had
delighted in for three decades and which
they still demanded: a light plot marked
by witty but often gross dialogue, the
cuckolding of bourgeois citizens, and
ridicule of anything that bore the slightest
trace of Puritanism. Congreve's plot is
ingenious but not original, and his people
are stock characters almost as old as the
drama itself. But at the same time his
brilliant style and high spirits lift his plays
above the work of his contemporaries, now
almost forgotten. One speech of Bell-
mour's in this play could easily stand as
Congreve's own motto: "Come, come,
leave business to idlers, and wisdom to
fools: they have use of 'em: wit, be my
faculty, and pleasure my occupation; and
let Father Time shake his glass."
The Story:
Sir Joseph Wittol, a foolish young
country knight, returned to the spot in London
where he had been attacked by footpads
the night before, a fracas from which Ned
Bellmour, a gallant, had rescued him.
Bellmour, meanwhile, had told his friend
Sharper of the incident, and Sharper,
encountering Wittol, pretended to be the
man who had rescued the country
bumpkin. Sharper, having ingratiated himself
with his false story, declared that he had
lost a hundred pounds in the scuffle, and
Wittol promised to make good the loss.
Wittol and Sharper were joined by
Captain Bluffe, a spurious veteran of
campaigns in the Low Countries and Wittol's
mentor in the ways of the city. BlufTe's
boasting and swaggering ways had deeply
impressed the foolish young Wittol.
Meanwhile, in her apartment,
Araminta was reproved by her cousin Belinda
for being a devotee to love. A footman
announced that Vainlove and Bellmour had
arrived to pay their respects to Araminta.
Belinda, who was preparing to go out but
who was charmed by Bellmour, declared
that she would remain to keep Araminta
company. The young men having been
admitted, Bellmour and Belinda exchanged
amiable insults. Gavot, Araminta's
singing-master, entertained the group with a
song.
Silvia, a prostitute and Vainlove's
discarded mistress, pined for his return to
her. Lucy, her maid, suggested that they
write a letter filled with foolish
protestations of love, sign Araminta's name to it-,
and send it to Vainlove. This deception,
they were sure, would cool Vainlove's
ardor for Araminta. Meanwhile Heartwell,
a professed woman-hater and a surly old
2620

bachelor, found himself against his will in
front of Silvia's door. Bellmour and Vain-
love saw him enter.
Lucy, masked, encountered Setter,
Vainlove's man. When Setter used abusive
language in speaking to her, she
unmasked and demanded from her old
acquaintance reparation in the form of
information on the progress of the affair
between Vainlove and Araminta. In the
meantime Wittol gave Sharper a note of
credit for a hundred pounds to be collected
from Fondlewife, a banker. Bluffe
rebuked Wittol for his misdirected
generosity. When Sharper appeared with the
cash and thanked Wittol, Bluffe intimated
to Wittol that Sharper was a trickster.
Replying to this insult, Sharper suggested
that Bluffe was a fraud. When he struck
Bluffe, the braggart was afraid to retaliate.
Sharper soundly trounced Bluffe and
departed; then Bluffe drew his sword and
ranted brave words.
At Silvia's house Heartwell entertained
the prostitute with hired singers and
dancers. When he professed his love for
her, she put him off coyly, asserting that
she must be married to a man before he
could enjoy her favors. Overcome by
passion and by Silvia's wiles, he at last agreed
to marry her. Saying he would return in
the evening, he went to procure a
marriage license.
Fondlewife, the banker, arranged to
have a Puritan minister visit his young
wife, Laetitia, while he was away on
business. At the last minute, however, he grew
wary and decided not to leave the city.
In the meantime, Vainlove, who had been
invited to visit Laetitia during the absence
of her ancient, doting husband, sent
Bellmour in his place. Vainlove received the
letter to which Silvia had signed Aramin-
ta's name. The writer pleaded for an end
to a slight disagreement between her and
the gallant. Disappointed to find the lady
so eager, Vainlove announced that his
interest in Araminta had waned.
Bellmour, disguised as the Puritan
minister, visited Laetitia and in private
revealed his true identity; he explained that
he had indiscreetly opened her letter to
Vainlove and, the intrigue appealing to
him, had come in Vainlove's stead.
Laetitia, charmed by Bellmour's gallantry,
entertained him in her bedroom.
Meeting Araminta in St. James Park,
Vainlove treated her coolly. Araminta
failed to understand when he tossed the
letter at her feet and stalked away. A few
minutes later Wittol encountered
Araminta for the first time and fell in love
with her.
Fondlewife, accompanied by Wittol,
who had come to get money from the
banker, returned home prematurely, and
Bellmour hid himself in the bedroom.
Fondlewife went to get cash for Wittol.
On his return the frantic Laetitia accused
Wittol of attempting to ravish her. Wittol
was asked to leave the house. Laetitia and
Bellmour cleverly succeeded in keeping
Bellmour's identity from Fondlewife until
the cuckolded old gentleman discovered
in the parlor the Scarron novel that
Bellmour, in his disguise, had carried as a
prayer book. Bellmour confessed to evil
intentions, but declared that Fondlewife
had returned too soon for the couple to
have sinned. When Laetitia wept and
declared their innocence, Fondlewife
reluctantly accepted Bellmour's story.
Bellmour, still in his disguise, passed
Silvia's apartment. Lucy, believing him
a parson who would marry her mistress
and Heartwell, stopped Bellmour.
Bellmour revealed his true identity to Lucy
and told her that he would provide both
her and Silvia with proper husbands if
she would agree to no more than a mock
marriage of Heartwell and Silvia.
Bellmour, practical joker that he was, could
not bear to see his friend Heartwell marry
a prostitute. He performed the service;
then, during Heartwell's momentary
absence, he told Silvia of the trick he had
played.
Vainlove, meanwhile, learned from
Setter that the letter signed by Araminta
was probably Lucy's work, since Lucy
had earlier made inquiries about the state
of accord between Araminta and Vainlove.

At the same time Sharper and Setter fooled
Wittol into thinking that Araminta had
conceived a passion for him. Wittol gave
Setter gold to bring Araminta to him.
BlurTe privately paid Setter a counter-
bribe to convey Araminta to him.
Sharper, pretending no knowledge of
HeartwelTs marriage to Silvia, asked
Heartwell to join him in a visit to the
prostitute. Heartwell, in a predicament,
told of his marriage and warned Sharper
not to go near Silvia's house.
Vainlove and Bellmour brought
Araminta and Belinda, both masked, to
Silvia's house. Setter, in the meantime,
had taken Lucy and Silvia, both also
masked, to meet Wittol and- Bluffe.
Finding Heartwell alone, Vainlove, Bellmour,
and the young ladies teased him
unmercifully about his marriage. Setter returned
with Wittol, Silvia, BlurTe, and Lucy.
When the ladies all unmasked, the
foolish knight and his roaring companion
admitted indulgently that they had been
hoodwinked. Heartwell, learning of the
mock marriage, thanked Bellmour for his
salvation; he vowed that if he ever really
married it would be to an old crone.
Vainlove and Araminta, and Bellmour and
Belinda, planned their weddings for the
next day.
2622

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1840-1841
Principal characters:
Little Nell Trent, an orphan
Nell's Grandfather, a curiosity dealer and gambler
Quilp, a misanthropic, misshapen dwarf
Kit Nubbles, Nell s friend
Dick Swtveller, a profligate young man, Quilp's tool
Sampson Brass, an attorney, £)uilp's creature in crime
Sally Brass, Sampson's sister and fellow criminal
The Single Gentleman, Nell's great-uncle
Critique:
In its time one of the most popular of
Dickens' novels, The Old Curiosity Shop
is one of the most sentimental of novels
written in a sentimental age. Emotion was
held in check by Dickens in such novels
as David Copperfield, and even in Oliver
Twisty but in this novel he let emotions
run riot, knowing full well that his
audience reveled in an opportunity to let
fall tears over such a pathetic fictional
character as Little Nell. Moreover,
Dickens himself had great feeling for his
characters. The twentieth-century reader,
however, product of a more hardened age,
may be moved to scoff rather than to weep.
Certainly he will feel that the novel is
not "great" by present-day standards,
even though it is a monument to the senti-
mentalism which moved a bygone
generation, both in England and in America,
The Story:
Little Nell Trent lived alone with her
aged Grandfather, who ran an old
curiosity shop. The Grandfather, Little Nell's
mother's father, had two obsessions. One
was keeping Little Nell away from her
brother Fred, a drunken profligate. The
other was a burning desire to gamble.
Hoping to provide a fortune for the little
girl, the old man gambled away every
penny he could get. Not content with
using the income of the curiosity shop, the
old man borrowed money recklessly.
One of his creditors was an ugly,
misshapen, cruel dwarf named Quilp. Quilp,
the husband of a pretty but browbeaten
young wife, plotted to ruin the old man
and someday marry Little Nell, who was
only fourteen years old. Having
discovered the old man's passion for gambling
by forcing his wife to spy on Little Nell,
Quilp was soon able, by due process of
law, to take over the old curiosity shop.
Little Nell and her Grandfather went
away during the night and started an
aimless journey from London to western
England.
Almost penniless, the old man and the
little girl found many friends on their
way. For a time they traveled with a Punch
and Judy troupe, until the girl became
alarmed at the habits of the men
connected with the show and persuaded her
Grandfather to leave them. She and the
old man were next befriended by Mrs.
Jarley, owner of a waxworks, but the
Grandfather's passion for gambling caused
them to leave their benefactress. At last a
schoolmaster, on his way to fill a new post,
took them under his wing.
Under the schoolmaster's guidance the
girl and her Grandfather were established
in a little town as caretakers of a church.
Their duties were very light because the
church had a regular sexton as well.
Meanwhile the only friend Little Nell
and her Grandfather had left behind in
London, a poor boy named Kit Nubbles,
was attempting to find them, but he was
2623

hampered by the enmity of Quilp and by
the tact that he had to help support his
widowed mother and two other children.
In addition, Quilp, who had an
unreasonable hatred for anyone honest, was trying
to find Little Nell in order to wed her to
one of her brother's worthless companions.
That young man, Dick Swiveller, was a
clerk in the office of Quilp's unscrupulous
lawyer, Sampson Brass.
After Little Nell and her Grandfather
had disappeared, a strange, single
gentleman had appeared to rent an apartment
from Sampson Brass. It turned out that
he, too, was hunting for Little Nell and
her Grandfather. Since he was obviously
a man of wealth, no one could be certain
of the stranger's motives. The Single
Gentleman soon proved to Kit and Kit's
honest employer that he wanted to aid
the two runaways, and so Kit tried to help
the stranger locate Little Nell and her
Grandfather. Unfortunately, when they
tried to follow the elusive trail of the old
man and the girl, they came to a dead end.
Their search carried them as far as the
woman who ran the waxworks.
Afterwards, apparently, the two had vanished
from the face of the earth.
Quilp, angered that anyone might be
willing to help Little Nell and prevent his
plans for her marriage, tried to
circumvent the Single Gentleman's efforts. To do
so, he plotted with Attorney Brass and his
sister Sally to make it appear that Kit had
stolen some money. During one of the
boy's visits to the stranger's rooms Brass
placed a five-pound note in the boy's hat.
When the money was discovered a few
minutes later, Kit was accused of stealing
it. In spite of his protestations of
innocence and the belief of the Single
Gentleman and Kit's employer that the boy had
been unjustly accused, he was found
guilty and sentenced to be transported to
the colonies.
Dick Swiveller, not a complete rogue,
discovered through a little girl he
befriended, a girl kept virtually as a slave
by the Brasses, that Kit had been falsely
accused. With his aid, the Single
Gentleman and Kit's employer were able to have
the lad released before he was sent out of
England. In addition, evidence that they
found caused Brass to be stripped of his
professional status and sent to prison.
Sally Brass, who had been just as guilty
in her brother's affairs, disappeared.
Quilp, warned by Sally Brass of the turn
his plot had taken, tried to flee
prosecution. Leaving his riverside retreat late at
night, he fell into the Thames and was
drowned.
Shortly afterward the Single
Gentleman learned the whereabouts of Little
Nell and her Grandfather. Kit's
employer's brother lived with the vicar of the
church, where the girl and her
Grandfather were caretakers, and the employer's
brother had written to tell of the new
couple in the village. The Single
Gentleman, accompanied by Kit and his
employer, started off at once to find Little
Nell and her Grandfather. During the
journey the Single Gentleman related his
reasons for being interested in the pair.
The Single Gentleman was the
Grandfather's younger brother. Years before,
the Grandfather and he had both been in
love with the same girl. Unsuccessful in
his suit, the younger brother had left
England. After many years he had returned,
to learn that Nell's father and his
profligate son, Nell's brother, had wasted the
family fortune, leaving Nell and the old
man in straitened circumstances from
which her Grandfather had tried
desperately to rescue them. The Single
Gentleman, wealthy in his own right, wished to
rescue his brother and Little Nell from
the plight into which they had fallen.
The rescuers arrived in the village too
late. Little Nell had just died, and she was
buried the day after their arrival, in the
churchyard where she had found
happiness and employment. Her Grandfather,
who felt he had nothing to live for after
her death, died on her tomb a few days
later and was buried beside her.
Kit, who had been in love with Little
Nell as an ideal, returned with Nell's
great-uncle to London. Through his
patron's influence and with help from the
2624

same men who had judged him guilty of
stealing money, only to find him honest
and innocent, he found a proper place in
society and was married shortly thereafter
to a worthy girl. The Brasses, after
Sampson Brass had been released from prison,
became beggars in and about London.
Mrs. Quilp, fortunately released by her
dwarfish husband's death, married again
and happily. As for the old curiosity shop,
it was soon destroyed to make way for a
new building. Even Kit could not tell
exactly where it had stood.
2625

OLD FORTUNATUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Dekker (o 1572-1632*)
Type of plot: Allegorical comedy
lime of plot: Tenth century
Locale: Cyprus, Babylon, England
First presented: 1599
Principal characters:
Fortunatus, a foolish man endowed by Fortune
Andelocia, his worldly younger son
Ampedo, his virtuous older son
Agripyne, daughter of the King of England
Fortune
Virtue
Vice
Critique:
A story of a father and son who could
not escape the attraction of money, Old
Fortunatus contains excellent passages of
poetry, of wit, and of humor. Structural
weaknesses, however, keep it from being
a great play. The plot was impaired by
revisions that were made for a special
performance before Queen Elizabeth, and
tven greater damage resulted from Dek-
ker's own uncertainty of purpose. An
uneasy marriage of morality and farce, the
play is too moralistic to be wholly
amusing, too farcical to be seriously moral.
The Story:
Fortunatus had never assiduously
pursued virtue. He had been compelled,
however, by his poverty to lead a life of
patience and temperance. One day, after
wandering for three days in a forest and
sustaining himself by eating nuts, he
unexpectedly encountered the Goddess
Fortune. This meeting was to transform his
life. The goddess, who enjoyed both the
praises and the curses of men as tokens
of her power, chose to smile on the old
man. Of her six gifts—wisdom, strength,
health, beauty, long life, and riches—she
offered him one. Believing that all other
blessings would naturally flow from it,
Fortunatus chose wealth.' To effect his
wish, she gave to him a magic purse that
would always contain ten pieces of gold,
no matter how frequently he drew from
it. This gift, she told him, would last
until he and his sons died. After
reproaching him for his foolish choice, she
sent him on his way home.
At home, Fortunatus found his sons,
Ampedo and Andelocia, in a despondent
mood. Andelocia, the worldly son, had
been lamenting his lack of food and
money, while his more virtuous brother,
Ampedo, had been greatly worried about
their father's plight. Fortunatus,
returning in rich attire, told them they need
sorrow no longer, for he was presenting
them with four bags of gold and would
give them more when it was gone. Then
he announced his intention to travel and
associate with the mighty men of the
world.
Meanwhile, Fortune was joined in
the forest by Virtue and Vice, goddesses
who had come to Cyprus to plant trees
of good and evil. Virtue's tree had
withered leaves and little fruit, while Vice's
flourished. Although Virtue had
experienced defeats and was forced to endure
the taunts of Vice, she had resolved once
again to seek fertile ground for her tree.
Fortune, who advanced both the virtuous
and the vicious, cared not whose tree
flourished, but agreed to judge the
contest and declare the sovereignty of the
winner.
Fortunatus, once scorned, now found
himself honored in every court. Among
other rulers, he visited the Soldan of
Babylon, who had heard of the purse
2626

and wished it for himself. The crafty
Fortunatus said that he had given away
three of the purses and would make
another for him. In gratitude, the soldan
proposed to show the old man the
wondrous sights of Babylon. He started with
his most highly valued possession, a hat
which carried its wearer wherever he
wished to be. Tricking the soldan into
letting him try on the hat, Fortunatus
wished himself in Cyprus and
disappeared.
Convinced of the supreme value of
money, he returned home at the height
of his triumph. His self-congratulations
were interrupted, however, by a second
encounter with Fortune, who, this time,
decreed his death. His dying wish that
his sons might have wisdom instead of
wealth was denied. Bequeathing them the
purse and the wishing hat, he asked
that the two gifts be kept together and
shared equally. No sooner had he died
than Andelocia insisted that they be
exchanged each year.
Andelocia, in possession of the purse,
followed the example of his father by
going to court. His first destination was
England, where he planned to test the
effect of gold on the beautiful Agripyne,
daughter of King Athelstane. When
Athelstane observed the lavish spending
of Andelocia, he advised his daughter to
try to discover the source of this wealth.
With ease she drew the secret from the
foolish young man, then drugged him
and took the purse.
Awaking and discovering the theft,
Andelocia, discouraged, determined to
return home, steal from his brother the
of Misery, and there make his home. He
carried out his resolution to possess the
magic hat; but, instead of seeking Misery,
he returned to England, abducted
Agripyne, and carried her away into the
wilderness. But again she was able to
outsmart him, this time accidentally gaining
possession of the hat and wishing herself
in England.
The hapless Andelocia, after having
eaten an apple, discovered that he had
grown horns. The Goddess Vice stood
before him and mocked him, for it wa.«
her apple that had caused his deformity.
Virtue also stood before him, grieving
and offering him apples that would
remove the horn. He accepted Virtue's
apples and pledged himself to be her
minion.
But his resolve was short-lived, for his
love of money was much more compelling
than his promise to Virtue. He returned
to England, determined to recover the
purse and hat. Disguised as Irish coster-
mongers, he and his servant peddled the
apples of Vice which he had brought
with him. By falsely representing the
effect of eating the apples, he sold them
to Agripyne and two courtiers, Longa-
ville and Montrose. While thus
employed, he was discovered by his brother
Ampedo, who had come to England to
fin] the purse and hat and to burn those
sources of grief and shame.
Longaville, Montrose, and Agripyne
grew horns; and Agripyne found herself
promptly deserted by all but one of her
many suitors. After they discovered that
the horns grew back after being cut,
they sought the help of a French
physician, who was, in reality, Andelocia in
another disguise. By using a medicine
taken from the apples of Virtue, he
removed Longaville's horns. As he turned
to treat Agripyne, he spied the magic
hat. Warning everyone to look the other
way so that his cure would work, he
grabbed the hat, took Agripyne by the
hand, and wished himself with his
brother.
After he had recovered the purse,
Andelocia removed the horns rrom
Agripyne and released her. But he was not
destined to enjoy his possessions long.
Ampedo, according to his pledge, burned
the hat. Soon afterward Longaville and
Montrose found Andelocia and took the
magic purse. Seeking revenge for the
indignities they had suffered, they placed
the brothers in the stocks, where Ampedo
died of grief and Andelocia was strangled.
Longaville and Montrose then turned
to quarreling between themselves over
the purse, but were interrupted by the
2627

arrival of members of the court and the
three goddesses. The purse was reclaimed
by Fortune, and the two courtiers were
condemned by Vice to spend their lives
wandering with tormented consciences.
Again a quarrel broke out between
Virtue and Vice. This time Fortune
turned to the audience for judgment.
For her judge, Virtue singled out Queen
Elizabeth. And at the sight of this
paragon of virtue, Vice fled, Fortune bowed
to a superior force, and Virtue admitted
that she, by comparison, was a mere
counterfeit.
2628

THE OLD MAID
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: The 1850's
Locale: New York
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Delia Ralston, a New York matron
James Ralston, her husband
Charlotte Lovell, Delia's cousin
Joe Ralston, James* cousin
Tina Lovell, Delia's ward
Critique:
Edith Wharton was justly famous for
her ability to portray characters and
scenes simply and accurately. In the
brief space of The Old Maid she
presented a woman whose life was extremely
conventional, but who longed to live
more fully and more emotionally than
circumstances permitted. At the same
time Mrs. Wharton told the story of
a woman who had lived emotionally and
for that reason was forced to live her
middle and old years in the most
conventional manner possible, to atone for
her sinful youth. Both characters were
carefully and interestingly depicted, and
their lite together has given us a novel
which not only interests us, but also
gives us a view of American society in
the genteel decades.
The Story:
Among the leading families in New
York in the 1850's, none was more
correct or more highly regarded than the
Ralstons. Their ancestors had come to
America not for religious freedom but
for wealth. By the time Delia Lovell
married James Ralston, the Ralstons
considered themselves the ruling class, with
all their thoughts and actions dictated
by convention. They shunned new ideas
as they did strange people, and the sons
and daughters of the numerous branches
of the family married only the sons and
daughters of similar good families.
Delia was conventional and correct
by birth as well as by marriage. Before
her marriage she had been in love with
Clement Spender, a penniless young
painter. But since he would not give
up his proposed trip to Rome and settle
down to a disciplined life in New York,
it was impossible for a Lovell to marry
him.
Delia often, against her will, imagined
herself married to Clement. But the
image was only momentary, for Delia
had no place in her life for strong
emotions or great passions. Her life
with James and their two children was
perfect. She was glad, too, that hei
cousin, Charlotte Lovell, was going to
marry James* cousin, Joe Ralston, for
at one time she had feared that Charlotte
might never have a suitable proposal.
Charlotte was a strange girl who had
become quite prudish in the years since
she made her debut. At that time she
had been gay and beautiful. Then a
sudden illness had caused her to go to
Georgia for her health. Since her return,
she had been colorless and drab,
spending all of her time with the children
of the poor. She had set up a little
nursery where she cared for the children,
and to this nursery had come a baby
who had been abandoned by a veiled
woman whom no one could identify.
Charlotte seemed especially fond of the
orphan child and favored her with better
THE OLD MAID by Edith Wharton. By permission of the publishers, Appleton-Century-Crofts. Inc.
Copyright. 1924. by D. Appleton & Co.
2629

toys and clothes than those given the
other children.
One day Charlotte came to Delia and
told her that she was not going to marry
Joe Ralston. She told Delia that the
orphaned baby in the nursery was her
own, that she had gone to Georgia to
give birth to the child. It was true that
Charlotte was ill; she had a racking
cough that often caused a hemorrhage,
but it was not the cough that caused
Charlotte to worry. Joe insisted upon
her giving up her work with the children
after they were married. Since her baby
had no known parents, it would be placed
in an orphanage. Charlotte could not
think of her child in a charity home.
Joe, being a Ralston, would never
marry Charlotte and accept her child if
he knew the truth. Delia did not know
what action to suggest until she learned
that the baby's father was Clement
Spender. Charlotte had always loved
Clement, who, when he returned from
Rome and found Delia married, had
turned to Charlotte. When he went back
to Rome, Charlotte had not told him of
the baby, for she knew that he still loved
Delia.
Although Delia thought she cared
nothing for Clement now, she too could
not bring herself to let his child be placed
in an orphanage. She persuaded her
husband to provide a home for Charlotte
and the baby, telling him and the rest
of the family that Charlotte and Joe
should not marry because of Charlotte's
cough. Joe, who wanted healthy
children, was not hard to convince.
After Charlotte and the baby, Tina,
had been established in a little house,
Charlotte's health improved. In fact,
she became quite robust, and each day
grew more and more into an old maid.
After James Ralston was killed by a fall
from a horse, Delia took Charlotte and
the little girl into her home. Tina grew
up with the Ralston children and copied
them in calling Delia "Mother" and
Charlotte "Aunt."
Delia's children made proper
marriages, and at last she and Charlotte and
Tina were left alone in the house.
Charlotte often seemed to resent Delia's
interest in Tina and the fact that the young
girl went to Delia's room for private
talks, but she dared not give any hint
that Tina owed her love or affection.
When Delia learned that the sons
of the good families would not marry
Tina because she had no family
background, she asked Charlotte to let her
adopt the girl and give her the Ralston
name. Both women feared that Tina
might make the same mistake Charlotte
had made if she continued to see young
men who loved her but would not
marry her. Soon afterward, Delia made
Tina her legal daughter and the g\r)
became engaged to a correct young
man, for the Ralston tie was one that
all families wanted.
Tina was delighted with her new
status as the daughter of Delia, for she
had long thought of her as a mother.
The two made endless plans for Tina's
wedding. On the night before the
wedding, Delia wanted to go up to Tina's
room to tell the girl all the things a
mother usually tells her daughter on the
eve of her wedding. But Charlotte flew
into a rage. She accused Delia of
having helped her and Tina only because
she wanted revenge for Charlotte's affair
with Clement. She told Delia that she
knew Delia still loved Clement, that
she had turned to Delia in her need years
ago because she knew that Delia would
help her for Clement's sake. Charlotte
had been carrying her hatred for Delia
in her heart for many years, thinking
always that Delia was trying to take Tina
from her real mother. Charlotte declared
fiercely that on her wedding eve Tina
should talk with her real mother, and
she started up to the girl's room.
When Charlotte had gone, Delia
realized that there was some truth in what
Charlotte had said. She had chosen
James and the Ralston life willingly and
knowingly, but she had often
unconsciously wished for a life that was filled
2630

with love and unpredictable passions.
And she knew, too, that she had made
Tina her own child, thus leaving
Charlotte nothing for herself.
Delia started up to her room. She
wanted to see Tina, but she thought
that Charlotte deserved this one night
with her daughter. Delia met Charlotte
coming downstairs. Charlotte had not
been with Tina, for she knew that the
girl would prefer her adopted mother.
There was nothing an old maid aunt
could say to a bride unless she were to
tell her the truth, and that Charlotte
could never do. And so Delia had her
talk with Tina. She did not stay long,
for she knew that Charlotte was alone
and unhappy. As she kissed Tina
goodnight, she asked one favor. On the
morrow, for Delia's sake, Tina was to give
her last goodbye kiss to her Aunt
Charlotte.
2631

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Type of plot: Symbolic romance
Time of plot: Mid-twentieth century
Locale: Cuba and the Gulf Stream
First published: 1952
Principal characters:
Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman
Manolin, a young boy
Critique:
The Old Man and the Sea may very
well become one of the true classics of
this generation. Certainly, the qualities
of Ernest Hemingway's short novel are
those which we associate with many great
stories of the past: near perfection of
form within the limitations of its
subject matter, restraint of treatment, regard
for the unities of time and place, and
evocative simplicity of style. Also, like
most great stories, it can be read on more
than one level of meaning. On one it is
an exciting but tragic adventure story.
Sustained by the pride of his calling,
the only pride he has left, a broken old
fisherman ventures far out into the Gulf
Stream and there hooks the biggest mar-
lin ever seen in those waters. Then, alone
and exhausted by his struggle to harpoon
the giant fish, he is forced into a losing
battle with marauding sharks; they leave
him nothing but the skeleton of his
catch. On another level the book is a
fable of the unconquerable spirit of man,
a creature capable of snatching spiritual
victory from circumstances of disaster and
material defeat. On still another it is a
parable of religious significance, its theme
supported by the writer's unobtrusive
handling of Christian symbols and
metaphors. Like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner,
Hemingway's Cuban fisherman is a
character allowing the imagination of his
creator to operate simultaneously in two
different worlds of meaning and value,
the one real and dramatic, the other moral
and devotionally symbolic.
The Story:
For eighty-four days old Santiago had
not caught a single fish. At first a young
boy, Manolin, had shared his bad
fortune, but after the fortieth luckless day
the boy's father told his son to go in
another boat. From that time on Santiago
worked alone. Each morning he rowed
his skiff out into the Gulf Stream where
the big fish were. Each evening he came
in empty-handed.
The boy loved the old fisherman and
pitied him. If Manolin had no money of
his own, he begged or stole to make sure
that Santiago had enough to eat and
fresh baits for his lines. The old man
accepted his kindness with humility that
was like a quiet kind of pride. Over
their evening meals of rice or black beans
they would talk about the fish they had
taken in luckier times or about American
baseball and the great DiMaggio. At
night, alone in his shack, Santiago
dreamed of lions on the beaches of
Africa, where he had gone on a sailing ship
years before. He no longer dreamed of
his dead wife.
On the eighty-fifth day Santiago
rowed out of the harbor in the cool dark
before dawn. After leaving the smell of
land behind him, he set his lines. Two
of his baits were fresh tunas the boy had
given him, as well as sardines to cover
his hooks. The lines went straight down
into deep dark water.
As the sun rose he saw other boats in
toward shore, which was only a low green
line on the sea. A hovering man-of-war
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway. By permission of the publishers. Charles
Scribner*s Sons. Copyright, 1952, by Ernest Hemingway.
2632

bird showed him where dolphin were
chasing some flying fish, but the school
was moving too fast and too far away.
The bird circled again. This time
Santiago saw tuna leaping in the sunlight. A
small one took the hook on his stern line.
Hauling the quivering fish aboard, the
old man thought it a good omen.
Toward noon a marlin started
nibbling at the bait which was one hundred
fathoms down. Gently the old man
played the fish, a big one, as he knew
from the weight on the line. At last he
struck to settle the hook. The fish did not
surface. Instead, it began to tow the skiff
to the northwest. The old man braced
himself, the line taut across his shoulders.
Although he was alone and no longer
strong, he had his skill and knew many
tricks. He waited patiently for the fish to
tire.
The old man shivered in the cold that
came after sunset. When something took
one of his remaining baits, he cut the line
with his sheath knife. Once the fish
lurched suddenly, pulling Santiago
forward on his face and cutting his cheek.
By dawn his left hand was stiff and
cramped. The fish had headed
northward; there was no land in sight. Another
strong tug on the line sliced Santiago's
right hand. Hungry, he cut strips from
the tuna and chewed them slowly while
he waited for the sun to warm him and
ease his cramped fingers.
That morning the fish jumped. Seeing
it leap, Santiago knew he had hooked the
biggest marlin he had ever seen. Then
the fish went under and turned toward
the east. Santiago drank sparingly from
his water bottle during the hot afternoon.
Trying to forget his cut hand and aching
back, he remembered the days when men
had called him El Canvpeon and he had
wrestled with a giant Negro in the tavern
at Cienfuegos. Once an airplane droned
overhead on its way to Miami.
Close to nightfall a dolphin took the
small hook he had rebaited. He lifted the
fish aboard, careful not to jerk the line
over his shoulder. After he had rested, he
cut fillets from the dolphin and kept also
the two flying fish he found in its maw.
That night he slept. He awoke to feel
the line running through his fingers as
the fish jumped. Feeding line slowly, he
tried to tire the marlin. After the fish
slowed its run, he washed his cut hands
in sea water and ate one of the flying
fish. At sunrise the marlin began to
circle. Faint and dizzy, he worked to bring
the big fish nearer with each turn.
Almost exhausted, he finally drew his
catch alongside and drove in the
harpoon. He drank a little water before he
lashed the marlin to bow and stern of
his skiff. The fish was two feet longer
than the boat. No catch like it had ever
been seen in Havana harbor. It would
make his fortune, he thought, as he
hoisted his patched sails and set his
course toward the southwest.
An hour later he sighted the first
shark. It was a fierce Mako, and it came
in fast to slash with raking teeth at the
dead marlin. With failing might the old
man struck the shark with his harpoon.
The Mako rolled and sank, carrying the
harpoon with it and leaving the marlin
mutilated and bloody. Santiago knew
the scent would spread. Watching, he
saw two shovel-nosed sharks closing in.
He struck at one with his knife lashed
to the end of an oar and watched the
scavenger sliding down into deep water.
The other he killed while it tore at the
flesh of the marlin. When the third
appeared, he thrust at it with the knife,
only to feel the blade snap as the fish
rolled. The other sharks came at sunset.
At first he tried to club them with the
tiller from the skiff, but his hands were
raw and bleeding and there were too
many in the pack. In the darkness, as he
steered toward the faint glow of Havana
against the sky, he heard them hitting
the carcass again and again. But the old
man thought only of his steering and his
great tiredness. He had gone out too far
and the sharks had beaten him. He knew
they would leave him nothing but the
stripped skeleton of his great catch.
2633

All lights were out when he sailed into
the little harbor and beached his skiff.
In the gloom he could just make out the
white backbone and the upstanding tail
of the fish. He started up the shore with
the mast and furled sail of his boat.
Once he fell under their weight and lay
patiently until he could gather his
strength. In his shack he fell on his bed
and went to sleep.
There the boy found him later that
morning. Meanwhile other fishermen,
gathered about the skiff, marveled at
the giant marlin, eighteen feet long from
nose to tail. When Manolin returned to
Santiago's shack with hot coffee, the old
man awoke. The boy, he said, could have
the spear of his fish. Manolin told him to
rest, to make himself fit for the days of
fishing they would have together. All
that afternoon the old man slept, the boy
sitting by his bed. Santiago was dreaming
of lions.
2634

OLD MORTALITY
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Katherine Anne Porter (1894- )
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1885-1912
Locale: Texas and New Orleans
First published: 1939
Principal characters:
Maria, aged twelve
Miranda, aged eight
Their Grandmother
Harry, their father
Amy, his dead sister
Gabriel, her cousin and husband
Miss Honey, his second wife
Eva Parrtngton, cousin to Harry and Amy
Critique:
Katherine Anne Porter's reputation
rests upon the excellence of her stories
and short novels. "Old Mortality" is one
of three novelettes from the collection
titled Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The
material of this work is as compact as that
needed for the shorter form of narration,
but the list of characters drawn for the
reader with precision is longer and the
effects are more varied. Miss Porter is
said to work from memory; that is, she
allows her memories to come together
until she has a story in hand. In "Old
Mortality," as in other of her stories, she
uses her own southern background as a
point of departure, suggesting also her
own experience in the children's
schooling at a convent, and revealing her
interest in social causes as represented by
Cousin Eva's absorption in and
imprisonment for women's suffrage. The child
Miranda seems to reflect Miss Porter's
own challenge of her family's romantic
myth as compared to the less romantic
view of things at the present. The
novelette is divided into three parts, each
with its undertones of irony. The first,
carrying the action from 1885-1902,
presents the family background. Each of the
other two, dated 1904 and 1912, is a
fully developed scene showing Miranda's
maturing reaction to the family myth.
The Story:
Maria and Miranda, aged twelve and
eight respectively, had grown old beyond
their years because they heard over and
over stories drawn from the memories of
grownups in their family. It was hard for
them to realize that their father, or Aunt
Amy, or Cousin Eva had ever been young.
Twice a year their grandmother felt
compelled to spend a day in the attic,
where she opened old trunks, read letters,
looked at dresses, shoes, ribbons,
brooches, and feathers. She cried quietly most
of the day, but allowed the little girls to
come and go and handle the treasures if
they did not disturb her grief with
questions. Not that they needed to ask
questions. All their lives they had heard that
their father's sister Amy was the most
beautiful girl in the South, the finest
rider, the most graceful dancer, the best-
loved belle of her day. Their father had
told them that Amy's picture did not do
her justice. They wondered when they
looked at it why older folks always sighed
over it. They also wondered, when they
looked at the keepsakes in the trunks,
why no one else saw how dowdy, faded,
and misshapen they were.
Their father looked askance at his
chubby, freckle-faced little girls and
hoped that some miracle would happen
that they might change into slim, beauti-
OLD MORTALITY from PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER by Katherine Anne Porter. By permiMion
of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., Copyright, 1937, by Katherine Anne Porter.
2635

ful creatures like Amy. When he thanked
God that all the women in his family
were slim and beautiful, he seemed to
forget Great-aunt Keziah in Kentucky, whose
husband refused to let her ride his good
horses after she achieved two hundred
and twenty pounds, or Cousin Eva, whose
chinless ugliness was a blot on the family
reputation for comeliness.
The little girls felt that Eva, in her
teaching of Latin and her speaking for
women's suffrage, belonged to their
everyday world; but Amy, in her
complicated romance with Uncle Gabriel,
belonged to the world of poetry. Amy had
a weak chest and she had used that as
an excuse to keep her second cousin
Gabriel dangling for five years. She was
never so sick, however, that she could
not ride when she wanted to or dance all
night.
At one dance Amy disappeared for a
while with a man to whom she had once
been engaged. Gabriel, ready to fight a
duel, insisted that the man had kissed
Amy. To prevent the duel as well as to
protect his sister's good name, Harry shot
at the man and then disappeared into
Mexico for a year until the affair blew
over. The little girls thought the scandal
must have been terrific.
No one could see why Amy still
would not marry Gabriel, who was young
and handsome and his rich grandfather's
apparent heir. When Gabriel quarreled
with his grandfather about race horses
and the old man cut him off without his
expected inheritance, Amy suddenly
decided to marry Gabriel. Six weeks later
she died mysteriously, romantically.
During the winter Maria and Miranda
were immured, as they liked to say, in a
convent in New Orleans. The life they
lived there was immeasurably dull
except for Saturday afternoons during the
racing season. Then, if the nuns thought
the girls' deportment and scholastic
achievements sufficient for the week,
someone in the family was likely to come
for the girls to take them to the races.
One Saturday their father came all the
way from Texas to take them to the races
at Crescent City, where their Uncle
Gabriel had a horse entered. For propriety's
sake they had to bet their dollar on their
uncle's hundred-to-one shot. They knew
that was no proper bet, but their father
insisted on their showing respect for their
uncle's horse. Just before the race they
met their bleary-eyed Uncle Gabriel for
the first time. He said they looked fine but
rolled into one would not match up to
Amy. As soon as she could, Miranda
announced proudly that she thought Uncle
Gabriel was a drunkard. His horse came
in first. To celebrate, he insisted on
taking Harry and the girls to see his second
wife, Miss Honey. They found her in a
cheap, foul-smelling room. She was
unbending, especially when Uncle Gabriel
asked her whether she thought the
children resembled Amy a little. Horrified
that their father took them to the races,
she said she would rather see her son dead
than hanging around a race track. The
children realized that she hated all of
them.
When they got back to the convent,
Maria and Miranda realized that,
although they had each won a hundred
dollars which would go into the bank,
they had not had even a nut bar to eat.
Eight years later Miranda was on a
train going home for Uncle Gabriel's
funeral. She sat down next to a very thin
old lady who obviously disapproved of
her until she asked her name. Then the
old lady introduced herself as Cousin Eva
Parrington. Cousin Eva had changed very
little, Miranda suddenly thought, except
that she was out from under her
beautiful mother's thumb. Eva had crusaded
for women's votes and had gone to jail
three times. She hoped Miranda would
use her brain a little in some good cause.
Neither Miranda nor Eva had been
home for some time. Miranda had
married young without her father's approval.
Eva had not been back since her mother
died. But both felt that they had to come
to Uncle Gabriel's funeral, for his death
was like the end of a period. His body
2636

was coming from Kentucky, where Miss
Honey was buried, to Texas to be placed
next to Amy's. Eva snifFed that the
arrangement was an eternal infidelity laid
on top of a lifelong infidelity whose brunt
had been borne by Miss Honey.
Eva snapped when she began to talk
of the romantic view everyone had held
of Amy. There were plenty of people
who did not love Amy or think her the
most beautiful girl in the South. Eva
could not even believe that Amy's
tuberculosis had been the romantic illness the
family had thought, nor did she think
that illness had caused Amy's death. She
believed that Amy had committed suicide
on her honeymoon, after tormenting
Gabriel with jealousy during the few weeks
they were married because she was
always sweet to everybody.
To Eva the parties which the belles in
the old days felt they had to attend were
markets for sex, where rivalry and
competition were bitter and keen. Her part
in them was particularly spoiled because
Amy had always advised her to keep her
chin up. Eva as an old lady was still
bitter about the viciousness of a society that
made outcasts of those who had one
deficient feature.
The next morning Miranda's father
met them at the station. Harry and Eva
immediately fell into the easy
comradeship of their youth. As they drove to the
house, Miranda thought that she had no
part in either of their worlds, both fading
into the dimness of the past. Having
discarded her father's romantic legend and
Eva's bitter one, she decided that she
would be compelled to find a more vital
one of her own.
2637

OLD MORTALITY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1679
Locale: Scotland
First published: 1816
Principal characters:
Henry Morton, the heir of Milnwood
Lady Margaret Bellenden, of Tillietudlem
Edith, her granddaughter
Colonel Grahame of Claverhouse, later Viscount of Dundee
Lord Evandale, a royalist
John Balfour of Burley, a Covenanter
Basil Olifant, a renegade Covenanter
Critique:
The man who gives his name to this
novel appears only briefly in the story.
Ostensibly a device to get the story under
way, he was a native of Dumfries who
traveled about Scotland caring for the
tombstones of the Covenanters who fell
in the rebellion of 1679. The assumed
narrator of the story pretends to have
gathered some of his facts from the old
man. First published in the series called
Tales of My Landlord, Old Mortality is
one of Scott's better novels, the plot
being dramatized with considerable skill
and the characters ably drawn and
presented.
The Story:
Henry Morton had the misfortune of
being a moderate man, a man who could
see both sides of a question. During the
rebellion of the Covenanters against the
crown in 1679, his position became an
exceedingly precarious one. His uncle
and guardian was the Squire of
Milnwood, by faith a Covenanter and by
nature a miser, and Henry's dead father
had commanded a troop of horse when
he fought for the Covenanters at Mars-
ton Moor. The story of his family was
frequently cause for comment among the
cavalier gentry of the district, especially
at the tower of Tillietudlem, the home
of Lady Margaret Bellenden and Edith,
her granddaughter.
Henry and Lord Evandale contested
as marksmen at a wappenschaw, and
Edith Bellenden was among the
spectators when Henry defeated his
opponent. Declared the victor at this festival
of the popinjay, Henry bowed his
respects to Edith Bellenden, who responded
with embarrassed courtesy under the
watchful eyes of her grandmother.
After the shooting Henry went with
friends to a tavern where some dragoons
of Claverhouse's troop, under Sergeant
Francis Bothwell, were also carousing.
Bothwell, a descendant of the Stuart
kings through the bar sinister line, was
a man of domineering disposition. After
Henry and his friends had drunk a
health to the king, Bothwell, intending
to humiliate the Covenanters, resolved
that they should drink also to the
Archbishop of St. Andrew's. A stranger in
the company proposed the toast to the
archbishop, ending with the hope that
each prelate in Scotland would soon be
in the same position as his grace.
Henry and the stranger left the inn
soon afterward, before word came that the
archbishop had been assassinated.
Realizing then that the stranger must have
been one of the plotters in the deed,
Bothwell ordered a pursuit.
Meanwhile Henry had learned that
his companion was John Balfour of
Burley, a Covenanter leader who had
saved the life of Henry's father at Mars-
ton Moor. That night Henry gave
Balfour lodging at Milnwood without his
uncle's knowledge and next morning
2638

showed the fugitive a safe path into the
hills. Bothwell and his troops arrived
shortly afterward. Henry was arrested
and taken away.
In company with Henry in his arrest
were Mause Headrigg, a staunch
Covenanter, and her son Cuddie. The
prisoners were taken to Tillietudlem Castle,
where Claverhouse sentenced Henry to
execution. He was saved, however, by
the intercession of Edith and Lord Evan-
dale.
Lord Evandale brought information
that a group of Covenanters was
gathering in the hills, and Claverhouse gave
orders to have his troops advance against
them. At a council of war Lord Evan-
dale, among others, suggested a parley
in which both sides could air their
grievances. Claverhouse sent his nephew,
Cornet Grahame, to carry a flag of truce
to the Covenanters. Balfour and a small
group met Cornet Grahame, but the
Covenanters refused to meet Claver-
house's demands. After an interchange
of words, Balfour, to the surprise and
suppressed indignation of all, shot Cornet
Grahame in cold blood.
The killing of the young officer was
the signal for a general fight. Bothwell
and Balfour met beard to beard, and
Balfour killed Bothwell with his sword as
the dragoon stood defenseless, his sword
arm broken by a kick of a horse. In the
fray Henry saved the life of Lord Evan-
dale after the young nobleman's horse
had been shot from under him.
Victorious, Balfour's rebels next laid
plans to capture Castle Tillietudlem.
Claverhouse left a few of his men to
defend the place under the command
of Major Bellenden, brother-in-law of
Lady Margaret.
Balfour, who had taken Henry
Morton from the troops of Claverhouse on
the battlefield, wanted Henry to join
with the rebels but Henry still held
back. Trying to convince Henry of the
righteousness of his cause, Balfour took
him to a council of war, Where Henry
was elected one of a council of six
through Balfour's insistence.
Major Bellenden refused to surrender
the castle to the insurgents, who then
decided to starve out the small garrison.
Balfour, realizing that Henry wished to
remain in the vicinity of the castle
because he was concerned for Edith's
safety, sent the young man to Glasgow,
the objective of the main Covenanter
army. Claverhouse, who had retreated
to Glasgow, laid careful plans for the
defense of the city. Henry returned to
Milnwood with Cuddie in order to learn
what was happening at Tillietudlem.
Hearing that Lord Evandale had been
captured during a sortie from the castle,
Henry once again saved Lord Evandale's
life from Balfour's rough justice. Then
Henry drew up a document stating the
grievances of and the conditions offered
by the Covenanters and sent Lord
Evandale with the paper to the castle. Edirh
and Lady Margaret escaped from the
castle, and Henry raised the flag of the
Covenanters to the castle tower.
The Covenanters were finally defeated
at the battle of Bothwell Bridge. In the
retreat from the field Henry was taken
prisoner by a party of Covenanter
fanatics, who believed him to have deserted
their cause. He was sentenced to death.
Cuddie Headrigg caught a horse and
escaped. He rode to Claverhouse and
explained Henry's predicament. Since
Henry's death was decreed on a Sabbath
day, his captors decided he could not be
executed until after midnight. This
decision gave Claverhouse and his men
time to rescue Henry. With the
Covenanters' revolt now broken, Claverhouse
agreed to put Henry on a parole of
honor. Henry accepted exile from
Scotland, promising to remain in banishment
until the king's pleasure allowed his
return. Henry went to Holland.
There he lived in exile for several
years, until William and Mary came to
the throne. When he returned to
Scotland, he called upon Cuddie, who had
married Jenny Dennison, Edith's maid.
From Cuddie he learned of all that had
2639

occurred during his absence. He was
informed that a man named Basil Olifant,
a turncoat kinsman of Lady Margaret,
had seized Tillietudlem and that Lady
Margaret and Edith were forced to
depend upon the charity of friends. Henry
also learned that Balfour was still alive
and that Lord Evandale was soon to
marry Edith Bellenden. Henry set out
to find Balfour and get from him a
document which would place once more in
Edith's possession the Ballenden estates.
But Balfour burned the document and
then threatened to fight Henry to the
death. Henry refused, however, to fight
with the man who had saved his father's
life, and he made his escape from
Balfour's fury by leaping across a ravine.
Meanwhile Edith had definitely
refused marriage to Lord Evandale because
she had caught a glimpse of Henry
Morton as he passed her window. Later, at
an inn, Henry overheard a plot to murder
Lord Evandale, the murderers hoping
to obtain a substantial sum from Basil
Olifant for so doing. Henry scribbled a
note of warning to Lord Evandale and
sent his message by Cuddie. Then he
went to Glasgow, intending to find Wit-
tenbold, a Dutch commander of
dragoons, and get help from him to protect
Lord Evandale. Cuddie, however, tarried
too long at an ale-house and forgot that
the letter was to be delivered to Lord
Evandale. Instead, he asked for Lady
Margaret, and then, refused admittance,
he stumbled away bearing the letter with
him. Thus Lord Evandale was not
warned of his danger.
A party of horsemen, led by Basil
Olifant, came to kill Lord Evandale. Cuddie,
knowing the danger, warned him too
late. Shots were exchanged and Lord
Evandale fell. Olifant ordered Lord
Evandale murdered in cold blood just
before Henry arrived with a magistrate
and a detachment of dragoons.
The troopers quickly dispersed the
attackers and Olifant fell during the
charge. Balfour, attempting to escape,
was swept to his death in a flooded
stream. Henry hurried to the side of
Lord Evandale, who recognized him and
made signs that he wished to be carried
into Lady Margaret's house. There he
died, surrounded by his weeping friends.
His last act was to place Edith's hand
in that of Henry Morton. Several months
later, to the great joy of the countryside,
Henry married the young heiress of
Tillietudlem. In the meantime, Basil
Olifant having died without a will, Lady
Margaret had recovered her castle and
her estates.
2640

OLD ST. PAUL'S
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Mid-seventeenth century
Locale: London
First published: 1841
Principal characters:
Stephen Bloundel, a London grocer
Amabel, his daughter
Leonard Holt, his apprentice
Maurice Wyvil, in reality the Earl of Rochester
Sir Paul Parravicin, a bravo and bully
Nizza Macascree, a beggar's daughter
Judith Malmayns, a wicked nurse
Critique:
Among the lesser nineteenth-century
novelists, Ainsworth seems to merit a
special place in our esteem. Although his
stories are often melodramatic and lacking
in sound literary values, he is a master in
his use of setting as a pertinent locale;
that is, the action of the novel is
inherently dependent upon atmosphere and
scene. In this novel his picture of plague-
ridden London is excellent, and the effect
of fear on the part of the citizens of
London creates a compelling atmosphere for
his plot. At every climax the plague
controls the scene. Like Dickens and other of
his Victorian contemporaries, Ainsworth
does not hesitate to make full use of
sentiment and melodrama.
The Story:
In the year of the great plague, 1665,
Stephen Bloundel, a London grocer,
gathered his household together and
prayed for salvation. The grocer had a
daughter, Amabel, a beauty who attracted
attention wherever she went. The grocer's
apprentice, Leonard Holt, was in love
with her. Also reputedly in love with her
was Maurice Wyvil, of whom Mr.
Bloundel disapproved, and whom Amabel
met secretly. That gentleman plotted,
with the help of Lydyard, his companion,
to dishonor Amabel and so win a wager.
Actually, Wyvil and Lydyard were the
infamous philanderers, the Earl of
Rochester and Sir George Etherege. Their
companions were men of low character,
Sir Paul Parravicin and Major Pillichody.
Two people who profited by the
pestilence were Chowles, a coffin maker,
and Judith Malmayns, a nurse who
robbed her patients and hid her plunder in
a secret niche in St. Faith Cathedral,
where her husband Matthew was a sexton.
Dr. Hodges, attending plague-stricken
young Stephen Bloundel, identified Ama-
Del's pursuer as the Earl of Rochester, who
while pressing his suit with Amabel was
also wooing an heiress, Mistress Mallet.
To soothe the distraught Amabel, Dr.
Hodges urged her to accept Leonard
Holt. She promised to many the
apprentice a month after Stephens disease had
passed.
Stephen recovered, and Leonard
pressed Amabel to marry him, but the girl
could not bring herself to set a date for
the wedding. Secretly she longed for
Rochester. After failing in one design to
kidnap Amabel, the nobleman succeeded
in carrying her off willingly to the vaults
of St. Paul's, with.Leonard in pursuit. In
the cathedral Leonard met a blind beggar,
Mike Macascree, and his daughter Nizza,
a young beauty. Leonard traced Amabel
and her captor to Judith Malmayns, who
during a search of the cathedral managed
to trick Leonard and lock him in a tower.
Nizza helped to release him in time to
break up the wedding of Amabel and the
Earl of Rochester. When Bloundel found
his daughter in the cathedral, Leonard
received all blame for the mischief.
While Parravicin looked at Nizza with
hungry eyes, she was nursing Leonard,
2641

who had been attacked by the plague.
When the girl tried to prevail upon Judith
Malmayns to care for the sick man, the
evil woman demanded money. From her
bosom Nizza drew a gold piece which
Judith seemed to recognize, but Nizza's
father said she must not give it away
because it had belonged to her dead mother.
Parravicin, seeing that Nizza was in love
with Leonard, paid Judith to do away
with the apprentice.
Bloundel planned to close off his house
from the city until the plague had spent
itself. In the meantime he allowed no one
to enter, and anyone who left would not
be readmitted. Leonard had returned to
the house but his stay there was short.
Seeing Nizza kidnaped by Parravicin, he
left the house to save her. Dr. Hodges
allowed the apprentice to stay at his home.
Leonard eventually found Nizza ill with
the plague but otherwise unharmed.
Leonard overheard Rochester plotting
with Pillichody and Etherege to kidnap
Amabel again. Because the girl was
languishing away in the boarded-up
house, Dr. Hodges planned to remove her
to the country, where fresh air might
improve her health. When the Bloundels
made plans to have Leonard escort her to
an aunt at Ashdown Lodge, a hidden
figure overheard all. Fully recovered from
the plague, Nizza offered to accompany
Amabel to the country. Nizza and Leonard
came upon a sick man carrying his dead
child to the plague pit. In gratitude toward
Leonard for helping him, the man gave
him a ring. The dying man seemed to find
Nizza's face familiar.
While the two women and Leonard
were at Ashdown Lodge, King Charles
arrived. Amabel asked him to command
Rochester to cease his attentions and King
Charles complied. Seeing Nizza, the king
asked her to be his mistress, but she was
saved when Parravicin entered. When the
two girls fled from Ashdown Lodge, King
Charles, angered, withdrew his
restraining command to Rochester. The girls were
followed and kidnaped.
Leonard, after recovering from a second
attack of the pestilence, returned to death-
ridden London to report to Bloundel the
fate of Amabel and Nizza. At St. Paul's he
met the man whose child he had helped to
bury. The man, whose name was Thirlby,
was trying to find Nizza. He also held a
strange influence over Judith Malmayns,
but he would not tell Leonard why.
Thirlby went to Nizza's father, and from
the conversation Leonard gathered that
Thirlby was Nizza's real father.
At last Leonard traced Nizza through
Parravicin and reported to the villain his
suspicions about Thirlby. Parravicin
seemed greatly agitated. When Leonard
went to Nizza, he again found her ill. He
told her also about Thirlby.
Thirlby's story was this: he had
married Isabella Morley after killing her
husband. She bore a son and a daughter, but
Thirlby treated the little girl so harshly
that Isabella gave her, Nizza, or little
Isabella, to Mike Macascree to care for.
The son, Thirlby confessed, was Sir
Paul Parravicin. Judith Malmayns was
Thirlby's half-sister.
Rochester, having abducted Amabel,
daily implored her to marry him. Stricken
by the plague, he constantly called her
name until she, convinced he really loved
her, consented to marry him. When he
told her, a month later, that he had tricked
her and intended to cast her off, the
unhappy girl lost her reason. But Judith
Malmayns, her nurse, had witnessed the
marriage ceremony and knew that it had
been performed by a real priest, not a
mock priest, as Rochester believed.
Thinking to win his favor, she infected Amabel
with the plague. Rochester repented
during her illness and acknowledged her as
his wife. After her death he promptly
married Mistress Mallet.
The plague slowly spent itself.
Leonard, still suffering shock from Amabel's
death, was nursed back to health by
Bloundel.
A few months later Leonard became
the grocer's partner. When the great fire
of London broke out, he thought of a plan
to check the progress of the flames.
Gaining an audience with King Charles in
Whitehall, he proposed that houses

nearest to the flames be blown up. The
king took Leonard with him to inspect the
progress of the fire, and during that
journey Leonard earned King Charles'
gratitude by saving him from death under
a falling building. The fire raged on,
destroying even the great cathedral of St.
Paul, designed by Inigo Jones. The king
promised that a new cathedral would rise
on that site, one designed by Christopher
Wren.
Leonard was rewarded for his heroism
when King Charles dubbed him Baron
Argentine and thus elevated him to a
station worthy of IsabeUa, the former Nizza
Macascree.

THE OLD WIVES' TALE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England and Paris
First published: 1908
Principal characters:
Constance Baines Povey, and
Sophia Baines Scales, sisters
John Baines, their father
Mrs. Baines, their mother
Samuel Povey, Constance's husband
Gerald Scales, Sophia's husband
Cyril Povey, son of Constance and Samuel
Critique:
The Old Wives' Tale is a highly
satisfying novel because of its excellent
craftsmanship and its characterization of
two strikingly different women. Although
the book is long, the continuity of the
narrative is sustained by the common
family background of Constance and
Sophia Baines and by the changes that
time brings to their very different lives.
The book contains many colorful details
of the period between the age of
crinolines and the industrial era, but its
emphasis is not historical. Events such as
the siege of Paris are used primarily as
background for the development of
character. The theme of the novel is time and
the effects of its passing upon human
life.
The Story:
Constance Baines at sixteen was a
plump, pleasant girl with a snub nose.
Sophia, aged fifteen, was a handsome
girl with imagination and daring. The
first symptoms of her rebelliousness, of
her strong individuality, came when she
announced her desire to be a teacher.
That was in 1864.
Mr. and Mrs. Baines owned a
draper's shop, and their income was adequate.
They were most respectable, and were
therefore horrified at their daughter's
unconventional plan, for it had been taken
for granted that she, as well as
Constance, would assist in the shop. When
Sophia was four years old, John Baines,
the father, had suffered a stroke of
paralysis which had left him a hopeless
invalid whose faculties were greatly
impaired. Prodded by his capable wife,
he joined in forbidding Sophia to think
of school teaching, but his opposition
only strengthened Sophia's purpose.
One day, when Sophia had been left
alone to care for her father, she saw a
handsome young man, representative of
a wholesale firm, enter the store. She
instantly invented an errand to take her
into the shop. His name, she learned,
was Gerald Scales. When Sophia
returned to her father's room he had slipped
off the bed, had been powerless to move
himself, and had died of asphyxia. Mr.
Baines' old friend, Mr. Critchlow, was
called immediately, and he, having seen
Sophia in the shop with Gerald,
instantly accused her of killing her father.
Presumably as a gesture of repentance
but actually because she hoped for an
opportunity to see Gerald again, Sophia
offered to give up her plans to teach.
Sophia worked in millinery while
Constance assisted Samuel Povey, the clerk,
a small quiet man without dignity and
without imagination. He and Constance
gradually fell in love.
THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett. By permission of A. P. Watt & Son, London, and the pub-
Ushers. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1911, by Doubleday & Co.. Inc. Renewed, 1938, by Marie
Margaret Bennett.
2644

After two years Gerald returned. By
artful contriving, Sophia managed to
meet him alone and to initiate a
correspondence. Mrs. Baines, recognizing
Sophia's infatuation sent her off to visit
her Aunt Harriet. Several weeks later
Sophia ran off with Gerald Scales.
She wrote her mother that they were
married and planning to live abroad. A
short time later Constance and Samuel
Povey were married. Mrs. Baines turned
over to them the house and shop, and
went to live with her sister.
The married life of Constance held
few surprises, and the couple soon
settled to a routine tradesman's existence.
Nothing further was heard of Sophia
except for an occasional Christmas card
giving no address. After six years of
marriage a son, Cyril, was born.
Constance centered her life about the baby,
more so since her mother died shortly
after his birth. Povey also devoted much
attention to the child, but he made his
wife miserable by his insistence on
discipline. When, after twenty years of
marriage, Povey caught pneumonia and left
Constance a widow, she devoted herself
entirely to Cyril. He was a charming,
intelligent boy, but he seemed indifferent
to his mother's efforts to please him.
When he was eighteen years old, he won
a scholarship in art and was sent to
London. His mother was left alone.
Life had not dealt so quietly with
Sophia. In a London hotel room, after
her elopement, she had suffered her first
disillusionment when Gerald began to
make excuses for delaying their
marriage. But after Sophia refused to go to
Pans with him except as his wife, he
reluctantly agreed to the ceremony.
Gerald had inherited twelve thousand
pounds. In Paris he and Sophia lived
lavishly. Gerald's weakness, his
irresponsibility, and lack of any morals or
common sense soon became apparent.
Realizing that Gerald had little regard
for her welfare, Sophia took two hundred
pounds in bank notes from his pocket
and hid them against an emergency. As
Gerald lost more at gambling, they lived
in shabbier hotels, wore mended clothes,
and ate sparingly. When their funds
were nearly exhausted, Gerald suggested
that Sophia should write to her itamily
for help. When Sophia refused, Gerald
abandoned her.
The next day she awoke ill and was
visited by Gerald's friend, Chirac, who
had come to collect money Gerald had
borrowed from him. Chirac had risked
his own reputation by taking money
from the cash box of the newspaper
where he was employed. Sophia
unhesitatingly used some of the notes she
had taken from Gerald to repay Chirac.
When she again became ill, Chirac left
her in the care of a middle-aged
courtesan, Madame Faucault, who treated
Sophia kindly during her long illness.
Madame Faucault was deeply in debt.
Sophia rented Madame Faucault's flat
and took in roomers and boarders. At
that time France was at war with
Germany, and soon the siege of Paris
began. Food was scarce. Only by hard
work and the most careful management
was Sophia able to feed her boarders.
She grew hard and businesslike. When
the siege was lifted and Paris returned to
normal, Sophia bought the pension Fren-
sham at her own price. This pension
was well-known for its excellence and
respectability, and under Sophia's
management it prospered. She did not hear
from her husband again. By the
Exhibition year she had built up a modest
fortune from the two hundred pounds
she had stolen from Gerald.
One day a young Englishman who was
Cyril Povey's friend came to stay at the
pension Frensham. Sophia's beauty and
dignity intrigued him, and he learned
enough about her to recognize her as
his friend'9 aunt. On his return to
England he hastily informed both Cyril
and Constance of Sophia's situation.
Constance immediately wrote Sophia
a warm, affectionate letter begging hei
to come to England for a visit. Mean,
while, in Paris, Sophia had suffered a
2645

slight stroke; when she was offered a
large sum for the pension Frensham she
reluctantly let it go. Soon afterward, she
visited England.
Although Sophia had intended to make
only a short visit, the sisters lived
together for nine years. On the surface they
got along well together, but Sophia had
never forgiven her sister for her refusal
to move from the ugly, inconvenient old
house. Constance, on her part, silently
resented Sophia's domineering ways.
Their tranquil existence was
interrupted by a telegram to Sophia,
informing her that Gerald Scales was very ill
in a neighboring town. She went to him
at once, but on her arrival she learned
that he was already dead. He was shabby
and thin and old. Seeing Gerald was
a great shock to Sophia, and part of hei
shock was the fact that she no longer
had any feeling for the man who had
both made and ruined her life. On the
drive home she suffered another stroke
and lived but a few hours. Cyril was
left all of Sophia's money. He had
continued to live in London on an
allowance, completely absorbed in his art, still
secretive and indifferent in his attitude
toward his mother. When Constance
died several years later, he was abroad
and did not return in time for the funeral.
When the servants went off for
Constance's burial, only Sophia's old poodle
was left in the house. She waddled into
the kitchen to see if any food had been
left in her dish.
2646

THE OLD WIVES' TALE
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Peele (1558M597?)
Type of plot: Comic fantasy
Time of plot: Indeterminate
Locale: England
First presented: c. 1593
Principal characters:
Antic,
Frolic, and
Fantastic, pages
Clunch, a smith
Madge, his wife
Erestus, an enchanted man, called Senex
Lampriscus, a farmer
Huanbbanco, a braggart
Sacrapant, a magician
Eumenides, a knight
Delia, a princess of Thessaly
Calypha, and
Thblea, her brothers
Venelia, wife of Erestus
Zantippa, and
Celanta, daughters of Lampriscus
Critique:
Although the text of this play has
come down to us in a badly printed
quarto, it is quite clear that George Peele,
the enfant terrible of English letters in
the 1580's and 1590's, produced an
engaging stage piece, the tradition of which
has survived in the present-day English
holiday pantomimes, replete with a
sorcerer, a princess in durance vile, the
beautiful and ugly daughters, a magic
well, and enchantments galore. In the
play Peele employed various folklore
motifs that were current in his time and
with which he was probably familial in
his childhood. The Old Wives* Tale, A
Pleasant Conceited Comedy, must have
charmed the old as well as the young in
Elizabethan England. Milton drew upon
the play for his Comus.
The Story:
Antic, Frolic, and Fantastic, three
pages, were lost at night in an English
rorest. There they encountered Clunch,
a blacksmith, who took them to his
cottage to spend the night in comfort and
safety. When Madge, Chinch's wife,
offered them food, they refused it; Antic
asked for a story instead. Oddly enough,
Antic thereupon went to bed with old
Clunch; his companions stayed up to
hear Madge's story:
Once upon a time, a king had a
daughter of great beauty. This
daughter was stolen away. The king
sent men in search of her until there
were no men left in the realm except
her brothers. Finally they, too, went
in search of their sister. It was a
magician disguised as a dragon who
had kidnaped her. This magician
imprisoned her in a great stone castle.
The magician also placed at the
crossroad a young man who by
enchantment appeared by day as an old man,
but who by night was changed into
a bear.
At that point in Madge's tale two
young men appeared and declared
dejectedly that they had arrived in England in
search of their sister Delia. They had
given alms to an old man whom they
encountered at a crossroad. In return for
their kindness, the old man repeated a
2647

verse for them and told them to say to
any inquirer about the rhyme that they
had learned it from the white bear of
England's wood.
After the brothers had left, the old
man told aloud his own story. He had
been happily married to a beautiful wife
in Thessaly. But Sacrapant, a sorcerer,
had fallen in love with her and had
enchanted the husband, Erestus, so that by
day he appeared to be an old man and by
night a bear. His wife Venelia, under
the influence of Sacrapant, became a
lunatic. Distracted, she ran past the cross-
Toad and was recognized by Senex, as
Erestus was called in his enchanted form
of an old man.
A farmer named Lampriscus, knowing
a bear's fondness for sweets, gave Erestus
a pot of honey. Lampriscus disclosed that
he was twice a widower; by his first wife
he had a beautiful daughter who, in her
pride and petulance, was a great burden
to him; by his second wife he had
another daughter who was' ugly and
deformed. Erestus directed Lampriscus to
send his daughters to the well to drink
of the water of life; there they would find
their fortunes.
Huanebango, a braggart who claimed
that he could overpower sorcerers, and
Booby, a peasant, came to the crossroad.
Both sought to win the favor of the fair
lady enchanted by Sacrapant.
Huanebango refused to give alms to Erestus;
Booby, however, gave him a piece of
cake. Erestus predicted that Huanebango
would soon be deaf and that Booby would
go blind.
In his study, meanwhile, Sacrapant
disclosed that he, the son of a witch, had
transformed himself into a dragon and
had kidnaped Delia, the daughter of the
king. Delia entered the study and sat
down to a magic feast with her captor.
As the pair dined, the two brothers
entered. Delia and Sacrapant fled, but
Sacrapant soon returned to overcome the
brothers with his magic. After they had
been taken to a dungeon in the castle,
Sacrapant triumphantly revealed aloud
that he could die only by a dead man's
hand.
When Eumenides, a wandering
knight, came also to the crossroad,
Erestus forecast his fortune for him in a
rhymed riddle. Eumenides lay down to
sleep. Before long he was awakened by
an argument between two country
fellows and a churchwarden; the
churchwarden refused to bury their friend, Jack,
who had died a pauper. Eumenides,
recalling a stipulation of the riddle, paid
the churchwarden all of the money he
had so that Jack might be properly
buried.
Huanebango and Booby came at length
to Sacrapant's stronghold. Huanebango
was struck down by a flame; Booby was
stricken blind and turned loose to
wander. Sacrapant then changed Delia's
name to Berecynthia and took her to the
fields to supervise the labors of her
brothers, who were digging in the enchanted
ground. Delia, ignorant of her true
identity, failed to recognize her brothers.
In the meantime Zantippa, the proud
daughter of Lampriscus, and Celanta, the
deformed daughter, went to the well of
life. Zantippa broke Celanta's waterpot.
At the same time two Furies brought
Huanebango, in a trance, to the well. As
Zantippa dipped her pot into the well,
she beheld a head in the water. She
impetuously broke her pot on the head;
thunder and lightning followed.
Huanebango, deaf by enchantment, awoke from
his trance. Unable to hear the strident
railings of the beautiful Zantippa, he was
smitten with love for her. The two left
the well together.
Eumenides, continuing his
wanderings, arrived at the well, where he was
joined by the ghost of Jack, for whose
burial he had given all of his money. The
host declared its intention to serve him,
ut Eumenides insisted that the ghost
should be his equal and share his worldly
wealth. The ghost went ahead to an inn
to arrange supper for the destitute
Eumenides. As he was eating, Eumenides
looked into his purse, which he believed
2648

completely empty, and discovered that it
was full of money. Having dined,
Eumenides, followed by the ghost, turned
his steps toward Sacrapant's castle.
At the well, in the meantime, Celanta,
with a new pot, had returned in the
company of the blinded Booby. The peasant,
unable to see her deformity, fell in love
with her. Celanta, who was a gentle
creature, obeyed the dictates of the head
in the well and was thereupon rewarded
with a pot of gold.
Eumenides and the ghost approached
the castle. The ghost, placing wool in the
knight's ears, directed him to sit quietly.
When Sacrapant came out of his cell and
asked Eumenides* identity, the ghost
removed Sacrapant's magic wreath and took
away his sword. Shorn of his magic
powers, Sacrapant died. At the ghost's
direction, Eumenides dug into the hillside *».nd
discovered a light enclosed in glass, but
he was unable to get to the light. The
ghost then gave Eumenides a horn to
blow. At the sound of the blast, Venelia
appeared, broke the glass, and
extinguished the magic light to free everyone
from the power of Sacrapant.
Eumenides and Delia pledged their
troth. Eumenides sounded the horn
again, and Venelia, the two brothers, and
Erestus appeared. Now that all were
together, the ghost demanded, upon the
terms of equality with Eumenides, a half
of Delia. Eumenides was reluctant; but,
true to his word, he prepared to cut Delia
in half with his sword. Convinced of
Eumenides' good faith, the ghost
withheld the stroke of the sword and left the
group. All declared their intention of
returning immediately to Thessaly.
Fantastic awoke Madge, for day was
breaking. The old woman moved toward
the kitchen and declared that breakfast
would soon be ready.
2649

OLDTOWN FOLKS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: Massachusetts
First published: 1869
Principal characters:
Horace Holyoke, the narrator
Deacon Badger, his grandfather
Mrs. Badger, his grandmother
Mr. Lothrop, the village minister
Mrs. Lothrop, his wife
Harry Percival, Horace's friend
Eglantine (Tina) Percival, Harry's sister
Miss Mehitable Rossiter, Tina's adopted mother
Ellery Davenport, Tina's first husband
Esther Avery, a minister's daughter, later Harry's wife
Sam Law son, the village do-nothing
Critique:
Harriet Beecher Stowe's son and
biographer believed that Oldtown Folks was a
novel destined to outlive the period in
which it was written. Recent criticism
seems likely to confirm that judgment.
Overshadowed for decades by the greater
fame of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Oldtown
Folks is now recognized for its distinctive
qualities as a social and regional chronicle.
The novel presents a vivid picture of New
England life shortly after the
Revolutionary War, with particular emphasis on the
changing social life of the times and on
the religious movements which followed
the collapse of the older Pilgrim-Puritan
theocracy. The treatment of character and
scene is realistic for the most part, in spite
of the inevitable overtones of Victorian
sentimentality. There is no plot; the
narrative pattern is largely one of quiet
reminiscence, as told by Horace Holyoke.
Oldtown was in reality the Massachusetts
village of Natick, the home of Mrs. Stowe's
husband. In writing the novel, she drew
heavily upon his recollections of the town
and its citizens.
The Story:
Years later Horace Holyoke could
remember Oldtown as he had known it
when he was a boy, a quiet little village
beside a tranquil river in Massachusetts.
Surrounded by farmhouses deep in green
hollows or high on windy hilltops, Old-
town consisted of one rustic street where
stood the chief landmarks of the
community. Among these were the meeting house
with its classic white spire, the school-
house, the academy, a tavern, and the
general store which was also the post-
office.
As was common in those days, when
New England was changing from a
Puritan theocracy of little villages to a group
of states under a federal government, the
minister was still the leading citizen of
the town. Mr. Lothrop, descended from
generations of ministers, was an Arminian
in his views, a sedate, sensible man whose
sermons were examples of elegant
Addisonian English. His wife, the daughter of
an aristocratic family of Boston, had never
forsaken the Church of England, and each
Easter, Whitsunday, and Christmas she
traveled in her coach to Boston to attend
services in Christ Church. The people of
Oldtown called her, without disrespect,
Lady Lothrop.
To Oldtown the famous John Eliot had
come as an apostle to the Indians. Three
generations later Horace Holyoke's father
had arrived in the town to teach in the
local academy. There he fell in love with
Susy Badger, one of the prettiest of his
2650

pupils, and married her. With marriage
came responsibilities that dimmed forever
his hopes of completing his education at
Harvard College. When Horace was a
little boy, his father's household was a
place of penny-pinching hardships. The
mother's beauty faded and the father's
health, weakened by his attempts to
provide for his family and to continue his
studies, broke slowly. Horace was ten and
his brother Bill a few years older when
their father died of consumption.
Horace grieved as only a small boy can
over his father's death. His chief comfort
in those dark days came from Sam Law-
son, the village handyman and
do-nothing. Many people called Sam shiftless. A
few pitied him because his wife was a
scold. A man of good humor and garru-
lous tongue, he was never too busy to
take small boys on fishing or hunting trips
and to tell them stories.
After the funeral Mrs. Holyoke and her
sons went to live with her father, Deacon
Badger, a leading farmer and miller of
Oldtown. He, like Mr. Lothrop, was an
Arminian, and a serene, affable man. His
wife, on the other hand, was a strict
Puritan Calvinist, as fond of theological
dispute as she was of cleanliness. Many were
the arguments Horace overheard between
the two, with scriptural texts flying thick
and fast in proof of their contentions.
Their unmarried daughters were named
Keziah and Lois. Keziah was a romantic-
minded woman with a reputation for
homeliness throughout the township. Lois
was like a chestnut bur, prickly and rough
on the outside but soft and smooth within,
as her tart tongue and warm-hearted
nature proved.
Just as the life of the village revolved
around the meeting house, so the center
of the Badger household was the spacious,
white-sanded kitchen. There the friends
of the family gathered—Miss Mehitable
Rossiter, daughter of a former minister of
the town, Major Broad, Squire Jones, Sam
Lawson, and others. There Horace
listened to discussions on politics, religion,
philosophy, and varied local lore that
were to influence him throughout his
lifetime. There, too, it was decided that his
brother Bill, who gave little promise as a
scholar, was to work on the farm with
Jacob Badger, his mother's brother, while
Horace would be allowed to continue his
studies in the village school.
Horace grew into a dreamy, imaginative
boy. Sometimes he felt that auras
suggestive of good or evil surrounded people
whom he met. Often he dreamed of a
silent, lonely lad of about his own age.
The boy began to fade from Horace's
visions, however, after he found a friend in
young Harry Percival.
Harry's father was an English officer,
the younger son of a landed family, who
had brought his wife to America near the
end of the Revolutionary War. The wife
was a curate's daughter whom the officer
had married secretly after their
elopement. The husband proved worthless and
dissipated, and at last he deserted his wife
and two children when his regiment
returned to England. With him he took his
wife's wedding certificate and left behind
a letter denying the legality of their
marriage. Friendless and without funds, the
wife set out to walk to Boston with Harry
and his sister Eglantine. On the way the
mother fell sick and died in the house
of miserly Caleb Smith, called by his
neighbors Old Crab Smith. The farmer
decided to keep the boy as a field hand.
Eglantine, or Tina, as her brother called
her, was taken in by Caleb's sister, Miss
Asphyxia. The children were treated so
harshly, however, that at last they
decided to run away. After a night spent
with an old Indian woman in the woods
they found a refuge in the abandoned
Dench mansion, reported to be haunted,
on the outskirts of Oldtown. There Sam
Lawson and some neighbors found the
children after smoke had been seen
coming from the chimney of the old house.
Harry and Tina were befriended by
Deacon Badger and his wife. Within a
few days it had been decided that Harry
was to remain with the Badgers, an
arrangement made even more satisfactory
by Mrs. Lothrop's promise to provide for
the boy's clothing and education. Miss
2651

Mehitable Rossi ter, whose life had been
saddened some years before by the
mysterious disappearance of her young half-
sister Emily, adopted Tina. From that
time on Horace's, Harry's, and Tina's lives
were to be closely intertwined.
As a special Easter treat, Mrs. Lothrop
arranged to take the children to Boston
with her. There they were entertained by
Madame Kittery, Mrs. Lothrop's mother,
and during their stay they met Ellery
Davenport. Ellery, Mrs. Lothrop's cousin, had
served in the Continental army and had
held several diplomatic posts abroad. He
was handsome and clever. A grandson of
the great Jonathan Edwards, he had
turned away from the church; his
preceptors were the French philosophers of
the day. Horace heard that his wife was
mad.
Madame Kittery, a kindly old woman,
took a great interest in Horace and
listened sympathetically while he told of
his father's death and of his own desire to
attend college. Shortly after the party
returned to Oldtown he was told that money
would be provided so that he and Harry
could go to Harvard together. Madame
Kittery had become his benefactress.
Over Thanksgiving, Ellery Davenport
and Mrs. Lothrop's sister Deborah came
to Oldtown for a visit. At a harvest dance
at the Badger homestead Ellery paid
marked attentions to young Tina. He also
promised Miss Mehitable that on his
return to France he would look for her lost
sister, who was believed to have fled to
that country.
Tina became more beautiful as she
grew older. When the schoolmaster fell
in love with her, and Miss Mehitable's
cousin Mordecai, hired as her tutor, also
succumbed to her charms, it was finally
decided that she, with Horace and Harry,
would go to Cloudland, where Jonathan
Rossiter, Miss Mehitable's half-brother,
was master of the academy. The boys
lived with Mr. Rossiter. Tina boarded
with the minister, Mr. Avery, whose
daughter Esther became the friend and
companion of the three newcomers. Esther
and Harry soon fell in love. Under Mr.
Avery's influence Harry decided to study
for the ministry. Horace dreamed of a
career that would insure his future with
Tina, whom he had loved since
childhood.
When Ellery Davenport returned from
England, he had important news for
Harry. The boy's father was now Sir
Harry Percival. Ellery had also secured
possession of the stolen marriage
certificate, which he gave to Mr. Lothrop for
safekeeping.
Horace and Harry entered Harvard as
sophomores. .Tina, visiting with the Kit-
terys in Boston or staying with Miss
Mehitable in Oldtown, wrote them letters
that were playful, almost mocking in tone.
Horace began to worry about Ellery
Davenport's influence on the girl. A short
time later he heard that Ellery's insane
wife had died. Then word came that
Harry's father had died in England.
Harry was now Sir Harry Percival. The
two friends returned to Oldtown for the
spring vacation, to learn on their arrival
that Tina was engaged to marry Ellery.
Horace, reflecting wryly on the contrast
between his own humble position and the
high estate to which his friends had been
lifted, concealed with stubborn pride the
deep hurt he felt.
Because Ellery was soon to return to the
embassy in London, preparations for the
wedding were hurried. After the
ceremony Ellery and his bride planned to
spend a short time, before sailing, in the
reconditioned Dench mansion. When
they arrived, they found a woman dressed
in black waiting for them in the parlor of
the old house. The caller was Emily
Rossiter, whom Ellery had seduced and taken
away from her family years before. Emily,
spurning the settlement he had provided
for her, had followed him to America. To
her horror, Tina learned also that he was
the father of the unfortunate woman's
child.
The course Tina took was both noble
and tragic. In spite of the wrong Ellery
had done, both to Emily and to his bride,
2652

Tina refused to desert him. Instead, she
used the fortune she had inherited from
her father to establish Miss Mehitable and
her sister in a house near Boston. The
child she took with her to England when
she went there with Ellery.
After his graduation Harry married
Esther Avery and left for England with
his bride. At first he planned to return
shortly to America, but as time passed it
became apparent that his interests lay
abroad and that he intended to make his
home there. Horace felt that he had been
left alone in the world.
Eight years went by before Ellery and
Tina returned to make their home near
Boston. By that time Tina had grown
faded and worn. Horace, a successful
lawyer, saw her and her husband frequently;
as a sympathetic spectator he watched the
course of Ellery's reckless and
unprincipled career, which, fed by his ambition,
was to bring him close to madness. Ten
years after his marriage Ellery was killed
in a political duel.
Two more years passed before Horace
and Tina were married. Their wedding
journey took them to England to see Harry
and Esther. Later, as the years came and
went softly, Horace and his wife often
visited Oldtown and there renewed the
familiar associations of earlier days.
2653

OLIVER TWIST
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: English provinces and London
First published: 1837-1839
Principal characters:
Oliver Twist, a workhouse waif
Mr. Brownlow, Oliver's benefactor
Mrs. Maylie, who also befriended Oliver
Rose Maylie, her adopted daughter
Fagin, a thief-trainer
Bill Sikes, his confederate
Nancy, in love with Sikes
Monks (Edward Leeford), Oliver's half-brother
Bumble, a workhouse official
Critique:
The plot of this novel, written when
Dickens was in his twenties, forecasts
the extremely complicated plots he
invented later. The action moves forward
in a natural way, achieved by an artistic
change of pace. Because the story was
first published serially, there are switches
of scene at moments of tension.
Sentimentality abounds, perhaps unavoidably,
because of the nature of the theme and
because of Dickens' deep concern for the
conditions of the underprivileged masses
in the Great Britain of his day.
The Story:
Oliver Twist was born in the lying-in
room of a parochial workhouse about
seventy-five miles north of London. His
mother's name was not known. She had
been found unconscious by the roadside,
exhausted by a long journey on foot, and
she died leaving as the only tokens of
her child's identity a locket and a ring.
These were stolen by old Sally, a pauper
present at her death.
Oliver owed his name to Bumble, the
parish beadle and a bullying official of
the workhouse, who always named his
unknown waifs in the order of an
alphabetical system he had devised. Twist
was the name between Swubble and
Unwin on Bumble's list. Oliver Twist
he was named.
An offered reward of ten pounds
failing to discover his parentage, he was sent
to a nearby poor farm, where he passed
his early childhood in neglect and near
starvation. At the age of nine he was
moved back to the workhouse. Always
hungry, he asked one day for a second
serving of porridge. The scandalized
authorities put him in solitary
confinement and posted a bill offering five
pounds to some master who would take
him off the parish.
Oliver was apprenticed to one Sower-
berry, a casket maker, to learn a trade.
Sowerberry employed little Oliver,
dressed in miniature mourning clothing,
as attendant at children's funerals.
Another Sowerberry employee, Noah Clay-
pole, teased Oliver about his parentage.
Oliver, goaded beyond endurance,
fiercely attacked CSaypole and was
subsequently locked in the cellar by Mrs.
Sowerberry. Sowerberry released Oliver,
who, that night, bundled up his meager
belongings and started out for London.
In a London suburb Oliver, worn out
from walking and weak from hunger,
met Jack Dawkins, sharp-witted slum
gamin. Dawkins, known as the Artful
Dodger, offered Oliver lodgings in the
city, and Oliver soon found himself in
the midst of a gang of young thieves, led
by a miserly old Jew, Fagin. Oliver was
trained as a pickpocket. On his first
mission he was caught and taken to the
2654

police station. There he was rescued by
kindly Mr. Brownlow, the man whose
pocket Oliver was accused of having
picked. Mr. Brownlow, his gruff friend
Grimwig, and the old housekeeper, Mrs.
Bedwin, cared for the sickly Oliver.
They marveled at the resemblance of the
boy to a portrait of a young lady in Mr.
Brownlow's possession. Recuperated,
Oliver was one day given some books
and money to take to a bookseller. Grim-
wig wagered that Oliver would not re
turn. Meanwhile Fagin and his gang
had been on constant lookout for the
boy's appearance, and he was intercepted
by Nancy, a young street girl associated
with the gang.
Bumble, in London on parochial
business, saw Mr. Brownlow's advertisement
for word leading to Oliver's recovery.
Hoping to profit, he hastened to Mr.
Brownlow and reported that Oliver was
incorrigible. After receiving this
information, Mr. Brownlow refused to have
Oliver's name mentioned in his presence.
Once more Oliver was in the hands
of Fagin. During his absence the gang
had been studying a house in Chertsey,
west of London, preparatory to breaking
into it at night. The time came for the
adventure, and Oliver, much to his
horror, was chosen to participate. He
and Bill Sikes, brutal young co-leader of
the gang, met Toby Crackit, another
housebreaker, and the trio, in the dark of
early morning, pried open a small
window of the house. Oliver entered,
determined to warn the occupants. The
robbers were discovered, and the trio
fled, Oliver wounded by gunshot.
In fleeing, Sikes threw the wounded
Oliver into a ditch and covered him with
a cape. Toby Crackit, the other
housebreaker, returned and reported to Fagin.
The old thief-trainer was more than ever
interested in Oliver after an important
conversation with one Monks. This
discussion, overheard by Nancy, concerned
Oliver's parentage and Monks' wish to
have the boy made a youthful felon.
Oliver crawled feebly to the house
into which he had gone the night before.
He was taken in by the owner, Mrs.
Maylie, and Rose, her adopted daughter.
Oliver's story aroused their sympathy and
he was saved from police investigation by
Dr. Losberne, friend of the May lies.
Upon his recovery the boy went with
the doctor to seek out Mr. Brownlow,
but it was learned that the old
gentleman, his friend Grimwig, and Mrs. Bed-
win had gone to the West Indies.
Meanwhile Bumble courted the
widow Corney. During one of their
conversations, Mrs. Corney was called out
to attend the death of old Sally, who had
stood by at the death of Oliver's mother.
After old Sally died, Mrs. Corney
removed a pawn ticket from her hand. In
Mrs. Corney's absence, Bumble
appraised her property to his satisfaction.
He proposed marriage.
The Maylies moved to the country,
where Oliver studied gardening, read,
and took long walks. During this
holiday Rose Maylie fell sick and nearly
died. After her recovery, Harry Maylie,
wastrel son of Mrs. Maylie, joined the
group. Harry, in love with Rose, asked
for her hand in marriage. Rose refused
on two grounds; she could not marry
him before she discovered who she was,
and she could not marry him unless he
mended his ways. One night Oliver was
frightened when he saw Fagin and
Monks peering through the study
window.
Bumble had discovered that married
life with the former Mrs. Corney was
not all happiness, for she dominated him
completely. When Monks went to the
workhouse seeking information about
Oliver, he met with Mr. and Mrs.
Bumble and learned that Mrs. Bumble had
redeemed a locket and a wedding ring
with the pawn ticket she had recovered
from old Sally. Monks bought the
trinkets from Mrs. Bumble and threw them
in the river.
Monks told Fagin that he had
disposed of the tokens of Oliver's parentage.
Again Nancy overheard the two villains.
2655

After drugging Bill Sikes, whom she had
been nursing to recovery from gunshot
wounds received in the ill-fated venture
at Chertsey, she went to see Rose May-
lie, whose name and address she had
overheard in the conversation between
Fagin and Monks. Nancy told Rose
everything she had heard concerning
Oliver. Rose was unable to understand
fully the various connections of the plot
nor could she see Monks' connection
with Oliver. She offered the miserable
girl the protection of her own home, but
Nancy refused, knowing that she could
never leave Bill Sikes. The two young
women agreed on a time and place for
later meetings. Rose and Oliver went
to call on Mr. Brownlow, whom Oliver
had glimpsed in the street. The reunion
of the boy, Mr. Brownlow, and Mrs.
Bedwin was a joyous one. Even old
Grimwig gruffly expressed his pleasure
at seeing Oliver again. Rose told Mr.
Brownlow Nancy's story.
Noah Claypole and Charlotte,
maidservant of the Sowerberrys, had in the
meantime, run away from the casket
maker and arrived in London, where
they went to the public house which was
the haunt of Fagin and his gang. Fagin
flattered Noah into his employ, Noah's
job being to steal small coins from
children on household errands.
At the time agreed upon for her
appointment with Rose Maylie, Nancy was
unable to leave the demanding Bill Sikes.
Noticing Nancy's impatience, Fagin
decided that she had tired of Sikes and
that she had another lover. Fagin hated
Sikes because of the younger man's
power over the gang, and he saw this
situation as an opportunity to rid himself
of Sikes. Fagin set Noah on Nancy's
trail.
The following week Nancy got free
with the aid of Fagin. She went to Rose
and Mr. Brownlow and revealed to them
the haunts of all the gang except Sikes.
Noah, having overheard all this, secretly
told Fagin, who in turn told Sikes. In
his rage Sikes brutally murdered Nancy,
never knowing that the girl had been
faithful to him. He fled, pursued by
the vision of murdered Nancy's staring
eyes. Frantic from fear, he attempted to
kill his dog, whose presence might
betray him. The dog ran away.
Apprehended, Monks confessed to Mr.
Brownlow the plot against Oliver.
Oliver's father, Edward Leeford, had
married a woman older than himself. Their
son. Edward Leeford, was the man now
known as Monks. After several years of
unhappiness, the couple separated,
Monks and his mother staying on the
continent and Mr. Leeford returning to
England. Later Leeford met a retired
naval officer and fell in love with his
seventeen-year-old daughter. There was
another daughter aged three. Leeford
contracted to marry the girl, but before
the marriage could be performed he was
called to Rome, where an old friend had
died. On the way to Rome he stopped at
the house of Mr. Brownlow, his best
friend, and left a portrait of his
betrothed. He himself fell sick in Rome
and died. His former wife seized his
papers. When Leeford's young wife-to-
be, who was pregnant, heard of Leeford's
death, she ran away to hide her
condition. Her father died soon afterward and
the younger sister was eventually adopted
by Mrs. Maylie. She was Rose Maylie,
Oliver's aunt. Monks lived a prodigal
life. When his mother died, he went to
the West Indies, where Mr. Brownlow
had gone in search of him. But Monks
had already returned to track down
Oliver, whose part of his father's
settlement he wished to keep from his young
half-brother. It was Monks who had
offered the reward at the workhouse for
information about Oliver's parentage, and
it was Monks who had paid Fagin to
see that the boy remained with the gang
as a common thief.
After Fagin and the Artful Dodger
had been seized, Bill Sikes and the
remainder of the gang met on Jacob's
Island in the Thames River. They
intended to stay there in a deserted house
2656

until the hunt had died down. But
Sikes* dog led their pursuers to the
hideout. Bill Sikes hanged himself
accidentally with the rope he was using as
a means of escape. The other robbers
were captured. Fagin was hanged
publicly at Newgate after he had revealed
to Oliver the location of papers
concerning the boy's heritage. Monks had
entrusted these papers to the Jew for
safekeeping.
Harry Maylie, who had become a
minister, married Rose Maylie. Mr. Brown-
low adopted Oliver and took up
residence near the church of the Reverend
Harry Maylie. Mr. and Mrs. Bumble
lost their parochial positions and soon
became inmates of the workhouse which
once had been their domain. Monks,
allowed to retain his share of his father's
property, went to America and
eventually died in prison. Oliver's years of
hardship and unhappiness were at an
end.
2657

OMOO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Early 1840's
Locale: Tahiti and the South Seas
First published: 1847
Principal characters:
Herman Melville, an American sailor
Doctor Long Ghost, his companion in his adventures
Captain Bob, a jovial Tahitian jailer
Critique:
The title of this book, a sequel to
Melville's earlier Typee, was borrowed from
the native dialect of the Marquesas
Islands. The word signifies a person who
wanders, like the narrator of the book,
from one island to another. Melville's
object in writing Omoo was twofold. He
wished to relate his own adventures in
the Society Islands and to make people
realize the effects promiscuous social
intercourse with white men, generally, and
missionaries, particularly, had had upon
the Polynesians. The natives were
better off, Melville felt, as
unsophisticated but sincere pagans than as the
hypocritical pseudo-Christians of the
missionary schools.
The Story:
Rescued from the cannibal island of
Typee by the crew of a British whaler,
Herman Melville agreed to stay on the
ship as a deckhand until it reached the
next port, where he was to be placed
ashore. But the Julia was not a well-
managed vessel, and soon after Melville
joined it several of the men made an
attempt to desert. These unfortunates
were recovered quickly, however, by the
timely aid of the islanders and the crew
of a French man-of-war.
In the weeks of cruising that followed
this adventure, Melville, relieved from
duty because of a lameness in his leg,
spent his time reading the books of the
ship's doctor and playing chess with their
owner. Those were not weeks of
pleasure. In that time two of the men in the
forecastle died and the entire crew lived
under the most abominable conditions,
in the rat-infested, rotten old ship which
should have been condemned years
before. Finally, when the captain himself
fell ill, the ship changed its course to
Tahiti, the nearest island.
Having convinced themselves that
when the captain left the ship they
would no longer be bound by the
agreements they had signed, the crew
intended to leave the ship when she
arrived in the harbor at Papeetee. The
captain attempted to prevent their
desertion by keeping the ship under way just
outside the harbor while he went ashore
in a small boat. Only Doctor Long
Ghost's influence prevented the men
from disregarding orders and taking the
vessel into the harbor to anchor her. The
crew did, however, protest their
treatment in a letter sent to the British
consul ashore by means of the Negro cook.
Unfortunately, the acting consul in
Papeetee and the captain of the Julia were
old acquaintances, and the official's only
action was to inform the men they would
have to stay with the ship and cruise
for three months under the command of
the first mate. The captain himself
would remain in Tahiti. But after a
Mauri harpooner attempted to wreck the
ship, the drunken mate decided to take
the whaler into the harbor, regardless of
consequences.
In Papeetee the acting consul had the
men, including Melville and Doctor
Long Ghost, imprisoned on a French
2658

frigate. After five days aboard the French
ship, they were removed and were once
more given an opportunity to return to
their ship. When they refused, the
mutineers were taken in custody by a Ta-
hitian native called Captain Bob, who
took them to an oval-shaped thatched
house which was to be their jail.
There they were confined in stocks,
two timbers about twenty feet long
serving to secure all the prisoners. Each
morning the jailer came to free the men
and supervise their baths in a
neighboring stream. The natives, in return for
hard ship's biscuit from the Julia, fed the
men baked breadfruit and Indian turnips.
Sometimes the kindly jailer led the men
to his orange grove, where they gathered
fruit for their meals. This fruit diet was
precisely what they needed to regain the
health they had lost while eating sea
rations of salt pork and biscuit.
The prisoners in the thatched hut
were in sight of Broom Road, the island's
chief thoroughfare. Since they were
easily accessible, the idle, inquisitive Ta-
hitians were constantly visiting, and they
did not lack for company.
Within a few days, their jailer freed
the sailors from the stocks during the
daytime, except when white men were
in the vicinity. Once this leniency was
granted, the men roamed the
neighborhood to take advantage of the natives'
hospitality. Doctor Long Ghost always
carried salt with him, in case he found
some food to flavor.
When the consul sent a doctor to look
at the prisoners, all the sailors pretended
to be sick. Shortly after the doctor had
made his examinations and departed, a
native boy appeared with a basket of
medicines. The sailors discarded the
powders and pills, but eagerly drank the
contents of all the bottles which smelled
the least bit alcoholic.
British missionaries on the island took
no notice of the sailors from the Julia
other than sending them a handful of
tracts. Three French priests, however,
came to see the men. The natives, it
seemed, looked upon the priests as
magicians, and so they had been able to
make only a few converts among the
islanders. The priests were popular with
the sailors because they gave freshly
baked wheat bread and liquor to the
prisoners.
Three weeks after arriving in the port
of Papeetee, the captain of the Julia
sailed away with a new crew recruited
from beachcombers idling about the
island. After his departure the mutineers
were no longer confined to their jail, but
continued to live there because the
building was as convenient as any other
thatched dwelling in the neighborhood.
They existed by foraging the
surrounding country and smuggling provisions
from visiting ships with the aid of the
sailors aboard.
Melville found this life not unpleasant
at first, but after a time he grew bored.
He even went to a native church to hear
the missionary preach. The theme of
the sermon was that all white men
except the British were bad and so were
the natives, unless they began to
contribute more baskets of food to the
missionary's larder. Melville did not go to
the missionary church again.
Several weeks after the Julia had
sailed, Melville met two white men who
informed him that a plantation on a
neighboring island was in need of
laborers. Melville and Doctor Long Ghost,
introduced to the planters as Peter and
Paul, were immediately hired. One
moonlight night the pair boarded the
boat belonging to their employers. They
left their former shipmates without
ceremony,, lest the authorities prevent their
departure.
The planters lived by themselves in an
inland valley on the mosquito-infested
island of Imeeo. The prospect of plying
a hoe in the heat of the day amid swarms
of insects did not appeal to the two
sailors, and so at noon of the first day in
the fields Doctor Long Ghost pretended
illness. He and Melville agreed to do as
little work as possible. After a few days
2659

they gave up farming for good and went
afoot to Tamai, an inland village
unspoiled by missionaries or other white
men. There they saw a dance by native
girls, a rite which had been banned as
pagan by the missionaries on the island.
A day or two later, while the two white
men were considering settling
permanently at Tamai, the natives forced them
to flee, for a reason they were never able
to discover.
The next adventure they contemplated
was an audience with the queen of
Tahiti. Traveling by easy stages from one
village to the next, afoot or by canoe,
they made their way to Partoowye, where
the island queen had her residence. They
met a runaway ship's carpenter who had
settled there and who kept busy building
boxes and cabinets for the natives. From
him they learned that a whaler was in
the local harbor. But when they talked
to the crew of the vessel, they were told
that it was not a good ship on which to
sail, and they gave up all thought of
shipping away from the islands aboard
the whaler.
After five weeks in the village, Doctor
Long Ghost and Melville finally obtained
admittance to the queen through the
good offices of a Marquesan attendant
at her court. When they came into the
queen's presence, she was eating, and
she waved them out of her palace in
high-handed fashion, at the same time
reprimanding their guide. Disappointed
by their reception at court, the two
travelers again decided to go to sea. They
made friends with the third mate of the
whaler, which was still in the harbor.
The mate reassured them concerning
conditions aboard the ship. The other sailors,
knowing the ship could not sail away
from the pleasant islands without more
men in the crew, had deliberately lied.
Having confidence in the mate,
Doctor Long Ghost and Melville then
approached the captain and asked to sign
on as members of the crew. The captain,
however, would not accept Doctor Long
Ghost as a deckhand or as the ship's
doctor. Reluctantly Melville shipped
alone on the voyage which would take
him to the coast of Japan and, he hoped,
eventually home.
2660

ON LIBERTY
Type of work: Philosophical essay
Author: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
First published: 1859
John Stuart Mill, the English
Utilitarian, here concerns himself with the
problem of denning the limits of the
power of the state in interfering with the
liberty of persons. The result is one of
the most important statements in the
history of Western democracy. The essay is
distinguished by its clarity and the
orderly arrangement of its persuasive
argument. Throughout the book can be
discerned Mill's interest in the happiness
and rights of men everywhere and his
serious concern lest that happiness be
threatened by governmental power
unwisely used.
Mill states concisely that:
The object of this Essay is to assert
one very simple principle, as entitled to
govern absolutely the dealings of
society with the individual in the way of
compulsion and control, whether the
means used be physical force in the
form of legal penalties, or the moral
coercion of public opinion. That
principle is, that the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or
collectively, in interfering with the
liberty of action of any of their
number, is self-protection. That the only
purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilized community, against his will, is
to prevent harm to others.
Another statement of the author's
intention is found in the last chapter,
"Applications," in which Mill states that two
maxims together form "the entire
doctrine" of the essay. The first maxim is
"that the individual is not accountable to
society for his actions, in so far as these
concern the interests of no person but
himself," and the second is "that for such
actions as are prejudicial to the interests
of others, the individual is accountable,
and may be subjected either to social or
to legal punishment, if society is of the
opinion that the one or the other is
requisite for its protection."
It would be an error of interpretation
of Mill's intention to suppose that he is
explicitly objecting to all efforts of
government to improve the condition of its
citizens. What Mill objects to is the
restriction of human liberty for the sake of
human welfare; he has nothing against
welfare itself. On the contrary, as a
Utilitarian, he believes that a right act is one
which aims at the greatest happiness of
the greatest number of persons; and it is
precisely because the restriction of human
liberty is so destructive to human
happiness that he makes a plea for a judicious
use of restrictive power, justifying it only
when it is used to prevent harm, or un-
happiness of whatever sort, to others than
the person being restricted.
Restricting a man's liberty for his own
good, for his happiness, is not morally
justifiable. Mill permits, even encourages,
"remonstrating" and "reasoning" with a
person who is determined to act against
his own best interests, but he does not
approve of using force to keep him from
it.
After reviewing some of the acts which
a person may rightfully be compelled to
do—such as to give evidence in court, to
bear a fair share of the common defense,
and to defend the helpless—Mill asserts
that society has no right to interfere when
a man's acts concern, for the most part,
only himself. This statement means that
a man must be free in his conscience,
thought, and feeling, and that he must
have freedom of opinion and sentiment
on all subjects. This latter freedom
involves freedom of the press. In addition,
each man should be free to do what he
likes and to enjoy what he
prefers—provided what he does is not harmful to
others. Finally, each man should be free
to unite with others for any purpose-
again, provided no one is harmed by this
2661

action.
Certainly this theme is pertinent, for
at any time there is either the present or
the possible danger of government
interference in human affairs. Mill admits
that his principal thesis has the "air of a
truism," but he goes on to remind the
reader that states have often felt justified
in using their power to limit the liberty
of citizens in areas which Mill regards
as sacrosanct. In the context of Mill's
philosophic work, On Liberty remains
one of his most important essays, sharing
honors with his Utilitarianism.
In perhaps the most carefully
articulated part of his argument, in Chapter II,
"On the Liberty of Thought and
Discussion," Mill considers what the
consequences of suppressing the expression of
opinion would be if the suppressed
opinion were true; and then, having
countered a series of objections to his
arguments against suppression, he continues
by considering what the consequences of
suppressing opinion would be if the
opinion were false.
Suppressing true opinion is clearly
wrong, particularly if the opinion is
suppressed on the ground that it is false.
Silencing the expression of opinion on
the ground that the opinion is false is
a sign of an assumption of infallibility.
A moment's thought shows that the
assumption may be mistaken, and that
suppressing opinion may very well make
discovery of error impossible.
In response to the objection that it is
permissible to suppress opinion, even true
opinion, because the truth always
triumphs, Mill answers that the idea that
truth always wins out is a "pleasant
falsehood" proved false by experience. To the
objection that at least we no longer put
men to death for expressing their
opinions, Mill counters with the argument
that other kinds of persecution continue
to be practiced, destroying truth and
moral courage.
If the opinion suppressed be false, Mill
continues, the prevailing and true
opinion, lacking opposition, becomes a dead
dogma. When ideas are not continually
met by opposing ideas they tend to
become either meaningless or groundless,
or both. Beliefs which at one time had
force and reasons behind them may come
to be nothing but empty words.
The argument in favor of freedom of
opinion and the press closes with the
claim that most opinions are neither
wholly true nor wholly false, but
mixtures of the two; and that only in free
discussion can the difference be made
out.
In order to reinforce his central
contention—that it is always wrong to hinder
the freedom of an individual when what
he does is not harmful to others—Mill
devotes a chapter to an argument
designed to show that development of
individuality is essential to man's happiness.
Since there is nothing better than
happiness, it follows that individuality should
be fostered and guaranteed. Mill
supports Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt's
injunction that every human being aim at
"individuality of power and
development," for which there are two
prerequisites: "freedom and the variety of
situations."
There is a refreshing pertinence to
Mill's discussion of the value of
individuality. We are reminded of Emerson's
defense of nonconformism when we read
that "Originality is the one thing which
unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of,"
and "He who lets the world, or his own
portion of it, choose his plan of life for
him, has no need of any other faculty
than the ape-like one of imitation." Mill
argues that only if uncustomary acts are
allowed to show their merits can anyone
decide which mode of action should
become customary; and, in any case, the
differences among men demand that
differences of conduct be allowed so that
each man can become what is best for
him.
In his discussion of the harm that
results from a state's interference with the
rights of an individual to act in ways that
concern only himself, Mill reviews some
of the consequences of religious
intolerance, prohibition, and other attempts to
2662

restrict liberty for the common good. In
each case, he argues, the result is not
only failure to achieve the goal of the
prohibitive act, but some damage to the
character of the state and its citizens.
As if he were writing for our times,
Mill closes by saying that "... a State
which dwarfs its men, in order that they
may be more docile instruments in its
hands even for beneficial purposes—will
find that with small men no great thing
can be accomplished. . . ."
2663

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
Type of work: Biological study
Author: Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
First published: 1859
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of
Species—originally titled On the Origin
of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life—belongs to
that category of books which almost every
educated person knows by title and
subject but which the average person has
never read. This is a circumstance to be
regretted, for probably no other book
written in modern times has had so
powerful an influence on contemporary
thought, either indirectly or directly. For
Darwin's report on his biological
investigations came to have far-reaching
importance beyond the field of biology; the
evidence he presented and the
implications and principles it involved came
eventually to influence psychology,
sociology, law, theology, educational theory,
philosophy, literature, and other branches
of man's intellectual endeavor.
The ideas contained in this work were
not entirely new in Western culture, as
Darwin himself realized. It was he,
however, who put theory in definitive form,
and his writings caught the public's
attention, so that in the public mind his
book, together with his name, came to
be a symbol for an empirical, positivistic
approach to problems and their study.
Scholarly opinion is somewhat divided
as to Darwin's contribution to biological
science. He built on the researches of his
predecessors, as all scientists do, but to
his studies he brought immense labors of
his own. More than twenty years prior
to the publication of On the Origin of
Species he had contemplated the theory
that species were not immutable. As a
naturalist he had spent five years in
scientific study during the voyage of
H.M.S. Beagle. During that time he had
unusual chances to observe flora and
fauna around the globe; those
observations led him to believe that species did
change, for what he observed caused him
to see the probability of common descent
for all living organisms. As early as 1837
he had begun a systematic study to
determine whether such hypotheses were
correct, and by 1842 he had a rough
draft of his theory of evolution. Wishing
to conduct as exhaustive investigations
as he could before publication of his
theory, he postponed public statement.
In 1858 a manuscript setting forth the
same ideas came to him from A. R.
Wallace. The two men, working
independently, had come to similar conclusions.
Darwin then felt obliged to publish a
statement of his own work in July, 1858,
at a meeting of the Linnaean Society.
On the Origin of Species was published
a little over a year later. His later books
—Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication (1868), The Descent of
Man (1871), and other
writings—elaborated particular aspects of the general
theory promulgated in the first book.
The possibility of evolution of species
goes back in the history of thpught to
classical times; even Aristotle hinted at
it in his writings. Darwin opened his
book with an account of previous
thinking on the theory of evolution in which
he outlined earlier statements, beginning
with Buffon, in modern times, and
noting such men as Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire, W. Herbert, von Buch, Halde-
man, the anonymous author of Vestiges
of Creation, and others. In his
introduction he also exercised care in warning
the reader what to expect. He wrote:
This Abstract, which I now publish,
must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot
here give references and authorities for
my several statements; and I must trust
to the reader reposing some confidence
in my accuracy. No doubt errors will
have crept in, though I hope I have
always been cautious in trusting to
good authorities alone. I can here give
only the general conclusions at which I

have arrived, with a few facts in
illustration, but which, I hope, in most
cases will suffice. No one can feel more
sensible than I do of the necessity of
hereafter publishing in detail all the
facts, with references, on which any
conclusions have been grounded; and I
hope in a future work to do this. For I
am well aware that scarcely a single
point is discussed in this volume on
which facts cannot be adduced, often
apparently leading to conclusions
directly opposite to those at which I have
arrived. A fair result can be obtained
only by fully stating and balancing the
facts and arguments on both sides of
each question; and this is here
impossible.
Again, in his final chapter titled
"Recapitulation and Conclusion," Darwin
told his readers that the book is "one
long argument" in favor of the theory
of mutability and evolution of species in
both the plant and animal worlds. He
pointed out that all the evidence had not
been gathered and that even the
likelihood of someday having all the evidence
is so slight as to be wholly inconceivable.
Darwin pointed out that there have been
too many gradations, especially among
broken and failing groups of organisms,
including those which have in past eras
become extinct.
The vast amount of information
Darwin laid before readers of On the Origin
of Species can be appreciated only by
actually reading the work itself in its
entirety. A partial list of the chapter
headings does give an indication,
however, of the kinds of evidence Darwin
accumulated and presented for the reader.
There are chapters on both variation in
nature and under domestication; there
are chapters on the struggle for existence,
on natural selection, on the principles
of variation, on instinct, on hybridism,
and on the geographical distribution of
flora and fauna. There are also chapters
on various objections to the general theory
of evolution, on the mutual affinities of
organic beings, and on the imperfections
of the geological record of the succession
of organisms. These chapters, more or
less interdependent, cast light on all
varied aspects of the theory of progressive
evolution of species. For this reason the
chapters do not lend themselves to
separate study. Darwin's organization of his
material is as complex as it is excellent.
Darwin's theory of progressive
evolution has been misunderstood at times.
Despite the fact that he did his best to
avoid misunderstanding, there were
misinterpretations. Although Darwin
pointedly expressed his view that natural
selection had been the principal means by
which variation occurred, some critics
objected that his theory rested on saying
that natural selection was the only means
by which variation occurred. The gross-
ness of such misinterpretations, now that
the theory can be approached in most
quarters without emotion, should be
obvious to any careful reader.
In spite of its length and the vveight
of its content, On the Origin of Species
is a remarkably easy book to read. The
credit must go to the care with which
Darwin organized his materials and the
lucid style in which he wrote. His
writing is scientific writing at its best. Each
sentence is carefully worded so that
prolixity is seldom encountered. The ideas
flow naturally from sentence to sentence
and paragraph to paragraph. To
characterize this style, one can say of it
figuratively that it is lean and muscular. Living
in an age when superlatives and prolixity
abound, the twentieth-century reader may
find himself pleasantly surprised in
reading Darwin's prose.
2665

THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Meredith (1828-1909)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1859
Principal characters:
Richard Feverel, the young heir to Raynham Abbey
Sir Austin Feverel, his father
Adrian Harley, Sir Austin's nephew
Ripton Thompson, Richard's playmate and friend
Blaize, a neighboring farmer
Lucy Desborough, Blaize's niece
Clare, Richard's cousin, in love with him
Critique:
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel tells
what happened when a disillusioned,
woman-hating father tried to rear his son
according to a scientific system of
education in which women were to play a
very minor part. Readers of the book
will of course learn, as Sir Austin
himself did, the futility of such attempts to
control nature's processes. Some modern
readers find an artificiality in the
dialogue and a certain pseudo-intellectual-
ism in the characterization. However,
any artificial qualities of the book are
more than redeemed by the idyllic
romance of Lucy and Richard. Their story
has undeniable appeal; if Meredith
strained for his effect in other aspects of
the novel, his treatment of young love
was simple and sincere.
The Story:
Richard Feverel was the only son of
Sir Austin Feverel, of Raynham Abbey.
After Sir Austin's wife left him, the
baronet became a woman-hater who was
determined to rear his son according to
a System, which, among other things,
virtually excluded females from the boy's
life until he was twenty-five. Then,
Sir Austin thought, his son might marry,
providing a girl good enough for the
youth could be found.
Because of the System, Richard's early
life was carefully controlled. The boy
was kept from lakes and rivers so that
he would not drown; from firecrackers
so that he would not be burned; from
cricket fields so that he would not be
bruised. Adrian Harley, Sir Austin's
nephew, was entrusted with Richard's
education.
When he was fourteen, the Hope of
Raynham, as Adrian called his charge,
became restless. It was decided that he
needed a companion — masculine, of
course — near his own age. The
candidate for this position was young Ripton
Thompson, the none-too-brilliant son of
Sir Austin's lawyer. In their escapades
around Raynham Abbey together,
Richard led and Ripton followed.
In spite of Ripton's subordinate
position, he apparently had much to do with
corrupting his companion and
weakening Sir Austin's System. Soon after
Ripton arrived at Raynham, the two boys
decided to go shooting. A quarrel arose
between them when Ripton, not a
sportsman by nature, cried out as Richard was
aiming his piece at a bird. Richard
called his companion a fool, and a fight
ensued. Richard won because he was
a scientific boxer. The two boys soon
made up their differences but their state
of harmony was short-lived. The same
afternoon they trespassed on the farm
of a neighbor named Blaize, who came
upon them after they had shot a pheasant
on his property.
Blaize ordered the boys off his land,
and when they refused to go he
horsewhipped them. Richard and Ripton
2666

were compelled to retreat. Ripton
suggested that he stone the farmer, but
Richard refused to let his companion use
such ungentlemanly tactics. The two
boys did, however, speculate on ways to
get even with farmer Blaize.
Richard was in disgrace when he
returned to Raynham because his father
knew of his fight with Ripton. Sir
Austin ordered his son to go to bed
immediately after supper; but he later
discovered that Richard had gone, not to
bed, but to meet Ripton, and the boys
were overheard talking mysteriously
about setting something on fire. Shortly
afterward, when Sir Austin discovered
that farmer Blaize's hayricks were on fire,
he suspected Richard. Sir Austin was
chagrined, but he did not try to make
his son confess. Adrian Harley suspected
both Richard and Ripton, who was soon
sent home to his father.
The next day a laborer named Tom
Bakewell was arrested on suspicion of
committing arson. Tom really had set
fire to Blaize's property, Richard having
bribed him to do so, but he refused to
implicate Richard. Conscience-stricken
and aware of the fact that a commoner
was shielding him, Richard was
persuaded to go to Blaize and confess that
he was responsible for Tom's action.
Blaize was not surprised by Richard's
visit, for Sir Austin had already called
and paid damages. Richard was
humiliated by the necessity of apologizing to a
farmer. He told Blaize that he had set
fire to the farmer's grain stacks; and
Blaize implied that Richard was a liar
because the farmer had a witness, a dull-
witted fellow, who said that Tom Bake-
well had done the deed. Richard insisted
that he himself was responsible, and he
succeeded in confusing Blaize's star
witness. Richard, however, left the farmer's
place in a most irritated frame of mind,
not even noticing the farmer's pretty
little thirteen-year-old niece, Lucy Des-
borough, who had let the young man in
and out of Blaize's house.
At Tom's trial, Blaize's witness was
so uncertain about the identity of the
arsonist that the accused was released.
Thereafter Tom became Richard's
devoted servant.
When Richard reached the age of
eighteen, Sir Austin set about finding
a prospective wife for the Hope of
Raynham, a girl who could be trained for
seven years to be a fit mate for Sir
Austin's perfect son. Richard, however, could
not wait seven years before he at least
showed an interest in women, partly
because they had no place in the System.
He was attracted first to his cousin Clare,
who adored him and dreamed of
marrying the handsome young man, but in a
single afternoon Richard completely
forgot Clare. Boating on the weir, he came
upon a young lady in distress and saved
her boat from capsizing. In that instant
the System collapsed completely. She
introduced herself as farmer Blaize's
niece, Lucy Desborough. Richard was
immediately smitten with her, and she
with him. Every day they met in the
meadow by the weir.
Sir Austin, meanwhile, thought that
he had found in London the perfect mate
for his son, a young girl named Carola
Grandison. Informed by Adrian and his
butler that Richard was secretly meeting
Lucy, Sir Austin ordered his son to come
to London immediately in order to meet
Carola. Richard at first refused to obey
his father, but Adrian tricked Richard
into going to London by saying that Sir
Austin had apoplexy.
Richard found his father physically
well, but mentally disturbed by the
young man's interest in Lucy. He told
Richard that women were the ordeal of
all men, and though he hoped for a
confession of Richard's affair with Lucy, he
got none. Sir Austin, however, refused
to let the young man return to Raynham
as soon as Richard would have liked.
Richard met the Grandisons, listened to
his father's lectures on the folly of young
men who imagined themselves in love,
and moped when, after two weeks, Lucy
mysteriously stopped writing.
2667

When Sir Austin and his son finally
returned to the abbey, Richard found
that Lucy had been sent away to school
against her will by her uncle so that she
would not interfere with Sir Austin's
System. Although the farmer did not
object to Richard, he refused to have his
niece brought back because of his
promise to Sir Austin.
After his unsuccessful attempt to have
his sweetheart returned to him, Richard
decided upon drastic measures. Sir
Austin unwittingly aided his son's designs,
when he sent Richard to London to see
the Grandisons. Tom Blaize, destined
by Sir Austin and her uncle to be Lucy's
husband, went to London by the same
train. Richard got in touch with his old
friend, Ripton Thompson, and asked him
to get lodgings for a lady. While in
London, Richard came upon Adrian
Harley, Clare's mother, and Clare, who
had picked up a wedding ring which
Richard had dropped. Tom Blaize was
tricked into going to the wrong station
to find Lucy, and Richard met her
instead. He installed her with Mrs. Berry
in lodgings in Kensington and married
her soon afterward, good-hearted Mrs.
Berry giving them her own wedding ring
to replace the one Richard had lost.
When Adrian learned of Richard's
marriage, he admitted that the System
had failed. Ripton himself broke the
news to Sir Austin, who remarked
bitterly that he was mistaken to believe
that any System could be based on a
human being. Actually Sir Austin
objected not so much to the marriage of his
son as to the deception involved.
Efforts were made to reconcile
Richard and his father, but to no avail.
Richard was uneasy because he had not heard
from his father, and Sir Austin was too
proud to take the first step. While
Richard and Lucy were honeymooning in the
Isle of Wight, he was introduced to a
fast yachting crowd, including Lord
Mountfalcon, a man of doubtful
reputation, whom Richard naively asked to
watch over Lucy while Richard himself
went to London to see his father and ask
his forgiveness.
In London he met a woman Lord
Mountfalcon had bribed to bring about
Richard's downfall, for his plan was to
win Lucy for himself by convincing her
of Richard's infidelity. Richard did not
know that Mrs. Mount, as she was
called, was being bribed to detain him
and that while she kept him in London
Lord Mountfalcon was attempting to
seduce Lucy.
Because he could not bear separation
from his sov» any longer, Sir Austin
consented to see Richard. Relations between
Richard and his father were still strained,
however, for Sir Austin had not yet
accepted Lucy. Since she could not have
Richard, Clare, meanwhile, had married
a man much older than she. Shortly after
her marriage, she died and was buried
with her own wedding ring and Richard's
lost one on her finger.
The death of Clare and the
realization that she had loved him deeply
shocked Richard. Moreover, his past
indiscretions with Mrs. Mount made him
ashamed of himself; unworthy, he
thought to touch Lucy's hand. He did
not know that Mrs. Berry had gone to
the Isle of Wight and had brought Lucy
back to live with her in Kensington.
Richard himself had gone to the
continent, where he traveled aimlessly,
unaware that Lucy had borne him a son.
Then an uncle who disbelieved in all
systems returned to London. Learning
of Lucy and her child, he bundled them
off to Raynham Abbey, and prevailed on
Sir Austin to receive them. Then he went
to the continent, found Richard, and
broke the news that he was a father.
Richard rushed back to Raynham to be
with Lucy and to become completely
reconciled with his father.
The reunion between Lucy and
Richard was brief. Richard saw his son and
received from his wife complete
forgiveness for his past misdeeds. A letter from
Mrs. Mount to Richard had revealed
how Lord Mountfalcon had schemed so
2668

that his lordship could see Lucy and
separate her from Richard. Knowing
Lucy's innocence and Mountfalcon's
villainy, Richard went immediately to
France, where he was slightly wounded
in a duel with Lord Mountfalcon. The
news of the duel was, however, fatal for
Lucy. She became ill of brain fever and
died of shock, crying for her husband.
Richard was heartbroken. Sir Austin was
grieved too, but his closest friend often
wondered whether he had ever perceived
any flaws in his System.
2669

THE OREGON TRAIL
Type of work: Record of travel
Author: Francis Parkman CI823-1893)
Type of plot: Travel and adventure sketches
Time of plot: 1846
Locale: The Oregon Trail
First published: 1849
Principal characters:
Francis Parkman, a young man just out of college
Quincy Shaw, his friend
Henry Chattixon, their guide
Deslauriers, their muleteer
Critique:
This book is one of the great
documents of the West. Very few travelers
wrote much about the country beyond
the Mississippi as early as the 1840's, and
those who did write seldom approached
their subject with the objective and
unbiased point of view from which Francis
Parkman wrote in his account of a region
he had known and enjoyed. His motive
was to set down for posterity what he had
observed on his trip to the Rocky
Mountains. He realized only too well that the
Indian, the trading post, the mountain
man, and the great buffalo herds were
passing figures in history. He wanted to
leave a record of them, for he saw in them
something of glamour and interest which,
once gone, could never return.
The Story:
In the spring of 1846, Francis Parkman
and his friend, Quincy Shaw, traveled by
railroad from the East to. St. Louis. From
St. Louis they went by river steamer up
the Missouri River to Kansas, then called
Kanzas, about five hundred miles from
the mouth of the river. Their object was
a trip to the Rocky Mountains, a very
unusual excursion in the 1840's.
Disembarking, the two youngs men
went by wagon to Westport to get horses
and guides for their journey. At West-
port they met three acquaintances with
whom they agreed to travel; two British
army officers and another gentleman,
who were planning a hunting expedition
on the American prairies. Pleased to
have companions on their dangerous
journey, the two Easterners were also
glad they did not need to travel with a
train of emigrants, for whom Parkman
expressed the utmost contempt.
The journey began inauspiciously for
the five travelers. The Britishers decided
to start by a trail other than the one
which had been previously decided upon.
The result was that the party discovered,
after several days of travel, that they had
gone far out of their way. The party
then rode northward to the Oregon Trail,
which they decided to follow to Fort
Laramie, seven hundred miles away.
On the twenty-third of May the party
arrived on the Oregon Trail, where they
saw the first human being they had met
in eight days of travel. He was a
straggler from a caravan of emigrants. At
the end of three weeks Parkman and
his companions, the Englishmen and a
small group of emigrants who had joined
them, reached the Platte River. They
were still four hundred miles from Fort
Laramie. The journey to the Platte
River had been a muddy one, for each
night the party was drenched by a
terrific thunderstorm. During the day they
also ran into numerous showers as they
made their way westward across the
uninteresting country east of the Platte, a
country almost devoid of any game
except for a few birds.
At the Platte the party entered the
buffalo country. Parkman and Shaw
were fascinated by those animals, and
they slaughtered hundreds, mostly bulls,
before their journey ended. When they
2670

entered the buffalo country they also
entered the first territory where they
were likely to encounter hostile Indians.
A few days after crossing the Platte,
Parkman, Shaw, and their guide went
on a sortie after buffalo. Parkman
became separated from his companions and
spent several anxious hours before he
found his solitary way back to the camp.
Shortly after that adventure the party
met the chief of the trading station at
Fort Laramie, who was on his way
downstream on the Platte with a shipment of
skins. He warned them to watch out
for Pawnees, in whose country the party
was then traveling.
While traveling up the river, the
Englishmen made themselves obnoxious to
Parkman and his friend by encouraging
emigrants to join the party and by
camping at any time of the day they pleased
without consulting the Americans. Since
Parkman and Shaw had a definite
schedule which they wished to keep, they left
the Englishmen and pushed on ahead
with Henry Chatillon, their guide, and
a muleteer named Deslauriers. Not many
days afterward Parkman and his group
reached Fort Laramie, at that time a
trading outpost and not a military fort.
At Fort Laramie the travelers
introduced themselves and gave the factor in
charge a letter they had brought from
his superiors in St. Louis. They were
entertained and housed in the best fashion
possible at the fort. Parkman and his
friend spent the next few days visiting
the Indian villages outside the fort,
talking with the trappers, and occasionally
looking in on emigrant trains which were
on their way to the Oregon country.
Using a small chest of medical supplies
Tie carried with him, Shaw gained some
little reputation as a medicine man by
doctoring a few of the more important
Indians.
The most decisive news which came
to Parkman and Shaw at the fort was
that the Dakota Indians were preparing
to make war upon their traditional
enemies of the Snake tribe. Parkman and
his friend decided that they would
accompany the Dakotas on the raid, since
their guide, Henry Chatillon, was
married to a Dakota squaw and could,
through her, promise the protection of
the Dakota tribe. The travelers felt that
it would be an unusual opportunity to
study Indians and their customs.
On June twentieth Parkman's party,
now augmented by two traders of Indian
and French descent, left Fort Laramie to
join the village of a Dakota chief named
The Whirlwind. A few days later,
reaching a point on Laramie Creek where the
Indians would pass, they decided to camp
and await the arrival of The Whirlwind
and his village. While they waited, two
misfortunes broke upon them. Parkman
fell seriously ill with dysentery and word
came that Chatillon's Indian wife, who
was a member of The Whirlwind's
village, was dying. Chatillon went ahead
to meet the Indians and see his wife
before she died. When the Indians failed
to arrive, Parkman, recovered from his
illness, went back to Fort Laramie. There
he discovered that the Dakota war-spirit
had lessened, so that there was some
doubt as to whether the tribe would take
the war-trail.
Parkman and Shaw decided to follow
The Whirlwind's village of Dakotas. A
day or two after they started, however,
they received word that a trader was
going to the Indian rendezvous and
wished Parkman and Shaw to
accompany him. They never did find the
trader, but pushed on by themselves to
the place where they expected to find
the Indians camped before they went
on the warpath.
Arriving at the rendezvous, Parkman
and Shaw found no Indians. Since Shaw
was not particularly interested in
studying the Indians, Parkman took one man,
who was married to an Indian, and set
off by himself to find The Whirlwind's
village. It was a dangerous undertaking,
for there was some risk of bad treatment
from all the Indians in the vicinity, both
friendly and hostile.
After many days of lonely travel, Park-
man and his companion came upon a
2671

Dakota village hunting in the foothills
of the Rockies. They learned that The
Whirlwind had left this village with a
few families. A Frenchman named Rey-
nal lived in the village, however, and
Parkman gained the protection of Rey-
nal and his squaw's relatives. Without
ceremony Parkman and his man
Raymond went to live in the lodge of Chief
Big Crow, who was honored that the
white men would come to live with him.
Until the first of August Parkman
lived with Big Crow and shared the
tribal life of the village. With his host
or with other Indians he went on
hunting expeditions after buffalo, antelope,
and other game. It was a dangerous life,
but Parkman enjoyed it in spite of the
many risks.
That summer was a perilous time for
the Indians. In search of a large herd
of buffalo needed to get skins for the
repair of their worn tepees, they had
deeply penetrated the hunting grounds
of their enemies. At last, after a
successful hunt, the village turned eastward
toward Fort Laramie, to rejoin the other
Indians who had not dared to accompany
them. Parkman and his man traveled
part of the way with the tribe. But in
order to reach Fort Laramie by the date
he had set, Parkman found that he had
to push ahead by himself, for the Indian
village traveled too slowly. Women,
children, and dogs reduced their rate of
travel considerably.
Back at Fort Laramie, where he
rejoined Shaw, Parkman prepared for the
return journey to St. Louis. They left
the fort on the fourth of August,
accompanied by several traders who had
promised to go with them for part of the
journey. These men left the party,
however, before it reached the Platte. Park-
man and Shaw made most of the return
journey with only their two hired men.
At Bent's Fort, a small trading post, they
were joined by a volunteer who had left
the army because of sickness. This man
gave them the first news of the Mexican
War that Parkman and Shaw had
received, for the war had begun after they
had left civilization behind them. From
that time on, the travelers met many
wagon trains and columns of troops on
their way westward to fight the
Mexicans. Because of the many troop units
in the territory, the small party had no
difficulty with any of the Indian bands
they encountered.
Early in September the four men rode
into Westport, where they sold their
horses and camping equipment. Park-
man and Shaw traveled by boat
downstream to St. Louis. There they discarded
the buckskins they had been wearing for
many weeks.
It had been an amazing vacation. For
five months they had traveled through
the heart of the Indian country, far
from the protection ot the government
and the army. They had seen many
Indians, but without loss of valuables or
life. The only casualty had been an old
mule that died as a result of a snake bite.
The good fortune of Parkman and his
friends was pointed up by the hostilities
which began shortly after they left the
frontier region. Three weeks after their
return to civilization, Comanches and
Pawnees began raiding the trail over
which they had traveled. The raids were
so methodical that not a single party
passed over the Oregon Trail in the next
six months.
2672

ORFEO
Type of work: Poetic drama with music
Author: Politian (Angelo Ambrogini, 1454-149
Type of plot: Mythological tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Sicily
First presented: 1480
Principal characters:
Orpheus
Eurydicb
Aristaeus,
Mopsus, and
Thyrsis, shepherds
Pluto
Proserpina
Critique:
To a city dweller, life in the country,
when he is not compelled to live there,
has always held a poetic charm. As far
back as the third century B.C., Philetas,
on the island of Cos, collected a group
of young poets to hymn the joys of rustic
existence. One was Theocritus (305?-
c.250 B.C.), of Sicily, whose bucolic
poems have survived. They inspired the
Eclogues of Vergil (70-19 B.C.). Prose
writers, too, were attracted by this theme.
No writer, however, was moved to put
these idealized shepherds on the stage
until a young Tuscan, Angelo
Ambrogini, born in Montepulciano in 1454,
was asked by Cardinal Francesco Gon-
zago, of Mantua, to help in a gala
entertainment for Duke Galeazzo Sforza.
Drawing on his classical training in
Florence, in two days this eighteen-year-old
wrote Orfe/), a play in verse with music.
The play is short, for the amateur
playwright failed to wring all the drama from
his material. The characters in the first
act drop out of sight and the final act has
nothing to do with the original problem.
The death of the new protagonist comes,
not from some flaw in his character, but
because he angered a crowd of drunken
women. However, one must remember
that Orfeo was both the world's first
pastoral drama and the first Italian nonre-
ligious play. Also, since music was
provided for some of the speeches, it was a
forerunner of Italian opera.
The Story:
While looking for a lost calf, old
Mopsus came upon Aristaeus and his servant
Thyrsis. They had not seen the animal,
but Aristaeus sent the young man in
search of it. Meanwhile, he told Mopsus
that he had seen a nymph more beautiful
than Diana in the woods. Although she
had been accompanied by a youthful
sweetheart, Aristaeus declared that either
he must win her love or he would die.
Mopsus tried to warn him of the
desolation and unhappiness caused by love, but
without success; the return of Thyrsis
with word that the girl was still in the
woods sent Aristaeus hurrying to find
her. Both shepherds were convinced that
he was mad.
After finding the nymph, Aristaeus
tried to make love to her, but she fled.
A moment later another nymph appeared
with news that the lovely Eurydice had
just died of a serpent bite by the
riverside. She called on her sister dryads to
join in a dirge "to set the air ringing with
the sound of wailing." As they sang, they
saw Orpheus, her sweetheart,
approaching with his lyre. The dryad took it upon
herself to break to him the sad news of
Eurydice's death.
When Orpheus' song about the
exploits of Hercules was interrupted by the
nymph bearing "crushing tidings," the
desolate poet called on sky and sea to
hear him lament his bitter fate. At last

he vowed to go to the gates of Tartarus
in an attempt to win back his dead love
—perhaps the magic of his lyre would
move even Death to pity. The satyr Mne-
sillus, who had been listening, had his
doubts.
In Tartarus, Orpheus' lyre of gold and
his beautiful voice "moved the gates
immovable." In fact, Pluto acknowledged
that everything stood still at his melody.
Proserpina was so charmed by it that
she seconded Orpheus' request that Eu-
rydice should be returned to him. Pluto
agreed on condition that the poet return
to earth without looking behind. But in
spite of his promise to the king of the
underworld, his doubts betrayed him.
Orpheus looked back and saw Eurydice
drawn again toward Tartarus. When he
tried to follow her, Tisiphone refused to
let him pass.
While he was lamenting his woes and
expressing his determination never again
to desire a woman's love, Orpheus was
overheard by a chorus of Maenads. One
of the Bacchantes, angered that a man
should scorn love, exhorted the others
to take revenge, and the fierce creatures
tore him to pieces in their rage, so that
every twig close by was soaked with his
blood.
2674

ORLANDO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Type of plot: Biographical fantasy
Time of plot: 1588-1928
Locale: England
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Orlando, first a man, then a woman
Sasha, a Russian princess loved by Orlando
Nicholas Greene, a poet pensioned by Orlando
Archduchess Harriet of Roumania, an admirer of Orlando
Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire, Orlando's husband
Critique:
Orlando is a fantasy which traces in
straightforward biographical manner the
life of a hero-heroine, a boy who was
sixteen years old in 1588 and a woman
of thirty-six in 1928. The novel is really
three centuries of English history
presented symbolically through the family
heritage of Victoria^Sackville-West,
English poet and novelist. Mrs. Woolf's
method gives the impression of time
passing and the present merging with
the past, a fantasy that is a free release
of the creative imagination, unhampered
by calendar time and compelling that
"willing suspension of disbelief" which
we make also in stories of the
supernatural.
The Story:
One day in 1588 young Orlando was
slashing at the head of a Moor tied to
the rafters in his ancestral castle. His
forefathers had been of noble rank for
centuries and had lived out their lives
in action, but Orlando was inclined
toward writing. Bored by his play in the
attic, he went to his room and wrote for
a while on his poetic drama, "Aethel-
bert: A Tragedy in Five Acts." Tiring
of poetry before long, he ran out of
doors and up a nearby hill, where he
threw himself down under his favorite
oak tree and gave himself over to
contemplation.
He was still lying there when he
heard trumpet calls announcing the
arrival of Queen Elizabeth. He hurried to
the castle to dress in his finest clothes
to serve Her Majesty. On the way to
his room he noticed a shabbily-dressed
man in the servants' quarters, a man who
looked like a poet, but he had no time
to stop for inquiry. The man's image
was to haunt him the rest of his life.
Having dressed, he dashed down to the
banquet hall and, kneeling before the
queen, offered a bowl of rose water for
her to wash her hands after her journey.
Elizabeth was so taken with the boy
that she deeded to his father a great
house. Two years later she summoned
Orlando to court, where in time he was
made her treasurer and steward. One
day, however, she saw Orlando kissing
a girl of the court and became so angry
that Orlando lost her royal favor.
Orlando had many adventures with
women. He had decided finally, to marry
at the time of the Great Frost in 1604.
That year the Thames was frozen so
deeply that King James had the court
hold carnival on the ice. There Orlando
met and fell in love with Sasha, a
Russian princess, with whom he skated far
down the river. They went aboard a
Russian ship to get something for Sasha,
who remained below so long that Orlando
ORLANDO by Virginia Woolf.
1928. by Virginia Woolf.
By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc. Copyright,
2675

went to investigate. He found her
sitting on the knee of a common seaman.
Sasha was able to reconcile Orlando,
however, and the two planned an elopement.
While waiting for her that night,
Orlando began to feel raindrops; the thaw
had set in. After waiting two hours, he
dashed down to the river bank, where
he saw great pieces of ice crashing down
the flooded waters. Far out to sea he
saw the Russian ship sailing for home.
Sasha had betrayed him.
For six months Orlando lived in grief.
One morning in June he failed to get
out of bed as usual. He slept for seven
days. When he awoke at last, he seemed
to have forgotten much of the past. He
began to think a good deal about the
subject of death, and enjoyed reading
from Sir Thomas Browne's Urn Burial.
He read, thought, and wrote a great deal.
He summoned Mr. Nicholas Greene,
a poet, to visit him. Greene talked to him
almost incessantly about the poets, about
life, about literature. Orlando was so
grateful to Greene that he settled a
generous pension on the poet. Greene,
however, could not endure the quiet
country, and one morning he went back
to his beloved London.
Still wondering what life was all about,
Orlando decided to try filling his life
with material achievement. First he set
about refurbishing his great house. He
spent a great part of his fortune and
traveled into distant countries in his
search for precious ornaments. The time
was that of the Restoration, when Charles
II was king.
One day, while Orlando was working
on a long poem, "The Oak Tree," he
was interrupted by a large, ugly woman,
the Archduchess Harriet of Roumania.
She had heard of Orlando and wanted to
meet him. She stayed so long in his
vicinity that Orlando asked King Charles
to send him to Constantinople as
Ambassador Extraordinary.
His duties in the Turkish capital were
so formal and arid that he became
extremely bored and began to wander
about the city in disguise. While he
was abroad, the King of England made
him a member of the Order of the Bath
and granted him a dukedom by proxy.
The next morning Orlando could not
be awakened, and for seven days he slept
soundly. When at last he did rouse
himself, he was no longer a man. He
had become a beautiful woman. In
confusion Orlando left Constantinople and
joined a gipsy tribe. Although Orlando
spent many happy days in the gipsy
camp, she could not bring herself to
settle down among them. Selling some of
the pearls she had brought with her from
Constantinople, she set sail for England.
She noticed a difference in attitudes
while on the ship. She who had been
a man now received courteous attention
from the captain, and she saw that hei
new role would require new
responsibilities and bring new privileges. Back in
England, she learned that all her estates
were in chancery, for she was considered
legally dead. At her country house she
was received courteously by her servants.
Again she was haunted by the
Archduchess Harriet, who now, however, had
become a man, the Archduke Harry, but
at last she managed to rid herself of his
attentions.
Orlando went to London to get a
taste of society. The reign of Queen
Anne was a brilliant one. Conversation
flowed freely, and dinners and
receptions were entertaining affairs. Addison,
Dryden, and Pope were the great names
of the age. After a time, however,
intercourse with the great wits began to pall,
and Orlando went looking for adventure.
She began to associate with women of
the streets and pubs and found their
earthiness a welcome change from the
formalities of the drawing-room. But the
company of women without men soon
grew dull and repetitive.
At last came the darkness and doubt
of the Victorian era. Orlando saw that
marriage, under Victoria's influence, was
the career toward which most women
were striving. Orlando married a man
named Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmer-
dine, Esquire, who took off immediately
2676

on a sea voyage. A wedding ring on her
left hand, however, was Orlando's
emblem of belonging to accepted society.
Orlando's lawsuits had been settled in
her favor, but they had been so expensive
that she was no longer a rich woman.
She went into London, where she saw
her old friend Greene, now a prominent
literary critic. He offered to find a
publisher for her poem, "The Oak Tree."
London itself had become a roaring
metropolis. It was October 11, 1928.
Orlando began to muse over her long
heritage. She recalled Sasha, the
archduchess, Constantinople, the archduke,
the eighteenth century, and the
nineteenth. She saw herself now as the
culmination of many influences.
She drove back to her country house
and walked out to the great oak tree
where, more than three hundred years
before, she had watched the arrival of
Queen Elizabeth. The stable clock began
to strike twelve. She heard a roar in the
heavens. Shelmerdine, now a sea
captain of renown, was arriving home by
plane.
2677

ORLANDO FURIOSO
Type of work: Poem
Author: Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Eighth century
Locale: France, Spain, Africa
First-published: 1516; enlarged edition, 1532
Principal characters:
Charlemagne, King of France
Orlando, his nephew, a paladin of France
Rinaldo, another nephew, a paladin of France
Bradamant, Rinaldo's sister, a maiden knight
Rogero, a noble Saracen, in love with Bradamant
Agramant, King of Africa
Angelica, Princess of Cathay
Rodomont, King of Algiers
Leo, Prince of Greece
Astolpho, an English knight
Atlantes, a magician
Critique:
Having begun Orlando Furioso as a
continuation of Matteo Boiardo's
Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto improved
greatly upon his original model by
additions of his own and by extensive
borrowings from extant chivalric literature.
Consisting as it does of many stories and
episodes, Ariosto's masterpiece of early
Italian literature contains too many
incidents and changes of scenes to possess
true internal unity. In reality, the poem
tells three main stories: the wars of
Charlemagne and the invading Saracens,
the romantic tale of Orlando's hopeless
love for Angelica and his madness, and
the love story of Rogero and Bradamant,
supposed ancestors of the great house of
Este. Orlando Furioso is a Renaissance
epic mingling the world of chivalry and
the world of fantasy.
The Story:
It happened that in the old days, as
Charlemagne and his paladins battled
against the Saracens, the great press of
their enemies scattered the Christians
and drove them back toward Paris. Then
Angelica, the damsel whose beauty and
deceit had caused so much dissension
among her lovers, Christian and Saracen
alike, escaped during the confusion and
fled into a nearby wood.
As she rode deeper into the forest, her
desire being to reach the nearest seaport
from which she could take ship to return
to her own land of Cathay, she saw
walking toward her Rinaldo of France, the
lover whom she hated. Straightway she
fled from him as fast as she could ride and
in her flight came upon Ferrau, a Saracen
knight, weary after the battle. While
Rinaldo and Ferrau fought for the maid,
she rode away. They followed, both upon
the Saracen's horse, until they came to a
fork in the path, where they parted. A
short time later Rinaldo saw his own lost
horse, Bayardo, but the animal ran from
him in the direction Angelica had taken,
the knight in pursuit.
Angelica rode for a day and a night,
until at last from weariness she lay down
and slept. While she rested, Sacripant,
Circassia's king, came riding through the
forest. Awaking, Angelica pretended love
for him and begged his aid. But before
they had traveled far, Rinaldo overtook
them. The two knights fought with fury
until Sacripant's shield was splintered.
Seeing her champion overthrown,
Angelica fled again until she met a white-
bearded hermit, a magician, who put a
spell upon her, so that she fell down in
a deep sleep upon the seashore. There
some travelers saw her and carried her
2678

by boat to the dread island of Ebuda,
where each day a beautiful maiden was
sacrificed to a monstrous ore sent by an
angry sea god to harry the island. When
the day came for Angelica to be the
ore's victim, the islanders stripped her of
all ornaments except one bracelet before
they tied her to a rock on the sands.
The unhappy lovers who would have
died for Angelica knew nothing of her
plight. But Orlando, paladin of France,
dreamed an evil dream as he lay behind
the walls of Paris after that city had been
besieged by the Saracens. Forgetful of his
duties to King Charlemagne, he arose and
passed at night through enemy lines to
begin his search for Angelica, a quest
which would take him into many lands
and finally drive him mad.
Meanwhile Bradamant, the maiden
knight, Rinaldo's sister, rode through the
land in search of Rogero, the gallant
Saracen whom she loved. During her
travels she met Count Pinabel, who told
her that Rogero had been imprisoned,
along with many other brave knights, in
the enchanted castle of old Atlantes, high
in the Pyrenees. But Pinabel proved a
treacherous knight intent on killing
Bradamant. Leading her to the entrance
of a cave, he pushed her headlong into
the deep cavern.
Luckily, a tree broke her fall.
Regaining consciousness, she found herself in
the wizard Merlin's cave. There Melissa,
a seeress, foretold a happy life for
Bradamant and Rogero and related the history
of the noble house they would found.
The next day Melissa led Bradamant from
the cave after telling the maiden that she
could free Rogero with the aid of a magic
ring given by Agramant, King of Africa,
to Brunello, his faithful dwarf.
Bradamant found Brunello, as Melissa
had directed. Armed with the ring, she
caused the disenchantment of Rogero
and all the other knights whom Atlantes
held in his power. Released, the knights
tried to capture the flying hippogryph,
the old magician's steed. Rogero was
successful in the chase, but when he
mounted upon its back the creature
soared high into the air. Bradamant
grieved to see her lover carried skyward
from her sight.
The hippogryph flew with Rogero to
the realm of Alcina, a sorceress. There he
saw Astolpho, a daring English knight,
whom Alcina had enchanted. Later he
slew Eriphilia, a giantess. Bradamant
encountered Melissa again and from her
learned that Rogero had yielded to
Alcina's evil beauty. Melissa had herself
conveyed to that strange land. There she
reproved Rogero and gave him a magic
ring by which he was able to break
Alcina's spell. Mounting the hippogryph,
he passed over many lands and came at
last to the island of Ebuda, where he saw
a beautiful maiden chained to a rock
beside the sea.
The damsel was Angelica. She saw
him check his flying steed, watched him
as he prepared to battle the dreadful ore
rising from the waves. Rogero put upon
her finger the magic ring to keep her
from all harm. Then he blinded the
monster with the dazzling brightness of
his shield. Leaving Ebuda, they rode
away on the flying steed until they came
to lesser Britain. By that time Rogero had
forgotten Bradamant; he swore he would
be Angelica's true knight forever.
But faithless Angelica made herself
invisible by means of the magic ring and
fled from him. Disconsolate, Rogero
prepared to mount the hippogryph but
found that the beast had flown back to
its master. While he was returning to his
own land, he saw Bradamant in the
power of a giant. Following that false
vision, conjured up by old Atlantes, he
was lured to another enchanted palace in
which the magician held captive many
noble knights and ladies. Atlantes had
been Rogero's tutor; he wished to keep
the young knight safe from hurt in battle.
At Paris, meanwhile, the Saracens
under fierce Rodomont had been
defeated by the Christian champions.
Rinaldo himself had killed in hand-
to-hand combat Dardinello, King of
Zumara. While Charlemagne's knights
celebrated their victory, two Saracen
2679

youths mourned beside the body of
Dardinello, their dead lord. One was
Cloridan, a brave hunter; the other was
Medoro, his brother. That night, like
silent angels of death, they killed many
Christian warriors to avenge their king.
At daybreak they met Prince Zerbino of
Scotland and his men. The Scottish
knights killed Cloridan and left Medoro
for dead upon the field.
There Angelica, journeying under the
protection of the magic ring, found him.
Taking him to a herdsman's hut nearby,
she nursed him until his wounds had
healed, for she who had been wooed by
the most famous of knights had fallen in
love with that young Saracen of humble
birth. When they left the hut to continue
their travels, Angelica had only the
bracelet left from her perilous experience
on Ebuda with which to reward the
herdsman. She and Medoro finally
reached Cathay, and Angelica made him
a king in that far land.
In his search for Angelica, Orlando
came one day to the herdsman's hut.
When the peasant told him the story of
Medoro and Angelica, and displayed the
bracelet, Orlando, recognizing the jewel,
thought his heart would break. That
night, in sudden madness, he saddled his
horse and rode away. At last he threw
away his armor, tore his clothes, and
raged naked through the forest. There
was great grief when it was known that
Orlando, greatest of knights, lived like
the wild beasts he fought with his bare
hands.
Once more the Saracens besieged
Paris, but as good fortune would have it
dissension broke out in the attackers'
camp between Rodomont and Mandri-
cardo, a prince of Tartary, over Doralice
the Spanish princess. Because Doralice
chose Mandricardo as her knight,
Rodomont left King Agramant's camp and
traveled until he met Isabella, a princess
of Galicia, who was mourning her dead
lover, Zerbino, whom Mandricardo had
slain. While drunk, Rodomont killed
Isabella. Grief-stricken, he built a bridge
across a river near her tomb and there
challenged all passing knights in honor
of the dead woman. Twice, however, he
was overthrown, once by a naked
madman, Orlando, and again by Bradamant.
Bradamant fought with Rodomont on
the plea of Flordelice, whose husband,
Brandimart, had been imprisoned by the
Saracen. Defeated, Rodomont promised
to release all his Christian prisoners,
including Brandimart. Bradamant took
Rodomont's horse, Frontino, which had
once been Rogero's property, and asked
Flordelice to deliver it to Rogero.
For, in the meantime, Rogero had been
freed from the enchantment of Atlantes.
His deliverer was Astolpho, whom
Melissa had released from Alcina's power.
By the blast of a magic horn, Astolpho
put Atlantes to flight. Then, mounting
the wizard's hippogryph, he flew to the
land of Prester John. From there he
journeyed to the regions of the moon,
where St. John showed him many
wonders, including some mysterious vials
containing the senses lost by poets, lovers,
and philosophers. Among the vials
Astolpho saw one containing Orlando's
lost wits. With that vial he flew down
to Nubia, where, after proper ceremonies,
he held the vial to Orlando's nose and
the madman's senses returned to his head.
Orlando and Astolpho led a Nubian army
against Biserta and sacked that city.
Rogero, returning to the Saracen
camp, quarreled with Mandricardo over
the Tartar's right to wear the escutcheon
of Trojan Hector, and Rogero killed
Mandricardo in single combat. As
dissension continued in the Saracen camp,
Agramant withdrew his army from the
walls of Paris. Then it was decided to
settle the war by a battle between
champions. Rinaldo was named defender
of the Christians. Agramant chose Rogero
as his bravest knight. But in the midst of
the combat Agramant broke his oath
and attacked Charlemagne's knights.
Although he had promised Bradamant
that he would accept Christianity after
the combat, Rogero, seeing the rout of the
2680

Saracens, chose to follow his defeated
king. After many adventures, separated
from his comrades, he was cast away on
a desert isle. There a holy man baptized
him, and there he lived while Orlando,
Oliver, and Brandimart fought with the
Saracen kings—Agramant, Gradasso,
Sobrino—and overcame them at Lipadusa.
Agramant, Gradasso, and Brandimart
were killed in the fight. Old Sobrino
survived to turn Christian.
On his return voyage Orlando stopped
at the desert isle and rescued Rogero.
Great was the rejoicing when the knights
learned that Rogero had been baptized.
Rinaldo, who was among the paladins,
gladly promised his sister to Rogero.
But Bradamant's parents wished her to
marry Leo, son of the Emperor Constan-
tine of Greece, and to force her to their
will they shut her up in a strong castle.
Separated from his love, Rogero decided
that Leo should die. On his way to
challenge his rival, he joined an army of
Bulgarians and fought with them against
Constantine's troops. When the Greeks
fled, he pursued them until he found
himself alone in enemy country.
Captured, he was imprisoned by Theodora,
the emperor's sister, whose son he had
slain. When Leo, a courteous knight,
heard what had happened, he rescued
Rogero and hid him in his own house.
Word came that Bradamant had
vowed to wed only a knight who could
withstand her in combat. Leo, unaware
of Rogero's true name but impressed by
the Saracen's valor, asked him to be the
prince's champion. Bradamant and
Rogero fought, and Rogero was the victor.
Then the sad knight went off into the
forest alone. Leo found him there, almost
dead from grief. When he learned who
the strange knight really was, Leo gave
up his own claim to Bradamant's hand
and returned with Rogero to
Charlemagne's court. There Bradamant and
Rogero were reunited.
At a feast to celebrate their betrothal
Rodomont appeared to accuse Rogero of
apostasy, and Rogero slew the haughty
Saracen in single combat. So the Christian
knights celebrated the wedding of Rogero
and Bradamant with all good-will. There
was even greater cause for rejoicing when
ambassadors from Bulgaria appeared to
announce that the grateful Bulgarians
had named gallant Rogero as their king.
2681

ORLANDO INNAMORATO
Type of work: Poem
Author: Matteo Maria Boiardo (c. 1440-1494)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Eighth century
Locale: France, India, Africa
first transcribed: 1486-1495
Principal characters:
Charlemagne, King of France
Orlando, his nephew, a paladin of France
Angelica, Princess of Cathay
Uberto, in reality Argalia, her brother
Rinaldo, a paladin of France
Malagigi, a magician, Rinaldo's brother
Bradamant, a maiden knight, Rinaldo's sister
Rogero, a noble young Saracen
Ferrau, a Spanish knight
Astolpho, an English Knight
Agramant, King of Africa
Critique:
The second of three Italian chivalric
romances based on the legendary
history of Charlemagne and his paladins,
Boiardo's poem unites the Matter of
France with the Arthurian by
introducing a love story which tells of Orlando's
passion for the bewitching Angelica. The
poem, consisting of sixty-nine cantos in
ottava rima and left incomplete when
Boiardo died in 1494, was stylistically
revised in the popular edition of Francesco
Berni (c. 1497-1535); Boiardo's own
manuscript was not recovered until the
nineteenth century. This work served as the
model for Orlando Furioso (1516-1532)
by Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533). The
predecessor of Boiardo's work was 11
Morgante Maggiore (c.1482), by Luigi
Pulci (1432-1484), a romance more
farcical and less heroic than Orlando Inna-
morato, concerned as it is with the
Christianizing of a famous magician of
folklore and filled with tales of ridiculous
encounters with giants and sorcerers. In
the characters of Bradamant and Rogero,
both Boiardo and Ariosto tell of the
adventures and love of the supposed
ancestors of the great medieval house of
Este. Also, both writers blend a world
of chivalry and a realm of fantasy. In
Don Quixote, Cervantes' hero was made
quite as mad reflecting on these chivalric
adventures as ever were the mock heroes
of the older romances.
The Story:
King Charlemagne summoned all his
paladins and vassal barons to a court
plenar in Paris, an occasion to be
celebrated with magnificent tournaments and
great feasts in which all friends and foes,
Christians and Saracens alike, were
invited to take part. To the banquet on
the opening night of this f£te came an
unknown knight, a beautiful damsel, and
four giants serving as bodyguards. The
knight, who called himself Uberto,
offered his lovely sister Angelica as the prize
to any man who could defeat him in the
jousts to be held the next day. He, in
turn, would claim as his prisoner any
knight whom he unhorsed. Seeing the
beautiful damsel, Orlando, the greatest
paladin of Charlemagne's court, was
immediately stricken by love; and it was
only respect for the monarch that kept
Ferrau, a Spanish knight, from snatching
her up and carrying her away in his
arms. Even great Charlemagne was
affected by her charms. The only person
unmoved was Malagigi, a magician, who
sensed in the visitors some purpose quite
different from that which they claimed.
After the damsel and her brother had
2682

retired, Malagigi summoned a fiend who
informed him that Uberto was in reality
Argalia, the son of Galaphron, King of
Cathay, sent with his sister to demoralize
the Christian knights. With Angelica as
his lure, protected by a magic ring that
would ward off all enchantment or make
him invisible if placed in the mouth,
Argalia planned to overcome the Christian
knights and dispatch them as prisoners
to distant Cathay. Armed with this
knowledge, Malagigi mounted a magic steed
and flew through the air to the stair
of Merlin, where Argalia and Angelica
were asleep. There he cast a spell over
the watchers which caused them to fall
into a deep slumber. As the magician
approached Angelica with the intention
of killing that damsel who was as false
as she was fair, he himself became
enslaved by her beauty and clasped her in
his arms. Angelica awoke with a shriek.
Argalia, aroused by her scream, ran to
her assistance and together they overcame
Malagigi. Angelica then summoned
fiends and ordered them to carry the
magician to Cathay. There King
Galaphron confined him in a dungeon
beneath the sea.
In the meantime dissension had broken
out among the knights of Charlemagne's
court, for all wished to try their skill
against the strange knight in order to win
such an enchanting prize. At length lots
were cast to determine the order of
combat. The first fell to Astolpho, the
second to Ferrau, and the third to the giant
Grandonio. Next in order came Berling-
hier, Otho, and Charlemagne himself.
Orlando, much to his indignation, was
the thirty-seventh on the list.
At the running of the first course
Astolpho was jolted from his saddle.
Ferrau, who followed, was also unhorsed,
but, contrary to the rules of the joust,
he leaped to his feet and continued the
fight on foot. After he had slain the
giants who attempted to restrain him, he
bore himself so fiercely that Argalia, even
though he was protected by enchanted
armor, finally called a brief truce. When
the combat was renewed, Angelica
suddenly disappeared, followed by Argalia.
Ferrau pursued them into Arden forest
but found no trace of the knight or the
damsel. Rinaldo and Orlando also set
off in pursuit of the fleeing maiden.
Meanwhile, Astolpho had taken up the
magic spear which Argalia had left
behind; with this weapon he performed
great feats of valor until, carried away by
the excitement of the combat, he felled
friends and foes alike. Finally, by
Charlemagne's command, he was overborne and
subdued.
Rinaldo, Ferrau, and Orlando,
meanwhile, were wandering through the
forest in search of Angelica. Rinaldo had a
rather ironic success in his quest. Having
drunk from a fountain which Merlin had
created vears before to relieve the love
pangs ot Tristram and Isolde, the knight
no longer loved Angelica, but hated her.
A short time later he fell asleep beside a
nearby stream. Angelica, coming upon
the stream, drank from its magic waters
and immediately became enamored of the
sleeping knight. When she pulled a
handful of flowers and threw them over
him, Rinaldo awoke and, in spite of her
piteous pleas and avowals of love, fled
from her in loathing.
Ferrau, riding through the forest, came
upon Argalia asleep beneath a tree. The
two engaged in fierce combat. Ferrau,
finding a chink in his enemy's magic
armor, struck him to the heart. Dying,
Argalia asked that his body and armor
be thrown into the stream. Ferrau agreed,
keeping only the helmet of his adversary.
As he rode on through the wood, he came
upon Angelica and Orlando, who, having
chanced upon the sleeping maiden, had
thrown himself down by her side.
Supposing that Orlando was her protector,
Ferrau awoke the sleeping man with
taunts and insults. Orlando, starting up,
revealed himself, but Ferrau, although
surprised, stood his ground. A duel
followed, in the midst of which Angelica
again fled. The combat of champions
ended only when a strange maiden,
Flordespina, appeared with news that
Gradasso, King of Sericane, was ravag-
2683

ing the Spanish dominions. Ferrau, torn
between love and duty, departed for
Spain with Flordespina.
Gradasso, a mighty monarch who
coveted whatever he did not possess, had
invaded Europe in order to obtain
possession of Durindana, the famed sword of
Orlando, and Bayardo, the horse of Rin-
aldo. Charlemagne, assembling all the
knights summoned to the tournament,
dispatched a mighty army, under Rinaldo,
to aid King Marsilius against the pagans.
During a battle fought near Barcelona,
Gradasso and Rinaldo engaged in single
combat. Neither prevailing, they agreed
to fight again on the following day under
these conditions: if Rinaldo were the
victor, Gradasso would release all the
prisoners he had taken; if the victory
went to Gradasso, Rinaldo would
surrender Bayardo to the king.
Angelica, meanwhile, had returned to
Cathay. Deciding to use Malagigi as the
mediator in her pursuit of the disdainful
Rinaldo, she released the magician and
promised to give him his complete liberty
if he would bring Rinaldo to her.
Deceived by his own brother, Rinaldo was
decoyed away from his encounter with
Gradasso. His troops, left leaderless,
returned home. Gradasso then invaded
France and took Charlemagne and his
knights prisoners. Offered his liberty and
the restoration of his lands if Durindana
and Bayardo were surrendered to the
conqueror, Charlemagne agreed. When
he sent to Paris for the horse, which had
been returned from Spain, Astolpho,
refusing to give up the animal, challenged
Gradasso to a duel. Using the enchanted
lance, Astolpho overthrew the king.
Gradasso, true to his promise, released his
prisoners and returned to Sericane.
Orlando, continuing his wanderings,
learned that Agrican, the king of Tar-
tary, had sought the hand of Angelica in
marriage. Angered by the girl's refusal,
Agrican besieged Albracca, the capital of
Cathay; he had sworn to raze the city if
need be in order to possess the princess.
News of the war having spread far and
wide, Orlando, Astolpho, and Rinaldo
journeyed by different routes to the
kingdom of Camay. There Orlando and
Astolpho ranged themselves on the side of
the defenders, while Rinaldo, still filled
with loathing for Angelica, joined the
forces of King Agrican. Orlando, riding
to the defense of King Galaphron, met
Agrican in single combat and slew the
Tartar king. Later Orlando and Rinaldo
engaged in furious combat. When night
fell, each withdrew in expectation of
resuming their struggle on the following
day; but that night lovesick Angelica,
scheming to save Rinaldo from his
kinsman's fury, sent Orlando on a quest to
destroy the garden of Falerina in the
kingdom of Orgagna.
In the meantime Agramant, the young
King of Africa, was preparing to lay siege
to Paris in revenge for the killing of his
father. One of his advisers prophesied
failure in his efforts, however, unless he
could obtain the help of Rogero, a gallant
young knight held prisoner by the
magician Atlantes on the mountain of Carena.
After Orlando had set out on his quest,
Rinaldo with several of his companions
left the camp before Albracca and started
in pursuit, Rinaldo still eager to continue
their quarrel. On the way Rinaldo
encountered a ruffian with whom he fought
until both plunged into a lake and
disappeared beneath the waves. While these
events were taking place, the messenger
of Agramant returned with word that he
had been unable to find Rogero. Irked by
the delay, Rodomont, a vassal king,
decided to embark with his forces on the
invasion of France. Agramant was told
that the garden of Atlantes was invisible
and that the young knight could be freed
only by possession of Angelica's magic
ring. A dwarf, Brunello, offered to obtain
the prize for his master.
Orlando, having accomplished his
quest, arrived at the lake where Rinaldo
had been carried under the waves. Seeing
his kinsman's arms stacked by the shore,
Orlando determined to avenge his former
companion in arms. He and the guardian
of the place fought a mighty battle in
which Orlando was victorious. From the
2684

enchanted garden beneath the lake he
freed all the prisoners held there by
Morgana, the sorceress. All the knights except
Orlando then returned to France to aid
in the defense of Christendom. Orlando,
now reconciled with Rinaldo, turned back
toward Albracca. On the way he
encountered Brunello, who had in the
meantime stolen Angelica's magic ring.
With the ring to dispel the mists of
enchantment, Agramant came at last to
the castle where Atlantes held Rogero in
duress. At Brunello's suggestion the king
issued an invitation to a tournament.
Joining in the tourney, Rogero was wounded
but revenged himself on his assailant.
His wounds miraculously healed, he
returned to the tourney, whereupon
Agramant recognized him and made him his
knight. Meanwhile, Rinaldo and Rodo-
mont had engaged in single combat in a
great battle between Christians and
pagans. When they were separated during
the fighting, Rinaldo, in pursuit of his
enemy, rode once more into the forest of
Arden.
On his arrival in Albracca after his
perilous quest, Angelica prevailed upon
Orlando to help her in her escape from
the beleaguered city and to escort her into
France. Orlando, not suspecting that her
real purpose was the pursuit of Rinaldo,
immediately agreed. After many
adventures they embarked for France and at
length arrived, hot and tired, in the forest
of Arden. There Angelica drank from the
waters of hate; at the same time Rinaldo
drank from the waters of love. When they
met a short time later the circumstances
of their love were reversed. Angelica now
fled from Rinaldo in disgust, while he
pursued her with passionate avowals.
Again Orlando and Rinaldo fought. In
the midst of their struggle Angelica fled.
When she took refuge in Charlemagne's
camp, the king, hearing her story, gave
her into the keeping of Namus, Duke of
Bavaria.
Agramant, joined by Gradasso, began
the siege of Paris. In the ensuing battle
Bradamant, a maiden warrior and the
sister of Rinaldo, became enamored of
Rogero and went over to the side of the
Saracens. When she removed her helmet
and allowed her hair to fall down, Rogero
was struck by love for the valiant maiden.
At that moment they were attacked from
ambush and Bradamant, unhelmeted, was
wounded slightly in the head. Rogero
avenged her hurt by routing their
enemies, only to be separated during the
pursuit from the woman who would one
day become his wife and the mother of
the illustrious line of Este, the noble
family whom Boiardo, the poet, served.
2685

ORLEY FARM
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1862
Principal characters:
Lady Mason, mistress of Orley Farm
Lucius Mason, her son
Joseph Mason, Esq., owner of Groby Park
Sir Peregrine Orme, a gallant old gentleman
Mrs. Orme, his daughter-in-law
Peregrine Orme, his grandson
Samuel Dockwrath, a rascally attorney
Miriam, his wife
Mr. Furnival, a London attorney
Sophia, his daughter, loved by Lucius
Mr. Chaffanbrass, a celebrated lawyer
Felix Graham, a penniless young barrister
Madeline Stavely, in love with Graham
Critique:
Orley Farm contains all those elements
of plot so dear to Victorian readers—a
forged will, a false heir, a woman with a
guilty secret, a chivalrous gentleman,
romantic young love, a long court trial,
expiation, and the spectacle of villainy
receiving its deserved reward. The story is
lively and complicated. This novel shows
Troll lope almost at his best—no more
than a degree or two below the level of
his Barchester series.
The Story:
Sir Joseph Mason was nearing seventy
when he married a second wife forty-five
years his junior. Having been in turn
merchant, alderman, mayor, and knight,
he had by that time amassed a large
fortune, out of which he purchased Groby
Park, a landed estate in Yorkshire. This
roperty he turned over to the son of his
rst marriage, Joseph Mason, Esq., who
under his father's generous provision was
able to lead the life of a country
gentleman with as much magnificence as his
mean, grasping nature would allow. Sir
Joseph himself made his home at Orley
Farm, a country residence not far from
London. Joseph Mason had always been
assured that the farm would go to him,
as head of the family, at his father's death.
The baronet's second marriage was
little more than an old man's attempt to
find companionship and comfort in his
declining years, and young Lady Mason,
a quiet, sensible, clever woman,
cheerfully accepted it as such. One son,
Lucius, was born to them. Then Sir
Joseph died suddenly, and when the
time came to prove his will it was
discovered that in an attached codicil he had
bequeathed Orley Farm to his infant son.
Joseph Mason, feeling that he had been
deprived of property rightfully his,
contested the codicil.
The Orley Farm Case, as it was called,
had many complications. The will had
been drawn up by Jonathan Usbech, Sir
Joseph's attorney, but it, like the codicil,
was in Lady Mason's handwriting, old
Usbech having suffered from a gouty
hand at the time. It had been witnessed
by John Kennerby, Sir Joseph's clerk, and
by Bridget Bolster, a housemaid. At the
trial both swore that they had been
called to their master's bedside and there,
in the presence of Usbech and Lady
Mason, had signed a document which
all assumed had been the codicil. Lady
Mason readily admitted that while she
2686

had asked nothing for herself she had
wanted much for her child, and that
before Usbech and Mr. Furnival, a
barrister, she had often urged her husband
to leave Orley Farm to little Lucius. Old
Usbech having died in the meantime, she
was unable to have her statement
confirmed by him, but Mr. Furnival testified
to the truth of her assertion.
The result was that Joseph Mason lost
his case. The will and codicil having
been upheld, Lady Mason and her son
continued to live at Orley Farm and to
enjoy its yearly income of eight hundred
pounds. Joseph Mason retired to sulk at
Groby Park. Miriam Usbech, old
Jonathan's daughter, also benefited under the
terms of the codicil to the extent of two
thousand pounds, an inheritance she lost
when she entrusted it to her husband,
Samuel Dockwrath, a shady young
attorney from the neighboring town of
Hamworth. Relations between Llsbech's
daughter and the mistress of Orley Farm
were always friendly. Because of Lady
Mason, Dockwrath held at low rental two
outlying fields on the estate.
Among the neighbors who had stood
by Lady Mason durino the trial was Sir
Peregrine Orme of The Cleeve. Other
members of his household were his
daughter-in-law, Mrs. Orme, who was
Lady Mason's best friend, and his
grandson, namesake, and heir. Young
Peregrine Orme and Lucius Mason were the
same age. They had little else in
common. Peregrine, educated at Harrow and
Oxford, heir to a great estate, was a well-
meaning but somewhat wild young man
whose chief interests were fox hunting
and rat-baiting. JHe was also in love with
Madeline Stavely, lovely daughter of
Judge Stavely of Noningsby. Lucius
Mason, after a term at a German
university, returned to Orley Farm with the
plan of putting into practice methods of
scientific farming he had learned abroad.
One of his first acts was to serve notice
of his intention to repossess the fields
leased to Dockworth. An unpleasant
interview between Lady Mason and the
angry attorney followed. Concerned over
Dockwrath's vague threats, she went to
Sir Peregrine for advice, as she had gone
on many occasions during the past
twenty years. Sir Peregrine snorted with
disgust over Lucius' agricultural theories
and announced that he would bring the
young man to his senses. Lucius went to
dine at The Cleeve but refused to give
up his plans. Sir Peregrine decided that
the earnest young man was as conceited
as he was stubborn.
In the meantime Dockwrath had been
busy. Going through his father-in-law's
papers, he learned that on the date
carried by the codicil Sir Joseph had signed
a deed of separation dissolving a business
partnership between him and one Mr.
Martock. Either two documents had been
signed on that day, a possibility which
the evidence at the trial made unlikely,
or the codicil was a forgery. Armed with
this information, Dockwrath went to
Groby Park to confer with Joseph Mason.
The upshot of that conference was
Mason's decision to reopen the Orley
Farm Case.
Dockwrath, hoping to advance himself
in his profession, begged for an
opportunity to handle the case, but the squire,
aware of Dockwrath's reputation, told
him to take his information to the firm of
Round and Crook, reputable London
lawyers who would be above suspicion.
Mason did promise, however, that
Dockwrath would be rewarded if Lady Mason
were convicted and Orley Farm returned
to its rightful owner. The Hamworth
lawyer then went to London and offered
his services to Round and Crook. They
were willing to use him but only to
collect information which might prove useful.
When Miriam Dockwrath carried to
Orley Farm an account of her husband's
activities, Lady Mason appealed to Sir
Peregrine, her good friend, and Mr.
Furnival, her attorney, for advice and
help. Mr. Furnival, with the passing of
time, had changed from a hard-working
young barrister into a fashionable attorney
with a weakness for port wine and lovely
women. Lady Mason was still attractive,
2687

and so he comforted her more as a woman
than as a client, assuring her that the
Orley Farm Case, unappealed at the time,
was not likely to be reviewed. Chivalrous
Sir Peregrine was stirred to great
indignation by what he considered the dastardly
conduct of Joseph Mason, whom he had
always disliked.
Lucius, hearing the news, was equally
indignant and told his mother to leave the
matter in his hands. Sir Peregrine and Mr.
Furnival had difficulty in restraining him
from acting rashly.
Actually, the outcome of the suit was
more important to Lucius than he realized.
He was in love with Sophia Furnival,
daughter of his mother's attorney, but that
prudent young woman intended to choose
her husband with discretion. Another of
her suitors was Adolphus Stavely, son of
the distinguished jurist. She could afford
to wait for the time being.
Meanwhile Peregrine's wooing of
Madeline Stavely had fared badly, for
Madeline had no interest in anyone except
Felix Graham, a penniless young
barrister. The judge, convinced that Graham
would make his way in the world, silently
approved his daughter's choice, but her
mother, eager to see her daughter mistress
of The Cleeve, grew impatient with her
husband because of his refusal to speak up
for young Orme.
There was some delay in determining
grounds for a suit. The will having been
upheld years before, it was felt that a
charge of forgery was impossible after so
long a time. Finally Round and Crook
decided to prosecute for perjury, charging
that in the previous trial Lady Mason had
sworn falsely to the execution of the will.
When word came that Lady Mason
would have to stand trial, Mrs. Orme
invited her to stay at The Cleeve. This
invitation, dictated by Sir Peregrine, was
intended to show to the county the Ormes*
confidence in their neighbor's innocence.
But Sir Peregrine's chivalry did not stop
there. At last he offered Lady Mason the
protection of his name as well as his house,
and she, almost overwhelmed by the
prospect of the coming trial, promised to
marry him.
Lucius and Peregrine were both
opposed to the marriage, although Sir
Peregrine reconciled his grandson in part
by encouraging that young man in his
own unsuccessful suit. Mr. Furnival
became less gallant. Lady Mason's
conscience, however, would not allow her to
accept Sir Peregrine's offer. One night
she went to him and confessed that she
had forged the codicil in a desperate effort
to keep the property for her son. Sir
Peregrine, shocked by the news, was still
determined to stand by her during the trial.
Mr. Furnival was shrewd. When he
heard that his client was not to marry Sir
Peregrine after all, he was convinced that
the whole story had not been told.
Suspecting her possible guilt, he hired the
famous Mr. Chaffanbrass and his
associate, Mr. Solomon Aram, noted criminal
lawyers, to defend Lady Mason at the
trial. Felix Graham was to act as a junior
counsel for the defense.
The trial lasted for two days and part of
another. The heckling attorneys so
confused John Kennerby that his testimony
was worthless. Bridget Bolster insisted,
however, that she had signed only one
document on that particular day. Even
Mr. Chaffanbrass was unable to break
down her story; the most damaging
admission she made was that she liked an
occasional glass of spirits. But Dockwrath
was completely discredited, especially
after Mr. Chaffanbrass forced him to
admit his revengeful motives and Joseph
Mason's promise to reward him for his
services. At the end of the second day
Lady Mason confessed her guilt to her son.
The next morning he was not in court
with her when the verdict was announced.
Lady Mason was acquitted.
The jury's verdict was legal only, not
moral. A few days later Mr. Furnival
notified Joseph Mason that Lucius was
transferring Orley Farm to his half-
brother. Lucius himself was returning to
Germany with his mother; later he hoped
to become a farmer in Australia. Sir Pere-
2688

grine went to see Lady Mason in London.
Their farewell was gentle and sad on his
part, final on hers. Dockwrath sued Joseph
Mason to collect payment for his help
and was completely ruined in the suit.
Sophia Furnival decided that she could
never be anything but a sister to Lucius.
Madeline Stavely married her penniless
barrister and lived more happily than her
mother thought she deserved. Young
Peregrine Orme eased his broken heart by
shooting lions and elephants in central
Africa.
2689

OROONOKO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mrs. Aphra Behn (1640-1689)
Type of plot: Didactic romance
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Africa and Surinam
First published: 1688
Principal characters:
Oroonoko, a Negro prince
Imoinda, his wife
Aboan, a friend of Oroonoko
The King, Oroonoko's grandfather
Critique:
Oroonoko, Or, The Royal Slave: A
True History was the first English novel
written on die theme of the Noble
Savage. It was followed by such well-known
favorites as Robinson Crusoe, Atalay and,
in a lesser sense, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The story, which is also a protest against
the institution of slavery, was based on
the conception that primitive man was
more noble than civilized man, probably
because he was nearer the state of
original life. To us, the tale may seem a
little stilted and unreal, but the plot is
dramatic in outline and the atmosphere
convincing. The novel provides a good
background for the later literature that
we know so well. Its author was the first
Englishwoman to become a professional
writer.
The Story:
In Coromantien, an African kingdom,
the ruler was an old man more than one
hundred years of age. His grandson,
Prince Oroonoko, was the bravest, most
loved young man in all the land. When
the commanding general was killed in
battle, Oroonoko was chosen to take his
place, even though the prince was only
seventeen years old. After a great
victory in battle, Prince Oroonoko presented
himself at the court of his grandfather,
the Kino. His noble and martial bearing
made him an instant favorite with lords
and ladies alike.
Oroonoko also visited Imoinda, the
daughter of his dead general, a girl as
beautiful and modest as he was handsome
and brave, and the two noble young
people immediately fell in love. She became
his wife, but before the marriage could
be consummated Oroonoko made known
his plans to his grandfather, the King.
But the old man, already possessed of
many wives, had heard of the loveliness
of Imoinda and wanted her for his own.
One day, when Oroonoko was absent, the
King sent his veil to Imoinda, a royal
command that she was to join his harem.
Since it was against the law for even a
king to take another man's wife, the old
man made her forswear her marriage
and acknowledge him as her husband.
When Oroonoko returned and learned
of the old man's treachery, he renounced
all pleasures in longing for his lost wife.
The lovers dared not let the King know
their true feelings, for to do so would
have meant death or worse for both of
them, even though Oroonoko was of the
King's own blood. By pretending not to
care for his lost Imoinda, Oroonoko was
again invited to the royal palace. There,
learning from some of the King's women
that Imoinda was still a virgin, Oroonoko
planned to rescue her. With the help of
his friend Aboan and one of the older
wives of the King, Oroonoko entered the
apartment of Imoinda and took her as
his true wife. Spied upon by the King's
orders, Oroonoko was apprehended and
forced to flee back to his army camp,
leaving Imoinda to the mercies of the
King. Enraged because he had been
betrayed by his own blood, the old man
determined to kill the girl and then pun-
2690

ish Oroonoko. In order to save her life,
Imoinda told the King that Oroonoko had
ravished her against her will. Then,
declared the King, she must be punished
with worse than death; he sold her into
slavery.
The King gave up his intent to punish
his grandson, for Oroonoko controlled
the soldiers and the King feared they
might be turned against him. Instead, he
took Oroonoko back into his favor after
telling the boy that Imoinda had been
given an honorable death for her
betrayal of the King. Oroonoko, who held
no grudge against the King, did not act
against him, but for a long time pined
for his lost wife. At last his grief grew
less and he once more took his place at
the royal court.
Soon afterward an English merchant
ship came to the port of Coromantien.
When her master, well known to
Oroonoko, invited the prince and his friends
to a party on board, Oroonoko, Aboan,
and others gladly accepted the invitation.
Once on board, all were seized and made
prisoners, and later sold as slaves in
Surinam, on the coast of South America. The
man who bought Oroonoko, seeing the
nobility of his slave, immediately felt
great esteem for him. Indeed, except for
the fact that he had been bought,
Oroonoko was not a slave at all, but rather a
friend to his master. In the colony, as in
his own homeland, Oroonoko was loved,
admired, and respected by all who saw
him. His name was changed to Caesar.
In a short time Oroonoko, now known
as Caesar, heard of a lovely young girl
whom all the Negroes and whites
wanted for their own. It was believed,
however, that she pined for a lost love. When
Oroonoko saw her, he found her to be
his wife Imoinda, whom he had thought
dead. Reunited with great joy, the lovers
were allowed to live together and were
promised their freedom and passage to
their own country as soon as the
Governor arrived to make the arrangements.
But Oroonoko began to fear that he
and his wife were never going to be set
free, that the promise would not be kept.
Imoinda being with child, they feared
that they were to be kept until the child
was born, another slave. One day, when
the masters were gone, Oroonoko tried to
pers,uade the slaves to revolt against their
bondage; he promised to lead them to his
own country and there give them liberty.
Although most of the slaves followed him,
they quickly deserted him when they
were overtaken by their masters;
Oroonoko was left with Imoinda and one man.
The Governor, who was with the
pursuers, promised Oroonoko that if he would
surrender there would be no punishment.
Again Oroonoko was betrayed. No
sooner had he surrendered than he was seized
and tied to a stake. There he was
whipped until the flesh fell from his
bones. Oroonoko endured his
punishment with great courage, but he vowed
revenge on his captors even if it meant
his death. His own master, still his friend,
had also been betrayed into believing the
promises made to Oroonoko. He took the
sick and feeble man back to his own
plantation and nursed him. There he
refused to let any but friends come near
Oroonoko, and he posted a guard to see
that no harm came to the sick man.
Oroonoko, resolved to have his revenge
on his tormentors, conceived a grim plan.
Fearing that Imoinda would suffer ravish-
ings and then a shameful death, he told
her that she must die at his hand so that
he would be free to accomplish his
revenge. Like a dutiful wife she blessed her
husband for his thoughtfulness, and after
many caresses and words of love
Oroonoko severed her head from her body. Then
he lay down beside her and for many
days did not eat or drink while he grieved
for his beloved.
Found by the side of his dead wife by
those who had come to beat him again,
he took his knife, cut off his own flesh,
and ripped his own bowels, all the while
vowing that he would never be whipped
a second time. Again friends took him
home and there cared for him with love
and kindness. Then the Governor tricked
his friends once more, and Oroonoko was
2691

tied to a stake and whipped publicly. So Oroonoko died a cruel and shameful
After the beating the executioner cut off death,
his arms and legs, his nose and his ears.
2692

THE ORPHAN
Type of work: Drama
Author; Thomas Otway (1652-1685)
Type of plot: Domestic tragedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Bohemia
First presented: 1680
Principal characters:
Acasto, a nobleman living in the country
Castalio, and
Polydore, his twin sons
Serina, his daughter
Chamont, a young soldier
Monimia, an orphan, Chamont's sister and Acasto's ward
Critique:
Though not so highly regarded as his
Venice Preserved (1682), Otway's The
Orphan held the stage until the early
nineteenth century and still receives a
few kind words from critics. The
language abounds in Shakespearian echoes,
particularly' of Romeo and Juliet, and
the character of Chamont, the hot-headed
brother, is very reminiscent of Laertes.
The plot, supposedly founded upon an
actual incident, turns upon a highly
improbable situation; but such
improbabilities were common in the drama of the
period. The tone of the play also points
forward to the sentimental drama of the
next century. Ojtway, now an almost
forgotten writer, was highly admired in his
own day, and Goldsmith considered him
next only to Shakespeare in tragedy.
The Story:
Somewhere in the Bohemian
countryside there lived a nobleman, Acasto, who
had served the emperor well before his
retirement from military service and the
life of the court. In his household were
his twin sons, Castalio and Polydore, and
his daughter Serina, as well as a young
noblewoman, Monimia, who had been
left as his ward upon the death of her
parents. It was Acasto's purpose to keep
his sons at home, for he had seen enough
of the intrigues and disappointments of
court life. The two sons, however,
restless and unoccupied, had both fallen in
love with Monimia.
Previously they had been close friends
and sharers of each other's secrets, but
now their love for the same woman
came between them. Castalio, whose
weakness was an excessive scrupulousness,
made the great mistake of minimizing his
passion for Monimia when talking with
his brother; he claimed that he had no
desire for marriage and that he would
not object to watching Polydore press his
own suit. This conversation was repeated
to Monimia by a page. Since she
genuinely loved Castalio, she misunderstood
his attitude and really believed that his
love had cooled. Thus it was that
Castalio, in his desire to be fair with
Polydore, allowed him and Monimia to be
alone together under circumstances which
allowed the less scrupulous Polydore to
make dishonorable proposals to her.
A short time later Chamont, Monimia's
brother, returned from the wars in which
he had been engaged for many years. In
his first interview with his sister, he told
her of a strange and ill-omened dream
he had had: a vision of Monimia
surrendering herself to two lovers. Further, on
his journey to Acasto's estates, he had
been warned by an old crone to hasten
in order to protect his sister's honor.
Although Monimia convinced him that
she really loved Castalio and that his
intentions were thoroughly honorable, her
brother nevertheless warned her against
Castalio and all men and made her
promise to treat her lover coldly, so as to try
him. But when she and Castalio met,
they smoothed out their misunderstand-
2693

ings, and the course of true love seemed
again to be running smoothly.
Almost immediately the household was
thrown into confusion by the sudden
illness of Acasto, who had been
entertaining his friends at a feast. Thinking that
he was about to die, the old nobleman
assembled his family and told of his plans
to divide his estate among them and to
dower Monimia. He also gave Chamont
permission to marry Serina. After the old
man and his family had left the room,
Chamont found out from the family
chaplain that that priest had just married
Monimia and Castalio but that the
marriage was still a secret because of their
fear of Acasto's disapproval. Chamont,
disliking the secrecy of the marriage, felt
that it was ill-omened, but that his sister's
honor was now safe.
Castalio, in the meantime, was urgently
begging his bride to allow him to spend
the night with her; she demurred, on the
grounds that her room was next to that
of Acasto and every sound would be
heard. It was finally agreed, however,
that Castalio was to come, was to make
his presence known by three light knocks
upon the door, and that not a word was
to be spoken during the night. So the
newly-married pair parted, not knowing
that Polydore, lurking in the background,
had overheard their plan. That
dishonorable man, who was of course ignorant of
the marriage, instantly decided to take
his brother's place, and this unworthy
plan he carried out. When Castalio
arrived at his wife's bedroom, he was
denied admittance because the maid
thought him to be Polydore.
The next morning, when Castalio,
who had been in a frenzy of despair all
night, met Monimia, he threw her from
him. The bride, thinking that she had
spent the night with her husband, could
not understand this treatment and
complained to her brother. Chamont, always
the impetuous soldier, demanded justice
of Acasto and told him of the marriage,
of which the nobleman did not approve.
Next, the wretched Monimia met
Polydore and the tragic horror was made
complete when he, in his vanity, told her
that it was he, not Castalio, who had
spent the night with her. When she told
him that he had slept with his brother's
wife, he was as horror-struck as she; and
they both agreed to spend the rest of
their lives in expiation of their sin.
For Castalio, still ignorant of the
truth, there was to be no peace. His
father told him of Chamont's demand for
justice; the young soldier, also ignorant
of the truth, wished to fight. He and
Castalio were parted only by Acasto.
Then news was brought by the servants
that Monimia was running distractedly
through the house calling for Castalio.
When husband and wife met, she told
him that she must leave him forever,
but did not reveal the terrible deception
practiced by Polydore the previous night.
A short time later the frantic Castaho
met his brother, and Polydore, by insults,
forced a fight upon his twin, then,
dropping his own sword, ran upon Castalio's
blade. Dying, and having expiated his
sin, Polydore told Castalio of the events
of the night before. His only reproach,
and a just one, was that, had Castalio
trusted him and told him of the
marriage, the tragedy would have been
averted.
The tragedy was heightened when
Monimia revealed that she had taken
poison. She died, the innocent victim of
circumstances. But this was not the end
of the tragedy, for Castalio killed
himself with a dagger and Polydore died of
his wound. Only stricken Acasto,
Chamont, and Serina survived the ruin of
the family whose great tragedy was
caused by excessive scrupulousness.
2694

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
Type of work: Classical myth
Source: Folk tradition
Type of plot: Allegory of grief
Time of plot: The Golden Age
Locale: Thrace and the Underworld
First transcribed: Unknown
Principal characters:
Orpheus, a musician
Eurydice, his wife
Critique:
Although there exists a large body of
literature called Orphic poems because of
the claim that Orpheus composed them,
it is now believed that these
compositions date from the worship of Orpheus
in Thrace. Hie story of Orpheus and
Eurydice is concerned with beauty in
music, as well as an assurance of immor
tality. As in many myths, a love of beauty
and a recognition of the deeply spiritual
exist side by side with cruelty and
barbarism, and it is well to remember that
this story partakes of both civilized virtues
and savage vices.
The Story:
Orpheus, son of Apollo and the muse
Calliope, grew up in Thrace, a land long
noted for the purity and richness of its
divine gift of song. His father presented
him with a lyre and taught him to play
it. So lovely were the songs of Orpheus
that the wild beasts followed him when
he played, and even the trees, the rocks
and the hills gathered near him. It was
said his music softened the composition
of stones.
Orpheus charmed Eurydice with his
music, but to their wedding Hymen
brought no happy omens. His torch
smoked so that tears came to their eyes.
Passionately in love with his wife,
Orpheus became mad with grief when
Eurydice died. Fleeing from a shepherd
who desired her, she had stepped upon
a snake and died from its bite.
Heartbroken, Orpheus wandered over
the hills composing and singing
melancholy songs of memory for the lost
Eurydice. Finally he descended into the
Underworld and made his way past the
sentries by means of his music.
Approaching the throne of Proserpine and
Hades, he sang a lovely song in which
he said love had brought him to the
Underworld. He complained that
Eurydice had been taken from him before
her time and if they would not release
her, he himself would not leave Hades.
Proserpine and Hades could not resist
his pleas. They agreed to set Eurydice
free if Orpheus would promise not to
look upon her until they should safely
reach the Upperworld.
The music of Orpheus was so tender
that even the ghosts shed tears. Tantalus
forgot his search for water; Ixion's wheel
stopped; the vulture stopped feeding on
the giant's liver; the daughters of Danaus
stopped drawing water, and Sisyphus
himself stopped to listen. Tears streamed
from the eyes of the Furies. Eurydice
then appeared, limping. The two walked
the long and dismal passageway to the
Upperworld and Orpheus did not look
back toward Eurydice. At last, forgetting
his vow, he turned, but as they reached
out their arms to embrace Eurydice
disappeared.
Orpheus tried to follow her, but the
stern ferryman refused him passage across
the River Styx. Declining food and
drink, he sat by the River Strymon and
sang his twice-felt grief.
As he sang his melancholy songs, se
sad that oaks moved and tigers grieved
a group of Thracian maidens attempted
to console him, but he repulsed them.
2695

One day, while they were observing the
sacred rites of Bacchus, they began to
stone him. At first the stones fell
without harm when they came within the
sound of the lyre. However, as the
frenzy of the maidens increased, their
shouting drowned out the notes of the
lyre so that it no longer protected
Orpheus. Soon he was covered with blood.
Then the savage women tore his limbs
from his body and hurled his head and
his lyre into the river. Both continued
singing sad songs as they floated
downstream. The fragments of Orpheus' body
were buried at Libethra, and it is said
that nightingales sang more sweetly over
his grave than in any other part of
Greece. Jupiter made his lyre a
constellation of stars in the heavens. Orpheus
himself joined Eurydice in the
Underworld, and there, happy at last, they
wandered through the fields together.
2696

OTHELLO
Principal characters:
Othello, the Moor of Venice
Desdemona, his wife
Iago, a villain
Cassio, Othello's lieutenant
Emilia, Iago's wife
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Early sixteenth century
Locale: Venice and Cyprus
First presented: 1604
Critique:
The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor
of Venice is one of the four great
tragedies written in what literary historians
call Shakespeare's period of despair, a
time when the bard seemed to be
preeminently concerned with the struggle
of evil and good in the human soul.
Alone of the four tragedies — Othello,
Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth —
Othello might be said to be ill-motivated.
Iago, the villain of the piece, is perhaps
the most sadistic and consummately evil
character in any literature. In Othello,
love triumphs over evil and hate, and
the love of one woman for another is
instrumental in bringing the villain to
poetic justice.
The Story:
Iago, an ensign serving under Othello,
Moorish commander of the armed forces
of Venice, was passed over in promotion,
Othello having chosen Cassio to be his
chief of staff. In revenge, Iago and his
follower, Roderigo, aroused from his sleep
Brabantio, senator of Venice, to tell him
that his daughter Desdemona had stolen
away and married Othello. Brabantio,
incensed that his daughter would marry
a Moor, led his serving-men to Othello's
quarters.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Venice had
learned that armed Turkish galleys were
preparing to attack the island of Cyprus
and in this emergency he had summoned
Othello to the senate chambers.
Brabantio and Othello met in the streets,
but postponed any violence in the
national interest. Othello, upon arriving at
the senate, was commanded by the duke
to lead the Venetian forces to Cyprus.
Then Brabantio told the duke that
Othello had beguiled his daughter into
marriage without her father's consent.
When Brabantio asked the duke for
redress, Othello vigorously defended his
honor and reputation, and he was
seconded by Desdemona, who appeared
during the proceedings. Othello, clear
of all suspicion, prepared to sail for
Cyprus immediately. For the moment, he
placed Desdemona in the care of Iago,
with Iago's wife, Emilia, to be attendant
upon her during the voyage to Cyprus.
A great storm destroyed the Turkish
fleet and scattered the Venetians. One
by one the ships under Othello's
command put into Cyprus until all were
safely ashore and Othello and
Desdemona were once again united. Still
vowing revenge, Iago told Roderigo that
Desdemona was in love with Cassio.
Roderigo, himself in love -with
Desdemona, was promised all of his desires by
Iago if he would engage Cassio, who did
not know him, in a personal brawl while
Cassio was officer of the guard.
Othello declared the night dedicated
to celebrating the destruction of the
enemy, but he cautioned Cassio to keep
a careful watch on Venetian troops in
the city. Iago talked Cassio into
drinking too much, so that when the
lieutenant was provoked later by Roderigo, Cas-
2697

sio lost control of himself and engaged
Roderigo. Cries of riot and mutiny spread
through the streets. Othello, aroused by
the commotion, demoted Cassio for
permitting a fight to start. Cassio, his
reputation all but ruined, welcomed Iago's
promise to secure Desdemona's good-will
and through her have Othello restore
Cassio's rank.
Cassio impatiently importuned lago
to arrange a meeting between him and
Desdemona. While Cassio and
Desdemona were talking, lago brought Othello
into view of the pair, and spoke vague
innuendoes to his commander.
Afterward lago would, from time to time, ask
Suestions of Othello in such manner
tiat he led Othello to believe that there
may have been some intimacy between
Cassio and Desdemona before
Desdemona had married him. These seeds of
jealousy having been sown, Othello
began to doubt the honesty of his wife.
When Othello complained to
Desdemona of a headache, she offered to bind
his head with the handkerchief which
had been Othello's first gift to her. She
dropped the handkerchief, inadvertendy,
and Emilia picked it up. lago, seeing an
opportunity to further his scheme, took
the handkerchief from his wife and hid
it later in Cassio's room. When Othello
asked lago for proof that Desdemona was
untrue to him, threatening his life if he
could not produce any evidence, lago
said that he had slept in Cassio's room
and had heard Cassio speak sweet words
in his sleep to Desdemona. He reminded
Othello of the handkerchief and said
that he had seen Cassio wipe his beard
that day with the very handkerchief.
Othello, completely overcome by passion,
vowed revenge. He ordered lago to kill
Cassio, and he appointed the ensign his
new lieutenant.
Othello asked Desdemona to account
for the loss of the handkerchief, but she
was unable to explain its disappearance.
She was mystified by Othello's shortness
of speech, and his dark moods.
lago continued to work his treachery
on Othello to the extent that the Moor
fell into fits resembling epilepsy. He
goaded Othello by every possible means
into mad rages of jealousy. In the
presence of an envoy from Venice, Othello
struck Desdemona, to the consternation
of all except lago. Emilia swore to the
honesty of her mistress, but Othello, in
his madness, could no longer believe
anything good of Desdemona, and he reviled
and insulted her with harsh words.
One night Othello ordered
Desdemona to dismiss her attendant and to go
to bed immediately. That same night
lago persuaded Roderigo to waylay
Cassio. When Roderigo was wounded by
Cassio, lago, who had been standing
nearby, stabbed Cassio. In the scuffle
lago stabbed Roderigo to death as well,
so as to be rid of his dupe. Then a
strumpet friend of Cassio came upon the
scene of the killing and revealed to the
assembled crowd her relationship with
Cassio. Although Cassio was not dead,
lago hoped to use this woman to defame
Cassio beyond all hope of regaining his
former reputation. Pretending
friendship, he assisted the wounded Cassio to
return to Othello's house. They were
accompanied by Venetian noblemen who
had gathered after the fight.
Othello, meanwhile, entered his wife't
bedchamber and smothered her, after
telling her, mistakenly, that Cassio had
confessed his love for her and had been
killed. Then Emilia entered the
bedchamber and reported that Roderigo had
been killed, but not Cassio. This
information made doubly bitter for Othello
his murder of his wife. Othello told
Emilia that he had learned of
Desdemona's guilt from lago. Emilia could
not believe that lago had made such
charges.
When lago and other Venetians
arrived at Othello's house, Emilia asked
lago to refute Othello's statement. Then
the great wickedness of lago came to
light and Othello learned how the
handkerchief had come into Cassio's
possession. When Emilia gave further proof
of her husband's villainy, lago stabbed
her. Othello lunged at lago and managed
2698

to wound him before the Venetian
gentlemen could seize the Moor. Emilia
died, still protesting the innocence of
Desdemona. Mad with grief, Othello
plunged a dagger into his own heart.
The Venetian envoy promised that Iago
would be tortured to death at the hands
of the governor-general of Cvpp'*
2699

THE OTHER ONE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette (1873-1954)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: Franche-Comt£ and Paris
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Farou, a playwright
Fanny, his wife
Jane, their secretary-companion and Farou's mistress
Jean Farou, Farou's son by a former mistress
Critique:
The Other One is one of Colette's last
major novels. Her sensibility having
widened by this stage to an awareness of
human motivation beyond the love
relationship, her incisive and ironic analysis of
the loving wife who prefers keeping the
former mistress of her beloved and
polygamous husband to facing loneliness
without her, is one of the most poignant
examples of the major theme in Colette's
writing: the portrayal of a woman's ruling
passion. Colette's characters always take
things in their stride—even to the edge of
heartbreak. This novel is an excellent
example of her comprehension of the
forces which mold individual lives and
control their relationships to other people.
The Story:
Fanny's and Jane's ways of waiting for
a letter from Farou, who was in Paris,
made explicit the contrast between them.
The beautiful, heavy Fanny, whose dark
Mediterranean beauty had long ago won
Farou's devotion, slept on the sofa, while
Jane, a thin, nervous, ash-blond girl of
nearly thirty, stood weeping quietly on
the veranda. Fanny's stepson Jean awoke
her when the letter arrived. Farou wrote
enthusiastically about a young lady who
was obviously his new mistress. Fanny
was amazed at Jane's violent reaction to
this news and wondered why, in spite of
her companion's affection and indispensa-
bility, she still did not regard Jane as a
close friend.
Their lives quickened with Farou's
return. Jane was happy and busy taking
dictation as Farou worked on his play.
To Fanny, Farou's roaring voice and the
murmur of the bees sounded in the heat
like the office of the Mass. Farou's
immense presence completely absorbed
them. When Fanny was alone with him,
it was clear that she both depended upon
and supported him. He was her one love,
and in this knowledge she was very
proud.
Jean and Farou, however, were
uneasy together. Jean had developed an
unhappy passion for Jane and watched her
and Farou very closely. When Jane went
for a walk he would climb into the lime
tree to see where she would go.
Farou's establishment dated from the
time before his plays became established
successes. In that lean period Jean had
contracted typhus, Farou's last play had
failed, and his secretary had left. At that
psychological moment Jane arrived. She
nursed Jean, she worked for Farou, and
with Fanny she soon established an easy
relationship of affection and respect.
When she could have left, Jane begged
to stay, and the Farous were glad to keep
her on as a secretary for Farou and a
companion for Fanny.
Soon afterward they left for their first
summer in the Franche-Comte*. They
were now spending their second summer
in the country. During the hot days
THE OTHER ONE by Colette. Translated by Roger Senhouse. By permission of the publishers, Farrar,
Straus & Cudahy, Inc. Copyright, I960, by Martin Seeker & Warburg, Ltd.
2700

Fanny, whose intelligence consisted of
emotional awareness more than of
intellectuality, found herself unable to
consider Jean and his father objectively. The
household revolved around Farou and
they all rejoiced when he sold a play.
Their practical dependence on Jane
continued. This awareness increased Jean's
restlessness, and at last he won Farou's
unwilling permission to leave France for
South America after the summer.
Once, from the balcony, Jean and
Fanny heard Jane and Farou talking in
the garden. Jean leaped to the wall to
watch them. Fanny joined him. Both
were suddenly aware of the intimacy of
Jane's relationship with Farou. But as
soon as Farou returned to the balcony
Fanny felt only an unaltered devotion
toward him. She subsequently felt
vulnerable, and indignant that she should
herself be involved in an affair of Farou's.
This realization, however, did not
significantly alter her affection for Jane.
Fanny slept little that night. At dawn
she heard Jane also moving about. Fanny
realized that she was disturbed by the
fact that Jane suffered with her over
Farou, and that no longer did she alone,
as it were, possess his unfaithfulness. The
sight of Farou sleeping intensified her
emotions of hurt and tenderness, and
emphasized her need for self-control.
One morning Fanny found Jean lying
on the path leading from the village
where she had been to shop. He had
fainted from the heat and from his agony
over Jane and Farou's relationship. He
was scornful of the telegram Fanny was
bringing, a message which summoned
Farou to Paris, and he mocked its
theatricality. Farou, meeting them, called Jane
to arrange their return to Paris. Fanny
became convinced that her moral duty
was to feel wounded, but instead she was
afraid of possible disruption in their lives.
Jean was angered by her obvious lack of
pride and emotion.
Surprisingly, Fanny was regretful
when they left the house the next day.
Farou teased Jane, who immediately told
him to help Fanny. Suddenly, Fanny
remembered how often Jane had done that.
In the train Jane tried to settle Fannv to
reading or sleeping, but Fanny declared
that she was managing very well. Then
she was surprised to find what she had
said was true.
In Paris, Fanny entertained the friends
that gathered around toward the end of
rehearsals for Farou's new play. Farou
was harsh and demanding with Jane.
Fanny scolded him and defended Jane-
terrified that their relationship would
somehow be exposed. The women dined
together after Farou had left for the
theater. When Jean found them amicably
reading, he taunted Jane for her endless
companionship with Fanny, a
relationship he despised because he thought it
hypocritical.
Farou's nervousness and Fanny's
jealousy and feeling of responsibility
increased as the confusions of the rehearsals
continued. For the first time, as she
returned from her dressmaker, Fanny saw
Farou kiss Jane. She realized then that
she would have to face the fear of
desertion within her own home, which
previously had been inviolate. Hoping that
they had not seen her, Fanny pretended
to be ill. Jane and Farou were most
solicitous, but lean, because of his own
obsession with Jane, was anxious only to
learn what exactly had upset Fanny.
When Farou returned home exhausted
from the rehearsal, Fanny pretended to
be asleep instead of soothing him; her
loss in that situation was at least as great
as his.
By the time of the dress rehearsal
Fanny was utterly exhausted, and Jane
and Jean were tense. Farou fast
approached the boredom that he always
suffered when a new play was finally out of
his hands. At the rehearsal critics
pronounced the play strong, direct, and
dynamic. Fanny wonderea whether Farou's
reputation, if he had been small and wiry
instead of being massive and having the
head of a pagan god, would have been
for subtlety and insight instead of force
and power.
On the way home Fanny feared that
2701

the relaxation after weeks of strain might
precipitate a crisis in the taxi. She dreaded
this happening before she could have
time to prepare herself for it, or while
she was not protected by the familiarities
of her home.
The next day Fanny reluctandy told
Jane that she knew that Farou was her
lover. She was discountenanced by Jane,
who saw the matter as a joint problem.
They kept reasonably calm while Jane
vacillated between appeals of friendship
mixed with bitter explanations that she
no longer was Farou s mistress and
reproaches because she had helped to
create the situation by disregarding Farou's
infidelities in the past. Farou interrupted
them and, discovering the situation,
wondered why Fanny had spoken up at all.
He reminded her that it was she who had
always commanded his greatest passion
and devotion. Ironically, this fact gave
him confidence that Fanny would be able
to reorder their lives satisfactorily.
During the rest of that evening Fanny
and Jane were together. As Jane prepared
to leave, Fanny realized that she could
not bear to be so alone; she would be
abandoned to Farou's moods, absences,
and frequent inarticulateness. Gently,
and with few words, it was arranged that
Jane should stay and that in this solution
would lie a measure of security for them
all.
2702

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot. Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: London
First published: 1864-1866
Principal characters:
Young John Harmon, alias Handfbrd, alias Rokesmith, a rich nan s son
Mr. Boffin, Old John Harmon's employee and heir
Bella Wilfer, loved by young Harmon
Wegg, a scheming peddler
Mr. Venus, Wegg s compatriot
Lightwood, a lawyer hired by Mr. Boffin
Critique:
One of Dickens' longest novels, Our
Mutual Friend was written during the
last years of his life, when his creative
powers were on the wane. The numerous
subplots, the excessive number of
coincidences, the unbelievable trick of a
disguise holding good for years, the labored
humor—all are faults which the younger
Dickens would have made more plausible
in his work before it was published.
Interesting to some readers is the
sympathetic portrait of a Jew, Riah, whose
character is obviously an atonement for
the prejudices aroused by the villainy of
Fagin in Oliver Twist. The most powerful
writing in Our Mutual Friend is
that which delineates scenes along the
Thames, the river serving as a background
for scenes in which bodies are found
floating in the river and murders are
committed. It is the mysterious Thames of
nighttime that Dickens here described,
not the placid flowing Thames of sunny
days and his happier novels.
The Story:
Young John Harmon, returning to
England to marry Bella Wilfer, was
supposedly murdered soon after he left the
ship, and a body discovered later was
identified as his. Actually, Harmon had
not died, but, fearing for his life, he
assumed first one disguise, as Handford, and
then another as John Rokesmith.
Under the latter disguise Harmon went
to work as secretary to Mr. Boffin, an
employee who had inherited all of the elder
Harmon's wealth, under the strange terms
of the dead man's will, after young John
Harmon had been pronounced dead.
Living with the Boffins was Bella Wilfer, the
young woman whom Harmon was to have
married before he was reported dead. Mr.
Boffin, who was illiterate, had also
another employee, a street peddler named
Wegg, who read to Mr. Boffin such books
as the latter saw fit.
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin were not at all easy
in their new position of wealth. They botn
felt that the son and disinherited daughter
of old Harmon should have enjoyed the
fortune which had come to them. So
strongly did the old couple feel in this
matter that they tried to find a little
orphan whom they could raise, in hopes
that the boy would be like little John
Harmon as they remembered him. They
had also taken in Bella Wilfer because she
had been engaged to young Harmon, for
they wished to give her the advantages she
would have had as John Harmon's wife.
Bella Wilfer was not, however, a very
likeable young woman. Mercenary in hei
ways, she repelled Rokesmith's love and
declared that her looks and her position
with the Boffins made her eligible for a
much finer match than a mere secretary
to a rich man. Mr. Boffin agreed with her,
and after a bitter scene, in which he
charged Rokesmith with impudence, he
discharged his secretary. Bella changed
her attitude, however, when she saw how
money and wealth had changed the easy-
2703

going Mr. Boffin into a miserly, avaricious
old curmudgeon. She refused to stay
any longer with the Boffins and returned
to the penurious life of her father's
home.
Meanwhile Mr. Boffin was having
troubles with Wegg, the man who read to
him. Mrs. Boffin had established Wegg in
a comfortable house in which the Boffins
and old Harmon had lived. Inspired by
some books about misers which he had
been reading to the illiterate Mr. Boffin,
Wegg searched diligently for possible
items of value that old Harmon might
have secreted in his house. While
searching, Wegg found a will dated later than
that which had given the fortune to Mr.
Boffin. The later will provided that only
a small portion of the money was to go to
Mr. Boffin and that the rest was to ba
given to the Crown.
Wegg, with the assistance of a friendly
taxidermist named Venus, plotted to
blackmail Mr. Boffin. They showed him
the will, but without allowing him to
handle it, and then told him that if he
would divide the fortune into three equal
parts, one for each of them, they would
not make known the existence of the later
will. Mr. Boffin was forced to agree.
In the meantime Mr. Boffin had offered
a reward to anyone giving information
about the murderer of young Harmon and
had placed the matter in the hands of
Mortimer Lightwood, a lawyer. Light-
wood's only clue was Handford, whom he
had seen when the body was dragged from
the Thames and identified as young
Harmon's. For a time Lightwood thought that
the murderer might have been a notorious
waterside character suspected of killing
people, robbing them, and then turning in
the bodies to collect rewards for finding the
corpses in the river. But Harmon himself,
disguised as Rokesmith, secured an
affidavit from the informer against the
waterman, the affidavit stating that the
informant had given false information in
order to revenge himself on the waterman
for an insult.
After Bella Wilfer returned to her
father's home, much chastened upon
observing the change his fortune had made
in Mr. Boffin, she felt that she now could
marry only a man she loved, rather than
any man who could provide her with a
fortune. When Rokesmith came to see her,
apparently penniless, she accepted his suit.
Their marriage proved a happy one, for
Rokesmith found a job which kept them
in modest comfort. Both were happy when
their child was born.
One day Lightwood met Rokesmith
and Bella on the street and immediately
identified Rokesmith as Handford, who
had been mysteriously present at the
identification of Harmon's body. That evening
the police came to arrest Rokesmith, who
was then forced to admit his real identity
as young Harmon. As it turned out, the
corpse identified as Harmon's had really
been that of his would-be murderer, who
had been killed by thieves. The mistake
had occurred because the would-be
murderer had put on Harmon's clothes after
drugging him.
Harmon had to admit his real identity
to his wife, and more besides. He had
been struck by Bella's mercenary attitude
and had taken the Boffins into his
confidence, for Mrs. Boffin had early guessed
who he really was. Mr. Boffin had only
pretended to become a miser and to hate
Rokesmith, for the single purpose of
showing Bella the kind of person she might
easily become if she continued in her
mercenary views. The success of their
scheme was proved by her return to her
father's home and her subsequent
marriage to Rokesmith, whom she had
believed to be a poor secretary.
The Boffins, anxious for young Harmon
to have the bulk of his father's fortune,
had turned over the estate to him; Bella
was really the rich woman she had at one
time wished to be.
There was still the matter of Wegg and
Venus, the two blackmailers who were in
possession of old Harmon's later will,
which gave the fortune to the Crown.
This situation was easily settled. In return
for aid in winning a girl he loved, Venus
turned evidence for Mr. Boffin and young
Harmon. His aid was actually not neces-
2704

sary, for Mr. Boffin himself was in
possession of an even later will, which he had
kept secret only because of its insulting
language in speaking of young Harmon
and his sister. The later will also gave the
fortune to Mr. Boffin and his wife, but
they once again gave the estate to young
Harmon and his family. As for Wegg, a
servant took him out of the house and
dropped him into a wagon loaded with
garbage.
2705

OUR TOWN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thornton Wilder (1897- )
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: 1901-1913
Locale: New Hampshire
First presented: 1938
Principal characters:
Dr. Gibbs, a physician
Mrs. Gibbs, his wife
George, and
Rebecca, their children
Mr. Webb, a newspaper editor
Mrs. Webb, his wife
Emily, and
Wally, their children
Simon Sttmson, director of the choir
Critique:
This play won the Pulitzer Prize in
1938. Portraying typical American
smalltown life, the play employs a minimum
of scenery. A stage manager remains
informally on the stage throughout the
play and helps to explain much of the
action. The tender and simple love
story of George Gibbs and Emily Webb
is the thread upon which the plot is
strung. Our Town is an exceptionally
fresh retelling of a timeless, nostalgic
story.
The Story:
Early one morning in 1901 Dr. Gibbs
returned to his home in Grover's Corners,
New Hampshire. He had just been
across the tracks to Polish Town to
deliver Mrs. Goruslowski's twins. On the
street he met Joe Crowell, the morning
paper boy, and Howie Newsome, the
milkman. The day's work was
beginning in Grover's Corners.
Mrs. Gibbs had breakfast ready when
her husband arrived, and she called the
children, George and Rebecca, to the
table. After breakfast the children left
for school in the company of the Webb
children, Wally and Emily, who lived
across the way.
After the children had gone, Mrs.
Gibbs stepped out to feed her chickens.
Seeing Mrs. Webb stringing beans in
her back yard, she crossed over to talk
with her. Mrs. Gibbs had been offered
three hundred and fifty dollars for some
antique furniture; she would sell the
furniture, she had decided, if she could
get Dr. Gibbs to take a vacation with
her. But Dr. Gibbs had no wish to take
a vacation; if he could visit the Civil
War battlegrounds every other year, be
was satisfied.
The warm day passed, and the
children began to come home from
school. Emily Webb walked home alone
pretending sne was a great lady. George
Gibbs, on his way to play baseball,
stopped to talk to Emily and told her how
much he admired her success at school.
He could not, he insisted, imagine how
anyone could spend so much time over
homework as she did. Flattered, Emily
promised to help George with his algebra.
He said that ne did not really need
school work, because he was going to
be a farmer as soon as he graduated from
high school.
When George had gone, Emily ran
to her mother and asked if she were
pretty enough to make boys notice her.
Grudgingly, her mother admitted that
OUR TOWN by Thornton Wilder. By permission of the author and the publishers, Coward-McCann. Inc.
Cupyfight, 1938. by Coward-MoCana. Inc.
2706

she was, but Mrs. Webb tried to turn
Emily's mind to other subjects.
That evening, while Mrs. Webb and
Mrs. Gibbs were at choir practice, George
and Emily sat upstairs studying. Their
windows faced each other, and George
called to Emily for some advice on
his algebra. Emily helped him, but she
was more interested in the moonlight.
When she called George's attention to
the beautiful night, he seemed only
mildly interested.
The ladies coming home from choir
practice gossiped about their leader,
Simon Stimson. He drank most of the
time, and for some reason he could not
adjust himself to small-town life. The
ladies wondered how it would all end.
Mr. Webb also wondered. He was the
editor of the local paper; and, as he
came home, he met Simon roaming the
deserted streets. When Mr. Webb reached
his home, he found Emily still gazing
out of her window at the moon—and
dreaming.
At the end of his junior year in high
school George was elected president of
his class, and Emily was elected secretary-
treasurer. When George walked home
with Emily after the election, she seemed
so cold and indifferent that George asked
for an explanation. She told him that
all the girls thought him conceited and
stuck-up because he cared more for
baseball than he did for his friends. She
expected men to be perfect, like her father
and his.
George said that men could not be
perfect, but that women could—like
Emily. Then Emily began to cry,
insisting that she was far from perfect.
George offered to buy her a soda. As
they drank their sodas, they found that
they really had liked each other for a
long time. George said he thought he
would not go away to agricultural school,
after all. When he graduated from high
school, he would start right in working
on the farm.
After a time Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs
learned that George wanted to many
Emily as soon as he left high school
At first it was a shock to them, for they
could not imagine that George was
anything but a child. They wondered how
he could provide for a wife; whether
Emily could take care of a house. Then
Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs remembered then
own first years of married life. They
had had troubles, but now they felt that
the troubles had been overshadowed by
their joys. They decided that George
could marry Emily if he wished.
On the morning of his wedding day
George dropped in on Mr. and Mrs.
Webb, and Mrs. Webb left the men
alone so that her husband could advise
George. But all that Mr. Webb had to
say was that no one could advise anyone
else on matters as personal as marriage.
When George had gone, Emily came
down to her last breakfast in her parents'
home. Both she and Mrs. Webb cried.
Mrs. Webb had meant to give her
daughter some advice on marriage, but she
was unable to bring herself to it.
At the church, just before the
ceremony, both Emily and George felt as if
they were making a mistake; they did
not want to get married. By the time
the music started, however, both of them
were calm. The wedding ceremony was
soon over. And Grover's Corners lost
one of its best baseball players.
Nine years passed; it was the summer
of 1913. Up in the graveyard above the
town the dead lay, resting from the
cares of their lives on earth. Now there
was a new grave; Emily had died in
childbirth and George was left alone with
his four-year-old son.
It was raining as the funeral
procession wound its way up the hill to the
new grave. Then Emily appeared shyly
before the other dead. Solemnly they
welcomed her to her rest. But she did
not want to rest; she wanted to live over
again the joys of her life. It was possible
to do so, but the others warned hei
against trying to relive a day in hei
mortal life.
Emily chose to live over her twelfth
2707

birthday. At first it was exciting to be
young again, but the excitement wore
of! quickly. The day held no joy, now
that Emily knew what was in store for
the future. It was unbearably painful
to realize how unaware she nad been
of the meaning and wonder of life while
she was alive. Simon Srimson, a suicide,
told her that life was like that, a time
of ignorance and blindness and folly. He
was still bitter in death.
Emily returned to her resting place.
When night had fallen, George
approached full of grief and threw himself
on Emily's grave. She felt pity for
him and for all the rest of the living.
For now she knew how litde they really
understood of the wonderful gift that is
life itself.
2708

OUR VILLAGE
Type of work: Tales and sketches
Author: Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855)
Type of plot: Village chronicle
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Rural England
First published: 1824-1832
Principal characters:
Miss Mitford, the author
Lizzy, favorite child of the village
Mayflower, a greyhound
Critique:
Whimsical and pleasing are these little
sketches of life in rural England in the
early part of the nineteenth century. They
were first published individually and later
collected under the title, Our Village, In
them there is no plot, little action. There
is, instead, only the evidence of a true
appreciation of nature and of the author's
simple but happy life. The laughter of
the children at play, the prancing of the
dogs, and the beauty of the violets were
to her the real values in life, and in her
quiet way she makes them seem important
to us.
The Story:
To Miss Mitford, life in a rural English
village was to be desired above any other.
To know intimately one's neighbors and
to watch them live out their daily lives
were to her matters of absorbing interest.
Each house, whether fine mansion or
humble cottage, had its own story; and the
inhabitants, elegant or simple, provided a
drama as moving as any found on the
stage.
There was the retired public official
who constantly arranged town festivals
because his leisure hung so heavily on his
hands; the shoemaker whose toil from
morning till night contrasted so sharply
with the idleness of his neighbor. There
was the partly finished house which was
the plaything of a well-to-do man who
lived a mile or so away. He was too wise
to tinker with his own fine home
continually, and so he expended his architectural
energies on this village house by
constantly changing and remodeling it.
There was also Lizzy, the darling of the
village. She was only three years old, but
she reigned over all like a queen. She
wheedled candy from the shopkeepers,
their toys from the other children, and
managed all the adults around her, includ
ing her parents and teacher. Her great
asset was her love for everyone and her
sure knowledge that everyone must love
her in return. She was Miss Mitford's
constant companion on her walks through the
village and the countryside. These two
had another friend. She was Mayflower,
a greyhound of wonderful disposition.
The child and the dog were a delight to
see as they romped together on the
common or along the country roads.
Miss Mitford described and her friends
knew the village and the countryside
during each season of the year. In January
the snow made soft, blurry shapes, pure
and white. There was a lovely quietness
everywhere, even Mayflower's big pads
making no noise. But, as they climbed the
hill, the shouting of children broke the
stillness. Some boys had made a slide and
were flying down it with raucous shouts.
The most mischievous of the lot was Jack
Rapley, for whom the villagers predicted
a sad end. He was Miss Mitford's favorite,
however, for he was the best-natured boy
of the town.
In March the first primroses bloomed
and Miss Mitford and Mayflower set out
for a brisk walk. They passed the house of
the richest man in the community, a good
man who enjoyed his prosperity and
2709

shared it with the townfolk. They passed,
too, the poorest house in those parts, but
one filled with the most love and the
happiest children—fourteen of them of all
shapes and ages. They passed also Miss
Mitford's old home, a magnificent one lost
through her father's gambling. Once her
heart had been heavy at leaving that place,
but now her new roots were so firmly
established that she could visit the old house
without heartache.
On another day she went hunting
violets, but this time she must go alone,
for violets had been her mother's favorite
flower and she wanted to think of her
beloved mother, now dead, in serenity and
quiet. She felt sad when she walked past
the parish workhouse and saw the old men
working in gloomy silence. She saw bean
planters stooping long hours in backbreak-
ing labor. All in all, it was at first a dreary
excursion. But her heart was joyful when
she finally came upon the violets, whole
fields of them, and her heart filled with
gratitude for the many blessings she
enjoyed.
In April, Mayflower acquired two
playmates, puppies who accompanied her and
Miss Mitford on their walks. The puppies
tried to chase a baby lamb, but the animal
lay as if dead until Miss Mitford had
cornered the dogs. Then it sprang up and
ran off to its mother, leaving the pups
yapping and jumping with
disappointment. Spring was on the way, and the
animals were as frisky as the children who
ran and played on the common.
On another day one of the pups tackled
a gander, and the dog came out of the fray
wiser but not victorious. Even
Mayflower, usually pompous and dignified
when with the other dogs, engaged a
hedgehog in play, tossing it and teasing it
as a cat would a mouse.
In May flowers bloomed in profusion
everywhere, filling the air with a
wonderful fragrance. On all the farms were
wobbly-legged calves and lambs. Farmers
toiled in the fields from morning till night,
and the brooks ran full.
Miss Mitford took Lizzy and
Mayflower out to the country to see a cowslip-
ball. Cuckoos screamed over them as they
gathered the flowers. Lizzy ruined most of
hers in her eagerness to help, and several
times Mayflower upset the baskets of
blossoms. After the balls were made and the
three had started for the village, a sudden
shower sent them scurrying homeward.
Thoroughly soaked, they decided the
day's pleasure was worth the wetting. A
blazing fire awaiting them at home
brought a perfect day to a close.
Each season seemed more lovely than
the last. One June day Miss Mitford and
a friend visited a mansion fallen into
disrepair. Debt had forced the original
owners to sell, and the new owner had found
the house too costly to keep up. Vines and
other foliage had penetrated the crevices
and hurried the collapse of the walls. It
seemed a convincing example of the
power of nature over man. Bees sang in
the lime trees, and the odor of
honeysuckle and musk roses was everywhere.
The loveliness caused the author to
compose a sonnet, while her friend sketched
the sad beauty of the place with a pencil.
The rest of the summer was cloudy
and cold, but in September the sun shone
in a cloudless sky. Mayflower rescued a
stray dog from his tormentors and forced
Miss Mitford to adopt him. He was a part
spaniel named Dash, so ugly th^t he
seemed to try to atone for his looks by lav«
ishing love and affection on his new
mistress. He was a fine retriever and on their
walks found all sorts of treasures which he
proudly presented to her. Once they
passed the house of Master and Dame
Weston. Dame Weston had had her
husband in court for beating her, but the true
facts were thai she was the one who hit
her husband often and whined at him
constantly. Shortly after this walk poor
Dash died of his sudden transition from
starvation to overfeeding. So attached was
Miss Mitford to Dash that she soon named
another dog after him.
In the fall there was nut-gathering
under the beauty of the brilliant foliage of
the whole countryside. Then the leaves
2710

were gone. The crisp, cold days, however,
were so invigorating that one could not
yearn for the lost beauty of autumn. At
last the cycle of the seasons was complete.
Soon the snow would fall again.
2711

THE OVERCOAT
Type of work: Story
Author: Nikolai V. Gogol (1809-1852)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: St. Petersburg, Russia
first published: 1842
Principal characters:
Akakii Akakiievich Bashmachktn, a government clerk
Petrovich, a tailor
A Cehtain Important Personage, a bureaucrat
Critique:
'We all," said Dostoevski, "came out
of 'The Overcoat.'" His pithy statement
is revealing in its implications, for Gogol,
rather than Pushkin, is the true literary
father of nineteenth-century Russian
realism. Having worked for a short time
as a civil servant, Gogol had no fondness
for bureaucratic officialdom, and "The
Overcoat" is as much a criticism of the
system as his more pointed satires against
petty public officials in Dead Souls and
The Inspector General, The wretched,
ill-paid government clerk in this long
tale is Gogol's economic man, and the
story of unfortunate Akakii Akakiievich
shows the writer's ability to develop a
realistic theme without bitterness, to
achieve a note of pathos that never lapses
into sentimentality. Even without
Dostoevski's endorsement, it would still stand
as one of the most influential shorter
works in the development of Russian
fiction.
The Story:
In one of the bureaus of the
government there was a clerk named Akakii
Akakiievich Bashmachkin. He was a
short, pockmarked man with dim,
watery eyes and reddish hair beginning to
show spots of baldness. His grade in the
service was that of perpetual titular
councilor, a resounding title for his
humble clerkship.
He had been in the bureau for so
many years that no one remembered
when he had entered it or who had
appointed him to the post. Directors and
othet officials came and went, but Akakii
Akakiievich was always to be seen in
the same place, in the same position,
doing the same work, which was the
copying of documents. No one ever treated
him with respect. His superiors regarded
him with disdain. His fellow clerks
made him the butt of their rude jokes and
horseplay.
Akakii Akakiievich lived only for his
work, without thought for pleasure or
his dress. His frock coat was no longer
the prescribed green but a faded rusty
color. Usually it had sticking to it wisps
of hay or thread or bits of litter
someone had thrown into the street as he was
passing by, for he walked to and from
work in complete oblivion of his
surroundings. Reaching home, he would
gulp his cabbage soup and perhaps a bit
of beef, in a hurry to begin transcribing
papers he had brought with him from
the office. His labors finished, he would
go to bed. Such was the life of Akakii
Akakiicx ich, satisfied with his pittance of
four hundred roubles a year.
But even clerks on four hundred a
year must protect themselves against the
harsh cold of northern winters. Akakii
Akakiievich owned an overcoat so old
and threadbare that over the back and
shoulders one could see through the
material to the torn lining beneath. At last
he decided to take it to Petrovich, a tailor
THE OVERCOAT by Nikolai V. Gogol, from THE OVERCOAT, AND OTHER STORIES. Trans-
lated by Constance Garnett. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1923, by
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed, 1950, by David Garnett.
2712

who did a large business repairing the
garments of petty bureaucrats. Petrovich
shook his head over the worn overcoat
and announced that it was beyond
mending, fit only for footcloths. For one
hundred and fifty roubles, he said, he would
make Akakii Akakiievich a new
overcoat, but he would not touch the old
one.
When he left the tailor's shop, the
clerk was in a sad predicament. He had
no money for an overcoat and little
prospect of raising so large a sum. Walking
blindly down the street, he failed to
notice the sooty chimney sweep who jostled
him, blacking one shoulder, or the lime
that fell on him from a building under
construction. The next Sunday he went
to see Petrovich again and begged the
tailor to mend his old garment. The
tailor surlily refused. Then Akakii
Akakiievich realized that he must yield to the
inevitable. He knew that Petrovich
would do the work for eighty roubles.
Half of that amount he could pay with
money he had saved, one kopeck at a
time, over a period of years. Perhaps in
another year he could put aside a like
amount by doing without tea and candles
at night and by walking as carefully as
possible to save his shoe leather. He
began that very day to go without the small
comforts he had previously allowed
himself.
In the next year Akakii Akakiievich
had some unexpected luck when he
received a holiday bonus of sixty roubles
instead of the expected forty which he
had already budgeted for other
necessities. With the extra twenty roubles and
his meager savings he and Petrovich
bought the cloth for the new overcoat,
good, durable stuff with calico for the
lining and catskin for the collar. After
some haggling it was decided that
Petrovich was to get twelve roubles for his
labor.
At last the overcoat was finished.
Petrovich delivered it early one morning,
and opportunely, for the season of hard
frosts had already begun. Akakii
Akakiievich wore the garment triumphantly
to work. Hearing of his new finery, the
other clerks ran into the vestibule to
inspect it. Some suggested that the owner
ought to give a party to celebrate the
event. Akakii Akakiievich hesitated but
was saved from embarrassment when a
minor official invited the clerks,
including Akakii, to drink tea with him that
evening.
Wrapped in his warm coat, Akakii
Akakiievich started off to the party. It
had been years since he had walked out
at night and he enjoyed the novelty of
seeing the strollers on the streets and
looking into lighted shop windows.
The hour was past midnight when he
left the party; the streets were deserted.
His way took him into a desolate square,
with only the flickering light of a police
sentry box visible in the distance.
Suddenly two strangers confronted him and
with threats of violence snatched off his
overcoat. When he came to himself, in
the snowbank where they had kicked
him, the clerk ran to the policeman's box
to denounce the thieves. The policeman
merely told him to report the theft to
the district inspector the next morning.
Almost out of his mind with worry,
Akakii Akakiievich ran all the way home.
His landlady advised him not to go to
the police but to lay the matter before a
justice of the peace whom she knew.
That official gave him little satisfaction.
The next day his fellow clerks took up
a collection for him, but the amount was
so small that they decided to give him
advice instead. They told him to go to a
certain important personage who would
speed up the efforts of the police. Finally
Akakii Akakiievich secured an interview,
but the very important person was so
outraged by the clerk's unimportance that
he never gave the caller an opportunity
to explain his errand. Akakii Akakiievich
walked sadly home through a blizzard
which gave him a quinsy and put him
to bed. After several days of delirium,
in which he babbled about his lost
overcoat and a certain important person, he
died. A few days later another clerk sat
in his place and did the same work at
2713

the bureau.
Before long rumors began to spread
through the city that a dead government
clerk seeking a stolen overcoat had been
seen near Kalinkin Bridge. One night a
clerk from the bureau saw him and
almost died of fright. After Akakii
Akakiievich began stripping overcoats from pass-
ersby, the police were ordered to capture
the dead man. Once the police came near
arresting him, but the ghost vanished so
miraculously that thereafter the police
were afraid to lay hands on any
malefactors, living or dead.
One night, after a sociable evening, a
certain important personage was on his
way to visit a lady friend about whom
his wife knew nothing. As he relaxed
comfortably in his sleigh he felt a firm
grip on his collar. Turning, he found
himself eye to eye with a wan Akakii
Akakiievich. In his fright he threw off
his overcoat and ordered his coachman to
drive him home at once. The ghost of
Akakii Akakiievich must have liked the
important person's warm greatcoat. From
that time on he never molested passersby
or snatched away their overcoats again.
2714

THE OX-BOW INCIDENT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1909-
Type of plot: Regional realism
Time of plot: 1885
Locale: Nevada
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Gil Carter, a ranch hand
Croft, his friend
Canby, a saloon keeper
Tetley, a rancher
Gerald, his son
Davies, an old storekeeper
Martin, a young rancher
Critique:
The Ox-Bow Incident begins as a
Western horse-opera with all the stage
settings and characters of a cowboy
thriller, but it ends as a saga of human
misery. The novel has the action and
the pace of a classic drama. The mob
assumes the nature of a Greek chorus,
now on one side, now on the other.
The story rises toward an inevitable
climax and as it does so it states a harsh
truth forcibly—the law of survival is
linked to an incredible curse of relentless
cruelty. Clark has made the Western
thriller a novel of art.
The Story:
Gil Carter, a cow puncher, and his
friend Croft rode into the little frontier
town of Bridger's Wells. At Canby's
saloon they reined in their horses. Can-
by was alone at the bar, and he served
Gil and Croft with silent glumness.
Canby told them that Rose Mapen, the
girl Gil sought, had gone to Frisco. He
also told the two cowboys that all the
local cowhands and their employers were
on the lookout for rustlers who were
raiding the ranches in the valley. More
than six hundred head of cattle had
been stolen and the ranchers were even
regarding one another with suspicion. Gil
and Croft felt suspicion leveled at them
when a group of riders and town men
came into the bar.
THE OX-BOW INCIDENT by Walter Van Tilburg
Random House, Inc. Copyright, 1940, by Walter V
)
Gil began to play poker and won hand
after hand. The stakes and the bad
feeling grew higher until finally Gil and
a man named Farnley closed in a rough
row. Gil downed his opponent but was
himself knocked unconscious when Can-
by hit him over the head with a bottle
A rider rode up to the saloon with the
word that rustlers had killed Kinkaid,
Farnley's friend. Farnley did not want
to wait for a posse to t>e formed, but
cooler heads prevailed, among them old
Davies, a storekeeper, and Osgood, the
Baptist minister. Everyone there joined
in the argument, some for, some opposed
to, immediate action.
Davies sent Croft and a young cowboy
named Joyce to ask Judge Tyler to swear
in a posse before a lawless man hunt
began. The judge was not eager to
swear in a posse in the absence of Ris-
ley, the sheriff, but Mapes, a loud,
swaggering, newly appointed deputy,
demanded that he be allowed to lead the
posse.
Meanwhile the tempers of the crowd
began to grow sullen. Ma Grier, who
kept a Doarding-house, joined the
mob. Then Judge Tyler arrived and
his long-winded oration against a posse
stirred the men up more than
anything else could have done. Davies took
over again and almost convinced the
men they should disband. But at that
rk. By permioion of the author and the publishers.
Tilburg Clark.
2715

moment Tetley, a former Confederate
officer and an important rancher, rode
up with word that his Mexican herder
had seen the rustlers.
Mob spirit flared up once more. Mapes
deputized the men in spite of Judge
Tyler's assertion that a deputy could not
deputize others. The mob rode off in
the direction of Drew's ranch, where
Kinkaid had been killed.
There the riders found the first trace
of their quarry. Tracks showed that
three riders were driving forty head of
cattle toward a pass through the range.
Along the way Croft talked to Tetley's
sullen son, Gerald. Gerald was not cut
out to be a rancher, a fact ignored by
his stern, domineering father. Croft
thought the boy appeared emotional and
unmanly.
The stagecoach suddenly appeared
over a rise. In the darkness and
confusion, the driver thought that the riders
were attempting a holdup. He fired,
hitting Croft high in the chest. When he
learned his mistake, he pulled up his
horses and stopped. One of the
passengers was Rose Mapen, the girl Gil
had hoped to find in Bridgets Wells.
She introduced the man with her as
her husband. Gil was furious.
Croft had his wound doctored and
continued on with the posse. On a tip
from the passengers, the posse headed
for the Ox-Bow, a small valley high up
in the range.
Snow was falling by the time the riders
came to the Ox-Bow. Through the
darkness they saw the flicker of a campfire
and heard the sound of cattle.
Surrounding the campfire, they surprised the
three men sleeping there, an old man,
a young, dark-looking man, and a
Mexican. The prisoners were seized and
tied.
The dark-looking young man insisted
there was some mistake. He said that he
was Donald Martin and that he had
moved into Pike's Hole three days
before. But one of the members of the
posse, a man from Pike's Hole, claimed
he did not know Martin or anything
about him. Martin began to grow
desperate. He demanded to be taken to
Pike's Hole, where his wife and two
children were. The members of the
posse were contemptuous.
Only Davies tried to defend Martin,
but Mapes soon silenced the old
storekeeper. The cattle were proof enough.
Besides, Martin had no bill of sale. He
claimed that Drew, who had sold him
the cattle, had promised to mail a bill
of sale later.
The posse was for an immediate
hanging. Tetley wanted to force a
confession, but most of the riders said it was
no kindness to make the three wait to
die. Martin told them that the Mexican
was only his rider, that he did not know
much about him because the man spoke
no English. The old man was a simple-
minded fellow who had agreed to work
for Martin for very little pay.
Martin was permitted to write a
letter to his wife. Shortly afterward it
was discovered that the Mexican
possessed Kinkaid's gun. He began to speak
English. He claimed that he had found
Kinkaid's gun.
Tetley appointed three of the posse
to lead the horses out away from the
men, whose necks would then be caught
in the nooses of the ropes tied to the
overhanging limb of a tree. He insisted
that his milksop son was to be one of
the three. Farnley was another. Ma
Grier was the third.
Martin became bitter and unforgiving.
He made Davies promise to look after
his wife and he gave Davies the letter
and a ring. A fine snow continued to
fall.
The three were executed. The
Mexican and the old man died cleanly.
Martin, whose horse had been slowly started
by Gerald, had to be shot by Farnley.
Tetley felled his son with the butt of
his pistol for bungling the hanging.
Then the posse rode away.
As they rode out of the Ox-Bow they
met Sheriff Risley, Judge Tyler, Drew,
and Kinkaid, who was not dead after
all. The judge shouted that every mem-
2716

ber of the posse would be tried for
murder. The sheriff, however, said that
he could not arrest a single man present
for the murders because identity was
uncertain in the swirling snow. He asked
for ten volunteers to continue the search
for the real rustlers.
Only old Davies seemed moved by the
affair, more so after he learned that
Martin's story was true and that the
cattle had been bought from Drew
without a bill of sale. Nearly maddened, he
gave the ring and letter to Drew, who
promised to look after Martin's widow.
After Croft and Gil had returned to
Canby's saloon, Davies began to moan
to Croft. Davies now had the idea that
he himself had caused the hanging of
the three men. Gil got drunk. That day
Gerald Tetley hanged himself. A few
hours later Gerald's father also committed
suicide. The cowhands took up a
collection for Martin's widow. In their room
at Canby's, Gil and Croft could hear
Rose laughing and talking in the bar.
They decided to leave town.
2717

PAMELA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1740-1741
Principal characters:
Pamela Andrews, a servant girl
Mr. B—, her master
Mrs. Jervis, Mr. B—*s housekeeper
Mrs. Jewxes, caretaker of Mr. B—'s country home
Lady Davers, Mr. B—*s sister
Critique:
Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded is a
romantic tale that created, in effect, the
epistolary form of the novel.
Richardson's obvious absorption in preaching a
moral does not hold our attention today,
but the work is valuable for the picture
it presents of life in the eighteenth
century and of the code of morals to which
people then held. The device of letter
writing to tell a story does not always
stand up under the test of reality, but its
failure is more a matter for amusement
than for condemnation. Richardson was
a pioneer of the English novel, and he
wrote with a moral earnestness and
innocence of technique impossible for the
modern writer.
The Story:
Pamela Andrews had been employed
from a very young age as the servant girl
of Lady B—, at her estate in
Bedfordshire. Because she had grown very fond
of her mistress, the letter to her parents
telling of her ladyship's death expressed
her deep sorrow. Her own plans were
uncertain. But it soon became clear that
Lady B—'s son wanted her to remain in
his household. Taking her hand before
all the other servants, he had said that
he would be a good master to Pamela for
his dear mother's sake if she continued
faithful and diligent. Mrs. Jervis, the
housekeeper, put in a friendly word as
well, and Pamela, not wishing to be a
burden upon her poor parents, decided
to remain in the service of Mr. B—.
Shortly, however, she began to doubt
that his intentions toward her were
honorable. And when, one day, he kissed
her while she sat sewing in a summer-
house, she found herself in a quandary
as to what to do.
Once again she discussed the situation
with the good Mrs. Jervis, and decided
to stay if she could share the
housekeeper's bed. Mr. B— was extreme1 -
annoyed at this turn of affairs. He tried
to persuade Mrs. Jervis that Pamela was
in reality a very designing creature who
should be carefully watched. When he
learned that she was writing long letters
to her parents, telling them in great
detail of his false proposals and repeating
her determination to keep her virtue, he
had as many of her letters intercepted as
possible.
In a frightening interview between
Mr. B—, Pamela, and Mrs. Jervis, he
intimidated the housekeeper by his
terrifying manner and told Pamela to return
to her former poverty. After talking the
matter over with her friend, however,
Pamela decided that Mr. B— had given
up his plan to ruin her and that there
was no longer any reason for her to leave.
But another interview with Mr. B—
convinced her that she should return to
her parents upon the completion of some
household duties entrusted to her. When
Mr. B— discovered that she was indeed
planning to leave, a furious scene
followed, in which he accused her of pride
beyond her station. That night he
concealed himself in the closet of her room.
When she discovered him, she threw
2718

herself on the bed and fell into a fit.
Both Pamela and Mrs. Jervis served
notice. In spite of Mr. B—'s threats on
the one hand and his cajolings on the
other, Pamela remained firm in her
decision to return home. The housekeeper
was reinstated in her position, but
Pamela set out by herself in the coach Mr.
B— had ordered to return her to her
parents.
What she had thought Mr. B—'s
kindness was but designing trickery.
Instead of arriving at her parents' humble
home, Pamela now found herself a
prisoner at Mr. B—'s country estate, to
which the coachman had driven her.
Mrs. Jewkes, the caretaker, had none
of Mrs. Jervis' kindness of heart, and
Pamela found herself cruelly confined.
It was only by clever scheming that she
could continue to send letters to her
parents. She was aided by Mr. Williams,
the village minister, who smuggled her
mail out of the house. The young man
soon confessed his love for Pamela and
his desire to marry her. Pamela refused
his offer, but devised with his help a
plan to escape. Unfortunately, Mrs.
Jewkes was too wily a jailer. When she
suspected that the two were secretly
planning for Pamela's escape, she wrote to
Mr. B—, who was still in London.
Pamela's persecutor, aided by his agents,
contrived to have Mr. Williams thrown
into jail on a trumped-up charge.
Although her plot had been
discovered, Pamela did not allow herself to
be discouraged. That night she dropped
from her window into the garden. But
when she tried to escape from the garden,
she found the gate padlocked. Mrs.
Jewkes discovered her cringing in the
woodshed. From that time on her
warder's vigilance and cruelty increased.
Mr. B— at length arrived, and
frightened Pamela still further with his threats.
With the help of Mrs. Jewkes, he
attempted to force himself upon her, but
opportunely Pamela was seized by fits.
Mr. B— expressed his remorse and
promised never to attempt to molest her again.
And now Pamela began to suspect that
her virtue would soon be rewarded, for
Mr. B— proposed marriage to her. But
as she was enjoying the thought of being
Mrs. B—, an anonymous warning
arrived, suggesting that she beware of a
sham marriage. Pamela was greatly
upset. At her request, a coach was called
and she set out to visit her parents. On
the way, however, letters arrived from
Mr. B— entreating her to return to him,
and offering an honorable proposal of
marriage.
Pamela returned immediately to Mr.
B—'s hall, for in spite of all that had
passed she found that she was in love
with Mr. B—. He, in turn, was
delighted with her beauty and goodness.
She and Mr. B— were married by Mr.
Williams before a few witnesses. Mr.
Andrews, Pamela's father, was present
and great was the rejoicing in the
Andrews household when he returned and
told of his daughter's virtue, and of the
happiness it had brought her.
Pamela readily adapted herself to her
new role as the wife of a gentleman.
With typical virtue, she quickly forgave
Mrs. Jewkes for her former ill-treatment.
The only flaw in her married state was
the fact that Lady Davers, Mr. B—'s
sister, was angry with her brother
because of his marriage to a servant girl.
Pamela was alone when Lady Davers
arrived. She so insulted Pamela that the
poor girl fled to her husband for
consolation. A terrible scene took place
between Mr. B— and Lady Davers, but
Pamela soon won the love and respect
of that good woman when she showed
her the letters she had written about her
earlier sufferings.
One day Mr. B— told Pamela of a
previous love affair with Miss Sally
Godfrey and took her to see his daughter,
who had been placed in a boarding-school
in the neighborhood. Pamela liked the
little girl and asked to have the pretty
child under her care at some later date.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were pleased
with Pamela's accounts of her happiness
2719

and of Mr. B—'s goodness to her. He
gave the old people a substantial gift of
money and thus enabled them to set
themselves up in a small but comfortable
business.
Lady Davers* correspondence with
Pamela continued at a great length, and
more and more she expressed her
approval of Pamela's virtue and her disgust
with her brother's attempts to dishonor
her. During a visit she paid the young
couple, Mr. B— expressed his regret for
his earlier unmannerly conduct toward
the one who had become his dearly
beloved wife.
Mr. B—*s uncle, Sir Jacob Swynford,
paid his nephew a visit, prepared to
detest the inferior creature Mr. B— had
married. But Pamela's charm, beauty,
and virtue won his heart completely, and
the grumpy old man left full of praises
for his lovely niece.
At last Mr. B— and Pamela decided
to leave the country and return to
London. Although her husband was still as
attentive and thoughtful as ever, Pamela
began to suspect that he might be
carrying on an intrigue with another woman.
She was particularly distressed that she
could not accompany him to the theater
and other places of amusement as she
was about to bear a child. The scene of
the christening of their son was very
gay, for besides the family, tenants from
the estate arrived to express their joy
that Mr. B— now had a son and heir.
But Pamela's suspicions after all had
been justified. An anonymous note
informed her that the business trip which
Mr. B— had taken was in reality a
journey to a neighboring city with a
countess with whom he was having an
affair. Pamela controlled her passions,
and when Lord B— returned he was so
overcome by this further evidence of her
kindness and understanding that he
begged her forgiveness and promised to
remain faithful to her from that day on.
Pamela made good use of the letters she
had written to Lady Davers during this
trying period by sending them to the
countess that she might learn from them
and turn away from the path of license.
True to her earlier wish, Pamela ]e
cided to take in Sally Godfrey's child
and bring her up as a sister for her own
son, Billy. Mr. B— was faithful to hi*,
resolve to devote himself only to his wife,
and he spent the remainder of his dayr.
admiring and praising her virtue.
2720

PARADE'S END
Tyfe of work: Novel
Author: Ford Madox Ford (Ford Madox Hueffer, 1873-1939)
Tyfe of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: World War I and after
Locale: England and France
First published: 1924, 1925, 1926, 1928
Principal characters:
Christopher Tietjens, "the last English Tory*
Sylvia, his wife
Mark, his brother
Macmaster, his friend
General Campion, his godfather
Valentine Wannop, his mistress
Critique:
Ford Madox Ford was born Ford
Madox HuefFer. Disliking his German
surname, however, he changed it during
World War I. His literary career was
varied. A disciple of Henry James, he
collaborated with Joseph Conrad, edited
The English Review and The
Transatlantic Review, and wrote many novels in
his own right. Parade's End, his most
important work, appeared originally as a
tetralogy: Some Do Not (1924), No More
Parades (1925), A Man Could Stand Up
(1926), and The Last Post (1928); it
was published first as a single unit in
1950. The novel tells the story of a
passing era and a vanishing generation.
Christopher Tietjens rightly called
himself "the last English Tory," for his type
had been disappearing from the
eighteenth century on. Seeking truth and
peace and wanting no part of the
pretense and confusion of his generation,
he tried to help his fellow men and to
live honorably. For those things he was
punished by others who could not
understand him or the creed he lived by.
Parade's End is a work of considerable
subtlety and power, told with great
simplicity and restraint. A faithful recorder
of his own time, the writer has been
called England's most neglected novelist.
The Story:
Christopher Tietjens was probably the
last real eighteenth-century Tory in the
England of pre-World War I. A
thoroughly good man, he was so much a
gentleman that he would never divorce
his wife Sylvia, who was flagrantly
unfaithful to him. It was doubtful that the
child she bore him was his own, and she
had gone off for several weeks with
another man, but Christopher held that no
gentleman would ever publicly disgrace
a woman by divorcing her or even by
admitting her infidelities. Sylvia Tietjens
hated her husband blindly because she
could never break down his reserve. All
of her little plots and meannesses were
for that one purpose only. She detested
the various men she lived with, but she
hated Christopher's virtue more.
Christopher's old-fashioned type of
virtue extended to his own family
background. His oldest brother, Mark, had
inherited the estate of Groby and its vast
income. Mark lived with a
Frenchwoman whom he would probably never marry
and who would certainly bear no
children, and the estate would one day
belong to Christopher. The brothers feared
that their father had committed suicide,
for Sylvia had schemed to have the old
man told that Christopher lived off the
earnings of immoral women, had even
sold her, his wife, to influential friends.
PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. Cop
right, 1924, by Thomas Seltzer, Inc.; 1925, 1926, 1928, by Albert & Charles Boni, Inc. Copyright. 195
by Alfred A. Knopf. Inc.
2721

Even though his father might have
believed those lies, Christopher thought it
a sign that the family was getting soft to
have one member commit suicide;
consequently, he would not accept one
penny of the estate for himself.
Mark then proposed to set Sylvia up
at Groby, with arrangements for the
estate to go to her son. Even if the boy
were not Christopher's, he must be
treated as if he were a Tietjen. The plan
suited Christopher, who had no interest
in anything except protecting his wife's
name and his son's future. Knowing that
war was imminent, he wanted to gather
up the loose ends of his life before he
went to be killed.
Christopher was one of the most
brilliant men in the government service, but
it was strange how his brilliance coupled
with his goodness made everyone want
to hurt him. His only real friend was
Macmaster, a Scotsman and a Whig who
was also in the service. Perhaps his
friendship was due primarily to the fact that he
owed Christopher a great deal of money.
Christopher had also lent money to other
men who, although they admired him,
seemed bent on ruining him.
Christopher often wished to make
Valentine Wannop his mistress. Valentine
was a young suffragist, the daughter of
his father's best friend and a woman
novelist whom Christopher admired greatly.
Valentine was willing to accept
Christopher as her lover, but always they seemed
destined to have their plans obstructed by
someone bent on hurting Christopher.
Although no word of their desire was
ever spoken between them, their feelings
must have been obvious to others, for
everyone believed that Valentine was
already Christopher's mistress.
The war began. On the niaht before
his departure for the army Christopher
asked Valentine to spend the night with
him. She consented, but again they were
kept apart. Later they both agreed that it
was for the best, as neither seemed made
for that sort of thing.
In France, unjustified troubles
continued to haunt Christopher. Sylvia was at
the bottom of most of them. Because she
seemed to think he would soon be killed
and out of her reach, she acted as if
compelled to hurt him as much as possible
while he still lived. His godfather,
General Campion, was his highest ranking
officer. Convinced by Sylvia that she was
an abused wife, the general constantly
berated Christopher for his brutality as a
husband. He berated him also for
getting dirty and mixing with his men and
helping them with their personal troubles;
it was not fitting for an English officer
to get into the dregs of war.
Christopher often thought that he was
surrounded by people with troubles. One
of his fellow officers, almost insane over
an unfaithful wife, often had fits of
madness that threatened to destroy company
morale. The first in command was a
drunken colonel whom Christopher tried
to shield, thus getting himself into
trouble with General Campion. Once
Christopher refused leave to a Canadian
because he knew his wife's lover would
kill the man if he went home. When the
Canadian was killed in battle later on, it
preyed on Christopher's mind that he had
saved the soldier from one death only
to lead him into another. Christopher's
good intentions constantly reflected
discredit on him.
To his distress, Sylvia went to France
to see him. Having accepted at last the
fact that she could never upset him
emotionally no matter what she did, she was
true to her character in her determination
to make him return to her in body. Her
scheme failed. After she had maneuvered
him into her room, one of her former
lovers and the drunken colonel opened
the door which she had left unlocked for
them but which she had forgotten to lock
when Christopher went in with her.
Christopher was forced to throw out the
two men in order to protect his wife's
honor. Having decided it was
Christopher's fault that his wife wanted to
entertain another man, General Campion
again berated him.
2722

It seemed to Christopher that the
whole war campaign bogged down
because of lack of good communications
between various parts of the army. To him
the failure was symbolic. Life, too,
bogged down into beastly messes because
of lack of communication between
people. The horror of the war to him was not
his physical sufiFering and inconvenience.
It was rather that the conflict was the
end of everything that mattered.
Believing that England was not prepared either
for victory or for defeat, that this was
the end of everything that was good no
matter who won the battles, he found it
almost impossible to remember anything
of his old creed or his way of life at home.
Away from her, Valentine also seemed
unreal to him.
Because of the manner in which
Christopher had thrown Sylvia's ex-lover and
the drunken colonel out of her bedroom,
General Campion sent him to the front.
Like the others, General Campion
admired and liked Christopher; but, like the
others, he could not understand him.
Again the only thing to do was to make
him suffer.
At last Valentine Wannop received a
telephone call from Macmaster's wife,
who said that Christopher was home and
almost out of his mind. Ready to give
up everything to live with him and care
for him, Valentine went to him at once.
What the story of his crack-up was she
did not know or care. The fact that he
had never written to her was also of no
importance. She intended to carry out
her desire to become his mistress, even
though she might first become his nurse.
The partial collapse of Christopher's
mind had been a long time in the
making. At the front he had found himself
second in command to hopelessly
outnumbered troops under the leadership of
the drunken colonel. Finally forced into
assuming command, he tried to sustain
the shattered morale of his troops. The
only thing that kept his mind in balance
was a dream of standing on a hilltop in
peace and serenity and privacy. Privacy
—that was the thing he desired above all
else. It seemed to him that the army gave
a man no chance to be alone, to keep his
life or his thoughts to himself. To his
naturally reticent nature the lack of
privacy was the worst hardship of all.
When an exploding shell buried
Christopher and two of his men under a pile
of dirt, he dug out one of the soldiers and
carried the other to safety through enemy
fire. On his return General Campion sent
for him and relieved him of his
command because his uniform was not
spotless and flawless and because he had
been reported away from headquarters.
His heroism and disgrace marked the
physical end of the war for Christopher.
Back home, in Valentine's company on
Armistice Night, he was prepared once
more to make her his mistress. As they
were about to declare their love they
were interrupted by celebrating members
of Christopher's old company. His mind
fuzzy, he found nothing sad in their
being thwarted again or in the obvious hate
he saw in the eyes of a wife whose
husband's life he had saved in the trenches.
Meanwhile there had been changes at
Groby. Mark had married his
Frenchwoman, partly to spite Sylvia by making
his mistress Lady Tietjens. Sylvia had
let the estate to an obnoxious rich
American woman and her husband. It was said
that Mark, having suffered a stroke just
after the Armistice, could not speak or
move. The truth was that, partially
paralyzed, he had simply withdrawn from
the world. Like Christopher, he belonged
to another era. Mark believed that the
last of the Tietjens were misfits. Truth
had given way to confusion and untruth,
and the brothers were likely to be
swallowed up in this mad new world to which
neither belonged. Avoiding the rest of
the world, he waited quietly for death.
Christopher and Valentine went to live
in a cottage close by. Having refused to
go back into government service or to
accept help from his brother, Christopher
had become a dealer in antique furniture.
Sylvia finally decided to divorce Chris-
2723

topher in order to marry General
Campion and go with him to India. Although
she had given up all hope of ever getting
Christopher to notice her again or to be
disturbed by her meanness, she had
continued her petty attempts to make his life
miserable. But when she learned that
Valentine was to have a baby, she became
afraid that her attacks on Christopher
and Valentine would harm the unborn
child.
She began to regret also her last and
crudest act against Christopher and
Mark. She had persuaded the American
woman to cut down the Groby Great
Tree, an immense cedar that had
guarded the manor house for generations, and
for a time she feared the wrath of the
brothers because of her deed. Both felt,
however, that the Groby Great Tree had
symbolized the curse hanging over the
family and that its removal might take
away part of that curse. When they
ignored her spite, she stopped her vicious
tricks and prepared to divorce
Christopher so that he could marry Valentine.
Sylvia hated General Campion too, but
she wanted to become a great official's
wife and be resplendent in a tiara.
Dying, Mark rationalized his father's
death and knew for certain that the old
gentleman had not committed suicide but
had died as the result of a hunting
accident. He realized also that the looks and
actions of Sylvia's son proved him to be
Christopher's as well, and the rightful
heir to Groby. It seemed to Mark that he
could at last understand his brother and
love him, and he believed truly that all
the tales he had heard about
Christopher were really lies told by people who
could never understand Christopher or
even Mark because the Tietjens were not
of this century of deceit and confusion
and untruth. Before he died, Mark spoke
once more. He assured Valentine that
Christopher was a good man and asked
her to be kind to him.
2724

PARADISE LOST
Type of work: Poem
Author: John Milton (1608-1674)
Type of plot: Epic
Time of plot: The Beginning
Locale: Heaven, Hell, and Earth
First published: 1667
Principal characters:
God The Father
Christ The Son
Lucifer, called Satan
Adam
Eve
Critique:
John Milton prepared himself for
many years for the creation of an epic
poem in English that would rank with
the epics of Homer and Virgil. He had
planned to write it on the Arthurian
Cycle, but after his identity with the
Puritans and with individual liberty
during the struggle between King and
Parliament, he chose the fall of man as his
subject. Paradise Lost is the epic of
mankind, the story of Paradise lost and
sought for in the life of every man.
The Story:
In Heaven Lucifer, unable to abide
the supremacy of God, led a revolt against
divine authority. Defeated, he and his
followers were cast into Hell, where they
lay nine days on a burning lake. Lucifer,
now called Satan, arose from the flaming
pitch and vowed that all was not lost,
that he would have revenge for his
downfall. Arousing his legions, he reviewed
them under the canopy of Hell and
decided his purposes could be achieved by
guile rather than by force.
Under the direction of Mulciber, the
forces of evil built an elaborate palace in
which Satan convened a congress to
decide on immediate action. At the
meeting, Satan reasserted the unity of those
fallen, and opened the floor to a debate
on what measures to take. Moloch
advised war. Belial recommended a
slothful existence in Hell. Mammon
proposed peacefully improving Hell so that
it might rival Heaven in splendor. His
motion was received with great favor
until Beelzebub, second in command,
arose and informed the conclave that
God had created Earth, which he had
peopled with good creatures called
humans. It was Beelzebub's proposal to
investigate this new creation, seize it, and
seduce its inhabitants to the cause of the
fallen angels.
Announcing that he would journey to
the Earth to learn for himself how
matters were there, Satan flew to the gate
of Hell. There he encountered his
daughter, Sin, and his son, Death. They
opened the gate and Satan winged his
way toward Earth.
God, in His omniscience, beheld the
meeting in Hell, knew the intents of the
evil angels, and saw Satan approaching
the Earth. Disguised as various beasts,
Satan acquainted himself with Adam and
Eve and with the Tree of Knowledge,
which God had forbidden to Man.
Uriel, learning that an evil angel had
broken through to Eden, warned Gabriel,
who appointed two angels to hover about
the bower of Adam and Eve. The
guardian angels arrived too late to prevent
Satan, in the form of a toad, from
beginning his evil work. He had influenced
Eve's dreams.
Upon awaking, Eve told Adam that
in her strange dream she had been
tempted to taste of the fruit of the Tree
of Knowledge. God, seeing danger to
Adam and Eve was imminent, sent the
angel Raphael to the garden to warn
2725

them. At Adam's insistence, Raphael
related in detail the story of the great
war between the good and the bad angels
and of the fall of the bad angels to
eternal misery in Hell. At Adam's
further inquiries, Raphael told of the
creation of the world and of how the Earth
was created in six days, an angelic choir
singing the praises of God on the
seventh day. He cautioned Adam not to
be too curious, that there were many
things done by God which were not for
Man to understand or to attempt to
understand. Adam then told how he had
been warned against the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil, how he had
asked God for fellowship in his
loneliness, and how Eve was created from his
rib.
After the departure of Raphael, Satan
returned as a mist to the garden and
entered the body of a sleeping serpent.
In the morning, as Adam and Eve
proceeded to their day's occupation, Eve
proposed that they work apart. Adam,
remembering the warning of Raphael,
opposed her wishes, but Eve prevailed,
and the couple parted. Alone, Eve was
accosted by the serpent, which flattered
her into tasting the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge. Eve, liking what she tasted,
took a fruit to Adam, who was horrified
when he saw what Eve had done. But
in his love for Eve, he also ate the fruit.
Having eaten, the couple knew lust
for the first time, and after their
dalliance they knew sickening shame. The
guardian angels now deserted the
transgressors and returned to God, who
approved them, saying they could not have
prevented Satan from succeeding in his
mission.
Christ descended to Earth to pass
judgment. Before Adam and Eve, who had
been reluctant, in their shame, to come
out of their bower to face him, Christ
sentenced the serpent to be forever a
hated enemy of mankind. He told Eve
that her sorrow would be multiplied by
the bearing of children and that she
would be the servant of Adam to the end
of time. Adam, said Christ, would eat
in sorrow; his ground would be cursed
and he would eat bread only by toiling
and sweating.
Meanwhile, Death and Sin, having
divined Satan's success, left the gates of
Hell to join their father on Earth.
Within sight of Earth, they met Satan,
who delegated Sin and Death as his
ambassadors on Earth. Back in Hell,
Satan proudly reported his
accomplishments to his followers. But he was
acclaimed by hisses as his cohorts became
serpents, and Satan himself was
transformed into a serpent before their
reptilian eyes. Trees similar to the Tree of
Knowledge appeared in Hell, but when
the evil angels tasted the fruit, they
found their mouths full of ashes.
God, angered at the disaffection of
Adam and Eve, brought about great
changes on Earth. He created the
seasons to replace eternal spring, and the
violence and misery of storms, winds,
hail, ice, floods, and earthquakes. He
caused all Earth's creatures to prey upon
one another.
Adam and Eve argued bitterly until
they realized they must face their
common plight together. Repenting their
sins, they prayed to God for relief.
Although Christ interceded for them, God
sentenced them to expulsion from Eden
and sent the angel Michael to Earth to
carry out the sentence. Adam and Eve,
lamenting their misfortune,
contemplated suicide, but Michael gave them
new hope when he brought to Adam a
vision of life and death; of the rise and
fall of kingdoms and empires; of the
activities of Adam's and Eve's progeny
through their evil days to the flood, when
God destroyed all life except that
preserved by Noah in the ark; and of the
subsequent return to evil days and
Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection,
and ascension as mankind's redeemer.
Despite the violence and evil and
bloodshed in the vision, Adam and Eve
were pacified when they saw that
mankind would be saved. They walked
hand in hand from the heights of
Paradise to the barren plains below.
2726

PARADISE REGAINED
Type of work: Poem
Author: John Milton (1608-1674)
Time: First century
Locale: The Holy Land
First'published: 1671
Principal characters:
Jesus of Nazareth
Satan
Paradise Regained is a masterpiece
which is little read and little liked by
the mass of general readers in the
twentieth century. Of course, students of
Milton in various colleges and
universities are required to pay it a small
tribute of study; and among scholars of
the period it has a substantial number of
admirers. It is, however, overshadowed
by its colossal predecessor, Paradise Lost;
and it lacks the appeal of the earlier and
more graceful, less austere Comus.
The poem is concerned with
triumphant resistance to temptation. Much of
our popular literature today is concerned
with surrender to temptation. When
Satan, in his conference with the powers
of darkness, dismisses with contempt the
idea of sexual temptation, he wipes out
with a single stroke a horde of readers.
The temptations which Jesus is required
to face are lack of faith, hunger, desire
for glory, desire to overthrow the
enemies of his people by violence, and pride
in being declared the beloved Son of
God. These temptations are not remote
from the life of modern man, though they
have less attention on the screen, in
books, or on the air than the more
romantic and flamboyant temptations of sex.
Like the Biblical story of Samson, the
Biblical story of the Temptation in the
Wilderness furnished Milton with a story
outline; but only a Milton would have
found Samson Agonistes and Paradise
Regained in his sources. Paradise Regained
is composed of four books averaging about
five hundred lines of blank verse each;
the poem, therefore, contains over two
thousand lines. The Gospel story in Luke,
Milton's principal source, is contained in
seventeen verses spread over two chapters.
The poem begins with an invocation
to the Holy Spirit. The first incident is
the baptism of Jesus by John the
Baptist. This rite is attended by Satan, the
Adversary, cloaked in invisibility.
Thunderstruck by the pronouncement from
Heaven that Jesus is the beloved Son of
God, Satan hastily assembles a council of
his Peers. They choose "their great
Dictator" to attempt the overthrow of this
new and terrible enemy. God, watching
Satan set out on his evil mission, foretells
to Gabriel the failure of that mission.
(The poet here abandons the popular
literary device of suspense.) The angels
sing a triumphant hymn.
Led by the Spirit, Jesus enters the
desert and pursues holy meditations. In
retrospect he examines his life up to this
point, considers his destiny, but does not
wish for revelation of his future until
God chooses to give it. For forty days he
wanders unharmed through the perils of
the desert; then for the first time he feels
hunger. Just at this moment he meets an
aged man in rural clothing. This old man
explains that he was present at the
baptism, then expresses amazement at the
lost and perilous situation of the
wanderer. Jesus replies: "Who brought me
hither will bring me hence, no other
Guide I seek." The old man then
suggests that if Jesus is really the Son of
God, he should command the stones to
become bread. In his refusal Jesus asks:
'Why dost thou then suggest to me
distrust, knowing who I am, as I know who
thou art?" At this discovery, Satan
abandons his disguise and enters a dispute
attempting self-justification. Overcome in
the argument, he vanishes as night falls.
The other newly baptized people and

Mary the Mother of Jesus are distressed
at his absence, but do not allow
themselves to despair.
Satan calls a fresh council of war. He
dismisses Belial's suggestion, "Set women
in his eye and in his walk," and receives
a vote of confidence for his own plan of
using honor, glory, and popular praise
combined with relief from the suffering
of physical hunger.
Jesus dreams of the ravens who fed
Elijah by Cherith's Brook and the angel
who fed him in the desert. Awakening,
he looks for a cottage, a sheepcote, or a
herd, but finds nothing. Suddenly Satan
appears again in a new form, but does
not attempt to conceal his identity. He
discloses a table loaded with delicious
food and invites Jesus to eat. Jesus
refuses the food, not because the food itself
is unjawful, but because it is the offering
of Satan. Disgruntled, Satan causes the
food to vanish and return? to the attack,
offering wealth with which to buy power.
When this is declined as an unworthy
aim of life, Satan proposes the career of
a glorious conqueror. Jesus retorts with
references to Job and Socrates, as justly
famous as the proudest conquerors, and
he declares that desire for glory, which
belongs to God, not man, is sacrilege.
Satan then attempts to relate conquest to
the freeing of the Jews from their Roman
oppressors. Jesus replies that if his destiny
is to free his people from bondage it will
come about when God chooses. He then
asks another of his penetrating questions:
why does Satan hasten to overthrow
himself by trying to found Christ's everlasting
kingdom? This question tortures Satan
internally, but he takes refuge in
hypocritical assurances that he has lost hope
of his own triumph. Then, remarking
that Jesus has seen little of the world,
he takes him to the top of a mountain and
shows him the terrestrial kingdoms, in
particular the empires of Rome and Par-
thia, one of which he advises him to
choose and to destroy the other with it.
But Jesus refuses earthly empire. Then
Satan tries a particularly Miltonic
temptation: he offers the empire of the mind —
philosophy, learning, poetry, particularly
those of Greece and Rome. Against these
Jesus places the sacred literature of the
Hebrews. Satan, baffled again, returns
Jesus to the desert and pretends to depart.
When Jesus sleeps again, Satan disturbs
him with ugly dreams and raises a fearful
storm. With morning and the return of
calm weather, Satan appears for a last,
desperate effort, no longer so much in
hope of victory as in desire for revenge.
He seizes Jesus, flies with him to
Jerusalem, places him on the highest pinnacle
of the Temple, and cries out:
There stand, if thou wilt stand; to
stand upright
Will ask thee skill. . . .
Now show thy Progeny; if not to
stand,
Cast thyself down; safely if Son of God:
For it is written, He will give command
Concerning thee to his Angels, in their
hands
They shall uplift .thee, lest at any time
Thou chance to dash thy foot against
a stone.
To whom thus Jesus: also it is
written,
Tempt not the Lord thy God, he said
and stood.
But Satan smitten with amazement
fell. . . .
Surely this climax is exciting enough to
produce a thrill of triumph. After Satan's
second fall a host of angels fly to the
Temple, take Jesus to a fertile valley, and
spread before him a table of celestial
food. After they sing another hymn
of triumph, Jesus" returns home to his
mother's house.
This "brief epic," a type according to
Milton best illustrated by The Book of
Job, is a marvelous synthesis of the poet's
wide reading in Hebrew, Greek, Latin,
Italian, and English literatures. It is also
a distillation of his earlier works, notably
Comus, Lycidas, and Paradise Lost. Since
the dating of the composition of Samson
Aopnistes is uncertain, we do not know
whether that great tragedy or Paradise
Regained was the last composition of the
blind poet. Perhaps most readers would
2728

prefer Samson Agonistes as the more ap- is worthy of the titan who kept his
propriate final work. But either creation strength to the end.
2729

PARALLEL LIVES
Type of work: Biography
Author: Plutarch (c. 45-c. 125)
First transcribed: 105-115
Principal personages:
Julius Caesar, Roman general and statesman
Alexander the Great, King of Macedon
Marc Antony, Roman statesman
Demetrius, Macedonian king
Marcus Brutus, Roman statesman
Dion, statesman of Syracuse
Demosthenes, Greek orator and statesman
Cicero, Roman orator and statesman
Alcibiades, Athenian general
Coriolanus, Roman leader
Solon, Athenian lawgiver
Poplicola, Roman lawgiver
Theseus, legendary Athenian hero
Romulus, legendary founder of Rome
The collection which is today known
simply as Plutarch's Lives is derived from
the Parallel Lives, a work in which
Plutarch presented a large number of
biographies (of which forty-six survive),
alternating the lives of eminent Greeks with
comparable lives of eminent Romans. A
number of shorter essays compared the
lives accorded biographical treatment.
The collection as it survives includes some
biographies written independently of the
Parallel Lives, as, for example, the
biographies of Otho, Galba, Artaxerxes and
Aratus.
Plutarch considered the lives of famous
men important for their moral
implications, and his treatment shows his
concern to apply the ethics of Aristotle to
the judgment of those whose lives he
reports. His treatment is more personal than
political; like the biographer Suetonius,
whose Lives of the Caesars lacks the
moral emphasis of Plutarch's work,
Plutarch was interested in great figures as
human beings liable to the errors and
inevitable temptations which confront all
human beings. Also, like Suetonius,
Plutarch delighted in anecdote and used
various tales concerning the Greeks and
Romans partly for their intrinsic interest
and partly to suit his moral intention.
Although there are inaccuracies in the
Lives, the charm and liveliness of
Plutarch's style give the biographies a
convincing appeal which more than
compensates for errors in fact. In any case, all
history is the result of an attempt to make an
intelligible statement about a past which
must be reconstructed from the
perspective of its writer; and if one is constrained
to say that in the Lives we see the famous
Greeks and Romans only as they
appeared to Plutarch, then we must say of
any history or biography that it is the
past only as it appears to its author. The
conclusion might be that since biographies
are sensible only relative to their authors,
the character and the ability of the author
are of paramount importance; and if the
Lives are judged in this manner, then
again Plutarch survives, for his work
expresses the active concerns of a sensitive,
conscientious, and educated Greek writer.
An accidental but none the less
fortunate consequence of the appearance of
the Lives was that through Sir Thomas
North's translation Shakespeare found the
dramatic inspiration and factual basis for
his Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra,
Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens.
The comparisons which Plutarch made
between his Greeks and Romans have
sometimes been dismissed as of minor
historical importance. The error behind
2730

such judgment is that of regarding the
comparisons as biographical and historical.
Plutarch's comparisons are not attempts
to recover the past, but to judge men as
he reported them; and if in the
biographies we come closer to the subject matter
of the Lives, in the comparisons we come
closer to Plutarch himself. In the
comparisons the moralist is at work, and
whatever the truth of the biographies, we come
close to the truth about the moral climate
of Plutarch's day. Another way of putting
it is*that in his biographical essays
Plutarch defined men of the past; but in the
comparisons he defined himself and the
men of his age.
Thus, in comparing Romulus, the
legendary founder of Rome, with Theseus,
the Athenian hero of Greek mythology,
Plutarch first of all considers which of
the two was the more valiant and the
more aggressive for a worthy cause. The
decision is given to Theseus, who
voluntarily sought out the oppressors of Greece
—Sciron, Sinnis, Procrustes, and Cory-
netes—and who offered himself as part of
the tribute to Crete.
But then Plutarch finds both heroes
wanting. "Both Theseus and Romulus
were by nature meant for governors," he
writes, "yet neither lived up to the true
character of a king, but fell off, and ran,
the one into popularity, the other into
tyranny, falling both into the same fault
out of different passions." Plutarch then
went on to criticize both men for
unreasonable anger, Theseus* against his son,
Romulus against his brother. Finally, he
severely took Theseus to task for parricide
and for the rapes he committed.
Even from this brief comparison we
learn a great deal about Plutarch.
Although he had an inclination to favor the
Greeks, he gave the Romans their due,
achieving a near balance of virtues and
vices. He honored courageous action
provided it was motivated by a love of
country and of man; and he approved the
ancient morality which called for respect
toward parents and faithfulness to friends
and brothers.
Plutarch was aware of the difficulty
and the dangers of the biographical tasks
he undertook, and he gives the
impression that the presence of the comparisons
was intended both to unify and to justify
the book as a whole. At the outset of his
biographical survey of the adventures of
Theseus he compares those biographies
of men closer to his own time with
biographies such as that of Theseus, in which
he was forced to deal with fictions and
fables. He wrote, "Let us hope that Fable
may, in what shall follow, so submit to
the purifying processes of Reason as to
take the character of exact history"; but
he recognized the possibility that the
purifying process might not occur, and so
begged the indulgence of the reader. He
then compared Theseus and Romulus
briefly, showing parallels of position and
fortune in their lives, in order to justify
his having decided to place their
biographies side by side and to undertake a
comparison of their moral characters.
Other comparisons which survive are
those of Numa Pompilius, Romulus'
successor as King of Rome and originator of
Roman religious law, with Lycurgus, the
Spartan lawgiver; of Poplicola, or Publius
Valerius, the Roman ruler who converted
a despotic command to a popular one,
thus winning the name "Poplicola" or
"lover of the people," with Solon, the
Athenian lawgiver; of Fabius, the Roman
leader who was five times consul and then
dictator, who harassed Hannibal with his
delaying tactics, with Pericles, the
Athenian soldier and statesman who brought
Athens to the height of its power; of
Alcibiades, the Athenian general, with
Coriolanus, the Roman leader; of Timo-
leon, the Corinthian, the opponent of
Dionysius and other Sicilian tyrants, with
Aemilius Paulus, the Roman who warred
against the Macedonians; of Pelopidas,
the Theban general who recovered Thebes
from the Spartans, with Marcellus, the
Roman consul who captured Syracuse; of
Aristides, the Athenian general who
fought at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea,
with Marcus Cato, the Roman statesman
who disapproved of Carthage and
destroyed the city in the third Punic war;
2731

of Philopoemen, the Greek commander of
the Achaeans who defeated the Spartan
tyrants Machanidas and Nabis, with
Flamininus, the Roman general and
consul who freed Greece from Philip V of
Macedon; of Lysander, the Spartan who
defeated the Athenians and planned the
government of Athens, with Sylla, the
Roman general who defeated Mithridates
VI, sacked Athens, and became tyrant
of Rome; of Lucullus, who continued
Sulla's (Sylla's) campaign against
Mithridates and pursued him into Armenia,
with Cimon, the Greek who defeated the
Persians on both land and sea at Pam-
phylia; of Crassus, one of the First
Triumvirate with Pompey and Caesar, with
Nicias, the Athenian who was captured
by the Syracuse forces which repelled the
Athenians; of Sertorius, a Roman general
who fought in rebellion against Pompey
in Spain, with Eumenes, the Greek
general and statesman who was opposed by
Antigones; of Pompey, the Roman
general who became Caesar's enemy after the
formation of the First Triumvirate, with
Agesilaus, the Spartan king who fought
the Persians and the Thebans without
preventing the downfall of Sparta; of
Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, the Roman
statesmen and brothers who fought and
died for social reform in the effort to
assist the poor landowners, with Agis and
Cleomenes, the Spartan reformer kings;
of Demosthenes, the Greek orator and
statesman, with Cicero, the Roman
orator and statesman; of Demetrius, the
Macedonian who became king after
numerous campaigns and after murdering
Cassander's sons, with Antony, Caesar's
defender and the lover of Cleopatra; and
of Dion of Syracuse, who attempted to
introduce Dionysius and his son to Plato,
with Brutus, the slayer of Caesar.
The most important of the remaining
biographies are those of Alexander the
Great and Julius Caesar.
Acknowledging the difficulty of his task, Plutarch
declared his intention to write "the most
celebrated parts," and he added that "It
must be borne in mind that my design
is not to write histories, but lives. And
the most glorious exploits do not always
furnish us with the clearest discoveries
of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a
matter of less moment, an expression or
a jest, informs us better of their
characters and inclinations. . . ."
Plutarch wrote at the beginning of his
biography of Timoleon that he had come
to take a personal interest in his
biographies, and he explained that "the virtues
of these great men" had come to serve
him "as a sort of looking-glass, in which
I may see how to adjust and adorn my
own life." Over the centuries readers have
responded with respect to Plutarch's moral
seriousness, thus testifying to his power
both as biographer and commentator.
2732

THE PARLIAMENT OF FOWLS
Type of work: Poem
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
Time: Fourteenth century
Locale: The dream world
First transcribed: c. 1380
Principal characters:
Chaucer, the dreamer
Scipio Africanus, his guide
Dame Nature
The Formel Eagle
Three Tercel Eagles, the highest-ranking birds
The Parliament of Fowls is one of the
most delightful of Chaucer's early poems,
written in the manner of the French
romances, but at the same time gently
satirizing the courtly love tradition that
produced them.
The poem opens with comments on
the hardships of love, which, the poet
assures his reader, he knows only through
his books; and books, he says, are the
source of all men's new discoveries. Just
now he is reading Cicero's "Somnium
Scipionis" in Macrobius' commentary,
one of the most popular books of the
Middle Ages. Chaucer tells the reader
how, in his book, Scipio Africanus
appears to the younger Scipio in a dream
and shows him all the universe, pointing
out how small the earth is in comparison
with the whole. He advises the younger
man to live virtuously and with
knowledge that he is immortal, so that he may
come swiftly to heaven after death.
Darkness forces the poet to put his
book aside; and, falling asleep, he dreams
that the same Scipio Africanus comes to
him and leads him to the gate of a
beautiful garden. Over one half of the gate
is a message promising happiness to
whoever enters; above the other half, a
warning of pain and sorrow within. As the
dreamer deliberates, his guide pushes him
through, explaining that neither motto
applies to him since he is not a lover,
but adding that he may discover there
something to write about.
The two men find themselves in a
garden filled with every kind of tree and
bird. Deer, squirrels, and ether small
beasts are playing there. Music and
fragrant breezes permeate the atmosphere.
Around the garden are the familiar
personifications found in The Romance of
the Rose and imitations of it: Cupid,
tempering his arrows, Pleasure, Beauty,
Youth, Jollity, Flattery, and many others.
Nearby stands a temple of brass upon
pillars of jasper. Women are dancing around
it, and doves sit on the roof. Before the
doors sit Dame Peace and Dame Patience
"on a hill of sand."
When he enters the temple, the
dreamer sees the goddess Jealousy, the
cause of the great sighing he hears
around him; Venus and the youth Rich-
ess; Bacchus, god of wine; and Ceres,
who relieves hunger. Along the walls are
painted the stories of many unhappy
lovers.
Returning to the garden, the dreamer
notices Dame Nature, so fair that she
surpasses all others as much as the
sunlight does the stars. Around her are all
the birds, ready to choose their mates,
for it is St. Valentine's Day. She decrees
that the tercel eagle, the bird of highest
rank, shall have first choice.
He asks for the lovely formel eagle
who sits on Dame Nature's own hand,
but immediately two other high-ranking
fowls interrupt; they, too, love her. A
lengthy debate follows: one has loved her
longest; another says that he has loved
fully as deeply, if not so long. This kind
of discussion was popular in court circles
in Chaucer's day, but others had their
own ideas about such conversations. The
other birds, thought by scholars to repre-
2733

sent different levels of English society,
the clergy, peasants, and the bourgeoisie,
soon weary of the debate, since they want
to pick their own mates. They decide that
each group shall elect a spokesman to give
its opinion of the "cursed pleading."
The birds of prey, no doubt the
nobility, pick the tercelet falcon, who suggests
that the formel wed the worthiest knight,
the bird of gentlest blood. The goose,
speaking for the water fowls, says simply,
"If she won't love him, let him love
another." The gentle turtle dove dissents;
the seed fowls hold that a lover should
serve his lady until he dies, whether or
not she loves him in return.
The duck offers a saucy retort: "There
are more stars, God wot, than a pair."
The tercel chides him for having no idea
of love; then the cuckoo gives the
verdict of the worm fowls, probably the
peasants — give us our mates in peace
and let the eagles argue as long as they
wish; let them be single all their lives if
they can reach no decision. One of the
noble birds insults the cuckoo, calling
him a murderer because of his usual diet,
and Dame Nature has to intervene to
keep peace.
Since none of the birds' opinions has
provided a solution, she orders the formel
eagle to choose the one she loves best.
Although she advises the formel to wed
the royal tercel, since he seems noblest,
she says that the bird herself must make
a choice. The formel pleads that she is
still too young to marry; she would wait
a year to decide. Dame Nature agrees,
and at last all the birds are permitted to
choose their own mates. Before they
depart they sing a charming roundel.
The noise the birds make as they fly
away awakens the poet, who immediately
picks up other books, hoping that some
day he will read something that will give
him a dream to make him fare better.
It is impossible to do justice to The
Parliament of Fowls with a summary
alone. Much of its charm lies in the
poetry itself, moving swiftly along, despite
its stanzaic form. The catalogue of trees,
with a few words about each one; the
description of the garden and the birds;
the courtly debate of the eagles; the
humorous comments of the duck and the
goose — all are delightful. One of the
most attractive passages is the birds' final
song:
Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne
softe,
That hast this wintres wedres overshake,
And driven away the longe nyghtes
blake!
Saynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte,
Thus syngen smale foules for thy sake:
Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne
softe,
That hast this wintres wedres overshake.
Wei han they cause for to gladen ofte,
Sith ech of hem recovered hath hys
make,
Ful blissful mowe they synge when
they wake;
Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne
softe,
That hast this wintres wedres overshake,
And driven away the longe nyghtes
blake.
Much of the excellence of the poem
lies in the characterization; even when
Chaucer's characters are birds, he can
picture a cross section of society. He
knew and understood many different
kinds of people, and here he presents
them and their ideas humorously,
impartially, and with his never-failing good
sense.
2734

PARZIVAL
Type of work: Poem
Author: Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170-1220)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: The chivalric age
Locale: Western Europe
First published: Thirteenth century manuscript
"Principal characters:
Gamuret, Prince of Anjou
Parzival, Gamuret's son
Gawain, knight of King Arthur's court
King Arthur
Feirefis, ParzivaFs half-brother
Lohengrin, ParzivaTs son
Critique:
Parzival is the masterpiece of
Germany's greatest medieval poet. It was,
moreover, the groundwork of the great
body of Wagner's operas on knightly
themes. Despite its place in German
literature and its influence on modern opera,
Parzival is little known to English-reading
people. Wolfram von Eschenbach's
influence on the legends of the Arthurian
cycle is also important. The Arthurian
legends had a relatively low moral tone
prior to their treatment by this poet who,
upholding the knightly virtues of fidelity
to the plighted word, charity toward man,
and a true reverence toward God, lifted
the moral tone of the Arthurian romances.
Most interesting is the identity of the
Grail in Parzival. Here it is not the chalice
used at the last supper, as it is in other
versions, but a precious stone of
supernatural powers.
The Story:
Gamuret, younger son of King Gandein
of Anjou, refused to live as a vassal in the
kingdom of his older brother,
notwithstanding the brother's love for Gamuret.
The young man, given gifts of gold by his
king-brother, as well as horses and
equipment and men-at-arms, left Anjou to seek
his fortune across the world. Hoping to
find for himself fame and love, Gamuret
went first to battle for Baruch at
Alexandria; from there he went to the aid of the
Moorish Queen Belakane. Belakane had
been falsely accused of causing the death
of her lover, Eisenhart, and was besieged
in her castle by two armies under the
command of Friedebrand, King of Scotland
and Eisenhart's uncle.
Gamuret, after raising the siege,
became the husband of Belakane, who bore
him a son named Feirefis. But Gamuret
tired of being king of Assagog and Zassa-
mank, and so he journeyed abroad again
in search of fame. Passing into Spain,
Gamuret sought King Kailet and found
him near Kanvoleis. The two entered a
tournament sponsored by the Queen of
Waleis. Gamuret did valiant deeds and
carried off all the honors of that
tournament, thereby winning a great deal of
fame as the victor.
Two queens who had watched the lists
during the tournament fell in love with
Gamuret, but Queen Herzeleide won his
heart and married him. They loved each
other greatly, but once again the call of
honor was too great to let Gamuret remain
a housed husband. Receiving a summons
from Baruch, he went once more to
Alexandria. In the fighting there he was
treacherously killed and given a great
tomb by Baruch. When news of his death
reached the land of Waleis, Queen
Herzeleide sorrowed greatly, but her sorrow was
in part dissipated by the birth of a child
by Gamuret. Herzeleide named the boy
Parzival.
Parzival was reared by his mother with
all tenderness and love. As he grew older
he met knights who fared through the
world seeking honor. Parzival, stimulated
by tales of their deeds, left his homeland
2735

in search of King Arthur of Britain. He
hoped to become one of Arthur's knights
and a member of the order of the Round
Table. During his absence his mother,
Queen Herzeleide, died. On his way to
Arthur's court Parzival took a token from
Jeschute and thus aroused the jealous
anger of her husband, Orilus. Farther
along on his journey he met a woman
named Sigune and from her learned of his
lineage and his kinship with the house of
Anjou. Still later Parzival met the Red
Knight and carried that knight's challenge
with him to King Arthur. Having been
knighted by the king, Parzival set forth
again in quest of knightly honor. Finding
himself in the land of Graharz, he sought
out Gurnemanz, prince of the land, who
taught the young knight the courtesy and
the ethics of knighthood.
From Graharz, Parzival journeyed to
Pelrapar, which he found besieged by
enemies. He raised the siege by
overthrowing Kingron. After this adventure Parzival
fell in love with Queen Kondwiramur,
and the two were married. But Parzival,
like his father before him, soon tired of
the quiet life and parted from his home
and queen to seek further adventures.
Parzival journeyed to the land of the
Fisher King and became the king's guest.
In that land he first beheld the fabulous
bleeding spear and all the marvels of the
Holy Grail. One morning he awoke to find
the castle deserted. Parzival, mocked by a
squire, rode away. Later he met Orilus,
who had vowed to battle the young knight
for taking Jeschute's token. They fought
and Parzival was the victor, but he was
able to reconcile Orilus to Jeschute once
again and sent the couple to find a
welcome at the court of King Arthur.
Arthur, meanwhile, had gone in search
of the Red Knight, whose challenge
Parzival had carried. Journeying in search
of King Arthur, Parzival had the
misfortune to fall into a love-trance, during
which he overthrew Gagramor and tooK
vengeance on Sir Kay. He met Gawain,
who took him back again to Arthur's
court. There Parzival was inducted into
the company of the Round Table.
At Arthur's court both Gawain and
Parzival were put to shame by two other
knights. When in his anger and despair
Parzival set out to seek the Holy Grail and
Gawain rode off to Askalon, the whole
company of the Round Table was
dispersed.
While Parzival sought the Grail,
Gawain had many adventures. He joined
the knights of King Meljanz of Lys, who
sought vengeance on Duke Lippaut.
When the fighting was over, Gawain rode
to Schamfanzon, where he was committed
by the king to the care of his daughter
Antikonie. Gawain wooed the maiden and
thus aroused the wrath of the people of
Schamfanzon. Gawain was aided,
however, by the girl and Kingrimursel. After
Gawain swore to the king that he would
ask Scherules to send back some kinsmen
to him, Gawain left, also to search for the
Holy Grail.
Parzival, meanwhile, had traveled for
many days in doubt and despair. In the
forest of Monsalvasch he fought with a
knight of the Holy Grail and passed on.
Then, on Good Friday, he met a pilgrim
knight who told him he should not bear
arms during the holy season. The knight
bade him seek out Trevrezent, a hermit
who showed Parzival how he had sinned
in being wrathful with God and indicated
to Parzival that he was a nephew to
Amfortas, one of the Grail kings. The two
parted in sorrow and Parzival resumed his
search for the Grail.
Gawain, continuing his adventures,
had married Orgeluse. When Gawain
decided to battle Gramoflanz, King Arthur
and Queen Guinevere agreed to ride to
see that famous joust. Before the joust
could take place Gawain and Parzival met
and did battle, each unknown to his
opponent. Gawain was defeated and
severely injured by Parzival, who was filled
with grief when he learned with whom
he had fought. Parzival vowed to take
Gawain's place in the combat with
Gramoflanz, but the latter refused to do
battle with anyone but Gawain himself.
Parzival, released from his vow, longed
to return once again to his wife. One
2736

morning before dawn he secretly left the
camp of King Arthur. On his way back to
his wife Parzival met a great pagan
warrior who almost vanquished him. After the
battle he learned the pagan knight was
Feirefis, ParzivaTs half-brother, the son of
Gamuret and Belakane. The two rode
back to King Arthur's court, where both
were made welcome by the king. In
company the half-brothers went into the lists
and won many honors together. At a feast
of the Round Table Kondrie entered the
great hall to announce Parzival's election
to the Grail kingdom. Summoned to Mon-
salvasch, Parzival, his wife, and Lohengrin,
ParzivaTs son, were guided there by
Kondrie. Feirefis, although he failed to see
the Grail, was baptized and married to
Repanse de Schoie. With her he returned
to his kingdom, which was held later by
his son, Prester John.
2737

A PASSAGE TO INDIA
Type of work: Novel
Author: E. M. Forster (1879- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: About 1920
Locale: India
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Dr. Aziz, a young Indian surgeon
Mrs. Moore, a visiting Englishwoman, Dr. Aziz's friend
Ronald Heaslop, the City Magistrate, Mrs. Moore's son
Adela Quested, Ronald's fiancee, visiting India with Mrs. Moore
Cecil Fielding, Principal of the Government College, Dr. Aziz's friend
Critique:
A Passage to India has two aspects,
political and mystic. Politically it deals
with the tension between the natives and
the British (now solved by the
withdrawal of the British), and also with
the tension between Hindus and
Moslems (now solved by the creation of the
two Dominions of India and Pakistan).
Mystically it is concerned with the search
after the infinite and the eternal, so
characteristic of Oriental religion, and
with the illogical and inexplicable
element in human life. The visit to the
Marabar Caves illustrates the malignant
side of mysticism, the Temple-Festival
at the close illustrates its benignity. The
three sections into which the book is
divided correspond to the three seasons
of the Indian year—the Cold Weather,
the Hot Weather, the Rains.
The Story:
Dr. Aziz had been doubly snubbed
diat evening. He had been summoned
to the civil surgeon's house while he
was at supper, but when he arrived he
found that his superior had departed
for his club without bothering to leave
any message. In addition, two
Englishwomen emerged from the house and took
their departure in his hired tonga
without even thanking him.
The doctor started back toward the
city of Chandrapore afoot. Tired, he
stopped at a mosque to rest and was
furiously angry when he saw a third
Englishwoman emerge from behind its
pillars with, as he thought, her shoes on.
Mrs. Moore, however, had gone barefoot
to the mosque, and in a surge of friendly
feeling Dr. Aziz engaged her in
conversation.
Mrs. Moore had newly arrived from
England to visit her son, Ronald
Heaslop, the City Magistrate. Dr. Aziz
found they had common ground when
he learned that she did not care for
the civil surgeon's wife. Her disclosure
prompted him to tell of the usurpation
of his carriage. The doctor walked back
to the club with her, although as an
Indian, he himself could not be admitted.
At the club, Adela Quested, Heaslop's
prospective fiancee, declared she wanted
to see the real India, not the India which
came to her through the rarified
atmosphere of the British colony. To please
the ladies one of the members offered
to hold what he whimsically termed a
bridge party and to invite some native
guests.
The bridge party was a miserable
affair. The Indians retreated to one side
of a lawn and although the conspicuously
reluctant group of Anglo-Indian ladies
went over to visit the natives, an
awkward tension prevailed.
There was, however, one promising
result of the party. The principal of the
Government College, Mr. Fielding, a
man who apparently felt neither rancor
nor arrogance toward the Indians, invited
A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E. M. Forster. By permission of the author and the publishers, Harcourt
Brace & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1924, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.
2738

Mrs. Moore and Adela to a tea at his
house. Upon Adela's request, Mr.
Fielding also invited Professor Godbole, a
teacher at his school, and Dr. Aziz.
At the tea Dr. Aziz charmed Fielding
and the guests with the elegance and
fine intensity of his manner. But the
gathering broke up on a discordant note
when the priggish and suspicious Heaslop
arrived to claim the ladies. Fielding had
taken Mrs. Moore on a tour of his
school, and Heaslop was furious at him
for having left Dr. Aziz alone with his
prospective fiancee.
Adela, irritated by Heaslop's callous
priggishness during her visit, informed
him she did not wish to become his wife,
but before the evening was over she
changed her mind. In the course of a
drive into the Indian countryside, a
mysterious figure, perhaps an animal,
loomed out of the darkness and nearly
upset the car in which they were riding.
Their mutual loneliness and a sense of
the unknown drew them together and
Adela asked Heaslop to disregard her
earlier rejection.
The one extraordinary thing about the
city of Chandrapore was a phenomenon
of nature known as the Marabar Caves,
located several miles outside the city.
Mrs. Moore and Adela accepted the
offer of Dr. Aziz to escort them to the
caves; but the visit proved catastrophic
for all. Entering one of the caves, Mrs.
Moore realized that no matter what-was
said the walls returned only a prolonged
booming, hollow echo. Pondering that
echo while she rested, and pondering the
distance that separated her from Dr.
Aziz, from Adela and from her own
children, Mrs. Moore saw that all her
Christianity, all her ideas of moral good
and bad, in short, all her ideas of life,
amounted only to what was made of them
by the hollow, booming echo of the
Marabar Caves.
Adela entered one of the caves alone.
A few minutes later she rushed out,
terrified, claiming she had been nearly
attacked in the gloom, and that Dr. Aziz
was the attacker. The doctor was
arrested.
There had always been a clear
division between the natives and the Anglo-
Indian community, but as the trial of
Dr. Aziz drew nearer, the temper of each
group demanded strict loyalty. When
Mrs. Moore casually intimated to her
son that she was perfectly certain Dr.
Aziz was not capable ot the alleged
crime, he had her shipped off to a coastal
port of embarkation at once. And when
Fielding expressed an identical opinion
at the club, he was promptly ostracized.
The tension which marked the open*
ing of the trial had a strange resolution.
The first sensational incident occurred
when one of Dr. Aziz's friends pushed
into the courtroom and shouted that
Heaslop had smuggled his mother out
of the country because she would have
testified to the doctor's innocence. When
the restless body of Indian spectators
heard the name of Mrs. Moore, they
worked it into a kind of chant as though
she had become a deity. The English
colony was not to learn until later that
Mrs. Moore had already died aboard
ship.
The second incident concluded the
trial. It was Adela's testimony. The
effects of the tense atmosphere of the
courtroom, the reiteration of Mrs. Moore's
name, and the continued presence of a
buzzing sound in her ears which had
persisted since the time she left the caves,
combined to produce a trance-like effect
upon Adela. She virtually relived the
whole of the crucial day as, under the
interrogation of the prosecuting attorney,
she recollected its events. When she
reached the moment of her lingering in
the cave, she faltered, dramatically
changed her mind, and withdrew all
charges.
Chandrapore was at once and for
several hours thereafter a great bedlam.
Anglo-India sulked while India exulted.
As for Adela, so far as Anglo-India was
concerned she had crossed the line.
Heaslop carefully explained that he could
no longer be associated with her. After
accepting Fielding's hospitality for a few
2739

weeks, she returned home. In spite of
Dr. Aziz's increased Anglophobia,
Fielding persuaded him not to press Adela for
legal damages.
Two years later the Mohammedan
Dr. Aziz was court physician to an aged
Hindu potentate who died on the night
of the Krishna Festival. The feast was
a frantic celebration and the whole town
was under its spell when Fielding
arrived on an official visit. During the
two years he had married again, and Dr.
Aziz, assuming he had married Adela
Quested, tried to avoid his old friend.
When he ran into him accidentally,
however, he found out it was Mrs. Moore's
daughter, Stella, whom Fielding had
married. The doctor's shame at his
mistake only caused him to become more
distant.
Before they parted for the last time,
Dr. Aziz and Fielding went riding
through the jungles. The
misunderstanding between them had now been cleared
up, but they had no social ground on
which to meet. Fielding had cast his lot
with his countrymen by marrying an
Englishwoman. The rocks which
suddenly reared up before them, forcing theii
horses to pass in single file on either side,
were symbolic of the different paths they
would travel from that time on. The
affection of two men, however sincere,
was not sufficient to bridge the vast gap
between their races.

THE PASSION FLOWER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jacinto Benavente y Martinez (1866-1954)
Type of plot: Tragedy
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Castile, Spain
First presented: 1913
Principal characters:
Esteban, a well-to-do Spanish peasant
Raimunda, his second wife
Acacia, her daughter
Rubio, a family servant
Juliana, another servant
Norbert, Acacia's former fianc6
Faustino, engaged to Acacia
Critique:
The first two acts of The Passion
Flower are violent melodrama. Then
comes the philosophical third act with its
action confined to the hearts of two
women who love the same man, one
consciously, one unconsciously. When the
translated version of this work was first
performed in the United States, critics
wrote rave notices contrasting its full-
blooded story with the anemic American
theater of the time. Also, the play was
partly responsible for the award to
Benavente in 1925 of the Nobel Prize for
literature "for the happy way he pursued
the honored traditions of the Spanish
drama." Actually, Benavente was one of
the least Spanish of recent Spanish
dramatists, having been especially influenced
by Ibsen, Shakespeare, and Moliere, as
well as by Levedan and other French
playwrights of his time. The Passion
Flower is in many ways more universal
than Spanish. One Spanish critic has
called it "a tragic drama on classical lines,
written without any real national bearing
or spirit."
The Story:
There was much excitement in the
home of Esteban, a wealthy peasant
living in an outlying section of a small town
in Castile, Spain. The engagement of his
stepdaughter Acacia to Faustino, son of
Tfo Eusebio, a friend of Esteban, had
just been announced, and friends of
Raimunda, her mother, were calling to talk
over the event. Acacia, after turning
down several suitors, had finally
consented to Faustino's suit. The women
were wondering whether she still thought
about Norbert, who some time before had
broken off his engagement to her without
explanation.
Fidelia, one of the callers, said that she
had seen Norbert going away angrily with
his gun after the engagement was
announced that afternoon. Another, En-
gracia, shrewdly suspected that the girl
had accepted Faustino to get away from
Esteban, against whom she had borne a
grudge for marrying Raimunda so soon
after the death of her first husband. But
Raimunda assured her friends that she
had seen no signs of ill feeling except in
Acacia's unwillingness to call him father.
Certainly Esteban had been most
generous to both of them.
Night was coming on. Faustino and
his father, who lived in the next village,
would have no moonlight for their
journey, and hungry husbands would soon
be demanding suppers; so the party
ended. Esteban offered to accompany his
friends to the edge of the village.
Raimunda, still not certain how her
daughter felt about the coming marriage,
THE PASSION FLOWER by Jacinto Benavente, from PLAYS, FIRST SERIES. Translated by John
Garrett Underhill. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1917, by John
Garrett Underhill. Copyright renewed, 1945, by John Garrett Underhill.
2741

began questioning her, but she was
reassured by her daughter's replies. Only the
servant, Juliana, struck a sour note as she
began to tidy the house after the party.
She wished that Acacia's real father had
lived to see this day.
Milagros, a friend who had stayed to
see Acacia's hope chest after the departure
of the others, also asked the girl how she
felt toward Norbert. When she suggested
that Acacia was still in love with him,
Acacia's answer was to tear his last letter
into bits and throw it out the window
into the darkness.
At that moment a gunshot was heard
outside. Raimunda sent Juliana to
investigate. The servant returned with
villagers carrying the body of Faustino.
None had seen the shot fired, but the
women were sure Norbert was the
assassin.
At the court trial unbiased witnesses
gave Norbert an unbreakable alibi, but
weeks later the village was still arguing
about the affair. Esteban moped about
the house and talked so much about the
killing that Acacia was almost frantic. At
last Raimunda sent Juliana after
Norbert. She was sure she could learn the
truth from him.
In the meantime Rubio, the servant,
was becoming increasingly drunk and
impudent, and he tried to keep Eusebio
from calling on Esteban to discuss the
murder. Eusebio's boys, disgusted with
what they regarded as a miscarriage of
justice, were threatening to shoot
Norbert. Their father hinted that even if the
young man was innocent, rogues can be
hired to assassinate or family servants
can act through loyalty. Raimunda told
him she prayed every day that God would
reveal and punish the murderer.
After Eusebio's departure, Juliana
sneaked Norbert into the house. He
assured Raimunda that he was completely
innocent of the crime. Bernab6, another
servant, arrived with accounts of Rubio's
drunken boasting that he was now master
in Esteban's house. The servant also
repeated a song, heard in the tavern,
calling Acacia the Passion Flower because
she inspired an unholy love in men.
Norbert confessed that he had broken off
his engagement to her because he had
been threatened and because he was a
coward.
When Acacia appeared, Raimunda, to
test her suspicions, accused her of being
in love with her stepfather. The girl
replied that her father was in the cemetery
and that she hated the man who had
taken his place. The arrival of Esteban
brought further denunciation from
Raimunda. Let him get Rubio's help to
murder Acacia and her, if he wished, but
she would kill him if he approached her
daughter. Norbert, trying to leave the
house in spite of Bernab6's warning, was
shot by Eusebio's boys.
The peace of the household had been
shattered. Norbert was recovering, but
an atmosphere of hatred hung over all
that was said or done. Raimunda and
Juliana talked over the time when
Esteban came courting and wondered whether
he had loved Acacia then. Juliana warned
that great hatred like Acacia's might
contain the germ of great love.
Rubio, insolent in his demands, proved
that Esteban had never actually told him
to murder Faustino. The master had only
audibly hoped that no one would take
Acacia from his house. There was still
love between Esteban and Raimunda,
however, and to preserve it they decided
that it would be wise to send Acacia
briefly to a convent and then try to find
a husband for her. Acacia, who had been
listening outside the door, burst in with
the announcement that she would not
leave the house. Esteban acquiesced; since
he was the cause of all the trouble, he
should be the one to go. At that Acacia
broke down. Esteban must not go; she
loved him.
Raimunda's screams denouncing him
brought the neighbors to the scene. The
trapped Esteban shot Raimunda, who
died happy because Acacia had turned
to her at the end as she lay dying, and
not to Esteban. Raimunda, by her death,
2742

had saved her daughter. Esteban could never have her now.
2743

PATERSON
Type of work: Poem
Author: William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
First published: 1946-1951
Anyone who picks up a copy of
William Carlos Williams' Paterson and gives
it a hasty reading may arrive at the end
of the poem with a feeling not unlike
that of the traditional country bumpkin
on his first trip to the big city: there are
so many different things to look at, in
so many different shapes and sizes, and
all the people seem to be rushing about
so haphazardly that the poor rustic winds
up his day in bemused but happy
confusion. Such a reaction to Paterson is
part of Dr. Williams' purpose, for this
poem interweaves the story of a city
with the story of a man so that the two
become interchangeable; and the jumbled
kaleidoscope of city life turns and
glitters like the conflicting ideas, dreams,
loves, and hates that assail the mind of
modern man. So much for a hasty
reading of Paterson.
Looked at more closely, the poem
begins to take on shape, like a city coming
out from under a rolling fog or a man
walking out of the shadows of trees in a
park. Dr. Williams unifies his poem by
letting the river that flows through the
city serve as a symbol of life, both the
city's and the man's. That life is like
a river flowing somewhere safe to sea is
certainly an image as old as poetry itself,
but Dr. Williams' style and presentation
are so fresh, so individual, that he seems
to have invented the idea. The poem is
divided into four books which correspond
to four parts of the river: first, the river
above the Falls; second, the Falls itself;
third, the river below the Falls; and
fourth, the entrance of the river into
the sea.
Dr. Williams opens the first book,
called "The Delineaments of the Giants,"
with these lines:
PATERSON by William Carlos Williams. Excerp
Directions. Copyright, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958,
Paterson lies in the valley under the
Passaic Falls
its spent waters forming the outline of
his back. He
lies on his right side, head near the
thunder
of the water filling his dreams!
Having quickly presented the blended
image of city and man, the poet lets us
know that there are also symbols for
women: a flower, a cliff, the Falls. He
then introduces one of the main concerns
of Paterson: the search for a language by
which human beings may "redeem" the
tragedies of life. To counterbalance this
somewhat abstract and nebulous idea,
Dr. Williams intersperses his poem with
many concrete passages, some in prose,
which serve as an entrancing
documentation of the background of the city and
the man. In Book I, for instance,
historical notes and newspaper clippings tell
us of the finding of pearls in mussels
taken from Notch Brook, near the city;
of General Washington's encounter with
"a monster in human form"; of the
accidental drowning of a Mrs. Cumming at
the Falls; of the death there of a stunt
man named Sam Patch; and of a great
catch of eels made by the local people
when a lake was drained. Paterson the
man is represented by letters written to
him, one from a misunderstood lady poet.
Dr. Williams rounds off Book I with a
quotation from Symonds' Studies of the
Greek Poets. Such diversity of material
seems to call for a prestidigitator to make
it all seem a part of the whole; Dr.
Williams does it easily, for he is a master
juggler who never quite lets his reader
see all of the act, making him fill in some
of the parts from his own imagination.
"Sunday in the Park," the title of
Book II, concerns itself chiefly with love,
rinted by permission of the publishers, New
illiam Carlos Williams.
2744

including the many kinds of love-making
found in a city park, and with poetry,
for Paterson is as much a tribute to
language as it is to a city or a man.
Fittingly, this section ends with another long
passage from a letter written by the lady
poet who is struggling to fit together her
work, her life, and her friendship with
the "dear doctor" to whom she writes.
Book III, "The Library," continues to
probe the inarticulateness of tragedy and
death, searching for some way that
language may assuage, even prevent those
things we accept so complacently as a
part of existence. In these beautiful lines
Dr. Williams has this to say about poetry:
The province of the poem is the world.
When the sun rises, it rises in the
poem
and when it sets darkness comes down
and the poem is dark
Book III also describes a great fire that
sweeps the city, destroying the library.
The poet continues to insert prose
passages and one of these tells the story of
Merselis Van Giesen, whose wife was
tormented by a witch that appeared to her
nightly in the form of a black cat. In
telling the story, Dr. Williams throws in
a few comments that display his sense
of humor, a talent so lacking in many
modern poets. When the witch is
revealed to be a Mrs. B., "who lived in
the gorge in the hill beyond," he
comments, "Happy souls! whose devils lived
so near." Interspersing the tale with other
witty remarks, the poet winds it up by
having the husband shoot the cat with a
silver bullet made from his cuff links. The
shot is a difficult one because the cat is
visible only to his wife, who must locate
the target for him and direct his aim.
He kills the cat and, in the tradition of
witch stories, Mrs. B. suffers for some
time with a sore on her leg.
Book IV, "The Run to the Sea," which
opens with an idyl involving Corydon,
Phyllis, and Paterson, also introduces
that bugaboo of our times, the Bomb.
The poem concludes when Paterson the
man reaches the sea, but he, along with
a dog found swimming there, is able to
escape from this symbol of death and to
head inland.
This poem, which Dr. Williams
published in sections between 1946 and
1951, has been compared with
Whitman's Leaves of Grass, MacLeish's
Conquistador, and Hart Crane's The Bridge.
It is certainly as good as anything written
by Crane, but it lacks the eloquent
brilliance of Conquistador; and to compare
Williams with Whitman is stretching the
superlatives until they become tenuous.
Whitman writes like a great wind that
sweeps you off your feet, buffeting you
with words until you are exhausted;
Williams wafts a far gentler breeze. And
while Paterson is a poem filled with
variety and surprises, it cannot match the
symphonic effect created by Whitman in
Leaves of Grass. There are times in this
poem when Dr. Williams turns his
kaleidoscope so quickly that you feel like
quoting from his own work:
. . . Geeze, Doc, I guess it's all right
but what the hell does it mean?
On the other hand, passages of great
lyrical beauty occur frequently in
Paterson and a careful reading of the poem
creates the feeling that you have visited
a typical American city and been taken
on a tour of it by a man who tells its
history as you walk along. More
important, you become acquainted with the
man himself: he is clever, witty,
sensitive, wise, and deeply concerned with the
J>eople of his city and with their prob-
ems. Thus does Paterson achieve its
purpose; you make friends with a man and a
city, both blended into one of the most
fascinating poems of our time.
2745

THE PATH TO ROME
Type of work: Travel sketches
Author: Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
First puhlished: 1902
Hilaire Belloc—poet, novelist, essayist,
biographer, historian, polemicist and
propagandist—was a writer so prolific and
versatile that it is almost impossible to
designate any one of his works as best
or even representative; but The Path to
Rome is in many ways as typical as any
in revealing his intellectual attitudes, the
nature of his faith, his outlook on the
world, and the qualities of his style.
The book is an account of a walking
tour that Belloc made one summer from
Toul, in eastern France, across the Alps
in Switzerland, and down through
northern Italy to Rome. Throughout the book
Belloc provides a great many digressions:
accounts of the people and the scenery,
essays on society and character, stories
told to divert the reader much in the
manner that Laurence Sterne used stories
in his accounts of his travels, observations
on language, culture, universities, and
poetry. But Belloc's principal digression
from the theme of his walking tour is his
constant reference to and discussion of
the Roman Catholic faith. Although The
Path to Rome is not a symbolic journey
into Catholicism, it is an attempt to get
at the essential meaning of experience
by observing the area as closely as
possible, just as, for Belloc, Catholicism was
the religion which expresses the essential
truths of experience. Catholicism is an
important theme in The Path to Rome;
the religion gives the digressions a sense
of direction, just as Rome itself provides
the geographical direction of the tour.
Throughout, Belloc provides maps and
sketches that he himself drew. The maps,
all complete with directional arrows
toward Rome, show the villages he passed
through and the mountains he crossed
in Switzerland. The mountains are drawn
with faces, passes, and routes clearly
shown. The sketches of buildings and
churches that interested him along the
way are also drawn with a great deal of
careful detail. Twice, on his walking
tour, Belloc persuaded himself to take
short train journeys. In both instances,
once just before he reached Milan and
once not far from Siena, Belloc was
almost out of funds. Had he continued
walking, he would not have had enough
money to buy the minimum amount of
food to sustain him on his walking tour.
Thus he saved time and took the train
to the city where his money was waiting
for him.
The Path to Rome is written in the
first person. But Belloc frequently
interrupts his monologue by means of a
character called "Lector" who derisively
jibes at the author for any pretentious
statement or complains when the
narrative is broken off to pursue one of
Belief's pet theories. The author answers
Lector and often puts him down.
Lector is a convenient device for
Belloc, a means of focusing the reader's
attention on the particular point or
digression the author is eager to make.
For example, Lector's interruptions allow
Belloc to go on about human pride and
pride in the intellect, one of the sins that
he finds most harmful among human
beings. Lector is also a means of self-
satire, for he sometimes complains after
the author has indulged in a passage of
purple descriptive prose, reminding the
author of his original dedication to
simple and careful writing. Lector, in other
words, gives Belloc's account a wider
perspective, allows the reader to see that
the author, while strongly immersed in
his own observations and point of view,
is also wise enough to detect the possible
relevant objections to and
inconsistencies in his work.
Belloc, beginning his book with an
assault on conventional proverbs and wise
sayings, announces his intention to see
and understand life fully and
sympathetically; he refuses to be bound by the

petty little guides for experience like "A
penny saved is a penny earned." In
rejecting such sayings, Belloc plans to
devote himself to largeness, width of both
understanding and expression. He has a
kind of Rabelaisian appreciation of all
sides of human activity; and during the
course of his journey he has many
opportunities to demonstrate this largeness.
He is simple, kind, though shrewd when
he needs to be, in all his dealings with
the peasants and innkeepers he meets
along the way. Frequently tattered and
dirty from his walking, he is sometimes
misjudged by the people he encounters.
But he often shows, and is shown,
kindness and friendship as well as a genuine
ability to understand the forces that mold
these people.
At one point, in Italy, he is arrested
as a tramp, but he is generally able to
find both inexpensive food and revealing
conversation at places where he stays.
His Rabelaisian quality is also evident in
his appreciation of good food and good
wine. He carries a quart of the wine of
the area with him all the time, and he
stops for at least one good meal each day.
In addition, he demonstrates a real
respect for the people who live close to the
earth, whose constant and necessary
preoccupations are with food and drink and
the essentials of physical life.
Belloc's faith, however, dominates the
book even more strongly than does his
desire to understand people. He always
makes a point of noticing whether the
people he encounters are Roman
Catholics, and, although he does not judge
them on this basis, he feels strongly the
error of those who do not belong to his
Church. He attends mass almost every
morning on the entire journey. He
praises the Germans he meets for their
constant interest in things spiritual, and
he frequently points to his own love of
the richness of ritual. At one point, in a
long digression on the values of
attending mass, he asserts that the mass allows
one to forget passions and cares, that
ritual relieves the individual from the
necessity of making judgments and
controlling his own life, that man receives
enormous satisfaction from acting as
thousands before him have acted and
formally releasing himself into the hands
of a higher power.
Belloc, in frequent digressions of this
sort, is able admirably to point out the
value and necessity or his faith. He also
praises religion from another point of
view: he uses it as the antidote to the
niggling, penny-pinching, narrow
commercialism he so much deplores. At times
he connects this commercialism with the
rise of the middle classes historically,
although, at other times, he praises the
middle classes for their continuous and
conventional devotion to religion as well
as for their bravery in facing the hard
and difficult circumstances of their lives.
Belloc's greatest enemy, however, is
not commerce but the pride man often
has in his intellect and powers of
analysis. In his most bitter digressions, he
attacks the pedants and the academics who,
saturated with intellectual pride, find
man the measure of all things. Such
people, Belloc feels, are skeptical about
religion, ultimately wicked, and unaware
of all the various delights and depths of
experience.
Throughout The Path to Rome, Belloc
uses a rich, discursive, allusive style.
Despite his promises to be brief and to the
point, he rarely is; and part of the
pleasure of the book is contained in the rich
and highly discursive use of language.
His style fits his long ramble, his
frequent pauses to sketch, to observe, to
ruminate. And his enjoyment of his own
language parallels his enjoyment of
people and places. His style is, perhaps, less
effective when he is describing the
magnificence of the scenery or the grand
view from an Alpine peak. In such
passages, his writing is likely to be florid, to
deliver rhapsodies in conventional terms.
Belloc, as writer and as observer, is best
when dealing with people, when
describing, from his firmly held but wide point
of view, the ideas and reactions of the
people he meets.
Belloc did not hold to all the firm
2747

resolutions with which he began his
journey. He twice took a train; he did not
(because of a snowstorm that drove him
back) cross the Alps at the point that
would lead him most directly to Rome.
But consistency or allegiance to man-
made resolutions was not the most
important thing for Belloc. He did have a
good time, and he did complete his
physical, humane, and spiritual journey to
Rome. He wandered, observed, and
lectured along the way, fully appreciating
the human and spiritual life he
encountered on a journey that was both
physically and spiritually rewarding.
2748

THE PATHFINDER
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1756
Locale: Lake Ontario and surrounding territory
First published: 1840
Principal characters:
Sergeant Dunham, of the Oswego garrison
Mabel Dunham, his daughter
Charles Cap, Mabel's uncle
Natty Bumppo, called Pathfinder, a frontier scout
Jasper Western, Pathfinder's friend
Lieutenant Davy Muir, garrison quartermaster
Critique:
The. Pathfinder, portrays Natty
Bumppo, wilderness scout, at the height of his
powers. Here, too, Natty falls in love for
the first and only time, but he
relinquishes his claim in deference to the man
his beloved really loves. This novel,
written in the tradition of the romantic
novel, is the third in the series of the
Leatherstocking Tales. The account of
the fort at Oswego, one of the
westernmost British frontier posts, is historical.
The action, however, is completely
fictional.
The Story:
Mabel Dunham and Charles Cap, her
seaman uncle, were on their way to the
home of her father, Sergeant Dunham.
They were accompanied by Arrowhead, a
Tuscarora Indian, and his wife, Dew-of-
June. When they reached the Oswego
River, they were met by Jasper Western
and Natty Bumppo, the wilderness scout
known as Pathfinder among the
English and as Hawkeye among the Mohican
Indians. Pathfinder led the party down
the Oswego on the first step of the
journey under his guidance. Chingach-
gook, Pathfinder's Mohican friend,
warned the party of the presence of
hostile Indians in the neighborhood.
They hid from the Indians and had a
narrow escape when they were
discovered. Arrowhead and Dew-of-June
disappeared; it was feared they had been
taken captives. Chingachgoot was
captured by the Iroquois but escaped. On
the lookout for more hostile war parties,
they continued their journey to the fort,
where Mabel was joyfully greeted by her
father after her dangerous trip through
the wilderness.
The sergeant tried to promote a
feeling of love between Mabel and
Pathfinder— his real purpose in bringing
Mabel to the frontier. WTien Major
Duncan, commander of the post,
proposed Lieutenant Davy Muir as a
possible mate for Mabel, the sergeant
informed the major that Mabel was already
betrothed to Pathfinder. Muir came to
the major and learned that he had been
refused, but he did not give up hope.
Actually Mabel and Jasper were in love
with each other.
A passage of arms was proposed to test
the shooting ability of the men at the
post. Jasper scored a bull's-eye. Muir
shot from a strange position and it was
believed by all that he had missed, bul
he said he had hit Jasper's bullet.
Pathfinder used Jasper's rifle and also struck
the bullet in the bull's-eye. The next test
of marksmanship was to drive a nail into
a tree with a bullet. Jasper almost drove
the nail into the tree; Pathfinder did.
The next test was shooting at a potato
tossed into the air. Muir failed, but
Jasper hit the potato in the center. A
silken calash was the prize, and Jasper
wanted it greatly as a present for Mabel.
When he mentioned the desire to
Pathfinder, the scout was able only to cut
the skin of the potato. After he had lost
2749

the match, Pathfinder could not resist
killing two gulls with one bullet. Then
Mabel knew how Jasper had won the
calash. In appreciation she gave
Pathfinder a silver brooch.
An expedition was sent to one of the
Thousand Islands to relieve the garrison
there. The party was to leave in the
Scud, a boat captured by Jasper. Before
departing, however, Major Duncan had
received a letter which caused him to
suspect that Jasper was a French spy.
Pathfinder refused to believe the charge
against his friend, but when the Scud
sailed under the command of Jasper he
was kept under strict surveillance by
Sergeant Dunham and Charles Cap. On
the way, the Scud overtook Arrowhead
and his wife and they were taken aboard.
When Pathfinder began to question the
Tuscarora, Arrowhead escaped in a canoe
the Scud was towing astern. Becoming
suspicious, Sergeant Dunham removed
Jasper from his command and sent him
below, and Charles Cap took over the
management of the boat. But Cap, being
a salt-water sailor, was unfamiliar with
fresh-water navigation. When a storm
came up, it was necessary to call upon
Jasper to save the ship. The Scud
escaped from Le Montcalm, a French ship,
and Jasper brought the Scud safely to
port.
Pathfinder had really fallen in love
with Mabel, but when he proposed to
her she refused him. Muir had not given
up his own suit. He admitted to Mabel
that he had had three previous wives.
Sergeant Dunham decided to take
some of his men and harass a French
supply boat. Starting out with his
detachment, he left six men at the post,
Muir among them, with orders to look
after the women. Soon after her father's
departure, Mabel went for a walk and
met Dew-of-June, who warned her of
danger from Indians led by white men.
Muir was unmoved by this intelligence
when Mabel informed him. Mabel then
went to MacNab, a corporal, and told her
story, but he treated Dew-of-June's
warning lightly. While they talked, a rifle
cracked in the nearby forest and MacNab
fell dead at her feet. Mabel ran to the
blockhouse. The attacking party was
composed of twenty Indians led by the
Tuscarora renegade, Arrowhead. Those
who escaped the ambush were Mabel,
Cap, and Muir, all of whom survived
through the help of Dew-of-June. Cap
and Muir were captured a little later.
Mabel discovered Chingachgook, who
had been spying about the fort. She
acquainted him with all the details of the
situation.
Pathfinder arrived secretly at the
blockhouse. He had not been fooled by dead
bodies of the massacred people that had
been placed in lifelike manner along the
river bank by the Indians. Then the
relief party of soldiers under Sergeant
Dunham was ambushed, but the
sergeant, seriously wounded, managed to
reach the blockhouse. Cap escaped from
the Indians and also gained the
protection of the blockhouse. The small group
then fought ofT the Indians during the
night. Jasper arrived with men in time
to relieve the situation. But Muir ordered
Jasper bound, basing his action on the
suspicion that Jasper was a spy.
Arrowhead stabbed Muir and disappeared into
the bushes, hotly pursued by
Chingachgook, who later killed him. Muir died
and Captain Sanglier, the white leader
of the Indians, admitted that Muir had
been the French spy, not Jasper. On his
deathbed Sergeant Dunham, thinking
Jasper to be Pathfinder, took Jasper's
hand, placed it in that of Mabel, and gave
the two his blessing. He died before the
surprised witnesses could correct his error.
Deciding that Mabel really loved Jasper,
Pathfinder relinquished his claim on her.
Pathfinder disappeared into the
wilderness with his Indian friend
Chingachgook, and was seen no more by Jasper
and Mabel. From time to time Indian
messengers came to the settlement with
gifts of furs for Mrs. Jasper Western, but
no name ever accompanied these gifts.
2750

PATIENCE
Type of work: Comic opera
Author: W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: 1881
Principal characters:
Reginald Bunthorne, a fleshly poet
Archibald Grosvenor, an idyllic poet
The Lady Jane, a rapturous maiden
Patience, a dairymaid
Critique:
One of the greatest favorites of all
Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, Patience, Or,
Bunthome's Bride is still performed
today almost as frequently as it was in the
past. A gentle thrust at romantic love
and unintelligible poetry, it found
instant popularity in its own day. The
libretto is often read simply as a play,
and one need only hum the familiar
tunes to get the spirit of this amusing
tale.
The Story:
At Castle Bunthorne, twenty lovesick
maidens pined and wilted for love of
Reginald Bunthorne, a fleshly poet. But
Reginald loved only Patience, the village
milkmaid. Patience did not know what
love was and thus did not know that
the utmost happiness came from being
miserable over unrequited love. The
lovesick maidens set her straight, however,
by showing her that to be in agony,
weeping incessantly, was to be truly happy in
love. Patience tried to remind them that
just a year ago they had all been in love
with Dragoon Guards, but they scorned
her for being so ignorant about real love.
A year ago they had not known Reginald,
the aesthetic poet.
The Dragoon Guards, billeted in the
village, saw Reginald approaching,
followed by the lovesick maidens, singing
and playing love songs directed to the
fleshly poet. The maidens ignored their
former loves, having eyes only for
Reginald. But Reginald himself had eyes only
for Patience, the milkmaid. At the
insistence of the maidens, he read them his
latest poem, into which he had poured
his whole soul—as he did three times a
day. The maidens swooned in ecstasy at
the poetry, but Patience said it was just
nonsense, which it was.
Later, alone, Reginald confessed that
he was a sham, that he hated poetry and
all other forms of aesthetic pleasure.
When Patience came upon him, he made
the same confession to her, telling her
again that he loved only her, not poetry.
But Patience knew nothing of the love
he spoke of, for she had loved only her
great-aunt and that love did not count.
After Reginald had left her, one of the
maidens told Patience that to love was
to feel unselfish passion. Patience,
ashamed that she had never been
unselfish enough to love, promised that
before she went to bed that night she would
fall head over heels in love with
somebody. In fact, she remembered that when
she was a little girl she had liked a little
boy of five. Now she was sorry that she
had not loved him. It was her duty to
love someone. If necessary, she would
love a stranger.
Archibald Grosvenor appeared
unexpectedly upon the scene. He was an idyl-
he poet who grieved because he was
completely perfect. Since he had no rival on
earth in perfection, it was his lot to be
loved madly by everyone who saw him.
Recognizing Patience, he told her that
he was the little boy she had known
when he was five. When he asked her
to marry him, she refused. He was
perfect; therefore she would not be acting
unselfishly in loving him. If he had only
2751

one small imperfection, she said, she
could marry him in good conscience.
Candor forced him to admit that such
was not the case. Patience told him,
however, that he could love her even if she
could not return his love, for she had
faults. Grosvenor agreed, and they sadly
parted.
Reginald Bunthorne prepared to raffle
himself to the rapturous maidens, but
before they could draw for him Patience
entered and begged his forgiveness for
not loving him sooner. Certainly to love
such a creature would be unselfish; she
would do her duty. As they left
together, the lovesick maidens turned back
to the Dragoon Guards, prepared to fall
in love with them once more.
But before their embraces were over,
Grosvenor entered, and the fickle
maidens left the Guards to follow Grosvenor.
They loved him madly. All deserted
Reginald but Lady Jane, one of the
unattractive older girls. She hoped her
faithfulness would be rewarded, but she knew
her beauty was too far gone ever to lure
Reginald away from Patience.
Grosvenor would not stop loving
Patience in order to love the rapturous
maidens. He pitied them for not being
able to receive his love and was annoyed
by their attentions. They had followed
him since Monday, with no half-holiday
on Saturday. Then he read them one of
his poems. It told of a little girl who put
mice in the clock and vivisected her best
doll and of a little boy who punched
his little sisters' heads and put hot
pennies down their backs. The maidens
nearly swooned with admiration of his lyric
beauty.
Patience continued to love Reginald,
even though she found the matter
difficult. He had no good habits and was not
attractive, but it was her duty to love
him and she did, shunning the perfect
Grosvenor who loved her. None of the
rapturous maidens except plain Lady
Jane still loved Reginald, the others
having taken their allegiance to Grosvenor.
Reginald, resentful because the other
maidens had forsaken him, decided to
change his character; he would be as
insipid as Grosvenor. Lady Jane promised
her help.
The Dragoon Guards returned to the
maidens, dressed as foppishly as even
Grosvenor could dress. They acted
insipidly and stupidly, and the lovesick
maidens were impressed by this proof of
their devotion. Reginald also became a
changed man. He was mild and kind,
even handsome. He told Grosvenor that
he must change, that he had too long
had the devotion that once was
Reginald's. On the threat of a curse from
Reginald, Grosvenor changed his nature
and became a cad, admitting that he had
long wished for a reasonable pretext for
getting rid of his perfection.
When Patience saw that Reginald was
now perfect and Grosvenor was not. she
was happy, for she could now unselfishly
love Grosvenor. The lovesick maidens,
seeing Grosvenor forsake aestheticism,
knew that since he was perfect he must
be right. They, too, gave up the arts and
returned to the Dragoon Guards. The
Duke of Dunstable, a Dragoon officer,
took plain Lady -Jane, leaving the now
perfect Reginald quite alone, without a
bride.
2752

THE PATRICIAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: England
First published: 1911
Principal characters:
Eustace Caradoc, Lord Miltoun
Mrs. Audrey Lees Noel, a woman separated from her husband
Lord Valleys, head of the Caradoc family
Lady Valleys, his wife
Barbara Caradoc, their daughter
Lady Casterley, Lady Valleys' mother
Mr. Courtier, a political liberal
Critique:
In this novel Galsworthy concerns
himself with the traditions of English
aristocracy and the possibility of a break
with tradition when the individual
attempts to assert himself. Although the
author appears to be sympathetic to such
a break, he never allows it actually to
happen. He seems, rather, to be saying
that we should continue in the patterns
that are already set for us. It is
something of a disappointment to the reader
when he finishes the novel and realizes
that all the lofty cries for liberty and
freedom have not been heeded, and that
much unhappiness results from them.
The Story:
After spending a pleasant weekend at
Monkland Court, the county seat of the
Carddoc family, Lord Valleys, the head
of the house, returned to London for a
Cabinet meeting called because of war
threats facing the country at the moment.
These scares had an added interest in
the household because the eldest son,
Eustace Carddoc, was making his first
bid for a seat in Parliament. Family
tradition demanded that he take such a step
and also that he be a member of the
Conservative Party and work to maintain the
authority vested in society, or the
English aristocracy.
Lord and Lady Valleys were concerned
about young Eustace's career because his
speeches too vividly reflected his very
high ideals and also because he was
seeing an attractive young woman, Mrs.
Audrey Noel, who was rumored to be
a divorcee. Because of her concern in
these matters Lady Valleys had written to
her mother, Lady Casterley, who would
do everything in her power to keep her
grandson from making a mistake
dangerous to his career.
While Lord Valleys was motoring to
London, Eustace was engaged in
conversation with Mr. Courtier, the real
power behind his opposition. The
conversation, or informal debate, took place
in Mrs. Noel's drawing room. Mr.
Courtier took his usual stand in favor of
freedom and liberty for the masses, while
Eustace argued that authority should be
left in the hands of the aristocracy whose
education and training traditionally
equipped them for running the country
in the best way. That both of these
gentlemen should be visiting Mrs. Noel was
not surprising. Courtier had known her
since she was a child, and Eustace was
rapidly falling in love with her.
A few nights later Eustace was again
visiting Mrs. Noel when word was
brought to them that the villagers were
"devilling" a man on the green. When
they rushed to his aid they found that
THE PATRICIAN by John Galsworthy. By {permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright renewed, 1939, by Ada Galsworthy.
2753

Mr. Courtier had been roughly treated,
although his only injury was a badly
sprained knee. Eustace, following the
dictates of courtesy, at once took him to
the Carddoc home, where he was to
stay until he recovered. But damage had
also been done to Eustace, for by
allowing himself to be seen visiting a woman
of a somewhat dubious reputation, his
own reputation, and consequently his
attempts to gain a seat in Parliament, also
came under suspicion. His actions were
duly reported by the local newspaper.
The fact that Mr. Courtier ran in its next
issue a statement to the effect that Mrs.
Noel was the lawful wife of the
Reverend Stephen Noel clarified but did not
help the situation.
Eustace, because of a quick trip to
London, did not learn of these
developments until the day that Courtier's
statement appeared, and then only when he
went to propose to Audrey Noel. He
was so much in love with her that he had
neglected to find out her real story and
he had assumed, like everyone else, that
she was divorced. She had not
discouraged his attentions because she thought
he already knew the truth. Matters
became even worse when Mrs. Noel's
husband would not give her a divorce
because of his religious beliefs, and Eustace,
because of his own ideals, had to
acquiesce.
Soon afterward Eustace was duly
elected to Parliament. Although they had
resolved to see no more of each other,
Mrs. Noel followed him to London.
Eustace worked night and day trying to
keep from thinking of her until the
strain of work and love proved too much
for him, and he became ill. His younger
sister Barbara, who had gone to see him
in his rooms just before the fever took
hold, decided to follow an impulse.
Having heard from Mr. Courtier that Mrs.
Noel was in London, she took her to
Eustace so that she could nurse him back
to health.
Barbara was sympathetic to the
couple, partly because of her own youth and
partly because of a strong temptation in
her own life to break away from the
traditions of family and society. Having
come to know Mr. Courtier during his
stay at Monkland Court, she could not
help being attracted to him because of
his handsome appearance and his belief
in personal freedom for everyone.
Barbara, beginning to feel the restraints of
her position in society and dreading the
prospects of marrying the man that
everyone expected her to marry, was able to
take Mrs. Noel to her brother with no
qualms whatsoever.
Barbara did not tell her family about
this step until after her brother had
passed the crisis and was almost well.
They then saw to it that he was moved
to their family home in London. Soon
after Eustace had recovered, an active
love affair between him and Mrs. Noel
began.
Being a man of the highest ideals,
Eustace, when he had entered into an
affair with Mrs. Noel, felt that he was
no longer fit for his seat in Parliament.
He reasoned that if he thought of
himself as helping to establish the authority
of the land he could not very well flaunt
that authority; and so he resolved to
resign his seat. His family, however, could
not understand that kind of idealism and
felt that he should keep his seat in spite
of the affair, or else give up the woman.
Also, Mrs. Noel had no desire for him to
give up his career; she knew that he could
never be happy outside of Parliament.
At last, after Lady Casterley had gone
to see Mrs. Noel in London, the young
woman agreed never to see her lover
again. Eustace, although depressed, went
on with his career; and Barbara, who also
had come close to a break with tradition,
married a man of her own class within
the year. Mrs. Noel and Mr. Courtier,
both foreign and detrimental to the
tradition of the conservative, aristocratic
class, quietly went away.
2754

THE PATRIOT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Italy
First published: 1896
Principal characters:.
Don Franco Matroni, fhe patriot
The Marchesa Ors'ola, his grandmothet
Luisa Rigey, his wife
Piero Ribera, Luisa's uncle
Critique:
The Patriot is the first of three related
novels telling the story of the troubled
times when Italy strove to throw off the
Austrian yoke and become a free, united
country. Actually the story is more
concerned with the struggle of two people
to find themselves than with the spirit
of patriotism which the title implies.
Antonio Fogazzaro, one of the foremost
Italian writers of the last century, was
a novelist whose books have gained a
prominent place in world literature.
The Story:
The Marchesa Orsola was determined
that Don Franco Maironi, her grandson,
should marry a woman of birth and
money, but that young man was in love
with Luisa Rigey, a gentle girl of the
neighborhood who had neither wealth
nor position. Because the marchesa had
forbidden him to see Luisa, her mother
had tried to please the powerful old lady
by keeping the young people apart.
Then, when the mother knew that she
was dying, she was so anxious to see her
daughter settled that she gave her
permission for a secret marriage.
His marriage meant that Franco would
be cut off without a cent, for the
marchesa controlled the Maironi fortune and
was not one to relent once her mind was
made up. But the young people would
be supported by Luisa's uncle, Piero
Ribera, a government engineer. He had
supported his sister and her daughter
for many years and considered it a
privilege to do so. Franco himself was an
imaginative youth who had never worked
and seemed unlikely ever to do so.
Although he had studied law in order to
be free of his grandmother's power, he
spent most of his time playing the piano
and composing poetry.
At the time the provinces that would
one day be Italy were trying to throw
off the yoke of Austrian power. There
had been several minor revolutions, but
each one had been put down and the
patriots imprisoned or killed. At last
other European countries were
becoming interested in the struggle for Italian
independence, and they were willing to
help the rebels. Franco was one of the
patriots. His grandmother was a stanch
supporter of Austria. That circumstance
made his position doubly dangerous.
Spies were everywhere, and if he
defied his grandmother in his marriage she
would be his personal enemy as well as
his political one.
Franco loved Luisa too much to let
those problems deter him, however, and
so they were secretly wed. Before many
hours had passed the marchesa learned
of the wedding, for she was so powerful
that people willingly brought her all the
news. She immediately disowned Franco,
refused even to acknowledge that he
existed. But what the old lady did not know
THE PATRIOT by Antonio Fogazzaro. Translated by M. Prichard-Agnetti. By permission of the
publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1906, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Renewed. All rights reserved.
2755

was that a friend of the family had called
Franco to him and showed him a letter
from his grandfather, the marchesa's dead
husband. The letter contained also a
will which reflected on the morals of his
wife, questioned the paternity of his son,
Franco's father, and left his fortune to
Franco. Since the will was a duplicate
copy, the friend felt sure that the mar-
chesa had knowingly concealed the
original, thus cheating Franco of his
rightful fortune. But Franco, although
stunned, refused to use the information
against his grandmother and did not
even want Luisa to learn of the letter.
Life was not easy for the young couple,
but they were sustained by their love
and by Uncle Piero's small allowance.
Meanwhile the police were becoming
more active, and once Franco was
arrested. Uncle Piero was also suspected.
Because there was no proof of treason, no
action was taken other than to warn
Franco and other patriots to avoid any
suspicious activities.
A baby girl born to Franco and Luisa
became the joy of their lives, and they
spent all of their time with her. But
there was one serious question between
them concerning the baby. Luisa was not
a believer in God. Franco, a devout
Catholic, feared that she would try to
influence the child. Luisa loved her husband
too much, however, to go against his
wishes. She took the baby to mass and
in other ways tried to please her husband
in training the child, although she
herself gave only lip service to any religious
function.
Through the ill will of the marchesa,
Uncle Piero was finally dismissed from
his government position. With no
income, Franco was forced to seek work.
Since it was becoming increasingly
unsafe for him to stay where he was
constantly watched, he went to a distant
province. From there he sent home as
much money as possible for the support
of his family, which now included Uncle
Piero, and for their future journey to
join him when the proper time arrived.
Before he left, Luisa had learned of the
concealed will and begged Franco to
make it public so that his grandmother
would get justice for her sin. She did not
want the money and would gladly have
given it all away, but she felt that
Franco's grandmother should be punished for
the trouble she had caused. Franco could
not agree with her, and they parted
under strained relations.
During his absence Luisa began to see
God as Franco had wished she might,
for through her love for the baby she
turned at last to a faith in which
everyone loves his brother, even his enemy.
Although she still could not accept all
the teachings of the Church, she wrote
Franco that she hoped someday to have
a belief as great as his. But she still
desired revenge against the marchesa who
had made them suffer so greatly. Finally
she secured a copy of the will and
approached the old lady to warn her of the
knowledge she now possessed.
Interrupted by a cry, she ran to find that her baby
had wandered off and drowned. Luisa,
almost out of her mind with grief, did
not want the child even to be buried.
Although Franco did not blame her when
he returned, Luisa felt that she had
killed the baby by leaving her alone in
order to seek out the marchesa. As a
result, she turned even more violently
against God and blamed Him for taking
her baby as punishment for the sins of
adults like herself and the marchesa.
The marchesa, even though she fought
against her own conscience, secretly felt
guilty of the sin of the child's death.
Fearing that she might soon die, she
repented of her sins and called Franco to
her. But she had not changed entirely,
for instead of asking his forgiveness she
offered to forgive him for disobeying her.
When she told him that she was making
him the sole heir in her will, Franco still
spurned the money. He wanted only
peace with the grandmother who had
reared him. Since the police were again
seeking him, he soon had to flee from his
home once more. His grandmother,
repentant, helped him to escape.
Three years passed before Luisa and
2756

Uncle Piero could join Franco. Luisa
had no feeling for her husband or for
anyone else now that her baby was dead.
Franco would soon join the army of
patriots who would fight against Austria.
Otherwise she would not have gone to
him in answer to his pleas. But as the
time drew near tor them to part, her old
love for him returned, and she went to
him in passion and in humility. When
Franco left her, she carried in her body
the seed of a new life, symbol of a
happier existence than the one Uncle Piero
left peacefully after seeing his family
once more united in love and in faith.
2757

PAUL BUNYAN
Tyfe of work: Short stories
Author: James Stevens CI892- )
Type of jflot: Folklore
Time of flot: From the Winter of the Blue Snow to the Spring That the Rain Came Up
From China
Locale: North America
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Paul Bunyan, a mighty hero
Babe, the Blue Ox
Hels Helsen, Paul's friend
Johnny Inkslinger, the surveyor
Sourdough Sam, a cook
Hot Biscuit Slim, another cook, Sourdough Sam's son
King Bourbon, King of Kansas
Shanty Boy, a storyteller
Critique:
In this collection of stories about the
fabulous Paul Bunyan, Stevens has tried
to catch the flavor of the north woods.
Bunyan and his Blue Ox, Babe, whose
horns were forty-two ax handles and a
plug of chewing tobacco apart, have
become a part of American folklore. The
Paul Bunyan tales, which originated
along the Canadian border about 1837,
have the hearty tall story exaggeration
of the wide West and the virile
Northwest. They will be popular with
readers of all ages for years to come.
The Stories:
That winter the blue snow fell. It
frightened the moose so that they fled
from the section of Canada where Paul
Bunyan lived to the far North. The herds
made so much noise that all the bears
woke up from their hibernation and fled
too. Some of the bears went so far
North that they turned white and
became polar bears. Some only went far
enough to turn gray, and some were
merely so frightened that they stayed
small. When Paul Bunyan discovered
the blue snow on the ground, he was
surprised, but not as surprised as he
was to find that his moose hound,
Niagara, had followed the herds, and was
no longer there to bring his food for
PAUL BUNYAN by James Stevens. By permission of the author and the publishers. Alfred A. Knopf. Inc.
Copyright, 1925, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
him. Walking around, he saw a blue
calf of an amazing size. Because it
seemed ill, he took it home to his cave
and fed it. Shortly afterward he dreamed
that he and the calf were to invent and
practice the art of logging.
So with the help of Babe, who had
grown up to be a huge Blue Ox, Paul
Bunyan set up a lumber camp. When
Paul had to do the paper work for the
camp, he invented the multiplication
table, the cube root, and algebra. As boss
of the logging, Paul was lucky to meet a
man, almost as big as he was, named Hels
Helsen. Hels was a wonderful worker
and Paul's friend, but they fought after
Paul decided to cut the trees on the
Mountain That Stood On Its Head.
When Paul found that his men could
not hang upside down from the sides
of the mountain and cut the
down-growing trees with ease, he loaded his gun
with plates of iron and shot it at the
overhanging sides. The discharge cut off
the trees so that they fell down and
buried their tops in the plain below.
Hels got angry at Paul for being so
smart, and the two of them had a terrible
fight on the top, which was really the
bottom, of the mountain. Paul won, and
from then on there was never any trouble
between them.
2758

Then the camp moved to a place where
Paul found trees planted in perfect rows,
and all of the same size. Paul's men cut
down the trees. Soon afterward Paul
met Johnny Inkslinger, the great
surveyor, and learned that Johnny had
planted the trees for surveying stakes.
In recompense, Paul made Johnny, who
also was almost as big as Paul, his
bookkeeper.
Feeding the huge lumber camp was a
great problem. At first Paul had a cook
who would serve only pea soup. One
day he threw the peas in a lake and
boiled the lake water to make the soup.
Then Paul got a new cook named
Sourdough Sam. Sam served only
sourdough, and he was convinced that it was
good for everything. He advised it as
a shoe polish, an emetic, liniment, and
toothache medicine. Once he put some
sourdough in Johnny Inkslinger's ink, in
hopes that it would treble the amount.
Unfortunately the ink blew up, and
Sourdough Sam lost an arm and leg.
Sam's son, Hot Biscuit Slim, then tooK
over the cookhouse, and after demanding
and getting a tremendous amount of
equipment from Paul, he made mealtimes
the happiest hours of the loggers' day.
Paul's loggers amused themselves at
night by listening to songs and stories.
Shanty Boy, of Bunkhouse 1, was the
best storyteller in the camp. Once, when
the men were feeling sad, Shanty Boy
ran out of stories to cheer them up, and
he told them some lies. The men believed
all Shanty Boy's lies until he told the
story of Jonah and the whale. Then Paul
had to be called in to keep the men
from beating up Shanty Boy for telling
what they thought was a whopper. Paul
told them that the story was true. They
believed Paul, but from that time on
no logger ever told another lie.
Paul took his camp to Utah to cut
down the stonewood trees there. The
men grew so tired, and their axes got
so dull, that they almost gave up. In
disgust, Paul himself started cutting
down the trees. He worked so hard
that he sweated tremendous drops of
water, which later became Salt Lake.
His men, frightened by the flood Paul's
sweat caused, ran away to Kansas. There
everything was perfect. All anyone did
was gamble and drink. One day a duke
planned a revolution against King
Bourbon of Kansas. He had all the bars
serve very strong drinks, and everyone
but the duke and his friends fell down
in a stupor. The duke, who wanted to
get rid of drink and gambling forever,
told all the men, including Paul's
loggers, that they had sinned mightily. Paul
finally turned up and forgave his men
for running away. He also hitched Babe
to Kansas and turned it over. He left
Kansas flat, and hid forever the wonderful
cigarette grass, beervines, and whiskey
trees.
One day Babe became ill. Johnny
Inkslinger tried several cures. He took
the camp to the West Coast, where they
captured whales and fed Babe whale's
milk, but the treatment did little good.
Finally Johnny whispered over and over
in Babe's ear that Babe was really well
Johnny drank whiskey to keep his voice
clear. After a few days, he fell in a
faint. Babe drank some of the liquor
and began to get well. Whiskey, not
whale's milk, was the medicine for the
Blue Ox.
Next the camp went to New Iowa,
where Paul left them. The scenery was
so beautiful that the men did nothing
but write poetry. Paul had to come back
and take them to the He-Man country
to get them out of the habit. In the
He-Man country it was so cold in the
wintertime that words froze in the air,
and you could not hear them until they
thawed out in the spring. The men
grew so virile after a winter of that hard
life that all they did was fight one
another. One day they stopped fighting
because they seemed to be knee-deep in
blood. After a while Paul discovered
that it was not blood but red rain which
had fallen up through the earth from
China.
2759

After the rain from China, the gang
moved into the Nowaday Valley. There
Paul discovered that the men were
singing about women, a subject he could
dimly remember having heard
mentioned before. Paul also had trouble
with one of his workers, who discovered
machines which could do what only
Paul and the Blue Ox had been able
to perform before. Paul was afraid that
his days were over. At last women
appeared near the camp, and Paul's men
disappeared. Paul went to look for them
and met a woman. He picked her up in
his hand and looked at her. Completely
unconcerned, she powdered her nose.
Paul was dumbfounded. Late that night
he started out across the hills with his
Blue Ox. He was never heard from
again.
2760

THE PEACE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-c. 385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Satiric comedy
Time of plot: The Peloponnesian War
Locale: Athens
First presented: 421 B.C.
Principal characters:
Trygabus, a citizen of Athens
Hermes
War
Hibrocles, a soothsayer from Areus
Critique:
After a decade of fighting, both Sparta
and Athens were ready to make some
kind of peace between themselves, and
the peace of Nicias was nearly complete.
In this play Aristophanes joyfully looks
forward to such a condition, although if
was not to be achieved as quickly as he
expected. Indeed, he anticipates herein
some of the difficulties to be overcome
within the various Greek states and, as
usual, he shows that the farmers of the
country will be most instrumental in
bringing about the peace. However, an
atmosphere of gaiety and hopefulness
does pervade the play. Since Aristophanes
is usually ribald when he is happy, this
is one of his first plays in which we see
the bawdy side of his nature.
The Story:
Being tired of the wars and hungry,
Trygaeus, like most Athenian citizens,
called upon the gods not to desert them.
Unlike the others, however, Trygaeus
searched for a way to gain entrance to
the heavens so that he might make a
personal plea to Zeus and thus save
himself, his family, and his country. He had
tried climbing ladders but had succeeded
only in falling and breaking his head.
Now he decided to ride to heaven on the
back of a dung beetle, in the manner of
Bellerophon on Pegasus.
This attempt to make his way to
heaven succeeded, but when Trygaeus
arrived at the house of Zeus he found that
the gods had moved to that point
farthest away from Greece so that they need
see no more of the fighting among those
peoples and hear no more prayers from
them. Having afforded the Greeks an
opportunity for peace, which they had
ignored, tne gods had now abandoned them
and given the god of War, aided by his
slave Tumult, full power to do with them
as he pleased.
Trygaeus soon found out that War had
already begun to carry out his plans.
He had cast Peace into a deep pit and
was now preparing to pound up all the
cities of Greece in a mortar. Trygaeus
watched him as he threw in leeks
representing the Laconians, garlic for the
Megarians, cheese for the Sicilians, and
honey for the Athenians. Fortunately,
this deed of destruction was momentarily
postponed because War could not find a
pestle. After several unsuccessful attempts
on the part of Tumult to find one for
him, War himself had to leave the mortar
and go make one.
His departure gave Trygaeus the
chance he needed to save Peace, and
immediately he called on all the states of
Greece to come to his aid. All came, but
with noise enough to bring Zeus himself
back from his retreat. Hermes, who had
been left in the house of Zeus, was
aroused and angered by the noise, and
could only be cajoled into allowing them
to go on with their work after many
promises of future glorification.
Even at such a crucial moment the
people refused to work together. The
Boeotians only pretended to work; La-
machus was in the way of everyone; the
2761

Argives laughed at the others but profited
from their mistakes; the Megarians tried
hard but had not enough strength to do
very much. The Laconians and the
Athenians worked earnestly and seriously,
but it was primarily through the efforts
of the farmers that Peace was finally
freed. With her in the pit were Opora
and Theoria. Everyone was now
apparently happy, and to ensure the peace
Opora was given to Trygaeus as a wife
and Theoria was sent to the Senate. All
then descended to earth, where
preparations for the wedding were begun.
Before going on with the wedding,
Trygaeus decided to make a sacrifice to
Peace. During his preparations he was
interrupted by Hierocles, a prophet from
Areus. Trygaeus and his servant both
tried to ignore the prophet because they
felt he had been attracted only by the
smell of cooking meat, but he was not
to be put off so easily. When Hierocles
learned to whom the sacrifice was being
made, he began to berate them and gave
them many oracles to show that this was
not a lasting peace and that such could
not be achieved. However, when they
were ready to eat the meat, he was
prepared to agree with anything they said
in order that he might satisfy his own
hunger. But Trygaeus, wishing to have
nothing to do with the soothsayer, beat
Hierocles and drove him away.
With peace newly restored to the
country, the people of Athens seemed to
enjoy the feasting and mirth before the
wedding.
A sickle-maker approached Trygaeus
and praised him for bringing back peace
and prosperity, but he was followed by
an armorer and various other personages
representing those trades which had
profited by the war. These people were
unable to join in the festivities; theirs was
not so happy a lot. Trygaeus, however,
had no sympathy for them and offered
only scorn. When they asked what they
could do with their wares in order to
regain at least the cost of manufacturing
them, he mocked them. He offered to
buy their crests and use them to dust the
tables, and he offered to buy their
breastplates for use as privies. He told them to
sell their helmets to the Egyptians who
could use them for measuring laxatives,
and he told them to sell their spears as
vine-props.
When Opora appeared, the whole
party went off to the wedding singing
the Hymen Hymenaeus.
2762

THE PEASANTS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ladislas Reymont (1868-1925)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Poland
First published: 1902-1909
Principal characters:
Matthias Boryna, a well-to-do peasant
Antek, Matthias* son
Dominikova, a widow
Yagna, her daughter
Hanka, Antek's wife
Critique:
The Peasants is epic in the sweep and
significance of its story. The problem of
Europe is contained in this novel—the
problem of overpopulation, of poor and
overworked soil, of ignorance, of
imperialism. The novel is at once a text
on the subject of mass sociology and a
human, heart-warming narrative. In
keeping with the seasonal movement of
its story, Reymont's masterpiece is
divided into four sections: Autumn,
Winter, Spring, and Summer.
The Story:
It was autumn and the peasants of
Lipka village were hurrying to finish the
harvest before winter. In Boryna's
barnyard the villagers gathered to see a cow
that had been chased from manor lands
and was now dying of colic. Hanka,
Matthias Boryna's daughter-in-law, took the
loss most to heart when old Kuba, the
lame stableman, said that he could do
nothing for the stricken cow.
That night Matthias, charged with
having fathered a servant girl's child,
went to visit the voyt, the headman of
the village, to ask about his trial. The
voyt, after assuring him that he would
get off easily in court, flattered
Matthias and told him he should marry
again, now that his second wife was
dead. Matthias pretended he was too
old, but he knew all the time he was
hopeful of marrying Yagna, the daughter
THE PEASANTS by Ladislas Reymont. Translated by Michael H. Dziewicki. By permission of the
publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1924, 1925, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
of Dominikova. Yagna would some day
inherit three acres of land.
The next morning the case against
Matthias was dismissed. After the trial
Matthias met Dominikova and tried to
sound her out on her plans for her
daughter.
On the day of the autumn sale
Matthias went off to sell some hogs and
Hanka her geese. Old Matthias, pleased
when Yagna accepted some brignt
ribbons, asked her hand in marriage. He
did not know that his son Antek, husband
of Hanka, was secretly in love with
Yagna. When Matthias settled six acres
upon Yagna in return for the three she
brought with her marriage portion, Antek
and his father fought and Matthias
ordered his son off the farm. Antek and
Hanka moved with their children into
the miserable cabin of Hanka's father.
The wedding of Matthias and Yagna
was a hilarious affair. In the midst of
the merriment Kuba, poaching on manor
lands, was shot in the leg by a
gamekeeper. Fearing the hospital, he cut off
his own leg and died from loss of blood.
Winter came swiftly, and wolves
lurked near the peasant's stock barns.
That winter Hanka and Antek had to
sell their cow to keep themselves in food.
At last Antek took work with men
building a new sawmill. Matthew, the
foreman, was his enemy, for Matthew also
loved Yagna. One aay Antek overheard
2763

Matthew's brag that he had been with
Yagna in her bedroom. Antek, in a
great fury, struck Matthew so hard that
the carpenter broke several ribs when he
fell over the railing and into the river.
At Christmas there was great rejoicing
in Matthias* house, for Yagna was with
child. At the midnight mass on
Christmas Eve, Yagna and Antek saw each
other for a moment. Antek asked her
to meet him behind the haystack.
That winter the peasants of the
village came to Matthias to report that a
part of the forest which the peasants
used for gathering wood had been sold
by the manor people. Unhappily,
Matthias allowed himself to be dragged into
the dispute. While Matthias was away,
Antek went to his father's farm to see
Yagna. Returning, Matthias nearly caught
them together.
One night at the inn Antek, drunk,
ignored his wife and asked Yagna to
dance with him. Matthias arrived, seized
Yagna, and took her away. Later, on
his way home, Antek found his wife
almost dead in the snow. From that time
on Matthias treated Yagna like a servant
girl.
Antek lost his job and Hanka was
forced to go with the paupers seeking
firewood in the forest. Walking home
through the storm, Hanka was given a
ride by old Matthias. He insisted that
Hanka come back to his farm the next
day.
That night Antek took Yagna into the
orchard. Coming upon them, old
Matthias lit up a straw stack in order to see
them. Antek and the old man fought.
Then Antek fled and the fire spread,
threatening the whole village. Yagna
fled to her family. Everyone avoided
Antek and refused to speak to him.
At last old Matthias took Yagna back,
but only as a hired girl. Hanka was
with him much of die time. When
Yagna began to see Antek again, the old
man took no notice.
Word came that the squire was cutting
timber on land the peasants claimed.
The next morning a fight took place in
the forest as the villagers tried to
protect their trees. Antek thought he might
kill his own father in the confusion, but
when he saw Matthias struck down, he
killed the woodcutter who had wounded
his father. Antek walked alongside as
Matthias was carried home.
Spring came. Many of the villagers,
Antek among them, were in jail after
the fight in the forest. Fields went un-
plowed. Old Matthias lay insensible.
Yagna had now begun to consort with
the voyt. It seemed as if the devil
himself had possessed the village.
Easter was a sad season because the
men were still in prison. Word went
around that the squire, who had been
ordered to stop the sale of his land, was
in desperate straits for money and vowing
revenge upon the peasants. Shortly after
Easter Hanka gave birth to a male child
who was named Roch. Gifts were given
out but in Antek's absence the christening
did not seem complete.
At last the peasants were set free.
Their homecoming was a happy
occasion in every cabin but that of Matthias,
for Antek had not been released. Yagna
was also unhappy. Even Matthew, the
carpenter who had once loved her, now
ignored her for younger Teresa.
One night old Matthias arose from
his stupor. For hours he wandered about
the fields as if about to sow his land.
In the morning he fell over and died.
Summer brought additional woes to
the peasants. There were quarrels over
Matthias* land. Some Germans came to
occupy the squire's land, but the peasants
threatened them and they went away.
Then the squire made arrangements to
parcel out the land to the peasants and
some of them bought new land for
homesteading.
Old Dominikova and Simon, one of
her sons, had quarreled, and Simon
bought his own land from the squire.
Simon and his wife Nastka received
many gifts from the villagers who wanted
to spite old Dominikova. When the
voyt's accounts were found to be short,
the villagers blamed Yagna.
2764

Released from prison, Antek returned
to work on the farm. He was still
attracted to Yagna, but the duties of his
farm and the possibility that he still
might be sent to Siberia pressed even
harder upon him. That summer the
organist's son, Yanek, came home from
school. In a short time he and Yagna
were seen together. At last the peasants
put Yagna on a manure cart and told her
never to return to the village.
The summer was dry and the harvest
scanty. One day a wandering beggar
stopped at Nastka's house. He gave her
some balm for Yagna, who had taken
refuge there. As the sound of the An-
gelus rose up through the evening air,
he strode away. For the food Nastka
had given him he called down God's
blessing on her peasant home.
2765

PEDER VICTORIOUS
Type of work: Novel
Author: O. E. Rolvaag (1876-1931)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: The Dakota Territory
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Beret Holm, a pioneer woman
Peder Victorious, her youngest child
Ole,
Store-Hans, and
Anna Marie, her other children
Mr. Gabrielsen, their minister
Charlie Dohent, Peder's friend
Susie, Charlie's sister
Critique:
Peder Victorious, a sequel to Rolvaag's
Giants in the Earth, carries on the saga
of pioneer life twenty years after the
time of the first novel. Since Rolvaag
himself was a Norwegian transplanted to
America, he wrote authoritatively of
Beret's reluctance to give over all her
Norwegian customs and to follow bhndly the
American ones of her children and
neighbors. Particularly, she resisted giving up
her own language, for that seemed a real
sin to her. On the other hand, having
come to this country as a young man,
Rolvaag also knew the forces working on
the young people to become
Americanized as quickly as possible. Hence, this
novel is 3 sympathetic picture of the
Holm family. If it does not have the
power of Giants in the Earth, the reason
may lie in the fact that the struggle in
this novel is not for survival in a new
land, but merely one of adaptation to a
new society.
The Story:
While Peder Holm was growing up,
he lived in three rooms. In one, where
he lived everything in English, there was
a magic touch. In the second, where he
lived everything in Norwegian, things
were more difficult. In the third room,
only he and God could come. Before he
was born, his mother had dedicated him
to God, who had become a very real
person to the boy.
As he grew up, however, he was not
always sure that God could be the kind
of being that his mother and the
Reverend Mr. Gabrielsen talked about. Peder
had been taught that God was love, and
yet He was blamed for the death of Per
Hansa, his father, the destruction of the
crops, and the bleakness of the land. To
Peder such calamities could not be
reconciled with his God of love; he read his
Bible assiduously in an attempt to
straighten out his thoughts.
The Reverend Mr. Gabrielsen was sure
that Peder would be the right one, after
seminary, to minister to the Norwegian
settlement. It was true that the preacher
expected English to supplant Norwegian
as the language, there in the next twenty
years, but that was all right. Peder's
English was fluent, though still tinged
with a Nordland accent.
The whole community was in a fever
of change. After a long argument in
church about disciplining a girl whose
shame had caused her to hang herself,
one group broke off and established a
second church. There were already two
schools, one strictly Norwegian and one
to which the Irish came as well. The next
PEDER VICTORIOUS by O. E. Rolvaag. By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers.
Copyright, 1929, by Harper & Brothers.
2766

problem would be the division of the
territory before it entered the Union.
Such affairs aroused the people nearly to
fighting pitch. Meetings called pro and
con were sources of fine entertainment
for everybody within riding distance.
Beret wanted everything Norwegian
kept intact; she even tried to keep the
children speaking Norwegian to her at
home, though that was hard after all the
children had been in school a few years.
Particularly, she wanted Peder kept
secure for the ministry; that desire was
hard for her to insure because she could
not understand him when he spoke
English at school and church affairs. Since
his voice was fine and loud, he spoke
often and entered into every kind of
entertainment. He might become a
minister, but he was certainly going to have a
lot of fun beforehand. As for that, he
found a great deal of entertainment and
satisfaction right on the farm.
After a political meeting at the school-
house, a meeting which Beret and her
whole family attended and at which
Peder recited Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address in English, his teacher spoke at
length to Beret about letting him speak
English all the time, that he might lose
his Norwegian accent. Beret was so
disturbed that she spoke to her husband's
picture that night. Although he seemed
to smile at her for her anxiety, she
decided that Peder should go to the school
which only Norwegians attended.
The change of schools did not help
much. Beret asked a widowed friend
about moving both their families back
to Norway, but Sorine questioned the
wisdom of taking their children into a
strange land. Beret could not
understand what Sorine could be talking
about. Weren't their children
Norwegian? Sorine told her that their children
were American.
One thing helped Beret to keep her
mind off her troubles. She could plan for
the farm. Everyone in the settlement
admitted that she was prosperous. Soon she
had a windmill and a fine big barn for
both horses and cows. She never knew
quite how she did that job; usually she
felt overcome by her problems and tried
some solution out of desperation. Always
her solutions seemed the right ones.
With her farm going so well, Beret
liked to give the minister donations for
the missions. Her generosity made her
feel better until the Reverend Mr. Gabriel-
sen did something which annoyed her
exceedingly and at which he could not
help but laugh. Just before Peder was to
be confirmed, the preacher asked him to
read at meeting a part of the Bible in
English. Beret objected to that when she
talked to the Reverend Mr. Gabrielsen,
but she was incensed sometime later when
he asked the blessing in English in her
own house. Still, she wanted Peder to
be a minister.
Peder was beginning to have ideas of
his own. In the first place, he began to
resent being kept at home, away from
dances and parties. The Irish were great
for parties and Peder liked a great many
of those people, especially the Dohenys.
Finally he began to go out at night
without telling his mother where he was
going. He could not escape her knowing
that he did go, however, because she
stayed awake each night until he came in.
Then she began to hear rumors about
which he would give her no satisfaction.
Soon the minister heard that Peder was
running around with girls. He begged
Peder to go off to the seminary
immediately. Peder refused^
Instead, he began to rehearse for a
play, the first to be put on in the
settlement. He was the hero and Susie Do-
heny, the heroine. To him the lines in
the pky became real and Susie his true
love. He was happier than he had ever
been, singing all day, and tireless at his
work. When the minister heard about
the play, he came to Beret and begged her
to get Peder out of that kind of
temptation. Beret thought it was up to the
minister himself to restrain Peder. She was
all confused. Perhaps Peder was going
astray, but lately he had been kinder than
2767

he had ever been before. She questioned
him and seemed relieved when she heard
that some of her old friends were also in
the cast.
By the time the next rehearsal came
around, she could not resist finding out
what she could. She went through the
fields until she could see into the school-
house. There she saw Peder with Susie
in his arms—Susie, that Irisher.
Beret crept into the shadows until the
players left. Her mind went blank. Then
she moved around a little, picking up
small sticks which she piled close to the
school. A heavy rain came up and blew
so hard that she could not get those sticks
to burn, and she crept home. She was so
tired then that she merely looked at her
husband's picture and fell on her bed.
She must have dreamed, for, hearing a
noise, she looked around and there was
Per Hansa standing by her bed, telling
her to let Peder have that girl of his that
he was so fond of.
The next day Peder thought Beret
seemed preoccupied. It was a shock and
then a delight to him td hear her say
they must hurry to Doheny's to arrange
for his and Susie's wedding.
2768

PEDRO SANCHEZ
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jose Maria de Pereda (1833-1906)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: 1852-1879
Locale: Santander and Madrid
First published: 1883
Principal characters:
Pedro Sanchez, a provincial from the Cantabrian Mountains
Augusto Valenzuela, a politician from Madrid
Clara, his daughter
Serafin Balduque, a former state employee
Carmen, his daughter
Mata (Matica), a student in Madrid
Redondo, editor of El Clarin of Madrid
Barrientos, Governor Pedro Sanchez* secretary
Critique:
In treatment of subject matter and in cheap boarding-house where he hoped to
composition, Pedro Sanchez is one of stay until he could contact Valenzuela.
Pereda's most finished works. It is a mod- The politician proved hard to find. Aft-
ern picaresque novel, an autobiography er settling in his lodgings, Pedro called at
satirizing all the phases of the protago- Valenzuela's house, where Pilita, his
nist's life as office seeker, journalist, po- wife, and his daughter Clara gave the
litical agitator, revolutionist, social lion, young man a cool reception. The politi-
and governor. Pedro's opinions of life cian, finally tracked down after a dozen
and politics in Madrid doubtless reflect visits to his office, vaguely promised to
those of the author, who had followed a keep Pedro in mind if anything should
somewhat similar career in the capital turn up. However, the boy wrote his
before he yielded to homesickness and father an optimistic letter in which he
returned disillusioned to his native re- lied about his reception by the Valen-
gion. There is nothing heroic about Pe- zuela family.
dro. He is an ordinary mortal with a Pedro's acquaintances at the boarding-
weak moral sense, yet he arouses sym- house were more helpful. Matica showed
pathy and pity when viewed in contrast him around Madrid and, when Pedro's
to the snobbery and villainy of the peo- money gave out and he was about to re-
ple about him. turn home, found him a job on the anti-
government newspaper, El Clarin, at
The Story: twenty-five duros a month. From the staff
Pedro Sdnchez, a young provincial Pedro learned of die crookedness of Val-
proud of his descent from Sancho Abarco, enzuela. Occasionally Pedro saw Bal-
a tenth-century king of Navarre, had duque. Mosdy he spent his free time in
seen little of Spain when he left his efforts to become a writer,
father and three sisters to go to Madrid. In the autumn, when one of the El
Augusto Valenzuela, a visiting politician, Clarin contributors entered government
had promised to look after his future in service, Pedro was advanced to writing
the capital. It was October, 1852, when reviews under his own name, which was
Pedro took the coach from Santander. announced as the pseudonym of a fa-
Among the passengers were a down-at- mous literary man. Redondo, the editor,
heels bureaucrat, Serafin Balduque, and hinted diat plays and novels by friends
his attractive daughter Carmen. From a in the party were to get preferential
student in the coach, Pedro learned of a treatment, while literary works by mem-
2769

bers of the opposition were to be severely
criticized. One of Pedro's first tasks was
to criticize Clemencia, by Pardo Bazin.
Pedro's success went to his head. He
abandoned his old friends, even Matica.
He saw Clara and in spite of her disdain
he found himself falling in love with her.
Valenzuela, however, did nothing to help
the young man get ahead in Madrid.
Since all El Clarin employees were
revolution-minded, Pedro caught the fever
and wrote a fable attacking the
government. Featured on the front page, il
brought him much attention. Valenzuela
sent for Pedro and offered him a meager
job, which he refused, on a government
publication. Warned by Balduque that
his refusal would put the police on his
trail, Pedro took refuge with Balduque
and Carmen.
After the overthrow of the government
in the revolution of July 17, 1854, there
was no longer any reason for Pedro to
stay in hiding. On his way from the
Balduque house to the office of El Clarin he
saw a mob burning government
buildings. When they began shouting against
Valenzuela, he diverted the rioters to the
palace of Cristina, the queen mother, and
rushed to save Clara. He was unwilling
to admit, however, that he acted out of
love for her.
Street fighting broke out, with Pedro
in command of a barricade. He was
joined by Balduque, who was eager to
get revenge for the wrongs committed
against him. When Balduque was killed,
Pedro and Matica were forced to break
the news to Carmen. She refused their
offers of help.
Finally Espartero imposed peace on
the troubled country. Valenzuela fled,
and his family accepted an invitation to
the country estate of the Duchess of Pico.
Pedro was rewarded with a provincial
governorship. Going to tell Clara
goodbye, he found himself proposing to her.
A fall marriage was arranged.
Through Pedro's efforts the
government granted a pension to Carmen, but
when ne went to tell her the news and
to announce his approaching marriage,
her lack of approval puzzled him. Matica,
too, was unenthusiastic. Redondo was
downright angry. The marriage was
performed after Pedro had visited his father
for the first time in three years.
Clara, her mother, her brother, and
Barrientos, a secretary whom Pedro
disliked from the first, accompanied him
to the seat of his government. There
everything went wrong. Clara's family
was extravagant and snobbish. Pedro's
secretary sneered at him and so did the
citizens. Finally, from a friendly editor,
Pedro got an explanation: his secretary
was collecting bribes and his wife was
exploiting her husband's political
position. Returning home unexpectedly,
Pedro surprised Barrientos in his wife's
bedroom. When Pedro and Barrientos met
in the street, they fought with sabers and
Pedro was wounded.
At last a change of government cost
Pedro his governorship. Ashamed to
return to Madrid, he got Matica's promise
to look after Carmen and gave up his
political life.
The passing years brought many
changes in Pedro's affairs. Valenzuela
soon died, as did his wife. Barrientos was
killed in a duel. Clara had several
protectors and eventually died, leaving
Pedro free to return to Madrid and marry
Carmen. But evil luck still plagued him.
His new wife and their small son died
during an epidemic. When he tried to
squander his money, Pedro became rich.
Homesick for the mountains, he sold his
business and returned to Santander, but
there he found no happiness. His father
was dead; the countryside and the people
seemed strange. Unhappy, Pedro wrote
his autobiography, ending it in true
picaresque style, with the hope that the
example of his disillusionment would
serve as a warning to his readers.
2770

PEER GYNT
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Satiric fantasy
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Norway
First presented: 1867
Principal characters:
Peer Gynt, a Norwegian farm lad
Ase, his mother
Solveig, a Norwegian girl whose love for Peer remains constant
The Great Boyg, a troll monster
The Button Moulder, who threatens to melt Peer in his ladle
Critique:
A satire on Man, that contradictory
creature with an upright body and
groveling soul, Peer Gynt is an example of
Ibsen's symbolic treatment of the theme
of individuahsm. This drama is a long
episodic fantasy, with a picaresque,
jaunty, boastful, yet lovable hero. Into
the fabric of the drama Ibsen weaves
folklore and satire combined with
symbolism that imparts a dramatic effect rich
in emotional impact. The unorthodox
and untheatrical design, however, make
stage presentation difficult. The play
deals with the degeneration of the human
soul, yet the triumphant note at the end,
the redeeming power of love, keeps it
from being tragic in dramatic effect.
The Story:
Peer Gynt, a young Norwegian
farmer with a penchant for laziness and
bragging, idled away his hours in
brawling and dreaming. Upbraided by his
mother, Ase, for his willingness to waste
his time, he answered that she was per-
fecdy right. She ridiculed him further
by pointing out that had he been an
honest farmer, Hegstad's daughter would
have had him, and he would have been a
happy bridegroom. He told her that he
intended to break the marriage of
Hegstad's daughter, a wedding planned for
that night. When his mother protested,
he seized her in his arms and set her on
the roof of their house, from where her
unheeded cries followed him up the road
to Hegstad's home.
At the wedding he was scorned by
everyone present except Solveig, a girl
unknown to him. But even she avoided
him as soon as she heard of his base
reputation. Peer became drunk and
began to tell fantastic tales of adventure,
stories that bridged an embarrassing gap
in the marriage ceremony when the bride
locked herself in the storeroom and
refused to come out. In desperation, the
bridegroom appealed to Peer for help.
As Peer left for the storeroom, his mother,
who had been released from the roof,
arrived. Suddenly the bridegroom cried
out and pointed toward the hillside.
Rushing to the door, the guests saw
Peer scrambling up the mountain with
the bride over his shoulder.
Peer quickly abandoned the bride and
penetrated more deeply into the
wilderness. Eluding the pursuit of Hegstad
and his neighbors, he married and
deserted the daughter of the elf-king of the
mountains. He encountered the Great
Boyg, who represented the riddle of
existence in the figure of a shapeless, grim,
unconquerable monster. Time and again,
Peer tried to force his way up the
mountain, but the Boyg blocked his way.
When Peer challenged the Boyg to a
batde, the creature replied that though
he conquered everyone he did not fight.
Exhausted, Peer sank to the ground.
The sky was dark with carnivorous birds
that were about to swoop down upon
PEER GYNT by Henrik Ibsen, from THE COLLECTED WORKS OF HENRIK IBSEN. Translated by
William and Charles Archer. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner'a Soma.
2771

him. Suddenly he heard the sound of
church bells and women's voices in the
distance. The Boyg withdrew, admitting
defeat because Peer had the support of
women in his fight.
An outlaw for having carried off Heg-
stad's daughter, Peer built himself a hut
in the forest, to which Solveig came to
keep him company. Their happiness was
brief, however, for one day Peer met
the elf-king's daughter, whom he had
deserted. With her was an ugly troll,
Peer's son; unable to drive them off, he
himself went away after telling Solveig
that she must wait for him a little while.
Before leaving the country, he paid
a farewell visit to his dying mother.
With his arms around her, Peer lulled
her into her last sleep. Over her dead
body he uttered thanks for all his days,
all his lullabies, all his beatings.
He went adventuring over the world.
In America he sold slaves; in China,
sacred idols. He did a thriving business
in rum and Bibles. After being robbed
of his earthly goods, he went to the
African desert and became a prophet.
Prosperous once more, he set himself up
in Oriental luxury. One day he rode intc
the desert with Anitra, a dance girl.
Stopping to rest, he could not resist the
urge to show off by proving to Anitra
that he was still young in spirit and body.
While he was performing, she stole his
moneybag and horse and galloped away.
Solveig had grown middle-aged while
she waited for Peer Gynt's return. Peer
Gynt, on the other hand, still struggled
on with his planless life, still drifted
around the all-consuming Boyg of life
without any apparent purpose in mind.
On his way back to Norway at last,
his ship was wrecked. Peer clung to a
spar which could hold only one man.
When the ship's cook attempted to grasp
the spar also, Peer thrust him into the
ocean. He had saved his own life, but
he doubted whether he had been
successful in saving himself from his aimless
existence.
On his return to Norway, he decided,
however, that he was through with
wandering, and he was willing to settle down
to the staid life of a retired old man.
One day on the heath he met a Button
Moulder, who refused to let the aged
Peer realize his dream of peace and
contentment. Informed that he was to go
into the Button Moulder's ladle to be
melted, Peer became frantic. To lose his
soul, his identity, was an end he had not
divined for himself despite his aimless
and self-centered life. He pleaded with
the Button Moulder to relent. He was
at worst a bungler, he cried, never an
exceptional sinner. The Button Moulder
answered that Peer, not bad enough for
hell nor good enough for heaven, was fit
only for the ladle. Peer protested, but
the Button Moulder remained adamant.
Peer was to be melted into the ladle of
nonentity unless he could prove himself
a sinner worthy of hell. Hell being a
more lenient punishment than mere
nothingness, Peer desperately enlarged upon
his sins. He had trafficked in slaves,
cheated people <md deceived them, and
had saved his life at the expense of
another. The Button Moulder ironically
maintained that these iniquities were
mere trifles.
While they argued, the Button
Moulder and Peer came to a house where
Solveig stood in the doorway ready for
church, a psaim book under her arm.
Peer flung himself at her feet, begging
her to cry out his sins and trespasses, but
she answered that he was with her again,
and that was all that mattered. She was
shocked when Peer asked her to cry out
Tiis crime to her; she said that it was he
who had made life beautiful for her.
Hearing her words, the Button Moulder
disappeared, prophesying that he and
Peer would meet again.
Peer Gynt buried his face in Solveig's
lap, safe and secure with her arms to
hold him and her heart to warm hiin.
Solveig's own face was bathed in
sunlight.
2772

PEG WOFFINGTON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Reade (1814-1884)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1853
Principal characters:
Peg Woffington, a famous actress
Harry Vane, her admirer
Mabel Vane, Harry's wife
Sir Charles Pomander, another admirer of Mrs. Woffington
Colley Cibber, actor and critic
Triplet, a painter and playwright
Critique:
This touching story reveals a keen
insight into human nature. Much too
sentimental to be credible to modern
readers, the story of Mrs. Woffington is
nevertheless a witty revelation of life
behind the scenes in the theater. The
dialogue between the critics and the
artists is delightful, and the attack on
critics follows a long tradition in our
literature. The principal character of the
story was a celebrated Irish actress.
The Story:
Mr. Harry Vane had come from
Shropshire to London on business affairs.
Having completed his business, he ventured
to remain in London for pleasure, for he
had seen Mrs. Woffington on the stage
and had fallen in love with her. From
his box seat at the theater, where he sat
night after night, he sent her anonymous
notes and flowers and waited for some
sign that his attentions had awakened
her interest. One night he sent a corsage
with a note asking her to wear the flowers
in her hair if the gentleman's notes had
interested her. In the final act of the
evening's performance, she appeared
with the flowers in her hair. Vane was
more determined than ever to meet the
actress personally.
From the audience Sir Charles
Pomander, whom Vane knew slightly, had
seen Vane in his box for many evenings.
Curiosity being one of Sir Charles'
greatest weaknesses, he watched to detect
signs in Mrs. Woffington or in Vane to
learn whether the gentleman's suit was
being successful. That night, observing
Vane's conduct, Sir Charles joined that
gentleman in his box and invited Vane
to accompany him to a gathering of
people in the green room backstage.
One of the group backstage was Mr.
Colley Cibber, known in his more
youthful days as a great actor and playwright.
When Vane questioned the famed actor
concerning Mrs. Woffington's ability as
an actress, Cibber scoffed and claimed
that acting is the art of copying nature.
He added that in his day there was a
much finer actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle.
Mrs. Woffington overheard his slighting
remarks. In order to disprove Cibber's
pompous claims, she disguised herself as
the elderly Mrs. Bracegirdle and appeared
among the backstage visitors as. that
famous old lady of the stage. So well
did she fool everyone that Cibber was
forced to admit his own deception by
Mrs. Woffington's play-acting.
Sir Charles was still watching Vane
for signs of the degree to which his suit
of Mrs. Woffington had advanced. But
the actress wore her feelings behind a
mask. Vane himself was too astounded
by his first visit backstage to reveal
anything to Sir Charles, who was also
pursuing Mrs. Woffington. Unfortunately,
Sir Charles had to leave London for a
few weeks. The next time Vane saw
Mrs. Woffington, she openly expressed
her admiration for him. Soon Mrs.
Woffington revealed to Vane that he was
her ideal of goodness and perfection.
2773

Vane himself was deeply in love.
Triplet, the plavwright, scene painter,
and poet, could find no market for his
talents, and his wife and children were
almost starving. One day when he was
at the theater trying to get Mr. Rich, the
manager, to read his latest tragedies, Mrs.
Woffington recognized him as a man
who had been kind to her when she was
a poor little Irish girl selling oranges on
the streets. When she learned of his
plight, she promised to sit for a portrait
and to persuade Mr. Rich to read his
plays.
When Sir Charles returned from his
trip, he immediately continued his suit
of Mrs. Woffington, who haughtily
refused him. Jealous of his rival's success,
he set about to ruin Vane's romance and
bribed Mrs. Woffington's servant to
report to him whatever Mrs. Woffington
did. One afternoon, suspecting that she
had gone to spend the day with a lover,
Sir Charles persuaded Vane to
accompany him in a search for her. Trailing
her to a strange apartment, they
discovered her with Triplet's family, whom
she had rescued from starvation when
she had gone to sit for her portrait. Vane
was dismayed at his own lack of trust in
Mrs. Woffington, but she readily
forgave him.
While he was journeying through the
countryside, Sir Charles had seen a
beautiful woman in a carriage. Arrested
by her beauty, he had sent a servant to
inquire about her identity-. Soon after
the incident in Triplet's apartment, Sir
Charles learned that the beautiful woman
was Vane's wife, Mabel, who was on her
way to join her husband in London.
When Mabel Vane arrived at her
husband's house, there was a gay party in
session. Although Mabel was a simple
country girl, she discerned the meaning
of Mrs. Woffington's presence, especially
after Sir Charles had described her
husband's conduct at the theater. True to
his crude character, Sir Charles offered
to comfort Mabel by making love to her,
but she coldly sent him away. Sitting
alone in the parlor, Mabel had to endure
the unhappy circumstance of overhearing
her husband pleading with Mrs.
Woffington to forgive him. Thus the devoted
and beautiful Mabel learned that her
husband no longer loved her.
Learning Mabel's identity, the actress
fled from Vane's house. Seeking comfort
and diversion, she went to Triplet's
studio and told him that she had come to
sit for her portrait. While she was
sitting, Triplet received word that some of
his theatrical friends were coming to his
studio to view the portrait. Knowing
that the critics Snarl and Soaper were
vicious and that Colley Cibber would
sneer at Triplet's work, Mrs. Woffington
contrived a plan to fool the arrogant
men. She cut a hole in the portrait just
large enough to fit round her head. When
the critics saw the picture, they believed
it to be a painting, while in reality it was
merely a setting around the real head of
Mrs. Woffington. True to their usual
form, the critics sneered at the artist's
lack of success in his endeavor to
reproduce the head of Peg Woffington.
Laughing at her own deception, Mrs.
Woffington stepped forward and revealed the
trick to the critics. Only Colley Cibber
was able to take the joke with good
nature. The others left in chagrin.
Mrs. Woffington told Triplet of Harry
Vane's wife, and he warned her that two
rival women were a dangerous
combination. While they were talking, Mabel
Vane entered the apartment. She had
come to see Mrs. Woffington. The
actress' vanity and pride had been cut to
the quick, but Mabel's sweet and
generous nature softened her heart. She
promised Mabel that she would not only
return Vane to his wife but also prove
to her that the heart of her husband had
never really deserted his wife. Mabel was
so grateful to her that she swore to call
Mrs. Woffington her sister, and the two
women embraced.
The Vanes were reunited, for Harry
truly loved his wife. Mabel Vane and Peg
Woffington remained steadfast friends,
seeing each other often in London and
writing numerous letters.
2774

PELLE THE CONQUEROR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Martin Andersen Nexo (1869-1954)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Denmark
First published: 1906-1910
Principal characters:
Pelle Karlsson, a young Swede
Lasse Karlsson, his father
Rud Pihl, Pelle's playmate
Ellen Stolpe, Pelle s wife
Master Andres, Pelle's master
Mr. Brun, Pelle's friend
Critique:
The background of Pelle the
Conqueror is the struggle between the workers
and employers during the rise of the labor
movement in Denmark in the last half of
the nineteenth century, but at no time
does the social criticism completely
envelop the biographical narrative.
Obviously the narrative was written to reveal
the struggles of the times. However, the
purely human interest in the growth of a
young man from the poorest kind of
background is always paramount. The
author's love for the common people and
their problems is perhaps best illustrated,
not in the background of social criticism
but in the insight with which sketches
and incidents of life among the common
folk are depicted. The many digressions
from the main story are entertaining
rather than boring because of the
sympathy and warmheartedness with which
these digressions present the customs and
experiences of people in whom Nexo was
interested.
The Story:
Among a shipload of migrant workers
from Sweden to the Danish island of
Bornholm, in the spring of 1877, were
Lasse Karlsson, a Swedish farmhand who
was old before his time, and his eight-
year-old son, Pelle. Like other Swedes
who went to Bornholm, Lasse Karlsson
was enticed from his homeland by the
relatively high wages paid on the Danish
island.
Lasse and his son were hired to look
after cattle on a large farm on the island.
Their life there was neither pleasant nor
unpleasant. The farm was a dreary one.
The owner, leaving the management of
the place to a bailiff, drank heavily and
sought after women. Pelle's greatest
happiness lay in getting out to look after
the cattle in the common pastures. After
a time he found a playmate in Rud Pihl,
the natural son of the farmer, who lived
in a shack with his mother near the edge
of the farm. For the elder Karlsson, life
was not easy; he was old and weak, and
the rest of the laborers made him the butt
of all their jokes. Even so, the man and
his son stayed at Stone Farm for several
years; it was easier to remain there than
it was to look for a new location.
The second winter found Pelle in
school, for the authorities insisted that he
attend. Though he was nine years old, he
had had no formal education. In addition,
he was the lone Swede among more than
twenty Danish children. Gradually,
however, Pelle made a place for himself, even
becoming a leader among his
schoolmates.
After two more years, Pelle was
confirmed. In the eyes of everyone, he was
now able to take care of himself. The boy,
PELLE THE CONQUEROR by Martin Andersen Nex5. By permission of the publishers. Henry Holt and
Ct , Inc. Copyright, 1914, 1917, by Henry Holt and Co., Inc. Renewed.
2775

realizing that his father was content,
decided to leave the farm by himself. Early
one morning he set his face toward the
little town that was the chief city of the
island. While trudging along the road,
Pelle met a farmer who gave him a ride
into town. Pelle confided to him that he
was on his way to look for work. The
farmer, who had known Pelle some time,
introduced him to a shoemaker who
accepted Pelle as an apprentice.
Master Andres was an easy master, but
even so the apprenticeship was not easy.
The journeyman under whom Pelle
worked was a grouchy person who taunted
Pelle for his rural upbringing. As the six
years of Pelle's apprenticeship passed, he
was not sure what he would do afterward.
He saw that many shoemakers had no
work and that machine-made shoes were
slowly taking the place of the handmade
variety.
In the last year of his apprenticeship
Master Andres died and the business was
sold. Rather than finish out his time with
a new master, Pelle ran away from the
shop. For several months he simply
drifted, picking up odds and ends of work
of any kind. The only thing which saved
him from becoming a ne'er-do-well was
the friendship of Marie Nielsen, a dancer.
She kept him seeking work, patched up
his clothes, and bolstered his self-esteem
so that he did not become a mere tramp,
until one day a traveling shoemaker
named Sort asked Pelle to join him for a
time. The two traveled about the country
and were highly successful. One day they
met Lasse, Pelle's father, who had just
been evicted from the farm he had
purchased during Pelle's apprenticeship. The
sight of his father, broken and miserable,
convinced Pelle that he ought to leave
Bornholm for Copenhagen, where he
hoped to make his fortune.
In Copenhagen, Pelle soon found work,
but the pay was slight. Finally he joined
a newly-organized trade union. He quickly
became interested in the activity of the
union and became a leader in the labor
movement. As such he met many people,
among them Ellen Stolpe, the daughter
of a leader in the stonemasons' union.
Pelle fell in love with her, and she
returned his love. They were married on
the day that Pelle became the president of
the shoemakers' union.
After his marriage Pelle lost interest in
the union; he spent as much time as
possible with his wife and, as they were
born, his two children. But a very bad
winter came along, when all the workmen
were extremely hard pressed by lack of
work. The hardships which he and other
workingmen suffered aroused Pelle once
again to work with the union. His private
life, too, was miserable, for he discovered
that his wife had turned prostitute in order
to bring home money to keep the little
family fed and sheltered. As soon as he
discovered what his wife had done, Pelle
left her.
The workmen were successful in a
general strike against their employers, but
Pelle, who was recognized as a ringleader,
was thrown into prison on charges of
having been a counterfeiter; the police
had discovered in his house a block of
wood that was a crude plate for a
banknote. Pelle had made it just for something
to do while unemployed. For six years
Pelle languished in prison. When he
came out, he became reconciled with his
wife. He also discovered that the lot of
the workingmen had become considerably
better during his period of imprisonment,
although in his own trade machinery had
taken the place of the
shoemaker-craftsman. Pelle took a job in a factory which
specialized in metal fabrications. He left
the job, although he had become a salaried
employee, when the management tried to
use him as a strikebreaker.
Pelle was out of work for quite a time.
He again picked up odd jobs wherever
he could find them, spent a great deal of
time in a public library reading everything
he could find about the labor movement,
and suggested ways of improving the lot
of the workingmen. He became a friend
of the librarian, Mr. Brun, and the two
of them started a cooperative shoe
factory. They were highly successful with
2776

their experiment, even though rival
companies tried to resist them. They prospered
to the point that they opened up their own
leather factory and bought a large tract
of land on which to build model homes
for their employees.
Pelle was now convinced that it was by
such peaceful measures that the lot of
workmen was to be made better. He, who
had been a firebrand earlier in life,
addressed meetings of workingmen. Always
he urged workers to take constitutional
means to make their laboring conditions
and wages better, rather than to use the
more combative and costly means of the
strike.
2777

PELLEAS AND MELISANDE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949)
Type of plot: Symbolic tragedy
Time of plot: The Middle Ages
Locale: Allemonde
First presented: 1893; first published: 1892
Principal characters:
Abjkel, King of Allemonde
Genevieve, mother of Pellets and Golaud
Pelleas, and
Golaud, grandsons of Arkel
Melisande, Golaud's wife
Little Yniold, son of Golaud by a former marriage
Critique:
Pelleas and Melisande, a symbolic
retelling of Dante's story of Paolo and
Francesca, is a play of both atmosphere
and character, with the gloomy castle in
the woods creating a mood that acts upon
the elfin Melisande. It is also the most
successful of Maeterlinck's full-length
dramas in which he turned from realism
to a full play of his anti-naturalistic
imagination. Maeterlinck led a crusade
against realism in the theater and was
acclaimed in Europe until about 1910,
when his popularity began to wane. It is
perhaps ironic that Pelleas and Melisande
is now better known for Claude
Debussy's opera of the same name than for the
stage version.
The Story:
Golaud, grandson of Arkel, became
lost while hunting, and as he wandered
through the forest he came upon
Melisande weeping beside a spring. She too
was lost, her beautiful clothes torn by
the briars and her golden crown fallen
into the spring. She was like a little girl
when she wept. Golaud tried to comfort
her. Although she would not let him
touch her or even reach for her crown,
which he could have retrieved easily, she
followed him out of the forest.
Afraid of Arkel, who wanted his
grandson to marry the daughter of an enemy
in order to bring peace to the land,
Golaud wrote his half-brother Pelleas that
he had married Melisande and wished to
bring her home if Arkel would forgive
him. He would wait near the castle for
the signal Pelleas would give him if
Golaud and Melisande might enter. Their
mother Genevieve got permission from
Arkel, who was now too old to resist fate.
Pelleas wanted to visit a dying friend
before Melisande came, but Arkel
persuaded him to wait to see how his own sick
father progressed before he went away.
Pellets took Melisande to see Blind
Man's Spring, a delightfully cool place
on a stifling day. Pelleas realized that
Golaud had found Melisande beside a
spring. As he asked her about that
meeting, Melisande, playing with her
wedding ring, let it fall into the water. As
the ring fell, the clock in the castle
grounds struck twelve.
Golaud had been hunting. When the
clock struck twelve, his horse bolted and
ran into a tree, throwing Golaud off. He
was recovering from his accident when
Melisande came to tell him that she
wanted to go away because the castle was
too gloomy. He noticed that her ring was
gone. She said that she had lost it in the
grotto by the sea while picking up shells
for Little Yniold. Golaud sent her back
immediately to find the ring before the
tide came in.
Pelleas took Melisande to the grotto so
that she would be able to describe the
place where she claimed to have lost
Golaud's wedding ring.
Whenever Golaud was away, Pelleas
spent as much time as he could with
Melisande. Usually Little Yniold was
2778

with them. One night the little boy,
unable to sleep, cried because he said Meli-
sande would go away. To entertain him,
Pelteas took him to the window to see the
swans chasing the dogs. Little Yniold
saw his father crossing the courtyard and
ran downstairs to meet him. Coming into
the room, Little Yniold noticed that both
Pelleas and Melisande had been crying.
On another night Melisande was
leaning from a tower while she combed her
beautiful, long hair. Pelleas, coming into
the courtyard below, entwined his hands
in her hair and praised her beauty. When
Golaud came by shortly afterward, Pel
l£as could not let go of Melisande's hair.
Golaud scolded them for playing at night
like children.
On certain days the castle had a smell
of death. Golaud, convinced that an
underground lake in one of the crypts
beneath the castle was responsible for the
smell, led Pelleas down into the crypts
the next morning to see the lake and
smell the overpowering scent of death
there. As Golaud swung the lantern
around, Pelleas would have fallen into
the lake if Golaud had not caught his
arm.
When the half-brothers came out on
the terrace, Golaud told Pelleas that
Melisande was young and impressionable and
that she must be treated more
circumspectly than Pelleas had treated her the
night before, because she was with child.
Golaud tried to find out from Yniold
how Pelleas and Melisande acted when
the child was with them, what tftey said,
and what they did. When he could not
get the child to answer any of his
questions satisfactorily, he lifted him so that
the boy could look through the window
of the room in which Pelleas and
Melisande were standing. Even then he could
not learn from Yniold anything that
Pellets and Melisande were doing.
A short time later the father of Pel-
teas was so much better that the prince
decided to start on his delayed journey
the next day. He asked Melisande to
meet him that night near Blind Man's
Spring.
Arkel told Melisande that happiness
ought to enter the castle now that Pelteas'
father had recovered. He wondered why
she changed from a joyous creature when
she entered the castle to the unhappy
one she now seemed to be. Although
Melisande disclaimed being unhappy, Arkel
sensed her sadness. Golaud, coming to
look for his sword, raved at Melisande
and dragged her behind him on her knees
until Arkel intervened.
That night Melisande went to meet
Pelleas. As they made love in the
shadows Pelleas felt that the stars were
falling. When they went into the moonlight,
their shadows stretched the length of the
garden. Pelleas thought that Melisande's
beauty was unearthly, as if she were
about to die. As the gates clanged shut,
they realized that they were locked out
of the castle for the night. Suddenly
Melisande saw Golaud. Knowing they
could not flee from his sword, Melisande
and Pelteas kissed desperately. When
Golaud struck Pelteas at the brink of the
fountain, Pelteas fell. Golaud pursued
Melisande into the darkness.
An old servant found Melisande and
Golaud at the gates early the next morn
ing. Melisande had a slight cut under
her breast, but not enough to harm a
bird. She was delivered of a tiny,
premature daughter. Golaud had tried to kill
himself without success.
Golaud dragged himself to Melisande's
room, where Arkel and the physician
were attending her. The physician tried
to convince Golaud that Melisande was
not dying of the sword wound, that
Melisande had been born without reason
to die, and she was dying without reason.
Golaud would not be convinced. He felt
that he had killed both Pelteas and
Melisande without cause, that they were both
children and kissed simply as children do.
But he was not sure.
When Melisande awoke, she seemed
to have forgotten her hurt and Golaud's
pursuit, and she thought her husband
had grown old. Hoping to hear her
confess to a forbidden love for Pelteas,
Golaud asked the physician and Arkel to
2779

go down the corridor for a moment and
leave him alone with her. But when he
questioned her, Melisande innocently
exclaimed that she and Pelleas were never
guilty. She asked where Pelleas was.
Because Golaud begged her to speak the
truth at the moment of death, she asked
who was to die. She could not answer his
questions any better than Little Yniold
had done when Golaud lifted him to the
window to spy upon Pelleas and Meli
sande.
Arkel showed Melisande her tiny
daughter. Melisande pitied the child
because she looked sad. While Melisande
was looking at the baby, a group of
women servants came into the room.
Melisande stretched out her arms and
then lay as if weeping in her sleep.
Suddenly the servants knelt. The physician
looked at Melisande and saw that she
was dead.
2780

PENAS ARRIBA
Principal characters:
Marcelo, a young man from Madrid
Celso Ruiz de Bejos, his eighty-year-old uncle
Chi sco, Celso's faithful servant
Doctor Neluco
Pedro Nolasco, a mountaineer
Mari Pep a, his daughter
Margarita (Lita), his granddaughter
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jose Maria de Pereda (1833-1906)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Santander, Spain
First published: 1895
Critique:
Some have compared Pereda to
Tolstoy in ability to probe the human soul,
to reproduce human feelings, and to set
down moral scruples and self-sacrifice
and heroism. Among Pereda's novels,
Penas arriba (Ascent to the Heights') is
equaled in craftsmanship only by his
Sotilew (1884). The first deals with the
mountainous region of northern Spain,
the other with the seacoast at the foot of
the mountains. Both reveal the author's
artistry in describing nature and its
moods. Published eleven years after the
story of the Santander fisherfolk, Penas
arriba marks the height of Pereda's
technical development. It is also outstanding
for the author's statement of his social
philosophy and ethical convictions, the
doctrine of the simple life.
The Story:
Marcelo, an epicure of Madrid,
received eight or ten letters from his eighty-
year-old uncle, Celso, who lived in the
mountains of Santander. Celso was alone
in the world and his thirty-two-year-old
nephew Marcelo was his nearest relative;
he wanted the young man to come and
live with him. More out of pity for the
old man than anything else, one October
day Marcelo took the train for the heart
of the Pyrenees. He was met by Chisco,
a servant who explained in dialect that
old Celso was the mayorazgo and a kind
of beneficent patriarch of the mountain
region.
Celso lodged Marcelo in a room used
by the Bishops of Santander and Leon.
On the first evening Marcelo met the
not very bright village priest, Sabas
Penas, who had three different
personalities: one for the Church, another for the
mountains, and the third for the kitchen
of the Celso manor house. Pedro Nolasco,
a huge mountaineer, was another of the
group. They talked about the simple
pleasures of the region, none of which
appealed to Marcelo, who, having sowed
his wild oats in various parts of Europe,
preferred the theaters and cafes of big
cities. He foresaw monotony. The Ta-
blanca house provided bread baked twice
a week and one kind of meat, with
occasional fresh milk. He could return to
Madrid, however, only if he deserted his
relative and his own obligation to carry
on the family estate, or if the old man
died.
Marcelo's first taste of rural whole-
someness was an exhausting climb to
the loftiest peak in company with two
hardy old citizens. More agreeable was
the cordiality of the community, evident
after he met Dr. Neluco and other
villagers who idolized old Celso and
worried about his wasting cough and worsen-
ing condition.
In the evening tertuiias at the Big
House, and during his excursions through
the town, Marcelo expressed and listened
2781

to the philosophy of general helpfulness
in a community of kindred spirits. Facing
his new situation, he realized how
unprofitable his soulless life had been to
the needy world. As time passed, the
moral and physical grandeur of his
surroundings began to influence his
thinking. He began to be part of them.
When Pito Salces took him on a bear
hunt he saw the daring of the
mountaineers. Chisco discussed his rivalry with
Pepazos for Tanasia, the daughter of
Topero. Also, Facia came to him for
advice. In spite of objections by Celso and
others, she had married a
good-for-nothing who robbed a church, knifed a priest,
and then disappeared, abandoning her
and their daughter Tona. That was what
the town knew. But to Marcelo she
confessed that, hidden in the mountains, he
was blackmailing her.
During one period when Celso could be
left alone, Dr. Neluco rode with Marcelo
to the town of Promisiones to meet others
of the Ruiz family who had lost their
family home through drink. One stormy
day Celso showed his nephew the gold he
had accumulated. It was all for Marcelo,
his heir. Marcelo tried in vain to
persuade him to have one of the other
branches of the family put in charge of
restoring the decaying ancestral home.
Winter came. Marcelo had seen snow
on flat places in Madrid, Paris, and St.
Petersburg, but in Celso's domain there
was no flat place outside the house. The
drifis piled on the peaks and in the
valleys. When one of the servants
disappeared, the villagers risked death to find
him. The doctor came through dangerous
drifts and even the old priest made the
trip up the snowbound mountain as Celso
lay dying.
At the funeral, attended by villagers
from leagues around, one visitor told of
finding several dead people in the snow,
and Marcelo realized that Facials
problem had been solved. But he found no
solution for his own difficulties. At last
he decided to confide in Dr. Neluco. The
old man advised him to marry Lita, the
granddaughter of Nolasco. Marcelo had
not considered that possibility> but he
approved. After a brief trip to Madrid for
material to renovate the manor house, he
invited the three generations of the
Nolasco family to view the results. His
proposal to Lita was interrupted, but he
went to her house the next day and
made formal request for her hand. He
was accepted.
Years later Marcelo was able to say
that he had lived so happily in the old
house that he dreaded leaving it even for
short trips.
2782

PENDENNIS
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1848-1850
Principal characters:
Arthur Pendennis (Pen), a snob
Helen Pendennis, his mother
Major Arthur Pendennis, his uncle
Laura Bell, Mrs. Pendennis' ward
Emily Costigan, an actress
Blanche Amory, an heiress
Henry Foker, Pen's friend
Critique:
The History of Pendennis is a long,
loosely organized novel, in which the
author, between events, stops to chat and
philosophize with the reader. There is
present a strong emphasis on morality,
on goodness and truth, as opposed to a
selfish, scheming, attitude which stresses
material wealth and social advancement.
The most consistent theme, brought out
with piercing irony, is the self-conscious,
rigid snobbery between classes in
England, and the unceasing efforts of the
middle class to become gentlemen and
aristocrats. This theme is epitomized in
the character of Major Pendennis, but it
is also illustrated in the experiences of
young Arthur Pendennis, who is torn
between his uncle's efforts to help him
to rise, socially and his mother's efforts
to keep him natural and unspoiled.
The Story:
Major Arthur Pendennis, a retired
army officer, impeccably dressed,
dignified, yet affable, sat in his London club
looking over his mail and considering
which of several invitations would be
most advantageous to accept. He left
until last a letter from his sister-in-law,
begging him to come to Fairoaks because her
son Arthur, who was known to the family
as Pen, had become infatuated with an
actress twelve years older than himself,
and insisted on marrying the woman.
Helen Pendennis implored the major,
who was young Pen's guardian, to use
his influence with the sixteen-year-old
boy.
John Pendennis, Pen's father, though
of an old family, had been forced to
earn his living as an apothecary and
surgeon. He prospered financially, and at
the age of forty-three married Helen
Thistlewood, a distant relative of one of
his aristocratic patrons. His own life's
aim was to be a gentleman, and by
fortunate transactions he was able to buy
the small estate of Fairoaks. He acquired
family portraits, and was henceforth
known as Squire Pendennis. He referred
proudly to his brother the major, who
associated with well-known aristocrats.
John Pendennis had died while his son
was still a schoolboy. After that
melancholy event, Pen took first place in the
family. His mother was especially
solicitous for his welfare and happiness. She
had already planned that he should marry
Laura Bell, his adopted sister and the
orphan of the Reverend Francis Bell,
whom Helen had loved years before.
Helen Pendennis was horrified at
Pen's infatuation with an actress, but
Pen, blind with youthful romance, saw
Emily Costigan as the ideal of all
womanhood. She was beautiful, and her
reputation was unquestioned, yet she was crude
and unintelligent. Pen was introduced to
her father, Captain Costigan, by Henry
Foker, a dashing, wealthy young
schoolmate. The captain was a snabby, rakish
Irishman who was constantly finding his
2783

daughter's income insufficient for the
drinks he required. He assumed that Pen
was a wealthy young aristocrat and urged
Emily to accept his proposal of marriage.
On the other hand, Emily regarded Pen
as a child, but at the same time she was
flattered by the serious attentions of a
landed young gentleman.
When the major arrived at Fairoaks,
Pen had almost won his indulgent
mother's consent. The major handled the
situation adroitly. Using many
references to his aristocratic friends, he hinted
that Pen, too, could be received in their
homes if only he made a brilliant
marriage. Then he called on Captain Costi-
gan and informed him that Pen was
dependent on his mother and that his
prospects were only five hundred pounds a
year. The captain wept over the deceit-
fulness of man and gave up Pen's letters
and verses in return for a small loan.
Emily wrote Pen a short note that Pen
thought would drive him to distraction.
But it did not. Meanwhile the major
arranged through his aristocratic and
influential friends to give Emily an
opportunity to play an engagement in
London. Pen, suffering over his broken love
affair, was so restless and moody it seemed
wise for him to join his friend, Henry
Foker, and attend the University of
Oxbridge.
He entered the university posing as a
moneyed aristocrat. His mother by hei
own rigid economies gave him an
adequate allowance, and Pen entered
enthusiastically into all sorts of activities. His
refined and diversified tastes led him into
expenditures far beyond his means. As
a result, he ended his third year deeply
in debt. He was made still more
miserable when he failed an important
examination. Overcome by remorse at his
reckless spending and his thoughtlessness ol
his devoted mother, he went to London.
There Major Pendennis did not hesitate
to show cold disapproval, and ignored his
nephew. But his mother welcomed him
home with affection and forgiveness.
Laura Bell offered a solution by
suggesting that the money left her by her father
be turned over to Pen to clear his debts.
It was Laura, too, who induced him to
return to the university. When he
received his degree, he came back to Fair-
oaks, still restless and depressed, until
an event of local interest aroused him.
Clavering Park, the mansion owned by
Sir Francis Clavering, was reopened. Sir
Francis was a worthless spendthrift whose
title was his only claim to respect. After
living many years abroad, he had made
an advantageous marriage to Jemima
Amory, a widow recently returned from
India. She had been left a large fortune,
and, though uneducated, she was well
liked because of her generous and good
nature. In addition to the Coverings'
young son, the heir to the now great
Clavering fortune, Lady Clavering had
by a previous marriage a daughter named
Blanche. Although extremely pretty,
Blanche was a superficial, self-centered
girl whose demure appearance disguised
a hard and cruel disposition. Pen and
Laura soon became friendly with their
new neighbors, and Pen imagined
himself in love with Blanche. In the
meantime, Helen confided to Pen her dearest
wish that he should marry Laura. Pen,
conscious of the sacrifices his mother had
made for him and of Laura's generosity,
made a grudging offer of marriage, which
Laura spiritedly refused.
His dignity hurt, he decided he would
make a place for himself in the world
and so he went to London to read for the
law. But in spite of his good resolutions
he was unable to settle down to serious
study. He became a young man about
town, and he took pride in the variety
of his acquaintances. He shared rooms
with George Warrington, a philosophic
man whom Pen came to respect and love.
At last, through Warrington's influence,
Pen began to earn his own living by
writing. Eventually he published a
successful novel. So Pen read law, wrote
for a living, and spent his evenings at
dinners and balls.
His disordered life finally resulted in
a serious illness, and his mother and
Laura went to London to nurse him.
2784

Later, accompanied by George
Warrington, they went abroad. Tliere Helen
Pendennis, worn out with worry over
Pen, became ill and died, and the party
returned to Fairoaks for her burial. Then
the estate was rented. Pen, now heir to
the small fortune his mother had left,
returned to London. During his
residence in London, his uncle had again
become actively interested in him.
Feeling that Pen should improve his station
in life, the shrewd major had decided
the Claverings could be useful to Pen
and he had encouraged his nephew to
cultivate the family once more.
One night Pen and the major were
invited to a dinner given by the Claver-
ings. While the men were sitting over
cigars and wine, Colonel Altamont
appeared. He was drunk. It was known
that for some mysterious reason Sir
Francis Clavering had given this man
large sums of money. Major Pendennis,
who during his career in the army had
been stationed in India, immediately
recognized Altamont as Mr. Amory, the
first husband of Lady Clavering. The
major did not divulge his knowledge to
anyone but Sir Francis, to whom he
issued the ultimatum that Sir Francis
must go to live abroad and that he must
give his place in Parliament to Pen. If he
refused, the major threatened to expose
the fact that Amory was still alive and
that the marriage of Sir Francis and Lady
Clavering was illegal. Another point the
major made was that Clavering Park
should be left to Blanche Amory. Sir
Francis had no choice but to agree.
Major Pendennis continued his
intrigue by urging Pen to marry Blanche.
Pen, with some uneasiness, fell in with
his uncle's plans. He did not know how
his place in Parliament had been secured,
but he did know that he was not in love
with Blanche. He became engaged to
her, however, and began to campaign
for his seat in Parliament. Laura, who
had been abroad as companion to Lady
Rockminster, returned to the vicinity.
When Pen saw her again, he began to
regret his plan to marry Blanche.
In the meantime the major's valet,
Morgan, had learned of the Claverings'
complicated marriage situation and
planned blackmail on his own account.
After a violent quarrel with the major,
Morgan told Pen how Major Pendennis
had forced Sir Francis to give up his seat
in Parliament in favor of Pen. Pen was
shocked by this news and by his uncle's
unethical methods. He and Laura agreed
that he should give up his candidacy for
the district, but that he must, even
though he loved Laura, go on with his
plans to marry Blanche, after his
proposal to her. However, this sacrifice to
honor proved unnecessary, for Pen
discovered that Blanche had forsaken him
for his old friend, Henry Foker, who had
just inherited a large fortune. Their
marriage left Pen free to marry Laura.
Because Lady Rockminster held Laura in
great affection, the marriage was
approved even by the class-conscious major.
So the simple wedding of Pen and
Laura replaced the fashionable one which
had been planned for Clavering Church.
Blanche did not marry Foker. When
Foker learned by chance that her father
was still alive and that Blanche had kept
the knowledge from him, he dropped his
plans to marry her. Blanche became the
wife of a French count. Lady Clavering,
who had truly believed her husband dead,
was horrified to learn that Amory was
still alive, but the legality of her marriage
to Sir Francis was established when it
was learned that Amory had contracted
several marriages before the one with
her.
Meanwhile Pen and Laura lived
happily. Laura had expectations from her
friend and patroness, Lady Rockminster,
and Fairoaks had increased in value
because the new railroad bought rights
through it. Later, when Sir Francis died,
Pen was elected to Parliament. He had
almost forgotten how to be a snob.
2785

PENGUIN ISLAND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Ancient times to the present
Locale: Mythical Alca
First published: 1908
Principal characters:
Mael, a missionary monk
Kraken, an opportunist penguin
Oberosia, Kraken's mistress
Trinco, a conqueror
Pyrot, a scapegoat
M. Ceres, a cabinet minister
Eveline, his wife
M. Visire, Prime Minister of Penguinia
Critique:
Penguin Island is a satiric and ironic
burlesque of history. Although the
narrative is doubly enjoyable to those who
know the history of France, the story
can be appreciated by everyone. In an
amusing way, the author seriously
criticizes politics, the Church, and other social
institutions.
The Story:
In ancient times Mael, a Breton monk,
was diligent in gathering converts to the
Church. One day the devil caused Mael
to be transported in a boat to the North
Pole, where the priest landed on an
island inhabited by penguins. Being
somewhat snow-blind, he mistook the
birds for men, preached to them, and,
taking their silence as a sign of
willingness, baptized them into the Christian
faith.
This error of the pious Mael caused
great consternation in Paradise. God
called all the saints together, and they
argued whether the baptisms were valid.
At last they decided that the only way
out of the dilemma was to change the
penguins into men. After this
transformation had taken place, Mael towed the
island back to the Breton coast so that
he could keep an eye on his converts.
Thus began the history of Penguinia
on the island of Alca. At first the
penguins were without clothes, but before
long the holy Mael put clothes on the
females. Because this covering excited
the males, sexual promiscuity was
enormously increased. The penguins began
to establish the rights of property—by
knocking each other over the head.
Greatank, the largest and strongest
penguin, became the founder of power and
wealth. A taxation system was set up
by which all penguins were taxed equally.
This system was favored by the rich, who
kept tneir money to benefit the poor.
Kraken, a clever penguin, withdrew
to a lonely part of the island and lived
alone in a cave. Finally he took as his
mistress Oberosia, the most beautiful of
penguin women. Kraken gained great
wealth by dressing up as a dragon and
carrying off the wealth of the peaceful
penguins. When the citizens banded
together to protect their property, Kraken
became frightened. It was predicted by
Mael that a virgin would come to
conquer the dragon. Kraken and Oberosia
fashioned an imitation monster. Oberosia
appeared to Mael and announced herself
as the destined virgin. At an appointed
time she revealed the imitation monster.
Kraken sprang from a hiding place and
pretended to kill it. The people rejoiced
and thenceforth paid annual tribute to
Kraken. His son, Draco, founded the
PENGUIN ISLAND by Anatole France. Translated by A. W. Evans. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co..
Inc. Copyright, 1909, by Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1937, by A. W. Evans.
2786

first royal family of Penguinia.
Thus began the Middle Ages on the
island of Alca. Draco the Great, a
descendant of the original Draco, had a
monastery established in the cave of
Kraken in honor of Oberosia, who was
now a saint. There were great wars
between the penguins and the porpoises at
that time, but the Christian faith was
Ereserved by the simple expedient of
urning all heretics at the stake.
The history of the penguins in that
far time was chronicled by a learned
monk named Johannes Talpa. Even
though the battles raged about his very
ears, he was able to continue writing in
his dry and simple style. Little record
was lert of the primitive paintings on the
isle of Alca, but later historians believed
that the painters were careful to represent
nature as unlike herself as possible.
Marbodius, a literary monk, left a
record of a descent into hell similar to
the experience of Dante. Marbodius
interviewed Virgil and was told by the
great poet that Dante had misrepresented
him. Virgil was perfectly happy with
his own mythology and wanted nothing
to do with the God of the Christians.
The next recorded part of Penguinian
history treated of modern times, when
rationalistic philosophers began to
appear. In the succeeding generation their
teachings took root; the king was put to
death, nobility was abolished, and a
republic was founded. The shrine of St.
Oberosia was destroyed. However, the
republic did not last long. Trinco, a
great soldier, took command of the
country; with his armies he conquered and
lost all the known world. The penguins
were left at last with nothing but their
glory.
Then a new republic was established
It pretended to be ruled by the people,
but the real rulers were the wealthy
financiers. Another republic of a similar
nature, new Atlantis, had grown up
across the sea at the same time. It was
even more advanced in the worship of
wealth.
Father Agaric and Prince des Boscenos,
as members of the clergy and nobility,
were interested in restoring the kings of
Alca to the throne. They decided to
destroy the republic by taking advantage
of the weakness of Chatillon, the admiral
of the navy. Chatillon was seduced by
the charms of the clever Viscountess
Olive, who was able to control his actions
for the benefit of the royalists. An
immense popular anti-republican movement
was begun with Chatillon as its hero; the
royalists hoped to reinstate the king in
the midst of the uproar. But the
revolution was* stopped in its infancy, and
Chatillon fled the country.
Eveline, the beautiful daughter of
Madame Clarence, rejected the love of
Viscount Ciena, after she had learned
that he had no fortune. She then
accepted the attentions of M. C6res, a
rising politician. After a short time they
were married. M. C£res received a
portfolio in the cabinet of M. Visire, and
Eveline became a favorite in the social
gatherings of the politicians. M. Visire
was attracted by her, and she became
his mistress. M. C6res learned of the
affair, but he was afraid to say anything
to M. Visire, the Prime Minister.
Instead, he did his best to ruin M. Visire
politically, but with little success at first.
Finally M. Visire was put out of office
on the eve of a war with a neighboring
empire. Eveline lived to a respectable
old age and at her death left all her
property to the Charity of St. Oberosia.
As Penguinia developed into an
industrial civilization ruled by the wealthy
class, the one purpose of life became the
gathering of riches; art and all other
non-profit activities ceased to be. Finally
the downtrodden workmen revolted, and
a wave of anarchy swept over the nation.
All the great industries were demolished.
Order was established at last, and the
government reformed many of the social
institutions, but the country continued
to decline. Where before there had been
great cities, wild animals now lived.
Then came hunters seeking the wild
animals. Later shepherds appeared and
after a time farming became the chief
2787

occupation. Great lords built castles.
The people made roads; villages
appeared. The villages combined into large
cities. The cities grew rich. An industrial
civilization developed, ruled by the
wealthy class. History was beginning to
repeat itself.
2788

Type of work: Philosophical reflections on relij
Author: Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
First'published: 1670
Blaise Pascal, scientist and
mathematician, became an active member of the
society of Port Royal after his conversion
as the result of a mystical experience in
1654. He was actively involved in the
bitter debate between the Jansenists, with
whom he allied himself, and the Jesuits,
and the series of polemical letters titled
Provinciales (1656-1657), is the result
of that great quarrel. Wanting to write
a defense of Catholic Christianity which
would appeal to men of reason and
sensibility, Pascal, about 1660, began to
prepare his defense of the Catholic faith.
Like many other great thinkers whose
concern was more with the subject of
their compositions than with the external
order and completeness of the
presentation, he failed to complete a continuous
and unified apology. When he died at
thirty-nine he left little more than his
notes for the projected work, a series of
philosophical fragments reflecting his
religious meditations. These form the
Patsies as we know it. Despite its
fragmentary character, the book is a classic
of French literature, charming and
effective in its style, powerful and sincere in
its philosophic and religious protestations.
Philosophers distinguish themselves
either by the insight of their claims or by
the power of their justification.
Paradoxically, Pascal distinguishes himself in his
defense by the power of his claims. This
quality is partly a matter of style and
partly a matter of conviction. It was
Pascal, in the Pensees, who wrote, "The
heart has its reasons, which reason does
not know," by which he meant not that
emotion is superior to reason, but that in
being compelled by a moving experience
one submits to a superior kind of reason.
Pascal also wrote that "All our reasoning
reduces itself to yielding to feeling," but
he admitted that it is sometimes difficult
to distinguish between feeling and fancy;
nevertheless, he believed that the way to
ious matters
truth is by the heart, the feeling, and that
the intuitive way of knowledge is the
most important, not only because it is
of the most important matters but also
because it is essential to all reasoning,
providing the first principles of thought.
Much of the value of the Pensees results
from the clarity with which Pascal
presented his intuitive thoughts.
A considerable portion of the Pensees
is taken up with a discussion of
philosophical method, particularly in relation
to religious reflection. The book begins
with an analysis of the difference between
mathematical and intuitive thinking and
continues the discussion, in later sections,
by considering the value of skepticism, of
contradictions, of feeling, memory, and
imagination. A number of passages
remind the reader of the fact that a
proposition which seems true from one
perspective may seem false from another, but
Pascal insists that "essential" truth is
"altogether pure and altogether true." The
power of skepticism and the use of
contradictions in reasoning both depend
upon a conception of human thinking
which ignores the importance of
perspective in determining a man's belief. Thus,
from the skeptic's point of view nothing
is known because we can be sure of
nothing; but the skeptic forgets that "It is
good to be tired and wearied by the vain
search after the true good, that we may
stretch out our arms to the Redeemer."
Contradiction, according to Pascal, "is a
bad sign of truth" since there are some
things certain which have been
contradicted and some false ideas which have
not. Yet contradiction has its use: "All
these contradictions, which seem most to
keep me from the knowledge of religion,
have led me most quickly to the true
one."
Pascal had the gift of responding
critically in a way that added value to both
his own discourse and that of his oppo-
2789

nent. Criticizing Montaigne's skepticism,
he came to recognize the truth—a partial
truth, to be sure—of much that
Montaigne wrote. His acknowledgment of
this is grudging; he writes that "It is not
in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find
all that I see in him," and also "What
good there is in Montaigne can only have
been acquired with difficulty." Yet, as
T. S. Eliot has pointed out in an
introduction to the Pensees, Pascal uses many
of Montaigne's ideas, phrases, and terms,
paralleling several parts of Montaigne's
"Apology for Raimond Sebond."
Perhaps the most controversial part of
the Pensees is Pascal's section on miracles.
He quotes Saint Augustine as saying that
he would not have been a Christian but
for the miracles, and he argues that there
are three marks of religion: perpetuity, a
good life, and miracles. He writes, "If
the cooling of love leaves the Church
almost without believers, miracles will
rouse them," and "Miracles are more
important than you think. They have served
for the foundation, and will serve for the
continuation of the Church till
Antichrist, till the end." Although there are
other passages which assert the
importance of faith which is in no way
dependent upon miracles, as, for example,
"That we must love one God only is a
thing so evident, that it does not require
miracles to prove it," Pascal does seem
unambiguously to assert that miracles are
a way to faith. This idea is opposed by
those who insist that belief in miracles
presupposes a belief in God and the
Gospels. Pascal had been profoundly affected
by a miracle at Port Royal, but his
defense of the importance of miracles goes
beyond that immediate reference with
appeals to reason and authority as well as
to feeling;.
Pascal's "Proofs of Jesus Christ" is
interesting not because it pretends to offer
demonstrations which would appeal to
unbelievers, but because it uses persuasive
references which throw a new light on
the question of Jesus' status. He argues
that because of unbelievers at the time
of Christ we now have witnesses to Him.
If Jesus had made His nature so evident
that none could mistake it, the proof of
His nature and existence would not have
been as convincing as it is when reported
by unbelievers. Pascal emphasizes the
function of the Jews as unbelievers when
he writes: "The Jews, in slaying Him in
order not to receive Him as the Messiah,
have given Him the final proof of being
the Messiah. And in continuing not to
recognize Him, they made themselves
irreproachable witnesses."
Pascal's famous wager is presented in
the Pensdes. He makes an appeal to
"natural lights"—ordinary human
intelligence and good sense. God either exists
or He does not. How shall you decide?
This is a game with infinitely serious
consequences. You must wager, but how
shall you wager? Reason is of no use here.
Suppose you decide to wager that God is.
"If you gain, you gain all; if you lose,
you lose nothing." Pascal concludes that
there is everything to be said in favor
of committing oneself to a belief in God
and strong reasons against denying God.
To the objection that a man cannot come
to believe simply by recognizing that he
will be extremelv fortunate if he is right
and no worse off if he is wrong, Pascal
replies by saying that if an unbeliever
will act as if he believes, and if he wants
to believe, belief will come to him. This
wager later inspired William James's The
Will to Believe, in which the American
pragmatist argued that Pascal's method is
essentially pragmatic. James's objection to
Pascal's wager is that the wager alone
presents no momentous issue; unless one
can relate the particular issue being
considered to a man's concerns, the appeal
of the wager is empty. If such proof
would work for Pascal's God, it would
work for any god whatsoever. However,
James's use of the wager to justify
passional decisions is much like Pascal's.
In a section titled "The Fundamentals
of the Christian Religion," Pascal wrote
that the Christian religion teaches two
truths: that there is a God whom men
can know and that by virtue of their
corruption men are unworthy of Him.
2790

Pascal rejected cold conceptions of God
which reduced Him to the author of
mathematical truths or of the order of the
elements. For Pascal the God of salvation
had to be conceived as He is known
through Jesus Christ. The Christian God
can be known, according to Pascal, but
since men are corrupt they do not always
know God. Nature assists God to hide
Himself from corrupt men, although it
also contains perfections to show that
Nature is the image of God.
In considering "The Philosophers,"
Pascal emphasizes thought as
distinguishing men from brutes and making the
greatness of man possible. "Man is
neither angel nor brute," he writes, "and
the unfortunate thing is that he who
would act the angel acts the brute."
Thus in Pascal we find a man who is
on the one hand eager to defend the
Christian faith, on the other determined
to indicate the shcrtcominss of men. He
is re*norselessly critical in his attacks on
skeptics, atheists, and other critics of the
Church, not simply because they err, but
because they do so in disorder and
without respect for the possibilities of man or
the values of religion. In regard to
skepticism he wrote that his thoughts were
intentionally without order in order to
be true to the disorderly character of his
subject.
But it is not Pascal the bitter critic
who prevails in the Pensees; it is, rather,
the impassioned and inspired defender of
the faith. Even those who do not sha-e
his convictions admire his stvle and the
ingenuity of his thought, and much that
is true of all mankind has never been
better said than in the Pensees.
2791

THE PEOPLE OF JUVIK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Olav Duun (1876-1939)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1800-1918
Locale: Namdal district, Norway
First published: 1918-1923
Principal characters:
Per Anders Juvtka, a prosperous Norwegian landowner
Ane, his wife
Jens, their ne'er-do-well son
Per, their hardworking but weak son
Ane,
Aasel, and
Beret, their daughters
Valborg, wife of young Per
Anders Haaberg, older son of Per and Valborg
Petter, the younger son
Solvi, Anders' first wife
Massi, his second wife
Per,
Gjartru,
Aasel,
Jens,
Beret, and
Ola, children of Anders and Massi
Johan Arnesen, husband of Gjartru
Mina, daughter of Gjartru and Johan
Arthur Ween, Mina's husband
Kristen Folden, husband of Aasel
Peder,
Elen, and
Marjane, children of Aasel and Kristen
Andrea Ween, wife of Peder
Astri, daughter of Peder and Andrea
Lauris, her husband
Otte Setran, a joiner
Odin, son of Elen and Otte Setran
Iver Vennestad, Elen's husband
Bendek Kjelvtk, Odin's foster father
Gurianna, Bendek's wife
Ingri Arnesen, Odin's wife
Anders, older son of Odin and Ingri
Per, the younger son
Engelbert Olsen, a leader of the workmen
Critique:
Six novels in all make up the complete novel may be read separately, but to-
story of The People of Juvik: The gether they provide a rich and moving
Trough of the Wave, The Blind Man, chronicle of Norwegian life through more
The Big Wedding, Odin in Fairyland, than six generations. Although the novel
Odin Grows Up, and The Storm, Each proper stretches back over several hun-
THE PEOPLE OF JUVIK by Olav Duun. Translated by Arthur G, Chater. By permission of the
publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1927, by Olaf Norli. Copyright, 1930, 1931. 1932, 1934,
J935, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
2792

dred years, the main story tells of the
people who lived at Juvik and Haaberg
from 1800 until 1918. The scene is the
district of Namdal, north of Trondheim,
where Olav Duun was born and where
he grew up. A family saga of the
region, comparable to the old Icelandic
family histories such as the Sturlunga
Saga, the novel follows the old Norse
tales in tone and narrative technique.
Duun's methods were matter of fact,
lighted by a great deal of local color,
superstitions, customs, crafts, set against
a realistic background. The characters
who people the novel also resemble the
heroic figures of the old epics, for they
trace their line of descent from ancestors
who figured in tales of heroic and even
superhuman deeds. The language used
by Duun was the landsmaal, the language
of the common people of Norway, as
opposed to the riksmaal, the more
commonly used literary language of Ibsen,
Hamsun, and others.
The Story:
The first Juviking was Per, a crofter
from the south. After a fight with his
landlord he bought the Juvik farm along
the fjord. Later his landlord's daughter
went to live with him but they never
married.
Litde was known about their sons.
In the third generation the owner of the
farm was nicknamed Bear Anders
because he had killed a great black beast
with an ax. His son was Big Per, so
strong that he once saved horse, sledge,
and rider from sinking through the ice.
After the rescue the man gave Per his
daughter for a wife. One of the last of
the old-time Juvikings was Greedy Per, a
rich miser who stole other men's nets. In
his old age he had a change of heart and
gave back what he had taken. Everyone
called him a hero, for it took more
courage to return stolen goods in daylight
than it did to take them after dark.
Two generations later, at the end of
the eighteenth century, there was a
single son, Per Anders Juvika. Taking a
fancy to a girl he saw at a fair, he went
to her father and frightened the man so
badly that he gave Per his daughter and
a handsome dowry. For his wife Ane,
Per Anders built a two-story house with
a plank floor in every room. They had
two boys, Jens and Per, and three
daughters, Ane, Aasel, and Beret. Ane and
Aasel married and went off to other
farms. Beret never married. Jens, wild
and reckless like the old Juvikings, was
also single, but gentle Per had an
industrious wife, Valborg, whom his fathei
had picked out for him. Even though
they were grown men, Jens and Per
stayed at home, ruled by old Per Anders,
and worked the farm.
One night in December, 1800,
neighbors saw a strange light over Juvik, an
omen of disaster. Per Anders laughed at
the superstitions of his womenfolk. On
Lucy Long Night he decided to visit his
married daughters. Ane he found living
poorly on the great farm at Haaberg, for
her husband was dead and she was
childless. Aasel and her husband Mikkal lived
on a tenant farm. Great workers, they
had more abundance than Ane, even in
the matter of children.
It was dark when Per Anders started
to row home. Because of wind and high
waves on the fjord he was exhausted by
the time he reached his own boathouse.
There his sons, worried by his long
absence, found him. Worn out by exposure
and fatigue, he lasted until after the
Christmas season and then died
peacefully. When the smoke of his burning
bedstraw blew back into the house,
signifying another death, both Ane and
Beret believed that the mother would
soon follow. Beret died after a short
illness, to Ane's relief. Her own respite
was brief, however, for she died six weeks
later.
The farm suffered the next year, for
Jens and young Per could seldom agree.
A thief began to rob the storehouse. One
night the brothers hunted the man into
the sea and he drowned. Jens made light
of the affair, but Per, the thief's death
2793

heavy on his conscience, grew more
unhappy at Juvik. After Jens had been
tricked into marrying a maidservant, Per
took his share of the inheritance in money
and bought Ane's farm at Haaberg. Jens,
going from bad to worse, finally deserted
the farm and went to sea. Aasel and Mik-
kal went to live at Juvik.
Per worked hard on his land before
he hurt himself while lifting stones* He
grew fretful and superstitious during the
last months of his life, and Valborg feared
that the heroic blood was going from the
Juvik veins. But young Anders, who
would inherit Haaberg, had cleverness
and strength. At Per's death the fourteen-
year-old boy assumed responsibility as
head of the house. All the neighbors and
servants saw that he would be a better
man than his father.
Anders was in his early twenties when
Valborg died, leaving him in charge of
Haaberg and Petter, his younger brother.
Petter was a sly one, always in trouble;
people said he was like his uncle Jens.
Anders* reckless Juviking blood showed
only in his courtship of Massi Liness.
With Ola Engdal, his rival, he risked his
life in many foolhardy deeds, the
agreement being that if either perished the
survivor was to have Massi. When Massi
settled matters by accepting Ola, Anders
defiantly married Solvi, a girl of Lapp
blood, and took her to live in the fine
new house he had built. Before long
there were many misfortunes in the
district. The Engdal children died. Ola
injured his leg and it became infected.
Wolves killed whole herds of sheep.
Because Haaberg alone continued to
prosper, the neighbors began to call Solvi a
witch and blamed their troubles on Lapp
sorcery. At last Anders yielded to their
superstitious beliefs and told Solvi to go
back to her father. While she was rowing
up the fjord, Petter started a rock slide
which fell from a cliff upon her boat,
killing her and her child. Having wished
Solvi dead, Anders brooded much aftei
her death. His hair turned gray.
Left widowed and childless, Massi
went to Anders and asked him to marry
her. Their children were Per, Gjartru,
Aasel, Jens, Beret, and Ola. Meanwhile
Petter had grown more dissipated and
spiteful. Anders finally bought him a
little place at Ronningan, where he
settled with Kjersti, Massi's foster daughter.
Later Anders tried to help his brother by
hiring him to paint the parish church and
lead the spire. Petter used cheap materials
and did poor work. When Anders
threatened to expose him, the rascal burned
the church.
Young Per married Marja Leinland
and brought his bride to Haaberg.
Gjartru was in love with Hall Gronset, who
was lost at sea. There was gossip in the
neighborhood when Petter Liness, Per's
friend, drowned and his family suspected
Per of having in his possession a wallet
containing Petter's savings. Petter had
entrusted the money to Per but had asked
him to give it secretly to Kjersti
Ronningan. Anders, grieved and angered by
Per's stubborn silence, feared that his son
would be forced also to foster Kjersti's
child by Petter.
Anders had hoped to make Per sheriff
of the district, but that plan fell through.
Then Massi became sick and died. Jens
tried to set himself up as a trader but
failed in his undertaking. Aasel had gone
to live with old Ane, her great-aunt, at
Paalsness.
Anders' eyesight began to fail. One
day he tried to treat himself with hot tar
and went completely blind. Ane died,
leaving Aasel without the inheritance she
had promised the girl. Jens became ill
with typhus but recovered. Per, who had
nursed his brother, caught the disease
and died. Aasel married Kristen Folden,
who bought Haaberg when Anders
needed money to pay Jens' debts, and Jens
went off to seek his fortune in America.
Young Ola, not much good for anything
else, planned to become a clerk. Gjartru
finally married Johan Arnesen; they kept
a store at Segelsund. Blind and old,
Anders thought a great deal about his
younger days and the sorrows of his life. Be-
2794

lieving that families ran their courses
like waves, he hoped that Aasel's
children or Gjartru's would redeem the
fortunes of the Juvikings.
Aasel at Haaberg and Gjartru at
Segelsund, both strong-willed, ambitious
women, became rivals. Gjartru, hoping
to see her husband grow rich in trade,
was always urging him into schemes for
making money. Aasel put her faith in
the land; under Folden's management
Haaberg became prosperous once more.
Blind Anders, over seventy, approved of
all his daughter and son-in-law had done
on the farm, and he thought of his
grandson Peder as one of the true Ju-
viking line.
Peder was courting Andrea Ween,
daughter of the veterinarian. Ola
Haaberg, the parish clerk, was also courting
her, but in a spiritless way. Mina Arne-
sen, Peder's cousin, was engaged to
Arthur Ween, Andrea's brother. Peder had
previously been in love with Kjerstina,
one of his distant cousins at Juvik; the
girl was with child by him. Ambitious
for her son's future, Aasel went to the
girl and told a tale which caused
Kjerstina to give up her claim on Peder. A
short time later Andrea threw over Ola
and accepted Peder.
The double wedding was celebrated at
Haaberg, where for three days and nights
the guests danced and feasted. An
unexpected guest at the wedding was Jens
Haaberg, who had made money in
America. Petter, old Anders* worthless brother,
was still up to his foolish pranks. When
he dressed up as a ghost to frighten some
of the guests, blind Anders rushed out
to confront the spirit, stumbled, and fell
dead. The celebration would have ended
anyway, for Arnesen had received word
that his speculations had failed and he
was ruined.
Arnesen and Gjartru asked Jens to lend
them money. He refused, but offered to
pay their passage back to America with
him. They went, leaving Segelsund to
Mina and her husband. Peder, taken ill
during the wedding celebration, died
soon afterward of galloping consumption.
Ineffectual Ola Haaberg reflected
bitterly that the great man of the Juvikings
was still to come.
Even in boyhood Odin Setran gave
promise of being that man. The son of
Elen Haaberg and Otte Setran, a joiner
who had worked on the farm where
Elen went as housekeeper after her
brother's death, he was born out of wedlock,
for by that time Otte had gone to
America. When Elen married Iver Ven-
nestad, they sent Odin to live with Ben-
dek Kjelvik and his wife Gurianna.
Kjelvik was a wonderful place to young
Odin, with the happenings of every day
almost like the fairy tales Bendek told
at night. Bendek was a poacher as well
as a herdsman, a secret he tried to keep
from the boy. One day, urged on by
some playmates, Odin took his foster
father's gun and accidentally killed an old
ram. When he repeated what the other
boys had said about Bendek and his gun,
the old man thought Odin was mocking
him, and he drove the boy out of his
house on Christmas night. Odin went
sadly back to Vennestad.
In the meantime Otte Setran had
returned from America. He asked for Odin,
but the boy looked on his father as a
stranger. Then Bendek, sick and sorry
for his hasty deed, begged Odin to
return to Kjelvik. He stayed with the old
couple until Bendek died. There he also
met Lauris, a boy of the Kjelvik kin, who
was to become his best friend and worst
enemy. After he started to school he met
for the first time his cousin Astri,
daughter of Peder and Andrea, and old Aasel,
his grandmother.
Odin, disliking his stepfather, was
unhappy at Vennestad, but after a time
he was able to hold his own against Iver's
bullying, so that the man began to
respect him. Becoming involved in several
escapades with Lauris, Odin greatly
distressed his ailing mother, and it was
decided that he should go to live with his
father. First, however, he wanted to
attend a fair across the fjord. When he
2795

went to Segelsund to borrow a boat, Fru
Mina asked him to take as his passenger
a young girl named Ingri Arnesen. A
storm came up and the children were
almost drowned, but at last they reached
shore safely. That was Odin's first
meeting with his future wife.
Odin became friendly with his Haa-
berg kin. After his mother died of the
same disease which had killed her
brother and her sister Marjane, widowed Aasel
asked him to live on the farm. He and
Astri fell in love, but when Otte Setran
began to court Astri's mother the young
people realized that their love would be
a sin if their parents were to marry. Odin
engaged in coastwise trading with Lauris
for a time. Astri married Arne Finne, a
childhood sweetheart dying of
tuberculosis. Otte and Andrea married and moved
to town. After her husband's death Astri
married Lauris. By that time Odin knew
that his friend was unscrupulous and
ambitious, but he held his tongue.
Old Aasel died hoping that Haaberg
would be sold and the house converted
into a home for the poor, but Astri and
her husband as well as the rest of the
parish were opposed. Only Iver Ven-
nestad backed Odin when he presented
the plan at his grandmother's funeral ale.
At the funeral he met Ingri again.
Odin, married to Ingri, did become the
leading man of the parish. Through his
efforts the poorhouse had been
established at Vennestad and a community
herring factory built. Lauris, jealous of
his success, took advantage of a labor
dispute at the factory to make himself
chairman of the board. Odin, not greatly
concerned, continued to work for the good
of the community, but he resolved to
fight back when Lauris and Engelbert
Olsen, a leader of the workmen, tried to
discredit him through gossip about Ingri's
father, who had served a sentence for
forgery. Like his ancestor, he hunted
Olsen into the sea and forced the man to
leave the district.
Ola Haaberg committed suicide,
leaving proof that Lauris had cheated Aasel
of a large sum of money. At last Odin
decided that for the good of the
community Lauris should die. Using Astri's
illness during the great influenza
epidemic as an excuse, he forced his enemy
to cross the fjord with him during a
storm. But when the boat capsized and
Odin had the chance to do away with
Lauris, he failed to do so. Instead, he
attempted to keep afloat on the oars while
Lauris clung to the more stable keel. A
fishing boat rescued Lauris. Odin's body
was washed ashore days later. The guests
at the funeral ale thought that they saw
his great generosity and courage reflected
in his young sons, Anders ana Per.
2796

THE PEOPLE, YES
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Carl Sandburg (1878- )
First published: 1936
In these days when people everywhere
shiver under the cloudy skies of the cold
war, with its threat of bombs and
radiation sickness, it is a pleasure to step
suddenly into the bustling sunshine of Carl
Sandburg's The People, Yes. Although
Sandburg wrote this book during the
depression of the 1930's, his strong voice
is as cheerful and reassuring today as it
was in the time of bread lines and soup
kitchens. But Sandburg does not raise his
voice to shout down the pessimists; he
hymns America out of no sense of duty:
his book arises from a genuine love of the
plain people who will somehow survive
their blunders, somehow find the answers
to "Where to? What next?"
In the opening section of this volume
Sandburg lets these questions be asked
by the children of workers who come to
build the Tower of Babel and at the end,
when the poet looks forward to the
"Family of Man" and the time when "brother
may yet line up with brother/' the
questions are still unanswered. In between,
the poet makes his tribute to people in
general and the American people in
particular: here are the legends, the sayings,
the slang, the tall tales, the dreams of
twentieth-century America.
Two of the best (and most quoted)
sections of the book are the one on
Lincoln and the one on tall tales, beginning
"They have yarns . . ." Sandburg is
world famous as an authority on Lincoln;
there are his great biographv and many
poems, speeches, and articles, but
nowhere is he more successful than in this
short poem which presents the many
talents of a great man by asking a series of
questions, such as "Lincoln? was he a
poet?" and "Lincoln? was he a historian?"
and then gives the answers from quoted
speeches, letters, and conversations of the
man himself. The tall-tales poem is an
THE PEOPLE, YES by Carl Sandburg. Excerpts l
Brace & Co.. Inc. Copyright, 1936, by Harcourt, Brace
encyclopedia of laughs ranging all the
way from the familiar "man who drove a
swarm of bees across the Rocky
Mountains and the Desert 'and didn't lose a
bee'" to the not-so-familiar story of a
shipwrecked sailor who has caught hold
of a stateroom door and floated in near
the coast; when his would-be rescuers
tell him he is off New Jersev, he takes a
fresh hold on the door and calls back
"half-wearily, 'I guess I'll float a little
farther/"
Much of The People, Yes is in this
same light-hearted tone, for Sandburg
loves the American language and the
twis's we give to our sayings. For irony,
he quotes from a memorial stone:
"We, near whose bones you stand,
were Iroquois.
The wide land which is now yours,
was ours.
Friendly hands have given us back
enough for a tomb."
For homespun wisdom, he offers this
advice: "Sell the buffalo hide after you
have killed the buffalo." And for unso-
phistication, he throws in: "The coat and
the pants do the work but the vest gets
the gravy." There are scores of other
wisecracks and jokes, some new and some
that wink at you like old friends from
your childhood.
Sandburg has also filled his book with
American people—the real, the legendary,
and the anonymous. Among the real ones
are John Brown, "who was buried deep
and didn't stay so"; Mr. Eastman, "the
kodak king," who at the age of seventy-
seven shot himself to avoid the
childishness of senility; and the Wright brothers,
who "wanted to fly for the sake of flying."
The legends include Mike Fink, John
Henry, and, of course, Paul Bunyan, to
printed by permission of the publishers, Harcourt,
Co., Inc.
2797

whom Sandburg devotes a whole section,
explaining how the people created this
Master Lumberjack, his Seven Axmen,
and Benny, his Little Blue Ox. Of the
anonymous, there are hundreds, and
Sandburg pays tribute to them all, from
whoever first said "Wedlock is a
padlock" to whoever first remarked, "No
peace on earth with the women, no life
anywhere without them."
If one fears that Sandburg will
consistently handle the American people
with the twin kid gloves of gentleness
and affection, he can quickly put his
mind at rest. When he feels like it,
Sandburg puts on the six-ounce mitts of a
prizefighter (as he has often done since
his Chicago Poems was first published in
1916) and flails away at what he hates:
the liars who do not care what they do
to their customers so long as they make
a sale; the torturers and the wielders of
the rubber hose; the cynics who shrug
off the unemployed; the crooked lawyers;
the judges who can be bought and the
men who boast that they can buy them;
and, most of all, the mis-leaders who spit
out the word "peepul" as if it were scum
hocked from their throats.
Of the many books that Sandburg has
written, both prose and poetry, The
People, Yes comes closest to being his coda,
his summing up of what he has tried to
say in a lifetime. As if to indicate as
much, he includes echoes from earlier
poems: there is the hyacinths-biscuits
combination that appeared first in one of
his most famous definitions of poetry; he
mentions the Unknown Soldier, "the boy
nobody knows the name of"; and he
includes the refrain from his "Four
Preludes on Playthings of the Wind": "We
are the greatest city, the greatest people.
Nothing like us ever was." And certainly
the themes in this book are the same as
those that run through all of Sandburg's
poetry: his love of America and its
democracy, the mystery of man and
where he is going, the hope that people
everywhere will someday blunder through
the fogs of injustice, hypocrisy, and
skulduggery into a bright world of peace.
Sandburg has put it all in The People,
Yes, has expressed it perfectly in the
fluent style that only he can master. No
American poet has a better ear for the
right combination of words and certainly
none has ever matched his ability at
writing dialogue, at putting on paper the
way Americans really talk.
As in all books, there are caution signs
for the reader to observe. No one should
try to read The People, Yes at one sitting.
It is not a narrative poem with suspense
enough to carry one along breathless to
the end. Some of the sections are
repetitious and in places the Whitmanesque
cataloging drones on monotonously.
Perhaps these are flaws that Sandburg might
have corrected by devoting more
individual sections to the telling of a single
story, as in the poems on Lincoln and
Paul Bunyan. Sometimes one gets the
feeling that over the years the poet
has kept a gigantic notebook which he
crammed with all the jokes and
picturesque sayings he ever heard; then he sat
down with notebook beside him and
patiently strung them on the strings that
are his central themes. Such a feeling
can be ameliorated if the reader will
treat this volume as a sort of reference
book without the dryness the word
"reference" usually connotes. Here is
writing to be dipped into, savored for a
time, and put aside, to be taken up again
when a sense of humor is drooping, when
faith in American democracy is limp and
cold.
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people
will live on.
They will be tricked and sold
and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth
for rootholds . . .
... In the darkness with a great
bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of
stars for
keeps, the people march:
"Whereto? What next?"
2798

PEPITA JIMENEZ
Type of work: Novel
Author. Juan Valera (Juan Valera y Alcald Galiano, 1824-1905)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: c. 1870
Locale: Andalusia, Spain
First published: 1874
Principal characters:
Luis de Vargas, a student for the priesthood
Don Pedro de Vargas, his father
Pepita Jimenez, a young widow
Antonona, her housekeeper and duenna
Count de Genazahar, a designing nobleman
Critique:
Valera, educated in both religion and
law, became a diplomat at twenty-three.
At the age of forty-six he started to put
on paper his thoughts about philosophy
and religion, and he ended with a story
which began the renascence of the
Spanish novel in the nineteenth century.
Pepita Jimenez shows Valera's ability to
write clearly, with polished phrases and
beauty of style. Even if he could not
write convincing dialogue or keep his
philosophizing from slowing the flow of
the narrative, his character analyses and
descriptions make this novel a notable
work. The psychological pattern of the
story, told with a minimum of external
action, is one to which his epistolary
method is well suited. The thesis is that
a priest is born and not made. In a
foreword the writer claimed that he took the
story from papers that fell into his hands
at the death of the Dean of the
Cathedral of . The original letters were
in three divisions: "Letters from my
nephew," "Chronicles," and "Letters
from my brother."
The Story:
On March 22, four days after
returning to his home in Andalusia, Luis de
Vargas wrote the first of his letters to his
uncle and favorite professor at the
seminary. He reported that his father intended
to fatten him up during his vacation, to
have him ready to return in the fall to
finish his training for the priesthood. He
mentioned in passing that his father was
courting a young and attractive widow,
Pepita Jimenez, twenty years old to his
father's fifty-five. Pepita had been
married for only a short time to an eighty-
year-old money-lender named Gumer-
sindo. Though Luis was not eager to see
his father married again, he promised
his uncle not to judge Pepita before he
knew her.
His next letter, dated six days later,
reported that he was already tired of the
little town and anxious to get back to
school. In the meantime he had met
Pepita. Having decided that she paid too
much attention to the body and not
enough to the spirit, he could not
understand why the local vicar held so high
an opinion of her. He hoped, however,
that she would have a good effect on his
somewhat unsettled father.
In his next letter Luis continued to
criticize Pepita for her coquetry toward
his father. He tried to forgive her
vanity about her pretty hands by remarking
that Saint Teresa had exhibited the same
fault. In closing, he apologized for not
at once fleeing the life that seemed to be
making a materialist of him, but his
father had begged him to stay on a while
longer.
In a letter dated April 14, Luis
expressed concern over Pepita's diabolic
power, shown by the manner in which
she charmed both his father and the
vicar, and made him write more about
her than about others in the town.
Meanwhile his time was so occupied
2799

that it was May 4 before he wrote again
to describe a picnic his father had given
for Pepita. Luis had ridden a mule. While
the others rode or played games, he stayed
behind to chat with the vicar and an old
lady, an experience more boring than he
had believed possible. But when he took
a walk and came upon Pepita alone, he
could not understand his strange
excitement. She reproved him for being too
serious for his age and remarked that
only very old people like the vicar traveled
on muleback. That night Luis told his
father that he wanted to learn to ride a
horse.
In later letters he described his
embarrassment during evening gatherings
at Pepita's house, where he always felt
out of place. But he did enjoy his riding
lessons and the thrill of riding past her
balcony on the day his father decided
he could ride well enough to do so. He
later confessed to his uncle that he was
disturbed in his feelings over Pepita and
as a result he had stopped going to her
house. He thought that he would be wise
to return to the seminary at once.
He was still more perplexed when
Antoiiona, Pepita's housekeeper, scolded
him for making her mistress unhappy.
When Luis called to apologize and
explain, the sight of tears in Pepita's eyes
upset him, and before he knew it he
kissed her. Certain that he must leave
as soon as possible, he told his father
that he intended to depart on June 25,
immediately after the Midsummer Eve
celebration. He ended his letter with
assurances that his uncle would be seeing
him within a week.
Five days after Luis' last letter Pepita
summoned the vicar to her house. She
wanted to confess that she no longer
loved Don Pedro because she had fallen
in love with his son. Convinced that
Luis loved her also, though without
knowing it, she intended to keep him
from carrying out his plans to become a
priest. The scandalized vicar ordered her
to remain engaged to the father and let
Luis go away as he had planned. Pepita
promised. But no one could force
Antoiiona to keep such a promise. She
determined to take a hand in the situation.
In the Vargas household, meanwhile,
Don Pedro worried about his moping
son and at last urged the boy's gay young
cousin, Currito, to take Luis in hand.
Luis went with his cousin to the casino,
where the Count de Genazahar was
among the gamblers. Having borrowed
five thousand pesetas from Gumersindo,
he had tried, after the old man's death, to
cancel the debt by marrying Pepita. Her
curt refusalhad made him hate her. At
the casino that night Luis overheard
some of his slighting remarks about the
young widow.
Antoiiona went to see Luis again and
accused him of behaving discourteously
toward her mistress. Luis protested that
he, too, was unhappy but that it was his
duty to return to the seminary. Because
Antoiiona insisted that he must first set
things right with Pepita, he promised to
go to her house at ten that night. The
streets would be full of Midsummer Eve
revelers and no one would notice him.
After Antoiiona's departure he
regretted his promise, but it had been given
and he went. His talk with Pepita was
long and difficult. Each made
self-accusations. At last, sobbing, Pepita ran to hex
bedroom. Luis followed her. When he
came out, he was convinced that he was
not among the men of whom priests are
made. On his way home, seeing Count
Genazahar in the casino, he stopped.
Declaring that he no longer wore his
religious robe, he announced that he had
come to beat the count at cards.
During a long run of luck he won all
the count's money. When Count
Genazahar wished to continue, Luis
insultingly answered his promise to pay later
by reminding him that he had failed to
pay his debt to Gumersindo's widow. The
count challenged him to a duel and
called for sabers. The fight was brief
and bloody and both men were wounded.
Currito and a friend took Luis home to
his worried father.
2800

Alone with Don Pedro, Luis tried to
confess that he had become his father's
rival for Pepita's affections. Don Pedro
merely laughed, and from his pocket he
took two letters. One from his brother in
the seminary said that he felt Luis had
no calling for the priesthood and would
do better to remain at home. The other
was Don Pedro's answer. Having realized
that Pepita's affection had shifted to Luis,
he would be happy in watching their
happiness. He invited his brother the
dean to come and marry the young lovers.
The dean refused the invitation, but
a month later, after Luis' wounds had
healed, the village vicar married them.
Don Pedro gave a splendid reception.
Although it was the local custom to
serenade with cowbells anyone marrying a
second time, the town thought so highly
of Luis and his bride that they were
allowed to steal away without an
embarrassing celebration.
The count, recovering after five months
in bed, paid part of his debt and arranged
to pay the remainder. After the birth of
their son, Luis and Pepita took a trip
abroad. For many years they and their
farms prospered and all went well with
them.
2801

PEREGRINE PICKLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: England and the continent
First published: 1751
Principal characters:
Peregrine Pickle, a reckless young man
Gamaliel Pickle, his father
Grizzle Pickle, his aunt, later Mrs. Trunnion
Commodore Hawser Trunnion, an old sea dog, Peregrine's godfather
Lieutenant Hatchway, the commodore's companion
Tom Pipes, a companion and servant
Emilia Gauntlet, Peregrine's sweetheart
Critique:
Traditional criticism claims that the
character of Peregrine Pickle undergoes
no change in the course of this novel,
that at the conclusion of his adventures
with folly he is still unconvinced about
the wisdom of a sober and useful life.
This tradition does not take into
consideration the nature of
eighteenth-century manners or the temper of Smollett's
mind. It must be noted that Smollett
was anxious to reveal the chicaneries of
his time and to satirize the manners and
morals of society in general. Viewed in
this light, the character of the writer's
unheroic hero is in keeping with the
theme and purpose of the novel. In
addition, the inclusion of the disputed
memoirs of the lady of quality
complements the story of Peregrine's picaresque
career.
The Story:
Mr. Gamaliel Pickle was the son of
a prosperous London merchant who at
his death bequeathed his son a fortune
of no small degree. Later, having lost
a part of his inheritance in several
unsuccessful ventures of his own, Mr.
Pickle prudently decided to retire from
business and to live on the interest of
his fortune rather than risk his principal
in the uncertainties of trade. With his
sister Grizzle, who had kept his house
for him since his father's death, he went
to live in a mansion in the country.
In the region to which he retired,
Mr. Pickle's nearest neighbor was
Commodore Hawser Trunnion, an old sea
dog who kept his house like a seagoing
ship and who possessed an endless list of
quarterdeck oaths he used on any
occasion against anyone who offended him.
Other members of his household were
Lieutenant Hatchway, a one-legged
veteran, and a seaman named Tom Pipes.
Shortly after he had settled in his
new home Mr. Pickle met Miss Sally
Appleby, daughter of a gentleman in a
nearby parish, and after a brief
courtship the two were married. Before long
Mr. Pickle discovered that his wife was
determined to dominate him completely.
Peregrine was the oldest son of that
ill-starred union. During her pregnancy
Mrs. Pickle took such a dislike to
Grizzle that she tried in every way possible
to embarrass and humiliate her sister-
in-law. Realizing that she was no longer
wanted in her brother's household,
Grizzle began a campaign to win the heart
of old Commodore Trunnion.
Ignoring his distrust of women in
general, she won out at last over his
obstinacy. The wedding was not
without humor, for on his way to the church
the commodore's horse ran away with
him and carried him eleven miles with
a hunting party. Upset by his experience,
he insisted that the postponed ceremony
be performed in his own house. The
wedding night was also not without ex-
2802

citement when the ship's hammocks in
which the bride and groom were to sleep
collapsed and catapulted them to the
floor. The next morning, wholly
indifferent to her husband's displeasure, Mrs.
Trunnion proceeded to refurnish and
reorganize the commodore's house
according to her own notions.
In order to silence his protests, Mrs.
Trunnion conceived the idea of
pretending to be pregnant. But the commodore's
hopes for an heir were short-lived; his
wife employed her ruse only to make
herself absolute mistress of the Trunnion
household. Lacking an heir of his own,
the gruff but kindly old seaman turned
his attention to young Peregrine Pickle,
his nephew and godson. Peregrine was
an unfortunate child. While he was still
very young, his mother had taken an
unnatural and profound dislike to him,
and the boy was often wretched from the
harsh treatment he received. Weak-willed
Mr. Pickle, under the influence of his
wife, did litde to improve that unhappy
situation. As a result, Peregrine grew
into a headstrong, rebellious boy who
showed his high spirits in all kinds of
pranks that mortified and irritated his
parents. Sent away to school, he rebelled
against his foolish and hypocritical
teachers, and at last he wrote to the
commodore asking that he be removed from
the school. Feeling pity for the boy and
admiring his spirit of independence, the
commodore took him out of school and
adopted him as his son and heir.
When Peregrine's pranks and
escapades became more than his indulgent
uncle could stand, the boy was sent to
Winchester School, with Pipes
accompanying him as his servant. Aware of
his uncle's kindness, Peregrine studied
and made steady progress until he met
Miss Emilia Gaundet and fell in love
with her. Emilia was visiting in
Winchester; her own home was in a village
about a day's journey away. So great
was Peregrine's infatuation that soon
after she had returned home he ran away
from school and took lodgings in the
village in order to be near her. His
absence having been reported by the
school authorities, Hatchway was sent to
look for him. The boy was summoned
to attend his uncle, who was alarmed by
his heir's interest in a penniless girl.
Peregrine's mother grew even more
spiteful and his father disowned him for his
youthful folly. Indignant at the parents'
harsh treatment of their son, the
commodore sent Peregrine to Oxford to
continue his studies. There he encountered
Emilia again and renewed his courtship.
Because he hoped to make a good match
for his nephew, the commodore attempted
to end the affair by sending Peregrine on
a tour of the continent. Aware of his
uncle's purpose in sending him abroad,
Peregrine visited Emilia before his
departure and vowed eternal devotion.
Shortly thereafter, warned by the
commodore that his reckless behavior would
lead only to disaster, Peregrine set out
for France. Faithful Pipes went with
him as his servant and he was also
accompanied by a mentor who was sup
posed to keep a check on Peregrine's
behavior. All efforts in that direction were
fruidess. Peregrine had barely set foot
on French soil before he made gallant
advances to Mrs. Hornbeck, the wife of
a traveling Englishman. In Paris he
encountered the lady again and eloped
with her, an escapade that ended when
the British ambassador intervened to send
the lady back to her husband. On one
occasion Peregrine was imprisoned by
the city guard. At another time he fought
a duel with a musketeer as the result of
an amorous adventure. He quarreled
with a nobleman at a masked ball and
was sent to the Bastille in company with
an artist friend. After Pipes had
discovered his whereabouts and had
secured his release, Peregrine was ordered
to leave France within three days.
On his way back to England,
Peregrine became embroiled with a knight of
Malta, quarreled with Pipes, and was
captivated by a lady he met in a carriage.
Shortly afterward he lost his carriage
companion and resumed his earlier affair
with Mrs. Hornbeck. Her husband in-
2803

terposed and once more Peregrine was
thrown into prison. After his release the
travelers proceeded to Antwerp and from
there to England. His uncle, who still
retained his affection for his wayward
nephew, received him with great joy.
On his return Peregrine called on
Emilia, whom he found indifferent to
his attentions. He wasted no time in
pining over a lost love but continued to
disport himself in London and Bath, until
he was called home by the final illness
of his uncle. The old commodore was
buried according to his own directions
and he was remembered with great
affection and respect by his nephew. To
Peregrine his uncle willed a fortune of
thirty thousand pounds and his house.
After a vain attempt to reach a friendly
understanding with his parents,
Peregrine left the house to the tenancy of
Hatchway and returned to London.
As a handsome, wealthy young
bachelor, he indulged in extravagance and
dissipation of all kinds. After exaggerated
reports of his wealth had been circulated,
he was pursued by matchmaking mothers
whose efforts merely amused him but
whose designs gave him entrance into
the houses of the fashionable and the
great.
Meeting Emilia again, he began the
same campaign to win her that had been
successful with his other light and casual
loves. Disappointed in his attempts to
seduce her, he took advantage of the
confusion attending a masquerade ball
to try to overcome her by force. He'was
vigorously repulsed, and her uncle denied
him the privilege of seeing Emilia again.
He became the friend of a notorious
lady of quality who gave him a copy of
her memoirs. The woman was Lady
Vane, whose affairs with many lovers
had created a great scandal in London.
Peregrine had a friend named CadwaL
lader who assumed the character of a
rortune-teller and magician. In that way
Peregrine was able to learn the secrets
of the women who came to consult
Cadwallader. Having acquired a
reputation as a clever man and a wit, Peregrine
used his knowledge to advance his own
position.
Grizzle Trunnion died and Peregrine
attended her funeral. On the road he
met a vulgar young female beggar whom
he dressed in fashionable clothes and
taught a set of polite phrases. It amused
him to introduce the girl into his own
fashionable world. When his
contemptuous joke was at last exposed, he lost many
of his fine friends.
Peregrine now decided to retrench.
He cut down his foolish expenses and
made loans at a good rate of interest.
He was persuaded to stand for
Parliament. This decision was taken after he
had met Emilia at her sister's wedding
and he had begged the sister to
intercede for him. But his political venture
cost more money than he had expected.
Having lost the election, he was for the
first time in his life faced with the need
for mature reflection on himself and his
world.
His affairs went from bad to worse.
A mortgage that he held proved
worthless. A friend for whom he had
endorsed a note defaulted. Reduced at last
to complete ruin, he tried to earn money
by writing translations and satires. He
was again thrown into jail after the
publication of a satire directed against an
influential politician.
His old friends, Hatchway and Pipes,
remained loyal to him in his adversity.
Each brought his savings to the Fleet
prison and offered them to Peregrine,
but he refused to accept their aid. It was
his intention to earn money for his
release by his writing or else starve in the
attempt.
About that time Emilia's brother,
Captain Gauntlet, learned that he had been
promoted to his rank largely through
Peregrine's services in the days of his
prosperity. Discovering Peregrine's plight,
he set about to relieve his benefactor.
Peregrine had an unexpected bit of luck
when one of his debtors returned a loan
of seven hundred pounds. Emilia,
having inherited ten thousand pounds, of-
2804

fered the money and her hand to
Peregrine. Touched by her generosity and
forgiveness, he reluctantly refused to
burden her with his debts and
degradation.
Peregrine was saved at last by the
death of his father, who died intestate.
Legal heir to his father's fortune, he
was able to leave Fleet prison and take
immediate possession of his estate.
Having settled an allowance upon his mother,
who had gone to live in another part
of the country, Peregrine hastened to
ask for Emilia s hand in marriage. With
his bride he settled down to lead the life
of a country squire.
2805

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Hellenistic period
Locale: Eastern Mediterranean Sea and its littorals
First presented: c. 1607
Principal characters:
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Thaisa, his wife
Marina, their daughter
Cleon, governor of Tarsus
Dionyza, his wife
Ltsimachus, governor of Mytilene
Antiochus, King of Antioch
Critique:
By scholarly consensus, only the last
three acts of Pericles, Prince of Tyre
are said to be by Shakespeare. Therefore,
it would appear that Shakespeare merely
finished a play that someone else had
been commissioned to write. The plot is
taken from Twine's Pattern of Painful
Adventures and Gower's Confessio
Amantis, in which Apollonius—Pericles
in the Shakespearian play—is involved
in the hairbreadth escapes, the endless
travels, and the miraculous reunions so
typical of Hellenistic romances. Patience
and goodness are rewarded; villainy
receives its deserved punishment; and an
infinity of vicissitudes are forgotten as the
principals are tearfully reunited.
The Story:
In Syria, King Antiochus' wife died in
giving birth to a daughter. When the
child grew to lovely womanhood, King
Antiochus conceived an unnatural
passion for her. Her beauty attracted suitors
to Antioch from far and wide, but King
Antiochus, reluctant to give up his
daughter, posed a riddle to each suitor.
If the riddle went unanswered, the suitor
was executed. Many men, hoping to win
the princess, lost their lives in this way.
Prince Pericles of Tyre, went to
Antioch to seek the hand of the beautiful
princess. Having declared that he would
willingly risk his life for the hand of
the king's daughter, he read the riddle,
the solution of which disclosed an
incestuous relationship between King
Antiochus and his daughter. Pericles
understood but hesitated, prudently, to reveal
his knowledge. Pressed by King
Antiochus, he hinted that he had fathomed
the riddle. King Antiochus, unnerved
and determined to kill Pericles, invited
the young prince to stay at the court for
forty days, in which time he could
decide whether he would forthrightly give
the solution to the riddle. But Pericles,
convinced that his life was in great
danger, fled. King Antiochus sent agents
after him with orders to kill the prince
on sight.
Pericles, back in Tyre, was fearful that
King Antiochus would ravage his city in
an attempt to take his life. After
consulting with his lords, he decided that he
could save Tyre by going on a journey
to last until King Antiochus died. Thali-
ard, a Syrian lord who had come to Tyre
to take Pericles' life, learned of Pericles'
departure and returned to Antioch to
report the prince's intention.
Meanwhile, in the remote Greek
province of Tarsus, Cleon, the governor, and
his wife Dionyza grieved because there
was famine in the land. As they
despaired, it was reported that a fleet of
ships stood off the coast. Cleon was sure
that Tarsus was about to be invaded.
Actually, the ships were those of Pericles,
who had come to Tarsus with grain to
2806

succor the starving populace. Cleon
welcomed the Tyrians, and his people
invoked the Greek gods to protect their
saviors from all harm.
Pericles received word from Tyre that
King Antiochus' agents were relentlessly
pursuing him, so that he was no longer
safe in Tarsus. He thereupon took leave
of Cleon and set sail. On the high seas
the Tyrians met disaster in a storm; the
fleet was lost; Pericles was the only
survivor. Washed ashore in Greece, he was
helped by simple fishermen. Fortunately,
too, the fishermen took Pericles' suit of
armor from the sea. With the help of the
fishermen, Pericles went to Pentapolis,
the court of King Simonides.
There a tournament was held to honor
the birthday of Thaisa, the lovely
daughter of King Simonides. Among the
gallant knights he met, Pericles presented a
wretched sight in his rusted armor. Even
so, he defeated all antagonists and was
crowned king of the tournament by
Thaisa. At the banquet following the
tourney Pericles, reminded of his own
father's splendid court, lapsed into
melancholy. Seeing his dejection, King
Simonides drank a toast to him and asked
him who he was. He disclosed that he
was Pericles of Tyre, a castaway. His
modesty and courteous deportment made
an excellent impression on King
Simonides and Thaisa.
Meanwhile, in Antioch, King
Antiochus and his daughter riding together
in a chariot, were struck dead by a bolt
of lightning. In Tyre, Pericles had been
given up for dead, and the lords proposed
that Helicanus, Pericles' deputy, take the
crown. The old lord, confident that his
prince was still alive, directed them to
spend a year in search of Pericles.
In Pentapolis, Thaisa, having lost her
heart to Pericles, tricked her suitors into
leaving by reporting that she would
remain a maid for another year. Then she
and Pericles were married.
A short time before Thaisa was to give
birth to a child, Pericles was told that
King Antiochus was dead and that
Helicanus had been importuned to take the
crown of Tyre. Free to go home, Pericles,
with Thaisa and Lychorida, a nurse, took
ship for Tyre. During the voyage the
ship was overtaken by storms. Thaisa,
seemingly dead after giving birth to a
daughter, was placed in a watertight
casket which was thrown into the raging
sea. Pericles, fearful for the safety of his
child, directed the seamen to take the
ship into Tarsus, which was not far off.
The casket containing Thaisa having
drifted ashore in Ephesus, the body was
taken to Cerimon, a skilled physician.
Cerimon, suspecting that Thaisa was not
really dead, discovered by his skill that
she was actually quite alive.
Pericles, having reached Tarsus
safely, remained there a year, at the end of
which time he declared that Tyre had
need of him. Placing little Marina, as he
had named his daughter, in the care of
Cleon and Dionyza, he set out for Tyre.
In the meantime Thaisa, believing that
her husband and child had been lost at
sea, took the veil of a votaress to the
goddess Diana.
Years passed, while Pericles ruled in
Tyre. As Marina grew, it was clear that
she was superior in every respect to her
companion, the daughter of Cleon and
Dionyza. When Marina's nurse
Lychorida died, Dionyza, jealous of the
daughter of Pericles, plotted to have Marina's
life, and she commissioned a servant to
take Marina to a deserted place on the
coast and kill her. As the servant
threatened to take the girl's life, pirates
frightened away the servant and took Marina
aboard their ship. Taking her to Myti-
lene, they sold her to a brothel owner.
In Tarsus, meanwhile, Dionyza
persuaded the horrified Cleon that for their
own safety against the rage of Pericles
they must mourn the loss of Marina and
erect a monument in her memory. When
Pericles, accompanied by old Helicanus,
went to Tarsus to reclaim his daughter,
his grief on seeing the monument was so
great that he exchanged his royal robes
for rags, vowed never again to wash
himself or to cut his hair, and left Tarsus.
In Mytilene, in the meantime, Ma-
2807

rina confounded both the owners of the
brothel and the customers by preaching
the heavenly virtues instead of deporting
herself wantonly. Lysimachus, the
governor of Mytilene, went in disguise to the
brothel. When Marina was brought to
him, he quickly discerned her gentle
birth, gave her gold, and assured her
that she would soon be freed from her
vile bondage. Alarmed, the bawd put
Marina in the hands of the doorkeeper.
Marina shamed him, gave him gold, and
persuaded him to place her as a teacher
of the gentle arts. The money she earned
by teaching singing, dancing, and
needlework she gave to her owner, the bawd.
When Pericles, now a distracted
wanderer, came to Mytilene, Lysimachus took
a barge out to the Tyrian ship, but he
was told that Pericles, grieved by the
loss of both wife and daughter, would
not speak to anyone. A Mytilene lord
suggested that Marina, famous for her
graciousness and charm, be brought.
Marina came and revealed to Pericles that
she knew a grief similar to his, for she
had lost her father and mother. It soon
became apparent to bewildered Pericles
that his daughter stood before him.
Rejoicing, he put aside his rags and dressed
in regal robes. The goddess Diana then
put him into a deep sleep, in which she
directed him in a dream to go to Ephesus
and to tell in the temple of Diana the
loss of his wife.
Pericles hastened to Ephesus, where,
in the temple, he revealed his identity
to the votaries in attendance. Thaisa,
overhearing him, fainted. Cerimon, who
was also present, disclosed to Pericles
that the votaress who had fainted was
his wife. Pericles and Thaisa were
joyfully reunited. Since Thaisa's father had
died, Pericles proclaimed that he and
Thaisa would reign in Pentapolis and that
Lysimachus and Marina, as man and
wife, would rule over Tyre. When the
people of Tarsus learned of the evil
done by Cleon and Dionyza, they burned
the governor and his family alive in their
palace.
2808

PERSIAN LETTERS
Type of workt Satirical essays in letter form
Author: Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Timet 1711-1721
Locale: Paris, Smyrna, Venice, Ispahan
First published: 1721
Principal characters:
Usbek, a Persian in Paris
Rica, a young friend of Usbek
Ibben, a Persian in Smyrna
Rhedi, a Persian in Venice
Zephis,
Zachi,
Zelis. and
Roxana, some of Usbek's wives in his seraglio in Ispahan
Solim, one of Usbek's servants in Ispahan
The Chief Black Eunuch, guardian of Usbek's seraglio
In these 161 letters written by various
fictional correspondents, Montesquieu
gives a sharp picture of many facets of
Parisian society and the customs of the
early eighteenth century. The
correspondence also reveals much of the thinking of
the time on comparative religions.
Although the writing is in a formal
mode in keeping with the status of the
correspondents, Montesquieu's tone and
style never become stiff or artificial. The
satire is by turns muted in the
mellowness of friendly correspondence and
proclaimed in the harshness of intentional
criticism. Unlike many similar collections
of letters, however, Persian Letters is
entertaining, pleasant reading. The concise,
clear sentences have a conversational tone.
In spite of Montesquieu's title, the aim of
the writing is not a sociological picture
of life in a Persian harem. It is a subtle,
accurate satire of French society, pointing
up the decadent attitudes and loose
morals, from 1712, in the last years of the
reign of Louis XIV and the regime of
Philip Due de Orleans, during the
minority of Louis XV. In Persian Letters there
are numerous resemblances to Dufresney's
Amusements, The Spectator, and trie
Decameron, writings known to have been
among Montesquieu's favorite books.
Persian Letters, printed in Amsterdam
and published anonymously in 1721, was
an immediate success. As a friend of
Montesquieu had predicted, copies of the
work "sold like loaves."
Because of a thin thread of story,
Persian Letters may be said to contain a
sustained narrative. Usbek, from his
youth a courtier, was given to sincerity
in his resolution to remain uncorrupted
by wordly concerns. Finally the ministers
came to question his intentions because
he was not given to flattery. Persecuted,
he resolved to go to Europe and
eventually to visit Paris. Rica, a young friend,
went as his companion. Other Persians
with whom these two exchanged letters
were Ibben, in Smyrna, and Rhedi, in
Venice.
Letters to Usbek from his wives, the
eunuchs, and other servants reported
unrest in the harem. These letters told of
the jealousies and the temperamental
behavior of the wives, the inadequacies
of underlings with responsibility but
without authority, and the efforts of those
persons to maintain their status through
Usbek's support.
The revolt continued; violence grew.
The wives wrote, variously proclaiming
their devotion to, or their hatred of,
Usbek. The chief eunuch was killed
while attempting to maintain order in the
harem. Roxana, the most recent of
Usbek's wives, had been the instigator of
that unrest and violence. Hers is the last
letter in the book; in it, she tells of
having betrayed Usbek. Personifying
liberated womanhood (a transition apparent
2809

in eighteenth-century France), Roxana
wrote:
Yes, I have deceived you; I have led
away your eunuchs . . . and I have
known how to turn your frightful
seraglio into a place of pleasure and
delight. . . . How could you think that
I was such a weakling as to imagine
there was nothing for me in the world
but to worship your caprices; that while
you indulged all your desires, you
should have the right to thwart me in
all mine? ... I have remodelled your
laws upon those of nature; and my
mind has always maintained its
independence. . . .
Rica, good-humored and sardonic,
represents the lighter side of Montesquieu's
nature. Rica jibed at groups and
individuals, at religion and government, at
customs and beliefs. Nothing escaped his
cynical eye. It was his observation that
the King of France was much wealthier
than the King of Spain; even though the
latter owned mines of gold and silver,
the French king's wealth came from a
more inexhaustible source, the vanity of
his subjects. The gullibility of the French
people, Rica wrote, was so great that
should the king be short of money, he
had only to suggest that a piece of paper
was the coin of the realm, and the
people were at once convinced of its value.
In Rica's estimation, the Christian
religion consisted of an immense number of
tedious duties. Among the tradespeople
in Paris, he noted that a "good narured
creature will offer you for a little money
the secret of making gold"; another
"promises you the love of the spirits of
the air, if you will see no women for a
small trifle of thirty years"; "an infinite
number of professors of languages, of
arts, and of sciences, teach what they do
not know; and their talent is not by any
means despicable; for much less wit is
required to exhibit one's knowledge, than
to teach what one knows nothing of."
Rica disdained the pseudo-intellectual
and everyone's apparent desire to write a
book on any topic of conversation
fashionable in the salons. "I am exasperated,"
he wrote, "with a book which I have just
laid down—a book so big that it seems to
contain all science: but it has only split
my head without putting anything into
it."
Although Usbek was as brilliant and
on occasion as satirical as the younger
Rica, he was graver and given more to
meditation and reflection. Throughout his
many discussions of religion in the
letters, Usbek showed respect for all faiths.
The social and the theological are as one,
according to Usbek, because God
established religions for man's happiness; and
he can most surely please God by obeying
the laws of society and by loving his
fellow man. That all religions had their
foundations in God was expressed in
Usbek's prayer: "Lord, I do not
understand these discussions that are carried
on without end regarding Thee: I would
serve Thee according to Thy will; but
each man whom I consult would have
me serve Thee according to his." Usbek
did not believe that it was necessary to
hate and persecute those of other faiths
in order to serve God; nor was it
necessary to try to convert them.
Although the Persian is Montesquieu's
mouthpiece for philosophical viewpoint
and discussion, Usbek is quite capable of
cryptic analysis. In one letter he asserted
that "a poet [is] the grotesquest of
humankind. These sort of people declare
that they are born what they are; and, I
may add, what they will be all their lives,
namely almost always, the most ridiculous
of men. . . ." On another occasion,
having been cornered at a party by a dandy
who boasted of his successful conquests
with ladies, Usbek told him that "If you
were in Persia, you would not enjoy all
these advantages; you would be held
fitter to guard our women than to please
them."
In Persian Letters communication is
direct and immediate, character is self-
portrayed, and ideas reveal the working
of a shrewd, incisive mind that is always
reflective of the author, yet in keeping
with the personalities of the principals
who are allowed to speak for him.
2810

THE PERSIANS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.)
Type of plot: Historical tragedy
Time of plot: 480 B.C.
Locale: Susa, capital of Persia
First presented: 472 B.C.
Principal characters:
Xerxes, King of Persia
Atossa, his mother
Persian Elders
The Ghost of Darius, Xerxes' father
Critique:
The Persians can hardly be called a
tragedy in the classical Greek sense; rather,
it is a glorification, by indirection, of the
invincible Greeks. It might possibly be
said that the tragic hero of this play is
Persia itself, for its presumption in auac*-
ing indomitable Greece; certainly the
individual catastrophe of Xerxes would have
aroused neither pity nor terror in the
Greek audience. Glorification of Greece
is achieved obliquely in The Persians
through a plot concerned wholly with the
Persian reaction to Xerxes' defeat at
Salamis. According to tradition, Aeschylus
was a soldier at Salamis; if this tradition
be true, then his magnificent description
of this decisive engagement is invaluable
for its authenticity.
The Story:
Xerxes, son of the late King Darius of
Persia, was a man of overwhelming
ambition, who, eager to add more countries to
his tremendous empire, had led a great
army against the Greek states. During his
absence he had left only the Persian elders
to maintain authority in Susa, his capital.
The old men waited apprehensively for
some word of the invasion forces, and their
fears grew as time passed and no message
came from Xerxes. Thev lamented that the
land had been emptied of the young men
who had marched valiantly to war, leaving
their wives and mothers to wait anxiously
for their return.
Atossa, widow of Darius and mother of
Xerxes, was also filled with vague fears.
One night she saw in a dream two women,
one in Persian dress, the other in Greek
robes, and both tall and beautiful. When
they began to quarrel, King Xerxes
appeared and yoked them to his chariot. The
woman in Asian costume submitted
meekly enough, but the other broke the
reins, overturned the chariot, and threw
young Xerxes to the ground. Then in her
dream Darius came and, seeing his son
on the ground, tore his robes with grief.
Later, awakening, Atossa went to pray for
her son's safety. While she was sacrificing
before the altar, she saw an eagle pursued
and plucked by a hawk. To her these
visions seemed to portend catastrophe for
the Persians.
The elders, after hearing her story,
advised her to pray to the gods and to beg
great Darius, from the realm of the dead,
to intercede to bring success to the Persian
expedition. Atossa, her thoughts far across
the sea with her son, asked the elders
where Athens was. The elders told her that
it was in Attica, in Greece, and that the
citizens of Athens were a free people who
derived great strength from their freedom.
Their words did little to reassure the
troubled mother.
A messenger arrived and announced
that the Persian host had been defeated
in a great battle fought at Salamis, but that
Xerxes, to Atossa's relief, had been
spared. His news threw the elders into sad
confusion. Atossa told them that men
must learn to bear the sorrows put upon
them by the gods. Quieted, the elders
listened while the messenger related the
story of the defeat.
2811

At Salamis more than twelve hundred
Persian ships had been arrayed against
three hundred and ten vessels of the
Greeks. The defenders, however, proved
themselves craftier than their enemies.
Deceitfully, a Greek from the Athenian fleet
informed Xerxes that at nightfall the far-
outnumbered Greek ships would leave
their battle stations and fly, under cover
of darkness, to escape the impending sea
fight. Xerxes immediately gave orders that
his fleet was to close in about the bay of
Salamis and to be on the alert that night
to prevent the escape of the Athenian
vessels. But the wily Greeks kept their places
in the bay. When morning came, the light
showed the Persian ships crowded so
closely into the outlet of the bay that they
were unable to maneuver. The Greeks
thereupon moved against the Persians and
destroyed them.
Meanwhile, the messenger continued,
Xerxes had sent troops to the island of
Salamis, where he planned to cut off all
Greeks who sought refuge on land. But
the Greeks, having destroyed the Persian
fleet, put their own soldiers ashore. In the
fierce fighting that followed, the Persians,
unable to escape by water, were slain.
Seeing his great army scattered and killed,
Xerxes ordered the survivors to retreat. As
the Persians, now without ships, marched
overland through hostile Greek territory,
many of them perished of hardships 01
were slain by enraged men of the lands
through which they traveled.
The elders of Susa bewailed the terrible
misfortune brought upon Persia by the
king's desire to avenge his father, who had
been defeated years before by the Greeks
at Marathon.
Having heard the story of her son's
defeat, Atossa retired to make offerings to the
!;ods and to pray for the warriors who had
ost their lives in the war with Athens. In
mourning, she invoked the spirit of
Darius, for whom she and the old men had
great need at this most depressing time.
The shade of Darius appeared and
asked what dire event had occurred in
Persia to make necessary his summons
from the lower regions. The elders were
struck speechless with fear and respect by
his august appearance, but Atossa bravely
confronted the ghost of her dead husband
and told him that Persia had met disaster,
not by plague or by internal strife, but by
defeat at the hands of the Athenians.
Darius was shocked to hear of the
losses Xerxes had suffered and to learn the
ambitious scope of his enterprise. He
lamented his son's god-offending pride in
bridging the sacred Hellespont and in
gambling away all the manpower and
wealth of Persia upon the success of his
ill-fated expedition. Atossa tried to defend
Xerxes by saying that he had been
influenced by evil advisers. Darius reminded
his listeners that he and his forebears had
never jeopardized the welfare of the
country to such an extent.
In despair, the old men asked Darius
how Persia could redeem her great defeat.
The dead king replied that the Persians
must never again attack Greece, for the
gods unquestionably favored those free
people. He urged the elders to teach the
Persian youths to restrain all
god-provoking pride, and he advised Atossa to
welcome Xerxes and to comfort him on his
return. With these words the shade of
Darius disappeared into his tomb.
Xerxes returned, sorrowing that he had
not perished on the field of battle. Filled
with remorse at the catastrophe he had
brought upon his people, he blamed only
himself for his defeat. The old men sang a
dirge, asking what had befallen various
great Persian warriors. Xerxes replied that
some had drowned in the sea battle and
that others had been slaughtered on the
beach. Many, he said, were killed and
buried without final rites.
Xerxes, in the deepest despair, joined
the elders in their grief. But even though
his greatest ambition had been dashed, he
praised the bravery and virtues of the
Greeks whom he had tried in vain to
conquer.
2812

PERSUASION
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Somersetshire and Bath, England
First published: 1818
Principal characters:
Sir Walter Elliot, owner of Kellynch Hall
Elizabeth Elliot, his oldest daughter
Anne Elliot, his second daughter
Mary Musgrove, his youngest daughter
Charles Musgrove, her husband
Henrietta, and
Louisa, Charles Musgrove's sisters
Captain Frederick Wentworth, a naval officer
Mrs. Clay, Elizabeth Elliot's friend
William Elliot, Sir Walter's cousin; heir to Kellynch Hall
Critique:
Persuasion may be called an autumnal
novel. It is Jane Austen's last work, and
the tone is mellow. Even the satire is
gentler than in her other works. Anne
Elliot is Jane Austen's sweetest heroine.
The book has a certain melancholy
throughout, even though the final
outcome is a happy one.
The Story:
Sir Walter Elliot, a conceited man,
vain of both his good looks and his title,
lived at his countryseat, Kellynch Hall,
with two of his daughters, Elizabeth and
Anne. Elizabeth, handsome and much
iike her father, was the oldest and her
father's favorite. Anne, sweet,
self-effacing, and quietly intelligent, was
ignored, neglected, and underrated by
both. Mary, the youngest daughter, was
married to an agreeable young man
named Charles Musgrove, and lived in
an untidy house at Uppercross, three
miles from Kellynch Hall.
Living beyond his means had brought
financial disaster upon Sir Walter, and
on the advice of his solicitor and of a
family friend, Lady Russell, he was
persuaded to rent Kellynch Hall and take a
smaller house in Bath. Anne would have
preferred to take a modest house near
home, but as usual her father and sister
had their way in the matter.
Reluctantly, Sir Walter let his
beloved countryseat to Admiral and Mrs.
Croft. Mrs. Croft was the sister of a
former suitor of Anne, Captain Frederick
Wentworth of the navy. Anne and
Captain Wentworth had fallen in love when
they were both very young, but the
match had been discouraged. Anne's
father felt that the young man's family
was not good enough for his own and
Lady Russell considered the engagement
unwise because Captain Wentworth had
no financial means beyond his navy pay.
Also, she did not like or understand
Captain Wentworth. Anne had followed
their advice and broken the engagement.
But it had been poor advice, for
Wentworth had advanced and had become
rich in the navy, just as he had said he
would. Anne, at twenty-seven, had not
forgotten her love at nineteen. No one
else had taken Captain Wentworth's
place in her affection.
With all arrangements completed for
the renting of Kellynch Hall, Sir Walter,
Elizabeth, and her friend, Mrs. Clay,
were off to Bath. Before they departed,
Anne warned Elizabeth that Mrs. Clay's
was not a disinterested friendship, and
that she was scheming to marry Sir
Walter if she could. Elizabeth would
not believe such an idea, nor would she
agree to dismiss Mrs. Clay.
2813

Anne was to divide her time between
her married sister, Mary Musgrove, and
Lady Russell until Christmas. Mary and
her family lived also near her husband's
father and mother and their two
daughters, Henrietta and Louisa. During her
visit to the Musgroves, Anne met
Captain Wentworth again, while he was
staying with his sister at Kellynch Hall.
She found him little changed by eight
years.
The Musgroves at once took the Crofts
and Captain Wentworth into their circle,
and the captain and Anne met frequently.
He was coldly polite to Anne, but his
attentions to the Musgrove sisters were
such as to start Mary matchmaking. Sho
could not decide, however, whether he
preferred Henrietta or Louisa. When
Louisa encouraged Henrietta to resume a
former romance with a cousin, Charles
Hayter, it seemed plain that Louisa was
destined for Captain Wentworth.
The likelihood of such a match was
increased when, during a visit to friends
of Captain Wentworth at Lyme Regis,
Louisa suffered an injury while the
captain was assisting her to jump down a
steep flight of steps. The accident was
not his fault, for he had cautioned Louisa
against jumping, but he blamed himself
for not refusing her firmly. Louisa was
taken to the home of Captain Went-
worth's friends, Captain and Mrs. Har-
villc, and Captain Benwick. Anne, quiet,
practical, and capable during the
emergency, had the pleasure of knowing that
Captain Wentworth relied on her strength
and good judgment, but she felt certain
of a match between him and the slowly
recovering Louisa.
Anne reluctantly joined her family
and the designing Mrs. Clay at Bath. She
was surprised to find that they were glad
to see her. After showing her the house,
they told her the news — mainly about
how much in demand they were, and
about a cousin, Mr. William Elliot, who
had suddenly appeared to make his peace
with the family. Mr. William Elliot
was the heir to Sir Walter's title and
estate, but he had fallen out with the
family years before because he did not
marry Elizabeth as Sir Walter and
Elizabeth felt he should have. Also, he had
affronted Sir Walter's pride by speaking
disrespectfully of his Kellynch
connections.
Now, however, these matters were
explained away, and both Sir Walter and
Elizabeth were charmed with him. Anne,
who had seen Mr. Elliot at Lyme Regis,
wondered why he chose to renew a
relationship so long neglected. She
thought it might be that he was
thinking of marrying Elizabeth, now that his
first wife was dead; Lady Russell thought
Anne was the attraction.
About that time news came of Louisa
Musgrove's engagement to Captain
Benwick. Joy, surprise, and a hope that
Captain Wentworth had lost his partiality lor
Louisa were mingled in Anne's first
reaction. Shortly after she had heard the
news, Captain Wentworth arrived in
Bath. After a few meetings Anne knew
that he had not forgotten her. She also
had the pleasure of knowing that he was
jealous of Mr. Elliot. His jealousy was
groundless.
Even if Anne had felt any
inclination to become Lady Elliot, the ambition
would have been short-lived, for Mr.
Elliot's true character now came to light.
Anne learned from a former schoolmate,
who had been friendly with Mr. Elliot
before he basely ruined her husband, that
his first design in renewing acquaintance
with Sir Walter's family was to prevent
Sir Walter from marrying Mrs. Clay and
thus having a son who would inherit the
title and estate. Later, when he met
Anne, he had been genuinely attracted
to her. This information was not news
to Anne, since Mr. Elliot had proposed
to her at a concert the night before. She,
of course, gave him no encouragement.
Her patience in waiting for Captain
Wentworth was soon to be rewarded.
Convinced that Anne still loved him as
he did her, he poured out his heart to
her in a letter, and all was settled happily
between them. Both Musgrove girls were
also married shortly afterward. Neither
2814

of their husbands was as rich as Anne's,
much to Mary's satisfaction. Mrs. Clay,
sacrificing ambition for love, left Bath
with Mr. William Elliot, and went to
live under his protection in London.
Perhaps she hoped some day to be Lady
Elliot, though as the wife of a different
baronet.
2815

PETER IBBETSON
Principal characters:
Peter Ibbetson, a confessed murderer
Colonel Ibbetson, his guardian
Mimsy Seraskier, his dearest friend; later the Duchess of Towers
Mr. Lintot, his employer
Mrs. Deane, a widow
Type of work: Novel
Author: George du JVlaurier (1834-1896)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: France and England
First published: 1891
Critique:
Peter Ibbetson has become a minor
classic in its particular field. It is a story
composed of the elements of love,
friendship, and kindness, but they are so mixed
that we have a completely new plot. It
is difficult to be sure of the author's
purpose in writing this story. Certainly
it was not to question the creation or
eternity. Perhaps it was merely to show
what might be possible if the world
would " dream true." The story has been
dramatized both for the stage and motion
pictures, and it is also the subject of a
popular opera.
The Story:
(After his death in a criminal lunatic
asylum, Peter Ibbetson's autobiography
was given to his cousin, Madge Plunket,
who arranged for the publication of the
manuscript. Through her efforts the
strange and beautiful story was
preserved.)
Peter Pasquier moved from England to
Paris when he was five years old. His
father was a dreamy-eyed inventor, his
mother a soft-spoken woman devoted to
her family. During his childhood Peter
had many friends, but the dearest were
Mimsy Seraskier and her beautiful
mother, who lived nearby. Mimsy was a
delicate, shy child, as plain as her mother
was beautiful. She and Peter were
inseparable friends, making up their own
code language so that no one could
intrude on their secret talks.
When Peter was twelve years old, his
father was killed in an explosion, and his
mother died giving birth to a stillborn
child less than a week later. His mother's
cousin, Colonel Ibbetson, came from
England to take Peter home with him.
Peter wept when he took leave of his
friends, and Mimsy was so ill from her
grief that she could not even tell him
goodbye.
Colonel Ibbetson gave Peter his name,
and he became Peter Ibbetson. The
colonel sent him to school, where he spent
six years. Events at the school touched
him very little, as he spent most of his
time dreaming of his old life in Paris.
When he left school, Peter spent some
time with Colonel Ibbetson. The colonel's
only request was that Peter become a
gentleman, but Peter began to doubt that
the colonel himself fitted the description.
He learned that Colonel Ibbetson had a
very poor reputation among his
acquaintances, due largely to his vanity and
gallantry. His latest victim was Mrs. Deane,
a woman he had ruined with malicious
lies. The colonel seemed also to derive
great pleasure from telling scandalous
tales about everyone he knew, and Peter
grew to hate him for this habit. After a
time he ran away to London and joined
the cavalry for a year. Following his term
in the army, he was apprenticed to Mr.
Lintot, an architect whom he had met
through Colonel Ibbetson. He took
rooms in Pentonville and there began a
new chapter in his life.
He worked industriously for Mr. Lin-
2816

tot and achieved some success, but his
outer life was lonely and dull. The only
real joy he found was in the arts, and of
these only music inspired him deeply. He
saved carefully that he might occasionally
attend a concert. His nightly dreams were
still of his childhood in Paris and of
Mimsy, but his dreams were becoming
blurred.
Viewing with skepticism the belief in
a creator and a life after death, Peter
believed man would have to work back to
the very beginning of time before he
could understand anything about a deity.
He believed it was possible to go back,
if only he knew the way. His ideas on
sin were unorthodox, for to Peter the
only real sin was cruelty to the mind or
boay of any living thing.
During this period of his life his only
acquaintances were the friends of Mr.
and Mrs. Lintot, for Peter was a shy
young man, too much concerned with his
speculations and dreams for social gaiety.
At one party, however, he saw a great
lady who was to be his guiding star for
the rest of his hfe. He was told she was
the Duchess of Towers, and although he
was not presented to her, he saw her
looking at him in a strange manner, almost
as if she found his a familiar face.
Some time after his first sight of the
Duchess of Towers, Peter revisited Paris,
where he found his old home and those
of his friends replaced with modern
bungalows. The only news he had of his
old friends was that Madame Seraskier
had died and Mimsy and her father had
left Paris many years ago. He returned
to his hotel that night, exhausted
emotionally from the disappointments of the
day.
But that night his real and true inner
life began, for he learned how to dream
true. When he fell asleep, the events
of the day passed before him in distorted
fashion. He found himself surrounded
by demon dwarfs. As he tried to escape
them, he looked up and saw standing
before him the Duchess of Towers. She took
his hand and told him he was not
dreaming true, and then a strange thing hap-
He was transported back to the happy
days of his childhood, and he saw
himself as he was then. But at the same
time he retained his present identity. He
was two people at the same* time, his
adult self looking at his child self. The
duchess told him he could always
transport himself into any scene he had ex-
?*rienced if he would only dream true,
o do this he must he on his back with
his arms over his head, and as he went
to sleep he must never cease thinking of
the place he wanted to be in his dreams.
Also, he must never forget in his dream
who and where he was when awake; in
this way his dream would be tied to
reality. She had learned the trick from
her father and could revisit any place she
chose.
When he awoke, he knew that at last
one of his greatest desires had come true;
he had looked into the mind of the
duchess. But the matter puzzled him, for
he had always thought such a fusion
would be possible only between two
people who knew and loved each other.
The duchess was a stranger to him.
He returned to Pentonville and
outwardly resumed his normal life. But his
inner self was his real life, and he
mastered the art of dreaming true and
reliving any experience he wished. He
visited with his mother and Mimsy
frequently in his dreams, and his hfe was
no longer bleak and lonely.
One day he again met the Duchess of
Towers in his outer hfe. Then he
discovered why she had been in his true
dream. She was Mimsy, grown and
married to a famous duke. She had had the
same dream as he when she had rescued
him from the dwarfs, and she too had
been unable to understand why a
stranger had invaded her dreams.
Although he did not again meet the
grown Mimsy in his dreams, Peter saw
the child Mimsy almost every night. So
his life went along without interruption
until he met Mrs. Gregory, formerly Mrs.
Deane, whom Colonel Ibbetson had tried
to ruin with slander. She told him that
2817

Colonel Ibbetson had told her and many
others that he was Peter's real father.
The recorded marriage and birth dates
proved he was lying; the story was
another product of the colonel's cruel
mind. Peter was so enraged he went to
the colonel's house to force an apology.
The two men fought, and Peter in his
fury struck blindly at Colonel Ibbetson
ana killed him.
Peter was tried and sentenced to be
hanged for the murder of his uncle.
While he was in prison, the grown
Mimsy came into his dream again and
told him his sentence had been changed
to life imprisonment because of the
circumstances under which the murder had
been committed. She promised Peter she
would continue to come to him in his
dreams and thus they would spend the
rest of their lives together.
Peter in his prison cell was the
happiest man in England. Attendants were
kind to him during the day, and at night
he was with Mimsy. At last they learned
they were distant cousins, and then they
discovered that they could project
themselves into the past through the character
of any of their direct ancestors. Either of
them, not both at once, could become any
ancestor he chose, and thus they relived
scenes in history which had occurred
hundreds of years before. They went back
to the days when monsters roamed the
earth and might have gone back to the
beginning of time, but Mimsy died.
She came back to Peter seven times
after she had died, urging him to
continue his search for the beginning of time.
She could come to him now only because
he was the other half of her soul. She
asked him to write down his method and
to urge others to follow him, and she gave
him some books in their secret code,
telling him of things she had learned.
But before he could begin to write
the secrets she told him, he died in his
cell, and his cousin, Madge Plunket, felt
that she would remember until her own
death the look of happiness and peace
upon his face.
2818

PETER PAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: James M. Barrie (1860-1937)
Type of plot: Romantic fantasy
Time of plot: Anytime
Locale: England
First presented: 1904
Principal characters:
Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up
Wendy, his friend
Tinker Bell, Peter's fairy
Hook, a pirate captain
Nurse Nana, a dog
Critique:
Loved by adults as much as by
children, Peter Pan portrays the joys of
perpetual childhood. Even in a realistic age
few can resist the mischievous Peter and
his followers, for in him adults can live
again those carefree days filled with
dreams and unending joys. The special
magic of James Barrie was his ability to
make dreams real, and for that reason his
charming, whimsical play marks the high
point of pure fantasy in the modern
theater. The play has had a successful
stage history, with many famous names
listed in its cast. Barrie later retold the
story in his novel, Peter and Wendy
(1906).
The Story:
In the nursery of the Darling home,
a dog was the Nana. Perhaps that was
one reason there was so much joy there.
Nana bathed the three children and gave
them their suppers and in all ways
watched over them. One night Mrs.
Darling, on Nana's night off, sat with
the children as they slept. Drowsing, she
was awakened by a slight draught from
the window, and looking around she saw
a strange boy in the room. As * she
screamed, Nana returned home and made
a lunge for the intruder, but the boy
leaped out of the window, leaving only
his shadow behind. He had been
accompanied also by a ball of light, but it too
had escaped. Mrs. Darling rolled up the
shadow and put it in a drawer. She
thought that the boy would come back
for it one night soon and thus could be
caught.
Mr. Darling considered the affair a
little silly, his thoughts being more
concerned with getting a different nurse
for the children. Believing that the dog
Nana was getting too much authority in
the house, Mr. Darling dragged her out
of the house and locked her up.
When the Darlings went out that
night, they left only a maid to look in
on the children occasionally. After the
lights were out and the children asleep,
the intruder returned. The boy was Peter
Pan. With him was the fairy, Tinker
Bell, the ball of light. Peter found his
shadow after searching in all the drawers,
but in his excitement he shut Tink in
one of the dressers. Peter could not get
his shadow to stick to him again, and
the noise he made in trying awakened
Wendy, the daughter of the household.
Peter told Wendy that he had run away
the day he was born because he heard
his parents talking about all the things
he would do when he was a man, and
he went to live with the fairies so that
he would never have to grow up.
Suddenly he remembered Tink, whom he
looked for until he found her in the
dresser. Tink, a ball of light no bigger
than a fist, was so small that Wendy
could hardly see her. She was not a very
PETER PAN OR THE BOY WHO WOULD NOT GROW UP by James M. Barrie, from THE
PLAYS OF J. M. BARRIE. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright. 1914.
1928, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1922, 1924. 1928, by J. M. Barrie
2819

polite fairy, for she called Wendy
horrible names.
Peter told Wendy, the only girl of the
three children and instantly his favorite,
that he and Tink lived in Never Land
with the lost boys, children who fell out
of their prams and were never found
again. He had come to Wendy's house
to listen to her mother tell stories to the
others. Peter, begging Wendy and her
brothers to go back to Never Land with
him, promised to teach them to fly. The
idea was too much for the chilaren to
resist. After a little practice they all flew
out the window, barely escaping the
Darlings and Nana, who had broken her
chain to warn them of the danger to the
children.
In Never Land the lost boys were
guarded against the mean pirates, led by
Captain Hook, by the Indians and their
chief and princess. It was Hook's
greatest desire to capture Peter Pan, for Peter
had torn his arm off and fed it to a
crocodile. The crocodile had so liked the
taste of the arm that he followed Hook
everywhere, waiting for the rest of him.
But the crocodile had, unhappily, also
swallowed a clock, and its ticking warned
Hook of his approach.
To this queer land Wendy and her
brothers flew with Peter Pan. The lost
boys, seeing Wendy first, thought her a
giant bird and shot her with a bow and
arrow. Jealous Tink had suggested the
deed. But when Peter arrived he saw
that Wendy was only stunned, and after
banishing Tink for a week he told the
others that he had brought Wendy to
them. They promptly built her a house
and asked her to be their mother. Wendy
thought so many children i great
responsibility, but she quickly assumed her
duties by telling them stories and
putting them to bed.
Jealous, the pirates planned to steal
Wendy and make her their mother; the
other children they would force to walk
the plank. But Peter overheard their plan
and saved the children and Wendy. He
himself escaped by sailing out to sea
in a bird's nest.
Wendy and her brothers, beginning
to worry about their parents, thought
that they should return home. The lost
boys, delighted at the thought of a real
grown-up mother, eagerly accepted
Wendy's invitation to come live with
her and her brothers and parents. Peter
refused to go, for he wanted always to
be a little boy and have fun. But he
sent Tink to show them the way.
The Pirates had learned of the
proposed journey, and as the children
ascended from Never Land Hook and his
men seized them and bound them fast,
all but Peter. When Peter found that
Hook had all his friends, he vowed to
get revenge on the pirate, once and for
all.
On the pirate ship the children
prepared to walk the plank. They were all
taken on the deck and paraded before
Wendy, ~vho was tied to the mast.
Unknown to the pirates, however, Peter
was also on board, and by tricks and
false voices he led first one pirate and
then another to his death. These strange
happenings were too much for Hook.
When he knocked the seat from under
Peter and then saw the boy calmly
sitting on air, the pirate threw himself
overboard, into the waiting jaws of the
patient crocodile.
Meanwhile, in the nursery of the
Darling home, Mrs. Darling and Nana
waited hopelessly for the children. They
had left the window open so that their
loved ones might get back easily should
they ever return. Peter and Tink flew
ahead of the other children and closed
the window so that Wendy and the
others would think they were not wanted.
But Peter did not know how to get out
of a door, and thus he was forced to fly
out the window again, leaving it open
behind him. Wendy and her brothers flew
in and slipped into their beds. Mrs.
Darling and Nana were overcome with
joy when they found their darlings safe
again.
The lost boys, adopted by Wendy's
2820

family, had great fun romping with her
father. Peter returned and tried to get
Wendy to fly away with him, but she
refused to leave her parents again. She
did go once each year to clean his house
for him, but each time she saw him a
little less clearly. Once or twice she tried
to get him to see her as something more
than a mother, but Peter did not know
what she meant. Then came the day
when Wendy could no longer fly
without a broomstick to help her. Peter,
watching her, sadly wished he could
understand all she said. He picked up his
pipes and played softly, perhaps too
softly to awaken humans in a grown-up
world.
2821

PETER SIMPLE
Principal characters:
Peter Simple, a naval officer
Ellen Simple, his sister
Terence O'Brien, a fellow officer
Lord Privilege, Peter's rascally uncle
Captain Hawkins, Lord Privilege's illegitimate son
Celeste O'Brien, in love with Peter
Colonel O'Brien, her father, a French army officer
Type of work: Novel
Author: Frederick Marryat (1792-1848)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England, France, various ships at sea
First published: 1834
Critique:
Captain Marryat's novels of the sea are
part of a long line extending from those
of Smollett in the eighteenth century
to those of C. S. Forester in the
twentieth, and, like the latter, Marryat laid
his in the period of the Napoleonic wars,
in which the author himself saw service
as an officer of the British Navy. It is
unfortunate that Marryat's novels have
descended from the reputation of adult
fiction to become, in reputation, books
for adolescents. The novels, redolent of
sea lore, the traditions of the British
Navy, and the Napoleonic wars deserve
a better fate than that to which they
have been committed, for about the
turn of the century they were replaced
as standard juveniles by works of such
authors as Robert Louis Stevenson.
Marryat's books richly deserve a renewed
reputation among adult readers of fiction.
In particular, Peter Simple, one of his
best novels, deserves that renewal of
interest.
The Story:
Peter Simple was the younger son of
the younger son of Lord Privilege, an
English viscount. Because there was
apparently no chance of the lad's
inheriting any money, he was sent to sea at
the age of fifteen as a midshipman so
that he could earn a living for himself.
Coming from a country home, Peter
knew almost nothing of the world, but
fortunately for him he served at first
under a very gentlemanly captain. He
was also befriended by an older
midshipman, Terence O'Brien. During his
first days aboard the Diomede, a British
man-of-war, Peter was hazed by his
fellow midshipmen because he seemed at
times as simple as his surname, but
under the tutelage of the crew in general,
and O'Brien in particular, he soon
learned to become a good sailor. Before
many months had passed he became
fairly proficient in seagoing matters and
earned the approval of his officers.
At every opportunity Peter went
where there was trouble and excitement.
Having no fears, he got into tight places
several times, but serious trouble did not
occur until he stowed away in a boat
which was sent ashore to spike a gun
battery on the French coast. French
infantry surprised the raiding party, and
Peter and his friend O'Brien were
captured; they had remained behind to
finish the spiking of the guns while the
rest of the sailors made their escape.
Peter having been wounded in the
escapade, the dblonel of the regiment and
his young daughter nursed him back to
health before he was sent to prison. The
daughter, Celeste O'Brien, was devoted
in her attentions to Peter, even though
he was • an enemy. After his recovery,
Peter and his friend O'Brien, who was
no relation to the French colonel, were
2822

sent to a prison at Givet. Although that
military prison was the stoutest in France,
they finally made their escape, thanks
to O'Brien's ingenuity, and crossed
France in two sets of disguises. At first
O'Brien dressed as a policeman and
escorted Peter as his prisoner. When that
ruse was discovered, they disguised
themselves as traveling performers. As they
passed through one town they
accidentally met Celeste O'Brien and the colonel,
who not only kept their secret but gave
them a purseful of money. After some
difficulty the two fugitives made dieir
way to England. Peter's grandfather,
Lord Privilege, invited the boy to visit
him. Several deaths had occurred in the
family, and Peter was now third in line
for the title, after his father and uncle,
and the latter had no legal male heir.
Thanks to his grandfather's assistance,
O'Brien was commissioned a lieutenant.
The two were assigned to a frigate and
went on a cruise to the West Indies.
During the second cruise word came
to Peter that his uncle was very
unhappy over the grandfather's patronage and
help for the young man, but Peter, busy
at sea, paid little attention to the news.
At last, his sea duty ended, Peter
returned to England. There he studied for
examinations which would lead to his
own commission as a lieutenant. He
almost failed to pass, however, because he
appeared at his examination dressed in
a very unmilitary fashion. He was
excused, however, when the military
examiners learned that his appearance was
the result of saving a soldier from
drowning.
Thanks to a deception passed upon
his now senile grandfather, Peter was
given his commission. While Peter was
still home on leave, the old man died.
When his will was read, it was
discovered that Peter and his father had not
been left any money, because of the
interference of Peter's rascally uncle,
who now succeeded to the title of Lord
Privilege. The shock made Peter's father
partially insane. Peter was forced to
return immediately to duty.
On his third tour of duty Peter was
separated from his friend O'Brien, who
now commanded a ship of his own.
Peter's new captain was a man named
Hawkins, who was, as it turned out, the
illegitimate son of Peter's uncle. At his
father's request, Captain Hawkins made
life miserable for Peter. Lord Privilege
wanted to discredit Peter because he had
discovered that his uncle, anxious to keep
the family fortune for his own children,
had replaced his fourth daughter with a
male infant at the time of her birth. The
uncle, fearful lest Peter's investigations
bring the truth to light, hoped to
discredit Peter so that any charges the
young man might bring against him
would be scornfully rejected.
When the troublesome voyage was
over and Peter's ship was back in an
English port, Captain Hawkins had
Peter court-martialed on a series of
counts, and Peter was relieved of his
duties, although the court-martial board
sympathized with him. Peter was not
sorry. Having learned of his father's
death, he wished to help his sister. On
his way home across England Peter was
robbed and taken ill. Lord Privilege went
to get him, and while Peter was still
delirious the uncle had him committed to
Bedlam asylum..
For twenty months Peter was an
inmate in the asylum. One day Celeste
O'Brien and her father happened to
visit the place and recognized him, and
with the help of an English nobleman
they had him released. Peter
immediately started a suit against his uncle for
false imprisonment. While the suit was
pending, his friend O'Brien arrived back
in England, bringing with him the wife
of the soldier whose life Peter had saved
years before. The woman, it turned out,
was the mother of the child whom Peter's
uncle had substituted for his own
daughter.
A short time later Lord Privilege was
exclaiming to his lawyer that he hated
2823

his nephew and wished to see him dead.
At that moment the uncle's substitute
son fell from a window and was killed.
The shock of the event was so great that
the uncle had a fit of apoplexy from
which he never recovered. Within a
matter of hours he too died. The title then
passed to Peter, along with a large
fortune and vast estates.
Peter's happiness at his good luck was
increased when he and his friend O'Brien
found Peter's sister Ellen a few days
later. She, left penniless at her father's
death, had gone through great troubles
and when found had become a singer
on the stage.
A few weeks later Peter, firmly
entrenched in his new title and fortune,
married Celeste O'Brien, the girl who
had befriended him on several occasions.
Peter's sister married his friend O'Brien,
who had been made a baronet for his
outstanding seivices as a naval officer.
They lived quietly thereafter, satisfied to
exchange family life for the rigors of the
service.
2824

PETER WHIFFLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Carl Van Vechten (1880- )
Type of plot: Simulated biography
Time of plot: 1907-1919
Locale: New York, Paris, Italy
First published: 1922
Principal characters:
Peter Whiffle, a would-be writer
Carl Van Vechten, his friend
Edith Dale, friend of Peter and Carl
Mahalah Wiggins, Peter's friend
Critique:
A first reading of Peter Whiffle may
leave the impression that here is an
ordinary biographical novel of a pseudo-
sophisticated young man who did not
know what he wanted from life. But
there is more to the story than that.
Peter Whiffle learned, before he died,
that not everyone is meant to accomplish
great things, that some are meant to
enjoy and appreciate the work of others.
To tell his readers this fact was
apparently Van Vechten's motive for
writing the story.
The Story:
Carl Van Vechten saw Peter Whiffle
for the first time in Paris, in the spring.
They were both young. Carl was naive
and unworldly; Peter was sophisticated
and knowing. Theirs was a strange
friendship. Often they did not see one
another for several years. But Carl knew
that he was one of the few people whom
Peter called his friend. They had spent
many enjoyable hours in Paris that
spring and together had seen all the
famous places of which they had read.
Peter wanted to write, and at that £oint
in his life he thought that subject was
unimportant, that style and form were
the only important things. In fact, it
was his plan to write a book containing
nothing but lists of Things. When he
wrote, he used colored papers to express
his moods.
After that spring in Paris, six years
passed before Carl saw Peter again. Carl
was back in New York at the time, and
while walking in the Bowery one night
he met Peter. He hardly recognized his
friend when he saw Peter in rags,
unshaven and unkempt. Carl learned that
the r#gs were only another phase of
Peter's life, for Peter was a rich man.
After he had learned Peter's history, Carl
began to understand him better.
Peter Whiffle, the son of a banker, was
born and' raised in Toledo, Ohio. From
infancy, Peter found it almost impossible
to make decisions. Whether to do this or
that was a problem that he could seldom
solve, and so, preferring inactivity to
decision, he usually did nothing. But there
was one thing about which he knew his
own mind. He hated work in any form.
When Peter could no longer stand his
Work in his father's bank, he left home
and went to New York. There he often
slept in the park and went for days
without food. He took a few odd jobs in
order not to starve. He lived in this
fashion until his mother's brother died
and left him a fortune. On the night he
learned of his inheritance he decided to
become a writer. A few days later he
left for Paris.
When they met in New York,
Carl learned from Peter that
although he was still a wealthy man he
had joined a group of Socialists and with
them was plotting an American revolu-
PETER WHIFFLE by Carl Van Vechten. By permission of the author and the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc. Copyright, 1922, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
2825

tion against capitalism. He was full of
plans to barricade the rich in their homes
and starve them to death, or bomb them,,
or hang them. Carl was not much
disturbed, for he recognized this idea as
another stage in Peter's life. When Carl
asked Peter about his book, he learned
that Peter now believed subject, rather
than style or form, was all-importan*
He was planning to write about the
revolution, to have as his heroine a girl
with a clubfoot, a harelip, and a hunched
back. The book would be bloody and
dirty, for that was the way life was.
When Carl took Peter to see Edith
Dale, a woman of wealth, Peter and
Edith became friends. At Edith's house
Peter met Mahalah Wiggins, a young
girl whom he found interesting. But he
could not make up his mind whether he
wanted to marry her, and so he did
nothing. He did change his living habits,
however, and the next time Carl saw
him Peter was clean and neat in
appearance. He still talked of the revolution,
but half-heartedly, and Carl knew
another phase of Peter's life was almost
over.
Deciding at last to marry Mahalah,
Peter asked Carl to be his attendant.
But on the wedding day Peter sent Carl
a note saying that he could not go
through with the wedding; it was too big
a decision for him to make. Instead, Peter
went to Africa.
Four months later Carl was in Italy,
visiting Edith Dale at her villa in
Florence. One night, while they were
dining in the city, they saw Peter again.
His father had died and his mother was
traveling with him. Peter told them that
he had almost died in Africa, that while
he lay at the point of death he had had
a vision. An angel from hell and an
angel from heaven had waited for him
to make up his mind about the place to
which he wanted to go when he died.
It had been a terrible moment, until he
remembered that he did not have to
make a decision; he could stay right
where he was. Then he recovered.
He had again changed his mind about
the book he planned to write. He claimed
that everything about the characters must
be put down, but he admitted that it
would be quite a task to record all
emotions, impressions, actions, and speech.
Having sent his mother home, Peter
went to stay with Carl and Edith. The
da} s at the villa were peaceful and happy
ones, so happy, in fact, that one day
Peter told Carl that he was going to
leave the villa at once, without telling
Edith goodbye. He wanted to leave in
the midst of his happiness so that his
memory would not have one blot on it.
He could not tell Carl where he was
going because he had not yet made up
his mind.
A few months later Carl found Peter
sitting on a park bench in New York.
Peter did not want Edith to learn that
he was there, for he was in the middle
of a new experiment and Edith might
distract him. Interested in black magic,
Peter was trying to discover the mystery
of life and death. He took Carl to his
apartment and showed him his
laboratory. He also persuaded Carl to join him
in an experiment. The magic brew
exploded and they woke up in the
hospital.
Carl sustained only minor injuries and
left the hospital before Peter, who was
dangerously hurt. But Peter recovered
and returned to Toledo with his mother.
Carl did not see him again until after
the war, in 1919. By that time Peter
was very ill from some incurable disease.
He never mentioned his illness, but Carl
knew that his friend's time was not long.
One afternoon in December, while the
two friends were in Peter's apartment,
Carl learned that Peter had at last found
himself. He told Carl that his book had
never become a reality because he had
attempted to do something that he was
never intended to do. He was not meant
to be a writer or a worker—he was meant
only to appreciate and love the work of
others, the art, the literature, the ability.
He would make art greater and people
2826

better by bestowing upon them his
appreciation and his affection. He
would never have to make a decision;
he would be himself. He told Carl
that now he was happy and that he w*\s
a success. Then he closed his eyes. Whe^i
Carl spoke to him again, Peter Whiffle
did not answer.
2827

PHAEDRA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Troezen, in Ancient Greece
First presented: 1677
Principal characters:
Theseus, King of Athens
Phaedra, his wife
Hippolytus, Theseus' son
Apjcia, an Athenian princess
Critique:
Pha&dra represents the classic tradition
of the French stage. In the seventeenth
century France, then at her apex,
demanded great things of her artists to
support the glory of the armies and the
royal house, and the writers of the period
assaulted the past in an effort to arouse
the minds of their contemporaries to past
glories and to stimulate them to greater
efforts. The vast storehouse of classic
legends became the source of countless
plots and themes. In whole or in part,
ancient plays and myths were constructed
into plays which adhered as closely as
possible to the classic tradition. Racine
stands foremost among the neo-classicists
of his century.
The Story:
After the death of his Amazon queen,
Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur, married
Phaedra, the young daughter of the Kin2
of Crete. Phaedra, seeing in her stepson,
Hippolytus, all the bravery and virtue of
his heroic father, but in more youthful
guise, fell in love with him. In an
attempt to conceal her passion for the son
of Theseus, she treated him in an aloof
and spiteful manner until at last
Hippolytus decided to leave Troezen and go in
search of his father, absent from the
kingdom. To his tutor, Theramenes, he
confided his desire to avoid both his
stepmother and Aricia, an Athenian princess
who was the daughter of a family which
had opposed Theseus.
Phaedra confessed to Oenone, her
nurse, her guilty passion for Hippolytus,
saying that she merely pretended un-
kindness to him in order to hide her real
feelings.
Word came to Troezen that Theseus
was dead. Oenone talked to Phaedra in
an attempt to convince the queen that her
own son, not Hippolytus, should be
chosen as the new king of Athens. Aricia
hoped that she would be chosen to rule.
Hippolytus, a fair-minded young man,
told Aricia that he would support her for
the rule of Athens. He felt that Phaedra's
son should inherit Crete and that he
himself should remain master of Troezen.
He also admitted his love for Aricia, but
said that he feared the gods would never
allow it to be brought to completion.
When he tried to explain his intentions
to his stepmother, she in turn dropped
her pretense of hatred and distrust and
ended by betraying her love for
Hippolytus. Shocked, he repulsed her, and she
threatened to take her own life.
The people of Athens, however, chose
Phaedra's son to rule over them, to the
disappointment of Aricia. There were
also rumors that Theseus still lived.
Hippolytus gave orders that a search be made
for his father.
Phaedra, embarrassed by all she had
told Hippolytus, brooded over the injury
she now felt, and wished that she had
never revealed her love. Phaedra was
proud, and now her pride was hurt
beyond recovery. Unable to overcome her
passier however, she decided to offer
the kingdom to Hippolytus so that she
might keep him near her. Then news
came that Theseus was returning to his
home. Oenone warned Phaedra that now
2828

she must hide her true feeling for Hip-
poly tus. She even suggested to the queen
that Theseus be made to believe that
Hippolytus had tempted Phaedra to
adultery.
When Theseus returned, Phaedra
greeted him with reluctance, saying that
she was no longer fit to be his wife.
Hippolytus made the situation no better by
requesting permission to leave Troezen
at once. Theseus was greatly chagrined
at his homecoming.
When scheming Oenone told the king
that Hippolytus had attempted to
dishonor his stepmother, Theseus flew into
a terrific rage. Hippolytus, knowing
nothing of the plot, was at first astonished by
his father's anger and threats. When
accused, he denied the charges, but
Theseus refused to listen to him and banished
his son from the kingdom forever. When
Hippolytus claimed he was really in love
with Aricia, Theseus, more incensed than
ever, invoked the vengeance of Neptune
upon his son.
Aricia tried to convince Hippolytus
that he must prove his innocence, but
Hippolytus refused because he knew that
the revelation of Phaedra's passion would
be too painful for his father to bear.
The two agreed to escape together. Before
Aricia could leave the palace, however,
Theseus questioned her. Becoming
suspicious, he sent for Oenone to demand
the truth. Fearing that her plot had been
uncovered, Oenone committed suicide.
Meanwhile, as Hippolytus drove his
chariot near the seashore, Neptune sent
a horrible monster, part bull and part
dragon, which destroyed the son of
Theseus.
When news of his death reached the
palace, Phaedra confessed her guilt and
drank poison. Theseus, glad to see his
guilty queen die, wished that memory of
her life might perish with her.
Sorrowfully he sought the grief-stricken Aricia
to comfort her.
2829

PHILASTER
Type of work: Drama
Authors: Francis Beaumont (1584M616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: The romantic past
Locale: Sicily
First presented: 1610
Principal characters:
Philaster, heir to the crown of Sicily
The King of Sicily, a usurper
Arethusa, his daughter
Pharamond, a pompous Spanish prince
Dion, a Sicilian lord
Euphrasia, his daughter, disguised as page, Bellario
Critique:
Philaster, Or, Love Lies A-Bleeding was
the first successful production, if not
actually the first collaboration, resulting
from the happy association of Beaumont
and Fletcher. The play is pure romance.
It is believed by scholars that this play was
written for the most part by Beaumont,
but echoes of Shakespearean themes and
rich imagery would tend to substantiate
the participation of Fletcher, who served
his dramatic apprenticeship under the
master. The drama passed from popular
favor because Restoration audiences did
not favor Philaster. Modern readers feel
that Euphrasia deserved a better fate than
she received. Yet Philaster remains a
beautiful and pathetic play, soundly
constructed and admirable in style—a
masterpiece of its period.
The Story:
The King of Calabria had usurped the
crown of Sicily from Prince Philaster's
father, now dead. Because the Sicilian
people loved their young prince, however,
the king did not dare imprison him or
harm him in any way. Meanwhile the
king planned to marry his daughter
Arethusa to Pharamond, a Spanish prince,
who would thereby become heir to both
thrones. Pharamond proved to be a
pompous, conceited man. When Philaster,
who was quite free and outspoken in his
manners, told Pharamond that he could
marry Arethusa and ultimately become
king only over Philaster's dead body, the
king admonished Philaster to restrain
himself. Philaster, acting strangely, declared
that he would restrain himself only when
he was better treated; he believed that he
was suddenly possessed by the spirit of
his late father. Philaster was promised aid
by the loyal Lord Dion and by two noble
gentlemen, Cleremont and Thrasilene.
At an audience with the Princess
Arethusa, Philaster could not believe his
ears when he heard Arethusa profess deep
love for him, and he declared his love for
her in return. In order to avoid detection
under the suspicious eyes of the court, he
promised to send Arethusa his servant to
act as their messenger. When Pharamond
entered Arethusa's apartment, Philaster
departed with words of scorn for the
boastful Spanish prince. Later he had difficulty
in persuading his servant,
Bellario—actually Euphrasia, daughter of Lord Dion,
in disguise—to enter Arethusa's service.
At court, meanwhile, Pharamond
attempted the virtue of Galatea, a court lady
who led him on but refused to yield to his
base suggestions. Later he made an
assignation with Megra, a court lady of easy
virtue. Galatea, having overheard the
conversation between Pharamond and
Megra, reported the prince's dissolute
ways to Arethusa.
That night the king, told -about
Pharamond's conduct, discovered Megra
in the prince's apartment. Pharamond
was in disgrace. Megra, however,
managed to extricate herself to some extent by
2830

insinuating that Arethusa was as wicked
as she and that Bellario was more than a
mere servant to Arethusa. The princess,
unfortunately, had made much of
Bellario because the page had been a gift
from Philaster. The king, who had not
even heard of Bellario's existence, was
confounded by Megra's suggestions of
evil.
Megra's story convinced even Philas-
ter's friends that Arethusa was unfaithful
to the prince, but when they told
Philaster what had happened he refused to
believe them. Nevertheless, his trust in
Arethusa was shaken. When Bellario
delivered a letter from Arethusa to Philaster,
who was still in doubt, the disguised girl
innocently damned herself by speaking in
praise of Arethusa and by describing
Arethusa's virtuous affection for the page.
Philaster accused Bellario of perfidy and,
overcome with the passion of jealousy,
threatened to take the page's life. At
Bellario's sincere protestations of innocence,
Philaster, although still not convinced,
spared his servant.
Meanwhile the king had ordered
Arethusa to discharge her young page.
When Philaster found Arethusa
depressed over Bellario's dismissal, he
revealed his suspicions and declared that he
would give up his claim to the throne and
become a hermit. The wretched Arethusa,
knowing that she was guiltless, could do
nothing to prevent the departure of
Philaster.
Philaster went to a nearby forest and
there wandered about disconsolately. At
the same time the king and the court
entered the forest to hunt. During the chase
Arethusa disappeared. The hunters found
her riderless horse but no trace of the
princess. Bellario, having been banished from
the court, had also gone into the forest.
Encountering Philaster, the page was
brusquely ordered away. In another part
of the forest Arethusa, stunned by recent
events and without direction in her
wandering, sat down to rest and suddenly
fainted. Bellario appeared in time to
revive her, only to be told by Arethusa that
efforts to help her in her distress were
wasted; the princess was prepared to die.
Philaster in his own wanderings came
upon the pair. Thinking that their
meeting had been planned, and that Bellario
and Arethusa were lovers, he told the
page to take his wretched life. When
Bellario disregarded his order, Philaster
angrily dismissed the page and then,
assuming the role of an agent of justice,
attempted to kill Arethusa. He only
wounded her, however, in his attempt. A
peasant then came upon the scene of
violence. In the fight that followed,
Philaster was seriously wounded. The young
prince fled when he heard horsemen
approaching.
When Pharamond, Lord Dion, and
others of the hunting party arrived to find
Arethusa wounded, they immediately
went in search of her attacker. In his flight
Philaster, hurt and bleeding, came upon
Bellario asleep. Distractedly, Philaster
wounded the page before collapsing from
loss of blood. Faithful Bellario
administered gently to Philaster and
convinced the prince that he had made a
mistake in his belief that Arethusa had
been unfaithful to him. Hearing Philas-
ter's pursuers, they fled. Bellario was
captured, but not before the page had led
them away from the prince. In order
further to protect the fugitive, Bellario
confessed to the attack on Arethusa. When
Philaster overheard this confession, he
came out of hiding to defend Bellario.
The king ordered that both be imprisoned,
but Arethusa, somewhat recovered from
her hurt, prevailed upon her father to
give her the custody over the prince and
the page.
In prison Philaster, about to be
executed, and Arethusa, his guard, pledged
their troth. The king disavowed his
daughter when he learned of the marriage.
Meanwhile the people of Sicily, aroused
by Philaster's imprisonment and
impending execution, seized Pharamond and
threatened total revolt. The king, fearful
for his safety and at last repentant for his
usurpation of the throne, promised to
restore the crown of Sicily and to approve
Arethusa's marriage to Philaster, if the
2831

prince would only calm the enraged
citizens. The people returned quietly to their
homes when Philaster assured them that
he was now quite free and that he was
their new ruler.
The king, still not satisfied with the
relationship between Arethusa and Bellario,
commanded that Bellario be tortured in
order that he might learn the truth.
Philaster protested vehemently against the
order. As the king's servants prepared to
strip Bellario for the ordeal, the page
revealed that she was, in reality, Euphrasia,
daughter of Lord Dion. Having loved
Philaster from childhood and despairing,
because of a difference in rank, of ever
marrying him, she had allowed everyone
to think that she had gone overseas on a
pilgrimage. Instead, she had disguised
herself as a boy and had taken service with
Philaster in order to be near him.
Philaster and Arethusa, moved by Euphrasia's
devotion, made her a lady in waiting to
the queen.
2832

THE PHILIPPICS
Type of work: Orations
Author: Demosthenes (384-322 B.C.)
First transcribed: Fourth century B.C.
Occasionally in history, perhaps more
often than we realize, genius and a
crisis in human affairs unite to produce
a great man whose name then rings down
through the ages long after the particular
events which produced him have faded
into the dimness of antiquity Such a
man was Demosthenes. Almost every
educated person has heard of him and
knows that he was a famous Greek orator.
But the events and the crisis in ancient
Greece which helped make him famous
a^e unknown, except to students of
ancient history.
As an Athenian lawyer and orator,
Demosthenes might have won but little
fame had it not been for Philip of Mace-
don, whose ambition was to conquer and
rule as much of the world as he could;
and to a great extent he succeeded in his
aim. When the danger to Athens became
great, Demosthenes did all he could to
arouse his fellow Athenians to the
defense of their city-state. The crisis was
one that has recurred in various forms
throughout history. On the one hand was
Philip of Macedon, a tyrant who sought
control of many lands and peoples: on
the other, Demosthenes, a believer in
democracy and local sovereignty who did
all that one person could to arouse his
contemporaries to fight against Philip
and, later, his son, Alexander the Great.
In this conflict between democracy and
tyranny there is no doubt of
Demosthenes' sincerity; it rings out from his
orations almost as clearly today as it must
have more than twenty-three centuries
ago.
By common consent of his
contemporaries and later generations, Demosthenes
was the greatest of the Greek orators, in
a culture that produced a great many able
men in rhetoric and oratory. Scholars of
all periods have praised his speeches, and
the number of manuscripts found in
Egypt containing fragments of his
speeches has been second only to papyri
containing fragments of the Homeric
epics. In modern times we can see but
dimly the greatness of the speeches from
the standpoint of formal rhetoric as the
Greeks knew and used it. What Cicero
praised in the orations is now to be found
only by the serious student of Greek
language and culture.
On the other hand, modern readers
can find something in the speeches that
his admirers in the ancient world seem
to have overlooked or ignored. We can
see that Demosthenes was an able and
sincere statesman laboring for democratic
ideals at a time when his fellow citizens
in Athens were inclined to do little to
oppose the forces of tyranny led and
symbolized by Philip of Macedon.
Demosthenes knew human nature as he
knew his art, and he brought the two
together to speak out forcefully what he
believed in. He spoke out, not for the
sake of his rhetoric, but for the sake of
Athens; he spoke not to a select group,
to no aristocracy, but to all Athenians.
He wished to persuade them to rise to
the defense of their city and the way of
life and government that it represented.
In the orations there is, at least as they
are translated, little flamboyance.
Demosthenes spoke plainly and sincerely;
his art was like all great art, hiding
beneath the cloak of apparent simplicity
great care in production. Demosthenes'
tone is serious, even to the point of
sobriety.
As in the case of so many ancient
authors, the authenticity of work
supposedly done by Demosthenes is open to
question. More than sixty orations, as
well as some letters and poems have been
attributed to him; but scholars nowadays
accept only about forty of the speeches
as authentic. Many of the orations
accepted as his are nonpolitical, having
been composed for delivery in cases at

law. These orations furnish a great deal
of material about Greek culture, as
Cicero's orations furnish information
about Roman culture at a later time.
Demosthenes' true fame rests on the speeches
called the Philippics. These were not the
only orations on political subjects that
he made, nor were they the only speeches
he gave which had to do with the threat
of Philip to Athens. Quite a number of
other orations, like the Olynthiacs, deal
with Philip's depredations in the Greek
peninsula and other portions of the
eastern Mediterranean world.
The first Philippic was delivered in
351 B.C. At that time Philip, stopped at
Thermopylae, had sent his armies into
Thrace, dispatched a fleet to attack the
islands of Lemnos and Imbrus, and
interfered with the commerce of Athens by
attacking shipping. Demosthenes spoke
that the Athenians might be made aware
of the danger and take steps to defend
themselves. The orator obviously felt that
Athens in 351 B.C. had more to fear
from the Macedonian king than its
traditional enemy, Thebes, or from a
combination of other unfriendly city-states.
It was not as an alarmist that
Demosthenes spoke; he spoke, rather, to awaken
his fellow Athenians to an awareness of
the need for watchfulness and
preparedness. In this first Philippic he encouraged
his city to meet the danger, pointing out
its advantages and strengths. In practical
fashion, he suggested ways in which the
city could economically take steps to meet
the danger, which at that time was not
as great as it would become in passing
years. It was not enough, as Demosthenes
knew, merely to hope that Philip had
died, as rumor had it. Demosthenes
realized that failure to provide for defense
through inaction sets up circumstances
which are an invitation to strong-armed
tyranny. Later history has shown that
leaders have often failed to realize this
truism of politics. Demosthenes realized,
as leaders sometimes have failed to do,
that free people do not have a choice
between action and inaction. To oppose
Philip, to warn him that Athens was
prepared to defend itself, the orator
suggested a military force of moderate size,
with good officers to lead it. He
recommended that at least twenty-five percent
of the personnel be Athenians, the rest
mercenaries. Knowing that to equip, pay,
and keep in the field a large force was
beyond the economic power of the city,
he urged a small, but efficient military
force. The answer to the problem, he
said, lay in making the best use of what
could be afforded, not in hitting blindly
only at places where Philip had already
struck.
Nothing was done by the Athenians.
In 344 B.C., seven years later, he again
spoke pointedly in the second Philippic.
By that time Philip, allied with the Mes-
senians, had become a more powerful
threat to Athens. Demosthenes himself
had headed an embassy to Messene and
Argos to warn those cities against the
oppressor, to no avail. Philip, in turn,
had sent an emissary to Athens to
complain about Demosthenes' charges and to
vindicate his conduct. Demosthenes spoke
to explain carefully what Philip was do*
ing and what the pro-Macedonian group
in Athens was doing to endanger the
city. He ended by pointing out that
Philip's conduct now made the
Athenians' problem one of defending their city
and homes, not merely of looking after
claims and interests abroad. Philip's
benevolence was shown to be double-edged.
In the third of the Philippics^ delivered
in 341 B.C., Demosthenes cried out that
Athenians had to learn that a state of
war existed, even though Philip talked
of peace. Philip aimed at the Chersonese,
which controlled the route of grain ships
between Athens and the Euxine.
Demosthenes urged that the Chersonese be
protected as a means of protecting Athens.
He was right in his predictions: Philip
attacked the Propontine cities in the
following year. The Athenians, to their
credit and Demosthenes', played their
part in resisting the tyrant. The fourth
and last of the Philippics was also
delivered in 341 B.C., just before Philip
laid siege to the Propontine cities. In
2834

this oration, as he had in the third
Philippic, Demosthenes urged resistance, even
advocating an alliance with Persia.
Although the fourth Philippic is generally
accepted as authentic, some scholars have
viewed it with suspicion, claiming for
several reasons that it is spurious and not
really a product of Demosthenes, own
hana.
2835

PHILOCTETES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sophocles (c. 496-406 or 405 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: The Trojan War
Locale: The island of Lemnos
First presented: 409 B.C.
Principal characters:
Philoctetes, an abandoned Greek warrior
Neoptolemus, Achilles' son
Odysseus, King of Ithaca
A Sailor, disguised as a trader
Herakles, a Greek immortal
Chorus of Sailors, under the command of Neoptolemus
Critique:
Philoctetes is Sophocles' penultimate
play. It is interesting that it is in theme
markedly similar to his last play, Oedipus
at Colonus. In both plays the protagonist
has become hateful to his society and has
been rejected by it, and in both plays the
hero again becomes necessary to the
society which had cast him out, is restored
by the gods, and resumes his powers. In
this play the attitude of Odysseus to the
sufferings of the hero, like that of Creon
in the Oedipus plays, is completely
inhuman. Philoctetes varies from all of
Sophocles' other plays, however, in
having a happy ending. This circumstance is
achieved only after Philoctetes has been
lovingly accepted as a fellow man by
Neoptolemus. The myth of the Wound
and the Bow, although it has not received
the overwhelming attention that has been
accorded the Oedipus myth, has
interested modern writers and critics. The crux
of the myth is the fact that the
unacceptable man and his remarkable and
essential powers are inseparable. Only when
this fact is understood by others can he
take his place and play his part in society.
The Story:
Odysseus had abandoned Philoctetes
on the barren island of Lemnos after the
warrior had been bitten on the foot by a
snake while preparing to make a sacrifice
at the shrine of Chrysa. The wound never
healed, and the smell that came from it
and the groans of suffering Philoctetes
were the reasons Odysseus gave for
making him an outcast. But Philoctetes, with
his invincible bow, once the property of
Herakles, had become indispensable to
the Greeks in their war against Troy.
Landing for the second time on Lemnos,
Odysseus described the cave in which
Philoctetes lived. Neoptolemus identified
it by the stained bandages drying in the
sun, the leaf-stuffed mattress, and the
crude wooden cup he found.
Instructed by Odysseus, Neoptolemus
was to lure Philoctetes on board with his
bow by declaring that he too hated
Odysseus because the king had deprived him
of the weapons of his father Achilles.
Neoptolemus was disgusted by this
deception, but wily Odysseus pleaded necessity
and promised him honor and glory after
this one day. When Neoptolemus had
agreed to obey, Odysseus left him.
The chorus of sailors reported that they
heard the painful approach of Philoctetes.
He asked who they were and whether
they too were Greeks. Imploring their
pity, he told them not to fear him,
although he had become a savage through
solitude and great suffering. Neoptolemus
answered Philoctetes, who asked who he
was and why he had come. The young
warrior said that he was the son of
Achilles and that he did not know Philoctetes,
who replied that he must indeed be vile
if no word of him had reached the
28B6

Greeks. His wound had grown worse and
because he was alone on the island he
had to use all his energy to keep alive.
He shot birds with his great bow, and in
order that he might drink in winter he
was forced to build a fire to melt the ice.
He cursed the Atreidae and Odysseus,
who had abandoned him, and wished that
they might suffer his agony.
Neoptolemus, answering as he had been instructed,
said that he too had cursed Odysseus,
who had deprived him of his rights and
robbed him of his father's arms. He
asserted that he intended to sail for home.
Philoctetes, declaring that their grief
was equal, wondered also why Ajax had
allowed these injustices. He was told that
Ajax was also dead. Philoctetes was
certain that Odysseus was alive, and this
fact Neoptolemus confirmed. After
hearing of the death of other friends,
Philoctetes agreed with Neoptolemus that war
inevitably killed the good men but only
occasionally and by chance killed the bad.
Neoptolemus stressed his determination
never to return to Troy. He then said
goodbye to Philoctetes, who implored
them not to abandon him and to suffer
for one day the inconvenience of having
him on board the ship on which
Neoptolemus was sailing. When he begged on
his knees not to be left alone again, the
chorus expressed their willingness to take
him with them. After Neoptolemus
agreed, Philoctetes praised the day that
had brought them together and declared
himself bound in friendship to the young
warrior for all time.
As Odysseus had planned, a sailor
disguised as a trader came to help
Neoptolemus in tricking Philoctetes. He said,
hoping to persuade Philoctetes to go
quickly on board, that Odysseus was
pursuing him in order to compel him to
rejoin the Greek army, for Helenus,
Priam's son, had prophesied that
Philoctetes was the one man who would defeat
Troy. Philoctetes swore that he would
never go with his most hated enemy, and
the disguised trader returned to his ship.
Neoptolemus asked permission to hold
the mighty bow while Philoctetes
prepared to leave the island. Suddenly the
wound in Philoctetes' foot began to pain
him beyond endurance. He handed the
bow to Neoptolemus and writhed on the
ground until the abscess burst and the
blood flowed. The sailors advised
Neoptolemus to leave with the bow while the
exhausted man slept. Neoptolemus
refused, for the bow was useless without
Philoctetes.
When Philoctetes awoke, Neoptolemus
revealed to him that he had come to take
the warrior to fight against Troy.
Philoctetes refused to go. When Neoptolemus
insisted on keeping the bow, Philoctetes,
enraged and despairing, cursed such
treachery and declared that he would
starve without his weapon. Neoptolemus'
loyalties were divided between duty and
compassion, but before he had decided
on the course to pursue, Odysseus arrived
and demanded that Philoctetes should
accompany them. When he remained
adamant, Odysseus and Neoptolemus left,
taking with them the bow.
The chorus of sailors assured
Philoctetes that it would be best to fight with
the Greeks, but out of pride he was
determined not to fight with men who had
made him an outcast. He begged for a
sword to kill himself. Then Neoptolemus,
followed by Odysseus, returned; he had
decided to redress the wrong he had done
Philoctetes and to return the bow.
Odysseus, unable to change the young
warrior's decision, went to tell the other
Greeks of this act of treachery.
Meanwhile, Neoptolemus again tried to
persuade Philoctetes to join them. When
Philoctetes again refused, Neoptolemus,
in spite of the return of Odysseus, gave
back the bow. He was then forced to keep
Philoctetes from killing Odysseus.
When Odysseus had again left them,
Neoptolemus revealed the whole of
Helenus' prophecy, which foretold that the
wound would be cured when Philoctetes
returned and that, together with
Neoptolemus, he would conquer Troy.
Philoctetes, declaring Odysseus had been faith-
2837

less once and would be so again, implored
Neoptolemus to take him home, as he
had first promised. But Neoptolemus was
afraid that the Greeks would in
retaliation attack his country. Philoctetes swore
that he would defend the country with
his bow.
Before they could leave, Herakles,
from whom Philoctetes had inherited the
bow, appeared on the rocks above the
cave. He informed Philoctetes that Zeus
had spoken: Philoctetes should return to
the Greek army, where he would be
healed. Also, with Neoptolemus, he
would kill Paris and take Troy.
Philoctetes, heeding the voice of the immortal,
willingly left Lemnos to fulfill his
destiny.
2838

PHILOSOPHIAE NATURALIS PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA
Type of work: Scientific and philosophical treatise
Author: Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
First published: 1687
One of the most seminal and
influential books in the English language has
been Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica (The
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy').
Published in 1687, the book immediately
led to intellectual controversy among the
scientists and philosophers of the day.
Men as distinguished as Leibniz, Dr.
Robert Hooke, and John Flamsteed, the
British Astronomer-Royal, felt it
necessary to argue with many of the
propositions and conclusions Newton advanced.
In spite of these arguments, the Principia
remained the principal document in the
field of physics for two hundred years and
a highly revered work of philosophy
throughout the eighteenth century.
Newton became one of the most honored
figures in Western culture, one of the first
formulators of scientific method and the
man whose work formed the basis for
scientific study and application of
principles. Physics, as a field of theory and
knowledge did not exist before Newton's
work.
Newton published a preface to the
Principia in which he announced that he
was interested in the laws of mathematics
as a means of discovering nature, or
getting at philosophical truth. He felt that
mathematics was not a pure, abstract
system, but rather a human and rational
means for discovering the principles of
the universe, for making a Kind of
universal order out of man s disparate
experience. In fact, he felt this function of
mathematics so strongly that, in the body
of the Principia, every experiment or
demonstration is concluded with a
"Scholium." The "Scholium" is a short essay
giving the philosophical implications or
the speculative use of the mathematical
or physical principle just demonstrated.
After the preface, Newton supplied a
series of definitions for such terms as
motion, force, and quantity, terms necessary
for even an elementary understanding of
his work. These definitions are still
standard among students of physics. After the
definitions, Newton stated his famous
three axioms or laws of motion. These
axioms, like the tendency of a body at
rest to remain at rest or the fact that
every action has an equal and opposite
reaction, are still relevant in any account
of the physical forces operating with
respect to the earth. Newton stated these
laws as axioms on which his whole
account of the universe rested. It was not
that he could prove them universally;
rather, these axioms became the
cornerstone of his system, the principles which
explained the various facts and data that
men found in physical phenomena around
them. The axioms, like the definitions,
were necessary beginnings, points which
must be accepted in order that all the
physical data could make rational sense.
The axioms had six corollaries,
propositions which could be established from the
axioms and be used in turn to establish
other propositions.
In the first book of the Principia,
Newton deals with the motion of bodies. In
order to simplify and explain his
theories, in the first book he confines his
observations and proofs to bodies moving
in a vacuum. He begins with the more
purely mathematical: establishing ratios
(demonstrating the logic of the number
system), determining the vectors of forces,
tracing and proving how bodies move in
various arcs, parabolas, and ellipses. For
all these geometric demonstrations he
gives mathematical proof by inventing
and proving his equations and by
making frequent reference to his many
diagrammatic figures. He also develops and
proves equations dealing with the ascent
and descent of bodies, again confining
his work to bodies in a vacuum. He also
devises mathematical explanation for the
oscillations of a pendulum. Finally, at
2839

the end of the first book, Newton deals
with the attractions of bodies for one
another, setting up equations to
demonstrate this necessary and universal
principle of attraction and repulsion.
In the second book he deals with the
motion of bodies in resisting mediums.
Because of the natures of the resisting
mediums, such as water or air, the proofs
become more intricate and complicated.
Newton usually attempts to simplify his
demonstrations by assuming that the
medium is constant. These experiments
allow Newton to calculate and, more
important, to explain the resistance of
substances like water or air to the motion of
bodies. He gives further demonstrations
of motion, analyzing some of the
problems dealt with in his first book. He
brings up, for example, the oscillations
of the pendulum and charts the equations
for the motion of a pendulum through
air. His consideration of the resistance to
bodies allows Newton to present and
demonstrate the solution to other
problems in the physical universe. In this
section, dealing with means of
determining the density and compression of fluids,
he develops equations to explain the
behavior of fluids: the density they offer as
resistance and the force they exert when
compressed. This work on fluids
permitted Newton to establish his
equations to determine the velocity of waves.
Newton called his third book the
"System of the World," his specific
intention in this book being to develop the
philosophical principles which he
believed followed directly from his
mathematical proofs and his experimentation.
He begins the book by stating his rules
for accurate reasoning, based on his
belief that there are no superfluous causes
in nature. Each cause that man can talk
of sensibly has direct effects which man
is able to observe and subdue to order
with his mathematical and rational equip
ment. In other words, Newton thought
that the simplicity of the design of the
universe is a basic rule; causes are never
extraneous, only the basis for observable
and frequently calculable phenomena.
Another significant rule is Newton's
belief that all conclusions are based on
induction: Man reasons from the
observable facts and always needs to refer his
conclusions or theories to the observable
facts around him. In this complete
devotion to scientific method, to the
necessity of constant reference of the theory
to all of the data, Newton fully realized,
however, that theories might well have
to be altered to provide explanations for
new or accumulated data. Changes in
post-Newtonian physics would not have
surprised Newton, for he always
acknowledged that scientific theories could be no
more than the best conclusions available
from the data at hand at the moment the
conclusion was made.
The third book sets forth Newton's
mathematical demonstrations of the
periodic times and movements of the
planets. Again, he derives many new
equations to demonstrate, with a good deal of
accuracy, the movements of the planets
and to correlate this knowledge with the
system of time on earth. He also proves
that gravity applies to all bodies and
calculates the ratio of gravity. Much of the
third section is devoted to lunar motion,
establishing equations and calculating, in
terms of time, the various changing
relationships between the moon and the
earth. These matters lead Newton into
consideration of the effect of the sun and
the moon on the waters of the earth, and
he devises means of measuring the tides.
He also computes the times and ranges
of recurrent comets.
In a long, final "Scholium" designed
to tie the extensive parts of the Princvpia
together, Newton develops the basis for
his belief in God. He asserts that such a
perfect, and perfectly simple, system must
have, as its ultimate or final cause, a
perfect, and perfectly simple, Being. This
Being must embody all the intelligence,
the rationality, the perfection, of the
system itself. Newton views God as tnis
ultimate principle, not as a personal God
or a larger edition of a human being.
Firm in his devotion to his principle, he
answered, in later editions of the Prin-
2840

cifiUy charges of atheism brought against
his system. This principle, the final cause,
is the perpetrator of the whole Newtonian
universe, the perfectly rational origin of
all the laws, mathematics, and reason that
man can use in order to develop and
describe the meaningful pattern in his
universe. And God, the perfect Being,
having set this vast plan in constant motion,
is constantly at hand to make sure the
universe does not run down, or to repair
any defects in the system.
This concept of God became, during
the eighteenth century, one of the
principal concepts held by intellectuals. The
religion of Deism, of viewing God as the
perpetrator and final cause of a complete,
perfect, mechanistic universe, was derived
from Newton's thorough and systematic
explanation.
As science and as philosophy, the Prin-
cipia is one of man's great achievements.
The book vastly increased the store of
human knowledge and derived a sound
and rational basis for making conclusions
about the physical universe. In addition,
Newton, in his Princi^ia, both illustrated
and defined the method by which man
could continue to test his observations,
developed a whole new and important
area for the human intellect, and
established a metaphysical system which
governed a great deal of human thinking and
scientific investigation for over a century.
2841

PHILOSOPHY OF ART
Type of work: Aesthetic philosophy
Author: Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893)
First published: 1865
Hippolyte Taine, author of The
History of English Literature (186B-1869)
and of The Origins of Contemporary
France (1875-1894), combined a
historical interest in his subjects with a
philosophical one. He was able to do
this because he regarded both history and
philosophy as sciences; he believed that
a study of the nature of art and of art
production could proceed, in the
manner of any scientific study, by attention
to the observable facts and by the
framing of inductive generalizations
Consequently, his Philosophy of Art is to some
extent a description of some predominant
art periods and to some extent an attempt
to generalize philosophically from the
data of his historical inquiries. Other
Taine volumes present studies of the art
of Greece, the Netherlands, and Italy.
Taine's working assumption is that no
work of art is isolated and that the only
way to understand a particular work of
art or the nature of art in general is by
attending to the conditions out of whicn
works of art come.
This theory holds that the character
of a work of art is determined by the
artist but that the artist himself is what
he is in virtue of a number of cultural
influences which are inescapable. Taine
believed that works of art present, in
perceptible form, the essential character
of the time and place in which the artist
works. In his words, "The work of art is
determined by an aggregate which is the
general state of the mind and
surrounding manners." To illustrate his point,
Taine refers to the art of Greece,
reflecting in its nude statues the Grecian
preoccupation with war and athletics and
with the development of the healthy
human animal; the art of the Middle
Ages, reflecting the moral crisis resulting
from feudal oppression; the art of the
seventeenth century, reflecting the values
of courtly life; and the art of industrial
democracy, expressing the restless
aspirations of man in an age of science.
The work of art itself is conditioned
by the wholes of which it is a part and
product. In the first place, according to
Taine, the work of art exhibits the
artist's style, that prevailing mode of
aesthetic treatment which runs through all
the works of an artist, giving them a
family resemblance to one another. Secondly,
the work of art reflects the prevailing
manner of the school of artists to which
the individual artist belongs. It expresses,
in tne third place, the world of the times,
the social milieu of taste, conviction, and
manners within which the artist must
work and by which he must be affected.
Taine believed, then, that "in order to
comprehend a work of art, an artist or
a group of artists, we must clearly
comprehend the general social and
intellectual condition of the times to which they
belong."
In addition to the influence of taste
and style, one must consider "moral
temperatiire," the spiritual milieu,
whether mvstic or pagan or something
foreign to both, which infects the artist
and, consequently, his work. The
philosophy of art, as Taine understood it, is
the attempt to study the art of various
countries and ages in order to discover the
conditions under which the art of a
particular place and time was created, and,
finally, the conditions in general for any
art whatsoever. A report of those general
conditions would be a philosophy of art.
In examining actual works of art, the
first step in scientific aesthetics, Taine
found that imitation was an important
feature of most works of art, particularly
of works of poetry, sculpture, and
painting. Taine wondered whether exact
imitation was the end of art, for he was
interested in arriving by inductive means
at a theory of the nature of art. He
concluded that it is not since exact imita-

tion does not produce the finest works of
art. Photography, for example, is useful
as a means of making accurate
reproductions of scenes, but no one supposes
that it can be ranked with such fine arts
as painting and sculpture. Another
reason for concluding that works of art are
not essentially concerned with exact
imitation is that many works of art are
intentionally inexact.
There is a kind of imitation, however,
which is essential to art, according to
Taine, and that is the imitation of what
he calls "the relationships and mutual
dependence of parts." Just as a painter,
even when reproducing a human figure,
does not represent every feature of the
body, its exact size, color, and weight,
but rather what might be called the logic
of the body, so artists in general, in
creating works of art, do not aim at
deception through exact representation but,
rather, at presenting the essential
character of an object. Since the essential
character of an object is simply the
predominant feature of the object as affected
by the place and time of its existence,
we may say that the artist's objective,
according to Taine's analysis, is to put
into perceptible form that principal
feature of the object. In painting a lion, for
example, the important thing is to
represent him as carnivorous; in painting the
Low Countries the artist must imitate its
alluvial character.
Taine was aware of the fact that the
artist is often doing something quite
different from making the dominant feature
of nature the predominant feature of the
work of art, but he believed that all art
can be explained as the imitation of
essential quality. What the artist presents may
be not the essential character of some
physical scene or object; it may be the
prevailing temper of his times. This view
is made clear in Part II of the book, in
which Taine considers artistic production.
Part I, on the nature of art, concludes
with the summary statement that "The
end of a work of art is to manifest some
essential or salient character,
consequently some important idea, clearer and
more completely than is attainable from
real objects. Art accomplishes this end by
employing a group of connected parts,
the relationships of which it
systematically modifies."
The law of art production—that a
work of art is determined by the general
state of mind and surrounding
circumstances—Taine defends in two ways. He
refers to experience in order to argue that
the law of production applies to all works
of art; and then he analyzes the effects
of "a general state of mind and
surrounding circumstances" in order to claim that
the law reveals a necessary connection.
As an example, Taine considers the
effect of melancholy as a state of mind,
together with the circumstances which
made melancholy characteristic of an
age. He argues that in a melancholy age
the artist is inevitably melancholy. As a
result, the artist portrays all objects as
being predominantly melancholy; he "paints
things in much darker colors. . . ."
During a renaissance, when there is
"a general condition of cheerfulness," the
works of art will express a joyful
condition. Whatever the combination of moods
in an age, the art of that age will reflect
the combination. It could not be
otherwise, Taine argues, because the artist
cannot isolate himself from his age.
As historical examples, the Greek
period, the feudal age, the seventeenth
century, and the nineteenth century are
referred to.
A "general situation" resulting from a
condition of wealth or poverty, or of
servitude or liberty, or from a prevailing
religious faith, or from some other
feature of the society, has an effect on the
individual artist, affecting his aptitudes
and his emotions. Thus, "In Greece we
see physical perfection and a balance of
faculties which no manual or cerebral
excess of life deranges; in the Middle
Ages, the intemperance of over-excited
imaginations and the delicacy of feminine
sensibility; in the seventeenth century,
the polish and good breeding of society
and the dignity of aristocratic salons; and
in modern times, the gTandeur of un-
2843

chained ambitions and the morbidity of
unsatisfied yearnings."
The four terms of a causal series by
reference to which the production of art
can be explained are: 1. The general
situation, 2. The tendencies and special
faculties provoked by that situation, 3.
A man, representing and embodying the
tendencies and faculties, and 4. The
material—such as sounds, forms, colors, or
language—by the use of which the man
gives the character sensuous form.
Taine argues that the artist imitates
the prevailing quality of his age because
he cannot escape being a part of his age,
because nothing else would be accepted,
and because the artist works for
acceptance and applause.
Taine's Philosophy of Art is a clear
and sensible defense of the idea that art
reflects the spirit of the times. In
opposition to his position there are those
theories which emphasize the role of the
extraordinary man, the eccentric who by
his genius transcends the perspectives
and sentiments of his age. The attempt
to reconcile these two basic philosophical
perspectives only hides the truth that
resides in each. The moral seems to be to
read Taine for an appreciation of the
influence of the social milieu, and someone
else, say Nietzsche, for an aesthetics in
which the artist is shown as an individual
rebel who falsifies nature.
2844

PHINEAS FINN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Political romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: The British Isles
First published: 1869
Principal characters:
Phineas Finn, a personable young Irishman
Lord Brentford, an important Whig
Lord Chiltern, his profligate son
Lady Laura Standish, Brentford's beautiful daughter
Mr. Kennedy, a very rich Member of Parliament
Violet Effingham, a charming girl of large fortune
Madame Marie Max Goesler, a pretty and wealthy young widow
Mary Flood Jones, a pretty Irish girl
Critique:
Phineas Finn, the Irish Member is an
objective account of the successful but
brief parliamentary career of a guilelessly
opportunistic young man who lacks the
fortune which could give him
independence from his party. The novel is
rewarding for its dispassionate account of the
passing of the important English Reform
Bill, but the author's approach both to
that and to his hero is so completely
objective that it is difficult for the reader to
feel much enthusiasm for either. As
usual, Trollope's characterizations are
excellent, but the loose and episodic plot
structure prevents Phineas Finn from
equaling the best of the Barsetshire series.
The Story:
Young Phineas Finn, just admitted to
the bar, was tempted to postpone his
career as a barrister by an offer to run
for election as a member of Parliament
from the Irish borough of Loughshane.
Phineas* father, a hard-working Irish
doctor, reluctantly agreed to give Phineas
enough money to enable him to live, for
a Member of Parliament received no
salary and could only hope that his party,
when in power, would reward him with
a lucrative office.
Phineas was elected. Among those to
whom he said goodbye before leaving for
London was pretty Mary Flood Jones, a
girl devoted to Phineas, but no richer
than he.
Phineas' well-wishers in London
included Lady Laura Standish, daughter
of Lord Brentford, an influential Whig.
Phineas, falling in love with Laura, saw
a rival in the aloof and unprepossessing
but rich Mr. Kennedy, also a Whig and
a member of Parliament. Laura tried to
encourage a friendship between Phineas
and her brother Lord Chiltern, a violent
young man who had quarreled with their
father. Lord Brentford would be
reconciled with his son if Chiltern were to
marry rich, lovely, and witty Violet
Effingham, a friend from childhood.
Chiltern, loving her deeply, had proposed
repeatedly; but Violet was level-headed
and, though fond of Chiltern, she did
not intend to ruin herself deliberately.
At Laura's recommendation, Phineas
accepted an invitation to visit Loughlin-
ter, the Kennedy estate in Scotland.
There Phineas made friends with several
Whig leaders and became the special
disciple of Mr. Monk, a cabinet minister
with independent views. Phineas
proposed to Laura, who told him she was
engaged to marry Kennedy. Against her
father's wishes, she explained, she had
exhausted her personal fortune by paying
her brother's debts and was consequently
obliged to marry someone with money.
2845

Last-minute fright prevented Phineas
from carrying out his elaborate plans for
his first speech in Parliament. Laura, now
several months married, began to find life
with her strict, demanding husband
oppressive. Chiltern, having unsuccessfully
proposed to Violet once more, invited
Phineas to hunt with him. Cared for by
Phineas after a hunting injury, Chiltern
became his intimate friend. The young
nobleman confided that, although he
could no longer hope for success with
Violet, he would fight any other aspirant
for her hand.
In the voting on the Reform Bill, the
question of the ballot divided Parliament,
and the government was dissolved. The
capriciousness of Lord Tulla, who had
insured Phineas* original success,
prevented his running again for Loughshane.
Lord Brentford, however, who had the
English borough of Loughton "in his
pocket," offered it to Phineas, who was
easily elected.
Phineas, who had rescued Kennedy
from two attackers late one night, was
again visiting at Loughlinter. Gradually
he had transferred his affections from
Laura to Violet, but his plan to confide
in Laura was prevented by her
confession to him that life with her husband
had grown intolerable. Phineas,
despairing of an opportunity to see Violet, found
his excuse in a letter from Chiltern which
contained a conciliatory message for his
father. Phineas took the letter to Lord
Brentford, at whose house Violet was
staying. Lord Brentford agreed to forgive
his son if Chiltern resumed his courtship
of Violet. Phineas sent this message to
Chiltern and, to avoid duplicity, added
that he himself hoped to win Violet's
hand. He later found the opportunity to
propose to Violet. Rejected, he felt that
her negative answer was not really
conclusive.
Because Phineas refused to give up his
courtship of Violet, Chiltern challenged
him to a duel. Though they fought
secretly in Belgium, the news leaked out,
partly because of Phineas' injury; he had
been wounded before he could fire. At
last Phineas confided in Laura, who was
angered by his news—as much because of
her own affection for him as because of
her brother's claims on Violet.
Phineas met the beautiful and
charming widow, Madame Goesler, who
became interested in him. Phineas, who had
been left a legacy of three thousand
pounds, soon received an even more
substantial income on being appointed to an
office which paid one thousand pounds
annually. Feeling she had wronged
Phineas, Laura took it upon herself to urge
his suit with Violet. But Violet,
knowing that Phineas had first courted Laura,
disliked being in second place. She
refused when Phineas proposed to her
again.
When the English Reform Bill was
passed, redistributing parliamentary
representation to conform to actual
population, the borough of Loughton, among
others, was voted out of existence.
Phineas, having shown himself an able and
loyal Whig, was promoted to a higher
office paying two thousand pounds a year.
Having no borough to run for, he
despaired of keeping the office after the
next election. But Loughshane was made
available again by the caprice of Lord
Tulla, and Phineas was assured success.
Chiltern proposed to Violet once more
and was accepted, and he and his father
were at last reconciled. Phineas, miserable
over Violet's engagement, confided in
Madame Goesler. He also told Laura of
his heartbreak, but she chided him,
saying he would soon forget Violet just as
he had forgotten her.
Lord Brentford finally learned of the
duel between his son and Phineas, whom
he accused of treachery. Phineas t
discovered the real cause of Lord Brentford's
anger: Chiltern and Violet, quarreling
over Chiltern's unwillingness to work,
had broken their engagement.
Madame Goesler had made a conquest
of the elderly and all-respected Duke of
Omnium. Though tempted to accept, she
finally refused his proposal of marriage.
2846

Not the least of her motives was her own
attachment to Phineas.
Because he accused her of taking
Phineas as a lover, Laura decided to leave
her husband. Phineas again asked Violet
to marry him. She answered that,
although she and Chiltern had quarreled,
she could not love anyone else.
Phineas caused a great sensation at
home by bringing Mr. Monk to Ireland
with him. Caught up with Mr. Monk in
political fervor, Phineas pledged himself
to support Irish tenant rights in
Parliament. Mr. Monk had warned him against
such promises, saying that Phineas, voting
in opposition to his party, would be
forced to resign his office. Then, without
means of support, he would have to give
up his promising career. Phineas
confided this danger and his unsuccessful
love of Violet to Mary Flood Jones, who
now won him to herself completely. They
became engaged.
After Laura had taken up residence
with her father, Kennedy sought legal
aid to get her to return to him. To escape
persecution, Laura decided to live abroad.
She confessed to Phineas that she had
always loved him and worked for him,
even though heartbroken when he had
revealed his love for Violet. Laura urged
him to assure his career by manying
Madame Goesler for her money. Phineas
did not mention his engagement to Mary.
When Madame Goesler offered her hand
and money to Phineas, he could only
refuse. His first feeling was one of bitter
disappointment.
Chiltern and Violet were reconciled.
The Irish Reform Bill was passed,
abolishing Phineas' borough of Loughshane.
Phineas' career in Parliament was over.
The intervention of governmental friends,
however, gave Phineas a permanent
appointment, that of a poor-law inspector
in Ireland. It paid a yearly salary of a
thousand pounds, enabling Phineas and
Mary to plan an immediate wedding.
2847

PHINEAS REDUX
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Political romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1874
Principal characters:
Phineas Finn, an Irish politician, a widower
Madame Ma-*ie Max Goesler, a wealthy and pretty widow
Lady Laura Kennedy, in love with Phineas
Mr. Kennedy, her estranged husband
Lord Citltern, Laura's brother
Violet Chiltern, his wife
Mr. Bonteen, a conniving politician
Critique:
Phineas Redux is the second of Trol-
lope's parliamentary novels. It is a sequel
to Phineas Finn, which was an
entertaining account of events which never
seemed really momentous. Phineas Redux
is even more entertaining; the
characterization is equally good, and the well-
constructed plot encompasses accusations
of adultery and a trial for murder. These
events fully exploit Trollope's genius
for detailing the exasperatingly logical
thought processes which lie behind false
rumors and misinformation.
The Story:
The conservatives had been in control
of the government for over a year. In
planning their return to power, the
liberals wanted to get every good man they
could muster.
Phineas Finn, now thirty, who had
retired from politics two years before to
marry his childhood sweetheart and to
settle down in a modest but permanent
position in Ireland, was invited back to
resume his political career. His wife had
died in the interval and he had saved
enough to let him live two or three years
without being given an office. Because
the urging of his friends seemed to imply
that he would not have to wait long for
an office, he agreed to give up his
security for the more exciting life of a
member of Parliament. He was to run for the
borough of Tankerville, held until then
by a corrupt conservative named Brow-
borough.
While awaiting the election, Phineas
visited Chiltern and Violet, now happily
married. Chiltern had at last found the
occupation perfectly suited to his
temperament and enthusiasm for hunting-
Master of the Brake Hounds. Also
visiting the Chilterns were Adelaid Palliser
and Mr. Maule, a gloomy and idle but
rather pleasing voung man, devoted to
and loved bv Adelaid.
In the Tankerville election Phineas
campaigned for separation of church and
state. Although Browborough won by
seven votes, the seat was to be contested
on evidence that Browborough had
bought votes. The conservative leader, in
a desperate effort to keep his party in
power, also declared for separation of
church and state.
Phineas, on his way to visit Lady Laura
Kennedy and her father in Dresden, was
summoned by her husband to his estate.
Kennedy's mind had become deranged;
his one purpose in life was to get his wife
back. He forbade Phineas to visit her,
and accused him of adultery. Although
he knew himself to be guiltless, Phineas
could not reason with Kennedy. Later, in
Dresden, Laura confided that her love for
Phineas had been the real reason behind
the failure of her marriage; however,
Phineas had long felt nothing but friend-
2848

shiD for Laura.
On his next visit to the Chilterns
Phineas saw Madame Goesler. The first
meeting was awkward because of their
earlier relationship, but soon they wee
old friends again. She told Phineas that
she had been acting as unofficial
companion and nurse to the old Duke of
Omnium, now on his deathbed. Lady
Glencora, the duke's niece, had become
her intimate friend.
Adelaid's thoroughbred qualities
attracted the uncouth squire and fox hunter
Snooner, who, unaware of the subtleties
of social behavior, felt himself mo-e
eligible than Maule, whose income was very
small. Spooner's proposal of marriage was
refused with horror, and Maule's was
accepted. Maule and Adelaid felt that they
could marry if his father would let them
live in Maule Abbey, now abandoned.
But Mr. Maule, Sr., opposed to his son's
marriage to a fortuneless girl and, angry
at the implied reminder that the property
would be his son's after his death, refused
the request.
Quintus Slide, representative of all that
is bad in journalism, brought to Phineas
a letter written to his newspaper by
Kennedy. The letter was a madman's
accusation, implying that Phineas and Laura
were guilty of adultery. Slide, who
intended to print the letter, enjoyed the
feeling of power its possession gave him;
believing that he was interested only in
upholding the institution of marriage, he
offered to give Phineas a day to persuade
Laura to return to Kennedy. Actually,
Phineas went to Kennedy's hotel to urge
him to retract the letter. Kennedy shot
at Phineas and missed. In spite of efforts
to keep the affair hushed up, the news
leaked out later. When Phineas obtained
an injunction against Slide, forbidding
him to print the letter, the journalist,
enraged, wrote an editorial in which, though
he could not quote, he referred to the
letter. Because he made the sttrv seem
even worse than it was, the whole affair
was damaging to Phineas' career.
In the meantime Mr. Bonteen, long
disliked by and jealous of Phineas, had
achieved advancement through party
loyalty. After the death of the old Duke of
Omnium the new duke had given up his
former office of Chancellor of the
Exchequer, a post which Bonteen was now
expected to fill as soon as the liberals
returned to power. Since Bonteen was using
his influence against Phineas, who
despaired of getting an office, Madame
Goesler and her friend Lady Glencora, now
Duchess of Omnium, resolved on a
counter-intrigue. But the duchess, while able
to prevent Bonteen's being made
chancellor, was unable to secure an office for
Phineas.
Normally the liberal party was for
separation of church and state, but now thev
officially opposed it, knowing that the
conservatives took the unnatural side only
to keep control of the government.
Phineas, although with some misgivings at
first, went along with his party. The
conservatives were defeated.
Bonteen and his wife had been
befriending a woman victimized by a
fortune-hunting Bohemian Jew turned
preacher and named, variously, Emilius
or Mealyus. Mealyus hoped to get half
his wife's fortune as a settlement, but
Bonteen was working to prove a rumor
that Mealyus was a bigamist. One night,
after Phineas had been publicly insulted
by Bonteen in their club, Bonteen was
murdered. Phineas and Mealyus were
both arrested, but the latter was released
when he proved he could not have left
his rooming-house that night.
Circumstances looked dark for Phineas.
Laura, Madame Goesler, the Duchess of
Omnium, Phineas' landlady, and the
Chilterns were the only ones convinced
of his innocence.
When Kennedy died, leaving
everything to Laura, she dreamed that she
might be happy with Phineas at last, even
though she sensed at the same time that
her hope was impossible.
Madame Goesler, on the trail of
evidence to help Phineas by destroying
Mealyus' alibi, went to Prague; she sus-
2849

pected Mealyus of having another
rooming-house key made there during a recent
trip. Then Mealyus* first wife was
discovered and he was arrested for bigamy.
At Phineas' trial the circumstantial
evidence against him broke down when
Madame Goesler wired from Prague that
she had found proof of Mealyus'
duplicate key. Laura, realizing that
Madame Goesler had saved Phineas, hated
her as a rival.
The late Duke of Omnium had willed
a handsome fortune to Madame Goesler.
Not needing the money, and afraid of
suspicion that she had been the duke's
mistress, she had refused to accept it.
The duchess took up the cause of Maule
and Adelaid, who were too poor to marry,
it being out of the question to expect
Maule to work. Adelaid had been a niece
of the old duke, and the duchess
persuaded Madame Goesler to let Adelaid
have the fortune she herself would not
accept. Adelaid and Maule were able to
marry, and Mr. Maule, Sr., was so pleased
with her fortune that he turned Maule
Abbey over to them after all. Spooner,
who had clung to his hope of marrying
Adelaid, was so miserable that he gave
up fox hunting for a time. Quintus Slide,
who had consistently denounced Phineas
and Laura in his newspaper, was sued for
libel by Chiltern. Chiltern won the suit
and Slide was forced to leave the paper.
Phineas was the hero of the
day—overwhelmingly reelected in Tankerville,
sought by the ladies, acclaimed
everywhere—but the knowledge that he had
been suspected by friends as well as by
strangers made him miserable and bitter.
Gradually, as his spirits improved, he was
able to meet people and to resume his seat
in the House. Also, he was offered the
same office he had filled so well in his
earlier parliamentary career. Although he
was almost at the end of his funds and
needed the position, the knowledge that
the offer was made simply because he had
not committed murder prompted him to
refuse.
While visiting Laura at her request, he
felt it only honorable to tell her that he
planned to propose to Madame Goesler.
At first Laura was violent in her
denunciation of Madame Goesler, but she was
at last calmed. Hers was the unhappiness
of knowing that she had brought all her
misery on herself by marrying one man
while loving another. Now deeply in love
with Madame Goesler, Phineas proposed
marriage and was joyfully accepted. No
longer a poor man, Phineas would be able
to continue his career in Parliament
without being the slave of his party.
2850

THE PHOENICIAN WOMEN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c. 485-c. 406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Time of the War of the Seven against Thebes
Locale: Thebes
First presented: c. 410 B.C.
Principal characters:
Jocasta, Oedipus' wife
Antigone, Oedipus' daughter
Polynices, Oedipus' exiled son
Eteocles, brother of Polynices and King of Thebes
Creon, Jocasta's brother
Menoeceus, Creon's son
Tiresias, the blind prophet
Oedipus, deposed King of Thebes
Chorus of Phoenician Maidens
Critique:
The Phoenician Women QPhoenissae)
probably incorporates more lines of
dramatic development and is more packed
with incident than any other Greek play,
possibly because the text has been
supplemented by one or more later hands.
It may be said that Aeschylus The Seven
against Thehes and the entire Oedipus
cycle of Sophocles are embodied in it,
although Euripides does not underscore the
religious or moral significance of the
action. In presenting the entire history of
the line of Cadmus, Euripides has made
a play that is polyproposon, in which none
of the characters (no less than eleven,
not counting the chorus) can be said to
be the tragic hero or the focus of
attention. Nevertheless, the play is extremely
well constructed, with each action
leading directly to the next, and uniformly
serious throughout, with no deviations
into satire or comedy.
The Story:
Before the royal palace of Thebes,
Jocasta, the mother of King Eteocles,
prayed to the sun god for aid in
reconciling her two sons and avoiding
fratricidal war over the kingdom of Thebes.
In her supplication she recalled that her
family had already suffered unbearable
horrors when her husband Oedipus
plucked out his eyes upon discovering
that in marrying her he had married his
own mother and had conceived two sons
and two daughters by her. At first the
sons had confined their father in the
palace in order to hide the family shame
and had decided to rule the kingdom
between them in alternate years. However,
Eteocles had refused to yield the throne
to Polynices, who, after marrying the
daughter of Adrastus, King of Argos, had
raised a host from seven city-states ^ad
was already at the gates of Thebes to win
his rightful place by force of arms.
Antigone, viewing the besieging
armies from the palace tower, recognized
the justice of Polynices' claim but prayed
that Thebes would never fall. In
desperate fear, Jocasta cut off her hair and
dressed in mourning. Then, in the hope
that the war could be averted, she
arranged a meeting under a truce between
her two sons. Eteocles was willing to
receive Polynices back in Thebes, but not
as an equal to share the throne;
Polynices, on the other hand, unable to
endure exile and equally unable to accept
such ignoble terms, remained bent on
war.
Eteocles then sent for his uncle Creon
to work out battle strategy. The two,
agreeing that the situation was grave,
finally decided not to attempt any
counterattack with their vastly outnumbered
troops but to post men at the seven gates
in defensive action. Creon also sent his
son Menoeceus to summon the prophet
Tiresias for further advice. The blind
2851

prophet, after warning Creon that the
means for saving Thebes would be one
he would be unwilling to accept,
announced that Menoeceus must be
sacrificed. Horror-stricken Creon refused and
urged his son to flee at once. Menoeceus
pretended to agree, but shortly after his
departure a messenger hurried to Creon
with the news that his son had plunged
a sword into his own throat at the very
moment that the Argive hosts launched
their first fruitless assault against the
gates of the city. ,
Jocasta, upon hearing that her two
sons had decided to determine the fate
of Thebes by a single combat apart from
their armies, rushed off with Antigone to
the battlefield to stop them if she could.
As she departed, Creon entered carrying
the corpse of his 3ead son and seeking
Jocasta's aid in the funeral preparations.
But a second messenger brought him
word that Jocasta had gone outside the
walls of Thebes and had found her two
sons dying, each the other's victim. Eteo
cles, unable to speak, bade his mother
farewell with his eyes, and Polynices
with his dying breath begged his mother
to bury him in Theban soil. Then the
grief-stricken Jocasta seized a sword and
thrust it through her throat. Upon that
stroke the Theban warriors fell upon the
surprised Argives and drove them from
the field. Menoeceus' sacrifice had not
been in vain.
Antigone, returning with servants
bearing the bodies of her mother and her
two brothers, was met by blind King
Oedipus, who had emerged from his
confinement in the palace and who began to
express his grief in groans and
lamentations. Creon, resolutely taking over the
rule bequeathed to him by Eteocles,
commanded him to cease and to prepare foi
exile. Determined to restore order in the
tragic city, Creon was compelled to put
aside personal feelings in submitting to
the prophecies of Tiresias. Antigone, the
new king insisted, must prepare to marry
his son Haemon; furthermore, while the
body of Eteocles was to be given burial
fit for a king, Polynices' corpse must be
left to rot, a prey to birds, as a warning
to all who might contemplate taking up
arms against the city. Oedipus, refusing
to beg from Creon, prepared to leave at
once, but Antigone flouted his
commands. Rather than marry Haemon, she
was determined to accompany her father
into exile and to bury the body of
Polynices with proper religious rites. As
father and daughter set out from Thebes,
Oedipus lamented the sad history of his
life but courageously submitted to the
fate that the gods had decreed for him.
2852

PHORMIO
Type of work: Drama
Author: Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, c. 190-159 B.C.)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: Second century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 161 B.C.
Principal characters:
Chremes, a rich gentleman of Athens
Demipho, Chremes1 rather miserly brother
Antipho, Demipho's son
Phaedria, Chremes1 son
Geta, a slave
Phormio, a parasite
Nausistrata, Chremes' wife
Critique:
Phormio, a tricky parasite and one of
the most fascinating rogues in all
literature, is the chief character in this play by
Terence. It is he who engineers all the
solutions to the problems involved in the
comedy and sees to it that each young man
is permitted to have the woman of his
choice. Phormio's plotting, acting as he
does on behalf of two young men, involves
a double plot, with many attending
complexities. But complex as the plot becomes,
especially when a mistaken identity
theme is also introduced, the play is not
confusing. As in other dramas by Terence,
there are no digressions; each part of the
play is closely knit into the structure and
furthers the development of both plots. In
addition, the comedy is even more
restrained than that of earlier comedies by
Terence. Never slapstick, the humor of
this play should be sufficient to please
even the most sophisticated modern
audiences.
The Story:
Demipho and Chremes, two wealthy
Athenian brothers, left the city on
journeys and entrusted the welfare of their
two sons to Geta, a slave belonging to
Demipho. For a time Antipho and
Phaedria, two young men of exemplary
habits, gave the slave little trouble. When
both fell in love, however, before their
fathers returned, Geta's troubles began.
His sympathy for Antipho and Phaedria
caused him to help both of them in their
amours, but he realized only too well that
both fathers would be angry when they
learned what had happened.
Phaedria, the son of Chremes, had
fallen in love with a lovely young harp player
owned by a trader named Dorio, who
refused to part with the girl for less than
thirty minae. Unable to raise the money,
Phaedria was at his wits' end. His cousin
Antipho had fallen in love with a young
Athenian girl of a good but penniless
family.
Antipho had already married the girl,
even though he knew that his father, who
was something of a miser, would be
furious to learn that his son had married a girl
who brought no dower. Geta, in an effort
to smooth out the problem, had contacted
a parasite named Phormio. Phormio, a
lawyer, had brought suit against Antipho
under an Athenian law that made it
mandatory for an unprovided-for girl to be
married to her nearest relative. Antipho
did not contest the suit, and so he had the
excuse that he had been forced by the
court to marry the young woman.
Shortly after the wedding, the two
older men returned. As soon as he learned
what had happened, Demipho ordered his
son to give up his wife. Antipho and Geta
again called upon Phormio for assistance.
Phormio warned the old man that he
would be unable to avoid keeping the girl,
even though Demipho claimed that the
girl was not actually a relative. Phormio
2853

contended that the girl was a relative, the
daughter of Demipho's kinsman, Stilpo,
who had lived in Lemnos. Demipho said
he never had a relative by that name.
In the meantime Phaedria tried
desperately to raise the thirty minae that would
purchase his beloved harpist from Doric
Dorio had given him three days to find the
money. Then Phaedria learned from a
slave that a sea captain, about to sail,
wanted to purchase the girl and that
Dorio, anxious to make a sale, had
promised to sell the girl to him. Phaedria
appealed to Dorio, but with no success.
Dorio would promise only to hold off the
sale of the slave girl until the following
morning.
After seeing Phormio, Demipho went
to his brother Chremes and talked over
the situation with him. They finally
agreed that the only answer to the problem
of Antipho's wife was to send her away
with a sum of money. Chremes agreed to
have his wife, Nausistrata, tell the girl
that she was to be separated from her
husband. While they were planning, Geta
went to Phormio once again.
Phormio hatched out a plan to satisfy
everyone and make some money for
himself. He offered to marry Antipho's cast-off
wife, if he were given a large sum of
money. With part of that money he
expected to have a good time, and with the
rest, which he was to turn over to
Phaedria, that young man was to purchase
his beloved harpist. Geta presented the
first part of Phormio's plan to the brothers,
who readily acquiesced, even though
Demipho hated to see Phormio receive
payment for marrying the girl.
After the arrangements had been made,
Chremes was horrified to learn that the
girl he was advising his brother to cast off
was his own daughter by a second wife
whom he had married in Lemnos. Even
worse was the fact that his Athenian wife,
Nausistrata, did not know of the other
marriage. Chremes took his brother into
his confidence and told him what had
happened. They both agreed to let the
marriage stand, and Chremes offered to
add a dower to the girl.
The only difficulty, as the old men saw
it, was how to redeem their money from
Phormio, who no longer needed to mdrry
the girl. Phormio, having given part of
the money to Phaedria, was unwilling to
return that part of the money which was
to have been his for his trouble.
While the old men were hunting for
Phormio, he was in conversation with
Antipho. Geta went to them with the
news that Antipho's uncle was also his
father-in-law and that Antipho's troubles
were at an end. Asked where he had
learned this fact, Geta replied that he
had overheard a conversation between
Chremes and a servant. The information
made both Antipho and Phormio happy,
Antipho because he would be able to
keep his wife, Phormio because he had
information to use in keeping the money
he had received from Chremes and
Demipho.
When Chremes and Demipho
confronted Phormio, he refused to give back
the money, and in answer to their threats
he replied that if they tried to bring a
suit against him he would tell Nausistrata
about Chremes' affair in Lemnos and the
true identity of Antipho's wife. During
the argument the brothers laid hands on
Phormio. Phormio, infuriated by their
treatment of him, called out to
Nausistrata. When she came out of the house,
Phormio told her about Chremes' other
wife. She was somewhat mollified,
however, when she realized that the other
woman was dead and that she would have
something to hold over her husband's
head.
Seeing that Nausistrata had been
converted to his side, Phormio told them also
that he had given thirty minae to Phaedria
so that he might purchase the harpist from
Dorio. Chremes began to protest, but
Nausistrata silenced him with the
statement that it was no worse for the son to
have such a mistress than for the father
to have two wives. Nausistrata, pleased
at the turn events had taken—for her son
had his beloved and her rival was dead-
asked Phormio if there were anything she
could do for him. Fun-loving Phormio said
2854

that he would be vastly pleased, and her proud of her newly-found power over her
husband much exasperated, if she would husband, agreed,
ask the lawyer to dinner. Nausistrata,
2855

THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE
Type of work: Essay in scientific philosophy
Author: Thomas Henry Huxley C1825-1895)
First published: Written in 1868; published in
"The Physical Basis of Life," together
with the other essays that compose
Huxley's Method and Results, reveals a
nineteenth-century man of science attempting
to go beyond the limits prescribed by
authoritarian scientists and churchmen and
making an effort to bring the clarity of
philosophy to the interpretation and
expression of the results of empirical
observation. This particular essay is among
Huxley's most famous. Its subject
matter is protoplasm, and its claim is that all
life has as its physical basis protoplasmic
substance.
Such a claim, which to
twentieth-century man seems so trivial as not to be
worth making, was revolutionary in an
age which demanded that all studies of
man find him unique, possessed of a life-
giving principle »by reference to which
he could be distinguished from all those
animals that were merely animals.
Huxley realized that his contention would be
novel, even shocking, to many of his
contemporaries. It was bad enough to
suggest that life is not independent of
matter but has a physical basis; it was
even worse to insist that there is but one
physical basis of life for all living things.
To reduce man to the material and to
equate him with the beast—that was
intolerable even to those who respected
science.
In his essay Huxley was careful to
state that even though all life has
protoplasm as its physical basis, it by no means
follows that materialism—the
philosophical theory that everything is nothing but
matter—is true; in fact, he argued that
materialism involved "grave philosophical
error."
Huxley's objections to a strict
materialism are made in the spirit of Hume's
philosophy. Referring to Hume as "the
most acute thinker of the eighteenth
century," Huxley argues that we mean by
the terms, "matter" and "spirit" either
Method and Results, 1896
something that can be explained by
reference to matters of our scientific
experience, or else names for unknown, even
imaginary, causes. He joins Hume in
objecting to the idea that it makes sense to
talk about a necessity that is anything
more than the observed cder of events.
"Fact I know; and Law I know," wrote
Huxley, "but what is this Necessity, save
an empty shadow of my own mind's
throwing?" Since both materialism and
spiritualism (or idealism) depend on
unfathomable senses of the terms "matter,"
"spirit," and "necessity," Huxley
concluded that such unscientific philosophies
were unsatisfactory.
In opposition to metaphysical
philosophies, Huxley proposed what he called
the "New Philosophy," the attempt to
limit philosophical thought and inquiry
to matters that could be verified
experimentally or explained by reference to
matters of experience. In doing this he
anticipated the most significant direction
of twentieth-century philosophy, the
logical empiricist movement as amended by
pragmatism and linguistic analysis.
Huxley made a plea for limiting the
consideration of problems to those
matters about which something can be
known. Agreeing with Hume in the
rejection of theology and metaphysics, he
argued that progress in scientific
philosophy is possible on the basis of two
assumptions: "the first, that the order of
Nature is ascertainable by our faculties
to an extent which is practically
unlimited; the second, that our volition
counts for something as a condition of
the course of events." In a footnote
Huxley explained that it would be more
accurate to say that not volition but "the
physical state of which volition is the
expression" may condition the course of
events.
He then went on to point out the
practical advantages, from the scientific
2856

point of view, that resulted from using
the language of materialism. The
materialistic terminology allowed the
scientist to relate thought and life to expe-
rienceable phenomena and permitted a
kind of expression which facilitated the
human control of events. The language
of those who held that all is spirit and
idea—the spiritualists—was barren and
confusing, according to Huxley.
Nevertheless, despite the practical
advantages of the terminology of
materialism, it would be a mistake, Huxley wrote,
to slide into metaphysical materialism.
The reader who asks what Huxley was,
if he was neither a materialist nor an
idealist, makes the mistake of supposing
that Huxley's rejection of two opposing
metaphysical positions is somehow a sign
of his having adopted a third. The truth
is that Huxley had no sympathy for
metaphysics. He wanted to use an
empirically meaningful language to talk
about events that came within the scope
of scientific inquiry; hence he had no
metaphysics.
In arguing that protoplasm is the
physical basis of life, Huxley was making a
much more radical claim than the theory
that without protoplasm there is no life.
He argued that the matter of life is
composed of ordinary matter; life is not an
indestructible and unchangeable
substance. Furthermore, the vital properties
of protoplasm are the result of molecular
changes. He concluded that his thoughts,
and the thoughts of the audience, were
the expression of molecular changes in
protoplasm.
In his analysis Huxley found a unity
in three respects among all living
organisms: "a unity of power or faculty, a
unity of form, and a unity of substantial
composition." The faculty which all
living matter has in common is contractility;
as to form, protoplasm is usually a
nucleated mass, and it is composed of
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.
The line between plants and animals is
not at all precise—there are borderline
cases—but both forms of living matter
are alike in the respects mentioned.
The essays collected under the title
Method and Results, also to be found in
Huxley's Collected Essays (1898), are
intended to outline "the indispensable
conditions of scientific assent" as defined
by Descartes in his Discourse on Method,
and to show the results of applying the
method to various problems. In an essay
written in 1870 concerning Descartes'
method, Huxley praised Descartes as the
thinker from whose works the
philosophy and science of the modern world
stem. Huxley agreed with Descartes in
valuing doubt as the first critical
operation in science and philosophy, as the
beginning of what Goethe called "the
active scepticism whose whole aim is to
conquer itself." Although he found fault
with Descartes' acceptance of "I think;
therefore, I am" as an indubitable truth,
he credited the Frenchman with having
made a reconciliation of physics and
metaphysics possible. According to
Huxley, Descartes' analysis suggests what
physics must admit: that "all the' phae-
nomena of Nature are, in their ultimate
analysis, known to us only as facts of
consciousness. . . ." But metaphysics
must admit, Huxley adds, that the facts
of consciousness make sense, practically
speaking, only as interpreted by physics.
The ideas in this essay are very similar
to those which William James was later
(1906-1907) to present as the basis of
pragmatism in his lectures at Columbia
University.
Devotion to skepticism and to the
benefits of natural science was shown and
defended by Huxley in his essay "On
the Advisableness of Improving Natural
Knowledge" (1866). The essay is a
defense of the advantage of finding out
about the world by studying the world
itself, a sensible procedure from the
twentieth-century point of view. But the
tentative, practical, empirical character
of natural science was believed by many
critics of Huxley to be antipathetic to
religion. Huxley himself argued that
science need not conflict with religion,
although it could not tolerate
meaningless metaphysics and theology. Huxley
2857

concluded that science must refuse to
acknowledge authority; for the scientist
"scepticism is the highest of duties; blind
faith the one unpardonable sin."
Justification for the scientist is not by faith,
but by verification.
These ideas led Huxley to argue
bitterly against churchmen who proclaimed
that belief in God or in the particular
dogmas of a church was the duty of every
man. The duty of a man, according to
Huxley, is to face the facts, to test his
ideas by reference to the course of natural
events, and to know the limits of his
inquiry. It cannot be his duty, then, to
believe what he has no reason to believe.
Almost a century after Huxley wrote
"The Physical Basis of Life," it seems
clear that the value of the essay results
from the clear and temperate defense of
scientific method which it contains.
Resisting the impulse to deify science, Hux^
ley indicated its method and results; and
he rested secure in the conviction that the
progress of science would justify his faith.
There is every reason to suppose that
from Huxley's point of view, that of a
man concerned with the practical search
for knowledge, he was right in his belief.
2858

PICKWICK PAPERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812rl870)
Type of plot: Comic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1836-1837
Principal characters:
Mr. Pickwick, founder of the Pickwick Club
Mr. Winkle,
Mr. Snodgrass, and
Mr. Tupman, members of the club
Mr. Wardle, owner of Manor Farm
Rachael Wardle, his sister
Emily Wardle, his daughter
Mrs. Bardell, Mr. Pickwick's housekeeper
Mr. Perker, a lawyer
Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick's servant
Arabella Allen, in love with Mr. Winkle
Mr. Alfred Jingle, a rascal
Critique:
Mr. Pickwick, the lovable, generous
old gentleman of Dickens' novel, is one
of the best-known characters of fiction.
Mr. Pickwick benignly reigns over all
activities of the Pickwick Club, satisfied,
under every circumstance, that he has
helped his fellow creatures by his well-
meaning efforts. The height of this Dick-
ensian comedy, however, lies in Sam
Weller and his father. Sam's
imperturbable presence of mind and his ready wit
are indispensable to the Pickwickians.
The novel has importance beyond
humorous incident and characterization. It is
the first novel of a literary movement to
present the life and manners of lower and
middle-class life.
The Story:
Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, was the
founder and perpetual president of the
justly famous Pickwick Club. To extend
his own researches into the quaint and
curious phenomena of life, he suggested
that he and three other Pickwickians
should make journeys to places remote
from London and report on their findings
to the stay-at-home members of the club.
The first destination decided upon was
Rochester. As Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tracy
Tupman, Mr. Nathaniel Winkle, and
Mr. Augustus Snodgrass went to their
coach, they were waylaid by a rough
gang of cab drivers. Fortunately the men
were rescued by a stranger who was
poorly dressed but of a magnificently
friendly nature. The stranger, who
introduced himself as Alfred Jingle, appeared
to be going to Rochester also, and the
party mounted the coach together.
After they had arrived at their
destination, Mr. Tupman's curiosity was aroused
when Mr. Jingle told him that there was
to be a ball at the inn that very evening
and that many lovely young ladies would
be present. Because his luggage had gone
astray, said Mr. Jingle, he had no
evening clothes and so it would be
impossible for him to attend the affair. This was
a regrettable circumstance because he had
hoped to introduce Mr. Tupman to the
many young ladies of wealth and fashion
who would be present. Eager to meet
these young ladies, Mr. Tupman
borrowed Mr. Winkle's suit for the stranger.
At the ball Mr. Jingle observed a doctor
in faithful attendance upon a middle-
aged lady. Attracting her attention, he
danced with her, much to the anger of
the doctor. Introducing himself as Dr.
Slammer, the angry gentleman challenged
Mr. Jingle to a duel.
2859

The next morning a servant,
identifying Mr. Winkle from the description
given of the suit the stranger had worn,
told Mr. Winkle that an insolent drunken
man had insulted Dr. Slammer the
previous evening and that the doctor was
awaiting his appearance to fight a duel.
Mr. Winkle had been drunk the night
before, and he decided he was being
called out because he had conducted
himself in an unseemly manner which he
could no longer remember. With Mr.
Snodgrass as his second, Mr. Winkle
tremblingly approached the battlefield.
Much to nis relief, Dr. Slammer roared
that he was the wrong man. After much
misunderstanding, the situation was
satisfactorily explained and no blood was shed.
During the afternoon the travelers
attended a parade, where they met Mr.
Wardle in a coach with his two daughters
and his sister, Miss Rachael Wardle, a
plump old maid. Mr. Tupman, being
quite taken with the elder Miss Wardle,
accepted for his friends Mr. Wardle's
invitation to visit his estate, Manor Farm.
The next day the four Pickwickians
departed for the farm, which was a distance
of about ten miles from the inn where
they were staying. Having difficulties
with their horses, they arrived at Manor
Farm in a disheveled state, but they were
soon washed and mended under the kind
assistance of Mr. Wardle's daughters. In
the evening they played a hearty game
of whist, and Mr. Tupman squeezed Miss
Wardle's hand under the table.
The next day Mr. Wardle took his
guests rook hunting. Mr. Winkle, who
would not admit himself unable to cope
with any situation, was given the gun to
try his skill. He proved it by accidentally
shooting Mr. Tupman in the arm. Miss
Wardle offered her aid to the stricken
man. Observing that their friend was in
good hands, the others went off to a
neighboring town to watch the cricket
matches. There Mr. Pickwick
unexpectedly encountered Mr. Jingle, and Mr.
Wardle invited the fellow to return to
Manor Farm with his party.
Convinced that Miss Wardle had a
great deal of money, Mr. Jingle
misrepresented Mr. Tupman's intentions to Miss
Wardle and persuaded the spinster to
elope with him. Mr. Wardle and Mr.
Pickwick pursued the couple to London.
There, with the assistance of Mr.
Wardle's lawyer, Mr. Perker, they went
from one inn to another in an attempt
to find the elopers. Finally, through a
sharp-featured young man cleaning boots
in the yard of the White Hart Inn, they
were aole to identify Mr. Jingle. They
indignantly confronted him as he was
displaying a marriage license. After a
heated argument, Mr. Jingle resigned his
matrimonial designs for the sum of one
hundred and twenty pounds. Miss
Wardle went tearfully back to Manor
Farm. The PickwicKians returned to
London, where Mr. Pickwick engaged as
his servant Sam Weller, the sharp, shrewd
young bootblack of the White Hart Inn.
Mr. Pickwick was destined to meet the
villainous Mr. Jingle soon again. A Mrs.
Leo Hunter invited the learned man and
his friends to a party. There Mr.
Pickwick spied Mr. Jingle, who, upon seeing
his former acquaintance, disappeared into
the crowd. Mrs. Hunter told Mr.
Pickwick that Mr. Jingle lived at Bury St.
Edmonds. Mr, Pickwick set out in
pursuit in company with his servant, Sam
Weller, for the old gentleman was
determined to deter the scoundrel from any
fresh deceptions he might be planning.
At the inn where Mr. Jingle was
reported to be staying, Mr. Pickwick
learned that the rascal was planning to
elope with a rich young lady who stayed
at a boarding-school nearby. Mr.
Pickwick fell in with the suggestion that in
order to rescue the young lady he should
hide in the garden from which Mr. Jingle
was planning to steal her. When Mr.
Pickwick sneaked into the garden, he
found nothing of a suspicious nature; in
short, he had been deceived, and the
blackguard had escaped.
Mr. Pickwick had for housekeeper
Mrs. Bardell, a widow. When he was
2860

about to hire Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick
had spoken to her in such a manner that
she had mistaken his words for a
proposal of marriage. One day Mr.
Pickwick was resting in his rooms when he
received notice from the legal firm of
Dodgson and Fogg that Mrs. Bardell was
suing him for breach of promise. The
summons was distressing, but first Mr.
Pickwick had more important business
to occupy his time. After securing the
services of Mr. Perker to defend him, he
went to Ipswich upon learning that Mr.
Jingle had been seen in that vicinity.
The trip to Ipswich was successful. The
Pickwickians were able to catch Mr.
Jingle in his latest scheme of deception
and to expose him before he had carried
out his plot.
At the trial for the breach of promise
suit brought by Mrs. Bardell, lawyers
Dodgson and Fogg argued so eloquently
against Mr. Pickwick that the jury fined
him seven hundred and fifty pounds.
When the trial was over, Mr. Pickwick
told Dodgson and Fogg that even if they
put him in prison he would never pay
one cent of the damages, since he knew
as well as they that there had been no
true grounds for suit.
The Pickwickians shortly afterward
went to Bath, where fresh adventures
awaited Mr. Pickwick and his friends.
On that occasion Mr. Winkle's weakness
for the fair sex involved them in
difficulties. In Bath the Pickwickians met two
young medical students, Mr. Allen and
Mr. Bob Sawyer. Mr. Allen hoped to
marry his sister, Arabella, to his friend,
Mr. Sawyer, but Miss Allen professed
extreme dislike for her brother's choice.
When Mr. Winkle learned that
Arabella had refused Mr. Sawyer because
another had won her heart, he felt that
he must be the fortunate man because
she had displayed an interest in him
when they had met earlier at Manor Farm.
Kindly Mr. Pickwick arranged to have
Mr. Winkle meet Arabella in a garden,
where the distraught lover could plead
his suit.
Mr. Pickwick's plans to further his
friend's romance were interrupted,
however, by a subpoena delivered because he
had refused to pay money to Mrs. Bardell,
Still stubbornly refusing to pay the
damages, Mr. Pickwick found himself
returned to London and lodged in Fleet
Street prison. With the help of Sam
Weller, Mr. Pickwick arranged his prison
quarters as comfortably as possible and
remained deaf to the entreaties of Sam
Weller or Mr. Perker, who thought that
he should pay his debt and regain his
freedom. Dodgson and Fogg proved to
be of lower caliber than even Mr.
Pickwick had suspected. They had taken
Mrs. Bardell's case without fee, gambling
on Mr. Pickwick's payment to cover the
costs of the case. When they saw no
payment forthcoming, they nad Mrs.
Bardell arrested also and sent to the Fleet
Street prison.
While Mr. Pickwick was trying to
decide what to do, Mr. Winkle with his
new wife, Arabella, came to the prison
and asked Mr. Pickwick to pay his debts
so that he could visit Mr. Allen with the
news of Mr. Winkle's marriage to
Arabella. Arabella herself felt that Mr.
Pickwick was the only person who could
arrange a proper reconcilliation between
her brother and her new husband.
Kindness prevailed; Mr. Pickwick paid the
damages to Mrs. Bardell so that he would
be free to help his friends in distress.
Winning Mr. Allen's approval of the
match was not difficult for Mr. Pickwick,
but when he approached the elder Mr.
Winkle, the bridegroom's father objected
to the marriage and threatened to cut off
his son without a cent. To add to Mr.
Pickwick's problems, Mr. Wardle came
to London to tell him that his daughter
Emily was in love with Mr. Snodgrass
and to ask Mr. Pickwick's advice. Mr.
Wardle had brought Emily to London
with him.
The entire party came together in
Arabella's apartment. All misunderstandings
happily ended for the two lovers, and a
jolly party followed. The elder Mr.
2861

Winkle paid a call on his new daughter-
in-law. Upon seeing what a charming
and lovely girl she was, he relented his
decision to disinherit his son, and the
family was reconciled.
After Mr. Snodgrass had married Emily
Wardle, Mr. Pickwick dissolved the
Pickwick Club and retired to a home in the
country, with his faithful servant, Sam
Weller. Several times Mr. Pickwick was
called upon to be a godfather to little
Winkles and Snodgrasses, but for the
most part he led a quiet life, respected by
his neighbors and loved by all his friends.
2862

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1891
Principal characters:
Dorian Gray, a Faustian young man
Lord Henry Wotton, his tempter
Basil Hallward, an artist
Sibyl Vane, an actress
James Vane, her brother
Critique:
The Picture of Dorian Gray is
definitely a period piece, but the central idea
of the story is so typical of its author
and the elements of the plot are so
carefully worked out that the novel is sure
to attract readers for many years to come.
Wilde has written that there is no such
thing as a moral or unmoral book, that a
book can be judged only as it is well
written or badly written. The Picture
of Dorian Gray should be judged with
this statement in mind.
The Story:
One day, in his London studio, Basil
Hallward was putting a few last finishing
touches on a portrait of his handsome
young friend, Dorian Gray. Lord Henry
Wotton, a caller, indolently watched the
painter at work. In reply to his friend's
admiration for the painting, the artist
explained that Dorian was his ideal of
youth. For this reason he asked Lord
Henry never to meet Dorian because the
older man's influence on the boy would
be absolute and evil.
While they were talking, Dorian
himself came to the studio, and he and Lord
Henry met, much against Hallward's
wishes. Half seriously, half jokingly, Sir
Hejiry began to exert his influence on
Dorian. Hallward signed the portrait and
announced it was finished. When Lord
Henry offered to buy the picture, the
painter said it was not his property, that
it belonged to Dorian, to whom he was
presenting it. Looking at his portrait,
after listening to Lord Henry's witty
conversation, Dorian grew sad. He would
become old and wrinkled, he said, while
the picture would remain the same. He
wished, instead, that the portrait might
grow old while he remained forever
young. He said he would give his soul
to keep his youth.
Dorian and Lord Henry became close
friends. One of the gifts Lord Henry
gave the boy was a book about a young
man who attempted to realize in his brief
lifetime all the passions of man's history.
Dorian made the book a pattern for his
own life, and the first lesson from its
pages was the lesson of love. In a third-
rate theater he saw Sibyl Vane, a young
actress who played the role of Juliet with
such sincerity and charm that he fell in
love with her on the spot. After he had
met her, Dorian dreamed of taking her
away from the cheap theatrical troupe
and making her a great actress who would
thrill the world. One night he took Lord
Henry to watch her performance. That
night Sibyl was listless and wooden, so
uninspired in her acting that the
audience hissed her. When Dorian went to
her dressing-room after the final curtain,
she explained that before meeting him she
had thought acting her only reality. Now,
she said, Dorian's love had taught her
what reality actually was, and she could
no longer act. Dorian coldly and cruelly
told her she had killed his love and he
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oicar Wilde. Published by The Viking Pre*. lac
2863

never intended to see her again.
In the meantime, Hallward had
delivered the painting to Dorian. When the
voung man returned to his home after
the theater that night he saw that the
appearance of his portrait had changed.
There was a new, faint line of cruelty
about the mouth. Looking at his own
features in a mirror, he found no such
line on his own lips. His wish had
evidently been granted. He would remain
young and untouched — the portrait
would take on an appearance of
experience and age.
Disturbed, he resolved to reform, to
see no more of Lord Henry, to ask Sibyl
Vane's forgiveness and marry her.
Accordingly, he wrote her a passionate
letter declaring his love. Before he could
post the letter, however, Lord Henry
visited him the next morning, bringing
the news that Sibyl had killed herself in
her dressing-room the night before.
After his friend had gone, forgetting
all his good resolutions Dorian decided
on a life of sensation and pleasure. The
Eortrait only was to bear the burden of
is shame. That night he attended the
opera with Lord Henry. The next day,
when Basil Hallward attempted to reason
with him over scandalous reports
beginning to circulate, Dorian refused to show
any emotion over Sibyl's suicide. His
part in her tragic story would never be
revealed, for she had known him only as
Prince Charming. Before he left,
Hallward asked to see his painting. Dorian
refused to show it. In sudden rage, he
shouted that he never wished to see
Hallward again. Later he hung the portrait
in an old schoolroom upstairs, locked the
door, and put the key where only he
could find it.
London continued to gossip about the
friendship of Lord Henry and Dorian
Gray. The young man was suspected of
strange vices, and gentlemen walked out
of their club rooms when he -entered
them. He was invited to fewer balls and
parties at country houses. Many of his
former friends refused to recognize him
when they met. It was reported he had
been seen in low dives with drunken
sailors and thieves. Meanwhile Dorian's
features did not change; only the portrait
reflected his life of crime and debauchery.
For Dorian's life, like that of the hero in
the book Lord Henry had given him,
became a frenzied quest for fresh
experiences and new sensations. In turn, he
became interested in religious rituals,
perfumes, music, jewels. He frequented
opium dens. He had sordid affairs with
women. His features in the portrait
became the terrible record of his life.
On the eve of Dorian's thirty-eighth
birthday, Basil Hallward visited him
again. Though the two had been
estranged for years, Hallward came in a
last attempt to persuade Dorian to change
his dissolute ways. He was still unable
to believe many of the stories he had
heard about Dorian. With a bitter laugh,
Dorian said that Hallward should see
what he had truly become. He took
Hallward to the schoolroom and unveiled the
portrait. The artist was horrified, for only
by signature could he identify his own
handiwork. In anger that he had
betrayed his true self to his former friend,
Dorian seized a knife which lay nearby
and stabbed Hallward in the neck and
back.
Dorian relocked the door and went
down to the drawing-room. Because
Hallward had intended to leave for Paris that
night, Dorian knew the painter would
not be missed for some time. Removal of
the body, he decided, was not enough.
He wanted it completely destroyed.
Suddenly he thought of Alan Campbell, a
young chemist who had once been his
intimate. By threatening the young
scientist with exposure for some secret crime,
Dorian forced Campbell to destroy the
body with fire and chemicals. After that
night, the hands of the portrait were
smeared with blood.
Late one night, commonly dressed,
Dorian visited an opium den. As he was
leaving the place, a drunken woman
addressed him as Prince Charming. A sailor
followed him out. The sailor was James
Vane, Sibyl's brother, who had sworn
2864

revenge on his sister's betrayer. The
sailor would have killed Dorian but for
the fact that he looked so young. Sibyl
had committed suicide eighteen years
before, and Dorian seemed no more than
twenty years old. When Vane, convinced
that Dorian could not have known his
sister, returned to the den, the woman
told him that Dorian Gray had ruined
her many years before, and that he had
not changed in appearance since then.
Some time later, at his country home,
Dorian saw James Vane watching him
outside a window. During a hunt on the
estate Vane was accidentally shot and
killed. In the meantime, Alan Campbell
had committed suicide under strange
circumstances, and Basil Hallward's
disappearance was being investigated.
Back in London, Dorian, having
decided to destroy the picture which stood
as an awful record of his guilt, went to
the old schoolroom. The portrait now
had an appearance of cunning and
triumph. Using the knife with which he
had murdered Basil Hallward, Dorian
stabbed the frightful portrait. The
servants in the house heard a horrible cry of
agony. When they forced open the locked
door of the room, they found, hanging on
the wall, a fine portrait of their master
as he had always looked. On the floor
was a dead body, withered, wrinkled, in
evening dress, with a knife in its breast.
Only by his jewelry did they recognize
Dorian Gray, who, in his desperate
attempt to kill his conscience, had killed
himself.
2865

PIERRE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Philosophical tragedy
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: New York
First published: 1852
Principal characters:
Pierre Glendinning, a wealthy, cultivated young man
Mrs. Glendinning, his mother
Lucy Tartan, his fiancee
Isabel, his illegitimate half-sister
Glen Stanly, his cousin
Delly Ulver, a farm girl
Critique:
Pierre, Or, The Ambiguities, the
seventh novel published by Herman
Melville, is probably the least read of his
works because of obscure and at times
confused symbolism which repels the
reader who prefers less philosophical and
tortuous fiction. Scholars have declared
that Pierre was an experiment on
Melville's part, an attempt to turn away
from the materials of his earlier volumes:
the sea, the romantic islands of the
Pacific, and man's struggles against fate.
Yet Melville, as he had in his earlier
volumes, used materials from his own
experience. Many of the incidents and
much of the background of this novel
reflect Melville's life and experiences of
members of his family. Those incidents
and that background are woven together
with fiction, however, as the author had
woven fact and fiction in his greatest
novel, Moby Dick. This novel, like Moby
Dick, was very probably an attempt to
prove himself something more than the
fabulous author of Typee, a man who had
lived among the cannibals.
The Story:
Pierre Glendinning was a young man
who lived amid luxury and ease, the
heir to vast estates that formed the
larger portion of two counties in New York
State. His time was taken up with
outdoor recreation, reading, and the
courting of beautiful and well-to-do Lucy
Tartan, a girl of whom Pierre's mother
approved completely. Mrs. Glendinning,
who was jealous of her influence over
her son, saw nothing to fear in quiet,
unaggressive Lucy Tartan.
One evening, however, a strange
incident occurred when Mrs. Glendinning
and Pierre visited a sewing bee in a
nearby home. One of the girls who was there
shrieked and fainted when she saw
Pierre. The incident bothered the young
man, but he was totally unprepared for
a note which he received from the girl
a short time later. In the note she
requested that Pierre visit her in the
evening at the farm where she was
employed. Pierre, disturbed by the mystery
involved, went to the farm and
discovered that the girl, Isabel, was his half-
sister, the illegitimate child of his father
and a young Frenchwoman. Pierre
resolved immediately to acknowledge
Isabel as his sister, but the question of how
to accomplish the acknowledgment was
a weighty one.
At first Pierre intended to tell his
mother of his discovery, but his mother's
attitude toward Delly Ulver, a farm girl
who had been born an illegitimate child,
warned Pierre that he could expect no
sympathetic understanding from Mrs.
Glendinning. He next thought of
approaching his minister for help with his
problem, but the discovery that the
minister followed his mother's opinion caused
Pierre to fall back on his own thinking.
He realized also that his mother could
not bear to have it proved that her
husband had been an adulterer, nor could
2866

he bring himself to dishonor his father's
name. The only road which seemed open
to Pierre was to acknowledge Isabel as
his wife rather than his sister.
When Pierre told his mother that he
had been married secretly, she ordered
him to leave the house immediately.
Disowned and cast forth from his mother's
affections, he also told Lucy Tartan that
he had married another girl. His story
threw Lucy into an almost fatal illness.
Having been disowned by his family,
Pierre took Isabel from her home at the
farm and went to New York City. They
were accompanied by Delly Ulver, whom
Pierre had decided to help. Although he
had announced that he and Isabel had
been married, Pierre and his half-sister
had entered into no such union; the
announcement was only a means to permit
them to live together. In New York City
they found life barren and difficult, for
Pierre had only a small supply of money.
He had hoped to find a haven for
himself and the two girls with his wealthy
cousin, Glen Stanly, but the cousin
refused to recognize Pierre and had him
thrown out of his home.
Forced to rely upon his own resources,
Pierre resolved to become an author. He
had, he thought, acquired quite a
reputation by publishing some short poems
and some essays in various periodicals.
He also thought he had great talent,
sufficient, at least, to enable him to write a
philosophical work. After much difficulty
he managed to find a publisher who
agreed to take his unwritten novel and
to advance him enough money to live.
For months Pierre, struggling to write
his great work, lived in three miserable,
unheated rooms in a vast tenement, along
with Isabel and Delly Ulver, who acted
in the capacity of servant to them both.
One day word came to Pierre that his
mother had died just a few weeks after
he had left for New York City; her
heir was Pierre's cousin, Glen Stanly.
The news made Pierre very bitter,
particularly when he discovered that his
cousin was a suitor for the hand of Lucy
Tartan, whom Pierre still loved dearly.
Despite the feeling of utter helplessness
which the news created in his mind,
Pierre kept at work upon his book.
Because he was unable to keep Isabel from
realizing that she was not alone in his
affections, the girl became jealous and
disliked the fact that another woman
could claim his attentions and love. Her
attachment for Pierre went much deeper
than ordinary love for a brother by a
sister.
Some time later Pierre received a
letter from Lucy. She had rebuffed Glen
Stanly's suit, and she wrote to tell Pierre
that he alone had her affections. She told
Pierre that, even though he was married,
she wished to travel to New York City
to live near him. Pierre could not prevent
her from joining his household, although
he lied to Isabel and told her that Lucy
was his cousin. Lucy arrived the next
day. As she entered the tenement where
Pierre lived, her brother and Glen
Stanly tried to take her away by force,. Pierre
interfered on her behalf, and the two
men had to leave without the girl.
Lucy, listening only to the promptings
of her heart, refused to leave Pierre, even
though he told her that Isabel was his
wife. Having brought along her
painting materials, she intended to support
herself as a painter of portraits. Isabel
disliked the idea of a third woman in the
home, but she was powerless to turn
Lucy out. The two women lived in 9
state of distrustful and watchful truce.
Glen Stanly and Lucy's brother, not
wishing to see Lucy remain near Pierre,
sent him a letter of premeditated insults
in hopes of provoking him. Angered by
their message, Pierre found two pistols
in the apartment of a friend and set out
to find Stanly and Lucy's brother. He
encountered them on a crowded street.
When they met, Stanly lashed at Pierre
with a whip, whereupon Pierre drew his
pistols and killed his cousin. The police
immediately seized Pierre and took him
to prison.
In prison, Pierre had no hope of life.
2867

Nor did he care to live, for he felt that
fate had been too cruel to him. One
evening Isabel and Lucy were allowed to
visit him for a few hours. When Isabel
revealed that she was Pierre's sister, the
shock of her announcement killed Lucy
immediately. Pierre, driven mad by her
death, seized a vial of poison which he
knew Isabel carried in her bosom. He
drank a portion of the poison, and Isabel
emptied the vial of the remainder.
A short time later Lucy's brother came
looking for her, still hoping to rescue
her from Pierre's influence. When the
turnkey opened the cell door, Pierre was
already dead, lying close to Lucy. Isabel
still had sufficient life to say that no one
had known the real Pierre. Then she too
died, completing the tragedy of then
ambiguous relationships.
2868

PILGRIMAGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Dorothy M. Richardson (1873-1957)
Time: 1893-1911
Locale: England, Germany, Switzerland
First published: Pointed Roofs, 1915; Backwater, 1916; Honeycomb, 1917; The Tunnel,
1919; Interim, 1919; Deadlock, 1921; Revolving Lights, 1923; The Trap, 1925; Oberland,
1927; Dawn's Left Hand, 1931; Clear Horizon, 1935; Dimple Hill, 1938
Principal characters:
Miriam Henderson
Harriet,
Sarah, and
Eve, her sisters
Gerald, Harriet's husband
Fraulein Pfaff, a German schoolmistress
Dr. Orly, head of a dental clinic
Dr. Hancock, a dentist
"Hypo" Wilson, a writer and socialist
Alma, his wife
Eleanor Dear, a nurse
Mrs. Bailey, a boarding-house keeper
Dr. Densley, Miriam's friend
Michael Shatov, a young socialist
Amabel, Miriam's young friend, later Mrs. Shatov
Of the writers who added to the
dimensions and technical resources of fiction in
the first half of this century, Dorothy
Richardson is the least read and the most
inaccessible. The single novels of her
twelve-part sequence, Pilgrimage, are
now out of print and five, except for
some imported sheets of the four-volume
collected edition, have never been
published in this country. Critical material
on her writing is negligible—an early
monograph by John Cowper Powys, brief
discussions in histories of the English
novel, two or three scattered articles, a
handful of reviews. For all critical
purposes her career ended in 1938, so that
when she died in 1957 she had oudived
both her work and her minor reputation.
Yet in all that has been written about
her there is general agreement that she
contributed significantly to the stream-
of-consciousness technique of the modern
novel. Critical neglect of her books is
all the more remarkable in view of the
adulation accorded fellow pioneers like
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
Certainly Dorothy Richardson has never
received the attention which her position
as an innovator warrants.
It was John Middleton Murry who
first called attention to the historical and
critical importance of her first novel. In
"The Break-up of the Novel," printed in
The Yale Review in 1923. he called
attention to the fact that between 191S
and 1916 three books calling themselves
novels but trying in a new way to
present character and the texture of
experience had quietly appeared. In France,
Marcel Proust had published Du Cdtd
de chez Swann in 1913. Two years
later came Dorothy Richardson's Pointed
Roofs, followed by Joyce's A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man in 1916.
(Virginia Woolf, who would now be
bracketed with these three, did not begin
her own assault on the conventions of
the naturalistic tradition until 1919.) In
these novels the writers, working inde-
pendendy, were shown in the process of
creating new techniques for recording the
development of consciousness without the
mediation of story or plot. This was
the narrative method to which May
Sinclair, reviewing Dorothy Richardson's
novels in 1918, applied the term "stream-
2869

of-consciousness," after a phrase from
William James.
In a sense Miss Richardson's method
is an elaborate but logical extension of
Henry James's theory of the "point of
view"—with one important difference.
Although James tried by everv means at
his command to identify himself with one
or another of his characters, he
nevertheless remained unobtrusively on the scene
to direct that character's view of things
and to control the flow of time. But in
Miss Richardson's novel the scene as a
dramatic unit has disappeared and time
has become only a pattern of impressions
and sensations arranged not in
chronological sequence but by a process of
immediate perception or association. The
result is a record of experience lived
wholly from within, a sens'itively
conceived, extended internal monologue
presenting what is in many ways the most
complete and revealing portrait of a
woman in all literature.
The novel may be called a portrait
because in the world of Miss Richardson's
fiction character is the beginning and end
of all experience. Pilgrimage presents no
view of the individual in relation to
family or society, or to some great concept
like good or evil. There is only the view
of personality in relation to itself in the
life of the heart or the life of the mind.
This is not the world of feminine
perception we find in the ironic propriety of
Jane Austen, the emotional intensity of
the Bronzes, the moral earnestness of
George Eliot, or the quicksilver play of
fancy and fact in the novels of Virginia
Woolf. It is something more somber and
primitive dredged from the depths of
being and thrown upon the page without
selection, order, or comment.
Dorothy Richardson makes no break
with tradition, however, in the substance
of her novel. Pilgrimage "tells" the rather
conventional story, partly by inference
through references to things past, partly
by direct impressionism, of Miriam
Henderson through an eighteen-year period
during which she progresses from the
awkwardness and confusion of
adolescence to the calm of maturity. In Pointed
Roofs she appears as one of four sisters
—Harriet, Miriam, Eve, and Sarah—in a
middle-class family of some means living
in a pleasant suburban home. When the
novel opens the family is facing a crisis.
Mr. Henderson, who has lived on an
inherited income, has, in a way never made
clear, lost most of his money, and his
daughters are about to be thrown on their
own resources. Harriet becomes engaged
to Gerald. Miriam and Eve plan to teach.
Sarah will stay at home with her parents.
At seventeen Miriam secures a post in
Fraulein Pfaff's private school in
Germany; her intention is to familiarize
herself with the language and later to return
to teach German in England. Her stay
in Germany lasts only a year.
Unknowingly she has attracted the interest of
Pastor Lahmann, a friend of Fraulein
Pfaff's, and the headmistress, jealous,
dismisses her.
Returning to England, Miriam
becomes a teacher at Wordsworth House,
a school conducted by the Misses Perne
in London. There she meets Grace and
Florrie Bloom, who are to become her
lifelong friends. She meets Ted, but
because she spends so much time with Max
at a dance she loses him. Lafer Max dies
in New York. Although the Misses Perne
are pleased with her instruction, she
becomes dissatisfied and leaves Wordsworth
House at the end of the year to become
a governess in the Corrie household in
the country. Harriet finally marries
Gerald. Miriam is forced to give up her
position in order to go to Brighton with her
mother, who is dying of cancer.
After her mother's death Miriam feels
that she is at last free to find a different
life for herself. Harriet and Sarah are
married, and Eve has become a governess
in the home of a wealthy family in
Wales. Miriam becomes the assistant in a
dental clinic conducted bv Dr. Orly, his
son, and Dr. Hancock. Through them
she meets new people and forms new
friendships. She also renews her
association with Alma, a former school friend
now married to "Hypo" Wilson, who is
2870

gaining some fame as a writer. Miriam
goes to visit them at their house in the
country. She also finds herself looking
after Eleanor Dear, a neurotic nurse
suffering from tuberculosis. Through Eve
she meets Dr. Densley, who is to become
another Ifelong; friend. During this time
she lives in a boarding-house owned by
Mrs. Bailey in Tanslev Street.
At Mrs. Bailey's she meers Michael
Shatov, a young Russian Jew, and
through him she becomes interesfed in
literature and in socialism. When Shatov
proposes to her she accepts, even though
she cannot bring herself to marry him
because of his race. Meanwhile, Mr.
Henderson has died, Harriet and Gerald
have apparently lost their money, and
Eve has moved back and forth between
London and Wales. She finally opens a
shop in the suburbs where Harriet and
her husband have a rooming-house.
Through Shatov and "Hypo" Wilson,
Miriam has become interested in a
socialist organization called the Lycurgans.
She breaks her engagement to Shatov
because, as we learn later, he has become
Eleanor Dear's lover. Miriam herself has
fallen in love with Wilson.
After Dr. Orly's retirement Mir»am
becomes Dr. Hancock's assistant when he
opens an office of his own. To
supplement her income she begins to write
literary reviews. She also leaves Mrs.
Bailey's for a time and shares a flat with
Selina Holland, a social worker. The two
women quarrel and she returns to the
board'ng-house. At Dr. Denslev's
suggestion she goes to Switzerland for a
vacation. On her return to London she hears
that Eleanor Dear is dead. Dr. Densley
wan*s her to marry him. but she refuses.
Insfead, she becomes "Hvpo" Wilson's
mistress. When the affair fails to bring
her the peace and happiness she desires,
she becomes more disturbed than ever,
and on Shatov's recommendation she
goes to stay for six months in the
country with a family named Rescorla, at
Dimple Hill. There she finds the
freedom from self she has dreamed of Shatov
falls in love with Amabel, a young girl
in whom Miriam has taken an interest;
the two are married. Back in London,
Miriam meets "Hypo" Wilson again at a
Lvcurgan meeting. This time she sends
him on his way.
This bald outline can give no idea of
the quality of the novel or of Dorothy
Richardson's method. Through the twelve
volumes everything remains in flux, a
constantly shifting kaleidoscopic pattern
of emotion, observation, situation, and
reflection. The time of the action, like
the story, must be inferred from the
clues Miss Richardson scatters casually
through the work. In Pointed Roofs she
makes references to music, particularly
to that of Wagner. There are references
to Oscar Wilde's trial in Honeycomb.
Joseph Conrad's Typhoon is mentioned
in Revolving Lights, Arnold Bennett's
Clayhanger in Dawn's Left Hand.
Automobiles appear in Clear Horizon. From
these instances it may be gathered that
the time covered falls approximately
between 1893 and 1911. In somewhat the
same way certain of Miss Richardson's
characters supply the authenticity of a
roman a clef. "Hypo" Wilson, for
example, is obviously a portrait of H. G.
Wells, as one of his biographers has
testified, just as the Lycurgans are plainly
modeled on the Fabian Society. On an
intensely personal level, the experiences
of Miriam Henderson reflect the
personalities and the spirit of English social
and intellectual life between the
Victorian Age and World War I.
These links with the realities of time,
place, and personality do not serve Miss
Richardson's purpose as they would a less
experimental writer; her novel remains
a roughhewn segment of experience
extracted from the flux of time passing. In
spite of the writer's originality and those
qualities within the work which make for
greatness in fiction, Pilgrimage suffers in
the end from an excess of its virtues. To
follow one woman's interior life through
twelve volumes puts a strain on even the
most patient and appreciative reader. One
has a vision of Miss Richardson
resolutely hacking her way through the waste
2871

and clutter of material things in the
naturalistic tradition of the novel in order
to reveal the essence of character, but she
leaves only a rough trail behind her.
Beside the myth-making quality and the
resourcefulness of language that we find
in Joyce or the poetry of perception and
mood in the novels of Virginia Woolf,
her effects appear curiously static.
Nevertheless, the reader gets from Pilgrimage
the impression of something vast, at times
impenetrable, and, at last, meaningful.
A resolute experiment, if not always a
successful one, in the creation of a new
kind of fiction, the work seems likely to
stand as a milestone in the development
of the novel in our time.
2872

THE PILGRIMAGE OF CHARLEMAGNE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Heroic legend
Time of plot: c. 800
Locale: Paris, Jerusalem, Constantinople
First transcribed: c. 1100
Principal characters:
Charlemagne, the Frankish king, Emperor of the West
Hugo, Emperor of Greece and of Constantinople
Roland,
Oliver,
William of Orange,
Naimes,
Ogier of Denmark,
Gerin,
Berenger,
Turpin the Archbishop,
Ernaut,
Aymer,
Bernard of Brusban, and
Bertram, Charlemagne's twelve peers
Critique:
The Pilgrimage of Charlemagne, a
legend from the Middle Ages, is an old
French poem titled Pelerinage de
Charlemagne, probably the product of some
minstrel or group of storytellers who
passed the legend, in poetic form, from
one to the other and embellished it. The
poem presents Charlemagne as the
champion of Christianity, undertaking a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem in order to return
with holy relics for the churches of
France. The fact is that Charlemagne
never went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
but the legend is not confined to facts.
It reaches its most amusing highpoint
with the recital of the "gabs," the
fantastic boasts, of the twelve peers of
Charlemagne; it seems not at all surprising
that God sees to it that enough of the
"gabs" come true to satisfy Hugo of
Constantinople, Charlemagne's angry host on
the return journey from Jerusalem.
The Story:
At the Abbey of Saint Denis,
Charlemagne boasted to his queen that he
looked handsome and powerful wearing
THE PILGRIMAGE OF CHARLEMAGNE, from THE MERRY PILGRIMAGE. Translated by Mer-
nam Sherwood. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1927, by The Macmillan
Co. Renewed. All rights reserved.
his crown and carrying his great sword at
his side. The queen chided him for
boasting and declared that she knew of a king
who was even more handsome when
wearing his crown. Charlemagne angrily
answered that he would have the French
lords compare him to such a king, and
if it turned out that Charlemagne was
handsomer the queen would lose her
head. She tearfully begged his pardon,
insisting that she had not meant to
insult him; and she attempted to pacify
him by saying that the other king was
not as brave as Charlemagne. But
Charlemagne threatened to cut off the queen's
head at once if she did not tell him who
the king was whom she believed
handsomer than he. The queen at last
confessed that she had been talking about
King Hugo of Constantinople, Emperor
of Greece and much of Persia.
Charlemagne returned to Paris and
announced to the peers that he would
undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to
worship the Cross and the Holy
Sepulchre. He also intended to visit King
Hugo. For the journey the emperor's
2873

attendants were dressed in pilgrims'
robes, and the pack animals were loaded
with gold and silver.
During the pilgrimage Charlemagne
boasted to Bertram that there were eighty
thousand pilgrims in the forefront alone;
he declared that whoever led such a force
must be a great leader.
In Jerusalem, Charlemagne visited the
great cathedral, and he and his twelve
peers sat in the chairs of Christ and the
twelve apostles. When the Patriarch of
Jerusalem heard that a great man was
sitting in Christ's seat, and that twelve
men filled the other places, he went to
Charlemagne to learn who the visitor
might be. The Patriarch named the
emperor Charles Magnus and granted the
king's request for holy relics. He gave
Charlemagne a handkerchief that had
covered the head of Jesus, one of the
nails with which He had been crucified,
the crown of thorns, a knife, a chalice,
and a bowl. When the relics were given
to Charlemagne, a cripple nearby was
immediately cured.
Charlemagne spent four months in
Jerusalem; then he departed for
Constantinople after having promised the
Patriarch to destroy the Saracens.
Charlemagne and his company were
awed by the grandeur of Constantinople.
They saw beautiful gardens in which
twenty thousand knights played chess
and backgammon, and thirteen thousand
maidens worked on embroidery with
golden threads.
Charlemagne discovered King Hugo
driving a golden plow and riding on an
ornamented cushion. The king welcomed
him and invited him and his followers to
be his guests. The palace was
magnificent with paintings and hangings and
decorations in silver, gold, and rich
jewels. The palace turned with the wind so
that Charlemagne and his men could not
keep their feet. When the wind ceased
and the Frenchmen were able to stand,
dinner was served. Oliver, one of
Charlemagne's peers, was charmed by King
Hugo's daughter. The feast was
luxurious.
The king led Charlemagne and his
twelve peers to a splendid bedchamber
where they would spend their nights.
While the Frenchmen drank their wine
and told boasting stories, according to the
old custom, they were spied upon by one
of King Hugo's men, who hid under a
staircase.
Charlemagne began the boasting with
the remark that were King Hugo to
select his strongest knight and dress him
in two hauberks and two helmets,
Charlemagne would cut through the armor
with King Hugo's sword, burying the
sword so far in the ground that it would
be necessary to dig down a spear's length
to draw it out.
Roland boasted that he would take one
of Hugo's ivory horns and blow it so
loudly that all the doors in the city would
be blown down, and King Hugo would
have his cloak torn from him.
Turpin the Archbishop said that he
would leap over two running horses and
land on the back of a third while
juggling four apples.
William of Orange claimed that he
would take a mighty ball which thirty
men could not move and throw it
through the palace, knocking down a
hundred and sixty cubits of wall.
Qgier, the Duke of Denmark, made
his gab by declaring that he would crush
the pillar on which the castle turned in
the wind.
Naimes boasted that he would wear a
heavy hauberk and leap over the palace,
while Berenger said that he would jump
from the palace onto the swords of King
Hugo's knights while the blades were
sticking up from the earth.
Bernard of Brusban said that he would
divert the river and flood the city,
sending King Hugo in flight to the highest
tower in Constantinople.
Ernaut claimed that he would leap
into a vat of molten lead and sit there
until it hardened, when he would shake
himself free.
Aymer declared that he would take his
invisible cap and eat King Hugo's food
and drink his wine, capping it all by
2874

knocking the king so that he would fall
onto the table.
Bertram boasted that he would take
two shields and use them as wings, and
that while in flight he would make a cry
that would frighten all the animals and
birds of the forest.
Gerin said that he would throw a spear
from a league's distance and so shake the
palace as to cause a farthing to fall from
the top of the tower without disturbing
another farthing on which the first coin
resfed.
The spy reported to King Hugo that
Charlemagne and his men were boasting
that they could overcome the king in
various ways, and that they were making
fun of him. King Hugo was angry, and
in the morning he called his knights
together. Confronting Charlemagne as the
emperor was leaving the mass, he
declared that unless the gabs were shown
to be true he would have Charlemagne
and his peers beheaded.
Charlemagne prayed before the relics,
and an angel appeared, assuring him that
the gabs would be carried out. The angel
warned him, however, never to make
gabs about any man again.
William of Orange, challenged to
throw the mighty ball as he had boasted
he could, picked it up and threw it
through the palace. Bernard of Brusban
then diverted the river and sent King
Hugo in flight to the highest tower. God
made the waters withdraw, and King
Hugo became one of Charlemagne's
vassals.
When the two kings passed before the
French knights, all declared that
Charlemagne was the handsomer. He returned
to France in such good humor that he
forgave his queen and did not behead
her.
2875

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Type of plot: Religious allegory
Time of plot: Any time since Christ
Locale: Anywhere
First published: 1678
Principal characters:
Christian
Faithful
Hopeful
Mr. Worldly Wiseman
Evangelist
Despair
Ignorance
Apollyon, a giant devil
Critique:
This famous story of man's progress
through life to heaven or hell has often
been rated next to the Bible in importance
as a Christian document. In any case, it
remains one of the most pleasing
allegories of the Christian way ever written.
Bunyan, an early Puritan, wished to write
a book which would be popular with the
common people as well as with
intellectuals. His characters are more than simple
symbols; they are real people. The story
can be read as a symbolic narrative, a
picaresque romance, and a realistic novel.
The Story:
One day, according to Bunyan, he lay
down in a den to sleep, and in his sleep
dreamed that he saw a man standing in
a field and crying out in pain and
sorrow because he and his whole family as
well as the town in which they lived were
to be destroyed. Christian, for that was
his name, knew of this catastrophe
because he had read about it in the book he
held in his hands, the Bible. Evangelist,
the preacher of Christianity, soon came
up to Christian and presented him with
a roll of paper on which it was written
that he should flee from the wrath of God
and make his way from the City of
Destruction to the City of Zion. Running
home with this hope of salvation,
Christian tried to get his neighbors and family
to go away with him, but they would not
listen and thought he was either sick
or mad. Finally, shutting his ears to his
family's entreaties to stay with them, he
ran off toward the light in the distance.
Under the light he knew he would find
the wicket gate which opened into
Heaven.
On his way he met Pliant and
Obstinate, who so distracted Christian that he
fell in a bog called the Slough of
Despond. He could not get out because
of the bundle of sins on his back. Finally
Help came along and aided Christian out
of the sticky mire. Going on his way,
he soon fell in with Mr. Worldly
Wiseman, who tried to convince Christian he
would lead a happier life if he gave up
his trip toward the light and settled down
to the comforts of a burdenless town life.
Fearing that Christian was about to be
led astray, Evangelist came up to the
two men and quickly showed the errors
in Mr. Worldly Wiseman's arguments.
Soon Christian arrived at a closed gate
where he met Good-Will, who told him
that if he knocked the gate would be
opened to him. Christian did so.
Invited into the gatekeeper's house by the
Interpreter, he learned from him the
meaning of many of the Christian
mysteries. He was shown pictures of Christ
and Passion and Patience; Despair in
a cage of iron bars; and finally a vision
of the Day of Judgment, when evil men
will be sent to the bottomless pit and
good men will be carried up to Heaven.
2876

Having seen these things, Christian was
filled with both hope and fear.
Continuing on his journey, he came to the Holy
Cross and the Sepulchre of Christ. There
his burden of sins fell off, and he was
able to take to the road with renewed
vigor.
Soon he met Sloth, Simple,
Presumption, Formalism, and Hypocrisy, but he
kept to his way and they kept to theirs.
Later Christian lay down to sleep for a
while. When he went on again, he
forgot to pick up the roll of paper
Evangelist had given him. Remembering it
later, he ran back to find it. Running
to make up the time lost, he suddenly
found himself confronted by two lions.
He was afraid to pass by them until the
porter of the house by the side of the
road told him that the lions were chained,
and that he had nothing to fear. The
porter then asked Christian to come into
the house. There he was well-treated
and shown some of the relics of Biblical
antiquity by four virgins, Discretion,
Prudence, Piety, and Charity. They gave
him good advice and sent him on his
journey armed with the sword and shield
of Christian faith.
In the Valley of Humiliation, Christian
was forced to fight the giant devil, Apol-
lyon, whose body was covered with the
shiny scales of pride. In this battle
Christian was wounded, but after he had
chased away the devil, he healed his
wounds with leaves from the Tree of
Life which grew nearby. After the Valley
of Humiliation came the Valley of the
Shadow of Death in which Christian had
to pass one of the gat°s to Hell. In order
to save himself from the devils who issued
out of that terrible hole, he recited some
of the verses from the Psalms.
Having passed through this danger, he
had to go by the caves of the old giants,
Pope and Pagan, and when he had done
so he caught up with a fellow traveler,
Faithful. As the two companions went
along, they met Evangelist, who warned
them of the dangers in the town of Vanity
Fair.
Vanity Fair was a town of ancient
foundation which since the beginning of
time had tried to lure men away from the
path to Heaven. Here all the vanities of
the world were sold, and the people who
dwelt there were cruel and stupid and
had no love for travelers such as Christian
and Faithful. Having learned these
things, the two companions promised to
be careful and went on down into the
town. There they were arrested and tried
because they would buy none of the
town's goods. Faithful was sentenced to
be burned alive and Christian was put
in prison. When Faithful died in the
fire, a chariot came down from Heaven
and took him up to God. Christian
escaped from the prison. Accompanied by
a young man named Hopeful, who had
been impressed by Faithful's reward, he
set off once more.
They passed through the Valley of
Ease, where they were tempted to dig in
a silver mine free to all. As they left
the valley, they saw the pillar of salt
which had once been Lot's wife.
Becoming lost, they were captured by a giant,
Despair, who lived in Doubting Castle,
and were locked in the vaults beneath
the casde walls. There they lay until
Christian remembered he had a key called
Promise in his pocket, and with this they
escaped from the prison.
TTiey met the four sheperds,
Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere,
who showed them the Celestial Gate and
warned them of the paths to Hell. Then
the two pilgrims passed by the Valley of
Conceit, where they were met by
Ignorance and other men who had not kept to
the straight and narrow path. They
passed on to the country of Beulah. Far
off they saw the gates of the city of
Heaven glistening with pearls and
precious stones. Thinking that all their
troubles were behind them, they lay
down to rest.
When they went on toward the city,
they came to the River of Death. They
entered the river and began to wade
through the water. Soon Christian
became afraid, and the more afraid he
became the deeper the waters rolled.
2877

Hopeful shouted to him to have hope and
faith. Cheered by these words, Christian
became less afraid, the water became less
deep, and finally they both got across
safely. They ran up the hill toward
Heaven. Shining angels led them through
the gates.
2878

THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Norwegian seaport
First presented: 1877
Principal characters:
Consul Bernick, the leader of the town
Mrs. Bernick, his wife
Olaf, their son
Martha, the consul's sister
Johan Tonnesen, Mrs. Bemick's brother
Lona Hessel, her stepsister
Doctor Rorlund, a schoolmaster
Dina Dorf, Bemick's charge
Aune, a foreman shipbuilder
Critique:
The Pillars of Society is a play
concerned only with everyday realities, and
it is one of the few plays by Ibsen in
which the plot is more important than
the characters. At times the plot is
cumbersome, for so many characters are required
to tell the story that the cast becomes
unwieldy. The plot is almost too mechanical
in arrangement and solution. Conscience
triumphs almost automatically, just in
time to bring the play to a close. But there
are touches of Ibsen's genius throughout,
and these justify a technique less perfect
than that which we expect from a master
dramatist.
The Story:
Consul Bemick was the unquestioned
leader of the town, with his wealth and
influence extending into every enterprise.
He owned the large shipyard which was
the source of most of the townspeople's
income, and he had successfully fought the
project of building a seacoast railway. But
he had introduced machines into the
yards, and Aune, his foreman, was stirring
up the workmen because the machines
meant the loss of jobs. Bernick, not
wishing to have his authority questioned,
threatened Aune with loss of his job if he
did not stop his speaking and writing
against the machines.
There was only one breath of scandal
about Consul Bernick, and that concerned
his wife's family. Many years before
Johan Tonnesen, her brother, had been
seen leaving the rear window of the houte
of Mrs. Dorf, a married woman. Later
Johan left town and went to America. It
was said that before he left he stole the
strongbox containing Bemick's mother's
fortune. What made the matter worse was
that Mrs. Bemick's stepsister, Lona
Hessel, had followed her younger stepbrother
to America and had been like a mother to
him. Only Bemick's standing in the town
prevented his ruin, and he had made it
clear to his wife that her family was a
disgrace to him.
Mrs. Dorf's husband deserted her and
their daughter. When Mrs. Dorf died soon
afterward, Bemick's sister Martha took the
child into their home. The girl, Dina,
was a constant annoyance to Bemick. Not
only did she have a disgraceful
background, but she talked constantly about
exercising her own free will ana acting
independently of his desires. Dr. Rorlund,
the schoolmaster, loved Dina, but he
would not marry her or let anyone know
his attachment because he was afraid of
the town's feelings about her. His
beautiful words about goodness and kindness
concealed his moral cowardice. He
promised that when he could improve her
position they would be married.
2879

In the meantime Bernick had changed
his mind about allowing a railroad to come
to the community. Formerly the proposed
road would have competed with his
shipping. Now he realized that a spur line
through the town would bring timber and
minerals to his shipyard. The railroad
would be a good thing for the town
because it was a good thing for Bernick. He
was aiding the town, a pillar of society.
There was constant trouble at the
shipyard. The American owners of a ship he
was repairing had cabled him to get her
under way immediately, although the ship
was so rotted that it would require several
weeks to make her safe. Bernick was torn
between the profits to be gained by
getting her afloat at once and the conscience
that kept him from sending her crew to
certain death.
He grew even more disturbed because
Lona and Johan had returned from
America and the town had revived the old
gossip. Many tried to ignore the pair, but
Lona refused to be ignored. She felt no
disgrace, nor did Johan.
Johan and Dina were at once drawn to
each other, and she begged him to take
her back to America so that she could be
free and independent. Bernick and his
wife would not hear of this plan, but for
quite different reasons. Mrs. Bernick still
felt her brother's disgrace. Bernick,
however, knew that Johan was blameless. It
had been Bernick, not Johan. who had
been forced to flee the married woman's
house. Johan had taken the blame because
he had no great reputation to save and he
was anxious to leave the town and strike
out for himself. What he did not know
was that Bernick had spread the story
about the theft of his mother's money.
Johan, thinking that the town would
soon have forgotten a boyish escapade with
another man's wife, renewed his promise
not to tell that it was Bernick who had
been involved. He told Bernick that Lona
knew the true story but that she would
not reveal the secret. Johan was grateful
to Martha, Bernick's sister, for caring for
Dina. Martha had refused several offers
of marriage in order to care for the younger
girl who had been so disgracefully
orphaned.
Johan learned also that Martha had not
married because she had always loved
him and had waited for him to return.
Martha told Johan that her brother's strict
moral principles had made him condemn
Johan and try to turn her against him.
Johan was puzzled, for he thought Bernick
had been grateful to him for assuming
Bernick's own guilt. Johan could not
understand his brother-in-law's attitude.
Lona, too, forgave Bernick for his past
acts, even his jilting of her in favor of her
rich stepsister. Bernick told her why he
had acted as he did. His mother's business
had been in great danger, and he had
needed money to avoid bankruptcy. For
that reason he had renounced Lona, whom
he loved, for her wealthier relative. For
the same reason he had spread the story
that Johan had taken old Mrs. Bernick's
money. In reality, there had been no
money at all; had the town learned the
truth, it would have meant ruin for
Bernick. Bernick completely justified
himself by saying that as the pillar of the
town he had been forced to act deceitfully
and maliciously.
Lona begged him to tell the truth at
last, to keep his life from being built on
a lie. Bernick said that the cost was too
great; he could not lose his money and
his position. In addition, the railway
project would fail if a whisper of scandal
were heard. The railway was to make
Bernick a millionaire.
While he struggled with his conscience
over this problem, repair of the American
ship still confronted him. He forced
Aune to get her ready to sail in two days,
even though her unseaworthiness meant
death for her crew. At the same time he
laid plans to pretend that it was Aune who
had failed to take proper time and
precautions to make the vessel safe. Then
he would stop the sailing and take credit
for losing his profit rather than risk the
lives of the sailors. He needed public
acclaim, for soon the town would learn that
he had bought up all the land through
2880

which the railroad would run. It would be
hard to convince the townspeople that
they would benefit from his wealth.
To make matters worse, Johan became
difficult. He had not known about the
story of the theft, but he would forgive the
lie if Bemick would now tell the truth.
Johan wanted to marry Dina, but his
name must first be cleared. Bemick
refused the pleas of both Johan and Lona,
lest he be ruined. He would not release
Johan from his promise of secrecy. Lona
would not tell the true story because she
still loved Bernick. Besides, she thought
he himself should tell the truth so that he
would be whole again. When Johan,
planning to leave on the American ship, vowed
to return in two months and to tell the
truth at that time, Bernick decided to
allow the ship to sail. If it sank, he would
be free of Johan forever.
On the night of the sailing Bernick
arranged for a celebration in his honor for
the purpose of getting the citizens into
the proper frame of mind before they
learned that he had bought property along
the railroad route. Shortly before the
celebration he learned that his son Olaf had
stowed away on the unseaworthy ship. He
tried to call it back, but it was already out
to sea. Then he was told that Johan had
taken Dina with him to America, but
that they had sailed on a different ship.
He would lose his son and gain nothing.
He was overjoyed when he learned that
his wife had found the boy on board and
brought him home before the ship sailed.
Word came also that Aune stopped the
sailing of the ship and brought her back
to the harbor. Bemick, saved from the evil
of his deeds, stood up before the
townspeople and confessed that he and not
Johan had been the guilty man. He
promised also that he would share the
profits from the railroad. Lona was happy.
She told Bernick that at last he had found
the real pillars of society—truth and
freedom. Only on them could society build a
firm foundation.
2881

THE PILOT
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Revolutionary War
Locale: Northeastern coast of England
First published: 1823
Principal characters:
Lt. Richard Barnstable, commander of the Ariel
Mr. Edward Griffith, an officer aboard an American
Long Tom Coffin, coxswain of the Ariel
Mr. Merry, a midshipman
Mr. Gray, the pilot, in reality John Paul Jones
Colonel Howard, a Tory
Katherine Plowdbn, his niece
Cecilia Howard, another niece of Colonel Howard
Captain Manual, an officer of the Marine Corps
Captain Borroughcliffe, a British officer
Christopher Dillon, kinsman of Colonel Howard
Alice Dunscombe, friend of Katherine and Cecilia
Critique:
While a number of earlier poems and
stories had presented fragmentary
pictures of seafaring life and some details
of the handling of ships, it was not until
1823, when Cooper's sea romance
appeared, that the first genuine sea novel
was published. For the technical
material of his story Cooper drew upon his
six years of service in the United States
Navy. Since the time of its publication
the novel has been popular with readers
of many lands and all ages. While Cooper
never names the pilot whose activities
give the novel its tide, it is generally
understood that the unknown seaman
was John Paul Jones.
frigate
The Story:
Toward the close of a bleak wintry
day during the American Revolution, a
small schooner and a frigate sailed through
shoal waters off the northeastern coast of
England and anchored in a small bay
beneath some towering cliffs. As darkness
setded, a whaleboat was put ashore from
the schooner Ariel. The boat was in
charge of the Ariel's commander,
Lieutenant Richard Barnstable, who had been
ordered to make a landing near the cliffs
and bring off a pilot known only as Mr.
Gray.
With the aid of a weather-beaten old
Nantucket whaler, Long Tom Coffin,
Barnstable chmbed the cliff and there
met his mysterious passenger, a man of
middle height and sparing speech.
Before he had completed his mission,
however, he also encountered Katherine Plow-
den, his fiancee, who gave him a letter
and a signal book. The girl was staying
temporarily at the St. Ruth's Abbey
manor house, the home of her uncle,
Colonel Howard, a wealthy South
Carolina Tory who had fled from America at
the outbreak of the war From her
Barnstable learned that another niece, Cecilia
Howard, and her friend, Alice
Dunscombe, were also guests at the abbey.
Cecilia was in love with Lieutenant
Edward Griffith, first officer aboard the
frigate. Alice Dunscombe was reported
to be in love with the mysterious pilot,
but she refused to marry him because she
was completely Loyalist in her
sympathies.
Darkness had fallen by the time the
pilot had been put aboard the deck of
the frigate, and a storm was rising. Cap
tain Munson of the frigate alone knew
the pilot's identity, a secret concealed
from everyone else aboard the ship and
its escort, the Ariel. Captain Munson,
seeing the pilot by the light of the batde-
lantems on deck, thought him gready
2882

changed in appearance since their last
meeting.
As the storm rose, the pilot guided the
frigate safely through dangerous, wind-
lashed shoal waters and out to open sea.
At sunrise the frigate signaled the Ariel
and ordered Barnstable to go aboard the
larger ship for a council of war. There
plans were made to harass the English
by sending landing parties ashore to raid
the mansions and estates of the gentry in
the neighborhood.
Barnstable wanted these expeditions to
serve another purpose, for he hoped to
rescue Katherine Plowden and Cecilia
Howard from the abbey, where they lived
unhappily with Colonel Howard, their
uncle and guardian.
Meanwhile, at the abbey, Colonel
Howard was holding a conference with
Christopher Dillon, a kinsman, and
Captain Borroughcliffe, a British officer in
charge of a small detachment of troops
stationed at the abbey. Dillon, an
impoverished gentleman, hoped to marry,
with the colonel's approval, one of his
wealthy cousins. The three men
discussed the progress of the American
Revolution, other political questions, and the
piracies of John Paul Jones. They agreed
that extra precautions should be taken,
for there were rumors that Jones himself
had been seen in the neighborhood.
That night Griffith and the pilot,
accompanied by a Marine Corps captain
named Manual, went ashore on a
scouting expedition. Because of Griffith's
imprudent conduct, they were seen and
seized. When a sentry reported the
arrest of strange seamen lurking in the
neighborhood, Captain Borroughcliffe
ordered them brought to the abbey for
examination.
On their arrival at the abbey the
prisoners would say only that they were
seamen out of employment, a suspicious
circumstance in itself. When the seamen
offered no further information of any
consequence, they were imprisoned to
await BorroughclifFe's pleasure.
Katherine and Cecilia bribed the sentry on duty
and obtained permission to visit the
prisoners. They recognized Griffith in
disguise. Alice Dunscombe also went to
visit the pilot, whom she recognized.
After drinking too much wine at dinner,
Borroughcliffe began to interview the
men and in his intoxicated condition
unwittingly helped them to escape.
Believing that the men had come from
a ship lying offshore, Dillon mounted a
horse and rode to a neighboring bay,
where the war cutter Alacrity lay at
anchor. Alarmed at the possible presence
of an American ship in the neighborhood,
*he cutter put out to sea, with Dillon
-vmong its volunteer crew. Barnstable and
Long Tom Coffin, waiting in the Ariel's
whaleboat, engaged the cutter in a
furious battle that ended when Coffin pinned
the captain of the cutter to the mast with
his whaler's harpoon. Dillon was among
the prisoners taken. Frightened, he
offered to return to the abbey and, in
return for his own freedom, secure the
release of the Americans held there.
After their escape, the pilot left
Griffith and Manual, who rejoined a party of
marines that had remained in hiding
while their captain went with Griffith
and the pilot to reconnoiter the abbey.
Attacked by Borroughcliffe and his troops,
the marines were surrounded. Griffith
was recaptured and Manual was forced
to surrender.
Trusting Dillon's word of honor,
Barnstable had sent Long Tom Coffin with
Dillon to the abbey to arrange for the
transfer of prisoners. But Dillon,
dishonoring his parole, had Coffin held
prisoner while he and Borroughcliffe planned
to trap Barnstable and his men. When
Borroughcliffe boasted of his intentions,
Coffin made a surprise attack upon him
and seized and bound the British officer.
He then followed Dillon to the
apartments of Katherine and Cecilia and there
took Dillon prisoner. He succeeded in
getting Dillon aboard the Ariel as a
British battery on the shore opened fire
on the schooner. A lucky shot wrecked
her mainmast as the schooner put out
to sea, where a heavy storm completed
the Ariel's destruction.
2883

Before the schooner sank, Barnstable, a
true captain, decided to go down with
his ship, and he ordered Mr. Merry, a
midshipman, to take charge of the crew
and lower the boats. Coffin threw
Barnstable overboard and in this manner saved
his commander's life. The ship went
down with Coffin and Dillon aboard.
When Dillon's body was later washed up
by the sea, Barnstable ordered his burial.
Shortly afterward Mr. Merry appeared
at the abbey in the disguise of a peddler.
Barnstable himself signaled by means of
flags to Katherine, using signals from
the code book which she had given him.
Later they met secretly and laid plans
for surprising the abbey and the soldiers
who guarded it. Borroughcliffe had wind
of the plot, however, and Barnstable
walked into Borroughcliffe's ambush. But
at this juncture the pilot arrived with a
party of marines from the frigate and
made prisoners of the Tories and the
British.
Later Griffith released Borroughcliffe
and his soldiers because Borroughcliffe
had behaved in an honorable manner
toward his prisoners. There was a final
interview between Alice Dunscombe and
the pilot. During their talk she addressed
him as John and said that if she should
speak his real name the whole
countryside would ring with it. The pilot insisted
that he would continue his activities for
the cause of patriotism, regardless of the
unsavory reputation it might gain for him
in England. Colonel Howard and his
two nieces were taken aboard the frigate
for the return voyage to America.
But the American ship was not yet out
of danger. The next morning a man-of-
war broke through the morning mists, her
decks cleared for action. There was
tremendous activity aboard the frigate in
preparation for trie battle, and the women
were taken below for safety as the
English ship of the line blazed a three-tiered
broadside at the American vessel. One
shot struck Captain Munson and cut him
down. Griffith, who now knew the pilot's
identity begged for permission to reveal
it to the crew, to encourage them in the
fight, but the pilot refused. Meanwhile
the British ship had been reinforced by
two others, but the Americans were lucky
enough to disable the smallest of their
attackers. Then, as the other ships closed
in upon the battered American ship, the
pilot took the wheel and daringly guided
her through the shoal waters that only he
knew well. Out-maneuvered, the
pursuing British ships dropped behind.
Colonel Howard, wounded during the
engagement, lived long enough to see
his nieces married by the ship's chaplain
to their lovers. He aied insisting that he
was too old to change his politics and
blessing the king.
The frigate sailed to Holland, where
the pilot was put ashore. To all but
Griffith, among those who watched his
small boat dwindling to a speck against
the horizon, his identity remained a
mystery.
2884

THE PIONEERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of ylot: 1793
Locale: New York State
First published: 1823
Principal characters:
Judge Temple, a frontier landowner
Elizabeth Temple, his daughter
Natty Bumppo, an old hunter, sometimes called Leatherstocking
Oliver Edwards, in reality Edward Oliver Effingham, Natty's young friend
Indian John, Natty's Indian companion
Hiram Doolittle, a local magistrate
Critique:
The Pioneers, or The Sources of the
Susquehanna was the first of the Leather-
stocking Tales written by Cooper. A
romantic story of life in upstate New
York ten years after the Revolutionary
War, it has historical importance as the
first true romance of the frontier in
American literature. The novel is filled
with scenes of hunting and trapping life,
the description of Templeton being
drawn from Cooper's memories of his
own boyhood in Cooperstown. Although
romantic in effect, the novel presents
with considerable realism the character
of Natty Bumppo, the old hunter and
frontiersman. His fate and the death of
Indian John point to the tragedy of the
Indian and the wilderness scout; neither
had a place in the life of a developed
frontier.
Vhe Story:
On a cold December day in 1793,
Judge Temple and his daughter Elizabeth
were traveling by sleigh through a snow-
covered tract of wilderness near the
settlement of Templeton. Elizabeth, who
had been away from her home attending
a female seminary, was now returning to
preside over her father's household in the
community in which he had been a
pioneer settler after the Revolutionary War.
Hearing the baying of hounds, the judge
decided that Leatherstocking, an old
hunter, had started game in the hills, and
he ordered his coachman to stop the sleigh
so he could have a shot at the deer if
it came in his direction. A few minutes
later, as a great buck leaped into the
road, the judge fired both barrels of his
fowling piece at the animal, but
apparently without effect. Then a third report
and a fourth were heard, and the buck
dropped dead in a snowbank.
At the same time Natty Bumppo, the
old hunter, and a young companion
appeared from the woodland. The judge
insisted that he had shot the buck, but
Leatherstocking, by accounting for all the
shots fired, proved the judge could not
have killed the animal. The argument
ended when the young stranger revealed
that he had been wounded by one of the
shots fired by the judge. Elizabeth and
her father then insisted that he
accompany them into the village in their sleigh,
so he could have his wound dressed as
soon as possible.
The young man got into the sleigh
with obvious reluctance and said little
during the drive. In a short time the
party arrived at the Temple mansion,
where his wound was treated. In answer
to the judge's questions, he gave his name
as Oliver Edwards. His manner remained
distant and reserved. After he had
departed, a servant in the Temple home
reported that Edwards had appeared three
weeks before in the company of old
Leatherstocking and that he lived in a
nearby cabin with the hunter and an
Indian known as Indian John.
Judge Temple, wishing to make
amends for having accidentally wounded
2885

Edwards, offered him a position as his
secretary. When Elizabeth added her
own entreaties to those of her father,
Edwards finally accepted the judge's offer,
with the understanding that he would be
free to terminate his employment at any
time. For a while he attended faithfully
and earnesdy to his duties in Judge
Temple's mansion during the day, but
his nights he spent in Leatherstocking's
cabin. So much secrecy surrounded his
comings and goings, and the reserve of
Leatherstocking and his Indian friend,
that Richard Jones, the sheriff and a
kinsman of the judge, became suspicious.
Among other things, he wondered why
Natty always kept his cabin closed and
never allowed anyone except the Indian
and Edwards to enter it. Jones and some
others decided that Natty had discovered
a mine and was working it. Jones also
suspected that Edwards was an Indian
half-breed, his father a Delaware chief.
Hiram Doolittle, the local magistrate,
prowled around the shack and set free the
dogs guarding it. In the meantime
Elizabeth and Louisa Grant, the minister's
daughter, went walking in the woods.
There they were attacked by a savage
panther and were saved only by the
timely arrival of Leatherstocking, who
shot the animal. But Natty had also shot
a deer, in defiance of Judge Temple's
strict game laws. With the charge that
the old hunter had killed a deer out of
season as his pretext, Doolittle persuaded
Judge Temple to sign a warrant so that
the magistrate could gain entrance to the
cabin and search it. Jones was more
convinced than ever that Leatherstocking
was secretly smelting ore he had mined.
But when Doolittle went to the cabin,
Leatherstocking, rifle in hand, refused
him entrance. Then the magistrate
attempted to force his way over the
threshold, but the old hunter seized him and
threw him twenty feet down an
embankment. As the result of his treatment of
an officer, Leatherstocking was arrested.
Found guilty, he was given a month's
jail sentence, a fine, and placed in the
stocks for a few hours. When Elizabeth
went to see what assistance she could
give the humiliated old woodsman, she
learned he was planning to escape.
Edwards, who had given up his position
with the judge, was planning to flee with
his aged friend; he had provided a cart
in which to carry the old hunter to safety.
Elizabeth promised to meet
Leatherstocking the following day on the top of a
nearby mountain and to bring with her
a can of gunpowder he needed.
The next day Elizabeth and her friend
Louisa started out on their expedition to
meet Leatherstocking. On the way Louisa
changed her mind and turned back,
declaring that she dared not walk
unprotected through the woods where they
had lately been menaced by a panther.
Elizabeth went on alone until she came
to a clearing in which she found old
Indian John, now dressed in the war
costume and feathers of a great Mohican
chief. When she stopped to speak to the
Indian, she suddenly became aware of
dense clouds of smoke drifting across the
clearing and discovered that the whole
mountainside was ablaze. At that
moment Edwards appeared, followed by
Leatherstocking, who led them to a cave
in the side of the mountain. There the
old Indian died of exhaustion, and
Elizabeth learned that he had been in earlier
days Chingachgook, a great and noble
warrior of the Mohican tribe.
When danger of the fire had passed,
Edwards conducted Elizabeth down the
mountainside until she was within
hearing of a party of men who were looking
for her. Before they parted, Edwards
promised he would soon reveal his true
identity.
The next day the sheriff led a posse
up the mountain in search of Leather-
stocking and those who had aided him in
his escape from jail. Leatherstocking was
again prepared to defend with his rifle the
cave to which he had taken Elizabeth
the day before, but Edwards declared
that the time had now come to let the
truth be known. He and Natty brought
from the depths of the cave an old man
seated in a chair. The stranger's face was
2886

grave and dignified, but his vacant eyes
showed that his mind was gone. Edwards
announced that the old man was really
the owner of the property on which they
stood. Judge Temple interrupted witn
a shout of surprise and greeted the old
man as Major Effingham.
The young man told his story. His
name, he said, was Edward Oliver
Effingham, and he was the grandson of the old
man who sat before them. His own father
had been, before the Revolutionary War,
a close friend of Judge Temple. They
had gone into business together, but the
outbreak of the war found them on
opposite sides during the struggle. Judge
Temple had some money entrusted to
him by his friend, money which actually
belonged to his friend's father, but when
he received no reply to letters he wrote
to the Effinghams he at last decided that
all the family had been lost in a
shipwreck off Nova Scotia. The money he
had invested in his own enterprises.
The judge had never met Major
Effingham; he would not have recognized him
if he had seen the helpless old man who
had for years been hidden in the cabin
on the outskirts of Templeton. During
those years he was nursed faithfully by
Leatherstocking and his Indian friend;
by Leatherstocking because he had served
with the major on the frontier years
before, by Indian John because the major
was an adopted member of the Mohican
tribe.
Judge Temple ordered that the old
man be carried to the Temple mansion
at once, where he would receive the best
of care. Old Major Effingham thought
himself back home once more, and his
eyes gleamed with joy. He died, happy
and well cared for, soon afterward.
Edward Effingham also explained his
belief that Judge Temple had stolen his
father's property and the money left in
trust years before. In his resentment he
had come to Templeton to assist his
grandfather and regain in some manner
die property which he believed Judge
Temple had unrightfully possessed. Now
the judge was happy to return that part
of the property which belonged to the
Effinghams, and there was a
reconciliation between the two men. As it turned
out, however, the property stayed in the
family, for Elizabeth and Edward
Effingham were married within a short time.
Elizabeth and Edward Effingham
wanted to build a new cabin for Leather-
stocking, but the old hunter refused their
offer. He intended to go off into the
woods to hunt and trap in the free
wilderness until he died. Settlements and
towns were not for him. He would not
listen to their pleas but set out soon
afterward on his long journey, pausing only
long enough to view the stone tablet on
Indian John's grave, a monument Edward
Effingham had erected. Then he trudged
off toward the woods, his long rifle over
his shoulder. Elizabeth and her husband
watched him go. Tears were in their
eyes as they waved a last farewell to the
old hunter just before he disappeared
into the forest.
2887

THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE
Type of work: Comic opera
Author: W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Type of plot: Humorous romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: 1879
Principal characters.
Major General Stanley, of the British Army
Richard, the pirate king
Frederic, the pirate apprentice
Mabel,
Edith,
Kate, and
Isabel, General Stanley's daughters
Ruth, a pirate maid or all worjc
Critique:
The Pirates of Penzance, Or, Th«
Slave of Duty is another entertaining
and perennially popular operetta by the
team of Gilbert and Sullivan. The hero
was such a noble lad that he killed and
plundered with the pirates because it
was his duty. Altogether delightful, this
libretto is one of the favorites of light
opera lovers throughout the world.
The Story:
Frederic, the pirate apprentice, had
reached his twenty-first birthday, and at
midnight he would be free of his
indenture. The pirate king announced that
Frederic would then become a full-
fledged member of the band. But
Frederic said that he had served them only
because he was a slave to duty; now he
was going to leave the pirates.
Astounded, the king asked for reasons. Frederic
would not tell, but Ruth, the pirate maid
of all work, confessed that she had been
Frederic's nurse when he was a baby.
She had been told to apprentice him to
a pilot, but being hard of hearing she
had thought the word was pirate. Afraid
to reveal her mistake, she too had joined
the pirates to look after her charge.
Frederic also announced that when
he left the pirates he was going to do
his best to exterminate the whole band.
Individually, he loved them all, but as a
crew of pirates they must be done away
with. The pirates agreed that they were
such unsuccessful pirates that they could
not blame him for leaving. Frederic told
them why they were such poor pirates.
When they reminded him that he would
still be one of them for half an hour, he
felt that it was his duty to give them the
benefit of his knowledge. The trouble
was that they were too kindly. They
would never attack a weaker party and
were always beaten by a stronger one.
Then, too, if any captive said he was an
orphan, he was set free; the pirates
themselves had all been orphans. Word about
the soft-hearted pirates had spread, and
now everyone who was captured
declared himself an orphan. The pirates
knew that Frederic was right, but they
hated to be grim and merciless.
Asked what Ruth would do when he
left their band, Frederic said he would
take her with him. He wondered if she
was attractive. Ruth declared that she
was, but since he had had no opportunity
to see another female face, Frederic could
not be sure. The king assured him that
she was still a fine-appearing woman, but
when Frederic tried to give her to the
king, he would not have her.
Ruth had him almost convinced that
she was a fair woman when Frederic
saw approaching a bevy of beautiful
maidens. Ruth, realizing that her cause
was lost, admitted that she had deceived
him; she was forty-seven. Frederic cast
her aside.
2888

Frederic hid himself as the girls
approached, but he felt that he ought to
reveal himself again as the girls, believing
themselves alone, prepared for a swim.
When they heard his story, they were
filled with pity for his plight and
admiration for his handsome figure. From a
sense of duty, one of the sisters, called
Mabel, accepted his affection. Her
sisters, Kate, Edith, and Isabel, wondered
whether her sense of duty would have
been so strong had Frederic been less
handsome.
Frederic warned the other girls about
the pirates. Before they could escape,
however, the band, led by their king,
appeared and seized them. At the same
time their father, Major General Stanley,
appeared in search of his daughters. He
bragged of his great knowledge—he knew
everything but military skill. As soon as
he learned something of military tactics
he would be the greatest general ever.
When the pirates told him they were
going to marry his daughters, the general,
much to their sorrow, begged them not
to take his lovely girls from him because
he was an orphan. Unhappily the pirates
gave up their prizes; they could not harm
an orphan.
Later, at his home, a ruin which he
had purchased complete with ancestors,
the general grieved because he had lied
to the pirates. He knew that his
falsehood about being an orphan would haunt
him and his ancestors, the newly
purchased ones. Frederic consoled him by
telling him that the lie was justified to
save his daughters from the pirates. At
midnight he, Frederic, would lead the
police who would capture the outlaw
band. He must wait until then because
he was still one of them.
When the police entered, the girls
praised them for going so nobly to their
deaths. The police, not cheered by the
praise, agreed that theirs would be a
noble death. At midnight Frederic
prepared to lead them to the the pirate
hideout. At that moment the pirate king and
Ruth appeared, laughing at a joke they
had just discovered. Frederic had been
born on February twenty-ninth in leap
year. Thus he was not twenty-one but
only five years old. His apprenticeship
would not be up until 1940. Frederic,
thinking that he looked more than five,
also laughed at that paradox.
And, since Frederic was again one of
the pirate band, he felt it his duty to
tell the pirates that Major General
Stanley was not an orphan, that he had lied.
The pirates went at once to capture the
villain and to torture him for his
falsehood. A struggle took place between the
pirates and the police. The pirates won,
but when the police challenged them to
surrender in the name of Queen Victoria,
the pirates yielded, for they loved their
queen. But before the police could take
them away, Ruth entered and told all
assembled that the pirates were really
noblemen gone wrong. Then the general
forgave them their youthful fling and
sent them back to their ranks, giving
them his daughters for their brides.
2889

THE PIT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Frank Norris (1870-1902)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1890's
Locale: Chicag
First published
1903
Principal characters:
Curtis Jadwin, a speculator in wheat
Laura Dearborn, later his wife
Sheldon Corthell, an artist in love with Laura
Mr. and Mrs. Cressler, friends of the Jadwins
Gretry, Jadwin's broker
Critique:
The Pit, A Story of Chicago, is an
exciting story about the Board of Trade
in Chicago and a man who for a time
cornered the wheat market of the world.
Norris, who intended to write a trilogy
about wheat, completed the first two
books. The second novel of the planned
trilogy, The Pit tells how wheat is bought
and sold on the Board of Trade. Along
with the interest in the financial
explorations of the novel, there is presented
a moving love story of two strong but
very human characters.
The Story:
From the first evening that Laura
Dearborn met Curtis Jadwin she knew
that she interested him. She had attended
the opera with her sister Page and her
Aunt Wess, as the guests of some very
old friends, the Cresslers. Jadwin had
also been a guest that evening, and she
found the marked attention which he
paid her so flattering that she listened
only absently to avowals of love from
her old and devoted suitor, Sheldon
Corthell. Corthell was an artist. The life of
the capitalist who made and broke
fortunes and human lives from the floor of
the Board of Trade seemed to Laura
more romantic than painting.
The next day Mrs. Cressler told Laura
part of Jadwin's story. He had been born
into a poor family, had worked to educate
himself. When, in default of a loan, he
gained possession of some land in Chi-
THE PIT by Frank Norris. By permission of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1903, by
Doubleday & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1930, by Jeannette Preston.
cago, he sold it, bought more real estate,
and by shrewd dealings now owned a
portion of one of the wealthiest sections
of real estate in Chicago. He was also
speculating in the wheat market, and
he was a familiar figure on the floor of
the Board of Trade.
Jadwin, stopping by the Board of
Trade one morning in answer to the
summons of his broker, Gretry, paused
in the Pit—the huge room downstairs
in which all the bidding took place—to
watch the frenzied excitement of bidders
and sellers. Gretry had advance
information that in a few days the French
government would introduce a bill placing
heavy import duties on all foreign goods.
When this news became widespread, the
price of wheat would drop considerably.
Gretry urged Jadwin to sell his shares
at once and Jadwin agreed.
The deal was a tremendous success.
Jadwin pocketed a large profit. The
Cresslers tried to persuade Jadwin to stop
his speculating. Mr. Cressler had almost
ruined himself at one time through his
gambling with wheat, and he feared
that the same thing might eventually
happen to his friend.
But Jadwin was too much interested
in Laura to pay attention to the warning
or even to hear the words of his friends.
One evening at the Cresslers he asked
Laura to marry him. Laura, in a
capricious mood, said that although she loved
no one as yet she might some day come
2890

to love him. She had given Sheldon
Corthell the same encouragement. That
night, ashamed of her coquetry, she wrote
to both men telling them that she did not
love either, and that if they were to
continue friends they must never speak of
love to her again. Corthell accepted her
refusal and left for Europe. Jadwin came
to call on Laura while she was out and
refused to leave until he had spoken to
her. He was successful in his suit and
they were married in July.
The early years of their marriage were
completely happy. Their home was a
mansion, exquisitely furnished and with
beautiful grounds. At first Laura found
it difficult to adjust herself to her
luxurious surroundings, but as time passed
she found great pleasure in satisfying her
interest in art, decorating her home, and
entertaining her friends.
Jadwin, caught up once more in the
excitement of the Pit, invested all his
money in successful speculative
enterprises. For some time he had aligned
himself with the bears in the wheat
market. But now, as he saw that the
country was becoming more prosperous
and the wheat crops were increasing, he
decided to change to the side of the
bulls. He resolved to buy as much wheat
as he could and, if possible, to corner the
market. Luck was with him. One year,
when European crops were very poor,
Jadwin bought a tremendous amount of
wheat at a low price and determined to
hold it until he could ask his own price.
Laura was worried by his constant
attendance at the Board of Trade, and he
promised to give up speculating as soon
as he concluded an important deal.
One evening Laura had dinner with
Sheldon Corthell, who had returned from
Europe. Late that night Jadwin came
home with the announcement that the
deal had been concluded and that he had
cleared five hundred thousand dollars.
He kept his promise to give up
speculating in the Pit, but within a short time
he grew restless. He began again to try
his luck in the wheat market.
Because he kept his activities hidden
from the public, he was spoken of as
the unknown bull. After he had
purchased as much wheat as he could, it
suddenly became evident that he was in
a position to corner the world's wheat
and name his own price. Cressler,
meantime, had been drawn into speculation
by the group of bears who were certain
that they could break the unknown bull.
He had no idea that the bull was his own
friend, Jadwin.
Weeks went by while Laura saw her
husband only at breakfast. He spent
his days and many of his nights at the
board. Laura, lonely and unhappy,
began to see more and more of Corthell.
Corthell, still in love with Laura, finally
declared his feelings to her. Laura was
kind in her dismissal, but she still loved
her husband.
In cornering the market, Jadwin had
risen upon a wave of power and
prosperity. But he began to have strange,
irritating headaches which he attempted
to ignore, just as he disregarded his
moods of loneliness and depression.
Mrs. Cressler confided that her own
husband was not well. She invited Laura
to call on her one afternoon. When
Laura arrived, Mrs. Cressler was not yet
home. She wandered into the library
and saw Mr. Cressler sitting there. He
had shot himself through the temple.
Jadwin was horrified when he
realized that Cressler had lost all his money
in speculation with the bears, and he
felt that he was responsible for his
friend's death. But Jadwin himself was
in a tight spot. Having forced the price
of wheat to a new high, he was now
faced by the necessity of cornering a
bumper crop in addition to the millions
of bushels he already owned. His enemies
were waiting for the time when the
unknown bull could buy no more wheat.
At that moment the price would drop
considerably. Jadwin put every penny
he owned into his attempt to keep wheat
cornered, but he was defeated by the
wheat itself. The grain flowed in,
millions of bushels at a time. Almost out
of his mind, he bought and bought, and
2891

still the wheat harvest continued. He no
longer controlled the market. He was
ruined.
He walked into his home one night
a broken man. Laura nursed him through
days and nights of illness. When he was
well enough, the two set out for the
West to begin life again. Although they
had lost their money, the Jadwins were
much happier than they had been for
many years.
2892

THE PLAGUE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Albert Camus (1913-1960)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realisn
Time of plot: The 1940's
Locale: Oran, Algeria
First published: 1947
Principal characters:
Dr. Bernard R. Rieux, a young physician
Jean Tarrou, a traveler
Cottard, a fugitive
Joseph Grand, a clerk
Raymond Rambert, a journalist
Father Paneloux, a priest
Critique:
Camus in this novel exhibits those
traits so frequently attributed to him:
classical clarity, independence, and logic.
The Plague has been very well received
here and abroad; in fact, it has been
called the best novel to come out of
postwar Europe. In structure the work is
compact, covering only the duration of
the plague. The characters are projected
with insight. But characters and plague
alike are subordinated to a search for
meanings. From the frightful course of
events Rieux finds an answer to the
eternal question, Why are we here?
The Story:
For a few days Dr. Bernard Rieux
gave little thought to the strange
behavior of the rats in Oran. One morning
he found three on his landing, each
animal lying inert with a rosette of fresh
blood spreading from the nostrils. The
concierge grumbled about the strange
happening, but Rieux was a busy doctor
and just then he had personal cares.
Madame Rieux was going away from
Oran. She suffered from a lingering
illness and Rieux thought that a sanatorium
in a different town might do her some
good. His mother was to keep house for
him while his wife was absent. Rambert,
a persistent journalist, cut into his time.
The newsman wanted to do a story for his
metropolitan paper on living conditions
among the workers in Oran. Rieux
refused to help him, for he knew an
honest report would be censored.
Day by day the number of dead rats
increased in the city. After a time truck-
loads were carried away each morning.
People stepped on the furry dead bodies
whenever they walked in the dark.
Rieux's first case of fever was the
concierge who had grumbled about having
to clean up the rats on the stair landing.
He had a high temperature and painful
swellings. Rieux was apprehensive. By
telephoning around he learned that his
colleagues had similar cases.
The prefect was averse to taking any
drastic action because he did not want to
alarm the population. Only one doctor
was sure the sickness was bubonic plague;
the others reserved judgment. When the
deaths rose to thirty a day, however, even
officialdom was worried. Soon a telegram
came instructing the prefect to take
drastic measures, and the news became
widespread; Oran was in the grip of the
plague.
Rieux had been called to Cottard's
apartment by Grand, a clerk and former
patient. Grand had cut down Cottard
just in time to prevent his suicide by
hanging. Cottard could give no
satisfactory reason for his attempt to kill
himself. Rieux was interested in him; he
seemed rather an eccentric person.
THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. By permission of the publishers.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1948, by Stuart Gilbert.
2893

Grand was another strange man. He
had for many years been a temporary
clerk, overlooked in his minor post, whom
succeeding bureaucrats kept on without
investigating his status. Grand was too
timid to call attention to the injustice of
his position. Each evening he worked
hard on his manuscript and seemed to
derive much solace from it. Rieux was
surprised when he saw the work. Grand
in all those years had only the beginning
sentence of his novel finished, and he
was still revising it. He had once been
married to Jeanne, but she had left him.
Tarrou was an engaging fellow, a
political agitator who had been concerned
with governmental upheavals over the
whole continent. He kept a meticulous
diary in which he told of the ravages
and sorrows of the plague. One of his
neighbors was an old man who each
morning called the neighborhood cats to
him and shredded paper for them to play
with. Then, when all the cats were
around him, he would spit on them with
great accuracy. After the plague grew
worse, the city authorities killed all cats
and dogs to check possible agents of
infection. The old man, deprived of his
cats as targets, stayed indoors,
disconsolate.
As the blazing summer sun dried the
town, a film of dust settled over
everything. The papers were meticulous in
reporting the deaths by weeks. When the
weekly total, however, passed the nine
hundred mark, the press reported only
daily tolls. Armed sentinels were posted
to permit no one to enter or leave the
town. Letters were forbidden. Since the
telephone lines could not accommodate
the increased traffic, the only
communication with the outside was by telegraph.
Occasionally Rieux had an unsatisfactory
wire from his wife.
The disposal of the dead bodies
presented a problem. The little cemetery
was soon filled, but the authorities made
a little more room by cremating the
remains in the older graves. At last two
pits were dug in an adjoining field, one
for men and one for women. When those
pits were filled, a greater pit was dug
and no further effort was made to
separate the sexes. The corpses were simply
dropped in and covered with quicklime
and a thin layer of earth. Discarded
streetcars were used to transport the dead
to the cemetery.
Rieux was in charge of one of the new
wards at the infirmary. There was little
he could do, however, for the serum from
Paris was not effective. He observed what
precautions he could, and to ease pain
he lanced the distended buboes. Most
of the patients died. Castel, an older
physician, was working on a new serum.
Father Paneloux preached a sermon on
the plague in which he called Oran's
pestilence a retribution. M. Othon, the
judge, had a son under Rieux's care by
the time Castel's new serum was ready.
The serum did the boy little good;
although he did show unexpected
resistance, he died a painful death. Father
Paneloux, who had been watching as a
lay helper, knew the boy was not evi\;
he could no longer think of the plague
as a retribution. His next sermon was
confused. He seemed to be saying that
man must submit to God's will in all
things. For the priest this view meant
rejection of medical aid. When he himself
caught the fever, he submitted to Rieux's
treatment, but only because he had to.
Father Paneloux died a bewildered man.
Rambert, because he was not a citizen
of Oran, tried his best to escape.
Convinced that there was no legal means of
leaving the city, he planned to leave with
some illicit smugglers. Then the spirit
of the plague affected him. He
voluntarily stayed to help Rieux and the
sanitation teams, for he realized that only in
fighting a common evil could he find
spiritual comfort.
Tarrou had left home early because
his father was a prosecutor; the thought
of the wretched criminals condemned to
death because of his father's zeal horrified
him. After he had been an agitator for
years he finally realized that the
workings of politics often resulted in similar
executions. He had fled to Oran just be-
2894

fore the plague started. There he found
an answer to his problem in organizing
and directing sanitary workers.
Cottard seemed content with plague
conditions. Wanted for an old crime, he
felt safe from pursuit during the
quarantine. When the plague eased a little, two
officers came for him but he escaped. He
was recaptured in a street gun fight.
Grand caught the fever but
miraculously recovered to work again on his
manuscript. Tarrou, also infected, died
in Rieux* house. As the colder weather
of January came, the plague ended. Rieux
heard by telegram that his wife had died.
The streets became crowded again as
lovers, husbands, and wives were
reunited. Rieux dispassionately observed
the masses of humanity. He had learned
that human contact is important for every
one. For himself, he was content to help
man fight against disease and pain.
2895

LES PLAIDEURS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
Type of plot: Satiric comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Normandy, France
First presented: 1668
Principal characters:
Dandin, a judge
Leandre, his son
Chicanneau, a bourgeois
Isabelle, Chicanneau's daughter
La Comtesse, a litigant
Petit Jean, a porter
L'Intime, a secretary
Lb Souffleur, the prompter
Critique:
Racine first planned Les Plaideurs as a
French adaptation of Aristophanes' The
Wasps, to be presented by an Italian
company in Paris. As it turned out, he
received some collaboration from a group
of friends who dined together regularly,
a circumstance which may explain the
spontaneity of the comedy. The action,
unimportant in itself, becomes the
occasion for a series of amusing scenes which
ridicule doctors and lawyers. Like
Aristophanes, Racine took the greatest
liberties with the logic of his plot. The play
occupies an interesting place in Racine's
work, for it shows a master of tragedy
equally at ease in a drama of completely
different effect.
The Story:
Early one morning Petit Jean stood in
front of Dandin's house while he
complained about the sad state of affairs
created by his master's madness. Judge
Dandin suddenly wanted to sit in
judgment on his own family and to go to
bed with his robes on. He had even
ordered his rooster killed, saying that a
defendant had bribed the bird to wake
him up too late.
It was necessary for Leandre to have
his father watched day and night, and
this was the reason why Petit Jean could
not sleep and was complaining. Leandre
also insisted that Judge Dandin should
not be allowed to go into court, but
Dandin was constantly attempting to
escape the watchfulness of his family in
order to do so. When L'Intime and Petit
Jean caught him trying to climb out the
window, the noise awakened Leandre,
who tried to persuade his father to go
back into the house. Finally Petit Jean
took Dandin into the house by force.
Leandre confessed to L'Intime his
wish to have a note delivered to Isabelle,
daughter of their neighbor, Chicanneau,
and L'Intime promised to help him. At
that moment Chicanneau arrived and
insisted on seeing Dandin about one of his
trials; the bourgeois was constantly
engaged in lawsuits. Petit Jean firmly
refused to let him enter. During the
argument La Comtesse arrived; she also was
always suing someone. Chicanneau tried
to advise her about one of her lawsuits.
When she misunderstood him and they
began to quarrel, both asked Petit Jean
to act as a witness. He tried his best to
pacify them.
In order to deliver the note to Isabelle,
L'Intime disguised himself as a process
server and insisted that Leandre dress as
a police commissioner. The idea was to
give Isabelle the letter while serving La
Comtesse' writ on Chicanneau. Finding
Isabelle alone, they succeeded in giving
2896

her the letter just as Chicanneau arrived
home. Isabelle, pretending that it was a
legal paper, tore up the note and declared
that she detested lawsuits. In order to
convince Chicanneau, L'Intime produced
the actual document from La Comtesse.
Chicanneau, doubting that L'Intime was
a process server, administered a sound
thrashing.
When Leandre arrived in his disguise,
L'Intime complained bitterly about the
bad treatment he had received and the
defiance of the law exhibited by both
Chicanneau and Isabelle. Leandre,
seizing upon this situation as an opportunity
to "question" Isabelle, tricked her into
admitting her feelings toward him.
Chicanneau, bewildered, failed to
understand what was happening and signed
what he thought was a police report, but
which was actually a marriage contract
between Leandre and Isabelle.
Dandin, meanwhile, was running from
one window of his house to another.
Insisting on giving audience to Chicanneau
and La Comtesse, he succeeded in pulling
Chicanneau inside the house through a
cellar window. When he next tried to
escape, Leandre suggested that he
preside at the trial of Citron, a dog that had
eaten a chicken.
Declaring that he had never seen them
before, Chicanneau complained to
Leandre about the process server and the
police commissioner. Leandre suggested
that Chicanneau and Isabelle demand
justice from Dandin.
Meanwhile, Leandre staged the trial
of Citron, with Petit Jean and L'Intime
acting as lawyers. Petit Jean, as the
prosecutor, had difficulty in playing his role
in spite of help from Le Souffleur, the
prompter, at every other word. L'Intime,
acting as the defense lawyer, was so
eloquent that Dandin fell asleep. On
awakening, he decided to condemn the dog to
the gallows. L'Intime then produced a
basket of puppies and, swearing that they
would become orphans if the dog were
executed, pleaded their cause. Dandin,
greatly perplexed, discussed this situation
with everyone.
Chicanneau and Isabelle arrived. When
Leandre produced the marriage contract,
Chicanneau threatened to go to court
over the agreement. Leandre assured
him, however, that he had no interest
in Isabelle's dowry. Mollified,
Chicanneau finally agreed to the marriage.
Then, as a welcoming present to Isabelle,
Dandin decided to acquit Citron.
2897

THE PLAIN DEALER
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Wycherley (1640M716)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: London
Firrt presented: c. 1674
Principal characters:
Captain Manly, a misanthropic gentleman in the king's service
Freeman, Manly's lieutenant
Olivia, Manly's mistress
Vernish, Manly's only trusted friend
Widow Black acre, a rich widow gulled by Freeman
Fidelia, Manly's page, an heiress in disguise
Critique:
In Wycherley's own time The Plain
Dealer was regarded as his best play. It is,
at any rate, an important, if sardonic,
account of the times when Holland and
England were at war during the reign of
Charles II. Manly, the plain dealer in all
situations, displays as much bitterness as
the misanthropes of Moliere's drama and
the plays of Marston and others in the
earlier seventeenth century. The picture
of contemporary life, complete with
scenes showing Westminster Hall,
bookseller's stalls, eating houses, and private
homes, is anything but enticing. The
people, except for Manly and his page, are
portrayed as evil, grasping, litigious, and
belligerent characters or, like the two
sailors, as simpletons incapable of a thought
of their own. Yet the social message of
the play is not oppressive, for Wycherley
also employed a tricky plot, brilliant
dialogue, and realistic stage business.
The Story:
The plain dealer, Captain Manly,
returned to London after his ship had been
sunk in a battle with the Dutch. He sought
another ship because he disliked the
hypocrisy of the age and wished to be
away from the sycophancy of court and
social life. Among the acquaintances who
called at his quarters in London was Lord
Plausible, who attempted to persuade the
captain to seek his ship through influential
people instead of waiting for an
assignment to be made. Manly demonstrated his
love of plain dealing by showing Lord
Plausible the door.
After Lord Plausible's departure Manly
instructed the two sailors who served him
not to admit anyone to his lodgings except
his ship's lieutenant, Freeman. When
Freeman came, he and Manly discussed
the relative merits of plain dealing and
hypocrisy. Freeman held that no one
could have a successful career without
being hypocritical, but he could not
convince Manly that such a policy was better
than telling the truth at all costs.
While they talked, Widow Blackacre
broke past the sailors and entered Manly's
rooms. Manly made her welcome because
she was a cousin of his fiancee, Olivia.
The widow, who was of an extremely
litigious nature, wanted Manly to appear
on her behalf at a court hearing the
following day. She warned Manly that if he did
not appear she would have him
subpoenaed. Freeman, well aware that the
widow had a great deal of money, started
a courtship for her hand. The widow, who
had a son Jerry, almost Freeman's age,
ridiculed the idea because she wanted to
manage her own affairs and could not do
so if she were married.
Manly then went to seek information
about Olivia, whom he had entrusted with
most of his fortune while he was at sea.
Meanwhile Olivia had heard of
Manly's arrival in London. She was none
too anxious to see him because she had
kept his fortune for her own and had
2898

married Vernish, the only man Manly
trusted and called his friend. Olivia
pretended to be a plain dealer like Manly.
When visited by her cousin Eliza, Lord
Plausible, and others, she belabored them
for their hypocrisy, saying they spoke only
ill of people in their absence but praised
the same persons to their faces. Her
cousin reminded her that her comments
about people were much worse, and that
she did not go out in company often
enough to have an opportunity to say any
thing good about people to their faces.
Olivia, going on to speak plainly about
Captain Manly, revealed that she did not
love him and wished to be rid of his
attentions. No one present knew as yet of her
secret marriage to Vernish. In the
meantime Manly had entered her apartment
unnoticed. After the others left Manly and
Olivia had words, and Manly told Olivia
that he detested her. Freeman and
Manly's page reminded him to recover his
money and jewels from Olivia, and so
Manly went back to request them. Olivia
then announced to all three that she was
married but did not say to whom. She
told Manly that she could not return the
money because her husband had it.
Olivia, noticing Manly's page, became
infatuated and told Manly to send the
young page as messenger if they were to
have any further dealings. As Manly left,
Widow Blackacre, accompanied by her
son, entered, and Freeman once more
began his suit for her hand. When she
repulsed him, he decided to use law
instead of ordinary courtship to gain his
ends.
The following morning Manly,
Freeman, and the page appeared at
Westminster Hall as witnesses in Widow
Blackacre's lawsuit. While away from
Freeman for a time, Manly instructed his
page to go to Olivia and arrange an
assignation for him, for Manly had decided
to get revenge by making her unknown
husband a cuckold. That was a bitter
errand for the page, who was actually a
young woman in disguise. She had some
time before fallen in love with Manly
and had disguised herself as a boy in order
to be near him.
At the court session Freeman found
Widow Blackacre's son and befriended
him by giving him some money. The boy
told Freeman that his mother refused to
let him have any money until he came of
age. Learning that the boy had not yel
appointed a guardian for himself,
Freeman persuaded the boy to name him as
guardian, an act which put Widow
Blackacre's money into his hands instead
of the widow's. In addition, Freeman had
the boy leave all the widow's legal
documents in his care.
Manly, returning to his lodgings, was
informed by his page that she had
succeeded in getting an assignation with
Olivia; Manly could substitute himself for
the page in the darkness. When Manly
heard the comments Olivia had made
about him, he became even more furious
and eager to have revenge. A little later
Widow Blackacre arrived, hoping to find
Freeman and her son. When she
confronted them, they told her that she was
helpless, since they had her documents and
Freeman had been appointed the boy's
guardian. The widow threatened then to
prove that her son was illegitimate and so
could not inherit her husband's estate.
That evening the page went to Olivia's
home. When Vernish appeared, the page
escaped without being discovered, only to
return later with Manly after Olivia had
sent her husband away. Manly, refusing
to seduce Olivia, left. The page, trapped
when Vernish returned unexpectedly,
escaped by disclosing herself to Vernish as
a woman, incapable of cuckolding him.
Vernish's attempt to ravish her was foiled
by the entrance of his wife.
The page, escaping through a window,
returned to Manly. Later Manly and
Vernish met. Manly was not yet aware
that Vernish was Olivia's husband, and
Vernish was unaware that Manly was
trying to seduce Olivia. Because they still
trusted one another as the best of friends,
Manly told Vernish he had been intimate
with Olivia before her marriage, a fact
which made Vernish all the more certain
2899

she had cuckolded him after marriage.
The page, entering during the
conversation, took Manly aside and told him
another assignation with Olivia had been set
for that evening. When they parted,
Vernish told himself that he would
pretend to leave town and thus trap the
unknown man who was seducing Olivia.
In the meantime Freeman and some
bailiffs overheard Widow Blackacre plan
with some court hangers-on to prove that
her son was born out of wedlock. Rather
than marry Freeman and lose control of
her estate, the widow finally granted an
allowance to the boy and an annuity to
Freeman. The lieutenant was satisfied;
the money was all he wanted.
That evening Manly and the page went
to Olivia's apartment. There Manly
overcame Vernish in a duel. Olivia, in shame,
tried to escape with the jewels and money,
but Manly took them from her. In the
scuffle the page's wig came off, disclosing
her as a woman. Manly, impressed by her
faithfulness and beauty, immediately
asked her to marry him. She, on her part,
told Manly she was Fidelia, heiress to a
large fortune. They planned to begin a
new life in the West Indies.
2900

PLATERO AND I
Type of work: Prose poems
Author: Juan Ram6n Jimenez (1881-1958)
First published: 1914-1917
About his life Juan Ram6n Jimenez
said very little. He was born in the small
Spanish village of Moguer, in Andalusia,
and educated at a Jesuit school. A few
poems published in a Madrid magazine
brought him an invitation to visit the
capital where the poet Rubdn Darfo and
others befriended him. But violent
critical attacks on a volume of his poetry
and the death of his father so upset him
that he spent some time in a French
sanitarium. From then on, in spite of
enthusiastic reception of later volumes of
verse, he lived almost a recluse either in
Spain or as a political refugee, after the
Spanish Civil War, in Cuba and Puerto
Rico. By the time he was thirty-five, he
had published twenty volumes of what
he called borradoras (rough drafts); the
rest of his life was spent polishing them,
beginning with his Selected Poems in
1917.
In prose, his best-known work is
Platero and I, a series of brief,
unconnected sketches, 138 in all, about life in
Moguer, the whole given unity by the
presence of a silver gray donkev, Platero.
There are both narrative and descriptive
sections in poetic prose. The subtitle is
"Andalusian Elegy," making the donkey
a symbol of the simplicity and purity of
the soul. Like Sancho Panza's donkey in
Don Quixote, Platero seems headed for
immortality in a volume "capable of
giving back to people their childhood soul."
Platero was a hairy donkey, so soft
that he might have been made of cotton,
without bones. Only his eyes were hard,
like two scarabs of black crystal. He fed
on oranges, grapes, and figs when he was
not nibbling the grass of the meadow.
To the country people he looks like steel
as the narrator, telling his story in the
first person, rides him through the town
of Moguer on Sundays. Coming back at
PLATERO AND T by Juan Ram6n Jimenez. Transls
of the publishers, University of Texas Press. Copyrig
dusk, he tells the customs collector that
all they have brought with them are
white butterflies. Then he rides on
through the miserable streets down by
the river, where poor children are
playing games of make-believe.
Unconnected episodes are presented.
Once Platero and the author saw an
eclipse of the sun. In the eerie light, the
town seemed to shrink and even the
donkey appeared diminished.
At the age of four, Platero should
have entered kindergarten, but there
were no chairs big enough for him. The
wisest plan, in the opinion of his master,
was to take Platero to the fields where he
could learn about flowers and stars.
There no one would ever put a dunce
cap on him or call him an ass.
Riding his donkey, the author, with
his long brown beard and small black hat,
must have looked strange, for ragged
children ran after him, shouting "Crazy
man!" Later the children were the ones
who seemed crazy on the day before
Easter, as they celebrated their feast by
shooting at Judas, to the terror of the
little donkey.
The lengthening days, as the year
went on, brought the ripening of the
first figs, and Jimenez and Platero went
to Rica to pick them. Everybody raced to
see who could get there first and arrived
panting and excited. The author picked
a few of the ripe ones and put them on a
tree trunk for Platero. Somehow a fig
fight started; the pickers threw the bluish
fruit at everybody, including the donkey.
On another occasion, Jimenez, with a
book of prints that he had received the
day before from Vienna, told the
children that he would give it as a prize to
the first one who reached the violets at
the end of the meadow. Seeing them
running, Platero took off after them and
sd by EloTse Roach. Excerpts reprinted by permission
:, 1957, by Juan Raradn Jimene*.
2901

easily outdistanced them. Panting their
protests, the children gathered around
the author. He told them that Platero
had won and demanded a prize. Because
the book would be of no use to him,
Jimenez took some parsley and made a
crown with which to adorn the victor.
In a serious moment Jimenez tried to
comfort his donkey by promising that he
would not be thrown into a pit when he
died, or abandoned beside the road; he
would be buried beside the tall pine in
the orchard. More immediate problems
occupied the donkey, however. As he
entered the pasture, he began limping.
Immediately his master jumped off.
Platero showed his right forefoot, in
which Jim6nez found a long orange-tree
thorn stuck into it like a little emerald
dagger. After the wound had been
washed in a brook they continued on
toward the sea, the master now walking
ahead and Platero, still limping, gently
nudging him in the back.
The swallows arrived early, chirping
as if to tell everybody about their two
sea crossings and the flowers they had
seen in Africa. Because of the unseasonal
cold, the birds nearly froze to death.
Sometimes, in their conversations,
Jimenez would reminisce over his
childhood days, the people who lived across
the street from him, the striped doorway
of the confectioner's house, and the little
idiot boy who sat, ugly and unable to
speak, in the doorway of his house to
watch the people pass. The boy had died,
and must now be in heaven watching the
promenade of heavenly souls.
Another memory was the story of An-
illa, who used to dress in a sheet, put
flour on her face, and walk about
carrying a lantern to scare children. One
September night, during a severe storm,
lightning struck and a eucalyptus tree
fell on the tool shed. When the moon
came out, the dog began barking so
loudly that everybody went out to see
what was wrong. There was Anilla, still
dressed in a sheet and with her lantern
burning, but now she really was a
ghost.
The author also communed with his
earthbound donkey about the joys of
height. He described climbing to the
flat roof and the sights to be seen: the
gardens, the houses, the people working
in them, and even the far-off river with
its boat. Looking into the distance gave
him the same feeling that he felt when,
as a child, he went to the locked gate in
the city walls and saw the winding road
with its promise of romance.
Many of the inhabitants of Moguer
pass through these pages: the French
doctor whose parrot comforted patients
with "It's nothing! Nothing!"; the
gipsies who would sometimes visit the town
and scandalize its inhabitants: Don Jose\
the priest who rode a female donkey;
Darb6n, the veterinarian. Children, in
particular, play an important part in the
life of Platero and his master. There is
much talk over plans to celebrate the Day
of the Magi, when the children would
put their shoes on the balconies in hopes
of presents from the Wise Men and all
the older people would have a parade;
Platero would be adorned with a
Colombian flag and his master, wearing a
cotton beard, would impersonate one of the
Three Kings.
There are tragedies as well. One day
Platero, while drinking at the fountain,
got a leech on his tongue. With the help
of Raposo, a farmer, Jimenez pried open
the donkey's mouth and removed the
leech with sticks. At another time
horseflies left him covered with blood.
Sometimes Platero could be helpful, as
when he gave a ride to a little sick girl,
or when he and his master helped a little
girl and her donkey with their cart which
was stuck in the mud. She rewarded
them with two oranges, one of which
Platero ate; the other little donkey got
the second orange.
Finally came the morning when the
author found Platero "lying on his bed
of straw, his eyes soft and sad." Darb6n,
the veterinarian, could do nothing for
him. "Something he ate, perhaps a poison
root." By noon Platero was dead. Later,
when his master went with some children
2902

to his grave and asked whether the
donkey was carrying angel children through
the heavenly meadows, a white butterfly
appeared.
At the end, in 'To Platero, in the
heaven of Moguer," Jimenez dedicated
the book to the donkey, and concluded:
"You, Platero, are alone in the past. But
you also live in a period of no time, for
you possess, as I do, a new sun with the
dawn of each day, red as the heart of the
everlasting God."
2903

THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Millington Synge (1871-1909)
Type of plot: Realistic comedy
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: County Mayo, Ireland
First presented: 1907
Principal characters:
Christopher Mahon, a braggart
Old Mahon, his father
Margaret Flaherty (Pegeen Mtkb), his sweetheart
Widow Quin, a villager
Shawn Kbogh, a young farmer in love with Pegeen
Critique:
This play is the most outstanding of
John Millington Synge's Irish dramas,
and in it Synge has used the beautiful
lyrical Irish language to the finest effect.
The Playboy of the Western World is
tender, ironical, and humorous drama.
spread among the villagers, they flocked
to look at this paragon of bravery. The
young women were particularly interested
in him—and the not so young as well.
Dame Quin, a middle-aged widow, was
much taken with the young taproom
hero.
But Christopher was attracted to pretty
Pegeen. He was flattered by her aa-
miration, and in an attempt to live up
to her opinion of him he began to adopt
an attitude of bravado. Before long he
himself believed that he had done a
courageous deed.
Each year the village held a festival
in which the men competed with each
other in various sports. Christopher was
naturally expected to take part. His early
timidity having long since disappeared,
he made every effort to appear a hero
in the eyes of Pegeen, to whom he was
now openly betrothed. She had broken
her engagement with a young farmer,
Shawn Keogh, soon after Christopher
arrived on the scene.
While her Playboy, as Pegeen called
him, was taking part in the sports, an
old man came to the inn. He was
looking for a young man whose description
fitted Christopher's appearance. Dame
Quin, who still had designs on the boy,
deliberately misdirected the stranger. But
when the man returned from his wild
goose chase, he arrived in time to see
Christopher hailed as a hero because he
had just won the mule race. Old Mahon,
TOE PLAYBOY. OF THE WESTERN. WORLD by John Mjllington jSyn£. j By^ jpermis.ipo of Random
Copyright, "*** ■■ "^ **
The Story:
One evening a young man arrived at
a small inn on the wild Mayo coast of
Ireland and announced that he had run
away from home. He said his name was
Christopher Mahon and that he was
running away because he had killed his
father during a fight. The farmers who
were passing the time in the inn were
very much pleased by his exhibition of
courage. Christopher was especially
admired by Pegeen, the pretty young
daughter of Michael Flaherty, the
innkeeper. She, along with the others,
pressed the young man to tell his story
over and over again.
At home Christopher had been a meek
and obedient son, domineered by his
father. He accepted the insults of his
parent until the latter tried to force him
into marrying a rich old woman. At
last, in desperation, he hit his father
over the head with a loy. Seeing the old
man fall, Christopher presumed that he
was dead.
The experience at the inn was
something new for Christopher, who for the
first time in his life was looked upon
as a hero. When the news of his story
Houee. Inc. Published by The Modern Library, Inc.
nt, 1935, by The Modem Library, Inc.
2904

not dead from Christopher's blow,
recognized his son and flew into a rage. He
insisted that Christopher go home with
him, and by his angry tirade he
humiliated his son in front of the spectators.
But the Playboy had enjoyed too long
the thrill of being a hero. He did not
give in timidly as he would have done
at an earlier time. Much to his father's
astonishment, he struck the old man over
the head. Once again it appeared that
old Mahon was dead. But the reaction
of the people was not at all what
Christopher might have expected. Killing one's
father some miles away was one thing.
Killing him in front of a number of
spectators who might be involved in the
affair was another. The people muttered
angrily among themselves, and even Peg-
een joined with them in denouncing the
murderer.
Deciding at last that the only thing
to do was to hang Christopher for his
crime, they tied up the struggling young
man and prepared to lead him away. But
Old Mahon had proved himself a tough
fellow once before, and he did so again.
The first blow that Christopher had given
him had only stunned him, so that soon
after the boy ran away his father was
able to follow him to the village. Now
the second blow had merely knocked him
unconscious for a short time. As
Christopher struggled and the noose was
slipped over his head, Mahon crawled
through the door on his hands and knees.
While the villagers stood around
dumbfounded, he walked over to his
son and quickly untied him. Far from
being angry with Christopher for hitting
him, he was pleased to discover that his
son was not the timid weakling he had
thought him to be. The two left the
inn, arm in arm, deaf to the pleas of
Pegeen, both of them jeering at the
foolishness of the people on the Mayo
coast
2905

THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sean O'Casey (1884- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1916
Locale: Dublin, Ireland
First presented: 1926
Principal characters:
Fluther Good,
Peter Flynn,
Mrs. Gogan,
Moixser Gogan,
Bessie Burgess,
The Covey,
Nora Clitheroe, and her husband,
Jack Clitheroe, neighbors in a Dublin tenement house
Captain Brennan, ol the Irish Citizen Army
Corporal Stoddart, and
Sergeant Tinley, of the Wiltshire!
Critique:
Sean O'Casey's bitter childhood and
early manhood accounted for his
adherence to the Marxist idea of class war.
He believed that the Irish would have
to reckon with the problem of Irish
poverty before they could ever hope to win
independence. It is with this problem
of some poor people caught in the midst
of the famous Easter Rebellion of 1916
that O'Casey deals in The Plough and
the Stars. Here the desperate situation
of a group of tenement dwellers
overshadows the dream of national
independence. The Covey seems always to
give O'Casey's own views on humanity
versus nationality. The play was the
cause of a patriotic riot when it was first
Eroduced by the Abbey Theatre in Dub-
n.
The Storyi
Fluther Good had put a new lock on
the Clitheroes' door when Mrs. Gogan
brought in a hatbox, just delivered for
Nora Clitheroe. Mrs. Gogan was
convinced that Nora was putting on airs and
buying too many new clothes to hold on
to her husband.
Nora's Uncle Peter Rynn drifted in
and out, getting ready his uniform of the
Irish National Foresters. Peter had a
chip on his shoulder which all the
tenement dwellers took turns knocking off.
He was an ineffectual man and he knew
it.
When the Covey, Nora's cousin, came
in, telling them that he had been laid
off from work because the boys had
mobilized for a demonstration for
independence, he aroused both Peter and
Fluther. The Covey was less inclined to
follow the flag of the Plough and the
Stars than to go ahead with his work.
Peter and the Covey were arguing
away when Nora came home and quieted
them, declaring that there was small
hope of ever making them respectable.
She was pleased with the way Fluther
had put on the lock, but Bessie Burgess,
a vigorous but rather coarse woman,
scornfully berated Nora for treating her
neighbors shamefully, not trusting them.
As Fluther broke up the women's
wrangling, Jack Clitheroe came home and sent
Bessie away. He told Nora that he would
speak to Bessie when she was sober again.
Jack was despondent because the
Citizen Army was to meet that night. He had
THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS by Sean CCatey. By permlwion of the oubliahert. The
Co* Copyright, 1926, by The MacwiHan Co.
2906

lost the rank of captain to Ned Brennan
and, sulking, had refused to attend
meetings. Wanting to be a leader, he did not
have strength of leadership. Nora tried
to get his mind off the meeting by
making love to him. They were interrupted
by the new Captain Brennan with a
dispatch from the general telling Jack where
to report. Jack did not understand why
he was to report until Brennan told him
that the boys had given him the title of
Commandant, word of which had been
in a letter Nora had never delivered.
Disturbed because Nora had withheld the
letter, Jack went off to the meeting with
Brennan.
Mollser Gogan, a child in the last
stages of tuberculosis, asked Nora if she
might stay with her, since everyone else
had gone to the demonstration.
Fluther and Peter, overwhelmed by
the oratory of the speakers at the
demonstration, repaired to a bar to pour in
more courage. Even in the public house,
the voice of the speaker followed them,
urging bloodshed and war. Bessie and
Mrs. Gogan were engaged in a verbal
battle when they entered. Bessie, drunk,
was ready for a hair-pulling, but the
barman sent both women away. Peter was
left holding Mrs. Gogan's baby, for she
had forgotten the child when she was
piloted out of the bar. He hurried out to
find her.
Fluther, though he had intended to
give up drinking before the meeting,
decided the time had come for all the liquor
he could hold, and he was generous
enough to stand treat, even to the Covey
and Rosie, a prostitute. Fluther and the
Covey got into an argument on the labor
movement and the Barman had to
separate them. Rosie and Fluther left when
Jack, Brennan, and other officers, their
eyes shining with excitement, came in
for a drink before moving off with the
Citizen Army.
The next day Mollser was so much
weaker that Mrs. Gogan put her out in
the sun in front of the house; they could
hear shooting in the distance. Looking
for Jack, Nora and Fluther had spent
the night going to all the barricades
without finding him. When they came
back to the house, Nora was leaning
heavily on Fluther. Bessie shouted down
curses from her window. The Covey
sighed that the fight would do the poor
people no good.
Bessie brought Mollser a mug of milk
when she came downstairs. The men
began to gamble to keep their minds off the
shooting, but they stopped when Bessie
reappeared, laden down with booty, to
say that looting had begun in the shops.
Fluther and the Covey went off
immediately. The guns scared Mollser so much
that Bessie took her into the house. Even
timid Peter started to follow Bessie and
Mrs. Gogan when they set out with a
baby carriage to hold their loot, but
the sound of the big guns again stopped
him. He was envious, however, when he
saw the Covey, then Bessie and Mrs.
Gogan, return with piles of loot.
Brennan and Jack stopped at the steps
to let a wounded comrade rest. It was
with difficulty that Jack got away from
Nora, who had run down to him when
she heard his voice. When the two
officers finally took their man away, Nora
was ready to faint.
Fluther came back with a jug of
whiskey. Roaring drunk, he was too
fuddled to go out for a doctor for Mollser,
who was suddenly very sick. Bessie,
praying when she heard the guns, went off
toward the shooting to find a doctor.
A few days later the rebellion was still
going on. Mollser had died, and Nora
had had a stillborn baby. Both bodies
were in the same coffin in Bessie's room,
the only room in the tenement that
seemed safe from the shooting. Fluther,
the Covey, and Peter, having taken
refuge there, played cards to while away
the time.
Nora was on the verge of insanity.
Bessie had stayed up with her for three
nights and was herself almost dead for
sleep. Each time Bessie sat in the chair
2907

in front of the fireplace for a nap, Nora
would wake up. Once, when Nora got
up, Brennan, in civilian clothes, was in
the room telling the men how Jack had
died. Nora did not recognize him.
Brennan wanted to stay with the others; he
said there was nowhere to go any more.
Corporal Stoddart, an English soldier,
came in to escort the coffin out of the
house. Mrs. Gogan was the only one
allowed to go with it. As she was thanking
Fluther for making the funeral
arrangements, the soldier heard a sniper nearby
shoot another English soldier. The
English, trying to find the sniper, were
rounding up all the men in the district, and
so Fluther, the Covey, Peter, and
Brennan were forced to go with the corporal
to spend the night in the Protestant
church.
Bessie had again fallen asleep. Nora
got up to prepare tea for Jack. As she
stood at the window looking for him,
the soldiers below shouted for her to go
away. Bessie, awakened, tried to pull
her back, but Nora struggled so hard that
Bessie fell back against the window
frame as she pushed Nora. Two shots,
fired quickly, struck Bessie. She was dead
before Mrs. Gogan came home.
Two English soldiers, investigating the
room for snipers, found the mistake they
had made in killing Bessie. They calmly
poured themselves cups of tea while Mrs.
Gogan took Nora downstairs to put hex
into Mollser's bed.
2908

THE PLUMED SERPENT
Type of work: Novel
Author: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Type of plot: Symbolic romance
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Mexico
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
Kate Leslie, an Irishwoman
Don Ram6n Carrasco, a Spanish-Indian scholar and the reincarnated
Quetzalcoad
General Cipriano Viedma, the reincarnated Huitzilopochtli, god
of war
Dona Carlota, Don Ram6n's first wife
Teresa, his second wife
Owen Rhys, Kate Leslie's cousin
Critique:
D. H. Lawrence was a writer driven
by deep, personal need in his search for
values that would redeem his vision of
a disordered modern world and a brittle,
crumbling civilization. The Plumed
Serpent, the impressive novel of his later
period, is the result of his American
pilgrimage. Brilliantly colored in style and
symbolic in theme, it is his tortured
confession of faith in an atavistic mysticism
which would restore to contemporary
man the primitive virtues of potency
and blood unity. In this novel the
symbols of quest and discovery are the gods
of ancient Mexico, Quetzalcoatl and
Huitzilopochtli, whom Don Ram6n
Carrasco and General Cipriano Viedma
attempt to revive as living deities. These
dark gods of the primitive spirit alone
can revitalize the earth, for Christianity
had failed to do so: this is Lawrences
message. Kate Leslie, involved in the
efforts of the two Mexicans, is a woman
bred in a tradition dominated by
industrial and mechanical controls, but her
submission is inevitable when she finds
herself in a strange world of masculine
domination, symbolized by the Indian
drum and the dance as expressions of
that ancient, instinctive life which
civilization has almost destroyed. The Plumed
Serpent, a tremendous fable of sexual,
political, and religious rebirth, is a
stirring and disturbing book, a great, even
though imperfect, work of the creative
imagination.
The Story:
Kate Leslie was the widow of an Irish
patriot. Restless after her husband's
death, she had gone to Mexico with
Owen Rhys, her American cousin. But
Mexico oppressed her. Dark and
secretive, the arid land weighed upon her
spirit like a sense of doom. She saw it
as a country of poverty, brutality, and
bloodshed.
Owen and one of his friends took her
to a bullfight. It was a distressing
experience, for to her that ritual of death was
like modern Mexico, vulgar and cruel,
without nvster or passion. At last,
unable to endure the spectacle and the reek
of warm blood, she announced that she
was returning alone to the hotel. A
downpour of rain began as she was leaving the
arena and she was forced to wait in the
exit tunnel with a crowd whose speech
and gestures filled her with alarm. She
was rescued from her predicament by a
small, authoritative man in uniform who
introduced himself as General Cipriano
Viedma. A full-blooded Indian, he was
impassive and withdrawn, yet vitally
THE PLUMED SERPENT by D. H. Lawrence. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc. Copyright, 1926, 1951, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
2909

alert. While they talked, waiting for the
automobile he had summoned to take
Kate to her hotel, she felt unaccountably
drawn to him.
The next day Mrs. Norris, widow of a
former English ambassador, invited Kate
and Owen to her house for tea. The
general and his friend, Don Ram6n Car-
rasco, were among the guests. Don Ra-
m6n was a landowner and a distinguished
scholar. There were reports of a strange
happening near his estate at Sayula. A
naked man was supposed to have risen
from the Lake of Sayula and told the
villagers that Quetzalcoatl and the old
gods of Mexico were soon to return to
earth. Don Ram6n had promised an
investigation. The story appealed to Kate's
Celtic imagination; she wanted to go to
Sayula and see the lake from which the
Aztec gods were to be reborn.
Kate and Owen dined with Ram6n
before his return to Sayula. The guests
talked about Mexican politics and the
happening at the lake. One impassioned
young man declared that only a great
miracle, like the return of Quetzalcoatl,
could save Mexico. Cipriano seldom
spoke but sat, his eyes black and
unfathomable, looking from Kate to his
host. After dinner he and Kate walked
in the garden. In the darkness she felt
that he was a man of strange, almost
primitive potency and impulses.
When Owen returned to the United
States, Kate decided to go to Sayula for
a time. There she found an old Spanish
house that pleased her. With the house
went a servant, Juana, and her two sons
and two daughters. Liking the house and
its surroundings, Kate rented it for an
indefinite stay.
The people of Sayula were restless,
filled with a spirit Kate had not seen
elsewhere in Mexico. One night she
heard drums beating in the village plaza.
Men naked to the waist were distributing
leaflets printed with a hymn to
Quetzalcoatl. Later the peons began to dance
to the savage, insistent rhythms of the
drums. In the torchlight the dance
looked like a ritual out of old, almost
forgotten times, a ritual men
remembered in their blood rather than in their
minds. Some said that Don Ram6n was
behind the new cult of Quetzalcoatl that
was springing up.
Several weeks after Kate arrived in
Sayula, Don Ram6n and his wife, Dona
Carlota, came to call. Dona Carlota was
devoutly pious and eager to be friendly.
When Kate visited Jamiltepec, Don Ra-
m6n's hacienda, she found soldiers
guarding the gates. A drum was beating in the
patio. Dona Carlota, hating the sound,
told Kate that she was afraid because
her husband was involved in the business
of Quetzalcoatl. He wished to become
a god, she confided, the reincarnation of
the Plumed Serpent that the Aztecs had
worshipped. Cipriano arrived at the
hacienda for supper. That night there was
a dance in the patio. Don Ram6n
promised that the reborn gods would bring
new life to the country. The rains
began, ending the hot, dry season.
Dona Carlota, refusing to witness hei
husband's heresies, as she called them,
returned to Mexico City. Meanwhile the
work of the Men of Quetzalcoatl
continued. During one of his visits Cipriano
asked Kate to marry nim, but she put
him off. Don Ram6n continued to write
and publish his hymns to Quetzalcoatl.
Cipriano's soldiers distributed them. After
he had been denounced by the clergy
Don Ramdn had the holy images
removed from the church at Sayula and
burned.
One day a group of his political and
religious enemies, disguised as bandits,
attacked Jamiltepec and tried to
assassinate Don Ram6n. Kate, who happened
to be at the hacienda when the raiders
appeared, killed one of the attackers and
saved Don Ram6n's life after he had
been seriously wounded. Afterward she
stayed much to herself, afraid of her
own disturbed emotions. But she was
being drawn slowly toward the dark,
powerful forces of primitive awareness
and power that she found in Don Ra-
2910

m6n and Cipriano. The general now
believed himself the living Huitzilo-
pochtli, god of war. Fascinated and
repelled, Kate yielded at last to his
masculine dominance. Don Ram6n married
them with pagan rites and she became
Malintzi, bride of the red-knifed god of
battles.
When Don Ram6n reopened the
church, which he had converted into a
sanctuary of the old Aztec gods, Dona
Carlota appeared to protest against his
blasphemy. Overcome by hysteria and
fear of his implacable will, she suffered
a stroke and died a short time later.
Meanwhile Cipriano had been spreading
the new doctrines among his soldiers. On
an appointed night he was declared the
living Huitzilopochtli, god of the knife,
and in the rites of his assumption he
sacrificed three of the prisoners captured
after the attack on Don Ramon some
weeks before.
Don Ram6n married again. His bride
was Teresa, daughter of a dead
landowner of Jalisco. Watching Teresa's
passive, female submission to her husband,
Kate began to fear the dark potency, the
upsurge of blood with which Don
Ramon and Cipriano were arousing all
Mexico. Men wearing the white and blue
sera pes of Quetzalcoatl and the red and
black sera pes of Huitzilopochtli were
seen everywhere. When the Church
excommunicated the leaders, revolt broke
out. The President of Mexico declared
the Church outlawed, and the faith of
Quetzalcoatl became the official religion
of the republic. Kate viewed these
happenings with a sense of horror. Because
the pride and strength of the old gods
seemed to menace her spirit and her
womanhood, she decided to return to
Ireland.
But in the end she could not go.
Cipriano with his black, impassive eyes and
dark maleness was stronger than her
European sensibility and her woman's will.
Afraid of his violence but awed by the
strength of a spirit stronger than her
own, she felt wanted but not needed.
The need, she realized, was her own, not
Cipriano's. He had revealed to her the
deep, dark, hot life of the senses and
the blood, and she was trapped in his
primitive world. She could never escape.
2911

PLUTUS
Ty?e of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-385 B.C.)
Type of flat: Satiric comedy
Time of flot: Fifth century B.C.
Locale: Athens
hirst presented: 388 B.C.
Principal characters:
Chremylus, a poor, but honest faxmtir
Cario, his servant
Blepsidemus, his friend
Plutus, the god of wealth
Critique:
Plutus is a dramatized moral fable
marked by a debate On the advantages of
poverty against the advantages of wealthy
by dehghtfully irreverent humanizing of
gods, and by pungeitf satire on ill-gotten
wealth and ingratitude. The utter
nonsense which takes place in the temple
of Asclepius is a high point in the comedy.
The Story:
Chremylus, a Greek farmer, went to
the temple of Apollo in Athens. There
he asked the oracle how his son might
attain affluence without having to resort
to knavery. The oracle directed him to
follow the first man he encountered on
his emerging from the temple and to take
the stranger home with him.
The first man Chremylus saw was a
blind beggar, whom he followed
impatiently. At first the beggar refused to
reveal his identity to Chremylus, but when
Cario, Chremylus' servant, threatened to
push the blind man over a cliff, he
fearfully revealed that he was Plutus, the god
of riches, blinded by Zeus when he told
the god that he would favor only good
men. Zeus did not want Plutus to
discriminate among men. The unhappy
Plutus declared to Chremylus that had he
his sight back again he would favor only
the good and shun the wicked.
When Chremylus offered to restore his
sight to him, Plutus expressed fear of
the wrath of Zeus. But Chremylus
declared that if Plutus had his sight back,
even for a moment, Zeus would be
superseded, because the dispensation of all
wealth, upon which Zeus was dependent
for his authority, would be in the power
of Plutus, even money paid for sacrifices
offered up to Zeus. Indeed, it would then
be Plutus, according to Chremylus, not
Zeus, who would be all things to all men.
Plutus was delighted to hear these words.
Chremylus, after sending Cario to
summon the neighboring farmers, ushered
Plutus into his house. When Cario told
the farmers that Plutus was at Chremylus'
house and that he would lift them out of
their poverty, they were delirious with
joy. Chremylus, welcoming them, noticed
that his friend Blepsidemus was skeptical
of Cario's report; he suspected that
Chremylus had stolen a treasure.
Chremylus declared that Plutus was truly in his
house and that all good and deserving
people would soon be rich. Even
Blepsidemus was convinced, and he agreed
that it was essential to restore to Plutus
his eyesight.
As Chremylus prepared to take Plutus
to the Temple of Asclepius, there to have
his sight restored, the goddess of poverty,
a hideous old woman, appeared and
objected to the prospect of being cast out
of Chremylus* house after having lived
with him for many years. Blepsidemus
and Chremylus were terrified at the sight
of her. But Chremylus quickly regained
his composure and engaged the goddess
in a debate over which deity, the god of
riches or of poverty, was more beneficial
to mankind. Chremylus declared that with
Plutus once again able to see, those who
deserved it would receive money. Thus
2912

society would be benefited. The goddess
of poverty answered that progress would
come to a halt because Plutus would
distribute money equally. The pair then
argued the difference between beggary
and poverty; the goddess maintained that
men who entertained her were brave,
alert, and strong, while those who
entertained Plutus were soft, fat, and cowardly.
She declared that men were virtuous
when she was their guest, but were
corrupted when Plutus was their guest.
Chremylus was not convinced by her
arguments.
The goddess, having been defeated,
departed in sorrow and anger. Chremylus
now took Plutus to the temple of Ascle-
pius, the god of healing. He observed
every detail of the ritual and laid Plutus
on a couch. A priest told them to sleep.
Plutus' eyes were wiped with a cloth;
then a purple mantle was placed over his
head. At a signal from Asclepius, two
serpents came forth from the sanctuary
and slithered under the mantle. In a
short time, Plutus, his sight restored, arose
from the couch.
Now, those people who had got their
wealth by unfair means looked with fear
upon Plutus, but the poor rejoiced at their
new good fortune. Plutus was happy; he
vowed to correct all of the mistakes he
had made when he was blind. Chremylus
was rewarded with great wealth for his
service to the god.
While Plutus was a guest in the house
of Chremylus, a just man came to petition
the god. He had helped his friends when
they were in need, but they had not
responded in kind when he himself had
become indigent. The man became
wealthy again through the power of
Plutus. He offered an old cloak and a
worn-out pair of sandals as tribute to the
god.
Soon afterward an informer came to
the house and complained that he had
been ruined by the change wrought in
Plutus. Cario stripped the informer of
his fine coat and bedecked him in the
just man's threadbare cloak.
An old woman, presuming to be a
young one, came to see the god. She was
distressed because her young lover, who
had flattered her in order to get money
from her, had deserted her now that Plutus
had made him independent. The youth
appeared with a wreath to give to Plutus
in appreciation.
Hermes, the messenger of the gods,
appeared and reported that Zeus and the
other gods were furious because men no
longer made oblations to them. He
declared that he himself was actually
starving since there were no more offerings in
the form of cakes or figs or honey, and
he urged Cario to succor him. Cario
condescended to retain Hermes to preside
at the games which Plutus surely would
sponsor.
A priest of Zeus came and complained
of hunger; when everyone was rich, there
were no more offerings to the gods.
Chremylus, calling attention to the fact
that Plutus had now taken the place of
Zeus in human fortunes, hinted that the
priest of Zeus would do well to become
the priest of Plutus. Zeus having been
deposed, Plutus was installed as the
supreme god.
2913

POEM OF THE CED
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Heroic epic
Time of plot: c. 1075
Locale: Fief of Bivar, to the north of Burgos, Spain
First transcribed: Twelfth century
Principal characters:
Ruy Df A2, sometimes called My Cid, Lord of Bivar
Alfonso, King of Le6n, by whom the Cid was exiled
Dona Ximena, the Cid's wife
Martin ANTOLfNEZ, one of the Cid's chief lieutenants
Dona Elvira, and
D^na Sol, the Cid's daughters
Minaya Alvar Fanez, the Cid's chief lieutenant and companion
Felix Munoz, the Cid's nephew and rescuer of his daughters
GarcIa Ordonez, Lord of Graft6n, and the Cid's enemy
Diego, and
Fernando Gonzalez, the princes of Carri6n, suitors and husbands to
the Cid's daughters, two villains
Gonzalo Ansijrez, Count of Carri6n, father of Diego and Fernando
Gonzalez
Critique:
In this national epic of
eleventh-century Spain, the poet writes in irregular
verse; there are 3735 lines of uneven
length in three Cantos which relate in
succession the major events in the Cid's
life. The poem, rich in Homeric flavor,
with frequently repeated descriptions of
the principal characters, is more or less
historically cor-ect. Such a man did live
(he died in 1099)- however, his character
and exploits have been embroidered,
amplified, and distorted to earn him the
unquestioned position of the most heroic
figure in Spanish historv and legend. Of
all the epics of the Cid, the Poem of the
Cid, dating from the twelfth century, is
unique in its aualities of reali«ttn, verity,
and poetic evcellence. The Cid is drawn
as a typical Span'sh warrior, proud,
ruthless, realistic, and calculating. At the same
time he shrewdly deals out praise to his
vassals and is generous to a fault. In
victory, he is qu:ck to do honor—even to
overdo it—to his loyal lieutenants.
Although exiled by King Alfonso VI he
continued to hold the position of the king,
if not the man himself, in high regard.
The Story:
By royal edict, the Cid was banished
from Christian Spain by King Alfonso
VI of Castile. The royal edict allowed
him nine davs in which to leave the
kingdom but fo-bade him from taking with
him any of his wealth and goods. Anvone
in the kingdom who would offer aid to
the Cid would forfeit his estate.
Nevertheless, the Cid enlisted the aid
of Martin Antolinez in swindling two
money-lenders, Raquel and Vidas, in
exchange for two large sealed coffers,
supposedly loaded with the Cid's riches but
containing only sand. The Cid and a
small force of vassals then rode away and
made a secret camp. On the morning of
his actual departure from the country,
with a fair-sized group of loval vassals,
mass for all was said at the abbey where
Dona Ximena, the Cid's wife, and his
two infant daughters, Dona Elvira and
Dona Sol, had been ordered to remain.
Becoming a soldier of fortune, the
knight led his host in conquest of one
Moorish territory after another, each time
with a generous sharing of spoils and
booty among his knights and vassals, even
the lowliest. Thus he built up a larger
and stronger force with every foray, and
after each victory mass was said in thanks-
2914

giving.
Trie Cid fought his way to the eastern
side of the peninsula, where he fought
his most crucial battle and won his
greatest victory when he took as his prisoner
Count Ram6n of Barcelona. After Count
Ram6n had been humbled and forced to
give up all his property, he was granted
his liberty.
Although Minava Alvar Fanez
returned to King Alfonso with gifts and
a glowing report of the Cid's successes,
the king did not revoke his decree of
banishment. Minaya's estates were
restored, however, and he was granted
freedom to come and go without fear
of attack.
The Cid continued his campaigns
against the Moorish territories in order
to increase his favor with King Alfonso.
After he had conquered the provinces of
Valencia and Seville, his men grew tired
of fighting and many wished to return to
Castile. The Cid, although still generous
and understanding, proved himself
master by threatening all deserters with death.
Again the Cid sent Minaya to King
Alfonso with a gift of one hundred horses
and a request that Dona Ximena and her
daughters be permitted to join him in
Valencia. Visibly softened by the Cid's
obvious power, King Alfonso granted this
request. In addition, he returned their
former estates to the Cid's men.
Shortly after a triumphant reunion
with his family in Valencia, the Cid
overcame the King of Morocco. As a
gesture of victory he sent the Moroccan's
tent to King Alfonso. This dramatic gift
earned the Cid's pardon and the request
that he give his daughters in marriage to
Diego and Fernando, the princes of Car-
ri6n.
At the victory feast, many marveled at
the great length and abundance of the
Cid's beard, for he had sworn at the time
of his banishment that his beard would
never again be cut and that it would
grow very long. A mystical significance
of power and success was now attached
to the fullness of his beard.
The Cid had reservations about giving
his daughters to the princes of Carrion.
They were, he thought, too young for
marriage. Also, he distrusted the two
men. However, with a great show of
humbleness and subservience, he
returned Dona Elvira and Dona Sol to
the king with word that Alfonso would
honor the Cid by disposing of his
daughters' future as the monarch saw fit.
After the weddings, the elaborate
wedding feast, to which all the Cid's vassals
as well as those of the territory of Car-
ri6n had been invited, lasted for more
than two weeks. The Cid expressed some
satisfaction in having his family united
with noblemen as rich as Prince Diego
and his brother Fernando. Two years of
happiness followed.
One day one of the Cid's pet lions
escaped. Far from showing valor in the
emergency, Diego hid from the lion
under the bench on which the Cid was
asleep, while Fernando fled into the
garden and hid behind a wine press.
After the Cid's vassals had easily
subdued the lion, the favored princes became
the butt of much crude humor and scorn,
but the Cid, choosing to ignore the
evident cowardice of his daughters'
husbands, made excuses for their pallor.
Once again the Cid was forced to war
with the Moroccans, this time against
mighty King Bucar. After a great battle,
Bucar was killed and his vassals were
subdued. The Cid was jubilant. As the
spoils were divided, he rejoiced that at
last his sons-in-law had become seasoned
warriors. His vassals were half-amused,
half-disgusted, because it was common
knowledge among them that neither
Diego nor Fernando had shown the slightest
bravery in the conflict, and at one time
the Cid's standard-bearer had been forced
to risk his life in order to cover for Fer-
nando's shocking cowardice.
Diego and Fernando were richly
rewarded for their supposed valor, but their
greed was not satisfied. Resentful and
injured by the insults and scorn heaped on
them by the Cid's vassals, they began a
scheme for revenge by telling the Cid
2915

that, proud of their wives and their
wealth, they would like to make a
journey to Carrion in order to show off their
wives and to sing the Cid's praises. In
secret, they planned not to return. The
noble and generous Cid, always ready to
think the best of anyone, granted their
request without question.
The Cid added further to the princes'
treasure and sent them off with a
suitable company of his own vassals as an
escort of honor. Then, belatedly
concerned for the safety of his daughters, he
also sent with them his nephew, Felix
Munoz, after charging the young
nobleman with the care of Dona Elvira and
Dona Sol.
When they were safely away from
Valencia, the princes sent the company
on ahead and took their wives into the
woods. There, with viciousness, they
stripped the women of their rich
garments and their jewels, whipped them,
and left them, bleeding and wounded, to
die. His suspicion aroused by the desire
of the princes to separate their wives from
the rest of the party, Fdlix Munoz
followed the princes' tracks and found the
women. He nursed them back to
consciousness and returned them to the Cid.
The princes' scheme of revenge
rebounded to their further disgrace. Word
of their wicked and dishonest acts spread
quickly, and King Alfonso, in his great
displeasure with the Carrions, swore to
try them in Toledo. The Cid swore that
he, to avenge the treatment his
daughters had received, would marry them to
the richest in the land.
At the trial, the princes were first
ordered to return the Cid's valued swords,
which he had given them as tokens of his
high regard. Then they were ordered to
return his gold. Having squandered it
all, they were forced to give him equal
value in horses and property.
In the meantime ambassadors from
Arag6n and Navarre had arrived to ask
for the Cid's daughters as queens for
their kings. The Cid was jubilant, but
still he demanded that the princes of
Carri6n pay in full measure for their
brutality: trial by combat with two of
the Cid's chosen knights. King Alfonso
charged the princes that if they injured
their opponents in the least, they would
forfeit their lives. Proved cravens in the
fight, the princes were stripped of all
honor and wealth.
The Cid rejoiced that, once banished,
he could now count two. kings of Spain
among his kinsmen. He died, Lord of
Valencia, on the Day of Pentecost.
2916

POEMS, CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Robert Burns (1759-1796)
First published: 1786
Since the first publication of Burns's
verse in the famous Kilmarnock edition
entitled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish
Dialect, the poet's fame has increased and
spread. Other editions of his work,
containing later poems, only enhanced his
reputation. Unlike many writers who
achieve early fame only to see it fade,
Burns is still widely read and
appreciated.
At least part of the reason for this
continuing appreciation is the fact that Burns
was essentially a transitional figure
between the eighteenth-century neo-classi-
cists and the Romantics who were soon
to follow. Possessing some of the
qualities of each school, he exhibits few of the
excesses of either. He occasionally used
the couplet that had been made a skillful
tool by Pope and his followers, but his
spirit was closer to the Romantics in his
attitude toward life and his art.
Although he occasionally displayed a
mild conservatism, as in the early "The
Cotter's Saturday Night," he was
fundamentally a rebel — and rebellion was a
basic trait of the Romantics. It would
have been hard for Burns to be a true
neo-classicist because his background,
which figures constantly in his poems,
simply did not suit him for this role. He
had a hard early life and a close
acquaintanceship with the common people and
the common circumstances of life. He
was certainly not the uneducated,
"natural" genius that he is sometimes
pictured — having had good instruction from
his father and a tutor and having done
considerable reading on his own — but he
lacked the classical education that earlier
poets thought necessary for the writing of
true poetry.
Like the neo-classicists, however, he
was skillful in taking the ideas and forms
of earlier poets, in Burns's case,
particularly, the Scottish poets Ramsay and Fer-
gusson as well as the anonymous ballad-
ists and writers of folk songs, and
treating them in his own individual way.
Thus his verse has a wide variety of
stanza forms and styles.
Despite the variety of his techniques,
his basic outlook in his poems is
remarkably consistent. This outlook also may
have a great deal to do with his
popularity. Perhaps more than any other poet
since Chaucer, Burns possessed the
personal insight and the instinct for human
feelings that can make a poem speak to
all men's hearts. Burns always saw the
human aspect of things. His nature
poetry, for instance, marks a departure from
the precise appreciation of the eighteenth-
century poets; Burns's lines about nature
treat it primarily as a setting in which
people live.
The warmth of his verse arises from
this attitude combined with the
experience he had of being in close personal
contact with the people about whom he
wrote. His writing never deals with
subjects that he did not know intimately.
Burns loved several women and claimed
that they each served as great poetic
inspiration. The reader may well believe
this statement when he encounters the
simple and clearly sincere little poems
"Highland Mary," "Mary Morison," and
the well-known song "Sweet Afton." It
was this quality of sincerity that another
great Scot, Thomas Carlyle, found to be
Burns's greatest poetic value.
Burns was not an original thinker, but
he had a few strong conviction's about
religion, human freedom, and morality.
His condemnation of Calvinism and the
hypocrisy it bred is accomplished with
humor and yet with sharpness in two of
his best poems, "The Holy Fair" and the
posthumously published "Holy Willie's
Prayer." In these and several other poems
Burns pokes occasionally none too gen*

tie fun at the professional religionists of
his time without ever seeming didactic.
Here his intensely personal viewpoint
saved him from preaching in the style of
earlier eighteenth-century versifiers. It is
to be expected that the few poems that
contain examples of his rare attempts to
be lofty are unsuccessful.
Having grown up in a humble
environment, Burns was especially sensitive
to social relations and the value of human
freedom and the equality of men. On this
subject, too, he is never didactic, but few
readers have remained unmoved by the
lines of probably his most famous poem
in defense of the lower classes, "A Man's
a Man for A'That":
Is there, for honest poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by—
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that and a' that,
Our toil's obscure and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that.
It was this powerful feeling for democracy
that led Burns, in his later years, to a
tactless advocation of the principles of the
French Revolution, a crusade that did
his career as a minor government official
no good.
It is questionable whether Burns's
heated protest against Calvinism and
the strict morality it proclaimed was
simply a rationalization of his own loose
behavior. However many the romances
he had, and however many the
illegitimate children he fathered, there can be
little doubt of Burns's sincere devotion,
at least at the time, to the woman of his
choice. In a larger sense, too, the poet's
warm sympathy for his fellow man is
evidence of a sort of ethical pattern in his
life and wo*k that is quite laudable.
The poetic techniques in Burns's poems
are unquestionably a chief reason for his
popularity. Few poets have so well suited
the style to the subject, and his use of
earlier stanza forms and several kinds of
poetic diction has a sureness and an
authority that are certain to charm even the
learned student of poetry.
There are three types of diction in his
poetry: Scottish dialect, pure English,
and a combination of the two. In "Tarn
O' Shanter," a later work that is perhaps
his masterpiece, Burns used dialect to tell
an old legend of the supernatural with
great effect. The modern reader who
takes the trouble to master the dialectal
terminology will be highly rewarded. In
this, as in most of Burns's poems, the
pace and rhythm of the lines are
admirably well suited to the subject.
His use of the purely English idiom,
as in "The Vision," was seldom so
successful. Usually Burns wrote in pure
English when he had some lofty purpose
in mind, and with the exception of "The
Cotter's Saturday Night" this
combination was nearly fatal to the poetic quality
of these poems.
For the general reader, probably the
most enjoyable and rewarding reading
consists of the poems and songs that
Burns did in English, with occasional
Scottish touches here and there in the
lines. Most happy is this joining of
language and dialect in such a poem as the
famous little love lyric, "A Red, Red
Rose." These three kinds of poetic
diction can be found side by side in one of
Burns's best poems, the highly patriotic
"The Jolly Beggars," which gives as fine
a picture of Scottish low life as can be
found anywhere.
Naturally, Burns was most at home
when he wrote in his native dialect; and,
since one of the most striking
characteristics of his verse is the effortless flow
of conversational rhythms, it is not
surprising that his better poems are those
that came as natural effusions in his most
familiar diction.
The total achievement of Burns is obvi-
2918

ously great, but it should not be
misunderstood. Burns lacked the precision
and clarity of his predecessors in the
eighteenth century, and he never was
able to reach the exalted heights of
poetic expression attained by Shelley and
Keats not long after him. For vigor and
the little touches that breathe life into
lines of poetry, however, he was
unexcelled by earlier or later poets.
The claim that Burns wrote careless
verse has been perhaps too much
emphasized. His poems and songs are surely
not carefully carved jewels, but neither
are they haphazard groupings of images
and rhymes. The verses seem unlabored,
but Burns worked patiently at them, and
with considerable effort. That they seem
to have been casual utterances is only
further tribute to his ability.
It may be that the highest praise of
all was paid to Burns, both as man and
poet, by Keats when the great Romantic
said that we can see in Burns's poems his
whole life; and, though the life reflected
was not an altogether happy one, the
poet's love of freedom, people, and of life
itself appears in nearly every line.
2919

THE POETICAL WORKS OF EDWARD TAYLOR
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Edward Taylor (c.1645-1729)
First published: 1939
Lord, let thy Glorious Body send such
rayes
Into my Soule, as ravish shall my
heart,
That Thoughts how thy Bright Glory
out shall blaze
Upon my body, may such Rayes thee
dart.
My Tunes shall dance dien on these
Rayes, and Caper
Unto thy Praise: when Glory lights
my Taper.
—Meditation Seventy-Six, Second
Series.
Edward Taylor, an orthodox Puritan
minister, was New England Puritanism's
sweetest singer before the Lord, but for
more than two hundred years after his
death his poems were unknown since he
did not allow their publication and
directed that his heirs should not publish
them. The 400-page manuscript
containing his poetical works was presented to
Yale University in 1883 by Henry
Wyllys Taylor. Thomas H. Johnson, a
specialist in American literature,
discovered the poems and received permission
from the university to publish them. The
Poetical Works of Edward Taylor,
published in 1939, contains what Mr.
Johnson regards as the best of Taylor's poems.
The Poetical Works contains a long
verse sequence titled "God's
Determinations Touching His Elect," a group of five
occasional poems, and selected poems
from two long series of "Sacramental
Meditations." "God's Determinations" is
largely in dialogue form; and the
speakers—Mercy, Justice, Christ, Satan, the
Soul, and a Saint—are reminiscent of
characters in early English morality plays.
The several poems in the sequence are
written in a variety of stanzaic patterns;
and the style (as in all of Taylor's poems)
is that of the seventeenth-century English
THE POETICAL WORKS OF EDWARD TAYD
Princeton University Press. Copyright, 1939, by R
versity Press.
metaphysical poets like John Donne and
George Herbert. The lines abound in
homely comparisons and metaphors drawn
from New England life and in
extravagant conceits which are a distinguishing
mark of all metaphysical poetry.
This long work, which embodies a
contest between Christ and Satan for
mankind, is typically Puritan in thought in
that it attempts to justify the Calvinistic
doctrine of the Covenant. According to
this doctrine, God made a covenant with
Adam that he and his descendants would
possess eternal happiness if they did not
eat of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. By disobeying, Adam and Eve
lost their immunity to suffering and
death. But through a new Covenant of
Grace, God gave men another chance to
save themselves from condemnation. If
they would believe in Christ, who had
willingly died for them, certain elect
souls would be saved. They would not
really earn this salvation through any
good works they might # do, but they
would receive it out of God's abounding
grace. No one knew how many of these
elect there were, but each believer in
Christ might hope that he was included.
Though Calvinism, greatly modified,
is still present in the doctrines of many
of the Protestant churches of today, most
modern readers find tedious the long
discussions of grace, faith, redemption, and
damnation which course through the
poetry and prose of the New England
Puritans. For this reason, much of "God's
Determinations" is of less interest than
Taylor's other poems, in which the poet's
lyricism and fanciful turns of thought are
not subdued or distracted by theological
argument.
There is nothing to distinguish many
of Taylor's lines in "God's
Determinations" from the writing of perhaps a
I. Excerpts reprinted by permission of the publishers,
kland Editions. Copyright, 1943, by Princeton Uni-
2920

dozen of his poetizing Puritan
contemporaries in America and England. Mercy's
reply to Justice, for example, concerning
the respective fates of the Devil's
disciples and of the true believers is no more
than rhymed Calvinism:
I will not onely from his Sin him free,
But fill him with Inherent grace also.
Though none are Sav'd that wicked-
nesse imbrace,
Yet none are Damn'd that have
Inherent Grace.
If Taylor were capable of nothing better
than this, he would never have been
hailed as America's best poet before the
appearance of William Cullen Bryant in
the nineteenth century.
But Taylor possessed more than the
inherent grace of Calvin's theology; he
was also gifted with the inherent grace
(in a different sense) of the true poet.
In the "Prologue" to "God's
Determinations," he humbly seeks aid from the
great God whom he would praise. He
asks:
Lord, Can a Crumb of Earth the Earth
outweigh:
Outmatch all mountains, nay the
Chrystall Sky?
Imbosom in't designs that shall Display
And trace into the Boundless Deity?
Even if this "Crumb of Earth" had an
angel's quill dipped in liquid gold, he
says, "It would but blot and blur: yea,
jag and jar," unless God made both "Pen
and Scribener." He then admits that he
himself is
this Crumb of Dust which is
design'd
To make my Pen unto thy Praise
alone,
And my dull Phancy I would gladly
grinde
Unto an Edge on Zions Pretious
Stone:
And write in Liquid Gold upon thy
Name
My Letters till thy glory forth doth
flame.
He prays that God will not laugh to
scorn his attempts and that He will
overlook any failings as "being Slips slipt
from thy Crumb of Dust." If God will
but guide his pen he may then write,
To Prove thou art, and that thou art
the best,
And shew thy Properties to shine
most bright.
And then thy Works will shine as
flowers on Stems,
Or as in Jewellary Shops, do
jems.
One of the most charming passages
in "God's Determinations" is found in
the opening stanzas of Christ's lengthy
reply to a soul who "groans for succour"
in his struggles against the fierce assaults
of Satan, characterized as a cur who
"bayghs and barks . . . veh'mently." As
Christ begins to speak, He is not God's
Son clothed in majesty or dignity but
simply a loving father comforting a
frightened child:
Peace, Peace, my Hony, do not Cry,
My Little Darling, wipe thine eye,
Oh, Cheer, Cheer up, come see.
Is anything too deare, my Dove,
Is anything too good, my Love,
To get or give for thee?
The cur barks, Christ explains, only
because this soul belongs to Him, and
"His barking is to make thee Cling/Close
underneath thy Saviours wing." To make
it clear that fright is needless, Christ uses
a simile from New England rural or
village life:
As Spot barks back the sheep again,
Before they to the Pound are ta'ne,
So he, and hence 'way goes.
Continuing with other endearing names
("Fear not, my Pritty Heart. . . ,. Why
did my sweeten start?"), Christ even
employs New England dialect:
And if he run an inch too fur,
I'le Check his Chain, and rate the Cur.
My chick, keep close to me.
Suddenly, in the next line, Christ's
language is transformed, and it is as though
John Donne or George Herbert had taken
2921

over the pen to finish Taylor's stanza for
him:
The Poles shall sooner kiss and greet,
And Parallels shall sooner meet,
Than thou shall harmed bee.
Of Taylor's occasional poems included
in the Poetical Works, the best known
(through many reprintings in
anthologies) is "Huswifery," a poem of three
six-line stanzas of the type which Taylor
uses in his "Sacramental Meditations."
Also, as in the "Meditations," the whole
poem develops a single "conceit" or
extended metaphor. The poet prays to his
Lord, "Make me ... thy Spin[n]ing
Wheele compleat," and the process of
becoming a Christian is described in
terms of the making of clothing which
he will wear. When, with Distaff ("Thy
Holy Worde"), Sw'ft Fivers ("mine
Affections"), Spool ("mv Soule"), and
Reel ("My Conversation"), the yarn has
been spun, the poet prays again:
Make me thy Loome then, knit therein
this Twine:
And make thy Holy Spirit, Lord,
winde quills:
Then weave the Web thyselfe. The
yarn is fine.
Thine Ordinances make my Fulling
Mills.
Then dy the same in Heavenly
Colours Choice,
All pinkt with Varnish't Flowers of
Paradise.
When the poet's Understanding, Will,
Affections, Judgment, Conscience,
Memory, Words, and Actions have been
dressed in this Cod-made cloth,
Then mine apparell shall display
before yee
That I am Cloathd in Holy robes for
glory.
Taylor's "Sacramental Meditations"
were written over a period of forty-four
years, 1682 to 1725. His purpose in
writing them is sug£esfed in his
complete manuscript title: "Preparatory
Meditations before my Approach to the Lords
Supper. Chiefly upon the Doctrinfe]
preached upon the Day of
administration." Each meditation is in Taylor's
favorite six-line stanza, rhyming ababcc;
and each is numbered, with a Biblical text
to provide the theme. In view of the sen-
suousness in the language and imagery
of so much of Taylor's poetry—despite
his Puritan religious orthodoxy—it is
significant that of ninetv-seven texts which
he chose from the Old Testament,
seventy-six are from the Song of Solomon
(Taylor uses the alternate name
Canticles), which is filled with the pass;on and
imagery of Oriental love poetry. The
orthodox interpretation of the book as an
allegory describing Christ's love for the
Church permitted Taylor to return
repeatedly to it without a twinge of his
Puritan conscience, but the modern
reader may wonder whether it was not
Taylor's own natural ardor which drew him
so of "en to Canticles for his texts. Yet,
reading the "Meditations," one never
questions the sincerity of his love for
Christ in such lines as these:
Oh! that my Heart, thy Golden Harp
might bee
Well tun'd by Glorious Grace, that
e'ry string
Screw'd to toe highest pitch, might
unto thee
All Praises wrapt in sweetest Musick
bring.
I praise thee, Lord, and better praise
thee would,
If what I had, my heart might ever
hold.
Though the "Sacramental
Meditations" are often awkward and uneven in
development and sometimes repetitious
in phrasing or imagery, they form
altogether a remarkable group of poems,
filled with light and warmth and beauty
and proclaiming the poet's love for the
Christ whom he served devotedly for so
many years.
2922

THE POETICS
Tyfe of work: Philosophical essay
Author: Aristotle (S34-322 B.C.)
First transcribed: Fourth century B.C.
Although Aristotle's reputation as one
of the greatest philosophers of all time
rests principally on his work in
metaphysics, he nowhere shows himself more
the master of illuminating analysis and
stvle than in the Poetics. The conception
of tragedy which Aristotle developed in
this work has perpetuated the Greek ideal
of drama through the ages.
Aristotle begins his essav with an
exposition of the Greek idea that all poetry,
or art, is representative of life. This
conception—that art is imitative—is also to
be found in Plato's Republicy a work in
which Plato, who was Aristotle's teacher,
rxrtravs Socrates as urging that poets be
banned from the ideal state for, as
imitators, they are too far removed from
reality to be worthy of attention. For the
Greeks the idea of poetry as imitative or
representational was a natural one since,
as a matter of fact, a great deal of
Grecian art was representational in content.
Furthermore, by "representation" was
meant not a literal copying of physical
objects, although it was sometimes that,
but a new use of the material presented
by sense.
Aristotle's intention in the Poetics is to
analyze the essence of poetry and to
distinguish its various species. The word
"poefv" is used in translation as
synonymous for "fine art." Among the arts
mentioned by Aristotle are epic poetry,
tragedy, comedy, dithvrambic roetry, flute-
playing and Ivre-playing. The^e a-ts are
regarded as all representative of life, but
they a^e distinguished from each other
by their means and their objects. The
means include rhvthm, language and
tune; but not all the arts involve all
three, nor are these means used in the
same wav. For example, flute-nlaving
involves the use of rhvthm and tune, but
dancing involves rhythm alone.
When living persons are represented,
Aristotle writes, they are represented as
being better than, worse than, or the same
as the average. Tragedy presents men
somewhat better than average, while
comedy presents men somewhat worse. This
point alone offers strong evidence against
a narrow interpretation of Aristotle's
conception of art, for if men can be altered
by the poet, made better or worse than
in actual life, then poetry is not a mere
uncreative copying of nature.
Furthermore, a comment later on in the Poetics
tells us that the poet in representing life
represents things as they are, or as they
seem to be, or as they should be. This
concept certainly allows the artist a great
deal more freedom than "imitation"
suggests.
The origin of poetry is explained by
Aristotle as the natural consequence of
man's love of imitation and of tune and
rhythm. We enjoy looking at accurate
comes of things, he says, even when the
things are themselves repulsive, such as
the lowest animals and corpses. The
philosopher accounts for this enjoyment by
claiming that it is the result of our love
of learning; in seeing accurate copies, we
learn better what things are. This view
is in opposition to Plato's idea that art
corrupts the mind since it presents copies
of copies of reality (physical objects
being considered as mere copies of the
universal idea or kind). Aristotle believed
that universals, or characteristics, are to
be found only in things, while Plato
thought that the universals had some sort
of separate existence.
Comedy represents inferior persons in
that, laughable, they are a species of the
ugly. The comic character makes mistakes
or is in some way ugly, but not so
seriously as to awaken pity or fear.
Epic poetry differs from tragedy in that
it has a single meter and is na^ative in
form. A further difference resulted from

the Greek convention that a tragedy
encompass events taking place within a
single day, while the epic poem was
unlimited in that respect.
Tragedy is defined by Aristotle as a
representation of a heroic action by means
of language and spectacle so as to arouse
pity and fear and thus bring about a
catharsis of those emotions.
The relief, or catharsis, of the
emotions of pity and fear is the most
characteristic feature of the Aristotelian
conception of tragedy. According to Aristotle,
tragedy arouses the emotions by bringing
a man somewhat better than average into
a reversal of fortune for which he is
responsible; then, through the downfall of
the hero and the resolution of the
conflicts resulting from the hero's tragic flaw,
the tragedy achieves a purging of the
emotions in the audience.
The audience feels pity in observing
the tragic hero's misadventures because
he is a vulnerable human being suffering
from unrecognized faults, and then fear
results from the realization that the hero
is much like ourselves: we, too, can err
and suffer.
Aristotle defines "plot" as the
arrangement of the events which make up the
play, "character" as that which
determines the nature of the agents, and
"thought" as what is expressed in the
speeches of the agents. "Diction" is the
manner of that expression.
The plot is the most important
element in the tragedy (the others being
character, diction, thought, spectacle, and
song) because a tragedy is a
representation of action. The characters exist for
the sake of the action, not the action for
the sake of the characters.
The two most important elements of
the tragedy and of its plot are "peripety"
or reversal and "discovery." By "peripety"
is meant a change of a situation into its
opposite state of fortune—in tragedy, a
change from a good state of affairs to
the bad. A "discovery" is a revelation of
a matter previously unknown. The most
effective tragedy, according to Aristotle,
results from a plot which combines
peripety and discovery in a single action, as
in Sophocles' Oedipus.
To modern readers Aristotle's
definitions of the "beginning," "middle," and
"end" of a tragedy may seem either
amusing or trivial, but they contain important
dramatic truths. The philosopher defines
the beginning as that which does not
necessarily follow anything else but does
necessarily give rise to further action.
The end necessarily follows from what
has gone before, but does not necessarily
lead to further events. The middle
follows the beginning and gives rise to the
end.
The sense of Aristotle's definitions is
found once we realize that the important
thing about the beginning of a play is
not that it is the start, but that relative
to the audience's interest and curiosity no
earlier event is needed, but further events
are demanded. Similarly, for the ending,
the closing events of a play should not
be merely the last events presented, but
they should appear necessary as a result
of what has already happened, and,
furthermore, they should not give rise to
new problems which must be solved if
the audience is to be satisfied.
Aristotle writes that anything that is
beautiful must not only have parts orderly
arranged, but must also have parts of a
large enough, but not too large, size. An
animal a thousand miles long or
something too small to be seen cannot be
beautiful. A play should be as long as
possible, allowing a change of fortune in a
sequence of events ordered in some
apparently inevitable way, provided the
play can be understood as a whole.
In his conception of unity Aristotle
emphasizes a point that continues to be
useful to all who compose or criticize
works of art: if the presence of a part
makes no difference, it has no place in
the work.
A good tragedy should not show
worthy men passing from good fortune
to bad, for that is neither fearful nor
pitiful but shocking. But even worse is to
show bad men acquiring good fortune,
for such a situation irritates us without
2924

arousing pity and fear.
The tragic hero, consequently, should
be a man better than ourselves, but not
perfect; and he should suffer from a flaw
which shows itself in some mistaken
judgment or act resulting in his
downfall. There has been considerable
discussion about the kind of flaw Aristotle
meant, but it seems clear from the
examples he gives, like the Oedipus, that the
flaw should be such that, given it, a man
must inevitably defeat himself in action;
nevertheless, it is not inevitable that
man have that flaw. All men are liable
to the flaw, however; hence, the tragic
hero arouses fear in all those who see the
resemblance between the hero's situation
and their own. The hero arouses pity
because, as a human being, he cannot be
perfect like the gods; his end is bound
to be tragic.
Aristotle concludes his Poetics with a
careful discussion of diction and thought,
and of epic poetry. Among the sensible
comments he makes is one to the effect
that what is believable though not
possible is better in a play than an event
which is possible but not believable.
Throughout the Poetics Aristotle
offers remarkably clear analyses of what
Greek tragedy actually was and of what,
according to Aristotle, it ought to be. He
shows not only an adroit analytical
intellect but also an understanding of the
practical problems of the art of poetry;
and he is sophisticated enough to realize
that most questions as to the value,
length, beauty, and other features of a
work of art are settled relative to the
kind of audience the judge prefers.
2925

THE POETRY OF AUDEN
Type of work: Poetry
Author: W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden (1907- )
Principal published works: Poems, 1930; The Orators, 1932; The Dance of Death, 1933;
Poems, 1934; Look, Stranger, 1936; Spain, 1937; Another Time, 1940; The Double Man,
1941; Vor the Time Being, 1944; Collected Poetry, 1945; The Age of Anxiety, 1947;
Nones, 1951; The Shield of Achilles, 1955; The Old Man's Road, 1956
philosophy. In the inaugural address
delivered when he became Professor of
Poetry at Oxford in 1956 he named
Thomas Hardy as his first real model;
the younger poet found in his master's
work an expression of the disillusionment
he himself felt. Hardy wrote of an
apparently meaningless universe, governed
by chance, and Auden found men going
through life as a ritual in which there is
no meaning. The soldiers of "Which side
am I supposed to be on?" are "aware of
our rank and alert to obey orders," but
they have no idea of what they fight for.
Like Hardy, Auden often speaks in
abstract tones, and he may have acquired
his fondness for experimenting with verse
forms from the late-Victorian poet.
William Blake's concern for the
mistreated laboring class and the paradoxical
religious views expressed in The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell are reflected in Au-
den's poetry. Blake's Songs of Innocence
and Songs of Experience also suggest the
form of many of the poems in "Songs and
other musical pieces" in Auden's
Collected Poetry. Especially reminiscent of
Blake is:
Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurses flowers will not last;
Nurses to the graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.
Auden's rhythms also reflect rrs
interest in Ando-Saxon and Middle
English verse. The Age of Anxiety, "a
Baroque Eclogue." is written almost entirely
in the old alliterative four-s*ress line,
which is used also in the lines of the
Voices' of the Desert in For the Time
Be'ng. The colloquial style of William
Butler Yeats's later poetry also influ-
THE POETRY OF W. H. AUDEN. Excerpts reprinted from THE COLLECTED POETRY OF
W. H. AUDEN by permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Copyright, 1945, by W. H. Auden.
W. H. Auden, for twenty years ranked
among the best modern poets, is, like his
contemporary T. S. Eliot, the product
of both the English and the American
traditions. Auden was raised in the
industrial midlands of England and educated
at Oxford during the bleak 1930's. There
he became one of a group of young poets,
including C. Day Lewis, Louis Mac-
Neice, Stephen Spender, and Christopher
Isherwood, who directed their writing
toward a search for meaning in a world
which seemed to them empty and
mechanical.
Growing up during the great
depression, when unemployment was at a peak
in England, Auden and his
contemporaries, in sympathy with the problems of
the working class, looked to Marxism as
a possible solution to social conditions
and to Sigmund Freud and George Wal-
ther Groddeck for answers to the spiritual
barrenness resulting from these
conditions. Auden's continual search for
meaning and faith during this period led him
away from these ideas to the orthodox
Christianity of theologians like Reinhold
Niebuhr and S0ren Kierkegaard. The
most complete expression of his
Christianity is his Christmas Oratorio, For the
Time Being, possibly his finest, most
cohesive work.
Auden's acceptance of Christianity
coincided approximately with his move
to New York, just before the outbreak
of World War II. His more recent work
combines American images, rhythms, and
colloquialism with English ones, but his
poetry is almost always universal rather
than regional.
Auden's wide reading is reflected in
the development of his technique and his
2926

enced some of Auden's work. Critics have
pointed out the s:milaritv between Yeats's
"September 1913" and Auden's
"September 1, 1939":
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade.
It is difficult to assess the effect of
T. S. Eliot on Auden: the latter is
reported to have told his Oxford tutor that
Eliot was the only poet to be seriously
considered by the prospective writer. The
social criticism of The Waste Land and
The Hollow Men was certainly an
inspiration to the young poet who felt the
same cultured barrenness that Eliot had
described. Auden has adopted a few of
Eliot's symbols: the desert is a recurrent
image of the present civilization for both
men.
A particularly striking similarity
between Eliot and Auden is their
acceptance of Anglo-Catholic ChrVianity.
However, Eliot writes in Ash
Wednesday and The Four Quartets of a
contemplative ideal, while Auden preaches
the necessity for human relationships
and mufual concern. His view is well
expressed in these lines from For the
Time Being:
Space is the Whom our loves are needed
by.
Time is our choice of How to love and
Why.
Several related themes run
throughout Auden's work. He sees man as an
individual isolated in society: a "lonely."
"Musie des Beaux Arts" emphasizes this
separation: suffering, Auden says, "takes
place while someone else is eating or
opening a window or just walking dully
along" :
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance; how
everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the
ploughrran may.
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important
failure . . .
The Wanderer is another recurrent
figure in Auden's poetry. The isolated
man searches, sometimes aimlessly, for
meaning in l'fe. An earlv poem, "Doom
is Dark and Deeper Than Any Sea
Dingle," whose title comes from a
Middle English poem translated by Auden,
describes the strange impulse which
drives a man away from home to wander
"a stranger among strangers." Man's quest
is portrayed more elaborately in The Aze
of Anx'ety, in the section called "The
Seven Stages." The four characters, three
men and a woman, travel, sometimes
toeether, sometimes separately, throueh
different scenes, passing through the
pitfalls of modern culture and their own
dreams, but they lack the courage to
cross the desert which is the final sfage.
Thev cannot take the "leap of faith" in
which Auden found the end to his own
quest. Only Rosetta, who possesses the
vestiges of her Jewish heritage, has roots
and conviction enough to allow her to
face the future; whatever happens, she
believes that peace lies in reconciliation
with her earthly and heavenly fathers.
Malin, the Air Force officer, expresses
the paradoxes which confront the
prospective Christian and the tension which
is an integral part of Auden's faith:
For the others, like me, there is only the
flash
Of negative knowledge. . . .
In both his pre-Christian and
Christian poems Auden writes of love as the
saving force for mankind, but both
humanistic and Christian love in his poetry
are extremely impersonal. Concern for
others is a familiar theme, but there are
almost no descriptions of personal
relationships. Even the so-called love lyric,
"Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love," is
strangely abstract.
Auden is a highly skilled technician.
His volume of collected poems includes
sonnets, lyrical songs, colloquial
meditations, and complex medieval and
Renaissance stanza forms like the sestina. His
long poems—The Sea and The Mirror,
in which he discusses the place of the
2927

artist in society, using the characters
from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and
For the Time Be»ng—contain passages
of excellent prose. This virtuosity, one of
the poet's greatest assets, is also a defect;
verbal tricks intended to produce striking
effects succeed only in seeming slick and
insincere in some of his work. Many a
potentially good poem is marred bv the
intrusion of a too clever phrase or forced
aural effects. Nevertheless, Auden's skill
makes his best work inimitable. In the
elegiac "In Memory of William Butler
Yeats" he interweaves imagery from
several of Yeats's own poems and uses three
rather different styles of his own to
produce one of the finest elegies of the
twentieth century. In the concluding
lines of this poem one will find Auden's
concept of the function of the poet.
Auden has adopted a long, free verse
line for many of his more recent poems
including parts of The Shield of Achilles
and "In Praise of Limesfone," a "moral
landscape" published in 1951. His
limestone hill is not the habitat of "saints-to-
be" or of "intendant Caesars"; the water-
carved stone attracts the men of
imagination who see statues, vineyards, in the
natural formations, those who climb "arm
in arm, but never, thank God, in s^ep."
It is too early to evaluate Auden's
work as a whole; he may yet write the
masterpiece which his best poems
indicate he is capable of creating. But
whatever the future direction his work may
take, he will certainlv be remembered,
on the basis of his published poetry and
criticism, as one of the outstanding
literary men of our time.
2928

THE POETRY OF BASHO
Type of work: Verse and poetic prose
Author: Matsuo Bashd (1644-1694)
First published: 1672-1748
No poet in Japan has had a greater
effect upon his contemporaries or his
posterity or has been accorded greater
acclaim and honor than Matsuo Bashd.
Throughout Japan, wherever his poetic
wanderings took him there are stone
memorials, more than three hundred
altogether, inscribed with his compositions
and many mounds believed to contain
objects he owned. Although his remains
were buried in a Buddhist temple, on his
centennial and sesquicentennial
anniversaries he was deified in at least three
Shintd shrines, one of which was
actually named after two of the words in his
famous poem:
Furu-ike ya
Kawazu tobi-komu
Mizu no oto.
Many have tried it, but no one has
successfully translated this poem.
However, it seems to refer to trie sound of
the water when a frog jumps into a pond.
Thus, the name of the shrine might be
translated as "Shrine of the Jump-sound."
Born the third (some say the second)
son of a warrior family, Bash6 not only
studied haikai poetry, but also read
widely in the Japanese and Chinese
classics and poetry. He was a student of Zen
Buddhism, calligraphy, and painting, and
had at one time been a student of Taoism
and of medicine. With this rich and
varied background Bashd, after a few
youthful indiscretions common to his age and
society, developed into a man of high
virtue, possibly because of the shock he
experienced at the death of his feudal lord
and fellow poet, the privations he met
during his wanderings, and his serious
studies in Zen Buddhism.
Haikai, the origins of which may be
traced back to the very beginnings of
Japanese poetry, developed from a form
in which a series of seventeen-syllable
verse were linked together. During the
middle of the sixteenth century, this form
split into the seventeen-syllable haiku
and linked verse (renga), the former a
humorous, sometimes bawdy, type of
epigram. By the middle of the
seventeenth century, haiku had again split into
two schools, one emphasizing the form
itself, the other seeking greater freedom
for the expression of wit and the unusual
at the expense of form. Ibara Saikaku
(q.v.) was in his verse a follower of the
latter school. Neither school, however,
produced superior poetry.
Bash6 lived in a peaceful period
following a century of wars and internecine
strife. More than half a century before,
Ieyasu had unified Japan under the rule
of his house. The warriors who had
fought under him and their descendants
now were busy with peaceful enterprises.
There was also a rising moneyed class
made up of merchants in the urban
trading centers of Osaka and Edo, now
Tokyo. The concentration of power and
resources in the shogunate, the
concentration of cash money among the
merchants, the philosophical clashes between
the rigid codes of feudal loyalty on the
one hand and the power of money on the
other, and peaceful times, produced three
of the greatest literary figures in Japanese
history almost at the same time. Bashd
was the poet among them, and the only
one who forsook material wealth for
matters of the spirit.
In 1666, when Bashd was twenty-
three, his feudal lord died. Bashd left
feudal service in spite of the fact that
such a step made him a semi-outcast
from his society, and in 1672 he arrived
in Edo already versed in the two schools
of the haiku. For the rest of his life he
devoted himself to bringing this form
back to true poetry and, in the course of
this effort, created a third school which is

named after him. In the three centuries
since, haiku poetry has had its
vicissitudes, but each revival has been a
movement back to Bashd. His influence is felt
not only in his own school, but also in
the other two. His death anniversaries
are still strictly observed by his followers,
and admiration for him amounts to bare
idolatry. The latest revival was begun by
Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), haiku poet
and novelist, in the 1 890's.
There is no single adequate word for
the essence of Bashd's poetry, but it has
been described as the illustration of an
old man girding on his armor and fighting
on the battlefield, or clothing himself in
the richest brocades to attend a banquet.
In either case he cannot hide the fact
that he is beyond his physical prime. The
gayest of Bashd's haiku contain an
element of lingering pathos, but such pathos
is not to be gained by seeking it per se.
It must be a development of one's nature
as the result of the varied experiences of
life.
The best of the poems by Bashd and
his disciples are collected in the Haikai
Shichihu-shu (Seven Collected Works)
in twelve volumes compiled by Sakuma
Ryukyo (1686-1748). The seven
collections contained are: Fuyu no Hi (Winter
Days'); Haru no Hi (Spring Days);
Arano (Fields of Wilderness); Hisago
(The Gourd); Saru Mino (Coats of
Straw for Monkeys); Sumi-dawara (Bags
of Charcoal); and Zoku Saru Mino (Saru
Mino, Continued).
Other well-known collections of his
verse and prose writings are the
following: Kai-oi, a collection of sixty haiku in
pairs, each like the two shells of a clam,
which gives this collection its title. The
verse of thirty-seven persons is contained,
as well as Bashd's comments. The preface
is dated 1672, when Bashd was twenty-
eight. The poems combine snatches of
popular songs and expressions of the
time, and Bashd's comments indicate that
if he himself did not indulge in a gay
life in his youth, he was at least in
sympathy with those who did. This work is
representative of his earlier years.
The remaining books are accounts of
his wanderings and journeys, each
liberally sprinkled with poems. These include
Nozarashi Kikd (In the Face of Wind
and Rain), 1685, an account of a trip
from Edo to the Kyoto-Nara-Ise area,
particularly Nagoya in 1684-1685; Kashima
Kikd (Moon Viewing to Kashima),
1687; Oi no Ohumi (Scraps from my
Letterbox), 1687, an account of a
journey in the Yamato area, believed to show
Bashd at his peak as a poet and
philosopher; Sarashina Kikd (Moon Viewing to
Sarashina), 1688, a brief work like the
Kashima Kikd and similar in style; Oku
no Hoso-michi (The Narrow Road of
Oku), an account of a trip in 1689 from
Edo to Sakata in northeastern Japan via
Nikkd and Matsushima, and thence
down toward the Japan Sea to Kanazawa,
Tsuruga and then southward to Ise,
covering about 1,467 miles in seven months.
This work, the greatest of Bashd's travel
accounts, inspired numerous followers,
both of his own time and later (including
at least one American), to make trips by
the same route. The Saga Nikki (Diary
at Saga)t 1691, is Bashd's diary written
during a month's stay in 1691 at the
Rakushi-sha, a modest residence in Saga,
near Kyoto. The style reveals Bashd at
his best in describing his enjoyment of a
simple, uncluttered life.
Some examples of Bashd's prose and
poetry have been translated into English,
German, and Spanish. Among the
English translations, his Genju-an no ki
("Prose Poem on the Unreal Dwelling")
is included in Donald Keene's Anthology
of Japanese Literature (New York,
1955). There are two translations into
German of the Kashima Kikd. The Oku
no Hoso-michi has been translated by
Isobe Yaichird (Tokyo, 1933). A partial
translation is included in the Keene
Anthology. It also appears as "Bashd, the
Wanderer," by Richard Lane, in the
Journal of Oriental Literature (IV,
1951). The Saru Mino appears in
"Bashd (1644-94) and the Japanese
Political Epigram," by Basil Hall
Chamberlain, in the Transactions of the Asiatic
2930

Society of Japan (XXX, 2, 1902). Har- his An Introduction to Haiku: an Anthol-
old G. Henderson has a number of ogy of Poems and Poets from Bashd to
unique translations of Bash6's poems in Shiki (New York, 1958).
2931

THE POETRY OF BLAKE
Type of work: Poetry
Author: William Blake (1757-1827)
Principal published works: Poetical Sketches, 1783; There Is No Natural Religion, c. 1788-
1794; All Religions Are One, c. 1788-1794; Songs of Innocence, 1789; The Book of
Thel, 1789; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, c. 1790; The French Revolution, 1791;
For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise, 1793; Visions of the Daughters of Albion, 1793;
America, A Prophecy, 1793; Songs of Experience, 1794; Europe, A Prophecy, 1794;
The First Book of Urizen, 1794; The Song of Los, 1795; The Book of Ahania, 1795;
The Book of Los, 1795; Milton, 1804-1803; Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant
Albion, 1804-1820; Laocobn, c. 1820; The Ghost of Abel, 1822
The poetry of William Blake, an artist,
printer, prophet, and revolutionary,
varies widely in style and substance, from
youthful imitations of Spenser to lyrics
of seemingly naive childish wonder to
obscure and pretentious mysticism. Apart
from his earliest productions, his work
shows a powerful originality in form,
images, and technique.
His juvenile work, written between
the ages of twelve and twenty, was
published in 1783 as Poetical Sketches. The
poems, which are slight and at times even
crude, show a strong Elizabethan
influence. Occasional flashes of lyrical
brilliance are visible, however, such as this
stanza from a song known to have been
written before he was fourteen:
With sweet May dews my wings were
wet,
And Phoebus fir'd my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
Although he remained poor and
generally unknown throughout his life,
Blake was well acquainted with a
number of leading social and political radicals,
and he belonged to a discussion group
which included Henry Fuseli, Thomas
Holcroft, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas
Paine, and others. Through such
stimulation he was able to develop his own
radical views about Christianity, Swe-
denborgianism, and the American and
French revolutions. His dual concern
with mysticism and political radicalism
about 1788-1789 marks his intellectual
and artistic maturity. These two strains
were immediately evident in Blake's two
major collections of lyrics, Songs of
Innocence (1789), and Songs of
Experience (1794), printed together in 1794 as
Songs of Innocence and Experience. All
three volumes were illustrated by the
author's powerfully imaginative
engravings, which contribute greatly to the
reader's appreciation of the text. By
"innocence" and "experience" Blake meant
two contrary, though not clearly defined,
states of the human soul. The two
groups of poems directly oppose their
subject matter. We are given "Infant
Joy" against "Infant Sorrow," "The
Blossom" against "The Sick Rose," "The
Lamb" against "The Tiger," "The Divine
Image" against "The Human Abstract,"
and opposed treatments, of "The
Chimney Sweeper," "A Little Boy Lost," and
others. The poems are remarkable for
their simple grace and direct emotional
expression. "Innocence" is something like
happiness, a state of wonder and
acceptance and endurance of life. The
"innocent" chimney sweep, for example,
although aware of his misery, retains his
vision and faith:
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried
when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was
shaved: so I said
"Hush Tom! never mind it, for when
your head's bare
You know that the soot cannot spoil
your white hair."
In contrast, the chimney sweep of the
opposed poem in Songs of Experience
understands the earth-bound social cause
and the destructive aspects of life. His
complaint is bitter:
2932

And because I am happy and dance
and sing,
They think they have done me no
injury,
And are gone to praise God and His
Priest and King,
Who make up a Heaven of our misery.
The poet's opposition of "innocence"
and "experience" reflects the
development of his Doctrine of Contraries, a
philosophical view which was to
dominate his poetry for the rest of his life. He
defines this doctrine in The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell (c. 1790): "Without
Contraries is no progression. Attraction
and repulsion, reason and energy, love
and hate, are necessary to human
existence." Elsewhere in the same work he
cas's these oppositions as a "Prolific
Force" against a "Devouring Force":
But the Prolific would cease to be
prolific unless the Devourer, as a sea,
received the excess of his delights. Some
will say: 'Is not God alone the Prolific?'
I answer: 'God only acts and is in
existing beings, or men.'
Blake apparently viewed progress as
cyclical, as a period of creation following
one of destruction. Such a view is present
in the mythology of his later works.
Specifically, The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell attacks the rationalism of eighteenth-
century Protestantism, which, Blake felt,
reduced complex moral problems to
oversimplified formulas. By means of
paradox he hoped to stress a truer and more
complicated awareness of the human
condition. In "The Little Vagabond," for
example, a later lyric associated with
Songs of Experience, the young narrator
complains: "Dear mother, dear mother,
the Church is cold,/But the Ale-house is
healthy and pleasant and warm."
Although apparently uncomplicated, Blake's
lyrics are written in a complex vision.
Blake's prophetic and mystical
writings include The Book of Thel (1789);
Tiriel (c.1789); Visions of the
Daughters of Albion (1793); America, A
Prophecy CI793); Europe, A Prophecy (1794);
The First Book of Urizen (1794); The
Song of Los (1795); The Book of Ahania
(1795); The Four Zoas (c.1797); Ml-
ton (1804-1808); Jerusalem (1804-
1820); and The Ghost of Ahel (1822).
These poems generally employ a kind of
free verse, although there are some
memorable lyrical passages, and an obscure
and at times incomprehensible personal
mythology. Various critics have produced
widely differing interpretations.
These writings may be profitably
divided into four groups which indicate
different directions in the author's
thought. The first such group contains
Thel and Tiriel, works that are allegorical
rather than symbolic. Thel argues for a
benevolent providence found in all
things. Tiriel is an Ossianic imitation
with the theme of defiant children
against a tyrannical father. Neither poem
shows the paradoxical views Blake was
soon to develop.
The second group marks the
beginning of Blake's characteristic mystical
thought. It includes the prose work. The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and two
subgroups of related poems. The first
group, cons:sting of A Song of Liberty;
Visions of the Daughters of Albion;
America, A Prophecy; Europe, A
Prophecy; and The Song of Los, employs
relatively uncomplicated symbolism. They
stress the doctrine of man's regeneration
through a revolt against common moral
standards to produce an apparently
anarchical society. The second group, which
includes The First Book of Urizen, The
Book of Los (1795), and The Book of
Ahania, introduces a myth which
challenges the Hebraic-Christian and Mil-
tonic views of cosmology, man, and sin.
These poems are intellectually significant
in that the action is set against a
background of blind fate. The power of God
to direct the universe is implicitlv denied.
Vala, an earlier form of The Four
Zoas, is representative of a third develop
ment in Blake's mythology. To his earliei
symbolism he added new qualities and
powers. Urizen, Luvah, Tharmas, and
Urthona or Los are associated respectively
with the intellect or the Brain, the affec-
2933

tions or the Heart, the appetite or the
Tongue, and the Ear or the prophetic
and creative activity. He apparently
wished either to base his myth in
psychology or to include human attributes
in a story about the origins of the
universe.
About 1797, however, while still
working on Vala, Blake radically shifted his
views to a belief in a beneficent God,
although he maintained his attack against
conventional theology and moral codes.
The Four Zoast Milton, and Jerusalem
belong to the fourth group, which
features a more extensive use of symbols
derived from Christianity and a more
elaborate view of his theories about reality
and knowledge. His theory of salvation
through revolt, as well as Ore, its symbol,
finally disappears. At the same time Blake
more closely identifies his mysticism with
art. Instead of creating a new mythology
to express his new views, Blake rewrote
and patched up the old symbolism,
inevitably confusing it still further. He left
no fully coherent myth.
Milton consists of two separate parts,
the obscure and shadowy Satan-Palama-
bron myth, and the descent of Milton
into the world to correct his theological
errors in Paradise Lost, such as having
regarded Satan as punished by God for
his sins. Blake often claimed to have
spoken to Milton in visions. Crabb
Robinson, an acquaintance of Blake, wrote
to Dorothy Wordsworth: "Now,
according to Blake, atheism consists in
worshipping the natural world, which same
natural world, properly speaking, is
nothing real but a mere illusion produced by
Satan. Milton was for a great part of his
life an atheist, and therefore his fatal
errors in Paradise Lost, which he often
begged Blake to refute." Milton is also
noteworthy for the striking lyric with
which it begins, "And did those feet in
ancient time."
Jerusalem deals with Albion's (man's)
conquest of error on earth and with his
return to Eternity. It celebrates the law
of Forgiveness of Sins. The text as we
have it is obscured by many revisions,
but in 1809 the poet published a clear
description of its theme: "(The Strong
Man, the Beautiful Man, and the Ugly
Man) were originally one man who was
fourfold; he was self-divided, and his real
humanity slain on the stems of
generation, and the form of the fourth was like
the Son of God ... it is voluminous,
and contains the ancient history of
Britain and the world of Satan and of Adam."
2934

THE POETRY OF BRYANT
Type of work: Poetry
Author: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
Principal published works: The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times: A Satire, 1808; Poems,
1821, 1834, 1836, 1839; The fountain and Other Poems, 1842; Poems, 1854; The
Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant, 1876
William Cullen Bryant was one of
the first authentic voices of the Romantic
Movement in America. At his best, he
combined the essential simplicity and
emotion of a romantic with careful
observation of and allegiance to the world
of nature about him. His poems
demonstrate this minute observation and this
simple care, fashioned into verse that is
clear, sometimes moving, and easily
communicated.
Bryant was a precocious boy who
demonstrated an early interest in politics and
literature. In 1808, before he was
fourteen years old, his first volume of poetry,
The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times:
A Satire, was published. "The Embargo,"
the principal poem in this volume, was
an attack on President JeflFerson in which
the young poet set down in heroic
couplets all the slanderous epithets he had
heard his elders use against Jefferson.
Bryant's next poem was "Thanatopsis."
First written in 1811, and published in
the North American Review in 1817, it
is an instance of genuine precocity. A
meditation in blank verse, developing its
theme with quiet power and a simple
sense of movement, the poem reflects
movingly on the spectacle of man going
to his death secure in the knowledge that
ultimate salvation is his. Avowedly moral
in purpose, it became one of the most
frequently read poems in American
literature.
Bryant never lost his tendency to use
poetry as a vehicle for his explicit moral
and religious convictions. He felt that
poetry should uplift and ennoble; and
his work is filled with poems
enjoining man to recognize the truths of nature
and of God and to live his life in
accordance with them. Bryant's poems indicate
that the author felt no shame or self-
consciousness in preaching to his fellows.
For contemporary readers, however,
Bryant is remembered far more for his
simple and direct observation of nature than
for his moral teaching. Poems like "The
Yellow Violet," "To A Waterfowl" and
"To the Fringed Gentian," verse acute,
precise, and unpretentious, seem now to
represent Bryant's highest poetic
achievement. The simplicity and ease of stanzas
like the following from "To the Fringed
Gentian" demonstrate something of the
ease and directness of Bryant's nature
poetry:
Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs
unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest
Bryant is often thought of as the
American Wordsworth, the Nature Poet
extraordinary. Like Wordsworth, he could
be didactic in his moral certainty, direct
and simple in his treatment of nature. If
Bryant's best work has not the power and
the simple force of Wordsworth at his
best, neither does Bryant have long
sections of poems as completely prosaic and
undistinguished as sections of The
Prelude.
Bryant wrote in a variety of stanza
forms. Although he often used blank
verse, he also frequently wrote his
nature poems in simple quatrains. He also
attempted other stanza forms; in fact, he
experimented, at one time or another,
with most of the forms regularly used in
English poetry. An early poem, "The
Ages," written for delivery before the
Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard in
1821, was written in the nine-line
Spenserian stanza; other poems attempted the
various forms used in the ode. Although
not an innovator, Bryant served a
genuine function in making Americans more
2935

aware of the structural variety in English
poetry, of incorporating into the
American tradition the forms and the
possibilities of the English tradition. Bryant's
work, as he himself was well aware, was,
by its example, the work of the
conscientious and enlightened teacher.
Bryant, in his effort at romantic
simplicity and smoothness, often was
distinguished for his sure sense of poetic
diction. His aim was, like Wordsworth's, to
use simple language and to avoid the
stylized or "poetic." Yet his poetry
demonstrates that, along with his belief in
simplicity of diction, he felt a strong
allegiance to the notion of propriety. He
attempted to get a certain elevation or
majesty into his poetic language, a quality
that, at its best, succeeded, although at
other times it led him into vast and flat
abstractions. In a poem called "The
Poet," he both articulated and illustrated
his sense of language as the combination
of the concrete and the majestic in a
carefully wrought passage:
Yet let no empty gust
Of passion find an utterance in thy
lay,
A blast that whirls the dust
Along the howling street and dies
away;
But feelings of calm power and mighty
sweep,
Like currents journeying through the
windless deep.
Despite the apparent calm, this passage
shows that Bryant had a great deal of
variety and power within his simple
language. At other times, inversion and
abstract pretense mar what might
otherwise be simple and moving poetry, as in
the poem called "October, 1866," written
just after his wife's death:
Yet was the home where thou wert
lying dead
Mournfully still, save when, at times,
was heard,
From room to room, some softly-moving
tread,
Or murmur of some sofdy-uttered
word.
Feared they to break thy slumber? As
we threw
A look on that bright bay and
glorious shore,
Our hearts were wrung with anguish,
for we knew
Those sleeping eyes would look on
them no more.
Bryant's poetry covered a great
number of themes. In addition to his interest
in nature, he also demonstrated his
sympathy for various causes throughout the
world: the fight for freedom in Italy, the
Greek revolt for independence from the
Turks. His opinions on social and
political questions were generally on the
liberal side (he was, for example, an ardent
abolition;st), but these opinions, on
domestic issues, seldom found their way
into his verse. He also frequently
mourned the death of friends and famous
contemporaries in verse and used his
foreign travels as the motivation for other
poems. But his most frequent theme was
nature; the change of the seasons, the
appearance of flowers, the beauty of the
familiar world were all his constant
preoccupation.
For Bryant, nature was never very far
from God, a merciful and forgiving God
whose bounty was evident in all his
works. He wrote a number of hymns
which demonstrate the same simple and
genuine devotion, the same sense of
pervading goodness, that emanates from his
poems on nature. No human tragedy
seemed to him so deep or meaningful
that the calm, the peace, the divine
reason behind it could not be seen. His
poetry was full of a generous and
pervasive faith.
Bryant was also a translator of many
poems from the Spanish and German lvri-
cis's of his time. La*e in his career he
translated Homer's Wad and Odyssey,
but unfortunately his versions do not
convey the boldness, sweep, and power
of the Homeric style. Bryant's peaceful
faith, particularly as it functioned in his
later poetry, was not an effective filter
through which to convey Homer's
grandeur.
2936

Bryant's poetry has had a great
influence on poetry in America. His variety,
his enthusiasm for expressing individual
emotions, his genuine interest in nature,
and his interest in many forms of poetic
expression helped to educate generations
of American poe's and readers. Although
his influence has been far less notable
during the past thirty or forty years, he
helped to introduce poetry to a voung
country that would have been highly
suspicious of more sophisticated
practitioners. In his poems he seemed an ordinary
man developing simple emotions in a
variety of styles, managing each in a
clear, clean, dignified way. For American
poetry in the middle of the nineteenth
century, no more was required: before
his time, no one had accomplished as
much.
In addition to his historical value,
Bryant still merits the modern reader's
attention for his careful diction and his
simple observation of nature. At its best,
his verse has a simple power and
precision. If the contemporary reader cannot
appreciate Bryant's easy assurances about
ultimate peace and justice or is disturbed
about the poet's lapses into flat and banal
language, he can still appreciate the fact
that Bryant was often a poet of skill and
simple d:rectness, still acknowledge the
poetic achievement of lines such as the
following from "The Burial Place":
Yet here,
Nature, rebuking the neglect of man,
Plants often, by the ancient mossy stone,
If he brier-rose, and upon the broken turf
That clothes the fresher grave, the
strawberry plant
Sprinkles its swell with blossoms, and
lays forth
Her ruddy, pouting fruit. . . .
As these lines show, Brvant could often
describe what he S3w with clarity,
emotion, and poetic force.
2937

THE POETRY OF CARDUCCI
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Giosue Carducci (1835-1907)
Principal published works: Rime, 1857; Inno
Gravia, 1868; Odi barbare, 1877-1889 (Pagm
Rarely has a poet in modern times
been awarded the admiration and
adulation during his lifetime that was accorded
by the people of Italy to Giosue Carducci.
Regarded as a national prophet, as well
as the unofficial poet laureate of Italy,
he was for many years prior to his death,
something of an Italian institution. In
addition to his career as poet and essayist,
he was a highly successful member of
the academic world. For more than forty
years he served as a professor of literature
at the University of Bologna. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in
1906.
As a poet Carducci was a
nonconformist in his rime, a fact which accounts
for much of h's popularity in Italv and
his importance in the history of Italian
literature. When he be^an his career,
Italian poetry was and had been for many
years inferior to Italian prose. A romantic
interest in the past and its glories had
become a curse to poetry. Carducci pointed
the way to a new view, however, by
looking at contemporary even's and the
possibilities of the future: the greatness of
Italv, its culture and its national unitv,
in the nineteenth century. Carducci felt
that poetry had a part to play in the preat
awakening—political, religious, and
literary—that seemingly was about to break
in his native country.
From the beginning, Carducci reacted
consciously against romanticism. As a
member of the "Amici Pedanti," a circle
of young Italian writers, he worked to
return Italian poetrv to class'csm. Trrs
change, hoped Carducci, would revitalize
the poetry of his native land. The poetry
he wrote at the time is typical in many
wavs of work produced throughout rrs
career. His verse is sample, but at the
sime time heroic and solemn in tone.
There is none of the excessive verbiage,
emotion, or metaphor typical of romantic
a Satana. 1865 (Hymn to Satan); Levia
Odes); Rime e ritmi, 1899
literature. All is restrained and controlled.
Carducci also tried to revive the
classical meters. This interest may be
explained partly by the s*rong humanistic
element in his education and academic
environment. In his first volume of
poems, R'me, he presented a collection
which decried two influences on Italian
culture: romanticism and Christianitv.
Carducci expressed through his early
poems a belief that classxism in art and
paganism in religion were needed to
invigorate Italian art and culture.
Two volumes of poems, mainlv about
contemporary political even's, followed.
Thev were Levia Gravia and Giambi ed
Epod' C1882). Critics in Italv and abroad
have felt that the political slanting of the
poems in these volumes weakened the
effort and that the two volumes represent
the least valuable in his work. One of
Carducci's best-known and most connro-
vers:al poems. Hymn to Satan, was
published in 1865. Invoking Satan as other
poe*s had invoked the muses, Carducci
complained that Christianity was
moribund and was carrying the world to death
with it, that rust was gnawing at the
mistical sword of the Archangel Michael. He
went on to call back paganism as a means
of free'ng man and his mind. Satan in
the poem was made a spirit of paganism,
the spirit that evoked the marbles, the
pictures, the literature of classical
antiquity, as well as the pantheon of gods and
goddesses. Carducci wrote, too, that this
was the spirit behind such great rebels
against the Roman Catholic Church as
Wycliffe, Huss, Savonarola, and Martin
Luther, men who unbound human
thought from the fetters with which
orthodoxy had, according to Carducci,
bound it. Satan became in the poem not
one symbol, but many. He symbolizes
progress, intellectuality, anti-clericalism,
the idea of progress, and the good influ-

ence of classical thought. Satan becomes
for Carducci more a helper than an
adversary of man.
The political aspects of Italian culture
and life were never far from Carducci's
mind and art. Sometimes he favored
those in power and sometimes he did not.
In the 1850's he was for a time the
darling of the monarchists because of such
poems as "La Croce di Savoia" and the
"Canzone a Vittorio Emanuele," for as
the years went by, Carducci tended away
from his earlier republicanism and
became satisfied with a monarchy for his
beloved Italy. That he was finally
reconciled is evident in the poems, especially
such a poem as "Piedmonte," an ode
which appeared in 1890 and was
included in Rime e ritmi.
Carducci did not, on the other hand,
change his mind very much about the
Church. Although he became less bitter
about the cultural significance of the
Roman Catholic Church in Italy, he could
not reconcile his views of art with
Christian theology, as the "Hymn to Satan"
had proved. Carducci believed that
beauty had reached its best expression in
Greek and Roman art. It was this belief
that caused him to try to return to
classical expression, even the meters of classical
poetry. It was in this pagan view of the
world, which he tried to express, that the
poet found tranquil loveliness. When
Carducci wrote of his native land, he
found in pagan religion and its spirit
something which welcomed the reality
of the land and its creatures, instead of
repressing the things of this world as
Christianity seemed to do, with its
emphasis on another, more spiritual world.
In Carducci's poems about the Italian
countryside there is a suggestion of the
early Vergil. It is as if the poet, sometimes
tired of struggling in political and
cultural battles, retired to the country for
peace, security, and contentment.
Carducci differs, however, from the
English poets of the nineteenth century.
Unlike Wordsworth, Carducci does not
moralize about what he finds in nature
and the rural life; unlike Keats, he shies
away from the sensuous, from the
emotional, and the subjective. Carducci
seems merely to have looked for and
found contentment of a kind. Such
expression is found, for example, in "II
Bove," a poem about the mild, strong,
and patient ox, whose eyes mirror for the
poet the green and divine silence of the
fields. It is not strange to find that the
poet says in a poem to Vergil that the
Roman poet's verse is to him like the sea,
a line of mountains, or the breeze in tall
trees. Again, in "A un Asino," Carducci
used the donkey as a symbol of ancient
patience and asks, at the same time, if it
may not be love that moves the donkey
to bray. Even "Presso una Certosa," a
poem written about landscape near a
monastery, is a poem on the loveliness
of the countryside, a loveliness which
leads the poet to think of pagan times
and things, and ends with the hope that
the poet may be visited by the spirit of
Homer.
At times Carducci seems to feel that
he could have chosen a better life by
living in the countryside, instead of
writing about the disturbances of his native
land. His "Idyl of the Maremma" finds
him writing of a vigorous countrywoman
meant for bearing vigorous sons and
daughters. Better to have loved and won
her, to have lived with such a one in the
country amidst a large and healthy
family, writes the poet, than to sweat in
small rhymes, to write painfully of sad
and miserable things, and to seek out the
ambiguous answers to the riddles of the
universe.
Although he was a reformer in poetry
and the foe of slavish imitation of the
past, Carducci revered the grea{ poets,
as his poems to Dante, to Vergil, and to
Homer testify. The poet of nineteenth-
century Italy did not deny the greatness
of his predecessors; he simply wished to
find his own vein of work which might be
as productive for him and his age as those
the great poets of the past had found for
themselves and their ages. Even though
he could not use the same materials as
Dante, Carducci realized the greatness
2939

of The Divine Comedy and praised
Dante for it. But, wrote Carducci, the
greatness of Dante's time was gone and
only the greatness of the song remained.
Few American readers know Carducci
and his poetry. He was essentially a lyric
poet, and too much is lost when a lyric
is taken from one language and remade
in the words of another. In Carducci's
case this is particularly true. His
materials, spirit, and style remain essentially
Italian, resistant to adequate translation
in another tongue.
2940

THE POETRY OF CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Principal published works: Gohlin Market an
and Other Poems, 1866; Sing Song, 1872;
1893; New Poems, 1896
The sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, Christina Rossetti began
writing poetry in her early teens. Her
verse, always simple, pure, direct, never
lost some of the childlike and direct
quality evident in her earliest work. Indeed,
she later wrote a nursery rhyme book
(Sing Song), full of pleasant and sharp
little rhymes for children. She even
included a rhymed alphabet, containing
six or eight onomatopoetic references for
each letter. Her skill and facility in light
verse can be seen in the lines like the
following from "An Alphabet":
K is a King, or a Kaiser still higher;
K is a Kitten, or quaint Kangaroo.
L is a Lute or a lovely-toned Lyre
L is a Lily all laden with dew.
Her deftness in children's verse and in
slight lyrics lasted throughout her poetic
career.
Christina Rossetti is, however, far
more frequently remembered for her
religious or devotional poetry. Living in
partial seclusion with her family
(primarily with her mother until the latter's
death in 1886), Christina Rossetti saw
little of the London around her but lived
intensely within her own private world
of religious contemplation and
meditation. Her poetry, the product of inward
contemplation rather than a weapon for
a public cause like that of the Pre-
Raphaelites, was most frequently
devotional. Her themes were faith and the
peace of the eternal spiritual life.
Her religion was not theological or
doctrinal, however, in the manner of
many Victorians, for she concentrated on
simple faith and applied her simple and
pure lyrics to celebration of that faith. In
this simple faith, Jesus being the object
of much of her devotion; she wrote a
i Other Poems, 1862; The Prince's Progress
A Pageant and Other Poems, 1881; Verses,
number of poems on the incidents in His
life and used Good Friday and the
Resurrection as a subject for several of her best
poems. In devoting her poems, the
products of her faith, to Jesus, she idealized
the peace that the individual could find
in his dedication to Christianity and the
life of the spirit. She seemed, often, to
picture herself as humble and unworthy,
to long for the peace of eternal rest
without ever being sure she could obtain it.
She made religion a haven, frequently in
her poetry presenting religion as a
resting place from the cares of a troubled
life. This -theme, along with her simple
diction, is evident in the following
passage from "I Do Set My Bow in the
Cloud":
Then tell me: is it not enough
To feel that, when the path is rough
And the sky dark and the rain cold,
His promise standeth as of old?
When heaven and earth have past away
Only His righteous word shall stay,
And we shall know His will is best.
Behold: He is a haven-rest,
A sheltering-rock, a hiding p!ace,
For runners steadfast in the race;
Who, toiling for a little space,
Had light through faith when sight
grew dim,
And offered all their world to Him.
This passage illustrates many of Miss
Rossetti's frequent attitudes: the
darkness and d fBculty of this world, usually
portrayed in wintry images; the sense of
God's prom'se to man emanating through
all human experience; the idea of the
"sheltering-rock," the haven of faith in
which the poor human being could
'hide"; the sense that religious faith,
without question, is more important for
man than are any of his own attempts to
see and understand the world about him.
In her devotional poetry she fre-

quently presents simple images of nature
through which she demonstrates her
devotion. Flowers, the coming of spring and
hope, the simple natural details of the
world around her, form the pattern of
images through which her faith is
conveyed. The fields and the meadows, like
her simple reflections, all demonstrate
the power of God and man's necessary
faith in the mercy and forgiveness of
Christ. The most common svmbol in her
poetry is the rose. Standing for a kind of
spiritual beauty, an emanation of the
spirit of Christ, the rose figures centrally
in her work. Roses are, in a poem like
"Three Nuns," the flowers planted in
paradise, the sure indications of the
existence of divine love. The rose is also, in
this and other poems, the symbol of
purity, of a virginal and spiritual beauty that
emanates from the divine. In addition,
the rose is often solitary, blooming alone
in a dark and wintry landscape. As a
figure of solitary beauty, the rose becomes
an emblem for faith and virtue in the
midst of a dark and corrupt world.
Christina Rossetti's faith was not
simply a private matter. In her poetry she
demonstrated a great deal of concern for
her family and her small circle of friends,
and she included them in her poetic
requests for the blessings of a merciful
Christ. Many of her poems mark family
occasions: birthday greetings, valentines
to her mother, hopes that her talented
brothers could find the peace and rest
latent in the true faith. Sometimes she
questions her worthiness for salvation,
although she generally concludes that
Christ is sufficiently merciful to receive
her in parad'se. In these poems she often
comments on the vanity of worldly
ambition and the folly of man's pride.
Although she humbly includes her own
inclination to judge others as one of the
most damning of sins, she often speaks
out against those less faithful to the
divine spirit than she, giving her work
qualities of precision and sharpness.
Not all of Christina Rossetti's verse is
religious or devotional. She can be light
and witty; some of her early epigrams
have the flavor of Jane Austen's quiet,
civilized, cutting comments. She also
wrote a few satirical poems, like one
called "The P.R.B." which begins:
The two Rossettis (brothers they)
And Holman Hunt and John Millais,
With Stephens chivalrous and bland,
And Woolner in a distant land-
In these six men I awestruck see
Embodied the great P.R.B.
D.G. Rossetti offered two
Good pictures to the public view;
Unnumbered ones great John Millais,
And Holman more than I can say
William Rossetti, calm and solemn,
Cuts up his brethren by the column.
Some of this sharpness and directness
also appears in the poems she wrote about
neighboring farm girls. These poems
sometimes begin with a simple
characterization or a simple account of the
circumstances in which the farm girl lived.
From this point, the writer goes on, as
in "Margery," to demonstrate that the
unhappy girl should not have been so
obvious in letting her boy friend know
that she loved him, or she may urge the
simple farmer to speak up and tell his
love. These poems have a direct, homely
quality of easy and unpretentious diction.
If they frequently add a didactic tag
that spoils them for modern ears, the
moral is also kept in the language and
the area of coneern in the poem. Wit
and homely common sense distinguished
much of Chrstina Rossetti's nonreligious
poetry, an indication that her observation
of the world around her was as sharp,
though restrained, as her allegiance to the
world of spirit was thorough and genuine.
Praised in her own time for the clarity
and sweetness of her diction as well as
for the purity of her faith, Christina
Rossetti was widely read, although not
widely imitated, for she introduced little
in the way of technical innovation or a
new area of poetic subject matter. Faith
is often more bitter in the twentieth
century, and the simplicity of her faith seems
remote and unworldly to many
contemporary readers. Yet the simplicity of her
2942

diction and the ability to state a
perception with ease and grace and point are
still qualities that endear this writer to
many modern readers. Although her
public is not wide, it is faithful and
appreciative.
2943

THE POETRY OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Principal published works: Poems, 1870; Ballads and Sonnets, 1881; Collected Works,
1886
Some glimpse into Rossetti's ideas on
poetry can be obtained from the
statement made, at almost the end of his life,
to Hall Caine, that when, as a youth,
he had first encountered early English
ballad literature, he had said to himself,
"There lies your line." He read the
collections made by Thomas Percy (1765)
and by Sir Walter Scott (1802-1803) as
well as Scott's original poetry, and he
spent many hours in the British Museum
poring over medieval romances in a search
for words to use in poems that he planned
to write.
He began his career, however, as a
painter, and entered literature through
the coterie which called itself the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood. This loossly-knit
group, formed in 1848 by Rossetti, Hol-
man Hunt, and J. E. Millais, had as its
artistic goal the return to the "fidelity to
nature" of medieval Italian painters prior
to Raphael. Thus both as painter and as
poet Rossetti was directed towards
medievalism. The new group soon needed a
periodical through which the members
could make their views known; so, in
1850, they founded The Germ. lis life
was short—only four numbers appeared
—but in it some of Rossetti's early work
was printed.
Surely no manuscript in all of
English literature had a stranger or more
macabre history than did Rossetti's first
volume of poems. When, on a February
night of 1862, he returned to his home
to find his wife dead from an overdose
of laudanum, he was so conscience-
stricken by the possibility that her death
had been suicide that he resolved on
the melodramatic gesture of placing the
manuscript in her coffin under her famous
red-gold hair. Even his brother William,
who knew that of some of the poems no
other copies existed, while of others there
were but imperfect copies, was sufficiently
influenced by the tension-charged
atmosphere to approve the act. The manuscript
contained some of Rossetti's most famous
poems: "The Blessed Damozel," "Jenny,"
"Sister Helen" (first titled "The Witch"),
and "Love's Noctum." But further
melodrama was to come. In October, 1869,
Rossetti, who now wished to publish the
poems and had even advertised their
appearance, had the grave opened and the
manuscript disinterred by C. A. Howell
and Dr. Llewellyn Williams. For this
exhumation, which he somewhat lamely
tried to justify, Rossetti has been much
criticized, one biographer even calling
him a "changeable widower rifling his
dead wife's grave at the dictate of literary
ambition."
The pieces that Rossetti included in
this first volume can be divided, at least
roughly, into three classes: "medieval"
poems, love poems, and sonnets for
pictures. By the first category is meant those
verses employing medieval settings or
imitations of medieval techniques.
Rossetti derived his literary medievalism from
two sources, the romance and the ballad.
From the romance he obtained the
colorful background of knights, ladies, and
castles found in "The Staff and Scrip";
from the. ballad he got the terse, tragic
story as well as such devices as the
refrain and the question and answer method
of narration. These two technical devices,
which were common enough in the
traditional border ballads, Rossetti—as well
as the other Pre-Raphaelite
poets—developed into artistic elements of considerable
effectiveness. From the simple refrain of
the old ballads they created what has been
called the "incremental" refrain—that is,
a refrain which, by changing with the
progress of the narrative and its emotional
pattern, helps to build up the climax of
2944

the story. The trick is best seen in "Sister
Helen," which has been considered one
of the best literary ballads of the
nineteenth century. This poem has the stark-
ness of the traditional ballad plus modern
psychological handling. Usually,
however, Rossetti tended to overlay the
simplicity of the old ballads with the
luxuriant detail so dear to the Pre-Raphael-
ites.
Another side of Rossetti's medievalism
appears in his three translations from
Villon, one of which, the "Ballad of Dead
Ladies," is perhaps the most famous
short piece of translation in English.
Rossetti's love poetry, both of this time
and later, presents a difficult problem.
To understand the work of any poet, one
must know something of his life; and this
statement is particularly true of Rossetti.
Even on the surface, his love poems are
not easy reading, for they are densely
woven, at times enigmatic. The mystery
turns on his attitude toward his dead
wife, Elizabeth Siddall and on the
circumstances of her death. It is now fairly
well agreed among Rossetti biographers
that her death was an act of suicide, and
that the suspicion—or even the knowledge
—of this fact haunted Rossetti for the rest
of his life and was responsible for the
gloom of his later years. Some critics even
go so far as to say that he never wrote a
good poem or painted a good picture after
1862. On the other hand, it seems also
true that his brief marriage, after a
prolonged engagement, was unhappy. It has
been customary to say that these
passionate, even sensuous, love poems were
inspired by Elizabeth or that they
expressed a yearning for a reunion with her;
but in recent years it has been claimed
that the real inspiration of the poems was
Jane Burden, who married William
Morris in 1859. She, it is said, was the
woman Rossetti really loved. Having
married Elizabeth out of a sense of duty and
having seen Jane become the wife of one
of his best friends, he poured his
frustrated love for Jane into "The Stream's
Secret" and the sonnet sequence "The
House of Life." So anxious was he,
according to the proponents of this theory,
to conceal the autobiographical aspects
of these poems that he deliberately
falsified the dates of composition so as to
throw readers off the scent. Since all the
facts, even after so many years, have
never been made public, the matter must
remain conjectural.
Rossetti's poetry was, on its publication,
generally well received by critics. But a
storm was brewing. In 1871 there
appeared in the Contemporary Review an
article, over an assumed name, called
"The Fleshly School of Poetry." Twenty
years earlier, Rossetti, along with the
other Pre-Raphaelites, had been attacked
for his paintings; now he was to be
attacked for his poetry. The writer of
this article was one Robert Buchanan,
an almost unknown Scotsman. The whole
situation was complicated by personal
feuds and animosities. But the (to us)
almost unbelievable prudery of Victorian
England made Rossetti peculiarly
vulnerable to this kind of attack. His poems
were, for those days, extremely frank;
his sonnet "Nuptial Sleep" and especially
"Jenny," the description of a prostitute,
with such lines as
Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
And warm sweets open to the waist,
were genuinely shocking to the
contemporary reading public. Also, Rossetti's well-
known friendship with Swinburne, the
real enfant terrible of the period, added
to the suspicions of the Victorian
public. It is certainly true that Rossetti's love
poems were far more sensuous than
nineteenth-century poetry had been used to.
But Buchanan's attack hurt Rossetti
deeply and increased his tendency
toward melancholia.
Few styles are as out of fashion these
days as the Pre-Raphaelite. To the
modern mind, these men seemed far too
self-conscious and artificial in their
medievalism. But both as poet and painter
Rossetti exercised a considerable
influence over the artistic taste of the
subsequent decades. He and the other Pre-
Raphaelites were in part responsible for
2945

the "aesthetic movement" of the 1880's
and 1890's, the chief ornament of which
was Oscar Wilde. Perhaps the most
important contribution of Rossetti as a poet
was his part in shattering the prudery
that had strangled so much of Victorian
literature.
2946

THE POETRY OF DONNE
Type of work: Poetry
Author: John Donne (1572-1631)
Principal published works: An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary, 1611; Of
the Progress of the Soule: The Second Anniversary, 1612; Poems by J.D., 1633
It was in the early years of the
twentieth century that John Donne was first
acknowledged to be a major English
poet, and his achievement meaningfully
evaluated. Pope "translated" Donne's
Satires so thoroughly that they were
unrecognizable, and Dryden misleadingly
declared that he wrote "nice speculations
of Philosophy" and not love poetry at all.
The poets of the nineteenth century
show, with the exception of Gerard Man-
ley Hopkins, the influence of Milton
rather than of the metaphysical poets.
The poets of this century have learned
much from Donne's poetic method, by
which emotions are expressed by ideas
and ideas denned in their emotional
context. Ironically, both Donne and Dryden,
by writing in what are essentially speech
rhythms and not in the current poetic
mode revitalized the language of poetry
in their generation.
Dryden was in error when he called
Donne's poetry philosophical. Donne was
not committed to a particular philosophic
system, but he was interested in the
fascinating, conflicting, and often disturbing
philosophies of his period. The scholastic
way of thought, in which systems tended
towards synthesis and unity, was giving
way to the European scientific
renaissance, which was analytical. Ptolemaic
astronomy was challenged by Copernicus;
Aristotle was challenged by Galileo. What
interested Donne, however, was not the
ultimate truth of an idea but the
fascination of ideas themselves. His images are
drawn from whatever belief best
expressed the emotion he had to
communicate.
Donne was not the first man to write
metaphysical poetry. That is, he was not
the first poet to describe an emotional
state by Ls intellectual equivalent.
However, before Donne wrote, this technique
was confined, with the exception of some
of Shakespeare's sonnets and Ben Jonson's
poetry, to the drama and was most
frequently found in the plays of Ford, Jon-
son, and Webster. Also, the Elizabethan
tradition of love poetry had already begun
to be rivaled by witty and cynical courtly
verse. Donne's own reaction against the
Elizabethan tradition was as successful as
it was complete.
In some poems, as in "The Indifferent/'
Donne celebrated variety in love, and in
"Go and Catch a Falling Star" he insisted
that no woman remained faithful. As
well as in these poems of wit and fancy,
where Donne directly mocked literary
convention, there are serious love poems
in which he is seen to have absorbed and
surpassed it. In "A Feaver" the world
would not merely be a place of darkness
afxr the lady's death; it would
disintegrate:
But yet thou canst not die, I know;
To leave this world behinde, is death,
But when thou from this world wilt
The whole world vapours with thy
breath.
A further departure from the tradition
in which the lady was invariably
unattainable is the glory Donne finds in
sexual as well as spiritual love. In only
two or three poems does he praise pla-
tonic relationships, and the poems that
describe a relationship in which the
beloved woman is not the poet's mistress
are extremely bitter and mocking, as, for
example, in "The Apparition."
The element of hyperbole in these
poems is central also in the poems of
consummated love and continued
devotion, where it is one of the means by
which the strength and sincerity of the
poet's passion is conveyed- "The Good-
Morrow" begins:
2947

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we lov'd? were we not wean'd
till then?
and continues:
For love, all love of other sights con-
troules,
And makes one little roome, an every
where.
At first Donne's images may amaze rather
than delight; however, they communicate
effectively the idea through which the
emotion is conveyed.
The areas from which Donne's images
were drawn—astronomy, geography,
philosophy, and alchemy among others-
were those of interest to educated readers
of his time. Donne's images do not evoke
general or remembered sensation, but
explain the particular one of which he
wrote. In "A Valediction: forbidding
mourning," the central idea is that love
is not destroyed by death. Donne
compares his love to "the trepidation of the
spheres" which on earth is not
destructive, although the lesser "moving of the
earth brings harms and fears." further,
his love is beyond the ordinary love and
includes the soul (love to Donne always
involved the entire being); thus
separation by death is not a "breach" but an
"expansion"—"Like gold to airy thinness
beat." The most striking image in this
poem is that of a pair of compasses: the
mistress who stays alive is the "fixt foot"
around which the dead soul revolves and
which, invisibly, circles with it. The
poem ends:
Thy firmness drawes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begunne.
The circle in Donne's poetry is always a
symbol for infinity.
The rhythm of Donne's poetry is as
varied and accurate in conveying the
sense as the imagery he employs. Its
texture is sinewy and often irregular. The
speech cadences of the verse are heard
in the mind and are essentially dramatic.
It is not smooth verse, but it is exact and
musical. The opening of "The Sunne
Rising" is illustrative of his quick, tense
quality:
Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through cur-
taines call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers seasons
run?
Compare these lines with the tranquility
and sensuousness of his close:
Thine age askes ease, and since thy
duties bee
To warme the world, that's done in
warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art every
where;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy
spheare.
"Aire and Angels" has lines in which
the vowel sounds are long and the
consonants soft, when love is contemplated,
and short-voweled monosyllabic lines
which express love's actuality. The sound
in Donne's poetry not only echoes the
sense but in part communicates the
emotion.
The power and beauty of Donne's
poetry is its synthesis of emotion,
passion, and thought. "The Anniversarie,"
which was presumably written to his wife
Ann More, is a triumphant expression
of confidence in love. In the opening
stanza of this poem Donne contrasts the
mutability of kings, courts, and even the
sun with their love:
Only our love hath us decay;
This, no to morrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting
day.
The discussion of death in the second
stanza of this poem is not, here or in
other of his lyrics, a morbid
preoccupation but, as is true of all Donne's poetry,
an illustration of the all-embracing and
inquiring quality of his mind. Death will
not destroy love; love will increase in
the souls released from the grave. In the
third stanza the lovers themselves are
kings and thus they will know physical
2948

change and decay; however, since the
love in their souls after death is inviolate,
so are they, while they live. The
evolution of this paradoxical idea and the
simplicity and directness of the language
carry dramatic conviction. The poem
ends:
Let us love nobly, and live, and adde
againe
Yeares unto yeares, till we attaine
To write threescore; this is the second
of our raigne.
Probably the Songs and Sonets are the
best known of Donne's poems, but some
of the Elegies and religious verse are of
the same quality. In 1615, Donne was
ordained an Anglican priest and became
Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
The poetry that Donne wrote after his
ordination was as passionate, as
intellectually inquiring, and often as
tormented as his love poetry. He spoke of
God and the Church in the same terms
as he spoke of secular love. For many
years before he became a priest he had
studied theology and was converted to
Protestantism, from the Catholic faith
to which he had been born. He discussed
the difficulty of finding true religion in
his poetry and was apparently almost
overwhelmed by the knowledge of his
sinfulness.
The "Holy Sonnets" are vibrant and
impassioned cries, infused with the
knowledge of the need for grace. They,
too, are highly personal and dramatic.
Number XIV begins:
Batter my heart, three person'd God;
for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and
seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow
mee, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and
make me new.
It ends:
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be
free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
Sometimes the paradoxes in the religious
poetry are superb and convincing, but
occasionally the ideas are pursued to
the point of tedium and a seeming
detail is over-elaborated. One of Donne's
most successful devotional poems is "A
Hymnne to God the Father," on sin,
fear, and forgiveness, which, with its
repeated phrase "Wilt thou forgive," has a
simplicity and humility which is equaled
only by the poetry of George Herbert.
Donne was the greatest of the
metaphysical poets. In some few of their poems
he was equaled by Vaughan and Marvell
and in religious poetry by Herbert. But
the body of his work is poetry of a
quality which, when compared with that of
any other of these poets, is unsurpassed.
When his images are understood in their
function of communicating a state of
mind, and his ideas in their power to
give expression to emotions, Donne's
poetry is appreciated for its wit, beauty, and
perception.
2949

THE POETRY OF DRAYTON
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Michael Drayton (1563-1631)
Principal published works: The Harmonie of the Church, 1591; Idea, the Shepherd's
Garland, 1593; Piers Gaveston, 1593; Idea's Mirror, 1594; Matilda, 1594; Endimion and
Phoehe, 1595; The Tragical Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy, 1596; Mortimeriados,
1596; England's Heroical Epistles, 1597; Legend of the Great Cromwell, 1607; Poly-
Olbion, 1612-1622; Nimphtdia, 1627; Shepherd's Sirena, 1627; The Muses' Elizium,
1630
Held in high esteem by his
contemporaries, Michael Drayton was one of the first
professional poets whose entire life was
devoted to his muse. He was thought to
have been with Shakespeare during the
last merry evening of the playwright's
life, or so legend has it. Drayton is almost
as elusive a figure for the biographer.
According to his own word, he turned to
poetry at the age of ten, when he was a
page in the service of Sir Henry Goodere
—a connection he maintained by
worshipful devotion to Goodere's youngest
daughter Anne throughout his bachelor
lifetime.
His first published work, The
Harmonie of the Church, is seldom read now
even by scholars, so much like the weaker
works of his contemporaries is this
collection of Biblical studies in verse. But some
of the prayers, the songs of thanksgiving,
and especially his rendition of the Song
of Solomon give indications of his latent
talent. His admiration for Spenser led
to the writing of a j>seudo-Shepheardes
Calender, pastoral eclogues called Idea,
the Shepherd's Garland. This work is not
to be confused, however, with Drayton's
fine sonnet sequence of a later period.
In 1605 or 1606 Drayton brought out a
collection of old and new work, Poems
Lyric and Pastoral, which contained "The
Ballad of Agincourt," a celebration of
Henry V's great victory, and "Ode to the
Virginian Voyage," a patriotic poem
commemorating Raleigh's conquests in the
New World. This latter is among the
first to present America as the new
Garden of Eden ("Earth's only paradise"):
Where nature hath in store
Fowl, venison, and fish,
And the fruitful soil-
Without your toil,
Three harvests more,
All greater than you wish.
Among Drayton's other odes are two
often anthologized because they are
among the most graceful, felicitous verses
in the language. "To His Coy Love"—a
canzonet, as Drayton calls it, but meant
to be sung, like his other odes—calls back
the poet's heart from a half love, starved
for pleasure "amidst an ocean of delight."
Rejecting many of the lady's physical
charms, he pleads:
Come nice thing, let thy heart alone,
I cannot live without thee.
About this same time Drayton
published a number of historical verses
titled Mortimeriados (republished as The
Barons Wars in 1603), a criticism of civil
strife in which he presented the disturbed
career of Edward II. He produced a
more interesting work of poetic history in
England's Heroical Epistles, an
imaginary exchange of the love letters
supposedly written by twelve English lovers
such as James and Mary Suffolk, Edward
IV and Jane Shore, Henry II and the
fair Rosamond. Along with Endimion
and Phoebe, verses in imitation of
Marlowe, and a miscellany of conventional
verses such as his Fig for Momus,
Drayton during this period seems to have
given more time to dramatic productions
and social life than to the diligence in
writing which characterizes his later life.
After Queen Elizabeth died, Drayton
failed to enjoy the favor of King James.
The first benefit posterity gained from
this lack of acceptance was an excellent
2950

satire, The Owl (1604), that wise bird
so hated by the crows and kites who
made up the new court. With a return
to his scriptural preoccupations, he
published in that same year Moses in a May
of His Miracles. While not an original
genius, Drayton displayed in this work a
spirit of courtliness and an expert use of
conventional themes: a lament over a
loved one, a comparison of youth and
age, a clearly patriotic celebration of the
great Elizabeth, a lament for the dead
Sidney, a praise of Idea (Anne), a song
of deceased though venerated worthies of
England.
The next year saw the publication of
a sequence made up of fifty-one sonnets,
four of which are still remembered and
read. Here, in Ideas Mirror, the platonic
conception is lost in what is clearly
passionate love. Drayton, often thought of
as a lesser Daniel and as the great
imitator, struck out on his own here,
rivaling the early Shakespeare and the later
Cavalier poets. The sonnet form, here
three iambic pentameter quatrains and a
final couplet, reaches a maturity of style,
especially in the poems starting with the
line "To nothing fitter can I thee
compare," continuing through "When first
I ended, then I first began," to a climax
of despair in "You're not alone when you
are still alone," and then to the gravely
beautiful conclusion:
Since there's no help, come, let us kiss
and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of
me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my
heart
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
"To His Rival" is thought to be
autobiographical in that it reflects a page's
aspiration to marry into the nobility. In
this poem Drayton gives the victorious
lover saucy advice and warning.
Though out of favor now, the long
poem was the mark of distinction in
renaissance England. Unfortunately for
Drayton, he planned his greatest work
as a cartographer might by mapping out
seas, lakes, streams, hills, islands,
forests, towns—a complete poetic excursion
from offshore islands through the southern
districts to the Tweed River. In "Poly-
Olbion" he intended to go right on north
through Scotland and to add at least
another 10,000 couplets to the 15,000
extant. Some critics have praised his use
of Alexandrines for this literary
excursion, saying that the ambling meter of
twelve-syllable lines fits the pleasant
landscapes viewed leisurely. Others feel that
the meter, unnatural in our language, is
dreary and boring. Certainly, all the
couplets are not poetry or even good
verse; but certainly some of the
descriptive passages are beautiful. For this great
work of thirty books a learned scribe,
Selden, wrote notes nearly as voluminous
and in some ways more interesting,
especially those concerning the legendary and
antiquarian sections. For Drayton
included history and folklore as well as
topography in the poem.
Drayton, by his own admission, was
disappointed in the reception of what he
hoped was an account of the Elizabethan
discovering his own England, a panegyric
of lofty dimensions which was also
scholarly and profound. He was most
successful in evoking the fairy glens, the
legendary figures of saints and warriors.
His pastoral scenes with shepherds still
offer in verse the peace and tranquility
of a life no longer possible in the bustling
seventeenth century. He starts with an
argument or prelude to each book or song
which can be read as a gloss or summary,
as this passage illustrates:
The sprightly Muse her wing displays,
And the French islands first surveys;
Bears up with Neptune, and in gl6ry
Transcends proud Cornwall's
promontory. . . .
The really interesting thing, as the
argument suggests and the first book reveals,
is the intermingling of place and legend;
for example, the river where Arthur's
blood "By Mordred's murderous hand
was mingled with her flood." Add to this
material the lovely prospect, the homely
2951

cottage, the toiling peasant, and Old
England lives on.
Two other works, inferior in length
but superior in all other ways, need be
mentioned: Nimphidia and The Muses'
Elizium, the first a miniature epic of
fairyland and the latter an ironic self-
portrait of the poet in a pagan paradise.
Like Shakespeare and Chaucer, Drayton
combines the lusty and die magical, farm
and fay, in "The Court of Faery," as the
subtitle of Nimphidia reads, where the
reader encounters Oberon the duped,
Queen Mab, mischievous, teasing Puck,
and Pigwiggen, the fairy knight.
A kind of epilogue to the life of the
friend of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Ben
Jonson is die brilliant work, The Muses'
Elizium. Though the idea is classical, the
eardily paradise presented is English:
the rills, the flowers, the seasons (apart
from the fact there is no winter), and
especially the pastimes. Divided into
Nimphalls, or books, which correspond
to the epic struggles between the Eliziums
and the Felicians, the last embattled satyr
takes refuge in the imaginary, Elizium,
though his heart is still in a world no
longer felicitous. Here we may see in
ironic portraiture the disappointed,
embattled old poet writing in praise of
earlier and happier times.
2952

THE POETRY OF EMILY DICKINSON
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Principal published works: Poems, 1890; Poems: Second Series, 1891; Poems: Third Series,
1896; The Single Hound, 1914; Further Poems, 1929; Unpublished Poems, 1936; Bolts
of Melody: New Poems, 1945; The Poems of Emily Dickinson, 1955
The life and literary career of Emily
Dickinson were filled with irony. In
deciding that some of the poems she sent
him were not strong enough for
publication, the essayist and critic Thomas
Wentworth Higginson is said to have
remarked that they were "too delicate."
This judgment is only one of the many
strange blunders made in connection
with a woman who has finally been
accorded the rank of a major poet.
Proper evaluation of a contemporary
writer is an uncertain business in any
era, but literary criticism in Emily
Dickinson's time produced some especially
ironic judgments. Of those who saw her
poems during her lifetime, only Helen
Hunt Jackson seems to have appreciated
their real worth; Emily herself (and
Emerson, who was astute enough as a
critic to recognize the genius of Walt
Whitman) thought Mrs. Jackson to be
one of the great poets of her time, but
she is now remembered almost solely
for her championing of Emily. "Creative
editing" is another irony that has plagued
the work of the inspired recluse of
Amherst. Only six of her poems appeared in
print before her death; the mutilation of
these by zealous editors who wanted to
"correct" her vagaries of rhyme, meter,
and punctuation was a factor in her
decision not to seek publication but to take
her chances with fame after death. Well-
meaning editing continued to haunt her
work long after she died and only
recently, in The Poems of Emily
Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson and
published in three volumes in 1955, has
the world been allowed to read her lyrics
as she wrote and punctuated them.
The bare facts of the life of Emily
Dickinson were so simple that they
would seem to permit no garbling, no
misinterpretation, but even here what
might be called "creative tampering" has
also been at work. Legend says she fell
madly in love with the Reverend Charles
Wadsworth and he with her. Supposedly
he was willing to give up family and
career for Emily, to renounce everything
for love; but, true to her Puritan
background, she refused him. Now
biographers are certain that no such double
renunciation ever took place, that while
she was greatly influenced by her
feelings for Wadsworth and addressed to
him many of her finest poems, their
acquaintance was largely restricted to letters
and he was probably never aware of her
deep attachment.
Out of these tangles that have long
surrounded her life and career, the reader
is now able to judge and enjoy the work
of one of America's most original and
remarkable poets. Using the Bible as her
chief source of inspiration and the
rhythms of the hymn books as a metrical
starting point, Emily Dickinson
developed with care a technique that produced
poems breath-taking in construction; they
are full of the magic of a child who
balances blocks on top of one another,
performing feats impossible for a shaky adult
hand. Almost as daring as the rhythms
are her experiments in all the variations
on part rhymes. With the help of
Whitman, Emily Dickinson pushed open the
door through which the "modern" poets
have rushed to find new ways of
expressing themselves. Here is an example of
her metrics and musical effect:
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
THE POETRY OF EMILY DICKINSON. Excerpts reprinted from POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON
by permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co. All rights reserved.
2953

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
As he defeated—dying—
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
Poems in this characteristic style were
what brought forth Higginson's
pronouncement—"too delicate." The
judgment now seems particularly obtuse, for
the very delicacy he objected to is one of
the poet's chief charms; and sometimes
that delicacy conceals the strength of
iron:
The Soul selects her own Society-
Then—shuts the Door—
To her divine Majority-
Present no more-
Unmoved—she notes the Chariots-
pausing—
At her low Gate-
Unmoved—an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat—
I've known her—from an ample nation-
Choose One-
Then—close uie Valves of her
attention-
like Stone—
The spirit of Emily Dickinson's poems
has been compared with that of the
great metaphysicals, John Donne and
William Blake; she is indeed like them
in her ability to expand the little
particularities of her everyday existence into
ideas that are timeless and universal. For
Emily Dickinson, who as her life slipped
by confined herself almost entirely to her
home and its grounds, these
particularities were birds, flies, frogs, sunrises and
sunsets, cups, saucers, doors, even a
snake, that "narrow Fellow in the Grass"
whom she never met "without a tighter
breathing and Zero at the Bone."
Broadening these simple subjects, the poet
expresses her feelings about God, death,
and immortality.
Her relationship with God is an
interesting one, for even in her childhood she
could not force herself to be orthodox.
As a schoolgirl she had great difficultv in
professing herself to be a Christian. The
harsh God of the Old Testament—the
God who created man in His own image,
restricted him with all sorts of "thou-
shall-nots," and then destroyed the image
with death—had little appeal for Emily.
In her poems her God is a very personal
one, to be treated like a friend, praised
for his good deeds and chided for his
faults. Pompous piety has no place in
any of her religious poems and when
her feelings of intimacy lead her to
address the Deity as "Papa above!" we are
charmed rather than shocked by poetry
that lets us become a part of a delightful
woman to whom the trivialities of
existence and the untouchable verities are of
equal importance.
Like most poets, Emily Dickinson was
intrigued by death; characteristically, she
made it seem just another event in human
experience. In one of her best-known
poems, death is the driver of a carriage
which picks her up, slowly takes her past
a school where children are playing
during recess, past fields, past the setting
sun, until finally
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground-
Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity—
But death is not something the poet takes
lightly. The loss of those she
loved—particularly her father and Dr. Wadsworth
—were blows from which she reeled; to
one whose circle of acquaintanceship was
so constricted each death assumed such
great importance that it inspired a flood
of little elegies in which the poet records
both her grief and her love.
"Time," "eternity," and "immortality"
are words that are insistently repeated in
2954

these poems. Always a skeptic, she once
asked the question, "Is immortality true?"
and like a proper metaphysician she lets
her mind play with the two possible
answers. In one of her last poems she seems
to say that a person's identity can never
be blotted out; the poem concludes with
this stanza:
To die is not to go—
On Doom's consummate Chart
No Territory new is staked—
Remain thou as thou art.
Many readers of Emily Dickinson feel
that she is a poet whom one may like or
not like, that those who judge her a
major poet have developed a sort of
gourmet's taste in literature, preferring the
delicate and dainty to the robust and
wholesome. There are indeed times when
her poetry is quaint to the point of being
cranky, when her eccentricities,
compressions, and indirections lead to
incomprehensibility; but if the reader will give her
a second or third chance he, like others
before him, will find that her best poetry
provides the essence of great literature-
contact with a powerful, original,
fascinating mind.
2955

THE POETRY OF FRENEAU
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
Principal published works: A Poem on the Rising Glory of America, 1772 (with H. H.
Brackenridge); The American Village, 1772; General Gage's Confession, 1775; The
British Prison Ship, 1781; The Poems of Philip Freneau, 1786; Poems Written
Between the Years 1786 and 1794, 1795; Poems Written and Published during the
Revolutionary War, 1809; A Collection of Poems . . . Written Between the Year 1797 and
the Present Time, 1815
The fact that Freneau's collected poetic
works, at least in a definitive edition,
were not published until over a hundred
years after he had stirred the American
conscience heightens the irony of the title
of the best biography of the poet, That
Rascal Freneau: A Study in Literary
Failure (1941). The phrase comes from
George Washington, who more than
anyone had occasion to be grateful to
Freneau, not only for the several
laudatory poems addressed to him but also
for lifting soldier morale during the nadir
of the Revolution. Freneau's political
poetry served the same purpose as Paine's
incendiary essays, and was perhaps more
effective.
These facts alone would make Freneau
interesting historically, but his poetry of
nature, of American life and culture, add
an important dimension to his memory.
Most literary historians and critics
consider Freneau our first outstanding poet,
a liberal in form as well as content. He
dared to introduce native themes and
idioms into poetry at a time when other
writers remained slavishly Anglophile.
While a student at Princeton he wrote
a poem in collaboration with Hugh
Henry Brackenridge, "A Poem on the
Rising Glory of America," a cue to later
cleverly designed propagandist pieces,
written first in praise of British
imperialism and then revised to express sharp
denunciation of British usurpation.
Significantly, the account that the poem
was received at commencement, 1771,
"with great applause," mentions only
Brackenridge's name. In blank verse and
dramatic dialogue, the work traces the
history of America as the story of
freedom-seeking men, establishing on this
Eden-like continent, prophetically, a
haven for all the oppressed:
And when a train of rolling years are
past,
(So sung the exiled seer in Patmos isle)
A new Jerusalem, sent down from
heaven,
Shall grace our happy earth,—perhaps
this land,
and such America at last shall have
When ages yet to come, have run their
round,
and future years of bliss alone remain.
From this patriotic writing Freneau
turned to the often-quoted "The
American Village," a poem in praise of this
land in contrast to "The Deserted
Village" of a decadent England. Though
written in heroic couplets, the sentiments
expressed, the names, and the idiom are
American.
To yonder village then will I descend,
There spend my days, and there my ev'-
nings spend;
Sweet haunt of peace whose mud'
wall'd sides delight,
The rural mind beyond the city bright.
Perhaps the neglect of his early poems
caused him to retreat to a more romantic
life in the West Indies. Some memorable
verse came out of this period in the
1770's, notably "The House of Night,"
a poem worthy of Poe with its vivid
description of death attended by weird
phantasms and graveyard symbols:
Around his bed, by the dull
flambeaux' glare,
I saw pale phantoms—Rage to madness
vext,
2956

Wan, wasting grief, and ever musing
care,
Distressful pain, and poverty perplext.
Several times Freneau was captured
by the British while going to and fro
among his island paradises. Finally he
was so incensed over the ruthless war on
the sea and the sad disposition of
prisoners that he wrote in 1781 his most
powerful early work of condemnation,
"The British Prison Ship," which
contains a notable picture of horror on the
high seas:
The various horrors of these hulks to
tell,
These Prison Ships where pain and
horror dwell,
Where death in tenfold vengeance
holds his reign,
And injur'd ghosts, yet unaveng'd,
complain;
This be my talk—ungenerous Britons,
you
Conspire to murder those you can't
subdue.
Though these were not Freneau's first
satiric thrusts, his earlier diatribes had
not the stuff of conviction. But the war
on the sea he had suffered at first hand
and he wrote about it from personal
knowledge.
From that time on, Freneau followed
closely the progress, or lack of it, of
the Revolution, writing stirring patriotic
pieces to boost morale, scourging lines to
incense the colonials against their
oppressors, rollicking ballads and
celebrations of American victory or British
defeat. He edited and editorialized during
the latter days of the war, his poems
being a special feature of various
journals with which he was associated. For
this work he was credited by Jefferson
with saving the Constitution from the
Monarchists and the Federalists. Attacked
by critics and forgotten by his
countrymen, he abandoned poetry and spent the
years immediately following the war as
a captain of coastal vessels. A collection
of his early poetry and essays was
published in 1786. He was aroused to
celebrate the French Revolution to some
memorable lines written in 1793, on
Bastille Day:
The chiefs that bow to Capet's reign,
In mourning, now, their weeds display;
But we, that scorn a monarch's chain,
Combine to celebrate the DAY
Of Freedom's birth that put the seal,
And laid in dust the proud Bastille.
This partisan feeling eventually gave
rise to the Probationary Odes by Jonathan
Pindar, Esq., some of the most mature
of Freneau's satires against the decay of
liberal, democratic sentiments. At the
same time he wrote masterful, idiomatic
prose under the pseudonym of Robert
Slender. These together brought the
wrath of the pompous against him, a
prelude to the journalistic battle of the
United States Gazette vs. the National
Gazette, Hamilton vs. Freneau. From
this affair came the abuse from which
Freneau never recovered during his
lifetime.
Freneau was first a poet, then a
politician and patriot, as these very late lines
in "The Brook in the Valley" reveal:
The world has wrangled half an age,
And we again in war engage,
While this sweet, sequestr'd rill
Murmurs through the valley still. . . •
But, with all your quiet flow,
Do you not some quarrels know!
Lately, angry, how you ran!
All at war—and much like man.
Of his work, the poems remembered
and anthologized today are his
unpretentious, indigenous nature lyrics such
as "The Wild Honey Suckle" ("Fair
flower, that dost so comely grow") or "On
a Honey Bee" ("Thou, born to sip the
lake or spring"). Also, his celebration of
the first Americans deserves mention,
especially "The Indian Burying Ground";
In spite of all the learned have said,
I still my old opinion keep;
The posture that we give the dead
Points out the soul's eternal sleep.
2957

Recently, Freneau's verse has been
reclaimed from neglect, very much as his
reputation has been cleared of calumnious
attacks by his contemporaries. Near his
former home at Mount Pleasant, New
Jersey, stands a monument inscribed:
Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high
And bids the pure in heart behold their
God.
2958

THE POETRY OF FROST
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Principal published works: A Boys Will, 1913; North of Boston, 1914; Mountain Interval,
1916; New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes, 1923; West-Running
Brook, 1928; A Further Range, 1936; A Witness Tree, 1942; A Masque of Reason,
1945; Steeple Bush, 1947; A Masque of Mercy, 1947; How Not tofBe King, 1951
They would not find me changed from
him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was
true.
In a sense this early prediction by
Robert Frost is an accurate description of
the course of his writing career: Frost's
poetry has not changed; it has simply
grown stronger. The dominant
characteristics of his work—his impeccable ear
for the rhythms of speech; his realistic
handling of nature that transcends the
ordinary "love" we ascribe to poets of the
outdoors; his revelation of human
character by means of dramatic events; his
warm philosophy that combines a
whimsical poet with a dirt farmer whose feet
are not only planted on the ground but
in it—all these qualities were apparent
(at least to some readers) early in his
career. And they are still there, handled
with greater precision, displaying more
depth. As an example of this
strengthening process, this growth of sapling into
tree, look first at the little poem, 'The
Pasture," the last s'anza of which invites
the reader into Frost's A Boys Will:
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so
young,
It totters when she licks it with her
tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.
The Frost charm is evident in these
lines, but there is also a somewhat
juvenile, Rilevesque quality. When one
compares "The Pasture" with "Come
In," a much later and firmer treatment
of the same general theme, the superior
diction is immediately apparent in such
magnificent lines as these:
THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST. Excerpts reprinted from COMPLETE POEMS OF ROBERT
FROST by permission of the publishers, Henry Holt & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1930, 1949, by Henry Holt &
Co., Inc.
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went—
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But equally apparent is a greater depth
of psychological complexity, a stronger
suggestion of the "death wish" that John
Ciardi discusses in his controversial
analysis of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening," the more famous lyric to which
"Come In" is certainly a superb
companion piece..
Frost has not changed, only grown
surer; but there has been an amazing
change, down through the years, in the
attitude taken toward his poems. First,
his fellow Americans could not see this
most American of writers as a poet at all;
it was necessary for him to go to England
to be hailed for his talent. Secondly,
when the English had pointed him out to
us, we catalogued him as another cold
New England poet who saw everything
in black and white. This astonishing
judgment becomes superegregious when
we consider that A Boy's Will contains a
poem of such warm understanding as
"The Tuft of Flowers" and that North of
Boston, his second volume, includes "The
Death of the Hired Man," "Home
Burial," and "The Fear," three dramatic
poems that are intensely emotional. After
Frost's reputation finally became
established, the critics forced him into a third
stage of his career: he was recognized as
a major poet, but one not very
interesting to talk or write about because his
poetry was thought too simple and
because Frost held aloof from the free-
verse poets whose efforts, he felt, lacked
discipline. Now, at last, Frost has en-
2959

tered a fourth period in which his great
talents are fully recognized, and he is
regarded as a poet of far more depth and
subsurface complexity than anyone had
previously realized. Two of Frost's poems
that are provocative enough to satisfy the
most eager analyst are "Directive," with
its Grail imagery, and "The Subverted
Flower," with its tantalizing
psychological horror.
But Frost will always be a poet more
loved than analyzed. He expresses
himself in such an attractive way that his
readers identify themselves with the poet;
they would like to be Frost. The
descriptive lines one finds in "After Apple
Picking," for example, have a perfection that
seems the only, the inevitable, way of
describing the dream that the poet feels
coming on. Many other poems by Frost
contain this same perfection of word
choice. "Two Tramps in Mud Time" is
so meticulously written (and yet so
effortless, with its touches of the famous Frost
wit) that the reader feels surrounded by
April weather; and he clearly sees those
two hulking tramps who stand around
idly, waiting for the poet to hire them to
chop his wood.
If Frost had limited his poetry to
descriptive and philosophical lyrics, he
would still rank as a major poet;
fortunately, his poems are also full of people,
characters who are understandable and
vividly real. In "The Death of the Hired
Man" four people come alive: Mary, the
sympathetic wife; Warren, the practical,
somewhat cynical husband; Harold
Wilson, the boy "who studied Latin like the
violin because he liked it"; and Silas, the
harmlessly wastrel hired man who had
come "home" to die. Other people are
scattered like old friends throughout the
poems: Magoon, the timid professor, and
Lafe, the burly bill collector, in "A
Hundred Collars"; the casual witch in "The
Witch of Coos"; the newlyweds who
philosophize so well in 'West-Running
Brook"; the old farmer in "The
Mountain" who lives at the foot of a mountain
he refuses to climb simply because he
sees no practical reason for doing so; and
that other dour farmer in "Brown's
Descent" who takes a hilarious ride down
a mountain on a slick crust of snow.
There are others equally memorable,
but perhaps the outstanding character in
all the poems is Frost himself.
Everything he writes is warmed by his own
personality, and he emerges from his
volumes as a great and charming man who
feels deeply but who never breaks the
restraining tether of good faste.
Emotional but never overly sentimental, he
is dramatic but never melodramatic,
conservative but not reactionary, sometimes
pessimistic but never defeated, humorous
without being flippant.
Trying to sum up the beguiling effect
of Frost's outlook on life is difficult, for
his writing personality is many-sided.
Certainly he strikes the reader as a man
who looks at life in a way that is both
poetic and practical. The concluding
lines of "Birches" beautifully illustrate
this remarkable blend. In the poem the
speaker has expressed a desire "to get
away from earth awhile" and then come
back for a new start:
Fd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-
white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear
no more,
But dipped its top and set me down
again.
That would be good both going and
coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger
of birches.
Frost's wise outlook is not always
concerned with only the broad generalities
of life; sometimes he becomes specific
about the events of our times, as in 'To
a Thinker," which gives advice to a
President, and in "U. S. 1946 King's
X," which is a mordant piece of irony:
Having invented a new Holocaust,
And been the first with it to win a war,
How they make haste to cry with
fingers crossed,
King's X—no fairs to use it any more!
A poet must be more than a dramatist,
2960

an analyst of human emotion, a
humorist, and a philosopher: he must above all
be a poet. Frost meets this difficult test.
He chooses to write in the rhythms of
human speech, and by sounding as
natural as a man talking to his neighbor in
simple language he has produced some of
America's greatest poetry. His approach
seems casual and disarming, rather like
that of a champion athlete who breaks
records without straining, who never tries
too hard. To claim perfection for
anyone—athlete or poet—is absurd. Frost has
his defects. At times he is like a kindly
teacher whose whimsicality is so sly as to
be irritating, whose wisdom sometimes
descends to mere crankiness. But Frost
has written magnificent poetry—simple,
sure, strong. Listen to this beautiful (but
not often quoted) lyric called "Moon
Compasses":
I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
Between two downpours to see what
there was.
And a masked moon had spread down
compass rays
To a cone mountain in the midnight
haze,
As if the final estimate were hers,
And as it measured in her calipers,
The mountain stood exalted in its place.
So love will take between the hands a
face.
2961

THE POETRY OF GRAY
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
Principal published works: Elegy in a Country Churchyard, 1751; Six Poems by Mr.
T. Gray, 1753; Odes by Mr. Gray, 1757; Pindaric Odes, 1758; Poems by Mr. Gray, 1768
Although the poem now titled "Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard" is
justly the most famous of Thomas Gray's
poems, anyone reading through the whole
of his work will decide that he is not a
poet of only one tone or one mode of
sensibility. True, Gray could strike and
maintain admirably a specific mood, such
as that of gentle melancholy and regret
that informs the "Elegy." This, however,
was only one of his effects. The poetry
of his great contemporary, Samuel
Johnson, is sustained in one mode from
beginning to end—abstract, moralistic,
improving—but not so Gray's.
Although Gray's poetry was expressive
of his time and displayed often enough
the neo-classic qualities admired by
eighteenth-century critics and readers, its small
body displays a wide variety of interest
that must be recorded in any report of a
poet who withdrew as a boy from the
playing fields of Eton (he was not one
of the "idle progeny" who knew how to
"chase the rolling circle's speed,/Or urge
the flying ball") and spent a quiet adult
life as a fellow-commoner at Cambridge.
He did, in his twenties, take an extended
Grand Tour with his friend Horace Wal-
pole, and to the end of his life he varied
the quietude of his life at Cambridge
with frequent journeys. But Gray, in his
travels, showed the qualities of the
observer, the tourist. Capable of wide
ranges of curiosity and considerable
imaginative response to what he saw, he
was willing to be entertained and diverted
by sights and experiences that Samuel
Johnson would simply have dismissed as
foreign and barbarous. Gray also
resembled other men of his time, even his
friend Walpole of Strawberry Hill fame;
he was willing to be amused, but the
one price he would not pay for his
amusement was his self-possession.
This reserve is what gives Gray's
poetry the kind of unity it has. He attempts
many things, and the variety of his
poetry gives him minor importance as a
forerunner of the Romantic Movement,
both in the subjects he sometimes chose
and in the simple language he sbmetimes
employed. But those who want to claim
Gray for the eighteenth century and neo-
classicism have no trouble in doing so.
Even Gray's best work, poems like "Ode
on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,"
"Hymn to Adversity," and thd "Elegy"
abound in the elevated, figurative diction
and the excessive personification popular
in his time. In some of his verse fish
hardly swim, and the poet himself is
overshadowed by a thick penumbra of
such literary abstractions as Adversity,
Melancholy, and others. Often there
cluster in the same poem so many of
these that the effect becomes clotted and
obscure. Consider these lines from "Ode
on the Pleasure Arising from
Vicissitude":
Smiles on past Misfortune's brow
Soft Reflection's hand can trace;
And o'er the cheek of Sorrow throw
A melancholy grace;
While Hope prolongs our happier
hour. . . .
Succeeding verses present "rosy
Pleasure," "a kindred Grief," "Misery," "Bliss,"
and a line which announces: "Humble
Quiet builds her cell."
These tendencies are the marks of
some of Gray's greatest poems, lines
which have gained the immortality of
proverb. The lines of the "Eton" ode
ring with many a remembered,
self-possessed phrase, such as ". . . where
ignorance is bliss,/'Tis folly to be wise."
Similarly, a moving and notable sadness,
admirably kept within bounds, throws
out phrase after phrase in the "Elegy"
2962

and enriches our common speech: "The
paths of glory lead but to the grave";
"Full many a flower is born to blush un-
unseen,/And waste its sweetness on the
desert air"; "Some mute inglorious
Milton here may rest. . . ." Truly noble
is Gray's contemplation of the burial
mounds, the rude inscriptions on the
stones, the truncated careers, and the
unanswerable silence of the modest
graveyard at Stoke Poges. For the
inglorious Miltons a tear is shed. This
shedding of tears may, it is true,
anticipate future Romantic glorification of the
emotions; but the measured shedding
keeps Gray the child of his century.
Significantly, most of Gray's poems were
written for sympathetic friends and were
published only when pirated versions, as
with the "Elegy," were about to appear.
The fact of Gray's self-control—the
fact that he possessed a considerable
range of feeling and powers of taste but
was not possessed by them—is testified
to by several items. He was a master of
the going eighteenth-century style and
could, for example, compose restrained
and sincere epitaphs ("Epitaph on Mrs.
Clerke," "Epitaph on Sir William
Williams"). At the same time, with brilliant
if trivial results, he could compose his
"Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat."
He could be really dull, as in his
"Alliance of Education and Government"; yet
this sober earnestness did not inhibit his
"Satire on the Heads of Houses," in
which he ridicules the university masters
to whom he was speaking soberly in his
"Alliance."
Similarly, Gray had enough taste and
curiosity to initiate the use of "Barbarian"
materials in "The Fatal Sisters," "The
Bard"-called a "Pindaric ode"-and "The
Triumphs of Owen." True to the tone of
his sources, he speaks in accents quite
different from those of neo-classic
convention; screams, mantic possession, and
direct language sustain many passages in
these pastiches from the Norse and other
languages. But the Cambridge resident
was no more possessed by savagery than
he was by the refined sensibility expressed
in the "Elegy" or the "Eton" ode. He
moved from sincere epitaphs to a lament
for 3 cat; he moved, at least once, from
his recreation of bardic song to "A Long
Story," in which much of the general
machinery of Romantic narrative is
burlesqued in advance.
As Gray indicated in "The Progress of
Poesy," he believed that he lived in an
age of twilight; the great luminaries of
Greek, Roman, and English poetry had
long since set ("Oh! Lyre divine, what
daring Spirit/Wakes thee now?"). He
shows us, however, that a conscientious
connoisseur can find his way through
twilight—perhaps toward a new dawn—
and throughout follow a memorable
course.
2963

THE POETRY OF HOPKINS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Principal published works: Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Now First Published, with
Notes by Robert Bridges, 1918; Complete Poems, 1947
Twenty-nine years elapsed from the
time the poet Robert Bridges first
published his edition of Gerard Manley
Hopkins' Poems to publication of the
definitive collection edited by the great Hopkins
scholar, W. H. Gardner. Within that
time Hopkins had been firmly established
as an important if not a major British
poet, not of his age but of the present.
Undoubtedly, many of the conflicts over
his life and work will have been resolved
by the hundredth anniversary of the year
Bridges first presented a small number of
Hopkins' poems in important anthologies
(1893).
Certain it is that the interest when this
brilliant genius was in vogue, during the
decade after 1918, has changed to
something more deeply critical and scholarly.
The letters, notebooks, and essays as well
as the complete poems—no one now
believes the best of the poet's work was
destroyed—are now available to all, and
hardly a year passes without the
appearance of a volume of criticism or
biography of the extremely paradoxical G. M.
Hopkins.
Of utmost importance in
understanding the very powerful poetry of this often
misunderstood poet is his eclecticism, his
wide knowledge and deep insights. While
it is true that the preponderance of
criticism has dwelt on Hopkins' innovations
in rhythm-rhyme and imagery ("instress"
and "inscape" summarize the two main
facets), his whole poetic output indicates
that he followed in the great European
poetic tradition from Homer to Matthew
Arnold. Hopkins' greatest poems are
unique in powerful rhythmic effect,
equal to or surpassing that of any other
poet of like output; historically speaking,
his poems prove that the genius of our
language lies in stress-rhythms (often
"sprung") of our oldest traditional poetry,
at least as important as syllabic meters in
effect. His poetic diction, his use of
common idiom as well as ingenious coinages,
is without exact parallel. His ear for
language was so acute, though highly
individual, that he helped restore poetry as
an oral-aural art, a fact the late Dylan
Thomas so brilliantly demonstrated.
The lack of bulk, the slender volume
of three hundred pages encompassing less
than two hundred poems or fragments,
makes arbitrary the distinction of whether
Hopkins was a major poet. Certainly he
is a classic in a very special sense. His
central vision was deeply Christian,
Jesuit, even mystical, often ecstatic though
intellectually controlled. One of his
greatest poems, "The Wreck of the Deutsch-
land" was inspired as much by the
"happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns"
as their tragic death in 1875 by
drowning. By his own account, the thirty-one-
year-old theologian, deeply affected by
the newspaper account of these nuns,
exiled by the Falk Laws, who drowned
in the Thames on a ship carrying them
from Germany to America, responded to
his rector's suggestion that a
commemorative poem should be written of this.
Hopkins was eager to try a new rhythm
which had been haunting his ear, as he
puts it. In spite of Robert Bridges'
disapproval, he kept the rhythmic "odd-
nesses" because the technique was
irrevocably bound to the sentiment he
wanted to express, the sprung rhythm or
"expressional rhythm ... a vital fusion
of the internal rhythm of thought-and-
emotion and the external rhythm of
sounds," as Gardner describes this
phenomenon. As a threnody the poem is
THE POETRY OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS. Excerpts reprinted from POEMS OF GERARD
MANLEY HOPKINS, third edition edited by W. H. Gardner, by permission of the publishers, Oxford
University Press, Inc. Copyright, 1948, by Oxford University Press, Inc.
2964

unique. An invocation to God to master
rebellious feelings, a narrative of the
tragic event, an elegy of one nun's
heroism, a meditation on God's beneficence, a
plea for intercession—all these and other
arguments within the poem demanded a
flexibility and felicity of form. The result
is one of the great poems in English or
any language. Stanza thirty-two, a poem
of praise to a merciful God, will illustrate
these subtleties:
I admire thee, master of the
tides,
Of the Yore-flood, of the year's
fall;
The recurb and the recovery of the
gulf's sides,
The girth of it and the wharf of
it and the wall;
Stanching, quenching ocean of a
motionable mind;
Ground of being, and granite of it:
past all
Grasp God, throned behind
Death with a sovereignty that heeds but
hides, bodes but abides.
While no one definition of "inscape" or
"instress" will suffice, this stanza
contains both: the former is seeing of the
internal and fundamental, significant
form or nature of, say, the ocean in
motion; and the latter would include the
access to God's grace and a celebration of
this, though the rhythmic expression is
also implied.
Perhaps the searching eye and the
recording ear are best illustrated in
Hopkins' most famous lyric, "Pied Beauty."
Here the poet as painter and musician
is displayed, showing his deep concern
for bringing to bear in a poem all the
senses:
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded
cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon
trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches'
wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced-fold,
fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and
tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare,
strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who
knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour;
adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past
change:
Praise him.
Here are rhythmic contrasts, dramatic
juxtapositions, unique word
manipulations, a compelling meter as dappled and
iridescent as the things described.
Another facet of Hopkins' talent, one
of his most pronounced achievements,
was his variation on the sonnet form, a
revolt against the stilted structures and
concepts of Victorian poesy. This is not
to say he wrote loosely or without
thought; quite the contrary is true, for
his critical writings reveal the depth of
his study and experimentation. Ascetic
by habit and temperament, he elevated
the form to a new lyricism by breaking
with or modifying many old systems and
establishing his own.
"The Starlight Night," a well-known
sonnet not too revolutionary, illustrates
the nervous counterpointed rhythms, the
startling pauses, the jarring sound clashes,
the harmonic word fusion among many
other interesting poetic, semantic, and
linguistic devices:
Look at the stars! look, look up at the
skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in
the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-
citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond
delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where
quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set
on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a
farmyard scare!—
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a
prize.
Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer,
patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard
boughs!
2965

Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-
with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors
house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling
shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother
and all his hallows.
This sonnet also illustrates Hopkins'
childlike joy in fairy lore, his deep love
of nature, and a metaphysical rapture
over God's munificence, a simple joy born
of a deep religion. In the Deutschland
poem Hopkins is critical of man's
questioning of God's ways, but his later poems
show this questioning in his own lack of
balance—a conflicting of personal desires,
private impulses, and his theology. This
unrest is perhaps best expressed in the
priest-poet's sonnet "Peace,' (1879):
When will you ever, Peace, wild wood-
dove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under
be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace?
I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come
sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace.
What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the
death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should
leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave
Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And
when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not
come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
Here he seems to have found some
measure of this peace through virtuous acts,
selfless serving of an often thankless
mankind.
As most critics point out, Hopkins
combined in his interesting person a
depth of humanity with a height of
mystical insight, with a whole spectrum of
emotions and attitudes infused. Most of
the contradictions in his nature, the
ambiguities within his poetry, can be
resolved by a thorough reading not only of
his poems, but of his letters, diaries, and
essays.
2966

THE POETRY OF HORACE
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Raccus, 6
Principal transcribed works: Satires, 35, 30 ,
men Seculare, 17 B.C.
Born two years before the Emperor
Augustus, Horace, the son of a freed
slave, was sent to Rome for the education
he could not get in Venusia, Italy. In
44 B.C. he went to Athens for further
study. There he met Brutus, after the
assassination of Julius Caesar, and was
appointed an officer in the republican army
routed at Philippi in 42 B.C. Back in
Rome, disillusioned, with his possessions
confiscated and his father dead, he began
verse writing. Vergil, attracted by his
poetry, presented the country boy to
Augustus' cultured minister, Maecenas.
Horace had the good taste to destroy
his early angry poetry. His first published
poems were his Satires in 35 B.C.,
followed by his Epodes. Then, still more
mellow, he published three books of Odes
in 23 B.C. During the last years of his
life, Horace wrote his Epistles. In one
ode, III, xvii, having heard of Maecenas'
illness, he wrote: "If any untimely stroke
snatches you away, you the half of my
life . . . that day shall bring the end of
us both." His wish was granted. He died
in 8 B.C., only a few weeks after his
protector, and their ashes were buried on the
Esquiline hillside.
The early poetry of Horace betrays
lack of self-confidence, as in his references
to his "pedestrian Muse." But the
publication of his Odes gave him assurance,
and after the death of Vergil, in 19 B.C.,
he was commissioned by the emperor to
compose and read an ode for the imperial
secular games. Later Augustus demanded
odes to celebrate the military victories of
his stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius.
In his poetry, especially in his Satires,
Horace re-creates his era with tolerance
and good humor. He attacks the vanity
of human desires, yet stresses the need to
enjoy the pleasures of the world. While
professing the epicurean philosophy, he
>-8 B.C.)
l.C; Epodes, 30 B.C.; Odes, 23-13 B.C.; Car-
generally practiced stoicism. Though
praising the pleasures of wine, his health
was too delicate to let him drink deeply.
And his poems to women were just as
conventional. For only one woman,
Cinara, did he show real feeling. His
affection was reserved for the men he
knew; and his sincerity and ability to
project himself beyond the lines of his
poems have won him innumerable friends
through the centuries.
The poetic satire was the invention of
the Roman Lucilius, "untouched by the
Greeks," as Horace declared, with its
name derived from a dish composed of a
variety of ingredients. Horace composed
eighteen satires, in two volumes, but he
made them more a friendly conversation
than the bitter lampooning of his
predecessor.
Book I, containing ten satires presented
in no chronological order, was completed
between his introduction to Maecenas in
38 B.C. and their appearance three years
later. Number I, appropriately addressed
to his patron, deals with Horace's favorite
theme, the folly of the discontented man
who wants something he does not have:
"Oh, happy trader!" cries the soldier,
while the trader, in his ship belabored by
the south winds, envies the soldier. The
poet follows this craving to its most
unreasonable form, the hoarding of money,
though he does not advocate being a
spendthrift. His council is that a man
should so live that he can leave his life,
as he leaves a banquet table, contented.
In Satire IV, Horace explains why he
uses this form: his father trained him
for a good life by pointing out as bad
examples those who lived it evilly.
Besides, the form allows him "smilingly, to
tell the truth." Satire V, describing a
journey made with his protector,
contains the poet's reply to those who charged

he was cultivating Maecenas for personal
profit, a subject taken up again in Satire
IX. His first contacts with the wealthy
statesman are described in the following
poem, which take a side glance at the
vice of aspiring to a higher position than
one merits.
The eight satires of Book Two, which
appeared five years later, are longer and
generally in dialogue form. In one, the
Lawyer Trebatius Testa clears the poet
of the charge of being too bitter in his
first volume. Paradoxes serve as themes
for two others: All except the wise are
mad, and all but the wise are slaves.
Three express Horace's delight in plain
living and his disgust at the vapid
conversations overheard at formal banquets.
He ends with an outburst against a
woman he calls Canidia, who also figures
in his later writings.
The earliest form of Horace's lyric
poetry is his collection of epodes, as the
grammarians called them. Horace named
diem "Iambi," a meter of alternating long
and short lines designed by Archilochus
for invectives. In these poems he
expresses his pet dislikes, sometimes
humorously, as in Number III, where he
inveighs against the garlic in the food
served at Maecenas* table. At other times
he really hated the object of his verse,
as in Number IV, written about a freed-
man who proudly strutted along the Via
Sacra, or in the poem which expresses
his hope that the ship will be wrecked
when the poet Maevias goes on a sea
voyage. In two epodes, V and XVII, he
comes back to Canidia, first accusing her
of being a witch who uses her spells on
men, and then, when he apologizes,
portraying her as threatening to use her vile
charms against him.
Several others have the form, but not
the substance, of an epode, as in
Number I, written when Maecenas was
departing for the battle of Actium and begging
his patron not to endanger himself. Best
known of all is probably the "Beatus
ille," classified as an epode because of its
surprise satirical ending:
How happy is his low degree,
How rich in humble poverty is he
Who leads a quiet country life
Discharged of busyness and void of
strife.
After an enumeration of the joys of life
in the country, the poem is revealed as
the idle words of the usurer Alphius:
He called his money in,
But the prevailing love of pelf
Soon split him on the former shelf.
He put it out again.
To lovers of poetry, Horace probably
makes his greatest appeal through his
Odes, the artistic work of a mature
writer. Composed after Actium, these
poems were written between 23 and 13
B.C. The ideas are commonplace—the
uncertainties of life, the joys of
friendship—but they endure because they
express sentiments that appeal to all
readers. Number III, for instance, contains
the much-quoted line, "Sweet and fitting
it is to die for the fatherland." Poets
good and bad ever since have enjoyed
translating these poems into their own
idiom.
In his Odes, Horace used a variety of
meters to suit his subjects. The earliest
are the gayest; the later odes, reflecting
his own failing health and the deaths
of friends, reveal an artist of subtle
elegance and an effective arrangement of
words. Even his pensive reflections
conceal subtle humor.
The culminating form of Horace's
genius was his Epistles. "You were the
inspiration of my earliest Muse,
Maecenas, and must be of my latest," he
says, beginning this form. One, Number
IX, is a fine example of a letter of
introduction, presenting Septimus to the
future Emperor Tiberius. The others,
however, are letters only in form, being
more in the nature of informal moral
essays. "Modernism is wisdom" is the
theme of the first; but instead of angrily
attacking vice, the aging but kindlier
poet gently rebukes folly. At the end he
sets himself up as critic of the poets and
2968

poetic movements of his age.
Surprisingly, Horace devotes little time to
Lucretius and Catullus, the greatest of his
predecessors. Carelessness marred the
verses of both; perhaps the fault which
he considered the gravest of all blinded
him to their many virtues.
Having completed twenty-two epistles,
Horace wrote: "You have played and
eaten and drunk enough. It is time for
you to depart the scene." He died, at the
age of fifty-seven, one of the most genial
and attractive of poets who have written
undying verse.
2969

THE POETRY OF LANIER
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Sidney Lanier (1842-1881)
Principal published works: Poems, 1877; Poems of Sidney Lanier, 1884
The poetic fame of Sidney Lanier,
after Poe the most important nineteenth-
century poet of the Southern United
States, rests upon a small body of poetry
found in the posthumous volume, Poems
of Sidney Lanier, which contains the
verse Lanier included in his Poems, along
with a number of pieces which had
received only magazine publication before
the poet's death in 1881, plus a group
of unrevised early poems that his wife
felt were worthy of publication. Of
approximately one hundred titles in the
posthumous volume, only fifteen or
twenty are known today except to
students especially interested in Lanier.
Most of the critical discussions of
Lanier's poetic significance cite primarily
these some fifteen or twenty poems in
illustrating both his merits and his
defects.
Lanier was a poet of both theory and
practice. His theory of technique was
influenced by his great love for music.
Precociously musical, he was in
manhood a brilliant flutist who played with
symphony orchestras in Dallas and
Baltimore. His moralistic theory of poetic
content was possibly influenced by his early
training in a devoutly Christian family
as well as by his own fundamentally
religious nature, which shows itself, in
some of his nature poems, as a passionate
love for God's plants and creatures
approaching that of St. Francis of Assisi.
Lanier s theory of prosody is expounded
principally in The Science of English
Verse (1880), which develops in
extensive detail and with copious illustration
the thesis that the same laws govern
both versification and music. Three brief
quotations will illustrate this thesis:
. . . when we hear verse, we hear a
set of relations between sounds; when
we silently read verse, we see that which
brings to us a set of relations between
sounds; when we imagine verse, we
imagine a set of relations between
sounds.
When those exact co-ordinations
which the ear perceives as rhythm,
tune, and tone-color are suggested to
the ear by a series of musical sounds,
the result is . . . MUSIC.
When those exact co-ordinations
which the ear perceives as rhythm,
tune, and tone-color, are suggested to
the ear by a series of spoken words,
the result is . . . VERSE.
. . . there is absolutely no difference
between the sound-relations used in
music and those used in verse.
Lanier's application of his prosodic theory
may be studied in many of his poems,
but it may be easily seen in such poems
as "The Symphony," "The Marshes of
Glynn," and "Song of the
Chattahoochee."
In "The Symphony," Lanier attempted
the difficult task of composing a poem
somewhat as a musician would. Such
instruments as violins, flute, clarinet,
horn, and hautboy (oboe) are personified
and used to develop the theme of Love,
the enemy of Trade (materialism),
which pervades the poem. Nowhere is
Lanier's belief in the essential identity
of sound-relations in music and in verse
better illustrated than in the four lines
which introduce the horn passage in the
poem:
There thrust the bold straightforward
horn
To battle for that lady lorn.
With hearthsome voice of mellow
scorn,
like any knight in knighthood's morn.
It has been objected that Lanier tried
the impossible in "The Symphony" and
that his achievement, though notable,
is successful only in part. Perhaps his
2970

theory is better illustrated in "Sunrise"
and "The Marshes of Glynn." In
"Sunrise," one easily catches the sibilance of
the forest:
Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms,
Ye consciences murmuring faiths under
forms,
Ye ministers meet for each passion that
grieves,
Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves.
In "The Marshes of Glynn" the sounds
and even the silence of the great marshes
near Brunswick, Georgia, may be heard
and felt by the reader. A passage near
the close of the poem describes in this
fashion the coming of the high tide of
evening:
The creeks overflow: a thousand
rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades
of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that
westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents
cease to run;
And the sea and the marsh are one.
In these lines the sounds of the moving
waters and grasses and of the whirring
wings are followed by a silence that is
palpable.
Because of Lanier's repeated use of
onomatopoeia in his verse he has often
been compared with Poe; but Lanier's
theory of poetic content is quite different.
Poe, in "The Philosophy of
Composition," concedes that "passion, or even
truth, may ... be introduced, and even
profitably introduced, into a poem"; but,
he asserts, "Beauty is the sole legitimate
province of the poem." In another essay,
"The Poetic Principle," Poe attacks what
he calls "the heresy of The Didactic."
"Every poem, it is said, should inculcate
a moral," he reminds us; "and by this
moral is the poetical merit of the work
to be adjudged." But, he continues,
would we but permit ourselves to look
into our own souls, we should
immediately there discover that under the
sun there neither exists nor can exist
any work more thoroughly dignified-
more supremely noble than this very
poem—this poem per se—this poem
which is a poem and nothing more—
this poem written solely for the poem's
sake.
Lanier loved art as much as Poe did,
but Lanier was on the side of the
moralists. In the series of lectures posthumously
published as The English Novel and the
Principle of Its Development (1883), he
leaves no doubt as to his position when
he states that
We may say that he who has not yet
perceived how artistic beauty and moral
beauty are convergent lines which run
back into a common ideal origin, and
who therefore is not afire with moral
beauty just as with artistic beauty—that
he, in short, who has not come to that
stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in
which the beauty of holiness and the
holiness of beauty mean one thing, burn
as one fire, shine as one light within
him; he is not yet the great artist.
Although Lanier wrote occasional
poems such as his verse narrative "The
Revenge of Hamish," in which the moral
element is not a major one, most of his
poetry is charged with moral purpose or
shines with "the beauty of holiness."
"The Symphony" bitterly indicts the
cruel, greedy practices of Trade and sings
the gospel of brotherly love. In "The
Marshes of Glynn," he writes:
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the
watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the
greatness of God.
Even a dialect poem like "Thar's More in
the Man than Thar Is in the Land"
contains a moral lesson, as the title itself
suggests. Occasionally his moral
earnestness dims Lanier's artistic sight, however,
as in "Song of the Chattahoochee," in
which the river is made to say:
... I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call—.
This is a flagrant example of what John
JRuskin called the "pathetic fallacy."
People may act with moral purpose; when
2971

the Chattahoochee River flows downward,
however, it is not because it knows that
The dry fields burn, and the mills are
to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
but because, as Lanier himself very well
knew, the law of gravity is a part of the
earthly scheme of things.
Though Lanier is not primarily a
regional poet, many of his lines sing
eloquently of his Southern origin. He is in
love with the beautiful Marshes of Glynn,
with their "moss-bearded live-oaks." He
mourns that "Bright drops of tune, from
oceans infinite/Of Melody" were ended
when a pet mockingbird "died of a cat,
May, 1878." He grieves in "Corn" that
the rich soil of his native state is being
washed away because of the greed of
cotton farmers who lay the surface bare
and then leave their erosion-ruined areas
and head for Texas to repeat their folly.
In "A Florida Sunday," he holds "in
my being" rich-scented orange trees, pea
green parrakeets, 'pranked woodpeckers
that ne'er gossip out," palmettos, pines,
and mangroves. In such poems Lanier is
as clearly a Southern poet as Robert
Frost is a New England one when he
describes his New Hampshire
countryside.
A fault that many readers have found
with Lanier is that, as a poet, he too
often lets his heart overflow and his
whole being "quiver with the passionate
thrill"; at times a noble emotion may
descend into sentimentality and at others
the poet's feeling may blur the expression
of "the great thought." The lush music
of Lanier's lines may also create the
lulling mental effect that one finds in
Swinburne. Part of Lanier's trouble seems
to be that he is striving too hard to attain
the right combination of "rhythm, tune,
and tone-color." He sometimes forces his
comparisons so that they become too-
obvious poetic conceits, as in "Marsh
Song—at Sunset," with its metaphors
drawn from Shakespeare's Tempest. Some
of his sentences, such as the thirty-six-
line one which opens "The Marshes of
Glynn," lack clarity because of their great
length and intricate structure.
In spite of the undisciplined
emotionalism, hazy thought, and strained effects
of his lesser poems, Lanier seems well
assured of a permanent place in
American literature. The melody of his best
lines; the love of God, man, and nature
founc1. in poems like "The Marshes of
Glynn" and "The Symphony"; the
simple beauty of "A Ballad of Trees and the
Master"; and the stoic acceptance of "The
Stirrup-Cup," in which the consumptive
poet says uncomplainingly to Death,
"Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt"
—for these Lanier will continue to be
loved.
2972

THE POETRY OF LEWIS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Cecil Day Lewis (1904- )
Principal published works: Beechen VigU and Other Poems, 1925; Country Comet, 1928;
Transitional Poem, 1929; From Feathers to Iron, 1931; The Magnetic Mountain, 1933;
A Time to Dance and Other Poems, 1935; Overtures to Death, 1938; Poems in Wartime,
1940; Word Over All, 1943; Short is the Time: Poems, 1936-1943, 1943; Poems, 1943-
1947, 1948; An Italian Visit, 1953; Pegasus and Other Poems, 1957
Cecil Day Lewis began writing poetry
at Oxford along with his literary friends,
W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and
Louis MacNeice, but his early work
shows little resemblance to that of his
contemporaries. His first well-known
work, Transitional Poem, was a long,
Whitmanesque, searching work
containing different styles and verse forms and
filled with classical allusions. Although a
few of its sections satirized contemporary
life, it was generally diffuse and had little
in common with the early sharp, ironic
Auden or the early lyric MacNeice. It
was followed by another long poem,
From Feathers to Iron. More carefully
controlled and more somber in tone, this
work displayed a shrewd observation of
contemporary English life. In it, Day
Lewis criticized the flat, industrial
suburb and contrasted the hardness of the
iron life of most men in modern society.
The poet also praised the natural process
of birth, pitting the idea of creation and
the child against the overwhelming
industrialism of the age. He felt that there
was, however, some limited amount of
space left for the natural and spiritual.
In this early poem several
characteristics of Day Lewis' work are evident:
his contemporary references and
language and the loose, conversational
quality of his style.
Day Lewis' poetry became more like
that of his contemporaries, at least in
theme, with his next long poem, The
Magnetic Mountain. Here he attacks the
complacent person who ignores social
issues, the fool who does not see them, and
the escapist who purposely avoids them.
The poem satirizes the old English,
public-school tradition, the tradition
which assumes that invariable guides for
conduct exist, formulas for meeting every
problem of society. Day Lewis pleads for
all who would reform society, who would
fashion a world based on the heart of
man, to join him in his journey to the
"Magnetic Mountain." The mountain
symbolizes both the heart or faith of
man and the enduring power or iron in
his character, for iron is a magnetic and
compelling substance. In his attack on
the English colonizing and commercial
past, Day Lewis calls for social action,
for a "communal sense" in order that man
may realize his full potentiality. His
stinging reproach to the gray, gritty
present and his great faith in the
possibility of a new social order, as well as
the qualities revealed in his earlier
writing, are in evidence throughout this work.
In this rhetorical declaration of faith,
Day Lewis' writing is loose and allusive,
with none of the hard, cryptic quality of
Auden's work. Yet the looseness of Day
Lewis' structure is frequently, as in the
above passage, balanced by unexpected,
musical alliteration.
Day Lewis' faith in the new social
order began to wane in his next volume,
A Time to Dance and Other Poems, a
volume including a number of shorter
lyrics. Although his allegiances were still
just as strong to the new social order, he
began to demonstrate an awareness of
some of the difficulties of bringing about
a reformation. He claimed, however, that
he still wrote his poems in order to keep
his faith and courage. The following vol-
THE POETRY OF CECIL DAY LEWIS. Excerpts reprinted from AN ITALIAN VISIT by permission
of the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1953, by Harper & Brothers,
2973

ume, Overtures to Death, demonstrates
an even keener realization that man was
not likely to become perfect within a
generation or so by joining in a
communal assault on the "Magnetic
Mountain." The verse in this book is crisper,
less shrill, and less rhetorical, conveying
a deeper insight into man and the issues
that face him. Although Day Lewis still
attacks the complacent and those who
love tradition for the simple reason that
it is tradition, he realizes that he, too,
may be bound to some sterile tradition,
some impossible notion of human
conduct. He develops this theme in one of
his best short poems, "Regency Houses."
The vague influence of Yeats in this
poem has given it a terseness and power
not always present in Day Lewis' work.
At the same time the introspective
quality, the realization of his own limitations,
has given the poem a depth not apparent
in his earlier calls to social action.
Day Lewis, alert to the dangers of
Nazism, had attacked the complacent
people who refused to acknowledge that
war was imminent. During the war,
however, his poetry became less social,
less political, more personal. He began to
write autobiographical poems dealing
with childhood memories and concerns.
He also wrote a number of poems on
the theme of love, presenting both its
pleasures and its difficulties. The range
of the subjects he treated widened
greatly: the life of the simple
countryman, the impact of the war, places,
poems in praise of literary figures such
as Thomas Hardy and Walter de la
Mare, the pleasures of Christmas. His
thoughtful and introspective side
continued, but his subjects grew more
personal, more concerned with direct
experience, and less dominated by the
intensity of a single vision for mankind's
salvation. In this shift of interest to more
personal and direct concerns, Day Lewis
mirrored the changing trend of a whole
generation of English writers and
intellectuals. Day Lewis still used satire, as
he does in his most recent volume,
Pegasus and Other Poems, but it was, and
has continued to be, a far more gentle
and understanding kind of satire.
In 1953, Day Lewis published An
Italian Visit, a long versified account of a
journey to Italy. This is a thoughtful,
descriptive work, full of powerful and often
startling images. The style is
conversational, like the easy flow of imaginative
language and rich contemplation from an
urbane and cultured gentleman. It is
perhaps this kind of loose, ruminative
writing that best suits Day Lewis' talent,
for he has never been, save in rare
moments, a poet of great intensity or
linguistic magic. The poem, in its
descriptions of Rome, Florence, and numerous
smaller towns, also displays a deep
appreciation of both art and tradition. Day
Lewis is, for the contemporary reader,
far more convincing as the guardian of
tradition and culture than he was as the
voice crying out for a new order. His
conversational ease, along with his skill
in fashioning images, is evident in the
following passage which can also serve
as his final comment on his pseudopro-
phetic role in the 1930's:
We who 'flowered' in the Thirties
Were an odd lot; sceptical yet
susceptible,
Dour though enthusiastic, horizon-
addicts
And future-fans, terribly apt to ask
what
Our all-very-fine sensations were in aid
of.
We did not, you will remember, come
to coo.
Still, there is hope for us. Rome has
absorbed
Other barbarians: yes, and there's
nobody quite so
Sensuously rich and reckless as the
reformed
Puritan . . .
Day Lewis has become the intelligent
gentleman of letters, able, with both
richness and humor, to see his past
convictions in perspective. Never a poetic
innovator, he has been overshadowed, in
critical accounts of his generation, by his
more brilliant contemporaries. But he has
2974

produced a great variety of thoughtful
and introspective verse, and he has
written with honesty and intelligence on a
wide range of subjects. In his maturity
he has found the kind of verse and the
kind of subject, as well as the gentle and
ruminative tone, that he is making
definitely his. Poems like the An Italian Visit
and "Moods of Love" in his most recent
volume are admirably readable and
demonstrate the poetic attractions of a witty,
cultured gentleman reporting on his
travels, his observations of people, his
feelings about himself. Cecil Day Lewis,
though not a great poet, is an honest and
attractive one.
2975

THE POETRY OF LINDSAY
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
Principal published works: General William Booth Enters into Heaven, 1913; The Congo
and Other Poems, 1914; The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems, 1917; The Golden
Whales of California and Other Rhymes in the American Language, 1920; Going-to-the-
Sun, 1923; Going-to-the-Stars, 1926; The Candle in the Cabin, 1926; johnny Appleseed
and Other Poems, 1928; Every Soul Is a Circus, 1929
No complete collection of Vachel
Lindsay's poetry has ever been published, nor
does it seem likely that this would be a
profitable venture for publisher, reader,
or scholar. The vogue for this poet died
out even before his death; the excellent
collections of selected poetry and
anthologies contain all that is likely to survive;
and a consensus among scholars has
already been established—Lindsay was a
vital minor poet whose interesting
experiments and some fifty poems will be
remembered.
Setting aside his earliest poems,
including the famous "Rhymes to be
Traded for Bread," and his late ones,
excluding "Johnny Appleseed," the critical
reader will find a corpus of poetry which,
if no longer startling, is at least
substantial. These first collections sometimes
include sketches which do not illuminate
and poems without substance; they were
a part of the poet's years when he
considered himself a traveling mystic, an artist-
writer with a rather vague creed based
loosely on Swedenborgian philosophy.
His later years before his suicide were
clouded over by a despondency which the
poems reflect.
In January, 1913, Poetry: A Magazine
of Verse published "General William
Booth Enters into Heaven," published
in book form later that year along with
other poems by the same author. The
immediate—and lasting—popularity of
this poem is justified, perhaps more so
than that of the familiarly anthologized
"The Congo." With cues for instruments
and singing, the writer's very real
tribute to the religious leader is a studied
cacophony which ends in deep reverence:
And when Booth halted by the curb for
prayer
He saw his Master thro' the flag-filled
air.
Christ came gently with a robe and
crown
For Booth the soldier, while the throng
knelt down.
He saw King Jesus. They were face to
face,
And he knelt a-weeping in that holy
place.
Are you washed in the blood of the
Lamb?
Here is Lindsay's metier, the rhythmic
portrayal of almost legendary persons:
Lincoln, Bryan, Chapman, Altgeld,
Sullivan, Jackson, and Alexander Campbell,
the founder of his religious sect, among
others. In these poemshe created a new
kind of poetic tribute, as unlike the usual
versifying obituary as his own life was
from those he celebrated.
Less successful, though even more
popular on chautauqua and college platforms
where he appeared for so many years in
so many cities, are the "travel" poems, the
sweeping Whitmanesque vistas of the
Santa Fe Trail, the Congo, the Great
Plains. Here, too, his poetry has its
strongly personal and syncopated quality,
a stress here and a manipulation there,
which stamps it with a form no longer
usable because, perhaps, he himself
overused it. "The Congo" begins:
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the
table,
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of
a broom,
THE POETRY OF VACHEL LINDSAY. Excerpts reprinted from SELECTED POEMS OF VACHEL
LINDSAY by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1936, by The Macmillan Co.
2976

Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of
a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
This is the four-stress line, with a kind
of added syncopation which one critic
has called "star-spangled jazz." Poems of
this type are most effective when read
aloud in keeping with the instructions
Lindsay supplied in a marginal gloss.
A third category, and in some ways the
most successful because the poems seem
so artless, is that of "children's" poetry—
the kind which is enchanting to all, the
large child reading and the small one
listening. "The Chinese Nightingale,"
although sullied by adult overtones, is the
best known of this group with its
chiming, clanging pigeon-Chinese symbols:
He lit a joss stick long and black.
Then the proud gray joss in the corner
stirred;
On his wrist appeared a gray small bird,
And this was the song of the gray small
bird:
"Where is the princess, loved forever,
Who made Chang first of the kings of
men?"
A group of poems on all kinds of mice
still delights youngsters when they are
reprinted in children's anthologies. These
little poems are more of a delight than
those which Lindsay thought would
charm children.
On the other hand, his exploitation of
sounds always pleases, as in "The
Kallyope Yell":
Music of the mob am I,
Circus day's tremendous cry:—
I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!
Hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot,
Willy willy willy wah HOO!
Sizz, fizz . . .
or the second part of "The Santa Fe
Trail":
Listen to the iron-horns, ripping,
racking.
Listen to the quack-horns, slack and
clacking.
Way down the road, trilling like a toad,
Here comes the dice-horn, here comes
the vice-horn,
Here comes the snarl-horn, I?rawI-horn,
lewd-horn,
Followed by the prude-horn, bleak and
squeaking: —
(Some of tnem from Kansas, some of
them from Kansas.)
The first echoes calliope dissonances, the
latter, the klaxon racket.
From his last volume, Every Soul Is a
Circus, comes what Lindsay thought was
a tribute to P. T. Barnum, but which
was really, as the opening lines reveal,
an apology for his own works:
My brothers of the poet-trade,
Leave your ivory towers, and stand
On the porch, and watch this ardent
band
And praise, with me,
This Masquerade.
From a cloud by the dark Art Institute
That old Barnum comes,
Followed by serene Greek Gods,
And the lake-breeze hums.
The Art Institute is the place where
Lindsay started his career; like Barnum,
he ended in the tent. Both brought
thrilling moments, Barnum his Lind, Lindsay
his Salvation Army hero-leader. A note
from the poet suggests this poem is to
read "with bardic and troubadour
chanting," and Lindsay's postlude might well
grace his epitaph:
So, come, let us be bold with our songs,
brothers,
Come, let us be bold with our songs.
2977

THE POETRY OF LOVELACE
Type of work-. Poetry
Author: Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)
Principal published works: Lucasta, 1649; Posthume Poems, 1659
To most readers, Richard Lovelace is
remembered for two lines each of two
songs. He caught for all those spirits who
have suffered in prison, who have
thought or composed thoughts in gaols,
the perfect expression of the free will in
Stone Walls doe not a Prison make,
Nor I'ron bars a Cage;
and he expressed his own high standards
as a gentleman, soldier, scholar, and poet
in lines which he wrote when going off to
war:
I could not love thee (Deare) so much,
Lov'd I not Honour more.
A Royalist by birth and politics, the poet
lost a modest fortune upholding his own
high standards: he suffered imprisonment
twice, ironically, and his entire life he
spent surrounded by war's tragedies. He
lost his father and a brother in battle,
and he and his remaining brothers fought
valorously for England (he attained the
rank of colonel). His poetry, of limited
popularity, was virtuous and modest in
extreme and, as critics hasten to point
out, the most moral written by the
Cavalier poets. His most famous series,
Lucasta (from lux casta, light of virtue), is
his testimonial.
No conclusive evidence has yet come
to light concerning the Lucasta of
Lovelace's first volume, though it is now
certain that this idealized figure was not
Lucy Sacheverell. The woman to whom
he addressed most of his early poems may
have been a Lucas, however; hence the
play on words.
Lovelace wrote in the age of the
"conceit," that witty and often barbed line
popularized by John Donne, but he
must always rank in second place in its
use. His two famous songs, written also
in an age of words set to music,
surpass those of his betters, but on moral
grounds: "To Althea, from Prison,"
demonstrates Lovelace's indomitable spirit
and "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres,"
his incorruptible soul. Lovelace was an
amateur poet, a man of action whose
education made of him a man of parts;
and he is often compared to Sir Philip
Sidney, "A Scholar, Souldier, Lover, and
a Saint," as one epitaph verse reads.
The diversified poetry within Lucasta
indicates that Lovelace followed in that
great tradition of the Renaissance
gentleman. His varied activities and tastes led
sometimes to the exercise of a talent
thinly spread, to poor taste, but
especially to haste—Lovelace's besetting sin.
His first volume lacked care,
proofreading (even at a time of variable spellings,
indifferent typography, and fanciful
punctuation), not to mention
chronological arranging, collating of stanzas, and
other matters so necessary to a really
professional work. One wonders, then, why
Lovelace was a favorite poet of an age
when better poets went begging for
readers. As a contemporary and professional
said of him, "He writes very well for a
gentleman."
Only twenty-seven copies of the 1649
Lucasta, available in the seventeenth
century for a few pence, are now known to
be extant. The portrait included makes
one wonder at the extravagant praise of
Lovelace's looks, but not of his poetry,
which is courtly, exuberant, at times
pleasingly fanciful, though often
amateurish in tone and style. This slender
book of some sixty poems is dedicated to
Lady Anne Lovelace, wife of his cousin
John, though not to be thought of as
Lucasta. A group of commendatory poems
follows the dedication, by his brothers
Francis and Dudley, the latter, ten years
later, the compiler of Lovelace's
posthumous poems. The most interesting poem
in this commendatory group is by the
author's friend and fellow poet, Andrew
Marvell, who suggests the verses will
2978

please the ladies more than the critics,
those "Word-peckers, Paper-rats, Book-
scorpions."
The poems proper begin with two
songs, both dedicated to ideal or Platonic
love and both related to going overseas
and fighting. Of the sixty, about a third
were set to music and may still be found
in books of "Ayres." Most of the poems
conform to the seventeenth-century
pattern of odes written on memorable days
or for sad occasions, pastorals, sonnets,
satires, and elegies. An interesting
example of the latter is one of the poet's
earliest poems, written when he was twenty
and addressed to Princess Katherine
"borne, christened, buried in one day."
The interesting contrasts of birth and
death, swaddling and winding clothes,
joy and sorrow, with the overtones of
pomp and circumstance befitting her
royal-innocent lineage make of this poem
a study in contrasts.
In addition to these varied types of
poems, Lovelace wrote at least one acted
play, a comedy called "The Scholars," the
prologue and epilogue appearing in his
first collection. Another play, "The
Soldier," was a tragedy never acted because
of the closing of the theaters in 1642.
During the period of the Protectorate
songs by Lovelace were probably sung in
the so-called masques, thinly disguised
plays produced privately for an
aristocratic audience.
Lovelace prepared his second book,
Posthume Poems, before his death,
though it remained for his brother to
bring out the volume. It is dedicated to
Sir John Lovelace, an indication this time
of his patronage. The first poem, "To Lu-
casta: Her Reserved Looks," epitomizes
the gay-sad theme so prevalent among the
Cavaliers, even at death:
Lucasta, frown and let me die,
But smile and see I live;
The sad indifference of your Eye
Both kills, and doth reprieve.
You hide our fate within its screen,
We feel our judgment ere we hear:
So in one Picture I have seen
An Angel here, the Divel there.
The poems in this volume show a
mature writer, even a practiced one, and the
salutary effect of careful editing by
Dudley Lovelace assisted by Eldred Revett,
makes this edition a more appealing one
for the modern reader. Although the
volume does not contain as many songs, the
same types of poems appear, forty-four
in all, with a series of translations from
Latin and French appended. There is
also a group of nature verses on "The
Ant," "The Grasshopper," "The Falcon,"
"The Spider," "The Snail," and others.
Thought by the critics to be devoid of
playful talent, Lovelace disputes the
charge effectively in the poem "A Black
patch on Lucasta's Face," a sonnet in
which a bee "Mistook her glorious Face
for Paradise," and the plaster placed on
the sting serves as "the sweet little Bees
large Monument."
It may be significant that Lovelace's
longest poems, in the first volume a
pastoral titled "Amarantha" and in the
second a satire, "On Sanazar's Being
Honoured with Six Hundred Duckets by the
Clarissimi of Venice," display the courtier
as a gallant and then as a cynic. In the
later poem Lovelace sees woman as
something less than perfect, but so much
gentler is this knight than the other Cavalier
poets that he would almost fit Chaucer's
famous description of knightly grace.
From the sentiments expressed in a
group of elegies in which the poet's
friends lament his death, the character
of Lovelace was exemplary. Such
expressions were a literary convention, of course,
but so much of what is said rings true of
his life that a backward glance reveals in
epitome a man of his age. His brother,
revealing something of a family talent,
wrote the concluding lines to Richard
Lovelace's literary epitaph, lines in which
the tragedy of premature death—"Snatcht
the bright Jewell from the Case"—is
softened by bright memory:
And now, transform 'd, he doth arise
A Constellation in the Skies,
Teaching the blinded World the way,
2979

Through Night, to startle into Day: hand
And shipwrackt shades, with steady He steers unto th' Elizian Land.
2980

THE POETRY OF MALLARME
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898)
Principal published works: L'Apr&s-midi d'un Vaune, 1876 (The Afternoon of a Faun);
Poisies, 1887; Vers et Prose, 1893; Poisies compUtes, 1899
Because of the highly individual
qualities of his writing and in spite of his
tremendous impact on modern poetry,
Ste*phane Mallarm6 has never been a
popular figure known to the general reader.
It is difficult, however, to overestimate his
importance as an innovator and as an
influence on other poets.
Certainly the most striking
characteristic of Mallarme's poems is their
obscurity. The reader meets in them a
subjective formation of imagery and a warping
of the normal patterns of syntax and
grammar that has puzzled, at times even
infuriated, students of French poetry for
more than a century. This obscurity is no
accident, and it plays an important part
in the history of poetry. At the end
of the Romantic period of French poetry
(which paralleled that of English
poetry), the figure of Charles Baudelaire
loomed large, with his theory and
practice of correspondances between things
concrete and things human and
emotional.
Of the followers of Baudelaire,
Mallarme assuredly holds first place as the
leading exponent of the Symbolist school.
It might be said that to understand
Mallarme, in itself a difficult task, is to
understand Symbolism. Rimbaud and Ver-
laine are not so profound, although their
personal lives reflected the rebellion that
is often thought an important part of
the movement. Mallarm6 was a rebel only
in his verse; outwardly he led a quiet,
decorous life at home and in the
classroom.
In a sense, Symbolism is to the regular
run of poetry what Surrealism is to
representational painting; and there seems
little doubt that the early Impressionists
in painting may well have had some of
Mallarme's theories in mind, even if only
subconsciously. To Mallarm6, a symbol
represented a feeling or sensation that
cannot be logically explained or clearly
expressed. Often, for him, the symbol was
a very personal abstraction that remained
unexplained even in the poem which it
inspired.
This concept of the use of symbols
was defended persistently by Mallarm6,
who, like Baudelaire, was a po&te-critique.
Unfortunately, many of Mallarme^s
critical dicta are as abstruse as his verse.
Difficult as the reading of this verse is,
however, the concept and the examples
of it in the work are intriguing; and
those who have been willing to put forth
the great amount of effort needed usually
declare themselves highly rewarded by
their grasp of these poems. For the
person who reads only English, or to whom
French is a less familiar second language,
the difficulty is compounded. Perhaps
more so than for any other poet, the
English-speaking reader is dependent
upon the translator for his interpretation
of one of Mallarme's poems; such a reader
will surely be perplexed to observe the
important differences in translations of
the same poem by different scholars.
In spite of these difficulties there is
about Mallarme's verses a strange,
haunting beauty that has captured the fancy
of many great minds, from Gide's to
Joyce's and T. S. Eliot's. Eliot suggests
an important fact that must be known
in order to understand Mallarm6's poetry.
The poems of Eliot are also difficult for
the general reader to understand, but
usually for a different reason from
Mallarme's obscurity. Whereas Eliot relies
frequently on little-known allusions to
convey his poetic meaning, Mallarm6
used a very personal poetic diction and
a chain of thought that puzzles the
reader.
Like Browning, Mallarm6 thought that
poetry need not be simple and direct and
that the reader should be willing to exert
2981

himself to discover the poet's meaning.
For Mallarm6, however, the word
"meaning" must be thought of in a very broad
sense, for to say that his poems have "a
meaning" may not be quite accurate.
Often, all that Mallarm6 wished to
convey was a state of mind or an emotional
mood, and certainly no poet ever worked
harder at perfecting a poetic style
designed for this purpose.
The basis of Mallarme^s poetic credo
is fundamental, coming close to the
essential nature of reality itself. To him the
reality of an object was not in the object,
or even in the poet's mind as he observes
the object. True reality, he believed, lies
in the poet's observation, his perception
of the object; thus the poet must express
the impression that he finds in a sort of
reverie inspired by contemplation of the
object within a twilight zone of
awareness. Simply to describe the object is far
from the poet's intention. Often the
object will be transformed during a poem
into one of its qualities, that one which
strikes the poet as the true reality. In a
well-known short poem, "Brise Marine"
("Sea Breeze"), the sheet of blank paper
under the lamp has whiteness as its
salient quality, a whiteness that protects
the paper and which symbolizes the
poetic sterility of the poet.
This obsession with sterility—and Mal-
larm^'s poetic thinking was virtually a
series of obsessions—which possessed the
poet for a long time in his youth,
represents another part of his basic outlook.
The poet must find first of all the spirit
of nothingness ("le Neant") that
pervades and underlies the visible universe.
Then the poet must re-create the universe
from his own mind. In this framework
of thought, Mallarm6 concentrated on
the movement of his mind, not on the
data it possessed.
With such a theory of poetry in his
mind, it was easy for the poet to use the
"black rock" in the opening line of "Tom-
beau" ("Tomb"), a very difficult poem
written at the grave of Verlaine, to
symbolize a black cloud, and the cloud to
represent the cloud of somber religious
ideas and the notions of sin which shade
the earth. This symbolism appears to
the penetrating reader, however, only
after long consideration of the opening
stanza of the poem.
As Mallarme lost his fear of poetic
sterility and began to achieve in his mind
the grasp of the spiritual nothingness that
was to him a prerequisite to worthy
creativity, his verse became more and more
obscure, so that his later work remains a
mystery to almost all readers, even to
some of the most diligent poets and
scholars. Throughout his work, however,
run more or less regular currents of
thought, or obsessions. His
preoccupation with absence, silence, and death is
part of his central poetic philosophy, as
his interest in music reflects his
conviction that music and poetry are much
akin in their expression of truth. L'Apr&s-
midi d'un Faune demonstrates and
expresses this conviction; the poem,
appropriately, was the inspiration for Debussy's
famous tone poem.
Side by side in Mallarm^'s work the
reader finds two other, very dissimilar
"obsessions": religious belief—essentially
a tragic subject for Mallarm6, as in
"Toast Funebre" ("A Funeral Toast")-
and an erotic preoccupation with nudity
which is found in L'Aj>r&s-inidi d'un
Faune and in many other poems.
Mallarm^'s later poems evidence not
only the profound convolutions of his
very personal poetic thinking but also
some experimentation with the form of
the poem on the printed page. One of
his last works, "Un Coup de Des Jamais
N'Abolira Le Hasard" ("A Throw of
the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance"),
will remind an American reader of the
interesting arrangements of the poems of
E. E. Cummings. In this poem as in his
other work, Mallarm6 had the same
overall purpose: to express, not clearly but
none the less accurately, an impression of
reality.
It may be said in Mallarm6's favor that
he was, in his way, one of the most
sincere of all poets. He was, in fact, so
critical of his work and so demanding in
2982

his standards that his total poetic output
can be contained in one regular-sized
volume. Further, Mallarme^s verses have
a fluidity about them that the reader
at first senses only vaguely. As the poet
was preoccupied with the movement of
his mind, so the lines of his poems
achieve a kind of movement: words flow
into words; meanings blend and change;
images fade and reappear with new
evocations of significance.
Although the Symbolist movement as
such can be said to have died with an
immediate follower of Mallarm6, Paul
Valery, its influence, particularly in the
English-speaking world, is still strong
today. The modern poet, trying to impose
the discipline of order on his fragmented
world, works partly in the shadow of this
French writer wholeheartedly devoted to
a poetic ideal.
2983

THE POETRY OF MARVELL
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
Principal published works: Miscellaneous Poems, 1681; Poems on Affairs of State, 1689;
An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, 1776
Andrew Marvell, influenced by the
work of Ben Jonson and John Donne,
was the last major poet with their qualities
and habits of mind. All his great poems
are metaphysical; that is, they present
feeling intellectually and synthesize
thought and passion. Marvell is always
aware of the multiplicity and the unity of
the universe and the tension he maintains
between them constitutes the peculiar
poise and balance of his verse. This
metaphysical reconciliation of seeming oppo-
sites appears in the imagery of the poems,
which with characteristic hyberbole
combine many areas of ideas and experience.
"An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's
Return from Ireland," generally
acknowledged to be the finest poem of its kind
in the language, exemplifies both his
political feeling and the balance of thought
in his verse. It is probably the last
English poem in which the divine right of
kings and a totally different type of rule
could be presented simultaneously.
Marvell celebrates Cromwell's phenomenal
rise to power "from his private gardens"
to
. . . cast the Kingdoms old
Into another mould.
The king's weakness rendered him
helpless against the strength of Cromwell,
and Marvell records the nobility of
Charles I, who "adorned" the "tragic
Scaffold." The transition from the
account of the king's death to the time of
Cromwell's rule are terse and effective:
This was that memorable hour,
Which first assured the forc'd Power.
Although he praises the efficiency and
energy of Cromwell and acknowledges that
he gave the government of the country to
Parliament, Marvell sees also the
necessity to continue fighting (after Ireland,
Scotland remains to be subdued), and he
concludes with a muted warning:
The same Arts that did gain
A Pow'r, must it maintain.
The equipoise of the "Ode'* is maintained
through its combination of praise,
reticence, and admonition: the recognition
of the justice of Cromwell and of the
tradition of kingship. Desire for the good of
his country outweighs the poet's feelings
about specific acts. He both disliked the
execution of the king and declared that
Cromwell's ability would be beneficial to
England. This sustained tension between
forces gives the "Ode" its power.
Marvell's reputation rests on a very
few poems. Some of the loveliest of these
are the poems in which he employs
nature images. One of his outstanding
characteristics is his use of a simple theme to
develop a deeply serious idea. Wit and
brilliant imagery enhance the seriousness
of his thought, so that an apparently
slight subject will thus carry religious
and philosophic implications and express
the complex sensibility which is so much
a part of the metaphysical poetic
tradition. In "The Bermudas," Marvell
celebrates the joyous exile of a group of
nonconformists who left England in the days
of Anglican Bishop Laud. Those islands,
"far kinder than our own," sheltered and
welcomed them and they were able freely
to practice their religion. The poem
glows with joy and pleasure at God's
grace manifested in the tropical
luxuriance of the exiles' environment:
He hangs in shades the Orange bright,
Like golden Lamps in a green Night.
These images parallel their spiritual
freedom.
Religious significance is implicit in
"The Nymph Complaining for the Death
of her Faun." The huntsmen cannot
cleanse themselves of guilt, even though
2984

die nymph forgives them; the faun's
whiteness and purity are matchless. The
tone of gentle grief is perfectly
maintained, however, and the precision of the
images exactly conveys heartfelt emotion:
So weeps the wounded Balsome: so
The holy Franldncense doth flow.
The brotherless Heliades
Melt in such Amber Tears as these.
The most complex of the poems that
draw their imagery from nature is "The
Garden." Here MarvelFs wit and
resilience of mind are almost dazzlingly
apparent. Coleridge has described the poetic
imagination as a "more than usual state
of emotion with a more than usual
order." This statement could well describe
the impact of "The Garden." The
pleasure of recognition symbolized by "the
palm, the oak bays," with reference to
the slight shade these individual leaves
cast, is contrasted with the shade given
by flowers and trees. Quiet and
innocence are not to be found among men:
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
No lovely woman is "As am'rous as
this lovely green." The tree on which a
mistress' name is carved is far more
beautiful than she. The hyperbole of these
assertions contains its own irony; the
passionate insistence with which they are
made obliquely denies some of their
validity. The fourth stanza describes classical
lovers who confirm the thesis that the
garden contains all delights:
Apollo hunted Daphne so
Only that she might Laurel grow.
In the sensual delights of the garden,
sexual pleasure is no longer sublimated
but is provided by the fruit itself:
The nectarine, and curious Peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Along with this sexual identification, the
image of Eden and the fall of man is
present in the image of "ripe apples" and
the line, "Insnar'd with flowers, I fall on
grass."
The sixth verse contains the climax of
the poem. Here the tension and poise are
most marked. The sensual pleasure has
led to intellectual joy, and "the Mind,
from pleasure less./Withdraws into its
happiness." In the mind are images of
all material things and from these it
creates transcendent worlds of its own until
the quintessence of nature is perceived:
Annihilatingall that's made
To a green Thought in a green Shade.
The remaining three stanzas are more
relaxed, yet they carry the weight of, and
are reinforced by, the previous argument.
The poet's soul glides into the trees
where "like a Bird, it sits and sings." It
will stay there until it is ready to ascend.
Meanwhile, it "Waves in its Plumes the
various Light." Eden, the poet says, was
like this, but the joy of solitude was
"beyond a Mortal's share."
Two paradises t'were in one
To dwell in Paradise alone.
The last stanza returns to a man-made
garden, where a sundial of herbs and
flowers measures the "sweet and wholesome
houres." The "skilled Gard'ner" is, of
course, God as well as a human
craftsman.
The levels of thought and feeling in
this complex poem are so carefully
wrought together that they could not
exist alone. The ideas complement,
balance, and reveal one another. The
withdrawal of the mind to contemplation of
paradise and its wry conclusion that
such solitude is impossible are
inextricable if their full force is to be appreciated.
From the original conceit that all
ambition can be satisfied by the delights of a
garden, the themes are, through the
allusive imagery, totally interdependent.
Marvell's two great love poems, "The
Definition of Love" and "To his Coy
Mistress," are passionate and urbane,
intense and witty, violent and civilized.
The reconciliation of opposites is the
theme of the definition: it is the meta-
2985

physical proposition that in perfect love
separation is essential. The validity of
this proposition relies on the jealousy of
fate. The poet's love was "begotten by
despair/Upon impossibility." The decrees
of Fate
Us as the distant Poles have plac'd,
(Though love's whole world on us doth
wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced.
The conceit, that heaven would have to
fall
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a Planisphere
before the lovers could be together,
emphasizes the inevitability of separation:
Therefore the love which doth us bind,
But fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction or the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
The punning conceit in these lines
exemplifies the wit and logic of Marvell's
verse.
The crowd of images, change of mood,
and development of emotional tension
combined with a subtle variation of
rhythm and pace render "To His Coy
Mistress" Marvell's greatest poetical
achievement. His theme is the traditional
one of "Gather Ye Rosebuds." The
opening theme is that if there were time
enough the lover would woo endlessly:
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than Empires and more slow.
An urbane note is sounded in the lines:
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
Then comes die surprising reversal:
But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near,
And yonder all before us lye,
Deserts of vast eternity.
The lines ring with passionate
desperation and the awful vision of the
unknown. The next image is one of
destruction in the grave, where the lady's
beauty shall no longer exist and honor
and lust alike will turn to dust and ashes.
From this vision of death the poet turns
to an evocation of the ladys present
beauty. He adapts the theory that souls
shine through the flesh of people of
exceptional purity to a reason for
consummating their love:
And while thy willing Soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may.
The ardor of the saint has become the
heat of physical passion. The conceit of
conquering time is developed in images
of strength—they will "devour"—time,
and will combine their powers "into one
Ball" to force their pleasures "Through
the iron gates of life":
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will .make him run.
The power of this love is conveyed in
the witty and determined assault on
unconquerable time.
These poems, with the addition of the
"Dialogue between The Resolved Soul
and Created Pleasure" and "Clorinda and
Damon," are those on which Marvell's
reputation depends. His poetic ability
was seemingly lost after the Restoration,
and he wrote, in verse, only political
satires. The flowering of his sensibility prior
to this period is an outstanding example
of that fusion of wit, passion, and
intellect which had its roots in Latin culture
and its last complete expression in the
poetry of Andrew Marvell.
2986

THE POETRY OF RONSARD
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585)
Principal published works: Odes, Books I-IV, 1550; Book V, 1552; Amours de Cassandre,
1552; Hymns, 1555; EUgies, mascarades et bergeries, 1565; La Franciade, 1572
Pierre de Ronsard was in his own
time, and to a less degree in later times
as well, the "prince of poets." This was
not merely an impression generally held.
It was Ronsard's own conviction, and he
did not hesitate to admonish a coy
mistress by reminding her that her kindness
to him was as nothing to his generosity
in fixing her name in the midst of
immortal lines. But the arrogance can, though
infrequently, coincide with just estimate;
Ronsard, the kings of France whom he
served, and those enemies, Mary Stuart
and Elizabeth of England, were at one
in their estimate of his verses.
Some poets speak at variance with the
conditions of their lives and their own
time. Ronsard, however final and
universal his accent, always speaks to us of
his own era and the circumstances of his
life. Great and moving as his poems are,
they speak of Renaissance spirit as well
as of humanity pure and simple.
The Renaissance, in France as
elsewhere, was a time when several
tendencies, not necessarily compatible, merged
with each other. It was a time when
nationalism was taking the place of the
feudal loyalties that had once held
society loosely together. At the center of
Ronsard's political consciousness are the
king and his court: from the king flow
the favors, including ecclesiastical
benefices, which allow a poet to live, and
the king's court, the nobility that dine,
talk, and dance there day after day,
constitutes the audience for whom the poet
writes. Ronsard addressed not a general
public but a particular one in that it was
small and self-conscious in its tastes. It
expected a poet to be learned as well as
moving, and it accepted and understood
references to events known only to the
privileged.
Related to this rarefied centrality is the
growing patriotism that led Ronsard's
friend Du Bellay, also a member of the
literary group called the P16iade to which
Ronsard belonged, to write La defense et
illustration de la langue Frangaise (1549),
in which the tendency of the learned to
write Latin verse is censured and,
perhaps inconsistently, the importance of
classical studies to any French-writing
poet is underlined. The result was that
Ronsard's use of his mother tongue
reflected literary conventions as old as
Homer, Sappho, Theocritus, and Horace.
Nymphs haunt Ronsard's home forest of
Gastine; local fountains, like that of Bal-
lerie, have all the grace and romantic
significance of the ancient Arethusa; and
the real charms of Ronsard's various
mistresses—Cassandre, Marie, Astr^e, Helene
—receive additions from what Catullus,
many centuries before, wrote about his
Lesbia.
Like numerous other Renaissance
persons, Ronsard was a full-blooded man as
well as a literary person. He did not, for
example, escape the serious political
turmoil of the century which divided
Catholic France against Protestant France
and, of course, one part of the court
against another. Though he could mingle
Christian and Greek views of deity in
the same poem, Ronsard died enjoying
the full rites of the Church, and he
earlier lived perceptive of the superior
advantages, to a cultured man, of the rich
traditions of the Catholic Church as
opposed to the stern moralism, the
"'Hebraism" of many of the "sectaries." Because
of his adherence to the Catholic faith,
Protestant writers attacked the poet, not
for his advocacy of pleasant and amorous
pursuit alone, but for darker sins which
had once been a part of the pagan world.
The pattern of Ronsard's personal
career but intensifies the lines drawn in his
2987

world. He was wellborn and demand-
ingly educated; he served at court; he
went twice to Scotland and once to
England and Germany. Suffering from early
deafness, he subsided into the role of
court poet; he received the tonsure in
order to enjoy ecclesiastical benefices;
and the rest of his long life was an
alternation between the court and his three
country estates. His background
provided Ronsard with two of his main
themes: the peril and hypocrisy of courts
and the charm and natural beauty of a
life that is rural and retired. (This
contention between city and country finds
reflection in the essays of Ronsard's great
contemporary, Montaigne.) A poem like
"Institution pour l'Adolescence du Roy
rres-crestien Charles IXe de ce Nom"
is a stern, moving record of Ronsard's
estimates of the moral perils that threaten
a king, and "A la Forest de Gastine" is
an account of Ronsard's country pleasures
which mingles classical memories with
vivid recollections of the real forest,
greensward, and flowers.
Testimony to a rich, energetic life that
was both patriotic and passionate echoes
through Ronsard's poetry; friendship and
piety, playful wit and sober reflection
mingle in such collections as Odes,
Hymns, Bocage Royale, and EUgies. His
one real poetic disaster is the Frangiade,
an epic written at royal command,
beginning with the tale of Troy and ending
with the history of the Merovingian
kings of early France.
No summary of Ronsard's poetic
creation can omit the many sonnets which he
wrote to his mistresses—some kind, some
cruel. Here, too, recollections of
Petrarch's Laura shape the diction of many
a passionate declaration. But Ronsard,
unlike many Elizabethan sonneteers in
the last decades of the century, was
always in pursuit of a flesh and blood
woman rather than the "Idea" of
Drayton. Passion was the occasion for
extended poetic exercises, but the exercises
were never, with Ronsard, an adequate
substitute for passion gratified. Two of
his mistresses, one early, one late, were
cruel—Cassandre Salviati, who
disappointed the young Ronsard by marrying;
and Helene de Surgeres, who during
several years never submitted to
Ronsard's passion, dressed in black, and was
painfully faithful to the shade of a dead
sweetheart and the rites of amorous Pla-
tonism. It is to these two women rather
than to more indulgent mistresses that his
greatest sonnets are addressed. In one
Ronsard declares to his servant that he
wishes to shut himself up and read the
Iliad of Homer in three days, unless a
message comes from Cassandre. In
another the name Helene suggests to aging
Ronsard some moving parallels with
Homer's heroine; he adds, hopefully,
that he believes his H61ene may also turn
out to be a Penelope, a comfort as well as
a torment. Or, anticipating Shakespearian
accents ("Shall I compare thee to a
summer's day . . .") Ronsard writes of
Helene's chill perfection: "Shall I
compare your beauties to the moon. . . ."
Ronsard's abundance, his revival of
certain parts of the medieval French
vocabulary, his personal note—all these
were censured by Malherbe, the taste-
maker of the next century. Ronsard was
also too direct for the oversubtle prc-
cieuses, the finicking, "learned" women
of the H6tel de Rambouillet. These
seventeenth-century women, ironically, had
a good deal in common with Ronsard's
Helene. But an eclipse of several
centuries is now over, and Ronsard's poetic
fame has now revived.
2988

THE POETRY OF SPENDER
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Stephen Spender (1909- )
Principal published works: Nine Entertainments, 1928; Twenty Poems, 1930; Poems, 1933;
Poems, 1934; Vienna, 1935; The Still Centre, 1939; Ruins and Visions, 1942; Poems
of Dedication, 1947; Returning to Vienna, 1947; The Edge of Being, 1949; Collected
Poems, 1928-1953, 1955
Stephen Spender explains in a brief
introduction.to his Collected Poems that
the volume does not contain his entire
poetic output over a period of twenty-five
years, but rather a selection of those
poems which he wished to gather
together from earlier volumes with an aim
'to retrieve as many past mistakes, and
to make as many improvements, as
possible, without 'cheating/" He admits
that he has altered a few readings here
and there in the interest of clarity or
aesthetics, but adds that he has retained,
in the interest of honesty and truth,
certain passages in which he now recognizes
youthful imperfections and a few poems
which reflect views he no longer holds.
As printed, the poems have been grouped
to represent roughly his development as
a poet, as well as his interest in contem*
porary history—chiefly the Spanish Civil
War and World War II—and in such
eternal themes as love and separation. He
views his book as "a weeded, though not
a tidied up or altered garden."
The volume gives an opportunity for
a studied reappraisal of one of a group
of English poets who first achieved fame
between the two world wars. The
members of the Oxford Group, as they have
sometimes been called, included W. H.
Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Cecil
Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice.
Spender dedicates three of his groups ofpoems
to the first three of these poets. Though
Spender has written elsewhere of the
"teacher-to-pupil" relationship between
Auden and himself at Oxford, his later
development as a poet has been largely
an independent one.
This is not to say, however, that he
has followed poetic paths never traveled
before* Some of his critics have com-
Sared him to Shelley, for the young
pender was also a rebel against the
society of his time; and in both poets
criticism of their own eras is combined
with a vision of a future, better time.
Both saw themselves somewhat as
prophets of their respective ages. Shelley
addressed the West Wind:
Be through my lips to unawakened
earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can opring be far
behind?
More than a century later Spender
exhorted, in "Exiles from Their Land,
History Their Domicile":
Speak with your tongues,
O angels, fire your guns
And let my words appear
A heaven-printed world!
Though some similarities of attitude
and theme are to be found in poems of
Shelley and Spender, their poetic
techniques are as different as the times in
which they lived. Spender is as
romantically emotional as Shelley: he believes
in the unmistakable love of man for his
fellow man; he often opposes the
darkness of man's life with the bright sun
which brings light and warmth into it.
But Spender's poems echo twentieth-
century phrasing, though some lines
might be described as Shelley an, as in
the beautiful lyric which begins, "I think
continually of those who were truly
great."
At times Spender reminds one of
T. S. Eliot (and Auden too), as in
THE POETRY OF STEPHEN SPENDER. Excerpts reprinted from COLLECTED POEMS, 1928-1953,
ky permission of the publishers. Random House, Inc. Copyright, 1934, by The Modern Library, Inc.
Copyright, 1930, 1942, 1947,1949, 1952, 1955, by Stephen Spender.
2989

'The Uncreating Chaos":
Shall I never reach
The fields guarded by stones
Rare in the stone mountains
Where the scytheless wind
Flushes the swayed grasses. . . .
Spender himself has said, however, that
he was more influenced by Wilfred Owen
than by Eliot. Like Owen, Spender often
employs subtle combinations of sound
effects, as in the lines quoted above:
"Where the scytheless wind/Flushes the
swayed grasses." Owen's poetry was
principally inspired by World War I, which
brought early death to the poet whose
pity had been stirred by the suffering and
dying which he had witnessed. Spender
seems to have been influenced not only
by Owen's bitterness against the bloody
injustices of the world, but also by what
he himself had learned of war during his
months in Spain and later in the Battle
of Britain and even more directly,
perhaps, by the content of certain of Owen's
war poems. Compare, for example,
Spender's "Two Armies," which describes
enemy forces resting at night only a few
yards apart,
When the machines are stilled, a
common suffering
Whitens the air with breath and makes
both one
As though these enemies slept in each
other's arms,
with Owen's "Strange Meeting," an
unfinished poem in which a soldier dreams
he meets in Hell the enemy whom he
killed and discovers in that "strange
friend" the same hope and pity and
compassion that was in his own heart.
In a critical essay on Auden which
Spender published several years ago in
the Atlantic Monthly (July, 1953), he
pointed out that the essential direction of
Auden's poetry has been toward a
definition of Love. The reader of the Collected
Poems discovers that, like his slightly
older friend and mentor, Spender has
written a series of variations on the same
theme. In the early poems the love seems
often like Whitman's "manly love of
comrades," even to the point of
suggesting Whitmanesque ambiguities, as in the
poem which begins "How strangely this
sun reminds me of my love" or another
which addresses directly an unnamed
"Abrupt and charming mover." One is
reminded of Whitman again in the
hortatory "Oh young men, oh young
comrades," in which the theme of loving
comradeship is combined with the call
to desert the dusty past, to leave the
"great houses where the ghosts are
prisoned," and to make a new and better
world:
Oh comrades, step beautifully from the
solid wall
advance to rebuild and sleep with friend
on hill
advance to rebel and remember what
you have
no ghost ever had, immured in his hall.
In other lyrics, as in the lovely
sonnet "Daybreak," which describes a
couple waking at dawn, first the man, then
the woman, one finds both tenderness and
the passionate intensity that suffuses so
much of the poetry of D. H. Lawrence.
But the mixture of desire and revulsion
which unpleasantly mars so many of
Lawrence's love poems is not in Spender.
In Lawrence's "Lightning," for example,
a lightning flash reveals to a lover the
fear in the face of the woman he is
preparing to kiss, and his passion is followed
by hatred of both the woman and
himself. Contrast with this Spender's "Ice,"
in which a woman comes "in from the
snowing air" and is greeted by a kiss:
Then my lips ran to her with fire
From the chimney corner of the room,
Where I had waited in my chair.
I kissed their heat against her skin
And watched the red make the white
bloom. . . .
The love of man and woman shows no
hectic flush in Spender; the colors are
those of radiant health.
Another aspect of love is revealed in
2990

Spender's numerous poems about
children. Several are about his daughter, but
the group titled "Elegy for Margaret"
are to or about the niece who died after
a long, wasting illness on Christmas Day,
1945. Here, though there are morbid
lines which describe the progress of the
disease, the whole elegy is filled with
pity and sorrow for both the child and
her parents; and the final poem, in which
he attempts to console his "Dearest and
nearest brother," is as moving as
anything that Spender has written.
Many of the poems for which Spender
is best known were published in his
widely reviewed Poems (1933). In the
Collected Poems these are reprinted in a
group under the title "Preludes." Here
one finds such familiar poems as "The
Express" and "The Landscape near an
Aerodrome," both of which illustrate
Spender's early interest in enlarging the
language of modern poetry through the
use of terms drawn from science,
machinery, and industry. The first opens:
After the first powerful, plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons,
without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the
station.
The blending of the names of
mechanical objects with language more usual in
poetry is so skillfully achieved that the
train becomes a mighty poem in motion.
"The Express" is perhaps the finest train
poem since Walt Whitman's portrait of a
very different train in "To a Locomotive
in Winter."
"The Landscape near an Aerodrome"
contains poetic beauty like that in "The
Express," but it is weakened by the
attempt to combine arresting description
with social commentary. The poem
begins with the picture of a gliding air liner
and then contrasts the quiet descent of
the great machine with the scenes of
squalor and misery which become clearer
to the passengers as they approach the
aerodrome. It ends with a sudden,
trenchant last line that not only surprises the
reader but seems totally uncalled-for by
the preceding descriptive lines:
Then, as they land, they hear the
tolling bell
Reaching across the landscape of
hysteria,
To where, louder than all those
batteries
And charcoaled towers against the dying
sky,
Religion stands, the Church blocking
the sun.
Several of the "Preludes" and two
or three poems in the next group, "A
Heaven-Printed World," belong to the
literature of protest of the 1930's and
reflect Spender's leftwing politics which
he later forswore. These poems, as
Spender has said, "did not please the
politicians." Notable are "The Funeral," "The
Pylons," and "An Elementary School
Classroom in a Slum." The last is full
of the pity which is deep in Spender's
poems, political or otherwise.
The introspective poems in the group
called "Explorations" are as a whole less
impressive than those in the other groups.
Rather hazy and inchoate, these
"explorations," when compared with Spender's
other poems, lead one to conclude that he
is a sensitive but not a cerebral poet.
It has been said that Spender is a
humorless poet. He does usually take
himself seriously, often too much so; but
the gracefully witty conceit in one of his
later poems called "Word" refutes the
charge against him:
The word bites like a fish.
Shall I throw it back free
Arrowing to that sea
Where thoughts lash tail and fin?
Or shall I pull it in
To rhyme upon a dish?
2991

THE POETRY OF STEFAN GEORGE
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Stefan George (1868-1933)
Principal published works: Hymnen, 1890 (.Hymns*); Pilgerfahrten, 1891 (Pilgrimages);
Algabal, 1892 (Heliogabalus); Die Biicher der Hirten und Preisgedichte; der Sagen und
Sange; und der hangenden Garten, 1895 (The Book of Eclogues and Eulogies; Legends
and Lays; and The Hanging Gardens); Das ]ahr der Seele, 1897 (The Year of the Soul);
Der Teppich des Lebens und die Lieder von Traum und Tod, 1899 (The Tapestry of
Life and Songs of Dream and of Death); Maximin, 1906; Der siebente Ring, 1907 (The
Seventh Ring); Der Stern des Bundes, 1914 (Star of the Covenant); Das Neue Reich,
1928 (Kingdom Come)
Stefan George was probably the
strongest defender of the "art for art's sake"
thesis ever to appear in Germany, and his
exclusiveness led him to write his first
poems in an invented language, a "lingua
romana" similar to Spanish. For many
years he printed his books privately and
not before 1899 were they offered to the
public. He disregarded the German rule
of grammar which calls for capitalization
of all nouns; the resulting loss in reading
speed was a most desired effect for the
author because he wanted his readers to
note that words in themselves were
artistic instruments which would evoke as
many—or more—emotions as the colors
of a painter's palette.
In 1890 George published his first
series of poems, Hymns. The title of the
first poem, "Initiation," indicates how
conscious he was of his radical literary
departure and of its limited appeal to an
audience used to continuous outpour of
modern naturalism. Nevertheless the
signal was given:
The river calls! Defiant reeds unfurl
Their slender banners to the languid
breeze
And check the coaxing ripples as they
swirl
To mossy shores in tender galaxies.
The theme is repeated in "Invitation":
"Let us leave pavements and grime!"
How dear your offer sounded!
"Far, where more light and elate
Thought and breath seem to chime,
We shall enjoy the flower
And resurrection fete."
Not expecting the applause of many—
the poems were still published privately
—the author treasured his small circle of
friends. Most of his works carry
dedications; that of his next work, Pilgrimages,
was written for the Austrian poet, Hugo
von Hofmannsthal (the friendship never
matured):
Then I journeyed forth
And became a stranger,
And I sought for some one
To share my moumfulness,
And there was no one.
Hymns and Pilgrimages reveal the
conflict between the author's poetic ideals
and the baseness of everyday life. He
used for his next work earlier historical
periods and the Orierit as times and
places for escape from the unpleasant
realities of the present. Thus Algabal,
written in Paris in 1892, is his own
interpretation of a Roman emperor who
moves in a world of time-removed
serenity and passionate feelings:
The hall of yellow glitter and of sun!
On level dome among the stairs it
reigns,
And from the fiery crater flashes run:
Topazes interfused with amber grains.
His sense of remoteness, however, never
excluded his knowledge of the "mystical
body of Christ" inherited from his
Catholic childhood in a small town in the
German Rhineland:
. . . For I, the one, comprise the
multitude . . .
THE POETRY OF STEFAN GEORGE. Excerpts reprinted from THE WORKS OF STEFAN
GEORGE by permission of the publishers, The University of North Carolina Press. Translated by Olga
Marx and Ernst Morwitx. Copyright, 1949, by The University of North Carolina Press.
2992

The Book of Eclogues and Eulogies;
Legends and Lays; and The Hanging
Gardens indicates a turn toward tranquility;
the wanderer once in desperate search for
beauty finds it in his own back yard:
Struck with amazement, as though we
were entering a region
Frost-bound when last we had seen it,
yet now full of flowers,
We, who felt old and sorrowful, gazed
at each other,
And our reflections were fused in the
river below us.
Thus the world of knighthood described
in The Book of Legends and Lays
contains much of this recognition of beauty
around him:
What a morning, what a day!
Breath of sun on brook and tree
Tunes your ear more swiftly to
Melting promise, melting plea
Which I shyly hid away.
The Year of the Soul, probably
George's best-known book, indicates that
the author no longer needed to search for
remote backgrounds; an old park is
sufficient for the description of images
symbolizing the principles of nature and love.
Beginning with autumn, the seasons of
the year are portrayed, with the
exception of the much used and abused season
of spring. The poet invites an unseen
friend:
Come to the park they say is dead, and
you
Will see the glint of smiling shores
beyond,
Pure clouds with rifts of unexpected
blue
Diffuse a light on patterned path and
pond.
In The Year of the Soul the lonely
prophet speaks again:
. . . The word of seers is not for
common sharing. . . .
In 1900 George published The
Tapestry of Life and Songs of Dream and of
Death. Each part contains twenty-four
poems. In the prelude he recollects his
struggles up to the present:
When pale with zeal, I searched for
hidden store . . .
and almost regrets that his stormy period
has ended:
Give me the solemn breath that never
failed,
Give me the fire again that makes us
young,
On which the wings of childhood rose
among
The fumes our earliest offerings
exhaled.
The Tapestry of Life, a poet's picture
book, gave the author ample opportunity
to employ his impressionistic power of
words:
When days are done with memory-laden
shadows
In half-forgotten beauty's faded frame,
Waves of white lambs draw slowly
through the meadows
From the broad clearing to the darkened
stream.
It is not surprising that the author
became also well-known for his translations
of Mallarm6, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud.
Songs of Dream and of Death is
dedicated to persons or occasions in the poet's
life; the sequence ends with a forceful
description of everlasting conflict:
All this whirls, tears and pounds, flames
and flies,
Until late in the night-vaulted skies
They are joined to a bright jewelled
beam:
Fame and glow, pain and bliss, death
and dream.
When George published The Seventh
Ring in 1907, a decisive factor had
entered his life. The partial fulfillment of
his poetic vision was his encounter with
a young man whom he called Maximin.
To George, this youth was the
embodiment of a dream and
temporarily—Maximin died very young—an end to
loneliness. The poet described the appearance
of Maximin: ". . . softened by the
mobility and vague sadness that centuries
2993

of Christian civilization have wrought in
the faces of the people . . . youth in
that unbroken fulness and purity that
can still move mountains. . . ." When
Maximin died George considered his
death in the light of his mystical
evaluation of the youth. He regrets his loss:
The forest shivers.
In vain it clothed itself in leaves of
spring,
The field your foot made consecrate is
numb
And cold without the sun you bring.
The fragile blades on hilly pastures
quiver,
For now you never come.
His death was almost a religious event:
You also were elect, so do not mourn
For all the days which unfulfilment
sheathed.
Praise to your city where a god was
born,
Praise to your time in which a god has
breathed!
George's next work, Star of the
Covenant, a book of a thousand verses, again
deals in its "Introit" with the significance
of Maximin. Some of the poems are not
rhymed, but a strong rhythmic flow is
present at all times:
You took away the pain of inner
schism,
You, who were fusion made incarnate,
bringing
The two extremes together: light and
frenzy!
The poet pleads again for a spiritual life
and complains that Germans do not listen
to their prophets, as in the case of
Nietzsche, who, according to George,
delivered his message
. . . With such insistence that his
throat was cracked.
And you? The shrewd or dull, the false
or true,
You acted as if nothing had occurred.
The book ends with a chorus expressing
a firm reminder that the power to lead a
spiritual life is available to man:
God has locked us in filiation,
God has swept us with his blaze,
God has lit us with elation,
God has steeped us in his grace.
In 1928 George published his last
volume, Kingdom Come. In this collection
he remembered once again the rich
literary inheritance of Goethe and Holderlin.
The book also contains a poetic prophecy
about war, written during World War I,
which seems to anticipate the horrors of
future world wars:
You shall not cheer. No rise will mark
the end,
But only downfalls, many and
inglorious.
Monsters of lead and iron, tubes and
rods
Escape their maker's hand and rage
unruly.
In "Secret Germany," George abhors
again the present regime and asks for
sincere understanding of the values which
will remain part of the true German
tradition :
Only what consecrate earth
Cradles in sheltering sleep
Long in the innermost grooves,
Far From acquisitive hands,
Marvels this day cannot grasp
Are rife with the fate of tomorrow.
Until his death in 1933 George
abstained for unknown reasons from
writing any more poetry.
George appealed to few, but his
admirers recognized in him the high priest
of German literature, a writer who
appeared at a time when the ideals of
Goethe were still venerated, but when
poetic expression was already in danger
of being suffocated by excessive
romanticism and sentimentality. Under the
leadership of the author a "George Circle"
was founded and the idea of
transforming life to mystical heights by way of art
and not by scientific positivism was
promoted by its members, who adhered to
strict moral principles. George made the
German language an instrument of art
and as a poet he was best qualified to
2994

carry Germany's classical tradition into
the twentieth century. After refusing to
become identified with Hitlerian
Germany's literary trends, George died in
self-imposed exile in Switzerland in
1933. His inventiveness with the
German language makes all translation
efforts a most difficult undertaking, but
The Works of Stefan George (1949),
translated by Olga Marx and Ernst Mor-
witz, succeeds in conveying much of
George's intensity of feeling into
English.
2995

THE POETRY OF THEOCRITUS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Theocritus (305?-c. 250 B.C.)
Principal published works: The Bucolics; the J
Theocritus is the originator of pastoral
poetry, that form which displays to us
the labors, the songs and loves, and the
sufferings of more or less simple
shepherds. In Western literature it is a poetic
tradition that is as deathless as it is—or
has become—conventional. When Marie
Antoinette and her court played at the
simple life in the village near Le Petit
Trianon, they were reviving modes of
sensibility to which the Hellenistic poet
first gave expression. Indeed, it would
be possible to say that no society can
produce pastoral poetry until it has become
keenly aware that it is non-pastoral in
actuality, old and sophisticated and
worldly.
Although Theocritus composed forms
of poetry that fit other classifications, he
is best remembered for his idealization in
verse of the simple, rustic life of the
Sicilian shepherds. In his idyls he tells us of
herdsmen and their loves; he writes of
country singing contests on a mountain
hillside, for which the prize is a new set
of pipes; he surrounds the occasions his
poems celebrate with pastoral grace and
occasional rural crudity. Among the best
of his pastoral poems is the elegy Thyr-
sis, a lament for Daphnis, traditional hero
of shepherds.
It is highly likely that Theocritus'
audiences included very few real country
people. The bare facts of his life suggest
that his ambition led him to courts and
not to the country hillsides or gatherings
of his verse. He was probably born in
Syracuse in Sicily, and some of his poems
were written in Alexandria, at the
Egyptian court of Ptolemy Philadelphus;
fulsome poems of praise to this ruler as well as
to Hiero II of Syracuse Suggest that
Theocritus knew how to finger courtly
instruments as well as oaten pipes. His tales of
shepherds—their bucolic existence,
simple fare, unsophisticated hopes in love,
and rude sports and games—were never
destined for country ears at all. Rather
might a ruler like Ptolemy Philadelphus,
after he had had his considerable fill of
praise from the poet, command a song
about Daphnis or Theugenus, drawn
from Theocritus' recollections of his
native Sicilian countryside.
Theocritus' poetry, in short, is one of
the chief representatives of the
Alexandrian period of Greek poetry. This was a
time generally regarded as an era when
the direct, authentic utterances of poets
like Homer, Hesiod, and Sappho had
given away to more self-conscious
garlands of verses woven self-consciously
and with as much variety as possible, a
time when the idyl, the epigram, and the
mime were the style. It was a time, too,
when verses were first written and then
polished and a poet like Theocritus was as
aware of the art of poetry as he was of
what themes he was expressing.
It is significant that Theocritus often
falls back on the traditional stories of the
Greek-speaking peoples. He tells us of
Cyclops in love with the sea-nymph
Galatea—but Cyclops is no longer Homer's
monster but a not entirely unattractive
swain "sighing like a furnace" for a cold
maiden. Or Theocritus takes incidents
in the life of Hercules and uses the
ancient web of the heroic tale as an
occasion for elegant embroidery. We are less
struck by the tale of Hercules strangling
serpents that attack him in his cradle
than we are by the deftness with which
the poet elaborates the old brief tale; the
gradual approach of the serpents is very
gradual indeed, the confusion of the
parents is very pretty, and the final triumph
of the muscular infant is a foregone con-
clus;on.
Theocritus is perhaps most brilliant
and most himself in two fairly long poems
that are far from the sloping fields of

Sicily and which reflect the rather fetid,
cynical, and jaded life of a city like
Alexandria. "Love Magic," or the "Spell,"
tells of a young woman, Simaetha, and
her servant working an incantation to
bring back a vigorous young lover who
has only recently gone elsewhere. The
mixture of sick desire and sicker hatred
in the girl's song is remote from the
simple lays of shepherds and herdsmen.
Less morbid and certainly wonderfully
charming and revealing of busy street life
of a Hellenistic city, is "The Women at
the Festival of Adonis." In this mime, a
brief dramatic sketch not unlike some of
the more extended efforts of Menander,
two women, Gorgon and Praxinoa,
chatter with each other and re-create a world
for us. They meet, they plan an outing,
comment on each other's costumes, and
arrange for their households to be cared
for in their absence. Then they go out
and walk through the hot, jostling streets;
out of their mouths tumble phrases that
allow us to see the city streets and their
abundant distractions as clearly as if we
were there. Then the women, never
losing breath or dropping a syllable, come to
the palace of Ptolemy, where a famous
young woman will sing the lament for
Adonis, the slain god. The two women
attend the religious rites.
All this should indicate that
Theocritus had a considerable range. But his
country poems, now elegant, now crude
in their language, but always fresh and
vigorous, have left a greater mark on the
literature of the Western world. Vergil's
celebration of the simple life (so far from
luxury and the cynicism of Augustan
Rome) have for twenty centuries
implored readers to go back to a Sabine
farm; and Vergil took his cue from
Theocritus. From Vergil, if not from
Theocritus, many poets have learned to hope
for escape from courts and cities. Spenser,
Milton, Keats, Tennyson, Arnold are on
the long list of English poets who have
used the pastoral convention of
Theocritus for their special purposes, often
weaving into the plaintive rural song of
pipe and voice political and religious
themes that no shepherd—or even
Theocritus for that matter—ever dreamed of.
2997

THE POETRY OF YEATS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Principal published works: Mosada: A Dramatic Poem, 1886; The Wanderings of Oisin*
1889; Poems, 1895; The Wind Among the Reeds, 1899; In the Seven Woods, 1903;
The Green Helmet and Other Poems, 1910; Responsibilities, 1914; The Wild Swans at
Coole, 1917; Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1920; Later Poems, 1922; The Cat and
the Moon and Certain Poems, 1924; The Tower, 1928; The Winding Stair, 1933;
Collected Poems, 1933; The King of the Great Clock Tower, 1934; A Full Moon in
March, 1935; New Poems, 1938; Last Poems and Plays, 1940; Collected Poems, 1949
The conflict that the antimonies
between dream and action caused in the
mind of William Butler Yeats could not
be resolved in the verse tradition of the
Pre-Raphaelites. This was the poetry,
together with that of Shelley and Keats
and the plays of Shakespeare, with which
he was most familiar. It was also the
tradition to which he was closest in time.
As he did not have a background of
coherent culture on which to base his
poetry, nor a personally satisfying faith,
Yeats throughout his life had to create
his own systems of thought—create, in
fact, the convention in which he was to
write.
In the introduction to A Vision, he
said: "I wished for a system of thought
that would leave my imagination free to
create as it chose and yet make all it
created, or could create, part of the one
history, and that the soul's." His search
for reality in belief and feeling was aided
by his knowledge that the Romantic poets
expressed faith in the power of the
imagination. This knowledge also
strengthened his conviction that the problems of
human existence would never be solved
by science and that answers would have
to come from quite different disciplines:
therefore, both his philosophy and his
actions were of paramount importance to
him in the writing of poetry.
Yeats spent many years in the study
of the occult: spiritualism, magic,
mysticism, and theosophy. His feelings for
Ireland and for the Pre-Raphaelites led
him, early in his life, to the study and
use of ancient Irish myths. His hopes of
independence for Ireland and his
periodic identification with Irish nationalism,
also a part of the fabric of his verse, were
influenced by his passion for Maud
Gonne and his friendship with his patron,
Lady Gregory. He believed the system
expounded in A Vision was revea led to
him by his wife's power as a medium.
Thus for Yeats, as ior all poets, the
pattern of his relationships, interests, beliefs,
and loyalties was the material of his
poetry. However, great poetry is always
the expression of one man's personality
in such a way that it is generally or
universally meaningful. Magic, nationalism,
and myth partly formed Yeats's complex
personality, and his prose writings in
these areas are undoubtedly esoteric.
Although it was through these studies that
Yeats was able to write, as he did, it is
not through them that the reader
appreciates his poetry. All Yeats's poetry can
be enjoyed and understood when
carefully read, without reference to any of
his prose. Yeats, in fact, took care to
make his work understandable, and one
of the most interesting aspects in the
study of his poetry is his lifelong
preoccupation with clarity, simplicity, and
exactness.
This clarity was the goal toward which
he worked throughout his career. For
Yeats, symbol was the means by which
the natural and the supernatural could
be fused and the antimonies be resolved.
Writing in many personae, he worked
toward this unified expression of reality,
with the result that the continuous
development of his powers and his ultimate
THE POETRY OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS. Excerpts reprinted from COLLECTED POEMS
by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1903, 1906, 1907, 1912, 1916, 1918, 1919,
1924, 1928, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1940, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1950, by The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1940,
by George Yeats.
2998

success are both rare and exciting
achievements. Yeats's dedication to his art was
such that to the end of his life his
conscious goals were always in advance of
the poems he had completed.
Yeats was a lyric poet, but his belief
in and practice of "active virtue"—that is,
following a discipline that one has forged
oneself—makes his verse essentially
dramatic. His first volumes of poetry express
the sensibility of the Pre-Raphaelites; the
lyrics are slight and the emotion,
incompletely realized, often expresses his
indecision between the life of dream and that
of action. Twilight and longing
predominate in these poems.
In his fourth volume, In the Seven
Woods, published in 1903, Yeats began
to find his true voice. Emotion is
particularized and he has started to speak
with authority. His technique is more
sure and his tone more varied. In
"Adam's Curse," in which the poet discusses
the labor of writing poetry with a woman
whom he loves, he uses common words
and speech idioms which firmly link the
poem to reality:
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement or break
stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of
weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these.
In his verse plays of this period Yeats
was beginning deliberately to eschew
abstraction and to introduce more direct
and bold speech into his work. His 1910
volume, The Green Helmet and Other
Poems, shows this technique in his lyric
verse, which is becoming more dramatic
and assertive. In "No Second Troy" the
use of Greek myth approximates a
reconciliation between dream and reality.
The 1914 volume, Responsibilities,
shows an increase in force. Here Yeats
uses other voices, or personae, of beggars,
fools, and hermits to present his ideas. At
that time he was encouraged further in
his progress toward exactness of
expression and the use of only the most
meaningful images by his contact with Ezra
Pound, who insisted that Yeats remove
all abstractions from his verse. He
appears to have learned quickly and well
from the younger poet, and in subsequent
poems he is able to integrate completely
his theories of history and personality,
and his feelings of despair for Ireland.
He also learned to pare his images so that
they are totally relevant to his emotion:
Things fall apart, the centre cannot
hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The Tower, published in 1928,
contains several of Yeats's finest poems. The
most brilliant and complex of these is
"Sailing to Byzantium." The dazzling
civilization of Byzantium which had
successfully withstood the power of Rome as
Yeats would probably have liked Ireland
to withstand that of England, became for
him the symbol of eternal art and of the
fusion of the creator with the work of
art. The reconciliation of youth and age,
passion and intellect, is effected by the
symbolic representation of the wisdom of
the inspired soul in a supernatural form.
In this poem, natural birds sing of the
cycle of human life and the created birds
of Byzantium, of the cycle of history.
The glory of the old and of the young
is here presented with a single steady
vision, and the conflict between them has
been resolved:
This is no country for old men. The
young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their
song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded
seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all
summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
He continues:
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder
sing. . . .
2999

The poet has sailed to Byzantium that he
may thus sing. His soul after death will
not take "bodily form from any natural
thing" but will be one of the singing
birds of metal and enamel that the
goldsmiths make to amuse the Emperor,
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Another unified vision of life which
is not dependent upon the supernatural
is communicated in the poem "Among
School Children." The mastery of
technique which gives "Sailing to
Byzantium" its tour de force brilliance, enables
Yeats in this poem to communicate the
feeling of peace after storm. The poet
visits a convent school where the children
see him as an old man, and as the
children stare in mild curiosity, he is
reminded of the "Ledaean body" of a
woman he had loved, and this vision
causes him to feel so joined in sympathy
with her that he can visualize her as she
must have been as a child:
For even daughters of the swan share
Something of every paddler's heritage.
The vision of the childhood of the
woman who caused him much pain leads
him to the thought that women would
not think motherhood worth while if
they could see their progeny at sixty. His
suggestion that mothers as well as nuns
worship images returns the poem to the
convent school setting. In the last stanza
of the poem Yeats, by a unifying image
of continuity and completeness,
reconciles the opposing forces of age and youth
at the level of reality.
The poems written in the three years
before Yeats's death at seventy-four show
no diminution of power. He was still
intent on his search for unity and reality
of expression. In "The Circus Animals'
Desertion," he reviews his poetic output
and says that until he was an old man
the machinery of his poetry was still in
evidence:
My circus animals were still on show,
Those stilted boys, that gilded chariot.
He lists his old themes: the Irish myths,
his lost love, and his preoccupation with
the theater, and he tells how he
dramatized his love in his plays. He faces his
own delight in dreams which he feared
would inhibit him from reality: "This
dream itself had all my thought and
love." He speaks of the personae in
which he wrote and of the characters of
Irish history:
Players and painted stage took all my
love
And not those things they were the
emblems of.
The reversal and resolution of these ideas
comes in the last verse where he
evaluates the use of images in his poetry, by
questioning their origin and finding that
they indeed had their bases in reality.
Thus his adolescent faith in the
imagination had been justified and he could
join the ranks of those whom he admired
and who had fused the subjective and
objective self into a meaningful whole:
"The antithetical self comes to those
who are no longer deceived, whose
passion is reality."
The philosophy that Yeats so carefully
constructed was the basis for a personal
vision of life, which by unswerving
dedication to craftsmanship and constantly
renewed emotional and intellectual
vitality he presented in his poetry in all its
varied facets, and with always increasing
significance.
3000

POINT COUNTER POINT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Aldous Huxley (1894- 1963)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: England
First published: 1928
Principal characters:
Philip Qu\rles, a novelist
Elinor, Philip's wife
Sidney Quarles, Philip's father
Rachel, Philip's mother
John Bidlake, Elinor's father
Mrs. Bidlake, her mother
Little Philip, Philip's and Elinor's sat,
Burlap, editor of Literary World
Beatrice Gilray, his mistress
Spandrell, a cynic
Everard Webley, a disciple of force
Walter Bidlake, Elinors brother
Marjorie Carltng, Walter's mistress
Lucy Tantamount, Walter's infatuation
Critique:
Point Counter Point contains a novel
within a novel. Within the framework
of the outer novel, Huxley places a
novelist who observes the activities of his own
world of fictional characters and then
plots a novel that is constructed exactly
as Huxley has written Point Counter
Point. From one set of individuals to
another the focus of the novel moves,
balancing each life against its
counterpoint. The lives of these people repeat
the same patterns in different forms,
while Philip Quarles plots a novel based
on their lives. It is apparent that Quarles
is Huxley himself plotting Point Counter
Point. Huxley would have us believe
that the theme of this novel is one of
variations on a single theme, the struggle
of natural sexual desire and escapism
against the bond of marriage.
The Story:
John Bidlake was an artist with an
artist's temperament. He had been
married three times. The first marriage had
ended in bitter resentment. The second
marriage had been idyllic for him, but
Isabelle had died two years later, leaving
her husband with a void that he had
tried to erase by pretending that he had
never known a woman named Isabelle.
His third marriage had lasted, although
John had not lived with his wife for
many years. He merely maintained a
home where he went whenever he
became ill enough to need his wife's
nursing skill.
The children of his third marriage,
Walter and Elinor, had not been too
successful in their own experiments with
marriage as a social institution. Walter
had been living with a married woman
named Marjorie Carling for a year and
a half, and he was growing tired of her.
Worse than his moral ties to Marjorie
was the fact that she tenaciously tried
to possess him, rejecting his proposal that
they live together as close friends, each
going his own free direction with
whomever he pleased. Now Marjorie was
going to have a baby, and her whining
jealousy toward his latest infatuation,
Lucy Tantamount, was pricking Walter's
conscience. It annoyed him immensely
POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley. By permission of the author and the publifihers, Harper &
Brothers. Copyright, 1928, by Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc.
3001

that he was making Marjorie unhappy by
going to a party at Tantamount House
without her.
Elinor and Philip Quarles were
traveling abroad, having left little Philip
behind under the care of a governess and
his grandmother, Mrs. Bidlake. Philip
was a novelist. As he traveled through
life, he jotted down in his notebook
incidents and thoughts that might make
rich material for his next novel. His
mind was turned inward, introspective,
and his self-centered interests gave him
little time for emotional experience.
Elinor, wishing that he could love her
as much as she loved him, resigned
herself to the unhappy dilemma of being
loved as much as Philip could possibly
love any woman.
Denis Burlap, editor of the Literary
World, flattered himself with the just
conceit that although his magazine was
not a financial success, it as least
contributed to the intellectual life of his
time. When Walter, who was one of
his chief contributors, asked for more
pay, Burlap hedged until Walter felt
ashamed of his demands. Burlap was
attracted to Beatrice Gilray, a pathetic
figure who had feared the very touch of
a man ever since she had been attacked
by her uncle while riding in a taxicab.
Burlap hoped eventually to seduce
Beatrice. Meanwhile they were living
together.
Another significant member of this set
was Spandrell, an indolent son of a
doting mother who supported him. There
was also Everard Webley, a friend of
Elinor and an active political figure.
Philip's parents still lived together.
Sidney Quarles pretended that he was
writing a long history, but he had not
progressed far beyond the purchase of
office equipment. Rachel Quarles,
assuming the burden of managing their
affairs, endured with patience Sidney's
whims and mild flirtations. Now it was
someone in London, for Sidney made
frequent trips to the British Museum to
gather material for his history. The girl
in London with whom Sidney had been
having an affair appeared one day at
his country house and in loud and furious
language informed her paramour that she
was going to have a baby. When Mrs.
Quarles appeared, Sidney quietly left the
room. The girl threatened Rachel and
then returned to London. Later the affair
was settled quietly.
Marjorie appealed to Walter's pity
enough to cause him some degree of
anguish because of his association with
Lucy Tantamount. Lucy herself was
not much interested in Walter.
Becoming tired of London, she went to Paris.
Elinor and Philip returned from abroad
to find little Philip faring well under the
care of his governess and his
grandmother. John Bidlake, having learned
that he was dying of cancer, had
returned to his wife's home. He had
become a cantankerous patient and treated
little Philip with alternate kindness and
harshness.
With Lucy in Paris, Philip had
persuaded Walter to take Marjorie to the
Quarles home in the country, in the hope
that some sort of reconciliation would
come about from this association. Rachel
Quarles began to like Marjorie, and the
pregnant woman found herself gaining
cheer under this new affection. Shortly
after she and Walter had come to the
Quarles estate, Walter received a letter
from Lucy in Paris, telling him that she
had found a new lover who had seduced
her in a shabby Parisian studio. With
her newly-acquired content, Marjorie
felt sympathetic toward Walter, who
was crestfallen at the cruel rejection he
had received from Lucy.
Everard Webley had long been in
love with Elinor. Sometimes she
wondered whether Philip would care if she
went to another man, and she decided
that it would be Philip's own fault if
she turned to Everard. She felt that a
breach was forming between herself and
Philip, but she could not seem to gain
enough attention or concern from him
to make him realize what was happening.
S002

She arranged a rendezvous with
Everard.
Behind the scenes of love-making and
unfaithfulness lurked the political enmity
of Spandrell and Everard. Perhaps it
was the lack of a useful purpose in his
life that allowed Spandrell's plan to
grow in his mind. Elinor Quarles was
home alone awaiting Everard's call when
Spandrell and a telegram arrived
simultaneously. The telegram urged Elinor
to come to her father's home, for litde
Philip was ill. Elinor asked Spandrell to
wait and tell Everard that she could not
keep her appointment with him.
Spandrell agreed. When Everard arrived at
Elinor's home, Spandrell attacked him
and killed him. Spandrell lugged the
dead body into an automobile and drove
it away. Later that evening he met
Philip and told him his son was ill.
Philip arrived at the Bidlake estate
the next day in time to hear the doctor
say that young Philip had meningitis.
For days Elinor stayed by the child's
side, waiting for the crisis to pass. One
night the sick boy opened his eyes and
told his parents that he was hungry.
They were overjoyed at his apparent
recovery, but later that night he died
suddenly. As they had done in the past,
Elinor and Philip escaped their
unpleasant world by going abroad.
For a long while the Webley murder
baffled the police. Spandrell, haunted
by his own conscience, sent the police
a note which stated that Everard's
murderer would be found at a certain
address at a certain hour. On their arrival,
the police found Spandrell dead with a
letter of confession in his hands.
Burlap was the only happy man among
these sensualists and intellectuals. One
night he and Beatrice pretended they
were children and splashed merrily
taking their bath together. Happiness was
like misery in the modern world, it
seemed—lustful, dull, selfish.
3003

POLYEUCTE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
Type of plot: Religious tragedy
Time of plot: Third century
Locale: M£litene, the capital of Armenia
First presented: c. 1643
Principal characters:
F£lix, Roman governor of Armenia
Pauline, his daughter
Polyeucte, his son-in-law, an Armenian nobleman
Nearque, Polyeucte's friend
Stratonice, Pauline's friend
Albin, Felix' friend
Severs, a Roman warrior, in love with Pauline
Critique:
Polyeucte, although a favorite of the
general public in Corneille's time, was
not considered his best play, that
distinction being reserved for The Cid (1636).
Modern criticism, however, has reversed
this judgment. Despite its somewhat
improbable plot, climaxed by miraculous
conversions, the play holds for today's
public particular religious interest, since
it deals with the working of divine grace
in the human soul. It is, however, the
strong delineation of the main characters
that has won for this work its present
universal acclaim.
The Story:
Pauline, daughter of Felix, the Roman
governor in Melitene, had been married
fourteen days to Polyeucte, an Armenian
nobleman. Terrified by dreams which
seemed to portend her husband's death,
she vainly sought to delay his departure
on a secret mission, the nature of which
was known only to his friend Nearque.
She related her fears to her friend
Stratonice and told her of her earlier love for
SeVere, a Roman of high birth whom
her father would not allow her to marry
because of Severe's lack of fortune. When
the Emperor Decie had appointed Felix
governor of Armenia, she had
accompanied him and dutifully married an
Armenian nobleman of her father's
selection. Meanwhile, they had heard that
SeVere had met a hero's death while
aiding the emperor in battle against the
Persians. According to the report, the
young Roman's body had never been
found.
Now Pauline had dreamed that SeVere
was not dead, but threatened her
husband's life; that a band of impious
Christians had thrown Polyeucte at the feet
of SeVere, and that she, Pauline, crying
out for aid from her father, had seen
him raise a dagger to pierce Polyeucte's
breast.
Her fears were further stirred when
her father approached and said that
SeVere was alive and was at that moment
entering the city. It seemed that the King
of Persia, struck by his gallantry, had
reclaimed the body from the battlefield in
order to gain the Roman honorable
burial. But miraculously life had been
restored to SeVere and the Persians had
sent him to Rome in exchange for royal
prisoners. Thereafter his greater deeds in
war had bound him closer to the emperor,
who had sent him to Armenia to
proclaim the good news of his victories and
to make sacrifices of thanksgiving to the
gods.
Because his love for Pauline had really
brought SeVere to Armenia, that Roman,
informed by his servant that Pauline was
POLYEUCTE by Pierre Corneille, from CHIEF PLAYS OF CORNEILLE. Translated by Lacy Lockert.
By permission of the publishers, Princeton University Press. Copyright, 1952, 1957, by Princeton
University Press.
3004

wedded, decided that life was not worth
living and that he would rather die in
battle. But first he would see Pauline.
When they met, she told him that if hers
alone had been the choice she would,
despite his poverty, have chosen him; but
that now she was married she would
remain loyal to the husband whom she had
learned to love. They bade each other
farewell, he ready to die in battle, she
to pray for him in secret.
Polyeucte returned from his mission,
on which he had been secretly baptized
a Christian. Ordered by a messenger from
Felix to attend the sacrifices in the
temple, he and N6arque planned to defy the
idolatry of the worshipers there. Pauline
told him of SeVere's visit but added that
she had obtained his promise not to see
her again.
Stratonice, a witness at the temple
sacrifices, hurried to Pauline with the news
that Polyeucte had become a Christian,
a traitor to the Roman gods; he had
mocked the sacred mysteries and, with
N6arque, had declared that their god
alone was the almighty king of earth and
heaven. This defilement, Felix declared,
would cost Nearque his life, but he
hoped Polyeucte might come to his senses
and recant after witnessing the
punishment and death of his friend.
When Albin, the friend of Felix,
brought news that Nearque was dead,
he added that Polyeucte had witnessed
his execution undismayed. Pauline,
reminding her father that Polyeucte was
his choice and that in marrying him she
had but fulfilled her filial duty, begged
him to spare his life. But Felix, fearing
the thunderbolts of his gods and SeVere
as well, refused to listen when Albin
urged that Polyeucte's sentence be left
to the emperor. Besides, he was tempted
by the thought that Polyeucte's death
would allow SeVere to wed his daughter
and thus he would gain for himself a far
more powerful protector than he now
had. Meanwhile, Pauline visited
Polyeucte in jail with the plea that if he must
worship his chosen god he should do so
silently and secretly, and thus give Felix
grounds for mercy. To her importunings
Polyeucte replied that he was done with
mortal ties, that he loved her, but loved
his God more.
Polyeucte called for SeVere and told
him that even as his wedding had parted
the true love of SeVere and Pauline, so
now by dying he hoped to bring them
happily together. He hoped also that they
would die Christians. Declaring himself
ready for death, he was marched off by
his guards.
SeVere was amazed at this example of
magnanimity, but his hopes were
shattered when Pauline told nim she could
never marry him, that it would stain her
honor to wed anyone who, even
innocently, had brought Polyeucte to his sad
fate. She begged him, however, to try to
save her husband from the death her
father had ordered. He consented, if for
no other reason than to prove to Pauline
that he could equal her in nobility and
thus be worthy of her. Felix, although he
regarded this intervention on behalf of a
rival as a trick to expose him to the full
strength of the emperor's wrath, made
one last effort to sway his son-in-law. He
told Polyeucte that only on SeVere's
account had he publicly taken his rigid
stand and that he himself would adopt
Christianity if Polyeucte would only
pretend to follow the old gods until after
SeVere had left the city. But Polyeucte
saw through this wile and refused.
Angered, Felix said he would avenge his
gods and himself. When Pauline entered,
Polyeucte commanded her to wed SeVere
or die with him a Christian.
Again Pauline pleaded for Polyeucte's
life, and again Felix was moved to make
another attempt to persuade Polyeucte
to abjure his new faith, but to no avail.
Bidding farewell to Pauline, Polyeucte
was marched out to death by Felix* order.
Pauline rushed out aftei him, lamenting
that she too would die if he were to die.
Felix ordered Albin to deter her but
issued his order too late; Pauline had seen
her husband executed. Seeing him die,
she felt that his death had unsealed her
own eyes, acting as a divine visitation of
3005

grace. She declared herself a Christian,
ready for death.
Severe upbraided Felix for Polyeucte's
death and threatened retaliation. Felix,
suddenly yielding to a strange feeling
that overcame him, declared that his son-
in-law's death had made him a Christian.
This sudden conversion struck SeVere
as miraculous. He ordered Felix to retain
his position of authority, and promised
to use all his persuasion to urge Emperor
D6cie to revoke his cruel commands and
to let all worship the gods of their choice
without fear of punishment.
3006

POOR PEOPLE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fvodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski (1821-1881)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: First half of nineteenth century
Locale: St. Petersburg, Russia
First published: 1846
Principal characters:
Makar Dievushktn, a destitute government clerk
Barbara Dobroselova, his friend
Pokrovski, a young tutor
The Elder Pokrovski, the tutor's father
Bwikov, a wealthy landowner
Critique:
Poor People, Dostoevski's first
published work, appeared serially in 1846 in
a literary periodical, Recueil de Saint
Petersbourg. In this work, Dostoevski
established a theme, the miseries of
Russia's downtrodden masses, from which
he never wandered far during his literary
career. In Poor People, however, one can
detect a sly humor that never appeared
again in his work. Indeed, the already
somewhat morbid and sick artist could
hardly have seen anything but black
despair in life after his sojourn in Siberia,
where he was sent in 1849 for
revolutionary political activities. Dostoevski's
ruthless and unexpected manipulation of
his characters' motives and personalities
is foreshadowed in Makar's farewell letter
to Barbara, in which Dostoevski has
Makar admit that he had not been entirely
sincere in his friendship with hei.
The Story:
Makar Dievushkin, an impoverished
government clerk, lived in an alcove in
a rooming-house kitchen. Even though
his accommodations were unpleasant, he
consoled himself that he could see from
his window the windows of Barbara
Dobroselova, an unhappy young woman
whom he supported in her shabby rooms
across the street. Makar and Barbara
corresponded; occasionally they walked
together when Barbara felt well. Makar,
poor but honorable, maintained the
gravest dignity in his relationship and in Jvs
correspondence with Barbara. In their
poverty and loneliness, each had warm
sympathy and understanding for the
other.
Among the boarders was a public
relations man of literary pretentions, whose
style Makar greatly admired. He was also
interested in a former government clerk,
Goshkov, and his family of four. Goshkov
had lost his job through a legal suit; he
was deeply in debt to the homely,
shrewish landlady.
Across the street, Barbara's cousin
Sasha appeared for the purpose of
resolving a difference which had long existed
between the cousins. Sasha questioned
Barbara's acceptance of Makar's bounty.
Meanwhile Makar sent gifts to Barbara
and became poorer with each passing day.
He pawned his uniform and, in his
poverty, became the butt of jokes. Barbara,
protesting somewhat weakly his sacrifices
for her, sent him, in return, her life's
story, which she had written.
Barbara was the daughter of the
steward of a prince in the province of Tula.
Her family moved to St. Petersburg when
she was twelve. She did not like the city
and she detested the boarding school she
attended. When Barbara was fourteen,
her father died, debt-ridden. Her mother
was consumptive. Creditors took all their
possessions, and Barbara and her mother
moved to the house of a distant relative,
Anna Thedorovna, whose source of
income was a mystery to them. There
Barbara, with her cousin Sasha, an
orphan, was tutored by a sick young
S007

student, Pokrovski, who was intelligent
but irritable. The young girls teased
Pokrovski remorselessly. Barbara,
however, soon regretted her behavior and
vowed to redeem herself in his eyes.
Pokrovski was visited from time to time
by his father, a wizened, obsequious little
man who worshiped his son. Because
the old man was inquisitive and talkative,
Pokrovski had limited the number of his
visits to two a week. Old Pokrovski would
do anything for his son.
Barbara outgrew the tutoring, but she
still had not redeemed herself with
Pokrovski. Bent upon wide reading, she
sneaked into his room and accidentally
upset his bookshelf. Pokrovski entered,
and while the pair were replacing the
books they realized that they were in love.
As Pokrovski's birthday approached,
Barbara joined forces with the elder
Pokrovski to buy the young tutor the
works of Pushkin; they would give the
set to him together. At the birthday party
Barbara magnanimously let the doting old
father give the books to his son. Pokrovski
died soon afterward. Grief apparently
weakened the old man's mind. He toot
his son's books and, following the funeral
procession on foot, dropped a pathetic
trail of books in the mud of the streets
leading to the cemetery. Barbara had
stopped writing her life story at the point
where her mother was dying of
tuberculosis.
The friendship between Makar and
Barbara continued. Barbara became
concerned with Makar's indulgences, which
he could not afford, in her behalf; she
urged him to get himself a decent uniform.
At the rooming house Makar, utterly
destitute, felt deep pity for Goshkov in
his poverty. He sent Barbara a volume of
the writings of the public relations man;
Barbara declared the book was trash.
When the possibility of her becoming a
governess in a wealthy household
presented itself to Barbara, Makar, in spite
of his own poverty, proudly told her that
he could continue to care for her.
Hearing that Barbara had been insulted
by an importunate suitor, Makar got
drunk and was brought home by the
police. In desperation he borrowed money
everywhere, even from Barbara. His
penury seemed to affect his mind.
Meanwhile the friendship between the two had
become the source of laughter to the other
boarders. Makar even suspected the
public relations man of maliciously gossiping
in civil service circles about his having
been brought home by the police. He
feared for his reputation, all that he had
left. Barbara invited him to come live with
her and her cook, Thedora; she urged
him to stop borrowing and to stop copying
the public relations man's style in his
letters.
A lecherous old man, sent by Anna
Thedorovna, called on Barbara. After
Barbara and Thedora got rid of him, Barbara,
in alarm, told Makar that she would have
to move immediately. Lack of money,
however, prevented her removal. Because
he could offer no security, Makar was
refused a loan by a rich usurer.
Everything went wrong; Makar's position at the
rooming house became impossible.
Barbara burned her hand and could not sew
for a living. She sent Makar money,
which he spent on drink. But even in his
abject condition Makar gave coins to
Goshkov that he might feed his family.
Makar made a mistake in his official
work and was ordered before his superior,
who was so affected at the sight of Makar's
wretched person that he gave the poor
clerk one nundred roubles and took his
hand. These gestures saved Makar
physically and morally. He regained his self-
respect and faced life with a new vigor.
All went well at the office and at the
rooming house.
Bwikov, a wealthy landowner who had
once courted Barbara and had deserted
her in her misfortune, came to St.
Petersburg and offered her money, which she
refused.
Goshkov, meanwhile, was officially
absolved of guilt in a case involving
misappropriation of funds and was awarded
substantial damages. Moved deeply by his
freedom and solvency, the man broke in
mind and body and died of shock.
3008

Bwikov returned to Barbara and offered
marriage to atone for his desertion. He
planned to take her to his country estate
tor her health. After much debate
Barbara and Makar agreed that she must
marry Bwikov. Makar could not help
remarking, however, that Bwikov would
probably be happier married to a certain
merchant's daughter in Moscow.
Barbara, preparing excitedly for a
magnificent wedding, employed Makar to run
coundess petty errands for her. Makar
planned to move into Barbara's rooms and
to retain Thedora as his cook. It saddened
him to think of Barbara's leaving him, of
her going to the steppes to become the
lady of a great estate. In a last letter he
implored her to stay but admitted that
his passionate turns of phrase were to
some extent only a literary exercise.
3009

POOR WHITE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1880-1900
Locale: Missouri and Ohio
First puhlished: 1920
Principal characters:
Hugh McVey, an inventor and manufacturer
Sarah Shepard, his foster mother
Steve Hunter, his partner
Tom Butterworth, his father-in-law
Clara Butterworth, his wife
Critique:
Poor White is a significant novel, an
early study of pioneer rural America
invaded by industrialism. It is also the
story of one man's rise from decadent,
poor white folk to a life of creation and
self-realization. Anderson graphically
described, not only the growth of America,
but also the conflicts and frustrations
between man and the machine, a conflict
that is today one of the major problems
in our culture.
The Story:
As a young boy in Missouri, Hugh
McVey was incredibly lazy. Hour after
hour he would lie on the grass by the
river doing absolutely nothing. Not
having gone to school, he was ignorant
and his manners were rude.
When the railroad came to town, Hugh
got work sweeping the platform and
doing odd jobs. His boss, Henry Shepard,
took an interest in him, and bought him
clothes. Soon Hugh went to live with
Henry and his wife Sarah. Sarah, who
was from New England, always preserved
her memory of quiet Eastern villages and
large industrial cities. Determined to
educate Hugh, she lavished on him the
discipline and affection she would have
given her own child.
The situation was difficult, at first,
for both of them. But Sarah Shepard was
a determined woman. She taught Hugh
to read, to write, to wonder about the
world beyond the little town. She in-
POOR WHITE by Sherwood Anderson. By permission of Mrs. Sherwood Anderson and her agent Harold
Ober. Copyright, 1920, by B. W. Hucbsch Inc. Renewed, 1948, by Eleanor C. Anderson.
stilled within him the belief that his
family had been of no account, so that
he grew to have a repulsion toward the
poor white farmers and workers. Always
she held out before him' the promise of
the East, the progress and growth of
that region. Gradually, Hugh began to
win his fight against natural indolence
and to adjust himself to his new way of
life. When the Shepards left town, Hugh
was appointed station agent for the
railroad.
He kept the job for a year. During
that time the dream of Eastern cities
grew more and more vivid for Hugh.
He gave up his job and traveled east,
working wherever he could. Always
lonely, always apart from people, he felt
an impenetrable wall between him and
the rest of the world. He kept on,
through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio.
Hugh was twenty-three when he
settled down in Ohio. By accident, he got
the job of a telegraph operator, just a
mile from the town of Bid well. There
he lived alone, a familiar and puzzling
figure to the people of the town. The
rumor began to spread that he was an
inventor working on a new device. Others
suggested that he was looking over the
town for a possible factory site. But
Hugh was doing neither as yet. Then
during his walks around the farmlands,
he became fascinated by the motions of
the farmers planting their seeds and their
crops. Slowly there grew in his mind
3010

an idea for a crop-setting machine that
would save the labor of the farmers and
their families.
Steve Hunter, who had just come
back from school in Buffalo, was another
dreamer. He dreamed of being a
manufacturer, the wealthiest in Bidwell. He
succeeded in convincing the town's
important people that Hugh was his man,
and that he was working on an
invention that would make them both rich.
He persuaded them to invest in a new
company which would build a factory
and promote Hugh's invention. Steve
went to see Hugh, who had progressed
so that the blueprint for a plant-setting
machine was complete. The two young
men came to an agreement.
The town idiot, who had skill in
woodworking, made models of the
machine, and the machine itself was finally
constructed in an old building carefully
guarded from the curious. When the
machine was not successful, Hugh
invented another, his mind more and more
preoccupied with the planning of devices
and machines. A factory was then built
and many workers were hired. With
the factory, BidwelTs industrialization
began.
What was happening in Bidwell was
the same growth of industrialism that
was changing the entire structure of the
nation. It was a period of transition.
Bidwell, being a small town, felt the
effects of the new development keenly.
Workers became part of the community,
in which there had been only farmers
and merchants.
Joe Wainsworth, the harness-maker,
had invested his life-savings in Hugh's
invention, and he had lost them. An
independent man, a craftsman, he came
to resent the factory, the very idea of
the machine. People came into his shop
less often. They were buying machine-
made harness. Joe became a broken man.
His employee, Jim Gibson, a spiritual
bully, really ran the business, and Joe
submitted meekly.
Meanwhile, Clara Butterworth came
back to Bidwell after three years at the
university in Columbus. She too was
lonely, unhappy. When she returned,
she saw that the old Bidwell was gone,
that her father, Tom Butterworth, was
wealthier than before, that the growth
of the town was due primarily to one
person, Hugh McVey. A week after she
met Hugh, he walked up to the farm
and asked her to marry him. They eloped
and were married that night.
For four years they lived together in
a strange, strained relationship. During
those four years Joe Wainsworth's fury
against Steve Hunter, against the new
age of industry which had taken his
savings, increased. One day he heard
Jim Gibson brag about his hold over
his employer. That night Joe Wains-
worth killed Jim Gibson. As he fled
from the scene, he met Steve Hunter
and shot him.
Clara, Hugh, and Tom Butterworth
were returning from a drive in the
family's first automobile when they learned
what had happened. Two men had
captured Joe, and when they tried to put
him into the automobile to take him
back to town, Joe jumped toward Hugh
and sank his fingers into his neck. It
was Clara who broke his grip upon her
husband. Somehow the incident brought
Hugh and Clara closer together.
Hugh's career as an inventor no
longer satisfied him. Joe Wainsworth's
attack had unnerved him, made him
doubt the worth of his work. It did not
matter so much if someone in Iowa had
invented a machine exactly like his, and
he did not intend to dispute the rights
of the Iowan. Clara was bearing his
child, an individual who would struggle
just as he had. Clara told him of the
child one night as they stood listening
to the noises of the farm and the
snoring of the hired hand. As they walked
into the house side by side, the factory
whistles blew in the night. Hugh hardly
heard them. The dark Midwestern
nights, men and women, the land itself
—the full, deep life current would go
on in spite of factories and machines.
1

PORGY
Type of work: Novel
Author: DuBose Heyward (1885-1940)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Charleston, South Carolina
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Porgy, a crippled Negro
Crown, a stevedore
Bess, his woman
Critique:
Porgy tells of Negroes living in a
society dominated by whites, and the
Negroes are presented as being elemental,
emotional, amoral, and occasionally
violent. Heyward develops in the reader a
sympathy not only for the crippled
Porgy, whose goatcart excites so much
amusement among the whites, but also for
Bess, who comes to live with him. Bess
honestly tries to be true to Porgy, but
she knows the weakness of her will and
flesh when the brutal Crown touches her
or when she has had liquor or dope. The
story was dramatized in 1927 by Heyward
and his wife Dorothy. The novel was also
the basis for the opera Porgy and Bess
(1935), for which Heyward wrote the
book and, with Ira Gershwin, the lyrics.
The Story:
Porgy, a crippled Negro beggar, lived
in a brick tenement called Catfish Row,
once a fine old Southern mansion in
Charleston, South Carolina. Different
from the eager, voluble beggars of his
race, Porgy sat silent day by day,
acknowledging only by lifting his eyes the
coins dropped in his cup* No one knew
how old he was, and his large, powerful
hands were in strange contrast to his
frail body. His single vice was gambling.
In a gambling session one evening in
April he witnessed the brutal murder of
Robbins by Crown, a stevedore who
thought he had been cheated.
In May Porgy made his first trip by
homemade goatcart through the city
streets, to the mocking amusement of the
PORGY by DuBose Heyward. By permission of Mrs.
Heyward, and the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc.
beggar
white folks. The goatcart gave Porgy a
new freedom. He no longer had to stay
at one stand all day; but he could roam
at will and take in more money than
before.
In June Crown's woman, Bess, came
to live with Porgy, and the cripple
became a new man. He seemed less an
impassive observer of life and he developed
a tender affection for children. Bess left
off her evil ways and became in truth
Porgy's woman.
On the day of the grand parade and
picnic of "The Sons and Daughters of
Repent Ye Saith the Lord," Crown came
upon Bess cutting palmetto leaves for
the picnic on Kittiwar Island. He took
her to his hut. At the end of the day
he let her return to Porgy with the
promise that in the fall, when cotton
shipments would provide stevedoring work
in Savannah, she would again be Crown's
Bess.
In September, while the "Mosquito
Fleet'' was at the fishing banks, the
hurricane flag was up over the custom
house. Jake's wife, Clara, shuddered with'
fear for her husband whom she had
warned not to go out that day in his
boat, the SeagulL After an ominous calm
the hurricane struck the city. The water
of the bay, driven by the shrieking
wind, rose above the sea wall, crossed
the street, and invaded the ground
floor of Catfish Row. Forty frightened
Negroes huddled in the great second-
story ballroom of the old mansion.
During a lull in the storm Clara saw the
DuBose Heyward, the Trustee of the estate of DuBose
Copyright, 1925, by Doubleday & Co., Inc.
3012

wreck of her husband's boat near the
wharf. Leaving her baby with Bess,
Clara went out into the flood. A few
minutes later she was overwhelmed
during a sudden return of the storm's great
fury. Bess and Porgy kept Clara's baby.
In October drays loaded with heavy
bales of cotton came rumbling down the
street. In Catfish Row there was
excitement and happiness, for stevedoring jobs
and* money would be plentiful again.
But the coming of the cotton seemed
to Porgy to portend disaster. He asked
Bess whether she was his woman or
Crown's. His, she answered, unless
Crown put his hot hands on her again
as he did that day of the picnic. She
could not answer for herself if that
happened again. Porgy assured her he would
not let Crown take her away from him.
When Crown broke into their room one
midnight not long afterward, Porgy
stabbed him. Next day the body was
found in the river nearby. The police got
nowhere in their questioning of the
occupants of Catfish Row, and there was
a kind of communal sigh of relief when
the officers left without having made
any arrests. But when one of the
buzzards that had fed upon Crown's body
lighted on the parapet above Porgy's
room, the frightened little cripple felt
that doom was in store for him. The next
day Porgy, having been asked to identify
Crown's body at the morgue, fled in
terror in his goatcart, hotly pursued by
a patrol wagon full of officers. Passersby
laughed uproariously at the ridiculously
one-sided race. Porgy was caught at the
edge of town, but by the time he had
been brought downtown he was no
longer needed since another Negro* had
identified the body. Crown was declared
to have come to his death at the hands
of a person or persons unknown. Porgy
was jailed for five days for contempt of
court.
When he returned from jail and found
Serena Robbins holding' Jake's and
Clara's orphan baby, Porgy suspected the
worst. From a neighbor he learned that
some stevedores had gotten Bess drunk
and taken her off to Savannah. Porgy
knew she would never return. Serena
had adopted the baby. Porgy had for
one brief summer known the joys that
come to other people. Now he was just
a pitiful old man sitting sadly in a goat-
cart with the morning sunlight shining
upon him.
301S

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: About 1875
Locale: England, France, Italy
First published: 1881
Principal characters:
Isabel Archer, an American heiress
Gilbert Osmond, her husband
Ralph Touchett, her cousin
Madame Merle, her friend and Osmond's former mistress
Pansy Osmond, Osmond's daughter
Lord Warburton, Isabel's English suitor
Caspar Goodwood, Isabel's American suitor
Henrietta Stackpole, American newspaper correspondent, Isabel's friend
Critique:
With the exception of the English
Lord Warburton, The Portrait of a Lady
contains a gallery of Americans who work
out their destinies against a European
background. The influence of European
culture is seen most closely as it affects
the heroine, high-minded Isabel Archer.
By means of careful penetration into her
mental processes, the steps which lead
to her marriage with the dilettante,
Gilbert Osmond, are delineated, as well as
the consequent problems which arise
from this marriage. The novel is an
excellent example of the Jamesian method
of refracting life through an individual
temperament.
The Story:
Isabel Archer, upon the death of her
rather, had been visited by her aunt, Mrs.
Touchett. She proved so attractive to
the older woman that Mrs. Touchett
decided to give her the advantage of more
cosmopoHtan experience, and Isabel was
quickly carried off to Europe so she might
see something of the world of culture and
fashion.
On the day the women arrived at the
Touchett home in England, Isabel's sickly
young cousin, Ralph Touchett, and his
father were taking tea in the garden with
their friend, Lord Warburton. When
Isabel appeared, Warburton had been
confessing to the two men his boredom
and his distaste for his routine existence.
The young nobleman was much taken
with the American girl's grace and lively
manner.
Isabel had barely settled at Garden-
court, her aunt's home, before she
received a letter from an American friend,
Henrietta Stackpole, a newspaper woman
who was writing a series of articles on
the sights of Europe. At Ralph's
invitation, Henrietta went to Gardencourt to
spend some time with Isabel and to
obtain material for her writing.
Soon after Henrietta's arrival, Isabel
heard from another American friend.
Caspar Goodwood, a would-be suitor, had
followed her abroad. Learning her
whereabouts from Henrietta, he wrote to ask if
he might see her. Isabel was much irked
by his aggressiveness, and she decided
not to answer his letter.
On the day she received the letter from
Goodwood, Lord Warburton proposed to
her. Not wishing to seem indifferent to
the honor of his proposal, she asked for
time to consider it. At last she decided
she could not marry the young
Englishman, for she wished to see considerably
more of the world before she married. She
was afraid that marriage to Warburton,
although he was a model of kindness and
thoughtfulness, would prove stifling.
Because Isabel had not seen London
on her journey with Mrs. Touchett and
since it was on Henrietta Stackpole's
itinerary, the two young women,
accompanied by Ralph Touchett, went to
the capital. Henrietta quickly made the
3014

acquaintance of a Mr. Bantling, who
undertook to squire her around. When
Caspar Goodwood visited Isabel at her
hotel, she again refused him, though his
persistence made her agree that if he still
wished to ask for her hand he might visit
her again after two years had passed.
While the party was in London a
telegram came from Gardencourt. Old
Mr. Touchett was seriously ill of the
gout, and his wife was much alarmed.
Isabel and Ralph left on the afternoon
train. Henrietta remained under the
escort of her new friend.
During the time Mr. Touchett lay
dying and his family was preoccupied, Isabel
was forced to amuse herself with a new
companion. Madame Merle, an old friend
of Mrs. Touchett, had come to Garden-
court to spend a few days. She and Isabel,
thrown together a great deal, exchanged
many confidences. Isabel admired the
older woman for her ability to amuse
herself, for her skill at needlework, at
painting, at the piano, and for her ability
to accommodate herself to any social
situation. On the other hand, Madame
Merle spoke enviously of Isabel's youth
and intelligence, lamenting the life which
had left her, at middle age, a widow with
no children and no visible success in life.
When her uncle died, he left Isabel,
at her cousin's instigation, one-half of his
fortune. Ralph, greatly impressed with
his young kinswoman's brilliance, had
persuaded his father that she should be
given an opportunity to fly as far and as
high as she might. For himself, he knew
he could not live long because of his
pulmonary illness, and his legacy was
enough to let him live in comfort.
As quickly as she could, Mrs. Touchett
sold her London house and took Isabel to
Paris with her. Ralph went south for the
winter to preserve what was left of his
health. In Paris the new heiress was
introduced to many of her aunt's friends
among American expatriates, but she was
not impressed. She thought their indolent
lives worthy only of contempt.
Meanwhile Henrietta and Mr. Bantling had
arrived in Paris, and Isabel spent much
time with them and Edward Rosier. She
had known Rosier when both were
children and she was traveling abroad with
her father. Rosier was another dilettante,
living on the income from his inheritance.
He explained to Isabel that he could not
return to his own country because there
was no occupation there worthy of a
gentleman.
In February Mrs. Touchett and her
niece went to the Palazzo Crescentini, the
Touchett house in Florence. They
stopped on the way to see Ralph, who
was staying in San Remo. In Florence
they were joined once more by Madame
Merle.
Unknown to Isabel or her aunt,
Madame Merle also visited her friend,
Gilbert Osmond, another American who
lived in voluntary exile outside Florence
with his art collection and his young,
convent-bred daughter, Pansy. Madame
Merle told Osmond of Isabel's arrival in
Florence saying that as the heir to a
fortune, Isabel would be a valuable
addition to Osmond's collection.
The heiress who had rejected two
worthy suitors did not refuse the third.
She was quickly captivated by the charm
of the sheltered life Gilbert Osmond had
created for himself. Her friends were
against the match. Henrietta Stackpole,
who was inclined to favor Caspar
Goodwood, was convinced that Osmond was
interested only in Isabel's money, as was
Isabel's aunt. Mrs. Touchett had
requested Madame Merle, the good friend
of both parties, to discover the state of
their affections; she was convinced that
Madame Merle could have prevented the
match. Ralph Touchett was disappointed
that his cousin should have fallen to the
ground from her flight so quickly.
Caspar Goodwood, learning of Isabel's
intended marriage when he revisited her
after the passage of the two years agreed
upon, could not persuade her to
reconsider her step. Isabel was indignant when
he commented on the fact that she did
not everi know her intended husband's
antecedents.
After her marriage to Gilbert Osmond,
3015

Isabel and her husband established their
home in Rome, in a setting completely
expressive of Osmond's tastes. Before
three years had passed, Isabel began to
realize that her friends had not been
completely wrong in their objections to her
marriage. Osmond's exquisite taste had
made their home one of the most popular
in Rome, but his ceaseless effort to press
his wife into a mold, to make her a
reflection of his own ideas, had not made
their marriage one of the happiest.
He had succeeded in destroying a
romance between Pansy and Edward
Rosier, who had visited the girl's
stepmother and found the daughter attractive.
He had not succeeded, however, in
contracting the match he desired between
Pansy and Lord Warburton. Warburton
had found Pansy as pleasing as Isabel had
once been, but he had dropped his suit
when he saw that the girl's affections lay
with Rosier.
Ralph Touchett, his health growing
steadily worse, gave up his wanderings
on the continent and returned to Garden-
court to die. When Isabel received a
telegram from his mother telling her that
Ralph would like to see her before his
death, she felt it her duty to go to
Gardencourt at once. Osmond reacted to
her wish as if it were a personal insult.
He expected that, as his wife, Isabel
would want to remain at his side, and
that she would not disobey any wish of
his. He also made it plain that he
disliked Ralph.
In a state of turmoil after her
conversation with her husband, Isabel met
the Gountess Gemini, Osmond's sister.
The countess, visiting the Osmonds, had
seen how matters lay between her brother
and Isabel. An honest soul, she had felt
more sympathy for her sister-in-law than
for her brother. To comfort Isabel, she
told her the story of Gilbert's past. After
his first wife had died, he and Madame
Merle had an affair that lasted six or
seven years. During that time Madame
Merle, a widow, had borne him a child,
Pansy. Changing his residence, Osmond
had been able to pretend to his new circle
of friends that the original Mrs. Osmond
had died in giving birth to the child.
With this news fresh in her mind, and
still determined to go to England, Isabel
stopped to say goodbye to Pansy, who
was staying in a convent where her father
had sent her to recuperate from her affair
with Rosier. There, too, she met Madame
Merle. Madame Merle, with her keen
perception, had no difficulty realizing that
Isabel knew her secret. When she
remarked that Isabel would never need to
see her again, that she would go to
America, Isabel was certain Madame
Merle would also find in America much
to her own advantage.
Isabel was in time to see her cousin
before his death. She stayed on briefly
at Gardencourt after the funeral, long
enough to bid goodbye to Lord
Warburton, who had come to offer condolences to
her aunt, and to reject a third offer from
Caspar Goodwood, who knew of her
husband's treatment. When she left to start
her journey back to Italy, Isabel knew
what she must do. Her first duty was not
to herself, but to put her house in order.
3016

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Joyce C1882-1941)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1882-1903
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1916
Principal characters:
Stephen Dedalus, an Irish student
Simon Dedalus, his father
Emma, his friend
Critique:
In telling the story of his own youth
under a thin disguise of fiction, Joyce
has written one of the most compelling
and forceful of recent autobiographies.
He tried to show the beginnings of his
artistic compulsion, and the events that
led him to think and to act as he did.
Highly descriptive, the book moves from
incident to incident in an unhurried
way, sketching in all the important
moments and thoughts of Joyce's youth
as he remembered them. This novel is a
forerunner of Joyce's more significant and
experimental Ulysses.
The Story:
When Stephen Dedalus went to school
for the first time, his last name soon got
him into trouble. It sounded too Latin,
and the boys teased him about it. Seeing
that he was sensitive and shy, the other
boys began to bully him. School was
filled with unfortunate incidents for
Stephen. He was happy when he
became sick and was put in the infirmary
away from the other boys. Once, when
he was there just before the Christmas
holidays, he worried about dying and
death. As he lay on the bed thinking,
he heard the news of Parnell's death.
The death of the great Irish leader was
the first date he remembered—October
6, 1891.
At home during the vacation he
learned more of Parnell. His father,
Simon Dedalus, worshiped the dead
man's memory and defended him on
every count. Stephen's aunt, Dante Rior-
dan, despised Parnell as a heretic and
a rabble-rouser. The fierce arguments
that they got into every day burned
themselves into Stephen's memory. He
worshiped his father, and his father
said that Parnell had tried to free
Ireland, to rid it of the priests who were
ruining the country. Dante insisted that
just the opposite was true. A violent
defender of the priests, she leveled every
kind of abuse against Simon and his
ideas. The disagreement between them
became a problem which, in due time,
Stephen would have to solve for
himself.
Returning to school after the holidays,
Stephen got in trouble with Father Dolan,
one of the administrators of the church
school he attended. Because he had
broken his glasses, Stephen could not
study until a new pair arrived. Father
Dolan saw that Stephen was not working,
and thinking that his excuse about the
glasses was false he gave the boy a
beating. The rest of the boys for once were
on Stephen's side, and they urged him
to complain to the head of the school.
With fear and trembling, Stephen went
to the head and presented his case. The
head understood, and promised to speak
to Father Dolan about the matter. When
Stephen told the boys about his
conversation, they hoistea him in their arms
like a victorious fighter, and called him
a hero.
Afterward life was much easier for
Stephen. Only one unfortunate incident
marked the term. In a spirit of fun,
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce. By permission of the publishers,
The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1916, by B. W. Huebsch. Renewed, 1944, by Nora Joyce.
3017

one of his professors announced in class
that Stephen had expressed heresy in
one of his essays. Stephen quickly
changed the offending phrase and hoped
that the mistake would be forgotten.
After class, however, several of the boys
accused him not only of being a heretic
but also of liking Byron, whom they
considered an immoral man and
therefore no good as a poet. In replying to
their charges, Stephen had his first real
encounter with the problems of art and
morality. They were to follow him
throughout his life.
On a trip to Cork with his father,
Stephen was forced to listen to the often-
told tales of his father's youth. They
visited the places his father had loved
as a boy. Each night Stephen was forced
to cover up his father's drunkenness and
sentimental outbursts. The trip was an
education in everything Stephen disliked.
At the end of the school year Stephen
won several prizes. He bought presents
for everyone, started to do over his room,
and began an ill-fated loan service. As
long as the money lasted, life was
wonderful. Then one night, when his money
was almost gone, he was enticed into a
house by a woman wearing a long pink
gown. At sixteen he learned what love
was.
Not until the school held a retreat in
honor of Saint Francis Xavier did
Stephen realize how deeply conscious he
was of the sins he had committed with
women. The sermons of the priests
about heaven and hell, especially about
hell, ate into his mind. At night his
dreams were of nothing but the eternal
torture which he felt he must endure
after death. He could not bear to make
confession in school. At last he went into
the city, to a church where he was
unknown. There he opened his unhappy
mind and heart to an understanding and
wise old priest, who advised him and
comforted his soul. After the
confession Stephen promised to sin no more,
and he felt sure that he would keep his
promise.
For a time Stephen's life followed a
model course. He studied Aquinas and
Aristotle and won acclaim from his
teachers. One day the director of the school
called Stephen into his office and, after
a long conversation, asked him if he had
ever thought of joining the order of the
Jesuits. Stephen was deeply flattered.
Priesthood became his life's goal.
When Stephen entered the university,
however, a change came over his
thinking. He began to doubt, and the longer
he studied, the more confused and
doubtful he became.
His problems drew him closer to two
of his fellow students, Davin and Lynch
and farther away from Emma, a girl for
whom he had felt affection since
childhood. With Davin and Lynch he
discussed his ideas about beauty and the
working of the mind. Because he would
not sign a petition for world peace,
Stephen won the enmity of many of the
fellows. They called him anti-social and
egotistic. Finally neither the peace
movement, the Irish Revival, nor the Church
itself could claim his support.
Davin was the first to question Stephen
about his ideas. When he suggested
to Stephen that in everything Ireland
should come first, Stephen answered that
to him Ireland was an old sow that ate
her own children.
One day Stephen met Emma at a
carnival, and she asked him why he had
stopped coming to see her. He answered
that he had been born to be a monk.
When Emma said that she thought him
a heretic instead of a monk, his last link
with Ireland seemed to be broken. At
least he was not afraid to be alone. If
he wanted to find beauty, and to
understand beauty, he had to leave Ireland,
where there was nothing in which he
believed. The prayers of his friends
asking that he return to the faith went
unanswered. Stephen got together his
things, packed, and left Ireland,
intending never to return. He did intend, some
day, to write a book that would make
clear his views on Ireland and the Irish.
3018

THE POSSESSED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski (1821-1881)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1867
Principal characters:
Stepan Verhovensky, a provincial patriot and mild progressive
Pyotr, his nihilist son
Varvara Stavrogin, a provincial lady and employer of Stepan
Nikolay, her son, a victim of materialism
Marya, his idiot wife
Shatov, the independent son of one of Varvara's serfs
Critique:
The Possessed is Dostoevski's answer
to Turgenev's treatment of Russian
nihilism in Fathers and Sons. By means of a
large number of characters representing
all classes of Russian society,
Dostoevski shows how an idle interest in nihilism
brought on robbery, arson, and murder
in one Russian community. The plot is
exceedingly complex, but this very
complexity tends to emphasize a similar
quality in nineteenth-century Russian life,
which convulsed violently when it
concerned itself with denial of an ordering
principle in the universe.
The Story:
Stepan Verhovensky, a self-styled
progressive patriot and erstwhile
university lecturer, was footloose in a provincial
Russian town until Varvara Stavrogin
hired him to tutor her only son, Nikolay.
Although Stepan's radicalism, which was
largely a pose, shocked Varvara, the two
became friends. When Varvara's
husband died, Stepan even looked forward
to marrying the widow. They went
together to St. Petersburg, where they
moved daringly in radical circles. After
attempting without success to start a
literary journal, they left St. Petersburg,
Varvara returning to the province and
Stepan, in an attempt to assert his
independence, going to Berlin. After four
months in Germany, Stepan, realizing
that he was Varvara's thrall emotionally
THE POSSESSED by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
and financially, returned to the provinuft
in order to be near her.
Stepan became the leader of a smajl
group that met to discuss progressive
ideas. Among the group were Shatov, the
independent son of one of Varvara's serfs,
a liberal named Virginsky, and Liputin, a
man who made everyone's business his
business.
Nikolay Stavrogin, whom Stepan had
introduced to progressivism, went on to
school in St. Petersburg and from there
into the army as an officer. He resigned
his commission, however, returned to St.
Petersburg, and went to live in the
slums. When he returned home, at
Varvara's request, he proceeded to insult
the members of Stepan's group. He bit
the ear of the provincial governor during
an interview with that dignitary.
Obviously mentally unbalanced, Nikolay was
committed to bed. Three months later,
apparently recovered, he apologized foi
his actions and again left the province.
Months later Varvara was invited to
visit a childhood friend in Switzerland,
where Nikolay was paying court to her
friend's daughter, Lizaveta. Before the
party returned to Russia, however,
Lizaveta and Nikolay broke their engagement
because of Nikolay's interest in Dasha,
Varvara's servant woman. In Switzerland,
Nikolay and Stepan's son, Pyotr, met
and found themselves in sympathy on
political matters.
Published by The Modern Library, Inc.
3019

In the province, meanwhile, there was
a new governor, one von Lembke. Stepan,
lost without Varvara, visibly deteriorated
during her absence. Varvara arranged
with Dasha, who was twenty, to marry
Stepan, who was fifty-three. Dasha, who
was the sister of Shatov, submitted quietly
to her mistress' wishes. Stepan
reluctantly consented to the marriage, but he
balked when he discovered from a
member of his group that he was being used
to cover up Nikolay's relations with the
girl.
New arrivals in the province were
Captain Lebyadkin and his idiot, crippled
sister, Marya. One day Marya attracted
the attention of Varvara in front of the
cathedral, and Varvara took the cripple
home with her. Nikolay, she learned, had
known the Lebyadkins in St. Petersburg.
Pyotr assured Varvara, who was
suspicious, that Nikolay and Marya Lebyadkin
were not married.
By his personal charm and a
representation of himself as a mysterious
revolutionary agent returned from exile,
Pyotr began to dominate Stepan's liberal
friends and became, for his own
scheming purposes, the prot£g£ of Yulia, the
governor's wife. Nikolay at first followed
Pyotr in his political activities, but he
turned against the revolutionary
movement and warned Shatov that Pyotr's
group was plotting to kill Shatov because
of information he possessed. Nikolay
confessed to Shatov that on a bet he had
married Marya Lebyadkin in St.
Petersburg.
As a result of a duel between Nikolay
and a local aristocrat who hated him, a
duel in which Nikolay emerged victorious
without killing his opponent, Nikolay
became a local hero. He continued
intimate with Dasha, Lizaveta having
announced her engagement to another man.
Pyotr, meanwhile, sowed seeds of
dissension among all classes in the town; he
disclosed von Lembke's possession of a
collection of radical manifestoes; he
caused a break between his father and
Varvara, and he secredy incited the
working people to rebel against their
masters.
Yulia led the leaders of the town in
preparations for a grand f£te. Pyotr saw
in the f£te the opportunity to bring chaos
into an otherwise orderly community. He
brought about friction between von
Lembke, who was an inept governor, and
Yulia, who actually governed the province
through her salon.
At a meeting of the revolutionary
group, despair and confusion prevailed
until Pyotr welded it together with
mysterious talk of orders from higher
revolutionary leaders. He talked of many other
such groups engaged in like activities.
Shatov, who attended the meeting,
denounced Pyotr as a spy and a scoundrel
and walked out. Pyotr disclosed to
Nikolay his nihilistic beliefs and proposed
that Nikolay be brought forward as the
Pretender when the revolution had been
accomplished.
Blum, von Lembke's secretary, raided
Stepan's quarters and confiscated all of
Stepan's private papers, among them some
political manifestoes. Stepan went to
the governor to demand his rights under
the law and witnessed in front of the
governor's mansion the lashing of
dissident workers who had been quietly
demonstrating for redress of their grievances.
Von Lembke appeased Stepan by saying
that the raid on his room was a mistake.
The f£te was doomed beforehand.
Many agitators without tickets were
admitted. Liputin read a comic and
seditious poem. Karmazinov, a great novelist,
made a fool of himself by recalling the
follies of his youth. Stepan insulted the
agitators by championing the higher
culture. When an unidentified agitator arose
to speak, the afternoon session of the f£te
became a bedlam, so that it was doubtful
whether the ball would take place that
night. Abetted by Pyotr, Nikolay and
Lizaveta eloped in the afternoon to the
country house of Varvara.
The ball was not canceled, but few of
the landowners of the town or
countryside appeared. Drunkenness and brawling
soon reduced the ball to a rout which
came to a sorry end when fire was dis-
3020

covered raging through some houses along
the river. Captain Lebyadkin, Marya,
and their servant were discovered
murdered in their house, which remained un-
burned in the path of the fire. When
Pyotr informed Nikolay of the murders,
Nikolay confessed that he had known of
the possibility that violence would take
place, but that he had done nothing to
prevent it. Horrified, Lizaveta went to
see the murdered pair; she was beaten to
death by the enraged townspeople
because of her connections with Nikolay.
Nikolay left town quickly and quietly.
When the revolutionary group met
again, all mistrusted one another. Pyotr
explained to them that Fedka, an ex-
convict, had murdered the Lebyadkins for
robbery, but he failed to mention that
Nikolay had all but paid Fedka to
commit the crime. He warned the group
against Shatov and said that a fanatic
named Kirillov had agreed to cover up
the proposed murder of Shatov. After
Fedka denounced Pyotr as an atheistic
scoundrel, Fedka was found dead on a
road outside the town.
At the same time, Marie, Shatov s wife,
returned to the town. The couple had
been separated for three years; Marie was
ill and pregnant. When she began her
labor, Shatov procured Virginsky's wife
as midwife. The couple were reconciled
after Marie gave birth to a baby boy, for
the child served to regenerate Snatov and
make him happy once more.
Shatov left his wife and baby alone
in order to keep an appointment with the
revolutionary group, an appointment
made for the purpose of separating
himself from the plotters. Attacked and shot
by Pyotr, his body was weighted with
stones and thrown into a pond. After
the murder Pyotr went to Kirillov to get
Kirillov's promised confession for the
murder of Shatov. Kirillov, who was
Shatov's neighbor and who had seen
Shatov's happiness at the return of his
wife, at first refused to sign, but Pyotr
finally prevailed upon him to put his
name to the false confession. Kirillov,
morally bound to end his life, shot
himself. Pyotr left the province.
Stepan, meanwhile, left the town to
seek a new life. He wandered for a time
among peasants and at last became
dangerously ill. Varvara went to him, and
the two friends were reconciled before
the old scholar died. Varvara disowned
her son. Marie and the baby died of
exposure and neglect when Shatov failed
to return home. One of the radical group
broke down and confessed to the violence
that had been committed in the town at
the instigation of the completely unmoral
Pyotr. Liputin escaped to St. Petersburg,
where he was apprehended in a drunken
stupor in a brothel.
Nikolay wrote to Dasha, the servant,
suggesting that the two of them go to
Switzerland and begin a new life. Before
Dasha could pack her things, however,
Nikolay returned home secretly and
hanged himself in his room.
3021

THE POT OF GOLD
Type of work: Drama
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254-184 B.C.)
Type of plot: Comedy
Time of plot: Second century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: c. 195 B.C.
Principal characters:
Euclio, a miser
Megadorus, Euclio's rich neighbor, who wished to marry Euclio's daughter
Eunomia, Megadorus' sister
Lyconides, Eunomia's son, in love with Euclio's daughter
Staphtla, a slave belonging to Euclio
Critique:
Although the miser is unusual in
Roman comedy, Plautus was not the first
dramatist to use such a character, and he
had as his models the older Greek
dramatists who had made use of various kinds
of misers in their plays. Menander, for
instance, wrote three or possibly four plays
which might have been Plautus* source or
inspiration for his The Pot of Gold*
Dating the Plautine play is difficult. Internal
evidence indicates that the violation of
Euclio's daughter occurred in August and
that the play was produced for the Mega-
lensian games, which were first held in
194 B.C. Like most Plautine comedies,
this play had considerable influence on
European drama. In the seventeenth
century, versions by Ben Jonson, Moliere,
Thomas Shadwell, and Hooft appeared.
Fielding's The Miser, written in the
eighteenth century, also was based in part on
this Plautine comedy.
The Story:
The grandfather of Euclio, an Athenian
miser, had entrusted a pot of gold to his
household deity after burying the pot
within the hearth. The god, angered in
turn at the grandfather, the father, and
Euclio himself, had kept the secret of the
treasure from all, until finally the daughter
of Euclio had endeared herself to the god.
In an effort to help the girl, the deity
then showed Euclio where the gold was
hidden, so that the miser, by using the
money as a dower, might marry his
daughter to Lyconides, the young man
who had seduced her.
Euclio, miserly and distrustful by
nature, was thrown into a feverish excitement
by the discovery of the gold. He feared
that someone would learn of its existence
and either steal or gull it from him. After
carefully hiding the gold in his house once
more, he was afraid that even his old
female slave, Staphyla, might learn of its
whereabouts. Staphyla, in her turn, was
worried by her master's strange behavior
and by the fact that her young mistress
was pregnant.
Meanwhile Megadorus, a wealthy
neighbor and uncle of Lyconides, planned
to marry Euclio's daughter, and he
enlisted the aid of his sistef Eunomia in his
suit. Megadorus said that he was so
pleased with the girl's character that he
would marry her, contrary to the Athenian
custom, without a dowry.
Seeing Euclio in the street, Megadorus
went out to ask the old miser for his
daughter's hand. Euclio, distrustful
because of his new-found gold, thought
Megadorus was actually plotting to take
the gold from him. But Megadorus
assured him that all he wanted was to marry
the girl, with or without a dowry; he
even offered to pay the expenses of the
wedding. Upon these terms Euclio agreed
to marry his daughter to Megadorus. After
Megadorus left, however, Euclio could not
convince himself that the prospective
bridegroom was not after the pot of gold.
Euclio informed Staphyla of the
proposed marriage, which was to take place
the same day. Staphyla, knowing that
3022

when Euclio's daughter was married she
could not conceal her pregnancy,
immediately began to wory about her mistress.
Staphyla had little time to worry,
however, for very shortly a caterer, bringing
cooks, entertainers, and food, arrived at
Euclio's house to prepare the wedding
feast. The caterer had been hired by
Megadorus, as he had promised.
Returning from the market place with
some incense and flowers to place on the
altar of his household god, Euclio was
horrified to see all the strangers bustling
about his house, for he immediately
thought they were seeking his pot of gold
and would steal it from him. Euclio first
drove all the caterer's people from the
house* in a fury and then removed his pot
of gold from its hiding place. After he
had removed it from the house he told
them to return to their work.
Euclio decided to take the gold and
hide it in the nearby temple of Faith.
On the way he met Megadorus, who
asked Euclio to join him in drinking a
bottle or two of wine. Euclio refused,
suspecting that Megadorus wanted to get
him drunk and then steal the pot of gold.
Going on to the temple of Faith, Euclio
hid the money. Although he did not know
it, a slave belonging to Lyconides, the
young man who had violated Euclio's
daughter, observed where the money was
placed. The slave took the money from its
hiding place, but Euclio, rushing back to
see if it was still safe, prevented the theft.
In an effort to find a safe hiding place
for his gold, Euclio took it to the grove
of Silvanus. The slave, anxious to please
his master and repay Euclio for a beating,
watched where Euclio hid the gold in the
grove.
In the meantime, Lyconides, having
learned of Megadorus' plans to marry
Euclio's daughter, went to Eunomia, his
mother, and told her that he himself
wanted to marry the girl. Pressed by
Eunomia for his reasons, Lyconides revealed
that he had violated the girl while he
was drunk and wished to make amends
by marrying her. Even as they spoke, the
excitement in Euclio's house among the
women told Eunomia and Lyconides that
the baby had been born to Euclio's
daughter. Eunomia then agreed to help her son
marry the girl.
Lyconides went to Euclio to tell of his
guilt in violating the miser's daughter.
He found Euclio greatly upset, for the
miser had just discovered the theft of his
gold from Silvanus' grove. Lyconides
believed that Euclio was angry with him
because he had fathered the daughter's
child. Euclio, on the other hand, thought
that the crime to which Lyconides was
confessing was the theft of the gold.
Finally the young man convinced Euclio
that he had not stolen the miser's gold.
He then told Euclio about his violation
of the girl and the birth of the child
Megadorus, in the meantime, had
renounced the girl. Euclio, who had looked
forward to the marriage of his daughter
and the rich Megadorus, felt that he was
utterly betrayed by the world.
After Euclio and Lyconides parted, the
slave appeared and told Lyconides about
the pot of gold he had stolen. Lyconides
insisted that the slave bring the gold to
him. After a lengthy argument the slave
reluctantly obeyed; he hated to think that
the gold would be returned to miserly
Euclio.
When the slave brought the gold to
Lyconides, the young man went to the
house of Euclio and returned the treasure.
The miser, glad to have the pot of gold
once more in his hands, was so happy
that he readily agreed to. a marriage
between his daughter and Lyconides, in
spite of the fact that Lyconides had
violated the girl and caused her to bear
a child out of wedlock.
Strangely enough, after the wedding
Euclio had a change of heart and gave the
entire pot of gold to the newly wedded
couple.
3023

POWER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Lion Feuchtwanger (1884- )
Type of plot: Historical novel
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: Germany
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Josef Suss Oppenheimer, a court favorite
Rabbi Gabriel, his uncle
Naemi, his daughter
Karl Alexander, the Duke
Marie Augusts, the Duchess
Weissensee, a politician
Magdalen Sibylle, his daughter
Critique:
What is a Jew? What causes a Jew, vise her as to the means by which she
in the midst of disdain, antipathy, and could keep her hold on the duke, he
persecution, to remain a Jew? reucht- offered to liquidate her possessions and
wanger deals with this problem through send them to another province. But the
his fictional minister, Josef Suss Oppen- countess, who had a strong belief in
heimer, the half-Christian Jew who chose black magic, insisted that Landauer must
to remain a Jew until his death. Subtly, bring to her the Wandering Jew to help
Feuchtwanger shows us the metamor- cast a spell on Ludwig.
phosis of a rank materialist. At first Suss Landauer went to his young friend,
chose to remain a Jew because he wanted Joseph Suss Oppenheimer, and offered
to be the greatest Jew in Germany. As nalfof what his dealings with the count-
a Christian he could never be at the *ss would bring him, if the young man
top. At the end, he chose Judaism be- would aid Landauer in the countess*
cause he found inspiration in its teach- scheme. The so-called Wandering Jew
ings. The outer Suss was no more than was an uncle of Suss, Rabbi Gabriel,
a moneymonger, but the inner man was whose melancholy demeanor and mystic
sensitive and human. ways had caused people to think that
he was the legendary Wandering Jew.
The Story: §^ss considered the offer. It was tempt-
All of Prussia rejoiced, and European ing, but for some unknown reason the
courts lost their best topic of scandal young man was half afraid of his uncle,
when Duke Eberhard Ludwig broke whose presence always instilled in his
with the countess who had been his mis- nephew a feeling of inferiority. Further-
tress and returned to his wife to beget more, Rabbi Gabriel was rearing mother-
another heir to the throne. The countess less, fourteen-year-old Naemi, the daugh-
had been his mistress for thirty years, ter whom Suss wished to conceal from
bleeding the country with her extrava- the rest of the world. But at last he
gant demands for wealth and jewels, sent for Rabbi Gabriel.
Ludwig was too vain, however, to remain Penniless Prince Karl Alexander came
her lover when she grew fat and middle- to Wildbad in hopes of gaining the grant
aged. of a substantial income from the duke.
The countess sent for Isaac Landauer, Suss, discovering the poverty of the
the wealthy international banker who prince, made himself the financial ad-
was her financial agent. Unable to ad- viser of that destitute nobleman. Al-
POWER by Lion Feuchtwanger. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. By permission of the publishers. The
Viking Pres*. Inc. Copyright, 1926, by The Viking Press, Inc.
3024

though Landauer warned him that Karl
Alexander was a poor risk, Siiss continued
his association with the prince merely
because he hoped to ingratiate himself
with the nobility. Half in gratitude,
half in jest, the prince granted Siiss
admission to his levees.
On his arrival in Wildbad, Rabbi
Gabriel told Siiss that he intended to
bring Naemi to his nephew. But Landauer
no longer needed Gabriel to help carry
out the countess' scheme, and the rabbi
returned to his home. The countess had
been banished from the duchy, taking
with her the money procured by
Landauer.
Siiss became the favorite of Prince
Karl Alexander. To Wildbad also came
Prince Anselm Franz von Thurn and Taxis
and his daughter, Princess Marie
Auguste. Their mission was to urge
Prince Karl Alexander to marry the
princess and turn Catholic. Angry
because the duke had refused to give him
a pension, the prince consented.
Duke Eberhard Ludwig died suddenly,
and Karl Alexander, now a Catholic,
inherited the duchy. Siiss became a court
favorite, appointed by the new duchess
to be keeper of her privy purse. Although
Jews were forbidden to live in the duchy,
the people had to acknowledge that the
duke should be allowed his private court
Jew.
Rabbi Gabriel had bought a litde
white house where he lived with Naemi
and a servant. For three days, while
the uncle was away, Siiss went to Hirsau
to visit his daughter. Then he returned
to his duke. Since Karl Alexander's
succession Siiss had slyly directed him in
measures which were resulting in a
complete control of Swabia by the duke
himself. The Constitution and the
Parliament were powerless. Great
noblemen had been ruined. Although his
income was enormous, Siiss himself
refrained from holding any office. Siiss
had picked one former cabinet member,
Weissensee, as President of the
Ecclesiastical Council. One night he gave a
party to which Weissensee brought his
daughter, Magdalen Sibylle. Siiss,
noting the duke's attentiveness toward the
girl, enticed her into his bedroom, where
the duke followed. After that evening,
the tiuke sent gifts to Magdalen Sibylle,
his declared mistress, and Weissensee
was promoted to a high office. Hating
Siiss, Weissensee secretly hoped to bring
the favorite into disfavor at court.
Learning that Siiss had a daughter, he planned
to place the Jew in the same position that
Siiss had placed him on the night Karl
Alexander had taken Magdalen Sibylle.
The murder of a child revived the old
legend that Jews sacrificed a Christian
child at the Passover feast, and a Jew,
Reb Jeckeskel Seligmann, was arrested
for the crime. Pressure was put on Siiss
to use his power to save the innocent
man, but he refused because of the
danger to his position at court. Then
Rabbi Gabriel sent word to Siiss that
Naemi had heard rumors of his
wickedness. At last Siiss decided that he would
help the arrested man. In rescuing
Seligmann, he felt anew his power as the
court Jew. Soon afterward, at the request
of Rabbi Gabriel, he went to visit his
mother. From her he learned that his
real father had been a great Christian
marshal in the German army. Confused,
Siiss finally decided that he was a Jew
and would remain so.
Convinced at last that Siiss was a
swindler, the duke threatened to
dismiss and dishonor him. But when Siiss
offered his own fortune in exchange for
proof of any financial trickery, the duke
changed his mind and roared his anger
at the enemies of Siiss. Realizing that
the favorite now had more power than
ever, Weissensee continued to plot his
revenge. Arranging for the duke to
spend some time at his home in Hirsau
while Rabbi Gabriel was not at home,
Weissensee took the duke to Siiss'
daughter. With visions of a heavenly rescue,
the quiet, lonely child climbed to the
roof of the house to escape from her
attacker. She fell from the roof to her
death.
Outwardly Siiss professed forgiveness
3025

toward the duke, but he pocketed more
and more funds from the ducal treasury.
His personality altered. Instead of
ingratiating himself at court, he criticized
and ridiculed his acquaintances. Filling
the duke's head with dreams of
conquest, Siiss inveigled him into leading
a new military coup. At the same time
he planned the duke's destruction. While
Karl Alexander lay dying at the scene
of his defeat, Siiss rained over his head
a torrent of pent-up abuse. His enemies
ordered his arrest.
For many months the case against,
Siiss dragged on. Finally he was put into
a stinking, rat-infested hole, where every
day the authorities plied him for a
confession, but he remained stubbornly alive
and sane. Sentenced to hang, he assailed
the court with icy, cutting words. He
could have freed himself by declaring
his Christian birth. He kept silent.
On the day of the hanging Siiss died
with the name "Adonai," the Hebrew
name for God, on his lips, and the word
was echoed by all the Jews who had
gathered to watch him die.
3026

THE POWER AND THE GLORY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Graham Greene (1904- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: The 1930's
Locale: Mexico
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Father Montez, a fugitive priest
Marcia, the mother of his child
Father Jose, a renegade priest
A Lieutenant of Police
A Poor Mestizo
Critique:
This novel reflects the author's interest
in Mexico and his experience as a
resident of that country. It is not surprising
that he should write a sympathetic novel
about the persecution of priests in
Mexico, since Greene himself is a convert
and his serious novels are in keeping
with Catholic idiom and doctrine. In
this book he deals, as usual, with the
psychology of the individual. The Power
and the Glory was published in the
United States in 1940 under the title
The Labyrinthine Ways. It proved
unpopular. A new edition, with the original
title restored, has increased the body of
readers familiar with the novel. In
particular, Greene is a master of suspense.
The Story:
In a particular Mexican state the
Church had been outlawed and the
priests driven underground by the threat
of being shot. After several months, word
went out from the governor's office that
there was still one priest, Father
Montez, who was moving from village to
village carrying on the work of the Church
by administering the sacraments and
saying masses. A young lieutenant of police,
an ardent revolutionist and an
anti-clerical, persuaded his chief to let him search
for the priest who, as the authorities saw
it, was guilty of treason.
Two photographs were pasted up
together in the police station. One was the
picture of an American bank robber who
had killed several police officers in Texas;
the other was that of the priest. No one
noticed the irony, least of all the young
lieutenant, who was far more interested
in arresting the clergyman. While the
officer was receiving permission to m^ke
a search for Father Montez, the priest
was already in the village, having come
there in order to get aboard a boat that
would take him to the city of Vera Cruz
and safety.
Before Father Montez could board the
boat word came to him that an Indian
woman was dying several miles inland.
True to his calling, the priest mounted
a mule and set out to administer the last
rites to the dying woman, even though
he realized that he might not find
another ship to carry him to safety. There
was one other priest in the vicinity,
Father Jos6. But Father Jose had been
cowardly enough to renounce the Church,
even to the point of taking a wife, a
shrewish old woman. The authorities
paid no attention to him at all, for they
felt, and rightly so, that the priest who
had renounced his vows was a detriment
and a shame to the Church.
After completing his mission, Father
Montez came back to the coast, where
he spent the nioht in a banana
warehouse. The English manager on the
plantation allowed him to hide there.
THE POWER AND THE GLORY by Graham Greene. By permission of the publishers, The Viking
Press, Inc. Copyright, 1940, by Graham Greene.
3027

The following day, hoping to find
refuge from the police and from the
revolutionary party of Red Shirts, he set out
on muleback for the interior. As he
traveled, he thought of his own past and of
himself as a poor example of the
priesthood. For Father Montez was a whiskey
priest, a cleric who would do almost
anything for a drink of spirits. In addition,
he had in a moment of weakness fathered
a child by a woman in an inland village.
Thinking himself a weak man and a
poor priest, he was still determined to
carry on the work of the Church as long
as he could, not because he wanted to be
a martyr but because he knew nothing
else to do.
After twelve hours of travel he reached
the village where his one-time mistress
and his child lived. The woman took him
in overnight, and the following morning
he said a mass for the villagers. Before he
could escape the police entered the
village. Marcfa claimed him as her husband,
and his child, a little grown girl of seven,
named him as her father. In that manner,
because of his earlier sins, he escaped.
Meanwhile the police had decided on a
new tactic in uncovering the fugitive. As
they passed through each village they
took a hostage. When a certain length of
time had passed without the
apprehension of Father Montez, a hostage was
shot. In that manner the lieutenant of
police in charge of the hunt hoped to
persuade the people to betray their priest.
After the police had left the village
without discovering him, Father Montez
mounted his mule and went on his way.
He traveled northward in an effort to
escape the police and, if possible, to make
his way temporarily into another state.
Some hours after leaving the village,
Father Montez met with a mestizo who
fell in with him. Before long the half-
breed discovered that Father Montez was
the priest for whom the police were
searching. He promised that he, a good
Catholic, would not betray the secret,
but Father Montez was afraid that the
promised reward of seven hundred pesos
would be too much of a temptation for
the poor man.
When they reached a town, however,
it was Father Montez' own weakness
which put him into the hands of the
police. He had to have some liquor, the
sale of which was against the law. He
managed to buy some illegally, but his
possession of the contraband was
discovered by one of the revolutionary Red
Shirts, who raised a cry after him.
Tracked down by a posse, the priest was
caught and placed in jail. Fortunately,
he was not recognized by the police, but
since he had no money he was kept in
jail to work out the fine.
The lieutenant of police who was
searching feverishly for him
unexpectedly did Father Montez a good turn.
Seeing the ragged old man working about
the jail, the lieutenant stopped to talk
with him. The priest claimed to be a
vagrant who had no home of his own.
The lieutenant, feeling sorry for the old
fellow, released him and gave him a
present of five pesos. Leaving town,
Father Montez started out across the
country to find a place of temporary safety.
After traveling for some time, he met an
Indian woman who could speak only a
few words of Spanish. She managed to
make him understand that something was
wrong with her child. He went with her
and found that the baby had been shot;
his immediate guess was that the
American bandit had done the deed.
After performing rites over the child*
Father Montez continued his flight. He
eventually made his way into the next
state, where he was given sanctuary by
a German plantation owner. After
resting a few days, he planned to go to a
city and there present his problems to his
bishop. Before he could leave, however,
he was found by the mestizo, who said
that the American bandit, a Catholic,
was dying and needed the priest. Father
Montez answered the call, even though
he was sure he was being led into a trap.
The bandit was really dying, but he lay
in the state from which Father Montez
3028

had just escaped. With him was a party
of police, waiting for the priest's
appearance in order to arrest him.
Immediately after the bandit's death
the police closed in and Father Montez
was captured. Taken back to the capital
of the state and tried for treason, he was
found guilty and sentenced to be shot.
The lieutenant of police, who felt sorry
in a way for the old priest, tried to
persuade the renegade Father Jos6 to hear
Father Montez' last confession, but
Father Jos£, who feared the authorities,
refused. Father Montez was led out and
shot without the benefit of the Church's
grace. Yet the lieutenant of police had
not succeeded in removing the Church's
influence; in the evening of the day on
which Father Montez died another priest
made his way, in secret, into the town
where the execution had taken place.
3029

THE POWER OF DARKNESS
Tyfe of work: Drama
Author: Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Tyfe of flot: Domestic tragedy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First presented: 1886
Principal characters:
NnriTA Aktmitch TchuJkin, a laborer
An£sya, his mistress
Peter Ignatitch, Anisya's husband, a well-to-do peasant
Matryona, Nikfta's mother
AxfM, Nikfta's father
Akoul£na, Peter's daughter by his first marriage
Marina, an orphan girl
Critique:
This play on a theme of sin and
redemption is embodied in the traditional
Russian conflict of father against son, of
the natural against the artificial life.
Nikfta finds himself led into adultery
and murder almost unknowingly, the
implication being that evil is a state into
which anyone can fall unless he is
diligently wary of it. The plot may seem
unexciting because of the didactic way in
which Tolstoy deals with the evils of
idleness, greed, and luxury, but his
ability to depict the triumph of spiritual
humility over materialistic arrogance must
still be admired.
The Story:
Peter Igndtitch, a well-to-do peasant,
was forty-two years old and sickly. His
second wife, Anfsya, was only thirty-two.
She still felt young and had started an
afFair with Nikfta, their hired man.
Peter, who considered Nikfta a loafer,
had thought of dismissing him. As he
was explaining his intention to his wife
they learned that Nikfta was talking
about getting married and leaving their
farm. Anfsya complained to Peter that
Nikfta's departure would leave her with
more work than she could handle.
When Anfsya and Nikfta were alone,
he told her that in spite of his marriage
plans he would always come back to her.
Anfsya threatened to do violence to
herself if Nikfta went away, adding that
when her husband died Nikfta could
marry her and become master of the
farm. Nikfta declared, however, that he
was satisfied with his lot. Then Ma-
try6na, Nikfta's mother, came in and
said that Nikfta's marriage was his
father's plan, not her own, and that he
need not worry about it. She then asked
Nikfta to leave the room.
Left alone with Matry6na, Anfsya
confessed her love for Nikfta. Matry6na,
who said that she had known of their
affair all along, gave Anfsya some poison
and advised her to bury her husband
before spring; she suggested also that Nikfta
would make a good master on the farm.
Concerning the marriage, she explained
that Nikfta had had an affair with
Marina, an orphan girl, and that when
Akfm, his father, learned about it he
had insisted that Nikfta marry her. Ma-
try6na had suggested that they talk the
matter over with Peter, who was Nikfta's
master. Having explained the situation,
Matry6na again urged Anfsya to use the
poison on Peter, who was near death
anyway.
At that point Peter and Akfm came in,
discussing Nikfta's proposed marriage.
THE POWER OF DARKNESS by Count Leo Tolstoy, from THE PLAYS OF LEO TOLSTOY.
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. By permission of the publishers, Amen House. Copyright, 1910, by
Constable ft Co. Copyright, 1923, by Oxford University Press, Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
3030

Peter seemed to approve of the match
until Matry6na told him that Marina
was promiscuous and so had no claim on
Nikita. To determine the truth of this
charge, Peter sent for Nikita, who falsely
swore that there had been nothing
between him and Marina. As a result, the
marriage was called off. Nikita was then
visited by Marina, who pleaded her love
and said that she had always been
faithful to him. Nikita sent her away, saying
that he was no longer interested in her.
Six months later Anisya and Matry6na
were worried because Peter was about to
die but had not told anyone where his
money pouch was hidden. Anisya also
told Matry6na that she had put the
poison into Peter's tea. As they stood talking
in the courtyard, Peter appeared on the
porch of his house, saw Nikita, who was
happening by, and asked his forgiveness,
a formal request made by the dying.
Nikita was temporarily struck with
remorse. Matry6na, who then helped Peter
back into the house, discovered that the
money pouch was hanging by a cord
around the sick man's neck. Anisya went
into the house and came out again with
the money pouch, which she gave to
Nikita. She then returned to the house,
only to reappear a short time later,
wailing a formal lament for Peter, who had
just died.
Nine months after Peter's death,
Nikita, who had married Anisya and
become the master of the farm, grew tired
of his wife and began an affair with
Akoulina, Peter's daughter by his first
marriage. Anisya was afraid to say
anything for fear that her murder of Peter
would be discovered.
In the following autumn, Matry6na
arranged a marriage for Akoulina, who had
become pregnant by Nikita. Matry6na
told the father of the suitor that Akoulina
herself could not be seen because she was
sickly; at that moment, in fact, Akoulina
was delivering her child in the barn.
Nikita could not decide what to do about
the child, but Anisya gave him a spade
and told him to dig a hole in the cellar.
Nikita balked at the suggestion, feeling
that he was not to blame for all his
troubles. Anisya, happy that she could force
Nikita into sharing her own guilt, told
him that he was already guilty because
he knew that she had poisoned Peter and
because he had accepted Peter's money
pouch. At last Nikita went to the cellar
and dug the hole.
When Anisya brought the baby to
him, covered with rags, Nikita was
horrified to discover that the infant was still
alive. Anisya and Matry6na pushed
Nikita into the cellar, where he murdered
the baby. After he had completed the
deed he reappeared in a frenzy,
threatening to kill his mother and claiming that
he could still hear the baby whimpering.
He then went off to forget his troubles
in drink.
Some time after that Akoulina's
wedding feast was held at Nikita's farm.
Nikita saw Marina, who had been able
to marry respectably and who was now a
wedding guest. Alone and troubled, he
told Marina that his only happiness had
been with her. Distraught, Marina left
Nikita to himself. Then Matry6na and
Anisya came to tell him that the bridal
pair awaited his formal blessing. Feeling
that it would be impossible to give his
blessing, Nikita thought of committing
suicide until Mitritch, a drunken ex-
soldier, appeared and began to talk of his
experiences, concluding with the thought
that a person should never be afraid of
anyone. With this thought in mind,
Nikita decided to join the wedding
feast.
When Nikita appeared before the
guests he was holding Akim by the hand.
Suddenly, instead of blessing the bridal
pair, he fell on his knees before his
father. Proclaiming that he was guilty
and wished to make his confession, he
begged forgiveness of Marina, whom he
had misused, and of Akoulina, saying
that he had poisoned Peter. Although
Akoulina said that she knew who had
poisoned her father, a police officer, who
happened to be a guest at the wedding,
3031

wanted to arrest Nikfta immediately.
Akim prevented him by saying that his
son must attend to God's business first.
Nikfta then confessed that he had
seduced Akoulfna and murdered her child.
Finally, turning again to his father,
Nikfta asked for his forgiveness. Akfm told
him that God would forgive him and
show him mercy. Nikfta was then bound
and led away.
3032

PRAGMATISM
Type of work: Philosophical essays
Author: William James (1842-1910)
First published: 1907
No more illuminating or entertaining
account of pragmatism has ever been
written than James's Pragmatism: A New
Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking.
But this is more than a popular
exposition prepared for the academic audiences
of Lowell Institute and Columbia
University during the winter of 1906-1907;
it is historic philosophy in the making.
Although James was profoundly
influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, who
invented the basic statement and name
of pragmatism, he was an independent
thinker with a distinctive creative
direction of his own.
Peirce's essay, "How to Make Our
Ideas Clear," introduced the pragmatic
notion that ideas are clarified by
considering what we would expect in the way
of experience if we were to act in a
certain manner. The whole of our
conception of the "sensible effects" of an
object is the whole of our conception of
the objects, according to Peirce. This
essay, clear, radical, entertaining,
appeared in the Popular Science Monthly
in January, 1878. But professional
philosophers were not interested in theory
advanced by a mathematician,
particularly when the theory went against the
prevailing idealism of American
philosophers. It was not until James revived the
idea in 1898 with a talk on
"Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results"
that the pragmatic philosophy began to
stir up controversy. With the lectures on
meaning and truth which were published
under the titles Pragmatism and The
Meaning of Truth, the former in 1907
and the latter in 1909, James brought
pragmatism into the forefront of
American thought.
In his first lecture on "The Present
Dilemma in Philosophy," James
distinguished between the "tender-minded"
and the "tough-minded" in temperament,
the former inclining toward a philosophy
that is rational, religious, dogmatic,
idealistic, and optimistic, and the latter, the
tough-minded, inclining toward a
philosophy that is empirical, irreligious,
skeptical, materialistic, and pessimistic. He
then went on to state his conviction that
philosophy can satisfy both temperaments
by becoming pragmatic.
His lecture on the pragmatic method
begins with one of the most entertaining
anecdotes in philosophical discourse.
James describes a discussion by a group
of philosophers on this question: Does a
man go around a squirrel that is on a tree
trunk if the squirrel keeps moving on the
tree so that the trunk is always between
himself and the man? Some of the
philosophers claimed that the man did not
go around the squirrel, while others
claimed that he did. James settled the
matter by saying, "Which party is right
depends on what you practically mean
by 'going round' the squirrel." It could
be said that the man goes around the
squirrel since he passes from the north
of the squirrel to the east, south, and
west of the squirrel. On the other hand,
the man could be said not to go around
the squirrel since he is never able to get
on the various sides of the squirrel—on
the right of him, then behind him, and
so forth. "Make the distinction," James
said, "and there is no occasion for any
further dispute."
James then applied the method to a
number of perennial philosophical
problems, but only after a careful exposition
of the meaning of pragmatism. He
described the pragmatic method as a way
of interpreting ideas by discovering their
practical consequences—that is, the
difference the idea's truth would make in our
experience. He asks, "What difference
would it practically make to anyone if
this notion rather than that notion were
true?" and he replies, "If no practical

difference whatever can be traced, then
the alternatives mean practically the same
thing, and all dispute is idle."
In his lecture James argued that the
pragmatic method was not new: Socrates,
Aristotle, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
had used it. But what was new was the
explicit formulation of the method and
a new faith in its power. Pragmatism is
to be understood, however, not as a set
of grand theories but as a method which
turns attention away from first principles
and absolutes and directs it to facts,
consequences, and results in our experience.
A bare declaration would hardly have
been enough to make pragmatism famous.
James devoted a considerable part of his
lectures to brief examples of the
application of the pragmatic method. He cited
with approval Berkeley's analysis of
matter as made up of sensations. Sensations,
he said, "are the cash-value of the term.
The difference matter makes to us by
truly being is that we then get sucn
sensations. . . ." Similarly, Locke
applied the pragmatic method, James
claimed, when he discovered that unless
by "spirit" we mean consciousness, we
mean nothing by the term.
Is materialism or theism true? Is the
universe simply matter acting and
interacting, or is God involved? James
considers this problem pragmatically and
reaches a curious result. As far as the
past is concerned, he says, it makes no
difference. If rival theories are meant to
explain what is the case and if it makes
no difference in our experience which
theory is true, then the theories do not
differ in meaning. If one considers the
difference now and in the future,
however, the case is different: "Materialism
means simply the denial that the moral
order is eternal . . . spiritualism means
the affirmation of an eternal moral order
and the letting loose of hope."
To this kind of analysis some critics
have answered with the charge that
James is one of the "tender-minded"
philosophers he spoke harshly of in his
earlier lectures. But throughout the course
of this series of lectures and in
subsequent books Tames continued to use
pragmatism as a way of combining the tough
and tender temperaments. He extended
the use of the term "difference" so that
the meaning of an idea or term was no
longer to be understood merely in terms
of sense experiences, as Peirce had urged,
but also in terms of passionate differences,
of effects upon human hopes and fears.
The essays in Pragmatism show this
liberalizing tendency hard at work.
The temperate tone of James's
suggestions concerning the religious hypothesis
is clear in one of his later lectures in the
book, "Pragmatism and Religion," in
which he writes that "Pragmatism has to
postpone dogmatic answer, for we do not
yet know certainly which type of religion
is going to work best in the long run."
He states again that the tough-minded
can be satisfied with "the hurly-burly of
the sensible facts of nature," and that the
tender-minded can take up a monistic
form of religion; but for those who mix
temperaments, as James does, a religious
synthesis that is moralistic and pluralistic,
allowing for human development and
creativity in various directions, is to be
preferred.
Pragmatism is important not only as
a clear statement of the pragmatic method
and as an illustration of its application to
certain central problems, but also as an
exposition, although introductory, of
James's pragmatic theory of truth. His
ideas were developed more fully two
years later in The Meaning of Truth.
Beginning with the common notion
that truth is a property of ideas that agree
with reality, James proceeded to ask what
was meant by the term "agreement." He
decided that the conception of truth as a
static relation between an idea and
reality was in error, that pragmatic analysis
shows that true ideas are those which can
eventually be verified, and that an idea
is said to be verified when it leads us
usefully to an anticipated conclusion.
Since verification is a process, it becomes
appropriate to say that truth "happens
to" an idea, and that an idea "hecomes
true, is made true by events." A reveal-
3034

ing summary statement is this: " The
true/ to put it very briefly, is only the
expedient in the way of our thinking,
just as 'the right* is only the expedient
in the way of our behaving."
The ambiguity of James's account, an
ambiguity which he did not succeed in
removing, allows extremes of
interpretation. On the one hand, a reader might
take the tender-minded route, something
in the manner of James himself, ana
argue that all kinds of beliefs about God,
freedom, and immortality are true in so
far as they lead a man usefully in the
course of his life. On the other hand, a
tough-minded reader might be inclined
to agree with James that an idea is true
if the expectations in terms of which the
idea makes sense are expectations that
would be met, if one acted—but he might
reject James's suggestions that this means
that a great many ideas which would
ordinarily be regarded as doubtful
"become true" when they satisfy the
emotional needs of a believer.
One difficulty with which James was
forced to deal because of his theory of
truth resulted, it might be argued, not
from his idea of truth as the
"workableness" of an idea, but from his inadequate
analyses of the meanings of certain terms
such as "God," "freedom" and "design."
James maintained that, pragmatically
speaking, these terms all meant the same
thing, viz., the presence of "promise" in
the world. If this were so, then it would
be plausible to suppose that if the idea
that the world is promising works out,
the idea is true. But if James's analysis is
mistaken, if "God" means more than the
possibility of things working out for the
better, James's claim that beliefs about
God are true if they work loses its
plausibility.
Whatever its philosophic faults,
Pragmatism is saved by its philosophic virtues.
For the general reader it offers the rare
experience of confronting first-rate ideas
by way of a clear and entertaining, even
informal, style.
3035

THE PRAIRIE
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1804
Locale: Western Plains of the United States
First published: 1827
Principal characters:
Natty Bumppo, an old frontiersman
Ishmael Bush, a desperado
Esther Bush, his wife
Ellen Wade, Esther's niece
Abiram White, Esther's brother
Dr. Battius, a naturalist
Paul Hover, Ellen's lover
Captain Middleton, of the United States Army
Inez, Middleton's wife
Hard-Heart, a Pawnee chief
Critique:
This novel, the fifth and last volume
of Cooper's familiar Leatherstocking
series, closes the career of his famous
frontiersman and scout, Natty Bumppo
The plot is full of incident, but it
depends too much on coincidence to seem
realistic to many modern readers. The
character portrayal is not vivid; the
women, especially, seem dull and
unreal. Much of the action is slowed down
by the stilted dialogue. Yet, in spite of
these defects, The Prairie catches much
of the spirit of the old West.
The Story:
Shortly after the time of the Louisiana
Purchase the family of Ishmael Bush
traveled westward from the Mississippi
River. Ishmael was accompanied by his
wife, Esther, and their sons and
daughters. Also in the caravan were Ellen
Wade, a niece of Esther; Abiram White,
Esther's brother; and Dr. Battius, a
physician and naturalist. As this company
searched for a camping place one evening,
they met an aged trapper, Natty Bumppo,
and his dog. The trapper directed them
to a nearby stream.
After night had fallen, Bumppo
discovered Ellen in a secret meeting with
her lover, Paul Hover, a wandering bee
hunter. The three were captured by a
band of Sioux. While the Indian raiders
stole all the horses and cattle from Ish-
mael's party, the captives made their
escape. Unable to proceed across the prairie,
the emigrant family occupied a naturally
fortified hilltop shown to them by
Bumppo.
A week later, Paul, Bumpoo, and Dr.
Battius were gathered at Bumppo's
camping ground. They were soon joined by
a stranger, who introduced himself as
Captain Middleton of the United States
Army. Bumppo was delighted to find that
Middleton was the grandson of an old
friend whom he had known in the days
of the French and Indian wars. The
young officer had come to find his wife,
Inez, who had been kidnaped by Abiram
White shordy after her marriage. She
was now a captive in Ishmael's camp.
Paul, Bumppo, and Dr. battius agreed to
help Middleton rescue her.
On the same day Ishmael and his sons
left their camp to hunt buffalo. That
evening they returned with meat, but
Asa, the oldest son, did not return with
the rest of the hunters. In the morning
the entire family set out to search for
him. At last his dead body was found
in a thicket; he had been shot in the
back with one of Bumppo's bullets. His
family buried him and returned to camp.
There they found that both Ellen and
Inez were gone.
3036

The girls, who had been rescued by
Middleton and his friends, were rapidly
making their escape across the prairie,
when their progress was interrupted by
a meeting with a Pawnee warrier, Hard-
Heart. After the Indian had galloped
away on his horse, the travelers found
themselves in the path of a stampeding
herd of buffalo. The group was saved
from being trampled to death at the last
moment by the braying of Dr. Battius'
donkey, for at the strange sound the
buffalo turned aside. However, Middleton's
party was soon captured by a band of
Sioux pursuing the buffalo herd. They
were the same Indians who had captured
Bumppo, Paul, and Ellen once before.
At the .same time Ishmael and his sons
approached on foot in search of the two
girls. The Indians remounted and gave
horses to their captives so that all could
ride to Ishmael's camp while he and his
sons were away. During the Indian raid
on the camp, Bumppo helped his friends
escape on horseback.
Tney rode as far as possible before
making camp for the night. But in the
morning they found that the Sioux had
followed them and had set fire to the
prairie in order to drive them into the
open. Bumppo rescued the party by
burning off the nearby prairie before the
larger fire reached it. As they started off,
they met the lone Hard-Heart again.
From him they learned that the Sioux
and Ishmael's family had joined forces in
order to search for them. Since Hard-
Heart and the little band had a common
enemy in the Sioux, he agreed to take
them to his Pawnee village for protection.
In order to evade their pursuers, the
fugitives crossed a nearby river. As they
reached the far bank the Sioux appeared
on the opposite shore. That night the
fugitives remained free, but snow fell and
made it impossible for them to escape
without being tracked. They were
captured and taken to the Sioux village.
Hard-Heart, Paul, and Middleton were
bound by their savage captors. Out of
respect for his age, Bumppo was allowed
to roam freely, but he declined to leave
his friends. The women were placed in
the lodge of the Sioux chief.
Using Bumppo as an interpreter, the
Sioux chief asked Inez to be his wife.
At the same time Ishmael asked the chief
to hand over to him Inez, Ellen, and
Bumppo, as had been previously agreed.
When the chief refused, Ishmael
departed angrily.
The Indians then gathered in council
to decide the fate of Hard-Heart, and
many wished to torture him to death.
But an old warrier stepped forward and
declared that he wished to make the
Pawnee his adopted son. Hard-Heart,
however, refused to become a member of
the Sioux tribe. The Sioux began their
torture, but in the midst of it Hard-Heart
escaped and joined a war party of his
own Pawnees, who arrived on the scene
at that moment.
Leaving their women to guard the
prisoners, the Sioux prepared to fight.
The braves of the two tribes gathered on
the opposite banks of a river, neither side
daring to make the first move. Then
Hard-Heart challenged the Sioux chief
to single combat.
Meanwhile, Bumppo helped the rest
of the captives to escape. Shortly
afterward they fell once more into the hands
of Ishmael.
Hard-Heart was victorious in the
single-handed combat, and his warriors
put the Sioux to flight in the battle
which followed.
The next morning Ishmael held a
court of justice in order to deal with his
captives. He realized his mistake in
carrying Inez away from her husband and
allowed the couple their freedom. He
gave Ellen her choice of remaining with
nis family or going with Paul. She chose
to go witn her lover. Ishmael allowed Dr.
Battius his freedom because he did not
think the scientist worth bothering about.
Then Bumppo came up for judgment.
Ishmael still believed that Bumppo had
shot his son, Asa. Bumppo, however,
revealed that it was really Abiram who had
done the cowardly deed. Abiram
confessed his crime and then fainted. Ish-
3037

mael was reluctant to pronounce
judgment on his brother-in-law, but he felt
it his duty to do so. That evening he
gave Abiram the choice of starving to
death or hanging himself. Late that night
Ishmael and Esther returned to find that
Abiram had hanged himself. Thev buried
him and continued on their way back
to the frontier settlements.
Middleton, Paul, and the girls invited
Bumppo to return to the settlements with
them, where they would make
comfortable his last days. He refused, giving as
his reason his desire to die away from
civilization. He chose to remain in the
Pawnee village with Hard-Heart.
A year later, when Middleton's duties
as an army officer brought him near the
Pawnee village, he determined to pay
Bumppo a visit. Arriving at the camp,
Middleton found the old trapper near
death. It was late afternoon. Bumppo
revived enough to greet his old friend.
At sundown, however, he seemed to be
breathing his last. As the sun sank
beneath the horizon, he made one last
tremendous effort. He rose to his feet
and, as if answering a roll call, he uttered
a loud and firm "Here" — then fell back
dead into the arms of his friends.
3038

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY
Type of work: Essay
Author: Dssiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536)
First published: 1511
Although written some four hundred
and fifty years ago, The Praise of Folly
is still an effective analytic examination
of man's abilities and vanities. It not only
gives the modern reader an idea of the
struggle of the early humanists in their
effort to rid the world of the conventions
and forms of the Middle Ages, but it
also gives him some insight into those
problems of living with which we are
still faced today.
Erasmus himself never thought very
highly of this work which, even though
written quickly and as something of a
jest, is the one for which he is best
remembered. He wrote it in about seven
days in 1509 while he was recovering
from an illness at the home of his
English friend, Sir Thomas More. And it was
not until two years after its writing that
he had the book secretly printed in
France. However, the fact that there
were at least seven editions within a few
months proves its immediate success and
popularity.
Because of this work and several others
Erasmus became one of the most popular
men of letters of his time, and,
consequently, he became one of the most
influential. He was of prime importance in
the spread of humanism throughout the
northern part of Europe and was
instrumental in many aspects of both the
Reformation and the later phase of the
Renaissance. Everything he did was to aid
man in tearing away the veils of foolish
traditions and customs and to help him
find the road back to the true God and
to his true self.
The form itself is an immediate
indication of the type of work that the book
is to be. Written as a parody of a classical
oration, the essay sets Folly as the orator.
Her Subject is society and she quickly be-
comes a many-sided symbol which stands
for all that is natural in man, for all his
misdirected effo-t, and for all of his
attempts to get the wrong things out of
life. She discusses the problem of man's
wisdom and tells how it can be united
with man's action to gain success in a
world of follv; she is concerned with the
way in which reason and simple
Christian advice can be presented to mankind;
she wonders what the Christian humanist
can do for himself and the world. Parody,
irony, and satire are used throughout the
essay to show man what he does and what
he should do. And no one is spared.
Neither king nor prince, pope nor priest,
aristocrat nor working man escapes the
indignation which Erasmus feels toward
society.
At the beginning of her oration Folly
declares that she is giving a eulogy of
herself, and she justifies the impertinence
by saying that she knows herself better
than anvone else and that no one else
will do it for her. Her father, she says,
is Plutus. the real father of all men and
gods, and she was born out of his passion
for Youth. Significantly, her birth took
place in the Fortunate Isles, and she lists
among her followers Drunkenness,
Ignorance, Self-love, Flattery, Forgetfulness,
Laziness, Pleasure, Madness, Sensuality,
Intemperance, and Sound Sleep—all of
whom help her to gain control of all
things.
It is Folly, for instance, who leads man
to marriage and the conception of life,
thus prolonging this life that is so
foolish. It is Pleasure, one of her followers,
who makes life bearable at all. It is For-
getfulness who makes youth such a
carefree time, and who restores this same
characteristic to old age, thereby bringing
about a second childhood. By throwing
off care and avoiding wisdom, we are told,
one can achieve perpetual youth.
Folly goes on to say that she is the
source of all that is pleasurable in life.
3039

Man will never be completely divorced
from Folly because he is ruled more by
passion than by reason, and the two
most important aspects of passion are
anger and lust. One of the chief sources
of man's pleasure, of course, is women,
who are even more subiect to folly than
men. Men's coarser looks are a result of
the infection of wisdom.
Friendship also derives from Folly
because it makes us ignore the faults and
defects of other people. Marriage itself is
held together with compromise,
infatuation, and duplicity. Without Folly man
could not get along with others; he would
soon begin to hate himself and
everything would seem sordid and loathsome.
Folly praises herself under the guise of
Prudence because she allows man to have
first-hand experience with the world. She
frees us from the shame and fear which
cloud our minds and inhibit our actions,
thus preventing any real experience.
Because of Prudence we 50 along with the
crowd, which is Folly. Indeed, it is Folly
who has caused all the great
achievements of mankind, wisdom and learning
are no great help. Everything that man
does is motivated by self-love, vainglory,
flattery, or other followers.
To lead such a life of folly, error, and
ignorance is to be human; it is to express
one's true nature. All other forms of life
are content with limitations but man is
vainly ambitious. The most ignorant men
are the happiest and some of the most
deluded men are those who delight in
telling lies. As an example, we are asked
to consider the priests—those who propose
to gain happiness by relying on magic
charms and prayers, saints and particular
rites. One cannot find happiness, we are
told, without Follv, since all our
emotions belong to Folly, and happiness
depends on expressing our human nature
which is full of Folly.
One of the most foolish of men,
therefore, is that person who tries to deny his
true nature and find happiness through
the Christian religion. Folly proves that
this religion has more to do with her own
nature than with wisdom by showing that
children, women, old people and fools
take more delight in it than anyone else.
It is they who are always nearest the
altars. In the way that Christianity is most
often taught and practiced, man must
deny his true nature by disdaining life
and preferring death. He must overlook
injuries, avoid pleasure, and feast on
hunger, vigils, tears, and labors. He must
give up and scorn all phvsical pleasures,
or at least he must take them more lightly
than he does spiritual pleasures.
Folly is at her most serious when she
tells us that this is the most foolish way,
and the only sure way, to true happiness.
Only by forgetting our bodies and
everything physical can we approach this goal.
We must give ourselves up completely to
the spiritual aspects of life in order to
achieve it. Only a very few men are able
to accomplish this task completely enough
while in this world, in order to approach
an experience which she tells us is very
close to madness. This madness, in turn,
is similar to the heavenly joys that one
will experience after death when the
spirit has completely left the body.
3040

PRECIOUS BANE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mary Webb (1881-1927)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Prudence Sarn, a harelipped girl
Gideon, her brother
Wizard Beguildy, an evil neighbor
Jancis Beguildy, his daughter
Kester Woodseaves, the weaver
Critique:
Just as Prudence Sam seemed to view
the past events of her life through a
veil, so she tells her story. The story
is not autobiographical, but into it Mrs.
Webb put many experiences of her own
youth. In this novel man seems to be
controlled by forces of nature. The Bane,
the poison that was in Gideon Sarn,
moved him even to murder, for powers
outside him drove him beyond his will.
But when nature was satisfied, the Bane
was exorcised; and peace came to the
Sams.
The Story:
The country people said there had
been something queer about the Sarn
family ever since old Timothy Sarn was
struck by forked lightning. The
lightning seemed to have gone into Timothy
and into all the Sarns. In Prue's father
the lightning took the form of a raving
temper, and in Prue's brother Gideon
the lightning was the more frightening
because it was quiet but deadly. Dogs
and horses turned away from Gideon's
gray eyes. Prue understood her brother
better than most, but even she was
frightened when Gideon offered to be
the sin-eater at their father's funeral.
For a sin-eater took the sins of the dead
person and sold his soul for a price.
Gideon's price was the farm which would
have been his mother's. Mrs. Sarn feared
to accept the terms, for a sin-eater's
destiny was dreadful; but she feared more
to let her husband go to his grave with
all his sins, and so she gave Gideon the
farm.
On the night after the funeral, Gideon
told Prue his plans. They were going
to become rich, own a house in town,
and have fine clothes and beautiful
furniture. Gideon promised Prue that for
her help he would give her fifty pounds
to get her harelip cured. He warned
her, however, that he would work her
as he would an animal. Because Prue
had hated her harelip for many years,
she consented to his terms. They signed
an agreement and took an oath on the
Bible that Gideon would be the master
and Prue his servant.
Prue was also to learn to read and
write and do sums so that she could keep
the farm accounts. Her teacher would
be Wizard Beguildy, a neighbor who
was preached against in church because
he earned his living by working spells
and charms. Wizard was the father of
Jancis Beguildy, a childhood friend of
Prue and Gideon.
During the next four years Prue and
Gideon slaved long hours in the field.
Prue grew thinner and thinner and their
mother became quite feeble. She was
compelled to watch the pigs, for Gideon
would let no one be idle. The farm
prospered.
One part of Gideon's plan did not
PRECIOUS BANE by Mary Webb. By permission of the publishers. E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright.
1926, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
3041

work out, however, as he had arranged.
In love with Jancis Beguildy, he
decided that he would make his fortune
and then marry her. Jancis did not want
to wait that long, but Gideon would not
change his mind.
Gideon and Jancis were handfasted
and Jancis had a love-spinning, even
though her father swore that she could
never marry Gideon. At the
love-spinning Prue first saw Kester Woodseaves,
the weaver. When Kester came into the
room, it seemed to Prue that a beautiful
mist surrounded her. Then she turned
sadly away. Gideon had told her often
enough that no man would love a girl
with a harelip.
A few days after the spinning Jancis
went to tell Gideon that her father
threatened either to sell her to a rich
squire for his pleasure or to hire her
out for three years as a dairymaid. Her
only salvation was immediate marriage
to Gideon. But Gideon told her that
he had not made enough money, that
she must be bound over for three years.
Even Jancis' tears would not move him.
Jancis was sent to work for Mr. and
Mrs. Grimble.
After several months Jancis ran away
from the Grimble farm. Because Gideon
had a good crop of grain coming up,
he promised to marry her after the
harvest. Wizard Beguildy still swore that
there would be no wedding, and Prue
was afraid.
One day, as Prue was walking through
the fields, Kester met her. When she
tried to hide her face, Kester took her
by the shoulders and looked straight into
her eyes. He did not laugh, but talked
to Prue as a man talks to a woman who
is beautiful and attractive. His words
were almost more than Prue could bear.
Never had there been such a harvest.
Gideon's crop was piled in high ricks,
and all the neighbor folks who had
helped with the harvest came to the
house to dance and feast. As soon as
the grain buyer came to buy the crop,
Jancis and Gideon would be married.
But Gideon, unable to wait until their
wedding, went to Jancis* home to be
with her. Mrs. Beguildy tricked her
husband into leaving so that the lovers
could be together* Wizard Beguildy,
arriving home early, found Jancis and
Gideon in bed together, and the two men
quarreled. Prue was more frightened
than ever.
Prue had reason for her premonition of
danger, for that night Wizard set the
ricks on fire and everything burned
except the house and the barn. Gideon was
like a madman. When Jancis tried to
comfort him, he said she was cursed by
her father's blood, and he drove her away.
He tried to get to Wizard to kill him,
but Prue prevented this deed by having
Wizard arrested. Gideon cursed the
Beguildy family, even Jancis. Jancis
swooned and lay for days in a trance.
She and her mother were put off their
farm, for no landowner would have the
family of an arsonist on his land.
Gideon began to rebuild his dream,
but Jancis was no longer a part of it.
He worked himself and Prue and their
mother almost to death. When the
mother became too weak to work, Gideon
put poison into her tea, for he would feed
no one who could not earn her way.
Prue knew that her brother's mind was
deranged after the fire, but she had
not known that he would kill for money.
Jancis returned with Gideon's baby.
When Gideon drove her out of the
house, Jancis took her baby to the pond
and drowned herself and her child.
Gideon began to see visions. He told Prue
often that he had seen Jancis or his
mother, and sometimes he heard Jancis
singing. He talked queerly about the
past, about his love for Jancis. He no
longer wanted the money that had been
his whole life. One day he rowed out
on the pond and threw himself into the
water and drowned. Prue was left alone.
Her vow to Gideon ended, Prue
decided to leave the farm. When she
rounded up the livestock and went into
the village to sell them, the people called
her a witch and blamed all the trouble
on her harelip. They said that the

forked lightning was in her worse than
in all the other Sarns, and they put
her in the ducking chair and ducked
her in the pond until she was senseless.
When she awakened, Kester was beside
her, to Tift her upon his horse and take
her away to be his wife. Prue knew then
that the forked lightning was not in
her; the curse of the Sarns had been
lifted.
3043

PREJUDICES: Six Series
Type of work: Essays on social and literary themes
Author: H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
First published: 1919-1927
During the fantastic decade of the
1920's, few literary events were so eagerly
awaited as the appearance of a new
volume of Mencken's Prejudices, so that
one might enjoy the spectacle of the Sage
of Baltimore as he pulled yet another
popular idol down from its moss-covered
pedestal and gloated over the fragments.
This iconoclasm was accomplished with
so much gusto and with such vigorous
and picturesque language as to enchant
a whole generation that had grown weary
of the solemnity of much American
writing. And the decade badly needed an
iconoclast, for it must be remembered
that what is now thought of as "the jazz
age" was also the era of the Ku Klux Klan
and the Anti-Saloon League, of Babbittry
and Boosterism.
The essays in these volumes can be
divided into two categories: literary
criticism and criticism of the American scene
as it appeared at that time. Literary
criticism Mencken defined as a "catalytic
process," with the critic serving as the
catalyst. Actually, as a critic Mencken
derived mainly from James Huneker,
whom he enormously admired and had
known personally. Huneker had been
familiar with Continental writers, then not
too well known in America; his criticism
was essentially impressionistic, often
written in breezy, epigrammatic language.
Mencken carried certain of these
characteristics much further; indeed, his
verbal acrobatics became his hallmark.
It was a racy, pungent style, very
effective for the "debunking" then so popular
and deliberately calculated to drive
conservative readers into frenzies. His chief
target, at which he never grew tired of
heaving bricks, was the Puritan tradition
in American literature with its
consequent timidity, stuffiness, and narrow-
mindedness. As he saw it, the Puritan
was afraid of aesthetic emotion and thus
could neither create nor enjoy art. This
fear had inhibited American literature,
he claimed, and had made American
criticism equally timid and conventional.
Further, criticism had fallen into the
hands of the professors, and there was
nothing—not even a prohibition agent—
that Mencken detested so much as the
average American university professor.
Hence, such men as Paul Elmer More,
Irving Babbitt, Stuart P. Sherman, and
William Lyon Phelps had scorn poured
over them for years.
It is ironic that the critical writings
of some of these men have withstood the
passage of time more successfully than
have those of Mencken. For though less
a geographical provincial than they, he
was more provincial in time and was
interested mainly in the contemporary. Of
the older native writers, he really admired
only Poe, Twain, and Whitman—the
nonconformists. Even among the moderns his
preferences were curiously limited. He
had great regard for Conrad and Dreiser,
but he overlooked much of the talent that
was budding during the 1920's. That he
should have overpraised some of his
contemporaries, Cabell, for example, should
not be held against him; few critics are
sufficiently detached to escape this fault.
Dreiser was an important writer but not
the "colossal phenomenon" that Mencken
called him. But his greatest failure as a
critic was his blindness to poetry. In the
Third Series of Prejudices he included
an essay, "The Poet and His Art," a
study so full of false assumptions, logical
fallacies, and plain misstatements of fact
that it is a gruesome relic for a critic to
have left behind him. And his remarks on
Dante stagger belief: Dante's theology
was unacceptable to Mencken; therefore,
Dante could not really have believed it,
and The Divine Comedy was, he said, a
satire on the whole Christian doctrine of
heaven and hell. Surely no gem that
Mencken garnered from the Bible Belt
S044

could equal this statement in absurdity.
The essays dealing with the national
scene were written in the same slashing
manner and naturally infuriated far more
readers, since Mencken attacked men,
institutions, and ideas more familiar to
them. Obviously, many of these pieces
have little significance now, for they
dealt with situations peculiar to that
decade. But some of them are still valid:
"The Sahara of the Bozart" (Second
Series) is in some ways almost as true of
the South today as it was in 1920; his
comments on the farmer ("The
Husbandman," Fourth Series) are even more
appropriate. And his dissections of such
eminent figures as Theodore Roosevelt
and Thorstein Veblen are still funny.
Of Americans in general, Mencken
had a low opinion, considering them a
mongrel people incapable of high spiritual
aspiration. His opinion of democracy was
equally low. It was, he felt, merely a
scheme to hearten the have-nots in their
unending battle with the haves. The
inferiority of Americans Mencken
attributed to the lack of a genuine aristocracy
and to Puritanism. Without an
aristocracy, there could be no real leadership
in America, and the vacuum would
inevitably be filled by politicians, whom he
detested. Nor did he have any faith in
reform or reformers.
As for Puritanism, Mencken believed
that it had always been the dominant
force in our history and had left
Americans the narrow-minded victims of
religious bigotry. The predominance during
the 1920's of the more extreme forms of
Fundamentalism gave some support to
his argument. But in his attacks on
religion he made the mistake of throwing
the baby out with the bath water; since
he was himself a complete skeptic, he
simply could not conceive of such a
creature as a sincere and yet intelligent
Christian. The terms were to him
incompatible; quite genuinely, he could see no
difference between Billy Sunday and
Archbishop Temple.
Mencken's enemies were always
urging him, in anguished tones, to leave this
country if he found it so distasteful. His
reply was that nowhere else could so
much entertainment be had so cheaply.
According to his calculations, it cost him
personally only eighty cents a year to
maintain Harding in the White House.
Where could a better show be found for
the money?
In spite of his exaggerations, crudities,
and often bad taste, Mencken performed
a valuable service. America always needs
a gadfly, and his cynical wit provided the
sting at just the right moment.
Unfortunately, he has had no successor.
3045

THE PRELUDE
Type of work: Poem
Author: William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
First published: 1850
Planned as the introductory portion of
a long autobiographical and
philosophical poem that was never finished, The
Prelude, or, Growth of a Poet's Mind, was
not published until shortly after
Wordsworth's death in 1850. The projected,
long poem, The Recluse, was to
present a comprehensive development of the
poet's views on man, society, and nature,
but of the projected three parts, only the
second, The Excursion (1814) was ever
completed and published.
The Prelude was to provide the
autobiographical introduction to The Recluse,
tracing the development of the poet and
his mind to the point where he was ready
to formulate his beliefs and philosophy.
Written between 1799 and 1805 and
addressed to Coleridge as the important
"Friend/* the poem is a long and
ambitious work, an attempt in blank verse to
trace the history and development of the
poet's feelings, ideas, and convictions.
Since Wordsworth so strongly
advocated the use of poetry for individual
emotions and insights, it is appropriate
that we should have such a thorough
description of the development of his
mind. In addition, The Prelude contains
some fine passages that illustrate the
clarity and force of Wordsworth's use of
language to convey both a precise
description and a sense of the meaning of nature.
Although the poem suffers from long
prosaic stretches, it also contains much
of the sense of the calm beauty and power
of nature which distinguishes
Wordsworth's verse.
The poem begins with an account of
the poet's childhood in the English Lake
Country, and Wordsworth, with many
digressions addressed to nature and its
power, wisdom, and infusing spirit, tells
of the influence of nature on his solitary
childhood. Some of the sense of awe and
pleasure that he found in nature, as well
as some of his clearest and most
penetrating use of diction, is evident in the
following passage. Young Wordsworth
has found a boat in a cave, unchained
the boat, and rowed out into the center
of a lake. He continues:
. . . lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a
swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep
till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak,
, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck
again,
And growing still in stature the grim
shape
Towered up between me and the stars,
and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its
own
And measured motion like a living
thing,
Strode after me.
The image of the peak is invested with
such simplicity and power that it is
transformed into a kind of force holding
terror and beauty for the guilty boy who
has stolen a ride in a boat.
In describing his early years, the poet
speaks of his youthful love of freedom
and liberty. He found this sense of
freedom in his rambles through the woods
and on mountain paths where he did not
feel fettered by the claims of society and
school work. But, he reassures the reader,
he was docile and obedient externally,
keeping his rebellion and sense of
freedom as a matter of the spirit. This
mixture of the calm and docile exterior with
the independent and rebellious interior
seems part of the origin of Wordsworth's
ability to control highly individualistic
thought in calm, dignified, unostentatious
verse forms and diction. It is not that,
in The Prelude, Wordsworth uses the
3046

speech of common man. His speech is
often abstract, speculative, pervaded with
a sense of the mystery and meaning of
nature. Rather, Wordsworth's diction, at
its best, has a dignity and calm control, a
lack of pretense, through which the force
of his inner meaning gently radiates.
Wordsworth continues his journey
through Cambridge, telling of
experiences there, discussing the fact that he
neither was nor cared to be a scholar.
He still, despite his studies, concentrates
inwardly on the spirit of things, the
power of nature and the impetus nature
gives to his feelings. At this point,
Wordsworth begins to speculate on the
differences between reason and emotion or
passion, to equate the reason with the
scholars and the emotion with his own
apprehension of the world of nature:
But all the meditations of mankind,
Yea, all the adamantine holds of truth
By reason built, or passion, which itself
Is highest reason in a soul sublime;
Throughout the poem, Wordsworth
makes the distinction between reason
and passion, attributing an ultimate
sterility to the quality of reason, while
glorifying the element of passion or
imagination.
Wordsworth tells next of his journey
to the Alps after leaving Cambridge. The
mountains there reminded him of the
mountains familiar in his childhood, and
he felt again, even more keenly, the
majesty and awe of the scenery reflected
in his spirit. He begins, more strongly,
to feel his kinship with nature. In
perhaps the dullest section of the poem, he
describes his life among the crowds and
industries of London, along with his
tours of the historical monuments, after
his return from Europe. Dissatisfied with
life in London, he then went to France
during the early stages of the French
Revolution. In this section he expresses
his feeling that he had not cared for man
sufficiently, that, in his devotion to
nature, he has neglected his feeling for his
fellow creatures. Recalling his early love
for freedom and liberty and adding his
new conviction of the importance of
political liberty for man, Wordsworth
became strongly attracted to the cause of
the French Revolution, feeling, as he said
in The Prelude, that he was tied
emotionally and spiritually to the popular
struggle against the monarchy. But the
bloodiness of the revolution, popular
ingratitude and popular refusal to
acknowledge the heroes who championed its cause
with greatest fervor and sincerity, soon
disillusioned Wordsworth. Beginning to
feel that blood had poisoned the cause of
liberty, he returned to England.
Wordsworth relates how, disillusioned
and alone, he sought to bring meaning
back into his life. The penultimate
section of The Prelude is titled "Imagination
and Taste, How Impaired and Restored."
At that period of his life he turned back
to nature, finding there not solace alone
but a sense of law and order that was
lacking in man. He began to realize the
difference in scale between nature and
man, the range and effect of nature in
comparison to the tiny inefFectuality of
man. His sections of resolution frequently
include passages like the following
interpolation in the midst of a narrative sec
tion:
O Soul of Nature! that, by laws divine
Sustained and governed, still dost
overflow
With an impassioned life, what feeble
ones
Walk on this earth!
In his view, nature provides not only
awe and spiritual impetus for man, but
also order, rules of conduct, and the
means of man's molding his behavior
on this planet. In the final sections of
the poem, Wordsworth uses nature as
the authority for his new morality and
assumes a much more overtly moral tone.
He didactically advocates the importance
of faith, of obedience, of not relying on
man's unaided reason in human affairs.
What was, in the earlier sections, the
praise of emotion and freedom in
opposition to rational restraint becomes the
praise of the restraint of faith and spirit
3047

in opposition to rational license. This
change is illustrative of the change in
Wordsworth's whole career from the poet
advocating the simple joy and freedom
of nature to the sage defending abstract
and conventional truths. His attitude is
demonstrated in the following passage*
from the conclusion of the poem:
. . . but, the dawn beginning now
To re-appear, 'twas proved that not in
vain
I had been taught to reverence a Power
That is the visible quality and shape
And image of right reason; that matures
Her processes by steadfast laws; gives
birth
To no impatient or fallacious hopes,
No heat of passion or excessive zeal,
No vain conceits; provokes to no quick
turns
Of self-applauding intellect; but trains
To meekness, and exalts by humble
faith.
As The Prelude shows Wordsworth's
changing attitudes toward nature and
man, both relating and illustrating the
changes and development in his mind, so
the poem also shows the different
characteristics of Wordsworth's diction and
poetic power. No other single poem has
so much of his clear reverence for nature
expressed with greater power and
simplicity along with so much of his
moralizing expressed with repetitive flatness.
The Prelude is truly an autobiographical
poem, a monument to the career, the
changing ideas, and the changing use of
poetry of and by William Wordsworth.
3048

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Rural England
First published: 1813
Principal characters:
Mr. Bennet, father of five daughters
Mrs. Bennet, his wife
Elizabeth Bennet, her father's favorite
Jane Bennet, the family beauty
Mary,
Catherine (Kitty), and
Lydia Bennet, younger sisters
Mr. Bingley, an eligible bachelor
Caroline Bingley, tiis sister
Mr. Darcy, a proud gentleman, Bingley's friend
Mr. Collins, a conceited bore
Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Collins' arrogant patroness
Critique:
Elizabeth Bennet, one of the most
delightful heroines of all time, would be
enough to make Pride and Prejudice
outstanding among English novels. In
addition, the book has a beautifully
symmetrical plot in which the action rises and falls
as inevitably as does an ocean wave.
Many of the other characters besides
Elizabeth are superbly drawn. Jane
Austen's delicate but telling satire of the
English country gendefolk of her day—
and indeed of her
neighborhood—remains a delightful commentary upon the
little foibles of human nature.
The Story:
The chief business of Mrs. Bennet's
life was to find suitable husbands for her
five daughters. Consequently she heard
with elation that Netherfield Park, one
of the great houses of the neighborhood,
had been let to a London gentleman
named Mr. Bingley. Gossip such as Mrs.
Bennet loved reported him a rich and
altogether eligible young bachelor. Mr.
Bennet heard the news with his usual
dry calmness, suggesting in his mild way
that perhaps Bingley was not moving into
the county for the single purpose of
marrying one of the Bennet daughters.
Mr. Bingley's first public appearance
in the neighborhood was at a ball. With
him were nis two sisters, the husband of
the older, and Mr. Darcy, Bingley's
friend. Bingley was an immediate
success in local society, and he and Jane,
the oldest Bennet daughter, a pretty girl
of sweet and gentle disposition, were
attracted to each other at once. His friend,
Darcy, however, created a bad impression,
seeming cold and extremely proud. In
particular, he insulted Elizabeth Bennet,
a girl of spirit and intelligence and her
father's favorite. He refused to dance
with her when she was sitting down for
lack of a partner, and he said in her
hearing that he was in no mood to prefer
young ladies slighted by other men. On
future occasions, however, he began to
admire Elizabeth in spite of himself. At
a later ball she had the satisfaction of
refusing him a dance.
Jane's romance with Bingley flourished
quietly, aided by family calls, dinners,
and balls. His sisters pretended great
fondness for Jane, who believed them
completely sincere. The more critical and
discerning Elizabeth suspected them of
hypocrisy, and quite righdy, for they
made great fun of Jane's relations,
especially her vulgar, garrulous mother and
her two ill-bred officer-mad younger sis-
3049

ters. Miss Caroline Bingley, who was
eager to marry Darcy and shrewdly aware
of his growing admiration for Elizabeth,
was especially loud in her ridicule of the
Bennet family. Elizabeth herself became
Caroline's particular target when she
walked three muddy miles to visit Jane,
who was sick with a cold at Netherfield
Park after a ride through the rain to
accept an invitation from the Bingley sisters.
Until Jane was able to be moved home,
Elizabeth stayed to nurse her. During
her visit Elizabeth received enough
attention from Darcy to make Caroline
Bingley long sincerely for Jane's recovery.
Nor were her fears ill-founded. Darcy
admitted to himself that he would be in
some danger from the charm of Elizabeth,
if it were not for her inferior family
connections.
Elizabeth now acquired a new admirer
in the person of Mr. Collins, a
ridiculously pompous clergyman and a distant
cousin of the Bennets, who would some
day inherit Mr. Bennet's property
because that gentleman had nb male heir.
Mr. Collins' patroness, Lady Catherine
de Bourgh, had urged him to marry, and
he, always obsequiously obedient to her
wishes, hastened to comply. Thinking to
alleviate the hardship caused the Bennet
sisters by the entail which gave their
father's property to him, Mr. Collins first
proposed to Elizabeth. Much to hei
mother's displeasure and her father's joy
she firmly and promptly rejected him.
He almost immediately transferred his
affections to Elizabeth's best friend,
Charlotte Lucas, who, twenty-seven and
somewhat homely, accepted at once his offer
of marriage.
During Mr. Collins' visit, the younger
Bennet sisters, Kitty and Lydia, on one of
their many walks to Meryton, met a
fascinating new officer, Mr. Wickham,
stationed with the regiment there.
Outwardly charming, he became a favorite
among the ladies, even with Elizabeth.
She was willing to believe the story that
he had been cheated out of an inheritance
left him by his godfather, Darcy's father.
Her suspicions of Darcy's arrogant and
grasping nature deepened when
Wickham did not come to a ball given by the
Bingleys, a dance at which Darcy was
present.
Soon after the ball, the entire Bingley
party suddenly left Netherfield Park.
They departed with no intention of
returning, as Caroline wrote Jane in a short
farewell note which hinted that Bingley
might soon become engaged to Darcy's
sister. Jane accepted this news at face
value and believed that her friend
Caroline was telling her gently that her
brother loved elsewhere, and that she
must cease to hope. Elizabeth, however,
was sure of a plot by Darcy and Bingley's
sisters to separate him and Jane. She
persuaded Jane that Bingley did love her and
that he would return to Hertfordshire
before the winter was over. Jane almost
believed her until she received a letter
from Caroline assuring her that they were
all settled in London for the winter. Even
after Jane told her this news, Elizabeth
remained convinced of Bingley's affection
for her sister, and deplored the lack of
resolution which made him putty in the
hands of his designing friend.
About that time Mrs. Bennet's sister,
Mrs. Gardiner, an amiable and
intelligent woman with a great deal of affection
for her two oldest nieces, arrived for a
Christmas visit. She suggested to the
Bennets that Jane return to London with
her for a rest and change of scene and —
so it was understood between Mrs.
Gardiner and Elizabeth — to renew her
acquaintance with Bingley. Elizabeth, not
too hopeful for the success of the plan,
pointed out that proud Darcy would
never let his friend call on Jane in the
unfashionable London street on which
the Gardiners lived. Jane accepted the
invitation, however, and she and Mrs.
Gardiner set out for London.
The time drew near for the wedding
of Elizabeth's friend, Charlotte Lucas, to
the obnoxious Mr. Collins. Charlotte
asked Elizabeth to visit her in Kent. In
spite of her feeling that there could be
little pleasure in such a visit, Elizabeth
promised to do so. She felt that in. taking
S050

such a husband Charlotte was marrying
simply for the sake of an establishment,
as was indeed the case. Since she herself
could not sympathize with her friend's
action, Elizabeth thought their days of
real intimacy were over. As March
approached, however, she found herself
eager to see her friend, and she set out
with pleasure on the journey with
Charlotte's father and sister. On their way,
the party stopped in London to see the
Gardiners and Jane, Elizabeth found her
sister well and outwardly happy, though
she had not seen Bingley and his sisters
had paid only one call. Elizabeth was
sure Bingley had not been told of Jane's
presence in London and blamed Darcy
for keeping it from him.
Soon after arriving at the Collins'
home, the whole party was honored, as
Mr. Collins repeatedly assured them, by a
dinner invitation from Lady Catherine de
Bourgh, Darcy's aunt and Mr. Collins*
patroness. Elizabeth found Lady
Catherine a haughty, ill-mannered woman
and her daughter thin, sickly, and shy.
Lady Catherine was extremely fond of
inquiring into the affairs of others and
giving them unasked advice. Elizabeth
turned off the meddling old woman's
questions with cool indirectness, and saw
from the effect that she was probably the
first who had dared to do so.
Soon after Elizabeth's arrival, Darcy
came to visit his aunt and cousin. He
called frequently at the parsonage, and
he and Elizabeth resumed their
conversational fencing matches. His rather
stilted attentions were suddenly climaxed
by a proposal of marriage, but one
couched in such proud and
condescending terms that Elizabeth indignantly
refused him. When he requested her
reason for such an emphatic rejection, she
mentioned his part in separating Bingley
and Jane, and also his mistreatment of
Wickham. Angry, he left abruptly, but
the next day brought a letter answering
her charges. He did not deny his part in
separating Jane and Bingley, but he gave
as his reasons the improprieties of Mrs.
Bennet and her younger daughters, and
also his sincere belief that Jane did not
love Bingley As for his alleged
mistreatment of Wickham, he proved that he
had in reality acted most generously
toward the unprincipled Wickham, who
had repaid his kindness by attempting to
elope with Darcy's young sister.
Elizabeth, at first incensed at the proud tones
in which he wrote, was at length forced
to acknowledge the justice of all he said,
and her prejudice against him began to
weaken. Without seeing him again, she
returned home.
She found her younger sisters
clamoring to go to Brighton, where the regiment
formerly stationed at Meryton had been
ordered. When an invitation came to
Lydia from a young officer's wife, Lydia
was allowed to accept it over Elizabeth's
protests. Elizabeth herself was asked by
the Gardiners to go with them on a tour
which would take them into Derbyshire,
Darcy's home county. She accepted,
reasoning that she was not very likely to
meet Darcy merely by going into the
same county with him. While they were
there, however, Mrs. Gardiner decided
they should visit Pemberly, Darcy's home.
Elizabeth made several excuses, but her
aunt was insistent. Then, learning that
the Darcy family was not at home,
Elizabeth consented to go.
At Pemberly, an unexpected and most
embarrassing meeting took place between
Elizabeth and Darcy. He was more polite
than Elizabeth had ever known him to
be, and asked permission for his sister to
call upon her. The call was duly paid
and returned, but the pleasant intercourse
between the Darcys and Elizabeth's party
was suddenly cut short when a letter
came from Jane telling Elizabeth that
Lydia had run away with Wickham.
Elizabeth told Darcy what had happened,
and she and the Gardiners left for home
at once. After several days the runaway
couple was located and a marriage
arranged between them. When Lydia came
home as heedless as ever, she told
Elizabeth that Darcy had attended her
wedding. Elizabeth, suspecting the truth,
learned from Mrs. Gardiner that it was
3051

indeed Darcy who brought about the
marriage by giving Wickham money.
Soon after Lydia and Wickham left,
Bingley came back to Netherfield Park,
and with him came Darcy. Elizabeth,
now more favorably inclined to him than
ever before, hoped his coming meant that
he still loved her, but he gave no sign.
Bingley and Jane, on the other hand,
were still obviously in love with each
other, and became engaged, to the great
satisfaction of Mrs. Bennet. Soon
afterward Lady Catherine paid the Bennets an
unexpected call. She had heard it
rumored that Darcy was engaged to
Elizabeth. Hoping to marry her own
daughter to Darcy, she had cnarged down with
characteristic bad manners to order
Elizabeth not to accept his proposal. The
spirited girl was not to be intimidated by
the bullying Lady Catherine and coolly
refused to promise not to marry Darcy.
She was far from certain she would have
another chance, but she had not long to
wonder. Lady Catherine, unluckily for
her own purpose, repeated to Darcy the
substance of her conversation with
Elizabeth, and he knew Elizabeth well enough
to surmise that her feelings toward hiro
had greatly changed. He returned to
Netherfield Park, and he and Elizabeth
became engaged. Pride had been humbled
and prejudice dissolved.
3052

THE PRINCE
Principal personages:
Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna
Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan
Pope Alexander VI, Roderigo Borgia, father of Cesare and Lucrezia
Borgia
Pope Julius II
Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forli
Louis XII, King of France
Type of work: Philosophy of politics
Author: Niccol6 Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Time: Fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Locale: Principally Italy
First published: 1532
This is the book that gives meaning to
the critical adjective "Machiavellian." It
is an ingenious and fascinating study of
the art of practical politics, composed by
a man who never rose higher than the
position of secretary to the Second
Chancery in Florence. The success of his book
is due partly to his wit and partly to his
having known some of the most clever
and powerful rogues of the Renaissance.
His model for the "Prince" was Cesare
Borgia, a man who used all means of
conquest, including murder, to achieve and
hold political position.
Machiavelli never pretended that his
book was a guide to the virtuous. On the
other hand, he did not set out to
prescribe the way to wickedness. He meant
his account to be a practical guide to
political power, and through a
combination of experience, logic, and imagination
he constructed one of the most intriguing
handbooks of Western civilization: a
primer for princes.
In beginning a discussion concerned
with the manners and attitudes of a
prince—that is, a ruler of a
state—Machiavelli writes:
Since ... it has been my intention
to write something which may be of
use to the understanding reader, it has
seemed wiser to me to follow the real
truth of the matter rather than what
we imagine it to be. For imagination
has created many principalities and
republics that have never been seen or
known to have any real existence, for
how we live is so different from how
we ought to live that he who studies
what ought to be done rather than
what is done will learn the way to his
downfall rather than to his
preservation.
This passage makes it clear that
Machiavelli intended to explain how successful
politicians actually work rather than how
they ought to work.
The Prince begins with a one
paragraph chapter which illustrates Machia-
velli's logical approach to the problem of
advising prospective princes. He claims
that all states are either republics or
monarchies. Monarchies are either hereditary
or new. New monarchies are either
entirely new or acquired. Acquired states
have either been dominated by a prince
or been free; and they are acquired either
by a prince's own arms or by those of
others; and they fall to him either by
fortune or because of his own character and
ability.
Having outlined this inclusive logical
bifurcation, Machiavelli first discusses the
problems connected with governing a
hereditary monarchy, and then goes on
to discuss mixed monarchies.
In each case, as his argument develops,
Machiavelli considers what the logical
alternatives are, and what should be done
in each case if the prince is to acquire
and hold power. In writing of mixed
monarchies, for example, having pointed out
3053

that acquired states are either culturally
similar to the conquering state or not, he
then considers each possibility. If the
acquired state is culturally similar, it is no
problem to keep it; but if the acquired
state is different in its customs, laws, or
language, then there is a problem to be
solved. One solution might be to have the
ruler go to the acquired territory and live
there. As an example, Machiavelli refers
to the presence of the Turkish ruler in
Greece.
Another possibility for solving the
problem which arises when an acquired
territory differs culturally from the
conquering state is the establishment of
colonies. Colonies are inexpensive to
acquire and maintain, he argues, because
the land is acquired from a few
landowners of the conquered territory and
they are the only ones who complain.
Such a plan is preferable to maintaining
soldiers, for policing a new state is
expensive and, in addition, offends the
citizens being policed.
Thus, by the somewhat mechanical
device of considering logical alternatives,
Machiavelli uses his limited experience to
build a guide to power. What he says,
although refreshing in its direct approach
to the hard facts of practical politics, is
not entirely fanciful or naive. Not only
did Machiavelli, through his diplomatic
missions, come to know intimately such
leaders as Louis XII, Julius II, the
Emperor Maximilian, and Cesare Borgia, but
he also used his time to advantage, noting
political tricks that actually worked and
building up his store of psychological
truths.
It is doubtful that any ruler or rebel
ever succeeded simply because he
followed Machiavelli to the letter, but it
may well be that some political coups
have been the result of inspiration from
The Prince. (Indeed, shortly after Fidel
Castro's overthrow of the Batista
government in Cuba in 1959, a newspaper
account reported that among the books on
Castro's revolutionary reading list was
Machiavelli's The Prince.^
What is inspiring for the politically
ambitious in The Prince is not the
substance but the attitude, not the
prescription but the unabashed, calculating, and
aggressive air with which the author
analyzes the means to power.
For the reader without political
ambition The Prince is a sometimes amusing
and sometimes frightening reminder of
the realities of political fortune. For
example, Machiavelli writes that anyone
who helps another to power is bound to
fall himself because he has contributed
to the success either by his cleverness or
his power, and no prince can tolerate the
existence of either in another person
close to him. This is a lesson which
would have been useful to some of the
men close to the top in the U.S.S.R.
Machiavelli considers this question:
Why did the kingdom of Darius,
occupied by Alexander the Great, not rebel
after Alexander's death? The answer is
that monarchies are governed either by
a prince and his staff or by a prince and
a number of barons. A monarchy
controlled by the prince through his
representatives is very difficult to conquer,
since the entire staff owes its existence
to the prince and is, consequently, loyal.
But once such a monarchy is captured,
power is easily maintained. So it was in
Alexander's case. But a nation like the
France of Machiavelli's day is ruled by
a king and barons. The barons are princes
of a sort over their portions of the state,
and they maintain control over their
subjects. It is easy to conquer such a state
because there are always unhappy barons
willing to join a movement to overthrow
the king. But once conquered, such a
state is difficult to hold because the
barons may regroup and overthrow the new
prince.
Sometimes power is acquired through
crime, Machiavelli admits, and he cites
a violent example: the murder of
Giovanni Fogliani of Fermo by his nephew
Oliverotto. Machiavelli advises that the
cruelty necessary to attain power be kept
to a minimum and not be continued, for
the purely practical reason that the prince
will lose power otherwise. The best thing
3054

to do, says the author, is to commit one's
acts of cruelty all at once, not over an
extended period.
This cold practicality is echoed in
such injunctions as those to the effect
that if one cannot afford to be generous,
accept with indifference the name of
miser; it is safer to be feared than to be
loved, if one must choose; a prince need
not have a morally worth-while
character, but he must appear to have it; if a
prince's military support is good, he will
always have good friends; to keep power
one must be careful not to be hated
by the people; it is always wiser for a
prince to be a true friend or a true
enemy than to be neutral; a prince should
never listen to advice unless he asks for
it; and it is better to be bold than
cautious.
Machiavelli's prime examples are
Francesco Sforza and Cesare Borgia,
particularly the latter. The author writes that
he is always able to find examples for
his points by referring to the deeds of
Borgia. Considering the value of using
auxiliary arms, the military force of
another state, Machiavelli refers to Borgia's
unfortunate experience with auxiliaries
in the capture of Romagna. Finding the
auxiliaries untrustworthy, Borgia turned
to mercenaries, but they were no better,
so he finally used only his own troops.
Machiavelli's conclusion in regard to
auxiliary troops is that "If any one . . .
wants to make sure of not winning he
will avail himself of troops such as these."
After reviewing Cesare Borgia's rise to
power (with the remark that "I could not
suggest better precepts to a new prince
than the examples of Cesare's actions"),
Machiavelli concludes that "I can find
nothing with which to reproach him,
rather it seems that I ought to point him
out as an example ... to all those who
have risen to power by fortune or by the
arms of others." This praise follows a
description of such acts as Borgia's
killing of as many of the hapless lords he
had despoiled "as he could lay hands
on."
Machiavelli praises the actions of other
leaders, such as Francesco Sforza and
Popes Alexander VI and Julius II, but
only Cesare Borgia wins unqualified
praise. Sforza, for example, is recognized
as having become Duke of Milan "by
the proper means and through his own
ability," but later on he is criticized
because of a castle he built when he should
have been trying to win the good will
of the people.
The Prince concludes with a plea to
the Medici family to free Italy from the
"barbarians" who ruled the republic of
Florence and kept Italy in bondage.
Machiavelli makes a plea for liberation,
expresses his disappointment that Borgia is
not available because of a turn of fortune,
and closes with the capitalized crv that
"THIS BARBARIAN OCCUPATION
STINKS IN THE NOSTRILS OF
ALL OF US."
Unfortunately for the author, his plea
to the Medici family did him no good,
and he died with the Republic still in
power. Perhaps he himself was not bold
enough; perhaps he was not cruel
enough. In any case, he left behind a
work to be used by any leader willing
to be both.
3055

THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens, 1835-1910)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1882
Principal characters:
Tom Canty, a London street beggar
John Canty, his father
Edward, Prince of Wales
Miles Hendon, a disinherited knight
Hugh Hendon, his brother
Hugo, a thief
Critique:
In many ways, The Prince and the
Pauper is a companion piece to A
Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court.
Both are historical satires; both deplore
the lack of democracy and cleanliness of
early England; both scrutinize the past
from a viewpoint of modern morality.
Lastly, both exhibit humor derived from
ludicrous situations. In its compactness
and relative brevity The Prince and the
Pauper is in some ways superior to A
Connecticut Yankee. But the
denouement of the novel is disappointing. It is
as if the fantasy got away from the author
and overwhelmed him. The outstanding
quality of this novel is the beloved
simplicity of the prince himself, his
unswerving tenacity to his royal training
throughout all his difficulties, and his final
act of clemency.
The Story:
On the same day, in London, Tom
Canty and the Prince of Wales were born,
the first unwanted and the second long
awaited. While the prince, Edward Tudor,
lay robed in silks, Tom Canty wallowed
in the filth of Offal Court.
Tom's father forced him to beg during
the day and he beat the boy at night;
but Tom had private dreams of his own.
Pretending that he was a prince, he
gathered his ragtaggle court of street urchins
around him. One day, hoping to see
Prince Edward of England, he invaded
the royal precincts, but when he tried
to approach the prince he was cuffed by
a guard and ordered away. Edward,
witnessing the incident, protected Tom and
took the young beggar into the palace.
There, in the privacy of Edward's
chamber, Tom confessed his longing to be a
prince. When the two boys exchanged
garments they discovered that they were
identical in appearance. Unrecognized as
the real prince and mistaken for the
beggar boy, Edward was promptly thrown
into the streets of London, where he
wandered helplessly, mocked by people
whom he approached with pleas that they
pay homage to him as their rightful
prince.
Meanwhile, in the palace, it was
thought that the prince had gone mad
because he could recall none of the royal
matters which he was supposed to know.
King Henry issued an edict that no one
should discuss the royal lapse of memory,
and the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth
mercifully tried to aid their supposed
brother, who by that time was too
frightened to confess that he was Tom Canty,
a beggar dressed in the prince's clothing.
King Henry VIII, sick in bed, had given
the Great Seal of the kingdom to Prince
Edward for safekeeping. When Henry
demanded the return of his seal, Tom
reported that he did not know where it was.
While the Prince of Wales, a homeless
waif, wandered the streets under the
3056

crowd's mocking raillery, King Henry
died. Edward was found by John Canty,
Tom's father, and brought to Offal Court;
but during the wild celebration of Tom's
ascension to the throne Edward escaped
from John Canty. Again tormented by
skeptical crowds who laughed at his
protests that he was now King of England,
Edward was rescued by Miles Hendon,
the disinherited son of a baronet.
Thinking Edward was mad, Miles pitied the
little waif and pretended to pay him the
homage due to a monarch.
Miles had loved a girl named Edith,
who was coveted by Miles' brother Hugh.
By trickery, Hugh had gained his father's
confidence and Miles was turned away
from home. Edward declared that Miles
had suffered unjustly and promised the
adventurer any boon he might ask.
Recalling the story of De Courcy, who, given
a similar opportunity by King John,
requested that he and all his descendants
might be permitted to wear hats in the
presence of the King of England, Miles
wisely asked that he be permitted to sit
down in Edward's presence, for the young
king had been ordering Miles about like
any other personal servant.
In the role of King of England, Tom
was slowly learning to conduct himself
royally. Regarded by his attendants as
mad, he was able to display his lack of
training, and his failure to recall events
familiar to Edward, with no calamitous
results. At the same time his gradual
improvement offered hope that his
derangement was only temporary.
John Canty lured Edward away from
Miles' protection and took the boy to
Southwark, there to join a pack of thieves.
Still vainly declaring himself king,
Edward was again the center of ridicule.
One of the thieves, Hugo, undertook to
teach Edward the tricks of his trade.
Making his escape, Edward wandered to
a farmhouse where a kind woman, pitying
the poor, insane beggar boy who declared
himself King of England, fed him.
Edward wandered on to the hut of a hermit
who accepted naively Edward's claim to
royalty. In turn, the hermit revealed to
Edward that he was an archangel; the
hermit was really mad. While Edward
slept, the hermit brooded over the wrongs
done him by King Henry. Believing
Edward really to be the king, and planning
to murder him, the hermit managed to tie
up the boy while he slept. John Canty
and Hugo, following the trail of the
escaped waif, rescued him and forced him
to rejoin the band of rogues. Again he
was compelled to aid Hugo in his
dishonest trade. At last Miles found the boy
and saved him.
Miles was on his way back to Hendon
Hall to claim his heritage and Edith for
a wife. Arriving at their destination, they
learned that Miles' father was dead and
Hugh, married to Edith, was master of
Hendon Hall. Only five of the old
servants were still living, and all of them, in
addition to Hugh and Edith, pretended
not to recognize Miles. Denounced as a
pretender, Miles was sentenced to the
stocks, where the abuse showered upon
him by the mob so enraged Edward that
he protested loudly. When the guards
decided to whip the boy, Miles offered
to bear the flogging instead. Grateful to
his friend, Edward dubbed Miles an earl,
but the imprisoned man sorrowed at the
boy's display of insanity. Upon Miles'
release from the stocks the two set out for
London, where they arrived on the day
before the coronation of King Edward
vi. 8
In regal splendor, enjoying the
adulation of his subjects, Tom Canty rode
through the streets of London toward
Westminster Abbey. There, just as the
crown was about to be set on his head,
a voice rang out demanding that the
ceremony cease, and the real king, clothed in
rags, stepped forth. As the guards moved
to seize the troublemaker, Tom,
recognizing Edward, ordered them to halt. The
Lord Protector solved the mystery by
asking the ragged king to locate the Great
Seal that had been lost since King Henry's
death. Edward, after much dramatic
hesitation, managed to remember the exact
3057

location of the Seal. Tom admitted that
he had innocently used it to crack nuts.
When Miles was brought before the
rightful King Edward, he exercised his
privilege of sitting in the king's presence.
At first he had doubted that the waif
was really the king, but when Edward
ordered his outraged guards to permit that
disrespectful act, Miles knew that his
young friend had not been insane after
all. Furthermore, Edward confirmed
Miles' title of earl. Hugh was stripped
of his titles and land. Later he died,
whereupon Miles married Edith, whose earlier
refusal to acknowledge his identity had
been the result of Hugh's threat to kill
his brother.
Tom returned to Offal Court with
Edward's promise that he and his family
would be honored for the rest of their
lives. Edward righted many wrongs he
had encountered during his adventures.
John Canty, whom he wanted to hang,
was never heard from again.
3058

THE PRINCE OF HOMBURG
Type of work: Drama
Author: Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811)
Type of plot: Historical tragedy
Time of plot: 1675
Locale: Prussia
First presented: 1821
Principal characters:
Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg
The Electress
Princess Natalie of Orange, niece of the elector
Field Marshal Dorfling
Prince Frederick Arthur of Homburg
Colonel Kottwitz, of the regiment of the Princess of Orange
Count Hohbnzollern, of the elector's suite
Critique:
Heinrich von Kleist led a short,
turbulent life as a poet and died by his own
hand at the age of thirty-four.
Predestined by family tradition to spend a life
of service to his own country, he
entered the army at the age of fourteen.
However, constant yearnings toward cre-
ativeness led him to secure a discharge.
He then embarked on a course of study
which included Kant's philosophy and
the theories of Rousseau. He began to
pour all of his creative powers, which
were singular for a man in his mid-
twenties, into a series of plays. One of
these was the farcical The Broken Jug,
the only light piece he was to compose.
His early works met with little success,
for he had a limited knowledge of the
techniques of writing for the stage. He
was essentially a romanticist. The Prince
of Homburg, his last dramatic work,
employs romantic poetic imagery, but its
subject presupposes a vital, realistic
framework. The play contains rich
characterizations which convey the Prussian
virtues of discipline and obedience. Its
chief fault lies in the lack of stage
techniques; it is episodic, lacking in action,
and cluttered with a number of secondary
characters.
The Story:
After three days of heading a cavalry
charge in pursuit of the Swedes, Prince
Frederick Arthur of Homburg had
returned to Fehrbellin. Exhausted and
battle weary, the prince fell into a
dreamlike sleep, weaving a laurel wreath as he
half dozed. The Elector Frederick
William was informed by Count Hohenzol-
lern of the prince's strange condition, and
as the elector, the electress, and their
niece, Princess Natalie, appeared in the
garden where he slept, a strange thing
occurred. The elector took the wreath
from the prince, entwined it in his neck-
chain and gave it to Natalie. They backed
away as the somnambulistic prince
followed murmuring incoherently, and as
they retreated inside, the prince snatched
a glove from Natalie's hand.
When the prince awoke, he told Count
Hohenzollern about the occurrence,
which he thought had been a dream.
Hohenzollern reproved him for his
romantic fantasies and urged him to make
ready for the coming battle with the
Swedes.
The field marshal of Brandenburg was
dictating the orders of battle to his
officers; but the prince, who was to play an
important role in the battle, was
absorbed with his thoughts. Hoping to
remember from whom he had got the
glove, he wore it in his collar. The
electress and Natalie were present, and plans
were being formed to send them to a
place of safety. As the field marshal
reached the section of the orders which
pertained to the prince, Natalie, prepar-
3059

ing to depart, suddenly realized that she
had but one glove. The prince, who
loved Natalie, quickly became aware that
he held the missing glove. In order to be
sure it was hers, he dropped it on the
floor in front of him. Natalie claimed it,
and the prince, in a fit of ecstasy, did not
hear his battle orders clearly though his
mission was to be a key one.
The battlefield of Fehrbellin resounded
with cannon and the elector's forces were
sure of victory. As the rout of the Swedes
became apparent, the prince precipitously
gave orders to advance. His colleagues
made an effort to dissuade him from this
impetuous action, insisting that he hear
the order of battle again; he was
definitely supposed to remain in his position
until a given signal. However, when the
arduous prince rebuked Kottwitz, an
elderly colonel, for lack of fervency,
Kottwitz, rather than appear unpatriotic,
joined the prince in the advance.
The electress and Natalie had paused
during their journey to safety at a house
in a nearby village, where news reached
them that the elector had died in battle;
both he and his great white horse were
reported killed during the bombardment.
The prince sought out the women and
took the opportunity to tell the distraught
Natalie of his love for her, and to offer
her his protection. The elector was her
last relative; now that he was dead she
had no one to turn to.
But the elector was not dead. He had
changed horses with one of his officers,
and the officer astride the white horse
had been mistakenly identified as the
elector. The same messenger who brought
word that the elector was still alive had
further news for rejoicing. The war was
over for the time being, and the elector
had returned to Berlin.
It became apparent to the elector that
Prince Frederick was responsible for
ignoring the battle order, and although
terms for peace with the Swedes were
being discussed, the strong military spirit
of the elector prompted him to punish the
prince for failing to follow orders. The
prince was sentenced to die and placed
in prison to await the day of his
execution.
The prince, given permission to visit
the electress, begged clemency through
her. She was touched by his plea, as was
Natalie, who threw herself at the feet of
the elector to beg for the prince's life. In
addition to Natalie's plea, the officers of
the elector's army circulated a petition
asking that the prince's life be spared. At
last the elector agreed to pardon him.
Natalie took the letter of pardon from
the elector to the prince's cell. But upon
his reading the pardon, events took a
different turn. In his letter the elector had
specified that the prince's sword would be
returned if the young man thought the
elector had been unjust in his sentence.
The prince then refused the pardon; his
military training and nationalistic spirit
prompted him to realize that the sentence
was just.
Tne officers of the army visited the
elector to plead on the prince's behalf.
Count Hohenzollem made the strongest
case. Had the elector not deceived the
young prince by snatching the laurel
wreath and entwining it with his neck-
chain, the prince would not have felt an
uncontrollable destiny forcing him into
battle. Therefore, it was the elector's own
fault that the prince's mind had been
clouded by what he thought was a vision
foretelling valorous deeds. The elector
countered by blaming Count
Hohenzollem himself for the whole affair, for he
was the one who had led the elector to
the sleeping prince.
When the prince appeared before the
assembled officers and the elector, he was
ready to die; nevertheless, he made such a
strong plea to the elector that he was able
to save himself. Meanwhile, peace with
Gustaf Karl of Sweden had been effected
by promising Natalie's hand to a Swedish
nobleman. The prince begged the elector
to revoke the agreement and to attack the
Swedes instead. The elector, ordering his
troops to resume battle, tore up the death
warrant. Prince Frederick Arthur was
hailed as the hero of the field of
Fehrbellin.
3060

THE PRINCESS OF CLEVES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Madame Marie de Lafayette (1634-1693)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1678
Principal characters:
The Princess db Cleves, nee Chartres, a beautiful young
noblewoman
The Prince de Cleves, her husband
The Duke de Nemours, in love with the princess
The Vidame db Chartres, uncle of the princess
The Queen Dauphins, Mary, Queen of Scots, friend of the minces*
Critique:
Because The Princess of CUves is
superior to any of the other romances
written by Madame de Lafayette, some
literary historians and critics have hesitated
to credit her with the authorship of a
book so simple in outline but elegant in
detail. There seems no reason to doubt
the authenticity o2 the work, however,
if we remember that during its
composition the novel was discussed and
criticized by the brilliant men and women
who attended the salon over which
Madame de Lafayette presided. These
included the Duke de Rochefoucauld,
Madame de S6vign6, Huet, the royal
tutor, Segrais, the poet, Cardinal de Retz,
and many others. The writer
undoubtedly profited by the suggestions and advice
of her friends. Certainly, out of their
personal memories of an earlier time,
they aided in reconstructing the historical
background and details of the book. More
important, this early novel defined areas
of experience which later writers have
charted more completely. The careful
analyses of emotion, the atmosphere of
intrigue, the conflict between duty and
desire, and the subjective portrayal of
character, as presented here, have made
the romance one of the landmarks of
French literature. The influence of the
book can be traced through two distinct
literary trends: the psychological novel
and the ronton a clef, which presents real
people and events under a thin fictional
disguise.
The Story:
The court of Henri II of France was
filled with many intrigues, as much of
the heart as of anything else. The court
itself was divided into several groups.
One group was partial to the queen, who
was at odds with Henri II because he
chose to be guided in his personal life
and in his government by Diane de
Poitiers, the Duchess de Valentinois, who
had been his father's mistress and was
now a grandmother in her own right. A
second group was that which surrounded
the Duchess de Valentinois. A third
group was that which had as its center
Princess Mary, wife of the dauphin, the
beautiful and brilliant young woman
who was also Queen of Scotland.
Into this scene of rivalry came Madame
de Chartres, with her very beautiful
daughter, to be married to a nobleman
with rank as high as possible; Madame
de Chartres hoped even for a prince of
the blood. Unfortunately for the
mother's hopes, the intrigues of the court kept
her from arranging a match so brilliant
or advantageous. A marriage with either
M. de Monpensier, the Chevalier de
Guise, or the Prince de Cleves seemed
the best that could be made, and there
were obstacles to a marriage with either
of these, as Mme. de Chartres
discovered. Each of the groups at the court was
afraid that such a marriage would upset
the status of the powers as they stood.
Finally the arrangements were made
for a marriage to the Prince de Cleves.
3061

The gentleman was perturbed, however,
by the attitude of his bride. He loved her
greatly, and she seemed to love him
dutifully but without the abandon he wished
for. He tried to be satisfied when she
told him that she would do her best to
love him, but that she felt no real
passion for him or any man. The marriage
was celebrated in grand style, and a fine
dinner party, attended by the king and
queen, was given at the Louvre.
For many months no one at the court,
where extramarital attachments were the
rule rather than the exception, dared to
say anything about the young wife.
Thanks to her mother's solicitude and
her own lack of passion where men were
concerned, the Princess de Cleves kept
a spotless reputation. Her mother, who
soon was on her deathbed, knew from
various conferences the princess had had
with her—unusual conferences for a
married woman to have with her mother,
for in reality they were confessions—that
the princess had no inclinations to stray
from her marital vows.
One evening, however, there was a
court ball given in honor of one of the
king's daughters, whose marriage was
impending. A late arrival at the ball was the
Duke de Nemours, the handsomest, most
gallant courtier in France. At his
entrance the Princess de Cleves who had
never seen the duke before, was ordered
by the king to dance with him.
In spite of the fact that Queen
Elizabeth of England had taken an interest in
the Duke de Nemours and had expressed
the wish that the young man would visit
her court, he remained where he could
be near the Princess de Cleves. Even the
repeated requests of the French king,
who saw in de Nemours a possible
consort for Queen Elizabeth, could not
remove the duke from her side. Meanwhile
the Princess de Cleves did everything she
could to conceal her love for the duke
from everyone, even from her lover
himself. She was determined to remain a
faithful and dutiful wife.
One day, while the princess and the
duke were in the apartments of the
Queen Dauphine, the princess saw de
Nemours steal a miniature portrait oi
herself. Although she had ample
opportunity, the princess said nothing to stop
him from taking her picture. Some time
later the duke was injured by a horse in
a tournament, and several people noted
the look of distress on the face of the
Princess de Cleves. The court was
beginning to realize that love was blossoming
between the two.
As soon as she realized what was
happening in her heart, the Princess de
Cleves went to her husband and asked
him to take her away from Paris for a
time. They went to an estate in the
country. While they were there, the princess
confessed to her husband that she was
falling in love with someone. Admiring
her candor, he promised to help her
overcome the passion. Although sne refused
to name the man she loved, the Prince
de Cleves guessed that it was one of
three men, a trio which included the
Duke de Nemours. But he had no proof.
Although neither knew it, while the
princess was confessing her love, the
Duke de Nemours was hiding so close to
them that he could overhear what was
said.
Months went by, and gradually,
despite her efforts to keep away from him,
the princess indicated to her husband
that the Duke de Nemours was the man
she loved. The prince was torn by
jealousy, but his wife's confession and her
obvious efforts to curb her love
prevented him from taking any action in the
matter. His only recourse was to accuse
her at intervals of not being fair to him
in loving another.
The strain becoming too much for the
Princess de Cleves, she asked her
husband's permission to retire to a country
estate near Paris. He yielded graciously
but sent one of his own retainers to make
sure of her conduct while she was away.
The retainer returned to report that
twice, at night, the Duke de Nemours
had entered the garden where the
princess was; the retainer did not know, and
so could not report, that his mistress had
3062

refused to see the man who loved her.
After the retainer had made his
report, the prince fell ill of a fever. When
the princess returned, she was unable
to convince him that she had not been
unfaithful, even though he wanted to
believe her. Rather than stand in the
way of her happiness, he languished and
died.
Some months after her husband's death
the Duke de Nemours prevailed upon
the princess* uncle, the Vidame de Char-
tres, to intercede for him with the
princess. The uncle did, even to arranging
for an interview between the two. At
that time the princess told the duke that,
in spite of her love for him, she could
never marry him. Soon afterward she
entered a convent for a time. Later she
retired to an estate some distance from
Paris. Shortly after her arrival at the
country estate she fell ill and died
within a matter of days.
3063

THE PRISONER OF ZENDA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Hope (Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, 1863-1933)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1880*5
Locale: "Ruritania"
First published: 1894
Principal characters:
Rudolf Rassendyll, an English gentleman
Lady Rose Burlesdon, his sister-in-law
Rudolf, King of Ruritania
Michael, Duke of Strelsau, King Rudolfs half-brother
Antoinette de Mauban, in love with Michael
Princess Flavia, betrothed to King Rudolf
Fritz von Tarlenheim, a loyal subject of the king
Colonel Sapt, another loyal subject
Critique:
Many novels have been written about
the intrigues and plots of royalty, but
few hold the reader's attention as does
The Prisoner of Zenda. In its pages
we meet kings and would-be kings,
beautiful ladies, loyal subjects, and those who
would sell out their leader for the
promise of gold or power. There are thrills
and excitement enough for all: murder,
duels at midnight, trysts, daring rescues.
If Anthony Hope's desire was to give
his readers a few hours of pure
enjoyment, and it seems to have been his sole
purpose in writing this novel, he was
successful. His success is confirmed by
the fact that the story is almost as
popular today as it was when first
published.
The Story:
To his sister-in-law, Lady Rose
Burlesdon, Rudolf Rassendyll was a great
disappointment. In the first place, he
was twenty-nine years old and had no
useful occupation. Secondly, he bore
such a striking resemblance to the Elph-
bergs, ruling house of Ruritania, that
Rose thought him a constant reminder
of an old scandal in which her husband's
family had been involved. More than
a hundred years before, a prince of the
country of Ruritania had visited Eng-
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA by Anthony Hope. By permission of the publishers, Henry Holt & Co., Inc.
Copyright, 1898, by Henry Holt & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1921, by A. H. Hawkins.
land and had become involved with the
wife of one of the Rassendyll men. There
was a child, who had the red hair and
the large straight nose of the Elphbergs.
Since that unfortunate event, five or six
descendants of the English lady and the
Ruritanian prince had had the
characteristic nose and red hair of their royal
ancestor. Rose thought Rudolph's red
hair and large nose a disgrace for that
reason.
Rassendyll himself, however, had no
concern over his resemblance to the
Ruritanian royal family. A new king was
to be crowned in that country within a
few weeks, and he decided to travel to
Ruritania for the coronation, in order
to get a close view of his unclaimed
relatives. Knowing that his brother and
sister-in-law would try to prevent his
journey, he told them that he was going
to take a tour of the Tyrol. After he
left England, his first stop was Paris,
where he learned something more about
affairs in the country he was to visit.
The new king, also called Rudolf, had
a half-brother, Michael, Duke of
Strelsau. Michael would have liked to
become king, and it was hinted that he
would try to prevent the coronation of
Rudolf. Rassendyll also learned that
there was a beautiful lady, Antoinette
3064

de Mauban, who loved Michael and
had his favor. She, too, was traveling
to Ruritania for the coronation.
When he reached Ruritania and found
the capital city crowded, Rassendyll took
lodging in Zenda, a small town some
fifty miles from the capital, and
prepared to go by train for the coronation.
Zenda was part of Michael's domain,
his hunting lodge being only a few miles
from the inn where Rassendyll stopped.
Rassendyll learned also that King Rudolf
was a guest at his half-brother's hunting
lodge while waiting for the coronation.
There were more rumors of a plot against
the king and talk that Black Michael, as
he was called, planned to seize the
throne.
Rassendyll walked every day through
the woods near the hunting lodge. One
day he heard two men discussing how
much he resembled the king. The men
introduced themselves as Fritz von
Tarlenheim and Colonel Sapt, faithful
friends of King Rudolf. While they talked,
the king himself appeared. The king
had shaved his beard, but otherwise he
and Rassendyll were identical. Pleased
to meet his distant cousin, the king
invited Rassendyll to the lodge. There the
king drank so much that Fritz and Sapt
could not wake him the next morning.
This was the day of the coronation,
and as the king slept in his stupor Fritz
and Sapt proposed a daring plan to
Rassendyll. They knew that if the king
did not appear for the coronation Black
Michael would seize the throne. Their
plan was to shave Rassendyll's beard and
dress him in the king's clothes and have
him crowned in the king's place. By
the time the ceremonies were over, the
king would have recovered, would take
his rightful place, and no one would be
the wiser. It was a dangerous gamble,
for exposure would mean death, but
Rassendyll agreed to the plot.
Fritz and Sapt locked the king in the
wine cellar and left a servant to tell him
of the plan when he awoke. Rassendyll,
with Fritz and Sapt, proceeded to the
palace. With the two men to help him,
he carried off the deception, even
convincing the Princess Flavia that he was
the real king. His role with Flavia was
the most difficult for Rassendyll, for
he must be gracious and yet not commit
the king too far.
The success of the conspirators was
not to last. When they returned that
night to the lodge, they found the
servant murdered and the real king gone.
Black Michael's men had worked well.
Black Michael knew that the supposed
king was an impostor, and Rassendyll,
Fritz, and Sapt knew that Black Michael
had the real king. But neither group
dared call the other's hand. Rassendyll's
only chance was to rescue the rightful
king. Black Michael's hope was to kill
both Rassendyll and the king and thus
seize the throne and Princess Flavia for
himself. Rassendyll was attacked and
almost killed many times. Once he was
saved by a warning from Antoinette de
Mauban, for although she loved Michael
she would not be a party to murder.
Also, she did not want Michael to be
successful, for his coup would mean his
marriage to Flavia. Michael learned of
her aid to Rassendyll and held her a
semi-prisoner in the hunting lodge where
he had hidden the king.
Playing the part of the king,
Rassendyll was forced to spend much time
with Flavia. He wanted to tell her his
real identity, but Fritz and Sapt appealed
to his honor and persuaded him that all
would be ruined if Flavia learned that
he was not the true king.
When they learned that King Rudolf
was dying, Rassendyll, Fritz, and Sapt
knew that they must take a daring chance
to rescue him. They and part of the
king's army attacked the lodge. Those
not aware of the deception were told
that Black Michael had imprisoned a
friend of the king. There was a bloody
battle both outside and inside the lodge.
Black Michael was killed and King
Rudolf wounded before the rescue was
completed. When he knew that the
3065

king would live, Rassendyll realized
that his part in the deception was over.
The king sent for him and thanked him
for his brave work in saving the throne.
Princess Flavia also sent for him. She
had been told the whole story, but her
only concern was to learn whether
Rassendyll had spoken for himself or the
king when he had given her his love.
He told her that he would always love
only her and begged her to go away with
him. But she was too honorable to leave
her people and her king, and she
remained in Ruritania, later to marry the
king and rule with him.
Rassendyll left Ruritania and spent
a few weeks in the Tyrol before
returning to England. His sister-in-law, still
trying to get him to lead a more useful
life, arranged through a friend to get
him a diplomatic post. When he learned
the post would be in Ruritania, he
declined it. Rassendyll resumed his former
idle life, with one break in his
monotonous routine. Each year Fritz and
Rassendyll met in Dresden, and Fritz
always brought with him a box containing
a rose, a token from Flavia.
S066

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE MASTER RACE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1933-1938
Locale: Germany
Partial presentation: 1938; first published: 1944
Principal characters:
Various Citizens of the Third Reich
Critique:
The Private Life of the Master Race,
an expos£ of the Nazi regime, is
composed of seventeen scenes or one-act
plays taken from a longer work, The
Pears and Miseries of the Third Reich.
The scenes form a pageant of the first five
years of Hitler's reign. In the usual sense
these scenes do not make a play, for there
are no characters who appear in more
than one scene; the unity of the work
is maintained only by the historical
sequence and by a fragmentary narration.
Brecht here aims at an epic drama, and
he does achieve by documentary
presentation a vivid sweep in time. He is
highly regarded as a poet. The worth of
the play lies in the poetry and in the
cumulative details of a reign of terror
under National Socialism.
The Story:
During the first years of the Nazi
regime, techniques for suppressing
opposition were rapidly perfected. One object
of suppression was any radio capable of
receiving broadcasts from Russia. The
Nazis relied on the German distrust of
Communism to aid in harsh enforcement
of the law. Soon neighbors were
betraying neighbors. Sets were confiscated and
the owners beaten.
In Berlin, in 1933, a storm trooper
came to visit his sweetheart who was a
maid in a wealthy home. While she was
feeding him in the kitchen, the cook's
brother came in with a tube to repair the
family radio. Since the brother, a
common worker, did not give the Heil Hitler
greeting plainly enough, the trooper put
on a demonstration to show the Nazi
power. He pretended to explain the
current methods of exposure by staging a
scene at the welfare office. He was the
more anxious to scare the worker because
he had drunk the Nazi's beer.
The trooper, ostensibly in mufti,
pretended that he was in a welfare line
discussing the things wrong in Germany.
The worker answered him by imitating
the common complaints heard from non-
Nazis. Simulating camaraderie, the
trooper clapped the worker on the shoulder.
On arriving at the office, the man would
be closely interrogated, for there was a
chalk cross on his shoulder. The trooper
had drawn the cross on his hand and
transferred it to the worker's shoulder
with a friendly pat. After that bit of
dramatizing the worker left abruptly.
In the concentration camps the
Socialists, the Communists, and the non-political
liberals realized too late that they should
have been united before Hitler came to
power. Now they were impotent. In the
factories there were broadcasts by happy
workers who had been carefully coached
in what they were to say. In private
homes a member of the family would be
returned in a zinc box; the official
explanation was always that death had come
from natural causes.
By 1935 even the scientists were
afraid. Spied on by their Nazi employees,
they were often handicapped in their
laboratories by the prohibition against
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE MASTER RACE by Bertolt Brecht. Translated by Eric Russell
Bentley. By permission of the publishers, New Directions. Copyright, 1944, by E, R. Bentley.
3067

correspondence with foreign scientists. It
was forbidden even to mention the name
of Einstein, for he was a Jew.
In Frankfort a Jewish wife was
packing. Her husband was a prominent
physician and an Aryan. She had stood her
racial stigma as long as she dared, but
now their friends were beginning to cut
them socially. Carefully tending to her
wifely duties, she telephoned to friends,
asking them to look after things in her
absence. After she had finished calling,
she prudently burned the notebook
containing the telephone numbers. Then she
began rehearsing the speech she would
make to her husband.
She would be brave. She would go to
Amsterdam for a few weeks until the
persecution died down. Really, the only
reason she was leaving was to relieve her
husband from embarrassment. As she
went through the carefully thought-out
speech, her husband came in. At once
she broke down. The husband pretended
to believe that she would be gone only a
short while, and when things were
better he would come to Amsterdam for her.
He would like a few days outside of
Germany himself. Surely the Nazis could not
for long shackle the intellectuals.
Even the judges were confused. They
had come to the point where they gave
decisions the way the party wanted them,
but sometimes it was difficult to know
just what the party desired. In Augsburg
three storm troopers broke into a store
run by a Jew and took some valuable
jewelry after wounding the Jew. To the
judge the case looked like a simple one;
the Jew had offered great provocation
the storm troopers had acted rightly in
defending the honor of the party. But
after talking with the prosecutor the
judge was not sure how he should decide.
There was race pollution mixed in the
case. The Jewish store manager had a
nineteen-year-old daughter about whom
there had been rumors. The father also
had an Aryan partner who had access to
party headquarters. The owner of the
building had changed his testimony.
Perhaps the case was clear cut; the judge
would decide against the storm troopers,
for German justice was honorable even
for Jews.
But the inspector in the case confused
him again. He said the prosecutor was
inducing the judge to give the wrong
decision because he wanted the judge's post
for himself. The harassed judge asked an
older colleague for advice, but the other
man could give him little help. With a
heavy heart the judge prepared to go into
his courtroom, where ribald storm
troopers occupied every seat.
Perhaps one of the most effective
devices of the regime was to teach the
children in the youth organizations to inform
on their parents.
In 1936 a man who had been released
from a concentration camp came to call
on a man and a wife with whom he had
worked in the resistance movement. The
couple were afraid to take him into their
confidence again, for the pressure in the
concentration camps was great. The
meeting was an embarrassing one. The couple
tried not to notice the released man's
shrunken hand with the missing fingers,
and he in turn pretended not to notice
their lack of confidence in him.
As food became scarcer in the stores,
the waiting lines were longer in the
mornings. Butter was sacrificed to
cannons and prices rose beyond the ability of
the people to pay. The store owners
themselves led a precarious existence, for
they never knew when they would be
arrested for infractions of rules. A
butcher, who had been a Nazi before 1933,
forced his son to join the storm troopers,
but his loyalty did him little good. When
he refused to put cardboard hams in his
window, the Nazis began to persecute
him. In despair the butcher hanged
himself in his shop window over a card which
announced to the world that he had voted
for Hitler.
There were faint signs of resistance to
the all-powerful regime. Farmers were
supposed to hand over their grain to the
government and buy feed at a fixed price.
3068

Here and there, however, a farmer would
take the precaution of having his wife
and children stand guard. While they
watched he would feed grain to his
hungry Fgs- f
In Liibeck, in 1937, a fisherman lay
dying. He had argued long hours with
his storm trooper son over Hitler's evident
determination to start a war. Now as the
dying man talked with his pastor he dared
to mention the life to come. The son left
his father's bedside without speaking.
The pastor had referred to the Sermon on
the Mount; no good Nazi could be taken
in by Jewish superstition.
In Hamburg, in 1938, just after the
union with Austria, a small group
discussed ways and means of getting out an
opposition leaflet. Such a project was al
most impossible. A woman in the group
read a letter from an executed father to
his small son, a letter in which the
father declared that his hard fate would
not have been in vain if his son remained
true to the common people.
3069

PRIVATE LIVES
Tyfe of work: Drama
Author: Noel Coward (1899- )
Type of flat: Comedy of manners
Time-of plot: 1930
Locale: France
First presented: 1930
Principal characters:
Sibyl Chase, a bride
Elyot Chase, her husband
Amanda Prynnb, Elyot's first wife
Victor Prynne, her husband
Critique:
One of the most popular of the plays
of Noel Coward, Private Lives is
sophisticated high comedy at its best, a story
of misadventures created by an exchange
of husbands and wives. Originally
performed by Coward himself and the late
Gertrude Lawrence, it won immediate
success. There is Httle plot, but the
brilliant dialogue and unconventionality of
theme more than sustain the play and
place it among the best brittle farces of
the modern stage.
The Story:
Sibyl Chase loved being married. She
was as much in love with the idea of
being a bride as she was with her
husband Elyot, perhaps more so. On her
honeymoon night Sibyl went into
raptures over Elyot, but she did not forget,
or let him forget, that she knew he had
loved his first wife Amanda madly. She
was certain that their breakup had been
Amanda's fault, that she had been a
mean-tempered and probably a wanton
woman. When Sibyl told him that she
knew how to handle a husband, how to
make him happy, Elyot feared that she
meant she knew how to manage a
husband. He was a trifle disturbed.
Unknown at first to the Chases,
Amanda was honeymooning at the same hotel
with her new husband, Victor Prynne.
Victor had much the same ideas about
marriage as Sibyl had. He would take
care of Amanda, make her forget that
PRIVATE LIVES by Noel Coward, from PLAY PARADE by Noel Coward. By permission of the
author's representative. Holtsmann & Holtsmann, New York, and «f the publishers, Doubleday k Co..
Inc. Copyright, 1930, by Noel Coward.
dreadful brute to whom she had been
married. The fact that Amanda never
asked to be taken care of was
unimportant. Victor would teach her to be a
suitable wife.
When Amanda and Elyot saw each
other again, each wanted to move out of
the hotel before their respective mates
knew about the presence of the other
couple. But Sibyl and Victor were not
accustomed to making abrupt changes
without reason, and so they refused to
leave. Thus Amanda and Elyot thought
they were not responsible when they
talked together again and found that
they still loved each other passionatelv
after five years of separation. Recalling
their happy times together, each tried
for a time to avoid the issue uppermost
in their hearts and minds. At last Elyot
broke the polite conversation by saying
that he still loved Amanda. They fell
into each other's arms.
Amanda tried for a time to make them
consider Sibyl and Victor, but Elyot
easily convinced her that those two would
suffer more if they all lived a lie. After
making their plans to go to Paris,
Amanda left without telling her husband,
Elyot without telling his wife.
Because they had fought so violently
and so often in their married days,
Amanda made Elyot promise that
whenever they started to bicker they would
use a password and each keep quiet for
two minutes. In Amanda's flat in Paris
3070

they were often forced into quick use of
the magic password, for they were torn
equally between love and hate. Amanda's
conscience bothered her a little, but Elyot
could easily soothe that nagging little
voice with love, logic, or a flippant
remark. Sorry that they had wasted five
years of separation after their divorce,
they agreed to marry each other again
as soon as Sibyl and Victor would
divorce them. Elyot was annoyed when he
learned that Amanda had spent those five
years in having little affairs with various
men, but he saw no reason for her
being annoyed at his own transgressions.
Their quarrels occurred over
nonsensical things for the most part. At the root
was often Amanda's concern for the moral
questions involved in their past and
present relationship. When Elyot brushed
these aside with worldly and flippant
comment, Amanda came back to him
more passionately than before.
The last explosion occurred as a result
of Amanda's mention of another man of
whom Elyot had always been jealous.
Without knowing quite how the quarrel
got out of hand, they found themselves
throwing things at each other and
slapping each other viciously. The magic
password failed to work during their
quarrel. As each slammed into a different
bedroom, neither was aware that Sibyl
and Victor had come into the room at the
height of the rumpus and settled
themselves quietly on the sofa.
The next morning Sibyl and Victor
had a very sensible discussion concerning
the situation they had found the night
before. Sibyl wept copiously, not so much
from sorrow as from custom; it was the
right thing for an injured wife to do.
Each blamed the other's mate for the
sordid scene in Amanda's apartment. When
Amanda and Elyot joined them, they
were very polite with each other and
with Sibyl and Victor. At first the
situation was like a cozy morning call for
coffee. When Amanda and Elyot
admitted that they were sorry, that it was all
a mess and a mistake, Sibyl and Victor
agreed that the culprits were not
contrite enough. Elyot, in particular, seemed
crass about the whole thing, particularly
to Victor, who wanted to thrash him.
But Elyot could see no use in heroics; he
honestly admitted that his flippancy was
only an attempt to cover real
embarrassment.
At the beginning of the unpleasant
scene Amanda and Elyot had refused to
speak to each other, but as Sibyl and
Victor continued to do the proper thing,
mouthing little platitudes about morals
and the sanctity of marriage, Elyot
winked at Amanda. While the injured
spouses made and reversed plans for
divorces, the sinners paid less and less
attention. At last Sibyl and Victor began
to quarrel, each accusing the other of
weakness in still loving such a wicked
and worldly person as Amanda or Elyot.
When Sibyl gave Victor a resounding
slap, he in turn shook her soundly. In the
midst of the quarrel Amanda and Elyot
picked up their suitcases and tiptoed out
the door together.
3071

THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF HENRY RYECROFT
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Gissing (1857-1903)
Type of plot: Reflective romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1903
Principal character:
Henry Ryecroft, a thoughtful man
Critique:
This work, sometimes called a novel,
is a kind of biography of the reflections
of a thoughtful, literate man. It is held
together by the person of Henry
Ryecroft, but there is little structure for the
book as a whole. Rather, the episodes and
sketches give Ryecroft's views on the
widest variety of subjects from Xenophon to
berries. The character of Ryecroft
himself is revealed with scrupulous
minuteness. Essentially a withdrawn humanist,
he is gentle and remote but aware of his
England.
The Story:
For many years Henry Ryecroft had
toiled unceasingly at all kinds of
writing. He did straight hack work,
translating, and editing. At first he knew the
bitterest of poverty, but at long intervals
a book appeared under his name and at
last he gained a somewhat less precarious
livelihood. At rare intervals some modest
affluence enabled him to take a short
trip abroad. By the time he was fifty his
health was failing; his wife had been
dead for years, and his married daughter
had a home of her own.
By a stroke of luck he inherited a
legacy from an acquaintance, a sufficient
income for his modest needs. He lost no
time in leasing for twenty years a cottage
in rural Devon and in bidding goodbye
to his writing. In Devon he settled down
contentedly with a quiet housekeeper.
After his death his private papers,
written during his few years in Devon, were
arranged by a friend and published.
It was spring. For more than a week
Ryecroft had done no writing. His house
was perfect, with just enough room, a
completely rustic setting, an interminable
quiet. His housekeeper, who rarely spoke
more than a word or two at a time, kept
the house shining and cheerful. Ryecroft
walked about the countryside in the
pleasant weather. He was no botanist,
but before long he knew the names of
most of the common plants he saw.
One day he came upon a boy crying
bitterly. The child had been given
sixpence and sent to repay a debt, but he
had lost the money and for hours he had
been weeping in the wood. He did not
fear his parents' wrath; rather, he was
aware of how much a sixpence meant to
them. Ryecroft gave him a sixpence. Not
long before he could not have afforded
such a sum.
Ryecroft remembered the many years
when he was bound to the pavements of
London. He lived in a mean room, ate
irregularly, begrudged time away from
his hack writing. The beds he slept in
so soundly would now seem an
abomination. He had been young in those days,
but not for anything, not even for a
regained youth, would he go through those
lean years again.
Ryecroft had always purchased books,
even when he was poor. Once he got a
complete Gibbon at a bargain and carried
it home in two trips. To look at
booksellers' windows and at advertisements
one might think that the English were
literary or at least book lovers. But the
THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF HENRY RYECROFT by George Gissing. By permission of the pub-
lishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. From EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY, published 1927, by E. P. Dutton &
Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
3072

daily newspaper was a better measuring
rod. It was devoted to horse racing,
scandal, war, and threats of war; books got
very little space.
In the summer Ryecroft sat reading
one day in his garden. A chance breeze
carried a perfume that reminded him of
his boyhood. His wise father had seen to
it that his family was seldom in crowds.
In those days it was still possible to find
spots along the English coast where
crowds were unknown, and the Ryecrofts
always spent tranquil vacations at the
seaside. It always seemed that their
keenest pleasure came on the trip home when
the train stopped at their station.
At one period of his life Ryecroft, with
little respect for the Sabbath, had
reserved his best satire for the day of
sanctified rest. Now Sunday had become the
culmination of a quiet week; its deeper
quiet made a perfect day. The
housekeeper, doing only necessary work, went
to church twice. Surely it did her good.
Ryecroft arose later than usual and
dressed in different clothes. While the
housekeeper was gone, he looked into
rooms he seldom saw during the week.
In London Sunday had always meant
cacophonous church bells. When he was
a boy, Sunday had been the day he was
permitted to look at expensive adult
books.
One thing about contemporary
England was the decline of taste in food.
Faddists vaunted the delights of
vegetarianism, but lentils were a poor foreign
substitute for good, honest English meat.
Ryecroft had even met a man who
boasted of eating only apples for breakfast.
A friend, a successful author, came to
visit for two days. The friend, working
only two or three hours a day, made two
thousand pounds a year. He and
Ryecroft, poor scriveners together in
London, had never dreamed that they both
should know prosperous times. His
friend's visit recalled London more
sharply; the only things he really missed in the
metropolis were concerts and picture
galleries.
In autumn Ryecroft was busy
learning to distinguish the hawkweeds. He
had no notion of a scientific
classification; common names were more fitting.
At dusk, as he was walking past a
farmhouse, he saw the doctor's rig at the gate.
After he had passed by he turned back
to see the chimney silhouetted in the
sunset afterglow. The scene was irresistible;
he hurried home to read Tristram Shandy
again after twenty years. Such impulses
came fairly often. One morning he awoke
an hour early, in great impatience to
read the correspondence of Goethe and
Schiller.
The triumph of Darwinism and the
spread of positivism had many
consequences. Agnosticism was an early result,
too reasonable to last. Oriental magic,
Buddhism, hypnotism were all the rage
for a while, as psychical phenomena and
telepathy were now, but Ryecroft was
equally indifferent to esoteric fads and
to the discoveries of Marconi and
Edison. Boasts about triumphs of human
knowledge were childish. He agreed
somewhat with Spinoza, who said that
the free man thinks of death only
rarely, although he was not free in Spinoza's
sense. Thinking of death very often, he
found the stoics a comfort.
During his first winter in Devon,
Ryecroft tried to keep a wood fire. Now he
had a comfortable coal grate. A storm
recalled the days when he would gladly
have tramped far in the wind and rain,
but such an exploit would kill him now.
His room seemed the most comfortable
in all England. Comfortable also because
he was able to spend money, he sent
fifty pounds to an indigent friend and
passed a pleasant hour thinking of his
friend's delight at the windfall.
In those days it was the fashion to
condemn the English kitchen. Cooks
were called gross and unimaginative, but
Ryecroft believed that English cooking
was the best in the world. The beef
tasted like beef, and the mutton was
decidedly mutton. Rather than being a
nation with one sauce, only England knew
3073

the virtues of meat gravy. However,
English cooking had been better before
the oven became the cook's friend and
refuge; a spitted joint was incomparably
better than a modern oven roast.
The strength of England probably
came from two sources. First there had
been Puritanism, which set moral
standards. Also, the English read the Old
Testament; they were the chosen people.
Perhaps the last thirty years had seen the
decline of conventional religion and the
growth of materialism. The old prudish-
ness, however, had given way to new
strength.
3074

THE PROFESSOR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Belgium and England
First published: 1857
Principal characters:
William Crimsworth, the narrator, a young teacher
Edward Crimsworth, his brother
Mr. Hunsden, a wealthy mill owner
M. Pelet, master of a boys' school
Mlle. Zoraide Reuter, mistress of a girls' school
Mixe. Frances Evans Henri, a student
Critique:
The Professor, Charlotte Bronte's first
completed novel, was not published until
after her death. Simplified in plot and
free from the atmosphere of mysticism
and mystery contained in Villette, The
Professor reads like an early study for that
later novel. The story of an English
teacher who seeks fortune in Europe, the
book presents a rather touching love story
and deals with certain problems which
seem to have disturbed the young author:
Catholicism, marriage, continental
culture. The brief picture of Hunsden
suggests an embryonic Rochester, and the
characterization of Zoraide Reuter is quite
well drawn. Much of the material in this
novel was drawn from Charlotte Bronte's
own experience; the location of the girls'
school in Brussels, for example, is that
of the institution attended by the Bronte*
sisters in 1842.
The Story:
Orphaned in infancy, William
Crimsworth had been meagerly supported by
his mother's brothers, Lord Tynedale and
the Hon. John Seacombe. William's
brother Edward, ten years his senior, had
taken over his deceased father's mill and
prospered.
Upon his graduation from Eton,
William, refusing to accept further aid from
the uncles who had treated his mother so
coldly, asked his brother for employment.
When he arrived at Bigben Close, where
the mill was located, Edward censured his
young brother for having submitted to
Tynedale and Seacombe for so many
years. Edward was harsh and cold in
speech and act, and his pretty young wife,
although inclined at first toward warmth,
began to treat William in much the same
way. Edward hired William as a clerk
at ninety pounds a year and requested
that the young man live away from
Crimsworth Hall.
A grudging brother and a harsh master,
Edward invited William to his house only
once, along with some other mill workers,
to attend a party. That evening William
met Mr. Hunsden, a flippant, wealthy
mill owner who, judging Edward a false
brother and a tyrant, publicly denounced
him. As a result Edward furiously
dismissed William. Hearing of William's
decision to go to the continent, Mr.
Hunsden gave him a letter of introduction
to a Mr. Brown in Brussels.
When William presented his letter,
Mr. Brown suggested teaching as a
possible career. Through his influence
William became a teacher of English and
Latin in the pension of M. Pelet. Next
door to M. Pelet's day school was a
seminary for girls headed by Mile. Reuter.
Shortly afterward Mile. Reuter asked
William to give lessons to her girls during
part of each week.
Having met Madame Reuter, a gross
and droll woman, William was surprised
to find her daughter, Zoraide Reuter,
young and charming. Teaching young
3075

ladies, William discovered, was not the
same as teaching young boys.
Mademoiselles Eulalie, Hortense, and Caroline
proved to be haughtily disdainful but at
the same time coquettish. M. Pelet, taking
deep interest in William's personal
relationships at Mile. Reuter's school,
questioned him about his impressions of Mile.
Reuter and the three young coquettes of
the classroom.
William admired Mile. Reuter. When
he made a weak attempt at flirtation, she
did not discourage him. But one night he
overheard M. Pelet and Mile. Reuter
talking in the park about their
forthcoming marriage, which M. Pelet wished
to hasten and she wished to delay. M.
Pelet then accused her of encouraging
William, who was obviously in love with
her, and he described the affair as
ludicrous, since she was ten years William's
senior. Mile. Reuter, laughing pleasantly
at M. Pelet's disclosure, denied interest
in William.
Although William knew M. Pelet to
be insincere in his friendship, he did not
reveal his knowledge. He did, however,
attempt to overcome his attraction toward
Mile. Reuter. William sensed that she
was trying to regain his favor when she
appealed to him to treat kindly a new
pupil, Mile. Frances Henri, who was also
a teacher at the seminary. William, not
disposed to please Mile. Reuter, harshly
criticized Frances on her first appearance.
Later he was surprised at the girl's fine
accent in reading English, and his interest
turned from Mile. Reuter to Frances, who
was an enigma to him. Once, taking time
for private and encouraging discourse
with his apt pupil, he found that the
schoolmistress had been eavesdropping.
William learned that the girl's mother had
been English, that she had been reared
by an aunt, and that she was trying to
educate herself in the hope of teaching
French in England, where her present
profession as a teacher of sewing would
not be a stigma upon her dignity if she
were also a teacher of language.
William, watching Frances grow in
poise and wit, made special efforts to
encourage her, until Mile. Reuter warned
him that he gave Frances too much of
his time. The directress seemed to hover
over him constantly in an attempt to
recapture his affections; but he found her
deceitful, artful, cruel. After she abruptly
dismissed Frances from the seminary, she
innocently pleaded that she did not know
the young woman's address.
Frances returned to the seminary to
find William, but the directress kept them
from meeting. Instead, William received
a note of thanks from his pupil and twenty
francs in payment for his teaching.
William gave Mile. Reuter notice that he
intended to quit the seminary.
After a month's futile search for
Frances he accidentally came upon her
mourning over the grave of her father.
When it began to rain, Frances took
William to her rooms, where the pair
drank tea and read from an English book.
Frances was earning a living by lace
mending. She could not seek another
position as a teacher because she feared
that Mile. Reuter would not give her
satisfactory references. Bitterly resenting Mile.
Reuter's treachery, William took his leave.
He managed to return the twenty francs
before he departed.
Drawn to William by his coolness,
Mile. Reuter had repulsed M. Pelet with
hints that she favored the English
schoolmaster. After William's resignation,
perceiving that she had overplayed her hand,
she returned her favor to M. Pelet.
Smirking with victory, he informed
William of his forthcoming marriage.
William, deciding that the school would be
intolerable with Mme. Pelet under the
same roof, resigned his position.
Frances wrote that she had been
employed by a Mrs. D. to teach in an
English school in Brussels. Along with this
communication came a letter from Huns-
den announcing his arrival. Hunsden,
after berating William for his failure to
forge ahead, casually announced that
Edward's mill had failed. He had sold Crims-
worth Hall and abused his wife until she
left him, but he had managed to renew
3076

his credit, start another business, and
regain his wife. William's one concern over
the matter was the whereabouts of his
mother's portrait, which had hung in
Crimsworth Hall. The next morning
William received from Hunsden, as a gift, the
missing portrait.
Within a few weeks William was
fortunate enough to be appointed professor of
English in a college in Brussels. Cheered
by the promise of his new position,
William went to Frances, whom he had not
seen since the night he had met her in
the cemetery, and asked her to marry him.
She accepted on the condition that she
retain her teaching post. Although
William's income was large enough for both,
she pleaded that she did not wish to marry
him merely to be supported.
William and Frances were married.
Within a few months Mrs. Crimsworth
proposed that she elevate her position by
starting a school, and William agreed to
her plan.
When they had been married ten years,
a period in which Frances' school
flourished and a son had been born, the Crims-
worths went to England to live. They
settled near Hunsden, who during the
years that followed became their close
friend. Young Victor Crimsworth,
reflecting in character many of the attributes of
each parent, grew up in the atmosphere
of a tranquil and loving home.
3077

THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Willa Cather (1876-1947)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: A few years after World War I
Locale: Hamilton, a Midwestern university town
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Godfrey St. Peter, a middle-aged teacher and historian
Lillian St. Peter, his wife
Rosamond, and
Kathleen, their daughters
Louie Marcellus, Rosamond's husband
Scott McGregor, Kathleen's husband
Tom Outland, a former student at Hamilton
Augusta, a seamstress
Critique:
Although Willa Cather uses a
minimum of lively incident in The Professor's
House, the novel is intricate in both its
character portrayal and its plot structure.
Godfrey St. Peter is one of the author's
most sensitive and sympathetic creations,
and it is the mirror of his nostalgic but
discerning mind which reflects the
tensions of shifting relationships in the St.
Peter family. The story does not move in
straightforward fashion; flashbacks and
indirect revelation of past events are used
to throw light on a baffling and
complicated personal problem. There is little
surface drama in what happens to Godfrey
St. Peter, but his inward struggle is
unfolded with uncommon directness and
illumination.
The Story:
The Oxford prize for history brought
Professor Godfrey St. Peter not only a
certain international reputation but also the
sum of five thousand pounds. The five
thousand pounds, in turn, built the St.
Peter family a new house, into which the
Professor had been frankly reluctant to
move.
For half a lifetime the attic of the old
house had been his favorite spot—it was
there that he had done his best writing,
with his daughters' dress forms for his only
company—and it was in this workroom
that Augusta, the family sewing-woman,
found him when she came to transfer the
dress forms to the new house. To her
astonishment, the Professor declared
quizzically that she could not have them; he
intended to retain the old house in order
to preserve his workroom intact, and
everything must be left as it was.
Nevertheless, the new house made its
own claims. That same evening found
the Professor host at a small dinner party
for a visiting Englishman. The Professor s
daughters and their husbands were
present, and during dinner the conversation
turned to the new country house being
built by Rosamond and Louie. Louie
explained to the visitor why the name
Outland had been selected for the estate. Tom
Outland had been a brilliant scientific
student at Hamilton, as well as The
Professor's protege*. Before being killed in the
war, he had teen engaged to Rosamond.
His will had left everything to her,
including control of his revolutionary invention,
the Outland vacuum. Later, Louie
Marcellus himself had married Rosamond and
successfully marketed Tom's invention.
The new house, Louie concluded, would
serve in some measure as a memorial to
THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE by Willa Cather. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1925, by Willa Cather.
3078

Outland.
Louie's lack of reserve visibly irritated
the McGregors, and the Professor himself
maintained a cool silence. The next
morning his wife took him to task for it. Lillian
had been fiercely jealous of her husband's
interest in Tom Outland. The Professor
found himself reflecting that people who
fall in love, and who go on being in love,
always meet with something which
suddenly or gradually makes a difference.
Oddly enough, in the case of Lillian and
her husband, it had seemed to be his
pupil, Tom Outland.
More and more the Professor sought the
refuge of his study in the old house, where
he could insulate himself against
increasing family strain. Even here, however,
interruptions came. Once it was
Rosamond, self-conscious about accepting all
the benefits of the Outland invention. Her
father refused to share her good fortune
but suggested that she aid cancer-ridden
Professor Crane, who had collaborated
with Tom in his experiments. Rosamond
stiffened immediately, for outside the
family she recognized no obligations.
Soon there was more evidence that the
family was drifting apart. Kathleen
confessed to her father her violent reaction to
Rosamond's arrogance. It became known
that Louie, attempting to join the Arts and
Letters Club, had been blackballed by
his brother-in-law. The Professor was
distressed by the rift between his daughters,
both of whom he loved, although he had
a special affection for Kathleen.
Louie Marcellus' real fondness for the
St. Peters was demonstrated when the
time came for the Professor to fill a lecture
date in Chicago. He and Rosamond,
paying all bills, took them to Chicago,
installed them in a luxurious hotel suite, and
tempted them with diversions. During a
performance of Mignon, Lillian, softened
by memories aroused by the opera,
confirmed the Professor's impression that her
resentment of Tom Outland had affected
their marriage.
Louie's next plan was even more
elaborate: he and Rosamond would take the
Professor and Lillian to France for the
summer. The Professor loved France, but
he recognized the futility of trying to
compromise his and Louie's ideas of a
European vacation. He begged off, pleading
the pressure of work, and eventually the
others departed without him.
The Professor moved back into the old
house and luxuriated in independence. He
decided to edit for publication Tom Out-
land's youthful diary, and constantly he
turned over in his mind the events in
Tom's dramatic history.
Years before, Tom had appeared on the
Professor's doorstep as a sunburned young
man who was obviously unaccustomed to
the ways of society. Tom wanted to go to
college, although his only previous
instruction had come from a priest in New
Mexico. Interested and curious, the
Professor saw to it that Tom had a chance to
make up his deficiencies and enter the
university. The St. Peter house became
the boy's second home, and the little girls
were endlessly fascinated by his tales of
the Southwest. To them he confided that
his parents had died during their wagon
journey westward and that he had been
adopted by a kindly worker on the Sante
Fe* Railroad.
Tom's diary was chiefly concerned
with his strangest boyhood adventure. To
regain his strength after an attack of
pneumonia, he became a herd rider on
the summer range. With him went his
closest friend, Roddie Blake. On the range
Tom and Roddie were challenged by the
nearness of the mysterious Blue Mesa,
hitherto unclimbed and unexplored. They
saved their wages and made plans; when
their job was finished, they set out to
conquer Blue Mesa.
They made a striking discovery. In the
remote canyons of the mesa were Indian
rock villages, undisturbed for three
hundred years and in a miraculous state of
preservation. This gift of history stirred
Tom to a strong decision. His find should
be presented to his country; the relics must
not be exploited for profit. With Roddie's
consent he took six hundred dollars,
3079

boarded a train, and left for Washington.
Weeks later he returned, worn out by
red tape and indifference, only to learn
that Roddie had finally weakened and sold
the Indian treasures to a foreign scientist.
In a climax of bitterness he quarreled with
Roddie. A year later he walked into the
Professor's garden.
Recalling Tom Outland had always
brought the Professor a kind of second
youth. Tom was the kind of person the
Professor had started out to be—vigorous,
unspoiled, ambitious. Marrying Lillian
had brought happiness, none the less real
for having now faded; but it had chained
him, he felt, and diverted the true course
of his life. Now, reviewing the past, the
Professor suddenly felt tired and old. At
the news that the travelers would soon
return, he thought he could not again
assume a family role that had become
meaningless.
When Augusta came for the keys to
reopen the new house, she found the
Professor lying unconscious on the floor of his
den. Its one window had blown shut, and
the unvented gas stove had done the rest.
Augusta sent for the doctor, and the
Professor was revived. He found that his
temporary release from consciousness had
cleared his mind. He was not only ready
to face his family, but he was ready to face
himself and a problem that came too late
for him to flee,
3080

PROMETHEUS BOUND
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: A barren cliff in Scythia
First presented: Date unknown
Principal characters:
Prometheus, a Titan
Hephaestus, his kinsman and the god of fire
Kratos, Might
Bia, Force
Oceanus, god of the sea
Io, daughter of Inachus, a river god
Hermbs, the winged messenger of the gods
Critique:
Displaying perfectly the Aeschylean
pattern, Prometheus Bound is a dramatic
treatment of the legend of Prometheus,
the Fire-Bearer. The spectacle of a
demigod in conflict with his destiny, defiant in
the face of severe punishment, makes for
compelling drama. The mood is one of
sharp irony and deep reflection, for the
suffering of Prometheus is a symbol of
man's inhumanity to man.
The Story:
Condemned by Zeus for giving fire to
mere mortals, the Titan Prometheus was
brought to a barren cliff in Scythia by
Hephaestus, the god of fire, and two
guards, Kratos and Bia. There he was to
be bound to the jagged cliffs with bonds
as strong as adamant. Kratos and Bia
obeyed willingly the commands of Zeus,
but Hephaestus experienced pangs of
sorrow and was reluctant to bind his
kinsman to the storm-beaten cliff in that
waste region where no man came, where
Prometheus would never hear the voice
or see the form of a human being. He
grieved that the Titan was doomed
forever to be guardian of the desolate cliff.
But he was powerless against the
commands of Zeus, and so at last he chained
Prometheus to the cliff by riveting his
arms beyond release, thrusting a bitin
wedge of adamant straight through his
heart, and putting iron girths on both his
sides with shackles around his legs. After
Hephaestus and Bia departed, Kratos
remained to hurl one last taunt at
Prometheus, asking him what possible aid
mankind might now offer their benefactor.
The gods who gave Prometheus his name,
Forethinker, were foolish, Kratos pointed
out, for Prometheus required a higher
intelligence to do his thinking for him.
Alone and chained, Prometheus called
upon the winds, the waters, mother earth,
and the sun, to look on him and see
how the gods tortured a god. Admitting
that he must bear his lot as best he could
because the power of fate was invincible,
he was still defiant. He had committed
no crime, he insisted; he had merely
loved mankind. He remembered how the
gods first conceived the plan to revolt
against the rule of Kronos and seat Zeus
on the throne. At first Prometheus did
his best to bring about a reasonable peace
between the ancient Titans and the gods.
Failing, and to avoid further violence, he
had ranged himself on the side of Zeus,
who through the counsel of Prometheus
overthrew Kronos. Once on the throne,
Zeus parceled out to the lesser gods their
share of power, but ignored mortal man
with the ultimate plan in mind of
destroying him completely and creating
instead another race which would cringe
and be servile to Zeus' every word.
Among all the gods, only Prometheus
objected to this heartless proposal, and it
was Prometheus' courage, his act alone,
3081

which saved man from burial in the
deepest black of Hades. It was he who
taught blind hopes to spring within man's
heart, and gave him the gift of fire.
Understanding the significance of these
deeds, he had sinned willingly.
Oceanus, brother of Prometheus, came
to offer aid out of love and kinship, but
he first offered Prometheus advice and
preached humility in the face of Zeus'
wrath. Prometheus remained proud,
defiant, and refused his offer of help on the
grounds that Oceanus himself would be
punished were it discovered that he
sympathized with a rebel. Convinced by
Prometheus' argument, Oceanus took sot
rowful leave of his brother.
Once more Prometheus recalled that
man was a creature without language,
ignorant of everything before Prometheus
came and told him of the rising and
setting of stars, of numbers, of letters, of the
function of beasts of burden, of the utility
of ships, of curing diseases, of happiness
and lurking evil, of methods to bring
wealth in iron, silver, copper, and gold
out of the earth. In spite of his torment,
he rejoiced that he had taught all arts
to humankind.
Io, a young girl changed into a heifei
and tormented by a stinging gadfly, came
to the place where Prometheus was
chained. Daughter of Inachus, a rivei
god, she was beloved by Zeus. His
wife, Hera, out of jealousy, had turned
Io into a cow and set Argus, the hundred-
eyed monster, to watch her. When Zeuf
had Argus put to death, Hera sent a gad
fly to sting Io and drive her all over the
earth. Prometheus prophesied her future
wanderings to the end of the earth,
predicting that the day would come when
Zeus would restore her to human form
and together they would conceive a son
named Epaphus. Before Io left, Prome
theus also named his own rescuer, Her
cules, who with his bow and arrow would
kill the eagle devouring his vital parts.
Hermes, messenger of Zeus, came to
see Prometheus and threatened him with
more awful terrors at the hands of angry
Zeus. Prometheus, still defiant, belittled
Hermes' position among the gods and
called him a mere menial. Suddenly there
was a turbulent rumbling of the earth,
accompanied by lightning, thunder, and
blasts of wind, as angry Zeus shattered
the rock with a thunderbolt and hurled
Prometheus into an abysmal dungeon
within the earth. Such was the terrible
fate of the Fire-Bearer who defied th*
gods.
3082

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
Type of work: Poem
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Tvpe of plot: Lyric drama
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Asia
First published: 1820
Principal characters:
Prometheus, a Titan
Earth, his mother
Asia, his wife
Jupiter, king of the gods
Demogorgon, supreme power, ruling the gods
Mercury, messenger of the gods
Hercules, hero ot virtue and strength
Panthea, and
Ione, the Oceanides
Critique:
This poem, called a lyric drama by the
author, is more lyric than dramatic. The
poem owes its form to Shelley's study of
Greek drama, however, and the
characters are drawn from Greek mythology.
Through the combined mediums of
drama and poetry Shelley expounds his
idea that universal love is the one
solution to mankind's ills. Prometheus
Unbound is valuable as a key to Shelley's
philosophy; it is also enjoyable as a work
of art.
The Story:
Prometheus, the benefactor of
mankind, was bound to a rocky cliff by order
of Jupiter, who was jealous of the Titan's
power. Three thousand years of torture
Prometheus suffered there, while heat and
cold and many torments afflicted him. An
eagle continually ate at his heart. But
Prometheus still defied the power of
Jupiter.
At last Prometheus asked Panthea and
Ione, the two Oceanides, to repeat to him
the curse he had pronounced upon Jupiter
when Jupiter had first begun to torture
him. But neither Earth, his mother, nor
the Oceanides would answer him* At
last the Phantasm of Jupiter appeared
and repeated the curse. When
Prometheus heard the words, he repudiated
them. Now that he had suffered
tortures and found that his spirit remained
unconquered, he wished pain to no living
thing. Earth and the Oceanides mourned
that the curse had been withdrawn, for
they thought Jupiter had at last
conquered Prometheus' spirit.
Then Mercury approached with the
Furies. Mercury told the captive that he
would suffer even greater tortures if he
did not reveal the secret which
Prometheus alone knew — the future fate of
Jupiter. Jupiter, afraid, wished to avert
catastrophe by learning the secret, and
Mercury promised that Prometheus
would be released if he revealed it. But
Prometheus refused. He admitted only
that he knew Jupiter's reign would come
to an end, that he would not be king of
the gods for all eternity. Prometheus said
that he was willing to suffer torture until
Jupiter's reign ended. Although the
Furies tried to frighten him by describing
the pains they could inflict, they knew
they had no power over his soul.
The Furies mocked Prometheus and
mankind. They showed him visions of
blood and despair on earth; they showed
the Passion of Ghrist and men's disregard
for His message of love. Fear and
hypocrisy ruled; tyrants took the thrones of the
world.
A group of spirits appeared and
prophesied that Love would cure the ills of
mankind. They prophesied also that
Prometheus would be able to bring Love
3083

to earth and halt the reign of evil and
grief.
When the spirits had gone,
Prometheus acknowledged the power of Love,
for his love for Asia, his wife, had
enabled him to suffer pain without
surrendering.
While Asia mourned alone in a lovely
valley for her lost husband, Panthea
appeared to tell of two dreams she had had.
In one, she saw Prometheus released from
bondage and all the world filled with
sweetness. In the other dream she had
received only a command to follow. Just
then the echoes in the valley broke their
silence. They called Asia and Panthea
to follow them. The listeners obeyed.
Asia and Panthea followed the echoes
to the realm of Demogorgon, the
supreme power ruling the gods. They
stopped on a pinnacle of rock, but spirits
beckoned them down into Demogorgon's
cave. There he told them that he would
answer any question they put to him.
When they asked who nad made the
living world, he replied that God had
created it. Then tney asked who had
made pain and evil. Prometheus had
given knowledge to mankind, but
mankind had not eradicated evil with all the
gifts of science. They asked whether
Jupiter was the source of these ills, the
evil master over man.
Demogorgon answered that nothing
which served evil could be master, for
only eternal Love ruled all. Asia asked
when Prometheus would gain his
freedom and bring Love into the world to
conquer Jupiter. Demogorgon then
showed his guests the passage of the
Hours. A dreadful Hour passed, marking
Jupiter's fall; the next hour was beautiful,
marking Prometheus' release. Asia and
Panthea accompanied this spirit of the
Hour in her chariot and passed by Age,
Manhood, Youth, Infancy, and Death
into a new paradise.
Meanwhile, Jupiter, who had just
married Thetis, celebrated his omnipotence
over all but the soul of man. Then
Demogorgon appeared and pronounced
judgment on Jupiter. Jupiter cried for mercy,
but his power was gone. He sank
downward through darkness and ruin.
At the same time Hercules approached
Prometheus. In the presence of Asia
Panthea, the Spirit of the Hour, and
Earth, the captive was set free.
Joyfully, Prometheus told Asia how they
would spend the rest of their days
together with Love. Then he sent the
Spirit of the Hour to announce his
release to all mankind. He kissed Earth,
and Love infused all of her animal,
vegetable, and mineral parts.
The Spirit of Earth came to the cave
where Asia and Prometheus lived and
told them of the transformation that had
come over mankind. Anger, pride,
insincerity, and all the other ills of man had
passed away. The Spirit of the Hour
reported other wonders that took place.
Thrones were empty, and each man was
king over himself, free from guilt or pain.
But he was still subject to chance, death,
and mutability, without which he would
oversoar his destined place in the world.
Later in a vision Panthea and lone
saw how all the evil things of the world
lay dead and decayed. Earth's happiness
was boundless, and even the moon felt
the beams of Love from Earth as snow
melted on its bleak lunar mountains.
Earth rejoiced that hate, fear, and pain
had left mankind forever. Man was now
master of his fate and of all the secrets
of Earth.
3084

THE PROMISED LAND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henrik Pontoppidan (1857-1943)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Denmark
First published: 1891-1895
Principal characters:
Emanuel Hansted, a clergyman and reformer
Hansine, his wife
Miss Tonnesen, his former fiancee
Dr. Hassing, a physician
Critique:
Pontoppidan's novel reflects the class
distinctions and the division between
town and country folk in nineteenth-
century Denmark, at a time when the
peasants were struggling for a greater
voice in the affairs of that country. As in
the case of so many European novels
dealing with social problems, the
characterization, the plot, and the happenings are
secondary to the social meaning and the
tone of the work. As a result, the
characters are types rather than individuals, and
in a plot subordinate to theme the
happenings are not skillfully tied together.
Quite obviously these items were
relatively unimportant to the author; he was
intent upon giving a picture of the
struggle between the People's Party and the
Conservatives, and the effects of that
struggle on individuals. Sympathetic to
the less-favored group, Pontoppidan, like
so many problem novelists, told only one
side of the story; one result is that his
upper-class characters, like those of the
American novelist Theodore Dreiser, are
often overdrawn.
The Story:
Emanuel Hansted, son of a wealthy
Copenhagen family, and a minister, had
left his home city years before to take
over a pastorate in the country. Somewhat
of a reformer, he had become addicted to
the socialism rife in Europe in the second
half of the nineteenth century, and to
prove his fellowship with the peasants
THE PROMISED LAND by Henrik Pontoppidan. By permission of the publishers, J. M. Dent ft Sons.
Ltd. Copyright. 1896, by J. M. Dent ft Sons, Ltd. Renewed. '
whom he served he had married a peasant
girl and undertaken to farm the land on
which the rectory was situated.
As the years passed Hansted's wife,
Hansine, presented him with three
children; his land, however, repaid him only
with debts. Although he tried experiment
after experiment, Emanuel's fields did not
produce enough to support his family.
Stubbornly, Emanuel refused to
acknowledge that he was no farmer; he even
continued to refuse any payment from his
parishioners and gave away the money he
received for the benefit of the poor.
In spite of his sacrifices, despite his
never-flagging efforts to share their lives,
and his ties with them through marriage,
the peasants did not accept him as one of
themselves. The fact that he had come
among them as an outlander was too
strong for them to forget, even in the
times of stress that came when the newly-
formed People's Party of Denmark,
representing chiefly the peasantry, was trying
to control the government, in order to
provide for the education of the masses
and to improve the lot of the common
people generally.
To the casual eye Emanuel might have
seemed a peasant, for he had nothing to do
with the few gentry who lived in the
vicinity. He even distrusted the doctor,
whom he had to call in occasionally to
treat a member of his family. Indeed,
Emanuel summoned Doctor Hassing only
3085

when an emergency existed. As for his
family, Emanuel had put his father and
his sister entirely out of his mind; only his
wife and children, who tied him to the
peasantry, were acknowledged as kin.
One summer all of nature and mankind
seemed determined to show that Emanuel
was a misfit in the rural area he had
adopted. His crops were even poorer than
usual. He had borrowed the seed he put
into the ground, and, after it was in,
nature refused to send the weather he
needed to produce successful yields in the
fields. In Copenhagen the Conservative
Party gained in strength and defeated the
People's Party, first in small items, then
in large. As the peasants lost their political
power, the people of Emanuel's parish
began to look upon him as one who
belonged on the other side.
As if that were not enough, Emanuel's
oldest child, a son, began to suffer from an
ear inflammation that had gone untended
for two years. At last, upon Hansine's
insistence, Emanuel sent for Dr. Hassing.
The physician could not believe that
Emanuel had permitted the child's health
to fall into such a dangerous state;
Emanuel, on his part, could not
understand that the child was really ill. Failing
to follow the doctor's advice, he treated
his son as if he were well and healthy.
Because of his father's failure to face
reality, the boy died.
Before long Emanuel and Hansine
began to drift apart, for their son's death
had erected a barrier between them that
had been years in the making. Hansine
felt that her husband really was unhappy,
and she believed that he actually wanted
to escape from the dismal, unappreciative
rural parish.
Quite by chance, while out walking
alone to prepare his Sunday sermon,
Emanuel came upon Dr. Hassing and a
small party of picnickers. Prevailed upon
to join the group, he found among them
Miss Tonnesen, his former fiancee from
Cophenhagen. Emanuel walked back to
Dr. Hassing's home with the picnickers
and, because it was growing dark,
remained for supper. The genteel
conversation, the quiet wealth of the home, the
very food on the table, the music after
supper—all of these things reminded
Emanuel of what he had lost when he had
refused Miss Tonnesen's love, rejected the
family warmth of his parents' home, and
turned instead toward the simple, rude
life of the peasants. In the days following
he ridiculed the people with whom he had
spent a few hours, but Hansine saw that
he was merely trying to convince himself
that he had chosen the right path in his
life's work.
A few weeks later Miss Tonnesen, who
had gone out into the rural area to prove
to herself that her former suitor had sunk
beneath her, visited the rectory. Her
father had been the former rector of the
parish; under his care the rectory had
been a place of beauty, both within and
without. His daughter, seeing it for the
first time in many years, was amazed to see
how Emanuel had let it fall into disrepair.
Only a few of the rooms, equipped with
the barest of essentials, were in use. The
gardens and lawns were overgrown; even
the outbuildings and fields had been years
without proper care. Miss Tonneson could
scarcely believe that the man she had
loved could have permitted the grounds
in his charge, and himself as well, to slip
into the state in which she found them.
Miss Tonnesen's visit bothered
Hansine. She saw in the other woman all that
her husband had given up when he had
married her instead of a woman from his
own social class. Even Hansine's children
asked if they could go to Copenhagen to
visit the beautiful lady. Emanuel himself
realized that Miss Tonnesen represented
something he had lost, but could still
regain. He became dissatisfied with the
peasantry, and they quickly sensed his
unrest. His farm workers left him when,
angry because the rains ruined any chance
he had of harvesting a crop of rye, he
abused them for their laziness.
The climax came when the director of
the district high school, a man who as
head of the institution had done much
3086

for the peasants, died. Everyone in the
region went to the funeral. After it was
over a political meeting formed of its own
accord. Emanuel, when asked to address
the meeting, spoke out against the sloth
and narrow prejudices of the peasants. As
he spoke, murmurings arose; he finally
had to stop speaking when the crowd
began to shout insults and ridicule. As he
slowly left the meeting, he could hear a
new speaker declaring that the pastor
should return to his own people.
He met Hansine at the edge of the
crowd; slowly they started home. On the
way back Hansine told Emanuel that he
ought to return to Copenhagen and she to
her former life. He sadly agreed. The
children, it was decided, would go with
their father. To Emanuel's delight, his
father and sister wrote him to return as
soon as possible. As a result, one morning
he and his remaining two children
climbed into a carriage and drove away,
while Hansine turned to walk to her
parents' cottage.
3087

PROSERPINE AND CERES
Type of work: Classical myth
Source: Folk tradition
Type of plot: Allegory of fertility and death
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Mediterranean region
First transcribed: Unknown
Principal characters:
Ceres, goddess of fertility
Proserpine, her daughter
Hades, king of the underworld
Venus, goddess of love
Cupid, her son
Triptolemus, builder of a temple to Ceres
Are thus a, a fountain nymph
Alpheus, a river god
Diana, goddess of the hunt
Jupiter, king of the gods
Mercury, messenger of the gods
Critique:
Prominent in popularity among the
legends created by the Greeks and the
Romans is the story of Proserpine and
Ceres. As a fable which identifies itself
with the simplest explanation of the
seasons, it has lived by being transferred in
oral legend, in poetry, and in prose from
generation to generation. Although the
story has changed in certain details, its
basic structure remains. Its hold upon
the imagination of the Western world
lies in its appeal as a record of man's
search for a beautiful interpretation of
grief.
The Story:
One of the Titans, Typhoeus, long
imprisoned for his part in the rebellion
against Jupiter, lav in agony beneath
Mount Aetna on the island of Sicily in
the Mediterranean Sea. When Typhoeus
groaned and stirred, he shook the sea and
the island of Sicily so much that the god
of the underworld, Hades, became
frightened lest his kingdom be revealed to the
light of day.
Rising to the upper world to make
entrance to his kingdom, Hades was
discovered by Venus, who ordered her
son Cupid to aim one of his love darts
into the breast of Hades and so cause him
to fall in love with Proserpine, daughter
of Ceres, goddess of fertility.
Proserpine had gone with her
companions to gather flowers by the banks of
a stream in the beautiful vale of Enna.
There Hades, stricken by Cupid's dart,
saw Proserpine, seized her, and lashed his
fiery horses to greater speed as he carried
her away. In her fright the girl dropped
her apron, full of flowers she had
gathered. At the River Cyane, Hades struck
the earth with his scepter, causing a
passageway to appear through which he
drove his chariot and took his captive to
the underworld.
Ceres sought her daughter everywhere.
At last, sad and tired, she sat down to rest.
A peasant and his daughter found her in
her disguise as an old woman, took pity
on her, and urged her to go with them
to their rude home. When they arrived
at the house they found that tneir only
son, Triptolemus, was dying. Ceres first
gathered some poppies. Then, kissing
the child, she restored it to health. The
happy family bade her join them in their
simple meal of honey, cream, apples, and
curds. Ceres put some of the poppy juice
in the boy's milk and that night when he
was sleeping she placed the child in the
fire. The mother, awakening, seized her
child from the flames. Ceres assumed her
proper form and told the parents that it
had been her plan to make the boy
immortal. Since the mother had hindered
S088

that plan, she would teach him the use
of the plow.
Then the goddess mother continued
her search for Proserpine until she
returned to Sicily. There, at the very spot
Hades had entered the underworld, she
asked the river nymph if she had seen
anything of her daugnter. Fearful of
being punished, the river nymph refused
to tell what she had seen but gave to
Ceres the belt of Proserpine, which the
girl had lost in her struggles.
Ceres decided to take revenge upon the
land, to deny it further gift of her favors
so that herbage and grain would not
grow. In an effort to save the land which
Ceres was intent upon cursing, the
fountain Arethusa told the following story
to Ceres. Arethusa had been hunting in
the forest, where she was formerly a
woodland nymph. Finding a stream, she
decided to bathe. As she sported in the
water, the river god Alpheus began to
call her. Frightened, the nymph ran, the
god pursuing.
The goddess Diana, seeing her plight,
changed Arethusa into a fountain which
ran through the underworld and emerged
in Sicily. While passing through the
underworld, Arethusa saw Proserpine,
now aueen of the dead, sad at the
separation from her mother but at the same
time bearing the dignity and power of
the bride of Hades.
Ceres immediately demanded help
from Jupiter, ruler of the gods. The king
of the gods said that Proserpine should
be allowed to return to the valley of
Enna from which she had been abducted
only if in the underworld she had taken
no food.
Mercury was sent to demand
Proserpine for her mother. But Proserpine had
eaten of a pomegranate. Because she had
eaten only part of the fruit, a compromise
was made. Half of the time she was to
pass with her mother and the rest with
Hades. Ceres, happy over the return of
Proserpine during one half of each year,
caused the earth to be fertile again during
the time Proserpine lived with her.
Ceres remembered her promise to the
peasant boy, Triptolemus. She taught
him to plow and to plant seed, and he
gathered with her all the valuable seeds
of the earth. In gratitude the peasant's
son built a temple to Ceres in Eleusis
where priests administered rites called the
Eleusinian mysteries. Those rites
surpassed all other Greek religious
celebrations because in the mysteries of nature,
men saw symbolized the death of man
and the promise of his revival in future
life.
3089

PURPLE DUST
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sean O'Casey (1884-
Type of plot: Satiric comedy
lime of plot: The present
Locale: Clune na Geera, Ireland
First presented: 1940
Principal characters:
Cyril Poges, a pompous English businessman
O'Killigain, a foreman stonemason
Basil Stoke, Poges' colleague
Souhaun, Poges mistress
Avril, Stoke's mistress
Three Irish Workmen
Critique:
In Purple Dust, Sean O'Casey returned
to certain stylistic aspects of his earlier
plays: the mixture of moving poetry with
extravagant comedy. However, though
the occasional poetic passages of the Irish
workmen concerning their noble past are
indeed beautiful, the emphasis of the
play is on the profoundly comic aspects
of two stuffy Englishmen trying to adjust
to the rigors of the bucolic life. O'Casey,
as usual, is extolling the hardy Irish, and
quite disapproves of men who cling to
the past without partly looking to the
future. When men venerate the past
without a true sense of understanding and
appreciation, as do Poges and Stoke, the
result is especially disastrous.
The Story:
Three workmen were standing
languidly in a large, gloomy room that
obviously was once the living room of a
ruined Elizabethan mansion. The three
pondered on the wisdom of two English
gentlemen, Cyril Poges and Basil Stoke,
in coming to live in such a decaying old
house. Though the fresh paint had
brightened things up a bit, it covered,
for the most part, rotting wood. The
sudden appearance of the sixty-five-year-old
Poges and the thirtyish, serious Basil
followed by their mistresses, Souhaun and
Avril, confirmed the workmen's
suspicions that the owners were slightly awry
in their thinking; the group danced in,
boisterously singing of the joys of
country living. The handsome foreman,
O'Killigain, explained to the workmen that
these were people who saw historical
loveliness in decaying ruins, and who
took foolish delight in any locale with a
story behind it. With the reappearance of
the pretty Avril, O'Killigain exerted his
poetic Irish charm to entice her into a
rendezvous later that night.
Poges, Basil, and Souhaun returned
from a tramp in the fields. Poges and
Basil talked excitedly about the glories of
past history and its better times, much
to the disgust of O'Killigain, who firmly
believed that life in its present state was
far more worth living. His philosophy
was lost on the other two, who went
about their comic business of hanging
pictures and discovering new aspects of
country living—new business for them,
but common enjoyment for the hardy
Irish workmen.
Although Poges wanted to forget the
outside world and its ways, his reverie
was constantly interrupted by prosaic
occurrences: arguments with Basil and the
girls, altercations with his butler over
men outside who wished to know if he
desired roosters and hens, and
interruptions by one of the workmen, who in-
PURPLE DUST by Sean O'Casey. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1940,
by Sean O'Casey.
3090

formed him of an excellent buy in a cow.
Poges raged that he would get in touch
with the Department of Agriculture. At
Poges* displeasure over the disconnected
telephone, another workman lost his
temper. Poges heard himself scorned as a
man who thought that the glory of the
world could be stuffed into a purse, a
man who was patronizing toward the
Irish, a mighty race a thousand years
older than his own. Basil and Avril left
for a horseback ride, in spite of warnings
that Irish horses were true horses, instead
of English animals. The predictions
were accurate; a battered Basil appeared
shortly afterward and announced that his
horse indeed had become a wild animal,
and that, when last seen, Avril was riding
away quite naked with O'Killigain.
The next day brought a cold dawn.
Though Poges and Basil had spent the
night fully clothed, they had almost
frozen to death in the old house, along
with the rest of the household. Poges still
tried to rationalize; the cold air would
revitalize them and exhilarate them.
Barney, the butler, and Cloyne, the maid,
were none the less disgusted with the
whole situation; they thought the place
an unlimited dungeon. As Barney
struggled to light a damp fire, Cloyne rushed
back into the room to scream that there
was a wild bull in the entrance hall. This
announcement caused a great panic
among the transplanted city dwellers.
Basil reentered with a gun, then ran for
his life as Poges roared for help and
Cloyne fainted. A workman saved them
all by shooing out a harmless cow which
had innocently wandered into the
hallway.
Later Poges thought he had found a
friend in the same workman, who
reminisced with him over glorious days in
the past. Once again Poges expressed his
philosophy that all the greats had gone
with their glory, their finery turned to
purple dust, and that today's man was
shallow by comparison. However,
O'Killigain and another workman later
transfixed Poges by their poetic visions of the
glorious Irish past and the fight for
independence. Although Poges was
momentarily surprised to find that these country
workers had such depth, his spirit of
English nationalism soon reasserted itself.
Poges' calamities continued. His next
misadventure was with an oversized,
heavy garden roller. Though his friends
warned him, Poges persisted in his efforts
to operate die machine. The result was
a wrecked wall, as Poges let the roller get
away from him to roll into and through
the side of the house. Following closely
on this incident, a terrified Basil shot and
killed the indolent cow which had earlier
invaded the hallway.
An interview with the local canon
lifted Poges' spirits when the churchman
praised Poges for restoring a portion of
the past to slow down the reckless speed
of the present. As the workmen continued
to bring in furniture, Souhaun, like Avril
to O'Killigain, almost succumbed to one of
the workmen and his poetic charm. The
moving into the room of a gilded desk-
bureau proved to be another disaster. The
top was first scarred by a workman's boot;
then the bureau and the entrance were
both damaged as the piece of furniture
was pushed and pried through the door.
Because the wind was rising and storm
clouds were brewing ominously, the
workmen were sent away, but not before
O'Killigain and the workman had
entreated Avril and Souhaun to accompany
them. The beautiful picture of Irish life
conjured quickly by the man left the girls
quite unsettled, but Poges and Basil
made great fun of the workmen's poetic
proposals. As the day grew darker and
the rain fell, Poges found still other
troubles; the postmaster arrived to complain
about Poges' midnight phone calls to him.
Suddenly the sound of a galloping horse
was heard over the howl of the wind.
Warned that the river was rising, the
terrified group in the darkened room
made plans to climb to the roof before
the house was flooded. Souhaun was
nowhere to be found; she was with the
workman on the galloping horse. O'Kil-
3091

Iigain, who had said that he would come for the roof and a defeated Poges fol-
for Avril when the river rose, appeared lowed slowly, longing, once more, for
as he had promised. Avril left, renounc- dear England,
ing Basil as a gilded monkey. Basil ran
3092

THE PURPLE LAND
Type or work: Novel
Author: W. H. Hudson CI841-1922)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Uruguay and Argentina
First published: 1885
Principal characters:
Richard Lamb, an English adventurer
Paquita, his wife
Dona Isidora, her aunt
Lucero, a horse tamer
Marcos Marco, General Coloma
Margarita, his daughter
Don Peralta, a mad landowner
Demetria Peralta, his daughter
Critique:
The Purple Land is a story of romantic
adventure, perhaps not quite so
entertaining as Green Mansions, but with merits
of its own. The reader gets an insight
into the lives and environment of the
people of an unhappy far-off purple land
in revolutionary South America. Hudson
is one of the great masters of sensuous
prose. Perhaps the reason for this stylistic
skill is the fact that he was a botanist
and the keenness of observation required
in scientific writing is reflected in his
choice of adjectives and verbs.
The Story:
Richard Lamb married Paquita
without her father's consent and eloped with
her to Montevideo. There they went to
see Dona Isidora, a relative of Paquita,
and stayed with her for some time. Dona
Isidora gave Lamb a letter to the overseer
of the Estancia de la Virgen de los
Desamparados, a ranch called in English
Vagabond's Rest.
Lamb departed with the letter, and in
the Florida department he began to learn
the history of the unhappy land of
Uruguay. The Argentines and Brazilians
interfered in the country's politics, and, as
if the foreign influences were not enough
to cause trouble, there was constant
friction between the country and the town
districts. At a pulperia, or tavern, he met
Lucero, a horse tamer, and went to stay at
THE PURPLE LAND by W. H. Hudson. Published by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
his house; but he soon left Lucero and
continued his journey to the estancia.
Lamb took advantage of rustic
hospitality throughout his journey. One night
he stayed at a house in which lived a
family with many children. The children
were all named after particular Christian
concepts, such as Conception and
Ascension. However, there were far too many
insects infesting the house for his
comfort, and he departed early the next day.
Lamb continued his journey through
Lucuaremb6 department and then
entered the county of his destination. There
he discovered that Dona Isidora's letter
meant nothing; there was no employment
for him.
During his stay at the estancia he had
a fight with a man called Barbudo and
sained a reputation for being a great
fighter. When he discovered that his
reputation as a fighter would only lead
to more and bloodier fights, he decided
to return to Montevideo.
At Toloso, Lamb met a group of
English expatriates in a pulperia, and he
remained with his fellow countrymen for
a time. Finally he found them to be
quite worthless and quarreled with them.
Then he headed once more for
Montevideo. In the Florida department he met
a lovely girl named Margarita and helped
her get her doves from a branch in a tree.
3093

Margarita was so different from the rest
of her family that Lamb could not help
wondering how she came to be born into
such a rough, coarse family. There he
met Anselmo, who was an indefatigable
talker and teller of pointless tales. There,
too, he met Marcos Marco.
Lamb and Marcos started out to go to
Montevideo together, but on the way
they were captured by an army detail and
taken prisoners because Lamb had
neglected to get a passport. They were taken
before a justice of the peace at Las
Cuevas. Through the machinations of
the justice's fat wife, Lamb was free to
move about until his trial. Marcos,
however, was imprisoned. Lamb talked the
fat wife into giving him the key to the
fetters which bound his friend Marcos.
Lamb freed his friend so that Marcos
would be able to sleep comfortably in his
captivity, but Marcos took advantage of
his opportunity and escaped during the
night. Lamb, being a lover of nature,
captured a small snake and used it as a
means to ward off the attentions of the
justice's wife. He was finally released.
Later, at the estate of Alday, he first
heard of General Santa Coloma, who in
reality was Marcos Marco. He told Anita,
an orphan living with the Aldays, the
story of Alma, who wanted a playmate,
and Little Niebla. Anita wanted a
playmate too and the next morning she ran
off to find one. Monica, the daughter of
the household, searched for and found
Anita. Monica then asked Lamb to tell
her a story out of the great store of
anecdotes he knew.
Lamb was taken to see General
Coloma, whom he recognized as his friend
Marcos. He joined the general and
fought in the battle of San Paulo. The
general explained to Lamb the mystery
of Margarita; she was Coloma's daughter.
When the batde of San Paulo ended
badly for the general's army, Lamb
escaped. At a pulDeria he met Gandara,
who wanted to take him prisoner because
he had been a member of General
Coloma's anrfy. Lamb shot Gandara and
escaped. He stayed for a time at the
home of an expatriate Scotsman named
John Carrickfergus, but soon he
continued his journey to Montevideo.
His next important stop was at the
home of Don Peralta, who was demented.
Don Peralta had lost a son, Calixto, who
had been killed in battle several years
before. Demetria Peralta, the daughter, was
the heir to the estate, but she and
everyone else were under the thumb of Don
Hilario, the supervisor of the estate.
When Lamb rode away, he left with
Santos, a servant, who told him the
history of the Peralta family. Demetria-
wished to marry Lamb and thus be able
to take over and administer the property
which was really hers. Lamb could not
marry her, but he arranged to abduct her
and take her to Montevideo, where she
would be safe from Hilario. When they
arrived safely in Montevideo, Paquita
looked after Demetria as if she were her
own sister. From Montevideo they went
to Buenos Aires, where the unsanctioned
marriage of Lamb and Paquita promised
to give still more trouble for the young
couple.
3094

PYGMALION
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Time: c. 1900
Locale: London
First presented: 1913
Principal characters:
Henry Higgins, a phonetician
Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl
Alfred Doolittle, her father, a dustman
Colonel Pickering, another phonetician
Freddy Eynsford Hill, a poor young gentleman
Throughout his career Shaw agitated
for the reform of the vagaries of
English spelling and pronunciation;
nevertheless his assertion is immaterial that
Pygmalion was written to impress upon
the public the importance of phoneticians
in modern society. Pygmalion, like all of
Shaw's best plays, transcends its author's
didactic intent. The play will continue to
be performed and read, not for
indoctrination into one of Shaw's pet theories,
but for the laughter its characters
provoke.
The play is a modern adaptation of the
Pygmalion myth (though some have
claimed that it is a plagiarism of Tobias
Smollett's Peregrine Pickle), in which the
sculptor-king Pygmalion falls in love with
a creature of his making, a statue which
Aphrodite, pitying him, brings to life.
The Pygmalion of Shaw's play turns up
as Henry Higgins, a teacher of English
speech; his Galatea, Eliza Doolittle, a
cockney flower girl whom Higgins
transforms into a seeming English lady, mainly
by teaching her to speak cultivated
English. In the process of transforming a
poor girl into a lady, Higgins irrevocably
changes a human life. By lifting Eliza
above her own class and providing her
with only the appurtenances of another,
Higgins makes her unfit for both. On
this change and Higgins' stubborn
refusal to accept its reality and its
consequences, Shaw builds his play.
From the beginning, when Higgins first
observes her dialectal monstrosities, Eliza
is characterized as a proud, stubborn girl,
even though educated only by the
crudities of poverty and the gutter. Brassy
enough to ask Higgins to make good his
boast that he can pass her off as a duchess
within three months, she calls on him
and offers to pay him for elocution
lessons which will take her off the streets
and into a position as saleswoman in a
flower shop. Like all the proud, she is also
sensitive, and she tries to break off the
interview when Higgins persists in
treating her as his social inferior. Little
wonder, then, that months later, when
Higgins has indeed proved his boast, she
resents his indifference toward her and
her future, and, after telling him what
a cad he is, runs away to his mother, who
has befriended her.
Higgins can best be understood in
contrast to Colonel Pickering, his foil, who
finances the transformation. As a fellow
phonetician, Pickering approves of the
project as a scientific experiment, but as
a gentleman he sympathizes with Eliza
as a sensitive human being. It is Higgins1
uproariously tragic flaw that he, like all
of Shaw's heroes, is not a gentleman. He
is brilliant and cultured, but he lacks
manners and refuses to learn or even
affect any, believing himself to be superior
to the conventions and civilities of polite
society and preferring to treat everyone
with bluntness and candor. He is, or so
he thinks until Eliza leaves him, a self-
sufficient man. When he discovers that
she has made herself an indispensable
part of his life, he goes to her and in one
of the most remarkable courtship scenes
in the history of the theater pleads with
her to live wi*h Pickering and himself as
3095

three dedicated bachelors. At the end of
the play he is confident that she will
accept his unorthodox proposition, even
when she bids him goodbye forever.
As a matter of fact, Shaw himself was
never able to convince anyone that Eliza
and Higgins did not marry and live
happily ever after. The first producer of the
play, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree,
insisted on leaving the impression that the
two were reconciled in the end as lovers,
and this tradition has persisted. Enraged
as always by any liberties taken with his
work, Shaw wrote an essay which he
attached to the play as a sequel
denouncing any sentimental interpretation
of Pygmalion.
He concedes that Pygmalion is a
romance in that its heroine undergoes an
llmost miraculous change, but he argues
that the logic of the characterization does
not permit a conventional happy ending.
Higgins is, after all, a god and Eliza only
his creation, so that an abyss separates
them. Furthermore, Shaw contends, their
personalities, backgrounds, and
philosophies are irreconcilable. Higgins is an
inveterate bachelor and likely to remain
one because he will never find a woman
who can meet the standards he has set
for ideal womanhood—those set by his
mother. Eliza, on the other hand, being
young and pretty, can always find a
husband whose demands on a woman would
not be impossible to meet. Therefore,
Shaw insists, Eliza marries Freddy Eyns-
ford Hill, a penniless but devoted young
man who played only an insignificant
role in the play itself. Stubbornly, Shaw
would not even permit them the luxury
of living happily ever after: they have
financial problems which are gradually
solved by opening a flower shop
subsidized by Colonel Pickering. Shaw's
Pygmalion is too awe-inspiring for his
Galatea ever to presume to love him.
Even with the addition of such an
unconventional ending to the play,
Pygmalion would be highly atypical of
Shavian drama were it not for the
presence of Alfred Doolittle, Eliza's father.
Through Doolittle, Shaw is able to
indulge in economic and social moralizing,
an ingredient Shaw could not dispense
with. Like Eliza, Doolittle undergoes a
transformation as a result of Higgins'
meddling, a transformation that is
unpremeditated, however, in his case. Early
in the play Doolittle fascinates Higgins
and Pickering by his successful attempt
to capitalize on Eliza's good fortune. He
literally charms Higgins out of five
pounds by declaring himself an
implacable foe of middle-class morality and
insisting that he will use the money for a
drunken spree. Delighted with the old
scoundrel, Higgins mentions him in jest
to a crackpot American millionaire who
subsequently bequeathes Doolittle a
yearly allowance of three thousand
pounds if he will lecture on morality.
Thus he becomes a dustman transformed
into a lion of London society, a reprobate
changed into a victim of bourgeois
morality. Although he appears only twice in
the play, Doolittle is so vigorous and
funny that he is almost as memorable a
comic character as Higgins.
The truth of the matter is that the
play itself is memorable because of its
vigor and fun, notwithstanding Shaw's
protestations about its didacticism. The
reason why Shaw did protest so much in
his insistence on the serious intent of the
play may lie in his realization that
Pygmalion was his least serious, least didactic,
play.
3096

QUALITY STREET
Type of work: Drama
Author: James M. Barrie (1860-1937)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Napoleonic wars
Locale: English provincial village
First presented: 1902
Principal characters:
Miss Phoebe Throssel, a spinster
Miss Susan Throssel, her sister
Valentine Brown, loved by Phoebe
Critique:
This play contains acute if not very
penetrating observations on the problem
of a wartime love affair in which the
lovers are apart for ten years, during
which time both change superficially.
Most of the action is based on the
heroine's successful attempt to bring her
lover to his senses. Barrie employs
dramatic irony quite effectively throughout
and the minimum of privacy in the lives
of people in a small village is brought
out with good comic effect.
The Story:
In the days of the Napoleonic wars,
two sisters, Phoebe and Susan Throssel,
lived in a little house in Quality Street,
the main thoroughfare of a provincial
English village. Both were single, both
were pretty. One day they entertained a
needlework party in their charming blue
and white parlor. One of the ladies
present repeated a rumor that a gentleman
of the village had enlisted to go to the
wars. All wondered who the gentleman
could be.
Phoebe told her sister that Valentine
Brown, a dashing doctor who had come
to the village two years before, had
walked with her in tne street, and had
said that he wanted to tell her something
important. The retiring Phoebe had asked
Brown to come to the house to tell her.
Both sisters assumed that Brown was
corning to propose marriage to Phoebe, a
likely conclusion since a venture in which
Brown had invested their savings had
failed and he would naturally feel
responsible for their welfare. In
anticipation of his proposal, Susan gave Phoebe
a wedding dress which she had made
for her own marriage, a wedding which
had never materialized.
But to Phoebe's disappointment and
humiliation, Brown said nothing of
marriage. Instead, he told them that he
was the man who had enlisted. He de-
dared his friendship for both sisters
and his liking for the little blue and
white parlor, but he gave no indication
of love for Phoebe, who had given her
heart to him. Ironically, Phoebe revealed
her disappointment by telling Brown
that she had thought he was going to
announce his marriage and that they
were curious to know the name of the
fortunate young lady. The sisters, out
of pride, did not mention that the loss
of their investment left them all but
destitute. They planned to set up a
school in their house.
Ten years later Susan and Phoebe
were still conducting their school, which
had prospered in spite of their many
shortcomings as teachers. They were
loved, but hardly respected by the older
children. Dancing and the more gende
acquirements they taught with pleasure,
but they detested Latin, and would teach
algebra only at the reauest of their pupils'
parents. They could not bring
themselves to whip the older boys, most of
whom they feared.
The wars were over at last, and every-
QUALITY STREET by James M. Barrie, from THE PLAYS OF JAMES M. BARRIE. By permission d
the publishers, Charles Scriboer's Sons. Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner't Sons, 1918, 1928, by J. M
Barrie.
3097

where people were celebrating the
victory at Waterloo. On Quality Street all
but Susan and Phoebe were preparing
for a village ball that night. While
Phoebe was out of the house, Captain
Valentine Brown, who had lost his left
hand during a battle on the continent,
came to call on his dear old friends.
Disappointed at the disappearance of the
delightful blue and white parlor, he paid his
respects to Miss Susan and asked to see
Phoebe of the ringlets and the dancing
eyes. WTien Phoebe returned, Captain
Brown could not hide his dismay at the
way she had changed into a drab,
mouselike spinster. Phoebe was hurt by his
unconcealed feelings. She was further
hurt later in the day when a former
pupil, now Ensign Blades and a veteran,
asked her, under duress, to attend the
ball with him. Miserable, Phoebe
declined. But Phoebe was only thirty
and tired of teaching. Inspired by Susan
and by Patty, the maid, she transformed
herself into the Phoebe of ten years
before. When Brown came again, he
failed to recognize Phoebe, and he was
told that she was the sisters' niece.
Completely taken in and charmed by "Miss
Livvy," he asked her to accompany him
to the ball. "Livvy" teased him, to his
discomfort, about his gray hairs.
At later balls and parties of the
victory celebration, "Liwy" continued to
capture the fancy of all the young men
of the village. Difficulties posed by the
dual existence of Phoebe-"Liwy" were
met by the explanation that Phoebe or
"Liwy" was either out or indisposed.
At one ball the swains hovered about
"Liwy" constantly, but Captain Brown
stoutly held his place as her escort. The
sisters' gossipy spinster neighbors, who
lived across the street and observed their
comings and goings, began to suspect
that something was not quite right. They
were almost in a position to expose
Phoebe at the ball, but Susan saved the
day by lending another young lady
"Livvy's" coat. Captain Brown, alone
with "Liwy," told her of his love for
Phoebe, explaining that he had fallen in
love with Phoebe during the balls
because of "Livvy's" resemblance to the
Phoebe of days gone by. "Livvy," the
flirt, had made Captain Brown realize
that he was no longer twenty-five and
that he preferred, after all, the retiring,
modest, quiet Phoebe.
School over, the parlor was redecorated
with its blue and white frills for the
summer holiday. Phoebe, tiring of her
dual role, announced that "Livvy" had
been taken sick, and became the tired
schoolteacher again. The gossips who
came to call were more suspicious than
ever because no doctor had visited
"Livvy." They almost discovered that
there was no one in the sick room, but
they prudendy did not go beyond the
partly opened door.
That day Captain Brown came to
propose to Phoebe. When the sisters left
the parlor for a moment, he entered the
sick room and found it empty. Then he
heard the entire story from Patty, the
maid. Captain Brown was amused, but
carried on the masquerade when "Liwy"
came out of the sick room and announced
her recovery. The sisters were stupefied
when he offered to take "Liwy" to her
home twenty miles away. They stepped
out of the parlor to have a hurried
consultation, but they knew that Captain
Brown had found them out when they
heard him talking to a "Livvy" he
devised with pillows and a shawl and which
he carried out to a waiting coach, to the
satisfaction of the gossips who were
watching from their windows.
Miss Susan Throssel announced the
forthcoming marriage of her sister Phoebe
to Captain Valentine Brown. The
reopening of school was quite forgotten.
3098

THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 184ft
Principal characters:
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France
Jeanne de La Motte Valois, an impoverished noblewoman
Cardinal de Rohan
Philippe de Taverney, a courtier
Andree de Taverney, his sister
Count de Charny, a naval officer
Oliva, a girl resembling the queen
Count Cagliostro, an Italian adventurer and supposed magician
Critique:
Always a defender of the integrity of
the monarchy, Dumas here presents a
lively picture of court intrigue and royal
passion. As a mystery story this novel
presents not one loose thread or irrelevant
detail. As historical fiction it attempts to
describe the person of Marie Antoinette
as a woman of extreme charm,
intelligence, and honor. Count Cagliostro, a
character in several romances by Dumas, is
again in this book a sinister and mysterious
figure motivating the action.
The Story:
The Countess Jeanne de La Motte
Valois, a descendant of the fallen royal
house of Valois, aspired to return to favor
in the court of Louis XVI. Suffering
extreme poverty, she was honored by a visit
from the queen, who gave her money and
promised her assistance.
The queen was always a victim of
intrigues by her enemies. Even on the night
when she had, with the assistance of
Andree de Taverney, made a charitable
visit to the Countess de La Motte, one of
her enemies had whispered into the king's
ear that her majesty had gone on a
nocturnal mission of doubtful purpose. Her
honesty and proud demeanor put the king
to shame, however, and as a conciliatory
gesture he offered her a fabulously
expensive necklace, which she refused on
the grounds that France needed a new
battleship more than the queen needed
jewels.
AndreVs brother, Philippe de Taverney,
was favored by Marie Antoinette for his
courtesy and grace. He promptly fell in
love with her. At a court reception
Philippe was thwarted in his love by
perceiving that Count de Charny had won the
queen's favor. It was AndreVs fate to have
fallen in love with de Charny also, and
she watched with jealousy the queen's
innocent flirtation.
While Jeanne de La Motte was plotting
to gain entrance to the royal court,
Cardinal de Rohan, disliked by the queen
because of his former disapproval of her
marriage to King Louis, was also hoping
to win a place at court. These two
hopefuls, combining talents, agreed to aid one
another in their ambitious projects.
Count Cagliostro, a mystic and a
malicious conspirator against the nobility of
France, plotted to create a public scandal
about the queen. To aid him he produced
an unknown girl, Oliva, whose amazing
resemblance to Marie Antoinette deceived
even the queen's closest friends. First
Count Cagliostro sent Oliva to the salon
of M. Mesmer, where she exploited her
emotions publicly, drawing attention to
herself. Her witnesses mistook her for the
queen. Next Count Cagliostro brought
the girl to a masquerade ball attended by
many of the nobility in disguise, but an
affair beneath the dignity of the queen.
Again it was said that Marie Antoinette
3099

had appeared in public in a most
ungracious manner. At the salon and at the
ball Jeanne de La Motte had seen the
woman who was not really the queen at
all. Cardinal de Rohan had been with
Jeanne at the ball. Jeanne had perceived
that he loved Marie Antoinette, whose
disdain for him was well-known.
Widespread gossip about her conduct
reached the queen, who, anxious to belie
her accusers, brought Jeanne to the king
and asked* her to assure the monarch that
the queen had not degraded herself in the
salon of M. Mesmer. The king loyally
asserted that he needed no assurance from
an outsider that his queen did not lie. But
the gossip about Marie Antoinette's
presence at the masquerade ball was not so
easily explained away. The queen denied
having been there; Jeanne claimed that
she had seen her. Others were called as
witnesses. Both Philippe and de Charny
said that they had recognized her when
her mask dropped off. King Louis came to
the queen's rescue by vowing that he had
been with her in her apartment on the
night of the ball.
Jeanne, guided by her intuition, knew
that the queen coveted the beautiful
necklace that the king had wanted to purchase
for her from the jewelers, Boehmer and
Bossange. When Jeanne assured de Rohan
that the queen would be pleased to own
the necklace, he, hoping to buy her royal
favor, arranged to purchase it by
delivering a down payment of five hundred
thousand francs. Jeanne, at Versailles,
promptly told Marie Antoinette of de
Rohan's generous intention. Her reaction
was to assume responsibility for the
payment of the necklace herself; as queen,
she could not accept so generous a favor
from a subject. When de Rohan brought
the necklace to her, she graciously
dismissed the old enmity between them.
Unfortunately, King Louis chose that time
to be frugal and refused to grant the
queen the sum of money she desired.
With timely malice Count Cagliostro
collected from de Rohan an old debt of five
hundred thousand francs. Hearing of the
transaction from Jeanne, the queen
ordered her to take the necklace back to
Boehmer and Bossange.
But Jeanne had her own plans. She
forged a note from the jewelers to the
queen acknowledging receipt of the
necklace. Next she forged a note from the
queen to the jewelers promising to pay the
balance due them within three months.
Meanwhile Jeanne kept the jewels. To
safeguard her theft, she had to prevent de
Rohan, who assumed that the queen had
kept the necklace, from meeting Marie
Antoinette. He had been told by the
deceived jewelers that the queen would pay
for the necklace.
Count Cagliostro assisted Jeanne in her
plan by taking Oliva to live in a house
close to that of Jeanne. When the two
women met, Jeanne knew at once she was
facing the woman who had compromised
the queen by her conduct at M. Mesmer's
salon and at the ball. She escorted Oliva
to the park on three successive nights, and
there de Rohan courted the woman he
mistook for Marie Antoinette. De Charny,
witnessing the amorous meeting, thought
that he saw the queen. Angry and grieved,
he reproached Marie Antoinette for her
conduct. Again she realized that someone
had been impersonating her.
When the day of payment for the
necklace arrived, the jewe^rs petitioned the
queen for their money. After an exchange
of angry words, Marie Antoinette and the
jewelers realized that they had been duped
and that their respective notes were
forgeries.
The scandal broke. De Rohan,
believing that the queen was his mistress but
wishing to conceal the fact for his own
protection, still assumed that the queen
would pay for the jewels. The jewelers
thought that he would pay for them. The
public thought that the queen retained the
necklace so that de Rohan, for love of her,
would be forced to pay, or that the king,
to avert scandal, would satisfy the jewelers.
When de Charny came to offer the
queen his money, she declared her
intention to prove her innocence, and she
placed de Charny in hiding while she
conducted an interview with de Rohan.
3100

When the deceived cardinal discreetly
hinted at their secret love affair, the queen,
outraged, sent for the king. De Rohan had
no proof of his accusation. Still believing
that he had possessed the queen and thai
she had kept the necklace, he was
sentenced to the Bastille.
De Charny emerged from hiding to
throw himself at the queen's feet just as
the king returned. To explain de Chamy's
supplicating position, Marie Antoinette
had to invent a lie. She said that he was
begging for permission to marry Andree de
Taverney, who had entered a convent.
Brought before the queen, Jeanne de
La Motte refused to divulge any
enlightening evidence and followed de Rohan to
the Bastille. Jeanne knew, however, that
she controlled the situation. If pressed too
hard, she could intimate that the queen
and de Rohan had a reason for charging
her with the theft of the necklace. Then
the police discovered Oliva. Seeing her,
the queen understood the intrigue that
had been worked against her, but Jeanne
was still able to connive and to lie about
her association with Oliva so that, in the
end, no one was convinced of the queen's
innocence. The public, believing Marie
Antoinette guilty of adultery and theft,
assumed that the person known as Oliva
had been invented to conceal the queen's
guilt.
After the trial, Cardinal de Rohan and
Count Cagliostro, also arrested, were
freed. Jeanne de La Motte was publicly
branded. The queen was still suspected of
being involved in a scandal. No one in the
palace realized all involved in the affair
were themselves on the threshold of the
Bastille and that the Revolution was
impending.
3101

QUENTIN DURWARD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1468
Locale: France and Flanders
First published: 1823
Principal characters:
Quenttn Durward, a Scottish cadet
Ludovic Lesley (Le Balafre), his maternal uncle
Isabelle, Countess of Croye, disguised as Jacqueline, a servant
Lady Hameline, her aunt
King Louis XI
Count Philip de Crevecoeur, of Burgundy
Charles, Duke of Burgundy
William de la Marck, a Flemish oudaw
Hayraddin Maugrabin, a Bohemian
Critique:
Quentin Durward was one of the many
Scotsmen who sought their fortunes
abroad in the service of foreign kings,
and the story of his adventures is the first
of Scott's novels with a foreign setting.
There is no doubt in the mind of the
reader that Scott liked this Scotsman very
much because the character of the hero
is the idealized younger son who goes
out to seek fortune with nothing but his
own wit and bravery. Quentin Durward
is among the best of Scott's novels, its
authenticity litde marred by some slight
reorganization of actual events to
implement the plot.
The Story:
When Quentin Durward, a young
Scottish gentleman, approached the ford
of a small river near the castle of Plessis-
les-Tours, in France, he found the river
in flood. Two people watched him from
the opposite bank. They were King Louis
XI in his common disguise of Maitre
Pierre, a merchant, and Tristan
I'Hermite, marshal of France. Quentin entered
the flood and nearly drowned. Arriving
on the other side and mistaking the king
and his companion for a respectable
burgher and a butcher, he threatened the
two with a drubbing because they had
not warned him of the deep ford. Amused
by the lad's spirit and daring, Maitre
Pierre took him to breakfast at a nearby
inn to make amends. At the inn Quentin
met a beautiful young peasant girl,
Jacqueline. Actually, Jacqueline was
Isabelle, Countess of Crove. Ouentin tried
to learn why the merchant, Maitre Pierre,
acted so much like a noble. He saw many
other things which aroused his curiosity
but for which he found no explanation.
Shordy afterward Quentin met
Ludovic Lesley, known as Le Balafr6, his
maternal uncle, who was a member of
King Louis' Scottish Archers. Le Balafre*
was exceedingly surprised to learn that
Quentin could read and write, something
which neither a Durward nor a Lesley
had heretofore been able to do.
Quentin discovered the body of a man
hanging from a tree. When he cut the
man down, he was seized by two officers
of Tristan I'Hermite. They were about
to hang Quentin for his deed when he
asked if there were a good Christian in
the crowd who would inform Le Balafr6
of what was taking place. A Scottish
archer heard him and cut his bonds.
While the two were defending
themselves from the mob, Le Balafr6 rode up
with some of his men and took command
of the situation, haughtily insisting that
Quentin was a member of the Scottish
Archers and beyond the reach of the
marshal's men. Quentin had not joined the
guards as yet, but the lie saved his life.
Le Balafr6 took Quentin to see Lord
Crawford, the commander of the guards,
to enroll him. When the Scottish Archers
3102

were summoned to the royal presence,
Quentin was amazed to see that Maitre
Pierre was King Louis.
Count Philip de Crevecoeur arrived at
the castle and asked audience with the
king in the name of his master, the Duke
?f Burgundy. When the king admitted
de Crevecoeur, the messenger presented
a list of wrongs and oppressions,
committed on the frontier, for which the
Duke of Burgundy demanded redress.
The duke also requested that Louis cease
his secret and underhand dealings in the
towns of Ghent, Liege and Malines, and,
further, that the king send back to
Burgundy, under safeguard, the person of
Isabelle, Countess of Croye, the duke's
ward, whom he accused the king of
harboring in secret. Dissatisfied with the
king's replies to these demands, de
Crevecoeur threw his gaundet to the floor
of the hall. Several of the king's
attendants rushed to pick it up and to accept
the challenge, but the king ordered the
Bishop of Auxerre to lift the gauntlet and
to remonstrate with de Crevecoeur for
thus declaring war between Burgundy
and France. The king and his courtiers
then left to hunt wild boars.
During the chase Quentin Durward
saved the king's life by spearing a wild
boar when Louis slipped and fell before
the infuriated beast. The king decided
to reward Quentin with a special mission.
He was ordered to stand guard in the
room where the king entertained de
Crevecoeur and others, and at a sign from
the king Quentin was to shoot the Bur-
gundian. But the king changed his mind;
the signal was not given. Then the king
made Quentin the personal bodyguard
of Isabelle and her aunt, Lady Hameline,
on their way to seek the protection of the
Bishop of Liege.
Quentin set out with the ladies to
conduct them to Liege. In the party was
Hayraddin Maugrabin, a Bohemian,
whose brother it was whom Quentin had
cut down earlier. On the road they were
assaulted by the Count de Dunois and
the Duke of Orleans. Quentin defended
himself with great courage and received
3
timely help from his uncle, who arrived
with a body of Scottish Archers. Le
Balafre" took de Dunois prisoner.
Nothing untoward occurred until the small
party reached Flanders. There Quentin
discovered, by following Hayraddin, that
a plot had been hatched to attack his
party and carry off the women to William
de la Marck, the Wild Boar of Ardennes.
Quentin frustrated these plans by going
up the left bank of the Maes instead of
the right. He proceeded safely to Liege,
where he gave over the women into the
protection of the bishop at his castle of
Schonwaldt. Four days later William de
la Marck attacked the castle and captured
it during the night. Lady Hameline
escaped. In the bishop's throne room in the
castle William de la Marck murdered the
churchman in front of his own episcopal
throne. Quentin, aroused by the brutality
of William, stepped to the side of Carl
Eberson, William's son, and placed his
dirk at the boy's throat, threatening to
kill the lad if William did not cease his
butchery. In the confusion Quentin
found Isabelle and took her safely from
the casde in the disguise of the daughter
of the syndic of Liege. They were
pursued by William's men, but were rescued
by a party under Count de Crevecoeur,
who conducted them safely to the court
of the Duke of Burgundy at Pennine.
The king came to tne castle of the
Duke of Burgundy, asserting the royal
prerogative of visiting any of his vassals.
Disregarding the laws of hospitality, the
duke imprisoned Louis and then held a
council to debate the difficulties between
France and Burgundy. Hayraddin
appeared as a herald from William de la
Marck, who had married the Lady
Hameline. But Toison d'Or, the duke's herald,
unmasked Hayraddin because he knew
nothing of the science of heraldry. The
duke released Hayraddin and set his
fierce boar hounds upon him, but ordered
the dogs called off before they tore
Hayraddin to shreds. Then he ordered that
Hayraddin be hanged with the proper
ceremony.
The king and the duke also debated

the disposal of Isabelle's hand and
fortune. But Isabelle had fallen in love
with Quentin and announced that she
preferred the cloister to any other alliance.
The duke solved the problem, at least to
his satisfaction, by declaring that
Isabelle's hand would be given to the man
who brought him the head of William de
la Marck.
The king and the duke joined forces
to assault Liege. Their combined forces
gallandy besieged the city but were forced
to go into bivouac at nightfall. That night
William made a foray but was driven
back into the city. Next day the forces
of the king and the duke attacked once
more, made breaches in the wall, and
poured into the city. Quentin came face
to face with William de la Marck, who
rushed at him with all the fury of the
wild boar for which he was named. Le
Balafre* stood by and roared out for fair
play, indicating that this should be a
duel of champions. At that moment
Quentin saw a woman being forcibly
dragged along by a French soldier. When
he turned to rescue her, Le Balafr6
attacked de la Marck and killed him.
Le Balafr6 was announced as the man
who had killed de la Marck, but he gave
most of the credit to Quentin's valiant
behavior and deferred to his nephew.
While it was agreed that Quentin was
responsible for de la Marck's death, there
was still the question of his lineage,
which the duke questioned. Indignant,
Le Balafr6 recited the pedigree of
Quentin and thereby proved his gentility.
Without more ado, Quentin and the
Countess Isabelle were betrothed.
3104

QUO VADIS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916)
Type of plot: Historical novel
Time of plot: c. A. D. 64
Locale: Rome
First published:
1895
Principal characters:
Vinicius, a young Roman patrician
Lygia, a foreign princess whom Vinicius loves
Petronius, Vinicius' uncle, intimate friend of Nero
Nero, the Roman emperor
Chilo, a Greek sycophant
Peter, leader of the Christians
Tigellinus, Petronius* enemy, Nero's friend
Critique:
Quo Vadis is a tremendous
achievement, both as a historical re-creation and
as a vivid and dramatic work of fiction.
Those who enjoy learning history by
reading novels will find it extremely
satisfactory. Others who are willing to
settle for a good story will be moved
by its sharply depicted characters, its
tremendous tensions and energy. No
one has succeeded better than
Sienkiewicz in portraying the broad panorama
of Roman civilization in the last,
degenerate days of the Empire, and no
one else has so credibly presented the
early Christians as real, live people.
The Story:
When Vinicius returned to Rome,
after duty in the colonies, he called on
his uncle, Petronius, who was one of
the most influential men in Rome. A
friend of the Emperor Nero, Petronius
owned a beautiful home, choice slaves,
and numerous objects of art. Petronius
had no delusions about the emperor.
He knew quite well that Nero was
coarse, conceited, brutal, thoroughly evil.
Petronius was happy to see his
handsome young nephew. Vinicius had
fallen in love with Lygia, daughter of a
foreign king, now living with Aulus
Plautius and Pomponia. He asked his
uncle to help him get Lygia as his
concubine. Petronius spoke to Nero, and
QUO VADIS by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Translated by Jeremiah Curtin. By permission of Mr. J. C. Cardell
and the publishers. Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1896, 1897, 1900, by Jeremiah Curtin. Renewed, 1924,
1925, 1927, by Alma Mary Curtin.
Lygia was ordered brought to the palace.
The giant Ursus was sent as Lygia's
devoted servant by her foster parents.
At a wild orgy in the palace, Vinicius
attempted to make love to Lygia.
Through the watchfulness of Acte, who
was a Christian and a former concubine
of Nero, he did not succeed. Lygia
herself was a Christian and she feared
both the lust of Vinicius and that of
the emperor himself. Then Acte
received information that Lygia would be
handed over to Vinicius. At the same
time, the daughter of the Empress
Augusta died. The empress and her circle
believed that Lygia had bewitched the
child. Alarmed at the dangers
threatening the girl, Acte and Ursus planned
Lygia's escape.
That night the servants of Vinicius
came and led Lygia away from the
palace. Meanwhile Vinicius waited at his
house, where a great feast was to take
place in honor of his success in securing
Lygia. But Lygia never arrived, for
on the way to his house a group of
Christians had suddenly attacked the
servants of Vinicius and rescued the
girl. Her rescuers took Lygia outside
the city walls to live in a Christian
colony.
Vinicius was furious. Petronius sent
some of his own men to watch the
gates of the city. Day after day Vinicius
3105

grew more and more upset. Finally,
Chilo, a Greek who passed as a
philosopher, offered for a sufficient reward
to find Lygia. By pretending to be a
convert, he learned where the
Christians met in secret. He and Vinicius,
together with a giant named Croton,
went there, and then followed Lygia to
the house where she was staying. When
they attempted to seize the girl, Ursus
killed Croton. Vinicius was injured in
the scuffle. For a few days he stayed
with the Christians who took care of
him. Lygia herself nursed him until
she became aware of her love for the
pagan patrician. Afterward, rather than
succumb to temptation, she left him to
the attentions of others.
Vinicius had heard the Christians
speaking at their meeting. While
recuperating, he was amazed at their
goodness, at their forgiveness, at their whole
religious philosophy. He heard their
leader, Peter, talk of Christ and of
Christ's miracles, and his mind became
filled with odd and disturbing thoughts.
He realized that he must either hate
the God who kept Lygia from him, 01
love Him. Strangely enough, he became
convinced that he no longer had the
desire to take Lygia by force. He
maintained his contacts with the Christians.
At last, after he had accepted their faith,
Lygia agreed to marry him.
In the meantime Nero had gone to
Antium. There the noble Tigellinus
planted in his mind the idea that he
should burn Rome in order to write and
sing a poem about the tremendous
catastrophe. Accordingly, Nero fired Rome,
and almost all of the city was destroyed.
Vinicius rushed from Antium to save
Lygia. Luckily, she had left the city
before the fire gained headway. The
populace was angry and violent about
the fire. Rebellion was in the air. The
empress and the Jews at court persuaded
Nero to blame the Christians for the fire.
Chilo, who had been befriended by the
Christians and whose abominable crimes
had been wiped away by Christian
forgiveness, turned traitor. He gave the
emperor all the information he had
about the Christians and led the guards
to the hiding places of the sect. Cruel
persecutions began.
Petronius tried desperately to stop
Nero and save Vinicius. Failing in his
attempt, he knew that his own days were
numbered. The Christians were crammed
first into prisons and then brought
into the arena for the entertainment of
the populace. Virgins were raped by the
gladiators and then fed to starvino lions.
Christians were crucified, burned alive.
After Lygia had been seized and
imprisoned, Vinicius failed in an attempt
to rescue her.
At last her turn came to be led into
the arena to amuse the brutal populace.
Stripped, she was tied to the back of
a raging bull. When the bull was sent
running into the arena, Ursus rushed
forward and locked his strong arms
around the animal. To the
astonishment of all, the bull yielded and died.
Then the people demanded that Lygia
and Ursus be set free, and the emperor
had to obey the public clamor. Petronius
advised Vinicius that they should all
leave the city, for Nero had subtle ways»
of removing people who had offended
him.
The persecutions continued, the
spectacles in the arena growing more and
more ghastly. At last the people
sickened of the bestial tortures. One of the
dying Christians looked straight at Nero
and accused him of all his infamous
crimes. While Glaucus, a martyr, was
being burned alive, he looked at Chilo,
the Greek who had betrayed them.
Glaucus, who had been left for dead
by Chilo, forgave the Greek who had
caused the Christian's wife and children
to be sold into slavery. Moved by the
dying man's mercy, Chilo cried out in
a loud voice that the Christians were
innocent of the burning of Rome, that
the guilty man was Nero. Despairing
of his own fate, Chilo was on the point
of complete collapse. But Paul of Tarsus
took him aside and assured him that
Christ was merciful to even the worst
3106

of sinners. Then he baptized the Greek.
When Chilo went back home, he was
seized by the emperor's guards and led
away to his death in the arena.
Vinicius and Lygia escaped to Sicily.
When Petronius heard that the emperor
had ordered his own death, he invited
some of the patricians to his house at
Cumae, where he had gone with Nero
and the court. There at a great feast he
read an attack against Nero and
astounded everyone by his foolhardiness. Then
he and Eunice, a slave who loved him,
stretched out their arms to a physician.
While the party continued and the
astonished guests looked on, Petronius
and Eunice bled to death in each other's
aims.
Nero returned to Rome. His subjects
hated him more than ever. A rebellion
broke out at last, and he was informed
that his death had been decreed. He
fled. With some of his slaves around
him, he attempted to plunge a knife
into his throat. But he was too timid to
complete the deed. As some soldiers
approached to arrest him, a slave thrust
the fatal knife into his emperor's throat
3107

THE RAINBOW
Type of work: Novel
Author: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: England
First published: 1915
Principal characters:
Tom Brangwen, a farmer
Lydia Lensky, his wife
Anna Lensky, Lydia's child by her first husband
Will Brangwen, Anna's husband
Ursula Brangwen, Anna's and Will's daughter
Anton Skrebensky, Ursula's lover
Critique:
The Rainbow has been the center of
much controversy. The author used it
as a lever to bring intelligent
consideration of basic human relations into the
open, where those relationships could be
reviewed in a clear-eyed, objective
manner, and in doing so he made use of
the sexual aspects of marriage and love.
The book is essentially a comparison of
the matings of three successive
generations. The book was not well received
when it appeared. The author was
ostracized and the novel was suppressed
for a time by the police. That such a
tempest was occasioned by The Rainbow
is hard for the reader to understand
today, for by present standards the book
can be read and appreciated for what it
is, an excellent psychological study.
The Story:
Tom Brangwen was descended from
a long line of small landholders who had
owned Marsh Farm in Nottinghamshire
for many generations. Tom was a man
of the soil, living alone on his farm with
only an old woman for his company and
housekeeper. Then a Polish widow,
Lydia Lensky, became the housekeeper
of the vicar of the local church. She
brought her small daughter, Anna, with
her. Within a few months Tom
Brangwen found enough courage to present
the widow with a bouquet of daffodils
one evening in the vicar's kitchen and
to ask the woman to be his wife.
Their marriage was a satisfactory one,
judged by the standards of the world.
Tom was kind to his stepdaughter. Later
he had two sons by his wife. But
knowing his stepdaughter was easier for him
than knowing Lydia. The fact that they
were of different nationalities, cultures,
and even languages kept the couple from
ever becoming intellectually intimate
with one another. There were times
when either one or both felt that the
marriage was not what it should be for
them, that they were not fulfilling the
obligations which their mating had
pressed upon them. On one occasion
Lydia even suggested to her husband
that he needed another woman.
Litde Anna was a haughty young girl
who spent many hours imagining
herself a great lady or even a queen. In
her eighteenth year a nephew of Tom
Brangwen came to work in the lace
factory in the nearby village of Ilkeston.
He was only twenty years old; the Bran-
gwens at Marsh Farm looked after him
and made him welcome in their home.
Anna Lensky and young Will
Brangwen fell in love, with a naive, touching
affection for each other. They soon an*
nounced to Tom and Lydia that they
wished to be married. Tom leased a
home in the village for the young couple
THE RAINBOW by D. H. Lawrence. By permission of the publishers, The Viking Pre**, Inc. Copyright,
1915, by D. H. Lawrence. Renewed, 1943, by Frieda Lawrence.
3108

and gave tnem a present of twenty-five
hundred pounds so they would not want
because of Will's small salary.
The wedding was celebrated with
rural pomp and hilarity. After the
ceremony the newly-married couple spent
two weeks alone in their cottage,
ignoring the world and existing only for
themselves. Anna was the first to come
back to the world of reality. Her
decision to give a tea party both bewildered
and angered her husband, who had not
yet realized that they could not continue
to live only for and by themselves. It
took him almost a lifetime to come to
that realization.
Shortly after the marriage Anna
became pregnant, and the arrival of the
child brought to Will the added shock
that his wife was more a mother than
she was a married lover. Each year a
new baby came between Will and Anna.
The oldest was Ursula, who was always
her father's favorite. The love which
Will wished to give his wife was given
to Ursula, for Anna refused to have
anything to do with him when she was
expecting another child, and she was
not satisfied unless she was pregnant.
In the second year of his marriage
Will Brangwen tried to rebel. He met
a girl at the theater and afterward took
her out for supper and a walk. After
that incident the intimate life of Will
and Anna began to gain in passion,
intense enough to carry Will through the
daytime when he was not necessary to
the house until the nighttime when he
could rule his wife. Gradually he
became free in his own mind from Anna's
domination.
Since Ursula was her father's favorite
child, she was sent to high school. That
privilege was a rare thing for a girl of
her circumstances in the last decade of
the nineteenth century. She drank up
knowledge in her study of Latin, French,
and algebra. But before she had finished,
her interest in her studies was shared
by her interest in a young man. The
son of a Polish friend of her
grandmother's was introduced into the house,
young, blond Anton Skrebensky, a
lieutenant in the British Army. During a
month's leave he fell in love with Ursula,
who was already in love with him. On
his next leave, however, she drove him
away with the love she offered to him.
He became afraid of her because of that
love; it was too possessive.
After finishing high school, Ursula
took an examination to enter the
university. Having passed the examination,
she decided to teach school for a time, for
she wanted to accumulate money to carry
her through her education without being
a burden to her parents. Anna and Will
were furious when she broached the
subject of leaving home. They
compromised with her, however, by securing
for her a position in a school in Ilkeston.
Ursula spent two friendless, ill-paid, and
thankless years teaching at the village
elementary school. At the end of that
time she was more than ready to
continue her education. She decided to
become a botanist, for in botany she felt she
was doing and learning for herself things
which had an absolute truth.
Then one day, after the Boer War
ended, Ursula received a letter which
upset her completely. Anton Skrebensky
had written that he wished to see her
again while he was in England on leave.
Within a week he arrived in Nottingham
to visit her at school. Their love
returned for each of them with greater
intensity than they had known six years
before. During the Easter holidays they
went away for a weekend at a hotel,
where they passed as husband and wife.
They went to the continent as soon as
Ursula had finished classes for the
summer. Even then, however, Ursula did
not want to marry Skrebensky; she
wanted to return to college to take her
degree. But Skrebensky continued to
press increasingly for marriage. He
wanted Ursula to leave England with him
when he returned to service in India.
Meanwhile Ursula had so neglected
her studies that she failed her final
3109

examinations for her degree and had
to study to take them over again before
the summer was finished. When Ursula
(ailed her examinations a second time,
Skrebensky urged her to marry him
immediately. In India, he insisted, her
degree would mean nothing anyway. In
the meantime they went to a house party,
where they realized that there was
something wrong in their mating, that they
could not agree enough to make a
successful marriage. They left the party
separately and a few weeks later
Skrebensky was on his way to India as the
husband of his regimental commander's
daughter.
After he had gone, Ursula learned
that she was pregnant. Not knowing
that he was already married, she wrote
to Skrebensky and promised to be a
good wife if he still wished to marry
her. Before his answer came from India,
Ursula contracted pneumonia and lost
the child. One day, as she was
convalescing, she observed a rainbow in the
sky. She hoped that it was the promise
of better times to come.
3110

RAINTREE COUNTY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ross Lockridge, Jr. (1914-1948)
Type of plot: Regional chronicle
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Raintree County, Indiana
First published: 1948
Principal characters:
John Wickliff Shawnessy, a teacher
Susanna Drake, his first wife
Esther Root, his second wife
Nell Gaither, his sweetheart
Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles, his friend
Senator Garwood B. Jones, a politician
Critique:
Raintree County is a long novel,
panoramic in scope. The story deals with the
events of a single day, but by a series
of flashbacks it encompasses almost half
a century of American history and life.
Through the story pass statesmen,
soldiers, prostitutes, gamblers, shoddy
politicians, simple people of the soil, all
fused into the picture that is America.
Here are the men and women of the new
Republic, struggling through greed, lust,
and war to produce the freedom that had
feeen promised one hundred years before.
The Story:
July 4, 1892: That was the day
Raintree County, Indiana, had been waiting
for. Her most illustrious son, Senator
Garwood B. Jones, would make the main
address of the day, introduced by his old
friend, John Wickliff Shawnessy,
teacher. And as John Shawnessy awoke on the
morning of that fateful day, his life
began to pass before his eyes. It was a
fitful picture—events and people crossed
each other without regard to time. Some
of the pictures were symbolic, some real.
But through them all John Shawnessy
searched for the meaning of his life.
Somewhere was the key to the secret of
his existence. During the day he visited
the graveyard, studied an old atlas of the
county, talked with old friends. Pieced
together, the events of that day told the
story of John Wickliff Shawnessy,
teacher.
Johnny's father was a preacher, a
doctor, a teetotaler. His mother was a gentle
woman whom he loved more than he
was aware of. Johnny's childhood and
adolescence were spent like those of most
youths in Raintree County, in playing,
working, and dreaming of greatness to
come. Two people stood out above all
others in those days. One was Garwood
B. Jones, the other, Nell Gaither.
Garwood, showing signs of becoming a
politician, was a smooth talker, a shrewd
judge of character, a man without
principles. Nell was the girl Johnny had
loved since he was old enough to know
such feelings. She was a combination of
lady and hoyden.
Life in Raintree County was
brightened by the appearance of Professor
Jerusalem Webster Stiles, who established
an academy of higher learning. The "Per-
fessor," as he was affectionately called,
was a cynic and a fraud. His training
of the young men was devoted slightly to
Greek and Latin and heavily to methods
of seducing desirable women. His caustic
tongue and vivid history drew young men
like a magnet.
On the day he had his graduation
picture taken, Johnny met Susanna Drake,
a southern girl of wealth and sensuous
beauty, but questionable reputation. She
RAINTREE COUNTY by Ross Lockridge, Jr. By permission of the publishers, Houghton
Copyright, 1947, 1948, by Ross F. Lockridge, Jr.
Mifflin Co.
3111

was an orphan, lately moved to the
village from New Orleans to occupy a house
she had inherited. She spoke boldly to
Johnny and filled him with desire.
Although he desired Susanna's beauty, his
heart remained true to Nell.
A picnic was held on graduation night.
Nell went with Garwood, who escorted
her most of the time, but she and
Johnny slipped off together and confessed
that they loved each other. In Paradise
Lake the two went swimming, nude.
Johnny never knew what might have
happened next, for they were forced back
to decency by the yells of their comrades.
It seems that the "Perfessor" and the
minister's wife had run off together, and
a posse with a rope was hunting the
scoundrel. They found the woman at
home—the elopers had missed their train
—and Johnny later helped the
"Perfessor" to escape. Many years were to pass
before the man and the boy met again.
On July Fourth of that same year,
Johnny found himself again at Paradise
Lake, this time with Susanna. As he
yielded to his desire and possessed the
girl, he knew that it was Nell he really
loved.
Susanna returned to New Orleans. In
October, Johnny received a letter saying
she was coming back to him, pregnant.
By the time Susanna arrived, Johnny had
made his peace with himself and decided
to marry her, although he still loved
Nell. Even when Susanna confessed on
the night before the wedding that she
was not pregnant but only loved him so
much that she must marry him, Johnny
forgave her.
After the wedding Johnny and
Susanna spent a long honeymoon in the South.
The year was 1859 and war was fast
approaching. Johnny was anti-slavery and
Susanna violently pro-South. She seemed
to be driven by some mad obsession about
Negroes. In New Orleans, Johnny
learned a little of her history. Her
father had loved a slave and had installed
the woman in his house, giving her
equality with his insane wife. All three had
died in a fire, but it was rumored that
the husband and slave had been shot
first, locked in an embrace.
Home again, Susanna gave birth to
a baby who soon became the greatest
joy of his father. Susanna grew more and
more withdrawn, alternately spitting out
hate and melting in passion. She was
driven by desperation, for what Johnny
could only suspect. In one last frenzy,
she set fire to their house and burned
the baby to death. She was rescued, her
mind completely gone, and Johnny sent
her back to her people to be cared for.
He knew at last what he had long
suspected. Susanna was the daughter of the
slave woman, reared as his own by hei
father because he loved the Negro
woman above all else. Susanna had also
known, but she had fought against the
knowledge. Unable to escape it, she had
tried to expiate the sin through fire, as
her father's wife had done.
Johnny enlisted in the war and lived
through many bloody campaigns. He
ceased to be John Shawnessy, a human
being, and became only John Shawnessy,
a soldier. He was wounded, reported
dead, present at the theater when
Lincoln was shot. None of these events
really touched Johnny. His soul was back in
Raintree County, rooted in the soil of his
homeland.
After the war he spent two years in
New York with the "Perfessor," now a
newspaperman. Johnny had planned
through the war years to get his marriage
annulled and return home to marry Nell.
But he found that Nell had married
Garwood after Johnny's reported death and
had died in childbirth. There was
nothing now to keep him in Raintree County.
But New York provided nothing
substantial to his life, and when he was
called home by his mother's death, he
put his roots down for good. He taught
school and became the local philosopher.
Susanna, he learned, had escaped her
relatives; she was believed dead. On the
strength of that information, Johnny
married a former pupil, Esther Root.
Esther's father, considering Johnny an
atheist and a bigamist, would not give
3112

his consent. The couple eloped, and Mr.
Root would never again receive his
daughter. The years were good to
Johnny and Esther. They had a fine family
and a respected place in the community.
There were people, however, who
considered John Shawnessy evil and plotted
to expose him to the world.
On the night of July 4, 1892, after
the departure of Senator Garwood B.
Jones, a delegation from the revival
meeting accused Johnny and a local widow
of immorality. But the "Perfessor," back
to cover the celebration, showed the
crowd instead that it was the minister,
leader of the posse, who had seduced one
of his flock. The "Perfessor" thought it a
huge joke that he who had once been
run out of town by a preacher could now
turn the tables after so manv vears.
The day having ended, John Shawnessy
walked the deserted streets of this village
in Raintree County. He was thinking of
the yesterdays and tomorrows that are
America.
3113

RALPH ROISTER DOISTER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Nicholas Udall (1505-1556)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: c. 1553
Principal characters:
Ralph Roister Doister, a well-tehdo, cowardly braggart
Mathew Merygreeke, Roister Doister's hanger-on
Dame Christian Custance, a well-to-do widow
Gawin Goodluck, Dame Custance's fiance"
Sym Suresby, Gawin Goodluck's friend
Critique:
This drama is one of the early English
plays acted by schoolboys and patterned
after the Roman drama popular in the
schools at the time. Neither the plot nor
the characters demanded much subtlety
from the youthful actors who originally
played it. The humor is broad and the
language at times very earthy. Some
scenes are truly slapstick, as the scene in
which grown men armed with swords are
routed by a widow and her servants armed
only with household utensils. Some of the
characters in the play are modeled on
the stock figures of Roman drama, and
some are not. Merygreeke is quickly
recognizable as the parasite of Roman drama,
and Roister Doister himself is found to
be the braggart so typical of classical
comedy. Dame Christian, on the other
hand, is an English addition to the drama,
in her way a sixteenth-century version of
Chaucer's Wife of Bath. Her humor can,
in fact, be traced to the broad comedy of
early mystery plays, as presented in the
Towneley Cycle.
The Story:
Mathew Merygreeke, a gay young
rascal who likened himself to the grasshopper
of the fable, had often had fun and money
at the expense of Ralph Roister Doister,
a well-to-do, doltish young man who
bragged long and loud of his bravery but
failed to act anything but the coward
when called to action.
In addition, Ralph Roister Doister
imagined himself in love with every woman
he met, and he swore each time he fell in
love that he could not live without the
woman who had most lately caught his
eye. One day, meeting Merygreeke on the
street, he asserted that he was now madly
in love with Dame Christian Custance, a
widow reported to be wealthy. She had
captivated Roister Doister when he saw
her at supper.
Merygreeke, anxious to please the man
he constantly gulled, agreed to help
Roister Doister pursue his suit. He assured
the foolish braggart that the widow was
certain to accept him and that Roister
Doister ought really to try to marry
someone of higher station and greater fortune.
Merygreeke went for musicians to
serenade Dame Custance, while Roister
Doister waited in front of the widow's
home. As he waited, three of the widow's
servant women came from the house and
talked and sang. When they noticed
Roister Doister, he came up, talked to
them, and tried to kiss them. After talking
with them for a time, Roister Doister gave
them a love letter to deliver to their
mistress. He boasted that he had written it
himself.
Given the letter by her serving-woman,
Dame Custance was furious. She
reminded her servants that she was an
honorable woman, affianced to Gawin
Goodluck, who had been for some months
on a sea voyage. Dame Custance refused
to break the seal of the letter, much less
read it.
3114

Meanwhile, to further his suit, Roister
Doister sent his servant to the widow's
house with some love gifts, a ring and a
token in a cloth. The young servant, after
some trouble, convinced the widow's
Serving-women to take the gifts to their
mistress, even though she had been angry
at receiving the letter.
Handed the gifts, the widow became
even angrier, lectured her servants on
their conduct, and finally sent a boy to
find the man who had delivered the gifts
to her house.
Merygreeke, after many a laugh over
what happened during Roister Doister's
suit, finally went to Dame Custance and
revealed his scheme for gulling Roister
Doister. The widow said she would never
marry such a doltish man, but agreed to
join in the fun at the braggart's expense.
She went so far as to read the letter he had
written to her and said she would make a
reply.
Rejoining Roister Doister, Merygreeke
listened to the suitor's woeful tale and
then told him in outrageous terms that the
widow had refused his suit, called him vile
names, and accused him of cowardice.
Roister Doister immediately vowed that
he would assault the widow's house with
intent to kill her in combat, along with
all her servants. Over Merygreeke's
protests, Roister Doister set out to get his
men together. Merygreeke laughed and
waited, knowing that the cowardly
braggart would never carry out his vow.
When they arrived at the widow'*
house, Merygreeke offered Roister Doister
an excuse for not leading the assault.
Instead, the braggart began once more to
woo the widow with music and song. He
sent Merygreeke to call the widow from
her house.
Dame Custance went out to Roister
Doister and repeated her refusal of his
foolish proposal. Then she read his letter
aloud, and by rephrasing it and repunctu-
ating it she made the letter as insulting as
Roister Doister had meant it to be loving.
The result thoroughly confused the
suitor, who vowed it was not the letter
he had sent to her. After she left, Roister
Doister sent for the scrivener who had
actually written the letter for him. The
scrivener took the letter, read it aright,
and convinced Roister Doister that
someone had tricked him.
In the meantime Sym Suresby, friend
of the widow's fiance^ arrived to tell Dame
Custance that her affianced suitor, Gawin
Goodluck, had returned from his voyage
and would be with her shortly. Suresby
saw and heard enough of the conversation
between the widow and Roister Doister to
think that the widow was unfaithful to
Goodluck. He went off, leaving the
widow furious at the tomfoolery of Roister
Doister. When she chased Roister Doister
off, he again vowed to have revenge on
the widow and her servants. Gathering his
men, he approached her house a second
time.
The widow, meanwhile, had gone to a
trusted friend to enlist his support in
getting rid of the troublesome Roister
Doister, who threatened to ruin her
approaching marriage to Goodluck. The
friend consented to aid her. They also
enlisted Merygreeke, who agreed to help
them and at the same time pull more
tricks at the expense of Roister Doister.
The foolish suitor and his men were
routed by the widow with household
utensils used as weapons. Having proved
himself a coward as well as a fool, Roister
Doister renounced his suit for the
widow's hand. When Goodluck appeared
soon afterward, Dame Custance was able
to assure him that the reports he had had
from Sym Suresby were muddled and
that she had never broken her vows to
him. She did, however, berate Suresby
for not making certain of the truth before
repeating what he had heard.
Merygreeke returned on behalf of
Roister Doister and asked forgiveness of
the widow and Goodluck. When he
promised them that they should have much fun
at Roister Doister's expense if they would
but agree, they assented heartily and
invited Merygreeke and Roister Doister to
have dinner with them that very day.
3115

THE RAMAYANA
Principal characters:
Rama, a prince and incarnation of Vishnu
Sita, his wife
Lakshman, his brother and loyal follower
Dasa-ratha, his father, King of the Kosalas
Ravan, Damon-king of Lanka (Ceylon)
Kaikeyi, one of King Dasa-ratha's wives and enemy of Rama
Type of work: Poem
Author: Valmiki (fl. fourth century B.C.)
Type of plot: Religious epic
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: India
First transcribed: c. 350 B.C.
Critique:
Although relatively unknown to
Western readers, the story of Rama is one of
the most popular tales among the people
of India, where the story holds great
religious significance. In India, where the
tale has been recounted for untold
generations, there are several versions of the
story, but the main outlines remain the
same, with Rama and Sita the idealized
versions of Man and Woman. To the
Western reader the characters may appear
to be human beings with supernatural
powers, roughly equivalent to certain
figures in Greek legend and myth, but to
Hindus the characters of the Ramayana
(The Fortunes of Rama) are more than
this; they are gods, to be reverenced today
as they have been in ages past. Scholars
disagree on the various versions of the
Ramayana, and the problem of the
original story and additions by later
generations of storytellers will perhaps never be
solved. The best approach for a general
reader is probably to accept the story and
enjoy it.
The Story:
King Dasa-ratha of the Kosalas, who
kept his court at Ayodhya, had four sons,
though not all by the same mother.
According to legend, the god Vishnu, in
answer to King Dasa-ratha's supplications,
had given a divine liquor to each of the
king's wives, so that they might bring
forth sons, each of whom was partly an
incarnation of Vishnu. Of the sons born,
Rama was the handsomest and strongest
of all, his mother having drunk more of
the magic beverage than Dasa-ratha's
other wives.
When Rama grew to manhood he
heard of Sita, beautiful, talented, and
virtuous daughter of King Janak and the
Earth-mother. King Janak was the pos-
ses:or of a wondrous bow, a mighty
weapon that had belonged to the gods,
and King Janak resolved that whoever
could bend the bow should have Sita for
his wife. The king knew, of course, that
no ordinary mortal could possibly
accomplish the feat.
Rama and his brothers traveled to the
court of King Janak and were granted
permission to try drawing the mighty
bow. With ease Rama bent the bow,
with such strength that the weapon
snapped in two. King Janak promised
that Sita should be Rama's bride and that
each of his half-brothers, too, should
have a noble bride from the people of
Videha.
So Sita became the wife of Rama;
her sister Urmila became the bride of
Lakshman, Rama's favorite brother; Man-
davi and Sruta-kriti, cousins of Sita,
became the wives of Bharat and Satrughna,
the other half-brothers of Rama. When
all returned to Ayodhya, Dasa-ratha,
fearing that rivalry between his children
might create unhappiness and tragedy in
3116

his house, sent Bharat and Satrughna to
live with their mothers' people.
Years passed, and King Dasa-ratha
grew old. Wishing to have the time
and opportunity to prepare himself for
the next life, he proposed that Rama his
favorite son, should become regent. The
king's council and the populace rejoiced
in the proposal, and plans were made to
invest Rama with the regency and place
him on the Kosala throne. Before the
preparations had been completed,
however, Manthara, a maid to Queen Kai-
keyi, one of King Dasa-ratha's wives,
advised the queen that Rama's succession
to the throne should be prevented and
that Bharat, Queen Kaikeyi's son, should
become regent. The ill advice was heard,
and Queen Kaikeyi remembered that she
had been promised two boons by her
husband. So when King Dasa-ratha came
to her she asked that Bharat should be
made regent and that Rama should go
into exile for fourteen years. King Dasa-
ratha was sad, but he had given his word
and he must fulfill his promises. Like a
dutiful son, Rama heard his father's
decision and prepared to go into exile. He
expected to go alone, but his wife Sita
and his brother Lakshman prepared to go
with him to share his lonelv and
uncomfortable exile in the dismal Dandak
forest. The Kosala people mourned his
departure and accompanied him on the first
dav of his journey away from Ayodhya.
Leaving his native country, Rama
journeyed south. He and his companions
crossed the Ganges River and came to the
hermitage of Bharad-vaja, a holy man.
After visiting with him they went on to
the hill of Chitrakuta, where stood the
hermitage of Valmiki, a learned and holy
man. There they learned that King Dasa-
ratha had died the day after Rama's
departure from Ayodhya, remembering in
his hour of death a curse laid on him by
a hermit whose son he had accidentally
killed. Rama stayed with Valmiki for a
time. Bharat returned to Ayodhya to
become regent, as his mother had planned.
However, he recognized Rama's claim
and set out on a journey to find Rama
and to ask him to become King of the
Kosalas. But Rama, having given his
word, remained in exile as he had vowed
to do. Bharat returned to Avodhya to
place Rama's sandals on the throne as a
symbol of Rama's right to the kingship.
In order that his kinsmen might not
find him again, Rama left Valmiki's
hermitage and after a long journey he
established his own hermitage near the
dwelling of Agastya, a holy and learned man.
There Rama, Sita, and Lakshman lived
in peace until they were disturbed by a
demon-maiden, enamored of Rama, who
had been repulsed in her addresses bv
both Rama and Lakshman. Spurned and
seeking revenge, she went to her brother,
Ravan, de^on-king of Lanka (Ceylon)
and asked his help. Ravan was a
powerful being who through asceticism had
achieved power even over the gods. His
domination, according to legend, could
be broken only by an alliance of men and
the monkey people. Ravan sent a demon
in the disguise of a deer to lead Rama
astray while on the hunt. When Rama
failed to return, Sita insisted that
Lakshman go look for him. In the absence of
the brothers, Ravan came and abducted
Sita.
Rama, having learned what had
happened, allied himself with the monkey
people in order to make war upon the
demons and win back his beloved wife.
Hanuman, one of the monkey people's
leaders, found Sita at Ravan's palace and
led Rama and the forces of the monkey
people to Ceylon. There Ravan's city was
besieged and many battles were fought,
with combat between the great leaders of
both sides and pitched battles between
the forces of good and evil. Finallv Ravan
and his demon forces were defeated,
Ravan was killed, and Sita w?s rescued
and restored to her husband. Sita, who
had remained faithful to Rama
throughout her captivity, proved in an ordeal by
fire that she was still virtuous and worthy
to be Rama's wife.
Rama, Sita, and Lakshman returned
in triumph to Ayodhya. where Rama was
welcomed and became king of the Kosala
3117

people. Rumors were spread, however,
that Sita had not been faithful to her
husband, until at last Rama sent his wife
away, and she went to live at the
hermitage of Valmiki. Shortly after her
arrival at the hermitage she gave birth
to Rama's sons.
More years passed and the two sons
grew up, tutored in their youth by the
wise Valmiki, who took his charges
eventually to Ayodhya. There Rama,
recognizing them as his sons, sent for Sita and
had her conducted to his court. Since her
virtue had been in doubt she was asked
for a token that she had been true to
her marriage vows. The earth opened to a
great chasm, and the Earth-mother
herself rose up on her throne to sr»eak on
behalf of Sita and to take her to the land
of the gods. Thus Sita was taken away
from the husband and the people who
had doubted her.
3118

RAMEAU'S NEPHEW
Type of work: Novel in the form of a dialogue
Author: D-nis Diderot (1713-1784)
Time: 1761
Locate: Paris
First published: In German, translated by Goethe, 1805; in French, 1823
Principal characters:
Rameau, nephew of Jean Philippe Rameau, a French composer
Diderot, the author, French encyclopedist and writer
Rameau s Nephew could hardlv have
been other than the work of a French
author. It submits to no simple
classification: although fictional, the characters
were actual persons and their ideas, in
all probability, were their own. But there
is the problem—for those who concern
themselves about such matters—of
deciding how much of Diderot can be found
in the character Rameau, and how much
of Rameau was in Diderot. On the one
hand, the character Diderot is a mild
champion of traditional values, and
Rameau is a vivacious apologist for roguery.
But the brilliant turns of this satirical
dialogue suddenly force upon the reader
the suspicion that Diderot the author is
delighted with the convention-defving
attitudes of his friend Rameau; perhaps
Diderot believes Rameau more than
Rameau believes himself.
The dialogue is a satircal critique of
manners and morals. It makes particular
reference to prominent writers,
musicians, politicians, critics, and other
leading figures of eighteenth-centurv France.
Many of the comments are unkind, and
some are painfully so—or would have
been had the work been published at the
time of its composition. But Diderot kept
his lively satire under wraps, not only
because of its references to living persons,
but also because of a reluctance to stir
up the censor and all others to whom
Rameau's carefree morality might prove
intolerable.
The character Rameau is marvelously
wrought to suit Diderot's intention.
Although Rameau is clearly an individual
and is convincing, as witty rogues in
literature usually are, he is not simply one
thing or another. On the contrary,
Diderot states that Rameau is his own
opposite. Sometimes Rameau is thin,
sometimes fat; sometimes he is filthy,
sometimes powdered and curled. His physical
vacillation is matched by a vacillation of
mood. Sometimes he is gay, sometimes
depressed; sometimes he is courageous,
sometimes timid to the point of fear.
Rameau is a sensualist, a lover of wine and
wenches. But his passionate defense of
an egoistic hedonism is a sign of his need
to apologize for his manner; his morality
is a device to prop up his manner.
Underneath Rameau's abandon the reader
perceives a poignant longing for depth and
respectability.
Having created a character whose
contrary traits reveal the human being at
odds with himself—thus providing the
motive for a discussion of
morality—Diderot provides Rameau with a
gentlemanly antagonist, the man of ideas,
Diderot himself. Diderot's mild responses,
ostensibly intended to counter Rameau's
philosophy, actually prompt Rameau with
the acuity of a Socrates, stimulating
Rameau to a lively defense of the sense-
gratifying life of a social parasite.
Rameau, who contradicts himself
within himself, and Diderot, who
contradicts Rameau, together bring out the
difficulty of all moral problems and of
morality itself. Man is neither merely
intellectual nor merely sensual; his desire
to understand is often in conflict with his
desires, and his desires are in conflict with
each other. Consequently, no one moral
rule or set of principles will do. To be a
good man, a person must have a kind of
moral genius. For such a person, rules are
instruments to be used only with
ingenuity and sometimes to be discarded alto-
3119

gether. If a person is at war with himself,
or with another, as Rameau is with
himself, or with Diderot, a just victory is not
always possible. Sometimes there is no
such thing as the proper answer. For a
good man, life is a creative struggle that
must be judged as works of art are
judged, without dogmatism and with
respect for the impossible goals the human
spirit sets for itself. Perhaps the theme of
the dialogue is best understood dialecti-
cally: without the restraint of reason and
human consideration, the human being
becomes something worse than a fool,
but without attention to the fact of
human appetites the moralist becomes
something less than a human being.
For Rameau is the fool and Diderot is
the moralist. But Rameau fancies
himself as something of the classic fool, the
darling of the courts, the discerning jester
who makes the bitter truth palatable. The
fact is that he comes close to being a com-
romising sponger, a guest in great
ouses only because he is sometimes an
amusing conversationalist. Although he
comes close to being merely parasitical,
he is saved by his own need for apology.
A man who must speak to Diderot is
already more than a professional guest.
The dialogue is presented against a
background of chess. The narrator takes
shelter in the Regency Cafe where the
finest chess players of Paris compete with
each other. When Rameau enters and
engages Diderot in conversation, he begins
a kind of verbal chess game that shows
him to be the brilliant and erratic player
while Diderot is slower but more canny.
Rameau's attitude is revealed at once. In
response to Diderot's expression of
interest in the games, Rameau speaks
scornfully of the players—although they are
the best in Paris—and when Diderot
remarks that Rameau forgives nothing but
supreme genius, Rameau retorts that he
has no use for mediocrity.
One must read carefully for, to
continue the chess metaphor, the moves are
deceptive. Rameau argues that evil comes
from men of genius, that the genius—and
he cites his uncle as an example—is so
absorbed in his own work that he
neglects family and state, and he concludes
that a child showing the mark of genius
should be smothered or thrown to the
dogs. Diderot asks whether it would have
been better if Voltaire had been a "good
soul" attending to his business and
family and doing nothing more, or whether
it was better that, though deceitful,
ambitious, and mean, he wrote great plays.
The implication is that Diderot prefers
the latter. But when Rameau says it
would have been better for Voltaire
himself if he had been the former, Diderot
acknowledges that this is true.
As the conversation continues, each
man forces upon the other an
appreciation of a perspective quite different from
his own. Diderot is fascinated by the
antics of Rameau, for Rameau is not only a
rascal and a wit but also a great mime
whose conversation is enlivened by
spontaneous performances in which he shows,
by the economy of caricature, the
manners of those with whom he must
associate.
Because Diderot responds to Rameau's
zest for life, he is saved from unrealistic
moralizing. Nevertheless, Rameau can go
too far. When he applauds the behavior"
of an informer whose act resulted in the
execution of the informer's friend,
Diderot is quick to say that he finds such an
attitude repulsive. He considers it
almost unbearable to be in the presence
of a man who regarded a great crime as
something worthy of the same critical
admiration one might give to a work of
art. But although nothing more is said
on the subject, the fact that Diderot
admits to being pursued by "dark fancies"
suggests that the moralist has caught
something of Rameau's aesthetic attitude
toward great acts, whether heroic or foul,
and feels himself at grips with the
problem of evil within himself.
Diderot and Rameau fall into a long
critical discourse on music. Rameau is
all for music which honestly expresses
the passions. The true, the good, and the
beautiful are his Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost—but his truth and beauty are close
3120

to the earth, allied to the passions of
men. Diderot admits that there is a great
deal of sense in what Rameau says, hut
he regrets that Rameau talks of nothing
but gold, wine, good food, and women.
The moralist must reconcile himself
and his morality to the facts of human
passion. Somehow Diderot must come to
acknowledge Rameau's importance as the
creative beast, but as a man of ideas he
finds it almost intolerable that not
everything about human action can be
reduced to a categorical formula. For
Diderot the problem was what it remains for
contemporary man, the problem of
reconciling Freud's view of man with Christ's
conception. In fact, Diderot anticipates
Freud twice, within two pages: once, by
having Rameau envious of Diderot's
literary talent, for in so doing, Rameau
accords with Freud's theory of the artist's
motive; again, when Rameau asserts that
were his son to develop without
interference, he would want good food and dress,
fame, and the love of women, Diderot
replies that if the child were left in his
natural state, he would grow to manhood
knowing no better than to murder his
father as a rival and then seduce his own
mother.
Like Dostoevski, Diderot appreciated
the exceptional man who stepped beyond
the bounds of conventional morality;
unlike Nietzsche, he did not deify the im-
moralist. Rameau s Nephew is a skillful
and satirical attempt to do justice to man
the moralist and also to man the animal.
3121

THE RAPE OF LUCRECE
Type of work: Poem
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Tragedy
Time of plot: 500 B.C.
Locale: Ancient Rome
First published: 1594
Principal characters:
Collatine, a Roman general
Lucrece, his wife
Tarquin, Collatine's friend and son of the Roman king
Critique:
The story of Tarquin's violation of
Lucrece is an ancient Roman legend
which has been presented in many
versions other than in this poem by
Shakespeare. Because the Elizabethans were
especially fond of this legend,
Shakespeare had numerous sources upon which
to draw. Compared with his other
writings, this poem is far more conventionally
Elizabethan, yet its passages of great
emotion and its consistently beautiful poetry
rank it above other interpretations of the
story known in his day.
The Story:
At Ardea, where the Romans were
fighting, two Roman leaders, Tarquin and
Collatine, spoke together one evening.
Collatine, in the course of the
conversation, described his beautiful young wife
Lucrece in such glowing terms that
Tarquin's passions were aroused. The
next morning Tarquin left the Roman
host and journeyed to Collatium, where
he was welcomed by the unsuspecting
Lucrece as one of her husband's friends.
As he told her many tales of Collatine's
prowess on the battlefield, Tarquin
looked admiringly at Lucrece and decided
that she was indeed the most beautiful
woman in Rome.
In the night, while the others of the
household were asleep, Tarquin lay
restless. Caught between desire for Lucrece
and dread of being discovered, to the
consequent loss of his honor, he wandered
aimlessly about his chamber. On the one
hand there was his position as a military
man who should not be the slave of his
emotions; on the other hand was his
overwhelming desire.
But what dreadful consequences might
be the result of his lustful deed! His
disgrace would never be forgotten. Perhaps
his own face would show the mark of his
crimes and the advertisement linger on
even after death.
He thought for a moment that he might
try to woo Lucrece but decided that such a
course would be to no avail. Since she was
already married, she was not mistress of
her own desires. Again he considered the
possible consequences of his deed.
At last emotion conquered reason. As
Tarquin made his way to Lucrece's
chamber all sorts of petty annoyances
deterred him. The locks on the doors had
to be forced; the threshold beneath the
door grated under his footstep; the wind
threatened to blow out his torch; he
pricked his finger on a needle. Tarquin
ignored these omens of disaster. In fact,
he misconstrued them as forms of trial
which only made his prize more worth
winning.
When he reached the chamber door,
Tarquin began to pray for success.
Realizing, however, that heaven would not
countenance his sin, he declared that Love
and Fortune would henceforth be his
gods. Entering the room, he gazed at
Lucrece in sleep. When he reached
forward to touch her breast, she awoke with
a cry of fear. He told her that her beauty
had captured his heart and that she must
submit to his will.
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First he threatened Lucrece with force,
telling her that if she refused to submit to
him he would not only kill her but also
dishonor her name. His intention was to
murder one of her slaves, place him in
her arms, and then swear that he killed
them because he had seen Lucrece
embracing the man. But, if she yielded, he
promised to keep the whole affair secret.
Lucrece began to weep and plead with
Tarquin. For the sake of her hospitality,
her husband's friendship, Tarquin's
position as a warrior, he must pity her and
refrain from this deed. Her tears serving
only to increase his lust, Tarquin
smothered her cries with the bed linen
while he raped her.
Shame-ridden, he stole away, leaving
Lucrece desolate. She, horrified and
revolted, tore her nails and hoped the dawn
would never come. In a desperate fury,
she railed against the night; its darkness
and secrecy that had ruined her. She was
afraid of the day, for surely her sin would
be revealed. Still worse, through her fall,
Collatine would be forever shamed. It was
Opportunity that was at fault, she
claimed, working for the wicked and
against the innocent. Time, the
handmaiden of ugly Night, was hand-in-hand
with Opportunity. But Time could work
for Lucrece now. She implored Time to
bring misery and pain to Tarquin.
Exhausted from her emotional tirade,
Lucrece fell back on her pillow. She
longed for a suicide weapon; death alone
could save her soul.
As the dawn broke she began to
consider her death. Not until she had told
Collatine the complete details of her fall
would she take the step, however, for
Collatine must revenge her on Tarquin.
Lucrece called her maid and asked for
pen and paper. Writing to Collatine, she
asked him to return immediately. When
she gave the messenger the letter, she
imagined that he knew of her sin, for he
gave her a sly, side glance. Surely
everyone must know by now, she thought.
Her grief took new channels. Studying a
picture of the fall of Troy, she tried to
find the face showing greatest grief.
Hecuba, who gazed mournfully at Priam
in his dying moments, seemed the saddest.
Lucrece grieved for those who died in the
Trojan War, all because one man could
not control his lust. Enraged, she tore
the painting with her nails.
Collatine, returning home, found
Lucrece robed in black. With weeping and
lamentations she told him of her shame,
but without naming her violator. After
she had finished, Collatine, driven half-
mad by rage and grief, demanded the
name of the traitor. Before revealing it,
Lucrece drew promises from the
assembled soldiers that the loss of her honor
would be avenged. Then, naming
Tarquin, she drew a knife from her Dosom
and stabbed herself.
Heartbroken, Collatine cried that he
would kill himself as well, but Brutus,
his friend, stepped forward and argued
that woe was no cure for woe; it was
better to revenge Lucrece. The soldiers
left the palace to carry the bleeding body
of Lucrece through Rome. The indignant
citizenj banished Tarquin and. all his
family.
3123

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK
Type of work: Poem
Author: Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Type of plot: Mock-heroic epic
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: London
First published: 1712
Principal characters:
Belinda, Miss Arabella Fermor
Lord Petre, Belinda's suitor
Thalestris, Belinda's friend
Ariel, a sprite
Umbriel, a gnome
Critique:
The Rape of the Lock, generally
considered the most popular of Pope's
writings as well as the finest satirical poem
in the English language, was written at
the suggestion of John Caryll, Pope's
friend, ostensibly to heal a family row
which resulted when an acquaintance of
Pope, Lord Petre, playfully clipped a lock
of hair from the head of Miss Arabella
Fermor. Pope's larger purpose in writing
the poem, however, was to ridicule the
social vanity of his day and the
importance that was attached to affected
manners.
The Story:
At noon, when the sun was accustomed
to awaken both lap dogs and lovers,
Belinda was still asleep. She dreamed
that Ariel appeared to whisper praises
of her beauty in her ear. He said that
he had been sent to protect her because
something dreadful —what, he did not
know — was about to befall her. He also
warned her to beware of jealousy, pride,
and, above all, men.
After Ariel had vanished, Shock,
Belinda's lap dog, thought that his mistress
had slept long enough, and he awakened
her by lappings of his tongue. Rousing
herself, Belinda spied a letter on her bed.
After she had read it, she promptly
forgot everything that Ariel had told her,
including the warning to beware of men.
Belinda, aided by her maid, Betty,
began to make her toilet. Preening before
her mirror, she was guilty of the pride
against which Ariel had cautioned her.
The sun, journeying across the sky,
witnessed its brilliant rival, Belinda,
boating on the Thames with her friends and
suitors. All eyes were upon her, and like
the true coquette she smiled at her swains
but favored no one more than another.
Lord Petre, one of Belinda's suitors,
admired a lock of her hair and vowed
that he would have it by fair means or
foul. So set was he on getting the lock
that before the sun rose that morning he
had built an altar to Love and had thrown
on it all the trophies received from
former sweethearts, meanwhile asking Love
to give him soon the prize he wanted
and to let him keep it for a long time.
But Love granted him only half his
prayer.
Everyone except Ariel seemed happy
during the cruise on the Thames. That
sprite summoned his aides, and reminded
them that their duty was to watch over
the fair Belinda, one sylph to guard her
fan, another her watch, a third her
favorite lock. Ariel himself was to guard
Belinda's lap dog, Shock. Fifty sylphs
were dispatched to watch over the
maiden's petticoat, in order to protect her
chastity. Any negligent sylphs, warned
Ariel, would be punished severely.
After her cruise on the Thames,
Belinda, accompanied by Lord Petre and
the rest of the party, visited one of the
palaces near London. There Belinda
decided to play ombre, a Spanish card
game, with two of her suitors, including
Lord Petre. As she played, invisible
sylphs sat on her important cards to pro-
3124

tect them.
Coffee was served after the game.
Sylphs guarded Belinda's dress to keep
it from being spotted. The fumes from
the coffee sharpened Lord Petre's wits to
the point where he thought of new
stratagems for stealing Belinda's lock. One of
his cronies handed him a pair of scissors.
The sylphs, aware of Belinda's danger,
attempted to warn her before Lord Petre
could act, but as the maid bent her head
over her coffee cup he clipped the lock.
Even Ariel was unable to warn Belinda
in time.
At the rape of her lock, Belinda
shrieked in horror. Lord Petre cried out
in triumph. He praised the steel used in
the scissors, comparing it with the metal
of Greek swords that overcame the
Trojans. Belinda's fury was as tempestuous
as the rage of scornful virgins who have
lost their charms. Ariel wept bitterly and
flew away.
Umbriel, a melancholy gnome, took
advantage of the human confusion and
despair to fly down to the center of the
earth to find the gloomy cave of Spleen,
the queen of all bad tempers and the
source of every detestable quality in
human beings, including ill-nature and
affectation. Umbriel asked the queen to
touch Belinda with chagrin, for he knew
that, if she were gloomy, melancholy and
bad temper would spread to half the
world. Spleen granted Umbriel's request
and collected in a bag horrible noises such
as those uttered by female lungs and
tongues. In a vial she put tears, sorrows,
and griefs. She gave both containers to
Umbriel.
When the gnome returned to Belinda's
world, he found the girl disheveled and
dejected. Pouring the contents of the
magic bag over her, Umbriel caused
Belinda's wrath to be magnified many
times. One of her friends, Thalestris,
fanned the flames of the maiden's anger
by telling her that her honor was at
stake and that behind her back her friends
were talking about the rape of her lock.
Thalestris then went to her brother, Sir
Plume, and demanded that he confront
Lord Petre and secure the return of the
precious lock. Sir Plume considered the
whole episode much magnified from little,
but he went to demand Belinda's lock.
Lord Petre refused to give up his prize.
Next Umbriel broke the vial
containing human sorrows, and Belinda was
almost drowned in tears. She regretted the
day that she ever entered society and also
the day she learned to play ombre. She
longed for simple country life. Suddenly
she remembered, too late, that Ariel had
warned her of impending evil.
In spite of Thalestris' pleas, Lord Petre
was still adamant. Clarissa, another of
Belinda's circle, wondered at the vanity
of women and at the foolishness of men
who fawn before them. Clarissa felt that
both men and women need good sense,
but in making her feelings known she
exposed the tricks and deceits of women
and caused Belinda to frown. Calling
Clarissa a prude, Thalestris gathered her
forces to battle with Belinda's enemies,
including Clarissa and Lord Petre.
Umbriel was delighted by this Homeric
struggle of the teacups. Belinda pounced
upon Lord Petre, who was subdued when
a pinch of snuff caused him to sneeze
violently. She demanded the lock, but
it could not be found. Some thought
that it had gone to the moon, where also
go love letters and other tokens of tender
passions. But the muse of poetry saw it
ascend to heaven and become a star.
3125

RASSELAS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Samuel Johnson (1709-1794)
Type of plot: Philosophical romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Abyssinia and Cairo
First published: 1759
Principal characters:
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
Nekayah, his sister
Pekuah, her maid
Imlac, a poet
Critique:
The History of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia, one of the most popular works
of Samuel Johnson during his own
lifetime, is still widely read. However, it is
a weighty novel, ponderous in style and
slow moving. There is almost no
narrative, for the plot deals with the efforts
of four people to find a working
philosophy by which they can guide their lives.
The age in which Johnson lived was
characterized by superficial optimism,
and this novel is an attack on that
optimism. There is a popular theory that
Johnson wrote Rasselas in one week, in
order to pay his mother's funeral
expenses, but many scholars refute this
theory. The novel shows that Johnson
hated pretense of any kind, and he used
his pen to fight it at every opportunity.
The Story:
It was the custom in Abyssinia for the
sons and daughters of the emperor to be
confined in a remote place until the order
of succession to the throne was
established. The spot in which Rasselas and
his brothers and sisters were confined was
a beautiful and fertile valley situated
between high mountains. In the valley was
everything needed for a luxurious life.
Entertainers were brought in from the
outside world to help the royal children
pass the time pleasantly. These
entertainers were never allowed to leave, for
the outside world was not to know how
the royal children lived before they were
called on to rule.
It was this perfection which caused
Rasselas in the twenty-sixth year of his
life to become melancholy and
discontented. He was unhappy because he had
everything to make him happy; he wanted
more than anything else to desire
something which could not be made available
to him. When he talked of his longing
with an old philosopher, he was told that
he was foolish. The old man told him
of the misery and suffering of the people
outside the valley and cautioned him to
be glad of his present station. But
Rasselas knew that he could not be content
until he had seen the suffering of the
world.
For many months Rasselas pondered
on his desire to escape from the valley.
He took no action, however, for the
valley was carefully guarded and there was
no chance for anyone to leave. Once he
met an inventor who promised to make
some wings for him so that he could fly
over the mountains, but the experiment
was a failure. In his search for a way to
escape, his labor was more mental than
physical.
In the palace there was a poet, Imlac,
whose lines pleased Rasselas by their
intelligence. Imlac was also tired of the
perfect life in the valley, for in the past
he had traveled over much of the world.
He had observed the evil ways of
mankind and had learned that most
wickedness stemmed from envy and jealousy.
He had noticed that people envy others
with more worldly goods and oppress
those who are weak. As he talked,
Rasselas longed more than ever to see the
world and its misery. Imlac tried to
discourage him, for he believed that
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Rasselas would long for his present state
should he ever see the violence and
treachery which abounded in the lands
beyond the mountains.
But when Imlac realized he could not
deter the prince, he agreed to join him
in his attempt to leave the perfect state.
Together the two men contrived to hew
a path through the side of a mountain.
When they were almost ready to leave,
Rasselas saw his sister Nekayah
watching them. She begged to accompany the
travelers for she too was bored with the
valley and longed to see the rest of the
world. Because she was the favorite sister
of Rasselas, he gladly allowed her and
her maid, Pekuah, to join them. The
four made their way safely through the
path in the mountainside. They took
with them enough jewels to supply them
with money when they reached a city of
trade. They were simply dressed and no
one recognized them as royalty.
In Cairo they sold some of tneir jewels
and rented a magnificent dwelling. They
entertained great men and began to learn
the customs of people different from
themselves. It was their object to observe
all possible manners and customs so that
they could make their own choices about
the kind of life each wanted to pursue.
But they found many drawbacks to every
form of living.
Rasselas and Nekayah believed that it
was only necessary to find the right
pursuit to Know perfect happiness and
contentment. Imlac knew that few men lived
by choice but rather by chance and the
whims of fortune. But Rasselas and
Nekayah believed that their chance birth
had at least given them the advantage of
being able to study all forms of living
and thus to choose the one most
suitable for them to pursue. So it was that
the royal pair visited with men of every
station. They went into the courts and
into the fields. They visited sages of
great fame and hermits who had isolated
themselves to meditate. Nowhere did they
find a man completely happy and
satisfied, for each desired what die other had
and thought his neighbor more fortunate
than he.
Only once did Rasselas find a happy
man. This man was a philosopher who
preached the doctrine of reason. He
stated that by reason man can conquer
his passions and disappointments and
thus find true happiness. But when
Rasselas called on the sage the following day,
he found the old man in a fit of despair.
His daughter had died in the night, and
the reason which he had urged others
to use failed completely in his own life.
Imlac and Nekayah spent long hours
discussing the advantages of one kind of
life over another. They questioned the
state of marriage as compared with
celibacy and life at court as compared with
pastoral pleasures, but at no time could
they find satisfactory solutions for their
questions. Nowhere could they find
people living in happiness. Imlac
suggested a visit to the pyramids so that they
might learn of people of the past. While
they were in a tomb, Pekuah was stolen
by Arabs, and it was many months before
she was returned to Nekayah. Pekuah
told her mistress that she had spent some
time in a monastery while she waited for
her ransom, and she believed that the
nuns had found the one truly happy way
of life.
Their search continued for a long
period. Often they thought they had found
a happy man, but always they would find
much sorrow in the lite they thought so
serene. Nekayah at one time decided
that she would cease looking for
happiness on earth and live so that she might
find happiness in eternity. A visit to
the catacombs and a discourse on the soul
prompted her decision.
When the Nile flooded the valley,
confining them to their home for a time, the
four friends discussed the ways of life
which promised each the greatest
happiness. Pekuah wished to retire to a
convent. Nekayah more than anything
desired knowledge and wanted to found a
woman's college, where she could both
teach and learn. Rasselas thought he
wanted a small kingdom where he could
rule justly and wisely. Imlac said he
3127

would be content to drift through life,
with no particular goal. Because all knew
their desires would never be fulfilled, they
began to look forward to their return to
the Abyssinian valley where everyone
seemed happy and there was nothing to
desire.
3128

RAVENSHOE
Typ e of work: Novel
Author: Henry Kingsley (1830-1876)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1862
Principal characters:
Charles Ravenshoe, of the old House of Ravenshoe
Father Mackworth, a resident priest
William Horton, a groom, friend of Charles
Adelaide Summers, a vain girl
Mary Corby, ward of the Ravenshoes
Cuthbert, older brother of Charles
Lord Saltire, an atheist and dandy
Critique:
This very long novel is slow in pace,
and to some modern tastes Kingsley may
seem arch with his interminable asides
and his painful foreshadowing. In
summary form the novel attempts to cover
several centuries in the story of an
English family, but the bulk of the book is
concerned with the affairs of one
generation; rather than a panorama of a
family, Kingsley gives the adventures of one
son. Divested of its paraphernalia, the
tale is a lively one in the Regency
tradition. The malevolent priest is perhaps the
outstanding character.
The Story:
The House of Ravenshoe had long
been a bastion of Catholicism in
England, and the Church of Rome had for
generations assigned a resident priest to
the household. Densil Ravenshoe, when
he reached manhood, showed a rebellious
spirit by going off to London and
consorting with Lord Saltire, a notorious atheist.
After he had been imprisoned for his
debts, his father sent the resident priest
to bail him out.
For a while Densil was reconciled to
priestly rule, but the new Father Mack-
worth had his difficulties with him.
Densil at last married a Protestant woman,
to the consternation of the Church. Five
years went by and Densil had no
children. Father Mackworth was thinking of
asking for another assignment, but he
was eavesdropping one evening and what
he heard caused him to stay on at
Ravenshoe. Cuthbert, Densil's first son, was
born, and the priest had the satisfaction
of baptizing him in the true faith.
Five years later a second son, Charles,
was born. Densil's wife died in
childbirth, and shortly the terrible truth came
out: Densil had promised to bring up his
second son as a Protestant. Charles was
given to a nurse, Norah, wife of James
Horton, the gamekeeper. She had a boy,
William, just a week older than Charles,
and she gladly accepted her new charge.
Father Mackworth, resolved that a
Protestant should never own Ravenshoe,
made his plans early.
Charles was a cheerful lad, well liked
by all. When he was ten, he went to
visit at Ranford, the estate of the As-
cots, who were related to the Ravenshoes.
Charles was immediately accepted by his
Protestant relations; Cuthbert had never
been able to win their love. At Ranford
Charles met beautiful, imperious
Adelaide Summers, a ward of Lady Ascot,
and promptly fell in love with her.
Another new friend was the famous Lord
Saltire, who became fond of the boy.
There was a great storm at Ravenshoe.
Jn the bay a ship went down, split on a
rock. Only a few were saved, among
them Mary Corby, the daughter of the
captain. She was a lovely girl who was
accepted as one of the family. She soon
fell in love with ^Charles.
At Oxford, Charles had two intimate
3129

friends, Lord Welter, his cousin from
Ranford, and John Marston, a scholar.
Marston was a good influence over
Charles but Welter was a brutal,
arrogant bully. Unfortunately Charles
followed Welter's habits of drinking,
brawling, and gaming. After a wild night of
carousing, both Charles and Welter were
sent down from the university. To delay
his homecoming, Charles stopped off for
a visit at Ranford. Lord Saltire helped
him make his peace with his father.
During his visit he became engaged to
Adelaide.
Charles spent several months of
enforced vacation at Ravenshoe. During
that time Welter and Marston both came
to see him. Marston proposed to Mary
but she refused him. This period was
marred by Father Mack worth, who
seemed to Charles an evil genius. Ellen
Horton, William's younger sister, ran
away because of some trouble which
seemed to be connected with Father
Mackworth. At the beginning of the next
term Charles went back to Oxford.
His stay was brief, for he was recalled
by the death of his father. Father Mack-
worth was in possession of a ruinous
secret which Cuthbert offered to buy for
ten thousand pounds. Father Mackworth
refused money, but to keep Charles from
inheriting Ravenshoe he revealed that
Norah had switched babies long ago;
Charles was really her own son, and
William Horton, the groom, was a
Ravenshoe. William, a Catholic, became
second in line to own Ravenshoe.
Distraught, Charles rushed to Ranford to see
Adelaide, only to learn that she had mn
away with Welter.
Calling himself Charles Horton, he
took service with Lieutenant Hornby. As
a servant he learned that Ellen, his own
sister, had been Welter's mistress; now
she was a maid in the same household
with Adelaide, Welter's new mistress.
Welter and Adelaide lived by gambling.
Charles had an interview with Welter,
who excused his villainy by saying that
he had not known that Ellen was
Charles' sister. In reality, Charles was
well rid of the scheming Adelaide. After
seeing Mary, who had become a
governess, from a distance, Charles enlisted
in the army to fight against the Russians.
The Ascot family, heavily in debt, had
put all their hopes on a horse they had
entered in the Derby. In a desperate
attempt to recoup his fortunes, Lord Ascot
substituted a less famous jockey and bet
against his own horse. The Ascot entry
won and the family was ruined. At his
father's death, Welter became Lord
Ascot. Although he had married Adelaide
by that time, society ignored her.
In the Crimea, Charles took part in the
famous charge of the Six Hundred at
Balaklava. Hornby was killed and Charles
was wounded. Invalided home, he took
service again as a groom under an officer
with whom he had served. He hoped to
remain and eventually to find his sister
Ellen. His health remained poor.
When William made a trip to
Sevastopol to look for Charles, a lying soldier
had convinced him that Charles was
dead. When he heard the news, Lord
Saltire made a new will, bequeathing a
large sum to Mary but leaving the bulk
of his fortune to Welter and Adelaide.
Thinking themselves at last secure,
Welter and his wife began to move
freely in society. One night, to his horror,
Welter recognized Charles in a tavern.
Adelaide wanted Welter to keep still,
but her husband, conscience-stricken,
informed Lord Saltire, who prepared to
make a new will immediately. But the
great lord died before morning.
Charles was nursed back to health at
Ranford after an operation to heal his
war wound. When he returned to
Ravenshoe, he was a guest of William, now
in control of the estate since Cuthbert's
death by drowning. But Lady Ascot had
started a chain of inquiries which
threatened Father Mackworth's design. Finally
paralyzed after a stroke, he summoned
Ellen, now a nun, and through a
wedding certificate in her keeping the truth
came out. James Horton, father of
Charles and Ellen, had always been
looked upon as the illegitimate son of
3130

Densil's father, Petre Ravenshoe. But
Petre had really married James' mother,
and so Charles was the true heir of
Ravenshoe after all. Father Mackworth
had at one time possessed the marriage
certificate, but Ellen had stolen it when
she ran away. Her return with the
certificate provided proof of Father Mack-
worth's duplicity.
Ellen returned to her nursing duties;
Father Mackworth died after begging
forgiveness of the heir he had
dispossessed. Charles, the Protestant owner of
Ravenshoe, made ample provision for his
good friend William and the two were
married in a double ceremony, Charles
to the faithful Mary and William to his
childhood sweetheart. At the celebration
Welter acknowledged that Lord Saltire's
estate really belonged to Charles.
Adelaide had become a permanent invalid
after a riding accident; hence they would
never have children. In reparation,
Welter had willed his entire fortune to
Charles.
3131

REBECCA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Daphne du Maurier (1907- )
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: 1930's
Locale: England
First published: 1938
Principal characters:
Maxim de Winter, owner of Manderley
Mrs. de Winter, Maxim's wife and the narrator
Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper at Manderley
Frank Crawley, estate manager of Manderley
Jack Favell, Rebecca's cousin
Colonel Julyan, a magistrate
Critique:
Rebecca is an excellent example of
the suspense novel. From the time the
drab little companion marries Maxim de
Winter, the reader is aware that there
is something wrong with the situation
at Manderley, the fine house where
Rebecca was formerly the mistress. All
through the novel there are hints that
some startling disclosure about Rebecca
is to come, a revelation which will
explain many strange events. In
development of situation and in character
portrayal there is ample evidence of the
author's technical skill.
The Story:
Manderley was gone. Since the fire
which had destroyed their home, Mr. and
Mrs. de Winter had lived in a secluded
hotel away from England. Occasionally
Mrs. de Winter recalled the
circumstances which had brought Manderley
and Maxim de Winter into her life.
A shy, sensitive orphan, she had been
traveling about the continent as
companion to an overbearing American social
climber, Mrs. Van Hopper. At Monte
Carlo Mrs. Van Hopper forced herself
upon Maxim de Winter, owner of
Manderley, one of the most famous estates
in England. Before approaching him,
Mrs. Van Hopper had informed her
companion that Mr. de Winter was
recovering from the shock of the tragic death
of his wife, Rebecca, a few months pre-.
viously.
During the following days the young
girl and Mr. de Winter became well
acquainted; when Mrs. Van Hopper
decided to return to America, Maxim de
Winter unexpectedly proposed to her
companion. Already deeply in love with
him, the girl accepted and they were
married shortly afterward.
After a long honeymoon in Italy and
southern France, Mr. and Mrs. de
Winter returned to Manderley. Mrs. de
Winter was extremely nervous, fearing that
she would not fit into the life of a great
estate like Manderley. The entire staff
had gathered to meet the new mistress.
Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, had been
devoted to her former mistress and
immediately began to show her resentment
toward the new Mrs. de Winter.
Gradually Mrs. de Winter pieced
together the picture of Rebecca. She
learned that Rebecca had been a
beautiful, vivacious woman, a charming
hostess. As she became acquainted with
the relatives and friends of her husband,
she became convinced that they found
her lacking in those qualities which had
made Rebecca so attractive and gracious.
One day she went secretly to the closed
rooms Rebecca had occupied. Everything
was as Rebecca had left it before her
fatal sail in her boat. Mrs. Danvers
suddenly appeared and forced her to
view Rebecca's lovely clothes and other
REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier. By permission of the author and her agent, Curtia Brown, Ltd.
Published by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1938, by Daphne du Maurier Browning.
3132

personal possessions.
When the bishop's wife suggested that
the traditional Manderley fancy dress
ball be revived, Mr. de Winter gave his
consent. Mrs. de Winter announced her
intention of surprising them all with her
costume. At Mrs. Danvers' suggestion,
she planned to dress as an ancestress
whose portrait hung in the hall at
Manderley. But as Mrs. de Winter descended
the stairs that night a silence fell over
the guests, and her husband turned
angrily away without speaking.
Realizing that something was wrong, Mrs.
de Winter returned to her room. Beatrice,
Mr. de Winter's sister, went to her
immediately and explained that Rebecca
had worn the identical costume to her
last fancy dress ball. Again Mrs. Danvers
had humiliated her new mistress.
Although Mrs. de Winter reappeared at the
ball in a simple dress, her husband did
not speak to her all evening; and her
belief that he had never ceased to love
Rebecca became firmly established in her
mind.
The next day a steamer ran aground
in the bay near Manderley. A diver sent
down to inspect the damaged steamer
discovered Rebecca's boat and in its cabin
the remains of a human body. Mr. de
Winter had previously identified the
body of a woman found in the river as
that of Rebecca.
Unable to keep silent any longer, Mr.
de Winter told his wife the whole story
of Rebecca and her death. The world
had believed their marriage a happy one,
but Rebecca had been an immoral
woman, incapable of love. To avoid the
scandal of a divorce, they made a
bargain; Rebecca was to be outwardly the
fitting mistress of Manderley, but she
would be allowed to go to London
periodically to visit her dissolute friends.
All went well until she began to be
careless, inviting her friends to
Manderley and receiving them in the boathouse.
Then she began to plague Frank
Crawley, the estate manager of Manderley,
and Giles, Mr. de Winter's brother-in-
law. There had been gossip after Frank
and others had seen Rebecca's cousin,
Jack Favell, at the boathouse with her.
One evening Mr. de Winter had followed
her to the boathouse to tell her that
their marriage was at an end. Rebecca
taunted him, suggesting how difficult it
would be to prove his case against her,
asserting that should she have a child it
would bear his name and inherit
Manderley. She assured him with a smile
that she would be the perfect mother
as she had been the perfect wife.
She was still smiling when he shot her
Then he put her in the boat and sailed
out on the river. There he opened the
seacocks, drilled holes with a pike, and
leaving the boat to sink, rowed back
in the dinghy.
Mrs. de Winter was horrified, but at
the same time she felt a happiness she
had not known before. Her husband
loved her; he had never loved Rebecca.
With that discovery, her personality
changed. She assured her husband that
she would guard his secret.
A coroner's inquest was held, for the
body in the boat was that of Rebecca.
At the inquest it was established that a
storm could not have sunk the boat;
evidence of a bolted door, the holes, and
the open seacocks pointed to the verdict
of suicide which the coroner's jury
returned.
That night Jack Favell, drunk,
appeared at Manderley. Wildly expressing
his love for Rebecca and revealing their
intimate life, he tried to blackmail Mr.
de Winter by threatening to prove that
de Winter had killed his wife. Mr.
de Winter called the magistrate, Colonel
Julyan, to hear his case. Favell's theory
was that Rebecca had asked her husband
to free her so that she could marry
Jack, and that de Winter, infuriated,
had killed her.
From Rebecca's engagement book it
was learned that she had visited a
Doctor Baker in London on the last day of
her life. Colonel Julyan and Mr. and
Mrs. de Winter, with Jack Favell
following in his car, drove to London to see
Doctor Baker. On checking his records,
3133

the doctor found that he had examined a
Mrs. Danvers on the day in question.
They realized that Rebecca had assumed
the housekeeper's name. Doctor Baker
explained that he had diagnosed
Rebecca's ailment as cancer in an advanced
stage. The motive for suicide established,
Colonel July an suggested that the matter
be closed.
Driving back to Manderley after
leaving Colonel Julyan at his sister's home,
Mr. de Winter told his wife that he
believed that Colonel Julyan had guessed
the truth. He also realized that
Rebecca had intimated that she was
pregnant because she had been sure that her
husband would kill her; her last evil
deed would be to ruin him and
Manderley. Mr. de Winter telephoned Frank
from the inn where they stopped for
dinner, and the estate manager reported
that Mrs. Danvers had disappeared. His
news seemed to upset Mr. de Winter.
At two o'clock in the morning they
approached Manderley. Mrs. de Winter
had been sleeping. Awaking, she thought
by the blaze of light that it was dawn.
A moment later she realized that she" was
looking at Manderley, going up in flames.
3134

THE REBEL GENERATION
Type of work: Novel
Author: Johanna van Ammers-Kuller (1884- )
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1840-1923
Locale: Leyden, Holland
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Louis Cornvelt, an upper middle-class Hollander
Nicholas, and
David Cornvelt, his sons
Sarah,and
Katie Cornvelt, his daughters
Marie Elizabeth Sylvain (Lysbeth, "Sylvia"), his niece
Dr. William Wiseman, Katie Cornvelt's husband
(Dr.) Eliza Wiseman, daughter of William and Katie
Louis Cornvelt, David's son
Clara Cornvelt, David's daughter
Millicent Cohnvelt, great-granddaughter of Louis Cornvelt, Sr.
Stephen Cornvelt, Mfllicent's cousin, in love with her
Dorothy Cornvelt, Stephen's wife
Puck, and
Kitty Cornvelt, daughters of Stephen and Dorothy
Critique:
The Rebel Generation is a sociological
novel presenting the changes in middle-
class Dutch culture through several
generations of a single family. It demonstrates
how the ethical standards and the mores
of the people changed, especially the
relationships between parents and children.
The novel also presents the struggle by
women for equality with men. The
presentation of the attempts by women
to achieve equality with men shows
how seriously nineteenth-century women
faced the problem and how the solution
appeared to women of a later generation
to be a mixed blessing. The Rebel
Generation is usually considered Johanna
van Ammers-Kiiller's greatest success. It
has been translated into several languages
and has had a successful production on
the stage.
The Story:
In 1840, Louis Cornvelt was a
prosperous owner of a weaving mill in Leyden.
Strongly orthodox and conservative in
every way, he was a stanch Calvinist whose
beliefs colored his treatment of his family
and his employees. His wife, his sons,
and his daughters were expected to be
completely submissive to his will and the
way of life he represented.
Outwardly, at least, they were, until
the arrival in the Cornvelt home of an
orphaned niece, Marie Elizabeth Sylvain.
Reared in a much more permissive
atmosphere in the home of her French father,
she brought new ideas and an air of
rebellion into the Cornvelt home. Three of
the sons fell in love with her, but she
refused their overtures of love and
marriage, for she could not stand the idea of
placing herself under the domination of
a man. Her rebellion extended so far as
to cause her to run away to France when
her uncle refused to allow her to earn a
living for herself; he felt that such a
course might demean him and his
family in the eyes of their friends and
neighbors.
Marie Elizabeth Sylvain's cousins,
fired by her arguments and example,
tried to rebel, too, but in the end each
THE REBEL GENERATION by Johanna van Ammers-Kuller. Translated by M. W. Hoper. By
permission of the agent, Curtis Brown, Ltd. Copyright, 1928, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Renewed, All rights
reserved.
3135

submissively accepted their father's
domination. Katie Cornvelt married a young
medical doctor, William Wiseman, as her
father wished, although she found the
man's profession and person repugnant to
her. Nicholas Cornvelt ran his father's
woolen mill in the old way, as his father
dictated, even though the younger man
realized that more progressive methods
were needed if the mill were to compete
with more progressive business houses.
Sarah Cornvelt gave up the young man
she loved when their fathers refused to
countenance their marriage. David
Cornvelt, in love with his French cousin, gave
her up too when his father demanded
that he do so. The young people had
been so used to domination that they
could not break from the habit of
obedience, even after they were grown.
By 1872 the children of Louis
Cornvelt were themselves middle-aged and
had children of their own who were
approaching maturity. Having been reared
in a home completely dominated by their
father, the children attempted to rule
their families in much the same way and
to require of the new generation absolute
obedience to parents and loyalty to a
harshly conservative code. In their time,
however, the new generation was
supported and encouraged to rebellion by
changes in the life of the time. In
Holland, as in other European countries, new
liberality in politics, new theories in
sociology, a breakdown of orthodox religion,
and other changes contributed to an
outlook that fostered rebellion against
paternal domination of children and masculine
domination of women.
Dr. William Wiseman and his wife
were horrified when their daughter Eliza
announced she wished to become a
doctor, for such a career had previously been
unheard of for a woman. Although her
father wanted a son to be a doctor, he
could not imagine his daughter becoming
one, and he fought to check her interest
in medical s'udies.
Eliza Wiseman found help and
encouragement when her mother's cousin,
Marie Elizabeth Sylvain, returned to
Holland from France to work for the
emancipation of women. Marie Elizabeth had
received a considerable fortune which she
devoted to the cause of equality of the
sexes, using the money to ass'st capable
young women to gain an education and
to publish periodicals in support of
feminine equality. Eliza Wiseman was not
the only one in the Cornvelt clan to
receive help from their cousin, who called
herself Sylvia.
Sarah Cornvelt had married a retired
army officer. When her husband died,
leaving her with almost no income and
several daughters almost grown, Sarah's
brothers attempted to take over her
affairs, offering her a small allowance from
their pockets in return for their
domination. Encouraged by her French cousin,
Sarah refused to accept the men's
proposals and established herself and her
daughters as professional dressmakers.
Sarah, like her sisters, had had too much
domination under the rule of father and
husband to accept the domination of her
brothers.
David Cornvelt, a distinguished
professor, found rebellion in other quarters
than his sister Sarah's household. In his
own home the younger generation
refused to follow his dictates, even though
rebellion hurt them and other members
of the family. David's son Louis became
a political radical and wrote pamphlets
that kept his father from appointment to
a post in the national cabinet. David's
daughter Clara persisted in being a social
worker among the lowest classes, even
though she gave in to her father in
matters of love.
In 1923 the senior members of the
Cornvelt family found themselves in their
turn faced with a generation of young
people who were in rebellion against their
parents. By this time even the older
generation was dissatisfied. The changes in
family relationships were unsatisfactory.
So far as women were concerned,
emancipation and equality with men had been
achieved. Dorothy Cornvelt, married to
Dr. Eliza Wiseman's nephew, was a
lawyer and a member of Parliament. But her
3136

home life was empty, for both her
husband and children were indifferent to her
professional and political life. Her
husband, Stephen Cornvelt, became
infatuated with Millicent Cornvelt, a distant
cousin from a branch of the family which
had migrated to England. His infatuation
with the girl was so great that he asked
for a divorce, and neither he nor the
young girl could see why his wife should
deny the request.
The children of Stephen and Dorothy
Cornvelt also felt that life was too loose
for them. Although they were well
educated and free from most parental
restraints, they were unhappy. They felt a
need for a return to the safety of a stable
home and the guidance of older people,
even though they disliked interference
by their elders. When Stephen tried to
dissuade his daughter Kitty from a career
as a dancer, she rebelled as violently as
any earlier Cornvelt had done. Her sister
Puck, however, a successful
businesswoman, indicated by her behavior the
course that later generations might take.
She gave up her career to marry the man
she loved, expecting to find happiness in
family life and the influence of her
husband. She also rebelled, but her rebellion
was against too much freedom, rather
than too little.
3137

THE RECRUITING OFFICER
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Farquhar (1678-1707)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: Shrewsbury, England
Firs* presented: 1706
'Principal characters:
Captain Plume, the recruiting officer, a gay blade
Sylvia Balance, Captain Plume's fiancee
Mr. Worthy, Captain Plume's friend
Melinda, Mr. Worthy's fiancee and cousin of Sylvia Balance
Justice Balance, Sylvia's father
Rose, the pretty young daughter of a farmer
Sergeant Kite, Captain Plume's aide
Critique:
This is not Farquhar's best-known play
—that honor goes to The Beaux
Stratagem—hut it is superior to many of the
other Restoration comedies. Perhaps the
most richly comic soldier in English
drama is to be found here in Sergeant
Kite, who doubles as a fortune-teller and
a pander for his master. It is a long step
from the Miles Gloriosus of the Plautine
comedy, through Captain Bobadil of Ben
Jonson's comedy, to this grandly comic
figure. In this play the reader is taken
from London to Shrewsbury, a welcome
change in comedies of this period, most
of which were laid in London. In
moving his scene from London, Farquhar
followed the example of Thomas Shadwell,
the poet and playwright who succeeded
John Dry den as Poet Laureate. Indeed,
the reader is constantly reminded of
similarities of incident and tone between the
plays of Shadwell and Farquhar. There
is less of the elegant tone in this play,
however, for it rather leans to the
sentiment of later eighteenth-century drama.
The Story:
Captain Plume, commander of a
company of grenadiers, and his aide,
Sergeant Kite, went to Shrewsbury to enlist
a number of recruits for Captain Plume's
command. They went to Shrewsbury
because of success in gaining recruits in
that city some months before, and
because of Captain Plume's amorous
successes at the same time. Upon the arrival
of the pair they were greeted with the
news that a young woman who had just
given birth to a child had named
Captain Plume as the father. At the captain's
request, Sergeant Kite married the
woman and went on record as the father
of the child. This was not the first time
he had done as much for the captain;
he had accumulated a list of six wives
in the same manner.
Captain Plume also found his good
friend, Mr. Worthy, at Shrewsbury. Mr.
Worthy had been a happy-go-lucky chap,
much like Captain Plume, until his
fiancee had inherited a fortune. The girl,
Melinda, had taken on airs after
becoming a rich woman, and she proceeded to
make life miserable for Worthy. His
latest grievance was that another officer on
recruiting duty, one Captain Brazen, had
apparently become a successful rival for
Melinda's hand and fortune. Captain
Plume asked Worthy about Sylvia
Balance, whom the captain loved but could
not marry because his life was too
uncertain and he had too little money.
Worthy told Captain Plume that Sylvia
Balance still thought very well of him.
While Worthy and Captain Plume
talked, Melinda and Sylvia were having
a conversation of their own, in which
Sylvia told her cousin that she was
determined that the captain should not
3138

leave Shrewsbury alone. The two women
quarreled, and after Sylvia's departure
Melinda wrote a letter to Sylvia's father
telling him that Captain Plume intended
to dishonor Sylvia.
That evening Captain Plume had
dinner with Sylvia and her father, Justice
Balance, who considered the captain a
fine match for his daughter. During the
evening news came from Germany by
mail that Justice Balance's son and heir
had died. Immediately the attitude of
Justice Balance toward Captain Plume
changed, for he did not like to think of
the captain as the husband of his
daughter if she were to have all his fortune.
Calling Sylvia into private conference,
he told her of the change in his attitude.
Although the girl was very much in love
with the captain, she promised that she
would not marry without her father's
consent. Captain Plume left the house
without learning what had happened. A
short time after his departure Melinda's
spiteful letter to Sylvia's father arrived.
In order to get her away from the
captain, Justice Balance immediately sent
Sylvia by coach to one of his country
estates.
Both Worthy and Captain Plume
interpreted Sylvia's departure erroneously.
They thought that she believed herself
too good for the captain after she had
inherited a fortune of two thousand pounds
a year. The captain, claiming that he
would get along as well without her,
proceeded to go about his business of
recruiting. While doing so he met a
farmer's pretty young daughter, named
Rose. Rose and he immediately fancied
one another, and the captain went so
far as to give his half-promise that he
would make the girl his wife. In return,
she helped him to add almost a dozen
more recruits to his company. These
included her own brother and her former
sweetheart.
One day Sylvia, disguised in some of
her brother's clothes, returned to
Shrewsbury, where she met the two recruiting
officers, Captain Plume and Captain
Brazen, in the company of Melinda.
When she told them that she was Mr.
Willful, a young man of good family
who wished to enlist, they both bid for
the new recruit, who finally agreed to
join Captain Plume's company. The
captain was so pleased with young Mr.
Willful that he proffered his friendship, even
though the recruit was to be an enlisted
man in the company.
Saying that he would be censured for
entering the army voluntarily, the recruit
asked Captain Plume to have him
impressed into service by the provisions
of the acts of Parliament. The captain
agreed to do so. To help her deception,
and also to test the direction of Captain
Plume's affections, Sylvia in her disguise
pretended to be in love with Rose.
The fiancee of Worthy, meanwhile,
had been to see a fortune-teller who was
really Sergeant Kite in disguise. The
fortune-teller told Melinda that she would
die unmarried if she let a man who was
to call on her at ten o'clock the following
morning leave the country. He had also
managed to secure a copy of her
handwriting, which he showed her in an
attempt to make her think the devil was
his helper. Melinda was so impressed
that she promised herself to follow the
fortune-teller's advice.
Justice Balance decided that the best
way to keep his daughter's honor and
fortune from falling into the hands of
Captain Plume was to provide the officer with
the soldiers he needed and to draft them
according to the provision made by
Parliament. In order to do so, the justice
opened his court and had the bailiff
bring in a number of men who were
eligible for the draft. Among the men
was Sylvia in her disguise as Mr.
Willful. She had been accused, as a man, of
having taken Rose as a common-law
wife. In the courtroom Mr. Willful
behaved impudently, and the justice
decided to punish the brash young man by
sending him off as a private in Captain
Plume's company of gendarmes. Thus
Sylvia tricked her father into sending
3139

her away with the captain. In fact, the
justice ordered Captain Plume not to
discharge Mr. Willful for any reason.
After the hearing Justice Balance went
to his home, where he learned that his
daughter, dressed in her deceased
brother's clothes, had disappeared from his
country estate. The justice immediately
realized that he had been tricked, that the
Mr. Willful whom he had sent off with
Captain Plume was really Sylvia. He
also thought that Captain Plume had
been a party to the deception. When the
captain called at the justice's home a
short time later, it was soon apparent
that he knew nothing of the scheme, for
he agreed to discharge the new soldier
at Justice Balance's request.
Mr. Willful was called in and
unmasked as Sylvia. Then the father,
realizing how much his daughter loved the
captain, gave them permission to marry.
Immediately thereafter Worthy and
Melinda arrived to say that they had also
reached an agreement and were to be
married shortly. Melinda also apologized
for the spiteful letter she had sent to
Justice Balance. Captain Plume, pleased
over the prospect of a handsome fortune
coming to him with his wife, announced
that he was retiring from the army. He
turned over all the recruits he had
enlisted to Captain Brazen, who had been
unsuccessful in finding any men for his
company.
3140

THE RED AND THE BLACK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle, 1783-1842)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 18 BO
Principal characters:
Julien Sorel, an opportunist
M. de Renal, mayor of Verrieres
Madame de Renal, his wife
Mathilde de La Mole, Julien's mistress
Fouque, Julien's friend
Critique:
This novel is unusual in that its chief
character is a villain. He is an interesting
villain, however, for Stendhal analyzes
the psychological undercurrents of his
nature in an attempt to show clearly how
struggle and temptation shaped his
energetic but morbidly introspective character.
The author analyzes the actions of
Julien's loves in the same way. This method
of writing slows down the action of the
plot considerably, but on the other hand
it makes the characters real and
understandable and shows much of the sordid
conditions of French society at the end
of the Napoleonic wars.
The Story:
Julien Sorel was the son of a carpenter
in the little town of Verrieres, France.
Napoleon had fallen, but he still had
many admirers, and Julien was one of
these. Julien pretended to be deeply
religious. Now that Napoleon had been
defeated, he believed that the church
rather than the army was the way to
power. Because of his assumed piety and
his intelligence, Julien was appointed as
tutor to the children of M. de R6nal, the
mayor of the village.
Madame de Renal had done her duty
all her life; she was a good wife and a
good mother. But she had never been in
love with her husband, a coarse man who
would hardly inspire love in any woman.
Madame de R£nal was attracted to the
pale young tutor and fell completely in
love with him. Julien, thinking it his
duty to himself, made love to her in order
to gain power over her. He discovered
after a time that he had really fallen in
love with Madame de R6nal.
When Julien went on a holiday to
visit Fouque\ a poor friend, Fouque tried
to persuade Julien to go into the lumber
business with him. Julien declined; he
enjoyed too much the power he held over
his mistress.
The love affair was revealed to M. de
R6nal by an anonymous letter written by
M. Valenod, the local official in charge
of the poorhouse. He had become rich
on graft and he was jealous because M.
de R£nal had hired Julien as a tutor.
He had also made unsuccessful advances
to Madame de R6nal at one time.
The lovers were able to smooth ovt,r
the situation to some extent. M. de R6nal
agreed to send Julien to the seminary at
Besan^on, principally to keep him from
becoming tutor at M. Valenod's house.
After Julien had departed, Madame de
R6nal was filled with remorse. Her
conscience suffered because of her adultery
and she became extremely religious.
Julien did not get on well at the
seminary, for he found it full of
hypocrites. The students did not like him and
feared his sharp intelligence. His only
friend was the Abb6 Pirard, a highly
moral man.
One day Julien went to help decorate
the cathedral and by chance found
Madame de R&nal there. She fainted, but
he could not help her because his duties
THE RED AND THE BLACK by Stendhal. Published by Liveright Publishing Corp.
3141

called him elsewhere. The experience
left him weak and shaken.
The Abbe* Pirard lost his position at
the seminary because of his opposition
to the local bishop; he had supported the
Marquis de La Mole, who was engaged
in lawsuits against the bishop. When
the Abbe Pirard left the seminary, the
marquis obtained a living for him in
Paris. He also hired Julien as his
secretary.
Julien was thankful for his chance
to leave the seminary. On his way to
Paris he called secretly upon Madame
de R6nal. At first she repulsed his
advances, conscious of her great sin. But
at last she yielded once again to his
pleadings. M. de R6nal became
suspicious and decided to search his wife's
room. To escape discovery, Julien jumped
out the window, barely escaping with his
life.
Finding Julien a good worker, the
marquis entrusted him with many of the
details of his business. Julien was also
allowed to dine with the family and to
mingle with the guests afterward. He
found the Marquise de La Mole to be
extremely proud of her nobility. Her
daughter, Mathilde, seemed to be of the
same type, a reserved girl with beautiful
eyes. Her son, the Comte de La Mole,
was an extremely polite and pleasant
young man. However, Julien found
Parisian high society boring. No one was
allowed to discuss ideas.
Julien enjoyed stealing volumes of
Voltaire from the marquis* library and
reading them in his room. He was astonished
when he discovered that Mathilde was
doing the same thing. Before long they
began to spend much of their time
together, although Julien was always
conscious of his position as servant and was
quick to be insulted by Mathilde's pride.
The girl fell in love with him because he
was so different from the dull young
men of her own class.
After Julien had spent two nights with
her, Mathilde decided that it was
degrading to be in love with a secretary. Her
pride was an insult to Julien. Smarting,
he planned to gain power over her and,
consequently, over the household.
Meanwhile the marquis had entrusted
Julien with a diplomatic mission on
behalf of the nobility and clergy who
wanted the monarchy reestablished. On
this mission Julien met an old friend
who advised him how to win Mathilde
again. Upon his return he put his friend's
plan into effect.
He began to pay court to a virtuous
lady who was often a visitor in the de
La Mole home. He began a
correspondence with her, at the same time neglecting
Mathilde. Then Mathilde, thinking that
Julien was lost to her, discovered how
much she loved him. She threw herself
at his feet. Julien had won. But this
time he would not let her gain the upper
hand. He continued to treat Mathilde
coldly as her passion increased. In this
way he maintained his power.
Mathilde became pregnant. She was
joyful, for now, she thought, Julien
would know how much she cared for
him. She had made the supreme sacrifice;
she would now have to marry Julien and
give up her place in society. But Julien
was not so happy as Mathilde over her
condition, for he feared the results when
Mathilde told her father.
At first the marquis was furious.
Eventually, he saw only one way out of the
difficulty; he would make Julien rich and
respectable. He gave Julien a fortune,
a tide, and a commission in the army.
Overwhelmed with his new wealth and
power, Julien scarcely gave a thought
to Mathilde.
Then the Marquis received a letter
from Madame de R6nal, whom Julien
had suggested to the marquis for a
character recommendation. Madame.de Renal
was again filled with religious fervor;
she revealed to the marquis the whole
story of Julien's villainy. The marquis
immediately refused to let Julien marry
his daughter.
Julien's plans for glory and power were
ruined. In a fit of rage he rode to Ver-
rieres, where he found Madame de R&ial
at church. He fired two shots at her be-
3142

fore he was arrested and taken off to
prison. There he promptly admitted his
guilt, for he was ready to die. He had
his revenge.
Mathilde, still madly in love with
Julien, arrived in Verrieres and tried to bribe
the jury for the trial. Fouqu6 arrived and
begged Julien to try to escape. But Julien
paid no attention to the efforts his
friends made to help him.
Tried, he was found guilty and given
the death sentence, even though his
bullets had not killed Madame de R&nal.
In fact, his action had only rekindled her
passion for him. She visited him and
begged him to appeal his sentence. The
two were as much in love as they had
been before. When M. de R6nal ordered
his wife to come home, Julien was left
again to his dreams. He had lost his
one great love — Madame de R6nal. The
colorless Mathilde only bored and angered
him by her continued solicitude.
Julien went calmly to his death on the
appointed day. The faithful Fouqu£
obtained the body in order to bury it in a
cave in the mountains, where Julien had
once been fond of going to indulge in
his daydreams of power.
A woman had loved a famous ancestoi
of Mathilde with an extreme passion.
When the ancestor was executed, the
woman had taken his severed head and
buried it. Mathilde, who had always
admired this family legend, did the same
for Julien. After the funeral ceremony
at the cave, she buried Julien's head with
her own hands. Later, she had the cave
decorated with Italian marble.
Madame de R6nal did not go to the
funeral. But three days after Julien's
death she died in the act of embracing
her children.
3143

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Civil War
Locale: A Civil War batdefield
First published: 1895
Principal characters:
Henry Fleming, a young recruit
Jim Conklin, a veteran
Wilson, another veteran
Critique:
Most war stories are epic histories of
generals and victories or defeats. In The
Red Badge of Courage we follow only the
personal reactions of a soldier; we do not
even know what batde is being fought
or who the leaders are. We know only
that Henry Fleming was motivated, not
by the unselfish heroism of more
conventional and romantic stories, but first
by cowardice, then by fear, and finally
by egoism. The style of narrative of the
novel belongs to a late period in English
prose fiction. The stream of Henry's
thought tells a story, and the reader
must perceive the hero's environment
through the subjective consciousness of
the young man. This novel set the
pattern for die treatment of war in modern
fiction.
The Story:
The tall soldier, Jim Conklin, and the
loud soldier, Wilson, argued bitterly over
the rumor that the troops were about
to move. Henry Fleming was impatient
to experience his first batde, and as he
listened to the quarreling of the seasoned
soldiers he wondered if he would
become frightened and run away under
gunfire. He questioned Wilson and
Conklin, and each man stated that he
would stand and fight no matter what
happened.
Henry had come from a farm, where
he had dreamed of batdes and longed
for army life. His mother had held him
back at first. When she saw that her
son was bored with the farm, she packed
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE by Stephen Crane,
Crofts, Inc. Copyright, 1895, by D. Appleton & Co. "
his woolen clothing and with a warning
that he must not associate with the wicked
kind of men who were in the military
camps sent him off to join the Yankee
troops.
One gray morning Henry awoke tc
find that the regiment was about tc
move. With a hazy feeling that death
would be a relief from dull and
meaningless marching, Henry was again
disappointed. The troops made only
another march. He began to suspect that
the generals were stupid fools, but the
other men in his raw regiment scoffed
at his idea and told him to shut up.
When the fighting suddenly began,
there was very litde action in it foi
Henry. He lay on the ground with the
other men and watched for signs of the
enemy. Some of the men around him
were wounded. He could not see what
was going on or what the battle was
about. Then an attack came.
Immediately Henry forgot all his former
confused thoughts, and he could only
fire his rifle over and over; around him
men behaved in their strange individual
manner as they were wounded. Henry
felt a close comradeship with the men
at his side who were firing at the enemy
with him.
Suddenly the attack ended. To Henry,
it seemed strange that the sky above
should still be blue after the guns had
stopped firing. While the men were
recovering from the attack, binding
wounds, and gathering equipment,
another surprise attack was launched from
By permission of the publishers. Appleton-Century-
Renewed, 1923, by William H. Crane.
3144

the enemy line. Unprepared and tired
from the first fighting, the men retreated
in panic. Henry, sharing their sudden
terror, ran, too.
When the fearful retreat had ended,
the fleeing men learned that the enemy
had lost the battle. Now Henry felt a
surge of guilt. Dreading to rejoin his
companions, he fled into the forest.
There he saw a squirrel run away from
him in fright. The fleeing animal seemed
to vindicate in Henry's mind his own
cowardly flight; he had acted according
to nature whose own creatures ran from
danger. Then, seeing a dead man lying
in a clearing, Henry hurried back into
the retreating column of wounded men.
Most were staggering along in helpless
bewilderment and some were being
carried on stretchers. Henry realized
that he had no wound and that he did
not belong in that group of staggering
men. There was one pitiful-looking man,
covered with dirt and blood, wandering
about dazed and alone. Everyone was
staring at him and avoiding him. When
Henry approached him, the young boy
saw that the soldier was Jim Conklin.
He was horrified at the sight of the tall
soldier. He tried to help Jim, but with
a wild motion of despair Jim fell to the
ground dead. Once more Henry fled.
His conscience was paining him. He
wanted to return to his regiment to
finish the fight, but he thought that his
fellow soldiers would point to him as a
deserter. He envied the dead men who
were lying all about him. They were
already heroes; he was a coward. Ahead
he could hear the rumbling of artillery.
As he neared the lines of his regiment,
a retreating line of men broke from the
trees ahead of him. The men ran fiercely,
ignoring him or waving frantically at him
as they shouted something he could not
comprehend. He stood among the flying
men, not knowing what to do. One man
hit him on the head with the butt of a
rifle.
Henry went on carefully, the wound
in his head paining him a great deal.
He walked for a long while until he met
another soldier, who led Henry back to
his regiment. The first familiar man
Henry met was Wilson. Wilson, who
had been a terrible braggart before the
first batde, had given Henry a packet of
letters to keep for him in case he were
killed. Now Henry felt superior to
Wilson. If the man asked him where he
had been, Henry would remind him of
the letters. Lost was Henry's feeling of
guilt; he felt superior now, his deeds of
cowardice almost forgotten. No one
knew that he had run off in terror.
Wilson had changed. He no longer was
the swaggering, boastful man who had
annoyed Henry in the beginning. The
men in the regiment washed Henry's
head wound and told him to get some
sleep.
The next morning Wilson casually
asked Henry for the letters. Half sorry
that he had to yield them with no
taunting remark, Henry returned the
letters to his comrade. He felt sorry
for Wilson's embarrassment. He felt
himself a virtuous and heroic man.
Another batde started. This time
Henry held his position doggedly and
kept firing his rifle without thinking.
Once he fell down, and for a panicky
moment he thought that he had been
shot, but he continued to fire his rifle
blindly, loading and firing without even
seeing the enemy. Finally someone
shouted to him that he must stop
shooting, that the batde was over. Then
Henry looked up for the first time and
saw that there were no enemy troops
before him. Now he was a hero.
Everyone stared at him when the lieutenant
of the regiment complimented his fierce
fighting. Henry realized that he had
behaved like a demon.
Wilson and Henry, off in the woods
looking for water, overheard two officers
discussing the coming batde. They said
that Henry's regiment fought like mule
drivers, but that they would have to be
used anyway. Then one officer said that
probably not many of the regiment
S145

would live through the day's fighting.
Soon after the attack started, the ccAot
bearer was killed and Henry took up the
flag, with Wilson at his side. Although
the regiment fought bravely, one of the
commanding officers of the army said
that the men had not gained the ground
that they were expected to take. The
same officer had complimented Henry
for his courageous fighting. He began to
feel that he knew the measure of his
own courage and endurance.
His outfit fought one more
engagement with the enemy. Henry was by
that time a veteran, and the fighting
held less meaning for him than had the
earlier batdes. When it was over, he and
Wilson marched away with their
victorious regiment.
3146

THE RED ROOM
Type of work: Novel
Author: August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Type of plot: Realistic satire
Time of plot: 1870's
Locale: Stockholm and X-koping, a provincial town in Sweden
First published: 1879
Principal characters:
Arvid Falk, a writer
Charles Nicholas Falk, his brother, a businessman
Mrs. Charles Nicholas Falk
Sellen, a painter
Lundell, a practical painter
Olle Montanus, a philosopher and sculptor
Ygberg, a philosopher
Rehnhjelm, a would-be actor
Levin, a post-office clerk
Nystrom, a schoolmaster
Smith, a publisher
Falander, an actor
Agnes (Beda Petterson), a young actress
Struve, a journalist
Borg, a young doctor
Critique:
A biting satire leveled against
contemporary Swedish society, The Red Room
was Strindberg's first published novel.
The story deals with the fortunes of a
group of young Swedish intellectuals
and artists trying to get along in
Stockholm of the 1870's. The intellectuals and
artists, dedicated to their tasks and to
honest appraisals of the society about
them, are constantly tricked, defeated,
and victimized by the insensitive
bourgeois world in which they live. They are
constantly faced with poverty (although
there are a few examples of unpredictable
and temporary success when the artist
happens, quite by chance, to catch the
public fancy), scorn, or indifference. By
the end of the novel, all the artists have
either gone mad, committed suicide, or
sold out to the commercial society.
Various institutions are also satirized: the
government agency where a large staff does
no work, the newspaper that makes or
breaks reputations to suit its purpose
without regard to factual accuracy, the
Parliament that endlessly debates
inconsequential matters, the charitable
organization out of touch with reality.
The Story:
Arvid Falk, a young government
worker who wanted to be a poet, told
Struve, a journalist, some facts
concerning the waste and inadequacy of a
government department where he, Arvid,
had worked. Struve worked this material
into an expose* for a newspaper that was
looking for sensational stories. Arvid was
discharged for giving out the information.
Arvid's brother, Charles Nicholas, a
flax merchant, liked to feel that he was
supporting Arvid by lending him money,
offering him cigars, and inviting him to
dinner. He could not believe that Arvid,
THE RED ROOM by August Strindberg. Translated by Ellie Schleussner. By permission of the
publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1913, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Renewed. All rights reserved.
3147

despite certain unconventional opinions,
would give out such information for
publication. Charles Nicholas was a rising
merchant, but his favorite cronies were a
beaten clerk named Levin and an
apathetic schoolmaster named Nystrom.
Levin and Nystrom would flatter Charles
Nicholas and write him fulsome verses of
appreciation for the small sums of money
he lent them. Charles Nicholas had a
young wife who slept until noon every
day and aspired to become a social and
civic leader.
Arvid visited his friends: Sell£n and
Lundell, who were painters; Rehnhjelm,
who ardently desired to be an actor, and
Olle Montanus and Ygberg, who spent
all day arguing the fine points of
philosophy. All were serious about their art or
their arguments, and all were poor.
Although the practical Lundell made a
living by doing magazine illustrations, the
group had little money; frequently they
were forced to combine their credit or
pawn some of their clothes in order to
scrape together enough money for dinner.
Out of a job, Arvid brought some of
his verses to Smith, a successful
publisher who offered Arvid the job of
writing about Ulrica Eleonora, a Swedish
historical personage, and doing hack work
on other trite and uninteresting subjects.
Arvid tried to do the work, in which he
had no interest at all, but was unable to
complete his dull assignments. He joined
his friends in the Red Room, a cafe
where they gathered, argued, and spent
as little money as possible.
Arvid finally got a job on a newspaper.
As a reporter on the afFairs of Parliament
he did his work successfully, although he
was privately outraged at the time wasted
in interminable and senseless discussions.
Most of the Swedes, however, were
!>roud of their new, more democratic Par-
iament.
About this time Sell£n had succeeded
in getting a picture hung in the Academy
show. At first it was pointed out as an
example of the new decadent, Bohemian
art, and as such was criticized by one of
the papers. For reasons having nothing to
do with art, another paper defended Sel-
len's painting, and he became a hotly
debated and highly successful young man.
For the moment all the members of this
Bohemian group were working; they
were able to pay for their drinks at the
Red Room and recover the overcoats they
had pawned.
When a group of unscrupulous men
organized a marine insurance company
called Triton, Charles Nicholas Falk was
pleased and flattered to be a member of
their board. At the same time his wife
was pleased to be on a committee
organized to erect a large creche for a church.
Charles Nicholas helped to forward his
wife's social ambitions by making a large
donation for the creche, but he made the
donation with shares of the marine
insurance company. When Mrs. Falk was
accepted by society, she made visits to the
homes of poor people and tried to convert
them to believing in her church. She had
little success and assumed that the poor
people were simply ignorant and
uncouth. Later, when the marine insurance
company was proved to be a hoax and
collapsed, the project for the creche, along
with Mrs. Falk's social aspirations, had
to be abandoned.
In the meantime, Rehnhjelm had gone
to the town of X-koping and joined a
theatrical company. He played only
minor parts and the theater manager took
advantage of him, but he felt that he
was learning the profession. He was
impressed by Falander, a suave older actor,
and he fell in love with Agnes, a sixteen-
year-old ingenue. His love for Agnes was
pure and idealistic; and he did not know
that she had long been Falander's
mistress. When he finally and belatedly
discovered this fact, he thought he would
commit suicide in his despair at the
wickedness in the world. Instead, he
returned to Stockholm and the security
offered by his wealthy family.
Arvid became a successful journalist
and his poems were published at last. He
moved from paper to paper every so often
in the hope that each would offer him
the opportunity to report the news as
3148

honestly as he saw it, but the papers were
interested only in versions of news or
scandal that would fit their particular
needs. Frustrated in his efforts, Arvid
became friendly with Bora, a cynical and
iconoclastic doctor, and he fell in love
with Beda Petterson, a young girl who
worked in a Stockholm cafe. The vogue
for SelleVs work had ended and he was
again poor. In the meantime Lundell had
become a society portrait painter. One
night Borg found Arvid in a low dive
with two representatives of a paper even
lower than the conventional papers Arvid
had found so unprincipled. Arvid had
gone raving mad. Borg took him on a
ship voyage under treatment for his
nervous breakdown.
When Arvid recovered and returned
to Stockholm, he found that the old
group at the Red Room had broken up.
Olle Montanus, unable to work except
as a stonemason, had finally committed
suicide. Seller's painting had again
become fashionable. Charles Nicholas had,
sfrangely enough, emerged unscathed
from the Triton disaster and was about
to establish a bank. Arvid discovered that
Beda Petterson and Rehnhjelm's Agnes
were really the same woman, a kind of
symbol for the faithless woman whose
only allegiance is a physical connection
to some man. None of his living friends
or associates retained any semblance of the
idealism and honesty that had once
motivated all their actions and conversations.
Arvid himself became a conventional
schoolmaster, married a schoolmistress,
and studied numismatics in his spare
time. Only Borg, the skeptic who
expected nothing, remained unchanged.
3149

THE RED ROVER
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: Newport, Rhode Island and the Adantic Ocean
First published: 1827
Principal characters:
Harry Wilder, formerly Henry Ark, actually Henry de Lacy
The Red Rover, captain of the Dolphin
Dick Fid, and
Scipio Africa, seamen, Harry Wilder's friends
Gertrude Grayson, General Grayson's daughter
Mrs. Wyllys, her governess
Critique:
Cooper, who knew the sea quite well,
wrote this novel to repeat the success of
The Pilot. His characters, as is customary
with him, are types, and there is little
character development. The plot is simple
and plausible until the end of the story,
when Cooper unravels the mystery
surrounding Henry Ark and the Red Rover
by proving improbable relationships
among the characters. However, few
novels of the sea contain a better record
of life and work aboard a sailing ship.
The Story:
While in the town of Newport, Rhode
Island, Harry Wilder saw in the outer
harbor a ship, the Dolphin, which inter*
ested him greatly. He decided to try to
secure a berth on her for himself and his
two friends, Dick Fid and Scipio Africa,
a Negro sailor. His determination was
strengthened after meeting a stranger
who in effect dared him to try to obtain
a berth there. That night the three men
rowed out to the ship lying at anchor,
in order to give the vessel a closer
inspection. Hailed by the watch on deck,
Wilder went aboard her. There he
learned that he had been expected and
that if he were interested in sailing with
her, he might go to see the captain. The
captain was the mysterious, mocking
stranger whom Wilder had met that
afternoon in the town. But before Wilder
signed on as a member of the ship's
crew, the captain revealed the true
nature of the ship and admitted that he
himself was the Red Rover, the scourge
of the sea. Wilder, who had formerly
been an officer in the British Navy, was
given the post of second in command.
He persuaded the captain to sign on
Dick and Scipio as well. He then
returned to shore to settle his affairs in
the town. The other two men remained
aboard the Dolphin.
At the same time the Royal Caroline,
a merchantman trading along the coast
and between the colonies and England,
lay in the inner harbor ready to embark
on the following day. Two ladies,
Gertrude Grayson and her governess, Mrs.
Wyllys, were to take passage on her to
Charleston, South Carolina, Gertrude's
home. Wilder met the ladies as if by
chance and tried to dissuade them from
sailing aboard the Royal Caroline. He
hinted that the Royal Caroline was
unsafe, but his words were discredited by
an old seaman who insisted that there
was nothing wrong with the ship. The
ladies decided to sail in spite of Wilder's
warnings. Then the master of the Royal
Caroline fell from a cask and broke his
leg, and a new captain had to be found
immediately. The Red Rover sent a
message ordering Wilder to apply for the
vacant position. He did, and was
immediately hired.
The voyage of the Royal Caroline
began with difficulties which continued as
time went on. They were not long out
of port when a ship was sighted on the
horizon. It continued to keep its distance
3150

in approximately the same position, so
that all aboard the Royal Caroline
suspected that it was following them. In
trying to outdistance the other ship,
Wilder put on all sail possible, in spite
of the threatening weather. A storm
struck the ship and left her foundering
in heavy seas. When Wilder commanded
the crew to man the pumps, they refused
and deserted the sinking ship in one of
the boats. Only Wilder and the two
women were left aboard the helpless
Royal Caroline. Hoping to make land,
they embarked in a longboat, but the
wind blew them out to sea. They were
sighted and picked up by the Dolphin.
Gertrude and Mrs. Wyllys were not
long aboard the Dolphin before the true
state of affairs became apparent to the
women in spite of the kindly treatment
afforded them. Mrs. Wyllys realized also
that Roderick, the cabin boy, was in
reality a woman. But this mystery was
nothing when compared with that of
Harry Wilder.
Dick Fid told the story of Harry Wil-
der's past history to the two ladies and
the Red Rover, thus explaining the
affection Wilder, Dick, and Scipio held for
each other. Some twenty-four years
earlier, Dick and Scipio had found a child
and a dying woman, apparently a nurse,
aboard an abandoned ship. After the
woman died, the two seamen took care
of the boy. They had only one clue to
follow in their efforts to locate the child's
relatives. This was the name Ark of
Lynnhaven which had been painted on a
ship's bucket and which Scipio had
tattooed on Dick's arm. But there was no
ship of that name in any port registry,
and so the search for the child's relatives
was abandoned.
As Dick finished his story, another ship
was sighted. It was the Dart, a British
naval vessel on which Wilder, Dick, and
Scipio had previously sailed. Wilder
wanted the Red Rover to flee, but the
captain had another plan for dealing with
the Dart. After showing British colors,
the Red Rover was invited by Captain
Bignall of the Dart to come aboard his
ship. There the pirate captain learned
that Henry Ark, alias Harry Wilder, was
absent from the Dart on a dangerous
secret mission. The Red Rover realized
that he had betrayed himself to his
enemy. He went back to the Dolphin and
then sent Wilder, Dick, Scipio, and the
two women to the Dart
Wilder had informed the Red Rover
that once aboard his own ship, the Dart,
he would be duty bound to reveal the
true nature of the Dolphin. But in
telling Captain Bignall his story, Wilder
begged for mercy for both the master and
the crew of the pirate ship. Bignall agreed
and sent Wilder back to the Dolphin
with lenient terms of surrender. The
Red Rover refused them and told Wilder
that if there were to be a fight Captain
Bignall would have to start it. As the
Dart attacked the pirate ship, a sudden
storm gave the Dolphin an unexpected
advantage. Its crew boarded the Dart,
killed Captain Bignall, and captured the
ship. The crew of the Dolphin demanded
the lives of Wilder, Dick, and Scipio as
traitors, and the Red Rover handed them
over to the crew. When the chaplain
who was aboard the Dart came forward
to plead for their lives, he saw the tattoo
on Dick's arm. He told the story of the
Ark of Lynnhaven and revealed that
Harry Wilder must be the son of Paul de
Lacy and Mrs. Wyllys, who had kept the
marriage a secret because of parental
disapproval and later because of Paul's death.
Mrs. Wyllys then begged for the life of
her son, whom she had thought dead «n
these years. The Red Rover dismissed his
crew until the next morning, when he
would announce his decision concerning
the fate of the prisoners.
The next morning, the Red Rover put
his crew and all the gold aboard the
Dolphin into a coaster and sent them ashore.
The crew of the Dart, Wilder, Dick,
Scipio, and the women were put aboard
the Dart and told to sail off. When they
were some distance away, they saw the
Dolphin catch fire and burn. None had
been left aboard her but the Red Rover
and Roderick. Some aboard the Dart
3151

thought they saw a small boat putting
off from the burning ship, but none could
be sure because of the billowing smoke.
Twenty years later, after the colonies
had won their independence from
England, the Red Rover, a veteran of the
Revolutionary War, reappeared in
Newport and made his way to the home of
Captain Henry de Lacy, who had
previously called himself Henry Wilder.
Admitted, he identified himself as the long-
lost brother of Mrs. Wyllys. Shortly
thereafter the Red Rover, pirate and
patriot, died.
3152

REDBURN
Type of work: Novel
Author; Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: New York, the Atlantic Ocean, and England
First published: 1849
Principal characters:
Wellingborough Redburn, a young lad on his first voyage
Captain Riga, master of the Highlander
Harry Bolton, a young English prodigal
Critique:
Redbum, like much of Herman
Melville's work, was based on his own life.
The background of the Redburn family
is very similar to that of the Melville
family after the father's death. The trip
on a merchant vessel is clearly based on
a similar round trip to Liverpool which
Melville himself had made while still in
his teens. The incident of the guidebook,
for instance, and the guidebook itself, are
taken directly from Melville's own
experience. Again, like other of Melville's
books, Redburn is authentic in its
treatment of sailors and sea life. Melville saw
seafaring life through the eyes of a
common sailor who learned his trade the hard
way and wrote his novel from the
seaman's point of view. Also, we find in
Redburn the beginnings of the
philosophical elements that made Moby Dick,
Melville's masterpiece, one of the great
novels of all time.
The Story:
Wellingborough Redburn's father had
died, leaving the mother and children
poorly provided for, even though the
father had been a highly successful
merchant and at one time a wealthy man.
When Redburn was in his middle teens,
he decided to take some of the burden
off his mother by going to sea. Given an
old gun and a hunting jacket by an
older brother, young Redburn left his
home along the Hudson River and went to
New York to seek a berth on a ship.
A college friend of his older brother
aided Redburn in finding a berth on a
ship bound for Liverpool. Unfortunately
the friend had emphasized the fact that
Redburn came from a good family and
had wealthy relatives; consequently,
Captain Riga, master of the Highlander, was
able to hire the young lad for three
dollars a month. Having spent all his
money, and unable to get an advance
on his wages, Redburn had to pawn his
gun for a shirt and cap to wear aboard
ship.
During his first few days out of port
Redburn thought that he had made a
dreadful mistake in going to sea. His
fellow sailors jeered at him as a
greenhorn; he made many silly mistakes; he
became violently seasick; and he
discovered that he did not even have a spoon
with which to take his portion of the food
from the pots and pans in which it was
sent to the forecastle. Most horrifying of
all was the suicide of a sailor who dived
over the side of the ship in a fit of
delirium tremens.
As the thirty-day cruise to Liverpool
from New York wore on, Redburn learned
how to make himself useful and
comfortable aboard the ship. When he went
aloft alone to release the topmost sails,
he earned a little respect from his fellow
seamen, although they never did,
throughout the voyage, let him forget that he was
still a green hand and had signed on
as a "boy." Redburn found the sea
fascinating in many ways; he also found it
terrifying, as when the Highlander passed
a derelict schooner on which three corpses
were still bound to the railing.
For Redburn one of the liveliest
incidents of the voyage was the discovery of
3153

a little stowaway on board the
Highlander, The small boy had been on board
the vessel some months before, when the
father had been a sailor signed on for
a trip from Liverpool to New York. The
father had since died, and the boy had
stowed himself away in an effort to
return to England. Everyone on the ship,
including the usually irascible Captain
Riga, took a liking to the homesick
stowaway and made much of him.
Redburn had little in common with his
fellow crew members, most of whom were
rough fellows many years older than he.
Through them, however, he received an
education quite different from that which
he had learned in school. At first he tried
to talk about church and good books to
them, but he soon discovered that such
conversation only irritated them into more
than their usual profanity and obscenity.
Redburn thought they were not really
very bad men; they had never had the
chance to be good men. Most of all, he
disliked them because they looked upon
anyone who could not follow the
seaman's trade as a fool.
A long, low skyline in the distance
was Redburn's first glimpse of Ireland.
He met his first true European when an
Irish fisherman hailed the Highlander
and asked for a line. When he had hauled
fifteen or so fathoms of the line into his
boat, the Irishman cut the line, laughed,
and sailed away. Even though the rope
was not Redburn's, he, boylike, felt that
the man had played a scurvy trick.
When the Highlander arrived at
Liverpool, Redburn decided that the English
city was not a great deal different from
New York. Sailors and ships, he found,
were the same in one place as in another,
with a few notable exceptions. His trips
into the city, away from the waterfront,
and excursions into the Lancashire
countryside convinced him that he, as an
alien, was not welcome. People distrusted
him because of his ragged clothing, and
he had no money to purchase a new
outfit, even though Captain Riga had
advanced him three dollars, one month's
pay, upon the ship's arrival in port.
Redburn's greatest disappointment
came when he tried to use for his
excursions an old guidebook he had brought
from his father's library. The guidebook,
almost half a century old, was no longer
reliable, for streets and structures it
mentioned were no longer in existence.
Redburn felt that the whole world must
have changed since his father's time; he
saw in the unreliable guidebook a hint
that as the years passed the habits and
ideals of youth had to be charted anew.
Each generation, he learned, had to make
its own guidebook through the world.
While in Liverpool, Redburn met
Harry Bolton, a young Englishman of
good family but a prodigal son. Bolton
said that he had shipped on two voyages
to the East Indies; now he wanted to
emigrate to America. With Redburn's help
Harry Bolton was enrolled as a "boy" on
the Highlander for its return trip to New
York. The two boys, traveling on Bolton's
money, made a quick excursion to London
before the ship sailed, but they were back
in Liverpool within forty-eight hours.
Redburn saw little of England beyond the
port where he had arrived.
On the return trip to America the ship
carried a load of Irish emigrants. Redburn
quickly felt sorry for them but at the
same time superior to the miserable
wretches crowded between decks. The
steerage passengers suffered a great deal
during the voyage. Their quarters were
cramped at best, and during heavy weather
they could not remain on deck. For
cooking they had a stove placed on one of
the hatches, one stove for five hundred
people. Worst of all, an epidemic of fever
broke out, killing many of the emigrants
and one of the sailors.
Bolton had a miserable trip, and
Redburn was sorry for him, too. The English
boy had lied in saying he had been at
sea before. Because he could not bear
to go aloft in the rigging, he, in place
of Redburn, became the butt of all the
jokes and horseplay that the crew devised.
After the ship reached America,
however, the voyage seemed to both Redburn
and Bolton to have been a good one. They

discovered that they really hated to leave
the vessel which had been home to them
for several weeks. But their nostalgia for
the vessel was soon dissipated by Captain
Riga. The captain dismissed Redburn
without any pay because the lad had left
his duties for one day while the ship
was at Liverpool. The captain even told
Redburn that he owed the ship money
for tools he had dropped into the sea.
Bolton was given a dollar and a half for
his work; the pittance made him so angry
he threw it back on the captain's desk.
The two boys then left the ship, glad
to be back on land once more.
3155

THE REDSKINS
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1842
Locale: Upstate New York
First published: 1846
Principal characters:
Hugh Roger Littlepage, the narrator and the heir to Ravensnest
Hugh Roger Littlepage, called Uncle Ro, his uncle
Mary Warren, a friend of the Littlepage family
The Reverend Mr. Warren, her father
Seneca Newcome, an anti-renter
Opportunity Newcome, his sister
Mrs. Ursula Littlepage, Hugh's grandmother
Patt Littlepage, Hugh's sister
Joshua Brigham. another anti-renter
Susquesus, an old Onondaga Indian living at Ravensnest
Jaap (Jaaf), an old colored servant at Ravensnest
Hall, a mechanic
Critique:
The Redskins, or, Indian and Injin, is
the final novel in Cooper's Littlepage
series. Like many of Cooper's novels, this
work deals with the conflict between a
cultured upper class of high principles
and an uncultured middle class with no
principles except those of self-interest.
Cooper's characters are drawn in
keeping with their sympathies, according to
whether they sympathize with the rights
of the land-owning Littlepage family or
with the grasping Newcome family.
Cooper stacks the cards in favor of the
landowners and makes the conflict one
between the patroons and the poltroons.
He tends to caricature his villains and
to treat them with satire and irony. In
spite of the rather restricted interest of
the anti-rent controversy around which
The Redskins centers, the novel has
suspense, action, romance, villainy, conflict,
and some sharp, if limited, insights into
the structure of American society. Cooper
saw clearly the perpetual struggle for
power within America, and he described
it with compelling logic.
The Story:
Hugh Littlepage and his Uncle Ro,
the owner of Satans'oe and Lilacsbush,
had been traveling through Europe and
the East for five years, and they had not
heard from their family in America for
eighteen months. Upon arriving at their
apartment in Paris they received a
bundle of letters and packages from the
family. Among other things the letters told
them that the Littlepages' Ravensnest
estate was in danger from tenants who
had formed a terrorist party known as the
"Injins." Since Hugh was now master
of the estate and the rents were due in
the fall, he and his uncle decided to
return home early, even though they
were not expected before autumn. They
decided to travel under the name of
Davidson in order to keep their return
a secret.
Arriving in New York, they went to
see the Littlepage agent, Jack Dunning,
who informed them that the estate was
threatened from two sides. On the one
hand, there were the Ravensnest tenants
led by the demagogue lawyer named
Seneca Newcome; on the other there
were the Albany politicians, who
depended on the tenants for votes. The
politicians had already raised the taxes on
the estate, and the tenants were
petitioning for a removal of the rents and a chance
to buy the property at their own low
prices. To speed up the process the ten-
3156

ants had resorted to terrorizing the
landlords with tar buckets, rifles, and calico
hoods. To mask their greed for land, they
claimed that their activities were carried
on in the name of liberty, equality, and
justice.
Because it would be dangerous to visit
Ravensnest openlv Hugh and his uncle
disused themselves as a watch peddler
and an organ grinder, acquired a broken
German accent, and smarted for
Ravensnest. On the boat to Albany they met
Seneca Newcome, who, thinking that they
might make good Injins. invited them to
Ravensnest. They got off at Albany and
went from there to Troy. In that city
they made the acquaintance of the Rev.
Mr. Warren and his daughter Marv. In
his new role as an organ grinder Hugh
invented a false history for himself and
his uncle, a story accepted by the
Warrens. Hugh soon learned that the
Warrens lived at Ravensnest, where Mr.
Warren was an Episcopal clergyman,
and that Mary was a close friend of
Hugh's sister Patt. Mary proved to be a
charming, well-bred girl in striking
contrast to Opportunity Newcome, who was
also present at the inn. After Seneca
Newcome joined the group the
conversation turned from Opportunity's
pretentious learning to anti-rentism. Mary and
her father argued gracefully and well in
marked contrast to Seneca's and
Opportunity's ill-constructed logic.
After a journey by train and carriages
Hugh and his uncle arrived in
Ravensnest. Still in their new roles as a
peddler and an organ grinder, they traveled
about the area to see for themselves how
matters stood. At the tavern where they
stopped overnight, they heard two men
arguing over anti-rentism. While a
lawyer took a mild stand against it, Hall, a
mechanic, stood firmly against it and
the greed behind it.
After a day's walk the travelers arrived
at Ravensnest manor. They decided,
however, to retain their disguises and
visit the two old men on the place, the
Indian, Susquesus, and the colored
servant, Jaap. While they were at the hut
of these faithful old retainers, Hugh's
grandmother,.Mrs. Ursula Littlepage, his
sister Patt, Mary Warren, and his uncle's
two wards, Henrietta Coldbrook and
Anne Marston, rode up. None penetrated
the disguises. After the others had gone
Susquesus revealed that he knew who
Hugh and his uncle were, but he
promised secrecy.
The two also visited the Miller farm
where they learned that Tom Miller was
hostile to anti-rentism and that a
farmhand of his strongly favored it. The
farmhand, Joshua Brigham, was
extremely greedy, Miller pointed out. While they
were at the Miller farm, the five women
again rode up, and Uncle Ro showed
them some watches. Mrs. Littlepage, who
wished to buy a very expensive watch
for Mary, told them that they could
receive payment for the watch at the
manor.
That evening, still dressed as peddlers,
they went to the Littlepage home. Hugh,
asked to play his flute, performed very
well, but when the flute was passed
around his grandmother recognized it.
When she drew her grandson aside he
confessed to the deception. Soon he and
his uncle were reunited witn Mrs.
Littlepage and Patt, who also promised
secrecy. Later that evening Hugh slept in
the Miller house next to Joshua Brigham.
Drawn into a discussion on anti-rentism,
the farmhand, thinking Hugh shared his
sentiments, told of his plans for robbing
the Littlepages of their land. He also
revealed that the Injins were to hold a
meeting the next day.
On the following day Hugh and his
uncle, riding in a wagon to the meeting
at the town of Ravensnest, were stopped
on the way by a gang of hooded Injins
who wanted to know their business.
Interrupted by the appearance of Mr.
Warren and Mary, the hoodlums disappeared
into the bushes. The Littlepages, trying
to pacify the hiding Injins by expressing
mild anti-rentist sentiments, provoked
Mr. Warren to argue with them,
whereupon the Injins came out of hiding. The
Injins then drove Uncle Ro and Mr.
3157

Warren to the meeting, leaving Hugh to
drive Mary. On the way he disclosed to
her his true identity and motives.
At the meeting house the imported
lecturer began to rant about liberty,
equality, and justice, accused the Littlepage
family of standing for slavery,
aristocracy, and injustice, and declared that
they were no better than other folks.
When he had finished, Hall, the
mechanic, got up to speak. He said that
the true aristocrats of America were
demagogues and newspaper editors, that
the Littlepages had as much right to
their ways as he did to his, and that if
the Littlepage property should be
divided, that of the tenants should be too.
His speech was interrupted by several
Injins who came whooping into the
meeting house. Most of the people fled, but
Mary, Hall, and the Littlepages
remained, comporting themselves with
dignity.
The In j ins ran wild stealing calico
and wagons from their own sympathizers.
After seeing the Warrens off, Hugh and
his uncle got into their wagon and rode
toward the manor. They could see a party
of armed men following them. On the
way they met some anti-renters who had
been deprived of their wagon. They
walked alongside, still talking about the
virtues of anti-rentism. Suddenly a group
of real Indians appeared in the road.
Surprised, Uncle Ro forgot his German
accent, and the anti-renters, realizing who
their companions were, ran into the
bushes. The Littlepages learned that the
Indians had come from Washineton and
were seeking Susquesus, the old
Onondaga who lived at Ravensnest manor.
When the terrorist In j ins appeared, the
real Indians let out a war whoop and the
In j ins ran. Two, Joshua Brigham and
Seneca Newcome, were captured but
were soon released. The Littlepages
invited the Indians to stay in an old
farmhouse at the manor. When Hugh and
his uncle arrived home, everyone knew
who they really were, and there was great
rejoicing.
That night the Indians held a confer*
ence on the lawn in which Susquesus
was the center of attention. The Indians
spoke about the old days, the coming
of the white man, and the different types
of men with force, eloquence, and
reserve. Hugh felt that they were as much
gentlemen in their own way as he and
Uncle Ro were in theirs.
Later that night Hugh, looking from
his bedroom window, saw Opportunity
Newcome riding toward the house. The
ostensible purpose of her visit was to tell
him that the Injins were trying to get a
legal charge against him and that they
were planning arson. He immediately
warned Mary to keep an eye out for
trouble and then went to tell the Indians to
do the same.
A short time later Mary signaled to
him as he was patrolling the grounds.
She said that two Injins were setting
fire to the kitchen. Hugh rushed to the
kitchen window and fired a shot into the
air as the men came out. He clubbed one
over the head and fell grappling with the
other. Hugh might have been
overpowered if Mary had not come to his aid. At
that moment the Indians, attracted by
the shot, arrived on the scene. The
prisoners turned out to be Joshua Brigham
and Seneca Newcome. A short time later
a few Injins set fire to a load of hay and
then ran off, the Indians close at their
heels.
Sunday morning was peaceful. The
Littlepages went to church and sat in
the canopied pew that the tenants
resented. After church, following a brief
meeting down the road, three anti-renters
presented Hugh with a petition to
remove the canopy; he refused. On the way
home Opportunity coyly asked Hugh to
release her brother, but he was
noncommittal. After leaving her he learned that
the canopy had been torn down and
placed over the Miller pigpen. On
arriving home he was told that Seneca had
tried to escape arson charges by
proposing to each of the four young women at
the manor.
Later that day a final ceremony was
held in honor of Susquesus. The peace
3158

pipe was passed around, and Jaap, the
colored companion of Susquesus, was
invited to make a speech. He was
interrupted, however, by the appearance of a
large group of Injins. While the Little-
pages waited to see what was intended,
Opportunity rode up, drew Hugh into
the house, and told him that these Injins
were not afraid of Indians. She said that
Hugh was standing over an earthquake
if he did not release her brother. Hugh
was called outside again when it was
discovered that the Injins had surrounded
the Warrens. Mr. Warren and Mary
maintained their composure, however,
and managed to go free. The Injins were
duly warned about the ferocity of the
Indians, and the ceremony was
continued. The Indians told how the white
men broke their laws for selfish reasons
and hid their shame under calico hoods,
while the red men upheld their laws even
at great personal sacrifice. The Injins
were humiliated by this speech. While
they were listening, Jack Dunning, the
business agent, arrived with the sheriff
and a posse to drive off the Injins. But
by this time the Injins had lost public
support and were thoroughly disgraced.
Taking advantage of the confusion,
Opportunity released her brother and Joshua
Brigham, and the two were never seen
in that part of the country again. The
Supreme Court upheld the rights of the
landlords and the anti-rent wars ended.
Uncle Ro gave a good portion of his
estate to Mary when she and Hugh
were married. Hugh heard that
Opportunity Newcome intended to sue him
for breach of promise, but nothing ever
came of that threat.
3159

THE RELAPSE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: England
First presented: 1696
Principal characters:
Sir Novelty Fashion, Lord Foppington, a London fop
Young Fashion, his brother
Loveless, a gendeman
Amanda, his wife
Worthy, a gentleman of the town
Sm Tunbelly Clumsey, a country squire
Miss Hoyden, Sir Tunbelly's daughter
Coupler, a matchmaker
Berinthia, a comely widow
Critique:
The Relapse, Or, Virtue in Danger
was written as a sequel to Colley Cibber's
Love's Last Shift because in Vanbrugh's
opinion the latter play did not present
an accurate picture of human nature.
Lord Foppington is Cibber's Sir Novelty
Fashion elevated to the peerage. The
Relapse was a huge success, and for more
than fifty years it held the London stage,
sometimes running in more than one
theater at a time. Historically, the play
is important because it helped to break
up the formulas followed in the artificial
comedy of manners. Vanbrugh has been
accused of irreligion, which is probably
not wholly true, and of licentiousness,
which is probably accurate.
The Story:
In the country Loveless and Amanda
led a quiet life after a stormy period of
marriage troubles. Because Loveless had
to go to London rather frequently and
because she had reason to doubt his
fidelity, Amanda was apprehensive. But
Loveless assured her he was temptation-proof;
going to London provided a test of his
reform.
Young Fashion and his servant Lory
called on Sir Novelty Fashion, the new
Lord Foppington, young Fashion's elder
brother. Lord Foppington had recendy
bought a title. Since he was the eldest
son, he had plenty of money, although
he spent too much as it was. Young
Fashion, on the contrary, was destitute. He
was minded to join the army as a last
resort, but at Lory's suggestion he
resolved to humble himself to ask the new
lord to pay his debts. But Lord
Foppington was Dusy with the tailor and the
shoemaker and hardly spared his brother
a word. Although Lord Foppington was
on the point of going out, he did invite
his brother to stay and have a home
dinner by himself.
Angered by his brother's attitude,
young Fashion determined on revenge.
Coupler, a matchmaker who
providentially came in, had a plan. Coupler had
arranged a marriage between Lord
Foppington and Miss Hoyden, wealthy
daughter of Sir Tunbelly Clumsey. Lord
Foppington was to pay the matchmaker
two thousand pounds, but he was afraid
the new lord would evade the money
agreement. It was decided that young
Fashion was to go to Sir Tunbelly's house
and, pretending to be his brother, marry
Miss Hoyden. Coupler, in turn, was to
receive a fee of five thousand pounds.
Young Fashion agreed to the plan, after
a hard time fighting off Coupler's
amorous advances.
Loveless and Amanda were installed
in their London lodgings and Loveless
had already been to the theater. In a con-
3160

fidential mood he told his wife of seeing
a beautiful woman in the audience, a
woman so handsome he had been
unable to keep his eyes off her. Amanda
was alarmed, but he told her he admired
the woman only in an aesthetic way.
Berinthia, Amanda's widowed friend,
came to call. To Loveless' surprise, she
was the woman he had admired in the
theater. Because he pretended to be
indifferent to Berinthia's charms, Amanda
invited her to stay with them while they
were in London.
Lord Foppington also came to call and
was quite smitten with Amanda's beauty.
Resolving to make a conquest at once,
he drew her aside and declared his love.
Amanda slapped his face. Loveless,
seeing the fracas, wounded Lord
Foppington with his sword. Although the wound
was not serious, the surgeon pretended
that it was, in order to increase his fee.
As Lord Foppington was being carried
out, Worthy entered and was also
attracted by Amanda's charms. After the
men had all left, Berinthia had a long
talk with Amanda about men and love.
Young Fashion determined to make
one more attempt before taking revenge
on his brother. Once again he told Lord
Foppington of his debts and asked for
money to settle them. Lord Foppington
refused haughtily, and in the ensuing
quarrel young Fashion tried to fight a
duel with his brother. Lord Foppington
contemptuously refused to fight and left.
Resolved to do his worst, young Fashion
set out for Coupler's house.
Loveless made love to Berinthia and
finally seized her. He left, however,
when they were interrupted by Worthy's
arrival. Worthy was in love with
Amanda. Because Berinthia had once been
his mistress, he asked her help in his
suit. Berinthia's plan was to let Amanda
become jealous of her erring husband;
in her anger she would be an easier prey.
When Amanda returned, Berinthia told
her that Loveless was pursuing a strange
woman.
Armed with a letter from Coupler,
young Fashion called at Sir Tunbelly's
house. When he knocked, Sir Tunbelly
quickly locked Miss Hoyden in her room
with her old nurse and sent armed
peasants to the gate. Young Fashion was
cordially received, however, when he
explained that he was Lord Foppington.
Miss Hoyden, ripely nubile, was all
atwitter.
Although the nurse was supposed to
be a chaperone, she was an indulgent
one, and she allowed young Fashion to
talk privately with Miss Hoyden. Sir
Tunbelly wanted to defer the wedding
for a while to allow time to invite the
guests, but young Fashion did not dare
wait so long. For a small bribe, since
Miss Hoyden was more than willing,
the nurse made arrangements for Bull, the
chaplain, to marry them secretly in the
morning. And, since they were to be
married so soon, she saw no harm in their
staying together that night. The
following morning the complaisant Bull pec1-
formed the ceremony.
When Berinthia and Amanda again
discussed the subject of love, Berinthia
skillfully played on Amanda's doubts of
Loveless' fidelity. According to plan,
Worthy then arrived to say that
Loveless would be out until very late, and
that while waiting for Loveless he would
play cards with the ladies. Artful
Berinthia withdrew to her chamber and left
Worthy and Amanda alone. In her
bedroom, meanwhile, Berinthia received the
erring Loveless. Putting out the candles,
he seized Berinthia and dragged her into
the closet. She shouted for help, but she
was careful to scream very softly.
Lord Foppington arrived at Sir Tun-
belly's house to claim his bride. Taken
for an impostor, he was set upon and
bound, and young Fashion declared he
had never seen the man before. A
neighbor identified Foppington, however, and
young Fashion fled precipitately. Miss
Hoyden decided to keep still about her
marriage to young Fashion and to marry
again, this time the real Lord Foppington.
3161

Back in London, Coupler showed
young Fashion a letter. Lord
Foppington had married Miss Hoyden but would
wait until they returned to Lord Fop-
pington's own bed to consummate the
marriage. Young Fashion had to wait
until the couple came to town to regain
his Miss Hoyden. Fortunately, the
parson of Fat-goose Living had just died
and young Fashion had the disposition
of the post. By promising the living to
Bull, yOung Fashion persuaded him that
he should tell the truth about the secret
marriage.
Meanwhile Berinthia, trying to arouse
Amanda's jealousy to the point where
she would accept Worthy as a lover,
arranged to have Amanda present at a
masquerade. Loveless was there in the
company of Berinthia, who was masked.
Convinced that her husband had a
mistress, Amanda received Worthy in her
home, but in spite of his best efforts she
retained her virtue.
Lord Foppington invited the whole
company to come and honor his new
bride. Young Fashion appeared also and
declared that Miss Hoyden was married
to him. Sir Tunbelly was thunderstruck
and Lord Foppington was contemptuous
of his younger brother's story. True to
their agreement, the nurse and Bull
backed him up. When it was learned
that young Fashion was Lord Fopping-
ton's brother, Sir Tunbelly withdrew his
opposition and accepted his son-in-law.
Lord Foppington met the new turn of
events as gracefully as he could. Miss
Hoyden, having learned that her first
husband was Lord Foppington's brother,
had no complaint to make, just so long
as she was married to someone.
3162

R. £. LEE
Type of work: Biography
Author: Douglas Southall Freeman (1886-1953)
Time: 1807-1870
Locale: Mostly the Confederate States of America
First published: 1934-1935
Principal personages:
General Robert E. Leb
Mary Custts Lee, his wife
General Winfield Scott, U.S.A.
President Jefferson Davis, C S.A.
Thomas Jonathan ("Stonewall") Jackson,
James Longstreet,
James Ewell Brown Stuart,
Richard Stoddert Ewell,
Ambrose Powell Hill, and
Jubal Anderson Early, Generals of the Confederacy
General Ulysses S. Grant, U.S.A.
By heritage, education, profession, and
talent Douglas Southall Freeman was
ideally fitted to write the definitive
biography of Robert Edward Lee. The son
of a Confederate veteran, a Doctor of
Philosophy in history from Johns
Hopkins University, editor of the Richmond
News Leader, whose "chief avocation"
was "the study of military history" and
whose prose style was fascinating, he
accepted in 1915 a publisher's invitation
to tell the life story of the South's best
beloved hero. It seems that Douglas
Freeman's ambition to compose such a book
was born in 1903, when as a youth of
seventeen in the company of his father
he attended a reunion of Confederate
veterans in Petersburg, Virginia.
Incidentally, the elder Freeman lived to see
his son's work come from the press. At
first the biographer expected to write only
a single volume, but a wealth of
compelling material, much of it scarcely
tapped, expanded his number to four.
Even then he had not exhausted the
accumulations of his research, with the
result that, after completing the work
originally planned, he brought out Lee's
Lieutenants, a three-volume "Study in
Command." As a title for his monumental
production Dr. Freeman chose the
general's autograph: R. E. Lee.
Volume I, containing thirty-six
chapters, covers a period of fifty-five years,
from Lee's birth on January 19, 1807,
to the beginning of the War between the
States in 1861 and the early months of
1862. It takes its reader witn never
flagging interest through the West Point
years, marriage, gradual rise in the
United States Amy, the Mexican War,
the capture of John Brown, "The
Answer He Was Born to Make," and the
early, unsuccessful operations in western
Virginia. Concerning Lee's momentous
decision, which has entailed much
dispute by many persons, the author states:
"The spirit of Virginia had been alive in
his heart every hour of his life. . . . He
was a United States officer who loved the
army and had pride in the Union, but
something very deep in his heart kept
him mindful that he had been a
Virginian before he had been a soldier."
Volume II, of thirty-five chapters,
recounting the Seven Days' Battles east of
Richmond against McClellan, Second
Manassas against Pope, the Sharpsburg
Campaign in Maryland with McClellan
again the adversary, and the Battle of
R. E. LEE by Douglas Southall Freeman. Excerpts from the Foreword and from Volume T by permission
of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1934, 1935, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
3163

Fredericksburg against Burnside, all in
1862, concludes with the victory over
Hooker at Chancellorsville and the death
of Stonewall Jackson in May, 1863.
Through these pages painstaking,
absorbing military analysis continues.
Volume III, twenty-nine chapters in
length, proceeds from the beginning of
the Gettysburg Campaign through that
fateful conflict with the full power of
Dr. Freeman's critical study. Then comes
the "hammer and rapier" matching of
Grant against Lee in 1864, with such
battles as the Wilderness, Spotsvlvania
Courthouse, and Cold Harbor, the
historian's expositions being precise but
never tiresome. Grant crosses the James,
and the long, encircling blue lines outside
Petersburg are held in check by Lee's
thin gray battalions for nearly ten months,
with the unique Battle of the Crater
furnishing a new, strange story for the
history of war. The reader lives with
freezing, starving Southern veterans to the
end of the winter of 1864-1865.
The first eleven chapters of Volume
IV relate the close of the war in Virginia
with the surrender at Appomattox
Courthouse. The next sixteen chapters picture
General Lee—body, mind, and soul—as
he turns to civilian pursuits and works
sincerely and consistently for peace and
reconciliation. He maintains his dignity
and grandeur as college president at
Lexington, until his death on October 12,
1870. The final chapter, "The Pattern of
a Life," is Freeman's masterpiece.
Epitomizing Lee's career and character, it can
be designated properly by one term only:
a classic.
R. E. Lee was a labor of love. For
nineteen years, from its inception in 1915 to
its publication in 1934-1935, the author,
discarding apocryphal and legendary tales,
scrupulously winnowed and used
documented facts. Averring that he was "fully
repaid by being privileged to live, as it
were, for more than a decade in the
company of a great gentleman," Dr. Freeman
adds in his foreword: "There were no
'secrets' and no scandals to be exposed
or explained. . . . Neither was there
any occasion to attempt an
'interpretation' of a man who was his own clear
interpreter." The reader enjoys the
biography as he shares the author's uplift
of spirit.
Though detailed, the narrative is never
boring. Minor, no less than major,
incidents are recorded delightfully; for
instance, Lieutenant Lee's riding double on
horseback with a brother officer along
Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington;
kissing a little boy whom he mistook for
his own son; picking up under shellfire
a small sparrow and putting it back in a
tree from which it had fallen; smiling
upon hearing a colored attendant explain
that he had not been shot because he
stayed back where the generals stayed.
Dr. Freeman would have transcended
human ability if he had never erred in
his minutiae. Few and inconsequential,
however, are such slips as entitling the
Right Reverend John Johns "Bishop of
Virginia" in 1853, whereas at that time
he was Assistant Bishop, and calling
Colonel David A. Weisiger "Daniel"
Weisiger. Generally Freeman's accuracy
of research and transcription equals his
natural stylistic charm. Moreover, R. E.
Lee retains freshness and vigor
throughout its length. Nor have verbal
mannerisms become so patent in it as the author's
often repeated "doubtless" in his later
George Washington.
Promptly upon the appearance of the
first two volumes, R. E. Lee was awarded
a Pulitzer Prize, and, in the years which
have followed, neither the scholar nor the
mere average reader has been prone to
dispute the judges' logic. Definitely this
life of an unspotted American hero is
the magnum ofus of an unexcelled
American biographer.
3164

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
Type of work: Novel
Author: Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries
Locale: France
First published: 1913-1927
Principal characters:
Marcel, the narrator
Marcel's Grandmother, a kind and wise old woman
M. Swann, a wealthy broker and esthete
Mme. Swann, formerly a cocotte, Odette de Cr£cy
Gilberts, their daughter, later Mme. de Saint-Loup
Mme. de Villeparisis, a friend of Marcel's grandmother
Robert de Saint-Loup, her nephew, MarceFs friend
Baron de Charlus, another nephew, a Gomorrite
Mme. Vedurin, a vulgar social climber
The Prince and Princess de Guermantes, and
The Duke and Duchess de Guermantes, members of the old aristocracy
Critique:
Remembrance of Things Past is not a
novel of traditional form. Symphonic in
design, it unfolds without plot or crisis
as the writer reveals in retrospect the
motifs of his experience, holds them for
thematic effect, and drops them, only to
return to them once more in the
processes of recurrence and change. This
varied pattern of experience brings
together a series of involved relationships
through the imagination and observation
of a narrator engaged in tracing with
painstaking detail his perceptions of
people and places as he himself grows
from childhood to disillusioned middle
age. From the waking reverie in which
he recalls the themes and characters of
his novel to that closing paragraph with
its slow, repeated echoes of the word
Time, Proust's novel is great art distilled
from memory itself, the structure
determined entirely by moods and sensations
evoked by the illusion of time passing, or
seeming to pass, recurring, or seeming
to recur. The title shows Proust's
twofold concern as a novelist: time lost and
time recalled. To the discerning reader
it is plain that for Proust the true realities
of human experience were not
contained in a reconstruction of remembered
scenes and events but in the capture of
physical sensations and moods re-created
in memory. The seven novels which
make up Remembrance of Things Past
are Swann's Way, Within a Budding
Grove, The Guermantes Way, Cities of
the Plain, The Captive, The Sweet
Cheat Gone, and The Past Recaptured.
The Story:
All his life Marcel found it difficult
to go to sleep at night. After he had
blown out the light, he would lie quietly
in the darkness and think of the book
he had been reading, of an event in
history, of some memory from the past.
Sometimes he would think of all the
places in which he had slept—as a child
in his great-aunt's house in the
provincial town of Combray, in Balbec on
a holiday with his grandmother, in the
military town where his friend, Robert
de Saint-Loup, had been stationed, in
Paris, in Venice during a visit there with
his mother.
He remembered always a night at
Combray when he was a child. M.
Swann, a family friend, had come to
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST by Marcel Promt. Translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and
Frederick A. Blocaom. By permission of Brandt & Brandt and the publishers. Random House, Inc. Copyright,
1924, 1925, by Thomas Seltzer, 1927, 1929, 1930, 1932, by Random House, Inc., 1934, by The Modern
Library, Inc.
3165

dinner. Marcel had been sent to bed
early, where he lay for hours nervous
and unhappy until at last he heard M.
Swann leave. Then his mother had
come upstairs to comfort him.
For a long time the memory of that
night was his chief recollection of Com-
bray, where his family took him to spend
a part of every summer with his
grandparents and aunts. Years later, while
drinking tea with his mother, the taste
of a small sweet cake suddenly brought
back all the impressions of his old days
at Combray.
He remembered the two roads. One
was Swann's way, a path that ran
beside M. Swann's park where the lilacs
and hawthorns bloomed. The other was
the Guermantes way, along the river and
past the chateau of the Duke and
Duchess de Guermantes, the great family
of Combray. He remembered the people
he saw on his walks. There were familiar
figures like the doctor and the priest.
There was M. Vinteuil, an old
composer who died broken-hearted and
shamed because of his daughter's
friendship with a woman of bad reputation.
There were the neighbors and friends
of his grandparents. But best of all he
remembered M. Swann, whose story he
pieced together slowly from family
conversations and village gossip.
M. Swann was a wealthy Jew accepted
in rich and fashionable society. His wife
was not received, however, for she was
his former mistress, Odette de Cr£cy, a
cocotte with the fair, haunting beauty
of a Botticelli painting. It was Odette
who had first introduced Swann to the
Vedurins, a vulgar family that pretended
to despise the polite world of the
Guermantes. At an evening party given by
Mme. Vedurin, Swann heard played a
movement of Vinteuil's sonata and
identified his hopeless passion for Odette with
that lovely music. Swann's love was an
unhappy affair. Tortured by jealousy,
aware of the vulgarity and pettiness of
the Vedurins, determined to forget his
unfaithful mistress, he went to Mme.
de Sainte-Euvert's reception. There he
heard Vinteuil's music again. Under its
influence he decided, at whatever price,
to marry Odette.
After their marriage Swann drifted
more and more into the bourgeois circle
of the Vedurins. When he went to see
his old friends in Combray and in the
fashionable Faubourg Saint-Germain, he
went alone. Many people thought him
both ridiculous and tragic.
On his walks Marcel sometimes saw
Mme. Swann and her daughter, Gilberte,
in the park at Combray. Later, in Paris,
he met the little girl and became her
playmate. That friendship, as they grew
older, became an innocent love affair.
Filled also with a schoolboyish passion
for Mme. Swann, Marcel went to
Swann's house as much to be in her
company as in Gilberte's. But after a
time his pampered habits and brooding,
neurasthenic nature began to bore
Gilberte. His pride hurt, he refused to see
her for many years.
Marcel's family began to treat him as
an invalid. With his grandmother, he
went to Balbec, a seaside resort. There
he met Albertine, a girl to whom he was
immediately attracted. He met also
Mme. de Villeparisis, an old friend of
his grandmother and a connection of
the Guermantes family. Mme. de
Villeparisis introduced him to her two
nephews, Robert de Saint-Loup and
Baron de Charlus. Saint-Loup and
Marcel became close friends. While visiting
Saint-Loup in a nearby garrison town,
Marcel met his friend's mistress, a young
Jewish actress named Rachel. Marcel
was both fascinated and repelled by
Baron de Charlus; he was not to
understand until later the baron's corrupt and
depraved nature.
Through his friendship with Mme. de
Villeparisis and Saint-Loup, Marcel was
introduced into the smart world of the
Guermantes when he returned to Paris.
One day, while he was walking with
his grandmother, she suffered a stroke.
The illness and death of that good and
unselfish old woman made him realize
for the first time the empty worldliness
3166

of his smart and wealthy friends. For
comfort he turned to Albertine, who
came to stay with him in Paris while his
family was away. But his desire to be
humored and indulged in all his whims,
his suspicions of Albertine, and his petty
jealousy, finally forced her to leave him
and go back to Balbec. With her, he
had been unhappy; without her, he was
wretched. Then he learned that she had
been accidentally killed in a fall from
her horse. Later he received a letter,
written before her death, in which she
promised to return to him.
More miserable than ever, Marcel
tried to find diversion among his old
friends. They were changing with the
times. Swann was ill and soon to die.
Gilberte had married Robert de Saint-
Loup. Mme. Vedurin, who had inherited
a fortune, now entertained the old
nobility. At one of her parties Marcel
heard a Vinteuil composition played by
a musician named Morel, the nephew
of a former servant and now a proteg6
of the notorious Baron de Charlus.
His health breaking down at last,
Marcel spent the war years in a
sanitarium. When he returned to Paris, he
found still greater changes. Robert de
Saint-Loup had been killed in the war.
Rachel, Saint-Loup's mistress, had
become a famous actress. Swann was also
dead, and his widow, remarried, was a
fashionable hostess who received the
Duchess de Guermantes. Prince de
Guermantes, his fortune lost and his
first wife dead, had married Mme.
Vedurin for her money. Baron de Charlus
had grown senile.
Marcel went to one last reception at
the Princess de Guermantes' lavish house.
Meeting there the daughter of Gilberte
de Saint-Loup, he realized how time had
passed, how old he had grown. In the
Guermantes library, he happened to take
down the novel by George Sand which
his mother had read to him that
remembered night in Combray, years
before. Suddenly, in memory, he heard
again the ringing of the bell that
announced M. Swann's departure and knew
that it would echo in his mind forever.
He saw then that everything in his own
futile, wasted life dated from that far
night in his childhood, and in that
moment of self-revelation he saw also
the ravages of time among all the people
he had ever known.
3167

REMEMBRANCE ROCK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Carl Sandburg (1878- )
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1607-1945
Locale: England and America
First published: 1948
Principal characters:
Orville Brand Windom, former Justice of the United States Supreme
Court
Oliver Ball Windrow, a woodcarver and philosopher
Mary Windling, a young Puritan
John Spong, whom she married
Remember Spong, their daughter
Orton Wingate, a sojourner in Plymouth
Peter Ladd, a seaman and gambler
Resolved Wayfare, a follower of Roger Williams
Ordway Winshore, a Philadelphia printer
Robert Winshore, his older son
John Locke Winshore, his younger son
Marintha (Mim) Wilming, a dressmaker's assistant
Oates Elwood, friend of Robert and Locke
Ann, his sister, Locke's wife
Omri Winwold, an ex-gambler
Joel Wimbler, an abolitionist
Rodney Wayman, Mibs' husband, a Confederate officer
Millicent (Mibs), their daughter
Brooksany, his wife
Critique:
Remembrance Rock, a first novel
published when its writer was 70, is a work
almost as sprawling and formless as the
land it celebrates. The pattern is simple:
three stories dealing with the settling of
Plymouth, the American Revolution, and
the Civil War, set between a prologue and
an epilogue which have for background
Washington in the years of World War
II. Imperfect as a novel, the book is
nevertheless a great American document,
presenting in human terms and in the idiom
of Sandburg's "swift and furious people"
the growth of the American dream
through more than three centuries of our
national history. Remembrance Rock has
been called a saga, a chronicle, a sermon, a
collection of Chaucerian tales, a
miscellany on folk themes; and it is all of these.
By means of fable, paean, symbol, and
style that ranges from the grave, proud
language of Bunyan and Defoe to the
downright slangy and boisterous,
Sandburg has projected a poet-historian's
testament of American life. The result is a
narrative as passionate and affirmative as
the tough and mystic eloquence of his
poetry. Unity of theme is provided by
characters recurring in the major episodes
and by the symbolic reappearances of a
bronze plaque bearing an inscription of
Roger Bacon's Four Stumbling Blocks to
Truth: 1) The influence of fragile or
unworthy authority. 2) Custom. 3) The
imperfection of undisciplined senses. 4)
Concealment of ignorance by ostentation
of seeming wisdom.
The Stories:
The rock stood in the cedar-shaded
garden of former Supreme Court Justice
Orville Brand Windom, a giant boulder
REMEMBRANCE ROCK by Carl Sandburg. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt. Brace and Co..
Inc. Copyright, 1948, by Harcourt, Brace and Co.* Inc.
3168

about which he had scattered earth from
Plymouth, Valley Forge, Gettysburg, the
Argonne. The justice was old, with a deep
and brooding concern for the American
land, its history, its people. Some of his
ideas he spoke to the world in a radio
broadcast he made in 1944. Others he
recorded in three chronicles of the living
past that his grandson, Captain Raymond
Windom, veteran of Okinawa, found in a
locked box after the old man's death.
These tales, like the antique bronze plaque
inscribed with Roger Bacon's Four
Stumbling Blocks to Truth, were Justice
Windom's legacy of wisdom and love to
his grandson, his grandson's wife, and
their son, Joseph Stilwell Windom.
I
Red-haired Oliver Ball Windrow, the
woodcarver, had on one side of his face
the look of a poet and dreamer, on the
other a countenance of wrath and storm.
A seeker and questioner, he loved Mary
Windling, a girl only half his age and a
member of the Separatist congregation
that worshipped secretly at Scrooby, and
for her he made a small plaque of bronze,
on which he inscribed Roger Bacon's
Four Stumbling Blocks to Truth, to wear
on a silver cord around her neck.
Mary liked his sudden whims and
strange humors, but in the end she
married a young workman named John Spong.
This happened in 1608, just before the
Scrooby congregation escaped to Holland.
For twelve years Mary Spong and her
husband lived in Leyden. Infrequent news
came from England. Windrow had wed
Matilda Bracken, the devoted mute who
kept his house. Then, in 1620, he and his
two daughters died of smallpox. Mary's
sadness for her old friend was lessened by
promises and fears surrounding plans of
the Puritans to try their fortunes in the
new world.
The Spongs and their daughter
Remember were passengers aboard the Mayflower
when it sailed. Little Remember had only
one memory of Plymouth. One day, while
she was playing on the wharf, some boys
began to torment her. Another boy came
with an ax handle and beat them off. She
forgot to ask his name.
Mary Spong, dying during that first
terrible winter in the wilderness, gave
her daughter the tarnished keepsake
Windrow had made years before.
Remember grew up in Plymouth, a cluster of
houses between forest and sea, and those
gaunt years of hardship and toil helped
to shape her strong body, her resolute will,
her sober decorum that hid deep passions.
Her father grew grim and silent as time
passed. He disliked Orton Wingate, a
sojourner in Plymouth, a man whose face
showed peace and calm on one side,
turmoil on the other. But Wingate was Re-
member's friend and came to sit with her
from time to time. She knew without his
saying that she could have had him for
her husband. Restless, uncertain of her
own mind, she waited.
Sometimes she rebelled against the
harsh Puritan laws, as when she concealed
Hode Latch, a convicted drunkard for
whom constables were searching, and
then she was afraid that she was damned.
Perhaps Peter Ladd sensed that wild streak
in her when he came courting. He was a
young seaman who drifted into Plymouth,
steadied himself for a while, and then fell
once more into dissolute ways. When
Remember refused him, he went away to
make his fortune in the slave trade. Two
years later he was drowned in a wreck
off the Virginia capes.
Roger Williams, free-thinking preacher,
lived in Plymouth for a time. Several years
later he was shaking the colonies with his
liberal beliefs and teachings. A new age
was beginning when Williams, a fugitive,
built his own town beside Narragansett
Bay, but Remember Spong could not
know how far-reaching were to be his
challenges to usages of authority and
custom. She feared him most because he
revealed the rebel in herself. For that reason
she was of two minds about Resolved
Wayfare, a newcomer to the colony in
1638. Wayfare had crossed the ocean
to learn for himself the meaning of
Roger Williams' message. He was also
the boy, grown to manhood, who had
3169

defended Remember on the Plymouth
wharf.
After he saved John Spong's life during
a blizzard, Remember nursed the young
man back to health. During that time
there was a battle of wills between them.
He wanted her to go with him to
Providence, but she, like her father, held that
the teachings of Roger Williams were of
Satan. Although Wingate's wisdom and
the cruel lashing of an unmarried mother
finally convinced her of the folly and
blindness of custom, she could not quite
make up her mind to go with Wayfare on
his journey. Yet she walked with him
some distance into the forest, and before
they parted she gave him the bronze
keepsake she had from her mother. Knowing
that they would meet again, they vowed to
be true as long as grass would grow or
water flow. That was the solemn promise
between them.
II
In March, 1775, Ordway Winshore,
master printer, left Philadelphia to visit
his sons in New York and Boston. Below
rusty hair, his face on one side promised
peace, on the other wrath and doom—a
face half serious, half comic, making him
a man easy to confide in. Among his
fellow travelers were two young British
lieutenants, Francis and George Frame.
During a tavern halt Francis Frame broke his
hand by striking a blacksmith who had
cursed King George. The Philadelphia
printer felt that the war was beginning.
Winshore spent two days in New York
with Locke, his younger son, a typesetter
for Henry Tozzer, printer of
Independence leaflets. Locke reported that his
brother Robert was deep in the activities of
Massachusetts patriots. He also hinted at
Robert's romance with a dressmaker's
assistant.
Another passenger in the coach to
Boston was Marintha Wilming, to whom
George Frame paid marked attention.
Winshore liked her, not knowing,
however, that she was the girl his older son
loved.
Not far from Boston, Robert Winshore
helped some Sons of Liberty to tar and
feather Hobart Reggs, a prosperous Tory
who had informed on a British deserter.
Sapphira, Rcggs' daughter, accidentally
saw his face during the tarring.
Boston, Winshore found, was a
seething, sullen city filled with British troops,
Tories, Rebels, and neutrals. At the dress
shop where Marintha Wilming worked-
there was much talk of Ann Elwood, an
innocent young girl who had been tricked
into a false marriage by a Grenadier
sergeant. Winshore met Marintha—Mim—
again in Robert's company and visited the
house where she lived with her aunt. He
also encountered Isaiah Thomas, printer of
the Massachusetts Syy and Robert's
employer, and in Henry Knox's bookstore he
met Mary Burton, whom he, a widower,
was to marry a short time later. One day,
at the dress shop, Sapphira Reggs
recognized Robert. When Lieutenant George
Frame attempted to arrest him at the home
of Mim's aunt, Robert escaped. Fleeing,
he lost the old bronze plaque which had
come to him from a great-granduncle and
which he wore on a chain under his shirt.
Robert was with the Minute Men when
the British marched on Lexington. Darius,
Mim's brother, was killed in the fighting,
and Lieutenant George Frame was
crippled for life. Robert ventured into Boston
to tell Mim of her brother's death, but the
girl, distracted by his news and George
Frame's injuries1, declared that she wanted
to forget him and his rebel violence.
Locke became a military courier. In
Philadelphia, Winshore and his new wife
read Paine's Common Sense. Robert and
Oates Elwood, Ann's brother, marched
with Benedict Arnold toward Quebec
until they became ill with fever and were
forced to turn back. The British evacuated
Boston. Robert was invalided home.
Locke and Elwood, carrying messages from
General Greene to General Washington,
spent a night with the Winshores in
Philadelphia. Robert was there, a
messenger at the Continental Congress. There
was no time for Locke to tell his family
that he had secretly married Ann Elwooa.
The next night, while riding to New
3170

York, Locke was shot by British scouts.
Mim Wilming, working in a Philadelphia
dress shop, delivered the shroud for his
burial. Meeting Robert for the first time
since the fighting at Lexington, she told
him that she believed at last in the
patriots, cause.
The years moved ahead with dates and
names—July 4, 1776, and the Unanimous
Declaration, Christmas night and
Trenton, Valley Forge. Near Morristown, Ann
Winshore gave birth to a son named after
his dead father. Mim, nursing the sick and
wounded at Bethlehem, became ill with
putrid fever. Ordway Winshore drove
through the British lines in Quaker
clothes to take her back to his house and
nurse her there. When word came that
Robert had died at Valley Forge, she
showed his father the plaque she had
found after Robert's flight from arrest.
Winshore told her it was hers to keep.
Summer came, and with it the British
left Philadelphia. The Winshores hung
out the flag which had been hidden under
Mim's mattress during her illness. One
day Oates El wood arrived with his sister
and her baby. Mim told Winshore that
his grandson, born in 1777, the Year of
the Three Gallows, would see many
dawns. He was the future.
Ill
Omri Winwold had been many things
—tavern chore boy, mill worker, lawyer's
clerk, gambler. He was a man of easy
manners but deep reserves, his brick-dust
beard covering a face peacefully calm on
one side, seamed with turmoil on the
other. The person who understood him
best was a distant cousin, Brooksany
Wimbler, whose husband Joel was an
abolitionist harness-maker in Arpa, New
York.
For years Omri had dreamed of a farm
in Illinois, and in 1836 he headed west
by wagon with his wife Bee and their
infant son, Andrew Marvel. Near Arpa,
where he stopped to say goodbye to the
Wimblers, he deserted his sluttish wife,
taking the child with him, after she had
behaved shamelessly with a bachelor
mover. The Wimblers knew nothing of his
plans, but they believed that he had
continued his journey west.
All America seemed moving westward
by highway and canal. Millicent Wimbler
was a baby in arms when her parents went
with a large party of neighbors to found
the antislavery community of New Era,
Illinois. Her childish nickname, Mibs,
stuck, even after she grew into a beautiful
young woman with a will of her own.
She had two admirers. One was Hornsby
Meadows, instructor at New Era College
and a crusading abolitionist. The other was
Danny Hilton, a farmer and contractor.
She went to church and to antislavery
lectures with Hornsby, to dances and the
Lincoln-Douglas debate in nearby Gales-
burg with Danny, but she would have
neither. Hornsby finally married Fidelia
Englehart, a village teacher. Danny went
to Chicago. Then, in 1859, Rodney Way-
man and his friend Nack Doss rode into
New Era. Wayman was a cattle buyer
from Atlas, Illinois. A Southerner, he had
been a banjo player in a traveling minstrel
show, a miner in California. Mibs
married him without her parents' consent two
weeks later.
In Pike County, meanwhile, Omri
Winwold had prospered. Taking a
gambler's chance on a charge of bigamy, he
had married Sarah Prindle, a neighbor's
daughter. After her death he married her
sister, Anne Moore, a widow. By 1857 his
roomy farmhouse held eight children,
from Andrew Marvel, who was twenty-
two, to Robert, who was seven—a good
muster, Omri felt, after his unsettled early
years. In 1852, during a business trip to
St. Louis, he ran into Bee again and also
met her husband, Henry Flack. The
husband never knew the truth about Omri
and Bee. After Bee ran away to San
Francisco and Anne Winwold died, Omri
and Flack, both lonely, became close
friends. When Rodney Wayman brought
his bride home to Atlas, and Mibs and
Omri had established their kinship, letters
passed once more between Omri and
3171

Brooksany.
Storm clouds were gathering. John
Brown raided Harper's Ferry. Clayborn
Joel Wayman was born a few months
before Lincoln was elected. Rodney was
buying horses in Texas with Nack Doss when
the war began. Both became captains in
the Confederate Army. Doss was killed in
a raid in Mississippi. Captured at Chicka-
mauga, Rod was sent to the military prison
at Camp Morton. Omri's boys who were
old enough joined up. Rodney Wayman,
Junior, was born that first year of the
war, but his father never had word of
him; he had escaped from Camp Morton
and rejoined the troops. Joel Wimbler,
commissioned in the commissary service,
was furloughed home and lay dying in
New Era. Brooksany died a few days after
her husband. Going through their things,
Mibs found in a trunk an ancient bronze
plaque with Roger Bacon's Four
Stumbling Blocks to Truth inscribed on it in
antique script. She hung the keepsake
around her neck, under her dress.
At Fredericksburg, Rod was again
wounded and taken prisoner. While he
lay in a barn hospital, Colonel Hornsby
Meadows died on the floor next to him.
Rod lived in the filth and stench of
Johnson's Island until Mibs came to get him,
an exchanged prisoner. One night they
went to have supper with Omri, and Rod
lost some of his deep bitterness when he
saw the younger Winwolds maimed and
crippled in the war. Andrew Marvel,
brevetted brigadier general, lacked an arm.
Milton was paralyzed by a bullet in his
spine. Holliday, starved in a prison camp,
was dead.
The fighting ended, but deeper grief
hung over the land when Lincoln's body
was brought back to Springfield for burial.
Mibs felt, however, that their days of storm
and travail were almost over. Across the
wide land the arch of union, strength, and
love still held firm.
Captain Raymond Windom and his wife
knew that they, too, had seen years of
crisis and destiny. To them it seemed only
fitting that other earths, symbols of
hardship and storm and stars coming after the
storm, should be buried at the base of
Remembrance Rock—gravel from Anzio,
sand from Utah Beach in Normandy,
black volcanic ash from Okinawa.
3172

RENEE MAUPERIN
Type of work: Novel
Authors: Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt
Type of plot: Domestic tragedy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1864
Principal characters:
Renee Maupbrtn, a sensitive, talented girl in her late teens
Henri Mauperin, her brother
Madame Davarande, her sister
Monsieur Mauperin, ReneVs father
Madame Mauperin, his wife
Naomi Bourjot, ReneVs friend and fiancee of Henri Mauperin
Madame Bourjot, her mother and lover of Henri Mauperin
Monsieur Denoisel, family friend of the Mauperins
de Villacourt, shabby heir of an old French family
Critique:
For those readers who prefer the
analysis of "a slice of life," this novel is the
Goncourt brothers' best work of fiction.
In it the authors have presented a
detailed and careful study of a middle-
class French family during the middle
of the nineteenth century. The younger
people are products of their parents' later
lives, for we are told that older
generation was one which had originally
believed in the revolutionary movements of
the late eighteenth century but had in
mature years become conservative
owners of property. Perhaps nowhere in
literature has the lingering death of a
victim of any disease been as carefully
delineated as has the death of Ren6e
Mauperin, whose slow and sad departure from
this life consumes at least a fourth of
the chapters of the novel and is, to the
sensitive reader, almost excruciating.
The Story:
Ren6e MauperhVs father had served
under the first Napoleon and had
battled for the liberal forces until he had
become a husband and father, with the
responsibilities that such a position had
forced upon him. After acquiring a
family he had ceased being a scholar and
political figure, in favor of the more
financially reliable career of sugar refiner.
His wife was a very proper woman, one
who wished to see her children married
well and respectably, that she might
enjoy her old age in satisfaction of a job
well done.
The children of the Mauperins, at
least the oldest two, were model children,
so well disciplined and quiet that they
failed to excite the interest of their
father. Ren6e, the third child, born late in
in his life, was MaUperin's favorite. Re-
n6e was a lively youngster from the
beginning, a lover of horses and action,
a vivacious creature who was
demonstrative in her affection, and an artistic but
spirited personality. While these
qualities endeared her to her father, they
made her the bane of her mother's
existence. The oldest daughter had
dutifully married and become the respectable
Madame Davarande, but Ren6e, who
had already dismissed summarily a dozen
suitors of good family and fortune,
showed no inclination to accept any who
came seeking her hand.
Almost as great a worry to Madame
Mauperin was her son, on whom she
doted. Henri Mauperin was a political
economist and a lawyer; he was also a
cold and calculating fellow, though his
mother, in her excessive love for him,
failed to realize just how selfish he was.
She thought that he had never given a
thought to marriage and chided him for
his lack of interest. She felt that at the
age of thirty he should have settled
3173

down.
Not knowing his plans, Madame Mau-
perin arranged to have him often in the
company of Naomi Bourjot. Naomi was
the only daughter of a very rich family
known to the Mauperins for many years.
The only difficulty lay in convincing her
father that Henri, who had no title, was
a suitable match for his daughter. Henri
himself had seen that such was to be the
great difficulty, and he had undertaken
to gain the aid of Madame Bourjot in his
suit. His method of securing her aid was
to become her lover.
Through the medium of an amateur
theatrical, Naomi, Ren6e, and Henri
were placed in one another's company,
although Naomi had to be forced into the
venture by her mother. Madame Bourjot
realized that Henri wanted to marry her
daughter, but she had no idea that he
was in love with the girl. It was only
Henri's portrayal of Naomi's lover on
the stage that revealed the true state of
his affections. Rather than lose him
altogether, Madame Bourjot, as Henri
had anticipated, resolved to help him
win her daughter and the family
fortune, although tearful and bitter scenes
preceded that decision. Through the
efforts of his wife, Naomi's father
reluctantly consented to the marriage if Henri
Mauperin could gain the government's
permission to add "de Villacourt" to his
name.
In the meantime Naomi had
discovered that Henri and her mother had been
lovers. Although she loved Henri, she
was dismayed by what she had learned.
Even so, because of her parents, she had
to go through with the marriage. Naomi's
only consolation was to tell what she
knew to Ren£e, who was horrified to
learn of her brother's actions. When she
confronted him with the story, he made
no attempt to deny the facts; all he did
was tell her curtly and angrily that the
affair was none of her business.
A short time later, when, superficially,
the antagonism between Renee and her
brother had been smoothed over, she
accompanied him to the government
offices where he received permission to
make the addition to his name. While
she was waiting for him, she overheard
two clerks saying that the real de Villa-
court family had not really died out and
that one member, a man, was still alive;
the clerks even mentioned the address.
Her knowledge gave Ren£e an
opportunity for revenge, although she had no
idea what might happen if she put her
plan into action. What she did was to
take a copy of the newspaper announcing
that the title "de Villacourt" was to be
given to Henri Mauperin and send it to
die real de Villacourt, a villainous lout
who immediately planned to kill the
upstart who dared to appropriate his title.
The real de Villacourt journeyed to
Paris and learned that, penniless as he
was, he had no legal means to regain his
title. Then he went to the apartment of
Henri Mauperin and attempted to beat
the young man. Henri, no coward,
immediately challenged the man to a duel.
The arrangements were made by
Monsieur Denoisel, a friend of the Mauperin
family for many years. He also served as
Henri's second in the affair. Henri shot
de Villacourt and thought the duel was
over, but the man was not fatally
wounded. Calling Henri back, he shot and
killed him. To Denoisel was given the
unhappy duty of reporting to all
concerned Henri s untimely death. The one
who seemed to take the news hardest
was Rene*e. No one expected her to
make so much of her brother's death,
since they had never been close.
One day, in a conversation, Denoisel
remarked that someone had sent the
newspaper clipping to de Villacourt.
Rente, fearful that she had been discovered
as the author of her brother's death, had
a heart attack. For many months she lay
ill, apparently with no desire to live.
Even the realization, after many weeks,
that she had not revealed her guilt made
no difference in her recovery. Her father
called in the best specialists he could
find, but they only remarked that some
terrible shock had caused her condition.
When told that she had recently lost a
3174

brother, they said that his death was
probably not the real cause of her illness.
In spite of all efforts on her behalf,
Ren£e Mauperin wasted away and finally
died. Nor was the tragedy of the Mau-
perins yet finished. They lost their third
child, Madame Davarande, a few months
afterward, when she died in childbirth.
Childless and alone, the elder Mauperins
traveled abroad, hoping thereby to ease
their grief and loneliness.
3175

THE REPUBLIC
Type of work: Philosophic dialogue
Author: Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Time: Fifth century B.C.
Locale: The Piraeus, Greece
First transcribed: Fourth century B.C.
Principal personages:
Socrates, the Athenian philosopher
Cephalus, an old man
Polemarchus, his son
Thrasymachus, a Sophist
Glaucon, and
Adeimantus, Plato's brothers
The Republic is Plato's masterpiece,
not only because it presents a fascinating
defense of the author's conception of the
ideal state, but also because it gives us
the most sustained and convincing
portrait of Socrates as a critical and creative
philosopher. Other dialogues, such as the
Phaedo and the Apology, may be superior
as studies of the personality and
character of Socrates, but the Republic is
unexcelled as an exhibition of the famed
Socratic method being brought to bear
on such questions as "What is justice?"
and "What kind of state would be most
just?"
Although the constructive arguments
of this dialogue come from the mouth of
Socrates, it is safe to assume that much
of the philosophy is Platonic in origin.
As a rough reading rule, we may say
that the method is Socratic, but the
content is provided by Plato himself. Among
the ideas which are presented and
defended in the Republic are the Platonic
theory of Ideas—the formal prototypes of
all things, objective or intellectual—the
Platonic conception of the nature and
obligations of the philosopher, and the
Platonic theory and criticism of poetry.
But the central concern of the author is
with the idea of justice in man and the
state. The pursuit of this idea makes the
Republic the longest of the dialogues
with the exception of the Laws.
The dialogue is a discussion between
Socrates and various friends while they
are in the Piraeus for a festival. The
discussion of justice is provoked by a remark
made by an old man, Cephalus, to the
effect that the principal advantage of
being wealthy is that a man near death is
able to repay what he owes to the gods
and men, and is thereby able to be just
in the hope of achieving a happy afterlife.
Socrates objects to this conception of
justice, maintaining that whether a
person should return what he has received
depends on the circumstances. For
example, a man who has received dangerous
weapons from his friends while sane
should not, if he is just, return those
weapons if his friend, while mad,
demands them.
Polemarchus amends the idea and
declares that it is just to help our friends
and return to them what they are due,
provided they are good and worthy of
receiving the good. Enemies, on the other
hand, should have harm done to them
for, as bad, that is what they are due.
Socrates compels Polemarchus to admit
that injuring anyone, even a wicked man,
makes him worse; and since no just man
would ever sanction making men worse,
justice must be something other than
giving good to the good and bad to the bad.
Thrasymachus then proposes the t.he-
ory that justice is whatever is to the
interest of the stronger party. His idea is
that justice is relative to the law, and the
law is made by the stronger party
according to his interests. In rebuttal,
Socrates maneuvers Thrasymachus into
saying that sometimes rulers make mistakes.
3176

If this is so, then sometimes the law is
against their interests; when the law is
against the interests of the stronger party,
it is right to do what is not to the
interest of the stronger party.
The secret of the Socratic method is
evident from analysis of this argument.
The term "interest" or "to the interest
of is ambiguous, sometimes meaning
what a man is interested in, what he
wants, and at other times what he could
want if he were not in error, as when
we say, "But although you want it, it is
not really to your interest to have it."
Socrates adroitly shifts from one sense of
the expression to the other so that Thrasy-
machus apparently contradicts himself. In
this indirect way Socrates makes it clear
both to the "victim" and to the onlookers
that the proponent of the claim—in this
case, Thrasymachus—has not cleared it
of all possibility of misinterpretation.
Socrates then goes on to say that
justice must be relative to the needs of
those who are served, not to the desires
of those who serve them. The physician,
for example, as physician, must make the
health of the patient his primary concern
if he is to be just.
Socrates suggests that their
understanding of justice would be clarified if they
were to consider a concrete case, say the
state: if by discussion they could come
to understand what a state must be in
order to be just, it might be possible to
generalize and to arrive at an idea of
justice itself.
Beginning with an account of what a
state would have to be in order to fulfill
its functions as a state, Socrates then
proceeds to develop the notion of an ideal
state by asking what the relations of the
various groups of citizens to each other
should be.
Every state needs three classes of
citizens: the Guardians, who rule and
advise the rest; the Auxiliaries, who provide
military protection for the state; and the
Workers, the husbandmen and other
providers of food, clothing, and such useful
materials.
In a just state these three classes of
citizens function together, each doing its
own proper business without interfering
with the tasks of the other classes.
Applying this idea to the individual
person, Socrates decides that a just man
is one who gives to each of his functions
its proper task, relating them to each
other in a harmonious way. Just as the
state has three distinct elements, the
governing, the defending, and the producing
bodies, so the individual person has three
corresponding elements, the rational, the
spirited, and the appetitive. By the
spirited element Plato means the passionate
aspect of man's nature, his propensity to
anger or other irrational emotions. He
so uses the term anger that he allows for
what we call righteous indignation, the
passionate defense of reason against
desire. The rational element is the
discerning and calculating side of man's nature,
and it is what enables man to be wise
and judicious. The appetitive side of man
is his inclination to desire some things
in preference to others.
A just man, then, is one who keeps
each of the three elements of his nature
doing its proper work with the rational
element in command. A person is brave,
says Socrates in the dialogue, if his
spirited element remains always in the
service of reason. He is wise if he is governed
by reason, for reason takes into account
the welfare of the entire person; and he
is temperate if his spirit and appetite
work harmoniously under the guidance
of reason.
In order to discover those citizens best
suited to be Guardians, Socrates
proposed that the ideal state educate all its
citizens in music and gymnastics,
continually observing them to decide upon
the sort of occupation for which they
would best be fitted. He also argued that
the Guardians and Auxiliaries should
have no private property, and that they
each should share a community of wives
and children.
These obvious communal features of
the ideal state have led many critics to
dismiss Plato's construction as
unacceptable. But it is well to remember that in
3177

the dialogue Socrates tells his listeners that
he is not concerned about the practicality
of his state; the conception of the state
is constructed merely to bring out the
nature of justice.
In considering the education of the
Guardians, Socrates builds the concept] >n
of the philosopher as the true aristocrat
or rational man, the ideal ruler for the
ideal state. The philosopher is a lover of
wisdom, and he alone manages to keep
appetite and spirit in harmony with
reason. Consequently, the Guardians of the
state should be educated as philosophers,
supplementing their training in
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music
with training in the philosophic skills of
dialectic. But the prospective Guardians
should not be allowed to undertake
philosophic education until they are old enough
to take it seriously, not as mere
amusement. After his philosophic training the
prospective Guardian should take part in
the active life of his times, so that at fifty
he can assume political power with some
knowledge of the actual matters with
which he shall be concerned.
In connection with his discussion of
the philosopher, Socrates introduced his
famous myth of the cave. Men are like
prisoners in a cave that faces away from
the light. Unable to see themselves or
anyone else because they are shackled,
the men observe only the shadows of
things on the wall in front of them, not
realizing that the reality is something
quite different from the shadows. The
philosopher is like a man who leaves the
cave, comes to know things as they really
are, and returns reluctantly to help the
shackled men who think that shadows
make up the true world.
The philosopher comes to know reality
through a study of the Ideas or Forms of
particular things. The world of our
experience is like the world of shadows,
but the world of Ideas is the true reality.
For every class of objects, such as beds
(Socrates' example), there is an Idea-bed,
a form shared by all particular beds. The
man who studies only the individual beds
made by carpenters, or only the pictures
of beds made by artists, knows only
copies of reality (and, in the case of the
imitative artist, only copies of copies);
but the philosopher, making the effort to
learn the Idea itself, comes closer to
reality.
Socrates objects to poetry and to art
whenever they are imitative, which they
usually are. Although he admits that
some poetry can be inspiring in the
patriotic training of the Guardians, he
stresses the point that imitative art is
corrupting because it is misleading Physical
things, after all, are merely copies of the
Forms, the Ideas; hence they are one step
removed from reality. But works of art
are copies of physical things; hence they
are at least two steps removed from
reality. Furthermore, the artist paints only
a single aspect of a thing; hence, strictly
speaking, art is three steps removed from
reality. It is on this account, as well as
because of the immoral effect of the
poetic style of all but the most noble poets,
that Socrates recommends that imitative
poets be banned from the state.
The Republic closes with Socrates'
reaffirmation of his conviction that only the
just man is truly happy, for only he
harmonizes reason, appetite, and spirit by
loving wisdom and the I orm of the Good.
The soul is immortal, he argues, because
the soul's illness is injustice; yet injustice
itself does not destroy a soul. Since the
soul cannot be destroyed by any illness
other than its own, it must be immortal.
Socrates concludes by using a myth about
life after death to show that the just and
wise man will prosper both in this life
and "during the journey of a thousand
years."
3178

RESURRECTION
Type of work: Novel
Author: Count Leo Tolstoy (1S28-1910)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1899
Principal characters:
Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, a gentleman
KaterIna Mikhaelovna Maslova (Katusha J, a prostitute
Valdemar Simonson, and
Vera Doukhova, political prisoners
Critique:
Resurrection (Voskraeseniye*) is
characteristic of one of Russia's foremost
novelists because of its rich visual record of
people and settings, its deftness in
presenting the vices of petty officialdom, the
humor of small people who want to seem
great, and the hollowness of ritualistic
orthodoxy. For Tolstoy, evil begins when
one ceases to listen to his conscience and
becomes self-centered. The public theme
of the novel concerns the shortcomings
of social organizations. The personal
theme, which involves the need for
forgiveness, takes a form characteristic of
Tolstoy: human failure revealed by a sin
committed in semi-ignorance, followed
by a long and soul-strengthening
atonement.
The Story:
Katerina Mdslova, better known as
Katusha, was being led out of prison to
attend her own trial for murder. Born
illegitimate, she had been taken in by
Sophia and Mary Ivdnovna, well-to-do s's-
ters who cared for her and began to
educate her. When she was sixteen Katusha
was seduced by her guardians' nephew,
Prince Dmitri Ivdnovitch Nekhludoff.
When she learned that she was to
become a mother, Katusha went to s*ay
with a village midwife. When her child
was born it was taken to the foundling
hospital, where it soon died. After
various tribulations Katusha became a
prostitute. When she was twenty-s'x she was
accused of complicity in the murder of
a Siberian merchant, the charge on which
she was to be tried.
While Katusha was being led into
court, Nekhludoff, her seducer, lay in
bed considering his position. Although he
had been having an affair with a married
woman, he was almost engaged to marry
Princess Mary Korchigin. He thought
also of how he had given away some of
his lands to the peasants. When
Nekhludoff arose, he was reminded that he had
to serve that day as a juror in the criminal
court.
In court, Nekhludoff was astonished
to see that the defendant was Katusha,
falsely accused of helping to rob and
poison the merchant from Siberia. The trial
was disgusting because of the self-interest
of the officials, who were vain, stupid,
and more concerned with formalities than
with the fair judgment of the accused.
When Nekhludoff was a student at
the university he would spend his
summers with his aunts, and it was there that
he first came to know and to like Katusha.
He gave her books to read and eventually
fell in love with her. When he next
returned, three years later, military life had
made him depraved and selfish, and he
seduced her. The next day he gave her
some money and left for his regiment.
When he returned after the war, he
learned that she had become pregnant
and had gone away. Somewhat relieved,
he had tried to forget her.
Now, at the trial, Nekhludoff saw
Katusha with a mixture of loathing and
3179

pity. At first he was afraid that his
relation to her would be discovered, but
Katusha did not recognize him; then he
began to feel remorse for the life to which
he had driven her. Because of a careless
legalistic oversight by the jury, the
innocent Katusha was sentenced to four years
at hard labor in Siberia. Moved by his
uneasy conscience, Nekhludoff went to a
lawyer to discuss the possibility of an
appeal.
Later, when Nekhludoff was with the
Korchagins, he realized that their life was
empty and degenerate, and he felt the
need to cleanse his soul. He determined
that he would marry Katusha and give
up his land.
When Nekhludoff went to the prison
and revealed himself to Katusha, the girl
treated him coldly. She seemed proud of
her occupation as a prostitute, because
it alone gave some meaning to her
otherwise empty life. The next time he visited
her, she behaved coarsely to him, and
when he said that he wanted to marry
her, she became angry with him and
returned to her cell.
On his next visit to the prison
Nekhludoff was told that Katusha could not be
seen because she had become drunk on
vodka bought with money he had given
her. He then went to see Vera Dou-
khova, a revolutionist acquaintance who
had sent him a note from the prison. He
was surprised at the inordinate pride
V6ra took in the sacrifices she had made
for the revolutionary cause. Vera told
him to get Katusha into the prison
hospital as a nurse, so that conditions would
be better for her. Nekhludoff arranged
to have Katusha transferred.
By this time Nekhludoff was no longer
joyful at the prospect of marrying
Katusha. Still determined to go through
with his plan, however, he started out on
a journey to setde his estates in
anticipation of his departure for Siberia. At
Pan6vo he saw the miserable conditions
of the people. He saw Matrona Khdrina,
Katusha's aunt, and learned about the
death of his child at the foundling
hospital. He gave up his title to the land at
Panovo and arranged for the peasants to
have communal holdings in it, an act
which brought him great joy.
Nekhludoff then went to St.
Petersburg. His chief reason was to appeal
Katusha's case to the Senate and to try to
secure the release of Lydia Shoustova, an
innocent prisoner who was Vera Dou-
khova's friend. In St. Petersburg he
came within the aristocratic circle of his
aunt, Katerina Ivanovna Tcharsky, who
claimed to be interested in evangelism
but who had no pity for the unfortunate
of the world. Nekhludoff went to see
various prominent people on the business
which had taken him to St. Petersburg.
The next day he learned that Lydia
Shoustova had been released.
Katusha's case was put before the
Senate. Because one of the senators styled
himself a Darwinian and thought that
Nekhludoff's morality in the case was
disgusting, the girl's sentence was
upheld. On the same day Nekhludoff met
an old friend, Selenin, now a public
prosecutor, an intelligent, honest man but
one who had been drawn into the tangled
web of "correct" society and its
standards. Nekhludoff began to see the same
principle at work in all official circles:
condemn some who might be innocent
in order to be assured of catching the
truly guilty.
Back in Moscow, Nekhludoff went to
see Katusha to have her sign a petition
to the emperor. During his visit he felt
love taking hold of him once more.
Katusha also loved Nekhludoff, but she felt
that marriage to a woman like herself
would be bad for him.
While Nekhludoff was preparing for
his journey to Siberia with Katusha, he
began to study and to think about the
nature of criminal law. Although he
began to read much on the subject, he
could not find the answer to his desire to
know by what right some people punish
others. He also began to feel that the
only reasonable kinds of punishment
were corporal and capital, which were
unfortunate but at least effective, while
imprisonment was simply unfortunate.
3180

On the long march to Siberia, Nekhlu-
doff followed the prisoners and saw
Katusha whenever possible. He also saw the
horrible conditions of the exiles. Nekhlu-
doff began to have a new love for
Katusha, a feeling composed of tenderness
and pity. He also learned to understand
the point of view of the revolutionists,
since Katusha had been allowed to travel
with the political prisoners. One of these,
Valdemar Simonson, fell in love with
Katusha. He told Nekhludoff that he
wished to marry the girl but that she
wanted Nekhludoff to decide for her.
Nekhludoff said that he would be
pleased to know that Katusha was well
cared for. When she learned of his
answer, Katusha would not speak to
Nekhludoff.
At a remote town in Eastern Siberia,
Nekhludoff collected his mail and learned
that Katusha's sentence to hard labor had
been commuted to exile in a less remote
region of Siberia. When he went to tell
Katusha the news, he realized how much
he wanted to have a family. Katusha
said that she preferred to stay with
Simonson; however, she refused to say that
she loved him. She told Nekhludoff that
he would have to live his own life.
Nekhludoff felt that he was not needed
any longer and that his affair with
Katusha was ended. He saw that evil existed
because those who tried to correct it were
themselves evil, and that society had
persevered, not because of systems of
punishments, but because of human pity and
love. Because he realized that the Sermon
on the Mount could indeed be a practical
law, that night NekhludotFs new life
began.
3181

THE RETURN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1910
Principal characters:
Arthur Lawford, a middle-aged Englishman
Sheila, his wife
Alice, their teen-age daughter
The Reverend Bethany, a rector
Herbert Herbert, a bookish recluse
Grisel Herbert, his sister
Critique:
As a literary apprentice, Walter de
la Mare took himself into a world of
fancy, in an effort to escape the dull
world about him. He became a master in
writing fiction and poetry that carry his
readers into a no-man's land of
knowledge somewhere between the real and the
unreal. He took this area consciously,
believing that it is modern man's one
hope of escaping from excessive realism.
This novel, written early in his career,
is a splendid example of de la Mare's use
of the imaginative experience as a reality
more profound than the ordinary,
unimaginative variety. De la Mare has been
severely criticized for not indulging
himself in a more prevalent temper, that of
literary realism, but his own forte has
been recognized by a sufficient number of
discriminating adult readers and by a
sympathetic government, which gave him
a pension in 1908 because of his
contributions to serious literature.
The Story:
Late one September evening Arthur
Lawford, who was recovering from an
attack of influenza, was walking in an
ancient churchyard. There he found the
grave of a man named Nicholas Saba-
thier, who had killed himself in 1739.
Suddenly tired, Lawford stopped to rest
and fell asleep. When he awoke, he felt
very strange and quite recovered from his
illness. Indeed, he felt so well that he
practically ran home.
Going up to his room to dress for
dinner, Lawford lit a candle and prepared
to shave. He stopped in horror when he
saw that his whole physical being had
changed; he was now lean-faced and
dark, an entirely different person. The
only thing that could have happened,
he thought, was that his nap in the
churchyard had changed him into
someone else, perhaps the occupant of the
grave, Sabathier. Still thankful that he
retained his own mind, Lawford tried
to think what to do. As he stood
undecided, his wife came to call him to
dinner. When she came into the room, she
was horrified and refused at first to
believe the person she saw was her hus
band.
The Lawfords called in the rector, the
Reverend Bethany, who was also
horrified. He was willing to believe, however,
that something had happened to Lawford
and that the person he saw was no
impostor. The three decided to wait until
a week had passed before doing anything
drastic.
Sheila Lawford refused to stay with
her husband at night; he seemed too
much a stranger to her in his new shape.
She tried to get him to remain in his
THE RETURN by Walter de la Mare. By permission of the publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons, and
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1922, by Walter de la Mare. Renewed. All rights reserved.
3182

room, but he found it necessary to go
out in the evening. On one of his
rambles at dusk he met an old woman who
had been a schoolfriend of his mother's.
She failed to recognize him in his new
shape, even though he prompted her by
telling her where she had known his
mother. She did say he looked somewhat
like the late Mrs. Lawford.
On another of his rambles, this time
back to the same churchyard, Lawford
met a strange man named Herbert
Herbert. They talked over the grave of
Nicholas Sabathier, and Lawford hinted at
his own history. Herbert seemed
interested and asked Lawford to come to tea
the following day. When they shook
hands to part, light fell on Lawford's
face for the first time. As it did, Herbert
gave an obvious start.
When Lawford went to tea the next
day, Herbert told him that his was the
face of Nicholas Sabathier, whose picture
was in a book Herbert owned. The book
also contained an autobiography of
Sabathier which revealed him as a man
very fond of women. Tea was served by
Grisel Herbert, the host's sister. Seeing
the look of fear on Lawford's face when
he left, she ran after him with the book
her brother had mentioned. The two
went for a walk, during which Lawford
felt that he wrestled with an alien spirit
and won out over it.
Alice, Arthur's daughter, returned
home from school. When she
accidentally met her father, the shock caused her
to faint. Her mother tried to make her
believe it was someone else, a doctor.
Alice went to her father in secret and
told him that she knew him and hoped
all would turn out well in the end.
Sheila, after several arguments with her
changed husband, finally decided to go
away for a few days, leaving Lawford
alone in the big house to wrestle with
his problem. Although he hoped to throw
off the spirit that had taken possession
of him, he feared that it might conquer
him entirely.
Lonely after his wife had gone,
Lawford turned to the Herberts, of whom
neither the rector nor anyone else had
previously heard. He spent several days
and nights with his new friends. Lawford
felt that he was getting better, that he
was conquering whatever had taken hold
of him. Grisel seemed especially helpful.
One night Lawford went back to the
house alone. There he had fearful dreams
and once again had a spiritual battle with
something he could not name. The
following day he went to see the Herberts,
who took him on a picnic. They walked
many miles until, as they came over a
hill, Lawford saw a village. The village
awakened strange memories in him,
horrible memories. He turned to Grisel and
told her that she knew what memories
they were; she made no denial.
The next day Grisel anH Lawford
went out together for a long walk,
during which they revealed their mutual
feeling that they had come to love each
other, as they felt, in another life. It
seemed as if through them Nicholas
Sabathier and a woman he loved were
talking to one another. At last Grisel told
Lawford that he was pursuing a dream
that could never reach reality. They
returned to the Herberts' house, where
Grisel told her brother, who seemed not
in the least surprised, that Nicholas
Sabathier had come to say goodbye for
a while. They made their farewells.
Lawford, somewhat returning to himself,
remarked that he had never appreciated
hfe before his strange adventure.
Lawford went back to his own house.
It was locked. Going in quietly, he
listened to a conversation between his wife
and some friends she had entrusted with
the secret of his change. The friends, in
spite of what her eyes had seen, and
which one of them had also seen, plus the
picture and account of Sabathier, which
Sheila had found in the house, refused
to believe what had happened. They
advised her to have him placed in an
asylum as mad or else into prison as an
impostor. Lawford, standing in the hall,
overheard the whole conversation. When
3183

they left, he remained, still silent, in
the house.
That evening was the eve of St.
Michael and All Angels, the same night on
which Nicholas Sabathier had killed
himself in 1739. As he sat in the quiet house,
Lawford felt himself returning to his
original condition. Unexpectedly, he was
visited by the old lady whom he had
met on his walk, the woman who
had known his mother at school. She had
come to see him in order to assure
herself that the man she had met was not
Lawford. This evening she immediately
recognized him as her schoolfriend's son,
with almost no resemblance to the
stranger who had accosted her. When she
left, she made some ambiguous remarks
which left Lawford wondering if she
had not, in some fashion, learned more
than she revealed. At any rate, he
decided that he was sufficiently himself
once more to write to his wife and let
her know of the change. He sat down
to write, but because of what he had
overheard earlier in the evening he was
unable to put into words what he
wanted to say. Fatigued, he fell asleep over
the table.
As Lawford slept, the rector came into
the room, recognized him as his own
parishioner again, and sat down to watch
over the sleeping man. Before long the
rector was also sound asleep.
3184

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Egdon Heath, in southern England
First published: 1878
Principal characters:
Diggory Venn, a reddleman
Damon Wildeve, proprietor of the Quiet Woman Inn
Thomasin Yeobright, betrothed to Wildeve
Mrs. Yeobright, Thomasin's guardian
Clym Yeobright, Mrs. Yeobright's son
Eustacia Vye, a designing woman
Critique:
In this novel Thomas Hardy created
two strong and opposing forces: Egdon
Heath, a somber tract of wasteland
symbolic of an impersonal fate, and Eustacia
Vye, a beautiful young woman
representing the opposing human element.
Throughout the book Eustacia struggles
against the Heath, but in vain. Of
course, her failure to overcome her
environment would seem to prove Hardy's
view that man is not the master of his
fate. But in attempting to minimize the
importance of the individual in this life,
Hardy has created in the character of
Eustacia Vye a person of great strength
and marked individuality. Indeed, the
reader, contemplating her, feels that
Eustacia herself, not fate alone, is
responsible for her tragic end.
The Story:
Egdon Heath was a gloomy wasteland
in southern England. Against this
majestic but solemn, brooding background a
small group of people were to work out
their tragic drama in the impersonal
presence of nature.
Fifth of November bonfires were
glowing in the twilight as Diggory Venn, the
reddleman, drove his van across the
Heath. Tired and ill, Thomasin
Yeobright lay in the rear of his van. She
was a young girl whom Diggory loved,
but she had rejected his proposal in order
to marry Damon Wildeve, proprietor" of
the Quiet Woman Inn. Now Diggory
was carrying the girl to her home at
Blooms-End. The girl had gone to marry
Wildeve in a nearby town, but the
ceremony had not taken place because of an
irregularity in the license. Shocked and
shamed, Thomasin had asked her old
sweetheart, Diggory, to take her home.
Mrs. Yeobright, Thomasin's aunt and
guardian, heard the story from the
reddleman. Concerned for the girl's welfare,
she decided that the wedding should take
place as soon as possible. Mrs. Yeobright
had good cause to worry, for Wildeve's
intentions were not wholly honorable.
Later in the evening, after Wildeve had
assured the Yeobrights, rather casually,
that he intended to go through with his
promise, his attention was turned to a
bonfire blazing on Mistover Knap. There
old Cap'n Vye lived with his beautiful
granddaughter, Eustacia. At dusk the
girl had started a fire on the Heath as a
signal to her lover, Wildeve, to come to
her. Though he had intended to break
with Eustacia, he decided to obey her
summons.
Eustacia, meanwhile, was waiting for
Wildeve in the company of young Johnny
Nunsuch. When Wildeve threw a
pebble in the pond to announce his
arrival, Eustacia told-Johnny to go home.
The meeting between Wildeve and
Eustacia was unsatisfactory for both. He
complained that she gave him no peace.
She, in turn, resented his desertion.
Meanwhile Johnny Nunsuch, frightened
by strange lights he saw on the Heath,
went back to Mistover Knap to ask Eu-
3185

stacia to let her servant accompany him
home, but he kept silent when he came
upon Eustacia and Wildeve. Retracing
his steps, he stumbled into a sand pit
where stood the reddleman's van. From
the boy, Diggory learned of the meeting
between Eustacia and Wildeve. Later,
he overheard Eustacia declare her hatred
of the Heath to Wildeve, who asked her
to run away with him to America. Her
reply was vague, but the reddleman
decided to see Eustacia without delay to
beg her to let Thomasin have Wildeve.
Diggory's visit to Eustacia was fruitless.
He then approached Mrs. Yeobright,
declared again his love for her niece, and
offered to marry Thomasin. Mrs.
Yeobright refused the reddleman's offer
because she felt that the girl should marry
Wildeve. She confronted the innkeeper
with vague references to another suitor,
with the result that Wildeve's interest in
Thomasin awakened once more.
Shortly afterward Mrs. Yeobright's
son, Clym, returned from Paris, and a
welcome-home party gave Eustacia the
chance to view this stranger about whom
she had heard so much. Uninvited, she
went to the party disguised as one of the
mummers. Clym was fascinated by this
interesting and mysterious young woman
disguised as a man. Eustacia dreamed of
marrying Clym and going with him to
Paris. She even broke off with Wildeve,
who, stung by her rejection, promptly
married Thomasin to spite Eustacia.
Clym Yeobright decided not to go
back to France. Instead he planned to
open a school. Mrs. Yeobright strongly
opposed her son's decision. When Clym
learned that Eustacia had been stabbed
in church by a woman who thought that
Eustacia was bewitching her children,
his decision to educate these ignorant
people was strengthened. Much against
his mother's wishes, Clym visited Eu-
stacia's home to ask her to teach in his
school. Eustacia refused because she
hated the Heath and the country
peasants, but as the result of his visit Clym
fell completely in love with the beautiful
but heartless Eustacia.
Mrs. Yeobright blamed Eustacia for
Clym's wish to stay on the Heath. When
bitter feeling grew between mother and
son, he decided to leave home. His
marriage to Eustacia made the break
complete. Later Mrs. Yeobright relented
somewhat and gave a neighbor, Christian
Cantle, a sum of money to be delivered
in equal portions to Clym and Thomasin.
Christian foolishly lost the money to
Wildeve in a game of dice. Fortunately,
Diggory won the money from Wildeve,
but, thinking that all of it belonged to
Thomasin, he gave it to her. Mrs.
Yeobright knew that Wildeve had duped
Christian. She did not know that the
reddleman had won the money away from
the innkeeper, and she mistakenly
supposed that Wildeve had given the money
to Eustacia. Meeting Eustacia, she asked
the girl if she had received any money
from Wildeve. Eustacia was enraged by
the question and in the course of her
reply to Mrs. Yeobright's charge she said
that she would never have condescended
to marry Clym had she known that she
would have to remain on the Heath. The
two women parted angrily.
Eustacia's unhappiness was increased
by Clym's near-blindness, a condition
brought on by too much reading, for she
feared that tnis meant she would never
get to Paris. When Clym became a
woodcutter, Eustacia's feeling of degradation
was complete. Bored with her life, she
went by herself one evening to a gipsy-
ing. There she accidentally met Wildeve
and again felt an attachment for him.
Seeing Eustacia and Wildeve together,
the reddleman told Mrs. Yeobright of the
meeting and begged her to make peace
with Eustacia for Clym's sake. She
agreed to try.
But Mrs. Yeobright's walk at noon
across the hot, dry Heath to see her son
and daughter-in-law proved fatal. When
she arrived in sight of Clym's house, she
saw her son from a distance as he
entered the front door. Then, while she
rested on a knoll near the house, she
saw another man entering, but she was
too far away to recognize Wildeve. After
3186

resting for twenty minutes, Mrs. Yeo-
bright went on to Clym's cottage and
knocked. No one came to the door.
Heartbroken by what she considered a
rebuff by her own son, Mrs. Yeobright
started home across the Heath.
Overcome by exhaustion and grief, she sat
down to rest and a poisonous adder bit
her. She died without knowing that
inside her son's house Clym had been
asleep, worn out by his morning's work.
Eustacia did not go to the door because,
as she later explained to her husband,
she had thought he would answer the
knock. The real reason for Eustacia's
failure to go to the door was fear of the
consequences, should Mrs. Yeobright find
Eustacia and Wildeve together.
Clym awoke with the decision to visit
his mother. Starting out across the Heath
toward her house, he stumbled over her
body. His grief was tempered by
bewilderment over the reason for her being
on the Heath at that time. When Clym
discovered that Eustacia had failed to let
his mother in and that Wildeve had been
in the cottage, he ordered Eustacia out
of his house. She went quietly because
she felt in part responsible for Mrs. Yeo-
bright's death.
Eustacia took refuge in her
grandfather's house, where a faithful servant
thwarted her in an attempt to commit
suicide. In utter despair over her own
wretched life and over the misery she
had caused others, Eustacia turned to
Wildeve, who had unexpectedly
inherited eleven thousand pounds and who still
wanted her to run away with him. One
night she left her grandfather's house in
order to keep a prearranged meeting with
the innkeeper, but in her departure she
failed to receive a letter of reconciliation
which Thomasin had persuaded Clym to
send to her. On her way to keep hei
rendezvous with Wildeve she lost hex
way in the inky blackness of the Heath
and either fell accidentally or jumped
into a small lake, and was drowned.
Wildeve, who happened to be near the lake
when she fell in, jumped in to save her
and was drowned also.
(Originally The Return of the Native
ended with the death of Eustacia and of
Wildeve; but in order to satisfy his
romantic readers, in a later edition Hardy
made additions to the story. The faithful
Diggory married Thomasin. Clym,
unable to abolish ignorance and superstition
on the Heath by teaching, became in the
end an itinerant preacher.)
3187

THE REVENGE OF BUSSY D'AMBOIS
Type of work: Drama
Author: George Chapman (c. 1559-1634)
Type of plot: Tragedy of blood
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: c. 1610
Principal characters:
Clermont d'Ambois, brother of Bussy d'Ambois, a soldier of fortune
recently murdered
Baligny, Clermont's brother-in-law
Charlotte, Clermont's sister
Montsurry, Bussy's murderer
Tamyra, his wife
The Duke of Guise
Henry III, King of France
Maillard, Baligny's lieutenant
Critique:
The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois is a
portrait of Chapman's ideal tragic hero.
All other elements of the play are
subordinated to the revelation of the
character and philosophy of Clermont
d'Ambois. Clermont, with his stoic idealism,
is indeed an interesting and compelling
figure. Unfortunately, however, his
character is not one that lends itself well to
the dramatic situation. He is essentially a
man of reflection, not of action; he lacks
the tragic flaw upon which the plot
might be developed. As a result,
Chapman wrote a superb character study, but
a poor drama.
The Story:
Clermont d'Ambois had vowed to
avenge the murder of his brother.
Although he doubted the virtue of
repaying violence with violence, he had made
a solemn promise to Bussy's ghost. His
sister Charlotte, unambiguous in her
feelings, was impatient for immediate
revenge, and her marriage to Baligny had
been made under the stipulation that he,
too, pledge himself to effect the death of
Montsurry, Bussy's murderer. Tamyra,
the wife of Montsurry and former
mistress of Bussy, had returned to her
husband, but she made no secret of her
hatred of him and her desire for his
death. But the design of these people
was obstructed by the cowardly
Montsurry, who had barricaded himself in his
home.
Clermont, who insisted on a fair duel
and who would allow no one else to
discharge his duty, had instructed Baligny
to deliver his challenge. Baligny's
entrance to Montsurry's home was
accomplished with the help of a decayed
nobleman, the Marquess Renel. Renel, visiting
Montsurry on business, bribed the guards
to admit Baligny. When Baligny entered,
Montsurry was terrified and refused to
accept the proffered challenge. Baligny
left the challenge with Tamyra, who
promised to make her husband read it.
This plot was not the only one in
which Baligny was involved. A
treacherous man, he based his actions on the
belief that troubles for others meant
blessings for himself. Wearing a different
mask for every acquaintance, he was able
to gain men's confidence and thus
discover their dissatisfactions and sow the
seeds of further discontent. In dealing
with King Henry III, he expounded the
doctrine that any evil done out of loyalty
to a king was justified. Such a philosophy
being agreeable to King Henry, Baligny
had become his trusted agent. In talking
to the Duke of Guise, on the other hand,
he expressed the belief that conspiracy
was sometimes defensible.
The principal object of jealousy in the
court at this time was the Guise faction.
3188

King Henry was fearful and jealous of
the increasing influence of the Duke of
Guise, and Baligny strove to increase his
distrust. Guise's closest friend was
Clermont d'Ambois, whom Guise not only
admired but endeavored to emulate. He
saw in Clermont a valor equal to Bussy's
and, more important, a profound
knowledge of life. Clermont's principles of
restraint, unworldliness, and stoic
acceptance guided the actions of the powerful
duke. Because of the close relationship
between the two men, jealousy of Guise
was often extended to include Clermont.
Thus Baligny was able to convince King
Henry of the advantage of getting rid of
Clermont. He suggested that Clermont be
invited to visit Cambrai and there, away
from his friends at court, be arrested.
Baligny induced Clermont to go to
Cambrai on the pretext of reviewing a
muster of the king's troops. In his
conversation with Clermont, Baligny
attempted to weaken Clermont's tie with
Guise by criticizing the latter for his part
in the St. Bartholomew Massacre. But
Clermont was one man on whom the
schemer's efforts were wasted because he
was convinced of Guise's virtue.
While Clermont was being entertained
by his sister in Cambrai, he received an
anonymous letter informing him of the
betrayal and of Baligny's complicity in
it. Refusing to think evil of his sister's
husband, he dismissed the letter as false.
Charlotte, who could think of little but
avenging Bussy's death, regarded the
message as an effort further to enfeeble
Clermont's weak will in carrying out his
duty.
Maillard, Baligny's lieutenant, had
been instructed by the king to apprehend
Clermont. When Maillard came to
Charlotte's house, ostensibly for the purpose
of accompanying Clermont on a tour, the
latter asked him if he were charged to
arrest him. Maillard's obvious signs of
guilt convinced Clermont that earlier
presentiments he had felt about the journey
had been justified. Clermont offered to
let Maillard take him peacefully, but
Maillard denied that any intrigue was
afoot. Although quite certain of the
consequences, Clermont, with characteristic
acceptance of fate, followed Maillard.
It was planned that Clermont be taken
while he was reviewing the troops. Two
soldiers disguised as lackeys were to lead
him into an ambush, where several men
would seize him. But Clermont's strength
exceeded even the estimate of his
attackers. The disguised soldiers succeeded only
in unhorsing him. Afoot, he easily beat
them off and drove straight through the
ambush. He ran until, exhausted, he fell
to the earth and was captured.
Believing that outer circumstances had
no power to touch the inner man without
his will, he accepted his capture with
little concern. His only worry was that
he would be unable to keep an
appointment with his mistress, the Countess of
Cambrai, and his one request was that a
message be sent to her. Other people,
however, did not accept his internment
with so much complacency. Upon
receiving his message, the countess sent him
jewels that she hoped would effect his
release and vowed that she would cry
until her eyes poured out. When the
Duke of Guise heard the news, he rushed
to King Henry and spoke so passionately
and eloquently of Clermont's virtues that
the weak-willed king, unable to answer
Guise, ordered that Clermont be released.
After his release Clermont went to the
house of the Duke of Guise. There he
again met Bussy's ghost, who chided him
for not having exacted the revenge.
Guise, who had been implicated in
Bussy's murder, felt that the ghost should
tnunder threats against him, but
Clermont asserted that the duke had fully
compensated for his error. Guise was also
worried about a plot against him; he
believed that his efforts at propagating the
Catholic cause were endangered.
Clermont wanted him to retire from his plans,
but Guise regarded withdrawal as an
abandonment of France.
A plot was indeed threatening the
Duke of Guise; King Henry, with
Baligny's encouragement, had ordered his
murder. The king, in addition to his long-
3189

standing jealousy of Guise, had been
angered at having his hand forced over
Clermont. As the duke was on his way
to visit the king, Henry's men stepped
from behind an arras and killed him.
With the assistance of Tamyra,
Clermont gained access to Montsurry's house.
There he found Charlotte, disguised as a
man. She had planned to kill Montsurry
herself but had been stopped by the
ghost. When Clermont drew his sword,
Montsurry at first refused to defend
himself and did so only after Clermont
offered to let Tamyra stab him. Although
Montsurry at last gained sufficient
courage to conduct himself courageously in
the duel, Clermont succeeded in killing
him. Soon after Clermont had fulfilled
his duty to his brother, he received the
news that the Duke of Guise had been
killed by the king's men. The death of
his friend and patron was a severe blow
to Clermont, whose life had been
centered around his relationship with the
powerful duke. Believing that his
purpose in this world was now destroyed, he
took his own life.
3190

THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Cyril Tourneur (c. 1575-1626)
Type of plot: Tragedy of blood
Time of plot: The Renaissance
Locale: A city in Italy
First presented: c. 1607
Principal characters:
Vendice, the revenger, often disguised as Piato
Hippolito, his brother, sometimes called Carlo
Castiza, their sister, a near victim of Lussurioso's lust
Grati ana, their mother, a widow
The Duke, the lecherous ruler of an Italian principality
Lussurioso, his legitimate son
Spurio, his illegitimate son
The Duchess, his recent bride
Ambitioso,
Supervacuo, and
The Third Son, the Duchess* sons by an earlier marriage
Antonio, an Italian nobleman, the Duke's final successor.
Critique:
There has been considerable scholarly
wrangling over the relative dates and
even the authorship of the two plays
associated with the name of Cyril
Tourneur; but today they are both ascribed
to him, and The Revenger's Tragedy is
held to be the earlier. The tragedy of
blood, with its themes of betrayal and
revenge, had its vogue during the entire
Elizabethan period beginning with Kyd's
The Spanish Tragedy as far back as
1585, and helped bring about the
closing of the theaters in 1642. With
Webster, Tourneur represents the final stage
of this dramatic genre. The plot of this
play is melodramatic; murder is piled
upon murder and horror upon horror to
a point at which the reader is driven
either to revulsion or to a refusal to take
the play seriously. Yet the overdrawn
plot is redeemed by the splendor of the
language. John Addington Symonds
described The Revenger's Tragedy as "an
entangled web of lust, incest, fratricide,
rape, adultery, mutual suspicion, hate,
and bloodshed, through which runs, like
a thread of glittering copper, the
vengeance of a cynical plague-fretted spirit."
The Story:
As the Duke, accompanied by his new
wife and his two sons, passed through
the city in the glare of torches, they
were watched by Vendice, the revenger.
In his hand he carried the skull of his
dead betrothed, poisoned by the Duke
when she had resisted his lecherous
advances. To the hate engendered by this
horrible murder had been added further
incentive to revenge: the death of Ven-
dice's father at the hands of this same
decadent ruler. Now his brother
Hippolito added fresh fuel to the flame by
reporting that he had been asked by
Lussurioso, the Duke's heir and a man as
depraved as his father, to employ a
procurer in order to ensnare their sister
Castiza. Vendice's nimble brain at once saw
the possibility of revenge in this
situation; he disguised himself, took on the
role of a panderer, and was presented to
Lussurioso under the name of Piato, thus
gaining access to the ducal household.
The sons of the newly married
Duchess were as evil as their stepbrothers.
The youngest had recently raped the
wife of Antonio, a highly respected
nobleman, and that poor lady had committed
suicide. But when the young villain was
brought to trial and sentenced, the Duke
put off his execution and merely ordered
that he be kept in prison. His older
3191

brothers promised to find a way to help
him escape. Meanwhile, their depraved
mother was revealing her love for Spurio,
the Duke's illegitimate son and a man
who hated his father for his own
illegitimate birth. He accepted the Duchess'
advances, since adultery with her would
avenge him on his father.
In pursuance of his plan, Vendice
undertook Lussurioso's commission, and,
still disguised, went to tempt the virtue
of his sister Castiza. His delight was
great when she spurned Lussurioso's suit,
but this delight was soon turned to
horror when their mother tried to persuade
her daughter to yield. Vendice rightly felt
that, were it not for gold and women,
there would be no damnation.
Having returned to the palace with
news of his mission, Vendice found out
from Hippolito that the Duchess and
Spurio had been seen together and were
planning an assignation for that very
night. Taking quick advantage of this
news, he informed Lussurioso; the latter,
ostensibly eager to protect his father's
honor but really wishing to get rid of his
hated half-brother, went with Vendice
to the Duke's bedchamber and stabbed
the man sleeping in the bed with the
Duchess. This man, however, proved to
be the Duke himself and not Spurio. But
the surprise was to Vendice's advantage,
for Lussurioso, whose blows had not
killed the Duke, was led to prison under
sentence of death.
The Duchess' sons, eager to eliminate
their stepbrothers, attempted the trick
of urging the Duke to mercy, in the
expectation that their pleas would have
the opposite effect. The crafty ruler,
however, saw through their game and
surprised them by granting their request and
sending them to release Lussurioso. But
Ambitioso and Supervacuo determined
to reverse the Duke's orders and then
pretend that their errand of mercy had been
too late. What they did not know was
that Lussurioso had already been released
through a prior order of the Duke's.
When they informed the gaoler that it
was the Duke's command that "their
brother" was to die, the gaoler, having
now only the Duchess' youngest son in
custody, naturally executed him. Thus
the first of the villains was disposed of.
Meanwhile, Vendice's plot was going
forward apace. The Duke had
commanded him, still in the disguise of the
panderer Piato, to bring him a woman
in some secluded spot. Knowing that the
Duchess and Spurio were to meet in a
lodge in the palace grounds, Vendice
selected this spot and brought to it the
skull of his betrothed decked out, in some
manner, in rich attire. On the fleshless
mouth of the skull he had smeared the
same poison that the Duke had used to
kill her. In a scene of unmitigated horror,
the Duke kissed the poisoned skull; his
own teeth and mouth were consumed
by the vitriol, while Vendice and
Hippolito, holding their daggers against him,
compelled him to spend his last agonized
moments of life in watching the
meeting of his wife and his illegitimate son.
So the second stage of the revenge was
finished.
Before the meeting with his supposed
mistress-to-be, the Duke had given word
that he was riding off on an undisclosed
journey; hence no one knew where he
was nor made an attempt to find him.
Lussurioso, meanwhile, had resolved to
dismiss Piato, whom he had come to
regard as an inefficient panderer, and he
ordered Hippolito, whom he knew to
have a brother unknown to the court, to
bribe that brother to kill Piato. Thus
Vendice was in the strange position of
being hired to murder himself. Again his
quick wit saw how advantage could be
taken of this fantastic situation: he and
Hippolito resolved to dress the still
undiscovered body of the Duke in the
clothes discarded by Piato; a dagger
thrust into the corpse would then
account for the Duke's death. While this
macabre scheme was in preparation, they
had their family affairs to settle—that
was, to punish their mother because she
had urged their sister to yield to
Lussurioso. But they were so moved by her
sincere repentance that they spared her
3192

life and returned to the ducal palace to
complete their plot.
The Duke's corpse, now dressed in the
old clothes of Piato, was still lying in
the lodge. It was the brothers* plan to
show it to Lussurioso, tell him the
manner of his father's death, and then kill
him. But Lussurioso spoiled the plan by
coming, not alone as they had expected,
but with a group of courtiers. So the best
they could do was to point out the form
of the supposed Piato lying on a couch,
say that he was drunk, and then stab
him on Lussurioso's command. The son
immediately discovered the true identity
of the corpse, but was sufficiently
deceived to absolve the brothers of any
guilt in his father's death. He was hardly
grief-stricken, for this death made him
the duke. He gave three orders as the
new ruler: to search for Piato, the
suspected murderer; to hold revels in honor
of his accession to the title; and to banish
the Duchess. After he had left the lodge,
the Duchess' two remaining sons resolved
to take advantage of the revels to murder
him.
Vendice, Hippolito, and other
disaffected nobles also determined to take
advantage of the revels and to do away
with the new ruler. Having heard that
a masque was to be a part of the
entertainment, they planned to copy the
masquers' costumes and, having thus got
into the hall of state, to assassinate
Lussurioso. As the duke and his nobles sat
at a table and argued over the ominous
portent of a comet blazing in the sky,
Vendice, Hippolito and two other lords,
in the fantastic costumes of masquers,
entered and performed their dance. At its
conclusion they drew their swords and
killed Lussurioso and his companions.
Hardly had they left the scene when
Ambitioso, Supervacuo, Spurio, and a
fourth noble came into the hall, dressed
in the same ^ostumes and bent upon
the same bloody errand. Finding
Lussurioso and his companions already dead,
the would-be murderers fell out among
themselves over the succession to the
dukedom, and Spurio killed Ambitioso,
only to fall himself at the hand of the
noble who had accompanied them. When
Antonio and the guards burst in, they
naturally assumed that the masquers
whom they found there had been the
murderers, nor could the surviving lord
convince them otherwise. But Lussurioso
was not yet quite dead. It was his dying
voice that had summoned Antonio, and
now he had to undergo the last agony of
having Vendice whisper in his ear the
full story of the revenge.
The ducal line having now been wiped
out, Antonio was proclaimed the ruler.
It was now that Vendice's bitter wit
betrayed him; he could not resist telling the
new duke that he and his brother had
been the avengers. Instantly Antonio
ordered them to execution, not wishing
to condone their actions even though he
had benefited from them. Further, he
knew that the men who had murdered
the old Duke and his family might well
murder him. Vendice accepted his
sentence calmly; his task was accomplished,
and it was time for him to die.
3193

THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: France
First published: 1914
Principal characters:
Maurice d'Esparvieu, a lazy young man
Arcade, his guardian angel
Monsieur Julien Sariette, a librarian
Madame Gilberts des Aubels, Maurice's mistress
Critique:
Anatole France was a revolutionary.
Opposed to the Church and the state,
he wrote many bitter novels ridiculing
those institutions. The Revolt of the
Angels is one of the most abusive satires
of this century. It is a fantasy, telling
the story of an angel who read so widely
in the field of science that he lost his
faith in God. He aroused thousands of
angels, and they planned to take over
the Kingdom of Heaven for Satan. In
this satire France attacked almost every
established institution in the world, but
in his desire to ridicule he often sacrificed
sincerity and thus effectiveness. His
greatest personal conviction, as reflected
in this satire, was his love for and his
faith in the little people of the world.
This factor is the greatest positive quality
of the novel.
The Story:
Because their fabulous library was so
large and valuable, the d'Esparvieu
family employed Monsieur Julien Sariette
to look after the three hundred thousand
volumes. The books were the most
precious charge that Sariette had ever
had, and he guarded them as if they
were jewels. There were rare first
editions, some with notations in the
handwriting of famous men of history. There
were several unpublished manuscripts
written on sheepskins and sycamore
tablets. It was no more difficult to steal an
emerald than to borrow one of those
precious books or manuscripts from
Sariette.
One morning he entered the library
to find many of the books in complete
disorder. Some of the finest specimens
were among the desecrated books, and
for a time the old librarian could not
comprehend what his eyes saw. But he
was even more disturbed when he
realized that some of the books were gone.
When he reported the theft to his master,
he was told that he had probably left
them lying carelessly around. Sariette
was completely upset.
For more than two months the thefts
continued. Locks were changed, and a
detective was employed, but all
precautions failed. Sariette hid himself in the
library one night, and what he saw
there frightened him more than ever.
He had fallen asleep. When he awoke,
he saw that the room was filled with a
queer, phosphorescent light. A book he
held in his hand opened, and he could
not close it. When he tried to force it
shut, the book leaped up and struck
him over the head, knocking him
unconscious.
From that time on Sariette could
neither sleep nor eat. He was at the
point of insanity when young Maurice
d'Esparvieu, who lived in the garden
pavilion and who had not heard of the
losses, asked him why so many of the
books from the library were piled in his
rooms. Sariette rushed to the pavilion.
THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS by Anatole France.
of the publithers, Dodd, Msad ft Co.. Inc. Copyright, 1914, by Dodd,'Mead ft Co., Inc.
Mrs. Wilfrid Jackson.
Translated by Mrs. Wilfrid Jackson. By permission
~ ' " Renewed, 1942, by
3194

There lay his precious books, scattered
around but all complete. He carefully
carried them back into the house and
put them on the shelves again.
The books continued to disappear each
night and appear in the pavilion the next
morning. Sariette knew no more than he
did before. One day a fine talcum
scattered on the floor revealed a strange
footprint. Some thought it the print of
a fairy, others that of a small, dainty
woman.
While these events were disrupting the
peace of the d'Esparvieu household,
Maurice was having a love affair with Madame
Gilberte des Aubels. While she was
visiting him in his pavilion one evening,
they were startled by the sight of a
nude man who suddenly appeared.
Gilberte, thinking him a burglar, offered
him her money and jewels, but the
stranger announced in a calm voice that
he was Arcade, Maurice's guardian angel.
He explained his appearance by telling
them that angels could take human form
when they pleased. He had come to the
earth at Maurice's birth, but had
remained invisible, as all good guardian
angels do. Because Maurice was a lazy
young man, Arcade had found time
heavy on his hands, and he had gone
into the d'Esparvieu library to find
something to read. He had studied the great
books on philosophy, theology, and
science, and the scientific approach to
the creation of the universe had
impressed him so much that he had decided
to assume human form and lead the
angels into revolt against God.
In his explanation to Gilberte and
Maurice he acknowledged that God
existed, but he denied that He was the
creator of the universe. Arcade now
considered God, or Ialdabaoth, as He was
called in Heaven, as only one of the
strong men of that kingdom. Ialdabaoth
and Satan had battled for the supremacy
of that beautiful and rich land, and
Ialdabaoth had won. Now there were
many other angels on earth who had also
assumed human form, thus disobeying
Ialdabaoth, and they too were ready to
revolt. Arcade was determined to join
the rebel angels and lead them to victory
against Ialdabaoth.
Gilberte and Maurice were shocked
They begged Arcade to renounce his
wicked ways and return to God, but he
was firm in his decision. Not wishing to
leave his angel in a nude state, Maurice
secured some clothes for him before
Arcade left the pavihon.
Arcade found many revolutionary
angels to plan with him for the final
battle. There was Prince Istar, the
chemist, who spent his time manufacturing
bombs. Zita was a female angel, as
willing to go to war as any of the males.
Th6ophile was not a revolutionary and
did not want to go to war against
Ialdabaoth. Th6ophile was a fallen angel
who had succumbed to the lust he felt
for a mortal woman, but he still believed
in God and would not join in plans for
the revolt. While they were gathering
recruits, most of the angels enjoyed
the pursuits of mortal men. Many of
them took lovers; Arcade seduced
Gilberte in Maurice's pavilion, after
Maurice had brought the angel home with
him. Arcade tried to enlist the help of
Sophar, an angel who had become a
Jewish banker named Max Everdingen,
but Sophar would not give them monev
for the revolution. He offered to sell
them munitions, however, and to finance
the purchases at his bank.
While the angels were preparing for
the final attack, Gilberte and Maurice
continued their affair, for Maurice had
forgiven Arcade and Gilberte. Sariette,
among his books, was happy because
Arcade, busy with the revolution, no
longer stole the precious volumes. But
through a mishap, Lucretius, one of the
most precious of the rare editions, was
taken from the library and lost. This
final blow drove Sariette to madness.
At last all was in readiness for the
revolt. Hundreds of thousands of rebel
angels joined Arcade and presented
themselves to Satan, asking him to lead them
into the battle against Ialdabaoth. Satan
asked them to wait until the next day
3195

for his answer. That night he had a
dream. He dreamed that he led the
rebels against laldabaoth, and that they
were victorious. Satan was crowned
king, and he banished laldabaoth as He
had banished Satan millions of years
ago. But Satan dreamed that as he
received the praises of mankind and the
angels, he became like the other God,
laldabaoth, and lost his sympathy for
humanity.
Satan awoke from his dream, and
called the leaders of the angels around
him. He told them that they would not
conquer Heaven, that one war always
brings on another because the vanquished
seek constantly to regain what they have
lost. He told them that he did not want
to be God, that he loved the earth and
wanted to stay on earth and help his
fellow men. And he told the angels that
they had done much already to destroy
God on earth, for they had been slowly
destroying ignorance and superstitions
concerning the false religion taught by
God. Satan told the angels to stay on
earth to spread the doctrine of love and
kindness; in this way they would
triumph over God and bring peace to
heaven and earth.
3196

THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES
Type of work: Essay on political science
Author: Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)
First published: 1930
Among the few modern Spaniards
known beyond his national boundaries is
Ortega y Gasset, professor of metaphysics,
literary critic and journalist, and a
representative of the school that believes in
the rule of an intellectual aristocracy or
small group of superior men, not the
privileged caste of the old feudal nobility.
Born in Madrid, Jos6 Ortega y Gasset
sought in Malaga the thorough training
of a Jesuit college, then took his doctorate
in philosophy at the Central University
of Madrid in 1904. Further study in
Germany preceded his teaching career in
Madrid. When Rivera became dictator,
Ortega, a critic of the monarchy, stopped
teaching and began to write for the
influential EI Sol. In 1923 he founded the
Revista de Occidente, the leading
Spanish intellectual publication until Franco
drove its editor out of Spain in 1936.
Later Ortega traveled widely, lecturing
in Buenos Aires, Paris, and the United
States. Returning to Spain, he died in
Madrid in 1955.
The Revolt of the Masses had its seeds
in an earlier book, Espana invertebrada
(1922), in an article titled "Masas" in
EI Sol (1926), and in several lectures
delivered in Argentina in 1928. As he
wrote in a footnote to the title of the
first chapter: "My purpose now is to
collect and complete what I have already
said, and so to produce an organic
document concerning the most important fact
of our time."
Repetition and interpolated material
weaken the structural unity of the book,
and the colloquial style may grate on the
reader before the final pages.
Nevertheless, the work is seminal and provocative.
Ortega advocates a European
confederation with judicial and political unity, an
"integration, not a lamination," of
nations, ultranational rather than
international, where a new liberalism and a
totalitarian form will each correct the
excesses of the other. The resulting
equilibrium, he promises, would produce a new
faith.
In his final paragraph, Ortega
acknowledges that the present-day situation
results from basic defects in European
culture, but he postpones any consideration
of that problem, and so the work is
incomplete. However, for the Buenos Aires
edition of 1938, Ortega added a prologue
for French readers and an epilogue for
English readers, in which he denied the
accusation that his theme was the
decadence of Spain since 1580. He is no
pessimist. While he does look back on the
good old days, he insists that a return to
the past is impossible for modern man.
Stressing the advances and improvements
of today, he asserts that if anything
superior is eventually evolved, it will be
based on technical knowledge and liberal
democracy.
Ortega's main thesis is that among
human beings there are two types of
individuals: the excellent or superior man,
who makes demands on himself, and the
common man, who is content with what
he is. The development and activities of
these types are shown against the
perspective of Western history.
Greece and Rome evolved from rural
communities and became cities. The
ancients, concerned with their past, were
unconscious of a future. Gradually the
State came into existence, built in the
Middle Ages by the feudal nobles. The
State was relatively small. Ortega quotes
the economist Werner Sombart for the
statement that Europe, from 700 to 1800,
never had a population of more than
180,000,000. Each state was directed by
its superior individuals, without whom
humanity would cease to preserve its
essentials. The mass man accepted higher
authority, and in general followed the
orders of a select minority.
The first divergence came when the
3197

bourgeoisie adopted gunpowder, which
the nobles never thought of using, and
with it won battles against the nobility.
Eventually a middle class took over the
State and made it so powerful that "state
intervention" has become a symbol of
danger. What were once privileges are
now rights, even though the masses
attack the institutions by which these
rights are sanctioned.
During the nineteenth century the
population of Europe rose to 460,000,-
000, and part of it overflowed to settle
in the Americas. In Ortega's view,
however, those who look with astonishment
at the rapid growth of the New World
should turn their eyes to Europe, where
the population increase has been even
more spectacular.
Nietzsche foresaw a "flood tide of
Nihilism rising." Actually, the world as it
was organized during the nineteenth
century automatically created a new type of
man, provided with formidable appetites
and powerful means of satisfying them.
The nineteenth cenury left these new
men to their own devices. Believing in
direct action, they intervened violently
in everything. Having been previously
guided by others, these "barbarian
products of modern civilization" determined
to govern the world for and by
themselves, and in their self-satisfaction,
according to Ortega, they now threaten the
degeneration of human culture.
In tracing the development of the
mass man, Ortega repeats his assertion
that the civilization of the nineteenth
century can be summed up under two
headings: Liberal democracy and
technology. Modern technical advance
represents the cooperation of Capitalism and
Experimental Science. The scientist is
likely to become a mass man, a primitive,
since he confines his knowledge to so
small an area. There was a time, the
author asserts, when men could be divided
into the learned and the ignorant, but
today even those learned in science are
frequently ignorant of the inner
philosophy of the science they cultivate.
Ortega discusses historians, or
"philologists," as he calls them, who turn their
attention to sources instead of the future.
The author does not believe in absolute
determinism of history, because in his
view the past does not tell us what to do,
but what to avoid. Life is now greater
in scope than ever before, presenting a
greater choice. Circumstances offer a
dilemma for the mass man to decide, but
he has no concept of the future. In the
Mediterranean countries, where the
triumph of the masses has made its greatest
advance, the mass man lives for the
moment, with no consideration for future
existence.
Life has become world-wide in
character, but time and space cannot be easily
obliterated. The "purchasing power of
life" has been broadened. Man believes
himself capable of creation without
knowing what to create. Power has brought
insecurity. Liberal democracy based on
technical knowledge is the highest type
of public life yet known. The perfect
organization of the nineteenth century gave
the impression that it represented natural
things, and therefore should belong to
everybody; but all that it represents had
earlier beginnings.
According to Ortega, bolshevism and
fascism are examples of retrogression in
politics, because they handle rational
elements in an anti-historical, even archaic,
way. Consequently, the political hope of
Europe lies in contemporaneous men who
abhor archaic and primitive attitudes.
Ortega does not believe in the
"decadence of Europe," a legend begun by
intellectuals who felt themselves stifled
by their nationality and who longed to
borrow from other literatures, or by
politicians similarly motivated. If there should
be a decadence among European nations,
the result, he argues, would be the
creation of a United States of Europe. There
is no one else to "rule," by which Ortega
means "to control public opinion." New
York and Moscow represent two sections
of European order. Writing in 1929,
Ortega believed that Russia would need
centuries before she could aspire to rule,
but that she would never succeed if there
3198

was in Europe a political union with a
new Western moral code and a new
inspirational program of life.
In one important sense, the title of this
work is misleading, in the light of recent
history. The author is not referring to
either actual revolt—rebelion is the
Spanish word he uses—or the Marxian
proletariat. What he had in mind was the
mass man whose claim to the right to
act is, in effect, a rebellion against his
own destiny. Since that is what he is
doing at the present time, Ortega y Gasset
considered his efforts a revolt of the
masses.
3199

REYNARD THE FOX
Type of work: Folk tale
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Fable
Time of plot: Tenth century
Locale: Germany
First transcribed: Twelfth century
Principal characters:
Reynard, the fox
Noble, the lion, King of Beasts
Isegrim, the wolf
Tibert, the cat
Bruin, the bear
Other Animals and Birds
Critique:
Second in popularity only to the fables
of Aesop is the old Germanic tale of
Reynard the Fox. Originally a folk
comedy, it became through the ages a subtle
satire on the customs and institutions of
the Middle Ages, indeed on all ages.
Here we see that cunning always
conquers force, that one who lives by his
wits will never suffer. We grudgingly
admire the villainous hero even while
we hope that he will get his just
punishment. The fable is undoubtedly of
Oriental origin, passing into the Germanic
folk tradition early in the Middle Ages.
The earliest extant version is that of
Heinrich der Glichesare in the twelfth
century. Goethe gave the tale its best-
known form in his Reineke Fuchs.
The Story:
When Noble, the great Lion-king, held
court during the Feast of the Pentecost,
all the animals told the king of their
grievances against Reynard the Fox. The
fist of sins and crimes was almost as long
as the list of animals present. First to
complain was Isegrim the wolf, whose
children had been made blind by the crafty
fox. Panther told how Reynard had
promised the hare that he would teach him
his prayers, but when the hare had stood
in front of Reynard as he was
instructed, Reynard had grabbed him by the
throat and tried to kill him. To
Chanticleer the cock Reynard had gone
disguised as a monk, saying that he would
never eat flesh again. But when Chanti
cleer relaxed his vigilance over his flock
and believed the villain, Reynard had
grabbed his children and eaten them.
So the complaints went on, with only
Tibert the cat and Grimbard the brock
speaking in Reynard's defense. These
two reminded the king of the crimes
committed by the complainers, but the
king was stern; Reynard must be brought
to court to answer for his sins. Bruin the
bear was sent to bring the culprit in.
Bruin was strong and brave, and he
promised the king that he would not be
fooled by Reynard's knavery or flattering
tongue.
When Bruin arrived at Reynard's
castle and delivered the king's message,
Reynard welcomed the bear and promised to
accompany him back to court. In fact,
Reynard said that he wished they were
already at court, for he had abstained from
meat and eaten so much of a new food,
called honeycombs, that his stomach was
swollen and uncomfortable. Bruin fell
into the trap and begged to be taken to
the store of honey. Reynard pretended to
be reluctant to delay their trip to court,
but at last he agreed to show Bruin the
honey. The wily fox led Bruin into a
trap in some tree trunks, where the poor
bear was set upon by humans and beaten
unmercifully. He escaped with his life
and sadly made his way back to court,
mocked by the taunts of his betrayer.
Enraged at the insult to his personal
3200

messenger, the king sent Tibert the cat
to tell Reynard to surrender himself at
once, under penalty of death. But Tibert
fared no better. He was tricked into
jumping into a net trap by the promise
of a feast on mice and rats. He too
escaped and returned to the court, no
longer a defender of the traitorous
Reynard. The next time the king sent Grim-
bnrd the brock to bring the fox in. He
too was warmly received by Reynard
and his wife, and he too received
Reynard's promise to accompany him to court.
This time the evil fox actually kept his
promise, confessing all his sins to the
brock as they journeyed.
At court, Reynard was confronted by
all his accusers. One by one they told of
his horrible crimes against them. Reynard
defended himself against them all, saying
that he was a loyal and true subject of
the king and the object of many lies and
deceits. The king, unmoved, sentenced
Reynard to death. On the gallows, the
fox confessed his sins, saying that he was
the more guilty because he did not steal
from want since money and jewels he
had in great plenty. Hearing Reynard
speak of his treasure, the greedy king
wanted it for himself, and he asked
Reynard where the jewels were hidden. The
fox said that he would gladly tell him the
hiding place, for the treasure had been
stolen in order to save the king's life.
Crafty Reynard told a slippery story about
a treasure which the other animals were
going to use to depose the king and make
Bruin the ruler in his place. In order to
save the life of his sovereign, Reynard had
stolen the treasure from the traitors and
now had it in his possession. The foolish
king, believing the smooth liar, ordered
Reynard released from the gallows and
made a favorite at court. Bruin the bear
and Isegrim the wolf were arrested for
high treason.
Reynard said that he himself could not
show the king the treasure because he
had to make a pilgrimage to Rome to ask
the pope to remove a curse from him. For
his journey he was given the skin of the
bear and the shoes or the wolt, leaving
those two fellows in terrible pain. The
king then put his mail around Reynard's
neck and a staff in his hand and sent him
on his way. Kyward the hare and Bellin
the ram accompanied Reynard on the
pilgrimage. They stopped at the fox's castle
to bid his wife goodbye, and there
Reynard tricked the hare, killed him, and ate
all but the head. That he sent back to
the king by the ram, that stupid animal
thinking he was carrying a letter for the
monarch. The king was so furious that
he gave the ram and all his lineage to
the wolf and the bear to atone for the
king's misjudgment of them.
Again complaints against the fox
poured into the king's ear. At last he
determined to lay siege to Reynard's
castle until the culprit was captured. This
time there would be no mercy. But Grim-
bard the brock hurried to the castle and
warned Reynard of the plot. The crafty
fellow went immediately to the court to
plead his case before the king.
On the way he again confessed to the
brock that he was guilty of many sins,
but he made them seem mild in
comparison with those of the animals now
accusing him. To the king also he confessed
that he had sinned, but he denied the
worst of the crimes laid to his doing. His
plea was that he would not have
surrendered voluntarily had he been so
guilty. His words were so moving that
most of his accusers kept silent, fearing
that the king would again believe
Reynard and punish those who would
condemn him. Only the wolf and the bear
held fast to their accusations. With the
help of his aunt, the ape, Reynard once
more excused himself in the king's eyes
and made the monarch believe that it was
the injured who were the guilty. Again
Reynard talked of lost jewels of great
value, jewels which he would search for
and present to the king.
Only Isegrim the wolf would not
accept Reynard's lies. He challenged the
fox to a fight. Reynard would have been
hard put to fight with the wolf except
that Isegrim's feet were still sore from
Reynard's taking of his shoes some time
3201

before. Also, the ape shaved off Reynard's
fur and covered him with oil so that the
wolf could not get hold of him. Even so,
Isegrim would have defeated him had he
not listened to Reynard's oily promises
of all the rewards Isegrim would receive
were he to let Reynard go. At last the
king stopped the fight and ordered all the
animals to a great feast. There he for
gave Reynard all his sins after taking the
scamp's promise that he would commit
no more crimes against his fellow
animals. The king made Reynard high
bailiff of the country, thus setting him above
all the others. From that time on the
mighty of the forest would bow to the
cunning of the weak.
3202

RHADAMISTUS AND ZENOBIA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Prosper Jolyot de Ctebillon (1674-1762)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: About A.D. 60
Locale: Artanissa, capital of Iberia
First presented: 1711
Principal characters:
Rhadamistus, King of Armenia
Zenobia (Ismenia^, his wife
Pharasmanes, King of Iberia, Rhadamistus' father
Arsames, Rhadamistus' brother
Hiero, Armenian ambassador, Rhadamistus' confidant
Mithranes, captain of the guards of Pharasmanes
Hydaspes, Pharasmanes' confidant
Phenice, Zenobia's confidante
Critique:
Rhadamistus and Zenobia contains
elements of greatness but lacks firmness and
symmetry of structure as well as vigor of
style. Now and then a line reminds one
of Shakespeare, but the more revealing
comparison is to Voltaire, Cr^billon's
rival and enemy. Voltaire's Zaire is in
many respects a better play; the action is
continuous and the exposition is
effectively simple—yet Rhadamistus and
Zenobia, for all its static presentation of
background material in the first act, is
more successful at creating the tragic
sense, the realization of the
self-defeating character of human passion. Few
members of a contemporary audience
would tolerate Cr6billon's play on the
stage; the lengthy expository passages, the
unmotivated antipathies, the awkward
and precipitous close—all are distasteful.
But for the reader the play still offers
passages of quiet force and power, and
within the faulty whole there are parts
to be remembered.
The Story:
Zenobia, wife of Rhadamistus, was the
prisoner of Pharasmanes, King of Iberia.
When Phenice, her companion, attempted
to persuade her that she should accept
the love Pharasmanes was offering her in
the hope that she would become his
queen, Zenobia, who had been using the
name Ismenia, revealed that she could
not accept Pharasmanes because the king
was her uncle and the father of
Rhadamistus. Zenobia explained that her father,
Mithridates, had reared Rhadamistus as
if the boy were his own son; but when
Pharasmanes invaded the Armenian
kingdom of Mithridates, Mithridates turned
against Rhadamistus and refused to allow
him to marry Zenobia as Rhadamistus
had expected. Rhadamistus had then
attacked the kingdom of Mithridates and
had driven the king into exile. Zenobia,
to protect her father, had offered to wed
Rhadamistus; only after the wedding had
she learned that Rhadamistus had
murdered her father. In rage, Rhadamistus
had then attacked his bride and thrown
her into the Araxes. Believing her dead,
he had no knowledge of her rescue.
Zenobia ended her account by telling Phenice
that Rhadamistus had been killed by his
own father, who had been jealous of his
son's rise to power. The most compelling
reason against marrying Pharasmanes,
Zenobia told Phenice, was that she was
in love with Rhadamistus, brother and
Pharasmanes' son, Arsames.
When Arsames came to Zenobia from
a campaign in Albania, he asked her
whether she intended to marry Pharas-
TtHADAMISTUS AND ZENOBIA by Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, from CHIEF RIVALS OF COR-
NEILLE AND RACINE. Translated by Lacy Lockert. By permission of the publishers, Vanderbilt
University Press. Copyright, 1956, by Lacy Lockert.
3203

manes that day, as he had heard. He
declared his love for her and his jealousy
of his father. Zenobia assured him that
she would not marry Pharasmanes, but
she also declared that she could never
consider marriage with Arsames. Arsames,
knowing Zenobia only as Ismenia, was
forced to accept her decision.
Pharasmanes appeared and criticized
Arsames for returning to Iberia without
permission. When Arsames declared that
he came in support of his father to meet
the invasion planned by Corbulo on
behalf of Rome and Syria, Pharasmanes
dismissed the excuse and forbade his son
to profess love for Ismenia or ever to see
her again. Pharasmanes, having dismissed
Arsames, warned Ismenia that he would
not tolerate refusal. In desperation,
Zenobia appealed to Phenice to tell the
Roman ambassador of her plight.
But Rhadamistus still lived. Tortured
by repentance, knowing himself to be the
murderer of Zenobia's father, and
believing himself to be the murderer of his
wife, he arrived in Iberia as the
representative of Rome and the Roman choice
for king of Armenia. Rhadamistus told
his companion Hiero how he had been
wounded by Pharasmanes' soldiers and
how Corbulo had rescued him.
Rhadamistus, vowing revenge on his father, had
joined forces with Corbulo and been
appointed Roman ambassador. Hiero told
Rhadamistus that the Armenians, fearing
Pharasmanes, hoped to persuade Arsames
to become their king.
When Pharasmanes entered,
Rhadamistus told him that Nero did not choose
to have Pharasmanes become king of
Armenia. Pharasmanes answered that Rome
had better get its legions together, for he
was determined to invade Armenia. He
then supported his claim to the throne by
referring to his brother, Mithridates, and
to his son, Rhadamistus. Rhadamistus,
who had managed to keep his identity
hidden from his father, then angered
Pharasmanes by declaring that the king
should not expect to be heir to those he
had murdered. Only Rhadamistus* status
as ambassador kept Pharasmanes from
ordering him seized.
Arsames, not recognizing Rhadamistus,
refused to join with him in a revolt
against Pharasmanes; but he urged the
ambassador to take Ismenia from Iberia.
Arsames also told Rhadamistus of his love
for Ismenia, which for some hidden
reason she could not return. Rhadamistus,
who had no way of knowing that Ismenia
and Zenobia were the same, agreed to
help Ismenia.
When Zenobia came to Rhadamistus
he recognized her immediately, but only
his outcry made her realize that the
ambassador was the husband who had tried
to murder her. Rhadamistus, throwing
himself at her feet, blamed himself for
all his deeds, and Zenobia, partly from
duty and partly from pity, forgave him
his crimes.
Zenobia, who thought herself guilty
because of her love for Arsames, could
not wholly condemn Rhadamistus. When
Arsames again told her of his love, she
revealed that Rhadamistus was alive and
that he was her husband. Rhadamistus
interrupted the conversation and gave
way to angry jealousy when he learned
that Zenobia had revealed his identity.
Zenobia remonstrated with him, pointing
out that she would never have admitted
her love for Arsames had not
Rhadamistus' anger prompted her. Rhadamistus,
ashamed of his outburst, begged their
forgiveness.
Pharasmanes, fearing that Arsames was
in league with the Romans, for he had
seen his son talking to the Roman
ambassador, arrested Arsames and sent his
soldiers to capture the envoy. His anger
was further aroused when he observed
that the ambassador had taken Ismenia
with him. He pursued Rhadamistus and
wounded him with his sword. Arsames'
grief stirred Pharasmanes strangely; he
felt that somehow he had done a terrible
act. Rhadamistus, dying, appeared before
Pharasmanes and by a reference to
Mithridates made his identity known to his
father. Pharasmanes, realizing at last the
fatal consequences of his jealousy and his
lust for power, directed Arsames to take
3204

the Armenian throne. Sacrificing his own them to flee from him lest his jealousy
love for Zenobia as punishment for hav- once again lead him to slay one of his
ing killed his son, Pharasmanes relin- own offspring,
quished Zenobia to Arsames and told
3205

RICEYMAN STEPS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arnold Bennett C1867-1931)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1919
Locale: Riceyman Steps, a suburb of London
First published: 1923
Principal characters:
Henry Earlfobward, a bookseller
Mrs. Violet Arb, owner of a nearby shop
Elsie, maid for both Earlforward and Mrs. Arb
Joe, Elsie's friend
Critique:
Riceyman Steps is a novel both
amusing and tragic. Bennett's gifts for satire,
for ironic comment and incident, and
for character development, combine in
this novel to create an excellent comedy
of manners. But, as in all of Bennett's
work, the note of tragedy is, in the last
analysis, the important one and it is not
absent in Riceyman Steps. Henry
Earlforward and his wife, as well as Elsie and
Joe, are the victims of selfishness and
greed.
The Story:
Henry Earlforward owned a bookstore
left to him by his uncle, T. T.
Riceyman. It was cluttered, dusty, badly
lighted. Earlforward lived in a back
room of the shop, the upstairs of the
building being filled with old books.
One night Elsie, his cleaning girl,
came into the shop. She told Henry
that she also worked for Mrs. Arb, who
owned the confectioner's shop next door,
and that Mrs. Arb had sent her for a
cookbook. Henry found one containing
recipes for making substantial meals out
of practically no food at all. A little
later Elsie returned and said that Mrs.
Arb thanked him, but the book was
too expensive.
His curiosity aroused, he himself went
to Mrs. Arb's shop. Even though he
marked down the price of the book,
Mrs. Arb still refused to buy it. Henry
became more interested, for it was clear
that Mrs. Arb was no spendthrift. The
following Sunday they went for a walk,
and from then on they became close
friends.
At last Violet Arb sold her shop and
agreed to marry Henry. When Violet
asked him about a wedding ring, he
seemed surprised, for he had supposed
the one she already owned would do.
He got a file, sawed off the ring, sold
it, and bought another, all without
really spending a penny. They were
married one morning and for a
honeymoon spent the day in London.
They visited Madame Tussaud's
Waxworks and the Chamber of Horrors.
Henry, who had thought the wedding
breakfast expensive enough, was
distressed at being forced to spend more
money. He wondered if he had been
deceived, if Violet were not a spendthrift
after all. He began to complain about his
lame foot. Violet was dismayed; she had
wanted to see a motion picture. But
Henry could not be persuaded to change
his mind. He did not, he said, want a
painful leg on his wedding day.
When they passed by the shop that
night, Henry thought the place was on
fire. It was glowing with light, and men
were working inside. Violet explained
that the men had been engaged to clean
the dirty, cluttered shop. She had
planned the work as her wedding gift
RICEYMAN STEPS by Arnold Bennett. By permission of A. P. Watt & Son, London, and the publisher!.
DouWeday ft Co., Inc. Copyright, 1923, by Doubleday & Co., Inc.
3206

to him, but he had spoiled the surprise
by coming home before the men had
finished their task. Henry showed Violet
a safe that he had bought to safeguard
her valuables and her money.
Violet soon discovered that miserly
Henry would not light a fire, would have
no electric light, would eat practically
nothing. On their first morning together
she cooked an egg for him but he
refused to eat it. Later Elsie ate it in
secret. At another time Violet had Elsie
cook steaks, but Henry would not touch
them. There was an argument in which
Violet called him a miser who was
starving her to death. He left the room
and his steak. That night Elsie ate it.
When Violet discovered that Elsie had
eaten the steak, there was another row.
But Elsie began to eat. more and more
when nobody was there to observe her.
The girl was half-starved in the miserly
household. To stop Elsie's thefts of fooa,
Henry went to bed, called Elsie to his
room, announced he was seriously ill,
and asked if she thought it right to steal
food while he lay dying. Elsie was glum
and frightened.
A short time later Henry actually
became ill. Elsie, in defiance of the Earl-
forwards, managed to get Dr. Raste to
examine Henry. The doctor said that
the sick man would have to go to the
hospital. Then the doctor discovered that
Violet was also ill. At first Henry
refused to go to the hospital, but Violet
finally persuaded him to go. When the
doctor called the next morning, it was
Violet, however, who went to the
hospital. Henry stayed at home in the care of
Elsie.
In the meantime Elsie had been hoping
for the return of Joe, her sweetheart. He
had been employed by Dr. Raste,
had been ill, and had wandered off. Elsie
was sure he would return some day.
One night Elsie wanted to send a boy
to the hospital to inquire about Violet.
When she asked Henry for sixpence for
the messenger, he said she could go
herself. Not wanting to leave him, she
picked up his keys, went downstairs, and
opened the safe. Amazed to find so
much money there, she borrowed
sixpence and put an I. O. U. in its place.
Then she dashed out to find a boy to
carry her note. When she came back,
she found Joe waiting for her. He was
shabbily dressed and sick.
Elsie quietly carried Joe up to her
room and took care of him, taking pains
so that Henry would not suspect his
presence in the house. When Joe began
to improve, he told her he had been in
jail. Elsie did not care. She continued
to take care of Henry, promising him
that she would never desert him. The
hospital informed them that Violet was
to have an operation. That night Elsie
went next door to the confectioner's
ohop. Mrs. Belrose, the wife of the new
proprietor, telephoned the hospital and
was told that Violet had died because
her strength had been sapped through
malnutrition.
Henry seemed to take the news calmly
enough, but he grew steadily worse. Dr.
Raste came again and said that he must
go to a hospital, but Henry refused.
Without Elsie's knowledge, he got up and
went downstairs, where he discovered
with dismay Elsie's appropriation of the
sixpence. He sat down at his desk and
began to read his correspondence.
Elsie was in her room taking care of
Joe. To the neighbors the'house seemed
quite dark. Accordingly, Mrs. Belrose
insisted that her husband go over to
inquire about the sick man. He
discovered Henry's body lying in the shop.
A relative came from London and sold
the shop to Mr. Belrose. Joe recovered
and went back to work for Dr. Raste.
Because Elsie intended to marry Joe, she
also went to work for Dr. Raste.
3207

RICHARD THE SECOND
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical tragedy
Time of plot: Fourteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: c. 1595
Principal characters:
Richard II, King of England
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Richard's uncle
Edmund Langley, Duke of York, another uncle of Richard
Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, son of John of Gaunt
Duke of Aumerle, son of the Duke of York
Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk
Earl of Northumberland, supporter of Bolingbroke
Critique:
One of Shakespeare's best-known
historical plays, The Tragedy of King
Richard the Second is his first truly
independent work in this form. Its
concentration on blank verse reveals the influence
of Marlowe, but the character of Richard
himself clearly indicates the course the
playwright will follow in creating his
later tragedies of character. Revealing, as
it does, Shakespeare's patriotic feelings,
this play is among his most eloquent and
contains many lines frequently quoted.
The Story:
During the reign of Richard II, two
young dukes, Henry Bolingbroke and
Thomas Mowbray, quarreled bitterly; and
in the end the king summoned them into
his presence to settle their differences
publicly. Although Bolingbroke was the
oldest son of John of Gaunt, Duke of
Lancaster, and therefore a cousin of the
king, Richard was perfectly fair in his
interview with the two men and showed
neither any favoritism.
Bolingbroke accused Mowbray, Duke
of Norfolk, of mismanaging military funds
and of helping to plot the murder of the
dead Duke of Gloucester, another of the
king's uncles. All these charges Mowbray
forcefully denied. At last Richard decided
that to settle the dispute the men should
have a trial by combat at Coventry, and
the court adjourned there to witness the
tournament.
Richard, ever nervous and suspicious,
grew uneasy as the contest began.
Suddenly, just after the beginning trumpet
sounded, the king declared that the
combat should not take place. Instead, calling
the two men to him, he banished them
from the country. Bolingbroke was to be
exiled for six years and Mowbray for the
rest of his life. At the same time Richard
exacted promises from them that they
would never plot against him. Still
persistent in his accusations, Bolingbroke
tried to persuade Mowbray to plead
guilty, before he left England, to the
charges against him. Mowbray, refusing
to do so, warned Richard against the
cleverness of Bolingbroke.
Not long after his son had been
banished, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
became ill and sent for Richard to receive
his dying advice. Although the Duke of
York pointed out that giving advice to
Richard was too often a waste of time,
John of Gaunt felt that perhaps a dying
man would be heeded while a living one
would not. From his deathbed he
criticized Richard's extravagance, for
mishandling of public funds had almost
impoverished the nation. John of Gaunt
warned Richard also that the kingdom
would suffer for his selfishness.
Richard paid no attention to his uncle's
advice. After the death of John of Gaunt,
the king seized his lands and wealth to
use for capital in backing his Irish wars.
3208

His uncle, the aged Duke of York,
attempted to dissuade the king from these
moves because of Bolingbroke's anger and
influence among the people. Yorks fears
were soon confirmed. Bolingbroke,
hearing that his father's lands had been seized
by the king's officers, used the information
as an excuse to terminate his period of
banishment. Gathering about him troops
and supplies, he landed in the north of
England. There other unruly lords, the
Earl of Northumberland and his son,
Henry Percy,* known as Hotspur, Lord
Ross, and Lord Willoughby joined him.
Richard, heedless of all warnings, had
set off for Ireland to pursue his foreign
war. He left his tottering kingdom in the
hands of the weak Duke of York, who
was no match for the wily Bolingbroke.
When the exiled traitor reached
Gloucestershire, the Duke of York visited him at
his camp. Caught between loyalty to
Richard and his despair over the bankrupt state
of the country, York finally yielded his
troops to Bolingbroke. Richard, returning
to England and expecting to find an army
of Welshmen under his command, learned
that they, after hearing false reports of
his death, had gone over to Bolingbroke.
Moreover, the strong men of his court,
the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, and Green,
had all been executed.
Destitute of friends and without an
army, the sorrowing Richard took refuge
in Hint Castle, where Bolingbroke went
pretending to pay homage to the king.
Making his usurped titles and estates his
excuse, Bolingbroke took Richard
prisoner and carried him to London. There
Richard broke completely, showing little
interest in anything, philosophizing
constantly on his own downfall. Brought
before Bolingbroke and the cruel and
unfeeling Earl of Northumberland, Richard
was forced to abdicate his throne and sign
papers confessing his political crimes.
Bolingbroke, assuming royal authority,
ordered Richard imprisoned in the Tower
of London.
During a quarrel among the young
dukes of the court, the Bishop of Carlisle
announced that Mowbray had made a
name for himself while fighting in the
Holy Land, had then retired to Venice,
and had died there. When Bolingbroke
affected great concern over that news, the
Bishop of Carlisle turned on him and
denounced him for his part in depriving
Richard of the throne. Nevertheless,
Bolingbroke, armed with numerous legal
documents he had collected to prove his
rights, ascended the throne. Richard
predicted to the Earl of Northumberland
that Bolingbroke would soon distrust his
old aide because the nobleman had had
practice in unseating a king. Soon
afterward Richard was sent to the dungeons at
Pomfret Castle and his queen was
banished to France.
At the Duke of York's palace the aging
duke sorrowfully related to his duchess
the details of the coronation procession
of Henry IV. When the duke discovered,
however, that his son Aumerle and other
loyal followers of Richard were planning
to assassinate Henry IV at Oxford, York
immediately started for the palace to warn
the new monarch. The duchess, frantic
because of her son's danger, advised him
to reach the palace ahead of his father,
reveal his treachery to the king, and ask
the royal pardon. She herself finally
pleaded for her son before the king and
won Aumerle's release.
Having punished the conspirators,
Henry IV grew uneasy at the prospect of
other treasonable activities, for while
Richard lived there was always danger
that he might be restored to power. Henry
IV, plotting the death of the deposed
monarch, suggested casually to Sir Pierce
Exton, a faithful servant and courtier,
that he murder Richard at Pomfret.
There in his dungeon .Richard
quarreled with his keeper, according to Exton's
plan, and in the struggle that ensued
the knight drew his sword and struck
down his unhappy prisoner. He then
placed Richard's body in a coffin, carried
it to Windsor Castle, and there presented
it to Henry IV. Distressed over the news
of mounting insurrection in the country,
King Henry pretended innocence of the
3209

murder of Richard and vowed to make a the death of his fallen cousin.
pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for
3210

RICHARD THE THIRp
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: England
Firs* presented: c. 1593
Principal characters:
Edward IV, King of England
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, his brother
George, Duke of Clarence, another brother
Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV
Lady Anne, widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI;
afterward married to Richard III
Queen Margaret, widow of Henry VI
Edward, Prince of Wales, young son of Edward IV
Richard, Duke of York, another young son of Edward IV
The Duke of Buckingham, accomplice of the Duke of Gloucester
Lord Hastings, a supporter of Prince Edward
Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby
Sm William Catesby, a court toady
Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, afterward King Henry VII
Critique:
The Tragedy of King Richard the
Third is the last in the series of history
plays which Shakespeare wrote* depicting
the strife between the Houses of York
and Lancaster. Like Richard the Second,
this play is patterned after the work of
Marlowe with great emphasis on blank
verse rather than on prose and songs. A
tragedy of blood, Richard the Third is
full of the traditional violence and
murder, yet it manages to evoke a surprising
amount of sympathy for its hero-villain,
especially in the last scenes of the drama.
The Story:
After the conclusion of the wars
between the Houses of York and Lancaster.
Edward IV was firmly established on the
throne once again. Before long, however,
his treacherous brother Richard, the
hunchbacked Duke of Gloucester,
resumed his own plans for gaining the
throne. Craftily he removed one obstacle
in his path when he turned the king's
hatred against the third brother, the Duke
of Clarence. Telling the king of an
ancient prophecy that his issue would be
disinherited by one of the royal line whose
name began with the letter G, Richard
directed suspicion against the Duke of
Clarence, whose name was George.
Immediately Clarence was arrested and taken
to the Tower. Richard, pretending
sympathy, advised him that the jealousy and
hatred of Queen Elizabeth were
responsible for his imprisonment. After
promising every aid in helping his brother to
secure his freedom, Richard, as false in
word as he was cruel in deed, gave orders
that Clarence be stabbed in his cell and
his body placed in a barrel of malmsey
wine.
Hoping to insure his position more
definitely, Richard then made plans to
marry Lady Anne, widow of Prince
Edward, son of the murdered Henry VI.
The young Prince of Wales had also been
slain by Richard and his brothers after
the battles had ended; Lady Anne and
Queen Margaret, Henry's widow, were
the only remaining members of the once
powerful House of Lancaster still living
in England. Intercepting Lady Anne at
the funeral procession of Henry VI,
Richard attempted to woo her. In spite of
her hatred and fear of her husband's
murderer, she was finally persuaded to
3211

accept an engagement ring when Richard
insisted that it was for love of her that
he had murdered the Prince of Wales.
Richard went to the court, where
Edward IV lay ill. There he affected great
sorrow and indignation over the news of
the death of Clarence, thus endearing
himself to Lord Hastings and the Duke of
Buckingham who were friends of
Clarence. Insinuating that Queen Elizabeth
and her followers had turned the wrath
of the king against Clarence and thus
brought about his death, Richard
managed to convince everyone except Queen
Margaret, who knew well what had really
happened. Openly accusing him, she
attempted to warn Buckingham and the
others against Richard, but they ignored
her.
Edward IV, meanwhile, ailing and
depressed, tried to make peace among the
enemy factions in his realm, but before
this end could be accomplished he died.
His son, Prince Edward, was sent for
from Ludlow to take his father's place.
At the same time Richard imprisoned Lord
Grey, Lord Rivers, and Lord Vaughan,
followers and relatives of the queen, and
subsequently had them executed.
Queen Elizabeth, frightened, sought
refuge for herself and her second son, the
young Duke of York, with the Archbishop
of Canterbury. Richard, upon hearing
of the queen's action, pretended much
concern over the welfare of his brother's
children and set himself up as their
guardian. Managing to remove young York
from the care of his mother, he had him
placed in the Tower, along with Prince
Edward. He announced that they were
under his protection and that they would
remain there only until Prince Edward
had been crowned.
Learning from Sir William Catesby, a
court toady, that Lord Hastings was a
loyal adherent of the young prince,
Richard contrived to remove the influential
nobleman from the court. He summoned
Hastings to a meeting called supposedly
to discuss plans for the coronation of the
new king. Although Lord Stanley warned
Hastings that ill luck awaited him if he
went to the meeting, the trusting
nobleman paid no attention but kept his
appointment with Richard in the Tower.
There, in a trumped-up scene, Richard
accused Hastings of treason and ordered
his immediate execution. Then Richard
and Buckingham dressed themselves in
rusty old armor and pretended to the
lord mayor that Hastings had been
plotting against them; the lord mayor was
convinced by their false protestations that
the execution was justified.
Richard, with Buckingham, plotted to
seize the throne for himself.
Buckingham, speaking in the Guildhall of the
great immorality of the late King Edward,
hinted that both the king and his children
were illegitimate. Shocked, a citizens'
committee headed by the lord mayoi
approached Richard and begged him to
accept the crown. They found him, well
coached by Buckingham, in the company
of two priests, with a prayer book in his
hand. So impressed were they with his
seeming piety, that they repeated their
offer after he had hypocritically refused
it. Pretending great reluctance, Richard
finally accepted, after being urged by
Buckingham, the lord mayor, and Catesby.
Immediate plans for the coronation were
made.
Lady Anne, interrupted during a visit
to the Tower with Queen Elizabeth and
the old Duchess of York, was ordered to
Westminster to be crowned Richard's
queen. The three women heard with
horror that Richard had ascended the
throne, and they were all the more
suspicious of him because they had been
refused entrance to see the young princes.
Fearing the worst, they sorrowed among
themselves and saw only doom for the
nation.
Soon after his coronation Richard
suggested to Buckingham that the two princes
must be killed. When Buckingham balked
at the order, Richard refused to consider
his request for elevation to the earldom
of Hereford. Proceeding alone to secure
the safety of his position, he hired Sir
James Tyrrel, a discontented nobleman,
to smother the children in their sleep.
3212

Then, to make his position still more
secure, Richard planned to marry Elizabeth
of York, his own niece and daughter of
the deceased Edward IV. Spreading the
news that Queen Anne was mortally ill,
he had her secretly murdered. He then
removed any threat from Clarence's heirs
by imprisoning his son and by arranging
a marriage for the daughter whereby her
social position was considerably lowered.
But all these precautions could not stem
the tide of threats that were beginning to
endanger Richard. In Brittany, die Earl of
Richmond, Henry Tudor, gathered an
army and invaded the country. When
news of Richmond's landing at Milford
reached London, Buckingham fled from
Richard, whose cruelty and guilt were
finally becoming apparent to his closest
friends and associates. Buckingham joined
the forces of Richmond, but shortly
afterward he was captured and executed by
Richard.
In a tremendous final battle the armies
of Richmond and Richard met on Bos-
worth Field. There, on the night before
the encounter, all the ghosts of Richard's
victims appeared to him in his sleep and
prophesied his defeat. At the same time
they foretold the coming victory and
success of the Earl of Richmond, lliese
predictions held true, for the next day
Richard, fighting desperately, was slain in
battle by Richmond, after crying out the
offer of his ill-gotten kingdom for a horse,
his own having been killed under him.
The duke mounted the throne and
married Elizabeth of York, thus uniting the
houses of York and Lancaster and ending
the feud of those noble families forever.
3213

RIGHT YOU ARE-IF YOU THINK SO
Type of work: Drama
Author: Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)
Type of plot: Expressionistic parable
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: A small Italian town, the capital of a province
First presented: 1917
Principal characters:
Lamberto Laudisi, an observer of human nature
Ponza, secretary to the provincial councilor
Signora Frola, his mother-in-law
Signora Ponza, his wife
Commendatore Agazzi, a provincial councilor
Amalia, his wife
Dina, their daughter
The Prefect
Centuri, a police commissioner
Critique:
Pirandello's Cost e—se vi pare!—which
has been given such varied English titles
as Right You Are—If You Think So,
Right You Are If You Think You Are,
and It Is So! (If You Think So)-de-
velops one of Pirandello's favorite themes:
the relativity of truth. Laudisi, who
mocks the determination of the
townspeople to pry out the secret of Signora
Frola and the Ponzas and who several
times vainly tries to stop them, serves as
the author's spokesman and the explicator
of his theme. Despite the philosophic
nature of this theme, the drama is an
eminently actable one.
The Story:
There was much talk in the small
capital of an Italian province about the
peculiar family arrangements of old
Signora Frola and her daughter, the wife
of Ponza, a newly appointed secretary to
the provincial councilor, Commendatore
Agazzi. Why was Signora Frola living by
herself in a fine apartment next door to
the Agazzis and not with her daughter
and her son-in-law? Why were Ponza
and his wife living in fifth-floor tenement
rooms on the edge of town? Why did
Ponza visit the old lady every evening
and sometimes during the day, but
always by himself? Why did Signora Frola
never visit her daugher, and why did h ar
daughter, whom no one except Ponza
ever saw, never visit her? Why would the
old lady not even permit Signora Agazzi
and her daughter to pay a social call?
While the enigma was being discussed
by Agazzi, his family, and several visitors
in the Agazzi parlor, Signora Frola came
in to apologize for having refused to
admit the Agazzis when they came
calling, and also to explain why she lived
apart from her daughter. She did not
want to interfere, she said, in the home
life of her daughter and Ponza. She lived
by herself it was true, but she was not
unhappy about it; and she kept in
contact with her daughter even though there
were no face-to-face visits. Signora Frola
had hardly left when Ponza—a fierce,
nervous, even sinister-looking man—came
in to explain about his poor mother-in-
law. The truth was she was mad.
Actually, her daughter had been dead for four
years and he had married again two years
later. But he had prevailed upon his
second wife to humor the old woman by
carrying on shouted conversations from a
fifth-floor balcony and writing notes to
be let down in a basket from the balcony
to the old woman on the ground.
RIGHT YOU ARE—IF YOU THINK SO by Luigi Pirandello. Translated by Arthur Livingston. By
permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1922, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
Copyright renewed, 1950, by Stefano, Fausto and Lietta Pirandello.
3214

No sooner had Ponza gone than Si-
gnora Frola returned. Though the
company at first denied it, she knew what
Ponza had been telling them. The sad
truth was, however, that he was the mad
one. The real truth, which she wished
she did not have to tell, was that when
he married her young and innocent
daughter he so frightened her with his
passionate attentions that she had to be
put into an institution for a while. When
she finally returned, Ponza himself was
in such a nervous state that he could not
be convinced that she was his wife; and
she was prevailed upon to pretend that
she was a second wife taking the place
of the one he had lost.
Before long a plot was hatched to have
Signora Frola and Ponza confront each
other in the presence of Agazzi and the
others in order that the truth might be
uncovered. Lamberto Laudisi, the brother-
in-law of Agazzi, even from the
beginning of the gossipy, inquisitorial
discussion, had been of the opinion that the
private domestic lives of the Ponzas and
Signora Frola were their own affair and
should remain so. They were harming
no one; they were not seeking anyone's
aid; they should be let alone. But Laudisi
was overruled. Agazzi left and came back
shortly to get some papers which he had
purposely left in his study so that he
might bring Ponza back with him to get
them. As they came in, Ponza heard a
piano in the next room playing a tune
which had been a favorite with his wife
Lena. Signora Frola was playing, and
when she stopped her voice could be
heard through the doorway. She was
discussing her daughter's cherished melody
in such a way as to suggest that Lena
was still alive. When she confronted
Ponza a moment later in the study, he
furiously insisted that Lena was dead,
that he was now married to Julia, and
that the piano which Lena used to play
had been smashed to pieces long ago.
While he was frenziedly shouting at
her, she was occasionally glancing about
at the others in the room as if to call
attention to his piteous state and to her
forbearance in humoring him. After
bursting into tears, Ponza suddenly
ordered her out of the room and she soon
left, sobbing. When she had gone, Ponza
immediately grew calm again and
explained the reason for his actions. The
old woman, he said, was so convinced
of his madness that he had to pretend
to be mad. Now he must go and see her.
Laudisi, who had earlier insisted that
truth is a relative thing and that what
is one person's truth is not necessarily
another's, laughed at the confusion of
the Agazzis and their visitors. Now, he
mocked, they had the truth they had
wanted!
Still the puzzle remained: who was
telling the truth and who was lying,
either knowingly or unknowingly?
Earlier someone had suggested that docu-
ments such as a marriage certificate for
the second marriage, or the letters which
the second—or first—Signora Ponza wrote
to the old woman, might be secured to
prove who was right. One of those
interested, Commissioner Centuri, arrived
with some data which he had uncovered
and which might yet clear up the
puzzle; but the data turned out to be as
inconclusive as the information already at
hand.
A chance remark that Signora Ponza
might as well be in another world since
no one had ever seen her made Laudisi
wonder whether there really was a
Signora Ponza.
Still another solution to the enigma
was suggested. Let Ponza go and get his
wife so that she might be seen by
everybody, to prove that she existed, and let
her be questioned by the prefect himself
in the presence of everyone so that the
truth might be generally known. Ponza
left after he had been assured that his
wife and his mother-in-law would not be
compelled to face each other. But in his
absence the old woman returned to say
that, since she could not live her own
life in peace, she would leave town and
not come back. To pacify her, the pre-
3215

feet pretended to believe her version of
the truth, though he had earlier said he
believed Ponza's. When Ponza returned
with a heavily veiled woman dressed as
if she were in deep mourning, he was
shocked and angry to see his mother-in-
law, since he had been assured that she
would not be there. Signora Ponza, to
quiet the clamor, asked Ponza to take the
old woman away. Both Ponza and his
mother-in-law went out weeping and with
their arms about each other's waists.
Now the truth would finally come out:
Signora Ponza would tell the entire group
the whole truth. But again and for the
final time the decision was left to each
of her hearers: she was the daughter of
Signora Frola; she was also the second
wife of Ponza, and, for herself, she was
nobody. When the prefect insisted that
she must be one or the other of the two
women, she answered that she was the
person she was believed to be. Hearing
that reply, Laudisi, saying that everybody
now knew the truth, burst out laughing.
3216

LE RIME OF PETRARCH
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374)
First transcribed: After 1327
Of the 366 poems included in the
collection which Petrarch made of his
poetry, 317 are sonnets, twenty-nine can-
zoniy nine sestine, seven ballate, and four
madrigals. According to the introduction
by Theodor E. Mommsen to Anna Maria
Armi's translation of the sonnets and
songs, the collection has no definite title
but is sometimes called the Rime or
Canzoniere. Petrarch called the collection
Reran* vulgarium fragmenta, calling
attention to the fact that the brief poems
were written, not in Latin, but in the
vernacular.
The comparison between Dante and
Petrarch is inevitably made when one
considers the sonnets and songs of
Petrarch, for both were Italians writing in
the vernacular; both centered their poems
about some gracious lady suddenly
discovered, idealized, and praised
throughout a lifetime; and both became giants of
Italian literature. Dante wrote his Vita
Nuova about Beatrice Portinari, whom he
met when he was nine and she was eight
and whom he continued to worship as
the ideal woman and to celebrate in his
poetry even after her death. Petrarch's
ideal woman was Laura, possibly Laura
de Noves, whom he met in 1327, in his
twenty-second year.
Like Dante, Petrarch kept his passion
at a distance—one might say at a poetic
distance—from the woman who charmed
him; and cynics can add that that is the
secret of enduring poetic love. When one
reads the poems of either Dante or
Petrarch, however, it is difficult to believe
that the love is merely an excuse for
poetry; somehow in the midst of creative
passion, something of human passion
burned as well to supply the warmth
which survives the centuries. It may be
that this enduring emotion can be at-
tributed to those distant ladies who set
LE RIME. OF PETRARCH, from SONNETS AND SONGS. Translated by Armi. Excerpts reprinted
by permission of tbe publishers, Pantbeon Books Inc. Copyrigbt, 1946, by Pantheon Books Inc.
the poets to writing immortal poetry, but
it is more reasonable to suppose that
poetic genius worked in both cases to turn
a sudden fancy into a lifelong poetic
enterprise.
Naturally, critics have wondered who
Laura was, or whether she was. Even
Petrarch's contemporaries were not
certain, and some of them contended that
the Laura of the poems was an invention,
an ideal based on no model whatsoever.
Petrarch denied the charge; but, more
significantly, the poems also deny it by
the force of their feeling and imagery.
One sympathizes with Petrarch, who
pointed out that it would be madness
to spend years writing hundreds of
poems about an entirely imaginary woman.
For both Dante and Petrarch the
idealization process took them beyond
earth to heaven. That is, neither Beatrice
nor Laura, as a poetic figure, is merely
mortal, physical woman as she ideally
could be; she is also spiritually
significant, by her person and manner a being
who symbolizes the highest values to
which the human soul can hope to
attain. Dante made Beatrice an inspiration
even in Paradise and used her as the
central guiding figure of the latter half
of The Divine Comedy. In writing of
the painter Simon, Petrarch comments:
But certainly Simon saw paradise
Wherein this gentle lady had her place;
There he saw her and portrayed in such
guise
That is the witness here of her fair face.
(From LXXVII)
Later, writing more explicitly of Laura
after her death, Petrarch speaks of
"Seeing her now on such intimate term/With
Him who in her life had her heart's
right," and, in the same sonnet, he
concludes:
3217

For fairer than before, my inner eye
Sees her soar up and with the angels fly
At the feet of our own eternal Lord.
(From CCCXLV)
It has been traditional to divide the
sonnets and songs into two major parts,
the one including poems written while
Laura was living, and the other
including those poems written after her death.
Petrarch first saw her on April 6, 1327,
and she died on the same day of the year,
in 1348, from the plague.
Poem III of the collection tells us of
the first meeting:
It was the day when the sun's rays
turned white
Out of the pity it felt for its sire,
When I was caught and taken by
desire,
For your fair eyes, my lady, held me
quite.
In V Petrarch works the syllables of
the name "Laura" into his verse in order
to describe what happens when his sighs
call her with the name that Love wrote
on his heart: "Cosi LAUdare e REverire
insegna/La voce stessa . . ." ("Thus to
LAUd and REvere teaches and vows/
The voice itself . . .")
In VI appears one of Petrarch's
numerous puns of Laura's name, when he
writes of Love as holding the bridle of
his desire and thus being directed "Only
to reach the laurel and its sour fruit . . ."
("Sol per venir al lauro . . .") Again,
in the following poem, he speaks of the
"love of laurel." It was in part because of
such puns that Petrarch was accused of
inventing the character "Laura."
These plays with words were the least
of Petrarch's accomplishments in the
sonnet form. He was so adept at using the
fourteen lines to express a complete idea
or image with its emotional correlate that
poets have taken him as a model ever
since. A full appreciation of the poet
comes only from the reading of his
poetry; only then does one understand what
other poets have envied in Petrarch's
work. Since he wrote in Italian, it
follows that to know his poetry one must
know Italian—or, at the very least,
something of the flow and sound of the
language. Then it is possible, by
comparing an English translation to the original,
to sense the beauty which results from
sensitive use of the sound and sense of
language within the sonnet form.
Attention to form alone will not yield
full knowledge of Petrarch's power in
poetry. Poets and artists generally like to
think that form alone is what counts—
and for an obvious reason: the poet gives
the form to the material he finds: since
he wan!s credit, he turns attention to
form. But what the poet forgets, when
he talks this way, is that he selects
material, underslands it from his perspective,
and in using it for his purposes forces
a recognition of its power as material. So
it is with Petrarch. He writes in the
tradition of love poetry, but he chose to do
so; and the advantage he gained is that
he writes of his beloved from a poignant
distance. In making Laura unobtainable,
he secured her forever in his poetry. Not
that it is a simple matter to sing doleful
songs of romantic longing, but there is
an advantage, after all, in being able to
give the imagination full rein while
touching the sympathies of the reader
who, even across centuries, regrets that
Petrarch did not finally possess his Laura:
A rain of bitter tears falls from my face
And a tormenting wind blows with my
sighs
Whenever toward you I turn my eyes,
Whose absence cuts me from the human
race. (From XVII)
Much of Petrarch's poetry is concerned
with the shortness of life, the inevitable-
ness of death, the end of all that is fair
and young on earth; and these matters
are, of course, related to Laura. Thus the
poetry before her death has a great deal
in common with the poetry written
afterward—the difference being that regret
and speculation have now taken the
place of fear for her loss. Before her
death Petrarch amused himself with
poetically metaphysical imagery by which
he claimed that Laura would outshine
3218

stars and draw the angels to her, but after
her death the poetic amusement is either
absent or tempered by a sober
recognition of the fact of death; and if Laura
is the favorite of anyone in heaven, it is
because of her spirit for which he shows
reverent respect. We are reminded of
Donne by the following image:
To count the constellations one by one
And to pour in a goblet all the seas
Was perhaps my intention when I took
This small sheet to relate such
mysteries. . . . (From CXXVII)
Not all the poems are about Laura.
Petrarch writes of Italy at war, of nature,
of God and the love of God, of life and
death and other matters of universal
concern. But even these poems have a
human dimension which would be lost were
they not fixed within the context of the
Laura poetry. Perhaps it is because
Petrarch had the heart and wit to be a love
poet that we can attend with respect to
his thoughts about matters that concern
us all.
After Laura's death Petrarch wrote a
sonnet of lament, CCLXVII, which
begins, "Alas! the lovely face, the eyes that
save/Alas! the charming countenance
and proud!" and in the following poem
he asks, "What shall I do? What do you
counsel, Love?/It is now time to die./
And I have waited longer that I would./
My lady died and did my heart
remove. . . ." The long song ends:
Flee the clearness, the green,
Do not go near where there is song and
laughter,
Canzone, follow after
Weeping: you are not fit for merry
folk,
A widow, without comfort, in black
cloak.
Petrarch's lamentations gradually
change character as one reads toward
the end of the collection. Grief gives way
to reflection, and reflection turns his
thoughts to spiritual love—thus to the
love of God. Laura becomes the symbol
of what man should strive for, even
though in life she was desirable as
woman. Because "Death quelled the sun
wonted to overwhelm" him, and "Dust is
the one who was my chill and spark," he
is able to write, "From this I see my
good," and "I find freedom at last, bitter
and sweet/And to the Lord whom I
adore and greet,/Who with his nod
governs the holy things,/I return, tired
of life, and with life sated." (From
CCCLXIII)
Although translation does not always
succeed in reproducing the finely-wrought
rhythms of Petrarch's verse, the best has
the great virtue of coming as close to the
form, sound, and even syntax of the
original as one could hope for. On that
account, an appreciation of the original
becomes possible, even for those who do
not understand Italian.
3219

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
Type of work: Poem
Author: Samuel Tavlor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Type of plot: Ballad fantasy
Time of plot: Late medieval period
Locale: A voyage around the Horn into the Pacific and thence home
First published: 1798
Principal characters:
The Ancient Mariner
A Hermit
A Wedding Guest
Critique:
According to Coleridge, his aim in
writing The Ancient Mariner was to malce
the supernatural seem real. For the poem
he chose as his verse form the old four-
line ballad stanza and an archaic style.
Especially noteworthy is the division of
the poem into parts, each part ending
with a striking sentence which serves as
a high point in the story.
The Story:
Three young gallants on their way to
a wedding were stopped by an old gray-
headed sailor who detained one of them.
The Ancient Mariner held with his
glittering eye a young man whose next of
kin was being married in the church
nearby and forced him to listen, against
his will, to the old seaman's tale. The
Ancient Mariner told how the ship left
the home port and sailed southward to the
equator. In a storm the vessel was blown
to polar regions of snow and ice.
When an albatross flew out of the
frozen silence, the crew hailed it as a
good omen. The sailors made a pet of
the albatross and regarded it as a fellow
creature. One day the Ancient Mariner
killed the bird with his crossbow. The
superstitious sailors believed bad luck
would follow.
Fair winds blew the ship northward
until it reached the equator, where it
was suddenly becalmed and lay for days
without moving. The thirsty seamen
blamed the Ancient Mariner and hung
the dead albatross about his neck as a
sign of his guilt.
In the distance a ship appeared, a
skeleton ship which moved on the still sea
where no wind blew. On its deck Death
and Life-in-Death were casting dice for
the crew and the Ancient Mariner. As a
result of the cast, Death won the two
hundred crew members, who dropped
dead one by one. As the soul of each dead
sailor rushed by, the Ancient Mariner
was reminded of the whiz of his
crossbow when he shot the albatross. Life-in-
Death had won the Ancient Mariner,
who must now live on to expiate his sins.
Furthermore, the curse lived on in the
eyes of the men who died accusing him.
One night the Ancient Mariner,
observing the beauty of the water snakes around
the ship, blessed these creatures in his
heart. The spell was broken. The
albatross fell from his neck into the sea.
At last the Ancient Mariner was able
to sleep. Rain fell to quench his thirst.
The warped vessel began to move, and
the bodies of the dead crew rose to
resume their regular duties as the ship
sailed quietly on, moved by a spirit
toward the South Pole.
The Ancient Mariner fell into a
trance. He awoke to behold his own
country, the very port from winch he
had set sail. Then the angelic spirits left
the dead bodies of the crew and appeared
in their own forms of light. Meanwhile,
the pilot on the beach had seen the lights
and he rowed out with his son and a holy
Hermit to bring the ship in to harbor.
Suddenly the ship sank, but the pilot
pulled the Ancient Mariner into his boat.
Once ashore, the old man asked the
Hermit to hear his confession and give him
3220

penance. The Ancient Mariner told the
Wedding Guest that at uncertain times
since that moment, the agony of his
guilt returned and he must tell the story
of his voyage to one who must he taught
love and reverence for all things God
has made and loved.
The merry din of the wedding had
ceased, and the Wedding Guest returned
home a sadder and a wiser man.
3221

THE RING AND THE BOOK
Type of work: Poem
Author: Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Type of plot: Dramatic monologues
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Italy
first published: 1868-1869
Principal characters:
Pietro Comparini, an aged Roman
Violante, Pietro's wife
Pompilia, the Comparini's adopted daughter
Gunx) Franceschini, Pompilia's husband
Giuseppe Caponsacchi, a priest
Critique:
This poem reveals Browning's deep
perceptive and poetic powers at their
greatest heights. Based upon a murder
trial in the city of Florence in 1698, the
poem attempts to probe the inner
motivations of the people involved in that old,
sordid tale of passion and crime. A
series of dramatic characterizations and
episodes carries the reader to the
magnificent conclusion. Pompilia and
Caponsacchi are among Browning's most notable
creations. Too long to be one of the
widely read poems of Browning, yet too
penetrating to be disregarded by any of
his admirers, The Ring and the Book is
written with tremendous power of
language.
The Story:
Count Guido Franceschini, descended
from an ancient house of Aretine, had
married Pompilia Comparini, a young
and beautiful Roman girl. Unhappy with
her husband, the young wife fled back
to Rome in the company of a young
priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi. Guido and
four accomplices followed her, and on
Christmas night he found his wife at
the home of her parents, Pietro and
Violante. He murdered the seventy-year-old
man and woman and fatally wounded
seventeen-year-old Pompilia.
The aged parents were laid in the
church where the people of Rome came
to stare and to speculate. The Comparini
had been childless until somehow
Violante had tricked Pietro into thinking that
she had given birth to the child she had
secretly bought. It was Violante's
mischief which had led to evil, asserted the
Roman people. She had spied Guido, of
a noble family, and had persuaded him
to take Pompilia for his wife. Then all
three, parents and daughter, had moved
to his estate in Arezzo and there learned
of Guido's poverty. Leaving Pompilia
behind, the Comparini returned to Rome.
Back in Rome, Violante confessed to
Pietro that she had bought the child from
a prostitute, and by disowning her
parentage the aged couple denied Guido his
dowry rights. Pompilia, meanwhile, wrote
a letter to the archbishop in Rome,
telling him that since her parents' departure
life in Arezzo had become unbearable.
In Arezzo, Pompilia had begun a
flirtation with Caponsacchi, the Roman gos-
sipers related, and at last had run away
with him. As the guilty pair neared
Rome, Guido overtook them and brought
them to Rome and to the Pope. The
couple declared themselves innocent and
disavowed love letters which Guido
claimed had passed between them. When
the court treated the case as a slight
marriage quarrel, Guido returned to
Arezzo and the taunts of his townsmen.
Soon afterward news reached him that
Pompilia, who had returned to the
Comparini, had given birth to a son. Then
Guido took four men, went to Rome,
killed the parents, and left Pompilia
dying. The Romans excitedly awaited
the trial, for Caponsacchi would be one
of the witnesses.
Another group of spectators in Rome
3222

took a different view of the murderer
and his wife. Pompilia had been a
blessing to her foster parents, no matter how
she came to them. They had considered
it a blessing when Guido married their
daughter, only to reach horrible
disillusionment when they went to Arezzo and
saw his cruelty and poverty. She was
Guido's victim, these gossips said.
The tribunal tried to determine the
truth in the case. Pietro and Violante
had been poor, struggling creatures.
When the mother of Pompilia was with
child, Violante had bargained with her
for the baby and deceived her husband
by pretending that it was she who was
pregnant. Her act was judged criminal.
When Guido came to Rome to find a
wife to bear him sons, and a dowry to pay
his debts, Pietro and Violante gave him
their daughter so that she could rise in
name and fortune. When they learned
that Guido was penniless, they cried that
they had been cheated. Meanwhile it
was Pompilia who suffered between the
rival factions of parents and husband.
She was tricked by Guido to trace letters
to Caponsacchi, which were offered at
the trial. But Guido's friends claimed
that he could not have so mistreated his
young wife, that she must have written
the letters herself.
Guido told his own story. His family
had once been wealthy and great, but
in his lifetime they had known only
poverty. His brothers were priests; he
alone remained to carry on the Frances-
chini name. His brother Paul, a priest
in Rome, had advised him that Pompilia
would make a suitable wife. He was to
give the girl his name and state in return
for her dowry and her son. But
Pompilia shirked her wifely duties from the
first. One day she caught the eye of
Caponsacchi at the opera. Afterward
Caponsacchi's way to church led him past
Guido's house, past Pompilia's window.
Then one night Pompilia drugged Guido
and all the servants and fled with her
priest to the inn where Guido located
them. He found some letters
Caponsacchi had exchanged with her, letters
which she claimed had been forged. He
brought them to court to have his
marriage annulled, but the court upheld the
marriage and sent Caponsacchi away fo?
a short confinement. Pompilia returned
to Pietro and Violante and there she had
a child which Guido believed
Caponsacchi's, He had no other course, he
said, but to go to Rome and cleanse his
family name, and he threw himself upon
the justice of the court.
Caponsacchi took the stand to describe
his first sight of Pompilia at the opera.
Not long after he received a letter, signed
by Pompilia, confessing love <:nd asking
him to come to her window. Suspecting
the letter to be a forgery, he answered
it with a refusal. He received more
letters. At last he became curious and went
to stand outside Guido's house. Pompilia,
seeing him, rebuked him for his unseemly
letters to her, a married woman. They
decided that they were victims of Guido's
plot. Pompilia begged Caponsacchi to
take her to her parents in Rome. His
heart softening at her plight, he arranged
for her to go away with him.
Pompilia, Caponsacchi said, had been
victimized by her cruel husband. The
testimony of dying Pompilia upheld- what
Caponsacchi had said. At the time of
her marriage she had been only thirteen
years old. She had been brought to
Arezzo, to an impoverished home where
Guido's brother had tried to seduce
her. For three years she lived in misery.
Then she received letters from
Caponsacchi. She tried to understand the
mystery, knowing that somehow she
was being tricked, but finally she sent
for the priest because she had decided to
seek help from the outside world.
The testimony of others followed, some
in defense of Guido, others exposing his
carefully laid plot to rid himself of
Pompilia. Testimony of Pompilia's innocence
was also presented. The Pope,
condemning Guido for the crime, pronounced
Pompilia innocent of guilt and told the
court of the tremendous burden of justice
that a Pope must carry on his shoulders.
Guido and his four accomplices were
3223

sentenced to be hanged.
Humbled and fearful of death, Guido
made one last plea for his life. Pride
and self-love colored his statements as he
confessed his crime but rationalized his
motive. He was to be pitied; he wanted
to live. He pleaded for mercy which was
not granted.
3224

RING ROUND THE MOON
Type of work: Drama
Author: Jean Anouilh (1910- )
Time: 1912
Locale: The Auvergne, France
First presented: 1947
Principal characters:
Hugo, a young man about town
Frederic, his twin brother
Madame Desmermortes, their aunt
Diana Messerschmann, engaged to Frederic
Messerschmann, her millionaire father
Lady Dorothy India, Madame Desmermortes' niece and Messer-
schmann's mistress
Isabelle, a ballet dancer
Her Mother, a teacher of the pianoforte
Romainville, Isabelle's patron
Patrice Bombelles, Messerschmann's traveling secretary, secredy in
love with Lady India
Capulat, Madame Desmermortes' faded companion
Jean Anouilh likes to divide his plays
into three categories of material and
treatment, and to date he has maintained a
fairly even balance of productivity among
the classifications he has designated.
Included in his pieces noires, as he calls his
more somber dramas, are those based on
themes taken from classic Greek sources
or from history: Legend of Lovers, the
retelling in a modern setting of the
Orpheus and Eurydice story; Antigone, a
thinly veiled allegory of France during
the German occupation; Medea, and The
Lark, which deals with the martyrdom of
Joan of Arc. On the evidence of these
plays it would be possible to make out a
good case proving that Anouilh is the
leading tragic dramatist of his generation
in France; however, he is better known
in this country and in England for his
pieces roses and pieces brillantes, his
lighter works of tender feeling, artifice,
and wit which do not fall into any of
the conventional classifications of drama.
Neither comedy, farce, fantasy, nor
romance, they contain elements of all four.
Ring Round the Moon, listed among the
pieces brillantes, is a typical example.
Ring Round the Moon is the title given
by Christopher Fry to his adaptation of
Anouilh's L'lnvitation au Chdteau.
Although this version in English has
considerable merit and unmistakable charm in
its own right—a Cinderella theme treated
in the manner of Oscar Wilde—Fry has
caught little more than the mannered
grace and brittle style of the original. His
treatment, aptly described as "A Charade
with Music," is a work of surface
brilliance, poetic overtones, and sly wit, and
as an engaging divertissement it provides
an entertaining evening in the theater.
Anouilh's play, on the other hand, is
more serious in its ironic implications,
depth of feeling, and insight into the
muddled human situation, matters
presented against a background that seems
always on the point of dissolving into the
make-believe atmosphere of a fairy tale.
This effect is characteristic of Anouilh's
art, for he holds that the primary
business of the theater is to create an illusion
and a mood. The world of his plays is a
moon-struck region of imagination and
invention in which the logic of things as
they happen is seldom the daylight logic
of the actual or the commonplace. In
spite of the fact that this world is as
circumscribed and meticulously detailed as
Proust's, it lends itself to effects of
unabashed theatricality appropriate to a
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land in which the
fantastic becomes the real, art is also artifice,
and no clear line divides the rueful from
3225

the comic. Since Giraudoux no writer has
been more successful in combining the
irresponsible with the serious, the
improbable with the real. Such stock situations as
the confusion of identical twins,
contrived or ridiculous misunderstandings
between lovers, affections abruptly
transferred, and the play within a play abound
in Anouilh's dramas because he dares to
be original in an old-fashioned way. He
works within a stage tradition that goes
back through the comedy of manners and
the commedia delV arte to Plautus,
Terence, and Menander.
A twofold theme of deception and self-
deception provides the dramatic
motivation in Ring Round the Moon. The
setting is the fifteenth-century chateau of
Madame Desmermortes, the time those
almost forgotten days before World War
I when everyone had plenty of money—
except the poor—and there was an
international society, when aristocratic
elderly ladies had genteel companions and
wealthy elderly men had traveling
secretaries, and when fabulous balls were
common. An assemblage of guests has
gathered at the chateau for such a gala
occasion. They include Madame
Desmermortes' nephews, Hugo and Frederic;
Messerschmann, a millionaire
industrialist of obscure origins; Diana, his
daughter; Romainville, a patron of the arts;
Lady Dorothy India, Madame
Desmermortes7 niece and Messerschmann's
mistress, and Patrice Bombelles, the
millionaire's secretary, with whom Lady India
is involved in a secret love affair.
Hugo and Frederic are identical twins,
alike in every respect except that Frederic
has a heart and Hugo does not. Frederic
is engaged to Diana, who is as heartless
as Hugo and obviously the wrong person
for Frederic to marry. Unable to see
reason, he has followed a blind path
wherever love has led; his latest folly is
sleeping in the rhododendron bushes under
Diana's window. Not realizing that he
himself is in love with Diana, Hugo is
determined to end his guileless brother's
romance. To this end he hires Isabelle, a
dancer in the corps de ballet at the Paris
Opera, politely blackmails Romainville
into passing her off as his niece, and
introduces her as a guest invited to the ball.
For a fee and the dress he has provided,
Isabelle is to make herself the center of
attention, so much so, in fact, that Hugo
will appear to be in love with her. At the
same time she is supposed to make
Frederic think that she is in love with him
in order to draw that young man to her
and away from Diana.
Even before the ball matters begin to
go awry. To the consternation of
Madame Desmermortes' proper butler, Isa-
belle's vulgar mother also arrives and is
recognized by Capulat, Madame
Desmermortes' companion, as an old school
friend. To explain her presence, the
mother tells Capulat that Hugo and
Isabelle are really in love and that the young
man has brought the girl to the ball under
the pretense that she is Romainville's
niece in order to conceal her true identity.
Informed of this circumstance by hei
companion, Madame Desmermortes
decides to take a hand in the masquerade;
she dresses Isabelle's mother in finery and
introduces her as prominent in society.
From these materials Anouilh has
constructed a plot in which irony and
nonsense are only a part of the thematic
design, not the ultimate effect of the play.
With compassion and insight he shows
in brief glimpses the reverse side of the
illusions by which humanity lives, for his
real theme is the isolation of the lonely
and the loving and the attempts of men
and women to find understanding among
themselves, happiness in money or in
love. Messerschmann and Isabelle stand
on a common footing when the
millionaire, urged on by his jealous daughter,
offers Isabelle money to leave the ball, and
the dancer refuses. They end by tearing
up the money in an angry, despairing
rejection of material values. Then
Messerschmann, remembering his peace and
contentment in the days when he was a
tailor in Cracow, goes off to break the
Bourse and so lose his great fortune. His
failure—for his flurry on the exchange
more than doubles his wealth—is as ironic
3226

in its consequences as Isabelle's pretended
suicide when, according to Hugo's plan,
she throws herself in the lake on the
chateau grounds; it is Hugo, not Frederic,
who pulls her out, and it is to heartless
Hugo that she turns in the misery of not
being loved.
In the end worldly, shrewd old
Madame Desmermortes sets these confused
matters straight. Frederic discovers the
true nature of Diana and finds in Isabelle
an innocence and gentleness of heart to
match his own. Hugo realizes that he has
secretly wanted Diana all the while, after
Madame Desmermottes makes him see
that they were really made for each other.
Even Messerschmann's future holds a
promise of happiness. Believing that he
has lost all his money, Lady India forgets
Bombelles and swears that she will follow
Messerschmann to Siberia if need be.
As stylized as a quadrille, touching even
in its absurdity, Anouilh's play reveals
not only the human capacity for error,
self-deception, cruelty, and guilt but also
man's striving toward goodness and love,
within the confines of a limited but
imaginatively conceived world in which
illusion and reality stand back to back to
shape a metaphor of life.
3227

RIP VAN WINKLE
Type of work: Tale
Author: Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: New York State
First published: 1819-1820
Principal characters:
Rip Van Winkle, a henpecked husband
Dame Van Winkle, his wife
Critique:
"Rip Van Winkle," like "The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow," first appeared in The
Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.,
and with these romantic, almost fantastic,
tales Irving made his earliest and most
favorable impression upon the English
and American reading publics. He was
living in England when he wrote these
tales, but it is easy to see that the
fascination of the American landscape was
with him there. "Rip Van Winkle" is
said to be based on a common European
legend, transferred to American soil; that
is, Otmar's tale of "Peter Klaus" in the
Volkssagen.
The Story:
Along the reaches of the Hudson, not
far from the Kaatskill mountains, there
was a small, antique Dutch town. The
mountains overshadowed the town and
there were times when the good Dutch
burghers could see a hood of clouds
hanging over the crests of the hills.
In that small town lived a man named
Rip Van Winkle. He was beloved by all
his neighbors, by the children and the
dogs, but at home his life was made
miserable by his shrewish wife. Though he
was willing to help anyone else at any
odd job that might be necessary, it was
impossible for him to keep his own house
or farm in repair. He was descended from
a good old Dutch family, but he had none
of the fine Dutch traits of thrift or energy.
He spent a great deal of his time at
the village inn, under the sign of King
George III, until his wife chased him
from there. Then he took his gun and
his dog Wolf and headed for the hills.
Wolf was as happy as Rip to get away
from home. When Dame Van Winkle
berated the two of them, Rip raised his
eyes silently to heaven, but Wolf rucked
his tail between his legs and slunk out of
the house.
One fine day in autumn Rip and Wolf
walked high into the Kaatskills after
squirrels. As evening came on, he and
his dog sat down to rest a while before
starting home. When Rip started down
the mountainside, he heard his name
called.
A short, square little man with a
grizzled beard had called Rip to help carry
a keg of liquor. The little man was
dressed in antique Dutch clothes.
Although he accepted Rip's help in carrying
the keg, he carried on no conversation. As
they ascended the mountain, Rip heard
noises that sounded like peals of
thunder. When they reached a sort of
amphitheater near the top, Rip saw a band of
little men, dressed and bearded like his
companion, playing ninepins. One stout
old gentleman, who seemed to be the
leader, wore a laced doublet and a high-
crowned hat with a feather.
The little men were no more
companionable than the first one had been, and
Rip felt somewhat depressed. Because
they seemed to enjoy the liquor from the
keg, Rip tasted it a few times while they
were absorbed in their game. Then he
fell into a deep sleep.
On waking, he looked in vain for
the stout old gentleman and his
companions. When he reached for his gun,
he found only a rusty flintlock. His dog
did not answer his call. He tried to find
the amphitheater where the little men
had played, but the way was blocked by
3228

a rushing stream.
The people he saw as he walked into
town were all strangers to him. Since
most of them, upon looking at him,
stroked their chins, Rip unconsciously
stroked his and found that his beard had
grown a foot long.
The town itself looked different. At
first Rip thought the liquor from the keg
had addled his head, for he had a hard
time finding his own house. When he
did locate it at last, he found it in a state
of decay. Even the sign over the inn had
been changed to one carrying the name
of General Washington. The men
gathered under the sign talked gibberish to
him, and they accused him of trying to
stir up trouble by coming armed to an
election. When they let him ask for his
old cronies, he named men who the
loungers told him had moved away, or
else they had been dead these twenty
years.
Finally an eager young woman pushed
through the crowd to look at Rip. Her
voice started a train of thought and he
asked who she was and who her father
had been. When she claimed to be Rip
Van Winkle's daughter Judith, he asked
one more question about her mother.
Judith told him that her mother had died
after breaking a blood vessel in a fit of
anger at a Yankee peddler. Rip breathed
more freely.
Although another old woman claimed
that she recognized him, the men at the
inn only winked at his story until an
old man, a descendant of the village
historian, vouched for Rip's strange tale.
He assured the men that he had it as a
fact from his historian ancestor that Hen-
drick Hudson with his crew came to the
mountains every twenty years to visit
the scene of their exploits, and that the
old historian had seen the crew in
antique Dutch garb playing at ninepins
just as Rip had related.
Rip spent the rest of his life happily
telling his story at the inn until everyone
knew it by heart. Even now when the
inhabitants of the village hear thunder in
the Kaatskills, they say that Hendrick
Hudson and his crew are playing
ninepins. And many a henpecked husband
has wished in vain for a draught of Rip
Van Winkle's quieting brew.
3229

THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: New England
First published: 1885
Principal characters:
Silas Lapham, a self-made manufacturer
Mrs. Lapham, his wife
Penelope,and
Irene, his daughters
Tom Corey, the Laphams' friend
Mr. Rogers, Mr. Lapham's former partner
Critique:
According to many critics, The Rise of
Silas Lapham is the most important book
William Dean Howells ever wrote.
Howells, a prolific though never a brilliant
writer, attempted to deal conscientiously
with the everyday experiences of rather
ordinary people. By presenting character
and situation in a straightforward
manner, he wrote novels characterized chiefly
by their moral atmosphere and authentic
domestic realism.
The Story:
Silas Lapham was being interviewed
for a Boston paper. The journalist was
secretly mocking Lapham's way of life,
but Lapham, content with his success,
Eaid little attention to his interviewer as
e proudly exhibited a photograph of his
two daughters and his wife. He told
how he had been brought up in a large
family, how he had gone West with his
brothers, how he had returned, bought
a stage route, married the village
schoolteacher and finally hit upon making paint
from a mineral his father had discovered
on his farm.
The story of his success was a story
of determination and hard work. During
the Civil War his wife had kept the paint
works going and after the war he had
taken a man named Rogers as a partner
for a short time.
After the interview Lapham and his
wife drove out to see the site of a house
they were building in a more fashionable
part of Boston. Although both looked
with pride upon the place soon to be their
residence, they pretended not really to
want the house at all. They merely
suggested the new home would be a greater
advantage for Penelope and Irene when
their friends came to call.
But neither Penelope nor Irene
anticipated with any great joy their coming
change of living. They said they felt the
present house was more convenient to
the horsecars. Secretly, both realized that
their parents were awkward in social life.
At the same time they themselves had
never been brought up to feel comfortable
in the presence of people whose families
had been accustomed to wealth for
generations.
One day, as Mr. and Mrs. Lapham
were dismounting from their carriage,
Lapham's former partner appeared
unexpectedly. Rogers had furnished money
to help Lapham get started, but later
Lapham had crowded Rogers out. Lapham
insisted that what he had done had
merely been good business. But Mrs.
Lapham maintained that she never felt
quite right about what had happened to
Rogers, and seeing him again took all the
happiness out of her plans for the new
house.
The next time the family ventured
out to visit the partly-completed house,
Irene was surprised by the arrival of
Tom Corey, a young man who had shown
some interest in her. Immediately Mr.
Lapham took over the occasion, and by
his bragging greatly embarrassed his
3230

daughters.
That evening young Corey talked to
his father about the Laphams. Bromfield
Corey did not agree with his son's easy
acceptance of the Laphams, but he did
not object when his son announced his
intention to apply for a position in Lap-
ham's firm.
Young Corey visited Lapham in his
office in order to ask for a job. Lapham
was so pleased that he invited Corey to
go with him to Nantasket where Mrs.
Lapham and the girls were expecting
Lapham for the weekend. At the Nantasket
cottage the girls and their mother could
not understand what had brought young
Corey for the weekend visit. They had
thought Lapham's bragging would have
kept him away forever.
That evening Lapham discussed Corey
with his wife. Mrs. Lapham contended
that Corey was interested not in the paint
but in Irene. Her husband commented
that unless the young man were
interested in the paint he would never get
a chance to be interested in Irene. When
Lapham said he intended to give the
young man a chance, Mrs. Lapham
warned him that he was playing with a
situation which was bound to bring
trouble.
Tom Corey's mother was concerned
when she heard what her son had done.
She admitted she would not object if
he made a fortune from the paint
business, but she did not want him to fall
in love with either of the Lapham girls.
After Corey entered Lapham's employ,
he was invited frequently to the
Lapham home, for Irene was beginning to
fall in love with him. Bromfield Corey
grew more and more curious about the
Laphams. He decided that he would
encourage his wife to give a dinner for
them in the autumn.
The cost of the new house worried
Mrs. Lapham, and she asked her husband
to stop his lavish spending. She learned
he had given a substantial loan to Rogers,
his former partner.
When Mrs. Corey returned from Bar
Harbor, she debated a long time about
giving a dinner party for the Laphams.
In the first place, the Laphams were
newcomers. On the other hand, she
wanted to give public recognition of the
new connection between her son and the
Lapham family. She finally decided to
give a formal dinner early in the season,
before her more prominent friends
returned to the city.
On the night of the dinner the
Laphams tried to appear at ease. Penelope
had refused to attend, thus causing her
mother considerable embarrassment.
Lapham watched the other men carefully,
feeling sure he had not made too many
social blunders. The next day, however,
he was not so sure, for he had taken
too much wine at dinner.
At the office Lapham sought out Corey
and mentioned with embarrassment his
behavior of the night before. He offered
Corey his liberty to seek another job, a
position among gentlemen, but Corey
refused to go, saying that Lapham's tipsy
talk had been only an unfortunate
accident. When they parted, Corey insisted
that Lapham's conduct had been proper
and entertaining.
That night, feeling that he had
actually patronized Lapham, Corey resolved
to go to his employer and apologize.
Lapham was out, but Penelope received
Corey. At the end of a long talk he
stammeringly confessed his love for her.
In great contusion he left without waiting
to speak to Lapham.
The next day Mrs. Lapham informed
her husband that Corey had been coming
to see Penelope all the time. She could
only imagine what the shock would do
to Irene. They felt, however, that
Penelope would never permit Corey to become
her suitor, for Penelope was convinced
he belonged to Irene.
Irene was informed of the situation
by her mother that evening.
Immediately she carried to her sister's room every
memento of Corey's attentions she
possessed. After a few days Lapham took
her to his boyhood village in Vermont.
Corey called on the Laphams to present
his explanation, saying that he had cared
3231

more for Penelope all the time. Penelope
refused to give him any satisfaction. She
said she owed more to her sister's hurt
feelings.
At the same time Lapham's finances
were troubling him greatly. People who
owed him money were unable to pay;
his own creditors were pressing him. Lap-
ham determined to take a trip west to
inspect some mills held as security for
his loan to Rogers. When he returned
he was even more concerned. Rogers had
drawn him into a trap with his securities,
for a railroad controlled the value of the
property. Lapham decided it would be
necessary to sell the new house
unfinished. Learning of Lapham's difficulties,
Corey offered to lend his employer thirty
thousand dollars, but Lapham rejected
the offer.
Lapham's affairs took a turn for the
worse. An added blow was the
destruction of the unfinished Back Bay house.
Wandering through the house one night,
he decided to test one of the chimneys
and made a fire from blocks and shavings
the workmen had left scattered about.
He thought the fire had burned out
before he left. That night the house burned
to the ground. The insurance policy had
expired a week before.
Determined to raise money by selling
everything he could, Lapham visited his
competitors who were working on a new
mineral paint. They were willing to
merge with him if he could raise money
to help develop their plant. While he
was trying to secure a loan, he learned
from Rogers that some English gentlemen
were interested in buying the property
which Rogers had put up as security and
which Lapham had thought valueless.
Lapham refused to sell the mills
however, because he believed a sale would
be unethical as long as the railroad
controlled their value.
He asked for time to think over the
proposition. Shortly afterward the
railroad forced him to sell the mills at a
ruinous figure. Lapham felt that his
honesty, which had kept him from selling the
property to the Englishmen, had been
unjustly abused. Rogers claimed Lapham
had made it impossible for him to recover
his losses. Lapham was now ruined, for
he could not raise capital to merge with
the rival paint firm.
Tom Corey was determined to marry
Penelope in spite of her father's
impending ruin. He did marry her after Lapham
went into bankruptcy, and his familv
accepted her for their own sake as well
as for his. Irene, who had returned as
soon as she heard of her father's troubles,
was pleased with her sister's happiness.
Lapham managed to save a part of his
fortune, but more important to him was
the belief that he had acted honestly in
all his business dealings.
3232

THE RIVALS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Bath, an English watering place
First presented: 1775
Principal characters:
Captain Jack Absolute (Ensign Beverley), a young officer in love with Lydia
Languish
Sir Anthony Absolute, his father
Faulkland, his friend, in love with Julia
Bob Acres, a country squire
Sir Lucius O'Trigger, a fiery Irishman
Lydia Languish, an heiress
Mrs. Malaprop, her aunt
Julia Melville, her cousin
Critique:
One of the most popular of the
English comedies of manners, The Rivals is
most successful in character portrayal. All
the great characters* are here — Mrs.
Malaprop, whose misuse of words gave
the word malapropism to the language;
Bob Acres, the bumptious but lovable
country squire trying to behave like a
gentleman; romantic Lydia Languish with
her head stuffed with nonsense from
current novels. The play is Sheridan's satire
on the pretentiousness and sentimentality
of his age, satire which in many respects
is applicable to our own day.
The Story:
To beautiful and wealthy young Lydia
Languish, who had been brought up on
romantic novels, the only lover worth
considering was one whose position in
life was in complete contrast to her own.
To this end she had fallen in love with
a penniless young ensign named Beverley.
But to this same Beverley, her aunt, Mrs.
Malaprop, raised serious objections. Hex
antipathy to young Mr. Beverley was
partly aroused by letters which the ensign
had written to Lydia, letters which made
uncomplimentary references to her aunt's
age and appearance. Mrs. Malaprop had
some moments of extreme discomfiture,
when she wondered whether she did
resemble the she-dragon to which Beverley
had compared her.
Mrs. Malaprop herself had fallen
hopelessly in love with a quixotic Irishman
named Sir Lucius O'Trigger, who
presumably returned her affection. Sir
Lucius, who had never seen Mrs.
Malaprop, had been hoodwinked by a
maidservant into believing that the romantic
creature with whom he was exchanging
love letters was Lydia herself.
The situation was further complicated
by the fact that Beverley was in reality
poung Captain Jack Absolute, the son of
Sir Anthony Absolute, and as wealthy
and aristocratic as Lydia herself. Jack
very early sensed that he would get
nowhere if he wooed the romantic Lydia
in his own person, and so he assumed a
character more nearly resembling the
heroes of the navels with which Lydia's
pretty but silly head was stuffed.
Nor did Jack's friend, Faulkland, fare
any better in his own romantic pursuit of
Lydia's cousin, Julia Melville. In fact,
it might be thought that he fared worse,
for unlike Jack, he was forever placing
imaginary obstacles between himself and
his beloved. Whenever they were
separated, Faulkland imagined all kinds of
horrible catastrophes which might have
THE RIVALS by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Published by The Macmillan Co.
3233

befallen her, and when he found that she
was alive and well he tormented himself
with the thought that she could not be
in love and remain so happy. At last
Jack Absolute lost patience with his
friend's ridiculous behavior, and even
Julia became a little tired of her lover's
unfounded jealousy. This curious love
tangle reached a crisis when Sir Anthony
Absolute informed his son that he had
selected the woman for him to marry,
threatening, if he refused, to cut him
off without a penny. Not having the
faintest idea as to the identity of the
woman his father had picked out for
him, and conjuring up pictures of some
homely heiress his father intended to
force on him against his will, Jack
rebelled. He declared that, whatever the
consequences, he would have nothing to
do with his father's choice.
Having been quite a connoisseur of
pretty women in his youth, and being not
exactly immune to their charms in his
old age, Sir Anthony Absolute was not
the man to saddle his son with an
unattractive wife. He had made an
agreement with Mrs. Malaprop for the
bestowal of her niece's hand upon his son.
Mrs. Malaprop, in turn, was only too
glad to save Lydia from a foolish
marriage to Beverley. But when Jack
refused to marry anyone not of his own
choosing, Sir Anthony flew into a rage
and insisted that the marriage take place
regardless of what the lady might be like.
By chance, however, Jack discovered
that the girl Sir Anthony had selected
as his bride was Lydia Languish, the
identical girl he himself had been wooing
as Ensign Beverley. He immediately
assured his father that he would be willing
to marry anyone of his choosing. Sir
Anthony, not used to such tractability on
Jack s part, became suspicious and a little
worried. Nevertheless, he made
arrangements for his son to meet his bride-to-
be, thus placing Jack in a neat dilemma.
Jack realized that Lydia would have
none of him as Sir Anthony Absolute's
son. Finally the supposed Ensign
Beverley pretended to Lydia that in order to
gain access to her aunt's house, he would
be forced to pose as Jack Absolute.
Lydia had another suitor in the person
of Bob Acres, a wealthy country squire
and a neighbor of Sir Anthony, who had
ambitions to become a man about town.
Before Sir Anthony proposed his son as
a husband for her niece, Mrs. Malaprop
had favored Bob Acres as a likely
candidate for Lydia's hand. When Acres
discovered he had a rival in Ensign
Beverley, he was disheartened. Encouraged by
his friend, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, he
challenged Beverley to a duel. Never having
seen young Beverley, he was forced to
give the challenge to the ensign's friend,
Jack Absolute, to deliver.
The great crisis in Jack's love affairs
came when he was forced to face Lydia
in the company of his father. With his
true identity revealed, Lydia's dreams of
a romantic elopement with a penniless
ensign vanished. She dismissed Jack from
her life forever. Chagrined by his abrupt
dismissal, Jack accepted with positive
gusto another challenge to a duel from
Sir Lucius O'Trigger. Sir Lucius named
the place as King's Mead Fields at six
o'clock that very evening, when he had
an appointment to act as a second to his
friend, Acres, in a duel with a certain
Ensign Beverley.
When Lydia learned that Jack had
involved himself in a duel on her account,
he became a different person in her eyes,
and she hurried with her aunt to King's
Mead Fields in an effort to halt the duel.
Meanwhile Sir Lucius O'Trigger had
alarmed Acres with his bloodthirsty
stories of dueling, so that when Acres
recognized his opponent as his old friend,
Jack Absolute, he heaved a distinct sigh
of relief.
With the arrival of Lydia and Mrs.
Malaprop, the whole situation was
quickly explained. Sir Lucius, much to
his chagrin, was forced to realize that the
writer of tender love letters to whom he
addressed his own impassioned
correspondence was not Lydia but Mrs.
Malaprop. Faulkland was content to accept
Julia's love for the whole-hearted thing
3234

it was. Lydia at last saw Ensign Beverley
and Jack Absolute as the same person
with whom she was in love. And Bob
Acres, happy because he would not be
forced to fight a duel with anyone,
ordered fiddles and entertainment for all
in the fashionable parlors of Bath.
3235

RIVER OF EARTH
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Still (1906- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Kentucky
first published: 1940
Principal characters:
Brack Baldridge, a Kentucky mountaineer
Alpha Baldridge, his wife
Brack's Oldest Boy, the narrator
Euly, the narrator's sister
Grandmother Middleton, Alpha's mother
Uncle Jolly, Alpha's brother
Critique:
It is obvious that James Still is a poet
as well as a novelist, for his words almost
sing as he describes the Kentucky hills
and the people who inhabit them. He
tells the story of the River of Earth
through the words of a very young boy,
and through the eyes of that boy shows
us the tiny, barren farms; the smoky,
sooty mining towns; the bat-filled school-
houses; the local jails where a prisoner
could have company for as many days
as he wished. Although the boy did not
understand all that he saw and heard, he
makes us understand what the author is
trying to say—that life flows as a river
flows and that the cycle of life is never
finished but goes on and on.
The Story:
When the mines closed in March,
there was very little food left in the
house. It was still a long time before
the garden crops would be ready, and
Alpha wanted Brack to tell his two
cousins, Harl and Tibb Logan, to leave
the house and find food for themselves.
But the father said that as long as he
had food in his house, he would never
turn his blood kin away. Then Uncle
Samp came to live with them, and the
mother saw her four children getting
hungrier and leaner. Knowing that the
kin would leave if there were no place
for them to sleep, she calmly set fire to
the house, first moving the children and
the skimpy furniture to the smokehouse.
All spring, while the family lived in
»:he smokehouse, they ate less and less
ind waited for the first vegetables. When
the beans were almost ready and the
whole family dreamed of having their
stomachs full, three men came from the
mining town to beg food for their
families. Unable to turn down starving
people, Brack sent the men into his garden.
When they came out, the boy saw that
they had taken every bean from the
patch. He turned away, wanting to cry.
In May, Brack took the boy with him
when he went to help a neighbor
deliver a colt. The boy expected to get the
colt for his own, as his father's fee, but
the neighbor's son told him that no
Baldridge was going to get the colt, that
the Baldridges were cowards, and that
after their Grandpa Middleton had been
killed by Aus Coggins no Baldridge had
done anything about it. The boy fought
with the neighbor's son. When the fight
was over, they found that the colt was
dead.
One day Uncle Jolly arrived and
brought them a pair of guineas from
Grandmother Middleton. Uncle Jolly
spent as much time in jail as out. It
was said that he was avenging Grandpa's
death by tormenting Aus
Coggins—cutting his fences, breaking his dam, and
RIVER OF EARTH by James Still. By permission of the author and the publishers. The Viking Press, Inc.
Copyright, 1940, by James Still.
3236

doing other mischief.
Soon after Uncle Jolly left, Brack
wanted to move the family down to
Blackjack, for the mines were going to
open again. The mother did not want
to go because the smoky valley would be
a bad place for her sickly baby. But
she resigned herself to her husband's
wishes.
In the middle of August the boy and
his sister Euly started to school. They
were anxious to learn to read and write,
the boy especially, for he did not want
to be a miner. He hoped that some day
he could be an animal doctor, as his
father had always wanted to be. But
it seemed to the boy and Euly that the
most important thing they learned in
school was how to smoke bats out of the
building.
In late September the boy was sent to
stay with his Grandmother Middleton
while Uncle Jolly served a term in jail.
He was to stay with her only until Uncle
Luce came, but the corn was husked and
the other grain harvested before Uncle
Luce arrived. The boy was astonished
at his grandmother's ability to do heavy
work, for she was very old. When she
learned that Uncle Jolly had been
sentenced to two years in the state
penitentiary, she asked the boy to stay with her
during the winter. As soon as the crops
were in she spent a great deal of time in
bed. She spent hours telling him about
her children and her husband. It was
easy to see that Jolly was her favorite.
In January Uncle Jolly came home.
There had been a fire at the penitentiary,
and Jolly had been so brave in helping
to fight the fire that the governor had
pardoned him. Grandmother Middleton
said nothing when Uncle Jolly told her
that he had started the fire.
Uncle Jolly also brought the news that
the boy's family had moved at last to
Blackjack, but there was no other word
of his family. Visitors were scarce in the
hills.
Spring and summer passed pleasantly
for the boy. In October Uncle Jolly was
in jail again, this time for fighting. Uncle
Toll came to bring Grandmother Middle-
ton the news and he took the boy back
to Hardin Town with him. They found
Jolly content to be in jail except that
he was lonesome. Uncle Toll begged
him not to break out. tor one more jail-
break would send him to the penitentiary
for a long time. Toll left the boy at the
jail so that Uncle Jolly would not break
out for lack of companionship. The boy
slept in the hall outside his uncle's cell.
When Uncle Jolly thought he would
have to break out of jail or die, he stole
the keys from the deputy and told the
boy to take the key of Jolly's cell to his
mother and ask her to keep it until the
remaining days of the sentence were
served. In that way the boy went back
to his family.
In March the family moved from
Blackjack again, this time to a little
rented farm on a hillside. There the
baby died of croup. Another garden was
planted, and in the summer they had a
funeral for the baby. The boy saw more
relatives than he had known he had. At
the end of summer Brack decided to go
back to the mines and moved his family
to Blackjack and into a house with
windows.
Uncle Samp and Harl and Tibb Logan
came back to live with the family. Harl
and Tibb worked in the mine, but Uncle
Samp had never worked and did not
intend to start now. Soon the mines began
to close down, and men everywhere were
laid off again. Brack was kept on, with
only one or two days of work each week.
Harl and Tibb, angry because they
were laid off, dynamited one of the veins.
At first it was thought that they were
trapped in the mine and had died, but
Uncle Samp and Brack rescued them.
They left the Baldridge house after Harl
and Tibb were kicked out by the mine
boss and Uncle Samp married a
fortuneteller.
Food was scarce again, and the mother
sickly most of the time, her stomach
swollen terribly. In March Uncle Jolly
3237

brought Grandmother Middleton's body
to the house. The old lady had died at
last, and Jolly was taking her to hei
old home to be buried. While they were
sitting with the body in the front room
of the house, the boy noticed his father
looking constantly at the closed dooi
behind which the mother had been taken
by a neighbor woman. In the morning
the boy knew what his father had been
waiting for and why his mother had been
so swollen. As he stood looking at the
tracks the wagon had made as it carried
his grandmother's body away for the last
time, he heard a baby begin to cry.
3238

THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Branch Cabell (1879-1958)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: 1896-1927
Locale: Litchfield, not to be found on the map of Virginia
First published: 1915
Principal characters:
Colonel Rudolph Musgravb, a Southern gentleman
Miss Agatha Musgrave, his sister
Patricia Stapylton Musgrave, his wife
John Charteris, a novelist
Anne Charteris, his wife
Mrs. Clarice Pendomer. Charteris' former mistress
Critique:
The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck,
James Branch Cabell's third novel and
the fourteenth volume in the Storisende
Edition of his works, deals with the
American descendants of Count Manuel
of Poictesme. Subtitled "A Comedy of
Limitations," the book satirizes the
American South and its adherence to the code
of chivalry. The title is taken from Hans
Christian Andersen's fairy tale of "The
Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep," in
which two porcelain figures who are in
love attempt to escape after the
shepherdess' grandfather, a porcelain Chinese figure
with a nodding head, promises her to a
wooden satyr. The shepherdess is
frightened by the outside world, and they
return. The grandfather had been broken
while pursuing them, and his neck was
riveted so that he could no longer nod
agreement to the satyr's proposal. In the
novel Musgrave interprets this tale as an
allegory about human limitations:
everyone has a figurative rivet in his neck, and
this signifies the action one cannot
perform. Although the outmoded code by
which Musgrave lives is satirized, the
author also perceived that this code was not
without grace and charm. The manner
matches the matter. Cabell was an
urbane stylist who seems closer to the
English wits than to any American writer.
The Story:
Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, family
head of the Musgraves of Matocton in
Litchfield, was forty years old in 1896.
He was a consummate Southern
gentleman: an aristocrat, a scholar, a lover, and
an indifferent businessman. A bachelor,
he lived with his s'ster Miss Agatha, who
let nothing interfere with his comfort.
His small income from his position as
librarian of the Litchfield Historical
Society was augmented by his genealogical
research for people who were trying to
establ:sh a pedigree, and the brother and
s:ster lived quite comfortably on his
earnings.
Both, however, had inherited
Musgrave weaknesses. She tippled, and he
fell in love with many women. The
colonel had a s'reak of chivalry in Ivs nature
which prompted him to make gallant
gestures of renunciation for the sake of the
lady in ques'ion. H's most recent act of
chivalry, which had provided Litchfield
with amusing gossip, occurred when he
had been overheard by Anne Charteris
—whom he had loved and lost to the
selfish novel rst, John Charteris—while he
was reprimand ng her husband for siring
a child by Mrs. Pendomer. Anne, who
blindly worshiped her husband, had
misunderstood the situation, and she had
supposed that Musgrave was the guilty
party. Musgrave had accepted the blame
in order to save Anne from learning that
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHERS NECK by James Branch Cabell. By permission of Margaret
Freeman Cabell. Published by Robert M. McBride & Co. Copyright. 1921. by James Branch Cabell. Renewed.
All rights reserved.
3239

her husband was a philanderer. Privately,
Musgrave delighted in the ep'sode.
The Musgraves were visited by
Patricia Stapylton, the twenty-one-year-old
daughter of a second cousin once removed
who had eloped with an overseer. Roger
Stapylton, the overseer, had become
wealthy in the North, and Patricia was
engaged to marry Lord Pevensey.
Although Musgrave tried to impress
Patricia with his most formal manner, she was
not at all awed by him and immediately
punctured his reserve. He spent a good
deal of time with her, however, and
once he read to her "The Shepherdess
and the Chimney Sweep."
Musgrave, acting according to his code
of honor, fell in love with Patricia and
tried to renounce her; but she saw
through his performance and jilted the
Englishman. During the dinner at which
their engagement was to be announced,
Musgrave discovered that Patricia had
fallen in love with Joe Parkinson.
Musgrave made his grand gesture by
announcing her engagement to the younger
man. But Patricia jilted Parkinson and
Musgrave married her.
At first their marriage was very happy,
even though Patricia was troubled by her
husband's reserve. Stapylton offered
Musgrave a remunerative position in his
business, but Musgrave refused it. Then
Musgrave tried to make some quick
money in the stock market but promptly
lost all his savings. After that they lived
on Patricia's allowance, which was rather
small because Stapylton was displeased
by their refusal to leave Litchfield.
Patricia had inherited a deformed
pelvis from her mother, who died in
childbirth. When Patricia became pregnant
the doctors gave her the choice between
losing the child or her life. Without
telling her husband anything about the
matter, she decided to have the child because
she knew how much Musgrave wanted a
son. Though she survived the birth of her
son, she was never completely well
afterward and had to have a series of
operations. The son was named Roger after
her father, and Stapylton settled almost
all his money on the child.
Tensions began to develop between the
Musgraves. Miss Agatha and Patricia had
never got along well together because the
spinster resented Patricia's role in Mus-
grave's life. Patricia, still young and
lively, found her husband's formality
increasingly annoying. Also, she was
annoyed by his ineptness with money.
The crisis in their relationship came
with the death of Miss Agatha. During
one of her drinking spells Miss Agatha
had wandered out into a storm and
caught pneumonia. When she died she
was attended only by the colored maid,
Virginia, and Musgrave rebuked his wife
for leaving the sick woman alone.
Patricia said some bitter things about Miss
Agatha and insisted that Virginia hated
all the Musgraves because Musgrave's
uncle had fathered her son, who had
been lynched by a mob for becoming
involved with a white woman. Patricia
declared that Virginia frequently was the
only one present when a Musgrave died.
Musgrave insisted that this claim was
nonsense. The quarrel ended bitterly and
their relationship was never quite the
same afterward.
When their son was five, the
Musgraves gave a house party at Matocton,
the Musgrave ancestral estate. Among the
guests were Anne and John Charteris.
Patricia, finding Charteris a pleasing
contrast to her husband, let him persuade
her to run off with him. On his part,
Charteris enjoyed the adoration of women
and had been involved in many affairs.
Though a successful novelist, he was not
independently wealthy, and so he had
always remained with Anne because she
had a great deal of money. Now he was
prepared to leave his wife because he
thought he had found a richer woman.
Musgrave, discovering the plan,
informed Charteris that Patricia had very
little money of her own. Charteris then
told Patricia that he could not take her
away, giving her many hypocritical
reasons for his change of heart.
Patricia was told by her doctor that her
heart was weak and that she would not
3240

live long. Although she kept her own
counsel, she was now determined to seek
happiness with Charteris, and so she
persuaded him to go through with their
original plan. Charteris borrowed money
from his wife to finance his desertion.
Musgrave, learning that Charteris and
Patricia were going through with the
elopement, attempted to dissuade
Charteris by telling him that they were
actually half-brothers. According to Mus-
grave's code of honor, no gentleman
would steal his brother's wife. Charteris
was unmoved by the news. The next
morning Musgrave met the lovers as they
were departing and struck Charteris.
Patricia, realizing that Charteris was a
coward, broke with him.
A few days later Charteris was
murdered by a jealous husband. On this
occasion, for once, he was innocent. The
newspaper with the story was brought to
Patricia by Virginia, and Patricia died of
a heart attack.
Anne Charteris, who had never seen
through her husband, continued to adore
him. Some five years after his death she
met Musgrave in the cemetery where
both Patricia and Charteris were buried.
Musgrave had Mrs. Pendomer's son with
him. At first Anne was outraged by Mus-
grave's lack of taste in being seen in the
company of his illegitimate child, but as
she looked at the boy she realized that
Charteris was the boy's real father.
Although Musgrave tried to maintain the
deception, Anne finally realized that her
husband had been a scoundrel. There
was now nothing to stand between Anne
and Musgrave; they recognized, however,
that their loyalties to their dead mates
were too strong to let them marry.
In 1927, Colonel Rudolph Musgrave
died dreaming of his first meeting with
Patricia.
3241

ROAN STALLION
Type of work: Poem
Author: Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
Type of plot: Symbolic melodrama
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: Carmel Coast, California
Firs* published: 1925
Principal characters:
California, a farm wife
Johnny, her husband
Christine, their daughter
Critique:
Roan Stallion is a powerful and highly
symbolic narrative poem. Jeffers is a de-
centralist who believes that the only
salvation for man lies in his escaping
from himself and his fellow men to a
communion with nature. In this poem he
employs the roan stallion as a symbol of
the rejection of man and the embracing
of the natural life. It is a brutal story,
but its difficult theme is handled with
delicacy and power.
The Story:
California was the daughter of a
Scottish father and a Spanish and Indian
mother. From her mother she had
inherited a dark beauty and a passionate
nature. When she was still very young
she married a farmer, Johnny, and at
twenty-one her features were already
beginning to show the marks of hard work.
Johnny spent much of his time away
from the farm drinking and gambling.
One evening he brought home a splendid
roan stallion he had won. It was shortly
before Christmas, and California, pleased
with his good fortune, decided to go into
town to buy some Christmas presents for
her young daughter, Christine. Johnny
delayed her departure in the morning so
that it was quite late before she could
hitch their old mare to the buggy and
set out for Monterey. By nightfall, when
she was ready to return home, a heavy
rainstorm had started. The water was
high when she reached the ford. Before
trying to cross in the darkness, she lashed
the presents around her body and hoped
that they would keep dry. Refusing to
cross the swollen stream, the mare
floundered back to shore. California
soothed the mare and tried once more to
guide her across the ford, but the animal
was still frightened. Desperate, California
prayed for light Suddenly the heavens
lit up brilliantly and she saw in them the
face of a child over whom hovered angels.
The mare, startled by the light, scrambled
back to shore. Sobbing, California
climbed out of the buggy, fastened the
presents securely to her back, and
mounted the horse. By the light of the
heavens she was able to guide the mare
across the stream and reach home safely.
California thought she hated the roan
stallion, but she could not forget the
magnificent beast. When she told young
Christine of the miraculous Hght at the
ford and described the birth of Christ,
she could hardly restrain herself from
identifying God and the stallion. She
knew that outside Johnny was mating
the stallion with a neighbor's mare.
That evening Johnny went down the
valley to the home of a neighbor. After
Christine was asleep, California stole out
to the stable. She leaned against the
fence, listening to the far-off cries of the
coyotes and watching the moon rise over
the hill. Once before she had seen God.
If she were to ride to the top of the hill,
perhaps she might see Him again. She
hurried down to the corral. The stallion
heard her as she approached. She ca-
ROAN STALLION by Robinson Jeffers.
by The Modern Library, Inc. ~
By permission of the author and Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 192S, by Boni & Liveright, Inc., 1935, " ~" "
.««... *xVUTO, iUv. Published
by The Modern Library, Inc.
3242

ressed his flanks, wishing that nature
had not made it impossible for him to
possess her. Then she sprang upon his
back and reveled in the feel of his
muscles as he galloped up the hillside.
At the top they halted, and she tethered
him lightly to a tree. Overwhelmed by
his majesty and her desire, she threw
herself at his feet.
The following night California could
not bear the thought of being with
Johnny. He had brought home some wine
and, half drunk, he ordered her to drink
some. Revolted at the thought of the
night ahead, California stole to the door,
opened it, and fled. Excited by the
prospect of a chase, Johnny called to his dog
to help him. When California heard
them approaching, she crawled under
the fence into the corral, the dog close
behind her. The stallion plunged,
frightened by the snarling, snapping dog.
Johnny climbed into the corral, where
the fierce stallion trampled him to death.
In the meantime Christine had
awakened. Frightened by the lonely house,
she made her way to the corral. When
she saw her father's body she ran back
to the house for the rifle. California took
the gun and shot the dog. While she
watched, the stallion struck again at
Johnny's body. Then, prompted by a
remnant of fidelity to the human race,
she raised the rifle and shot the stallion.
It was as though she had killed God.
3243

ROB ROY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1715
Locale: Northumberland and Glasgow
First published: 1818
Principal characters:
Mr. William Osbaldistone, of the firm of Osbaldistone & Tresham
Frank Osbaldistone, his son
Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, Frank's uncle
Rashleigh Osbaldistone, his son
Sir Frederick Vernon, a Jacobite
Diana Vernon, his daughter
Rob Roy MacGregor Campbell, a Scottish outlaw
Critique:
Rob Roy MacGregor Campbell is not
the hero of this novel; he is the man
behind the scenes. The novel itself
concerns the fortunes of Frank Osbaldistone
and his adventures with Rob Roy, the
Scottish Robin Hood. Scott, as he usually
does, manipulates Scottish history to suit
his purpose. The story is told by Frank
Osbaldistone, writing to his friend,
Tresham. Always a popular Waverley novel,
it has been dramatized several times and
was the subject of an opera by Flotow.
The Story:
Frank Osbaldistone was recalled from
France where he had been sent to learn
his father's mercantile business.
Disappointed in his son's progress, the angry
parent ordered the young man to
Osbaldistone Hall, home of his uncle, Sir
Hildebrand Osbaldistone, in northern England.
His father gave him fifty guineas for
expenses and instructions to learn who
among Sir Hildebrand's sons would
accept a position in the trading house of
Osbaldistone and Tresham.
On the road Frank fell in with a
traveler named Morris, who was carrying
a large sum of money in a portmanteau
strapped to his saddle. That evening
they stopped at the Black Bear Inn, in
the town of Darlington, where they were
joined at dinner by Mr. Campbell, a
Scotsman. Campbell was Rob Roy, the
Scottish outlaw. The next morning
Campbell and Morris left together, and at
a secluded spot along the road the men
were halted and a highwayman robbed
Morris of his saddlebag. Frank,
meanwhile, rode toward Osbaldistone Hall. As
he neared the rambling old mansion, he
saw a fox hunt and met Diana Vernon,
Sir Hildebrand's niece. Outspoken Diana
told Frank that his cousins were a
mixture of sot, gamekeeper, bully, horse-
jockey, and fool, these characteristics
being mixed in varying proportions in each
man. Rashleigh, she said, was the most
dangerous of the lot, for he maintained a
private tyranny over everyone with whom
he came in contact.
It was Rashleigh, however, who was
prevailed upon to accept Frank's vacant
position. The cousins disliked each other.
One night, while drinking with the
family, Frank became enraged at Rashleigh's
speech and actions and struck him.
Rashleigh never forgot the blow, although to
all intents and purposes he and Frank
declared themselves friends after their
anger had cooled.
Shortly after Frank's arrival he was
accused of highway robbery and he went
at once to Squire Inglewood's court to
defend himself and to confront his
accuser, who turned out to be Morris. Rob
Roy, however, appeared at the squire's
court of justice and forced Morris to
confess that Frank had not robbed him.
When Rashleigh departed to go into
3244

business with Frank's father, Frank be-
tame Diana's tutor. Their association
developed into deep affection on both
sides, a mutual attraction marred only by
the fact that Diana was by faith a
Catholic and Frank a Presbyterian.
One day Frank received a letter from
his father's partner, Mr. Tresham. The
letter informed him that his father,
leaving Rashleigh in charge, had gone to the
continent on business, and that Rashleigh
had gone to Scotland, where he was
reported involved in a scheme to embezzle
funds of Osbaldistone and Tresham.
Frank, accompanied by Andrew Fair-
service, Sir Hildebrand's gardener, set
off for Glasgow in an attempt to frustrate
Rashleigh's plans. Arriving in the city
on Sunday, they went to church. As
Frank stood listening to the preacher, a
voice behind him whispered that he was
in danger and that he should not look
back at his informant. The mysterious
messenger asked Frank to meet him on
the bridge at midnight. Frank kept the
tryst and followed the man to the Tol-
booth prison. There he found his father's
chief clerk, Mr. Owen, who had been
arrested and thrown into prison at the
instigation of MacVittie and MacFin,
Glasgow traders who did business with his
rather. Frank learned that Campbell had
been his mysterious informant and guide,
and for the first time he realized that
Campbell and Rob Roy were one and the
same.
Shortly thereafter Frank saw Morris,
MacVittie, and Rashleigh talking
together. He followed them and when
Morris and MacVittie departed, leaving
Rashleigh alone, Frank confronted his
cousin and demanded an explanation of
his behavior. As their argument grew
more heated, swords were drawn, but the
duel was broken up by Rob Roy, who
cried shame at them because they were
men of the same blood. Rob Roy
considered both men his friends. Frank
learned also that his father's funds were
mixed up with a Jacobite uprising, in
which Sir Hildebrand was one or the
lotters. He suspected that Rashleigh
ad robbed Morris on information
supplied by Rob Roy.
Frank and Andrew were arrested by an
officer on their way to meet Rob Roy,
and the officer who searched Frank
discovered a note which Rob Roy had
written to him. On the road the company
was attacked by Scotsmen under the
direction of Helen, Rob Roy's wife, who
captured or killed all the soldiers. Helen,
a bloodthirsty creature, ordered the death
of Morris, who had fallen into the hands
of the Highlanders. In the meantime,
Rob Roy had also been captured but had
made his escape when one of his captors
rode close to Rob Roy and surreptitiously
cut his bonds. Rob Roy threw himself
from his horse into the river and swam
to safety before his guards could
overtake him.
With a Highland uprising
threatening, Frank thought he had seen Diana
for the last time. But he met her soon
afterward riding through a wood in the
company of her father, Sir Frederick
Vernon, a political exile. She gave him
a packet of papers which Rashleigh had
been forced to give up; they were notes
to the credit of Osbaldistone and
Tresham. The fortune of Frank's father was
safe.
In the Jacobite revolt of 1715,
Rashleigh became a turncoat and joined the
forces of King George. At the beginning
of the revolt Sir Hildebrand had made
his will, listing the order in which his
sons would fall heir to his lands.
Because Rashleigh had betrayed the Stuart
cause, he substituted Frank's name for
that of Rashleigh in the will. Sir
Hildebrand was captured by the royal forces
and imprisoned at Newgate, where he
died. His four sons died in various ways
and Frank inherited all the lands and
properties belonging to Sir Hildebrand.
When Frank went to Osbaldistone
manor to take over, Rashleigh showed
up with a warrant for Diana and her
father. But he obtained no end that he
desired, for he was killed in a fight with
3245

Rob Roy. Frank became the lord of marry a Papist, but at last he relented
Osbaldistone Hall. At first Frank's father and Frank and Diana were married,
did not like the idea of having his son
3246

ROBIN HOOD'S ADVENTURES
Type of work: Folk tales
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Thirteenth century
Locale: England
First published: c. 1490
Principal characters:
Robin Hood, Earl of Huntingdon
Little John,
Friar Tuck,
Will Scarlet,
A Tinker, and
A Cook, of the Band of Merry Men
The Sheriff of Nottingham
Sir Richard of the Lea, Robin Hood's friend
Critique:
Robin Hood, legendary outlaw, is a folk
hero who has been celebrated in ballad
and tale since the Middle Ages. The first
collection of ballads dealing with his
exploits was published about 1490. This
book, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, was
titled The Lytel Geste of Robin Hood.
These adventure stories tell of Robin
Hood's courage, skill at archery, and
daring deeds in support of the poor.
Nowadays Robin himself is known chiefly as a
children's hero, but he has served as the
prototype for a great many heroes of
romantic fiction.
The Story:
Robin Hood, before he became an
outlaw, was the rightful Earl of Huntingdon.
Because the times were so corrupt, his
father had been dispossessed of his estates
and young Robin was driven into the
forest. His method of protest was to
organize a band of outlaws in Sherwood
Forest and prey upon the rich to give to
the poor.
The reason for his outlawry was this: a
great archer, he was on his way to a
shooting match in Nottingham. Some of the
king's foresters met him in Sherwood
Forest and mocked his youth. Because one
of the foresters wagered that he could not
slay a deer, Robin Hood killed one of the
king's stags. The penalty for his deed was
death. When the foresters gave chase,
Robin was forced to hide in the forest.
There he found other landless, hunted
men and became their leader.
One day, seeking adventure, Robin
Hood encountered a tall stranger at a
bridge. Calling his merry men after the
stranger had tumbled him into the stream,
Robin and his companions soon overcame
the stranger. Then a shooting match took
place between the two. Robin Hood won
the match, and the stranger good-
naturedly acknowledged defeat and joined
Robin's band. The outlaws called him
Little John because*he was so big.
The Sheriff of Nottingham, angered
because Robin flouted his authority, sent
out a warrant for his arrest. This warrant
was carried by a Tinker into tnc forest.
When the Tinker met Robin Hood,
however, he failed to recognize the fugitive
because Robin was disguised. Robin took
the Tinker to the Blue Boar Inn, got him
drunk, and stole the warrant. Later the
Tinker met Robin in the forest and fought
with him. Robin Hood won the bout, and
the Tinker happily joined the other merry
men in Robin's band.
The Sheriff of Nottingham grew more
and more enraged by Robin's boldness.
When the kino rebuked him for not
capturing the outlaw, the sheriff devised still
another plan. Knowing that Robin Hood
prided himself on his skill in archery, the
sheriff proclaimed a shooting match in
Nottingham Tower. There he hoped to
catch Robin Hood and his men. They out-
3247

witted him, however, for they went to
the match in disguise. As a tattered
stranger, Robin won the golden arrow
given as a prize. After he returned to
Sherwood Forest, he sent the sheriff a note
of thanks for the prize. This act infuriated
that officer even more.
Now the band of outlaws lay low in the
forest for a time. At last Robin Hood sent
one of his men to learn the sheriff's next
plan. When he was captured, the band
set out to rescue him. As he was being
dragged forth to be hanged, Little John
leaped into the cart and cut the prisoner's
bonds. The other outlaws ran from their
hiding places and overcame the sheriff's
men.
Next Robin Hood bought some meat
and took it to Nottingham to sell to the
poor at half price. Disguised as a butcher,
he was thought by most people to be
either a foolish peasant or a wealthy
nobleman in disguise. When Robin Hood
offered to sell him a herd of cattle at a
ridiculously low price, the sheriff gleefully
accepted the offer. Then Robin took the
sheriff to Sherwood Forest, took his
money, showed him the king's deer, and
told him that there stood his herd.
As a lark Little John went to the Fair
at Nottingham Town, where he treated
all the people to food and drink. When he
was asked to enter the sheriff's service,
because of his great size, Little John
decided such employment might be fun. He
found life in the sheriff's household so
pleasant that he stayed six months, until
he gradually grew bored and became
arrogant toward the steward. The steward
called the cook to fight Little John. Both
men ate such a huge meal before fighting
that neither could win. Finally they
decided to stop because they did not really
dislike each other. Then Little John
persuaded the cook to join the Band of Merry
Men.
On another day Robin Hood and his
men went out to find Friar Tuck of
Fountain Dale, supposedly a rich curate. Spying
a strange monk singing and feasting
beside a brook, Robin joined him. When
Robin wished to go across the water, he
persuaded the man to carry him on his
back. On the return trip the monk, who
was in reality Friar Tuck, dumped Robin
into the water. After another great* fight,
with Robin the victor, the friar joyfully
joined the outlaw band.
Having heard of Robin's prowess and
fascinated by stories told about him and
his men, the queen invited him to come to
London. In an attempt to outwit the king
she proposed an archery match at which
she would put up three archers against his
best three. If her team won, the king was
to issue a pardon of forty days to certain
prisoners. The king accepted the wager.
The queen's archers were Robin Hood,
Little John, and Will Scarlet, all in
disguise. Naturally, the outlaws won,
although Will Scarlet was bested in his
match. When the king learned that the
queen's archers were Robin Hood and two
of his men, he was angry, and they
escaped capture only with the queen's help.
The others returned safely to Sherwood
Forest, but Robin Hood met with many
dangerous adventures on the way. During
his journey he encountered Sir Richard
of the Lea, a knight whom he had once
aided, and Sir Richard advised him to
return to London and throw himself on the
queen's mercy. She persuaded the king
to give Robin Hood safe escort back to
Sherwood Forest and so pay the wager
of the shooting match.
King Richard the Lion-Hearted,
returning from the Crusades, decided to
seek out Robin Hood and his outlaw band.
With six others, all disguised as friars,
Richard encountered Robin and his men
and bested them. Richard then revealed
himself and pardoned Robin and his men.
Robin he restored to his rightful honors
as the Earl of Huntingdon.
Several years later, on a visit to
Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood became so
homesick for his old life that he gave up
his title and returned to live with the
outlaws. His action infuriated John, the
new king, and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
They sent their men to capture the
outlaws and during the fighting the sheriff
was killed. Robin Hood, ill and much de-
3248

pressed by this bloodshed, went to Kirkley
Abbey, where his cousin was prioress, to
be bled. She was a treacherous woman
and had him bled too long, so that he lay
dying. At last Little John, having pulled
down bolts and bars to get to Robin,
reached his leader's bedside. As Robin
Hood lay dying in Little John's arms, he
asked for his bow and arrows and said that
he wished to be buried wherever his arrow
fell. Then Robin shot an arrow through
the window of the priory. Little John
marked its flight and Robin was buried
beneath the ancient oak that was his last
target. His merry men disbanded after
his death, but the stories of their brave
deeds and the prowess of Robin Hood
live on even to this day.
3249

ROBINSON CRUSOE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1651-1705
Locale: An island off the coast of South America, and the Several Seas
First published: 1719
Principal characters:
Robinson Crusoe, a castaway
Friday, his faithful servant
Critique:
The Life and Strange Surprising
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe as Defoe
called his novel, is read as eagerly today
as when it was first published. At times
the narrative seems too detailed, since the
routine of Crusoe's life on the island was
much the same. But Defoe knew the
theatrical device of timing, for no sooner
do we begin to tire of reading the daily
account of his hero's life than a new
situation breaks the monotony of Crusoe's
life and of our reading. The book has
attained a high place in the literature of
the world, and justly so.
The Story:
Robinson Crusoe was the son of a
middle-class English family. Although
his father desired that Robinson go into
some business and live a quiet life,
Robinson had such longing for the sea that he
found it impossible to remain at home.
Without his parents' knowledge he took
his first voyage. The ship was caught in
a great storm, and Robinson was so
violently ill and so greatly afraid that he
vowed never to leave the land again
should he be so fortunate as to escape
death.
But when he landed safely, he found
his old longing still unsatisfied, and he
engaged as a trader, shipping first for
the coast of Africa. The ship on which
he sailed was captured by a Turkish pirate
vessel, and he was carried aprisoner into
Sallee, a Moorish port. There he
became a slave, and his life was so
unbearable that at the first opportunity he
escaped in a small boat. He was rescued
by a Portuguese freighter and carried
safely to Brazil. There he bought a small
plantation and began the life of a
planter.
When another English planter
suggested they make a voyage to Africa for
a cargo of slaves, Robinson once more
gave way to his longing and sailed again.
This voyage was destined to be the most
fateful of all, for it brought him his
greatest adventure.
The ship broke apart on a reef near
an island off the coast of South America,
and of the crew and passengers only
Robinson was saved. The waves washed
him ashore, where he took stock of his
unhappy plight. The island seemed to
be completely uninhabited, and there
was no sign of wild beasts. In an attempt
to make his castaway life as comfortable
as possible, he constructed a raft and
brought away food, ammunition, water,
wine, clothing, tools, sailcloth, and
lumber from the broken ship.
He first set up a sailcloth tent on the
side of a small hill. He encircled his
refuge with tall, sharp stakes and entered
his shelter by means of a ladder which
he drew up after him. Into this area
he carried all of the goods he had
salvaged, being particularly careful of the
gunpowder. His next concern was his
food supply. Finding that there was
little which had not been ruined by rats
or by water, he ate sparingly during his
first days on the island.
Before long, having found some ink
and a quill among the things he had
brought from the ship, he began to keep
a journal. He also added the good and
evil of his situation and found that he
had much for which to thank God. He
began to make his shelter permanent.
3250

Behind his tent he found a small cave
which he enlarged and braced. With
crude tools he made a table and a chair,
some shelves, and a rack for his guns.
He spent many months on the work, all
the time able to find wild fowl or other
small game which kept him well supplied
with food. He also found several springs
and so was never in want for water.
His life for the next twenty-four years
was spent in much the same way as his
first days upon the island. He explored
the island and built what he was pleased
to call his summer home on the other
side of it. He was able to grow corn,
barley, and rice. He carefully saved the
new kernels each year until he had
enough to plant a small field. With these
grains he learned to grind meal and bake
coarse bread. He caught and tamed wild
goats to supply his larder and parrots for
companionship. He made better
furniture and improved his cave, making
it even safer from intruders, whom he still
feared, even though he had seen no sign
of any living thing except small game and
fowl and goats. From the ship he had
brought also three Bibles, and he had
time to read them carefully. At a
devotional period each morning and night,
he never failed to thank God for
delivering him from the sea.
In the middle of Robinson's twenty-
fourth year on the island, an incident
occurred which altered his way of living.
About a year and a half previously he
had observed some savages who had
apparently paddled over from another
island. They had come in the night and
gorged themselves on some other savages,
obviously prisoners. Robinson had found
the bones and the torn flesh the next
morning and had since been terrified that
the cannibals might return and find him.
Finally a band of savages did return.
While they prepared for their gruesome
feast, Robinson shot some of them and
frightened the others away. Able to
rescue one of the prisoners, he at last had
human companionship. He named the
man Friday after the day of his rescue,
and Friday became his faithful servant
and friend.
After a time Robinson was able to
teach Friday some English. Friday told
him that seventeen white men were
prisoners on the island from which he
came. Although Friday reported the men
well-treated, Robinson had a great desire
to go to them, thinking that together they
might find some way to return to the
civilized world. He and Friday built a
canoe and prepared to sail to the other
island, but before they were ready for
their trip another group of savages came
to their island with more prisoners.
Discovering that one of the prisoners was a
white man, Robinson managed to save
him and another savage, whom Friday
found to be his own father. There
was great joy at the reunion of father
and son. Robinson cared for the old man
and the white man, who was a Spaniard,
one of the seventeen of whom Friday had
spoken. A hostile tribe had captured
Friday's island, and thus it was that the
white men were no longer safe.
Robinson dispatched the Spaniard and
Friday's father to the neighboring island
to try to rescue the white men. While
waiting for their return, Robinson saw an
English ship one day at anchor near
shore. Soon he found the captain of
the ship and two others, who had been set
ashore by a mutinous crew. Robinson
and Friday and the three seamen were
able to retake the ship, and thus
Robinson was at last delivered from the island.
He disliked leaving before the Spaniard
and Friday's father returned, and he
determined to go back to the island some
day and see how they had fared. Five of
the mutinous crew chose to remain rather
than be returned to England to hang.
And so Robinson and Friday went to
England, Robinson returning to his homeland
after an absence of thirty-five years. He
arrived there, a stranger and unknown,
in June of 1687.
But he was not through with
adventure. When he visited his old home, he
found that his parents had died, as had
all of his family but two sisters and the
two children of one of his brothers.
3251

Having nothing to keep him in England,
he went to Lisbon to inquire about his
plantation. There he learned that friends
had saved the income of his estate for
him and that he was now worth about
five thousand pounds sterling. Satisfied
with the accounting, Robinson and
Friday returned to England, where
Robinson married and had three children.
After his wife died, Robinson sailed
again in 1695 as a private trader on a
ship captained by his nephew and bound
for the East Indies and China. The ship
put in at his castaway island, where he
found that the Spaniards and the English
mutineers had taken native wives from
an adjoining island, so that the
population was greatly increased. Robinson was
pleased with his little group and gave a
feast for them. He also presented them
with gifts from the ship.
After he had satisfied himself that the
colony was well cared for, Robinson and
Friday sailed away. On their way to
Brazil some savages attacked the ship and
Friday was killed. From Brazil Robinson
went around the Cape of Good Hope and
on to the coast of China. At one port,
after the sailors had taken part in a
massacre, Robinson lectured them so severely
that the crew forced their captain,
Robinson's nephew, to set him ashore in
China, as they would have no more of
his preaching. There Robinson joined a
caravan which took him into Siberia. At
last he reached England. Having spent
the greater part of fifty-four years away
from his homeland, he was glad to live
out his life in peace and in preparation
for that longer journey from which he
would never return.
3252

RODERICK RANDOM
Type of work: Novel
Author: Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1748
Principal characters:
Roderick Random, an adventurer
Tom Bowling, his uncle
Strap, Tom's friend and companion
Miss Williams, an adventuress
Narcissa, Roderick's sweetheart
Critique:
The Adventures of Roderick Random
is unique in being the first English novel
to describe with any detail life on a
British warship. For this material
Smollett drew upon his own experience as a
ship surgeon. There is little structure to
the book. The success of the novel lies
in Smollett's ability to narrate and
describe incident after incident and to keep
his readers interested and, usually,
amused. The central character of
Roderick Random is used, as in a picaresque
novel, to unite the incidents into a story
and to provide a reason for the
development of the climax. Roderick's
adventures provide an opportunity for satire
on the follies and affectations of the age
The Story:
Although Roderick Random came
from a wealthy landowning family of
Scotland, his early life was one of
vicissitudes. Roderick's father had married a
servant in the Random household, and
for that reason he had been disowned
without a penny. Soon after Roderick's
birth his mother died. When his father
disappeared, heartbroken, the
grandfather was prevailed upon to send the
lad to school for the sake of the family's
reputation.
At school Roderick was the butt of the
masters, although a great favorite with
the boys his own age. His whippings
were numerous, for he could be used as
a whipping boy when something had
one wrong and the real culprit could not
e determined. In Roderick's fourteenth
year, however, there was a change in his
fortunes. His mother's brother, Tom
Bowling, a lieutenant in the navy, came
to visit his young nephew.
Lieutenant Bowling remonstrated with
his nephew's grandfather over his
treatment of Roderick, but the old man was
firm in his refusal to do anything beyond
what necessity dictated for the offspring
of the son whom he had disinherited.
When the grandfather died, he left
Roderick nothing. Tom Bowling sent the lad
to the university, where Roderick made
great progress. Then Tom Bowling
became involved in a duel and was forced
to leave his ship. This misfortune cut off
the source of Roderick's funds and made
it necessary for him to leave the
university.
Casting about for a means of making
a livelihood, Roderick became a surgeon's
apprentice. He proved to be so capable
that before long his master sent him to
London with a recommendation to a
local member of Parliament, who was to
get Roderick a place as surgeon's mate in
the navy.
Securing a place on a man-of-war was
a difficult task. To keep himself in
funds, Roderick worked for a French
chemist in London. In the shop he met
Miss Williams, with whom he fell in
love, but much to his chagrin he
discovered one day that she was a prostitute
trying to better her fortune. Soon
afterward Roderick was accused of stealing
and was dismissed by his employer.
While he was leading a precarious ex-
3253

istence, waiting for his navy warrant, he
learned that Miss Williams lived in the
same lodging-house. He won the
everlasting gratitude of the young woman by
acting as her doctor while she was ill.
One day, while walking near the
Thames, Roderick was seized by a press-
gang and shanghaied aboard the man-of-
war Thunder, about to sail for Jamaica.
Roderick, who had found friends on the
ship; was made a surgeon's mate.
The voyage to Jamaica was a terrible
one as the commanding officer, Captain
Oakhum, was a tyrant who came very
close to hanging Roderick and another
surgeon's mate because one of the ship's
officers claimed he had heard them
speaking ill of both the surgeon and the cap
tain. Thinking that Roderick's Greek
notebook was a military code, the captain
threatened again to hang him as a spy.
After seeing action against the Spanish
at Cartagena, Roderick secured a billet
as surgeon's mate aboard the Lizard, a
ship returning to England with
dispatches. On the way the captain died
and Lieutenant Crampley, an officer who
greatly disliked Roderick, took command
of the ship. Crampley, being a poor
officer, ran the ship aground off the Sussex
coast. The crew robbed and tried to kill
Roderick when they reached the shore,
but an old woman befriended him, cured
him of his wounds, and found him a
place as footman with a spinster
gentlewoman who lived nearby.
Roderick spent several months in her
service. He found his way into his
employer's good-will by his attention to his
duties and by showing a knowledge of
literature, even to the extent of
explaining passages from Tasso's Italian poetry
to her. The spinster had a niece and a
nephew living with her. Narcissa, the
niece, was a beautiful girl of
marriageable age to whom Roderick was
immediately attracted. Her brother, a drunken,
fox-hunting young squire, was
determined that she should marry a wealthy
knight in the neighborhood.
One day Roderick prevented the girl's
brutal suitor from forcing his attentions on
her and beat the man severely with a
cudgel. While he was deliberating on his
next move, he was taken prisoner by a
band of smugglers who for their own
safety carried him to Boulogne in France.
There Roderick found his uncle, Tom
Bowling, and assured him that he would
be safe if he returned to England, for the
man Bowling believed he had killed in
a duel was very much alive.
Roderick set out for Paris in company
with a friar who robbed him one night
and left him penniless. Meeting a band
of soldiers, Roderick enlisted in the army
of King Louis XIV and saw service at the
battle of Dettingen. After the battle his
regiment went into garrison and
Roderick unexpectedly met a boyhood
companion, Strap, who was passing as
Monsieur D'Estrapes and who was friendly
with a French nobleman. Strap
befriended Roderick and secured his release
from onerous service as a private in the
French army.
Strap and Roderick schemed for a way
to make their fortunes and finally hit
upon the idea of setting up Roderick as
a wealthy gentleman. They hoped that
he would marry, within a short time,
some wealthy heiress.
The two men went to Paris, where
Roderick bought new clothes and became
acquainted with the ways of a man about
town. Then they went to London.
There Roderick quickly became
acquainted with a group of young men
who were on the fringe of fashionable
society.
Roderick's first attempt to become
intimate with a rich woman was a dismal
failure, for she turned out to be a
woman of the streets. On the second
attempt he met Melinda, a young woman
of fortune, who won many pounds from
him at cards and then refused to marry
him because he did not have an
independent fortune of his own. Finally one
of Roderick's friends told him of a cousin,
Miss Snapper, who was a wealthy
heiress. The friend promised that he
would help Roderick in his suit in return
for Roderick's note for five hundred
3254

pounds, due six months after the
marriage.
Falling in with this suggestion,
Roderick immediately started out for Bath in
company with the young woman and her
mother. On the way he saved them from
being robbed by a highwayman, a deed
which established him in the good graces
of both mother and daughter. At Bath,
Roderick squired the young woman about
day and night. Although she was
crippled and not good-looking, the thought
of her fortune was greater in his mind
than her appearance. Besides, she was
an intelligent and witty young woman.
All went well with the plan until
Roderick caught sight of Narcissa, the
young girl he had known while he was
employed as a footman by her aunt.
Realizing that he was in love with her,
he promptly deserted Miss Snapper.
Narcissa soon revealed to Roderick
that she returned his love. The young
squire, her brother, had no objections to
Roderick because he thought that
Random was a wealthy man. Unfortunately
Roderick's former love, Melinda, arrived
in Bath and caught the attention of Nar-
cissa's brother. At a ball she spread evil
reports about Roderick because he had
left her. The result was that Roderick
first fought a duel with Lord Quiverwit,
one of Narcissa's admirers, and then saw
his Narcissa spirited away by her brother.
The only thing that kept Roderick's hope
alive was the fact that he knew Narcissa
loved him and that her maid, the Miss
Williams whom Roderick had long
before befriended, was eternally grateful to
him and would help him in any way
which lay in her power.
Returning to London, Roderick again
met his uncle, Tom Bowling, who had
been appointed to take a merchant ship
on a mysterious trip. He proposed to
take Roderick with him as ship surgeon,
and he gave Roderick a thousand pounds
with which to buy goods to sell on the
voyage. He also made out a will leaving
all his property to Roderick in case he
should die.
The mysterious trip proved to be a
voyage to the Guinea Coast to pick up
Negro slaves for the Spanish American
trade. The slaves and the cargo,
including the goods shipped by Roderick, were
sold at a handsome profit. While their
ship was being prepared for the return
voyage, Roderick and his uncle spent
several weeks ashore, where they were
entertained by people they met and with
whom they did business. One of their
acquaintances was a rich Englishman
known as Don Rodrigo, who invited
them to visit him on his estate. During
their stay it was discovered that the man
was Roderick's father, who had gone to
America to make his fortune after having
been disinherited because of his marriage
to Roderick's mother.
The voyage back to England was a
happy one. Roderick was full of
confidence, for he had made a small fortune
out of the voyage and had expectations
of quite a large fortune from the estates
of his father and his uncle. He
immediately paid his addresses to Narcissa, who
accepted his offer of marriage in spite of
her brother's opposition. They were
married shortly afterward and went to
live in Scotland on the Random estate,
which Roderick's father had bought from
his bankrupt elder brother.
3255

ROGUE HERRIES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hugh Walpole (1884-1941)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1730-1774
Locale: England
First published: 1930
Principal characters:
Francis Herries, the Rogue
Margaret Herries, his first wife
Mirabell Starr, his second wife
David Herries, his son
Deborah Herries, his daughter
Alice Press, his mistress
Sarah Denburn, David's wife
Critique:
Rogue Herries is the first novel of a
tetrology which traces in detail the story
of an English family over a period of two
hundred years. The story of the Herries
becomes also the story of England through
the Georgian, Victorian, and modern
periods, largely upon the domestic level
of morals and manners. There is a
growing complexity to the novel as new
generations appear and succeed one another,
but Hugh Walpole keeps the narrative
within bounds by relating the action to
the descendants of the notorious Rogue
Herries. Throughout there is a fairly
successful capturing of the flavor of the
period.
The Story:
In the year 1730 Francis Herries
brought his family from the roistering
life of Doncaster to live in a
long-deserted family house—called Herries—at
Rosthwaite not far from Keswick in
Cumberland. In addition to his wife and
three children, he brought along the
most recent of his many mistresses, Alice
Press, who, under pretense of being the
children's governess, had actually been
unkind and overbearing with them and
insolent to their mother. The family
rested for a period at the Keswick inn,
and met Francis' oldest brother and his
wife. After an uncomfortable journey on
horseback over a scarcely discernible road,
the party reached Herries.
Francis Herries had led a life of
dissipation. His respectable relatives, of
whom there were a great many, looked
on him as the black sheep of the family
and avoided him. His wife Margaret
he had married more for pity than for
love. But she had brought him some
money. The one person whom Francis
really loved was his son David. And
David returned his love.
One day Francis, now tired of Alice
Press, came upon her berating his wife.
Although he did not love Margaret, he
loved Alice less. He tried from that day
to make Alice leave the house, but she
refused. When he took David to Keswick
to a fair, they saw Alice Press. Furious,
Francis told Alice that she must not
return to Herries. At last he began to
shout, announcing that Alice was for
sale. People were shocked and astounded.
Then a man threw down a handful of
silver. Francis picked up a token piece
and walked away. David felt that his
father was possessed of a devil.
Francis became notorious throughout
the district for his escapades and before
long acquired the epithet of Rogue
Herries. One Christmas night, at a feast in a
friend's house, he was challenged to a
duel by young Osbaldistone. Francis had
ROGUE HERRIES by Hugh Walpole. By permission of the Executors, estate of Sir Hugh Walpole, and the
publishers, Messrs. MacMillan & Co., London. Copyright, 1930, by Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc.
3256

won money from him gambling in
Keswick and had also paid some attention to
a young woman that Osbaldistone
fancied. In the course of the duel,
Francis had the advantage. Then, when
Francis* guard was down, Osbaldistone slashed
him from temple to chin. The resulting
scar marked Rogue Herries for the rest
of his life.
One evening in the spring following,
Francis came in from working on his
land and found Margaret ailing. They
had never had any warmth of feeling
between them, but even in the moment
of her death she felt that he would be
at a loss without her. After making
David promise never to leave his father,
she called for Francis and died in his
arms.
In 1745 Francis had a strange
adventure. After a long walk through the
hills near his home, he lay down to rest
and fell sound asleep. When he awoke
he was bound hand and foot. His
mysterious captor untied his bonds after
questioning him as to his identity and led
him to a cave where he saw several
desperate-looking men and a lovely young
girl. One of the men gave him a cross
and chain which the girl's mother had
left for him at her death. Years before,
he had seen her shuddering with cold
by the roadside and had given her
his cloak. Fascinated now by the girl, he
talked kindly to her and learned that
her name was Mirabell Starr. The men
with whom she lived were thieves and
smugglers.
In November Francis took David to
Carlisle. The Young Pretender had
landed in Scotland and was marching
toward London. At an inn in Carlisle,
Francis saw Mirabell with a young man
of her own age. He was jealous, for he
knew that he loved Mirabell despite the
great difference in their ages. He also
saw that an ugly man of considerable
age was jealous of Mirabell's lover.
During the siege of the city all able men
were pressed into service. When Carlisle
fell to the Pretender's forces, the city
became quiet once more. On a dark
night Francis, out for a walk, saw
Mirabell and the young man walking ahead
of him. He also saw the ugly man of
the inn approach the pair. He yelled a
warning too late. The boy Harry dropped
dead. Mirabell escaped in the darkness.
In the summer of 1756 David and his
sister Deborah attended a ball in
Keswick. At the dance Deborah fell in love
with a young clergyman. When they
arrived home next day, they were met
by their father, who explained to them
that Mirabell had arrived and had
promised to marry him. After her hard
life on the roads Mirabell had come to
offer herself to Francis in return for food
and protection.
In 1758 David was thirty-eight. On
a business trip he met and fell in love
with a girl named Sarah Denburn, a
frank, friendly girl of more than average
beauty. Her uncle-guardian intended her
for another man, but David carried her
off one night after killing his rival.
For about two years David and Sarah
lived at Herries. Mirabell hated Sarah.
At last David bought a house not far
off and moved with his wife to it.
Deborah went to Cockermouth to wed her
clergyman. Alone with his young wife,
Francis unsuccessfully tried to teach her
to read and write and to love him.
Mirabell had something of the gipsy in her.
One day she ran away. From then on
most of Francis* life was devoted to
traveling over England looking for
Mirabell.
Meanwhile David and Sarah, settled
at Uldale, had three children and
became well established in the community.
Sarah loved the society of the people of
Uldale and David prospered.
After many years of wandering,
Francis at last saw Mirabell again among a
troupe of players in Penrith. She
promised to meet him after the play,
but did not. Francis searched the town
in vain. As he returned to his inn, he
fell ill of an old ailment, a fever, and
was forced to stay there for six months.
3257

When at last he returned home, he found
Mirabell waiting for him. She explained
that she could not desert the acting
company on that fateful night because the
leader, her lover, had threatened to kill
himself if she deserted him, and his death
would have left his children friendless
orphans. But at last he had run away
with a younger woman, and Mirabell
had come back to Francis once more for
protection. She tried to make him
understand that the only man she had ever
truly loved was the boy killed in
Carlisle.
In 1774 an old woman from a nearby
village came in to cook for Francis and
Mirabell, for at last Mirabell was going
to have a baby. Francis, stricken again
by his fever, was in bed in the next room
as Mirabell gave birth to a daughter and
died. Francis, in a final spasm of vigor,
rose from his bed and then fell back, he
thought, into Mirabell's arms. He too
was dead. Only the new-born child and
the old woman were alive in the house
on that stormy winter night.
3258

THE ROMAN ACTOR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Philip Massinger (1583-1640)
Type of plot: Tragedy of intrigue
Time of flot: First century
Locale: Rome
First presented: 1626
Principal characters:
Paris, the Roman actor
Domitian, Emperor of Rome
Domitia, his wife
Aretinus, Domitian's spy
Parthenius, Domitian's freedman
Critique:
The Roman Actor depicts the
degeneracy of imperial Rome under the tyrant
Domitian. In contrast to the general
corruption stand Paris, the actor, and two
senators of Stoic persuasion. The most
original and impressive element of the
play is the character of Paris.
Unfortunately, the plot revolves around
Domitian, a much less interesting character,
while Paris is forced awkwardly into the
central action. Paris, in defending the
theater of Rome, is Massinger's
spokesman for the Stuart theater.
The Story:
During the reign of Domitian, there
was little public support for the theater.
The people, accustomed to circuses and
involved in their own licentious
practices, found the drama tame by
comparison; thus most actors made a bare
livelihood. One troupe of actors,
however, prospered, because of the special
affection Domitian had for its leading
member, Paris. But Paris also had his
enemies in the inner circles around the
emperor, the most notable being Aretinus,
Domitian's spy, who believed he and
other leaders had been satirized in a
production by the players. While Domitian
was involved in a military campaign,
Aretinus took the opportunity to have
Paris and his fellow actors arrested.
At a session of the Senate they were
charged with treason. Paris* defense was
in the form of a general vindication of
the theater, in which he eloquently
testified to the uplifting effect of drama
through its revelation of evil and its
attempt to inspire honorable action. As he
finished his speech, news was brought of
Domitian's return from his conquest of
the Chatti and the Daci; thus the release
of the actors was assured.
The people's praise of Domitian for his
victory was exceeded only by his self-
praise. In a characteristic gesture, he
celebrated his return by having his
captives tortured and slain. Although his
despotism and his brutality were causing
unrest among the people, few dared speak
against him.
Among those who welcomed the
emperor were several women who vied for
his favor. All were greeted with contempt,
except the beautiful Domitia. She had
been the wife of a senator, Lamia, until
one of Domitian's men had forced her
husband, under threat of death, to sign a
bill of divorce. She, ambitious for
position, had been agreeable to the change
as long as she could be Domitian's wife,
not his strumpet. Now he bestowed on
her the title of Augusta.
Aretinus had kept a watchful eye on
signs of discontent during his ruler's
absence. Now he informed Domitian of
opposition to his poisoning of Agricola
his execution of Paetus Thrasea, his
incest with his niece Julia, and his intended
marriage to Domitia. Prominent among
the malcontents were three senators—
3259

Rusticus, Sura, and Lamia. Domitian
resolved to have revenge first on Lamia.
After Domitia had been established in
the imperial palace as his wife, the
emperor ordered Lamia brought to him.
Domitian gave lavish thanks to the
senator for the gift of his wife, declaimed
the joys of living with Domitia, and at an
appropriate moment had Domitia sing a
song from the window above them. After
Lamia had time to experience fully his
mental anguish, Domitian ordered his
execution.
In compliance with one of the
emperor's first orders on arriving in Rome,
the actors presented a play. The Cure of
Avarice was chosen at the request of
Parthenius, Domitian's freedman, who
hoped that the dramatization would help
turn his father from his miserly habits.
But the obdurate old man was
unimpressed. Domitian then tried to convince
him of the foolishness of his practices,
but to no avail. Finally, piqued,
Domitian ordered the old man's death.
Despite the long and faithful service of
Parthenius, the emperor refused to hear
his plea for his father's life.
The next to satisfy Domitian's lust for
blood were the senators Rusticus and
Sura, who had criticized the emperor for
his execution of the Stoic philosopher,
Paetus Thrasea. In hopes of hearing their
cries for mercy, Domitian had them
tortured. Sustained by their Stoic principles,
however, the two men refused to show
any sign of pain and mocked him for his
impotence against them. Even after he
had ordered them killed, the experience
unsettled him and gave him his first
doubts of his omnipotence.
Domitia, to cheer up her husband after
this ordeal, had a play presented in which
Paris acted the part of a rejected lover.
As the drama progressed, she became
increasingly agitated, until at the point of
Paris' threatened suicide she jumped from
her seat to stop him.
This unusual behavior immediately
aroused the suspicions of the women of
the court. Having been replaced by
Domitia in the emperor's favor, and having
been treated like servants by Domitia,
these women had been awaiting a chanctf
to discredit her. Their suspicions were
confirmed when they discovered that she-
had sent a letter to Paris requesting that
he meet her. Aretinus, the ubiquitous
spy, was also aware of this situation; he
saw in it a chance not only to gain
further power but to triumph over Paris.
In a petition signed by him and the
women, Domitian was notified of his
wife's behavior. Although refusing at first
to believe the accusation, he agreed to
observe the meeting between his wife and
Paris.
At this meeting, Domitia, after finding
that hints of her feelings failed to elicit
the desired response in Paris, openly
stated her love for him. Loyalty to
Domitian kept Paris from succumbing to her
enticements, however, and her threats and
her bribes left him unmoved. Finally,
after she begged for a brotherly kiss, he
weakened. At that moment Domitian
arrived on the scene. Enraged by her
infidelity, but still too much ruled by the
power of her beauty to kill her
immediately, Domitian had his wife placed
under guard in her chamber. Aretinus,
expectant of reward for informing on the
pair, was put to death instead. The
palace women, for their efforts, were cast
into a dungeon.
Left alone with Paris, Domitian
protested his aversion to killing him. At
Domitian's request, they acted out a play
called The False Servant, with Paris
playing the part of the servant, Domitian
acting as the wronged husband. In the
scene in which the husband discovers
the treachery of his servant, Domitian
drew his sword and killed Paris. The
emperor, feeling in honor bound to kill
a man he much admired, believed he,
at least, had provided a fitting end.
Domitia's hold on her husband was
so great that she was soon restored to
grace. Far from being remorseful,
however, she openly mocked Domitian for
his weakness in loving her and refused
3260

ever again to respond to his love. Finally,
after an especially vicious taunting, he
ained courage to place her name in his
ook of condemned people.
A further source of irritation to him
was an astrologer's prediction of his
imminent death. According to the prophecy,
the astrologer himself would be eaten by
dogs before Domitian would die. In order
to shift the course of events, the emperor
gave orders that the astrologer be burned.
As the soldiers prepared to burn him, a
heavy rain put out the fire, and dogs
burst upon them and devoured the body.
Filled with fear by this happening,
Domitian surrounded himself by tribunes
and awaited the hour of five, at which
time his death had been predicted.
Meanwhile, Domitian's book having
been stolen by Domitia, she, Parthenius,
and the women of the court found their
names on the condemned list. With
others, they decided on immediate action.
By falsely telling Domitian that the hour
of five was passed, Parthenius drew him
away from his guard, and all the
conspirators fell upon him and ended the
life of a tyrant.
3261

THE ROMANCE OF A SCHOOLMASTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edmondo de Amicis (1846-1908)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Italy
First published: 1876
Principal characters:
Emilio Ratti, a young schoolmaster
Professor Megari, his adviser and friend
Faustina Galli, a young schoolteacher whom Ratti loves
Giovanni Labaccio, a schoolteacher and Ratti's friend
Carlo Lerica, another friend, a teacher
Critique:
The Romance of a Schoolmaster was
a product of the author's later years, when
he was convinced that socialism offered
the only palliative for his country's ills.
In this novel he found fault with the
lower and middle classes for being
harsher toward their inferiors than the upper
class was to people below it. The novel
is also a timeless study of the vicissitudes
of the teacher in the elementary school,
the type of teacher recruited from a
shallow culture and the* lower classes. In the
novel the teacher's hardships, his low
pay, his pettifogging enemies, the lack of
social position, and his lack of a cultural
background are all vividly drawn. When
the novel appeared in Italy, it was
bitterly criticized because of the author's
attacks on the system and officials of the
Department of Public Instruction.
The Story:
The unexpected death of Emilio
Ratti's father plunged the family into
poverty, and Emilio, at seventeen, found it
necessary to look for some way to make
his own living. At his mother's
suggestion, and with financial help from a
wealthy family named Goli, he entered
a normal school located in the town where
the Rattis resided. The young man felt
a real call to the teaching profession; the
love and sympathy he felt for his young
brothers and sisters had given him an
interest in the welfare and training of
small children.
His mother's death came on the day
Emilio learned of his appointment to the
normal school. As a result, he spent his
first months there in relative solitude,
reading and studying during the hours
when he was not required to be in
classes. His only friends were his roommates.
One was Carlo Lerica, a thirty-year-old
ex-corporal of grenadiers who had left
the army to go into elementary teaching.
The other was a quiet, compromising
chap in his mid-twenties, Giovanni
Labaccio. His only other friend was
Professor Megari. Emilio believed that the
professor had a genuine liking for him,
even though he did not let it show among
the other students.
When Emilio finished his course at
the normal school, the professor
admitted his sympathy for the young man
and showed him a note written by Emil-
io's mother on her deathbed, a note
asking this faculty member to do what he
could for her son. Professor Megari,
thinking that the letter might inspire
Emilio in his career, gave the letter to
him.
Emilio's first post was at an elementary
school in Garasco, not far from the city
of Turin, in the northern part of Italy.
There the new teacher spent his first
professional year, a year not without its
tribulations. He inadvertently made an
enemy of the local priest's cook, a spiteful
woman who did everything she could to
harm his reputation with the parents of
his pupils and with the local authorities,
mostly because he refused to bow to her
3262

in the street. During that first year Emilio
tried to keep discipline and order in his
room and motivate his students by
kindness and affection for them. He learned,
however, that the rather brutal peasant
youngsters took his attitude for weakness
and disliked him for being so easygoing
At the annual inspection the school
inspector for the province advised Emilio
to keep his affection for his pupils but
not to let it show, lest they continue to
take advantage of him. Emilio was
leaving Garasco at the end of the year, his
position being only a temporary one, and
he resolved to change his methods when
he changed his location.
The following year Emilio taught at
Piazzena, a small village on the plains.
Inadvertently, he found himself regarded
in the area as a member of the opposition
to the political group in office, largely
because he had secured his position
through an influential gentleman of the
neighborhood. The first year in Piazzena
went by without any but the usual petty
incidents of a schoolteacher's existence,
and at its end Emilio was congratulated
by the provincial inspector. In the
second year, however, the village was
thrown into open war over the treatment
of a young woman who taught girls in
the elementary school. The local priest
accused her of teaching the girls to go
against the principles of the Church.
When those charges failed to arouse her
or the village, he accused her of
immorality. Emilio, knowing how unjust the
priest's accusations were, was among
those who sided with the young woman.
After a long battle, in which the school
authorities and the courts became
involved, the teacher's good name was
vindicated and the priest was forced to pay
her an indemnity and to apologize in
print. The battle was enough to convince
Emilio that he no longer wanted to
remain in the community. He did not
request to have his two-year contract
renewed.
Emilio's next post was in Altarana,
situated in the Occidental Alps. There he
ran into a new problem. Because the
government decreed that all children should
be sent to school, there was a good deal
of resentment on the part of the peasants
and their children. Try as he would to
keep the children in attendance, Emilio
fought a losing battle. Both the parents
and youngsters preferred to have the
children work in the fields.
In spite of his difficulties Emilio stayed
in Altarana six years, hoping that by the
end of that time his study and experience
would enable him to get a post in the
municipal school system in Turin. The
pay was better in the city and teaching
was not completely subject to the whims
of pettifogging authorities who tried to
keep money from the schools and to
harass the teachers for not being friends to
every faction and individual.
Faustina Galli, a new teacher for girls,
arrived in Altarana. She had been chosen
by one of the village officials because of
her beauty, and the man who chose her
hoped to have an affair with her. When
she proved to be impervious to his
solicitations or his threats, Emilio, impressed
with her virtue and beauty, fell in love
with her. But Faustina, having the
responsibility of a crippled father to look
after, rejected his attentions. Disappointed
and despairing of ever getting ahead in
his profession, Emilio turned to liquor.
He almost lost his post, but his old friend
and adviser, Professor Megari, interceded
in his behalf and also showed him the
folly of his drinking.
In his last year at Altarana, Emilic
learned what had happened to his
roommates at the normal school. The
ex-corporal of grenadiers, Carlo Lerica, had
encountered many difficulties, but Giovanni
Labaccio had made a name for himself
by insinuating himself into everyone's
graces. He finally married a rich woman
older than he and retired from teaching.
After his retirement he turned against
the profession from which he had risen
and accused the teachers of thinking only
of money, rather than their professional
responsibilities.
Emilio's next village post was in Ca-
3263

mina, where he spent two more years.
There he had numerous small adventures
and the usual troubles with the local
authorities and parents, but he was learning
to put up with them as one of the
conditions of his profession. From there he
went to Bossolano, where he spent his
final year as a teacher in a village school.
At the end of that year he felt that he
had served his apprenticeship and had
put in enough study to compete
successfully for a post in Turin. He took the
examinations in the city, along with more
than two hundred other candidates. He
was successful, as was his old classmate,
Carlo Lerica. Not only did they pass the
examination, but they were appointed
immediately to posts. To add to his joy,
Emilio discovered that Faustina Galli was
also teaching in Turin. From her he
learned that her father had died, and she
gave him reason to hope that she was at
last ready to return his love.
3264

THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI
Type of work: Novel
Author: Dmitri Merejkowski (1865-1941)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1494-1519
Locale: Italy and France
First published: 1902
Principal characters:
Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance artist
Giovanni Beltraffio, his pupil
Cesare Borgia, Leonardo's patron
Monna Cassandra, a sorceress
Francesco Melzi, another pupil of Leonardo
Monna Lisa Gioconda, model for a portrait by Leonardo
Critique:
This novel presents a vivid picture of
the glittering Italian Renaissance. The
royal courts, the Vatican, the quiet
countryside, the studios of artists, an
alchemist's workshop, and many other scenes
serve as a backdrop for the story of the
later years of the famed painter and
thinker, Leonardo da Vinci. Almost all
the great figures of the age pass through
the pages of the novel as they cross the
path of Leonardo. More than a
fictionalized biography, it is also the history of a
culture, for Merejkowski has depicted the
religious and political struggles of the age
as well as its adventure, romance, and
bravado.
The Story:
In 1494 the fear of the coming of the
Antichrist prophesied in the New
Testament began to make itself felt in Italy.
Greek and Roman statues, which had
recently been excavated and accepted as
supreme works of art by such men as
Leonardo da Vinci, were considered by
the common people as actual pagan deities
returning to prepare the world for the
reign of the Antichrist.
Leonardo da Vinci had become a
member of the court of Duke Moro in Milan.
Besides acting as chief architect for the
duke, he interested himself in teaching his
pupils, Giovanni Beltraflio and Andrea
Salaino, and in working on whatever
caught his fancy. Most of the money he
received from the duke's treasury went
to buy pieces of amber with bugs
imbedded in them, old shells, live birds that he
studied and then freed, and other curious
objects which distracted his attention and
kept him from completing his painting,
The Last Supper,
The student Giovanni was attracted to
Monna Cassandra, a beautiful girl who
lived in the neighborhood. Unknown to
him, she was a practicer of the black arts
and a favorite of suspected witches.
The Duke of Milan called upon the
King of France to help protect and
support his dukedom. But Louis XII of
France sonn proved false to his friendship
with the duke and overran the duchy.
The French forces used a clay statue of a
mounted warrior, which Leonardo had not
yet cast in bronze, as a target for a
shooting contest, and a flood caused the walls
on which The Last Supper was painted to
bulge and crack. Realizing that these two
works of art could never be finished,
Leonardo decided to leave Milan and go
to the court of Cesare Borgia, son of Pope
Alexander VI.
As Borgia's adviser, Leonardo designed
many pieces of war equipment and
machinery which Borgia used in his attempt
to seize all of Italy for the pope. None of
THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI by Dmitri Merejkowski. By permission of the publishers,
Random House, Inc. Translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney. Copyright, 1928, by The Modern Library.
Inc.
3265

Leonardo's pupils approved of his working
for Borgia, whose cruelties and vices made
him hated all over Italy.
One day one of Leonardo's students, a
blacksmith named Zoroastro da Peretola,
had gone against his orders and had tried
to fly in Leonardo's only partly completed
airplane. Falling from a considerable
height, he received such a jolt that his
mind was never again sound.
Leonardo left Borgia's services and, with
the help of his friend Machiavelli,
received a commission from the city of
Florence to plan a system of waterways which
would divert the course of the Arno River.
Because Machiavelli had underestimated
the expense of the work, Leonardo was
soon in trouble with the authorities. The
canal project was abandoned and
Leonardo was asked instead to paint a large
picture depicting the battle of Anghiari.
At that time Michelangelo was also
working in Florence, and a great jealousy had
grown up between admirers of the two
artists. Leonardo tried to make friends
with Michelangelo, but the passionate
artist would have nothing to do with the
mild Leonardo. Raphael, at that time only
a young man, was friendly with both
artists. His works were more popular with
artistically-minded Pope Leo X than those
of either of the older men.
During his stay in Florence, Leonardo
had begun the portrait of a young married
woman of the town named Monna Lisa
Gioconda. As she sat for him, day after
day, he would amuse her by telling her
stories as he worked, or converse with her
on any subject in order to keep her
interested in the dull task of posing. As the
months passed, Monna Lisa and Leonardo
were more and more drawn to each other.
Both were essentially secretive persons
who seemed to understand each other
intuitively. Months passed into years, and
still Monna Lisa came to the studio to
pose. No one suspected anything improper
of the meetings, but it became a source of
amusement in Florence that the gentle
artist, who had never before taken an
interest in women, seemed to be in love.
Monna Lisa's sudden death shocked
Leonardo to the bottom of his soul. He had
hoped to finish her portrait, to finish this
one work at least, but with Monna Lisa's
death his hopes fell. He had tried to show
in her face the mystery of the universe,
for he had found that the mystery of
Monna Lisa and the mystery of the
universe were one.
Because of the trouble over the canal
and the unfinished picture of the battle of
Anghiari, Leonardo da Vinci was
dismissed from the service of the city of
Florence. He returned to Milan to serve
under the new ruler of that city, Louis
XII of France. There Giovanni Beltraffio
again met Monna Cassandra. One day she
promised to show him the answers to his
deepest questions. He was to meet her
late that same night. As Giovanni left
her, he was shocked to see in her face
the expression of the White She-Demon, a
specter which had haunted him since
childhood.
But before the time for their meeting
Monna Cassandra was taken prisoner by
the Most Holy Inquisition. Thinking her
completely innocent, Giovanni visited all
his old friends in an effort to secure her
release. The more he tried to help her,
however, the more convinced he became
that there were indeed evil spirits who
inhabited the forms of human,beings, and
that the White She-Demon was one of
them. Unable to prevent Monna's death,
Giovanni walked about the streets
disconsolately. Suddenly he realized that the
strange odor he had been smelling was
the scent of burning flesh. Monna and
one hundred and twenty-nine others
accused as witches wete being burned at the
stake. Terror-stricken, he almost lost his
mind. Later, still haunted by the White
She-Demon, he committed suicide.
The loss of his favorite pupil would
have been a more terrible blow to
Leonardo if Francesco Melzi had not recently
joined his group of students. Francesco
Melzi, who was to be the true and faithful
friend of the old artist, helped him
through the final years of his life,
especially in that trying period when the
death of Louis XII left Leonardo without
3266

a patron. But the new French king,
Francis I, soon afterward called Leonardo
da Vinci to Paris. In 1516 Leonardo and
his small group left Italy for France; the
artist was never to see his home country
again.
In France he was well treated in spite
of his inability to finish anything he
began. He took up the Monna Lisa
portrait again, and almost finished it to his
satisfaction from memory. One day King
Francis visited him in his studio. Seeing
the portrait, the king purchased it but
agreed that Leonardo could keep his
beloved portrait until he died.
King Francis did not have long to wait.
A few years later Leonardo, old and weak,
grew sick and died. His faithful pupil,
Francesco Melzi, saw to it that Leonardo
received the rites of the Church before
his death. He also arranged to have the
artist buried in a style which, he hoped,
would forever still the whispering tongues
that called Leonardo a disciple of the
Antichrist to come.
3267

THE ROMANCE OF THE FOREST
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mrs. Ann RadclifFe (1764-1823)
Type of plot: Gothic romance
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: France and Savoy
First published: 1791
Principal characters:
Adeline, a victim of intrigue
Pierre de la Motte, her benefactor, a fugitive from justice
Madame de la Motte, his wife
Louis, their son
Theodore Peyrou, a young soldier
The Marquis de Montalt, a villainous nobleman
Arnaud la Luc, a cleric and scholar
Clara, his daughter
Peter, a loyal servant
Critique:
One of the most popular writers of her
day, Mrs. RadclifFe made her name
practically synonymous with the tale of
mystery and terror. To her the Gothic novel
was a work of the romantic imagination,
the background usually a ruined castle
or abbey whose secret passages and moldy
dungeons contributed much to the
action and atmosphere of her story. Unlike
others among the Gothic romancers, she
did not descend to the supernatural for
the sake of ghastly horror. Her situations,
exaggerated and extreme as they appear
to the modern reader, were always
accounted for in some logical fashion. Her
plots were awkward, her character
drawings stilted and sentimentalized, but her
novels achieved a remarkable vitality
because of her skill with effects of
atmosphere and suspense.
The Story:
On a dark and tempestuous night
Pierre de la Motte left Paris to escape
his creditors and prosecution by the law.
Descended from an ancient house, he
was a man whose passions often proved
stronger than his conscience. Having
dissipated his own fortune and that of his
wife, he had engaged in various
questionable schemes which brought him at
last to disgrace and made necessary his
flight with only the small wreck of his
once considerable property. Leaving Paris
with his wife and two faithful servants,
he hoped to find a refuge in some
village of the Southern Provinces. The
departure was so sudden that there had
been no time for the harried parents to
say farewell to their son Louis, on duty
with his regiment in Germany.
Several leagues from the city Peter,
the coachman, lost his way while driving
across a wild heath. Seeing in the
distance the lighted window of a small,
ancient house, La Motte dismounted and
walked to the dwelling in the hope of
securing directions from its inmates. A
grim-visaged man opened the door at his
knock and ushered him into a desolate
apartment, the door of which was
abruptly locked behind him. Over the howling
of the wind La Motte could hear rough
voices close at hand and the muffled
sobbing of a woman.
The door was at last unlocked and the
forbidding ruffian reappeared, dragging
by the hand a beautiful girl of about
eighteen. Putting a pistol to La Motte's
breast, the man offered him his choice
between death or taking the girl with
him. When the girl begged him to take
pity on her, La Motte, moved by her tears
as much as by his own danger, readily
assented. Other men appeared and the
prisoners, now blindfolded, were taken on
horseback to the edge of the heath. There
La Motte and the girl were put into his
3268

carriage. Followed by the threats and
curses of the wild crew, Peter drove
rapidly away. The agitated girl, thrust so
strangely into the company of La Motte
and his wife, gave her name only as
Adeline. Not wishing to add to her distress,
they did not pursue their questioning.
Madame de la Motte was filled with pity
for the unfortunate creature.
Several days later the travelers reached
the vast forest of Fontanville. The sun
was setting when they saw against the
ruddy sky the towers of an ancient
abbey. Awed by the solemn beauty of the
ruins, they proceeded on their way, but
at no great distance a carriage wheel
broke, overturning the vehicle. Not
wishing to spend the night in the open, they
returned to the abbey. During their
explorations they discovered a suite of
apartments still habitable and of more
modern date than the rest of the
structure. In spite of his wife's misgivings,
La Motte decided to make the secluded
abbey his place of refuge.
Peter, dispatched to a nearby village
for provisions and furniture, returned
with the report that the ruins were the
property of a nobleman living on a
distant estate. The country people also
claimed that a mysterious prisoner had
once been confined there, and although
no one knew his fate his ghost was
supposed to haunt the scenes of his
imprisonment. For seventeen years the natives
of the region had not dared to approach
the old abbey.
La Motte was well pleased with all that
he heard, and before long he and his
household had made their rude quarters
as comfortable as possible. La Motte
spent most of his mornings out of doors,
either hunting or fishing, his
afternoons and evenings with his family.
Sometimes he read, but more often he sat
in gloomy silence. Adeline alone had
power to enliven his spirits when he
grew moody and depressed. Having fully
recovered from her terrifying experience,
she had become a girl of sweet, lively
disposition and diligent habits. After a
time she began to look upon Madame de
la Motte as a mother, and to her
benefactress she confided the story of her life.
She was the only child of the poor
but reputable Chevalier de St. Pierre.
Her mother being dead, she had been
reared in a convent, it being her father's
intention that she should take the veil.
On her refusal, he rebuked her for her
obstinacy, but at last named a day to
take her from the convent. Much to her
dismay, she was not taken to his
magnificent house in Paris but to that lonely
house on the heath. There she was turned
over to the care of brutal keepers. Only
the arrival of La Motte, she believed,
had saved her from an unknown but
terrible fate.
After a month passed in his forest
refuge, Lb Motte regained a measure of
his tranquility and even cheerfulness,
much to the delight of his wife and their
war!. Then his mood suddenly changed.
Preyed upon by some guilty secret or
deep remorse, he avoided his family and
spent many hours alone in the forest.
Peter, the faithful servant, tried to
follow his master on more than one
occasion, but La Motte always eluded his
follower and at one particular place
disappeared as if the trees and rocks had
swallowed him. About that time, also,
Peter brought from the village a report
that a stranger was in the neighborhood
inquiring for his master. Greatly
disturbed, La Motte remembered a
trapdoor he had observed in one of the
decaying chambers of the abbey. Thinking
that it might lead to a place of hiding, he
explored the passageway to which the
trapdoor gave access and came finally to
a room containing a large chest of ancient
design. Throwing open the lid, he was
horrified to find inside a human
skeleton. Although he told them nothing
about the gruesome remains in the chest,
he insisted that his family join him in
the hidden apartments he had
discovered.
The next day, venturing out of hiding,
La Motte saw a stranger in the abbey. He
returned quickly to his place of
concealment. But their provisions were running

low, and at last it was decided that
Adeline should reconnoiter the ruins to learn
whether the supposed officer of the law
had gone away. In the cloisters she
encountered a young man in military
uniform. Although she tried to flee, he
overtook her and demanded to know the
whereabouts of Pierre de la Motte.
Adeline's relief was as great as her joy when
the stranger's identity was revealed. He
was Louis de la Motte, whose filial
affection had drawn him to his father'i
side.
Unfortunately, his coming was to
destroy completely Madame de la Motte's
liking and esteem for Adeline. At times
in the past she had been moved to
jealousy, suspecting that La Motte went to
keep assignations with his lovely ward
when he disappeared so mysteriously into
the forest, but she had tried to put such
unworthy thoughts out of her mind.
Now, seeing her son's growing fondness
for the girl, she became unkind in her
manner toward her. Aware of the
mother's coldness and dislike, Adeline spent
much of her time »n the forest, where
she composed poems inspired by the
beauty of the landscape and her own
gentle melancholy.
One day, while she sang some stanzas*
of her own composition, a strange voice
echoed her. Startled to find a young man
in hunter's dress close at hand, she
would have fled in fright if the stranger
had not paused respectfully on seeing her
agitation. Adeline decided to refrain for
a time from walking so far from the
abbey. On her return Madame de la Motte
added to her confusion by greeting her
suspiciously.
About a month later a party of
horsemen arrived at the abbey during a violent
midnight storm. When La Motte ignored
their knocking, they pushed the decayed
door from its hinges and stalked into the
hall. Adeline, overcome by fear for her
benefactor, fainted. She revived to find
the young man of the forest in the room.
From the conversation she learned that
his name was Theodore Peyrou and that
his older companion, a chevalier of
haughty demeanor, was the Marquis de
Montalt, the owner of the abbey, who
was staying at his hunting lodge on the
edge of the forest. La Motte, who had
fled when the knocking began, returned
to the room. Immediately he and the
marquis regarded each other in great
confusion, and the nobleman put his hand
threatingly upon his sword. He agreed,
however, when La Motte requested a
private discussion in another room.
Madame de la Motte overheard enough of
their conversation to realize that there
was some secret between the two men.
The marquis and his retinue departed
early in the morning. Returning the next
day, the nobleman, after inquiring for
La Motte, paid courteous attention to
Adeline. When he and La Motte had
disappeared into the forest on an errand
of their own, Theodore remained with
the ladies. Adeline realized suddenly that
she was falling in love with the young
man, an officer in a regiment
commanded by the marquis.
Louis de la Motte prepared to return
to his regiment. The marquis continued
to visit the abbey almost every day.
Adeline, meeting Theodore in the forest,
received hints of some mysterious danger.
He promised to meet her again the next
evening, but when Adeline went to meet
him he failed to appear. The marquis
had suddenly ordered him to return to
duty.
That night Adeline dreamed that she
was in a strange chamber of the abbey,
where a cloaked guide conducted her to
a coffin covered with a pall. When her
guide lifted the covering, she saw a dead
man lying within, blood gushing from
his side. Awaking, she slept no more that
night.
The next day the marquis came for
dinner and consented with reluctance to
sleep at the abbey. A rearrangement of
the private apartments being necessary to
accommodate the guests, Adeline retired
to a small chamber usually occupied by
Madame de la Motte's maid. Behind an
arras she uncovered a door which led into
the chamber she had seen in her dream.
3270

A rusted dagoer lay on the floor and in
a moldering bed she found a small roll
of manuscript. On her return to her room
she heard voices coming from the room
below and to her horror recognized the
impassioned accents of the marquis as he
declared his intention to make her his
own. She retired in great distress of mind,
to be aroused again when the nobleman,
in evident alarm, left the abbey
unceremoniously before daybreak.
Later that same morning the marquis
returned and over Adeline's protests
declared his suit. When she turned to La
Motte for aid, he assured her that he was
unable to help her, since his safety
depended upon the nobleman's favor. So
great was Adeline's despair that she
almost forgot the manuscript she had found
in the abandoned room. She read enough
of it, however, to realize that the
despairing document had been written by the
mysterious prisoner of the abbey, a
victim of the cruel Marquis de Montalt.
From Peter she learned also that the suit
of the marquis was false; his wife was
still living.
At last, to save the helpless girl from
her suitor's evil design, Peter promised
to take her to his native village in Savoy.
She was to meet the servant at an old
tomb in the forest, but when she arrived
at the place of meeting a strange
horseman appeared and in spite of her
struggles carried her to the marquis' hunting
lodge. There he again pressed his suit
upon her. When he finally withdrew,
she managed to escape through a
window. Theodore, who had returned from
his regiment when he learned of the
marquis' evil designs, joined her in her
flight. In a carriage which he had
waiting they drove all night in the direction
of the frontier. At an inn where they
stopped for some refreshment they were
overtaken by officers who tried to arrest
Theodore in the king's name. Resisting,
he received a saber cut in the head. He
had almost recovered from his wound
when the Marquis de Montalt appeared
and ordered his men to seize Theodore
on a charge of treason. Theodore,
snatching up a sergeant's cutlass, wounded the
marquis. During the confusion Adeline
was hustled into a chaise and driven back
to the abbey, where La Motte locked her
in her room. Anxious for word of
Theodore, she was told a short time later that
the young officer had been returned
under arrest to his regiment.
By the time the marquis was able to
travel, his passion for Adeline had turned
to hate, and La Motte was instructed to
do away with the girl. The unscrupulous
nobleman's hold over La Motte was
strong, for that unhappy man, driven to
desperation by his lack of funds, had
during his early days at the abbey held
up and robbed the marquis, whom he
mistook for a chance traveler in the
forest. Although he was completely in the
other's power, La Motte refused to stain
his hands with blood. Instead, he ordered
the faithful Peter to take Adeline to Le^
loncourt, in Savoy, where she would be
safe from the marquis' agents. When her
flight was revealed, the nobleman had La
Motte arrested for highway robbery and
imprisoned.
Shortly after her arrival in Leloncourt
Adeline became ill. Arnaud La Luc, a
scholarly clergyman, took her into his
home for nursing and during her
convalescence she formed a close friendship
with his daughter Clara. So deep was her
grief over Theodore that she never
mentioned him to her new friends. Then La
Luc's health began to fail, and she and
Clara accompanied him to the
Mediterranean sea coast. There Adeline
encountered Louis de la Motte and learned that
he was on his way to Leloncourt on an
errand for Theodore. To her great
surprise, it was revealed that the man she
knew as Theodore Peyrou was in reality
the son of Arnaud La Luc. The travelers
immediately hastened to Vaceau, where
the young officer was being held under
sentence of death.
La Motte, meanwhile, had been taken
to Paris for trial on the charges brought
against him by the marquis. The prisoner
was in despair when an unexpected
witness appeared in his behalf. The man was
3271

Du Bosse, one of the ruffians hired to
dispose of Adeline while she was held
prisoner in the lonely house on the heath.
His story started an investigation which
revealed that Adeline was the natural
daughter of the Marquis de Montalt, who
had never seen the girl before he met her
at the ruined abbey. In the past one of his
agents had always played the part of her
father. The marquis was arrested and
Adeline was summoned to Paris for his
trial. With the arrest of the man she had
always considered her father other of the
marquis' activities came to light. He had
also ordered the murder of his older
brother, whose skeleton La Motte had
found in the abbey. The confederate also
testified that Adeline was not the
nobleman's natural daughter but his older
brother's child, an heiress whom he had
tried to conceal from the world. The
manuscript Adeline had found provided
further documentary evidence of her uncle's
villainy. He was sentenced to death for
his crimes.
The extent of the marquis* evil designs
being known, Theodore received a royal
pardon and was restored to his military
rank. Pierre de la Motte was sentenced
to exile in England, and Adeline
provided for his comfort and that of his wife in
their old age. Her father's skeleton she
buried with all respect in the vault of his
ancestors. A short time later she and
Theodore married and went to live at Le-
loncourt. Clara married Monsieur Ver-
neuil, Adeline's distant kinsman, who
had been helpful to her and the La Lues
during the time of their distress over
Theodore and La Motte. Before many
years had passed Louis de .la Motte came
with his bride to a house nearby, and
there in Leloncourt the three deserving
couples lived out their lives in happiness
and prosperity.
3272

ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Lo Kuan chung (c. 1320 c. 13S0)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Third century
Locale: China
First transcribed: Fourteenth century
Principal characters:
Liu Pei, a distant descendant of t*ie royal family of the Han dynasty
and t^e founder of the Shu Han Kingdom
Kuan YD, Liu Pefs sworn brother, later apotheosized by Chinese as the
God of War
Chang Fei, the sworn brother of Liu and Kuan, a blunt soldier of great
prowess
Chu-ko Ltang. prime minister to Liu Pei and to his weakling successor
Ts'ao Ts'ao. founder of the Wei Kingdom, noted for his unscrupulous
res^u^c^fulnpss
Sun ChYian, founder of the Wu Kingdom
Chou Yu, Sun Ch'iian's brilliant military commander, perpetually
piq'iM by Chu-ko Liang's snneH^r infplli^nc^
Ch \o Yun, a brave general of the Shu Han Kingdom
Lii Po, an unprincipled and matchless warrior famous for his romantic
involvement with the beauty Tiao Shan
Ssu-ma I, founder of the all-powerful Ssu-ma family in the Wei
Kingdom
Chiang Wei, Chu-ko Liang's successor
Critique:
The colorful events of the period of
the Three K'nadoms. beoinnino with
the r'se of the Yellow Turban rebels
under the last emperors of the Eastern Han
dynastv and ending with the
unification of China under the first Chin
Emperor, have always fascinated the
Chines*. Lo Kuan-chung. who made use of
official hVory as well as oral traditions
in the composition of this great dynas*ic
romance, permanentlv fixed the popular
image of the period. In this respect he is
not unlike Homer, who rendered a s'mi-
lar service for the Greeks. It is not too
much to say that the Romance of the
Three Kingdoms QSan-kuo chih yen~t)
has been for centuries the most popular
book in China, beloved alike by literati
and populace. Lo Kuan-chung wrote
from the point of view which believes
Liu Pei to be the rightful successor to
the Han throne, but while his treatment
of the major personages of Shu Han is
always sympathetic, he seldom stoops to
vilify the equally colorful heroes of Wei
and Wu. Even Ts'ao Ts'ao, always the
caricature of a villain on the Chinese
stage, is a more complex and subtle
character in the book than most careless
readers would allow. In making Chu-ko
Liang his hero, a man of unexcelled
intelligence who nevertheless attempts the
impossible out of his devotion to Liu Pei
and his cause, Lo Kuan-chung has given
his history a tragic meaning of the most
disturbing kind.
The Story:
When the Yellow Turban rebellion
was finally quashed, the many soldiers of
fortune who took part in its suppression
seized power for themselves, thus
precipitating the downfall of the Eastern
Han dynasty. Among these the most
shrewd and successful politician was
Ts'ao Ts'ao, who had already attracted a
ROMANCE OF THE THPEE KINGDOMS bv T.o Kuan-chun*. Translated by C. H. B-ewitt-Tnylor.
By pernvssion of the publishers, Charles E. Tuttle Co., Rutland. Vt. Copyright, 1925, by Kelly & Walsh,
Ltd. Renewed. All righto reserved. Copyright, 1959, by Charles E. Tuttle Co.
3273

large following of able counselors and
warriors. After the systematic elimination
of his many rivals, such as Tung Cho,
Lii Po, Yuan Shao, and Yuan Shu, he
ruled over North China as the King of
Wei, subjecting the Han Emperor and
his court to great indignity.
Liu Pei, who also rose to fame during
the Yellow Turban rebellion, was for a
long time doing very poorly, in spite
of the legendary prowess of his sworn
brothers, Kuan Yu and Chang Fei. It was
not until he sought out Chu-ko Liang
and made him his prime minister that his
fortunes began to improve. In time he
ruled over Szechwan as the King of Shu
Han.
While Liu Pei was beginning to mend
his fortunes, the only man who blocked
Ts'ao TsWs territorial ambitions was Sun
Ch'iian, who had inherited from his
father and older brother the rich kingdom
of Wu, south of the Yangtze. When
Ts'ao Ts'ao finally decided to cross the
Yangtze and subdue Wu, Sun Ch'iian
and Liu Pei formed an alliance, and
the combined strategy of their respective
military commanders, Chou Yii and Chu-
ko Liang, subjected Ts'ao Ts'ao's forces
to a crushing defeat. After this victory
Liu Pei went to Szechwan and the
precarious power balance of the Three
Kingdoms was established.
The friendly relationship between Shu
and Wu did not last long. Kuan Yii,
entrusted with the vital task of
governing the province of Hupeh, adjacent to
the Wu territory, had antagonized Sun
Ch'iian, and in the subsequent military
struggle he was killed. Liu Pei now
vowed to conquer Wu; against the sage
advice of Chu-ko Liang, who wanted to
conciliate Wu so as to counter their more
dangerous common enemy, Wei, he led
a personal expedition against Wu and
suffered a disastrous defeat. Liu Pei died
soon afterward.
Liu Pei's son and successor was a
moronic weakling. Out of loyalty to his
late master, however, Chu-ko Liang was
determined to serve him and improve the
fortunes of Shu. He made peace with
Wu and" led several expeditions against
Wei. These campaigns ended in a
stalemate. Overburdened with work and
handicapped by the lack of able generals
(of the "Five Tiger Warriors" of Liu
Pei's day, only Chao Yiin had remained,
an old fighter as intrepid as ever), Chu-
ko Liang could no longer direct his cam-
paigns with his usual brilliance.
Moreover, the Wei commander, Ssu-ma I,
whose family had become increasingly
powerful in the Wei court following the
death of Ts'ao Ts'ao, was in many ways
his shrewd match. Finally Chu-ko Liang
died of physical exhaustion.
By that time the Ssu-mas had usurped
the power of Wei and had subjected
Ts'ao Ts'ao's descendants to as much
cruelty and torture as Ts'ao Ts'ao and
his immediate successor had subjected
the Han emperors. Wu and Shu had
both weakened. Even though Chiang
Wei, the Shu general, tried bravely to
stem the tide, he was overwhelmed by
the numerical strength of the invading
Wei forces, under the command of T'eng
Ai and Chung Hui. Soon after the death
of Chiang Wei, the kings of Shu and
Wu surrendered. Ssu-ma Yen, Ssu-ma
I's grandson, now ruled China as the
• first Emperor of Chin.
3274

THE ROMANTIC COMEDIANS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)
Type of plot: Humorous satire
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: Richmond, Virginia
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
Judge Gamaliel Bland Honeywell, a widower of sixty-five
Annabel, his second wife, a girl of twenty-three
Mrs. Upchurch, Annabel's mother
Edmonia Bredalbane, the judge's sister
Amanda Lightfoot, the judge's childhood sweetheart
Critique:
The Romantic Comedians presents the
age-old problem of the old man who
marries a young girl. But symbolized in
these two people is the struggle between
two diverse eras in American culture.
The man represents the faded Victorian-
ism of the American South in the last
third of the nineteenth century. The
girl represents the generation of Southern
Americans in the decade after the first
World War. Since Ellen Glasgow's
purpose was to present the new South, the
novel succeeds because it reflects the
forces which pervade that section of our
country today.
The Story:
As Judge Honeywell walked home
from church on the first Easter morning
after his wife's death, he was surprised
by his own reactions to the Virginia
springtime. He felt quite young, for
sixty-five, and life with his wife, now
dead, seemed so remote as never to have
happened. In fact, he felt relieved, for
his first wife had seldom let him lead an
existence of his own.
The judge looked after Mrs. Upchurch
and her daughter Annabel in a friendly
way because they were kinswomen of his
late wife. But shortly after that
memorable Easter morning he began to think
of twenty-three-year old Annabel in quite
another way. His changed attitude
began because he was secretly sorry for her.
THE ROMANTIC COMEDIANS by Ellen Glasgow. By
lac. Copyright, 1926, 1933, by Ellen Glasgow.
! She had been engaged to a young man
i who had left her almost at the altar. It
i had hurt her bitterly, as the judge and
i her mother knew.
As time passed the judge found
himself thinking more and more of Annabel
t Upchurch and of Amanda Lightfoot, his
s childhood sweetheart. Unfortunately, the
i judge's sister, Mrs. Bredalbane, tried to
t convince him that falling in love with
Amanda would be the sensible thing for
J him to do. The judge, like most men,
J promptly closed his mind to Amanda and
r began thinking more of Annabel, who
had asked the judge if he would help
her to open a flower shop.
Soon the judge had purchased a house
with a large garden for Mrs. Upchurch
j and her daughter, so that Annabel might
practice landscape gardening. When he
told the girl, he added that he only
expected the reward of seeing her happy.
But when she left, he kissed her.
c By the time that Mrs. Upchurch and
i Annabel were settled in their new home,
the judge knew he was in love with the
i girl, who was more than forty years
r younger than he. He bought new clothes
; and had his hair and beard trimmed to
lessen the amount of gray which had
i appeared. He felt that he could give
t Annabel everything she needed—love,
tenderness, security, and wealth.
The number and quality of the judge's
. By permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co.„
3275

gifts soon made apparent to Annabel and
her mother what was in the old man's
mind. Annabel thought at first that it
would be more suitable for him to marry
her mother. But, as she informed her
mother, marrying an older man was
certainly better than living in an atmosphere
of shabby gentility. Annabel decided to
visit Amanda Lightfoot. Knowing that
Amanda had never married because she
had been in love with the judge,
Annabel wished to find out if the older
woman still loved him. If she did not,
Annabel decided, she herself would
marry him. But the older woman almost
refused to say anything at all. Annabel
was disappointed but secretly relieved.
When she arrived home, Judge
Honeywell was waiting with a present for her,
a sapphire bracelet. Before he left the
house he told her he loved her, and she
accepted him.
After the marriage the judge and
Annabel traveled in Europe and in
England. The judge felt that he was as fine
a man as he had been at thirty-five,
although his nerves were jarred a little
when some one occasionally referred to
Annabel as his daughter. That she often
danced with young men did not bother
him. He felt no envy of their youth:
after all, she was his wife.
The judge was glad to be back in his
home in Virginia after the honeymoon.
His dyspepsia soon disappeared after he
began to eat familiar cooking once more,
and he felt at peace to be living in the
familiar old house which had not been
refurnished in over thirty years.
The couple dined out frequently and
went to many dances. The judge, after
noting how silly his contemporaries
appeared on the dance floor, abstained from
any dancing, but he encouraged Annabel
to enjoy herself. He always went with
her, not from jealousy but because he
felt that he had to keep up with her
life. It cost him a great deal of effort,
for on those evenings he sometimes
thought that he had never before known
what fatigue was really like.
At home, Annabel had brought
changes into the house. While he did
not approve, the judge said nothing until
she tried to change the furniture in his
own room. She learned then, although
it cost him a ring she had admired, that
he would not let her meddle with his
own privacy.
When the judge came down with
bronchitis, Annabel proved an able and
attentive nurse. During his
convalescence, however, she found it difficult to
remain at home reading night after night.
He, noticing her restlessness, told her to
begin going out again, even though he
could not go with her. When Annabel
went out, her mother or the judge's
sister would come to have dinner and stay
with him during the evening.
The passing weeks brought in
Annabel a change which many people
noticed. Noted for her boisterous spirits
and lack of reticence, she surprised them
by becoming more vague about her
comings and goings. At the same time
they compHmented the judge on how
happy she seemed. The compliments
made the old gentleman content, for, as
he said, Annabel's happiness was what
he wanted most.
Slowly the judge began to feel that
all was not right in his home. Annabel
was distant in her manner. When he
talked with his sister and Annabel's
mother, both reassured him of the girl's
devotion. Still, he knew something was
not right. He received proof one day
when he found Annabel kissing a young
man. Dabney Birdsong belonged to an
old family in the community. Annabel
had resolved to have him, cost what it
might. To the judge, his greatest sorrow
was that it might be only an infatuation
which would not make Annabel happy.
The girl, on the other hand, thought if
she did not have Dabney she would die.
Annabel and her lover ran away and
went to New York. The judge followed
them to the city. Unable to understand
his young wife, he felt sorry for her
because she defied convention, and he
3276

thought that he himself was to blame for
what had happened. After a talk with
Annabel he left New York, defeated, to
return to Virginia.
The rain and the draughty train gave
the judge a cold which turned into
influenza, and he was in bed for several
weeks in a serious condition. During his
convalescence he discovered that spring
had once more arrived. With the
stirring in nature, he felt a resurgence of life
in his weary body. Like many an old
man before him, the season of freshness
and greenery gave him the feeling of
youth that he had had on the previous
Easter Sunday morning. He found
himself beginning to look with new, eager
interest at the young nurse who was
attending him during his illness.
3277

THE ROMANTIC LADIES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1659
Principal characters:
La Grange, and
Du Croisy, young men of Paris
Magdalen, and
Cathos, the romantic ladies
The Marquis De Mascarille, La Grange's valet
Viscount Jodelet, Du Croisy's valet
Gorgibus, Magdalen's father and Cathos' uncle
Critique:
When The Romantic Ladies (Les
Pricieuses Ridicules') was first presented
in Paris, it was the fashion for people of
fashionable society to talk in affected,
ultra-sentimental style. Moliere, using his
rapier-like pen to lampoon this custom,
made the people of Paris see themselves as
they appeared to others, and before long
they mended their foolish ways of speech.
The play had instant success, for not only
did it deal with a subject near to the hearts
of pleasure-loving Paris but also it was a
true comedy, delicate and subtle in its
effects. This one-act play deserves a place
with Moliere's best.
The Story:
Gorgibus had taken his daughter
Magdalen and his niece Cathos from their
country home for a stay in Paris. There
La Grange and Du Croisy, calling on them
to propose marriage, were greatly
disgusted by the affectation displayed f>y the
young ladies, for the girls had adopted
manners prevalent everywhere in France,
manners which were a combination of
coquetry and artificiality. With the help of
their valets, La Grange and Du Croisy
determined to teach the silly young girls a
lesson. One of the valets in particular,
Mascarille, loved to pass for a wit; he
dressed himself as a man of quality and
composed songs and verses.
Gorgibus, meeting the two prospective
suitors, inquired into their success with
his niece and his daughter. The evasive
answers he received from them led him to
discuss the affair with the two ladies. He
had to wait some time for them, while
they were busily engaged in painting their
faces and arranging their hair. When they
were finally ready to receive him, he was
enraged by their silly conversation.
He had expected them to accept the
two young men, who were both wealthy
and of good family, but the romantic
ladies explained that they would only
spurn suitors so direct and sincere. Also\
much to the disgust of the two girls, the
young men had proposed at their first
meeting. They wanted lovers to be
deceiving. A lover also must be pensive and
sorrowful, not joyful and healthy, as La
Grange and Du Croisy had been. In
addition, a young lady must refuse her
lover's pleas in order to make him
miserable. If possible, there should also be
adventures: the presence of rivals, the
scorn of fathers, elopements from high
windows. Another fault the girls found
with the two young men was that they
were dressed simply, with no ribbons or
feathers on their clothing. Poor Gorgibus
thought his daughter and niece out of
their minds. He was convinced of this
when they asked him to call them by other
names, for their own were too vulgar.
Cathos would be called Amintha and
Magdalen renamed Polixena. Gorgibus
knew only one thing after this foolish
conversation—either the two girls would
3278

marry quickly or they would both become
nuns.
Even the girls' maid could not
understand the orders they gave her, for they
talked in such riddles that no one could
rightly understand their meaning. She
announced that a young man was in the
parlor, come to call on the two ladies. The
caller was the Marquis De Mascarille, in
reality La Grange's valet. The girls were
enchanted with Mascarille, for he was a
dandy of the greatest and most artificial
wit. His bombastic puns were so affected
that the girls thought him the very soul
of cleverness. He pretended to all sorts of
accomplishments and acquaintances. On
the spot he composed terrible verses and
songs, which he sang out of key and in a
nasal tone. He claimed to have written a
play that would be acted at the Royal
Theater. He drew their attention to his
beautiful dress, complete with ribbons,
feathers, and perfume. Not to be outdone,
the ladies boasted that although they knew
no one in Paris, as yet, a friend had
promised to make them acquainted with all the
fine dandies of the city. They were a
perfect audience for the silly valet pretending
to be a marquis. They applauded each
verse, each song, each bit of shallow wit.
The Viscount Jodelet, in reality Du
Croisy's valet, joined the group. He
claimed to be a hero of the wars, in
command of two thousand horsemen. He had
the girls feel the scars left by deadly
wounds he had received. The two
scoundrels were hard put to outdo each other
in telling the foolish girls ridiculous tales.
When they talked of their visits with
*. likes and countesses, the girls were
fascinated by their good connections. Running
out of conversation, the two valets then
asked the girls to arrange a party. They
sent for musicians and other young people
in order to have a proper dance. Mascarille,
not being able to dance, accused the
musicians of not keeping proper time, and
Jodelet agreed with him.
The dance was in full swing when La
Grange and Du Croisy appeared upon the
scene. Raining blows upon them and
calling them rogues, they fell upon the two
impostors. Mascarille and Jodelet tried to
pretend this scene was all a joke, but their
masters continued to beat them. When
other servants appeared and began to
strip the clothes from the two pretenders,
the girls screamed in honor. La Grange
and Du Croisy berated them for receiving
servants better than they received masters.
They told the girls that if they loved the
two scoundrels so well, they must love
them without their masters' finery. Taking
all the outer apparel from the rogues, La
Grange and Du Croisy ordered them to
continue the dance.
Gorgibus, having heard on the streets
of Paris of his ladies scandal, appeared and
soundly berated the pranksters for the
disgrace they had brought upon his house.
All Paris, all France even, would laugh at
the joke, for the young people at the dance
were now spreading the news up and
down the streets and in the caf is. Gorgibus
was furious with La Grange and Du
Croisy for their trick, but knew the stupid
girls deserved the treatment they had
received. He sent the two valets packing and
ordered the romantic ladies to hide
themselves from the world. Then he cursed
folly, affectation, and romantic songs, the
causes of his horrible disgrace.
3279

THE ROMANY RYE
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Henry Borrow (1803-1881)
Type of plot: Simulated autobiography
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1857
Principal characters:
Lavengro, a scholar gipsy
Isopel Berners (Belle), his companion
Jasper Petulengro, a gipsy
Jack Dale, a horse-trader
Murtagh, an Irishman and Lavengro's childhood friend
The Coachman
Critique:
The Romany Rye continues without a
break the story of Lavengro. The novel
is a collection of stories about the people
Lavengro met, together with his many
side remarks and observations on gipsy
customs, English fairs, religion, and
literature. The Romany Rye is unevenly
written, but its pictures of English life
in the first half of the nineteenth century
are at all times vivid and dramatic.
The Story:
In those days, Lavengro and Isopel
Berners traveled the English highroads
together. Lavengro was a scholar who
had become a gipsy tinker, and Isopel,
whom he called Belle, was a strapping
woman of the roads and dingles. One
night they rescued a coachman whose
carriage had overturned in a swollen
stream, and, while they waited for
daylight, he entertained them with the story
of his life. In the morning Lavengro
forged a new linch-pin for the broken
wheel, and the coachman continued on
his way. The Man in Black, a Catholic
priest whom Lavengro had met before,
visited Lavengro again that evening, and
the two of them discussed and argued
the merits of Catholicism and
Protestantism, with an occasional remark from
Belle.
The next morning Lavengro informed
Belle that Jasper Petulengro and his band
of gipsies had camped nearby during the
night and that he was going to invite
Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro for breakfast.
Lavengro's gipsy friend refused his
invitation, however, saying that he and his
wife would pay a visit later in the day
when they were better settled. On the
next Sunday they all went to church
together. Following the service, Jasper and
Lavengro began a lengthy discussion on
morals.
Belle had indicated to Lavengro that
she thought it about time their paths
separated. When she informed him she
was going on a journey, he feared she
was leaving for good, but she told him
she would come back before too long.
One evening while she was gone
Lavengro had a long talk with Ursula, Mrs.
Petulengro's sister, and thus he learned
her story. She had been married some
years previously. Her husband, escaping
from a constable, had met with an un
fortunate accident and had drowned
She had been a widow until just two
days before, when she had married
Sylvester, another member of the gipsy band
and a widower with two children.
Lavengro and Ursula discussed many
subjects, including morals, virtue, marriage
customs, and words. It was about tlv*
meanings of some of the gipsy words thai
Lavengro wanted most to talk with
Ursula.
Belle returned that night and the next
day Lavengro, who had thought the
matter over in her absence, asked Belle to
marry him and to migrate with him tc
3280

America. When she told him that she
could not give him her answer
immediately, he planned to attend a fair in a
nearby village the next day. Belle agreed
to consider his proposal during his
absence and to give him her reply when he
returned. At the fair Lavengro saw a
horse which he desired, but he did not
have the money to buy the animal and
he refused to borrow the money from
Jasper, who was willing to lend it to him.
When Lavengro returned to the
dingle, Belle had disappeared. At first
he thought she had gone only on a short
journey, but when two days went by
and she did not appear, he began to fear
she would not return. A few days later
he received a letter from her, telling him
that on her previous short journey she
had made arrangements to dispose of all
her goods and to go to America. When
he proposed to her, she had been tempted
to accept his offer, but after thinking it
over carefully she had decided that her
first plan would be the best after all.
Lavengro never saw her again.
That night, at a nearby public house,
Lavengro again saw the horse he had
admired at the fair and learned the animal
could be bought for fifty pounds. Jasper
insisted on giving Lavengro the money
with which to buy the horse, and
Lavengro reluctantly agreed. He and Jasper
planned to meet about ten weeks later.
Lavengro departed the following
morning. On his way he met an old man who
had just had his mule taken away from
him by force. Lavengro rode after the
offender and returned the mule.
One afternoon, as Lavengro and his
horse were resting at the door of an inn,
he met his old friend, the coachman, and
through him obtained a job in the
hostelry as a keeper of accounts in exchange
for room and board for himself and his
horse.
After a short while at the inn,
Lavengro decided it was time for him to be on
his way again. He had decided to go to
Horncasde, a town at a distance of about
one hundred and twenty-five miles. There
he hoped to sell his horse at a good profit.
He journeyed at a leisurely pace for
several days and was nearing Horncastle
late one evening when his horse,
frightened by a light on a gig, threw him and
knocked him unconscious. When he
recovered consciousness, he found
himself in the home of the man who owned
the gig. The man informed him that his
horse was safe and uninjured in the barn.
A surgeon came soon after to examine
Lavengro and to bandage his injured arm.
While recuperating, Lavengro learned his
host's story, how at the shattering of all
his hopes for happiness with the death of
his beloved, he had turned to the study
of Chinese as a way to occupy his mina.
Through this man, Lavengro learned
much of the character of Chinese
language and writing.
The surgeon finally declared Lavengro
well enough to continue to the fair and
gave him a letter to an innkeeper in
Horncasde, so that he might find room
and board for both himself and his horse.
He proceeded to Horncastle, and the next
morning, after displaying his horse's
abilities to the best advantage, he sold him to
Jack Dale, a horse-trader, who was acting
as a representative for a Hungarian, Later
that evening Lavengro and the
Hungarian began a discourse in German, and
Lavengro learned much of the history of
Hungary. He also heard Jack Dale's life
story. Jack, the son of a forger, had
experienced a difficult and unhappy
childhood. His life had been made even harder
because of his physical ugliness. After
his father was convicted and sent away
to serve a prison sentence, Jack decided
to live an upright life, as he had promised
his father he would do. After much
struggling, he had finally achieved a
respectable place in the community.
While walking through the town the
next morning, Lavengro saw a thimble-
rigger chased off by Jack Dale.
Lavengro recognized the thimblerigger as a
boyhood friend, Murtagh, and followed
him. After much recollection of old
times he gave Murtagh five pounds to
3281

return to Ireland and become a priest, a
profession for which Murtagh had
studied as a young man, but in which
he had never been ordained because of
difficulties over card playing.
Lavengro left Horncastle and walked
eastward. He continued his journey for
two days until he came to a large town.
There, on the outskirts, he was accosted
by a recruiting sergeant who tried to get
him to join the Honorable East India
Company and to go to India to fight.
Lavengro was struck by the similarity of
words the sergeant used and those of the
gipsies. But when the sergeant noticed
that Lavengro's hair was beginning to
turn gray, he withdrew his offer. All of
his life Lavengro was to wonder what
new adventures he might have
encountered if he had gone to India.
3282

ROME HAUL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Walter D. Edmonds (1903- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: 1850
Locale: Erie Canal
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Dan Harrow, a newcomer on the canal
Molly Larkins, his cook
Fortune Friendly, a canal character
Gentleman Joe Calash, a canal highwayman
Jotham Klore, a canal bully
Critique:
There is a native tang and sharpness to
this novel, which reclaims a segment of
the American past in its picture of life
along the Erie Canal. The book is vivid
in its painstaking detail. The description
of a flock of geese becomes more than
description for pictorial effect; it becomes
a symbol of the passing of a season and
a passing of a way of life. There is
poignancy and passion in the lives of
people like Dan and Molly, Mrs. Gurget
and Sol, and even Gentleman Joe Calash,
who lived on the big ditch before the
railroads destroyed its free, picturesque
life. Rome Haul is authentic Americana.
The Story:
It was early summer. A young man
carrying a carpetbag was walking to
Boonville, New York, when a peddler
named Jacob Turnesa picked him up.
The young man said his name was Dan
Harrow, lately a farmhand and now
looking for work on the Erie Canal. A farm
woman stopped them for news and gave
them some root beer. She and Turnesa
talked about Gentleman Joe Calash, a
highwayman on the canal.
While Dan was looking for lodgings
in one of the taverns, he saw Gentleman
Joe Calash quarreling with Jotham Klore,
canal bully. The highwayman struck
Klore with his revolver and rode off
in the darkness. Dan made no effort to
give the alarm, not even for the two
thousand dollars reward. Inwardly he
felt sympathy for the robber, who was,
like himself, alone and without friends.
Looking for work, Dan went to the
Ella-Romeyn, the canal boat of Hector
Berry. He found Berry playing cards
with Sol Tinkle and Mrs. Gurget, Sol's
cook. Mrs. Gurget was enormously fat
and addicted to rum noggins with lots
of lemon in them. Mrs. Berry was
away, and so Hector, who could make no
decisions without his wife, could only
offer Dan a job for the short haul to
Rome. Later that day Mrs. Berry came
aboard. She was suspicious of Dan
because he was a stranger. Dan left the
boat on reaching Rome.
At Rome he went to Hennessy's
Saloon to see Julius Wilson about a job.
While he waited he overheard more talk
of Gentleman Joe Calash and of the
reward for capturing him. Then Molly
Larkins, a pretty canal cook, joined
him. Molly cooked for Jotham Klore.
When Klore came in, he accused Dan
of getting too familiar with Molly.
Angry, Dan hit Klore. Gentleman Joe
suddenly appeared, knocked out Klore,
and held Molly and Dan with his
weapon. When they promised not to give
the alarm, he made his escape.
A little later Wilson hired Dan for
the haul to Albany on his boat, the
Xerxes. Ben Rae was the captain and
William Wampy, the cook and fiddler.
ROME HAUL by Walter D. Edmonds. By permission of the author, of Harold Ober, and the publisher*,
Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1929, by Walter D. Edmond*
3283

Near Utica they saw a tall thin man
running from a crowd that chased him
into a haymow. They learned that the
man was a traveling preacher who had
been paid for six sermons but had tried
to sneaK out without giving the last one.
Cornered, the minister preached a fire-
and-brimstone sermon from the mow.
After he had finished, Ben Rae took the
minister aboard. He explained that
though he had been trained for the
ministry he was not really a preacher.
His name was Fortune Friendly.
At the next stop Dan went ashore and
encountered Molly Larkin again. She
had given up her job with Klore and
was going to Lucy Cashdollar's place to
get a new position. Later that night
Dan got into another fight with Klore
and was knocked out. When he came
to, he found that someone had carried
him to the boat. He caught a glimpse
of Gentleman Joe.
At Albany Samson Weaver, captain of
the Sarsy Sal, hired him to drive his
team. On the first day of their haul they
saw a burning canal boat condemned
because of cholera. Samson claimed he
was not afraid of cholera, but he began
to drink hard. Ill, he asked Dan to use
his money for a doctor, but before Dan
could get a doctor Samson died. While
looking for an undertaker, Dan found a
funeral director who offered him ten
dollars for Samson's corpse. He took the
money because he could not afford to
pay for Samson's funeral.
Deciding to carry on alone, he headed
for Lucy Cashdollar's agency. Lucy
supplied girls as cooks for lonely canal men.
Whether they married the canal men
was no concern of hers, but usually she
was glad if they did. By nightfall Molly
was installed as the cook aboard the
Sarsy Sal.
Mr. Butterfield, the agent for whom
Samson had worked, offered to keep Dan
hauling for him at the rates he had
paid Samson. Together they planned to
reclaim Samson's body from the surgeon
to whom the undertaker had sold it, and
give it decent burial.
On the wharf Dan saw old Fortune
Friendly again and hired him as a driver.
Molly and Friendly talked about Jotham
Klore and agreed that sooner or later
there would have to be a show-down
fight between Klore and Dan. Molly
and Dan found Samson's money hidden
aboard the Sarsy Sal, over eight hundred
dollars. Dan thought it was enough to
start a small farm.
When Dan decided to buy a pair of
horses at the Utica fair, Molly, Sol
Tinkle, Mrs. Gurget, Hector Berry, and
Mrs. Berry went with him. While Molly
and Dan shopped for a suit for Dan, the
clerk treated them as man and wife.
Dan almost asked Molly to marry him,
but he lost his chance when Hector
hurried them along so that his wife could
witness the hanging of a woman who
had browbeaten her husband and finally
killed him. Hector hoped the hanging
would be a lesson to his nagging wife.
At the fair Dan purchased two well-
matched horses.
Autumn was in the air, and soon the
canal would be closed for the season.
Jotham Klore had not appeared. His
fight with Dan would be postponed
until spring. Dan and Molly saw
Gentleman Joe again, and the highwayman
gave them a jeweled pin as a memento.
Dan had always linked himself with
Gentleman Joe, feeling that neither he
nor the highwayman was really part of
the canal.
That winter Dan and Molly realized
that the initial warmth of their feeling
for each other was over. Molly confided
to her friends that she intended to stay
on the canal and that if Dan decided
to go back to the land she would leave
him. When spring came, Dan received
an offer to work on a farm, but the
offer was good only if he were not
married. Not knowing what to do and
unwilling to desert Molly, Dan headed the
Sarsy Sal west on the canal. At the
Lansing Kill they met Jotham Klore's boat
coming toward the lock. Dan and Klore
3284

fought on a square of grass that the
excited, shouting boaters marked off
beside the locks. It was a battle that
men talked about on the Erie for years
afterward, Dan and Klore pummeling
each other under the hot sunshine while
Molly Larkin stood by to see what the
outcome would be. Dan won, and he
and Molly started west once more. But
the feeling between them was no longer
the same. Dan felt that she was pitying
Klore, the beaten bully of the canal.
Then Gentleman Joe was caught and
killed, and for the first time Dan saw
the highwayman's cruel, mean face.
Somehow, he felt that the highwayman's
death freed him from life on the canal.
One day Molly left him to go back to
Klore. Dan took the farm job that had
been ofiFered him. He knew that he
belonged in the farm country from which
he had come.
3285

ROMEO AND JULIET
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: Verona, Italy
First presented: c. 1595
Principal characters:
Romeo, son of the house of Montague
Juliet, daughter of the house of Capulet
Friar Lawrence, a Franciscan
Mercutio, Romeo's friend
Tybalt, Lady Capulet's nephew
Critique:
This story of two star-crossed lovers is
one of Shakespeare's tenderest dramas.
Shakespeare was evidently quite
sympathetic toward Romeo and Juliet, and in
attributing their tragedy to fate, rather
than to a flaw in their characters, he
raised them to heights near perfection.
They are both sincere, kind, brave, loyal,
virtuous, and desperately in love, and
their tragedy is greater because of their
innocence. The feud between the lovers'
families represents the fate which Romeo
and Juliet are powerless to overcome.
The lines capture in poetry the youthful
and simple passion which characterizes
the play.
The Story:
Long ago in Verona, Italy, there lived
two famous families, the Montagues and
the Capulets. These two houses were
deadly enemies, and their enmity did not
stop at harsh words, but extended to
bloody duels and sometimes death.
Romeo, son of old Montague, thought
himself in love with haughty Rosaline, a
beautiful girl who did not return his
affection. Hearing that Rosaline was to
mend a great feast at the house of
Capulet, Romeo and his trusted friend,
Mercutio, donned masks and entered the
great hall as invited guests. But Romeo
was no sooner in the ballroom than he
noticed the exquisite Juliet, Capulet's
daughter, and instantly forgot his
disdainful Rosaline. Romeo had never seen
Juliet before, and in asking her name he
aroused the suspicion of Tybalt, a fiery
member of the Capulet clan. Tybalt
drew his sword and faced Romeo. But
old Capulet, coming upon the two men,
parted them, and with the gentility that
comes with age requested that they have
no bloodshed at the feast. Tybalt,
however, was angered that a Montague
should take part in Capulet festivities,
and afterward nursed a grudge against
Romeo.
Romeo spoke in urgent courtliness to
Juliet and asked if he might kiss her hand.
She gave her permission, much impressed
by this unknown gentleman whose
affection for her was so evident. Romeo then
begged to kiss her lips, and when she
had no breath to object, he pressed her
to him. They were interrupted by
Juliet's nurse, who sent the young girl
off to her mother. When she had gone,
Romeo learned from the nurse that Juliet
was a Capulet. He was stunned, for he
was certain that this fact would mean his
death. He could never give her up.
Juliet, who had fallen instantly in love
with Romeo, discovered that he was a
Montague, the son of a hated house.
That night Romeo, too much in love
to go home to sleep, stole to Juliet's
house and stood in the orchard beneath
a balcony that led to her room. To his
surprise, he saw Juliet leaning over the
railing above him. Thinking herself
alone, she began to talk of Romeo and
wished aloud that he were not a
Montague. Hearing her words, Romeo could
contain himself no longer, but spoke to
her. She was frightened at first, and
3286

when she saw who it was she was
confused and ashamed that he had overheard
her confession. But it was too late to
pretend reluctance, as was the fashion
for sweethearts in those days. Juliet
freely admitted her passion, and the two
exchanged vows of love. Juliet told
Romeo that she would marry him and
would send him word by nine o'clock
the next morning to arrange for their
wedding.
Romeo then went off to the monastery
cell of Friar Lawrence to enlist his help
in the ceremony. The good friar was
much impressed with Romeo's devotion.
Thinking that the union of a Montague
and a Capulet would dissolve the enmity
between the two houses, he promised to
marry Romeo and Juliet.
Early the next morning, while he was
in company with his two friends, Ben-
volio and Mercutio, Romeo received
Juliet's message, brought by her nurse.
He told the old woman of his
arrangement with Friar Lawrence and bade her
carry the word back to Juliet. The nurse
kept the secret and gave her mistress the
message. When Juliet appeared at the
friar's cell at the appointed time, she and
Romeo were married. But the time was
short and Juliet had to hurry home.
Before she left, Romeo promised that he
would meet her in the orchard
underneath the balcony after dark that night.
That same day, Romeo's friends,
Mercutio and Benvolio, were loitering in the
streets when Tybalt came by with some
other members of the Capulet house.
Tybalt, still holding his grudge against
Romeo, accused Mercutio of keeping
company with the hateful and villainous
young Montague. Mercutio, proud of his
friendship with Romeo, could not take
insult lightly, for he was as hot-tempered
when provoked as Tybalt himself. The
two were beginning their heated quarrel
when Romeo, who had just returned
from his wedding, appeared. He was
appalled at the situation because he knew
that Juliet was fond of Tybalt, and he
wished no injury to his wife's people.
He tried in vain to settle the argument
peaceably. Mercutio was infuriated by
Romeo's soft words, and when Tybalt
called Romeo a villain, Mercutio drew
his sword and rushed to his friend's
defense. But Tybalt, the better swordsman,
gave Mercutio a mortal wound. Romeo
could ignore the fight no longer. Enraged
at the death of his friend, he rushed at
Tybalt with drawn sword and killed him
quickly. The fight soon brought crowds
of people to the spot. For his part in the
fray, Romeo was banished from Verona.
Hiding out from the police, he went,
grief-stricken, to Friar Lawrence's cell.
The friar advised him to go to his wife
that night, and then at dawn to flee to
Mantua until the friar saw fit to publish
the news of the wedding. Romeo
consented to follow this good advice. As
darkness fell, he went to meet Juliet.
When dawn appeared, heartsick Romeo
left for Mantua.
Meanwhile, Juliet's father decided
that it was time for his daughter to
marry. Having not the slightest idea of
her love for Romeo, the old man
demanded that she accept her handsome
and wealthy suitor, Paris. Juliet was
horrified at her father's proposal but
dared not tell him of her marriage
because of Romeo's part in Tybalt's death.
She feared that her husband would be
instantly sought out and killed if her
family learned of the marriage.
At first she tried to put off her father
with excuses. Failing to persuade him,
she went in dread to Friar Lawrence to
ask the good monk what she could do.
Telling her to be brave, the friar gave
her a small flask of liquid which he told
her to swallow the night before her
wedding to Paris. This liquid would make
her appear to be dead for a certain length
of time; her seemingly lifeless body
would then be placed in an open tomb
for a day or two, and during that time
the friar would send for Romeo, who
should rescue his bride when she awoke
from the powerful effects of the draught.
Then, together, the two would be able
to flee Verona. Juliet almost lost courage
over this desperate venture, but she
3287

promised to obey the friar. On the way
home she met Paris and modestly
promised to be his bride.
The great house of the Capulets had
no sooner prepared for a lavish wedding
than it became the scene of a mournful
funeral. For Juliet swallowed the strong
liquid and seemed as lifeless as death
itself. Her anguished family sadly placed
her body in the tomb.
Meanwhile Friar Lawrence wrote to
Romeo in Mantua, telling him of the
plan by which the lovers could make
their escape together. But these letters
failed to reach Romeo before word of
Juliet's death arrived. He determined to
go to Verona and take his last farewell
of her as she lay in her tomb, and there,
with the help of poison procured from
an apothecary, to die by her side.
Reaching the tomb at night, Romeo
was surprised to find a young man there.
It was Paris, who had come to weep over
his lost bride. Thinking Romeo a grave
robber, he drew his sword. Romeo,
mistaking Paris for a hated Capulet, warned
him that he was desperate and armed.
Paris, in loyalty to Juliet, fell upon
Romeo, but Romeo with all the fury of
his desperation killed him. By the light
of a lantern, Romeo recognized Paris
and, taking pity on one who had also
loved Juliet, drew him into the tomb so
that Paris too could be near her. Then
Romeo went to the bier of his beautiful
bride. Taking leave of her with a kiss, he
drank the poison he had brought with
him and soon died by her side.
It was near the time for Juliet to
awaken from her deathlike sleep. The
friar, hearing that Romeo had never
received his letters, went himself to deliver
Juliet from the tomb. When he arrived,
he found Romeo dead. Juliet, waking,
asked for her husband. Then, seeing him
lying near her with an empty cup in his
hands, she guessed what ne had done.
She tried to kiss some of the poison from
his lips that she too might die, but
failing in this, she unsheathed his dagger
and without hesitation plunged it into
her breast.
By this time a guard had come up.
Seeing the dead lovers and the body of
Paris, he rushed off in horror to spread
the news. When the Capulets and
Montagues arrived at the tomb, the friar told
them of the unhappy fate which had
befallen Romeo and Juliet, whose only
sin had been to love. His account of
their tender and beautiful romance
shamed the two families, and over the
bodies of their dead children they swore
to end the feud of many years.
3288

ROMOLA
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1492-1498
Locale: Italy
First'published: 1863
Principal characters:
Bardo, a Florentine scholar
Romola, his daughter
Tito Melema, an adventurer
Tessa, a peasant girl
Baldasarre Calvo, Tito's benefactor
Critique:
Romola is the story of a thoroughly
good woman and a thoroughly wicked
man. It is not an easy novel to read, for
the author has attempted a work
involving more than literary craftsmanship. She
has dipped into the history of an age of
political intrigue and mystical religious
personalities, and often the plot of the
story becomes lost in the maze of its own
environment. But if the plot of this
novel fails to stand out clearly from its
background, the characters themselves
can carry the burden of brilliant
development.
The Story:
Tito Melema arrived in Florence
penniless and unknown, but the sale of some
rare jewels in his possession soon brought
him into the circle of the wealthy, learned
men of the city, among them the blind
antiquarian, Bardo. Bardo was a great
scholar who continued his annotations of
Greek and Roman books through the eyes
of his beautiful daughter, Romola.
Bardo's only interest in life was his library
and museum, and he had brought up his
daughter in innocence of the outside
world. Bardo accepted Tito eagerly, for
he was always eager to meet a scholar and
a man who had traveled much. He also
told Tito of a son whom he had lost.
Tito's fortune had at last come to him
with the sale of all his jewels except a
single ring. He recalled that the money
properly belonged to Baldasarre Calvo,
the man who had been almost a father
to him, the man who might now be a
slave in the hands of the Turks. If
Baldasarre were really alive, Tito told
himself, he would spend the money for
the old man's ransom. But he was not
sure his foster father still lived.
Quickly Tito entrenched himself in
the learned society of Florence. At the
yearly festival of San Giovanni, patron
saint of Florence, Tito, while sitting at
a window with a friend, fancied that he
saw in the crowd below a monk who
gazed upon him with a malicious glance.
Also glancing up at Tito from below was
the beautiful Tessa, daughter of a milk
vendor, whom Tito had met on the day
of his arrival in Florence.
Later as he walked through the
crowded streets, he rescued Tessa from
some jostling revelers. When he had left
her, he met the strange monk who had
gazed at him from the crowd earlier in
the afternoon. The monk, Fra Luca,
gave him a note that had been brought
from a pilgrim in the Near East. The
note was from Baldassare, who pleaded
that Tito should rescue him from slavery.
Tito wondered what was so familiar
about the Fra's face.
Attracted by the lovely, grave Romola,
Tito spent many hours reading and
writing manuscripts with her blind father.
One day, when Tito had the opportunity
to be alone with Romola "for a brief
moment, he declared his love to her, and
Romola shyly confessed her love for him.
That same day Monna Brigida paid a
call on her cousin Biardo. When she
accidentally mentioned the name of a
3289

Dominican monk, Dino, Tito discovered
that the lost son of Bardo was not dead,
but banished from his father's house.
Realizing that Fra Luca was Dino, Tito
feared exposure of his benefactor's
slavery. He felt the rime ripe for asking the
old man for permission to marry Romola.
Bardo readily consented.
Tito learned that Fra Luca was
dangerously ill at Fiesole. One evening
Romola told him that her dying brother
had sent for her. Tito feared that Fra
Luca would tell her the story which Tito
had hoped would die with him. In
despair, he wandered through the city and
accidentally met Tessa. In a ribald
ceremony which amused the gaping crowd,
Tito allowed Tessa to believe that he
had really married her. Unwilling to
undeceive her, he made her promise to keep
the marriage a secret. Meanwhile Dino
died without revealing to Romola the
story of Baldasarre and the ungrateful
Tito. Tito and Romola were married.
Bardo died, leaving Romola to carry
on his scholarly work. Meanwhile
political events in Florence helped to
advance Tito's fortunes; he became an
interpreter in negotiations with the French. On
the day the French king arrived in the
city, the soldiers led through the streets
a group of prisoners who begged their
ransoms from the Florentines. The
mocking mob cut an old man loose from his
fetters and allowed him to escape into
the crowd. The prisoner ran blindly into
Tito, who stood with a group of
dignitaries on the steps of San Marco. Tito
turned and found himself looking into
the face of Baldasarre Calvo, who then
disappeared into the crowd.
Fearing Baldasarre's revenge, Tito
bought a coat of mail to wear under his
clothes as a defense against the thrust
of a knife or a spear. Tito begged Romola
to sell her father's library and leave
Florence with him. When Romola re
fused, he secretly sold the library and
the antiquities it contained.
In his search for a place to stay,
Baldasarre came by chance to the house where
Tessa and her children by Tito lived
with a deaf old peasant woman. The
woman gave the old man permission to
sleep in the loft. Tessa eagerly confided
in Baldasarre. Tito had not abandoned
her after their mock-marriage. At first
he had been too flattered by her innocent
admiration to tell her they were not man
and wife. Instead, he had sent her to
live with the old peasant woman, whom
he paid well for the care she gave Tessa
and his children, and he had sworn the
two women to secrecy. While Baldasarre
lay in the hayloft, Tito came to see Tessa.
Suspecting from her description the
identity of the old man, Tito went to his foster
father to ask his forgiveness. He had
decided that Baldasarre should come to live
with him and share his comfort. But
the old man did not forgive. He
threatened to expose Tito and ruin him.
At a dinner in Florence, .Baldasarre
appeared to denounce Tito before his
political friends. The trembling old man
was pronounced mad and sent to prison.
During a plague the jails were emptied
to make room for the sick, and Baldasarre
was released. He spied upon Tito until
he learned that the youth had two wives,
one noble and brave, the other timid and
stupid. He approached Romola to expose
Tito. When he told Romola of Tito's
betrayal, she was able to piece together
all the suspicions she had felt toward her
husband, his long absences from home,
his strange moods, and his secret fears.
One day she found little Lillo, Tessa's
son, wandering lost in the streets. She
took the child to his home, and there
she realized that she had discovered
Tito's Tessa.
The final blow came to Romola when
her godfather, Bernardo Del Nero, the
only person in the world she still loved,
was arrested. The Medici had been
plotting to return to Florence, and Bernardo
was a member of the committee which
plotted their return. Romola knew Tito
had been a spy for both political
factions; he had gained his own safety by
betraying others. Romola revealed to Tito
her knowledge of Baldasarre's story and
the truth of the old man's accusation
3290

against him. Then, disillusioned and
sorrowful at the execution of Bernardo, she
fled from Florence.
Tito also planned to flee from Florence,
for his double dealings had been
discovered. A mob followed him out of the
city. To escape his pursuers, he threw
away his money belt, and while the
crowd scrambled for it, he jumped into
the river. Weakly he pulled himself
ashore on the opposite side. There Bal-
dasarre, now a starving beggar, found
him. In a final effort the old man threw
himself upon his exhausted enemy and
strangled him.
After passing many months in another
city, Romola returned to Florence to
learn of her husband's murder at the
hands of an old man who had long been
his enemy. Romola understood the
justice of Tito's violent end. She found
Tessa and the children and brought them
to live with her. Hers was the one good
deed that resulted from Tito's false and
guilty life.
3291

A ROOM WITH A VIEW
Type of work: Novel
Author: E. M. Forster (1879- )
Type of plot: Social comedy
Time of plot: Early 1900's
Locale: Florence, Italy, and Surrey, England
First published: 1908
Principal characters:
Miss Lucy Honeychurch, a young Englishwoman
Miss Charlotte Bartlett, her cousin and chaperon
Mr. Emerson, an Englishman
George Emerson, his son
The Reverend Arthur Beebe
Mrs. Honeychurch, Lucy's mother
Freddy Honeychurch, Lucy's brother
Cecil Vyse, Lucy's fiance"
Miss Catherine Alan, a guest at the Pension Bertolini
Miss Teresa Alan, her sister
Miss Eleanor Lavish, a novelist
Critique:
This novel, E. M. Forster's third, was
probably conceived in Italy. To Mr.
Forster, Italy represents the force of true
passion, and the recognition of this passion
by his heroine in his theme here. He is
singularly aware of the nonexistence of
absolutes; his kindest characters have their
moments of cruelty and areas of
incomprehension. Similarly, those least
sympathetic have moments of glory and of true
feeling and understanding. Forster is also
intensely aware of the structure of society
and of the imperfections and merits of
each of its spheres. Although smaller in
scope than Howard's End and A Passage
to India, his two later novels, A Room
with a View is equally perceptive and
shows a highly developed moral
sensibility.
The Story?
Lucy Honeychurch and Charlotte
Bartlett were disappointed by the Pension
Bertolini and by the fact that their rooms
had no view. They were embarrassed at
dinner when Mr. Emerson offered to
exchange his and his son's rooms, which had
views, with theirs. Their unhappiness
decreased when the Reverend Arthur Beebe,
whom they had known previously, and
who had been appointed rector of Lucy's
home parish, joined them at dinner. After
dinner he managed to convince Charlotte
that the exchange of rooms would not
put them under any obligation to the
Emersons. The change, although effected,
merely confirmed Charlotte's opinion that
the Emersons were ill-bred.
At Santa Croce Church Lucy met the
Emersons, who guided her to the Giotto
frescoes that she had come to see. She
found that she was more at ease with Mr.
Emerson than she had expected, even
though his rejection of artistic and
religious cant and his concern about his son
confused her.
Late one afternoon Lucy declared that
she would go for a walk alone. She
bought some photographs of paintings she
had seen and then walked through the
Piazza Signoria. As she did so, she passed
two men arguing over a debt. One stabbed
the other and the stricken man, bleeding
from the mouth, died at her feet. At the
same moment she saw George Emerson
watching from across the square. As he
A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E. M. Forster. By permission of the publishers. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1923, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
3292

reached her side, she fainted. After she
had recovered, she sent him to get her
photographs. Disturbed because they were
covered with blood, he tossed them into
the Arno on the way home. When Lucy
asked why he had thrown the pictures
away, he was forced to tell her. He felt
that something very significant had
happened to him in the piazza. Lucy stopped
with him near the pension and, leaning
beside him over the parapet, asked him
to tell no one that he had been there.
Perturbed by their enforced intimacy, she
was puzzled and amazed when George
said that the murder would make him
want to live.
In a large party the visitors at the
pension, together with a resident English
chaplain, drove toward Fiesole. Lucy,
excluded from Miss Lavish's conversation
with Charlotte, asked one of their drivers
to direct her to the clergyman. Instead, he
led her to George. Lucy found at the end
of the path a terrace covered with violets.
While she stood there, radiant at the
beauty of the place, George stepped
forward and kissed her. Charlotte, whom
neither had seen at first, called her cousin
back.
Charlotte told Lucy that George was a
cad and, obviously, was accustomed to
stealing kisses. She took advantage of
Lucy's need for sympathy to indicate that
George's way of life, as she saw it, was
merely brutal. In the morning the women
took the train for Rome.
Back at her home in Surrey, Lucy
became engaged to Cecil Vyse, whom she
had visited in Rome. Mr. Beebe, coming
to the house for tea, was perturbed by the
engagement. Returning from a party with
Lucy and Mrs. Honeychurch, Cecil saw
a pair of ugly villas that had been put
up by a local builder. When the village
residents became alarmed as they
considered the type of person who might rent
them, they were assured that a certain
Sir Harry Otway had bought the houses
and intended to lease them only to
suitable tenants. Lucy suggested the Misses
Alan whom she had met in Florence.
After seeing the villas, Cecil and Lucy
walked on through the woods. By a pond
where Lucy had bathed as a child, Cecil,
for the first time, asked if he might kiss
her. Their embrace, not successful, only
reminded Lucy of the Emersons, whom
she then mentioned to Cecil.
Shortly before the Alans' occupancy
had been arranged, Cecil met the
Emersons in London and suggested that they
take one of the villas. Not connecting
them with Lucy, he hoped thereby to
disrupt the local social order. After the
Emersons had moved into their house,
Mr. Beebe took Freddy Honeychurch to
meet them. The boy immediately asked
George to go swimming with him.
Together with Mr. Beebe they swam and
raced gaily at the pond in the woods.
There Lucy came upon George again.
Although he greeted her joyously, she
bowed stiffly and moved on with her
mother and Cecil.
One Sunday, while George was visiting
the house, Cecil loftily refused to play
tennis. Lucy, George, Freddy, and a
friend of his played while Cecil read.
After the game Cecil read aloud from his
novel. Written by Miss Lavish, it
contained a scene describing George and
Lucy's kiss. Cecil was ignorant of this
fact, but George and Lucy were
profoundly moved. On the way into the
house, George again kissed her. Charlotte
was staying in the house at that time and
Lucy was furious that she had thus
betrayed her to Miss Lavish. Together they
went to George and Lucy asked him to
leave. Before he obeyed, he told Lucy
that he loved her and that it would be
disastrous for her to marry Cecil, who
was incapable of intimacy with anyone.
That evening, although she denied to
herself that she was attracted to George,
Lucy broke her engagement to Cecil. In
the meantime Mr. Beebe received a
letter from the Misses Alan, who were
planning to visit Athens. To escape her
confusion, Lucy decided that she must go
with them, and Charlotte joined Mr.
Beebe in persuading Mrs. Honeychurch
to let Lucy go. Lucy, afraid that George
3293

would hear of her rejection of Cecil and
return to see her, hoped in this manner
to avoid another meeting with him.
As Lucy was returning from a day in
London with her mother, Charlotte came
out of Mr. Beebe's house and asked them
to go with her to church. Lucy, declining,
went into the house to await their return.
There she found Mr. Emerson in the
library. George, feeling utterly lost, had
gone to London. Lucy finally admitted
that she was not to marry Cecil, but when
Mr. Emerson revealed his intuitive
knowledge that she loved George, she became
angry and wept. Although she gradually
perceived that all he said was true, she
was upset at the prospect of distressing
everyone afresh if she acted on her new
knowledge. Strengthened by Mr.
Emerson's passion, sincerity, and confidence,
however, she promised to attempt to live
the truth she had learned.
Her family opposing but not
defeating her, Lucy married George. They
spent their honeymoon in the Pension
Bertolini, where they wonderingly
realized that subconsciously Charlotte had
been on their side. She had known that
Mr. Emerson was in Mr. Beebe's house,
and she must have realized, too, how he
would speak to Lucy when they met
there.
3294

RORY O'MORE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Samuel Lover (1797-1868)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1798
Locale: Southern Ireland
First published* 1837
Principal characters:
Rory O'More, an Irish peasant
Mary O'More, his sister
Shan Regan, a villainous neighbor
Kathleen Regan, his sister
Horace De Lacy, an Irish patriot
De Welskein, a smuggler
Scrubbs, a tax collector
Critique:
Rory O'More never quite succeeds in
being a good historical novel, in spite
of Lover's patriotic motives in writing the
book. The people are the familiar stock
characters of Irish fiction, and the plot
is clumsy and contrived. But the book
lives in its atmosphere of the stirring days
of the rebellion of 1798, in its ferocious
lampoons of soldiers, magistrates, and
collectors, in the terrible and tragic
realities of Irish peasant life, and in the
pleasant idyl of its love story. Readers of
Lover's day felt that in this novel he came
close to the heart of his unhappy land.
The Story:
While in Dublin on some business for
his widowed mother, Rory O'More made
the acquaintance of Horace De Lacy, an
Irish patriot who had come from France
in order to further the cause of
revolution against English oppression. He was
a messenger from a French general who
was aiding the Irish in order to help
Napoleon in his attempted conquest of
England. De Lacy was a gentleman,
descended from proud blood lines, and
Rory and his mother and sister
considered it an honor to have him share their
home. The O'More women nursed him
back to health after an attack of
smallpox, and De Lacy felt indebted to the
good people for their care. In addition,
Rory became a fellow conspirator. De
Lacy and Rory did not conspire for
personal gain, as did many of the rebels;
rather they loved Ireland and wanted
her and her people to be free. Although
De Lacy was perhaps not aware of it,
he was a true democrat.
Rory loved a neighbor lass, Kathleen
Regan. Although she returned his
affection, she was prevented from marrying
him by her brother Shan, a blackguard
who had been refused by Mary O'More,
Rory's sister. Shan, his pride hurt by
Mary's refusal, hated the whole O'More
family. Since Shan was the head of the
household, Kathleen and her mother
feared to disobey him; she and Rory
were forced to meet in secret.
Because De Lacy was not well enough
to take and receive a message that was
expected by his contacts in Ireland, Rory
volunteered to act in his place. He was
dismayed to learn that Shan was one of
his fellow rebels, for he knew that his
enemy hoped only for personal gain.
Another among the group was De
Welskein, a smuggler who cared little which
side won since he would profit regardless
of the outcome. Shan and De Welskein
were made for each other, each one
willing to betray their friends for a profit.
Rory knew them both to be dangerous.
After he had secured the necessary
letter for De Lacy, Rory left the unsavory
crowd. Later he was apprehended by the
police, but his cleverness and his
knowledge of the colonel's affair with a
married woman gained his freedom for him.
De Lacy was pleased with his success,
3295

and that gentleman's praise was a great
reward to Rory. Shan then tried to make
trouble for him with Kathleen, and Rory
was forced to administer two beatings
to the bully before Shan gave him any
peace.
It was necessary for De Lacy to return
to France to help the cause of the
rebellion. He parted sadly from his friends
and made his way to a port from which
De Welskein was to smuggle him out
of Ireland. In the meantime Rory,
purely by accident, accompanied Scrubbs, a
government tax collector, from a tavern
in the village. On their way home they
heard people calling for help. Hurrying
to the rescue, they found De Welskein,
Shan Regan, and other rebels imprisoned
in a flooding cave. After saving the lives
of the doomed men, the scoundrels
repaid Rory by taking him and Scrubbs
prisoners and transporting them to the
ship which De Welskein had secured for
De Lacy's trip to France. Shan, anxious
to get rid of Rory in any manner,
persuaded the others that Rory was a traitor
to their cause. Because Scrubbs was a
(government official it was not safe to
eave him to reveal their names to the
authorities.
On board the ship Rory learned that
he was on the vessel which carried his
friend De Lacy. Knowing that De
Welskein would keep the news of his
presence from De Lacy, he managed to send
a message to his friend. When they were
off the coast of France and under the
eyes of a battleship commanded by De
Lacy's friend, De Welskein was forced
to release Rory. Scrubbs, a government
official, was of no concern to De Lacy.
In France, De Lacy heard two
heartbreaking pieces of news. His unfaithful
sweetheart had given her hand to
another and Napoleon had decided to
withdraw his promised aid to Ireland in his
campaign against the English. The first
vdesertion he avenged by inflicting a
wound on his rival, but the latter one
left a scar on his heart. Hie approaching
death of an uncle kept him and Rory in
France, there being no reason for them
to hurry back to Ireland. But after the
uncle's death Rory and De Lacy
embarked once again for Ireland.
Many changes had taken place during
the year that they had been gone. Some
•of the fanatical rebels had attempted to
revolt without the help of France, and
Ireland had been bathed with blood. The
homes of the O'Mores and the Regans
had been burned, and the women of the
families had banded together and taken a
house in the village. Shan was wanted
by the authorities as a suspected rebel
and because of his attempt on the lives
of Mary O'More. and an old tinker. The
tinker informed the officers of Shan's
hideout. Although most of his band
escaped by ambushing the police, Shan
himself was killed. For his pains, the
tinker was hanged as a traitor for leading
the officers into an ambush.
Arriving in Ireland, De Lacy stayed
in Dublin to transact some business.
Rory, meanwhile, went at once to his
native village, where he was reunited
with his loved ones. On his first night
home, however, he was arrested for the
murder of Scrubbs, his enemies having
testified that Scrubbs was last seen alive
in Rory's company. When De Lacy heard
the news, he returned to the village and
with his lawyer fought for his friend's
freedom. The case looked black until
Scrubbs, who had escaped from France
and returned to Ireland, appeared during
the trial. Rory's enemies had tried to
keep Scrubbs hidden until after the trial
and Rory's hanging, but the collector had
eluded his keepers. Although the jury
returned a verdict of guilty, so
determined were the rogues to be rid of Rory,
a humane judge arranged to have the
verdict put aside. Rory was set free.
De Lacy, knowing that he and Rory
would never be safe in Ireland,
persuaded Rory to take his family and Kathleen
and her mother and go with De Lacy
to America. There De Lacy would buy
a farm and make Rory his manager.
When Rory and Kathleen were married,
De Lacy gave the girl a handsome dowry.
3296

It was with regret that the party left
their beloved homeland, but they knew
they must do so if they wished to live
in peace and safety. Mary O'More had
long loved De Lacy but did not dare to
show her feeling because she was a
peasant and he a gentleman. De Lacy
admired the simple lass, but he feared the
ridicule he would receive from his friends
if he married a peasant. As he thought
about the new life in America, however,
he began to realize that it would make
little difference there if a man and his
wife were of different social classes. With
Rory and Kathleen already married, De
Lacy and Mary seemed likely to join them
in that happy state.
3297

ROSMERSHOLM
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Type of plot: Social drama
Time of plot: Middle nineteenth century
LocaU: Small coastal town in western Norway
First presented: 1887
Principal characters.
Johannes Rosmer, a former clergyman
Rebecca West, his friend
Rector Kroll, the schoolmaster
Ulric Brendel, a disillusioned liberal
Peter Mortensgard, a publisher
Madam Helseth, housekeeper at Rosmersholm
Critique:
The last of Ibsen's social dramas, Ros-
mersholm gives us also a first glimpse of
the psychological studies he was to write
later. The characters are still part of a
social class, but toward the end of the
play they begin to emerge as individuals,
working with their own personal
problems and seeking their own values. In
this play Ibsen continues the attempt to
arouse his readers to raise themselves above
the mass, not to be pulled down to the
level of the popular majority. This work
is written with the dramatist's usual skill
and ranks with his other great plays. It
was published in 1886, prior to its first
presentation.
The Story:
Since the death of his wife, Beata,
Johannes Rosmer had turned more and
more to his friend, Rebecca West. Rosmer
had had an unhappy marriage with an
unsympathetic, neurotic wife who had
taken her own life in the millpond that
flowed through the estate. Rebecca had
been her friend, as well as the husband's.
Beata's brother, Rector Kroll, the
schoolmaster, was also Rosmer's close friend.
Rector Kroll called on Rosmer to get
him to join a political drive against the
new liberal party that was gaining power
in the village. The party was controlled
by Peter Mortensgard, publisher of the
Beacon, a paper Rector Kroll considered
radical and dangerous because it was loud
in criticism of the conservative party
which he represented. Kroll was
disappointed to learn that Rosmer no longer
held his former static views on politics and
social structures but, instead, supported
the liberals. Rosmer's real concern was not
with politics at all, but only with
encouraging men to ennoble their souls; he felt
the new party was a step toward this goal.
Rebecca supported him in his belief.
While they talked. Madam Helseth,
the housekeeper, announced Ulric
Brendel, a self-styled genius who was going
to the village to offer his services to the
liberal party. Brendel was in rags and
obviously without any means of livelihood,
and to Rector Kroll he epitomized the
liberals. To Rosmer and Rebecca, however,
Brendel was a man living and working
as his conscience directed, and they
helped him with clothing and money.
This act turned Kroll against them.
He now turned on Rosmer savagely and
accused him of betraying his class.
Because Rosmer had been a clergyman, Kroll
attempted to plead with him from a
religious point of view, but Rosmer claimed
that he had also renounced the Church
and become a freethinker. He felt that
men were growing so bitter in political
struggles that they must be brought back
to tolerance and good will. It was his hope
that he could aid in this task by
renouncing his way of life and working with the
new leaders.
Kroll then accused Rosmer of living in
sin with Rebecca, even though he had de-
3298

fended Rosmer and Rebecca when town
gossips had whispered about them. He
accused Rebecca of influencing Rosmer in
his new attitude and suggested that she
had been responsible for the suicide of
Rosmer's wife. He said his sister had
believed that Rosmer wished to wed Rebecca
and for that reason she had drowned
herself. Kroll maintained he had not spoken
up before because he did not know that
Rebecca was an emancipated woman, and
he had not believed her capable of such
actions. His worst thoughts about Rosmer
and Rebecca were confirmed when Peter
Mortensgard appeared at Rosmer's home
in answer to a note Rebecca had written
him in Brenders behalf. When Kroll left,
he promised to inform the town of
Rosmer's treachery.
Mortensgard had come to solicit
Rosmer's aid in the liberal cause, but when
he learned that Rosmer had left the
Church, he did not want the former
clergyman's help. He needed Christians,
not freethinkers, as he himself was, and so
Rosmer was left with no one to support.
Mortensgard, too, slyly accused Rosmer
and Rebecca of indiscretions and of
causing the death of Rosmer's wife.
From that time on Rosmer began to
feel guilty about his part in her death and
feared that he had not concealed his true
feelings for Rebecca from his wife.
Determined not to let the past rule his life,
he asked Rebecca to marry him. She fled
from him sobbing, swearing that she
could never marry him, that if he ever
asked her again she would die the way his
wife had died.
Kroll did his work well. The paper
supporting his party accused Rosmer of
betraying his class to gain favor with the
liberals. The article linked Rebecca and
Rosmer in a debasing way. Rosmer
wanted to fight back, if only to free men's
minds from pettiness and mass thinking,
but he felt that he could not accomplish
this task because he no longer felt
innocent of his wife's death; only the innocent
could lead others.
Rebecca decided to give him back his
purity of conscience. In Kroll's presence
she told Rosmer that she alone was
responsible for his wife's suicide. She said
that she had come to Rosmersholm for the
sole purpose of converting Rosmer to the
liberal party. She knew that Brendel had
once had great influence over Rosmer,
and she hoped to renew that influence
and win him to the emancipators. With
victory in sight, his wife was a stumbling
block. To overcome that obstacle, she
made that sick woman believe that she
was going to have a child by Rosmer. In
desperation the wife threw herself into
the millpond. Rebecca's love for Rosmer
made her confess so that he could clear his
own conscience of all guilt. Kroll and
Rosmer left her alone after her confession, and
she prepared to leave Rosmersholm forever.
While she packed, Rosmer returned
and told her his old friends had persuaded
him that the task of ennobling men's
minds was not for him, or for anyone. He
told her that he knew she had only used
him to attain her own goals. Then she
made her greatest confession to him. She
said that she had first been moved by
physical passion. She had plotted to get
rid of his wife. Then, after the suicide,
Rebecca had come to feel such deep and
quiet love for Rosmer that it had taken her
free spirit from her. He had ennobled her
soul.
Rosmer could not quite believe her
story; he feared that she was again using
him for her own purposes. As they talked,
Brendel appeared and told them that he
was leaving town, that his genius was
gone, and he was bankrupt. He told them
too that Mortensgard was the only one
who could win their cause, for he was
without ideals. Only those without ideals
could gain a victory. He said also that
Rosmer could gain victory if the woman
who loved him would convince him of
her loyalty.
After Brendel left them, Rosmer asked
Rebecca to prove that he had ennobled
her soul. The price was high. He asked
her to throw herself into the millpond as
she had caused his wife to do. Because
only her self-inflicted death could give
him back his faith in himself, she agreed

to his plan. Since they no longer believed
in a judgment after death, they must
punish themselves for their love. At the
last minute, Rosmer decided to join
Rebecca in death. They stood with their
arms entwined, then threw themselves
into the pond. The water and Rosmer's
dead wife claimed their bodies.
3300

ROUGHING IT
Type of work: Record of travel
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens, 1835-1910)
Type of plot: Travel sketches and autobiography
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: The West
First published: 1872
Principal characters:
Mark Twain, a tenderfoot
Brigham Young, the Mormon leader
Slade the Terrible, a Western desperado
Hank Erickson, a correspondent of Horace Greeley
Critique:
Mark Twain's recollections are
interesting because they present a picture of
the still expanding Western frontier.
Although the book is badly organized, it is
excellent for its eye-witness accounts of
Virginia City and the Nevada mining
camps, Mormonism, early San Francisco,
and the Hawaiian Islands. Always, of
course, the book is enlivened by Mark
Twain's boisterous, native humor.
The Story:
When Mark Twain traveled West
with his brother, he had no idea that he
would stay out there for any long period
of time. His brother had been appointed
Secretary of the Nevada Territory, and
Twain went along as his secretary, with
no salary. Instead of the three months
he intended to stay, however, he was six
years away from home.
The trip itself was exciting. There
were many inconveniences, naturally, as
well as danger from the Indians and
attacks by highwaymen. But Twain saw
the country and enjoyed the adventure,
nonetheless. On the way he came face
to face with Slade the Terrible. Slade
was foreman of the stagecoach workers,
a man who would kill anyone if crossed,
a man whose repute went far and wide.
To Twain he seemed very polite, a
gentleman, and quite harmless. But
Slade's days were numbered. The
vigilantes were after him. Although he was
warned, he was drunk at the time, and
so was unable to avoid capture. Brought
to trial by a vigilante court, he was found
guilty and ordered hanged. He died
without having seen his wife, probably
a fortunate circumstance for the
vigilantes. At an earlier time, with blazing
six-shooters flaming from under her
petticoats, she had rescued Slade from a
similar situation.
Twain also met Brigham Young, the
Mormon leader, who bemoaned the fact
that he had so many wives, wives who
were jealous and argumentative. Out of
curiosity Twain also read the Mormon
Bible.
Twain and some companions set out to
prospect for gold in the Nevada
mountains. Once they were caught in a
snowstorm and seemingly doomed to die. Each
of them renounced a particular vice.
Twain threw away his pipe, another his
cigarettes, and the third his bottle of
whiskey. But they did not die. At dawn
they discovered that they had been but
a few yards away from an inn. Then
Twain was sorry he had thrown away his
pipe. He found it in the snow and
sneaked behind the barn for a smoke.
There he came upon one of his comrades
drinking from the whiskey bottle and
the other rolling a cigarette.
At first they had no luck in their search
for gold. True, they found places where
there was gold, but the operations needed
to extract it were too complicated and
expensive. Finally they had real luck.
When they found rock that would yield
millions of dollars for them, they claimed
it and dreamed of spending their lives
in luxury. The law specified that some
work must be done on each new claim
within ten days; otherwise the claimants
3301

lost their right to the claim and anyone
else could get control of it. Twain left,
having confidence that his partners would
work the new claim. But each thought
the other would do the work, and so
none was done. At the end of ten days
the mine was claimed by others. Twain
and his partners were relegated to a
common, working existence.
He wandered from place to place,
working for newspapers, being fired from
"them, and moving on. Eventually he
landed in San Francisco and went from
there to the Hawaiian Islands, where he
visited the spot on which Captain Cook
had been killed by natives. At first the
natives had treated the British explorer
kindly. Cook, in turn, had made them
believe that he was a god, and he had
treated them brutally. One day, injured,
he showed his pain. Convinced by his
hurt that he was not divine, but a man
like themselves, the natives killed him —
rightly, according to Twain, for he had
returned their kindness with cruelty.
Then there was Hank Erickson, the
crazy stranger. Erickson had once written
a letter to Horace Greeley. A widow had
a son who liked turnips. She wanted to
find out if turnips sometimes grew into
vines. This was the question Erickson
asked in the letter he wrote to Greeley.
Greeley replied, but the handwriting was
so illegible that nothing could be made of
it. In fact, every time Erickson read the
letter it seemed different, but always
meaningless. Finally he deciphered it
and became convinced that Greeley had
insulted him. Erickson wrote to Greeley
again. The publisher had a clerk copy
the letter, which turned out to be
informative and not at all insulting. Twain
slyly maintained that he never found out
why Erickson was crazy.
Twain decided to try his luck at
lecturing. At his first appearance he was
afraid that nobody would laugh at his
jokes. He gave free tickets to various
people, and told them to laugh at the
right moments. When he got to the
auditorium the seats were empty. He sat in
the wings and felt sad. However, he
soon heard the noise of voices and came
out of his dream to find that the hall
was crowded. His lecture was a great
success; people even laughed when his
talk was not funny.
When he returned to San Francisco
from Hawaii, Twain planned a trip to
Japan. Later he abandoned the idea to
go back home. He traveled to New York
by way of Panama. So ended his Wild
West and Hawaiian adventures.
3302

ROXANA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England and Europe
First published: 1724
Principal characters:
Roxana, a courtesan
Amy, her maid
Mr. , her landlord
The Prince de
A Merchant
Critique:
One of the early forerunners of the
modern novel, Roxana, Or, The Fortunate
Mistress holds a special place in English
literature. It is a brilliant piece of
imaginative writing displaying a talent in the
author both original and clever, since he
practically invented this form of realism
and pretense at fact at a time when his
contemporaries were contriving fantastic
characters and situations. Roxana herself
is a fascinating woman, a matter of
perennial interest to lovers of good books. In
construction, analyzed in relation to the
accepted novel form, the book is rambling,
repetitious, and lacking in wit. It is never
dull, however, and will always be read.
That Roxana was written as a didactic
study does not detract from its excellence.
The Story:
Born in France, from which her parents
fled because of religious persecution,
Roxnna grew to adolescence in England.
At fifteen she married a handsome but
conceited man. After seven years of
marriage, during which time her husband
went through all their money, Roxana was
left penniless with five children.
She appealed for eid to her husband's
relatives, all of whom refused her except
one old aunt, who was in no position to
help her materially. Amy, Roxarta's maid,
refused to leave her mistress, although she
received no wages for her work. Another
poor old woman whom Roxana had aided
during her former prosperity added her
efforts to those of the old aunt and Amy.
These good people managed to extract
money from the relatives of the children's
father. All five of the little ones were given
over to the care of the poor old woman.
Penniless, Roxana was at the point of
despair when her landlord, after
expressing his admiration for her, praised her
fortitude under all her difficulties and
offered to set her up in housekeeping. He
returned all the furniture he had
confiscated, gave her food and money, and
generally conducted himself with such
kindness and candor that Amy urged
Roxana to become the gentleman's
mistress should he ask it. Roxana, however,
clung to her virtuous independence.
Fearing that the gentleman's kindness would
go unrewarded, Amy, because she loved
her mistress, offered to lie with the
landlord in Roxana's place. This offer,
however, Roxana refused to consider. The two
women talked much about the merits of
the landlord, his motive in befriending
Roxana, and the moral implications of his
attentions.
When he came to take residence as a
boarder in Roxana's house, he proposed,
since his wife had deserted him, that he
and Roxana live as husband and wife. To
show his good faith he offered to share his
wealth with her, bequeathing her five
hundred pounds in his will and promising
seven thousand pounds should he leave
her. There was a gay celebration that
evening and a little joking about Amy's
offer to lie with the gentleman. Finally
Roxana, her conscience still bothering her,
3303

ielded to his protestations of love and
edded with him.
After a year and half had passed and
Roxana had not conceived a child, Amy
chided her mistress for her barrenness.
Feeling that Mr. was not her true
husband, Roxana sent Amy to him to beget
a child. Amy did bear a child, which
Roxana took as her own to save the maid
embarrassment. Two years later Roxana
bore a daughter who died within six
months. A year later she pleased her lover
by bearing a son.
Mr. took Roxana with him to Paris
on business. There they lived in great
style, until he was robbed and murdered
for the jewels he carried on his person.
Roxana managed to retain the gentleman's
wealth and secured it against the possible
claims of his wife, who was still living.
In France the Prince de , hopino to
make amends to Roxana for the murder of
her protector, lavished gifts upon her and
flattered her beauty until she consented
to be his mistress, this time allowing her
virtue to be sullied not because of poverty
but through vanity. In order to suppress
gossip, Roxana, pretending that she had
gone back to England on business,
confined herself to her quarters and instructed
Amv to admit only Prince de .
Roxana's new lover showered her
bountifully with gifts. When she bore
him a son, he promised to acknowledge
the child as his own and never to let it
want. After the birth of the child, Roxana
thought that she recognized her husband,
a member of the gendarmes. Amy visited
the man and found him to be the same
worthless scoundrel who, years before, had
abandoned his wife and five children.
When the prince had to go to Italy on
an official assignment, he took Roxana
with him. There they remained for two
years. She bore another son who lived only
two months. Then the prince's wife died,
and he, repenting his sins, parted from
Roxana, who had been his faithful
mistress for eight years.
Roxana and her maid, after engaging a
merchant to handle Roxana's wealth,
sailed for England. Roxana had to go to
Holland to receive her money from the
merchant. The merchant, arriving in
Holland from Paris, took lodgings in the same
house, and he and Roxana became well
acquainted. The merchant wanted to
marry her, but she, too avaricious and
calculating to risk her wealth for a mere
caprice of love, suspected his motives. She
did allow him to seduce her, however, for
she felt that she owed him some token of
gratitude for his assistance. She was
already pregnant when they parted.
Returning to London, Roxana settled
her financial affairs and bore her son.
Because she established herself in a
handsome apartment, she was courted by
numerous fortune hunters, but her
philosophy, as she chose to call it, would
not permit her to marry anvone. As a wife
she would have to share her wealth; as a
mistress she received riches, and she was
determined to amass a fortune.
Roxana gave lavish parties, attended by
many fashionable people of London. Soon
her name became famous. Her purpose
was fulfilled when a rich lord offered her
a substantial income if she would be his
mistress. Retiring from societv, she took
a new apartment and saw onlv the lord.
She passed several years in this, fashion.
By that time she was fifty years old. Tiring
at last of her lover, she began to see her
friends again.
With Amy's help she began to live a
different kind of life so that eventually she
could assist her children. She took rooms
in another part of the city with a Quaker
lady. Amy let people believe that her
mistress had gone to Europe.
By chance Roxana met the merchant
whom she had known in Holland and
whose son she had borne. The merchant
renewed his suit. Although Amy sent
word from Europe that Prince de was
trying to find Roxana and wished to marry
her, Roxana, having learned that her
husband was dead, accepted the merchant's
proposal. The pair planned to return to
Holland and, taking residence there,
declare themselves eleven years married in
order to legitimize their son.
One of Roxana's legitimate daughters
3304

had by chance been her maid while
Roxana lived in London. At first the
mother had tried to help her daughter by
giving her, through Amy, money and
advantages above her station. When the girl
began to suspect that her mistress was her
mother, Roxana was distressed, for she
would be undone should her past be
known now. When Amy, infuriated with
the prying girl, threatened to murder her,
Roxana, after many years' friendship,
dismissed her faithful maid. But at last the
persistent daughter's inquiries were
silenced and Roxana was able to go to Hot-
land with her husband.
3305

THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultdn's Turret in a Noose of Light.
Type of work: Philosophical poem
Translator: Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883)
First published: 1859
Thus did Edward FitzGerald, a shy
dilettante living in the Victorian Age,
open the first edition of what he called
his "transmutation" of the quatrains of
Omar Khayyam, a Persian mathematician
and poet of the eleventh century. So
striking are these opening lines, which flash
like the rays of the morning sun, it seems
almost incredible that anyone could read
them and not wish to continue; but Fitz-
Gerald's poem, unsigned and privately
printed, mouldered in bookshops for years,
even though the price dropped to a penny
a copy. Not until Dante Gabriel Rossetti
stumbled on the poem, realized its worth,
and began quoting from it in the proper
literary circles did The Rubdiydt start its
upward climb to great popularity. Fearful
that its epicurian flavor would prove too
spicy for prudish Victorians, FitzGerald
did not allow his name to be associated
with the poem during his lifetime. Only
the fifth edition, published six years
after his death in 1883, gives him credit
for taking Omar's random verses and
turning them into a poem that has shape,
vitality, and a lyrical frivolity. Even after
the poem had become famous, a theory
was seriously advanced that it was all
symbolical, that when Omar mentioned
"Wine" he really meant "the Divinity."
Such a theory seems as hard to swallow
as the one which makes a religious
allegory out of the "Song of Solomon."
FitzGerald finally won out over the
Victorians; by 1900 admirers of The Rubdiydt
had become a cult. Not so lucky was
Omar himself, for he too tried to run
counter to a trend: the ancient Persians
believed that poetry must have mysticism
to be of value; The Rubdiydt was so
worldly it told them bluntly to eat, drink,
and be just as merry as possible. Thus
Omar died unpraised and not until more
than seven centuries later, when he was
"reincarnated" in FitzGerald, did the
world hail his philosophy.
Following the opening quatrain, The
Rubdiydt quickly establishes that
philosophy, for as soon as the cock crows some
people standing in front of a tavern
demand that the door be opened so that
they may drink their wine immediately.
Such is the theme of the poem: life is
short; therefore, you must put no
dependence in Tomorrow or the Hereafter,
but must seize on Today with all its
sensory pleasures. FitzGerald plays variations
on this theme for more than a hundred
quatrains and among these are some of
the most-quoted stanzas in English
literature; for instance, those concerned with
"the Bird of Time," with the celebrated
"Book of Verses underneath the Bough,"
with the "batter'd Caravanserai," with
"so red the Rose," and with the
"Moving Finger." But The Rubdiydt is not
haphazardly thrown together. It flows
smoothly from the praising of wine to
the disparagement of logic and wisdom;
then from the spoofing of the ordinary
conception of Divinity to the finality of
death, that simple end to revelry.
One of the most interesting sections,
though not the most lyrical, is the group
of related stanzas dealing with the Potter
and the Pots. Some of the Pots are
"loquacious Vessels" and what they say reveals
a thought-provoking if somewhat
skeptical attitude toward life, the Creator,
and death. The first vessel complains that
surely the earth will not be molded into
a figure and then broken or trampled
back to earth again. A second says that
since a "peevish Boy" would not break a
bowl from which he had drunk with
3306

pleasure, the Potter will certainly not in
wrath destroy what He created. Then
follow these stanzas:
After a momentary silence spake
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make:
"They sneer at me for leaning all
awry:
"What! did the Hand then of the
Potter shake?"
Whereat some one of the loquacious
Lot-
I think a Sufi pipkin—waxing hot—
"All this of Pot and Potter-Tell me,
then,
"Who is the Potter, pray, and who the
Pot?"
"Why," said another, "Some there are
who tell
"Of one who threatens he will toss to
Hell
"The luckless Pots he marr'd in
making—Pish!
"He's a Good Fellow, and 't will all be
well."
FitzGerald (or Omar) cannot be taken
seriously as a destroyer of faith or as a
radical philosopher. He is too light-
hearted to be accused of inducing
corruption. And when The Rubdiydt is
looked at closely, one becomes aware that
there are really no new ideas here; it has
all been said before. Certainly this poem
and Gray's "Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard" are highly dissimilar, but
in one respect they are alike: both
FitzGerald and Gray have taken a series of
platitudes, strung them together, and
created tremendously effective poems
because the words and music blend together
so appropriately. Gray's music is slow and
stately, a funeral march; FitzGerald sings
like a skylark that has become tipsy from
eating fermented cherries:
You know, my Friends, with what a
brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my
Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to
Spouse.
The meter of these lines is plain iambic
pentameter, but somehow the unrhymed
third line makes each stanza spill into the
next, as one might pour wine rapidly
from one cup to another. The alliteration
and the adroit use of internal part-rhyme
(such as "barren Reason") increase the
musical effect. And FitzGerald's diction
is so fresh, so pert, that The Rubdiydt
may never become dated, may always
sound as if it were written yesterday or
(more in the FitzGerald spirit) Today.
In any long poem there are bound to
be passages that come as a letdown; The
Rubdiydt is no exception. A goodly
number of its stanzas can be passed over
without loss to the reader and even some
of the better and best ones are
repetitive. In spite of these minor objections
The Rubdiydt glitters with joy, especially
so when one considers it as a product of
the Victorian Age, which took itself so
seriously. Two fine poets of that era have
written poems in which they give their
ideas on death. Tennyson's death-poem
is, of course, the simple and moving
"Crossing the Bar"; in "Prospice"
Browning envisions the end of life as a last
battle to be won, a fighting-through to
heaven. Measured against these two great
poems, the final stanza of The Rubdiydt
may seem flippant, but its very flippancy
makes it equally as memorable:
And when like her, oh Sdkf, you shall
pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the
Grass,
And in your joyous errand reach the
spot
Where I made One—turn down an
empty Glass!
3307

RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: c. 1600
Locale: Spain
First presented: 1624
Principal characters:
Leon, a young Spanish gendeman
Don Juan de Castro, a colonel
Michael Perez, a captain
Cacafogo, a fat usurer
The Duke of Medina
Margarita, a rich and wanton lady
Altea, her companion
Estifania, her maid
Critique:
From a strictly moral point of view,
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife leaves a
good deal to be desired; Leon wins the
beautiful, rich, and wanton Margarita by
deceit and transforms her into a dutiful
and virtuous wife by bullying her
unmercifully. But Fletcher is never much
concerned with moral questions. Rather,
he is interested in creating comic
situations which will give rise to fast-moving
action and which will permit the
introduction of interesting and humorous
characters. These effects he achieves
masterfully in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,
one of the most tightly knit of his
comedies. The main plot, the taming of
Margarita by Leon, is carefully balanced
against the subplot, the gulling of
Michael Perez by Estifania, and the two
plots serve to reinforce each other
admirably. As a supposedly weak husband
asserts and wins superiority over his wife,
so a seemingly wealthy and virtuous wife
reveals to her husband that she is no
better than she should be and makes him like
it. The plots are united in their use of
dramatic irony, and both are invigorated
by a strong and direct language which is
saved from vulgarity by its use in broadly
comic, sometimes nearly farcical,
situations.
The Story:
As they were discussing the gathering
of their companies for the Dutch wars,
Michael Perez and Don Juan de Castro
were interrupted by two veiled ladies, one
of whom desired Don Juan to carry a
message to a kinsman serving in Flanders.
Perez was much attracted by her
companion, and the lady seemed equally
drawn to him. In spite of his pleas,
however, she would not open her veil,
although she did instruct him to have his
servant follow her to learn the location of
her home and to call there later himself.
This was done, and Perez was overjoyed
to find that the lady, Estifania, was not
only lovely but also the owner of a
magnificent town house beautifully adorned
with hangings and plate. Perez proposed
on the spot and to his delight was
accepted. Don Juan, meanwhile, was
interviewing Leon, a young man
recommended to him as an officer. Although he
was strong and handsome and had seen
previous service, Leon revealed himself
to be the most incredible ass. When he
showed himself to be both cowardly and
immeasurably stupid, Don Juan dismissed
him with little encouragement.
In the country nearby, Margarita, a
beautiful young heiress, was making
preparations to return to town. She had but
one object in view—pleasure—and she
declared herself not at all adverse to a bit
of wantonness if it should come her way.
On the advice of Altea, her gentlewoman,
she had decided that her reputation could
be best protected if she married a foolish
3308

and complaisant man who would wink at
her infidelities. In fact, Altea had just
the man in mind, a fellow who was
presentable enough but who had no more
brains than an oyster and no sense of
honor whatever. The man was Leon.
When Margarita interviewed him she
found him perfect for the role he was
supposed to play, and she decided to wed
him at once. She did not hear Leon
whisper to Altea that he was a thousand
crowns in her debt.
Margarita's sudden appearance in the
city was welcomed by all the gallants, but
it interrupted the idyllic honeymoon of
Perez and Estifania. The soldier was
reveling in the possession of his bride's
mansion when Margarita and her entourage
arrived at the door. Estifania did not seem
altogether surprised; she pacified Perez by
telling him that Margarita was a poor
cousin trying to make the gentleman who
accompanied her believe that she was rich
in order to have him propose. The scheme
made it necessary for Estifania and Perez
to move into temporary quarters for a few
days so that the ruse could be carried out.
After Perez had left, the relationship
between Estifania and Margarita became
clear. Far from being a poor cousin,
Margarita was the mistress and Estifania only
the maid. It was Perez who had been
thoroughly gulled.
Again in possession of her house,
Margarita wasted no time. New hangings
were placed in the rooms, couches were
arranged in strategic locations, a
magnificent dinner was prepared, and a
company of gallants, including Don Juan and
the Duke of Medina, in whom Margarita
was especially interested, were invited to
enjoy the feasting and entertainment.
The party was just beginning when
Leon appeared, his air of stupidity and
fecklessness entirely gone. Proudly he
informed the guests that he was Margarita's
husband and master and that he intended
to protect his honor to the utmost.
Margarita was infuriated, but Leon quickly
silenced her. The Duke, too, was sorely
displeased that his plans for Margarita
had gone so suddenly awry, and he
angrily drew upon Leon. But the young
man was quite ready to fight, and only
Don Juan's intercession restored calm and
won a grudging apology from the Duke.
Don Juan, in fact, was enchanted to see
Leon's sudden transformation.
The guests were going fairly amicably
in to dinner when Perez burst in. From
some women in his new lodging he had
heard the truth about Estifania, and he
had also learned that he was not the first
husband she had cozened. Moreover, she
had disappeared with all his possessions.
Having had the women's story
confirmed by Margarita, Perez hurried away
again, determined to find Estifania and
punish her. But when he met her on the
street, Estifania was as angry as he; she
had attempted to pawn his treasures and
had learned that they were all false. In
the mutual tongue-lashing that followed,
Estifania emerged the winner. Having
sent Perez back to Margarita's house
again, convinced that it was really his,
she began to improve their fortunes by
selling Perez's worthless trinkets to Caca-
fogo for many times their value. She told
him that they were Margarita's
possessions which her mistress was sacrificing
so that she could raise money to escape
from Leon.
The Duke had ideas of his own about
separating the husband and wife: he had
Don Juan deliver to Leon a commission
to command a troop of horse and orders
to leave for Flanders immediately. When
she heard of this plan, Margarita
protested, tongue in cheek, that she hardly
could bear to be left by her new husband
whom she was just coming to love. If
only she could accompany him, she
signed, but that, of course, was
impossible. At the most ardent point of her
discourse she heard the sound of hammers.
Leon had checked the Duke's maneuver
neatly. He intended to take with him to
Flanders not only Margarita but also the
complete furnishing of the house so that
he could live like a gentleman in the
garrison. As a last resort Margarita pleaded
that she was pregnant, but Leon calmly
reminded her that since they had been
3309

married only tour days the news was
somewhat too sudden to be credible. In
spite of the protests of the gallants who
were present, Leon remained firm;
Margarita would accompany him. In a pique,
Margarita gave the house and furnishings
to Perez, who had by that time arrived to
claim the possessions he believed his own,
but Leon was so little troubled by this
action that Margarita, almost in spite of
herself, was compelled to express her
admiration for him. Consequently, the gift
was withdrawn, and Perez again was
gulled.
Angered beyond measure, he once more
sought out Estifania. This time he drew
his sword to kill her, but she stopped him
by covering him with a pistol. She then
took the edge off his wrath by presenting
him with the thousand ducats out of
which she had gulled Cacafogo. Realizing
that there were shortcomings on both
sides of the match and that his wife was
a great deal cleverer than he, Perez
decided that he ought to make the best of
his bargain.
Meanwhile, both the Duke and
Cacafogo arrived independently to pay suit to
Margarita. The usurer was diverted into
the wine cellar, where he soon became
drunk. The Duke, having gained entry
to the house by pretending to be wounded
in a duel, soon found a chance to be
alone with her, but his passionate speeches
were interrupted by Cacafogo's drunken
roaring from the cellar, a noise which, at
Margarita's suggestion, he took to be a
devil haunting him because of his evil
purpose. Half afraid and thoroughly
ashamed by the lady's virtuous replies, he
became utterly discomfited and renounced
his suit for good. This development
completely satisfied Leon, who had
overheard everything that was said. All ended
happily as the bride and groom, now
completely in love with each other,
invited Perez and Estifania to take service
with them.
3310

R. U. R.
Type of work: Drama
Author: Karel Capek (1890-1938)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: The future
Locale: An unnamed island
First presented: 1921; published in 1920
Principal characters:
Harry Domin, General Manager of Rossum's Universal Robots
Helena Glory, his wife
Dr. Gall, a scientist
Mr. Alquist, head of the works department of R. U. R.
Primus, a robot
Helena, a robotess
Critique:
R. U. R. is a bitter attack on the trend
toward a mechanized civilization which
would put millions of men out of work.
In this play the crisis of the scientific
Utopia occurs when the robots are given
souls and begin to act like human beings,
destroying the men who made them. The
characters in the play are deliberately
contrived in keeping with Capek's
purpose of protest against the depersonalized
march of science and invention. The
plot is pure, stark drama. This play has
enjoyed continuous success since its first
production and has been presented by
professionals and amateurs alike.
Domin, general manager, she could
hardly believe they were not human. Helena
had been sent by the Humanity League
on a mission to gain better living
conditions for the robots. Helena knew that
when the robots began to act strangely,
as they sometimes did, they were
destroyed and their parts were used to make
new robots. She was dismayed to find that
the robots she met and talked with in the
factory did not care whether they were
killed or starved. They thought of
nothing but their work. They talked
rationally, answering her questions, but they
seemed to have no desires or feelings
beyond their given jobs. Domin and the
other executives were willing to have her
preach to the robots all she wished.
In the warehouses there were hundreds
of thousands of robots waiting to be
shipped all over the world. Domin tried
to convince Helena of the rightness of
the new era. Now, man was no longer
effective. He was too imperfect, too
expensive, too long a child. Although
Domin could not agree that robots should
be freed and allowed the rights of
mankind, he admitted that sometimes they
acted queerly. Often one would gnash its
teeth, throw things about, and then stand
still. The attack was similar to epilepsy,
and the robot would have to go to the
R. U. R. by Karel £apek. Translated by Paul Selver and Nigel Playfair. By permission of the
publishers, Samuel French. Copyright, 1923, by Doubleday, Page & Co., 1930, by Thomas H. Dickinson in
CHIEF CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS. THIRD SERIES. Application for the right to present
this play should be made to Samuel French, of 25 West 45th St., New York 36, N. Y., or 7623 Sunset
Blvd., Hollywood 46, Calif., or if in Canada to Samuel French (Canada) Ltd., 27 Grenville St., Toronto,
Out.
The Story:
The Rossum Universal Robot Factory
had perfected mechanical men and
women. The formula had been developed
originally by old Rossum, but it had been
left to his son, an engineer, to
manufacture the robots. Robots knew no joy, no
desire to take a solitary walk, no personal
wish of any kind. They were highly
developed with mechanisms devised for
only one purpose: work.
The robots manufactured by Rossum's
Universal Robot Factory were so lifelike,
however, that when the president's
daughter, Helena Glory, called at the
factory and was shown around by Harry
3311

stamping-mill to be destroyed. Helena
believed these were signs of developing a
soul. The managers were working on a
pain-nerve. They thought that if the
robots were to feel pain, these attacks could
be foreseen and treated.
The executives tried also to convince
Helena of the virtue of robots by
pointing out to her that the prices of all
manufactured and farm goods had dropped
almost to nothing. Where Helena could
«ee only the millions of men out of work,
the managers could see a world in which
no human being worked. Men could then
sit back and enjoy the labors of
mechanical workers. Only Mr. Alquist, head of
the works department, disagreed with
that notion. Alquist could see the joy
men found only in working and creating.
The others quickly voted him down.
Without prior warning, Domin told
Helena that he loved her and could not
bear to lose her. Puzzling even herself,
she accepted him.
Ten years passed. The managers tried
to keep from Helena the news that the
robots were causing trouble. All over the
world small groups of robots had
revolted against their masters. Some
governments had turned the robots into soldiers
and terrible wars had been fought.
Learning of these revolts, she begged Domin
and the others to close the factory while
there was still time. The men laughed
at her fears. They had a gunboat
standing by which would protect them from
quist agreed with Helena. He even
prayed that God would destroy the robots
and let mankind return to his rightful
work. He knew, as Helena did, that man
had stopped reproducing; there had been
no births recorded in the past week.
Dr. Gall, the physiologist, began to
fear the results when he learned that
some of the more intelligent robots,
according to their different grades, had
begun to feel pain and to have heart
flutters. They had also begun to show
definite signs of hating and loving. But the
R. U. R. shareholders were making too
much money and world governments
were growing too powerful with robot
soldiers to permit their discontinuance,
even if Domin and the others had
accepted Helena's and Alquist's views. Feeling
that the end was near, Dr. Gall could
only warn Helena to look out for herself.
The scientist believed they were all
doomed.
The only weapon the managers could
use against the robots, should they rebel,
was the secret of their manufacture, the
secret which promised to end a world
organization of robots. As soon as the
current trouble was over, each country
would begin to manufacture its own
robots. The differences in language and
customs would prevent a world union in
the future.
The trouble soon grew into a real
danger. A mail boat arrived with leaflets
announcing that the world organization
ordered all robots to kill every man,
woman, and child in the world. The
robots claimed that man had become a
parasite, that robots were now smarter
than man and must rule the world. The
orders were to be carried out immediately.
After a gallant fight the humans in
the factory were overpowered. Even when
he knew death was near, Domin had no
regrets. He had wanted to free man from
the restrictions of an unfair social system,
from poverty, from the slavery of
working for another; but something had gone
wrong. Somehow the robots had begun
to care about the things that man cared
about. The mystery was solved when
Helena confessed that she had persuaded
Dr. Gall to give the robots souls. She had
hoped that if the robots were more like
human beings both groups could
understand each other better. Now the robots
were so human that they acted like men.
The only hope was to persuade the
robots that they dared not kill the men
who knew the secret of their
manufacture. Domin prefered death rather than
to give up his dream, but the others,
hoping to use the formula in their
bargaining, outvoted him. Then they learned
that Helena, hoping to put an end to
3312

the factory and to help children be born
again, had burned the formula.
All the humans were killed except
Alquist, spared by the robots because he
also worked with his hands. Alquist,
unable to duplicate the formula, could not
save the robots, who were dying by the
millions. Before long they would be
extinct. The irony was that Alquist needed
human beings to study and experiment
with in order to rediscover the formula,
but there were no humans left.
One day Alquist decided that there
was hope. Primus, a robot, and Helena,
a robotess made in Helena's image,
exhibited all the symptoms of love. At
first Alquist planned to dissect them, to
see what made them feel human love.
When he learned that they were willing
to die for each other, but that they would
not be parted, he knew that he need
search no longer for the secret of robot
life. Their love would bring forth new
life, and the world would know human
ity once more.
3313

THE SAINT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911)
Type of plot: Religious romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Italy
First published: 1905
Principal characters:
Benedetto, the saint
Jeanne Dessalle, his former mistress
Noemi d'Arxel, her friend
Giovanni Selva, a philosopher
Don Clemente, a Benedictine monk
Critique:
The Saint is the third part of a trilogy
dealing with the Maironi family in
nineteenth-century Italy. It is, however,
complete in itself. The best and most
popular novel of the series, it was from its
first publication a highly controversial
book. In Italy, particularly, its merits
are still a matter of debate. Fogazzaro
himself was a prominent Catholic
layman of the nineteenth century, and the
novel has been widely read by those
seeking an objective view of the Church of
that period.
The Story:
Three' years had passed since Piero
Maironi, an artist, had renounced the
world, and with it his love for Jeanne
Dessalle. Maironi, whose wife was in a
lunatic asylum, had fallen in love with
Jeanne, who was separated from her
husband. Before Maironfs wife died,
however, she regained her sanity and called
Piero to her side. There he had recovered
his sense of honor, and on the night she
died he had a prophetic vision
concerning his life. He disappeared
immediately from the knowledge of his family and
friends and none of his old associates
had seen him since. Jeanne had received
a message from him that told of his
sorrow at the sin they had shared. In spite
of his message she could not quite accept
his decision but still hoped to see him
and renew his love for her. Her husband
had died in the meantime, and she
thought that if Piero could come to her
without guilt he might renounce the
holy life he was supposed to have
embraced.
With a new friend, Noemi d'Arxel,
Jeanne began to travel over Italy in
search of Piero. In the hope that he had
not yet taken his final vows as a monk,
she sought him everywhere. Jeanne
herself could not accept God. She knew that
this fact would be a hindrance to the
relations she hoped to establish with her
former lover, but she was too intelligent
and too honest to pretend to believe in
order to influence him.
At last Jeanne and Noemi found Piero.
He was at Jenne, a gardener in the
monastery of Santa Scholastica, where he was
the pupil and servant of Don Clemente,
a Benedictine monk of rare humility and
virtue. Piero was now called Benedetto,
and no one but Don Clemente knew his
real identity. To the people he was
known as the Saint of Jenne, and many
were cured of afflictions by merely
touching his garments. Benedetto claimed no
miracles; in fact, he begged people not
to glorify him. For Benedetto was a true
man of God. He wanted only to pray and
to serve others and to rid the Church of
her faults. For this last desire he was
often reviled, because many dignitaries
of the Church could not stand to have
their souls bared to the public. Loving
THE SAINT by Antonio Fogazzaro. Translated by M. Agnetti Pritchard. By permission of the pub-
Ushers. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1906, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Renewed. All rights reserved
3314

the Church with his whole heart,
Benedetto sorrowed when he saw corruption
and greed weakening it from within. In
spite of his sincerity and his humility,
he was sometimes hated, sometimes
worshipped by those who knew him.
Although Jeanne managed to see
Benedetto alone, the interview was not a
satisfactory one. He asked her first if
she now believed, and honesty made her
answer that she did not. Then he asked
her if she would promise to live for the
poor and to love the afflicted. When she
answered that she would, he told her that
he would call her to his side at a certain
hour in the future. Until then she must
never try to see him again. After
Benedetto left her, Jeanne was lost in sorrow.
Even though he worked only for the
good of others, ruining his health by his
frugal habits, Benedetto was forced to
leave Jenne because he talked out against
the corruption of the Church. Friends
helped him, including Giovanni Selva,
Noemi's saintly brother-in-law. Selva was
a loyal Catholic who loved his Church
so much that he wanted to see it rise
above the worldly evils which
threatened it. He had written some
philosophical books on this subject, books
which were in danger of being proscribed
as unfit for Catholics to read. It was not
always safe for Selva to aid Benedetto,
but when he could not help the simple
man himself he arranged for other friends
to do so. Don Clemente, too, had been
ordered by his superiors in the Church
to abandon Benedetto. Although the
monk obeyed, he longed for the time
when they would all be vindicated and
their teachings accepted.
Benedetto felt an invisible voice
telling him to make a pilgrimage to Rome,
to the Holy Father himself. Sick and
weak, he made the long journey and was
ordered to an audience with the pope.
As he entered the Vatican, he saw again
the vision he had seen on the night of
his wife's death. Alone, he found his
way to the pope's library, a fact the
pope thought singularly strange;
however, Benedetto had found the intricate
halls and stairways just as he had seen
them in his vision. The pilgrim learned
that the pope was also concerned about
the Church as it stood at that time, and
he told Benedetto that the pope must
deal with human beings, not with God
alone, and that he had to consider how
best to help all people everywhere, not
those who believed only as he did. The
Holy Father listened earnestly to
Benedetto's account of the four sins which
he considered the most serious: they were
the spirit of falsehood, the domination
of the clergy, the spirit of avarice, and
the spirit of immobility or the failure to
meet the needs of the changing times.
The pope agreed with Benedetto on these
points but begged him to be patient in
waiting for their correction.
Benedetto's last plea to the pope was
that Selva's books might not be placed
on the Index. The vicar made no
promises, but he agreed to consider all the
things they had discussed. Then he
blessed Benedetto and the pilgrim took
his leave.
Not long after the interview friends
warned Benedetto that the police were
after him. Although she kept her prom
ise not to try to see him, Jeanne sent him
one message of warning. She did send
her carriage for him once, in the hope
that the reminder of her might cause him
to change his mind, but her ruse was
unsuccessful. Though the charges against
Benedetto were false, sworn to by his
enemies, his friends forced him to heed
the dangers and hide himself. By that
time he was in poor health because of
his life of fasting and praying. Because
he often went for days without food or
rest, his friends knew that he would soon
die.
Benedetto, also realizing that his days
were numbered, sent for Jeanne. Before
she arrived he saw his true friends once
more: Selva, whose books had been kept
off the Index because of Benedetto's plea
to the pope; Don Clemente, who had
come to him in spite of the danger
involved; the poor from all over the city.
He blessed them all and exhorted them
3315

to keep God in their hearts through all
obstacles and dangers. Last of all Jeanne
went to him. By that time Benedetto was
so weak that he could hardly move hi«
head. He did not speak, but stretched
out his hand in the direction of the
crucifix. When she took it to him, he raised
it toward her lips. Taking the crucifix
from his weak grasp, Jeanne kissed it
passionately. A smile came to the face
of the saintly man as he breathed his last.
3316

SAINT JOAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Time: 1428-1456
Locale: France
First presented: 1923
Principal characters:
Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans
Charles, Dauphin and later King of France
Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais
The Earl of Warwick, an English lord
"Jack" Dunois, a French commander
Robert de Baudricourt, a French squire
The Archbishop of Rheims
De Stogumber, an English chaplain
In 1920, almost five hundred years
after she had been burned at the stake
as a heretic, sorceress, and witch, Joan
of Arc, Maid of Orleans, was canonized;
three and one half years later, with the
first performance of Saint Joan on
December 28, 1923, at ,the Garrick Theatre
in New York City, Joan was Shavianized.
That is to say, George Bernard Shaw told
the world the truth about Joan in terms
of the Shavian dramatic dialectic.
Shaw felt that although Joan had been
completely rehabilitated, both by the
Church and by secular commentators, the
true significance of her life and
martyrdom was not yet understood, for in
exonerating Joan of the crimes for which
it had burned her, the Church had
whitewashed Joan and condemned itself.
Furthermore, the literary interpretations of
Joan, ranging from Voltaire's ribald
burlesque to Mark Twain's romantic
adulation, were misleading and therefore
worthless. Shaw believed that he could
rectify all these erroneous interpretations.
He proceeded to write Saint Joan, basing
it on the extraordinary premises, first, that
Joan was a harbinger of Protestantism
and, secondly, that she was a fomenter of
nationalism. Within the framework of
the play he concludes that Joan had to
die because as a Protestant she
threatened the authority of the Church, and as
a nationalist she imperiled the power of
the feudal lords.
Whether or not these premises and
conclusions are valid historically is, of
course, conjectural. But such a question
is irrelevant since they are valid
dramatically. In this play more than in any
other, Shaw succeeded in creating
characters who lived the theme in addition to
preaching it. Saint Joan is thus a genuine
play, not just a Shavian dialogue.
Joan's Protestantism is rooted in hex
independence, her insistence on
listening to the dictates of her heavenly voices,
which she concedes may be figments of
her imagination. Convinced that the
advice given her by Saint Margaret and
Saint Catherine is sensible and practical,
she finds the courage to defy bishops,
archbishops, and inquisitors. Her
nationalism grows out of her almost fanatical
zeal to save France from the English and
to establish France as an autonomous
state dedicated to glorifying God. This
zeal, manifested as fervid sincerity and
earnestness, enables her to command
generals and to crown kings.
Independence, courage, and zeal—these
characteristics make Joan a Shavian
genius, a superwoman, and the female
counterpart of Jack Tanner. Her ability to
probe deep into the problems of life
and to formulate independent ethical
values causes her to be alienated from
conventional society. Although Joan is a
Shavian genius, she is not a typical one.
As a proud, stubborn peasant girl, Joan
3317

is profoundly, pathetically human. She
can stand as a character without
reference to Shaw or his philosophy.
The characterization of Joan is by no
means the only original one in the play:
the treatment of the minor personages is
even less conventional, most notably with
the Earl of Warwick, and Cauchon,
Bishop of Beauvais. Shaw objected to the
traditional interpretation of Warwick and
Cauchon as egregious blackguards and
set out to rehabilitate them. Within the
typically Shavian framework they
represent the conservative and reactionary—
the established—elements of society who
resist and defeat the genius. Within the
thematic framework of Saint Joan, they
represent the power of the Church and
of feudalism. Their opposition to Joan is
not vindictive; Cauchon, in fact, strives
to save her and insures a fair trial for
her. Both are forced to resist her because
as thinking men they recognize that she
threatens their own self-interest within
the existing social order. As a feudal lord,
Warwick cannot brook Joan's
nationalism, which, if unchecked, would
diminish his power. As a ruler of the Church,
Cauchon cannot tolerate Joan's
Protestantism, which, if unchecked, would
subvert his authority. Both are reasonable,
even virtuous men, and by executing
Joan they perform a service to the
elements of society which they represent.
Far from being villains, they were
medieval heroes.
Most of the other characters also
represent the conservative elements of
society, but they see, for a while at least,
the advantage in allying themselves with
Joan. To the French, Joan is a new hope
for France, a crazy hope, perhaps, but
the last hope for driving out the English.
Thus Captain Robert de Baudricourt, lord
of the province where Joan was born,
agrees to furnish her horse and armor as
well as an escort to take her to the
dauphin. The dauphin, timid and a little
silly, a prisoner of his own court, makes
Joan his commander-in-chief and
succumbs to her efforts to make a man and
king of him. The Archbishop of Rheims
gives to her enterprise the sanction of
the Church. And Dunois, commander of
the forces at Orleans, agrees to follow
Joan's leadership in a desperate attack
across the Loire. Yet all these desert
Joan when she has served their purposes.
When her plans to complete her mission
by driving the English from Paris seem
too impractical, too audacious to execute,
they withdraw their support, charging her
with impudence and pride. By the time
Joan has crowned the dauphin at Rheims,
they have recovered their conventionality
and are embarrassed by their former
enthusiasm in accepting a peasant girl's
leadership. Therefore they do not move
to save Joan when she is captured and
sold to Warwick and Cauchon.
This theme of the rejection of the
moral genius by the conservative elements
of society is recapitulated and
generalized in an epilogue. Twenty-five years
after her death, on the occasion of her
rehabilitation by the Church in 1456,
Joan meets again the men who were
involved in her career. When a messenger
from the Pope appears to announce the
canonization of Joan, all, from Cauchon
to King Charles, fall to their knees in
adoration of the new saint. Yet when
Joan acknowledges their praise by
asking if she should return from the dead,
a living woman, each—except for a
common soldier—again rejects her, humbly
this time, and disappears. Shaw's
message is clear: those who rule society are
never ready to accept the moral genius
who would change society, even though
that genius be a saint.
Saint Joan is perhaps the only play
in which Shaw succeeded in dramatizing
this theme without reference to
situations which now seem dated, and
without reducing drama to didacticism.
Because Saint ]oan in part transcends Shaw,
it must be listed among his masterpieces,
3318

ST. PETER'S UMBRELLA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Kalman Mikszath (1847-1910)
Type of plot: Humorous romance
Time of plot: Second half of nineteenth century
Locale: Hungary
First published: 1895
Principal characters:
Pal Gregorics, a wealthy bachelor
Anna Wibra, his housekeeper and cook
Gyury (Gyorgy) Wibra, the illegitimate son of Anna Wibra
Janos Belyi, a priest in Glogova
Veronica Belyi, his sister
Widow Adamecz, the priest's housekeeper
Janos Sztolarik, a lawyer
Jonas Muncz, a Jewish merchant
Critique:
Kalman Mikszath was a country squire,
lawyer, magistrate, journalist, member of
parliament, and novelist; but his forte
was undoubtedly the ability for superb
storytelling, surpassed in Hungary only
by Maurus Jokai. He draws his
characters with the certainty of a man who
knows and understands the people he
writes about, mainly the Hungarian
peasantry. The ease with which he transforms
everyday life into unusual stories reminds
one strongly of Maupassant; his sense
of humor, as demonstrated in this novel,
makes reading a pleasure. The author
became a member of the Hungarian
Academy and of the Hungarian Parliament,
but his parliamentary speeches will be
long forgotten when the hilarious
episodes of St. Peter's Umbrella will be still
remembered.
The Story:
When the new priest, young Jdnos
Belyi, arrived in Glogova, prospects for
an enjoyable life were extremely dim.
The little Hungarian town was a forlorn
place where impoverished peasants lived
out their lives trying to get as much as
possible out of the poor soil. No
provisions were made for the priest's
subsistence and church property was almost
nonexistent. While the priest was
contemplating the fact that he would have
to eat less and pray more, the situation
became more critical with the arrival of
his little baby sister. His parents had died
and somebody had decided to send little
Veronica to her next relative, the priest.
Thus a little baby in a basket was
suddenly put at the doorstep of his modest
home. In order to find a solution to his
problems he took a prayerful walk.
A heavy rain began to fall. Suddenly
he remembered the baby, still lying in
front of his house, and he was certain
the child would be soaking wet before he
could arrive. To his surprise he found
her completely dry, protected by an old
red umbrella. The priest could not
imagine who had been so kind to his little
sister; however, the townspeople soon
found all sorts of explanations. Since the
only stranger who had been seen lately
was an old Jew, the peasants came to the
conclusion that St. Peter had come to
show his mercy for the poor child.
At the next funeral on a rainy day the
priest used the red umbrella. The men
carrying the coffin stumbled and the
supposedly dead man, who was merely in a
trance, became very much alive. To the
villagers this incident was another sign of
the supernatural character of the
umbrella. On account of the umbrella the
priest's conditions improved rapidly, and
all kinds of gifts arrived at his house for
3319

the baby who had caused St. Peter to
come to Glogova. Even Widow Adamecz
offe-ed her services as housekeeper free
of charge, additional proof of the
miraculous power of the umbrella to all who
knew the money-conscious widow.
In the beginning the priest tried to
resist continuous requests for the presence
of the umbrella during church
ceremonies, but his parishioners felt so offended
when he refused that he finally gave in
and used the umbrella on all occasions.
Pilgrims came from far away to look at
the umbrella and brides insisted on being
married under it. Soon the town felt the
need for building an inn which carried
the name "Miraculous Umbrella." The
priest wondered how the umbrella came
to Glogova; he was to wait many years
for an answer.
In the town of Besztercebinya lived
a wealthy bachelor, Pal Gregorics. A spy
during the war, he had been seen many
times with a red umbrella. Pal Gregorics
was in love with his housekeeper, Anna
Wibra, who gave birth to an illegitimate
son, Gyury Wibra. The townspeople
observed how Pal Gregorics devoted all his
time to the child. Pal's two brothers and
his sister did not like the possibility that
they might some day have to share PaTs
estate with an illegitimate child. For this
reason Pal, afraid that his relatives might
try to harm young Gyury, decided to
trick them by pretending he did not care
for the boy, and he sent Gyury to a
distant school. To deceive his brothers and
sister, he acted as if he had invested all
his money in several estates which
required inspection from time to time, but
in reality he visited his son.
In spite of great love for his father,
Gvury reproached Pdl for making
himself a laughingstock by always carrying
the old red umbrella. Pdl disregarded the
complaints and promised his son he would
one day inherit the umbrella. When Pdl
felt he was going to die, he asked his
lawyer Janos Sztolarik to prepare his will.
Mysteriously, he asked two masons,
under strict order of secrecy, to break a wall
in order to place a caldron into the wall
and finish the masonry as it had been be-
fo-e. Although he had told his
housekeeper to notify Gyurv of his illness, she
failed to do so, and Pal Gregorics died,
without seeing his son, with the red
umbrella in his hands.
When Sztolarik read the will, PaTs
brothers and sister were horrified to hear
nothing about the rich estates which
their brother supposedly owned. They
spent much time and money to find out
what Pal had done with the money. They
suspected a secret bequest to Gyury, but
investigators reported that the boy was
studying and living on a meager income.
Finally they discovered the two masons,
who revealed for a large sum of money
the secret of the caldron in the wall.
Certain they had found the answer to
their riddle, they bought the house,
which had been willed to Gyury, for an
extremely high price. When they b~oke
the wall open, they found the caldron
filled with rusty nails.
Soon afterward Gyury completed his
education and became a lawyer in
Besztercebinya. He had heard about the
frantic search for his father's estate and he
himself began to wonder where it could
be. The first clue was given by the dving
mayor, who told how Pal Gregorics had
carried secret documents in the hollow
handle of his umbrella during the war.
Gyury's suspicion was confirmed when
his mother told him how Pal, even in
death, was still clutching the umbrella.
The search for the umbrella then began.
Gyury's in\ estigations pointed to an old
Jew, J6nds Miincz, who had bought for
a few coins his father's odds and ends
which the relatives did not want.
Further inquiries established that the Jew
had died, but that his wife owned a
small store in Bdbaszek. Gyury and his
coachman hurried to that town. An
interview with Frau Miincz revealed that
her husband had been fond of the
umbrella and had carried it around at all
times. Gyury heard from Frau Miincz's
son that the old Jew had been seen
putting the umbrella over a litde baby in
Glogova.
3320

As he was about to leave for Glogova,
Gyury found a lost earring for which,
according to the town crier, the mayor
was searching. Returning the earring to
the mayor, he was introduced to its
owner, a young and extremely beautiful
girl. Furthermore, he learned she was
Veronica Belyi, sister of the village priest
in Glogova. She had been on her way
home when an accident damaged her
vehicle.
Gladly Gyury offered to conduct
Veronica and her traveling companion in
his carriage, but the two women decided
that it was now too late for departure, and
Gyury agreed to postpone his trip until
morning. During a party in the mayor's
house Gyury heard about the miraculous
umbrella in Glogova and realized that
the umbrella he was seeking was identical
with the priest's umbrella. Throughout
the night he could hardly sleep from
thinking how near and yet now far away
the umbrella was. During the night he
dreamed that St. Peter advised him to
marry the priest's sister; thus he would
have a beautiful wife and a legal claim on
the umbrella.
On the trip to Glogova, Gyury
considered the advantages of the suggestion
offered to him in his dream, but he was
afraid Veronica might not love him. Not
far away from the town the carriage broke
down. Searching for some wood needed
for repair, he heard faint cries for help; a
man had fallen into a deep hole. After
several attempts he succeeded in lifting
out the unfortunate man, who turned out
to be the priest of Glogova; he had
fallen into the hole while waiting for
Veronica on the previous night. Deeply
grateful, the priest wanted to know
whether there was anything he could do
for his rescuer. Gyury told him he had
something in his carriage belonging to the
priest. The priest was surprised to find his
sister in the vehicle; he informed
Veronica of his promise and thus Veronica
became engaged to Gyury.
In Glogova the young man had a
conversation with the lawyer Sztolarik, who
had heard from Gyury about his
successful search. The lawyer was concerned
because he felt that Gyury could not be
sure whether love for Veronica or for the
umbrella was the primary motive for his
marriage. Veronica, overhearing the
conversation, ran away heartbroken.
Gyury was eager to see the umbrella,
which the priest gladly showed him. But
the old handle had been replaced by a
new one of silver. Gyury's last hope for
recovering the old handle was crushed
when the priest's housekeeper informed
him that she had burned it. Meanwhile
the priest began to worry about the
absence of his sister. Hearing of her
disappearance, Gyury was also greatly upset.
Suddenly he realized that he could
overcome the loss of the umbrella, but not
the loss of Veronica. Church bells gave
the fire alarm signal and everybody in
Glogova appeared for the search. When
Gyury found Veronica and told her about
the burned handle, she recognized his
greater love for her, and she and Gyury
were married in the grandest wedding
Glogova had ever seen. Although Gyury
never knew whether the handle contained
the key to his inheritance, the umbrella
remained a treasured relic in his family.
3321

ST, RONAN'S WELL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Scotland
First published: 1824
Principal characters:
Francis Tyrrel, a young Englishman posing as an itinerant painter
The Earl of Etherington, an English nobleman
Clara Mowbray, daughter of a Scottish laird
John Mowbray, her brother
Mr. Touchwood, an elderly world traveler
Meg Dods, mistress of the inn at old St. Ronan's
Lady Penelope Penfeather, a society leader at St. Ronan's Well
Captain Harry Jekyl, Etherington's friend
Critique:
St. Ronan's Well is one of the most
bitter and scathingly satirical of Scott's
novels. Lockhart reports that the original
version, in which Clara's forced marriage
to Valentine Buhner was consummated,
was so unpleasant that the author's
publishers forced him to alter his plot. It is
in some ways unfortunate that he
followed their advice, because the change
weakened the motivation for Clara's later
behavior. The members of the idle society
at the watering place are easily
recognizable individuals, probably modeled after
superficial admirers of Scott's work; his
own experiences may be reflected in
Francis Tyrrel's lack of success in Lady
Penelope's circle. The author does not
give these characters the sympathy which
he reserves for his kindhearted, eccentric
figures like Meg Dods, the village
parson, or Mr. Touchwood. What is unusual
in this novel is the fact that the good
intentions of these characters are partly
responsible for the final tragedy.
The Story:
Meg Dods, the proprietress, welcomed
Francis Tyrrel, a young Englishman, to
her inn at old St. Ronan's, after she had
recognized him as a former visitor to the
village and not a traveling salesman. She
gladly answered his questions about the
Mowbray family, telling him that John
had inherited his father's title of Laird of
St. Ronan's and now spent much of his
time gambling at the Well, the
fashionable watering place whose growth had
caused the old town to fall into ruins.
Clara Mowbray, reported to be a little
strange, lived with her brother.
Tyrrel saw these old acquaintances a
few weeks later when he was invited to
tea by Lady Penelope Penfeather, who
was delighted to learn that an artist had
come into the neighborhood. Her hope
that he would be an asset to her social
circle was thwarted, for she found him
commonplace and was offended that he
presumed to sit by her at dinner, far
above what she considered his rightful
position. Tyrrel was angered to discover
that his activities had been the subject
of a bet between Sir Bingo Binks and
John Mowbray, and only a familiar voice
in his ear stopped him from coming to
blows with the boorish Sir Bingo.
Leaving the Well, Tyrrel waited in a
nearby wood for Clara Mowbray, whose
voice he had recognized. When they met
they alluded to mysterious and dreadful
past events which, the young man
immediately realized, had unhinged the girl's
mind. Clara, controlling her emotions
enough to ask that they meet as friends,
invited him to a party she and her
brother were to give at Shaws Castle.
Smarting under Tyrrel's supposed
insult, Sir Bingo, encouraged by his friend
Captain MacTurk, sent a challenge to
Tyrrel, who accepted it and agreed to a
3322

time for an encounter. However, when
Sir Bingo and MacTurk appeared at the
appointed place, they waited in vain.
Although a public statement was issued
at the Well to raise Sir Bingo's status
and blacken Tyrrell name, the young
Englishman failed to come forward to
defend his reputation.
Meg Dods, upset by her lodger's
disappearance, and convinced that Tyrrel had
been murdered by his dueling opponents,
went to consult the sheriff at a nearby
town. Her attention was diverted from
Tvrrel bv the entrance info the sheriff's
office of Mr. Touchwood, who told her
that he was thoroughly d'sgusfed with the
foolish society at the Well, where he had
been s^aying. When Mrs. Dods promised
him better service at her own inn, he
agreed to move there.
Once he had given detailed instructions
about the angle of his bed and the
cooking of his food, Mr. Touchwood set out
to make new acquaintances. First he
sought out the Rev. Josiah Cargill, the
most absent-minded of scholars, but a
kind and charitable man. Mr. Cargill,
generally vague about the affairs of his
parishioners, became unexpectedly
agitated when, during a discussion of the
Mowbravs' forthcoming fete, he heard the
rumor that Clara was to wed a voung
nobleman. He agreed to join his friend
Mr. Touchwood for the party and insisted
that he must talk to the girl.
The rumored bridegroom, the Earl of
Ether'ngton, had been welcomed at St.
Ronan's Well with special cordiality
because of the wounds he said he had
received at the hands of a highwayman.
John Mowbray gambled with Ethering-
ton of^en during h?s convalescence and
would have lost lvs own fortune and the
money he had borrowed from his sister if
the earl had not deliberately allowed his
opponent to win. He then asked John's
permissron to marrv his s'ster, explaining
that under the will of an eccentric
relative a large fortune would be his if he
wed a Mowbray. John gave h;s consent
with the provision that Clara must agree
to the match.
The mvs'ery of Tyrrel's d'S3ppearance
was partially explained in a letter which
Etherington wrote to a friend, Captain
Harry Jekyl. The artist and the earl,
bitter enemies who were obviously
connected in some way, had met in a wood
near St. Ronan's and there fought a duel
in which Tyrrel had been injured.
Etherington said that he knew nothing of
Tyrrel's present whereabouts.
Mr. Touchwood and Mr. Cargill went
together to Shaws Castle, where they
were entertained with tableaux from A
Midsummer Night's Dream. Etherington
had chosen the part of Bottom, plaved in
an ass's head; it was later made obvious
that his object was to prevent Clara from
seeing his face. After the play the earl
was addressed by the minister as
Valentine Buhner, but the nobleman vigorously
denied this name and left abruptly. Mr.
Cargill, who had just spoken to Clara
and urged her not to sin by considering
marriage, was greatly puzzled: however,
knowing his own absent-minded nature,
he did not pursue the matter further.
Etherington again postponed a meeting
with Clara by leaving the banquet before
she arrived, but he sent word to John
the next morning that he wished to meet
her that day. When Clara told her brother
that she would not see him or any other
man who came proposing marriage, John
left her alone to look for the bearer of
an anonymous note which declared that
Etherington had usurped his title. Just
then the earl entered Clara's room; she
screamed as she recognized him and asked
why he had broken his promise never to
see her again. He answered that the fact
that she had spoken to Tyrrel absolved
him of h's promise.
Etherington's ensuing conversation
with John and his second letter to
Captain Jekyl explained the complicated
relationship between himself, Clara, and
Tyrrel. The two young men were half-
brothers, both claiming to be their father's
legitimate son. At one time they had
been sent to Scotland, where the future
earl took the name of Valentine Bulmer.
When Tyrrel fell in love with Clara, the

two planned a clandestine marriage with
Bulmer's help. Meanwhile, Bulmer had
learned of the strange bequest hinging
upon his marriage with a Mowbray, and
he treacherously substituted himself for
the bridegroom in the ceremony
performed by Mr. Cargill. When Tyrrel
stopped the newly wedded couple a short
distance from the church and fought with
his half-brother, Bulmer fell under the
wheels of his carriage and was seriously
injured. Clara had returned home,
horrified, and the two young men, both still
in their teens, vowed never to see her
again. The old earl died soon afterward
and, having made no effort to
acknowledge Francis Tyrrel's legitimacy, named
Etherington as his heir.
Soon after Etherington's interview
with Clara, Tyrrel returned to the inn,
where he was befriended bv Mr.
Touchwood. When Captain Jekyl came there
to trv to persuade him to soften his
hatred for h:s brother, Tyrrel showed h's
visitor a list of documents which proved
his legal title to the earldom- he offered
to withhold this evidence, however, if
Etherington would agree to leave Clara
alone for the rest of her l'fe. Captain
Jekyl reported this interview to the earl,
who denied that such proofs existed. As
soon as h's friend had gone, however, he
plotted with his valet to steal the
documents from the post-office, thus subsfan-
tiating Tyrrel's claim that his brother
already knew about the papers.
By coincidence Lady Penelope led the
carl to the deathbed of the one person
who could prove his treachery
conclusively. She was Hannah Irwin, Clara's
former maid, who had helped him carry
out his plot. Etherington kept Lady
Penelope from hearing much of the dvino
woman's confession, but he was disturbed
by the knowledge that his trickery could
so easily be disclosed. His consternation
increased when the stolen packet was
found to contain only copies of the vital
documents. In danger of los'ng hrs
earldom, he was more anxious than ever to
acquire the estate which would come
with Clara. He gambled again with John
Mowbray and won heavily enough to
make the young man agree to persuade
Clara to accept marriage to a husband she
detested.
John first confronted Clara with the
ugly rumors about her character, repor's
spread by Lady Penelope, who based her
gossip on Hannah's half-heard confession.
Then he literally forced the poor girl to
swear to submit to marriage with the earl.
He left her, trembl'ng, in hei room and
went to greet an unexpected visitor, Mr.
Touchwood, who identified himself as the
son of the man who had left the estate
coveted by Etherington and the senior
partner in the law firm wlrch held the
documents proving Francis Tyrrel's
legitimacy. Mr. Touchwood, having pieced
together the complicated affair between
Clara and the two young men, told John
the whole s'ory, partly extracted from the
earl's servant, Solmes.
Ironically, this revelation came too late.
When John went to rouse his sVer and
tell her that he at last knew the truth,
he found that she had fled. Her nightly
wandering had led her first to Mr. Car-
gill's house, where Hannah Irwin had
been moved by Mr. Touchwood. There
she heard Hannah ask for forgiveness
before she went on, d'stractedly, to
Tyrrel's room at the inn. She collapsed af'er
begging him to flee with her and died the
next morning under the care of Meg
Dods. Tyrrel rushed out to take
vengeance on the man responsible for the
tragedy, only to learn from Mr.
Touchwood that John Mowbray had preceded
him and had already killed the earl.
John, in flight to England, sent back
word that the whole town of St. Ronan's
Well should be pulled down. He
gradually developed habits of economy, and it
was generally believed that he would
eventually inherit Mr. Touchwood's
estate. That gentleman had tred to make a
protege" of Franc's Tyrrel, but the latter
said that he had lived too much of his
life too young and wanted only a quiet
future. Refusing to claim his title, he
went to the Continent, where he was
reported to have joined a Moravian mis-

s;on. Mr. Touchwood, who might have hims2lf, lived on, alone, making empty
forestalled the final tragedy if he had not plans and increasing his fortune,
been so anxious to work everything out
3325

SAKUNTALA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Kalidasa (c. sixth century)
Type of plot: Exotic romance
Time of plot: Golden Age of India
Locale: India
Firs* presented: c. sixth century
Principal characters:
Sakuntala, beautiful daughter of a Brahman and a nymph
Kanwa, Sakuntala's foster father and a wise hermit
Dushyanta, King of India, in love with Sakuntala.
Mathavya, the court jester
Critique:
Kalidasa has been termed the
Shakespeare of India, and this particular drama
is usually considered his best work. There
is little of the realism found in this play
that may be found in earlier Hindu drama,
such as The Clay Cart, done by an
unknown author a century or two before
Sakuntala. The greatness of Kalidasa's
drama lies in its tremendous lyric, power.
The play was originally written in a
combination of verse and prose, a form which
most modern translators from the original
Sanskrit have striven to emulate, though
not always successfully. While almost
nothing is known of Kalidasa, legend has
it that he was the son of a good family of
high caste, but that he was abandoned as
a baby and reared as a common laborer. In
spite of that handicap, says the legend, he
became a great poet and dramatist, as well
as the favorite of an Indian princess.
The Story:
Dushyanta, King of India, was hunting
one day when his chariot took him into
the sacred grounds of a religious
establishment. A hermit stopped the king and
reminded him that he had sworn to protect
the religious people who lived there. The
king left his chariot and wandered through
the hallowed groves. As he walked, he
heard voices and saw three young women
passing through the grove to water the
plants growing there. When a bee,
angered by their presence, flew at her,
Sakuntala, not knowing that the king was
anywhere near, playfully called on
Dushyanta to rescue her.
Dushyanta, stepping from his hiding
place, announced himself, not as the king,
but as the king's representative appointed
to oversee the safety of the grove
and its inhabitants. While they talked,
Dushyanta learned that Sakuntala was no
ordinary maid, but the child of a Brahman
and a water nymph. Dushyanta fell in
love with her. Sakuntala also felt the first
pangs of love for the king and believed
that the Hindu cupid had struck her with
his five flower-tipped arrows.
Mathavya, the king's jester, complained
to his master that too much time was being
spent in hunting and that the life was too
hard on him. Ostensibly to humor the
jester, but actually to have more time to
seek out Sakuntala, the king called off any
further hunting and ordered his retinue
to camp near the sacred grove in which
Sakuntala lived with her foster father, a
hermit-wiseman named Kanwa. A short
time later word came to the camp that the
king's mother wished him to return to the
capital to take part in certain ceremonies,
but Dushyanta was so smitten with love
for Sakuntala that he sent his retinue back
while he himself, in hopes ef seeing
Sakuntala again, remained at the sacred
grove.
After their first meeting, both the king
and Sakuntala had languished with love.
At last Dushyanta found excuse and
opportunity to revisit the grove, and there he
met the girl again. Both were obviously in
love, but neither one knew how to tell the
other. One of Sakuntala's attendants
3326

finally conceived the idea of having her
send a love note to the king. As Sakuntala
wrote the note, Dushyanta heard her
speaking the words aloud. He stepped
from his place of concealment and told her
of his determination to make her his
consort and the head of his household, above
all his other wives. Sakuntala left, telling
him that she would have to talk over the
subject of marriage with her attendants,
for her foster father, Kanwa, was absent
and so could not give his consent.
Sometime later a scurrilous and
eccentric sage came to the sacred grove. He felt
himself slighted by Sakuntala, who had
not heard of his arrival and so did not
accomplish the rites of hospitality to suit
him. In his anger he called down a curse
upon the girl, though she did not know of
it. The curse was that her lover should not
remember her until he saw once again the
ring of recognition that he would give her.
The attendants who heard the curse were
afraid to tell Sakuntala for fear she would
become ill with worry.
Before Dushyanta left the sacred grove
to return to his palace, Sakuntala agreed to
a secret marriage and became his wife, but
she decided to remain at the grove until
the return of her foster father. Before he
left, the king gave her a ring, as a sign of
her new status. Not long after the king's
departure, Kanwa returned. Having the
gift of omniscience, he knew all that had
taken place, and, as Kanwa reentered the
sacred grove, a supernatural voice told
him that Sakuntala should give birth to a
son destined to rule the world. Kanwa,
thus assured of the future, gave his
blessing to the union of Sakuntala and the
king. He had his people make the
necessary preparations for sending the bride to
her husband, to appear as the royal
consort.
When the time came for her departure,
Sakuntala was filled with regret, for she
loved the sacred grove where she had been
reared. In addition, she had premonitions
that her future was not to be a happy one.
Kanwa insisted, however, that she make
ready to leave, so that her son could be
born in his father's palace.
But when the hermits of the sacred
wood appeared in Dushyanta's presence
with the girl, the curse proved true, for
King Dushyanta failc 1 to remember
Sakuntala and his marriage to her. The
hermits, feeling that they had done their
duty in escorting Sakuntala to her
husband, left her in the king's household.
Sakuntala, heartbroken at her husband's
failure to remember her, looked for the
ring of recognition he had given her. But
the ring had been lost during the journey
from the sacred wood to the palace.
Not long after Dushyanta had sent
Sakuntala from his presence, his courtiers
came to tell him that a strange, winged
being had flown into the palace gardens,
picked up Sakuntala, and carried her
away into the heavens. The king was
much disturbed over the event, but
resolved to put it from his mind. Later the
ring of recognition, bearing the king's
crest, was discovered in the hands of a
poor fisherman; he had found it in the
belly of a carp. The ring was carried to
Dushyanta; no sooner had he set eyes
upon it than he remembered Sakuntala
and their secret marriage, for the sight of
the ring removed the curse.
Remembrance of Sakuntala did him no
good; when she had been snatched from
the palace garden, she had been lost to
mortal eyes. Dushyanta grew sad and
refused to be comforted. Meanwhile the
nymph who had stolen Sakuntala from
the palace garden kept watch and took
note of the king's unhappiness. Finally
she took pity on him and had the chariot
of the god Indra sent down to earth to
convey King Dushyanta to heaven for a
reunion with Sakuntala.
In heaven the king found a young boy
playing with a lion. He was amazed to
see what the child was doing and felt a
strong attraction for him. While he
watched, an amulet fell from the child's
neck. The king picked it up and replaced
it on the boys shoulders, much to the
surprise of the boy's heavenly attendants,
3327

for the amulet was deadly to all but the
child's parents. Dushyanta, recognized as
the true father, was taken to Sakuntala,
who readily forgave her husband, for she
had heard the story of the curse. The gods,
happy to see the pair reunited, sent them
back to earth, along with their little son
Bharata, to live many years in happiness
together.
3328

SALAMMBO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Third century B.C.
Locale: Carthage
First published: 1862
Principal characters:
Hamilcar, Suffete of Carthage
Salammbo, his daughter
Matho, a Libyan chief
Spendius, a Greek slave
Narr' Havas, a Numidian chief
Critique:
Salammbd is a monumental
description of Carthage while that city-republic
was still a great power. Into this novel
Flaubert put five years of reading, years
when he read every scrap of information
he could find about Carthage during the
Punic Wars. The result is a vast, erudite
reconstruction for which there are few
parallels. Flaubert was a careful, slow
worker, and this novel demonstrates his
exact style. Character analysis is scant
and the plot little more than animated
history, but critical opinion accords it a
distinguished place because of its faithful
picture of the people and the times.
The Story:
Inside the walls of Carthage a vast
army of mercenaries gathered in the
gardens of Hamilcar. There were Liguri-
ans, Lusitanians, nomadic barbarians
from North Africa, Romans, Greeks,
Gauls, and Egyptians. A feast for these
thousands of hired warriors was in
preparation. Odors of cooking food came from
Hamilcar's kitchens, and the Council of
Elders had provided many oxen to roast
over the open fires in the gardens. The
men, tired from their defeat at the hands
of the Romans and weary from the sea
journey over the Mediterranean, waited
with ill-concealed impatience for the
feasting to begin.
More than that, they were in an ugly
mood because they had not been paid.
Hamilcar, their beloved leader even in
defeat, had promised them their pay
many times. The elders, however,
parsimonious and afraid of this huge
assembly of fierce foreigners, withheld their
pay. Offers of token payment had been
angrily refused.
While the revelry was at its height,
many men were emboldened by drink
and began to pillage the palace of
Hamilcar. In a private lake, surrounded by a
heavy hedge, they found fish with jewels
in their gill flaps. With joy they
ruthlessly tore off the gems and boiled the
sacred fish for their feast. The slaves
brought new foods and fresh casks of
wine for the drunken revelers. Then
above them on a high balcony appeared
Salammbd, the priestess of the moon
goddess and daughter of Hamilcar. Her great
beauty stilled the wild barbarians. She
called down a malediction on their heads
and in a wailing refrain lamented the sad
state of Carthage.
Among those who watched the young
girl, none was more attracted than Narr*
Havas, a Numidian chief who had been
sent by his father to Carthage to serve
with Hamilcar. Although he had been
in Carthage six months, this was his first
sight of Salammb6. Also watching her
keenly was Mathd, a gigantic Libyan.
He had heard of Salammbo, and already
loved her. With Math6 was Spendius, a
former Greek slave who, tricky and
shrewd, played the jackal to brave Mathd.
Spendius had been long in service to
Carthage, and he whispered the delights
of Salammbo to his master.
3329

The elders gave each soldier a piece
of gold if he promised to go to Sicca and
wait for the rest of his money to be sent
to him. The gold and the solemn
promises enticed many, and finally all the
mercenaries and barbarians joined the march
to Sicca. Many of their leaders distrusted
the words of the elders, but they were
sure of better treatment when Hamilcar
returned to Carthage.
Math6 lay in his tent all day long at
Sicca. He was in love, and since he had
no prospect of ever seeing Salammb6
again, he despaired. Finally the wily
Spendius profited greatly by Matho's
inaction and ingratiated himself with the
Libyan.
At Sicca the enormous Hanno
appeared in his costly litter. Hanno, one of
the Council of Elders, was tremendously
fat; the fat on his legs even covered his
toenails and his body was covered with
weeping sores. Pompously he addressed
the crowd, telling them of Carthage's
intent to pay later and urging them all to
return to their homes. But the Gauls and
the Campanians and the rest understood
not a word of Punic. Spendius leaped up
beside Hanno and offered to translate.
Falsely he told the soldiers that Hanno
was exalting his own gods and reviling
theirs. The mob became unruly and
Hanno barely escaped with his life.
Soon the inflamed barbarians were on
the march again, this time to besiege
Carthage. At their head rode Math6,
Narr' Havas, and Spendius, now a leader.
The mob camped at the gates of
Carthage. The city sent Gisco, a famous
warrirjr, to treat with them. In fear the
Carthaginians raised a little money and
began to pay the soldiers. They felt
powerless without Hamilcar. But the pay
ment was slow. Gisco had insufficient
funds, and many barbarians claimed
more pay than they merited.
As the unrest grew, Spendius went to
Math6 with a project of his own. He was
sure he had found a way into the city,
and if Math6 would follow his lead and
help him in his own private errand, he
would take Math6 to Salammb6.
Outside the walls Spendius had found
a loose stone in the pavement over the
aqueduct that supplied the city with
water. Math6 with his giant strength
lifted the stone, and the two swam with
the current in the darkness until they
came to a reservoir inside the city itself.
Then Spendius revealed his project. He
and Mathd were to steal the zaimph, the
mysterious veil of Tanit, goddess of the
moon. Since the Carthaginians put their
trust in Tanit, and Tanit's strength lay
in the veil, Spendius hoped to cripple
the morale of the city. Math6 was fearful
of committing sacrilege, but he was forced
to consent in order to see Salammbo.
While the female guards slept, the
two stole into Tanit's sanctuary and
Matho seized the veil. Then quietly
Spendius led the trembling Math6, who
wore the sacred robe, into Salammb6's
sleeping chamber.
As Math6 advanced with words of love
to Salammb6,s bed, the terrified girl
awoke and shouted an alarm. Instantly
servants came running. Math6 had to
flee, but while he wore the sacred veil
no one dared to lay a hand on him. So
Math6 left the city and returned to the
barbarians with his prize.
Hamilcar returned to Carthage in time
to organize the defense of the city, and
the siege melted away. Because the
barbarians were short of food, they marched
to Utica to demand supplies. Only loosely
bound to Carthage, Utica was glad to
harass Carthage by aiding its enemies.
Newly supplied with arms and food,
the barbarians were a more formidable
'aost. Hamilcar, however, had brought
his army out of Carthage and joined the
battle on the plain. Although the
Carthaginians were few in number, they
were disciplined and well led. They
engaged the barbarians several times,
always indecisively. Finally, by a stroke of
luck, the army of Hamilcar was trapped,
and the barbarian's surrounded the city's
defenders.
Meanwhile Salammb6 was goaded by
the high pnest into retrieving the sacred
veil. Disguised and with a guide, she
3330

made her way into the barbarian camp,
under priestly injunction to do whatever
might be necessary to reclaim the robe.
Finding Math6's tent, she went in and
asked for the veil which hung among his
trophies of war. Math6 was
thunderstruck and stammered eager protestations
of love. Remembering the commands of
the priest, Salammbo submitted to Math6.
While the Libyan slept, she took the veil
and went unmolested into her father's
camp.
Hamilcar noticed immediately that the
thin golden chain linking her ankles was
broken, and in his shame he promised
her to Nan:' Havas, who had long since
deserted the barbarians and returned to
help Hamilcar. But the marriage was
delayed until after the final defeat of
Hamilcar's enemies.
Hamilcar, wary of the stalemate in the
battle, led his followers back to Carthage
and the barbarians again laid siege to
the city. Spendius sought to end the
siege by breaking the aqueduct. Thirst
and famine threatened the city from
within. When pestilence broke out, the
children of Carthage were burned in sacrifice
to Moloch. Moloch was appeased, and
torrential rains saved the city.
With help from his allies, Hamilcar
began to reduce the forces of the enemy.
A large part of the army was trapped in
a defile in the mountains and left to
starve. Matho was taken prisoner.
On the wedding day of Narr' Havas
and Salammb6, Matho was led through
the city and tortured by the mob. Still
alive but with most of his flesh torn away,
he staggered up to the nuptial dais of
Salammbo. There he fell dead.
Salammbo recalled how he had knelt before
her, speaking gentle words. When the
drunken Narr' Havas embraced her in
token of possession and drank to the
greatness of Carthage, she lifted a cup
and drank also. A moment later she fell
back on the wedding dais, dead. So died
the warrior and the priestess who by
their touch had profaned the sacred robe
of Tanit.
3331

SAMSON AGONISTES
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Milton (1608-1674)
Type of plot: Heroic tragedy
Time of plot: c. 1100 B.C.
Locale: Palestine
First published: 1671
Principal characters:
Samson, Hebrew champion, one of the Judges
Manoa, his father
Dajjxa, a Philistine woman, Samson's wife
Harapha, Philistine giant
Chorus of Hebrew Elders
Critique:
Samson Agonistes is Milton's profound
treatment of the Biblical story in the
form of the classical Greek tragedy.
Although the play, published with Paradise
Regained in 1671, was not designed for
the stage, the author modeled his work
on Greek tragedy because he found it
"the gravest, moralest, and most
profitable of all other poems." The story of
Samson is one of the most dramatic
episodes in the Old Testament; the parallels
between the life of the blind Hebrew
hero and his own must have encouraged
Milton to base his last work on the story,
to!d in Judges, of the man singled out
before his birth as a servant of God.
Milton opens his play during Samson's
imprisonment. He refers frequently to
the Biblical accounts of the events of
Samson's youth, but the episodes which
make up most of the play are his own
creation. Each affects Samson's character,
renewing his faith in God and
influencing his decision to go to the Philistine
temple where he dies, according to the
Biblical tradition, when he pulls down
the roof upon himself and his enemies.
Samson Agonistes is a powerful and
moving drama. The poetry is both majestic
and simple, different from the rich verse
of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained,
but perfectly suited to the subject. The
play is the masterpiece of an old man,
one who has suffered like Samson and
who has, in his own way, triumphed over
suffering.
The Story:
Samson, eyeless in Gaza, had been
given a holiday from his labors during
the season of a Philistine religious
festival. He sat alone before the prison,
lamenting his fallen state. His hair had
grown long again and his physical strength
had returned; but to him life seemed
hopeless. Although he wondered why
God had chosen him, who seemed
destined to live out his days as a miserable,
blinded wretch, he nevertheless blamed
his misfortunes on himself. He should
not have trusted in his strength without
the wisdom to protect him from the wiles
of Philistine women. He mourned also
the blindness which made him live a life
that was only half alive.
A chorus of Hebrew elders joined him.
They recalled his past great deeds and
spoke of the present state of Israel,
subject to Philistine rule. Samson accused
his people of loving bondage more than
liberty because they had refused to take
advantage of the victories he won for
them in the days of his strength.
Manoa, Samson's aged father, also
came to see his son, whose fate had given
him great distress. He brought news
which plunged Samson still deeper into
his mood of depression; the Philistine
feast was being given to thank the idol
Dagon for delivering the mighty Hebrew
into the hands of his enemies. Samson
realized then the dishonor he had brought
to God, yet he was able to find hope in
the thought that the contest now was be-
3332

tween Jehovah and Dagon. He foresaw
no good for himself, cast off by God, and
he prayed only for speedy death.
As the chorus mused over God's
treatment of his chosen ones, Dalila
approached. When she offered Samson help
as recompense for her betrayal of him, he
scorned her. She tried to excuse herself,
pleading weakness and patriotism, but
Samson refused to compound his sins by
yielding to her again; he was regaining
spiritual as well as physical might. He
again accepted his position as God's
champion when Harapha, a Philistine giant,
came to gloat over his misfortune. It was
too bad that Samson was now so weak,
said Harapha; had he met him sooner he
would have won great honor by defeating
him. But he could not defile himself by
combat with a slave. Samson, enraged,
invited Harapha to come within his
reach. The giant refused to accept the
challenge, however, and left.
When a public officer came to summon
Samson to the feast, the blind man
refused to go. His presence there would
violate Hebrew law, and he had no
desire to have the Philistine mob make
sport of his blindness. But as Samson
told the chorus why he would not go, he
felt a sudden inner compulsion to follow
the messenger. He sensed that the day
would mark some remarkable deed in his
life. When the officer brought a second
summons, and more imperative, Samson
accompanied him.
Manoa, returning with the news that
he had been able to persuade the
Philistine lords to ransom his son, gladly
planned to sacrifice his patrimony and
spend his old age caring for Samson. Just
as he was speaking of his hopes that
Samson would recover his sight, horrible
shouting broke out in the temple. A
Hebrew messenger, fleeing the awful
spectacle, told Manoa and the chorus
that he had just seen Samson pull the
temple down upon himself and thousands
of Philistines. Manoa decided that
Samson had conducted himself like Samson,
and heroically ended a heroic life.
3333

SANCTUARY
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological melodrama
Time of plot: 1929
Ijocale: Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee
First published: 1931
Principal characters:
Popeye, a racketeer
Horace Benbow, a lawyer
Temple Drake, a girl attacked and held by Popeye
Tommy, a moonshiner killed by Popeye
Lee Goodwin, a moonshiner accused of Tommy's murdnx
Ruby Lamar, Goodwin's woman
Reba Rivers, madam of a Memphis bawdy house
Gowan Stevens, a college student
Critique:
Sanctuary is a harsh and brutal book
which on one level reads like a
sensational and motiveless recital of horrors
enacted by a sinister cast of grotesques
and perverts. Beneath its surface
violence, however, the novel has a deeper
meaning for which an interesting
allegorical interpretation has been suggested:
The social order of the old South has
been corrupted and defiled by progressive
modernism and materialistic exploitation,
represented by Popeye and his
bootlegging activities, so that historic
tradition, symbolized by Horace Benbow, is
powerless to act because it is opposed
by middle-class apathy and inbred
violence which victimizes both the Negro
and poor white trash. Viewed in this
light, Sanctuary is a social document
which has its proper place in William
Faulkner's tragic legend of the South.
The Story:
Horace Benbow, on his way to
Jefferson one afternoon, stopped to drink
from a spring on the Old Frenchman
place. When he rose he saw an
undersized man in a black suit watching him,
the man's hand in a pocket which held
his gun. Satisfied at last that the lawyer
was not a revenue officer, Popeye led
Benbow to the gaunt, gutted ruins of
a plantation house. That night the
lawyer ate with Popeye, several moonshiners,
and a blind and deaf old man, the father
of Lee Goodwin, one of the moonshiners.
They were fed by Ruby, Goodwin's
woman. Later Benbow was given a lift
into Jefferson on a truck loaded with
whiskey on its way to Memphis.
The next afternoon, at his widowed
sister's home, Benbow watched her
walking in the garden with young Gowan
Stevens. Stevens left that evening after
supper because he had a date with a
girl at the State University the following
night. The girl was Temple Drake.
After a dance Stevens got drunk. He
awoke the next morning in front of the
railroad station. A special train taking
university students to a baseball game haa
already left. Driving rapidly, Stevens
caught up with the train in the next
town. Temple jumped from the train
and climbed into his car. Disgusted with
his disheveled appearance, she ordered
him to drive her back to the university.
Stevens insisted that he had promised
to drive her to the game. On the way
he decided to stop at Goodwin's place to
buy more whiskey.
Stevens wrecked his car when he struck
a barrier across the lane leading to the
house. Popeye took Temple and Stevens
to the house. Temple went into the
kitchen, where Ruby sat smoking and
SANCTUARY by William Faulkner. By permission of the author and the publishers, Random House, Inc
Copyright, 1931. by William Faulkner.
3334

watching the door.
When she saw Stevens again, he was
drunk. Then Popeye refused to drive
them back to town. Temple was
frightened. Ruby told Temple to go into
the dining-room to eat with the men.
One of the men tried to seize her and
Temple ran from the room. Tommy,
one of the moonshiners, followed her
with a plate of food. The men began
to quarrel and Stevens was knocked
unconscious and carried into the house.
Goodwin and a moonshiner named Van
tussled until Popeye stopped them. When
Van found Temple in one of the
bedrooms, Goodwin knocked him down.
Then began a series of comings and
goings in the bedroom. Ruby came to
stand quietly in the darkness. Later
Popeye appeared and stood silently over
the girl. After he had gone, Goodwin
entered to claim a raincoat in which
Temple had wrapped herself. Popeye
returned once more, followed noiselessly
by Tommy, who squatted in the dark
beside Ruby. When the men finally left
the house to load the truck for its run
to Memphis, Ruby took Temple out to
the barn and stayed with her until
daylight.
Stevens awoke early and started out for
the nearest house to hire a car. Feeling
that he could not face Temple again
after his drunken night, he paid a farmer
to drive to the house for Temple, while
he thumbed a ride into town.
Learning that Stevens had already
gone, Temple went into the kitchen witn
Ruby. When she left the house again,
she saw the shadowy outline of a man
who was squatting in the bushes and
watching her. She returned to the house.
Seeing Goodwin coming toward the
house, she ran to the barn and hid in the
corncrib.
Watching, Popeye saw Goodwin
looking from the house toward the barn. In
the barn Popeye found Tommy at the
door of the corncrib. While Tommy
stood watching Goodwin, Popeye shot
him. A short time later Goodwin told
Ruby that Tommy had been shot. He
sent her to the nearest house to phone
for the sheriff.
Benbow stayed with his sister for two
days. When Goodwin was brought in,
charged with Tommy's murder, Benbow
agreed to defend the prisoner. Goodwin,
afraid of Popeye, claimed only that he
had not shot Tommy. It was Ruby who
told Benbow that Popeye had taken
Temple away in his car.
Benbow attempted to trace the girl's
whereabouts. State Senator Snopes told
him that Judge Drake's daughter was
supposed to be visiting an aunt in
Michigan after an attempted runaway
marriage.
A week before the opening of the
court session Benbow met Senator
Snopes again. For a price the politician
was willing to reveal that Temple was
in Reba Rivers' bawdy house in
Memphis. Benbow went at once to see the
girl. Temple, although reluctant to talk,
confirmed many details of Ruby's story.
The lawyer realized that without the
girl's testimony he could not prove that
Goodwin was innocent of Popeye's crime.
One morning Temple bribed Reba's
colored servant to let her out of the house
to make a phone call. That evening she
managed to sneak out again, just as a
car with Popeye in it pulled up at the
curb. When she refused to go back to
her room, he took her to the Grotto,
where Temple had arranged to meet a
young man called Red, whom Popeye
had taken to her room.
At the Grotto she danced with Red
while Popeye played at the crap table.
She begged Red to take her away with
him. Later in the evening two of Pop-
eye's henchmen forced Temple into a
car waiting outside. As they drove away,
Temple saw Popeye sitting in a parked
car.
Red's funeral was held in the Grotto,
For the occasion the tables had been
draped in black and a downtown
orchestra had been hired to play hymns. Drinks
were on the house.
The night before the trial Benbow
learned from Reba Rivers that Popeye
3335

and Temple had left her house. Ruby
took the witness stand the next day and
she told the story of Tommy's murder.
She and Benbow spent that night in
the jail cell with Goodwin, who was
afraid that Popeye might shoot him from
one of the buildings across the street.
Temple, located through the efforts
of Senator Snopes, was called to testify
the next morning. She indicated that
Goodwin was the man who had first
attacked her on the day of Tommy's
murder. Goodwin was convicted. That night
a mob dragged the prisoner from the
jail and burned him.
Popeye, on his way to Pensacola, was
arrested for the murder of a policeman
in Birmingham. The murder had
occurred the same night Red was shot
outside the Grotto. Popeye made no
defense, and his only claim was that he
knew nothing about the Birmingham
shooting. Convicted, he was executed
for a crime he had not committed.
Judge Drake took his daughter to
Europe. In the Luxembourg Gardens
with her father, listening in boredom to
the band, Temple sat in quiet, sullen
discontent.
3336

SANDFORD AND MERTON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Day (1748-1789)
Type of plot: Didactic romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1783-1789
Principal characters:
Harry Sandford, a farmer's son
Tommy Merton, a gentleman's son
Mr. Barlow, a clergyman, teacher of Sandford and Merton
Mr. Merton, a very sensible gendeman, Tommy's father
Critique:
This novel is one of those which
during the eighteenth century appeared in
England to popularize certain social
theories which were originating in France.
The theory which Sandford and Merton
.Attempted to promulgate was that of
education by example rather than coercion: the
same theme had been presented in
Rousseau's Entile, which had been published
in France twenty-one years earlier. In
Thomas Day's novel the reader finds alsc
the belief that a proximity to nature is
one of the ingredients of a healthy
personality. Little Harry Sandford, a farmer's
son, having been in contact with nature
in his most formative years, is healthy,
kindly, and sensible; young Tommy
Merton, on the other hand, enters the novel
with a background of artificiality and is
a headstrong weakling. Like most novels
of doctrine, this one depends for its force
upon its didactic elements.
The Story:
Little Tommy Merton was a
headstrong, ill-tempered, and weak lad when
he returned with his family to England
from Jamaica. His first years had been
spent in the company of slaves who
pampered his whims, and his mother, who
could see no wrong in her child,
condoned everything he said or did. The
child had no inclination to study, and so
he could not read, write, or do arithmetic
when he arrived in England. Mr.
Merton, who was very wealthy, wished to
improve his son, but he was at a loss to
know where to begin.
Thanks to a lucky chance, Mr. Mer-
ton's problem solved itself. One day,
when Tommy Merton was walking
through the fields, a snake coiled itself
about his leg. Only the timely
appearance of a farmer boy, who tore the snake
from Tommy's leg, prevented serious
injury. As a reward for his brave action,
the farm boy, Harry Sandford, was invited
to the Merton mansion for dinner.
During the meal he greatly displeased Mrs.
Merton, for he refused to believe that
the artificialities of the Merton home and
all the paraphernalia of the rich were
really worth-while. But his philosophic
attitude interested Mr. Merton, who, upon
inquiry, learned that Harry Sandford was
under the tutelage of the local clergyman,
Mr. Barlow. Thinking that his son
needed some training to make him a better
social being, Mr. Merton made
arrangements for Tommy to be boarded at Mr.
Barlow's vicarage and educated with little
Harry.
The first few days at the vicarage were
trying ones for Tommy. When he refused
to help with the gardening, Mr. Barlow
refused to let him eat. Then, when he
went into tantrums, no one paid the least
bit of attention to him. Gradually he
learned that getting on in the world took
greater abilities than simply demanding
whatever one wanted. Under the tutelage
of Mr. Barlow, and with the example of
Harry, he began to take an interest in
what was going on about him. He
became ashamed that he did not know how
to read, and with great effort he taught
himself to do so. His desire was to read
stories aloud, as Harry did. By means of
3337

these stories Mr. Barlow imparted a great
deal of information to the children.
From their reading the boys also got
ideas for various projects. They embnrked
for exnmnle, on the building of a hut,
to see if they could build one that would
protect them from the weather, after they
nnd read of sailors being cast away on
islands which were uninhabited. Tommy
also became interested in gardening after
he learned that bread did not simply
happen on the table at mealtimes. From the
gardening he went on to visit, along with
Mr. Barlow and Harry, a mill where the
grain was ground to make flour. These
processes he had never even heard of in
his earlier years when he was pampered
as a rich man's son.
The first sign of generosity on the part
of Tommy came when he and Harry
were befriended by a poor woman who
gave them some lunch one day after they
had strayed from home. While the boys
were in the cottage, bailiffs came to take
away the family's belongings to settle a
bill that the father of the family had
signed for a relative. Little Tommy went
to his father and got the money, a
relatively large sum, and gave it to the man
and his wife. Keeping his generosity a
secret from his family, he said that he
would save the money out of his
allowance, a sizeable one, and pay it back to
his father. When the secret was finally
made known by the poor people, Mr.
Merton was very pleased, not only with
his son but also with the instruction he
was getting from Mr. Barlow and Harry.
After some months had passed,
Tommy went home for a vacation and took
Harry with him. The guests at the
Merton house, astonished and displeased that
a gentleman's son should be permitted
the companionship of a farmer's son,
showed their disapproval. Other children
at the house, imitating the grownups,
made life miserable for Harry, who took
their malice with the best possible grace,
even when Tommy, whom he thought
his best friend, turned against him. One
day a group of youngsters disobeyed their
parents and went to a bull-baiting.
Harry tried to dissuade them from going,
but he received only blows and ill will
for his efforts. At the bull-baiting the
infuriated animal broke its tether and ran
amuck. Only quick thinking on the part
of Harry and a colored beggar saved
Tommy's life.
After saving Tommy's life, Harry and
the Negro went to Harry's father's farm.
The other children tried to blame Harry
for their having gone to the bull-baiting,
but the truth came out and little Harry
was the hero of the day. As much as he
had been the underdog before, he
became the hero of the adults and the
children. Tommy asked Harry's forgiveness
and apologized for his selfish and proud
behavior. Harry, of course, forgave him.
One day Tommy, while on a walk by
himself, saw a lamb attacked by a dog.
Tommy rescued the lamb, although he
himself had to be rescued by a
Highlander who happened along the road. Filled
with gratitude, Tommy took the
Highlander and his motherless children home,
where the Scots were given a hearty
meal. After dinner the Highlander told
of his adventures while serving as a
soldier in America. As he told his story, it
came out that he was a friend of an
officer in America who was related to one
of the Mertons' guests. Because of his
help in rescuing Tommy and the lamb,
as well as his connection with the guest's
relative, the Highlander was given
employment on one of Mr. Merton's farms.
By that time Mr. Merton was
convinced that Harry Sanford and Mr.
Barlow had changed his son into a healthy,
generous, straight-thinking young lad. It
was time, however, for Tommy to begin
a more formal education. Mr. Merton
went to the Sandford farm to make a
present of a large sum of money to Mr.
Sandford for what Harry had done. Mr.
Sandford, a virtuous, self-sufficient man,
refused to accept payment, saying that
he had got along well without it and
that he was afraid it would only cause
3338

trouble in his household, where
heretofore everyone had been content. He did,
however, agree to accept a fine team of
workhorses. When Tommy left with Mr.
Merton, he told Harry that he would look
forward to seeing him as often as possible,
for he realized that Harry had taught him
how to be sincere and useful, not merely
a gentleman's son.
3339

SANINE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mikhail Artsybashev (1878-1927)
Type of plot: Philosophical romance
Time of plot: 1906
Locale: Russia
First published: 1907
Principal characters:
Vladimir Petrovitch Sanine, an individualistic young Russian
Lidia (Lida) Petrovna, his sister
Maria Ivanovna, his mother
Captain Sarudine, in love with Lida
Dr. Novikoff, also in love with Lida
Sina Karsavina, briefly the mistress of Sanine
Yourii Nicolaijevitsch Svarogitsch, in love with Sina Karsavina
Critique:
Following the abortive revolution of
1905, many of the Russian intelligentsia
made hedonism a popular cult, with
pleasure and freedom from sexual morality
the hallmarks of their changed attitudes.
Artsybashev, in Sanine (the English
variant of the Russian Sanin), took
advantage of the prevalent climate of
opinion and with this novel achieved great
popularity—even notoriety—both in
Russia and abroad. While critics of Russian
literature have refused to grant greatness
to the book or its author, students of
Russian history have felt that Sanine not only
mirrced the lapse in morality in Russia
at the time of its publication but that it
actually contributed to that lapse. The
novel can best be described by saying that
it preaches a kind of nihilism as the only
satisfactory answer to human life. It has
been termed a sermon based on the text
of being one's self and following one's
inclinations. Sanine, the first novel
written by Artsybashev, is typical of his plays,
short stories, and novels in its treatment
of brutality, death (especially suicide),
and sexual irregularity.
rison town, he came as a person believing
only in himself, his strength, and the
desirability of following his inclinations
wherever they might lead him. His
mother, Maria Ivanovna, could not
understand her son. His sister Lida,
however, found him strangely attractive, even
though she distrusted and feared his
thinking and its influence.
Lida, having many admirers among
young civilians and the junior army
officers, was the belle of the little garrison
town. Her two most serious admirers were
Dr. Novikoff, who wished sincerely to
marry her but was awkward as a suitor,
ard Captain Sarudine, a brutal and
lascivious army officer who wished only to
make a sexual conquest and was well
on his way to success with the young
woman. Sanine, giving the same freedoms
to others as he believed in for himself,
made no serious attempt to interfere in
his sister's affairs.
Before long Sanine was caught up in
the social life among the young
intelligentsia of the town. Among those in the
group were Sina Karsavina and Yourii
Svarogitsch. The former was a pretty
young schoolteacher of strong emotions
who found herself drawn strangely to
Sanine, although she was very much in
love with Yourii, a young student who
had been exiled to the provinces for his
part in revolutionary activities. Although
SANINE by Mikhail Artsybashev. Translated by Percy Pinkerton. By permission of the publishers, Th«
Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1926, by The Viking Press, Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
The Story:
During the formative years of his life
Vladimir Petrovitch Sanine was away
from the influence of his family and their
home. When he returned, a young man,
to his mother's house in a provincial gar-
3340

attracted to Sina, Yourii felt that his
political duties and ambitions would be
hampered if he were married. Because of
his beliefs in political duty, and because
of bashfulness as well, he tried to avoid
becoming emotionally involved with the
young schoolteacher.
As the weeks passed, Lida was drawn
closer to Captain Sarudine. So strong was
his physical attraction that she refused a
proposal of marriage from Dr. Novikoff,
whose jealousy almost became hate. Soon
afterward Lida became Captain Saru-
dine's mistress. Discovering that she was
pregnant, she turned for help to her lover,
only to learn that he was now finished
with her, having made his conquest.
Lida, distraught, thought of drowning
herself, but she was found by her brother
in time. He convinced her that she
needed to live and that she should
become Dr. NovikofFs wife. Having his
sister's agreement, Sanine went to Dr.
Novikoff, who was about to leave the town.
Little persuasion was needed, even with
a knowledge of the facts, to get the
doctor's agreement to marry Lida.
About this time Captain Sarudine had
a visitor from St. Petersburg. When
Captain Sarudine and his friend paid a visit
to the Sanine home so that the officer
might show off the beautiful woman he
had seduced, Sanine ordered the captain
to leave the house and suggested further
that he leave town. Captain Sarudine,
true to the code of his corps, challenged
Sanine to a duel. Because he believed that
dueling proved nothing, the young man
refused the challenge. He learned that
his sister, on the other hand, expected
him to fight the duel. Realizing that his
sister, like his mother, was a conformist
to opinion and tradition, Sanine felt
alienated from them because of their
attitudes and their failure to understand his
ideas.
Even more angered by the refusal of
his challenge, Captain Sarudine feared
that his failure to avenge his honor might
Eut him in a disgraceful position with nis
rother officers. That he had disgraced
himself in some people's eyes by his
treatment of Lida did not enter his mind.
One evening, as Sanine and some
friends were strolling along the
boulevard, they unexpectedly met Captain
Sarudine and several of his brother
officers. Captain Sarudine spoke harshly to
Sanine and threatened him with a riding
crop. Sanine, in self defense, knocked
down the officer with his fist. Captain
Sarudine, not much hurt physically but
humiliated by the indignity of the blow,
almost went out of his mind. Taken back
to his quarters, he refused to see even
his friends or his orderly.
After the brief but violent encounter
Sanine walked home with a Jewish
friend, Soloveitchik. The two sat for a
long time discussing human life and its
meaning. Sanine refused to accept any
blame for his behavior, even though he
might have ruined Captain Sarudine's
career and life. The Jew asked Sanine if
a man who worried and thought too much
might not be better off dead. Sanine
replied that a man or woman who could not
enjoy life was already dead. Shortly
afterward he lefti On his way home he met
Captain Sarudine's orderly, who informed
him that the officer hr.d committed
suicide by shooting himself. The next
morning word came, too, that Soloveitchik had
hanged himself. The two sudden deaths
caused a great furor in the little town,
but Sanine steadfastly refused to admit
that he was in any way responsible.
One morning Yourii received a letter
from Sina asking him to meet her at a
monastery near the town. He met her as
requested, and a tender but awkward love
scene ensued. Because Yourii hated to
admit he needed the girl, his conscience
bothered him in strange ways. When Sina
was suddenly called back to town that
evening, Sanine, who was also visiting at
the monastery, offered to escort her. On
the way both Sanine and the girl were
overcome by their emotions, and she
surrendered to him. Though she was much
upset afterward, she decided that the best
thing for her to do was forget what had
happened. In the meantime Yourii's
sister tried to persuade her brother to marry.
3341

The problems that marriage raised for
him were so great that the young man
could not face them, and he shot himself.
At the funeral Sanine, asked to say a few
words, declared that there was one fool
less in the world. His response horrified
everyone. Soon afterward Sanine left the
town again by train. Early one morning,
as the train was crossing the plains, he
jumped off to glory in the beauty of an
autumn sunrise.
3342

SAPPHO
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1884
Principal characters:
Jean Gaussin, a student
Fanny Legrand, his mistress
Irene, his fiancee
Bouchereau, a famous physiologist
Dechelette, a wealthy engineer
LaGournerie, a poet
de Potter, a composer
Rosa, de Potter's mistress
Flamant, convict engraver
Cesatre, Jean's uncle
Critique:
To many people Daudet's name is a
synonym for naturalism, and in some
respects Daudet is the outstanding
representative of his school. His writing is
carefully documented; his style releases
a sustained emotion. Above all Daudet
is an intuitive psychologist. Sappho,
concerned with the half-world of
prostitutes and crime, is generally considered
a surprisingly delicate and sure study of
a distasteful milieu.
The Story:
Dechelette, a vigorous though aging
engineer, spent all but two months of the
year on construction projects far from
Paris. Each summer, however, he
returned to the gay city to compress into
two months enough pleasure to make up
for his enforced absences. To one of his
masquerade parties came Jean Gaussin,
a young student from the south of France.
Jean was bewildered at the extravagant
ball. Unhappy and lost, he wandered
into a gallery and found there a woman
dressed as an Egyptian.
When he was ready to leave, the
woman stopped him and asked him to
take her to his room. In this way he
became her lover. Her name, she told him,
was Fanny Legrand.
She continued to come to his room
frequently. When he finally visited her
apartment, he was astonished at the
luxury of the place. In the morning before
he was up, the servant announced a
visitor. Fanny went into another room to
see the early caller, and Jean was horrified
to overhear a violent quarrel. Fanny was
shouting insults and curses at the man
in the language of the gutter. Finally
the man began to sob and pressed money
on Fanny. He begged her not to
dismiss him, whatever else she did. Jean
went back to his classes much disturbed.
Unable to end the affair, he rented an
apartment and set up housekeeping with
Fanny. She proved to be a capable
housewife and a demanding mistress. Jean
felt settled and at ease. He made good
progress in his consular studies.
The following summer he met
Dechelette and Caoudal, a sculptor, at a cafe*
and learned the past history of his
mistress. Thirty years before, she had lived
with Caoudal and had been the model
for his well-known figure of Sappho. She
had lived with Dechelette at various
times and LaGournerie, the poet, had
kept her for some years. Jean felt
nauseated when he came to understand that
she owed her imaginative diction to
LaGournerie, her graceful gestures to
Caoudal, her ample spending money to
Dechelette. One of her latest lovers had been
Flamant The poor man, an engraver,
3343

had counterfeited some bank notes and
had been sentenced to prison. Jean
learned that Fanny was nearly fifty,
almost thirty years older than he.
When he taxed Fanny with his
knowledge, she readily admitted her past.
When she protested her love for him
alone, Jean asked for her box of
keepsakes. In her letters he traced her history
of loose love for nearly thirty years. The
farewell letter from Flamant asked Fanny
to look after his young son. Jean
suspected that the child was Fanny's also.
But in spite of this knowledge, Jean could
not leave his mistress after Fanny meekly
submitted to his reproaches. They
continued to live together.
Cesaire, Jean's uncle, came to Paris
with news that Jean's family had been
ruined by failure of the grape crop and
that he had been sent to Paris to collect
an old debt of eight thousand francs.
With Fanny's help, C6saiie collected the
money but soon lost it gambling. Fanny
volunteered to* get more money from
D6chelette. Jean and Cesaire awaited her
return anxiously. Jean tortured himself
by imagining how she would get it. After
some hours Fanny returned with the
money. Cesaire left for home, loudly
asserting the goodness of Fanny and
promising to keep silent about Jean's loose
life.
With the decline in the Caussin
fortunes, Jean and Fanny decided to
separate. Fanny went to work managing an
apartment for Rosa, mistress of the
wealthy composer, de Potter. She and
Jean were together each Sunday on her
day off. After reckoning his decreased
allowance, Jean found that they could
take a small hut in the country. He was
sure they could exist there for another
year, and then he would be through with
his course of study. But Jean hated their
life in the country. The grumbling old
servant Fanny hired had been revealed as
Fanny's mother. Hex father, a dissolute
cab driver, came to visit them. Flamant's
child, a savage boy of six, lived with
them. Jean counted on an appointment
to a consular office to break away from
Fanny.
On his trips into town, he became
acquainted with Bouchereau, the eminent
physiologist. Then he met and fell in
love with Bouchereau's niece, Irene. Jean
hoped that he would receive an
appointment in South America and that Irene
would go with him as his wife.
As he was gradually permitted to see
Irene more often, Jean became troubled.
Her innocent enjoyment of simple things
was disturbing, for he had become so
satiated with his experienced courtesan
that other women had little attraction for
him. When he told Fanny of his
approaching marriage, a furious quarrel
broke out.
Shortly afterward Jean met de Potter,
who congratulated him on his
approaching marriage. De Potter's story was a
horrible warning to Jean; the composer had
never been able to get away from his
mistress, and the attraction of her flesh
had held him fast for many years. De
Potter's wife rarely saw him; his children
were almost strangers. De Potter was
bitter about his wasted life, but he could
not leave the aging Rosa, whom he
supported in luxury.
Despite de Potter's example, despite
his engagement to Irene, Jean resolved
to keep Fanny. On the eve of his
departure for his post in South America, he
broke his engagement to Irene and wrote
to Fanny to join him in Marseilles.
Waiting with tense expectancy in a hotel room
in the Mediterranean port, Jean received
a letter from Fanny. She had gone back
with Flamant on his release from prison.
Fanny was too old to go traveling about.
She could not leave her beloved Paris.
3344

SAPPHO
Type of work: Drama
Author: Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Sixth century B.C.
Loade: The island of Lesbos
First presented: 1818
Principal characters:
Sappho, the renowned Greek poetess
Phaon, a young man loved by Sappho
Melitta, Sappho's young and beautiful slave
Rhamnes, an elderly male slave owned by Sappho
Critique:
The legend that Sappho hurled herself
to her death from the Leucadian rock
when her love was spurned by a young
man named Phaon has persisted through
the centuries, although there seems to be
no historical foundation for the legend.
Using this tale as his starting point,
Franz Grillparzer wrote a play that goes
beyond a mere love story in several ways.
Sappho is portrayed in the drama as the
victim of love for a man, many years her
junior, who turns to love a woman his
own age. Sappho is also presented as a
poetic genius who cannot meet the
demands of ordinary mortal love and
domestic relations. Finally, realizing that
she cannot meet those demands, she
foregoes love to hurl herself to her death,
seeking not vengeance or escape, but
rather trying to find her place among the
immortals. The conflict within Sappho
between the demands of love and genius
probably reflects the fact that Grillparzer
himself believed, as a result of personal
experience, that the two conflicting forces
were incompatible. The central aspect of
the play is really to be found in Phaon's
error in mistaking his love of her poetic
genius for love of Sappho the woman.
The Story:
Sappho, beloved by all and treated as
the queen of her native island of Lesbos,
Went to Olympia to compete for the prize
to be awarded for poetry and song.
Because of her genius she won the laurel
wreath accorded the victor and returned
in triumph to her island home. To her
countrymen's surprise she brought with
her on her return a handsome, pleasant,
but very young man named Phaon, with
whom she had fallen deeply in love.
Phaon, having heard the poems of
Sappho read in his father's home, had great
admiration for the poetess before he
journeyed to Olympia to compete in the
games as a charioteer. There he and
Sappho had met and fallen in love.
Phaon, a young man simple in his
tastes, was almost overwhelmed by
Sappho's home, her way of life, and her
place of importance on the island.
Sappho, deeply in love with Phaon, tried to
make him comfortable and at ease in his
new environment by constantly
expressing her love for him and telling him how
much he meant to her happiness.
In Sappho's household was a very
beautiful young female slave named
Melitta, taken into Sappho's home when
the slave was a small child. For some years
the girl had been very close to her
mistress. On Sappho's return from Olympia
she suddenly realized that the child had
become a woman. Realization of the
change caused Sappho some pangs, for it
brought home the fact that Sappho
herself was no longer young. For the first
time the poetess wished she were younger
again, for the sake of Phaon.
One day Phaon, who still was
uncomfortable in the luxurious household of
his mistress, found refuge in a grotto
from the noisy merrymaking of Sappho's
guests. While he was enjoying the silence
of the place, Melitta wandered nearby,
3345

having been sent to the gardens to pick
some flowers. As she walked along she
voiced her grief at being a slave in a
foreign land, lonely for a home and family.
Phaon, hearing the girl's lamentations,
was greatly moved, for he too was
lonesome in a strange land. He went to the
slave girl and tried to cheer her. The
climax of their interview was a kiss,
observed by Sappho as she came looking for
Phaon. Upset, she left Phaon to himself
for a time. Later she found him asleep
in the grotto and awakened him with a
kiss. As he awoke, Phaon murmured
Melitta's name. Fully awake, he told
Sappho of a dream in which he saw himself
in love with Melitta, who had usurped
the place of Sappho. Sappho told him
not to believe in lying dreams.
Although she concealed the fact from
him, Sappho's pride was badly hurt by
his account of the dream and by the kiss
she had seen him bestow upon Melitta.
Coming upon Melitta, Sappho accused
the girl of maliciously trying to steal
Phaon's love. After heated words had
passed between the mistress and her
slave, Sappho drew a dagger and
threatened Melitta's life. Phaon's appearance
probably saved the girl from injury at
Sappho's hands. Phaon then announced
his love for the slave girl and accused
Sappho of trying to weave magic spells
with her poetry to make him believe he
loved her.
Later that same day Sappho called her
most trusted slave, Rhamnes, to her and
commanded him to take Melitta away
from Lesbos to Chios, across the sea, to
be placed in the household of one of
Sappho's friends. That night Rhamnes
tried to lure the girl from her quarters to
a boat on the beach. Melitta, suspecting a
trap, protested.
Phaon, fearful for Melitta's safety, had
remained awake and had heard Rhamnes
enter Melitta's quarters. When he
discovered Rhamnes' trickery, he made him
relinquish the girl.
Alarmed by what had happened,
Phaon decided to flee Lesbos and
Sappho's household. Taking Melitta with
him, he embarked in the boat Rhamnes
had planned to use in spiriting the girl
away.
As soon as he was free of the threat
of Phaon's dagger, Rhamnes sounded the
alarm and told of Phaon's flight with
Melitta. Planning revenge, Sappho called
the people of the island to her and
promised a handsome reward of gold for the
return of the fugitives. Spurred by the
reward and their love for Sappho, the
islanders hurried after Phaon and
Melitta. When they came up with the
fugitives upon the sea, Melitta was struck
on the head by an oar during the
struggle. Phaon then yielded to their captors.
Back in the house of Sappho, Phaon
demanded to know why she should be
given the privilege of judging him, as if
she were a queen. The islanders told him
that they regarded her as their queen.
Sappho demanded the return of Melitta,
but Phaon said that in threatening the
slave girl's life Sappho had relinquished
all her rights to the girl. Sappho then
accused Phaon of being a deceiver in love.
Phaon defended himself by saying that
he had been mistaken in his love, that
the love he had felt for Sappho was love
of her genius. He added that he had
really loved her as a goddess, not as a
woman, not knowing the difference, he
claimed, until after he had met and fallen
in love with Melitta.
Sappho was disturbed by what had
happened and by what Phaon had said.
At first, thinking that she was being
asked too great a price for having poetic
gifts, she wished to disown her genius in
order to live and love as an ordinary
mortal woman. She left the company to
think in solitude. As she looked out
across the sea, her lyre suddenly clanged
loudly, as if warning her, and she
decided not to try to escape the genius
given her by the gods. She asked the gods
only to keep her from being an object of
men's derision. Returning, she forgave
the young lovers with a kiss and then
walked to an altar of Aphrodite which
3346

stood on a cliff overlooking the sea.
Calling upon the gods to take her to them,
Sappho hurled herself over the brink into
the water below. Phaon and Sappho's
people ran to rescue her, but they were
too late. Hie ocean currents had dashed
her to her death against the rocks.
3347

SARAGOSSA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Benito Perez Gald6s (1845-1920)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1808-1809
Locale: Spain
First published: 1874
Principal characters:
Don Jose de Montoria, a Spanish patriot
Augustine de Montoria, his son
Araceli, Augustine's friend
Candiola, a miser
Mariquilla, his daughter
Critique:
Saragossa is one of a series of novels
by Galdos which cover the period of
Spain's wars with Napoleon. Here the
story of the second siege of Saragossa is
presented as a historic example of
Spanish patriotism. Because of its dramatic
scenes and accurate descriptions of the
siege, the novel has been ranked by some
critics with the better-known work of
Zola and Tolstoy.
The Story:*
The French armies of Napoleon had
laid siege to Saragossa from mid-June to
mid-August in the year 1808. Although
the city had defended itself so bravely
that the French finally withdrew, the
people of Saragossa knew that Napoleon
would never leave them in peace until
he had conquered them. When warnings
of a second siege came early in
December of the same year, citizens of the
town were not surprised. The fame of
the first defense of Saragossa had spread
over all Spain, and many men went to
aid the city in the coming struggle.
Among these was Araceli, a young man
well-known to a brave Saragossan, Don
Jos6 de Montoria.
Don Jos£, delighted to have Araceli in
Saragossa, enrolled him in the battalion
of the Penas of San Pedro. Don Jos6
himself had two sons, Manuel and
Augustine. Manuel, the older, was to carry
on the family line. Augustine was to
enter the Church. Araceli quickly made
friends with Augustine and discovered
that the boy was a better soldier than
he was a theological student.
When French troops began their
attack on the city, Augustine and Araceli
fought side by side in the front lines.
During the first days of the siege
everything seemed to be going well for the
defenders. One night, when the two were
off duty, Augustine told Araceli about
his love for Mariquilla, daughter of the
old miser, Candiola. Augustine knew that
he was destined for the Church, but he
also knew that he and Mariquilla loved
each other. During the first siege
Candiola had won the enmity of everyone
because he had done nothing to help
the town, and Augustine did not dare
tell his family that he loved the miser's
daughter. The two tried to see the girl
secretly that night but, as they were
about to be let into the garden of her
house by a maid, Candiola appeared and
they had to leave.
The fighting continued, neither side
making much headway until the French
attacked the Redoubt del Pilar and
finally breached the walls. As the Spanish
defenders prepared to retire, they saw
that someone had mounted the walls and
was trying to hold back the French alone.
When the soldiers saw that this brave
person was a girl, Manuela Sancho, they
were inspired to hold their positions.
The fortification did not fall that day.
As the battle for the city went on,
food and materials of war became scarce.
Don ]os6 was authorized to seize any
3348

wheat that he could find and pay a
stipulated sum for it. Because Candiola was
known to have a large supply of grain
in his house, Don Jose* went there to
get it. But Candiola refused to sell the
wheat at the price offered. Angry, Don
Jose knocked the old man down and
ordered the soldiers to take the wheat.
Mariquilla, rushing from the house, tried
to protect her father, who lay shaking
in the dust. When Don Jose* offered her
the money he had been ordered to pay
for the wheat, she took it and threw it
in his face.
A few days later Augustine and Ara-
celi visited Mariquilla at night. The
girl's first words to Augustine were about
the man who had struck her father, for
she did not know that Augustine was
Don Jose's son. Augustine was at a loss
for something to say. Mariquilla loved
her father despite his faults, and
Augustine could not let her know that it had
been his father who had struck the old
miser. A few days later, after Candida's
house had been hit by a bomb, Augustine
and Araceli rushed to the spot to see if
any harm had come to Mariquilla. They
found the family safe, but the house was
in ruins. Candiola was disgusting in his
concern over his lost treasures in the very
face of the dead about him, and he
refused to leave his house for fear looters
would steal something from the rubble.
Augustine arranged to have Mariquilla
stay with the brave Manuela Sancho.
Meanwhile the French had broken
into the city, and the defenders fought
from street to street, from house to
house. During the fighting Manuel de
Montoria was killed. The tragedy worked
a great change in Don Jos6. When he
met Candiola in the street, he asked to
be forgiven for striking him, but
Candiola would not forgive the insult.
During their conversation Candiola charged
that Don Josh's son had led his daughter
astray by taking her to nurse the
wounded and care for the sick.
The next day Augustine and
Mariquilla were sitting together on a sidewalk
talking over the plans for their marriage
after the war was over. Araceli joined
them. All thought they could hear sounds
of digging under them. For the past
several weeks the French had been
trying to dig tunnels under the city to
aid them in blowing up strategic
buildings, but the defenders had dug as many
tunnels in defense and felt sure that all
was protected from surprise. The three
investigated as well as they could, but
decided that a tunnel at that spot would
be of no danger to the city.
The next day the convent of San
Francisco in the center of the city was
destroyed. The Saragossans soon discovered
that the French had penetrated to the
convent through a tunnel from Can-
diola's house, to which the miser had
guided the enemy. The town demanded
death for the traitor.
As soon as she heard that her father
was to be killed, Mariquilla left the
hospital where she had been working
and went to look for Augustine. Sure
that her father was innocent, she begged
Augustine to save Candiola. At that
moment Don Jos6 appeared and Mariquilla
learned that Augustine was his son.
When she learned further that Augustine
was in charge of the firing squad foi
Candida's execution, she threw herself
at his feet and again begged him to spare
her father's life. Don Jos6 told his son
to remember the cause for which he
fought. Torn between love and honor,
Augustine broke his sword and walked
away. Mariquilla, overcome with grief,
was befriended by sympathetic
spectators.
Still Saragossa held out. Weeks
dragged by. Finally, on the twenty-first
of February, 1809, the city was forced
to surrender. Hardly a wall stood to
shelter the defenders.
A few days later Araceli was accosted
by a man he scarcely recognized. It was
Augustine, come to entreat his friend to
help dig a grave for Mariquilla, who had
died neither of war nor of the plague,
but of grief. Don Jos6 came up to them
and begged his son to forget the girl
now that she was dead, and to come back
3349

to his family and carry on the Montoria
name. But Augustine told his father
that he intended to enter a monastery
as soon as he had finished with Mari-
quilla's grave. Thus ended Don Jose's
hopes for his family. Araceli left the
destroyed city of Saragossa, the lesson of
its bravery still deep in his heart when
in other cities, in later days, he
continued the fight for Spanish freedom.
3350

SARTOR RESARTUS
Type of work: Philosophical satire
Author: Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
First published: 1835
This ecstatic, involved work—"The
life and Opinions of Herr
Teufelsdrockh," to quote its subtitle—is in many
ways one of the most characteristic works
of Thomas Carlyle, the "sage of Chelsea,,
and a crusty censor of the optimistic
Victorian era.
Carlyle, a familiar gibe has it, preached
the virtues of silence in a long series of
volumes. Sartor Resartus ("the tailor re-
clothed") is an early preachment on
silence, work, duty, and the world as spirit.
These were topics that Carlyle was never
able to abstain from, whether he was
writing about a medieval abbot (Past and
Present), about heroes (On Heroes, Hero-
Worship, and the Heroic in History),
or about fairly recent historical events
(The French Revolution). Of Carlyle it
is fair to paraphrase and say: Scratch the
historian, and you will find the prophet.
In Sartor Resartus, at any rate, Carlyle
is nearly all prophet.
In a style that is crabbed, Germanic,
allusive, ironic, hectoring, and
paradoxical, Carlyle gave to the age of the
Reform Bill (1832), John Stuart Mill,
utilitarianism, and the Industrial
Revolution the "gospel" he thought it needed. It
was a message that, in Carlyle's opinion,
the age was likely to overlook.
Historically, this is one reason why Sartor
Resartus and other of his works are worthy
of attention today.
Sartor Resartus is a title pointing to
the "clothes-philosophy" at the center of
the book. But no reader reaches the
center of the book without penetrating the
formidable framework and bastion of
mystification both playful and perverse
that Carlyle sets up in early chapters.
Carlyle, already an admirer, translator,
and popularizer of German literature
when he began this work, writes much of
the time as if in his own person. That
is, he is supposedly the English editor
who has been faced with the task of
rearranging and commenting upon the
mss. contents of six paper sacks which
have come to him from Germanv. These
sacks contain the disorderly, fervid
lucubrations of a learned German
philosopher named Teufelsdrockh (literally,
"Devil's-dung"). Out of these scrambled
materials, the English "editor" and
interpreter wishes to write a "life" of the
German savant and also to effect a
presentation of the key ideas of the great foreign
thinker.
The "life," which does not come to
much, is obviously a reflection of Car-
lyle's admiration for Goethe's The
Sorrows of Young Werther and other Bil-
dungsromane or tales of youthful growth.
Teufelsdrockh has a mysterious birth and
grows up lovingly cared for by foster
parents. His mind soon shows its powers
and feeds omnivorously on books. The
future sage falls in love with a young
woman named Blumine, is jilted by her,
and goes on typical early nineteenth-
century wanderings. Driven by Welt-
schmerz, he goes to the Alps and finally
to Paris; for sufficient reason, he utters his
Everlasting No, his sweeping and bitter
rejection of the structure of society and
its conventions. Shortly thereafter, Car-
lyle's hero goes to Northern Scandinavia,
outfaces a murderous Russian, and utters
his Everlasting Yea. This is his
acceptance, in a deeper sense, of the same
texture of life and convention that he had
rejected in Paris. After this climactic
experience, Teufelsdrockh returns to his
native city of Weissnichtwo (Don't-
Know-Where), puffs his pipe, drinks his
beer, and now and then sits at his desk
in a top-floor room and meditates upon
his little town and the world beyond it.
This "life," however, takes second
place to the long quotations of his
opinions, also deposited in the paper bags for
3351

the benefit of his English editor and, of
course, England. On many pages Teu-
felsdrockh is allowed to speak for
himself. But in almost as many pages the
editor speaks for him, extending the
application of the supposedly Germanic
ideas to the turmoils of contemporary
England. By this transparent subterfuge,
the life and opinions of the imaginary
German philosopher become a tract for
the time, in which Carlyle is able to utter
his own Everlasting No to the
anti-idealist movements of the Victorian Age: the
growth of democracy, the trust in
utilitarian philosophy and its cold and (to
Carlyle) petty calculation of pleasure
and pain, profit and loss.
Carlyle is also able to utter his
Everlasting Yea, which amounts to this:
clothes and human institutions and
religions of the past and their empty rites
must be regarded, when they are properly
viewed, as the obscure and yet wonderful
expression of the ongoing life of the soul.
And the life of the soul must be regarded
in two supplementary but noncontradict-
ing ways: It is the destiny of each man
to create or re-create the "clothes" that he
himself wears. It is a gift of world
destiny that man over outnumbered
generations may trace the biography of the
human race itself by study of the
institutions it sets up, the buildings it erects,
and, most important of all, the thoughts
that it thinks and, by religion and in
books, transmits to future generations.
To do all this is to be a good Teufels-
drockh, but to practide an imitation of
Richter and Goethe, it not Christ, each
man must trace the arc of denial and
affirmation in his own life. As Carlyle
points out in Sartor Resartus, each man
must deny "the dandiacal body"—life
smart, modish, and empty—and he must
sink into a condition of receptive silence.
Out of this silence will come the true
words, the words that emancipate man
from illusions and which clear the way to
work. This work can be humble and
anonymous like the digging of a
gardener, or it can be noble and widely
known, like the notations of Teufels-
drockh at his desk.
Such are the main outlines of the
"good news" of Carlyle's early book.
Readers who are just will concede that
Carlyle was a kind of pre-Existentialist
like his contemporary Kierkegaard, though
it is Kierkegaard who is accepted as a
master by modern Existentialist thought.
3352

SATANSTOE
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1751-1758
Locale: New York State
First published: 1845
Principal characters:
Cornelius Littlepage, called Corny, the narrator
Hugh Roger Littlepage, Corny's grandfather
Dirck Van Valkenburgh, called Dirck Follock, Corny's friend
Abraham Van Valkenburgh, called 'Brom Follock, his father
Herman Mordaunt, a wealthy landowner
Anneke Mordaunt, his daughter
Mary Wallace, her friend
Guert Ten Eyck, Corny's friend, in love with Mary
The Reverend Thomas Worden, a clergyman
Jason Newcome, a schoolmaster from Connecticut
Mother Doortje, a fortune-teller
Major Bulstrode, a British officer, in love with Anneke
Jaap, Corny's Negro slave
Mr. Traverse, a surveyor
Susquesus, and
Jumper, Indian guides and runners
Critique:
Satanstoe, or, The Littlepage
Manuscripts, combines the social criticism of
Cooper's later life with his talents as a
romanticist. Unlike his best work,
however, this novel lacks the action and
melodrama that brought him fame. The
story, narrated by Corny Littlepage, son
of a landed proprietor, takes place mainly
in Albany, New York, with an
adventurous climax in the forests of New York
State. The value of the book as social
criticism rests in its descriptions of life
in Albany and New York City and in the
author's comments on the Dutch
characters of these cities. Cooper's intense
romanticism led him to create idealized
heroes who are unreal and often boring.
Much of the book dwells on a poorly
developed love affair between Corny and
Anneke who, in the end, marry and live
happily ever after. The novel seems to
lack direction and the action barely gets
off the ground before the novel ends.
The Story:
As a lad, Cornelius Littlepage, usually
called Corny, studied classics under the
Rev. Thomas Worden at Satanstoe as a
preparation for going to an American
university. Satanstoe was owned by
Corny's father and was so named because
it was a peninsula shaped like an
inverted toe. When Corny's father felt
that he was prepared to attend a
university, a discussion was held with
Abraham Van Valkenburgh, or 'Brom Follock,
as he was called, to decide on which
university Corny was to attend. Follock
also had a son, Dirck, the same age as
Corny. After comparing the New
England manners at Yale with the manners
of Newark, later Princeton, it was
decided to send Corny to Princeton.
Before settling at Newark, Corny went
with his father to visit New York City.
They arrived there during a holiday and
toured the streets. Because the Patroon of
Albany was visiting the city, a crowd had
gathered. Corny noticed a beautiful girl
named Anneke who had been insulted
when a butcher's boy knocked an apple
from her hand. Corny gave the boy a dig
in the ribs and then exchanged blows
with him. Turning to see the girl again,
3353

Corny found that she had disappeared.
In 1755, after completing the four-
year course at college, Corny returned to
Satanstoe. There he renewed his boyhood
friendship with Dirck Follock and met
Jason Newcome, the new schoolmaster
from Danbury. Newcome took strong
exception to New York habits and manners,
as exampled by the Rev. Mr. Worden,
who played whist with Corny's mother.
Newcome, because of his Connecticut
upbringing, was not as well educated as
were the Littlepages, and he could not
understand their leisure. He felt that
Corny should work for a living.
When Corny was twenty, he and
Dirck traveled to New York City. On
the journey Corny learned that their
fathers had jointly purchased some land
from the Indians and that probably, next
year, they were to be sent to look over
the land, which was not far from Albany.
While on the road, Dirck pointed out
Lilacsbush, the summer home of Herman
Mordaunt, his mother's cousin. Corny
suggested that they stop there, but Dirck
explained that Mordaunt and his
motherless daughter Anneke remained in their
winter home in New York City until
after the Pinkster holidays, around
Easter time. Dirck declared that Anneke was
one of the prettiest girls in the colony.
The pair stopped at Mrs. Light's inn
where they heard some gossip about
Anneke's many admirers.
In New York City, Corny visited his
aunt, Mrs. Legge, while Dirck stayed
with relatives in the town. Jason New-
come, being on a holiday, also made his
appearance. Soon after their arrival the
three young men went to the town
common to watch the Pinkster frolics, a
Negro holiday. There they met Anneke
Mordaunt, Dirck's cousin, who
remembered that Corny had fought the butcher's
boy for her sake. The group visited a
lion's cage and Corny was able to save
Anneke's life when the crowd pressed her
close to the bars and the animal seized
her with one paw. In addition to
Anneke's gratitude Corny also earned that
of her father, who invited Corny and
Dirck to dine with him. At the Mordaunt
house Corny met several British officers
who were numbered among Anneke's
admirers. One, Major Bulstrode, asked
Corny why he had not enlisted to fight
in the war against the French. Corny
replied that his grandfather would not
have allowed him to join the colors. Later
he expressed his opinion that the war was
not really the concern of the settlers but
a quarrel between the English and the
French.
During the stay in New York, Corny
and Dirck frequently visited the Mor-
daunts. When the officers gave a dramatic
performance to which the Mordaunts and
their friends were invited, Bulstrode, the
starring performer, was offensive to
Anneke's sensitivities, theatrical
performances not being highly considered in the
colonies. Corny and Dirck -then rode
with the Mordaunts and Mary Wallace
to Lilacsbush. In spite of Corny's efforts
to prevent him, Jason Newcome managed
to travel with them on the journey back
to Satanstoe. On their return home,
Corny related the events of his trip,
including his meetings with Anneke, to
his mother, who was greatly pleased.
In the following March, Dirck and
Corny traveled to Albany in order to
inspect the land their fathers had bought.
With them they carried a quantity of
merchandise to sell to the army, which
was stationed in Albany. At the inn
where they stopped they learned that the
Mordaunts were also there as well as
Bulstrode's regiment and that Herman
Mordaunt wanted Anneke to marry
Bulstrode. Corny and Dirck had Mr. Worden
and Jason as their companions, as well as
Jaap, a faithful colored servant. In order
to reach Albany they were forced to
cross the Hudson on ice. Although many
other wagons had made the crossing, Mr.
Worden refused to ride in the sleigh and
ran alongside, thus acquiring in Albany
the title of the "loping Dominie." In
Albany, Corny met Guert Ten Eyck, an
irresponsible young man who took Corny
sledding in the center of the town and
humiliated him by guiding the sled to
3354

the feet of Anneke and her friend, Mary
Wallace; sledding was considered a child's
sport. Guert was in love with Mary, who
admonished his action severely.
Guert, who helped Corny dispose of
the goods he had brought from Satanstoe,
invited his friends to dinner. Discovering
that the army had stolen his dinner, he
tricked Corny and Mr. Worden into
helping to steal their dinner from the mayor.
That official, learning of Guert's trick,
invited them to a second dinner that night.
Present at the mayor's house were the
Mordaunts and Mary Wallace. That same
night Corny told Anneke that Guert
loved Mary and then admitted that he
loved her. Anneke, hearing his
declaration, turned pale.
When Corny met Bulstrode in Albany,
the British officer spoke of his love for
Anneke and of his hopes of obtaining
his father's permission for their marriage.
They discussed the war and the
relationship between England and the colonies.
Guert Ten Eyck, wishing to go riding
with Mary, asked Corny to try to obtain
Mr. Mordaunt's approval of a sleigh ride
he was planning.
Mr. Mordaunt agreed to accompany
Anneke and Mary on the sleigh ride with
Guert, Corny, and Dirck on the
following Monday. Then, over the weekend,
the ice melted on all the roads because
spring had arrived suddenly; Guert and
Corny feared their trip would have to
be postponed until the following year.
The Hudson River was still frozen over,
however, and Guert's suggestion that they
go for a ride on the river itself proved a
plan agreeable to the whole party.
The sleighs rode on the ice to Kinder-
hook without mishap. On the return trip
people frequently called out from the
land, but the sleighs were going too fast
for the occupants to understand what was
being told them. Suddenly, to their
dismay, they realized that the warm weather
had caused the river to flood, breaking
the ice apart and separating the sleighs
from dry land. Fearing for the safety of
the women, Corny promised to care for
Anneke's life and Guert promised to look
after Mary. In their efforts to reach shore
safely, the groups were separated, each
attempting to save themselves by another
route. Through courage and effort,
everybody reached shore safely.
Because of their heroism on the ice,
Guert and Corny became well known in
Albany. Bulstrode, congratulating Corny,
learned for the first time that the young
man was in love with Anneke. Although
he received this news coolly, Bulstrode
said that he saw no reason why he and
Corny could not remain friends.
Disappointed in his courtship of Mary,
Guert proposed that Corny accompany
him on a visit to Mother Doortje, a
fortune-teller. Mr. Worden, not a strictly
moralistic man, went with them, as did
Dirck Follock. Although they disguised
themselves, the seer recognized them and
advised Guert to follow Corny into the
woods during the summer. She also
identified Mr. Worden as the loping
Dominie and advised Jason Newcome to
buy land for making a mill-seat. When
Guert was told he might never marry,
the fortune-teller's words caused him to
give up almost all hope of winning Mary.
After the arrival of Lord Howe, the
British troops moved northward. A short
time later Mr. Mordaunt announced that
he was going to visit land of his own,
a tract known as Ravensnest, which was
very near the Littlepage and Follock
property of Mooseridge. The group
traveled together to Ravensnest. From there
Corny, Dirck, Guert, the surveyor Mr.
Traverse, two axmen, two chainbearers,
Jaap, and Guert's colored servant Pete
set out to find Mooseridge. On the way
they met Jumper, an Indian whom they
hired as a guide. Later a second Indian,
Susquesus, or Trackless, was added to
the party. Because of Susquesus' skill in
woodcraft, they soon located the
boundary marker and immediately began the
work of surveying the tract. For shelter
they built a rude but comfortable log
cabin.
Learning from the woods runner that
the English were about to begin
operations against Ticonderoga, Corny, Dirck,
3355

Guert, and Jaap, guided by Susquesus,
set out to join the expedition. The British
were badly defeated at the battle by a
smaller force of French and Indians and
Lord Howe was killed. Under Guert's
leadership the volunteers escaped after
learning that Bulstrode had been
seriously wounded and sent to Ravensnest.
Jaap had taken a Canadian Indian, Mus-
querusque, but he was forced to release
his prisoner so that the group could
make an escape. Jaap thrashed the Indian
before freeing him; Susquesus warned
that Jaap had done a very foolish deed.
Guided by Susquesus, the party returned
to Mooseridge, where they found the
surveying party gone.
Susquesus, going to warn the surveyors
of the danger of Indian raids, found
strange Indian tracks and followed them.
That night the men returned from Ticon-
deroga and all slept in the locked hut.
In the middle of the night Corny was
awakened by Susquesus, who led him
in the direction of cries for help. They
found Guert's colored servant, who had
been with the surveyors, tortured and
scalped. Later they found the body of
one of the hunters and axmen and, a
little farther on, the surveyor, his two
chainbearers, and the second axman, also
scalped and dead. Susquesus said that
Musquerusque had taken his revenge for
the beating.
Returning to Mooseridge, they found
Jumper, the Indian scout, with a letter
from Mr. Mordaunt inviting them to join
him at Ravensnest. On the way they
came upon a party of Indians and
dispersed them in a surprise attack.
At Ravensnest, Corny took the
opportunity to press his suit. Anneke, in turn,
confessed her love for him, adding that
she had never loved Bulstrode. Mary
Wallace, however, refused to marry
Guert. During an Indian raid on the
house Guert fought with reckless
courage. After he and Jaap had been
captured, Mary realized that she loved him
after all. Guert was mortally wounded,
however, while escaping with Jaap from
the Indians, and he died in Mary's arms.
Bulstrode, confined to his bed because
of his wound, did not learn until much
later Anneke's decision to marry Corny.
When the two men met again at Lilacs-
bush, Bulstrode offered his rival his hand
and best wishes.
Corny's mother was overjoyed to hear
of her son's approaching marriage, and
Mr. Mordaunt, who had originally
favored Bulstrode for his daughter's hand,
decided to settle his property on Corny
and his bride. After their marriage
Anneke and Corny settled at Lilacsbush. On
the death of his grandfather Corny
acquired still more land. He and Anneke
lived for many years in peace, and
became the happy parents of a son whom
they named Mordaunt.
Jason Newcome acquired a mill-seat
from Mr. Mordaunt on a cheap lease. Mr.
Worden returned to Satanstoe. He had
decided that missionary life was too d.'ffi-
cult and that the only people who should
be Christians were people who were
already civilized.
3356

SATIRES
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis, c.
First transcribed: 112-128
Greatest of the Latin satirists, Juvenal
was born in Aquinum, southeast of Rome,
also the birthplace of St. Thomas
Aquinas. Few facts about him have come
down outside his own writing, though a
biography written in the fourth century
said that he was the son of a freedman
and practiced rhetoric until middle age
for his own amusement — perhaps until
he took up poetry. As a satirist, the vices
of his age gave him material.
Born during the reign of Nero, he
lived under nine other emperors,
including Otho, of whom he was especially
critical, and tyrannical Domitian.
Juvenal's pictures of life in Rome are gloomy
and bitter. He feared the growing power
of the moneyed classes, the traders, and
the freedman. He disapproved of the
softening influences of Greek and Eastern
cultures and the vices they introduced.
Some scholars have accused him of
dwelling on vice for the pleasures he took in
writing about immorality; his own claim
was that he wrote to exalt virtue and
encourage men to seek it.
He explained his choice of medium
in his first satire. Having no desire to
rewrite old plays or endless epics, and
having seen a barber become wealthier
than a patrician and an idiotic Egyptian
advance himself at the expense of the
Romans, he declared that "it is difficult
not to write satires." His writing was little
appreciated during his lifetime. Indeed,
his satires disappeared for several
centuries. Rediscovered, Juvenal was
esteemed as an epigrammatist and social
historian because of his vivid pictures of
Latin life.
Sixteen satires, totaling 3,775 lines,
made up the total preserved work of
Juvenal. The poems vary in length from
the little more than sixty lines of the
unfinished XVI, which deals with the
prerogatives of a soldier, to the 661 lines
55-c. 135)
of VI, directed against women, which is
long enough to fill a papyrus roll by
itself. His first book, containing 690 lines
in all, includes his first five satires of
which Satire I, appropriately, explains
why he turned to this form of literary
activity. He declared that he began
writing to pay back the many poets who had
been boring him, from crude Cordus with
his lengthy epics to the writers of
comedies and elegies. Since depravities on
every side "rate the midnight oil of
Horace," he bade the writer of satires
to "set sail." Pondering, however, the
advice of those who had warned him against
the wrath of rulers, he declared his
intention to dedicate his attention to the dead,
those whose ashes lie along the roads
outside Rome.
Satire II, directed against effeminate
men, put into circulation the familiar
proverb that "one rotten apple spoils a
whole barrel." This work describes the
pretty boys with their long hair and their
togas of pastel colors.
The whole of Rome was his target in
Satire III. Hearing that his friend Urn-
britius was moving to Cumae to escape
the vices of the capital, Juvenal
commended his decision:
After all, it is something even in a
lonely corner
To make yourself the landlord of a
single lizard.
In Satire IV he considered those able
to escape the consequences of any crime
because they were wealthy or highborn.
In Number V, he inveighed against
stingy patrons and clients who had no
sense of shame. He described the
tasteless food provided for clients who came
to the rich man's table, contrasting this
fare with the delicious banquets served
when only a few friends were invited in
to dine.
3357

The approaching marriage of Postumus
gave the poet a motive for a coarse
diatribe against the women of Rome in
Satire VI. Back in primitive times, he
asserted, chastity existed on earth, but
not among the Roman matrons of his
time. He described their beauty aids,
their aimless lives, their extravagances,
and their pretense to culture. Some even
went as far as to forget their sex in their
desire to be gladiators. And the remedy?
End the evils of an extended peace and
the luxury that had taken the place of
frugality and self-sacrifice.
Satire VII laments the evil plight of
men of culture when poets and historians
cannot make a living and teachers, after
years of preparation, get less money in a
year than a successful jockey after one
race.
Blood is no reason for expecting
respect, said Juvenal in Satire VIII.
Retraced a few generations, even the noblest
blood is mixed with the common. Deeds
are more important. The brief Satire IX
is a poem on pimps and informers. It is
followed by the famous Number X,
adapted by Johnson to the English scene
under the title "On the Vanity of Human
Wishes/' This poem states that few
human beings know what is good or bad
for them. Most people wish for health
or honor. Students of rhetoric crave
eloquence, the ruin of Demosthenes and
Cicero. The ambitions of Alexander and
Xerxes were their undoing. People desire
long life, which brings ills, or beauty
which causes unhappiness. If we were
wise, we would let the gods make the
decision for us. As Johnson translated it:
So raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to Heaven the measure and
the choice.
If we must pray, ask for a healthy mind
in a healthy body and a spirit reconciled
to trouble or death.
Extravagance is the theme of Satire
XI, sent to Persicus along with an
invitation to dinner. Many in Rome beggar
themselves for pleasure, said Juvenal; but
at my table, friend, you will eat what I
can afford, simply served, and without
lavish entertainment.
In a more mellow vein, Juvenal
devoted Number XII to his joy that his
friend Catullus had been rescued after a
shipwreck. His ceremonies of
thanksgiving, however, were to be simple. He
would not offer rich treasures to the gods
as some legacy hunters had done. Then,
not able to remain benevolent long, he
ended with a jibe at Pacuvius, who
profited from the misfortunes of others.
Calvinus, who complained loudly at
being defrauded, was satirized in
Number XIII, and the avaricious Fuscinus in
Number XIV was urged to provide a
better example to his children. Satire XV
differs from the preceding, being in effect
a parable about the rivalry of neighboring
towns: Once man was kind to man; now
vipers are less cruel to their fellows.
Pythagoras, should he return, would be
certain the beasts of the fields are
superior to humans.
The final, unfinished Satire XVI
represents a new departure for the poet. Here
he lists the special advantages that
soldiers have over everyone else. The work
breaks off with an unfinished sentence,
in the middle of a line, without leaving
the reader sure whether Juvenal really
intended to praise the soldiers, or whether
he was preparing to deflate the military
caste. There is no explanation of why
Juvenal failed to finish the poem.
Perhaps there is some truth in the tradition
that he was either summarily banished or
sent on a mission from which he never
returned.
3358

SATIROMASTIX
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Dekker (c. 1572-1632?)
Type of plot: Satirical romance
Time of plot: c. 1100
Locale: England
first presented: 1601
Principal characters:
William Rufus, King of England
Sir Walter Terrill, his noble follower
Caelestine, Sir Walter's bride
Sir Quintilian Shorthose, the bride's father
Mistress Miniver, a wealthy widow
Sir Vaughan ap Rees, a Welshman, suitor of the widow
Sir Adam Prickshaft, another suitor of the widow
Crispinus, a poet
Demetrius, another poet
Horace, the humorous poet
Asinius Bubo, Horace's admiring follower
Captain Tucca, a roaring roisterer
Critique:
Thomas Dekker's Satiromastix owes its
present interest almost solely to the plot
dealing with "The (intrusting of the
Humourous Poet," the poet being Ben Jon-
son under the thin disguise of the name
Horace. Apparently the play was patched
up in some haste after the production of
Jonson's Poetaster, which caricatured
Dekker and John Marston. The three plots are
not well joined. Perhaps the. triangle
containing Sir Walter Terrill, his beautiful
bride Caelestine, and King William Rufus,
was the plot of an original play on which
Dekker was working when the
controversy between Jonson and the "poetasters"
broke out. It remains the central plot.
The second, which has little bearing on
the first, is concerned with the wooing
of Mistress Miniver by Sir Quintilian, Sir
Vaughan, and Sir Adam. Filled with a
veritable glut of puns ranging from the
risqu£ to the obscene, this farcical plot
would doubtless have been a success on
the Elizabethan stage as an independent
work. The third plot depends on its
relation to Jonson's Poetaster, performed
earlier in the year (1601). Poetaster
contains two plots, somewhat loosely
connected: the love story of Ovid and Julia,
the daughter of Augustus Caesar, and
the discomfiture of Horace's enemies,
particularly Crispinus the poetaster and
Demetrius the playdresser. For a long time
scholars of Jonson devoted themselves to
identifying the characters of Poetaster
with actual Elizabethans. There is,
however, no reason to doubt that Poetaster
contains attacks on Marston and Dekker,
and possibly other contemporaries. And
there is no ambiguity about Dekker's
Horace: he is England's Ben Jonson,
brilliantly caricatured.
The Story:
While Sir Quintilian Shorthose
supervised the preparations for the marriage
of his daughter Caelestine, Sir Adam
Prickshaft, Sir Vaughan ap Rees, and
Mistress Miniver came to share in the
festivities. All three knights were
enamored of the widow. When the bridal
party entered, Sir Walter Terrill, the
groom-to-be, announced that King
William Rufus would grace the wedding
with his presence. The groom had sent
to the poet Horace for a wedding song.
Horace was laboring by candlelight,
surrounded by books, when his admiring
friend Asinius Bubo visited him. Bubo
warned that Crispinus and Demetrius
planned to put Horace in a play as a
bricklayer. To the great embarrassment
3359

of Horace, Crispinus and Demetrius
entered and accused him of unfair attacks
on them.
Soon Blunt, accompanied by Captain
Tucca, came to get the wedding verses;
but Horace confessed he had not been
able to finish them in the three days
allotted him. Captain Tucca blasted
Horace with a stream of Rabelaisian abuse
for writing satires about him. Quivering
with fear, Horace apologized and
promised future good behavior. The captain
tipped him generously, and the visitors
left.
The three knights urged Mistress
Miniver to choose one of them for her
second husband, but their talk was
interrupted by the arrival of King William
Rufus and his train. The king greeted the
bride with a kiss, obviously taken with
her beauty and charm. During the dance
he managed to single her out frequently,
engaging in risqu6 banter. When the
ladies withdrew, the king dared Sir
Walter to postpone the wedding night and to
trust his bride at court alone with the
king. Goaded with lack of faith in her,
Sir Walter unwisely promised to send
her.
In spite of Horace's love letters
purchased by Sir Vaughan, the widow
refused him, favoring Sir Adam. Enraged,
Sir Vaughan asked Horace to write a
satire on baldness, since Sir Adam was
bald. Sir Quintilian, needing a messenger
to speak for him, turned to raucous, foul-
mouthed Captain Tucca. The captain
also agreed to carry rich gifts to the widow
from Sir Adam. However, Captain Tucca
wooed for himself. Later, the captain was
shown a new series of satirical epigrams
by Horace on him.
Sir Vaughan entertained the widow at
a banquet, at which Horace read his
satire on baldness. Mistress Miniver
announced she could never be "enameled"
of a baldheaded man again. Captain
Tucca burst in and threatened Horace;
Sir Vaughan drove him out, but Mistress
Miniver called after the captain
demanding that he return the money she had
lent him. Sir Vaughan rushed after the
captain to punish him. Bubo showed
Horace a challenge left by the fire-eating
Captain Tucca.
Captain Tucca promised Sir Adam he
would have Crispinus and Demetrius
praise baldness in verse. Bubo and
Horace came to the captain for a parley, and
the three made peace again. Captain
Tucca convinced Sir Vaughan that
borrowing the money had been part of his
plan to help the knight win the widow.
At the next gathering of the widow's
friends, Crispinus read his praise of
baldness; then Captain Tucca aroused the
whole group to take Horace to court and
punish him for his sharp satires.
Sir Walter, Sir Quintilian, and Cae-
lestine lamented her danger; and Sir
Quintilian proposed that she drink
poison. Grief-stricken, Sir Walter consented
to the loss of his wife in order to save
her honor. When revelers came to escort
the couple to court, Sir Walter announced
his wife's death and requested that they
go with him in procession to the king.
King William Rufus, laughing at the
gullibility of Sir Walter, waited eagerly
for the coming of the bride. Sir Walter,
dressed in black, escorted the body into
the king's presence. Seeing Caelestine
lifeless, the King cried out in horror. Sir
Walter accused the king of tyranny and
explained that Caelestine had chosen to
die rather than to lose her honor; Sir
Walter's oath was kept by his bringing
her body to the king. Shame overcame
the repentant monarch. Caelestine
revived, and Sir Quintilian told how he
had given her a potion which gave the
appearance of death, though both Sir
Walter and she had believed it poison.
The king restored the wife unharmed to
her husband.
Crispinus offered an interlude for
comic relief after the seriousness of the
situation. Captain Tucca led Horace and
Bubo, both wearing horns, into the royal
presence. Bubo was made to swear he
would abandon Horace and his poetry;
upon swearing this, he was released.
Horace, crowned with netdes instead of
laurels, promised at great length to amend
3360

as a writer and to give up sour criticisms
and complaints. Captain Tucca
announced that he and Mistress Miniver
were to be married. The disgruntled
knights accepted defeat, and Captain
Tucca promised to repay them what they
had given him for their wooing of the
widow. A dance followed, and all ended
happily.
Captain Tucca delivered an epilogue
promising future theatrical battles
between Horace and the poetasters.
3361

THE SATYRICON
Type of work: Fictional miscellany
Author: Gaius Petronius Arbiter (?—A.D. c. 66)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: First century
Locale: Italy
Earliest extant printed version: 1664
Principal characters:
Encolpius, the narrator
Ascyltus, his friend
Gito, their attendant
Eumolpus, a poet
Trimalchio, a wealthy vulgarian
Critique:
This vast work of Petronius is extant
only in a fragment of 146 chapters of
books 15 and 16. The chapters consist of
a miscellany of anecdotes without much
unity. It is generally thought that
Petronius wrote the tales as a sort of
parody or protest of the orgies and debauches
of Nero's reign. The pictures of Roman
life presented are a vast canvas of
licentiousness. By their worship of Priapus the
Romans signaled their decadence and fall.
Modern readers, even though hardened
by the present-day cult of frankness, tend
to turn in disgust from the excesses here
depicted.
The Story:
Encolpius railed at the growth of
artificiality in modern rhetoric and the ill-
prepared students who came to the
school. Agamemnon, the professor, agreed
with him, but placed the blame entirely
on parents who refused to make their
children study. Weary of the dispute and far
gone in drink, Encolpius fled the school.
An old woman, who made indecent
proposals to him, showed him the way back
to his inn.
Gito, his sixteen-year-old slave, had
prepared supper, but the comely boy was
crying: Ascyltus had made violent love
to him. Encolpius was soothing the boy
with caresses and tender words when
Ascyltus broke in on them. A quarrel
ensued between the two friends as to who
should enjoy Gito's favors. The dispute
was settled only when all three agreed to
pay a visit to Lycurgus, a rich friend of
Ascyltus.
Lycurgus received them most cordially
and introduced them to Lichas, his friend.
Lichas, completely taken with Encolpius,
insisted that Encolpius and Gito come
home with him. On the way, Tryphaena,
a beautiful woman attached to Lichas*
entourage, made surreptitious love to
Encolpius, who resolved to have little to
do with Lichas. But, when the party
arrived at Lichas* villa, Tryphaena deserted
Encolpius for the bewitching Gito.
Smarting under her desertion, Encolpius
made love to Doris, Lichas* attractive wife.
All went fairly well until Gito tired of
Tryphaena. Then she accused both Gito
and Encolpius of making improper
advances, and the two returned in haste to
Lycurgus* house.
Lycurgus at first supported the two
adventurers, but as the jealous Lichas
increased his complaints, Lycurgus turned
against the pair. At the suggestion of
Ascyltus, the three set out again to seek
what love affairs and plunder they could
find. They were well supplied with gold,
for Encolpius had thoughtfully plundered
one of Lichas' ships before leaving.
At a nearby small town a fair was in
progress. There they came upon a groom
THE SATYRICON by Gaius Petronius. By permission of the publishers, Liveright Publishing Corp.
Copyright, 1922, by Boni and Liveright, Inc. Renewed, 1949, by Liveright Publishing Corp.
3362

who was saddling a rich man's horse.
When the groom left for a moment,
Encolpius stole the rich man's riding cloak. Soon
afterward Ascyltus found a bag of coins on
the ground. The two friends hid the gold
by sewing it under the lining of Encolpius*
threadbare tunic. Just as they finished, the
rich man's retainers gave chase to recover
the riding cloak. Dashing through a wood,
Encolpius was separated from his friend
and lost the tunic.
They met again at a market. There they
saw the tunic up for sale with the gold
pieces still hidden in the lining. When
they offered to trade the riding cloak for
the tunic, the bystanders became
suspicious and tried to make the two friends
appear before a judge. Dropping the
riding cloak and seizing the tunic, they fled.
After telling Gito to follow later on,
they set out for the next town. Seeing the
dim forms of two comely women hurrying
through the dusk, they followed them
unobserved into an underground temple.
There the two men saw a company of
women in Bacchanalian garb, each with a
phallic emblem in her hand, preparing to
worship Priapus. They were discovered by
the horrified women and chased back to
their inn.
As they were dining with Gito in their
rooms, the maid of one of the women
whom they had followed to the sacred
rites came in and begged them to listen to
her mistress, who was a respectable
matron. Even though Encolpius swore never
to tell of the forbidden rites, the matron
had the three seized and taken to her villa.
The men were bound and given powerful
love potions, and then all the women of
the household made love to them. After
escaping from the love-maddened ladies,
Encolpius had to rest for three days; Gito
seemed little affected.
Next the three attended a huge
banquet given by Trimalchio, a rich and
vulgar freedman. Every dish served was
disguised as something else. After hours
of eating and drinking, they were glad
even for the respite of story telling.
Trimalchio started off with a boring
elucidation of the signs of the zodiac, and
many of the guests told pointless anec
dotes. From Niceros, however, they heard
an absorbing tale.
Niceros was staying, while he was still
a slave, at an inn where he was in love
with the landlord's complaisant wife,
Melissa. One day he induced a soldier
to go for a walk with him. When they
came to a graveyard, the soldier took oft
his clothes and threw them beside the
path. Making a magic circle around the
clothes, he straightway turned into a wolf
and went howling away. When Niceros
saw to his horror that the clothes had
turned to stone, he hurried home to
Melissa. She told him that a wolf had just
come into the yard and killed some sheep.
A servant drove a spear through the
animal's neck but the wolf got away.
Niceros ran back to the cemetery where
he found that the stone clothes had
dissolved in blood. In the morning he went
to the soldier's room. There a physician
was stanching the blood from a wound in
the soldier's neck.
Encolpius, Ascyltus, and Gito were
finally so stuffed and bored they could
stand no more. To their relief, the
company moved outdoors to exercise. From
the conversation they learned that another
banquet was to follow, this one given by
Trimalchio's wife. They left hurriedly.
Following another quarrel over Gito,
Encolpius and Ascvltus parted company.
To the distress of Encolpius, Gito elected
to go with Ascyltus.
After sorrowing uselessly for days,
Encolpius fell in with an old man, the
poet Eumolpus. When the two went to
the baths to cement their friendship,
Encolpius was overjoyed to find Gito acting
as attendant for Ascyltus, who was in
another room. Gito confessed that he really
liked Encolpius better, and the latter, in
a happy mood, took the boy back to his
apartment.
Matters would have been smoother for
Encolpius if he had not tried to make love
to Circe. Because of his past tribulations
and hardships, he had no strength for her
ardors. Suspecting him of trifling with her,
she raised such an outcry that Encolpius

judged it wise to leave town.
On Eumolpus* advice, the comrades
embarked secretly at night on a ship lying in
the harbor. In the morning Encolpius
discovered to his chagrin that they were
aboard Lichas* ship. The owner and
Tryphaena were aboard. Eumolpus tried
to disguise Encolpius and Gito with
burnt cork. Their subterfuge was
discovered, however, and for a while it looked
as though they would be flogged. But
Lichas remembered his old attraction to
Encolpius and Tryphaena was smitten
anew with Gito; so they were spared.
When Lichas' ship was wrecked in a
storm, the three comrades got ashore at
Croton. Eumolpus posed as a rich
landowner and Encolpius and Gito passed as
his slaves. By cleverly deluding the
inhabitants, they lived luxuriously as guests
of the town. After a year suspicion grew
as to Eumolpus* supposed wealth. Seeing
an end to their pleasant stay, Encolpius
and Gito escaped just in time. The
aroused townspeople used Eumolpus as a
scapegoat. They decked him out with
boughs and sacred vestments, led him
through the city, and finally hurled him
down a cliff.
3364

THE SCARLET LETTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Early days of the Massachusetts Colony
Locale: Boston
First published: 1850
Principal characters:
Hester Prynne, a woman convicted of adultery
Arthur Dimmesdale, a minister of the community
Roger Chillingworth, a physician, and Hester's husband
Pearl, Hester's daughter
Critique:
Critics have called The Scarlet Letter
the greatest book ever written in the
Western Hemisphere. The theme of the
novel is the universal subject of sin.
Specifically, Hawthorne traces the effect
of one particular sin on the lives of four
people. In the pages of The Scarlet Letter
we watch the almost beneficial effect of
her sin upon Hester Prynne, who wears
her shame openly for all the world to see;
upon the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale,
who is killed by the distressing secret
which he keeps hidden in his own breast;
upon Roger Chillingworth, who becomes
a devil incarnate; and upon little Pearl,
who develops into a capricious, wayward
child, but still sympathetic and lovable.
The Story:
On a summer morning in Boston, in
the early days of the Massachusetts
Colony, a throng of curious people had
gathered outside the jail in Prison Lane. They
were there to watch for Hester Prynne,
who had been found guilty of adultery
by a court of stern Puritan judges.
Condemned to wear on the breast of her
gown the scarlet letter, the A which stood
for adulteress, she was to stand on the
stocks before the meeting house, so that
her shame might be a warning and a
reproach to all who saw her. The crowd
waited to see her ascend the scaffold with
her child in her arms, and there for three
hours bear her shame alone.
At last, escorted by the town beadle,
the woman appeared. She moved serenely
to the steps of the scaffold and stood
quietly under the staring eyes that
watched her public disgrace. It was
whispered in the gathering that she had
been spared the penalty of death or
branding only through the intercession of
the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, into
whose church she had brought her
scandalous sin.
While Hester stood on the scaffold,
an elderly, almost deformed man
appeared from the edge of the forest. When
her agitation made it plain that she had
recognized him, he put his finger to his
lips as a sign of silence.
Hester's story was well-known in the
community. She was the daughter of
an ancient house of decayed fortune, and
when she was young her family had
married her to a husband who had great
repute as a scholar. For some years they
had lived in Antwerp. Two years before,
the husband had sent his wife alone
across the ocean to the Massachusetts
Colony, intending to follow her as soon
as he could put his affairs in order. There
had been news of his departure, but his
ship had never been heard of again.
Hester, a young, attractive widow, had
lived quietly in Boston until the time of
her disgrace.
The scaffold of the pillory on which
Hester stood was situated next to the
balcony of the church where all the
dignitaries of the colony sat to watch her hu-
THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Published by Houghton Mifflin
3365

miliation. The ministers of the town
called on her to name the man who with
herself was equally guilty, and the most
eloquent of those who exhorted her was
the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, her
pastor. Still Hester refused to name the
father of her child, and she was led back
to the prison after her period of public
shame had ended.
On her return to prison Hester was
found to be in a state of great nervous
excitement. When at last medical aid
was called, a man was found who
professed knowledge of medicine. His name
was Roger Chillingworth, he told the
jailer, recently arrived in town after a
year of residence among the Indians.
Chillingworth was the stranger who
had appeared so suddenly from the forest
while Hester stood on the scaffold that
afternoon, and she knew him as her
husband, the scholar Prynne. His ship
had been wrecked on the coast and he
had been captive among the Indians for
many months.
He also asked Hester to name the
father of her child. When she refused,
he stated that he would remain in Boston
to practice medicine, swearing at the same
time that he would devote the rest of
his life to discovering the identity of the
man who had dishonored him. He
commanded Hester not to betray the
relationship between them, and she swore she
would keep his secret.
When Hester's term of imprisonment
was over, she found a small house on the
outskirts of town, far removed from other
habitation. There with her child, whom
she had named Pearl, she settled down
to earn a living from needlework, an
outcast from society and still wearing the
scarlet emblem on her breast.
Hester Prynne dressed her child in
bright highly-ornamented costumes, in
contrast to her own sober dress. As she
grew up, Pearl proved to be a capricious,
wayward child, hard to discipline. One
day Hester called on Governor Belling-
ham to deliver a pair of embroidered
gloves. She also wanted to see him about
the custody of Pearl, for there was a
movement afoot among the strict church
members to take the child away from her.
In the garden of the governor's mansion,
Hester found the governor, Dimmesdale,
and old Roger Chillingworth. Because
the perverse Pearl would not repeat the
catechism, the governor was about to
separate the child from her mother.
Dimmesdale saved the situation, however, by
a persuasive speech which resulted in the
decision to let Hester keep Pearl, who
seemed to be strangely attracted to the
minister.
Roger Chillingworth had become
intimately acquainted with Arthur
Dimmesdale both as his parishioner and his
doctor, for the minister had been in ill
health ever since the physician had come
to town. As the two men lodged in the
same house, the physician came to know
Dimmesdale's inmost thoughts and
feelings. The minister was much perturbed
by thoughts of conscience and guilt, but
when he expressed these ideas in
generalities to his congregation, the people
thought him only the more righteous.
Slowly in Chillingworth the conviction
grew that Dimmesdale was Pearl's father,
and he conjured up for the sick man
visions of agony, terror, and remorse.
One night, unable to sleep,
Dimmesdale walked to the pillory where Hester
Pyrnne had stood in ignominy. He went
up the steps and stood for a long time in
the same place. A little later Hester, who
had been watching at a deathbed, came
by with little Pearl. The minister called
them to the scaffold, saying that they had
been there before when he lacked courage
to stand beside them. Thus the three
stood together, Dimmesdale
acknowledging himself as Pearl's father and Hester's
partner in sin. This striking tableau was
not unobserved. Roger Chillingworth
watched them from the shadows.
Hester Prynne was so shocked by Dim-
mesdale's feeble and unhealthy
condition that she determined to see her former
husband and plead with him to free the
sick minister from his evil influence.
3366

One day she met the old physician
gathering herbs in the forest and begged
him to be merciful to his victim. But
Chillingworth was inexorable; he would
not forego his revenge on the man who
had wronged him. Hester then advised
him that she would tell Arthur Dimmes-
dale their secret and warn him against
his physician. A short time later, Hester
and Pearl intercepted Dimmesdale in the
forest as he was returning from a
missionary journey to the Indians. Hester
confessed her true relation with Chilling-
worth and warned the minister against
the physician's evil influence. She and
the clergyman decided to leave the colony
together in secret, to take passage in a
ship then in the harbor and return to
the Old World. They were to leave four
days later, after Dimmesdale had preached
the Election Sermon.
Election Day, on which the new
governor was to be installed, was a holiday
in Boston, and the port was lively with
the unaccustomed presence of sailors
from the ship in the harbor. In the crowd
was the captain of the vessel, with whom
Hester had made arrangements for hex
own and Dimmesdale's passage. During
the morning the captain informed Hester
that Roger Chillingworth had also
arranged for passage on the ship. Filled
with despair, Hester turned away and
went with Pearl to listen to
Dimmesdale's sermon.
Unable to find room within the
church, she stood at the foot of the
scaffold where at least she could hear the
sound of his voice. As the procession left
the church, everyone had only words of
praise for the minister's inspired address.
Dimmesdale walked like a man in a
dream and once he tottered and almost
fell. When he saw Hester and Pearl at
the foot of the scaffold, he stepped out
of the procession and called them to him.
Then, taking them by the hand, he
climbed the steps of the pillory. Almost
fainting, but with a voice terrible and
majestic, the minister admitted his guilt
to the watching people. With a sudden
motion he tore the ministerial band from
across his breast and sank dying to the
platform. When he thus exposed his
breast, witnesses said that the stigma of
the scarlet letter A was seen imprinted on
the flesh above his heart.
Chillingworth, no longer able to wreak
his vengeance on Dimmesdale, died
within the year, bequeathing his considerable
property to Pearl. For a time Hester
disappeared from the colony, but years later
she returned alone to live in her humble
thatched cottage and to wear as before
the scarlet emblem on her breast. But
the scarlet letter, once her badge of
shame, became an emblem of her tender
mercy and kindness — an object of
veneration and reverence to those whose
sorrows she alleviated by her deeds of
kindness and mercy. At her death she
directed that the only inscription on her
tombstone should be the letter A.
3367

SCEPTICISM AND ANIMAL FAITH
Type of work: Philosophy
Author: George Santayana (1863-1952)
First published: 1923
Scepticism and Animal Faith was
written as an introduction to a system of
philosophy, a system later made explicit
in Santayana's four-volume The Realms
of Being: The Realm of Essence (1927),
The Realm of Matter (1930), The Realm
of Truth (1938),TJie Realm of Spirit
(1940). Despite the fact that the author
believed that his ideas needed the
extended treatment he gave them in these
volumes, the introductory work remains
the clearest, most concise, and most
representative of Santayana's works. Almost
every important contribution which the
author made to philosophy can be found
here* and the advantage of this single
work is that the reader can gain a
synoptic vision of the relations of the ideas
to each other, something he might fail
to achieve if he centered his attention
initially upon one of the volumes of The
Realms of Being or The Life of Reason
(1905-1906).
Santayana's principal thesis is that
knowledge is faith "mediated by
symbols." The symbols of human discourse,
when man is talking to himself about the
world of facts, are the elements in his
experience: sensations, images, feelings,
and the like. "The images in sense are
parts of discourse, not parts of nature:
thev are the babble of our innocent organs
under the stimulus of things," writes
Santayana. Since we cannot be certain that
the given elements, the essences, are signs
of physical objects affecting us as physical
organisms, there is a sense in which we
cannot be said to be free of the
possibility of error. Nevertheless, as animals,
as active beings, we find ourselves
compelled to take our experiences as the
experiences of a living organism in the
process of being shocked and stimulated by
the world. Our belief in a nature of
change is made possible by our
interpretation of the given—the data, the
essences—but it cannot be justified by the
given; hence, it is animal faith.
To prepare himself for the statement
that all knowledge is the faith that
certain given elements are signs of things
and events, Santayana develops a
thorough skepticism which ends with the
cryptic statement that "Nothing given
exists." To understand the meaning and
ground of this claim it is necessary to
understand Santayana's conception of the
given—his theory of essences.
It is difficult to make all the proper
qualifications in a brief description, but
if one begins by supposing that essences
are characteristics of actual and possible
things, whether physical, psychical,
mathematical, or whatever, a beginning
has been made. If a person were to have
two or three sense experiences of
precisely the same sort—three sense images
of a certain shade of yellow, for example
—that shade of yellow would be an
essence that had been given to him in
sense experience. Even if he had not had
the experience, he could have had it; the
essence is a character his experience
might come to have. Essences, then, are
universals, not particulars; they are
characteristics which may or may not be the
characteristics of existing things.
It makes sense to say of a particular
thing that it is, or was, or shall be; but
we cannot sensibly talk that way about
the characteristics of things. Considered
in themselves, as they must be, essences
are immutable, eternal, never vague, and
neither good nor bad. In Santavana's
terms, the realm of essence "is simply the
unwritten catalogue, prosaic and infinite,
of all the characters possessed by such
things as happen to exist, together with
the characters which all different things
would possess if they existed."
If this definition of essence is kept
clearly in mind, if an essence is simply
a character but not necessarily the
character of anything, then it becomes clear

that if essences are given—and they are
—then nothing given exists. If we are
correct in our suppositions, then,
whenever an essence is given, it is given to a
self; i.e., someone has an experience, and
the experience has a certain character, an
essence. The self that has experiences
exists; the "intuition," i.e., the
apprehension of the character of the experience,
exists; and, if the self is not mistaken in
its interpretation of the given, of the
"datum," a physical event or object exists
as signified by the datum. In
conventional language, there are persons, sense
experiences, and the objects which give
rise to the experiences. But it is improper
now, and false, to say that the essence
of the experience exists. To say this
would violate Santayana's definition of
essence and, accordingly, lead to a
paradox. For example, if an essence is a
character, and if on three occasions the same
character were given, then the
consequence of saying that on each occasion
the essence existed is that the essence will
have gone in and out of existence three
times. If two persons have the same kind
of experience—i.e., intuit the same
essence—then we would have to say that
the essence is in two places at the same
time. As long as one remembers that, by
definition, an essence is a character
considered as a character, it is clearly
nonsense to think of essences as existing.
The discovery of essence is the reward
of a relentless skepticism. In Santayana's
view, we have no final justification for
our claims about the existence of external
objects, and all of our beliefs about selves
and change and memory are open to
critical challenge. "Scepticism may . . .
be carried to the point of denying change
and memory, and the reality of all facts,"
he writes.
But Santayana had no great affection
for this ultimate skepticism. In his terms
he wTas a "wayward sceptic,"
entertaining the notion of an ultimate skepticism
only to show that critical challenge of
our customary beliefs is possible. It is
customary and unavoidable for a human
being to suppose that he himself lives
and thinks, and Santayana's rejoinder is,
"That he does so is true; but to establish
that truth he must appeal to animal
faith."
In order to discuss the human being in
his response to the data of experience
Santayana introduces his special senses
of the terms "spirit," "psyche," and
"intuition." Intuition is the apprehension of
essence; thn spirit is the cool contem-
plator, that which intuits; and psyche is
the self that acts, has preferences, takes
data as signs. Of course, when we begin
to use these terms as descriptive of facts,
we are expressing our own animal faith;
when we say that the spirit confronts
essences and that the psyche acts
accordingly, taking the essences as signs of a
physical world, we are saying what the
ultimate skeptic cannot allow—but we
are animals, and the psyche has other
business than philosophy.
There is something appealing and
liberating in Santayana's conception of
animal faith. No one could be more
careful than he in examining and
challenging the pretensions of the pretenders
to knowledge and wisdom: the paradox
that knowledge is animal faith reveals
that what we call "knowledge" is merely
unwarranted, but stubborn, animal
conviction. That same paradox brings out the
positive side of Santayana's philosophy:
as animals taking data as signs we make
sense out of what would otherwise be a
static complex of essences and give order
both to our world and ourselves.
In the description of the consequences
of animal faith in action, Santayana
considered first the belief in discourse which
arises once one has given up "passive
intuition." From the belief in discourse one
passes to belief "in experience, in
substance, in truth, and in spirit." This
progression of beliefs is a natural one, and
the description of the life of reason in
various areas was undertaken by
Santayana in his earlier five-volume work The
Life of Reason. The Realms of Being
naturally followed Scepticism and Animal
Faith as a careful elaboration of the
terms "essence," "matter," "truth," and
3369

"spirit."
Unlike many philosophers, Santayana
had self-confidence enough to know the
limits of his inquiry. He did not pretend
to be able to discover what the physicist,
for example, can discover by acting on his
scientific animal faith. Once we pass from
the intuitive contemplation of essences
to the recognition of the human use of
data as signs, we soon come to the
discovery of our assumptions of an
experiencing self coming up against substance
—the presumed cause of the data. The
philosopher can clarify the idea of
substance, explaining that it is extended, in
space and time, with a structure, and so
forth; and he can go on to identify
substance with such homely examples as
"the wood of this tree . . . the wind
. . . the flesh and the bones of the man.
. . ." But he need not, and Santayana
does not, try to do what the physicist and
the chemist do in their specialized ways.
By this practice, then, Santayana
fulfilled the promise of his introduction to
Scepticism and Animal Faith in which
he said: "Here is one more system of
philosophy. If the reader is tempted to
smile, I can assure him that I smile with
him. ... I am merely trying to express
for the reader the principles to which he
appeals when he smiles."
In this book, as in all his others,
Santayana presents his ideas by means of a
beautifully articulated, poetic style. Even
if his vision of knowledge as animal faith
had no value, this work would endure as
the most fascinating portrayal of the
realm of essence which has yet appeared
in literature. That this moving survey of
the timeless, changeless realm of essence
should have come from a naturalistic
philosopher is one of those pleasant
paradoxes to which we turn with classic
delight after coming from Scepticism and
Animal Faith.
3370

THE SCHOOL FOR HUSBANDS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1661
Principal characters:
Sganarelle, a gentleman of means
Ariste, his brother
Isabelle, Sganarelle's ward
Leonor, her sister and Ariste's ward
Valere, Isabelle's lover
Critique:
Moliere has been called the first great
modern in the sense that he portrayed the
actual in life, the true manners of his
times. In The School for Hushands he
lives up to his reputation as a satirical
critic and comic dramatist. The outspoken
frankness and amusing anecdote of the
play delighted the theatergoers of Paris,
and it met with striking popularity which
it has retained to this day.
The Story:
Leonor and Isabelle, orphaned on the
death of their father, were committed by
his deathbed wish to the guardianship of
his friends, Sganarelle and Ariste, with
the additional charge that if they
themselves did not marry the young women
they were to provide suitable husbands
for their wards. The two brothers had
different ideas about the upbringing of
the orphans. The elder, Ariste, chose to
conform to the fashions of the day but
without going to extremes. He gave his
ward Leonor the opportunity to attend
balls and dances and meet the gallants of
the city. Although he himself wished to
marry her, he loved Leonor sufficiently to
leave the choice to her. Sganarelle,
however, thought all this was foolish. Where
Ariste hoped to govern only by affection,
Sganarelle believed in the effectiveness
of severity. He confined Isabelle strictly
to her quarters and to household duties,
thus keeping her from meeting any
eligible young men. Determined to marry her
himself, he hoped to discipline her to that
end. When Sganarelle scoffed at his
brother's leniency and predicted that he
would in the end be tricked by so young
a wife, L6onor declared that if she
married her guardian she would be faithful
to him, but that if she were to be
Sganarelle's wife she would not be answerable
for any of her actions.
Meanwhile, Valere, Sganarelle's new
neighbor, had fallen in love with Isabelle,
whom he had seen at a distance, and
Isabelle reciprocated his love; but with no
means of communication neither knew
the true feelings of the other. Isabelle
finally worked out a plan to test Valere.
She told Sganarelle about Valere's
attentions and, knowing her guardian would
then angrily accost Valere, declared that
they were distasteful to her. Sganarelle
asked Valere to cease molesting his ward
and told him that, even though Isabelle
knew of Valere's hopes, his was an
unrequited passion, that her only wish was
to find happiness in marrying her
guardian. Valere sensed in this message
something more that Isabelle hoped to convey
to him.
Sganarelle told Isabelle that Valere had
been crushed by her harsh message.
Isabelle, under the pretense of returning a
letter which, according to her story, an
accomplice of Valere's had thrown into
her chamber, persuaded her guardian to
deliver the note. Actually, it was a love
letter that she had written to Valere.
3371

Sganarelle, taking her request as a
touching example of model womanly behavior,
delivered the letter, which told of Isa-
belle's resolve to get free of her prison at
any cost during the six days remaining
before her enforced marriage to her
guardian. Valere, making use of
Sganarelle to take back to Isabelle words
showing the sincerity of his attachment,
declared that his only hope had been to
make her his wife and that, although he
now realized the hopelessness of his suit,
he would always love her. First he
flattered Sganarelle as an opponent no one
could possibly displace, and showed
himself so completely crestfallen and hopeless
in surrendering all thought of winning his
fair prize that Sganarelle even came to
feel a little sorry for his rival.
Isabelle, trying to trick her guardian
into appearing despicable in the eyes of
her lover, pretended to fear an attempt by
Valere to force her from her chamber and
carry her off before her marriage to
Sganarelle. Bursting with pride at what he
considered the womanly discretion of his
ward, discretion obviously reflecting his
own wisdom in her upbringing,
Sganarelle offered to return to Valere and
berate him for his bold and mischievous
scheme. All turned out as Isabelle hoped.
In reply, Valere declared that if what
Sganarelle reported were possibly true,
then his passion was indeed hopeless.
Sganarelle, to make matters perfectly
clear, took Valere directly to Isabelle to
hear the cruel decision from her own lips.
By words that could be understood two
ways, Isabelle and Valere declared their
love for each other under the nose of
their dupe. Then on Isabelle's order
Valere departed, promising that in three
days he would find a way to free her from
her jailer. But Sganarelle could not wait
three days. Overjoyed at the exhibitions
of what he took to be his ward's fond
regard for him, he was eager to
consummate the marriage. He told Isabelle the
ceremony would be performed the next
day.
Isabelle realized that her last resource
was to commit herself unreservedly to hei
lover at once, but as she prepared for
flight Sganarelle saw her and informed
her that all preparations had been made
for their union. Isabelle trumped up a
story that she was about to leave the
house to spend the night with a worthy
friend, Lucrece, because L6onor, in
desperation, had asked for the use of
Isabelle's room that night. Against her better
judgment, she declared, she had
consented and had just locked her sister in.
Isabelle pretended that Valere had really
been L6onor's lover for more than a year,
but had abandoned her when he became
infatuated with Isabelle. She said that
L6onor, hoping to win back his love,
planned to meet him in the lane near the
house. Sganarelle, declaring this plan
immodest, wanted to drive Leonor out
of the house at once. Isabelle restrained
him, however, and persuaded him to let
her take the message to Leonor, after
insisting that Sganarelle must hide himself
and promise to let her sister leave
without his speaking to her. Sganarelle agreed,
secretly pleased at the thought of his
brother's discomfiture over the wanton
doings of his ward.
Isabelle, pretending to be L6onor, left
the house. Curious, Sganarelle followed.
He saw Valere and Isabelle meet and,
after declaring their love, enter Valere's
house. Thinking that Leonor was with
Valere and wishing to keep scandal from
touching Isabelle through her sister, he
hurriedly called a magistrate and urged
him to marry the pair. The magistrate
was to wait, however, until Sganarelle
could return with the bride's guardian to
witness the ceremony.
Ariste, although he could not believe
his ears when Sganarelle gloatingly
insisted that L6onor was with Valere, was
induced nevertheless to accompany his
brother. Valere, who had hidden Isabelle
in a separate room, had the magistrate
prepare a formal contract, to be signed
by all parties present, indicating their
consent to the marriage. Still under the
delusion that the bride to be was his
3372

brother's ward L6onor, Sganarelle agreed
to the wedding; and Ariste, placing the
desires of his supposed ward above his
own dreams, assented also.
Meanwhile, L6onor returned early
from the ball she had attended. Ariste
gently chided her for not confiding in
him her love for Valere; but L£onor,
amazed, protested that she loved only
Ariste, her beloved guardian, whom she
was ready to marry immediately.
Angered, Sganarelle realized too late the
trick played on him by Isabelle. All
women, he declared, were to be
disbelieved and shunned. In the schooling of
husbands it was he and not his brother
Ariste who had failed.
3373

THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL
Type of work: Drama
Author: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Type of plot: Comedy or manners
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1777
Principal characters:
Sir Peter Teazle, an elderly nobleman
Lady Teazle, his young wife
Maria, Sir Peter's ward
Sir Oliver Surface, Sir Peter's friend
Joseph Surface, and
Charles Surface, Sir Oliver's nephews
Lady Sneerwell, Lady Teazle's friend
Rowley, Sir Peter's servant
Critique:
The School for Scandal contains
elements of Restoration comedy as well as
the usual sentimentalism of the comedy
of sensibility. There are two plots: Lady
Sneerwell's love for Charles and her
scandalous tales about Lady Teazle and the
latter's relations with Joseph, and Sir
Oliver Surface's tests to discover the
worthier of his two nephews. Sheridan
brilliantly brings the two plots together in
the famous screen scene, which
demonstrates his adeptness as a writer of
comedy. The School for Scandal, revived
from time to time as a costume play,
continues to hold the interest of audiences
everywhere.
The Story:
Lady Sneerwell, who in her youth was
the target of slander, had set her life
upon a course to reduce the reputations
of other women to the level of her own.
Aided by her intimate, Snake, she was
intriguing to involve the Teazles in
scandal, to bring Joseph Surface's true
character to light, to wreck the love of Charles
and Maria, and to gain Charles for herself
along with Sir Oliver's fortune. To her
the world was nothing but scandal and
scandalous intrigues, and she did her best
to make her vision a reality. But when
she abused Charles Surface, Maria, Sir
Peter Teazle's ward, refused to listen to
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Published by The MacmiUan Co.
her. Instead, Maria trustingly confided
in Lady Candour, whose defense of a
reputation insured its complete
annihilation.
Sometimes Sir Peter Teazle pondered
the wisdom of his marriage to Lady
Teazle, doubting the judgment of an
old bachelor in marrying a young wife.
Lady Teazle was a country-bred girl who
was extravagantly enjoying London life
to the full. Sir Oliver Surface was
concerned about his two nephews, his
problem being the disposal of his great
fortune. Sir Oliver, having been abroad
for the past fifteen years, felt that he did
not know their real natures, and he hoped
by some stratagem to catch them
unawares and test their characters.
One day Sir Peter and Lady Teazle
quarreled because Sir Peter objected
violently to her attendance at the home of
Lady Sneerwell. Lady Teazle accused
Sir Peter of wishing to deprive her of all
freedom and reminded him that he had
Eromised to go to Lady Sneerwell's with
er. He retorted that he would do so
for only one reason, to look after his own
character. When he arrived, Lady Sneer-
well's rooms were full of people uttering
libelous remarks about their enemies and
saying even worse things about their
friends. Sir Peter escaped as soon as
possible.
3374

When the rest of Lady Sneerwell's
guests retired to the card room, leaving
Maria and Joseph alone, Joseph once
more pressed his suit for Maria's hand.
He insinuated that she was in love with
Charles and was thus running counter to
Sir Peter's wishes. Lady Teazle
interrupted as Joseph was on his knees
avowing his honest love. Surprised, Lady
Teazle told Maria she was wanted in the
next room. She then asked Joseph for an
explanation. Joseph informed her that
he was pleading with Maria not to tell
Sir Peter of his tender concern for Lady
Teazle.
Sir Oliver consulted Rowley, Sir
Peter's shrewd and observing servant, in
an attempt to learn more of his nephews'
characters. Rowley himself believed that
Joseph had less good character than his
reputation seemed to indicate and that
Charles had more. Sir Peter was also
consulted. He declared that he was ready
to stake his life on Joseph's honor. He
was much put out, therefore, when Maria
once more refused to marry Joseph.
Sir Peter, Sir Oliver, and Rowley
planned to test the worthiness of the
nephews. Charles, as usual, was in dire
need of money. Since Moses, a Jew, was
going to see Charles, Sir Oliver was to
accompany him as Mr. Premium, a man
who could supply the money Charles
needed.
When they arrived at Charles' lodging,
a drinking party was in progress. Some
of the guests were at games of dice. Sir
Oliver was not at all impressed with Trip,
Charles' footman, who gave himself the
airs of a fashionable man about town.
Upon investigation, Sir Oliver discovered
that Charles had turned his inherited
possessions into cash with the exception of
the portraits of his ancestors. Convinced
that Charles was a scamp, Sir Oliver,
still calling himself Premium, agreed to
buy the paintings, and he purchased each
picture as presented except his own,
which Charles would not sell for any
amount of money. Sir Oliver was pleased
by this fact and discounted Charles'
reputation for extravagance. Charles
received a draft for eight hundred pounds
for the portraits and immediately sent one
hundred pounds to Mr. Stanley, a poor
relation in even more straitened
circumstances.
During an assignation between Joseph
Surface and Lady Teazle in Joseph's
library, he advised her to give her
husband grounds for jealousy rather than
suffer his jealousy without cause. He
argued that to save her reputation she
must ruin it and that he was the man
best able to help her. Lady Teazle said
that such a doctrine was very odd.
While they were talking, Sir Peter
arrived unexpectedly, and Lady Teazle
hid behind the screen which Joseph
ordered placed against the window.
Joseph pretended to be reading when
Sir Peter walked in. The purpose of Sir
Peter's call was to inform Joseph of his
suspicions that Lady Teazle was having
an affair with Charles, and he showed
Joseph two deeds he had brought with
him. One deed settled eight hundred
pounds a year upon Lady Teazle for her
independent use, the other gave her the
bulk of his fortune at his death. Joseph's
dissimulation before Sir Peter and Sir
Peter's generosity to her were not lost
on Lady Teazle. Then Sir Peter began
to discuss Joseph's desire to wed Maria.
Hidden, Lady Teazle realized that Joseph
had been deceiving her.
Below stairs, Charles inopportunely
demanded entrance to the house to see
his brother. Not wishing to see Charles
Sir Peter asked where he could hide.
Sir Peter caught a glimpse of a petticoat
behind the screen, but Joseph assured
him that the woman was only a French
milliner who plagued him. Sir Peter hid
in a closet; Lady Teazle remained behind
the screen.
When Charles came in, he and Joseph
discussed Lady Teazle and Sir Peter's
suspicion that Charles was her lover.
Charles mentioned that he believed
Joseph to be her favorite and recounted
all the little incidents which led him to
think so. Embarrassed by this turn in the
conversation, Joseph interrupted to say
3375

that Sir Peter was within hearing. Placed
in a difficult position, Charles explained
to Sir Peter that he was merely playing
a joke on Joseph. Sir Peter knew a good
joke on Joseph, too, he said; Joseph was
having an affair with a milliner. Charles
decided that he would have a look at the
milliner and threw down the screen.
Joseph was undone because Lady Teazle
refused to agree with any excuses he
made. She angrily informed her husband
of the whole nature of Joseph's intentions
and departed. Sir Peter followed her,
leaving Joseph to his own conscience.
Sir Oliver, masquerading as Mr.
Stanley and badly in need of assistance,
gained admittance to Joseph's apartment.
Joseph refused to help Mr. Stanley,
saying that he received very little money
from Sir Oliver and claiming that he
had advanced all his funds to Charles.
After Sir Oliver left, Rowley, who was
a party to the whole scheme, came to
tell Joseph that Sir Oliver had arrived
in town.
Sir Oliver went again to see Joseph.
Still believing that his uncle was Mr.
Stanley, Joseph was showing him out
just as Charles entered. Charles,
surprised to see Mr. Premium in his
brother's apartment, also insisted that he
leave. But at that moment Sir Peter
Teazle arrived and addressed Sir Oliver
by his right name. Both Sir Oliver and
Sir Peter were now aware of Joseph's
real character. Charles, promising to try
to reform, got Maria and his uncle's
inheritance as well. Then Lady Sneerwell
was exposed by Snake, who was paid
double to speak the truth, and Lady
Teazle returned her diploma to the
School for Scandal of which Lady Sneer-
well was president. Everyone was happy
except Lady Sneerwell and Joseph
Surface.
3376

THE SCHOOL FOR WIVES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: France
First presented: 1662
Principal characters:
Arnolphe (M. de la Souchb), a wealthy man
Agnes, his ward
Horace, Agnes' lover
Ghrysalde, Arnolphe's friend
Enrique, Chrysalde's brother-in-law
Orontb, Horace's father
Critique:
The School for Wives QUEcole des
Femmes) was the most successful of
Moliere's plays during his lifetime. Acted
more than any other of his dramas while
he lived, it called forth both great praise
and acid criticism from his
contemporaries. The satire is biting, the irony
vicious. But Moliere knew exactly when
to break the tone and inject humor into
the dialogue, as is shown by the roles
played by the two servants. Nowhere in
his works is his genius more brilliantly
displayed. He was indeed a master satirist
who has seldom been excelled.
The Story:
As Arnolphe told his friend Chrysalde,
if a man's wife were not to make a fool of
him he must choose one ignorant of the
ways of the world and in no danger of
being admired by other men. Arnolphe,
famous for his bitter ridicule of other men
who were put to shame by the
unfaithfulness of their wives, was determined that
he would not find himself in a like
position. For that reason he proposed to marry
Agnes, his young ward, whom he had
protected from society. He thought her
such an ignorant girl and such a fool that
she would make a perfect wife.
Agnes had been put in his care by her
widowed foster mother. The girl had her
early training in a convent to which
Arnolphe sent her. Later she lived in a
small cottage on his estate. Her life was
secluded, in order that she might be kept
safe from learning and from outside
influences until she reached an age for
marriage. On a whim, Arnolphe had changed
his name to Monsieur de la Souche, but
Agnes was not aware of this fact. Neither
was she aware of Arnolphe's plan to marry
her.
Before Arnolphe could inform Agnes of
his wishes, Horace, the son of his friend
Oronte, told him that he was in love with
her. Horace, knowing only that Agnes was
the ward of one de la Souche, did not
realize that Arnolphe and de la Souche
were the same man. Horace asked
Arnolphe not to tell anyone of the love
affair because it must be kept a secret from
both de la Souche and Horace's father.
Arnolphe could only smother his rage in
silence as he listened to the tale of Agnes'
duplicity. Even though she was not aware
that Arnolphe planned to make her his
wife, he already felt that she was faithless
to him and had shamed him. He thought
he must accuse her of sinning against him
and must also tell her his plans
immediately.
But Agnes did not react as he had
anticipated. In her innocence she told him
of the pleasure she found in Horace's
company. Arnolphe was relieved to learn
that she had given her lover only kisses,
for she was so innocent that she had once
asked if babies came from the ear. He
ordered her not to see Horace again, even
to slam the door in his face or throw stones
at him if he attempted to see her. In addi-
3377

tion, he lectured her on the role of women,
wives in particular, and gave her a book
of maxims to study so that she might be
better prepared for marriage. The maxims
expressed Arnolphe's ideas exactly since
they too saw wives as the complete
possessions of their husbands. Amolphe told
Agnes that he intended to marry her, but
she misunderstood him and thought he
meant to give her in marriage. She was
happy because she thought she would be
married to Horace.
Amolphe learned from Horace that
Agnes had obeyed orders and thrown a
stone at him, but he learned also that she
attached a letter to the stone. In the letter
she had professed her love for Horace and
the young man was delighted. Still not
knowing that his supposed friend was in
reality Agnes' guardian, Horace asked
Amolphe for help in rescuing her from de
la Souche.
Amolphe decided to marry Agnes at
once and sent for the notary. He was
doubly miserable; first because he felt
betrayed, and secondly because he really
loved the girl. Thus he was enraged when
he learned of Horace's plan to gain
admittance to Agnes' room, and he ordered
his servants to set upon Horace with clubs
as he tried to climb to Agnes' window. He
was horrified, however, when the servants
told him that they had beaten Horace too
hard and had killed him.
Even though he hated the young man,
Amolphe was relieved to see Horace alive
and not seriously injured. Horace told him
that he had pretended to be dead so that
his attackers would leave him. Agnes,
swearing that she was never going back
to her prison cottage, had slipped out
during the uproar. Horace, with no place to
take the girl, asked Amolphe to help
him by hiding the girl until they could be
married. Amolphe hid his face as he met
Agnes, and it was not until after Horace
had gone that she recognized Amolphe as
de la Souche. Still her innocence made her
unafraid, and she told Amolphe that
Horace was more to her liking for a
husband than he was. Swearing that she
would have no one but Horace, she
refused to consider marrying Amolphe in
spite of his alternate threats and promises.
At last Amolphe declared angrily that he
would send her to a convent, and he had
his servants lock her up until a carriage
could be secured.
Horace, ignorant of these
developments, went again to his friend Amolphe,
this time in great agitation. His father,
Oronte, had arrived for a visit with his
friend Enrique, the brother-in-law of
Chrysalde. It was Oronte's purpose to
marry Horace to Enrique's daughter, and
Horace asked Amolphe to persuade
Uronte not to force the marriage.
Although he promised to help Horace,
Amolphe did exactly the opposite. He told
Oronte that a father should never give in
to a son but should make him bow to a
parent's wishes. He insisted that Horace
and Enrique's daughter be married
at once. Then Horace learned that
Amolphe was in reality de la Souche and
knew that he had been betrayed.
Amolphe had Agnes brought in before
the gathering because he wanted to
witness her grief and Horace's as they were
separated forever. But he was
disappointed. To his astonishment he learned
that Agnes was Enrique's daughter.
Enrique, years before, had secretly
married the sister of Chrysalde. After her
death Enrique, forced to flee the country,
had left his small daughter with a country
woman. Too poor to provide for the child,
the woman had in turn given Agnes to
Amolphe. Enrique had only recently
learned of her whereabouts. As soon as he
learned that she was with Amolphe, he
had arranged her betrothal to the son of
his friend Oronte. Thus the lovers were
united with the blessing of everyone but
Amolphe, who could only sputter and
wring his hands. He had truly been
betrayed.
3378

THE SCORNFUL LADY
Type of work: Drama
Authors: Francis Beaumont (1585M616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of flot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1613-1617
Principal characters:
Elder Loveless, a suitor to the Lady
Young Loveless, a prodigal man about town
Savil, Elder Loveless' steward
Welford, another suitor to the Lady
Morbcraft, a money-lender
The Lady, Elder Loveless' beloved
Martha, her sister
Abigail (Mrs. Younglove), the Lady's waiting-woman
The Widow, Morecraft's beloved
Critique:
Of all of Beaumont and Fletcher's
comedies, The Scornful Lady was the most
popular during the Restoration period,
undoubtedly because it contains just those
characters and situations which were
most palatable to late
seventeenth-century audiences. The play skillfully
combines a number of favorite theatrical
ingredients. The main plot, the pursuit of
the sophisticated and independent Lady
by Elder Loveless, has strong overtones
of the eternal battle of the sexes; the
subplot, the gulling of a usurer by a young
prodigal who repairs his ruined fortunes
by marriage to a rich and beautiful widow,
was later to become one of the heartiest
commonplaces of the English comedy of
manners. As in other Beaumont and
Fletcher plays, there is a fairly careful
balancing of characters in the two plots:
Elder Loveless is contrasted with his
profligate younger brother (these two are. in
fact, only different stages in the
development of a Jacobean gallant) and Elder
Loveless* mistress, the unreceptive Lady,
is contrasted not only with the overamo-
rous and aging Abigail but also with the
complaisant widow who married Young
Loveless. The dialogue is racy and
suggestive, and the plot complicated enough
to provide the intricate exchanges so dear
to the heart of the Jacobean theatergoer.
Extremely noticeable is a strong vein of
sexuality, but the matter is too artificial to
be obscene. On the whole, The Scornful
Lady is a good play of its kind,
particularly interesting because of the preview it
offers of the tinsel world of Restoration
comedy.
The Story:
Elder Loveless, who had fallen out of
favor with his mistress because he forced
her to kiss him in public, humbly begged
her pardon and urged her for me
Hundredth time to marry him. She was
adamant, however; for penance he must
travel for a year abroad. Dejectedly Elder
Loveless prepared for his journey, leaving
his house and income to the none too
tender mercies of his dissolute younger
brother, who had already squandered his
own lands and rents. Immediately after
the door closed on his elder brother,
Young Loveless and his four cronies—a
Captain, a Traveler, a Poet, and a To-
baccoman—began their carousing. Over
the protests of his brother's faithful
steward, Savil, Young Loveless surveyed his
good fortune and delightedly anticipated
the unlimited supply of drink and doxies
his brother's estate would buy.
At the same time, a new suitor for
the Lady's hand, Welford, arrived at her
house. Because of his generosity and good
looks, he was warmly received by Sir
Roger, the Lady's curate, and Abigail, her
aging and lecherous gentlewoman; how-
3379

ever, he got but cold favor from the Lady
herself, for in spite of her harsh
treatment of Elder Loveless, she had actually
given him her heart.
His vows to his mistress
notwithstanding, Elder Loveless did not take ship.
Instead, he disguised himself and returned
in order to test his brother and his
sweetheart by reporting his own death. He
arrived at his house to find his brother in
the midst of another round of debauchery.
Young Loveless took the sad news with
amazing calmness: he commended his
brother's soul to God, filled a bumper,
and drank with the company to his elder
brother's demise. And as soon as the
disguised brother left, Young Loveless
rejoiced at the prospect of running through
the estate he had just inherited.
Elder Loveless then delivered the news
of his death to the Lady. The reception
was at first all that he could wish. The
Lady burst into tears; but as Elder
Loveless continued to berate her for her cruelty
to her lover, she penetrated his disguise
and retaliated by pretending affection for
Welford, who was considerably startled
but pleased by the Lady's sudden change
in attitude toward him. Exasperated,
Elder Loveless threw off his disguise,
whereupon the Lady, revealing that she
had known him all along, bade him fulfill
the task she had set him if he ever
expected to enjoy her favor. Elder Loveless
retired in confusion. Welford then
attempted to press the advantage he
believed now offered him, but the Lady,
once again drastically altering her tone,
ordered him to be on his way. When
Abigail offered herself as second choice,
Welford, thoroughly disgusted, insulted her
and called for his horses.
Meanwhile. Young Loveless had been
hard at work disposing of his brother's
estate. From Morecraft, the usurer who
had bilked him of his own fortune, he
obtained £6,000 after promising to
consummate the sale later. Morecraft was
delighted with the bargain; from its
profits he expected to obtain a knighthood
and the hand of a wealthy and beautiful
widow.
When Morecraft and the Widow met
Young Loveless to take possession of Elder
Loveless' house, Young Loveless and the
Widow were immediately attracted to
each other. Before the Keys could be
delivered to Morecraft, however, Elder
Loveless reappeared in his own person.
Young Loveless, who was equal to any
shift in fortune, greeted his supposedly
dead brother with his usual equanimity.
Although the usurer declared the sale
void, Young Loveless, refusing to return
the money, told Morecraft to regard his
hard luck as a fair requital for the
cozening he had been responsible for in the
past. The Widow applauded Young
Loveless' shrewdness, whereupon she rejected
Morecraft and struck up a match with
the clever young wastrel.
Elder Loveless, equally determined not
to travel and to win his lady, tried another
gambit. Visiting her once more, rhe
adopted a scoffing tone, made light of her
former domination of him, and declared
that he loved her no longer. The Lady,
not so easily tricked, countered with that
feminine ruse, a feigned swoon. As the
remorseful Elder Loveless rushed to
comfort her, she burst into laughter and
ridiculed him for attempting such a
transparent deception. But she carried her
ridicule too far. Elder Loveless, now really
angry, left, ignoring her earnest pleas
that he return to her.
His love, however, was stronger than
his anger. Together with Welford, who
was quite as willing to have Martha, the
Lady's lovely younger sister, as the Lady
herself, Elder Loveless planned a last
desperate ruse to win his mistress.
Welford was disguised as a woman, and Elder
Loveless presented him to the jLady as
his future bride. This time the Lady was
thoroughly taken in. When Elder
Loveless compared her treatment of him with
the homely virtues of his new sweetheart,
the Lady, believing that she had lost her
faithful lover, attempted to save the
situation by offering to marry him
immediately. Elder Loveless accepted her
proposal and Martha, pitying Elder Loveless'
3380

supposedly abandoned sweetheart, took
the still disguised Welford to bed with
her.
The next morning the men had the
last laugh as Elder Loveless revealed the
plot to the Lady. Welford and the
embarrassed Martha hurried off to church.
Young Loveless and his new bride
appeared on the scene; Sir Roger and
Abigail were united, and Morecraft,
transformed from usurer to rake, drank to the
general happiness of all and distributed
money among the servants.
3381

THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jane Porter (1776-1850)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1296-1305
locale: Scotland, France, England
First published: 1810
Principal characters:
Sir William Wallace, a Scottish patriot
Earl of Mar, a Scottish nobleman
Lady Mar, his wife
Lady Helen Mar, his daughter
Edwin Ruthven, Wallace's friend
Edward I, King of England
Robert Bruce, heir to the Scottish throne
Earl of Gloucester, an English nobleman
Critique:
Miss Porter's desire in The Scottish
Chiefs, Or, The Life of Sir William
Wallace was to write the story of a great
national hero who was also a Christian hero.
Today the goodness and nobility of
William Wallace may seem overdrawn, but
the story moves always with a vigor and
momentum which carries the reader
along. The effectiveness of the story can
be attributed in part to the amount of
research Miss Porter did for her novel. The
sources she accepted as accurate are not
considered so today, yet the story is far
more historically correct than are most
modern historical novels. The Scottish
Chiefs has always been a great favorite,
largely because the events of the period
were in themselves highly exciting and
heroic.
The Story:
In the summer of 1296 Scotland was
finally at peace, for the Scottish king had
submitted to the authority of Edward I,
King of England. Sir William Wallace,
like many other Scottish lords, had retired
to his home at Ellerslie. One night he was
asked secretly to meet Sir John Monteith,
who gave him a mysterious iron box with
instructions that it was not to be opened
until Scotland was again free. On his way
home with the box, Wallace saw the old
Earl of Mar attacked by English soldiers.
Wallace saved his old friend and took the
wounded man to Ellerslie. There the
vengeance of the English governor
followed them. The wounded earl was
hidden in a well, and Wallace fled to the hills-
Lady Wallace was killed by the English
governor when she refused to give
information concerning her husband's
whereabouts or the iron box. Ellerslie was
burned. After the English had gone, Mar
was rescued and taken to Bothwell Castle.
Wallace had the box taken to the Abbot of
St. Fillan for safekeeping.
When Wallace heard that his wife had
been so cruelly murdered, he swore to free
Scotland from the tyrant Edward. Mar
promised him aid and men, and in a few
weeks Wallace had captured several
castles and their English garrisons. After
some successful battles Wallace learned
that Mar and his family had been
captured and jailed in Dumbarton Castle, and
he hastened there with his troops to save
them.
A young man, Edwin Ruthven, entered
the castle by stealth, to learn the strength
of its defense. Acting on Ruthven's
information, Wallace and his troops
captured the castle and saved Mar's family.
He escorted the fugitives to Bute, where
it was hoped that they would be safe until
Scotland was free.
While Wallace was at Bute, he learned
that the English had executed many of the
great Scottish chiefs in revenge for the
victories he had won. Wallace first led his
troops to Avr and captured that castle.
3382

Shortly afterward he attacked Berwick
Castle and captured its noble commander,
the Earl of Gloucester, son-in-law of Kino
Edward. Gloucester realized that
Edward's claims to Scotland were weak, and
that Wallace had the right and the
blessings of God on his side. The two men
became fast friends and Gloucester promised
never again to raise his sword against
Wallace. He planned to return to England
and plead with Edward to grant Scotland
independence and freedom.
On the same day Wallace received from
Lady Helen Mar a letter which said that
her father had been betrayed and that he
was a prisoner in Stirling Castle. Wallace
led his troops to Stirling at once, taking
with him Lord de Valence, an English
prisoner. As he approached the castle, the
English showed Mar on the battlements
and threatened to hang him if Wallace did
not surrender immediately. Wallace
countered this threat with a promise of death to
dc Valence if Mar were touched. Later
Wallace destroyed an English army
marching to reinforce the garrison at
Stirling. After this defeat Stirling
surrendered, and in the ancient hall of Snaw-
doun the Scottish nobles assembled and
named Wallace regent to rule for the king
whom Edward held hostage in England.
But some of the nobles, jealous of his
victories and popularity, could not see what
an honest and true Scot Wallace was.
When they heard that King Edward
himself was leading troops to Scotland to fight
Wallace, they planned to betray the
regent into English power.
Wallace met the English in the battle
of Falkirk. During the battle the false
Scottish lords turned their troops against
Wallace and tried to defeat him. That
night, while reconnoitering the English
lines, Wallace met Robert Bruce, the son
of the royal claimant who was half friend,
half ally of Edward. The young Bruce,
convinced of Wallace's virtue and honor,
promised to try to persuade his father to
join the patriots fighting for Scotland's
freedom. In the next day's fighting Mar
was wounded and Lady Helen Mar
captured. On his deathbed Mar made
Wallace promise to save her from Lord de
Valence, the English knight who had
made her his prisoner. Wallace promised
that he would. Edward, meanwhile, had
retreated to English soil, and all would
have gone well if the nobles had supported
Wallace. Dissension broke out in the
Scottish Parliament when Lord Cummins
declared that Wallace was trying to seize
the throne for himself. Wallace, realizing
that Scotland would be torn with internal
quarrels if he remained regent, resigned
his post, much to the sorrow of all true
Scots. Insisting that her noble birth would
help him to secure the throne, Lady Mar
tried to persuade him to marry her after
her husband's death. Disgusted, Wallace
left her to go to England to save Lady
Helen.
Disguised as a minstrel, he made his
way to the castle of Durham, where
Edward held his court. His voice soon won
him the favor of Edward's queen, and he
was often called to sing for her. He found
his old friends, Gloucester and Robert
Bruce. His father having died, Bruce was
now the heir to the throne. He declared
himself ready to fight beside Wallace for
his country's freedom. When Edward
became suspicious of the minstrel's identity,
it was the Earl of Gloucester who helped
Wallace to escape. Bruce promised to join
him before long.
Wallace had learned that de Valence
had taken Lady Helen to France and had
locked her in a castle there. Bruce joined
Wallace in Rouen. He and Bruce were
well received by the French king.
Wearing a suit of royal French armor which the
king had given him, Wallace entered the
prison of Lady Helen and rescued her.
Disguised as a page, she returned to
Scotland with Wallace and Bruce.
Wallace again turned his sword against
the enemies of Scotland and fought under
the new regent, Lord Cummins. One day
a knight presented himself to Wallace and
asked to be allowed to fight under the
anonymous title of the Knight of the
Green Plume. Wallace gave his
permission, little knowing that the knight was
Lady Mar in disguise. Bruce, not wishing
3383

to claim the throne of Scotland until after
he had fought for Scottish freedom, had
taken the name of the Count de Longue-
ville. He fought bravely in several battles.
Then, severely wounded, he was sent to
the castle of Huntingtower until he
recovered. During his absence Wallace was
surprised to discover that the Knight of
the Green Plume was really Lady Mar.
She revealed herself to him and again
begged him to marry her. When he
refused, she struck at him with her dagger
and wounded him slightly. As she left his
tent, she boasted that she would some day
see his head rolling beneath the
executioner's ax.
A short time later Wallace received
word that he had been accused of treason,
and he was summoned before the chiefs
of Scotland to stand trial. His accuser, he
soon learned, was Lady Mar, who tried to
prove by false letters that Wallace had
betrayed Scotland to the King of France. The
council, led by Lord Cummins, decided
against him, and in a fury he swore that
he would leave Scotland forever. When
he learned that his enemies were planning
to turn him over to the English, he and
his faithful follower, Edwin Ruthven,
attempted to flee to France. Sir John
Monteith, turning against his old friend,
betrayed him to the English. Monteith
and his men surrounded the hut where
Wallace and Ruthven had stopped for the
night. Ruthven was killed defending his
leader. Wallace was put in chains and
taken to London.
When Robert Bruce learned of this
tragedy, he left his sickbed and made a
futile attempt to save Wallace. Lady
Helen Mar dressed herself in the page's
costume in which she had escaped from
de Valence wifh Wallace's help and set
out for London. By bribing the guards,
she gained entrance to the Tower of
London and saw Wallace in prison. The two
were discovered by Wallace's old friend,
Gloucester, who sent Lady Helen to plead
with the king. Her mission was fruitless.
With Gloucester's aid she and Wallace
were married on the eve of his execution.
The next day Wallace died a shameful
traitor's death. Gloucester, however, had
the body saved from indignity and
brought back to the tower. Robert Bruce,
arriving too late to see Wallace alive,
helped Lady Helen smuggle the body
back to Scotland.
Robert Bruce raised the royal standard
in his own name. The Scottish nobles,
learning the identity of the Count de
Longueville, acclaimed him their rightful
monarch. He led his army against
Edward's troops in the famous battle of
Bannockbum, defeated the English, and
won Scotland's freedom.
After the battle, Bruce went to be
crowned at the church of St. Fillan.
There, with Wallace's body newly placed
in a grave, he was crowned and married
to Isabella Mar, Lady Helen's younger
sister. As the ceremony ended, Lady Helen
fell dying on the tomb of Wallace. Then
the Abbot of St. Fillan, remembering the
box which had been left in his care,
brought it forward in the belief that it
contained holy relics which would save
the dying woman. In the box were the
crown and regalia of the King of Scotland.
So Wallace, dead, restored to Robert
Bruce his rightful crown.
3384

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE
Type of work: Travel sketches and impressions
Author: H. M. Tomlinson (1873-1958)
Time: 1912
Locale: England, at sea, South America
First published: 1912
Principal personages:
The Author
The Skipper, captain of the ship
The Ship's Doctor
Although the world has changed a
great deal since this book was written,
The Sea and the Jungle is still a classic of
its kind, not only because it tells an
interesting story of a journey away from the
humdrum existence of everyday living,
but also because it is an example of travel
writing at its best. Tomlinson was
working on a newspaper when the
opportunity arose for him to make the long
journey to South America aboard the Capella,
a tramp steamer which was to deliver
industrial supplies and coal deep in the
jungles of Brazil. He made his decision
quickly and was signed on the ship as
purser.
Tomlinson's narrative is unassuming
and straightforward. It tells of the voyage
of the Capella from Swansea to Para, on
the Brazilian coast, and then some two
thousand miles up the Amazon River and
its tributaries to the small settlement of
Porto Velho, thence to the Barbados, and
on to Tampa, Florida, where Tomlinson
left the ship to take a train to New York
and make a fast passage home to
England. Despite the simplicity of his
method, however, the author is not a simple
man, and his perceptions and writing
style make this a revealing and exciting
book.
As in many travel books, The Sea and
the Jungle contains four kinds of
material: the narrative of the events of the
trip; lengthy and detailed descriptions of
the things which caught the author's
interest; stories that were told to the author
by seamen and various unusual men he
encountered in South America; and the
reflections on life, nature, and mankind
that the circumstances of the journey
provoked in the author's mind. These
elements, skillfully blended, give the book
its structure, vividness of detail, and
stylistic excellence.
Aside from the bare outline of the
major events of the trip—the embarkation,
the arrival, the delivery of the cargo—the
narrative is rilled with the little daily
occurrences that give such a book its real
life. It is in this part of the writing that
Tomlinson best fulfills the purpose
implied by his statement: "This is a travel
book for honest men." In his full
attention to the hardships and discomforts of
the trip, Tomlinson makes evident his
conviction that escape from dullness may
be exciting but seldom comfortable. The
insects, the danger, and, perhaps most of
all, the incredible heat are the enemies of
comfort; and Tomlinson makes the reader
acutely, even painfully, aware of them
constantly.
The author was, however, gifted with
a great interest in practically every aspect
of travel without the bent for making
didactic judgments of other people and
other lands that often irritate readers of
travel books. Occasionally, as in his
admiration for the rebellion of a black heifer
that was being transported upstream to
one of the railroad camps, he is moved to
comment upon the human qualities of
nonhuman things such as animals,
insects, and the jungle itself, which
Tomlinson saw as a brooding, mysterious giant
which silently tolerated the invasion of
men but which held a secret that no man
could wring from it.
Along with the less inviting aspects of
the journey, Tomlinson presents whatever
he found beautiful or interesting, matters
3385

which he describes with great sensitivity
and a fine technique. Of course, the first
step in good description is accurate and
imaginative observation; after this comes
the expression of this perception so that
the reader may share it. In this book the
author combines careful observation with
artfully expressed, often nearly
impressionistic, description. The two main
subjects for the description are, naturally, the
sea and the jungle. The voyage to Para,
which takes up roughly the first third of
the book, takes the writer and his
shipmates from a cold, wet England to the
warmth and brilliant color of equatorial
waters.
The main feature of the voyage, from
a descriptive standpoint, is the storm
which struck the ship shortly after its
departure. Tomlinson's description of this
event ranks with the best such passages
in Conrad. Perhaps the most striking
quality is the originality of the
comparisons, always an important device of the
describer. A wave, for example, seems to
Tomlinson's eye "as a heaped mass of
polished obsidian, having minor hollows
and ridges on its slopes, conchoidal
fractures in its glass/'
Once arrived at Para, Tomlinson
devotes his descriptive attention to the
jungle and its inhabitants in an equally
detailed but more personal way. Here he
had more time to observe and reflect the
wider variety of items that engaged his
attention. Pages are given over to the
mass of green foliage that lines the river's
edge. Paragraphs are devoted to one
insect. Through it all, without an excess of
direct comment but more by the nature
of his descriptions, Tomlinson's intense
interest in the whole panorama is shown.
He is overcome with delight at sighting a
morpho butterfly and compares it to a
Tittle piece of blue sky flitting about the
forest.
Tomlinson's reputation as a stylist is
high, and descriptive passages in this
book show his writing at a high level.
His mixture of long and short sentences
and clauses, each compact and full of
concrete details and carefully chosen
adjectives, is a lesson in writing vivid but
highly detailed description without
becoming dull and seeming long-winded.
No doubt much easier to
write—because their very material is sure to be
interesting to the reader—are the several
stories that Tomlinson includes at well-
spaced intervals. These tales range from
the fantastic seamen's yarn about Bill
Moffat's encounter with Davy Jones to
the chilling story of how Captain Davis'
interest in shrunken heads led him to an
unfortunate first-hand experience of the
phenomenon. Once more, Tomlinson
refrains from comment, simply allowing the
narrative itself to impress the reader with
the strange nature of the teller and the
peculiar facets of life to be found in these
remote places.
The foregoing kinds of material will
delight most readers, but many may be
repelled by Tomlinson's too-frequent
statements of his view of things that are
not really connected with the essence of
The Sea and the Jungle. Certainly the
main idea, and the one which impelled
him to leave London and go with the
Skipper on the trip, is bound to appeal to
many people. The thought of escape to
another world, preferably an exotic one,
occupies everyone's mind at some time or
another, but the reader may well lose
sympathy with Tomlinson s repeated
statement that the reader has not really
eaten, or slept, or appreciated human
companionship until he has done so
under circumstances similar to those enjoyed
by the author. Here Tomlinson comes
close to preaching, and it mars the effect
of his work.
Several outright homilies castigate the
spirit of commercialism that was ruining
the beauties of nature along the Amazon
and was sending to death or misery brave
men who often had no real idea of why
they were being so sacrificed. In 1912,
Tomlinson's audience had not had so
much time as the current reader to
become weary of declarations like this one:
"I begin to think the usual commercial
mind is the most dull, wasteful, and
ignorant of all the sad wonders in the pag-
3386

eant of humanity." His admiration for
the men who are the victims of this kind
of mind is a less disturbing feature of the
book, and his statements about the beauty
and mystery of the jungle and the life
that is lived there are quite fitting. It is
really the condemnation of things apart
from his direct experience on the trip, but
things which this experience causes him
to ponder on, that seems out of place or
obtrusive, breaking the mood and tonal
quality of the whole. Tomlinson's
sarcasm on the Poor Law, for instance,
weakens the effect of his writing.
These passages—all toward the end of
the book—are, however, insignificant in
comparison to the rest of The Sea and
the ]ungle, and Tomlinson's
achievement is great in spite of them. Few
writers, in either travel books or fiction, have
been able more skillfully to capture the
spirit of a place, its human implications,
and to express them in such a
well-controlled writing style and with such finely
balanced sensitivity.
3387

THE SEA OF GRASS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Conrad Richter (1890- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Tune of plot: 1885-1910
Locale: The Southwest
First published: 1936
Principal characters:
Colonel Jim Brewton,
Lutie,, his wife
Hal, his nephew
Brice Chamberlain, a
Critique:
The Sea of Grass conveys within its
brief framework the whole atmosphere
of space and freedom of the West, the
sweeping drama of the cow country
at the end of the last century, when
cattlemen fought to hold their free range
against the homesteader's fence and plow.
For a few years an empire was available.
Whether the ranchers had a greater right
to it than the nesters is open to dispute,
but the battle they fought was frontier
history in brief passage. In this novel
Conrad Richter has reclaimed a dramatic
segment of the American past.
The Story:
Hal Brewton never forgot the day he
stood on the railroad platform at Salt
Fork, where he waited to meet Lutie
Cameron, who was arriving from St.
Louis to marry his uncle, Colonel Jim
Brewton, owner of the vast Cross B
Ranch. At present Colonel Brewton was
involved in a range war with nesters
coming to rip the sod off the grazing
lands in order to raise wheat.
On the day of Lutie's arrival two of
the colonel's cowhands were being tried
for shooting at a homesteader on the
Brewton range. Although the colonel's
lawyer, Henry McCurtin, won the case,
the opposition lawyer, young Brice
Chamberlain, protested indignantly that
the victory would not be permanent.
Colonel Brewton was contemptuous of
the lawyer's warnings.
THE SEA OF GRASS by Conrad Richter. By permi
Inc. Copyright, 1936, by the Curtit Publishing Co.
, a pioneer rancher
lawyer
Lutie Cameron was a lovely woman,
too lovely for that still-wild territory.
When men saw her, she won them
completely. Only Hal refused to be moved
by her charm. All that winter in an
academy at Lexington, Missouri, he
thought of her as part of the
destruction coming from the East to destroy the
sea of grass he loved.
The following summer he returned to
a changed ranch house. Lutie had filled
it with furniture and flowers and had
planted a row of cottonwoods and
tamarisks about it. Guests from the whole
territory came and went. Officers from
the Army posts, officials of the railroad
companies, neighboring ranch men—all
found ample welcome at the home of
Colonel and Mrs. Brewton.
The old-timers who had known the
colonel before he had married Lutie
hoped she would settle down after her
babies came. The babies were born, two
boys and a girl; however, Lutie did not
settle down. The third baby was scarcely
in its cradle before she was dancing with
Brice Chamberlain as her favored
partner. Colonel Brewton ignored the gossip
which was whispered about Lutie.
Local politics shifted with the
administration in Washington, for the territory
depended upon appointments to its
judicial staffs. For a while Brice
Chamberlain had influential support from
Washington. Then, during another
administration, the forces which backed
a of the author and the publisher*. Alfred A. Knopf.
3388

Colonel Brewton were in power, and
the incoming tide of settlers seemed to be
checked. Hal read of the change with
great pleasure, but when he returned to
Salt Fork he discovered that Chamberlain
was still in his law office on the Salt
Fork plaza. He learned that hundreds
of settlers were waiting nearby for a
change in government which would
permit them to stake claims upon the miles
of land held by men like Colonel Brew-
ton.
Then Lutie calmly announced that she
was leaving her husband and children.
She explained that she had had enough
of the flat grass country and the fighting
between ranchers and homesteaders. She
claimed she would be able to get
possession of her three children, Jimmy,
Brock, and Sarah Beth later, by court
action.
The town was informed that Mrs.
Brewton was leaving for a visit in St.
Louis. Most of the people knew better.
Their feelings were confirmed when they
saw Brice Chamberlain with a bag
packed, ready to head east on the same
train. But the colonel paced the station
platform, a gun belt buckled under his
broadcloth coat. Chamberlain did not
board the train.
A few days later the colonel sent Hal
to Denver, to give Lutie a thousand
dollars. He knew that his wife's cowardly
lover had no intention of following her
But Hal could find no trace of Lutie
in Denver. At the same time a new
administration appointed Chamberlain a
judge of the district court. Back in Salt
Fork, Hal saw the white-covered wagons
of the emigrant trains moving westward
into the range country.
When Colonel Brewton planned tc
run the homesteaders off his land, a
troop of cavalry from Fort Ewing was
sent to guard him until all chances of
his stopping the land-grabbers were gone.
Studying for his medical degree, Hal
spent three more years away from Salt
Fork. When he returned, he discovered
that his sea of grass had been hopelessly
despoiled. His uncle seemed much older.
The Brewton children were growing up
wild, for their mother had never sent
for them.
One day Hal saw Jimmy and Brock
fighting in the dusty Salt Fork street.
Then a nester among the onlookers called
out that he was betting on the Chamber
lain brat. So Hal heard for the first time,
the rumor that Brock was not his uncle'i,
son. Hal fired at the nester but missed.
When Colonel Brewton appeared, the
crowd, even the jeering nesters, grew
quiet.
As young Brock grew older, he became
the image of Brice Chamberlain. It was
obvious that he realized the truth and
resented it. He took to gambling,
drinking, and barroom brawling. At last he
was caught cheating in a card game.
For that disgrace Colonel Brewton could
not forgive him, but he continued to
indulge the boy and pay his debts.
By that time Hal was practicing
medicine in Salt Fork. He was glad
when Sarah Beth, who had been away
at school, returned and began to look
after her father.
One day Brock shot and killed Dutch
Charley, who nad accused Brock of using
a woman to help him cheat at cards.
Brock was locked up, but Brice
Chamberlain soon got him out of jail. When
Brock returned home, he defied Colonel
Brewton and said he was leaving the
Brewton ranch to go to work for Brice
Chamberlain's interests. This last blow
to the colonel's pride permanently
wrecked his health.
Brock now took the name of
Chamberlain, an act which cut the old colonel
still more. Brock began to ride wild,
shooting up towns and staging reckless
holdups. He became the talk of the
Southwest for his daring lawlessness.
At last he was trapped by a posse of
homesteaders and held at bay in a cabin
by twenty or thirty vigilantes.
That same day Lutie Brewton
unexpectedly returned. She was fifteen
years older, but she still carried herself
3389

with quiet self-possession. Lutie
immediately assumed her place in her
household as though she had been away
fifteen days, not fifteen years.
Meanwhile the colonel rode out to
the cabin where Brock was holding off
the sheriff and the armed and angry
nesters. With Hal, who had been
summoned to attend a wounded deputy, he
broke through to Brock, who lay dying
from a bullet wound in his lung. They
brought his body back across desolate
country scorching in raw sunlight, with
nesters* families huddled about sagging
shacks and plows rusting in fields where
wheat would not grow in hot, rainless
summers. Sand was beginning to drift
among dugouts and rotting fence posts.
Brock was buried on the Brewton
ranch. The stone inscribed with the
name "Brock Brewton" was the old
colonel's challenge to all gossip and
speculation around Salt Fork. He and Lutie
took up their life where she had broken
it off years before, and no one ever dared
ask either the colonel or his wife where
she had been. It seemed to Hal that the
colonel had found peace at last.
3390

THE SEA WOLF
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jack London (1876-1916)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1904
Locale: Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea
First published: 1904
Principal characters:
Humphrey Van Weyden (Hump), an unwilling sailor aboard the Ghost
Wolf Larsen, captain of the Ghost
Mugridge, ship's cook
Maud Brewster, a survivor picked up at sea
Critique:
Jack London began his career as a
sailor, and on shipboard he observed the
sea life that he later described. A teller
of two-fisted yarns, he wrote brilliant
description to go with tailor-made plots.
Enormously popular with American
readers, many of his books have been
filmed and many of them republished
year after year. In The Sea Wolf London
told an impossible story with such gusto
and fervor that he created reality all his
own within his limited, specialized world
of violent action and masculine interests.
The Story:
When the ship in which he was a
passenger sank in a collision off the coast
of California, Humphrey Van Weyden
was picked up by the crew of Wolf
Larsen's ship, the Ghost, a sailing vessel
headed for seal hunting ranges in the
Bering Sea. Wolf Larsen was a brute.
Van Weyden witnessed the inhuman
treatment of a sick mate who died shortly
afterward. He saw a cabin boy badly
beaten. In his own interview with the
captain, he fared little better. Instead
of promising to help him return to San
Francisco, Wolf demanded that Van
Weyden sign as cabin boy and stay with
his ship.
The crew set to work taking in the
topsails and jibs. From that moment Hump,
as the crew called Van Weyden, learned
life the hard way. He had to get his sea
legs and he had to learn the stoical
indifference to pain and suffering which
the sailors seemed to have mastered
already. As cabin boy, he peeled potatoes
and washed greasy pots and pans.
Mugridge, the cook, abused him and robbed
him of his money.
Only one man, Louis, seemed to share
Hump's feelings about the captain and
his ship. Louis predicted many deaths
would result from this voyage. He said
that Wolf Larsen was a violent,
dangerous man, that the crew and seal hunters
were vicious outcasts. Wolf did seem
mad. He varied from moods of wild
exultation to spells of extreme
depression. In his cabin were classic books of
literature, and when he spoke he chose
either to use excellent English or the
lingo of the sailors. Sometimes he amused
himself by arguing with Hump. He
claimed that life was without meaning.
During a southeaster Hump badly
dislocated his knee, and Wolf
unexpectedly allowed Hump to rest for three
days while he talked to him about
philosophy and literature. When Hump
returned to the galley, the cook was
whetting his knife. In return, Hump
obtained a knife and began whetting
it also. His actions so frightened the
cowardly cook that Hump was no longev
the victim of his abuse.
Louis talked of the coming season with
the seals. Moreover, he hinted that
trouble would come if the Macedonia,
a sealing steamer, came near. Captained
by Death Larsen, the brother and enemy
of Wolf, the Macedonia was a certain
THE SEA WOLF by Jack London. By permission of Mrs. Charmian London. Published by The Macmillan
Co. Copyright, 1903, by The Century Co. Renewed, 1931, by Charmian K. London.
3391

menace. As a prelude to things to come,
an outbreak of fury took place aboard
the Ghost. First, Wolf Larsen and the
mate beat a seaman named Johnson to
a pulp because he complained of ill
treatment; then Leach, the former cabin
boy, beat the cook. Later two hunters
exchanged shots, severely wounding each
other, and Wolf beat them because they
had crippled themselves before the
hunting season began. Afterward Wolf
suffered from one of his periodic
headaches. To Hump, life on shipboard was
a tremendous experience in human
cruelty and viciousness.
A few days later the men tried to
mutiny. In the row which followed,
Johansen, the mate, was drowned and
Wolf was nearly killed. While Hump
dressed Wolf's wounds, Wolf promoted
him to mate in Johansen's place. Both
Leach and Johnson would have killed
Wolf in a second, but he remained too
wary for them.
At the seal hunting grounds a terrific
storm cost them the lives of four men.
The ship itself was beaten, its sails torn
to shreds and portions of the deck swept
into the sea.
When Leach and Johnson deserted in
a small skiff, Wolf started out in
pursuit. On the morning of the third day
an open boat was sighted. The boat
contained a young woman and four
men, survivors from a sinking steamer.
Wolf took them aboard, planning to
make sailors of the men as he had of
Hump. Shortly afterward the Ghost
overtook Johnson and Leach. Refusing
to pick them up, Wolf let them struggle
to get aboard until their small craft
capsized. He watched them drown
without comment and then ordered the ship's
course set for a return to the seal
hunting grounds.
The woman survivor was Maud
Brewster, a rich woman and a poet, as weak
physically for a woman as Hump had
been for a man. Wolf resented the
intimacy which sprang up at once between
Maud Brewster and Hump, but he took
out his resentment by deciding to give
the cook the first bath the cook had
ever been known to take.
At his orders Mugridge was thrown
into the water with a tow rope slung
about his middle. First, however, the
cook fled madly about the ship, causing
one man to break a leg and another to
be injured in a fall. Before Wolf was
ready to bring Mugridge back aboard
ship, a shark bit off the cook's right foot
at the ankle. Dragged aboard, Mugridge
in his fury tried to bite Wolf's leg, and
the captain almost strangled him. Then
Hump bandaged the wounded man's leg.
Maud Brewster looked on, nearly
fainting.
The Macedonia appeared one day and
robbed Wolf's hunters of their day's
catch of seals by cutting off the line of
approach to the Ghost. In revenge, Wolf
set his men to work capturing hunters
from the Macedonia. When the
Macedonia gave chase, Wolf sailed his ship
into a fog bank.
That night Wolf tried to seize Maud,
but Hump, awakening, ran his knife
into Wolf's shoulder. At the same time,
Wolf was overcome by one ©f his
headaches, this seizure accompanied by
blindness. Hump helped him to his bunk
and under cover of darkness he and
Maud made their escape in an open
boat. After days of tossing they came
to a small island. Using supplies they
had taken from the Ghost, they set about
making themselves houses and gathering
food for the coming winter.
One morning Hump saw the wreck
of the Ghost lying offshore. Going
aboard, he discovered Wolf alone, his
crew having deserted him to go aboard
Death Larsen's ship. Wolf seemed nearly
insane, and had only a sick man's desire
to sleep. Hump stole some pistols and
food which he took to the island.
Hump, planning to repair the masts
of the Ghost, began work on the crippled
ship. That night Wolf undid all Hump's
work, and cast the masts off the vessel.
Hump and Maud began anew to refit
3392

the ship. One day Wolf attempted to
murder Hump, but during the struggle
he had one of his spasms and fainted.
While he was still unconscious, they
handcuffed him and shut him in the
hold.
Then they moved aboard the Ghost
and the work of refitting the vessel went
forward. Wolf became more than a
prisoner. He had a stroke which
paralyzed the right side of his body.
Hump continued to repair the vessel.
At last it was able to sail. Wolf Larsen
finally lost the use of his muscles and
lay in a coma. When he died, Hump
and Maud buried him at sea. By that
time they were deeply in love. When a
United States revenue cutter discovered
them one day, they felt that their
dangerous odyssey was at an end. Bui
they were about to begin another, less
perilous iourney, together.
3393

THE SEAGULL
Type of work: Drama
Author: Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First presented: 1896
Principal characters:
Irina Arkadin, an actress
Konstanttn Treplev, her son
Pyotr Sortn, her brother
Llya Shamraev, manager of his estate
Polina, his wife
Masha, their daughter
Nina Zaretchyn, a young actress
Boris Trigorin, an author
Yevgeny Dorn, a doctor
Semyon Medvedenko, a schoolmaster
Critique:
The Seagull was based on an
apparently trifling event in Chekhov's life. One
afternoon, while he was taking a walk
with his friend, llya Levitan, the landscape
painter, he saw Levitan shoot a seagull
which was flying over the river. Later, the
moody painter, feeling he was scorned by
the woman he loved, threw the dead
seagull at her feet and threatened to kill
himself. The play Chekhov made from
this incident is perhaps the most elaborate
and realistic analysis of the life of the
artist ever presented in dramatic form, but
all that almost any other dramatist would
have selected as the material for his play
takes place in Moscow between the third
and fourth acts. What we see is the effect
of what has taken place, and in this lies
the essence of what Chekhov has
contributed to the art of the theater.
The Story:
One day Konstantin Treplev killed a
seagull and laid it at the feet of Nina, the
beautiful young actress with whom he
was hopelessly in love. He told her that
unless she could love him, he too would
be lying dead at her feet. But Nina was
not in love with Konstantin; she was in
fatuated with Trigorin, the famous
novelist, who in turn was in love with Irina
Arkadin, the actress, Konstantin's mother.
Konstantin hated Trigorin, looking
upon him as a purveyor of empty phrases,
a writer entirely different from what he
himself hoped to become. Konstantin's
ambition was to create new and more
expressive literary forms, and he had
written a play in which Nina had
consented to appear.
The performance, which was staged in
the open air on the estate of Pyotr Sorin,
Konstantin s uncle, was not exactly a
success, although it possessed unquestioned
literary merit. Madame Arkadin and
Trigorin, who were present, refused to
take the production seriously. Trigorin
was most impressed by the performance of
nineteen-year-old Nina in the principal
role.
Madame Arkadin's behavior at her son's
play was typical of her attitude toward
Konstantin in every aspect of their
relationship. As a famous actress, whose
popularity depended upon her keeping
her youth and good looks, she naturally
was not overjoyed at the constant
reminder that she was the mother of a
twenty-five-year-old son. Consequently,
she kept Konstantin in the country where
he would not be seen and thus be
associated with her in the public mind.
THE SEAGULL by Anton Chekhov. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright,
1912, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed.
3394

Moreover, she gave him little or no money
to spend, so that he was forced to wear
the same suit for years until it was
threadbare. Her brother, Pyotr Sorin, had taken
his sister to task on several occasions for
her stinginess, but she had pleaded
poverty, meaning, of course, that she
preferred to spend her money on herself.
In spite of the way she treated him,
Konstantin was greatly attached to his
mother, so much so that he developed a
morbid, unhealthy attitude toward his
work and life in general. Occasionally he
would lose his temper and quarrel
violently with his mother. When he did so,
she would burst into tears, and Konstantin
would be overcome promptly by feelings
of remorse.
Konstantin was not the only
unbalanced individual on the Sorin estate.
Another was Masha, the daughter of
Pyotr Sorin's manager, who was as
hopelessly in love with Konstantin as he was
with Nina. Although she was only a
young girl, she dressed habitually in black
—in mourning, as she said, for her chronic
unhappiness. Semyon Medvedenko, the
schoolmaster, was in love with her, but he
had only twenty-three roubles a month
on which to support his mother, two
sisters, and a brother. After two years, giving
up all hope that Konstantin would ever
notice her, Masha decided to marry
Semyon. She bore him a child, but she was
so indifferent to it that the schoolmaster
had to take care of the baby in addition to
his other responsibilities.
Konstantin, like most young writers,
knew many people who were willing to
offer him advice on how he should write,
and what he should write about. Among
these advisers was Yevgeny Dorn, the
local doctor, who had never written a line
in his life, but who had theories about
how it should be done. His idea was that
Konstantin spent entirely too much time
worrying about literary form, whereas
literature was not a matter of form, good
or bad, but of spontaneous ideas. Another
dispenser of advice was the old man,
Pyotr Sorin. He suggested that his nephew
write a story called The Man Who
Wished, based on Sorin's own life. He
maintained that when he was young he
had wished to become an author, but had
failed. Then he wanted to become an
orator, but he spoke abominably. Finally
he wanted to marry, but he never did.
When Sorin was reminded that he also
wished to become State Councilor and
succeeded, he roared with laughter,
claiming that he had achieved the post
without any effort of his own.
But the most complete analysis of the
writer's art was made by the novelist,
Trigorin. One day, while he was taking
notes on the personal habits of the
neurotic Masha, he was interrupted by
Nina, who expressed the view that a
writer's life must be a very fascinating
one. He told her that writing was merely
a violent obsession which lays hold of a
man and places him on a treadmill from
which there is no escape. Against his
will, almost, the writer of fiction was
compelled to utilize everything in his
experience for his next story. Even the
seemingly trivial incident of the seagull
which Konstantin had shot, Trigorin
viewed as material for a story. He began
to see Nina herself as the seagull and
himself as the hunter. He realized that
Madame Arkadin would be furiously jealous
of his interest in the younger woman. Fate
played into his hands when Nina
promised to run away from home and join him
in Moscow.
For nearly a year Nina was Trigorin's
mistress in Moscow. After she bore him
a child that died, Trigorin deserted her.
Even her acting career was unsuccessful,
consisting largely of a tour of country
towns. All that time Konstantin followed
Nina about, but the only encouragement
he got was an occasional letter which
showed that Nina's spirit was near the
breaking point.
At last, worn out and hungry, she came
to the Sorin estate, which awakened in
her memories of her happy girlhood.
Konstantin urged her to stay with him or to
allow him to go away with her, but she
refused. She had accepted an engagement
for the winter with a second-rate repertory
3395

company at Eltz, and there she intended
to go as the next step in her career as an
actress. Out of her suffering she had
realized that in any art it was not the honor
and glory which mattered—it was
perseverance. But Konstantin did not have that
kind of strength, and when Nina, the
seagull, flew out of his life forever he
locked himself in his room and put a
bullet through his head.
3396

A SEASON IN HELL
Type of work: Prose poem
Author: Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
First published: 1873
Still a matter of controversy and
interpretation, A Season in Hell (JJne
Saison en Enfer) is perhaps best
described by the critic Wallace Fowlie as
"the poem of a confession." Historically,
Rimbaud's central work is somewhat in
the spirit of Saint Augustine's
Confessions or Dante's Vita Nuova, but more
in the form of Baudelaire's Flowers of
Evil. This poet, who wrote no more after
composing this work in his nineteenth
year, was in certain respects a literary
precursor of Hart Crane and Henry
Miller in America, T. S. Eliot and W. H.
Auden in England, Rainer Maria Rilke
in Germany, and the Existentialists in
France, especially so in that he wrote not
only brilliantly of himself but also
prophetically of the modern world. He has
been called the Villon of his day, an
enfant terrible who, like Lucifer, plunged
into the depths and like Faust was at last
redeemed.
This strange and compelling poem
begins with an unmarked introduction
of the images and symbols used so
brilliantly later, a preview of Lis odyssey
downward which includes moments from
innocence to depravity in his short life.
He tells of the childhood of himself and
the race, "a feast where all hearts opened
and all wines flowed," from which he
and we have departed. Once he took
Beauty on his knee—perhaps normal love
which he never knew but fleetingly—
and found her anathema, a figure
offering a possible explanation of his own
homosexuality. From that time on he was
pursued by the Furies of poetry, exile,
and hate in his search of a lost innocence.
"Misfortune was my God," he declared as
he invited all suffering, and he found the
"key to the ancient feast" was charity.
The devil, who welcomed this inverted
A SEASON IN HELL by Arthur Rimbaud. Trail
»ion of the publishers, New Directions. Copyright*
Dante without a Vergil, called him a
hyena, that horribly laughing outcast or
satirist of society, and told him, "Attain
death with all your appetites, your
selfishness and all the capital sins!" For him,
then, the poet tore "these few, hideous
pages from my notebook of one of the
damned."
"Bad Blood," the longest of the
several books of the seasons (from the
springtime youth of mankind until the dread
present winter of civilization) describes
ancestral recollections, the Gallic days,
pagan rites, magnificent lusts, and
especially ineptness in the sheer mechanics
of living. This blood wars with that of
Christianity, which has acted as a
weakening rather than a strengthening
transfusion. The poet sees himself as a
visionary who remains pagan: "I cannot see
myself at the councils of Christ; nor at
the councils of Nobles—representatives
of Christ." The inferior race has overrun
everything in these last centuries of
reason, nationalism, and especially our
age of science, "the viaticum" which he
so despises, verbal, analytic, and
statistical. He frighteningly foretells of his own
destruction through perversion, his erotic
flights into Africa, and finally his
miserable death preceded by a leg amputation
to stave off a cancer.
The poet is an outcast who cannot be
judged as other men; this is the theme
which inspired him originally to call his
long poem Livre negre, for his skin is
deeper and he is more primitive. He sees
all saints as outcasts, even convicts, who
destroy only to save; but he learns that
in persecution the strong do not cry out
against their fate. Yet he, the poet, is no
different from others, the ones in power,
who "have drunk of the untaxed liquor
of Satan's still," and in this realization
:ed by Louise Var&se. Excerpts reprinted by permis-
■5, 1947, by New Directions.
3397

he finds comfort or even escape. He will
live, bless life, love his brothers, find
God. From depravity to hope he goes in
search of his lost innocence, but like the
fierce Saints, "anchorites, artists such as
are not wanted anymore."
"Night of Heir describes the eternal
punishment as the fires of desire for
salvation. This is not the inferno the poet's
catechism taught him, the errors of his
elders transplanted to the innocents. Here
his symbolism moves toward surrealism:
. . . Satan, Old Nick, runs with the
wild grain . . . Jesus walks on the
purple briars and they do not bend
. . . Jesus walked on the troubled
waters. The lantern showed him to us,
erect, white, with long brown hair, on
the flank of an emerald wave. . . .
He then goes on to ask for separate hells
of pride, anger, laziness—a whole
symphony. But this exquisite suffering is not
to be; he knows only a slow deterioration
during which the sinner is intact,
observing himself unhidden and alone.
In the next two parts, "Delirium I"
and "Delirium II," the poet goes on a
pilgrimage to view his own carnal love
and visionary love. The first part
describes with uncomfortable intimacy the
older Verlaine and the insatiable
Rimbaud, the former the foolish virgin and
the latter the demonic bridegroom: the
meetings, the raptures, the quarrels, the
youth's sadistic torturing of the older
man, the latter's rejection of marital
relations, the drunkenness and disorder, the
final disruption through violence.
Symbolically, this unholy alliance is almost
a literal hell on earth in response to the
uncontrollable. Escape is not possible,
though the relationship is sterile, and yet
there is a sense of rapture which is
spoiled only by the lack of perfection,
the absence of a higher, more intellectual
realization which both sought. "Hunger,"
a poem within "Delirium II," suggests
that through love we may get a brief
glimpse of truth, of eternity; the poet
sees himself as part of a "fabulous opera"
containing all these contradictions.
Carnal man creates life; visionary man creates
art—or, rather, both re-create from the
substance of God. Profundity can now
be expressed only as a comic opera by
that buffoon, the poet.
In "The Impossible," the attempt to
bend time backward, the poet is seen
running on a treadmill. In the
"Occidental swamps" we are mired down and
catch only a glimpse of the old Orient,
"the first and eternal wisdom." Instead,
we cling to the pompous platitudes of
M. Prudhomme, the self-righteous man
whom Rimbaud thought was born of
Christianity. But we can move in our
theology to the vigor of Eden where
"Through the spirit we go to God!"
"Lightning Flash" is a brief section on
the false hopes of human toil, busy work,
a pretended life which must be denied.
Modern man is made of such disguises
as "mountebank, beggar, artist,
scoundrel . . . priest!" But he will strike out
against poses; otherwise eternity would
be lost to us all.
Having now worked himself through
the many snares of hell, the poet gets
a glimpse of "Morning." He returns to
his opening theme before he was cast out
in the desert (like the hyena), before
his pagan voice was lost in Christian
dogma. Yet he sees hope in an attainable
"Christmas on the earth" where we must
be the Magi, the "Kings of life" singing
the songs of heaven without cursing life.
Hell has no meaning unless salvation is
present, unless the "doors were opened
by the son of man."
The last section, "Farewell," begins:
"Autumn already!—But why regret an
eternal sun if we are embarked on the
discovery of divine light." This
completes the cycle, if Christmas is really the
festival of lights, our last hope in an old
world which was begun in the childhood
of pagan spring or Oriental wisdom.
The poet's autumn vision, after the hot
season of summer hell and memories of
the cool spring of creation, is apocalyptic:
Sometimes in the sky I see endless
beaches, covered with white nations
3398

full of joy. Above me a great golden
ship waves its multi colored pennants
in the breezes of the morning. I created
all fetes, all triumphs, all dramas. I tried
to invent new flowers, new stars, new
flesh, new tongues.
But yet Rimbaud could not be an angel
or seer, "exempt from all morality." He
found himself both man and artist,
peasant and angel, for there can be no
separation of body and soul in this new
Jerusalem. We must enter the city in "vigor
and real tenderness," where all "shall
be free to possess truth in one soul and
one body"
3399

THE SECOND MRS. TANQUERAY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: The 1890's
locale: London and Surrey, England
First presented: 1893
Principal characters:
Aubrey Tanqueray, a London socialite
Cayley Dhummle, his friend
Paula, Aubrey's second wife
Ellean, Aubrey's daughter by a former marriage
Captain Hugh Ardale, Ellean's suitor
Mrs. Alice Cortelyon, the Tanquerays' neighbor in Surrey
Critique:
Because of Pinero's departure from
certain aspects of the "well-made" play of
that period, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
is considered by many to be the first truly
modern English play. Presenting a
genuine social problem, this drama pictures
people as they really are by reason of
their social prejudices and the difficulties
arising from those biases. Other
contributions which this play made to realistic
English drama were the dramatist's use of
actual place names in London and Surrey,
the more logically motivated action, and
the exactness of stage directions and sets.
The Story:
Aubrey Tanqueray, a wealthy widower,
was to be married to Paula Ray, a woman
younger than he and of questionable
character. Aubrey's first wife had not
contributed a great deal to his happiness. A
child had been born to the Tanquerays
shortly before the first Mrs. Tanqueray
died of a fever, the only warmth, in the
opinion of one of Aubrey's friends, ever
to have come to the woman's body. The
child, nineteen-year-old Ellean had spent
most of her life in a convent and was
planning to take final vows.
Cayley Drummle, a friend, discussed
with Aubrey the inadvisability of
marriage between different social classes; but
Aubrey, intent upon having warmth and
companionship in his home life, was
resolute in his determination to marry
Paula.
Aubrey had momentary misgivings,
however, when Paula appeared late at
night at his apartment. Such conduct did
not become a lady, Aubrey charged; it
would cause talk among the servants.
Paula's opinion, indicative of her
treatment of domestics, was that servants were
merely machines to do chores and to
appear for testimony in the divorce courts.
But despite her glib pretenses, Paula,
too, felt somewhat unsure about the social
abyss which she and Aubrey were
attempting to bridge. While she went to
put on her cloak, Aubrey, reminded by
his servant that he had not opened the
day's mail, read a letter from Ellean in
which she told him that she had
communed with the spirit of her mother,
who had admonished her to return to
Aubrey in his loneliness. Perplexed, he
was unable to foresee happiness between
his daughter and his wife-to-be.
Two months after their marriage the
unhappiness of the Tanquerays in their
domestic life was apparent to all their
friends. Paula was bored with the
inactivity of country life at Aubrey's house
in Surrey. He was apprehensive over
Ellean's and Paula's incompatibility. Both
wondered why their neighbors 'did not
call on them.
Ellean, after her arrival, became a
barrier between her father and
stepmother because of her life in the convent.
Although Aubrey tried to throw the two
women together, they soon showed that
they had nothing in common. When
Cayley Drummle, visiting on an adjoining
3400

estate, came for a call, he was the
confidant of both Paula, who expressed her
wishes for the life she had known before
her marriage, and of Aubrey, in his
expressions of keen disappointment over
Ellean's lack of interest in meeting
eligible young men.
Benevolent Drummle encouraged Mrs.
Cortelyon, his hostess and Aubrey's
longtime friend, to call on Paula. Although
Aubrey saw through Drummle's efforts,
he appreciated Mrs. Cortelyon's visit and
her invitation to have Ellean as her guest
in Paris during the Easter vacation.
Paula resented Mrs. Cortelvon's
attentions to Ellean, who made no attempt
to conceal her preference for a member
of her father's social set. Mrs. Cortelyon
made the situation more awkward when
she courteously and straightforwardly told
Paula that her memories of Aubrey's first
wife could never be erased by the
presence of another woman in the Tanqueray
house.
Feeling excluded from her husband's
life, Paula spitefully sent a letter to Sir
George and Lady Orreyed, the latter a
friend of Paula's in her former way of
life. Aubrey had earlier forbidden an
invitation to the Orreyeds because he did
not wish to have Ellean associating with
people as boisterous and unconventional
as they were.
Ellean went to Paris with Mrs.
Cortelyon, and the Orreyeds came to visit the
Tanquerays. During their visit they
insulted their host and hostess because of
the limited supply of liquors, broke
furniture in the heat of a marital squabble,
and lolled about in unbecoming positions.
Their crudeness was offensive to Paula,
but having invited them she could not,
under the circumstances, ask them to
leave; she could only hate them.
Although Aubrey's purpose in
marrying Paula had been partly to show her
kindness, he was unable to do so because
Paula, always on the defensive, would
not accept his attentions. Drummle,
having known Paula in her former situation,
was seemingly capable of mellowing her.
It was he who, on learning that Paula
had intercepted letters from Mrs.
Cortelyon and Ellean to Aubrey, convinced her
that such conduct was only breeding
much of the unhappiness that she was
enduring.
Paula gave the letters to Aubrey, who
forgave her maliciousness in keeping the
correspondence from him. After Aubrey
told her of his disappointment and
frequent embarrassment because of her
common jokes and paltry cynicism, Paula
admitted that she had not been fair to
him and Ellean, and she asked for another
chance to prove herself when Ellean
should return from Paris and London.
Mrs. Cortelyon and Ellean returned
soon afterward, the older woman anxious
because she had not heard from Aubrey
regarding his reaction to Ellean's romance
with Captain Hugh Ardale. The
courtship had been the subject of the letters
Paula had intercepted.
Deeply in love with Ardale, a British
soldier stationed in India, Ellean
approached Paula to share the story of her
good fortune. Paula repulsed Ellean at
first, saying that the girl was being kind
only because she was soon to be married.
Then, after confessing her bitter jealousy,
Paula and Ellean were reconciled, and
Paula was happy in Ellean's new-found
happiness.
Ardale, who had accompanied Ellean
and Mrs. Cortelyon home from Paris,
came to the Tanqueray house from a
nearby hotel. Paula, after telling Ellean
that she and Ardale had met before, said
that she wanted to talk with him about
Ellean. Alone, Paula and Ardale recalled
the time when she had been his mistress.
When Paula told him that Aubrey must
be informed of Ardale's past, Ardale
threatened suicide if Paula interfered to
prevent his marriage to Ellean.
Told of Paula and Ardale's past
relations, Aubrey would not allow Ellean
to see Ardale again. Shocked by her
father's attitude, Ellean guessed that
Paula had influenced Aubrey against
Ardale. When Ellean pressed Paula for
an explanation, Paula could not bring
3401

herself to divulge her past life to her
stepdaughter. Ellean then told Paula that
she could surmise what Paula had told
Aubrey and that she had known from
their first meeting that Paula was not a
good woman.
Ardale sent a note to Paula, telling her
that he was going back to Paris to await
any word that she or Aubrey would want
him to have, and asking that they
explain the situation to Ellean. After Aubrey
had read the note, at Paula's request, they
discussed philosophically what the future
might hold for them together. Paula said
that the only great distances in the world
were those that people carry within
themselves, the distances that separate
husbands and wives, and she predicted that
Aubrey would tire of her in the future.
Drummle returned to discuss with
Aubrey the affair of Ellean and Ardale.
As the men talked, Ellean appeared and
asked her father to go quickly to Paula.
The girl told Dmmmle that when she
had gone to Paula's room to apologize for
her unkind remarks, she had heard a body
falling. Entering the room, she had found
Paula dying. Ellean said that she, in her
unkindness, had helped to kill Paula.
3402

THE SECOND SHEPHERDS' PLAY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Social satire and devotional mysticism
Time of plot: The Nativity
Locale: Bethlehem and surrounding country
First transcribed: Fifteenth century manuscript
Principal characters:
First Shepherd
Second Shepherd
Third Shepherd
Mak, a rascal
Gill, Mak's wife
An Angel
Mary
Critique:
The Second Shepherds* Play belongs
to that group of mystery plays which
make up the Wakefield cycle. This cycle
of religious dramas, presented on Corpus
Christi Day in Wakefield during the
Middle Ages, is also known as the Towne-
ley cycle, from the name of the family
in whose library the manuscripts were
found. Within the cycle is a group of
extraordinarily fine plays which were
probably written in the fifteenth century
by one unknown dramatist. In his plays,
notable for their excellent craftsmanship,
satirical dialogue, boisterous humor, and
sheer exuberance are mixed neatly with
serious situations. The Second Shepherds*
Play, which contains a short scene of
adoration but more rough comedy than
anything else, is an excellent example of the
curious juxtaposition of the serious and
the comic which the unknown playwright
carried off so well, with no regard for
propriety or theatrical convention.
The Story:
On the night of Christ's birth a cold
and lonely shepherd stood in the
countryside near Bethlehem watching his
flocks and bemoaning his lot in life. He
was joined by another shepherd, who
added his lamentations to those of the
first and pointed out that his lot was
worse because he was married. The
second shepherd complained that his wife,
a fat, shrewish person, had once been a
sweet and charming girl, but that
marriage had changed her.
While they grumbled, a third
shepherd joined them. His chief complaint
was the weather, for he thought that
never, since Noah's flood, had the season
been so bad. To ease their unhappy lot,
the three began to sing a song.
After they had sung, Mak came into
the field to join them. Mak was not very
welcome, for he had a reputation as a
thief and the shepherds were somewhat
fearful that he would steal something
from them. But Mak, begging them to
let him stay, told a sad story of being
hungry and unwelcome at home, even though
he worked hard to give his wife what she
wanted. The three shepherds gave in and
bade him lie down and spend the night
with them.
After the three shepherds had fallen
asleep, Mak arose and made ready to
steal a sheep, first casting a spell over
the shepherds to keep them from
awakening. He went to the fold, selected a fat
ewe, and made off with it to his house.
Not daring to kill the sheep, lest the
noise make the theft known, Mak and
his wife Gill decided to hide the sheep
in the cradle if anyone came. In the
meantime Mak went back to finish out
his night's sleep with the shepherds, thus
trying to hide his own guilt.
The next morning Mak awakened
with the shepherds, made them note
that he was taking nothing with him, and
started off toward his home. Not long
3403

after he arrived there the shepherds, who
had missed their ewe, went to Mak's
house to see if he or his wife had stolen
the animal. According to plan, Mak and
Gill hid the sheep in the cradle, and Gill
pretended to have given birth to a son
the night before. Although the accusers
hunted all over the house, they found no
sign of the sheep, not even a morsel of
meat. After asking Mak's pardon and
bidding good health to the new child in
the cradle, the shepherds left. Scarcely
had they gone when they remembered
they had left no gifts for the baby. They
returned to the house to offer a little girt
and, when they looked in the cradle,
discovered their stolen sheep. Mak and
Gill tried to explain the presence of the
sheep by telling how an evil spirit had
taken their child and replaced it with
the ewe. The shepherds, not taken in by
the story, tossed Mak in a sheet for
punishment and then departed with their
sheep.
When the shepherds returned to the
fields, an angel appeared to them and told
them of the birth of the Saviour, who
would overthrow the devil and restore the
glory which had been lost to man through
Adam's fall. The shepherds, following
the commands of the angel, made ready
to visit the Christ child as it lay in a
manger in Bethlehem, only a short
distance away. They considered themselves
lucky to have an opportunity to see the
Messiah, prophesied in ages past.
Upon their arrival in Bethlehem,
having been led by the star, the three
shepherds went to the stable where Mary and
the Child were housed. The first
shepherd, after greeting both the Mother and
the Child, offered his gift of a bob of
cherries. The second shepherd, not to be
outdone as a giver of gifts, made a little
speech filled with respect and gave the
Child a little bird to play with. The third
shepherd also made a little speech of
reverence and then gave his gift, a ball. He
urged the Child to grow up and play at
tennis.
After they had given their gifts, the
shepherds were thanked by Mary for the
presents they had brought and the
reverence they had done. She also bade them
spread the news of the Christ when they
left. The three shepherds then departed
to sing the good tidings to the world.
3404

THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Type of work: History
Author: Winston S. Churchill (1874- )
Time: 1919-1945
Locale: Europe, North Africa, the Pacific Area
First published: 1948-1954
Principal personages:
Sir Winston Churchill
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Adolf Hitler
Neville Chamberlain
Anthony Eden
General George C. Marshall
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel
Contemporary accounts by actual
participants in great, climactic, or
catastrophic events in world history often
achieve tremendous popularity for a brief
period. They are widely discussed in the
light of other circumstances, but are then
permitted to fall into the anomalous
category of "source books" for infrequent
reference on obscure detail. Because of
the circumstances of authorship, the
insights given, and the dramatic drive of
the narrative itself, it is safe to sav,
however, that Sir Winston Churchill's
history of World War II will not soon fall
into the category of forgotten books by
the participant in the making of history.
Churchill brought to his monumental
undertaking not only his intimate
knowledge of military affairs and strategy dating
back to the beginning of the present
century, but also half a century of activity
in parliamentary and international affairs.
To these qualifications he added also the
skill of a seasoned lecturer on world
problems and the invaluable experience of
an accomplished author of more than a
dozen significant books. Moreover, as
Churchill notes in the preface to the
first volume, this history is intended as
a continuation of the three books he
wrote on World War I: The World
Crisis, The Eastern Front, and The
Aftermath. Together, the early three
books and the six on World War II
comprise an account of what might be called
another Thirty Years' War.
Within no more than six or seven
years, Sir Winston Churchill produced
the historical work which he calls simply
The Second World War. The scope of
the enterprise is suggested by the fact
that it extends through a half dozen
volumes averaging well over eight
hundred pages each, and that it encompasses
most of the significant occurrences from
the close of World War I in 1919 until
July 26, 1945—approximately a quarter
of a century. Geographically, this history
is global, since it concerns the
far-reaching exploits of armed forces whenever
there was conflict in both hemispheres.
Following the method employed in his
history of the first world war, Churchill
takes the personal-experience approach
that Defoe used in his Memoirs of a
Cavalier. Concerning the second global
war, Churchill writes with greater
authority, since he was chief of His
Majesty's Government for more than five years.
Despite the complexity of action and
counteraction, the multitude of events
and personages and decisions to be
carried out, Churchill's main purpose in his
history is simply to show that the
inevitability of war stemmed from the lack of
a consistent and resolute policy among
the democracies.
The first volume, titled The Gathering
3405

Storm, begins with a swift appraisal of
the twenty-year period from 1919 to
1939, termed in retrospect, "From War
to War." In this account Churchill
decides that the principal folly of the
victors in World War I was their failure to
keep Germany disarmed. The victors
pursued their universal hope that peace
would reign, and their designation of the
first conflict as "the war to end wars"
reveals their ideal. But the scheme of
reparations did not work; the League of
Nations was rendered impotent; and
world-wide economic dislocation followed
the collapse of the American stock
market in 1929. Meanwhile, General von
Seeckt was secretly rebuilding the armed
might of Germany and almost unnoticed
by war-weary European nations, Adolf
Hitler was emerging with his grandiose
notions of German superiority and
destiny. Soon Austria was taken, the Saar
united with the Fatherland; then the
fateful Munich conference provided
Hitler with a year of breathing space to
ready his forces. Next, Churchill
recounts how war was declared on
September 3, 1939. Poland was taken; Norway
was occupied; and Belgium and Holland
were invaded. When the Chamberlain
government fell, Churchill took over as
Prime Minister.
In this volume, as in the five
succeeding parts, Churchill deals not only with
events political, strategic, diplomatic, and
military; he also sketches in significant
background fact, characterizes major
personages in the struggles that take place,
and pauses to assess the importance of
civilian activities. For this is the whole
story as Churchill sees it. He views it not
dispassionately but with all the
understanding and insight of one who was
forced to weigh conditions; to bully and
build and negotiate; to cope with crisis,
catastrophe, and, ultimately, a
bewildering array of problems of allied joint
action.
Volume II, Their Finest Hour, covers
the grim days from May, 1940, until
early January, 1941. During those
momentous months, the battle of France
was joined and lost; Dunkirk was
evacuated; and home defense of Britain
became a shocking necessity. Next, the
German air assault attempted to paralyze
London and the entire island. President
Roosevelt worked to provide the means
of assistance through the Lend-Lease
Bill, passed by Congress in March, 1941.
In the meantime Hitler turned his
thoughts to the subjugation of Russia.
London and England were saved for the
time being, but the conflict grew more
and more extensive as German might
exerted itself in several directions.
In the third volume, The Grand
Alliance, the horror that Churchill once
decried as "the unnecessary war" became
truly world-wide. The year 1941
presented shocking and tragic events which
culminated in the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor. As the toll of merchant
shipping continued to rise in the Atlantic,
war grew in intensity on land. Rommel
began his counterattack in the desert.
Hitler planned to bomb and starve the
English and to invade Russia.
Meanwhile, the Germans turned their
attention to the Balkans, and Yugoslavia,
Greece, and Albania fell. However, not
all the news was completely
disheartening: German sea power was drastically
limited by the destruction of the
Bismarck; Hitler's attack on Russia brought
the Soviets into the war; and the
Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor forced
American participation in the struggle.
Volume IV, The Hinge of Fate, covers
the next year and a half, from January,
1942, to the end of May, 1943. During
this period material losses continued
mountainous and casualty lists were long,
but the "hinge of Fate" had turned in
favor of the Allies, as Churchill sees it.
With the defeat of Rommel a'nd the
American landings in Morocco, threats
in the Mediterranean abated. Japanese
forces swept southward, but United States
victories in the Coral Sea and at Midway
Island foretold the turning point of war
in the Pacific. Moreover, Operation Torch
put the Allied forces in position to achieve
the fall of Italy. As German and Japanese
3406

power was committed to a last effort, the
Allied potential continued to grow.
Volumes V, Closing the Ring, (June,
1943-June, 1944), and VI, Triumph and
Tragedy, (June, 1944-July 26, 1945),
deal with the final twenty-six months of
the struggle. During a single year
following June, 1943, Japan was put on the
del fensive, the invasion of Italy moved
as far as Rome, the Germans were in
retreat before Russian power, and
preparations for a cross-Channel landing were
complete. In spite of postponement and
the danger of bad weather, D-day
became a reality on June 6, 1944. With
relentless force, during the succeeding
fourteen months, victory followed
victory in France and Italy, the Pacific,
Germany, and finally Japan itself.
These are the broad outlines of
history's greatest military undertaking. But
Churchill concerns himself also with
high-level conferences, hard-won
decisions on strategy, agonizing losses, and
finally the terms of surrender in Europe.
He refers to this account as his
"personal narrative" of the war period. So it
is; but it is, in addition, a magnificent
retelling of the events of consequence
during eight of the most tempestuous
years of modern time.
To some academic historians or
partisans with a reluctance to accept
Churchiirs point of view and judgments, he
may appear to slight or neglect particular
causes, conditions, and effects which were
perhaps of considerable importance at the
time. None the less, in the
appropriateness of style to circumstance and subject
matter, in the selection and interweaving
of significant detail with major
occurrence, in scope and sweep and
conception, Churchiirs The Second World War
is a truly memorable piece of writing.
3407

THE SECRET AGENT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Conrad (Teodor J6zef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-1924)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1880's
Locale: London
First published: 1907
Principal characters:
Mr. Verloc, a foreign secret agent
Winnie, his English wife
Stevie, her weak-minded brother
The Assistant Commissioner, a London police official
Chief Inspector Heat
Mr. Vladimir, First Secretary of an unnamed embassy
Michaelis, and
Ossipon, anarchists
Critique:
Produced about the middle of his
writing career, The Secret Agent is one of
Joseph Conrad's acknowledged
masterpieces, and it yields to none in the
effectiveness of its characterization and in the
authenticity of its atmosphere. In this
novel, in a side street of Soho, Conrad
has gathered some of his most interesting
and unusual figures. Realistically
presented, these figures are surveyed through
a veil of irony which enhances rather
than mars the total effect; here Conrad
displays his ironical touch at its surest,
delicate but probing, and quite
impersonal. In addition, the novel is notable
for the character of Winnie Verloc, one
of the best presented of Conrad's women
victimized by circumstance and fate.
The Story:
Mr. Verloc was on his way to a
certain foreign embassy, summoned there,
to his astonishment and unease, at the
unseemly hour of eleven in the morning.
Ambling down the street, bulky and
stolid, Mr. Verloc did not look very much
like the agent provocateur that he was
supposed to be. He kept a little shop,
obscure and ill-patronized, behind which
were quarters for his family. There he
often entertained a group of London
anarchists from whom he had carefully
THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad. By permission of the Trustees of the Estate of Joseph Conrad;
of J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; and of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1907, 1921, by Double-
day & Co., Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
kept the secret that he was an embassy
agent. Thinking how awkward it would
be if any of his anarchist friends were
to detect him in the act of entering such
a place, he grumbled inwardly as he
approached the embassy.
His appointment with Mr. Vladimir
did nothing to improve his mood. In fact,
his discontent had deepened almost to a
state of terror by the time of his
departure. Mr. Verloc, who had let
himself get comfortable, if not lazy, in the
years since he had settled in England
as the agent of a foreign power, had
never contemplated the possibility that
he might lose his job. Now he found
himself being roundly abused and
insulted for what First Secretary Vladimir
was pleased to call his fatness, his sloth-
fulness, his general inefficiency. He had
even been threatened with dismissal if he
did not promptly promote some incident
to upset English complacency. In short,
Mr. Vladimir demanded a dynamite
outrage within a month. Furthermore, it
must be directed against some monument
of learning and science—preferably the
Greenwich Observatory.
Badly shaken, Mr. Verloc made his
way back to his shop in Soho. Rejoining
his household in the rooms behind it, he
managed to reassume his usual demeanor
3408

of stolid reserve. When, soon after, his
anarchist friends paid one of their calls,
he betrayed nothing to them of the
frustration and fear that lurked behind his
impassivity. He was not so successful
with his wife. She was able to keep her
own counsel, but she missed very little
of what went on about her.
Younger than her husband, Winnie
Verloc had married him for security
rather than for love. Nor was it even
her own security that she was concerned
about, but that of her unfortunate
brother, whose passionate protector she
had been ever since the days of their
childhood. Stevie, now physically mature,
had remained childlike in other ways; he
was easily excited and inarticulate, though
generally soft-hearted and trusting. One
of the people he trusted most was Mr.
Verloc. His sister had done a great deal
to bring this state of affairs about; and
his mother, who was also being
supported by Mr. Verloc, had assisted
Winnie in impressing upon Stevie the idea
that Mr. Verloc was good, that his wishes
must be instantly carried out, and that
he must be spared the slightest
annoyance. Mr. Verloc, meanwhile, serenely
went his own way; insensitive to this
anxious maneuvering to keep Stevie in
his good graces, he largely ignored his
brother-in-law even while tolerating his
presence in the Verloc household.
To consolidate her son's position still
further, the mother of Stevie and Winnie
decided that before Mr. Verloc could tire
of supporting both of his wife's relatives,
she would move to an almshouse. Stevie
missed her and fell to moping. Winnie,
seeking a remedy for her brother's
moodiness, seized upon what seemed to her a
happy expedient. The long walks of her
husband, mysterious of purpose and
destination, gave Winnie an idea. Finding
the right moment to make her request,
she persuaded her husband to take Stevie
with him. Soon, to Winnie's gratification,
this experiment became an established
practice. With things apparently going so
well, she saw no reason to object when
Mr. Verloc made a rather unexpected
proposal regarding Stevie. Since Stevie
was fond of Michaelis, an elderly
anarchist who frequently visited the house,
why not let the brother spend a few days
with Michaelis at his retreat in the
country?
Apparently pleased with this
development, Stevie left to visit Michaelis and
the next few days passed without
incident in the Verloc household. Late one
afternoon, however, Mr. Verloc came
home from one of his walks more upset
than Winnie had ever seen him. He had
withdrawn all of their money from the
bank, and he mumbled vaguely about the
necessity of leaving the country. Winnie
tossed her head at this—he would go
without her, she declared tartly. Mr.
Verloc morosely ignored her wifely urgings
that he eat his supper and change his
slippers. He did not ignore, however, a
distinguished-looking stranger who turned
up presently and took Mr. Verloc away.
Winnie failed to recognize this caller as
the Assistant Commissioner of London
Police.
During their absence, a second stranger
arrived. Winnie became more and more
apprehensive upon learning that he was
Chief Inspector Heat. Heat, on learning
that he had been forestalled by his
superior, showed Winnie a cloth label
bearing Stevie's name and address.
Recognizing it as an identification tag placed
in her brother's coat, she asked wildly
where Heat had found it. The return
of Mr. Verloc, alone, interrupted their
conversation. After Heat had taken Mr.
Verloc into another room, Winnie tried
to overhear what they were saying.
Almost mad with grief, she heard her
husband tell how he had trained Stevie to
take part in a bombing attempt upon the
Greenwich Observatory. But Stevie had
stumbled in the fog, exploding the bomb
prematurely and blowing himself to bits.
After Heat left, Winnie faced her
husband. White-faced and rigid, she hardly
listened to his faltering explanation or
his plan to turn state's evidence on the
promise of a lighter penalty. When,
exhausted, he finally dropped on the couch,

she seized the carving knife and stabbed
him in the heart.
Running aimlessly out into the dark,
Winnie stumbled upon Comrade Ossipon,
one of her husband's anarchist associates
who had eyed her from time to time with
admiration. After promising to help her
he discovered, with consternation, what
had occurred and that he might be
implicated in the affair. Coaxing her onto a
boat train, Ossipon waited until it started
to move; then he leaped off. With him he
took the money which Winnie had
entrusted to his care.
A week passed. Ossipon did not enjoy
his possession of Winnie's money; he felt
heavily burdened by gloom and guilt.
The feeling deepened as he read a
newspaper report of the suicide of a female
passenger from a cross-channel boat. He
was convinced that the last words of the
dispatch would always haunt him since
he alone knew the truth about Winnie
Verloc's death, a deed which the
newspaper called a mystery of madness or
despair.
3410

SEJANUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ben Jonson (1573M637)
Type of plot: Political tragedy
Time of plot: First century
Locale: Ancient Rome
First presented: 1603
Principal characters:
Emperor Tiberius
Sejanus, his corrupt favorite
Eudemus, a physician and beautician
Livia, Tiberius' daughter-in-law
Arruntius, a righteous and indignant Roman citizen
Siuus,
Sabinus,
Cordus, and
Lepidus, noble Romans hostile to Tiberius' corrupt government
Macro, a fiendish tool of the emperor
Critique:
Ben Jonson's Sejanus and Catiline are
not among his popular plays; nor have
they received profuse praise from literary
critics. Yet Catiline was Jonson's
expressed favorite among his plays; and,
according to the Oxford editors of Jonson,
Sejanus marks the turning point of his
work, leading to his mature masterpieces.
Both Roman tragedies display Jonson's
ability to create an illusion of living
history; both are well constructed; both have
strong characterization; both are written
in firm, powerful verse. Where they fall
short of Shakespeare's and many lesser
dramatists' work is in the fact that they
have a certain hardness and lack of
warmth. Horror is sometimes stirred, pity
perhaps; but love and gentleness are
missing. Although these tragedies are often
treated together, they are independent
creations. Sejanus is perhaps more
consistent in tone. The world of Sejanus is
evil and terrifying: although good men
open and close the play, wickedness is in
power from beginning to end. In Jonson,
as in Shakespeare, the alchemy of
dramatic art has wrought something new
and original out of historical source
material.
The Story:
Silius and Sabinus, respectable Roman
citizens of the old stamp, met and
discussed the corruption of Tiberius' court.
Both admired Agrippina, the widow of
Germanicus. Though conscious of the
prevalence of spies controlled by the
emperor's loathsome favorite Sejanus, they
showed no personal fear. Arruntius and
the historian Cordus, men of their kind,
joined them. Two of Sejanus' spies
watched and planned to entrap these men
devoted to freedom. Sejanus entered with
a group of hangers-on and suitors.
Arruntius and his friends observed the favorite
with scorn. One of Sejanus' followers
presented a suit from Eudemus, the
physician of Livia, wife of the emperor's son
Drusus. Sejanus sent for Eudemus
privately, and laid plans with him for the
seduction of Livia.
When Tiberius, followed by Drusus,
made a public appearance, Sejanus
bathed him in fulsome flattery, to the
disgust of Arruntius and his friends. The
emperor answered with a devious,
hypocritical speech. After his departure, Drusus
and Sejanus clashed, and Drusus struck
him. Sejanus remained alone, promising
himself to add revenge to his ambitious
motives for the destruction of Drusus.
Having found Livia a willing victim of
corruption, Sejanus plotted with her and
Eudemus to poison Drusus. Sejanus
worked on the fears of Tiberius to
persuade him to destroy Agrippina and the
3411

sons of Germanicus, who after Drusus
were heirs to the Empire; he also warned
the emperor of the danger of Silius, Sa-
binus, and others. Tiberius consented to
call the Senate and to allow Sejanus to
handle the destruction of Silius, his wife
Sosia, and Cordus, leaving Sabinus and
Arruntius for the future.
Arruntius and his friends, hearing that
Drusus was dying, recalled the public
blow given to Sejanus. Later, the Senate
convened, with Drusus' death on all lips.
Tiberius entered, to the amazement of
the senators, who had assumed grief
would keep him from a political
function. Tiberius delivered one of his
hypocritical orations, punctuated by low-
voiced comments from the undeceived
Arruntius and his friends. Suddenly,
without preliminary warning, Sejanus'
puppets accused Silius of treason.
Recognizing the tyrant's trap and his own
hopeless situation, Silius recalled his
important services to Rome in peace and war,
formally accused Tiberius of fraudulent
conduct, and, mocking the tyrant's power,
stabbed himself. Tiberius hypocritically
expressed regret that he was thus
deprived of an opportunity to show mercy
to an erring subject. Cordus was next
accused and sentenced to prison. His books,
histories of the Roman Republic, were
sentenced to be burned. Arruntius
growled at the Senate's "brainless
diligence" in attempting to destroy truth by
book-burning.
At the conclusion of the Senate
meeting, Tiberius and Sejanus planned future
moves to strengthen their hands; but,
flushed with power and triumph, Sejanus
made a major mistake by asking to be
allowed to marry Livia. Startled into
suspicion, the emperor grunted ominously,
then launched into a devious speech
pointing out the dangers of such a match.
Sejanus hastily withdrew his request but,
still blinded by overconfidence, ne urged
Tiberius' retirement to Capri. Alone, he
gloated over past successes and looked
toward future triumphs, including the
overthrow of the emperor himself. But
Tiberius, thoroughly aroused, began to
work with a new tool, the villainous
Macro, to undermine Sejanus. While the
emperor retired to Capri, Macro began
his work by advising Caligula, one of the
sons of Germanicus, to go and surrender
himself to Tiberius, saying that he feared
the plots of the powerful Sejanus.
The next victim of Sejanus was
Sabinus. Arruntius was moved to wonder
why Jove did not strike down the impious
and ruthless favorite. Sejanus, having
reached a dangerous state of intoxication
with his own greatness, thought himself
superior not only to men but also to gods.
Ominous events occurred, but Sejanus
scorned superstition and remained
confident of success in his march to absolute
power. Macro, with authority from
Tiberius, caused the Senate to convene
again, apparently to confer new honors
on Sejanus. Macro himself remained in
the background, but assumed control of
the guards. As the senators gathered for
the session, Arruntius and Lepidus, a
good old Roman unspotted by corruption,
stood aside to observe the flatterers eager
to get close enough to Sejanus to fly-blow
his ears with confidential whispers. Great
rivalry followed to see who could sit close
to him during the proceedings. When the
senators were seated, a letter from the
emperor was read aloud to them. Bit by
bit this masterpiece of political devious-
ness shifted the majority of the hearers
from fulsome support of Sejanus to sus-
icion, fear, and hostility. Flatterers who
had clamored to get near the favorite
hastily shifted their seats, all but a gouty
one who struggled in vain to rise, mucn
to the delight of Arruntius at seeing gout
keep the flatterer "miserably constant."
Macro entered, supported by the guards,
and dragged Sejanus from his seat,
heaping violent personal indignities on him.
Sejanus was hurried away to execution.
Later reports told of his body's being torn
to pieces by the mob. Most horrible of
all, the children of Sejanus were torn
from his divorced wife Apicata and were
killed. In agony and fury, Apicata
accused Livia and Eudemus of poisoning
Dru&is. Their death sentences were fore-
3412

told.
Arruntius and Lepidus knew that
Rome had but exchanged one instrument
of evil for another, as Macro was no
improvement on Sejanus, and the
venomous, reptilian emperor remained
untouched. Arruntius, however, delivered a
valedictory prophecy to all tyrants and,
using the fall of Sejanus as example,
warned of the inevitability and terror of
their destruction.
3413

SELECTED POEMS
Type of work: Poetry
Author: John Crowe Ransom (1888- )
First published: 1945
John Crowe Ransom, recognized as
poet, social critic, and literary critic, has
in this book published forty of his best
poems. The slender volume has been
culled principally from two earlier
volumes, Chills and Fever (1924) and Two
Gentlemen in Bonds (1927), with the
last five poems having appeared
previously only in periodicals. No poems have
been included from his earliest volume,
Poems About God (1919). The
arrangement is chronological.
Though neither a prolific nor a
popular poet, Ransom, through his variety,
freshness, and elegance, has won a
distinguished place in American poetry. In
the few poems of this volume there is
ample evidence of distinction in his
sensitive lyricism, his adept narratives and
character portraits, and his skillful use
of wit and irony.
Ransom the scholar is apparent in
nearly all of the poems. The polysyllabic
vocabulary and occasional use of
archaisms such as "thole," the remote allusions,
and the use of ellipses and slant rhyme
are characteristic of a poet writing for
mature readers, unwilling to condescend
to popular taste. At times the stumbling
blocks seem unwarranted, like playful,
mocking jokes on the reader, and the
charge of obscurity, particularly in some
of the later poems, is justified. However,
in the majority of the poems the
obstacles are not insurmountable and the
reader's effort is well rewarded.
Conclusions are never explicitly stated
by Ransom; morals are never obvious. He
states his theory of modern poetry and the
moral, so well exemplified in his own
poetry, in the essay "Poets Without
Laurels":
Pure or obscure, the modern poet
manages not to slip into the old-fash-
SELECTED POEMS by John Crowe Ransom. Exc
A. Knopf. Inc. Copyright, 1924, 1927, 1945, by Alfre
ioned moral-beautiful compound . . .
he may take the subject nearest his
own humanity, a subject perhaps of
terrifying import; but in treating it
will stop short of all moral or
theoretical conclusions, and confuse his detail
to the point where it leaves no positive
implications.
Ransom's is a poetry of understatement,
in which irony is an important means of
showing the implications of a situation,
implications which may vary with
interpretation. In "Here Lies a Lady," for
example, the surface situation is made to
seem ludicrous, with the picture of
husband, aunt, infant of three, and medicos
hovering over the lady who burned, then
froze, and finally died, "After six little
spaces of chill, and six of burning." But
the irony is forceful, for this is a "lady
of beauty and high degree," like the
"sweet ladies" whom the poet addresses
in the last stanza, and her life appears
pitifully ignominious at the end. Though
her fingers fly and her eyes are confident,
she makes nothing out of the maze of old
lace scraps about her. Even her death
lacks dignity, despite the "flowers and
lace and mourning." It is the old theme
of the transience of beauty, but here
presented freshly, more forceful because
it is under cover.
The same theme appears in several of
the other poems, most notably in the
sonnet, "Piazza Piece," in which Death, an
old gentleman in a dustcoat, comes to
claim the beautiful lady, and in "Blue
Girls," a carpe diem piece which
combines the same gentle mocking and
underlying seriousness found in "Here Lies a
Lady."
The theme of death is not always
interwoven with that of transient beauty.
Two of the poems, for example, deal
rpts reprinted by permission of the publishers, Alfred
A. Knopf, Inc.
3414

with the death of children. "Dead Bov"
does not spare satire in contrasting trie
glorified feeling for the dead boy with
the realities of his character in life, "A
pig with a pasty face, so I had said," but
the hurt is apparent, too, and even the
poet recognizes in the now dead lad the
nobility of his forebears. More pathetic
is "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter."
Here the contrast is between the very
active life of the little girl as she played
in the orchard and chased the lazy geese
("Who cried in goose, 'Alas'") to the
pond, and the complete stillness of her
body in death. The emotion is perfectly
controlled—yet evident—as the poet states
the effect of the quiet little body:
But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study
Lying so primly propped.
Another of the poems about death,
"Janet Waking," deals with a child's
first knowledge of death, the death of old
Chucky, a hen. Again, the balance
between humor and pathos is perfectly
achieved. Through the use of
exaggeration the poem even touches on the mock-
heroic: The agent of death is a
"transmogrifying bee" which
Came droning down on Chucky's old
bald head
And sat and put the poison. It scarcely
bled,
But how exceedingly
And purply did the knot
Swell with the venom and
communicate
Its rigor! Now the poor comb stood up
straight
But Chucky did not.
The exaggeration here is not merely for
humorous effect, however. To young
Janet this is an event of tremendous
seriousness, and the contrast between the
cause and the effect serves to point up,
not play down, the pathos of the
situation.
This characteristic mingling of humor
and emotion may be traced through a
great number of the poems. Even in the
love poem, "Winter Remembered," some
of the imagery is humorous: The lonely
man's fingers, away from his love's touch,
are like "Ten frozen parsnips hanging
in the weather." Then, the humor may
at times become biting, satiric, as in
"Parting, Without a Sequel," serving to
make even stronger the underlying
emotion.
Ransom's fine character portraits and
short narratives at times suggest Edwin
Arlington Robinson and one of
Ransom's chief influences, Thomas Hardy.
In "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" we have
a dreamer related to Miniver Cheevy.
"Captain Carpenter" is a forcefully
satiric piece about an unteachable idealist
who suffers one reverse after another and
yet never gives up. "Miriam Tazewell,"
whose world was her flowers, went about
sullen for weeks after they were destroyed
in a storm.
The tragedy of many of Ransom's
characters is that they are not able to
communicate. One major reason for this
inability is that they live in a world of
convention, which only the very young
and the very old can break through. The
grandfather in "Old Man Playing with
Children" speaks thus to the middle-aged
who make fun of him for playing Indian
with the boys:
"It is you the elder to these and younger
tome
Who are penned as slaves by properties
and causes
And never walk from your shaped
insupportable houses
And shamefully, when boys shout, go
in and flee.
"May God forgive me, I know your
middling ways,
Having taken care and performed
ignominies unreckoned
Between the first brief childhood and
the brief second,
But I will be the more honourable in
these days."

In "Eclogue/' innocent, carefree youth
is contrasted with selfish adulthood, when
love is no longer freely given. Fear, also,
is given here as a reason for the lack of
love: The dream of Death comes
suddenly, "Then metamorphosis." "Spectral
Lovers" and "The Equilibrists" describe
lovers who fear showing their passion
because of conventional feelings about
honor:
Predicament indeed, which thus
discovers
Honor among thieves, Honor between
lovers.
O such a little word is Honor, they
feel!
But the grey word is between them cold
as steel.
In "Two in August," the poet,
characteristically understating, tells how a
husband and wife one night "did something
strange" and suddenly attacked each
other "with silences and words."
Similarly, though less clearly stated, the
troubled tension of a domestic situation
appears in "Prelude to an Evening."
These are problems posed, not solved.
"The Equilibrists," for example,
questions, half whimsically, whether it would
be better to go bodiless to Heaven or to
go honorless to Hell, where there is no
end to kissing. And with the half-hope
of Hardy in "The Darkling Thrush" or
"The Oxen," the poet says in
"Somewhere is Such a Kingdom" that when
even the birds start quarreling and croak-
ing-
My dull heart I must take elsewhere;
For I will see if God has made
Otherwhere another shade
Where the men or beasts or birds
Exchange few words and pleasant
words.
And dare I think it is absurd
If no such beast were, no such bird?
It is impossible to deal adequately
with the variety of Ransom's poetry,
ranging from allusion-packed poems such
as "Philomela" to light, whimsical verse
such as "Dog" and "Survey of
Literature." Though his poetic output has been
relatively small, this poet has well proved
his versatility and his particular talent of
combining wit and irony, sometimes
gentle, sometimes biting, with emotion and
serious meanings.
3416

THE SELF-TORMENTOR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, c. 190-159 B.C.)
Type of plot: Social comedy
Time of plot: Fourteenth century B.C.
Locale: The countryside near Athens
First presented: 163 B.C.
Principal characters:
Chremes, an old man
Sostrata, his wife
Antiphila, his daughter
Cutipho, his son
Clinia, a youth
Menedemus, his father
Syrus, Clitipho's servant
Bacchis, a courtesan, Clitipho's mistress
Critique:
Although The Self-Tormentor (Heau-
tontimorumenos), based on an earlier
play by Menander, takes its primary force
from its intricate plot, it is, like several
of Terence's comedies, in some sense a
problem play. The issues are not as clearly
presented here as in The Brothers, for
example, but the conflict is much the
same. The problem is whether undeviat-
ing strictness or affectionate tolerance is
the best mode of rearing children.
Menedemus begins by finding the apparent
excesses of his son intolerable. Since his
uncompromisingly uprighteous reaction
results in the loss of his son, his is clearly
not the way Terence would recommend.
Neither, however, is the old man's swing
to the opposite extreme after his son
leaves home. Chremes' advice to the
contrite Menedemus when the latter is
contemplating putting his son in complete
control of the entire estate is too full of
common sense to be ignored, and the
same thing is to be said of the reform
imposed on Chremes' own son. Terence
seems to imply here some sort of mean
between the two extremes: strictness
without severity, tolerance without
anarchy.
The Story:
While Chremes* wife Sostrata was
pregnant, Chremes had told her that if
the child should be a girl she was to
destroy it. Sostrata agreed, but when the
baby did turn out to be a daughter the
poor woman did not have the heart to
carry out her husband's command by
herself. Instead, she gave the child to a
poverty-stricken Corinthian woman then
living in Athens to be exposed. Out of
superstition, she also gave the woman
a ring for her finger to accompany the
child when it was left out to die.
The old Corinthian woman failed to
carry out her instructions. Naming the
child Antiphila, she reared the girl as
her own. Antiphila grew up,
well-mannered and comely, and she was believed
by everyone to be the old woman's own
daughter.
Clinia, the son of Menedemus, saw
Antiphila and fell desperately in love
with her. Fearing the disapproval of his
strict father, Clinia began living with her
in secret as though she were his wife.
But Menedemus at last discovered the
affair, and by constantly chiding his son
and accusing him of unmanly indolence,
he finally caused the young man to go
to Asia and serve in the wars under the
Persian king.
Shortly after Clinia had left Athens,
Menedemus came to realize that he had
been unjust and cruel in his severity. To
punish himself he sold all his possessions
in Athens, purchased a farm in the
country, and began working both himself
3417

and his servants almost beyond
endurance.
Three months after his departure,
Clinia returned, no longer able to
tolerate his separation from Antiphila.
Unaware of his father's change of heart, he
kept his return secret from Menedemus
and was entertained by Clitipho, a
boyhood friend and the son of Chremes. As
soon as Clinia had arrived, Clitipho sent
his two slaves, Dromo and Syrus, into
Athens to bring Antiphila to her lover.
On the same day Chremes had learned
from Menedemus how much he wanted
his son to return and how generous he
was determined to be to the young man
when the opportunity did finally present
itself. In fear of making Clinia audacious
in his demands on Menedemus, however,
Chremes refrained from telling the young
man about his father's change of feeling.
That evening Syrus returned, bringing
both Antiphila and a high-priced
courtesan, Bacchis, as well. Clitipho, unknown
to his father, had previously become
deeply infatuated with Bacchis, and the
cunning and bold Syrus had decided that
the youth's desire to see his mistress could
be satisfied if Bacchis were introduced to
Chremes as Clinia's mistress and
Antiphila were to pretend to be a member
of the courtesan's retinue.
Early the next day, Chremes went to
Menedemus and told him of Clinia's
arrival. The old man, overjoyed at the news,
wanted immediately to give his son full
control over all his possessions. Chremes,
however, counseled against such a move
on the same grounds that he had refrained
from telling Clinia of his father's change
of heart. Morever, Chremes believed
Bacchis to be Clinia's mistress, and he
knew that her extravagant mode of living
would quickly drain any admirer of all
his possessions. The festivities of the
night before alone had cost Chremes
dearly. What he did advise was that
Menedemus should receive Clinia warmly,
pretend to be ignorant of his affair with
Bacchis, and allow himself to be tricked
out of relatively small sums from time to
time. This procedure, Chremes thought,
would both keep Clinia at home and
forestall the ruin of Menedemus.
Meanwhile, Syrus was hatching a plot
to trick Chremes out of the ten minae
that Bacchis had demanded as the price
of her sojourn with Clitipho. The servant
was gratified and amused when Chremes
gave him apparent sanction for his
deception by asking Syrus to contrive a way
to deceive Menedemus into believing that
Bacchis was not Clinia's mistress. Syrus,
agreeing, cunningly proceeded with his
own plot by telling Chremes that Anti-
phila's mother had borrowed ten minae
from Bacchis, leaving Antiphila as a
pledge for the money. The old woman
having presumably died, Antiphila needed
the money to purchase her freedom.
At that moment, however, Sostrata,
Chremes' wife, was discovering by means
of the ring that Antiphila was her
abandoned daughter. When this fact was
revealed to Chremes, his first reaction
was to chide his wife; but he was really
pleased to recover his daughter now that
his condition had improved financially.
At last Syrus hit upon a plan for
deceiving both fathers by telling them the
truth. He proposed that Bacchis and her
retinue should be moved to Menedemus*
house on the pretext that she was Cli-
tipho's mistress and that her affair with
Clitipho must be concealed from Chremes.
In addition, Antiphila was to be passed
off as Clinia's mistress, and Clinia was
to ask his father for ten minae to
provide for the wedding. Chremes refused
to allow another to ransom his daughter
for him, however, and gave Clitipho the
ten minae. The rest of the plot proved
acceptable as well, and Bacchis and her
servants were moved to Menedemus*
house.
Menedemus assumed that what he was
told regarding Bacchis and Clitipho was
designed to deceive him, but when he
saw the two entering a bedchamber
together without a word of protest from
the observing Clinia, he grew troubled
and told Chremes what he had seen. He
also pointed out that Clinia had made
no effort to get money out of his father
3418

and had seemed highly pleased when
Menedemus agreed to his marriage with
Antiphila. Thus, the whole truth came
out. Chremes, infuriated at first,
threatened to settle the whole of his property
on Antiphila. The sudden prospect of
being left penniless led Clitipho to reflect
seriously on his mode of life, and he
promised to abandon all courtesans and
marry a virtuous woman. Under the
gentle persuasion of Menedemus and Sos-
trata, Chremes finally agreed to let
Antiphila marry Clinia, and in the end he
promised to forgive even Syrus.
3419

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1811
Principal characters:
Elinor Dashwood, a young woman of sense
Marianne Dashwood, her sister
John Dashwood, her brother
Fanny Dashwood, his wife
Edward Ferrars, Fanny's brother
Sir John Middleton, a Dashwood relation
Colonel Brandon, Sir John's friend
John Willoughby, loved by Marianne
Lucy Steele, in love with Edward
Robert Ferrars, Edward's brother
Critique:
To Jane Austen, there were people of
sense and people of fine sensibilities but
little sense. In this novel of nineteenth-
century English life she makes it quite
clear that she admires men and women of
sense. The story and setting are typical of
Jane Austen, with the heroine having
to overcome many difficulties in order to
achieve happiness and success. Although
the dialogue of this early novel may seem
stilted at times and the characters
overdrawn, they combine to give a clear
picture of the manners of upper and
middle-class English society of that
period.
The Story:
When Mr. John Dashwood inherited
his father's estate, it was his intention to
provide comfortably for his stepmother
and his half-sisters. His wife Fanny,
however, had other ideas, and even though
she was independently wealthy she
cleverly prevented her husband from helping
his relatives. When Fanny's brother,
Edward Ferrars, began to show interest in
John's half-sister Elinor, Fanny,
determined to prevent any alliance between
them, made life so uncomfortable for the
older Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters
that those ladies accepted the offer of their
relative, Sir John Middleton, to occupy a
cottage on his estate.
Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, and Marianne
were happy in the cottage at Barton Park.
There they met Colonel Brandon, Sir
John's friend, who was immediately
attracted to Marianne. She, considering
him old at the age of thirty-five,
rejected his suit and fell in love with
John Willoughby, a young man visiting
wealthy relatives on a neighboring estate.
Once, while all the friends were
preparing for an outing, Colonel Brandon
was called away in a mysterious fashion.
Elinor and Marianne were surprised later
to hear that he had a daughter; at least
that was the rumor they heard.
Willoughby seemed determined to give
Marianne a bad impression of Colonel
Brandon, a fact which did not make
Elinor happy. Shortly after the colonel's
sudden departure, Willoughby himself
left very suddenly, without giving
Marianne a satisfactory explanation. Elinor
could not help being concerned about the
manner of his departure, particularly
since he had not made a definite
engagement with Marianne.
A week later Edward Ferrars appeared
at the cottage for a visit. In spite of
Elinor's attraction to him, Edward seemed
no more than mildly interested in her.
After a short stay he left the cottage
without saying anything to give Elinor hope.
Meanwhile Sir John had invited to his
3420

home Miss Lucy Steele and her sister, two
young ladies whom Elinor thought vulgar
and ignorant. She was therefore stunned
when Lucy told her that she was secretly
engaged to Edward Ferrars, whom she
had met while he was a pupil of Lucy's
uncle. According to Lucy's story, they had
been engaged for four years, but
Edward's mother would not permit him to
marry. Since Edward had no money of his
own and no occupation, they were forced
to wait for Mrs. Ferrars' consent before
they could announce their engagement.
Elinor, concealing her unhappiness at
this news, told Lucy that she would help
in any way she could.
A short time later Elinor and Marianne
were invited to London to visit friends.
Marianne immediately wrote to Will-
oughby that she was near. Although she
wrote two or three times, she had no
reply. One day she met him at a party. He
was with another young lady and treated
Marianne courteously but coolly. The
next morning Marianne received a letter
from him telling her that he was sorry if
she had misunderstood his intentions and
that he had long been engaged to another
girl. All of her friends and relatives were
furious with Willoughby. Even though
she was heartbroken, Marianne
continued to defend him and to believe that
he was blameless. She was comforted by
Colonel Brandon, who was also in
London.
Privately, the colonel told Elinor
Willoughby's story. The colonel had a ward,
the young girl believed by some to be his
daughter, who was in reality the daughter
of his brother's divorced wife. When the
colonel had had to leave Barton Park so
suddenly, he had learned that his ward
had been seduced and then abandoned by
Willoughby. Elinor gave this news to
Marianne, who received it with such
sorrow that Elinor feared for her health.
Colonel Brandon continued to be kind to
Marianne, and it was obvious to everyone
that he loved her.
The girls continued their stay in
London, and a little later their brother John
and his wife Fanny took a house there.
When the Misses Steele also arrived in
town for a visit, Edward's mother learned
at last that he and Lucy were engaged.
Angry, she settled what would have been
Edward's inheritance on her other son,
Robert, and Edward and Lucy were left
with no means of support. He planned to
study for the ministry, and Elinor
arranged with Colonel Brandon for Edward
to become a curate on his estate so that
Edward and Lucy could be married.
Before Elinor and Marianne returned
home, they visited Cleveland, an estate
between London and Barton Park. There
Marianne became ill with a heavy cold.
Because she was anxious to see her
mother, Colonel Brandon went for Mrs.
Dashwood. Before they returned,
Willoughby, having heard of Marianne's
illness, called at the house. He told Elinor
that he had treated Marianne shamefully
because he had no money of his own and
because his wealthy relative had learned
of his treatment of Colonel Brandon's
ward and as a result had refused to
give him an allowance. Consequently, he
had married a wealthy girl and renounced
Marianne. He said that he still loved
Marianne and wished her to know his
story so that she would not think harshly
of him.
Marianne recovered from her illness
and returned home with her mother and
Elinor. There Elinor told her
Willoughby's story. Marianne continued to
sorrow for him, but she no longer loved
him.
After their return Elinor learned from
a servant that Edward and Lucy had been
married. Soon Edward appeared at the
cottage and told the Dash woods that the
unscrupulous Lucy had married his
brother instead, after their mother had
disinherited Edward in favor of Robert.
Edward had come to ask Elinor to marry
him, and he had no trouble in gaining her
consent, as well as that of her mother. It
remained only for him to secure a living.
He went to London to seek his mother's
forgiveness. Because Mrs. Ferrars also had
3421

scorned her son Robert after his marriage
to Lucy, she felt a need for affection from
one of her children. After much weeping
and pleading, which failed to move
Edward in his determination to marry
Elinor, Mrs. Ferrars gave her consent to
the wedding. After their marriage they
moved into the parsonage promised
Edward by Colonel Brandon some months
before.
The colonel continued his quiet and
friendly courtship of Marianne. At last
site recognized his gentleness and
kindness and they were married. When they
moved to his estate, the two sisters were
near each other once more. Fanny and
John were so pleased to be related to the
colonel that Fanny even forgave Edward
for marrying Elinor. Mrs. Dashwood was
delighted at the good fortune of her
children, and the families lived in peace
and contentment for all of their lives.
3422

A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time ofvlot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1869
Principal characters:
Frederic Moreau, a young student
M. Arnoux, a businessman
Mme. Arnoux, his wife
M. Dambreuse, a banker
Mme. Dambreuse, his wife
Rosanette, mistress of many
Deslauriers, Frederic's friend
Louise Roque, Frederic's neighbor
Critique:
This novel by Flaubert illustrates well
his style. Flaubert's writing is always
exact, concise, and detailed. His fame
rests on a rather small number of works,
of which the best known are Madame
Bovary and Salatnmbd, all of them
exhibiting the careful, labored work of
a superb craftsman. A Sentimental
Education, hke the others, is a careful
piece of work. Although the plot interest
is slight, there are many impressive
analyses of French character.
The Story:
In 1840 the boat down the Seine to
Nogent had among its passengers
Frederic Moreau, who was returning home
after finishing his course at the College
de Sens. Frederic, with the prospect
of a long vacation before beginning his
law studies, saw on the boat an older
man whose conversation was eagerly
followed by a group of admirers.
Frederic drew closer to hear what was
being said. M. Arnoux was holding
forth on the subject of women; his
remarks were worldly in the extreme.
Noticing Frederic in the circle, he made
the young man's acquaintance and the
two promenaded for some time. Arnoux
invited Frederic to call when he arrived
in Paris. Frederic went up to the first-
class deck to sit and reflect on his
homecoming. There he saw a woman
knitting. Frederic thought her the most
beautiful woman he had ever seen. She
was a little older than he and demure
of manner; she never once looked directly
at him.
They were alone on the deck.
Frederic moved several times to see her from
different angles. Finally she dropped
her ball of yarn. When Frederic
retrieved it, her murmur of thanks was
pleasant to hear. A few minutes later
a litde girl came up, and he knew the
child was her daughter.. Then Arnoux
appeared on deck, and Frederic learned
that the woman was his wife. When the
boat docked, he watched them drive
away.
Mme. Moreau, a widow, was glad to
see her son, for all her hopes were in
his future career in diplomacy. As soon
as he decently could, Frederic went out
to meet his friend Deslauriers, an older
boy also planning a legal career. The two
friends discussed at great length theii
plans for Paris in the fall.
A neighbor of the Moreaus, M. Roque,
gave Frederic a letter for M. Dambreuse,
a rich banker in Paris. Mme. Moreau
advised her son to call on Dambreuse as
soon as he could; the banker could be
of great help to a young lawyer.
Bidding goodbye to his relatives and Louise
Roque, a girl who had become his special
friend during the summer, Frederic leff
3423

for Paris and his studies at the
university.
Deslauriers and Frederic took an
apartment together and began to attend
lectures in law. Frederic, however, found
great difficulty in keeping his mind on
his studies, for he thought most of the
time of Mme. Arnoux. He finally
received an invitation to the Arnoux store,
a big establishment dealing in paintings
and other works of art. He was patient
enough to become intimate with Arnoux,
and he lived in hopes of meeting his
wife.
One night Arnoux invited Frederic
to a ball. At the masquerade Arnoux
introduced him to Rosanette, an
attractive woman called la Mardchale by her
friends. Frederic was sure that Rosanette
was Arnoux's mistress. He was glad
to learn about the liaison; he had more
hopes of becoming friendly with Mme.
Arnoux.
When Frederic was finally invited to
dine at the Arnoux home, he was happy
to learn that Mme. Arnoux remembered
him perfectly. She was a friendly
Woman, but as time went on Frederic saw
little chance of ever becoming more
intimate with her. Even when he was
regularly included in gatherings at their
country house, he made no progress. At
last Frederic had to conclude that his
friends were right; Mme. Arnoux was
an honest woman.
So great was his preoccupation with
the pursuit of Mme. Arnoux that Frederic
failed his examinations that spring.
Before he left for home he called at the
Dambreuse home, where he was well
received. He vowed to study hard, to
forget about Mme. Arnoux, and to try
his luck in public life under the
sponsorship of M. Dambreuse. For a time
Frederic studied diligently, cultivated the
Dambreuse family, and went only
occasionally to see Mme. Arnoux. Having
passed his examinations, he was admitted
to the bar.
Before leaving Paris, he was included
in a picnic in honor of Mme. Arnoux's
birthday. During the party she seemed
put out with her husband. Arnoux
shrugged off his wife's pique and sent
her back to the city with Frederic. As
they left, Arnoux gave his wife a
bouquet which she surreptitiously threw
away. Thinking she had dropped it,
Frederic picked it up and gave it to her
in the carriage. As soon as they had
started the trip, she begged him to throw
the flowers out the window. Frederic
had never felt so close to her.
At Nogent Frederic had bad news.
His mother's income had dwindled
considerably because of the troubled politics
of monarchial France, and she had been
forced to sell some of her lands.
Henceforth she would have onlv enough for
a frugal living. A worse blow fell when
Frederic's rich uncle in Le Havre
announced that he would not leave his
wealth to Frederic. Feeling that he
was ruined, with no income and no
expectations, Frederic resigned himself
to a dull life in Nogent and spent three
years in almost complete idleness. His
only friend was Louise Roque, who had
grown into an attractive woman.
At last a telegram came. The uncle
in Le Havre had died intestate and
Frederic was his only heir. Hastily
Frederic prepared to return to Paris, in
spite of his mother's remonstrances. He
declared his love for Louise before he
left, but all the while he was thinking
of Mme. Arnoux.
In Paris, Frederic took a fashionable
apartment and settled down to a life
of ease. He became an intimate of the
Arnoux household and renewed his
friendship with Deslauriers. He agreed
to furnish the money to found a journal
of political opinion, his intention being
to give employment to Deslauriers and
at the same time control a paper that
would support his own future career in
politics. But when he learned that
Arnoux was pressed financially, he lent
money to him on Arnoux's promise of
repayment in a few days. But Arnoux
never repaid the money, and in
disappointment Deslauriers broke off their
friendship. Frederic consoled himself by
3424

his increasing intimacy with Mme. Ar-
noux.
Little by little Arnoux lost most of
his money, and an oil company he had
founded went bankrupt. He began to
spend less time at home and more with
various mistresses. His wife, becoming
aware of his many affairs, turned to
Frederic for sympathy. At last she agreed
to meet him and spend the afternoon
in his company.
With high hopes Frederic rented a
room for their rendezvous and rilled it
with expensive trinkets. He was to
meet Mme. Arnoux between two and
four, and on the appointed day he went
to the meeting place at one-thirty. He
waited until six-thirty, but she did not
appear. In despair he went to see
Rosanette, for to him it seemed a just
retaliation to make Arnoux's mistress
his own.
Mme. Arnoux had not kept the
appointment because her son was ill.
Taking his illness as a sign from heaven,
she was much ashamed of her interest
in Frederic.
During the riots which attended the
overthrow of the monarchy and the
establishment of the republic, Frederic
spent the time agreeably enough in the
country with Rosanette. He returned to
Paris only after he received word that
one of his friends had been wounded.
Louise Roque went to Paris with her
father, chiefly to see what had happened
to Frederic. When she finally met him,
she understood that he no longer was
interested in her.
In spite of his affair with Rosanette,
Frederic took another mistress, Mme.
Dambreuse. When the banker died,
Frederic decided to marry his widow.
But in his will, canny Dambreuse had
left his money to his niece. Frederic gave
up all thought of the proposed
marriage.
Although Frederic had many loves,
none was permanent. When he was
nearly fifty, Mme. Arnoux went to see
him. They agreed that they had been
right not to love carnally. Deslauriers
had been for twenty-five years a lawyei
in Nogent. He came to visit Frederic, and
they talked over the past. Deslaurien
had married Louise Roque, but she had
run away with a singer. To the old
friends it seemed that love was fickle,
selfish, unhappy — like life itself.
3425

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
Tyfe of work: Novel
Author: Laurence Steme (1713-1768)
Tyfe of plot: Novelized autobiography
Time of f lot: 1760's
Locale: France
First published: 1768
Principal characters:
Mr. Yorick, a sentimental traveler
Madame de L—, a fellow traveler
Madame de R—, Madame de L—'s friend
Count de B—, an admirer of Englishmen
La Fleur, a servant
Maria, a country girl
Critique:
Sterne called his book A Sentimental
Journey Through France and Italy, but
the title of this unconventional mixture
of autobiography, travel impressions, and
fiction is misleading. Sterne told of his
travels through France, but he died of
tuberculosis before he had written the
Italian section of his narrative.
Sentimental, as the title implies, outrageous
and eccentric in its humorous effects, the
novel entertains the reader with
delightful accounts and observations of whatevei
came into the author's mind. Like Tris
tram Shandy, the book broadened the
scope of prose fiction for later writers by
demonstrating that form and unified plot
are not necessary for a successful novel.
The Story:
With all the different lands of
travelers, the Idle Travelers, the Inquisitive
Travelers, the Travelers of Necessity, the
Simple Travelers, and the rest, Mr.
Yorick felt no kinship. He was a
Sentimental Traveler. As such, he collected
sentimental adventures as other tourists
collected postcards of the points of
interest they visited. Mr. Yorick had started
his journey because a man had asked
him, with a sneer, if he had ever been
in France. Yorick had just made some
statement on the French and did not like
being answered so tartly merely because
he did not have first-hand experience.
The same evening he packed some clothes
and left by boat for Calais.
While he was having supper at an inn
in Calais, a poor monk approached him
and begged alms for his monastery.
Yorick rebuffed him with caustic and
witty remarks. A little later Yorick saw
the monk talking with an attractive
woman who was also staying at the inn.
Afraid the monk might tell her how
rudely he had behaved, Yorick
approached the couple, apologized to the
monk, and offered his shell snuffbox to
him as a peace offering. Having made
friends with the monk and the lady,
Yorick planned to ask the lady to travel
with him to Paris. Her name, he learned,
was Madame de L—.
Proposing to make the trip to Paris in
a private carriage, Yorick invited the lady
to go with him to look over some of the
vehicles for sale in a nearby courtyard.
Their admiration of each other grew with
unusual rapidity. Before Yorick had a
chance to ask her to travel with him,
however, she was called away by a
message that her brother, Count L—, had
arrived. He had come to take her back
to Belgium with him. Yorick was
brokenhearted.
In parting, Madame. de L— asked
Yorick to visit her in Belgium if he passed
through that country. She also gave him
a letter of introduction to a good friend
in Paris, Madame de R—.
The next day Yorick set off in a small
carriage for Paris. His baggage fell out
of the chaise several times, and he had
a most uncomfortable trip to Montriul.
There an innkeeper suggested he needed
3426

a servant, and Yorick saw that the man
was quite right. He hired a young boy
named La Fleur, whose greatest
accomplishments were playing the flute and
making love to the girls. La Fleur was
delighted at the prospect of traveling
around Europe with a generous and
unpredictable English milord; his only
sadness on leaving home was the necessity
to say goodbye to all his village
sweethearts. Yorick was pleased with the lad's
quickness and wit, as he was sure that the
young Frenchman would be equal to any
emergency arising along the way.
The first problem the travelers met on
their journey was a dead ass lying in the
middle of the road. The horses refused
to pass the carcass, and La Fleur's horse
threw him and ran away. Proceeding to
the next town, they met and talked with
the owner of the poor dead beast. He
had taken the ass with him from
Germany to Italy, and was very unhappy at
its death, not so much because the beast
had been a help to him, but because he
felt sure that the ass had loved him
dearly and had been a good friend to
him for many years.
In Paris, Yorick went to the opera.
A quotation from Shakespeare popping
into his mind, he suddenly decided to go
and buy the works of that writer. He
went into a bookstore and found a set
on the counter. Unfortunately they were
not for sale, but had been sent to be
rebound for Count de B—, a great lover
of English authors and Englishmen. In
the shop Yorick saw a most attractive
young girl who, he decided, must be a
chambermaid. When she left the shop,
he followed her and began a conversation
about the book she had bought. Yorick
was surprised and pleased to discover that
the young girl belonged to the household
of Madame de R—. He told her to
inform her mistress that he would call
the next day.
On returning to his rooms, Yorick
learned from La Fleur that the police
wanted to see him. In his rush out of
England he had forgotten to get a
passport, and he had overlooked completely
the fact that England and France were
at war. Since he did not wish to be put
in jail, he decided that he would have to
get a passport. But he did not know how
these matters were arranged in France.
Madame de R— was the only person in
Paris to whom he carried a letter of
introduction, and he did not want to bother
the lady about the matter. The only
other chance of help was from Count de
B—, who at least liked Englishmen.
It took Yorick some time to get in to
see the count, but when he did the count
was most polite. As an amusing way to
introduce himself, Yorick opened one of
the volumes of Shakespeare, which had
just been sent from the bookseller's.
Turning to The Tragedy of Hamlet and
pointing to the passage about the jester
Yorick, he said that was his name. The
count was overcome with pleasure at
meeting so famous a person, and Yorick
could say nothing that would change the
count's mind. The count left the room
and did not return for a long while.
When he did, he presented Mr. Yorick
with a passport which called him the
King's Jester. Realizing that he could
not correct the mistake without losing
his passport, Yorick thanked the count
and returned to his rooms.
The next day Madame de R—*s
chambermaid called to see why Mr.
Yorick had not visited her mistress as
he had promised. Yorick explained about
the passport and asked her to present his
apology. Some hours later, after the girl
had gone, the manager of the hotel came
in and objected to Yorick's having young
ladies in his room. In order to keep from
being evicted from the hotel, Yorick had
to buy some lace from a young woman.
He suspected that the manager pocketed
most of the profits from such sales.
On Sunday La Fleur appeared in a
fine suit of clothes which he had bought
second-hand. He asked if he might be
allowed to have the day off, as he had
been able to make friends with a young
woman he would like to see again tha*
day. Yorick asked him to bring some food
before he left for the day. Wrapped
3427

about the butter, which La Fleur brought
with Yorick's dinner, was a piece of
paper which bore on it some old printing.
Yorick became interested in the story it
told and spent the whole day translating
the faded characters to read the story of
a luckless notary. But he was never to
know the ending of the tale, for La Fleur
had used the rest of the paper to wrap up
a bouquet for his new ladylove.
Yorick had a fine time at parties to
which he was invited by Count de B—
and the count's friends. He agreed with
everyone to whom he talked, and made
no remarks of his own, and so he was
thought the finest wit in Paris. After
several minor sentimental adventures,
Yorick and La Fleur set out to travel
through southern France. At Moulines,
Yorick stopped to see Maria, a poor
unhappy girl who wandered about the
country grieving for her dead father. He had
heard of the girl from his old friend,
Mr. Toby Shandy, who had met her
several years before. Yorick sat down on a
rock with Maria and, moved by her
purity and sadness, shed a few tears with her.
Before ascending Mount Taurira,
Yorick stopped and had dinner with a
pleasant peasant family. That night he
was forced to stay in a roadside inn.
There was only one room in the inn, and
Yorick had to share it with a French lady
and her maid. In the room there were
two large beds standing beside each other
and, in a closet connected to the room, a
cot. After much deliberation, the lady
and Yorick took the big beds and sent the
maid into the closet. Yorick had to
promise to stay in his bed all night, and not
to say a word. Unable to sleep, both
Yorick and the lady began talking. Afraid
that something untoward might occur,
the maid come out of the closet and,
unseen, stood between the two beds.
Yorick stretched out his hand. With thi*
sentimental gesture Sterne ended abrupt
ly the story of his sentimental journey.
3428

SEVEN AGAINST THEBES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Thebes in Boeotia
First presented: 467 B.C.
Principal characters:
Eteocles, King of Thebes
Polynices, his brother
Antigone, and
Ismene, their sisters
A Spy
Theban Women, the chorus
Critique:
In this severely simple drama, in which
all the action is described by messengers,
Aeschylus presented the third and closing
episode in the tragic legend of the royal
house of Thebes. The plays dealing with
the fate of Laius and or his son Oedipus,
have, unfortunately, not come down to
us, but in the surviving drama the deaths
of Eteocles and his brother Polynices,
sons of Oedipus and grandsons of Laius,
culminated three generations of violence,
bloodshed, and agony which arose from
Laius* ingratitude to Pelops. The
delineation of the character of Eteocles in this
play marked in Greek tragedy a new
departure which was to be perfected by
Sophocles and Euripides.
The Story:
After the ruin and exile of Oedipus,
King of Thebes, his sons, Eteocles and
Polynices, fell into open dispute, each
brother claiming supreme authority in the
city. The quarrel led to a bloody civil
war, in which Eteocles was victorious.
Banished from Thebes, Polynices went to
Argos. There he mustered an army, led
by six famous Argive heroes, for the
purpose of returning and recapturing the city,
which was restless under his brothers
rule.
Thebes was besieged with the Argive
warriors camped about its walls. Eteocles,
consulting a seer, learned that his brother's
army was planning to make a surprise
night attack and under cover of
darkness scale the walls and overwhelm the
defenders. Eteocles exhorted all Theban
men, young and old, to stand bravely at
their posts and to repel the attackers.
While he was speaking, a spy reported
to Eteocles that Polynices and his Argives
had sworn to raze the city, their vows
made with clasps of hands stained by
blood dripping from the head of an ox
sacrificed in solemn ritual. The spy also
brought word that Polynices and tne six
Argive heroes had drawn lots to
determine the city gates against which each
of the seven would lead his band of
attackers.
Upon hearing the spy's report, the
Theban women called upon the gods and
goddesses to protect Cadmus' sacred city
from the onslaught of the besiegers.
Eteocles rebuked the frightened women
and declared that they were wasting their
time with appeals to the gods at a time of
imminent peril. He asserted that the
Thebans must depend on their own
courage and strength, not upon the
unpredictable gods. Angrily he dismissed the
women to attend to their children and
weaving; they were to leave all other
matters to their husbands and fathers.
Eteocles then chose the six outstanding
warriors of Thebes who would, with
himself, defend the seven gates of the city
against the seven Achaean warriors who
had sworn each to take a gate of the city
by storm. The king chose the defending
heroes carefully. Theban Melanippus
3429

would oppose Argive Tydeus; Poly-
phontes, Capaneus; Megareus, Eteocles of
Argqs; Hyperbius, Hippomedon; Actor,
Parthenopaeus, and Lasthenes, Amphi-
?.raus. Because Polynices himself was to
be the seventh hero leading the attack
against the seventh gate, Eteocles
announced that he would stand as his
brother's opponent. Their combat, prince
against prince, brother against brother,
would determine for all time the destiny
of their ill-fated house.
Hearing his heated words, the Theban
women again began their wailing lament
and warned him against the sin of
fratricide. But Eteocles, well aware of the blood
bath that his family had already suffered
because of the curse of Pelops on Laius,
his grandfather, ignored the city matrons.
Defying the fickle gods, he declared that
he was determined to remain King of
Thebes, even if his brother's death must
be the price of his crown.
At Etiocles' mention of the curse upon
his house, the Theban women deplored
the sad story of Laius. Already cursed by
Pelops, whose hospitality he had
desecrated, Laius had been warned by Apollo
that he would prosper only if he sired no
child. In spite of the warning, however,
he had fathered a son, Oedipus. Later
the child was abandoned in the
wilderness, where he was saved from death by
the intervention of an old household
servant and reared to manhood by a good
shepherd. Oedipus, in turn, defied
prophecies of disaster and doom when he,
unaware of his true identity, murdered
Laius, his father, and subsequently
married Jocasta, his mother. Two of the
children of their ill-starred union were
Eteocles and Polynices, whose rivalry had
caused untold suffering in Thebes. The
women wept when they recalled the years
of strife and trouble that had been brought
upon their city by the doomed line of
Cadmus.
Meanwhile the brazen clamor of arms
and the shouts of men sounded in the
distance; the attack had begun. While
the women waited to learn the outcome
of the assault, a messenger brought word
that the defenders had beaten back the
Argive warriors at six of the seven gates.
The city had been saved, he announced,
but in the fighting at the seventh gate
Eteocles and Polynices had both been
slain.
At the height of the attack, when the
battle was fiercest, the brothers had killed
each other, thus fulfilling the prophecy
of Oedipus that his sons would share
glory by iron, that is to say, by the sword,
not by gold. The only land over which
they would rule would be the grave, and
the soil that had called them masters was
now red with their blood.
The bodies of Eteocles and Polynices
were carried into the city in preparation
for their burial. Antigone and Ismene,
sisters of the dead princes, mourned their
violent deaths, while the Theban women
sang a mournful dirge for the tragic
ending of a great family, cursed by the gods
but defiant of the doom forecast years
ago and now unhappily fulfilled.
In the midst of their laments a herald
appeared to announce the decision of the
Theban senate. Eteocles, the city fathers
had decreed, had been his country's
friend; as such, his body was to receive
final burial rites and to be interred within
the royal tomb. Men would remember
him as his city's champion and savior.
Polynices, on the other hand, had sowed
dissension and civil strife. Demanding
fit punishment for his crimes against the
state, the senate had proclaimed that his
body should be thrown outside the city
gates, where dogs and ravens could feast
upon his flesh.
Antigone imperiously defied the city
fathers. If no one else would give her
brother a burial befitting his rank, she
declared, she herself would bury him. It
was her opinion, since he was the older
son and therefore rightful heir to the
throne, that he had been no more right
and no more wrong than Eteocles had
been in his beliefs and deeds.
Her brave defiance brought many
sympathizing citizens to her side. Some
declared that laws often changed and what
is one day right is often wrong tomorrow.
3430

The others, surrounding the corpse of division of public opinion more troubles
Eteocles, maintained that they would were forecast for the unhappy city,
obey the decree of the senate. In that
3431

SEVEN GOTHIC TALES
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Isak Dinesen (Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke, 1885-1962)
Time: Nineteenth century
Locale: Mostly northern Europe
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag, an old aristocrat
Countess Calypso von Platen Hallermund, her godchild
Cardinal Hamilcar von Sehestedt
Kasparson, his servant
Jonathan Maersk, a young noble
Baron von Brackel, an old gallant
The Prioress of Closter Seven
Boris, her nephew
Athena, the girl Boris loved
Count Augustus von Schimmelmann, a young Danish nobleman
Donna Rosina di Gampocorta, a Pisan lady
Morten De Coninck, a sailor
Euza, and
Fanny, his sisters
Lincoln Forsner, an English adventurer
Mathiesen, a town councilor
Anders Kube, a clerk and poet
Mme. Fransine Lerche, a beauty
When Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic
Tales first appeared in 1934, their old-
world atmosphere, their romantic style of
writing, and their aura of mystery made
them highly popular. Particularly in
America, these tales of the supernatural
and of nineteenth-century aristocratic life
found a wide audience of people tired of
the vast amount of realistic and
naturalistic fiction of the age. At that time,
few Americans knew Isak Dinesen's real
identity (she is a Danish Baroness, Karen
Blixen-Finecke). In fact, Dorothy Can-
field, who wrote the introduction to the
first American edition of Seven Gothic
Tales, did not know whether the author
was a man or a woman and only ventured
the guess that the author was a
northern European of aristocratic background.
These tales, and Isak Dinesen's
subsequent work, have held a loyal audience
ever since, although for many readers the
enthusiasm that originally greeted the
Seven Gothic Tales has been tempered
by an awareness of the overwriting and
the tricks frequently used to bring the
plots together.
Many of the plots involved in the
Seven Gothic Tales deal with a
vanishing aristocracy in Europe in the early
or middle years of the nineteenth
century. The aristocracy, concerned with
passing its blood down from generation
to generation, finds the lines of breeding
corrupted by illegitimacy. The
uncovering of illegitimacy, or sometimes of
legitimacy, is one of the major plot devices in
Isak Dinesen's work. In "The Deluge
at Norderney," for example, Jonathan
Maersk is trying to escape the knowledge
that he is really a baron's son instead of
the son of a simple seaman. The
knowledge that he is the baron's son makes
Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag arrange a
marriage between him and her godchild while
they are all waiting in a hayloft for a
rescue boat during a flood. The plot
hinges on Jonathan's disclosure of his
origin, no matter how melancholy this
revelation makes him, for melancholy is
fashionable among the aristocracy of the
time. The question of legitimacy also
plays a strong part in the working out
of several of the other tales.
3432

Most of the stories also contain a
strong element of the supernatural.
People assume the identities of others, as the
servant Kasparson assumes the identity
of Cardinal Hamilcar von Sehestedt,
after he has killed the cardinal, in "The
Deluge at Norderney"; or people's lives
strangely follow the pattern of long-dead
historical figures as in "The Poet," in
which the situation repeats the pattern
of a royal triangle that had led to tragedy
in the same town half a century before.
It is as if men are not the agents that
control their destinies; rather, they are
pushed by powers greater than they,
powers that are never explained or
described in any rationally comprehensible
manner. Mysterious transformations also
take place in this northern and
supernatural world, as the prioress is
transformed inexplicably in "The Monkey."
Along this gloomy northern shore, men
are haunted by ghosts of history and
their own past actions. The supernatural
is not always inexplicable; it is
sometimes, in Isak Dinesen's work, used as
the symbol for the past of the
character influencing his present. Morten De
Coninck's return to the sea, in "The
Supper at Elsinore," is at least as much a
reaction against his sisters and his
boyhood memories as it is a mysterious "call"
from powers stronger than he. In other
stories, like "The Monkey," both Athena's
and the prioress' actions seem attributable
only to supernatural causes.
These stories are full of heroic and
aristocratic action. For example, in "The
Roads Round Pisa," a young Danish
nobleman who helps an old lady after
a road accident finds himself led into a
complex of events that eventually causes
him to become involved in a duel. The
stories have floods and storms, long
voyages and tragic deaths, a constant kind of
romantic derring-do. If the characters are
expected to maintain strength and
heroism in the face of adversity, if they do
avoid self-pity (although not
melancholy), they still become involved in
incidents like duels for love or honor, in
raging storms or floods, that recall the
romantic tradition. The only element in
Miss Dinesen's work that distinguishes
it from the supernatural, romantic tale
is the need of the characters to meet
their fate without wailing, with bravery
and often stoicism, as an aristocratic old
woman faces the decay of her class and
her own possible death during a furious
storm in "The Deluge at Norderney."
At its best, Isak Dinesen's work shows
the courage involved in facing the
unpredictable, the romantic defeat, the
powerful supernatural force.
Some of the tales, like "The Poet" and
"The Supper at Elsinore," have more
simple and domestic settings. Instead of
dealing with bizarre aristocrats
considering blood lines and legitimacy, these
stories deal with simple townspeople or
seafaring families. But these people also
become involved in strange events that
they cannot control, and they find the
romantic promptings of their souls
unfulfilled in the quiet ways of life they are
expected to lead. "The Poet" deals with
the love triangle of the town councilor,
the poet, and the beautiful lady who has
just come to town. Their romantic urges,
their characters, and their fates make a
conflict inevitable, despite their awareness
of a historical warning concerning the
same kind of triangle. Two sisters, who
have unwillingly become old maids
because their brother ran away from his
intended bride at the altar, wait
faithfully for the brother in "The Supper at
Elsinore." He returns, but again runs
away, for the pathetic and romantic
sisters have come to represent exactly what
he fled in the first place. Isak Dinesen
is able to look at her characters clearly
in these stories, analyze the motives that
impel them, sympathize with their
romantic dreams, and yet treat their defeats
without falling into mawkish excess.
One of Isak Dinesen's stories is more
glibly ironic than are the rest. In "The
Old Chevalier" an old baron who has
been successful with the ladies for many
years is approached by a lovely young
girl in Paris. He takes her to his room,
invests her with all the characteristics of
3433

the enigmatic and romantic waif, makes
love to her, and feels he has found
something pure, ideal, and beautiful.
Then, as she is leaving, she asks him
for her standard fee. Like Isak Dinesen's
other aristocratic heroes, he takes his
defeat with good grace but with knowledge
of the ironic situation in which he finds
himself. Although obvious similar devices
of plot are frequent in Seven Gothic
Tales, the bizarre details and the
supernatural aura of stories such as "The
Monkey" and "The Deluge at Norderney"
make them far more interesting for most
readers than is "The Old Chevalier."
The frequent use of both the bizarre
and the supernatural is paralleled by Isak
Dinesen's rich and provocative style.
Although often repetitious, the prose is full
of gloomy images of the northern seas,
a full use of comparisons, and great ease
of manner. Isak Dinesen is a true
storyteller, able to evoke a mood with
richness, ease, and power. Her prose is also
distinguished by touches of humor which,
without disrupting the thread of the
narrative, are apparent in all her work. These
frequent injections of humor do much to
relieve the fullness and the supernatural
aura of the ornate prose.
Despite the humor and despite an
awareness of psychological motive, Isak
Dinesen is not essentially a
twentieth-century writer. Her adroit, easy style, her
fondness for the bizarre and the
supernatural, her construction of elaborate
plots based on a trick, a mistaken
identity, a sudden inexplicable
transformation—all these make her tales far more
characteristic of nineteenth-century rather
than twentieth-century writing. Because
she writes out of allegiance to the earlier
Gothic tradition and with consciously
contrived artistry, it does not seem likely
that she will be celebrated as one of our
greatest, most profound, or most
interesting writers. At the same time her
deliberate adherence to a past literary tradition
and an earlier style and point of view
makes her work an interesting example
of the diversity of contemporary literature
and provides her with a loyal ai d
enthusiastic group of readers.
3434

SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM
Type of work: History
Author: T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)
Time: 1916-1918
Locale: The Middle East
First published: 1926
Principal personages:
T. E. Lawrence, the author
Sherif Feisal Ibn Hussein
Field Marshal Edmund H. H. Allenby
Sir Henry McMahon, High Commissioner in Egypt
Jemal Pasha, of Syria
Sherif Hussein, Emir of Mecca
Unless the forces and countercurrents
of world history change abruptly or
virtually reverse themselves, it is unlikely
that an Englishman will ever again have
the opportunity to approximate the
exploits and terrors, the sense of
achievement and frustration which T. E.
Lawrence experienced and described in his
Seven Pillars of Wisdom. This work is,
in a very real sense, autobiographical
history, lived by a most extraordinary and
strangely gifted man.
The unusual qualities manifest in the
author of Seven Pillars of Wisdom
developed early. His boyhood interest in
archaeology and adventure resulted in
one book, Crusader Castles, written while
he was still an undergraduate. His field
of special study at Oxford brought about
his travels as a professional archaeologist
in exploratory rambles through Syria,
Egypt, and Northern Mesopotamia.
When war broke out in 1914, it was only
to be expected that Lawrence would serve
in British Intelligence in Egypt. But in
1916, Captain Lawrence sought leave
from these duties to try to bring about
unity among the Arab chieftains in order
to counteract the military and political
activities of Turkey. With these
extraordinary years Seven Pillars of Wisdom is
concerned.
Following World War I, Lawrence's
life fell into unusual patterns. Granted
many military distinctions and special
recognition for his achievements during
the war years, he refused nearly every
honor. For a time he served as Arab
consultant at peace conferences and as a
political adviser to the Colonial office of
his government. By 1921, however, his
secretive nature had asserted itself. He
enlisted as an aircraftman under the
name of Ross; he saw duty as Private
T. E. Shaw in the Tank Corps; and he
enlisted again as T. E. Shaw in the Air
Force. Upon completion of this last tour
of duty, he returned to England, only to
lose his life in a motorcycle crash. His
was a strange and unusual life, filled with
adventure, heroic achievement, planned
self-effacement, and accidental
conclusion.
Just as extraordinary were the events
culminating in the final publication of
Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Working from
his own detailed notes, which he
destroyed as he completed each major
section of the book, Lawrence lost almost
the entire first draft. Again he set about
his task, this time writing from memory
alone. The work appeared first in the
limited edition of 1926. In the following
year he issued an abridgement, Revolt in
the Desert, for the general public.
Following his death in 1935, the full text of
Seven Pillars of Wisdom was released.
Comparison of the complete work with
Revolt in the Desert affords no good
explanation for the author's insistence upon
the delay in releasing of the full text.
Strange, even quixotic, as some of the
SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM by T. E. Lawrence. By permission of the publishers, Doubleday ft Co.,
Inc. Copyright, 1926, 1935, by Doubleday ft Co., Inc.
3435

incidents of Lawrence's life and the
fortunes of his principal publication may
seem, the book itself is far more
extraordinary and revealing: a detailed and
absorbing recital of two years of striving,
of attack and maneuver, of persuasion and
rebuff, of privation and intense strain,
which culminated in a large measure of
success with partial victory of Arab forces
over the common enemy, Turkey.
The title of this account is to some
extent indicative of the complex mind of
the author. Some years before he had
selected the phrase from the first verse
of the ninth chapter of the Book of
Proverbs: "Wisdom hath builded a house:
she hath hewn out her seven pillars."
At the time he planned to use the title
for a projected book about seven cities;
later he transferred the title to the
present work "as a memento" of his early
literary enterprise; finally he added the
subtitle, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom:
a Triumph. In essence, the full title
suggests the transition from Lawrence the
youthful archaeologist to Lawrence the
expert in Arab affairs and in military
plans and strategy.
This record of a two-year campaign is
long, compact, and explicit, though set
down from memory. It consists of 122
closely written chapters, comprising an
introduction, ten books, and an epilogue,
totaling more than six hundred pages.
In the first seven chapters Lawrence
sketched what he termed "The
Foundations of Revolt." He described the Arab
lands and their troubled peoples, the
animosity between Turks and the other
loosely knit groups, the lack of trust
among various Arab clans, and the
absence of fundamental understanding of
all these conflicting circumstances on the
part of the British Foreign Office and key
military leaders. Lawrence was convinced
that the Arab Revolt could succeed if
the Arab leaders were properly advised.
After securing detachment from his
Foreign Office assignment, he took off to
interview Arab chieftains and leaders. He
traveled far, on camelback and in Arab
dress, to confer with Feisal and other
prominent Arab chiefs in an effort to
gather first-hand impressions of physical
conditions, supplies, and military strength.
With this information, Lawrence returned
to his superior officers and reported that
a tribal war would be feasible if
adequately supplied logistically. His estimate
of the situation was accepted, somewhat
surprisingly, and preparations began for
an attack on the Turks. A frontal assault
soon proved foolhardy, however, because
of the preponderant forces of the enemy.
Thereafter, the Arabs under Feisal served
often as an integral part of the British
force and were successful in taking
Medina, Akaba; in harassing the enemy bv
cutting railway communications; and
finally in aiding in the capture of
Damascus. By this time the Turkish armies were
scattered and the Eastern war drew to its
end. Lawrence's efforts were expended.
He departed as soon as possible in order
not to become involved in the stalemate
of establishing authority.
As an account by one intimately
acquainted with a successful militarv
endeavor of great significance, Seven Pillars
of Wisdom merits recognition and
thorough study, for it is an excellent treatise
of war conducted under extremely
difficult conditions. But Lawrence's book
offers much more than mere history; in
reality, the military story is little more
than the framework upon which the
author built a deeply absorbing analysis of
this part of the Arab world, its people and
leaders, its weaknesses, and its hopes for
the future. As a professional student of
the past history of those areas, Lawrence
had chosen to live among the people, to
learn their ways, and to share their
hardships. With this profoundly sympathetic
background, Lawrence was singularly
equipped to understand, to reconcile Arab
psychologv with Allied purpose, to gain
the confidence of justifiablv suspicious
Arab leaders. In the course of his account,
Lawrence constantly describes, explains,
and interprets. His style, though at times
archaic or difficult, enables him to picture
desert scenes, oases, and the teeming Arab
cities with consummate skill. His portraits
3436

of his associates, his junior colleagues and
senior officers among the Allies, and his
valued and capable friends among the
Arabs are vivid word pictures. Lawrence
had an eye for human qualities and
human character, and he could record them
memorably. As few Europeans have ever
been able to do, Lawrence became one of
the people he was working with, and the
most understanding and intelligent of
them realized this phenomenon and
valued his efforts.
Perhaps the most puzzling and
stimulating feature of this extraordinary book
is almost coincidental: the picture of
Lawrence himself which gradually
emerges. T. E. Lawrence was indeed an
amazing person. He was capable of
intense absorption in the task at hand, that
of mounting a successful military
operation to conquer the Turks. But at the
same time he was appreciating the stark
beauties of barren lands and ancient
cities; he was evaluating human beings
and their ways, judging, adapting their
strength to the immediate purpose, and
enjoying their companionship. He was
also subjecting his own way of life and
his own people to a very critical
appraisal. In the end, he evidently found
his own institutions strangely lacking and
disappointing. Hence, Lawrence
apparently decided to refuse the honors heaped
upon him, to cut himself off from the
leaders of his own kind, and to submerge
himself in obscurity. His was a lofty,
powerful mind, honest but stern and
implacable. When that mind could not
reconcile itself to the English present,
he simply chose anonymity. Like
Gulliver, his travels among strange peoples
and regions left Lawrence far from
satisfied with the ideals and practices in his
homeland.
3437

SEVEN SHORT PLAYS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Lady Gregory (Isabella Augusta Persse Gregory, 1852-1932)
Time: The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: Ireland
First published: 1909
These fine plays, the best and most
popular short plays by the influential
writer-director of the Abbey Theatre in
Dublin, were dedicated to the moving
spirit of the group, William Butler Yeats.
The plays, produced in the years 1903
to 1909, are capsule representatives of the
entire theater movement during the Irish
Renaissance. They contain something of
Yeats' own poetic imagery, Synge's
mystical lyricism, and O'Casey's critical
though often comic realism.
In this collection Lady Gregory,
careful scholar and folklorist, included notes
and music, production dates, and names
of actors which also serve to document
her literary career and her activities in
the theater. The notes explain the source
of inspiration, name those who gave
information, and define Irish terms and
expressions. The music is folk in origin,
though carefully transcribed and adapted,
perhaps, to the demands of the theater.
The production dates and casts are, of
course, history.
The first short play, "Spreading the
News," began as a tragedy of the
unhappy results of rumor. In 1903 what was
needed, Lady Gregory says, was comedy
to offset heavier pieces, and so she
designed a farce of errors, the errors of false
reports which involved the whole henny-
penny Irish countryside. A new
magistrate, very zealous to uncover law
violations, followed a report of violence from
the time an unexplained act of
friendship—returning a pitchfork—became the
ditching of an instrument used to kill the
husband of a faithless spouse. The entire
population of a country fair becomes
radically partisan, to the extreme discomfiture
of the unlucky "murderer," who swears
he will commit the rumored murder
should his "victim" be put in jail with
him.
"Hyacinth Halvey," the title name of
the hero, now stands as a byword for the
unlucky man about whom nothing evil
can be said. This play, often anthologized
since its first production and printing in
1906, contrasts Halvey with Fardy Far-
rell, the good-natured lout about whom
nothing good is said. Lady Gregory
suggests that respectability can be a great
burden, for young Hyacinth arrives in a
small, gossipy village, where he is
preceded by fulsome "characters,"
recommendations from his relatives and friends.
The satire is resolved when Halvey's
honest attempts to be wicked become in one
instance the saving of a butcher who deals
in spoiled meat and in another a cover-
in g-up of the alleged crime of poor Far-
rell. Hyacinth Halvey finally goes off to
the courthouse to deliver a temperance
lecture—sent there by the absentee
speaker—on the shoulders of the
townspeople, who proclaim him a kind of mes-
siah.
Also produced in 1906, "The Gaol
Gate" holds something of quiet tragedy,
a keening of the wife and the mother
of a man who died for a crime he did not
commit, without informing on those who
did. This misfortune becomes a solace to
the two women who had traveled to the
jail thinking the man an informer—again,
village rumor. Though the symbolism is
not insisted upon, the two women are
both named Mary. And they leave in
exaltation, knowing that Denis died for
his neighbor.
In 1907 two other plays were
produced. "The Jackdaw" shows the Irish
temperament to be at once quixotic and
rigidly practical. An improvident
shopkeeper has been hailed into court for
nonpayment of debt, but her brother wants
to get her off and yet remain anonymous,
not for reasons of modesty but to prevent
3438

her from bleeding him. A friend invents
the fiction of the jackdaw which sells for
ten pounds, the amount of the fine.
Everyone in town then goes on a
jackdaw hunt, not excluding the benefactor.
"The Rising of the Moon" is a
melodrama which on production aroused some
controversy among extreme Nationalists
and Unionists alike. The story tells of a
ragged young ballad singer, a political
refugee, who makes his escape with the
help of a magical song, a folksong from
his native county, which proves to be
the birthplace of the policeman who
allows him, even helps him, to escape.
"It is better to be quarreling than
alone" is the proverb upon which "The
Workhouse Ward" is based. First written
as the scenario of a play to further the
national theater movement, this work
was in 1908 expanded into a lively farce
in which opposition attracts. Into a scene
of violent argument beween two old men
in a poorhouse comes the sister of one,
offering to take him to her home. The
other man, a childhood friend to them
both, begs to be taken too. The sister feels
that his request is unreasonable, especially
when her brother refuses to go without
his favorite enemy, and she leaves them.
The play closes on a scene of violence
more devastating than that with which it
opens.
The final play, for which no
production date is given, is based on an
international folk-tale type known as "The
Greedy Peasant Woman." "The
Travelling Man" of the title is Christ, who
many years ago led a homeless young girl
to the lonely house of a widower, asking
only that she not shut her heart upon
him when he returns. Each year, the
woman explains to her young daughter,
she and her husband make a special cake
commemorating the day (the feast day)
when they were brought together. While
the mother is out, the young girl invites
in a tramp who plays with her and asks
only a bit of food from the mother upon
her return. She refuses him and reviles
him, only to discover a flowering branch
left behind as a sign that he was the
"King of the World."
Such versatility as Lady Gregory
displayed in her long association with the
Abbey Theatre is very well presented in
this volume, the plays ranging as they do
from farce to fantasy. She was one of the
great Irish writers of one-act plays who,
along with Dunsany, Synge, and Yeats,
made the one-act play an art form. They
have had many imitators, but no peers.
3439

THE SEVEN WHO FLED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Frederic Prokosch (1909- )
Type of plot: Exotic romance
Time of plot: c. 1935
Locale: China
First published: 1937
Principal characters:
Layeville, an English explorer
Serafimov, a Russian exile
Goupilliere, a Belgian criminal
Hugo Wildenbruch, a German geologist
Joachim von Wald, an Austrian geologist
Monsieur de la Scaze, a wealthy Frenchman
Olivia de la Scaze, his Spanish wife
Dr. Liu, a Chinese merchant
Critique:
The mystery of the Orient floods the
pages of The Seven Who Fled: its
resignation, its cruelty, its passive strength, and
its subtle lure for the Occidental. Starting
at the extreme western edge of China, the
scenes of the novel are wide in range.
Seven Europeans, assembled by chance at
Kashgar, are set adrift to brave an alien
East. Prokosch sketches their adventures
in seven separate stories, giving his
narrative a degree of unity by the use of a
prologue and an epilogue. These Europeans
are fleeing more than a revolutionary
disturbance when they join a Chinese
caravan for their flight across central Asia.
Purposeless and disillusioned, they are
running away, not only from themselves
but from Europe itself, the shaper of their
barren and frustrated lives. Their personal
fates dramatize the fates of their different
countries, and their common doom hints
at the death of a continent. This vivid
contrast between the ancient Asiatic
landscape and the bewildered, frightened
modern man gives Prokosch's novel a quality
of thoughtfulness and significance which
only deepens its verbal beauty.
The Story:
Late one September night, a caravan
crossed a dried river bed and approached
Aqsu from the direction of Kashgar. The
members of the party were Dr. Liu, a
wealthy and cultured Chinese merchant
who had hired the caravan; seven
Europeans, including one woman, whom he
had permitted to join it, and a dozen or
more Turki porters. The Europeans had
been forced to leave Kashgar because of
disturbances in Sinkiang Province. Before
them lay an arduous, danger-filled journey
of two thousand miles eastward to
Shanghai.
Their troubles started early, at Aqsu.
Local authorities mysteriously imprisoned
the two young geologists, Wildenbruch
and von Wald, the German and the
Austrian. Two others were detained as
hostages, the huge Russian Serafimov and
the scarred, wiry Belgian, Goupilliere.
The remaining three were permitted to
move on with Dr. Liu, but wealthy de la
Scaze developed a fever and also stayed
behind. His young and beautiful Spanish
wife went on with the caravan, as did
Layeville, the handsome English explorer.
Layeville, inured to hardship, withstood
imperturbably the rigors of desert heat and
distance. The camels were less enduring;
and finally, with only four of them left,
the party was forced to halt. Fortunately,
two caravans soon came into view, one
headed eastward and the other toward
Tibet. Dr. Liu and Olivia de la Scaze
joined the former; but Layeville, to their
astonishment, turned back toward Tibet.
THE SEVEN WHO FLED by Frederic Prokosch. By permission of the author and the publishers, Double-
day & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1937, by Harper & Brothers.
3440

After weeks of travel his caravan, misled
by a treacherous Tibetan, became
hopelessly lost. Among the icy peaks which
symbolized something remotely beckoning
and unattainable, Layeville awaited
calmly the experience he had been half-
consciously seeking—death.
Back in Aqsu, the hulking Russian exile
began his interminable wait in the
crowded caravanserai. Patient at first,
Serafimov soon began to be tortured by
physical desire. Hearing of a Russian
prostitute who was supposed to possess wit and
elegance, he went to her apartment, but
she rejected him. Emotional and
impulsive, Serafimov daily sank deeper into
melancholy brooding. Soon his frustration
found an outlet in hatred and jealousy of
his cleverer fellow-hostage. Eventually he
realized what he had to do—and one dark
night, after Goupilliere had slipped out to
visit Madame Tastin, Serafimov awoke
and followed him.
Goupilliere had had an unsavory past.
Scheming and unscrupulous, his unusual
beauty had allowed him to prey on
women, robbing them of their virtue and
jewels. Murder was added to the dark
pattern of his crimes when, in blind fury,
he strangled a Parisian grisette who had
split his cheek with a pair of scissors. In
new-found fear he fled to Saigon—where
he met de la Scaze and his wife—and
thence to Kashgar and Aqsu. At Aqsu
his ability to torment the clumsy Russian
had afforded Goupilliere malicious
pleasure. Now, however, the discovery of the
menace lurking in Serafimov's eyes was
turning the Belgian's amusement mta
fright. One night, coming from Madame
Tastin's, Goupilliere found the Russian
waiting. A short flight, a game of frantic
hide-and-seek in the dark, and he felt vast
hands closing upon his throat.
Meanwhile Wildenbruch, with his
Austrian companion, was still in prison.
With Germanic thoroughness he
exercised, he counted passers-by, he kept a
journal. Finally the vigilance of the
guards relaxed, and the prisoners escaped.
After fleeing all night, they sighted a
caravan which carried them into Mongolia
and there abandoned them. However,
they were befriended by an old Russian,
Mordovinov, who installed them in one
of his two huts and helped them through
the winter. During their stay in that
frozen wasteland Wildenbruch began to
cough, and occasionally he found his
handkerchief stained with blood. The
discovery sent a chill of dismay through him,
for his mother had died of tuberculosis.
Young von Wald did not find the long
Mongolian winter irksome, although he
was concerned at his friend's intermittent
illness. High-spirited and hopeful, he
attempted to encourage the despondent
Wildenbruch. With the approach of
spring they decided to resume, once
more, their eastward journey. Taking
affectionate leave of Mordovinov, they
traveled on foot for a few days until they
reached a main road and fell in with a
caravan of cattle and donkeys. Time
passed and they reached the coast, with
Wildenbruch wildly anxious to sail for
Germany; but von Wald, entranced with
the East, decided to remain in Shanghai.
Shanghai was also the end of the trail
for Olivia de la Scaze. Earlier, she had
accepted Dr. Liu's hospitable invitation
to break her difficult journey at his
luxurious home in Lu-chow. It soon became
clear, however, that he had no intention
of allowing her to leave. Alarmed, she
escaped one night and boarded a junk for
Shanghai. During the voyage she became
feverish and listless, no longer caring
what happened to her or that the Chinese
captain and his handsome young pilot
were obviously treating her as their
virtual captive. Upon reaching Shanghai,
she made no resistance when she was led
into the street of the prostitutes and
placed in a brothel.
A similar resignation to destiny had
seized Olivia's husband, recuperating at
Aqsu. His money ran low, but he made
no effort to depart. Realizing that he had
never utilized his powers of observation
and understanding, he began to immerse
himself in the sights and sounds of the
East. The climax of his experience was
reached when a beautiful dancing-girl
3441

came to his apartment—but she brought
with her the contagion of cholera. When
de la Scaze fell ill, he made his way, like
the natives, to the Dying Field. There
he awaited, almost joyously, the
purification of death.
A final three-cornered encounter took
place in Shanghai. After saying goodbye
to Wildenbruch, Joachim von Wald
strolled back from the docks into the city.
Resting at a cafe\ he saw two people
emerging from a doorway across the
street. One was a prostitute, black-haired
and beautifully shaped; she was Spanish,
von Wald decided. Her companion was
a huge Russian—Serafimov. A vague
recollection stirred the Austrian, and he
exchanged a few words with the man.
Then they parted, and von Wald walked
thoughtfully onward through the tangled
maze of Shanghai streets.
3442

THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED
Type of work: Novel
Author: Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1908
Principal characters:
Sergey Golovtn,
Vasily Kashirtn,
Tanya Kovalchuk,
Musya, and
Werner, revolutionists
Ivan Yanson, and
Tsiganok Golubets, two condemned men
Critique:
In a letter granting permission.for The
Seven Who Were Hanged to be
translated from the Russian, Andreyev stated
clearly his purpose in writing the novel.
It ,was to expose capital punishment as
a horrible crime, no matter what the
provocation. In this novel the writer
shows us the mind of each of the seven
who were condemned. To Andreyev,
each had something in his character or
in his background which justified his
actions, and so the novelist's sympathy was
with the doomed ones. It is a powerful
story, probably the most irrmortant
contribution Andreyev made to the literature
of Russia and of the world. Once read, the
story of The Seven Who Were Hanged
is difficult to forget.
The Story:
When the police informed a powerful
minister that there was a plot to
assassinate him, he was terrified. But the police
assured him that he would be given
ample protection; they knew who the
terrorists were and would arrest them.
As good as their word, the police seized
three men and two women, young people
ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-
eight. A large amount of dynamite was
also found. The evidence was so
damaging that the prisoners knew they would
be sentenced to hang. The trial was swift,
and the five revolutionists were
imprisoned until the time of their execution,
two days hence.
In the same prison were two other
condemned men who had been waiting
about two weeks for their execution. One
was Ivan Yanson, a peasant workman. He
was an Estonian who spoke Russian
poorly and talked little. His ignorance had
made him cruel. Since there were no
humans on whom he could vent his rage,
he regularly beat the animals under his
care. Frequently he drank too much, and
then his cruelty to animals was worse
than usual. Once he had tried to make
love to another servant, but he was so
repulsive looking that she had rejected him.
One night Yanson entered the room
where his master was sleeping and
stabbed him to death. He then tried to
rape his mistress but she escaped him.
While attempting to flee with some
money he had stolen, he was seized, tried,
and sentenced to hang.
At first he wanted the time before his
execution to pass quickly. Then, as the
time grew shorter, he began to tell his
guards that he did not want to die, that
he did not understand why he should be
hanged. Yanson had no one to love or
believe in. Partly stupefied by fear, he
was unable to take in much of what had
happened to him.
The other condemned man was
Tsiganok Golubets, a robber and murderer
who took brutal pride in his
accomplishments. At times, completely mad, he
3443

would get down on all fours and howl
like a wolf. Then for a time he would
be quiet. What little time remained of
his life was meaningless to him, for he
knew only how to rob and kill and these
pleasures had now been taken away.
The five revolutionists had each
determined not to show fear. But when
Sergey Golovin's father and mother visited
him in his cell, he could no longer be
brave and he cried. Sergey was young and
life was strong in him; he found it hard
to understand that he was soon to die.
Only Vasily Kashirin's mother came to
see him, for his father was not interested
in seeing his son again. Vasily, who had
long ago lost respect for his parent, had
no regrets about not seeing his father.
Even his mother meant little to him;
there was really no one he would hate
to leave when he died. While he waited
for his execution he showed no signs of
fear.
It was not for herself but for her
comrades that Tanya Kovalchuk worried.
The fact that she too was to die had no
meaning for her; she was concerned only
for the discomfort and fears of her
children, as she called the others. She loved
them all.
Musya knew that she would not
completely die when she was hanged. She
would join the martyrs whom she
admired so much, and her name would live
forever. She had only one regret; she
had done nothing significant enough to
justify her martyrdom. But she consoled
herself with the thought that she had
been on the threshold of great deeds. She
thought that she had conquered her
captors, for the fact that they were going to
kill her proved that they feared her.
Musya eagerly awaited her execution.
The man called Werner had long been
developing a contempt for mankind and
was tired of life. There was no one whom
he could respect and admire; he was cold
and superior even to his comrades. But
in his cell he suddenly developed a love
for humanity in his realization of man's
progress from his animal state. Loving
and pitying his fellow men, Werner felt
more freedom in his prison cell than he
had ever known outside. It had been a
long time since he had felt sympathy for
other men; the feeling was a good one.
On the day of their execution the five
were allowed to talk together for a short
time. They were almost afraid to look at
one another, each not wanting to see fear
in a comrade's face. Vasily could not
control his emotions. The others, particularly
Tanya, urged him to be calm and not
to allow their guards to see his fear.
When the time came for the
execution, Yanson and Golubets joined them.
Yanson was still babbling about not
wanting to be hanged. Golubets retained his
arrogance and made a joke about dying.
Transferred to a train, they were allowed
to sit together until they reached their
destination. Musya was happy to see that
Werner had lost his scorn for his
brothers. As they drew nearer their final stop,
she smiled; soon she would join those
whom she admired so much.
On their arrival, Yanson had to be
carried from the coach. Golubets wanted to
attack the guards. The night was cold
and often they slipped in the snow as
they marched toward the scaffold. All
refused the services of a priest who was
present. They all kissed one another
goodbye and walked in pairs to the ropes.
Sergey and Vasily went first, Vasily
outwardly calm and in control of himself.
At the last minute Golubets was
frightened and asked to go with one of the
five brave ones. Musya took his hand,
kissed him, and they followed Sergey and
Vasily. Musya's hand calmed Golubets;
he was arrogant again as he climbed the
steps. Werner took Yanson with him, but
the peasant had to be carried most of the
way. Tanya was the last and she went
alone. Her children had all gone bravely.
She was happy.
After Tanya's drop there was silence
for a moment in the wintry night. Then
the bodies were taken back over the same
road they had traveled a short time
before. But only their bodies—their souls
were elsewhere.
3444

SEVENTEEN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Booth Tarkington (1869-1946)
Type of plot: Humorous romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Small Midwestern town
First published: 1916
Principal characters:
William Sylvanus Baxter, aged seventeen
Mrs. Baxter, his mother
Jane Baxter, his sister
Miss Pratt, a summer visitor
Critique:
Seventeen is the hilarious story of
William Sylvanus Baxter, just seventeen,
who is in love with Miss Pratt, a summer
visitor in the neighborhood. There is
nothing weighty in this book to arrest
the reader's thought, nothing sublime,
but everything ridiculous. The
adolescent antics of a small-town Lothario are
beguiling and utterly harmless, and the
completely normal but demoniacal
actions of Jane, William's pesky younger
sister, are foolish and delightful. The
only really sane person in the tale is
Mrs. Baxter, who sadly tries to keep
up with her children's whims and moods.
The Story:
William Sylvanus Baxter had at last
reached the impressive age of seventeen,
and as he emerged from the corner drug
store after indulging in two chocolate
and strawberry sodas, he tried to impress
the town with his lofty air of self-im-
Eortance. But no one noticed him except
is friend, Johnny Watson, who
destroyed William's hauteur in one breath
by calling him "Silly Bill." At that
moment William saw a feminine vision in
pink and white. A stranger in town, she
carried her parasol and her little white dog
with easy grace. William, not daring to
speak, managed only an insincere yawn.
The vision, taking no apparent notice
of William, spoke in charming lisps to
her little dog Flopit, and disappeared
around the corner.
William went home in a daze, hardly
bothering to speak to his outrageous
little sister, Jane, who greeted him
between mouthfuls of applesauce and
bread. Scorning her, he went up to his
room, his heart full of the mystery of
love, and composed a poem to his new
and unknown lady. He was interrupted
by his mother, who asked William to go
with Genesis, the Negro handyman, to
pick up some laundry tubs from the
second-hand store. The errand, to
William, was worse than being seen in
public with a leper, for he looked on
Genesis as a ragged, bedraggled, down-
at-the-heels pariah, whose presence was
an unwholesome reproach to the whole
neighborhood.
Genesis was in reality a wise old
philosopher, despite his semi-nudity and the
ubiquitous presence of his mongrel dog,
Clematis. But William was in no mood
to be tolerant. His worst fears were
realized when, on the way home, he
heard behind him the silvery voice of the
fair stranger referring to Clematis as a
nasty old dog. William was hidden by
the laundry tub he carried over his
head, but his invisibility in no way
diminished his growing horror at being
taken for a companion of Genesis and
the owner of tne dreadful Clematis.
Clematis, meanwhile, was fascinated by
Flopit, and when William heard the yips
and barks of the two dogs, he ran away,
still hidden under his protecting tub.
SEVENTEEN by Booth Tarkington. By permission of Brandt & Brandt and the publishers. Harper A
Brothers. Copyright, 1917. by Stuart Walker. Renewed. 1945. by Arthur Walker.
3445

The young vision in pink and white
was the summer visitor of May Parcher.
Her name, William learned, was Miss
Pratt. Soon the boys in the neighborhood
collected on the Parcher porch and
swarmed around the adorable girl every
evening after supper, much to the disgust
of Mr. Parcher, who lay awake for hours
in his room over the porch and listened
reluctantly to the drivel of conversation
below. William had an advantage over
the other suitors, for he borrowed his
father's dress suit without his parents'
knowledge and arrived each night in
splendid attire.
During the day William could not
escape his sister Jane, who insisted on
appearing in dirty summer sunsuits, her
face smeared with her favorite repast
of applesauce and bread, just at the
moment when William would be
walking by the house with Miss Pratt. His
angry demands that his sister present a
more ladylike appearance irritated Jane
to a calm, smouldering intent to get
even with William. She knew that
William wore his father's dress suit every
evening when he visited Miss Pratt.
She also knew that Mr. Parcher was
nearly crazy over the nightly sessions
on his front porch. Putting these facts
together, she coldly repeated to her
mother some of Mr. Parcher's comments.
Mrs. Baxter was horrified that William
had worn out his welcome at the
Parcher's, and when she discovered Mr.
Baxter's dress suit under William's window
seat she took it to a tailor and had it
altered to fit only Mr. Baxter. William
could not go to see Miss Pratt without
the dress suit. He was not among Miss
Pratt's evening admirers .thereafter.
As a reward to Jane, who had
immediately told him of her part in
decreasing by one the population of his
front porch, Mr. Parcher sent her a
five-pound box of candy, much to the
amazement of the whole Baxter
household. No one suspected Jane's perfidy.
Feeling herself to blame for William's
gloomy moods, Mrs. Baxter decided to
have a tea for her son's friends, with
Miss Pratt as guest of honor. The great
day arrived, swelteringly hot. Upstairs,
William had no sooner broken his only
collar button on his fifth and last white
shirt than he had the misfortune to tear
his white trousers. Another suit was
splattered by Jane's paints. By the
time he found a heavy winter suit in
a trunk in the attic, the guests had
gone. Angry and miserable, William sat
down on Jane's open, wet paint box.
The time came for Miss Pratt to return
home. As a farewell party, the relieved
Parchers scheduled a picnic in their
guest's honor. To impress Miss Pratt,
William bought a package of Cuban
cigarettes. But coy Miss Pratt gave all
her attention to George, a braggart who
stuffed himself with food to impress the
beauty with his gustatory prowess. Lunch
over, William offered George his
cigarettes. Before long he had the
satisfaction of seeing George disappear behind
a woodpile. William was blissful once
more.
When Miss Pratt unexpectedly granted
the weary Parchers the privilege of her
company for another week, they gave
a final farewell dance in her honor.
Mrs. Baxter had her husband's dress
suit again altered to fit William.
Resplendent, but late as usual, William
arrived at the dance to find all Miss
Pratt's dances taken, and he was forced
to spend the evening with a lonely
wallflower. His dignity suffered another
blow when Genesis, serving sandwiches,
not only greeted William with familiarity
but also chided him about the dress
suit. His evening was a dismal failure.
The next day William went down to
the train to see Miss Pratt off. Laden
with candy and lush poetry, he found
her surrounded by her many admirers.
He had the uncomfortable sensation that
they were all laughing at him, for they
were pointing derisively in his direction.
Turning, he saw Jane, who had
deliberately come to torment him in
company with an equally disreputable female
3446

companion. The two pranksters were
walking with a vulgar strut that William
abhorred. So flustered was he that he
merely waved to Miss Pratt and went
sadly home, forgetting that he still
carried under his arm the box of candv
and the poem intended for the pink
and white beauty who was going out of
his life forever.
3447

SHADOWS ON THE ROCK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Willa Cather (1876-1947)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Late seventeenth century
Locale: Quebec, Canada
First published: 1931
Principal characters:
Eucltde Auclaih, the apothecary in Quebec
Cecils Auclair, his daughter
Count Frontenac, governor of New France and Auclair's patron
Pierre Charron, a Canadian woodsman
Critique:
Shadows on the Rock is a very human
story about a little-known segment of
North American history, the early
colonies in Canada. Unlike many fictional
French people in the literature of Britain
and America, Willa Cather's characters
maintain personalities and enlist the
sympathies of the Anglo-Saxon reader.
The author has divested them of any
alien spirit, so that they become members
of the human family rather than
members of a different national stock. The
book is also a mine of information on
life in Quebec at the end of the
seventeenth century. The author noted in
great detail the customs, habits, and daily
routine of the people whom she
described, even to the food they ate and
the homes in which they lived.
The Story:
Late in October of 1697 the last ship
left Quebec to return to France, and the
colony of New France was isolated from
the world until the arrival of the fleet
in June or July of the following year.
One of the persons who watched as the
last vessel passed out of sight down the
St. Lawrence River was Euclide Auclair,
the apothecary in Quebec.
Auclair lived on the street which
wound up the slope and connected the
Upper Town on the cliff with the Lower
Town that clustered along the shore of
the river at the foot of the mountain.
In his home behind his shop, Auclair
and his daughter C£cile did their
best to re-create the atmosphere they had
known in France. So successful were
they that many people came to the shop
merely to visit and snatch a breath of
the France they had left behind.
C6cile was only thirteen years old
and her mother had been dead for
several years. Although she was content
to remain in Canada, her father seemed
to live only for the time when he could
return to France with his patron, the
governor of the colony, Count
Frontenac. Auclair, who had served the count
for many years, was a trusted friend of
the governor as well as his apothecary.
A few weeks after the last ship had
departed, C6cile went to see the count
to ask his aid in obtaining some shoes
for a little orphan boy. The governor
was glad to see her, for too many of
the people who came to him were
anxious only to help themselves. He said
that when he made his will he would
leave the girl a bowl of glass fruit she
had always admired.
The first days of December brought
a heavy fall of snow which ushered in
the deepest reality of life in Canada, the
long, dark winter. The snow also
reminded C£cile of the boxes of Christmas
presents which had been sent to her
by aunts in France the previous
summer. On the twenty-fourth of December
the Auclairs brought the boxes out of
their storage place. In one was a creche
to be set up in their living room. The
creche was the crowning point of Christ-
SHADOWS ON THE ROCK by Willa Cather. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf. Inc.
Copyright, 1931, by Willa Cather.
3448

mas for many of their friends, for the
French colonists were, as a rule, very
devout.
One day in March Father Hector
Saint-Cyr put in his appearance. The
priest spent several evenings recounting
to the Auclairs stories of the
missionaries, the Indians, and the hardships of
backwoods life. When he left, Euclide
Auclair wondered if, after all, the gifts
of an educated man like Father Saint-
Cyr might not be going to waste in
misplaced heroisms among the Canadian
missions to the Indians.
About the middle of March the
weather changed. There was a
continuous downpour of rain which the
snow soaked up as if it were a gigantic
sponge. Even the ice in the St. Lawrence
broke up and floated downstream in huge
gray blocks. It was a season of sickness,
and the apothecary was busy from
morning until night acting as doctor to many
of the inhabitants of the town. C6cile
herself caught a cold and was in bed
for several days.
One evening while C£cile was ill,
Auclair had a strange visit with a
misshapen hunchback who secured water
and wood for the Auclairs in return for
a bowl of soup and a small glass of
brandy each evening. Blinker, as the
hunchback was called, told Auclair that
as a boy he had been an apprentice to
the king's torturer at Rouen. While an
apprentice, Blinker had tortured an old
woman into admitting that she had
murdered her son. Some months after
her execution the son had returned. The
shock of what he had done was too great
for the apprentice. He ran away, took
ship, and went to Quebec to begin a
new life. But visions of the old woman
haunted him so that he could not sleep.
Filled with sympathy, the apothecary
gave Blinker some laudanum so that he
might have a little untroubled rest.
One day, while C6cile was regaining
her strength, her father wrapped her in
a blanket and carried her to the door.
There, outside the door, C£cile saw the
first swallow hunting for its old nest
in the wall of the cliff that rose sharply
to the chateau above. As soon as she
was well, C6cile hurried to inform old
Bishop Laval of the bird's appearance.
The old man had kept a record of the
changing seasons for thirty-eight years
and he had always included the date
of the first swallow's arrival.
On the first day of June the leaves
began to bud ana the hunters arrived
from the woods with their loads of pelts.
Among the first hunters to reach Quebec
was Pierre Charron, an old friend of the
apothecary and his daughter. Pierre, the
son of a rich family in Montreal, had
been disappointed in love. His
sweetheart had decided to build a chapel with
her dowry and enter the Church as a
recluse. After she had taken her vows,
Pierre had become a hunter traveling
through the wilderness as far as Michili-
mackinac and Lake Superior in his quest
for furs and forgetfulness. During the
spring Pierre Charron took C£cile with
him to visit some friends on the Isle
d'Orleans, in the St. Lawrence some
miles below Quebec. The squalid and
primitive life there disgusted Cicile.
Early in July the ships from France
arrived. The count had requested the
king to recall him from Canada, and he
had promised that he would take the
Auclairs back to France with him. As
each ship arrived through the summer,
the Auclairs looked for the governor's
recall. Toward the end of summer the
count called Euclide Auclair to the
chateau to warn him that the king's
request would never come. When the
count offered to send the Auclairs back
to France, Euclide refused, assuring the
count that he could not leave while his
patron was forced to remain in Quebec.
The last ship left Quebec in October.
Shortly afterward Count Frontenac
became ill. Euclide Auclair knew that
his patient could not live through the
winter. When the count died, Euclide
carried out his patron's last wish. He
sealed the count's heart in a lead box
and sent it with a missionary priest to
the English colonies in the south. From
3449

there it was returned to France for
burial.
The death of the count was a great
blow to the Auclairs, for security seemed
to have gone from their lives. Thinking
to return to France that year, they had
not even laid in a proper supply of food
to last through the winter. Fortunately
for them, Pierre Charron arrived in
Quebec with an offer of help. Later he
married Ce*cile. Charron had not the
authority of documents and seals which
the count had had to protect them, but
he had his knowledge of the woods and
the people, which was asgood or better
in the wilds of Canada. TTbe future was
safe.
3450

SHE
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Africa
First published: 1887
Principal characters:
Ludwig Horace Holly, a teacher
Leo Vincey, his ward
She, a beautiful ageless woman, in love with Leo
Job, Holly's servant
Ustane, a woman also in love with Leo
Billali, an old man of the Amahagger tribe
Critique:
She contains such deft allusions to
real events and places that the reader
frequently finds himself wondering if
the whole invention could not be true.
This story of a land presided over by an
ageless white queen and of the fire which
enabled her to live for thousands of
years is in the tradition of adventure
romance and fantasy.
The Story:
Late one night in his rooms at
Cambridge, Ludwig Holly received an urgent
visit from a fellow student named
Vincey. The man was dying of a lung
condition, and because he had no living
relatives he asked Holly to undertake
the guardianship of his young son after
his death. Vincey explained that the
boy would be the last representative of
one of the oldest families in the world.
He could trace his ancestry back to the
ancient Egyptians, to a priest of Isis
named Kallikrates, who had broken his
vows and fled the country with an
Egyptian princess. Kallikrates had been
murdered by the queen of a savage
tribe, but his wife had escaped and had
borne a son, from whom the boy was
descended.
Holly agreed to rear the boy. It was
understood that he was to be tutored at
home, where he would be taught Greek,
mathematics, and Arabic. On his twenty-
fifth birthday he was to receive an iron
box which Vincey would leave with
Holly; at that time he could decide
whether he wanted to act upon its
contents.
The following morning Vincey was
found dead in his rooms. Shortly
afterward five-year-old Leo Vincey went to
live with his guardian.
Twenty years passed happily for Leo
and for the man whom he called his
uncle. Then, on the morning of the
youth's twenty-fifth birthday, the iron
chest was opened. Inside was an ebony
box which, in turn, contained a silver
chest. Within the silver chest was a
potsherd inscribed by the wife of the ill-
fated Kallikrates. A message to her son,
it declared that the queen who had
murdered Kallikrates had shown them
both the Pillar of Life. The message
ended by begging that he, or some brave
descendant, should try to find the Pillar
of Life and slay the evil queen.
There was also a letter to Leo from
his father in the inmost chest. He
wrote that he had journeyed to Africa
to find the land which his ancestors had
visited, but had gone only as far as the
coast. There, suffering a shortage of
provisions, he had been forced to turn
back. Before he could plan another trip,
he had been taken with his fatal illness.
Leo determined at once that he would
carry on from the point where his father
had been forced to give up his quest.
Three months later, he, Holly, and their
servant, Job, were on their way to Africa.
Their destination was a rock shaped
like a Negro's head, which reared as a
3451

landmark on the eastern coast of Central
Africa. As they drew near shore the
little party readied the whaleboat which
they planned to use for travel inland.
The boat was tied onto the large dhow
that carried them down the coast.
Suddenly a squall came up, and huge waves
wrecked the dhow. The three white men
and an Arab named Mahomed managed
to launch the small boat and reach the
shore.
The men found themselves at the
mouth of a river whose teeming marshy
banks were crowded 'with crocodiles.
After refreshing themselves, the little
party started inland in the whaleboat.
Holly and his companions traveled
without much difficulty for five days, but at
the end of that time the river grew too
shallow to continue farther and they were
forced to branch off into another stream,
which proved to be an ancient canal.
During the next four days the trip
became increasingly more difficult.
Because the canal was full of weeds, the
boat had to be towed. While the
exhausted men were resting, on the fourth
evening, they were suddenly attacked
by a party of about fifty tall, light-colored
men who spoke Arabic. They would have
been slain on the spot, had not the old
man who was the leader of the natives
ordered that their lives be spared. He
explained that word had come from some
one whom he called "She-who-must-be-
obeyed" that any white men who
wandered into the country were to be brought
to her. The man, whose name the
adventurers later learned was Billali,
decreed that Mahomed's life should also
be spared. In litters the prisoners were
carried to a cave village of the Amahag-
ger tribe. There Billali left them with
his people while he went on to report to
She-who-must-be-obeyed.
The next four days passed peacefully.
The men were well-treated, and Ustane,
one of the Amahagger women, took Leo
for her husband by the simple ceremony
of throwing her arms around him and
kissing him.
On the fourth night the three white
men and Mahomed were invited to a
party. The only refreshment served was
a fermented drink. After the brew had
been passed around several times, a
terrible thing occurred. Suddenly a
woman slipped a rope around Mahomed's
body. At the same time some of the
men reached into the fire around which
they were sitting, dragged out a red-hot
pot, and tried to slip it on the Arab's
head. Holly, realizing that the natives
were preparing to kill and eat Mahomed,
drew his gun and shot the woman. The
bullet passed through her body and killed
the Arab as well. In the furious struggle
that followed Leo was seriously wounded
in the side. The situation was growing
desperate when Billali appeared to restore
order.
Three days later, when Leo's wound
had barely healed, the three white men,
accompanied by Billali and Ustane, were
taken to meet She in her hidden city of
Kor. The way led through deep swamps
which at last gave way to spreading
plains. The next day the travelers reached
a tunneled mountain. Their guides led
Holly and his friends, blindfolded,
through the tunnel to a great plain that
had once been a lake. There the
blindfolds were removed, and the men were
taken to some apartments cut into the
solid rock.
After he had refreshed himself, Holly
was taken to the apartments of the
heavily-veiled queen. She, asking about
the ancient Greeks and Egyptians,
explained that she had been living in the
mountain for the past two thousand
years. Holly wondered at the strange
power which had enabled her to live
untouched, apparently, by time or death.
She declared that she stayed with the
Amahagger only to await the return of
the man she had once loved, for he
was destined to be born again. Ayesha,
as she asked Holly to call her, removed
her veil. She was exceedingly beautiful.
That night Holly could not sleep
from excitement. Wandering in the
passages which led off from his room, he
saw Ayesha uttering curses over a fire.
B452

They were, he discovered, directed
against an Egyptian woman. Near the
fire, on a stone shelf, lay a corpse with
a shroud over it. Holly, fearful for his
own life if he were discovered, crept
back to his room.
The next day the savages who had
plotted Mahomed's death were brought
before Ayesha and condemned to death
by torture. In the evening Ayesha went
to visit Leo, who was ill with a fever
and near death. When she saw his race,
the queen staggered back with a scream.
Leo had the face of the dead Kallikrates.
It was he whose arrival Ayesha awaited.
She quickly forced some life-giving
fluid down the young man's throat. In
her jealousy she would have kilied
Ustane, had not Holly reminded her of
the suffering she had had to bear for
killing Kallikrates so long ago. Ustane
was sentenced to leave the mountain.
On the following evening the three
white men were invited to attend a
dance performed by natives dressed in
animal skins. The caves were
honeycombed by preserved human bodies, and
these were used to illuminate the
proceedings, for when a torch was applied
to them they burned brightly.
Ustane, who had not been able to
bear the parting from Leo, was one of
the dancers. She revealed herself to Leo
when he strolled to a dark corner of the
room, but she was discovered by Ayesha
before she could flee with him. When
Ustane refused to leave Leo's side,
Ayesha killed her with a fierce look.
Ayesha led Leo and Holly to the place
where Holly had seen her uttering her
incantations. Drawing back the shroud
which covered the corpse, she disclosed
the body of Kallikrates. Then over it
she poured some acid that destroyed it
quickly. With Leo present in the flesh,
she explained, she had no more need
for the body of the dead man.
Leo quickly fell under Ayesha's spell
and forgot Ustane. That night the queen
and the three white men started their
journey to the place where Leo was to
bathe in the fire of the Pillar of Life and
so be assured of thousands of years of
existence.
Traveling across the plain, through
the ruins of the ancient city of Kor,
the party reached a steep mountain. At
its foot they left the litter bearers in the
charge of Billali, who had accompanied
them, and began the ascent. When, by
difficult stages, they reached the top,
they were forced to walk a plank across
a deep chasm to reach the cave which
held the pillar of fire, the Pillar of Life.
When Leo hesitated to immerse
himself in that spiraling flame, Ayesha, to
show that there was nothing to fear,
walked into it. As she stood in its rising
flame, a sudden change came over
Ayesha. Her face and limbs began to
shrivel until finally, before the horrified
onlookers, she shrank into a little old
monkey-like creature and died. Whether
her death was caused by some fatal
quality which had crept into the flame, or
whether her earlier immersion in it had
been neutralized, the men did not know.
Shaken to their depths, Holly and Leo
started back to Billali. They left Job, who
had died of shock, in the cave with the
remains of Ayesha.
Informed of Ayesha's fate, Billali
hurried to lead the white men back through
the swamps toward the coast, before the
Amahagger tribe learned they no longer
had to fear their dread queen. Much
the worse for wear, Holly and Leo
managed to make their way to Delagoa Bay
after leaving the old native at the edge
of the swamp country. Though they
had only spent three weeks in the
interior, Leo's hair had turned white.
The two men eventually arrived in
England and resumed their old existence.
However, as he sat alone at night, Holly
frequently wondered what the next step
in the drama he had witnessed would be,
and what, some day, would be the role
of the Egyptian princess whom
Kallikrates had loved.
3453

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Type of plot: Comedy of situation
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: 1773
Principal characters:
Mr. Hardcastlb, an English gentleman
Mrs. Hardcastlb, his wife
Tony Lumpkin, Mrs. Hardcasde's son
Kate Hardcastlb, Mr. Hardcasde's daughter
Constance Neville, Tony's cousin
Marlow, Kate's reluctant suitor
Hastings, in love with Constance
Sir Charles, Marlow's rather
Critique:
This charming play has entertained
audiences for more than one hundred and
seventy-five years. Conditions of society
on which the comedy is based have long
since ceased to exist, but the gaiety of
the plot and the racy dialogue are still
amusing. Designed to satirize the
sentimental comedy of Goldsmith's day, She
Stoops to Conquer far outshines the
exaggerated sentimentality of the author's
contemporary stage.
The Story:
Mrs. Hardcasde, the wife of Mr. Hard-
castle by a second marriage, had by hei
first husband a son, Tony Lumpkin.
Tony was a lazy, spoiled boy, but his
mother excused his actions by imagining
him to be sickly. Mr. Hardcasde vowed
that his stepson looked the picture of
good health.
Kate Hardcasde, Mr. Hardcasde's
daughter, was headstrong. To overcome
his daughter's wish to be a lady of im-
Eortance, Mr. Hardcasde had struck a
argain with her whereby she wore
ordinary clothes and playea a country girl
during part of the day; at other times she
was allowed to appear in fine clothes.
Knowing it was time for his daughter to
marry, Mr. Hardcasde sent for Mr.
Marlow, the son of his closest friend, to meet
Kate. Kate was pleased by her father's
description of the young man in all
features except one. She did not like the
fact that he was considered shy and
retiring.
Mrs. Hardcasde hoped to arrange a
match between Tony and Constance
Neville, her ward and Kate's best friend.
The two young people mutually hated
each other but pretended otherwise for
Mrs. Hardcasde's sake. On the day of
Mr. Marlow's expected arrival, Constance
identified the prospective bridegroom as
the friend of Hastings, the man whom
Constance really loved. Constance
described Marlow as being very shy with
fashionable young ladies but quite a
different character with girls of lower
station.
En route to the Hardcasde home,
Hastings and Marlow lost their way and
arrived at an ale-house where Tony was
carousing with friends. Recognizing the
two men, Tony decided to play a trick
on his stepfather. When Hastings and
Marlow asked the way to the Hardcasde
home, Tony told them that they were
lost and would be wise to stop at an inn
a short distance up the road. Marlow and
Hastings arrived at their destination but
thought it the inn Tony had described.
Hardcasde, knowing notning of their
misconception, treated them as guests, while
Hastings and Marlow treated him as an
innkeeper, each party thinking the other
extremely rude. Hardcasde decided that
Marlow's apparent character was in
contradiction to the ~-xlest personage who
3454

had been described to him.
When Hastings met Constance, she
quickly recognized Tony's hand in the
mischief, but Hastings and Constance
kept the secret to themselves. Hastings
explained to Marlow that the two young
ladies had arrived at the inn after a long
journey through the country. When
Tonv came home, Hastings took him
aside and explained his desire to marry
Constance, an arrangement quite
satisfactory to the rascal. He promised to help
the lovers and even to try to secure
Constance's jewelry, which was in Mrs.
Hardcastle's keeping. The bargain
having been made, Tony went to his mother's
room and stole the gems. He gave them
to Hastings. When Constance asked for
the jewels, Tony whispered to his mother
that she should tell Constance they had
been lost. Thinking it a capital plan,
Mrs. Hardcastle complied with Tony's
suggestion, only to discover later that
the gems actually were gone. Meanwhile,
Kate, according to her agreement with
her father, had put on a pleasant, simple
dress.
Learning of Marlow's mistaken idea
that he was at an inn, Kate decided to
keep him in error. Marlow, seeing Kate
in her simple dress, thought she was a
serving-girl, and revealed himself as a
flirtatious dandy. As he was trying to
kiss her, Mr. Hardcastle entere3 the
room, and Marlow fled. Mr. Hardcasde
remarked to Kate that obviously she now
had proof that Marlow was no modest
young man. Kate vowed she would
convince her father Marlow had the kind of
personality pleasing to them both.
However, Marlow's continued impudence
aroused Hardcastle to such an
uncontrollable state that he ordered him to leave
his house. Kate, thinking the time had
come to enlighten her deceived suitor,
told Marlow about the trick Tony had
played. Marlow, still unaware of Kate's
real identity, found himself more and
more attracted to her, while Kate was
discovering him to be a fine and honest
person.
Hastings had given Marlow the jewels
which Tony had stolen from Mrs.
Hardcastle. To protect the valuables, Marlow
had sent them to Mrs. Hardcasde,
supposing her to be the innkeeper's wife.
The servants, under Tony's instructions,
then explained to the distraught lady that
the jewels had been mislaid because of
some confusion in the household.
Mrs. Hardcastle discovered that
Hastings planned to elope with Constance.
Enraged, she decided to punish
Constance by sending her to visit her Aunt
Pedigree. To add to the confusion, news
came that Sir Charles, Marlow's father,
was on his way to the Hardcastle home.
Tony offered to drive the coach for
Mrs. Hardcastle, but instead of taking
the ladies to the house of Aunt Pedigree,
he drove them around in a circle for
three hours until Mrs. Hardcastle
believed they were lost. After hiding his
terrified mother in the bushes, Tony took
Constance back to Hastings. But
Constance was determined not to leave
without her jewels. When Mrs. Hardcastle
at last discovered Tony's trick, she was
furious.
Sir Charles, on his arrival, was greatly
amused by Hardcastle's account of
Marlow's mistake. Hardcastle assured Sir
Charles that Marlow loved Kate, but
Marlow insisted he was not interested in
Miss Hardcastle. Kate promised the two
fathers she would prove that Marlow
loved her, and she told them to hide
while she talked with Marlow. Still
under the impression that Kate was a
serving-girl, the wretched young man told
her he loved her and wanted to marry
her. Sir Charles and Hardcastle emerged
from their hiding place satisfied that the
marriage would be arranged. Marlow was
upset to learn that the serving-girl with
whom he had behaved so freely was
really Miss Hardcastle.
Mrs. Hardcastle reminded her husband
that she had full control of Constance's
fortune until Tony married her when he
became of age. But if he should refuse
her, Constance would be given control
of her inheritance. It was then announced
3455

that Tony's real age had been hidden in
the hope that the lad would improve his
character. Informed that he was already
of age, Tony refused to marry Constance.
Sir Charles assured Mrs. Hardcastle that
Hastings was a fine young man, and
Constance obtained her jewels from her
guardian.
So Kate married Marlow, and
Constance married Hastings. And Tony
gained his freedom from his mother.
3456

THE SHEEP WELL
Type of work: Drama
Author: Lope de Vega (Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, 1562-1635)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1476
Locale: Spain
First presented: c. 1619
Principal characters:
Commander Fernan G6mez de Guzman, a lustful tyrant
Rodrigo Teixez Gir6n, youthful master of the Order of Calatrava
Laurencia, a peasant girl sought by the commander
Frondoso, a peasant youth in love with Laurencia
Esteban, alcaide of Fuente Ovejuna and Laurencia's father
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain
Critique:
The Sheep Well, known also under
its Spanish title of Fuente Ovejuna, is
one of about five hundred plays by Lope
de Vega still extant. The surviving work
is, however, but a fraction of his total
output; he himself estimated that he had
written well over eighteen hundred
dramas. Lope de Vega, who served his king
with the ill-starred Spanish Armada, was
the central figure of the great dramatic
movement in Spain during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. The best of
his plays are those, like The Sheep Well,
which use peasants as heroes and
heroines. Lope de Vega had a sympathy and
feeling for those people because they were
of the same class from which the
dramatist himself had sprung. The Sheep Well,
because of its use of the entire
population of a Spanish village as the "hero,"
is sometimes referred to as the first
proletarian drama, written some three
hundred years before the flood of so-called
proletarian literature came out of the
Great Depression in the United States.
The Story:
In the troubled Spain of the 1470's,
when King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella were trying to integrate their
kingdom and preserve it from the
depredations of Portugal, the grand mastership
of the military and religious Order of
Calatrava fell upon the shoulders of
Rodrigo Tellez Grron, a young man scarcely
out of boyhood. The new grand master'*
adviser was the lustful, tyrannical Conv
mander Ferndn de Guzmdn, who took
women whenever and wherever he saw
them and kept his peasants in constant
fear of himself and his soldiers. The
commander was not loyal to Ferdinand and
Isabella, and so he counseled the young
grand master to capture the Ciudad Real
and hold it for Portugal, which was
claiming sections of Spain through its Spanish
queen. The grand master took the
commander's advice and captured the city.
When the commander returned to his
lands, he continued his tyrannous ways
with the peasants, especially the women.
Among the unmarried girls was a
particularly pretty one named Laurencia,
daughter of the alcalde of the village. The
commander had sought her for more than
a month, but she had managed to elude
his servants by staying in the fields as
much as possible. Then the commander
had left to capture the city. He returned
in triumph, and upon his arrival in the
village of Fuente Ovejuna he was praised
and given two cartloads of foodstuffs as
recognition of his military efforts. After
receiving the gifts, he requested that the
THE SHEEP WELL by Lope de Vega, from FOUR PLAYS BY LOPE DE VEGA. Translated by
John Garrett Underhill. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1918,
by The Poet Lore Co., 1936, by John Garrett Underhill.
3457

girls, including Laurencia, remain behind
to amuse him. The girls, however,
refused to stay.
Meanwhile Ferdinand and Isabella had
received word of the treacherous action
of the grand master of the Order of Cala-
trava and had dispatched a force to retake
the Ciudad Real, lest it be turned over
to Portugal.
In the village of Fuente Ovejuna,
Laurencia was wooed by a good-looking
young peasant, Frondoso, but she refused
to accept him as her husband. One day,
as she was working in the fields, the
commander came upon her and attempted
to take her by force. Frondoso, though
but a mere peasant, seized the
commander's crossbow and threatened to kill the
knight unless he let Laurencia go. The
commander, faced with no choice, but
swearing vengeance, let the girl go free.
Frondoso, no fool, fled with the crossbow.
The commander later went to the
village and confronted the alcade, Lauren-
cia's father, and demanded that he give
up his daughter to him. Esteban refused
to act the pander, and he and the other
villagers left the commander standing
alone in the square. Some of his servants
appeared and reported that they thought
they had killed Frondoso. Unfortunately,
they had cut the throat of the wrong
man. As they spoke, a messenger came
to inform the commander that the grand
master had been besieged by the forces
of Ferdinand and Isabella. The
commander decided to rush to the grand master's
aid.
As they rode away from the village,
the commander and nis servants tried to
force their attentions on several peasant
girls. The girls fled until they reached
one of the men of the village. When he
tried to protect them, the commander had
the man disarmed, bound to a tree, and
flogged unmercifully with bridle reins.
While that was done, the commander
seized one of the girls, dragged her into
a thicket, and raped her. The soldiers
then proceeded on their journey.
During the commander's absence his
subject peasants relaxed a bit. In the
quiet interval arrangements were made
for the wedding of Laurencia and
Frondoso, the young peasant who had become
dear to her after he had saved her from
the commander's lust. But on the very
day of the wedding the commander
returned and demanded the girl for his
own purposes. When her father again
refused, the commander had him beaten,
and the wedding was broken up by the
soldiers. Frondoso was imprisoned to
await hanging; Laurencia was taken to
the commander's citadel.
The next day the town board
assembled in the village hall to discuss what
might be done to prevent further acts
of violence and rapine by their wicked
master. While they debated, Laurencia,
who had escaped from the citadel, ran
into the hall, where she roused the men
and women of the village to open revolt
against the commander who had treated
them so brutally and ruthlessly. The
people, spurred to action by their anger,
stormed the citadel. Once inside, chey
killed many of the soldiers and finally
found the commander. They put him to
death also and then returned to the
village with his head held high upon the
point of a spear. Their plan was to leave
the head as a symbol of the tyranny they
had broken; its site was to be the village
square itself. Not really rebels, the
villagers hastened to raise the escutcheon
of Ferdinand and Isabella in place of the
commander's. Their plan was to place
themselves at the mercy of the king and
queen.
But one of the commander's servants
had escaped and carried news of the
uprising to the king and queen. The king,
anxious to prevent revolt from spreading
throughout Spain, dispatched soldiers and
a judge to the village of Fuente Ovejuna
to investigate the happenings. When
word came to the village that a judge
was coming, the villagers met and
decided to stick together, even to hiding
the actual murderers of the commander
and his men. It was agreed that the en-
3458

tire village had done the deed and that
they would hang together, if need be.
The judge caused the soldiers to bring
in villagers for questioning. When the
villagers refused to tell who had been
the leaders of the revolt or who had
actually killed the commander, the judge
had them tortured, as was the custom
of the time. More than three hundred
of the villagers were tortured, including
small children, but not one broke their
vow to claim that the whole town was
responsible for their deeds.
At last the judge and the soldiers
returned to the court of Ferdinand and
Isabella, where the judge reported that
he had made no decision, for in order
to punish justly he would have had to
wipe out the entire village. He also
reported to the king and queen the
cruelties of which the commander had been
guilty. Villagers he had brought with
him to court, pleading with the king
and queen, pointed out that they had not
rebelled against the crown; they had
simply been forced to rid themselves of
a tyrannous lord who threatened their
very lives and honor. The king, after
hearing their stories, pardoned the entire
village of Fuente Ovejuna and made it
a protectorate of the crown.
3459

THE SHELTERED LIFE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Virginia
First published: 1932
Principal characters:
General Archbald, a Southern gentleman
Jenny Blair Archbald, his granddaughter
George Birdsong, his neighbor
Eva Birdsong, George's wife
Critique:
Ellen Glasgow, at a time when many
writers of her generation and section of
the United States saw fit to write in
experimental patterns, kept to established
traditions of writing. The result was a
lucid, realistic approach to the problem
of Southern society in the early twentieth
century. A tragedy that is the necessary
outcome of folly is presented clearly and
with distinction in The Sheltered Life.
There can be no criticism of Miss
Glasgow's logic. The novel is a revealing
picture of manners and morals.
The Story:
The Archbalds and the Birdsongs
were the last of the old families left on
once-fashionable Washington Street, and
they clung to it along with their
passion for the gentility of the past decades
in an effort to keep things as they had
always known them. They not only
disliked change; they also forbade it on
their premises.
Jenny Blair Archbald was five when
her father died. A short time later her
mother had gone to live with her
husband's father and his two unmarried
daughters, Etta and Isabella.
At the end of the block lived Eva and
George Birdsong. Eva, after twelve years
of marriage, was still the acknowledged
beauty among her wide circle of friends.
They had no doubt that had she so
chosen she might have been a famous
prima donna or a great actress. Her
husband, however, was not successful;
he lost his inheritance, he drank, and
he was unfaithful to her.
Jenny Blair Archbald wanted new
roller-skates. Her grandfather, General
Archbald, promised to give her a penny
a page for reading Little Women, but
Jenny Blair founa the book dull
reading. She would rather have been
investigating Ganal Street against her
mother's wishes.
Aunt Etta was having one of her
spells. Doomed to a single life by her
unpopularity with men, Etta suffered
all sorts of nervous disorders. Isabella,
having just broken off an engagement,
was currently allowing herself to talk
frequently with Joseph Crocker, a
carpenter.
Jenny Blair finally took her old roller-
skates and skated in the direction of
Canal Street. There she stumbled and
was taken in by Memoria, the Birdsong's
mulatto laundress. While she was
recovering she saw George Birdsong, who
took her home but made sure that she
promised ro tell no one where she had
met him.
The Peytons were giving a ball which
Jenny Blair was to attend, although she
and young Bena Peyton were to keep
out of sight and out of the way. Hei
aunts were preparing to go. Eva
Birdsong was making over an old gown for
the affair and was planning to dance only
two dances, the first and the last, both
with her husband.
At the dance Eva saw George walking
THE SHELTERED LIFE by Ellen Glasgow. By pcnniwion of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Co.. Inc
Copyright, 1932, by Ellen Glasgow.
3460

in the garden with Delia Barron. She
promptly fainted, recovered in the
children's nursery, and had to be carried
home by her husband.
Seven years passed. Old General
Archbald, now eighty-three, mused over
his life and that of his relatives. He
had always surrendered the things he
wanted most for the things he had felt
were his duty. Now he wondered what
he had done with his life. Isabella had
broken two engagements to marry Joseph
Crocker, a man socially beneath her.
Jenny Blair's mother had loved his son
and his son had died while fox hunting.
Eva Birdsong had given up everything
for a husband who was indifferent to
her beauty and her wit. And now Eva,
whom he admired greatly, was being
operated on.
Eva was past the age when she was
likely to have children, but she had
hidden the nature of her illness as long as
possible until now her life was in danger.
For many long hours the old general
relived in his memories the fleeting events
of his life.
The general visited Eva in the
hospital. Eva seemed despondent. She
made him promise to look after George
and retold many amusing old tales about
her life with her husband. As he left
the sick woman's room, the old man
wondered how he could help her or if
there were any help on earth for her.
Now old enough to make her
appearance in the formal society of the dignified
old city, Jenny Blair rebelled against her
mother's formal plans. Instead, she and
Bena Peyton hoped to go to New York.
Jenny Blair thought that she wanted to
be an actress.
One day George Birdsong waited for
Jenny Blair outside the hospital, where
they talked as the sun was setting.
Suddenly, before she knew what had
happened, George seized her and kissed her.
Jenny Blair was unsure of her emotions,
although George pretended it was the
kind of a kiss he had always given her
—a sort of little girl's kiss. But this
kiss, she was positive, was different.
When she accompanied her
grandfather home, she told him that she
thought she would give up going on the
stage or even going to New York.
The old man was puzzled and tired.
Cora, Jenny Blair's mother, mixed a mint
julep for him in an effort to revive him,
but he felt that the drink had little effect.
As he went upstairs to dress for dinner
he saw his sick daughter Etta reading
in bed one of her endless French love
stories. He wished in vain she might
have had some of Isabella's charm so
that she might have married.
At the hospital the next day Jenny
Blair left a kimono for Eva to wear.
Old General Archbald listened with
disgust to George Birdsong's exhibition of
grief for his wife's suffering. Then, just
as the operation was about over, the old
man had a heart attack which he kept
secret.
Jenny Blair had become infatuated
with George Birdsong, or thought she
was, and to her that was the same thing.
She pretended to be angry with him,
but when he took his wife away for a
rest after her illness Jenny Blair counted
the days until he should return. She
wondered why she had ever wanted to go
to New York, and she decided that she
hated Eva's cousin, John Welch, a
doctor, because he seemed to understand her
strange moods better than she herself
understood them.
When George Birdsong returned
alone, Jenny Blair sought him out and
admitted she loved him. George,
somewhat surprised, tried to put her off.
Finally he kissed her as she desired him
to do, but he tried to make her see that
she was being very foolish.
When autumn came and the Arch-
balds returned from their summer
vacation, Jenny Blair was glad because she
could see George Birdsong again. At
the same time she visited Eva, who
seemed to get no better.
George had shot some ducks and tied
cards to their necks with bits of Eva's
green ribbon, for he intended to give
them away to his friends. That evening
3461

Jenny Blair and George stood together
in the garden of the Birdsong home. As
George bent to embrace her, they heard
Eva, who had arisen from her bed.
George went into the house at his wife's
insistence. A few minutes later there
was a shot. When John Welch called
Jenny Blair into the house, she saw
George dead from a gunshot wound and
Eva with a strangely vacant look on her
face. The dead ducks and George's gun
were lying in the hall. John insisted that
the shooting had been an accident. Old
General Archbald, when he arrived,
asserted also that it had been an accident.
Jenny Blair, in terror and shame, found
refuge in hysteria.
3462

THE SHIH CHING
Type of work: Poetry
Compiler: Confucius (c. 551-479 B.C.) by tra
First transcribed: Twelfth century B.C.
The earliest repository of Chinese
verse, the Shih Ching or Book of Poetry
contains 305 poems of both folk and
court origins. The court poems are more
or less ceremonial in character, designed
to be sung at sacrifices, to accompany the
dances and feasts in honor of dynastic
ancestors, or to adorn such formal
occasions as receptions, banquets, chases, and
archery contests. The folk songs
comprise love lyrics of various kinds, epitha-
lamiums, complaints, satires, elegies, and
georgics.
Almost all the poems in the Shih
Ching were composed in the pre-Confu-
cian period of the Chou dynasty (c.l 122-
222 B.C.). In the ceremonial odes the
wisdom and prowess of its founders—the
kings Wen and Wu and the Duke of
Chou—are frequently recalled, though a
few pieces, hardly of greater antiquity,
celebrate the splendid achievements of
even earlier dynasties, the Hsia and the
Shang. According to a now discredited
tradition, Confucius was the compiler of
this anthology after rejecting nine tenths
of the 3,000 poems then extant; but the
canon must have been well fixed by his
time and diplomats and scholars even
then knew the poems by heart, quoting
them on every conceivable occasion to
display their literary attainment or
political sagacity. It is easy to see why the
court poetry—so vital to the discharge of
religious and state functions—should have
been saved, but the early preservation of
so much folk poetry is a more curious
matter. In the absence of better
explanation, one must accept the tradition that
the Chou kings made a point of
collecting the popular ballads of their many
vassal states and using them as a political
barometer to gauge the happiness or
discontent of the populace. Needless to say,
all the poems in the Shih Ching were
meant to be sung, but the runes were
already lost by time of the Han dynasty
tional ascription
(206 B.C.-A.D. 220).
The anthology, as it exists today, is
divided into four sections: kuo fenq, the
smaller and greater ya, and sung,. While
kuo feng are the folk songs of the vassal
states and both ya and suns, mav be
indifferently translated as odes, the
divisions are hardly clean-cut. Many of the
poems in the category of the smaller ya
are apparently folk songs, and some of
the greater ya poems are little
differentiated from the religious and dynastic
odes of the sung section. But as
documents of ancient China, both the folk
songs and courtly odes are of great
historical and anthropological interest. To
these we owe the first mention of the
sage kings and mythical heroes, the
coherent presentation of the animistic
beliefs of the early Chinese regarding
ancestor worship and the adaptation of
human labor to the cyclic changes in
nature, the precise details of many a
religious and state ritual, the intimate
evocation of the life of a simple people of great
emotional integrity: their courtships and
marriages, their work on the farm and
their much-detested military service. On
the strength of the love poems alone, the
French Sinologist Marcel Granet has
reconstructed a fascinating picture of
mating customs and fertility rites in the
dawn of Chinese history.
But the Shih Ching is primarily
poetry and should be read as such.
Confucius once told his disciples, "Mv
children, why do you not study the Poetry?
Poetry will stimulate your emotions, help
you to be more observant, enlarge your
sympathies, and moderate your
resentment of injustice. It is useful at home in
the service of one's father, abroad in the
service of one's prince. Furthermore, it
will widen your acquaintance with the
names of birds, beasts, plants, and trees."
One is hardly surprsed that Confucius
attached great importance to the Shih

Ch'mz as a guide to good conduct and
a manual of useful information; in
ancient Greece, the s'udy of Homer was
urged on similar grounds. And the
Poetry, as;de from its great social and
ceremonial utility, does mention by name
about seventy kinds of plan's, thirty kinds
each of trees, beasts, and birds, not to sav
ten kinds of fish and twenty kinds of
insects: a virtual catalogue of the more
common flora and fauna of the then
Middle Kingdom. There were not many
other sources in ancient China where
such a variety of information was so
readily available.
If one reads Confucius correctly, the
key message in his little speech attests
to his awareness of the humanizing
influence of poetry, its power to regulate
and refine emotions, to enlarge
sympathy. To Confucius, li (ritual,
etiquette), music, and poetry constitute an
inseparable triad. While li is designed to
bring out the best qualities of man in his
everyday social intercourse as well as on
the formal occasions of rejoicing and
mourning, Confucius is also aware that
there is an excess of emotion in man
which cannot be rendered in terms of
ritual or etiquette. To him, therefore, li
is the approximation of the ideal and
poetry, the expression of the actual,
although, as in much of the Shih Ching,
poetry can be an integral part of a
ritualistic occasion. Music is closely allied to
ritual and poetry because it serves the
dual function of supporting courteous
behavior and facilitating the expression of
one's true feelings.
To the modern reader, the more vital
portion of the Sh'h Ching is surely the
folk songs—160 kuo feng poems plus
many others—because they speak the
universal language of man's actual feelings.
These songs are quite simple in structure,
a series of short rhymed stanzas. The
basic unit is the four-word line, and the
closing line of each stanza is usually a
refrain. Within the simple structure of
each poem, however, a little drama
unfolds itself. As in all ballad poetry, the
poet seldom speaks in his own person: he
is some girl awaiting her lover by a ford
(according to Granet, the wading of a
creek or shallow river by a couple
signalizes marital engagement), or
detaining her lover in bed while the dawn is
breaking,, or tellinq her story of woe after
her husband has been pressed into
military service or has deserted her. Or the
speaker may be the lover himself, who
tosses and turns all night in bed thinking
of his girl, who takes a walk bv the
eastern gate and sees girls shining like clouds
but still prefers his own choice, a modest
girl of "plain cloth and gray kerchief."
In other poems the speaker is the soldier
who climbs a barren hill and acutely
misses his kinsfolk; the exile who, seeing
the yellow birds pecking in the fields, is
seized with the sudden impulse to return
home; the farmer who thinks of
migrating to another state because the large rats
in his fields remind him of the greater
rapacity of the officials. This dramatic
quality is one reason why the folk songs
have a universal appeal and a perennial
charm about them.
Another source of poetic appeal is the
language. When we come across such
phrases as "cork-heild schoone" and "gold
kerns" in an old Scottish ballad like "Sir
Patrick Spens," we feel that the words
themselves enhance the sensuous and
musical qualities of the images. The
diction of the Shih Ching, renders a similar
service, for its archaic flavor adds
immeasurably to the meaning of the poems.
The folk songs, especially, have retained
a pristine quality because the s;mple
emotions which thev embody are clothed in a
language beyond the contamination of
modern ideas, bevond the corrosion of
time. But the language has another
strength which is charac'ersMc of
Chinese poetry in general: its elliptical
density. In a four-word line there is
absolutely no room for mere decoration, for
logical connectives; each word must have
a maximal poetic weight and suggestive-
ness to merit inclusion.
To a student of English poetry long
accustomed to its roses and nightingales,
the Shih Ching with its duckweed and
3464

dolichos, mulberry and date trees,
magpies and orioles, cicadas and locusts
presents a distinctively new landscape. In
almost every folk song, nature is an
integral part of the human situation:
the mulberry tree is shedding its leaves
upon the ground and the girl thinks of
her state of desertion; ripe plums are
dropping from the tree and presently
there will be only three left on the
boughs, and the girl wonders if she will
ever have a lover, because she, too, is
ripe for love. Because the lovers, farmers,
and soldiers in the folk songs are so
physically close to nature, there is seldom any
need to resort to simile and metaphor.
The strategy of correspondence, for
example, employed by Tennyson in his
song "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal,
Now the White" (The firefly wakens:
waken thou with me.") is characteristic
of the Shih Ch'ing.
In view of the later development of
Chinese poetry, the love songs and
complaints appear especially important. Such
conventional themes as the separation of
husband and wife, the poverty of
peasants, the evils of officialdom and war, the
appropriate moods induced by seasonal
changes were all first embodied in the
Shih Chmg. The work has remained
unsurpassed in its depiction of love.
Whereas the later poets, with the exception of
a few exquisite poetesses, adopt the mask
of the forsaken or forlorn woman more or
less as a literarv convention, the Chinese
women in the Shih Ching speak out
unafraid in the spontaneity of the natural,
unashamed womanhood. By contrast,
Chinese women of subsequent history,
confined in the home and disallowed the
privilege of free social intercourse with
their menfolk, appear" sad and dull
indeed.
3465

SHIRLEY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Yorkshire, England
First published: 1849
Principal characters:
Shirley Keeldar, the young mistress of Fieldhead estate
Caroline Helstone, niece of the rector of Briarfield
Robert Moore, manager of a textile mill
Louis Moore, a tutor, Robert's brother
Mrs. Pryor, Shirley's governess and companion
Critique:
In this novel as in Jane Eyre, which it
followed, Charlotte Bronte showed her
keen interest in the inner selves of her
characters. Here she has concerned
herself principally with two contrasting
characters, Shirley Keeldar and Caroline
Helstone, one spirited and independent,
the other shy and delicate. Her divided
interest between these two characters,
however, is the main cause of the novel's
structural disunity. Shirley, whom the
reader expects to be the protagonist, is not
introduced until nearly one third of the
book is completed, and thereafter the
writer shuttles back and forth between
the two characters, oblivious of
integration. Concern with the labor problems of
the early nineteenth century, obviously
not the author's forte, also detracts from
the structural unity. The plot is too
contrived, leaning heavily on unrealistic
turns, such as the revelation that Mrs.
Pryor is Caroline's mother and Robert's
sudden declaration of love for Caroline.
Emotion often degenerates into
sentimentality; but there are moments,
particularly in the description of the
Yorkshire countryside, when the finer
romantic qualities of Charlotte Bronte reach
the peaks of Jane Eyre.
The Story:
The introduction of machinery into
Robert Moore's Yorkshire cotton mill had
caused many mill workers to lose their
jobs. A group of rebellious men, spurred
on by hungry families and resentful
leaders, one night stormed down on wagons
bearing new machinery to the mill. The
rioters destroyed every piece.
Caroline Helstone, quiet and delicately
pretty, appeared the following morning
in Robert Moore's cottage to take her
French lesson with Hortense Moore, who
with her brother had recently come to
England from Brussels. As a young child,
Caroline had been deserted by her parents
and left to the care of her stern and
unsympathetic uncle, the rector of Briar-
field. Robert and Hortense were
Caroline's distant cousins, and her visits to
their cottage were the brightest moments
in her routine life. On this day her
anxiety over Robert's mill trouble and her
attempts to distract him by reading
Shakespeare with him made it apparent that
Robert himself was the main reason for
the pleasure of her visits.
Robert, however, was too much
concerned with his affairs to notice his
cousin's growing ardor. In the days which
followed, Caroline distractedly sewed for
the charity basket, read, and had tea with
her uncle and the three ludicrous curates,
while secretly cherishing each word that
Robert spoke to her and his few displays
of cousinly affection. Then, to make her
life more intolerable, Robert and her
uncle quarreled over politics, and she was
forbidden to visit the Moore cottage.
Into this barren world of Caroline's,
a new and charming individual suddenly
3466

appeared. Shirley Keeldar, the youthful
heiress of Fieldhead, one of the largest
estates in the countryside, came to occupy
that long-deserted mansion and to preside
as its mistress. Vivacious and
independent, she was soon a favorite of all her
tenants and the village people. Caroline,
her opposite in temperament, became
Shirley's special friend, and Robert, who
rented his mill from Shirley, became a
frequent visitor at Fieldhead, where
Shirley cajoled him into talking with her
about his political views and labor
problems and readily gave her own ideas.
When Caroline was present on these
occasions, she withdrew shyly from the
conversation and watched painfully the
growing color in Shirley's cheeks as she talked
and the amusement in Robert's eyes.
Despairing of gaining Robert's love and
refusing to tell her feelings to anvone,
Caroline attempted to forget herself by
devoting long hours to charity work. In
this work she followed the lead of a
saintly old maid, Miss Ainley, and
determined to prepare to be just such an old
maid herself.
Meanwhile, Robert had set up new
machinery in his mill, and the unrest in
surrounding villages continued. Shirley
generously poured out her money to the
poor in an attempt to ease the results of
unemployment. The tension mounted,
however, and one summer night a band
of men crashed through the mill gates
and attempted to enter the mill itself.
Robert, having received word of their
plan, was ready with men inside to
defend his mill. Gunfire followed, watched
from a hilltop by Shirley and trembling
Caroline, who had been aroused from bed
by the commotion. Robert successfully
turned back the rioters and for the
remainder of the summer spent most of his
time tracking down the mob leaders in
the large towns of England.
Caroline's attempts to occupy herself
with charity work failed. When her
growing despair contributed to a physical
breakdown, she could only lie in bed,
feverish and unable to eat. Robert, away
in London, knew nothing of her
condition. Possibly she would have died if a
singular revelation had not occurred. Mrs.
Pryor, Shirley's governess, a retiring
woman who had in her faltering way
expressed much fondness for Caroline,
nursed the invalid constantly during her
illness. One night she confided that she
was Caroline's own mother, having given
her up as a child because Caroline's
beauty had made her fear that she would
grow up to be like her errant father. With
someone to love her, Caroline slowly
recovered.
During Caroline's illness, Shirley's aunt
and uncle, the Sympsons, arrived for a
visit. Solicitous to find a distinguished
and wealthy husband for their niece, they
suggested and encouraged several likely
candidates. One such eligible, Sir Philip
Nunnely, seemed on the verge of success,
but he was finally rejected by Shirley,
who admired but did not love him. Robert
Moore appeared one evening and
proposed suddenly, only to have Shirley's
frank and passionate outburst of rejection
prove to him that he had only been
fascinated by her and that she was keenly
aware of the fact.
In the background of these attempts
at matchmaking, a quiet, intelligent figure
smoldered and outwardly behaved coolly
to Shirley—Louis Moore, Shirley's
former tutor, now the tutor to the Sympsons*
son. Gradually, apparently casual
meetings in the schoolroom began to break
through the barrier between Shirley and
Louis. Shirley scorned his pride because
of his low situation; he, in turn, showed
that he could master her willful
independence and yet not crush her spirit. At
last the two, in spite of the Sympsons'
outrage, set a date for their wedding.
Robert, in the meantime, had been
shot and badly wounded while pursuing
the leaders of the rioters. During his slow
recovery he was nursed in the home of
a friend, and visitors were forbidden him.
Through the scheming of one of the
children in the household, however,
Caroline managed to see him in secret sev-
3467

eral times, and at last Robert awakened ble wedding was planned at Briarfield
to her love for him and discovered the church,
strength of his own love for her. A dou-
3468

THE SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Dekker (1570M641?)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Reign of Henry V of England
Locale: London and the nearty village of Old Ford
First presented: 1599
Principal characters:
Simon Eyre, a London shoemaker
Hodge,
Firk, and
Rape, his employees
Sir Roger Otley, Lord Mayor of London
Rose Otley, his daughter
Sm Hugh Lacy, the Earl of Lincoln
Rowland Lacy, his nephew
Margery, Simon Eyre s wife
Jane, Rafe's wife
Critique:
Thomas Dekker, an Englishman of
probable Dutch descent, was a true son
of London, as his plays, and especially
The Shoemaker's Holiday, attest. Happy
in its blending of quasi-history and
ordinary London life, this plot contains young
lovers, noblemen, solid merchants,
artisans, and even a king. Surely the theme
and treatment gave the play wide
popularity in Dekker's own day. This drama,
with its appeal to patriotic instincts,
formed part of the Lord Admiral's Men's
answer to the popular history plays being
written at the moment by Shakespeare,
who wrote for the Lord Chamberlain's
Men. Dekker derived his plot from a prose
tale, The Gentle Craft, published in 1597
by Thomas Deloney.
The Story:
Rose Otley, daughter of the Lord
Mayor of London, Sir Roger Otley, and
Rowland Lacey, nephew to Sir Hugh
Lacy, the Earl of Lincoln, were deeply in
love. With evident irony, proud Sir Roger
declared to Sir Hugh that he could not
presume to have his daughter marry above
her station. With equal pride, Sir Hugh
ironically countered that because of
Rowland's dissolute ways it would be far better
for Rose to marry a substantial young
London businessman. Rowland, who had
toured Europe, where he had learned the
shoemaker's trade in Germany, was given
a command in the army of King Henry
the Fifth, who was preparing to invade
France. Sir Hugh wanted Rowland off
to France as soon as possible, so that the
youth might forget Rose Otley.
But Rowland had other ideas.
Claiming pressing business in London, he
turned his command over to his cousin,
Askew, after promising that he would
join his unit in Normandy, if not in
Dover.
When the troops assembled to leave
London, Simon Eyre, a shoemaker,
pleaded to no avail with Rowland to allow
Rafe Damport, his drafted journeyman,
to stay home with his new bride, Jane.
Rafe, resigned to going to the wars, gave
Jane as a farewell gift a pair of shoes that
he had made for her.
Meanwhile Rose, confined to her
father's house at Old Ford, a London
suburb, sent her maid Sybil into the city
to seek information about Rowland.
Rowland, determined to win Rose, disguised
himself as a German shoemaker. Singing
a German drinking song, he sought work
at Simon Eyre's shop. When Simon
refused to consider hiring Rowland, Simon's
workmen, charmed by Rowland's broken
speech, threatened to leave. Rowland, as
Hans Meulter, was taken on.
3469

While hunting near Old Ford, Ham-
mon and Warner, two London citizens,
pursued a deer into the Lord Mayor's
estate. There they encountered Rose and
her maid. Hammon fell in love with Rose
and Warner lost his heart to Sybil. Sir
Roger, welcoming the young hunters,
decided that Hammon was just the man
to marry Rose.
Rowland, through his friendship with
a German sea captain, speculated in a
valuable unclaimed ship's cargo, to the
enormous profit of Simon, his employer.
As a result of this venture Simon was
made an alderman, and the genial
shoemaker seemed destined for even greater
city honors.
Sir Hugh, meanwhile, had learned
from a servant that Rowland was not in
France. Ashamed of his nephew, Sir
Hugh sent the servant into the city to
discover Rowland's whereabouts.
When Hammon confessed his love,
Rose at first dismissed him coyly; finally
she declared that she intended to remain
single. Even though Sir Roger threatened
to force Rose into the match, the offended
and impatient Hammon returned to the
city. In London, Sir Hugh's servant could
learn nothing of Rowland's whereabouts,
even though he inquired at the shop of
Simon Eyre.
Simon, grown affluent and popular,
continued to advance upward in political
rank. To the amusement of Simon's
journeymen, Firk and Hodge, his wife
Margery assumed pretentious manners. Rafe,
having been wounded in France, returned
to London. Seeking his wife, he wept to
learn that Jane had left the Eyre
household, where she had been a maid to
Margery Eyre, and had not been seen
since. The Eyres—Simon was now High
Sheriff—visited Sir Roger at Old Ford,
where Simon's employees, Rowland
among them, performed a morris dance.
Rose recognized Rowland in spite of his
disguise and drank a toast to him.
Jane, also grown quite independent
because of her ability as a seamstress, was
courted by Hammon. In his desperate
attempt to seduce her, he showed her, to
her disbelief, Rafe's name on a casualty
list from France. Sorrowfully, she
promised Hammon that if she ever remarried
she would accept his proposal.
Rose, knowing of Rowland's presence
in the city, returned to her father's town
house and arranged to have Rowland
see her on the pretext of fitting a pair of
shoes. At the shoe shop, a servant brought
in a shoe and ordered that a pair of
similar size be made in time for a wedding
which was to occur the next day. Rafe
recognized the shoe as Jane's; he learned
from the servant where the ceremony was
to take place.
Roland, as a shoemaker, went to see
Rose and talked to her under the eyes of
Sir Hugh, who was looking for his
nephew, and Sir Roger, who declared to
Sir Hugh that he had not seen the young
man. When Sybil revealed that Rose
meant to marry the German cobbler, Sir
Hugh gloated, thinking that Rowland
would never be able to marry this middle-
class girl. Sir Roger, who secretly had
hoped that Rose would marry Sir Hugh's
nephew, was furious. At the same time
Firk delivered a pair of shoes for Rose and
misled the two men into believing that Rose
and the German cobbler would marry the
next day at the church where Hammon
and Jane planned to be married. Sir Hugh,
to his alarm, suddenly realized that the
cobbler must be his nephew Rowland.
Simon, now Lord Mayor but still his
lusty, simple self, declared his gratitude
because Rowland had helped him to
affluence and promised that he would help
the young people to become husband and
wife. The next day Dame Eyre
accompanied the young couple to the Savoy,
while Rafe and his fellow shoemakers,
armed with cudgels, encountered
Hammon and Jane in front of St. Faith's.
Hammon resented the intrusion of the base
craftsmen; Jane was filled with misgiving
at the sight of Rafe, whom she had
believed dead. Hammon patronizingly
offered Rafe twenty pounds to relinquish
3470

his claims to Jane. Rafe, insulted, would
have thrashed Hammon, but he was
prevented from doing so by his lameness.
Expecting to apprehend Rose and Rowland,
Sir Hugh and Sir Roger had waited, too,
in front of St. Faith's. Word reached them
there that Rose and Rowland had been
married at the Savoy.
Lord Mayor Simon Eyre gave a
breakfast for all London apprentices; he himself
was served by men of his own craft. The
king pardoned Rowland and blessed him
and Rose. When Sir Hugh and Sir Roger
protested the match, the king explained
that love was not a respecter of blood. To
crown the festivities of Simon's Lord
Mayorship, the king granted the
shoemakers the privilege of holding two
market days a week in the newly-built
Leadenhall Market, and accepted Simon's
invitation to him to be the guest of honor
at a banquet.

SHORT STORIES OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Katherine Mansfield (Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp, 1888-1923)
First published: In a German Pension, 1911; Prelude, 1918; ]e ne parle pas frangais, 1920;
Bliss and Other Stories, 1920; The Garden Party and Other Stories, 1922; The Doves'
Nest and Other Stories, 1923; Something Childish and Other Stories, 1924; The Aloe,
1930
Katherine Mansfield, one of the
greatest of modern short story writers, began
writing at an early age. Born in New
Zealand, Miss Mansfield went to
England in 1903 and in 1911, when she was
twenty-three, published her first volume
of stories, In a German Pension, a series
of sketches based on her experiences in
Germany. These stories, often sharply
and crisply satirical, portray many of the
Germans as a gross people, preoccupied
with mountains of food and long detailed
discussions of their digestive processes,
but covering their grossness and
vulgarity with a thick coating of sentimental
allegiance to the spirit or the soul. With
acid sharpness, Miss Mansfield's stories
demonstrate this combination of
vulgarity and sentimentality. They also deride
the Germans for other qualities: the
lechery of the old man after he has
protected a young English girl, cringing
respect for the silent man with a title, the
modern woman with her talk of art who
completely neglects her children.
Although these stories are sensitive and
moving portraits of people and their
society, they show that Miss Mansfield had
not yet found her own style. Crisply and
economically told, they are not always
completely realized in their effects,
however, and often without that sharply
focused point of view that this writer later
developed. Despite these early
shortcomings her criticisms of Germany were
so telling that when war broke out in
1914 she was urged to have the stories
reprinted by another publisher, the first
having gone bankrupt. But she refused to
take advantage of the 1914 attitude
toward Germans, and the volume remained
out of print until after her death.
Katherine Mansfield's next published
story, Prelude, is set in New Zealand; it
centers around a family called "Burnell,"
a set of characters she also used in a
number of later stories which, like Prelude,
are undoubtedly autobiographical to some
extent. The Burnell family consists of
three young daughters (one of them,
Kezia, withdrawn and sensitive, one
prissy and domineering, one slow and
clumsy), their sensitive mother who hated
bearing children, their energetic and
successful father, their competent
grandmother, their pretty maiden aunt who is
lonely and waiting for a man who never
comes. Prelude is a series of scenes
showing the interactions of these characters on
one another against a domestic
background. The scenes are given in turn
from the point of view of Kezia, the
mother, and Beryl, the lonely spinster
aunt. Although the work is full of
perceptive passages, sensitive descriptions of
nature and of flowers, and a warm
understanding of people, the device of the
multiple point of view never really
unifies the story. Prelude remains a series of
brilliant but scattered perceptions.
Miss Mansfield's talent had genuinely
developed by the time she published the
volume called Bliss and Other Stories in
1920. Her range of subjects had become
wider: marriage, people alone in London
and trying to make their way in a difficult
world, family relationships, little ironic
episodes. And her technique had become
much surer and more effective. The title
story of the volume is an effective tale of
a modern woman, sensitive and
withdrawn, married to a vital and energetic
man. The woman finds herself attracted,
as she has never been to her husband,
to a mysterious and enigmatic Miss
Fulton. While giving a dinner party, with
Miss Fulton present, the woman suddenly
realizes that this attraction, this happiness
3472

she feels is really sexual and really
directed toward her husband. She is
anxious for her guests to leave so that she
may begin a new and deeper relationship
with him. As the guests are leaving, she
accidentally catches a glimpse of her
husband in a situation of familiarity with
Miss Fulton and the young wife's
newfound happiness is shattered.
Other stories, such as "The Dill
Pickle," deal with shifting relationships
among people—the realization that people
change and cannot find in others,
although they try to desperately, the
happiness and comfort they once did. Little
details and mannerisms, such as the
calculated and merciless way in which the
young man peels the orange in "The Dill
Pickle," indicate a great deal about
human character, indicate why, in this
story, the young woman cannot return
to him even though he is, in other ways,
enormously attractive. Miss Mansfield,
interested in shifting emotions, attempted
to probe the truth of her characters'
feelings. Yet this was not her sole concern.
Many of her stories, such as "Pictures,"
exist in a wider social context. In
"Pictures," an aging and bosomy singer is
about to be evicted from her grimy
Bloomsbury flat because she has not paid
the rent. Miss Mansfield follows her
through degrading attempts to find any
sort of work—movies, stage, extra work.
These futile attempts are balanced against
her pathetic dreams of glory or of a
handsome knight coming to save her. The
story ends when she, with false hilarity,
agrees to go home with a middle-aged
businessman whom she meets in a
restaurant. In these stories the writer probes
the truths of experience on several
different levels of life not limited by social
class or interest in the arts or the life of
leisure.
Her next volume, The Garden Party
and Other Stories, contains a number of
Katherine Mansfield's best-known works.
Stories such as "The Garden Party" and
"Her First Ball" recapture a great deal
of a young girl's experience on entering
the social world. In "Her First Ball,,,
Miss Mansfield shows that in the midst
of wonder and pleasure comes an
awareness of age and the realization that no
human experience lasts; yet the feeling
of excitement is genuine and beautifully
conveyed. The writer was able, at her
best, fully to use her style, her crisp
language, as part of what she wanted to say.
This volume also has a number of stories
dealing with marriage and the difficulties
of preserving a relationship between two
individuals. These difficulties appear
intensified in the rapidly changing social
world just after World War I. For
example, in "Marriage a la Mode," the wife
has developed an interest in new forms
of art, formed friendships with effeminate
young poets, and cultivated a flippant
attitude toward all the sanctities of
prewar life, while the husband has remained
his old stolid, virtuous self. The marriage
is doomed. Miss Mansfield, in this story,
satirizes the wife's selfishness and her
lack of concern for others.
The total body of Miss Mansfield's
work does not place her, however, on the
side of Victorian virtue. In other stories
she satirizes the domestic tyrant who,
representing old-fashioned virtues, preys
on his daughters, or she ridicules the
successful and virtuous prude who has
neither time nor insight to observe what
is going on around him. In other words,
Miss Mansfield's stories attempt to
describe the truth of the human experience
and to praise honesty, directness, fidelity
to that truth and to that concern. The
person who, aware of his emotions, is
faithful to them and concerned with the
emotions of others, is the character who
wins Miss Mansfield's sympathy. This
concern, this sensitivity, may look
ridiculous to the standards of the greater
outside world, as the relationship in "Mr.
and Mrs. Dove" appears ridiculous, but
its depth and interior meaning are what
matter. The people Miss Mansfield
castigates are, like those in In a German
Pension, the brutal, the callous, the
pretentious, the falsely sentimental, the
unconcerned.
In getting at her kind of emotional
3473

truth, Miss Mansfield became more and
more proficient. In her later stories, such
as "The Doll's House," which deals with
the Burnell family in New Zealand, she
learned to control material and insight
for disciplined artistic effect. She also,
in several of the unfinished stories
published in The Doves' Nest and Other
Stories, began to use the technique of the
stream of consciousness as a means to
probe more deeply into issues involved
in the experiences of her characters. Yet
she retained the ability to use the small,
telling detail, the casual conversation, or
the intimate mannerism, as a way of
displaying more profound and important
truths.
A meticulous craftsman and a writer
committed to a deep sense of moral
honesty, Miss Mansfield has been
deservedly praised as one of the leading
writers of short stories in this century.
She has also, in both technique and
theme, had an enormous influence on a
generation of writers attempting to see
things clearly and record them with
fidelity, clarity, and insight.
3474

SHORT STORIES OF O. HENRY
Type of work: Short stories
Author: O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910)
First published: 1904-1917
The once inflated fame of O. Henry
is no more. Today he is not only belittled
by most critics of the short story but also
practically ignored by writers on
American literature in general. The Literary
History of the United States (1946)
mentions him twice, once as a user of
slang and once as a writer popular in the
U.S.S.R. The Literature of the American
People (1951) ignores him altogether.
Even Jay B. Hubbell's The South in
American Literature, 1607-1900 (1954)
devotes less than two pages to him as a
Southern writer and offers him only a
sentence or two of subdued praise. Yet
he continues to be widely read, as is
clearly suggested by the inclusion of The
Best Short Stories of O. Henry (1945)
in the Modern Library, the reissue of
The Complete Works of O. Henry in
two volumes (1953), and the publication
of The Pocket Book of O. Henry Stories
(1956). The last collection went into a
second printing within a month.
The ingredients which appeal most
in the typical O. Henry short story are
usually a blend of humor and sentiment
or sentimentality. There is no depth of
characterization; O. Henry specializes in
easily recognizable types. The story is
neatly put together and it moves rapidly.
The style is breezy and slangy. Though
the vocabulary may include a number of
words unfamiliar to the reader of
newspapers and pulp magazines (in which
most of O. Henry's stories first appeared),
there is enough of the American
vernacular to sustain the story on a colloquial
level. The unwary reader, in fact, may
overlook the many humorous paraphrases
from Shakespeare and other famous
authors. The story characters belong either
to the great American middle class or to
a less exalted level of society. The authoi
is o*bviously the friend of the "little man"
and the enemy of those who would
exploit him. There is a plentiful display of
"local color/' especially in the many
stories of New York life. And there is a
trick or surprise ending, often totally
unexpected and illogical, but usually light
and amusing. Though the surprise
ending may be sentimental or even pathetic,
it is never really tragic.
O. Henry has been compared to
several of his predecessors and
contemporaries from whom he may have learned
something about story writing, among
them Bret Harte, Maupassant, Mark
Twain, and Frank Stockton. Many of the
early stories are filled with the easy
sentimentality of Bret Harte as well as Harte's
"editorial" remarks about his characters.
Maupassant's irony is often imitated, but
the master's mordancy is missing, as well
as his prevailingly serious view of life.
O. Henry uses slang even more than
Twain did, but where Twain's is integral,
O. Henry's is gratuitous and frequently
spoils what might have been some of his
best effects. O. Henry is often credited
with having introduced the trick ending
into the short story, but Frank Stockton
had already gained popularity with this
type of ending several years before O.
Henry's first story was published.
Stockton's most famous story—"The Lady or
the Tiger?"—had not even a trick
ending; it had none at all, the reader being
left to supply one for himself. The
reader's-choice ending of O. Henry's
"Thimble, Thimble" is reminiscent of
Stockton, who is specifically named as a
model at the beginning of the story.
These facts show that O. Henry was,
then, not so much an originator as a
clever practitioner. Far more a craftsman
than an artist, he was a close observer of
the surfaces of life and character. In spite
of his exaggerations and whimsicality, he
remains an effective local colorist in his
3475

presentation of life in Bagdad-on-the-
Subway, as he called New York, in the
first decade of the century. To read his
stories of the metropolis is to enter in
imagination a bygone era of gaslights,
horse-drawn hacks, and rococo decor that
was the delight of the rich and the
envious dream of shopgirls and ill-paid
clerks or sweatshop workers.
Reading "The Furnished Room" in
Tfee Four Million (1906), one senses
how it felt a half century ago to be lonely
in a gaslit furnished room filled with
battered furniture and the scattered,
forgotten mementos of former lodgers. One
hears the distant, disquieting noises from
other rooms and breathes the familiar
odors of the dilapidated lodging house.
In O. Henry's stories of the metropolis
one joins the strollers in Central Park or
on Fifth Avenue, listens to tales told by
drinkers in unobtrusive bars, inhales the
garlic-rich atmosphere of a small Italian
restaurant, or dines on lobster at fabulous
Delmonico's.
Among the most famous of O. Henry's
New York stories are 'The Gift of the
Magi" which, though somewhat
hackneyed by many reprintings and a filmed
version, still has its sentimental appeal;
"The Cop and the Anthem," in which
Soapy, after vainly trying to get himself
jailed for the cold winter, hears church
music and vows to reform, only to end
with a three-month sentence for vagrancy;
"The Romance of a Busy Broker," with
the unbelievable revelation at the end
that Harvey Maxwell has erred in
proposing to his stenographer, because he has
forgotten he married her the evening
before; and "The Last Leaf," with its
sentimental close that ironically
counterbalances the saving of a young girl's life with
the death of the kindly old artist who
saved it.
Because O. Henry attained his fame
while living in New York and because
it is the scene of many of his stories,
modern readers may forget that the author,
like so many of the city dwellers he wrote
about, was not a native. Born in North
Carolina, he grew to manhood there. He
lived for several years in Texas, and he
stayed in Honduras for some months after
having fled the United States to escape
arrest for misappropriating funds from an
Austin, Texas, bank. His life in the
South, the Southwest, and Central
America provided the backgrounds for
numerous stories.
The more than twenty stories laid in
the Southern states or employing
distinctly Southern characters include
several of his best. "A Municipal Report"
is an excellent story of Nashville,
Tennessee, written to answer an offhand
comment by the novelist Frank Norris that
Nashville was not a "story" city. The
despicable Major Caswell of "A
Municipal Report" is one of O. Henry's most
vividly drawn characters, but he is
matched by the very different Major
Talbot of "The Duplicity of Hargraves," who
romantically personifies the ante-bellum
aristocrats of the columned mansions and
great cotton plantations in the storied Old
South. The faithfulness of ex-slaves to
their former owners is shown in the
devotion of Uncle Caesar to Mrs. Caswell in
"A Municipal Report," the solicitude of
Uncle Bushrod for the honor of the
Weymouth family in "The Guardian of the
Accolade." Other Southern stories are
"The Whirligig of Life" (Tennessee),
"The Rose of Dixie" (Georgia), "Cher-
chez la Femme" (New Orleans), "A
Blackjack Bargainer" (North Carolina),
and perhaps the funniest of O. Henry's
stories, "The Ransom of Red Chief"
(Alabama).
O. Henry's Texas years furnished him
with both characters and atmosphere
which he used for narrative purposes in
Heart of the West (1907) and in
scattered stories in other volumes. The
leading character of "The Reformation of
Calliope" delights in shooting rampages
when drunk, like many a bad man in
Western movies. The Cisco Kid of "The
Caballero's Way" is said to have been
modeled after the notorious Texas killer,
John Wesley Hardin. "The Passing of
3476

Black Eagle" is the story of another Texas
desperado. "The Pimienta Pancakes" and
"The Hiding of Black Bill" utilize O.
Henry's knowledge of ranch life. It
should be added, however, that the
ludicrously polysyllabic language used by
some of the characters in these Texas
stories bears little relation to that ever
used by any rancher or cowboy, O. Henry
included.
For the loosely related series of stories
in his first volume Cabbages and Kings
(1904) and a few later stories, O. Henry
drew upon his stay in Honduras and
possibly upon tales he heard from the
train robber Al Jennings and other friends
he met there. Though some of these
stories have comic-opera overtones, they
probably reveal the same closely observed
details of actual life that were later to
appear in the New York stories.
O. Henry's life was marked by many
vicissitudes, but he retained almost to the
end a zest for living and a genuine love
of people. Because of this and because his
writing so frequently shows a humorous
virtuosity of language and a facile
playing upon the emotions of his readers, he
seems likely to survive, even without
benefit of criticism, for many years to come.
3477

A SHROPSHIRE LAD
Type of work: Poems
Author: A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
First published: 1896
In 1896, the high point of what has
been variously called "the yellow
'nineties" and "the Beardsley period,"
Victorian poetry was at a low ebb. Tennyson
and Browning were both dead;
Swinburne had long since retired to Putney.
The Pre-Raphaelite movement had
subsided. Hardy was still known only as a
novelist. The minor poets seemed
stereotyped into two groups: those who, like
Wilde, produced "Swinburne and water"
and those who wrote frail imitations of
the French of Paul Verlaine. The only
new and original talent was that of
Kipling, who had already published his two
most famous volumes. But in spite of
Kipling's vigor, the spirit of the age was
best represented by The Yellow Booh and
Beardsley's illustrations for The Rape of
the Lock. It was in this atmosphere of
"purple patches and fine phrases" that
there appeared A Shropshire Lad, a
slender volume containing sixty-three short
poems—some only eight lines
long—written by the Professor of Latin at
University College, London.
Twenty-six years later, in a short
preface to his second volume, Last Poems,
Housman gave some hint of the
circumstances attending the composition of A
Shropshire Lad. He said that most of the
poems had been written "in the early
months of 1895" and under a
"continuous excitement." Exactly what he meant
by this last phrase has never been quite
clear; indeed, his biography, apparently
so uneventful, presents some little
mystery. Oddly enough for a man who was
to become one of the greatest Lafinists
in the English-speaking world, he did not
take honors in his final examinations at
Oxford, and as a result he apparently
went through a period of depression.
But the cause of the "continuous excite-
A SHROPSHIRE LAD by A. E. Housman, from <
aion of the authorized publishers, Henry Holt & Co.,
ment" that resulted in A Shropshire Lad
remains to be satisfactorily explained.
The reader coming upon the poetry of
Housman for the first time will be
immediately aware of its extremely narrow
range. The poet limited himself to but
one theme: the brevity and tragedy of
life and the inevitability of death. Spring
and youth are beautiful, but they pass
quickly, just as the blossoms "stream
from the hawthorn on the wind away."
Further, a man must expect neither
happiness nor justice during the brief span
allotted to him; life is cruel and filled
with injustice. But at least we know that
our misfortunes are the common lot of
mankind, for, as he wrote in Last Poems,
The troubles of our proud and angry
dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we
must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink
your ale.
Man has no one but himself to
depend on; his own strength must see him
through his troubles. He does not have
even the hope of immortality—as Horace
said, in the ode that Housman translated,
"pulvis et umbra sumus—we are dust and
dreams." But the grave, when finally won
to, brings peace: "Turn safe to rest, no
dreams, no waking."
The influence of Housman's classical
studies upon his own poetry is difficult
to measure, and yet it is apparent. Years
devoted to the careful editing of texts
gave him, if nothing else, a feeling for
precise workmanship; the terseness of the
Latin language contributed to the
characteristic brevity of his poems. Indeed, there
is much that might be called "Roman"
about his poetry—it could even be claimed
that the familiar lines of Catullus:
MPLETE POEMS. Excerpts reprinted by permis-
:. Copyright, 1940, 1959, by Henry Holt & Co., Inc.
3478

Soles occidere et redire possunt:
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda,
(Suns may rise and set again.
For us, when our short light
Has set, remains no more than sleep
Through one perpetual night.)
sum up most of what he had to say. Also,
it has been observed that the aspect of
Roman stoicism which has remained in
the imagination of subsequent centuries
is the "quality of emotional self-restraint."
It is this quality that is apparent in
Housman's work and that marks it off sharply
from the mass of Victorian poetry. There
has been "paganism" enough in some of
the late nineteenth-century poets; but it
took the form either of the wild riot of
Maenads, Bassarids, and other
mythological fauna so dear to Swinburne or of the
soft Epicureanism of FitzGerald's
translation of Omar Khayyam. A paganism
deriving from Roman stoicism and based on
restraint, on acceptance of the inevitable
tragedy of life, on the idea that "life is
never worth preserving at the cost of
dishonor," was something quite different.
And it should be remembered that
patriotism, expressed in some of these poems,
was one of the pagan virtues.
Housman's tragic view of life, his
preoccupation with death (particularly with
death by hanging) have been criticized
by some as artificial. It did not seem
plausible that a man whose own
existence was so secure could genuinely have
viewed life in such grim fashion. But
Housman tried to make his readers aware
that the tragedies of which we wrote
were "not mine, but man's." He was also
criticized for cultivating certain
mannerisms of language. It is, for example, true
that the unfortunate lines describing the
football game:
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal,
sound like an unconscious parodv of his
own style. But what great poet has not,
at least once, unwittingly parodied
himself?
Although Housman declared that "the
most poetical of all poets is Blake," he
elsewhere stated that the great influences
on his own work had been Shakespeare's
songs, the Border ballads, and the poems
of Heine. Poem VIII in A Shropshire
Lad shows how he used ballad material;
in Last Poems, the second stanza of
"Sinner's Rue" is a translation of Heine's
"Am Kreuzweg wird begraben." But the
important effect of the three ■ influences
was that of compression. He himself felt
that "poetry is not the thing said but a
way of saying it," and that "to transfuse
emotion ... is the peculiar function of
poetry." His own taste was romantic; he
derived his critical judgments from
Arnold, whose dislike for
eighteenth-century poetry he shared. Yet the opinions
he expressed in his lecture, "The Name
and Nature of Poetry" (1933), are
sometimes curiously at variance with his
practice.
As late as 1922 it was still possible for
Holbrook Jackson to list Housman among
the minor poets of the 1890's. But today
.his reputation, resting chiefly on the one
hundred and four short poems in his first
two volumes, is higher than that of any
English poet between the Victorians
Tennyson and Browning and the moderns
Yeats and Eliot.
3479

THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH
Type of work: Philosophical treatise
Author: S0ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
First published: 1849
Kierkegaard gave The Sickness Unto
Death a subtitle, "A Christian
Psychological Exposition for Edification and
Awakening," and he used the pseudonym
"Anti-Climacus" when it appeared.
Walter Lowrie, in an introduction to his
translation of this work, calls The Sickness
Unto Death "one of the most important
productions of that most productive
period" of Kierkegaard's life. The subtitle
and the pseudonym reflect not the wit
and eccentricity of a pedant, but the
conscience and intellect of a modest but
nevertheless self-assured philosopher in the
service of God. What is the "sickness
unto death" which Kierkegaard reveals in
his psychological exposition in so forceful
a manner that the work has impressed
the critics and affected the course of
modern philosophic thought? It is the
sickness of a self that wills to tear itself
away from the Power which constituted
it.
According to Kierkegaard, man is in
despair, which he may not recognize,
because he is always critically "sick unto
death." For a spirit in such a condition,
death is no escape; the sickness is "unto
death" precisely because it is a despairful
longing for death, not for extinction
alone, but for the experience of not being
the self that one is. It is as if man were
longing for the experience of death—an
impossible experience because death,
considered as death, is the end of all
experience. The self is not content to be
itself; it is not content to relate itself to
God; it cannot be satisfied with extinction
—the result is, in Kierkegaard's view, "the
sickness unto death."
Another way of understanding
Kierkegaard's account of this dreadful malady
of the spirit is through a consideration of
what he means by health. Kierkegaard
maintains that "to have a self, to be a self,
is the greatest concession made to man,
but at the same time it is eternity's
demand upon him." Yet man's self is a
relation between the infinite and the finite,
the temporal and the eternal, freedom
and necessity—and as a relation, a
synthesis, the self cannot exist before the
synthesis is achieved. For that reason, there
is some sense in which, as Kierkegaard
claims at the outset, "man is not yet a
self": he has not achieved a synthesis
with God, with the Power which
constituted him. Sickness is this alienation;
health is the elimination of despair,
achieved when the self, recognizing its
dependence on the Power which
constituted it, wills to be itself.
To use language other than
Kierkegaard's in the attempt to understand the
central thesis upon which the value of
the book depends, we can say that
Kierkegaard is arguing that man, considered not
as an animal but as a spirit, can realize
himself only by being willing to admit
that he becomes something worthy of the
name "self" when he accepts the whole
of his condition. This acceptance of
limitations, of opposing powers, even of God's
eminence, is not resignation; it is a
willingness to live "no matter what," to be
what one is in the world as it is.
It is tempting to make Kierkegaard's
thesis broader than it is, to argue that the
great Danish philosopher has more sense
than to suppose that significant action is
possible only by relating the self to God.
But the term "God" is not a convenient
symbol for power; for Kierkegaard God
is the Power which relates itself to every
spirit and makes possible, through the
self's acknowledgment of that relation,
the existence of every self.
Atheistic Existentialists have found
much that is helpful to them in
Kierkegaard, but only by eliminating all
references to God. Philosophers like Jean-Paul
Sartre are interested in arguing that in

man "existence precedes essence," that
only through action can man "make
himself" into some particular self.
"Authentic" existence is not given to a man, but
he can create himself by the life he
chooses and lives. For Kierkegaard also,
health of the spirit is possible whenever
man chooses to be himself—but only
because to be himself man must relate
himself to God, while for Sartre health of
the spirit consists not in relating oneself
to God, but in recognizing one's freedom
from all such dependent relations. Sartre
writes of the nausea and anguish which
grip a man when he realizes his creative
responsibility, but for Kierkegaard
anguish is not the result of realizing one's
own creative responsibility—it is the
condition of a self which is not yet a self,
of a man who tries to escape from God
and, consequently, from himself.
The despair which is the sickness unto
death may take any one of three forms:
it may be the despair of not being
conscious of having a self; it may be the
despair of not willing to be oneself; or
it may be the despair of willing to be
oneself.
If a man is in despair, how can he fail
to be conscious of it? Kierkegaard asserts
that a man who is primarily sensuous can
be in despair without being conscious of
his condition. Such a man "lives in the
sensuous categories
agreeable/disagreeable, and says goodbye to truth. ..." A
person who is sensuously happy will
resent any attempt to take his happiness
from him; he refuses to acknowledge the
despair which is deep within him. This
form of despair, unconscious despair, is
the most common. Since the sickness of
not being willing to be oneself before
God is sinful, it is important that all who
are in the anguish of dread come to be
conscious of that dread as the first step
toward creating a self which is a
synthesis. Kierkegaard defines sin as follows:
"Sin is this: before God, or with the
conception of God, to he in despair at not
willing to be oneself, or in despair at
willing to be oneself." Both kinds of
despair are eliminated, of course, by being
willing, before God, to be oneself.
The formula which enables a man to
escape the sin, the offense, of dread is,
at the same time, a definition of faith:
"By relating itself to its own self and by
willing to be itself, the self is grounded
transparently in the Power which
constituted it." The opposite of sin,
according to Kierkegaard, is not virtue, but
faith.
In order to emphasize his conviction
that the opposition of faith to sin is a
Christian concept which is fundamental
to all ethical concepts, Kierkegaard
stresses the importance of the qualifying
phrase "before God." Man comes to have
a reality, a self, "by existing directly in
the sight of God," and because of this,
man's sin—his not willing to be himself
before God—concerns God. Kierkegaard
admits that the notion of man's being
invited to exist before God and of God's
being concerned for man is unacceptable
to many persons because it is both strange
and demanding. Just as it would be
puzzling and disturbing if an emperor were
to invite a peasant to be his son-in-law,
so it is puzzling and disturbing to
suppose that God takes enough interest in
each man to wish to have that man come
to exist before him by willing to be
himself before God. Yet this is the Christian
idea, Kierkegaard insists, and it is an
idea which illuminates the entire area
of ethical being and action.
The despair at not willing to be
oneself is called the despair of weakness, and
the despair of willing to be oneself is
called the despair of defiance. Such forms
of despair result from a concern with self
as if the self could exist by itself; this
delusion is made possible by an
absorption in matters that do not properly
concern the spirit—matters of business or
pleasure.
The sin of despair may give rise to
new sins, to a continuation of sin. One
may despair over one's sin, so
concentrating attention upon it as to make
impossible the emergence of faith, or one
may despair of being forgiven. In the
latter case, the sinner chooses, in weak-
3481

ness, to be a sinner, for he rejects the
forgiveness which would enable him to
be himself before God. Finally, one may
commit the sin of abandoning
Christianity, of declaring it to be false. This sin
is "offensive warfare," according to
Kierkegaard, and it is a sin against the Holy
Ghost.
Kierkegaard's conception of God is
often difficult to grasp because he
explains the relations between God and
man in a dialectical way, claiming that
one understands either only by
appreciating the subtle effects that the actions
and attitude of either have on each other
and on the emergence of man's spiritual
self. An interesting feature of his account
is his conception of God as a being who
"can do no other" than make the
possibility of man's offense a part of man's
condition. Dread must be possible for
man because God is concerned to allow
man the possibility of faith.
The influence of Kierkegaard in
modern philosophy can be explained,
paradoxically, by reference to modern man's
loss of faith. A dissatisfaction with
unexamined creeds quickly leads to the
rejection of the creeds. Man is then in
anguish over the void which he finds
before him, and the writers tell of
"wastelands" and "lost generations." At such a
time the Existentialists are able to catch
men's interest by declaring that through
action man creates his self; the Christian
Existentialist turns his attention to God
as the factor to which man must be
related in order to be a self, while the
atheistic Existentialist makes virtues out
of lucidity, courage, and action. Of the
Christian Existentialists, none has been
more original and persuasive than
Kierkegaard.
3482

THE SIEGE OF RHODES
Type of work: Drama
Author: Sir William Davenant (1606-1668)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1522
Locale: The fortress at Rhodes and the nearby coast of Caria
First presented: 1656
Principal characters:
Solyman ii, The Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 1520-
1566
Pyrrhus, the general in charge of the Persian army before the arrival
of Solyman
Villerius, Philip Villiers de L/Isle Adam, commander of the
fortress at Rhodes
Alphonso, a Sicilian duke
Ianthe, Alphonso's wife
Roxolana, Solyman's wife
Critique:
William Davenant, not yet knighted at
the time he wrote and produced this
"entertainment" based on the historic siege of
Rhodes, was named poet laureate of
England in 1638. When he became
"governor" of a group of actors, Cromwell
allowed him certain theatrical liberties
during the time the theaters were "closed/*
He is credited with adapting the French
neoclassicists' favorite theme, love and
honor, for the English stage. He was also
the first to bring actresses to the stage in
England. The play is in two parts, the
first an elaborate musical spectacle, the
second a more fully developed drama with
five acts and many scenes. The historical
basis for the plot concerns the attempt
of the Ottoman Empire to control a
passageway to Egypt by destroying the
fortress at Rhodes. An unsuccessful assault
on the part of Solyman led to his
successful siege, which caused Philip Villiers de
L/Isle Adam to surrender to the lenient
terms of the admiring Turk. The other
characters, the women in particular, are
inventions, used to exploit the honor-in-
love theme in contrast to that presenting
love-of-battle.
The Story:
In the fortress at Rhodes, seven
bastions were maintained by eight Christian
nations as united in opposition to the
Turks as were the earlier Crusaders.
Villerius, a Knight of St. John in supreme
command of those forces, was successfully
defending the fort from Solyman's
assault. Alphonso, the most vigorous among
those defending the Cross from the
Crescent, considered this battle Christendom's
last stand against the infidel. Ianthe, his
bride of but a few months, first aided the
war effort by sacrificing her jewels to buy
arms, and then decided to become one of
history's termagants, or Amazons, and
fight by the side of her husband. In her
attempt to join him, she was captured by
the Turks. Two days later she was
released by order of the sultan as a mark
of respect to her courage and virtue.
In the battle that followed, Alphonso,
mad with jealousy because he believed
that his wife had been unfaithful to him
with the Turkish ruler, fought with the
fierceness of many men. Roxolana, Soly-
man's wife, also became jealous, so highly
was Ianthe praised by her husband. The
battle was fought so ferociously,
especially by the English, that the infidels
were repulsed, forcing the sultan to
resort to siege tactics. Honor had been
preserved in love and battle by participants
on the two sides of the fort.
Famine soon became a real threat to
the beleaguered garrison. While the
leaders debated strategy, the populace
demanded that Ianthe sue for peace.
Alphonso, recovered from his jealousy, re-
3483

fused to allow Ianthe to be used as a
hostage, but she, deciding otherwise in
order to save her husband and the
garrison from slow starvation, stole secretly
away to the sultan's camp. Further
misunderstanding ensued when Roxolana
learned that Ianthe was in the sultan's
tent. In her jealousy she sent a note to
the aggrieved warrior-husband, word
which caused the entire garrison to
deplore the sacrifice of virtuous Ianthe to
the supposed lust of Solyman. Ianthe's
display of virtue, however, won over the
sultana, who was fearful only that her
son would not succeed to the throne.
Solyman declared that his intentions were
always honorable, in love as well as war.
As the palace of Villerius was set on
fire at the height of the siege, a last
abortive attack was made by the Christians
in order to rescue Ianthe. The two young
lovers were secretly united by Roxolana.
Her husband, moved as much by his
wife's compassion for the young couple
as by their own virtue and devotion, sent
both back to Rhodes, leaving the terms oft
the surrender entirely to Ianthe's
discretion. History has it that a general amnesty
ensued and that all the Knights of St.
John were allowed free egress from
Rhodes.
3484

THE SIGN OF FOUR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: 1888
Locale: London
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
Sherlock Holmes, crime investigator
Dr. John Watson, his friend
Mary Morstan, a client
Thaddeus Sholto, an art collector
Jonathan Small, an escaped convict
Critique:
The stories of Sherlock Holmes need
no introduction to lovers of mystery and
suspense. In The Sign of Four the
master detective chases an elusive treasure
and runs into murder. Undaunted by
completely baffling clues, spurred on by
his friend Dr. Watson, Sherlock unwinds
the mystery but modestly gives the credit
to the less astute. One of the earliest of
his detective story yarns, this brief novel
will provide an excellent evening's
entertainment
The Story:
Miss Mary Morstan went to Sherlock
Holmes and Dr. Watson with something
of a mystery. Her father, formerly an
officer in an Indian regiment, had sent her
word from London that she was to meet
him at a certain hotel. But when she kept
the appointment, her father failed to
appear, and he had not been heard from
in the ten years elapsed since that time.
His only known friend in England had
been Major Sholto, a brother officer, but
that gentleman had disclaimed any
knowledge of Morstan's presence in
London. For the past six years Mary Morstan
had received one large and valuable
pearl on a certain date each year. That
morning she had received a note asking
her to meet the writer at a certain spot
near a theater. She was to bring two
friends if she liked, but not the police.
Apprehensive and puzzled, she turned to
Sherlock Holmes for help.
Sherlock and Dr. Watson eagerly
accepted the assignment, Sherlock from a
need for excitement and Dr. Watson
from a newly kindled love for the young
girl. When the three people kept the
appointment at the theater, they were met
by a coachman who drove them some
distance and then deposited them in
front of a house in a long row of new,
dreary houses of the same design. Inside
they were met by Dr. Thaddeus Sholto,
the son of Major Sholto, who told them
a strange and frightening story which
their father had told him and his twin
brother shortly before the major died.
In India, Morstan and Major Sholto
had come upon a large fortune which
Sholto had brought back to England.
When Morstan arrived in London, where
he had planned to meet his daughter, he
had called on Major Sholto. In a
disagreement over the division of the
treasure Morstan, stricken by a heart attack,
fell and struck his head a mortal blow.
Fearing that he would be accused of
murder, Major Sholto had with the help
of a servant disposed of the body. On his
deathbed Major Sholto had wanted to
make restitution to Morstan's daughter
and had called his twin sons to his side
to tell them where the treasure was
hidden. But as he was about to reveal the
hiding place, he saw a horrible face
staring in the window, and he died before
he could disclose his secret.
On the following morning his sons
found the room ransacked and on the
dead man's chest a piece of paper bearing
3485

the words "The Sign of Four." The two
brothers differed over their responsibility
to Mary Morstan, Thaddeus wanting to
help her and his twin wanting to keep
everything for themselves should the
treasure be found. It was Thaddeus who
had sent her the pearl each year, their
father having taken the pearls out of the
treasure chest before he died.
The day before his meeting with
Mary, Sherlock Holmes, and Dr.
Watson, Thaddeus had learned that his
brother had found the treasure chest in
a sealed-otl portion of the attic in their
father's house. Thaddeus declared his
intention to take Mary and the two men
to his brother and force him to give the
girl her share of the wealth. When they
arrived at the brother's house, however,
they found him murdered and the
treasure gone. It was a baffling case, for the
door to his room was locked from the
inside and the wall to the window
impossible to scale. But Sherlock found
certain clues which led him to believe there
had been two accomplices, one of whom
had pulled the other up through a
trapdoor in the roof. He also ascertained that
one of the men had a wooden leg and
the other exceedingly small feet.
During the ten years since Morstan's
death there had been found various notes
with the names of four men on them, the
only English name being that of
Jonathan Small. Many of the notes were
signed "The Sign of Four," the words
which had been written on the paper
left on the late Major Sholto's body.
Using this clue and the evidence found
in the murder room, Sherlock went to
work. Believing that Jonathan Small was
the key to the mystery, he tracked Small
to a steam launch and after a harrowing
chase on the river caught up with him.
Before he could overtake Small,
however, he had to kill the little man with
the small feet. About to be taken, Small
emptied the treasure into the river. After
his capture, he told a story which
unraveled the mystery.
When he was a young man, Jonathan
Small had fled from home because of
trouble over a girl. Joining the army, he
went to India. Soon after his arrival there
he lost a leg to a crocodile. His accident
necessitating a wooden leg, he was
invalided out of the army. For a time he
worked on a plantation. When the
natives staged an uprising, he accidentally
came upon a treasure chest filled with
precious jewels. Three natives, his
partners in the discovery, swore loyalty to
each other and called themselves The
Four. After the uprising the four men
were imprisoned. In order to escape they
had entrusted their secret to Morstan and
Major Sholto, and Sholto had taken
charge of the treasure until the others
could reach safety. But Major Sholto
had tricked his confederates, his
treachery resulting in Morstan's and his own
conscience-stricken deaths. Sherlock had
been right in assuming that Small had
left the paper with "The Sign of Four."
Small had escaped from prison and made
his way back to England with a native
companion, the man with the small feet.
After Major Sholto's death he had waited
until the son found the treasure. Small
had not intended violence, but his
companion had murdered young Sholto with
a poison splinter before Small could enter
the locked room by means of a rope
suspended through the trapdoor.
The rest of the story was known by
Sherlock Holmes. Small, attempting to
escape the country with the treasure, had
dumped it into the river rather than part
with it. To Dr. Watson the loss was a
happy circumstance, for he could now
tell Mary Morstan of his love for her.
This he would not do while he thought
her an heiress. Mary accepted his
proposal and the happy pair received the
good wishes of Sherlock Holmes. As for
him, he preferred the stimulation of
mystery to the stimulation of love.
3486

SILAS MARNER
Type of work: Novel
Author: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1861
Principal characters:
Silas Marner, a weaver
Eppie, his adopted daughter
Aaron Winthrop, whom Eppie married
Godfrey Cass, Eppie's father
Dunstan Cass, his wastrel brother
Nancy Lammeter, whom Godfrey married
Critique:
George Eliot's intent in writing Silas
Marner: the Weaver of Raveloe was to
show that good things come to pure,
natural people. In contrast to the deadly
serious nature of the hero are the simple
and humorous village characters. Silas
does not belong to the realm of important
literary characters. He is merely a symbol
of patience, pathos, and goodness; the
victim of an injustice which he does
nothing to rectify. He waits for sixteen
years until justice, the abstraction,
conquers, and Silas, the man, reaps his
deserved harvest.
The Story:
In the small community of Raveloe
lived the linen-weaver, Silas Marner.
Long years at his spinning-wheel had left
Silas extremely near-sighted so that his
vision was limited to only those objects
which were very bright or very close to
him. Because of an unjust accusation of
theft, Silas had left his former home at
Lantern Yard and had become a recluse.
For fifteen years the lonely, shriveled
man had lived for no purpose but to
hoard the money he received in
payment for his weaving. Night after night
he took his golden hoard from its hiding
place in the floor of his cottage and let
the shining pieces run through his
fingers.
The leading man in Raveloe was
Squire Cass, who had one fine son,
Godfrey, and one wastrel son, Dunstan. It
was said that Godfrey would marry
Nancy Lammeter. But Godfrey had
become involved in Dunstan's gambling
debts. He had lent his spendthrift brother
some of the squire's rent money, which
Dunstan had lost in gambling. Since
neither brother could raise the money,
they decided that Dunstan must sell
Godfrey's favorite horse, Wildfire, at a
nearby fair. Godfrey's one fear was that
this affair would harm his reputation in
the neighborhood and his chance with
Nancy. Another thing that weighed on
Godfrey's conscience and prevented his
declaration to Nancy was the fact that
he was already married. Once he had
been drunk in a tavern in a distant
hamlet, and in that condition he had married
a low-bred, common woman. Sober, he
had fled back to Raveloe and kept his
marriage a secret.
Dunstan rode Wildfire across the fog-
dimmed fields and crippled the animal
on a high jump. With no means of
raising the money, half-drunk and fear-
driven, Dunstan came to Silas Marner's
cottage. He knew the neighborhood
gossip that the weaver had a hoard of gold
hidden away. The cottage was empty,
and instinct soon led the drunken boy
to the hiding place of the gold. Stealing
out of the cabin with his prize and
stumbling through the night, Dunstan fell
into an abandoned quarry pit and was
killed.
The robbery of Silas' cottage furnished
gossip for the entire community. Another
mystery was the disappearance of Dun-
3487

stan Cass. Godfrey was forced now to
tell his father about the rent money he
had given Dunstan and about the loss of
the valuable horse, which had been found
dead. Silas began to receive visitors from
the neighborhood. One of his most
frequent callers was Dolly Winthrop and
her son Aaron, a charming little boy.
Yet Silas could not be persuaded to come
out of his hermitage; he secretly mourned
the loss of his gold.
On New Year's Eve a destitute woman
died in the snow near Silas' cottage. She
had with her a little yellow-haired girl
who made her way toward the light
shining through the cottage window and
entered the house. Returning from an
errand, Silas saw a golden gleam in front
of his fireplace, a gleam which he mistook
for his lost gold. On closer examination,
he discovered a sleeping baby.
Following the child's tracks through the snow,
he came upon the body of the dead
woman.
Godfrey was dancing happily with
Nancy when Silas appeared to say that he
had found a body. Godfrey went with
the others to the scene and saw to his
horror that the dead woman was his
estranged wife. He told no one of her
identity, and had not the courage to
claim the baby for his own. Silas, with
a confused association between the
golden-haired child and his lost hoard,
tenaciously clung to the child. After
Dolly Winthrop spoke up in favor of his
proper attitude toward children, the
villagers decided to leave the baby with the
old weaver.
Years passed. Under the spell of the
child who in her baby language called
herself Eppie instead of the Biblical
Hephzibah that Silas had bestowed upon
her, the cottage of the weaver of Raveloe
took on a new appearance. Lacy curtains
decorated the once drab windows, and
Silas himself outgrew his shell of
reticence. Dolly brought her son to play
with Eppie. Silas was happy. After many
years he even returned to Lantern Yard,
taking Eppie. He searched his old
neighborhood hopefully but could find no one
who could clear his blighted past.
Godfrey Cass married Nancy, but it
was a childless union. For sixteen years
Godfrey secretly carried with him the
thought of his child growing up under
the care of Silas. At last the old stone
quarry was drained and workmen found
a skeleton identified by Dunstan's watch
and seals. Beside the skeleton was Silas'
lost bag of gold, stolen on the night ol
Dunstan's disappearance. With this
discovery, Godfrey's past reopened its sealed
doors. He felt that the time had come
to tell Nancy the truth. When he con
fessed the story of Eppie's birth, Nanc)
agreed with him that they should go tc
Silas and Eppie with their tale. Hearing
this strange story of Eppie's parentage,
the unselfish weaver opened the way foi
Eppie to take advantage of her wealthy
heritage; but Eppie fled to the arms of
the man who had been a father and a
mother to her when no one else would
claim her.
There was one thing remaining to
complete the weaver's happiness. Eppie
married Aaron Winthrop, her childhood
playmate, while Silas beamed happily on
the scene of her wedding.
3488

THE SILENT WOMAN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ben Jonson (1573M637)
Type of plot: Satirical comedy
Time of plot: Early seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1609
Principal characters:
Morose, a gentleman who loves no noise
Sir Dauphine Eugenie, his nephew
Ned Clerimont, one of Sir Dauphine's friends
Truewit, another friend
Sir John Daw, a ridiculous knight
Sir Amorous La-Foole, another silly knight
Cutbeard, a barber
Captain Otter, a heavy drinker
Mistress Otter, his wife
Mistress Epicxene, supposed the Silent Woman
Critique:
On the original title page this work
was called Epicczne, or The Silent
Woman; however, in Jonson's own time
and since, it has been better known by
its subtitle. The play is one of Jonson s
superbly constructed masterpieces. John
Dryden chose it as a perfect example of
English drama and devoted a long
passage of his Essay of Dramatic Poesy to a
critical examination of its merits. Before
The Silent Woman, the settings of Jon-
son's plays were in Italy, in unspecified
places, or in a mythical land of nowhere.
With this play the dramatist settled on
his native land as the setting for his
comedies. It is, therefore, a forerunner of
the great play, The Alchemist, of the
second version of Every Man in His
Humour, and of Bartholomew Fair, another
magnificent prose comedy. The laughter
in The Silent Woman is less savage than
the laughter frequently characteristic of
Jonsonian comedy.
The Story:
Clerimont and Truewit, young men
about town, met and discussed various
matters, including the relative merits of
natural beauty and the use of cosmetics.
Shifting the topic to their friend Sir
Dauphine Eugenie, they wondered how
he was able to put up with his uncle
Morose, an eccentric character who could
abide no noise except the sound of his
own voice. Clerimont's page amused them
with accounts of various noisy pranks
played on the ridiculous old man. Sir
Dauphine joined them and complained
that his uncle blamed all the pranks on
him and his friends and threatened to
marry and leave his fortune to his new
wife instead of to his nephew. Morose
had heard of a soft-voiced woman,
extremely frugal of speech, and had
negotiated with his silent barber, Cutbeard,
to arrange a meeting, possibly even a
marriage.
Truewit, amazed at hearing of a silent
barber and a silent woman, was struck
with a sudden inspiration and excused
himself. After Truewit's departure on his
undisclosed mission, Sir Amorous La-
Foole arrived to invite the gendemen to
a feast at the home of his kinswoman,
Mistress Otter. The guests were to
include the silent Mistress Epicoene; three
collegiate ladies, Lady Haughty, Lady
Centaur, and Mistress Mavis; and Sir
John Daw. Sir Dauphine and Clerimont
bracketed Sir John and Sir Amorous as
ridiculous targets for comedy.
Morose was instructing his servant
Mute to use only sign language, or in
extreme emergencies to speak through a
tube, when they were interrupted by a
loud blast from a post-horn. Mute went to
3489

the door and returned, followed by True-
wit, carrying a post-horn and a halter.
Morose and Mute were overwhelmed by
a volley of words and intimidated by a
dagger when they attempted to leave the
room. Truewit suggested that Morose
choose some way of self-destruction other
than marriage and offered him the halter
to hang himself. After another voluble
outpouring he left, but added the final
torture of another blast from his horn.
When Cutbeard arrived, he found
Morose in such a state that he had to be put
to bed.
In the company of Mistress Epicoene,
Sir Dauphine and Clerimont encouraged
the fantastic knight Sir John Daw to
quote and explain his own poetry, to
show off his copious but confused mass
of knowledge, and to boast of his
romantic prowess. They were interrupted by
Truewit, returning with his horn. Sir
Dauphine was greatly disturbed at the
account of the prank, which Truewit
assured him would break off the intended
marriage; he told Truewit that the
marriage was his own plot abetted by his
confederates, Cutbeard and Mistress
Epicoene. Cutbeard hastened in to announce
that Morose, furious with Truewit and
certain that Sir Dauphine had sent him
to break off the match, had determined to
marry immediately. Cutbeard conducted
Mistress Epiccene away, and the young
gentlemen commented on her apparent
desertion of her gallant, Sir John. They
encouraged him to indulge his
melancholy.
Morose welcomed Cutbeard and
Mistress Epiccene, who spoke so sofdy that
she could hardly be heard. Cutbeard did
all his speaking by signs only. Carried
away with Mistress Epiccene's noiseless
charm, Morose promised large rewards
to the barber, reminding him to deliver
his thanks silently, and sent him to find
a soft-voiced minister to perform the
marriage ceremony. He gloated over his
imminent marriage and his begetting of
children to inherit his estate after he had
cast out his impudent nephew.
When Cutbeard announced the
results to Sir Dauphine and his friends,
Truewit suggested that the whole of Sir
Amorous' party be transported to Mo-
rose's house to celebrate the wedding with
proper sound effects. The young men left
for the party. The crowd gathered at the
Otters' nouse for the party. Clerimont
and Sir Dauphine stirred up trouble
between Sir Amorous and Sir John Daw
by making each believe that the other
was putting a slight on him: that Sir
Amorous knew that Morose was taking
Sir John's sweetheart from him, and that
Sir John was taking Sir Amorous' guests
to the wedding feast. They suggested to
Sir Amorous that he have his provisions
carried to Morose's home, in the hope
that the smell of the venison would
attract some fiddlers and trumpeters on the
way.
Morose had the wedding ceremony
performed by a parson who could hardly
be heard because of a bad cold; he
rewarded him handsomely, but a crashing
cough angered him so that he demanded
that part of the reward be returned.
Cutbeard suggested that making change
would be difficult for the parson, but that
he could cough out the rest; this
suggestion silenced Morose, who dismissed the
parson. Immediately following the
ceremony, Mistress Epiccene exhibited her
voice in an outburst of shrewish scolding.
Reeling from this shock, Morose looked
around to see Truewit entering with loud
congratulations, shortly followed by the
whole procession of noisy guests. The
collegiate ladies invited Mistress Epiccene to
join their circle. When they began to
whisper confidentially, Morose had a
gleam of hope which was immediately
clashed by their loud criticisms of the
lack of wedding festivities. Clerimont
ushered in a host of musicians playing
fortissimo, and Captain Otter followed
with his drinking mugs and a group of
drummers and trumpeters to sound for
toasts. Morose fled, groaning, to lock
himself in the attic with a nest of nightcaps
pulled over his ears. The party continued
noisily, enlivened by a quarrel between
Captain Otter and his wife; she beat him
3490

until he howled repentance. Morose
returned with his sword to drive away the
party, but, overcome bv the clamor, he
fled again, followed by Sir Dauphine,
who endeavored to console him, and
Truewit, who reminded him of his
warning about the dangers of marriage.
Morose accepted Truewit's advice that he
sue for a divorce.
Continuing their pranks on Sir John
and Sir Amorous, the young men
reduced them into such a state of terror
that they hid from each other. At last
each was persuaded to consent to be
blindfolded and to accept indignities from
his furious opponent: Sir John was to
receive five kicks from Sir Amorous and
to surrender his sword; Sir Amorous was
to surrender his sword, receive a blow on
the mouth, and have his nose tweaked.
Sir Dauphine, impersonating each in
turn, inflicted the indignities on the
hoodwinked knights. On Morose's return,
Truewit showed him the swords and said
that the quarrel had arisen over the
bride's amorous favors. Since Morose had
not been able to face the noise in the
law courts, Truewit promised to find
legal help for the divorce proceedings.
Prodded by the young men, both Sir
John and Sir Amorous boasted of
successful love affairs with Mistress Epi-
coene.
Truewit returned with Cutbeard
disguised as a lawyer and Captain Otter
disguised as a parson. These engaged in a
noisy dispute on secular and canon law
concerning divorce proceedings.
During the dispute, which was
exquisite torture to Morose, Mistress Epicoene
and the ladies entered screeching about
her wrongs. Every effort of Morose to
free himself failed, even the accusation of
adultery, for neither knight could claim
intimacy after the marriage. Sir Dauphine
proposed to his uncle that if he could
free him from his tormenting bride
Morose would restore him as heir. Morose
eagerly accepted the terms and signed an
agreement, at which Sir Dauphine pulled
off Mistress Epiccene's wig to disclose that
the supposed silent woman was a boy.
Sir John and Sir Amorous were
discredited and discomfited; the collegiate ladies
were covered with embarrassment at
having exposed feminine mysteries to a
member of the opposite sex; and Morose
retired to welcome silence.
3491

SIMPLICISSIMUS THE VAGABOND
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. J. C. von Grimmelshausen (c. 1625-1676)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)
Locale: Germany
First published: 1669
Principal characters:
Simplicius Simplicissimus, a vagabond
A Peasant, his foster father
A Hermit, his real father
A Pastor
Ulrich Herzbrudhr, Simplicissimus' friend
Oliver, a rogue
Critique:
It was not until the middle of the
nineteenth century that Grimmelshausen
became known as the author of
Simplicissimus, for this book, like so many
of his works, was published under a pen
name. This is a particularly strange fact
in German literary history, when one
considers that the novel is the
masterpiece of the only really great German
writer of the seventeenth century.
Indeed, the writings of Grimmelshausen
have been declared to be the one oasis in
the literary desert during that period. In
this novel none of the great historical
figures of the Thirty Years' War appears;
only James Ramsay, the Scot who
brilliantly defended Hanau, is a real-life
figure of note. The fact that he is made to
be the uncle of Simplicissimus, the
brother of the hero's mother, is completely
fictional. Grimmelshausen's is the only
contemporary German treatment of the
Thirty Years' War in fiction.
The Story:
Simplicissimus was a simple child who
grew up to the age of ten with his
parents on a farm near the Spessart forest.
Because they lived at some distance from
any town, and had no near neighbors,
Simplicissimus was reared in almost
complete innocence, his only knowledge
concerned with the care of stock and the
playing of bagpipes. But in his tenth year
SIMPLICISSIMUS THE VAGABOND by H. J. C. von Grimmelshausen. Translated by A. T. S.
Goodrick. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
the Thirty Years' War swept over his
homeland and a troop of soldiers
descended upon his father's farm. While foraging
parties were plundering the farm,
Simplicissimus escaped into the forest.
There he was rescued by a hermit who
taught the boy how to take care of
himself and tried to make a hermit out of
him. Two years later the hermit died,
leaving the boy to look out for himself.
He fell into the hands of some soldiers
and was taken to Hanau as a prisoner.
There the governor questioned
Simplicissimus and learned that the boy did not
know who he was or anything about his
past, except that he had been the son
of a peasant and had spent some time
with a hermit. Fortunately for him, a
pastor saw him and recognized him as
the hermit's young companion. The
pastor told the governor that the hermit had
been a nobleman who had sickened of
war and so had turned to a holy life.
The governor, taking a liking to
Simplicissimus, made him a page. As a page,
Simplicissimus was at a disadvantage, for
he knew little of the world and his
innocence and ignorance kept getting him
into trouble. At last the governor decided to
make a jester of Simplicissimus. A plot
was laid to make him lose his wits, but
the pastor, who discovered the
arrangements, warned the boy beforehand.
Simplicissimus, falling in with the scheme,
3492

pretended to have lost his wits; he knew
that his life would be easier and safer
as a fool than as a blundering page.
After many adventures as the
governor's fool, Simplicissimus was captured by
a Croat raiding party. He served several
masters while a prisoner of the Croats,
finally making his escape by dressing as
a girl, only to find refuge as a lady's maid.
His disguise did not last long, and soon
Simplicissimus was found out and made
a horseboy. While with the Croats he
befriended a young German named Ul-
rich Herzbruder and gave Herzbruder a
sum of money large enough for the young
man to escape punishment for a theft of
which he had been unjustly accused.
Because he was rapidly learning how
to get on in the world, Simplicissimus
soon rose from the post of horseboy to
that of musketeer. He served for several
months as a guard at a nunnery, where
a huntsman taught him .many tricks of
the woods. Upon his return to his unit,
Simplicissimus soon became a great
leader and forager, for the combination of his
training as a huntsman, his own courage,
the woodcraft he had learned from the
hermit, and a natural quickness of wit
served him in good stead. As a forager
he used many tricks that made him
known far and wide as the Hunter of
Soest, a soldier to be feared. Although he
was only a corporal, Simplicissimus had
plenty of money, for he took a great deal
of plunder from the rich. Never did he
misuse the poor.
Soon he learned that someone else had
borrowed his title and distinctive green
garb and was committing great crimes in
nis name. After several weeks of search*
ing Simplicissimus ran down his
impersonator and forced the fellow to stop,
although he allowed the man to live. So
famous did Simplicissimus become as the
Hunter of Soest that he had dreams of
becoming an officer and even of being
made a nobleman. To that end he hid
away a great deal of the treasure which
fell to him through his foraging
activities; his plans came to naught, however,
when he was captured by the Swedes.
When the commandant of the Swedes
learned that Simplicissimus was the
Hunter of Soest, he offered the young
man a chance to become an officer.
Simplicissimus refused to do so immediately,
but he gave his parole so that the
commandant allowed him the freedom of
the city. Simplicissimus' servant escaped
through the lines with a large part of
the hero's treasure, and Simplicissimus
turned to six months of study and
making friends. His easy manners and bold
bearing soon made him a favorite with
the women. The commandant used
Simplicissimus' weakness to have him
married to a colonel's beautiful daughter, in
hopes that the marriage would make
Simplicissimus pledge his allegiance to the
Swedes. The ruse worked, and the young
man went to Cologne to arrange for the
safekeeping of his treasure. While in that
city he was fooled into making a trip to
Paris. In Paris he had many adventures
of love, by which he got a large amount
of money and a case of smallpox. He was
robbed of his money, however, and made
his way toward Germany by
masquerading as a quack doctor. The career as a
quack was cut short when he was once
more forced into the army as a soldier.
On a marauding trip, Simplicissimus
met a robber and discovered that the
robber was Oliver, an erstwhile friend who
had misused Simplicissimus' friend, Ul-
rich Herzbruder. Within a few days
Oliver was killed by a group of soldiers.
Simplicissimus escaped with a large
amount of gold sewed into two shirts
which he wore under his coat. He was
later captured and again forced into sol-
diering. Fortunately, Ulrich Herzbruder
recognized him and had him released.
The two then set out on a pilgrimage as
palmers and traveled for many months
through southern Europe. Upon their
return Ulrich Herzbruder arranged to have
Simplicissimus be made a captain. The
end of the Thirty Years' War came
quickly, however, with the Treaty of
Westphalia, and Simplicissimus was
again at loose ends.
While visiting at a Swiss spa he met
3493

an old peasant who turned out to be his
father. To Simplicissimus' surprise,
however, the old man related that
Simplicissimus was only a foster child and that
the nobleman who had turned hermit,
and who had befriended the boy, had
been Simplicissimus' father. His
mother, it turned out, was a Scot, the sister of
James Ramsay, a famous officer in the
Thirty Years' War. Simplicissimus' real
name was Melchior Sternfels von Fuchs-
heim.
Shortly afterward Simplicissimus was
married again. This marriage lasted only
a year, his wife dying of a fever. After
her death Simplicissimus had a strange
adventure at the middle of the earth,
which he reached with the help of the
water sprites who dwelt in the Mummel-
see, a lake in Germany. After that
adventure Simplicissimus went with a
friend to Russia, where he expected to
get employment with the tsar. Following
some adventures in Russia,
Simplicissimus was captured by Tartars and finally
returned to Germany after having
traveled across Asia and through China and
Japan. Upon his return, Simplicissimus
read a great deal and finally became a
hermit, as his father had done before
him.
3494

SIR CHARLES GRANDISON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
Type of plot: Epistolary novel of manners
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1753-1754
Principal characters:
Sir Charles Grandison, an English baronet of great virtue
Harriet Byron, a virtuous English girl
Lady Clementina della Porretta, a young Italian woman in love
with Sir Charles
Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, a libertine in love with Harriet Byron
Charlotte Grandison, Sir Charles' younger sister
Lady L., Sir Charles' older sister
Emily Jervois, Sir Charles' ward
Critique:
Like other English writers of fiction
before him, Samuel Richardson felt it
necessary to pretend that his novels were
written to serve a didactic and moral
purpose. In his three great novels—Pamela,
Clarissa, and Sir Charles
Grandison—virtue is rewarded and evil given its earned
deserts. Richardson was fond of poetic
justice. Because he had, in Pamela and
Clarissa, written of men who were
libertines, Richardson next attempted, he said,
to adumbrate the character of a truly
virtuous man. Sir Charles Grandison, like
its predecessors, was written in the form
of letters, for Richardson believed this
the best method to use in presenting
matters concerned with the emotions.
Readers of the contemporary psychological
novel will discern in Ricnardson's fiction
an early ancestor of their favorite brand of
fiction; the problems in a Richardson
novel, including Sir Charles Grandison,
are always psychological: little happens,
the important things being what the
characters feel and think.
Tfee Story:
When Harriet Byron, a beautiful and
virtuous English girl of modest
expectations, left her aunt's home in rural
Northamptonshire to visit in eighteenth-century
London, she left three men who loved her
very much and various relatives who
feared that the social life of the city might
offer moral pitfalls unknown to a young
and unsuspecting girl of virtue such as
Harriet was. Having spent all her life in
the country, living with an aunt after her
parents' deaths, Harriet was excited at
the prospect of the London visit. She
went, too, with a happy heart, for she
had no one, despite her many admirers,
that she was interested in marrying; her
suitors had not appealed strongly enough
to her sentiments and mind in spite of
their respectable, if ardorous, attentions.
In London, where she had connections
of a very respectable sort, Harriet was
invited to many homes and social events,
and she met many wealthy suitors. One
of these was Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, who
was determined not to accept a refusal.
When told by Harriet that he did not suit
her fancy, Sir Hargrave became enraged
and vowed he would have both the girl
and revenge. He laid a plot to abduct the
girl from a masquerade ball and force her
to marry him.
Sir Hargrave's plot almost succeeding,
the experience was a horrible one for
Harriet. Fortunately for the girl, however,
Sir Charles Grandison heard her screams
and rescued her from Sir Hargrave's
clutches. Sir Charles took Harriet to his
country house, not far from London,
where he and his sister invited Harriet
to remain as a guest, almost a member
of the family. Sir Hargrave sent a
challenge to Sir Charles, but the latter
refused to fight a duel, insisting that no
' 3495

virtuous man, however brave and skilled,
could become a duelist and retain his
virtue.
Harriet Byron soon fell in love with
Sir Charles Grandison, who was, she
realized, the very soul of honor and
virtue, a man whose time was spent in
carefully managing his own affairs and in
doing good for others. His father had
died leaving his entire estate to Sir
Charles, with no provision for the two
daughters of the family. When Sir
Charles returned to England from the
Continent to take over his estate, he
treated his sisters with all consideration
and devotion. The oldest received his
permission for her to marry Lord L., a
suitor frowned upon by her father
during his lifetime. Sir Charles also began to
improve his estates and their revenues
so that he could set aside better marriage
portions for both girls, something more
than their father had been willing to do.
Sir Charles befriended everyone who
would accept his kindnesses, and he
behaved always wisely and with decorum.
Even those persons who were prepared
to dislike him found themselves won over
by his sympathetic, friendly, and yet
dignified ways. Even to his father's
paramour, Mrs. Oldham, he behaved
magnanimously, persuading the rest of the
family to view her as a misguided and
miserable fellow human being.
Many women were in love with Sir
Charles, including Harriet Byron, but
no one could ascertain whether he had
any inclinations toward any particular
woman. But Harriet tried to hide her
love for him and to subdue it, even
though many of Sir Charles' friends and
relatives, including his sisters, favored the
match. Sir Charles consistently referred
to Harriet as a sister and behaved toward
her with the same consideration he
showed Charlotte Grandison and Lady L.
Finally it became known that two Italian
women he had met in his travels had won
some favor from him and had some claim
to him and his affections. One was Lady
Olivia and the other was Lady
Clementina della Porretta, whom he had met
after saving her brother's life. Lady
Clementina's family did not favor a marriage
between their daughter and a Protestant
Englishman, but the young woman was
so enamored of Sir Charles that his
departure from Italy unhinged her reason.
Feeling a sense of responsibility to the
lady and her family as the source of her
misfortune, Sir Charles returned to Italy
with English medical experts to try to
effect a cure. Harriet Byron, believing
that he would prefer Lady Clementina
to her, began to prepare herself for news
of his marriage to the Italian woman.
After she had recovered from her
malady, however, Lady Clementina refused
to marry Sir Charles, in spite of the fact
that her family and he had been able to
compromise over religious differences.
Lady Clementina, a devout Roman
Catholic, feared that she would be tempted
by her love for Sir Charles and his virtue
to leave her faith to become a Protestant.
She asked to be free not to marry at all,
since she could not marry him; her
family hoped she would marry some other
eligible man.
While he was still in Italy, an attempt
was made on Sir Charles' life, almost
certainly at the instigation of Lady Olivia,
who had previously struck at him with a
poniard after he had repulsed her
addresses. After this incident Sir Charles
felt himself free to pay his court where
he would. He returned to England and
immediately began his suit for Harriet
Byron's hand, which he quickly won. In
the meantime his sister Charlotte had
married Lord G., and Harriet helped that
impetuous and willful young woman to
learn to bear properly the dignity of
matrimony. Harriet's marriage to Sir Charles
still faced some small obstacles. She had
to learn to accept her suitor in new ways;
she was shocked, for example, when he
kissed her on the mouth instead of on
the cheek. Harriet had to find a place in
her heart, too, for Emily Jervois, Sir
Charles' young ward. The young girl
loved her guardian, and Harriet, aware
of the girl's feelings, had to help her
accept Harriet's marriage to Sir Charles.
3496

still faced some small obstacles. She had
to learn to accept her suitor in new ways;
she was shocked, for example, when ne
kissed her on the mouth instead of on
the cheek. Harriet had to find a place in
her heart, too, for Emily Jervois, Sir
Charles' young ward. The young girl
loved her guardian, and Harriet, aware
of the girl's feelings, had to help her
accept Harriet's marriage to Sir Charles.
Another disturbance was caused by a
former suitor of Harriet, Mr. Greville,
who tried, while emotionally deranged,
to fight a duel with Sir Charles.
Harriet Byron and Sir Charles were
finally married. A short time later they
were visited by Lady Clementina, who
had run away from her home in Italy
because of her parents' insistence that
she marry. Through a compromise, Sir
Charles managed to arrange a satisfactory
agreement between the young woman and
her family. Word came, too, of Sir Har
grave Pollexfen's death. Sir Hargrave,
rescued in France by Sir Charles from
the outraged relatives of a woman he
had attempted to seduce, had discovered
the evil of his ways. Wishing to make
amends for the abduction and the
attempted forced marriage to Harriet, Sir
Hargrave left his fortune to her and her
husband. Even the mother of Emily
Jervois was influenced to become a
respectable and virtuous woman. Encouraged by
Sir Charles' magnanimity and financial
generosity, she interested herself in
religion. Although that unfortunate woman
had once looked on Sir Charles as her
enemy and she and Mr. O'Hara, her
onetime paramour and second husband, had
attempted to force Emily into a
degrading marriage with a rascal who had
promised to share with them the girl's fortune
that Sir Charles held in trust, they
mended their dissolute ways and became
sober, worthy persons.
3497

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
Type of work: Poem
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Sixth century
Locale: England
First transcribed: Fourteenth-century manuscript
Principal characters:
Sir Gawatn, a knight of the Round Table
Sib Bernlak de Hautdesert, the Green Knight
Critique:
The manuscript of this Middle English
poem dates from the end of the fourteenth
century, but the actual composition may
have been earlier. Certainly the exploits
of Gawain had been celebrated in many
earlier romances and folk tales. The style
seems all the more remarkable because at
the time of its composition English speech
had not yet developed into the language
we know today. Various stages of emotion
are successfully portrayed, and there is a
careful detailing of nature. Although
there have been numerous translations,
none matches the flavor of the original
Middle English version.
The Story:
On Christmas Eve many knights and
fair ladies gathered in King Arthur's
banquet hall, there to feast and enjoy the
holiday festivities. Suddenly a stranger
entered the room. He was a giant of a man,
clad all in green armor, and with a green
face, hair, and beard. He advanced, gave
his greetings, and then loudly issued his
challenge. Was there a knight in the group
who would dare to trade blows with the
mighty Green Knight? He who accepted
was to strike one blow with a battle-ax
on this occasion. Then on New Year's
morning, a year hence, the Green Knight
was to repay the blow, at his own castle
in a distant land. Arrogantly, the Green
Knight waited for an answer. From King
Arthur's ranks answered the voice of Sir
Gawain, the youngest and least battle-
scarred of the knights. Sir Gawain
accepted the challenge.
King Arthur and the other knights
watched approvingly as Sir Gawain
advanced, ax in hand, to confront the Green
Knight. The stranger knelt down, bared
his neck, and waited for the blow. Sir
Gawain struck, sure and true, and the
head of the Green Knight was severed
from his body. While all gaped in
amazement, he picked up his head in his hands,
leaped upon his charger, and rode toward
the gate. As he rode, the lips of the head
shouted defiance at Sir Gawain,
reminding him of their forthcoming tryst at the
Green Chapel on the coming New Year.
The months passed quickly. Noble
deeds were legion at the Round Table,
and an atmosphere of gaiety pervaded
King Arthur's castle. Then, when autumn
came, Sir Gawain departed on his
promised quest, and with much concern the
other knights saw him set forth. Sir
Gawain, riding his horse Gringalet, went
northward, and at last arrived in Wirral,
a region wild and uncivilized. On his way
he was often in danger of death, for he
faced fire-puffing dragons, fierce animals,
and savage wild men in his search for the
Knight of the Green Chapel. At last, on
Christmas Eve, Sir Gawain saw a great
castle in the middle of the wilderness. He
entered it and was made welcome.
His host offered Sir Gawain the entire
facilities of the castle. In a beautifully
furnished chamber which he occupied, Sir
Gawain was served the finest dishes and
the best wines. The lady of the castle, a
lady more beautiful even than Queen
Guinevere, sat with him as he ate. The
next day was Christmas, and the lord of
the castle led in the feasting. Expressing
3498

the wish that Sir Gawain would remain
at the castle for a long time, the host
assured the knight that the Green Chapel
was only a short distance away, so that it
would not be necessary for him to leave
until New Year's Day. The lord of the
castle also asked Sir Gawain to keep a
covenant with him. During his stay Sir
Gawain was to receive all the game that
his host caught during the day's hunt. In
return, Sir Gawain was to exchange any
gifts he received at the castle while the
host was away.
On the first morning that the host
hunted, Sir Gawain was awakened by the
lady of the castle. She entered his
chamber, seated herself on his couch, and
spoke words of love to him. But Sir
Gawain resisted temptation and took
nothing from the lady. That evening,
when die host presented his bounty from
the hunt, Sir Gawain answered truthfully
that he had received nothing that day.
The second morning the same thing
happened. Sir Gawain remained chaste in
spite of the lady's conduct. On the third
morning, however, the day before Sir
Gawain was to depart, she gave him an
embroidered silk girdle which she said
would keep him safe from any mortal
blow. Then she kissed him three times
and departed. That evening Sir Gawain
kissed his host three times, but he did not
mention the silken girdle he had received.
On New Year's morn Sir Gawain set
forth from the castle and rode to the Green
Chapel. He found it without difficulty;
as he approached he heard the Green
Knight sharpening his ax. When Sir
Gawain announced that he was ready for
the blow and bared his head, the Green
Knight raised his ax high in the air in
preparation for the stroke of death. But
Sir Gawain jumped aside as the ax
descended. The second time the Green
Knight merely struck at Sir Gawain, not
touching him at all. With the third blow
he wounded Sir Gawain in the neck,
drawing a great deal of blood. Then Sir
Gawain shouted defiance and said that he
had fulfilled the covenant. The Green
Knight laughed loudly at that and began
to praise Sir Gawain's courage.
To Sir Gawain's surprise, he revealed
himself as the host of the castle and
explained the blows. On the first two blows
Sir Gawain escaped injury, because for
two days he had faithfully kept the
covenant. The third drew blood, however,
because Sir Gawain had failed to reveal
the gift of the girdle, the property of the
host, Sir Bernlak de Hautdesert.
Together with Morgain le Fay, King
Arthur's half-sister, the Green Knight had
planned this whole affair to test the
strength and valor of King Arthur's
knights. They had devised the disguise of
the Green Knight and persuaded Lady de
Hautdesert to try tempting Sir Gawain.
Sir Gawain haa withstood the test of
temptation well, his only fault the keeping
of the girdle. The host forgave him for
his act, however, because it was the love
of life itself that had motivated Sir
Gawain.
The two knights returned to the castle,
and a few days later Sir Gawain journeyed
back to King Arthur's court. As he rode he
gazed with shame at the girdle which he
had procured from the host. It was to
remain with Sir Gawain as a reminder of
the moment when he yielded and
succumbed to the weakness of the flesh.
At King Arthur's castle all the knights
and ladies listened to the tale of Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, and then,
to show their love for the young knight,
they all donned silk girdles. This symbol
became a tiaditional part of the costume
of the Knights of the Round Table.
3499

SIR JOHN VAN OLDEN BARNAVELT
Type of work: Drama
Authors: John Fletcher (1579-1625) and Philip Massinger (1583-1640)
Type of plot: Historical tragedy
Time of plot: 1618-1619
Locale: The Netherlands
First presented: 1619
Principal characters:
Grave Maurice, Prince of Orange
Sir John van Olden Barnavelt, Advocate of Holland and West
Friesland
Leidenberch, Secretary of the States of Utrecht
Grotius, Pensionary of Rotterdam
Hogerbeets, Pensionary of Leiden
MODESBARGEN,
Bredero, and
Vandort, Lords of the States
Barnavelt's Wife
Barnavelt's Daughter
Four Dutch Women
An English Gentlewoman
Critique:
In Sir John van Olden Barnavelt,
Fletcher and Massinger apparently
intended to present the character of a noble
and virtuous man of high station who was
brought to ruin by ambition. This
intention is never realized dramatically. We
are told of Barnavelt's service to the state,
of the love the common people had for
him, and of his many fine personal
qualities; but we are never shown these things.
Thus Barnavelt emerges from the play as
a proud and crotchety old man whose
unreasonable machinations lead
eventually to a well-deserved beheading. Hence
he never achieves tragic dimensions. Any
other positive effects the play might have
achieved are inhibited by distinctly
second-rate plotting and versification. But
Jacobean audiences seem to have reacted
to the play quite favorably. The historical
Barnavelt had been executed in May,
1619, and to them the reenactment of
the end of his career was an exciting
contemporary chronicle, rendered all the
more interesting because a number of
dangerous political questions were raised.
For this reason, perhaps, the play was
not printed during the seventeenth
century. It survived in the form of a heavily
censored manuscript prompt book, which
was not generally available until its
publication in 1883.
The Story:
Although hostilities with Spain had
ended with the Twelve Year Truce in
1609, the infant Dutch states were still
upset in 1618 by internal political and
religious strife. To Modesbargen,
Leidenberch, and Grotius, the silver-haired
patriot Barnavelt declared his dissatisfaction
with the present state of affairs, for with
the support of the army, the Prince of
Orange was becoming known among the
people as the father of his country and
the chief champion of the new freedom.
The contributions of the older patriots,
particularly Barnavelt, were being
forgotten; he hinted darkly that he, who
had done so much to bring about the
Spanish defeat, would see his country
overthrown again before he would allow
his honor to be so sullied.
Although Modesbargen reminded
Barnavelt that his services had been well
rewarded and that his present course
of action could lead only to his ruin,
Grotius and Leidenberch enthusiastically
supported him, and Modesbargen agreed
eventually to help Barnavelt in any way
3500

that would not prejudice the state.
The conference was interrupted by two
captains, one of whom was to be judged
by Barnavelt for having spoken
scornfully of the Lords of the States. Coldly,
Barnavelt relieved the captain of his
command, telling him that he could look to
the Prince of Orange for maintenance.
Although Leidenberch privately
promised the cashiered officer that he would
intervene for him, the captain, who knew
that Leidenberch's genial manner covered
a cold and relentless nature, announced
that he would seek to reestablish himself
by bribing Barnavelt's wife or by
furnishing a fresh wench for his son.
In a second conference with his friends,
Barnavelt avowed himself, like them, an
Arminian, and urged that they enroll
companies of citizens in the provincial
cities for the defense of the sect against
its enemy, the Prince of Orange, whose
regular troops were garrisoned at Utrecht.
Modesbargen again protested, this time
that religion should not be made a cloak
for subversive political activity, but
Barnavelt cynically replied that any weapon
could be used that would serve their
cause. He then persuaded Bredero and
Vandort, two Lords of the States, to
order the Prince of Orange locked out
of a meeting of the Lords which was
about to take place.
When the prince arrived and found
the doors of the council chamber barred
against him, he had difficulty in
restraining his attendants, who realized the
enormity of the insult, from forcing their way
in. His humility and modesty prevailed,
however, and he remained without until
Barnavelt and the Lords appeared. He
inquired why he had lost his seat. In
reply, Barnavelt spoke harshly, charging
him with haughtiness. Bredero and
Vandort were shocked and offended not only
by Barnavelt's outspokenness and
offensive tone but also by his assumption of
the right to speak for them. Instead of
joining Leidenberch and Modesbargen
in following Barnavelt to his home, they
remained behind and assured the prince
of their loyalty to him. With their assent
the prince resolved to move against the
towns in which Barnavelt's supporters
had raised citizen companies.
Although Barnavelt knew that the
Prince of Orange would attempt to
disband the companies, he confidently
believed that the prince would not risk
civil war and that in any event his own
reputation would protect himself and his
followers from harm. In Utrecht the
citizens attempted to persuade the regular
garrison to desert the prince and serve
Barnavelt's cause; but the soldiers,
remembering their loyalty to the House of
Orange, resisted the blandishments of the
wily Leidenberch. When the soldiers
remained firm against threats to oust them
from the town, Barnavelt realized that a
crisis was nearing. While his followers
proceeded to muster the citizen
companies, he returned to The Hague to begin
a diverting action.
Meanwhile, four Dutch women, all
ardent feminists, attempted to convince
a visiting English gentlewoman of the
advantages of living in a free society,
where women could lord it over their
husbands and inquire into the doings of
their rulers. They were ridiculing the
English mercenaries' fidelity to the Prince
of Orange when news was brought that
the prince had disarmed all of the other
towns and was approaching Utrecht. The
citizens began to arm themselves, but the
gates were guarded by the English, who
refused to give over their posts to citizen
reliefs. Thus, when the prince arrived
before the city, the English admitted
him, and his army quickly disarmed the
citizens. Leidenberch was taken prisoner
and ordered to The Hague. Modesbargen
made his escape to Germany.
At The Hague, Bredero, Vandort and
other Lords of the States were rejoicing
at the news of the prince's victories when
they were joined by Barnavelt. The old
man accused his colleagues of slighting
him in favor of the prince; they replied
that in spite of his former services he was
now regarded as a suspect, and they
advised his reformation. Barnavelt then
unleashed all his pent-up fury, reaffirming
3501

his undying hatred of the Prince of
Orange. The others were retreating before
his anger when Bamavelt's son arrived
with a report of Utrecht's fall and
Leidenberch 's capture.
Knowing that their cause was lost, the
son advised his father to capitulate to the
prince. Once again Barnavelt swore that
he would die first.
With the dispersal of the citizen armies,
Bamavelt's power was lost, and when the
Prince of Orange returned to The Hague
his leadership of the state was assured.
When the Lords of the States met again,
it was Barnavelt who was excluded on the
recommendation of Vandort and Bredero,
The subject of the meeting was the
extent to which the Arminian heresy still
threatened the state. The prince reported
that the reduction of the armed towns had
done much to stamp out the sect, but that
powerful men who were yet untouched
were its real source of strength. Pressed
by the council to reveal their names, he
accused Modesbargen, Grotius,
Leidenberch, and finally Barnavelt. Although
Leidenberch had been captured, it was
felt that a case against the others would
be difficult to make without the testimony
of Modesbargen; therefore, a captain and
a small band were dispatched to
Germany to arrest him secretly. Leidenberch,
accompanied by his young son, was then
brought before the council. Convinced
that a full confession was his best course
of action, he vowed to reveal everything
as he was led off again to his cell.
There he was met by Barnavelt. When
Leidenberch admitted that he had told
his captors the secrets that had been
entrusted to him, the old man reviled him
for his weakness and faithlessness. As
Leidenberch quailed before him,
Barnavelt urged with all of his considerable
force that the turncoat's only honorable
atonement would be suicide. So
powerful were his arguments that Leidenberch
that evening took his own life.
Meanwhile, Bamavelt's own position
was growing increasingly tenuous; but he
was still not without friends. Grotius and
Hogerbeets let it be known that if he was
arrested they would burn the statehouse
about the prince's ears.
Barnavelt himself grew more
despondent as he felt the prince's net tightening
upon him. In spite of the efforts of
his wife and daughter, he could not be
cheered; however, when his son brought
him the news of Leidenberch's suicide,
he realized that any charge the prince
might have had against him would
collapse for lack of a witness. His mood
immediately changed as he regained
confidence in his own powers.
But he had underestimated the potency
of his enemies. Just as he reached the
height of his elation, he was arrested by
the prince's men and brought before the
council. Still thinking himself safe, he
vigorously denied charges of treason. In
the midst of his defense Modesbargen,
who had been brought back from
Germany, was introduced. Although
Bamavelt's case collapsed, the old man's spirit
was not broken. He continued to deny
his guilt and refused to ask for mercy.
While Barnavelt was held in prison
awaiting the passage of his sentence, the
Lords of the States were subject to
pressure from all sides to release him. Not
only was he still beloved by the common
people, but the heads of foreign states
interceded for him. His treason was too
blatant to be forgiven, however, and he
was sentenced to be beheaded. To the
end he maintained his innocence and
repeatedly accused the state of
ingratitude to one who had served her well.
Even though thousands were wagered
that the ax would never strike his neck,
he was eventually led to the block and
executed in full sight of the populace.
The decaying body of Leidenberch was
exhumed for the occasion and hung
nearby. Thus, two of Holland's greatest
men paid ambition's price.
3502

THE SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS
Type of work: Periodical essays
Authors: Joseph Addison (1672-1719); Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729); Eustace Budgell
(1686-1737)
Time: Early eighteenth century
Locale: London and Worcestershire
First published: 1711-1712
Principal characters:
The Spectator
Sir Roger de Coverley, a Worcestershire knight
Sir Andrew Freeport, a wealthy merchant
Captain Sentry, a retired army officer
Will Honeycomb, an aging dandy
Will Wimble, a country gendeman
The Widow, loved in vain by Sir Roger
In the second number of Addison and
Steele's Spectator papers
eighteenth-century readers were introduced to the
members of "The Club." Heading the list of
those characters who, among them, were
intended to represent the entire range of
public opinion and enlightened bias for
the London of 1711 was "a gentleman
of Worcestershire, of ancient descent, a
baronet, his name Sir Roger de Coverley."
Sir Roger was initially conceived of as
an aging Restoration rake. In the old days
he
. . . was what you call a fine
gentleman, had often supped with my Lord
Rochester and Sir George Etnerege,
fought a duel upon first coming to
town, and kicked Bully Dawson in a
public coffeehouse for calling him
"youngster."
By the time of The Spectator, however,
he had been mellowed by years of
unrequited love for a "perverse beautiful
widow of the next county to him," and
had become that quaint and lovable
representative of the Tory landowning class,
an amiable but rather ineffectual
anachronism who was to stand as the most
popular and the best remembered of the
many characters that appeared in the 555
numbers of the original Spectator.
So popular did he become, in fact, that
his name is known to many who have
never heard of the Spectator himself; his
lengthy and unconsummated love affair
has been the subject of a full-length play;
and those numbers of The Spectator in
which he figures prominently have been,
in a variety of editions, collected and
separately published, usually under the title
of The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers.
There are in all some thirty-five
Spectators in which Sir Roger is prominent.
As a member of "The Club" he, of
course, appears in more; but the essays
usually collected under his name are
limited to the first number, which serves
as an introduction, and to thirty-four of
the thirty-five in which Sir Roger is the
central (or, at least, an important) figure.
(The thirty-fifth, possibly by Tickell, is
rejected as being inconsistent with the
character of the knight.) Of these,
twenty-three (including the introductory
first paper) are by Addison, nine are by
Steele, and three are by Eustace Budgell,
a junior associate. There were, we know,
other infrequent contributors to The
Spectator (Alexander Pope among them),
but, with the exception of Budgell's three
essays, Sir Roger remains the exclusive
property of Addison and Steele.
Steele, apparently, was his creator.
That he was Sir Richard's brain child
may be inferred from the fact that in
the nine contributions by Steele Sir
Roger lives most independently as a
character. Certainly the good knight's love
affair was Steele's creation. The beautiful
and perverse widow is introduced along
with the knight himself; then, in papers
3503

113 and 118, the full story of Sir Roger's
forty years of frustration at her hands is
unfolded.
Steele's interest in the affairs of Sir
Roger's heart was in keeping with his
general interests as a periodical writer.
The age of sentiment was at hand, and
Steele was among the first to sense the
demand, and to provide the material, for
the exercise of "fine feelings." Through
his treatment, Sir Roger becomes not
merely a character, but a sentimental one.
His quaintness (he still dresses in the
fashion of the Restoration), his lovable-
ness (he has the heart of all his servants),
his amusing foibles (he often loses track
of his thoughts in mid-sentence, an
indication that a counter-thought of the
widow has crossed his mind)—these traits
are all designed to endear him to the
hearts of the readers, particularly to those
of the feminine readers whom Steele had
constantly in mind and with whose
interests he was always concerned.
Sentimentality, the rise of the middle class as
the arbiter of manners and morals, and
the accompanying rise of the importance
of women as the designers of public
conscience were all concepts that Steele was
temperamentally equipped to make
appealing. Much of the success of his
periodical essays can be attributed to his
ability to work this appeal into a popularly
digestible literary form. In Sir Roger he
offered his most attractive tidbit.
Though it was Steele who created the
character of Sir Roger, it was Addison
who made the most of him. For Addison,
he was a vehicle, sometimes merely a
convenience. Addison could also treat
him as a character, and when he did, he
treated him in a manner consistent with
the pattern set by Steele. But for the
most part Addison used Sir Roger as a
means to some journalistic end. Some
action of the knight sets off a train of
thought that leads to a philosophical
discussion; various types of characters meet
the knight—in his home, on his way to
the assizes, in town—and the^e characters
are brought under the scrutiny of the
Spectator, thereby furnishing material for
social analysis or the knight's reactions
to various sophisticated elements of the
town, reactions based on his stern and
conservative notions of morality and on a
sympathetic naivete, are used as foils to
satirize urban folly.
Addison is not to be criticized
adversely for so employing his character.
The purpose in creating "The Club"
with its wide range of members was, in
the first place, to provide the Spectator
with a means for examining and
commenting on all types and all levels of
English society in his day. Addison was
merely carrying out the original intention
of the series when he used Sir Roger as
a magnet to attract various but
interesting odds and ends of essav material.
Thus in Addison's hands (and in Bud-
gell's, in the three contributions for
which he is responsible) Sir Roaer serves
his original purpose. Through him
London readers of The Spectator were able to
gain some understanding of the life—of
the ways, the beliefs, the basic values—of
the people of the shires. In general, the
understanding gained is extended to all
things pertaining to the countrv except,
perhaps, country politics (Addison and
Steele, both Whigs, promised to keep
politics out of The Spectator, and for the
most part they lived up to this promise,
though there are two or three papers in
which Sir Roger's Toryism is satirized.)
The nostalgic idea that God made the
country and man made the town is but
another manifestation of that rising
middle-class sentimentality that was so much
a part of Steele. The philosophers of the
age of sentiment argued the moral
superiority of all things countrified, and in
this moral notion the citified Addison
went along with Steele. As a result, many
of those twenty papers that were
supposed to have been written by the
Spectator while he was the guest of Sir Roger
in Worcestershire are paeans to the
physical, social, or moral superiority of
country things.
In these papers the moral, didactic
purpose of The Spectator was lived up to.
For those to whom sentimentality and
3504

moralizing, hidden or overt, have little
appeal, The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers,
even those by Addison, often leave much
to be desired. Still, these very qualities
make them interesting examples of the
sources of middle-class mercantile mores.
Moreover, they share with The Spectator
as a whole the claim to presenting a
vivid portrayal of the color and detail of
English life in the early eighteenth
century; and, in their own right, they offer
a picture of English country ways which
might profitably be compared with that
drawn by such writers as Fielding and
Sterne later in the century.
3505

SISTER CARRIE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1889
Locale: Chicago and New York
First published: 1900
Principal characters:
Carrie Meeber, a small-town girl
Charles Drouet, her first lover
G. W. Hurstwood, Drouet's friend and Carrie's second lover
Critique:
Dreiser's first novel is, in some ways,
somewhat superior to much of his later
work. As usual, his characters are vivid
and lifelike, sympathetically portrayed.
Unlike some of the later novels, Sister
Carrie is well-unified, the style more
fluent and natural. A companion piece
to Stephen Crane's Maggie—and a
comparison between the two books is always
interesting and revealing—it is also
historically significant as a pioneer work
of the naturalistic movement in American
literature.
The Story:
When Carrie Meeber left her home
town in Wisconsin, she had nothing but
a few dollars and a certain unspoiled
beauty and charm. Young, inexperienced,
she was going to Chicago to live with
her sister and to find work. While on
the train, she met Charles Drouet, a
genial, flashy traveling salesman. Before
the train pulled into the station, they
had exchanged addresses, and Drouet
promised to call on Carrie at her sister's
house.
When she arrived at her sister's home,
Carrie discovered that her life there
would be far from the happy, carefree
existence of which she had dreamed. The
Hansons were hard-working people, grim
and penny-pinching, allowing
themselves no pleasures, and living a dull,
conventional life. It was clear to Carrie
that Drouet could not possibly call there,
not only because of the unattractive
atmosphere, but also because the Hansons
SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser. By permission of Mrs. Theodore Dreiser and the publishers. The
World Publishing Co. Copyright, 1900, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Renewed, 1927, by Theodore Dreiser.
were sure to object to him. She wrote
and told him that he was not to call,
that she would get in touch with him
later.
Meanwhile Carrie went job-hunting
and finally found work in a small shoe
factory. Of her first wages, all but fifty
cents went to her sister and brother-in-
law. Then she fell ill and lost her job.
Once again she had to look for work. Day
after day she trudged the streets, without
success. It seemed as if she would have
to go back to Wisconsin, and the
Hansons encouraged her to do so. If she
could not bring in money, they did not
want her.
One day, while Carrie was looking for
work, she met Drouet and told him her
troubles. He offered her money which,
with reluctance, she finally accepted.
The money was for clothes she needed,
but she did not know how to explain
the source of the money to her sister.
Drouet solved the problem by suggesting
that he rent a room for her, where she
could keep her clothing. A few days later
Carrie went to live with Drouet, who
had promised to marry her as soon as he
had completed a business deal.
In the meantime Drouet introduced
her to a friend, G. W. Hurstwood.
Hurstwood had a good job as the
manager of a saloon, a comfortable home, a
wife, and two grown children. More
than twice Carrie's age, he nevertheless
accepted Drouet's suggestion that he look
in on her while the salesman was out
of town on one of his trips. Before
3506

long Hurstwood was passionately in love
with her. When Drouet came back, he
discovered from a chambermaid that
Carrie and Hurstwood had been going
out together frequently. A scene
followed. Carrie was furious when Drouet
told her that Hurstwood was already
married. She blamed Drouet for her
folly, saying that he should have told
her that Hurstwood was a married man.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Hurstwood had
become suspicious of her husband. Drouet
had secured for Carrie a part in a
theatrical entertainment which a local lodge
was presenting. Hurstwood, hearing that
Carrie was to appear, persuaded many of
his friends to go with him to the show.
Mrs. Hurstwood learned of the affair and
heard, too, that her husband had been
seen riding with an unknown woman.
She confronted Hurstwood and told him
that she intended to sue for divorce.
Faced with social and financial ruin,
Hurstwood was in despair. One night
he discovered that his employer's safe
was open. He robbed it of several
thousand dollars and went to Carrie's
apartment. Drouet had just deserted her.
Pretending that Drouet had been hurt,
Hurstwood succeeded in getting Carrie
on a train bound for Montreal. In
Montreal Hurstwood was approached by an
agent of his former employer, who urged
him to return the money and to settle
the issue quietly. Hurstwood returned
all but a relatively small sum.
Under the name of Wheeler, he and
Carrie were married, Carrie being all the
while under the impression that the
ceremony was legal. Then they left for
New York. There Hurstwood looked
for work, but with no success. Finally he
bought a partnership in a small tavern.
After a time the partnership was
dissolved and he lost all his money. Every
day he went looking for work. Gradually
he grew less eager for a job, and began
staying at home all day. When bills
piled up, he and Carrie moved to a new
apartment to escape their creditors.
Carrie set out to find work and was
lucky enough to get a job as a chorus
girl. With a friend, she took an
apartment and left Hurstwood to himself.
Soon Carrie became a well-known
actress, and a local hotel invited her to
become a guest there, at a nominal
expense. Carrie had many friends and
admirers. She had money and all the
comforts and luxuries which appealed to
a small-town girl.
Hurstwood had not fared so well. He
could find no work. Once he worked
as a scab, during some labor troubles,
but he left that job because it was too
hazardous. He became a bum, living in
Bowery flophouses and begging on the
streets. One day he went to see Carrie.
She gave him some money, largely
because she had seen Drouet and had
learned for the first time of Hurstwood's
theft in Chicago. She believed that
Hurstwood had kept his disgrace a secret
in order to spare her feelings.
Although Carrie was a toast of the
town, she was not happy in spite of her
success. She was invited to give
performances abroad. In the meantime
Hurstwood died and, unknown to
Carrie, was buried in the potter's field. As
Carrie was sailing for London,
Hurstwood's ex-wife, daughter, and
prospective son-in-law were coming into the city,
eager for pleasure and social success, a
success made possible by the daughter's
coming marriage and by Hurstwood's
divorce settlement, which had given the
family all of his property.
3507

SISTER PHILOMENE
Type of work: Novel
Authors: Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First published: 1861
Principal characters:
Marie Gaucher, later Sister Philomene
Celine, her friend
Mme. de Viry, employer of Philomene's aunt
Henri de Viry, Mme. de Viry's son
Barnier, a young doctor
Malivoire, his friend, also a doctor
Romainb, Barnier's former mistress
Critique:
The Goncourt brothers were pioneers
in the case-history school of naturalism,
but in certain respects their work is more
important for its influence on other
writers (notably Zola) than for its own
literary merits. Characterization and plot
suffer alike in the Goncourt novels-
subtleties of motivation are lost in the
inexorable grinding away of the chance
events which cause or alleviate lower-
class tragedv. Sister Philomene is happilv
preserved from the want and nr'sery of
many Goncourt characters by her
religion and a profession which provides
objects for solicitude and care, as well as
the necessities of life.
The Story:
In a hospital ward, two white-clad
women, Sisters of St. Augustine, were
making their rounds. One of them was
a novice.
SiVer Philomene's name was originally
Marie Gaucher. Daughter of a tailoress
and a locksmith, she was orphaned at the
age of four and adopfed by an aunt, a
servant to the widowed Mme. de Virv. In
that pleasant household the child began
to thrive, and she sooned assumed equal
footing with Mme. de VhVs son Henri.
Mme. de Viry felt the evil of this
situation and the child was sent, screaming,
to a convent orphanage. To avoid
confusion with another child called Marie,
the Sisters called her Philomene.
Miserable at first, she gradually lost her
resentment as she became adapted to convent
routine; but she changed from a vivacious
child to a quiet and whining one. Within
she was restless, living only for her aunt's
monthly visit. One Sister, ugly but good
and kind Marguerite, paid special
attention to Philomene.
At the age of ten, Philomene became
the intimate friend of a newcomer. C6-
line, aged twelve. Much of Celine's
childhood had been spent in reading
the Lives of the Saints aloud to her
infirm grandmother, and she had
developed a mystic temperament. Denying
herself pleasures, fasting, and inventing
self-punishmenfs, she converted
Philomene to a course of personal sacrifices,
and Philomene worked herself up to a
sta^e of religions agitation. She habitually
s~)ent all dav Sunday in church, looking
forward to that prospect as she once had
to her aunt's visits. She became sicklv and
irritable, and her thoughts were always
on death. When her eyes began to give
her trouble, the Sisters sent her with her
aunt to see an eye doctor. After the visit,
she went to Mme. de Viry's house for the
first time since she had entered the
orphanage.
Back in the convent, Philomene felt
miserable and forlorn. She strove to
maintain a fever of piety, and succeeded for
two years, but then her faith became
automatic and unfelt. Celine left the
orphanage to become a nun; Sister
Marguerite left for her health.
3508

The convent becoming unbearable to
Philomene, she went into a decline and
was so close to death that her aunt was
permitted to take her home. Now acting
as a servant to Monsieur Henri, his
mother having died, Philomene longed to
sacrifice herself for him. She rejected
the advances made by a coarse groom
who hoped eventually, by marrying her,
to gain the management of Henri's
house.
One night Philomene overheard Henri
telling her aunt that he would have
brought a woman home had it not been
for the presence of an unmarried girl in
the house. When he suggested that
Philomene marry the groom, she fainted.
Later, though assured she would not be
sent away, she decided to begin her
novitiate to the Sisters of St. Augustine.
With seven months of her novitiate to
complete before taking her vows, she was
sent to a hospital to replace her friend
Celine, who as Sister Lawrence had died
of tvphoid.
The doctors agreed that Philomene
was pretty, but Barnier, under whom she
worked, said that he preferred the old
ones, tried and true. Philomene's original
horror of the hospital was relieved by its
clean, peaceful atmosphere at first, but
later the realization of death and disease
tortured her. Mid-morning breakfast was
the happiest hour for her; then
Philomene, useful and busy feeding and
cheering her patients, gained strength for the
rest of the day. By the time the
disillusionment of knowing that she could only
relieve suffering came, she was inured to
the hospital. She was never hardened,
however, and her patients loved her for
her tenderness.
Philomene won doctors and students
alike by her courage and compassion.
Soon she was all-powerful, softening
hospital rules and lending courage to
sufferers.
When one dying patient despaired
for her little boy's future, Barnier
generously proposed to send him to his mother
in the country. Everyone admired his
goodness, and he and Philomene became
fast friends. Their chats were her one
recreation, for Barnier told her about
changes outside the hospital in Paris. She
feared that she would be transferred, for
the Sisters were not supposed to get
attached to a ward, but she was pleased to
learn that she was to remain. One day
Barnier, an unbeliever who had often
discussed religion with her, was silenced
by her announcement that she had just
taken her vows. Then Philomene
became ill and had to leave the hospital for
a month. When she returned she was
very pale but seemed strong and active.
Malivoire told Barnier that he should
have a more or less permanent mistress.
Because a doctor's profession was so
material, said Malivoire, the physician needed
the illusions of love as well as the brutal
fact of sex. Barnier was about to confess
a love affair to Malivoire when they were
interrupted.
Barnier gave Philomene laudanum to
take for her neuralgic headaches. Her
laudanum-provoked dream included the
illusion of the touch of a kiss.
A new patient arrived. Barnier
recognized her as the specter of Romaine, the
woman he loved. They had been happy
lovers until she left him and began a
life of dissipation which resulted in a
breast injury. When Barnier asked
Philomene to prepare Romaine for the
operation, Philomene spoke to the woman
with unusual harshness. After the
operation Romaine, raging in fever, alternately
cursed Barnier and begged him not to let
her die. Leaving, Barnier overheard
Philomene say that women like her should
not be admitted to the hospital. Romaine
died, after a scene in which Philomene's
prayers were broken by the woman's
curses and singing. Returning, Barnier
saw the coffin that was to carry her away.
At a drinking party Barnier defended
the Sisters against a cynic who said that
they were tender only toward those who
were religious and decent. A suggestion
was made that Philomene loved Barnier.
Drunk and aroused, he went to the ward
and attempted to kiss her; she slapped
him. Sobered, he returned to his friends
3509

to say th^t he would fight anyone who
suggested her impurity.
Miserable in his memories of Romaine,
Barnier took to drinking absinthe.
Intoxication became his real life.
Learning that the house surgeon's
coveted medal would not be his, Barnier
struggled to resist drink, but when sober
he was haunted by thoughts of Romaine.
Philomene herself was ill. After her
laudanum dream she searched her heart
for symptoms of attachment for Barnier
and remembered her jealous reaction to
Romaine. Resolving on a course of
expiation, she punished herself by remaining
in the hospital and suffering the torments
of love. One day Barnier asked her
forgiveness for the attempted kiss. Her heart
too full to speak, she went silent to her
closet.
Bamier's student period was soon to
end. He told Malivoire that the subject
of his thesis was to be Death, that
modern existence—a suicide more or less slow
—does not use up but breaks life. Having
deliberately scratched his hand while
dissecting a diseased body, Bamier went to
bed to await death.
Philomene went to a priest to have
prayers said for Bamier by the
Confraternity of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires,
devoted to those who do not believe. Later
she knelt and prayed beside the dead
Barnier. After she had gone, Malivoire,
searching on the bedside table for the
lock of Barnier's hair which was to be
sent to his mother, found it missing.
3510

SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Luigi Pirandello CI867-1936)
Type of plot: Intellectual comedy
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: The stage of a theater
First presented: 1921
Principal characters:
The Father
The Mother
The Stepdaughter
The Son
The Boy
The Child
Madame Pace
The Manager
Leading Lady
Leading Man
Critique:
Six Characters in Search of an Author,
Pirandello's best-known play, contrasts
illusion and reality, as do several of the
author's other works. It may also be
thought of as a dramatic criticism of the
popular but very artificial "well-made"
play of the nineteenth century. Instead
of starting with a cleverly constructed
drama, Pirandello begins with a group
of characters and experiments with
letting them—with some professional
direction—try to fashion their story into an
actable drama. Inexperience, clashes of
opinion, interruptions, and above all a
lack of poetic understanding defeat their
purpose. Yet the attempt itself has
produced a drama of a sort, not the
characters' but Pirandello's.
The Story:
As a stage manager and a group of
actors were preparing to rehearse a
Pirandello play, they were interrupted by the
appearance of six characters: a man of
about fifty, a woman, a young woman, a
young man of twenty-two, a boy of
fourteen, and a little girl. The man and the
young woman were searching for an
author who would put all six of them into
a drama. They insisted that they were
SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR by Luigi Pirandello. Translated by Edward Storer.
By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1922, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
Copyright renewed, 1950, by Stefano, Fausto and Lietta Pirandello.
already living characters but that they
needed an author to put their drama into
suitable form for the stage. The manager,
at first annoyed at the interruption of his
rehearsal, finally listened with some
interest to the rather confused story that the
man and the young woman, who, it
turned out, was his stepdaughter, tried to
tell him.
Years ago the father had got rid of
his wife, whom he found both boring
and pitiable, by providing her with a
lover, his ex-secretary, to whom she might
go when she was rejected by her husband.
Long afterward, the father visited
Madame Pace's dress shop, a legitimate
business which she operated as a cover for
her procuring, and was provided with a
pretty young woman whom he did not
recognize as his stepdaughter until they
were separated by the sudden appearance
of his wife. When he learned that his
wife was destitute, her lover having died
two months before, he permitted her to
return to his home with her daughter and
two younger children, all illegitimate.
To forestall a refusal by the manager
to act as vicar-author for the drama, the
father assured him that he need not be
bothered about the presence of the two
3511

children, for they would quickly
disappear from the story. In fact, the daughter
would also disappear, leaving only the
three original members of the family.
The manager dismissed his actors for a
few minutes in order to hear more of the
plot as it was outlined to him in his
office.
Returning a few minutes later from the
office conference, the manager set about
putting together the play, asking his
prompter to take down the most
important points in shorthand so that his actors
might properly learn their parts later. At
this point the father interrupted; the
manager, he said, simply did not
understand. This was not a play for the
manager's professional actors; it belonged to
the characters themselves. There was no
need for actors when the manager already
had six living characters at hand.
After hearing similar objections from
the stepdaughter, the manager consented
to use the characters, as this was only a
rehearsal. But he wondered who would
play Madame Pace if they were going
to do the dress shop scene. After
borrowing hats and other clothes from several
actresses to hang on clothes pegs, the
father arranged the set.
Madame Pace suddenly appeared to
play her part, but when she found that
she was expected to play it in the
presence of the mother, who would be
watching the rehearsal from the side of the
stage, she was scandalized at such
impropriety and left in a rage.
The rehearsal continued, with the
mother watching and listening intently,
suffering all the while at the reenactment
of the scene in which her husband with
honeyed words and actions planned to
purchase the favors of the pretty girl
whom he did not recognize as his step
daughter. The action was suddenly
stopped and then repeated, this time with
the parts of the father and the
stepdaughter being taken by the leading man
and the leading lady of the actors'
company. The stepdaughter was unable to
control her laughter at what seemed to
her the ludicrous performance of the
leading lady, and the father objected to
the way the leading man was portraying
him. Again the scene was played with
the original characters, this time up to
the point where, after the girl had
reminded the father that she was wearing
mourning, he had suggested that she
remove her dress. At that point the action
was abruptly stopped by the entrance of
the mother, who in horror pulled her
daughter away from the father. The
manager was well pleased with this action; it
would, he decided, make a fine first-act
ending for the drama.
Preparations were begun for working
up a second act, using a garden scene.
The father engaged in a lengthy
discussion of the difference between reality and
the mere illusion of reality to be round
in conventional stage representations, or,
for that matter, in life itself. The
manager, the father said, must try to
perceive what he had so far missed: ordinary
people had illusions about themselves
which they later discovered were not the
realities they had thought them to be, but
only illusions; the only reality the six
characters had was that of a permanent,
unchanging illusion, more real than any
reality the manager himself might have.
The stepdaughter also entered the
discussion, which was marked by the
manager's increasing irritation and the
father's persistence in following his
argument through. She, her father, and the
other characters had been created by an
author who had then decided that he
did not want to use them in one of his
plays. Having been created, however, they
now had existence in drama which must
be revealed. But, insisted the manager,
drama is action, not slow, dull
philosophizing; let the talk stop and the action
begin. The manager placed the silent,
fourteen-year-old boy behind a tree and
some bushes in the garden and the little
girl near a fountain. Then he prepared
for a conversation between the legitimate
son and his mother. But, said the son,
there was no such scene in the garden;
what happened was that his mother came
into his room and he left, refusing to
3512

talk to her. The manager asked what
happened then. The son replied that nothing
happened, that he disliked scenes and
simply went away. He seemed very
unwilling to discuss the matter or to have
anything to do with acting in the drama
which his father and his half-sister were
trying to have presented.
When his father demanded that he
play his part, the son turned violently
upon him, asking what madness made
him wish to expose the family shame
before the world. If the son himself was in
the theater, he explained to the confused
manager, it was only because his father
had dragged him there. But the manager
insisted on knowing what happened after
the son left his room. Reluctantly, the
son answered that he merely walked in
the garden. When the manager urged him
to continue, he burst out that it was
horrible.
The manager, noting the mother's
apprehensive look toward the fountain,
partly comprehended, while the father
explained that she had been following
behind her son. Then the son quickly
told what he had found: the body of the
little girl in the fountain pool and the
brother staring insanely at it. At that
moment a revolver shot sounded behind the
stage bushes where the boy had been
hidden. Amid the resulting confusion the
manager asked if the boy was wounded,
and the actors disagreed as to whether
he was dead or merely pretending to be.
The father cried that it was real. The
manager, losing his temper, consigned
the whole play and the characters to hell.
He had lost a whole day over them.
3513

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thornton Wilder (1897- )
Type of plot: Fantastic parable
Time of plot: All human history
Locale: Excelsior, New Jersey, and the boardwalk at Atlantic City
First presented: 1942
Principal characters:
Mr. Antrobus, a citizen of the world
Mrs. Antrobus, his wife
Gladys, their daughter
Henry, their son
Sabina, their maid
Critique:
The Skin of Our Teeth, which owes
something of its conception and form to
Bertolt Brecht but even more to James
Joyce's Vinnegans Wake, is a fantastic
parable dealing with mankind's agelong
struggle to achieve civilization. The style
is casually presentational in the manner
of the newsreel. Dinosaurs participate in
the conversation and action; scenery is
handled in a highly unconventional
manner; Sabina talks directly to the audience
much of the time and on occasion halts
the story entirely to comment on the
construction of the play itself. The action
covers three periods: an Ice Age, a great
flood, and a devastating war. In each case
mankind manages to survive in the face
of overwhelming odds. Through these
scenes, Wilder expresses his underlying
theme: faith in humanity and its ability
to survive. The Skin of Our Teeth is a
profound and vital drama, considered by
many critics the best play of the period
of World War II. More than that, it
remains an influential and exciting
contribution to the literature of the
American stage, a panoramic view of all human
history reduced to the experiences of a
New Jersey suburban family.
The Story:
A great wall of ice was moving
southward over the land, bringing with it an
unprecedented cold spell in August. In
Hartford they were burning pianos and
it was impossible to reach Boston by
telegraph, yet the people did nothing but
talk about the looming catastrophe. So
far, only the extreme cold had reached
Excelsior, New Jersey, where Mr. and
Mrs. George Antrobus lived in an
attractive suburban residence. Their rather
commonplace lives were to be greatly
changed by the extreme form which the
weather had taken.
Mr. Antrobus was a fine man, a
sterling example for his community. He had
invented the wheel, the alphabet, and
the multiplication table. Mrs. Antrobus
was the picture of the middle-class
mother, with the best interests of her
children at heart. Their daughter Gladys
was much like her mother, but their son
was atypical. His name had been Cain
until an unfortunate accident occurred
in which he hit his brother with a stone
and killed him. As the result of that
thoughtless action, his name had been
changed to Henry, and Mrs. Antrobus
went to some pains to keep his past
history a secret. Members of the Antrobus
household also included Sabina, the maid,
a baby dinosaur, and a mammoth.
On this particular day in August,
everyone was freezing and even the dogs
were sticking to the sidewalk because it
was so cold. Sabina was in an agitated
state because nothing seemed to be going
roperly. She had milked the mammoth,
ut she had let the only fire in the
E
THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH by Thornton Wilder. By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers.
Copyright, 1942, by Thornton Wilder.
3514

house go out. Her plight was doubly
humiliating because her career in the
Antrobus house had begun when Mr.
Antrobus brought her back from the
Sabine rape. He had given her a life of
luxury until he tired of her; now she was
relegated to the kitchen. She, however,
was a canny and observant individual, a
necessary apex to the age-old triangle.
She was waiting nervously for the
return of Mr. Antrobus when a domestic
altercation with Mrs. Antrobus prompted
her to give a two-week notice. Later a
telegram announcing the arrival of Mr.
Antrobus and some salvation from the
cold caused her to change her mind for
the time being.
When he finally arrived, Mr. Antrobus
brought news that most of the outside
world was freezing and diat there was
probably nothing they could do to escape
the same fate. When some tramps and
refugees from the ice came to the house
for warmth and food, Mrs. Antrobus was
not in favor of admitting them, but Mr.
Antrobus insisted. Mrs. Antrobus agreed,
but only after the dinosaur and the
mammoth had been evicted. The refugees
included a Judge, named Moses; a blind
beggar with a guitar, named Homer; and
the Misses E., T., and M. Muse. The
Antrobus family attempted to keep up
some semblance of hope as they gathered
around their small fire. When Henry, in
another fit of hate, murdered a neighbor
with a stone, Mr. Antrobus stamped out
the fire. However, he was cajoled into
having faith in mankind again, and all,
including the audience, were asked to
burn their chairs in order to keep the fire
going and save the human race from
extinction.
That crisis over, Mr. and Mrs.
Antrobus went to the Atlantic City convention
of the Ancient and Honorable Order of
Mammals, Subdivision Humans. Mr.
Antrobus, just elected president of the
society for the coming year, made a speech
of acceptance, which was followed by a
few words from Mrs. Antrobus. During
an interview immediately afterward, it
was learned that Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus
would soon celebrate their five
thousandth wedding anniversary. Mr.
Antrobus had previously judged a beauty
contest in which the winner had been the
former maid Sabina, now Miss Lily-
Sabina Fairweather from the Boardwalk
Bingo Parlor. She had decided, as a
result of her victory, to take Mr. Antrobus
away from his wife; and as soon as she
could easily do so, she lured him into her
beach cabana. During her father's
sojourn in the cabana, Gladys bought
herself a pair of red stockings and Henry
became involved in an altercation with a
boy whom he hit with a stone. When
Mr. Antrobus was finally located, he had
decided to leave his wife. Told of his
intentions, she handled the situation very
calmly and maneuvered him into staying
with her. She was aided somewhat by a
coming storm which made it necessary
for the family and a large collection of
animals to retreat to a boat in order to
survive. Under the directions of a
mysterious Fortune Teller, Mr. Antrobus
took them all, including Sabina, off to
make a new world.
When the great war came, much of
the population of the world and most of
Excelsior, New Jersey, were wiped out.
The Antrobus household, including
Sabina, managed to survive, but not4
without considerable damage. Mrs. Antrobus
and Gladys and Gladys' new baby had
hidden out in the basement. When the
war ended, they came out into the world,
which in a very short time began to
function very much as it had before the war
occurred.
Sabina, dressed now as a Napoleonic
camp follower, had enjoyed the war. She
felt that everyone was at his best in
wartime.
Henry, following up his
stone-throwing activities, had progressed from a
corporal's rating to the rank of a general; he
had become the picture of hate, the
enemy of man. Mr. Antrobus ordered
that he never come into the house again
or he would kill him. When Henry
returned, he wanted to kill his father,
whom he had hated all these years, and
3515

he had brought a gun with which to
shoot Mr. Antrobus. When he finally fell
asleep from exhaustion, Mrs. Antrobus
took the revolver from him. Mr. Antrobus
and Henry had an argument during
which all the evil in the young man was
revealed. Mr. Antrobus, in a fit of self-
condemnation, admitted that he would
rather fight Henry than try to build a
peace with him in the midst of it. His
will to survive returned once again,
however, and he asked Henry to try to live
in peace. Henry agreed, providing he be
given a freedom of his own will.
Mr. Antrobus, striving to regain his
confidence in mankind, recalled the three
things which had always kept him going:
the people, his home, and his books. In
addition, he remembered the philosophies
that he had known and through which he
regained his hope for the future.
3516

THE SLEEPWALKERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hermann Broch (1886-1951)
Type of plot: Philosophical and social chronicle
Time of plot: 1888-1918
Locale: Germany
First published: 1930-1932
Principal characters:
Joachim von Pasenow, a young lieutenant
Herr von Pasenow, his father
Bertrand, his friend
Esch, a bookkeeper
Frau Hentjen, nis wife
Huguenau, a businessman
Critique:
The Sleepwalkers consists of three
short novels, The Romantic, The
Anarchist, and The Realist, held together
loosely by the reappearance of some of
the characters. In structure the work is
hardly a novel, for the form is incidental.
Rather, the narrative is a convenient
means to express the author's philosophy.
Broch feels that the romantic, the
anarchic, and the realistic approaches to life
are weak. In a disintegrating society all
have serious limitations. Outwardly at
least the realistic businessman has the
least difficulty; but he is little better than
a brute. Similarly, the romantic is weakly
ineffectual and the anarchist is unstable,
unable to maintain a consistent point of
view. The Sleepwalkers, difficult as it is,
is an important and a rewarding work.
The Story:
In 1888, Joachim von Pasenow was a
lieutenant in the German Army. Having
worn a uniform so long, he looked on it
as his natural dress. A uniform hid a
man's nakedness; unlike civilian clothes
it made a man amount to something. His
friend Bertrand had left the army and
now wore mufti all the time; it seemed
indecent. Joachim felt a little insecure
about his honor, too. His brother Hel-
muth had been killed in a duel, and his
father made much of Helmuth's
unsullied honor.
Herr von Pasenow came to Berlin to
visit Joachim. He was a funny little man,
rotund and intent, and his son was a bit
ashamed of him. At a casino they met
Ruzena, a Bohemian girl. Von Pasenow
stroked her familiarly and gave her
money. She accepted the attentions easily,
but when the old man joked about
marriage she went into the lavatory to cry'.
Later, perhaps as a kind of penance,
Joachim took Ruzena as his mistress.
Bertrand also took a friendly interest
in Ruzena and helped her get on the
stage. Ruzena, happy with Joachim,
began to distrust Bertrand. He let slip the
suggestion that she should leave the
chorus and go into a notion shop.
Joachim had to leave Ruzena at times to
visit his family, and these absences
strengthened her suspicions. Joachim's
father was anxious that he should resign
from the army and look after the family
estate. He was anxious too for him to
marry Elisabeth.
When Bertrand met Elisabeth, he
spoke to her eloquently of a love based
on renunciation; the innocent girl was
upset. Ruzena, convinced that Bertrand
was the evil genius separating her from
her lover, shot him in the arm. She then
left Joachim and went back to work in
a cafe. Joachim, believing also that
Bertrand was a bad influence, settled money
on Ruzena and proposed to Elisabeth.
THE SLEEPWALKERS by Hermann Broch. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. By permission of
the publishers, Pantheon Books, Inc. All rights reserved.
3517

His deed was a break with his past, for
he did not ask Bertrand's advice about
the marriage.
Before accepting Joachim, Elisabeth
visited Bertrand in the hospital. He
declared his love for her but thought her
marriage with Joachim was inevitable.
For a time after their marriage Joachim
thought of Elisabeth as an
unapproachable madonna. They did not have their
first child until a year and a half had
passed.
In 1903, when Esch was dismissed
from his post as a bookkeeper at a
shipping concern in Cologne, Martin, a
crippled socialist, somehow learned of his
dismissal and told him of a better job
in Mannheim. They discussed the
matter in Frau Hentjen's restaurant. Esch
knew he would have to have a reference.
He finally got a good one by threatening
to expose the crooked manager under
whom he had worked.
In Mannheim he was employed by a
large firm owned by Bertrand. He made
friends with Korn, a customs inspector,
and with Lohberg, a pallid tobacconist.
In a short while he went to room with
Korn and his sister Erna. Erna was
unattractive but wanted desperately to get
married, and Korn hoped to acquire a
brother-in-law in Esch. Esch at last
answered her provocations by going into
her bedroom, but Erna reserved her
favors until they should be married.
By helping Gernerth, a theatrical
manager, with his shipping, Esch received
passes to a show and took Korn and Erna
with him to the performance. The star
attraction was Teltscher, a Hungarian
knife thrower, and Ilona, his flashy
blonde target. Becoming acquainted with
Korn and Esch, the actors visited them
at Korn's house. For a while Esch hoped
to win Ilona but she showed a preference
for Korn; at last she slept with him
openly.
Martin, arriving in Mannheim
during a strike, was arrested at a workers'
meeting. Esch was convinced that
Bertrand had hired baiters to trap Martin
and that Bertrand should have been
imprisoned instead. Feeling restless, he
accepted Teltscher's offer to go in with him
n the theatrical business. They planned
«o operate in Cologne. Esch felt a queer
responsibility to get Teltscher away from
Ilona, because the knife-throwing act
endangered Ilona's safety.
Back in Cologne, Esch spent much
time with Frau Hentjen and in time
overcame her scruples against taking him
as her lover. She did not like his new
job, for Esch was hiring lady wrestlers.
Esch wrote an article protesting against
Martin's false imprisonment, but the
socialist newspaper refused to print it.
During his wandering through the town he
stumbled on evidence that Bertrand was
a sodomite, but again the paper refused
to print his story.
Driven by a vague compulsion, Esch
went to see Bertrand. On the way he
stopped off to see the Korns and found
Erna engaged to marry Lohberg. Erna
had changed; she willingly allowed Esch
to sleep with her. Bertrand received Esch
kindly but was evasive on the subject of
the strike. Bertrand died soon after Esch
returned to Cologne.
For a while Esch planned vaguely to
go to America. After Frau Hentjen
mortgaged her restaurant to provide theatrical
capital, she and Esch were married.
Eventually they lost their money and
Esch took a good job in Luxemburg.
Huguenau, a businessman practical in
outlook, deserted from the army. By
keeping an open countenance and
refusing to skulk, he made his way through
Belgium to the Ardennes and thence
back into the Moselle district. Since he
was an Alsatian knowing both French
and German, either side of the Rhine was
home to him. In Kur-Trier he spent
enough of his carefully hoarded money to
set himself up as a hotel keeper.
All about him others were questioning
their beliefs during the last months of
the war. Hanna, the lawyer's faithful
wife, grew more and more virginal
during her husband's absence. In Berlin,
Marie the Salvation Army girl
half-acknowledged a passion for a Talmudic
3518

Jew. The wounded in the hospitals had
little spirit to live. But Huguenau had
no questions, no frustrations; he was
intent only on business deals.
He bluffed the military commandant,
Major Joachim von Pasenow, into giving
him support, and on the strength of that
backing persuaded the local dignitaries
to put up capital enough for him to buy
control of a newspaper owned by Esch.
He made the deal easier by circulating
rumors that Esch was subversive. Before
long Huguenau was editing the paper
and eating Frau Esch's good meals
without payment.
Having embraced the Protestant faith,
Joachim finally became convinced that
Esch was a malcontent and Huguenau
a suspicious character. In November,
1918, the workers revolted and took over
the town. Joachim was hurt and carried
to the basement of Esch's printing house.
Seeing the incident, Huguenau took
advantage of the confusion and raped Frau
Esch. Then he followed Esch, who was
returning to guard duty. He caught up
with him and slipped a bayonet into his
back.
After the war, Huguenau by letter
tricked Frau Esch into returning the
borrowed capital he had invested in the
paper. While he continued to amass more
money, he prudently married a German
girl with a good dowry.
3519

THE SLIPKNOT
Type of work: Drama
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus (c 255-184 B.C.)
Type of plot: New comedy
Time of plot: Late third century B.C.
Locale: Cyrene, in Libya
First presented: Late third or early second century B.C.
Principal characters:
Daemones, an aged Athenian
Palaestra, his daughter
Amfelisca, a slave girl
Plesidiffus, a young man in love with Palaestra
Labrax, a procurer
Charmides, an aged Sicilian, his guest
Gripus, a servant of Daemones
Trachalio, a servant of Plesidippus
Critique:
Although many critics feel that The
Slipknot, or the Rudens, is one of
Plautus' best plays, and although it
reveals his characteristic ingenuity in plot
construction, it contains loose ends that
are more palpable than those found in
most of his other comedies. In the fourth
act, for example, an impending marriage
is hinted at between two of the
characters, but when the action is concluded,
no step has been taken to affirm or reject
this hint, and the audience is left
wondering why the suggestion was made at
all if nothing was to follow from it.
Unlike some of Plautus* padding, this
problem seems inexplicable in terms of the
demands made by the playwright's
rigorous concern for the unities of time and
place. It seems rather to be a direction
Plautus considered taking and then
rejected, at the same time forgetting to
erase his preliminary steps.
The Story:
Daemones, an old Athenian exiled
from Athens, had come to Cyrene to
spend his waning years. He was a kindly
man, and his exile had come about as a
result of his excessive generosity to others
and consequent indebtedness rather than
from any sort of dishonorable activity on
his part. Nor were his impoverishment
and exile his only misfortunes. Some
years before, his daughter Palaestra, then
a small girl, had been stolen from him
and sold by the thief to the procurer,
Labrax, who brought her, unknown to
her father, to Cyrene. There she was
reared and educated by Labrax, and
there, as she approached maturity, the
young Plesidippus saw her and fell in
love with her. Wanting to secure her
freedom, he arranged to buy her from
Labrax for thirty minae. He gave the
procurer a retainer and bound him by
oath to turn Palaestra over to him when
he paid the full sum agreed upon.
Labrax was as unscrupulous as his
profession would suggest. When the
Sicilian, Charmides, suggested that the
procurer could get a much better price
out of his women by taking them to
Sicily, Labrax decided to ignore his
contract. He contrived to get Plesidippus
out of the way by arranging to meet him
before the Temple of Venus for a
sacrificial breakfast. The night before,
however, he moved Palaestra and her fellow
slave, Ampelisca, together with all his
belongings aboard ship. Then,
accompanied by Charmides, he set sail. But a
storm arose during the night, wrecking
the ship, casting Labrax and his guest on
the rocks, and permitting Palaestra and
Ampelisca to escape in a small boat. The
two girls landed near the Temple of
Venus, not far from the house of
Daemones. After asking sanctuary of the
3520

priestess, they went inside.
A short time later Ampelisca was sent
to Daemones' house for water. On her
way, she encountered Plesidippus'
servant, Trachalio, who had come to the
temple looking for his master. She sent
him inside to see Palaestra. While she
was waiting for the servant of Daemones
to bring her the water, however, she
spied Labrax and Charmides, whom she
had believed dead, laboriously making
their way to the temple from the place
where the sea had washed them up on
the rocks. Terrified, she hastened back
to the temple to warn her friend.
When Labrax and Charmides arrived,
wet and tattered, they devoted most of
their remaining energy to mutual
recriminations for their plight until the
procurer learned from a servant that his two
slaves were not drowned but were inside
the temple. He rushed in, intent on
saving at least that much of his property,
and attempted to drag the girls away
from the statue of Venus at whose feet
they had sought sanctuary. Trachalio
witnessed this violence and came out,
calling for aid for the outraged
suppliants. Daemones heard him and brought
his servants to the girls' assistance. Labrax
was soundly beaten, but without quelling
his determination to get back his two
slaves. Then, while Daemones' men held
the struggling procurer, Trachalio went
to find Plesidippus and bring him to
the temple. On his arrival die young
Athenian, angry at the outrageous trick
Labrax had nearly succeeded in playing
on him, dragged die scoundrel to justice.
Daemones took the two girls home
with him, for on the previous night he
had dreamed that he had prevented a
she-ape from stealing the fledglings from
a swallow's nest; he believed that the
episode with Labrax was in some way a
fulfillment of that dream and that the
girls, therefore, were somehow important
to him. But he had no more than got
the girls inside the door than his wife,
jealous of their youth and beauty, created
an intolerable furor on the grounds that
he had brought harlots into the house.
Meanwhile, Daemones' servant, Gri-
pus, was making his way home from a
morning's fishing, elated at having pulled
up in his nets a large wallet which,
unknown to him, had been lost by Labrax
the night before and which contained,
in addition to the procurer's own wealth,
certain tokens which would help
Palaestra to identify her parents if she should
ever encounter them. Gripus intended to
keep the contents of the wallet for
himself, but on his way home Trachalio
overtook him, recognized the wallet, and
raised such a clamor that Daemones was
finally brought out to arbitrate between
them. Trachalio told the old man whose
wallet it was and said that it contained,
among other things, the identifying
trinkets of Palaestra. To test Trachalio's
story, Daemones asked Palaestra to
describe the trinkets. Her description both
fitted the contents of the wallet and
revealed that the slave girl was Daemones'
long-lost daughter. Father and daughter,
united in great joy, ignored Gripus'
claims to ownership of the remainder of
the wallet's contents and went into
Daemones' house.
By that time the case of Labrax had
been tried by the court, and it had been
decided that the procurer had no legal
title to Palaestra, for she had been born
free. Ampelisca, however, was adjudged
rightfully his, and he returned to the
temple to look for her. Overhearing
Gripus grumbling about the wallet, he
questioned him and to his joy learned
that it had been recovered. Promising
Gripus a talent of silver for identifying
the wallet's present possessor, he was
directed to Daemones, who, scrupulously
honest, returned it willingly. The
procurer was about to go off when Gripus
protested that the talent of silver had not
yet been paid. Although Labrax had
sworn on the altar of Venus to give the
money to the servant, who wanted to buy
his freedom, Gripus would have had
nothing for his pains if Daemones had
not intervened. The old man suggested
that Labrax give Gripus only half a tal
ent and give Ampelisca her freedom for
3521

the remainder. To this suggestion Labrax
agreed. Even Gripus was content with
it when he learned that Daemones was
willing to give him his freedom for the
half talent.
One of the first things that Daemones
did in his newly recovered status as father
was to betroth his daughter to Plesidip-
pus. In addition, he agreed to encourage
the young man to give Trachalio his
freedom and permit him to marry Ampelisca
if she were willing. Then everyone,
including Labrax, had a hearty dinner with
Daemones.
3522

THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: An unnamed county, "Barsetshire," London
First published: 1864
Principal characters:
Christopher Dale, Squire of Allington
Mrs. Dale, his widowed sister-in-law
Lilian (Lily), her daughter
Isabel (Bell), another daughter
Bernard Dale, the squire's nephew and heir
Adolphus Crosbie, Lily's suitor
John Eames, another suitor
Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, a young woman of fashion
Dr. Crofts, in love with Bell
Lord de Guest, Eames' benefactor
Critique:
The Small House at Allington, fifth of
the Barchester chronicles, was Trollope's
own favorite of the series, although in the
candor of his later years he admitted that
Lily Dale was "somewhat of a French
prig." In this novel the worldly-wise,
conniving de Courcys are set in contrast to
the honest, sturdy Dales of Allington,
thereby adding another panel to the
portrait of a complete Victorian society
that the modern reader finds in Trollope's
imaginary Barsetshire. Her creator's
opinion of Lily Dale is perhaps too severe. She
is the Victorian heroine, winning but also
pathetic, and a perfect model of the type
who has her counterpart in almost every
novel of the period. Critics have read a
great deal of Trollope's own story as a
young man into the character of John
Eames.
The Story:
There were two houses at Allington.
The Great House was the residence of
Squire Christopher Dale, a plain,
seemingly dour man whose ancestors had been
squires at Allington for generations. In
the Small House nearby lived his sister-in-
law, Mrs. Dale, and her two daughters,
Bell and Lily. Mrs. Dale was the widow of
the squire's youngest brother, who, dying
young, had left his family in modest
circumstances. When the squire had offered
his brother's widow the Small House rent
free, she immediately accepted his offer,
not for her own sake but for that of her
daughters.
The Dales were not the chief family of
the neighborhood. Near the town of
Guestwick stood Guestwick Manor, home
of Lord de Guest and his sister, Lady
Julia. Although not intimate, the families
had a tie by marriage. Years before
another brother of the squire's, Colonel
Orlando Dale, had eloped with the earl's
sister, Lady Fanny. Not having made a
career for himself, the colonel lived with
his lady in semi-retirement at Torquay.
Bernard Dale, their only son and a
captain in the Engineers, was the unmarried
squire's heir.
Mrs. Dale was a woman whose pride
was as great as her means were small, and
her brother-in-law's gruff manners had
done little to establish cordial relations
between them during her ten years in the
Small House. The uncle had been kind
to his nieces in his rather ungracious
manner, however, so that they enjoyed the
social advantages if not the income of
wealth. Bell was her uncle's favorite. It
was his secret wish that she, as Bernard's
wife, would someday be mistress of the
Great House*. At one time Mrs. Dale had
believed that Dr. Crofts, the Guestwick
physician, would declare himself; but he
3523

had not spoken, and now there seemed
little likelihood of a match in that quarter.
One summer Bernard Dale arrived to
visit his uncle, bringing with him a
London friend, Adolphus Crosbie, a senior
clerk in the General Committee Office at
Whitehall. At first Crosbie, a handsome,
agreeable fellow, made the deeper
impression on Bell, and Lily liked to tease her
sister by calling him a swell because he was
received in the drawing-rooms of
countesses and cabinet ministers. Crosbie himself
was attracted to Lily. When the squire,
more gracious than usual to his nephew's
friend, invited him to return in September
for the shooting, Crosbie gladly accepted
the invitation.
Lily had still another suitor in young
John Eames. of Guestwick, a clerk in the
Income Tax office in Ixmdon. Although
he had been hopelessly in love with Lily
since boyhood, his meager income of a
hundred pounds a year gave him no inv
mediate prospect of marriage. Eames was
awkward, callow, susceptible. While
professing adoration for Lily, he had against
his better judgment become entangled
with Amelia Roper, the designing
daughter of Mrs. Lupex, his London landlady.
Crosbie returned to Allington in Sep
tember, and before long neighborhood
gossip was confirmed—a marriage had
been arranged between Lily Dale and
Adolphus Crosbie. This was the news that
greeted Eames when he arrived in
Guestwick to visit his mother in October. He
was made even more wretched by the half-
languishing, half-threatening letters he
received from Amelia during his stay. Lily's
engagement made Squire Dale more
anxious than ever to see fulfilled his own
plans for Bernard and Bell. Encouraged
by his uncle, the young officer proposed,
but in such undemonstrative fashion that
Bell refused him immediately. Not even
the settlement of eight hundred pounds a
year promised by the squire tempted her
to change her mind.
Having made his choice, Crosbie hoped
that the squire would make a financial
settlement on Lily. But when he brought up
the matter, that gentleman declared he
felt under no obligations to provide for his
niece's future. Crosbie was disappointed,
but he consoled himself with the reflection
that he was marrying for love and not for
worldly advancement. So matters stood
when he received from the Countess de
Courcy an invitation to join a house party
at Courcy Castle before he returned to
London.
The de Courcy's entertained lavishly.
One of the party was Lady Julia de Guest,
a well-meaning busybody who soon spread
the news of Crosbie's engagement. The
countess, who had already had some
experience in getting daughters engaged and
then seeing their engagements broken,
said nothing was likely to come of
Crosbie's romance at Allington. She was
right. So successful was her campaign to
secure the clerk for her own youngest
daughter, Lady Alexandrina, that long
before the end of his visit Crosbie proposed
and was accepted. He had not declared
himself to Lady Alexandrina without
severe twinges of conscience, it was true;
but, after all, an earl's daughter would
offer a better position in fashionable
London life than would the penniless niece
of a country squire. Lady Julia, hearing
what had happened, denounced him as
a deceiver and a miserable wretch. Crosbie
recognized in her scorn the voice of public
opinion; he wished that he could blot out
his visit to Courcy Castle.
Meanwhile Squire Dale had learned
from his nephew of Bell's refusal and had
gone to his sister-in-law to enlist her aid in
furthering the match. He was greatly put
out when she insisted that Bell should be
free to choose for herself. A short time
later the squire received from Lady Julia
a letter telling him of Crosbie's
engagement to Lady Alexandrina. Learning that
Crosbie had returned to London, the
squire followed him there and tried to see
the clerk at his club. Conscience-stricken,
Crosbie refused to meet the old gentleman
but sent a disapproving but obliging friend
to talk with the squire. The next day
Crosbie wrote to Mrs. Dale and confessed
that he had broken his engagement to her
daughter.
3524

Shortly before the end of his vacation
Eames saved Lord de Guest from being
attacked by a bull on his estate. Gratefully,
the earl decided to take an interest in the
young man's future, and he invited Eames
to spend Christmas with him at Guest-
wick Manor.
The two months Defore Christmas
passed with heavy slowness at Allington.
Mrs. Dale could only hope that time
would heal Lily's hurt. The squire felt
that there should be some redress for the
slight to his niece. Lord de Guest, meeting
Eames in London, realized the true state
of that young man's feeling for Lily when
Eames threatened physical punishment for
Ciosbie's deed. Crosbie, meanwhile, was
deep in financial arrangements for his
marriage. Under the fostering hand of
Mortimer Gazebee, his future brother-in-
law and a guardian of the de Courcy
interests, he settled most of his income on
Lady Alexandrina.
Crosbie went to Courcy Castle for
Christmas, Eames, still involved with
Amelia Roper, to Guestwick Manor. At a
dinner the earl announced his intention of
settling some money on Lily and Eames if
they married. He asked the squire to do
the same, but Lily's uncle refused to
commit himself. Returning to London on the
same train with Crosbie, Eames was
unable to restrain himself when they met
on the station platform. He thoroughly
trounced Lily's faithless suitor.
Bernard, renewing his proposals to Bell,
argued their uncle's wishes in the
matter, but Bell told him, as kindly as
possible, that she could follow no wishes but her
own. Stubborn in his desires, the squire
became angry with his nephew and niece,
and he decided to be angry with his sister-
in-law as well if she refused to reason with
her daughter. After heated words had
been exchanged, Mrs. Dale decided that
it might be better for all concerned if she
and her daughters moved away from the
Small House.
A short time later Lily became ill with
scarlatina, and Dr. Crofts was called in.
He came daily, ostensibly to see his
patient, but actually to be near Bell. In the
meantime Mrs. Dale was preparing to
move into a small cottage in Guestwick.
During Lily's illness Dr. Crofts declared
his love to Bell. Taking her evasive
answer for a refusal, he drove away in
dejection. Lily, aware of Bell's true feelings,
urged him to ask her sister again. Crosbie
and Lady Alexandrina were married in
London in February.
After Lily's illness Lady Julia invited
Mrs. Dale and her daughters to spend a
week at Guestwick Manor. Eames was
asked at the same time. But Lily saw
through the scheme for bringing her and
Eames together, especially after she
learned that Squire Dale was to make
another of the parry, and she declined the
invitation. The squire was so kind in his
concern for Lily that Mrs. Dale began to
regret her decision to move into the
village. In the midst of her perplexities Dr.
Crofts came to tell her that Bell had
accepted him. Mrs. Dale was pleased. That
night, while the doctor sat with the Dales
beside the fire, as if they were already
one family, the anxious mother was
almost able to believe that happiness had
returned to the Small House.
Eames, manfully escaping from the
toils of Amelia Roper, arrived at
Guestwick Manor. He had recently been made
private secretary to the great Sir Raffle
Buffle, largely through the earl's
influence, and he was grateful. Since Lily had
not gone to the manor, it had been decided
that the squire and Bell should dine with
the de Guests. On the next day Eames was
to call at Allington and declare himself to
Lily. To his dismay, however, she would
not have him. When, after his departure,
Mrs. Dale added her entreaties to his, Lilv
remained firm. She was, she declared,
like her mother—widowed. And so matters
had to stand.
But Mrs. Dale did not leave the Small
House after all, for their family troubles
had brought her and the squire closer
together, and he announced his intention of
settling three thousand pounds on each
of his nieces. When Bell married Dr.
Crofts in June, he threw open the Great
House for the wedding. Bernard and

Eames did not attend.
Crosbie's wedded life lasted only a few
months. Lady Alexandrina, bored with
the humdrum of a government clerk's life*
went off to join her mother at Baden
Baden. Too late Crosbie discovered that.
the settlements he had made on his wife
left him a poor man, and he went into
cheap lodgings—happy at any price,
however, to be free of her nagging and hei
aristocratic relatives.
3526

SMALL SOULS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Louis Couperus (1863-1923)
Typ'e of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: The Hague
First published: 1901
Principal characters:
Constance van dbr Welcke, a daughter of the once-prominent Van
Lowe family
Henri van der Welcke, her husband
Aodie (Adriaan), their son
Bertha, and
Adolphine, her sisters
Van Naghel van Voorde, Bertha's husband
Critique:
Small Souls, written by one of the
foremost of modern Dutch novelis's, is
the first of a series of four novels known
as The Books of the Small Souls.
Constance, who divorced her prominent
husband and married for love is unable, even
after twenty years, to escape the
condemnation of a society which is comprised of
small souls who are very tender to
criticism and are engaged in schemes of
attaining status by the use of gossip, rumor,
scandal, and fear. This theme is
conveyed through a realistic interplay of
characters. The deft presentation of the
dark, chill, and damp Dutch climate also
serves to further the theme.
The Story:
Mrs. van Lowe was preparing for her
usual Sunday family get-together. On
this Sunday her daughter Constance was
returning to Holland after a scandal that
had kept her away for twenty years.
After several respectable and loveless
years with De Staffelaer, the Dutch
envoy at Rome, Constance had had an
affair with a young diplomat, Henri
van der Welcke. When Constance
divorced De StafTelaer and married Henri,
the marriage proved the ruin of her new
husband's political career, and they were
now finally returning to their homeland.
Everyone assured Constance that it was
SMALL SOULS by Louis Couperus. Translated by Alexander Telxeira de Mattos. By permission of the
publishers, Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1914, by Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Renewed. All rights
reserved.
good to have her back, but she felt alien
to her relatives; in the past twenty years
her father had died and she had seen her
mother only twice, briefly, at Brussels.
Some time later, Constance, Henri,
and their son Adriaan, whom they called
Addie, went to visit Henri's parents. This
invitation was significant because it was
the first time since the scandal that
Henri's parents had paid any attention
to Constance or even acknowledged
Addie as their grandson. The interview was
formal and oppressive. Constance was
annoyed to see Henri's mother treating
thirteen-year-old Addie as a child; he
was, in fact, very mature and serious for
his age, and he always managed to
reconcile his parents when they had an
argument.
For the most part, Constance felt
happier all the time. She saw her mother
daily; she had had an intimate talk with
her sister Bertha; and she got along well
with her brother Gerrit. Also, Constance
was determined to like her sister
Adolphine, despite her petty enviousness. But
of all her brothers and sisters, she saw
Paul most often because he got along
well with Henri and Addie.
One day the Van der Welckes gave a
quiet but decorous dinner for Paul and
Van Vreeswijck, a friend of Henri's who
was a chamberlain extraordinary to the
3527

queen regent. Adolphine, who knew that
Constance was giving a dinner, pretended
to be just dropping by, for she wanted
to see what the dinner was like. When
she saw the candles and flowers she
became very envious. The next day
Adolphine had a visit from Cateau, her
brother Karel's wife, and she belittled
Constance's dinner, saying that they had
invited Van Vreeswijck in order to push
themselves into higher social circles.
That summer Constance was happy
because she thought that her family had
forgiven her. One day, on Henri's thirty-
ninth birthday, they had an unexpected
visit from Henri's mother. When she
arrived, she was surprised to meet
Constance's mother, who also happened to be
there. Without resorting to words, the
two old women sought each other's
forgiveness for the misdeeds of their
children.
In The Hague, the gossip of the old
scandal had been revived, although
Constance never heard of it. One day,
however, Addie had gone bicycling with
Adolphine's children, one of whom, Jaap,
called Addie an "Italian" and said that
Addie was not Henri's son. When he got
home, Addie told his father, who assured
him that the rumors were false.
Constance, hearing what had happened,
wondered whether she had not made a
mistake in returning to The Hague. Addie
himself began to feel that there must be
some reason why people always gossiped
about his family. He became so gloomy
that at last his father told him the story
of the scandal in Rome. Once he knew
the truth, Addie began to feel better.
Constance and Henri began to see that
their son was now no longer a child.
Having received an invitation, Henri
and Addie went to visit Henri's parents
for a week. When Henri confessed to
his father that he had told Addie about
the scandal in Rome, the old man was
deeply shocked, for he felt that Henri
had corrupted the child. Henri then
realized that he and his father were strangers
and could not communicate; he realized,
too, what a great shock the scandal must
have been to the old man and with what
grief he must have ordered him, for the
sake of propriety, to marry Constance,
thus shattering Henri's promising
diplomatic career.
While Henri and Addie were away,
Constance had a visit from Adolphine,
who proceeded to make slighting remarks
about her. At last, Constance could
tolerate no more. She told Adolphine just
what she really thought of her and then
dismissed her. After Adolphine left,
Constance burst into tears because she had
not been able, apparently, to return
quietly to her homeland and live in
peace.
One day Constance found in her
mailbox a copy of the Inspector, a privately
printed newspaper devoted to publishing
scandal. She was startled to find a
libelous article in it directed against Bertha's
husband. The article also promised that
the next issue of the paper would give
the full details about an older scandal.
When Henri heard about the article he
grew furious, and a quarrel ensued in
which Henri childishly claimed that
Constance, by providing food for scandal,
was ruining Addie's chances for a
diplomatic career. Constance declared that she
would at once try, for Addie's sake, to
become accepted in higher circles, mainly
through the influence of her sister Bertha,
who was socially prominent.
To make good her resolve, Constance
went to Bertha's at-home day, an
important social function in which the Van
Lowe family did not usually take part.
Bertha's husband had been disturbed by
the article in the Inspector and now
Bertha herself was uncomfortable because
the guests at her at-home day included
friends and relatives of De Staffelaer,
Constance's first husband.
On the following Sunday, when
Constance went to her mother's weekly
family get-together, she at once noticed an
air of tenseness everywhere. She then
learned that the next edition of the
Inspector had appeared. Henri, who was
reading a copy of it, had already become
furious. Then Adolphine came in and
3528

said that the revived scandal was all
Henri's fault. A quarrel ensued in which
Henri challenged Adolphine's husband
to a duel. Everyone tried to hush up
the whole disturbance, but just then
Bertha and her husband, Van Naghel,
arrived. Van Naghel, who had obviously
seen the new article in the Inspector,
greeted Constance coldly. Bertha told
Constance that Van Naghel was very
put out by her visit to Bertha's at-home
day. Constance said that for Addie's sake
she was determined to rehabilitate
herself in society and that she wanted
Bertha and Van Naghel to help her.
Constance then got Van Naghel and
Henri together. She apologized to Van
Naghel for going to Bertha's, but also
asked him to help her in society and to
invite her to their social functions. Van
Naghel protested that he could not
possibly invite her to their dinners, saying
that she would be bored at them. Henri
became furious at Van Naghel, who in
turn said that he wanted nothing to do
with the Van der Welckes. After
exchanging insults with Henri, Van Naghel
left. Constance fainted into Paul's arms.
Addie, who witnessed the scene,
scornfully said that all of this fuss was over
nothing.
3529

SMOKE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1862-1865
Locale: Germany and Russia
First published: 1867
Principal characters:
Grigory Litvinoff, a serious Russian
Tanya Shestoff, his fiancee
Kapitolina Shestoff, Tanya's aunt
Irina, a fashionable lady
General Ratmiroff, her husband
Potugin, a retired clerk
Critique:
Smoke has for background the
nihilistic movement in Russian politics just
after the emancipation of the serfs. In
background of period and place it is
comparable to Fathers and Sons. But
Smoke is different from its predecessor
in time in that it is a pleasant,
unencumbered love story, a novel of defdy
drawn characters. The political theme
of Smoke is not intrusive; few modern
readers will even be aware of the political
tensions involved. The character of
Irina was modeled from a mistress of
Alexander II.
The Story:
At Baden Grigory Litvinoff decided to
enjoy a few days of vacation. The
fashionable German watering place was full
of Russians, and there, in a week or so,
Litvinoff was to meet T£nya Shestoff, his
fiancee, who was coming to Baden with
her Aunt Kapitolina.
Litvinoff was poor, comparatively
speaking. His father owned a large farm
with forests, meadows, and a lake, but
Russian farming was so unproductive
that he could barely make ends meet.
After his university days, Litvinoff had
decided to learn progressive farming, but
because Russia was so far behind in
agriculture he had to go abroad to study.
He had been in the Crimea, in France,
Switzerland, and England. Everywhere
his keen mind had absorbed the latest
agricultural methods, and he was
particularly impressed by the superiority of
the few pieces of American machinery
he had seen. Full of ideas, his life was
planned; he would make a model farm.
But first, he would marry Tanya.
Quite by chance he ran into Bambdeff,
a former acquaintance. Bambaeff was
an ebullient person, filled with windy
politics and intimate with the most
advanced thinkers in Baden. When Bam-
bdeff took Litvinoff to meet Gubary6ff,
the idol of the liberals, Litvinoff was
repelled by the company he met in Gu-
baryoff's room. They all talked long
and loud in their assertions that Russia
produced nothing good, that all virtue
resided in Europe proper, that the
emancipation of the serfs was a foolish step.
He met Binddsoff, a choleric boor who
borrowed a hundred roubles from him;
he never repaid the debt, although
Litvinoff later watched him win four
hundred roubles with the money. Only one
man in the gathering was quiet; he
sat unnoticed in a corner.
The next morning the quiet man came
to LitvinofFs room and presented
himself; he was Potugin, a former clerk in
Moscow. They talked agreeably for a
long time. Botn men disliked very much
their compatriots who were so sure that
nothing good came out of Russia, and
they both agreed that by hard work
Russia could advance. At last, as Potugin
rose to go, he excused himself by saying
that he had a girl with him. Seeing
LitvinofFs look of polite blankness, he
explained that he was looking after a
3530

little child who had no parents.
After a short walk Litvinoff returned
to his hotel. He had a letter from
T&nya to read, and as he read he was
bothered by a heavy sweet smell.
Looking around, he saw a bunch of fresh
heliotrope in a glass. Here was a mystery.
The servant said that a lady had given
him two gulden to get into the room.
She must have left the flowers. Suddenly
he remembered Irina.
Ten years before Litvinoff had been
a student in Moscow. He was poor, and
he visited frequently another poor
family, the Osinins. The family was of the
real nobility, but for generations the
Osinins had declined, until they existed
only on a small pension the father
received from some obscure sinecures.
Litvinoff was attracted greatly to Irina, the
seventeen-year-old daughter of the
household, but for a long time Irina paid little
heed to the poor student. One day her
haughtiness suddenly changed. Pliant
and cheerful, she talked eagerly with
Litvinoff of his ambitions. When he
declared his love, Irina was pleased and
grateful. Without any formal
understanding, Litvinoff became her accepted
suitor.
By a trick of fate, Prince Osinin, hei
father, received an invitation to the
court ball. Now that Irina was grown,
he decided to accept, to show his
daughter in fine society. Litvinoff urged
Irina to go to the ball. She repeated
many times that she was going only at
Litvinoff's insistence.
On the night of the ball, Litvinoff
brought her a bunch of heliotrope to
wear. She took the flowers and kissed
him passionately. The next day Irina
had a headache and refused to see him.
Two days after the ball Irina had gone
to St. Peterburg with Count Reisenbach,
a distant cousin of her mother.
The explanation was brief and tragic.
Hie count needed an ornament in his
household. Grasping and ambitious as
she was, Irina had accepted and had gone
to stay with her debauched cousin.
Litvinoff put her out of his mind; he had
almost forgotten the incident until the
heliotrope appeared mysteriously in his
room.
Litvinoff wrestled with his conscience
and decided not to see Irina again. He
held to his resolve until Potugin came to
him with a pressing invitation to visit the
home of General Ratmiroff. At the party
he met Irina again, now the wife of
General Ratmiroff, a vain, cruel
aristocrat. Litvinoff was as much repelled by
the empty smart set as he had been by
the empty liberals he had met in Baden.
Irina would not let him ignore her.
She begged her former suitor to love her
again, and when she came to his rooms
he admitted his love had never died.
Tanya and her Aunt Kapitolina
appeared. Even naive Tdnya saw at once
that something had happened to her
fiance; she was not wholly unprepared
when he confessed his affair with Irina.
Potugin tried his best to get Litvinoff
to abandon Irina. He had good reason to
do so. For love of Irina, he had agreed
to marry a friend of hers who was soon
to bear an illegitimate child. Although
the girl fell ill and the marriage never
took place, Potugin was burdened with
the care of the little girl. He had acted
because of his hopeless infatuation for
Irina, and he warned Litvinoff that only
evil could come of leaving T&nya for
the shallow aristocrat.
In his despair Litvinoff made a
compact. He would not become Irma's
secret lover; she must go away with
him and be his alone. He named the
train on which he would leave. Irina
was not at the station and Litvinoff sadly
took his seat. Just then he saw Irina,
dressed in her maid's costume, rush to
the platform. He motioned her to come
aboard; she understood, but she refused
by gesture and motioned him to
dismount. She stood in a hopeless attitude
on the platform as the train pulled out.
Litvinoff recovered almost wholly from
his hurt. He was too quiet for his
years, but he was fairly happy. He found
his father's farm in bad shape, with not
even enough income to keep up the
3531

house. His father, pathetically glad to
see him, abandoned the control of the
estate to his son. That end accomplished,
he died content. For a long time there
was no opportunity to introduce new
methods; Litvinoff had all he could do to
remain solvent.
After three years he learned that
T£nya was living on a farm a day's
journey away. Resolved to mend his
life, he decided to go to her and ask her
forgiveness. He found Tdnya ready to
forget as well as forgive, and she was
even embarrassed by his penitence. They
were soon married.
Inna continued to attract admirers in
St. Petersburg, for, in spite of her thirty
years, she retained the freshness of
youth. Although many gallants were in
attendance upon her, she never singled
out a special admirer. The society ladies
all agreed that Irina was not generally
liked; she had such an ironical turn of
mind.
3532

THE SNAKE PIT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sigrid Undset (1882-1949)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Late thirteenth, early fourteenth centuries
Locale: Norway
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Olav Audunsson, master of Hestviken
Ingunn STEiNFrNNSDATTBR, his wife
Cecilia, their daughter
Emm, Ingunn's son by Teit
Olav Half-Priest, Olav's Icinsman
Torhxld Bjornsdatter, housekeeper at Hestviken
Critique:
The Snake Pit is the most hopeless and
despairing of the four novels which make
up The Master of Hestviken. Here Olav
Audunsson and his wife Ingunn have
passed the period of youthful passion,
outlawry, and violence which gave The Axe
its tragic poignancy. There is little warmth
or color to brighten the years of Ingunn's
illness and Olav's struggle with his
conscience. Medieval man looked up to
heaven or down to hell; earth was only a
testing ground for the bliss or punishment
of the future life. Olav, burdened by a
sin which he cannot confess, is one of
the doomed. In his person the writer
unfolds a story of man's inner life and
reflects the manners and morals of his age.
The Story:
After Olav Audunsson received his wife
Ingunn from her kin, he returned with
her to Hestviken to claim his inheritance.
Lime trees were in blossom, and their
scent brought back to him childhood
memories of the manor which had not been
his home since he was seven. Hestviken,
on a ridge above Oslo fjord, had been a
place of chieftains. One of the heirlooms
of Viking days was a wood carving
showing legendary Gunnar surrounded by
vipers in the pit where Atle threw him.
While Olav was growing up as Stein-
finn's foster son at Frettastein and during
his years of warring and outlawry, an aged
kinsman lived at Hestviken. Old Olav,
called Half-Priest because he had studied
for the Church before an accident crippled
him, was more clerk than franklin. Under
his stewardship the manor had not
prospered, and young Olav had less wealth
than he expected. Still, Hestviken was a
rich homestead, and so he cheerfully set
about repairing the houses, increasing his
herds, and outfitting boats to trade by sea.
Besides, he liked Olav Half-Priest and
spent many evenings listening to stories
of his ancestors and their deeds in the old
Olav Half-Priest had known four
generations of the Hestviken men, and hi9
greatest wish, as he often told Ingunn, was
to see her son and Olav's before his death.
But the child Ingunn bore the summer the
old man died lived only a few seconds. In
the next four years she had three more
children, all stillborn. During part of that
time Olav was away on raids against the
Danes, but when he was at home there
was little cheer between them. Ingunn was
fretful and sick, resentful of Signe and
Una, Olav's distant cousins, impatient
with her maids. Olav knew that she was
thinking of the healthy son she had had
by Teit, the Icelander he had killed to
hide her shame, but there was no mention
of the boy between them.
Olav's crime weighed heavily upon his
own spirit. If he had proclaimed it at the
time men would have found justice in
THE SNAKE PIT by Sigrid Undset. By permission of the publishers. Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. Copyright,
1929, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
3533

Teit's slaying; his silence had made his
deed secret murder. Unable to confess his
guilt without bringing shame to Ingunn,
whom he loved, he knew that he must live
unshriven for his sin. Perhaps, he thought,
the dead children were part of the
chastisement he must suffer. He was always
tender toward the useless wife whose
misfortune he had taken by violence upon
himself.
When Ingunn became really ill, Olav
hired Torhild Bjornsdatter whose mother
had been a serving-woman at Hestviken,
to keep his house for him. Afterward the
manor was in better order, and for a time
Ingunn's health improved, so that one
spring she traveled to see Tora, her
widowed sister, at Frettastein. While there,
she went to see little Eirik, her son, at his
foster mother's house. He was half-
frightened of the richly dressed woman
who gave him gifts and held him so
tightly. On her return to Hestviken, Olav
asked her if she longed greatly for the
boy. She said that Eirik had been afraid
of her.
Ingunn's brother Jon died and Olav
rode north to collect her share of his goods.
When he returned, he brought Eirik with
him. In the neighborhood he let it be
known that the boy was his child and
Ingunn's, born during his outlaw years and
for that reason given to foster parents in
the Upplands. When Eirik, like Olav,
followed him about, Ingunn sometimes
grew fretful because the boy preferred
her husband's company to her own. Then
Olav, for the sake of peace, treated the
child coldly. Often it seemed that he was
never to have ease because of the
Icelander's brat.
After Ingunn gave birth to a son,
Audun, Olav realized how foolish his act
had been, for in claiming Eirik he had
defrauded his lawful son of his
birthright. He became sharper in his manner
toward Eirik, scolded him for childish lies
he told, and to his own shame beat him
for his boasting and loud ways. Sickly
Audun died the next winter.
One year Amvid Finnsson came to
Hestviken, Ingunn's cousin and their true
friend in the days of Olav's outlawry.
Amvid said that he had given his manor
to his oldest son; he himself was to enter
the order of the Preaching Friars. To him
Olav told the story of the guilt weighing
so heavily upon him, saying it was as if
God's wrath pursued him and gave him
no peace, night or day. Arnvid, kind and
good man though he was, could say little
to comfort his friend.
Ingunn gave birth to her last child, a
fair daughter christened Cecilia. From
that time the mother seldom left her bed.
Years before she had lost the power of
her limbs during an illness, and now her
old sickness took her again. Sometimes
Olav looked at her, pale and wasted, and
wondered how the sick woman could
have been the beautiful girl he had known
years before. Yet he was not completely
unhappy in their last years together. He
looked after Ingunn with patience and
pity for the sad life she had lived.
Thinking she might become better if he were
to make atonement for the slaying of Teit,
he spoke to her one day of the matter, but
she begged him to keep silent for her
sake. Word came that Arnvid had died at
Hamar. Olav felt that the only friend
left from his youth was Ingunn, once so
fair that he had killed two men for her
sake.
The two had lived so much to
themselves at Hestviken that they had never
been popular with their neighbors. For
that reason there was much gossip when
it became known that Olav had fathered
a child on his housekeeper. Feeling that
his new sin went back to the old one from
which he could never be free, and anxious
to make amends to Torhild for the wrong,
he gave her the farm at Auken for her
own. Ingunn, who had always been
jealous or Torhild's strong, healthy body,
said nothing. Eirik showed in every way
his dislike for the stern, aloof man he
called father.
Torhild's child was a boy, Bjorn. On the
day Torhild went to Auken, Ingunn sent
to her and asked to see him, a lusty child
3534

as fair as her own Cecilia. Afterward Eirik
spat after Torhild and cursed her son.
Ingunn begged him never to speak so of
any woman's child.
Olav was at the Oslo fair when a servant
brought word that Ingunn was dying.
Memories of the past, remorse, and the
conviction that God would be merciful if
he would only confess his guilt plagued
him as he rode homeward to be at her side.
After her death he was minded to do as
he had planned on that night ride, confess
and welcome his punishment, whether
holy pilgrimage or headsman's ax. But he
could not, he realized at last, because of
Eirik and Cecilia. Never could he abandon
them to a kinsman's care or shame them
by letting the world know their mother
had been wanton.
Sometimes, in the slow, sleepless nights,
he felt that he was Gunnar in the snake
pit on the old carving—his hidden sin was
the viper that had pierced his heart.
3535

SNOW-BOUND
Type of work: Poem
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
Type of plot: Pastoral idyl
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Haverhill, Massachusetts
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Members of the Whittier Family
The Schoolmaster
A Guest
Critique:
Snow-Bound, Whittier's popular idyl,
is one of the most beautiful pastorals in
American literature. The harshness of
winter life on a New England farm is
scarcely suggested, for the glow of the
aging poet's memory gives the impression
that in his youth life was serene, secure,
and joyful. The title suggests a nature
poem, but the poet's chief interest is not
in the external world. He dwells upon
the people who were dear to him,
picturing a family circle which represents
an idealization of the American home.
The Story:
One December day a wind from the
cast and a leaden sky forecast snow. As
night came on, the members of the
Whittier family brought in firewood,
Uttered the cattle stalls with fresh straw,
and fed the stock. All night the storm
raged, and in the morning the Whittiers
looked upon a world of fleecy snow. The
elder Whittier, a man of action, ordered
a path dug to the barn, and his sons
merrily turned to the work, making a
crystal-walled tunnel through the deepest
drift. Though the snow no longer fell,
all day a north wind drove bits of sleet
against the windows of the house. Again,
as night fell, wood was brought in for the
great fireplace around which the family
gathered. While the moon shone on the
snow outside and the north wind still
battered the house, the family stayed
snug and warm inside.
As the poet recalled this happy scene
of long ago, he paused a moment to think
of the many changes which had later
taken place. Only he and his brother
now remained; death had taken all the
others. Again his memory went back to
the old fireside, the stories told there,
the puzzles and riddles solved, the poems
recited. The elder Whittier told of
adventures he had had with the Indians,
of fishing trips, and of the witches
reputed to have inhabited the land in olden
days. The mother told of Indian raids
and of the happy times she had had as
a girl. To these stories from her own
life she added some which she had read
in books by famous and revered Quakers.
Next the poet called to mind the tales
of the world of nature told by his uncle,
a man unschooled in a formal way but
seemingly filled with a boundless
knowledge of moons and tides, of weather signs,
of birds and beasts. The memory of the
poet's maiden aunt brought her also
vividly before him. He remembered how
she lived for others instead of bewailing
her lonely maidenhood. He saw again his
elder sister whose rich, full nature had
prompted many deeds of self-sacrifice.
Tenderly he recalled his dearly loved
younger sister, who had been with him
until a year ago, but whose body now lay
with the others in the earth.
From the members of his family, the
poet turned to the young schoolmaster, a
boarder in the Whittier home. The son
of a poor man, the schoolmaster had as a
boy learned independence. As a student
he had helped to pay his way through
Dartmouth College by taking varied jobs.
Later as a teacher he had, when school
was out, joined in schoolboy sports. In
3536

the schoolroom he was the earnest shaper
of youthful minds. The poet prayed that
Freedom might have many young apostles
like him.
Another guest of the Whittier
household on that night of long ago came to
the poet's mind. A strange woman, half-
feared, half-welcome, she was as well-
known for her violent temper as she was
for her eccentric devotion to religion.
Leaving her home, she later went to
Europe and the Near East, prophesying
everywhere the imminent second coming
of Christ. The poet asked His mercy
upon the poor woman whose mind had
seemed so odd to her neighbors.
As the hour grew late the group about
the fire retired for the night. The next
morning teamsters came to clear the
snow-filled roads. The young folks played
in the snowbanks. Later, along the
cleared road came the neighborhood doc
tor on his rounds. A week passed before
the mailman finally delivered a
newspaper to tell of happenings beyond the
Whittiers, snow-bound world.
The poet shut the covers of his book
of memory upon these happy scenes of
the past, and he put the book away with
the hope that readers in the future might
pause with him to view for a httle while
these Flemish pictures of old days.
3537

SO RED THE ROSE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Stark Young (1881-1963)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1860-1865
Locale: Mississippi
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Malcolm Bedford, owner of Portobello
Mrs. Sarah Tait Bedford, his wife
Duncan,
Mary Hartweix, and
Frances, their children
Valette, an adopted daughter
Middleton, an orphaned nephew
Hugh McGehee, owner of Montrose
Agnes McGehee, his wife, Malcolm Bedford's sister
Edward, and
Lucinda (Lucy), their children
Shelton Taliaferro, a distant relative of the McGehees
Charles, his son
Zach McGehee, Hugh's nephew
Amelie Balfour, Zach's fiancee
Critique:
Stark Young takes rather long to set
the stage for the action in this novel.
The gradual unfolding of character and
scene is necessary, however, because the
book is not so much a story of the
political and military aspects of the Civil War
as U is a study of the effects of the war
upon ili^se who stayed at home. The
book presents an excellent picture of
the background of plantation life prior
to the Civil War, tells of people's
thoughts at the time, and shows what
happened to the civilian population
during the war years.
The Story:
Malcolm Bedford was the owner of
Portobello plantation, where he lived
with his second wife, Sarah, and their
three children, an adopted daughter,
Valette, and an orphaned nephew,
Middleton. Malcolm's sister Agnes had
married Hugh McGehee, and they and
their two children occupied a
neighboring plantation, Montrose. Plantation life
in Mississippi flowed easily in those days
just preceding the Civil War, with
frequent parties and visits between
families to provide hospitality and
entertainment. But other happenings, less pleas*
ant, gradually intruded upon the serenity
of plantation life. Talk of secession,
states' rights, slavery, emancipation,
Lincoln, and war began to be more seriously
discussed and argued whenever a group
of people assembled. Hugh McGehe*
and his son Edward discussed these
problems and Edward's possible
enlistment when the latter returned home for
a short visit from the Louisiana Seminary
of Learning and Military Academy.
Duncan Bedford was also in school,
at Washington College in Virginia. In
love with Valette, he accused her of
leading other young men on. When he
went back to college, they were no
longer on friendly terms.
Shelton Taliaferro, a distant relative
of the McGehees, and his son Charles
came to visit Montrose. Edward was
home for a visit at the time, and the two
young men became friends. They spent
SO RED THE ROSE by Stark Young. By permission of the author and the publishers, Charles Scribner'a
Sons. Copyright, 1934, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
3538

a short time together at the seminary
until Charles resigned. It was this young
man, to whom life seemed to flow
generously, who attached himself to
Edward. A year after his first visit to
Montrose he and Edward enlisted under
General Beauregard. Shelton
Taliaferro, his father, and Edward McGehee
were the only two people for whom
Charles cared, to the disappointment of
Lucy, who had fallen in love with him.
Duncan also enlisted, but without first
coming home. He wrote a letter to
Valette to tell her of his enlistment and
to assure her that he still loved her.
About a year later, at the time of the
battle of Pittsburg Landing, Agnes
received a letter from her son. It was
dated three days earlier and according
to his letter the batde would be taking
place at that moment she was reading
the letter. Feeling instinctively that
Edward was dead, she ordered William
Veal, the butler, to hitch up the wagon
so that they might set out for the
battlefield and bring home the body of her
dead son. When she returned, she
brought with her Edward's body and
those of two other boys of the
neighborhood. She also brought word that
the body of Charles Taliaferro had not
been found, although it was almost
certain that he was dead since he was not
with the survivors of the desperate
fighting. Lucy was heartbroken.
After the Emancipation Proclamation
on January 2, 1863, many of the slaves
deserted their former owners to flee to
the Union lines. A short time later
Malcolm Bedford, who had been helping
to strengthen the defenses at Vicksburg,
came home with a very bad case of
dysentery from which he never
recovered. He died, on the day Vicksburg
fell, claiming that with the fall of
Vicksburg the doom of the South was sealed.
Life went on at both plantations under
much altered circumstances. Natchez, the
nearest town, had been bombarded and
occupied. Federal soldiers swarmed over
the countryside, burning, looting, and
carrying off horses, food, and clothing.
More slaves ran away to the protection
of Federal troops in Natchez, and many
joined the Federal army to help fight
against their former masters. But when
disease broke out in the Natchez
stockades, where the Negroes were confined,
some of the former slaves, especially the
older ones, began to return to the
plantations, the only place they had
ever known security.
Sherman, on a visit to Natchez, rode
out to see the McGehees because he
had known their son Edward when he
was superintendent of the seminary
Edward had attended. He was very much
of an enigma to the McGehees, as he was
to many. His kindness and personal
interest could not be reconciled with his
toleration of plunder and destruction by
his troops. Shortly after his visit
Montrose was destroyed by a mob of former
slaves under the direction of a few
white officers. They burned the place to
the ground, after permitting the family
to save only what could be rescued in
twenty minutes. After the fire the family
moved into a five-room cottage on the
plantation.
The Bedfords at Portobello were
having their own difficulties. One night a
group of Confederate soldiers hanged
three Federals on the trees not far from
the house. A fourth soldier escaped,
injured, and he was taken into the house
and cared for until a way could be found
to smuggle him out. The three Union
soldiers were quickly buried to avoid
reprisals.
There had been no word of Duncan
for many months, and the Bedfords at
Portobello believed that he must be dead.
Now that the war was over, they thought
that they should at least have a letter
from him if he were still alive. Then
one day Duncan, without any previous
warning, walked in. He had been taken
prisoner but had been booked for
exchange soon afterward. A Union officer
had spoken insultingly of General Lee,
however, and Duncan had struck him.
His order for exchange was immediately
revoked and he was placed in irons,
3539

charged with having struck an officer
of the United States Army. When peace
was declared and all prisoners were
released, Duncan's charge still stood. But
at his trial the judge, who felt that a
great injustice had been done Duncan,
dismissed the case.
The South was beginning to feel the
vengeance of the North. Many of the
plantations had been burned and many
of the men had been killed. The slave
labor gone, there was no one to work
the plantations. Heavy taxes were
imposed to make the South pay for its
military government. Negroes were
insolent and destructive and carpetbaggers
were beginning to buy up mortgages on
the plantations, thus gaining control of
huge amounts of property. Mrs. Bedford
and Duncan decided that they would not
mortgage their property but would try
to make the land productive once more.
During those grim years Duncan found
Valette kinder and more understanding
than she had been in the proud old days
at Portobello.
Amelie Balfour and Zach McGehee,
nephew of Hugh, were to be married.
Amelie convinced Valette that they
should make it a double wedding. Their
plans were all made on the spur of the
moment, and the next evening at Home-
wood, the home of Amelie's aunt,
Duncan and Valette were married. They were
to have a honeymoon in New Orleans
and then return to Portobello to live.
3540

SOHRAB AND RUSTUM
Type of work: Poem
Author: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Type of plot: Heroic romance
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Western Asia, on the banks of the Oxus River
First published: 1853
Principal characters:
Rustum, a Persian chieftain
Sohrab, a youth in the Tartar army
Pbran-Wisa, leader of the Tartars
Fbrood, leader of the Persians
Gudurz, another Persian chieftain
Critique:
The cloak of melancholy which
envelops much of the work of Matthew
Arnold in both prose and poetry is well
illustrated in the story of Sohrab and
Rustum. This mournful verse tale fused
somberness and sentiment in just the
right proportions to appeal to the taste
of Victorian readers. Not only in its
"high seriousness" — to use Arnold's own
phrase — does Sohrab and Rustum accord
with popular taste of the author's own
time. Ordinarily, the Victorian passion
for ornamentation and embellishment
might seem difficult for the intellectual
Arnold to satisfy in his poetry; but here
the Oriental theme serves to justify,
perhaps to demand, an unusual extravagance
of language and emotion. Simile after
simile decks the lines of iambic
pentameter, flowing as smoothly and darkly as
the fabled Oxus flows through the story's
setting. Under Arnold's technical skill
the implausibilities of the tale are
generally covered up or shoved well into the
background. The events of the poem
were drawn from such accounts as Sir
John Malcolm's History of Persia (1815).
Arnold telescoped the chronicle in order
to bring his protagonists together for one
fateful, climactic meeting; but in the
main he is faithful to the story as it is
usually given.
The Story:
The two powerful armies of the
Tartars and the Persians were encamped
along the banks of the Oxus River. It
was night and the soldiers were asleep,
but daylight would bring a great conflict
between mighty forces.
To one Tartar, however, rest refused
to come. In the grayness of the early
dawn he left his bed and, solitary, made
his way through the black tents of the
great encampment to the quarters of
Peran-Wisa, commander of the Tartar
army. He was Sohrab, the youthful
champion of the Tartars. Hardly more than a
boy, he had developed into the mightiest
fighter of the Tartar host. Young in years,
famous in arms, he was nevertheless
restless and discontented. Above everything
else, he wanted to find the father he had
never seen—the incomparable Rustum,
invincible chieftain of the Persians.
Rustum, on his part, did not even
know that he had a son. He had been
told that a woman of Ader-baijan, after
his departure from that place, had borne
him a child. But that was years before;
and Rustum, believing his offspring to be
a girl child, had given the matter little
thought. After Sohrab was born, the
fearful mother, thinking to avoid having
her son wrested away and reared for war,
had deceived Rustum with that report.
Nevertheless, Sohrab had become a
warrior; his mother's ruse had availed
nothing except to keep her son from a
knowledge of his father.
Peran-Wisa, his slumber broken by
Sohrab's entrance, listened to an unusual
request: Sohrab wished to challenge a
leader of the Persians to single combat,
3541

the duel to occur as soon as arrangements
could be made. Thirsty for reputation, he
hoped that in this manner his fame as a
fighter would reach the ears of his father.
Peran-Wisa, urging patience, questioned
his wisdom in thus tempting fate, but at
last he agreed unwillingly to Sohrab's
plea.
Thus challenged by their Tartar foe,
the Persians were barely able to conceal
their alarm. They had no champion to
pit against the redoubtable young Sohrab
except Rustum; and Rustum, estranged
by slights from the young Persian ruler,
had drawn apart, aloof and sullen. When
the Persians appealed to him, cleverly
implying that Rustum was hoarding his
fame and reluctant to risk it with younger
men, Rustum, roused to wrath,
grudgingly consented to meet the Tartar
champion, although he stipulated that he would
fight unknown to the enemy and in plain
armor. Otherwise, as had happened
before, his great name might daunt the
brash young challenger at the outset.
Rustum was in no mood to forego the
combat, now that his temper had been
aroused.
Halfway between the waiting armies,
Sohrab and Rustum came face to face.
Before they fought words passed
between them; and a strange disquiet
settled over their spirits. But the moment
passed and the conflict began. Sohrab's
misgivings returned; when his nimble-
ness gave him the initial advantage, he
forbore to follow it up. Stung with anger
and shame, Rustum gave him no second
chance. With a shout of "Rustum" he
renewed his attack upon Sohrab who,
thunderstruck at the sound, momentarily
lowered his shield. Instantly he was
transfixed by Rustum's spear and fell to the
ground, mortally wounded.
As his life ebbed away, the
unfortunate youth revealed to his adversary the
secret of his birth. Rustum, at first
incredulous, was finally convinced when
Sohrab bared his arm to reveal the sign
of Rustum's own seal, pricked there soon
after his birth. Then the unhappy
Rustum, beset by extremes of agony and
remorse, coula barely be restrained from
taking his own life and dying with his
son. Broken by grief, he promised to bear
the body of Sohrab far away, so that it
might be in death where it had never
been in life, near the palace of snow-
headed Zal, the boy's grandfather. There
it would receive burial worthy of a son
of Rustum.
So the quest of Sohrab for his father
ended. Life passed from him; the day
waned; night came on. The majestic river
flowed on into the frosty starlight, and
campfires began to twinkle through the
fog; but grieving Rustum remained on
the river sands, alone with his son.
B542

THE SOLDIER'S FORTUNE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Otway (1652-1685)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: c. 1680
Locale: London
First presented: 1681
Principal characters:
Captain Beaugard, a military officer out of service
Lady Dunce, in love with Beaugard
Sir Davy Dunce, her elderly husband
Courtine, Beaugard's friend and companion
Sylvia, Sir Davy Dunce's niece
Sir Jolly Jumble, an old rake turned pimp, a neighbor of the Dunces
Critique:
Restoration comedy, clearly and openly
written to entertain and to create
laughter, was intended chiefly for the corrupt
courtiers of the time who patronized the
London stage. As a result the comedy was
witty, cynical, often crude, and by most
standards immoral. Thomas Otway's The
Soldier's Fortune is more or less a typical
example. While some of the comic effect
is that of the comedy of manners, much
of the comedy depends on grossness, sex,
and even the absurd for its humor. The
characters are stock figures found again
and again in Restoration drama: the
elderly cuckold, the young wife, the
disbanded officer, the loyal and shrewd
servant, the male bawd, the young female
who despises both men and marriage for
a time. It should be noted, however, that
the vague military background of
Beaugard and Courtine is usually credited to
Thomas Otway's own military service on
the Continent during the 1670's.
The Story:
Captain Beaugard and Courtine, his
companion-in-arms, returned to England
from Flanders after a military campaign
in the Low Countries. On their arrival
they found themselves short of funds, for
they had been paid in debentures which
they had cashed at a discount. While
they were bewailing their low state of
affairs, Beaugard received a handful of gold
pieces in exchange for his picture. Sir
Jolly Jumble, an aged rake turned bawd,
had brought him the money, saying that
a fine and beautiful woman had arranged
with him to get the picture for her
because she was highly enamored of
Beaugard. The woman was Lady Dunce,
whose name at the time meant nothing
to Beaugard. She had been in love with
him a long time; however, when he went
off to the wars she despaired of ever
marrying him and finally accepted the
suit of Sir Davy Dunce, a
tobacco-chewing, onion-eating man of about sixty-five,
not at all to the taste of a young and
beautiful woman in spite of the size of
his fortune.
Like most marriages so arranged, this
one had proved a poor match. Sir Davy
Dunce was an exceedingly jealous
husband and fearful that he snould be made
a cuckold. His wife, still in love with
Beaugard, disliked her husband and
welcomed a chance to have an affair with
the military gallant. With Sir Davy and
Lady Dunce lived their niece Sylvia, who
disliked the idea of marriage because of
her observations of her aunt's plight. Next
door to the Dunces lived Sir Jolly Jumble,
an elderly rake who was oaly too glad
to assist Lady Dunce in her amorous
adventure, for Sir Jolly still enjoyed
vicariously what he could not enjoy at
firsthand.
Lady Dunce, deciding to use her rather
thick-witted husband to further her own
designs, gave him Beaugard's picture and
told him the gallant had been paying her
3543

unwelcome attentions. By sending her
husband to return the picture and give
Beaugard a message, she hoped he would
further her designs and at the same time
be convinced of her virtuous intentions.
Sir Davy Dunce did exactly as his wife
directed, but at first Beaugard did not
comprehend the double meaning in the
message that Sir Davy Dunce delivered.
Misunderstanding, Beaugard thought he
had been jilted by a woman who had
made overtures of her own to him. In
hope of revenge, Beaugard dispatched his
servant to play some rascally trick upon
Sir Davy. Meanwhile, Courtine had met
Sylvia, but when he began to court her
the young woman rejected his advances
and treated him scornfully.
While Beaugard and Courtine were
commiserating each other over their trials
and misfortunes, Lady Dunce appeared.
Seeing her, Beaugard realized that she
was Clarinda, the girl whom he had loved
and who had returned his affections
before he went to the wars. Beaugard, hurt
because he still supposed himself jilted
and refusing to believe that she still loved
him or wished to engage in an affair,
doubted that she had sent him a ring
as a token. He also tried to return the
gold pieces she had sent him by Sir
Jolly.
Shortly after she had gone, Sir Davy
Dunce reappeared; he had forgotten to
deliver the ring, which he believed a gift
that Beaugard had sent to Lady Dunce.
Beaugard, realizing the sincerity of Lady
Dunce's affections for him, played up to
Sir Davy Dunce by pretending that he
had experienced a change of heart and
was now heartily sorry for his attempt to
steal the affections of such a virtuous
wife. Simple-minded Sir Davy fell into
the trap as quickly as he had fallen a
victim to his wife's machinations. While
Beaugard talked to Sir Davy, Courtine
talked to Sylvia, who promised him a
rendezvous on her balcony that night,
at Sir Davy's house near Covent Garden.
Beaugard's servant went to Sir Davy
and pretended that he was a messenger
from the Lord Mayor, sent to invite Sir
Davy to a dinner and a conference. Sir
Davy fell for the ruse and rushed away,
only to return unexpectedly and find
Lady Dunce and Beaugard in each other's
arms. After Beaugard had fled, Lady
Dunce persuaded her husband that
Beaugard had forced his attention upon her
after breaking into the house. Sir Davy
Dunce vowed revenge. He found
Beaugard's servant, whose identity he did not
know, and through him hired an assassin
to kill Beaugard. Sir Davy hated to part
with his money, but finally he himself
became so frightened by the assassin that
he paid one hundred pounds for the deed.
Beaugard's servant went immediately to
his master to report what had happened.
Beaugard, the servant, and Sir Jolly
Jumble planned to turn the situation to their
own account.
Beaugard went to Sir Davy Dunce's
home, where Lady Dunce and Sir Jolly
Jumble arranged him to look like a corpse.
When Sir Davy Dunce returned, he saw
the supposed body and became fearful
that he might be implicated in the crime
and be hanged as an accomplice. In his
fright he was easily persuaded by his wife
and Sir Jolly to go off to another part
of the house to pray while Lady Dunce
tried to resuscitate the corpse in her room.
After Sir Davy had gone, his wife and
her lover had a long interval to
themselves in her apartment. In the
meantime Sir Davy prayed and imagined he
saw ghosts, devils, and all kinds of evil
spirits. Toward morning Sir Jolly Jumble
proposed that he and Lady Dunce take
the supposed corpse to Jumble's house
next door for further treatment, a plan
to which Sir Davy Dunce eagerly agreed.
During the same night Courtine had
kept his rendezvous, albeit somewhat
drunk, with Sylvia at her balcony. Sylvia
tricked him twice. First she left him dan-
ling for a time in a loop of rope midway
etween the ground and the balcony.
Then she had her servants tie him up
after he had collapsed from too much
drink. When he awakened from his
stupor, she chided him unmercifully, but
before long they were confessing their
3544

love for each other. Sylvia promised to
marry Courtine if he would be a faithful,
active, and devoted husband to her. He
was only too willing to agree.
Once Beaugard's "body" had been
removed to Sir Jolly Jumble's house, Sir
Davy felt more secure. Calling the watch,
he told them that a murder had been
committed. Then he led them next door,
where he expected to find a corpse whose
death he could lay to Sir Jolly. When
they entered the house, however, they
found no dead man. Instead, they
discovered an angry Beaugard with his sword
in his hand. Beaugard told Sir Davy that
the conspiracy to kill him meant that Sir
Davy would have to acknowledge his
wife as Beaugard's mistress, an admission
the knight was only too glad to make,
since conspiring to murder was a capital
offense at the time. Courtine and Sylvia
arrived to announce their plans to marry.
Thus the four young people found
happiness in love—Courtine and Sylvia
through marriage, Lady Dunce and
Beaugard in an acknowledged arrangement
that left her free from Sir Davy's
unwanted attentions.
3545

THE SON AVENGER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sigrid Undset (1882-1949)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Fourteenth century
Locale: Norway
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Olav Audunsson, master of Hestviken
Eirik, his heir
Cecilia, Olav's daughter
Jorund Rypa, her first husband
Aslak Guintnarsson, her second husband
Bothild Asgersdatter, Olav's foster daughter
Gunhild Bersesdatter, loved by Eirik
Eldrtd Bersesdatter, whom he married
Critique:
The Son Avenger gathers together the
many threads of Olav Audunsson's story
and brings to an inevitable and tragic close
the second of Sigrid Undset's long novels
dealing with Norse life in the Middle
Ages. Some critics have complained that
The Master of Hestviken lacks the
human warmth of Kristin Lavransdatter.
This judgment is true for an obvious rea-
SQn: Olav's sin is greater than Kristin's,
his remorse is more terrible, his confession
is denied him when he dies speechless
at the end. Like Kristin Lavransdatter;
The Master of Hestviken is a great work
of the historical imagination and of
Christian morality. The novel lives in its
gradual, richly detailed evocation of the
past and in the writer's ability to create
men and women who are true to the
hopes, passions, and sufferings of
humanity of any time or place.
The Story:
When young Aslak Gunnarsson came
to Hestviken with the tale that he had
slain a man, Olav Audunsson was not
minded to shelter an outlaw. But he and
Aslak had fought side by side in Duke
Eirik's war, and he remembered his own
outlawry in his younger days. So Aslak
stayed at Hestviken that winter.
Cecilia Olavsdatter and Bothild, her
foster sister, found Aslak such pleasant
company that at last Olav began to
believe that the dalesman and his daughter
were friendlier than was needful. He was
not sorry when he heard that Aslak's
family had paid atonement for the killing and
the time came for his guest to return home.
When Aslak begged to return with his
kinsmen and ask for Cecilia's hand, Olav
spoke kindly but gave him no hope for
his suit.
Late in the summer Eirik came home,
bringing with him Jorund Rypa, his
friend. Olav had no great liking for Jorund
because of an act of boyish disloyalty to
Eirik years before, but the young squire's
pleasant manners and courteous speech
made Olav feel that perhaps he had been
mistaken in his judgment. When Jorund
rode back to his family's manor at Gun-
narsby, it was understood that his brothers
would soon return to declare his suit for
Cecilia.
Eirik, meanwhile, had become lustfully
attracted to Bothild and, to her distress,
wooed her with boorish rudeness. One
night they went on an errand to Rundmyr
farm. On the way back she tried to evade
him, fell, and began to vomit blood. Then
Eirik learned for the first time that she
THE SON AVENGER by Sigrid Undset. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1930, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
3546

was ill with the wasting sickness.
Remorseful, he left Hestviken. Bothild died
shortly before Yule. Early in the new year
Eirik returned, determined to make
amends by asking Bothild's hand in
marriage. Filled with feelings of guilt for her
death, he suddenly decided to become a
monk.
Olav was well pleased with Eirik's
decision. For years he had brooded because a
false heir, Ingunn's son by Teit, would
inherit after him. Perhaps, he thought,
God was protecting Cecilia's rights. Also,
his unconfessed guilt in the secret murder
of Teit had weighed upon him for years;
now there might be a time when he could
make contrition by confesssing the father's
slaying to the son. Then, if Eirik accepted
him, all might be well.
The news of Eirik's intention speeded
Jorund's wooing, for Cecilia would be a
rich heiress, and before long she journeyed
to Gunnarsby for her wedding feast. Olav,
seeing the great manor Jorund shared with
his brothers, was well satisfied with her
marriage.
But Eirik made a poor novice after all,
so that the convent brothers sent him
home. Meanwhile Cecilia had not been
happy among the brawling Rypas at
Gunnarsby. Shortly before the birth of her
second child she and Jorund begged to be
allowed to live at Hestviken. Jorund
proved a poor son-in-law and
husbandman. When Olav sent Eirik to collect some
debts in Oslo, Jorund went with him and
fell into old habits of dicing and
drinking. Before they returned, he borrowed
Eirik's purse containing Olav's silver and
later claimed that he had used the money
to pay a pressing debt. Olav seldom spoke
to his son-in law after that. Later Eirik
heard that Jorund was often at the house
of thieves and gamblers Liv and Arnketil
kept at Rundmyr.
Eirik spent most of his time at
Saltviken, an old farm he was reclaiming
for himself. Pleased at last by his steady
ways, Olav felt that the time had come
for Eirik to marry. Gunhild, daughter of
Berse of Eiken, was the girl decided upon,
and Olav's distant kinsmen were asked to
forward the suit. About that time Gun-
hild's uncle, rich 'Juttorm of Draumtop,
was robbed of much silver when thieves
attacked him and his wife while they
were returning from a wedding feast.
Fiom the story Gunhild had told him,
Eirik recognized some of the silver when
he and Cecilia came upon it by chance
in Jorund's chest. Jorund said that he had
bought it from some travelers near
Rundmyr. Doubting the story, Eirik
buried the silver in a field. Later he would
pretend to find it and return it to Guttorm.
All worked out as he had planned.
Then the authorities captured some
robbers who knew of Jorund's part in the
affair, and Berse refused to marry his
daughter into a family whose kinsman had
received stolen goods.
Gunhild had an older sister, Eldrid,
who had caused great scandal and who
lived by herself at Ness. When Berse
planned to wed Gunhild to an older man,
the girl sent Eirik a message asking him
to meet her at her sister's house. Eirik
went there, but Gunhild, her plan
discovered, never arrived. Eirik felt that he
was a man whose efforts always came to
nothing. Eldrid was kind. He married her
and went to live at Ness.
Olav, weary of everything and feeling
that it was his own sin which had brought
sorrow and disgrace to his house, moved
to Saltviken. Word reached him that
Bjorn, his son by Torhild Bjornsdatter,
had married die daughter of an old friend,
and he went to see the boy and his bride
in Oslo. They were young, he thought,
happy, and lucky. Bjorn was the son he
could never claim, and so family troubles
would never touch him.
When Cecilia could stand Jorund's
drunken brutalities no longer, she rode
to Ness and begged Eirik to go back with
her to Hestviken. Jorund, he found, was
like a madman. Leaving a house-carl to
guard him, Eirik went to Saltviken for
his father. The next morning, on their
return, they found Jorund stabbed in his bed.
Old Olav, convinced that Cecilia had
killed her husband, saw his own secret
3547

murder repeated in his daughter's deed.
Horrified and sorrowful, he went to Oslo
and in the convent there told his story to
a monk he knew, the son of his old friend,
Arnvid Finnsson. The monk gave him a
day to prepare for his confession. Early the
next morning Eirik arrived from Hest-
viken with news that Arnketil had killed
Jorund to avenge the ruin of a daughter.
Overcome, Olav suffered a stroke which
left him partially paralyzed and
speechless. Arnketirs body was found a long
time later in a swamp; there were whispers
that Eirik had shielded the slayer, but
nothing came of that gossip.
After Cecilia had been a widow for
more than a year, she married Aslak Gun-
narsson, who had been her first choice.
Old Olav, his mind filled with memories
of Ingunn and their younger days,
dragged his crippled body about die
manor. At last he died, his sin still uncon-
fessed.
Eirik and Eldrid went into holy orders,
she to the convent in Gimsoy, he to the
Minorite convent in Oslo. Cecilia and
Aslak inherited Hestviken and prospered,
so that Olav's grandchildren were all well
provided for. When they visited him in
the convent, Eirik never tired of telling
them about their grandfather's manly and
upright life. Eirik himself died when he
was threescore years old.
3548

SONEZAKI SHINJU
Type of work: Drama
Author: Chikamatsu Monzaemon CI653-1725)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Osaka, Japan
First presented: 1703
Principal characters:
O Hatsu, a popular geisha
Tokubei, her lover, an apprentice
Ky6emon, Tokubei's uncle and employer
Kuheiji, Tokubei's friend, also in love with O Hatsu
Gihei, a wealthy countryman
Critique:
Of the three literary giants who
appeared simultaneously on the Japanese
literary scene during the early half of the
Tokugawa Period (1600-1868),
Chikamatsu Monzaemon was the playwright.
He wrote the books (called jdruri) for
the puppet theater which came into its
own in Osaka because of the happy
appearance of both Chikamatsu, and a
great chanter (Takemoto Gidayu), a
talented samisen accompanist (Takezawa
Gon'emon) who put Chikamatsu's words
to music, and a superb puppeteer (Tat-
sumatsu Hachirobei) who boldly
appeared on the stage with his puppets and
yet, through sheer artistry, made the
audience forget his physical presence in the
movements of the puppets he
manipulated. Chikamatsu also wrote for the live
Kabuki theater then centered in Kyoto
and Edo (now Tokyo). Chikamatsu's
dramatic works fall into two classes
according to the subject matter treated: the
historical and the domestic, the latter
dealing with contemporary events and
with people chiefly of the merchant, or
common, class. The Sonezaki Shinty,
translated as The Love Suicides at
Sonezaki, was the first of the domestic plays
written by Chikamatsu. He was fifty
years old at the time. First staged in
Osaka in 1703, it is a dramatization, with
additions, of an actual occurrence in
Osaka earlier that same year. Originally
written for the puppet theater, it was
scon presented also on the Kabuki stage
as well. The play has lost none of its
original popularity in the modern
Japanese theater.
The Story:
Gihei, a rich man from the country,
was trying to decide how to spend the
evening in Osaka. Two friends urged him
to hire O Hatsu, the famous geisha or
courtesan for the evening. She begged
off, however, and remained with her
maids, meanwhile thinking about her
lover Tokubei, a clerk, who had been
neglecting her.
To her great joy, he arrived a short
time later, but with word that Kyuemon,
his uncle and employer, had arranged for
his marriage to an heiress and that his
aunt had already received and spent the
dowry. When Tokubei refused to marry
the girl, the dowry had to be returned.
Tokubei had managed to collect the
money but later lent it to his friend
Kuheiji. Now Kyuemon wanted Tokubei to
leave Osaka.
O Hatsu, in spite of this disturbing
news, was happy once more; she had
feared Tokubei no longer loved her.
While the lovers were talking, Kuheiji
and a group of his friends appeared.
When Tokubei asked for the money
owed him, Kuheiji pretended to know
nothing about the loan. Desperately,
Tokubei attacked Kuheiji, whose friends
joined the fight and overwhelmed
Tokubei. During the uproar Gihei returned
and compelled O Hatsu to go off with
him.
Not knowing what had happened to
3549

Tokubei, O Hatsu was afraid that he had
been killed in the quarrel. When Kyue-
mon arrived, she went outside to speak to
him. Saying that she was a bad influence
on the young man and that she was not
truly in love with him, Kyuemon begged
her to give up Tokubei. He also asked
where Tokubei could be found. O Hatsu
insisted that her love was real, and that
she was ignorant of her lover's
whereabouts. Kyuemon went inside, but
O Hatsu, still fearful, remained in the
street.
She was still standing there when a
shabby Tokubei appeared. As she told
him of Kyuemon's visit, Kuheiji and
his gang reappeared and insisted that
O Hatsu join them. She was able to hide
Tokubei -under the porch while she sat
above him on a step, and from his hiding
place he was able to communicate his
understanding by fondling her foot
tenderly. It developed that Kuheiji had
come to ransom O Hatsu, using Toku-
bei's money. O Hatsu, seeing no solution
but suicide, managed to convey her
resolve to Tokubei through her
conversation with Kuheiji. Kuheiji, the braggart,
went away to close the deal, and O Hatsu
was forced to withdraw without talking
to Tokubei again.
That night O Hatsu stole away
secretly to meet Tokubei, and the lovers
fled to the woods of Sonezaki.
Meanwhile, Kuheiji and his servant, while
discussing the plan to gain O Hatsu and
malign Tolcubei, had been overheard by
Kyuemon. After confronting the evil
Kuheiji, Kyuemon went in haste to find the
lovers. He was too late. They had already
committed suicide together.
3550

THE SONG OF BERNADETTE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Franz Werfel (1890-1945)
Type of plot: Religious chronicle
Time of plot: 1858-1875
Locale: Lourdes, France
First published: 1941
Principal characters:
Bernadette Soubirous, a religious mystic
Louise Soubirous, her mother
Francois Soubirous, her father
Dean Pbyramale, the parish priest
Sister Maris Therbsb, Bernadette's teacher and superior
Critique:
Franz Werfel wrote this book as a
fulfillment of a vow he made while
hiding from the Nazis at the beginning of
World War II. Every fact he records
is absolutely true, but from the records
of the actual apparition at Lourdes he
has produced a novel of great interest
and emotional power. Franz Werfel did
not write a purely religious story; his
book is a story of people who have the
same emotions, the same hopes and fears,
that all men and women share. For that
reason The Song of Bernadette is a
masterful work, haunted by shadows of
the unknown, filled with delicate beauty
and a strong affirmation of man's essential
The Story:
In Lourdes the Soubirous family had
fallen into pitiful poverty. Francois
Soubirous, having lost the mill whose
products provided a livelihood for his
family, was reduced to taking odd jobs that
he could beg from the prosperous citizens
of the little French village. His wife
Louise helped out by taking in
washing. But their combined earning, scant
and irregular, were insufficient for the
care of the children. The family lived
in the Cachot, a dank, musty building
that had been abandoned as a jail because
it was unhealthy.
The oldest Soubirous child,
Bernadette, was weak and suffered from
asthma. At school she was considered,
both by her schoolmates and her teacher,
Sister Marie Therese, to be the most
ignorant and stupid of all the children.
Her ignorance extended even to religion.
Although fourteen years old and the
daughter of Catholic parents, she did
not understand the meaning of the Holy
Trinity. It was clear that little could
oe expected from the daughter of the
poor and uneducated Soubirous family.
One day the children were sent out
to gather firewood near the grotto of
Massabielle. Close to the grotto ran a
small stream into which the offal of
the town was emptied. Carcasses of dead
beasts were swept along by the current,
and earlier that day Francois Soubirous
had dumped there a cartload of
amputated limbs and filthy bandages from the
contagion ward of the local hospital. It
was rumored that the spot had once
been the scene of pagan religious
ceremonies.
Slower than the rest, Bernadette
became separated from the other children
and went to the cave alone. Suddenly,
to her great astonishment, a strange light
shone at the mouth of the grotto. She
was unable to believe her eyes when a
beautiful lady appeared before her.
Dressed in blue, her face shining with
brilliant light, her bare feet twined with
roses, the lady smiled at the frightened
child. Bernadette threw herself on her
THE SONG OF BERNADETTE by Franz Werfel. Translated by Ludwig Lewiiohn. By ptrmiatioo of tht
publishers. The Viking Press. Inc. Copyright, 1942, by The Viking Press, lac.
3551

knees and prayed.
When the other children came upon
her they found her kneeling on the
ground. After making the others promise
to keep her secret, Bemadette told of her
vision. But the children told and soon the
whole town was laughing at stupid Ber-
nadette. The next day she returned to
the grotto and saw the lady once more.
The vision told her to return each day
for fifteen days.
When she returned again and again to
the grotto, the townspeople were aroused.
To the local intellectuals and the atheists,
Bernadette's vision was an example of
ignorant superstition. To government
officials, it was a plot of the Church
against the state. To the Church, it
was a dangerous event that could lead
to disaster for Catholics. No one in
authority believed Bemadette, but the
common people became more and more
interested. Soon many went with her
when she made her daily visits. At last
the authorities tried every method to
make the girl confess that her vision
was a hoax, but without success.
One day the lady told Bemadette to
ask Dean Peyramale to build a chapel
on the site of the grotto. When
Bemadette told the dean of the request, he
angrily asked who the lady was. If she
were truly a heaven-sent vision,
persisted the dean, let her give some sign
that would prove it. Let her make the
rose bush in the cave bloom with roses
in February.
The lady smiled when she heard the
dean's message. She beckoned to Ber-
nadette, wanting her to come forward.
The girl moved toward the lady, bent
down, and kissed the rose bush,
scratching her face on the thorns. Then the
lady told her to go to the spring and
drink from it. When Bemadette started
for the stream, the lady shook her head
and told the girl to dig with her hands.
In a short while, Bemadette reached
moist soil. Scooping it up with her
hands, she tried to drink the little water
in it. The earth that she swallowed
made her ill, however, and she vomited.
The crowd that had followed her was
disgusted. To the people her actions had
seemed those of a lunatic because they
had seen no lady there, only the gray
stone walls of the cave and its opening.
They scoffed when Bemadette was taken
away.
A few days later one of the
townspeople went to the grotto. There, where
Bemadette had dug, water had begun
to flow. He scooped up some of the
moist soil and applied it to his blind
eye. After a while he could see; his
blindness was gone. Local experts swore
that there could be no spring there, that
no water could flow from solid rock.
By that time both the Church and the
government were thoroughly aroused.
Bemadette was forbidden to visit the
grotto, and the place was barred to the
public.
Reluctantly the dean began to wonder
whether a miracle had occurred. After
he discovered that roses were indeed
blooming in the cave, he persuaded the
Church authorities to set up a
commission to investigate the whole affair. The
dean was at last convinced that
Bemadette had seen the Blessed Virgin. The
commission agreed with his views. Finally
the emperor ordered that the public be
allowed to visit the grotto.
Throughout all the excitement
Bemadette remained calm and humble. After
the Church had given its sanction to
her vision, she agreed to enter a
convent. There her immediate superior was
her former teacher, Sister Marie Therese.
The nun, proud, arrogant, skeptical,
refused to believe in Bernadette's vision.
As a nun Bemadette won the hearts
of everyone by her humility, her
friendliness, her genuine goodness. The
prosperity of Lourdes, where pilgrims came
from all over the world to be healed
by the miraculous water, did not matter
to her. When her family came to visit
her, she was glad to see them, especially
her father; but she was relieved when
they left. For more than seventeen year?
she lived in the convent.
At last a tumor of the leg afflicted
3552

her with a long and agonizing illness.
As she lay dying, Sister Marie Therese
admitted her error and confessed belief
in the miracle. In Lourdes, the town
atheist was converted. Dean Peyramale,
disappointed and sad because the Church
authorities had ignored him in the
establishment of a shrine built at the
grotto, went to visit Bemadette during
her last moments. Her death was
peaceful and serene.
After her death the fame of Lourdes
became world-wide. Bemadette has been
canonized and is now a saint of the
Roman Catholic Church.
3553

THE SONG OF HIAWATHA
Type of work: Poem
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Type of plot: Legendary romance
Time of plot: Aboriginal period
Locale: Indian territory around Lake Superior
First published: 1855
Principal characters:
Hiawatha, an Indian hero
Minnehaha, whom he married
Nokomis, his grandmother
Mudjekeewis, the West Wind, Hiawatha's father
Critique:
Longfellow based his story on
traditional legend among North American
Indians of a warrior hero sent to clear
the rivers, forests, and lakes, and to unite
the tribes in peace. With this legend the
poet combined other Indian traditions.
Of particular interest are the folklore
stories of the way the woodpecker got a
red streak on his tuft of feathers, the
introduction of picture writing, the gift
of corn to man, and the origin of the
peace pipe.
The Story:
Weary of the constant fighting of his
people, the Great Spirit called together all
Indian tribes to reprimand them for their
foolish ways. He had given them fertile
lands, abundant streams, and forests,
but they had continued to hunt each
other. He promised to send a prophet
who would guide and teach them. Should
they fail to follow his counsel, they
would perish. Breaking off a piece of
a Ted-stone precipice, he molded a pipe
as a symbol of peace among them. He
told the warriors to plunge themselves
into the stream and wash the war paint
from their faces, the bloodstains from
their hands.
One evening in twilight the beautiful
Nokomis fell to earth from the full moon.
There among the ferns and mosses she
bore a daughter, Wenonah. As Wenonah
grew tall and lovely, Nokomis feared for
her daughter and warned her to beware
of Mudjekeewis, the West Wind. When
Wenonah failed to heed the warning and
succumbed to his wooing, she bore a son,
Hiawatha. Deserted by the false and
faithless Mudjekeewis, Wenonah died
grieving for his love.
Hiawatha grew up in the wigwam of
Nokomis. From boyhood he was skilled
in the craft of hunters, in sports and
manly arts and labors. He was a master
of speed and accuracy with a bow and
arrow. He had magic deerskin mittens
which gave him great physical power.
Upon his feet he wore magic moccasins
which allowed him to stride a mile v/ith
each step.
Aroused by the story of his father's
treachery, he vowed to visit
Mudjekeewis ana seek revenge. In the land of
the West Wind the two fought for three
days. At last Mudjekeewis told Hiawatha
that it would be impossible for him to
kill his immortal father. Pleased with
the boy's courage, however, Mudjekeewis
sent him back to his people as the
i>rophet who had been promised. On his
ong journey home Hiawatha stopped in
the land of the Dacotahs to purchase
arrowheads from an old man. There he
saw Minnehaha, the arrow-maker's lovely
daughter.
When Hiawatha returned to his
people, he built a wigwam in the forest and
went there to fast. On the fourth day of
his fast, as he lay exhausted on his couch,
Hiawatha saw a youth dressed in green
and yellow garments with green plumes
over nis forehead. The stranger informed
Hiawatha that his prayers had been
heard and that they would be answered
3554

should Hiawatha overcome him. In
spite of his weakness, Hiawatha struggled
bravely until the young stranger yielded
himself. He ordered Hiawatha to strip
his green and yellow garments and bury
him, and then to guard his grave until
he leaped again into the sunshine.
Hiawatha faithfully guarded the grave
until a green shoot appeared, then the
yellow silk, and finally the matured ear
of corn which was to feed his people.
Hiawatha next shaped a canoe from
the birch tree. Then he set out with his
strong friend, Kwasind, and cleared the
rivers of roots, sandbars, and dead trees,
to make the streams safe for the people.
At another time he rid the lake of its
greatest menace, the sturgeon.
Nokomis then bade Hiawatha to
undertake the destruction of Pearl-Feather,
the magician, who was responsible for
fever, pestilence, and disease. Hiawatha
prepared to battle the dozen serpents
that guarded the entrance to the wizard's
domain. As he approached, he killed
them with his arrows. A woodpecker
helped Hiawatha to overcome the
magician by telling him to aim his arrows at
the roots of the wizard's hair. Hiawatha
rewarded the woodpecker by dabbing his
tuft of feathers with the magician's
blood, which the woodpecker wears to
this day.
When Hiawatha told Nokomis that
he intended to make Minnehaha his
wife, Nokomis urged him to marry a
woman of his own tribe. Hiawatha
refused to listen to her arguments,
however, and assured her that the marriage
would unite the two tribes. On his
return with Minnehaha, they were honored
at a huge banquet at which Hiawatha's
beloved friend, Chibiabos, sang his
famous love songs, and lagoo related his
fanciful tales.
Hiawatha's people prospered in peace
and raised abundant crops of corn. In
order to keep a record of their tribal
history, Hiawatha invented picture
writing to tell their story.
One winter famine struck Hiawatha's
people. Snow covered the forests and
lakes so deeply that it was impossible
for hunters to seek food. Hiawatha's
people were starving and dying of fever.
When Minnehaha died, Hiawatha
mourned her death for seven days.
At last came the warmth and fertility
of spring, and life began to return to
the earth. There were rumors of the
approach of white men in large canoes
with sails. Hiawatha confirmed the
rumors, for he had seen the white men
in a vision. He urged his people to
welcome the strangers and be friendly,
adding that if they ignored his counsel the
tribes would only destroy themselves.
As Hiawatha stood by the wigwam of
Nokomis one evening, three white men
approached, one of them a priest.
Hiawatha welcomed them and invited his
people to hear the stories the priest told
of the Saviour. That night, as the white
men lay sleeping, Hiawatha told
Nokomis that the time for him to leave had
arrived. Having fulfilled his promises,
he left to travel through the portals of
the Sunset, to the Land of the
Hereafter.
3555

THE SONG OF ROLAND
Type of work: Tale
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: About 800
Locale: Western Europe
First transcribed: Medieval manuscript
Principal characters:
Roland, prince in Charlemagne's court
Oliver, his friend
Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor
Ogier the Dane,- Roland's friend
Ganelon, a wicked courtier
Bertha, Roland's mother
Critique:
The Song of Roland is the latest of
great hero tales. As a result it
incorporates all of those which go before. In its
narrative framework are legends of the
Greeks and the Germans, and a fusing
of historical accounts from the dark ages
of Europe with folklore from the Fai
East. Poetic legends of the troubadours,
the tales of Virgil, Dante, and Hebrew
testament all blend together in this vast
fabrication of chivalric ideals and
romantic lore.
The Story:
The boy Roland grew up far from his
home country and lived with his
penniless mother in a cave formerly occupied
by a lonely monk. Nevertheless, his
mother had taught him that some day he
should be a brave hero like his father,
Milon, and serve with the great army of
Charlemagne. When he asked his mother
to tell him the story of his birth, he
learned that through his father he was
descended from great heroes of old,
Trojan Hector on one side and Wotan, king
of the Norse gods, on the other. His
father, Milon, having incurred the wrath
of Charlemagne for taking the king's
sister, the Princess Bertha, as his wife,
had come to Italy and there had died
fighting pagans in single-handed combat.
One summer, when he was still only
a lad, his friend Oliver, the son of a local
prince, met him and the two watched the
coming of the great Charlemagne into
Italy, where the king was to receive the
blessing of the Pope at Rome.
Roland was impressed by the royal
Eageant but not overawed. That night
e walked into Charlemagne's banquet
hall and demanded his rights for himself
and his mother. Amused by the boy's
daring, Charlemagne ordered that Bertha
be brought to him. When the emperor
recognized his long-lost sister, he rejoiced
and gave her and her son a place of
honor in his court.
Roland's boyhood years passed auickly
and with increasing honors. At first he
was merely a page in the court, his duties
being to attend the ladies, to carry
messages, and to leam court etiquette. He
was permitted to accompany the king's
knights during war with the Saxons, and
he was present when the swan knight,
of the race of Lohengrin, appeared at the
court of Charlemagne.
When Roland was fourteen years old,
he became a squire and made the
acquaintance of Ogier the Dane, a hostage
prince at Charlemagne's court. The two
boys became great friends. Then, urged
by a new queen, Ogier's father, Duke
Godfrey, planned a revolt against
Charlemagne. In retaliation Charlemagne
threatened to kill Ogier. Roland
intervened and saved his friend's life.
In the meantime barbarians attacked
Rome. In an effort to save the Pope,
Charlemagne ignored the rebellion of the
Danes and set off to the south, taking
3556

Ogier with him as a prisoner. The great
army was assisted on its passage across
the Alps when a magnificent white stag
appeared to lead the army through the
mountain passes.
In the battles which followed,
Charlemagne's army was divided. One force,
led by the cowardly son of Charlemagne
and the false knight Alory, attempted to
retreat and placed the emperor's life in
jeopardy. Roland and Ogier, aided by
other squires, donned the garments of the
cowards and saved the day. Charlemagne
knighted them upon the battlefield.
One of the pagan knights proposed a
personal combat. In this encounter Char-
lot, a son of Charlemagne, and Ogier met
two barbarians, Prince Sadone and Kara-
Iieut. The pagans trapped Ogier and
threatened to put him to death, but
Chariot escaped. Karaheut, who was to
have fought Ogier, rebelled against the
unchivalrous action of his pagan prince
and gave himself up to Charlemagne, to
be treated exactly as Ogier would be
treated. Reinforcements came to the
pagans, among them the giant king of
Maiolgre. In a dispute over the marriage
of Glorianda, a Danish prisoner, Ogier
fought for Glorianda and put his enemy
to rout. Charlemagne attacked at the
same time. Ogier and Roland were
reunited. The Pope was restored to his
throne.
Roland was invested with royal arms.
His sword was the famous Durandal; his
battle horn was the horn of his
grandfather, Charles the Hammer. None but
Roland could blow that horn. His armor
was the best in the kingdom.
A new war began when Count Gerard
refused homage to the emperor. Oliver,
grandson of die count, was among the
knights opposed to Charlemagne. After
the French had besieged the fortress of
Viana for seven months, it was decided
to settle the war by encounter between a
champion from each army. Roland was
chosen to fight for Charlemagne.
Unknown to him, his adversary was to be
Oliver, his boyhood friend. When the
two discovered each other's identity, they
embraced.
A few weeks later Charlemagne on a
boar hunt near Viana was captured by
Count Gerard. The two leaders declared
a truce and Count Gerard agreed to be
a faithful liegeman of the emperor
thereafter. Roland met Oliver's sister, Alda,
and became betrothed to her.
At Christmas time the Princess of
Cathay arrived with her brothers at
Charlemagne's court. She proposed a
contest between a Christian knight and
her brother Argalia. If one of
Charlemagne's knights were the victor, he should
have her hand in marriage. If the knight
were defeated, he should become a
hostage. Malagis, the wizard, discovered that
the princess and her brothers really
sought by sorcery to destroy
Charlemagne. He visited the apartment of the
foreigners but was discovered by them.
They complained and Charlemagne, not
understanding the wizard's desire to help
him, sentenced Malagis to be imprisoned
in a hollow rock beneath the sea forever.
The jousts began. After Argalia had
defeated the first knight, Ferrau, the
fierce Moor, began combat. Unhorsed,
the Moor fought Argalia on foot and
overpowered him. Then the princess
became invisible, and Argalia rode away,
the Moor in pursuit.
In the forest of Ardennes the Moor
discovered Argalia sleeping, killed him
without honor, and seized his wonderful
helmet. Roland, having followed them,
discovered the murder of Argalia, and
sought the Moor to punish him for his
unknightly deed.
Reinold of Montalban found the
Princess of Cathay in the forest after he had
drunk from the waters of the fountain
of Merlin, and the effect of this water
was to make him see the princess as an
ugly crone. She thought him handsome,
but he felt disgust and hurried away.
Roland discovered the Moor and
challenged him to combat, but the Moor
suddenly remembered that his liege lord in
Spain was in need of his help and did
not remain to fight with Roland.
When the Princess of Cathay saw the
3557

Moor wearing her brother's helmet, she
knew a tragedy had occurred and she
transported herself by magic to her
father's kingdom.
Roland went on a quest to the Far
East in search of the complete armor of
Trojan Hector. Whether by chance or
by evil design he came to a fountain and
there drank the water of forgetfulness.
He was rescued by the Princess of Cathay
and fought many a battle for her sake,
even though she was a pagan princess.
At last he came to the castle of the
fairy queen, Morgan the Fay, where the
armor of Trojan Hector was said to be
hidden. Overcome for the first time, he
failed to gain the armor and was ordered
to return to the court of Charlemagne.
He arrived home in time to help the
Danes resist an invasion of their country.
When Oder's father, Duke Godfrey,
summoned help, Ogier and Roland set
out for Denmark. The invaders fled. At
the same time Ogier's father died, but
Ogier, on the advice of Morgan the Fay,
renounced his rights to his father's
holdings in favor of his younger brother.
On his way back to France, Roland
heard of a fierce ore said to be the
property of Proteus. The ore devoured one
beautiful maiden each day until Roland
overcame it and was rewarded by Oberto,
the king of Ireland, whose daughter he
had saved.
In the meantime Charlemagne's forces
were being attacked by Saracens, and
Roland set out to help Charlemagne's
knights. On the way he was trapped in
a wizard's castle. From this captivity he
was saved by Bradamant, a warrior
maiden. She, having won a magic ring
from the Princess of Cathay, overcame
the wizard and released all of the knights
and ladies held prisoner in the wizard's
castle.
Ferrau, the Moorish knight, lost the
helmet he had stolen from Argalia and
vowed he would never again wear a
helmet until he should wear that of Roland.
By trickery he managed to get Roland's
helmet.
Roland was set upon by Mandricardo,
the fierce knight to whom fortune had
awarded the arms of Trojan Hector. They
fought for the possession of Durandal,
Roland's sword, the only part of Trojan
Hector's equipment which Mandricardo
did not possess. At last Mandricardo was
forced to flee for his life.
Roland visited the forest where the
Princess of Cathay and Medoro, a
Moorish prince, had fallen in love. Some
declared it was jealousy for the princess but
others declared it was sheer exhaustion
which caused Roland now to lose his
mind. He cast his armor away from him
and went wandering helplessly through
the forest. Mandricardo seized
Durandal and made Roland his prisoner.
Astolpho and Oliver set out from the
court of Chariemagne to save Roland.
Astolpho journeyed on the back of a
flying horse to the fabulous land of
Prester John. Having freed Prester John
from a flock of harpies, Astolpho
journeyed to the rim of the moon and there
saw stored up all the things lost on earth.
There he found Roland's common sense,
which he brought back with him and
returned to Roland so that the knight
became his former self.
In a battle against the Saracens the
wicked Ganelon betrayed the knights of
Charlemagne and they, greatly
outnumbered, fell one by one to their enemies.
Roland, unwilling to call for help,
refused to use his famous horn to summon
aid, and he died last of all. Charlemagne,
discovering the dead hero, declared a
great day of mourning. Alda, the be*
trothed of Roland, fell dead and was
buried with many honors. Then
Charlemagne died and was buried with great
pomp. Only Ogier the Dane, remained,
and it is said that Morgan the Fay carried
him to Avalon where he lives in com
pany with Arthur of the Round Table.
It is said also that Charlemagne dwells
inside a vast mountain cave with all his
heroes gathered around him. There they
wait for the day when they shall march
out to avenge the wrongs of the world.
3558

THE SONG OF SONGS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hermann Sudermann (1857-1928)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Germany
First published: 1909
Principal characters:
Lilly Czepanek, daughter of a music master
Fritz Redlich, a student
Colonel von Mertzbach, Lilly's elderly first husband
Walter von Prell, Lilly's first lover
Richard Dehnicke, Lilly's lover and later her husband
Konrad Rennschmidt, Lilly's great love
Critique:
The Song of Songs belongs to the dent, Fritz Redlich, who spurned her
naturalistic movement in European because he misunderstood her overtures
literature. In its detailed study of a of friendship.
woman's fall from virtue, the novel re- Mrs. Asmussen's two worldlv daugh-
sembles in many ways the novels of ters, home after having failedf to find
Balzac and Zola. There is no mistaking their fortunes elsewhere, coached Lilly
the critical purpose and the symbolism *n &e ways of catching a man. Lieuten-
behind Sudermann's frank study of ant von Prell, attached to the local
social hypocrisy and vice, regiment, came to the library, saw Lilly,
and was overwhelmed by her simple
The Story: charm. His visit was followed by the
Lilly Czepanek was fourteen years visits of many young officers and men of
old when her temperamental father, a fashion of the town. The sisters, Lona
music master, disappeared from home. and Mi, jealous of Lilly, hated her for
The girl and her mother became desti- ner ability to attract men without even
tute, but they looked forward every venturing out of the Asmussen house,
day to Czepanek's return since he had When Colonel von Mertzbach, the
left behind his cherished musical com- commander of the regiment, offered Lilly
position, The Song of Songs, around a job as his secretary and reader in order
which the entire family had built its t0 save her from such sordid surround-
hopes for success. in8P> &* declined because she was sus-
Lilly grew into an attractive young picious of his intentions. She received
woman. She attended school in prepara- dozens of fine Christmas gifts from the
tion for a career as a governess. Mean- colonel, but she returned them all. At
while Mrs. Czepanek, beginning to lose the colonel's request, Lilly went to his
her mind, projected mad schemes to re- quarters, where he proposed after
regain her social position. One day, in a vealing his passion for her. Seeing a
fit rf rage, she attacked Lilly with a chance for freedom and luxury, Lilly ac-
bread knife and was subsequently com- cepted and became his wife. Soon she
mitttd to an asylum. Lilly, now alone, discovered, however, that the colonel had
took work as a clerk in the circulating only a physical attraction for her and that
library of Mrs. Asmussen; she assuaged she was little more than his chattel. Their
her loneliness by reading voraciously, wedding trip to Italy was interrupted
She admired a high-minded young stu- when the colonel, who was extremely
THE SONG OF SONGS by Hermann Sudermann. Translated by Thomas Seltzer. By permission of the
publishers, The Viking Press. Inc. Copyright, 1909, by J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger.
Renewed, 1937, by Thomas Seltzer.
3559

jealous, saw Lilly take a passive interest
in a young man who shared their
compartment.
The couple went to East Prussia to
the colonel's castle. The colonel, retired
from military service, devoted his time
to molding Lilly into an aristocratic
Junker lady, and in this task he was
assisted by the housekeeper, Miss von
Schwertfeger.
Von Prell, who had resigned his
commission, was now employed on the estate
of his former commanding officer. He
taught Lilly to ride, and on one of their
jaunts together into the countryside she
surrendered herself to him. Having access
to the castle, he made his way to her
room secretly at night. One night the
colonel returned home unexpectedly from
one of his frequent trips to the nearby
town and almost surprised the two
together. Miss von Schwertfeger covered
up Lilly's infidelity, however, and later
told her mistress that she hated von
Mertzbach because he had forced her for
years to be a party to mad orgies which
had taken place in the castle. But she
forbade any further relations be twee*
Lilly and von Prell.
Later Lilly, hearing that von Prell
was philandering in the town, went to
his lodge. The colonel discovered them
together, and ordered Lilly off the estate.
She went to Berlin; von Prell went to
the United States.
Lilly, now divorced, assisted a maker
of lampshades until, being herself
proficient, she opened her own shop. When
her business venture proved
unsuccessful, she went to Dehnicke, a friend of
von Prell, who was a bronze statuary
manufacturer and who, von Prell had
assured her, would help any friend of
his. To escape Dehnicke's attentions,
Lilly left him and went to Kellermann,
a glass painter, whom Dehnicke
recommended to her. Kellermann made
advances, but Lilly immediately made him
understand that she was there only to
learn glass painting. As she produced
transparencies, Dehnicke took them and
acted as her agent in selling them. One
day Dehnicke gave Lilly a large check
drawn on an American bank and sent to
her, he said, by von Prell. With her new
wealth, Lilly was able to establish her
studio in a fine apartment in a decent
part of the city. But soon she lost
interest in her transparencies and began
to live as Dehnicke's creature. She toured
the bronze factory, but was barred from
entering one small storeroom.
Lilly, now virtually a prisoner in the
luxurious surroundings provided by
Dehnicke, grew morose and melancholy. She
and Dehnicke attended an elaborate
carnival at Kellermann's studio. There she
learned that not one of her transparencies
had sold, that the forbidden storeroom
in the factory was their repository.
One day Dehnicke, a bachelor and
very much under the influence of his
mother, announced to Lilly that at his
mother's insistence he intended to marry
an heiress. Lilly, confused and helpless,
yielded herself to Kellermann. But
Dehnicke gave up the heiress and returned
to Lilly; their old way of life was
resumed. Still Lilly grew more lonely and
waited for the one man in her life to
appear.
After several years in Berlin, Lilly
again met Fritz Redlich. Seeing that the
former student was a failure and in
extreme poverty, she prepared to dedicate
her life to regenerating him. She fed
and clothed him, made him a frequent
guest at her table, and finally secured
for him a position as tutor in another
part of Germany. Still misunderstanding
her interest in him, he refused to have
dinner with her the night before he was
to leave for his new job.
Lilly next met Konrad Rennschmidt,
a young student of art history. There
was an immediate sympathy between
the two, and Lilly knew what she
thought was real happiness at last.
Because Konrad did not know all the true
facts of Lilly's past, she told him many
lies in her frantic desire to keep his
friendship. At last she surrendered
herself to Konrad and drifted away from
Dehnicke, whose mother still had hopes
3560

that her son would marry well.
Konrad had a rich uncle who came
to Berlin to meet Lilly when he heard
that his nephew planned to marry her.
The old uncle, an adventurer of sorts,
tricked Lilly into disclosing her true
tortured and fallen soul to him. Sure
that Lilly would do Konrad no good and
that his family and friends would not
accept her, he persuaded Lilly never to
see Konrad again.
Having never been essentially evil,
and seeing little hope of happiness in
her life, Lilly attempted to throw herself
in the River Spree after her last great
disappointment. But she failed even in
that attempt. She did, however, throw
The Song of Songs into the river. For
years she had guarded the musical
composition as a symbol of all that was fine
and good in life. At last, when his
mother had resigned herself to the
inevitable, Dehnicke again asked Lilly to
marry him. She accepted. It seemed to
her by this time that Dehnicke was her
fate.
3561

THE SONG OF THE LARK
Type of work: Novel
Author: Willa Cather (1876-1947)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries
Locale: Colorado, Chicago, New York
First published- 1915
Principal characters:
Thea Kronborg, a young singer
Dr. Howard Archie, her friend and adviser
Professor Wunsch, a music teacher
Andor Harsanyi, a concert pianist
Frederick Ottenburg, a wealthy art patron
Tilly Kronborg, Thea's aunt
Critique:
The West, the past—one is the physical
background of Willa Cather's writing, the
other its spiritual climate. Against her
chosen backgrounds she projected her
stories of pioneers and artists, men and
women of simple passions and creative
energies. The very nature of her material
determined her own values as an artist:
to find in the people of her creation those
realities of the spirit which have been
almost overwhelmed in the complexity
and confusion of the present. The Song
of the Lark, which carries Thea Kronborg
from an obscure Colorado town to the
concert and opera stage, is a novel rich
and sustaining in homely realism. The
character of Thea was drawn in part from
the late Olive Fremstad, but there is much
of Miss Carrier's own story in the
experiences of her heroine. Like Thea, she made
common things and disciplined effort the
shaping influences of her art. The story
of the artist in America is usually
sentimentalized or idealized. This novel
is a notable exception.
The Story:
Thea Kronborg was the daughter of the
Swedish Methodist pastor in the small
town of Moonstone, Colorado. A tall, fair
girl with grave, candid eyes, her shy
awkwardness hid restless depths of thought
and feeling. Although she grew up in a
lively household of brothers and sisters,
she had no real friends among children
her own age. Of her family, onlv her aunt,
Tilly Kronborg, seemed to understand her.
But Tilly was so ridiculous in her speech
and actions that neighbors only laughed
when she told them that the day was
coming when Thea would make
Moonstone sit up and take notice.
One of her few friends was Dr. Howard
Archie, the town phvsician, who, when
she was eleven, saved Thea's life during
an attack of pneumonia. He was
unhappily married to a mean-spirited woman
who wanted only three things in life: to
have her cigar-smoking husband away
from home as much as possible, to keep
her house closed against dust, and to live
on food from cans. Having no children of
his own, Dr. Archie loved Thea in a
fatherly way, and he often wondered what
would become of a girl so passionate and
determined.
Another friend of her childhood was
gruff, disreputable old Professor Wunsch,
her music teacher. A drunkard, but at one
time a talented pianist, he had drifted
casually into Moonstone, and Fritz
Kohler, the German tailor, had pitied him
and given him a home. The two old men,
both with memories of their younger years
in Europe, became cronies. Fiercely
resenting demands of family and school
upon her time, he gave Thea her first
THE SONG OF THE LARK by Willa Cather. By permission of the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Ox
Copyright, 1915, by Willa Sibert Cather. Renewed, 1943, by Willa Sibert Cather.
3562

glimpse of artistic endeavor, just as the
Kohler house gave her a knowledge of
true old-world simplicity and friendliness.
Wunsch, unable to understand Thea's
stubborn reserve, compared her to the
yellow prickly pear blossoms of the desert.
Through these friends she also knew
Spanish Johnny from the Mexican
settlement on the outskirts of town. He was
another wanderer and drunkard, who
always came back to Moonstone and his
patient wife to recover from his debauches.
The neighbors were scandalized when the
minister's daughter went with the doctor
and Wunsch to hear Spanish Johnny sing
Mexican folk songs. Mrs. Kronborg,
wiser than her husband, quietly allowed
Thea to go her own way.
Still another man who took great
interest in Thea was Ray Kennedy, a
railroad conductor on the Denver run. He
was waiting until she grew up; then he
intended to marry her. In his way he was
the most protective of all.
Thea was fifteen when old Wunsch, in
a drunken frenzy, smashed the furniture
in the Kohler house and left town. After
his departure Thea took over his pupils.
A year later Ray Kennedy, injured in a
wreck, died, leaving Thea six hundred
dollars in insurance. Dr. Archie advised
her to take the money and study music for
a winter in Chicago. After much
discussion the Kronborgs agreed, if the doctor
would take her there and get her settled.
In Chicago, living in cheap rooms and
earning extra money by singing in a
church choir, Thea was homesick for the
sand dunes and deep, silent snows of
Moonstone. She hated the city, but she
worked hard for Andor Harsanyi, under
whom she studied. Like Wunsch, the
brilliant young musician was baffled by
qualities of Thea's imagination and will.
He was almost in despair over her when
he discovered that her real talent was in
voice. Relieved yet sorry, he told her that
she would never make a great pianist. She
might, however, become a great singer.
The next summer Thea went back to
Moonstone. There she disturbed her
family by refusing to sing at the funeral of
Maggie Evans, a neighbor. Persuaded by
her mother, she finally consented. Later
she shocked the town and disgusted her
brothers and sisters by going to a party in
the Mexican village and singing with
Spanish Johnny and his friends.
Returning to Chicago, she studied
under Madison Bowers, a teacher whom
she both admired and disliked. At his
studio she met for the first time Fred
Ottenburg, son of a rich brewer and an
amateur musician. Bowers was cynically
amused that the wealthy young man was
attracted to the strange girl from the West.
Through Ottenburg's influence Thea was
given singing engagements at the parties
of his fashionable friends.
That winter Thea caught a severe cold.
Her convalescence was slow, and she felt
weak and dispirited. Ottenburg,
concerned for her welfare, urged her to go
away for a rest at his father's ranch in
Arizona. There Thea discovered a West
different from the crude, vulgar
Moonstone she had known. Prowling among the
cliff-dwellers' ruins in Panther Canyon,
she felt herself part of an older West, a
land closer to the everyday simplicities of
sun, wind, and water. Thoughts of those
primitive people aroused her own half-
awakened nature; the desert country,
ancient but filled with relics of human
endeavor, gave her a realization of art as
form given to hope and experience.
Rested, and grateful to Ottenburg, she
accepted his proposal of marriage when
he arrived at the ranch. On the way to
Mexico, however, she learned that he
already had a neurotic, invalid wife. Hurt
and shocked, she refused his offers of
assistance, borrowed money from Dr.
Archie, and went to Germany for further
study.
Years passed. By that time Dr. Archie
was a widower, his wife having been
killed when some cleaning fluid exploded,
and he had moved to Denver to take
charge of some mining investments which
had prospered. From time to time reports
reached him of Thea's progress abroad,
and he was pleased when Ottenburg
brought word that she had sung Elisabeth

at the Dresden Opera. He alone
understood why Thea, at a critical point in her
career, had been unable to return to
Moonstone for her mother's funeral.
He was in New York on that great
night when the sudden illness of a famous
singer gave Thea her chance to sing Sieg-
linde in Die Walkiire at the Metropolitan
Opera House. He and Ottenburg, whom
Thea had forgiven, heard the performance
together, both pleased and proud because
they were the two men who had meant
most in her career.
By 1909 Tilly was the last Kronborg
in Moonstone. She never tired of boasting
to her neighbors about Thea's successes
and her marriage to wealthy Frederick
Ottenburg after his wife's death. Best of
all, she liked to remind the townspeople
that Thea had once sung in Moonstone
at Maggie Evans' funeral.
3564

SONG OF THE WORLD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jean Giono CI895- )
Type of plot: Impressionistic romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Basses-Alpes region, France
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Antonio, a man of the river
Sailor, a woodcutter
Junie, his wife
Danis, their son
Maudru, a wealthy ox-tamer
Gina, his daughter
Clara, a blind woman
Jer6me, called Monsieur Toussaint, Junie's brother
Critique:
Jean Giono exhibits a talent that is
remarkable in the field of contemporary
fiction. His novels achieve a quality of
timelessness because in most of his work
he deliberately ignores the discoveries of
modern science and men's mechanical
inventions. Instead, he presents in his
books pictures of semi-primitive and
pastoral life such as survived until a decade
or two ago in his remote region of
France. Giono's feeling for nature is
deeply mystical, and he attempts to bridge
the worlds of inner and outer reality by
the use of poetic images and metaphors.
His style is vigorous and sensuous.
Nowhere does he show himself a lyric
novelist of the soil better than he does in
Song of the World, a novel which is
both an exciting adventure story and a
paean in praise of nature and the simple,
rustic life.
The Story:
For years the man called Sailor had
lived with his wife Junie and their twin
sons in a woodcutter's camp in the forest
beyond Christors Pass. Shortly after one
of the twins had been killed by a
landslide in a clay pit, leaving a widow and
a child, the other red-haired twin went
north into the Rebeillard country to cut
fir trees and raft them down the river.
SONG OF THE WORLD by Jean Giono. Translated by Henri Fluchere and Geoffrey Myers. By
permission of the publishers, The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1934, by Librairie Gallimard, 1937, by
•"He Viking Press, Inc.
When he failed to return, two months
later, Junie became alarmed and sent
her husband to ask help of Antonio, who
lived on the isle of jays.
Antonio was a fisherman, a fierce,
hardy, yet strangely compassionate
fellow, wise in the ways of streams and the
weather. He carried three scars on his
body, a knife wound, a man's bite, and
the slash of a billhook, for he was as
reckless in a fight as he was daring in
making love to the maidens and wives of
the river villages. Men called him Golden-
mouth. He promised to help Sailor search
the river and creeks for some sign of
Danis, the red-haired twin.
The men started early the next
morning, Antonio on one side of the stream,
Sailor on the other. Both were armed, for
the Rebeillard region was wild country
beyond the gorges. There Maudru, the
ox-tamer, kept his great herds, and his
word was the only law. The wind
blowing from the north was chill with frost
as the two men worked their way up the
river. Although they found no sign of
Danis or his logs, they saw some of
Maudru *s drovers and heard their horns, which
seemed to signal the coming of strangers
into the district. Antonio wondered why
Maudru's men were on watch.
3565

At nightfall he swam across the river
to join Sailor. While they sat by a fire
which they had built to warm themselves
and cook their food, they heard the
moaning of a creature in pain. Investigating,
they found a young woman sufrering in
childbirth. Following the directions of
a drover who had been spying on their
fire, they carried her and her newborn
child to the house of a peasant woman
called the mother of the road. The next
morning Antonio learned that the
unmarried woman he had saved was named
Clara and that she was blind. When he
saw her for the first time in the daylight
he loved her. That day, over the protests
of Maudru's men, he killed a wild boar
to provide meat for the house. Four
drovers came to the house at twilight. They
had been sent to the fields near the river
gorges to keep two travelers from leaving
the country. Because Antonio and Sailor
had come into the district, the watchers
were uneasy. While Antonio and Sailor
waited to see whether the drovers would
make a fight of the matter, signal beacons
flashed on the northern hills. From what
was said Antonio realized that the red-
haired twin, for whom the whole country
was searching, had been sighted or
captured.
Antonio asked the mother of the road
to keep the blind woman for him while/
he and Sailor traveled on toward Ville-
vielle, where they hoped to have some
word of Danis' doings from Junie's
brother Jer6me, the almanac-vendor and
healer. On the way they overtook a cart
carrying Metric, Maudru's nephew,
wounded. Danis had shot him, Antonio
learned, and the young herder was likely
to die. For that reason beacons had
burned on the hills. A drover told the
story. Years before Gina, Maudru's
sister, had run away from her brother's
farm at Puberclaire with twenty-three of
his drovers and had taken the Maladrerie
estate as her own. There she ruled her
fields and her bed and bred her sons as
she did her bulls. M£d£ric was the last
of her children. Maudru married and had
a daughter, Gina. It had been planned
that the cousins should marry, but Danis
had shot old Gina's son and carried off
her namesake. While Maudru's men
were searching for the fugitives, the
wounded man was being carried to
Puberclaire to die.
Giving as their reason a wish to visit
the healer of Villevielle, Antonio and
Sailor entered the old medieval town
and found the house of J6r6me, a
hunchback whom the Rebeillard folk called
Monsieur Toussaint. Danis and young
Gina were hiding in his house. The twin
had cut his trees and hidden the raft in
Villevielle creek; it was still there. Then
he had stolen Gina, but before they
could escape down the river Maudru had
sent out an alarm. Now his men watched
the river and every hamlet and road.
The lovers were trapped.
Winter came early in the Rebeillard
country. After the first snows J£r6me
sent a messenger to tell Junie that Danis
and Sailor still lived. Since they were
unknown in the town Antonio and Sailor
visited the wineshops from time to time
and heard the news. Gina grew fretful.
Sometimes she treated Danis with great
tenderness; sometimes she mocked him
because he was not stronger and more
clever than her father, or complained
because they lived like cuckoos in
another's house. In spite of J6r6me's efforts
Metric died. Antonio went to the
burial at Maladrerie and met Maudru, a
powerful, slow-spoken man. One day
Danis went out on skis to inspect his raft
and was almost captured. A short time
later three of Maudru's men, pretending
to be sick, came to J6r6me's house. The
inmates realized then that the fugitives
had been located. When he ventured out
thereafter, Antonio went and came
through passages connecting the cellars
of the old houses.
One day, when there was a touch of
spring in the air, Antonio and Sailor
went out through the cellars and drank
at an inn. Both became drunk. Antonio
pursued a woman whom he mistook for
3566

Clara and left Sailor alone. To Sailor,
confused by the brandy he had drunk,
it seemed that he was young again and
about to embark on a long sea voyage.
Forgetting to be cautious, he never heard
the two drovers who crept up behind him
and stabbed him in the back.
Antonio, returning home, discovered
that Clara had arrived with J£r6me's mes
senger. Her child had died and she no
longer wished to be alone. In his joy at
seeing her Antonio forgot Sailor
completely, until J£r6me became alarmed by
his absence. Then, with Clara's sense of
hearing to tell them where danger might
lurk in the darkened streets, Antonio and
the healer searched for the old man.
When they found him, they carried his
body back to the house and called Danis
to look at his dead father.
Danis was enraged. That night he and
Antonio went to Puberclaire and fired
Maudru's barns and house. Many of his
prize bulls and tame oxen died in the
blaze as the great bull farm was
destroyed.
The light of the burning drew off
Maudru's watchers, and under cover of
the confusion Danis, Gina, Clara, and
Antonio started off down the flooded
stream on the log raft. Below the gorges
they saw green on the trees; spring had
arrived. Danis was planning the house
he would build for Gina. Antonio
thought of his life with Clara on the
isle of jays. None of the travelers saw
Maudru, alone on horseback, as he
watched from a high peak the raft
passing below him and out of sight toward
the south.
3567

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
First published: 1850
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets
from the Portuguese are among the most
famous and most frequently read of all
English love poems. Their popularity,
originally heightened, perhaps, because
they were the first products from Mrs.
Browning's pen after her romantic
marriage and flight to Italy with Robert
Browning, has been great ever since they
first appeared to the public in 1850.
The poems themselves have come, in
the popular mind, to stand for the
sincere love for and faith in her husband
held by the woman who had previously
believed herself a hopeless spinster
invalid. Her devotion to her husband, her
genuine and articulate thanks to him for
having made her a vital woman, shine
through the poems and give them a
simple autobiographical value not often
found in poetry. Mrs. Browning, in these
poems, has no poses, no artifice, little
facility for exploring technique; she is
simply a woman grateful for her
husband's love.
Sonnets from the Portuguese consists
of forty-four sonnets that Mrs. Browning
wrote to her husband during the first
few years of their relationship. Many of
the sonnets indicate her feelings of
humility, her doubts that she deserved the love
and attention of such a great and strong
man. Other sonnets simply tell of her
gratitude, describe her deep appreciation
of the fact that Browning saved her from
the life of the sheltered invalid. Still
other sonnets, pursuing the theme of
gratitude, tell of her pleasure in living in
terms of this world rather than, as she
formerly did, in terms of the next. In one
way, these sonnets tell the story of Mrs.
Browning's growing interest in earth and
its life, her growing abandonment of her
former concentration on Heaven and the
spiritual life. In Sonnet XXIII, after
talking of her love for her husband, she
concludes:
Then my soul, instead
Of dreams of death, resumes life's lower
range.
Then, love me, Love! look on me . . .
breathe on me!
As brighter ladies do not count it
strange,
For love, to give up acres and degree,
I yield the grave for thy sake, and
exchange
My near sweet view of Heaven, for
earth with thee!
In spite of this movement toward earth
and life, Mrs. Browning retained a good
deal of her religious interest and religious
conviction. The sonnets are full of her
devotion to God and her assurance that
she shall be with her husband after death
as well.
Although many modern readers find
these sonnets banal and undistinguished,
they have always had great appeal for the
popular audience, less for serious critics
or practitioners of poetry. The poems are
not distinguished by either sharpness or
intricacy of diction to cloak unashamed
expression of a woman's simple love and
devotion. When the simple emotion is
decorated, it is likely to be given a
decoration, an applauding angel or a direct
emotional address, that was a Victorian
commonplace.
The limitations of the sonnet form
keep these poems more technically
accurate and meaningful than many of Mrs.
Browning's other poems, but the form is
not enough to give them any technical
distinction. Mrs. Browning neglects the
dramatic possibilities of the sonnet as well
as the technical intricacy possible within
the scope of fourteen rhyming, iambic
pentameter lines. Occasionally, however,
she uses some striking poetic images.
Sonnet XXIV, for example, opens with the
following image:
3568

Let the world's sharpness, like a
clasping knife,
Shut in upon itself and do no harm
In this close hand of Love, now soft
and warm,
And let us hear no sound of human
strife
After the click of the shutting.
The "sound of human strife" may be an
easy cliche, and the "soft and warm"
hand of Love may sound banal to the
contemporary reader, but the whole
image of the clasping knife and the sense
of warmth in a closed, sheltering hand
of love provides an image of some power
and unusual quality for the poem.
Similarly, Mrs. Browning also uses floral
images effectively in order to express the
flowering of her love. In addition to these
occasional images, Mrs. Browning's
sonnets sometimes have a sense of rhetorical
movement that distinguishes them from
the merely pedestrian. Although she does
not use the form dramatically, she often
uses it with a sense of musical and
emphatic movement. The emotion is still
essentially simple and the cliches are still
present; but the poem itself is sometimes
a rhetorically emphatic statement that
carries strong feeling with ease,
simplicity, and grace. Such an effect is found
in Sonnet XLI :
I thank all who have loved me in their
hearts,
With thanks and love from mine. Deep
thanks to all
Who paused a little near the prison-
wall,
To hear my music in its louder parts,
Ere they went onward, each one to the
mart's
Or temple's occupation, beyond call.
But thou, who, in my voice's sink and
fall,
When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's
Own instrument didst drop down at thy
foot,
To hearken what I said between my
tears, . . .
Instruct me how to thank thee!—Oh, to
shoot
My soul's full meaning into future
years,
That they should lend it utterance, and
salute
Love that endures, from Life that
disappears!
Although the opening lines are clotted
with thanks, the poem does move with
grace and power, and, in the last few
lines, carries its romantic theme with
compression and strength.
Critics have long pointed to the fact
that such distinction is rare in Mrs.
Browning's work, that much in Sonnets
from the Portuguese is sentimental,
hastily written, undistinguished in diction
or pace. Yet these considerations have not
diminished her appeal for her many
faithful followers, an appeal based on the
simple and genuine emotion and devotion
given to her knight by a distinguished
romantic heroine who had long been
imprisoned in her father's dingy castle.
3569

SONS AND LOVERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1913
Principal characters:
Gertrude Morel, a devoted mother
Walter Morel, her husband, a collier
William, her oldest son
Annie, her daughter
Paul, her favorite son
Arthur, another son
Miriam Leivers, Paul's sweetheart
Clara Dawes, Paul's mistress
Baxter Dawes, Clara's husband
Critique:
Sons and Lovers is a realistic novel
developing two significant psychological
themes. The first is the story of Paul
Morel's beautiful but terrible
relationship with his mother, who gives to him
all her warmth of feeling because her
husband has denied her the love she
craves. The second is a study of
attraction and repulsion in love, presented
through Paul's relations with two quite
different women, Clara and Miriam. It
is, on the whole, a tragic story of work,
love, and despair. Lawrence's
psychological insight and the poetry of his style
make this novel one of the great
landmarks in modern autobiographical fiction.
The Story:
Walter Morel, a collier, had been a
handsome, dashing young man when
Gertrude had married him. But after a
few years of marriage he proved to be an
irresponsible breadwinner and a
drunkard, and his wife hated him for what
he had once meant to her and for what
he now was. Her only solace lay in her
children, William, Annie, Paul, and
Arthur, for she leaned heavily upon them
for companionship, lived in their
happiness. She was a good parent; her
children loved her. The oldest son, William,
was successful in his work but he longed
to go to London, where he had promise
of a better job. After he had gone, Mrs.
Morel turned to Paul for the
companionship and love she had found in William.
Paul liked to paint. More sensitive
than his brothers and sister, he was closer
to Mrs. Morel than any of the others.
William brought a girl named Lily home
to visit, but it was apparent that she
was not the right kino! of girl for him;
she was too shallow and self-centered.
Before long, William himself became
aware of that fact, but he resigned
himself to keeping the promise he had made
to his fiancee.
When William became ill, Mrs. Morel
went to London to nurse her son and
was with him there when he died. Home
once more after she had buried her first
son, Mrs. Morel could not bring
herself out of her sorrow. Not until Paul
became sick did she realize that her duty
lay with the living rather than with the
dead. After that she centered all her
attention upon Paul. The two other
children were capable of carrying on
their affairs without the constant
attention that Paul demanded.
At sixteen Paul went to visit some
friends of Mrs. Morel. The Leivers were
a warm-hearted family, and Paul easily
gained the friendship of the Leivers
SONS AND LOVERS by D. H. Lawrence. By permission of the publishers. The Viking Pre*, Inc. Copy-
right, 1913, by Mitchell Kenncrley.
3570

children. Fifteen-year-old Miriam Leivers
was a strange girl, but her inner charm
attracted Paul. Mrs. Morel, like many
others, did not care for Miriam. Paul
went to work at a stocking mill, where
he was successful in his social
relationships and in his work. He continued
to draw. Miriam watched over his work
and with quiet understanding offered
judgment concerning his success or
failure. Mrs. Morel sensed that some
day her son would become famous for
his art.
By the time Miriam and Paul had
grown into their twenties, Paul realized
that Miriam loved him deeply and that
he loved her. But for some reason he
could not bring himself to touch her.
Then through Miriam he met Clara
Dawes. For a long while Mrs. Morel
had been urging him to give up Miriam,
and now Paul tried to tell Miriam that
it was all over between them. He did
not want to marry her, but he felt that
he did belong to her. He could not make
up his own mind.
Clara Dawes was separated from her
husband, Baxter Dawes. She was five
years Paul's senior, but a beautiful
woman whose loveliness charmed him.
Although Clara became his mistress, she
refused to divorce her husband and marry
Paul. Sometimes Paul wondered whether
he could bring himself to marry Clara
if she were free. She was not what he
wanted. His mother was the only woman
to whom he could turn for complete
understanding and love, for Miriam had
tried to possess him and Clara maintained
a barrier against him. Paul continued to
devote much of his time and attention
to making his mother happy. Annie had
married and gone to live with her
husband near the Morel home, and Arthur
had married a childhood friend who bore
him a son six months after the wedding.
Baxter Dawes resented Paul's
relationship with his wife. Once he accosted
Paul in a tavern and threatened him.
Paul knew that he could not fight with
Baxter, but he continued to see Clara.
Paul had entered pictures in local
exhibits and had won four prizes. With
encouragement from Mrs. Morel, he
continued to paint. He wanted to go abroad,
but he could not leave his mother. He
began to see Miriam again. When she
yielded herself to him, his passion was
ruthless and savage. But their
relationship was still unsatisfactory. He turned
again to Clara.
Miriam knew about his love affair
with Clara, but the girl felt that Paul
would tire of his mistress and come back
to her. Paul stayed with Clara,
however, because he found in her an outlet
for his unknown desires. His life was
a great conflict. Meanwhile Paul was
earning enough money to give his mother
the things her husband had failed to
provide. Mr. Morel stayed on with his
wife and son, but he was no longer
accepted as a father or a husband.
One day it was revealed that Mrs.
Morel had cancer and was beyond any
help except that of morphine and then
death. During the following months
Mrs. Morel declined rapidly. Paul was
tortured by his mother's pain. Annie and
Paul marveled at her resistance to death,
wishing that it would come to end her
suffering. Paul dreaded such a
catastrophe in his life, although he knew it
must come eventually. He turned to
Clara for comfort, but she failed to make
him forget his misery. Then, visiting
his mother at the hospital, Paul found
Baxter Dawes recovering from an attack
of typhoid fever. For a long time Paul
had sensed that Clara wanted to return
to Dawes, and now, out of pity for
Dawes, he brought about a
reconciliation between the husband and wife.
When Mrs. Morel's suffering had
mounted to a torturing degree, Annie
and Paul decided that anything would
be better than to let her live in agony.
One night Paul gave her an overdose of
morphine, and Mrs. Morel died the next
day.
Left alone, Paul was lost. He felt
that his own life had ended with the
3571

death of his mother. Clara, to whom he
had turned before, was now back with
Dawes. Because they could not bear to
stay in the house without Mrs. Morel,
Paul and his father parted, each taking
different lodgings.
For a while Paul wandered helplessly
Sing to find some purpose in his life,
en he thought of Miriam, to whom he
had once belonged. He returned to her,
but with the renewed association he
realized more than ever that she was
not what he wanted. Once he had
thought of going abroad. Now he wanted
to join his mother in death. Leaving
Miriam for the last time, he felt trapped
and lost in his own indecision. But he
also felt that he was free from Mirian:
after many years of passion and regret.
His mother's death was too great a
sorrow for Paul to cast off immediately.
Finally, after a lengthy inner struggle,
he was able to see that she would always
be with him and that he did not need to
die to join her. With his new found
courage he set out to make his own life
anew.
3572

THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Mid-eighteenth century
Locale: Germany
First published: 1774
Principal characters:
Werther, a sentimental young man
Charlotte (Lotte), hi. beloved
Albert, betrothed to Cnarlotte
Critique:
Many teachers of literature consider
The Sorrows of Young Werther the
starting point of a certain phase of the
romantic movement which in England
reached its peak in the early nineteenth
century and which at a later date left
its mark upon the novels of Charles
Dickens and others. The interest in
landscape, in excessive emotion, and in
despairing passion developed more freely
and earlier on the continent, but when
such books reached England they found
immediately a sympathetic audience of
readers and many imitators among the
writers of the period. Today, however,
the novel belongs almost exclusively to
poets, scholars, and special readers of
one kind or another. Perhaps it will
always appeal to the very young in
spirit.
The Story:
Young Werther, having left his former
home, wrote to his friend Wilhelm to
describe the secluded region where he
had gone to forget the unhappiness of his
earlier years. He had discovered a
pleasant cottage surrounded by a lovely
garden, and he felt that in his peaceful
retreat he could live in happy solitude
forever.
A few days later he reported that his
soul had recovered in his rustic
surroundings. He did not want books or the
companionship of his old friends, for he
had been transported into a new world
of kinship with nature. He mentioned
a nearby hamlet called Walheim and the
village inn where he could drink good
coffee, sit in solitude, and read his
Homer. Several letters to Wilhelm told
the same story of Werther's simple life
among scenes of natural beauty.
Suddenly there was a break in his
letters. Then he wrote to tell his friend
that he had met an angel. At a ball he
had been introduced to Charlotte S., thu
daughter of a judge who had retired to
a hunting lodge not far from Walheim.
Charlotte was a beautiful and charming
girl, and in spite of the fact that she was
betrothed to another, Werther had fallen
deeply in love with her at first sight.
Perhaps his passion ran all the more
deeply because he had been warned not
to fall in love with her, since she was
betrothed to a young man not present
at the ball. The warning went unheeded.
At the dance Werther had demanded
much of her attention. He had begun
to ask her some questions about the
Albert to whom she was betrothed when
a storm suddenly interrupted the dance.
The hostess led the guests into a room
protected by curtains and shutters. There
they played a game called counting.
Once Werther kissed Charlotte's hands.
When the party broke up at sunrise,
he took her to her home through a
dazzling world of raindrops and morning
sun.
From that time on he called every
day on Lotte, as he referred to her in his
letters. He grieved over their separation
when she went to attend a sick woman
whom she knew. One day he went with
her to visit an old pastor; he noted that
her youthful presence seemed to bring
new life to the old man as well.
Because he could not bear to have her
3573

out of his sight, Werther began to object
to the time Lotte gave to sick friends and
to other acquaintances. A glimpse of her
as she rode away on some errand was
enough to set his head spinning and his
heart beating wildly. If her ringer
accidentally touched his, the blood pounded
through his veins. To his friend he
confessed that he had done little of the
painting he had intended; all of his time
was taken up with his love for Charlotte.
After his friend Wilhelm had written,
advising him either to press his suit for
Lotte or else to give up his hopeless
passion, Werther decided to see the girl
less frequently. His decision was further
strengthened when Albert returned to
Walheim. Jealous of Albert, WTerther
wrote nevertheless that he admired his
rival's fine character. In answer to further
urging from his friend, Werther replied
that he could neither give up Lotte nor
hope to win her from Albert.
Werther grew more and more
melancholy. Because he could hope to possess
Lotte only in his dreams, he was plunged
into gloom and despair. At last,
deciding that he must leave Walheim, he
asked Wilhelm to secure a government
post for him. When Wilhelm suggested
a post with an ambassador, Werther
postponed his acceptance or refusal of the
position. But Wilhelm obtained the
appointment without waiting to hear from
his friend, and so Werther's course was
decided for him. During the two last
hours he spent with Lotte and Albert,
he pretended all the time that he was
not going away. He felt that their
farewells would be more than he could
bear.
At first the official duties of his new
position kept Werther from brooding
over his sorrows. But as time passed he
began to dislike the ambassador under
whom he worked. No longer interested
in government affairs, he reproached
Wilhelm for securing his appointment. He
chafed constandy at the responsibilities
he was forced to assume.
At last he wrote a letter to Lotte.
Albert wrote to him in reply and informed
him that the two had been married some
time before.
Meanwhile Werther had resigned his
position at court. Failing in his attempt
to enter the army, he accepted the offer
of a young prince to spend the summer
on his estate. When he failed to find
in the nobleman's household the peace
and calm for which he had hoped, he
decided at last to return to Walheim in
order to be near Lotte.
His first encounter with Albert and
Lotte threw him into such a state that
his letter to Wilhelm was almost
incoherent. He could not understand why
Albert did not look more distractedly
happy. Lotte pitied Werther and Albert
sympathized with him, but they were
unable to help him. At the same time
Werther was concerned with the fate
of a peasant who had been convicted of
murder. Failing to save the man from
his fate, Werther was more wretched than
ever. At last, following her husband's
suggestion, Lotte suggested that Werther
visit her house less frequently. In
despair, he wrote that when he could bear
his sorrows no longer he intended to
end his life.
The rest of his story was told by
others. One night, while Albert was
away from home, Werther went to Lotte's
house. Frightened by his speech and
appearance, she asked him to read aloud
some passages from Ossian. After he had
seized her in a wild embrace, she fled
and locked herself in her room. He
stood outside the door and begged her
to speak so that he could hear her voice
for the last time.
The next day he sent a servant to
Albert and asked for the loan of a brace
of pistols to take with him on an
unexpected journey. He shot himself that
night, but he was not quite dead when
his servant found him the next morning.
He died at noon without regaining
consciousness. Charlotte, hearing of his
death, fell into a swoon so deep that her
life was despaired of. Workmen of the
village carried Werther's body to its
resting place under the lime trees at
Walheim.
3574

SOTILEZA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jose Maria de Pereda (1833-1906)
Type of plot: Regional realism
Time of plot: 1880
Locale: Santander, Spain
First published: 1884
Principal characters:
Silda (Sotileza), an orphan girl
Mechelin, her foster father, a crippled fisherman
Mocfj6n, her guardian
Cleto, Mocej6n's son
Carpia, his daughter
Muergo, an orphan, Mechelin's ward
Captain Pedro Bitadura, of the S. S. MontaHesa
Andres, his son
Venancio Lienores, a merchant
Luisa, his daughter
Tol!n, his son
Padre Apoltnar, a priest
Critique:
Jose* Maria de Pereda, outstanding
among Spanish realists, was the
chronicler of the mountainous and coastal
region in the north of Spain. A
conservative with aristocratic prejudices, he hated
the middle class but admired the virtues
of the miserable lower classes. His fisher-
girl heroine has the finer feelings of a
great lady, while the upper-class Luisa is
snobbish and ill-bred. The other
characters are well portrayed. Vivid descriptions
and realistic details of the fishermen's
lives make this one of the great sea
stories of Spanish literature.
The Story:
Among the ragged youngsters being
taught the catechism by Padre Apolinar
was a tough ten-year-old called Muergo,
or Clam. He lived with Mechelin, a
fisherman crippled after years of exposure to
the sea. Muergo had for his playmate a
barefoot orphan girl named Silda, Moce-
jon's ward. One day after school the
children and the old fisherman went to the
waterfront to await the coming of the
steamship Montanesaf arriving from Cuba
under Captain Bitadura. The captain's
young son Andres was there also, along
with Cleto, Mocej6n's son, and Colo,
who was studying for the priesthood.
Silda was badly treated by Mocejon
and Carpia, his nineteen-year-old
daughter, and at Andres* request Padre
Apolinar transferred her to Mechelin's
tenement apartment. There she learned to
keep herself neat, even washing her face
once a week, until her admiring foster
father said she was as dainty as the
leader on his fishing line and because of the
likeness nicknamed her Sotileza.
Andres wanted to study navigation,
but his mother, fearing that the sea
would destroy him as it had so many
others, apprenticed him to Venancio Li-
encres, to learn bookkeeping. Luisa,
Lienores' daughter, embarrassed Andres by
her admiration for the young man.
Sotileza was not beautiful, but as she
grew older she became exciting to men.
Although she treated her admirers
coldly, she kept a warm affection for ugly
Muergo and tried to make him save his
money for clothes instead of spending it
on drink. She paid no attention' to Cleto
until the day he came home laden with
fishing gear and bumped her out of his
way on the stairs, making her nose bleed.
She got her revenge by flirting with him.
His parents were disturbed; they wanted
to have nothing to do with a penniless
orphan.
3575

Mechelfn was torn between his
dislike for Mocejon's son and his desire to
assure Sotileza's future by marriage to a
young man as hard-working as Cleto
was. Andres also liked Sotileza, though
without serious intentions. When his
sympathy for crippled Mechelin made
him persuade his father to help the
fisherman get a small boat of his own,
spiteful Carpia spread the gossip that Andres
was trying to buy Sotileza. Half
believing the report, Cleto begged the priest
to intercede with Mocejdn for permission
to marry the girl.
One day Sotileza decided to
accompany the others in Mechelin's boat
When they went ashore to eat their
lunch, Muergo fell asleep. Andres put
his arm around Sotileza and tried to
make love to her. She repulsed him.
That night, as Andres was on his way
to the theater with the Liencres family,
Luisa criticized the girl she had seen in
his company. Reminded of Sotileza, he
sneaked away to see her and apologize
for his behavior. She forgave him but
said that she would never have given in,
since honor was all she could offer her
foster parents in return for their care.
Carpia, having seen him leaving,
whispered around that Andres was seeing
Sotileza when she was alone in her
apartment.
Rumors that men were to be drafted
to serve three years in the Spanish navy
hastened many marriages in Santander,
and many couples appeared before Padre
Apolinar. Cleto courted Sotileza, but she
gave no sign of her feelings toward him.
The priest carried Cleto's request to Mo-
cej6n and his wife.
In the meantime the lower town had
challenged the upper town to a regatta,
to be held late in August. Sotileza went
with Muergo, who was, so dressed up that
she was amazed. When she tried to comb
his ruffled hair with her fingers, he seized
her, and she escaped only by picking up
a stick and beating him with it. She
forgave him, however, and helped him to
brush his rumpled suit before they went
to the boat races.
At the regatta she cheered the sixteen
oarsmen of Cleto's red-striped boat,
which won by covering the six miles in
twenty-five minutes. That evening, while
the fishermen celebrated, everyone took
her marriage to Cleto for granted.
Later that night Andres went to her
home and proposed marriage. Sotileza
said that she could never accept him.
While they argued, Carpia locked them
in and then slipped the key under the
door before she summoned all the
people in the tenement. When Sotileza
opened the door, she found the hall full
of witnesses. She denounced Carpia's
scheme so fiercely that the others were
convinced of her innocence, especially
after several confessed that they had seen
Mocej6n's daughter locking the door.
Andres went home and told his family
what had happened. Because he had
promised never to see the girl again, his
angry father drove him from the house.
Captain Bitadura then went to see
Mechelfn in order to learn the truth.
Sotileza assured the captain that she had
no intention of marrying his son.
Andres* mother visited Liencres to
discuss a marriage between Luisa and her
son. At the same time Luisa asked her
brother Tolin to suggest to Andres that
the young clerk give up Sotileza and
marry her. When Tolfn tried to refuse,
Luisa threatened to find Andres and
speak for herself.
Meanwhile Andres, angry over what
had happened, learned from his friend
Renales that the fishermen were going
out early the next morning, to make up
for days of fog which had kept them
ashore. Andres offered ro go along when
the boats put out immediately after mass.
In one of the other boats was Muergo,
making his last trip before being
drafted. He was too drunk to know what was
happening.
The day was beautiful. The fishermen
passed schools of sardines as they went
out farther and farther, hunting hake.
They came upon thousands of fish and
3576

everyone, including Andres, began to
pull them into the boats. In their
excitement the fishermen failed to notice a
gathering storm. It struck, scattering the
fishing fleet. High waves battered the
boats. The corpse of Muergo floated by.
Refiales, trying to seize the body, was
knocked unconscious against the
gunwale of his boat. No one in the boat
expected to survive, even though they
worked valiantly against the power of
wind and waves. At last they neared the
shore, only to realize that they would be
compelled to steer between the narrow
walls of the breakwater, a feat none had
attempted except Reiiales, who lay too
bruised and weak to be of any use.
In desperation Andres finally took the
big oar and with injured Reiiales to direct
him brought the boat in safely. Captain
Bitadura, who was watching from a point
nearby, cheered for his son.
Muergo was dead; there would be no
naval service for him. Cleto, called up,
delayed his departure for his wedding
ceremony to Sotileza, who had accepted
him at last. When the sailors from San-
tander marched away, Luisa and Andres
watched them from her balcony as they
passed.
3577

THE SOUND AND THE FURY
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1910-1928
Locale: Mississippi
First published: 1929
Principal characters:
Mrs. Compson, the mother
Benjamin, her idiot son
Quenttn, another son
Candace, her daughter
Jason, another son
Sydney Herbert Head, Candace's husband
Quenttn, Candace's daughter
Dilsby, a Negro servant
Critique:
Beneath its involved and difficult
technique, The Sound and the Fury is a
compelling study of the dissolution of an
old southern family gone to seed. The
members of the Compson family are
victims of lust, incest, suicide. The story
is told through the minds of the various
characters, and the scene jumps from
1928 to 1910 without so much as a
change of sentence. The lack of
punctuation is effective, but confusing, for it
is difficult to tell where reality ends and
memory begins. The book is divided into
four parts, but only in the last two parts
does the story fall into a clear pattern.
Then the pieces of the puzzle begin to
fit into place and the reader finds that
he is experiencing stark tragedy and
horrible reality. The novel is not easy
to read, but it is powerful work that will
haunt the reader for many days aftex
the last page has been turned.
The Story:
The Compson family had once been
a good one, but the present generation
had done everything possible to ruin
the name of Compson for all time. In
the little Mississippi town in which they
lived everyone laughed and made
slighting remarks when the name Compson
was mentioned.
Mrs. Compson had come from what
she considered good stock, but she
thought she must have sinned terribly in
marrying a Compson and now she was
paying for her sins. For eighteen years
she had been saying that she did not
have long to live and would no longer
be a burden to her family. Benjamin
was her greatest cross. He was an idiot
who moaned and cried and slobbered all
day* long. The only person who could
quiet Benjamin was Candace, his sister.
When they were small, Candace loved
Benjamin very much and made herself
his protector. She saw to it that the
other children of the family and the
Negro servants did not tease him. As
Candace grew up, she continued to love
Benjamin, but she also loved every man
she met, giving herself freely to any man
who would have her. Mrs. Compson
thought Candace was another cross she
had to bear and did very little to force
her daughter to have better morals.
Quentin, another son, was a moody,
morose boy whose only passion was his
sister Candace. He loved her not as a
sister, but as a woman, and she returned
his love. Quentin was sent to school at
Harvard. But although she loved
Quentin in the spirit, Candace could not keep
away from other men. Sydney Herbert
Head was the one serious lover she had.
He wanted to marry her. Head, a banker,
THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner. By permission of the author and the publishers.
Random House, Inc. Copyright, 1929, by William Faulkner.
3578

promised to give her brother Jason a job
in his bank after they were married.
When Quentin learned that Candace
was in a condition which made her
marriage necessary, he was wild. He lied
to his father and told him that he had
had incestuous relations with Candace
and that she must not be allowed to
marry. His father did not believe him,
and the family went along with their
plans for the wedding. At last Quentin
could stand no more. On the day of his
sister's wedding he drowned himself in
the Charles River in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Mrs. Compson resigned
herself to one more cross.
When Candace had a baby too soon,
Head threw her out of his house with
her child. Her mother and father and
her brother Jason would not let her come
home, but they adopted the baby girl,
Quentin. Jason believed that Quentin
was the child of his brother Quentin and
Candace, but the rest of the family
refused to face such a fact and accept it.
They preferred to believe, and rightly,
that Quentin was the child of some other
lover who had deserted Candace.
Candace stayed away from the little town
for many years.
Quentin was as wild as her mother as
she grew up. She, too, gave herself to
any man in town and was talked about
as her mother had been. Every month
Candace sent money to Mrs. Compson
for Quentin's care. At first Mrs.
Compson burned the checks, for she would
have none of Candace's ill-gotten money.
When Mr. Compson died, Jason became
the head of the family. He blamed
Quentin for his not getting the job in
the bank, for if the child had not been
born too soon Head would not have left
Candace and would have given Jason the
job. Hating his sister, he wrote checks
on another bank and gave those to his
mother in place of the checks Candace
had sent. The old lady was almost
blind and could not see what she burned.
Jason then forged her signature on the
real checks and cashed them, using the
money to gamble on the cotton market.
Quentin hated her Uncle Jason as
much as he hated her, and the two were
always quarreling. He tried to make her
go to school and keep away from the
men, but Mrs. Compson thought he
was too cruel to Quentin and took the
girl's part.
A show troupe came to town and
Quentin took up with one of the
performers. Jason locked her in her room
each night, but she climbed out the
window to meet her lover. One morning she
did not answer when old Dilsey, the
colored mammy who had cared for the
family for years, called her to breakfast.
Jason went to her room and found that
all her clothes were gone. He also
found that the three thousand dollars
he had hidden in his room had been
stolen. He tried to get the sheriff to
follow the girl and the showman, but
the sheriff wanted no part of the
Compson family affairs. Jason set out to find
the fugitives, but he had to give up his
search when a severe headache forced
him to return home for medicine.
Jason felt more than cheated. His
money was gone and he could not find
Quentin so that he could punish her for
stealing it. He forgot that the money
really belonged to Quentin, for it was
part of the amount he had saved from
the money Candace had sent for the
girl's care. There was nothing left for
Jason but blind rage and hatred for
everyone. He believed that everyone laughed
at him because of his horrible family—
because Benjamin was an idiot, Candace
a lost woman, Quentin a suicide, and
the girl Quentin a village harlot and a
thief. He forgot that he, too, was a thief
and that he had a mistress. He felt
cursed by his family as his mother was
cursed.
When he saw Benjamin riding through
town in a carriage driven by one of the
colored boys, he knocked the colored
boy down and struck Benjamin with all
his force, for there was no other way for
him to show his rage. Benjamin let out
a loud moan, then settled back in the
carriage. He petted a wilted flower and
3579

his face assumed a calm, quiet, blankness,
as if all the strife in the world were
over and things were once more serene.
It was as if he had understood what old
Dilsey meant when she said she had
seen the beginning and the end of life.
Benjamin had seen it all, too, in the
pictures he could never understand but
which flowed endlessly through his
disordered mind.
3580

SOUTH WIND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Norman Douglas (1868-1952)
Type of flot: Social satire
Time of flot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Island of Nepenthe
First published: 1917
Principal characters:
Bishop Heard op Bampopo, an Anglican clergyman
Mrs. Meadows, his cousin
Don Francesco, a Catholic priest
Mr. Van Koppen, an American millionaire
Freddy Parker, proprietor of a drinking club
Mr. Keith, a hedonist
Mr. Eames, an elderly scholar
Count Caloveglia, an antiquarian
Denis Phipps, a student
Rjstlow, alias Muhlen, a blackguard
Critique:
Whether the imaginary island of
Nepenthe is also the very real island of
Capri remains a topic of dispute. The
matter is unimportant, however; Norman
Douglas was writing sly and humorous
fiction, not a guidebook. South Wind is
a collection of character sketches and
incidents dealing with a most unusual and
amusing group of people who are all
affected by the mellow climate of
Nepenthe and the warm sirocco winds which
blow from the south. The reader is
introduced to the inhabitants through a
visitor, Bishop Heard, who serves as an
observer and interpreter of the people and
their problems. Along with the several
plots which carry the action, Douglas tells
much of the imaginary yet somehow real
history of the island. The novel, blandly
sophisticated in tone, abounds in touches
of absurdity and satire.
The Story:
Bishop Heard went to Nepenthe to
meet his cousin, Mrs. Meadows. Her sec
ond husband having been unable to
leave his post in India, the bishop was
to escort Mrs. Meadows and her child to
England. The bishop himself was
returning from ecclesiastical labors in
Bampopo, Africa.
The bishop was introduced to
Nepenthe society by Don Francesco, a priest he
had met on the boat. The social leader
was the American-born Duchess of San
Martino, who was about to join the
Church through Don Francesco's
influence. Other figures were Mr. Keith, a
wealthy hedonist; Denis Phipps, a
frustrated college student; Mr. Eames, a
faithful compiler of material for an
annotated edition of a forgotten work on the
Antiquities of Nepenthe; Count
Caloveglia, an antiquarian interested in the
Golden Age of Greece, and Freddy
Parker, proprietor of a drinking olub which
served a strange brand of whiskey
bottled by his stepsister.
There was also much talk of some
religious fanatics, disciples of an unwashed
Russian mystic named Bazhakuloff.
Because of a virile apostle named Peter, the
group was favored by Madame Steynlin
and had access to her villa by the sea.
One of the few Englishwomen on the
island was Miss Wilberforce, who
frequently drank to excess and undressed in
the streets at odd times of the day and
night. Fortunately, the bishop had de-
SOUTH WIND by Norman Douglas. By permission of the publishers, Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc.
Copyright. 1928. by Dodd, Mead & Co.. Inc.
3581

veloped a tolerant point of view while
living among African natives, and he was
able to accept these strange characters as
he found them.
Except for a festival in honor of Saint
Dodekanus and a call on his cousin, who
did not seem pleased to see him, the first
days of the bishop's stay were uneventful.
Then one of the old springs on the island
suddenly dried up and the natives
reported several unusual births. Next Mr.
barker's stepsister was bitten by a strange
insect. She died swiftly and would have
been as swiftly buried if the volcano had
not erupted at the same time.
Mr. Parker, watching ashes falling
over the city, was saddened both by his
stepsister's death and by news that a
cabinet minister of Nicaragua had been
removed from office. Since the minister had
made Parker the Nicaraguan finance
commissioner for southeastern Europe,
the proprietor feared that he was about to
lose his pretentious but empty title.
Hoping that the Vatican would intercede
for him if he were to become a Catholic,
he consulted the parish priest and
suggested a procession in honor of the
island's patron saint to bring an end to the
eruption. The priest was delighted to
hear such a pious suggestion from a non-
Catholic, and before long the holy
procession was winding through the ashy
streets. Miraculously enough, the ashes
stopped falling and rain which followed
washed away all traces of nature's
upheaval.
The eruption ended, life went on as
usual. Several parties were given for Mr.
Van Koppen, an American millionaire
who visited the island every year. At
these parties the bishop heard more about
the life of the colony. He talked with
Denis and learned about his problems.
He heard with amusement of Van Kop-
pen's promise to contribute liberally
toward a clinic for Miss Wilberforce, if
Mr. Keith would give a like sum. Van
Koppen knew that Keith, believing that
people should be allowed to do what they
liked with their lives, would never part
with the amount he had promised.
One day the bishop, visiting Count
Caloveglia, found him about to sell the
American a small bronze statue of
wonderful antique Greek workmanship. To
authenticate the statue, which had been
unearthed on the count's property, Van
Koppen had called in an English art
expert. Although the expert declared the
piece a real masterpiece and a rare find,
Van Koppen knew that the work was a
fake. He was willing to pay the price,
however, as a compliment to the count's
ability to deceive the expert.
The next day the bishop went for a
walk along the cliffs with Denis, who
was still perturbed about his problem of
where to go and what to do. While they
rested, the bishop saw that they were in
sight of his cousin's villa. As he watched,
he saw Mrs. Meadows come out of her
house and walk along the cliff with a man
who had called himself Muhlen when the
bishop met him on the boat. Later he had
heard that the man was a blackmailer
whose real name was Retlow. He
wondered what his cousin was doing with
such a person. Suddenly the man
disappeared and Mrs. Meadows walked
briskly back to her house. The bishop had just
watched a murder.
Suddenly he remembered where he
had heard the name Retlow before; it
had been the name of his cousin's first
husband. Doubtless he had been
blackmailing her. So far as the bishop could
see, she had been justified in killing him.
He remembered that on the boat Retlow
had said a particularly annoying child
ought to be thrown overboard. The bishop
decided that Retlow's own end was
consistent with his ideas.
Unfortunately, a gold piece which had
belonged to Retlow came to light in the
possession of a native boy. When the
boy was accused of murder, the case
became a battle of rival factions. The boy
was a cousin of the village priest and
Signor Malipizzo, the magistrate, was a
3582

Freemason who hoped to discredit the
Church through that relationship. To
defend the boy, the priest called in the
Commendatore Morena, a lawyer who
had risen to fame and power through his
membership in the Black Hand.
At the trial the boy was judged
innocent, chiefly because of Morena's
eloquence. He first called the jurors'
attention to the crime they would commit if
they removed the boy from his mother,
a relationship which had been
important to so many famous men. Then,
learning that the boy was an orphan, he
shifted his argument to show what an
injustice they would commit if they
convicted an innocent boy. The accused went
free. Under the circumstances the bishop
resolved to say nothing of Mrs.
Meadows' guilt. She seemed a different woman,
now that her fears of blackmail had been
removed, and nobody had suffered from
the murder but Retlow, who deserved
his fate.
Denis finally became angry at Mr.
Keith's drunken meddling, and he told
the old hedonist to shut up. It was the
first time Denis had ever made a decision
for himself and carried it through. His
visit to Nepenthe had started him on the
road to manhood.
On the whole, reflected the bishop,
most matters affecting the people of
Nepenthe turned out well in the end.
3583

THE SPANISH FRIAR
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Dryden (1631-1700)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: Aragon, Spain
First presented: 1681
Principal characters:
Torrismond, son of Sancho the deposed king, defender of Aragon
against the Moors
Leonora, Queen of Aragon, the daughter of the usurper, engaged to
Bertran
Bertran, made a duke by Leonora's father, now in military disgrace
Raymond, foster father of Torrismond
Dominic, a licentious friar
Lorenzo, a young gallant and soldier
Gomez, an elderly usurer
Elvira, his young wife
Critique:
The Spanish Friar, or, The Double
Discovery is of more interest to historians
of the theater than to critics. Its
popularity in Dryden's day was perhaps
attributable to its anti-Catholic sentiments, but
the poet laureate's later conversion made
him sympathetic to the action of James
II in banning the play. Many Dryden
scholars consider this work his most
successful fusion of the love-honor theme
and ribald comedy. The modern reader's
delight in the Falstathan priest-pimp
should not obscure the fact that the
language, style, and structure of the drama
are of a high order.
The Story:
Aragon was in a state of siege because
the usurper king, lately dead, had
refused to acknowledge and reward the
services of the Moors in gaining the
kingdom for him. Queen Leonora,
promised on her father's deathbed to
Duke Bertran, regretted this alliance as
well as the fact she held in a dungeon
deposed King Sancho, a righteous and
beloved ruler. Bertran's forces had been
routed three times by the Moors before
Torrismond, supposed son of one of the
leading nobles, Raymond, rallied the
scattered Christians and saved the kingdom
from the infidels.
Young Lorenzo, a valiant colonel in
Torrismond's army, brought news of the
victory and confided to his friends his
desire to celebrate with the first
prostitute available. He boasted that he had
robbed his Moorish victims of gold and
jewels. Elvira, the young wife of a
jealous old money-lender named Gomez,
made welcome advances to the handsome
soldier. Her husband, however,
immediately thwarted plans for the*
assignation, plans put in motion by Friar
Dominic.
Torrismond, on his triumphal return,
offended Bertran by open ridicule of the
latter's ineptness and by his own naive
declaration of love for the queen.
Leonora, in turn, was smitten with love for
the young hero, thereby creating a
strange problem. Bertran, betrothed to
the queen, vowed vengeance and
responded to her suggestion that by killing
King Sancho, he would hasten the
marriage. Leonora really intended by this
deceit to make Torrismond her
king-husband; he, in turn, was filled with anxiety
because he remained loyal to the old king
and his supposed father, Raymond.
Clandestine love, in spite of all,
prevailed in the palace, though not in
Gomez* mansion. Friar Dominic, ghostly
father to Elvira, had made a series of
arrangements for the young wife and her
hopeful gallant to meet, but each meet-
3584

ing, unfortunately for the three, was
discovered by the near-cuckolded husband.
Bertran, too, did his best to keep the
other lovers apart by testing the reaction
of the populace to the supposed murder
of King Sancho.
Raymond, incensed by such intrigues,
finally confessed that in the troublesome
days of the Moorish invasion King
Sancho had entrusted to him his son Tor-
rismond. Raymond urged Torrismond to
take over the kingdom, to depose or kill
the usurpers and so avenge the old king's
death. Torn between love and duty (love
for Leonora but filial duty to his foster
father to avenge his real father's death),
Torrismond could not commit so bloody
a deed. He declared his belief that
Leonora's repentance and his own attempt
to thwart the regicide settled that score.
After learning Torrismond's decision,
Raymond departed to rouse the citizens.
At the same time he was moved to
compassion over his adopted son's
predicament.
Meanwhile, the intrigue involving
Elvira and Lorenzo had come to nothing;
no amount of bribing, blackmailing, or
disguising could bring the two together,
in spite of the fact that Friar Dominic
was a master of all possible trickery and
knavery. Finally, the friar was disgraced
when Lorenzo's father revealed that
Elvira was his daughter, married to Gomez
the usurer in order to prevent her
suffering a worse fate in those troubled times.
Thus it was revealed that the affection
Elvira and Lorenzo had felt for each
other was based on the family
relationship of brother and sister.
To this double discovery—the true
parentage of Torrismond and Elvira—was
added a third: King Sancho was not
dead. Bertran, suspicious of the queen's
motives and aware of the people's loyalty
to the old king, had merely spreaa the
rumor of King Sancho's death. Knowing
also that the queen was devoted to
Torrismond rather than to himself, Bertran
begged forgiveness for his part in the
many sad events that had occurred in the
kingdom. Leonora, much relieved, wished
only for King Sancho's permission for
her marriage to his son. Torrismond
assured her that the good king, quick to
forgive, would grant such a boon.
3585

THE SPANISH GIPSY
Type of work: Drama
Authors: Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) with William Rowley (1585M642?) and
possibly John Ford (1586-c. 1640?)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: Early years of the seventeenth century
Locale: Madrid
First presented: 1623
Principal characters:
Fernando de Azevida, the corregidor of Madrid
Roderigo, his son
Louis de Castro, and
Diego, Roderigo's friends
Alvarez de Castilla, an exiled lord disguised as the father of the
gipsies
Constanza, Fernando's daughter, disguised as a gipsy
John, a young nobleman in love with Constanza
Pedro de Cortes, an elderly Spanish don
Clara, his daughter
Critique:
A graceful tragi-comedy with an
extremely complicated story, The Spanish
Gipsy apparendy derives most of its
action and background from portions of two
novels by Cervantes. There are two plots
which develop side by side and are
occasionally interwoven. One of them, which
furnishes the play with its title, concerns
a Spanish nobleman who has been exiled
from his country; he returns secretly to
Spain as leader of a band of gipsies who,
under his influence, eschew stealing or
cheating to lead a Utopian, idyllic
existence as popular singers and entertainers.
A charming pastoral mood pervades this
portion of the drama. The major plot,
however, is tinged with violence and
tragedy, involving Roderigo and Clara as
protagonists. The opening situation is so
striking as to be almost unique, and it is no
small feat that after a very melodramatic
first act the interest of the play can be
maintained at such a high level. Some
scholars contend that Middleton and
Rowley had some assistance from John
Ford on this play.
The Story:
Roderigo, son of the corregidor of
Madrid, was a pleasure-bent, reckless youth.
One night, while roaming about the
outskirts of the city with two young
noblemen, he acted on a rash and outrageous
impulse. When a pretty girl came along,
accompanied by her elderly parents,
Roderigo decided to have some fun; on the
spur of the moment he determined to
kidnap her. After a bit of urging he won the
somewhat reluctant cooperation of Louis
de Castro and Diego, who restrained the
distraught mother and father while
Roderigo carried off the protesting maiden.
Taking her to his apartment in the cor-
regidor's palace, Roderigo yielded to his
lust and raped her. Meanwhile, back on
the road, Louis learned to his dismay that
the mistreated family was that of Pedro
de Cortes, an influential Spanish don.
Worse still, the girl stolen by Roderigo
under the cloak of night was Clara, the
object of Louis' own affections.
Clara, overcome by shame, asked
Roderigo to kill her, whereupon he sullenly
strode from the apartment. While he was
gone, Clara examined the room for any
clues to the identity of her attacker. From
the window she saw below a starlit
garden containing a curious alabaster
fountain. In the chamber itself she discovered
a precious crucifix, which she quickly
concealed in her bosom as she heard
Roderigo's footsteps approaching once more.
Beginning to feel repentant for his
deed, Roderigo readily agreed when Clara
3586

asked him never to speak of her
ravishment and to take her back to the road
where he met her. Afterward, meeting
the anxious Louis, Roderigo denied
harming the girl. Nevertheless, he found
himself falling in love with her. To avoid
seeking her out again, he planned to leave
Madrid for studies in Salamanca.
At an inn of Madrid, the gipsies
danced and sported for their admiring
following. Disguised as their leader was
Alvarez de Castilla, banished from Spain
in previous years for the death of Louis
de Castro's father. With Alvarez was his
wife Guiamara and her niece Constanza,
both supposed to have been lost earlier in
a shipwreck. Constanza, called Pretiosa
among the gipsies, was the great
attraction to their audiences. Young and very
beautiful, she was a magnet for the young
gentlemen of the city. Deeply in love
with her was John, son of a Spanish
nobleman. Constanza, half in play, told
him that if he would turn gipsy for two
years she would requite his love; and he
immediately took steps to comply with her
conditions.
When Louis tried to tell Clara of his
love, she skillfully managed to parry his
proposal of marriage. To her father, Louis
revealed that Fernando, the corregidor,
wished to pardon and recall Alvarez from
banishment. To this proposal he had
sought the agreement of Louis, and Louis
now requested the counsel of Pedro on
the matter. Secretly, Louis thirsted for
revenge on Alvarez and hoped the return
of the latter would bring him within
reach of Louis' sword.
Roderigo found his thoughts directed
more and more to the unknown girl
whom he had wronged. He decided to
deceive his father and friends into
thinking that he had gone to Salamanca,
though he would actually remain near
Madrid. Meeting the gipsies, he posed as
an Italian poet and joined them as a
helper with their plays and
entertainments. Soon afterward, when the gipsies
performed for the corregidor's court,
Fernando quickly detected his son among the
supposed gipsies but held his peace. The
gipsies presently began to engage in
fortune-telling, whereupon Louis asked that
Clara be sent for so that she might be
diverted by the general festivity.
On her way to the palace, Clara found
herself in a mob of people attracted to
the scene of a street accident. In the
crowding and confusion, she fainted and
was carried into a chamber of the nearby
palace. When she revived, she was
amazed and frightened to find herself in
the same room where she had previously
been taken by her kidnapper. Learning
that it was Roderigo's room, she decided
that it was time to reveal her secret. To
Fernando, who had hastened to her side
with her father and mother, she told the
story of her treatment by Roderigo.
Fernando was shocked and dismayed by
Clara's story, but convinced of its truth
when she produced the crucifix that she
had previously taken from the room.
When the corregidor declared that his
son's life should be forfeited for the
deed he had committed, Clara convinced
him that a live Roderigo, rather than a
dead one, could much more effectively
clear her name.
The gipsies ceremoniously inducted
John into their tribe, and Constanza re-
ne'wed her vow to marry him if he lived
the vagabond life for two years. But from
the first John encountered difficulties in
his new existence. The trouble started
when he fell under the eye of Cardochia,
a rich heiress who had been acting as the
sponsor and hostess of the gipsies.
Infatuated with John, she offered him herself
and her possessions. When he rebuffed
her attentions, she vowed revenge. To
Diego, an old suitor, she falsely accused
John of improper and obscene behavior
toward her.
When the gipsies performed a play for
Fernando's court, the corregidor insisted
that Roderigo, still in his ineffectual
disguise, take the role of a debased libertine.
The play was interrupted by a tumult
caused by a fight between John and
Diego. Diego was wounded; and, after
3587

Cardochia had aggravated John's plight
by charging him with theft, Fernando
angrily ordered him to prison, to be held
for trial. Next, in pretended anger at
finding his son among the gipsies,
Fernando confronted Roderigo. When he
threatened Roderigo with marriage to an
atrociously ugly heiress, the young man
pleaded to be allowed the alternative of
paying court to a beauty whom he had
glimpsed in the palace audience of the
gipsies. Fernando slyly assented, knowing
the lady in question to be Clara herself.
Roderigo, still unaware of Clara's real
identity, courted and married her. After
the ceremony Fernando told Roderigo the
truth, and the young couple promised to
turn their backs on the past and be true
to each other. For John and Constanza,
however, the path to a happy ending
proved less easy. Alvarez, hearing that
John was condemned to die, offered Louis
an opportunity to face his father's killer
in return for Louis' help in saving John.
Louis eagerly accepted; but when Alvarez
unmasked himself as the man sought by
Louis, the latter decided that revenge was
no longer important to him. John's true
identity was made known; Cardochia was
revealed as a liar; and gipsies and court
celebrated these happy results with a
lively dance.
3588

THE SPANISH TRAGEDY
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Kyd (1558M594)
Type of plot: Tragedy of revenge
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: The Spanish and Portuguese courts
First presented: c. 1586
Principal characters:
Ghost of Don Andrea, a murdered Spanish nobleman
Balthazar, Prince of Portugal
Lorenzo, a Spanish nobleman
Bel-Imperia, fiancee of Don Andrea before his death
Hieronimo, a Spanish general
Horatio, Andrea's friend and Hieronirno's son
Alexandro, and
Villupo, Portuguese noblemen
Critique:
The Spanish Tragedy, one of the most
popular English plays of the sixteenth
century, marked a change from the earlier,
stilted English drama. Kyd built his plot
on a foundation of three conventional
devices found in the Roman tragedies of
Seneca. One was a ghost; the second was
revenge for a murdered relative, and the
third was a liberal use of bombast and
soliloquy in the dialogue. To these he
added queer and amazing characters with
strange psychological twists: madmen,
murderers, suicides. He also employed a
play within the play, public hangings,
and other items new to English drama
As a pioneer playwright, Kyd, in this play,
pointed the way to the lurid, bloodthirsty
revenge plays of the Jacobean and Caroline
stage. The popularity of The Spanish
Tragedy can be partly seen in the fact
that it is known to have gone through at
least ten editions by 1634.
The Story:
Don Andrea, a Spanish nobleman, was
killed in battle with the Portuguese.
When his soul descended to the
underworld, Pluto sent it with the Spirit of
Revenge to learn what had happened after
his death.
At the Spanish court Andrea heard that
the Portuguese had been defeated in war
and that Balthazar, Prince of Portugal,
had been taken prisoner. Balthazar, he
learned, was the man who had killed
him. A quarrel had developed between
Lorenzo and Horatio, each claiming the
honor of capturing Balthazar.
Meanwhile, at the Portuguese court,
Villupo told the viceroy that his son
Balthazar was dead, having been killed by
traitorous Alexandro. Alexandro was then
sentenced to death.
Balthazar, while a prisoner, fell in love
with Bel-Imperia, as did Horatio. Bel-
Imperia, who had been the fiancee of dead
Andrea, fell in love with Horatio. At this
time plans were proposed for a treaty of
peace between Spain and Portugal. These
events were all distasteful to Andrea's
Ghost. He was comforted, however, by
Revenge's promise that grim fate would
overtake all concerned.
Balthazar, aided by Lorenzo, planned
to win the love of Bel-Imperia. Lorenzo
sent a servant to spy on Bel-Imperia and to
discover whom she loved. When he
returned to tell his master that Bel-Imperia
was in love with Horatio, Lorenzo and
Balthazar plotted Horatio's death.
But the King of Spain planned to make
diplomatic use of Bel-Imperia by marrying
her, his niece, to Portuguese Prince
Balthazar, thus cementing the friendship
of the two countries. The king warned her
that she must do his will.
One night, when Bel-Imperia and
Horatio met in the garden, Horatio was set
3589

upon by Balthazar and Lorenzo and
hanged. After his death Bel-Imperia was
taken away by Lorenzo and Balthazar.
When the body was discovered,
Hieronimo, Horatio's father, went mad, as did
his wife. Seeing all, Andrea's Ghost
became even more bitter. The Spirit of
Revenge told him to be patient.
The ambassador to Spain, returning to
the Portuguese court, arrived in time to
prevent the death of Alexandro, for he
brought word that Balthazar still lived.
Villupo, who had plotted Alexandra's
death in hopes of preferment, was
sentenced to die.
In Spain, Hieronimo, partly recovered
from his madness, plotted to avenge his
son's murder. Afraid of Hieronimo,
Lorenzo and Balthazar planned to murder
one of their accomplices, lest he give
away their secrets. They had him slain
by another of their accomplices. When
the murderer was arrested and sentenced
to hang, they told him he would be saved
with a pardon. The man went to his death
in silence, or so Lorenzo and Balthazar
believed. Before his execution, however,
he had written a confession in which he
told the true story of Horatio's death, and
he had sent the document to Hieronimo.
Meanwhile Lorenzo and Balthazar had
imprisoned Bel-Imperia in hopes of
forcing her to marry Balthazar. She,
bewildered by all that had happened, finally
believed Lorenzo's statement that she
would only suffer her father's and the
king's anger if she failed to marry
Balthazar willingly.
Balthazar and Lorenzo enlisted Hieron-
imo's aid in presenting an entertainment
for the Spanish court and the Portuguese
viceroy, who had arrived to swear fealty to
the King of Spain. Hieronimo suggested
that they do a play that he had written
and silenced their protestations with the
observation that even Nero had not
considered it beneath his dignity to act in a
play. The play, he told them, was to be a
tragedy befitting royal actors and
onlookers.
In the meantime Hieronimo's mad
wife, still lamenting the death of her son,
cut down the arbor where he was hanged
by his assailants, and stabbed herself. Hers
was the fourth death in the action
watched by Andrea's Ghost and the Spirit
of Revenge.
That evening the royal party gathered
for the play which Hieronimo and the
others were to present. When the party
entered, Hieronimo insisted that they all
enter a gallery, lock the door, and throw
the key down to him. The king, thinking
nothing amiss, agreed to do so. Thus the
stage was set for Hieronimo to avenge the
murder of his son.
In the play Balthazar played the
Emperor Soliman, Lorenzo played a bashaw,
and Bel-Imperia played a Christian girl
captured and given to Soliman. While
Soliman and the bashaw argued over the
girl, a third character, acted by
Hieronimo, entered and killed the bashaw, and
the captured Christian girl killed the stage
emperor. Then, stopping the applause for
the fine performance, Hieronimo
introduced the body of his dead son and
assured the audience that the deaths they
had watched were real. Then he ran to
hang himself before the royal party could
break out of the locked gallery.
Oyertaken by courtiers bel :ore he could
kill himself, he bit out his own tongue
to prevent a confession. Told to confess
in writing, he gestured for a knife to
sharpen the pen. With that weapon he
stabbed the king's brother and himself,
thus bringing the number of deaths to
eight.
At the end, Andrea's Ghost, which had
been watching all the while, announced
to the Spirit of Revenge that he was
satisfied; all his enemies had received their
just deserts. Revenge told him that they
would return to the underworld, where
Andrea could watch his enemies in their
torment and consort happily with his
friends.
3590

THE SPOILERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Rex Beach (1877-1949)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: The Alaska gold rush
Locale: The Yukon
First published: 1906
Principal characters:
Roy Glenister, die owner of die Midas gold mine
Bill Dextry, Glenister's partner
Mr. McNamara, a politician
Helen Chester, the girl with whom Glenister is in love
Judge Stillman, her uncle
Cherry Malotte, a notorious woman in love widi Glenister
Mr. Struve, a dishonest lawyer
Critique:
The Spoilers is a lusty book about a
raw new land filled with adventurers and
gamblers of all kinds. Blood and thunder
leap forth from every page. The real
fault of the novel is the number of
coincidences. In his scenes of action the
author is at his best. His descriptions
and dramatic incidents, like the battle at
the mines or the epic bare-handed duel
between the hero and the villain, are
his best work. The merit of the book
lies in such, not in the loosely-planned
plot or the love story.
time being.
Two weeks later her uncle, Judge
Stillman, arrived in Nome with a
politician named McNamara. Stillman had
been appointed the first Federal judge in
Nome, Alaska. Trouble soon brewed for
the owners of the mines on Anvil Creek,
including Glenister and Dextry. Their
claims were relocated and possession of
the mines was given to McNamara as a
receiver appointed by the court until the
claims could legally be cleared.
Convinced that the receivership was
dishonest, Glenister and Dextry robbed their
mine of ten thousand dollars in gold with
which to send their attorney to San
Francisco. By the time die attorney had
made the trip and returned, all the mine
owners on Anvil Creek realized that
there was collusion between Judge
Stillman and McNamara. When the attorney
tried to serve an injunction which would
force the judge to return die mines to
the owners, Stillman refused to recognize
the writ from the San Francisco court.
Glenister and Dextry immediately
smuggled their attornev aboard a ship bound
for San Francisco, with a request that
United States marshals be sent to Nome
to serve the writ and arrest Stillman for
contempt of court.
Meanwhile Glenister and Dextry spied
on McNamara and discovered the part
T*JE SPOILERS by Rex Beach. By permission of the author and the publishers, Harper & Brothers.
Copyright, 1905, by Rex Beach. Renewed, 1932, by Rez Beach.
The Story:
Trouble began for Glenister and
Dextry, the owners of the Midas mine, the
moment they started from Seatde back
to the frozen North. First of all a
young woman, Helen Chester, enlisted
their aid in stowing away aboard their
ship. Then Roy Glenister fell in love
with her. After they were aboard
Dextry told Glenister mat the government
was sending a court to institute law and
order in the gold country and warned
him that they would have to be careful
lest they lose their claim to the Midas
mine.
In Nome Helen delivered a packet of
documents to the law firm of Struve and
Dunham and then went with the two
partners up to the Midas mine. There
was no place else for her to go for the
3591

Helen Chester had played in bringing
in the documents which had made
possible the theft of the mines by
McNamara. Cherry Malotte also told Glen-
ister that Helen had informed McNamara
of the money Glenister and Dextry had
at their camp. The last straw for
Glenister was the announcement that
McNamara and Helen were to be married.
Deciding to repossess their mines by
violence, the owners on Anvil Creek
formed a vigilante committee with the
intention of lynching McNamara and
tarring and feathering the judge.
After spreading the word that troops
were going to guard the mines,
McNamara laid a trap for the vigilantes at
his office in Nome. He thought that the
mine owners, not daring to attack the
troops, would attack his own office. To
his surprise, the owners attacked the
mines and seized them after a short,
sharp battle. They discovered that the
defending force had been only a few
guards posted by McNamara.
In the meantime Helen Chester had
gone to Struve to discover what she could
about the dealings of her uncle and
McNamara. At a deserted hotel outside
Nome he tried to bargain with the girl
for the documents he had, papers which
would incriminate himself, the judge,
and McNamara of collusion to rob the
mines. After Helen had read the papers,
he tried to attack her. As he was about
to overpower her, a gambler—Helen's
long-lost brother—appeared on the scene
and shot Struve. Helen and her rescuer
set out through a terrific storm to return
to Nome and turn over the incriminating
documents to Glenister and other mine
owners.
A few hours after they had left,
Glenister himself came to the hotel and
discovered the wounded man. Struve told
Glenister that Helen had left the hotel
with a cheap gambler. Furious,
Glenister rode back to Nome. He resolved to
hunt down McNamara and the gambler
and to kill them both.
When Glenister arrived in Nome early
the following morning, he found
McNamara alone in his office. Glenister
laid aside his coat and gun to fight the
man hand-to-hand. In their struggle they
demolished the office. A crowd gathered
to watch them. Feeling himself slipping,
McNamara tried to reach for a pistol.
As he did so, Glenister seized him in a
hammerlock and slowly broke his arm.
At that moment Judge Stillman arrived
at the office with several soldiers and put
Glenister under arrest.
As he was being led away to jail, a
ship sailed into the harbor. Shordy
afterward Glenister's attorney came ashore
with several United States marshals and
the court orders from San Francisco.
With Stillman's power broken, Glenister
was quickly released. When he returned
to his cabin to rest, Dextry told him that
his fight with McNamara was the talk
of the town, for no one had ever seen
a combat like it in all the rugged North
country. Glenister, too tired to care,
stumbled into his bunk and fell asleep.
He was finally awakened when Helen
and her gambler brother entered his
cabin. Helen told Glenister of the
gambler's real identity and tried to prove
to him that she had not willingly been
a partner in the plot to rob the mine
owners of Anvil Creek. What she told
him convinced Glenister that she was
telling the truth. She also told him that
she had seen his fight with McNamara,
that she could never marry a man who
was more of a brute animal than a
civilized human being.
The next day all was again peaceful
in Nome. Glenister planned to return
to his mine and resume operations there.
While he was preparing to leave, Dextry
walked into his cabin. Dextry told him
that he was going to sell his share of the
Midas mine and leave Nome. His
excuse was that law and order had finally
come to Alaska, so that the country was
growing too civilized for an old
frontiersman like himself.
After Dextry left, Glenister wandered
down toward the beach, too downhearted
to finish his preparations for going to the
mine. Helen Chester saw him on the
3592

beach. Calling him to her, she told him
that she finally understood why he could
be as brutal as he was, for her own battle
with Struve had shown her how thin the
veneer of civilization was in the far
North, where life had to be fought for
against both men and the elements.
Glenister pretended not to understand
what she meant, and asked her when
she was leaving. Her reply to him was
that she did not intend to leave, unless
he sent her away.
3593

THE SPOILS OF POYNTON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Social morality
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1897
Principal characters:
Mrs. Gereth, mistress of Poynton
Fleda Vetch, her companion
Owen Gereth, her son
Mona Brigstock, Owen's fiance'e
Critique:
This novel, written in the middle
period of Henry James's career, shows the
detailed character analysis, careful
development, and acute insight into human
affairs for which he has become famous.
Here we have a kind of tragedy, but not
one in the classical sense. This novel is
tragic first because many beautiful things
are unavoidably given up to one who has
no appreciation of them, and secondly
because these same objects are completely
destroyed in a freak accident. The human
emotions involved are seen to be
somewhat mean in spite of the grandeur of
the objects with which they are
connected; and throughout the novel we
have James's astute comments on, and
impressions of, the society in which the
action takes place.
The Story:
While visiting one weekend at Water-
bath, the country house of the Brigstock
family, Mrs. Gereth met and was
immediately drawn to a young woman named
Fleda Vetch. The basis of the attraction
was a mutual sensitiveness to beautiful
things; each guessed that the other
possessed such a feeling when they met one
morning while obviously trying to escape
the house and the rest of the party. Their
aversion was caused not by the fact that
Waterbath was exceptionally ugly, but
rather because it was so very ordinary
while pretending to be lovely. The house
and the garden might have been quite
attractive, and should have been so, but
the Brigstocks, people without even a
hint of feeling or taste, had had
everything done over to fit the very latest
fashion. It was this air of fashionable
conformity that Fleda and Mrs. Gereth
objected to. They recognized what the
estate would have been naturally, and
they could only be repulsed by what it
had become.
Mrs. Gereth's horror of Waterbath was
particularly acute because of the
comparison she inevitably made between it
and her own home at Poynton.
Everything at Poynton was exquisite. She and
her late husband had gradually furnished
it after years of scraping and saving so
that they might have the best. Every
article in the house had been carefully
chosen during their travels in various
parts of the world, and she rightly
considered it the most beautiful place in
England. Unfortunately, the estate had
been left to her son Owen, and she knew
that she would have to give it up, along
with her beloved treasures, when he
married. Her secret dread was that he would
marry a woman with as little a sense of
the beautiful as he himself had. She
therefore spent much of her time at
Waterbath trying to turn his attention
from Mona Brigstock, who personified
everything she dreaded, to Fleda Vetch,
the one person of her acquaintance who
would appreciate and preserve Poynton
as it was.
When Mrs. Gereth, with somewhat
ulterior motives, invited Fleda to come
to Poynton as a friend and permanent
companion, Fleda, who had no real home
3594

of her own, readily accepted. To the
chagrin of both women, Owen soon wrote
that he was planning to marry Mona and
that he was bringing her down within a
week to see the estate. Mona, of course,
approved. Although she failed to
appreciate its beauty and immediately began
planning certain changes, she did realize
that every article in the house had some
value, and she insisted that Mrs. Gereth
leave all but her personal belongings as
they were. Mrs. Gereth was to be given
the smaller, but still charming, estate
called Ricks.
At first Mrs. Gereth refused to be
moved, but she finally agreed to make
the change when it was decided that she
could take a few of her prized objects
with her. Owen, who was very much
disturbed at being pushed by Mona to
the point of having a serious conflict
with his mother, had solicited Fleda's aid
in getting his mother to make the move
quickly. This request only complicated
matters, however, for Fleda soon fell in
love with Owen and could not really be
effective as an agent for both parties in
the controversy. She encouraged Mrs.
Gereth to move quickly and quietly,
leaving Poynton essentially as it was; but,
because of her feelings toward both her
friend and the estate, she also
encouraged Owen to give his mother more time.
During these negotiations it became
necessary for Fleda to go to London to
see her father. While she was gone Mrs.
Gereth left Poynton. Her moving was
quick and quiet. When Fleda rejoined
her at Ricks, she found that the woman
had moved virtually all of the furnishings
from Poynton. Needless to say, Owen
and Mona were less than pleased. In fact,
Mona postponed the wedding; she refused
to marry Owen until Poynton again held
its rightful belongings. Again Mrs.
Gereth was stubborn, and more negotiations
ensued, with both sides once more
depending on Fleda for aid.
This time it was Owen's turn to fall
in love. His strained relations with Mona,
which caused a rather close relationship
with Fleda, left him emotionally unstable.
He had also lately come to realize how
much Poynton, as he had always known
it, meant to him and to appreciate
anyone who understood its beauty and value
as Fleda did. He knew that his life would
have been much more satisfactory at this
time if he were about to marry Fleda
instead of Mona. Mrs. Gereth, who had
always been willing to give up Poynton
to anyone who could love it as she did,
would gladly send back everything for
Fleda. A realization of this fact finally
caused Owen to declare his love for Fleda
and to ask her to marry him.
Fleda, although she acknowledged her
own feelings, would make no move until
Owen had completely broken with Mona
Brigstock, and it was to this end that she
sent him away. When Mrs. Gereth heard
of these developments she thought that
the situation had finally worked out to
her liking, and she immediately sent
everything back to Poynton. This act
proved a mistake, however, for as soon as
Mona heard that the furnishings had
been returned she immediately became
her former charming self and again
captivated Owen. Unfortunately, because of
his honor as a gentleman, Owen could
not break the engagement unless the lady
demonstrated that she wished to do so;
Mona Brigstock now made it clear that
she did not wish to end the engagement.
She quickly married him and moved at
once to Poynton in order to acknowledge
and secure her possession of the house
and its contents. Soon the couple began
an extended tour of the Continent.
Fleda and Mrs. Gereth again took up
residence at Ricks and succeeded in
making quite a charming place out of it, in
spite of having little to work with and
of having to do it with broken hearts.
Sometime later Fleda received a letter
from Owen asking her to go to Poynton
and take whatever object she most prized,
and because of her love both for Owen
and the estate, she resolved to do so.
When she arrived at the station, still
more than a mile from Poynton, she saw
great billows of smoke rising from that
direction. It was a porter who told her
3595

that everything was lost. In a fire which Poynton and all its beautiful furnishings
was probably caused by a faulty lamp were destroyed,
and aided tremendously by a strong wind,
B596

SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
Type of work: Poetry
Author: Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950)
First published: 1915
Like Edward FitzGerald and a few
other poets, Edgar Lee Masters is that
rarity among men of letters: he
established his reputation on the basis of one
work, Spoon River Anthology. Masters
was a prolific writer, producing many
volumes of verse, several plays, an
autobiography, several biographies, essays,
novels, and an attempt to recapture his
great success in a sequel, The New Spoon
R'ver; but except for a handful of
individual poems from the other volumes,
he will be remembered as the re-creator
of a small Middle Western town which
he calls Spoon River, but which was
probably Lewiston, Illinois, where he studied
law in his father's office and practiced for
a year before moving on to Chicago.
In form and style Spoon River
Anthology is not a work that sprang wholly out
of Masters' imagination; it is modeled on
The Greek Anthology and the style of
the character sketches owes a
considerable debt to Browning. But Masters has
written his book with such an effortless
brilliance and freshness that some forty-
five years after its first publication it still
retains a kind of startling inevitability, as
if this were the best and only way to
present people in poetry. From their
graveyard on the hill Masters lets more
than two hundred of the dead citizens
of Spoon River tell the truth about
themselves, each person writing what might
be his or her own epitaph. The secrets
they reveal are shocking—stories of
intrigue, corruption, frustration, adultery.
Because of its unrelenting frankness,
Spoon River Anthology provoked howls
of protest from disturbed readers who felt
that it presented too sordid a picture of
American small-town life. Distorted or
not, Masters' approach to his subject
undoubtedly helped open the way for
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY by Edgar Lee Mas
Masters. Published by The Macmillan Co. Copyright,
1915, by The Macmillan Co. Renewed. All rights reserv
dozens of novels whose authors seem to
use grappling hooks to break that placid
surface of life and dredge up secrets
from the murk below.
Masters' book, however, is not a novel
in verse, and while many of the poems
are interrelated and a certain amount of
suspense is created by having one
character mention a person or incident to be
further developed in a later epitaph, the
anthology is not centered around a
unifying theme. About the closest approach to
such a theme is the tragic failure of the
town's bank, chiefly attributed to Thomas
Rhodes, its president, and his son Ralph,
who confesses from the grave:
All they said was true:
1 wrec ked my father's bank with my
loans
To dabble in wheat; but this was true—
I was buying wheat for him as well,
Who couldn't margin the deal in his
name
Because of his church relationship.
Many people suffered from the bank's
collapse, including the cashier, George
Reece, who had the blame placed on him
and served a term in prison; but a far
more corroding effect was the cynicism
generated in the citizens when they found
that their leaders, the "stalwarts," were
weak and culpable.
Masters has pictured many vivid
characters in Spoon River Anthology. They
range all the way from Daisy Fraser, the
town harlot who
Never was taken before Justice Arnett
Without contributing ten dollars and
costs
To the school fund of Spoon River!
to Lucinda Matlock, who
Rambled over the fields where sang the
larks,
ers. Excerpts reprinted by permission of Ellen C.
1914, 1915, by William Marion Reedy. Copyright,
3597

And by Spoon River gathering many a
shell,
And many a flower and medicinal
weed—.
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing
to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that
is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
Others are the town physicians, Doc Hill
and Doc Myers, both of whose lives are
scarred; Petit, the Poet, whose "faint
iambics" rattled on "while Homer and
Whitman roared in the pines"; Ann
Rutledge, from whose dead bosom the
Republic blooms forever; Russian Sonia,
a dancer who met old Patrick Hummer,
of Spoon River, and went back with him
to the town, where the couple lived
twenty years in unmarried content; and
Chase Henry, the town drunkard, a
Catholic who was denied burial in
consecrated ground but who won some
measure of honor when the Protestants
acquired the land where he was buried and
interred banker Nicholas and wife beside
the old reprobate.
Spoon River Anthology is weighted
so heavily on the sordid side—abortions,
suicides, adulteries—that the more
cheerful and "normal" epitaphs come almost
as a relief. Lucinda Matlock and Ann
Rutledge fit this category; others are
Hare Drummer, who delights in the
memory of a happy childhood; Conrad
Siever, content in his grave under an
apple tree he planted, pruned, and
tended; and Fiddler Jones, who never
could stick to farming and who ended
up with "a broken laugh, and a thousand
memories,/And not a single regret."
One especially effective device that
Masters makes use of in his collection is
the pairing of poems so that the reader
gets a startling jolt of irony. Thus
when Elsa Wertman, a peasant girl
from Germany, confesses that her
employer, Thomas Greene, fathered her
child and then raised it as his and Mrs.
Greene's, we find in the next poem that
Hamilton, the son, attributes his great
success as a politician to the "honorable
blood" he inherited from Mr. and Mrs.
Greene. There is also Roscoe Purkapile,
who ran away from his wife for a year,
telling her when he came back that he
had been captured by pirates while he
was rowing a boat on Lake Michigan.
After he told her the story
She cried and kissed me, and said it was
cruel,
Outrageous, inhuman!
However, when Mrs. Purkapile has her
say in the next poem, she makes it known
that she was not taken in by his cock-
and-bull story, that she knew he was
trysting in the city with Mrs. Williams,
the milliner, and that she refused to be
drawn into a divorce by a husband "who
had merely grown tired of his marital
vow and duty."
Masters displays an amazing variety of
effects in these short poems. His use of
free verse undoubtedly helps to achieve
this variety, for a stricter form or forms
might make the poems seem too pat, too
artificial. Sometimes Masters lets his
character's only remembrance of life be a
simple, vivid description, as when Bert
Kessler tells how he met his death. Out
hunting one day, Bert killed a quail and
when he reached down by a stump to
pick it up he felt something sting his
hand, like the prick of a brier:
And then, in a second, I spied the
ratder—
The shutters wide in his yellow eyes,
The head of him arched, sunk back in
the rings of him,
A circle of filth, the color of ashes,
Or oak leaves bleached under layers of
leaves.
I stood like a stone as he shrank and
uncoiled
And started to crawl beneath the stump,
When I fell limp in the grass.
Bert tells of his death without comment,
but when Harry Williams describes how
he was deluded into joining the army to
fight in the Spanish-American War, in
which he was killed, the poem is full of
bitterness, horror, and brutal irony.
To say that every poem in this volume
3598

is successful would be as foolish as to
contend that each entry in Shakespeare's
sonnet sequence is a masterpiece.
Masters frequently strains for an effect; for
instance, "Sexsmith the Dentist" seems
to have been created so that Sexsmith
may remark, at the end, that what we
consider truth may be a hollow tooth
"which must be propped with gold"; and
Mrs. Kessler, a washerwoman, was
probably included so that she might observe
that the face of a dead person always
looked to her "like something washed and
ironed." And there are other poems in
which the characters just do not come
alive. One suspects that the poet wrote
a number of philosophical lyrics, some
of them marred by cliches and cloying
rhetoric, and then titled them with names
selected at random.
In the main, however, Masters has
done a remarkable job in Spoon River
Anthology. Anyone living in a small
town will recognize in these poems the
people he sees every day; and, though
he may not like to admit it, when these
people die they may carry to the grave
secrets as startling and embarrassing as
those revealed by the dead of Spoon
River.
3599

THE SPY
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1780; 1812
Locale: New York State
First published: 1821
Principal characters:
Harvey Birch, a peddler
Mr. Harper, General George Washington
Mr. Wharton, a Loyalist sympathizer
Frances, his daughter
Sarah, another daughter
Henry, his son
Major Peyton Dunwoodik, an American officer
Captain Lawton, another American officer
Colonel Wellmere, a British officer
Critique:
Judged by modern standards, The Spy:
A Tale of the Neutral Ground is still a
satisfactory historical novel. As Cooper
remarked in the introduction to his novel,
however, his purpose in The Spy is
frankly patriotic. If the reader bears this
fact in mind, he can understand that
Peyton Dunwoodie is supposed to
represent the ideal American soldier and
officer; Frances Wharton, the ideal of
American womanhood; and Washington,
of course, the ideal father of his country,
combining Roman strength and vigor
with American humanity and humility.
This understanding will help the reader
to appreciate Cooper's point of view. The
great historical novelist of the early
nineteenth century was an intensely
nationalistic individual who, conscious of the
past achievements and potentialities of
his country, looked forward eagerly to
the development of a great nation.
The Story:
At the beginning of the Revolutionary
War, Harvey Birch, a peddler, became
a spy against the British. Because of the
extremely secret nature of Birch's work,
few Americans were aware of his true
mission. As a matter of fact, they
suspected that he was a British spy, and they
denounced him as a bold and shameless
Tory.
At the time, Westchester County in
New York was considered common
ground for both the rebels and the
Loyalists, and the inhabitants of the county
affected a neutrality they did not feel.
This was the case of Mr. Wharton, a
British sympathizer, who at the outbreak
of hostilities had retired to his country
estate with his two daughters, Sarah and
Frances, and their aunt, Miss Jeanette
Peyton.
One evening as a storm was
approaching a horseman rode up to the Wharton
house, The Locusts. He was a tall man
of powerful frame, military in his bearing
but plain and sober in his dress. After
being let into the house by the Whartons*
Negro servant, Caesar Thompson, the
traveler introduced himself as Mr. Harper
and asked for shelter from the storm. Mr.
Wharton courteously granted the
traveler's request, and the two men were soon
engaged in conversation concerning the
progress of the war. Mr. Wharton
expressed his views cautiously in order to
determine Mr. Harper's sentiments, but
the stranger remained tight-lipped and
uncommunicative in his replies.
The conversation between the two
men was interrupted by the arrival of
Henry Wharton, Mr. Wharton's son and
a captain in the British army. The young
man wore a disguise because he had been
3600

compelled to cross the American lines in
order to visit his home. He was
disconcerted when Mr. Harper recognized him,
despite the disguise.
Later Harvey Birch, the peddler
believed by all in the neighborhood to be a
royalist spy, came to the Wharton home,
bringing with him laces for the ladies,
tobacco for Mr. Wharton, and news of
the war — news which included a report
of the hanging of Major Andre\ During
Birch's visit, Caesar, the colored servant,
remarked to his master that he had heard
voices in Mr. Harper's room. There
seemed to be no reason why the traveler
and the peddler should have matters to
talk over in private.
With the return of fair weather, Mr.
Harper said goodbye to his host. Before
he departed he promised to help Henry
Wharton, if the latter ever needed help,
in return for Mr. Wharton's hospitality.
Shortly after Mr. Harper left, the
Wharton home was surrounded by a troop of
Virginia cavalry looking for a man
answering Mr. Harper's description. V/hen
the American soldiers entered Mr.
Wharton's house, they discovered Henry,
whose disguise was so hastily assumed
that Captain Lawton, in command of the
troop, was able to discover the deception.
The captain was certain that Henry was
a spy because he knew that Birch, whom
he believed a British spy, had recently
been visiting the Whartons.
Not certain what course he should
follow with Henry, Captain Lawton
consulted his superior, Major Peyton Dun-
woodie, who was interested not only in
Henry Wharton but also in Henry's
sister, Frances. She pleaded with her lover
for Henry's release, but when Henry was
found to have a pass signed by General
Washington, Major Dunwoodie thought
that the case warranted Henry's arrest.
Further investigation by Major
Dunwoodie into the matter was halted by a
report that British troops were in the
neighborhood. The major rushed to his
command, leaving Henry guarded by two
soldiers.
In the confusion Henry escaped. He
reported to his superior, Colonel Well-
mere, leader of the advancing British
troops, who professed to be in love with
Sarah Wharton. When Henry advised
the colonel to be wary of Major
Dunwoodie and his Americans, Wellmere
scorned the advice and determined to
force a fight with the rebels. In the brief
engagement which followed the British
were routed and Captain Lawton
succeeded in recapturing Henry, who was
returned under guard to his father's
home. Colonel Wellmere, also taken
prisoner, was slightly wounded in the action.
Chagrined by his defeat and capture, he
gave the impression that his injuries were
mortal, much to the distress of Sarah
Wharton.
Birch was watching Major Dun-
woodie's success from a distant hill when
he was sighted by Captain Lawton, who
determined to capture the spying peddler
dead or alive. In the pursuit, Captain
Lawton overtook Birch, but he fell from
his horse and found himself at the
peddler's mercy. Birch, however, spared Cap
tain Lawton's life, and for that act oi
magnanimity the captain would not allow
his men to overtake the peddler.
A price was put on Birch's head. One
night his house was ransacked and burned
by a band of lawless men called Skinners,
who surprised the peddler and his dying
father. They then delivered Birch to
Captain Lawton and claimed their
reward. Major Dunwoodie, who was also
present when the peddler was brought in,
accused him of treason. Although Birch
possessed a paper which would have
cleared him of the charge, he swallowed
it rather than betray the confidence of
his secret employer. Captain Lawton paid
the Skinners in gold for their captive, but
he also ordered them whipped for
burning, robbing, and murdering.
Birch was put in jail, but that night he
escaped in the guise of a washerwoman
who visited his cell. The next morning,
on the outskirts of the American camp, hf
confronted Major Dunwoodie again.
With a gun pointed at the officer, to
prevent recapture, the peddler warned
3601

him to be on guard against danger
to the Whartons. Major Dunwoodie was
alarmed by the thought of danger
threatening Frances Wharton. He was also
much disturbed because he felt that he
could never win Frances if her brother
were executed as a spy. Major Dun-
woodie's troubles were magnified when,
after assuring Frances that he would try
to get General Washington's help for her
brother, she turned from him coldly
because she believed that he was in love
with Isabella Singleton, the sister of an
American officer who was recuperating at
The Locusts from injuries sustained in
the battle.
Meanwhile Sarah Wharton had
accepted Colonel Wellmere's proposal of
marriage, and a date for the wedding had
been set, the night when there was to
be an exchange of prisoners at the
Wharton house. Major Dunwoodie and
Captain Lawton were among the guests
during the truce arranged for the exchange
and the wedding. The ceremony was
suddenly interrupted, however, by the
appearance of Birch, who told the colonel
that the Englishman's wife had crossed
the ocean to meet him. Sarah fainted.
Captain Lawton challenged Colonel
Wellmere to a duel. The Englishman
missed his mark, but Captain Lawton
was prevented from killing his adversary
when the Skinners leaped upon him and
overpowered him. Colonel Wellmere
fled the scene, and Captain Lawton was
able to escape his enemies only after a
fierce struggle.
The Skinners then proceeded to burn
Mr. Wharton's house. Captain Lawton
returned to the scene with troops he had
met on the road, and after routing the
Skinners he rescued Frances from the
blazing house. Birch rescued Sarah and
again Captain Lawton permitted the
peddler to escape. A bullet fired at Captain
Lawton from the darkness, apparently by
the Skinners, struck Isabella Singleton
and wounded her mortally. On her
deathbed she confessed to Frances her love for
Major Dunwoodie but said that he
thought of her only as a friend.
At his trial Henry Wharton admitted
that he had used a disguise in order to
pass through the American lines, but he
insisted that his reason for doing so had
been for the one purpose of visiting his
family, especially his aged father. Major
Dunwoodie himself vouched for Henry's
character. Frances, however, ruined her
brother's chances for acquittal when she
confessed that Henry had had dealings
with Birch, who, she told the court, had
given her brother his disguise. Henry's
rate seemed certain. He was found guilty
and sentenced to be hanged on the
following day.
Major Dunwoodie declared that he
would go to General Washington to make
an appeal for the life of his friend. His
attempt was unsuccessful, however, for
the commander-in-chief was not at his
headquarters.
Soon afterward a tall, gaunt man in
clerical dress appeared and announced
himself as a minister from a nearby
village, come to offer spiritual comfort to
the condemned man. Admitted to
Henry's cell, he revealed himself as
Harvey Birch. He helped Henry to disguise
himself as Caesar Thompson, the faithful
black servant of the Whartons, and led
the young officer past the unsuspecting
sentinel with the remark that the black
servant was being sent on an errand for
his master.
Frances, hearing of the escape, thought
that her brother and the peddler would
probably hide in a cabin not far away.
Stealing away from the American lines,
she set out to join them. But to her
surprise, she found the cabin occupied
by Mr. Harper, who was poring over an
outspread map. Recalling his promise to
help her brother, she told him the whole
story. He reassured her that all would
be well and told her to return to
headquarters to await Major Dunwoodie.
Orders from General Washington
arrived in time to relieve Major
Dunwoodie of the necessity of tracking down
Henry, who was thus allowed to escape.
Several days later Birch saw him safely
aboard a British man-of-war in New York
3602

harbor.
Frances and Major Dunwoodie decided
to be married immediately. Within a
short time, however, their bliss was
tempered by the news that Captain Lawton
had fallen in battle with the British.
Some time later Birch appeared at the
headquarters of the American army in
a New Jersey town. There he had a long
interview with a grave and noble man
whom the Whartons would have
recognized as Mr. Harper. The peddler called
him General Washington. During their
talk the general attempted to reward his
faithful spy by giving him money. The
peddler refused to accept payment for
his services to his country, but he did
welcome a letter of approbation from his
commander-in-chief. It was agreed that
the peddler's real mission as an American
spy should remain a secret which only
they would share.
Thirty-two years later, in the War of
1812, a gaunt old peddler appeared on
the Canadian border and carried word
of British troop movements to the
American lines. There he met Captain Whait
ton Dunwoodie, the son of Major Peyton
Dunwoodie and his wife Frances. To
him the peddler acknowledged his earlier
acquaintanceship with the young officer's
parents.
A few days later, during a battle, the
old peddler threw away his pack and with
a musket seized from a fallen soldier
rushed into the fight. After the battle
Captain Dunwoodie found the old man's
body and on his person a letter, signed
by George Washington, which revealed
Harvey Birch, not as a despicable spy but
as a loyal, heroic, and long-suffering
patriot
3603

THE STAR OF SEVILLE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Unknown, but sometimes attributed to Lope de Vega (1562-1635)
Type of plot: Cape-and-sword tragedy
Time of plot: Thirteenth century
Locale: Seville
First presented: c. 1617
Principal characters:
King Sancho the Brave
Estrella Tabera, The Star of Seville
Don Bustos Tabera, her brother
Don Arias, the king's confidant
Don Pedro de Guzman, and
Don Farfan de Riviera, alcaldes of Seville
Don Sancho Ortiz, a nobleman of Seville
Clarindo, Don Sancho's servant
Critique:
With the reasoning that The Star of
Seville is an excellent play and that Lope
de Vega was an excellent playwright,
people have believed for centuries that he
wrote it; but scholars have recently taken
a closer look at the two extant versions
and have begun to doubt his authorship.
Needing clarification is the fact that the
author's name, in the final quatrain of
one version, is given as "Cardenio," an
emendation that corrected a line
imperfect when "Lope" was put there.
Technically, too, the play is unlike dramas
that Lope is known to have written. It
is noticeably lacking in humor, and the
lagging of interest in the last act is
unworthy of a master of plot construction.
Experts, on the lookout for another
possible author, have suggested that the
drama represents the reworking of a play,
possibly by Lope, by a less skilled hand.
One nomination is the obscure Cordoba
dramatist, Pedro de Cdrdenas y Angulo,
who is known to have used "Cardenio"
as his pen name, but no play by him
exists for comparison. Another candidate
is the actor-manager, Andres de Clara-
monte, known to have been in Seville in
1622, who may have rewritten an earlier
play. A number of his plays exist, signed
"Clarindo" and containing some
excellent scenes but careless poetry. In The
Star of Seville, a character named
Clarindo recites the final appeal to the
audience. But whoever the author may have
been, he produced, in spite of certain
shortcomings, a masterpiece of the Golden
Age.
The Story:
Sancho IV, King of Castile, was
delighted with his welcome to Seville, and
he was especially charmed by a black-
haired beauty seen on a balcony. The
alcaldes of the city identified her as
Estrella Tabera, the Star of Seville. King
Sancho whispered orders to his confidant,
Arias, telling him to arrange for the
monarch to visit her the next evening. He
also sent for her brother, Don Bustos
Tabera, in the hope of winning his
agreement to the royal suit.
When he offered Don Bustos Tabera
the command of the military post at Ar-
chidona, already sought by two veteran
soldiers, the nobleman amazed the king
by refusing the honor and by accepting
with obvious reluctance other friendly
gestures; his excuse was that he did not
deserve them.
At home, Don Bustos found his sister
and Don Sancho Ortiz planning their
marriage. Before long the disguised king
appeared, but Don Bustos, pleading a
house in disorder and foreseeing the
possibility of a scandal, did not invite him in.
However, Arias did succeed in entering
the house. When he revealed his errand,
Estrella indignantly refused his request
that she be kind to the king. He had bet-
3604

ter luck when he tried to bribe Matilde,
the maid, who promised to admit the king
to the house after dark.
That night, after the king had been
admitted, Don Bustos returned home
unexpectedly and found the monarch there.
Pretending not to believe that the
intruder was the king, since a noble and
just ruler would not stoop to dishonor,
Don Bustos insulted him as a masquer-
ader. The angry king, with no legal way
to get his revenge for the insults he had
endured, sent for Don Sancho Ortiz and
offered to arrange the young nobleman's
marriage to anyone he should choose, in
return for ridding the king of an enemy.
Don Sancho was given a paper on which
was written the name of the man he was
supposed to kill.
In the meantime Don Bustos, having
forced Matilde to confess her treachery,
hanged her from the king's balcony. Then
he instructed Estrella to arrange for her
marriage to Don Sancho at once, and the
girl sent her lover a message informing
him of the plan and asking him to come
to her. The two notes posed for Don
Sancho a conflict between duty and
inclination. He loved Estrella, but he had
sworn to serve the king faithfully; and
so, when he met Don Bustos, he picked
a quarrel with his sweetheart's brother
and killed him in a duel. Afterward he
stubbornly refused to give any
explanation of his deed and was taxen, under
arrest, to the Triana prison.
Estrella, awaiting the arrival of Don
Sancho, received instead the body of her
dead brother. When she learned the
name of his murderer, she decided to go
at once to the king to demand vengeance.
Before her arrival at the palace, the king
had already been assured that Don
Sancho was loyally keeping silent about
the king's part in the death of the don.
Since justice would be expected,
however, the king was forced to order the
beheading of Don Sancho. To Arias he
marveled at the honor and dignity of the
citizens of Seville.
When Estrella appeared, the king
delegated to her the power to pass sentence
on the murderer of her brother and sent
her, with his ring, to the Triana prison.
Alone, he soliloquized on the tragic
results of his unbridled passion.
Meanwhile, in the prison, loyal Clarindo was
trying to amuse Don Sancho, who seemed
to be out of his mind. The alcaldes could
not understand his ravings or his refusal
to explain his crime. He kept telling them
that he had acted as a king, and that it
was the duty of someone else to confess.
As they were about to order his
execution, Estrella appeared, veiled/ By now
her love had conquered her anger, and
she ordered the release of the prisoner.
At the palace, Arias kept insisting that
Don Sancho deserved to be saved. On the
other hand, if the king were to confess,
his action might cost him his throne. At
last he sent Arias to smooth things over,
and in private he urged each alcalde to
spare Don Sancho's life. But they
considered a pardon incompatible with their
concepts of honor and royal dignity, and
in spite of both Estrella and the king they
ordered Don Sancho's execution.
With such examples of honor
confronting him, the king was moved by his
own conscience to confess that he had
instigated the assassination. Since a king
could do no wrong, he was unpunished,
and Don Sancho was set free. However,
both he and Estrella refused to obey the
king's order that they marry. The Hood
of Estrella's slain brother separated them
forever.
3605

STATE FAIR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Phil Stong (1899-1957)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early 1930's
Locale: Iowa
First published: 1932
Principal characters:
Abel Frake, a prosperous farmer
Melissa Frake, his wife
Wayne, his son
Margy, his daughter
Eleanor, Wayne's friend
Harry Ware, Margy's friend
Emily, a girl Wayne met at the fair
Pat Gilbert, a newspaperman
The Storekeeper, a local philosopher
Blue Boy, a prize boar
Critique:
In State Fair Phil Stong has accurately
and sympathetically shown us the
reactions of a typical Midwestern family to
that most important event of the year,
the state fair. The members of the Frake
family might be any of our neighbors,
and the storekeeper the cracker-barrel
sage at whom all small towns smile
indulgently. State Fair has no lesson to
teach or moral to point up. It is
interesting in characterization and entertaining
in story and therefore achieves the
purpose for which it was written.
The Story:
Abel Frake knew that this year Blue
Boy would be judged the finest boar at
the state fair. As he discussed his hog
with the men loafing in the store one
Saturday night, he found the
storekeeper as pessimistic as usual.
The storekeeper believed that
something intangible was always working to
see that things did not go too well for
most people. What it was he could not
exactly say, but he was willing to bet
Abel five dollars that it would either
keep him from winning the blue ribbon
or let him win because some other
catastrophe would occur later. Abel,
accustomed to the storekeeper's gloom, went
home with his confidence in Blue Boy
unshaken.
As Abel and his wife Melissa made
plans for the next day's start for the
fair, their son and daughter were not so
carefree. Wayne was with Eleanor, home
from her first year in college. But she
was changed. Before she went away she
had always been his girl; now she did
not want to be committed to any promises
for the future. Wayne drove home in
gloomy silence. When he pulled into
the farmyard, he found his sister Margy
and Harry Ware sitting in his
convertible. Harry was begging Margy to
marry him as soon as she came home
from the fair. But Margy, like Eleanor,
did not know whether it was Harry she
wanted.
Sunday was spent in making last-
minute preparations for their departure.
Melissa checked the jars of pickles she
intended to exhibit at the fair. Abel could
do nothing except groom Blue Boy.
That evening they started out in the
farm truck. The pickles and Blue Boy
were given most consideration in the
packing, for they were to win honors
for the family. Abel drove all night and
reached the fairgrounds in Des Moines
on Monday morning. Blue Boy was
STATE FAIR by Phil Stong. By permission of the author and his agent Harold Matson. Copyright, 1932,
by Phil Stong
3606

taken at once to the stock pavilion, and
the family set up their tent in an area
reserved for fair visitors.
As soon as Wayne could get away, he
went to the fairgrounds to look for a
barker who had cheated him the year
before. During the past year Wayne had
practiced throwing hoops, and he almost
cleaned out the barker before he stopped
throwing. When the barker threatened
to call the police, a girl who had been
watching called his bluff and walked
away with Wayne. Her name was Emily;
she was the daughter of a stock-show
manager. She and Wayne visited other
booths together. In the afternoon they
went to the horse races and Emily won
some money for them to spend.
While Wayne was busy with Emily,
Margy strolled around the fairgrounds
and looked at the exhibits. That night
she and Wayne planned to visit the
midway, but they became separated and
Margy went on alone. On the roller
coaster she met Pat Gilbert, a reporter
for a Des Moines paper. Margy found
that she could talk easily with Pat.
On Wednesday Melissa's pickles won
three blue ribbons. A photographer who
was with Pat took pictures of Melissa
and Margy. Neither Wayne nor Margy
had told their family about* their new
friends, and Margy had to pretend that
she did not see Pat at the exhibit. As
soon as she could get away, she and
Pat went again to the roller coaster. As
they walked back to the tent grounds that
night, they stopped in a grassy spot that
was hidden from the walks and paths.
Pat took Margy in his arms and kissed
her, and she gave herself to him willingly.
On Thursday the most important event
was the judging of the hogs. Although
Abel was nervous and at times had doubts
of his victory, he was not really much
surprised when Blue Boy had the blue
ribbon pinned on his stall. The judges
declared him the finest boar they had
ever seen, and from then on the fair
was over for Abel. In fact, the judging
over, he and Melissa had little interest
in the remainder of the week.
That evening Wayne and Emily went
to a stage show in the city, and Wayne
thought it the most wonderful show he
had ever seen. Afterward Emily took
Wayne to her hotel room and gave him
a drink of whiskey. He had never tasted
liquor before; it gave him a wonderful,
warm feeling inside. Emily went into
another room to change from her
evening gown. Wayne was not surprised
when she returned wearing only a thin
kimona. He had known what to expect
when he had gone to the hotel with her.
On Friday evening Pat asked Margy to
marry him right away. He loved her and
wanted to keep her with him. But
she knew that a marriage between them
would never work out. Pat was restless
and wanted to see the world. He thought
now that he would gladly settle down in
Des Moines for the rest of his life if he
could have Margy with him, but she
knew that he would grow restless again
and be unhappy with her. When she
told him goodbye, she knew she would
not see him again.
That same night Wayne told Emily
that he loved her and asked her to marry
him and go back to the farm with him.
Emily also refused. She, hke Pat, could
never stand quiet life on the farm. She
was not a wild girl, but she still wanted
to enjoy the pleasures of youth.
The next morning the family packed
their truck and went back home. On
Sunday Eleanor and Harry came to
dinner as though nothing had happened
that made this Sunday different from any
other. The storekeeper drove out and
paid his five dollars to Abel, conceding
that nothing would happen in the next
two months to make him win the bet.
But as he looked at Wayne and Margy,
he smiled, as if he saw that something
had already happened.
3607

STEPPENWOLF
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: Germany
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Harry Haller, the steppenwolf
Hermine, a friend
Pablo, a saxophonist
Maria, a demi-mondaine
Critique:
Steppenwolf is an important work by
an important German novelist and poet
who won the Nobel prize in 1946. This
novel is an unusual combination of
smooth, compelling narrative and deep
insight into the conflict between nature
and spirit. In a way, this conflict is an
allegory of Germany, buffeted and
anchorless, after her defeat in 1918. In
Haller, Hesse has given us an
understanding of the German renascence which
was aborted into Nazism. In a larger
way the conflict is that of the roaring
twenties when the lost generation sought
a path out of the maze. The solution is
as inevitable as it is unappealing.
The Story:
The aunt, who kept a spotless
bourgeois house, was attracted to Harry
Haller, the new lodger who had rented
her attic. Her nephew, however, was
suspicious of Haller. His suspicions were
first aroused when the lodger asked them
not to report his domicile to the police;
he explained that he had a repugnance
for official contacts. His room was always
in disorder; cigar ends and ashes, wine
and brandy, pictures and books littered
the apartment.
Haller was about fifty, sometimes in
poor health and addicted to pain killers.
He arose very late and became active
only at night. He was invariably polite,
but remote. Once the nephew found him
sitting on the stairs near a landing.
Haller explained that the landing,
redolent of wax and turpentine and decorated
with washed plants, seemed to him the
epitome of bourgeois order. Occasionally
a pretty girl came to see Haller for a
short time; her final visit ended in a
bitter quarrel.
One day Haller disappeared, after
meticulously paying his accounts. He left
behind a manuscript, written during his
stay, which told the story of a
steppenwolf. The nephew, sure that Haller was
not dead, made the. account public.
Haller, nearing fifty, had suffered a
series of blows. His wife, becoming mad,
chased him from the house. His
profession was closed to him. Living a solitary
life, he became a divided personality.
On the one side he was a neat, calm
bourgeois; on the other, he was a wolf
from the steppes. When he acted
politely and genteelly, the gaunt world mocked
his respectability. When he snarled and
withdrew from society, his bourgeois self
was shocked. It seemed that he was a true
steppenwolf.
On a solitary night ramble, he thought
he saw an electric sign over a Gothic
door in an old wall. The words, which
he could barely make out, told of a magic
show only for madmen. A little later he
saw a peddler with a similar sign. Eagerly
he bought from a hawker a treatise on
the steppenwolf which he avidly read.
STEPPENWOLF by Hermann Hesse. Translated by Basil Creighton. By permission of the publishers,
Henry Holt & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1929, by Henry Holt & Co., Inc.
3608

The treatise explained the popular
concept or a steppenwolf, half-wolf and half-
man through mischance or spell. But this
concept was oversimplified. Every one
was composed not of two selves, out of
many selves. The great bulk of the
populace was held to one self through the
rigid patterns of the sheep-like
bourgeoisie; but here and there a few men,
ostensibly complying, were not really part
of the pattern. They acted like the lone
wolf. They were the leaders in all fields.
Meditating on this philosophy, Haller
understood his own nature a little more
clearly, but he could scarcely think of
himself as containing many selves.
An old acquaintance, a professor, met
him and insisted on inviting him to
dinner. The occasion was not a happy one.
The professor and his wife were naively
jingoistic and approved a vicious
newspaper attack on a Haller who had
written that perhaps the Germans shared the
war guilt of 1914 to 1918. The professor,
of course, did not realize that the writer
was his guest, for Haller was a common
name. Then Haller ridiculed a pompous
painting of Goethe which was greatly
prized by the professor's wife.
Feeling the wolf in him dominant, he
dropped in at the Black Eagle Tavern,
where merriment reigned riotous. At the
bar he encountered a young girl who
was sympathetic. He told her his long
tale of woe: the professor's dinner; his
mad wife; Erica, whom he saw only
every few months and with whom he
quarreled. The girl, who refused to give her
name, good-naturedly ridiculed his
preoccupations with Mozart and Indian
myths when he did not even know how
to dance. She seemed almost motherly in
her concern for him; and when he
confessed he was afraid to go back to his
lodging, she sent him upstairs to sleep.
Before they parted, Haller made a dinner
date with her.
At their next meeting the girl, who
gave her name as Hermine, set out to
make Haller a different person. She
would help him for friendship's sake, so
that in the end Haller would love her
enough to kill her. Haller himself had
thought of death; in fact, he was
seriously contemplating suicide on his fiftieth
birthday. Perhaps that was why he
thought so little of Hermine's strange
plan.
Hermine began her campaign. First
she took him shopping for a gramaphone,
and in his cluttered room he took
dancing lessons. Although he was stiff, he
learned the steps of the foxtrot. Then she
took him to a tavern to dance. At her
urging he asked the most beautiful girl
there, Maria, to be his partner. To his
amazement, she accepted, and they
danced well together. Hermine
complimented him on his progress.
Late one night, as Haller returned
quietly to his bedroom, he found Maria
in his bed. Thinking himself too old for
her, Haller was hesitant; but Maria was
so sympathetic that he lost his reluctance.
He met Maria frequently in another
room he rented nearby. Haller was
grateful to Hermine, who had arranged it all.
She kept track of his progress in love.
After some time Haller realized that only
through a lesbian relation could Hermine
have known Maria's technique so well.
Another new acquaintance was Pablo,
a gentle, accommodating saxophonist. He
agreed readily with Haller's criticisms of
modern jazz and his preference for
Mozart. But music, to Pablo, was not
something to criticize; it was something to
enjoy, and dancers enjoyed his music. Part
of Pablo's great popularity came from his
ability to provide drugs for jaded
profligates. One night Pablo invited Hallei
and Maria to his room and proposed a
love episode for three. Haller refused
abruptly, but Maria would have liked to
accept.
Hermine several times hinted that she
was more unhappy than Haller. He was
learning other sides of life, but she knew
only a life of pleasure and the senses.
She was hoping that Haller would come
to love her, because at the coming
masquerade ball she would give her last
3609

command.
At the big dance, Hermine was dressed
as a man, reminding Haller of his friend
Hermann. They danced with many
different women. When Hermine finally
changed to women's clothes, Haller knew
he loved her.
After the ball Pablo took them up to
his peep show. There in a hall of mirrors
Haller saw his many selves and in the
various booths he lived his many lives.
In one booth he killed automobile-drivers
recklessly. In another he met all the girls
he had ever loved. Toward the end he
was with Mozart, a laughing, reckless
Mozart who played Handel on a radio.
The whirling came to an end. In the
last booth he saw Hermine and Pablo
naked on a rug. They were asleep,
satiated with love. Haller stabbed Hermine
under the breast. In the court Mozart was
his friend and comforted him when the
judges sentenced him to eternal life; he
was to be laughed out of court. Mozart
turned into Pablo, who picked up Her-
mine's body, shrank it to figurine size,
and put it in his pocket.
3610

THE STOIC
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Chicago, New York, London, Paris
First published: 1947
Principal characters:
Frank A. Cowperwood, a financier
Aileen Cowperwood, his second wife
Berenice Fleming, his mistress
Philip Henshaw, and
Montague Greaves, English engineers
Bruce Tollifer, a Southern artist
Lord Stane, an English financier
Lorna Maris, a dancer in Baltimore
Marigold Brainerd, Tollifer's friend
Dr. Jefferson James, Cowperwood's friend and doctor
Critique:
The Stoic, the third novel of the
trilogy that includes The Financier and The
Titan, completes the story of Frank
Algernon Cowperwood. As in the other two
novels, Cowperwood, a man of great force
and vitality, is interested only in material
things—making money, having attractive
mistresses, and building monuments to
perpetuate his name. Dreiser does not
condemn this attitude morally, but he
does point out that none of
Cowperwood's relationships is lasting, none of
his projects achieves permanence. For all
his power and strength, he is simply
another man whose best efforts are cut
down by time and the forces around
him. Ironically, his cherished dream of
founding a hospital is realized through
Berenice, his former mistress turned
Eastern philosopher, after his death; but the
money Cowperwood left for the project
is dissipated in endless lawsuits as shady
as the deals by which Cowperwood got
the money in the first place. Man, even
the ruthless man of business, cannot, in
Dreiser's world, impose his will on events
for very long, and Cowperwood's
ultimate ineffectuality, the difference
between his desires and his real
accomplishments, gives him a certain amount
THE STOIC by Theodore Dreiser. By permission of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright*
1947, by Helen Dreiser.
of sympathy. Dreiser never quite
finished The Stoic; his wife wrote the final
chapter, from his notes, before the novel
was published posthumously in 1947. As
a novel, it is not generally regarded as
Dreiser's best, for the details of finance
overwhelm the concept of Cowperwood's
character and the writing becomes more
repetitious and uneven as it moves along.
The nature of Dreiser's concept of
human experience also made the struggles
of his characters more interesting to most
readers than the inevitable long
conclusions concerning the worthlessness of the
struggle.
The Story:
Frank Cowperwood, nearing sixty, had
just lost his long struggle to gain a fifty-
year franchise to control the transportation
system in Chicago. In addition, he and
Aileen, his second wife, had failed to
achieve the social prominence to which
they felt their wealth entitled them. At
the time of Cowperwood's defeat,
Berenice Fleming, an attractive young woman
whom he had loved for eight years, quite
unexpectedly agreed to become his
mistress. Berenice knew that Cowperwood
intended to stay married to Aileen; Cow-
3611

perwood agreed to continue to support
Berenice and her mother.
Cowperwood, a vital man impatient
for something to do, was interested in the
proposition of two English engineers,
Philip Henshaw and Montague Greaves,
that he help in financing the
construction of the London underground.
Henshaw and Greaves were interested in the
line that ran from Charing Cross to
Hampstead (each of the lines was
originally planned by different
organizations). Cowperwood, hoping to
coordinate the separate lines, planned to go to
England, with Berenice, to organize the
financing and attempt to gain the
controlling interest in the project.
On his way to England Cowperwood
stopped in New York to see Aileen in
the palatial mansion he had built for her.
First he invited her to go to Europe; then
he decided that he needed to keep her
occupied socially so that he would have
time for Berenice, and so he found an
improvident artist, Bruce Tollifer, whom he
hired to pursue and amuse his wife.
Tollifer was to receive two hundred dollars a
week plus expenses and was to meet
Aileen in London. Not knowing of the
arrangement and thinking of Tollifer as
a friend, Aileen felt that, by asking her
to come to Europe, her husband was
finally settling down to one woman. The
party left for Europe.
In London, Cowperwood discovered
that he also needed control of the
Central Loop line in order to solidify his
interests. He met Lord Stane, a British
financier, who helped him in both his
business dealings and personal
arrangements. Berenice rented a country house
from Lord Stane. In the meantime
Tollifer persuaded Aileen to take a trip to
Paris with him. He tried to make her
more attractive (once pretty, Aileen had
become middle-aged and overweight) by
renewing her interest in clothes and
exercise.
While Tollifer and Aileen were in
Paris, Cowperwood and Berenice were
free to live at Berenice's country house
and tour the cathedral and university
towns of England.
As Cowperwood's business interests
expanded, he found it necessary to return
to the United States to find more capital.
He took Aileen and left her in New
York while he toured the country raising
money. In Baltimore, a beautiful young
dancer named Lorna Maris came to his
hotel room claiming that she was a
distant Cowperwood relation. Lorna and
Cowperwood began an affair, and he
stayed in the United States longer than
he had planned. Aileen, hearing of the
affair through a newspaper item, sent
the clipping on to Berenice; she had
discovered the affair between Berenice and
her husband before leaving Europe.
Berenice was furious when she heard that
Cowperwood and Lorna were having an
open affair. Although she and Lord
Stane, beginning to spend a great deal of
time together, were finding that they had
much in common, Berenice decided to
remain faithful to Cowperwood; she
found his vitality irresistible.
Cowperwood broke off the affair with Lorna,
returned to England, and was reunited
with Berenice.
Cowperwood's trip was financially
successful. Along with Lord Stane and
several others, he now controlled the
underground and the connected
construction company. He had bought out
Henshaw and Greaves. Aileen returned to
Tollifer in Paris. However, while she
had been in the United States, the
artist had become friendly with Marigold
Brainerd. At a party Marigold, partly to
protect her interest in Tollifer and partly
because she was drunk, told Aileen that
her husband had simply hired Tollifer to
keep her occupied. Hurt and angry,
Aileen returned to New York.
Cowperwood, following her, announced that he
planned to enlarge the New York house,
fill it with more art treasures, and have it
converted into a museum after they died.
He wanted Aileen to supervise the new
construction and to do it immediately, for
after his death much of his money was to
3612

go toward founding a hospital. He left
Aileen in New York after promising to
return as soon as he had completed his
business in London.
Back in London, and ill, Cowperwood
decided to hire a yacht and sail on a
holiday to Norway with Berenice. Soon after
he returned to work, constantly driving
himself, he became ill once again and the
doctors told him he had Bright's disease.
He decided to erect a tomb for himself
and to wind up his business affairs as
quickly as possible. During a weekend at
Lord Stane's house he suffered another
attack and sent for his American
physician and friend, Dr. Jefferson James.
Dr. James took him on a boat trip to the
Riviera, but once again the effect of the
vacation was only temporary. Back at
work in London, five months later,
Cowperwood suffered another attack and
decided to return to New York to see Aileen
once more. Berenice was also to return
to the United States and stay at the
Waldorf-Astoria in order to be near him.
On the Ijoat Cowperwood suffered an
even more serious attack and had to be
carried off the boat on a stretcher.
Because Aileen's house, in the midst of
renovation, had no room for him, he was
taken to the Waldorf-Astoria. Aileen
came to the hotel to find Berenice caring
for him in his room; her bitterness had
scarcely abated by the time of Cowper-
wood's death a short time later. He was
buried in the tomb he had built.
Although his financial position had
seemed secure at his death, various
lawsuits, deriving from some of his unsavory
deals, plagued the estate. The lawsuits
continued for five years, and Aileen,
seeing Cowperwood's money vanish, was
forced to sell her mansion and abandon
all her plans for the museum and the
hospital. A year after the mansion was sold,
Aileen died and was buried in the tomb
beside her husband.
After Cowperwood died, Berenice, at
loose ends, traveled around the world. In
India she became fascinated with Hindu
philosophy and stayed there for five years,
regretting her past and developing a
greater sense of humanity. She had her
own income that Cowperwood had left
her. When she returned to America, she
heard that the rest of his money had been
lost. She then decided to use her income
to found a hospital, and she hired Dr.
Jefferson James as the director.
Berenice herself began to work at the
hospital, where she found enormous
satisfaction in dealing with handicapped
children. Recognizing her very limited
function in human affairs, she realized
that the power Cowperwood had sought
had not brought him happiness, peace,
fame, or enduring power. A person could,
she now knew, express himself effectively
only in limited ways, such as helping a
few handicapped children in a small
hospital.
3613

STONE DESERT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hugo Wast (Gustavo Martinez Zuvirfa, 1883- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: The rocky tablelands of northern Argentina
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Don Pedro Pablo (Pepablo) Ontiveros, an Argentine landowner
Midas Onttveros, his nephew
Marcela, daughter of Midas
Aquiles, and
Hector, her brothers
Alfonso Puentes, son of a neighboring farmer
Roque Carpio, a gaucho murderer and outlaw
FroilAn Palacios, an overseer
Dona Silvestre, his wife
Critique:
Stone Desert—Desierta de Piedra in
the original—has been for
Latin-American readers a favorite among the thirty-
two titles written by this most prolificof
Argentine novelists. Afraid that his
origins in Cordoba might handicap his sales,
Martinez Zuvirfa hid his identity under
a pen name when he published his first
novel in 1911. Since that time his books,
written under the name of Hugo Wast,
have sold almost two million copies, with
three hundred editions in Spanish and
seventy others in translation. In Stone
Desert, Marcela speaks for the writer
when she voices her opinion that a return
to nature is the best cure for decadent
city life. The novel also expresses the
author's belief that the hope for Argentina
lies in the toil of hard-working
immigrants, combined with a change in the
attitude of the country's easygoing,
wasteful citizens.
The Story:
One foggy April morning a weary
gaucho stopped at the house of Dona
Silvestre and her husband, Froildn
Palacios, an overseer on a ranch owned by old
Pedro Pablo Ontiveros. The traveler's
pallid face showed that he had recently
been in prison. After receiving meat and
bread, he betrayed his familiarity with
the region around Real de San Eloy by
starting out for the town of Canteros over
a trail unknown to most of the natives.
Early the next morning, near the main
ranch house on the Ontiveros estate, he
found a girl's bare footprints in the sand
by the river. A short time later a boy
appeared. He was Aquiles, a great-nephew
of old Pepablo. as everyone called Don
Pedro. The boy said that the tracks had
been made by his sister Marcela. The
traveler introduced himself as Juan-with-
out-a-Country, but when he stopped at
the tavern in Canteros, old Pepablo
recognized him as Roque Carpio, a gaucho
exiled to the Argentine penal colony at
Ushuaia for killing his unfaithful wife
twenty-five years before.
With old Pepablo was his nephew
Midas. A failure in Buenos Aires, he had
brought his daughter Marcela, his sons
Aquiles and Hector, and his mother-in-
law, Dona Claudia, to live on Pepablo's
run-down ranch. Marcela wished to
restore the property with the help of Leo-
polda, the mannish wife of Overseer
Difunto. Pepablo scoffed at her plan.
Hard work was for gringos like his
Spanish neighbor, Isidro Puentes, ambitious
owner of a farm which had once be-
STONE DESERT by Hugo Wast. By permission of the author. Copyright, 1928, by Longmans, Green
& Co., Inc.
3614

longed to Roque Carpio.
The old man did admire Marcela,
however, and gradually turned the ranch over
to her management. While searching for
missing cattle, she had left the
footprints seen by Roque. She found her
cows in Puentes' barley field. The
gringo, hoping to arrange a match between
her and his son Alfonso, had let the
starving animals graze. Marcela scorned
Alfonso, partly because the neatness of
Puentes' farm, in contrast with Pepablo's
establishment, hurt her pride. Once,
however, she asked his help when she ran a
thorn into her arm.
Increasing drought brought death to
Pepablo's cattle. Aquiles and Hector tried
to bring rain by staking out a toad in the
patio. A storm came, washing out
Puentes* barley fields. Pepablo was
delighted. When the gringo took advantage of
the rainwater to drown burrowing hares
that had been ruining his fields, Marcela
wanted to follow his example. But
Pepablo was too proud to imitate a gringo.
Besides, the hares provided food for his
dogs.
Marcela then suggested that they
round up the remaining cattle and drive
them to higher pastures. Pepablo
promised her half the calves that could be
saved. The score of neighbors she invited
to the roundup spent the night at the
house of Froil&n Palacios at Real de San
Eloy. Roque Carpio joined them for a
cup of mate before he went home
through a howling storm, leaving
Marcela convinced that city-dwellers were
weak in contrast to rugged country
people. A conversation she overheard later
made her suspect that Roque was
stealing and branding cattle.
Snow fell. Marcela hired Don Tertulio,
a bonesetter and local treasure seeker, to
make some repairs at the ranch house. At
the feast of San Pedro and San Pablo,
Pepablo was to carry the cross in the
religious procession When Marcela
discovered that rats had eaten his best shoes,
she got him a new pair. They were so
stiff that Pepablo slipped them off during
dinner and the dogs gnawed them.
Midas, meanwhile, had been busy
with a scheme to make church candles
from beeswax. Failing in that venture,
he threatened to take his family back to
Buenos Aires. As a bribe Pepablo
unearthed some money he had hoarded and
set his nephew up as an antique dealer.
That project also failed. Midas' next plan
was to cut down the algarrobo trees
which were Pepablo's especial pride and
sell the timber. By cajolery and threats
he secured the old man's permission to
fell the trees, but the sound of the
woodsmen's axes was more than Pepablo could
stand. He died, leaving the house and the
trees to Midas, the rest of his property
to Marcela.
Midas promptly sold his share to
Puentes and moved his family to the
overseer's house at Real de San Eloy. Marcela
hoped that life on that rugged tableland
would purge their blood of city-created
decadence. After discharging Froil&n,
whom she suspected of conniving with
Roque, she herself ran the ranch.
Froil&n, with Dona Silvestre and their
daughter Monica, opened a tavern and
store. Roque and Midas were among his
customers, and Midas discussed his
grandiose schemes with the outlaw. He once
asked Roque, jokingly, why he did not
carry some girl away to one of his
mountain caves.
The question turned Roque's thoughts
to a plan to win Marcela. He killed a
cow, making the death seem like the
work of a mountain lion, so that
Marcela would organize a lion hunt. But his
plan to steal her away at that time was
frustrated by the arrival of Melit6n Ba-
z&n, a famous hunter who stirred Roque
to rivalry by his claim that he carried
only two cartridges because he never saw
more than two lions at a time. During
the hunt Roque and Melit6n each killed
a lion. Alfonso Puentes shot Roque's dog
in order to protect three cubs Marcela
wanted. Only Marcela's quick defense
saved the young man from the gaucho's
fury. Roque left, angry.
3615

After a week of sulking Roque bribed
Froilan to keep Midas late at the tavern,
so that Marcela would be left
unprotected. Awakened by the noise of Roque's
arrival, she called Dona Claudia. When
they saw the outer door opening, they
threw themselves against it. Even the
small boys helped. The intruder thrust
a foot inside, but Marcela managed to
wedge the bar tightly, trapping him.
Roque argued at first; then he
threatened her. With a pair of scissors, the only
weapon she could find, she kept jabbing
at his leg through his boot until he
collapsed from loss of blood. Returning,
Midas found the outlaw dead. None
mourned him except Monica, with whom
he had flirted.
Because of litigations in the district,
Puentes could not take possession of
Midas' property, and he returned it in
exchange for the right to build an
irrigation ditch for his alfalfa fields.
Marcela, unwilling to stay at bloodstained
Real de San Eloy, left the place in care
of a new overseer and returned to
repair Pepablo's house, more dilapidated
than ever since Don Tertulio had pierced
the walls while looking for hidden
treasure. By the time the fig trees were in leaf
she had made the old ranch house
comfortable and attractive.
One day she encountered Alfonso
again. With her ideas about Roque and
his wild life clear to her at last, and with
her false pride and irritation gone after
her discovery that she could run a farm
as efficiently as any foreigner, she began
to realize the good qualities of the young
gringo. Again she had a thorn in her
hand, and once more she asked his help
in removing it. This time she was quite
happy when he kissed her.
3616

THE STORY OF A BAD BOY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Bailev Aldrich (1836-1907)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: New Hampshire
First published: 1869
Principal characters:
Tom Bailey Aldrich, the narrator
Captain Nutter, his grandfather
Miss Abigail, the captain's sister
Kitty Collins, the Nutter maid
Bill Conway, and
Seth Rodcers, Tom's enemies
Sailor Ben, Tom's friend; Kitty's missing husband
Phil Adams,
Pepper Whitcomb, and
Binny Wallace, Tom's friends
Critiqtie:
The Story of a Bad Boy is one of the
most fascinating and amusing accounts
of the life of an American boy in the
early part of the nineteenth century.
Acknowledged by the author to be largely
autobiographical, it is an adult recapture
of childhood experience. The fictional
Rivermouth is Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, the author's childhood home.
The Story:
Tom, the son of a banker, was born at
Rivermouth in New England. When he
was eighteen months old, however, his
family moved to New Orleans, and there
he lived until he was ten, growing up in
almost complete ignorance of everything
that was not Southern. In his tenth year,
he was sent North to live with his
Grandfather Nutter. Tom soon learned to
admire his hale, cheery grandfather and to
respect his great-aunt, Miss Abigail. The
fourth member of the household was Kitty
Collins, the maid, an Irish girl happily
married to a sailor until he sailed away
one day and failed to return.
Tom's grandfather sent him to school
immediately — to keep him out of
mischief. At the Temple Grammar School
he made friends with many boys and
incurred the enmity of two, Bill Conway
and Seth Rodgers. Tom's friends
decided to put on a play, William Tell, in
Tom's barn. Pepper Whitcomb, as WaV
ter Tell, balanced an apple on his head,
while Tom played the part of William.
Tom's arrow missed the apple and struck
Pepper in the mouth. The theatrical!
ceased abruptly.
Bill Conway's tyranny finally drove
Tom to make preparations to fight his
tormentor, and Phil Adams tutored Tom
in the manly art of self-defense. The
fight did not occur, however, until after
Tom had experienced several more
adventures.
As the Fourth of July approached, the
boys in the Temple Grammar School
could not concentrate on their studies.
One of the boys placed a torpedo under
the cloth on the desk, at the exact spot
where Mr. Grimshaw usually struck with
his heavy ruler. The resultant explosion
created quite a commotion and nearly
caused the strangulation of Charley Mar-
den, who was at the water pail getting a
drink.
On the night before the Fourth, Tom
slipped out of bed and used Kitty's
clothesline to escape from his bedroom.
He did not tie knots in the rope and, as
a result, burned his hands in his descent.
He went to the square, where a big
bonfire was to be lit. When the fire burned
THE STORY OF A BAD BOY by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. By permission of the publishers, Houghto©
Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1869, 1897, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1911, by Mary Elizabeth Aldrich.
3617

down after a while, Tom and his friends
took an old stagecoach from Ezra Win-
gate's barn and used the vehicle as fuel.
The boys were caught and put in jail,
but they escaped. The next day Ezra
collected three dollars from the family of
each boy who had aided in the theft. Ezra
made a good profit, for he had previously
offered the coach to anyone who would
pay seventy-five cents for it. During the
celebration of the Fourth, Tom
accidentally stepped on a mine and was blown
into the air and knocked unconscious.
As a result, he was a hero among his
friends for about two weeks.
Shortly after this experience, Tom
was initiated into the mysterious order of
the Centipedes, an organization notorious
for the pranks of its members. One of
these pranks was the stealing of the
druggist's gilt mortar and pestle, which the
Centipedes placed over the Widow
Conway's front door. On the drug store
window shutters they tacked a sign
advertising for a seamstress. The town
laughed, because everyone except Mr.
Meeks himself knew that Widow
Conway had set her cap for the
mild-mannered druggist.
One day after school; Tom found Bill
Conway tormenting Binny Wallace.
Tom lowered his head and swung right
and left as he prepared to give Conway
a thrashing. Tom pummeled the school
pump for twenty seconds before he
discovered that Conway had already retired.
Miss Abigail could not stand the odor
of tobacco. When she took over as
housekeeper for her brother, she restricted his
smoking to the barn. One morning
during a very cold winter Grandfather
Nutter descended the step-, with a clay pipe
in his mouth. Abigail objected
strenuously but the captain merely renvwed the
pipe from his lips and blew a cloud into
the hall, where the temperature was two
degrees below zero. Miss Abigail fainted
dead away. When she was revived,
Grandfather Nutter told her that there
had been no tobacco in the pipe and that
she had seen only his congealed breath
in the frosty hallway.
At Slatter's Hill, the North-End boys
and the South-End boys met for a
snowball fight at specified times during the
week. But the fights became too
dangerous because frozen snowballs were
used, and parents and police put an end
to the snow battles.
One summer Tom bought a boat called
the Dolphin, and he and three of his
friends planned a day's trip to Sandpeep
Island. When the boys landed on the
island, they found that they had left the
lemons in the boat. Binny Wallace
volunteered to get them. The boat, after
he stepped into it, broke loose from its
mooring-place and floated away. Binny
drifted farther and farther out to sea. A
rising squall developed into a full-sized
storm, and the boys waited through it,
hoping that Binny would be rescued.
However, such was not to be. He was
drowned.
One day Tom saw Sailor Ben, whom
he had met during his voyage north from
New Orleans. The old sailor failed tc
recognize Tom because he had grown so
tall. When Tom took Sailor Ben home
with him, Kitty at once recognized the
sailor as her long-lost husband and the
two were reunited. Grandfather Nutter
broke out a fresh decanter of Madeira
and they all celebrated the happy
occasion. Deciding to quit the sea, Sailor
Ben bought a small cottage near the
wharf. Kitty remained as the Nutter
maid, but spent her free time with her
husband.
Silas Trefethen bought all the cannon
available in Rivermouth because he
thought that war with England was
imminent. When he died, still thinking so,
the cannon rusted and became unfit for
any use except as monuments. Tom and
his gang decided to have some fun with
the cannon after they found several pieces
near the wharf and cleaned them.
Everything went well with their plan to set
them off, except that Tom and his
conspirators could not make the proper fuse.
Sailor Ben, learning of their plan, told
them how to prepare the fuse. When
everything was in readiness, the Centi-
3618

pedes drew lots to determine who would
fire the cannon. The chance fell to Tom.
That night he slipped out of bed, lit the
fuse, and returned to his room before the
first cannon went off. The operation
succeeded as planned. Everyone was aroused
from bed by the explosions. The only
casualty was Sailor Ben's chimney. No
one was ever able to solve the mystery
of the explosions.
With Primrose Hall, a girls' school,
close by, it was not surprising that Tom
should fall in love, but he was
unsuccessful with the girls attending the seminary.
Tom finally fell in love with Nelly Glent-
worth, who came to visit his grandfather,
but she scorned him, and so for some
time Tom rather enjoyed the pangs of
unrequited love.
In New Orleans the yellow fever broke
out, causing the death of Tom's father.
His mother came north and settled in
New York, where Tom was offered a
position with an uncle in his counting-
house. Ready at last to make his own
way in the world, Tom left Rivermouth
regretfully. He felt that the happiest
days of his life were over.
3619

THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Edgar Watson Howe (1853-1937)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: The Middle West
First published: 1883
Principal characters:
Ned Westlock, a boy on the Middle Border
Rev. John Westxock, his rather
Joe Erring, his uncle
Mateel Shepherd, Joe Erring's sweetheart
Clinton Bragg, Joe Erring's rival for Mateel
Critique:
This novel is the earliest of a number
of books that sounded a revolt against the
popular conception that the American
small town was an idyllic place in which
to live. In it Howe drew a deadly
picture of village life — the shallowness of
thought, the materialism, the ever-present
sense of failure and the underlying
spirit of petty and mischievous enmity.
Through all of the book rings a note of
sincerity which makes Howe's
iconoclastic efforts valid, giving his novel depth
and lasting value as a social document.
The Story:
The Westlocks had gone west to grow
up with the country. They lived first
on a farm near a church where the father
acted as the volunteer preacher. It was
a life of toil and privation on the bleak
prairie. Days began early and ended soon
after supper, when fatigue drove the
Westlocks to bed. There were four of
them, John Westlock and his wife, their
son Ned, and Mrs. Westlock's younger
brother, Joe Erring. The only real
amusement Ned had was visiting a nearby
miller with his young uncle. The miller,
Mr. Barker, had been a sailor in early
life and he regaled the boys with stories
of his travels.
When Ned was eleven years old a
minister was sent from the East to take
charge of the country church where Mr.
Westlock had been acting as preacher.
Erring immediately fell in love with
Mateel Shepherd, the daughter of the
new preacher, but he found no favor in
her eyes because he was uneducated and
crude. With the miller's help he began
to improve himself. The miller became
so fond of Erring that he took him on as
an apprentice who would some day take
over the mill. This was a great
opportunity for the seventeen-year-old boy.
The only flaw in his happiness then was
that Mateel Shepherd was being courted
by a young lawyer named Clinton Bragg.
Shortly after Erring left the farm,
Mr. Westlock sold his farm and bought
the almost defunct paper in the town of
Twin Mounds. When the Westlocks
moved into town, Ned went to the office
every day to learn the printing trade and
to help his father in the newspaper office.
Twin Mounds was an unprepossessing
village with a post-office, several stores, a
jail, and about six hundred people. The
only pleasures in which the people
seemed to indulge, so far as Ned could
see, were drinking, gossiping, and
fighting. Although the Westlocks lived in a
large stone house, the father had Ned
stay at the newspaper office in the
company of one of the printers, under whom
he was learning the trade.
Erring, apprenticed to the miller, made
such excellent progress that after a vear
or so the community subscribed to a fund
so that he could build a mill of his own,
the growing population justifying a
second mill in the district. He was also
successful in his suit with Mateel
Shepherd, who had promised to marry him
when his mill was completed and in
operation.
3620

One day the quiet life of the Wesdock
family was rudely shattered. Mr. West-
lock left the deeds to all his property in
the custody of Ned and his mother and
ran away with another woman. Ned took
over the newspaper, which became more
profitable under his management than it
had been under his father, for the people
in the community had not liked Mr.
Westlock. He had been too solitary and
strange to suit their natures.
The family gradually began to grow
out of the feeling of disgrace which had
fastened itself upon them when the father
disappeared. Their friends did what they
could for them and rallied in support of
Mrs. Westlock and her son. At times it
seemed as if the disappearance of Mr.
Westlock were of more benefit than
harm. Ned was left with some valuable
property and a chance to make a name
for himself at a very early age.
The following Christmas Eve Erring
married Mateel Shepherd. Just before
the marriage he and Ned had a long talk,
in which he told Ned that in some way
he was not as anxious for the marriage
as he had been when he first met Mateel.
What Erring did not realize was that he
had been so zealous in getting an
education that he had not only reached
Mateel's level but he had already passed
her. It was not a happy wedding. Only
a handful of guests came to the wedding
supper, and those who stayed away did
not bother to send their regrets. The
Shepherds were not popular in the
community.
After the marriage of Mateel and
Erring, life in the community of Twin
Mounds settled into a quiet routine for
everyone. Ned was more disappointed
than ever in the town. Its people seldom
thought out anything for themselves, and
every opinion they had was made for
them, often by Ned's own editorials.
Their shallowness and smugness irked
him.
One cold winter night Erring appeared
at the door of the Westlock home.
Nervous and disheveled, he had come because
he felt the need to talk to someone whom
he could trust. He had found a letter
which his wife had written to his rival
before her marriage, a letter disclosing
Mateel's belief that she could never love
any man but Bragg. This idea rankled in
Erring's mind. He had been thoughtful
and tender with his wife, but she had
always been distant and cool to him, in
keeping with the vow she had made in
her letter to Bragg.
Ned listened to his uncle's story and
then took him back to the mill and
Mateel. After Erring had confronted his
wife with what he had discovered, he and
Ned sat up all night, unable to sleep.
Clinton Bragg disappeared from Twin
Mounds within a few days, apparently
afraid of Mateel's husband.
That same winter Ned's father
returned to Twin Mounds and accidentally
met his son on the street at a late hour.
He told Ned that he had been faced
with misfortune ever since he had left
his wife and son. The woman with
whom he had run away had not really
loved him and had deserted him soon
after she learned that he had left his
money and property in Ned's hands. John
Westlock was a pathetic and broken
figure, unwilling to face the wife he had
deserted. Ned gave him the little money
he happened to have in his pocket, and
the older man then turned away into the
snowy night and was soon lost to sight.
Ned knew that he had seen his father
for the last time.
Meanwhile matters between Erring
and his wife had gone from bad to worse.
He had taken a vow never to speak to his
wife or touch her again, and Mateel
began to fade quickly under his harsh
treatment. At last she asked Erring to let
her return to her father's home. He
agreed. A day later Bragg drove up in a
buggy to take the girl back to her father
and mother. It was a bitter experience
for Erring to see another man carry his
wife away from his house. Ned was with
his uncle and left only when the older
man had fallen asleep, exhausted.
When Ned arrived home he discovered
that his mother had died in his absence.
3621

Always quiet and subdued, she had died
as she had lived, asking nothing from
anyone.
In the spring Ned braved a heavy
rainstorm to visit his uncle. He arrived to
find the mill deserted. Suddenly the
door opened and Erring walked in,
carrying Mateel, who was unconscious. In a
calm voice he told Ned how he had lain
in wait along the road until Bragg and
Mateel had come along in a buggy. He
had dragged his rival from the vehicle
and killed him with his bare hands while
Mateel looked on. Then he had carried
Mateel back to the mill. Unable to face
the fact that Mateel had divorced him and
married Bragg, he felt it was better to
murder and then to die himself than to
live with Mateel married to another.
Erring surrendered quietly to the
authorities and was taken to jail. He was
never tried, however, because one night
he took poison. The jailer discovered him
with a letter for Ned clutched in his
hand.
After Erring's burial, Ned stopped at
the Shepherd home to ask about Mateel.
The poor girl was demented. While he
was in the house she came into the room
and mistook Ned for Erring. She drew
a dagger from her dress and told Ned she
had gone by the mill that day to have one
last look at the place where she had been
happy. Now she intended to kill herself.
Her mother led her away. That same
night she died, shortly after telling her
father and mother she hoped to see Joe
Erring soon.
3622

THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM
Type of work: Novel
Author: Olive Schreiner (1855-1920)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1880's
Locale: South Africa
First published: 1883
Principal characters:
Tant* Sannie, a Boer farm woman
Lyndall, her stepdaughter
Em, LyndalTs cousin
Waldo, son of a German overseer
Bonaparte Blenkins, a hypocrite
Gregory Rose, a young Englishman
Critique:
The Story of an African Farm was an
early attempt to present realistically the
problem of a woman's place in the world.
The struggle of Lyndall to find power
and freedom in a world of strict moral
conventions and restricted social
opportunities foreshadows woman suffrage
struggles still to come. The novel is also
noteworthy for its finely wrought
passages concerning religious doubts and
moral independence.
The Story:
Just before the Englishman had died
he had married Tant' Sannie, so that
there would be someone to take care of
his farm and his motherless daughter,
Lyndall. Tant' Sannie, a heavy, slow
simple Boer woman, took over the farm
and the care of Lyndall and her cousin,
Em. Most of the hard work was done
by an old German, who lived with his
young son in a small house nearby. The
toy, Waldo, watched over the sheep and
helped his father take charge of the
black natives who did the heaviest work.
The farm lay in a dreary flat plain of
red sand that was sparsely dotted with
pale bushes. The sun always glittered
in a blinding way on the zinc roofs of the
buildings and on the stone walls of the
enclosures for the animals. Life was
monotonous and deadly. Tant' Sannie
sat in the farmhouse drinking coffee; the
children played in a half-hearted way;
young Waldo did his chores, and the
German went about seeing that things
were as they should be.
Tant' Sannie had been asked by the
Englishman to see that the two girls were
educated, but she, believing only in the
Bible, paid no attention to their demands
for books. The two girls and Waldo
found some old histories, and studied
them when they could. Lyndall learned
rapidly, for she was a quick, serious girl,
fascinated especially by the story of
Napoleon. Em was more quiet and reserved.
Waldo was the strangest of the three.
His father was deeply devout, with an
innocent faith in the goodness of man and
the mercy of God. He had filled the
boy's head with ideas which were
frightening and overpowering.
One day a visitor came to the farm
and asked for a night's lodging. He
introduced himself as Bonaparte Blenkins,
but because he was English-speaking
Tant' Sannie would have nothing to do
with him. The old German interceded
for the visitor, however, and finally won
Tant' Sannie's grudging permission for
him to spend the night. The German
could not bear to pass up an opportunity
to practice Christian charity.
Blenkins soon won the German over
completely with his fantastic tales of
adventure and travel, and he even
conquered Tant' Sannie by the wonderful
way he read and preached the service
on Sunday. But the children were not
fooled. Lyndall knew that the man was
3623

lying when he talked, and that his
religion was all hypocrisy. But Blenkins
was soon installed on the farm as tutor
to the children. After a few days, Lyn-
dall walked out of class and refused to
return.
Slowly Blenkins gained Tant' Sannie's
esteem, until he felt that it was safe to
try to get rid of the German and take
over his job. With a trumped-up charge,
he accused the overseer to his mistress,
and stood by happily as the old German
was ordered off the farm. Shocked the
more deeply because of the support he
had given Blenkins, the German went to
his house to pack up and leave. It was
not in his nature to argue or fight for
his rights; what God sent must be
accepted. In his grief he died that night.
Bonaparte Blenkins took over the farm.
Like his namesake, he loved power and
took advantage of his new position. He
ordered Waldo about, beat him, and
destroyed the model for a sheep-shearing
machine the boy had made. None of
these matters made any impression on
Tarn' Sannie. She thought that Blenkins
had a wonderful sense of humor, and
daily he grew more and more valuable to
her. She hoped some day to be his wife.
A visit by one of Tant' Sannie's nieces
disillusioned her. The niece was young,
only a little overweight, and wealthy.
One day Tant* Sannie climbed up to the
loft to see if everything there was neat
and let her maid take the ladder away.
While she was there, Blenkins came into
the room below with the niece and began
to make love to her. Furious at
Blenkins' deception, Tant' Sannie dropped a
barrel of salt meat on his head, almost
knocking him out, and drenching him
with pickle-water. His stay on the farm
was over.
When the children grew up, Lyndall
had her way about going to the city to
work and study. Waldo began to doubt
the God he had so terribly feared in his
childhood, and Em grew to attractive, if
not beautiful, womanhood. Tant' Sannie
rented part of the farm to a young
Englishman named Gregory Rose, who soon
fell in love with Em. It was the first time
anyone had paid much attention to the
girl, and she was enraptured at the
prospect of marriage. Tant' Sannie thought
she herself might as well marry again,
and she sent out word to the surrounding
farms that she was looking for a
husband.
Waldo eagerly awaited Lyndall's
return from the city. He wanted to know
what she had found out about the world
and to tell her of his own problems. He
had learned wood carving. One day,
while he was watching the sheep, a
stranger had come up and talked with
him. After looking at one of Waldo's
carvings, the traveler told the boy a story
of a man. who searched for Truth but
found merely a creed until, just before
his death, he caught a glimpse of his
goal. The meeting was short but
unforgettable. Waldo wanted to go out
into the world, to find the man again, to
learn more about the search for Truth.
When Lyndall returned, she was a
different person. Waldo found that he
could not talk with her as he had before.
She had learned the problems a woman
faces in the world, and she refused to
be held down by the laws and
restrictions which bound her. Neither Em
nor Gregory Rose, her fiance, could
understand Lyndall. Gregory disliked
her at first, but as time passed he became
more attracted to her. At Tant' Sannie's
wedding feast, for she had found a
widower who wanted to marry again,
Em discovered that she did not really
love Gregory, and she asked him to forget
the plans they had made.
When Lyndall asked him to marry
her—just to give her his name—Gregory
consented. It was a long time before he
discovered the reason. Lyndall had made
a friend in the city, a man who wanted
her to marry him, but she could not stand
the idea of being tied down by legal
marriage. She wanted freedom, not
bondage. She felt that if she could threaten
her lover with marriage to another man,
she could get what she wanted horn him.
Her plan worked. When he received a
3624

letter telling of her plans, he set out at
once to see her. Lyndall met her friend
secretly at the farm and went away to
live with him, but not as his wife.
Since Waldo, too, had gone off to seek
his way in the world, the farm was quiet
for a time. Gregory did not know what
to do about Lyndalrs disappearance. The
longer she was away, the more he felt
he loved her. At last he started out to
learn what had become of her.
As Gregory tracked Lyndall from town
to town, he learned the story of a slowly
fading love between the two people he
was following. In time he found Lyndall,
lying sick in a hotel room, deserted by
her lover. She had had a child, but it
had died shortly after birth. Seeing her
so weak and sick, Gregory wanted to be
near her, to care for her. Dressed as a
woman, he was hired as Lyndall's nurse.
When she died, he took her body back
to the farm for burial.
One night Em was startled by a knock
on the door. Waldo had returned. He
had traveled much, but had learned little.
Once he had seen the stranger who had
talked to him so wonderfully about
Truth, but the man, not recognizing him,
had turned away. The first thing Waldo
did was to sit down and begin a letter
to Lyndall. When Em learned what he
was doing, she told him that Lyndall
was dead.
Gregory still thought of Lyndall and
kept as his greatest treasure the one letter
he had received from her, a letter which
advised him to marry Em. In time he
asked Em again to be his wife, and she
accepted. Waldo knew that Em felt she
would have only half a husband, but he
also knew that she had never learned to
hope for much, as he had, as Lyndall
had. Waldo kept one of Lyndall's dancing
shoes in his blouse. He spent much of
his time wandering about the farm
watching the insects, looking at the
flowers. He wanted to be like them, to
die, to sleep in the same earth with
Lyndall. One day, lying in the warm
sunshine, he died.
3625

THE STORY OF BURNT NJAL
Type of work: Saga
Author: Unknown
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Tenth century
Locale: Iceland
First transcribed: Thirteenth-century manuscript
Principal characters:
Njal, a man of law
Bergthora, his wife
Gunnar, Njal's friend
Hallgerda, Gunnar's wift
Flosi, Njal's enemy
Critique:
The Story of Burnt Njal is the most
elaborate and probably the best known of
the thirty-odd Icelandic sagas which have
come down to us from the heroic age of
the Vikings. These works belong to
primitive literature, and they deal with the
simple, deep passions and forthright, flaring
violence of a primitive people. The sagas
are never dull reading. The action is
always swift and varied, the characters are
real, and the style is clear and terse.
Lawman Njal and his neighbors are more than
figures in a tale of violence and intrigue;
they stand also for a people, a society, and
an age.
Tfcc Story:
In those days Harold Grayfell ruled in
Norway. Hrut Heriolfsson had come out
of Iceland to claim an inheritance, and he
sat on the high seat of Gunnhilda, the
king's mother. He was handsome and
strong. He found favor with the king as
well, so that he claimed his inheritance
and got a great store of rich goods while
sea-roving. Then he sailed back to
Iceland, but not before Gunnhilda put a
spell on him that he might never have
pleasure living with the woman he had
set his heart on.
Soon after Hrut married Unna, Fiddle
Mord's daughter. Things did not go
smoothly between Hrut and Unna and
she soon left him. When Mord asked at
the Thing for her goods to be returned,
Hrut offered to fight him instead. Mord
refused and got great shame by his suit.
Hrut's brother Hauskuld had a fair
daughter, Hallgerda, but she was
hardhearted. She married Thorwald Oswifsson
and he was killed by Thiostolf, her foster
father. Then she married Glum, son of
Olof the Hall, and he was murdered.
Then she sent Thiostolf to Hrut to tell of
Glum's death and Hrut struck him dead.
Fiddle Mord died and Unna ran
through her goods. Then she asked her
kinsman Gunnar Hamondsson to get back
her goods from Hrut. Gunnar was the best
skilled in arms of all men. His brother's
name was Kolskegg.
Njal was Gunnar's friend. They swore
nothing should come between them. Njal
was so great a lawyer that his match was
not to be found. Bergthora was his wife.
Gunnar asked Njal how to get Unna's
goods and Njal advised him to trick Hrut
into summoning himself to the Thing
where the suit would be tried. There
Gunnar challenged Hrut to single
combat, but Hauskuld made Hrut pay the
money. There was much ill feeling.
Gunnar and Kolskegg went sea-roving
and came back with much goods. They
rode to the Thing and there Gunnar saw
Hallgerda and asked for her. Njal foretold
ill from this but went to the wedding.
At the wedding Thrain Sigfusson put
away his shrewish wife and asked for
Thorgerda, Hallgerda's daughter. So there
were two weddings.
Each year Gunnar and Njal had feasts
for friendship's sake. Njal had it the year
Bergthora insulted Hallgerda and Hall-

gerda asked Gunnar to avenge her. Gun-
nar refused and took her home. Then
Hallgerda had Bergthora's thrall killed.
Gunnar paid atonement to Njal. Berg-
thora retaliated and Njal paid for that
death. The women urged their men on
until Njal's sons were involved, but
Gunnar and Njal kept their friendship.
When Otkell Skarfsson tricked Gunnar
into buying a deceitful thrall, Hallgerda
sent him to burn Otkell's storehouse.
Gunnar offered atonement but refused Otkell
friendship. Then Otkell gave Gunnar a
hurt and Gunnar killed Otkell. This was
the beginning of Gunnar's manslayings.
Njal warned him not to kill more than
one man in the same stock or he would
get his death.
Then Starkad, son of Bork the Waxy-
toothed Blade, challenged Gunnar to a
horse fight. Thorgeir Otkellsson was hurt
and wanted to be revenged against
Gunnar. Starkad, his son Thorgeir, and
Thorgeir Otkellsson tried to ambush Gunnar,
and Thorgeir Otkellsson was killed. This
was the second man slain in the same
stock. Thorgeir Starkadsson swore
vengeance. At the Thing the atonement was
that Gunnar and Kolskegg were to go
away within three years or be slain by the
kinsmen of those they had killed.
They made plans to go abroad, but as
they rode away Gunnar's horse threw him
with his face turned toward home. When
he decided not to go, Kolskegg went alone.
Gunnar was outlawed. Njal warned him
that Geir the Priest was getting up a band
to slay him, and Gunnar asked Njal to see
after his son Hogni.
When Geir the Priest and his men came
to Gunnar's house, they killed his hound
Sam. Sam howled loudly before he died,
so that Gunnar was prepared. Gunnar
put up a long fight and killed two men
and wounded sixteen before his enemies
pulled the roof off his house to get at him.
They built a cairn over Gunnar. Skarp-
hedinn Njalsson and Hogni Gunnarsson
saw the cairn open, and Gunnar with a
merry face sang a song before the cairn
closed again. Then Skarphedinn and
Hogni killed Starkad and Thorgeir
Starkadsson and avenged Gunnar.
Njal's sons then went abroad and
wrongs piled up between them and
Thrain Sigfusson in the Orkneys. Kari
Solmundsson was with them. When they
came back, Skarphedinn killed Thrain.
Kettle of the Mark was Thrain's brother
but Njal's son-in-law, and so Kettle and
Njal made atonement. Njal took Haus-
kuld Thrainsson as his foster son. Kari
asked for and got Njal's daughter Helge
to wife.
Then Flosi Thordsson became involved
in the feud. He was tall and bold.
There was a change of rulers in
Norway. Olaf Tryggvisson made a change of
faith and sent Thangbrand to Iceland to
preach Christianity. He did that by
challenging any man who spoke against the
new faith. At the Thing Thorgeir of
Lightwater challenged the men for the
new law and they all made pledges. Then
Njal went to Rosi to ask his daughter
Hildigunna for his foster son Hauskuld.
She said she would not be wedded unless
they would get Hauskuld a priesthood.
Njal tried to get a priesthood for
Hauskuld, but no one would sell his. At the
Thing that summer, when no one could
get his suit settled, Njal said it would be
wiser to have a Fifth Court to take over
those suits that could not be finished in
the Quarter Courts. And so Skapti Thor-
odsson brought the Fifth Court into law.
Then Njal begged a new priesthood for
Hauskuld, and Hildigunna and Hauskuld
were married.
Soon after Lyting, Thrain's sister's
husband, took offense at Hauskuld, Njal's
baseborn son, and killed him. Rodny,
Hauskuld's mother laid it upon
Skarphedinn to avenge that death. Skarphedinn
and his brothers went after Lyting and
his brothers. When Njal's foster son
Hauskuld made atonement for the
slaying, Aumund, Hauskuld Njalsson's base-
born and blind son, came to Lyting at the
Thing and demanded his share. Lyting
refused. When Aumund came to the door,
he turned short around and his eyes were
opened. Then he ran straight to Lytine
and killed him with an ax. Aumund
3627

turned to go out again and his eyes were
sealed. Njal made the atonement.
Mord Valgardsson planned to talebear
before Njal's sons so that they would kill
Hauskuld the Priest. A coolness sprang
up between Njal's sons and Hauskuld.
Finally, Mord with them, Njal's sons slew
Hauskuld. Njal said the next deaths
would be his and those of his wife and
sons.
Hauskuld's death brought his father-
in-law Flosi Thordsson much grief and
wrath. He gathered together a great band.
Skarphedinn sought help, and they all
went to the Thing. There the atonement
fell through. Flosi gathered his men for an
attack with fire and sword on Njal's
sons.
Njal gathered all his sons in the house
and Flosi's band tried to master them
with weapons. When the attackers had
got great manscathe with many wounded,
Flosi took fire and made great piles before
the doors. He called the women out, and
Helgi Njalsson tried to escape with them
but was killed. Bergthora stayed indoors
with Njal and Kari's son Thord. The
three lay down on the bed with an
oxhide over them. Then the fires burned hot
and timbers began to fall. Kari ran along
the crossbeams and beat his way out with
a burning bench. He was hidden by the
smoke as he ran away. Skarphedinn tried
to follow but was pinned to the wall, and
Grim fell dead in the fire. After Flosi's
men were sure Skarphedinn was dead, they
heard him sing a song. When men came
to find them, Njal and Thord and
Bergthora were not burned, but the oxhide
was shriveled.
Flosi dreamed that many men would
die. Kari set about getting his men
together. They all went to the Thing. All
who wished to avenge the burning
shouted their war cries. Many men were
killed before an atonement was reached.
Since Kari would not have that atonement
cover the burning, there was another
award for that. The payment covered all
but Thord Karisson. Flosi and his men
were to go abroad.
Thorgeir Craggeir, a kinsman, went
along with Kari. They came upon some
of Flosi's men and killed them. Then Flosi
made an atonement with Thorgeir, so that
Kari would be left alone. Kari said he
would take it ill if Thorgeir did not make
his peace. He agreed that the burning was
avenged but not his son's death.
Then Kari went to the Orkneys and
killed more men who had sailed out of
Iceland until he had slain fifteen. His
wife died while he was sea-roving.
Then Kari and Flosi made separate
pilgrimages south for absolution. When they
came home, Kari went straight to Flosi's
house. Flosi sprang up and kissed Kari.
Then they were fully atoned, and Flosi
gave to Kari his brother's daughter Hildi-
gunna. They dwelt there a long time.
3628

THE STORY OF GOSTA BERLING
Type of work: Novel
Author: Selma Lagerlof (1858-1940)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Sweden
First published: 1894
Principal characters:
Gosta Berling, formerly a minister
The Countess Elizabeth, Gosta's wife
Margareta Samzelius, the major's wife
Marianne Sinclair, in love with Gosta
Christian Bergh, Gosta's crony
Critique:
The Story of Gosta Berling has
remained since its publication a great
favorite, and the esteem in which it is
held is due to several noteworthy qualities
of the novel. Selma Lagerlof has
recreated much of the warm, emotional
tone of Swedish country life. The use
of the almost supernatural, which can
be explained reasonably, is unique. The
moral theme of Gosta's redemption is a
powerful one. In addition, the tale is told
with a light, sure touch that adds to the
delight of the reader. The novelist takes
the point of view of an old resident who
recalls with difficulty the tales of long
ago, a process which gives an air of
realism.
In his heart Gosta felt love for his flock.
As he sat up that night, thinking of
the wonder that had happened, Bergh
came to his window to assure him that
the bishop would never trouble him
again. Thinking to help his drinking
crony, Bergh had driven the bishop and
his attendant priests in his carriage. He
took them on a wild ride, up and down
hill and over plowed fields at top speed.
Then, as he drew up at the inn which
was their destination, he warned the
bishop not to bother Gosta thereafter.
The bishop did not come to see Gosta
any more on any errand, nor did any
other bishop, for Gosta was dismissed
from the church.
He became a beggar. In the winter he
had only rags on his feet. He met the
twelve-year-old daughter of the wicked
clergyman of Bro. Neglected by her
father, she was hauling a heavy sled with
a sack of meal for her own food. Gosta
took hold of the rope with her. When
she left him in charge of the sled, he
promptly bartered both sled and meal for
brandy.
Awaking from a drunken sleep, Gosta
saw Margareta Samzelius, the major's
wife, looking at him; out of compassion
she intended to help Gosta. Margareta,
strong and rough, ruled Ekeby and six
estates. She had been betrothed to a
young man named Altinger, but her
parents made her take the major while
THE STORY OF GOSTA BERLING by Selma LagerlSff. Translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach. By per-
misuon of the publishers, Doubleday ft Co., Inc. Copyright, 1898, by Pauline Bancroft Flach. Renewed,
1925, by Pauline Bancroft Flach.
The Story:
Gosta Berling stood in the pulpit on
what was a critical Sunday for him, for
the bishop was present to make a strict
investigation of his ministry. Gosta drank
far too much and too often. With his
crony, Christian Bergh, he spent more
and more time in tavern taprooms, and
brandy had become for him a necessity.
The congregation had complained of his
conduct to the bishop, and now Gosta
felt himself on trial.
That morning he preached his sermon
as if inspired by God Himself. At the
end of the service, the bishop stood up
and asked for complaints against the
minister, but no one would say a word.
3629

she was waiting the five years for Altinger
to make his fortune. Then Altinger came
back rich and famous and Margareta
became his mistress. At his death he left
his lands ostensibly to the major, but in
reality to Margareta.
After great urging, Gosta became a
pensioner, one of the group of merry
wastrels who existed handsomely on the
bounty of Margareta. On Christmas Eve
the pensioners had a great party, with
much to drink. Then Sintram, who was
so evil that he thought himself the chosen
of Satan, came in dressed as the devil.
He said he was going to renew his pact
with Margareta. The half-drunk
pensioners thought uneasily of Margareta's
great wealth and power. Surely
something supernatural had helped her. It
was said that she held her power by
sacrificing the soul of one pensioner to
the devil each year.
In a frightening bit of nonsense the
pensioners made a pact with the devil;
no one of their number was to die that
year. Once in charge of Ekeby and the
six estates, the pensioners agreed to
conduct themselves as masters in a manner
pleasing to Satan himself.
The next day when the grouse was
passed at the Christmas feast, Bergh
called the birds crows and threw them
one by one against the wall. Margareta
ordered him out of the house. In his
wrath, Bergh accused her of having been
Alringer's mistress with the compliance
of her husband. Margareta proudly
confessed the truth of what he said. Then,
to save his honor, the major disowned his
wife. All the pensioners, who owed her
so much, turned their faces when she
asked for help. Margareta left her home
to become a beggar.
That year the pensioners were in
charge at Ekeby. The major, indifferent
to the estates, returned to his own farm.
Gosta learned that Anna Stjarnhok, the
rich and beautiful belle of the district,
had broken her engagement to a timid
man named Ferdinand to become
engaged to a rich old man with a bald head.
Determined to bring Anna back to
Ferdinand, Gosta harried her so much
at a ball that she slapped his face. But
that slap revealed the truth; Anna really
loved Gosta. Forgetting his duty to
Ferdinand, Gosta set out with Anna for
Ekeby. But on the way their sleigh was
followed by wolves and they were forced
to stop at Ferdinand's home for
protection. So Gosta involuntarily brought
Anna back to Ferdinand, and so he was
saved from committing a sin.
Ferdinand, however, soon died, and
Anna went through a marriage ceremony
with his corpse. Ever after she
concealed her love for Gosta.
At a ball at Ekeby, Gosta and
Marianne Sinclair took part in a tableau
presenting them as lovers. Marianne,
succumbing to the charm of Gosta, kissed
him after the tableau. Later, at the
gaming table, Gosta won all the money
Marianne's father had, and then, in jest,
won his consent to a betrothal with
Marianne. When the father discovered
that Gosta, a drunkard and an unfrocked
minister, was in earnest, he was furious
with his daughter.
After the ball the pensioners found
Marianne locked out by her father and
half-frozen. Supposedly asleep in the
guest room at Ekeby that night, the girl
heard Margareta, who had returned full
of wrath against her pensioners, plan a
riot to drive the wastrels out. Marianne
ran to a bear hunter and enlisted his aid,
and succeeded in breaking up the riot.
But Marianne contracted smallpox on
her errand, and the scars gready marred
her beauty. Not wishing Gosta to see
her, she returned to her father, and Gosta
thought she had discontinued their
romance. Too proud to go after her, he
soon forgot her.
Countess Elizabeth Dohna, at twenty,
was a gay, sympathetic girl married to a
stupid husband. At a dance Gosta asked
her for a polka. She refused because she
had heard that Gosta had caused the
death of Ebba, her husband's sister, who
had died in sorrow after hearing the
story of Gosta's life. Angry at her
refusal, Gosta and his friends abducted the
3630

countess and took her home. There
the stupid husband sided with Costa.
The poor girl led a miserable life. Finally
she ran away to live as a peasant, and
the count had the marriage annulled.
After she was legally a single woman
again, she bore a child. Not wishing to
have an unnamed baby, she asked Costa
to marry her. Gosta accepted, awed and
grateful, for he loved the countess.
Costa, helped by his wife, turned over
a new leaf, and all the pensioners
followed his lead. Ekeby rang with the
smith's hammer; walls and docks were
repaired. When Margareta came back
after the death of the major, she
reentered Ekeby as mistress of a prosperous
estate.
Costa and his wife retired to a modest
cottage where Gosta could earn his living
as a carpenter and help all who were in
trouble, and the countess could serve
the sick. So Costa became, after many
years, a good man.
3631

STORY OF THE GUITAR
Type of work: Drama
Author: Kao Tse-ch'eng (Kao Ming, c. 1305-c. 1368)
Type of plot: Tragi-comedy
Time of plot: c. 200
Locale: Honan Province, China
First presented: Fourteenth century
Principal characters:
Ts'ai Jung, a young scholar
Chao Wu-niang, his wife
Chang, a neighbor
The Honorable Mr. Niu, the prime minister
Miss Niu, his daughter
Critique:
Although the hero of this play, Ts*ai
Jung, was a historical figure, the plot
has no historical basis. Its central interest
is in the character of Chao Wu-niang,
whose endurance, sacrifice, and devotion
to her husband and parents-in-law
represent the height of Chinese feminine
virtues. Her legend, popular even before the
play was written, has touched the hearts
of Chinese women for countless
generations. Sometimes staged under the title
Lute Song, the original Chinese title is
Fi Fa Chi.
The Story:
Ts'ai Jung had been married for only
two months when the local government
recommended him as a candidate for the
Imperial Examination. His father insisted
on his making the trip to the capital, for
the examination gave the young scholar
an opportunity to distinguish himself
and bring honor to his family. Ts'ai
himself would rather have stayed home and
fulfilled his duties as a. son. However,
fearing that his unwillingness to leave
his parents, who were infirm with age,
would be interpreted as selfish love for
his wife, Ts'ai reluctantly took his
departure, after entrusting his neighbor
Chang, an old man, with the care of his
family.
Ts'ai easily won the first place in the
examination. The emperor took such a
fancy to the young scholar that he ordered
him to be married to the daughter of Mr.
Niu, the prime minister. The imperial
order came as a happy solution to the
prime minister; he had a problem in
his daughter, who had sworn never to
marry unless the man was a genius who
passed first in the Imperial Examination.
Here, at last, was a young man who met
the requirement; consequently, no one
paid attention to Ts'ai's protestations that
he already had a wife and that his only
ambition was to serve his parents. He was
married a second time, much against his
wishes. Further restrictions were imposed
on his freedom when he was ordered to
live in the prime minister's house.
Ts'ai's second wife was as intelligent
and sympathetic as she was beautiful,
and she could see that her husband was
unhappy in his new surroundings. He
loved her, but he was also homesick.
He had no knowledge that Ch'en-liu,
his home district, had been stricken with
famine. Nor did he know what a strain
was placed on his first wife, Chao Wu-
niang, to support his parents during that
terrible time. She sold her clothes and
jewels to save the aged couple from
starvation, while she herself lived on chaff.
Their neighbor Chang also shared with
them whatever rice he had.
No word came from Ts'ai. When the
mother succumbed to sorrow, hunger, and
disease, Chang lent the money to buy a
coffin. When the father died a short time
later, Chao Wu-niang did not like to
trouble the kind neighbor for another
loan. She cut her hair and tried to get
a little money from its sale. Before any
3632

buyer turned up, however, she was
discovered in the street by Chang, who
bought another coffin for her. Because
she could not hire a grave-digger, she
tried to raise a tumulus with her own
hands. At last she fell asleep from fatigue,
her fingers bleeding from her hard labor.
While she slept, spirits came to finish the
grave for her.
Carrying a pipa, an instrument like a
guitar, and portraits of the deceased
parents, done by herself, which she would
exhibit while begging for alms, she set
out for the capital in search of her
husband.
Ts'ai had not for a moment forgotten
his parents and first wife; he was merely
duped when a swindler arrived with false
news from his family. Relieved to hear
that they were all well and safe, Ts'ai
asked the same man to deliver a letter,
together with gold and pearls, to his
parents. The villain simply disappeared.
After a long period of anxious waiting,
Ts'ai decided to go and see for himself
how his family fared. He had
wholehearted support from his second wife,
who intended to go with him in order to
perform daughterly duties for his
parents. The prime minister refused to grant
permission, however; he wanted to keep
his daughter and son-in-law always close
to him. When his daughter kept
pestering him with supplications, he finally
agreed to send a servant to Ch'en-liu to
bring Ts'ai's parents and first wife to the
capital, where they would live in his
house as guests.
One day Chao Wu-niang came to a
temple where a special mass was being
celebrated. She had arrived in the
capital, but she was not willing to see her
husband until she was sure that he had
not hardened his heart against her. She
sang to the pipa a song on the virtue of
filial piety, but the pilgrims and
worshipers were not as generous in giving alms
as she had expected. After she had hung
up the portraits and begun to say prayers
for the deceased parents, Ts'ai appeared
to pray for his parents, whom he believed
to be on their way to the capital. Chao
Wu-niang immediately left the temple.
Ts'ai failed to see her, but he found the
picture and took it home with him.
The prime minister's daughter, in
anticipation of the arrival of her parents-in-
law, was looking for an intelligent woman
to serve as a maid for the old couple.
Chao Wu-niang, applying for the
position, won the sympathy of the young
mistress with her story of long suffering
and the purpose of her journey to the
capital. Though Chao Wu-niang used an
anagram for her husband's name, the
other could not fail to see who the
unfortunate woman really was. She
immediately addressed her as sister and
together the two devised a stratagem to
test Ts'ai's heart.
The picture Chao Wu-niang had left
in the temple was now hanging up in
Ts'ai's study. She wrote a poem on its
back, criticizing in a loving tone her
husband's conduct.
Ts'ai had not looked carefully at the
picture, nor did he know that a man
servant had hung it up. Now, returning
from his office, he saw it again. The two
faces bore a strange resemblance to his
parents, but he was puzzled by their
emaciated and ragged looks. Then he
discovered the poem, apparently a satire at
his expense. His first reaction was anger.
He asked his wife whether she had any
knowledge of the person who ventured
into his study and scribbled an unjust
attack on him. Chao Wu-niang was
summoned, and the whole story was told.
The prime minister finally won over,
Ts'ai took his two wives to Ch'en-liu to
worship at his parents' graves. All three
were honored by the emperor as examples
of virtuous conduct. The happiest man
on the scene was the neighbor Chang,
who derived more satisfaction from the
reunion of Ts'ai's family than he did from
the material rewards he now received.
3633

STRANGE INTERLUDE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: New England and New York
First presented: 1928
Principal characters:
Nina Leeds, a neurotic woman
Professor Henry Leeds, her father
Sam Evans, her husband
Mrs. Amos Evans, his mother
Gordon Evans, Nina's son
Edmund Darrell, a doctor, Nina's lover
Charles Marsden, a novelist
Madeline Arnold, in love with Gordon
Critique:
Strange Interlude is a frankly
experimental drama in which Eugene O'Neill
attempts to bring to the stage the stream
of consciousness technique of the modern
novel. By means of technical devices such
as the soliloquy and the aside he allows
his characters to reveal to the theater
audience their inner thoughts and feelings.
These devices, artificial in themselves,
contribute, nevertheless, to the plastic and
imaginative freedom of the play. The
writer's concern for the inward or
subconscious mentality of his people reflects
the widespread interest of the 1920*8 in
Freudian imagery and theory.
The Story:
If Nina Leeds had married her first
love, Gordon Shaw, her whole life might
have been different. But Gordon went off
to the war in France, and when his plane
burst into flames and crashed near Sedan,
he )oit Nina with nothing to show for her
life.
Before he went away Gordon had
urged Nina to marry him, but her father
had objected. Now Gordon was dead, and
Nina had not even the memory of one
night alone with him. As a consequence
she threw herself indiscriminately into
affairs with one soldier after another,
those who like Gordon were going out to
die, because she thought she could give to
others what Gordon had been denied. But
promiscuity failed to ease her own sorrow,
and she returned to her father's house an
embittered and lonely woman. She was
particularly bitter toward her father, a
professor in the university, for she rightly
suspected that it was her father's jealousy,
his irrational desire to keep her with him,
which had been responsible for his
opposition to her marriage with Gordon.
Nina had an admirer in Charles
Marsden, the novelist, an old friend of
her father. Marsden had known Nina
since she was a little girl and he had often
thought of marrying her. But since he was
attached to his aging mother, who did not
entirely approve of Nina, he never got
around to proposing. Her half-serious,
half-mocking fondness for him annoyed
Marsden; it was a reminder of his own
failure to come to grips with life.
Nina had another admirer of quite a
different nature in Dr. Edmund Darrell,
an ambitious young physician who had
taken an interest in Nina's case when she
was a nurse in the hospital of which he
was a staff member. Although he found
her attractive, Darrell had no intention of
endangering his career by an involvement
with a neurotic woman. Nevertheless he
did realize that she needed help, and he
STRANGE INTERLUDE by Eugene O'Neill. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc.
Copyright, 1928, by Horace Iiveright, 'Inc.
3634

concluded that a husband and a child
would be the logical solution for her
difficulties. His choice was Sam Evans, scion
of a well-to-do family, who was already in
love with Nina.
In the meantime Professor Leeds,
Nina's father, had died, and she turned
almost automatically to Marsden as a kind
of surrogate. When Marsden, taking his
cue from Darrell, suggested Evans as a
possible husband, Nina drowsily assented.
Sam Evans married Nina realizing that
she was not in love with him, but he lived
in the hope that a child would bring them
closer together. About seven months after
she came to live on the Evans homestead
in northern New York State, Nina found
herself pregnant, but when she confided
her condition to her mother-in-law, Mrs.
Evans found it necessary to reveal several
family secrets which she had kept hidden
even from her own son.
One was that Sam's aunt, hopelessly
insane, lived on the top floor of the old
house, and the other was that Sam's
grandmother and her father before her
had both died in an asylum.
Overwhelmed by the situation in which she
found herself, Nina could think of no
way out except to get rid of her child
through an operation and to leave Sam.
Mrs. Evans protested, pointing out that
Sam needed her, that he needed the
confidence a child would give him, even if
this child were not his own.
Pondering this idea, Nina encountered
Darrell, who had just returned from
Europe, and revealed to him the true
circumstances of her marriage. Darrell,
realizing that he was partly responsible
for her predicament, considered the
situation. At last he and Nina decided that it
would be best for Nina to have a child,
with Darrell himself as the father.
This plan worked out very well so far
as Sam Evans was concerned. When he
learned that his wife was to have a child,
he was delighted. But, unfortunately,
Nina and Darrell were unable to go on as
dispassionately as they had planned. Nina
fell in love with the real father of her
child, and in spite of the risk to his career
Darrell could not tear himself free of
Nina.
Fatherhood made a startling change in
Sam Evans. The old look of self-conscious
inferiority disappeared from his face, and
there was in its place a look of
determination and confidence. Nina also had
changed. She was noticeably older, but
there was on her face an expression of
peace and calm which had never been
there before. But Marsden had changed
most of all. His mother had died in the
meantime, and he had aged. His hair was
almost pure white.
When Darrell returned from Europe,
ostensibly because of his father's death
but actually because he could stay away
no longer from the woman he loved, Nina
for the first time in her life felt complete,
surrounded as she was by her men—her
spiritual father, her husband, her lover,
and her son.
The next eleven years brought still
more changes into these linked lives.
Darrell and Marsden had backed Sam
Evans in one of his enterprises, and as a
result all had become wealthy men.
Darrell had long ago given up his career
in medicine. Marsden, on the other hand,
had taken to writing genteel novels about
dear old ladies and devilish bachelors,
stories completely unrelated to real life.
Young Gordon Evans had no use for
his real father, whom he called Uncle
Ned, and quarreled with him on the
slightest provocation. He identified
himself completely with his mother's stories of
Gordon Shaw, built up by Nina into a
hero in the boy's imagination.
As time went by, Darrell martaged to
break the stranglehold Nina had on his
soul, devoting himself as assiduously to
biology as he had formerly to medicine.
He became his own firm self again,
impervious to all of Nina's wiles. But as she
grew older, Nina's neurotic tendencies
increased. She became the possessive
mother in her opposition to Gordon's
marriage to Madeline, a girl of good family,
even going so far as to consider informing
3635

Madeline of the strain of insanity in the
Evans family. She grew to hate Sam
Evans and at times actively wished for
his death, a wish that was fulfilled when
Sam suffered a stroke while witnessing
Gordon's victory over the Navy crew.
After Sam Evans' death, Gordon
somehow could not throw off the feeling that
his mother had never loved his father, and
he remembered a time in his boyhood
when he had seen his Uncle Ned kiss his
mother. This memory was repressed, but
it burst out one day when Gordon slapped
Darrell across the face during an
argument. Gordon instantly regretted his
act and apologized, and the matter ended
without his realization that Sam Evans
was not his real father.
At last Nina was really alone. She had
finally given her consent to her son's
marriage to Madeline. Her own marriage to
Darrell at this late date would have been
out of the question. There were too many
memories of a regretful past between
them. So Nina was left alone with
Marsden, who had waited patiently all
these years until she turned like a
daughter to him at last.
3636

STRANGE STORIES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO
Type of work: Tales and legends
Author: P'u Sung-ling (1640-1715)
First published: 1766
In spite of the rationalist tradition of
Confucianism, the Chinese people
before the republican era were no less
superstitious and credulous than
Europeans during the Middle Ages.
Supernatural tales are a literary genre still
cultivated today in Taiwan, though less
extensively or seriously than they were
under the Manchu dynasty (1644-1911),
when a great number of such collections
were published and enjoyed by a wide
audience. Of these, Strange Stories from
a Chinese Studio (Liao-chai Chih-i) is
the recognized classic, superior to the rest
for its style, learned allusions, wonderful
mixture of humanity with the
preposterous, and inventiveness. Though the
author claimed in his preface that he did
nothing more than copy down what he
had heard and edit contributions from his
friends, quite a number of the stories
were his creations, judging from the
sophistication of sentiment and the
neatness of plot. These stories, mostly
supernatural in theme, rich in poetic
symbolism, and deep in psychological insight,
are a unique achievement in Chinese
literature as studies of the feminine mind
clothed in vivid imagination.
The preponderant supernatural
element in these stories is far from naive;
human nature as revealed here is what is
known to a wise scholar or a passionate
lover rather than to an innocent blessed
with great sense of wonder but little
experience. But like the fairy tales of the
Western world, the stories are governed
by a logic of their own. Supernatural
intervention is common, and men
associate freely with spirits. Causes are
followed by effects, but not in the
same manner as in the natural or
everyday human world. Spirits, demons, and
human beings are all under the control
of the law of causation, or just
retribution; good deeds or evil bring forth
rewards or punishments. Therefore, the
author believed that his stories had a
moral purpose in spite of their weirdness,
absurdity, or even, in certain cases,
obscenity.
Of the 431 pieces collected, some are
short bits of curious information. For
instance, the account of a chorus
composed of frogs does not run to more than
two lines in the original. Another
account, in three lines, concerns a show
with a cast of mice which performed,
under masks, a puppet-like drama. Some
longer ones, about a page in length, have
greater human interest. An old man,
revived after he had been thought dead,
had his old spouse lie down by his side,
and they died together ("Mr. Chu, the
Considerate Husband"). A tiger, after
killing a man, allowed himself to be
arrested, confessed his crime to the court,
and agreed to serve as a son to the
destitute and lonesome old mother. He
constantly brought dead animals and
other valuables to her door, and he would
sometimes come to her house to keep her
company. After her death, he was present
at the funeral. When the human
mourners were all frightened off, he roared
terribly to give vent to his grief ("The
Tiger of Chao-ch'eng").
Short and comparatively artless pieces
like these can be found in other
collections of a similar nature. The fame of
this book rests on the longer tales which
the author narrates with an admirable
delicacy and poignancy. None is truly
tragic, for one essential condition of
tragedy is missing here, as in many other
Chinese stories. The author, and
apparently his readers too, did not believe that
death was final and irrevocable. He did
not even take death seriously, since a
dead woman (most of the stories are
remembered for their heroines rather
than their heroes), can always in one way
B6B7

or another recover life or assume an
animate shape. A man will feel little scruple
about making love to a female ghost,
especially when she is young and
beautiful. Moreover, she is often learned, and
her occupation in her ghostly loneliness
is the composition of poetry, works of
great self-pity and chilliness. She prefers
a poetical, handsome young man for her
lover. The poetical qualities seem to be
important, for in one story the ghost
spurns a very good-looking young man
only because he is too stupid to learn
("The Young Gentleman Who Couldn't
Spell")- It may be supposed that a man
can love a ghost only spiritually, without
bodily contact, but not so in this book
where love means sexual love. When a
man and a ghost sleep in the same bed,
he may suffer from exposure to the
ghostly air, but he can be cured with proper
medical treatment. In one story the ghost
absorbs so much vitality from her lover
that she feels life has come back to her,
and she bids him reopen her grave. The
coffin is decayed but the corpse looks
lifelike and feels warm. After he takes
her body home, the first words she utters
after her resuscitation are: "Aren't they
like a dream—these ten odd years buried
there!"
A great number of stories are about
spirits—the spirits of rocks, trees, flowers,
frogs, snakes, fish, birds, and various
mammals. The most notable is the fox. A
fox spirit can be vicious in the popular
legends, but here he, or she, is almost
invariably witty, charming, highly
sophisticated, and possessed of all too human
qualities in addition to magical powers.
A female fox in human shape may be
only plain, as in the case of The Dowdy
Fox; but that was because the man she
chose was a simple peasant who,
according to her, deserved neither wealth nor a
beautiful mistress ("The Marriage
Lottery")- Or she may be middle-aged and
"modestly good-looking," like the
celebrated Heng-niang, who lectures on the
art of feminine charm and helps a
disfavored wife to win back her husband's
love. But most foxes are young girls of
unearthly beauty who may have the
power to cast spells but who are also
capable of wifely virtues and undying
love. In one story ("Miss Lien-hsiang"),
the fox saves her human lover from the
deadly influence of a female ghost. Then
the rivals, both exceedingly beautiful,
are reconciled and each, in a reincarnated
form, marries the lucky man.
Few Chinese writers indeed
understood the woman's heart so fully and
profoundly as P'u Sung-ling who, no less
than the storytellers of the Western
world, was fascinated by the mystery of
woman. Instead of being stiff and pale
paragons of virtue or negative examples
of harlots, the women in this book shine
with rare brilliance and charm. Freely
they choose their lovers, go to bed with
them, and leave them when they see that
they must part. Since liberty such as they
took was morally censurable and hardly
conceivable as a theme of literature, P'u
solved his problem of creation by
adopting the form of the supernatural tale
and thus won praise for his fancy and
style. The modern reader, however, will
recognize his ghosts and his spirits of
foxes or other animals as realistic
portraits of the eternal woman.
There are about twenty female
characters in this book who will long be
remembered as among the best creations of
Chinese literature. Altogether, these tales
present a full gallery of portraits of women,
whether they are human, superhuman,
or subhuman; women in various moods
and situations, women as lovers and
wives, women with all their passion,
tenderness, flirtation, perseverance, and
devotion. The popularity of the tales in
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
has been due as much to their
strangeness as to their appeal to common
humanity. The author, as a product of his
age, may have intended to be simply
entertaining or didactic, or bpth, but his
genius allowed him to probe
psychological depths that were often beyond the
imagination of other storytellers.
3638

STREET SCENE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Elmer Rice (1892-
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: 1929
Locale: New York
First presented: 1929
Principal characters:
Rose Maurrant, a young girl of twenty
Anna, her mother
Frank, her father
Sam Kaplan, a frustrated young intellectual
Abe, his father
Shirley, his sister
Harry Easter, a fairly prosperous real estate man
Critique:
In Street Scene we have the
forerunner of the social drama of the 1930's.
Before this time, what social drama
America had produced criticized only
indirectly. Rice presents us with a tragic
situation growing out of a specific
environment, the teeming tenements of
New York, and he makes his
presentation effectively; most of his many
characters would undoubtedly be found
around just such a neighborhood. Thus
this play, which culminates in a lurid
murder, does not fall into the category of
melodrama, as its people and their
environment create the main interest.
The Story:
It was a hot June evening in New
York, and in front of an ancient brown-
stone walk-up apartment in a mean
quarter of the city, residents were variously
disposed, discussing the weather and the
affairs of the day. Anna Maurrant and
her lover, Sankey, a collector for the
milk company, were the subjects of the
gossip of a small group of the residents.
They were shocked at Anna's behavior-
after all, she had a grown-up daughter.
One neighbor reported that Sankey had
already been there twice this week while
Anna's husband and daughter Rose were
away.
The gossip ceased with the appearance
of Anna and the arrival of her husband.
Frank Maurrant was irritated that his
daughter Rose was not yet at home and
that her whereabouts was a mystery. He
told Anna that he would have to be out
of town the next day; as a stagehand, he
was working on a show which was
opening outside of New York. After the Maur-
rants had left, the janitor of the building
quietly predicted that Frank would
someday kill Sankey.
A short time later Sam Kaplan
appeared. The arguments and trivial talk
which passed between the occupants of
the tenement bored him. Twenty, and a
student in college, he was depressed over
his current situation. He felt trapped by
his environment, although old Abe, his
father, seemed content with life in the
tenement, reading his newspapers,
criticizing the government, longing for a so-
STREET SCENE by Elmer Rice. By permission of the author and the publisher, Samuel French, Inc.
Copyright. 1928. 1929, by Elmer L. Rice; Copyright, 1955, 1956 (in renewal), by Elmer L. Rice.
Application for the right to present this play should be made to Samuel French, Inc., of 25 West 45th Street,
New York 36, N. Y., or 7623 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood 46, Calif., or if in Canada to Samuel French
(Canada) Ltd., 27 Grenvillc St., Toronto, Ont.
3639

cial revolution, and arguing politics with
anyone interested. Sam would have been
more than happy to get out of the
tenement atmosphere at the first opportunity.
After the street cleared, Rose Maur-
rant finally arrived, escorted by Harry
Easter, manager of the real estate office
where she worked. Easter wanted to set
Rose up in an apartment and take her
away from her twenty-five-dollar-a-week
salary, but Rose refused his offer. Easter
was married, in the first place, and she
was not really very fond of him. Besides,
she realized that there would be strings
attached to his proposal. Easter left with
the approach of Frank Maurrant, who
lectured his daughter on her late hours.
Maurrant, ironically enough, spoke up
for family happiness, security, and proper
behavior. Sam came out and sympathized
with Rose, who knew of her mother's
situation. Sam felt that neither of them
belonged in this sordid atmosphere. He
was even more crushed when he tried
unsuccessfully to defend Rose from an
amorous taxi driver who passed by; the
incident added to his bitterness, which
Rose tried in vain to allay. Rose left Sam
sitting despondently on the curb.
Bustling tenement life went on as usual
the next morning. In the middle of the
hubbub, Sam's sister Shirley warned him
to spend more time on his studies and
less with Rose. Later she asked Rose to
avoid Sam. Since he was going to be a
lawyer, Shirley felt he should not be
distracted from his studies. Rose pleaded
innocence to the charge of taking Sam's
mind from his work. They possibly
seemed slightly drawn to each other, Rose
did admit.
Sam's appearance led to another
conversation with Rose concerning life and
death. Though Rose, unlike Sam,
admitted there was joy to be found in life,
certainly it was not to be found in their
environment. They talked of running
away; it was clear that Sam was interested
in Ros£ romantically. Rose, however, was
simply interested in getting away from
her surroundings.
Although Frank Maurrant had left his
wife with a less than subtle hint that he
knew what was going on in his absence,
soon after his departure Anna informed
Sankey that no one was at home, Rose
having left for a funeral. For a few
minutes life monotonously continued in the
neighborhood; then Frank reappeared,
dashed inside, and killed both his wife
and her lover. He emerged, torn and
bloody, and escaped. Rose arrived in time
to see her mother being carried through
the crowd on a stretcher.
Later that afternoon the tabloids
contained full accounts of the bloody
murders. Everyone in the neighborhood was
talking about the killings and speculating
on the whereabouts of Frank Maurrant,
who was still at large. Rose, returning
from a grim shopping trip, declined
sincere offers of help from Easter and others.
She simply did not wish to feel obligated
to anyone; she and her twelve-year-old
brother would soon be leaving New York.
For the present, they were moving away
from the tenement immediately.
An excited crowd surged down the
street, heralding the appearance of two
policemen and a battered Frank
Maurrant. Frank tearfully cried that he was
out of his head when he committed
murder. He had tried to be a good father, but
this was just the way things turned out.
Rose and Sam Kaplan eventually
found themselves alone in the street.
Sam, renewing his plea that he and Rose
go away together, spoke of their
belonging to each other. Rose, however, felt
that people should never belong to
anyone. If her mother had not depended on
someone else for what she should have
had inside her, Rose said, the tragedy
might have been averted.
She tenderly explained that loving and
belonging were different emotions; a
person should believe in himself, but she
told Sam that perhaps something would
work out for them when they were older
and wiser. After Sam had gone into the
house, a now sympathetic Shirley
appeared to say goodbye before Rose left
3640

for what she hoped would be a new and
better life. As she was leaving, a shabby-
looking couple had spotted the vacancv
notice on the building and were ringing
for the janitor. From the wreath on the
door, they decided that someone had died;
it was probably the reason why the
apartment was being vacated.
3641

STRIFE
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Industrial town near London
First presented: 1909
Principal characters:
John Anthony, chairman of the Trenartha Tin Plate Works
Edgar Anthony, his son
Francis Underwood, manager of the plant
Enid Underwood, his wife, and John Anthony's daughter
Simon Harness, a Trades Union official
David Roberts, leader of the strike
Annie Roberts, David's wife
Critique:
Galsworthy wrote this play at a time
when the rights of laborers were only
beginning to be asserted. Strife presents
a picture of both sides of the strike
question, for Galsworthy was always an
impartial realist. Aside from its social
implications, the play is also notable for
several very real and forceful characters,
Roberts and old Anthony among them.
The Story:
The strike at the Trenartha Tin Plate
Works had lasted so long without any
sign of a settlement that the directors
had begun to fear for their dividends.
They had all gathered at the Underwood
home at the request of the workers, and
at first there was some talk of
compromise. Facing them, however, was
the stern figure of the chairman of
the board, seventy-five-year-old John
Anthony, who refused to consider any
plan for compromise.
Anthony belonged to the old school
of businessmen who refused to move
with the times. For him there could be
only one master at the plant, and that
was John Anthony himself. He had
defeated four strikes in his thirty-two
years as chairman of the board, and he
was certain that a little more perseverance
would defeat the strikers once more.
The other directors were a little uneasy
under his stern refusal. In his report
STRIFE by John Galsworthy, rrom PLAYS by John Galsworthy. By permission of the publishers, Charier
Scribrier*s Sons. Copyright, 1909, 1910, by John Galsworthy, 1928, by Charle* Scribner's Sons.
Underwood, the plant manager, had
made no attempt to disguise the terrible
suffering of the striking workers and
their families. The directors were also
aware that if the strike lasted much
longer their stockholders would begin to
protest strongly.
Although the union had withdrawn
support from the strikers because two
of their conditions exceeded the
prevailing standards, Simon Harness, a
Trades Union official, had been sent
to attempt mediation between the board
and the workers. His interview with
the directors accomplished nothing
because of Anthony's obstinacy. The
meeting between the representatives of the
workers and the directors was equally
unhappy. Roberts, the leader of the
striking workmen, was just as unyielding
on his side as Anthony was on his. Both
sides faced a deadlock.
Conditions among the workers were
so terrible that many of them were ready
to give in, but Roberts remained
adamant. Mrs. Roberts was dying; her weak
heart could not stand the cold and
hunger which the strike imposed upon
them all. At one time she had been
the maid in Underwood's home, and
one afternoon Enid Underwood went
to visit her. Mrs. Underwood had tried
to send food to Mrs. Roberts, but the
strike leader was too proud and too
3642

stubborn to accept help from the
daughter of John Anthony. Mrs. Underwood
tried to plead with Roberts, asking him,
for his wife's sake, to give in and end
the strike. But he was fanatic in his
certainty that in the end the workmen
could bring their employers to terms.
At a meeting of the men and Harness,
the Trades Union official, it became
evident that most of the strikers were
willing to compromise, to accept the
union suggestions. A few were willing
to give in completely. When Roberts
appeared at the meeting, the men did
not wish to hear him speak. But Roberts
was a powerful orator, and as he talked
to them again about the eventual victory
which they could win if they refused
to give in now, they were once more
moved and convinced by his oratory.
As he was speaking, a young woman
approached the platform and told him
that his wife had died. With this tragedy
as an example of what they must expect
if they continued to resist, the men
decided to accept the terms of the union
compromise.
The news of Mrs. Roberts' death was
a blow to the directors. Edgar Anthony,
in spite of the respect which he had for
his father, now faced his colleagues and
accused them of responsibility for the
woman's condition and death. They felt
uncomfortably that what he said was
very close to the truth. Old Anthony,
weak and unwell as he was, still
insisted that the company should not
yield. But the directors had decided to
act in spite of him, although they knew
that should they decide to accept the
union terms, Anthony would resign.
That evening the meeting between
the workers, Harness, and the directors
was painful in the extreme. Anthony
found himself outvoted by his colleagues.
Wearily, with an acknowledgement of
his defeat, he resigned. Roberts, who
knew nothing of the action which his
men had decided to take after he had
left the meeting, arrived at the
Underwood home in time to watch Harness
complete the settlement. The terms
agreed upon were those which the union
had suggested to both sides before the
strike began, but it had needed months
of suffering to bring agreement in the
dispute. The two leaders stared at each
other, both deserted by their supporters,
both defeated by the compromise. As
they recognized the courageous battle
which each had put up, their expression
of hate turned to one of grudging
admiration and mutual respect.
3643

STUDS LONIGAN: A TRILOGY
Type of work: Novel
Author: James T. Farrell (1904- )
Time: 1916-1931
Locale: Chicago
Virst published: Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy, 1935 (Young Lonigan, 1932; The Young
Manhood of Studs Lonigan, 1934; Judgment Day, 1935)
Principal characters:
William "Studs" Lonigan, a lower middle-class Irish-American
Old Lonigan, his father
Mrs. Lonigan, his mother
Frances Lonigan, his sister
Lucy Scanlon, loved hy Studs Lonigan
Catherine Banahan, Stud Lonigan s mistress and fiancee
Paulie Haggerty, and
Weary Reilley, friends of Studs Lonigan
Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy, first
published in separate volumes from 1932 to
1935, still appears to be James T. Far-
rell's major work, despite the long list
of books—novels, collections of short
stories, essays, and literary criticism—
which have followed. Every significant
critical work on the American novel
published since 1935 has mentioned the
trilogy. While critics have not always
agreed on the merit of Farrell's work, the
purposes behind it, or even the nature of
the author's craft, they have all admitted
that Farrell has contributed something of
apparent but still unproved value to
American fiction written in this century.
The three volumes about Studs
Lonigan portray the disintegration, physical
and moral, of a voung Chicago Irishman
during the period from 1916 to 1931,
beginning with the protagonist's graduation
from a parochial school on Chicago's
South Side and ending with his death.
Farrell himself has been explicit in
pointing out that Studs Lonigan is not a story
of the slums, that the tragedy of Studs
Lonigan is not rooted in the economics
of the community or nation. The trilogy
was not intended to illustrate an
economic thesis, nor does it. The downfall
of Studs Lonigan is portrayed as the
result of spiritual poverty in an Irish-
American, lower middle-class
neighborhood of Chicago. The elder Lonigan was
a painting contractor who was successful
enough that his family was not in want.
The failure in the world of the Lonigans
is a failure of moral sanctions. As Fanrell
himself has stated of that social milieu,
there were important institutions which
should have played a part in the
education of Studs Lonigan and his friends;
those institutions were the home, the
family, the church, the school, the
playground. When they failed, the streets and
the poolroom took their place. Under
these influences young Lonigan, not an
evil young man or a moral cripple, drifted
into grim and dismal circumstances. To
such an extent is the character of Studs
Lonigan a social manifestation, as well
as a fictional character.
The story of the growth of the trilogy
has been told by its creator. While a
student at the University of Chicago,
Farrell took a course in advanced
composition, apparently the only college course
which he liked and in which he worked.
In that course he wrote a story entitled
"Studs," which, shown to Professors James
Weber Linn and Robert Morss Lovett,
won encouragement for its author.
Farrell then proceeded to construct a novel,
which grew into a trilogy about the
character of Studs, who came to be a symbol
of the spiritual poverty of his
neighborhood, his class, and his times. In a wider
social sense, the tragedy of Studs may be
also the tragedy of countless young
Americans whose drifting, shattered lives have
been, and still are, centered about too
much sex, too much alcohol, too many
3644

automobiles, too many empty platitudes,
too manv empty social dogmas, and too
little faith in themselves and human
nature, lives ending in increasing numbers
in alcoholism, drug addiction,
delinquency, and crime. FarreU's portrayal of
Studs Lonigan, ugly as it is in some
respects, may have hit closer to artistic and
social truth than the author dreamed of
at the time.
Farreirs technique in the Studs
Lonigan trilogy has been termed both
realistic and naturalistic. Neither term, as
it is traditionally used, fits Farreirs work,
for he has gone beyond conventional
categories. The primary reason for not
regarding the Studs Lonigan trilogy as
naturalistic or realistic is that Farrell has
used determinism in a different fashion
from that of earlier authors like Norris
and Dreiser. Thus, the character of Studs
Lonigan is not molded entirely by his
environment; he knows, at least at times,
where he is drifting. Farrell intimates in
the novel that it was in his character's
power not to have failed so entirely.
Certainly Danny O'Neill, the hero of a later
series of Farrell novels, and Farrell
himself in real life, did not drift into the
tragedy which becomes Studs Lonigan's
lot. Unlike the earlier naturalistic
novelists, Farrell did not hold himself aloof,
hold himself to an amoral view of his
creations. To some extent he asked for
reform and improvement, as the
traditional naturalistic writer does not.
Another aspect of FarreU's work that
has drawn comment, perhaps too much,
is the selection of details and language in
Studs Lonigan. The story is told in an
idiom close enough to the original to be
embarrassingly accurate for a person
familiar with it, and yet the language is
changed sufficiently to admit the
expression of wider and deeper concepts than
its culturally starved users normally can
express or wish to express. Readers* who
have never experienced this strata of
society, however, may honestly feel shocked.
Farrell has called his overall technique
"social realism"; and certainly his
language is part of that technique. Part of
the objectivity, the realistic portrayal of
both character and setting in the trilogy,
would have been lost if the writer had
employed any other style or selected his
details differently. Farrell has chosen not
to sentimentalize the world, not to
romanticize it, nor to hide its real character
in any other way. It should be noted, too,
that from early in his career, which he
has taken as seriously as his fictional
Danny O'Neill takes his, James T.
Farrell has had confidence in his materials
and in his methods. Many another writer
of the same period became the victim of
adherence to left wing brands of
determinism in his art. Those who did either
changed or failed. Farrell did not fail, nor
did he have to change, having evaded the
trap from the beginning.
To sum up the total significance of
the trilogy is not yet possible. Many
readers still misunderstand the purposes
and the techniques, preferring comfort
of illusion to pain of truth. Farrell
himself has recognized this tendency. In A
Note on Literary Criticism (1936), he
S3id that art must flow from the reality
of the writer's experience and that it
cannot be better than life. The story of Studs
Lonigan shows Farrell practicing what he
expressed as his theory. Some critics and
others who have admired FarreU's
writings have defended the \olumes by
calling them sociological documents and
making of Farrell a student of sociology
rather than an artist in fiction. Farrell
himself has not stooped to such
subterfuge, deeming any such defense
unwarranted and unnecessary.
3645

A STUDY IN SCARLET
Type of work: Novel
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: London
First published: 1887
Principal characters:
Sherlock Holmes, the detective
Dr. John Watson, his friend
Jefferson Hope, an American cab driver
Tobias Gregson, of Scotland Yard
Lestrade, of Scodand Yard
Critique:
A Study in Scarlet was the first of the
many adventures of Sherlock Holmes,
the most delightful as well as the most
durable of fictional detectives. No
ordinary criticism can apply to the canon
of Sherlock Holmes. From 1887 until
Doyle's death in 1930 the amazing
Holmes appeared in a total of sixty novels
and short stories. Many of the plots
are incredible; many of the deductions
*re improbable; all of Doyle's Americans
are people from another planet. Dr.
Watson's bullet wound was sometimes
in his shoulder, sometimes in his leg,
and he was married and widowed at
Doyle's convenience. These matters are
irrelevant. Let us have a puzzle, let us
have Holmes to solve it, let us have
Watson foi a foil, and we are all content.
The Story:
To many the Afghan wars brought
fame and promotion, but to John H.
Watson, M.D., they brought only
misfortune. He was wounded by a Jezail
bullet, and during his convalescence was
struck down with enteric. After months
of suffering he was invalided home on
eleven shillings and sixpence a day.
At first Watson lived in a hotel, but
his pension scarcely covered his bills.
By chance he met Stamford, an old
friend, and confided his difficulties.
Through him he learned of an amateur
scientist, Sherlock Holmes, who had rooms
at 22IB Baker Street and was looking
for some one to share them. On the
spot Watson arranged to have Stamford
bring them together. Stamford warned
that Sherlock Holmes pursued no
orthodox studies; one day Stamford had
found him beating a cadaver to see if
bruises could be produced after death.
Holmes had a queer habit of making
deductions from trifling, often personal
things. Watson grew curious about
Sherlock Holmes. Soon after their first
meeting Watson went to share Holmes' rooms
in Baker Street.
Watson never went out; consequently
he spent much time studying his new
friend. He found Holmes an amazingly
contradictory man who knew nothing at
all of literature, philosophy, or astronomy,
but who had a profound knowledge of
chemistry, anatomy, and sensational
crime stories. He also played the violin.
From time to time Holmes had visitors,
but Watson never knew why they came.
One day at breakfast Watson learned
a good deal more about his friend.
Holmes showed Watson a letter from
Tobias Gregson, a Scotland Yard
investigator, who asked help in a case of
murder. A gentleman identified by his
visiting cards as Enoch J. Drebber,
Cleveland, Ohio, U. S. A., had been found
murdered in a deserted house in Lauris-
ton Gardens. Holmes then explained
his profession; he was a consulting
detective. Whenever an unusual case,
outside police jurisdiction or too difficult
for Scodand Yard, came up, Holmes was
asked to step in and help solve die
mystery.
Holmes and Watson took a cab to
3646

Lauriston Gardens to look into the
affair. Holmes spent a long time
outside in the road and in the yard.
Watson was impatient at the delay, but
Holmes examined everything carefully.
Inside the house Gregson and Lestrade,
another detective from Scotland Yard,
greeted them and pointed out the body
of Drebber, surrounded by spatters of
blood. Holmes went over the body
painstakingly.
As tne orderlies were carrying out the
corpse, a woman's wedding ring fell to
the floor. The Scotland Yard men were
sure a woman was involved, and
Lestrade was triumphant when he found
the word Rache printed in letters of
blood on the wall. As Sherlock Holmes
left the room, he announced his findings
to the detectives. The murderer was
over six feet in height and florid; he
wore square-toed boots; and he smoked
a Trichinopoly cigar. He had long
nails on his right hand. He had driven
up to the house in a four-wheeler drawn
by a horse with a new shoe on his off
forefoot. The murder was done by
poison, and Rache was not short for
Rachel but was rather the German word
for revenge.
The cigar ashes, the tracks, the height
of the writing, and the scratches during
the writing on the wall had told their
story to Holmes. The blood on the floor
came from a nosebleed, indicating the
ruddy coloring of the murderer. But
after uncovering these initial clues
Holmes was balked for a time. He
advertised the wedding ring as lost, and
an old woman came to claim it. When
the old woman eluded him, he knew
that he was searching for a clever
opponent.
The trail of Drebber led to his
secretary, Stangerson. Gregson was sure
that if Stangerson could be found, he
would have the murderer. But a short
time later Stangerson was found dead,
stabbed through the heart, in his hotel
room. The case seemed impenetrable, at
least to Scotland Yard.
Gregson and Lestrade came to Holmes
one night, and the three detectives and
Watson went over their difficulties.
Holmes was tying up a trunk preparatory
to sending it away. He called a cab to
deliver it, and when the bell rang he
asked the cabbie up to help with the
ropes. As the man bent down, Holmes
quickly slipped handcuffs over the
cabbie's wrists. The cabbie was a large,
vigorous man who fought as if possessed,
but finally the four men subdued him.
With a theatrical flourish, Holmes
presented him—Jefferson Hope, the
murderer of Drebber and Stangerson!
Hope calmed down. He told the
men he had nothing to fear and he asked
Watson to feel his pulse. Watson
detected an aneurism immediately. He
agreed that Hope had not long to live.
Indeed, Hope never came to trial, for
he died in less than a week; but from
him the English officers learned his
strange story.
On the great alkali plain in Utah,
John Ferrier and little Lucy were the
only survivors of a wagon train. But
the two were providentially picked up
by Mormons, who under the leadership
of Brigham Young were on their way
to a new setdement in the wilderness.
Ferrier had to agree to adopt the
Mormon faith, and in return he and Lucy
were taken along.
Ferrier prospered as a Mormon and
soon became a rich man; Lucy grew up
to be a beautiful woman. But Ferrier,
although a Mormon, refused to take
wives, and he made a vow that Lucy
should never marry a Mormon. When a
traveler named Jefferson Hope stopped
at their house on his way to the silver
mines, an attraction soon developed
between him and Lucy. After Hope left,
the blow fell. The Mormon elders
decreed that before thirty days should
elapse, Lucy must choose a husband. She
could marry either Drebber or
Stangerson, who already had several wives, but
she must marry.
In his dilemma, Ferrier sent word to
Hope, who returned on the last day of
grace. At night Hope, Ferrier, and Lucy
3647

stole out of the Mormon village and rode
furiously toward the mountains.
When he judged that they were safely
away, Hope left Ferrier and Lucy in
camp while he went hunting. On his
return, he saw his error. Ferrier had
been murdered, and Lucy was gone.
Hope hid near the Mormon village in
the hope of rescuing Lucy, but he was
balked by the strong, watchful Latter-
day Saints. Lucy was given in marriage
to Drebber. She survived only a month.
While the women watched at night
over her coffin, Hope stormed in, kissed
his dead love, and took the wedding ring
from her finger. Then he vanished.
Shortly afterward both Drebber and
Stangerson renounced Mormonism and
moved to Cleveland. When Hope took
up the trail ag£in, he became a nemesis.
Drebber and Stangerson were wealthy
and afraid, for they knew Hope was
after them. They fled to Russia and
Germany, and finally ended up in
London. Hope followed them from place to
place.
To exist, Hope took a job as cab
driver, and as such he could follow his
prey conveniently. Drebber engaged him
one night when he was drunk, and Hope
drove him to the deserted house. There
he showed Drebber the wedding ring.
Taking from his pocket a small box
containing two pills, one harmless and one
deadly, he forced Drebber to choose one
and swallow it. Hope put the other in
his own mouth. Hope felt that Lucy's
spirit guided the choice; it was Drebber
who died. On impulse, Hope had
scribbled Rache on the wall with the blood
which had gushed from his nose in his
excitement. Later, finding Stangerson
in his hotel room, Hope offered him the
fatal choice. When Stangerson had
attacked him, Hope had killed him with
a knife. He refused to give the name of
the old woman who had appeared to
claim the ring.
On the day he was to appear in court
Hope died from the bursting of the
aneurism in his heart. His work was
done; Lucy was avenged.
3648

A STUDY OF HISTORY
Type of work: Philosophy of history
Author: Arnold Toynhee (1889- )
First published: 1934-1954
Not every monumental work,
monumental because of its size, is monumental
in character. But Arnold J. Toynbee's
A Study of History, a ten-volume work,
compels the continuing critical attention
of historians, philosophers, and other
students of civilizations rising and falling
in the long course of time. Despite its
scope, this book is not superficial; and
despite its author's ambition—to account
for the death of civilizations—it shows no
sign of a confusion between modesty and
unoriginality: considered as a theory, it
is daring and illuminating.
But is it true? Most readers hesitate to
enter upon a ten-volume pilgrimage if the
only reward is acquaintance with a
scholar's laborious fancies. In the sense in
which Toynbee is a philosopher of
history, a philosopher of history is a man,
generally a historian, who tries to make
sense out of the mass of events presumed
to have occurred. He proceeds from
records and signs, or what he supposes are
records and signs, and constructs a story
of the presumed past: that is history.
He then surveys the story he has written,
or which other men have written, in the
attempt to find the theme of that story,
the moral of the tale: his account of his
reflections is his study of history. Since
the task is so complicated, since history
itself is tentative, dependent on the
evidence, how can a study of history hope
to show the patterns hidden within the
histories of civilizations? How can a study
of history be true?
Of course, such a study could be true;
a historian who was at the same time a
genius and something of a seer might
discover or create an explanation of
history that would show that the fortunes
and accidents of history are fortunes and
accidents only relative to men's ignorance;
considered in the new light, history is
inevitable.
But although a study of history could
be true, it is more likely that, strictly
speaking, it is false—that at best it
approximates the truth and makes some
sense to men with something of the
author's intelligence and perspective.
In any case, the truth of such a study
is unimportant. A theory with the
pretensions of Toynbee's can never be
verified because more would be demanded in
the way of evidence than scholars could
ever give. Not the truth of the theory but
its plausibility is what counts; not its
conformity to undiscoverable facts, but its
organizing power in the face of evidence.
Finally, even if a reader rejects a study
of history because of its failure to make
sense out of the evidence, it is still
possible that the work will have had the
value of showing a creative mind in its
response to the greatest of historical
problems.
That Toynbee's study has this latter
value is beyond question. To some his
theory is plausible; to others it is as clearly
false; but to all it is exciting and worthy
of respect.
Toynbee's study of history has led him
to present and defend the thesis that
"societies," not nations, are the proper
concern of the historian, and that
civilized societies—civilizations—arise in
response to difficult conditions which
present a challenge; grow, in response to
further challenges; break down, i.e.,
cease to respond creatively, because of
some idolization of a past self, institution,
or technique; and disintegrate into a
dominant minority, an internal
proletariat (in the society, but not of it), and
an external proletariat (formerly, but no
longer, of the society) as a result of the
failure to respond in such a way as to
meet a challenge repeatedly presented.
The answer to the central question,
"Why do civilizations die?" is that they
die as a result of an inability to determine
themselves creatively. The failure of self-
3649

determination results, if petrifaction does
not set in instead, in a schism of the
society which is paralleled by a schism
in the soul of civilized man.
The thesis, and each point in its
defense, is illustrated historically in
Toynbee's work. Indeed, one of the values of
the work comes from its ability to charm
the reader into a reexamination and
reappraisal of the content of history and,
of course, from its introducing the reader
to many historical findings with which
he was not previously acquainted.
Dispassionately considered at some
distance from the wealth of historical
material which gives the thesis great
persuasive force, Toynbee's central claim is
perhaps not as remarkable as in the reading
of A Study of History it seems to be. It
may be that in his use of the term
"civilization" Toynbee has employed a criterion
by reference to which he dismisses
certain societies as primitive. The analysis,
then, reveals what his use of the term
"civilization" indicates: societies which
grew not from favorable, but from
unfavorable and challenging conditions.
Similarly, it might be argued that his
account of disintegration is a truism
handsomely and historically disguised. Of
course, civilizations decline before they
fall; they fall because they fall apart, and
they fall apart because they can no longer
hang together creatively.
Even if Toynbee's claim is not as
remarkable as in the reading it seems to be,
the value of the study is not a function
of the remarkableness of the claim.
Perhaps for the first time a historian has
made the reader see civilizations as, to
a considerable extent, they are—not as
living organisms, not as accidents, not as
the fruits of fortune—but as societies of
men, achieving their characters as
civilizations from the mode and quality of
their responses to challenges, and falling
apart when either because of the absence
of challenge or because of the presence of
challenges too strong to be met, the
society and the individuals composing it
divide into irreconcilable parts. This,
then, is another case of coming to realize
what, in a sense, we knew all along—but
not in this way. If what Toynbee presents
is a truism, at least he has had the wit to
see it as a truth and the historical
knowledge to make it respectable. Furthermore,
he has imagination and spiritual courage.
It takes spiritual courage to argue, as
Toynbee does, that history is "a vision
of God's creation on the move," and that
the historian finds six dimensions—the
three of space, then time, life, and the
Spirit. He also appraises the chances that
man has in Western civilization to pursue
his "true" end: glorifying God. And he
argues that the laws of nature do not
control all of man's action, but that,
within limits, man is free; Perfect
Freedom, he adds, is to be under the law of
God. Finally, he conducts a "survey of
saviours/' with the result that Jesus alone
is considered to have made good his claim
to be the son of God.
These beliefs are not unpopular;
indeed, they are shared by millions. But
what is odd and therefore demanding of
courage is the expression of these beliefs
in a study of history, not merely as token
reminders of Western man's faith, but as
necessary to both the understanding and
the existence of Western civilization.
Even though it may seem strange and
unhistorical to explain history by a
declaration of religious faith, it is possible,
even for the unbeliever, to appreciate the
historical point of Toynbee's declaration
of religious faith. In the first place, as
Toynbee clearly shows, Western
civilization is for the most part a Christian
civilization. Secondly, if Toynbee is right in
arguing that civilizations rise and grow as
they make creative responses, break down
and disintegrate as they fail to determine
themselves, then to be born and to grow
through an exercise of the proper spirit
is the special business of any individual
or civilization that values life and the
special quality of life which creative
activity provides. It is certainly excusable
for a Christian scholar to make these
points in Christian terms.
A particular benefit of Toynbee's spirit-
3650

ual approach to historical problems is his
analysis of "schism in the soul" in a
disintegrating society. In a growing society
men are creative or mimetic; i.e., they are
leaders or imitators. But in a
disintegrating society there is an increasing tendency
to substitute for creativity and mimesis.
There are passive and active substitutions.
For example, instead of being creative,
an individual might be inclined either to
live with abandon, to follow his impulses
(the passive substitute) or to live with
self-control, keeping his passions in check
(the active substitute). Truancy
(desertion) and martyrdom (action afeove and
beyond the call of duty) are considered
as the passive and active substitutes,
respectively, for mimesis. Toynbee also
considers "the sense of drift" and the
"sense of sin" as alternative substitutes
for the feeling of creative advance which
accompanies the growth of a civilization.
His discussion of other spiritual attitudes
and characteristics is intelligent and
illuminating.
Toynbee refuses to be either pessimistic
or optimistic about the possibility of the
survival of Western civilization. Of the
twenty-eight civilizations which Toynbee
finds in history, only the Western
civilization is not clearly disintegrating or
already dead. Nine of the remaining ten
civilizations have already broken down.
There are some signs of breakdown in
the West, but they are not conclusive.
Toynbee considers that the extreme de-
structiveness of the atomic bomb together
with the continued effort of the Christian
spirit might finally bring about a world
order that will allow Western civilization
to continue to grow. But he likens our
present situation to that of the crew of
the Kon-Tiki approaching a reef which
might, or might not, destroy them.
A Study of History is a ten-volume
work, and for a full appreciation of the
author's style and his depth of historical
reference one should go to the work in
that form. But a splendid abridgment is
available written by D. C. Somervell and
worked over by Toynbee in collaboration
with Mr. Somervell. The abridgment
itself is two volumes in length, but it
contains a helpful thirty-eight-page outline
of the argument Toynbee presents in his
major study.
3651

SUMMA THEOLOGICA
Type of -work: Theological treatise
Author: Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274)
First transcribed: c. 1265-1274
This towering edifice of thought, often
called simply the Summa, stands as a
bulwark against the forces of doubt and
skepticism which invaded the Western
world during the late Middle Ages,
toward the close of which St. Thomas
created this great summation of
philosophical and theological knowledge. In it two
of the mightiest forces in the realm of
human thought met: Hellenism and
Christianity. It was their first real
encounter.
Simply stated, what St. Thomas did
was to collect and synthesize the
philosophical knowledge and thinking of
previous eras and apply them to the
Christian theology. This was, of course, an
immensely ambitious task, and the
wonder is that St. Thomas did so well with
it. Though unfinished, because of the
divine doctor's sudden death from illness,
the Summa unites, or at least joins
elements of thought from the Greek,
Arabian, and Oriental traditions in a highly
detailed fashion. St. Thomas thus became
a historian of philosophy; but he was a
critical historian, carefully weighing and
evaluating each premise and conclusion.
The largest part of this previous
thought is, as might be expected, that
of the Greeks. St. Thomas is usually
given the credit for having reinterpreted
the philosophy of Aristotle on a
Christian basis. This statement is, however,
something of an oversimplification, for
the reading of Aristotle and other great
Greek thinkers, including Plato, was a
very special one. St. Thomas was himself
a magnificent philosopher, and the
Summa is unquestionably his book. What
he did, in essence, was to organize the
thought of Aristotle along Christian lines,
to apply it to the problems and principles
of religion. For example, some
philosophers had interpreted Aristotle's Physics
as a denial of Creation; St. Thomas saw
it as merely falling short of this
fundamental concept.
The Summa is an exceedingly long
work, running into several volumes, a
necessary length in order to approach the
achievement of applying Scholasticism,
certainly the prevailing philosophical
influence in the thirteenth century, to
religion. In doing so, St. Thomas gave
credit for ideas and lines of thought to
many earlier thinkers, and he found the
seeds of much thirteenth-century belief
in the works of previous philosophers.
His work, then* is in the nature of a
summary of past thinking on the highest
subjects and a setting forth of the
essential principles of Christian theology as
he was able to formulate them from this
past material and from his own
conviction and thinking.
There are three main divisions of the
Summa: the first dealing with God and
the divine nature of the creation of man
and the universe; the second, often called
the Moral Philosophy of St. Thomas,
treating man and the goal of his life and
the ways of reaching that goal; the third
devoted to Christ and His role as Saviour.
Within this general framework virtually
every possible subject pertaining to
theology is discussed: good and evil,
pleasure, knowledge, duty, property. The list
is almost endless.
The method of attacking these
questions is the Socratic one. A basic question
is asked and the negative side of it is
enforced by a fictitious opponent; then St.
Thomas undertakes to resolve the
problem and explain the positive side of the
contrived argument. This method,
besides making for more interesting
reading, tends to create an atmosphere giving
fairer treatment to opposing beliefs.
The opening of the Summa presents a
good example. Here St. Thomas poses
the question of "Whether, Besides the
Philosophical Sciences, Any Further
Doctrine Is Required?" How fundamental is
3652

the divine doctor's approach can easily be
seen: even before beginning his book, he
wishes first to convince the reader of the
necessity for any sacred doctrine at all.
Following the question there are listed
two chief objections to the writing of
sacred doctrine; then St. Thomas
explains the need for it and refutes each
objection in turn. This tighdy organized
discussion is maintained throughout; in
a book that is so closely reasoned it is
essential.
Part of the reason for this clear
organization was the fact that the Summa
was not primarily intended for learned
divines. Instead, it was written for
people whom St. Thomas called beginners,
the common man in search of the truth.
Also, such an intention probably had
much to do with the style of the writing.
Although the Summa is extremely long,
it is praised for its economy of language,
with no wasted words, no useless
introduction of extraneous points of logic,
and no pursuit of attenuated lines of
reasoning past the point of common sense.
Although much of what St. Thomas
has written in the Summa has long been
accepted doctrine in the Roman Catholic
Church, there is for the average current
reader considerable material that may
strike him as remarkably up to date, for,
theology aside, this book is pivotal in the
history of Western philosophy.
Possibly most interesting to the modern
reader will be, not the ethical elements
which are fairly familiar and do not seem
to mark such a sharp break with earlier
Greek views, but the metaphysical and
epistemological aspects of the treatise.
Two particularly important issues are
raised by St. Thomas in these areas, and
both a^e in opposition to Greek thought,
especially that of Plato.
The first of these concerns the very
nature of reality, which is the main point
of inquiry in metaphysics. While Plato
saw reality as made up of essences, largely
perceived as abstractions in the mind
(here the "way of knowing," the central
question of epistemology, enters in), St.
Thomas maintained that the basic
statement was that something had being; that
is, it had existence. This is, of course,
the basis for an argument that has raged
ever since among philosophers: Which
is the supreme reality, essence or
existence? Which is the more fundamental
statement, what it is or that it is?
In his defense of the latter statement
St. Thomas propounded principles that
might be called Thomistic Existentialism,
an expression that may well arouse a
reader's interest in view of the present
vogue of Existentialist belief and
practice. Certainly the conflict created in the
Summa over this question in the
thirteenth century was of vital importance.
Equally so was St. Thomas' disagreement
with the Platonic belief that man is
really two separate things, a soul and a
body. To St. Thomas man was a
composite, a unity composed of soul and
bodv, both essential to his nature as man.
This conflict connects with St. Thomas'
convictions about the "way of knowing"
that is basic to his epistemology. Since
reality is fundamentally existence rather
than essence, in order to know this reality
man must have a body—he must be able
to perceive reality through the senses.
Certainly St. Thomas' statements in this
area would meet with much warmer
approval by most readers todav than would
the Greek notions concerning reality as
essences, known only bv abstractions in
the mind. The practicality of the
Thomistic viewpoint makes it appeal to
scientifically minded thinkers of today.
In building this great philocophical
and theological structure, St. Thomas
dealt with three of the most pressing
problems in the thinking of the
thirteenth century—the nature of being, of
m?n, and of knowledge—and these three
subjects parallel the divisions of
philosophy as it is generally studied today:
metaphysics, ethics, ancf episte^oloqv. In
approaching this skillful and subtle
blending of theology and philosophy, the
reader must be willing to do what nearly
every philosophical writer demands: he
must be agreeable to accepting certain
general premises or principles. Without
3653

these, few philosophers can operate, and
St. Thomas is no exception. He assumes
certain beliefs in his reader (the
prevailing beliefs toward the close of the
Middle Ages) concerning theology and
religion. Granting these convictions, the
reader will find in the Summa
well-documented (quotations are frequent) and
carefully reasoned statements on both
sides of every issue involved in the
Christian doctrine.
This work, which death ended as St.
Thomas was working on the article about
the sacrament of Penance, has been
widely translated into most modern
languages and continues to be assiduously
studied by all who wish to grasp the
moment when, in the opinion of many,
modern Christian theology began.
3654

THE SUN ALSO RISES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: Paris and Pamplona, Spain
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
Jake Barnes, an American newspaper man
Lady Brett Ashley, one of the lost generation
Robert Cohn, a young writer
Michael Campbell (Mike), Brett's fianoe
Bill Gorton, Jake's friend
Pedro Romero, a Spanish bullfighter
Critique:
This early Hemingway novel reflects
the period following the first World
War, a period of maladjustment and
despair on the part of a war-weary
generation for whom life had lost its
significance. The opening quotation from
Gertrude Stein and the quotation from
Ecclesiastes, from which the title of the
novel is taken, clearly point to this
theme. Such reference is not necessary,
however, once the reader has started
the book. The Sun Also Rises describes
realistically life among American
expatriates on the Left Bank in Paris and
the color and excitement of a Spanish
fiesta. Above all, the skillful character
analysis, sketched in so rapidly by
Hemingway, will make the reader feel that
he has really lived with the disillusioned
people who appear in the novel.
The Story:
Jake Barnes knew Robert Cohn in
Paris shortly after the first World War.
Somehow Jake always thought that Cohn
was typical of the place and the time.
Cohn, the son of wealthy Jewish
parents, had once been the middleweight
boxing champion of Princeton. He never
wanted anyone to forget that fact. After
leaving college, he had married and had
lived incompatibly with his wife until
she ran off with another man. Then in
California he met some writers and
decided to start a little, arty review of
THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway. By permission of the author and the publishers, Charles
Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1926, by Charles Scribner » Sons.
his own. He also met Frances Clyne,
who became his mistress, and when Jake
knew Cohn the two were living
unhappily in Paris, where Cohn was
writing his first novel. Cohn wrote and
boxed and played tennis, and he was
always careful not to mix his friendships.
A man named Braddocks was his literary
friend. Jake Barnes was his tennis friend.
Jake Barnes was an American
newspaperman who had fought with the
Italians during the war. His own private
tragedy was a war wound which had
emasculated him so that he could never
marry Lady Brert Ashley, a young
English war-widow with whom he was in
love. In order not to think too much
about himself, Jake spent a lot of time
listening to the troubles of his friends
and drinking heavily. When he grew
tired of Paris, he went on fishing trips
to the Basque country or to Spain for
the bullfights.
One night, feeling lonely, Jake asked
Georgette, a girl of the streets, to join
him in a drink at the Cafe Napolitain.
They dined on the Left Bank, where
Jake met a party of his friends, including
Robert Cohn and Frances Clyne. Later
Brett Ashley came in with a group of
young men. It was evident that Cohn
was attracted to, her, and Frances was
jealous. Brett refused to dance with
Cohn, however, saying that she had a
date with Jake in Montmartre. Leaving
3655

a fifty-franc note with the cafe proprietor
for Georgette, Jake left in a taxi with
Brett for a ride to the Pare Montsouris.
They talked for a time about themselves
without mentioning what was in both
their minds, Jake's injury. At last Brett
asked Jake to drive her back to the Caf6
Select.
The next day Cohn cornered Jake
and asked him questions about Brett.
Later, after drinking with Harvey Stone,
another expatriate, on the terrace of the
Cafe Select, Jake met Cohn and Frances,
who announced that her lover was
dismissing her by sending her off to
London. She abused Cohn scornfully and
taunted him with his inferiority complex
while he sat quietly without replying.
Jake was embarrassed. The same day
Jake received a telegram from his old
friend, Bill Gorton, announcing his
arrival on the France. Brett went on a
trip to San Sebastian with Robert Cohn.
She thought the excursion would be
good for him.
Jake and Bill Gorton had planned to
go to Spain for the trout fishing and the
bullfights at Pamplona. Michael
Campbell, an Englishman whom Brett was
to marry, had also arrived in Paris. He
and Brett arranged to join Jake and Bill
at Pamplona later. Because Cohn had
gone to San Sebastian with Brett and
because she was staying now with Mike
Campbell, everyone felt that it would be
awkward if Conn accompanied Jake and
Bill on their trip. Nevertheless, he
decided to join them at Bayonne. The
agreement was that Jake and Bill would
first go trout fishing at Burguete in the
mountains. Later the whole party would
meet at the Montoya Hotel in
Pamplona for the fiesta.
When Jake and Bill arrived in
Bayonne, they found Cohn awaiting them.
Hiring a car, they drove on to Pamplona.
Montoya, the proprietor of the hotel,
was an old friend of Jake's because he
recognized Jake as a true aficionado—one
who is passionate about the bullfight.
The next morning Bill and Jake left by
bus for Burguete, both riding atop the
ancient vehicle with several bottles of
wine and an assortment of Basque
passengers. At Burguete they enjoyed good
fishing in the company of an Englishman
named Wilson-Harris.
Once back in Pamplona, the whole
party had gathered for the festival of
San Fermin. The first night they went
to see the bulls come in, to watch the
men let the savage bulls out of the cages
one at a time. Much wine made Mike
Campbell loquacious and freed his tongue
so that he harped constantly on the fact
that Cohn had joined the group,
although he knew he was not wanted. At
noon on Sunday the fiesta exploded.
The carnival continued for seven days.
Dances, parades, religious processions,
the bullfights—these and much wine
furnished the excitement of that hectic
week. Also staying at the Montoya Hotel
was Pedro Romero, a bullfighter about
twenty years old, who was extremely
handsome. At the fights Romero
acquitted himself well, and Brett fell in love
with him, a fact she admitted with
embarrassment to Jake. Brett and the young
man met at the hotel; Romero soon
became interested in her.
Besides the bullfights, the main
diversion of the group was drunken
progress from one drinking spot to another.
While they were in the Cafe Suizo,
Jake told Cohn that Brett had gone off
with the bullfighter to his room. Cohn
swung at both Mike and Jake and
knocked them down. After the fight
Cohn apologized, crying all the while.
He could not understand how Brett
could go off with him to San Sebastian
one week and then treat him like a
stranger when they met again. He
planned to leave Pamplona the next
morning.
The next morning Jake learned that
after the fight Cohn had gone to Pedro
Romero's room, where he found Brett
and the bullfighter together. Cohn had
beaten Romero badly. But that day, in
spite of his swollen face and battered
body, Romero performed beautifully in
the ring, dispatching a bull which had
3656

recently killed another torero. That night,
after the fights, Brett left Pamplona with
Romero. Jake got very drunk.
The fiesta over, the party dispersed.
Bill Gorton went back to Paris, Mike
Campbell to Saint Jean de Luz. Jake was
in San Sebastian when he received a
wire from Brett asking him to come to
the Hotel Montana in Madrid. Taking
the express, Jake met her the next day.
Brett was alone. She had sent Pedro
Romero away, she said, because she
thought she was not good for him. Then,
without funds, she had sent for Jake.
She had decided to go back to Mike,
she told Jake, because the Englishman
was her own sort.
After dinner Jake and Brett rode
around in a taxi, seeing the sights of
Madrid. This, Jake reflected wryly, was
one of the few ways they could ever be
alone together—in bars and caf6s and
taxis. Both knew the ride was as
purposeless as the war-wrecked world in
which they lived, as aimless as the
drifting generation to which they belonged.
3657

THE SUNKEN BELL
Type of work: Drama
Author: Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946)
Type of plot: Poetic fantasy
Time of plot: Indefinite, timeless
Locale: A mountain, a valley, and the paths between
First presented: 1897
Principal characters:
Heinrich, a bell-founder
Magda, his wife
Their Children
Rautendelein, an elfin mountain sprite
Old Wittikin, her grandmother, a sorceress
The Nickelmann, an elemental water spirit
The Vicar,
The Schoolmaster, and
The Barber, representatives of the world
Critique:
This play is the most autobiographical
yet poetic of all the great Silesian
playwright's efforts in that he symbolically
discusses the problem of the artist against
the world, the creative spirit against
reality. The problem of living a personal life
while maintaining standards of idealism,
of making a living by artistic means, is
his own very real problem—one which
Hauptmann himself did not solve, having
outlived his creative power. The play
remains as a strange sort of masterpiece,
however, expressive of the revolt from
naturalism, a discarding of the "slice of
life" technique for which the playwright
is most famous.
The Story:
In a mountain forest glade
Rautendelein, a beautiful elf-child, sat singing and
combing her long, golden hair while
calling to a water spirit, the Nickelmann.
She made fun of the croaking froglike
monster who came out of a nearby well.
Into that setting skipped a faun who
seemed enamored of the lovely sprite and
who invited her to be his love. She
refused, as if this were not her destiny.
When she left, the wood and water
sprites discussed the intrusion of man in
their hallowed realms, the former having
that day forced off the road and into a
valley lake a bell meant for a mountain-
top church. The bell-founder himself
appeared, quite exhausted and badly injured
from his fall. He collapsed before the
cottage of Wittikin, a witch whom
mortals in the region greatly feared. Her
granddaughter, Rautendelein, strangely
drawn to the thirty-year-old Heinrich,
made him a bed of straw and gave him
milk to drink.
Heinrich was also drawn to this
beautiful creature whose speech was song and
who made him glad to leave the life-
death below. He had tried to match the
musical note of her voice in his supreme
creation, the bell even then in the lake.
He called her his sweet fantasy and the
glade his real home. He begged for a
dying kiss. Wittikin told the child all
mortals die while they, the mountain folk,
Thor's children, must go about their
immortal business.
When voices interrupted a merry troll
dance, Rautendelein feared she would
lose this strange man. A wood sprite
answered the rescue party, which consisted
of a clergyman, a teacher, and a barber
—envoys of the outer world of spirit.
THE SUNKEN BELL by Gerhart Hauptmann, from DRAMATIC WORKS OF GERHART HAUPT-
MANN. Translated by Charles Meltzer. By permission of the publishers. The Viking Press. Inc. Copyright,
1914, by B. W. Huebich. Copyright, 1942, by Ludwig Lewisohn.
3658

mind, and body. The Vicar, spirit-weak,
could not go on, though the Barber urged
them all to leave the bewitched area and
the Schoolmaster declared such an
attitude mere superstition. Frightened, each
addressed Wittikin, who in turn ridiculed
their master-worker and his trade as well
as their respective callings, for she and
her kind hated clanging bells and all
human enterprise. The villagers carried
Heinrich away as a group of elves and
sprites danced furiously. Rautendelein
also danced, though she told the Nickel-
mann her spirit was not in it. They
examined in wonder a tear from her eye, a
globe of human pain. Thor flashed out
and mocked her with raindrops. The
Nickelmann warned her not to live with
this half-man who belonged partly in
their world, but she turned to the world
of men.
In the meantime, the bad news had
reached the bell-maker's home. Magda,
Heinrich's wife, told a neighbor what
labor the task had cost her husband and
then went off to meet her husband's body,
terribly disconcerted by the pallbearer
appearance of the rescuers. Heinrich
revived and, speaking as one already dead
to his anxious wife, begged her pardon
for hurts done. He renounced his great
work as a misshapen thing providentially
destroyed—a work for the valley rather
than for the mountain tops. Saving that
he now wanted no part of this world of
flesh, he refused all aid and became
unconscious. The Vicar would not seek aid
from Wittikin; but Rautendelein, thought
to be deaf-mute Anna from the wayside
inn nearby, breathed life into the body
while the villagers sought other help.
Heinrich, recovering, recognized her as
nature, essential life, beauty; he would
go with her onto the mountain. He
declared to the returning Magda that he
would live, though he was unaware of
her joyful embrace.
Heinrich's presence in the mountains
irritated all the supernatural folk. Taking
up quarters in an abandoned glassworks,
he mined ore, cut trees, and worst of all,
made Rautendelein his bride. The
Nickelmann was jealous, though the wood sprite
said she would never love a water spirit,
at least not as long as Wittikin remained
the bell-founder's friend. When these
creatures teased Rautendelein about her
earthly lover, she replied that their
accursed race could by his industry and
strength become renewed.
The Vicar, now dressed in mountain
costume and determined on his course,
interrupted this argument. He accused
the sprite of bewitching and holding
Heinrich without his consent. This charge
she denied. At that moment the master
craftsman appeared. Misled by flattery,
Heinrich declared by occult signs that
he was a new man, and he drank to the
Vicar's health while explaining his
exuberant yet fundamental new life.
The bell-founder's vision was a chime
of the finest metals which would ring by
itself, through God's will and for no
earthly church. The Vicar, denouncing
this ecstasy, recounted Heinrich's earthly
obligations to the Church and especially
to his bereaved wife and children. He
said it would be better if Heinrich were
dead than to see him sustained by
supernatural and sacrilegious beliefs. When
Heinrich defended Rautendelein and his
new life, the minister declared that both
the people and God would crush him,
that the arrow of rue would pierce
though not kill him. This arrow could
not pierce him any more than his great
bell could ever toll again, Heinrich
declared.
Some time later Heinrich, desperately
working his forge, drove his dwarf
helpers to exhaustion in an attempt to create
his beatific vision, to mold the ideal. As
one dwarf whispered in his ear, another
angrily shattered the piece on which they
worked so furiously; it was imperfect.
Heinrich gave them a holiday and
declared all could go to the devil and he
would garden, eat, drink, sleep, and die.
Exhausted, he dreamed that the
Nickelmann ridiculed his mortality, his
weakness, and his uncompleted works. He
thought his old bell longed to ring out,
though choked with blood and sunk so
3659

deep. He awoke in terror and called
Rautendelein for comfort; she responded
by calling him her God and caressing
him into illusions of immortality.
Incompleteness and imperfection
goaded him still, however, and he struck out
pridefully for work. He was warned not
only by her but by the spirit of the
wood, the faun of sensuality, and by
distant voices which cried out from
below. Though he thought himself
triumphant, a half-remembered tolling
unsettled him as the phantom forms of his
two children brought him a pitcher of
Magda's tears and the news that her
dead hand rang the sunken bell. Hein-
rich renounced Rautendelein and tore
himself from her.
At midnight, near the well, the weary
Rautendelein met her fate as the bride
of the Nickelmann and sank into the
water. Wood and water spirits discussed
the matter, and the former prophesied
that a man child would soon fill a
watery cradle. Meanwhile, defiant Hein-
rich called out for his loved one, ready
to throw a stone at parson, barber, teacher,
or sexton. Wittikin barred his way and
pointed to a flaming, incomplete
cathedral-castle. Determined to go on and yet
exhausted, he drank from the well before
he attempted to reach the flaming ruins.
A beloved voice sang a goodbye, though
the sound was only half remembered.
Wittikin comforted Heinrich in his
final minutes, told him he was a hardy
one, and granted him a boon. He drank
first a goblet of the white wine of life,
which he drained to the last drop. Then
he drank a second of red, of the questing
spirit. Just then Rautendelein appeared,
though urged back into the well by the
Nickelmann. Heinrich called for the final
goblet of yellow wine, which was brought
by Rautendelein. This he felt was all
aspiration, sun wine poured into his
veins now by the evanescent one. Only
now, in death, did the master bell-
founder, embraced and kissed by his
great love, hear the chimes of the sun
break through the night of life into the
dawn of eternity.
3660

THE SUPPLIANTS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aeschylus (525-456 B. C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Age of myth
Locale: Argos
First presented: c. 490 B. C
Principal characters:
Danaus, an Egyptian of Greek descent
His Fifty Maiden Daughters
Pelasgus, King of Argos
The Fifty Sons of Ajegyptus, brother op Danaus
Critique:
The Suppliants, although complete
artistically, seems to be a part of a larger
pattern, possibly a trilogy, which
probably told the complete, tragic story of
Danaus and Aegyptus and their sons and
daughters. The value of The Suppliants
to the student of drama lies in the fact
that it bridged the gap between the
purely lyric phase of Greek drama and that
glorious phase in which character and
situation were developed to almost
unbelievable heights of artistic perfection.
In this play the protagonist is the chorus
of maidens; Pelasgus, in his timidity, is
almost three-dimensional, thus
foreshadowing the great characters of the classic
drama written during subsequent
decades.
The Story:
Danaus and his fifty maiden daughters
fled from Egypt after Danaus' brother,
Aegyptus, had decided that his fifty sons
should take their cousins to wife. At last
the fugitives reached the shores of Argos,
the land of their illustrious ancestress, Io,
a mortal who had been loved by Zeus.
Holding olive branches wrapped in
wool, the maidens sought, before an Ar-
give altar, Zeus' protection of their
purity. Their supplications to the father of
the gods included the wish that the sons
of Aegyptus might meet disaster at sea
between Egypt and Argos. In fear of
being forced to marry Aegyptus' sons, the
maidens also invoked the wretched Proc-
ne, who had been given in marriage to
the perfidious Tereus, and who took the
life of her child, Itylus, out of hatred for
her husband. They repeated their
supplication to Zeus to protect them from
forced love; they invoked Artemis, the
goddess of chastity, to be favorable to
them. They declared that they would
end their own lives before they would
submit to the sons of Aegyptus.
Danaus, observing that someone
approached, cautioned his daughters to stay
near the altar and to conduct themselves
with modesty. Meanwhile they invoked
not only Zeus but Apollo as well, who
himself was once an exile. They prayed
to Poseidon, god of the sea, and to
Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Danaus
recalled that the gods were merciless to
those who indulged in lustful pleasures.
A man, followed by servants and
warriors, entered the sacred area. Seeing that
the maidens wore Oriental clothing and
that suppliant wands had been placed on
the altar, he asked whence Danaus and
the young women had come. Questioned
in turn, he disclosed that he was
Pelasgus, King of Argos. One of the
maidens then told him that they were of Ar-
give stock, descendants of Io, the Argive
woman who had given birth to a son by
Zeus. Pelasgus interrupted to remark that
the maidens appeared to be North
Africans, and akin to the Amazons, rather
than Grecian.
The maiden then resumed her tale.
When Hera, wife of Zeus, saw that Zeus
loved the mortal Io, she transformed Io
into a heifer, over whom she placed
Argus, the many-eyed god, as a guard. Fur-
3661

ther, Hera created a gadfly which she
willed to sting Io into a miserable,
wandering existence on earth. When Io, in
her wanderings, came to Memphis, in
Egypt, by mystical union with Zeus—the
touch of his hand—she gave birth to a
son. She named him Epaphus, from the
nature of his birth. Epaphus had a
daughter, Libya, after whom a great stretch of
North Africa was named. Libya had d
son, Belus, who fathered two sons, Dan-
aus and Aegyptus. Danaus was the father
of fifty daughters—the king beheld the
father and his daughters before his very
eyes—and Aegyptus was the father of
fifty sons.
Pelasgus, satisfied that they were of
Argive stock, asked why they had left
Egypt. The maiden explained that they
had fled because they were threatened
with forced marriage to their cousins;
that it was not so much that they hated
their cousins as it was that they wanted
their husbands to love them. Pelasgus,
observing that in the most advantageous
marriages there was no aspect of love,
was not sure he could support the
maidens in their cause. The maidens pointed
to the wand-decked shrine and asked
Pelasgus to heed the sign.
All the sisters pleaded for assistance
from Pelasgus, who feared that his
meddling in the affair might bring war to
Argos. Apprehensive, yet anxious to
succor the maidens, he insisted that he
would have to consult his people. The
suppliants answered that he was an
absolute ruler, that he could, if he so
desired, make his own decisions. They
warned him to beware of the wrath of
Zeus, the god who took pity on humans
in distress and who was merciless with
those mortals who refused to assist
others. Still Pelasgus insisted on consulting
his people; he feared lest he bring disaster
to Argos. Even after searching deeply
into his soul for an answer, he declared
that the problem was one with which he
alone could not cope, that to resolve it
would involve frightful sacrifices to the
gods.
In despair, the maidens proposed that
Pelasgus use their girdles to hang them
to the statues in the sacred area. Deeply
disturbed, Pelasgus suggested that
Danaus gather up all of the wands and, in
hopes of eliciting general Argive
sympathy for the maidens, place them on
altars in the city of Argos itself. Danaus
accepted the suggestion after he had been
assured of safe passage into the city.
Danaus then departed with the wands.
When Pelasgus directed the maidens to
an unhallowed area of the sacred ground,
they asked how they were to be protected
there from their cousins. Pelasgus,
advising them to pray to the Argive gods,
returned to Argos to consult with his
people.
Left alone, the maidens resumed their
earnest prayers and invocations to Zeus.
They again recalled Zeus' love for their
ancestress and appealed to him who, after
all, was responsible for their being, to
save them from the lust of Aegyptus'
sons.
Danaus returned to report that to a
man the Argives would defend any
refugees from seizure. Pelasgus, too, had
reminded the Argives that if they failed to
assist and to offer sanctuary to suppliants,
Zeus would send before the city a man-
eating monster. The maidens then sang
their gratitude to the people of Argos and
invoked the gods to look ever
auspiciously upon the land.
Danaus, standing on an elevated place
in the sacred ground, saw the sons of
Aegyptus approaching the shore in their
ships. He calmed his frightened
daughters by reminding them of the Argives'
promise, but when he wished to leave
them to summon help, they begged him
to stay with them. He pointed out that
since it would take Aegyptus' sons some
time to make proper anchorage, there
would be plenty of time for him to seek
aid.
After Danaus had gone, the maidens,
overcome with apprehension at the
approach of their cousins, spoke of the death
they preferred to the enforced love which
3662

appeared to be imminent. As they cried
in anguisn to Zeus, a messenger from the
ships came to them and, brutally
handling them, ordered the maidens to the
ships. While he sneered at their frantic
appeals to the Greek gods, Pelasgus came
upon the scene of violence and demanded
of the messenger his business. The
Egyptian answered that he had come to take
what belonged to him and that only force,
not any fear of the Greek gods, could
prevent his taking the maidens back to
Egypt. Pelasgus declared that the sons
of Aegyptus would have to fight to claim
their captives. When the messenger
asked his name, Pelasgus retorted that
his name did not matter; what did mattex
was that the sisters would never be taken
by force from Argos.
The messenger, having been repulsed
by the king's words, returned to the ships.
Pelasgus then invited the maidens to
take shelter among the friendly people
of Argos. The maidens first sought the
approval of their father. Danaus,
advising them to treasure their chastity before
their lives, gave them permission to go.
Rejoicing, the daughters of Danaus
sang reverently and thankfully to
Artemis, goddess of chastity. They also
invoked Aphrodite, goddess of love, who
they were sure would help in guiding
them to marriages blessed by true love.
3663

THE SUPPLIANTS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c 485-c. 406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Immediately after the War of the Seven against Thebes
Locale: Eleusis, not far from Athens
First presented: c. 424 B.C.
Principal characters:
Theseus, King of Athens
Aethra, his mother
Adrastus, King of Argos
Evadne, Capaneus' wife
Iphis, her father
Children of the Slain Chieftains
The Goddess Athena
Herald of Creon
Chorus of Argive Mothers
Critique:
Though The Suppliants is not a well-
constructed play, it has as much tragic
feeling, eloquence, and imagination as
any other of the ancient Greek tragedies.
The Peloponnesian War so dominated
the thought of Euripides that every one
of his plays set in Athens is easily seen
as a lesson to his fellow citizens and a
warning against the follies of war. But
even though The Suppliants, like
Andromache and the Herakleidae, is marred by
this didactic urgency, it profoundly
embodies a universal theme: the criminal
folly of men who kill men and the
desperate need for religion, law, and human
compassion.
The Story:
Adrastus, the Argive king who had led
the disastrous war of the Seven against
Thebes and had alone escaped with his
life, brought the mothers and the
children of the slain chieftains to Athens,
the most democratic and hospitable city
of Greece. There they gathered at the
temple of Demeter at Eleusis, and when
Aethra, the mother of Theseus, came to
pray they formed a ring of supplication
about her, begging for help in recovering
the dead bodies of their sons for burial
according to the prescribed rites. The
anguish of the mothers so moved Aethra
that she sent at once for her own son.
The powerful young king closely cross-
examined the defeated old ruler and,
after discovering that Adrastus had
foolishly married off his daughters to
quarrelsome exiles, Tydeus and Polynices, and
had even more foolishly engaged in war
against Thebes despite the advice of the
prophet Amphiaraus, refused to help.
But Aethra discreetly reminded her son
that although his logic was sound as far
as it went, he was nevertheless obligated
by honor and the religious customs of
Attica to go to the aid of all who sought
proper burial and funeral rites for the
dead. Theseus, recognizing the wisdom
and humanity of her counsel, departed
to seek a vote of the Athenian assembly
on the matter.
Upon his return, Theseus announced
that with the support of the assembly he
was ready to send two messages to Creon,
King of Thebes: the first a polite request
for permission to bury the dead, to be
followed in case of refusal with a
warning that his armies were on their way.
But he was interrupted by the arrival of
an insolent herald from Creon who
demanded in the name of his despot that
Adrastus be driven from Athens. The
herald added that courageous wisdom
called for peace. Theseus, although he
detested war, felt obligated by the
ancient laws of the gods to bury the dead,
by force of arms if necessary. After a
heated exchange of words the Theban
3664

herald withdrew and Theseus prepared
for battle. He rejected Adrastus' offer of
aid, for he was unwilling to blend his
fortunes with those of a king who had
brought upon himself the wrath of the
gods. As Theseus marched off with his
troops, the chorus chanted fear of the
fickleness of heaven and prayed for
deliverance.
Soon a messenger, bringing news of
Theseus' victory, described how the
Athenians arrived at the Theban gates,
expressed a desire to avoid war provided
they were permitted to bury the Argive
chieftains, but finally found it necessary
to slaughter the Thebans. But Theseus,
refusing to enter the gates and sack the
city, had personally gathered together the
dead bodies and washed their wounds.
Adrastus, deeply moved, lamented that
the Thebans had not learned the lesson
of compromise from his own experience
and wished that he, too, had died with his
fellow warriors.
When the bodies were brought to
Athens, Adrastus delivered a eulogy over
each (Capaneus, Eteocles, Hippomedon,
Parthenopaeus, Tydeus, and Polynices)
before they were prepared for cremation
on the funeral pyre. Suddenly Evadne,
widow of Capaneus, appeared on a rock
overhanging the burning pyre,
determined to marry him in death as she had
in life. Her aged father, Iphis, pleaded
with her in vain. Dressed in festive
garments, she leaped into the fire. As the
children of the cremated warriors carried
away the ashes in funeral urns, the grief-
stricken Iphis withdrew to the dark
interior of his house to die.
Marching in funeral procession, the
children (thereafter known as the Epi-
goni) chanted with the chorus an oath to
avenge their fathers. Theseus extracted
from them a promise, too, that they and
all their children would always remember
the kindness they had received from
Athens and honor the city of democracy.
But before the children could carry off
the ashes of their fathers, the goddess
Athena appeared in mid-air and called
upon Theseus not to permit the ashes to
be returned to Argos. Instead, after
appropriate animal sacrifices, they must be
delivered to the safekeeping of the oracle
at Delphi. Then, turning to the children,
Athena prophesied that when they
reached manhood they would
successfully sack the city of Thebes and avenge
the slaughter of their fathers.
3665

I SUPPOSITI
Type of work: Drama
Author: Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: c. 1500
Locale: Ferrara, Italy
First presented: 1509
Principal characters:
Dulippo, the true Erostrato, posing as a servant
Erostrato, the true Dulippo, posing as a student
Polynesta, a young lady of Ferrara
Damon, a wealthy merchant, her father
Cleander, an ancient doctor of law, her suitor
A Sienese, posing as Erostrato's father
Philogano, a wealthy Sicilian merchant, true father of the true
Erostrato
Pasiphilo, a meddlesome parasite
Balia, Polynesta's nurse
Critique:
Ariosto wrote two versions of his
famous I Suppositi (The Substitutes) the
first in prose, the second in poetry; the
action, however, is essentially the same in
each. The play stands as an excellent
example of the classical influence on
Italian Renaissance drama. It follows to
the letter the rules for a five-act structure
laid down by Landino; it adheres strictly
to the unities of time, place, and action;
it follows a Terentian plot line and
employs the favorite Plautinian theme of
mistaken identity. The play is also
important in the history of English drama.
Translated by George Gascoigne (under
the title Supposes) for production at
Gray's Inn in 1566, the work had a
strong influence on the development of
Elizabethan comic form, as may be seen
from Shakespeare's early The Comedy of
Errors. Aside from these historical
considerations, I Suppositi is good comedy
in its own right—a fast-moving, ribald,
and extremely playable piece.
The Story:
Balia, nurse to beautiful young
Polynesta, was concerned over her mistress*
practice of sleeping with her father's
servant, Dulippo. Polynesta reproved
Balia, reminding her that it was she who
had first given Dulippo access to her
bedroom but reassuring her by giving the
following situation.
Dulippo was, in reality, not a servant,
but Erostrato, the son of a wealthy
Sicilian merchant. Having come to
Ferrara to pursue his studies, he had fallen
in love with Polynesta upon his arrival.
Consequently, he had taken the name of
his servant Dulippo and secured
employment in the house of his beloved's
father. Meanwhile, the true Dulippo had
assumed the identity of Erostrato and
occupied the house next door.
This affair had been going on for two
years; but now, Polynesta observed, it was
being complicated by the fact that the
doddering old doctor of law, Cleander,
had become a suitor for her hand,
tempting her father with an offer of two
thousand ducats. Dulippo was attempting to
forestall him by having the false
Erostrato ask for her, too, and by having him
meet Cleander's offer.
The old doctor arrived in the company
of his ever-hungry parasite, Pasipnilo,
and the two ladies retired. Cleander's
eyesight was so bad that he could not tell
who they were. Under Pasiphilo's
prodding, Cleander boasted that he would go
to any price to secure Polynesta. He had,
he claimed, amassed a fortune of ten
thousand ducats during the time he had
lived in Ferrara, and he boasted that this
was the second fortune he had made. The
3666

first he had lost at the fall of Otranto
twenty years before. That loss, he
recalled sadly, was nothing to the loss of
his five-year-old son, captured by the
Turks during the battle.
After Cleander had gone, Dulippo
appeared to invite Pasiphilo to dinner. The
false Erostrato confronted Dulippo with
bad news: Damon, Polynesta's father,
doubted Erostrato's ability to match
Oleander's offer for his daughter. The
two connivers agreed that they must
devise some ruse to convince the
grasping merchant of their ability to pay.
Dulippo, to alienate Cleander and
Pasiphilo, told the old doctor that
Pasiphilo had insulted him, illustrating the
insults in an extremely comic way. After
Cleander had left enraged, the false
Erostrato arrived, this time with good
news. He had met a foolish Sienese
gentleman whom he had frightened with the
claim that all visitors from Siena would
be persecuted in Ferrara. The Sienese
had sought protection by agreeing to pose
as Erostrato's father. He would meet any
sum that Cleander could offer.
But the trick was never played. Damon
had overheard Balia quarreling with a
servant over the propriety of Polynesia's
conduct and had learned of his
daughter's two-year-old affair. Dulippo and
Balia were thrown into Damon's private
dungeon. Damon, aware of the
extralegal nature of this procedure, swore the
servant to secrecy, but, unknown to him,
Pasiphilo, who had been sleeping off an
attack of indigestion in the stables
nearby, had awakened in time to overhear
everything.
Meanwhile, to complicate matters
further, Philogano, Erostrato's true father,
had arrived from Sicily. He had written
asking Erostrato to return home but his
pleas had been ignored, and he had
decided to come in person for his son. He
was conducted to Erostrato's house by
a local innkeeper. The false Erostrato
saw him in time, however, and attempted
to hide.
A hilarious bit of byplay followed in
which the Sienese, aided by Erostrato's
servants, on the one hand, and Philogano,
assisted by his servants, on the other, both
claimed to be Erostrato's father. Finally
Philogano espied the false Erostrato,
whom he knew as his servant Dulippo,
and called on him to substantiate his
claim. He was confounded when the real
Dulippo declared that he was Erostrato,
that the Sienese was Philogano of Sicily,
and that the old man was an impostor or
mad. Certain that Dulippo had done
away with his son, Philogano went off to
seek aid from the authorities.
Pasiphilo arrived to cadge a dinner from
Erostrato. Concerned over the affair with
Philogano, for he really loved the old man
who had been a father to him, the false
Erostrato asked Pasiphilo if he had seen
Dulippo, and Pasiphilo told him the
whole story of the discovery and
imprisonment. Afraid that the ruse had
gone too far, the servant rushed off to
confess all to Philogano, leaving
Pasiphilo, to the latter's delight, in charge of the
dinner.
Philogano returned with the lawyer
he had retained—old Cleander. He
explained how his trusted servant whom he
had saved from the Turks twenty years
before had betrayed him. On hearing his
story, Cleander closely questioned
Philogano about the boy. To Oleander's
delight, the real Dulippo turned out to be
the old man's long-lost son.
Next came Damon. Polynesta had
revealed the whole truth of her affair, and
he had rushed out to check up on her
claim that his servant was actually the
wealthy and highborn Erostrato.
Finally the false Erostrato returned to
make his confession, and all the
entanglements were straightened out. The true
Erostrato was released and united with
his mistress, whom his father promised to
procure as his bride—thereby pacifying
Damon. Cleander renounced his claim
on Polynesta; he had wanted a wife only
to produce an heir and now he had one in
the true Dulippo. Even Cleander and
Pasiphilo were reconciled, and Pasiphilo
was given a permanent invitation to dine
at Oleander's house.
3667

SURRY OF EAGLE'S-NEST
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Esten Cooke (1830-1886)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1861-1863
Locale: Virginia
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Lieutenant Colonel Surry, the narrator
May Beverley, later his wife
Colonel Mordaunt, an embittered, melancholy planter
Fenwick, his enemy
Mrs. Parkins, Fenwick's confederate
Harry Saltoun, a young officer, Mordaunt's son
Violet Grafton, an orphan
Achmed, Mordaunt's Arab companion
General Stonewall Jackson
General J. E. B. Stuart
General Turner Ashby
Major John Pelham
Captain William D. Farley, a Confederate scout
Critique:
Surry of Eagles-Nest, a romantic,
historical novel of 132 brief chapters by
Captain John Esten Cooke of trie
Confederate army, purports to be "the
memoirs of a staff-officer serving in Virginia."
It blends many facts and much fiction;
and, even if its flavor is extremely
melodramatic, in keeping with the literary
style of its author's generation, it has
continued to fascinate readers for nearly a
hundred years. For the reader who might
want to follow Surry's fortunes to the
end of the war Cooke composed a sequel,
which he completed three years after
General Lee's surrender. Written in the
same vein as Surry of Eagles-Nest, but
somehow not so well known, is Mohun,
"the last days of Lee and his paladins."
The Story:
Cavalier Philip Surry, who rode and
fought under Prince Rupert in the
English Civil War, escaped to Virginia when
King Charles I was beheaded.
Establishing a home, which he named Eagle's-
Nest, on the Rappahannock River below
Port Royal, he enjoined in his will that
the oldest son of the family in each
generation should sign himself "Surry of
Eagle's-Nest."
The present Surry, who had attended
the Virginia Military Institute for one
session and had studied law at the
University of Virginia, was in Richmond in
April, 1861, when the State Convention
passed its ordinance of secession. One
evening at the Capitol Square he saw
with rapture a beautiful girl, whose
dropped handkerchief contained the
initials, M.B. On another day, in
Hollywood Cemetery, he witnessed by chance
a duel between a tall, bronzed stranger
named Mordaunt and one Fenwick, the
encounter ending when Mordaunt put a
pistol bullet through Fenwick's lungs.
Surry left Richmond the proud recipient
of a captain's commission in the
Provisional Army of Virginia, and in his
new gray uniform he rode toward
Harper's Ferry for duty under Colonel
Jackson.
Losing his way in the Wilderness,
which bordered the Rapidan River, he
spent a night in a house where dwelt
an insane woman in white, still
possessing traces of youthful beauty, who
was attended by her lovely young cous:n,
Violet Grafton, and by a harridan, Mrs.
Parkins. Surprisingly there appeared at
this house Fenwick, whose duel wound
3668

had not been fatal. In the night "the
White Lady," tiptoeing into Surry's
room, slipped into his coat pocket a
package bearing the words, "Read these
when I am dead—and remember
Your own Frances."
Further, while en route to Harper's
Ferry, Surry was overtaken by a
hurricane in a forest and was knocked from
his horse by a large limb. He was stunned
and his arm was broken. A female
equestrian, whom the flying branches had
spared, ordered her servant to take the
injured man to her father's home, "The
Oaks." There he convalesced under the
eyes of Colonel Beverley and his
daughter May, his rescuer and the owner of
the handkerchief which he had picked
up in Richmond. Surry's heart was fully
captivated, but May was already bound
by a between-fathers contract and a
young-girl engagement to Frederick Bas-
kerville. The fact that her new lover
knew Baskerville to be a scoundrel made
Surry's plight doubly bitter.
Fairly near "The Oaks" was the
home of Mordaunt, which Surry visited.
Its owner, who lived hermit-like with
Achmed, a faithful Arab, was destined
to become one of Surry's best friends.
Mordaunt's air of melancholy indicated
the gentleman's deeply tragic past.
After long delays, Captain Surry
finally reported for duty to Colonel
Thomas J. Jackson, who made him an
aide-de-camp. Shortly afterward the
young staff officer met Colonel J. E. B.
Stuart. The two colonels, soon to
become generals, would be Surry's idols
to the end of his days.
Before their first battle Surry and
Mordaunt, now a Confederate colonel,
saw an eerie night burial in the garden
of a stone house at Manassas. They
observed on the scene Fenwick, the
Parkins woman, and Violet Grafton. The
dead person was the insane "White Lady"
of the Wilderness. Again Mordaunt tried
to kill Fenwick, but without success.
Soon afterward Surry delivered to Violet
Grafton the package which her cousin
had put in his pocket.
Wounded in the Battle of First
Manassas, Surrv was taken to the Fitz-
hugh home, "Elm Cottage," where he
was well nursed. Mrs. Fitzhugh, charmed
by Violet Grafton, gave the orphan girl
a home.
In 1862, having recovered from his
wound, Surry was with Jackson
throughout his spectacular Valley Campaign and
held General Turner Ashby in his arms
when that "Knight of the Valley" expired
on the battlefield. Briefly a prisoner, he
met Sir Percy Wyndham, an
Englishman wearing Federal blue. Also he met
and admired Captain Farley of Stuart's
staff, a scout extraordinary. When
Jackson joined General Lee near Richmond
to defeat McClellan, Surry shared in that
campaign; then he was back near
Fredericksburg, in the Wilderness area.
There one night, peering through a
window shutter at the house where he
had first seen "the White Lady" and
Violet Grafton, Surry heard Fenwick,
while intoxicated, acknowledge himself to
be a Yankee spy. Moreover, Fenwick
reviewed to Mrs. Parkins the story of his
and Mordaunt's enmity. Years before,
Mordaunt and Fenwick, youthful friends,
had become rivals for the love of Frances
Carleton. When she married Mordaunt,
Fenwick planned revenge. Still posing
as a devoted friend, he utilized a trip
of Mordaunt's to London to forge a letter
which made Frances believe that her
husband had landed in New York and was
requesting her to let Fenwick escort her
there to meet him. Aided by the easily
bribed Mrs. Parkins, Fenwick abducted
his friend's wife to Maryland, where she
gave birth to a son, who was afterwards
reported dead, and where she contracted
a fever which permanently affected her
brain. Imitating Frances Carleton
Mordaunt's handwriting, Fenwick perpetrated
another forgery which duped Mordaunt
into believing that his wife had forsaken
him. Embittered, the young husband left
Virginia for a long sojourn in Arabian
3669

lands. After drunken Fenwick's
remarkable disclosure Surry captured him, but
the prisoner escaped after bribing a guard.
At a later date, however, in a face-to-face
combat, Mordaunt pinned his enemy to
a tree with a thrust of his sword.
Surry, who, as the war continued, rose
to be major and later lieutenant colonel,
saw old Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet,
and Lee defeat Pope at Second Manassas.
In the Maryland campaign which
followed he was captured, interviewed by
McClellan, and placed aboard a prison
train headed for Baltimore; but he
escaped by jumping through a window
while the train was in motion. In
December, 1862, he was present when Lee's
two corps under Longstreet and Jackson
repulsed Burnside at Fredericksburg.
There he saw the youthful artillery
genius, Major John Pelham, master-
maneuver his guns. An ardent friendship
between Surry and Pelham continued
until the gallant young Alabaman was
killed in battle.
The spring of 1863 brought Surry
abundant joy. When Colonel Beverley's
wealth at "The Oaks" was destroyed by
invading armies, Frederick Baskerville
lost interest in May so completely that he
released her from her engagement.
Consequently she married Surry, with her
father's sanction.
Among Surry's friends was Harry Sal-
toun, a young Confederate lieutenant
from Maryland. Fenwick, who repeatedly
recovered from seemingly mortal wounds,
by means of a lying anonymous letter
provoked Saltoun to challenge Colonel
Mordaunt to a duel. Tragedy was averted,
however, when Violet Grafton sent
Mordaunt the paper in which "the White
Lady," Mrs. Frances Carleton Mordaunt,
had recorded the whole truth about
Fenwick and his evil deceptions. Also, through
an affidavit of a Maryland woman, Harry
Saltoun was proved to be Mordaunt's
own son.
Fenwick's ultimate villainy was the
abduction of Violet Grafton, but Mordaunt's
devoted Arab companion, Achmed, trailed
the knave to his hiding place. There
Mordaunt and Fenwick had their final
fight, but it was Achmed, not Mordaunt,
who killed Fenwick with a gleaming
dagger. Sadly, however, a ball from the
dying villain's pistol wounded Achmed, who
expired in the presence of the two persons
whom he loved, Mordaunt and Violet
Grafton.
"Fighting Joe" Hooker, who had
succeeded Burnside as commander of the
Federal army of invasion, thrust at Lee
in the Wilderness, on the south side of
the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers.
In a brilliantly conceived surprise
movement Stonewall Jackson struck Hooker's
right flank at Chancellorsville, to win a
thrilling victory. This Southern triumph
was dearly bought, for in the woods, on
the night of May 2, 1863, Jackson was
wounded by his own men, and on
Sunday, May 10, that irreplaceable hero
breathed his last.
Surry of Eagle's-Nest survived to tell
his story and that of the war years. For
him, only the ghosts of the past remained.
3670

SWALLOW BARN
Type of work: Novel
Author: John P. Kennedy (1795-1870)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Virginia
First published: 1832
Principal characters:
Mark Littleton, the narrator
Ned Hazard, his cousin
Frank Meriwether, Ned's brother-in-law
Mr. Isaac Tracy, a gentleman farmer
Bel Tracy, his daughter
Harvey Riggs, a Tracy kinsman
Critique:
Although the author of Swallow Barn
states definitely that the story is not a
novel, it is usually listed as such
because of the continuous thread or theme
running through it. In reality the book
is a series of sketches or dramatic
episodes concerned with plantation life and
manners in Virginia during the early
eighteenth century, sketches held
together by a continuity of characters and
events. Swallow Barn, the first work of
popular fiction to be set in Virginia, was
the forerunner of a large number of
novels dealing with the historic background
of that state.
The Story:
After receiving many invitations from
his cousin Ned Hazard, Mark Littleton
at last felt that he could no longer put
off a visit to Virginia. He left his mother
and sisters in New York and began his
journey south. At Swallow Barn, his
cousins home, Mark met or renewed
acquaintance with a great many relatives
and friends. Ned Hazard's sister had
married Frank Meriwether, who was now
the head of the family. The estate had
been left to Ned. It had been heavily
encumbered and Frank had paid off the
heaviest debts and put the plantation on
a paying basis. The house was filled with
Meriwether and Hazard relatives, all
permanent guests. Some performed small
functions as a pretense of paying their
own way, but their tasks were no more
than token duties kindly thought up for
them so that they would feel useful.
Mark found life in Virginia restful
and pleasant, for there was an
unhurried rhythm about Swallow Barn that
appealed to him. The plantation was
filled with slaves and freed Negroes who
were fiercely loyal to Frank, a good
master. Indeed, everyone loved Frank for his
thoughtfulness and generosity. Mark's
special favorite, however, was his cousin
Ned Hazard. The two young men were
inseparable companions. Ned was a man
of excellent spirits, always indulging in
pranks and jokes. Swallow Barn would
one day revert to him, but he was
content to let Frank use it as his own,
wanting only to have a good time without
the need of responsibilities. Ned took
Mark on several excursions around the
countryside and introduced him to local
beauties of nature.
While Ned and Mark walked through
the woods one day, they indulged in one
of their favorite pastimes by singing their
loudest, each trying to outdo the other.
In one verse Ned called out the name
of Bel Tracy. He was deeply chagrined
when that lady, having ridden up
unnoticed, answered him. Bel Tracy was
the daughter of old Isaac Tracy, master of
the neighboring estate, The Brakes.
Ned's confusion at being discovered by
Bel made Mark think that his cousin felt
more than friendship for her. She teased
him gently about his boisterous use of
her name, leaving Ned stammering in
confusion. Bel was accompanied by her
3671

sister and Harvey Riggs, a Tracy
kinsman. Harvey joined in the teasing, but
Mark saw at once that it was
good-natured teasing and that Harvey felt great
friendship for Ned.
The two parties went back to Swallow
Barn, where Harvey delivered a letter
from Mr. Tracy to Frank Meriwether.
The subject matter was of long
standing and it afforded Frank some
amusement. For many years Mr. Tracy had
imagined himself in possession of one
hundred acres of marshland separating
The Brakes from Swallow Barn. Every
court in Virginia had denied his claim,
but the old gentleman was adamant.
Frank would long since have given him
the land, for it was worthless, but he
knew the old gentleman would be los\
without the affair, which provided him
with mental activity as he plotted ways
to get possession of the land. In his
letter Mr. Tracy suggested that he and
Frank let their lawyers go over the
matter again, the two disputants to abide by
the legal decision. Frank planned to ask
his lawyer to arrange matters so that Mr.
Tracy would win the suit after what
looked like a difficult legal maneuver.
Old Mr. Tracy was a detriment to
Ned, even though Ned loved the old
gentleman. He was a gentleman of the
old school, dignified and sober; Ned, on
the other hand, could not repress his
merry spirits. But Bel had absorbed some
of her father's dignity and was usually
not very receptive to Ned's foolishness.
The poor young man tried hard to
change, but his disposition was almost
as firm as Mr. Tracy's.
After Ned had admitted to Mark that
he loved Bel, the two friends mapped out
a campaign to win her heart to Ned's
cause. Their plans were temporarily
postponed, however, by the arrival of the
lawyers who would decide the disputed
land claim.
The legal gentlemen afforded the
young men much entertainment, one
being a dandy known throughout Virginia.
He was pursued by two of the maiden
relatives, each of whom pretended to be
pursued by him. When the dandy
learned of their intentions, he finished
his business and departed as quickly as
possible. The settling of the suit gave
everyone but old Mr. Tracy a lot of
amusement. Because he was serious about
the whole matter, Ned lost more ground
in his suit when he unwittingly made
light of the affair. It took a great deal
of clever legal terminology to fool the
old man, but at last he was awarded the
land and convinced that justice had been
done.
Sometimes Ned, Mark, and the others
found entertainment in listening to the
tales of goblins and ghosts told by old
slaves on the plantation. The two
families frequently gave large dinner parties,
when the whole community would be
invited to come and spend the day. Mark,
thinking he would find it hard ever to
return to New York and his own family,
hoped to stay long enough to help Ned
in his courtship of Bel. At one of the
parties Ned had a little wine and became
more boisterous than ever, causing Bel
to lose the esteem she had gradually been
developing for him. He gained her good
will once more by finding her pet falcon
which had flown away, but later he lost
her affection by engaging in a fist fight
with a town bully. Harvey Riggs,
joining Mark in attempts to help Ned with
his suit, told Bel that Ned had fought
the bully because the ruffian had cast
slurs on her father. Pity at last entered
BeJ's heart, and she treated her suitor
with more favor.
Mark at last left Virginia and went
home to New York. Some months later
he learned that Ned had been successful;
Bel had married him on New Year's Day.
Ned wrote too that it was as Frank had
feared. Old Mr. Tracy was sorry the land
suit was settled and wished to open it
again. Without the pending suit, he felt
like a man who had lost an old and
faithful friend.
3672

THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Johann Rudolf Wyss (1781-1830)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: An island near New Guinea
First published: 1813
Principal characters:
Mr. Robinson, a shipwrecked Swiss gendeman
Mrs. Robinson, his wife
Fritz,
Ernest,
Jack, and
Francis, their sons
Emily Montrose, an English girl, also shipwrecked
Critique:
The adventures of the Robinson family
are familiar to most school children, for
the account of their life on an
uninhabited island has long been a favorite. For
adults the story moves rather slowly; the
events are related in such detail that they
become tiring at times. All ages,
however, can admire the perfect harmony in
which the Robinsons lived. Obedience to
parental wishes and love for one's family
are points the author apparently wished
to stress in the story.
The Story:
Of all the passengers and crew on
board the ship, only the Robinson family
was saved when the vessel broke apart on
a reef and the crew and other passengers
jumped into lifeboats without waiting
for the little family to join them. As the
ship tossed about, the father prayed that
God would spare them. There was plenty
of food on board, and after they had eaten
the boys went to sleep, leaving the father
and the mother to guard them.
In the morning their first concern was
to get to the island they could see beyond
the reef. With much effort, they
constructed a vessel out of tubs. After they
had filled the tubs with food and
ammunition and all otKer articles of value they
could safely carry, they rowed toward the
island. Two dogs from the ship swam
beside them, and the boys were glad they
would have pets when tney reached their
new home.
Their first task on reaching the island
was to erect a tent of sailcloth they had
brought from the ship. They gathered
moss and dried it, so that they would
have some protection from the ground
when they slept. They were able to
find a lobster and to shoot some game,
and thus to add fresh food to their
•supplies. Since they had no utensils for
eating, they used shells for spoons, all
dipping out of the iron kettle which they
had brought from the ship. They had
released some geese and pigeons while they
were still on the ship and had brought
two hens and two cocks with them. The
father knew that they must prepare for
a long time on the island, and his
thoughts were as much on provisions for
the future as for their immediate wants.
The father and Fritz, the oldest son,
spent the next day exploring the island.
They found gourds from which they
would make dishes and spoons, and many
edible fruits and roots. Coconuts,
growing in abundance, provided a treat for
the mother and the younger boys. Fritz
captured a small monkey which he took
back for a pet. The younger boys were
enchanted with the mischievous little
animal.
The Robinsons spent the next few days
securing themselves against hunger and
danger from wild animals. The father
and Fritz made several trips to the ship
in their efforts to bring ashore everything
that they could possibly use. The do-
3673

mesticated animals on the ship were
towed back to the island. There was
also a great store of firearms and
ammunition, hammocks for sleeping, carpenter's
tools, lumber, cooking utensils,
silverware, and dishes.
While the father and Fritz were
salvaging these supplies, the mother and the
younger boys were working on the shore,
sowing seeds, examining the contents or
the kegs which floated to shore, and in
every way possible making the tent home
more livable. The mother and boys also
explored the island to find a spot for a
more permanent home. When the father
and Fritz could join them, the whole
family helped to construct a tree house
which would give them protection from
wild animals which they feared might
dwell on the island.
Through the following weeks each
day brought a new adventure of some
kind. There were encounters with wild
birds and terrifying animals. Ernest, the
second son, had studied nature with great
interest before their ill-fated voyage, and
it was he who identified many of the
animals and birds. They found some
food which they considered luxuries,
sugarcane, honey, potatoes, and spices.
They fenced in a secluded area for their
cattle, so that they might have a constant
supply of milk and fresh meat. Several
new dwellings were constructed to
provide homes on all sides of the island.
The father found a tree which contained
long threads, and after he had constructed
a loom the mother was able to weave cloth
for new clothing. Jack and Francis, the
younger boys, contributed to the welfare
of the family by helping their mother to
care for the animals and thresh the grain
grown from seeds brought from the ship.
Many times the little band found their
labor destroyed by forces they could not
control. Goats ate the bark off young
fruit trees they had planted. Monkeys
robbed their food stores frequently, and
jackals and serpents killed some of their
pets. But the family would not be too
discouraged, for they knew that they had
been very fortunate to be saved on an
island which provided food and shelter
in such abundance.
About a year later they discovered a
cave which became a home and a storage
place for their supplies. In it they were
protected from the rains and their
supplies were safe from intruders. They
spent many enjoyable evenings reading
books they salvaged from the ship. The
father and mother had found a way to
make candles from the sap of a native
tree. Altogether, their lives were
agreeable and happy, and each morning and
evening they tnanked God for His
goodness.
Ten years passed. The boys had
become young men, and Fritz often sailed
long distances in the canoe he had
constructed. One day he captured a wounded
albatross and found attached to it a note,
written in English, asking someone to
help an English girl who was in a cave
near a volcano. The father and Fritz
decided that Fritz must try to find her
without telling the rest of the family of
the note or the proposed search. Fritz,
successful in his search, found a young
girl, Emily Montrose, who had also been
shipwrecked as she was sailing from India
to her home in England. The members
of the Robinson family accepted Emily
as a daughter and a sister who was able
to help the mother in her duties and give
the boys much joy with her stories of life
in India. Her own mother was dead.
Emily had lived in India with her father,
an army officer, who had sailed back to
England on a different ship. She knew
he would be worried about her, but there
was no way for her to communicate with
him.
One morning, a few months later, the
castaways were astonished to hear the
sound of three cannon shots. Not
knowing whether the sound came from a
friendly ship or from a pirate vessel, they
loaded their small boat with firearms and
sailed out to investigate the noise. There
they found an English ship which had
been driven off her course by a storm.
It was impossible for this ship to take
Emily back to England, but the captain
3674

promised to notify her father and to
send a ship back for her. A captain, his
wife and two children, who were on
board, were so enchanted with the island
that they asked to be allowed to stay.
It seemed as if a little colony would grow
there.
Six months later the ship sent by
Emily's father arrived. Fritz and Jack
had a great longing to see their homeland
again, and since they were now mature
young men, their mother and father
allowed them to return with Emily. Before
he left Fritz told his father that he loved
Emily and intended to ask her father's
permission to propose marriage to her.
The Robinsons, who loved Emily dearly,
gave their blessing to their son.
The father, who had prepared a
manuscript relating their adventures, gave it
to Fritz before the boy sailed, in the
hope that their story might be of interest
to the rest of the world, The father and
mother wanted to spend their remaining
days on the island. Now that their island
was known, commerce would begin and
a colony could grow there. The father
prayed that the little colony would
increase in prosperity and piety, and
continue to deserve and receive the blessings
of the merciful God who had cared for
them all so tenderly in the past.
3675

THE TALE OF GENJI
Type of work: Novel
Author: Lady Murasaki Shikibu (978M031?)
Type of plot: Courtly romance
Time of plot: Early medieval period
Locale: Japan
First transcribed: 1001-1015
Principal characters:
Prince Genji, the talented illegitimate son of the Emperor
The Emperor, Genji's father
Ktritsubo, Genji's mother, the Emperor's concubine
Lady Koktden, the Emperor's consort
Princess Aoi, Genji's first wife
Utsusemi, one of Genji's paramours
Yugao, another noblewoman in love with Genji
Murasaki, a young girl reared by Genji, his second wife
Critique:
The Tale of Genji is the first and title
volume of an extremely long court
romance written by Lady Murasaki
Shikibu, daughter of a famous provincial
governor and widow of a lieutenant in
the Imperial Guard. As a lady in waiting
to the Empress Akiko, she was
completely familiar with Nipponese court ritual
and ceremony, and her knowledge of
palace life is everywhere apparent in the
adventures of her nobly-born hero, Prince
Genji. The novel is undoubtedly the
finest example of medieval Japanese
storytelling, and in it one can trace the very
growth of Japanese literature about the
year 1000. In the beginning Lady Mu-
rasaki's romance is an adolescent affair,
very much in the fairy-tale tradition of
the old Japanese Chronicles. As it
progresses, it reaches the full-blown stage of
the prose romance, and it can be
compared satisfactorily with the medieval
prose romances of western Europe. In
both, the love affairs of the heroes are
dominant. The Tale of Genji, however,
imparts the qualities of Japanese culture
—similar to and yet quite different from
the medieval culture of Europe. Here
are people whose main occupation, far
from the arts of war and chivalry, was
living well: enjoying nature and art in
all its forms. Also, in place of idealized
woman we have the idealized man, with
woman in a distinctly subordinate role.
The Story:
When the Emperor of Japan took a
beautiful gentlewoman of the
bedchamber as his concubine, he greatly
displeased his consort, the Lady Kokiden.
The lot of the concubine, whose name
was Kiritsubo, was not easy, despite the
protection and love of the Emperor, for
the influence of Kokiden was very great.
Consequently, Kiritsubo had little
happiness in the birth of a son, although the
child was beautiful and sturdy. Kirit-
subo's son made Kokiden even more
antagonistic toward the concubine, for
Kokiden feared that her own son might
lose favor in the Emperor's eyes and not
be elevated to the position of heir
apparent. Because of her hard life among
the women, Kiritsubo languished away
until she died.
After his mother's death the young
child she had had by the Emperor was
put under the protection of the clan of
Gen by the Emperor, who gave the child
the title of Prince Genji. The boy,
spirited and handsome, was a popular figure
at the court. Even Kokiden could not
bear him a great deal of ill will, jealous
THE TALE OF GENJI by Lady Murasaki Shikibu. Translated by Arthur Waley. By permission of
the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co. All rights reserved.
3676

as she was on behalf of her son. Prince
Genji won for himself a secure place in
the Emperor's eyes, and when twelve
years old he was not only elevated to a
man's estate, but was also given in
marriage to Princess Aoi, the daughter of
the Minister of the Left, a powerful
figure at court. Genji, because of his age,
was not impressed with his bride. Nor
was she entirely happy with her
bridegroom, for she was four years older than
he.
Genji was soon appointed a captain
of the guard and as such spent much of
his time at the Emperor's palace. Indeed,
he really spent little time with his bride
in their apartment in her father's home.
He found that his good looks, his
accomplishments, and his position made it very
easy for him to have any woman he was
disposed to love. His wife, not liking this
state of things, became very cool to him.
Genji cared little what Princes Aoi said
or did.
One of Genji's first amours was with
a young gentlewoman named Fujitsubo,
who, like his bride, was a few years older
than he. His second adventure was at
the home of a young courtier, Ki no
Kami. At the home of Ki no Kami, who
was honored to have the person of Prince
Genji at bis home, Genji went into the
room of a pretty young matron, Utsusemi,
and stole her away to his own quarters.
The woman, because of Genji's rank and
pleasing self, refused to be angered by
his actions. In an effort to keep in touch
with her, Genji asked that her brother
be made a member of his train, a request
that was readily granted. Utsusemi soon
realized that such an affair could not long
continue and broke it off; Genji named
her his broom-tree, after a Japanese shrub
that at a distance promises shade but is
really only a scrawny bush.
Once, a short time later, Genji made
another attempt to renew the affair with
Utsusemi. But she was not asleep when
he entered her room and was able to
run out ahead of him. With her was
another very charming young woman who
had failed to awaken when Utsusemi
left and Genji came in. Genji, refusing
to be irritated by Utsusemi, gently
awakened the other girl and soon was on the
most intimate of terms with her.
One day, while visiting his foster
mother, Genji made the acquaintance of
a young woman named Yugao. She was
living a rather poor existence, in spite of
the fact that she came from a good
family. After paying her several masked
visits, Genji became tired of such
clandestine meetings. He proceeded to make
arrangements for them to stay for a time
in a deserted palace within the imperial
domains. The affair ended in tragedy,
for during their stay Yugao was strangely
afflicted and died. Only through the
good offices of his retainers and friends
was Genji able to avoid a disastrous
scandal.
Shortly after the tragic death of Yugao,
Genji fell ill of an ague. In order to be
cured, he went to a hermit in the
mountains. While staying with the hermit,
he found a beautiful little girl, an orphan
of a good family. Seeing something of
himself in little Murasaki, who was
pretty and talented, Genji resolved to take
her into his care. At first Murasaki's
guardians refused to listen to Genji's
plans, until he was able to convince them
that he had only the girl's best interests
at heart and did not plan to make her
a concubine at too early an age. Finally
they agreed to let him shape the little
girl's future, and he took her to his own
palace to rear. Lest people misunderstand
his motives, and for the sake of secrecy,
Genji failed to disclose the identity of
the girl and her age, even though his
various paramours and his wife became
exceedingly jealous of the mysterious
stranger who was known to dwell with
Genji.
Soon after his return to the Emperor's
court with Murasaki, Genji was
requested to dance the "Waves of the Blue Sea"
at the annual festival in the Emperor's
court. So well did he impress the Em-
3677

peror with his dancing and with his
poetry that he was raised to higher rank.
Had the emperor dared to do so, Genji
would have been named as the heir
apparent.
During this time, when Genji's star
seemed to be in the ascendant, he was
very worried, for he had made Fujitsubo,
the Emperor's concubine, pregnant.
After the baby's birth everyone noticed how
like Genji the baby looked, but the
likeness was, to Genji's relief, credited to
the fact that they were both sons of the
Emperor himself. So pleased was the
Emperor that he made Fujitsubo his
official consort after the unexpected death
of Lady Kokiden.
Meanwhile Genji's marriage
proceeded very ba3ly, and he an & his wife
drifted farther and farther apart. Finally,
however, she became pregnant, but far
from making her happy her condition
seemed to make her sadder. During her
pregnancy Princess Aoi declined, filled
with hallucinations that her rivals for
Genji's affections were stealing her life
from her by hatred and jealousy. So
deep was her affliction that Princess Aoi
died in childbirth, much mourned by
Genji, who finally had come to
appreciate and love her. A year after her death,
however, when Murasaki, the girl he had
reared, was of suitable age to marry,
Genji took her for his wife and resolved
to settle down.
3678

A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: French Revolution
Locale: France and England
First published: 1859
Principal characters
Dr. Manette, a former prisoner in the Bastille
Lucie Manette, his daughter
Mr. Lorry, an agent of Tellson & Co.
Charles Darnay, Marquis St. Evr&nonde
Sydney Carton, a lawyer's clerk
Miss Pross, a servant
Madame Defarge, a French revolutionary
M. Defarge, her husband
Critique:
Dickens is a remarkable story-teller.
Although one may complain of the many
characters in his stories, each character is
necessary to complete the pattern of the
Dickens plot. In this novel of the French
Revolution, Dickens' treatment of his
complicated plot, every event of which
draws toward one great climax against
the greater drama of history, is both
delightful and fascinating to experience.
The Story:
The early rumbling of the French
Revolution was echoing across the
English Channel. In Paris a lonely old man
waited in an attic for his first meeting
with a daughter whom he had not seen
since she was a baby. With the aid of
Mr. Jarvis Lorry, an agent for the Franco-
British banking house of Tellson & Co.,
the lovely Lucie Manette had been
brought to Paris to find her father,
imprisoned for eighteen years in the
Bastille. Above the wine shop of Madame
and M. Defarge, Dr. Manette was kept
secretly until his rescuers could take him
safely back to England. Day after day
Madame Defarge sat outside her wine
shop, knitting into a long scarf strange
symbols which would later spell out a
death list of hated aristocrats.
Five years later Lucie Manette sat
beside her father in the courtroom of the
Old Bailev, where Charles Darnay, a
teacher of languages, was on trial for
treasonable activities which involved his
passing between France and England on
secret business. A man named John Bar-
sad had brought charges against him.
Lucie and her father had testified they
had met Darnay on the boat when they
had traveled from France five years
earlier. But an unusual circumstance
saved the prisoner. Mr. Stryver, the
prisoner's counsel, pointed across the
courtroom to another man who so
resembled the prisoner that legal
identification of Darnay was shaken. The other
man was Sydney Carton, and because of
the likeness between the two Mr. Stryver
secured an acquittal for the prisoner.
Carton's relationship to Stryver was that
of the jackal to the lion, for the alcoholic,
aimless Carton wrote the cases which
Stryver pleaded in court.
Lucie and her father lived in a small
tenement under the care of their maid,
Miss Pross, and their kindly friend, Mr.
Lorry. Jerry Cruncher, porter at Tellson
& Co., and a secret resurrectionist, was
often helpful. Darnay and Carton
became frequent callers in the Manette
household, after the trial which had
brought them together.
In France the fury of the people grew.
Monseigneur the Marquis St. Evremonde,
was driving in his carriage through the
countryside when he carelessly killed a
child of a peasant named Gaspard. The
nobleman returned to his castle to meet
3679

his nephew, who was visiting from
England. Charles Darnay's views differed
from those of his uncle. Darnay knew
that his family had committed grave
injustices, for which he begged his uncle
to make amends. Monseigneur the
marquis haughtily refused. That night the
marquis was murdered in his bed.
Darnay returned to England to seek
Dr. Manette's permission to court Lucie.
In order to construct a bond of complete
honesty, Darnay attempted to tell the
doctor his true French name, but Manette
fearfully asked him to wait until the
morning of his marriage before revealing
it. Carton also approached Lucie with a
proposal of marriage. When Lucie
refused, Carton asked her always to
remember that there was a man who would
give his own life to keep a life she loved
beside her.
Meanwhile in France Madame De-
farge knitted into her scarf the story of
the hated St. Evremondes. Gaspard had
been hanged for the assassination of the
marquis; monseigneur's house must be
destroyed. John Barsad, the spy, brought
news that Lucie Manette would marry
Charles Darnay, nephew of the marquis.
This news disturbed Defarge, for Dr.
Manette, a former prisoner of the
Bastille, held a special honor in the eyes of
the Revolutionists.
Lucie and Darnay were married.
Sydney Carton became a loyal friend of the
family. Time passed, and tiny Lucie
arrived. When the child was six years
old, in the year 1789, the French people
stormed the Bastille. At the Bastille
Defarge went to the cell where Dr. Manette
had been a prisoner and extracted some
papers hidden behind a stone in the wall.
One day, while Darnay was talking to
Mr. Lorry at Tellson & Co., a letter
addressed to the Marquis St. Evremonde
was placed on Mr. Lorry's desk. Darnay
offered to deliver it to the proper person.
When he was alone, he read the letter.
It was from an old family servant who
had been imprisoned by the
Revolutionists. He begged the Marquis St.
Evremonde to save his life. Darnay realized
that he must go to Paris. Only Dr.
Manette knew of Darnay's family name, and
the doctor had been sworn to secrecy.
Darnay and Mr. Lorry went to Paris,
the latter to look after the French branch
of Tellson & Co. Shortly after his arrival
Darnay was seized as an undesirable
immigrant after Defarge had ordered his
arrest. Mr. Lorry was considerably upset
when Lucie .and Dr. Manette suddenly
arrived in Paris. Some of the doctor's
friends had informed him of Darnay's
arrest. The old man felt that his own
imprisonment in the Bastille would win
the sympathy of the Revolutionists and
enable him to save his son-in-law.
After fifteen months of waiting,
Darnay was brought to trial. Able to prove
his innocence of harming the French
people, he was freed, but forbidden to
leave France. A short time later he was
again arrested, denounced by Defarge
and one other person whose name th*
officer refused to disclose.
While shopping one day in the Paris
market, Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher,
who were in Paris with Lucie and Mr.
Lorry, met a man who caused Miss Pross
to scream in amazement and Jerry to
stare in silent astonishment. The man
was Solomon, Miss Pross* lost brother.
Jerry remembered him as John Barsad,
the man who had been a spy-witness at the
Old Bailey. Carton arrived on the scene
at that moment, and he was able to force
Barsad to come with him to the office of
Tellson & Co. for a private conference.
Barsad feared detection of his duplicity
for he was now an employee of the
Republican French Government. Carton
and Jerry threatened to expose him as a
former spy for the English government,
the enemy of France. Carton made a deal
with Barsad.
When Darnay was once more brought
before the tribunal, Defarge testified
against him and named Dr. Manette as
the other accuser. Defarge produced the
papers which he had found in Dr. Ma-
nette's cell in the Bastille. Therein the
doctor had written the story of his arrest
and imprisonment because he had learned
3680

of a secret crime committed by a St.
Evremonde against a woman of humble
birth and her young brother. His
account was enough to convict Darnay.
Sentenced for the crimes of his ancestors,
Darnay, the young St. Evremonde, was
condemned by the tribunal to the
guillotine.
Now Sydney Carton began to act. He
visited the Defarge wine shop, where he
learned that Madame Defarge was the
sister of the woman ruined by St.
Evremonde years before. Then with the help
of the false Barsad, he gained
admittance to the prison where Darnay had
been taken. There he drugged the
prisoner and, still aided by the cowed Barsad,
had him carried from the cell. Carton
remained. The resemblance between the
two would allow him to pass as Darnay
and prevent discovery of the aristocrat's
escape.
Madame Defarge went to the lodgings
of Lucie and Dr. Manette to denounce
them. Only Miss Pross was there; the
others, including Darnay, were already
on their way to safety. To keep Madame
Defarge from learning of their escape,
Miss Pross struggled with the furious
woman demanding admittance to Lucie's
apartment. Madame Defarge was killed
when her pistol went off. Miss Pross was
deaf for the rest of her life.
Lucy and Darnay returned safely to
England. Sydney Carton died at the
guillotine, giving his own life for the
happiness of his dear friends.
3681

TALES OF ISE
Type of work: Stories and poems
Author: Arihara no Narihira (825-880)
Time: Ninth century
Locale: Japan
First transcribed: Ninth century
Both the work commonly known as
the he Monogatari (Tales of he") and
the identity of its author have been long
disputed. However, it is generally
conceded that the principal author was
Narihira and that, as the collection of tales
and poems now stands, later hands made
additions after Narihira's death.
There are slight differences in text and
sequence among the various hand-copied
versions that have survived, but in
general the work consists of 125 episodes,
most of which open with the phrase,
"Once upon a time there was a man.
. . ." These episodes, put together with
no particular order, chronologically or
otherwise, vary in length and contain
poems, sometimes only one, sometimes
two or more, mostly by Narihira. Almost
all of these episodes deal with amorous
dalliances, and in time cover the hero's
life from the time of his maturity rite to
his death. That many of the tales are
autobiographical in nature, based on real
people and events, is undeniable.
This work, although slight, has a
position in Japanese literature out of
proportion to its length. Its strong influence may
easily be seen, for instance, in Lady
Murasaki's Tale of Genji (Genji
Monogatari'). The hundreds of later
commentaries and studies dealing with the he
Monogatari attest to its importance.
Because of its episodic and disordered
nature, no synopsis is possible, but through
the 125 episodes there runs the central
theme of the loves of the principal
author who never clearly identifies himself,
but who expresses the many aspects and
manifestations of love: its joys, its
despair, its pain, its triumphs, its comedy.
A summary of some of the episodes
follows:
Not too many years after the capital
has been moved from Nara to Kyoto
(A.D. 794), there lived a man who
loved love. Shortly after his maturity
rite, which at that time was usually at
the age of eleven and when the boy had
grown four and a half feet tall, the youth
went falcon hunting at Kasuga in the
former capital. There he happened to see
two beautiful sisters and sent them a
poem. The poem begins the description
of the love life of this "man."
The later Imperial Consort Takako
was the daughter of Middle Counselor
Nagayoshi; in A.D. 859 she served as
one of the performers at a court
ceremony. About that same time the hero of
the Tales of he met and began to visit
her. When their love affair began to be
bruited about, the girl was made
unavailable by the simple expediency of
placing her in service at court where, in
866, she became the consort of the
Emperor Seiwa.
Tiring of life in the capital, the man
went on a trip to eastern Japan, but he
has gone no further than the border of
Ise and Owari Provinces when he became
homesick and composed poems to express
his nostalgia. He met an itinerant priest,
saw Mount Fuji for the first time, and
composed a poem. Entering the province
of Musashi, at the Sumida River which
runs through present Tokyo, he
composed a celebrated poem of nostalgia
concerning the oyster-catcher birds. In
Musashi he also met and was attracted to
various women. Later he wandered
through the region to the northeast,
where he made love to the local
country women.
A check with the Imperial Anthology,
the Kokin-shti (Poems, Old and New,
A.D. 905)-for of the 209 poems in the
he Monogatari, sixty-two also appear in
the Kokin-shb—reveals that the woman
in Episode 19 is in all likelihood the

daughter of Ki no Aritsune, who is
mentioned in Episode 16. Aritsune was a
close friend of Narihira, and at least one
of Aritsune's daughters married Narihira,
perhaps the one presented in Episode 19.
It has also been thought that one of the
girls in the first episode is the same girl
as well. Aritsune had an unfortunate life,
according to the standards of the court
nobility of the time. His younger sister
was the mother of Emperor Montoku's
first born son, Prince Koretaka. But in
850, the year Montoku succeeded to the
throne, another son, Prince Korehito, was
born to Akirakei-ko, a daughter of Fuji-
wara no Yoshifusa, just at the time when
the Fujiwara clan under Yoshifusa was
about to achieve its hegemony at the
court—a power which they achieved
largely by intermingling with the
imperial family through their daughters'
marriages to future emperors, or through
becoming the mothers of future emperors.
No doubt Montoku was inclined to make
his older son his successor, but because
of pressure brought upon him, the Fuji-
wara-mothered Korehito succeeded him.
This accession left Aritsune on the outer
fringe of power, and his subsequent
career as a courtier was not a happy one.
Yoshifusa went on to become prime
minister during Montoku's reign.
Friends s:nce early childhood, this
daughter of Aritsune eventually married
Narihira, but Narihira did not long
remain faithful to her. However, scattered
through the earlier episodes are hints
which cause the reader to believe that
she managed to draw him back to her
af rer each infidelity.
There is also the eternal triangle
involving two men and one woman, with
the usual tragic results. The woman in
this case had been waiting three years for
the return of a man who had left to make
his way in the capital. Meanwhile, she
was courted by a second man, who finally
won her promise of marriage. The first
man, returning on the wedding night,
learned what had happened during his
absence and left the woman with his
blessing. Following him, she lost her life.
There are passages of young love
between a weakling son of good family and
a household maid; or the love of a young
girl, too shy to make her feelings known,
who dies with her love unrequited as a
result; of an affair between two faithless
people who send each other poems
charging the other with faithlessness; of a
beloved wife whose husband is so busy
with his duties at court that she feels
neglected, and goes off with another man
to the country. Eventually the husband is
appointed an imperial emissary to an
important shrine and there meets the
woman, who is now the wife of a
country official. She realizes her mistake, and
becomes a nun. There is the story of an
elderly woman, the mother of three sons,
who is amorously starved but too d ffident
to say so openly, so she tells her sons
of her craving as something she had
dreamed. The third son alone is
sympathetic to his mother's plight, and he
arranges for her relief through the kind
offices of the handsome Narihira.
From the earliest times it had been the
custom for the emperor to appoint
through divination an unmarried
imperial princess to serve as the head priestess
at important shrines. In Narihira's time
the head priestess of the great shr'ne of
Ise was Princess Yasuko, second
daughter of Emperor Montoku. Her
appointment, made in 859, lasted until 876.
Sometime after her appointment, there
appeared in Ise a handsome inspector in
the guise of a falcon hunter. The
priestess, having received word of his arrival
on official matters, greeted him with
special kindness; the meeting led to their
falling in love with each other. For the
sake of discretion she waited until night
before paying him a visit, and she left
long before dawn. That same morning a
messenger arrived from her with a poem,
the gist of which said, "Did you come
to see me last night, or was it I who went
to see you? I do not remember. Nor do
I know whether it was all a dream, or
was real."
Narihira replied with another poem
making a tryst for that evening, but the
3683

governor of the province gave an all-
night banquet; thus Narihira's plans were
thwarted because on the following day it
was necessary for him to continue his tour
of inspection. The lovers parted,
promising each other in poems to meet again,
somewhere, sometime.
So the episodes go, to end with the
poem which might be roughly translated:
Long have I known
That this last journey must be made,
But little did I know
That it might be so soon.
3684

TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS
Type of work: Short stories
Author: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
First published: 1891
Ambrose Bierce wrote volumes of acid,
satirical prose in his long career as a
journalist, and even managed to get a
somewhat pretentious twelve-volume
edition of his collected works published.
Most of it, because of its time-bound
nature, was doomed to oblivion by the time
the edition appeared. The work that
continues and promises to survive is the
collection of short stories titled Tales of
Soldiers and Civilians. Bierce's literary
reputation rests essentially on this book.
The bland title of this collection stands
in ironic contrast to the vision of life
which informs the stories themselves.
Indeed, Bierce seems to have striven for
bland, noncommittal, titles to most of his
stories. Titles like "Chickamauga," "An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," and
"The Mocking-Bird" tell little of the
macabre nature of these tales. Bierce
seems to have chosen his mild titles with
deliberate irony.
When this volume was reprinted in
1898, it was given a more meaningful
title, In the Midst of Life. The irony is
more obvious and more indicative of the
true content of the book: in the midst of
life is death.
Death is the sole absolute of this book,
the common denominator of each story,
and the final proposition in a logic of
ruthless necessity. Each protagonist is
part of a greater logic; each is subordinate
to the plot, and each is cursed. Death is
separated from life, is raised up as a
separate principle antagonistic to life, and
becomes an entity in its own right. Death
is seen as a hostile specter, rather than a
normal process of life. As such, Death
seeks to conquer life rather than aid it.
Death then becomes an inevitable victor
which "has all seasons for his own," as
Bierce was fond of remarking.
Against such a powerful antagonist the
heroes become victims in a web of cruel
necessity, shadow figures drawn into the
Valley of the Shadow; and as such they
are depicted with sharp, relentless strokes.
Bierce's heroes are essentially lonely men
who derive their reality from the fear
they experience. These men are cursed
and driven by the logic of their curse.
Their strongest motivation is fear, an all-
pervasive anxiety that frequently
annihilates them. The success of each story
depends on its ability to arouse this same
fear in the reader.
In consequence, Bierce places a great
value on courage, fearlessness in the face
of death. However, he is acute enough to
see that courage is not so much
fearlessness as it is a greater fear overcoming
a lesser fear, in most cases a fear of
dishonor overcoming a fear of death.
Courage, then, is the faith that one's honor
is more important than one's life.
Frequently the heroes Bierce admires court
death with an awesome recklessness. His
heroes are inevitably damned. There is
no escape, no transcendence, and no
salvation from the macabre situations into
which they are drawn. Their dooms are
inescapable facts. But the measure of
their manhood is how they meet death.
Bierce's vision of life is fatalistic, but
there is more to it than that. Avenging
Furies hover about his stories, but they
are not the same Furies that haunted
Orestes. Bierce is nihilistic, but
inevitably there is a macabre humor in his
nihilism. The acid, satirical touch that
colors the rest of Bierce's work is present
here as well. Bierce's Furies are diabolical
jesters, who love irony more than they
love the wretched human spirit. His
Furies are divine practical jokers, who drum
"Dixie" and "John Brown's Body" on
the human skull for laughs. One can
scarcely tell whether the shriek one
3685

senses in Bierce's prose is that of humor
or horror.
Bierce's grotesque wit serves as a relief
from the horror of his situations. A
related technique that serves the same
purpose is his ironic stance, one which
removes him from the petty human scene
and separates him from the terror of his
heroes. Bierce assumes a godlike attitude
that determines the objective nature of
his prose. He uses a naturalistic style that
is precise in diction, spare in depiction,
ironic in narration.
In effect, Bierce takes on the cruel role
of the Furies in narrating his stories, and
the tone of his prose is frigid, caustic, and
inhuman. Yet it is precisely this emotional
sterility, this godlike irony, that makes
his stories so powerfully chilling. If, for
example, Bierce were to sympathize with
his heroes, we would have pathos rather
than terror. The very lack of an
appropriate emotional response in the
narration stimulates to an excessive degree the
proper emotional response in the reader.
The fact that Bierce himself was caustic,
cruel, and sharp, demanding perfection
of his fellow human beings, admirably
served his limited artistic abilities and
enabled him to focus his talent on
evoking both terror and humor.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians is
divided into two parts, as the title suggests.
There are the war stories and the
mystery stories, and each type develops
Bierce's vision of life in a different
literary direction. The war tales anticipate
Hemingway, while the civilian stories
anticipate modern horror-tale writers like
H. P. Lovecraft.
Beyond a doubt, Bierce reached his
artistic peak in the soldier tales. War
stories provided the perfect medium for
someone of his character and experience.
First of all, Bierce had served in the Civil
War and undoubtedly his stories draw
much of their vigor and reality from
firsthand experience. His depiction of various
battles and their effects have an
unmistakable aura of reality. His description of
war is hauntingly vivid and stands in
marked contrast to the maudlin accounts
given in the vast bulk of Civil War
writings.
Secondly, war tales provided an
acceptable outlet for his obsessions with fear,
courage, and death. These leitmotifs
could be presented naturally in tales of
soldiers. Since war abounds in abnormal
situations, Bierce could write naturally
about a twin killing his twin, about a son
killing his father, and about an artillery
man killing his wife. In the context of
their stories these plots become necessary
accidents, part of some divine causality.
Thirdly, Bierce's naturalistic style was
admirably suited to describing the limited
vision of the soldier in war, a vision
which is not permitted the luxury of
feeling pity and which must avoid all
contemplation. It is a vision, moreover, that
must concentrate on immediate
objectives and on carrying out specific orders.
Finally, the army subjugates individuals
to the mass. Deeds of fear and courage
are the only acts by which a soldier is
individualized and judged. Bierce's
characters draw their reality from the way
they face death. Each hero undergoes an
ordeal which means death either for him
or for someone close to him, and that
test determines his character. Apart from
that ordeal Bierce's characters are lifeless
puppets dancing to a meretricious plot.
Bierce's war stories are his best.
Nowhere else did he achieve such a perfect
fusion of form and content, except
perhaps in his aphorisms. In quality the
tales are superior to about ninety-nine
percent of the short fiction that was being
written during the nineteenth century in
America. In many instances they
anticipate or rival Hemingway's stories.
Actually, many points of comparison can be
drawn between Bierce and Hemingway.
Both show obsession with fear, courage,
and death. Both use a crisp, ironic prose
to communicate their vision. Both were
to find happy expression in stories of war.
Both present character tested through
some ordeal. And both possess a cruel,
evocative power at times giving their fic-
3686

tion a haunting quality as vivid as a
nightmare.
Bierce's war tales, particularly "Chicka-
mauga," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek
Bridge," "One Kind of Officer," and
"Killed at Resaca," are first-rate for what
they attempt to do. His civilian stories,
however, fall somewhat short of the high
standards he achieved in his war tales.
The reason for this diminished quality
is that Bierce attempted to impose on his
stories of civilians the same vision of life
that pervades his soldier tales, and the
grafting was not always successful.
Pictures of war provided the perfect literary
vehicle for his outlook, since war abounds
in pathological situations. When he tried
to impose this vision on civilian reality,
however, the imperfections of plot, the
implausibilities, and the grotesqueness
showed up much more glaringly. The
trick endings came off much worse. The
characters and plots never matched those
of the war stories. To inject a
pathological fear into stories about civilians
requires great skill.
What Bierce succeeded in doing in
these stories was to extend a relatively
new prose genre, the short mystery tale.
In this lesser genre Bierce came off rather
well when compared with writers who
today create in this vein. His stories
continue to hold their own in the
anthologies.
That Bierce was neurotic is beside the
point. Successful in turning his neuroses
into fine artistic stories, he has few equals
in suspense, evocative power, clarity, and
irony.
3687

TALES OF UNCLE REMUS
Type of work: Tales
Author: Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)
First published: 1880-1910
An old Negro sits talking to a little
boy in his cabin on a cotton plantation
not far from Atlanta, Georgia. The Civil
War has not yet been fought, and the
old man, a slave, belongs to the family
that owns the cabin, the big house a few
yards away, and the fine plantation. His
loyalty is boundless to the parents of the
little boy, the lady he calls "Miss Sally"
and her husband "Mars John." He has
known them a long time and he shares
their memories of earlier times.
Occasionally he speaks of those old days, but
it is more usual for him to tell of times
far more distant, when "my great-gran-
daddy's great-grandaddy live nex' door ter
whar ol' Grandaddy Cricket live at" or
of "one time, way back yander, 'fo' you
wuz borned, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er
Miss Sally wuz borned—way back yander
'fo* enny un us wuz borned." When he
talks to the little boy who sits beside him
(and years later to the son of the first
little boy), both he and his listener move
in imagination into legendary eras which
have no calendar dates and need none.
For the stories which Uncle Remus tells
are drawn from the legends of many lands
and ancient times.
Though Joel Chandler Harris wrote
the tales of Uncle Remus, he laid no
claim to having invented them. He looked
upon himself as a mere recorder. A shy,
modest, and somewhat diffident author
who once described himself as a
"cornfield journalist," Harris admitted, in the
introduction to Uncle Remus: His Songs
and His Sayings (1880), his indebtedness
to the Negroes from whom he heard the
tales. In a later volume, Nights with
Uncle Remus (1883), he gave credit not
only to the Georgia Negroes but also to
the many correspondents who, having
enjoyed his first Uncle Remus book, had
supplied him with material which he
embodied in later stories.
Harris was uncertain as to where the
Uncle Remus tales originated. Readers
curious about possible origins may consult
the introductions to the two volumes
cited above and a number of articles listed
in Lewis Leary's Articles on American
Literature, 1900-1950 (1954). Old tales
like those told by Uncle Remus in the
middle Georgia Negro dialect and by his
less-known friend Daddy Jake in the
Gullah dialect of the coastal areas of
South Carolina and Georgia have been
found in Africa, Europe, South America,
and the Orient.
Questions of origin are for specialists,
however, not for lovers of the tales
themselves. There are clear resemblances
between the characters and the simple plots
of many of the Uncle Remus tales and
those in folk tales from many nations.
What gives these stories their special
appeal is not their content but the manner
in which they are told. (Mark Twain
once wrote Harris: "In reality the stories
are only alligator pears—one eats them
merely for the sake of the dressing.") In
addition, Uncle Remus himself is one
of the most lovable characters in
American literature. The sly humor of the old
man, his pretended gruffness followed
quickly by tender concern when he sees
he has hurt the little bov's feelings, his
ingenious parrying of the little boy's
searching questions, his moralizing on
the behavior of both children and adults,
and his citing of ancient authority for
the particular form of the tales ("de tale
I give you like hit wer' gun to me")—all
make him seem a very real person.
Children see in him a kindly old man who
loves to entertain children; to adults he
is, in addition, a philosopher of life whose
thoughts are based on close observation
of people over many years. As to the
origin of Uncle Remus, Harris replied
when he was asked about it:
3688

He was not an invention of my own,
but a human syndicate, I might say,
of three or four old darkies whom I had
known. I just walloped them together
into one person and called him "Uncle
Remus."
Though Brer Rabbit does not appear
in all of the Uncle Remus tales, he is the
hero of many of them. The reason was
given by Harris in his first volume, when
he said that ". . . it needs no scientific
investigation to show why he [the Negro]
selects as his hero the weakest and most
harmless of all animals, and brings him
out victorious in contests with the bear,
the wolf, and the fox. It is not virtue
that triumphs, but helplessness; it is not
malice, but mischievousness.,, Moralists
may complain that the mischievousness
sometimes becomes cruelty and that Brer
Rabbit is a remarkably accomplished liar,
but to most adult readers these would
seem carping criticisms. Perhaps some of
the children who have known the tales
through three generations may have
objected to a code of conduct in the tales
which is very different from what they
have been taught in Sunday School or at
home. Most have probably thought that
the world of Uncle Remus's animals and
birds is simply a story world anyway, one
in which many things seem all right that
would not be so elsewhere. Even Uncle
Remus suggests, now and then, that he
does not entirely approve of what has
been done in a certain tale, as when
several terrapins have been used to make
it seem that Brer Rabbit has lost his race
with Brer Tarry pin, and the little boy
objects, "But, Uncle Remus, that was
cheating." The old man answers:
"Co'se, honey. De creeturs 'gun ter
cheat, en den folks tuck it up, en hit
keep on spreadin'. Hit mighty ketchin',
en you min* yo* eye, honey, dat
somebody don't cheat you *fo' yo* ha'r git
gray. . . ."
The Negro dialect of. Uncle Remus
presents a greater hindrance to readers
today than it did when the tales first
appeared. Even Southern Negro children
have been known to ask in public
libraries for a version of several of the tales
simplified and "modernized" a few years
ago. They complained that they could not
understand the original tales. As the
educational level rises for both whites and
Negroes in the Southern states and as
o
Southern speech becomes more like that
in other parts of the nation, the dialect
of Uncle Remus may come to seem as
foreign to Americans as the Scottish
dialect of Burns, and perhaps not much
more comprehensible than Chaucer's
English. Uncle Remus's tales are essentially
oral ones, and they are best when read
aloud. But if future readers come upon
the stories without ever having heard
anyone talk like Uncle Remus, they will
find it difficult to imagine the sounds, the
inflections, and the easy flow of the old
man's words in such a passage as the
following:
"You kin put yo' 'pennunce in ole
Brer Rabbit. . . . He wuz dere, but
he shuffle up kinder late, kaze w'en
Miss Meadows en de balance un um
done gone down ter de place, Brer^
Rabbit, he crope 'roun* ter de ash-
hopper, en fill Brer Coon slippers full
er ashes, en den he tuck'n put um on
en march off. He got dar atter w'ile, en
soon's Miss Meadows en de gals seed
*im, dey up'n giggle, en make a great
'miration kaze Brer Rabbit got on
slippers. Brer Fox, he so smart, he holler
out, he did, en say he lay Brer Rabbit
got de groun'-eatch. . . /'
Another barrier to comprehension of
the Uncle Remus tales by future readers
has been pointed out by Jay B. Hubbell
in The South in American Literature,
1607-1900 (1954). American life has
become increasingly urban in the last
half century, and many children now
grow up with scarcely any knowledge of
the ways of animals like the rabbit, the
fox, and the wolf, or of what life is like
on a farm. It is true that Uncle Remus
does make some allowance, in several
tales in Told by Uncle Remus (1905),
for the ignorance of the second little boy,
who has lived in Atlanta and whose ac-
3689

tions Uncle Remus frequently contrasts
with those of the first little boy a
generation earlier. But most of the tales were
told to the first little boy, and Uncle
Remus makes no explanation, for
example, of the "spring-'ouse" that Brer
Fox and Brer Rabbit put some butter in,
or of what the "go'd er water" is that
Brer Rabbit gives Brer B'ar to keep him
from "stranklin'" after he has bit all the
hair off Brer Possum's* tail.
It is to be hoped, however, that the
reading handicaps of dialectal spelling
and strange words, or of the frequent
use of terms from Southern farm life
before it was transformed by
mechanization and electrification, will not be strong
enough to prevent future generations of
American children and adults from
relishing the story of Brer Rabbit's escape
in "How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for
Mr. Fox," from secretly rejoicing at "The
Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf," or from
joining in the merriment at "Brother Rabbit's
Laughing Place."
3690

THE TALISMAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Twelfth century
Locale: The Holy Land
First published: 1825
Principal characters:
Richard the Lion-Hearted, King of England
Sir Kenneth, Knight of the Couchant Leopard
El Hakim, a Moslem physician
Theodorick of Engaddi, a hermit
Queen Berengaria, Richard's wife
Lady Edith Plantagenet, Richard's kinswoman
Conrade, the Marquis of Montserrat
The Grand Master of the Knights Templars
Critique:
The Talisman has been read by almost
every high school student for generations,
because it contains all the ingredients for
a romantic adventure: far-away lands,
love, mystery, and chivalric courage and
daring. Sir Walter Scott has woven these
ingredients together with his usual skill,
bringing the several subplots together in
the final scenes. As is usual with him also,
he makes history serve his own purposes
by inventing characters and situations and
blending them with real people and
historical events. The result is so interesting,
however, that we join the author in
ignoring the facts, and enjoy the story—an
excellent tale, well told.
The Story:
Sir Kenneth, the Knight of the
Couchant Leopard, was one of the knights who
followed King Richard the Lion-Hearted
to the Holy Land during the Third
Crusade. At the time Richard was ill of a
fever, and the Council of Kings and
Princes had sent Kenneth on a mission to
Theodorick of Engaddi, a religious hermit
who acted as a go-between for both
Christians and Moslems. Richard did not know
of the mission, for the other leaders in the
crusade were jealous of him and his
power, and they resented his high-handed
methods and his conceit. On the desert.
Kenneth met and fought with a Saracen,
an infidel who did not at first know that
Kenneth carried a pass from Saladin, the
leader of the Moslems. Neither warrior
was injured in the fight, and since at that
time there was a truce between the
Christians and the Moslems, they continued
their journey together, the Saracen
having promised to conduct Kenneth to Theo-
dorick's retreat.
Theodorick showed Kenneth a crypt
containing a piece of the Cross. As the
knight knelt by the holy relic a group of
nuns, novices, and others living at the
convent came into the holy place singing
and strewing flowers. Each time one of
the robed ladies passed him at his
devotions, she dropped a single rose by his
side. She was the Lady Edith Plantagenet,
King Richard's kinswoman. Although she
and Kenneth had never spoken, they
loved each other. Marriage was
impossible, however, for she was related to the
English king and he was only a poor
Scottish knight. Both his birth and his
nationality formed a bar between them, for
England and Scotland were constantly at war.
Edith was at the convent because she was
one of the ladies attending Richard's wife,
Queen Berengaria, who was on a
pilgrimage to pray for the king's recovery.
Forcing himself to put Lady Edith out
of his mind, Kenneth delivered his
message to Theodorick, who promised to carry
it to Saladin. When Kenneth returned to
Richard's camp, he took with him a
Moslem physician called El Hakim. This
learned man had been sent by Saladin to
3691

cure Richard's fever, for though the two
rulers were enemies, they respected each
other's valor and honor. El Hakim used a
talisman to cure the king; the potion he
made with it took the fever from Richard.
Still weak but restored to health, Richard
was grateful to Kenneth for bringing the
physician but furious with him for acting
as a messenger for the Council of Kings
and Princes without the king's
knowledge. He felt certain the other leaders
would soon withdraw from the crusade,
for the Christians were greatly
outnumbered by the infidels. It would be
impossible for Richard to continue the war with
his small band of followers.
In the meantime the other leaders grew
more restless and dissatisfied. Two of
them, in particular, wished to see Richard
disgraced. Conrade, Marquis of
Montserrat, wanted to gain for himself a
principality in Palestine, and the Grand Master of
the Knights Templars wanted Richard
killed and out of the way for good. The
other leaders merely wanted to give up
the crusade and return to their homes.
Conrade's sly hints and slurs moved the
Archduke of Austria to place his flag next
to Richard's standard on the highest
elevation in the camp. Richard, learning of this
act, arose from his bed, for he was still
weak, tore down the flag and stamped on
it. Then he ordered Kenneth to guard the
English flag and to see that no one again
placed another near it.
Queen Berengaria, growing bored with
life in the camp, sent Kenneth a false
message saying that Edith wanted him to
come to her tent. He was bewildered by
the message, and torn between love for
Edith and duty to King Richard. At last
love became stronger than duty. Leaving
his trusted dog on guard, he walked to
Edith's tent. There he overheard the
plotters giggling over their joke. When Edith
heard of the plot, she disclaimed any part
in the trick and sent him at once back to
his post.
There he found the royal standard of
England gone and his dog apparently
dying. El Hakim, appearing suddenly,
said that he could cure the animal with
his talisman. He offered also to take
Kenneth to the Moslem camp to escape the
king's wrath, but Kenneth refused to run
away. Instead, he confessed his desertion
to Richard and was instantly condemned
to death. Everyone tried to save him, the
queen even confessing the trick played
upon him, but Richard could not be moved.
Kenneth, refusing to plead his own cause,
believed he deserved to die for deserting
his post. He asked for a priest and made
his confession. Then El Hakim asked the
king for a boon in return for saving the
royal life with his talisman. He was
granted the favor he requested, the
privilege of taking Kenneth with him. So
Kenneth became an outcast from the
Christian camp.
The other leaders continued their
scheming to rob Richard of his power. At
last the Grand Master persuaded Conrade
to join him in a plot to kill the king. They
captured a dervish, a rabid Moslem
member of a wild tribe of desert nomads,
disguised him, and sent him, pretending to
be drunk, to Richard's tent. The king's
guards were lax, but he had been sent, as
a gift from Saladin, a mute Nubian slave
who was extremely loyal to him. As the
assassin raised his poniard to strike the
king, the slave dashed him to the ground.
In the scuffle the Nubian received an arm
wound from the dagger. Knowing that the
knife was probably poisoned, Richard
himself sucked the slave's wound.
Grateful, the slave wrote a note
promising that if Richard would have all the
leaders pass in review he, the slave, could
identify the one who had stolen the royal
flag. The slave was, in reality, Kenneth in
disguise. El Hakim, after curing his dog,
had told him that the animal undoubtedly
could identify his assailant. Richard
agreed to the plan, and as the suspected
plotters passed by, the dog attacked
Conrade of Montserrat. Conrade denied his
guilt, but Richard declared that his
innocence could be decided only by trial of
arms. The king asked Saladin to choose a
neutral ground for the match, and in cour-
3692

tesy invited Saladin to be present at the
combat to test Conrade's innocence or
guilt.
At the place of combat, when Richard
and Saladin met for the first time other
than in battle armor, Saladin revealed
himself as El Hakim. Richard in turn
confessed that he knew the slave was
Kenneth, whom he also named as the king's
champion. In the fight Conrade was
seriously wounded and hastily carried away
by the Grand Master of the Knights
Templars, who feared that Conrade would
reveal the whole plot against the king. At
the same time Richard revealed to the
queen and Edith that Kenneth was in
reality David, Earl of Huntingdon, Prince
Royal of Scotland. The king had learned
his true identity from one of Kenneth's
retainers. That noble knight, having
vowed not to reveal himself until the Holy
City had been taken, would not break his
oath even to save his life after he had
deserted his post.
The king then promised to give the
knight Edith's hand in marriage, even
though their betrothal belied Theodorick's
earlier prophecy that Edith would marry
Saladin. Abashed, the old hermit
confessed that he had interpreted the signs
incorrectly. His vision was that a
kinswoman of the king would marry Richard's
enemy in a Christian marriage. Theo-
dorick had thought his vision meant that
Saladin would be converted and marry
Edith. The true prophecy was that
Kenneth, a Scot and thus an enemy of the
English king, would marry the king's
kinswoman and that they, both
Christians, would have a Christian wedding.
At a noontime repast given by Saladin
in honor of his friends, Saladin killed the
Grand Master of the Knights Templars
because the Moslem leader learned that
the Grand Master, while bending over
Conrade to hear his confession, had
stabbed him with a dagger so that he could
not confess the plot against Richard.
Richard and Saladin both realized that
the crusade had failed, for the Christian
forces could never hope to overcome the
Saracens. The two men parted friends,
each honoring the other's skill and valor.
A short time later Edith and Kenneth
were married, Kenneth receiving the
lucky talisman as a wedding gift from
Saladin. Although the magic token
effected some cures in Europe, it did not
again have the power given it by the
famous infidel.
3693

TAMAR
Type of work: Poem
Author: Robinson Jeffers 0887-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological melodrama
Time of plot: World War I
Locale: Carmel Coast Range, California
First published: 1924
Principal characters:
Tamar Cauldwell, a neurotic girl
Lee Cauldwell, her brother
David Cauldwell, her father
Jinny Cauldwell, David's idiot sister
Stella Moreland, sister of David's dead wife
Will Andrews, Tamar's suitor
Critique:
Tamar is one of the greatest of Jeffers'
long narrative poems. In powerful and
rugged language he outlines the
turbulent lives of the Cauldwell family and
their terrible but inevitable destruction.
The symbol which he employs to
indicate humanity's absorption in itself is
incest and its resulting miseries. Tamar
is a violent and powerful story told
against the harshly magnificent
background of the Carmel coastline range.
It is at once thrilling and moving.
The Story:
Injured when his horse stumbled and
fell over a sea cliff, young Lee Cauldwell
was nursed back to health by his sister
Tamar. Lee, who had lived a wild and
dissolute life, vowed to give up his
drinking and debauchery. He and Tamar
became devoted to each other during his
convalescence, so much so that Lee
jealously warned a former suitor of his
sister to stay away from her. Old David
Cauldwell feared what might result from
the isolation of his family. His fears were
confirmed when the brother and sister,
after swimming in the river, were drawn
to each other against their wills.
The Cauldwell family was a peculiar
group. Resides the father and the two
children, it contained two old women.
Aunt Jinny, an idiot sister of David
Cauldwell, was cared for by Aunt Stella,
the sister of David's dead wife. Through
the confused mumblings of Jinny, Tamar
realized that an incestuous relationship
had occurred between David and his own
sister Helen.
A short time later, Tamar discovered
that she was pregnant. Rather than
admit that Lee was the father of her
child, she deliberately sought out and
seduced her former suitor, Will Andrews.
Disgust and revulsion grew in her until
she hated her two lovers and, most of all,
herself. She felt that she would lose
her mind unless she talked to someone.
Aunt Stella was a medium through
whom the voices of the dead sometimes
spoke. In desperation, Tamar appealed
to her to let her speak to Helen. That
evening she and Stella, with the
imbecile Jinny between them, stole down
to the seashore, so that they would not
be discovered by the men. Stella
gradually fell into a trance, and through
her lips Tamar heard the voice of a
man who told her that the coastline
country had been the land of the Indians,
where their gods used to come to them.
He ordered Tamar to strip and dance so
that the gods would come again. Against
her will, Tamar danced to strange
guttural chants from the lips of the tranced
woman. After a while the chanting
ceased and Tamar returned slowly to
her senses. Then through the lips of
Stella she heard the voice of Helen
taunting her for the shameful orgy. The
TAMAR by Robinson Jeffers. By permission of the author and Random House, Inc. Published by The
Modern Library, Inc. Copyright, 1924, by Peter G. Boyle.
3694

voice, after warning Tamar that she
would lose her child, told her that a
fire Tamar had earlier set in the cabin
would be quenched before it fulfilled its
purpose of destroying the corruption of
the Cauldwell family. Then in a
mournful voice Helen told Tamar of the horror
of death, of her longing for life, and of
her need to haunt Tamar as long as
she lived, because she possessed life. On
the shore, unassisted by anyone and in
great agony, Tamar lost her baby.
Back in the cabin once more, Tamar
could scarcely restrain the hatred she
felt for her family. All pity had left
her, and all love. In order to revenge
herself on Helen, she tempted her old
father with her beauty. Through the
medium of Stella, Helen cursed Tamar
and pleaded with her not to commit that
ultimate folly.
Lee, who had returned to his drinking,
enlisted in the army, but Tamar was
determined not to let him go. She told
him that the child had not been his but
the child of Will Andrews, who had
visited her late at night after she had set
a lighted lamp in her window as a signal.
Tamar taunted Lee until he lashed her
with a whip.
When Will Andrews came to the
cabin that night, Tamar told him that
Lee would leave the following day for
the army and would like to say goodbye
to him. The meeting between the two
men was cool but amiable. But while Lee
was out of the room, Tamar showed Will
her whip-lash wounds and told him that
she had lost his child through outrages
which both her father and Lee had
perpetrated upon her. When Lee returned
with his father, Will accused him of
those atrocities. In turn, Lee accused
Will of having attempted to set fire to
their home. Tamar, who herself had
been responsible, said nothing but goaded
on the fight with her smiles and wordless
encouragement to Will. Lee stabbed
Will horribly and fatally.
Helen, through the person of Stella,
tried to save old David Cauldwell from
the destroying forces of hate and evil,
but he refused to heed her warnings.
Downstairs the idiot Jinny, alone and
disturbed, was attracted by the light of
a candle. She carried it to the window,
where the flame set fire to the blowing
curtains. Her dying shrieks attracted
the attention of those upstairs.
Lee tried to run to her, but Tamar
clung to him and would not let him
go. Will, dying, dragged himself as far
as the window. Stella rushed out into
the flaming hall and perished. The old
man prayed brokenly, groveling on the
floor. Lee made one last effort to escape,
but Tamar, glorying in the destruction
of her three lovers, embraced him until
the flames consumed them all.
3695

TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
Type of work: Drama
Author: Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: Fourteenth century
Locale: Asia
First presented- 1587
Principal characters:
Tamburlaine, the Scythian conqueror
Zenocrate, his wife
Bajazeth, Emperor of the Turks
Callapine, his son
Mycetes, King of Persia
Cosroe, his brother
Theridamas,
Techelles, and
Usumcasane, followers of Tamburlaine
Orcanes, King of Natolia
Critique:
A study of driving ambition,
Tamburlaine the Great is also notable for the
dignity and beauty of Marlowe's lines.
The poetry of the play is all the more
remarkable in view or the fact that it
was among the first written in English
blank verse. Marlowe wrote so well, with
so much original invention, that for a
time many scholars believed him the
author of some plays now attributed to
Shakespeare. It is safe to say that
Marlowe is the best of pre-Shakespearean
playwrights.
The Story:
When Mycetes became king of Persia,
his brother, Cosroe, blatantly told the
new king that he was not fit for the
office. Among Mycetes' greatest concerns
were the raids of Tamburlaine, the
Scythian bandit, upon the Persian people.
Because it was rumored that this robber
chief aspired to rule the East, Mycetes
sent Theridamas with a thousand troops
to capture Tamburlaine, and ordered
another lord named Menaphon to follow
Theridamas. Cosroe sarcastically pointed
out to the king that Menaphon was
needed in Babylon, where the province
was about to revolt against such an
inferior sovereign as Mycetes. At this
insult Mycetes vowed to revenge himself
against his brother.
Menaphon asked Cosroe if he were not
afraid of the king's threat, but Cosroe
assured the Persian lord that there was a
plot afoot to make Cosroe emperor of
Asia, explaining that it hurt him to
witness the scorn now being directed toward
the Persian monarchy, which had
formerly awed the entire world. Shortly
afterward there was a revolt, and the
rebellious lords offered Cosroe the crown.
Cosroe set out to annex the thousand
troops of Theridamas in order to conquer
his brother Mycetes.
Meanwhile, on a Scythian hill,
Tamburlaine held Zenocrate, the daughter of
the sultan of Egypt. To her the former
shepherd spoke grandly of kingdoms he
would conquer. Techelles and
Usumcasane echoed his boasts, vowing to follow
Tamburlaine to the death. To
Zenocrate the ambitious leader promised all
the wealth and power in his kingdom; he
was in love. Suddenly the thousand horse
troops of Mycetes attacked the five
hundred foot soldiers of Tamburlaine. When
Theridamas accosted the Scythian, he
was so impressed by the appearance of
the former shepherd that Tamburlaine
was able to persuade Theridamas to
become an ally. Visions of mighty
kingdoms and power had persuaded
Theridamas.
Cosroe, smugly discussing Tambur-
3696

laine's personality and latest conquest,
was preparing to send troops to join
Tamburlaine and Theridamas by the
river Araris, there to engage the forces of
Mycetes, who was fuming with rage at
the revolt. Meander, a follower of
Mycetes, conceived the idea that he who
could conquer Tamburlaine would be
offered the province of Albania, and
whoever took Theridamas could have Media,
but Mycetes asked that Cosroe be
captured alive. Mycetes was convinced that
the followers of the bandit Tamburlaine
could be bribed to desert their leader,
who had purchased them by bribes in
the first place.
When Cosroe met Tamburlaine, the
Scythian boasted of his great future;
Theridamas indicated to Cosroe that he
believed in Tamburlaine's ability.
Certain of victory, Cosroe promised Techelles
and Usumcasane rewards for their deeds.
Mycetes was defeated. After the
victory, Tamburlaine bribed Theridamas,
Techelles, and Usumcasane with a
promise of kingdoms of their own if they
would attack Cosroe. Marveling at
Tamburlaine's arrogant daring, Cosroe
prepared for battle. Cosroe was wounded
in battle, and Tamburlaine, gloating over
his easy conquest, proclaimed himself
king of Persia.
At the court in Algiers, the kings of
Fez, Morocco, and Algiers fumed at the
bandit who had taken Persia and who
now was forcing them to raise their siege
of Greek Constantinople. Bajazeth, king
of the Turks, dispatched a message to
Tamburlaine and offered threats if the
Scythian conqueror dared set foot in
Africa. Meanwhile the kings planned to
take Greece by siege.
Zenocrate had grown slowly to admire
Tamburlaine, who was now plotting the
conquest of the Turkish kings. Zabina,
wife of Bajazeth, sneered at Zenocrate
and called her a concubine. When he
had subdued Bajazeth, Tamburlaine
made Zabina Zenocrate's attendant slave.
The next victim of the Scythian's lust
for power was the sultan of Egypt,
Zenocrate's father. To show his might, Tain
burlaine had put Bajazeth in a cage and
subjected him to base ridicule by using
his prisoner as a footstool. Still Bajazeth
and Zabina courageously insulted their
master by hurling disdainful remarks and
threats at him.
As Tamburlaine's armies prepared to
take Damascus, Zenocrate gently asked
her paramour to deal kindly with the
city of her father, but he refused.
Zenocrate grieved until Tamburlaine promised
not to harm her father when Damascus
fell. By now the Scythian conqueror
loved Zenocrate dearly, and while he
ordered three emissaries from Damascus
to be killed, he thought of his beloved's
beauty and tenderness. Zenocrate herself
was torn between her conscience, which
revolted against her lord's cruelty, and
her love for him.
When Tamburlaine brought the
sultan alive to Zenocrate, the conqueror
promised to give the sultan's kingdom
back to him if Zenocrate would accept
the title of Queen of Egypt. She readily
accepted this condition and Tamburlaine
planned his wedding with Zenocrate.
Bajazeth and Zabina had killed
themselves by dashing their heads against the
bars of the cage in which Tamburlaine
had imprisoned the Turkish monarch.
Orcanes, king of Natolia, preparing for
a battle with Sigismund, king of
Hungary, learned that Tamburlaine was
mustering for an attack. He sent for all the
Christian rulers of Europe to form an
alliance against an invasion by the
Scythian. The former enemies, Sigismund
and Orcanes the Mohammedan, entered
into a pact of friendship with the rulers
of Buda and Bohemia.
Callapine, son of Bajazeth and a
prisoner of Tamburlaine, was guarded by Al-
meda, whom the young prince bribed
with offers of wealth and power if he
would help Callapine to escape.
Tamburlaine by now had three sons,
Calyphas, Amyras, and Celebjnus. Calyphas
expressed a desire to lead a peaceful life
with his mother Zenocrate.
3697

The treaty of the monarchs against
Tamburlaine did not hold. When the
Mohammedan Orcanes withdrew his
troops from his campaign' against the
Christians, Sigismund was urged by his
allies to attack Orcanes. Orcanes was
trapped, for he was at the same time
preparing to attack Tamburlaine. The
betrayed monarch, crying for his enemies'
Christ to help him defeat the traitors,
prepared to defend himself. Sigismund
was killed in the fighting, and Orcanes
was the victor in the battle.
Zenocrate had become ill, and when
she died, Tamburlaine was overcome
with such grief that he would not have
her buried until after his own death.
Escaping with the aid of Almeda, Cal-
lapine returned to his father's kingdom
and marshaled the allies to defeat
Tamburlaine and revenge Bajazeth's death.
Inconsolable in his grief for Zenocrate,
Tamburlaine prepared to fight the forces
of Callapine. The Scythian's sons, Amy-
ras and Celebinus, were eager for battle,
but Calyphas, disliking his father's career
of bloodshed, refused to join the fighting.
After he had vanquished his Turkish
enemies, Tamburlaine returned to his
camp and wrathfully stabbed Calyphas,
who had remained in his tent all the
while. The Turkish monarchs were
bridled like horses, and under Tambur
laine's whip, forced to pull his carriage.
The conqueror then planned to take
Babylon. After this city was taken,
terrible plunder, rape, and murder followed.
Tamburlaine was now mad with lust and
power. Only Callapine was still free to
oppose him.
Tamburlaine fell ill with some
mysterious malady, and his physician declared
that he was dying. After the dying
conqueror had crowned his son Amyras
monarch of his empires, he sent for
Zenocrate's hearse. Bidding his son to
reign with power, Tamburlaine, the
scourge of God, died leaning over his
beloved Zenocrate's coffin.
3698

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
Type of work: Drama
Author. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Padua, Italy
First presented: c. 1593
Principal characters:
Baptista, a rich gentleman of Padua
Katharina, his shrewish daughter
Bianca, another daughter
Petruchio, Katharina's suitor
Lucentio, a student in love with Bianca
Tranio, his servant
Vincentio, Lucentio's father
Gremio, and
Hortensio, Lucentio's rivals
A Pedant
Critique-:
Often called rough and bawdy, The
Taming of the Shrew has none of the
lyrical poetry or the gentle humor that
characterizes most of Shakespeare's plays.
This dramatic work is filled with wordy
puns and coarse illusions; however, the
vividness of language and rapid action
sustain with excellent effect the demands
of the plot. The play has long been one
of the most popular of Shakespeare's
works, and its main characters have
become models for a shrewish woman and a
strong woman-tamer. Some literary
authorities think that Shakespeare did not
write the whole play, that the subplot
was written by another. This scholarly
dispute is not likely to concern the reader
who enjoys a lusty, witty play.
The Story:
As a joke, a beggar was carried, while
asleep, to the house of a noble lord and
there dressed in fine clothes and waited
on by many servants. The beggar was
told that he was a rich man who in a
demented state had imagined himself to
be a beggar, but who was now restored
to his senses. The lord and his court had
great sport with the poor fellow, to the
extent of dressing a page as the beggar's rich
and beautiful wife and presenting the
supposed woman to him as his dutiful and
obedient spouse. The beggar, in his
stupidity, assumed his new role as though
it were his own, and he and his lady
settled down to watch a play prepared for
their enjoyment.
Lucentio and Tranio, his serving-man.
had journeyed to Padua so that Lucentio
could study in that ancient city. But
Tranio persuaded his master that life was
not all study and work and that he should
find pleasures also in his new residence.
On their arrival in the city Lucentio and
Tranio encountered Baptista and his
daughters, Katharina and Bianca. These
three were accompanied by Gremio and
Hortensio, young gentlemen both in love
with gentle Bianca. But Baptista would
not permit his younger daughter to marry
until someone should take Katharina off
his hands. Although Katharina was
wealthy and beautiful, she was such a
shrew that no suitor would have her.
Baptista, not knowing how to control his
sharp-tongued daughter, announced that
Gremio or Hortensio must find a husband
for Katharina before either could woo
Bianca. He charged them also to find
tutors for the two girls, that they might be
skilled in music and poetry.
Unobserved, Lucentio and Tranio
witnessed this scene. At first sight Lucentio
3699

also fell in love with Bianca and
determined to have her for himself. His first
act was to change clothes with Tranio, so
that the servant appeared to be the master.
Lucentio then disguised himself as a tutor
in order to woo Bianca without her
father's knowledge.
About the same time Petruchio came
to Padua. He was a rich and noble man of
Verona, come to Padua to visit his friend
Hortensio and to find for himself a rich
wife. Hortensio told Petruchio of his love
for Bianca and of her father's decree that
she could not marry until a husband had
been found for Katharina. Petruchio
declared the stories told about spirited
Katharina were to his liking, particularly
the account of her great wealth, and he
expressed a desire to meet her. Hortensio
proposed that Petruchio seek Katharina's
father and present his family's name and
history. Hortensio, meanwhile, planned to
disguise himself as a tutor and thus plead
his own cause with Bianca.
The situation grew confused. Lucentio
was disguised as a tutor and his servant
Tranio was dressed as Lucentio. Hortensio
was also disguised as a tutor. Petruchio
was to ask for Katharina's hand. Also,
unknown to anyone but Katharina, Bianca
loved neither Gremio nor Hortensio and
swore that she would never marry rather
than accept one or the other as her
husband.
Petruchio easily secured Baptista's
permission to marry his daughter Katharina,
for the poor man was only too glad to
have his older daughter off his hands.
Petruchio's courtship was a strange one
indeed, a battle of wits, words, and wills.
Petruchio was determined to bend
Katharina to his will, but Katharina
scorned and berated him with a vicious
tongue. Nevertheless she must obey her
father's wish and marry him, and the
nuptial day was set. Then Gremio and Tranio,
the latter still believed to be Lucentio,
vied with each other for Baptista's
permission to marry Bianca. Tranio won because
he claimed more gold and vaster lands
than Gremio could declare. In the
meantime Hortensio and Lucentio, both
disguised as tutors, wooed Bianca.
As part of the taming process, Petruchio
arrived late for his wedding, and when he
did appear he wore old and tattered
clothes. Even during the wedding
ceremony Petruchio acted like a madman,
stamping, swearing, cuffing the priest.
Immediately afterward he dragged
Katharina away from the wedding feast and
took her to his country home, there to
continue his scheme to break her to his
will. He gave her no food and no time for
sleep, while always pretending that
nothing was good enough for her. In fact, he all
but killed her with kindness. Before he was
through Katharina agreed that the moon
was the sun, that an old man was a woman.
Bianca fell in love with Lucentio, whom
she thought to be her tutor. In chagrin,
Hortensio threw off his disguise and he
and Gremio forswore their love for any girl
so fickle. Tranio, still hoping to win her
for himself, found an old pedant to act
the part of Vincentio, Lucentio's father.
The pretended father argued his son's
cause with Baptista until that lover of
Ejld promised his daughter's hand to
ucentio as he thought, Dut in reality to
Tranio. When Lucentio's true father
appeared on the scene, he was considered an
impostor and almost put in jail for his
deceit. The real Lucentio and Bianca,
meanwhile, had been secretly married.
Returning from the church with his bride,
he revealed the whole plot to Baptista and
the others. At first Baptista was angry at
the way in which he had been duped, but
Vincentio spoke soothingly and soon
cooled his rage.
Hortensio, in the meantime, had
married a rich widow. To celebrate these
weddings, Lucentio gave a feast for all the
couples and the fathers. After the ladies
had retired, the three newly married men
wagered one hundred pounds each that
his own wife would most quickly obey his
commands. Lucentio sent first for Bianca,
but she sent word she would not come.
Then Hortensio sent for his wife, but she
too refused to obey his summons.
Petruchio then ordered Katharina to
appear, and she came instantly to do his
3700

bidding. At his request she also forced
Bianca and Hortensio's wife to go to their
husbands. Baptista was so delighted with
his daughter's meekness and willing
submission that he added another twenty
thousand crowns to her dowry. Katharina
told them all that a wife should live only
to serve her husband and that a woman s
heart and tongue ought to be as soft as
her body. Petruchio's work had been well
done. He had tamed the shrew forever.
3701

TAPS FOR PRIVATE TUSSIE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jesse Stuart (1907- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Kentucky
First published: 1943
Principal characters:
Grandpa Tussie, head of the Tussie clan
Grandma Tussie, his wife
George Tussie, his brother
Uncle Mott Tussie, his son
Uncle Kim Tussie, his deceased son
Aunt Vittie Tussie, Kim's wife
Sn> Seagraves Tussie, a grandson
Critique:
Jesse Stuart, who came into sudden
fame with his book of Kentucky poems,
Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow, has
continued to use this familiar background
in the series of novels and short stories
which have followed. Stuart displays a
great understanding for the people about
whom he writes in Taps for Private
Tussie. In this novel of the Kentucky
mountain people the plot is unimportant; the
characters are the story. Stuart's
treatment of this region grows out of his
deep familiarity with the place and its
people. He himself has lived the life
about which he writes.
The Story:
There was trouble at Grandpa Tussie's.
In the coal shed behind the schoolhouse
where the Tussies lived, Uncle Kim's
body was beginning to smell. Kim
Tussie had been killed in the war. The
government had sent his body home, and
now the Tussie clan had gathered for
the funeral. Kim's folks, Grandpa and
Grandma Tussie, comforted Aunt Vittie,
Kim's wife, who was screaming and
wailing. Uncle Mott, Kim's brother, was
telling how he had identified the body.
Sid, Kim's young nephew, was just
excited. There had not been so much
going on since he could remember. The
noise the Tussie kin made as they carried
the coffin up the mountainside could
not soon be forgotten by a young boy.
Uncle Kim had left Aunt Vittie ten
thousand dollars in government
insurance, and the day after the funeral she
rented the Rayburn mansion and filled
it with new furniture, all ready for
Grandpa and Grandma, Uncle Mott, and
Sid to move in. It was the biggest and
best house any of the Tussies had ever
seen. Uncle Mott flicked the electric
lights off and on all day. Sid used the
bathroom over and over. Aunt Vittie
bought them all new clothes to go with
the house. To Sid it was all wonderful,
but his happiness was spoiled a litde
when he realized Uncle Kim had to die
in order for the rest of them to have that
splendor.
The next few weeks were really a
miracle in the lives of the Tussies.
Grandpa continued to get his relief
groceries and Aunt Vittie bought more
groceries at the store. Grandpa began to
look for more of the Tussies to come
when they heard about the money.
Grandpa thought his brother George
would be the first. Brother George had
been married five times. He could play
a fiddle till it made a man cry.
Grandpa was right. When George
heard about the money, he decided to
come home to die. Uncle Mott hoped
TAPS FOR PRIVATE TUSSIE by Jesse Stuart. By permission of the author and the publishers, E. P.
Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1943, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
3702

that that time would come soon, but
Aunt Vittie looked at George and smiled.
George played his fiddle far into the
night, playing tunes Aunt Vittie asked
for, and Grandpa knew George had come
to stay. Aunt Vittie bought George new
clothes, too, and Uncle Mott began to
look mean.
Then more Tussies came, first Uncle
Ben, then Dee, then Young Uncle Ben,
then Starkie, then Watt, then Sabie, then
Abe, all with their wives and young
ones. The mansion was ready to burst.
Only Grandpa knew them all. When
Grandma counted forty-six of them, she
would stand for no more.
The money began to go fast. Sid knew
now why Grandpa and Grandma had
not cried at Kim's funeral. They had
known Aunt Vittie would get the money
and all the Tussies would live high.
Brother George's fiddle playing had Aunt
Vittie looking as she had never looked
before. Uncle Mott was losing out and
he looked dangerous.
Grandpa knew things were bound to
change. He was right. First the
government man came and stopped their relief.
It hurt Grandpa to lose his relief. He
had had it for years and had expected it
to go on forever. Then George Rayburn
came to inspect his house. When he saw
the floor full of nail holes, the broken
windowpanes, the charcoal and pencil
marks on the walls, he threatened to
bring suit if the Tussies did not leave at
once. But the uncles and the brothers
and the cousins twice removed refused
to leave. It was not until Sheriff White-
apple came with the law papers that
they knew they were whipped. That
night there was the grandest dance of
all. Aunt Vittie kissed Brother George
and then she kissed Uncle Mott, but
not very hard. It looked as if George
were winning.
The next day the Tussies began to
leave. Grandpa and Grandma, Aunt Vit-
de, Brother George, Uncle Mott, and
Sid were the last to go. Aunt Vittie had
bought fifty acres of land and an old
shack with the last of her money, and
she put the farm in Grandpa's name.
They had no furniture, no sheets, no
dishes, since Rayburn had attached
everything to pay for damages to his
house. There was only Grandpa's old-
age pension check to look forward to.
But Uncle Mott and Brother George
made a table and sapling beds and Sid
found their old dishes in the gully by
the old schoolhouse, and the Tussies
began living as they had always lived.
Then came the worst blow of all.
Someone had reported that Grandpa now
owned land, and his old-age pension
was stopped. Sometimes there was not
enough to eat. Uncle Mott and George
began to look dangerous. Sid knew bad
trouble was coming. After Brother
George and Vittie were married, Uncle
Mott stayed in town most of the time,
drinking bootleg and getting mean drunk.
Grandpa knew his time on earth was
about up, but he felt something was
going to happen that he did not want
to miss. And he was right again. Uncle
Mott came home from town one day
and told them that he had found Young
Uncle Ben and Dee and had shot them
for reporting Grandpa to the relief
agency. As Uncle Mott talked, Brother
George began to stroke his fiddle, and
he played a note of death. Uncle Mott,
cursing the fiddle for being the cause
of all his trouble, shot the fiddle from
George's hands. George drew his gun
and shot Uncle Mott through the head.
Aunt Vittie had been to town, too,
begging food for Grandpa and the rest,
and now they saw her coming, walking
close beside a strange man. That is, he
was a stranger until he came nearer, and
then they saw that it was Uncle Kim,
who was supposed to be buried on the
mountainside. When George saw the
ghost, he went through the windowpane.
But it was simple for Sheriff Whiteapple,
when he came a little later, to follow his
footprints in the snow.
After Kim had explained that he had
not been killed after all, they began
to understand what had happened. Uncle
Mott had always wanted Aunt Vittie,
3703

and it had been easy for him to identify
a body as Kim's. And Kim told more.
He told Sid that he was Aunt Vittie's
son, that she had been wronged by a
rich man who paid Kim to marry her,
and that now Sid would be their son.
That night it was as if nothing had
happened, except for Uncle Mott's body
in the shack. To Sid it was like a
dream, but a dream with life in it. For
the first time he began to feel really
good. Peace had come to the Tussies.
3704

TARAS BULBA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Nikolai V. Gogol (1809-1852)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1835
Principal characters:
Taras Bulba, a Cossack warrior
Ostap, Taras' older son
Andrii, Taras' younger son
Yankel, a Jewish merchant
Daughter of the Polish Waiwodb, Andrii's sweetheart
Critique:
Taras Bulba is a prose poem in praise
of the Cossack warrior, celebrating, as it
does, the brave deeds of those hardy
fighters. Presenting the life of the
Cossack band on the march and in battle,
Gogol uses a theme which is truly epic
Certainly Gogol intended this heroic tale
as a romantic commentary of the dullness
of life in his own day. Its application
for our own time is just as apt.
The Story:
When the two sons of Taras Bulba
returned home after finishing their studies
at the Royal Seminary in Kiev, their
father ridiculed their monastic garb.
Ostap, the older of the two, insisted that
any insult must be avenged, and father
and son began to exchange blows. Taras,
learning in this manner that Ostap was
a stout contender, embraced him heartily.
The father would have liked also to try
the mettle of his younger son, Andrii, but
his wife intervened, preventing any more
fisticuffs.
In honor of his sons' arrival Taras
entertained all the local officers of the
Zaporozhian Cossacks. Under the
stimulus of corn brandy, Taras resolved to take
his sons the next day to the Setch, the
permanent camp of the fighting Cossacks.
The mother was heartbroken to hear that
she must part with her sons, but Taras
was firm. Before the party left for the
encampment, all sat down, even the
servants, while the mother blessed her
sons and gave them holy pictures to wear
around their necks.
Taras Bulba and his sons rode off
together across the steppes, each concerned
with his own thoughts. Taras was a
Cossack leader imbued with the old-fashioned
ideas that the only good life was that of
the soldier. Ostap, when first enrolled
at the seminary, had found life there
unbearable; but he gradually grew
accustomed to scholastic life and became a
good student. Though not a leader at the
seminary, he was willing to follow other
boys whose main interests, like his own,
were war and revelry. Andrii was of a
different sort. He was a willing student,
a better leader, but was also passionately
fond of women, who came in his dreams
to trouble his sleep. He remembered a
beautiful girl who one day had laughed
from her window. Learning that she was
the daughter^of the Polish Waiwode of
Koven, Andrii daringly visited the girl
in her bedroom the following night. To
his regret she left the city with her
father soon afterward.
Three days later Taras and his sons
reached the suburb of the Setch, where
the workmen and merchants for the
great encampment were located. Finally
they came to the Setch itself, and the
Cossacks uproariously greeted Taras, their
old comrade-in-arms. The only
requirements for admission to the Setch were
belief in Christ, the Holy Trinity, and
the Church. If the members lacked
money, they simply plundered the
merchants in the suburb. Andrii and Ostap
fitted well into this wild life and soon
they gained recognition among the
Cossacks for their bravery and daring.
Not wanting his sons to be idle, Taras
3705

consulted the Cossack leader about the
possibility of stirring up some bold
enterprise. Taras suggested attacking the
Turks, but he was told that a treaty
of peace had been signed with the sultan.
Sly Taras then arranged for a meeting of
the whole encampment, at which Kird-
yaga, a close friend, was chosen as the
new leader. The next day Kirdyaga called
the group together and harangued them
into voting for a raid on the coasts of
Anatolia.
Immediately the Setch became active
with preparations for the march. Before
arrangements were completed, however,
a group of Cossacks appeared in a barge
and reported persecution and defeat at
the hands of the Poles. The Jews were
also accused, and so the enraged Cossacks
threw the Jewish merchants into the
Dnieper River. Only one escaped, a
trader named Yankel, who was saved by
the intercession of Taras Bulba.
The Zaporozhti began their trek of
pillage and plunder throughout southeast
Poland. Arriving at the city of Dubno„
they found it heavily garrisoned and
walled. The Zaporozhti then surrounded
Dubno, cutting off all food supplies from
the surrounding district, and gave
themselves up to pillage and drunken revelry.
Both of Taras* sons were bored with
this inactivity. One night Andrii was
awakened by a Tatar serving-woman.
She told him that her mistress was the
beautiful daughter of the waiwode, the
girl whom he had encountered at Kiev.
Having seen him from the walls, the girl
had sent her servant through a secret
gate to ask Andrii to visit her in the city
and to bring food for her starving family.
Andrii stole a sack of bread and
accompanied the Tatar into Dubno. When he
met the waiwode's daughter, she seemed
more beautiful to his sight than ever; in
her embrace he forgot home, honor,
country, loyalty, and Church.
A short time later Taras learned of his
son's treachery from Yankel, who had
been inside the city walls. The old
Cossack was furious at Andrii, but proud of
Ostap, who had been raised in rank and
put in command of a large unit. Then
news came that the Setch had been
invaded by the Tatars. Half of the
Cossacks departed to pursue the Tatars, while
the others remained at the siege of
Dubno, Taras and Ostap among them. Taras,
to bolster the courage of his warriors,
gave the Cossacks a large supply of wine
he had brought along for just such a
purpose.
One day there was a great battle, a
fight in which most of the Cossacks were
killed or captured. Toward the end of the
fray Andrii appeared, richly attired, to
fight against his own people. Taras, who
saw him come into the battle,
maneuvered his men so that he and his son
met alone. Taras shot Andrii, who died
with the name of the waiwode's daughter
on his lips. The victorious Poles captured
Ostap, who had distinguished himself
in the battle. After receiving a serious
wound, Taras was rescued by a faithful
servant. He regained consciousness on
the way back to the Setch, where he
learned that not another man who had
been on the expedition had returned.
Unable to forget Ostap, now a prisoner
of the Poles, Taras set out for the city
of Ouman. There he found Yankel, who
for a large sum was persuaded to conduct
Taras to the hostile city of Warsaw in
search of Ostap. Hidden under a load
of bricks, Taras entered the city, but he
was unable to see Ostap before the day
the Cossack prisoners were led out for
torture and death. When Ostap called
out for his father, Taras was unable to
endure the sight of his son's torture in
silence. Taras answered him so that
Ostap knew his father was close by at
his death.
Thus discovered, Taras was pursued
but escaped to the Ukraine, where he
became the leader of a Cossack band.
When the Zaporozhian chiefs made peace
with the Poles, Taras broke away with
a band of his followers and raided towns
and cities through all Poland. Finally,
pursued by five regiments, he was taken
prisoner. Crucified to a burning tree,
Taras Bulba died calling to his comrades
to carry on their fight for freedom.
3706

TARR
Type of work: Novel
Author: Wyndha-n Lewis (1886-1957)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: About 1910
Locale: Paris
First published: 1918
Principal characters:
F^ede^ick Tarr, an Eng^sh artist
Bertha Lunken, Tarr's fiancee, a German art student
Otto Kretslei, a German artist
Anastxsya Vasek. a Russian
Louis Soltyk, a Pole
Critique:
In this novel, Lewis presents a
psychological study of a group of artists in
the Paris of the days before the First
World War. In the main, it is concerned
with the emotional effects that these
characters have upon each other as they
are juxtaposed in various combinations.
Lewis was also concerned with the
national psychologies involved—in
particular, English vs. German. He detested
the Germans, and on Nietzsche he placed
the blame for the over-inflated egos of
the many nonentities who infested the
artistic world of this period. The novel
is largely a satire on certain German
characteristics: sentimentality, solemnity, and
various aspects of Prussianism. The story
is grotesque, farcical, and yet tragic; it is
also a warning that the famous English
"grin" can be a mask for a sentimentality
as bad as that of the Germans. By
making Tarr, the main character, his
mouthpiece, Lewis foreshadowed some of the
famous novels of the 1920's, in which
the discussion of ideas was the main point
of the book.
The Story:
Frederick Tarr, an English artist living
in Paris, was engaged to a young
German woman, Bertha Lunken, a student
in the Parisian art schools. Tarr rather
disliked Germans, although he knew a
great many of them in Paris. It was his
theory that their only use was to be very
TARR by Wyndham Lewis. By pe-missior of Chatto & Windus, LH.. Executes of the Estate of Wyndham
Lewis. Copyright, 1918, 1928, by Chatto & Windus, Ltd. Renewed. All rights reserved.
intimate with, and that the real problem
was how to put up with them when one
was not intimate. Not wishing to have it
known that he was engaged to Fraulein
Lunken, he was on the point of breaking
with her, for he considered her a dolt.
He justified his strange attitude on the
grounds that all his finer feelings had
gone into his art and had left nothing
over for sex. He admitted that his taste
in women was deplorable.
After a conversation with a friend,
during which he explained his theory, Tarr
went to his fiancee's apartment. He felt
some remorse for his treatment of Bertha,
but he had been attracted by her bour-
geois-bohemian absurdities and her
Germanic floridity and had unwittingly be-
coTie too involved. Now, he felt, a break
had to be made. But he had
underestimated the intensity of feeling that
Bertha had developed for him. The scene in
the apartment, carefully decorated with
sham art that Tarr loathed, was comic yet
tragic. Tarr could not help feeling that
he was treating Bertha shabbily, yet he
was passionately convinced that marriage
was not for him. Nor had he expected
such floods of tears. But somehow the
break was accomplished, and Tarr
departed with the promise to see Bertha
again after a few days.
Otto Kreisler, an impecunious German
artist, lived on a small allowance
grudgingly doled out by his father. Just re-
3707

turned from a trip to Italy, he was more
than usually hard up. Four years before
Otto had made the mistake of marrying
off an old sweetheart to his father. Since
he refused his father's urgings that he
give up art, return to Germany, and
settle down into business, the monthly
check, in revenge, was sent at irregular
intervals. At this point, he was concerned
with pawning his portmanteau as the
result of failure to borrow money from an
affluent compatriot, Ernst Volker. On his
return from Italy, Kreisler had discovered,
to his horror, that his position as the
recipient of Volker's bounty had been taken
by a Pole, one Louis Soltyk, and that no
more money could be expected. He
already owed Volker fifteen hundred marks.
It was the psychological effect of lack
of money that, by indirect means,
propelled Kreisler toward his final tragedy
In a mood of discouragement—the
check from home was late again—he went
to the Cafe* Vallet for lunch. By chance,
he found himself at the same small table
with an extraordinarily beautiful young
woman who, after some preliminary
conversation, explained that she was Anas-
tasya Vasek and that she had escaped to
Paris from her parents' bourgeois home.
Kreisler was strongly attracted to her
because to him women had always been a
kind of emotional pawnshop where he
could dump his sorrows. With German
sentimentality, he thought of love as
sorrowful. Determined to follow up that
chance meeting, and in spite of the fact
that his evening clothes were in pawn,
he accepted an invitation from a member
of the German colony, Fraulein Lip-
mann, to join her group at a dance at a
club in the neighborhood.
On the afternoon before the dance he
came upon Anastasya sitting with Soltyk
in a cafe. Again, he decided, the Pole
was interfering in his affairs.
Driven bv a kind of persecution mania,
Kreisler deliberately made a fiasco of the
evening. On the way to the dance, he
found himself walking with Bertha and
somewhat behind the other members of
the party. Again, their peculiar German
psychologies inter-reacted; he wished to
avenge himself through her on the mo"e
affluent guests; she felt that he was
suffering and that she should make a
sacrifice to console him. So Kreisler kissed her
roughly and she permitted jhe kiss. They
were seen by the other Germans, who
were walking ahead. Arrived at the dance,
Kreisler, dressed in rumpled morning
clothes and still under the spell of his
mania, behaved abominably. He insulted
nearly every woman present and was
almost thrown out. Worse, Anastasya
laughed at him, turning his admiration
to hate. The next morning, when the
long-awaited allowance arrived
accompanied by a command to return to
Germany, Kreisler replied to his father that
he would kill himself in exactly one
month.
Shortly afterward Bertha received a
letter from Tarr, informing her that he
had heard of the episode with Kreisler
and that he was leaving for London.
Further, the "Kreisler affair" had rather
embroiled Bertha with her German
friends. In a dreary mood, she went out
to buy lunch and met Kreisler: after
some conversation, she accepted his
invitation to visit a cafe the following
evening. This curious act was a defense
against her friends; it was part of her
theo-v that he was in distress and it
would contradict the story, now current,
that his outrageous behavior had been
the result of Anastasya's snub. Also, her
meeting with Kreisler would be a kind
of revenge on Tarr. So she succeeded in
convincing herself that she was being
driven into this strange friendship. Eight
days later, in Kreisler's studio, he
possessed her by force, and the situation
that she had created became suddenly
tragic. Kreisler came to her apartment,
offered to shoot himself, and finally
departed after swearing to be her eternal
servant. With her usual sentimentality,
Bertha felt uplifted, as if together they
had done something noble.
Meanwhile, Tarr had merely moved to
the Montmartre district, where he felt
that he could work in peace. He con-
3708

tinued to frequent his old section with
its German colony so that he could keep
an eye on Bertha. Inevitably, he met
Anastasya, and just as inevitably he
encountered Bertha and Kreisler together.
He could not resist joining this pair; their
"Germanness" gave him an ironic
pleasure. Kreisler was baffled by the
Englishman's sudden friendship that led Tarr
to join him at a caf6 evening after
evening, and he found his Teutonic
solemnity not equal to the situation.
Fearful of being driven mad, he threatened
the Englishman with a whip when Tarr
went to his room and then pushed him
out the door.
During this time Tarr and Anastasya,
attracted to each other, had long caf6
conversations about life and art. But a
storm was gathering. One evening Tarr,
who had joined Kreisler and a Russian
at a caf6, saw the German jump from
his seat, rush across the room to a group
of Russians and Poles, and slap Soltyk's
face. That afternoon Kreisler had met
Anastasya and Soltyk and, in a cold fury,
had struck Soltyk. Now he was
challenging the Pole to a duel; after much
excited conversation the challenge was
accepted.
The duel next morning was another
mixture of comedy and tragedy. The
seconds were trying to effect an honorable
compromise when Kreisler's mood
suddenly changed: he offered to forgive
Soltyk if the latter would kiss him! As he
leaned forward the enraged Pole leaped
upon him; they fell to the ground, and
the seconds began fighting among
themselves. When the dust had settled,
Soltyk's friends tried to led him awav, but
thev were stopped bv Kreisler, who still
held his pistol. A Pole struck at him;
Kreisler fired and killed Soltyk. Kreisler
fled. Five days later, penniless and
hungry, he reached a village near the border
and was put in jail. In a last display of
his disordered temperament, he hanged
himself in his cell. His father paid the
exact sum demanded by the town for the
burial.
In Paris, meanwhile, Tarr and
Anastasya had rapidly become involved in an
affair, and Tarr continued to see
Bertha in decreasing "do:es," as though he
were taking medicine. As he was about
to give her up, she told him that she was
pregnant and that the child was Kreisler's.
Out of pity, Tarr married her. But he
lived with Anastasya. Two yea^s later,
Bertha divorced him to marry an eve
doctor. Tarr never married Anastasya. He
had three children by another woman.
3709

TARTARIN OF TARASCON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897)
Type of plot: Satiric romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France and North Africa
First published: 1872
Principal characters:
Tartarin, a huntsman
Baxa, a Moorish beauty
Prince Gregory of Montenegro
Barbassou, captain of the Zouave
Critique:
The saying is that words fly so quickly
in southern France because the air is so
light and buoyant. Indeed the Midi is
renowned for its braggarts. Tartarin was
a real braggart, but in this story he made
good his boasts — to a certain extent.
Tartarin of Tarascon was written with
the sure touch of a humorist combined
with the fantastic imagination of the
Provencal poet. In his understanding of
people and in his method of character
portrayal, Daudet is often compared with
Dickens.
The Story:
In the little town of Tarascon in the
Midi, Tartarin enjoyed an enviable
reputation which was based first of all on his
garden. But Tartarin grew no plants of
France. He had banana trees, palm trees,
cacti, and all the most exotic plants he
could find.
To understand the second reason for
Tartarin *s fame one must know the town
of Tarascon. The Tarasconese were
mighty hunters and all the men had
ample arsenals. Tartarin's study
contained a complete collection of deadly
weapons. He had rifles, carbines,
blunderbusses, Malayan krishes, and Indian
tomahawks. It was too bad that there
was no game at all for many leagues
around the town, for in order to indulge
their passion for the chase, the
Tarasconese had to hunt their own caps. A man
would throw his cap in the air and fire
while it was still in flight. Tartarin had
the distinction of ruining more caps than
all his rivals put together.
The third reason for his fame came
from the custom of each Tarasconese to
sing his own particular song at all social
events. Tartarin had no particular song,
for he could sing them all. It was a brave
thing to hear Tartarin sing "NO. NO,
NO" in a duet with Mme. Bezuquet.
True, all Tartarin could sing was "No,"
but this he sang with enviable gusto.
Fourth, Tartarin had once been offered
a job as clerk in the Shanghai office of
a French importing firm. Although he
had not taken the job, it was almost the
same to him in later years, when he
talked in a knowing way of the
mysterious customs of the Far East. Even
if he had never stayed overnight outside
of Tarascon, he was a true cosmopolite.
Often he would roam the poorer streets
of Tarascon looking for those stealthy
people who carry on international
intrigue and thuggery. He would arm
himself with knuckle dusters, his bowie
knife, his trusty forty-five, and then
fearlessly seek adventure. Every one he met,
unfortunately, was a harmless citizen who
greeted him by name. However, one
never knew when something unusual
might happen.
One night a member of the club came
running to announce that a carnival had
brought a lion to Tarascon. Tartarin
bravely affixed a bayonet to his elephant
gun and went to the carnival. It was an
inspiring sight to see Tartarin swagger in
front of the lion's cage, and he never
flinched no matter how the lion roared.
3710

This experience, coupled with his own
ability at telling tales, soon gave Tartarin
a reputation as a great lion hunter, and
in some way the impression grew that
Tartarin was actually going to Africa to
hunt lions. It must be admitted that
Tartarin enjoyed the story and actually
talked about his coming trip. But as the
months went by he showed no signs of
leaving. He could not bring himself to
give up his regular hot chocolate.
Finally even the Tarasconese could no
longer stand the suspense. When
Commander Bravida told Tartarin that he
must go, Tartarin, with uneasy heart,
put on his costume of full white linen
trousers, a cummerbund two feet wide,
and a gigantic red fez. On each shoulder
he carried a heavy gun, in his belt a
hunting knife, and on his hip a revolver. In
his two copper-lined chests were his
reserve weapons. Other boxes contained
drugs, pemmican for emergency rations,
and a shelter tent. Thus attired and
supplied, he put on his spectacles and left,
amid the hurrahs of the town.
On the trip across the sea the good
ship Zouave was unsteady, and Tartarin's
great fez was often inclined over the rail.
But in Algeria he still had strength to go
on deck, where to his horror, he saw the
ship invaded by hordes of natives he
mistook for Algerian pirates. Taking out
his sheath knife, he courageously rushed
upon the invaders. Luckily Captain Bar-
bassou caught him around the middle
before he could harm the startled porters.
The first morning in Algiers Tartarin
arose at daybreak and prepared to hunt
lions. Dashing out into the road, he
met hunters with game bags filled with
rabbits. Tartarin pushed on over the
desert country. By nightfall he was in
a thicket. Uttering cries to imitate a
stray kid, he settled down to wait. Before
long he saw a lion bearing down upon
him. Up went his trusty gun. Two shots
rang out, and the wounded lion thrashed
away. Not daring to move for fear the
female would come to the aid of her mate,
Tartarin sat uneasily until dawn.
Then to his dismay he found himself
sitting in a garden among rows of beets.
He had killed no lion, but there in a ditch
lay a donkey with two bullet holes in
him.
Tartarin decided to go back to Algiers,
get his equipment, and head south. On
the bus he was stricken by the bold
glance of a Moorish lady. Losing his
head, he started on a conquest of love.
After weeks of fruitless searching,
Prince Gregory of Montenegro, whom
he had met aboard the Zouave, helped
Tartarin find the beautiful Moor. She
was Baia, a widow of twenty and sister
of a pipe seller in the bazaar. Prince
Gregory kindly offered to placate the
brother by buying his pipes. The smitten
Tartarin gave his friend enough money
over several weeks to buy gross after gross
of pipes before the matter was arranged
to the satisfaction of all.
Tartarin took a house in the native
quarter with his Baia. At first glance
Baia seemed much fatter than the lady in
the bus, but Tartarin put down such base
suspicions. Now he was known as Sidi
Tart'ri ben Tart'ri. All day he puffed his
narghile and ate sweetmeats flavored with
musk. Baia entertained her lord by
singing monotonous airs through her nose or
dancing the stomach dance. The only
flaw in the household was that Baia spoke
no French and Tartarin no Arabic.
One day Tartarin met Barbassou by
chance. The cynical captain warned
Tartarin against all Montenegrin princes
and expressed doubt that Baia knew no
French. Although Tartarin disdained the
suspicions of Barbassou, the sight of a
fellow Tarasconese again recalled lion
hunting to his mind. He stoutly resolved
to leave his bliss and go south to hunt
the terrible lion.
After two days of rough jolting in an
obsolete coach, Tartarin entered the city
of Milianah, where on a street corner
he saw a degrading sight. A lion had been
trained to hold a bowl in his mouth and
beg for alms. Incensed at this
debasement of the most noble of beasts, Tartarin
seized the bowl from the lion's jaws and
dashed it on the ground. Thinking him
3711

a robber, the two Negro attendants set
on him with clubs. A riot was averted
by the arrival of suave Prince Gregory,
who had hurried south after his friend.
Now with a proper caravan made up
of the prince, Tartarin, and one camel,
Tartarin wandered for nearly a month.
Each time they entered a town, the prince
would visit trie military post, the
commander would extend full hospitality to
Tartarin, and Tartarin would pay the
bill. But he found no lions anywhere.
Finally, on a notable night, Tartarin
was hiding in a copse of oleanders when
he heard a lion cough. Giving his purse
to the prince to hold, he lay in wait. No
lion appeared. The prince vanished.
Without lion or money, Tartarin sat in
despair on the steps of a saint's tomb.
To his great astonishment, a noble lion
advanced down the path. Tartarin fired
twice, and bagged his lion at last.
But the lion was a holy, blind lion
belonging to a Mohammedan convent,
and Tartarin had to pay a fine of twenty-
five hundred francs. He was forced to
sell all his fine weapons to pay the sum,
but he skinned the lion and sent the
skin to Tarascon.
In disgust Tartarin walked back to
Algeria, followed by his faithful camel,
which had formed a liking for him.
Tartarin could not shake off the beast. The
camel swam the Mediterranean behind
the Zouave and trotted behind the train
from Marseille to Tarascon.
So the great hero of Tarascon came
home. The story of how he killed twenty
lions was told over and over again.
3712

TARTUFFE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
Type of plot: Comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1664
Principal characters:
Orgon, a wealthy ex-officer of the King's Guard
Madame Pernelle, his mother
Elmire, his wife
Damis, his son
Mariane, his daughter
Valere, Mariane's lover
Dortne, Mariane's maid
Cleante, Orgon's brother-in-law
Tartuffe, a hypocrite
Critique:
It is almost impossible for a modern
reader to realize the disturbance Tartuffe,
or the Hypocrite caused when it was
originally produced. Moliere was attacked
for undermining the very basis of religion
in his portrait of the hypocrite. For
moderns, the comedy is valuable mainly
as the ancestor of similar satiric portraits,
ranging from Dickens' Mr. Pecksniff to
Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. Moliere's
Tartuffe is hardly convincing to us,
however, because we do not know why or
how he became what he was.
puritan regimen for the family, and
persuaded Orgon to force his daughter to
break her engagement to Valere in order
to marry Tartuffe. He said she needed
a pious man to lead her in a righteous
life. *
The Story:
Orgon's home was a happy one. He
himself was married to Elmire, a woman
much younger than he, who adored him.
His two children by a former marriage
were fond of their stepmother, and she
of them. Mariane, the daughter, was
engaged to be married to Valere, a very
eligible young man, and Damis, the son,
was in love with Valere's sister.
Then TartufFe came to live in the
household. TartufFe was a penniless
scoundrel whom the trusting Orgon had
found praying in church. Taken in by
his cant and his pose of fervent
religiousness, Orgon had invited the hypocrite
into his home. As a consequence, the
family was soon demoralized. Once
established, TartufFe proceeded to-change
their normal, happy mode of life to a
strictly moral one. He set up a rigid
Valere was determined that Mariane
would marry no one but himself, but
unfortunately Mariane was too spineless
to resist TartufFe and her father.
Confronted by her father's orders, she
remained silent and remonstrated only
weakly. As a result, Tartuffe was
cordially hated by every member of the
family, including Dorine, the saucy,
outspoken servant, who did everything in
her power to break the hold that the
hypocrite had secured over her master.
Dorine hated not only Tartuffe but also
his valet, Laurent, for the servant
imitated the master in everything. In fact,
the only person besides Orgon who liked
and approved of TartufFe was Orgon's
mother, Madame Pernelle, who was the
type of puritan who wished to withhold
from others pleasures she herself could
not enjoy. Madame Pernelle highly
disapproved of Elmire, maintaining that in
her love for clothes and amusements she
was setting her family a bad example
which TartufFe was trying to correct.
Actually, Elmire was merely full of the
joy of living, a fact that her mother-in-
law was unable to perceive. Orgon him-
3713

self was little better. When Elmire fell
ill, and he was informed of this fact,
his sole concern was for the health of
Tartuffe. Tartuffe, however, was in fine
fettle, stout and ruddy-cheeked. For his
evening meal, he consumed two
partridges, half a leg of mutton, and four
flasks of wine. He then retired to his
warm and comfortable bed and slept
soundly until morning.
Tartuffe's designs were not really for
the daughter, Mariane, but for Elmire
herself. One day, after Orgon's wife had
recovered from her illness, Tartuffe
appeared before her. He complimented
Elmire on her beauty, and even went so
far as to lay his fat hand on her knee.
Damis, Orgon's son, observed all that
went on from the cabinet where he was
hidden. Furious, he determined to reveal
to his father all that he had seen. Orgon
refused to believe him. Wily Tartuffe
had so completely captivated Orgon that
he ordered Damis to apologize to
Tartuffe. When his son refused, Orgon,
violently angry, drove him from the
house and disowned him. Then to show
his confidence in Tartuffe's honesty and
piety, Orgon signed a deed of trust
turning his estate over to Tartuffe's
management, and announced his daughter's
betrothal to Tartuffe.
Elmire, embittered by the behavior of
this impostor in her house, resolved to
unmask him. She persuaded Orgon to
hide under a cloth-covered table and see
and hear for himself the real Tartuffe.
Then she enticed Tartuffe to make love
to her, disarming him with the assurance
that her foolish husband would suspect
nothing. Emboldened, Tartuffe poured
out his heart to her, leaving no doubt as
to his intention of making her his
mistress. Disillusioned and outraged when
Tartuffe asserted that Orgon was a
complete dupe, the husband emerged from
his hiding place, denounced the
hypocrite, and ordered him from the house.
Tartuffe defied him, reminding him that
the house was now his according to
Orgon's deed of trust.
Another matter made Orgon even more
uneasy than the possible loss of his
property. This was a casket given him
by a friend, Argas, a political criminal
now in exile. It contained important
state secrets, the revelation of which
would mean a charge of treason against
Orgon and certain death for his friend.
Orgon had foolishly entrusted the casket
to Tartuffe, and he feared the use that
villain might make of it. He informed
his brother-in-law, C16ante, that he would
have nothing further to do with pious
men; that in the future he would shun
them like the plague. But Cleante pointed
out that such rushing to extremes was
the sign of an unbalanced mind.
Because a treacherous vagabond was
masquerading as a religious man was no
good reason to suspect religion.
The next day Tartuffe made good this
threat, using his legal right to force
Orgon and his family from their house.
Madame Pernelle could not believe
Tartuffe guilty of such villainy, and she
reminded her son that in this world
virtue is often misjudged and persecuted.
But when the sheriff's officer arrived
with the notice for evacuation, even she
believed that Tartuffe was a villain.
The crowning indignity came when
Tartuffe took to the king the casket
containing the state secrets. Orders were
issued for Orgon's immediate arrest. But
fortunately the king recognized Tartuffe
as an impostor who had committed crimes
in another city. Therefore, because of
Orgon's loyal service in the army, the king
annulled the deed Orgon had made
covering his property and returned the casket
unopened.
3714

THE TASK
Type of work: Poem
Author: William Cowper (1731-1800)
First published: 1785
The first popular poetic success of
William Cowper was The Task, which
was also his first maior venture in blank
verse. For the fifty four-year-old recluse
the reception of his poem must have had
a salutary effect, for he went on to
become, according to his greatest champion,
Robert Southey, "The most popular poet
of his generation. . . ."
Cowper's place in literary history is
often in dispute. Coming as he did
exactly one hundred years after Dry den,
he completed his best work in the year of
Dr. Johnson's death. He neither aspired
to become poet laureate nor did he wish
to be the critical arbiter of his day. Yet
in many wavs he was the successor of
both men. His blank ve~se is perhaps the
best between Milton and Wordsworth,
while his criticism expresses
dissatisfaction with the extreme formalism of his
age and anticipates in some measure the
nineteenth-century revolt against neo-
classicism. He is usually said to be a
writer of this transition toward
romanticism and realism.
His first work of any magnitude, Givey
Hymns (1779), he undertook with his
evangelical friend, the Reverend Tohn
Newton, while living at Olnev with the
Unwin family. "Oh! for a closer walk
with God" is the most beautiful of his
hymns, rivaling the be°t of both Newton
and Wesley, and perhaps superior in
poetical form and sentiment.
Although Cowper's writing of the then
f?shionable couplet was not successful,
his earlv verse was at least simple. (He
obiected strenuouslv to Pore's influence,
which resulted in the highly ornamented
versification of that age.) Several long
poems in this genre, publV.ied in 1782,
sere as a kind of prelude to The Task.
'Table Talk," written in rather abstract
couplets, is a dialogue concerning the
political, social, moral, and literary topics
of the dav. Here Cowper's dislike for the
artifice of the eighteenth century is quite
clear, and he damns most of the literary
cults with faint praise, at the same time
urging a return to God and nature for
inspiration. 'The Progress of Error"
outlines the follies of high life and living
as these affect the social structure: in
this wck he suggests a return to
Christianity for the solut'ons to vexing
problems. "Truth" extends Cowper's religious
beliefs almost as if Ivs distant
relationship, through his mother's line, with the
cleric Tohn Donne were making itself
felt. His thesis here is that pride is truth's
greatest foe, while humilitv will uplift
mankind. In "Expostulation" he parricu-
larlv decries anti-Semitism and u^ges
England to remove this mote from the public
eve. "Hope" and "Charity" celebrate
God's nature (not the human nature of
the Age of Reason) as the proper studv,
or at least reflection, of mankind.
Satirically, he contrasts man's ways with God's.
Another poem of this early g-oun is
"Retirement," an apology for his life as a
recluse, his justification for giving up a
life of action for the contemplative life
of the poet.
Bv happy chance, in 1783 one of
Cowper's intimate friends, Lady Austen, urged
him to abandon the restrictive couplet
form for blank verse. Cowper tells of this
happening in the "Advertisement" of
The Task:
A lady, fond of blank verse, demanded
a poem of that kind from the author,
and gave him the SOFA for a subject.
He obeyed; and, having much leisure,
connected another subject with it; and,
ursuing the train of thought to which
is situation and turn of mind led him,
brougSt forth at length, instead of the
trifle he at first intended, a serious
affair—a Volume!
This volume of five thousand lines is
divided into six parts: "The Sofa," "The

Time-Piece," "The Garden," "The
Winter Evening," "The Winter Morning
Walk," and "The Winter Walk at Noon."
The poem's success was immediate,
launching for the middle-aged poet a
career and a reputation.
The sofa Cowper describes in the
opening lines is the effete summation of
man's efforts to indulge in slovenly
comforts, a human failing the poet presents
with evident good humor. He leaves the
sofa, as he savs, "for I have lov'd the rural
walk . . ." with a good companion at his
side. It is immediatelv apparent that the
poet's work is to justify man's ways to
God: "The task of new disGOv'ries falls
on me," he suggests as he goes abroad.
The next lines indicate that he will not
countenance romantic illusions of the
peasant's hard life or such poetic effusion
of his age that tend to overlook the
sordid, cruel, or ungodly. In comparing
country and town he sets up a dichotomy
which persists throughout the poem: God
creates and man destrovs.
In "The Time-Piece"—really
time-serving or expediency—Cowper takes a long
look at institutions, especially political.
After a close examination of events now
forgotten, he remarks in a memorable
line, "England, with all thy faults, I love
thee still." But the England he loves is
the nation of an earlier, mo~e virtuous,
simpler time. He examines public figures,
especially ministers, and finds them
wanting. He suggests that God must be in
every heart, Christ in every act. The river
Ousr he describes as a symbol of
immortality and ease. "The Garden" brings the
poet to the eternal verities of nature and
causes him to celebrate family life,
domestic happiness. Within this poem is
the parable of Cowper ("I was a stricken
deer, that left the herd . . .") who,
wounded by society, retired to a life of
religious contemplation. From this
vantage point he asks men to be humane and
Christian, to eschew wars, to learn
wisdom. "Who loves a garden loves a
greenhouse too" is his plea to men to
cultivate simple pleasures in a rural setting:
"Health, leisure, means t' improve it,
friendship, peace . . ." are what he
thinks worth while. He concludes with
a harsh renunciation of the citv.
Continuing his statement of conflicting
interests, in "The Winter Evening"
Cowper compares the tragic news of the world
with the simple man who delivers the
post, unmoved. So should man live, he
says, interested and sympathetic but apart;
nothing is pleasanter than a winter night
spent with good friends in good talk, and
before a good fire. Again the town
appears as the corrupter, its poison filtering
down in the form of fashions spoiling the
simple folk and altering the landscape.
While there are consolations in poetry,
especially Milton's, rural life brings more
compensations and inspiration.
"The Winter Morning Walk," a
bracing though aesthetic experience, restores
the poet's good humor as he observes
beast and man under winter's thrall.
Cowper sees in winter a hope for immortality,
for as the seeds and hibernating creatures
wait out the ice, so man is bound in
history. He next shames the great men of
history as tyrants of oppression and great
countries as slave holders:
HTis liberty alone that gives the flow'r
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume
He is a freeman whom the truth makes
free, and all are slaves besides. . . .
This is the substance of his argument.
He concludes with an apostrophe to godly
graces and offers thanks to God.
Finally, in "The Winter Walk at
Noon," William Cowper in sonorous
polysyllables celebrates village bells as
symbols of harmonious living—and offers
also a backward glance at his own life.
Here he describes the winter landscape in
an ode to the cold, crisp season. In
memorable passages he anticipates the spring.
Finally, he justifies the life of the
rambler, the contemplative life of the poet
who sounds the note of God's truth,
whether of castigation or exaltation.
3716

THE TEMPEST
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic fantasy
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: An island in the sea
First presented: 1611
Principal characters:
Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan
Miranda, his daughter
Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples
Ariel, a spirit, Prosperous servant
Caliban, rrospero's slave
Alonso, Kins of Naples
Sebastian, Alonso's brother
Antonio, Duke of Milan, Prospero's brother
Gonzalo, a philosopher who saved the lives of Prospero and Miranda
Critique:
The Tempest, written toward the close
of Shakespeare's career, is a work of
fantasy and courtly romance. The story of a
wise old magician, his beautiful,
unworldly daughter, a gallant young prince,
and a cruel, scheming brother, it contains
all the elements of a fairy tale in which
ancient wrongs are righted and true lovers
live happily ever after. The play is also
one of poetic atmosphere and allegory.
Beginning with a storm and peril at sea, it
ends on a note of serenity and joy. No
other of Shakespeare's dramas holds so
much of the author's mature reflection on
life itself.
The Story:
When Alonso, King of Naples, was
returning from the wedding of his daughter
to a foreign prince, his ship was overtaken
by a terrible storm. In his company were
Duke Antonio of Milan and other gende-
men of the court. As the gale rose in
fury, and it seemed certain the vessel
would split and sink, the noble travelers
were forced to abandon ship and trust to
fortune in the open sea.
The tempest was no chance disturbance
of wind and wave. It had been raised by a
wise magician, Prospero, as the ship sailed
close to an enchanted island on which he
and his lovely daughter Miranda were the
only human inhabitants. Theirs had been
a sad and curious history. Prospero was
rightful Duke of Milan. Being devoted
more to the study of philosophy and magic
than to affairs of state, he had given much
power to ambitious Antonio, his brother,
who twelve years before had seized the
dukedom with the aid of the crafty
Neapolitan king. The conspirators set
Prospero and his small daughter adrift in
a boat, and they would have perished
miserably had not Gonzalo, an honest
counsellor, secretly stocked the frail
craft with food, clothing, and the books
Prospero valued most.
The helpless exiles drifted at last to an
island which had been the refuge of
Sycorax, an evil sorceress. There Prospero
found Caliban, her son, a strange,
misshapen creature of brute intelligence, able
only to hew wood and draw water. Also
obedient to Prospero's will were many
good spirits of air and water, whom he
had freed from torments to which the
sorceress Sycorax had. condemned them
earlier. Ariel, a lively sprite, was chief of
these.
Prospero, having used his magic arts to
draw the ship bearing King Alonso and
Duke Antonio close to his enchanted
island, ordered Ariel to bring the whole
party safely ashore, singly or in scattered
groups. Ferdinand, King Alonso's son, was
moved by Ariel's singing to follow the
sprite to Prospero's rocky cell. Miranda,
who remembered seeing no human face
3717

but her father's bearded one, at first sight
fell deeply in love with the handsome
young prince, and he with her. Prospero
was pleased to see the young people so
attracted to each other, but he concealed his
pleasure, spoke harshly to them, and to
test Ferdinand's mettle commanded him
to perform menial tasks.
Meanwhile Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio,
and Gonzalo wandered sadly along the
beach, the king in despair because he
believed his son drowned. Ariel, invisible in
air, played solemn music, lulling to sleep
all except Sebastian and Antonio.
Drawing apart, they planned to kill the king
and his counsellor and make Sebastian
tyrant of Naples. Watchful Ariel
awakened the sleepers before the plotters could
act.
On another part of the island Caliban,
carrying a load of wood, met Trinculo, the
king's jester, and Stephano, the royal
butler, both drunk. In rude sport they offered
drink to Caliban. Tipsy, the loutish
monster declared he would be their slave
forever.
Like master, like servant. Just as
Sebastian and Antonio had plotted to murder
Alonso, so Caliban, Trinculo, and
Stephano schemed to kill Prospero and become
rulers of the island. Stephano was to be
king, Miranda his consort; Trinculo and
Caliban would be viceroys. Unseen, Ariel
listened to their evil designs and reported
the plan to Prospero.
Meanwhile Miranda had disobeyed her
father to interrupt Ferdinand's task of
rolling logs and, the hidden magician's
commands forgotten, the two exchanged
lovers' vows. Satisfied by the prince's
declarations of devotion and constancy,
Prospero left them to their own happy
company. He, with Ariel, went to mock
Alonso and his followers by showing them
a banquet which vanished before the
hungry castaways could taste the rich
dishes. Then Ariel, disguised as a harpy,
reproached them for their conspiracy
against Prospero. Convinced that
Ferdinand's death was punishment for his own
crime, Alonso was moved to repentance
for his cruel deed.
Returning to his cave, Prospero released
Ferdinand from his hard toil. While spirits
dressed as Ceres, Iris, Juno, nymphs, and
reapers entertained Miranda and the
prince with a pastoral masque, Prospero
suddenly remembered the schemes which
had been devised by Caliban and the
drunken servants. Told to punish the
plotters, Ariel first tempted them with a
display of kingly garments; then, urging
on his fellow spirits in the shapes of fierce
hunting dogs, he drove them howling
with pain and rage through bogs and brier
patches.
Convinced at last that the King of
Naples and his false brother Antonio had
repented the evil deed they had done him
years before, Prospero commanded Ariel
to bring them into the enchanted circle
before the magician's cell. Ariel soon
returned, luring by strange, beautiful music
the king, Antonio, Sebastian, and
Gonzalo. At first they were astonished to see
Prospero in the appearance and dress of
the wronged Duke of Milan. Prospero
confirmed his identity, ordered Antonio to
restore his dukedom, and severely warned
Sebastian not to plot further against the
king. Finally he took the repentant Alonso
into the cave, where Ferdinand and
Miranda sat playing chess. There was
a joyful reunion between father and son
at this unexpected meeting, and the king
was completely captivated by the beauty
and grace of Miranda. During this
scene of reconciliation and rejoicing,
Ariel appeared with the master and
boatswain of the wrecked ship; they reported
the vessel safe and ready to continue the
voyage. The three grotesque conspirators
were driven in by Ariel, and Prospero
released them from their spell. Caliban
was ordered to prepare food and set it
before the guests. Prospero invited his
brother and the King of Naples and his
train to spend the night in his cave.
Before he left the island, Prospero
dismissed Ariel from his service, leaving
that sprite free to wander as he wished.
Ariel promised calm seas and auspicious
3718

winds for the voyage back to Naples
and Milan, where Prospero would
journey to take possession of his lost
dukedom and to witness the marriage of his
daughter and Prince Ferdinand.
3719

THE TEMPLE
Type of work: Poetry
Author: George Herbert (1593-1633)
First published: 1633
Sir Richard Herbert, an aristocrat of
Norman descent, died when his son
George was three years old. His ten
children were reared by their mother, who
is known to have been a wise, witty,
generous, and religious woman. John
Donne said: "Her house was a court in
the conversation of the best." Too frail
for the family profession of soldiering,
George Herbert was early guided toward
the priesthood by his mother. He was
not, however, ordained until 1630.
Nevertheless, Magdalen Herbert seemingly
influenced the course of his life as much
as Donne influenced his poetry. The first
sonnets he wrote were addressed to her
and in them he vowed to devote himself
to religious poetry.
The Latin verses that Herbert wrote
at Cambridge are full of classical allusion.
In The Temple, which consists of the
main body of his English verse, he
eschewed all archaic references and poetic
rhetoric as studiously as Donne himself.
From Donne he also learned to transmute
thought into feeling so that the
intellectual concept becomes the emotional
experience of the poem. Like Donne's,
his rhythms are colloquial and his
imagery, although not often as dramatic as
that of Donne, is similarly practical,
concrete, and arresting.
Herbert's range was narrower than
Donne's; he wrote only religious poetry
and it is not turbulent or exacerbated.
One should beware of calling Herbert
"simple"; or it can be said that he is
simple rather than tortuous or complicated,
and he does have a moral simplicity. His
thought is varied, but evidences one
central preoccupation. In his last letter to
Nicholas Ferrar, to whom he sent the
manuscript of The Temple, he
described his poems as "A picture of the
many spiritual conflicts that have passed
betwixt God and my soul, before I could
subject mine to the will of Jesus my
master, in whose service I have now
found perfect freedom." His anguish was
lest he should not be a good and worthy
servant to God, and not that he had lost
faith or was threatened with damnation.
His main temptation was worldly
ambition.
At Cambridge, Herbert's main
relaxation was music; he played the lute and
wrote accompaniments to his Latin poems.
This interest is evident in the
vocabulary and also in the rhythm of many of
his poems. Some, like his version of the
Twenty-third Psalm, were written to be
sung. In "Easter" the lute is an image for
the body of Christ on the cross:
The cross taught all wood to resound
his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings,
what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.
This equation, in the second stanza, of
the crucifixion and the lute
communicates the glory and pathos of Easter. The
eager invocations to the poet's own heart
and lute in the first stanza are found
also in the third, which carries the full
implications of the previous image and
reinforces it:
Consort both heart and lute, and twist
a song
Pleasant and long:
Or since all musick is but three parts
vied,
And multiplied;
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his
sweet art.
Ambition for worldly acclaim is as
recurrent in Herbert's poetry as music.
In The Temple he often analyzes the
delights of success, and the rejection of
these delights is as meaningful poetically
as it was in his life. In "The Pearl"
Herbert speaks of his knowledge of

learning, honor, and pleasure, and
concludes each stanza with the refrain, "Yet
I love thee." In the last stanza the value
of such knowledge is justified and
explained: it renders his love of God
significant and reasoned. "Therefore not
sealed but with open eyes/I flie to thee."
This quality of quietness, certitude, and
moral simplicity at the end of many of
Herbert's poems gives them peculiar
power. A controlled and intense late
poem of rebellion contemplated, "The
Collar," reflects at its close Herbert's
complete humility and devotion in spite
of all ambition and restlessness. The poem
describes all that was lost:
Sure there was wine,
Before my sighs did drie it: there was
corn,
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the yeare onely lost to me?
Have I no bayes to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sight-bloom age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold
dispute
Of what is fit, and not forsake thy
cage. . . .
The poem is forceful, quick and
argumentative; at the height of its fierceness
the poet interrupts himself:
Methought I heard one calling, Childe:
And I reply'd, My Lord
Herbert's devotion to God is usually
expressed with this humility and with a
sensitive awareness of personal unworthiness.
The ability to love is itself a gift of God.
The search for a way of service is
complemented by Herbert's intense
consciousness of the sacrificial nature of Christ's
life. In the sonnet "Redemption," the
poet records a search for Christ first in
heaven, then in earth's palaces, cities,
and courts. Finally He was found in a
rabble of thieves and murderers:
. . . there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said,
and died.
The common meeting grounds of
people and mundane activities and
possessions are a great source of imagery to
Herbert. His lyrics are probably his
greatest poetry, and their structure, imagery,
vocabulary, and rhythm all encompass
one dominant idea, which, after the
thought that inspired the lyric has been
thoroughly explored, is finally, exactly,
and directly communicated. These poems
have total unity, and the impression of
ease (in craf smanship, not of feeling)
is obtained by the logical and perceptive
argument. Technically, this effect is most
often achieved in the development of the
images. In "Vertue," the clear and
sensuous expression of the death of the day
and a rose and of the spring which is
composed of days and roses, "A box
where sweets compacted lie," leads to an
image of natural strength, where the
virtuous soul "Like season'd timber; never
gives"; and the penultimate line,
following logically from the timber image,
uses a most commonplace object, coal, as
a continuation of it, and reverberates with
the conviction of the immortality of the
soul:
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
In "Affliction (1)" Herbert's feeling of
unworthiness is clearly related to his ill
health: There is a carefully balanced
argument: at first loving God was a joyous
experience and Herbert uses the
metaphor of a furnished house to express his
contentment: "Thy glorious household
stuff did me entwine." After the first
rapture in which there was no room for fear,
sorrow and sickness overcame him. This
situation was partly improved when he
turned from "the way that takes the
town" and won "Academic praise." Then,
lest he should "too happie be" in his un-
happiness, God sent him further
sickness. "Thus does thy power cross-bias
me." A note of rebellion sounds at the
seemingly contradictory demands of God,
but the poem concludes:
3721

Ah my deare God! though I am clean
forgot,
Let me not love me, if I love thee not.
Herbert's poetry is a constant
communing with God, and it presents a great
variety of moods. The firm tone of
"Affliction (1)" can be contrasted with the
delicacy and gentleness of "Love (Hi)," in
which the alternating long and short
lines illustrate the hesitancy of a soul
yearning for God's love and yet not able
to grasp it because of its own
inadequacies. The tenderness of love is implicit in
the vocabulary: "welcome," "sweetly,"
"smiling," and "quick-eyed love." Flat
monosyllables convey the soul's guilt:
"s:nne," "slacke," "marr'd," and "shame."
But love made the eyes that call
themselves unworthy, and love bore the blame
for the sin; love encourages the soul until
it can accept these things and the gift of
love itself:
You must sit down, sayes Love, and
taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Another poem in which the length of
line echoes the feeling is "Easter Wings."
The affected device of writing a poem in
the shape of "wings"—and it was in the
early editions printed vertically on the
page—is effective in this instance. The
first and last lines of both verses are
long and each verse has middle lines of
only two words each. This arrangement
conveys in reading the rise and fall of the
lark's song which is the image for the fall
of man and his resurrection in Christ.
"Easter Wings" is the best of the poems
in which Herbert uses some trick to
illustrate his meaning. Other examples are
"The Altar" and "Paradise."
Donne's influence on Herbert's poetry
can thus be seen in the variety of his
lyrical forms, the directness of his
language, and his less learned but equally
arresting imagery. In contrast to Donne's
poetry, Herbert's is essentially peaceful.
His poems never end on a note of
desperation. His way of thinking and his
sensibility, by which he perceives the
nuances in an idea and the connections
between varied images and then fuses
these to communicate feeling, is
essentially metaphysical. The quiet tone of
Herbert's poetry with its power of
persuasion by gentle argument is entirely
original and something for which, as the
"Jordan" poem tell us, he consciously
strove and beautifully achieved:
As fla-nes do work and winde, when
they ascend;
So did I weave myself into the sense.
But while I bustled, I might hear a
friend
Whisper, How wide is all this long pre-
tencel
There is in love a sweetness readie
penrid:
Copie out only that, and save expense.
Herbert had great influence on other
seventeenth-century poets: Vaughan
borrowed from him extensively, and Cra-
shaw called his own first volume The
Steps to the Temple. He was, together
with the other metaphysical poets,
criticized in the eighteenth century. Pope,
although disliking his poetic method, in
his Essay on Man appears to have been
influenced by Herbert's philosophy.
Coleridge restored critical favor to Herbert,
and he profoundly influenced Gerard
Manley Hopkins. The delighted response
of twentieth-century poets to the
metaphysical poets is well known.
3722

THE TEMPLE BEAU
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Type of plot: Comedy of manners
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: London
First presented: 1730
Principal characters:
Wilding, a wild young man supposed to be a law student
Sir Harry Wilding, nis father
Bellaria, a young woman supposed to marry Wilding
Sir Avarice Pedant, Bellaria's miserly uncle
Pedant, Sir Avarice's son
Lady Lucy, Sir Avarice's coquettish second wife
Lady Gravely, Sir Avarice's prudish sister
Veromil, Bellaria's lover
Valentine, Veromil's rakish friend
Critique:
Because of his fame as a novelist,
relatively few modern readers are aware of
Fielding as a playwright. Certainly his
abilities as a dramatist have been
overshadowed by his fame as the author of
such novels as Tom Jones and Joseph
Andrews. He was also the last of the
great eighteenth-century playwrights of
the comedy of manners, and this
particular drama is one of his best. Yet even
his work in comedy cannot compare with
the polish of his later farces, in which
he found his best dramatic medium. Very
apparent in The Temple Beau is
Fielding's attitude that high life in the
eighteenth century was of the dullest and that
the people, both men and women, who
made up the highest circles were
entirely without shame. Though he
pictured high life amusingly in his plays,
in private life Fielding could see little
that was comic in it.
The Story:
Sir Avarice Pedant, who had lost a
great deal of money in the South Sea
Bubble, decided to marry his son to
Bellaria, his rich niece. An opportunity
presented itself when her father, sending
Bellaria to London in order to get her
away from a fortuneless young man,
asked her uncle to see that she married
the son of Sir Harry Wilding. Sir
Avarice, who saw a chance to make ten
thousand pounds, had no intention of
furthering the request.
Young Pedant was too deep in his
studies of philosophy, however, to wish
to marry Bellaria. Only after Sir Avarice
threatened to disinherit him did he agree
to follow his father's wishes.
In the meantime Sir Harry Wilding
came down to London to arrange the
marriage between his son and Bellaria.
He found that his son, young Wilding,
was not a lawyer, but had been
spending his time as a gay man about town.
In fact, young Wilding had been flirting
with Sir Avarice's young second wife,
who was a coquette of the worst kind.
She also was flirting with Valentine, one
of the most licentious young men in
town. For her coquetry, Lady Avarice was
constantly badgered by her older sister-
in-law, Lady Gravely, wh6 seemed on
the surface to be a prude. Actually, Lady
Gravely was merely jealous of her
reputation and, when opportunity presented
itself, discreetly had affairs of her own.
Also in London was Veromil, a friend
of Valentine's who had been cheated of
his inheritance by his brother. Veromil,
the young man with whom Bellaria was
really in love, had come to London to
solicit his friend's aid in marrying
Bellaria before she could be married off to
someone else. Valentine, not knowing
3723

that Bellaria was the object of Veromil's
affections, agreed to help him. Valentine
had just thrown over his own fianc6e in
hopes of winning Bellaria for himself.
While Valentine and Veromil went to
see Bellaria, Sir Harry Wilding went to
call on his son. In young Wilding's
rooms, instead of books, he found packets
of love letters and a crowd of tradesmen
who were about to send him to debtors'
prison. Sir Harry went about the rooms
in a fury, breaking open closets and
chests to learn what the young man
had been doing. From there he went
immediately to Sir Avarice's house in hopes
of finding his son. He and Sir Avarice
discovered Wilding in the garden
embracing young and pretty Lady Avarice. Both
men were furious, the father because he
found his son a rakish fop and the
husband because he suspected that he had
been made a fool and a cuckold. Lady
Avarice saved the day by telling a lie;
she said that young Wilding had merely
been importuning her to help him win
Bellaria. The husband and father were
satisfied with the answer.
Young Wilding still had to answer for
the lack of law books and the presence
of love letters and duns at his rooms;
to do so he told his father that he had
gone into the wrong apartment. The
father, believing the lie, was immediately
fearful lest he be arrested as a
housebreaker. Through a servant young
Wilding played upon his father's gullibility
and persuaded Sir Harry to offer an
annuity to the army officer whose rooms he
had supposedly broken into. Sir Harry,
rather than be hanged for what he
thought was a felony, was glad to comply.
Meanwhile Valentine had discovered
that the object of Veromil's affections
was Bellaria and became so angry that
he offered to kill his friend. Finally
friendship overcame his passion, and he
once more agreed to help Veromil win
the girl. He was partly persuaded by the
discovery that his own fianc6e loved him
so much that she would take him back,
even after his rudeness in breaking their
engagement.
Valentine persuaded Sir Avarice to
give him seven thousand pounds for help
in marrying off Bellaria. Sir Avarice
thought Valentine had reference to the
marriage of Bellaria to his son, but
Valentine, leaving the agreement vague, planned
to marry Bellaria to his friend
Veromil and still have the money. He told
Sir Avarice to bring the young people
to young Pedant's apartment at the Inns
of Court at a certain time. Young Pedant,
not knowing of the scheme, had lent his
apartment to young Wilding, who in
tended to pass it off to his father as his
own. Hoping to embarrass them both
into letting him alone thereafter,
Wilding had also made assignations with
both Lady Avarice and Lady Gravely for
the same rime. He too had fallen in love
with Bellaria and hoped to marry her
according to his father's wishes.
The two women, arriving first at the
apartment, were utterly confused to find
themselves dupes. They agreed to stick
together, however, and try to save their
reputations. A short time afterward
Valentine, his fiancee, Veromil, and
Bellaria, arrived. Within a few minutes the
clergyman appeared to officiate at the
marriage of Veromil and Bellaria. But
at the last minute Valentine could not
bear to see Bellaria married to Veromil.
He tried to interrupt the ceremony, but
his fiancee, with the help of Lady
Avarice and Lady Gravely, held him back.
Just then Sir Harry Wilding appeared
with his son and young Wilding's serv
ant. Veromil, drawing his sword,
threatened them unless they let him pass with
Bellaria. He was disarmed by young
Wilding before any mischief was done.
Veromil was beside himself until Bellaria
told him that nothing could force her
marriage to anyone else.
Just then Sir Avarice and his son
arrived, expecting to find no one but a
clergyman, Bellaria, and Valentine, for
they had come to marry Bellaria,
according to Valentine's agreement, to young
Pedant. When Sir Harry Wilding de-
3724

mantled to know why all these people
were in his son's apartment, young
Wilding's ruse was disclosed. Sir Harry,
furious at the trick played upon him,
swore he would disinherit his son. Then
young Wilding revealed that the annuity
his father had signed was actually made
out to him. Sir Harry left in a rage.
Veromil picked up a letter which Sir
Harry had torn from the pocket of his
son's servant. It was a letter from
Veronal's brother and it related how Veromil
had been cheated of his inheritance. The
servant, after confessing to his part in
the crime, promised to admit his perjury
in court, thereby permitting the
restoration of Veromil's rightful property. Sir
Avarice was only too glad to give his
blessing to the match between Bellaria
and Veromil; under the circumstances
he would not be forced to pay the seven
thousand pounds to Valentine for
arranging a marriage between Bellaria and
his own son. Valentine, however, pointed
out to the miser that the contract had
only called for an arrangement of a
marriage for Bellaria and did not name
anyone as the husband in the affair, and so
Sir Avarice, much to his dismay, was
still liable for the payment. Young
Pedant was only too happy to learn that
he could continue his studies instead of
taking up the burdens of a husband.
3725

THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTHONY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: The fourth century
Locale: Egypt
First published: 1874
Principal characters:
Saint Anthony
Hilarion, his disciple
The Devil
The Queen of Sheba
Tertullian
montanus
Apollonius
Critique:
In this novel we find many
indications of Flaubert's religious thought: not
only the conclusions of his later life but
also his attempts to find in the past some
hope for his day; his realization of the
attractions of the heresies of history; his
knowledge of the struggle for faith. It is
a novel which combines vast knowledge
with a romantic imagination. We see also,
even in translation, the results of
Flaubert's careful and laborious method of
writing.
The Story:
Having lived the life of a hermit for
over thirty years, Anthony had come
almost to the point of despair. He was
extremely weary of life and with the world
as he saw it from the limited point of
view*of his cell high in the mountains.
At one time people had made pilgrimages
to see him and be advised by him. These
same people had furnished him with
whatever money and clothing he needed.
But everyone had stopped coming years
before and Anthony had begun to fear
that his life was worthless. He then
began to long for the money, women,
and goods of this world through which
he might regain some sort of recognition
and pleasure.
One night his solitude became too
much for Anthony. He remembered his
early life as a monk with its adventures
and successes, and he thought of the
things he might have done if he had not
become a hermit. At last he decided that
it was merely his own stubbornness that
kept him alone in the mountains. Rather
than allow himself to be guilty of such
a sin, he prepared to depart. But he got
no farther than the cleared area before
his cell. Realizing that he had almost
yielded to temptation, he threw himself
upon the ground. Then, in order to
regain his strength and courage, he read
from the Acts of the Apostles and tried
to think. His mind, however, kept
coming back to worldly matters that still
tempted him.
Anthony then began to review in his
mind the things that were a credit to
him in this world, the good works of
his life. He praised himself for
hardships he had suffered and for the things
which he had denied himself. Again he
began to feel sorry for himself; the desire
for the money, goods, and women that
had earlier been denied became too much
for him. He fell into a trance.
While Anthony lay on the ground the
Devil appeared, his wings spread like
those of a giant bat to reveal beneath
them the Seven Deadly Sins. Anthony
awoke hungry and thirsty. Taking up a
scrap of bread, which was all that he
could find to eat in his cave, he threw it
on the ground in anger. Then there
appeared before him a table laden with all
manner of meat and fruit from which he
might satisfy himself. As he watched, the
table grew and things which he had
3726

never seen before appeared on it.
Anthony almost indulged himself, but he
realized, in time, that this also was the
work of the Devil. When he kicked the
table, it disappeared.
Soon afterward Anthony found on the
ground a silver cup which had a gold
coin at the bottom of it. When he picked
up the coin another appeared, and then
another, until the cup filled and began
to overflow. As Anthony watched, he
began to dream of the power that could
be his because of so much wealth. He
soon saw himself as second in power
only to the emperor and at the same
time he thought of the revenge he could
take on all his enemies. He even
imagined himself as the emperor, taking
precedence in Church affairs over the fathers
of the Council of Nicaea. During this
time, however, his bodily form had
become more and more degraded until at
last he saw himself as a beast. At this
point he awoke.
Anthony flogged himself furiously for
indulging in such sinful dreams, but as
he was doing so he became aware of the
arrival of a caravan. Soon the Queen of
Sheba presented herself before him with
many promises of love and luxury, the
only condition being that Anthony had
to give up his solitary life and live with
her. Although she used all of her
feminine charms to lure him away, Anthony
firmly resisted the temptation she offered.
After she had disappeared, Anthony
noticed that a child, whom he supposed
had been left behind by the caravan, was
standing in the door of his cell. The
child was Hilarion, a former disciple.
As Anthony watched, the child grew to
the height of a man and began accusing
the saint of leading a sinful life. He
charged that Anthony's abnegation was
merely a subtle form of corruption, that
his solitude simply freed him from the
outbreak of his lusts, and that he only
thought he held all the wisdom of the
world because he was too lazy to learn
anything new. When Anthony defended
himself by saying that the Scriptures held
all the wisdom necessary for mankind,
Hilarion pointed out various minor
contradictions in the New Testament. He
then tempted Anthony by offering to lead
him to a knowledge of the Unknown, the
sources and secrets of life. At that point
Anthony fell into another trance.
When he again became aware of his
surroundings he found himself in a large
congregation which included all the great
heretics of history, each propounding his
own theories of God and the universe.
Some suggested that God was feminine.
Others were devoutly following one
aspect of Christianity, such as drinking the
blood of Christ while completely ignoring
all other aspects. Some were warming
their naked bodies by an open £re in
order to show the purity of Adam in
paradise. Soon a man dressed as a
Carthaginian monk leaped into the middle
of the crowd, named them all for the
impostors they were, and drove them
away. Anthony, recognizing Tertullian,
rushed forward to meet him but he found,
instead, a woman seated alone on a bench.
The woman began to talk about Mon-
tanus, whom she believed to be the
incarnation of the Holy Ghost. When
Anthony suggested that he was dead, Mon-
tanus appeared before them in the form
of a Negro. Then followed another
succession of people, each propounding a
different heresy, until a woman called
Marcellina suggested that she could cause
Christ himself to appear if she invoked
him with the aid of a silver image. When
she was put to the test, however, only
a python appeared. It quickly wrapped
itself around Anthony, and the people
began to proclaim him the Christ. At
that point Anthony swooned in horror.
When he awoke, he found himself in
prison with the early Christians who had
been thrown to the lions, and he found
himself wishing that he too could give
his life to God in such a way. Then
Simon appeared before him with a
woman who he claimed was the embodiment
of all the infamous women of history,
but who had now been cleansed through
him. He offered Anthony the secret of
his magic but disappeared at the men-
3727

tion of holy water. ApoUonius and his
disciple then appeared before Anthony
and offered to describe the long road to
salvation and immortality. Anthony was
about to yield to their eloquence, but he
drew back in horror when ApoUonius
began to describe his visions and his
power of curing the sick and predicting
the future. Because these proved the
hardest of the temptations offered thus
far, it was not until Anthony clung to
the cross and prayed that Apollonius and
his disciple disappeared.
But Apollonius' taunts that Anthony's
fear of the gods kept him from knowing
them awakened in him a desire to set
them. Hilarion then caused to appear
before him the gods of men in all ages.
When Anthony laughed at them,
Hilarion pointed out that there was an
element of Truth in each one, which fact
caused Anthony to grieve that these false
religions could so easily lead man astray.
He himself almost succumbed to the
beauty of Olympus and the Greek gods,
but he was able to repel their images by
repeating the Apostles' Creed. Althougn
Anthony had seen and learned enough of
the false gods, the vision continued
until he confessed to a desire to see the
Devil. He hoped that his horror of Satan
would rid him forever of such an evil.
When the Devil appeared, Anthony was
immediately filled with regret, but it was
too late to recall his wish.
The Devil carried Anthony into space
in order to show him that man and the
world were not the center of the universe,
that there were no limits to space and no
purpose in its being. While the two
engaged in a discussion on the nature of
God, the Devil attempted to dispel all
Anthony's beliefs in divine goodness, love,
and infinite power. He tried to show that
before understanding a God that had no
limitations whatsoever, we must first
understand the infinite. By spreading his
wings to cover all space, he showed
himself to be infinite and called upon
Anthony to believe in him and curse God.
Only by raising his eyes in a last
desperate movement of hope was the saint
able to rid himself of this evil.
When Anthony next awoke, the
figures of Death and Lust confronted him,
each begging him to come and escape
the ugliness of this world. Refusing to
yield, Anthony was no longer disturbed
by what had seemed the disparateness of
all things. As dawn began to break he
no longer felt afraid; he enjoyed life once
more. When the clouds rolled back, and
he saw the face of Jesus Christ in the
middle of the sun, he made the sign of
the Cross and resumed his prayers.
3728

THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anne Bronte (1820-1849)
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1848
Principal characters:
Helen Graham, in reality Helen Huntingdon, the tenant
Frederick Lawrence, her landlord
Arthur Huntingdon, her first husband
Gilbert Markham, her second husband
Critique:
The story of The Tenant of Wildfell
Hall is tola in a series of letters written
by Gilbert Markham to his brother-in
law, Mr. Halford. This epistolary device,
so common to fiction writers of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gives a
certain psychological value to Anne
Bronte's study of marital difficulties.
There is keen irony here, as well, for
Arthur Huntingdon's male superiority
and brutal dominance is offset in large
measure by the inherent priggishness and
short-sightedness of the woman whom
he should never have married.
Huntingdon, the attractive but drunken profligate,
is generally identified with Bramwell
Bronte, brother of the writer.
The Story:
Gilbert Markham, a young man of
good family, was mildly interested when
the strange tenant came to Wildfell Hall.
Mrs. Graham, as her neighbors knew
her, was young and beautiful, and her
demand for seclusion stimulated the
interest of the gentry of the neighborhood.
She was particularly criticized for
the way in which she was caring for her
small son, Arthur, whom she would not
allow out of her sight. Gilbert's mother
declared the child would become the
worst of milksops.
On his first visit to Wildfell Hall,
Gilbert learned that Mrs. Graham was a
landscape painter of considerable ability
and that she was concealing her
whereabouts from her former friends. Her air
of secrecy aroused both his curiosity and
sympathy.
Hoping to avoid the attentions of a
local girl for whom he had at one time
shown a preference, Gilbert spent much
of his time in the company of the
young widow. He accompanied her and
young Arthur on long walks to find
scenes for Mrs. Graham to paint. His
friends, however, attempted to
discourage his attentions to the tenant of
Wildfell Hall. Rumor spread that she
was having an affair with Frederick
Lawrence, her landlord, and Lawrence
assured Gilbert that he would fail in his
attentions to Mrs. Graham. When he
tried to tell her of his growing affection,
Mrs. Graham herself insisted that Gilbert
regard her simply as a friend.
After the vicar of the parish had
accused the widow of improper conduct,
Gilbert overheard Mrs. Graham deep in
a mysterious discussion with her
landlord. Suspecting that the rumors about
them were true, Gilbert resolved to have
no more to do with her. On his next
encounter with Lawrence, Gilbert struck
his rival and wounded him severely.
A short time later Gilbert met Mrs.
Graham and she gave him a copy of her
journal to read. The journal, beginning
in 1821, told the story of Helen
Graham's life for the past six years. It
opened with an account of her meeting
with Arthur Huntingdon, whom she
loved in spite of her aunt's claim that
the young man was wild and wayward.
Her aunt, with whom she made her
home, had taken her away so that she
might see no more of the objectionable
Huntingdon. But by a miscalculation
3729

her unwelcome suitor was invited to their
summer home for partridge hunting.
That autumn the two were married, and
shortly afterward the young wife
discovered that her husband's true character
was exactly that which her aunt had
described. He was a drunkard, a man
incapable of high principle or moral
responsibility. She began to be
contemptuous of him, and he responded by
growing indifferent to her. More and
more frequently he began to absent
himself from his home, and during his
absences she had no way of knowing
where he was.
Several years passed. When Helen
bore a child, a boy, she hoped that her
husband's conduct would improve. But
Huntingdon absented himself again and
again. Each time she welcomed him
back because she still loved him.
When Helen's father died, she was
greatly disturbed by her husband's
callous attitude toward her grief. Then a
reconciliation took place, and for a time
Huntingdon seemed to reform. One day,
however, she discovered her husband
making love to Lady Lowborough, a
visitor in their house. When she
demanded a separation for herself and her
child, Huntingdon refused. To keep
the affair from becoming known to
others, Helen decided at last to stay on
with her husband.
Lord Lowborough also learned of the
affair Helen's husband was having with
Lady Lowborough. Indifferent to public
scandal, Huntingdon kept up his wild
hunting parties and filled his house with
drunken, riotous men. Helen began to
make her plans for escape. All that
time she had to fight off a would-be lover
of her own, a Mr. Hargrave, who was
determined to win her. She hoped to
find refuge in a place where her husband
could not find her and legally take her
child from her. Her pride kept her from
appealing to her brother or her uncle
and aunt.
Helen's husband learned of her plan
when he read her journal. From that
time on he had her closely watched. He
refused to let her have any money in
her possession.
Her position became unendurable,
however, when Huntingdon brought
his mistress into the house on the pretext
of providing a governess for young
Arthur. Helen determined to malce her
escape without money or resources. The
diary ended with the arrival of Helen
at Wildfell Hall.
Reading the journal, Gilbert realized
that Frederick Lawrence was the brother
mentioned several times in the diary.
He at once sought out Helen to renew
his suit, but in spite of his entreaties she
insisted that they should not see each
other again. Gilbert then went to see
her brother, whom he had treated so
roughly at their last meeting. The
reconciliation between the two men was
prompt and sincere.
A short time later the whole
community learned the secret of the tenant
of Wildfell Hall. Huntingdon had a
fall from his horse and his wife, learning
of his serious condition, went to his
house at Grassdale to look after him.
Frederick Lawrence told Gilbert that
Huntingdon had received her
ungraciously, but that she was determined
to stay with him out of a sense of duty.
In spite of her care, however,
Huntingdon secured a bottle of wine and
drank it in defiance of his doctor's orders.
His indiscretion brought on a relapse
which ended in his death.
Several months later Gilbert heard
that Helen's uncle had died and that she
had gone to live with her aunt at
Staningley. More than a year passed before
he dared to go to her. He found her
at Staningley, and the welcome of young
Arthur was as joyous as Helen's was
warm and gracious. She and Gilbert
were married a short time later.
3730

TENDER IS THE NIGHT
Type of work: Novel
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: The 1920's
Locale: Europe
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Dick Diver, a psychologist
Nicole, his wife
Rosemary Hoyt, an actress
Tommy Barban, a professional soldier
Critique:
Fitzgerald's reputation rests mostly on
The Great Gatsby, but in many ways
Tender is the Night is a more penetrating
work. The characters, expatriate
Americans wandering from one fashionable
place to another in Europe, seem to bear
superficially a great resemblance to a
common type written about in literature of the
twenties, but there is a difference in
treatment and significance. Dick and Nicole
are well portrayed, Nicole being an
especially sympathetic creation. The result
is an artistic portrayal of believable people
whose experiences add up to a keen
analysis of the spiritual disintegration and
bankruptcy of an expatriate generation.
The Story:
Rosemary Hoyt was just eighteen, dewy
fresh and giving promise of beautiful
maturity. In spite of her youth, she was
already a famous actress, and her movie,
Daddy's Girl, was all the rage. She had
come to the south of France with her
mother for a rest. Rosemary needed
relaxation, for she had been very ill after
diving repeatedly into a Venetian canal
during the shooting of her picture.
At the beach she met Dick Diver, and
suddenly she realized that she was in love.
After she became well acquainted with
the Divers, she liked Diver's wife Nicole,
too. Nicole was strikingly beautiful and
her two children complemented her
nicely. Rosemary's mother also approved
of Dick. When Rosemary attended one
TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's
Sons. Copyright, 1934, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
of the Divers' famous parties, she told
Dick outright that she loved him, but he
made light of her declaration.
During the party a Mrs. McKisco saw
Nicole behaving hysterically in the
bathroom, and on the way home she tried to
tell about it. Tommy Barban, a war hero,
made her keep silence. Resenting
Tommy's interference, Mr. McKisco provoked
a quarrel with him. The quarrel ended
in a duel in which several shots were
exchanged but no one was hurt. Rosemary
was greatly moved by the occurrence.
Rosemary traveled to Paris with the
Divers and went on a round of parties and
tours with them. Often she made advances
to Dick. He refused, apathetically, until
one day a young college boy told of an
escapade in which Rosemary had been
involved, and then Dick began to desire
the young girl. Although their brief love
affair was confined to furtive kisses in
hallways, Nicole became suspicious.
Abe North, a brawling composer,
offended two Negroes and involved a third.
While Dick was in Rosemary's hotel
room, Abe brought one of the Negroes to
ask Dick's help in straightening up the
mess. When Dick took Abe to his own
room, the Negro stayed in the corridor.
The two other Negroes killed him and
laid the body on Rosemary's bed. When
the body was found, Dick carried it into
the hall and took Rosemary's spread into
his bathtub to wash it out. Seeing the
bloody spread, Nicole broke down and in
3731

an attack of hysteria accused Dick of
many infidelities. Her breakdown was like
the one Mrs. McKisco had previously
seen in the bathroom at the party.
Some years before Dick had been doing
research in advanced psychology in
Zurich. One day in the clinic he had met
a pathetic patient, beautiful young Nicole
Warren. Attracted to her professionally
at first, he later learned the cause of her
long residence in the clinic.
Nicole came from a wealthy Chicago
family. When she was eleven her mother
died, and her father became very close
to her. After an incestuous relationship
with him, she suffered a breakdown. Her
father, too cowardly to kill himself as he
had planned, had put her in the clinic
at Zurich. For many reasons Dick became
Nicole's tower of strength; with him she
was almost normal. Finally, motivated by
pity and love, Dick married her. For a
time he was able to keep her from periodic
schizophrenic attacks and the marriage
seemed to be a success, aided by the fact
that Nicole's family was rich, so rich that
Nicole's older sister was able to buy Dick
a partnership in the clinic where Dick had
first met Nicole.
For some time after the episode
involving Rosemary, Nicole was quite calm, but
too withdrawn. Then a neurotic woman
wrote her a letter accusing Dick of
misdeeds with his women patients. The letter
was the working of a diseased mind, but
Nicole believed what the writer said and
had another relapse. She left her family at
a country fair and became hysterical while
riding on the ferris wheel.
At one time Dick had shown great
promise as a writer and as a psychologist.
His books had become standard and
among his colleagues he was accounted a
genius. It seemed, however, that after
Nicole's hysterical fit on the ferris wheel
he could do little more real work. For one
thing, Nicole was growing wealthier all
the time; her husband did not have to
work. At thirty-eight, he was still a
handsome and engaging man, but he began to
drink heavily.
On several occasions Nicole was
shamed by her husband's drunken
behavior. She did her best to make him stop,
and in so doing she began to gain a little
moral strength of her own. For the first
time since the long stay at the clinic she
gradually came to have an independent
life outside of Dick's influence.
Dissatisfied with the life he was
leading, Dick decided to go away by himself
for a while. He ran into Tommy Barban,
still a reckless, strong, professional soldier.
Tommy had just had a romantic escape
from Russia. While still absent from his
wife, Dick received word that his father
had died.
Going back to America was for him a
nostalgic experience. His father had been
a gentle clergyman, living a narrow life;
but his life had had roots, and he was
buried among his ancestors. Dick had
been away so long, had lived for so many
years a footless, unfettered life, that he
almost determined to remain in America.
On the way back to meet his family
Dick stopped in Naples. In his hotel he
met Rosemary again. She was making
another picture, but she managed to find
time to see him. Not so innocent now,
she proved an easy conquest. Dick also
met Nicole's older sister in Naples.
One night Dick drank far too much
and became embroiled with a chiseling
taxi driver. When he refused to pay an
exorbitant fee, a fight broke out and Dick
was arrested. The police captain unfairly
upheld the taxi driver. Blind with rage,
Dick struck a policeman and in return was
severely beaten by the Fascist carabinieri.
Thinking his eye had been gouged out,
Dick got word to Nicole's sister, who
brought all her influence to bear upon the
consul to have her brother-in-law released.
Back in Zurich, Dick was busy for a
time at the clinic. On a professional visit
to Lausanne, he learned to his surprise
that Nicole's father was there, very near
death. When the dying man expressed a
wish to see his daughter again, Dick sent
for Nicole. Strangely enough, the
weakened father still could not face his
daughter. In a despairing frenzy he escaped from
the hospital and disappeared.

Dick continued to go downhill. He
always drank too much. A patient, objecting
to the liquor on his breath, created a
scene. At last Dick was forced to surrender
his partnership in the clinic.
With no job, Dick wandered about
restlessly. He and his wife, he realized,
had less and less in common. At last, after
Dick had disgraced his family many times
in drunken scenes, Nicole began to
welcome the attentions of Tommy Barban.
She confidently looked forward to an
independent life with Tommy. She no
longer needed Dick.
After the divorce Dick moved to
America. Nicole heard of him occasionally. He
moved several times to successively
smaller towns, an unsuccessful general
practitioner.
3733

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Type of plot: Philosophical realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1891
Principal characters:
Jack Durbeyfield, a poor worker
Tess, his daughter
Alec d'Urberville, her betrayer
Angel Clare, her husband
Critique:
Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urber-
villes has become a modern classic. In it
Hardy concerned himself with the
question of fate and its influence upon the
lives of most people. If Tess's father had
not learned that he was a d'Urberville,
if Angel had found the letter Tess
slipped under the door, her life would
have been much different. But fate ruled
that these things were to happen, and
so determined the course of Tess's life.
Hardy called Tess a pure girl, and so
she was. He believed that she was not
responsible for her actions, and he forces
us to agree with him.
The Story:
It was a proud day when Jack
Durbeyfield learned that he was descended from
the famous d'Urberville family.
Durbeyfield had never done more work than was
necessary to keep his family supplied
with meager food and himself with beer,
but from that day on he ceased doing
even that small amount of work. His
wife joined him in thinking that such a
high family should live better with less
effort, and she persuaded their oldest
daughter, Tess, to visit the Stoke-d'Urber-
villes, a wealthy family who had assumed
the d'Urberville name because no one
else claimed it. It was her mother's hope
that Tess would make a good impression
on the rich d'Urbervilles and perhaps
a good marriage with one of the sons.
When Tess met her supposed relatives,
however, she found only a blind mother
and a dapper son who made Tess
uncomfortable by his improper remarks to
her. The son, Alec, tricked the innocent
young Tess into working as a poultry
maid, not letting her know that his
mother was unaware of Tess's identity.
After a short time Tess decided to look
for work elsewhere to support her parents
and her numerous brothers and sisters.
She was innocent, but she knew that
Alec meant her no good. Alec, more
clever than she, at last managed to get
her alone and then possessed her.
When Tess returned to her home and
told her mother of her terrible experience,
her mother's only worry was that Alec
was not going to marry Tess. The poor
girl worked in the fields, facing the
slander of her associates bravely. Her trouble
was made worse by the fact that Alec
followed her from place to place, trying
to possess her again. By going about to
different farms during the harvest season,
Tess managed to elude Alec long enough
to give birth to her baby without his
knowledge. The baby did not live long,
however, and a few months after its
death, Tess went to a dairy farm far to
the south to be dairymaid.
At the dairy farm Tess was liked and
well treated. Also at the farm was Angel
Clare, a pastor's son who had rejected
the ministry to study farming. It was
his wish to own a farm some day, and
he was working on different kinds of
farms, so that he could learn something of
the many kinds of work required of a
general farmer. Although all the
dairymaids were attracted to Angel, Tess in-
3734

terested him the most. He thought her a
beautiful and innocent young maiden, as
she was, for it was her innocence which
had caused her trouble with Alec.
Tess felt that she was wicked,
however, and rejected the attentions Angel
paid to her. She urged him to turn to
one of the other girls for companionship.
It was unthinkable that the son of a
minister would marry a dairymaid, but
Angel did not care much about family
tradition. In spite of her pleas, he
continued to pay court to Tess. At last,
against the wishes of his parents, Angel
asked Tess to be his wife. Not only did
he love her, but also he realized that a
farm girl would be a help to him on his
own land. Although Tess was in love
with Angel by this time, the memory of
her night with Alec caused her to refuse
Angel again and again. At last his
insistence, coupled with the written pleas
of her parents to marry someone who
could help the family financially, won
her over, and she agreed to marry him.
On the night before the wedding,
which Tess had postponed many times
because she felt unworthy, she wrote
Angel a letter, telling everything about
herself and Alec. She slipped the letter
under his door, sure that when he read
it he would renounce her forever. But
in the morning Angel acted as tenderly
as before and Tess loved him more than
ever for his forgiving nature. When she
realized that Angel had not found the
letter, she attempted to tell him about
her past. Angel only teased her about
wanting to confess, thinking that such
a pure girl could have no black sins in her
history. They were married without
Angel's learning about Alec and her dead
baby.
On their wedding night Angel told
Tess about an evening of debauchery in
his own past. Tess forgave him and then
told about her affair with Alec, thinking
that he would forgive her as she had him.
But such was not the case. Angel was
at first stunned, and then so hurt that
he could not even speak to Tess. Finally
he told her that she was not the woman
he loved, the one he had married, but a
stranger with whom he could not live,
at least for the present. He took her to
her home and left her there. Then he
went to his home and on to Brazil, where
he planned to buy a farm. At first neither
Tess nor Angel told their parents the
reason for their separation. When Tess
finally told her mother, that ignorant
woman blamed Tess for losing her
husband by confessing something he need
never have known.
Angel had left Tess some money and
some jewels which had been given to
him by his godmother. The jewels Tess
put in a bank; the money she spent on
her parents. When it was gone, her
family went hungry once more, for her
father still thought himself too high-born
to work for a living. Tess again went
from farm to farm, doing hard labor in
the fields in order to get enough food to
keep herself and her family alive.
While she was working in the fields,
she met Alec again. He had met Angel's
minister father and, repenting his evil
ways, had become an itinerant preacher.
The sight of Tess, for whom he had
always lusted, caused a lapse in his new
religious fervor, and he began to pursue
her once more. Frightened, Tess wrote
to Angel, sending the letter to his parents
to forward to him. She told Angel that
she loved him and needed him, that an
enemy was pursuing her. She begged
him to forgive her and to return to her.
The letter took several months to reach
Angel. Meanwhile Alec was so kind to
Tess and so generous to her family that
she began to relent in her feelings toward
him. At last, when she did not receive
an answer from Angel, she wrote him a
note saying that he was cruel not to
forgive her and that now she would not
forgive his treatment of her. Then she
went to Alec again, living with him as
his wife.
It was thus that Angel found her. He
had come to tell her that he had
forgiven her and that he still loved her. But
when he found her with Alec, he turned
away, more hurt than before.
3735

Tess, too, was bitterly unhappy. She
now hated Alec because once again he
had been the cause of her husband's
repudiation of her. Feeling that she could
find happiness only if Alec were dead,
she stabbed him as he slept. Then she
ran out of the house and followed Angel,
who was aimlessly walking down a road
leading out of the town. When they met
and Tess told him what she had done,
Angel forgave her everything, even the
murder of Alec, and they went on
together. They were happy with one
another for a few days, even though
Angel knew that the authorities would
soon find Tess.
When the officers finally found them,
Tess was asleep. Angel asked the officers
to wait until she awoke. As soon as she
opened her eyes, Tess saw the strangers
and knew that they had come for her and
that she would be hanged, but she was
not unhappy. She had had a few days
with the husband she truly loved, and
now she was ready for her punishment.
She stood up bravely and faced her
captors. She was not afraid.
3736

THADDEUS OF WARSAW
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jane Porter (1776-1850)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth century
Locale: Poland and England
First published: 1803
Principal characters:
Thaddeus Sobieski, a patriotic young Pole
Count Sobieski, his grandfather
General Kosciusko, a Polish leader
Pembroke Somerset, Thaddeus' English friend
General Butzou, another Polish patriot
Mary Beaufort, Somerset's cousin, whom Thaddeus married
Critique:
This novel combines factual history
with considerable imaginative invention.
The Englishman of the early nineteenth
century was already familiar with the
spectacle of the political refugee. Pity
for the plight of the exile who must adapt
himself to a different land and strange
customs is one of the chief themes ol
Miss Porter's novel.
The Story:
Thaddeus Sobieski was educated in
the palace of Count Sobieski, his grand
father, an enlightened nobleman of War
saw. On the evening of Thaddeus*
eighteenth birthday, his mother gave him a
letter in which she revealed that his
father, an Englishman, had deserted his
mother in Italy before Thaddeus was
born. The man's name was Sackville.
Thaddeus' mother had returned to
Poland and her father maintained the fiction
that she had married and had been
widowed within two months. None knew
of the deception save the king. At the
end of the letter Thaddeus' mother
begged him to be honorable always for
the sake of his grandfather and the
illustrious Sobieski name.
In 1792 the Poles began a war of
independence against Russia. Before
Thaddeus and his grandfather set off to the war,
Thaddeus heard the story of how Count
Sobieski and General Butzou had long
ago saved the life of King Stanislaus of
Poland. Both the knowledge of his own
past and the story of his grandfather's
bravery helped to shape Thaddeus'
character into heroic mold.
Later, Thaddeus met General
Kosciusko and was filled with hope for Poland.
In one of the skirmishes with the enemy
Thaddeus displayed both bravery and
intelligence. With dismay he learned that
the Poles were immediately to retreat, for
they were outnumbered by the Russians.
His grandfather was injured during the
retreat but refused to let Thaddeus attend
him. He ordered him to stay with the
troops. .
Thaddeus took a prisoner, an
Englishman named Pembroke Somerset, who
had joined the Russian army for the
sake of adventure. Somerset and
Thaddeus became close friends. Thaddeus
gained Somerset's freedom, and when
Thaddeus returned to his mother's home
Somerset accompanied him.
The tremendous patriotism and the
sense of honor existing in Thaddeus now
transferred themselves to Somerset, who
in his letters home wrote of his great
admiration of the Poles. Somerset soon
returned home to England, at the
insistence of his family.
Count Sobieski had greater cares, for
Poland was falling under the Russian
attack. When the Germans broke their
treaties of assistance, the king decided
that organized resistance was useless. He
surrendered for his people. In Warsaw
the sons of the nobles vowed eternal
resistance to the enemy, and Thaddeus
was among those taking the sacred oath.
3737

Poland in November, 1793, was shorn
of her best lands and her nobles were
humbled. In the meantime Thaddeus
led troops into the south, where
resistance continued. He managed to join with
General Kosciusko and so brought a
measure of hope to the Poles.
Thaddeus managed to free his
grandfather from a Russian prison. Later
Thaddeus led the other nobles in the
surrender of all his personal property
for the continuation of the war. In a
battle fought soon afterward, Thaddeus'
grandfather was killed. With his last
breath he made Thaddeus promise never
to take any name other than Sobieski.
Devastation spread over Poland as the
fighting continued. In one of the last
campaigns of the war Thaddeus found a
moment to talk to his mother, who said
she would not survive the destruction
of Poland. She made him promise to go
to England if Poland should fall. The
Sobieski palace was burned to the ground.
Thaddeus, along with General Butzou,
watched as the towers of Villanow
crumbled. Inside lay the dead body of his
mother, who had died during the battle.
Taking his farewell of the defeated king,
Thaddeus left Poland forever.
True to his promise, he went to
England. In London he took lodgings under
the name of Mr. Constantine and then
became ill with a slow and disastrous
fever which threatened his life. His
landlady, Mrs. Robson, had become quite
attached to him because of his gentle
manners and deep courtesy and she
watched over him during his illness.
When he recovered he sold his jewelry in
order to pay his bills. He tried also to
sell some original drawings but was
insulted by the merchant to whom he
showed them, and he refused to do
business with the man.
Mrs. Robson's sick grandson died in
spite of the care that Thaddeus gave the
child. Dr. Vincent, suspecting that
Thaddeus had a large fortune, sent a huge bill
for his services. Thaddeus promised to
raise the money for the medicine and for
the burial, but he had not a shilling in
his pocket. He was forced to sell more
of his possessions.
Thaddeus tried to contact Somerset,
but without success. About the same time
he found General Butzou in the greatest
distress of poverty and took him to his
lodgings with Mrs. Robson. Thaddeus
now began to earn enough for the
expenses of himself and the penniless
general by means of his drawings. Once he
saw Pembroke Somerset on the street,
but Somerset passed without noticing
him.
One day Thaddeus saved a woman,
Lady Tinemouth, from ruffians in Hyde
Park. Out of gratitude, Lady Tinemouth
took Thaddeus in hand and found
employment for him as a tutor in German.
At the same time her friend, Lady Sara
Ross, attempted to involve him in a love
affair, but she found him indifferent.
The old general was going mad. The
doctor whom Thaddeus called in was Dr.
Cavendish, a good man who would not
take the payment when he heard the
cause of the old general's illness.
Thaddeus went to the home of Lady
Dundas, where he was to serve as a
tutor. Lady Dundas proved to be a bore
and her daughters ill-favored and ill-
mannered. Attracted by Thaddeus' noble
appearance, the two girls, Diana and Eu-
phemia, determined to study hard. Eu-
phemia Dundas and Lady Sara Ross
pursued him.
A visitor in the Dundas household was
Miss Mary Beaufort, a gentle girl who
saw at once the noble nature of Thaddeus
and tried to ease the slights and rebuffs
he received from the rich and vulgar
Lady Dundas on the one hand and the
embarrassing attentions of Euphemia
Dundas on the other. In the meantime
Mary Beaufort occupied herself with
trying to discover the true name of Mr.
Constantine.
One day some of Lady Tinemouth's
friends were discussing the tutor. One
laughed at Euphemia for her interest in
a man no better than a mere
schoolmaster. But Mary Beaufort defended
him. Lady Tinemouth remained silent,
3738

for to her alone Thaddeus had confessed
his true identity. Shortly afterward
gossip caused Lady Tinemouth to receive
unpleasant notice from her relatives that
her attentions to Mr. Constantine were
intolerable. Lady Tinemouth planned to
leave London. In her letter announcing
her departure she told Thaddeus that
Mary Beaufort was deeply interested in
him.
When old General Butzou died,
Thaddeus realized that one of Poland's bravest
sons was dead. In order to meet the
death expenses, Thaddeus, who still had
not received any payment from Lady
Dundas, was forced to sell his last tokens.
The same pawnbroker took them, but
the amount gained was not enough to
pay his debts and Thaddeus was put in
Newgate prison.
Hearing of his misfortune, Mary
Beaufort searched out his apartment and
learned from Mrs. Robson the story of
his imprisonment. Mary's plan to aid
Thaddeus was interrupted by the arrival
of Pembroke Somerset, her cousin, and
by the betrayal of Euphemia. Euphemia
declared that Thaddeus had made
passionate love to her. Euphemia's mother
screamed for revenge and announced her
intention of sending her daughter to
Scotland.
Somerset, not knowing that Mr.
Constantine was really his old friend
Thaddeus, paid the debt of the tutor at Mary's
request, but he did not so much as look
at Thaddeus.
When Thaddeus returned to his room,
he discovered a note in which Lady
Dundas called him a rogue. Before he could
demand an explanation for the note, the
whole group had left London. He then
took a stage to the place where Lady
Tinemouth had found refuge.
At Lady Tinemouth's home Thaddeus
and Somerset met again and Somerset
revealed that he actually had not seen
Thaddeus on the occasion of their
meeting on a London street.
This meeting also brought about a
reunion between Thaddeus and Mary
Beaufort. A more surprising revelation
was the discovery that Somerset's father
was the same Sackville who was the
father of Thaddeus. To right the old
wrong, Thaddeus was given a large
inheritance from the Somerset estate. With
this fortune he married Mary Beaufort
and spent the rest of his days happily
with his wife and the half-brother whom
he had found after many strange
adventures.
3739

THE THEBAIS
Type of work: Poem
Author: Publius Papinius Statius (c 45-c. 96)
Time: Remote antiquity
Locale: Argos, Nemea, Thebes
First transcribed: Last quarter of first century
Principal characters:
Oedipus, deposed King of Thebes
Jocasta, his wife and mother
Eteocles,
polynices,
Antigone, and
Ismene, their children
Creon, Jocasta's brother
Menoeceus, his son
Adrastus, Kino of Argos
Argia, his daughter, Polynices* wife
Tydeus,
Capaneus,
Amphiaraus,
Hippomedon, and
Parthenopaeus, Argive heroes of the march against Thebes
Hypsipyle, the former Queen of Lemnos, now a slave
The Thebaic of Statius, a retelling in
epic form of the Seven Against Thebes,
by Aeschylus, draws extensively on the
general body of material dealing with the
ill-fated familv of Oedipus. Statius'
version of the tale of the contending
bothers, Eteocles and Polynices, extends to
twelve books. Written over a period of
twelve years, this narrative of bloodv and
tragic conflict is a product of the so-called
Silver Age of Latin literature. Statius*
epic, produced during the reign of the
Emperor Domitian, represents a falling
off from a great work like Vergil's Aeneid,
the model for this lesser and more
melodramatic poem.
Statius himself was a native of Naples,
and legend tells us that he used to visit
Vergil's tomb there. His father, a
rhetorician, held up to his son for admiration
the great works of Latin poetrv in the
time of Augustus and encouraged him to
make his career by continuing the
tradition of measured utterance in which he
had been reaped.
Students of Latin poetry find, however,
that a considerable gap separates Statius
from the Golden Age writers whom he
desired to imitate. In this epic the
machinery of the gods who intervene and
often direct the course of fratricidal strife
are dead gods indeed, pale figures
beside the lusty deities who battle and love
in Homer's g^eat wo*ks or in Vergil's
national epic. The narrative line of the
poem is gratifyingly simple, and the
inclusive propo-tion is well-considered* but
these matters often d^op from sight,
hidden beneath the deliberate rhetorical
effect of the parts. Ang^y lions, ramping
bulls, ships fighting their way through
a storm to a safe harbor, and rivers in full
soate are used again and a^ain as
figurative devices, sometimes with such facility
and in such detail that the object of
comparison is lost sight of. Some of the
moralizing in the Thehais is telling and
sincere, but much of it is quite as
perfunctory as the figures of speech. The
most striking defect in the Thehais is
the taste for blood* both the battlefields
around Thebes and the verses that
describe them are gorily presented. The
aesthetics of slaughter in the contemporary
Roman arena, difficult for the modern
mind to grasp, are amply illustrated in
3740

the epic, in which mingle a welter of
carnage and lamentation for the dead.
The storv, following the general line
of the G^eek play, pits Eteocles and Poly-
nices, the two sons of Oedipus and To-
casta, against each other when, after the
fall of Oedipus, it was arranged that the
sons would alternate as rulers. The plan
was doomed to failure because Oedipus
had called down the wrath of the Furies
upon his unnatural sons. The first vear
of the kingship falling to Eteocles, Poly-
nices went into temporary exile in Argos.
There he quarreled with Tvdeus. a great
warrior and hero, but King Adrastus,
obeying the prompting of an oracle,
settled the dispute by betrothing one of his
daughters to each of the voung men.
At the end of a year, however, Eteocles
refused to step aside in favor of Poly-
nices, acceding to the agreement
between them. Argia, the wife of Polvnices,
then persuaded her father to aid the
prince in assenting his right to the The-
ban throne. Tydeus was firrt dispatched
as an en^oy to the citv. Jealous of the
fame of the young warror, Eteocles set
an ambush for Tydeus, who killed all his
attackes except one. The survr or,
Maeon, returned to tell Eteocles what
had happened and then killed himself.
The march against Thebes began. At
Nemea the army was halted by a great
drought, but the Argives were saved from
their distress when Hypsipvle, the
onetime Queen of Lemnos bero-e the great
massacre there, and now a slave entmsted
with the care of King Lycurgus' small
son, guided them to a sfeam that still
flowed. When a snake bit her infant
charge, the Argives protected her from
the king's anger and in observance of the
boy's funeral instituted the Nemean
games. On the anival of the army before
the walls of Thebes, Jocasta and her
daughters appeared to plead with
Polvnices in an effot to prevent b'.oodshed.
The battle was joined, however, when
two tigers attacked the driver of Amphi-
araus' chariot; Amphiaraus himself
disappeared into the underworld when the
earth suddenly opened and swallowed
him alive. In an engagement with the
Thebans, Tvdeus fell mortally wounded;
he died while gnawing the skull of his
foeman. The Argive heroes were killed
one by one, fighting valiantly but
powerless against the might of the gods. Capa-
neus, who had rested from battle to
challenge the justice of the gods, was struck
by one of Jove's own thunderbolts as he
attempted to scale the wall of the city.
In a hand to hand combat, Eteocles and
Polvnices killed each other. Onlv King
Adrastus survived. The war ended with
the intervention of King Theseus of
Athens, who had been moved by the prayers
of the Argive women. Creon died at the
hands of King Theseus; his son, Menoe-
ceus, had previously listened to the words
of the oracle and had thrown himself
from the city wall.
The materials used in the Thebais
served their purpose admirably in Greek
tragedy; their use by Statius in his epic
suggests, however, that the convention
which barred slaughter from the stage
was a wise one. But in spite of its
obvious defects and the author's exploitation
of melodrama for its own sake, Statius'
work is not without its power to move,
especially when the unhappy mother of
wamng sons pleads with them to end
their strife, when Oedipus laments his
banishment f-om the citv, or when
Antigone attends the bodv of Polvnices after it
has been abandoned in death. In moments
like these tenderness and psychological
insight are never sacrificed to sentiment
or contrived excitement.
Statius was a popular poet in his own
d°y and throughout the medieval period.
Chaucer, who ranked him with Homer
and Vergil, paid him the compliment of
imitation in Troilus and Cri^eyde. Dante,
who apparently thought of the Roman
writer as a Christian, told in his Purga-
torio of his encounter with the author of
the Thebais.
3741

THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES
Type of work: Drama
Author: August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Type of plot: Symbolic realism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1899
Principal characters:
Maurice, a young Parisian playwright
Jeanne, his mistress
Marion, their five-year-old daughter
Adolphe, a young Parisian painter
Henriette, his mistress, a sculptress
Emile, Jeanne's brother, a workman
Madame Catherine, the proprietress of the cr&nerie
The Abbe
Critique:
There Are Crimes and Crimes was
written soon after August Strindberg
himself had passed through a period of
profound depression and was entering into
the final phase of his prolific career. Thus
the play is a combination of the realism
that he had mastered so well in his earlier
works and the symbolism that was to
mark his later triumphs. The setting is
definite and the characters are actual
personalities, but woven into the action is
the foreboding presence of a greater
meaning and a motivation that is more than
human. There are crimes punishable by
law, Strindberg is saying, but there are
others, undetected by human eyes, that
are punished by a higher power.
The Story:
Early in the day that was to mark his
first theatrical triumph, Maurice met
Jeanne, his mistress, and Marion, their
young daughter, in the Montpamasse
Cemetery. He promised them that the
success of his play was assured and that
with the money he would make he would
finally be able to marry Jeanne. Unable
to leave Marion to attend the
performance of the play, Jeanne presented
Maurice with a tie and a pair of gloves to
wear in her honor in his hour of victory.
That afternoon Maurice went to the
headquarters of his set, the cremerie of
Madame Catherine. There he saw for
the first time the beautiful Henriette, the
mistress of his painter-friend, Adolphe.
Immediately attracted to her, he felt, at
the same time, a strange premonition of
evil. Madame Catherine, also sensing the
evil, and thinking of Jeanne and her
child, pleaded with him to leave. He
started to go out but, ironically, collided
with Emile, Jeanne's brother, as he
walked toward the door. While Emile
was apologizing, Henriette came up to
him. Once in her presence, he found it
impossible to retreat. When Adolphe
finally arrived, he realized at once that he
had lost his mistress to his friend.
Maurice's play was as great a success
as he had hoped. Although his friends
arranged a victory celebration for him at
the cr&merie, he never appeared; he and
Henriette had gone to an inn, ostensibly
to wait for Adolphe. Adolphe, having
misunderstood the meeting place, failed
to appear, and Maurice and Henriette
openly declared their passion for each
other. Henriette, even though she
admitted her propensity for evil and
acknowledged that she had once committed
a crime, easily convinced Maurice that
THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES by August Strindberg, from PLAYS BY AUGUST
STRINDBERG, Second Series. Translated by Edwin Bjorkman. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's
Sons. Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed. All rights reserved.
3742

she was more worthy of sharing his
triumph than the dull, uneducated Jeanne.
To stress her point she threw Jeanne's
present, the tie and gloves, into the fire
and placed her own laurel wreath on
Maurice's brow.
When Adolphe finally met the pair
the next morning, he realized the
situation that now existed. After he had
discreetly retired, Henriette attempted to
persuade Maurice to run away with her.
Maurice admitted that it was not Jeanne
who held him, but the child Marion.
Henriette replied that she wished the
child were dead. Maurice agreed that
things would be simpler if she were, and
that he would go away with Henriette
if she would consent to his seeing the
child once before he left. Henriette
reluctantly granted this favor, and Maurice
went off for his last visit with his
daughter.
Later that morning the customers of
the cr&merie, smarting from the slight
Maurice had paid them by not attending
their party in his honor, were astounded
by the news, brought by the Abb£, that
Maurice's daughter was dead.
Apparently she had been murdered by someone
who had visited her in her mother's
absence, for there was no sign of illness. A
commissaire of police arrived to
question the patrons as to Maurice's
whereabouts. At first they protested that
Maurice was incapable of such a crime as the
murder of his own daughter; but as the
evidence against him and Henriette
began to accumulate—waiters had
overheard all their remarks, the tie and gloves
had been recovered from the fire,
Maurice was known to have visited the little
girl—even Madame Catherine and the
Abb6 began to waver, the Abbe*
maintaining, however, that the whole business
was the work of a higher power.
When Maurice and Henriette arrived
to bid their friends adieu, the evidence
against them was so strong that they were
taken into custody. Presently it was
decided that there was as yet no proof that
the child had actually been murdered,
and so they were released. But public
opinion was against them. Maurice's play
was taken from the stage and that of a
rival put in its place. Worse still, his
payments were suspended. The hero of
the night before was now shunned and
penniless. He and his new mistress were
haunted by men they imagined
detectives, who were waiting for them to
convict themselves with a chance word or
gesture.
The situation was too much for their
love. Held together only by fear, they
began to hate each other, to suspect each
other of the murder. Maurice was
convinced of Henriette's guilt when she
confessed the details of her earlier crime:
she had assisted in an abortion performed
on a friend, and the friend had died.
She lived in terror, fearing that her dead
friend's lover would, in a moment of
contrition, confess his guilt and thereby
reveal hers. Her wanton existence had been
the result of this constant dread.
Maurice suggested that since they were bound
by hate and fear they should be married.
Henriette would not agree.
Finally Henriette left Maurice outside
the closed Luxembourg gardens near the
statues of Adam and Eve and returned
to the cr&merie where she made her
accusations to Adolphe. The previously
despised Adolphe, seeing the effect of
success on Maurice, had just refused a
coveted painting prize. From the newspaper
he had learned the verdict that Marion
had died of some rare disease and that
Maurice and Henriette were exonerated.
Obsessed by guilt and her hatred of
Maurice, however, Henriette at first
rejected the news. At last, however,
Adolphe persuaded her to give up her
Bohemian existence and return to her
mother.
After the departure Maurice returned
and made his accusation to Adolphe.
Adolphe informed him of his
exoneration and the consequent restaging of his
play. Even the news that his payments
would be resumed gave him little
pleasure, for he was too strongly aware of his
3743

crime of intention. He began to have
some hope of atonement when Emile
arrived to present him once again with the
tie and gloves from Jeanne. The Abbe"
offered him an even stronger hope. He
agreed to meet the Abbe at the church
that night instead of attending the
reopening of his play.
3744

THERESE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Francois Mauriac C1885- )
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: France
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Bernard Desqueyroux, a petty landowner
Therese Desqueyroux, his wife
Marie Desqueyroux, their daughter
Georges Filhot, a law student and Marie's lover
Anne de la Trave, Bernard's half-sister
Jean Azevedo, a young intellectual
Critique:
The story and meaning of the life of
Th6rese Desqueyroux preoccupied Mau-
riac's mind over a long period of time.
The book is not a novel in the
conventional sense, being a series of four stories
tied together by the mind of the major
character rather than by incident. But it
is a powerful and dramatic revelation of
the human condition and its relation to
sin as seen through the eyes of one of
the most interesting and influential of
Catholic authors. In Th6rese, his
central character, Mauriac has caught the
complex movement of guilt as it exists
in everyone.
The Story:
In die little French town of Argelouse
where she spent the first part of her life,
The'rese Desqueyroux was known not so
much for her beauty as for her charm.
Her wit and independence of mind made
her conspicuous in the stifling and inbred
atmosphere of her native province, and
she inspired in her friends and relatives
as much disapproval as admiration. Left
to her own devices by a father more
intent on his political career than die
problems of fatherhood, The'rese had spent
her girlhood in isolated brooding. Her
one friend was Anne de la Trave, the
half-sister of Bernard Desqueyroux, whom
Therese was later to marry.
Of her youth and the days leading to
her marriage, Therese could remember
little. For the most part her memories
were clouded over by the confusion in
her own mind: an intense love of life
and a desire for experience joined to
provincial willingness to sacrifice self to
tradition. Her marriage to Bernard
Desqueyroux she saw as only the natural
culmination of a social cycle.
Before the honeymoon was over
Therese felt acutely the loss involved in
her marriage. In Bernard she discovered
all that was worst in provincial life: a
fanatical pride of family and material
possessions. To a fatal degree, he lacked
the insight and imagination to
understand his wife. For her own part, Th6rese
found herself disgusted by the marriage.
During die honeymoon a letter came
to Bernard from his family informing
him that his half-sister Anne had fallen
in love with a penniless young man, Jean
AzeV£do. To preserve the family name
and honor, Bernard prevailed on Therese
to help stop the affair. Returning to
Argelouse, Therese persuaded Anne to
go off on a trip. After Anne had gone
Therese met Azeve'do and discovered in
him that intensity and individualism she
missed in her own life. AzeVe'do told
her that he was not really in love with
Anne, and he readily agreed to write to
the girl confessing his true feelings. In
the meantime he and Therese met from
THERESE by Francois Mauriac. Translated by Gerard Hopkins. By permission of the publishers, Farrar,
Straus and Cudahy, Inc. Copyright, 1947, by Henry Holt & Co., Inc.
3745

time to time and the two were drawn to
each other. When AzeV6do left Argelouse,
it was with the promise that they would
be reunited in a year.
After Az6vedo had gone, Th&ese
settled into the normal routine of a farmer's
wife. Even the birth of a child, Marie,
failed to give her life meaning, for
motherhood only further intensified her
frustration. Almost involuntarily she
decided to poison Bernard.
The attempted murder was quickly
discovered and Theiese was brought to
trial. At the last moment, however, a
trumped up explanation by Bernard
saved her from conviction. Th&rese
returned home to learn that Bernard had
lied only to save the family from scandal.
After telling her that divorce was
impossible, he forced her, under threat of
revealing her true actions, to live a life
of semi-imprisonment in her bedroom.
Th&rese regained her freedom,
however, when Bernard reconsidered and
allowed her to go to Paris to begin a new
but distant life.
Alone in Paris, Theiese tried to make
a new life for herself, but without
success. The sense of sin she carried within
her perverted all attempts to find
happiness. As the years passed she retreated
more and more into herself.
Fifteen years after her banishment
from Argelouse, Theiese was found by
her daughter, Marie, now a young girl
of seventeen, living in retirement in an
apartment in Paris. Marie, who explained
that she had followed to Paris a young
law student from her native province,
was shocked to find Therese broken in
health and old before her time. Therese,
hoping to extirpate the sense of her own
s:nfulness, decided to help Marie win
the love of the student, Georges Filhot.
To persuade Filhot to marry Marie and
to modify his parents' disapproval,
Therese told her daughter that she
would turn over to her all her own land-
holdings in Argelouse. The next day
Therese visited Filhot and invited him to
dinner. At the conclusion of the evening
Marie returned to Argelouse with the
promise of a final reunion with Filhot in
three months.
In the next few days it became
painfully and thrillingly evident to Therese
that Filhot was not in love with Marie
but with herself; and in a violently
emotional scene she confessed to the student
not only her past crime but a whole
series of crimes for which she believed
herself guilty but which were not
recognized as criminal by the law. Then she
sent Filhot away. Rather than insist that
he sacrifice himself to her daughter,
however, she urged him to write to Marie
saying that he did not love her.
A short time later Marie returned to
Paris to face her mother, who by that
time was living in a confused and
paranoid world in which she believed all her
acquaintances were engaged in a plot to
bring her to justice for her sins, both
real and imaginary. Marie's anger was
softened, and when she returned to
Argelouse she took the sick Therese
with her.
Returned to her birthplace, Th6rese
slowly regained her sanity; the doctor
predicted, however, that she would soon
die. Nursed during her last days by her
daughter and Bernard—for whom, by this
time, she felt neither pity nor disgust—
Th6rese tried to put her mind in order.
She awaited death hopefully, seeing it
as the final deliverance from self.
3746

THE THESMOPHORIA2USAE
Principal characters:
Euripides, the playwright
Mnesilochus, his father-in-law
Agathon
Chorus of Thesmophoriazusae, fertility celebrants
Leader of the Chorus
A Scythian Policeman
Type of work: Drama
Author: Aristophanes (c. 448-c. 385 B.C.)
Type of plot: Satiric comedy
Time of plot: Fifth Century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 411 B.C.
Critique:
The Thesmophoriazusae, one of the
liveliest and wittiest of Aristophanes'
eleven extant plays, is a satiric comedy
with two targets, both squarely hit:
Euripides, the notorious misogynist, and the
loose morals of the women of Athens. It
is a lusty drama, fully appreciated only
by the most sophisticated of audiences.
The Thesmophoria referred to in the title
was a fertility festival, celebrated only by
women, at which the seed corn was
mixed with the putrid remains of dead
pigs. The time of the plot is the third
day of that festival, when the Senate and
the tribunals are not in session.
The Story:
En route to the house of Agathon,
Euripides, the celebrated dramatist,
explained to his aged but lusty father-in-
law, Mnesilochus, that he was in great
danger of his life. The
Thesmophoriazusae were gathered at the temple of
Demeter to decide on an appropriate
punishment for the
playwright—Euripides—who had so consistently and so
bitterly insulted their sex in his plays.
Agathon would surely be able to help
him. At the door of Agathon's house a
servant appeared and ordered the people
and the winds to be quiet because his
master was seized with poetical
inspiration. Mnesilochus knew at once that no
real help could come from such a man.
When Agathon appeared, reposing on
a bed, dressed in a saffron runic, and
surrounded by feminine toilet articles,
Mnesilochus insulted him roundly for his lack
of manhood. As expected, Agathon
refused to aid Euripides by dressing as a
woman in order to mix with the fertility
celebrants and plead Euripides' cause; the
plan was simply too risky. Mnesilochus
then offered himself and was promptly
and painfully shaved, undressed, and
depilated. Disguised as a woman, the old
man was suddenly very reluctant to go to
the temple until Euripides swore by all
the gods to come to his aid if anything
went wrong.
Striving to act as womanly as possible
and giving his voice a feminine lilt, the
old man entered the temple with a prayer
to Demeter and Persephone that he
would not be recognized. After certain
preliminaries the women within beoan
their deliberations concerning Euripides'
fate. The First Woman, after spitting as
orators do, opened with the charge that
Euripides presented women in his plays
as adulterous, lecherous, bibulous,
treacherous, and garrulous; he caused husbands,
especially old ones, to be suspicious of
their wives; and he provoked them into
keeping the keys to the storerooms and
sealing doors upon their wives. She
declared that the playwright deserved any
form of death, but preferably by poison.
The Second Woman explained that she,
a widow with five children, had sup-
3747

ported herself by selling religious chap-
lets until Euripides convinced spectators
of his plays that there were no gods.
Mnesilochus, unable to restrain himself upon
hearing his son-in-law so defamed, agreed
that Euripides had indeed committed
two or three such indiscretions, but he
urged the women to consider all their
horrendous faults that Euripides had not
attacked. Mnesilochus then proceeded to
present a detailed catalogue of feminine
failings.
The outraged women turned upon
Mnesilochus in furious wrath, but
before the face-slapping could lead to hair-
pulling Clisthenes arrived with the
warning that a man disguised as a woman
was in their midst. Unmasked, the
desperate Mnesilochus seized what he
thought was a woman's child and
threatened to slit its throat if he were not
allowed to go free. But the "child" turned
out to be a wineskin and the enraged
women began to gather faggots in order
to roast Mnesilochus alive.
Euripides, summoned by messages
scratched on wooden idols that
Mnesilochus had thrown out of the temple,
entered declaiming Menelaus' lines from
his play Helen. Mnesilochus responded
with Helen's lines, but before a rescue
could be effected a Magistrate
accompanied by a Scythian Policeman arrived
and Euripides fled. The Magistrate, after
ordering Mnesilochus to be lashed to a
post, left him under the guard of the
Scythian. As the women began their
ceremonies, Euripides, playing Echo of
his drama on Perseus and Andromeda,
began to echo Mnesilochus* laments as
he entered the temple in the dress of
Perseus. But the illiterate Scythian
refused to believe that old Mnesilochus
was really Andromeda, as Euripides
insisted.
During the ceremonies the guard fell
asleep. Euripides proceeded to disguise
himself as a procuress. He then offered
the women a proposal of peace: if they
would release his father-in-law, he would
no longer insult them in his plays. The
women agreed, but there remained the
Scythian to be outwitted. Still disguised
as a procuress, Euripides offered the
Scythian a good time with the little flute
girl whom the barbarian eagerly
purchased. While the two were away,
Euripides released his father-in-law and they
both escaped. His lust satisfied, the
Scythian returned to find his prisoner
gone and the obliging Thesmophoria-
zusae sent him off in hot pursuit—in the
wrong direction.
3748

THE THIN MAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Dashiell Hammett (1894- 1961 >
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: 1930's
Locale: New York
First published: 1934
Principal characters:
Mimi Jorgensen, Clyde Wynant's ex-wife
Dorothy Wynant, her daughter
Gilbert Wynant, her son
Christian Jorgensen, her present husband, Wynant's former associate
Nick Charles, a detective
Nora Charles, his wife
Herbert Macaulay, Wynant's attorney
Morelli, a gangster
Arthur Nunheim, an ex-convict
Critique:
As detective fiction, this novel
presents a picture of sophisticated New York
life at the end of the prohibition era.
The plot itself follows the pattern set
by Poe in The Murders of the Rue
Morgue in 1841 and by Arthur Conan
Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes stories.
Here are the astute detective, the
somewhat obtuse and distrustful police, the
questioning companion, the dropping of
clues to give the reader a chance to
solve the mystery, and the final
explanation by the detective.
The Story:
Nick Charles, one-time detective and
now a California lumberman, arrived in
New York with his wife Nora for the
Christmas holidays. He was drawn into
investigation of a murder case because
the dead woman, Julia Wolf, was the
secretary of Nick's old client, a lunatic-
fringe inventor whose wife had divorced
him in order to marry a man named
Christian Jorgensen. Clyde Wynant, the
inventor, was reported to be out of
town, working on some new project.
Herbert Macaulay, attorney for Wynant,
had told police that he had not seen
Wynant since October, when Wynant
had given the lawyer power of attorney.
Suspicion fell on Mimi Jorgensen, just
returned from Europe, for she had gone
THE THIN MAN by Dashiell Hammett.
right, 1934, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
to see Julia on the afternoon of the
murder, had arrived, in fact, in time for
Julia to die in her arms. She had
wanted, she said, to get her husband's
address, for she needed more money to
support his two children, twenty-year-
old Dorothy and eighteen-year-old
Gilbert, since Jorgensen had run through
the large settlement Wynant had made
on Mimi at the time of their divorce.
Suspicion fell on Jorgensen, who
turned out to be a man formerly known
as Kelterman, with whom Wynant had
worked several years before. He thought
that Wynant had not treated him fairly.
Then it was discovered that Jorgensen
had a wife living in Boston and that
he had married Mimi only to get
Wynant's money.
Suspicion fell on Morelli, a gangster
who had been fond of Julia. When he
learned that Nick was on the case,
Morelli went to Nick's apartment and, as
the police arrived, shot Nick in the
chest, a glancing shot that did not
produce a serious wound. Nick told the
police he would not press charges, for
the man was apparendy in enough
trouble. Although the police beat up
Morelli, they could find no reason for
holding him. He was released the same
day.
Suspicion fell on Gil Wynant, for the
By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copy*
3749

members of the Wynant family did not
have much love for one another. Gil
was an odd young man who asked Nick
about bizarre subjects such as incest and
cannibalism. He was frequently found
at keyholes listening to private
conversations.
Suspicion fell on Arthur Nunheim,
who identified Julia Wolf's body. When
Nick went with Guild, a detective, to
see Nunheim, they found him living in
an extremely untidy apartment with a
big, frowzy blonde. In the presence of
their callers, Nunheim and the blonde
insulted each other until the woman
left him. Nunheim escaped from Nick
through a back window. He was
reported murdered a little while later.
Suspicion fell on Wynant himself,
for Macaulay reported that Wynant had
made an appointment with him on the
day the murder was committed, but had
failed to appear. During the course of
the investigation several people received
from Wynant communications which
seemed to throw suspicion on Mimi and
Jorgensen. One day Wynant was
reported to have tried to commit suicide
in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The report
was false, however, for the man was
not Wynant.
On First Avenue Wynant had
maintained a shop which the police had given
a cursory examination. Nick insisted
that they return and tear it apart if
necessary, for he felt sure that some
clue was to be found there. The police
discovered a section of the cement floor
newer than the rest. When they tore it
up, they found the bones of a dead man,
with a cane, some clothes apparently for
a larger man than Wynant and a key
chain bearing the initials D.W.Q.
At last Nick accused Macaulay of
murdering Wynant, Julia, and
Nunheim. He believed that Macaulay and
Julia had joined forces to get Wynant's
money, that Wynant had gone to Macau-
lay's house in Scarsdale to accuse
Macaulay of the plot, and that Macaulay
had killed his client there. Then, Nick
reasoned, Macaulay had dismembered the
body and brought it back to the
workshop, where he discharged the two
mechanics and buried the body under new
cement. The cane, the large-size clothes,
and the key chain were intended to
prevent identification of the body.
Macaulay, according to Nick, had
renewed the lease on the shop and kept
it vacant while with a forged power of
attorney and Julia's help he began to
transfer Wynant's fortune to his own
accounts. Then Mimi had come back
from Europe with her children and had
asked for Wynant. When Nick had
arrived for his Christmas holiday and had
agreed to help Mimi find the missing
inventor, Macaulay felt he would be safer
with Julia dead. Later he sent letters
to members of Wynant's family, and even
to himself, supposedly from Wynant.
Nick thought Macaulay had killed
Nunheim because the ex-convict had been
near Julia's apartment and had probably
heard the shots that killed her. When
Nunheim had demanded hush money
from Macaulay, the lawyer had murdered
him also to keep him permanently quiet.
So Nick outlined his case. But on
the day he made the accusation, Gilbert
Wynant received a letter, supposedly
from his father, telling him to use the
enclosed key, go to Julia's apartment,
and look for an important paper between
the pages of a certain book. Following
the instruction in the letter, Gilbert
entered the apartment, where a plain-
clothesman struck him, fettered him,
and took him to police headquarters.
The boy showed the officials and Nick
the letter that he had received. The
book and paper had been invented.
When Nick took Gilbert home, he
learned from Mimi that Wynant had
just been there to leave with Mimi ten
thousand dollars in bonds.
As it turned out, Macaulay, knowing
that the police would be in Julia's
apartment, had sent the letter to Gilbert in
an attempt to shift the suspicion back
to Wynant once more. Also, Macaulay
himself had brought Wynant's bonds to
Mimi, making her promise to say that
3750

Wynant had brought them and thus
give credence to his own story that
Wynant was in town. Nick forced Mimi
to admit the truth by explaining that
Macaulay now had possession 0}
Wynant's fortune and that if she played
his game she would have to be satisfied
with comparatively small sums
occasionally, whereas if she were to stop shield
ing Macaulay — however innocent of
Wynant's death—she would, through hei
children, have control of her ex-husband's
entire fortune. Jorgensen, meanwhile,
had gone back to his legal wife in Boston.
After Nick had explained the whole,
case to Nora, she could not help feeling
that the business of a detective, based
as it is on so much probability, is at
best unsatisfactory.
3751

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Buchan (1875-1940)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1914
Locale: England and Scodand
First published: 1915
Principal characters:
Richard Hannay, a retired mining engineer
Franklin Scudder, a private investigator
Sir Walter, a government official
The Black Stone, espionage agents
Critique:
Well-told spy stories are always
exciting, and The Thirty-Nine Steps is no
exception to the rule. Both as fiction
and in motion picture versions, the novel
has survived with remarkable popularity
the time for which it was written.
Buchan's style was always crisp and
lively, a fact which helps to explain the
widespread appeal of his novels during
the first three decades of this century.
The Story:
Richard Hannay was a mining
engineer who had made a modest fortune in
South Africa and returned to England
to retire. Before long he found himself
bored beyond belief with the
conversations and actions of the Englishmen he
met. He had just about decided to
return to South Africa when a strange
series of events provided him with ample
excitement.
As he was unlocking the door of his
fiat, he was startled by the sudden
appearance of Franklin Scudder, another
tenant in the building. Scudder,
obviously a badly frightened man, begged
Hannay to give him refuge in his flat.
After the two men were setded
comfortably, Scudder told Hannay a
fantastic tale. He said that a plot to start a
war between England and Germany was
being hatched. A Greek diplomat, Ka-
rolides, the only really strong man in
Europe, was to visit London on June
fifteenth. At that time his assassination
would create an excuse for a declaration
of war.
Scudder told Hannay that a group
called The Black Stone were the agents
arranging for the assassination. This
group of men knew that Scudder had
learned of their plot, and they had tried
several times to kill him. He had now
planted a body in his flat, hoping that
the murderers would think the body his.
He asked Hannay to let him stay with
him until plans could be made to prevent
the assassination.
Impressed by the sincerity of Scudder's
story, Hannay gave him sanctuary. One
day he returned to his flat to find
Scudder with a knife through his heart.
Hannay knew then that The Black
Stone nad found Scudder and that his
own life was in danger. The police, too,
would want Hannay for questioning.
When he saw two men strolling in
front of his flat, he decided that they
were part of the enemy group. By a
ruse he exchanged clothes with the
milkman and left his flat, taking with
him a litde black book in which he had
seen Scudder making notes. He was
afraid to go to any government office
with his fantastic story. His plan was to
disappear for the three weeks remaining
before June fifteenth, and at the last
minute to try to get to someone in
authority to listen to him.
THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS by John Buchan. By permission of the Executors, estate of John Buchan, of
MCA Management Ltd., and the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1915, by George H. Doran Co
Renewed, 1943, by Lady Susdn Tweedsmuir.
3752

He went to Scotland, thinking that he
could hide more easily there. But the
London papers carried the story of the
murder of Scudder and Hannay's
description. He had several narrow escapes
from local Scottish police. The Black
Stone had also traced him. When an
airplane flew low over his refuge, obviously
on the lookout for him, he took shelter
in an inn until The Black Stone found
him there and he was forced to flee
again. In every spare moment he studied
Scudder's little black book. Deciphering
the code, he learned that Scudder had
told him only part of the truth. The
murder of Karolides was only a small
part of the plot. The main threat of the
plan was an invasion of England without
warning. Airfields were already laid out
and mines had been placed to line the
shores at a given signal. The time for
invasion was to be determined after
The Black Stone intercepted a French
envoy who was coming to London to
secure the plans which showed the
arrangement of the British fleet. When the
enemy learned where the ships were,
they could lay mines in strategic positions
and destroy a great portion of the fleet.
The only clue Hannay could find about
the time and place of the enemy
operation was a reference to thirty-nine steps
and a high tide at 10:17 P. M.
By luck, Hannay met a man who had
an uncle in an influential position in the
government. This man believed the story
and promised to write his uncle and ask
him to talk to Hannay and to help in
thwarting the plot. Hannay traveled
carefully, for the police and The Black Stone
were still after him. Once he was
captured by a member of The Black Stone,
but he blew up the building in which he
was held and escaped. At last he reached
Sir Walter, the uncle of his friend, and
Sir Walter listened carefully to Hannay's
report. At first he dismissed Scudder's
story as that of a loyal but overly anxious
young man. But when he received a
call informing him that Karolides had
been killed, he knew that Scudder's
information had been right, and he
promised to take Hannay's information
to the proper authorities.
Although Hannay was not to be
allowed to attend the secret conference of
government officials, he had the uneasy
feeling that his presence there was of
utmost importance, that only he could
find out how the highly confidential
information about the French envoy's
visit had leaked out to the enemy.
Against Sir Walter's orders, he went to
the house where the officials were
meeting. As he sat in the hall waiting to be
admitted, one of the officials came out
of the meeting room. Realizing that the
man had recognized him and that he
had seen the official elsewhere, he burst
into the room and told the astonished
officials that the man who had just left
was an impostor.
They thought him mad, for the man
was the First Lord of the Admiralty and
they knew him well. But at Hannay's
insistence they called the official's home
and learned that he was there. Then
they remembered that the impostor had
scanned the drawings and figures
carefully and could have memorized them.
If he left the country, the whole plan
of defense would be in the hands of the
enemy. The only hope was to capture
him. But there were hundreds of small
ports where a little boat could leave
English shores; not all could be watched.
By checking isolated spots along the
coast, Hannay finally found a small cove
where the tide was high at 10:17 P. M.
and nearby a house with thirty-nine
steps leading down to the cove.
Accompanied by police, he went to the
house. There he found three
Englishmen on a vacation. Their actions were
so natural that he doubted that they
could be spies. Only the presence of a
fast yacht in the water close to the
cove supported his suspicions. But an
unconscious finger tapping by one of
the vacationers identified him as the
enemy agent who had once captured
Hannay. Hannay and the police were
able to capture two of the men. The
3753

third escaped to the ship, but as it had
already been boarded by English police,
he too was taken.
The murder charge against Hannay
had been dropped, and he was safe for
the first time in many weeks. Three
weeks later war was declared between
England and Germany. But the war
was not fought on English soil and there
was no surprise invasion. Hannay
enlisted in the army, but he knew that he
had done his greatest service for his
country before he put on a uniform.
The Black Stone was no more and
Scudder's murder was avenged.
3754

THIS ABOVE ALL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Eric Knight (1897-1943)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Summer, 1940
Locale: England
First published: 1941
Principal characters:
Clive Briggs, a soldier
Prue Cathaway, in love with Clive
Monty, Clive's friend
Dr. Cathaway, Prue's father
Critique:
This Above All is a story of great
emotional conflict between a girl who
knew and loved the England of hunting,
cricket, and afternoon tea, and a man
who knew and hated the England of
slums, mines, starvation, and disease. The
author attempted to show what war can
mean to a civilian as well as to a
frontline soldier.
The Story:
Home on rest leave, after the disaster
of Dunkirk, Clive Briggs went first to
Leaford and then to Gosley, both resort
towns on the coast of England. At a
band concert in Gosley he met Prudence
Cathaway, who was stationed nearby
with the women's army corps. Prue was
of an upper middle-class family and
Clive was from the slums, but they were
attracted to each other and became lovers
the second time they were together.
Prue told him of her family. Her
grandfather had been a general in the
last war and felt unwanted and useless
in this one; her father was a doctor, a
famous brain specialist. She told him
of her Aunt Iris, who wanted only to
get to America and who pretended that
she wanted her children to be safe when
it was really for herself she feared. Iris'
brother was in America, buying steel
for the British government. Prue also
told Clive that she had broken her
engagement to a conscientious objector,
and because she was ashamed for him
she had joined the W. A. A. F.
Clive seemed reluctant to talk about
himself, other than to say he had been
born in the slums. In fact, it was many
days before Prue knew he was in the
army and had been in the rear-guard
action at Dunkirk.
When they found that Prue could get
a leave which would give them ten days
together, they went to Leaford. Most
of the time they were quite happy but
each time Prue mentioned the War Clive
became angry and sullen and seemed to
get pleasure from taunting her about her
family. Sometimes they quarreled
without knowing the reason and were
reconciled only because of their desire for each
other.
During the last five days of their stay,
Clive's friend Monty joined them. Monty
was also slum-born. It was Monty who
told Prue of Clive's heroism at Dunkirk.
Monty's story puzzled Prue more than
ever. She could understand even less
why Clive was so bitter.
While they were at Leaford, air raids
became frequent. One night during a
heavy raid Clive told Prue why he would
not go back to the army, why he intended
to desert. He told her of his childhood,
of his illegitimate birth and of his sordid
remembrances of childhood in the slums.
He asked her if a country that ignored
its poor were worth fighting for. England
was still fighting a gentleman's war, he
said, and the leaders were asking the
slum boys to win the war and then go
back to the mines and the. factories and
the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1941,
THIS ABOVE ALL by Eric Knight. By permission of
by Eric Knight.
3755

the mills from which they had come.
He was through. Prue tried to tell him
that he must go back to save himself.
She said it was his pride that had brought
him up from the filth, and his pride and
that of the others like him would change
all the conditions of which he had told
her. He would not listen to her.
At the end of the leave Prue
returned to her camp. Clive, true to his
word, did not go back to the army at
the end of his furlough. He wandered
along the coast while trying to decide
what he really wanted to do. Once he
went into a cnurch and talked with the
pastor, but he scoffed when the minister
told him that we fight because we have
faith in our ability to build a better life
than we have had. He accused the
minister and all the churches of betraying
Christ and His teachings because the
rich who support the church must not
be told of their sin in neglecting their
fellow men. Before he left the church
the minister told him that realism and
reasoning like his had brought war and
hunger and cruelty, and that only faith
could restore human dignity and freedom
throughout the world.
At last Clive tired of running away;
there was no place for him to go. Finally
he decided to give himself up, to let the
army decide for him whether he was
wrong, for he was too exhausted to
decide his problem for himself. Perhaps
Prue and the minister had been right;
perhaps faith in himself meant faith in
his country and the willingness to die
for it.
On the train to London, Clive
suddenly remembered something Prue had
said, a remark which had no meaning
at the time. Now he knew she was
going to have a baby. He felt that he
could not give himself up before he saw
Prue and asked her to marry him. He
managed to evade the military police
in London and call Prue. They arranged
to meet at the station in London and
to marry as soon as possible. Clive
knew at last that he loved Prue, and
he was determined that his child would
never know the hurt an illegitimate child
must always feel.
While he was waiting for Prue's
train, a bomb fell on a nearby building.
As he tried to help rescue a woman
trapped in the basement of the building,
the wall collapsed on him. He regained
consciousness with Prue sitting beside
him in a hospital room. Monty and her
father had helped her find him. Prue's
father was honest with her. He had
tried to save Clive's life with an
emergency operation, but part of the brain
tissue was gone and there was no hope
that Clive would live. During one of
his periods of consciousness Clive told
Prue that he had risked his life to save
a strange woman, because he knew at
last that he did have faith in himself
and his country.
Clive died in the night during a heavy
bombing raid. Afterward Prue walked
along the streets of London and saw the
volunteer firemen and the Cockney
policemen performing their duties among
the wreckage, and she knew why Clive
had died. Feeling the child stir within
her, she hoped that by sacrifices like
Clive's his child and all children might
have the chance to live in a good and
free world.
3756

THE THREE BLACK PENNYS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Hergesheimer (1880-1954)
Type of plot: Period chronicle
Time of plot: c. 1750-1910
Locale: Pennsylvania
First published: 1917
Principal characters:
Howat Penny, son of the owner of Myrtle Forge
Ludowika Winscombe, in love with Howat Penny
Jasper Penny, Howat Penny's great-grandson
Susan Brundon, Jasper's sweetheart
Howat Penny, Jasper's and Susan's grandson
Mariana Jannan, Howat's cousin
James Polder, Mariana's lover
Critique:
The Three Black Pennys is, in an
unusual way, the history of American
culture, the first of the Pennys representing
the beginning of a culture, the second
representing the essential crudeness of
the early nineteenth century, and the
last Penny representing the effete
qualities of a Victorian generation which
passed away without ever understanding
the modern society supplanting it. The
author aptly named the three sections
of his book The Furnace, The Forge,
and The Metal, in keeping with a story
dealing with a family engaged in the
steel industry in Pennsylvania. The
symbolism is obvious. The
characterization is excellent, as is the description.
Two of the highlights of the book are
the descriptions of an all-night raccoon
hunt in the eighteenth century and the
tapping of an open-hearth converter in
a twentieth-century steel mill.
The Story:
The Penny family was English, except
for a Welsh ancestor whose blood
cropped out from time to time among his
descendants. Those who showed the
Welsh strain were called black Pennys
by their relatives in an attempt to
describe the mental make-up of individuals
to whom it was applied. Howat was
the first black Penny in over a hundred
years; the last one had been burned to
death as a heretic by Queen Elizabeth,
long before the family had emigrated
to the Colonies.
Living at Myrtle Forge, on the edge
of the Pennsylvania Wilderness, Howat
Penny was far more interested in the
deep woods than he was in becoming
an ironmaster. Nor did the appearance
of Ludowika Winscombe make him any
more satisfied or contented with his life
Ludowika Winscombe, the young
Polish wife of an elderly British envoy,
had been left at the Penny home while
her husband traveled through the
Colonies on the king's business. Before
long Howat Penny fell in love with
her. Ludowika warned him, however,
that she was a practical person who felt
it was best for her to remain married to
her husband rather than to run away
with a young frontiersman. Howat
stubbornly told her that she would have to
marry him, for he would permit nothing
to stand in the way of their happiness.
Winscombe returned ill to Myrtle
Forge and Howat Penny found himself
acting as Winscombe's nurse. It was an
ironic situation filled with tension. Howat
Penny waited for the old man to die.
Ludowika was torn between two desires.
She wanted Howat Penny, but she hated
to face a life with him in the wilderness.
The climax came late one night while
Howat and Ludowika sat by the sick
THE THREE BLACK PENNYS by Joseph Hergesheimer. By permission of the author and the publishers,
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1917, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed 1944, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
3757

man's bed while Winscombe made a
gallant effort to remain alive. Howat
and Ludowika dared not even look at
each other foi fear of what they might
see behind each other's eyes. Early in
the morning the old man died. As they
faced each other in the gray dawn
Howat and Ludowika realized that she
was destined to remain with him in
Pennsylvania and never to see London
again.
Three generations later the Welsh
Penny blood again appeared in the
person of Howat's great-grandson, Jasper.
By that time the forge, which had been
the beginning of the Penny fortune, had
been replaced by a great foundry with
many furnaces. Jasper Penny was a rich
man, steadily growing richer by
supplying the tremendous amounts of iron
needed for the new railroads in the
United States.
Jasper Penny had never married. like
his great-grandfather Howat, he was a
man of great passions whose energies
were spent in building up his foundry
and fortune. He was still painfully
reminded, however, of his earlier
indiscretions with a woman who had borne him
an illegitimate daughter. The woman
hounded Jasper for money and he found
it easier to give her money than it was
to refuse her demands.
He saw very little of Eunice, his
daughter, for he assumed that she would
be cared for by her mother as long as he
paid all expenses. One day in
Philadelphia Jasper decided, on impulse, to visit
Eunice. He discovered her, ill-clothed
and underfed, in the home of a poor
family, and, horrified, he took her away
with him. Not knowing what to do with
her, he finally placed her in a school in
New York.
In Philadelphia Jasper had also met
Susan Brundon, mistress of a girls' school
and friend of a distant branch of
Jasper's family Jasper fell in love with
her and in his abrupt fashion proposed
marriage. Being honest, he told her that
he had an illegitimate child. Susan
refused to marry Jasper because she felt
that his first duty was to Eunice's mother.
Shortly after his proposal Jasper was
involved in a murder. Eunice's mother
had killed another lover and suspicion
fell on Jasper Penny. He hated to involve
Susan Brundon in the sordid affair, but
he found that the only way he could
clear himself was through her testimony
that he had been with her when the
crime was committed.
After the trial Susan told Jasper that
she could not marry him until Eunice's
mother was dead, that she could not have
the past intruding itself upon her love
for him after they were married. Almost
a decade passed before they were finally
able to marry.
The last of the black Pennys was also
the last of the family name, for the
family died out with the second Howat
Penny, the grandson of Jasper Penny
and Susan Brundon. Howat was a
bachelor who lived alone in the country near
the site of the original Penny forge.
Interested in music and art, he had never
married, and the management of the
Penny foundries had gone out of his
hands. Possessed of a comfortable
fortune, he had in the closing years of his
life the companionship of Mariana Jan-
nan, a cousin. She was a young woman
in her twenties and little understood by
old-fashioned Howat.
He did not understand Mariana
because he could not understand her
generation. Because Jasper's son and
grandson had never had anything to do with
that branch of the family descended from
Jasper's illegitimate daughter, Howat was
horrified when Mariana told him that
she was in love with James Polder, a
distant cousin.
Howat thought Mariana mad to fall
in love with James Polder, who had
begun working in the Penny foundries as
a boy. The fact that he had worked his
way up to a position of importance railed
to redeem him in old Howat's eyes.
Polder finally ran away with an
actress. Three years after his marriage,
3758

Mariana and Howat Penny called on him
and his wife. Polder, unhappy with his
slatternly wife, had begun drinking
heavily. Howat, at Marianna's insistence,
invited Polder to visit his home in the
country. Polder accepted. Shortly
afterward he learned that his wife had
deserted him and returned to the stage.
He no longer cared; in love once more,
he and Mariana realized they should
never have permitted family differences
to come between them.
Mariana's relatives, shocked by the
affair, protested to Howat. Howat
himself said nothing, for he now felt that
he was too old and understood too litde
of modern life to intrude in the affairs
of Mariana and Polder. Although he
was as much Mariana's friend as ever, he
could not understand how she was able
to live with Polder as his mistress while
they waited for his wife to divorce him.
Howat believed until the end of his
life that women should be protected from
reality. Even when he knew he was
dying, he said nothing to Mariana, who
sat reading by his side. The delicacy of
his sensibilities prevented him from
shocking her with the fact of his
approaching death and kept him from
saying goodbye to her when he died, the
last of the three black Pennys.
3759

THE THREE-CORNERED HAT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Pedro Antonio de Alarc6n (1833-1891)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Spain
First published: 1874
Principal characters:
Lucas, a miller
Frasquita, his wife
Don Eugenio, the corregidor
Dona Mercedes, the corregidor's wife
Critique:
This novel is based on a famous folk
tale that could belong to every age and
almost every people. The plot is simple
yet satisfying; the characters lack
complexity but are delightful and real.
Although the story is set in a particular
place and time, it is basically universal,
for the cuckold is an invariable subject
for humor in all nations. This story is
among the most delightful on the
subject ever written.
The Story:
The early years of the nineteenth
century were calm ones for Spain. Life
there still followed the old pattern, and
an almost medieval attitude toward
government existed. The Church was a
great power, and government officers
treated their commands like petty
kingdoms. Corregidor Don Eugenio was a
fine example. He ruled one of the
Andalusian cities like a little Caesar.
Near the city was a famous old flour
mill. Lucas was its owner. There the
military and the gentry visited every day
to eat the miller's good food and to talk
with the miller's beautiful wife,
Frasquita.
These daily visits the miller shrewdly
put to good use. He did not give his
food without recompense, although he
was never so blunt as to demand anything
for his hospitality. If he needed some
wood, a word to the bishop would secure
him the right to cut some on the bishop's
grounds, or if he needed to have his
taxes lowered, a word to Don Eugenio,
the corregidor, would suffice. Life for
him was pleasant and fruitful. His
wife Frasquita was a beautiful woman
who loved him deeply and sincerely
despite the miller's ugly face and the slight
hump on his back. They joked together,
and tried to outdo one another in
kindness. Only children were lacking to
make their love complete.
To those who met every day under
the shady grape arbor outside the mill,
it became obvious that Don Eugenio had
fallen in love with Frasquita. There was
nothing unusual in this, for everyone
who knew her was in love with her.
Fortunately, the miller was not jealous
of his wife; she had never given him
any reason to be so. Yet where so
important a person as Don Eugenio was
concerned, suspicion was certain to arise.
Don Eugenio was a sight to see. He
wore a huge black three-cornered hat, a
scarlet cape, white stockings, and black
shoes with gold buckles. His face was
deeply wrinkled, for he had no teeth.
On his back was a hump much larger
than the miller's, and in his breast a
heart much smaller. But he was the
corregidor, and everyone bowed to him
when he passed, with his bailiff, Weasel,
following always at his heels.
One day Don Eugenio came to the
mill much earlier than usual, and the
miller, spying him at a distance, plotted
to surprise him. Knowing that Don
Eugenio would try to make love to
Frasquita, the miller hid in the grape
arbor above the spot where the cor-
3760

regidor would sit. He told his wife to
act as if she knew nothing of his presence
there.
Don Eugenio began to talk of love,
but when he tried to take one of
Frasquita's hands in his own she knocked
over his chair in pretended confusion.
At that moment the miller fell from the
arbor. Don Eugenio was furious. The
couple pretended that the miller, asleep
in the arbor, had not overheard the silly
love scene. Although the affair seemed
to pass off easily, Don Eugenio planned
revenge.
That night, as the miller and his wife
were preparing for bed, they heard a
knock at the door. It was a messenger
from the mayor, demanding that the
miller go at once to testify in an
important case. The miller, guessing
correctly that this request was part of Don
Eugenio's plot, told Frasquita to bolt
the door and not to let anyone in after
he had gone.
When the miller arrived at the mayor's
home, he found that his testimony was
not needed. The mayor insisted,
however, that he go up to the loft and spend
the night, to be on hand for the trial
the next morning. The miller pretended
to go to bed, but shortly afterward he
let himself down from the window, got
his mule, and started back to the mill.
On his way he passed another rider
whose mule neighed at his and received
an answer. Alarmed, the miller turned
aside from the road. When he arrived
at the mill, he found the doors all open.
Furious, he got a gun and crept up to
the bedroom. Peeking through the
keyhole, he saw Don Eugenio in his bed.
The miller did not know what to do.
He wanted to kill his wife and Don
Eugenio, but he knew he would be
hanged for the crime. He went
downstairs, where Don Eugenio's clothes were
scattered about on chairs in front of the
fire. An idea came to the miller. Turn
about is fair play. He dressed in Don
Eugenio's clothes and set out for town.
What had actually happened was
different from what trie miller suspected.
Don Eugenio had come to the house,
but Frasquita had let him in only after
he had fallen into the millpond. When
he had tried to make love to her, she
threatened him with a gun. Then she
had called the bailiff, who was waiting
outside, and told him to put his master
to bed. Saying that she was going for
a doctor, she had started out to get her
husband. It had been her mule that
had alarmed the miller on his way to
the house. Don Eugenio had sent the
bailiff away at the moment the miller
arrived home and judged the
circumstances so falsely.
Arriving at the mayor's house,
Frasquita learned that her husband had fled.
Together she and the mayor set out for
the mill. They arrived in time to meet
Don Eugenio leaving in the miller's
clothes. The bailiff had returned, noticed
that his master's clothes were gone, and
guessed that the miller had taken them.
The whole group, for different reasons,
started out for Don Eugenio's house.
On their arrival the maid, insisting
that Don Eugenio had returned home
some time before, refused to admit them.
Don Eugenio angrily demanded entrance,
and at last his wife told the maid to
admit the party. They all went upstairs.
Dona Mercedes refused to recognize
Don Eugenio until she had learned what
he had been doing. Frasquita would not
speak to the miller. Doiia Mercedes
ordered her husband to leave the room.
Then she told Frasquita that she had
found the miller hiding under her bed.
At first she had been furious, but after
she heard his story she had become angry
at her husband. Frasquita, reconci led
with the miller, proved her own
innocence by telling him about the neighing
mules, and he apologized for doubting
her honor.
When Don Eugenio returned to the
room, Doiia Mercedes refused to tell
him anything about what had happened
that night and ordered him never to
come to her room again. There was
nothing his guilty conscience would allow
him to say. The miller and his wife
3761

went home. do with the miller's reputation. But Don
The next day the bishop and the other Eugenio never came to the mill again,
officials came to the mill as usual, for The miller and his wife both lived to
they did not want anyone to feel that a happy and prosperous old age.
the night's happenings had anything to
3762

THREE MEN IN A BOAT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)
Type of plot: Comic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
J., the narrator
Harris, his friend
George, another friend
Montmorency, a dog
Critique:
Three Men in a Boat, which has
always been popular with many readers, is
a slight tale with only a thin thread of
plot. The humor lies in the digressions,
which make up the bulk of the book, and
in some of the incidents. Jerome had a
light and sure touch which only
occasionally betrayed him into sentimentality,
as when he dealt with a moral fable or
attempted a profound look into the
meaning of history. In this novel he captured
much of the charm of boating on the
Thames. The characters are delightfully
human.
The Story:
J., Harris, and George were feeling
seedy. They sat around idly in J/s room
discussing their ailments. J., especially,
was prone to ailments. Once he had gone
through a medical book and discovered
that he had all the symptoms of typhoid,
cholera, and zymosis; in fact, he had all
the ills described except housemaid's
knee.
He visited a doctor, intent on giving
him practice in diagnosis. After the
examination the doctor gave him a
prescription for a pound of beefsteak and a pint
of bitter beer every six hours. The
prescription must have been efficacious; J.
was still alive.
The three friends decided they needed
a complete change and rest. Various
possibilities were suggested, including a sea
voyage. J. knew from experience that
nearly everyone became sick on sea
voyages. He had a friend who paid two
pounds and a half in advance for his
board during a week's trip. By the end
of the week he had eaten so little thai
the steward had at least two pounds clear.
A sea voyage was out. As a compromise,
they decided on a boat trip up the
Thames to Oxford. Montmorency was
opposed to the idea but was outvoted.
They were to start from Kingston.
George, who had to work until two on
Saturdays, would join them at Chertsey.
They discussed sleeping and eating
arrangements. Although Harris was
doubtful, they agreed to sleep in the boat and
cook their own meals. Harris had no
poetry in his soul; life in the raw had no
appeal for him, for he was the type who
always knew the best pub in every town
in England.
In making their grocery list, J.
remembered the time he was in Liverpool. A
friend asked him if he would take two
cheeses back with him on the train to
London. J. willingly agreed. The train
was crowded and he found a seat in a full
compartment. One by one the others left,
overpowered by the odor, and J. had the
compartment to himself all the way to
London. After he delivered the cheeses
to his friend's wife, she promptly moved
into a hotel until her husband could get
home. He had to bury them on a
deserted beach. That experience showed how
careful one should be in selecting
provisions.
Although Harris and J. were to get an
early start, they overslept. It was well
after nine before they got all their rugs
and hampers together. Then they could
3763

not get a cab. They stood on the
sidewalk, attracting a curious crowd of
hangers-on who made unkind remarks
about their many bundles. At Waterloo
no one could tell them the platform from
which their train would leave. Even the
district superintendent was vague. They
solved the problem by bribing the
engineer of a waiting train to take them to
Kingston. The engineer agreed because
he had no idea where his train was
supposed to go anyway. At last the Exeter
mail train took them to Kingston.
Harris had had an experience once in
finding his way. He bought a map of
Hampton Court maze. It looked simple
on the map to visit the place and get out
again. A number of innocent bystanders
trusted him and his map to their sorrow.
The worst of it was that the keeper on
duty was new and had little idea how to
get out. They all waited hours for the
old keeper to come back on duty.
The travelers set out upriver from
Kingston. Dividing the work evenly,
according to J.'s suggestion, Harris sculled,.
J. steered, and Montmorency was the
passenger. All was going well as J. dreamed
along. Suddenly Harris threw away his
sculls, left his seat, and threw his legs
into the air. J. had daydreamed too long;
they had run head-on into the tow path*
Shortly afterward they picked up George,
and the three men in a boat were fairly
off.
Their boat had a series of hoops and a
canvas roof over them so that they could
sleep on board at night. The first time
they tried to set up the apparatus, the
hoops became tangled. The canvas was
even worse. George and Harris stood at
the bow to unroll the canvas and stationed
J. at the stern to receive the end.
Somehow both George and Harris got rolled
up in the canvas. J. noticed that they
were struggling for a long time, but he
faithfully stuck by the stern to receive
the end and fasten it. Finally George got
his head out and shouted for help. Harris*
face was black by the time they got him
unwound.
They made tea on a spirit stove. Their
method was to put the kettle on and then
make sure not to look at it or show any
signs of impatience. Usually the method
worked and the kettle boiled. Sometimes
they had to make loud remarks about
not wanting any tea that meal before the
water would get hot enough.
Montmorency was hostile toward the kettle. The
first time it boiled he took the noise foi
a challenge and bit the spout. After that
he was content merely to growl at the
bubbling steam.
They had trouble at times getting
water. An old lock tender told them he
always used river water. Thinking that
boiling the water would make it safe,
they tried it once for tea. Just as they
were sitting down to tea, a dead dog
came floating down the stream.
None of them could cook very well,
but George proposed an Irish stew one
night. They put potatoes, a peck of peas,
two heads of cabbage, some bacon, and
whatever else they could find in the pot.
George, rummaging for ingredients,
expounded the theory that an Irish stew
was a handy dish because it got rid of all
the leftovers. Montmorency watched the
proceedings with interest. When he
understood the theory, he trotted off on his
own foraging trip. He proudly brought
back a dead rat as his contribution.
At Streatley they hired a washerwoman
to do their laundry. The original idea
had been to do their own washing in
the Thames, but that idea had not been
successful; the clothes caught all the silt
in the river. The woman charged them
a triple rate for what was scarcely an
ordinary washing job. It was more in the
nature of excavating.
Near Wallingford, George and J.
stopped at an inn which displayed an
enormous trout in a glass case. One by
one each of the local hangers-on told
them how he had caught the big fish.
When the landlord came in, he laughed
at the wild claims; he himself had caught
it when he was a boy. George, excited,
climbed up on a chair for a. closer look.
3764

The chair slipped, George clutched, and
the glass case came down. Amid the
broken glass on the floor lay the broken
trout. It was not stuffed; it was made of
plaster of Paris.
On the way downstream from
Oxford the weather was bad. To while away
a rainy evening they played cards, but
they had to quit because George won
fourpence. They finally grew so bored
that Harris and J. asked George to play
his banjo and sing.
They finally gave up their trip.
Leaving the boat at Pangbourne, they took a
train to London. At a select French
restaurant they had a light dinner and left
an order for a late supper. Then, boating
clothes and all, they went to the Alham-
bra. There was some difficulty getting
in because of their wet flannels, but they
persevered. Then, after a hearty
supper, they watched in comfort the rain
outside. Harris thought they were three
men well out of a boat.
3765

THE THREE MUSKETEERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802rl870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: 1626
Locale: France
First published: 1844
Principal characters:
D'Artagnan, a Gascon adventurer
Athos,
Porthos, and
Aramis, the three musketeers
Constance BoNAcrEux, the queen's seamstress
Lady de Winter, Cardinal Richelieu's agent
Cardinal Richelieu, minister of state
Critique:
Of all the stories by Dumas, this is
probably the best. It is true that today
we may find it too melodramatic, but
once we accept the fact that the novel
is a romance, we can read it as such and
enjoy it. For it is a highly interesting
story, full of adventure and intrigue,
considered a classic of its type by all who
admire historical romances of love and
intrigue.
The Story:
In the spring of 1625 a young Gascon
named D'Artagnan, on his way to Paris
to join the musketeers, proudly rode up
to an inn in Meung. He was mounted
on an old B6arn pony given him by his
father, along with some good advise and
a letter of introduction to the captain
of the musketeers. In Meung he showed
his fighting spirit by fiercely challenging
to a duel a stranger who seemed to be
laughing at his orange horse. Before
continuing his journey to Paris he had
another encounter with the stranger,
identified by a scar on his face, and the
stranger's companion, a young and
beautiful woman.
Athos, Porthos, and Aramis were the
three best blades in the ranks of the
Musketeers of the Guard, in the service
of Louis XIII. D'Artagnan became a
fourth member of the group within three
months of his arrival in Paris. He had
made himself loved and respected by the
others when he challenged each in turn
to a duel and then helped them drive
off Cardinal Richelieu's guards, who
wished to arrest them for brawling.
D'Artagnan was not made a musketeer
at once; he had to serve an
apprenticeship as a cadet in a lesser company of
guards before being admitted to the
musketeer ranks. Athos, Porthos, and
Aramis looked forward to the day he
would become their true comrade in
arms and each took turns accompanying
him when he was on guard duty.
D'Artagnan was curious about his friends,
but could learn nothing about them.
Athos looked like a nobleman. He was
reserved, never mentioned women, and
it was said that a great treachery had
poisoned his life. Porthos was a squire
of dames, bragging incessantly of his
loves. Aramis, who always dressed in
black, insisted that he was a musketeer
only temporarily, that he was a
churchman at heart and soon would enter a
monastery and exchange his plumed hat
for a monk's cowl.
The three musketeers had been
rewarded in gold by the timid king for
their bravery against the cardinal's
guards, but had since spent all their
money. They were trying to figure a
way out of their difficulties when Bona-
cieux, D'Artagnan's landlord, came to
D'Artagnan because he had heard that
his tenant was a brave man. He said
3766

that his wife Constance, who was a
seamstress to the queen and whose
devotion to the queen was well-known, had
been abducted. He suggested that
D'Artagnan find and rescue Constance in
payment for long-overdue rent and for
financial compensation.
When Bonacieux described the
abductor, D'Artagnan recognized him as
the man he had challenged at Meung.
On these two scores, the Gascon was
willing to helpthe stricken husband. But
he was even more eager when he
discovered that the purpose of the
abduction was to force Constance to tell what
she knew of a rumored romance between
the queen and the Duke of Buckingham.
Constance escaped her abductors and
returned to her home, where the
cardinal's men again tried to seize her, only
to be attacked and scattered by D'Artag-
nan who had overheard the struggle.
Later that evening D'Artagnan met
Constance who was hurrying along alone
on the streets at a late hour. He
questioned her, but she would not say where
she was going. He told her that he loved
her, but she gave him no encouragement.
Still later that evening he encountered
her again as she was leading the Duke
of Buckingham, in disguise, to the queen.
The queen had sent for Buckingham
to beg him to leave the city where his
life was in danger. As they talked she
confessed her love for him, and gave him
as a memento a rosewood casket
containing twelve diamond studs that the
king had given her.
Richelieu, through his spies, learned
of the gift and suggested to the king that
he should give a f&te and ask the queen
to wear her diamond studs. The cardinal
then ordered Lady de Winter who was
in London, to snip off two of the studs
from Buckingham's clothing. This deed
gave him a chance to strike at the king,
the queen, and also Buckingham.
Learning of this scheme, Constance went to
D'Artagnan. Because he loved Constance
and because he wanted to serve his
queen, he undertook to recover the
jewels. With his three comrades he
started out for London. Only
D'Artagnan arrived there, for when the
cardinal's agents ambushed the comrades the
three musketeers were wounded and left
behind. D'Artagnan reached the duke
in time to recover the studs and return
to Paris with them. Richelieu's plot was
foiled.
After D'Artagnan had received the
thanks of the queen he was to meet
Constance that evening, but Constance
was again seized and imprisoned by the
cardinal's spies, one of whom was
identified as the man from Meung.
D'Artagnan decided he needed the help of his
three friends and, accompanied by his
servant Planchet, he went to find them.
First he called at the inn where he had
left Porthos and found him still there,
recovering from his wounds. Later he
found Aramis talking with some doctors
of theology and about to renounce the
world. Athos had barricaded himself in
a wine-cellar. Drunk, he related a story
about a friend of his, a count, who, when
he was young, had married a beautiful
girl and had made her the first lady in
his province. However, he had later
discovered that she was branded on the
shoulder with the fleur-de-lis, the brand
for a convicted criminal, and he had
hanged her on a tree, leaving her for
dead.
Once again the four friends were
together. Then D'Artagnan, who had
followed Porthos into a church, saw a
beautiful woman whom he recognized
as the companion of the man he had
met at Meung. He followed her out of
church and saw her get into her coach.
Later he and his friends took the same
road her coach had taken and encountered
the coach by the side of the road. The
lady was talking to a young man who,
D'Artagnan discovered, was her brother-
in-law, Lord de Winter. D'Artagnan
became a friend of Lord de Winter after
sparing his life in a duel; the lord
introduced him to his sister-in-law.
D'Artagnan fell in love with Lady de Winter.
But she loved another, a M. de Wardes,
who, unknown to her, had been killed.
3767

D'Artagnan deceived her one night
into believing she had an assignation
with de Wardes. D'Artagnan presented
himself to her as de Wardes that night
and she gave him a magnificent
sapphire ring. When D'Artagnan showed
the ring to Athos, he recognized it as
the one which had belonged to his
mother and which he had given to his
wife. Athos began to suspect that his
wife was not dead, but was Lady de
Winter.
D'Artagnan overheard Lady de Winter
make slurring remarks about him because
he had spared the life of her brother-in-
law. She was Lord de Winter's heir.
D'Artagnan also realized that Lady de
Winter was the cardinal's spy. At his
next meeting with her, D'Artagnan, as
himself, confessed his duplicity to her
and she angrily struck a blow which
caused him to step on her dress. The
dress pulled from her shoulder, exposing
the brand of the fleur-de-lis. As
D'Artagnan realized the truth, Lady de Winter
attacked him with a knife and screamed
that she would get revenge. D'Artagnan
fled to Athos.
The war between England and France
was reaching a climax, and the siege of
La Rochelle was of particular political
importance. The four friends prepared
to go to La Rochelle. Before they left,
D'Artagnan was called for an interview
with the cardinal. Richelieu tried to
bribe D'Artagnan to enter his own
guards, but D'Artagnan refused and left
with the knowledge that his refusal might
mean his death. In La Rochelle two
young soldiers tried to kill D'Artagnan.
From them he learned that they had
been hired by Lady de Winter to kill
him, and he also learned that she was
responsible for the imprisonment of
Constance.
The musketeers did not have much to
do with the siege and led a carefree life.
One evening they encountered two
horsemen on a lonely road. One was the
cardinal on his way to a nearby inn. The
cardinal ordered the musketeers to go
with him. Lady de Winter was at the
inn and the musketeers overheard the
cardinal instruct her to go to London,
where she was to tell Buckingham that
unless he ended the war his affair with
the queen would be exposed. If he
refused, Lady de Winter was to poison him.
As her reward Lady de Winter asked to
have two of her enemies killed. These
two were Constance, who had been
conveyed to a convent by an order the queen
had obtained from the king, and
D'Artagnan. Richelieu then wrote out a safe-
conduct for Lady de Winter.
A few minutes later, Athos, who had
recognized her voice, was in Lady de
Winter's room. There he revealed
himself as the Count de la Fere, her husband.
She was terrified, for she had thought him
dead as well. Athos took from her the
cardinal's letter of safe-conduct and
ordered her to leave France at once under
threats of exposure.
The four friends returned to the siege
of La Rochelle, where they conducted
themselves with such bravery that they
again drew notice from the cardinal.
When the cardinal spoke of them to
him, their captain said that D'Artagnan
was not in the service of the musketeers.
The cardinal then £ave orders that
D'Artagnan was to be made a musketeer, and
this news, when relayed to D'Artagnan,
made him very happy. The friends now
wrote out a message to warn Lord de
Winter against his sister-in-law and senl
Planchet to deliver it. They also sent
a message to a cousin of Aramis, and
learned from her the name of the
convent in which Constance had been
confined.
When Lady de Winter arrived in
England, she was held a prisoner by
Lord de Winter. But her pretense of
religious fervor and her beauty convinced
her young Puritan jailer of her
innocence. After she had told him a
fantastic tale to the effect that her downfall
had been caused by Buckingham, he
helped her to escape. To avenge her he
then went to Buckingham and stabbed
him. De Winter, who discovered her
escape also hurried to Buckingham, but
3768

arrived too late to save his life. Before
he died, a messenger from Paris brought
Buckingham word from the queen of her
faithful love.
Lady de Winter escaped to France, to
the convent where Constance was
staying. There she managed to poison
Constance and flee again before the four
companions arrived to rescue the queen's
faithful servant. Lord de Winter, also
in pursuit of Lady de Winter, arrived
a few minutes after they had discovered
Constance. Continuing their pursuit of
Lady de Winter, they overtook her and
held a trial. They condemned her to
die. She was executed by the public
executioner of Lille, who had branded
her for her crimes, many years before.
On his return to La Rochelle, D'Ar-
tagnan was arrested and taken to the
cardinal. The man who took him
prisoner was the stranger D'Artagnan had
met at Meung, identified now as the
Chevalier de Rochefort. The cardinal
charged D'Artagnan with treason, but
D'Artagnan interrupted and named the
long list of crimes of the woman who
had charged him. Then he informed the
cardinal of hex death and produced the
safe-conduct pass, signed by the
cardinal, which Athos had taken from the
woman. D'Artagnan told Richelieu that
as bearer of the pass he should be
allowed to go free. The cardinal was so
Eleased by the Gascon's cleverness that
e could not be angry. Instead, he offered
D'Artagnan a commission in the
musketeers. D'Artagnan offered it to his friends,
but each refused it, insisting that he
deserved the rank, an honor great nobles
often sought in vain.
La Rochelle surrendered to the French
and the faithful four disbanded. Athos
returned to his estate, Porthos married
a rich widow, and Aramis became a
monk. D'Artagnan became a famous
soldier. He and de Rochefort, his old
enemy at Meung, fought three times, but
finally became good friends.
3769

THE THREE SISTERS
Type of work: Drama
Author: Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First presented: 1901
Principal characters:
Andrey Prozorov, a student
Natasha, his fiancee, afterwards his wife
Olga,
Masha, and
Irina, his three sisters
Fyodor Kuligin, husband of Masha
Albiandr Vershintn, a battery commander
Baron Tusenbach, a lieutenant
Vassily Solyont, a captain
Ivan Tchbbutyktn, an army doctor
Critique:
The Three Sisters is a good example
of Chekhov's feeling for people. His
male characters are inclined to be weak-
willed, incapable of acting, much as
Tchebutykin, the old army doctor, and
Andrey are throughout the play. On the
other hand, his women are likely to be
stronger, if only because they live on
dreams or hopes, like the three sisters,
or Natasha. Yet Chekhov never makes
fun of these people; he feels for them
with a deep tolerance for human frailty
and a hatred of ugly conditions. While
the over-all effect of the situation in
which the three sisters find themselves
is pessimistic, Vershinin provides the
leavening that Chekhov always uses to
show that, though this world is sad, there
is usually someone who thinks that it
will be brighter sometime; perhaps not
while we live, but sometime.
The Story:
On Irina's name-day, her friends and
family called to wish her happiness. It
was exactly one year after the death of
their father, who had been sent from
Moscow eleven years before to this
provincial town at the head of a brigade.
Irina and Olga longed to go back to
THE THREE SISTERS by Anton Chekhov, from PLAYS BY ANTON TCHEKOFF, SECOND
SERIES. Translated by Julius West. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons*
Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Renewed, 1939, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Moscow, and Masha would have liked to
go too, except that she had married
Kuligin, whom she once thought the cleverest
of men. They all pinned their hopes on
their brother Andrey, who was studying
to become a professor.
An old army doctor, Tchebutykin,
brought Irina a samovar because he had
loved her mother. Masha's husband gave
her a copy of the history of the high
school in which he taught; he said he
wrote it because he had nothing better
to do. When Irina told him that he had
given her a copy for Easter, he merrily
handed it over to one of the army men
who was calling. Tusenbach and Solyony
quarreled half-heartedly because
Tusenbach and Irina had decided that what
they needed for happiness was work.
Tusenbach had never done anything but
go to cadet school, and Irina's father
had prepared his children only in
languages. Both had a desire to labor hard
at something.
Vershinin, the new battery
commander, came to call, reminding the girls that
he had lived on the same street with them
in Moscow. When he praised their town,
they said they wanted to go to Moscow.
They believed that they had been op-
3770

pressed with an education which was
useless in a dull provincial town. Vershinin
thought that for every intelligent person
then living, many more would appear later
on, and that the whole earth would be
unimaginably beautiful two or three
hundred years hence. He thought it might
be interesting to relive one's life to see
if one could improve on the first
version.
Natasha came in while they were still
sitting at the dinner table. Olga criticized
her dress and the men began to tease her
about an engagement. Andrey, who could
not stand having her teased, followed her
out of the room and begged her to marry
him. She accepted.
After their marriage Andrey lost any
ambition he ever had to become a
professor and spent much of his time gambling
in order to forget how ill-bred, rude, and
selfish Natasha really was. Irina,
meanwhile, had taken a job in the telegraph
office and Olga was teaching in die
high school. Tired when they came home
at night, they let Natasha run the house
as she pleased, even to moving Irina out
of her own bedroom so that Natasha
and Andrey *s baby could have it.
Vershinin had fallen in love with
Masha, though he felt bound to his
neurotic wife because of his two daughters.
Kuligin realized what was going on but
cheerfully hoped Masha still loved him.
Tusenbach, afraid that life would
always be difficult, decided to give up his
commission and seek happiness in a
workingman's life. Vershinin was
convinced that by living, working, and
struggling we create a better life all the time.
Since his wife periodically tried to
commit suicide, he did not look for happiness
for himself but for his descendants.
Andrey asked Tchebutykin to prescribe
for his shortness of breath, but the old
doctor swore he had forgotten all the
medical knowledge he had ever known.
Solyony fell in love with Irina, who
would have nothing to do with him. He
declared that he would have no happy
rivals.
One night all gathered to have a party
with some mummers who were to come
in. Natasha, however, decided that the
baby was not well and called off the
party at the last minute. Then Protopopov,
the Chairman of the Rural Board, came
by with his carriage to take Natasha
riding while Andrey sat reading in his room.
A short time later fire destroyed part
of the town. Olga gave most of her
clothes to those whose homes had been
burned and, after the fire, invited the
army people to sleep at the house.
Natasha berated Olga for letting her old
servant sit in her presence and finally
suggested that Olga herself move out of
the house. The old doctor became drunk
because he had prescribed incorrectly for
a woman who had died. After the fire
people wanted him to help them, but he
could not. In disgust, he picked up a clock
and smashed it.
Masha, more bored than before, gave
up playing the piano. She was disgusted,
too, because Andrey had mortgaged the
house in order to give money to Natasha.
Everyone but he knew that Natasha was
having an affair with Protopopov, to
whose Rural Board Andrey had recently
been elected.
Irina, at twenty-four, could not find
work to suit her, and she believed she
was forgetting everything she had ever
known. Olga persuaded her to consider
marrying Tusenbach, even if he was
ugly; with him Irina might get to Moscow.
Masha confessed that she was in love
with Vershinin and that he loved her,
though he was unable to leave his
children.
Andrey berated his sisters for treating
his wife so badly and then confessed that
he had mortgaged the house which
belonged to all four of them. He had so
hoped they could all be happy together.
Irina heard a report that the brigade
would move out of town! If that
happened, they would have to go to
Moscow because no one worth speaking to
would be left.
On the day the first battery was to
3771

leave, the officers came to say their
farewells to the sisters. Irina had heard of an
incident the day before which the old
doctor dismissed as not worth talking
about. Kuligin, however, told her that
Tusenbach and Solyony had had words
because both of them were in love with
her and she had promised to marry
Tusenbach. Kuligin eagerly anticipated the
departure of the brigade because he hoped
Masha would then again turn to him.
Masha was bored and spiteful. She felt
that she was losing, bit by bit, the small
happiness she had.
Andrey wondered how he could love
Natasha when he knew she was so vulgar.
The old doctor claimed that he was tired
of their troubles, and he advised Andrey
to walk off and never look back. But the
doctor, who was to be retired from the
army in a year, planned to come back to
live with them because he really loved
them all.
Irina hoped to go off with Tusenbach.
Olga intended to live at the school of
which she was now headmistress.
Natasha, expecting to be left in sole charge
of the house, planned all sorts of
changes to wipe away the memory of the
sisters' having been there. Andrey
wondered how his children could possibly
overcome the deadening influence of
their mother's vulgarity.
After Tusenbach had fought a duel
with Solyony, Tchebutykin returned to
tell them that Tusenbach had been
killed. So the sisters were left alone with
their misery, each thinking that she must
go on with her life merely to find out
why people suffer so much in a world
that could be beautiful.
3772

THREE SOLDIERS
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Dos Passos (1896- )
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1917-1919
Locale: France
First published: 1921
Principal characters:
Dan Fuselli, an American soldier from San Francisco
Chris field, an American soldier from Indiana
John Andrews (Andy), an American soldier from Virginia
Genevieve Rod, Andrews' friend
Critique:
This novel attempts to do for World
War I what Stephen Crane's The Red
Badge of Courage did for the Civil War;
that is, to destroy the myth of glamour
and glory and to expose the brutal reality
of war. Unlike the hero of The Red
Badge of Courage, who deserts in fright
and returns proudly to battle, John
Andrews of Three Soldiers can only takfc
a self-respecting step by deserting after
months of ignominious conformity. The
novel succeeds best in its presentation of
the tedium, de-humanizing
regimentation, and the physical horrors of war.
As such, it is a vividly realized social
document.
The Story:
Private Dan Fuselli was anxious to
become Corporal Dan Fuselli. He had
seen movies of Huns spitting Belgian
babies on their bayonets and then being
chased like rabbits by heroic Yankee
soldiers who were later rewarded with
embraces by the pretty and picturesque
Belgian milkmaids. He looked forward
to the time when his girl, Mabe, writing
from San Francisco, his home town,
would address her letters to Corporal Dan
niselli.
Private First Class Fuselli of the
Medical Corps hated the Army and
everything about it, but he knew that to
become a corporal he must keep clean, keep
his mouth shut, obey the brass, and
continually cajole the sergeant. He was
infuriated one night when he went to
town to see Yvonne and learned that the
sergeant had taken her over. Then,
when he returned to camp, he heard that
the consumptive corporal was back, the
one in whose absence Fuselli had been
made acting corporal. But Private Fuselli
kept his mouth shut. Someday he would
be a corporal, perhaps even a sergeant;
but now he kept his mouth shut.
Finally, after a setback doing endless
K. P. and following his recovery from a
venereal disease, after the Armistice, he
did become Corporal Dan Fuselli. But
by that time his girl had married a naval
officer.
Matters worked out diflFerendy for
Chrisfield. The Army was not as
easygoing as life in the Indiana farm country
had been. The officers shouted at you,
made you do things you hated. You
had to take it. One night Chrisfield was
so furious he pulled a knife on a sergeant
named Anderson, but his friends held
him back and nothing happened. In
Europe, things were not much better.
Occasionally he had a talk about the
stars and the fields with his educated
buddy, John Andrews. Mostly, however,
the war was awful.
The marches were endless, and his
shoulders ached from his heavy pack.
When bombardments came, the marchers
scattered face down in a field. Once
Chrisfield asked Andrews to speak
French for him to a French girl at an
inn, but nothing came of it.
THREE SOLDIERS by John Dos Passos. By permission of the author and the publishers, Houghton Mifflin
Co. Copyright, 1921. by John Dos Passos.
3773

One day, walking alone through a
wood near the front, Chrisfield found
a dead German lying prone. When he
kicked the body over, he saw that it had
no face, only a multicolored, pulpy mass
with green flies hovering around it. In
the man's hand was a revolver—he was
a suicide. Chrisfield ran off panting.
Chrisfield was high-strung. When he
was sitting thinking, a soldier prodded
him and asked him what he was
dreaming about. Chrisfield punched the
fellow in the nose. He and Andy hated
the Y. M. C. A. men who were always
telling the men at the front what brutes
the Huns were and urging them in the
name of Old Glory to kill Germans.
Chrisfield was court-martialed when he
announced that he intended to kill
Sergeant Anderson after the war was over.
One day he went wandering and made
his way silently into the kitchen of a
house near the front. Looking into the
next room, he saw a man in a German
uniform. He reached into his pocket,
pressed the spring on the grenade he
had, withdrew it, and tossed it into the
room. Not long afterward he came
across Anderson, now a lieutenant, seated
wounded in a deserted section of the
wood. Chrisfield had two more grenades
in his pocket, and he threw them at the
man he hated.
After the Armistice, the rumor that
he had killed Anderson somehow leaked
out. Afraid, Chrisfield went A. W. O. L.
and became a refugee in France,
eternally on the move.
John Andrews was a Harvard graduate
and a would-be composer. The Queen
of Sheba section of Flaubert's
Temptation of Saint Anthony kept recurring to
his mind as he washed the barracks
windows, and he thought how fine the
subject would be for a musical
composition. He cursed the Army for slowly
stamping him into its iron mold.
Overseas, he saw action and was more
convinced than ever that war was needless
butchery. He felt happiest away from
the regiment. One day he walked away
from his company in order to be alone.
He was looking at little frogs in a pool
when a shell burst near him. He awoke
on a stretcher.
For a while the hospital was a relief
from the endless orders and general
mechanization of Army routine. Lying
in his bed, he began to realize that he
had respect for himself only when he
thought of rebelling against the system,
of going A. W. O. L. Soon the tedium
of the hospital began to gall him. After
his leg healed, he rejoined his company
reluctantly and full of rebellion. The
Armistice had been signed. When he
heard that he could go to a French
University through a school detachment
being set up, he lied, secured some
recommendations, and found himself in Paris.
In Paris he met Genevieve Rod, a
young Frenchwoman who admired his
piano playing and his artistic tastes. She
thought of artists as men who, because
of their special sensitivity, should be
exempt from the horrors of war. Andrews
disagreed; one worker was like another;
it was the whole of humanity that should
be exempt. One day he left Paris
without official leave for a country trip with
Genevieve. An MP picked him up and
took him to a local office where he was
beaten by several MP's. He was sent
to a labor battalion loading concrete for
a stadium being presented by the
Americans to the French. It was crushing
work. Convinced that Army life was a
menace to human freedom, Andrews
decided to desert, for one man less in the
system made it weaker, by that much.
One night he leaped from a plank and
swam out to a barge in the Seine.
The barge family cared for him for
a few days. lliey sank his uniform in the
river, bought- him new clothes, and as
anarchists proclaimed their solidarity with
him. He went back to Paris to find
Genevieve, and stayed for a while with
Chrisfield and a group of other concealed
deserters. Then, hearing that Genevieve
was at her country place, he joined her
there.
At first he did not tell her of his
desertion. He lived in an inn nearby and
3774

began composing, not about the Queen
of Sheba, but about John Brown,
liberator of slaves. When he finally
confessed his plight to Genevieve, a
noticeable reserve crept into her attitude toward
him. Perhaps, she suggested, he should
five himself up. She could not compre-
end the social motive in his rebellion.
One day he heard an American officer's
voice at the door of the inn below his
window. He thought of tbe prison
sentence he must face. Too late he
discovered that the landlady, experienced in
the ways of impecunious Americans who
were possible deserters, had stolen his
revolver. As the MP's took him away,
the wind blew in through the window
of his room and the music papers on
which he had been working fluttered one
by one to the floor.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Type of work: Imaginative tale
Author: Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: The dream world of an imaginative child
First published: 1871
Principal characters:
Alice, a fanciful child
Dinah, a cat
The Black Kitten
The White Kitten
The White King and Queen
The Red King and Queen
Gnat
Tweedledum and Tweedledbe
humpty dumptt
The Lion and the Unicorn
The White Knight and the Red Knight
Critique:
A continuation of the adventures of
Alice in the marvelous country of
Wonderland, this story takes her into Look-
ing-Glass Land, filled with talking insects
and live chessmen. Although the story
may perhaps be a gentle satire on mid-
Victorian life and customs, it is primarily
a children's fantasy and the reader need
not look for nor concern himself with
deeper meanings. Alice undoubtedly led
a lonely and sometimes confusing life,
and we delight with her in her new,
though peculiar, friends. Indeed, we must
envy the real Alice, a little girl who
could inspire such wonderful stories.
The Story:
Alice was sure the whole thing was
not the white kitten's fault. It must
surely have been the fault of the black kitten.
For Dinah, the mother cat, had been
washing the white kitten's face when it
happened; she certainly had had nothing
to do with it. But the mischievous black
kitten had been unwinding Alice's yarn
and in all ways acting naughty enough
to cause the whole strange affair.
While the black kitten curled up in
Alice's lap to play with the yarn, Alice
told it to pretend that the two of them
could go right through the mirror and
into Looking-Glass House. As she talked,
the glass grew all misty and soft, and in
a moment Alice was through the mirror
and in the Looking-Glass room. The place
was very strange, for although the room
looked just the same as the real room she
had seen in the mirror, the clock and the
fire and the other things in the room
seemed to be alive. Even the chessmen,
for Alice loved to play chess, were alive.
When Alice picked up the White
Queen and set her on the table, the
White Queen screamed in terror,
thinking that a volcano had shaken her about.
The White King had the same fear, but
he was too astonished to cry out. They
seemed not to see or hear Alice, and even
though she wanted to stay and watch
them and read the king's rather funny
poetry, she felt she must look at the
garden before she had to go back through
the Looking Glass. When she started
down the stairs, she seemed to float, not
even once touching the steps.
In the garden every path Alice took
led her straight back to the house. She
asked Tiger lily and Rose and Violet
whether there were any other people in
the garden; she hoped they might help
her find the right path. The flowers told
her there was only one, and Alice
found her to be the Red Queen—but a
very strange chess figure, for the Red
3776

Queen was taller than Alice herself. As
Alice walked toward the Red Queen, she
once more found herself back at the door
of the house. Then Alice figured out that
in order to get to any place in this queer
land one must walk in the offosite
direction. Doing so, she came face to face
with the Red Queen.
The queen took Alice to the top of a
hill. There, spread out below them, was
a countryside that looked like a large
chessboard. Alice, delighted, said that
she would love to play on this board.
Then the Red Queen told her that they
would play and that Alice could be the
White Queen's Pawn. They would start
on the Second Square and—but at that
moment the Red Queen grabbed Alice's
hand and they started to run. Alice had
never run so fast in her life, but even
though she was breathless from such fast
running the things around them never
changed a tiny bit. When they finally
stopped running, the queen told Alice
that in this land one had to run as fast
as she could to stay in the same place and
twice as fast as she could to get
somewhere else. Then the queen showed
Alice the pegs in the Second Square and
told her how to move. At the last peg the
Red Queen disappeared, leaving Alice
alone to continue the game.
Alice started to run down the hill. The
next thing she knew she was on a train
filled with insects and having quite an
unpleasant time because she did not have
a ticket. All of the insects talked
unkindly to her, and to add to her discomfort
the train jumped over the brook and took
them all straight up in the air. When she
came down, she was sitting under a tree,
talking to a Gnat. Gnat was as big as a
chicken but very pleasant. He told her
about the other insects that lived in the
woods; then he too melted away and
Alice had to go on alone.
Turning a corner, she bumped into
two fat little men, called Tweedledum and
Tweedledee, the funniest little creatures
she had ever seen. Everything they said
seemed to have two meanings. It was fun
to listen to the merry little men as they
recited a long poem about a Walrus and
a Carpenter and some Oysters. While
they were explaining the poem to Alice,
she heard a puffing noise, like the sound
of a steam engine. Tweedledee told her
it was the Red King snoring. Sure
enough, they found him asleep.
Tweedledee told Alice that the Red King was
dreaming about her and that if he
stopped dreaming Alice would be gone
for good. Alice cried when they told her
she was not real but only a part of the
Red King's dream.
As she brushed her tears away, she
saw Tweedledum staring in terror at
something on the ground. It was an old
broken rattle, over which the two foolish
men got into a terrible fight. That is,
they talked a terrible fight, but neither
seemed very anxious to have a real
battle. The Crow flew over and frightened
them so that the funny men ran away
into the wood. Alice ran too, and as she
ran she saw a shawl blowing about.
Alice, looking for the owner of the
shawl, saw the White Queen running
toward her. The White Queen was a
very queer person; she lived backward
and remembered things before tney
happened. For example, she hurt before she
pricked her finger. While the queen was
telling these strange things to Alice, the
queen turned into a Sheep and was in a
shop with Alice. It was a very curious
shop, the shelves full of things that
disappeared when Alice looked at them.
Sometimes the boxes went right through
the ceiling. Then Sheep gave Alice some
needles and told her to knit.
As she started to knit, the needles
became oars and she found herself and
Sheep in a little boat rowing in a stream.
The oars kept sticking in the water.
Sheep explained that the crabs were
catching them. Alice picked some
beautiful, fragrant rushes that melted away as
soon as she picked them. Soon, to her
surprise, the river and boat vanished, and
Alice and Sheep were back in the shop.
She bought an egg, even though in this
3777

shop two were cheaper than one, but
when she started to get the egg, as Sheep
would not reach it for her, the egg began
to grow larger and larger and more and
more real, with eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
Then Alice could tell as plain as day
that the egg was Humpty Dumpty.
She had a queer conversation with
Humpty Dumpty, a conversation all rilled
with riddles. They took turns at choosing
the topic to talk about, but most of the
subjects turned into arguments, even
though Alice tried hard to be polite.
Humptv Dumpty explained to Alice what
the "jabberwocky" poem meant, the one
she had seen in the White King's book.
Then, while reciting another poem, he
stopped right in the middle, saying that
was all. Alice thought it very queer but
did not tell Humpty Dumpty so. She
thought it time for her to leave, but as
she walked away there was a terrible
crash that shook the whole forest.
Thousands of soldiers and horses came
rushing toward her, the riders constantly
falling off their horses. Frightened, she
escaped from the wood into the open.
There she found the White King, who
told her that he had sent the soldiers and
horses and that the loud crash she had
heard was the noise of the Lion and
Unicorn fighting for the crown. She went
with the king to watch the fight, which
was indeed a terrible one. It was really
silly of them to fight for the crown, since
it belonged to the White King and he
had no notion of giving it away. After
the fight Alice met the Unicorn a id the
Lion. At the king's order she served them
cake, a very strange cake which cut itself
when she carried the dish around.
A great noise interrupted the party.
When it stopped Alice thought she must
have dreamed the whole thing until the
Red Knight game along, followed soon
by a White Knight. Each claimed her as
a prisoner. Alice thought the whole
business silly, since neither of them could do
anything except fall off his horse and
climb back on again, over and over and
over. At last the Red Knight galloped off
and the White Knight told her that she
would be a queen as soon as she crossed
the next brook. He was supposed to lead
her to the end of the wood, but she spent
the whole journey helping him back on
his horse each time he fell off. The trip
was filled with more queer conversation.
By that time Alice was used to strange
talk from her Looking-Glass friends. At
last they reached the brook. The knight
rode away and Alice jumped over the
brook and into the last square of the
chess board. To her delight, when she
reached that square she felt something
tight on her head—a crown! She was a
queen.
Soon she found the Red Queen and
the White Queen confronting her, very
cross because she also thought she was a
queen. They gave her a test for queens
which she must have passed, for before
long they were calling her "Your
Majesty," and inviting people l j a party which
she was to give. The Red and the White
Queens went to sleep after a time. Alice
watched them until they disappeared.
Then she found herself before a doorway
marked "Queen Alice." All of her new
friends were there, including the queens
who had just vanished. The party was
the most amazing experience of all.
Puddings talked, guests poured wine over
their heads, and the White Queen turned
into a leg of mutton. Alice was
exasperated, so much so that she seized the
tablecloth and jerked it and everything
on it to the floor. Then she grabbed the
Red Queen and shook her as she would
a kitten. But what was this? It was a
kitten she was shaking, the black kitten.
Alice talked to Dinah and both the
kittens about the adventure they had all
had, but the silly kittens did nothing but
purr.
3778

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Type of work: Philosophical comments as parable and prophecy
Author: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
First published: Parts Mil, 1883-1884; Part IV, 1891
Only a philosopher with a great ego
(resulting from a fear of failure) and a
great passion would have conceived the
idea of putting his most radical thoughts
into the mouth of a Persian mystic dead
over five hundred years before the birth
of Jesus. Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, was a
Persian religious leader whose
revolutionary religious activity stimulated the
growth of the religion that bears his
name: Zoroastrianism. Nietzsche fancied
that he found similarities between his
ideas and passions and those of
Zarathustra, but whether he was justified in
using the name of the Persian in order
to give his paradoxical and poetic work
a certain mystical quality is a problem
that can be left to those who moralize
about art. The important word to
remember is "art": Thus Spake Zarathustra
is a work of art in which a radical
inversion of traditional values is expressed
in the guise of poetic prophetic writings.
Nietzsche's prologue, entitled "Zara-
thustra's prologue," tells us that
Zarathustra went up into the mountains when
he was thirty and stayed there ten years.
When he came down he went to the
market place of the nearest town and
said, "I teach you the Superman. Man
is something that is to be surpassed. What
have you done to surpass man?"
The book is Nietzsche's attempt to help
man surpass himself, to become
Superman. Of course, Superman is the
author's conception, and the qualities which
make Superman distinctive can most
readily be understood as the opposite to
whatever is enervating and spiritless in
traditional Christianity. It is easy to read
Nietzsche as one who condemns
whatever is generally regarded as worth-while
and virtuous; he condemns Christianity
as fostering a "slave morality." But what
he says makes some sense, whatever its
excesses, if considered as having been
stimulated by Christianity at its
sentimental and dogmatic worst.
Nietzsche's basic idea is that the most
impo-tant feature of all existence is will,
an idea he received from Schopenhauer.
But, unlike the pessimistic Schopenhauer,
he did not believe that man's objective
should be to abolish the will and,
consequently, to be nothing; on the cont-a-y,
Nietzsche thought that man should seek
to surpass himself, to strengthen his will,
to rise above ordinary men, and to achieve
greatness of will and being. For him,
pride is a great virtue and so is contempt
of everything that ordinary men believe
and worship.
Zarathustra speaks to the spectators of
a rope-dancing performance and tells
them to "remain true to the earth" and
not to believe "those who speak unto vou
of superearthlv hopes!" He tells them that
the greatest thing they can experience is
"the hour of great contempt" in which
they look with loathing upon their
happiness, their reason, and their virtue.
When the rope-dancer falls and is fatally
injured, Zarathustra tells him not to
worry about being dragged to hell; he
assures the dying man that his coul will
be dead before his body is. When the
rope-dancer replies that if this is so, he is
nothing more than an animal, Zarathustra
objects by pointing out that the rope-
dancer had made danger his calling, and
he adds that "... therein there is
nothing contemptible."
Nietzsche's ideas have sometimes been
compared to those of the Nazis, but it is
probably more accurate to suppose that
the virtues Nietzsche endorses are those
which Hemingway extols in his novels.
Both writers ask men to surpass
themselves, to be courageous and proud, to
face danger, to love action and to act, and
to respect those who can kill and be
killed; both writers regard love as im-
portant only when it is biologically
compelling, and even then it is regarded as
3779

something of a nuisance.
Nietzsche is famous not only for his
denunciation of Christianity but also for
his attacks on women. In Section 18 of
the First Part, Zarathustra gives his
views on women: "Everything in woman
is a riddle, and everything in woman
hath one solution—it is called preg-
nancv. . . . Two different thinos want-
eth the true man: danger and diversion.
Therefore wanteth he woman, as the
most dangeous plavthing. Man shall be
trained for war, and woman for the
recreation of the warrior: all else is folly."
Zarathustra concludes with a "little truth"
which the old woman to whom he
expressed his ideas gave him: "Thou goest
to women? Do not forget thy whip!"
Although it is poss'ble for the critic
so to consider Thus Svake Zarathustra
that it becomes sensible to speak of its
philosophic content, it is mo-e helpful to
take the book as a prose poem, a pa-s'on-
ate and sometimes incoherent injunction
to men to become more than they have
been and to go beyond the petty limits
prescribed for them by conventional
moralities.
Nevertheless, when the effort is made
to extract f^om this curious book its
philosophic claims, it soon becomes clear
that for Nietzsche values make sense only
if they a**e relative to the individual, not
only in the respect that whatever is good
or bad is so to a person, but also in the
respect that whatever is good or bad
(acco-dina to Nietzsche) is so for a
perron. The^e would be no point in
telling the author that some men value the
welfare of other persons; such sentimental
attachment to others is what keeps a man
from surpassing himself, Nietzsche
believes. To be great, to surpass himself, a
man must consider his own power and
know how he can best use that power to
extend himself and to satisfy himself.
"One must learn to love oneself . . .
with a wholesome and healthy love," he
writes, "that one may endure to be with
oneself, and not go roving about." To be
mce than man, to discover oneself,
involves giving up the monl habits and
injunctions we learned "almost in the
cradle." Nietzsche claims that with the
wo-ds "brotherly love" thee has been
"the best lying and dissembling, and
especially by those who ha,Te been
burdensome to every one." And he aroues that
"He, however, hath discove-ed himself
who saith: Th;s is my pood and evil:
therewith hath he silenced the mo^e and
the dwarf who s^v: 'Good for all. evil
for all/ " The conclusive statement of the
relativity of values comes at the end of
the secton titled "The Spirit of Gravity,"
from which the Quotations of this
paragraph come: "'This—is now my way,—
whe-e is vours?' Thus did T answer those
who asked me 'the way/ For the way-
it doth not exist!"
In "Old and New Tables" Nietzsche
reiches the extreme roint of demanding
the destruction of old laws and
commandments. Nietzsche venerates the creator of
new values and, consequently, the
destroyer of old ones. The creation of new
values is important, not because it rights
wrongs and liberates men, but because
the creative process itcelf is an exercise
of the will's power; it is the wav to
Superman. Nietzsche argues that the greatest
danger to any man and to mankind comes
f-orn the good and the iusr. that is, from
the defenders of the old morality. He
writes that "The good must crucify him
who deviseth his own virtue!"
Again, when one considers Nietzsche
philosophically, it is possible to find in
Thus Spake Zarathustra many ideas
which connect Nietzsche with modern
Existentialism. He argues that God is
dead, the old God that preached brotherly
love; man faces an abyss and before the
response of petty men the higher man
feels nothing but disgust. The proper
response to the abyss is the creative act
of a man who loves himself and takes
pride in his power to create new values
through his acts. "Doth not—man's future
strive and struggle in you?" he asks.
These ideas are presented to the reader
in the midst of strange accounts of Zara-
thustra's wanderings and encounters with
the mass of the market place and with a
3780

few eccentric persons who in one way or
another suggest the Superman ideal.
To suppose that Nietzsche created the
ideal of the Superman as the destroyer of
old values and the creator of the new, the
teacher of the virtue of pride, in order to
justify a totalitarian state, is to misread
him. Because of the superficial
resemblance of Nazi propaganda to Nietzschean
utterances, it is easy to fall into the error
of taking Nietzsche as an apologist for
a state controlled by self-styled
"supermen." Early in Thus Spake Zarathustra,
Nietzsche condemns the state for its
pretension to be identified with the people.
Not only is it a lie to identify the state
with the people, but it is destructive of
men to believe the lie. Only whce the
state falls does man rise and make
Superman possible.
Many persons dismiss Nietzsche
contemptuously, knowing only that he
contemptuously dismissed Christianity. But
throughout Thus Svake Zarathustra and
Beyond Good and Evil (q.v.), Nietzsche
reveals a constant and impassioned
concern for that part of each man which is
lost, in his opinion, because of slavish
obedience to a conventional, effeminate
morality. His scorn of the "rabble"—"Life
is a well of delight; but where the rabble
also drink, there all fountains are
poisoned."—is not so much a scorn of men
and virtue as it is of those who pervert
themselves and others in the name of
virtue. He writes, "And many a one who
cannot see man's loftiness, calleth it virtue
to see their baseness far too well. . . ."
Nietzsche creates Zarathustra as a
liberator, as one who brings the new word
that all men might be free—not to march
onward in any regimented way, but to
stream outwards as individually creative
beings. Much of what Emerson endorsed
as "self-reliance" Nietzsche endorses as
"the will of power."
If Nietzsche is to be criticized for his
shortcomings, it would be better to call
attention to the absence of development
and order in his work. However one may
sympathize with his love for the creative
man, certain problems remain: How does
one come to choose or to create the new
law? Is it possible for a man desiring to
be Superman—to surpass himself—to be
free and creative in the wrong way, and
thus to destroy himself?
Nietzsche's failure to clarify the
procedure of value-creation is his greatest
fault. His work remains a paean of praise
for an art he never elucidates.
3781

THYESTES
Type of -work: Drama
Author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 B.C.-A.D. 65)
Type of plot: Tragedy of revenge
Time of plot: The Heroic Age
Locale: Greece
First presented: c. A.D. 60
"Principal characters:
Atreus, King of Argos
Thyestes, his brother
Thyestes' Three Sons
Critique:
The most fiendish revenge play in the
history of drama is this Senecan tragedy,
the gruesome story of a banquet at
which the father partakes of his own
children. The play is also a landmark in
dramatic history, for it was the model of many
revenge plays appearing in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries in English
drama. As such, it was the forerunner of
Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy,
Shakespeare's Hamlet, Chapman's
Revenge of Bussy D'Amhois, and Webster's
The Duchess of Malfi. Seneca was not the
first ancient author to make use of the
Thyestes legend. It had been used by
Sophocles, Euripides, Ennius, and Accius.
None of the versions by those authors
have, however, survived the years, and
we do not even have enough information
about them to compare the treatment by
those authors with that of Seneca.
The Story:
Megaera, one of the Furies, summoned
the ghost of Tantalus to return from
Hades to Argos, where Tantalus in life
had been king, to watch revenge, hate,
and havoc spread across that kingdom.
Tantalus was hesitant because of the part
he had played in the story of his royal
house, but Megaera forced him to witness
the fate of his descendants.
The grandsons of Tantalus, the sons of
Pelops, whom Tantalus had sacrificed to
the gods, were at war with one another.
The oldest of Pelops' sons, Atreus, was the
rightful ruler of Argos, but his brother,
Thyestes, had seduced Atreus' wife and
carried her away. With them they took
the golden ram, the symbol of power held
by the ruler of the kingdom. Civil war
broke out, and Thyestes was defeated.
After his defeat he was exiled by Atreus.
But exile was not sufficient punishment
for Thyestes. The fierce hatred of Atreus,
burning over his brother's crimes and his
own misfortune in the loss of his wife,
demanded greater revenge. A tyrant who
believed that death was a comfort to his
subjects, Atreus brooded over fierce and
final vengeance upon his younger brother.
He felt that no act of revenge could be
a crime when committed against a man
who had worked against him as his
brother had. Moreover, he felt that he, as
a king, could do as he wished; private
virtues were not for rulers.
When an attendant suggested that
Atreus put Thyestes to the sword, Atreus
said that death was only an end. He
wanted Thyestes to suffer even greater
torture. The punishment Atreus finally
hit upon was a scheme to feed Thyestes'
own children to him at a banquet.
Atreus took the first step toward
accomplishing his revenge. He sent his own
sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, as
emissaries of good will to Thyestes and asked
the exile, through them, to return to a
place of honor at his brother's side.
Fearing that his sons, forewarned, might lack
the discretion needed to act as friendly
ambassadors, he did not tell them the part
they were playing in his scheme of
revenge.
Thyestes, trusting the king, returned to
Argos with his three sons, including one
named Tantalus, after his great-grand-
3782

father of famous memory. But when he
looked again at familiar landscapes,
Thyestes felt a sense of foreboding. His
footsteps faltered, and his sons noted his
apparent unwillingness to return. The
offer of peace and half the kingdom
seemed to Thyestes unlike his brother's
earlier hatred and fury. He felt that there
had been too much hate and bloodshed
between them for real peace. But his sons,
silencing his doubts, led him on to the
court of Atreus.
Atreus, overjoyed to see his brother and
nephews in his power and apparently
unmindful of the revenge plotted against
them, concealed his hatred and welcomed
them to the kingdom once again.
Atreus announced a great feast to
celebrate his brother's homecoming. Then,
taking the three sons of Thyestes aside, he
led them to a grove behind the palace and
there slew them with all the ceremony of a
sacrifice to the gods. The first he stabbed
in the neck, the second he decapitated,
and the third he killed by a thrust through
the body. The boys, knowing that appeals
were useless, suffered death in silence.
Atreus drew off their blood and prepared
the carcasses like so much beef. The limbs
he quartered and placed upon spits to
roast; the bodies he hacked into small
pieces and placed in pots to boil.
The fire seemed reluctant to burn as an
accomplice to his deed, but Atreus stood
by and acted as cook until the ghastly
banquet was ready. As he cooked, the sky
grew dark and an unnatural night settled
across the face of the earth. The banquet
prepared, Atreus felt that he was the equal
of die gods themselves.
The feast began. After the banquet had
progressed to the point that the guests
were glutted by all they had eaten, Atreus
prepared for Thyestes a drink of wine and
blood drained from the bodies of Thyestes'
sons.
All the while a premonition of evil
hung like a cloud in the back of
Thyestes' mind. Try as he would, he could
not be gay and enjoy the feast, for vague
terrors struck at his heart. When Atreus
gave him the cup of blood and wine, he
could not lift it to drink at first, and when
he did try to drink the wine seemed to roll
around the brim of the cup rather than
pass through his lips. Filled with sudden
fears, Thyestes demanded that Atreus
produce his sons.
Atreus left and returned with the heads
of the three sons on a platter. Thyestes,
chilled with horror at the sight, asked
where the bodies were. He feared that
Atreus had refused them honorable burial
and had left them for the dogs to eat.
Atreus told Thyestes that he had eaten his
own children. Then Thyestes realized
why unnatural night had darkened the
skies.
Still Atreus was not satisfied. He felt
disappointed that he had not planned to
force Thyestes to drink some of his
children's blood while they were yet alive. The
king bragged of what he had done and
described how he himself had committed
the murders and spitted the meat before
the fires.
Atreus, enjoying his revenge, could
never believe that the greatest weight
upon Thyestes' mind was regret that he
had not thought of such revenge and
caused Atreus to eat of his own children,
3783

THE TIME MACHINE
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1895
Principal characters:
The Time Traveler
Weena, a woman the Time
Critique:
The Time Traveler's description of
the people of the future, the weak
Eloi and the predatory Morlocks, has its
roots in some interesting scientific
hypotheses. This speculative chronicle of a
space-time concept and a picture of life
in the world of the future is so exciting,
however, that it may be read merely as
an adventure story. The book is a
mixture of fantasy and pseudo-scientific
romance.
The Story:
After dinner, one evening, the Time
Traveler led the discussion to the subject
of the relationship of time and space.
It was his theory that time was a fourth
dimension, and that his concept could
be proved. To the astonishment of his
guests, he exhibited a model of his Time
Machine, which, he declared, could travel
backward or forward in time. One of
the guests was invited to touch a lever.
To the amazement of all, the machine
disappeared. The Time Traveler
explained that the instrument was no longer
visible because it was traveling into the
past at such great speed that it was
below the threshold of visibility.
The following week the Time Traveler
was not at home to greet his dinner guests
when they arrived, but he had left word
that they were to proceed without him.
Everyone was at the table when their
host came in, dirty from head to toe,
limping, and with a cut on his chin.
After he had changed his clothes and
dined, he told his friends the story of the
THE TIME MACHINE by H. G. Wells. By permis
publishers, Henry Holt & Co., Inc., Copyright, 18^
H. G. Well*.
Traveler meets in the future
day's adventures.
That morning he had taken off on his
Time Machine. As he reeled through
space, the days shot past him like
minutes, the rapid alternation of light and
darkness hurting the Time Traveler's
eyes. Landing and falling from his
machine when he braked too suddenly, he
found himself on the side of a hill. In
the misty light he could see the figure
of a winged sphinx on a bronze pedestal.
As the sun came out, the Time Traveler
saw enormous buildings on the slope.
Some figures were coming toward him.
One was a little man about four feet tall.
Regaining his confidence, the Time
Traveler waited to meet this citizen of
the future.
Soon a group of these creatures
gathered around the voyager. Without a
common language, he and his new
acquaintances had to communicate with
signs. After they had examined the Time
Machine, from which he had the presence
of mind to remove the levers, one of them
asked him if he had come from the sun.
The Time Traveler was led to one of
the large buildings, where he was seated
upon a cushion and given fruit to eat.
Everyone was a vegetarian, animals
having become extinct. When he had eaten,
he tried to learn his new friends'
language, but without much success. These
people, who called themselves the Eloi,
were not able to concentrate and tired
quickly.
Free to wander about, the Time
Traveler climbed a hill and from the
lion of the Executors, estate of H. G. Wells, and the
5, by Henry Holt & Co., Inc. Renewed 1923, by
3784

crest saw the ruins of an enormous
granite structure. Looking at some of the
creatures who were following him, he
realized that all wore similar garb and
had the same soft, rounded figures.
Children could be distinguished only by their
size.
The Time Traveler realized that he
was seeing the sunset of humanity. In
the society of the future there was no
need for strength. The world was at
peace and secure. The strong of body
or mind would only have felt frustrated.
As he looked about to find a place to
sleep, he saw that his Time Machine had
disappeared. He tried to wake the people
in the building in which he had dined,
but he succeeded only in frightening
them. At last he went back to the lawn
and there, greatly worried over his
plight, fell asleep.
The next morning he managed to trace
the path the Time Machine made to the
base of the sphinx, but the bronze doors
in the pedestal were closed. The Tirr.e
Traveler tried to intimate to some of the
Eloi that he wished to open the doors,
but they answered him with looks of
insult and reproach. He attempted to
hammer in the doors with a stone, but he
soon stopped from weariness.
Weena, a young girl he rescued from
drowning, became the Time Traveler's
friend and guide. On the fourth
morning, while he explored one of the ruins,
he saw eyes staring at him from the
dark. Curious, he followed a small,
apelike figure to a well-like opening, down
which it retreated. He was convinced
that this creature was also a descendant
of man, a subterranean species that
worked below ground to support the
dwellers in the upper world.
Convinced that the Morlocks, as the
subterranean dwellers were called, were
responsible for the disappearance of his
Time Machine and hoping to learn more
about them, he climbed down into one
of the wells. At its bottom he discovered
a tunnel which led into a cavern in which
he saw a table set with a joint of meat.
The Morlocks were carnivorous. He was
able to distinguish, too, some enormous
machinery.
The next day the Time Traveler and
Weena visited a green porcelain museum
containing animal skeletons, books, and
machinery. Since they had walked a
long distance, he planned to sleep in the
woods that night with Weena and to
build a fire to keep the dark-loving
Morlocks away. When he saw three
crouching figures in the brush, however, he
changed his mind and decided he and
Weena would be safer on a hill beyond
the forest. He started a fire to keep their
enemies at a distance.
When he awoke the fire had gone out,
his matches were missing, and Weena
had vanished. A fire he had started
earlier was still burning, and while he
slept it had set the forest on fire. Between
thirty and forty Morlocks perished in the
blaze while the Time Traveler watched.
When daylight returned, the Time
Traveler retraced his steps to the sphinx.
He slept all day and in the evening
prepared to ram open the doors in the
pedestal with the lever he had found in
the porcelain palace. He found the
doors open, his machine in plain view.
As a group of Morlocks sprang at him,
he took off through space.
The Time Traveler had his encounter
with the Morlocks and the Eloi in the
year 802,701. On his next journey he
moved through millions of years, toward
that time when the earth will cease
rotating. He landed on a deserted beach,
empty except for a flying animal, which
looked like a huge white butterfly, and
some crab-like monsters. On he traveled,
finally halting thirty million years after
the time he had left his laboratory. In
that distant age the sun was setting.
It was bitter cold and it began to snow.
All around was deathly stillness.
Horrified, the Time Traveler started back
toward his present.
That evening, as he told his story, his
guests grew skeptical. In fact, the Time
Traveler himself had to visit his
laboratory to make sure his machine existed.
The next day, however, all doubts
3785

ceased, for one of his friends watched
him depart on his vehicle. It was this
friend who wrote the story of the Time
Traveler's experiences three years later.
The Time Traveler had not reappeared
during that time, and his friends
speculated on the mishap which had made
him a lost wanderer in space and time.
3786

THE TIME OF MAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1886-1941)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Kentucky
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
Ellen Chesser, a farm girl
Nellie, her mother
Henry, her father
Jasper Kent, her husband
Jonas, her fiancl
Critique:
The Time of Man is a farm story
that strikes a nice balance between the
sordid and the romantic. Here we have
the life of the migrant Kentucky farmer
as it is, unvarnished and plain. But
deeper, we see the springs from which
these people draw their strength. They
lived in poverty, with little hope of
security. But in their love for the soil
and in their fierce independence they
find meaning for their lives. To call
this novel a story of local color would
be true but inadequate. The regionalism
of The Time of Man is but a convenient
frame for the depiction of human and
enduring values.
The Story:
Henry and Nellie Chesser had been
on the road a long time. People
sometimes called the Chessers and their
friends gipsies, and they did tell fortunes
and swap horses and mules. But Henry
liked the earth, and he worked as a
tenant for different farmers from time
to time. Only his restless spirit kept him
from settling somewhere permanently.
One day Henry's wagon broke down.
The others could not wait for the
Chessers, and Henry haunted the smithy,
hoping to speed repairs. But when Hep
Bodine offered him twenty dollars a
month, a tenant house, and a garden
spot, he accepted. The house had only
THE TIME OF MAN by Elizabeth Madox Roberts.
Copyright, 1926, by The Viking Pre», Inc.
f one room and a loft, but it was bettei
e than sleeping outside.
2 Henry's daughter, Ellen, was greatly
r disappointed. She hated to leave Tes-
t sie, her great friend, the fortune-teller,
i Ellen knew no one on the Bodine farm,
y nor did she make friends easily. Mrs.
f Bodine even ordered her out of the
1 berry patch. Only Joe Trent, home
y from college, noticed her.
1 Joe was elegant, always wearing shoes
i and clothes of different kinds of cloth,
i He would joke with Ellen as she got in
t the firewood. She was growing up, and
d Joe awakened some spark of longing in
her thin body. Then one day Joe drove
past her with Emphira Bodine. He
pretended not to see Ellen* in her skimpy
n skirt above her bare feet and legs. After
:- that, Joe would stand behind a big bush
r where the men from the house could
:s not see him and call to Ellen. Ellen was
y ashamed. She was glad when her father
a decided to move over to the Wakefield
e farm.
q Their new house was better; even the
loft had once been papered. Miss Tod
i. Wakefield let Ellen look after the
>- turkeys for money wages. So with set-
7, ting out tobacco plants, getting in the
p firewood, and going regularly to the big
a barnyard, she settled into a pleasant
n routine. By fall Nellie was able to get
y Ellen a store dress and new shoes.
By permission of the publishers, The Viking Press, Inc
3787

In an old abandoned barn where she
went to look for turkey eggs she often
noticed Amanda Cain waiting in the
hay loft for Scott MacMurtrie, who was
married to Miss Cassie. All the field
workers knew of the affair, and they
discussed eagerly how Miss Cassie would
lay into Scott when she learned he was
carrying on with her cousin Amanda,
for Miss Cassie was strong and
independent. One day Scott and Amanda
disappeared. That night Ellen was
awakened by the tolling bell on the
MacMurtrie place. She hurried over,
outdistancing her father, who thought
the barn must be on fire. Ellen found
the old Negress pulling the bell rope in
a frenzy. Miss Cassie had hanged
herself.
Dorine moved into one of the tenant
houses. She was merry and gay and
attracted others to her. She and Ellen
became friends. At her house Ellen
went to her first party. Shy, she hoped
desperately that no one would notice
her. But in her agony of timidity she
sang a ballad her father had taught her,
and she was accepted as one of the
group. At their dances and games and
on their Sunday walks she went
sometimes with Jonas Prather but more often
with Sebe Townley. Sebe was kind and
gentle, but she liked Jonas better.
Jonas took little part in their gay
dances. He would call the figures and
then retire with the old folks. He seemed
to withdraw from contact with girls;
some even said he had got religion.
One night Jonas told Ellen he wanted
her to marry him. When he went away
to work for wages, he promised to come
back during the summer to get married.
Ellen had a letter from him and she
wrote him a letter in return. But the
summer wore on and Jonas did not come.
At last she heard that Jonas had
married Sallie Lou.
When Henry rented a patch of
twenty-five acres called the Orkeys place,
Ellen felt a sense of escaping from her
troubles. Their new home had once
been a toll house. It contained three
rooms on one floor, and Ellen's bedroom
was weather-tight.
The nearest neighbors were on the
Wingate place. Old Mrs. Wingate,
half mad, sat suspiciously in her house
all day long and Jasper Kent worked her
farm on half shares. Albert Wingate,
the son, seldom came to the farm, and
when he did appear he would often be
roaring drunk. He would beg or steal
money from his mother and sometimes
he would turn the house upside down
looking for more. When he began
driving off catde in which Jasper had a half
interest, Jasper felt his anger mount.
Although Jasper prudently kept his
own pigs in a corral far from the house,
Albert discovered them. One morning
Jasper found the corral empty; Albert
had sold the pigs to a passing trader.
That night Albert and Jasper fought in
the barn. Jasper was stronger than his
opponent. Then Albert drew a gun.
Jasper wrested it away and threw it in
the brush. But in the fighting Jasper
forgot his lantern on the barn floor.
When the building went up in flames,
Jasper fled. He had been in jail before,
and he was afraid.
He found work on the Phillips farm.
Joe Phillips offered a house to Jasper.
So Jasper and Ellen were married and
set up housekeeping in their own place.
Their house was tight, and Joe promised
to add a room. Ellen was carrying her
first child and was very content with
her marriage.
The letter they had been dreading
came, an indictment for arson drawn up
against Jasper for the burning of the
Wingate barn. Henry was Jasper's
witness and Jasper was freed. At last Ellen
and Jasper seemed to be free of all care;
they had only to work the land and
raise their family. Each year they had
another child.
Following the custom of the migrant
people, they left the Phillips farm. It
became a matter of indifference to Ellen
where she lived; a year on the Goodrich
3788

place, a year on the McKnight farm—
it was all the same. Then they moved
back to the Phillips farm. Joe Phillips,
greatly attracted to Ellen, spoke sweet
words to her. When Jasper began to go
off for all-night carouses, Ellen accepted
Joe's attentions. She did not tell Jasper
right away about the new baby she was
carrying. When she did, Jasper was
bitter and swore it was Joe's. But when
the sickly child was born, Jasper was
very fond of it. The baby died in its
third year.
When a nearby barn burned, suspicion
unjustly fell on Jasper. One night masked
raiders came to their home, seized Jasper
while he slept, and bound him with
ropes. They beat him savagely. Ellen
brought him in and washed his bleeding
welts. Jasper was greatly shamed.
The family loaded all their goods on
the wagon and set out. They scarcely
knew where they were going, but it
would be far away. As they went they
dreamed of a homeplace of land they
could call their own. Perhaps they could
even set out trees for an orchard,
somewhere, someday.
3789

TIMON OF ATHENS
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare CI564-1616)
Type of plot: Tragedy of delusions
Time of plot: Fourth century B.C.
Locale: Athens and the nearby seacoast
First presented: c. 1605-1608
Principal characters:
Timon, an Athenian lord
Flavius, his faithful steward
Apemantus, Timon's candid friend
Alcibiades, an Athenian general
Critique:
Shakespeare did not finish Timon of
Athens. Perhaps he was able to see that
this bitter play, which was another of
his dramatic commentaries on enormities
brought about by ingratitude, was too
stark in its contrasts and too obviously
moralistic ever to be successful with the
public. There is no neutral ground here
to which one can retreat to draw his
breath: the good are almost impossibly
good, the bad are unbelievably bad.
Shakespeare derived the plot from the
life of Mark Antony in North's
Plutarch's Lives, as well as from Lucian's
dialogue, Timon, which was available to
him in Latin and French.
The Story:
In Athens, the house of Timon, a
wealthy lord of the city, was the scene
of much coming and going. Poets, artists,
artisans, merchants, politicians, and well
wishers in general sought the friendship
and favors of a man whose generosity
knew no bounds. While waiting to speak
to Timon, a poet disclosed his vision to
an artist: Timon was depicted as the
darling of Dame Fortune, and his friends
and acquaintances spared no effort in
admiring his favored position. But, so went
the vision, Fortune turned and Timon
tumbled into penury, his friends doing
nothing to comfort him.
Timon joined the crowd of suitors in
his reception chamber. When a
messenger reported that Ventidius, his friend,
had been jailed for a debt, Timon
promised to pay the debt and to support
Ventidius until he became solvent again. An
old man complained that one of Timon's
servants had stolen the heart of his only
daughter. Timon promised to match the
girl's dowry with an equal sum. Then he
received the poet and the painter and
the jeweler graciously, accepting their
shameless flattery. Apemantus, a crudely
candid friend, declared broadly that these
flatterers and seekers of bounty were a
pack of knaves. Alcibiades, a great
military leader, came with a troop of
followers to dine with Timon. As all prepared
to feast at Timon's bounteous table,
Apemantus cursed them roundly.
A great feast was served to the
accompaniment of music. Ventidius, having
been freed from jail, offered to repay the
money spent in his behalf, but Timon
declared that friendship would not allow
him to accept Ventidius' money. When
Apemantus warned Timon that men will
readily slay the man whose food and
drink they consume, Timon expressed
his gratitude at having so many friends to
share his generosity; he wished,
however, that he might be poorer in order
that these good friends might know the
joy of sharing their largess with him.
Timon's eyes filled with tears, so
overcome was he by the sentiments of
friendship, as a group of costumed Athenian
ladies presented lavish gifts to him from
men of wealth. Timon then presented
rich gifts to his departing friends.
Flavius, his steward, observed that his master's
3790

infinite generosity had almost emptied
his coffers. Timon told Apemantus that
he would give him gifts, too, if he would
cease railing at these felicities of
friendship.
Before long Timon was reduced to
insolvency and near beggary. A senator to
whom he owed a great sum of money sent
his servant to collect. Other servants of Ti-
mon's creditors had gathered in front of his
house. Timon, who had never given Flavi-
us a chance to explain that there was no
more money, asked the steward the reason
for the crowd outside. When Flavius told
him the truth, Timon ordered the sale
of all his lands. Flavius disclosed that the
lands had been sold or mortgaged. Timon,
refusing to share Flavius* alarm, declared
that he now had the chance to test his
friends. He directed his servants to
borrow money from his friends Lucius,
Lucullus, and Sempronius. Then they were
to go to the senators and borrow more.
Flavius disclosed that he had already
tried without success to borrow from
these sources. Timon made excuses for
them, however, and suggested that the
servants try Ventidius, who had recently
come into a large fortune.
The servant who went to Lucullus was
told that times were difficult and that
Timon's friendship was not sufficient
security for a loan. When Lucullus offered
the servant a bribe to say that he had
been unable to see Lucullus, the servant,
horrified, threw down the bribe money
and departed in disgust. Lucius claimed
that he, needing money, had hoped to
borrow from Timon. A third servant went
to Sempronius. Upon learning that
Timon had been denied a loan by Lucullus,
Lucius, and even by Ventidius,
Sempronius, pretending to be hurt that Timon
had not sent to him first, also refused.
As Timon continued to be importuned
by his creditors' servants, he went out in
a rage and bade them cut what he owed
their masters out of his heart. Still
enraged, he directed Flavius to invite all
of his creditors to a feast.
Alcibiades, meanwhile, pleaded in the
senate for the remission of the death
sentence on a veteran soldier who had
committed murder. The senators, deaf to his
arguments that the man had killed in
self-defense, persisted in their decision.
When Alcibiades continued his plea, the
senators sentenced him, on pain of death,
to be banished from Athens.
At Timon's house, tables were
arranged as though for a great banquet.
Timon's guests, apologizing profusely for
their inability to honor his requests for
money, appeared in expectation of a
lavish banquet. When Timon bade them
eat, they discovered that the covered
dishes were filled with warm water.
Timon then cursed them for what they
were, threw the water in their faces, and
drove them out of his house.
A confirmed misanthrope, Timon left
Athens. For the moment he focused all
of his hatred on Athens and her citizens,
but he predicted that his curses would
eventually encompass all mankind.
Flavius, meanwhile, announced to his fellow
servants that their service in Timon's
house had come to an end; what little
money he had, Flavius shared with his
fellows. He pocketed his remaining
money and declared his intentions of
seeking out his old master.
One day Timon, who was living in a
cave near the seashore, dug for roots
and discovered gold. As he was cursing
the earth for producing this root of all
evil, Alcibiades appeared, accompanied
by his two mistresses. Timon cursed the
three and told them to leave him. When
Alcibiades disclosed that he was on his
way to besiege Athens, Timon gave him
gold and wished him every success. He
also gave the two women gold, after
exhorting them to infect the minds and
bodies of all men with whom they came
in contact. When Alcibiades and his
troops marched away, Timon continued to
dig roots for his dinner.
Apemantus appeared to rail at Timon
for going to the opposite extreme from
that which had caused his downfall. He
declared that wild Nature was as cruel
3791

as men, that Timon, therefore, would do
well to return to Athens and flatter men
who were still favored by Fortune. After
Apemantus had left, a band of cutthroats,
having heard that Timon possessed a
great store of gold, went to the cave.
When they told Timon that they were
destitute, he threw gold at them and
ordered them to practice their malign art
in Athens. So bitter were Timon's words
that they left him, determined to
abandon all violence.
Flavius, finding the cave, wept at the
pitiful state to which his master had
fallen. Timon, at first rude to his
faithful steward, was almost overcome by
Flavius' tears. He gave Flavius gold,
wished him well, and admonished him
to succor only dogs.
The reports of Timon's newly found
wealth having reached Athens, the poet
and the painter went to his cave. He
greeted them sarcastically, praised them
for their honesty, and gave them gold to
use in destroying other sycophants and
flatterers. Flavius returned, accompanied
by two senators. The senators,
apologizing for the great wrongs done Timon,
offered to lend him any amount of
money he might desire. They promised
him, furthermore, command of the
Athenian forces in the struggle against Alci-
biades. Timon wished a plague on both
Athens and Alcibiades. His prescription
to the Athenians for ending their troubles
was that they come to the shore and
hang themselves on a tree near his cave.
When he retreated into his cave, the
senators, knowing their mission fruitless,
returned to Athens.
In Athens, the senators begged
Alcibiades to spare the city because its
importance transcended the petty griefs
of an Alcibiades or a Timon. Alcibiades
agreed to spare Athens only on the
condition that those who had offended him
and Timon should be punished. As the
city gates were opened to the besiegers,
a messenger reported that Timon was
dead. Alcibiades read Timon's epitaph,
copied by the messenger. It reaffirmed
Timon's hatred of mankind and
expressed his desire, in death, that no one
pause at his grave.
3792

'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE
Type of work: Drama
Author: John Ford (1586-1640?)
Type of plot: Horror tragedy
Time of plot: Renaissance period
Locale: Parma, Italy
First presented: c. 1624
Principal characters:
Florio, a citizen of Parma
Giovanni, his son
Annabella, his daughter
Putana, her duenna
Donado, another citizen of Parma
Bergetto, his foolish nephew
Soranzo, a nobleman
Grimaldi, a Roman gendeman
Vasques, Soranzo's servant
Richardetto, a supposed physician
Hippolita, his wife
Friar Bonaventura, Giovanni's tutor and confessor
Critique:
Poetically, John Ford followed closely
the magnificent tradition established by
Shakespeare and Webster., but the
vehicles for his poetry were marked by
Caroline decadence. Perhaps Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy C1621) led
Ford to probe the more obscure aspects
of human relationships. In 'Tis Pity
She's a Whore, the main plot is
concerned with brother-sister incest. Surely
Ford grew too expansive in plotting this
play, for the several substantial subplots
anticipated early in the drama fade out
somewhat indecisively. The intensity of
the main plot, while it may have drawn
Ford away from his original intentions,
compensates for the resulting
^conclusiveness of structure.
The Story:
In Parma a brilliant young gendeman
named Giovanni fell in love with his
sister Annabella. Maddened by his
passion, Giovanni went to his tutor, Friar
Bonaventura, for advice and shocked the
friar by his use of fallacious arguments
to justify his unnatural love. The friar,
deploring Giovanni's willingness to
ignore religious and moral strictures on
such a love, advised the youth to remain
in his room for a week, at the end of
which time he surely would realize the
enormity of his passion.
When Grimaldi, a Roman gentleman,
and Vasques, servant of Soranzo, met in
front of Florio's house, Vasques thrashed
Grimaldi. Florio, the father of Giovanni
and Annabella, accompanied by Donado
and Soranzo, came upon the fracas and
separated the antagonists. Soranzo
explained to Florio that Vasques was
disturbed because Grimaldi, obviously an
inferior man to the noble Soranzo, was
competing with Soranzo for the hand of
Annabella.
During the street disturbance
Annabella and her duenna, Putana, appeared
on the balcony. Putana pointed out to
Annabella that she was being fought
over, that she should be proud to have
two such excellent suitors. Although
Putana especially praised Soranzo,
Annabella was plainly not interested. As they
stood on the balcony Bergetto, the
foolish nephew of Donado, passed by and
declared his intention of winning the
hand of Annabella.
Giovanni, returning from his talk with
the friar, approached and entered the
house. Annabella, not recognizing him
at first, praised his manly beauty. Then,
realizing who he was, she hastened into
3793

the house to join him and to comfort him
in the melancholy from which he
appeared to suffer.
Giovanni despaired. The more he
strove to forget his love for Annabella,
the more he seemed to love her. When
Annabella joined him, no longer able to
contain his maddening obsession, he
confessed his love. Then he offered her his
dagger and begged her to love him or to
end his life. Annabella expressed dismay
at Giovanni's revelation. He assured her
that the Church had approved of his love
for her. She then revealed that she loved
him with equal passion.
Donado, in the meantime, advanced
the cause of his nephew Bergetto. Florio,
pleased by Donado's promise to leave
the youth a fortune, said that the final
choice must be left to Annabella herself.
After Giovanni and Annabella had
consummated their love, he expressed the
jealous fears of a lover. Annabella
assured him that she found her suitors
repulsive. When Giovanni had left her,
Annabella was introduced to Richardet-
to, a supposed doctor, and his niece
Philotis, who carried a lute. Florio had
retained the doctor because Annabella
appeared to him to be sickly.
Meanwhile Soranzo, distracted in his
love for Annabella, was confronted by
Hippolita, a woman he had wronged.
She told him that her husband was aead
and that he must fulfill his promise to
marry her now that she was a widow.
Soranzo, preoccupied with his love for
Annabella, dismissed her. Vasques
encouraged Hippolita, however, by telling
her that perhaps Soranzo would be more
amenable another day. Hippolita then
tried to enlist Vasques' aid in a plot to
avenge herself on Soranzo. Vasques
pretended to become her accomplice.
Richardetto privately informed
Philotis that during a journey away from
home he had had his death reported so
that he might return to Parma in
disguise and discover the adulterous
activities of his wife Hippolita. Grimaldi asked
Richardetto for a love potion which
would win Annabella's love. Richardetto,
after assuring Grimaldi that Soranzo was
his only rival, promised to provide him
with a poison for his rapier so that he
might mortally wound Soranzo in a fight.
The foolish Bergetto, meanwhile,
continued his silly courtship of Annabella.
Donado, after reading an inane letter
Bergetto had written to Annabella,
advised his nephew to remain indoors lest
his idiocy get him into trouble. After
Donado left, Bergetto went with his
servant Poggio to see a prodigious horse
in a side show.
When Giovanni revealed the state of
his affair with Annabella, the friar,
shocked because the youth had refused
to heed his warnings, decided to visit
Annabella.
At Florio's house Donado presented an
acceptable letter, allegedly written by
Bergetto, to Annabella. She expressed no
interest. When her father suggested that
she send an heirloom ring to Bergetto,
she had to admit that Giovanni had taken
it to wear. Quite frankly, she told
Donado that it would be impossible for her
ever to love Bergetto. Bergetto arrived
with word that he had allowed himself to
be thrashed in the street and that a doctor
newly arrived in Parma had ministered
to his wounds. Bergetto also disclosed
that he had been charmed by the
doctor's niece, who had kissed him.
Donado, accepting defeat, asked Annabella
to keep as a marriage gift a jewel that
he had given her as a courtship token
from Bergetto. Later, encountering his
sister alone, Giovanni jealously
commanded her to return the jewel.
Florio next chose Soranzo as the suitor
most acceptable to him. Annabella
disclosed to Soranzo that she was
determined to remain a maid, but that if she
ever married it should be to Soranzo.
Giovanni listened secretly to the
conversation in order to convince himself
of her fidelity to him. As Annabella and
Soranzo talked, the girl was suddenly
taken sick.
Later, when Putana told him that An-
5794

nabella was with child, Giovanni directed
Putana to admit no doctor to his sister
and to tell Florio that Annabella had
merely suffered from indigestion. In the
meantime Florio, conferring with Rich-
ardetto about his daughter's health,
learned that Annabella suffered nothing
more than ills common to young
womanhood and that she should be married.
Florio, ignorant of Annabella's refusal of
Soranzo, decided that Soranzo and his
daughter should be married by Friar
Bonaventura immediately. Giovanni,
meanwhile, conducted the friar to the
house, ostensibly to give spiritual
comfort to his sister. Richardetto, having
learned of Florio's plans for the marriage
of Soranzo and Annabella, gave Grimaldi
the promised poison.
Annabella, in her chamber, confessed
to the friar and, fearful of eternal
damnation, agreed to his suggestion that she
marry Soranzo immediately. Soranzo was
called and, in the friar's presence, the
pair made their betrothal vows. The
wedding ceremony was to take place in
two days' time. Vasques, pretending to
be Hippolita's ally, reported that Soranzo
would marry Annabella.
Grimaldi waited outside the monastery
for the arrival of Soranzo and Annabella.
Bergetto and Philotis, sent by
Richardetto, also went to the monastery to be
married. In the dark Grimaldi mistook
Bergetto for Soranzo and mortally wounded
the silly youth.
Having murdered Bergetto, Grimaldi
took refuge in the house of the cardinal,
who, confronted by Donado, Florio,
Richardetto, and police officers, disclosed
that he already knew of Bergetto's death.
Grimaldi, confessing to the murder,
insisted that he had mistaken one man for
another. The cardinal declared that
Grimaldi, because of his noble Roman blood,
would be protected by the Church.
Donado and Florio, deploring what seemed
to them a gross injustice, left the
cardinal's house.
Two days later Soranzo and Annabella
were married. Giovanni, racked by
jealousy and grief, refused to drink a health
to the newlyweds. His slight was
overlooked, however, when Hippolita,
disguised, arrived with some masked maidens
to present a masque in honor of
Annabella. Hippolita, joining the hands of the
couple, called for a cup of wine to drink
their health. Vasques handed her a
poisoned cup intended for Soranzo. After
Hippolita had drunk the fatal potion,
Vasques revealed his trickery. Hippolita
died cursing the marriage. The friar
expressed to Giovanni his fear of that omen
of blood at the marriage feast.
When Soranzo, having discovered his
wife's pregnancy, berated her viciously,
Annabella tortured him with words of
praise for the father of her unborn child.
Soranzo, threatening to kill her if she did
not disclose the identity of her lover,
drew his sword. Vasques entered and
calmed his master; he advised Soranzo
to be gentle with Annabella and to let
his servant seek out the lover. Soranzo
then turned to Annabella and apologized
for his brutality, declaring that one must
have compassion for weaknesses of the
flesh.
Vasques tricked Putana into telling
him about Annabella's love for her
brother. When Putana had declared that
Giovanni was the father of Annabella's
child, Vasques called in a band of
ruffians and at his command they gagged
Putana and carried her away to put out
her eyes. Meeting Giovanni, Vasques
told him that Annabella was alone in her
chamber and suggested that he go to he*.
Annabella, filled with remorse for her
sins, stood at her window and declared
her repentance. The friar, passing below,
was amazed at her change of heart. She
threw down to him a letter in which she
urged her brother also to repent. The
friar delivered the letter to Giovanni, who
read that their incestuous love had been
discovered. As he expressed his disbelief,
Vasques brought Giovanni an invitation
from Soranzo to attend his birthday feast.
Giovanni, in spite of the friar's warning,
promised to be present. The friar,
convinced that matters were coming to a
3795

dreadful conclusion, left Parma.
While Soranzo was greeting his guests,
Giovanni went to his sister in her
chamber. When he chided her for her
repentance, Annabella warned him that the
feast had been arranged in order that
Soranzo might destroy them both.
Giovanni, determined to take a desperate
course, told Annabella to pray and to
forgive him; then he stabbed her. With
Annabella's heart on the point of his
dagger, he went to the banquet hall. There,
to the amazement of his father, he
confessed his incestuous love. Vasques, who
had gone to Annabella's chamber,
returned with word that she was dead.
Florio collapsed and died. Soranzo and
Giovanni drew and fought, and Soranzo
fell, mortally wounded. Then, while
Vasques and Giovanni fought, Vasques
signaled his ruffians, who surrounded
Giovanni and mortally wounded him. He
died still unrepentant of his unnatural
love.
Blind Putana, having confirmed the
relationship between brother and sister,
was condemned to be burned to death
for her part in the affair. Vasques was
banished from Italy.
3796

THE TITAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Theodore Dreiser CI871-1945)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: 1890's
Locale: Chicago
First published: 1914
Principal characters:
Frank Algernon Cowperwood, a multimillionaire and financial genius
Aileen Cowperwood, his mistress and then his wife
Peter Laughlin, his business partner
Stephanie Platow, Cowperwood's mistress
Berenice Fleming, Cowperwood's prot£g£e and mistress
Critique:
Dreiser's full-length portrait of a great
financial wizard is one of the triumphs of
the naturalistic school of writers.
Between 1890 and the publication of this
book scores of novels dealing with the
American financier were published, but
none approached the thoroughness and
the psychological insight of The Titan,
which continues the psychological and
sociological study of Cowperwood begun
by Dreiser in The Financier. While the
man Dreiser portrays is wholly without
a conventional moral code, he is
nevertheless a strong man with a purpose.
The author makes no effort to judge
his character, and the reader feels that it
is best if he, too, refrains from passing
judgment.
The Story:
Released from a Pennsylvania prison
in the 1870's, Frank Algernon
Cowperwood, still young and a millionaire, went
to Chicago to begin a new life with
Aileen Butler, his mistress. Within a
short time Cowperwood made friends
among influential businessmen there.
Divorced by his first wife,
Cowperwood finally married Aileen. He
prepared to increase his fortune, to become
a power in the city, and to conquer its
society. To this end, he sought an
enterprise which would quickly yield him
heavy returns on his investment. His
first battle among the financial barons of
THE TITAN by Theodore Dreiser. By permission of
Publishing Co. Copyright, 1914, by John Lane Co.
Chicago was to gain control of the gas
companies.
At the same time the Cowperwoods
made their first attack on Chicago society,
but with little success. Aileen
Cowperwood was too high-spirited and lacking
in the poise which would win her social
success. Then Cowperwood became
involved in several lawsuits and his earlier
political-economic disgrace in
Philadelphia was exposed in the Chicago
newspapers. But after a long battle
Cowperwood was able to force the rival gas
companies to buy out his franchises at a
profit to himself.
Unfortunately, the deal brought social
defeat, at least temporarily, to the
Cowperwoods, for his rivals in finance were
the social powers of Chicago at that
time. Cowperwood turned once again
to a mistress, but the affair ended when
Aileen attempted to kill her rival.
For several years a cable-car system
of street railways claimed most of
Cowperwood's time. He bought control of
the horsecar company which served the
north side of Chicago. Then the naturally
promiscuous temperament of
Cowperwood intruded itself when he met dark,
lush Stephanie Platow. Ten years
younger than his wife and interested in
art, literature, and music, she was able to
occupy a place in his life Aileen could
never fill.
Mrs. Theodore Dreiser and the publishers, The World
3797

While involved in that affair, Cow-
perwood coerced the west side street
railway company into giving its franchise
to him. But the sweetness of his victory
was partially lost by the exposure of
Stephanie as another man's lover.
Meanwhile financial forces were at work
against Cowperwood. Through two city
bosses, these forces hoped to play the
city politicians against Cowperwood, for
without the support of the city council
to aid him with franchises and grants
the financier would find himself helpless
to merge all the street railways of the
city under his control.
The first battle was fought in an
election to gain possession of the
Chicago city council. It was far more
painful for Cowperwood to learn at this time
that his wife had been unfaithful to him
than to discover that he had arrayed the
whole financial and social element of the
city against himself. The loss of the
election proved no permanent setback to
Cowperwood, however, nor did his wife's
infidelity. From the latter he recovered,
and the first was soon undone by his
opponents because they did not pave
the way with favors and money when
they tried to push bills through the new
reform council. Even the new mayor
was soon an ally of Cowperwood.
Soon afterward Cowperwood met
Berenice Fleming, daughter of a procuress,
who was being prepared in a fashionable
boarding-school for a career in society.
Taking her and her family under his
wing, Cowperwood became her lover
with some misgivings, for the girl was
but seventeen and he was fifty-two at
the time. By this time his enemies were
trying to gain franchises for elevated
lines powered by electricity.
This new effort by his financial rivals
meant that his own street railways had
to be converted to electricity, and he
had to compete for at least a share of
the elevated lines to prevent his ruin.
The south side "L" was already a tre
mendous success because of the World's
Fair of 1893, and the whole city was
now clamoring for better transportation
service. Cowperwood's opponents held
control over the city banks, which
prevented those institutions from lending
him funds needed to begin his
operations. When he attempted to secure funds
in the East, Cowperwood discovered that
his assets were in question. But by one
master stroke the financier wiped out
any question of his ability and his credit;
he donated three hundred thousand
dollars to the local university for a telescope
and observatory.
Even with unlimited credit, the
problem of gaining franchises was not easy.
He was determined to keep control of
the Chicago transportation system, but
he began to realize that neither he nor
his wife could ever become socially
acceptable there. He decided to build a
mansion in New York to hold his
collection of art and be his card of entry into
society.
Meanwhile, having obtained his
franchises, he began work on Chicago
elevated lines. Cowperwood's enemies
planned to let him overreach himself, so
that they could force him out of
Chicago financially as well as socially. Then
the collapse of the American Match
Corporation, partially engineered by
Cowperwood, began a series of runs on the
Chicago banks controlled by his enemies.
When their attempts to recall the
enormous loans made to Cowperwood failed,
he emerged from the affair stronger than
ever.
The final battle, the climax of
Cowperwood's financial career in Chicago,
was the one he waged to secure fifty-
year franchises for his growing
transportation system. This project was made
doubly difficult because of Cowperwood's
latest property, the Union Loop, by
which he controlled the elevated lines.
This loop of elevated track, encircling
the downtown business district, had to
be used by all the lines in the city. The
moneyed interests opposed Cowperwood
because he was not with them; the
newspapers, because they wanted to see
3798

better and cheaper facilities. In the face
of the opposition, even the most
reckless of the city's aldermen feared to
grant the franchises Cowperwood wanted,
regardless of the money and power he
was prepared to give to them. Then his
lawyers informed Cowperwood that the
state constitution prevented the city from
granting such long-term franchises, even
if the city council could be coerced intc
approving them.
Cowperwood's next idea was to have
a transportation commission set up by
bribery in the state legislature. In the
bill which set up the commission was a
clause extending existing franchises for
a period of fifty years. The bill, passed
by the legislature, was vetoed by the
governor.
Meanwhile the New York mansion
had been completed, and Aileen
Cowperwood moved in. She met with no social
success, except among the Bohemian
set. Berenice Fleming was settled at the
same time with her family in a mansion
on Park Avenue. The next step in
Cowperwood's personal affairs was to
be his second divorce. Then Aileen heard
of his affair with Berenice Fleming. When
he asked her for the divorce, she tried
to commit suicide but failed.
Cowperwood again tried to force his
bill through the Illinois Legislature, but
the legislators returned it to the city
council. There, as before, Cowperwood
lost. The people and the newspapers
frightened the aldermen so that they
dared not grant what the financier
wished, despite his fantastic bribes.
With his hope of controlling the
Chicago transportation system gone,
Cowperwood sold his interests. Admitting
defeat, he and Berenice went to Europe.
The Titan's empire had fallen.
3799

TITUS ANDRONICUS
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Tragedy or revenge
Time of plot: Early Christian era
Locale: Rome and vicinity
First presented: 1594
Principal characters:
Saturninus, Emperor of Rome
Bassianus, his brother
Titus Andronicus, a Roman general
Lavinia, his only daughter
Marcus, his brother, a tribune
Tamora, Queen of the Goths
Aaron, her lover, a Moor
Alarbus,
Demetrius, and
Chiron, her sons
Critique:
Shakespeare idolaters have for
centuries sought to dissociate the name of the
bard from this brutal play. The unsavory
episodes would suggest the work of an
apprentice playwright following the
tradition of Thomas Kyd, whose The
Spanish Tragedy, a violent drama of revenge,
was enormously popular in the last
decade of the sixteenth century. Conclusive
proof of authorship appears, however, in
the virtues of this play. They adumbrate
Shakespeare at the peak of his powers:
flights of excellent poetry, tight
construction, and a genuine sense of the
dramatic. For his plot, Shakespeare had
recourse to two classical revenge legends,
the revenge of Atreus from Seneca's
Thyestes and the rape of Philomela from
Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The Story:
Early in the Christian era, Saturninus
and Bassianus, sons of the late emperor,
contended for the crown of the Roman
Empire. Both men were leaders of strong
factions. Another candidate, a popular
one, was Titus Andronicus, a Roman
famed for his victories over the
barbarian Goths to the north.
Marcus Andronicus, brother of Titus,
stated in the forum that Titus was the
popular choice to succeed the late
emperor. The sons, willing to abide by the
desires of the populace, dismissed their
factions.
As the prominent men of the city went
into the senate house, Titus made his
triumphant entry into Rome. He was
accompanied by his surviving sons and by
a casket containing the body of another
son. In his train also were Tamora,
Queen of the Goths; her sons, Alarbus,
Demetrius, and Chiron, and her lover,
Aaron, a Moor. Before the senate house,
Lucius, one of Titus' sons, demanded
that a Gothic prisoner be sacrificed to
appease the spirit of his dead brother in
the casket. When Titus offered as
sacrifice the oldest son of Tamora, the queen
pleaded for mercy, reminding Titus that
her sons were as precious to her as his
were to him. Titus paid her no heed.
Alarbus was sacrificed and the casket was
then laid in the tomb of the Andronici. At
that moment Lavinia, Titus' only
daughter, appeared to greet her father and
brothers and to pay her respects to her
fallen brother.
Marcus came out of the senate house,
greeted Titus, and informed him that
he was the choice of the people for the
emperorship. Titus, unwilling to take on
that responsibility at his age, persuaded
the people to name Saturninus emperor
3800

instead. Saturninus, in gratitude, asked
for and received the hand of Lavinia to
become his queen. But Bassianus, to
whom Lavinia had given her heart, seized
the maid with the help of Marcus and
the sons of Titus and carried her away.
Titus' son Mutius, who stayed behind to
cover their flight, was killed by his
father.
Saturninus, who begrudged Titus his
popularity with the people, disavowed all
allegiance and debt to the general and
planned to take Tamora as his wife.
Titus, deserted by his emperor, his brother,
and his sons, was deeply shaken.
Marcus and Titus' sons returned and
expressed the desire to bury Mutius in
the family vault. Titus at first refused,
saying that Mutius had been a traitor;
then he relented after his brother and
his sons argued effectively for proper
burial.
When Bassianus appeared with
Lavinia, Saturninus vowed that he would
avenge the stealing of the maid who had
been given him by her father. Bassianus
spoke in Titus' behalf, but Titus
declared that he could plead his own case
before the emperor. Tamora openly
advised Saturninus to be gracious to Titus,
but secretly she advised him to curry
Titus' friendship only because Titus was
so popular in Rome. She assured
Saturninus that she would destroy Titus and
his family for their having sacrificed one
of her own sons. Saturninus therefore
pardoned the Andronici and declared his
intention of marrying Tamora. Believing
their differences reconciled", Titus invited
Saturninus to hunt with him the next
day.
Aaron, contemplating Tamora's good
cortune and the imminent downfall of
Saturninus and of Rome as well, came
upon Chiron and Demetrius, disputing
and about to draw their swords over their
chances of winning the favors of Lavinia.
Advising the youths to contain
themselves, he told them that both could
enjoy Lavinia by seizing her in the forest
during the hunt, which would be
attended by the lords and ladies of the court.
Later, while the hunt was under way,
Aaron hid a sack of gold at the foot of
a large tree in the forest. He had
previously arranged to have a pit dug near the
tree; this pit he covered over with
undergrowth. There Tamora found him and
learned that both Bassianus and Lavinia
would come to grief that day. Before
Aaron left Tamora, he gave her a letter
with directions that the message reach
the hands of Saturninus. Bassianus and
Lavinia approached and, seeing that the
Moor and Tamora had been together,
chaffed Tamora and threatened to tell
Saturninus of her dalliance in the forest.
Chiron and Demetrius came upon the
scene. Informed by Tamora that
Bassianus and Lavinia had insulted her,
they stabbed Bassianus to death. But
when Tamora urged them to stab
Lavinia they refused, saying that they
would enjoy her first. Lavinia then
appealed to Tamora to remember that
Titus had spared her life. Tamora,
recalling how Titus had ignored her pleas to
spare her son from sacrifice, was
determined that her sons should have their
lustful pleasure. The brothers, after
throwing the body of Bassianus into the
pit, dragged Lavinia away to violate her.
Meanwhile, Aaron, on the pretext that
he had trapped a panther, brought two
of Titus' sons, Quintus and Martius, to
the pit and left them there. Martius fell
into the trap, where he recognized the
murdered Bassianus by a ring he wore on
his finger. When Quintus tried to pull
Martius out of the pit, he lost his balance
and tumbled in. Aaron, returning with
Saturninus, claimed that Titus' sons had
murdered Bassianus. Tamora then gave
Saturninus the letter that Aaron had
given her. The letter, written ostensibly
by one of the Andronici, outlined a plot
to assassinate Bassianus, to bury him in
a pit, and then to collect payment, which
was a bag of gold hidden near the pit.
When the bag of gold was found where
Aaron had placed it, Saturninus was
convinced of the brothers' guilt. Despite
Titus' offer of his own person as security
for his sons, Saturninus sentenced them
3801

to be tortured. Tamora assured Titus that
she would speak to Saturninus in his
behalf.
In another part of the forest, Chiron
and Demetrius, their evil deed
accomplished, cut off Lavinia's hands and
tongue so that she would be able neither
to write nor to tell of what had befallen
her. Alone in the forest, Lavinia was
joined at last by her uncle, Marcus, who
led her away to her father.
Later, in Rome, Titus recalled his
years of faithful military service to the
state and begged the tribunes to spare his
sons, but they would not listen to him.
Another son, Lucius, a great favorite
with the people, attempted
unsuccessfully to rescue his brothers. He was
banished from the city. As Titus pleaded in
vain, Marcus brought the ravished
Lavinia to him. The sight of his daughter
led Titus to wonder to what infinite
depths of grief a man could come. Aaron
announced to the grieving Andronici that
Saturninus would release Martius and
Quintus if one of the family would cut
off his hand and send it to the court.
Titus agreed to let Lucius and Marcus
decide between them; when they went to
get an ax, Titus directed Aaron to cut
off his hand. Later, a messenger brought
Titus his hand and the heads of Martius
and Quintus as well. Having suffered as
much as a man could suffer, Titus
vowed revenge. He directed the banished
Lucius to raise an invading force among
the Goths.
At his home, Titus appeared to be
demented. Even so, it was clear to him one
day that Lavinia was trying desperately
to tell him something. She indicated in
Ovid's Metamorphoses that section in
which the story of Tereus' brutal rape of
Philomela was recounted. Suddenly, it
occurred to Marcus that he could, by
holding a staff in his teeth and between
his knees, write in the sand on the floor.
Lavinia took the staff thus and wrote in
the sand that Chiron and Demetrius were
her violators.
Titus now sent his grandson Lucius
with a bundle of weapons tc present to
Tamora's sons. The youths did not
understand the message that Titus had
attached to the gift, but Aaron quickly saw
that Titus knew Lavinia's ravishers. As
the brothers admired their gift, a blast
of trumpets announced the birth of a
child to Tamora. A nurse entered with
the newborn baby, who was black, and
stated that Tamora, fearful lest
Saturninus see it, had sent the child to Aaron
to dispose of. Chiron and Demetrius,
aware of their mother's shame, insisted
that the infant be killed immediately.
When they offered to do the murder,
Aaron, the father, defied them. As a
precaution, he killed the nurse, one of
three women who knew the baby's color.
Then he had a fair-skinned baby, newly
born, taken to Tamora before he fled to
the Goths.
Titus, now reputed to be utterly
demented, wrote messages to the gods,
attached them to arrows, and, with
Marcus and his grandson, shot the arrows
into the court. He persuaded a passing
farmer to deliver a letter to Saturninus.
The emperor was already disturbed
because the messages carried by the
arrows stated Titus' grievances against the
state. When Saturninus threatened to
execute justice on old Titus, Tamora,
feeling her revenge complete, advised him
to treat the distracted old soldier gently.
The farmer, meanwhile, delivered Titus'
letter. Enraged by its mocking message,
Saturninus commanded that Titus be
brought to him to be executed.
A messenger brought word that the
Goths, led by Lucius, threatened to sack
Rome. Knowing Lucius' popularity with
the Romans, Saturninus was fearful. But
Tamora, confident of her ability to save
the city, directed the messenger to
arrange a conference with Lucius at the
house of Titus.
In the camp of the Goths, Aaron and
his child were brought before Lucius.
Aaron's captor disclosed that he had come
upon the Moor in a ruined monastery
and had heard him state aloud that the
baby's mother was Tamora. At Lucius'
promise to preserve the life of the child,
3802

Aaron confessed to his crimes against the
Andronici. Lucius decreed that the Moor
must die a horrible death.
Tamora, meanwhile, believing that
Titus was demented beyond all reason,
disguised herself as Revenge and with
her sons, also disguised, presented
herself to Titus. Although Titus recognized
her, she insisted that she was Revenge,
his friend. Titus, for his own purposes,
pretended to be taken in by the
disguises; he told Rapine and Murder,
Revenge's cohorts, to seek out two such
as themselves and destroy them. At Ta-
mora's bidding, Titus directed Marcus
to invite Lucius to a banquet, to which
Satuminus and Tamora and her sons
would also come.
Titus persuaded Chiron and
Demetrius to stay with him while their
companion, Revenge, went to perform other
duties. He then called in his kinsmen,
who seized and bound the brothers.
Titus told them that he intended to kill
them and feed to their mother a paste
made of their bones and blood. Lavinia
held a bowl between the stumps of her
arms to catch their blood as Titus cut
their throats.
Lucius, accompanied by a guard of
Goths, came to his father's house, where
he put Aaron in the charge of Marcus.
Satuminus and Tamora made their
appearance and were ushered to a
banquet served by Titus, dressed as a cook.
Titus, hearing from Satuminus that Vir-
inius, in the legend, had done well to
ill his ravished daughter, stabbed
Lavinia. The startled Satuminus asked if
Lavinia had been ravished and by whom.
When Titus disclosed that Tamora's sons
had done the evil deed, Satuminus asked
to see the youths at once. Titus,
declaring that Tamora was eating their
remains, stabbed her. Satuminus stabbed
Titus, and Lucius, in turn, stabbed
Satuminus. A general fight ensued. Lucius
and Marcus, with their followers, retired
to a balcony to tell the people of Rome
of the manifold evils wrought by
Tamora, her sons, and Aaron.
After the people had chosen him their
new emperor, Lucius sentenced Aaron to
be buried waistdeep and left to starve.
He also decreed that Tamora's body be
fed to wild beasts.
3803

TO BE A PILGRIM
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joyce Cary (1888-1957)
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of plot: Late 1930's
Locale: Tolbrook, England
First published: 1942
Principal characters:
Tom Wilcher, an old lawyer, the narrator
Sara Monday, his former employee
Ann Wilcher, Tom's niece, a doctor
Robert Brown, her husband, Tom's nephew, a farmer
Edward Wilcher, Tom's brother, a politician
Lucy Wilcher, Tom's wild sister
Puggy Brown, Lucy's husband, a Benjamite preacher
Julie Eeles, an actress, Edward's mistress, later Tom's mistress
Bill Wilcher, Tom's brother, a military man
Amy Sprott, Bill's devoted wife
Loftus Wilcher, their son
John Wilcher, another son, a car salesman
Fred, Sara's latest man
Critique:
To Be a Pilgrim, the second novel in
Cary's most famous trilogy, depicts events
from the point of view of Tom Wilcher,
the last surviving member of his
generation of an old West-Country liberal and
religious family. He is about to die, as
the novel opens, and he is concerned
about the future of his family, his
property, his convictions, and his country. In
his reflections, he considers all the events
of his life, attempting to shape them into
some kind of meaningful pattern.
Although liberal by conviction, he wishes
to conserve the values of his past and his
family, and he feels unhappy because the
values of the past, along with its religious
and political significance, seem lost to the
younger members of his own family.
Through the use of this narrator, Cary is
able to develop the character of Tom
Wilcher—a representative of a vanishing
type of Englishman—with power,
sympathy, and depth. In addition, the
technique of the novel allows the author to
explore many of the other characters
fully. Ann comes to stand as the symbol
for the modern, emancipated, scientific
young woman. Robert represents the
attempt of the new farmer to get back to
the soil. The novel, told with a great
deal of humor and insight, is an integral
part of Cary's full, varied, complex,
interrelated fictional world.
The Story:
When Tom Wilcher, a lawyer seventy-
one years old and the owner of Tolbrook
Manor, suffered a heart attack, his niece
Ann, a doctor, came down to his home
at Tolbrook to take care of him. Ann was
the daughter of Edward, Tom's oldest
brother and a liberal politician in the
early years of the twentieth century. Ann
was willing to take care of the old man
because the family felt that Tom should
be kept away from Sara Monday, his old
housekeeper.
While working for Tom some time
before, Sara had stolen some of his
possessions and the family had sent her to
jail. But Tom, who had never regarded
Sara's action as criminal, wanted her
found when she was released. He
realized that she never had stolen things
actually in use, but only^ld relics stored
in the attic; he was also aware that she
TO BE A PILGRIM by Joyce Cary. By permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1942,
by Joyce Cary.
3804

really cared for old things. He revered
Sara as an example of the past, as a
lover of the old, humane, settled life
rapidly giving way to the new society
of text books and technology. He would
have gone to Sara if Ann had not kept
close watch over him.
Tom's nephew, Robert, visited him at
Tolbrook and soon fell in love with Ann.
Robert was the son of Tom's wild sister,
Lucy, and Puggy Brown, a hypocritical
preacher of the Benjamites (an
evangelical religious sect), with whom Lucy had
run away. Puggy Brown had been
unfaithful to Lucy, though she had
relinquished family and position for him,
because he claimed that Cod had told him
that he should commit adultery with
another of his followers. Young Robert,
unlike either parent, wanted to become a
farmer. The agricultural possibilities of
Tolbrook fascinated him, and he soon
got to work, married Ann, and became a
successful farmer. Much to Tom's horror,
he kept his new threshing machine in
the famous and beautiful living room at
Tolbrook.
Tom had never been interested in
fanning. He had wanted to follow a
religious career, but because his older
brother, Edward the politician, had
shown so little interest in the family
property, Tom had felt obliged to
become a lawyer and handle the family
affairs and property. His reverence for
the past had caused him to follow a
career that did not really interest him.
In spite of his objections to Robert's new
scientific methods of agriculture, he was
happy when he saw his nephew taking a
deep interest in the land. Shortly after
their marriage, Ann and Robert had a
son, named after her father, but called
Jan.
Tom, living in his memories,
constantly tried to illustrate the value of the
past to Ann and Robert. Having
sacrificed his own career in order to keep his
family home and property, he lived in
terms of his old affections. He also had
been the family messenger, running after
Lucy when she had eloped with Puggy
Brown and following along after
Edward's mistress, Julie Eeles. Julie Eeles
had been a graceful, though not very
talented, actress. After Edward left her
because she could not help his political
career, Tom rather inherited her and she
became his mistress. Tom, in other words,
had always tidied up after his more
striking brother and sister.
Another of Tom's brothers, Bill, was a
more settled individual. A stolid military
man, Bill had married devoted Amy
Sprott. They had two children, Loftus
and John. John had been, as a boy, Tom's
favorite nephew, but during World War
I John became restless and cynical, so
that after the war he no longer seemed
to care about the family or about any of
the concerns for righteous life he had
shared with Tom. John, with slack
indifference, became a car salesman and
married a woman who constantly
deceived him with other men. After a while
he seemed not to care about living, and
one day he was run over in the street and
killed. John's death left Ann and Robert
the only relatives for whom Tom had
any concern.
After a time Robert left Ann for a
farm girl named Molly, leaving Tom
depressed about the way the present
generation of his family was turning out.
He felt st ongly that the old Victorian
virtues, the old allegiance to religion,
had made people happier than they were
today. Yet he could not hold this point
of view strongly, for his own generation
had also led unhappy and unfortunate
lives. Lucy's evangelist husband was
untrue to her, and she, though still
charming, had lived a miserable existence;
Edward had finally married the woman
who became Ann's mother, but she had
left him when his political career failed.
For all his charm and intelligence,
Edward had never really achieved anything.
More and more, Tom came to feel that
the only person who had really
understood and appreciated him was Sara
Monday (he often referred to her as
Sara Jimson, for he was under the
assumption that she had been married to
3805

the painter, Gulley Jimson). He was still
determined to find her and marry her.
Although Ann and Robert were
reconciled to each other (they established a
household which included Robert's farm
girl), Tom escaped from them and went
to London to find Sara. There he
discovered that she was living with Fred, a
man considerably younger than she. Sara,
however, was no longer a woman devoted
to Tom and to his feelings toward the
past. Not as he had imagined her, she
had become coarse, materialistic,
interested only in herself.
When Tom suffered another and more
serious heart attack, Sara called Ann and
Robert, who came quickly and took the
old man back to the security of Tolb-ook.
In his last few days Tom realized that the
attempt to find and marry Sara had been
a ridiculous gesture. He kept wondering
to which of his descendants he should
leave his money and property. He
pondered about how his family and his
values and his home might be most
appreciated by a new generation with other
concerns and values. Concerned with
these matters, he died without leaving a
will.
3806

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: c. 1910-1920
Locale: The Isle of Skye in the Hebrides
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Mr. Ramsay, a professor of philosophy
Mrs. Ramsay, his wife
James, their son
Camilla, their daughter
Mr. Tansley, Mr. Ramsay's guest and friend
Lily Briscoe, an artist
Mr. Carmichael, a poet
Critique:
Set in the out-of-the-way Hebrides
Islands, this book has an other-world
quality. There is an air of unreality
about it, achieved, perhaps, by the odd
structure of the book. Virginia Woolf
learned a great deal from James Joyce
about the psychological novel. Although
her stream of consciousness does not get
out of hand or lead the story into hidden
depths, it does dominate the entire novel
and make good its effect. The past has,
throughout the novel, an effect upon
the present action, and this mingling of
past and present is the secret of the
book's unity.
The Story:
Mrs. Ramsay promised James, her
seven-year-old son, that if the next day
were fair he would be taken on a visit
to the lighthouse they could see from
the window of their summer home on
the Isle of Skye. James, the youngest
of Mrs. Ramsay's eight children, was his
mother's favorite. The father of the
family was a professor of philosophy whose
students often thought that he was
inspiring and one of the foremost
metaphysicians of the early twentieth century;
but his own children, particularly the
youngest, did not like him because he
made sarcastic remarks.
Several guests were visiting the Ram-
says at the time. There was young Mr.
Tansley, Ramsay's student, who was also
unpopular with the children because he
seemed to delight in their discomfiture.
Tansley was mildly in love with his
hostess, despite her fifty-five years and
her eight children. There was Lily
Briscoe, who was painting a picture of
the cottage with Mrs. Ramsay and little
James seated in front of it. There was
old Mr. Carmichael, a ne'er-do-well who
amused the Ramsay youngsters because
he had a white beard and a mustache
tinged with yellow. There was also
Mr. Bankes, a young man in love with
Prue, the prettiest of the Ramsay
daughters.
The afternoon went by slowly. Mrs.
Ramsay went to the village to call on a
sick woman. She spent several hours
knitting stockings for the lighthouse
keeper's child, whom they were planning
to visit. Many people wondered how
the Ramsays, particularly the wife,
managed to be as hospitable and as charitable
as they were, for they were not rich;
Mr. Ramsay could not possibly make a
fortune by expounding Locke, Berkeley,
and Hume to students or by publishing
books on metaphysics.
Mr. Carmichael, pretending to read,
had actually fallen asleep early after
lunch. The children, except for James,
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf. By permission of the publisher*, Harcourt. Bract & Co.. Inc.
Copyright, 1927, by Harcourt, Braoe & Co., Inc.
3807

who was busy cutting pictures out of
a catalogue, had busied themselves in a
game of cricket. Mr. Ramsay and Mr.
Tansley had passed the time in a
pointless conversation. Miss Briscoe had only
made a daub or two of paint on her
canvas. For some reason the lines of the scene
refused to come clear in her painting.
Prue and Mr. Bankes had gone walking
along the shore.
Even the dinner went by slowly. The
only occasion of interest to the children,
which was one of tension to their mother,
came when Mr. Carmichael asked the
maid for a second bowl of soup, thereby
angering his host, who liked to have
meals dispatched promptly. As soon as
the children had finished, their mother
sent the younger ones to bed. Mrs.
Ramsay hoped that Prue would not fall in
love with Mr. Bankes, and that Lily
Briscoe, who always became seasick,
would not want to accompany them in
the small sailboat if they should go to
the lighthouse the following day. She
thought also about the fifty pounds
needed to make some necessary repairs
on the house.
After dinner Mrs. Ramsay went
upstairs to the nursery. James had a boar's
skull which his sister detested.
Whenever Camilla tried to remove it from the
wall and her sight, he burst into a frenzy
of screaming. Mrs. Ramsay wrapped
the skull in a handkerchief. Afterward
she went downstairs and joined her
husband in the library, where they sat
throughout the evening, she knitting
and Mr. Ramsay reading. Before they
went to bed it was agreed that the trip
for the next day would have to be
canceled. The night had turned stormy.
Night followed night. The trip to
the lighthouse was never made that
summer, nor did the Ramsays return to their
summer home for some years. In the
meantime Mrs. Ramsay died quietly in
her sleep. Prue was married, although
not to Mr. Bankes, and died in
childbirth. The first World War began.
Andrew Ramsay enlisted and was sent
to France, where he was killed by an
exploding shell.
Time passed. The wallpaper in the
house came loose from the walls. Books
mildewed. In the kitchen a cup was
occasionally knocked down and broken
by old Mrs. McNab, who came to look
after the house from time to time. In
the garden the roses and the annual
flowers grew wild or died.
Mr. Carmichael brought out a volume
of poems during the war. About the
time his book appeared, daffodils and
violets bloomed on the Isle of Skye.
Mrs. McNab looked longingly at a warm
cloak left in a closet. She wished the
cloak belonged to her.
At last the war ended. Mrs. McNab
received a telegram requesting that the
house be put in order. For several days
the housekeeper worked, aided by two
cleaning women, and when the Ramsays
arrived the cottage was in order once
more. Several visitors came again to
share a summer at the cottage. Lily
Briscoe returned for a quiet vacation.
Mr. Carmichael, the successful poet, also
arrived.
One morning Lily Briscoe came down
to breakfast and wondered at the quiet
which greeted her. No one had been
down ahead of her, although she had
expected that Mr. Ramsay and the two
youngest children, James and Camilla,
would have eaten early and departed
for the long-postponed sail to the
lighthouse, to which the youngsters had been
looking forward with joyful anticipation.
Within a few minutes the three straggled
down, all having slept past the time
they had intended to arise. After a swift
breakfast they disappeared toward the
shore, their going watched by Lily
Briscoe, who had set up her canvas with
the intention of once again trying to
paint her picture of the cottage.
The journey to the island where the
lighthouse stood was not as pleasant as
the children had expected. They had
never really liked their father; he had
taken too little time to understand them.
He was short and sharp when they did
things which seemed foolish to him,
3808

though those actions were perfectly
comprehensible to his son and daughter.
James, especially, expected to be blamed
caustically and pointlessly if the crossing
were slow or not satisfactory in some
other way, for he had been delegated
to handle the sheets and the tiller of the
boat.
Mr. Ramsay strode down to the beach
with his offspring, each carrying a paper
parcel to take to the keepers of the
lighthouse. They soon set sail and pointed
the prow of the sailboat toward the black
and white striped pillar of the
lighthouse in the hazy distance. Mr. Ramsay
sat in the middle of the boat, along with
an old fisherman and his son. They
were to take over the boat in case of an
emergency, for Mr. Ramsay had little
trust in James as a reliable seaman. In
the stern sat James himself, nerves
tingling lest his father look up from his book
and indulge in unnecessary and hateful
criticism. But his nervous tension was
needless, for within a few hours the
little party reached the lighthouse, and,
wonderful to relate, Mr. Ramsay sprang
ashore like a youngster, smiled back at
his children, and praised his son for his
seamanship.
3809

TOBACCO ROAD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Erskine Caldwell (1903- )
Type of plot: Social melodrama
Time of plot: 1920's
Locale: Georgia
First published: 1932
Principal characters:
Jeeter Lester, a poor white
Ada, his wife
Dude, his son
Ellie May, his daughter
Pearl, another daughter
Lov Bensey, Pearl's husband
Bessie, a backwoods evangelist
Critique:
The uproarious, Rabelaisian episodes
of Tobacco Road make the novel appear
to be a burlesque on rural life of the
southern United States. Granted the
exaggeration for effect, the book deals
truthfully, in the main, with a human
element which is in evidence in the
eastern piedmont from Virginia to
Georgia. The character of Jeeter Lester,
although repulsive in many respects, is
nevertheless a curiously moving one. In
creating Jeeter, Caldwell gave the world
another minor hero, a man whose futile
hopefulness attracts the sympathy of the
sentimental and the social-minded.
The Story:
Lov Bensey, husband of Pearl, fifteen-
year-old daughter of Jeeter Lester, felt
low in his mind when he stopped by the
Lester house on his way home with a bag
of turnips. Pearl, he complained, refused
to have anything to do with him; she
would neither sleep with him nor talk
to him.
The Lesters lived in a one-room shack
which was falling apart. They had
nothing to eat but pork-rind soup. Jeeter was
trying to patch an inner tube so that
the Lester car, a nondescript wreck which
had been refused even by the junk
dealer, could be used to carry firewood to
Augusta. Jeeter's harelipped daughter
Ellie May charmed Lov away from his
bag of turnips. While she and Lov
were dallying in the yard in front of
the shack, the other Lesters pounced
upon the bag of turnips. Jeeter grabbed
it and ran into the scrub woods,
followed by his worthless son Dude. Jeeter
ate his fill of turnips. He gave Dude
several and even saved a handful for the
rest of the family. They returned from
the woods to find Lov gone. Sister
Bessie, a woman preacher, had come for
a visit. Bessie, middle-aged, and Dude,
sixteen, were attracted to each other.
Bessie, upon leaving, promised to return
to take Dude away to be her husband.
The Lesters were starving. Jeeter had
long since been unable to get credit at
the local stores in order to buy seed,
fertilizer, and food. His land was
exhausted and there was no chance of
reclaiming it because of Jeeter's utter
laziness. Jeeter and his wife Ada had had
seventeen children. Twelve of them
survived, but all except Ellie May and
Dude had left home.
Bessie returned and announced that
God had given her permission to marry
Dude, but Dude refused to listen until
Bessie said that she was planning to
buy a new car with some money that
her late husband had left her. She and
Dude went to town and bought a new
Ford, the loud horn of which Dude
highly approved. At the county court-
TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell. By permission of the author and the publishers, Duell Sloan
Peai^e. Inc. Copyright, 1932, by Erskine Caldwell.
3810

house, over the mild protestations of the
clerk because of Dude's youth, Bessie
got a marriage license. Back at the
Lester shack, Bessie, using her authority
as preacher, married herself to Dude.
The newlyweds went for a ride in
their new car; they returned to the tobacco
road at sundown with one fender of the
car completely ruined. They had run
into a farm wagon on the highway and
had killed a Negro whom they left lying
by the roadside.
Jeeter, anxious to get food and snuff,
persuaded Bessie and Dude to take him
to Augusta with a load of firewood.
Their arrival in Augusta was delayed,
however, by the breakdown of the car.
A gallon and a half of oil poured into
the crank case enabled them to get to
the city, where Jeeter failed to sell one
stick of wood. The trio sold the car's
spare tire, for which they could see no
use, and bought food. They mistook a
house of ill-repute for a hotel; Bessie
was absent from Jeeter and her young
husband most of the night.
During the return trip to the tobacco
road, Jeeter unloaded the wood beside the
highway and set fire to it. He was about
to suggest another trip in the car, but
Bessie and Dude rode away before he
could stop them.
As the car rapidly fell apart, the
warmth between Bessie and her young
husband cooled. In a fight between
Bessie and the Lesters over Jeeter's right
to ride in the car again, Dude sided with
his wife. After all, the car still ran a
little.
Meanwhile Pearl ran away from Lov;
she had managed to escape after he had
tied her to their bed. Jeeter advised
Lov not to look for Pearl, but to take
Ellie May in her place. He asked Ellie
May to bring back victuals and clothes
from Lov's house. The grandmother, who
had been run over by Bessie's Ford, died
in the yard.
Jeeter anticipated seeding time by
burning the broomsedge off his land.
A wind blew the fire to the house while
Jeeter and Ada were asleep. The destitute
sharecroppers were burned to death on
the land that Jeeter's family had once
owned as prosperous farmers.
3811

THE TOILERS OF THE SEA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: The 1820*8
Locale: The Isle of Guernsey
First published: 1866
Principal characters:
Gilliatt, a young recluse
Mess Lethierry, a shipowner, and Gilliatt's friend
Deruchette, Lethierry's niece
Sieur Clubin, captain of Lethierry's steamboat
Rantaine, Lethierry's former partner
Rev. Ebenezer Caudray, Deiucbette's lover
Critique:
The Toilers of the Sea is a typical work
of the French romantic period. Much of
the novel is given over to descriptions of
places and people, conveyed with all
of Hugo's fidelity to detail. Some critics
of the novel have protested against local
color emphasized at the expense of
conciseness, speed of narration, and
credibility of incident and characterization. They
forgot that in this novel Hugo's purpose
was to present the regional and the
romantic, an intention in which he
succeeded admirably.
The Story:
In the parish of St. Sampson, Gilliatt
was a strange figure. He and his mothei
had come to the Isle of Guernsey some
years before and had made their home in
an old house by the shore. Nobody knew
where they came from, but most people
decided that they were French. When
Gilliatt grew to young manhood, his
mother died and he was left alone to
make his livelihood by fishing and
cultivating. To the superstitious people of the
town, he was a figure to be feared, for
they were sure he had power to
communicate with evil spirits and cure strange
ailments. The young man went his own
way with seeming indifference.
One Christmas Day Gilliatt saw a
young woman tracing some letters in the
snow. When he reached the spot, he
discovered that the letters spelled his own
name. The girl was Deruchette, niece
of Mess Lethierry, Gilliatt's supporter
against the superstitious people of the
parish. From that day on Gilliatt was in
love with the beautiful Deruchette.
Although he stood in her garden and
serenaded her with his bagpipe, he lacked
the courage to approach her directly. Mess
Lethierry heard the music from the
garden and thought that it would do the
suitor, whoever he was, little good; it was
to him the suitor should apply.
Later Gilliatt won a race, the prize
being a Dutch sloop. Mess Lethierry
thought more highly of him than ever.
Lethierry was a good man who loved two
things, the sea and his niece. Some time
before he had been brought to ruin by the
treachery of a man he had trusted.
Rantaine, his partner, had run away, not only
with his own share of the profits but also
with Lethierry's. In an effort to recoup his
finances, Lethierry bought a steamboat,
an invention the fishermen considered a
work of the devil.
The Durande, as the ship was called,
shared equal affection with D6ruchette in
Lethierry's heart. As captain, he engaged
Sieur Clubin, a man whose honesty was
the pride of the community. Lethierry,
despite the opposition to the steamboat,
prospered in trade with St. Malo and
other points on the French coast.
Meanwhile a new rector, Ebenezer
Caudray, had come to the parish. One
day, while Gilliatt was fishing from his
sloop, he rescued Caudray, who had
3812

climbed upon a seat-shaped rock exposed
at low tide. The grateful rector gave him
a Bible. When Caudray met Deruchette,
he fell in love with her, much to Gilliatt's
chagrin.
One day the Durande did not return
from a trip to St. Malo. Lethierry was
in despair, the whole parish in an uproar.
Some days previously a group of boys
had gone prowling near an old and
supposedly haunted house. There they had
heard men talking in Spanish, discussing
payment for taking someone to South
America. In St. Malo a man purchased
a revolver and spoke mysteriously to
various people. A short time before a
coast guardsman had been killed. Clubin,
encountering Rantaine, had forced him
at the point of a gun to return the money
stolen from Lethierry. As Rantaine left
in a boat, he shouted to Clubin that he
would write to Lethierry and tell him that
he had given the captain the money.
While Lethierry and the townspeople
waited for news of the Durande, that
ship was in difficulty. The pilot, having
discovered a flask of brandy, had got
drunk and steered the ship off its course
in the fog. The captain cursed the
drunken pilot and attempted to avoid a
catastrophe. Suddenly there was a crash
and the boat began to leak. The passengers
took to lifeboats, but the captain remained
on board. When they were gone, the
captain made his way to the rocks upon
which the ship had grounded. Much to
his surprise and fear, he discovered that
he was not where he had planned to be.
Clubin had deliberately wrecked the
ship after placing the brandy where the
pilot would find it. In the hope that
everyone would believe he had been drowned,
he had planned to ground the Durande
at a spot where he would find some
smugglers hired to carry him to South America
with the money taken from Rantaine.
Now he realized that he had
miscalculated, that he was stranded in one of the
deathtraps of the sea, that he would drown.
When survivors of the wreck reached
St. Sampson and told their story, Sieui*
Clubin became a hero. Rut Lethierry was
desolate; his fortune was gone. It was not
so much the vessel itself that was
important, for that could be replaced. Rut
the engine was lost, and he lacked the
money to buy another. In his despair
Lethierry announced that whoever should
regain the engine would have D6ruchette
for his wife. Gilliatt stepped forward and
announced that he would try to salvage
the engine.
At the scene of the wreck Gilliatt
labored unceasingly against the powerful
sea and bad weather. One day he swam
into an underwater cave where he was
attacked by a monster that he finally
managed to kill. He swam farther and in the
recesses of the cavern he found the
remains of a man and a wallet bearing
Clubin's name. The wallet contained
many coins. Gilliatt pocketed it and
resumed his work.
At last he succeeded in hoisting the
engine. WTeary and exhausted, he fell
into a deep sleep. The next day, after the
sun had warmed his tired body, he gained
new strength. Then he discovered that
part of his work had been undone by the
sea. While he attempted to repair the
damage, a storm came up and all his work
seemed in vain. But he finally got the
engine into his boat and sailed for home.
In St. Sampson, with the arrival of
Rantaine's letter, Mess Lethierry began to
understand Clubin's duplicity. As time
passed, Clubin's secret preparations
became knovyn, and no one any longer
believed that he had gone down with the
ship. Lethierry was even more dispirited
than ever. One morning, as he looked out
at the ocean, he saw Gilliatt's Dutch sloop
with the engine aboard. Overjoyed, he
sent for Gilliatt, who had slipped away
to his own house. Lethierry was ready to
make good his promise, with deep
gratitude now that Gilliatt had returned not
only the valuable engine but also the
money recovered from Clubin's wallet.
But D6ruchette, confronting the unkempt
and bedraggled Gilliatt, fainted. Gilliatt,
having seen her and Caudray in the
garden, knew that she secredy loved the
3813

rector.
When the shipowner, unaware of his
niece's true affections, pushed the
preparations for the wedding, Caudray
determined to marry D£ruchette without
Lethierry's knowledge. The two went off to be
married, only to learn that they could not
have the ceremony performed without
Lethierry's consent. Then Gilliatt arrived
with the consent Lethierry had given for
the wedding of Gilliatt and D6ruchette.
To their astonishment, Gilliatt said he
would give the bride away. So Caudray
and Deruchette were married.
As the newlyweds were embarking
upon the Cashmere, which was to take
them to England, Gilliatt presented
Deruchette with a chest of bride's linen he
had inherited from his mother. As the ship
pulled out, Gilliatt went to the rock seat
from which he had once rescued Caudray.
On board, D6ruchette saw that a man was
sitting there, but in her happiness she
gave no more thought to him. As Gilliatt
watched the ship sail out of sight, the
water mounted higher and higher around
the rock. Soon the waves washed over
it, and nothing could be seen but the sea
and the sky.
3814

TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Hughes (1822-1896)
Type of plot: Didactic romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England
^irst published: 1857
Principal characters:
Thomas Brown, a student at Rugby
Harry East, his friend
George Arthur, befriended by Tom Brown
Dr. Arnold, headmaster of Rugby
Flashman, a bully
Critique:
On the surface a simple recounting of
life at an English public school, the story
of Tom Brown is in reality a plea for
improvement in customs in those
institutions. It was the author's hope that the
older boys would follow the good example
of the splendid headmaster and turn from
bullying and cheating to an
understanding of the real values to be gained from
school life. The author does not ask that
young boys give up all their mischief,
only that they develop a sense of fitness
and charity.
The Story:
Tom Brown was the son of a country
squire who believed in letting his
children mingle not only with their social
equals but also with any children who
were honorable. Thus before Tom left
home to attend Rugby he had had the
advantage of friendship with all types
of boys. This training was to be of value
to him when he first arrived at the
famous school.
When Tom alighted from the coach
he was met by Harry East, a lower-school
boy who had been at Rugby for a half
year. He gave Tom much good advice
on how to dress and how to take the
hazing and bullying that every new boy must
endure. The two boys became immediate
friends and were to remain so throughout
their years at school. From the first Tom
loved the school. He conducted himself
with such bravery, both on the playing
field and in dormitory scuffles, that he
soon gained popularity among the other
boys. One of the sixth-form boys, a leader
among the students, made such an
impression on Tom with his talks on
sportsmanship and kindness to weaker boys that
Tom for the first half-year was an almost
model student. He did join in some of
the mischief and was once sent to Dr.
Arnold, the headmaster, but by and
large both he and East profited by the
lessons they learned in classes and in
games.
With the beginning of the second half-
year, Tom was promoted into the lower
fourth form, a large and unruly class
dominated by bullies and ruffians.
Formerly he had liked his masters and tried
to please them; now he began to believe
that they were his natural enemies and
to do everything possible to thwart them.
He cribbed on his lessons and shirked
many of his other duties. He and East
disobeyed many rules of the school and
often taunted farmers in the
neighborhood by fishing in their waters or killing
their fowls. All in all, Tom and East
and their friends acted in very ungentle-
manly ways.
But Tom and East also did some good
in the school, for they were basically boys
of sound character. Both came from good
homes and had received good early
training. They finally decided that something
must be done about fagging, the custom
of running errands for the older boys.
Each older boy was allowed two fags, but
some of them made every younger lad
3815

in the school wait on them. One
particular bully was Flashman. Deciding to
strike against his domination, Tom and
East locked themselves in their room and
defied his demands that they let him
in. After attempting to break the door
down, Flashman retreated temporarily;
but he was not through with the rebels.
For weeks he caught them and tortured
them at each possible chance, but they
held firm and persuaded some of the other
lower-school boys to join them. At last
Flashman's brutality to Tom and East
and their friends so disgusted even the
bully's best friends that they began to
desert him, and at last his hold on the
school was broken forever. Then Tom
and East thrashed him soundly, and
from that time on Flashman never laid
a hand on them. Not long afterward
Flashman was caught drunk by the
headmaster and was sent away from the school.
Tom and East began to get into trouble
in earnest, and the headmaster despaired
of their even being allowed to stay in
school. But wise Dr. Arnold could see
the good in the boys, good which they
seemed to try hard to hide, and he
arranged for them to be split up. Tom was
given a new and shy young boy to
live with, one George Arthur. Arthur
was a half-orphan and Tom's better
nature responded to the homesick
younger boy. Arthur was to be the greatest
influence to enter Tom's life during
his career at Rugby. He was of slight
build, but he had moral courage that
made Tom ashamed. Arthur did what
he thought was right, even when it meant
that he must endure the taunts of his
housemates. Because Tom could not let
a younger boy appear more courageous
than he, he reverted to his own former
good habits which he had dropped
because of fear of hazing. He began again
to kneel in prayer morning and night,
to read his Bible, and to discuss earnestly
the meanings of certain passages. Indeed,
as East said, although Tom was seemingly
becoming a leader in the school, it was
really Arthur who was leading Tom and
thus the other boys. East fought the
change as hard as he could. But he too
followed Tom, and so in spite of
himself he began to change for the better.
When fever struck the school, many of
the boys were seriously ill, Arthur among
them. One boy died. Arthur remained
very weak after his illness and his mother
decided to take him out of school until
he could recover his strength. Before he
left, Arthur spoke to Tom about cribbing.
Although Tom, believing that to fool the
masters was a schoolboy's duty, scoffed
at his friend's views, Arthur as usual
prevailed. Tom found it hard to do his
lessons honestly, tut each time he would
weaken the memory of Arthur's face
and voice would set him straight again.
East did not completely change in this
respect, but he did try a little harder
on his own before resorting to dishonest
translations.
Another result of Arthur's influence
was that East took communion. He had
never been confirmed. But as a result of
a conversation with Tom, at which Tom
put forth many of Arthur's beliefs, East
talked with Dr. Arnold and received
spiritual stimulation. After he began to
receive communion East rapidly changed
into the good young man he had
unknowingly wanted to be.
So the school years passed. East
finished up and went off to fight in India.
Tom became the leader of the school,
and he and Arthur, who had returned
after his illness, made many changes in
the actions and attitudes of the boys.
Tom, graduated, went on to Oxford.
While there he learned of the death of
his old headmaster, Dr. Arnold. He
returned to his old school, to mourn the
man who had played such a large part
in influencing his life. For it was not
until Dr. Arnold was gone that Tom
and the others realized how much the
good man had done for them. Tom's
friends were scattered over the earth,
but he knew that his heart would always
be with them and chose wonderful days
at Rugby.
3816

TOM BURKE OF OURS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charles Lever (1806-1872)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Ireland and France
Virst published: 1844
Principal characters:
Tom Burke, Irish gentleman and soldier of fortune
Anthony Basset, an unscrupulous estate lawyer
Darby M'Keown, called Darby the Blast, an Irish patriot
Charles de Meudon, a young French officer
Marie de Meudon, his sister
Captain Bubbleton, an English officer
The Marquis de Beauvais, a French aristocrat
General d'Auvergne, Tom's benefactor
Captain Montague Crofts, Tom's enemy
Napoleon Bonaparte
Critique:
Charles Lever, the most popular of
nineteenth-century Irish novelists, was a
great admirer of Napoleon, so much so
that Tom Burke of Ours presents one of
the most idealized portraits of that
historical personage to be found in any
literature. In a preface to this novel Lever
called the Napoleonic Period the most
wonderful and eventful in modern
history. The story proper covers Napoleon's
career from the days of the first
consulship to the fall of the empire. The plot,
although theatrical, is absorbing, and the
battle scenes, particularly those of Aus-
terlitz, Jena, and the engagements of the
famous 'Week of Glory," are presented
with dash and brilliance. As a result, the
book has the vividness and swift action
of a good film. The chief defect of the
work is the fact that Lever, intent upon
telling a romantic story, maintains no
consistent point of view in his
presentation of either the history or the society of
the period.
The Story:
Tom Burke was only a schoolboy when
his father died and the family physician
and a rascally estate lawyer conspired to
cheat him out of his inheritance as a
younger son. Eton, private tutors, fine
clothes, and the best horses and dogs had
been provided for his older brother
George; an obscure Dublin school and
hand-me-downs had been considered
good enough for fourteen-year-old Tom.
On a dark winter day, sitting in the
shadows by his dying father's bedside, he
overheard the doctor and the lawyer
discuss an arrangement to have him articled
to Anthony Basset, the lawyer, in return
for the five hundred pounds left Tom
under his grandfather's will.
The day after the funeral, hoping to
escape his dreary prospects as a lawyer's
clerk, Tom took to the roads with Darby
M'Keown, called by the peasants Darby
the Blast, a piper belonging to one of
the patriotic secret societies which had
survived the disastrous rising of '98.
Several times he was almost overtaken by
Basset's agents or captured by British
soldiers who were everywhere tracking
down rebels in those troubled times. By
chance he was thrown into the company
of Charles de Meudon, a young French
officer who had volunteered to aid the
cause of Irish independence. The
Frenchman taught Tom languages and
military science, capturing his boyish
imagination with accounts of Napoleon's
victories at Marengo, Lodi, Areola. Knowing
that he would never live to return to his
own country, the sickly young officer
3817

made Tom promise that he would go to
France to study at the Ecole Polytech-
nique and to be like a brother to his
friend's sister, Marie de Meudon. Charles
died at the country retreat where he and
Tom had gone together. Before his death
he gave the boy some French money to
pay for his journey overseas.
Captured by the British at the time of
de Meudon's death, Tom was being
taken to Dublin under guard when
Darby the Blast appeared and provoked a
scuffle with the militia. During the fight
Tom escaped. His only hope being to
find the quarters of Captain Bubbleton,
a bombastic English officer who had been
kind to him some time before, he
continued on his way to Dublin. There,
while searching for the captain, he was
caught in a mob rioting before
Parliament House. Struck over the head by a
musket, he fell unconscious.
When he awoke, Tom found himself
in Captain Bubbleton's quarters, where
that officer had carried the boy after
finding him senseless in the street. Tom tried
to tell the captain the true story of his
experiences, but his rescuer, who always
changed circumstances to suit his
fantastic imagination, brushed the
explanations aside. To him, Tom was a hero who
had been wounded while fighting the
Irish rebels and the officers' mess,
delighted with the boy's spirit, called him
Tom Burke of Ours. Lord Castlereagh
himself, the captain added, was
concerned for Tom's quick recovery.
Tom's cuts and bruises soon healed
under the nursing of the captain and his
sister, Miss Anna Maria. One day the
captain reported that an officer was
coming from the Castle to see the
convalescent. To Tom's dismay, the officer was
one who was able to recognize him
immediately as an associate of rebels.
Lodged in jail, the boy was released when
Basset appeared at the hearing and
claimed his runaway apprentice. But
Captain Bubbleton remained Tom's good
friend. At his intercession the lawyer was
persuaded to accept four hundred pounds
of Tom's inheritance money in exchange
for the boy's indenture papers.
So Tom did become Tom Burke of
Ours for a short time, even though he was
still determined to go to France at the
first opportunity. The officers of the mess
welcomed Captain Bubbleton's charge
in friendly fashion. One exception,
however, was Captain Montague Crofts, who
made little effort to conceal his dislike.
One evening Darby the Blast,
disguised as an old woman, came to the
barracks to give Tom a packet containing
Charles de Meudon's letter of credit and
two checks on his banker, papers Tom
had dropped while fleeing from the
British soldiers. Tom and Darby were
interrupted when a group of officers entered
and called for a deck of cards to settle a
wager between Bubbleton and Crofts.
Hearing Bubbleton wagering heavily,
and knowing that his friend had not that
much money on his person, Tom slipped
the captain what he thought was a
twenty-pound note. Instead, he gave him one
of Charles de Meudon's notes for two
thousand livres. After the other officers
had gone on duty Crofts threatened to
denounce the boy as a traitor and a spy
for the French. When Tom stood up
against his accuser, the enraged captain
drew his sword and tried to run the boy
through. Tom was wounded, but before
Crofts could strike a second blow Darby
the Blast ran into the room and struck
the officer to the floor, where he lay as
if dead.
Aided by the disguised piper, Tom
managed to walk by the sentry and reach
a house by the river. There his wound
was dressed. Before daybreak he was
aboard a smuggler's vessel bound for
France.
All went as Charles de Meudon had
planned. Tom, enrolled in the Poly-
technique, soon distinguished himself at
the French military school. One day the
famous General d'Auvergne arrived to
review the cadets, and Tom led a
desperate charge in a mimic battle staged for
the occasion. Knocked unconscious, he
revived to find a young woman holding

a cup of water to his lips. Half-dazed, he
had the impression that he had met her
somewhere before. At that moment the
group about him parted. He saw a short
man with a pale, commanding face
looking down at him, and he heard Napoleon
saying that he should be given his brevet
at once. Advanced in rank, Tom moved
into new quarters. His roommate was
Lieutenant Tascher, the nephew of
Madame Bonaparte, from Guadaloupe.
Although he grumbled frequently
because his kinsman gave him no
preferment, Tascher was generously pleased
when Tom received a commission in the
Eighth Hussars, a billet the young Creole
had also desired. The next day Tom,
invited to attend Madame Bonaparte's
reception at the Tuileries, went to a
fashionable tailor to be fitted for a new
uniform. The shop was filled with elegant
young dandies who eyed Tom's old cadet
uniform with contempt. Taking
exception to one lounger's remarks, Tom called
him insolent. The young man presented
himself as the Marquis de Beauvais,
willing to meet Tom with rapiers in the Bois
de Boulogne the next morning.
At the reception, which Tom attended
in his old uniform, he was graciously
received by Madame Bonaparte. A
gentleman pointed out the young ladies of the
court. One was the girl whom he had
found bending over him when he awoke
after the mock battle at the Poly
technique. She was Mademoiselle de Roche-
fort, called the Rose of Provence. While
wandering through the Tuileries, Tom
overheard a conversation between
Napoleon and Talleyrand and learned that
the treaties of peace were soon to be
broken. He also encountered young Henri
de Beauvais, who apologized for his rude
behavior of the morning. With his new
friend Tom went to a famous restaurant
where a gay supper party was in
progress. During the evening he indiscreetly
revealed the discussion he had overheard.
The Rose of Provence, he also learned,
was the cousin of de Beauvais. Later,
when he was questioned by a police
agent, he got the impression that an
attempt might be made to involve him in
a political intrigue.
The war with England began, but
Tom's squadron remained on duty at
Versailles. From time to time he saw the
Rose of Provence at a distance. One day
the Abbe* d'Ervan, whom he had met in
the company of de Beauvais, visited him.
From his caller Tom learned that de
Beauvais was a royalist, also that the Rose of
Provence, who had taken her mother's
name because of her family's royalist
connections, was Charles de Meudon's
sister.
About to throw his lot with the rebel
Chouans, de Beauvais planned to see his
cousin once more and sent the abbe*
with a request that Tom pass his friend
through the sentry lines. At last Tom
reluctantly agreed to do so. The next day
he encountered the girl in the gardens
and revealed himself as her brother's
friend. That night he helped de Beauvais
to enter the palace grounds. Before he left
the young nobleman offered Tom a
commission in the royal army; it was refused.
Later Marie reproached Tom for his
seeming disloyalty in becoming embroiled
with the royalists.
Several months later Tom received a
note in which Marie begged him to warn
if possible a party of Chouans who were
to be trapped at the Chateau d'Ancre, de
Beauvais among them. He arrived at the
chateau, only to be captured when troops
surrounded the old castle. Arrested, he
was charged with treason.
He was in prison during the reign of
terror under the consulate, when the
government repressed with harsh measures
and bloodshed the royalist uprising for
the restoration of the Bourbons, but
because of General d'Auvergne's influence
with Napoleon he was not among those
executed or sent to the galleys.
Transferred to a military tribunal, he was
released after de Beauvais surrendered and
absolved the young Irishman of any part
in the conspiracy. Restored to his rank
and appointed to d'Auvergne's staff, he
3819

was sent to the garrison at Mayence.
Napoleon became emperor. There were
reports that the expedition against
England would soon sail. In the midst
of these warlike preparations General
d'Auvergne summoned Tom to Paris.
There he revealed his plan to adopt Marie
de Meudon as his daughter. But
Napoleon, refusing to consent to the plan, insisted
that d'Auvergne marry the girl in whom
he took so great an interest. Tom, as the
general's aide, was forced to witness the
hurried wedding of the girl he loved in
secret. After the ceremony d'Auvergne
left immediately for the front. To Tom
he declared that he had made Marie his
wife and that his only possible reparation
would be to make her his widow.
After the battle of Austerlitz, Tom, now
restored to Napoleon's favor, was one of
the young officers named to the comipag-
nie d'elite. In Paris, during those
triumphant days of 1806, his closest friend was
the Chevalier Duchesne, an officer who
was secretly ready to serve either Bona-
partists or Bourbonists to his own
advantage. Their friendship cooled eventually
because the chevalier suspected Tom of
being his rival for the hand of Pauline
de Lacostellerie, an heiress related to the
empress. When Duchesne swore that he
never forgot his debt to a friend or an
enemy, Tom expected a challenge to a
duel, but before the affair could be
arranged he received orders to rejoin the
army. At Jena his display of courage and
resourcefulness led to his recommendation
for the Legion of Honor and a colonelcy.
Meanwhile his enemy was working for
his ruin. Shortly after the fall of Prussia
he was summoned to Marshal Berthier's
quarters at Potsdam. There he was shown
an incriminating letter from Duchesne
which had been seized in the mails.
Duchesne, who had resigned his commission
some time before, wrote as if to a fellow
conspirator, for the letter, filled with
ridicule of the emperor and hints of sedition,
was his means of revenging himself upon
Tom. Realizing himself disgraced if the
nature of the letter were revealed, Tom
claimed a foreign officer's privilege of
resigning his grade and leaving the service.
With no ideas as to how he was to
meet the future he left for Paris. General
d'Auvergne and Tascher, his only real
friends, were with the army in the field;
having resigned his commission under
questionable circumstances, he could not
turn to them. In Paris he made the
acquaintance of a number of royalists and
at last consented to travel with an abb6
who was going to Ireland on a secret
political mission. Instead of the abbe\
however, he met his former friend, Henri
de Beauvais, who prevailed upon Tom in
the name of their former friendship to
convey some documents to the Irish
patriots. Much as he had left Ireland ten
years before, Tom returned on a
smuggler's ship at night.
In his delight at being home once more
he forgot the circumstances of his
departure. He was surprised, therefore, when
soon after his return to Dublin he was
arrested on an old charge of murderous
assault on Captain Crofts. Having
survived the blow Darby the Blast had given
him, Crofts was still eager for revenge.
In the meantime Tom had also
encountered Basset and had learned from him
that his brother George was dead; he was
now the heir to the Burke estates. Tom
realized that he was involved in a deep
plot, for Crofts, as Basset
unintentionally revealed, was a distant kinsman who
would inherit the property if Tom were
out of the way. But Crofts was completely
discredited at the trial. Darby the Blast,
who had been transported to Australia
some years before, returned in time to
tell the true story of the assault and to
accuse Crofts of other villainies, so that
the judgment of the court turned against
Tom's designing enemy and kinsman.
Suddenly possessed of his good name
and a fortune, Tom was glad to settle
down to the quiet life of a country squire,
with old Darby as his loyal pensioner
and friend. For a long time he paid no
attention to events beyond the boundary
of his estate. One day he chanced upon
3820

a newspaper and read in it an account of
the burning of Moscow, Immediately his
interest in Napoleon and his former
comrades in arms revived. As disaster followed
disaster for the French he brooded more
and more upon the falling fortunes of
Napoleon. At last he decided to offer his
sword again in the emperor's service.
Crossing the channel in a fishing boat, he
volunteered in the first French unit he
encountered. During the fierce fighting at
Chaumiere he stumbled upon the dead
body of General d'Auvergne and with
his own hands dug a grave for his old
commander. At Montereau his daring in
blowing up a bridge won for him the cross
of the Legion.
Wounded in that engagement, Tom
was invalided at Fontainebleau. One
evening he heard hoofbeats and saw a file of
dragoons drawn up before a distant wing
of the palace. While he was walking in
the garden that night, he saw Roustan,
the emperor's faithful mameluk, on guard
in a lighted apartment. Defeated, his
army gone, Napoleon was in retreat. The
next morning Tom awoke to find the
courtyard filled with troops. From his
window he watched the emperor's final
farewell to his Old Guard. Napoleon
was on his way into exile.
Paris welcomed with wild excitement
the restoration of the Bourbons. Tom,
who stubbornly continued to wear the
Bonapartist tricolor in his hat, was once
attacked by an angry mob. He might
have been killed if de Beauvais had not
appeared to save his life. Later, as Tom
was preparing to leave France forever,
de Beauvais came to him and offered him
a commission in the army of King Louis.
Tom refused to renounce his allegiance
to the fallen emperor. When they parted
the Frenchman handed him a note from
Madame d'Auvergne, who asked Tom to
call at her hotel that evening.
He found Marie dressed in mourning,
but lovelier than ever. Planning to leave
France, she wanted to give him some
small keepsakes of her brother's and the
sword General d'Auvergne had worn at
Jena. When she tried to remove from her
finger the ring which was to be her own
token of remembrance, the band stuck.
At that Tom begged her to give it to
him where it was. While he stood telling
the story of his long-concealed love, she
smilingly placed her hand in his.
3821

TOM CRINGLE'S LOG
Type of work: Novel
Author: Michael Scott (1789-1835)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: West Indies
First published: 1833
Principal characters:
Tom Cringle, a young midshipman
Mary Palma, his cousin and wife
Obadiah, a smuggler and pirate
Captain Transom, of the Firebrand
Critique:
There is almost no plot in Tom
Cringle's Log and even little connection
between episodes. Great numbers of
people appear briefly in disconnected
incidents and then disappear, for the novel
is, as the name implies, a recital of one
man's experience as an officer on various
British warships during the Napoleonic
wars. Although the book gives the reader
some first-hand accurate accounts of
minor actions in the war with Napoleon
and many sidelights on the War of 1812
with America, Scott emphasizes merry
bibulous exploits ashore rather than the
business of fighting.
The Story:
Tom Cringle, aged thirteen and four
feet four inches tall, looked upon himself
as a successor to Nelson. In pursuing
his aim, he pestered his relative, Sir
Barnaby Blueblazes, to such lengths that
at last Tom was appointed midshipman
aboard the frigate Breeze and ordered to
report for foreign duty in four days.
Poor Tom had envisioned a period of
months ashore after his appointment,
time to strut his uniform before all his
friends. His time being so short, he
hardly knew whether he wanted to go to sea
after all, and his widowed mother wept
and begged him not to leave. But on the
appointed day Tom went aboard his ship,
bound for action.
He had a trip to the Bay of Biscay on
the Breeze, and a tour of duty on the
Kraaken. Then, an old hand, Tom
boarded the Torch, an eighteen-gun sloop
bound for the North Sea.
Near Cuxhaven the ship's boat was
lowered and Tom was put second in
command of a party to tuter the harbor. The
captain was sure no French were near;
consequently the party shoved off with
light hearts. To their astonishment they
were challenged by French sentries. In
trying to regain the ship, Tom's boat
was hit by a shell from a shore battery,
and subsequently he was taken prisoner.
A resident of Hamburg went surety
for Tom and took him to his own country
house. The next day the Russians
advanced and drove out the French. In
the confusion Tom and the Hamburg
family escaped and safely boarded the
Torch.
The Torch stood off Cork, where Tom
played the part of a spy. By a clever
tale he induced a group of British
seamen to rendezvous in a small tavern.
There they were captured and pressed
into service. Then with her full
complement the Torch left for Caribbean
waters, where Tom was to spend many
years. In the West Indies the French,
Spaniards, English, and Americans were
all privateering, and there was much
work for a British man-of-war, in
escorting merchantmen, keeping a lookout for
American marauders, and trying to keep
slavery and smuggling within bounds.
Tom had an early introduction to the
horrors of piracy the day a London
merchantman was sighted behaving
erratically. With great difficulty a boarding
party captured the ship after subduing a
pirate crew. In the main cabin of the
merchantman the British found a terri-
3822

fying situation. The captain had been
tied on the table, his throat so savagely
slashed that he was almost decapitated.
Tied in a chair was a prosperous
gentleman very nearly hysterical. On the sofa
was the man's wife, violated by the
pirates. The poor lady was mad with
shame and fright and spent her last days
in an asylum. The leader of the pirates,
who subsequently escaped, was a tall,
handsome Spaniard. Tom learned much
later that his name was Francesco Can-
grejo.
During a violent hurricane the Torch
went down, and Tom, believing himself
the only survivor, spent three terrible
days in an open boat. At last thirst and
privation overcame him. When he
regained consciousness he was on shore,
tended by Lieutenant Splinter, the only
other crew member to escape. Captain
Deadeye, of the Torch, was stretched out
under a canvas on the beach. Scarcely
had Tom recovered his senses when they
were taken prisoners by a Spanish
platoon. When Tom and Splinter had
satisfactorily established their identity, they
were freed, but they were stranded in the
tiny port of Cartagena, far from the
British forces.
On the beach Tom made the
acquaintance of a black pilot, Peter Musgrave,
who was wanted by the Admiralty for
running a British ship aground. Tom
agreed to act as Peter's friend at court,
and in turn Peter would procure passage
to Jamaica.
Peter went aboard a suspiciously
decrepit small craft in the harbor and
returned with the American mate of the
vessel. Obadiah, the mate, took them
aboard, and the black captain consented
to take the Englishmen to Jamaica for a
reasonable fee. As soon as they were
int sea, however, some astonishing changes
took place. Obadiah assumed the
captaincy, and under his directions the
villainous but alert crew re-rigged the worn
sails and mounted guns on deck. Then
the truth dawned on Tom; he was aboard
a pirate ship.
Two British men-of-war bore down on
the ship, but Captain Obadiah, refusing
to heave to, held his course in the face
of almost certain suicide. By clever
seamanship the pirate craft outran its
pursuers, although many of the crew were
killed or wounded. Making a landfall
in Cuba, the pirates put in to a small
river, and after a narrow passage came
to anchor in a secluded lagoon a mile
in diameter. The lagoon was filled with
armed craft of many types. Tom was in
the secret den of the West Indian pirates.
When the Firebrand, an English
warship, engaged a pirate felucca near the
river's mouth, Tom escaped with the
help of Peter. Going aboard the
Firebrand, to which he had been assigned
by dispatch, Tom took part in the
capture of the whole pirate band. Obadiah,
who was a renegade Englishman, as Tom
learned later, was shot as he tried to swim
away. For his bravery in the engagement
Tom was promoted to the rank of
lieutenant.
Captain Transom of the Firebrand
proved to be a genial commander with
many friends in the islands. Tom spent
much time ashore indulging in nigh
jinks. One trij> ashore, however, was a
somber one. Tom served as interpreter
at the trial of the pirates, who were all
condemned to death. One of the
prisoners, Tom found, was Francesco Can-
grejo, who cut a brave figure in the dock
in spite of his confessed career of villainy.
At the pirate's request, Tom took his
miniature and crucifix to deliver to the
pirate's betrothed.
In Kingston, where Tom called on his
relatives, the Palmas, he was most
cordially received. There he met and fell
in love with Mary Palma, his cousin.
When he was called away on duty, it
was with the understanding that thej
would be married after his next
promotion.
At Santiago Tom went ashore to visit
Ricardo Campana, a rich merchant.
There a priest who met him and Ricardo
on the street seemed much upset. Tom
could hear the name Cangrejo
mentioned and learned that Maria, Fran-
3823

cesco's sweetheart, was dying. The party
hastened to the Cangrejo house in time
for Tom to have a few words with Maria
before she died. Tom was saddened when
he heard of Francesco's early promise and
reflected on the Spaniard's later death for
piracy.
On a trip out from Santiago, Tom was
ordered to take command of the small
schooner Wave. At twenty-three, Tom
Cringle, lieutenant, became master of his
own ship. Sent to patrol for suspicious
vessels, Tom sighted a large schooner
that failed to heed his signals. After a
two days' chase the Wave closed with
the heavily-armed, larger ship.
Displaying great courage at close quarters, the
gallant crew of the Wave boarded the
schooner, which proved to be a slaver.
Unable to land the ship with a prize
crew, Tom had the slaver shelled until
it caught fire and sank. Tom rescued as
many slaves as the Wave could carry and
put them ashore.
Tom was afterward trusted with many
missions, including one to Panama. Since
he was always diligent in doing his duty
and since he had always displayed great
courage in battle, he received his second
epaulet. Tom Cringle, one time
midshipman, became Commander Cringle.
At dinner in Kingston, wearing his
two epaulets, Tom was surprised that
none of the Palmas remarked on his
promotion. Mary herself was quite
agitated and left the table. In his
embarrassment Tom had the misfortune to
drink a glass of catsup. But in spite of
all his awkwardness, Tom managed to
see Mary alone and win her consent to
an immediate marriage.
3824

TOM JONES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Type of plot: Comic epic
Time of plot: Early eighteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1749
Principal characters:
Tom Jones, a foundling
Squire Allworthy, his foster father
Bridget, Allworthy's sister
Master Blifil, Bridget's son
Mr. Partridge, the schoolmaster
Mr. Western, an English squire
Sophia Western, his daughter
Critique:
It is difficult to determine whether
greater pleasure is derived from the
narrative parts of The History of Tom ]ones,
a Foundling, as Fielding titled his novel,
or from the essays written at the
beginning of each book. The story itself is a
long, involved plot in which Tom finally
wins the confidence of those he loves.
Most of the humor in this novel lies in
Fielding's exaggerated dramatic emphasis
and in his lengthy, delicate dissections
of the motives of his characters. It must
be remembered that Fielding had few
examples of the novel form from which
to learn, but his novels are so far
advanced in development over their
predecessors that Fielding must be
recognized as a literary innovator. The author
knew the follies of human nature, and
he attempted to laugh mankind out of its
own weaknesses.
The Story:
Squire Allworthy lived in retirement
in the country with his sister Bridget.
Returning from a visit to London, he
was considerably surprised upon entering
his room to find an infant lying on his
bed. His discovery caused much
astonishment and consternation in the household,
for the squire himself was a childless
widower. The next day Miss Bridget
and the squire inquired in the
community to discover the baby's mother, and
their suspicions were shortly fixed upon
Jenny Jones, who had spent many hours
in the squire's home while nursing Miss
Bridget through a long illness. The
worthy squire sent for the girl and in his
gentle manner reprimanded her for her
wicked behavior, assuring her, however,
that the baby would remain in his home
under the best of care. Fearing malicious
gossip of the neighborhood, Squire All-
worthy sent Jenny away.
Jenny Jones had been a servant in the
house of a schoolmaster named Mr.
Partridge, who had educated the young
woman during her four years in his
house. Mrs. Partridge, because of Jenny's
comely face, was jealous of her.
Neighborhood gossip soon convinced Mrs.
Partridge that her husband was the father of
Jenny's son, whereupon Squire Allworthv
called the schoolmaster before him and
talked to him at great length concerning
morality. Mr. Partridge, deprived of his
school, his income, and his «vife, also left
the country.
Not long afterward Captain Blifil won
the heart of Bridget Allworthy. Eight
months after their nuptials Bridget bore
a son. The squire thought it would be
well to rear the foundling and his sister's
child together. The foundling had been
named Jones, after his mother.
Squire Allworthy became exceedingly
fond of the foundling. Captain Blifil died
during his son's infancy, and Master
Blifil grew up as Squire Allworthy's
acknowledged heir. Otherwise, he remained on
even terms with the foundling so far as
3825

opportunities for advancement were
concerned. But Tom was such a mischievous
lad that he had but one friend among
the servants, the gamekeeper, Black
George, an indolent man with a large
family. Hired to instruct the lads were
Mr. Thwackum and Mr. Square, who
considered Tom a wicked soul. Tom's
many deceptions were always discovered
through the combined efforts of Mr.
Thwackum, Mr. Square, and Master
Blifil, who as he grew older disliked Tom
more and more. It had been assumed by
all that Mrs. Blifil would dislike Tom,
but at times she seemed to show greater
affection for him than for her own son. In
turn, the compassionate squire took
Master Blifil to his heart and became
censorious of Tom.
Mr. Western, who lived on a
neighboring estate, had a daughter whom he
loved more than anyone else in the
world. Sophia had a tender fondness for
Tom because of a deed of kindness he
had performed for her when they were
still children. At the age of twenty,
Master Blifil had become a favorite with the
young ladies, while Tom was considered
a ruffian by all but Mr. Western, who
admired his ability to hunt. Tom spent
many evenings at the Western home,
with every opportunity to see Sophia, for
whom his affections were increasing
daily. One afternoon Tom had the good
fortune to be nearby when Sophia's horse
ran away. Tom, in rescuing her, broke
his arm. He was removed to Mr.
Western's house, where he received medical
care and remained to recover from his
hurt. One day he and Sophia had
occasion to be alone in the garden, where they
exchanged confessions of love.
Squire Allworthy became mortally ill.
Assuming that he was dying, the doctor
sent for the squire's relatives. With his
servants and family gathered around him,
the squire announced the disposal of his
wealth, giving generously to Tom. Tom
was the only one satisfied with his
portion; his only concern was the impending
death of his foster father and benefactor.
On the way home from London to see
the squire, Mrs. Blifil died suddenly.
When the squire was pronounced out of
danger, Tom's joy was so great that he
became drunk through toasting the
squire's health, and quarreled with young
Blifil.
Sophia's aunt, Mrs. Western, perceived
the interest her niece showed in Blifil,
for Sophia, wishing to conceal her
affection for Tom, gave Blifil the greater part
of her attention when she was with the
two young men. Informed by his sister
of Sophia's conduct, Mr. Western
suggested to Squire Allworthy that a match
be arranged between Blifil and Sophia.
When Mrs. Western told the young girl
of the proposed match, Sophia thought
that she meant Tom, and she
immediately disclosed her passion for the
foundling. But it was unthinkable that Mr.
Western, much as he liked Tom, would
ever allow his daughter to marry a man
without a family and a fortune, and Mrs.
Western forced Sophia to receive Blifil
under the threat of exposing the girl's
real affection for Tom. Sophia met Tom
secretly in the garden and the two lovers
vowed constancy. Discovering them, Mr.
Western went immediately to Squire
Allworthy with his knowledge.
Blifil, aware of his advantage, told the
scjuire that on the day he lay near death
1 om was out drinking and singing. The
squire felt that he had forgiven Tom any
wrongs, but his show of unconcern for
the squire's health infuriated the good
man. He sent for Tom, reproached him,
and banished him from his house.
With the help of Black George, the
gamekeeper, and Mrs. Honour, Sophia's
maid, Tom and Sophia were able to
exchange love letters. When Sophia was
confined to her room because she
refused to marry Blifil, she bribed her maid
to flee with her from her father's house.
Tom, setting out to seek his fortune,
went to an inn with a small company of
soldiers. A fight followed in which he
was severely injured, and a barber was
summoned to treat his wound. When
Tom had told the barber his story, the
man surprisingly revealed himself to be
3826

Partridge, the schoolmaster, banished
years before because he was suspected
of being Tom's father. When Tom was
well enough to travel, the two men set
out together on foot.
Before they had gone far they heard
screams of a woman in distress and came
upon a woman struggling with a soldier
who had beguiled her to that lonely spot.
Promising to take her to a place of safety,
Tom accompanied the unfortunate
creature to the nearby village of Upton,
where the landlady of the inn refused to
receive them because of the woman's
torn and disheveled clothing. But when
she heard the true story of the woman's
misfortune and had been assured that
the woman was the lady of Captain
Waters, a well-known officer, she
relented. Mrs. Waters invited Tom to dine
with her so that she could thank him
properly for her rescue.
Meanwhile a lady and her maid
arrived at the inn and proceeded to their
rooms. They were followed, several
hours later, by an angry gentleman in
pursuit of his wife. Learning from the
chambermaid that there was a woman
resembling his wife in the inn, he burst
into Mrs. Waters' chambers, only to
confront Tom Jones- At his intrusion,
Mrs. Waters began to scream. The
gentleman, abashed, identified himself as
Mr. Fitzpatrick and retreated with
apologies. Shortly after this disturbance had
subsided, Sophia and Mrs. Honour
arrived at the inn. When Partridge
unknowingly revealed Tom's relation with
Mrs. Waters and the embarrassing
situation which Mr. Fitzpatrick had disclosed.
Sophia, grieved by Tom's fickleness,
decided to continue on her way. Before
leaving the inn, however, she had Mrs.
Honour place on Tom's empty bed a muff
which she knew he would recognize as
hers.
Soon after setting out, Sophia overtook
Mrs. Fitzpatrick, who had arrived at the
inn early the previous evening and who
had fled during the disturbance caused
by her husband. Mrs. Fitzpatrick was
Sophia's cousin, and they decided to go
on to London together. In London Sophia
proceeded to the home of Lady Bellaston,
who was known to her through Mrs.
Western. Lady Bellaston was
sympathetic with Sophia's reasons for running
away.
Unable to overtake Sophia, Tom and
Partridge followed her to London, where
Tom took lodgings in the home of Mrs.
Miller, whom Squire Allworthy
patronized on his visits to the city. The
landlady had two daughters, Nancy and
Betty, and a lodger, Mr. Nightingale,
who was obviously in love with Nancy.
Tom found congenial residence with
Mrs. Miller, and he became friends with
Mr. Nightingale. Partridge was still
with Tom in the hope of future
advancement for himself. Repeated visits to Lady
Bellaston and Mrs. Fitzpatrick finally
gave Tom the opportunity to meet Sophia
during an intermission at a play. There
Tom was able to allay Sophia's doubts as
to his love for her. During his stay with
the Millers, Tom learned that Mr.
Nightingale's father objected to his marrying
Nancy. Through the kindness of his
heart Tom persuaded the elder
Nightingale to permit the marriage, to Mrs.
Miller's great delight.
Having learned Sophia's whereabouts
from Mrs. Fitzpatrick, Mr. Western came
to London and took Sophia from Lady
Bellaston's house to his own lodgings.
When Mrs. Honour brought the news
to Tom, he was in despair. Penniless,
he could not hope to marry Sophia, and
now his beloved was in the hands of her
father once more. Then Partridge brought
news that Squire Allworthy was coming
to London, bringing with him Master
Blifil to marry Sophia. In his distress
Tom went to see Mrs. Fitzpatrick, but
encountered her jealous husband on her
doorstep. In the duel which followed,
Tom wounded Fitzpatrick and was
carried off to jail.
There he was visited by Partridge, the
friends he nad made in London, and Mrs.
Waters, who had been traveling with
Mr. Fitzpatrick ever since their meeting
in Upton. When Partridge and Mrs.
3827

Waters met in Tom's cell, Partridge
recognized her as Jennv Jones, Tom's
reputed mother. Horrified, he revealed
his knowledge to everyone, including
Squire All worthy, who by that time had
arrived in London with Blifil.
In Mrs. Miller's lodgings so many
people had praised Tom's goodness and
kindness that Squire Allworthy had
almost made '"* ^is mind to relent in his
attitude toward the foundling when news
of his conduct with Mrs. Waters reached
his ears. But fortunately the cloud was
soon dispelled by Mrs. Waters herself,
who assured the squire that Tom was ne
son of hers but the child of his sister
Bridget and a student the squire had
befriended. Tom's true father having died
before his son's birth, Bridget had
concealed her shame by putting the baby on
her brother's bed upon his return from
a long visit to London. Later she had
paid Jenny liberally to let suspicion fall
upon her former maid.
Squire Allworthy also learned that
Bridget had claimed Tom as her son in
a letter written before her death, a letter
Master Blifil had destroyed. There was
further proof that Blifil had plotted to
have Tom hanged for murder, although
Fitzpatrick had not died. That
gentleman recovered sufficiently to acknowledge
himself the aggressor in the duel, and
Tom was released from prison.
Upon these disclosures of Blifil's
villainy, Squire Allworthy dismissed Blifil
and made Tom his true heir. Tom's
proper station having been revealed, Mr.
Western withdrew all objections to his
suit. Reunited, Tom and Sophia were
married and retired to Mr. Western's
estate in the country.
3828

TOM SAWYER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens, 1835-1910)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: St. Petersburg on the Mississippi River
First published: 1876
Principal characters:
Tom Sawyer
Aunt Polly, Tom's aunt
Huckleberry Finn, and
Joe Harper, Tom's friends
Becky Thatcher, Tom's girl
Injun Joe, a murderer
Muff Potter, a village ne'er-do-well
Critique:
Rich native humor and shrewd
observation of human character make The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer one of the
greatest boys' books ever written. Niorc
than a book for boys, it is an idyl of
America's golden age, of that pastoral
rime and scene which had already
vanished when Mark Twain re-created St.
Petersburg from memories of his own
boyhood. Of a lesser greatness and different
in purpose from The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, the story of Tom
Sawyer's adventures is true to both the
fantasies of boyhood and adult nostalgia.
Tom's pirate gang, cures for warts, the
white-washing of the fence, Jackson's
island, Becky Thatcher, Injun Joe, and
Huck Finn — American literature would
be poorer without them.
The Story:
Tom Sawyer lived securely with the
knowledge that his Aunt Polly loved
him dearly. When she scolded him or
whipped him, he knew that inside her
breast lurked a hidden remorse. Often
he deserved the punishment he received,
but there were times when he was the
victim of his tale-bearing half-brother,
Sid. Tom's cousin, Mary, was kinder to
him. Her worst duty toward him was to
see to it that he washed and put on clean
clothes, so that he would look respectable
when Aunt Polly took Tom, Sid, and
Mary to church on Sunday.
A new family had moved into the
neighborhood. Investigating Tom saw a
pretty, blue-eyed girl with lacy pantalets.
She was Becky Thatcher. Instantly the
fervent love he had felt for Amy
Lawrence fled from his faithless bosom, to be
replaced by devotion to the new girl he
had just beheld.
She was in school the next day, sitting
on the girls' side of the room with an
empty seat beside her. Tom had come
late to school that morning. When the
schoolmaster asked Tom why he had
been late, that empty seat beside Becky
Thatcher caught Tom's eye. Recklessly
he confessed he had stopped to talk with
Huckleberry Finn, son of the town
drunk. Huck wore castoff clothing, never
attended school, smoked and fished as
often as he pleased, and slept wherever
he could. For associating with Huck, Tom
was whipped by the schoolmaster and
ordered to sit on the girls' side of the
room. Amid the snickers of the entire
class, he took the empty seat next to
Becky.
Tom first attracted Becky's attention
by a series of drawings on his slate. At
length he wrote the words, "I love you/'
and Becky blushed. Tom urged her to
meet him after school. Sitting with her
on a fence, he explained to her the
possibilities of an engagement between them.
Innocently she accepted his proposal,
which Tom insisted must be sealed by a
TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain. Published by Harper & Brother*.
3829

kiss. In coy resistance she allowed Tom
a brief chase before she yielded to his
embrace. Tom's happiness was
unbounded. But when he mentioned his previous
tie with Amy Lawrence, the brief
romance ended. Becky left her affianced
with a haughty shrug of her pretty
shoulders.
That night Tom heard Huck's whistle
below his bedroom window. Sneaking
out, Tom joined his friend, and the two
went off to the cemetery, Huck dragging
a dead cat behind him. They were about
to try a new method for curing warts.
The gloomy atmosphere of the burial
ground filled the boys with
apprehension, and their fears increased still more
when they spied three figures stealing
into the graveyard. They were Injun
Joe, Muff Potter, and Doctor Robinson.
Evidently they had come to rob a grave.
When the two robbers had exhumed the
body, they began to quarrel with the
doctor about money, and in the quarrel
Potter was knocked out. Then Injun
Joe took Potter's knife and killed the
doctor. When Potter recovered from his
blow he thought he had killed
Robinson, and Injun Joe allowed the poor old
man to believe himself guilty.
Terrified, Tom and Huck slipped away
from the scene they had just witnessed,
afraid that if Injun Joe discovered them
he would kill them too.
Tom brooded on what he and Huck
had seen. Convinced that he was ill,
Aunt Polly dosed him with Pain Killer
and kept him in bed, but he did not seem
to recover. Becky Thatcher had not come
to school since she had broken Tom's
heart. Rumor around town said that she
was also ill. Coupled with this sad news
was the fear of Injun Joe. When Becky
finally returned to school, she cut Tom
coldly. Feeling that there was nothing
else for him to do, he decided to run
away. He met Joe Harper and Huck
Finn. Together they went to Jackson's
Island and pretended to be pirates.
For a few days they stayed happily on
the island and learned from Huck how
to smoke and swear. One day they heard
a boat on the river, firing cannon over
the water. Then the boys realized that
the townspeople were searching for their
bodies. This discovery put a new aspect
on their adventure; the people at home
thought they were dead. Gleeful, Tom
could not resist the temptation to see how
Aunt Polly had reacted to his death. He
slipped back to the mainland one night
and into his aunt's house, where Mrs.
Harper and Aunt Polly were mourning
the death of their mischievous but good-
hearted children. When Tom returned
to the island, he found Joe and Huck
tired of their game and ready to go home.
Tom revealed to them an attractive plan
which they immediately decided to carry
out.
With a heavy gloom overhanging the
town, funeral services were held for the
deceased Thomas Sawyer, Joseph Harper,
and Huckleberry Finn. The minister
pronounced a lengthy eulogy about the
respective good characters of the
unfortunate boys. When the funeral
procession was about to start, Tom, Joe, and
Huck marched down the aisle of the
church into the arms of the startled
mourners.
For a while Tom was the hero of all
the boys in the town. They whispered
about him and eyed him with awe in
the schoolyard. But Becky ignored him
until the day she accidentally tore the
schoolmaster's book. When the irate
teacher demanded to know who had torn
his book, Tom confessed. Becky's
gratitude and forgiveness were his reward.
After Muff Potter had been put in
jail for the murder of the doctor in the
graveyard, Tom and Huck had sworn to
each other they would never utter a
word about what they had seen. Afraid
Injun Joe would murder them for
revenge, they furtively sneaked behind the
prison and brought Muff food and other
cheer. But Tom could not let an
innocent man be condemned. At the trial he
appeared to tell what he had seen on
the night of the murder. While Tom
spoke, Injun Joe, a witness at the trial,
sprang from the window of the court-
3830

room and escaped. For days Tom worried,
convinced that Injun Joe would come
back to murder him. But as time went
by and nothing happened, he gradually
lost his fears. With Becky looking upon
him as a hero, his world was filled with
sunshine.
Huck and Tom decided to hunt for
pirates' treasures. One night, ransacking
an old abandoned house, they watched,
unseen, while Injun Joe and a
companion unearthed a chest of money buried
under the floorboards of the house. The
two frightened boys fled before they were
discovered. The next day they began a
steady watch for Injun Joe and his
accomplice, for Tom and Huck were bent
on finding the lost treasure.'
When Judge Thatcher gave a picnic
for all the young people in town, Becky
and Tom were supposed to spend the
night with Mrs. Harper. One of the
biggest excitements of the merrymaking
came when the children went into a cave
in the riverbank. The next day Mrs.
Thatcher and Aunt Polly learned that
Tom and Becky were missing, for Mrs.
Harper said they had not come to spend
the night with her. Then everyone
remembered that Tom and Becky had not
been seen since the picnickers had left
the cave. Meanwhile the two, having
lost their bearings, were wandering in
the cavern. To add to Tom's terror, he
discovered that Injun Joe was also in the
cave. Miraculously, after spending five
days in the dismal cave, Tom found an
exit that was five miles from the place
where they had entered. Again he was
a hero.
Injun Joe starved to death in the cave.
After searchers had located his body,
Tom and Huck went back into the cavern
to look for the chest which they
believed Injun Joe had hidden there. They
found it and the twelve thousand dollars
it contained.
Adopted shortly afterward by the
Widow Douglas, Huck planned to
retire with an income of a dollar a day for
the rest of his life. He never would have
stayed with the widow or consented to
learn her prim, tidy ways if Tom had
not promised that he would form a
pirates' gang and make Huck one of the
bold buccaneers.
3831

TOM THUMB THE GREAT
Type of work: Drama
Author: Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Type of plot: Farce
Time of plot: Age of chivalry
Locale: King Arthur's court
First presented: 1730
Principal characters:
Tom Thumb the Great, a pocket-size epic hero
King Arthur, Tom Thumb s liege lord
Queen Dollallolla, King Arthur's consort, in love with Tom
Princess Huncamunca, in love with Tom and Lord Grizzle
Lord Grizzle, suitor for Huncamunca's hand
Queen Glumdalca, a captive giantess, in love with Tom
Critique:
The full title of this play is The
Tragedy of Tragedies, Or, The Life and
Death of Tom Thumb the Great. It is
a literary burlesque of the absurd heroic
tragedies so popular during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well
as a satire on so-called courtly greatness.
The importance of the play lies,
however, in the skill with which Fielding
parodied the verbal absurdities so
common to the heroic tragedies. To add to
the satire, Fielding pretended that the
play was a newly discovered Elizabethan
play, a pretense which permitted him to
document the play for the reading
public with a host of footnotes showing
parallel speeches in the heroic drama to the
absurd speeches in his own play. The
device left no doubt as to precisely what
he was burlesquing. This play was
exceedingly popular in Fielding's lifetime;
it broke all records for long runs on the
stage during the eighteenth century.
The Story:
According to the legends told in his
lifetime, Tom Thumbs peasant father
and mother were unable to have any
children until Tom's father went to
Merlin the magician and received from him
a charm which resulted in the wife's
giving birth to the valiant, but diminutive,
Tom Thumb. When he reached
manhood, Tom Thumb entered the service
of King Arthur, in whose court he
accomplished great deeds and earned a
vast reputation.
Queen Dollallolla fell in love with
Tom Thumb. She loved him, in fact, as
much as she loved drinking, but she
kept her love a secret from all. Least of
all did she tell King Arthur, who was
afraid of no one except his queen.
Tom Thumb's greatest achievement
was his victory over the giants who dwelt
in the land ruled by the amazonian
Queen Glumdalca. Tom subdued ten
thousand giants and then returned with
the surviving foes fastened to his chariot,
among them the comely Queen
Glumdalca. Because of their size, all the giants
except the queen, who was a foot
shorter than her subjects, had to be left
outside the castle walls. Queen Glumdalca
was brought into the castle. As soon as
he saw her, King Arthur also fell in love
with someone other than his spouse.
Eager to reward Tom Thumb for his
great deeds, the king promised him
anything within reason. Tom at first replied
that permission to serve his king was
sufficient reward. When pressed,
however, he asked for the hand of Princess
Huncamunca, with whom he had long
been in love. The queen was furious
that her daughter should become the
wife of the man she loved. She railed at
her husband and swore that the marriage
should not take place. But the king, for
once holding his own against his virago
queen, told her to be quiet. The queen,
furious also at her husband, went to
Lord Grizzle, a discontented courtier.
3832

to secure his aid in preventing the
marriage. Lord Grizzle was quite willing
to oblige, for he himself was in love with
Princess Huncamunca. He promised the
queen that he would kill Tom Thumb.
Too late, Queen Dollallolla realized
that she did not want Tom killed. She
hoped, instead, that King Arthur would
die and that she might be free to marry
Tom.
In the meantime King Arthur went to
tell Princess Huncamunca of his decision
to marry her to Tom Thumb. The
princess was only too happy to hear of his
decision, for she had been in love with
Tom for a long time. She had also been
afraid that she might die an old maid
and, according to old superstition, be
doomed to lead apes through hell. After
the king had gone, Lord Grizzle came
to plead his suit with Princess
Huncamunca. She revealed that she loved him,
too. Taking her cue from the career of
the queen of the giants, who had had
twenty husbands, Princess Huncamunca
decided that she could love both Tom
and Lord Grizzle. She promised to marry
Lord Grizzle and he went at once to secure
a license for the ceremony.
Shortly after Lord Grizzle had gone on
his happy errand, Tom Thumb came to
the princess* apartment. Learning of her
promise to Lord Grizzle, he paid no
attention to it. While he was talking with
the princess, Queen Glumdalca came
into the room and offered herself to Tom
Thumb, who, she said, would take the
place of her twenty former husbands.
Tom refused, saying he preferred the
smaller gold coin of Princess
Huncamunca to the large dross coin of the giantess.
Queen Glumdalca left in a fury, but her
anger abated when she discovered that
the king was in love with her.
Tom Thumb hurried Princess
Huncamunca off to a parson, who married them
quickly and wished them at the same
time a long life and many children. Lord
Grizzle, returning iust after the ceremony,
found Princess Huncamunca married to
his rival. The princess assured him that
there was room in her heart for two
husbands and offered to marry him as
well. Lord Grizzle, unappeased, rushed
out to create a rebellion and kill Tom
Thumb.
That night the ghost of Tom Thumb's
father appeared to King Arthur and
warned him that Tom's life and the
king's rule were both endangered by
Lord Grizzle and his rebels. After the
ghost's departure the king sat
meditating on what he had been told, until the
queen, rousing from a drunken slumber,
came to see what was'the matter. She
tried, unsuccessfully, to put the king at
ease.
The next morning Tom Thumb, in
company with the giantess, went forth
to subdue the rebels. On the way to the
battlefield Merlin's magic vouchsafed Tom
Thumb a vision in which he saw that
he was doomed to be eaten by a red cow.
The vision put him in awe of death,
but when Merlin then revealed that Tom
would become famous through the
medium of the stage, Tom was willing to die.
Lord Grizzle, who had raised an army
of rebels under the banner of democracy
and freedom, advanced to meet Tom
Thumb and the giantess. In a bloody
engagement Lord Grizzle killed Queen
Glumdalca, and Tom avenged her by
killing Lord Grizzle. Their leader dead,
the rebels dispersed. Tom cut off Lord
Grizzle's head and started a victorious
march to the castle.
In the castle, meanwhile, the king,
the queen, and the princess awaited the
news of the battle, certain that Tom
Thumb would triumph and save them
from the rebels. Their hopes were
confirmed when a courtier ran in to tell them
of Tom's success. Their happiness was
short-lived, however, for the courtier went
on to tell how, on his march back to the
castle, Tom Thumb had met a large red
cow which had swallowed poor Tom at
a gulp.
Queen Dollallolla, outraged at the
courtier for bringing news of her loved
one's death, seized a sword and killed
him. The courtier's mistress then killed
the queen. Princess Huncamunca, anx-
3833

ious to avenge her mother's death, slew
the courtier's mistress. Another courtier
seized the time of strife to kill Princess
Huncamunca because of an old grudge
he carried against her. The princess' maid
then avenged her mistress by killing
Huncamunca's murderer. The king,
dispensing justice, killed the maid. Then
the king, with bodies lying all about him,
killed himself, with the thought that his
only glory was that he was the last to die.
3834

TONO-BUNGAY
Type of work: Novel
Author: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: England, West Africa, Bordeaux
First published: 1908
Principal characters:
George Ponderevo, a young scientist and the narrate
The Honorable Beatrice Normandy, an aristocrat
Edward Ponderevo, George's uncle
Susan Ponderevo, George's aunt
Marion Ramboat, George's wife
Critique:
Tono-Bungay is a spirited novel,
interesting from several points of view.
The references to early stages of
aviation have a quaint charm for the modern
reader, and the use of science as a motive
of fiction throws light upon the
intellectual development of the period. The
manufacture and sale of patent medicine
becomes a symbol of disintegrating
society. Frequently unconvincing, the
novel is still good reading, if only for
the Dickensian characters it presents.
Wells' critical views are always relieved
by humor and a shrewd analysis of
human motives.
The Story:
George Ponderevo grew up in the
shadow of Bladesover House, where his
mother was the housekeeper. In that
Edwardian atmosphere the boy soon
became aware of the wide distinctions
between English social classes, each
according to their station and degree, for
the neighborhood around Bladesover was
England in miniature, a small world made
up of the quality, the church, the
village, the laborers, and the servants.
Although George spent most of his time
away at school, he returned to Blades-
over for his vacations. During one of
his vacations he learned for the first time
the class he himself represented—the
servants.
His lesson came as the result of the
arrival at Bladesover House of the Hon-
TONOBUNGAY by H. G. Wells. By permission of the Executors, estate of H. G. Wells, and the publishers,
Dodd. Mead & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1909, by H. G. Wells. Renewed, 1936, by H. G. Wells.
orable Beatrice Normandy, a child of
eight, and her snobbish young half-
brother, Archie Garvell. Twelve-year-old
George Ponderevo fell in love with the
little aristocrat that summer. Two years
later their childish romance ended
abruptly when George and Archie fought
each other. George was disillusioned
because the Honorable Beatrice did not
come to his aid. In fact, she betrayed
him, abandoned him, and lied about
him, picturing George as an assailant of
his social betters.
When George refused flatly to
apologize to Archie Garvell, he was taken to
Chatham and put to work in the bakery
of his mother's brother, Nicodemus
Frapp. George found his uncle's family
dull, cloddish, and over-religious. One
night, in the room he shared with his
two cousins, he told them in confidence
that he did not believe in any form of
revealed religion. Traitorously, his
cousins reported George's blasphemy to
their father. As a result, George was
called upon in a church meeting to
acknowledge his sins. Humiliated and
angry, he ran away to his mother at
Bladesover House.
Mrs. Ponderevo then took him to live
with another uncle, his father's brother,
Edward Ponderevo, at Wimblehurst, in
Sussex. There George worked in his
uncle's chemist shop out of school hours.
Edward Ponderevo was a restless, dis-
3835

satisfied man who wanted to expand, to
make money. Aunt Susan Ponderevo
was a gentle, patient woman who treated
George kindly. His mother died during
his years at Wimblehurst.
But George's pleasant life at
Wimblehurst was brought suddenly to an end.
By foolish investments Edward
Ponderevo lost everything of his own, including
the chemist shop and also the small fund
he was holding in trust for George. The
Ponderevos were forced to leave
Wimblehurst, but George remained behind as
m apprentice with Mr. Mantell, the new
owner of the shop.
At the age of nineteen George went
up to London to matriculate at the
University of London for his Bachelor of
Science degree. On the trip his uncle,
now living in London, showed him the
city and first whispered to him the name
of Tono-Bungay, an invention on which
the older Ponderevo was working.
When George finally arrived in
London to begin his studies he was nearly
twenty-two, and in the meantime he had
decided to accept a scholarship at the
Consolidated Technical Schools at South
Kensington instead of the one offered at
the university. One day he met an old
schoolfellow, Ewart, an artist who
exerted a broadening influence on the
young man. He also met Marion Ram-
boat, the girl who was later to become
his wife. Because of these influences,
George began to neglect his studies.
When he saw a billboard which
advertised Tono-Bungay, he remembered the
hints his uncle had thrown out several
years before. A few days later his uncle
sent George a telegram in which he
offered the young man a job at three
hundred pounds a year.
Tono-Bungay was a patent medicine, a
stimulant most inexpensive to make and
only slightly injurious to the person who
tooK it. After a week of indecision,
George joined the firm. One factor that
helped to sway him was the thought that
Marion Ramboat might be persuaded to
many him if his income were greater.
Using new and bold methods of
advertising, George and his exuberant uncle
made Tono-Bungay a national product.
The enterprise was highly successful;
both George and his uncle became
wealthy. At last Marion consented to
marry George but their marriage was
unsuccessful. They were divorced when
Marion learned that her husband had
gone off for the weekend with Effie
Rink, one of the secretaries in his office.
After his divorce George devoted himself
to science and research. He became
interested in flying.
Edward Ponderevo, in the meantime,
branched out into many enterprises,
partly through the influence of the wealthy
Mr. Moggs, with whom he became
associated. His huge corporation, Domestic
Utilities, became known as Do-Ut, and
his steady advancement in wealth could
be traced by the homes in which he lived.
The first was the elaborate suite of rooms
at the Hardingham Hotel. Next came
a gaunt villa at Beckenham; next, an
elaborate estate at Chiselhurst, followed
by the chaste simplicity of a medieval
castle, Lady Grove, and finally the
ambitious but uncompleted splendor of the
great house at Crest Hill, on which three
hundred workmen were at one time
employed. While his uncle was buying
houses, George was absorbed in his
experiments with gliders and balloons,
working in his special workshop with
Cothope, his assistant. The Honorable
Beatrice Normandy was staying near
Lady Grove with Lady Osprey, her
stepmother. She and George became
acquainted again and after a glider accident
she nursed him back to health. Although
the two fell in love, Beatrice refused to
marry him.
Suddenly all of Edward Ponderevo's
world of top-heavy speculation collapsed.
On the verge of bankruptcy, he clutched
at anything to save himself from financial
ruin and the loss of his great,
uncompleted project at Crest Hill.
George did his part by undertaking
a voyage to Mordet Island in the brig
Maude Mary, to secure by trickery a
cargo of quap, an ore containing two
3836

new elements valuable to the Ponderevos
largely because they hoped to use can-
adium—one of the ingredients—tor
making a new and better lamp filament. The
long, difficult voyage to West Africa
was unpleasant and unsuccessful. After
the quap had been stolen and loaded on
the ship, the properties of the ore were
such that the ship sank in mid-ocean.
Rescued by the Portland Castle, George
learned of his uncle's bankruptcy as soon
as he came ashore at Plymouth.
To avoid arrest, George and his uncle
decided to cross the channel at night in
George's airship, and escape the law by
posing as tourists in France. The
stratagem proved successful, and they landed
about fifty miles from Bordeaux. Then
Uncle Ponderevo became dangerously ill
at a small inn near Bayonne, and a few
days later he died, before his wife could
reach his side. Back in England, George
had a twelve-day love affair with Beatrice
Normandy, who still refused to marry
him because she said she was spoiled by
the love of luxury and the false pride of
her class.
George Ponderevo, by that time a
severe critic of degeneration in England,
became a designer of destroyers.
3837

THE TOWER OF LONDON
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1840
Principal characters:
Duke of Northumberland
Guilford Dudley, Northumberland's son
Lady Jane Grey, Dudley's wife
Cuthbert Cholmondeley, Dudley's squire
Cicely, in love with Cuthbert
Lawrence Nightgall, the jailer
Simon Renard, Spanish ambassador
Queen Mary
Princess Elizabeth, Mary's sister
Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire
Critique:
Fictionalized history holds a twofold
interest for the reader. First it tells a
romantic story; secondly it tells a partly
true story. The Tower of London brings
one more factor to the reader, a lively
description of one of the most famous
structures in England. The story proper
is concerned with Queen Mary's troubled
reign, one of the least understood by
students of history and literature.
The Story:
At the death of King Edward the
Sixth, there were several claimants to
the English throne, among them Mary,
Elizabeth's older sister, and Lady Jane
Grey, wife of Lord Guilford Dudley, who
was supported by her father-in-law, the
Duke of Northumberland. According to
custom, Lady Jane was brought to the
Tower of London for her coronation.
There the supporters of Mary, while
pretending to be in accord with
Northumberland, waited to betray Lady Jane.
Among those present was Cuthbert
Cholmondeley, Dudley's squire, who
having seen a beautiful young girl in the
Tower, had fallen in love with her. From
inquiries among his servants, Cuthbert
learned that she was the adopted
daughter of Peter the pander and Dame Po-
tentia Trusbut, the true circumstances
of Cicely's birth being unknown. The
chief jailer of the Tower, Lawrence
Nightgall, also loved Cicely. When
Simon Renard, the Spanish ambassador,
and Lord Pembroke, Mary's supporters,
conspired to assassinate Cuthbert because
they knew him to be Dudley's favorite,
Nightgall eagerly agreed to help them.
Nightgall told Cicely that her new
lover had been taken from the Tower
and that she would never see him again.
Meanwhile, a prisoner in a dungeon
below the Tower, Cuthbert was accosted
by a strange woman who cried out that
she wanted her child to be returned to
her. When Nightgall visited Cuthbert,
the prisoner asked his jailer about the
woman, but Nightgall evaded the
question by stating that the woman was mad.
An old woman, Gunnora Broase, had
at Northumberland's command
administered a dose of poison to the late boy-
king, Edward the Sixth. She was directed
by a strange man to reveal
Northumberland's part in the murder and thus to
defeat his intention to place Lady Jane
on the throne of England.
Simon Renard and Lord Pembroke had
effected a rupture between Lady Jane and
Northumberland by convincing Lady
Jane that she should not consent to make
Dudley a king. Northumberland desired
this distinction for his son, but Lady Jane
believed that making her husband a king
would cause too much dissention in the
kingdom. In anger at this slight from his
3838

wife, Dudley left the Tower. Surrounded
by intrigue, Lady Jane was convinced
that Renard and Lord Pembroke were her
friends and that Northumberland was
her enemy. Lord Pembroke next
persuaded Lady Jane to send
Northumberland against Mary's forces, which were
reported advancing on London. With
Northumberland separated from Lady
Jane, Lord Pembroke and Renard were
certain that they could destroy her rule.
Lady Jane was easily persuaded because
she did not suspect the treachery of her
two advisers.
Cuthbert Cholmondeley escaped from
his dungeon. Dudley returned to his
wife and his queen in time to convince
her of the treachery of Lord Pembroke
and Renard, whom Lady Jane ordered
imprisoned. Cicely came to Dudley and
Lady Jane with the tale of what had
happened to Cholmondeley. Soon after
the imprisonment of Lord Pembroke and
Renard, Nightgall helped them to escape
from the Tower. Meanwhile Lady Jane
had made Cicely a lady-in-waiting.
Gunnora Broase came to Lady Jane for
an audience. The old woman declared
that Northumberland had poisoned
Edward and that his purpose in marrying
his son to Lady Jane was to elevate
Dudley to the throne, after which Lady Jane
was to be poisoned. Meanwhile
Cuthbert had found his way from the lower
dungeons and he and Cicely were
reunited. He was present when the Duke
of Suffolk, Lady Jane's father, urged her
to save her head by abdicating. Dudley,
however, persuadea his wife not to
surrender the crown. Mary was proclaimed
queen, and Lady Jane was placed in
Drison with Cicelv and Cuthbert.
Dudley was separately confined. Gunnora
Broase sneaked into Lady Jane's cell and
secreted her from the prison with the
promise that Dudley would follow shortly.
But when Northumberland disbanded his
forces and acknowledged Mary as queen,
Lady Jane surrendered herself and
returned to her cell in the Tower.
The people acclaimed Mary when she
entered London. The new queen's first
act was to release all Catholic prisoners
md replace them with her former
enemies. When Northumberland was
arrested and condemned to the scaffold, he
pleaded for mercy for Lady Jane because
he had been the chief proponent of her
pretension to the throne. Although the
duke publicly embraced Catholicism in
the mistaken belief that his life would
be spared, he was executed by Mary's
order.
Mary put pressure upon Lady Jane
and Dudley to embrace Catholicism as
Northumberland had done in order to
save their heads, but Lady Jane was
determined to die a Protestant.
Released from custody, Cuthbert
returned to Dame Trusbut seeking Cicely,
but she was nowhere to be found. Cutn-
bert did find the strange madwoman
again. She was lying in a cell, dead.
Among the prisoners Mary had
released from the Tower was Edward Cour-
tenay, the Earl of Devonshire. The young
nobleman was really in love with
Elizabeth, although, covetous of Mary's throne,
he pretended to love Mary. Without
scruple, he was able to win Mary's
promise that she would make him her husband.
Renard, however, lurked menacingly in
the background. When Courtenay went
to Elizabeth with one last appeal of
love, Mary and Renard were listening
behind a curtain and overheard the
conversation. In anger Mary committed
Courtenay to the Tower and confined
Elizabeth to her room. Then, on Renard's
advice, Mary affianced herself to Philip,
King of Spain. Later Mary's counselors
persuaded her to release Elizabeth.
Moved by compassion for the innocent
Lady Jane, Mary issued a pardon for the
pretender and her husband. The couple
retired to the home of Lady Jane's father,
where Dudley began to organize a new
plot to place his wife on the throne.
Seeing that Dudley was fixed in his design,
Lady Jane, faithful to her husband,
consented to follow him in whatever he did.
Another revolt was led by Sir Thomas
Wyat, a fervent anti-Catholic, supported
by those who opposed an alliance between
3839

England and Spain. The rebellion was
quelled, and Wyat and Dudley were
captured. Lady Jane and Cuthbert
surrendered themselves to Mary, Lady Jane
to plead for the life of her husband in
exchange for her surrender. The only
condition on which Mary would grant
Dudley's life was that Lady Jane should
embrace Catholicism. When she refused,
she was sentenced to death along with
Dudley. Elizabeth was brought to the
Tower, Mary planning to do away with
Courtenay and her sister after she had
completea the destruction of Lady Jane
and Dudley.
Nightgall, still suffering from jealousy
over Cicely's love for Cuthbert, had held
the girl in prison since the fall of Lady
Jane. Meanwhile Nightgall had been
hired by the French ambassador to
assassinate Renard. Renard and Nightgall
met in Cuthbert's cell after the squire
had been tortured, and in the ensuing
fight Cuthbert escaped and ran to find
Cicely. Renard succeeded in killing
Nightgall, who lived long enough to
prove Cicely's noble birth. She was the
daughter of the unfortunate madwoman,
Lady Grace Mountjoy. Before her
execution, Lady Jane requested that Cicely and
Cuthbert be allowed to marry. Mary,
with strange generosity, pardoned them
and granted their freedom.
At the scene of her execution, even the
enemies of Lady Jane shuddered at the
sight of so good and fair a woman about
to die. On the block she reaffirmed her
Christian faith as the ax descended upon
one of the most ill-fated of English
monarchs.
3840

THE TOWN
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: 1909-1927
Locale: Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
First published: 1957
Principal characters:
Flem Snopes, the shrewdest of the Snopes family
Eula Varner Snopes, his wife
Linda Snopes, their daughter
Manfred de Spain, the mayor of Jefferson and Eula's lover
Gavin Stevens, a county attorney
V. K. Ratliff, a salesman and friend of Gavin Stevens
Charles Mallison, Stevens' nephew
Montgomery Ward Snopes,
Wallstreet Panic Snopes,
Byron Snopes,
Mink Snopes,
Eck Snopes, and
I. O. Snopes, Flem's cousins
Critique:
In 1940, the novel The Hamlet
introduced the Snopes family and described
the Snopes invasion of the small
community, Frenchman's Bend, in fictional
Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.
Seventeen years later The Town appeared,
reporting further progress of the Snopes
clan and of Flem Snopes's rise from
restaurant owner to bank president.
Faulkner's method of tellino the story by means
of three narrators (idealistic lawyer
Stevens, shrewd and likable salesman
Ratliff, and Charles Mallison, Stevens'
young nephew) gives the novel unusual
depth, and the characters of the book
become so well known that readers who
missed The Hamlet may wish to return
to that novel. If Flem Snopes is the
symbol of unprincipled thirst for power, then
his opponents are symbols for a still
existing moral force which can even make
a town inhabited by the Snopeses a
livable place.
The Story:
The Snopes family, which came out
of nowhere after the Civil War, had
successfully completed the invasion of
Frenchman's Bend. Now Flem Snopes,
son of Ab Snopes, a bushwhacker,
sharecropper, and horse thief, was ready for
the next goal, the domination of
Jefferson, county seat of Yoknapatawpha
County.
Flem Snopes was ruthless, shrewd,
uneducated, and possessed of a fanatic
belief in the power of money. The
townspeople, who had seen him when he took
over Frenchman's Bend and then left it
under control of other family members,
were wondering about Flem's next move.
Among those interested were Gavin
Stevens, a young lawyer educated in
Heidelberg, and V. K. Ratliff, a
good-natured sewing machine salesman, who
made up for his lack of education with a
great measure of common sense. Stevens
felt a moral responsibility to defend the
town against the Snopeses, and Ratliff
was once the victim of Snopesism when,
thinking that it contained a buried
treasure, he bought worthless property from
Flem for a high price. Another who
became an assistant in the fight against
Snopes infiltration was Stevens' nephew,
Charles Mallison, who watched the
THE TOWN bv William Faulkner. By permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Copyright, 1957,
by William Faulkner. Copyright, 1957, by The Curtis Publishing Co.
3841

Snopes invasion from his childhood
through adolescence.
Flem Snopes realized that more subtle
methods for conquering Jefferson were
necessary than those he had used in
Frenchman's Bend. The greatest
advantage for him was his marriage with Eula
Varner, daughter of Will Varner, chief
property owner in that community.
When Eula was pregnant, impotent Flem
had married her after making a profitable
deal with Varner, who despised Snopes
but wanted to save his daughter's honor.
In a small rented house Flem and his
wife made a modest beginning in
Jefferson by operating a small restaurant of
which Ratliff had been a partner before
he lost his share in the business deal with
Flem. Later the restaurant was
transformed into a hotel. The first hint that
Flem was aiming even higher came when
he was appointed superintendent of the
local power plant, before the people even
knew that such a position existed.
As the new mayor of Jefferson,
Manfred de Spain was not in favor with the
town conservatives, but he had won the
election in a landslide when he declared
himself against an automobile ban
imposed by the former mayor. Soon it
became known in the town that Eula
Snopes and the new mayor were lovers.
No one had seen anything, but everybody
seemed to know about the affair except
her husband.
Shortly after the war, during which
Gavin Stevens served overseas, the
president of Jefferson's oldest bank was killed
in an auto accident. De Spain, named
president on account of the bank stock
he had inherited, resigned as mayor. The
election of a new president made
necessary a routine check by government
auditors, who uncovered the theft of a
large sum of money by a defaulting clerk,
Byron Snopes, who fled to Mexico.
Announcement was made that the money
had been replaced by the new president
and that Mr. Flem Snopes had been made
a vice president of the bank. Flem's
appointment indicated to his opponents a
new phase of Snopesism: the search for
money power was now overshadowed by
Flem's desire for respectability. This new
tactic also became apparent when he rid
himself and Jefferson of some
undesirable kinsmen, like Montgomery Ward
Snopes, who might have destroyed his
efforts to make the name Snopes
respectable. Montgomery Ward Snopes had
returned from the war in France with a
rich supply of pornographic pictures. A
short time later he opened a photographic
studio and gave nightly slide shows for a
large part of the male population of Yok-
napatawpha County. Flem, not wishing
to have his name associated with this
shady enterprise, put bootleg whiskey in
Montgomery Ward's studio to assure his
arrest. When another Snopes, Mink, was
jailed for murder, Flem failed to give him
any assistance. There was also Eck
Snopes, who did not fit into the Snopes
pattern on account of his weak
intelligence. Flem had no need to bring about
his removal, for Eck removed himself. He
had been hired to watch an oil tank.
While a search was being made for a
lost child, Eck, trying to make sure that
the child had not climbed into his oil
tank, took a lantern and went to look
inside the tank. After the explosion only
Eck's metal neck brace was available for
burial. Meanwhile, the child was found
safely somewhere along the road.
Flem's new desire for respectability
also made him forget Wallstreet Panic
Snopes, who had dared to become a self-
made man without his kinsman's help.
Wallstreet Panic, a successful grocer,
introduced the first self-service store in
Jefferson. Flem also disliked the outcome
of one of his family projects with I.O.
Snopes, who was trained to tie mules to
the railroad track in order to collect
money from damage law suits against
the railroad. When I.O. Snopes was
killed during one of these operations,
Flem hoped to collect the indemnity. But
I.O.'s stubborn wife kept all the money
and Flem, in order to avoid complications,
was forced to pay off the man who had
supplied the mules. Flem also tried to
live up to his new social standing by let-

ting a professional decorator furnish his
house.
In the meantime Gavin Stevens, who
had never been able to rid himself of the
attraction Eula Snopes held for him,
concentrated his reform efforts on Linda,
Eula's daughter. Linda, now in high
school, did not know that Flem was not
her real father. The lawyer loved Linda
and tried to influence her to attend a
northern college far away from Snopes-
ism. But Flem, needing a front of
outwardly solid family life for his show of
respectability, was opposed to the
possibility of losing his control of Linda,
especially since a will existed which gave the
girl a great deal of Will Varner's estate.
So Flem disregarded the pleas of his
daughter because he still had one more
step ahead of him to achieve the
position he desired in Jefferson: his scheme
to replace de Spain as president of the
bank. When he failed in his first attempt
to ruin the bank by instigating a run on
it, he decided that the time had come to
use his knowledge of his wife's adultery
as a weapon. Acting as if he had just
learned of the eighteen-year-old affair,
and armed with a declaration from Linda
that she would leave her part of her
inheritance to her father, he visited Will'
Varner. Once more, in order to save the
honor of his daughter and in return for
Flem's promise to destroy Linda's note
about the inheritance, Varner helped
Flem to get rid of de Spain and Flem
became president of the bank. Hoping Eula
would run away with him, de Spain sold
his bank stock, but Eula, hoping to keep
her daughter from ever learning of her
affairs, remained in Jefferson. She
committed suicide after securing from Gavin
Stevens a promise that he would marry
Linda.
Flem, having reached his goal, agreed
to let Linda leave Jefferson. But for a
short interval the ghost of old Snopesism
came back to Jefferson, when bank thief
Byron Snopes sent his four half-Indian
children to stay with his kinsfolk. After
a series of incidents in which the
children terrorized Jefferson and Frenchman's
Bend, Flem himself made sure that these
last reminders of primitive Snopesism
were sent back to Mexico. Meanwhile, he
had bought the de Spain house, and
workers were busy transforming it into a
mansion suitable to Flem Snopes,
president of the Bank of Jefferson.
3843

THE TOWN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Conrad Richter (1890- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Ohio
First published: 1950
Principal characters:
Sayward Wheeler, a pioneer matriarch
Portius, her husband
Resolve,
Guerdon,
Kinzie,
HULDAH,
Sooth,
Libby
Dezia,
Mercy, and
Chancey, her children
Jake Tench, a steamboat operator
Mrs. Jake Tench
Rosa Tench, her child
Critique:
Beginning with The Trees, and
continuing with The Fields, Richter's story
of the growth of an Ohio pioneer
settlement is completed in The Town, the
third novel of his trilogy. Although Say-
ward Wheeler still dominates her
family, The Town brings to maturity her
children, a younger generation having
little sympathy for the pioneers'
philosophy of work for happiness. Richter's
purpose in writing these books was not a
historical one. History for its own sake
never enters into the story. Richter
wanted, instead, to give to the reader the
feeling of having lived with his characters,
of being familiar with their colloquial
speech, their habits, their clothes, their
everyday problems, and their struggle for
survival against nature, man, and beast.
These are satisfying books, full of the
love of the land, of earthy wisdom and
broad sympathy.
The Story:
Three times in her life Sayward
Wheeler had felt that her life was over
and done. Not that it frightened her
THE TOWN by Conrad Richter. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc Copyright.
1950, by Conrad Richter. *
any; she figured she could do as well in
the next world as in this. Once was
the day before her father told her die
game was leaving Pennsylvania. The
next week Sayward and her family
traipsed west. The second time was the
night she married Portius. This time she
was not sure the feeling was more than
that she would never have any more
babies. She reckoned ten was enough,
though one lay in the burying ground.
Her youngest worried her the most.
All the others had been hearty enough,
but Chancey was so frail folks thought it
would have been easier for him to die
when he was born. When he was a
little fellow his heart flopped so much
when he walked that he spent most of
his time sitting on a stool in his daddy's
office. He looked out of the window for
hours, never opening his mouth.
Chancey lived in two worlds, the earthy,
boisterous one his family loved, and one
in which he could float away and do
wonderful things.
Sayward had fretted herself to raise
him. To harden him, she always had
3844

guests sleep with him. She never knew
how he shuddered lying next to most of
them, but he liked the softness of the
bride the time the bridesman got angry
up in the loft with all of them and spent
the night sitting in the kitchen.
Chancey was his father's favorite
because his mind ran as clear as water.
Often he rode his father's shoulders into
town. He had an uncertain ride the day
Portius took him to the hay scales. Por-
tius had just returned from the state
capitol where he had put through a bill
calling for a new county for the
township. With the making of the new
county went four judgeships. Portius, because
he was an agnostic, did not get an
appointment as he had expected. It was
given instead to a skinflint tax collector.
Portius had come home, drunk and
disheveled, minus his horse and saddle.
Shortly afterward the new judge came to
deliver a load of hay which had to be
weighed in town on the new scales.
Portius, with Chancey on his shoulders,
followed the wavering wagon tracks into
town. With one eye on Portius* unsteady
gait, the new judge stayed on the wagon
while it was weighed in. They clinched
their bargain at the inn, the judge
demanding cash which Portius produced.
When die judge started to leave, Portius
claimed that he had bought the judge's
person with the load of hay. Before he
left the inn the judge had given Portius
the hay to avoid being haled to court.
Not many could get ahead of Portius;
Sayward thought he had too much of
the rascal in him himself.
Although he was not yet a judge, he
was a popular lawyer, and he was the
leader in the fight to have Americus
named the county seat. Resolve had
studied law with his father and also practiced
at the courthouse. Sayward was pleased
when he married a girl who was sensible,
even if she did have a lot of money. But
Sayward felt at the time that things were
going along too well and that the Lord
would fetch her feet to the ground soon.
She was brought around feet first when
Huldah disappeared. Sayward knew that
black-eyed minx never fell in the river
as some folks thought, but she was taken
a little aback when she heard that
Huldah had gone to a man's house stark
naked, claiming the gipsies had taken
her clothing. Sayward went after her.
On the way home the ferryman,
muttering a coarse remark Sayward only guessed
at, made them wait for a second crossing.
Sayward would not wait; she drove her
horse into the river and forded it instead.
Huldah listened respectfully after that.
Her set-to with the ferryman settled
in Say ward's mind. Next thing he knew,
Portius was arguing for a bridge in town.
When it was built, Guerdon worked on
it, though he claimed all the while that it
was too low for flood time. When the
floods came, Chancey, running away, was
caught on the bridge and washed down
the river. He could not tell whether he
was in a dream or not until some men
rowed out after him. Guerdon came down
the river later to take him home.
Guerdon married a slut and ran away
after he killed her lover. Guerdon's
daughter Guerda, a sprightly and
prophetic child, became Say ward's favorite.
Soon after Guerda told Sayward that a
good angel was coming for her, the child
died suddenly of a throat infection.
Of all the Wheeler children, Chancey
always had the hardest row to hoe. He
fell in love with Rosa, the child Mrs.
Jake Tench had had by Portius. When
Rosa realized that all chances were
against her, she committed suicide.
After his Aunt Unity died and her
Bay State furniture was sent to him,
Portius persuaded Sayward that his position
in town warranted a mansion on the
square. Sayward was proud of the house,
but comfortable only in the kitchen and
the room where she kept her old cabin
furniture. Oh, she never disgraced her
family; she could keep up with folks,
even when Resolve became state
governor. Although she was the richest woman
in town, her family said she was so
common she spoke to everyone she saw. The
things she missed most at the town house
3845

were trees. She, who had sworn so often
at the big butts, grew lonely for them.
The first trees in town were those she
planted in her yard.
She enjoyed having Portius* sister come
to visit for a month, though the Bay State
woman harped mostly on things and folks
back east. Sayward could not help
laughing when her old bushnipple of a pappy
came in to see the woman and praised the
old settlers skyhigh.
Her pappy had tracked down their lost
Sulie. When Sayward and Genny went
out to see her, they found her a squaw-
woman who would not admit she
remembered them.
Chancey left home to become a
newspaper editor, blasting the pioneers who
slaved for their livelihood and praising
the men who advocated the abolition of
hardship. Sayward secretly supported
Chancey's paper; she thought he had as
good a right to say what he pleased as
anyone. She missed him, but his
newspaper pieces seemed to bring him closer.
When he came back for Portius* funeral,
Sayward guessed he really came to see if
his father had left him any money.
Sayward was lonely. All the folks who
had known her kind of life were gone.
The children thought her mind
wandered a little before she died. She talked
to her trees and said in her will that they
could not be cut down. When she finally
took to her bed, she had it turned toward
the trees outside.
3846

THE TRACK OF THE CAT
Type of work: Novel
Author: Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1909- )
Type of plot: Symbolic allegory
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Sierra Nevada Mountains
First published: 1949
Principal characters:
Arthur Bridges, a dreamer
Curt, and
Harold, his brothers
Grace, his sister
Mrs. Bridges, the mother
Mr. Bridges, the father
Joe Sam, the Indian hired man
Gwen Williams, Harold's girl
Critique:
Like his earlier novel, The Ox-Bow
Incident, Walter Van Tilburg Clark's
The Track of the Cat is a tragedy laid in
Nevada, his adopted state. It is a long,
psychological, and symbolic study of the
effect of evil on a ranch family. The
black cat means the end of everything
to the Indian Joe Sam, whose animism,
apparent in his recognition and
acceptance of the primitive, mythic nature of
Evil, affects the whole Bridges family for
whom he works. Clark writes his story
with his usual vivid contrasts between
dream and fact, white man and Indian,
tragedy and hope.
The Story:
Arthur Bridges, dreaming that he was
caught in a blizzard in the Sierra Ne-
vadas, could hear a loved one cry out to
him, but he could not recognize the voice.
He was afraid to move for fear he would
fall off an icy cliff. He realized dimly
that his left hand was bare and cold. As
he put it in the pocket of his red and
white cowhide parka, he felt the half-
finished carving of a mountain lion that
he was making for Joe Sam. Every year
he carved a cat for Joe Sam because the
old Indian believed a black cat brought
death with the first snow unless he could
make medicine against it. This year the
first snow had come early in October, and
the carved cat was not finished. The black
cat must be stalking some prey through
the stormy night. As Arthur heard the
scream again, he tried to get off the cliff.
Falling, he screamed and woke himself
up.
Finding himself in the bunk room of
the ranch house, Arthur listened for a
sound in the wind. When he heard it,
he waked his brothers, Curt and Harold.
Curt thought Arthur was only dreaming
until he also heard the scream of cattle
being attacked somewhere in the storm.
He rushed into his clothes to go out to
the cattle.
The mother, having heard the screams,
was making breakfast by the time the
boys were dressed. Since it was dark and
they could not see what was attacking,
they ate while they made plans. Harold,
the youngest, was to stay at home. Curt,
always the boss, would take charge, but
he would take Arthur along because he
had dreamed that a black painter was at
the cattle.
Arthur got out his whittling as they
waited. Harold told him that Joe Sam
had been up to his tricks that night.
When something worried Joe Sam, he
was likely to fall into a trance and go
without eating or sleeping for days. Joe
Sam always made medicine to his gods
before the first snow and carried one of
THE TRACK OF THE CAT by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. By permission of the publishers, Random
House, Inc. Copyright, 1949, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark.
3847

Arthur's carvings of a mountain lion in
a little bag under his chin. The black
cat was, to him, the height of evil.
Bullets went through it so that it could never
be killed. It was as big as a horse. It made
no tracks. But it could kill viciously. The
early October storm had caught them all
unawares, with Joe Sam's cat still
unfinished.
The mother had also dreamed
something which she would not tell. She
wanted Curt to take Harold with him
instead of Arthur. But Harold's girl, Gwen
Williams, had come to visit the night
before and Arthur thought Harold should
stay with her. When the mother asked
Harold his plans for marrying Gwen, he
claimed that he had not gone that far.
Arthur figured the valley could hold more
stock out of which Harold could take a
yearly cut. They all realized that Curt
would object if he did not get his own
way or if he saw money going outside of
the immediate family, even if it were to
a brother's family. Harold said he would
arrange the matter with Curt when Gwen
went home. They all knew the father,
who lived now only to drink, would
have no say in the matter.
Before Curt and Arthur left, the father
and the girls, Grace and Gwen, came to
breakfast. The father immediately started
drinking. To spite Harold, Curt tried to
impress Gwen. Although he made fun
of Arthur's half-belief in Joe Sam's black
cat, he admitted when he got the horses
ready that they were spooky that
morning.
Curt and Arthur took only one gun
because Curt was sure the cat was in a
box canyon where he could easily find
and kill it; Arthur would not need a gun
for his kind of cat. In the canyon Curt
found some of the cattle newly killed,
obviously by a mountain lion. There
were tracks nearby, but in his highheeled
boots he could not follow them through
the snow. Leaving Arthur and the gun
to hold the trail, Curt went back to the
house for tracking boots and food.
Arthur, leading his pony, slowly
followed the cat's tracks toward a half-dome
where he had often sat, whittling his
figures and admiring the view. Suddenly his
pony neighed fiercely and jerked,
throwing Arthur sprawling into the bushes
nearby. As he looked up over his
shoulder, Arthur saw the black cat leaping at
him.
Curt dawdled at home. Trying to get
a rise out of Gwen, he promised to bring
her home the skin of the black cat to use
as a blanket, or, if it should be a yellow
one, to wear as a costume. Harold brought
him a frisky horse. Curt, nearly
trampling the Indian, asked Joe Sam whether
he still believed in the black cat. Joe Sam
only replied that hunting would be no
good because of the heavy snow.
On the way back to the canyon Curt
saw Arthur's horse heading home. Dis
gusted because he thought Arthur had
forgotten the horse as he daydreamed,
Curt followed the tracks until he found
Arthur's body. While he exchanged his
coat for Arthur's heavy parka and packed
the body on his own horse, he swore to
get the cat if he had to trail it to the
Pacific. Then he headed the horse toward
home with the body.
Arthur's death greatly upset the mother
and Grace. Harold and Gwen had to
keep things going at the ranch. The
father was drunk and Joe Sam
practically hypnotized. A heavy snow settled in,
delaying the burial. Afterward they made
a huge bonfire in front of the house in
case Curt needed direction. He had been
out more than two days since Arthur's
body had come back on the horse. The
mother told Harold he would have to go
out after Curt and that he should take
Joe Sam along to track.
The horses became spooky when Curt
and Joe Sam came near the box canyon.
Each man tracked one side of the creek.
Harold found dead cattle, one heifer so
freshly killed that the blood still spurted.
Working carefully, he tracked the cat so
closely that he was almost surprised when
3848

he saw it. As he shot, Joe Sam's bullet
came from across the creek. The cat
sprang away with a scream, but the men
followed it and finished their job.
Although it was almost all black, Joe Sam
said that the cat was not his black
painter. His was a devil killing all the time.
Harold found Curt's crumpled body
under a cliff. Tracing back from the place
above the body where the snow had been
broken off, he guessed that Curt had
rushed wildly about after leaving a fire
and a pile of cut boughs higher up.
There, where the fire had been, Harold
found Curt's gun and snowshoes, but he
could find no tracks except Curt's in all
the clearing. Puzzled and a little
terrified, Harold guessed that the dead black
painter might as well be blamed for
Curt's death after all.
3849

THE TRAITOR
Type of work: Drama
Author: James Shirley (1596-1666)
Type of plot: Tragedy of blood
Time of plot: c. 1480
Locale: Florence, Italy
First presented: 1631
Principal characters:
Alexander, Duke of Florence, enamored of Amidea
Lorenzo, his kinsman and the next in succession
Amidea, betrothed to Pisano and scornful of the duke
Sciarrha, and
Florio, her brothers and avengers
Pisano, enamored of Oriana, though engaged to Amidea
Cosmo, his friend, engaged to Oriana
Oriana, loved by Pisano, formerly by Cosmo
Morosa, her mother
Petruchio, Pisano's servant, in Lorenzo's hire
Depazzi, an informer for Lorenzo
Critique:
James Shirley was one of the first
playwrights to learn his trade from the
printed page rather than in the theater.
The Traitor displays a talent carefully
nurtured on Marlowe, Shakespeare, and
Jonson, but at the same time capable of
original, powerful poetry. In his own day
his position in the theater was that of
competent journeyman playwright, yet
his works graced the boards for
generations. The Traitor, which remained in
theatrical repertoire for over a hundred
and fifty years, was attributed falsely in
the late seventeenth century to a Jesuit
who died in Newgate Prison. Shirley's
reputation has only recently been rescued
from critical neglect.
The Story:
The reign of Alexander, the young
Duke of Florence, began in a cloud of
conspiracy, for his cousin Lorenzo had
played the role of the loyal kinsman
to seat the duke and was now playing
the villain to unseat him, under the
pretext of establishing a republic. For this
purpose he appealed through pressures
and persuasion to Cosmo, beloved of
Oriana, to give over his suit in favor of
Pisano, who had become enamored of the
girl through the influence of his servant
Petruchio, secretly in the hire of Lorenzo.
Pisano, in turn, was to break his
engagement to Amidea so that the duke might
have her later for his lustful purposes.
From a man exiled at Lorenzo's
request, the duke received a message which
told of the prince's treachery. Confronted
with this evidence, Lorenzo denied
everything and cleverly reinstated himself and
even strengthened his plot by recounting
the examples of his loyalty to his
kinsman. Restored to favor, Lorenzo
undertook to procure the beautiful Amidea
for the duke. By design, he attempted to
accomplish his purpose through the offices
of her brother, the hot-headed Sciarrha.
Sciarrha, reacting as Lorenzo had
expected, renounced the duke and, acting
on hints from Lorenzo, agreed to murder
his ruler in Amidea's chamber that night.
Sciarrha, in the presence of his brother
Florio, tested his sister's chastity by
advocating the assignation. She rejected his
proposal, however, and her other brother
threatened Sciarrha's life should such
degradation be visited upon them. Her
devotion to virtue and Florio's threat to
murder Sciarrha were greeted with great
elation, but before a pact could be made
Pisano arrived to declare that Amidea was
no longer paramount in his affections,
and that he was in love with and desired
to marry another. This news was with-
3850

held from Sciarrha for fear that he would
embark on a reckless course of revenge
harmful to them all.
Meanwhile, Cosmo's attempts to place
his friend Pisano in Oriana's affection
proved unsuccessful. In spite of her
mother's pleadings, Oriana remained, for
the time being, loyal to Cosmo.
The plans for the assignation which
was supposed to end in murder were
well laid. In order to arouse the populace,
Depazzi, picked because of his political
innocence, was to spread the news of the
ruler's death even before the murder.
Lorenzo would then quiet the citizens
and the uneasy nobles by consenting to
act as interim ruler until the state could
be delivered from tyranny and be
proclaimed a republic.
Sciarrha made sure that nothing was
lacking in his lavish entertainment of
the duke. A masque which depicted the
downfall of treachery was portrayed
before the youthful ruler, but he remained
unmoved, so intent was he on the lovely
Amidea. When Amidea received the duke
in her chambers, her brothers were
concealed behind the arras as she pleaded
with him to abandon his wicked
pursuits. Threatened with her suicide before
his eves, the duke repented and declared
his determination to be a ruler worthy of
her esteem. The brothers then appeared
to congratulate their revered leader and
urged him to hide in order to discover
the author of the traitorous plot against
him.
Lorenzo, when told the duke had died
according to the plans made, cleverly
accused the brothers of treachery and
denied any complicity in the plot. The duke
attempted a reconciliation of the plotters,
but without success.
After the people had been quieted by
the duke's appearance before the mob,
Lorenzo claimed repentance equal to the
duke's, much to Sciarrha's anger and
disgust. Lorenzo, continuing to play the
villain, told Sciarrha that Pisano had broken
off his marriage contract with Amidea
and that Oriana was to be led to the altar
by her mother's duplicity. Infuriated by
this news, Sciarrha once again became
Lorenzo's ally. Pisano would die and
Sciarrha would also be a willing tool in
the conspiracy against the duke. Lorenzo
released the former conspirator, Depazzi,
from his service.
But the duke's repentance was
shortlived when he received assurances from
Lorenzo that Amidea would soon be
more tractable in order to save her
brother, who seemed bound for his own
destruction. Amidea tried in vain to
persuade Pisano to take his wedding party
elsewhere that he might escape Sciarrha's
fury, and she even pleaded with Oriana,
who was more than willing to return
Pisano to his rightful loved one; but
Pisano refused to be moved. He refused
to fight back, however, when Sciarrha
demanded satisfaction, and so he was
murdered before Lorenzo's watchful
eyes and guard. Further supplication to
Sciarrha to deliver his sister to the duke's
lust proved useless until Lorenzo pointed
out that the brother's execution would
only make Amidea's ruin more certain.
At last Sciarrha agreed to send his sister
to the duke's bed that very night.
Amidea, in double mourning for a
lover lost and a brother's life forfeited,
begged to die rather than suffer ignominy.
Sciarrha again tested her chastity with
his unacceptable proposals. Amidea knelt
in prayer for her brother's soul when
she realized he must kill her in order
to protect her. Later Florio promised
Lorenzo that he would bring his sister
to the duke—in secret, however, to spare
her shame.
After the corpse of Amidea had been
repared, the duke entered his cham-
er and cried out in horror when he
kissed her cold lips. In Lorenzo's
presence he wished that he too might die,
and Lorenzo killed him with Petruchio's
help. Though he protested that only his
grief spoke out, the duke died in full
knowledge of the treachery his kinsman
had planned. He was placed in bed with
his intended victim. Though Sciarrha
had pretended to share in Lorenzo's plans,
he fought and killed Lorenzo, receiving
1

in the struggle his own death wound. and promised to make what amends he
Petruchio was sent to the torture cham- could to Oriana and Florio.
ber. Cosmo assumed the rule of the city
3852

TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA
Type of work: Rfcird of travel
Author: Charles M. Doughty (1843-1926)
Time: 1876-1878
Locale: Northwestern Arabia
First published: 1888
Traveh in Arabia Deserta has been
recognized, almost since its publication
in 1888, as one of the greatest travel
books in the English language. Doughty
spent almost two years traveling, going
on pilgrima^es, and living with various
nomad tribes in northwestern Arabia,
then a land almost completely unknown
to Europeans and Americans. His account
is a thoroughly realized document, a
comprehensive understanding and treatment
of e^ery aspect of the life of the nomadic
Arabs. Written with grace, fullness, and
enormous insight, Travels* in Arabia
Deserta has become a classic of travel
literature and a necessary book of
instructions for anyone interested in that
part of the Moslem world. T. E.
Lawrence, in his introduction to the 1921
edition of this work, acknowledged that
Doughty was the first and greatest of all
European writers on Arabia.
Travels in Arabia Deserta is also an
objective treatment of life among the
nomads. Doughty was content to observe,
to understand, to record, without leveling
judgments against a civilization so
different from his own. This obiectivitv
allowed him to see and report the Arabs as
they lived, to understand fully their
customs, their prejudices, and their attitudes.
In several ways, Doughty was
extremely well equipped to be one of the
first Europeans to visit the Arabian
peninsula and explore it extensively. A
geologist, he was able to draw geological
maps of uncharted territory and
determine the nature of the terrain. As a
scientist he was also enonnously interested
in the climate of Arabia, and he filled
his book with observations on climate and
torog'-aphv. Doughty drew, and included
in his work, some of the first maps of the
area he visited. He was also interested
in and knowledgeable about architecture
and archaeology. He captured a keen
sense of Arabic design and often used
one of the designs as a chapter heading.
Because of his interest in many phases
of scientific learning, he was able to use
many of the skills of Western civilization,
for the first time, on the Arabian
peninsula. In addition, Doughty was an able
medical practitioner. He attempted to use
his medical knowledge to help the Arabs
among whom he lived. Although, later,
he did help enormously during epidemics
of tropical diseases such as cholera and
leprosy, the Arabs were often inclined to
distrust him. Doughty points out that
in their love for certainty and complete
assurance they were likely to judge a
medical practice by a single case and they
were not appreciative of the tentative
conclusions of honest medical science.
Although Doughty had great respect
and affection for the nomad tribes among
whom he traveled, he did not
sentimentalize them or the conditions in which
they lived. Long passages in Travels in
Arabia Deserta describe their filth,
poverty, and ignorance. Frequently they
could get little food; often, even the chief
of the tribe could not get enough water
for his wife to make him a cup of coffee.
They wore thin cotton robes, even though
the desert nights frequently became very
cold. The Arabs met with frequent rival
tribes who might steal their camels and
their meager possessions, and they were
suspicious of any stranger. Their life, as
depicted by Doughty, was not the life of
romantic adventure; rather it was one of
poverty, hardness, insecurity, and want.
Travels in Arabia Deserta gives a
complete picture of the social life and
customs of the nomad tribes. Men, ruling
the family tyrannically, decided also the
affairs of the tribe. Women were servants,
and girl children were not looked on with
3853

favor. In the tribes Doughty visited he
found little evidence of the notion of the
harem that Europeans and Americans
have idealized. There was no moral
feeling against polygamy, but most of the
men, even the chiefs, could not afford to
keep more than one woman. The woman,
if she found the arrangement not to her
liking, could run away and settle herself
in a place more congenial to her. And
those men who had two wives with them
on their travels frequently found the
jealousy between the two women not
worth the extra pleasure of a second wife.
Women were slaves in the family itself,
but they had some choice as to whether
or not to submit to slavery. Doughty also
discussed the notion of justice in the Arab
society. Although the men ruled the
family firmly and there were frequent wars
between different tribes, justice within
the tribe was fairly humane and
understanding. Thieves were not hanged but,
rather, were forced to make amends.
Doughty contrasted these notions of a
merciful concept of justice with the ideas
of divine wrath and fearful justice in the
Old Testament.
Doughty did not simply chronicle the
social customs of the Arabs. He also
discussed their religion fully and attempted
to relate both their religion and their
customs to the kind of life the climate
and the economic circumstances forced
them to lead. In their difficult desert
existence, the leniency of their justice
was an expression of their sympathy for
others caught in the same way of life,
but, according to Doughty, they would
never have articulated such a feeling,
for their life made such practical
demands upon them that they had neither
the time nor the inclination for any
introspection or analysis. They simply went
about the difficult task of keeping
themselves alive.
They were a deeply religious people.
Although the open and barren nature of
their terrain made them suspicious of
enemies, forthright and direct in manner
and speech, and little inclined to subtle
thought, this same open terrain, this area
that showed only earth and sky, seemed
to make them feel closer to God and feel
their religion with enormous intensity.
They often embraced religious causes,
and they followed the dictates of their
religion with a fierce intensity that was
not necessarily moral or reasoned, but
rather a product of the closeness they
felt with God. They accepted death and
disaster easily (too easily, at times, for
Doughty), for these people, trying to live
in the enormous, barren desert, felt
themselves subject to the will of an
all-powerful God. When they could build
structures, they built towers, expressions of
their desire both to relieve the flatness of
their surroundings and to approach God
more closely. The towers were also useful
in posting watchmen to warn the tribe
of any possible enemy attack. Doughty
points out also that the tower is the
natural expression of the tribe used to desert
existence, the natural attempt to put the
relationship between God and man in a
vertical sphere.
Doughty discusses, too, the fanatical
quality of the nomad's religion, his
willingness to sacrifice anything, including
his life, for a cause he believes sacred.
This fanaticism is, again, a product of
the singleness, the open nature of his
desert surroundings. Man finds little in
nature to divert him, little to draw his
attention from his home and his God, so
in his allegiance to his cause he finds
little qualification or sophistication to divert
his faith.
Doughty conveyed his observations in a
rich, full style. He managed to use this
fullness as a splendid means of carrying
the entire range of his observations and
inferences about Arab life. At times, to
contemporary ears, his style seems stilted
and archaic. For example, he writes
sentences like this: "We were to depart
betimes by the morrow." This style was
deliberately archaic even in the 1880's, yet
it helps to produce the flavor of a
different and more primitive culture. The
archaic richness of the style completes the
contrast between our world and the
world of the Arab nomad. Doughty,
3854

fully aware of the differences between
these worlds, has managed to create a
comprehensive and understanding
portrait of the nomad world, to produce, in
Travels in Arabia Deserta, a history of
the beliefs, the experiences, the essential
conditions of life, of the nomadic
peoples of northwestern Arabia.
3855

THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO
Type of work: Record of travel
Author: Marco Polo (1254-1324), as set down by the scribe, Rustigielo
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1260-1295
Locale: Greater Asia
First transcribed: Fourteenth-century manuscript
Principal characters:
Nicolo Polo, a Venetian merchant
Maffeo Polo, his brother
Marco Polo, Nicolo's son
Kublai Khan, Emperor of China
Critique:
The story of Marco Polo's Asiatic
journey is the most astounding of all travel
books of Western civilization. One
reason for its popularity is that Marco Polo
did not mind mixing some real facts with
his fiction. Another is that he possessed
in high degree a quality few travelers
have ever had; he was able to see more
objectively than the many who have
described lands visited only in terms of their
home countries. His book is the record
of a merchant-gentleman who sets forth
his own observations and at the same time
reveals the medieval viewpoint — its
interest in alchemy and enchantments, its
concern with mystery, and its sound,
logical way of thinking beneath the
surface superstition and credulity of the age.
The Story:
Marco Polo's father and uncle set
forth on their first trip East in 1260, with
a cargo of merchandise for
Constantinople. From there Nicolo and Maffeo
Polo ventured on into the lands of the
Tartar princes. Having at last reached
the court of Kublai Khan, they managed
to ingratiate themselves into his highest
favor. During their stay the khan
questioned them about the Catholic faith and
asked them to return to Europe and to
request the Pope to send missionaries to
his distant land. In the year 1269, the
two Polos arrived in Venice, to learn that
Pope Clement was dead and that Nicolo
Polo's wife had also died after giving
birth to a son, Marco Polo.
THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO by Marco Polo. Published by Doubleday & Co., Inc.
There was a long delay in the naming
of a new Pope. At last the Polos decided
to return to Kublai Khan and to take
young Marco with them. Scarcely had
they left Italy, however, when word
followed them that Gregory the Tenth had
been elected in Rome. The Polos at once
asked the new Pope to send missionaries
to Kublai Khan, and Gregory appointed
two priests to accompany the merchants.
Before their arrival at the khan's court,
the priests turned back when confronted
by strange lands and unknown dangers.
Young Marco Polo remembered that the
journey to the land of Kublai Khan took
three and a half years.
Kublai Khan received them graciously
and appointed Marco one of his
attendants. In a short time Marco Polo had
learned four different languages and he
was sent by Kublai Khan on various
important missions.
For seventeen years the Polos remained
at the court of Kublai Khan before they
finally expressed a desire to return to their
own country with their wealth. They
felt that if the great khan should die
they would be surrounded by envious
princes who might harm them. The khan
was unwilling to part with the Polos, but
they managed to get his permission by
offering to transport some barons to the
East Indies. Fourteen ships were made
ready for the homeward voyage. The
expedition arrived at Java after about three
months. Eighteen months more were
required for the voyage to the territory
3856

of King Argon in the Indian seas. During
the voyage six hundred of the crew were
lost as well as two of the barons. From
there the Polos took an overland route
to Trebizond. En route they learned that
the great Kublai Khan was dead. The
three arrived home safely in 1295, in
possession of their wealth and in good
health.
When the time came for him to
dictate to the scribe, Rustigielo, the story of
his travels, Marco Polo remembered that
Armenia was divided into two sections,
the lesser and the greater. In Armenia
Major was the mountain said to have
been Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark
came to rest. Near this place was a
fountain of oil so great that caravans of
camels hauled away the oil, which was
used for an unguent as well as for heat
and light.
At the boundaries of the province of
Georgiania, Alexander the Great had
caused a gate of iron to be constructed.
This gate, though not all of iron, was
commonly said to have enclosed the
Tartars between two mountains.
At Teflis was a fountain wherein
hundreds of fish made their appearance from
the first day of Lent until Easter Eve.
During the remainder of the year they
were not to be seen.
Baudas, or Baghdad, anciently known
as Babylon, lay along the river that
opened out upon the Sea of India. The
city was one of the great cities of the
world, and its ruler one of the richest
men of all time. He lost his life through
his unwillingness to spend a penny of
his wealth for its protection. His captor
locked him up in his tower where he
starved to death surrounded by gold. In
that region also a Christian cobbler had
caused a mountain to move and by his
miracle converted many Arabs to
Christianity.
In Irak Marco Polo visited a
monastery in which the monks wove woolen
girdles said to be good for rheumatic
pains. He also visited Saba, from whence
were said to have come the three Magi
who adored Christ in Bethlehem. At
Kierman, on the eastern confines of
Persia, Marco saw the manufacture of steel
and products in which steel was used.
Much rich embroidery was also found
there as well as splendid turquoises. The
Karaunas of the region had learned the
diabolical art of producing darkness in
order to obscure their approach to
caravans they intended to rob.
At Ormus he encountered a land-wind
so hot that people exposed to it died. A
whole army was once wiped out by the
wind and the inhabitants, seeking to bury
the invaders, found the bodies baked so
hard that they could not be moved.
Bitter, undrinkable water, the tree of the
sun, and the old man of the mountain
were all of that region. The old man
of the mountain used to administer drugs
to young men to make them think they
were truly in Paradise. At his orders
they assassinated any one not of the true
faith. His followers held their own lives
of little worth, convinced that they would
return to Paradise upon their deaths.
On the overland route to Cathay,
Marco met Nestorian Christians as well
as people who were part Christian and
part Mohammedan. There too he found
a miraculous pillar said to remain
upright without any visible means of
support. In Peyn he discovered chalcedony
and jasper and also peculiar marriage
customs. Passing over a desert, he heard
the strange sounds attributed to evil
spirits but since explained as the sounds
of shifting sand dunes. At Kamul he
discovered the primitive hospitality of
turning over houses and wives for the
entertainment of strangers. At Chinchitalas
he discovered the use of material which
would not burn; it was asbestos.
On the borders of the Gobi the Polos
gathered supplies for their trip through
the desert. They passed close to the land
of Prester John and heard the history of
the war between Prester John and
Genghis Khan. He saw the land of Tenduk,
governed by the princes of the race of
Prester John.
Kublai Khan was a great king who had
rewarded generously those who had aided
3857

him in the conquest of other nations.
Each noble so favored received a golden
tablet inscribed by the khan for the
protection of its wearer. Kublai Khan
had four principal wives, plus a number
of women who were given to him each
year. He had some fifty sons, all of whom
were appointed to high places in the
empire. In the winter the khan lived in
Peking, in a magnificent palace that was
eight miles square. His personal
bodyguard consisted of twelve thousand
horsemen.
Greatest in interest among his people
were the Tibetans, who produced the
scent of musk, used salt for money, and
dressed in clothes of leather. Gold dust
was found in their rivers and among their
inhabitants were many said to be
sorcerers. Karazan was known for its huge
serpents, or crocodiles, which the natives
killed for hides and gall. This gall was
a medicine for bites from mad dogs.
In Kardandan, Marco observed fathers
who took over the nursing of babies. In
the city of Mien he saw two towers, one
of silver and one of gold. Bengal he found
rich in cotton, spikenard, galangal,
ginger, sugar, and many drugs. The region
also supplied many eunuchs.
For a time Marco Polo held the
government of the city of Yan-Gui upon
orders of the khan. Nicolo and Mafreo
Polo aided the khan in overcoming the
city of Sa-Yan-Fu, the two Venetians
having designed a catapult capable of
hurling stones weighing as much as three
hundred pounds.
Marco thought the city of Kin-sai, or
Hang-chau, so beautiful that the
inhabitants might imagine themselves in
Paradise. There were twelve thousand bridges
over the canals and rivers of the city, and
the houses were well-built and adorned
with carved ornaments. The streets were
paved with stone and brick. The people
were greatly concerned with astrology.
Moreover, the inhabitants had provided
for fire fighters who kept a constant guard
throughout the city. From it the khan
received revenue of gold, salt, and sugar.
In the kingdom of Kon-cha, Marco
found people who ate human flesh. He
also found there a kind of chicken
covered with black hair instead of feathers.
He observed with much interest the
manufacture of Chinese porcelain.
In his travels he saw the merchant
ships of India, which were large and built
in sections so that if one section sprang
a leak, it could be closed off while repairs
were made. On the island of Java he
obtained pepper, nutmegs, spikenard-
galangal, cubebs, cloves, and gold.
Idolaters lived there as well as cannibals.
Elephants, rhinoceroses, monkeys, and vul'
cures were in abundance. He also
discovered the practice of the natives which
was to pickle certain monkeys so that they
resembled dead pygmies. Tnese creatures
were then sold as souvenirs to sailors and
merchants.
In Lambri he saw what he thought
were men with tails. He also saw the sago
tree from which the natives made flour.
On the island of Nocueran he visited
people living like naked beasts in trees.
They possessed the red and white sandal
wood, coconuts, sapanwood, and cloves.
At Angaman he saw more cannibals. In
Ceylon he found rubies, sapphires,
topazes, amethysts, and garnets. The grave
of Adam was believed to be on a high
mountain in Ceylon.
Marco thought India the noblest and
richest country in the world. Pearls were
found in abundance. The kingdom of
Murphili was rich in diamonds. In the
province of Lac he heard that people
often lived to the age of one hundred
and fifty years and managed to preserve
their teetn by a certain vegetable they
chewed. In Kael he found people
chewing a leaf called tembul, sometimes mixed
with camphor and other aromatic drugs
as well as quicklime. At Cape Comorin
he found apes of such a size as to
appear like men. At Malabar he found
gold brocades, silk, gauzes, gold, and
silver. At Guzzerat he discovered pirates
of the worst character. In Bombay he
bought incense and horses.
Marco visited the island of
Madagascar, where the inhabitants reported a
3858

bird so large it was able to seize an
elephant in its talons. He thought the
women of Zanzibar the ugliest in the
world. The people did business in
elephant teeth and tusks.
Marco recalled how Kublai Khan and
his nephew, Kaidu, fought many battles
for the possession of Great Turkey. Over
a hundred thousand horsemen were
brought to fight for each side. At first
Kaidu was victorious. Kaidu had a
mannish daughter, Aigiarm, who battled with
any man who wanted her for a bride. At
last she seized the man of her choice from
the hosts of enemies in battle.
Marco believed that Russia was a
region too cold to be pleasant. He spoke
of trade in ermine, arcolini, sable, marten,
fox, silver, and wax among the natives,
who were included in the nation of the
king of the Western Tartars.
Marco Polo gave thanks to God that
the travelers were able to see so much and
return to tell about the marvels of many
lands.
3859

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY
Type of work: Record of travel
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Type of plot: Sketches and impressions
Time of plot: 1878
Locale: The C^vennes, French Highlands
First published: 1879
Principal characters:
Robert Louis Stevenson, the traveler
Modestine, a donkey
Father Apollinaris, a Trappist monk
Critique:
Stevenson said that every book is a
circular letter to the friends of him who
wrote it. Travels with a Donkey in the
Cevennes takes much of its merit from
the warm-hearted spirit of Stevenson
himself. Throughout the narrative the reader
is led by Stevenson's voice as if
Stevenson were talking in the same room for the
enjoyment of his reader. More vivid than
either his account of the people or his
account of the history made in the
Cevennes is Stevenson's way of describing the
countryside and its variations in mood.
The Story:
In twelve days, from September 22,
1878, until October 3, 1878, Robert
Louis Stevenson walked from Le Monas-
tier to St. Jean du Gard in the CeVennes.
His only companion was Modestine, a
donkey. He traveled as his fancy led him,
stopping to sleep whenever occasion
offered. One morning after a night's sleep
out of doors Stevenson scattered coins
along the road upon the turf in payment
for his night's lodging.
Modestine, the donkey, demanded that
her owner exercise all his ingenuity. At
first he loathed her for her intractable
differences of opinion displayed
concerning the rate of travel to be maintained.
Repeated blows seemed not to influence
her until he learned to use the magical
word "Proot" to get her moving. Later
he obtained a real goad from a
sympathetic innkeeper at Bouchet St. Nicolas.
Modestine was dainty in her eating. She
seemed to prefer white bread, but she
learned to share half of Stevenson's brown
loaves with him.
Modestine and her owner quarreled
about a short cut. She hacked, she
reared; she even brayed in a loud,
aggrieved tone. However, he forced her
to give in. A few days later Stevenson
began to understand his strong-willed
donkey; he came to understand her
stupidity, and he overlooked her flights of
ill-judged light-heartedness.
Stevenson, like many who buy at the
insistence of others and sell at their own
pleasure, was eager to dismiss the matter
of Modestine's cost. He had paid sixty-
five francs and a glass of brandy for her,
but he sold her for thirty-five francs.
Stevenson commented that the pecuniary
gain was not obvious, but that he had
bought freedom into the bargain.
More absorbing than the pleasure with
which Stevenson contrasted his vagabond
life and that of deeply-rooted monks and
peasants was his interest in
long-remembered, local conflicts. Such a conflict was
that struggle at Pont de Montvert where
Camisards, led by Pierre Seguier,
murdered the Archpriest of the CeVennes.
Seguier was soon taken and his right
hand cut off. He himself was then
burned alive. Stevenson also identified
the characteristic elements in the
landscape as he went along. He thought the
CeVennes remarkably beautiful.
Stevenson's account of the local
peasantry was less appreciative than his
account of the landscape. He described
two mishaps. In the first place, the
peasants looked with suspicion upon a traveler
wandering on their bleak high hills with
very little money and no obvious purpose
other than to stare at them. At his ap-
3860

proach to one village the people hid
themselves. They barricaded their doors and
gave him wrong directions from their
windows. Secondly, two girls whom he
termed "impudent sly sluts" bade him
follow the cows. For these reasons,
Stevenson came to feel sympathy for the
infamous beast of Gevauden, who,
according to tradition, ate about a hundred
children of the district.
During his travels he visited Our Lady
of the Snows Monastery. Approaching
the monastery, he encountered Father
Apollinaris, who, clad in the white robe
of his order, greeted him and led him
to .the entrance of the monastery. He
felt the atmosphere of his environment
and portrayed it in descriptions of the
monks at their duties, the feel of the
highland wind on his face, the cheerless,
four-square buildings which were bleak
and too new to be seasoned into the place.
The belfry and the pair of slatted gables
seemed plain and barren. When he
departed after a day of quiet repose, the
lonely Trappist, Father Apollinaris,
accompanied him, holding Stevenson's
hands in his own.
Stevenson continued on to St. Jean du
Gard. He lost his way and found it
again. Modestine learned to wait
patiently when he wanted to stop to talk
with someone. The procession of days
took him through gullies, along river
beds, and over high ridges. At St. Jean
du Gard he parted from Modestine.
Then, seated by the driver en route to
Alais through a rocky gully past orchards
of dwarf olive trees, Stevenson began to
reflect what Modestine had become in his
life. She had been patient and she had
come to regard him as a god. She had
eaten from his hand. He felt that he had
parted from his best friend.
3861

TREASURE ISLAND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1740's
Locale: England and the Spanish Main
First published: 1883
Principal characters:
Jim Hawkins, cabin boy of the Hispaniola
Dr. Livesey, a physician and Jim's friend
Squire Trelawney, a wealthy landowner
Mr. Smollett, captain of the Hispaniola
Long John Silver, leader of the mutineers
Ben Gunn, a pirate
Critique:
Since its publication, this novel has
been a favorite of boys everywhere. With
action moving swiftly from beginning to
end, the story is told in the first person
for the most part by the boy hero; the
rest is told in the person of Doctor
Livesey. The character of John Silver
dominated Stevenson so completely that the
outcome is not entirely acceptable from a
conventionally moral point of view. The
book, according to Stevenson, was born
out of his fascination with a water-color
map he himself drew of an imagined
treasure island.
The Story:
Young Jim Hawkins always
remembered the day the strange seaman, Bill
Bones, came looking for lodgings at his
father's inn, the Admiral Benbow. He
came plodding up to the inn door, where
he stood for a time and looked around
Black Hill Cove. Jim heard him singing
snatches of an old sea song:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest,
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum."
When he learned from Jim's father
that the inn was a quiet one with little
trade, he declared it was just the berth
for an old seaman. From that time the
strange guest—a retired captain he called
himself—kept watch on the coast and
the land road by day and made himself
free in the taproom of the inn at night.
There he drank and sang and swore great
oaths while he told fearsome tales of the
Spanish Main. Wary of all visiting
seamen, he paid Jim Hawkins to be on the
lookout for a one-legged sailor in
particular. He was so terrible in his speech
and manners that Jim's father, sick man
that he was, never had the courage to ask
for more than the one reckoning Bill
Bones had paid the day he came to the
inn. He stayed on without ever clinking
another coin into the inn till for his meals
and lodging.
The one-legged sailor never came to
the inn, but another seaman named Black
Dog did. The two men fought in the inn
parlor, to the terror of Jim and his mother,
before Captain Bones chased his visitor
up the road and out of sight. He fell
down in a fit when he came back to the
inn, and Doctor Livesey, coming in to
attend Jim's father, cautioned Captain
Bones to contain himself and drink less.
Jim's father died soon afterward. On
the day of the funeral a deformed blind
man named Pew tapped his way up to
the door of the Admiral Benbow. The
man forced Jim to lead him to the
captain. Bill Bones was so terrified when
the blind man gave him the Black Spot,
the pirates' death notice, that he had a
stroke and died.
Jim and his mother took the keys to
his sea chest from the dead man's pocket
and opened it to find the money due
them. As they were examining the
contents, they heard the tapping of the
blind man's stick on the road. Jim pock-
3862

eted an oilskin packet and he and his
mother left hurriedly by the back door
of the inn as a gang of men broke in to
search for Captain Bones' chest. Mounted
revenue officers arrived and scattered the
gang. Blind Pew was trampled to death
by the charging horses.
Jim gave the packet to Dr. Livesey
and Squire Trelawney. The three
discovered that it contained a map locating
the hidden treasure of the bloody
buccaneer, Captain Flint. Squire Trelawney,
intrigued, decided to outfit a ship in
which to sail after the treasure. The
doctor threw in his lot and invited Jim
to come along as cabin boy.
In Bristol Trelawney purchased a
schooner, the Hispaniola, and hired one
Long John Silver as ship's cook. Silver
promised to supply a crew. Jim went to
Bristol and met Silver, who had but one
leg. He was alarmed when he saw Black
Dog again in the inn operated by Silver,
but Silver's smooth talk quieted Jim's
suspicions.
After the Hisyaniola had sailed,
Captain Smollett, hired by Squire Trelawney
to command the ship, expressed his
dislike of the first mate and the crew and
complained that Silver had more real
authority with the crew than he did.
One night Jim, in a barrel after an apple,
overheard Silver discussing mutiny with
members of the crew. Before Jim had a
chance to reveal the plot to his friends,
the island was sighted.
The prospects of treasure on the island
caused the disloyal members of the crew
to pay little heed to Captain Smollett's
orders; even the loyal ones were hard to
manage. Silver shrewdly kept his party
under control. Wisely, the captain
allowed part of the crew to go ashore; Jim
smuggled himself along in order to spy
on Silver and the men on the island.
Ashore, Silver killed two of the crew
who refused to join the mutineers. Jim,
alone, met Ben Gunn, who was with
Captain Flint when die treasure was
buried. Gunn told Jim that he had been
marooned on the island three years
before.
While Jim was ashore, Dr. Livesey
went to the island and found Captain
Flint's stockade. Hearing the scream of
one of the men Silver murdered, he
returned to the Hispaniola, where it was
decided that the honest men would move
to the fort within the stockade. Several
dangerous trips in an overloaded boat
completed the move. During the last
trip the mutineers aboard the ship un-
limbered the ship's gun. Squire
Trelawney shot one seaman from die boat
In the meantime the gang ashore saw
what was afoot and made efforts to keep
Jim's friends from occupying the
stockade. The enemy repulsed, Squire
Trelawney and his party took their posts in
the fort. The mutineers on the His-
faniola fired round shot into the stockade,
but did little damage.
After leaving Ben Gunn, the marooned
seaman, Jim made his way to the
stockade. The Hispaniola now flew the Jolly
Roger skull and crossbones. Carrying a
flag of truce, Silver approached the
stockade and offered to parley. Admitted
by the defenders, he demanded the
treasure chart in exchange for the safe return
of Squire Trelawney's party to England.
Captain Smollet would concede nothing
and Silver returned to his men in a rage.
The stockade party prepared for the
coming batde. A group of the pirates
attacked from two sides, swarmed over the
paling and engaged the defenders in
hand-to-hand combat. In the close
fighting the pirates were reduced to one man,
who fled back to his gang in the jungle.
The loyal party was reduced to Squire
Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, Captain
Smollett, and Jim.
During the lull after the battle, Jim
sneaked off and borrowed Ben Gunn's
homemade boat. In this he rowed out
to the Hispaniola under cover of
darkness and cut the schooner adrift. In
trying to return to shore, he was caught
offshore by coastal currents. Daylight
having come, Jim saw that the Hisyan-
iola was also aimlessly adrift. When the
ship bore down upon him, he jumped
to the bowsprit. Ben Gunn's little boat
3863

was smashed. Jim found himself on
board alone with pirate Israel Hands,
wounded in a fight with another pirate.
Jim took command and proceeded to
beach the ship. Pursued by Hands, he
climbed quickly to a crosstree just before
Hands threw his knife into the mast not
more than a foot below Jim- as he climbed.
Jim had time to prime and reload his
pistols, and he shot the pirate after he
had pinned the boy to the mast with
another knife throw.
Jim removed the knife from his
shoulder, made the ship safe by removing the
sails, and returned to the stockade at
night, only to find it abandoned by his
friends and now in the hands of the
pirates. When Silver's parrot, Captain
Flint, drew attention to the boy's
presence, the pirates captured him. Silver's
men, dissatisfied with the buccaneer's
methods of gaining the treasure,
grumbled. One attempted to kill Jim, who had
bragged to them of his exploits in behalf
of his friends. But Silver, for reasons of
his own, took the boy's side and swore
he would take the part, also, of Squire
Trelawney. Silver's disaffected mates
met and gave Silver the Black Spot,
deposing him as their chief. The pirate
leader talked his way out of his difficulty
by showing them, to Jim's amazement
and to their delight, Captain Flint's chart
of Treasure Island.
Dr. Livesey came under a flag of truce
to the stockade to administer to the
wounded pirates. He learned from Jim
that Silver had saved the boy's life. And
Jim heard, to his mystification, that the
doctor had given Captain Flint's chart to
Silver.
Following the directions of the chart,
the pirates went to find the treasure.
Approaching the hiding place, they heard
a high voice singing the pirate chantey,
"Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum." Also,
the voice spoke the last words of Captain
Flint. The men were terrified until
Silver recognized Ben Gunn's voice. Then
the pirates found the treasure cache
opened and the treasure gone. When
they uncovered only a broken pick and
some boards, they turned on Silver and
Jim. At this moment Jim's friends, with
Ben Gunn, arrived to rescue the boy.
Early in his stay on the island Ben
Gunn had discovered the treasure and
carried it to his cave. After Dr. Livesey
had learned all this from Gunn, the
stockade was abandoned and the useless
chart given to Silver. Squire Trelawney's
party moved to Gunn's safe and well-
provisioned quarters.
The Hispaniola having been floated
by a tide, the group left Treasure Island,
leaving on it three escaped buccaneers.
They sailed to a West Indies port where,
with the connivance of Ben Gunn, John
Silver escaped the ship with a bag of
coins. A full crew was taken on, and the
schooner voyaged back to Bristol. There
the treasure was divided among the
survivors of the adventure. "Drink and the
devil had done for the rest."
3864

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Betty Smith (1904- )
Type of plot: Domestic romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Brooklyn, New York
First published: 1943
Principal characters:
Francie Nolan, a Brooklyn girl
Neeley Nolan, her brother
Katie Nolan, her mother
Johnnie Nolan, her father
Critique:
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is the story
of a young girl affected by the realities
and mysteries of life. The setting of
Brooklyn tenement life in the early
1900's makes full use of local color.
Francie's struggles to overcome poverty
and to obtain an education in a world
in which only the fittest survive make
absorbing reading.
The Story:
For their spending money Francie and
Neeley Nolan relied on a few pennies
they collected from the junkey every
Saturday. Katie, their mother, worked
as a janirress in a Brooklyn tenement, and
the money she and their father earned
—he from his Saturday night jobs as a
singing waiter—was barely enough to
keep the family alive and clothed.
After their Saturday morning trips
with the rags, metal, and rubber they
had collected during the week, Francie
would visit the library. She was
methodically going through its contents in
alphabetical order by reading a book each
day, but on Saturdays she allowed herself
the luxury of breaking the sequence. At
home, sitting on the fire escape, she
could look up from her book and watch
her neighbors' preparations for Saturday
night. A tree grew in the yard; Francie
watched it from season to season during
her long Saturday afternoons.
At five o'clock, when her father came
home, Francie would iron his waiter's
A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Betty Smith.
Copyright, 1943, by Betty Smith.
apron and then go to the dry-goods store
to buy the paper collar and muslin
dickey which would last him for the
evening. It was her special Saturday
night privilege to sleep in the front
room, and there she could watch the
people in the street. She got up briefly
at two in the morning when her father
came home, and was given a share of
the delicacies he had salvaged from the
wedding or party at which he had served.
Then, while her parents talked far into
the night, Francie would fix Saturday's
happenings in her mind and gradually
drift off to sleep.
Johnnie Nolan and Katie Rommely
had met when he was nineteen ana
she was seventeen, and they were
married four months later. In a year's time
Francie was born. Johnnie, unable to
bear the sight of Katie in labor, had
got drunk, and when the water pipes
burst at the school in which he was
janitor, he was discharged. Neeley was
born soon after Francie's first birthday.
By that time Johnnie was drinking so
heavily that Katie knew she could no
longer rely on him for the family's sup
port. In return for free rent, the Nolans
moved to a house in which Katie could
be janirress.
Francie was not sent to school until
she was seven, and Neeley was old
enough to go with her. In that way the
children were able to protect each other
from would-be tormentors. Seated two-
By permission of the publishers. Harper & Brothers.
3865

at-a-desk among the other poverty-stricken
children Francie soon grew to look
forward to the weekly visits of her art and
music teachers. They were the sunshine
of her school days.
By pretending that Francie had gone
to live with relatives, Johnnie was able
to have her transferred to another school
which Francie had seen on one of her
walks. A long way from home, it was,
nevertheless, an improvement over the
old one. Most of the children were of
American parentage and were not
exploited by cruel teachers, as were those
from immigrant families.
Francie noted time by holidays.
Beginning the year with the Fourth of
July and its firecrackers, she looked
forward next to Halloween. Election Day,
with its snake dances and bonfires, came
soon after. Then followed Thanksgiving
Day, on which the children disguised
themselves with costumes and masks
and begged trifles from storekeepers.
Soon afterward came Christmas. The
year Francie was ten and Neeley nine,
they stood together on Christmas Eve
while the biggest tree in the
neighborhood was thrown at them. Trees unsold
at that time were thrown at anyone who
volunteered to stand against the impact.
Bruised and scratched, Francie and her
brother proudly dragged their tree home.
The week before Christmas, when
Francie had just become fourteen,
Johnnie staggered home drunk. Two day*
later he was found, huddled in a door
way, ill with pneumonia. The next day
he was dead. After the funeral, Neeley
was given his father's ring and Francie
his shaving mug, his only keepsakes aside
from his two waiter's aprons. To his wife
Johnnie left a baby, due to be born the
following spring.
In March, when their funds were
running low, Katie cashed the children's
insurance policies. The twenty-five
dollars she received carried them through
until the end of April. Then Mr. Mc-
Garrity, at whose saloon Johnnie had
done most of his drinking, came to their
rescue. He hired Neeley to help prepare
free lunches after school and Francie to
do housework, and the money the
children earned was enough to tide them
over until after Katie's baby was born.
Laurie was born in May. In June,
after their graduation from grade school,
Francie and Neeley found their first real
jobs, Neeley as errand boy for a
brokerage house and Francie as a stemmer in
a flower factory. Dismissed two weeks
later, she became a file clerk in a
clipping bureau. She was quickly advanced
to the position of reader.
In the fall there was not money
enough to send both her children to hign
school, and Katie decided that the more
reluctant Neeley should be chosen.
With the money Francie earned and
with Neeley's after-school job at Mc-
Garrity's saloon, the Nolans had more
comforts that Christmas than they had
ever known before. The house was
warm; there was enough food; and there
was money for presents. Fourteen-year-
old Neeley received his first pair of
spats, and Francie almost froze in her
new black lace lingerie when they went
to church on Christmas morning.
When the clipping bureau closed with
the outbreak of the war, Francie got a
job as teletype operator. By working at
night, she was able to take advanced
college credits in summer school that
year. With the help of a fellow student,
Ben Blake, she passed her chemistry and
English courses.
Francie was eighteen when she had
her first real date, with a soldier named
Lee Rhynor. The evening he was to
leave to say goodbye to his parents
before going overseas, Lee asked her to
marry him when he returned. Francie
promised to write to him every day.
Three days later she received a letter
from the girl he married during his trip
home.
Katie also had a letter that day. Officer
McShane had long been fond of Katie.
Now retired, he asked her to marry
him. To this proposal all the Nolans
agreed. As the time approached for the
wedding, Francie resigned her job. With
3866

Katie married, she intended to go to
Michigan to college, for with Ben Blake's
help she had succeeded in passing the
entrance exams.
The day before Katie was to be wed,
Francie put the baby in the carriage
and walked down the avenue. For a
time she watched the children carting
their rubbish into the junk shop. She
turned in her books at the library for
the last time. She saw another little
firl, a book in her hand, sitting on a
re escape. In her own yard the tree
had been cut down because the tenants
had complained that it was in the way
of their wash. But from its stump another
trunk was growing.
3867

THE TREE OF THE FOLKUNGS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Verner von Heidenstam (1859-1940)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Eleventh and thirteenth centuries
Locale: Sweden
First published: 1905-1907
Principal characters:
Folke Filbyter, founder of the Folkung line
Ingemund,
Hallsten, and
Ingevald, his sons
Folke Ingevaldsson, his grandson
Ulf Ulfsson, a pagan udalman
King Valdemar, descended from Folke Filbyter
Duke Magnus, his brother
Queen Sophia, wife of Valdemar
Lady Jutta, her sister
Gistre Harjanson, a minstrel
Yrsa-lill, a goat-girl
Archbishop Fulco, prelate of Upsala
Critique:
Like Sigrid Undset in Norway, Verner
von Heidenstam drew inspiration from
the history of his native Sweden in
medieval times. The Tree of the Folkungs
is a historical novel of imaginative
freedom and dramatic vigor. There are two
parts to the story. The first deals with the
period at the end of the eleventh
century, a barbaric, brutal age which in the
North saw heathenism and Christianity
in conflict. In the second half of the novel
the Folkung family, proud descendants
of an ancient peasant freebooter, have
pushed their way to the Swedish throne
by the middle of the thirteenth century.
Here are all the pageantry, heroism,
humility, superstition, cruelty, and greed
of the Middle Ages. The effect is not one
of antiquarianism, however, for von
Heidenstam is interested in a living past, the
growth of a culture, with its mixture of
good and evil, nobility and baseness. The
writer tells his story with a variety of
styles and techniques, mingling myth,
legend, history, saga, and fantasy. The
result is a literary work of racial significance
and tragic power. The author was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1916.
The Story:
Folke Filbyter planted the seed from
which grew the mighty Folkung tree.
Homeward returning after long
sea-roving, he brought his ship to shore near a
shield-maiden's grave-ground in the land
of Sveas and Goths. Dwarf Jorgrimme, a
Finnish sorcerer, prophesied terror would
darken the land and Thor's image
tremble.
For two nights Folke tramped inland,
his sack of booty on his back. The third
night he came to Jorgrimme's cave, where
the sorcerer gave him drink from the horn
Manegarm, treasure of the gods. Then
the dwarf cut the sack so that some of the
gold fell out. Discovering the leak, Folke
swore he had sown the ground with riches
he would also reap. There he built his
mighty hall, Folketuna.
Before long Folke had land and thralls
but no sons. One morning his men found
Jorgrimme's daughter trapped in a wolf-
pit, and Folke took her home to his bed.
Three sons she bore him, Ingemund,
Hallsten, and Ingevald, but she got no
honor and crouched in the straw like the
scurviest thrall. Ingemund and Hallsten
went sea-roving. Ingevald stayed by his
THE TREE OF THE FOLKUNGS by Vcrncr von Heidenstam. Translated by Arthur J. Chater. By
permission of the publishers, Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Copyright, 1925, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed, 1953, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
3868

father's side.
Folke, wanting a good marriage for his
son, spoke for Holmdis, Ulf Ulfsson's
daughter. Meanwhile old Jakob, a
begging friar, preached a new faith in the
region. When Ingevald tumbled the
dwarfs' one-eyed god, his mother gave
him sacred Manegarm, stolen from Jor-
grimme's burial-cairn. Folke swore blood-
brotherhood with the king of outlaws and
got great riches. Then Holmdis proudly
spurned a match with the thrall-woman's
son, but Ingevald carried her by force to
his father's hall. There, waiting in vain
for her kinsmen to rescue her, she brought
one son to Folketuna before she died.
After her funeral Folke had no good of
Ingevald. Folke Ingevaldsson was his
grandfather's heir.
When Jakob came again, Ingevald,
hoping to save his son from the lawless
life at Folketuna, gave the child to the
priest. For years old Folke rode from
hearth to hearth looking for his lost
grandchild. Thrall and thane alike knew
of the grim old man's search.
King Inge traveled through the land
with his bodyguards, and wherever he
stopped men died or else were baptized in
the new faith. When Ulf Ulfsson spoke
for the old gods, the king's earl and chief
adviser, a ruthless, priest-trained young
man, left him bound to perish in the
forest. Ingemund and Hallsten, homeward-
bound, were in Ulf's hall that night and
joined the king's guard.
Folke was at Upsala when the sacred
grove burned and people cried out
against Inge and called Blot Sven king.
There Folke saw the king's earl, on his
hand the star-shaped mark of the child
stolen from Folketuna years before.
Although the old outlaw offered his riches
to help the king's need, young Folke and
his uncles were proud men with little
wish to have a name as unsavory as Folke
Filbyter's associated with them, now that
they were counted among the greatest
of the king's thanes. They took the
treasure he offered to advance themselves, but
they visited him seldom in the bare hall
where he sat in the dirty straw. At last
he opened his veins and died as unwanted
old men had done in ancient times.
Two hundred years later King Holm-
ger lay dead, with the sacred sword Grane
on his grave, and Earl Birger of the
Folkungs ruled in Sweden, although it
was his young son Valdemar who wore
the crown. Valdemar grew up weak and
soft, a lover of pleasure and women.
From his far ancestor, Folke Filbyter, he
inherited a yeoman's love of the land and
a liking for serfs and outlaws. There were
many who thought that his brother,
Junker Magnus, should have been king,
for he was bold and cunning and the
better knight. When Magnus unhorsed his
brother at a great tournament at Belbo,
and Valdemar laughed at his tumble
without shame or regret, Earl Birger was
so angry with his son that he collapsed
from a stroke and died soon afterward.
At the division of the earl's estate his sons
quarreled over a missing drinking horn,
Manegarm, an heirloom of the old days.
Valdemar's bride was Sophia,
daughter of Denmark's king. Lady Jutta was
her sister. Sometimes Valdemar talked
with the maid apart and she became
frightened. Valdemar also spent much
time in the hut of Yrsa-lill, a goat-girl, to
whom Gistre Harjanson had carried
Manegarm. The company drank from it
when Valdemar went to the hut to
carouse with herdsmen and outcasts.
Meanwhile the land knew confusion. Peasants
paid no taxes and robbers roamed the
highways. Valdemar would allow no
wrongdoer to be punished.
When Jutta wished to return to
Denmark, Magnus and Sir Svantepolk, a
worthy knight, set out to escort her.
Valdemar overtook them at the goat-girl's
hut, where the party had stopped to rest.
After convincing Jutta that Magnus was
a trickster, Valdemar accompanied her to
the border, and on the way they became
lovers. Sir Svantepolk, renouncing his
allegiance, rode off to join Duke Magnus.
Queen Sophia had Yrsa-lill thrown into
a cage filled with snakes. Gistre, the
minstrel, rescued the girl, who afterward lay
speechless in the convent at Vreta.
3869

When Jutta bore a son beyond the
marches, Valdemar gave the child into
the keeping of Archbishop Fulco of Up-
sala. Then the king threatened to take
away his brother's titles. Magnus had
the sword Grane brought from King
Holmger's tomb and fastened it to his own
belt. At Vreta, Yrsa-lill regained heT
speech and prophesied that whoever
would get St. Eirik's banner from a man-
maiden's hands would rule Sweden.
Jutta, now prioress at Roskilde, went
to Upsala for a holy festival honoring St.
Eirik. There she found her son and saw
Valdemar surrounded by his wild
bodyguard. Moved by her old love, she took
off her religious habit and dressed in the
robes of one of the king's favorites.
Together she and Valdemar stood on the
balcony of the king's house while the
people howled disapproval and insults.
Queen Sophia ordered Jutta sent to a
convent in the archbishop's keeping.
Archbishop Fulco gave St. Eirik's
banner to some maidens who carried it to
Duke Magnus. Afterward there was war
between the brothers. Crafty, vain,
Magnus battled Valdemar and his army of
peasants and outlaws. Valdemar seemed
indifferent to the outcome, however,
and sat feasting at Ramundeboda while
his army was defeated at Hofva. From
that time on Magnus had the crown, but
the war did not end with his victory, for
Valdemar fought and then fled from lost
villages and provinces. At last the
outlawed king had nothing left but a jeweled
riding-whip borrowed from Lady Luit-
gard, the last friend to share his
misfortunes, and he gave that to Gistre and told
the minstrel to go look for Yrsa-lill. Alone
and unarmed, Valdemar then surrendered
to his brother.
King Magnus, old and sick by that
time, gave the country peace. Valdemar
lived a prisoner at Nykopingshus, Luit-
gard his only company, but in his
captivity he found such contentment that
Magnus died envying him.
3870

THE TREES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Conrad Richter (1890- )
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
Locale: Old Northwest Territory
First published: 1940
Principal characters:
Worth Luckett, a woodsy
Jary, his wife
Saywarti,
Genny,
ACHSA,
Wyitt, and
Sulie, their children
Louie Scurrah, Genny's husband
Portius Wheeler, Sayward's husband
Jake Tench, a white runner
Critique:
The Trees is the first of three novels
Conrad Richter has written to trace the
growth of a pioneer settlement in the
old Northwest Territory west of the Al-
leghenies and north of the Ohio River.
Considered with the other two, The
Fields and The Town, these novels are
actually a trilogy telling the story of Say-
ward Luckett from the time she left
Pennsylvania to enter the deep woods
in the Ohio wilderness. One of the most
interesting characteristics of the books is
the use Richter has made of early pioneer
language as it was spoken, not as it was
written. This is only one proof of the
authenticity of the facts he used in
writing a new and effective type of regional
story. No other novel conveys so
realistically what the first settlers must have
felt when they faced the timbered
wilderness on the frontier, the barrier of
trees that shut out the sky and gave
protection to animals and human enemies.
The Trees is a pioneer story of simple
human warmth and vigor.
The Story:
Worth Luckett was a woodsy with an
itching foot. By the time he had five
growing children and one left in its
infant grave, he was ready to take off
again. He had already been west when
he was a boy with Colonel Bouquet.
Jary, his wife, had never wanted to leave
the settlements, but game was growing
scarce in Pennsylvania; without food
brought down by his gun, Worth could
not see how he could feed his family.
He was wary of telling Jary outright that
he wanted to move on, but she knew
what he wanted and was half resigned to
it when she heard that the animals were
clearing out of places where men lived.
Because Jary had the slow fever, the
care of the younger children fell on
Sayward's shoulders. She was nearly
fifteen, a strapping girl scared of neither
man nor beast. It was not beyond her
strength to drown a white-faced buck
when Worth had neglected to bring meat
home. The girls, Genny, Achsa, and
baby Sulie, and the boy Wyitt knew they
had to step when Sayward spoke.
Worth led his family across the Ohio
River and on until they came to a
wilderness of trees that reached as far as the
eye could see. Near a spot covered with
deer antlers Worth laid out a place for
a cabin. He was handy enough with tools
to have the shell of a cabin up quickly,
the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright,
THE TREES by Conrad Richter. By permission of
1940, by Conrad Richter.
3871

but the game in the woods drew him
away so often that fall came before the
cabin was finished. The darkness under
the big trees had disheartened Jary so
much that she did not even speak of the
cabin until one fall day when the leaves
had fallen so that she could look up
through the branches and see the sky
again. Then she felt like a human being
who wanted to live in a house. She sent
Worth back to his job. The snow fell
the day after they moved into their cabin.
A few Indians still followed the trace
by the house. One came on a night when
Worth was away. Sayward hid the ax
under her bed to fell him if he made a
move toward the children in the loft or
came toward her bed. He got up at night
to cook some of his own meat at the fire.
Worth was disturbed when he came
home and found the Indian still there,
but he and the Indian roared with
delight when Sayward showed them the
hidden ax.
Jary had such a hankering after some
bread that Worth walked six days to
bring back some white flour. But she
could not eat the bread after Sayward
made it; the slow fever had nearly
finished her. When she died, they buried
her under one of the big trees outside
the cabin. Worth went away for a while,
leaving Sayward to take care of the others.
One day, for the first time since they
had lived there, they heard another ax
in the woods. The young ones
investigated and found a cabin going up, a
man and a boy working on it. The man
was a torn thumb, Sayward thought,
when he asked her father for Sayward as
a wife. Sayward thought he might be
the first around there to ask her to marry
him, but probably not the last.
Before long a trading post was set up
by the river. Wyitt could hardly wait to
trade off some of his skins for a knife.
Indians and whites were whooping it up
while he was there. He never forgot the
sight of the wolf they skinned alive and
set free.
More people raised cabins nearby
until the Lucketts had several neighbors
within walking distance. Worth blamed
them and their cutting of the trees for
the swamp pestilence that brought down
Achsa, who was as brown and tough as
an Indian. While the fever was on her
Achsa begged for water, but that was the
one thing she was not supposed to have.
Late one night Sayward awoke to see
Achsa crawling into the cabin with the
kettle. She had drunk her fill from the
run and had brought water back in
the kettle. After that Achsa got well.
Louie Scurrah as a child had acted as
decoy for Delawares on the warpath.
When he came back to a small cabin
nearby, the Lucketts expected to steer
clear of him. He charmed Worth first
with his woodsy tales, then Genny and
Achsa, but there was always unspoken
enmity between him and Sayward.
Sulie never returned after the day she
was separated from Wyitt as they drove
in the neighbor's cows. Worth was away
at the time and the trail was cold when
he and Louie gathered some
neighborhood men to beat the woods. They found
Sulie's tracks leading to a bark
playhouse in a grove of trees, with a bit of
her dress as a cover for a play trencher,
but they could not find tracks leading
out. Close by there were Indian trails,
but they were also cold.
With Sulie gone, Worth went too. He
thought he might follow the Indian tracks
west.
The feeling between Louie and
Sayward was not softened when Sayward,
after finding Louie with Genny in the
woods, told him it was time for him to
marry Genny. He took Genny down the
river and married her with good grace,
but before long his itching foot took him
off more and more often.
Louie got Wyitt a rifle to help kill
meat for Sayward's cabin. The first day
he had it, Wyitt wounded a buck.
Standing over the animal to slit its throat, he
suddenly found himself hoisted aloft.
The deer tried to shake him loose, but
Wyitt was able to kill it when it tired.
His clothes were torn to ribbons and he
was badly cut. Sayward, realizing that
3872

she had another woodsy on her hands
and thankful for the meat he brought,
said nothing.
Finally Louie went off to the English
lakes with Achsa. Sayward did not know
until later that they left the very night
the painter tried to claw his way down
Genny's chimney. Genny burned
everything in the house that night to keep
the painter from coming into the cabin.
When Wyitt and Sayward found her,
she did not recognize them. At last,
under Say ward's care, Genny came back to
her senses.
At a sober wedding of old folks, Jake
Tench decided it was time to get a wife
for solitary Portius Wheeler, a former
Bay State lawyer. When the girl Jake
picked shied off, Sayward told Jake that
she would marry Portius. Jake brought
Portius to Sayward's cabin where, under
the influence of brandy, Portius went
through the marriage ceremony. But
when neighbors tried to put him to bed
with Sayward, he turned tail and ran.
Jake brought him back at dawn.
Although Sayward told him she would not
hold him against his will, Portius stayed
with her.
Together they cut down trees for a
garden patch. The neighbors brought
teams to snake out the logs and to plow.
Portius treated Sayward with gentle
deference, and she was happy when she
looked forward to her first-born.
3873

THE TRIAL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Twentieth century
Locale: Germany
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Joseph K., a bank employee
The Advocate
Titorelli, a painter
Leni, the Advocate's servant
Critique:
The Trial is one of the most effective
and most discussed works to come out of
Central Europe between wars. To many,
perhaps most, readers it is a highly
engaging comedy filled with buffoonery and
fantasy. More serious students of
literature see in it, however, a vast
symbolism and a first rate psychological study
of a system whose leaders are convinced
of their own righteousness. To some the
court is a symbol of the Church as an
imperfect bridge between the individual
and God. To others the symbolism
represents rather the search of a sensitive
Jew for a homeland that is always denied
him. At any rate The Trial is a powerful
and provocative book.
The Story:
Perhaps some one had been telling
lies about Joseph K., for one morning
he was arrested. The landlady's cook
always brought him his breakfast at
eight o'clock, but this morning she
failed to appear. Joseph looked out of
the window and noticed that the old
lady across the way was peering into his
room. Feeling uneasy, he rang the bell.
At once a man entered dressed like a
tourist. He advised Joseph to stay in his
room, but Joseph failed to obey. In the
next room he saw another strange man
reading a book. The missing breakfast
was explained by the empty dishes he
saw. The two strangers had eaten it.
The two strangers had come to notify
Joseph he was under arrest. They were
so sure of themselves and yet so
considerate that Joseph was at a loss as to
the attitude he should take toward them.
They tried to take his underwear, saying
it was of too good quality, but when he
objected they did not press him. They
refused to tell him the reason for his
arrest, saying only that he would be
interrogated. Finally, after Joseph had
dressed according to their choices of his
wardrobe, they led him to another room
to be questioned by the Inspector.
To his dismay Joseph saw that the
Inspector was occupying Fraiilein Biirst-
ner's room. The Inspector gave no
further hint as to the reason for the
arrest, nor did he inquire into Joseph's
defense. The latter at one point said
that the whole matter was a mistake; but
under pertinent if vague questioning,
Joseph admitted that he knew little of
the law. All he learned, really, was that
some one in high authority had ordered
his arrest.
Then Joseph was told that he could
go to work as usual. His head fairly
aching from bewilderment, Joseph went
to the bank in a taxi. Arriving half an
hour late, he worked all day long as
diligently as he could. He was, however,
frequently interrupted by congratulatory
callers, for this day was his thirtietn
birthday.
He went straight home at nine-thirty
to apologize for using Fraiilein Biirstner s
THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka. Translated by Edwin and Willa Muir.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright. 1937. by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
By permission of the publishers.
3874

room. She was not in, however, and he
settled down to anxious waiting. At
eleven-thirty she arrived, tired from an
evening at the theater. In spite of her
uninterested attitude he told her the
whole story very dramatically. At last
Fraiilein Biirstner sank down exhausted
on her bed. Joseph rushed to her, kissed
her passionately many times, and returned
to his room.
A few days later Joseph received a
brief note ordering him to appear before
the court for interrogation on the
following Sunday. Oddly enough, although the
address was given, no time was set for
the hearing. By some chance Joseph
decided to go at nine o'clock. The street
was a rather mean one, and the address
proved to be that of a large warehouse.
Joseph did not know where to report,
but after trying many doors he finally
reached the fifth floor. There a bright-
eyed washerwoman seemed to be
expecting him and motioned him through her
flat into a meeting hall. Joseph found
the room filled with old men, most of
them with long beards. They all wore
badges.
When the judge asked Joseph if he
were a house painter, he snappishly
rejoined that he was the junior manager
of a bank. Then the judge said he was
an hour and ten minutes late. To this
charge Joseph replied that he was present
now, his appearance in court being the
main thing. The crowd applauded.
Encouraged, Joseph launched into a
harangue damning the court, its methods,
the warders who had arrested him, and
the meeting time and place.
The judge seemed abashed. Then an
interruption occurred. At the back of
the room a man clasped the
washerwoman in his arms and screamed, all
the while looking at the ceiling. Joseph
dashed from the room, loudly refusing
to have any more dealings with the court.
All that week Joseph awaited another
summons. When none came, he decided
to revisit the meeting hall. The
washerwoman again met him kindly and
expressed her disappointment that the
court was not in session. She told him
a little about the court and its methods.
It seemed that the court was only a
lower body which rarely interfered with
the freedom of the accused people. If
one were acquitted by the court, it meant
little, because a higher court might
rearrest the prisoner on the same charge.
She seemed to know little of Joseph's
particular case, although she said she
knew as much as the judge. As she was
speaking, a law student seized the
washerwoman and carried her up the
stairs.
The woman's husband kindly offered
to lead Joseph up to the law offices, the
inner sanctum of the court located in the
attic. There Joseph found a number
of people waiting for answers to petitions.
Some of them had been waiting for
years, and they were becoming a little
anxious about their cases. The hot room
under the roof made Joseph dizzy and
he had to sit down. The hostess tried
to soothe him and the director of public
relations was very pleasant. Finally some
one suggested that Joseph ought to leave
and get some fresh air.
On his uncle's advice, Joseph hired
an Advocate, an old man who stayed in
bed most of the time. His servant, Leni,
took a liking to Joseph and would often
kiss him while he was conferring with
the Advocate. Joseph liked best to dally
with her in the kitchen. After some
months, all the Advocate had done was
to think about writing a petition. In
desperation Joseph discharged him from
the case.
Leni was heartbroken. She was in her
nightgown entertaining another client.
This man, a businessman, Leni kept
locked up in a small bedroom. The
Advocate warned Joseph of his
highhanded behavior and pointed to the
businessman as an ideal client. Disgusted,
Joseph left the house.
Then Joseph went to see Titorelli, the
court painter. Titorelli told him he
could hope for little. He might get
definitive acquittal, ostensible acquittal,
or indefinite postponement. No one was
3875

ever really acquitted, but sometimes cases
could be prolonged indefinitely. Joseph
bought three identical paintings in
return for the advice.
Even the priest at the cathedral, who
said he was court chaplain, offered little
encouragement when consulted. He was
sure that Joseph would be convicted of
the crime charged against him. Joseph
still did not know what that crime was,
nor did the priest.
At last two men in frock coats and
top hats came for Joseph at nine o'clock
on the evening before his thirty-first
birthday. Somehow they twined their
arms around his and held his hands
tightly. They walked with him to a
quarry. There one held his throat and
the other stabbed him in the heart,
turning the knife around twice.
3876

TRIAL BY JURY
Type of work: Comic opera
Author: W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Type of plot: Humorous romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First presented: 1875
Principal characters:
The Learned Judgb
Angelina, the plaintiff
Edwin, the defendant
Counsel for the Platntot
Foreman of the Jury
First Bridesmaid
Critique:
A gentle satire on the due processes of
law, Trial by Jury is a short and
delightful play by the Gilbert half of the
famous team of Gilbert and Sullivan. It
was the second operetta on which these
two talented men collaborated, the
forerunner of many more well-known and
well-loved musicals. It is the only
Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera without
spoken dialogue.
The Story:
The court was assembled, waiting for
the learned Judge, the plaintiff, and the
defendant. The jurymen were warned
that they must set aside all prejudice and
view the case in a judicial state of mind.
The usher, who warned them to be fair,
went into raptures over the beauty and
the heartbreak of the plaintiflF, ending
each bit of praise, however, with the
reminder to be free of bias.
When Edwin, the defendant, entered,
the jurymen chanted to him to beware
their fury. The defendant thought this a
very strange proceeding and begged them
to hear his story. The jury, after
consultation, agreed that they should hear his
plea. Then the defendant told how his
heart had leaped with joy when he first
knew his old love. He had laid his heart
and his riches at her feet. He had moped
and sighed just like a lovesick boy. But
then the joy had turned to boredom. The
flame of love had burned out, and so
one morning he had awakened to be
another's lovesick boy.
The jurymen then confessed that when
they were young lads they had behaved
in much the same fashion and acted as
regular cads. Now that they were
respectable men, they had not a scrap of
sympathy for the defendant.
The learned Judge entered, but
before he would hear the case he felt
obliged to tell the court how he had
become judge. When he was first called to
the bar, he was, like most barristers, an
impecunious lad, and he had almost
despaired of ever trying a case before an
English jury. Tiring at last of this third-
class living, he had married a rich
attorney's old and ugly daughter. The rich
attorney had rewarded him for his
sacrifice, after assuring him that he would
soon grow used to his bride's looks. Cases
then came fast to the young attorney and
he restored many thieves and burglars to
freedom. At last he became rich enough
to throw over his elderly, ugly bride. Now
he was a judge, and a good judge too,
ready to hear this case of breach of
promise.
The jurymen, sworn in, promised to
weigh the case carefully. Angelina, the
plaintiff, was then called in, preceded by
her bridesmaids. The Judge took an
immediate fancy to the first bridesmaid and
sent her a note, which she kissed and
placed in her bosom. But when the
plaintiff entered, the learned Judge, trans-
3877

ferring his affection to Angelina, had the
note taken from the first bridesmaid and
given to the plaintiff. She too kissed it
and placed it in her bosom as the Judge
and the jurymen took turns praising the
plaintiff.
The plaintiff stated her case. She had
been basely deceived by the defendant,
who had wooed her without ceasing.
When she had tried to name a day for
their wedding, however, he had framed
excuses and at last deserted her. His act
was doubly criminal because she had
already bought her trousseau. The plaintiff
reeled, and the foreman of the jury and
the Judge vied with each other to support
her. At last Angelina fell sobbing on the
Judge's chest. The jurymen shook their
fists at the defendant and warned him
again to dread their fury.
Edwin, although admitting that he had
trifled with the lady, held himself
blameless. No one should be censured for
changing appetites. To atone, however,
he would marry this lady today, his othei
love tomorrow. The Judge thought that
a reasonable proposition, but the Counsel
submitted that such a deed would be
Burglaree. The Judge considered this a
fine dilemma, calling for all their wits.
The plaintiff went to the defendant
and embraced him, vowing that she loved
him with unceasing fervor. She reminded
the jury to remember her great loss when
they assessed the damages the defendant
must pay. The defendant then extolled
his vices, stating that she could not abide
him for a day. They should remember
that when they assessed the damages.
The Judge, tossing aside his books and
papers, said that he could not stay there
all day. He would marry the lady him-
self. As he embraced her the others agreed
that he was indeed a good judge—oi
beauty.
3878

A TRICK TO CATCH THE OLD ONE
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: First years of seventeenth century
Locale: London
First presented: c. 1604
Principal characters:
Witgood, a young prodigal of good family
A Courtesan, Witgood's mistress and accomplice
Pecunius Lucre, Witgood's miserly uncle
Walkadine Hoard, a rival miser to Pecunius Lucre
Taverner, Witgood's friend and accomplice
Joyce, Walkadine Hoard's niece, pretty and wealthy
Critique:
Thomas Middleton, next to Ben Jon-
son, was the greatest realist among the
dramatists writing during the reign of
James I. The realism is not reinforced in
Middleton's work by a close attention to
the structure of the drama, as is so
noteworthy in the Jonsonian plays. Middle-
ton, a commoner himself and holder of
a post for many years under the Lord
Mayor of London, was exceedingly
interested in the life of the people who
lived within the city, rather than in the
people of the court and the fashionable
world. Where Middleton got the plot for
this play is not known; possibly he
gathered it out of incidents that actually
occurred in London. On the other hand,
the influence of this play on Philip Mas-
singer's A New Way to Pay Old Debts
is obvious. The greatest merits of the
Middleton play are its intrigues, its
hustle and bustle of incident, and its
propensity to give good fun.
The Story:
Theodorus Witgood, a young man of
quality, had been so prodigal with his
fortune that he had lost it all. Even his
country estate had been mortgaged to
his uncle, Pecunius Lucre, a miserly
man. The cause of Witgood's downfall
was a Courtesan, a young woman on
whom he had wasted his fortune after
seducing her. Fortunately for Witgood,
the girl really liked him and was anxious
to help him. When Witgood conceived
a plan to regain his fortunes, a plan that
required her help, she readily promised
to help her lover.
Witgood's plan was to take the
Courtesan to London and pass her off as a
rich widow. With the aid of a tavern-
keeper, who gave Witgood his services
ns a servant and the use of his horses,
the plan was put into execution.
Witgood even hoped to get back the
mortgage from his uncle. As soon as Uncle
Lucre heard about the rich widow, his
miserly instincts were aroused. Taken in
by his nephew's story, he hoped to
promote the marriage and eventually gain
the widow's money and estates.
Uncle Lucre invited Witgood and the
supposed wealthy widow to his home,
where in spite of his real feelings toward
Witgood he praised the young man to
the skies. In addition to his uncle, the
creditors to whom Witgood owed money
were anxious to help his marital efforts,
for the creditors realized that a good
marriage would enable them to collect
the money he owed them.
When word of the wealthy widow
spread through the town, many suitors
came to woo her. Among them was
Walkadine Hoard, a rival miser who was
pleased at the prospect of wooing a
widow of fortune and so keeping that
fortune from falling into the hands of
Uncle Lucre. The situation was to
Witgood's advantage, and he filled his uncle's
ears with talk of the jointures that other
3879

suitors were willing to give the widow.
His hope was that his uncle would take
the hint and restore his estates and money
to him in the belief that he should shine
as well as the other suitors in the
supposed widow's eyes. The plan was only
a ruse, however, for Witgood had no
intention of marrying the Courtesan and
making an honest woman of her. Wit-
good's real love was Joyce, the daughter
of Hoard's rich brother. Lest Jovce think
he had forsaken her, Witgood sent her
a letter telling her to keep faith with him.
They had to keep their love secret, for
Witgood's wild ways and prodigality,
plus the enmity between their respective
uncles, prevented their marriage.
In the meantime Hoard plotted to get
the widow for himself. Accompanied by
several gentlemen, he went to her and
told her the truth about young Witgood.
His friends also represented Hoard as an
ardent suitor. Witgood, in another room,
heard all that was said. At his first
chance he advised the Courtesan to go
ahead with her deception and marry old
Hoard, a marriage which would give her
a place in the world and restore her lost
reputation. Hoard's proposal was a piece
of luck that the plotting pair had not
foreseen. She promised to meet Hoard
at a tavern and elope with him. When
she confessed that she had no estates,
Hoard, thinking she was only teasing
him, refused to believe her.
The Courtesan went to the tavern,
where the old miser met her. To
entertain his uncle, Witgood then went and
told him that Hoard was being married
off to a prostitute. Uncle Lucre was
immensely pleased. Discreet Witgood did
not tell the uncle that the prostitute was
the supposed wealthy widow.
Witgood's creditors, getting wind of
what was happening, secured a bailiff
and had him arrested for debt. After
much talking he persuaded them to take
him first to Hoard's house. When they
arrived there, Witgood informed Hoard
that he had an earlier marriage contract
with the widow, a contract which could
not be nullified until both parties agreed
to break it. Old Hoard was horrified, for
the bond meant that his new wife's
property, if any, was not his. Pretending to
save the day, the woman suggested that
Hoard buy off Witgood by paying the
young man's debts. The creditors, paid
by Hoard, went their way. Then
Witgood and the widow confessed the
woman's true identity. The bridegroom
fumed, realizing too late that the
supposed widow had told him in the
presence of witnesses that she had no
fortune. Hoard had been gulled into taking
another man's mistress as his wife.
Meanwhile the tavernkeeper, acting as
servant for Witgood and the Courtesan,
had convinced Uncle Lucre that his
nephew could marry the widow only if
he had a fortune or an estate. The
uncle, hoping to use the young man to get
the supposed widow's fortune in his
hands, gave up the mortgage on
Witgood's estates. The tavernkeeper hastened
with the papers to Witgood, who was
extremely pleased with the way his plans
were working out.
Before he left Hoard's house, Witgood,
once more in control of his estates,
received a message in which Joyce told
him that she would meet him a short
time later.
Old Hoard tried to pass off his wife
as she had been passed on to him. He
ordered a great wedding supper and
invited, among other guests, his rival and also
his brother. Everything went off well
until Hoard'? brother recognized the
bride as Witgood's former mistress. In the
confusion that followed the bride fell on
her knees and asked forgiveness, telling
her husband that she repented her
previous sins and would make him a good
wife. She pointed out that it was better
for a man to have a wife whose sins
were behind her instead of before her.
Witgood also helped her reputation by
saying that he had been her seducer and
only lover.
Witgood himself then declared that
he, too, had reformed. He promised to
put aside his old habits of prodigality
as the first step in winning consent to his
3880

marriage with Joyce, the girl he truly loved.
3881

THE TRICKSTER
Type of work: Drama
Author: Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 255-184 B.C.)
Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue
Time of plot: Late third century B.C.
Locale: Athens
First presented: 191 B.C.
Principal characters:
Simo, an old Athenian gentleman
Calidorus, his son
Pseudolus, Simo's servant
Ballio, a procurer, owner of Phoenicium
Harp ax, a messenger
Simia, servant of one of Calidorus' friends
Phoenicium, loved by Calidorus
Critique:
The Trickster (Pseudolus) shares both
the deficiencies and the excellences of
most of Plautus' plays. The comedy
displays what might be called an absolute
unity of place and time: the whole of the
action occurs before a single house in
Athens in precisely the time it would
have occupied in reality. The result, while
attesting strongly to the dramatist's
ingenuity, tends to violate what is perhaps
the most important unity of all, that of
action. The plot is crowded with
irrelevant events introduced primarily to
provide time for other more essential events
to take place off stage, and the characters
are sometimes given improbable speeches
to account for their presence in this place
at this time when another place and
time would have appeared more suitable.
Nevertheless, Plautus seems not oblivious
of these incongruities, and he presents
them with a sufficient hint of irony to
make them entertaining, even if they
are not dramatically integrated.
The Story:
Pseudolus, a servant of the Athenian
Simo, observed one day that his master's
son Calidorus was deeply despondent
about something. Questioning him on
the matter, Pseudolus was given a letter
from Phoenicium, a slave girl with whom
Calidorus was in love. She had written
that Ballio, her master, had sold her to a
Macedonian military officer for the sum
of twenty minae. However, the
transaction was not yet complete; the officer had
given Ballio fifteen minae to seal the
bargain and had arranged that Phoenicium
was to be delivered to a servant of his
who would bring the remaining five
minae and a letter bearing a seal to match
the one the officer had made with his
ring and left in Ballio's keeping. This
servant was to arrive on the festival of
Bacchus, now being celebrated.
Calidorus was naturally and thoroughly
upset by this news, for he had no money
with which to buy Phoenicium and no
Erospect of getting any. At loose ends,
e appealed to the wily Pseudolus for
help. With great self-confidence, the
servant promised to trick Calidorus' father,
Simo, out of the money.
Before any plan could be formulated,
Ballio appeared, cursing and beating
some of his slaves. Calidorus and
Pseudolus approached him and begged him to
reconsider his bargain, pointing out that
Phoenicium had been promised to
Calidorus as soon as the young man could
find the money to pay for Tier. But the
unscrupulous Ballio remained unmoved,
taunting Calidorus with his poverty and
his inability to get money from his father.
Before they parted, however, he craftily
pointed out that today was the day on
which the officer had agreed to send his
final installment of the payment for
Phoenicium and that if die promised
money were not received, Ballio would
be free to sell her to any other bidder.
3882

As Pseudolus was revolving his plans
in his mind, he overheard Simo talking
to a friend and learned that the old man
had already heard of Calidorus' plight and
had steeled himself in advance against
any plea for money that his son might
make. Finding his task thus complicated,
Pseudolus stepped forward and brazenly
admitted his commission, telling Simo
that he intended to get the twenty minae
from him and that Simo should
consequently be on his guard. The slave told
his master in addition that he intended
to trick Ballio out of the slave girl.
Simo was skeptical, but Pseudolus finally
goaded him into promising to pay for the
girl if Pseudolus proved successful in
getting her away from the procurer.
Soon afterward Pseudolus was fortunate
enough to overhear a newcomer identify
himself as Harpax, the Macedonian
captain's messenger, come to conclude the
dealings for Phoenicium. Accosting the
messenger, Pseudolus identified himself
as one of Ballio's servants and persuaded
Harpax to allow him to deliver the sealed
letter that was to identify the rightful
purchaser. Then he induced Harpax to
go to an inn to rest from his journey until
Pseudolus came to get him.
When the messenger had gone,
Calidorus appeared in the company of a
friend, and in the conversation that
followed, the latter agreed to lend five
minae for the execution of Pseudolus*
plot. He agreed, moreover, to allow his
servant Simia to be used in the
enterprise.
These arrangements made, the three
left to conclude their preparations. Then
Ballio appeared in the company of a
cook, and it was disclosed that today was
the procurer's birthday and that he was
Ereparing a feast for his customers. Be-
>re Ballio went into his house, it was
disclosed also that Simo had met him in
the market place and had warned him to
be on his guard against Pseudolus' plot.
Immediately after Ballio went in,
Pseudolus appeared in the company of Simia.
During their conversation Simia revealed
himself to be shrewd and wily, and in
the ensuing confrontation with Ballio he
proved as apt a dissembler as Pseudolus
himself. For when Ballio came out of his
house, Simia approached and asked
directions to find the procurer. Ballio identified
himself, but, suspicious, he asked Simia
the name of the man who had sent him.
For a moment, the eavesdropping
Pseudolus was afraid that his plot had collapsed,
for Simia had not been told the name of
the Macedonian captain. Simia adroitly
evaded the trap, however, by pretending
suspicion on his part and refusing to give
Ballio the sealed letter until the procurer
had himself identified Phoenicium's
purchaser. Ballio did so, received the letter
and the money and released Phoenicium
into Simia's custody.
After Simia and Phoenicium had gone,
Ballio, congratulating himself on having
outwitted Pseudolus, chuckled at the
prospect of the servant making his tardy effort
to obtain the girl. When Simo appeared,
the procurer expressed his certainty that
Pseudolus had been foiled and declared
that he would give Simo twenty minae
and relinquish his right to the girl as well
if Pseudolus were successful in his plot.
At that moment Harpax entered,
grumbling that Pseudolus had not come to get
him as he had promised to do.
Confronting Ballio, he learned the procurer's
identity and set about to close the bargain his
master had made. Ballio, convinced that
Harpax was in the employ of Pseudolus,
did his best to humiliate the messenger,
until Harpax mentioned having given the
sealed letter to a "servant" of Ballio. From
the description, Ballio realized with great
chagrin that he had been thoroughly
duped. Simo held him to his word
regarding the twenty minae and the
relinquishing of his rights to Phoenicium, and
Harpax, learning that the girl was no longer
available, insisted on the return of tie
fifteen minae that the captain had already
deposited.
Meanwhile, Pseudolus, Calidorus, and
Phoenicium were celebrating their
victory with wine. Pseudolus later met Simo
and demanded the twenty minae which
the old man owed him for having success-
3883

fully tricked Ballio. Simo gave the money turned half the sum and took his master
with good will since it was not ultimately off to drink to their good fortune,
coming out of his pocket. Pseudolus re-
3884

TRILBY
Type of work: Novel
Author: George du Maurier (1834-1896)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Paris and London
First published: 1894
Principal characters:
Trilby OTerrall, an artist's model
Svengali, a Hungarian musician
Gecko, another musician
Taffy,
Sandy, and
Little Billee, English art students
Critique:
This novel has had an astonishing
success both in its original form and in
a dramatic version for stage presentation.
Its chief merit lies in its picture of
student life in the Latin Quarter of Paris.
Du Maurier, who wrote the book from
recollections of his own youth, seems to
have set down only the glamorous
elements. The result is delightful reading
so long as the reader remembers that
the account of Bohemian life is idealized
and sentimentalized.
The Story:
In the large Latin Quarter studio
which Taffy, Sandy, and Little Billee
shared, the three students were hosts
to Svengali, an unconventional musician,
and Gecko, a fiddler. Suddenly there
was a knock on the door. An artist's
model came in; she had heard music and
decided to stop by. She wore a mixture
of clothing—a soldier's coat, a pair of
men's shoes, a frilled petticoat—and she
carried her lunch. When she began to
sing, her voice was so flat that the
listeners did not know whether to be
amused or embarrassed. Only Svengali
realized the quality of her untrained
voice.
Svengali went one morning to borrow
money from Sandy. Trilby was in the
studio when he arrived. Because she
complained of a headache, Svengali
TRILBY by George du Maurier. By pennission of the publishers. Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1894, by
Harper & Brothers. Renewed, 1922, by Gerald du Maurier and May du Maurier Coles.
hypnotized her. Sandy, thinking of the
control Svengali might have over Trilby,
was alarmed.
Trilby came more often to the studio.
She cooked for the three Englishmen,
darned their clothing, joined in their
meals and parties. In return they taught
her how to speak correct English and
treated her as a highly respected sister.
When Sandy fell ill, Trilby refused to let
anyone else look after him.
Svengali had a stroke of luck when he
was hired to appear in concerts. He was
anxious to hypnotize the model again,
but the three Englishmen would not
permit it.
Because Trilby posed in the nude,
Little Billee, who had fallen in love
with her, became angry and left Paris,
Trilby, unhappy at this turn of events,
became a laundress. She began to take
care of her appearance, so that when
Little Billee returned he was completely
charmed by her. At Christmas time
Trilby promised to marry Little Billee.
But a few days later his mother and a
clergyman arrived and made Trilby
promise that she would not marry Little Billee.
Trilby left Paris. Little Billee became
ill and with his mother and sister
returned to England.
Five years passed. Little Billee
achieved success in London. Sandy and
Taffy traveled on the continent. When
3885

the three friends met again at a ball in
London, there was much talk of old days
in Paris. Word went around that
Svengali had found a great pupil, that he
had married her and was making a famous
singer of her. Litde Billee painted more
pictures and fell in and out of love with
a girl named Alice. The other two friends
went their ways.
At last the tnree met in Paris. During
their stay they attended the first
performance of the famous La Svengali in
Paris and discovered that the singer was
their Trilby of earlier days. Under the
hand of her master she had gained a
great voice that thrilled her audience.
The three Englishmen were overcome.
The next day, when they saw Trilby
and Svengali in the park, Little Billee
ran up to greet her. She looked at her
old friends vaguely, listened to
something which Svengali said to her, and
then to their surprise glanced coldly at
them as if she nad never seen them
before.
The next day Litde Billee encountered
Svengali, who spat on him. A fight began
in which the tall musician was more
than a match for the small artist. Then
Taffy appeared. With one hand he
seized Svengali's nose and with the
other he slapped Svengali on the cheek.
Svengali was only too glad to escape.
A few days later the Englishmen left
for home.
When Svengali brought his star to
London, she was the talk of the city.
Little Billee and his friends bought
tickets for Trilby's first concert.
At the last minute the concert was
canceled. Svengali had scolded Trilby
past the limit of Gecko's endurance, and
Gecko had attacked Svengali with a
knife. At that moment Trilby became
imbecile in her manner. While her
husband remained ill she was incapable of
speech, and she spent all her time with
him. Svengali would not permit her
to leave him either to practice or to sing
her concert without him.
At last Svengali recovered. Not well
enough to conduct the orchestra,
however, he was compelled to occupy a seat
in a box facing Trilby as she sang.
When Litde Billee and his friends
arrived, they saw Svengali rise from his
place with a look of unalterable hatred
on his face. Then he slumped forward.
Trilby, led from the wings, took her place
somewhat mechanically. She seemed to
be looking for Svengali. The orchestra
began her number. She remained
indifferent, refusing to sing. Again and
again the orchestra began to play. At
last she demanded, in her old gutter
French, what they wanted of her. When
they said she was to sing, she told the
orchestra to be quiet; she would sing
without an accompaniment. Then she
began in the same flat voice with which
she had sung for Litde Billee and his
friends years before. At once catcalls
shook the house. Terrified, Trilby had
to be led away. The confusion increased
when someone shouted that Svengali
was dead in his box.
The three friends went to Trilby's
dressing-room. Finding her frightened,
they took her to Litde Billee's lodgings,
where the next day he and his friends
called on her. Trilby knew nothing of
her career as a singer, and she
remembered Svengali only as the kindest man
in her life. She was pale and seemed
vasdy aged.
She told them that Svengali had
offered to look after her when she left
Paris. He had not married her,
however, for he already had a wife and
three children. As Trilby talked, her
mind seemed disturbed beyond recovery,
and a doctor was called in. She
gradually became weaker and weaker. There
seemed little that could be done for
her.
Gecko went to prison for striking
Svengali. Svengali's money, which
Trilby had earned, went to his wife and
children. Each afternoon the three
friends went to visit Trilby. She became
more and more emaciated, and could no
longer rise from her chair. Only by
3886

smiles and gestures could she reveal to
them the gay, carefree Trilby of other
days in Paris.
One day a large life-like photograph of
Svengali was shown her. She began to
sing and charmed her listeners to tears
with the sadness of her song. Then
she fell asleep. A doctor, summoned
immediately, said she had been dead
for a quarter of an hour or more.
Years later TafTy and his wife, Little
Billee's sister, met Gecko in a cafe* in
Paris and he told them of Svengali's
influence over Trilby. Svengali had
hypnotized the girl, had made her a
singing automaton of matchless voice.
When the spell was broken, there was
no Trilby, Gecko claimed, for Svengali
had destroyed her soul. TafTy and his
wife told him how Little Billee had died
shortly after Trilby's death. There was
little any of them could say. They could
only wonder at the strangeness and
sadness of Trilby's story.
3887

TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Gottfried von Strassburg (fl. late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: The Arthurian period
Locale: Northern Europe, Ireland, England
First transcribed: c. 1210
Principal characters:
Rivalin, a lord of Parmenie
Blanchefleur, his wife
Tristan, their son
Rual the Faithful, Tristan's foster father
Mark, King of Cornwall, Tristan's uncle
Isolde the Fair, King Mark's bride, loved by Tristan
Brangene, Isolde's companion
Isolde of the White Hands, Tristan's bride
Critique:
Those who know Richard Wagner's
opera of the same title are familiar with
the basic plot of Gottfried von Strass-
burg's version of this widespread tale.
The version Wagner chose, 19,000 or so
lines of which are attributed to Gottfried,
the medieval German court poet, is the
finest extant and the most extensive
telling of one of the most famous love
stories of all times. This metrical
romance, which belongs to the tradition of
German Minnesang, does not follow the
line of chivalric romance developed by
other writers, and there is no deadly
repetition of knightly deeds of valor in war
and tournaments. Instead, Gottfried
celebrates romantic love deeper than chivalric
love with its strict but conventional code
of behavior; his conception of love is
more inward, at once enchanting and
enthralling, bewildering and ecstatic, one
that sways the soul and makes martyrs
of those who have partaken of love's
sacrament. The landscape against which
Tristan and Isolde move often suggests
an inner dream world of motivation and
compulsion.
The Story:
Rivalin, a lord of Parmenie, tired of
baiting Duke Morgan, the wicked ruler,
signed a year's truce and set off for
Britain where King Mark of Cornwall
was establishing peace and order. Badly
wounded while fighting in the defense
of Cornwall, Rivalin was pitied and
nursed back to health by Mark's sister
Blanchefleur, whom he took back to
Parmenie as his bride. Later, hearing of
Rivalin's death at Duke Morgan's hand,
Blanchefleur went into labor, and died
during the birth of her son. Rual,
Rivaling faithful steward, and his wife
reared the boy out of loyalty to their
dead lord and mistress and to thwart
Duke Morgan's vindictiveness. The boy
was named Tristan, in keeping with the
sad events preceding his birth and a
prophecy of grief to come.
Tristan's education was courtly, both
at home and abroad; it included music,
art, literature, languages, falconry,
hunting, riding, knightly prowess with sword
and spear, and jousting. These
accomplishments he used to great advantage
throughout his short life. He was loved
deeply by his foster parents, his
stepbrothers, and the people of Parmenie as
well.
Kidnapped by Norwegians, Tristan
managed to make his way to Cornwall
after an eight-day storm at sea. He
immediately attached himself to King Mark's
court as a hunter, later the master of the
hunt. When his royal lineage was
revealed, he became his uncle's knight and
vassal.
Known far and wide as a doughty
knight, Tristan returned to avenge his
father's death by defeating and killing
3888

Duke Morgan; his lands he gave to Rual
and his sons. Meanwhile, Duke Morolt
of Ireland, who had exacted tribute from
King Mark, demanded further payment
or a fight to the death in single combat
with the Cornish king. Tristan acted as
King Mark's emissary to the Irish court,
where his efforts to have Duke Morolt
recall his demand for tribute were
unsuccessful. Duke Morolt did agree,
however, to let Tristan fight in King Mark's
place. They met and fought in
Cornwall. After wounding Tristan in the hip,
Duke Morolt suggested that the young
knight yield so that his sister Isolde,
Queen of Ireland, could nurse him back
to health. This offer was refused, and
the fight waved fiercely again. Tristan
finally sliced off Duke Morolt's head and
hand.
Tristan, disguised as a beggar, went to
Ireland to be cured. Calling himself Tan-
tris, he ingratiated himself with Queen
Isolde, who cured him of his hurt.
Afterward he became the tutor in music and
languages to her daughter, Isolde the
Fair. When the young Isolde learned that
he was the murderer of her uncle, the
queen mother forgave him and allowed
him to return to Cornwall.
In Cornwall, Tristan sang the praises
of the Irish princess. Because King Mark
had made the young knight his heir,
some jealous noblemen, hoping to have
Tristan slain, suggested that he return
to Ireland and bring Isolde back as
King Mark's bride. On his arrival in
Ireland Tristan killed a dragon which had
long ravished the kingdom. In gratitude,
Queen Isolde entrusted her beautiful
daughter to Tristan's care.
Oil the return voyage, Brangene, the
faithful companion and cousin of Isolde
the Fair, failed to guard carefully the
love potion intended by the queen for
Isolde and King Mark on their nuptial
day. Tristan and the princess drank the
potion and were thenceforth enslaved by
love for each other. They both
experienced conflicting duty and desire, turned
red then white, became both depressed
and exalted, and finally gave in to love.
To deceive King Mark, Brangene stole
into Isolde's bed so that Tristan and
Isolde might meet in secret.
After some time had passed, Isolde
grew apprehensive lest Brangene betray
her, and she ordered her companion's
death. Fortunately, the queen relented
before Brangene could die, and all went
on as before until the king was at last
informed of Tristan's treachery. King
Mark made many attempts to trap the
lovers, meanwhile vacillating between
trust and angry jealousy. Each time a
trap was set, Tristan and Isolde proved
their false innocence by some cunning
ruse.
Finally the lovers were exiled. The
king invited them to return, however,
when he discovered them innocently
asleep in a cave, a sword between them.
Although King Mark urged propriety on
their return to court, Tristan and Isolde
almost immediately abandoned all
caution, driven as they were by the caprices
of love. Knowing that the king would
have them killed if they were discovered,
Tristan set out from Cornwall after
accepting a ring from his beloved as a
token of their fidelity to each other.
During his travels Tristan performed
deeds of knightly valor in Germany,
Champagne, and Normandy. In
gratitude tor his services in Normandy the
duke gave him his daughter Isolde, called
Isolde of the White Hands to distinguish
her from Isolde the Fair, as his bride.
Lovesick and dejected, Tristan accepted
his bride in name only—the name Isolde.
(At this point Gottfried's narrative
breaks off abruptly. From his source
materials and from related versions, it is
likely that Tristan was fatally wounded
by a poisoned spear and that Isolde the
Fair, summoned from Cornwall, arrived
after her lover had died. Shock and grief
caused her death also. King Mark,
learning of the love potion, forgave them and
ordered the lovers buried side by side in
Cornwall.)
3889

TRISTRAM
Type of work: Poem
Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
Type of flat: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Arthurian period
Locale: England and Brittany
First published: 1927
Principal characters:
Tristram, Prince of Lyonesse
Mark, his uncle, King of Cornwall
Howel, King of Brittany
Isolt of the White Hands, Howel's daughter
Isolt, Princess of Ireland
Gouvernail, Tristram's friend
Andred, Mark's minion
Queen Morgan, the wily queen
Critique:
The old Breton lay of Tristram and
Yseult is here reworked with happy
results. In Robinson's version the romance
loses some of its air of remoteness and
its rather stereotyped romantic
convention, and we have, instead, a genuine
love story with little except the names
to remind us of the Middle Ages. The
characters talk and think in a plausible
manner which adds to the ease of
reading. More than the modernization,
however, Robinson tells the story with real
lyric power. The use of symbolism, as
in the quiet ship on a still ocean at the
death of Tristram, brings vividness and
appeal to the tale.
The Story:
Isolt of the white hands was too
pensive and preoccupied for a young girl.
Always she looked to the north, toward
England, and her father, King Howel
of Brittany, loved his daughter too much
to let her attitude go unquestioned.
Isolt told her father she was waiting
for Tristram, who some time before had
made a visit to the Breton court. Fond
of Isolt as a man is fond of a child, he
had given her on his departure an agate
for a keepsake and had promised to come
back. Now Isolt was a woman of eighteen
and she waited for Tristram as a woman
wait* for her lover. King Howel tried
to tell her that Tristram thought of her
as a child, and that he probably would
not return; but Isolt would not be
convinced.
In Cornwall it was the wedding day of
old, lecherous King Mark and the dark
and beautiful Isolt of Ireland, his bride,
With the wedding feast in full swing,
the wine cup was often passed. Sick of
the drunken merriment and sicker with
inner torment, Tristram, nephew of the
king, left the feast and wandered in the
fresh night air.
King Mark, displeased by his nephew's
absence, sent Gouvernail, Tristram's
preceptor and friend, to ask him to return.
Tristram said only that he was sick. Then
feline Queen Morgan came to talk to
Tristram. She used all her arts and
blandishments on the brooding knight,
and they were cunning indeed, for
Queen Morgan, much experienced in the
arts of love, was more than a little
attracted to Tristram. But Tristram
repeated stubbornly that he was sick.
Then there was a soft step on the
stair, as Brangwaine came, followed a
moment later by dark-caped, violet-eyed
Isolt of Ireland herself. She looked at
Tristram but said nothing as he took her
in his arms. Memories hung about them
like a cloud.
King Mark was old and unattractive,
TRISTRAM by Edwin Arlington Robinson. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copy-
-ight, 1927, by Edwin Arlington Robinson.
3890

and he had wanted a young wife in his
castle. Yearning for Isolt of Ireland, he
had sent as emissary his gallant nephew,
Tristram, to plead his cause. Tristram
had to fight even to get to the Irish
court. After he had slain the mighty
Morhaus, Isolt's uncle, he made a
bargain of state with the Irish king and took
Isolt back to Cornwall in his boat. One
night they were alone with only the
sea and the stars to look upon them.
Isolt waited in vain for Tristram to
speak. If he had, she would have loved
him then, and there would have been
no marriage of convenience with King
Mark. But bound by knightly fealty
Tristram kept silent and delivered Isolt
to his uncle. Now he looked at her and
regretted bitterly that he had not spoken
on the boat.
Andred stole behind them to spy on
their love-making. He was a faithful
servitor of King Mark, but jealousy of
Tristram and love for Isolt motivated
him as well. But Tristram saw Andred
skulking in the shadow, seized him, and
threw him heavily on the rocks. When
King Mark himself came out to inquire
about his absent guests, he stumbled over
Andred's unconscious body and stood
unseen long enough to hear the
passionate avowals of Tristram and Isolt.
Since Tristram was his nephew, King
Mark did not have him killed, but he
banished Tristram forever from
Cornwall on pain of burning at the stake.
The sick Tristram wandered in a fever.
When he recovered, he found himself the
captive of Queen Morgan in her castle.
Queen Morgan eventually gave up her
siege of Tristram's heart and let him
go.
Next Tristram went to Brittany,
where a griffin, giant scourge of the
Breton land, was threatening King Howel
and his court. Knightly Tristram, fierce
in battle although sick for love, slew the
griffin and put his hosts to flight. As
a hero, Tristram had a secure place at
King Howel's court, and there he
married Isolt of the white hands. He pitied
her and she loved him, although she
knew of his sorrow. For two years
Tristram was a faithful husband and reigning
prince.
Then from the north came another
ship with Gawaine aboard bringing a
message from King Arthur. For his
deeds Tristram was to become a Knight
of the Round Table; hence his summons
to Camelot. Isolt watched her husband
go with quiet despair, for she feared he
would not come back. She had little
dread of King Mark, for Gawaine had
told her in secrecy that King Mark was
in prison. The Cornish king had forged
the Pope's signature on a paper ordering
Tristram to go fight the Saracens, and
his forgery had been detected. But
somehow Isolt knew that Tristram's danger
lay in Cornwall.
Guinevere, Arthur's queen, and her
lover, Lancelot, plotted to bring Irish
Isolt and Tristram together. Lancelot
took Tristram to Joyous Guard, his tryst-
ing castle, and Guinevere brought Isolt
of Ireland secredy out of Cornwall. So
the lovers were together again, while
King Mark was in prison.
They had a happy summer together
and as autumn drew near Tristram lost
a little of his apprehension. Early one
morning he went out on the sea while
Isolt slept. When he returned, there
were strangers in Joyous Guard and
Isolt was gone. King Mark, released
from prison, had abducted his wife and
carried her off to Cornwall.
Tristram moped in silence until he
had a letter from Queen Morgan. She
chided him for his lovesickness and urged
him to see his Isolt once more. Goaded
by the wily queen, Tristram rode to
Cornwall prepared to fight and die for
a last look at Isolt. But when he
arrived at his uncle's castle, he entered
easily and in surprised joy sought out
Isolt. She told him that she was near
death. King Mark, in pity for her
wasting figure and sick heart, had given her
permission to receive her lover. Isolt
and Tristram, sad in their love because
Isolt was to die, sat on the shore and
gazed out at a still ship on the quiet
3891

ocean. While they sat thus, the jealous
Andred crept up behind them and stabbed
Tristram in the back. So Tristram died
before Isolt after all. King Mark finally
realized that Andred was also in love
with Isolt, and he regretted that his
lecherous lust for a young queen had
brought sorrow and death to many lives.
Gouvernail went back to Brittany to
convey the grievous news of Tristram's
death to Isolt of the white hands, who
divined the truth when he disembarked
alone. He told her only part of Tristram's
sojourn in England, only that Tristram
had seen the dying Isolt of Ireland a last
time with King Mark's consent, and that
Andred had killed Tristram by treachery.
Isolt was silent in her grief; no one could
know what she was thinking, nor how
much she divined of Tristram and the
other Isolt.
Now Isolt looked no more for a ship
from England. On the white sea the
white birds and the sunlight were alive.
The white birds were always flying and
the sunlight flashed on the sea.
3892

TRISTRAM SHANDY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Type of plot: Humorous sensibility
Time of plot: 1718-1766
Locale: Shandy Hall in England
First published: 1760-1767 (published in several books)
Principal characters:
Tristram Shandy, who tells the story
Mr. Walter Shandy, his father
Mr. Toby Shandy, his uncle, an old soldier
Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby's servant
Mr. Yorick, a parson
Dr. Slop, a medical quack
Widow Wadman, a romantic widow
Critique:
The Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy, Gentleman is one of the most
amusing books ever written. In part, its
humor derives from Sterne's delight in
oddities of material and method. His
pleasure in the unexpected creates
surprise on almost every page. Memory and
an intense sensibility combine to create
the first true psychological novel in
English literature. The organization of the
novel is based on little more than Sterne's
whims. Diagrams, unusual uses of type,
and strange numbering of the pages are
amusing pranks played by the author.
The Story:
Tristram Shandy, in telling the story
of his earliest years, always believed that
most of the problems of his life were
brought about by the fact that the
moment of his conception was interrupted
when his mother asked his father if he
had remembered to wind the clock.
Tristram knew the exact date of his
conception, the night between the first
Sunday and the first Monday of March,
1718. He was certain of this date
because, according to his father's notebook,
Mr. Shandy set out immediately after
this date to travel from Shandy Hall up
to London. Before this date Mr. Shandy
had been seriously inconvenienced by an
attack of sciatica.
Another complication of Tristram's
birth was the marriage settlement of his
parents. According to this settlement,
quoted in full by Tristram, Mrs. Shandy
had the privilege of going to London
for her lying-in. But, if Mrs. Shandy
were to put Mr. Shandy to the expense
of a trip to London on false pretenses,
then the next child was to be born at
Shandy Hall. The circumstance of a
needless trip to London having occurred
some time before, Mr. Shandy stoutly
insisted that Tristram should be born at
Shandy Hall, the birth to be in the
hands of a country midwife, rather than
in those of a London doctor.
On the night of Tristram's birth, his
father and his Uncle Toby were sitting
in the living-room engaged in one of
their interminable discussions and
debates. Informed by Susannah, the maid,
that Mrs. Shandy was about to be
delivered of a child, they sent for the
midwife. As an extra measure of safety, they
sent also for Dr. Slop, a bungling country
practitioner whom Mr. Shandy admired
because he had written a five-shilling
book on the history of midwifery. While
the midwife attended Mrs. Shandy, the
doctor would, for a fee of five guineas,
drink a bottle of wine in the back parlor
with Mr. Shandy and his brother, Toby.
Uncle Toby, who had been called the
highest compliment ever paid humaD
nature, had been a soldier until he was
wounded during the siege of Namur in
1695. The wound, the exact position of
which was to play such a large part in
Tristram's story later on, forced him to
3893

retire to the country. There at the
suggestion of his faithful servant, Corporal
Trim, he had built, on a bowling green
behind Shandy Hall, a large and
complicated series of model fortifications and
military emplacements. Uncle Toby's
entire time was spent playing soldier and
thinking about this miniature battlefield.
It was his hobbyhorse, and he rode it
continually with the greatest of pleasure.
Mr. Shandy was not at all taken with
his brother's hobby, and had to keep him
from discussing it by violent interruptions
so that he could himself continue, or
start, one of his long and detailed
digressions on obscure information.
As the two brothers sat awaiting the
arrival of the midwife and her rival, Dr.
Slop, Mr. Shandy made a rhetorical
question of the subject of Mrs. Shandy's
preference for a midwife rather than a male
doctor. Uncle Toby suggested naively
that modesty might explain her choice.
This innocent answer led Mr. Shandy
into a long discussion of the nature of
women, and of the fact that everything
in the world has two handles. Uncle
Toby's innocence, however, always made
it impossible for him to understand such
affairs.
Dr. Slop, with his bag of tools, finally
arrived. The midwife was already in
attendance when he went up to see about
the birth of the child. Meanwhile, to
pass the time, Corporal Trim read a
sermon aloud. Dr. Slop, in attending Mrs.
Shandy, unfortunately mistook Tristram's
hip for his head. In probing with his
large forceps, he flattened what Tristram
always referred to as his nose. This
mistake Tristram blamed essentially on the
affair of the winding of the clock
mentioned earlier. This, and a later incident
concerning the falling of a window sash
when Tristram, still a little boy, was
relieving himself through a window,
brought about a problem in his anatomy
which he mentioned often in his story of
his life.
Between Tristram's birth and almost
immediate baptism, Mr. Shandy
entertained the company with a long story he
had translated from the Latin of the old
German writer, Slawkenbergius, a tale
telling of the adventures of a man with
an especially long nose. By the time Mr.
Shandy had recovered from the bad news
of the accident with the forceps, and had
asked about his child, he learned that it
was very sickly and weak; consequently
he summoned Mr. Yorick, the curate, to
baptize the child immediately. While
rushing to get dressed to attend the
ceremony, Mr. Shandy sent word to the
parson by the maid, Susannah, to name the
child Trismegistus, after an ancient
philosopher who was a favorite of Mr.
Shandy. Susannah forgot the name,
however, and told Mr. Yorick to name the
child Tristram. This name pleased the
old man because it happened to be his
own as well. When Mr. Shandy, still
half unbuttoned, reached the scene, the
evil had been done. Despite the fact
that Mr. Shandy thought correct naming
most important, his child was Tristram,
a name Mr. Shandy believed the worst
in the world. He lamented that he had
lost three-fourths* of his son in his
unfortunate geniture, nose, and name.
There remained only one
fourth—Tristram's education.
Tristram managed to give a partial
account of his topsy-turvy boyhood
between many sidelights on the characters
of his family. Uncle Toby continued to
answer most of his brother's arguments
by softly whistling Lillibullero, his
favorite tune, and going out to the little
battlefield to wage small wars with his
servant, Corporal Trim. The next
important event in the family was the
death of Master Bobby, Tristram's older
brother, who had been away at
Westminster school. To this event Mr. Shandy
reacted in his usual way by calling up all
the philosophic ideas of the past on
death and discoursing on them until
he had adjusted himself to the new
situation. The tragic news was carried to
the kitchen staff and Susannah, despite
a desire to show grief, could think of
nothing but the wonderful wardrobe of
dresses she would inherit when her mis-
3894

tress went into mourning. The vision of
all Mrs. Shandy's dresses passed through
her mind. Corporal Trim well
demonstrated the transitory nature of life by
dropping his hat, as if it had suddenly
died, and then making an
extemporaneous funeral oration.
After many more digressions on war,
health, the fashions of ancient Roman
dress, his father's doubts as to whether
to get Tristram a tutor, and whether
to put him into long trousers, Tristram
proceeded to tell the history of his Uncle
Toby, both in war and in love. Near
Shandy Hall lived the Widow Wadman,
who, after laying siege to Uncle Toby's
affections for a long period, almost got
him to propose marriage to her. But the
gentle ex-soldier, who literally would not
kill a fly, finally learned the widow's
purpose when she began to inquire so
pointedly into the extent and position
of his wound. First he promised the
widow that he would allow her to put
her finger on the very spot where he was
wounded, and then he brought her a
map of Namur to touch. Uncle Toby's
innocence balked her real question until
Corporal Trim finally told his master
that it was the spot on his body, not
the spot on the surface of the world
where the accident took place, that was
the point of the Widow Wadman's
interest. This realization so embarrassed
the old man that the idea of marriage
disappeared from his mind forever.
Tristram concluded his story with Parson
Yorick's statement that the book had
been one of the cock and bull variety,
the reader having been led a mad, but
merry, chase through the satirical and
witty mind of the author.
3895

THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH
Type of work: Novel
Author: Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Italy
First published: 1894
Principal characters:
George Aurispa, a young Italian of wealth and family
Signor Aurispa, George's materialistic father
Hippolyte, George's mistress
Critique:
To a person of sensitivity, this novel
by D'Annunzio may seem overdrawn.
Because of its subject matter and florid
style, sale of the book was prohibited in
some countries. The result was to give
D'Annunzio a tremendous underground
reputation. Some critics have argued that
the characters, except for Hippolyte, are
types, particularly among the minor
figures of the novel. The hero is the
romantic Byronic hero in modern dress, a man
who has never grown up because he
has never had to take on responsibility
or worry, because he has never had to
methodize his life in any way. There are
times when the story resembles a case
history of one whose emotions have never
matured with the body, a case history for
the psychiatrist's notebook as much as a
novel. Yet the book holds a power of its
own. The lives of Hippolyte and George
Aurispa represent both a triumph of
romantic individualism and a failure of
humanity and civilization.
The Story:
George Aurispa, a young Italian of
old family and sufficient money to enjoy
life without working, had fallen in love
with a lovely married woman named
Hippolyte. She had lived with her
husband only a few weeks, for she had
fallen ill shortly after her marriage. When
the affair with George began, she left
her husband and returned to her family.
Marriage was out of the question for the
lovers; because of religious reasons they
could not marry as long as one or the
other had a living spouse.
Infatuated, both George and
Hippolyte often wished they could spend even
more time together. But on the second
anniversary of their first meeting an
incident occurred which both regarded as
an ill omen and which cast a pall over
their minds. As they walked in Rome's
Pincio gardens they came to a terrace
where a man had just committed
suicide. Blood and a lock of blond hair
were still in evidence.
The suicide of the unknown young
man in the Pincio affected the lovers
even more than they realized at the time.
George began to feel that materialism
and sensuality, fostered by his love for
Hippolyte, had taken too firm a hold
upon him. Hippolyte, on the other hand,
was warned again of her own mortality
and the fact that she had a tendency
toward epilepsy.
Soon afterward George was called
home. His father and mother did not
live together, and George had known for
some time that his father kept a mistress.
During the visit he learned for the first
time the full story of his father's conduct.
His mother told him that his father had
despoiled the family fortune, refused a
dowry for their daughter, and lived
openly with his mistress and two illegitimate
children. George disliked the financial
entanglements of the situation; his own
money he had inherited from an uncle.
When George did visit his father to
intercede for his family, the young man
did nothing to help his mother and
sister. Instead, he agreed to sign a note as
surety for his father, who was trying to
borrow money from a bank. George was
struck, however, by the way his father
3896

had surrendered completely to a life of
gross materialism.
Before he left his mother to return
to Rome, George visited the apartment
in the mansion where his uncle had
lived. His uncle had committed suicide.
The realization of his uncle's deed filled
him with curiosity and melancholy, and
he almost decided to kill himself with
the same dueling pistol the uncle had
used.
Returning to Rome, George again fell
under the spell of Hippolyte, even
though he was now haunted by his fear
of gross sensuality, the thought of
suicide, and a friend's warning that
Hippolyte was coarse beneath her beauty and
would someday find a richer lover.
In order to escape from his fears,
George searched for a place where he
and Hippolyte could be away from the
world. He thought that in a small
village on the Adriatic coast they could live
in peace and he could work out his
emotional and psychological problems.
But their new secluded life left George
in even more of a quandary. There were
times when he felt great happiness in
being with his mistress day and night.
At other times he saw in her only the
embodiment of the same animal nature
that was slowly but surely ensnaring him
as it had ensnared his father. In order to
escape, to achieve idealism, George once
more considered taking his own life.
The Church offered no solution to his
problem. Both he and Hippolyte were,
in their way, devout. They visited
shrines, but the mobs of humanity, the
beggars with their sores and ills, only
repulsed the lovers. Hippolyte's spell
continued to work its way with George. She,
proud of her power to awaken his desires,
used this power constantly. George loved
her and hated her at the same time, but
he knew that he himself was not without
blame. When their affair had begun, she
was modest and almost frigid. Her
husband, to whom she had been married
by her family, had been brutal, and she
had been ill. George, the first to stir her
emotions, had helped to shape her
personality.
Like all people living together, they
discovered some irritating traits in eacn
other. George was displeased with
Hippolyte's feet, which he regarded as too
common-looking. She, on the other hand,
thought he was often too morbid. Both
of them tried too hard, as they readily
admitted, to escape into a world of
pleasure and ideality.
Trying by all means to keep from
antagonizing each other, they continued
to make short excursions away from the
village. George had a piano and music
sent from Rome to their retreat. Still
George found himself thinking not only
of his death but of Hippolyte's as well.
He sometimes believed that he could
escape from sensuality only through the
loss of his beloved. Death was the means
he knew he must take to banish her
irrevocably. She, for her part, seemed to
realize what was in his mind. She had
dreams in which she saw him dead or
taking threatening attitudes toward her.
Again, in George's mind, she was the
most beautiful and fascinating of women,
for her power over him continued to
grow. Often, when he was emotionally
distressed, she could draw him from that
state of mind with nothing more than a
kiss.
One afternoon, while they were
swimming, George had an impulse to drown
Hippolyte. She seemed to sense his mood
and refused to go bathing with him again.
One night they had a pleasant meal
together. Later that evening, with great
effort on his part, so strong was her
physical charm at such a time, George
persuaded his mistress to take a walk down
to the rocky coast where fishermen were
working at their nets. When they came
to a one-plank bridge over which they
had to walk, Hippolyte, growing dizzy
at the sight of waves and rocks below,
refused to cross. But George, feeling that
he had found the time and place for his
despairing deed, swept Hippolyte into his
arms and plunged both of them to death
on the rocks many feet below.

TROILUS AND GRESSIDA
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Realistic comedy
Time of plot: Trojan War
Locale: Troy
First presented. 1601-1602
Principal characters:
Priam, King of Troy
Hector, and
Troilus, his sons
Agamemnon,
Achilles,
Ulysses,
Ajax, and
Diomedes, Greek commanders
Pandarus, a Trojan lord
Cressida, his niece
Critique:
The apparent last-minute inclusion of
The History of Troilus and Cressida in
the First Folio (1623), between the
histories and the tragedies, has tended to
put this play in an anomalous position in
the opinion of commentators ever since.
Troilus and Cressida has been called a
satire, a comedy, a history, and a tragedy.
The truth probably is that it is a little
of all of these. Certainly, it is a comedy
of disillusionment and bitterness. It
would seem clear, however, that
Shakespeare, in his unusual handling of the
traditional elements of the Iliad, was in
his own way, perhaps, commenting on
the fading splendor of the Age of
Elizabeth. Shakespeare knew the story from
the pages of Chaucer and Henryson;
but, where Chaucer and Henryson gave
the story medieval color, Shakespeare
transferred his Troy to the decadent days
of the late Renaissance.
The Story:
During the Trojan War, Troilus,
younger son of Priam, King of Troy, fell
in love with the lovely and
unapproachable Cressida, daughter of Calchas, a
Trojan priest who had gone over to the
side of the Greeks. Troilus, frustrated
by his unrequited love, declared to
Pandarus, a Trojan lord and uncle of
Cressida, that he would refrain from fighting
the Greeks as long as there was such
turmoil in his heart. Pandarus added to
TroiJus' misery by praising the
incomparable beauty of Cressida; Troilus
impatiently chided Pandarus, who answered
that for all it mattered to him Cressida
could join her father in the Greek camp.
Later, Pandarus overheard Cressida
and her servant discussing Hector's anger
at having received a blow in battle from
Ajax, a mighty Greek warrior of Trojan
blood. Pandarus extolled Troilus' virtues
to Cressida, who was all but indifferent.
As the two discoursed, the Trojan forces
returned from the field. Pandarus praised
the several Trojan warriors—Aeneas, An-
tenor, Hector, Paris, Helenus—as they
passed by Cressida's window, all the
while anticipating, for Cressida's
benefit, the passing of young Troilus. When
the prince passed, Pandarus was lavish in
his praise, but Cressida appeared to be
bored. As Pandarus left her to join
Troilus, Cressida soliloquized that she was
charmed, indeed, by Troilus, but that
she was in no haste to reveal the state
of her affections.
In the Greek camp, meanwhile,
Agamemnon, commander of the Greek
forces in Ilium, tried to put heart into
his demoralized leaders. Old Nestor
declared that the seven difficult years of
the siege of Troy had been a real test of
3898

Greek stamina. It was the belief of
Ulysses that the difficulties of the Greeks lay
in a lack of order and discipline, not
Trojan strength. He reminded his
fellow Greek leaders that the disaffection
of mighty Achilles and the scurrilous
clowning of Patroclus, a Greek leader,
had provoked disorder in the Greek ranks.
Even Ajax, usually dependable, had
become fractious, and his follower,
deformed Thersites, embarrassed the Greeks
with his taunts.
As the Greek leaders conferred, Aeneas
delivered to them a challenge from
Hector, who in single combat would defend
the beauty and the virtue of his lady
against a Greek champion. When the
leaders went their several ways to
announce the challenge to Achilles and to
other Greeks, Ulysses and Nestor
decided that the only politic action to take,
the pride of Achilles being what it was,
was to arrange somehow that Ajax be
chosen to fight Hector. Ajax, Achilles,
ind Patroclus heard of the proclamation,
but tended to disregard it. Their levity
caused the railing Thersites to break with
them.
In Troy, meanwhile, Hector was
tempted to concede to a Greek offer to end
hostilities if the Trojans returned Helen to
her husband, King Menelaus. Troilus
chided his brother and Helenus for their
momentary want of resolution. As the
brothers and their father, Priam, discussed
the reasons for and against continuing
the war, Cassandra, prophetess and
daughter of Priam, predicted that Troy
would be burned to the ground by the
Greeks. Hector heeded her warning, but
Troilus, joined by Paris, persisted in the
belief that the war, for the sake of
honor, must be continued. Hector, although
aware of the evil the Trojans were
committing in defending Paris' indefensible
theft of Helen from her husband,
conceded that for reasons of honor the
fighting must go on.
The Greek leaders approached
Achilles, who had kept to himself since his
quarrel with Agamemnon. Refusing to
confer with them, Achilles retired into
his tent and sent his companion,
Patroclus, to make his apologies. At Achilles'
persistent refusal to deal with the Greek
commanders, who sought in him their
champion against Hector. Ulysses pkyed
on the pride of Ajax with subtle flattery
and convinced this Greek of Trojan
blood that he should present himself as
the Greek champion in place of Achilles.
In the meantime Pandarus had pre
pared the way for a tryst between Troilus
and Cressida by securing the promise of
Paris and Helen to make excuses for
Troilus' absence. He brought the two
young people together in his orchard,
where the pair confessed to each other
their undying love. Cressida declared that
if she were ever false, then all falsehood
could forever afterwards be associated
with her name. Pandarus witnessed these
sincere avowals of faith and himself
declared that if Troilus and Cressida did
not remain faithful to each other, then
all go-betweens would be associated with
his name. These declarations having been
made, Pandarus led the young people to
a bedchamber in his house.
In the Greek camp, Calchas, Cressida's
father, persuaded Agamemnon to ex
change Antenor, a Trojan prisoner, for
Cressida, whose presence he desired.
Diomedes, a Greek commander, was
appointed to effect the exchange.
Planning to ignore Achilles, the Greek
leaders passed the warrior with only the
briefest recognition. When he demanded
an explanation of that treatment, Ulys
ses told him that fame was ephemeral
and that great deeds were soon forgotten.
Fearful for his reputation, now that Ajax
had been appointed Greek champion,
Achilles arranged to play host to the un
armed Hector after the contest.
Diomedes returned Antenor to Troy,
and at dawn he was taken to Pandarus'
house to escort Cressida to the Greek
camp. When Troilus and Cressida
learned of Diomedes' mission, Troilus
appealed unsuccessfully to the Trojan lead
ers to allow Cressida to remain in Troy.
Heartbroken, he returned to Cressida and
the young couple repeated their vows in
3899

their farewells. Troilus then escorted
Cressida and Diomedes, who commented
on Cressida's beauty, as far as the city
gates. When Diomedes and Cressida en
countered the Greek leaders outside the
walls, Cressida was kissed by
Agamemnon, Menelaus, Nestor, Patroclus, and
others. Ulysses observed that she
appeared wanton.
Warriors of both sides assembled to
watch Hector and Ajax fight. The two
companions clashed for only a moment
before Hector desisted, declaring that he
could not harm Ajax, his cousin. Ajax
accepted Hector's magnanimity and
invited the Trojan to join, unarmed, the
Greek commanders at dinner. Hector,
accompanied by Troilus, was welcomed
among the Greeks with many warm
compliments, but Achilles, meeting Hector,
rudely mentioned that part of Hector's
person in which he would one day
inflict a mortal wound. Stung by Achilles'
pride and lack of manners, Hector
declared hotly that he would destroy all
of Achilles at one stroke. The result was
an agreement to meet in combat the next
day. Ajax managed to calm heated
tempers, however, and the feasting began.
Troilus, anxious to see his beloved
Cressida, asked Ulysses where he might
find Calchas, and Ulysses promised to
be his guide. After the banquet they
followed Diomedes to Calchas's tent,
where Cressida met him and in
affectionate overtures toward Diomedes revealed
to the hidden Troilus that she had
already all but forgotten him. As she gave
Diomedes, as a token of her love, a sleeve
that had belonged to Troilus,
compunction seized her for a moment. But she
quickly succumbed to Diomedes* charms
and promised to be his at their next
meeting. Diomedes left, vowing to kill
in combat the Trojan whose sleeve he
would be wearing on his helmet. Troilus,
unable to believe that Cressida was the
girl whom he loved so passionately,
returned to Troy. He vowed to take the
life of Diomedes.
As the new day approached, Hector
was warned by Andromache, his wife,
and by his sister Cassandra not to do
battle that day; all portents foretold
disaster. When their words proved
ineffectual, King Priam tried vainly to
persuade Hector to remain within the walls.
During the battle Diomedes unhorsed
Troilus and sent the horse as a gift to
Cressida. Despite his overthrow, Troilus
continued to fight heroically. Hector
appeared to be, for his part, invincible.
When Patroclus was severely wounded
in the action, Achilles, enraged, ordered
his followers, the Myrmidons, to stand
by. As the action subsided, and Hector
was unarming himself at the end of the
day, the Myrmidons, at Achilles'
command, closed in on brave Hector and
felled him with their spears.
Troilus announced to the retiring
Trojan forces that Hector had been killed
by treachery and that his body, tied to the
tail of Achilles' horse was being dragged
around the Phrygian plain. As he made
his way to the gates, he predicted general
mourning in Troy and expressed his
undying hatred for the Greeks. He
encountered Pandarus, whom he abruptly
dismissed as a cheap pander, a man whose
name would be infamous forever.
3900

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE
Type of work: Poem
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer (1340M400)
Type of plot: Cnivalric romance
Time of plot: Trojan War
Locale: Troy
First transcribed: c. 1382
Principal characters:
Troilus, young prince of Troy
Criseyde, a young widow
Pandarus, Troilus' friend and Criseyde's uncle
Diomedes, a Greek warrior
Critique:
Troilus and Criseyde, the only long
work completed by Chaucer, is based on
the legend of the Trojan War. The
characters, however, behave in the best
tradition of the medieval court of love. As
an incomparable teller of tales, and as a
great poet, Chaucer combined his two
talents to produce this almost perfectly
constructed narrative poem. The effective
depiction of character and its
development in the poem forecast the shrewd
observations of human nature* made by
Chaucer in the prologue to The
Canterbury Tales*
The Story:
Calchas, a Trojan prophet, divining
that Troy was doomed to defeat, fled
to the Greeks. He left behind him his
beautiful daughter, Criseyde, a young
widow.
One day in April the citizens of
Troy were observing the rites of the
spring festival. Among those in the
temple was Troilus, a younger son of
King Priam of Troy. Troilus, scornful
of the Trojan swains and their love-
sickness at this season, saw Criseyde for
the first time and fell deeply in love
with her. Sick with the love malady he
had always scorned, Troilus invokea the
god of love to have pity on him. Feeling
that he had no hope of winning Criseyde,
he became the scourge of the Greeks on
the battlefield.
Pandarus, friend of Troilus, offered
his advice and help when he learned
that Troilus had lost his heart to a
beautiful Trojan. When Troilus at length
disclosed that his lady was the fair Criseyde,
Pandarus offered to become a go-between,
a service he was well able to perform
since he was Criseyde's uncle.
Pandarus called on his niece to gossip
with her. They discussed Priam's sons
and Pandarus praised the bravery of
Troilus. Subtly he disclosed to Criseyde
that young Troilus was dying for love
of her. Criseyde, suspecting that the
intentions of neither Troilus nor
Pandarus were honorable, cried out in
distress at this information, but Pandarus
soon convinced her that Troilus' love
was pure. She felt herself drawn to the
prince when she beheld his modesty as
he rode past her house after a day of
battle outside the walls of Troy. She
decided, after much inner turmoil, that
it would not be dishonorable to show
friendship to Troilus in order to save
the young man's life.
At the suggestion of Pandarus, Troilus
wrote a letter to Criseyde. Impressed,
she wrote a restrained letter in return.
When Troilus, wishing to be with
Criseyde, soon tired of this
correspondence, Pandarus arranged a meeting by
asking Deiphobus, brother of Troilus, to
invite the pair to his house for dinner.
After the dinner Criseyde gave the
miserable prince permission to be in her
service and to adore her.
Pandarus, eager to bring about a
private meeting of the lovers, studied the
stars and decided on a night which
would be propitious for their tryst. He
3901

invited Criseyde to dine with him on that
evening. Troilus was already hidden in
his house. As the lady prepared to take
her leave, it began to rain and Pandarus
persuaded her to stay. So through
Pandarus' wiles the lovers were brought
together. After yielding, Criseyde gave
Troilus a brooch as a token of their love.
About that time a great battle was
fought between the Greeks and the
Trojans and several of the Trojan leaders
were captured. In an exchange of
prisoners Calchas persuaded the Greeks
to ask for Criseyde in return for Antenor,
a Trojan warrior. The Trojan
parliament, after much debate, approved of
the transaction. Hector, another brother
of Troilus, argued that Criseyde should
remain in Troy, but without success.
Troilus was in despair, and Criseyde
prepared to be separated from her lover.
Pandarus brought the lovers together
secretly after plans for the exchange had
been made. Criseyde, broken-hearted,
told the prince tnat their separation
would not be for long, and that she
would remain faithful to him.
Troilus and his party accompanied
Criseyde to the place appointed for the
exchange. There they met Antenor and
conducted him to Troy, while Diomedes,
a young Greek warrior, led Criseyde away
to the Greek camp. Troilus returned to
Troy to await the passing of ten days, at
the end of which time Criseyde had
promised she would return. But
Diomedes had seduced the fair Criseyde
by the tenth day. She gave him a brooch
she had received from Troilus at their
parting; Diomedes gave her a horse he
had captured from Troilus in battle.
After several weeks of anxious
waiting, Troilus wrote to Criseyde. She
answered him, avowing weakly her love
for him and saying that she would return
to Troy at the earliest opportunity.
Troilus, sensing that something was
amiss, grieved. One day he saw the
brooch which he had given Criseyde on a
piece of armor taken from Diomedes on
the battlefield. Knowing that Criseyde
had forsaken him for another, Troilus
sought out and fought Diomedes
indecisively many times. Eventually the un-
happv Troilus was killed by mighty
3902

THE TROJAN WOMEN
Type of work: Drama
Author: Euripides (c. 485-c. 406 B.C.)
Type of plot: Classical tragedy
Time of plot: Age of the Trojan War
Locale: Before the ruined walls of Troy
First presented: 415 B.C.
Principal characters:
Poseidon, god of the sea and patron of Troy
Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom
Hecuba, Queen of Troy
Cassandra, her daughter, a prophetess
Andromache, wife of Hector, prince of Troy
Helen, Queen of Sparta abducted bv Paris
Menelaus, King of Sparta
Talthybius, herald of the Greeks
Chorus of the Captive Trojan Women
Critique:
The Trojan Women (the Troades)
has more pathos and emotional tension
than any other play by Euripides. It is
not, strictly speaking, an Aristotelian
tragedy, for it has no central tragic
figure; neither is it simply a tragic
pageant. The Greek warriors collectively
constitute the tragic hero in that they
commit hubris by defiling the Trojan
temples and brutally murdering the
innocent. At the end of the play their doom
awaits them. This compelling
presentation of the utter folly of mass warfare
and genocide speaks eloquently to the
twentieth century. No doubt Euripides
was moved to write the play in protest
against the Athenian massacre of all the
males and the enslavement of the women
and children of Melos in 415 B.C.,
when that unfortunate city sought to
remain neutral in the war against Sparta.
The Troades is the only surviving play
of a trilogy that included Alexandros
(another name for Paris), which dealt
with the refusal of Priam and Hecuba to
murder the infant Paris as commanded
by the oracle's prediction that he would
be the ruin of Troy, and Palamedes,
which dealt with the treachery of the
Greek leaders who murdered Palamedes
before Troy. In the Troades the Greek
and Trojan lines of tragedy are merged.
The Story:
On the second morning after the fall
of Troy and the massacre of all its male
inhabitants, Poseidon appeared to lament
the ruins and vow vengeance against the
Greeks. To his surprise, Pallas Athena,
the goddess who had aided the Greeks,
joined him in plotting a disastrous
homeward voyage for the victors who had
despoiled her temple in Troy. They
withdrew as Hecuba rose from among the
sleeping Trojan women to mourn the
burning city and her dead sons and
husband. The chorus joined her in chanting
an anguished lament.
Talthybius, the herald of the Greeks,
arrived to announce that Agamemnon
had chosen Cassandra to be his
concubine and that the other royal women of
Troy had been assigned by lot—Polyxena
to the tomb of Achilles, Andromache to
Achilles' son Neoptolemus, and Hecuba
herself to Odysseus, King of Ithaca and
conceiver of the wooden horse that had led
to the fall of the city. Amid the cries of
the grieving women Cassandra appeared,
bearing a flaming torch in each hand.
The chorus was convinced that she had
gone mad as she danced and prayed to
Hymen, god of Marriage, that
Agamemnon take her soon to Argos as his bride,
for there she would cause his death and
the ruin of his entire family. As for Odys-
3903

seus, she foretold that he would suffer for
ten more years on the seas before
reaching his homeland. As Talthybius led her
off, he observed that Agamemnon
himself must have been mad to fall in love
with the insane Cassandra.
Hecuba, broken with grief, collapsed
to the ground. From the city came a
Greek-drawn chariot loaded with the
spoils of war and bearing Andromache
and her infant son Astyanax. Cursing
Helen, the cause of all their woe,
Andromache called upon the dead Hector
to come to her and announced enviously
that Polyxena had just been killed upon
the tomb of Achilles as a gift to the dead
hero. Drawing upon her last remaining
strength, Hecuba tried to comfort the
distraught Andromache and urged that
instead of mourning for Hector she win
the love of Neoptolemus so that her son
might grow to manhood and perhaps
redeem Troy. At this point the reluctant
herald Talthybius announced the Greeks'
order that the son of so distinguished a
warrior as Hector must not be permitted
to reach manhood but must be killed at
once by being hurled from the
battlements of Troy. As Talthybius led away
Andromache and her son, a fresh lament
and cursing of Helen went up from the
grieving women of Troy.
Suddenly King Menelaus came
striding in the sunlight with his retinue to
demand that his faithless wife Helen be
dragged to him by her blood-reeking hair.
Hecuba pleaded with him to slay Helen
at once, lest her beauty and feminine
wiles soften his will, but Menelaus
remained determined to take her back to
Greece, where the relatives of those who
died for her sake might have the
pleasure of stoning her to death. Helen
approached, calm and dignified. Her plea
for the right to speak being supported by
Hecuba, she argued that she was not
responsible for the fall of Troy. The first
blame must be attributed to Priam and
Hecuba, who refused to kill the infant
Paris as the oracle commanded; the
second to Aphrodite, who bewitched her
into submitting to Paris; the third to Dei-
phobus and the Trojan guards who
prevented her from escaping to the Greeks
after she had come to her senses. Goaded
on by the chorus of Trojan women,
Hecuba jeered at these claims, insisting
that the gods would not have been so
foolish as Helen would have them
believe, that her own lust drove her into
Paris' arms, and that she could always
have escaped Troy and her own shame
by way of suicide. Helen, falling to her
knees, pleaded with Menelaus not to kill
her. Hecuba also knelt to beg Helen's
immediate death and to warn Menelaus
against taking her aboard his ship.
Menelaus compromised: Helen would return
to Greece on another ship and there pay
for her shameful life. As Menelaus led
her away, the chorus wailed that Zeus
had forsaken them.
Talthybius then returned, bearing the
crushed body of Astyanax on Hector's
shield. He told Hecuba that Andromache,
as she was being led aboard Neoptolemus'
ship, had begged that the infant be given
proper burial. The performance of that
rite was more than Hecuba could bear,
and she had to be restrained by force
from throwing herself into the flames of
the city. As the captive women were led
off to the Greek ships, the great crash
of Troy's collapsing walls was heard and
the city was engulfed in smoke and
darkness.
3904

THE TRUE HISTORY
Type of work: Prose romance
Author: Lucian (c. 120-c. 200)
Type of plot: Satiric fantasy
Time of plot: Second century
Locale: The universe
First transcribed: Second century
Principal characters:
Lucian
Endymion, King of the Moon
Phaethon, King of the Sun
Scintharus, an inhabitant of the whale's belly
Critique:
Poking fun at exaggerated travel books
like Antonius Diogenes' The Marvels of
Ultima Thule and others now lost,
Lucian, called by Macaulay "the last great
master of Attic eloquence and Attic wit,"
wrote in The True History a two-part
parody that greatly influenced Rabelais
and Swift. Because Lucian was also
known as a writer of satirical dialogues
mocking many beliefs of the people, the
story originated that he was torn to pieces
by dogs in Egypt. In an explanatory
prologue to this work Lucian declared that
athletes alternate severe exercise with
relaxation. Intellectuals should do the
same, he maintained, and alternate
serious reading with that which is witty and
entertaining. And so he wrote The True
History, "with a novelty of subject and
excellence in design," and for the
purpose of telling lies in a plausible way and
parodying the exaggerations of certain
writers that he "need not name because
the enlightened reader could easily
recognize the originals." Because the creatures
he was going to describe could not
possibly exist, he hoped all his readers would
disbelieve him.
The Story:
Heading westward from the Pillars of
Hercules, Lucian in his sloop with a
crew of fifty finally reached the Atlantic
Ocean. Filled with a thirst for adventure
and an intellectual restlessness to see
what was on the other side of the world,
he found the first day of the voyage
delightful. Then came a terrible storm
that drove the ship before it for seventy-
nine days. On the eightieth day the
adventurers came to a lofty wooded
island and went ashore.
After resting, twenty sailors
accompanied Lucian on an exploration of the
island. They discovered a bronze tablet
announcing that Hercules and Dionysius
had been there, and they saw two huge
footprints. They also discovered that the
river had its source in a grape arbor and
contained Chian wine. Eating the fish
that swam in it made them drunk.
The inhabitants of the island were
women, human from the waist up, but
growing on vines. When several of the
crew became too friendly with these
creatures, the sailors soon found
themselves tangled in the vines and taking
root; and so they had to be left behind.
Filling their casks with wine and
water, the survivors set sail, only to run
into a whirlwind that whipped the sloop
hundreds of miles into the air. A week
later the ship was thrown upon the
moon, which was inhabited by men
riding vultures. The king, Endymion,
enlisted the service of the Greeks in his
war against Phaethon and his people of
the sun.
The mighty invasion force was made
up of eighty thousand vulture-riding
cavalry and twenty thousand troops
riding birds covered with grass and having
lettuce leaves for wings. This vegetarian
force had armor of vegetable husks, but
Greek swords. Among their allies were
fighters from other constellations astride
3905

monster fleas.
The army of the sun rode flying ants,
gnats, and mosquitoes. Some hurled
radish bombs, others wielded asparagus
spears. But they were no match for the
lunar troops until centaur reinforcements
arrived, so numerous that the number
could not be set down for fear of
creating incredulity. When the moon army
was put to flight, Lucian and his friends
were captured and bound with spider-
webs.
To bring the Moon People to terms,
Phaethon erected a cloud screen. Cut
off from sunlight, the moon troops soon
surrendered. The terms of capitulation
were inscribed on a slab of electrum. With
the coming of peace, Lucian had time
to explore the moon and note its wonders.
Homeward bound, the Greeks paused
at Lamptown, inhabited by lanterns, and
at Cloud-Cuckooland, where Lucian
verified the details of Aristophanes' comedy,
The Birds. Finally the travelers reached
the ocean again, only to have their sloop
swallowed by a huge whale. In its belly,
amid a clutter of wrecked ships, they
found Scintharus, who was raising
vegetables on an island. He had lived there
for twenty-seven years, ever since leaving
Cyprus.
There were many other inhabitants,
all quarrelsome and unjust. Some had
eel eyes and lobster faces; others were
half men and half animals. Since their
only weapons were fishbones, Lucian
decided to attack them. The creatures were
all slain in two battles in which the
Greeks suffered only one casualty; the
sailing master was stabbed with a mullet
spine.
One day, after living in the whale for
a year and eight months, the Greeks
heard a loud uproar in the outside world.
Peering between the whale's teeth, they
watched a naval battle of giants who
manned floating islands and fought with
oysters and sponges.
At last the Greeks conceived a scheme
to gain their liberty. They set fire to the
forest inside the whale; then, as the
creature was about to suffocate, they wedged
open his jaws and sailed out, with
Scintharus as pilot. But they did not get far,
for a north wind froze the ocean. They
lived in a cave they hollowed in the ice
until, after a month, it occurred to them
to hoist the sails and let the ship glide
across the smooth ice to open water.
Sailing in a sea of milk, they took
on provisions at a cheese island. They
stopped at the Isle of the Blessed and
watched a lawsuit between Theseus and
Menelaus for the custody of Helen.
While the hearing was in progress, Helen
ran off with a new sweetheart, aided by
some of Lucian's crew; and the tourists
were deported. Lucian, however, did
have time to consult Homer on moot
points concerning his life and writing,
and to catalogue the famous Greeks who
inhabited the isle. Also, he witnessed a
prison break by the damned and watched
the heroic exploits of Achilles in
recapturing them.
Again voyaging, the travelers passed a
place of punishment for liars. Herodotus
was there, but Lucian knew he was safe
because he had never written anything
but the truth. The company spent a
month at the Port of Dreams, and also
paused briefly to take Calypso a note
from Odysseus. Pirates attacked them
several times, but the travelers finally
reached safety in a land which Lucian
recognized as the continent facing his
world.
3906

TRUTH SUSPECTED
Type of work: Drama
Author: Juan Ruiz de Alarc6n (c. 1581-1639)
Type of plot: Thesis comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Madrid
First published: 1628
Principal characters:
Don Garcia, a young man given to lying
Don Beltran, his father
Tristan, his servant
Juan de Sosa, a friend, in love with Jacinta
Jacinta, niece of Don Sancho, Don BeltraVs friend
Lucrecia, her friend
Critique:
Mexican-born, Juan Ruiz de Alarc6n
became one of the leading dramatists of
the Golden Age in Spain. The twenty-six
plays now identified as his are divided
into two groups. His early plays, in
keeping with the romantic tradition, are
marked by complicated plots. His later
works are more concerned with the
human qualities of his characters and less
with dramatic situations; some critics
attribute to his Mexican background this
departure from the current conventions of
the theater. His two best plays belong to
his second period. Walls Have Ears
attacks slander, and Truth Suspected
presents an excellent character study of a
congenital liar. The latter play inspired
Corneille's Le Menteur (1643).
The Story:
When Don Garcia returned home from
studies at the University of Salamanca,
he learned that on the death of his
brother Gabriel he had become the heir
to the family estates and fortune. His
father also provided him with a shrewd
and cynical servant, Tristin. Don Garcia's
tutor had already reported that the young
man was given to one great vice: lying.
Later his discerning servant agreed. The
son's habit naturally worried his father,
himself a man of great honor. Though he
admitted that regard for truth was
uncommon at the court of Spain, he hated the
vice of lying above all others, and he
vowed to break his son of the habit.
During his first day in Madrid, Don
Garcia indulged in his practice after
meeting two attractive women in the
shopping center of the city. Taking his
cue from Tristan's remark that the women
of Madrid were money-mad, the young
gallant told them that he was a wealthy
man from the New World. Though he
had been in Madrid hardly a day, he
assured one of the women that he had
worshiped her from afar for a year.
Unfortunately, he had misunderstood the
information bought from their coachman
by Tristan; he thought the girl he wanted
to marry was Lucrecia, but the object of
his attentions was really her friend
Jacinta.
More lying followed when Don Garcia
met his friend, Juan de Sosa, a young
man in love with Jacinta but rejected by
her uncle until he acquired a knighthood.
This time, falsely claiming responsibility
for a serenade and banquet the preceding
night, Don Garcia found himself
challenged to a duel by Juan.
In the meantime, hoping to get his son
married off before Madrid learned of his
habit of lying, Don Beltrdn, after giving
him a lecture on the value of truth, told
him he had arranged for his marriage to
Jacinta, niece of his old friend, Don
Sancho. Since Don Garcia thought it was
Lucrecia whom he loved, he promptly
invented a prodigious lie about his marriage
to a lady of Salamanca. He declared that
while visiting her one night, he had been
3907

discovered by the lady's father; to save
her reputation and life, he had agreed to
marry her.
Lucrecia, to help Jacinta decide which
of her suitors she preferred, signed her
name to a note inviting Don Garcia to
wait beneath her balcony. During his
talk with the veiled ladies, his earlier
story about a wife in Salamanca and his
uncertainty as to which of the veiled
women was the one he loved resulted in
their ridicule and scorn. Rudely
dismissed, he received from Tristdn a lecture
on the evils of lying.
More lying was necessary when Don
Beltran attempted to send for his son's
wife. She could not travel, Don Garcia
told him; she was going to have a baby.
Although he laughed at Tristan's
warning that "one who lies needs a quick wit
and a good memory," his punishment had
already begun. When Lucrecia invited
him to another meeting at a convent, he
found himself trapped in a mesh of
deceit, and the veiled ladies showed how
unsuccessful had been his wooing.
Tristan contributed to his unhappiness by
many quotations from Latin and Greek
writers. The servant also remarked that
he could see no sense to his master's lies
when they were so easily discovered.
But even Tristdn was fooled by Don
Garcia's account of his supposed duel
with Juan de Sosa; actually he had
placated his former friend by telling more
lies. It would have been better had he
silenced his challenger on the dueling
field, for Juan now appeared to tell Don
Beltran that no one with the name of Don
Garcia's supposed wife lived in
Salamanca. So incensed was the father that
he was about to disinherit his son. Even
by telling the truth, Don Garcia could
not convince him without corroboration
from Tristdn. The word of a servant was
more trustworthy than the oath of a
nobleman, the ashamed father pointed
out.
When Juan's attainment of knighthood
cleared away that obstruction to his suit,
Don Sancho gladly arranged for the
young man's marriage to Jacinta; and that
lady, disillusioned and dubious of a
lying suitor, was happy to agree with her
uncle's decision. Don Beltrdn, too, was
won over, and he agreed to arrange for
his son's delayed marriage. But when the
suitors were paired off, Don Garcia saw
his lady go to his rival. Even though the
whole affair had been based on
misunderstanding, it was now too late to correct
the mistake. Don Garcia must in honor
bound marry Lucrecia.
Tristdn again underlined a moral when
he assured his master that if he had told
the truth instead of lying he would now
be happy with Jacinta. However, Lucrecia
was also beautiful.
3908

TURCARET
Type of work: Drama
Author: Alain Rene" Le Sage (1668-1747)
Type of plot: Social comedy
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: Paris
First presented: 1709
Principal characters:
M. Turcaret, a financier, in love with the Baroness
Mme. Turcaret, his wife
The Baroness, a young widow and a coquette
Frontin, the Knight's valet
The Knight, a coxcomb
The Marquess, another coxcomb
Marine, and
Lisette, maidservants to the Baroness
Mme. Jacob, a dealer in toilette necessaries, sister to M. Turcaret
Flamand, M. Turcaret's valet
Critique:
In Turcaret, or, The Financier action
never lags; lines never drag. This type of
French satirical comedy is marked by the
main features of earthy realism, an almost
didactic purpose, and photographic
characterizations, and Turcaret is a classic of
its kind. The satire is founded both in
personalities and in national conditions.
The title character is the profiteer, whose
altruism is nonexistent and whose wealth
is his only merit. Those who ingratiate
themselves for favors from this parvenu
are no more admirable than he is.
Through the relationships of the various
characters, Le Sage presents a clear
picture of the social disintegration which
began in the last years of Louis XIV,
of the clumsy fiscal system of
seventeenth-century France, and of the
demoralized attitude of the French resulting
from the military disasters of the war
with England and Austria.
The Story:
M. Turcaret lavished gifts and immense
sums of money upon the Baroness, whom
he had asked to marry him. The Baroness
in turn poured equal amounts into the
pockets of the wheedling Knight. Marine
admonished her mistress to use her
reasoning. The discerning Marine knew the
Baroness' motivation in keeping the
Knight. He had been the first to offer her,
a widow, love. Marine outlined a
judicious pattern for the Baroness: drop the
Knight, because M. Turcaret might not
like the idea of her having "friends" and
accept M. Turcaret's gifts. Then, should
he not want to marry her, she would have
wealth and possessions and could marry
some needy gentleman. To be sure, the
world might talk a little about her
rejection by M. Turcaret, but a husband,
needy or not, could restore her
reputation by marriage.
An early gift was a small coffer,
delivered by Flamand, M. Turcaret's valet.
It contained two notes: one a bill of
exchange for ten thousand crowns and
written by M. Turcaret; the other a
quatrain, dedicated to the Baroness.
Marine was anxious to read the verse of the
second to see whether it was as good as
the prose of the first.
Enraged by her mistress' gullibility
with the Knight, Marine quit her job
with the Baroness. She announced, in
quitting, that she would report to M.
Turcaret that the Baroness was little more
than the middleman for his money, as it
passed from M. Turcaret to the Knight.
Frontin quipped that such a servant as
Marine with all her righteousness was
worse than a mother. As to her exposing
them to M. Turcaret, Frontin added that
waiting maids were like pious ladies per-
3909

forming their charitable deeds as a means
of avenging themselves. Frontin knew
exactly the young woman, Lisette, to
replace Marine as the Baroness* maid.
To show her animosity for M.
Turcaret and her kind thoughts for the
Knight, the Baroness gave the Knight the
ten-thousand-crown note given her by
M. Turcaret to redeem her diamond ring
(also a gift from M. Turcaret), which she
had given the distraught Knight to pawn
so that he might pay a gambling debt.
Frontin gave a succinct summary of the
life of the times, when he traced the
source of income. He and the Knight had
a coquette who milked the man of
affairs who made his money pillaging the
taxpayers. It made, he thought, a
diverting circumstance of trickery.
The Knight returned the ring, but not
the change from the note. His action was
timely, as M. Turcaret, having heard
Marine's story of the Baroness'
generosity toward the Knight, appeared and
asked to see the ring. When the Baroness
produced it, Marine's report to M.
Turcaret was undermined. The ring incident
served as frima facie evidence that the
Baroness had the note also. M. Turcaret
became putty in the Baroness' hands as
she reprimanded him for believing
Marine's report.
M. Turcaret's undisciplined character
was demonstrated fully, just prior to this
scene of abject apology, as he went about
the Baroness' room smashing her largest
mirror and her finest porcelains. This
outburst, he said, gave him a little relief.
He restored the damage with costly
replacements.
Taking full advantage of M.
Turcaret's subservience, the Baroness told him
that she wished Frontin to replace Fla-
mand in his service. M. Turcaret
observed that Frontin's countenance was
marked by honesty; he asked Frontin
whether he had principles. Asked what
he meant, M. Turcaret explained that he
meant clerk's principles—such as
knowledge of the single entry system. Frontin
stated his qualifications as adeptness at
two handwritings, ability with double
entry, and a knowledge of preventing
frauds or countenancing them—as M.
Turcaret's advantage would require.
'When Lisette reported as the Baroness'
maid, it was apparent that she would be
active in the financial intrigue. Frontin,
having coached her in the finances and
relationships among the various people,
gave Lisette her cardinal responsibility to
the Baroness: indefatigable compliance
and unceasing flattery of the Baroness*
infatuation for the Knight. Lisette was
most capable in exercising her duties.
The Knight explained to Frontin that
he had not been able to find the usurer
to cash the ten-thousand-crown note, that
Frontin was to find a moneychanger to
effect the transaction so that the Baroness
would not learn that they had not pawned
her diamond. Further, the valet was to
go to the restaurateur to make the
arrangements for that night's dinner which
the Knight was giving in honor of the
Baroness and M. Turcaret.
Frontin's first move as M. Turcaret's
valet was to maneuver, with Lisette's
assistance, his employer into an outlay of
sixty pistoles, the amount to be payment
on a coach and horses for the Baroness.
His second move involved his coming to
the Baroness with a bailiff who had a
deed signed by the Baroness and her late
husband (Frontin's handwriting ability
had been put to early use), assigning ten
thousand uvres to a norse merchant. The
visit was well-timed. M. Turcaret was
present and paid the sum due, rather
than have the Baroness discomfited.
A countess from the country, whom
the Marquess—the son of M. Turcaret's
former master—brought to the Baroness'
dinner, was Mme. Turcaret, who had not
lived with her husband for ten years
because of his meanness and ill manners.
Mme. Turcaret had come to Paris to
collect five quarters' support owed her by
M. Turcaret. The Knight recognized her
as the lady with whom he had had an
affair. Mme. Jacob, who came on
reference from one of the Baroness' friends to
sell her a fashionable headdress, was M.
Turcaret's sister.
3910

In the midst of abuses and insults
among the Turcarets and Mme. Jacob,
M. Turcaret was called away to discuss
a business matter with his partners.
Sensing Turcaret's fiscal embroilments,
the Baroness announced that she would
give up M. Turcaret for his and Mme.
Turcaret's happiness; the Marquess
followed suit in severing connections with
Mme. Turcaret. Frontin brought the
news that the bailiffs had apprehended
M. Turcaret, he being responsible for a
pay-officer who had defaulted on two
hundred thousand crowns. Mme. Jacob
went to her brother's aid, not forgetting
she was his sister. Mme. Turcaret went
to him to bombard him with insults, not
forgetting she was his wife.
Frontin reported that he had been
searched by the bailiffs, who had
confiscated the ten-thousand-crown note,
which he had not yet been able to cash,
and the ten-thousand-livre note which
M. Turcaret had issued to relieve the
Baroness of her debt on the bond. The
Baroness, aware then that her diamond
had never been pawned and that the note
would never be returned to her, put the
duping Knight and Frontin out of her
life forever. The Knight denied Frontin
future employment with him. Then he
went off with the Marquess, to resume
their old comradely habit of drinking all
night and sleeping all day.
Left alone with Lisette, Frontin
confessed that he had not been searched by
the bailiffs. He had cashed the notes and
had the forty thousand francs safely put
away. If Lisette's ambition were satisfied
with such a sum, Frontin proposed, they
should start a stock of honest children.
He was taking over in finances where M.
Turcaret had left off.
3911

THE TURN OF THE SCREW
Type of work: Novelette
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Moral allegory
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1898
Principal characters:
The Governess
Mrs. Grose, housekeeper at Bly
Miles, and
Flora, the two children of the house
Mr. Quint, and
Miss Jessel, two apparitions
Critique:
The Turn of the Screw is more than a
ghost story. Of all James' work, it best
exemplifies his power to understand and
depict moral degradation. The real evil
lies not in the horror of the apparitions
themselves, but in what is happening to
change the children from examples of
sweetness and innocence to flagrant liars
and hypocrites. Certainly there are few
stories in literature which embody as
much unspoken horror as The Turn of
the Screw. It is the sense of dreadful and
unguessable things which gives the tale
its elegance and tone, raising it above the
cheapness of melodrama. As James
himself said in the preface to the original
edition, it is the reader's own intensified
imagination which supplies the
particulars in abundance.
The Story:
It was a pleasant afternoon in June
when the governess first arrived at the
country estate at Bly where she was to
take charge of Miles, aged ten, and Flora,
eight. She faced her new position with
some trepidation because of the unusual
circumstances of her situation. The two
children were to be under her complete
care, and the uncle who had engaged her
had been explicit in the fact that he did
not wish to be bothered with his orphaned
niece and nephew. Her uneasiness
disappeared, however, when she saw her
charges, for Flora and Miles seemed
incapable of giving the slightest trouble.
The weeks of June passed
uneventfully. Then, one evening, while she was
walking in the garden at twilight, the
governess was startled to see a strange
young man at a distance. The man looked
at her challengingly and disappeared.
The incident angered and distressed the
young woman, but she decided the man
was a trespasser.
On the following Sunday evening the
young woman was startled to see the
same stranger looking in at her through a
window. Once again he stared piercingly
at her for a few seconds and then
disappeared. This time the governess
realized that the man was looking for someone
in particular and that perhaps he boded
evil for the children in her care. A few
minutes later the governess told the
housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, of the incident and
described the appearance of the man.
Mrs. Grose told her that it was a perfect
description of Peter Quint, the valet to
the governess* employer, but that Mr.
Quint was dead.
One afternoon shortly afterward, a
second apparition appeared. This time the
ghost of Miss Jessel, the former governess,
appeared in the garden to both the
governess and the little girl, Flora. The
THE TURN OF THE SCREW by Henry James. By permission of the agent, Paul R. Reynolds & Son,
New York, and the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1898, by The Macmillan Co. Renewed, 1926,
by Henry James, Executor.
3912

strange part of the situation was that the
little girl refused to let the governess
know that she had seen the figure and
knew who it was, though it was obvious
that she had understood the appearance
fully.
From the housekeeper the governess
learned that the two apparitions had been
lovers while alive, though the girl had
been of a very fine family and the man
had been guilty of drunkenness and
worse vices. For what evil purpose these
two spirits wished to influence the
seemingly innocent children, neither the
housekeeper nor the governess could
guess. The secrecy of the children about
seeing the ghosts was maddening to the
two women.
They both felt that the boy was
continuing to see the two ghosts in private
and concealed that fact, just as he had
known of the illicit affair between the
valet and the former governess in life and
had helped them to conceal it. Yet, when
in the presence of the children, the
governess sometimes felt that it would be
impossible for the two children to be
influenced into evil.
The third time the ghost of Quint
appeared to the governess inside the
house. Unable to sleep, she had sat
reading late at night. Hearing someone on
the stairs, she went to investigate and
saw the ghost, which disappeared when
faced by her unflinching gaze. Each
night after that she inspected the stairs,
but she never again saw the ghost of the
man. Once she glimpsed the apparition
of Miss Jessel as it sat dejectedly on the
lowest stair. Worse than the
appearance of the ghosts was the discovery that
the children had left their beds at night
to wander on the lawn in communication
with the spirits who were leading them
to unknown evil. It became apparent to
the governess that the children were not
good within themselves. In their
imaginations they were living in a world
populated by the evil dead restored.
In such an atmosphere the summer
wore away into autumn. In all that time
the children had given no sign of
awareness of the apparitions. Knowing that her
influence with the children was as
tenuous as a thread which would break at
the least provocation, the governess did
not allude to the ghosts. She herself had
seen no more manifestations, but she had
often felt by the children's attitude that
the apparitions were close at hand. What
was worse for the distressed woman was
the thought that what Miles and Flora
saw were things still more terrible than
she imagined, visions that sprang from
their association with the evil figures in
the past.
One day Miles went to her and
announced his desire to go away to school.
The governess realized it was only proper
that he be sent to school, but she feared
the results of ghostly influences once he
was beyond her care. Later, opening the
door of the schoolroom, she again saw
the ghost of her predecessor, Miss Jessel.
As the apparition faded the governess
realized that her duty was to stay with
the children and combat the spirits and
their deadly influence. She decided to
write immediately to the children's uncle,
contradictory to his injunction against
being bothered in their behalf. That night
before she wrote she went into Miles'
room and asked the boy to let her help
him in his secret troubles. Suddenly a
rush of cold air filled the room, as if the
window had been blown open. When the
governess relighted the candle blown out
by the draft, the window was still closed
and the drawn curtain had not been
disturbed.
The following day Flora disappeared.
Mrs. Grose and the governess found her
beside the garden pond. The governess,
knowing she had gone there to see the
ghost, asked her where Miss Jessel was.
The child replied that she only wanted
to be left alone. The governess could see
the apparition of Miss Jessel standing on
the opposite side of the pond.
The governess, afraid that the evil
influence had already dominated the little
girl, asked the housekeeper to take the
3913

child to London, and to request the
uncled aid. In place of the lovable angelic
Flora there had suddenly appeared a little
child with a filthy mind and filthy speech,
which she used in denouncing the
governess to the housekeeper. The same
afternoon Mrs. Grose left with the child as
the governess had requested.
That evening, immediately after
dinner, the governess asked Miles to tell her
what was on his mind before he left the
dining-room. When he refused, she asked
him if he had stolen the letter she had
written to his uncle. As she asked the
question she realized that standing
outside the window, staring into the room,
was the ghost of Peter Quint. She pulled
the boy close to her, shielding him from
any view of the ghost at the window,
while he told her that he had taken the
letter. He also informed her that he had
already been expelled from one school
because of his lewd speech and actions.
Noting how close the governess was
holding him, he suddenly asked if Miss Jessel
were near. The governess, angry and
distraught, shrieked at him that it was the
ghost of Peter Quint, just outside the
window. When Miles turned around, the
apparition was gone. With a scream he fell
into the governess* arms. At first, she did
not realize that she had lost him forever—
that Miles was dead.
3914

TWELFTH NIGHT
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Ilyria
First presented: 1600
Principal characters:
Viola (Cesario), twin sister of Sebastian
Olivia, a countess
Maria, her maid
Sebastian, twin brother of Viola
Antonio, Sebastian's friend
Orsino, Duke of Ilyria
Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's uncle
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Olivia's ancient suitor
Malvolio, Olivia's steward
Critique:
Because of its title, it is assumed that
this play was intended to be performed as
a feature of the Twelfth Night festivities
observed in Shakespeare's day. One of
Shakespeare's most delightful comedies,
the principal charm of Twelfth Night,
Or, What You Will lies in the comic
characters: Malvolio, Sir Toby Belch, Sir
Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria. Viola,
the heroine, ranks with Portia and
Rosalind in intelligence and wit. The original
source of the plot was an Italian novella
by Bandello, based on an earlier work by
Cinthio, but the story was translated into
various secondary sources which
Shakespeare probably used. In the character of
Malvolio the playwright pokes sly fun at
the Puritans of his day.
The Story:
Viola and Sebastian, twin brother and
sister who exactly resembled each other,
were separated when the ship on which
they were passengers was wrecked during
a great storm at sea. Each, thinking the
other dead, set out into the world alone,
with no hope of being reunited.
The lovely and charming Viola was
cast upon the shores of Ilyria, where she
was befriended by a kind sea captain.
Together they planned to dress Viola in
men's clothing and have her take service
as a page in the household of young Duke
Orsino. This course was decided upon
because there was no chance of her entering
the service of the Countess Olivia, a rich
noblewoman of the duchy. Olivia, in deep
mourning for the death of her young
brother, would admit no one to her palace
and would never think of interviewing a
servant. So Viola, dressed in man's garb,
called herself Cesario and became the
duke's personal attendant. Orsino,
impressed by the youth's good looks and pert
but courtly speech, sent him as his envoy
of love to woo the Countess Olivia.
That wealthy noblewoman lived in a
splendid palace with a servant, Maria, a
drunken old uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and
her steward, Malvolio. These three made
a strange combination. Maria and Sir
Toby were a happy-go-lucky pair who
drank and caroused with Sir Andrew
Aguecheek, an ancient nobleman who
was much enamored of Olivia. In return
for the grog supplied by Sir Andrew, Sir
Toby was supposed to press Sir Andrew's
suit of love with Olivia. Actually,
however, Sir Toby never sobered up long
enough to maintain his part of the
bargain. All these affairs were observed with
a great deal of disapproval by Malvolio,
the ambitious, narrow-minded steward.
This irritable, pompous individual could
brook no jollity in those about him.
When Cesario arrived at the palace,
Olivia finally decided to receive a
messenger from Orsino. Instantly Olivia
3915

was attracted to Cesario and paid close
attention to the page's addresses, but it
was not love for Orsino that caused Olivia
to listen so carefully. When Cesario left,
the countess, feeling in a flirtatious mood,
sent Malvolio after the page with a ring.
With an abrupt shock, Viola, who
enjoyed playing the part of Cesario, realized
that Olivia had fallen in love with her in
her man's garb.
Meanwhile Maria with Sir Toby and
Sir Andrew decided to stop Malvolio's
constant prying into their affairs. Maria
devised a scheme whereby Malvolio
would find a note, supposedly written
by Olivia, in which she confessed her
secret love for the steward and asked him to
wear yellow stockings tied with cross
garters and to smile continually in her
presence. Malvolio, discovering the note,
was overjoyed. Soon he appeared in his
strange dress, capering and bowing before
the countess. Olivia, startled by the sight
of her usually dignified steward behaving
in such a peculiar fashion, decided he had
lost his wits. Much to the amusement of
the three conspirators, she had him
confined to a dark room.
As the days went by in the duke's
service, Viola fell deeply in love with that
sentimental nobleman, but he had eyes
only for Olivia and pressed the page to
renew his suit with the countess. When
Cesario returned with another message
from the duke, Olivia openly declared her
love for the young page. Cesario insisted,
however, that his was a heart that could
never belong to any woman. So obvious
were Olivias feelings for Cesario that
Sir Andrew became jealous. Sir Toby and
Maria insisted that Sir Andrew's only
course was to fight a duel with the page.
Sir Toby delivered Sir Andrew's
blustering challenge, which Cesario reluctantly
accepted.
While these events were taking place,
Sebastian, Viola's twin brother, had been
rescued by Antonio, a sea captain, and the
two had become close friends. When
Sebastian decided to visit the court of
Duke Orsino at Ilyria, Antonio, although
he feared that he might be arrested
because he was the duke's enemy and had
once fought a duel with Orsino, decided
to accompany his young friend. Upon
arrival in Ilyria, Antonio gave Sebastian his
purse for safekeeping, and the two men
separated for several hours.
During his wanderings about the city
Antonio happened upon the trumped-up
duel between the unwilling Cesario and
Sir Andrew. Mistaking the page for
Sebastian, Antonio immediately went to
the rescue of his supposed friend. When
police officers arrived on the scene, one of
them recognized Antonio and arrested
him in the name of the duke.
Antonio, mistaking Viola in disguise
for Sebastian, asked for the return of his
purse, only to be surprised and hurt
because the page disclaimed all knowledge
of the captain's money. As Antonio was
dragged protesting to jail, he shouted
invectives at "Sebastian" for refusing him
his purse. Thus Viola learned for the first
time that her brother still lived.
The real Sebastian, meanwhile, had
been followed by Sir Andrew, who never
dreamed that the young man was not the
same Cesario with whom he had just been
fighting. Egged on by Sir Toby and Maria,
Sir Andrew engaged Sebastian in a duel
and was promptly wounded, along with
Sir Toby. Olivia then interfered and had
Sebastian taken to her home. 1 here,
having sent for a priest, she married the
surprised but not unwilling Sebastian.
The officers were escorting Antonio
past Olivia's house as Duke Orsino,
accompanied by Cesario, appeared at the
gates. Instantly Orsino recognized
Antonio and demanded to know why the
sailor had returned to Ilyria, a city filled
with his enemies. Antonio explained that
he had rescued and befriended the duke's
present companion, Sebastian, and
because of his deep friendship for the lad
had accompanied him to Ilyria despite the
danger his visit involved. Then, pointing
to Cesario, he sorrowfully accused the
supposed Sebastian of violating their
friendship by not returning his purse.
3916

The duke was protesting against this
accusation when Olivia appeared and
saluted Cesario as her husband. The duke
also began to think his page ungrateful,
especially so since Cesario had been told
to press Orsino's suit with Olivia. Just
then Sir Andrew and Sir Toby came
running in looking for a doctor because
Sebastian had wounded them. Seeing
Cesario, Sir Andrew began to rail at him
for his violence. Olivia dismissed the two
old men quickly. As they left the real
Sebastian appeared and apologized for the
wounds he had given the old men.
Spying Antonio, Sebastian joyfully
greeted his friend. Antonio and the rest of
the amazed group, unable to believe what
they saw, stared from Cesario to
Sebastian. Viola then revealed her true
identity, explained her disguise, and
told how she and her brother had been
separated. The mystery cleared up,
Sebastian and Viola affectionately greeted
each other. The duke, seeing that the page
of whom he had grown so fond was in
reality a woman, asked that Viola dress
again in feminine attire. She was unable
to do as he desired, she explained, because
the kind sea captain to whom she had
entrusted her own clothes was held in prison
through the orders of Malvolio. This
difficulty was cleared up quickly, for Olivia's
clown, Feste, pitying Malvolio, visited
him in his confinement and secured a long
letter in which the steward explained the
reasons for his actions. The plot against
him revealed, Malvolio was released. Then
followed the freeing of the sea captain,
the marriage of Viola and Orsino, and also
that of Sir Toby and Maria. Only
Malvolio, unhappy in the happiness of others
remained peevish and disgruntled.
3917

TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jules Verne (1828-1905)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1866-1867
Locale: The Seven Seas
First published: 1870
Principal characters:
Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French scientist
Conseil, his servant
Ned Land, his friend and companion
Captain Nemo, captain of the Nautilus
Critique:
Many writers have had vivid and
penetrating imaginations which permitted
them to speculate about things to come.
Jules Verne was one of these, and his
book is in the tradition that has given
us Utopian stories of revealed discoveries
and inventions yet to occur. In this
instance Verne was really prophetic. The
submarine and most of the inventions
conceived by Captain Nemo have
become realities. Books of this nature are
seldom great, but they are always
interesting.
The Story:
In different parts of the ocean, a
number of ships had sighted a mysterious
monster, gleaming with light, such as no
man had ever seen before. After this
monster had attacked and sunk several
vessels, people all over the world were
both amazed and alarmed. Finally an
American frigate, the Abraham Lincoln,
was fitted out to track down and destroy
the mysterious sea creature. Among its
passengers was Pierre Aronnax,
Professor of Natural History in the Museum
of Paris, who had published his opinion
that the monster was a giant narwhal.
One of the crew was Ned Land, an
expert harpooner. For quite a while
the ship sailed without sighting anything
even remotely resembling the reported
terror of the seas.
The creature was sighted at last. When
an opportunity presented itself, Ned
Land threw his harpoon, but the
monster was uninjured and Land realized
that it was protected by a thick steel-like
armor. During a pursuit in the
darkness, a terrific explosion rocked the ship.
Professor Aronnax, Ned Land, and
Conseil found themselves floundering in the
water. Aronnax fainted. Regaining
consciousness, he discovered that they were
aboard some sort of underwater cratt.
Later two men came to greet them. The
survivors from the ship spoke to them
in various languages, but the men
appeared not to understand. Then the
captain of the vessel appeared and spoke
to them in French. He revealed that
his name was Nemo, that the vessel was
a submarine, that they were, in effect,
prisoners who would have every liberty
aboard, except on occasions when they
would receive orders to retire to their
cabins.
The submarine Nautilus, Aronnax
learned, had been built in a complicated
manner. Parts of it had been secured
from various places and secredy
assembled on a desert island. Then a fire
had been set to destroy all traces of the
work done there. The ship manufactured
its own electricity, had provisions for
quantities of oxygen which allowed it
to remain submerged, and was as
comfortable as any home. All food came
from the ocean. There was fish, but
fish such as Aronnax had never before
tasted. There was clothing made from
some sort of sea fibres. There were
cigars, not of tobacco but of a special
seaweed. Captain Nemo showed them
air guns which allowed him and the
crew to go hunting, as well as a device
that permitted the crew to walk the
3918

ocean floor.
In the Pacific, Captain Nemo invited
the three survivors to a hunt in the
marine forest of Crespo, where Ned
Land saved Captain Nemo's life by
killing a creature which was about to
put an end to the captain. Later, the
captain saved Land's life. In Ceylon
they watched the pearl divers in the
oyster beds. There Nemo saved an
Indian from the jaws of a shark.
Off the coast of Borneo the three
survivors decided to go ashore in the hope
of bagging some land game. While they
were hunting, they were attacked by
natives. Although they managed to get
back to the Nautilus, the savages
remained clustered about the ship. Aron-
nax was alarmed, certain that the natives
would board the submarine when the
hatches were opened for oxygen the
next morning. He took his problem to
Captain Nemo, who was not at all
worried. Instead he told the professor
about an eighteenth-century ship that
had sunk with a full cargo of gold. The
next morning, when the hatches were
opened, the natives did try to come
aboard, but the few who touched the
rails let out a shriek and retreated in
terror. Ned Land touched the rail and
was paralyzed with shock; the rail was
electrified.
The captain announced suddenly that
he would enter the Mediterranean.
Aronnax supposed that he would have
to circle the Cape of Good Hope. To
his astonishment, he learned that the
captain had discovered a passage under
the Isthmus of Suez. The submarine
entered the Mediterranean through the
underwater passage.
On one occasion the three companions
were ordered to go to their cabins. Some
sort of encounter occurred, and later
Aronnax was called upon to treat a crew
member who had been injured. When
the sailor died, he was buried in a coral
forest on the ocean floor. By that time
the survivors had discovered that
Captain Nemo had a tremendous fortune
in gold salvaged from sunken vessels.
Although the captain had some
mysterious hatred against society, he
nevertheless used the money to benefit his
unfortunate fellow men.
Ned Land grew to dislike the captain
very much. He told Aronnax that he
would escape as soon as an opportunity
presented itself. They thought such an
opportunity had come when they rounded
Spain, but their plan did not materialize.
When they came close to Long Island,
they thought the time for escape had
come. But a sudden hurricane blew the
ship off its course, toward
Newfoundland.
On another occasion the captain
astonished them by heading toward the
South Pole. There the ship was
endangered by an iceberg, and for several
days passengers and crew were in danger
of their lives. Escaping, they headed
northward. As the Nautilus approached
the coast of Norway, it was suddenly
drawn into the notorious maelstrom, the
deathtrap for so many ships. Shortly
before, the submarine had encountered
a mysterious ship which had attacked it.
The submarine succeeded in sinking
the unknown vessel. Aronnax believed
that in this incident there was a clue
to Captain Nemo's hatred of society.
The professor never knew what
actually happened after the Nautilus was
drawn into the maelstrom. When he
awoke, he and his companions were safe
and sound on a Norwegian island. They
also had no idea how they had reached
the island. They were the only men
who now knew the secrets of the ocean
—if Captain Nemo and his crew had
perished.
3919

TWENTY YEARS AFTER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Mid-seventeenth century
Locale: France and England
First published: 1845
Principal characters:
D'Artagnan,
Athos,
Porthos, and
Aramis, Musketeers of the Guard
Cardinal Mazarin, Minister of State
Mordaunt, Cromwell's agent
Critique:
The most appealing factor in this
Dumas novel is the clever use made of
history. It is an intriguing pastime to
speculate upon what might have
happened had not the fictional Mordaunt
dogged the footsteps of the real Charles
of England, or had not the real Mazarin
relied upon the fictional shrewdness of
D'Artagnan. Intricate in plot, though not
so much so as The Count of Monte-
Cristo, this sequel to The Three
Musketeers is in some ways a less original
work than its predecessor. Dumas was
repeating himself in his infallibly clever
D'Artagnan and his persistently saintly
Athos. Furthermore, the four musketeers
behave for Mazarin, after the passage of
twenty years, very much as they did for
Richelieu in the earlier novel; the only
change that twenty years wrought was
that of names and places. But in spite of
these defects the novel has perennial
interest as a sequel to The Three
Musketeers.
The Story:
When the powerful Richelieu had died
and Cardinal Mazarin, whose name gossip
coupled with that of Queen Anne, had
seized control of the French government;
and while Oliver Cromwell was
overthrowing Charles I of England,
D'Artagnan, a lieutenant in the Musketeers, pined
for intrigue and adventure.
Politically, France was in turmoil, with
revolt impending. High taxes, coupled
with the evident avarice and extravagance
of the rulers who levied them, had aroused
the people. Also stirred, but motivated by
loyalty to the throne, were some of the
powerful nobles.
Queen Anne was under Mazarin's
thumb. She, in turn, acted as protector
for her son, King Louis XIV, then only
ten years old. The boy despised Mazarirt.
Mazarin, beset on all sides by enemies
and harassed by fears for his personal
safety, summoned D'Artagnan, whose
earlier fame with the King's Musketeers had
been obscured by time.
Twenty years had passed since
D'Artagnan, the Gascon adventurer, and the
other three musketeers, Athos, Porthos,
and Aramis, had performed doughty deeds
for their country and their king. Now,
separated by time and interests, they had
all but lost touch with one another.
Ordered by Mazarin to recruit the three
musketeers, D'Artagnan found himself
confronted by mystery in the conduct of his
former comrades in arms.
First he found Aramis, the dandy, a
monk who lived in luxury. The former
musketeer declined D'Artagnan's proposal
on the pretense that such activity would
interfere with his monastic vows. Porthos
was a more willing adventurer. Living on
a large estate with a sufficient income, he
was unhappy because of his lack of a
title. He wished to be a baron. This
D'Artagnan promised him. Athos, who had
adopted a son, Raoul, lived on another
luxurious estate. He also refused to ally
3920

himself with D'Artagnan, The adopted
son of Athos was in reality his true son,
begotten illegitimatelyr but Athos did not
want to acknowledge the boy as his own
and reveal the circumstances of his birth.
When the Duke de Beaufort, a political
prisoner, escaped from his prison at Vin-
cennes, Mazarin ordered the faithful
adventurers, D'Artagnan and Porthos, tc
recapture the duke and the man who had
helped his escape. D'Artagnan and
Porthos, attempting to overtake the fugitives,
found themselves confronted by Aramis
and Athos. The four comrades dropped
their weapons, exchanged vows of eternal
friendship and love, and then parted, both
pairs to carry on according to their own
alliances.
Athos and Aramis were members of the
Fronde, a political force composed of two
factions: the rebellious commoners of
Paris, who hoped to overthrow the king,
and the nobility, who wished to replace
the king. D'Artagnan and Porthos had
sworn allegiance to Mazarin, who
represented the king.
The first outbreak of the revolt found
Mazarin and the queen unprepared. The
mob, after tearing up the streets of Paris,
surrounded the palace, and Mazarin
called upon D'Artagnan to save him. No
obstacle was too great for the clever
Gascon. He smuggled Mazarin away from the
palace and out of Paris. Then he returned
and gave similar assistance to the queen
and the young king.
During the early days of their exploits
the four musketeers and an Englishman
named de Winter had executed a vicious
woman referred to simply as Milady; she
was de Winter's sister-in-law. Mordaunt,
Milady's son, a young man sworn to
revenge his mother's death and an agent in
the service of Oliver Cromwell, returned
to France in a dual role: to search for and
to murder those who had caused his
mother's execution and to serve as an
emissary for Cromwell, who hoped to
learn howgreat was French sympathy for
deposed Charles I of England. Lord de
Winter had also gone to France to assist
Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles, and
to ask that the king be given sanctuary
in France should he escape Cromwell s
forces.
The Fronde came to Henrietta Maria
and Lord de Winter in the persons of
Athos and Aramis. They departed secretly
for England in de Winter's company, but
not before they had learned that Milady's
embittered son was on their trail.
When Mordaunt presented his case for
Cromwell before Mazarin, the cardinal
decided to send a message to the Puritan
leader. His messengers were Porthos and
D'Artagnan, who unwittingly placed
themselves in the hands of their enemy
when they set out for England with
Mordaunt, whose identity was as yet unknown
to them.
At a battle near Newcastle, King
Charles was taken by Cromwell's troops.
When D'Artagnan and Porthos
discovered Aramis and Athos in the defeated
army, they tried to save their friends by
taking them prisoners, with the feigned
excuse of holding them for ransom. The
cruelty of the Puritans, coupled with the
personal courage of the fallen Charles I,
so influenced D'Artagnan that he
consented to do everything he could to help
the king escape to France.
As the victorious army of Cromwell
made its way back to London, D'Artagnan
maneuvered: himself into the good graces
of the soldier who guarded Charles. As
the four musketeers were about to kidnap
the king, their plans were thwarted by
an unlucky interruption instigated by
Mordaunt. In London, D'Artagnan began
to lay the groundwork for snatching
Charles to safety. As the time for the
execution approached, the plans of
D'Artagnan one by one toppled under the
vigilant efforts of Mordaunt. At last
D'Artagnan kidnaped the executioner, sent his
comrades in disguise as gallows builders,
and awaited his chance to free the royal
prisoner. His attempt failed, however,
when Charles was beheaded by a
volunteer executioner, who, it was later
discovered, was the vicious Mordaunt.
Fearing for their own lives, the four
comrades plotted to escape from England.
3921

Mordaunt followed them to the coast,
mined their ship, and bought off the crew.
But fortune was with the heroes, who
discovered the casks filled with
gunpowder. When Mordaunt blew up the
ship, they were waiting to seize him.
Athos stabbed the Englishman as the two
men struggled in the water.
Back in France, Mazarin, angry
because they had attempted to aid King
Charles, arrested D'Artagnan and Porthos.
Athos was arrested while trying to aid
them. Porthos, using his great strength,
overcame their guards, seized Mazarin in
his country retreat, and forced him to
release Athos. With Mazarin in their
power, they compelled him to pardon
them and grant their demands.
When the Frondist revolt was over and
Paris restored to order, the royal
household returned to the palace. The
musketeers, twenty years older but forever the
same, were again in good standing. D'Ar
tagnan was awarded a captaincy in the
Musketeers and Porthos was granted the
title of baron. Athos went back to his
estate and Aramis back to his amours.
None of the four knew when they would
ever meet again.
3922

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
Type of work: Drama
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Romantic comedy
Time of plot: Sixteenth century
Locale: Italy
First presented: 1594
Principal characters:
Valentine, and
Proteus, two gentlemen of Verona
Julia, beloved of Proteus
Silvia, beloved of Valentine
Thurio, in love with Silvia
The Duke of Milan, Silvia's father
Critique:
Written before Shakespeare's complete
dramatic maturity, Two Gentleman of
Verona is a play of no great depth. True,
at is romantic, witty, gay, but the incidents
are too pat to be believable. Some of the
characters seem superficial, playing roles
in which they have no real concern.
Also, the hero's quick and sympathetic
forgiveness of the friend who had
betrayed him so grossly strikes a false note.
Nevertheless the comedy is charming and
engrossing and worthy of the reader's
time. For, in spite of the faults, some of
the bard's magic is there.
The Story:
Valentine and Proteus, two long-time
friends of great understanding, disagreed
heartily on one point. Valentine thought
the most important thing in life was to
travel and learn the wonders of the world.
Proteus, on the other hand, thought love
the only thing worthwhile. The two
friends parted for a time when Valentine
traveled to Milan, to seek advancement
and honor in the palace of the duke. He
pleaded with Proteus to join him in the
venture, but Proteus was too much in love
with Julia to leave her side for even a
short time. Julia was a noble and pure
young girl, pursued by many. But Proteus
at last won her heart and the two were
happy in their love.
Valentine journeyed to Milan, and
there he learned his friend had been right
in believing love to be all that is
worthwhile. For Valentine met the duke's
daughter Silvia and fell instantly in love
with her. And Silvia returned his love.
But her father wanted her to marry
Thurio, a foolish man who had no
charm but owned much land and gold.
Valentine longed for Silvia, but he saw
no chance of getting her father's consent
to his suit. Then he learned that his
friend Proteus was soon to arrive in Milan,
sent there by his father, who, ignorant
of Proteus' love affair, wished his son
to educate himself by travel.
The two friends had a joyful reunion.
Valentine proudly presented his friend to
Silvia, and to Proteus he highly praised
the virtue and beauty of his beloved.
When they were alone, Valentine
confided to Proteus that he planned to fashion
a rope ladder and steal Silvia from her
room and marry her, for her father would
give her to no one but Thurio.
Valentine, asking his friend to help him in his
plan, was too absorbed to notice that
Proteus remained strangely silent. The
truth was that, at the first sight of Silvia,
Proteus had forgotten his solemn vows
to Julia, sealed before he left her with
the double giving of rings, and he had
forgotten too his oath of friendship with
Valentine. He determined to have Silvia
for his own. So, with protestations of
self-hatred for the betrayal of his friend,
Proteus told the duke of Valentine's plan
to escape with Silvia from the palace and
carry her away to be married in another
3923

land. The duke, forewarned, tricked
Valentine into revealing the plot and
banished him from Milan, on penalty of his
life should he not leave at once.
While these events were taking place,
Julia, thinking that Proteus still loved
her and grieving over his absence,
disguised herself as a page and traveled to
Milan to see her love. She was on her way
to Milan when Valentine was forced to
leave that city and Silvia. Valentine, not
knowing that his one-time friend had
betrayed him, believed Proteus' promise
that he would carry letters back and forth
between the exile and Silvia.
With Valentine out of the way,
Proteus next proceeded to get rid of Thurio
as a rival. Thurio, foolish and gullible,
was an easy man to trick. One night
Proteus and Thurio went to Silvia's
window to serenade her in Thurio's name,
but Proteus sang to her and made love
speeches also. Unknown to him, Julia, in
the disguise of a page, stood in the shadows
and heard him disown his love for her and
proclaim his love for Silvia. But Silvia
scorned him and swore that she would
love no one but Valentine. She also
accused him of playing false with Julia,
for Valentine had told her the story of his
friend's betrothal.
Calling herself Sebastian, Julia, still in
the dress of a page, was employed by
Proteus to carry messages to Silvia. One
day he gave her the ring which Julia
herself had given him and told her to
deliver it to Silvia. When Silvia refused
the ring and sent it back to Proteus, Julia
loved her rival and blessed her.
Valentine, in the meantime, had been
captured by outlaws, once honorable men
who had been banished for petty crimes
and had taken refuge in the woods near
Mantua. In order to save his own life,
Valentine joined the band and soon
became their leader. A short time later
Silvia, hoping to find Valentine, escaped
from the palace and with the help of
an agent arrived at an abbey near Milan.
There she was captured by the outlaws.
When her father heard of her flight, he
took Thurio and Proteus, followed by
Julia, to the abbey to look for her. But
Proteus, arriving first on the scene,
rescued her from the outlaws before they
were able to take her to their leader.
Again Proteus proclaimed his love for her.
When she scornfully berated him, he
seized her and tried to force his attentions
upon her. Unknown to Proteus, however,
Valentine had overheard all that was said.
He sprang upon Proteus and pulled him
away from the frightened girl.
Valentine was more hurt and wounded
by his friend's duplicity than by anything
else that had happened. But such was
Valentine's forgiving nature that when
Proteus confessed his guilt and his shame
over his betrayal, Valentine forgave him
and received him again as his friend. In
order to prove his friendship, he gave up
his claim on Silvia. At that moment Julia,
still disguised, fainted away. When she
was revived, she pretended to hand over to
Silvia the ring Proteus had ordered her to
deliver. But instead she offered the ring
Proteus had given her when they parted
in Verona. Then Julia was recognized by
all, and Proteus professed that he still
loved her.
The outlaws appeared with the duke
and Thurio, whom they had captured
in the forest. Thurio gave up all claim
to Silvia, for he thought a girl who would
run off into the woods to pursue another
man much too foolish for him to marry.
Then her father, convinced at last of
Valentine's worth, gave that young man
permission to marry Silvia. During the
general rejoicing Valentine begged one
more boon. He asked the duke to pardon
the outlaws, all brave men who would
serve the duke faithfully if he would
return them from exile. The duke granted
the boon, and the whole party made its
way back to Milan. There the two happy
couples would share one wedding day and
mutual joy.
3924

THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN
Type of work: Drama
Authors: William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Type of plot: Chivalric romance
Time of plot: Age of legend
Locale: Athens and Thebes
First presented: c. 1613
Principal characters:
Theseus, Duke of Athens
Hippolyta, his wife
Emilia, her younger sister
Palamon, and
Arcite, cousins, nephews of Creon, King of Thebes
Critique:
The Two Noble Kinsmen was a joint
production of the aging Shakespeare and
his prot£g6, John Fletcher. Specific
scenes have been attributed, on the basis
of stylistic traits, to each dramatist. That
many scenes cannot be specifically
assigned would suggest intimate
collaboration. The main plot was taken from
Boccaccio's Teseide, which, in turn, was
derived from Statuis' Thebaid. Shakespeare
had already used the Theseus-Hippolyta
theme in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Chaucer had used the same story in "The
Knight's Tale." The underplot of this play
is marked by a sentimentality that
betokened the end of the golden age of the
Tudor and Stuart drama.
The Story:
During the marriage ceremony of
Theseus, Duke of Athens, and
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, three
widowed queens begged Theseus' aid. Creon,
King of Thebes, had slain their husbands
in battle and would not permit their
bodies to receive decent burial. Theseus
commiserated with the queens, but
provided small comfort for their grief when
he directed that his nuptial ceremonies
be continued. The queens persisting in
their pleas, Theseus conceded to the
extent of ordering an expeditionary force
to be readied to march against Thebes.
Not to be denied, the distracted queens
finally persuaded him to champion their
cause. He appointed Pirithous, an
Athenian nobleman, to stand in his place for
the remainder of the ceremony, kissed
Hippolyta farewell, and led the queens
away toward Thebes.
Meanwhile, in Thebes, the cousins Pala-
mon and Arcite, nephews of Creon, found
their uncle's tyranny unbearable and
stultifying, and decided to leave Thebes.
But no sooner had they made this
decision then they learned that Thebes was
threatened by Theseus. The cousins,
loyal to Thebes if not to Creon, deferred
their departure in order to serve their
city.
When the opposing forces met, Pala-
mon and Arcite fought with great
courage, but the Athenians were victorious in
the battle. Theseus, triumphant,
directed the three widowed queens to bury
their dead in peace. Palamon and Arcite,
having been wounded and left for dead
on the battlefield, were taken by the
Athenians.
The cousins, healed of their wounds
and finding themselves in a prison in
Athens, impressed their jailers with their
seeming unconcern at being incarcerated.
In their cell, however, they sadly
bemoaned their fate to each other.
Resigned to spending the rest of their lives
in prison, they recalled with grief the
joys of battle and the hunt, and they
grieved at the thought of a future
without marriage. Even so, they made some
3925

attempt to reconcile themselves to
imprisonment by declaring that in their
cell they had each other's excellent
company and that thev were insulated from
the infinite number of evils that beset
free men.
Emilia, Hippolyta's beautiful sister,
entered the prison garden. Palamon saw her
and fell in love at once. When Arcite
beheld her, he too fell in love. Palamon
declared that Arcite must not love her,
but Arcite answered that Palamon, who
had called her a goddess, might love
her spiritually; he, Arcite, would love
her in a more earthly manner. Palamon
maintained that this goddess they had
beheld was his to love because he had
seen her first. Arcite, in turn, insisted
that he too must love her because of
the propinquity of the pair. Palamon,
enraged, wished for liberty and weapons
so that he and Arcite might decide the
issue in mortal combat.
The jailkeeper, on orders, took Arcite
to Theseus. Palamon, meanwhile, was
filled with despair at the thought that
Arcite was now free to win Emilia. The
keeper returned to report that Arcite had
been sent away from Athens and that
Palamon must be moved to a cell in
which there were fewer windows.
Palamon writhed in the knowledge that
Arcite now seemed certain to win the hand
of Emilia.
But Arcite, in the country near Athens,
felt no advantage over his cousin. Indeed,
he envied Palamon, who he believed
could see Emilia every time she visited
the prison garden with her maid.
Desperate, he assumed a disguise and
returned to Athens to participate in athletic
games in honor of Emilia's birthday.
Excelling in the games, he admitted that he
was of gentle birth; but Theseus did not
penetrate his disguise. Theseus,
admiring Arcite's athletic prowess and his
modesty, designated him to be a serving-man
to Emilia.
In the meantime the daughter of the
jailkeeper fell in love with Palamon and
effected his escape. In the forest, where
the court had gone a-Maying, Arcite
came upon the escaped prisoner. In spite
of Palamon's harsh words to him, Arcite
promised to supply his cousin with food.
Two days later he brought food and
drink. When he left, he promised to
return the next time with armor and
weapons, that the two might decide their
quarrel by combat.
Arcite having returned with armor and
weapons, the two youths armed
themselves and fought. At the same time
Theseus and his party, hunting in the
forest, came upon the struggling pair.
Theseus condemned them to be
executed straightway, one for having defied
banishment, the other for having broken
out of prison. But Hippolyta, Pirithous,
and Emilia begged Theseus for mercy.
The duke then declared that they might
live if they would forget Emilia. When
both refused, Theseus resolved that the
youths should go free, but that in a
month they must return to Athens, both
accompanied by three knights of their
own choice, and determine this problem
in the lists. The victor would be
awarded the hand of Emilia; the loser and his
companions would be executed on the
spot.
A month passed. As Emilia admired
likenesses of Palamon and Arcite and
despaired at her inability to choose one
or the other as her favorite, the cousins,
with six knights, returned to Athens.
Arcite and his knight-companions invoked
Mars, the god of war; Palamon and his
cohorts invoked Venus, the goddess of
love; Emilia, in her role as a priestess of
Diana, invoked the goddess of chastity
to bring victory to the youth who loved
her best. In the tournament which
followed Arcite was the victor.
Palamon now laid his head on the
block in anticipation of execution, but
Pirithous interrupted the beheading to
announce that Arcite had been thrown
and mortally trampled by a black horse
that Emilia had given him. Before he
died, Arcite, brought before his cousin,
3926

relinquished his claim upon Emilia to cousin, observed sorrowfully that he had
Palamon. Palamon, reconciled with his lost a great love in order to gain another.
3927

TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST
Type of work: Record of travel
Author: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: 1834-1836
Locale: California and the high seas
First published: 1840
Principal character:
Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Critique:
The author wrote this realistic account
of the life of a common sailor to make
the public aware of the hardships and
injustices to which American sailors were
subjected. In his narrative, chiefly in the
form of a journal, Dana explains life at
sea at great length. The book also
reveals much about life in Spanish
California in the early nineteenth century.
Dana was a careful observer, and his
story has the ring of authenticity
throughout
Tfce Story:
In August, 1834, Richard Henry
Dana, Jr., shipped aboard the brig
Pilgrim out of Boston for a voyage to
California. He went as an ordinary
seaman, hoping to relieve his eye trouble
by the journey; upon his return he
planned to reenter Harvard College.
Since Dana was a completely green
hand, he was forced to bunk in the
steerage instead of in the forecastle with
the other sailors. At first his duties were
confusing> doubly so during the first
two days, for he was violently seasick.
But he soon found his sea legs and
quickly learned shipboard routine. He
and his companions were kept busy all
day cleaning and repairing the ship. At
night they took turns standing watch.
The voyage was uneventful until
October, when the Pilgrim passed near
the mouth of the River Plate. Here
Dana encountered his first real storm at
sea. The weather then began to get
cold, and all the crew prepared to round
Cape Horn.
The seas at the Horn were high, and
they encountered snow and hail.
Everyone's clothing was perpetually wet. By
the middle of November the ship rounded
the Horn and headed northward.
The first mishap of the voyage occurred
soon afterward, when a young sailor was
swept overboard. A boat Towered to
search for him found no trace of the lost
man. Following the custom of the sea,
the captain auctioned off the dead man's
clothing.
Near the end of November the brig
made the island of Juan Fernandez and
dropped anchor for the first time since
her departure from Boston. Dana was
glad to see land and managed to get
on shore for a short time. As soon as
the ship had taken on water, however, it
weighed anchor and headed for
California.
Shortly after Christmas Dana was
acknowledged by the crew to be
experienced enough to move into the
forecastle with them. Now he was a real
seaman.
By the middle of January the Pilgrim
made her first California port at Santa
Barbara. There Dana learned that his
Work for the next year would be loading
cattle hides into the ship. The sailors
carried the stiff, undressed hides out
through the surf on their heads and
deposited them in a boat. Then the crew
of the boat took the hides to the ship and
stowed them away.
The Pilgrim next sailed northward to
Monterey with some passengers. At that
port Mexican customs officers inspected
the cargo. Then the company agent
aboard the ship set up a store in order
to trade with the townspeople. The crew
3928

was kept busy on a shuttle service
between ship and shore. Because he had
some knowledge of languages, Dana
became the interpreter for the Pilgrim,
and he was sent ashore on errands which
required a knowledge of Spanish. In
this way he became acquainted with the
town and its people. He found the
Spaniards to be pleasant but lazy, with
most of the trade carried on by foreigners.
Everyone owned horses; they were so
numerous that the price of a fane animal
was very low.
When business began to fall off, the
Pilgrim returned to Santa Barbara. There
the crew again began the work of
collecting cattle hides from shore. At the time
trouble was brewing aboard the ship.
Captain, mate, and crew were all at odds.
One day the captain began to flog a sailo
unjustly; when one of his shipmates stooo
up for him, the captain flogged the second
sailor also. The sailors were angry, but
they had no higher power to which they
could appeal, for the captain's word was
law. Her hold filled with hides, the
Pilgrim sailed for San Diego.
In San Diego, Dana got his first
shore leave. After drinking for a time
with the rest of the crew, he and a
friend hired horses and rode to a nearby
mission, where they were able to get a
good Mexican meal, a welcome change
from the salt beef served aboard ship.
The undressed hides were unloaded
from the Pilgrim and placed in a large
shed on the beach, where they were to
be dressed and stored until enough hides
had been collected for the voyage home.
Just as the ship had finished unloading
and was ready to set sail, a man deserted
ship. After an unsuccessful search, the
brig put to sea without him.
The Pilgrim took on more hides at
San Pedro and then continued on to
Santa Barbara. It was the Lenten season,
and Dana saw the celebrations ashore.
The ship gathered more hides at several
places and returned to San Diego. After
the hides had been unloaded, the captain
sent Dana and another man ashore to
assist with the dressing of the hides.
Then the ship sailed northward on
another coastal voyage.
Dana became acquainted with some
Sandwich Islanders who lived on the
beach and worked with him; he found
them to be generous men and true
friends. Some of his spare time he spent
reading books and studying navigation.
Each day he had to perform a certain
amount of work on a certain number of
hides, which had to be cleaned, soaked
in brine, scraped, dried, beaten, and then
stored away.
When the ship Alert arrived at San
Diego, Dana, anxious to be at sea again,
exchanged places with a boy aboard the
ship. The Alert belonged to the same
company as the Pilgrim; she was to take
aboard the hides collected by the brig
and carry them to Boston. The Pilgrim
was not to sail for home until later. The
two vessels had exchanged captains, and
Dana was under the same master as
before. However, the first mate of the
Alert was a good officer, and Dana found
conditions much more pleasant in his
new berth.
Loading hides, the Alert moved up and
down the coast for several months. In
the middle of November, 1835, she left
Santa Barbara with some passengers
bound for Monterey. However, such a
gale came up that the ship could not
put in at Monterey but went on up the
coast to San Francisco.
The ship then continued working up
and down the coast until there were
enough hides at San Diego to make her
full cargo. In May she headed
southward for Cape Horn.
Rounding the Horn on the return
journey was even worse than on the way
out. Dana became sick with a toothache
at the time he was needed most on deck.
For days everyone had to work extra hours
because of the danger from icebergs.
Finally, however, the Alert got clear of
the ice and ran before a strong wind
around the Horn.
Once the ship entered the Atlantic
tropics, the weather was fair except for
occasional violent storms. Some of the
3929

men began to come down with the
scurvy, but they were soon cured after
the crew obtained fresh vegetables from
a passing ship.
On September 21, 1836, the Alert
anchored in Boston harbor. Hurriedly
the crew performed their last duties in
bringing her to the wharf. Within five
minutes after the last rope had been
made fast, not one of the crew was left
aboard.
3930

TYPEE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Type of plot: Adventure romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Marquesas Islands
First published: 1846
Principal characters:
Herman Melville (Tom), an American sailor
Toby, his friend
Mehevi, chief of the Typees
Kory-Kory, a native servant
Fayaway, a native girl
Marnoo, a native taboo man
Cntique:
Typee is a fictionized narrative of
actual adventures of young Herman
Melville. Although most of the narrative
is based upon the capture and escape of
Tom and Toby, much of the book is
devoted to a aescription of the life of
the Typee cannibals. In spite of its
somewhat antiquated style, the book makes
fascinating reading. Typee has historical
interest because it is the first romance of
the South Seas.
The Story:
The whaler Dolly had been long at
sea, and the men were discontented
and restless when the captain finally
gave orders to put in at Nukuheva, one
of the Marquesas Islands. This was the
chance Tom and Toby, two young sailors,
had been waiting for. Even though the
natives of the island were known to be
cannibals, Tom and Toby deserted the
ship and fled inland, planning to hide
until the Dolly sailed. Then they hoped
to sign aboard another ship where they
would get better treatment.
Tom and Toby began their flight with
only a few biscuits for food. On the
first night away from the ship Tom
contracted some disease which caused his
leg to swell, and he was in much pain.
Nevertheless, he and Toby went on. At
last, when their food was all gone, they
realized that they could stay alive only
by giving themselves up to one of the
savage tribes that inhabited the island.
They discovered too late that the
natives to whom they surrendered
themselves were the Typee tribe, the most
ferocious cannibals on Nukuheva. Tom
and Toby were treated with respect,
however, and were given food and
comfortable quarters. All the natives came
to see the strangers. Mehevi, the king of
the Typees, appointed Kory-Kory as
personal servant to Tom. The captives
went to live in the home of Tinor, Kory-
Kory's mother. Mehevi had a medicine
man examine Tom's swollen leg, but the
native remedies had no effect on the
disease.
Tom, unable to walk, spent most of
his time reclining in the house while
Kory-Kory attended to his needs. A
beautiful young maiden, Fayaway, was
also his constant companion. She, among
all the Typees, seemed to understand the
painful situation of the two captives.
Toby convinced the Typees that he
should be allowed to return to the main
harbor on the island to seek medical
aid for Tom. On the trail he was
attacked by hostile warriors from a
neighboring tribe, and he returned to the
Typees with an ugly head wound.
A few days later Toby discovered a
boat offshore. He was allowed to go
down by the beach, but Tom was
detained in his house. Toby promised to
bring medical aid to Tom within three
days. But the three days passed without
the return of Toby. Tom could learn
nothing from the natives; he realized
that now he was the single captive of the
Typees. Somewhat recovered, he was
allowed to roam almost at will within
3931

the country of the Typees. But he was
always accompanied by Kory-Kory; there
was no chance for escape.
As Tom's leg improved, he began to
indulge in the pleasures allowed him and
to observe the native life with interest.
The Typees seemed to exist in a
perpetual state of happiness, interrupted
only by skirmishes with neighboring
tribes.
One of Tom's greatest pleasures was
to paddle a canoe about a small lake in
company with Fayaway. For the privilege
of taking Fayaway with him he had to
ask special permission, since entering a
canoe was ordinarily taboo for a woman.
One day a handsome stranger
appeared among the Typees bearing news
from other parts of the island. He was
Marnoo, a taboo man, who was free to
go among all the tribes without harm.
When Tom learned that Marnoo knew
English, he asked the native to help
him escape. This Marnoo could not do
for fear of arousing the anger of the
Typees.
The daily life of the natives was
extremely regular. Each morning they
bathea and ate breakfast. After the meal
they smoked their pipes. The rest of
the morning they spent sleeping,
conversing, or doing odd jobs about their
houses. The men often spent the
afternoon in the large meeting house of
Mehevi; there they relaxed and joked in
a sort of bachelors' club. Before the
evening meal they bathed again. After the
meal the young girls entertained the rest
with dancing. Everyone retired at an
early hour.
Tom was present at the Feast of the
Calabashes. It seemed to have some
religious significance, but most of the
time was spent in eating and drinking.
During the two days of the festival Tom
decided the natives did not take their
religion seriously. They possessed many
idols not treated with any high degree
of respect. The most universal religious
observance was that of tattooing;
everyone was tattooed upon the face, even
the women. The bodies of some of the
men were completely covered with
intricate designs.
Since the men outnumbered the
women in the tribe, the women often
had two or three husbands. But the men
never had more than one wife. All in
the tribe seemed happy with the various
aspects of their social organization.
Private property was limited to household
goods, food was common property. All
understood and followed the laws and
customs of the tribe; there were never
disputes among the Typees.
One day a battle was fought between
the Typees and a neighboring tribe.
Afterward the bodies of the dead enemies
were taken to the ceremonial feasting
place. For the next day or two Tom was
not allowed to leave the vicinity of his
house. He suspected that the Typees
were making a meal of their dead
enemies. Later he discovered the re
mains of the meal and found that he was
correct, though the Typees denied they
were cannibals.
A few days later Marnoo again
appeared among the Typees. This time he
told Tom to try to escape by means of
the same path by which he left. Tom was
unable to leave the village, however, for
Kory-Kory kept close watch on him day
and night.
Not many days after Marnoo had left,
the Typees excitedly announced the
approach of a boat. Tom argued with the
natives and finally persuaded them to let
him go to the beach. He had some
difficulty in getting there, since his leg
had begun to swell again.
At the beach Tom found a boat from
an Australian ship standing just outside
the surf. Marnoo had told the Australian
captain of Tom's trouble, and he had
sent a boat loaded with presents to obtain
Tom's release. The Typees, however,
had no wish to release their captive. In
desperation, Tom broke away from the
guard which had been placed around
him and plunged into the surf. He
managed to reach the boat, and the
sailors pulled away from shore.
Thus ended Tom's captivity among
3932

the Typees. His only regret was in
leaving the faithful Kory-Kory and the
beautiful Fayaway.
Many years later Tom again met Toby
and learned from him that he had
intended to return to the aid of his
injured friend, but he had been tricked into
boarding a vessel which sailed from
Nukuheva the following day. It was
only long after Toby had given Tom
up for lost that the two friends learned
of each other's fate after their separation.
3933

THE UGLY DUCHESS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Lion Feuchtwanger (1884- )
Type of plot: Historical enroniele
Time of flot: Fourteenth century
Locale: Central Europe
First published: 1926
Principal characters:
Duchess Margarets
Prince Johann, her husband
Chretien de Laferte, aide to Prince Johann
Margrave Karl Ludwig, Margarete's second husband
Prince Meinhard, Margarete's son
Konrad von Frauenberg, Margarete's adviser
Agnes von Flavon, Margarete's rival
Critique:
Although this historical novel relies
mainly on interesting events to keep the
story going, the characters are well
developed and credible. To some readers,
however, the book may seem confusing,
because the plot is complicated by the
rivalries of various monarchs and the
political situations of the fourteenth
century. In spite of these difficulties, the
character of the ugly duchess gives the
novel a proper center at all times.
The Story:
Heinrich, King of Bohemia, Duke of
Carinthia, and Count of Tyrol, was an
important person to three people—King
John of Luxemburg, Albert of Austria,
and Ludwig of Wittelsbach. Though
most of the king's hereditary territory
had long been taken by others, the
Tyrol and other lands he still owned were
valuable. The three rival monarchs
sought, by various means, to control
them in order to extend their respective
empires.
John of Luxemburg persuaded
Heinrich to agree that his daughter, Princess
Margarete, should marry John's son,
Prince Johann of Luxemburg, and that
Princess Margarete should be declared
Heinrich's heir. It was not likely that
Heinrich himself should have another
heir, despite the fact that his wife,
Princess Beatrix, was still young.
Princess Margarete and Prince Johann
were married in childhood. At the
wedding feast, Margarete took a fancy to
the prince's page, Chretien de Laferte,
and insisted that he be made a knight.
Johann refused, but Margarete had her
way when the prince's father agreed.
Margarete was undoubtedly one of
the ugliest women ever born. To
compensate for her lack of charm, she
concentrated upon becoming a good ruler
and achieving power. Always she had to
be vigilant against the encroachments of
other nations, even against her own
barons and nobles, who were despoiling
the land. When her father died and
John of Luxemburg was killed in battle,
she and Johann were the joint heirs of
their principalities, but it was Margarete
who ruled, governing so cleverly that
her fame spread throughout Europe.
She and Chretien had become close
friends. When Heinrich's mistress died,
she left three daughters. One of these,
Agnes von Flavon, appealed to
Margarete and Johann to be permitted to
retain the two fiefs which Heinrich had
granted her mother. Johann was
willing, but the princess declared that one
of the estates should go to Chretien.
When a group of barons, including her
illegitimate brother, Albert, plotted to
drive the Luxemburgers from the
country, Margarete consented to the revolt
THE UGLY DUCHESS by Lion Feuchtwanger. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.
:he publishers, The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1928, by The Viking Prett, Inc.
By permission of
3934

and urged that Chretien be made leader
of the rebels. Then Johann informed
Margarete that Agnes was to marry
Chretien. Margarete sent anonymous
letters telling of the planned revolt, and
the rebellion was put down. Chretien's
head was sent to her by Johann, who did
not know that Margarete herself had
revealed the conspiracy.
A Jew named Mendel Hirsch came to
the castle to ask for permission to settle
in the Tyrol. Margarete granted his
petition and the country prospered from
the industry and crafts which the Jews
brought to the area. Mendel Hirsch
became her confidant. Meanwhile another
rebellion was brewing. Jacob von
Schenna, a friend from her youth,
brought the news of the plot to
Margarete. She consented to it listlessly, for her
spirit had been broken because of a
pogrom which resulted in the death of
Hirsch and the other Jews. When Prince
Johann returned to the castle, he found
it barred to him. Margarete had their
marriage annulled.
Margarete and Margrave Karl, son of
Emperor Ludwig, were married. As a
result, Luxemburgers close to the Pope
influenced the pontiff to excommunicate
Margarete and Karl and to place the
land under an interdict. John's son was
elected Holy Roman Emperor in place
of the excommunicated Ludwig. The
years that followed were not happy ones,
and plagues and destructive fires ravaged
the country. Margarete was blamed
because the people thought these
visitations a punishment for her illegal
marriage. She and Karl had a son, Prince
Meinhard, who grew up easy-going and
not intelligent. Conditions of the
country were so perilous that Margarete, in
an effort to secure money, entered into
an agreement with Albert of Austria,
who promised financial assistance in
return for a treaty by which Tyrol should
go to Austria if she died without heirs.
In the meantime Prince Johann wished
to remarry. Accordingly, he went to
Margarete and made an agreement with
her. When a new Pope was elected, the
marriage of Margarete and Karl was
solemnized and Prince Meinhard was
declared their rightful heir. Later the
interdict was lifted and church bells
pealed as services were resumed.
One day, as the margrave was setting
out on a trip, Konrad von Frauenberg,
Margarete's unscrupulous adviser, went
to her to say goodbye and hinted that
his death might occur at any moment
since Karl detested him. But it was the
margrave who died, mysteriously
poisoned, leaving Margarete the undisputed
ruler of the principality. Then Princt
Meinhard and another young prince
formed the Arthurian Order, which
pillaged the community. Later the order
was put down, but Prince Meinhard
stayed in Munich, the pawn of a rival
prince. Agnes von Flavon was also in
Munich and plotting against Margarete.
At the castle a group led by Konrad
von Frauenberg had organized a council
for the control of the state. Margarete
wanted her son back, sure that her
position would be stronger if he could be
married to an Austrian princess. Von
Frauenberg went to Munich and after
some time succeeded in persuading
Prince Meinhard to return home. But
as they were crossing the mountains, von
Frauenberg pushed Meinhard off a cliff.
He told the pursuers that the prince's
death had been an accident.
Agnes von Flavon returned to Tyrol,
where she was promptly imprisoned by
Margarete. Tried for crimes against the
state, she was convicted. Margarete
insisted that Agnes be executed, but the
council refused to pass the death
sentence. Balked, Margarete was willing to
free Agnes if the prisoner would
acknowledge her crimes against the state, promise
to plot no more, and leave Tyrol. Agnes,
believing that Margarete would not ordei
her execution, refused. A few days later
Konrad von Frauenberg slipped into her
cell and poisoned Agnes.
Her funeral took place on the same
day that Prince Meinhard was buried.
All the nobles and barons went to Agnes'
funeral; no one went to that of the
3935

prince. Even in death Agnes had won.
A few days later Margarete was called
upon to honor her agreement with
Austria. Accordingly, she signed a
proclamation to the effect that her territories
were now the property of the Austrian
duke. Then Margarete went into exile,
to spend the rest of her days in a peasant's
hut. A greedy, ugly old woman, she
sniffed hungrily whenever she smelled
fish cooking for dinner.
3936

ULYSSES
Type of work: Novel
Author: James Joyce (1882-1941)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: June 16, 1904
Locale: Dublin
First published: 1922
Principal characters:
Stephen Dedalus, a young Irish writer and teacher
Buck Mulligan, a medical student
Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising salesman
Marion Tweedy Bloom (Molly), his wife
Blazes Boylan, Mrs. Bloom's lover
Critique:
Ulysses is an attempt at the complete
recapture, so far as it is possible in fiction,
of the life of a particular time and place.
The scene is Dublin, its streets, homes,
shops, newspaper offices, pubs, hospitals,
brothels, schools. The time is a single
day in 1904. A continuation of the story
of Stephen Dedalus as told in A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the
novel is also a series of remarkable
Homeric parallels, the incidents,
characters, and scenes of a Dublin day
corresponding to those of the Odyssean
myth. Leopold Bloom is easily
recognizable as Ulysses; Molly Bloom, his wife,
as Penelope, and Dedalus himself as
Telemachus, son of Ulysses— in Joyce's
novel Bloom's spiritual son. The book
is written in a variety of styles and
techniques, the most important being
the stream of consciousness method by
which Joyce attempts to reproduce not
only the sights, sounds, and smells of
Dublin, but also the memories, emotions,
and desires of his people in the drab
modern world. Ulysses is the most widely
discussed novel of our time, the most
influential for technique and style.
The Story:
Buck Mulligan mounted the stairs
of the old tower and prepared to shave
himself on that morning of June 16,
1904. A moment later Stephen Dedalus
came to the stairhead and stood looking
out over Dublin Bay. When Mulligan
spoke of the sea glinting in the
morning sunlight, Stephen had a sudden
vision of his own mother, to whose
deathbed he had been called back
from Paris a year before. He
remembered how she had begged him to
pray for her soul and how he, rebelling
against the churchly discipline of his
boyhood, had refused.
After breakfast Stephen and Mulligan
went off with Haines, a young
Englishman who also lived in the old tower.
In spite of the Englishman's attempts to
be friendly, Stephen disliked Haines,
who was given to night-long drunken
sprees. Stephen felt that his own life
was growing purposeless and dissolute
through his association with Mulligan
and other medical students.
Stephen was a teacher. Because it was
a half-holiday at school, the boys were
restless. One of his pupils was unable
to do his simple arithmetic problems,
and in the boy Stephen saw for a
moment an image of his own awkward
youth. He was relieved when he could
dismiss the class.
Later he walked alone on the beach.
He thought of literature and his student
days, of his unhappiness in Dublin, his
lack of money, his family sinking into
poverty while his shabby-genteel father
made his daily round of the Dublin
pubs. He saw the carcass of a dead dog
ULYSSES by James Joyoe. By permission of the publishers. Random House, Inc.
1942, 1946, by Nora Joseph Joyce.
Copyright, 1914, 1918,
3937

rolling in the surf. Stephen remembered
how a dog had frightened him in his
childhood; he was, he thought wryly,
not one of the Irish heroes.
Meanwhile Leopold Bloom had crawled
out of bed to prepare his wife's
breakfast. He was a Jewish advertising
salesman, for sixteen years the patient,
uncomplaining husband of Marion Tweedy
Bloom, a professional singer of mediocre
talent. He was vaguely unhappy to
know that she was carrying on an affair
with Blazes Boylan, a sporting
Irishman who was managing the concert tour
she was planning.
Munching his own breakfast, Bloom
read a letter from his daughter Milly,
who was working in a photographer's
shop in Mullingar. Her letter reminded
Bloom of his son Rudy, who had died
when he was eleven days old. Bloom
read Milly's letter again, wondering
about a young student his daughter
mentioned. For a moment he was afraid
that Milly might grow up like her
mother.
Bloom set out on his morning walk. At
the post-office he stopped to pick up a
letter addressed to Henry Flower, Esq.,
a letter from a woman who signed
herself Martha. Bloom, unhappy at home
and under another name, was carrying
on a flirtation by mail. Idly he wandered
into a church and listened to part of the
mass. Later he joined a party of mourners
on their way to the funeral of an old
friend, Paddy Dignam, who had died
suddenly of a stroke. During the service
Bloom watched Father Coffey. He
thought again of little Rudy and of his
own father, a suicide.
The day's business for Bloom was a
call at a newspaper office to arrange for
the printing of an advertisement. While
he was there, Stephen Dedalus also came
to the office. The two men saw each
other, but they did not speak.
Leaving the newspaper building,
Bloom walked across the O'Connell
bridge. He met Mrs. Breen and gave her
an account of Dignam's funeral. She
told him that Mrs. Purefoy was in the
maternity hospital in Holies Street. Bloom
walked on, watching the sights of
Dublin on a summer day. At last he entered
Davy Byrne's pub and ordered a cheese
sandwich. Later he went to the National
Library to look at some newspaper files.
There Stephen, flushed with the drinks
he had taken at lunch, was expounding
to Buck Mulligan and some literary
friends his own ingenious theory of
Shakespeare's plays and the second-best
bed of Shakespeare's will. Again Bloom
and Stephen saw one another but did not
speak.
Bloom went to the Ormond Hotel for
a late lunch. Blazes Boylan came into
the bar before he went off to keep an
appointment with Molly.
Late in that afternoon Bloom got into
a brawl in a pub where the talk was all
about money Blazes Boylan had won in
a boxing match. Escaping from the
jeering crowd, Bloom walked along the
Sandymount shore and in the dimming
twilight watched young Gertie Mac-
Dowell. The moon rose. Bloom decided
to stop by the hospital to ask about Mrs.
Purefoy. As he walked slowly along
the strand a cuckoo-clock struck nine
in a priest's house he was passing. Bloom
suddenly realized that he had been
cuckolded again, while he sat dreaming
his amorous fantasies on the Dublin
beach.
At the hospital he learned that Mrs.
Purefoy's baby had not yet been born.
There he saw Stephen Dedalus again,
drinking with Buck Mulligan and a
group of medical students. Bloom was
disturbed to find the son of his old
friend, Simon Dedalus, in that ribald,
dissolute company.
Bloom went with the medical students
to a nearby pub, where Stephen and Buck
Mulligan began a drunken argument
over the possession of the key to the
old tower. When the group broke up
Stephen and one of the students went
on to a brothel in the Dublin slums,
Bloom following them slowly. All were
3938

drunk by that time. Bloom had a
distorted, lurid vision of his wife and Blazes
Boylan together. Stephen, befuddled,
thought that his dead mother suddenly
appeared from the grave to ask him again
to pray for her soul. Running headlong
into the street, he was knocked down in
a scuffle with two British soldiers. Bloom
took Stephen home with him. Stephen,
exhausted by his wild night, remained
silent and glum while Bloom talked
about art and science. Bloom had begged
him to spend the night, to leave Mulligan
and his wild friends and come to live with
the Blooms, but Stephen refused. The
bells of St. George's Church were
ringing as he walked off down the silent
street.
Bloom went slowly to bed. As he
drifted off to sleep he told Molly firmly
that she was to get up and prepare
his breakfast in the morning.
Molly Bloom lay awake thinking oi
Blazes Boylan. She thought of the
mysteries of the human body, of people
she had known, of her girlhood at a
military post on Gibraltar. She considered
the possibility that Stephen Dedalus
might come to live with her and her
husband. Stephen was a writer, young,
refined, not coarse like Boylan. She heard
a far, shrill train whistle. She recalled
the lovers she had had, Bloom's
courtship, their years together, the rose she
wore in her hair the day Bloom had
asked her to marry him as they stood
close under a Moorish arch. So
wakeful, earthy Penelope's thoughts flowed
on, while her tawdry Ulysses, Bloom, the
far wanderer of a Dublin day, snored in
the darkness by her side.
3939

THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Saki (Hector Hugh Munro, 1870-1916)
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Early 1900's
Locale: London
First published: 1912
Principal characters:
Comus Bassington, the "unbearable" Bassington
Francesca Bassington, his mother
Elaine de Frey, an heiress
Courtney Youghal, a young M. P.
Henry Greech, Mrs. Bassington's brother
Critique:
H. H. Munro, who wrote under the
pen name of Saki, belongs to the
tradition of the social satirists, including Oscar
Wilde and Evelyn Waugh. The
Unbearable Bassington represents the essence
of the inimitable Saki: his amusing
dialogue, his skillful use of poetic figures,
his sharp wit. This short novel is a
brilliant piece of satire, excellent in its
character studies and pungent dialogue.
Though it has been said that the
discovery about the painting at the end of
the volume is an unnecessary feature,
the fake masterpiece represents a typical
Saki touch.
The Story:
Francesca Bassington was a successful
member of London society who was able
to make a little money go a long way.
Her greatest interest in life was the
drawing-room in her small, perfect house
on Blue Street. Foremost of her treasures
was a famous Van der Meulen
masterpiece, which hung in the paneled place
of honor in that charming room. She also
had a son Comus who presented a
serious problem to his mother because of
his casual attitude toward life. Francesca
had come to the conclusion that there was
only one solution for her son's future.
He must marry a wealthy girl. Her first
choice was Emmeline Chetrof, who
would eventually come into a comfortable
fortune and, most important of all, would
upon her marriage inherit the house in
which Francesca lived.
During the time Comus was at school
Francesca wrote her son, asking him to
show special kindness to Emmeline's
brother Lancelot. That suggestion on the
part of his mother caused Comus to treat
the child even more cruelly, and her
plans for a match between Comus and
Emmeline Chetrof ended dismally.
Two years later, when Comus was
turned loose in his mother's fashionable
world of Mayfair and Ascot, she
persuaded her brother, Henry Greech, to
secure a position for the young man as
a secretary to Sir John Jull, the governor
of an island in the West Indies. Because
he did not want to leave England, Comus
sent to a newspaper an article criticizing
Sir John. This scurrilous attack was
written by Courtney Youghal, a young
politician whom Comus knew and
admired. Printed over Comus' signature,
it had the desired result. Comus lost
the position Sir John had promised.
At a dinner given by Lady Caroline
Benaresq, Francesca Bassington first
learned that her son was interested in
Elaine de Frey, a wealthy girl who
resembled a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
At the same party Francesca learned
that Courtney Youghal was also interested
in the young heiress.
One summer afternoon Elaine de Frey
entertained her two suitors, Comus and
Courtney, at tea in her garden. Elaine,
THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON by Saki, from THE NOVELS AND PLAYS OF SAKI By
permission of the publishers, The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright, 1930, by The Viking Press, Inc.
3940

an earnest and practical young lady, had
analyzed her suitors carefully, but even
though she realized that Comus was
both frivolous and undependable she
found herself falling in love with him
and making excuses for his shortcomings.
Courtney, as a rising member of
Parliament, also interested her and seemed to
her practical mind a better risk than
Comus. When the tea was served, Comus
snatched up a silver basket containing
the only bread and butter sandwiches
and dashed off to feed the swans.
Returning with the basket, an heirloom of
the de Frey family, Comus asked
permission to keep it as a souvenir of a
delightful tea party. Elaine did not wish
to part with the piece of silver, but
Comus made such a scene that she finally
gave in to his wishes.
One fine June morning all of London
society had turned out to ride, walk, or
sit in the chairs along the Row.
Courtney Youghal was there discussing the
theater with Lady Veula Croot. In a
secluded part of the Row, Elaine and
Comus had rented chairs. The two had
drifted apart slightly because of small
unrepaid loans which Comus had
requested and because of the affair of the
silver basket. That morning Comus
again asked Elaine to lend him money
—five pounds to pay a gambling debt.
She promised to send him two pounds
by messenger and curtly asked to be
excused. He had hurt her pride and
alarmed her practical sense of caution.
As she was leaving the Row she mei
Courtney. Over the luncheon table the)
became engaged.
At an exhibition at the Rutland
Galleries Comus learned of Elaine's
engagement. Elaine had intended to write
Comus a gracious but final note, but
instead she went to call on her cousin
Suzette, to break the news of her
engagement. When Elaine returned home
after her call, she found a letter from
Comus awaiting her. In the letter he
thanked her for the loan, returned the
money, and promised to return the silver
basket in lieu of a wedding gift.
Francesca Bassington learned of the
engagement, a blow to her elaborate
plans, from that inveterate gossip, George
St. Michael. She informed Comus that
he must take a position in West Africa,
for which Henry Greech had made
arrangements. With his eyes on the
Van der Meulen masterpiece, Comus
asked his mother if she could not sell
something. Mrs. Bassington was fiercely
angry at such a suggestion and scolded
him severely.
That night, as lonely Comus watched
the play from the stalls of the Straw
Exchange Theatre, he envied Courtney
and Elaine and their circle of friends.
Francesca learned from St. Michael, her
usual source, that Emmeline Chetrof
was to be married but only after a long
engagement. Thus her beloved house on
Blue Street was safe for a time.
Francesca entertained at a dull dinner party
in honor of her son's departure—a party
to which none of Comus' friends was
invited.
In the meantime, Courtney and Elaine
were taking their wedding trip on the
continent. During their honeymoon they
soon discovered that neither loved the
other, that the marriage was not likely
to be highly successful. Comus
Bassington, exiled to West Africa, was bored
and unhappy. Shortly before Christmas
Francesca received a cablegram saying
that Comus was dangerously ill. To calm
herself, she walked in the park, for the
first time realizing how selfish her love
for her possessions, especially the Van
der Meulen, had been. During the time
she was walking, her brother brought
an eminent critic to inspect the
masterpiece. Returning to the house, she found
a cablegram announcing the death of
Comus. A few minutes later George
Greech arrived to inform her that the
Van der Meulen masterpiece was not
an original, but only a good copy. While
his voice buzzed on and on, Francesca
sat stricken among her prized pieces of
3941

silver, bronze, and porcelain—all of them herself,
as beautiful and soulless as Francesca
3942

UNCLE SILAS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)
Type of plot: Mystery romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1864
Principal characters:
Maud Ruthyn, an English heiress
Austin Ruthyn, her father
Silas Ruthyn, her uncle and guardian
Milly, Silas' daughter
Dudley, his son
Lady Monica Knollys, Maud's cousin
Dr. Bryerly, a trustee of the Ruthyn estate
Lord Ilbury, another trustee
Madame de la Rougierre, a governess
Meg Hawkes, a servant
Critique:
Uncle Silas is more than the
sentimental, nineteenth-century story of the
designing uncle and the lovely heiress
driven almost insane by terror. It is a
well-constructed novel, rambling in the
Victorian fashion but highly effective in
the mechanics of atmosphere and
suspense. Le Fanu, in fact, protested against
the labeling of his novels as examples of
the sensational school of fiction
popularized by Wilkie Collins and Charles
Reade. In his view, his fiction was a
continuation of that type of tragic
romance exemplified in The Bride of Lam-
mermoor and other novels by Sir Walter
Scott. The fact remains that Le Fanu
has never lost a following of readers to
keep his name alive, and this novel is
an example of his fiction at its best. Most
notable is his handling of character and
scene as we sometimes see them in old
Dutch paintings, with certain figures
prominently in the foreground, others in
the middle distance, and still others in
the background, all clearly visualized,
however, and busy with whatever
happens to be at hand. Uncle Silas and
Madame de la Rougierre are creatures of
terror in the foreground, but equally
relevant are Dudley Ruthyn, Dr. Bryerly,
Lady Monica, Milly, and Meg Hawkes,
fijgures successively removed from the
center of the action but no less necessary
for atmosphere and plot.
The Story:
Maud Ruthyn had spent a lonely
childhood in the great old house at Knowl.
Her mother had died when the girl was
very young, and her father, Austin
Ruthyn, had become a recluse who seldom
left the grounds of his estate.
Disappointed in Parliament many years before,
he had retired from public life to devote
himself to scientific and literary studies.
These had led him to Swedenborgianism,
a doctrine suited to his eccentric and
moral tastes. His daughter knew him only
as a kindly but solitary and taciturn man.
For this reason she never questioned
him about her uncle Silas, whose
portrait as a handsome young man hung
in the oak room at Knowl. From vague
hints and the whispers of the servants
she knew that some mystery
overshadowed this relative she had never met, a
scandal which had clouded her father's
life as well. Uncle Silas, a younger
brother, lived at Bartram-Haugh, a Derbyshire
estate owned by Austin Ruthyn.
One of the few visitors at Knowl was
Dr. Bryerly, a tall, ungainly man who
dressed always in black and wore an
untidy scratch wig. Like Maud's father,
3943

he was a Swedenborgian. The girl was
greatly in awe of him, but she knew that
he had her father's confidence. On one
occasion Mr. Ruthyn showed her the
key to a locked cabinet in his study. He
was soon to go on a journey, he said, and
after his departure she was to give the
key to Dr. Bryerly and to no other.
Maud was a little past seventeen when
her father employed a new governess,
Madame de la Rougierre, a tall,
masculine-looking woman who was smirking
and sly in her speech and manners. Maud
hated her from the first. On every
possible occasion the governess questioned her
charge about Mr. Ruthyn's will and
business affairs; sometimes Maud thought
that the woman was deliberately spying
on the household. One day Madame de la
Rougierre and her pupil walked to a
ruined abbey near Knowl. While the
woman was exploring the ancient
churchyard, a strange young man accosted
Maud. The girl was frightened by his
coarse appearance and offensive manner,
but Madame de la Rougierre ignored the
incident.
Maud forgot the whole affair in her
excitement over the arrival of Lady
Monica Knollys, her father's cousin from
Derbyshire. Madame de la Rougierre
pretended to be ill during Lady Monica's
visit. When that brisk, sensible
noblewoman went to the governess' room, the
conversation revealed that they had
previously known each other under
circumstances distasteful to Lady Monica. When
she told Mr. Ruthyn that the governess
was not a suitable companion for his
daughter, he accused her of prejudice,
and a lively dispute followed. The result
was that Lady Monica left Knowl
abruptly, but not before she had warned Maud
against Madame de la Rougierre and
cautioned her always to be on guard
against her. Lady Monica also told Maud
that at one time her uncle Silas had been
suspected of murder, but that nothing
had been charged. Later Silas had
interested himself in religion. Lady Monica,
it was plain, did not like him.
A short time later Maud had another
strange adventure. While she was
walking with Madame de la Rougierre in the
park, they saw on an unfrequented road
a carriage with one woman as its only
passenger. Continuing on. their way, they
met three men, among them the coarse
young stranger who had approached
Maud near the ruins of the abbey. All
were tipsy and addressed the governess
with rough familiarity. When one of the
men tried to seize Maud, her screams
attracted two gamekeepers. In a scuffle with
the intruders one of the gamekeepers was
shot. Mr. Ruthyn and the servants tried
to intercept the strangers at the park
gates, but the men and their woman
companion had disappeared.
Madame de la Rougierre was
discharged not long afterward. One night
Maud fell asleep in her father's study. She
awoke to find the governess going through
his private papers. Informed of the
midnight search, Mr. Ruthyn discharged the
woman at once. Maud was glad to see
the last, as she supposed, of her sly, simi
pering governess.
When Mr. Ruthyn died suddenly of a
heart attack, Maud understood at last
the journey he had contemplated. She
learned also that Dr. Bryerly had been
her father's physician as well as his
friend. With the key she gave him the
doctor unlocked the cabinet which
contained Mr. Ruthyn's will. Its provisions
disturbed Dr. Bryerly and filled Lady
Monica with dismay. After varying
bequests to relatives, friends, and servants,
the remainder of Mr. Ruthyn's great
estate was given to Maud, under the
trusteeship of Dr. Bryerly, Lord Ilbury, Sir
William Aylmer, and Mr. Penrose Cress-
well. In addition, Silas Ruthyn was
appointed Maud's guardian, with the
stipulation that the girl was to live with him
at Bartram-Haugh until her twenty-first
birthday. Lady Monica immediately
recalled the strange circumstances under
which Mr. Charke, a turfman to whom
Silas Ruthyn owed large gambling debts,
had been found dead at Bartram-Haugh;
3944

only the fact that the body had been
discovered in a bedroom locked from the
inside had kept Silas from being charged
with murder. Dr. Bryerly, in turn, was
disturbed by the knowledge that Silas
would inherit her fortune if Maud died
before her majority, and he advised that
an attempt be made to have the
provisions of the wardship put aside. Silas,
however, refused to relinquish his
guardianship. Maud, who interpreted the will
as her father's wish that she vindicate
her uncle's name by becoming his ward,
announced that she would go to live
with Silas in Derbyshire.
With her maid, Mary Quince, Maud
traveled by carriage to Bartram-Haugh.
The house was old and rambling, with
many of the rooms closed and locked.
The grounds were wild and neglected.
Although Silas welcomed his niece
courteously and with many pious sentiments,
it seemed to Maud that he was secretly
laughing at her at times. His own rooms
were furnished in great luxury. The
quarters Maud shared with her cousin Milly
were shabby and bare. Milly was a loud,
good-humored girl at whom her father
sneered because of her hoydenish
manners. Maud took an immediate liking to
her young relative. There was also a son,
Dudley, but Milly said that her brother
was seldom at home.
The first morning after her arrival
Maud went with her cousin for a walk
through the grounds. To their surprise
they found the gate leading into Bartram
Close locked and guarded by Meg
Hawkes, the miller's rough-tongued
daughter. When Meg refused to let them
pass, the girls entered the park by a
little-traveled path that Milly knew. There
they met a pleasant young gentleman
who introduced himself as Mr. Carys-
brook, a tenant at the nearby Grange.
Maud felt that he paid her particular
attention; she, in turn, was attracted to
the amiable and pleasant young man.
Maud had Milly as her only
companion. She saw little of her uncle.
Addicted to laudanum, Silas passed many of
his days in a coma. Sometimes the girls
were summoned to sit in his room while
he lay quietly in bed. One day Dr.
Bryerly appeared unexpectedly to transact
some business with Silas. To the
doctor's questions Maud replied that she was
happy at Bartram-Haugh. Dr. Bryerly
gave her his address in London and told
her to communicate with him if the need
should ever arise.
Early in December, Lady Monica
Knollys opened her house at nearby El-
verston and invited Maud and Milly to
visit her. To Milly's surprise, Silas gave
his consent. Among the guests at dinner
was Mr. Carysbrook. Lady Monica told
Maud that he was in reality Lord Ilbury,
one of her trustees.
In the meantime Dudley Ruthyn had
returned to Bartram-Haugh. Summoned
to her uncle's room to meet him, Maud
realized that he was the same vulgar
young man she had encountered twice
before, at Knowl. When she told of those
meetings, Silas brushed the matter aside.
The spirits of youth, he declared, ran
high at times, but Dudley was a
gentleman. Maud was relieved to learn that
Milly disliked and feared her brother,
and the girls avoided him as much as
possible. Meg Hawkes, brutalized by her
father, became ill. Maud supplied her
with medicines and delicacies and so won
the strange girl's devotion.
Lord Ilbury called at Bartram-Haugh
and expressed the hope that Maud would
be allowed to visit his sister at the
Grange. Dr. Bryerly also appeared and
accused Silas of misusing his ward's
property. Infuriated, Silas ordered him out
of the house. When the invitation from
the Grange arrived, Silas angrily refused
his consent to the visit. A short time later
Maud was made unhappy when Milly
was sent to study in a French convent,
but her situation became even more
unbearable when Dudley began to persecute
her with his proposals of marriage. Silas
refused to listen to her protests. She
should, he said, give the matter her
serious attention for a fortnight. Before that
3945

time passed, however, Dudley's
unwelcome attentions abruptly ended when his
secret marriage to Sarah Mangles, a
barmaid, was revealed. Sarah was the
woman Maud had seen in the carriage at
Knowl. In his rage Silas sent Dudley and
his bride away. Before his departure
Dudley offered to conduct Maud safely to
Lady Monica for twenty thousand
pounds. Convinced that this was another
of his schemes, she refused. A few days
later she saw in the paper an
announcement stating that Dudley and his wife
had sailed for Melbourne.
Silas confessed to his ward that he
faced final and complete ruin. To elude
his creditors, he said, he would be forced
to send Maud to join Milly in France;
he himself would travel by another route
to join them there. Maud grew
apprehensive, however, when she learned that
her companion on the journey was to be
Madame de la Rougierre, her former
governess. Confined like a prisoner, she tried
to communicate her plight to Lady
Monica, but the servant she bribed to carry
her letter returned the message to his
master. With reproaches for her
ingratitude and accusations against him, Silas
told her that she was to leave for France
immediately with Madame de la Rou-
gierre; Mary Quince, the maid, would
follow with him in a few days.
Maud, guarded by her grim
companion, traveled to London and spent the
night in an obscure hotel. The next night
they entrained, as Madame de la Rou-
gierre informed her, for Dover. Maud was
so dull and sleepy on their arrival that
she paid little attention to the house to
which they were driven. The next
morning she awoke and found herself, not in
a Dover inn, but in one of the upper
chambers at Bartram-Haugh. Madame de
la Rougierre said only that there had
been a change in plans. Maud realized
that everything told her had been lies,
that she was to die. Her only hope was
that Meg Hawkes, who had unexpectedly
appeared, would carry word of Silas'
villainy to Lady Monica at Elverston.
That night Madame de la Rougierre
drank some drugged wine intended for
Maud and fell asleep on the girl's bed.
Crouched in the shadows of an old press,
Maud was surprised to see the window
of the room swing inward and a man
suspended by a rope clamber over the
sill. The intruder was Dudley; the
announcement of his departure for
Australia had been another of Silas'
fabrications. Dazed, she saw him raise a spiked
hammer and strike at the figure on the
bed. When old Silas entered by the
doorway and the two began to open a trunk
containing the girl's jewelry, she took
advantage of the noise and ran from the
room. As she left the house she
encountered Tom Brice, a servant in love with
Meg Hawkes. The man, cursing his
master's villainy, drove her to safety at
Elverston.
So shaken was she by her experience
that Lady Monica hurried her off to
France at once, and two years passed
before she learned what had happened after
her flight. Silas had killed himself with
an overdose of opium. Dudley had
disappeared. Madame de la Rougierre's body
had been found buried in the courtyard,
its whereabouts disclosed by Meg
Hawkes' brutal old father. Subsequent
investigation had also revealed that
Maud's room was the chamber in which
Charke had been found dead; the peculiar
construction of the window frame
explained how his murderer had been able
to enter a room locked from the inside.
But those grim discoveries were forgotten
as time passed. Milly became the wife of
a worthy clergyman. Meg Hawkes
married Tom Brice and the two, with
capital provided by Maud, emigrated. Dr.
Bryerly gave up his practice and
undertook the management of the Ruthyn
estates. As for Maud, she married Lord II-
bury and found new happiness as a wife
and mother.
3946

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: Kentucky and Mississippi
First published: 1852
Principal characters:
Uncle Tom, a Negro sl$ve
Eva St. Clare, daughter of
Simon Legree, a planter
Eliza, a runaway slave
Topsy, a black imp
Critique:
A sentimental but powerful document
in the controversy over slavery, Uncle
Tom's Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly
is a novel whose political and
humanitarian pleading is now outdated. The
highly exaggerated Legree and the
highly exaggerated Eva, however, have
become properties of the American
imagination. The novel seems linked to two
popular traditions. It incorporates all the
sentimental elements of the novel of
feeling, and in its horror scenes it suggests
the Gothic novels of Mrs. Radcliffe and
Horace Walpole.
The Story:
Because his Kentucky plantation was
encumbered by debt, Mr. Shelby made
plans to sell one of his slaves to his chief
creditor, a New Orleans slave dealer
named Haley. The dealer shrewdly
selected Uncle Tom as part payment on
Mr. Shelby's debt. While they were
discussing the transaction, Eliza's child,
Harry, came into the room. Haley
wanted to buy Harry too, but at first
Shelby was unwilling to part with the
child. Eliza listened to enough of the
conversation to be frightened. She
confided her fears to George Harris, her
husband, a slave on an adjoining
plantation. George, who was already bitter
because his master had put him to work
in the fields when he was capable of
doing better work, promised that some
day he would have his revenge upon
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
a wealthy Southerner
his hard masters. Eliza had been brought
up more indulgently by the Shelbys and
she begged him not to try anything rash.
After supper in the cabin of Uncle
Tom and Aunt Chloe, his wife, the
Shelby slaves gathered for a meeting.
They sang songs, and young George
Shelby, who had eaten his supper there,
read from the Bible. In the big house
Mr. Shelby signed the papers making
Uncle Tom and little Harry the property *
of Haley. Eliza, learning her child's fate
from some remarks of Mr. Shelby to his
wife, fled with her child, hoping to reach
Canada and safety. Uncle Tom,
hearing of the sale, resigned himself to the
wisdom of providence.
The next day, after Haley had
discovered his loss, he set out to capture
Eliza. However, she had a good start.
Moreover, Mrs. Shelby purposely delayed
the pursuit by serving a late breakfast.
When her pursuers came in sight, Eliza
escaped across the Ohio River by
jumping from one floating ice cake to
another, young Harry in her arms.
Haley hired two slave-catchers, Marks
and Lolcer, to track Eliza through Ohio.
For their trouble she was to be given to
them. They set off that night
Eliza found shelter in the home of
Senator and Mrs. Bird. The senator
took her to the house of a man known to
aid fugitive slaves. Uncle Tom, however,
was not so lucky. Haley made sure Toim
would not escape by shackling his ankles
>lished by Houghton Mifflin Co.
3947

before taking him to the boat bound for
New Orleans. When young George
Shelby heard Tom had been sold, he
followed Haley on his horse. George
gave Tom a dollar as a token of his
sympathy and told him that he would
buy him back one day.
At the same time George Harris began
his escape. White enough to pass as a
Spaniard, he appeared at a tavern as a
gentleman and took a room there, hoping
to find before long a station on the
underground railway.
Eliza was resting at the home of
Rachel and Simeon Halliday when
George Harris arrived in the same
Quaker settlement.
On board the boat bound for New
Orleans, Uncle Tom saved the life of
young Eva St. Clare, and in gratitude
Eva's father purchased the slave. Eva
told Tom he would now have a happy
life, for her father was kind to
everyone. Augustine St. Clare was married to
a woman who imagined herself sick and
therefore took no interest in her daughter
Eva. He had gone north to bring back
his cousin, Miss Ophelia, to provide care
for the neglected and delicate Eva. When
they arrived at the St. Clare plantation,
Tom was made head coachman.
Meanwhile Loker and Marks were on
the trail of Eliza and George. They
caught up with the fugitives and there
was a fight in which George wounded
Loker. Marks fled, and so the Quakers
who were protecting the runaways took
Loker along with them and gave him
medical treatment.
Unused to lavish Southern customs,
Miss Ophelia tried to understand the
South. Shocked at the extravagance of
St. Clare's household, she attempted to
bring order out of the chaos, but she
received no encouragement because the
slaves had been humored and petted too
long. Indulgent in all things, St. Clare
was indifferent to the affairs of his family
and his property. Uncle Tom lived an
easy life in the loft over the stable. He
and little Eva became close friends with
St. Clare's approval. Sometimes St. Clare
had doubts regarding the institution of
slavery, and in one of these moods he
bought an odd pixie-like child, Topsy,
for his prim New England cousin to
educate.
Eva grew more frail. Knowing that she
was about to die, she asked her father
to free his slaves, as he had so often
promised. After Eva's death St. Clare
began to read his Bible and to make
plans to free all his slaves. He gave
Topsy to Miss Ophelia legally, so that
the spinster might rear the child as she
wished. Then one evening he tried to
separate two quarreling men. He received
a knife wound in the side and died shortly
afterward. Mrs. St. Clare had no
intention of freeing the slaves, and she
ordered Tom sent to the slave market.
At a public auction he was sold to a
brutal plantation owner named Simon
Legree. Legree drank heavily, and his
plantation house had fallen to ruin. He
kept dogs for the purpose of tracking
runaway slaves. At the slave quarters
Tom was given his sack of corn for the
week, told to grind it himself and bake
the meal # into cakes for his supper. At
the mill he aided two women. In return
they baked his cakes for him. He read
selections from the Bible to them.
For a few weeks Tom quietly tried
to please his harsh master. One day he
helped a sick woman by putting cotton
into her basket. For this act Legree
ordered him to flog the woman. When
Tom refused, his master had him flogged
until he fainted. A slave named Cassy
came to Tom's aid. She told Tom the
story of her life with Legree and of a
young daughter who had been sold years
before.
Then she went to Legree's apartment
and tormented him. She hated her master
and she had power over him. Legree
was superstitious. When she talked,
letting her eyes flash over him, he felt
as though she were casting an evil speD.
Haunted by the secrets of his guilty
past, he drank until he fell asleep. But
he had forgotten his fears by the next
morning, and he knocked Tom to the
3948

ground with his fist.
Meanwhile, far to the north, George
and Eliza and young Harry were making
their way slowly through the stations
on the underground railway toward
Canada.
Cassy and Emmeline, another slave,
determined to make their escape.
Knowing the consequences if they should be
caught, they tricked Legree into
thinking they were hiding in the swamp.
When Legree sent dogs and men after
them, they sneaked back into the house
and hid in the garret. Legree suspected
that Tom knew where the women had
gone and decided to beat the truth out
of his slave. He had Tom beaten until
the old man could neither speak nor
stand.
Two days later George Shelby arrived
to buy Tom back, but he came
too late. Tom was dying. When George
threatened to have Legree tried for
murder, Legree mocked him. George
struck Legree in the face and knocked
him down.
Still hiding in the attic, Cassy and
Emmeline pretended they were ghosts.
Frightened, Legree drank harder than
ever. George Shelby helped them to
escape. Later, on a river boat headed
nortn, the two women discovered a
Madame de Thoux, who said she was
George Harris* sister. With this
disclosure, Cassy learned also that Eliza,
her daughter, was the Eliza who had
married George and with him and her
child had escaped safely to Canada.
These relatives were reunited in
Canada after many years. In Kentucky
George Shelby freed all his slaves when
his father died. He said he freed them
in the name of Uncle Tom.
3949

UNCLE VANYA
Type of work: Drama
Author: Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Type of plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First presented: 1899
Principal characters:
Alexandr Serebryakov, a retired professor
Yelena Andreyevna, his wife, aged twenty-seven
Sonya Alexandrovna, his daughter by his first wife
Marya Voynitsky, widow of a Privy Councillor and
mother of his first wife
Ivan Voynitsky (Uncle Vanya), her son
Mihail Astrov, a doctor
Marina, an old nurse
Critique:
Chekhov's plays were meant to be
acted by people who immersed
themselves so deeply in the parts that they
infected their audiences with strong
emotions and moods suggested simply or
subtly. It is more difficult to read these
plays, but a great deal of satisfaction can-
be derived from them if they are read
with a sympathy for characters who are
perhaps ordinary in themselves, though
they really speak for the whole world. In
Uncle Vanya we feel the hopelessness of
Sonya and Uncle Vanya, who have
dedicated their lives to a mistaken ideal in
supporting Professor Serebryakov, and yet
we feel at least Sonya's faith that they
will have eventual rest for their troubles.
The Story:
Astrov, the doctor, called to minister
to retired Professor Serebryakov, who had
complained all night of pains in his legs.
To the annoyance of the doctor,
however, the professor had gone for a long
walk with his wife Yelena and Sonya, his
daughter. Astrov told the old nurse,
Marina, that he felt a hundred years old,
overworked as he was. Too, he felt that,
having worked with weak, discontented
people for years, he had become as strange
as they. Caring for nothing and no one,
UNCLE VANYA by Anton Chekhov, from PLAYS BY ANTON TCHEKOFF. Translated by Marian
Fell. By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1912, by Charles Scribner's
Sons. Renewed, 1939, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
he wondered if people living a hundred
years hence would remember men like him
who had struggled to beat out a road for
them.
Marina explained that the professor
had completely changed the routine of
the house, so that everyone waited on him
and everyday work was sandwiched in if
possible. Ivan Voynitsky enviously
described the fortunate life the professor
had, living on the fruits of his first wife's
estate, with her mother doting on his
every word, retired now and writing as he
pleased, with a new and beautiful young
wife to cater to him. But it had been Ivan,
Uncle Vanya to Sonya, who worked
with him, who had blindly followed his
mother's ideals and made the estate a
splendidly productive place to supply
extra money for the professor. Only
recently had he realized how selfish the
professor had been in treading over
everybody. Ivan told his mother that he
could no longer bear to hear of the
pamphlets which had been her life for the
last fifty years.
When the professor came in, he
immediately excused himself to get to his
writing. Yelena, apologizing to the
doctor, said that her husband was well again.
Both Ivan and the doctor admired her ex-
3950

travagantly, and the doctor invited her
and Sonya to come to his estate to see his
trees. A crank on the subject of trees, the
doctor wanted to restore the countryside
to its former state before the peasants cut
down forests indiscriminately. Yelena
realized Sonya was attracted to the doctor.
Yelena was bored with everything, even
Ivan's love for her.
Again the professor complained of
pains in his legs, this time keeping his
wife awake for two nights. Believing that
he had earned the right to be disagreeable
and tyrannical at his age, and feeling
that he was in a vault with stupid people
who made foolish conversation, he
refused to see the doctor he had summoned.
He begged not to be left with Ivan, who
would talk him to death. Only Marina
seemed to be able to handle him; she led
him away so that the others could rest.
Yelena asked Ivan to try to reconcile
everyone, since all seemed to be involved
in hatred or petty wrangling. When Ivan
made love to her again, she left him. Ivan
realized he could have fallen in love with
her ten years before and might even have
married her if he had not been wrapped
up in the ideal of fulfilling the
professor's wishes. He felt cheated in the
realization that the professor, retired, was a
nonentity.
Ivan and the v doctor continued the
drinking they had started while the
doctor waited to see the professor. Sorya
asked them both to stop; Ivan because
he was living on illusions, the doctor
because she did not want him to destroy
himself. She tried to tell him obliquely
that she loved him, but he felt his
reactions had been blunted. He would never
be able to love anyone, though Yelena
might be able to turn his head.
Yelena and Sonya effected a
reconciliation when Yelena explained that she
had married Sonya's father in the belief
that she loved him, only to find she was
in love with an ideal. Having lost that
illusion, she found herself very unhappy.
Sonya, glad to make friends with her,
was happy about everything; she had
spoken at last to the doctor, even if he
had not understood her.
While waiting for the hour at which
the professor had asked all the family to
join him, Yelena complained of being
bored. Sonya suggested that she help on
the estate. When Yelena declined all
suggestions, Ivan told her she was too
indolent to do anything. To make
matters worse, her indolence was catching,
for he had stopped work to follow her, as
had Sonya and the doctor, who used to
come once a month but now came daily.
Since Yelena seemed to have mermaid
blood in her veins, he said, she should let
herself go for once and fall in love with
a watersprite. Yelena was indignant. Ivan,
as a peace offering, went to get her some
autumn roses.
Sonya asked Yelena's help. She knew
the doctor came to see Yelena, not even
realizing Sonya was there. Yelena
decided to speak to him in Sonya's behalf.
When she did, he laughed at her for
pretending she did not know why he
came. Then he kissed her. Yelena
halfheartedly held him off until she saw Ivan
returning with the roses.
The professor, not content with
country living but unable to live in the city
on the income from the estate, suggested
that they sell the estate, invest most of
the money, and buy a small place in
Finland with the remainder. His plan was
greeted with horror, particularly by Ivan,
who was driven almost mad as he felt the
estate slipping away from Sonya, the
work of twenty-five years undone. He
explained how the estate had been bought
for Sonya's mother and handed on to
Sonya; how he had paid off the mortgage
and made the place productive; how
Sonya and he had slaved on the property
by day and over books by night with
only the professor in mind. Feeling
cheated, he rushed away while the
professor declared that he could no longer
live under the same roof with Ivan.
Yelena begged him to leave the place
immediately, but to apologize to Ivan before
they left. When the professor tried to
3951

make amends, Ivan shot at him twice,
missing both times.
Marina, pleased with the arrangement,
hoped that matters would settle down
after the professor and his wife left. Astrov
refused to go home before Ivan had
given back the morphia he had taken
from the doctor's bag. Ivan, saying he
was a madman, begged for a way out,
but the doctor laughed and said that both
of them, the only well-educated men in
the district, had been swamped in the
trivialities of country life and that they
were both cranks, a very normal condition
of man. After reconciliations all around,
the professor and Yelena left, followed by
Astrov. Marina rocked away with
satisfaction, Ivan's mother went back to her
pamphlets, and Sonya assured Ivan that
after work to rest their minds they would
find life happier.
3952

UNDER FIRE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Henri Barbusse (1874-1935)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: 1914-1915
Locale: France
First published: 1917
Principal characters:
Volpatte,
ElJDORE,
Poterloo, and
Joseph Mesnil, French soldiers
Critique:
Barbusse ranks in time with the first
of the writers who deglorified war. To
him war in the trenches was a saga of
mud, lice, and death. When they had to,
the poilus worked and fought with a will,
but anyone who had a wound severe
enough for hospitalization was considered
lucky. The characters have neither
illusions nor glamour, but they do
appreciate the necessity of stamping out
war. To most of them the essence of
war means killing Germans, but a few
look on the enemy as people like
themselves. Under Fire has no thread of plot;
it is a mere series of incidents with only
the war to connect them. The merit of
the book lies in the vivid pictures it
presents.
The Story:
High up in the mountains, the rich
old men had every medical care at their
sanatorium. When an obsequious servant
softly told them that war had begun,
they took the news in various ways. One
said France must win; another thought
it would be the last war.
Far down on the plain one could see
specks, like ants, hurrying to and fro.
Those thirty million men, in their
common misery, held great power in their
hands. When they became miserable
enough, they would stop wars.
That morning they came out of the
Jugouts to the sound of rifle fire and
cannonading. They were in fantastic
UNDER FIRE by Henri Barbusse. Translated by Fitzwat«r Wray. By permission of the publishers, E. P.
Dutton & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1917. by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Renewed, 1947.
dress against the cold, the damp, the
mud; and all were incredibly dirty. As
they stumbled out into the trenches, they
reached inside their clothes to scratch
their bare skins. As they walked along
the trench, the oozy mud released each
foot with a sticky sigh. Bertrand's squad,
holding a secondary trench in the reserve
line, was getting ready for another day.
Lamuse, the ox-man, was puffy around
the eyes; he had been on fatigue duty
during the night.
Three breathless fatigue men brought
up the breakfast. One of the squad asked
what was in the cans; the mess man
merely shrugged. Paradis looked in the
cans; there were kidney beans in oil,
bully beef, pudding, and coffee.
Cocon explained to his neighbor the
arrangement of the trenches, for Cocon
had seen a military map and had made
some calculations. There were over six
thousand miles of trenches on the French
side and as many more on the German
side. The French front was only an
eighth part of the total world front.
Just to think about it made one more
insignificant, and it was terrible to
imagine so much mud. The only possible
way to look at the whole matter was to
concentrate on dislodging the Boches in
the opposite lines.
Tirloir had once seen a captured
German officer, a Prussian colonel, who was
being led along the communication
trench when Tirloir kicked him. The
3953

colonel nearly had a seizure when he
realized that a mere private had touched
him. The squad agreed that the German
officers were the real evil.
There was a disturbance just ahead;
some important people were coming to
visit. One could hear oaths and grunts
when it became known that they were
civilians. One of the visitors was so bold
as to ask if the coffee were good. The
squad remembered the saying that
winning a war is certain if the civilians can
hold out.
When the mail came around, rumors
flew fast. Many were sure that their
squad was soon to be sent to the Riviera
for a long rest; another had heard they
were going to Egypt. The troops stopped
their gossip as a company of African
soldiers moved by; they decided an attack
had been planned. The Africans were
notoriously ferocious fighters.
During a sharp attack, Volpatte had
both of his ears almost cut off. At the
dressing station the doctors bandaged
his head. Volpatte was happy to be going
to the rear, for at last ne could rest.
After a long while he came back to the
trenches with his ears nicely sewed.
When his comrades asked him about the
hospital he was so angry he could scarcely
speak. Then it all came out; the hospital
was swarming with malcontents,
malingerers, and general shirkers. The worst
were those assigned to the hospital for
duty; they seemed to think they ran the
whole war. The squad soothed Volpatte;
let those who could, get by easily.
When the squad retired for a brief
rest, they were billeted in a village where
for an outrageous sum they rented a
cow shed without walls. For a table they
had a door on some boxes and a plank for
a bench. But it was a wonderful
experience to be above ground once more.
The woman who ran the house sold them
wine for twenty-two sous, although the
established price was fifteen sous a bottle.
Everywhere they went they heard the
same story; the civilians had all the
hardships.
Eudore got a fourteen-day leave. His
wife, a practical person, applied well in
advance for a permit to go to the village
of her husband's people. She herself ran
a tiny inn with only one room, where
she would have no privacy to entertain
her man, and Eudore's people had a big
house. Eudore arrived in his village after
much delay with only seven days left of
his furlough, but his wife was not there;
her permit had not arrived. Fearing to
miss her, he stayed with his parents and
waited. Then she wrote to say that no
permits were allowed for civilian travel.
Eudore went to the mayor and got
permission to go to his wife. It was raining
very hard when he got off the train to
walk the several additional miles to his
home. On the way he fell in with four
poilus returning from leave. They
tramped along together in the rain until
they came to the inn. But Eudore and
his wife could not turn out the four
poilus in the rain, and so all six of them
spent the night on chairs in the tiny
room. Early in the morning Eudore left;
his furlough was over.
Fraternization with the Boche was
strictly forbidden. While out looking for
bodies, Poterloo took a chance and fell
in with some German privates, jolly
fellows who offered to go with Poterloo to a
nearby Alsatian village so that he could
see his wife. Poterloo put on some great
boots and a Boche coat and followed his
friends behind the German lines. They
reached the village safely. That night
Poterloo walked twice past the house
where his wife was staying with
relatives. Through the lighted window he
could see his wife and her sister at dinner
with a group of German non-coms. They
were laughing and eating well. Poterloo
carried back to the trenches a
disheartening picture of his wife laughing up
into the face of a German sergeant.
There were six Mesnil brothers, four
of them already killed by 1915. Joseph
and Andr6 were pessimistic about their
own chances. On reconnaissance, one
of Bertrand's squad discovered Andre*
propped upright in a shell crater. At
first they were afraid to tell Joseph, but
3954

he did not seem much affected by the
news. Bertrand was killed. Then Joseph
was wounded in the leg and taken to the
dismal dressing station, a large dugout.
There were many men in the dugout,
most of them resigned to death, all of
them given to spiritless discussion. It
was agreed that to stop war you had
to kill the spirit of war. That appeared
to be a difficult job. It came as a new
thought to some of them that they were
the masses, and the masses had the power
to stop war. But it was just too much to
do. Many men thought only in terms of
killing Boches. It hardly mattered
anyway. Nearly all of them would be dead
soon. The war went on.
3955

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of vht: Nineteenth century
Locale: Rural England
First published: 1872
Principal characters:
Reuben Dewy, a carrier
Dick Dewy, his son
Mr. Shiner, a farmer
Mr. Maybold, the vicar
Fancy Day, a schoolmistress
Critique:
Unlike the stark realism and
philosophical pessimism found in most of the
novels of Thomas Hardy, Under the
Greenwood Tree is almost pure romance.
It is a gentle story, full of whimsical,
simple humor. The characterizations, in
particular those of the Wessex rustics,
are delightful, even though often so
simplified as to appear to be caricatures.
This book, one of his early novels by a
great English master, deserves a place
with those of his maturity.
The Story:
On Christmas Eve the village choir
prepared to go about its annual caroling.
In fine voice, mellowed by generous
mugs of cider, the men and boys gathered
at the home of Reuben Dewv. Then
with their fiddles and the cello of
Grandfather Dewy, they departed on their
rounds. The first stop was at the school-
house, to serenade the new
schoolmistress, Fancy Day. At first there was no
indication that she had heard them, but
at last she appeared, framed,
picturelike, in a window. Later the men missed
young Dick Dewy. When they found
him he was leaning against the school,
staring up listlessly at the now darkened
window.
At church, on the following morning,
Fancy Day caused quite a stir of
excitement. For three men she was the primary
attraction—Dick Dewy, Farmer Shiner,
and the new vicar, Mr. Maybold. To
many other men in the congregation, the
members of the choir, Fancy Day was
not endeared. She committed what
amounted almost to blasphemy. For as
long as anyone could remember the male
choir had provided music for the service,
but the young woman, on her first day
in church, led the young girls in
singing along with the men. Some of the
older and wiser ones foresaw more trouble
from a girl so fro ward.
Mr. Dewy, the carrier, called by
everyone the tranter, gave his annual party
on the afternoon and evening of
Christmas Day. During the dancing, Dick was
alternately delighted and depressed by
Fancy. When he could claim her for a
dance, he was transported with joy. But
when she danced with Farmer Shiner,
a handsomer, wealthier man, Dick was
downcast. And when Farmer Shiner
escorted the lady home, the evening was
ruined for young Dick.
Using a handkerchief left behind by
Fancy as his excuse, Dick a few days
later found courage to call at the school-
house. Being a very inexperienced lover,
he simply returned the handkerchief,
stammered a good day, and departed. It
was not until spring that he made any
real progress in his silent love affair. By
that time Dick was a wan and shadowy
figure of a man. He spoke to no one
of his love, but it was obvious to all but
Fancy and her other two admirers that
Dick was not himself.
But before Dick could declare himself,
a delegation from the choir waited on the
new vicar, Mr. Maybold. Having heard
disquieting rumors that they were to be
3956

displaced by an organ, played by Fancy
Day, they learned from the vicar that
their fears were well founded. He had
brought an organ to the church, since
he preferred that instrument to a choir.
He agreed that the choir was fine, but
an organ would be better. In order to
spare the feelings of the faithful choir
members, however, he agreed to wait for
a time before deposing them. They were
to have the dignity of leaving on a
special day, not on any ordinary Sunday.
Dick's big day came when he was
allowed to bring Fancy and some of her
belongings from the home of her father.
He was dismayed to find Farmer Shiner
also present at the house, but when
Fancy allowed him to touch her hand
at the dinner table Dick's spirits rose
perceptibly. On the ride home he could
not find the words that were in his
heart; he felt, nevertheless, that he had
made some progress with his lady. Then
in the weeks that followed rumors of her
friendliness with the vicar and with
Farmer Shiner drove him to desperation.
One day, screwing up his courage, he
penned her a letter, asking bluntly
whether he meant anything to her. When he
received no answer from Fancy, he
resolved that he would have it out with
her the next Sunday.
Before Sunday came, however, he had
to go on an errand for the vicar's mother,
an errand which would take him to a
neighboring town. As he was about to
leave this village, he saw Fancy waiting
for the carrier to take her home. Seizing
the opportunity, Dick helped her into
his cart and triumphantly carried her
off. On the way home he finally made
his proposal and was equally surprised
and overjoyed to hear her acceptance.
They kept their betrothal a secret
since they could not marry for some time.
Also, Fancy's father had told her that he
hoped she would accept Farmer Shiner
for a husband. One trait of Fancy's
character troubled Dick. She seemed to take
undue pleasure in dressing to please
others than himself, but whenever he
prepared to punish her by letting her worry
about him for a change, Fancy would go
to him and apologize for her vanity. The
young lover, unable to resist her
shamefaced tears, would take her back into his
heart before she knew she was gone.
On the day he was at last to meet her
father to ask for her hand, Dick prepared
himself carefully. In spite of his
precautions, her father told him bluntly that
he was not good enough for Fancv, that
she was too cultured, too well educated,
and too wealthy for a plain carrier. Sadly
Dick agreed, and sadly he turned toward
home.
But Fancy was not so easily defeated.
When tears failed to move her father,
she resorted to the age-old trick of
languishing away for love. She did not eat,
at least not so that her father could
notice, but merely pined and sighed. The
ruse worked, and her father reluctantly
found himself begging her to marry her
young lover. The date was set for the
coming midsummer.
On the day that Fancy was installed
at the organ, the day the choir died a
disillusioned death, Dick went away to
serve at the funeral of a friend. Fancy
had put her hair in curls and in other
ways dressed more lavishly than ever
before. Dick was sorry to see her dress
so beautifully when she knew he would
not be present to see her, but she put
him off brusquely. On his way home
that night, Dick walked through the rain
to get one last glimpse of his love before
he retired. She would not even lean out
her window far enough to give him a
kiss. Later, when she saw the vicar
approaching through the rain, she greeted
him warmly. The vicar too had been
enchanted with her appearance of the
morning. Knowing nothing of her
betrothal to Dick, he had decided to ask
for her hand in marriage. Surprising even
herself, Fancy accepted him.
The next morning the vicar met Dick
on the road. Dick, still thinking himself
betrothed, shyly told the vicar of his
coming marriage to Fancy. The vicar
kept his shocked silence, leaving Dick
ignorant of Fancy's faithlessness. Then
3957

the vicar sent a note to the young lady,
telling her that she could not honorably
forsake Dick. Before it was delivered, he
in turn received a note from Fancy,
stating that she had been momentarily
swayed by the prospect of a more
cultured, more elegant life; now she begged
to withdraw her acceptance of his
proposal because she had loved and still
loved another.
In summer the wedding day came. It
was a great celebration, marred only by
the vicar's refusal to perform the
ceremony. Puzzled, Dick could not think
of any way in which he might have
offended the vicar. And when, after the
ceremony, Dick told his bride that they
would never have a secret between them,
Fancy replied that they never would,
beginning from that day forth.
3958

UNDER THE YOKE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ivan Vazov (1850-1921)
Type of plot: Romantic tragedy
Time of plot: 1875-1876
Locale: Bulgaria
First published: 1889
Principal characters:
Kralich, a revolutionary
Rada, his sweetheart
Sokolov, a doctor
Marika, a young girl
Critique:
Under the Yoke was published after
Bulgaria had won her independence from
Turkish rule. Translated, the novel
brought to Western readers a fresh and
vivid insight into the affairs of that
troubled country. Although the story is tragic,
the treatment of the theme is romantic
in the manner of Scott, and through
fictitious characters and events the trials
of the Bulgarians are faithfully re-created.
Critically, the novel has been called one
of the finest romances to come out of
Eastern Europe.
The Story:
One day Marko, a substantia] family
man, sat down to his evening meal. His
children and his relatives were a noisy
crowd, but over the din they heard an
alarming noise in the yard. The females
all shrieked, because they were afraid
of robbers. Marko took a pistol and went
to investigate. In the stable he found a
spent and furtive man cowering in the
dark.
Ivan Kralich, the fugitive, had
returned to the village of Bela Cherkva after
escaping from a Turkish prison. The
Turks were harsh rulers of Bulgaria, and
anyone suspected of revolutionary
tendencies was either killed outright or
imprisoned. But eight years of confinement
had failed to quench Kralich's spirit.
Having made his getaway, he asked for
sanctuary because the Turks were on
his trail. Marko, a patriot who had known
Kralich's family, told the fugitive to
remain in hiding in his stable. As he
returned to the house, however, Turkish
policemen knocked at the door. They had
heard the women shrieking and had
come to see what the trouble was.
As soon as Marko could get rid of the
Turks he hurried back to the stable, but
Kralich had disappeared. Hearing the
police, he had climbed the wall and run.
Unfortunately, he ran into a patrol and
escaped them only after leaving his coat
in the hands of the Turks. They shot
at him, but the fugitive escaped into the
countryside.
It was raining, and at last he took
refuge in a mill. As he crouched in a
dark corner, the miller came in with his
daughter Marika, an innocent girl of
fourteen. Kralich watched unobserved as
they made beds on the floor. Then two
Turkish policemen knocked and forced
their way into the mill. One of them
was a notorious lame man who had cut
off a girl's head a short while before.
The miller was terror stricken when the
Turks ordered him to get them some raid.
Knowing that they wanted Marika, the
miller bravely refused to leave.
Throwing aside all pretense, the Turks seized
him and started to bind him. Kralich was
moved to action when the despairing
miller called to Marika for help. He took
an ax and after a brief struggle killed the
Turks. After Kralich and the miller had
buried the bodies, the grateful miller
led Kralich to a good hiding place in a
nearby monastery.
While Kralich was resting, Sokolov,
the village doctor, found himself in
trouble. Called a doctor, though he had re-
3959

ceived no training and prescribed few
medicines, he was regarded with
suspicion by the Turks because he was a
patriotic Bulgarian and because his
peculiar habits included keeping a pet bear.
That night, as he was playing with the
bear, the Turks arrested him on a charge
of treason.
What had happened was that Kralich
had asked Sokolov the way to Marko's
house, and the compassionate doctor had
given Kralich his coat. When Kralich
lost the coat during his escape from the
patrol, the police recognized Sokolov's
garment. In the pockets they found
revolutionary documents. The arrest created
a sensation in the district. Kralich,
hearing of Sokolov's trouble, started to the
village to clear him. Marko cleverly fooled
the police, however, by substituting a
harmless newspaper for the incriminating
documents when the official messenger
stopped for a drink in a tavern. Because
the evidence had disappeared, the
easygoing Turkish bey released Sokolov.
Kralich changed his name and found
a job teaching school. He maintained
contact with the revolutionaries, however,
and soon welcomed to the cause his
friend Mouratliski, who had also fled
from the Turks. Mouratliski, passing as
an Austrian photographer, soon became
a familiar figure in the village. Kralich,
continuing to discuss the cause of liberty,
won many converts. He also fell in love
with Rada, a gentle orphan who taught
in the girls' school.
Once the townspeople gave a play in
which Kralich took a leading role. The
bey, who understood no Bulgarian, was
an honored guest. At the end of the play
Kralich led the cast in singing patriotic
and revolutionary songs. The audience
was much moved. The quick-witted
Bulgarian who was translating for the bey
assured that Turkish official that the songs
were part of the drama.
Kralich finally came under suspicion
when a spy informed the Turks that the
schoolmaster was working for Bulgarian
independence. A detachment of police
surrounded the church while the villagers
were at worship, but Kralich got through
the cordon by assuming a disguise.
Taking to the mountains and the woods, for
months he led a wandering life sheltered
by patriotic Bulgars. He preached
continually the need for revolution. One day,
when he attended a party in a small
village, Turks came and beat an old man
to death. Kralich led a small group,
including the giant Ivan Kill-the-Bear, out
along a trail and waited in ambush. The
Bulgars succeeded in killing the Turks
and left their bodies to be eaten by
wolves.
Meanwhile, in Bela Cherkva, Rada led
an uneasy life. The village, knowing of
her love for Kralich, twitted her on her
hopeless affair after his disappearance.
In particular, a student named Kandov
made her life miserable by following her
about. At last Kralich slipped into the
village to visit her. Because Rada,
overjoyed, was reluctant to part from him
again, Kralich invited her to go to
Klissoura, a nearby village, where he was
busy organizing a revolt. Soon afterward
she set out, but Kandov followed her and
found the house where she was staying.
When Kralich appeared, he was already
a little jealous because he had received
an anonymous letter accusing Rada of
intimacies with Kandov. As soon as he saw
Kandov with her, Kralich became angry
and left.
The inhabitants of Klissoura, under
the fiery leadership of Kralich, prepared
to revolt. On the day for the rising the
little garrison proclaimed its
independence of Turkey, and the citizen soldiers,
after setting their wooden cannon on the
trail, prepared to battle the Turks. Bela
Cherkva did not revolt as planned,
however, and the whole Turkish strength
was concentrated on Klissoura. The
Bulgarians were quickly overwhelmed. When
the victors began pillaging the town,
Rada was lucky enough to get back to
Bela Cherkva with the help of Ivan and
his wife.
A fugitive once more, Kralich wan-
3960

dered hungry and cold through the
Balkans. He took shelter at last in the mill
and sent the faithful Marika into town
with a letter asking Sokolov to bring him
clothes. Marika could not find the doctor,
who had also become a fugitive, but by
chance the letter fell into Rada's hands.
She made up a bundle of clothing and
started off to the mill.
Sokolov, meanwhile, had joined Kra-
lich. When Rada arrived, the lovers had
a brief and tearful reunion before
pursuing Turks attacked the mill. Kralich
and Sokolov were both armed, and for
a time they held their stronghold against
the enemy. Rada was the first to be killed
by gunfire. Kralich kissed her cold lips
and returned to the battle. The Turks
quickly closed in on the two Bulgarians
when the defenders' ammunition gave
out. Kralich's head was mounted on a
pole and carried in triumph back to the
village.
3961

UNDER TWO FLAGS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramee, 1839-1908)
Type of 'plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: London and environs, the continent, Algeria
First published: 1867
Principal characters:
The Honorable Bertie Cecil, a young Guardsman
Berkeley, his younger brother
Lord Rockingham (The Seraph), Bertie's friend
Rake, Bertie's servant
Cigarette, a French patriot
Colonel Chateauroy, Bertie's enemy
Princess Corona d'Amague, the Seraph's sister
Critique:
Under Two Flags is a tale written by
a master of her craft. As a novel it
combines two popular traditions of
English fiction, the adventure and the
sentimental romance. Ouida was a widely
read writer of her generation, and her
books are still popular with those who
have a fondness for a story of heroic
adventure and characters of moral virtue.
The Story:
The Honorable Bertie Cecil, of the
First Life Guards, although a fashionable
member of his London set and an
admirable fellow in every other respect,
was uncommonly hard put to it for
money. No money-lender in London
would accept his note after he had
mortgaged his whole inheritance. In those
circumstances he depended upon
winning a race with his six-year-old, Forest
King, and he had staked everything on
the race. Nevertheless with good-humored
generosity he lent his younger brother,
Berkeley, fifty pounds. The following
day he rode Forest King to victory over
a difficult course and received the praise
of his lady, a fashionable peeress who
had worn his scarlet and white.
His father, Lord Royallieu, who lived
in the same mortgaged splendor that he
had taught his sons to enjoy, loved his
sons with the exception of Bertie, who
looked too much like his dead wife's
lover and, to the old viscount's
detestation, carried the dead lover's name. The
old man took every occasion to sneer
at Bertie's extravagance, and one day
revealed his suspicions that Bertie was
really the son of Alan Bertie.
Bertie was petted by the world. Sought
after by half the women in London, he
carried on flirtations with many. Lady
Guenevere was one of his conquests.
Rake, his valet, was devoted to him.
Bertie had salvaged Rake from a bad
affair and had treated him as he treated
others, with friendly decency.
While he was disturbed by his
financial affairs, his head groom had promised
to dope Forest King for a fee. When it
was learned that Forest King had been
doped before a race, his friends, far from
blaming him, pretended to agree that the
horse was merely ill, but Bertie felt
himself disgraced.
While Bertie's best friend, Lord
Rockingham, known to his comrades of the
Guards as the Seraph, was attempting
to discover the mystery of Forest King's
condition, he received a report that
Bertie Cecil had forged the Seraph's name
to a note. Bertie could not deny the
charge, for the note had been
presented at a time when he had been
dining with Lady Guenevere. Wishing
to protect her name from scandal, Bertie
allowed himself to be accused.
Knowing that his brother had forged the note
and hoping to protect Berkeley's name
as well, he left London suddenly in
3962

order to escape arrest.
Bertie, accompanied by Rake, made
his escape on Forest King. Rake had
discovered that the groom had doped
Forest King, and he had pummeled him
for it. He and his master rode to a place
of safety; then Bertie ordered Rake to
take Forest King to Lord Rockingham.
He waited in hiding for a time, in the
hope Lady Guenevere would save him by
telling of his whereabouts when the
forged note was presented. She chose
to keep silent, however, holding her
reputation at greater worth than Bertie's
name.
At last, by a throw of the dice, Bertie
decided to cast his lot with the French
Foreign Legion. The faithful Rake
accompanied him. Back in England people
believed Bertie dead as well as ruined.
Rockingham had Forest King; the old
viscount burned Bertie's picture.
As Louis Victor, Bertie made his mark
with his new companions in the Foreign
Legion. They marveled at his skill
with the horses, at his bravery, at his
brilliance at dancing or cards. Bertie
was a veteran Legionnaire when he
received, six months late, the news that
his father had died at the age of ninety.
His older brother inherited the. title.
Cigarette, a woman of independent
spirit, a dancer and singer for the troops,
came to understand and like Bertie. She
warned him against Colonel Chateauroy,
who hated Bertie because of his gallant
record and popularity, and asked him
never to disobey any of the colonel's
unreasonable commands. Partly because
he pitied her, Bertie promised. Shortly
afterward Cigarette saved Bertie's life
from some drunken Arabs. She was in
love with him, but he was indifferent
to her.
Bertie spent his spare time carving
chessmen of ivory and through this
occupation he met the lovely Princess
Corona d'Amague, a woman who had
been unhappily married to a man
injured while saving her brother's life.
Her husband had died soon after, and
the princess had felt ever since a feeling
of responsibility for his death. Bertie
soon fell in love with Princess Corona.
Colonel Chateauroy made it clear
that he would never permit Bertie to be
promoted above the rank of corporal.
Bertie learned that Rake was purposely
getting himself into trouble to prevent
his own promotion, for he did not wish
to outrank his master.
One day, in an old English journal,
Bertie read that his older brother had
died suddenly and that Berkeley had
become Viscount Royallieu.
The regiment was ordered out. In
the fighting that followed, Cigarette saved
the day when she arrived at the head of
a fresh squadron of cavalry. She found
Bertie, badly wounded, on the
battlefield. In the tent to which she had him
carried, Bertie began to talk incoherently
while Cigarette sat beside him. All she
heard him say made her more jealous
of the princess. She also learned that
Bertie was English. No French person
ever hated the English more than she.
At her request Bertie was not told who
had brought him back from the
battlefield and cared for him during his sick
ravings.
Three weeks later Bertie was startled
when the Seraph came as an English
tourist to visit the Legion camp. Not
wishing to encounter his former friend,
Bertie asked for and received permission
to carry dispatches through hostile
territory to another legion post. With
faithful Rake, he rode away on a
mission that meant almost certain death.
Rake was killed in an Arab ambush, but
Bertie delivered his dispatches safely.
On his return trip he stopped at a way
station and there saw his brother
Berkeley, who was one of a party of tourists
traveling with Princess Corona. Bertie
gave no sign of recognition but spurred
his horse and rode on.
Berkeley followed Bertie. When he
caught up with his older brother, he
revealed his fear that Bertie might claim
the title. Indifferent to all except
Berkeley's selfishness, Bertie asked his brother
to leave Algeria at once.

Shortly afterward he discovered that
Princess Corona was really the younger
sister of the Seraph. She also became
aware of Bertie's real name, and insisted
that he make himself known to her
brother. She begged him to claim his
title, but he refused.
Cigarette went to Princess Corona,
who requested her to tell Bertie that the
Seraph was looking for his former friend.
In another interview with Bertie, the
princess asked him to tell his story and
let the world be the judge. As he left
her tent Colonel Chateauroy intercepted
him and insulted the princess. In sudden
rage Bertie struck his superior officer.
Colonel Chateauroy arrested him. Bertie
was sentenced to death.
When Cigarette heard Bertie's fate,
she forced Berkeley, whom she met
accidentally, to acknowledge that Bertie
was in reality his brother, an exile for
Berkeley's crime, and the true heir to
the estate of Royallieu. She carried hei
story to a marshal of France, demanding
that Bertie's honor be saved even though
his life were already forfeited. With a
stay of execution signed by the marshal
she rode at full speed to reach the Legion
camp before the hour set for Bertie's
execution.
The Seraph, not Cigarette, reached
Bertie first. But in spite of the Seraph's
entreaties, Colonel Chateauroy refused to
delay the time of execution.
Cigarette reached the spot just as the
volley was fired. With her own body
she took the bullets intended for Bertie.
She died, the marshal's order safely
delivered. A child of the army and a
soldier of France, she gave her life to
save a comrade. It was a sacrifice that
Bertie and Princess Corona, happily
reunited, were never to forget.
3964

UNDER WESTERN EYES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Conrad (Teodor Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-1924)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland
First published: 1911
Principal characters:
Razumov, a Russian student
Victor Haldin, a revolutionist
Nathalie Haldin, his sister
Mrs. Haldin, mother of Victor and Nathalie
The English Professor, a friend of the Haldins
Critique:
In the later years of Joseph Conrad,
increasing recognition accorded him as a
novelist of genius tended to identify him
almost exclusively as a writer of sea tales.
This tendency distressed Conrad because
he felt that the nature of his writing ran
the risk of being obscured by only one
part of his material. He himself called
attention to those novels which turn
away from exotic places and deal with
various aspects of Europe before World
War I. Occupying a conspicuous place
among the latter is Under Western Eyes.
Despite its initial failure to impress the
public, its clearness of judgment and its
picture of prewar Russia were later
confirmed by its reception in that country
and by the events of the Russian
Revolution. Razumov is one of those lonely
figures so absorbing to Conrad. In his
loneliness Razumov keeps a journal
which eventually falls into the hands of
an elderly Englishman in Geneva, the
friend and adviser of the girl Razumov
loves. Under this Englishman's "western
eyes" the whole episode involving
Razumov is scanned and evaluated. The
fictional result is an interpretation of the
Russian mind and temperament which
has seldom been surpassed for sharpness
of perception and objectivity of
treatment.
gregarious, had been generally respected
by the other students. His silences were
attributed to profundity of thought, and
his behavior was such as to inspire
confidence and good opinion. Razumov,
absorbed in his studies, remained largely
indifferent to the impression which he
made on his fellow students. He dreamed
of winning scholarly honors, and he had
no wish to become involved in the
revolutionary activities which occupied the
minds of such acquaintances as Victor
Haldin, a youth in whose company he
had occasionally spent some time. Razu-
mov's mother was dead; his father, Prince
K , acknowledged his illegitimate son
only to the extent of sending him money
secretly, through an intermediary. As a
result, the unspent feeling which
Razumov was unable to direct toward parents
or family found its way into other
channels. He lavished much of it on his
country and felt, in his loneliness, that if he
were not a Russian, he would not be
anything.
By a strange turn of circumstances the
uneventful pattern of Razumov's life was
abruptly altered. On a certain snowy
morning in St. Petersburg, a sensational
event occurred—a political terrorist
assassinated a prominent government official
and then escaped. An hour or two later,
the unsuspecting Razumov returned to
his apartment to find a visitor awaiting
him. The guest was Victor Haldin.
Presuming on his casual acquaintance with
UNDER WESTERN EYES by Joseph Conrad. By permission of the Trustees of the Estate of Joseph
Conrad; of J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; and of the publishers, Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 1911, 1921,
by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Renewed. All rights reserved.
The Story:
A student, at the St. Petersburg
University, Razumov, while not talkative or
3965

Razumov, Haldin had selected the lat-
ter's quarters as a place of temporary
refuge. Pressed for an explanation, he
confessed that he was the killer being
sought by the police. He asked Razumov
to help him in making his escape from
the city.
Razumov, dismayed, knew he could be
compromised and ruined by Haldin's visit
if it ever became known. However, he
went in search of a sledge-driver who
might spirit Haldin away, but he found
the man helplessly drunk. His dismay
and despair deepening, Razumov decided
that he could not continue to shield
Haldin. In his extremity, he broke an
unwritten rule by calling on Prince K
to ask his advice and beg his protection.
Prince K immediately contacted the
authorities, with the result that Haldin
was promptly apprehended and executed.
Razumov, after extended interrogation
by General T and Councilor Miku-
lin, was released, but not before he had
been marked down, by the councilor's
sharp eyes, as a tool of great potential
usefulness to the government.
Meanwhile, in Geneva, Haldin's
mother and sister waited anxiously for
news of him. When word of his
execution arrived, they were grief-stricken and
bewildered; but their efforts to find out
the exact circumstances of his end were
blocked by the mystery and vagueness
which shrouded the whole affair.
Nathalie, Victor Haldin's sister, was relieved
when she heard that a Russian named
Razumov had arrived in Geneva.
According to the rumors which had been
circulating, this man was an escaped
colleague of her brother's, a fellow
conspirator and revolutionist. Surely he,
better than any other, would be able to
solve the puzzle of her brother's arrest
and execution.
To the Haldins, Razumov proved to be
an elusive and enigmatic quarry. He lost
himself at once in a circle of
revolutionists in exile, including the celebrated
Peter Ivanovitch, the legendary Madame
de S , and the sinister Nikita. Among
them he was admired as a hero. This role
Razumov found increasingly difficult to
maintain, especially after he met
Nathalie Haldin and fell in love with her.
Razumov finally broke under the strain
of keeping up his twofold deception.
Through his journal, which he sent to
Nathalie Haldin, she learned his true
relationship to her brother. Then, on an
impulse, he confessed to the
revolutionists the fact that he was a government
spy. Brutally beaten by Nikita, with his
hearing destroyed, he stumbled in front
of a tramcar. Suffering from two broken
limbs and a crushed side, he was picked
up by passers-by and carried to a
hospital.
The tragic story of Razumov might
have ended there, but his will to live
proved too strong. Nursed back to partial
health by a motherly revolutionist, he
eventually returned to his homeland.
There, in the south of Russia, he shared
a two-room cottage with his Good
Samaritan friend, the devoted Tekla. Ironically,
some of the revolutionists came to regret
the cruel treatment Razumov had
received at their hands. Periodically they
visited his cottage to be stimulated by his
intelligent and original views on politics,
society, and morality.
3966

THE UNDERDOGS
Type of work: Novel
Author: Mariano Azuela (1873-1952)
Type of plot: Social and historical chronicle
Time of plot: 1914-1915
Locale: Zacatecas, northern Mexico
First published: 1915
Principal characters:
Demetrio Macias, a poor Indian of Jalisco
Luis Cervantes, an opportunist journalist and political turncoat
Camila, a village girl
La Pintada, "The Painted Lady," a prostitute and camp follower
"Whitey" Margarito, a sadistic soldier
Critique:
Mariano Azuela knew at first hand the
materials of this novel, for he had served
as a military doctor with Pancho Villa's
Golden Boys. His vivid account of
revolutionary Mexico was first published
serially in a small El Paso newspaper.
Almost forgotten, it was revived in 1924
and won immediate fame for its author.
Pessimism marks this story of those
coming up from below—Los de abajo—at the
beginning of the Mexican Revolution.
This is no overall picture of the struggle,
but a blending of excitement, cruelty,
and beauty as seen through the eyes of
a man practically pushed into the
struggle, a soldier who fought because the
enemy was in front of him. Best known
of Azuela's sixteen novels, The
Underdogs has appeared in dozens of Spanish
editions and has been translated into eight
languages.
then joined a band of sixty sharpshooting
rebel outlaws and helped them to drive
off twice that many soldiers. During the
fighting two of the rebels were killed
and Demetrio was shot in the leg.
For two weeks the outlaws remained
hidden in a native village, looked after
by Indians who hated the government.
Venancio, a barber-surgeon, tended De-
metrio's wound. The village women also
used poultices of laurel and fresh pigeon
blood to heal him. An attractive young
girl named Camila was his nurse.
One day the psuedo-intellectual Luis
Cervantes blundered into the village and
explained that he had deserted the
government forces because his commanding
officer had assigned him to menial duty.
Distrusting Cervantes' glib tongue and
big words, the rebels pretended to
condemn him to death. One outlaw dressed
in a priest's robes and pretended to hear
the deserter's last confession in order to
determine whether he was a spy.
Accepted eventually as a revolutionist,
Cervantes then urged the rebels to join the
great revolutionary leaders of Mexico.
Camila fell in love with him. Although
she made her feelings evident, Cervantes
never encouraged her, not even on the
night of the outlaws' departure. The girl
had never responded to Demetrio's love
making; he was only an Indian.
Hearing from messengers that Huerta's
Federalists had fortified the city of Zaca-
THE UNDERDOGS by Mariano Azuela. Translated by E. Mungula, Jr. By permission of the
publishers, Coward-McCann, Inc. Copyright, 1929, by Coward-McCann, Inc.
The Story:
Demetrio Macfas was a peaceful
Indian who knew nothing about
revolutions. When as a follower of Madera he
was hounded by the political leader of
Jalisco, he fled with his wife and child to
the mountains. There some Federal
soldiers came upon the fugitives at
breakfast and sent Demetrio flying. Wild and
lawless, they would have raped his wife
if he had not returned with a gun. Being
no killer, the Indian let them go free,
only to have them come back with
reinforcements and burn his fields. Demetrio
3967

tecas, Cervantes urged the band to hurry
to join the besiegers and be in at the
capture. He also flattered Demetrio by
telling the Indian that he was more than a
common rebel, that he was a tool of
destiny to win back the rights of the people.
Demetrio planned a surprise attack on
one of the towns along their march, but
an Indian guide betrayed the scheme and
the Federalists were prepared to resist. A
friendly citizen showed the rebels a back
way into the town, however, and the gar
rison was overwhelmed. The rebels found
and stabbed the treacherous guard and
killed the Federal soldiers who had
survived the attack.
By the time General Natera arrived
in the district, Demetrio's reputation had
grown so great that he was made a
colonel in the revolutionary army. Failing to
take Zacatecas, the rebels were forced to
retreat, discarding their booty along the
road. Demetrio thought of going back to
Camila, until news of Villa's coming
excited the rebels and gave them a fresh
incentive.
During the next battle Cervantes and
Solis, an idealist, took refuge in a place
where they thought they would be safe.
While they discussed the significance of
the revolution, a stray bullet killed Solis.
Demetrio's gallant charge turned the tide
of battle for Villa and won him
promotion to the rank of general.
While drinking and boasting in a
tavern after the battle, Demetrio met Whitey
Margarito and La Pintada, a prostitute
with whom he went looking for a hotel
room. Her insistence that as a general he
should occupy a house of his own made
him decide to commandeer a fine
residence. During the ransacking Cervantes
found a valuable diamond ring. The
soldiers tore the pictures from books in the
library and sold the ruined volumes.
Whitey, joining Demetrio's forces, ran
off with Cervantes' girl while Demetrio
was arguing the matter of taking her
instead of La Pintada, of whom he had
tired.
Soon afterward the rebels raided the
house of Don Monico, Demetrio's
landowning enemy, and burned the estate.
Cervantes, having collected much loot,
suggested that he and Demetrio hide it
in case they were forced to leave the
country. Demetrio wished to share it with the
others still an idealist, he believed the
rebel cause would triumph. Because he
wanted only Camila, Cervantes promised
to get her for his leader.
Cervantes went to the village and
persuaded the girl to return with him.
Believing that Cervantes was in love with
her, she was surprised to find herself in
Demetrio's bed. The next morning La
Pintada discovered Camila and offered to
help her escape. Camila refused. She had
found that she liked Demetrio and she
decided to stay with him and the army.
During the march against General
Orozco at Jalisco, Whitey showed his
cruelty when he tortured a prisoner by
tightening a rope around the man's neck
until his eyes bulged. Later, when kind-
hearted Camila persuaded Demetrio to
return ten bushels of confiscated corn to
a starving villager, Whitey gave the man
ten lashes instead. Camila's protests at
the incident won her the enmity of La
Pintada, who had taken up with Whitey
after Demetrio and Cervantes had
discarded her. When Demetrio, siding with
Camila, ordered the camp follower away,
La Pintada became enraged and stabbed
Camila.
By the time Demetrio and his men
reached Aguascalientes they found Villa
and Carranza, once allies, fighting each
other. The Federal forces, taking
advantage of the disunity, defeated Villa at
Celaya. The defeat was a terrible shock
to Demetrio's followers, who could not
bring themselves to believe that their idol
had been beaten. The rebels were forced
to retreat.
Cervantes escaped safely across the
border. From El Paso he wrote to Venan-
cio, the barber-surgeon. He said that
Whitey had shot himself, and he invited
Venancio to join him in Texas, where
with the barber's money they could open
3968

a Mexican restaurant.
After Villa's defeat Demetrio found the
villagers no longer willing to help the
rebels. To them, he and his followers
had become outlaws once more.
Somewhat discouraged, he decided to return
home. He had been away two years and
had seen much, but he could not answer
his wife's questions when she asked him
why he kept on fighting. He lacked
Cervantes' glib tongue to put his true
feelings into words.
Trying to pacify the landowners of the
region, the government sent troops into
the uplands after the outlaw band. Once
more the rebels and the Federal troops
clashed. Outnumbered, the outlaws
perished on the spot where two years before
they had won their first victory. After
the fighting had ended the soldiers found
the body of Demetrio Macfas. His eyes,
forever fixed, still sighted along the
barrel of his gun.
3969

UNDINE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque (1777-1843)
Type of plot: Symbolic allegory
Time of plot: The Middle Ages
Locale: Austria
First published: 1811
Principal chatacters:
Undine, a water spirit
Sir Huldbrand, a knight
Kuhleborn, Undine's uncle
Bertalda, loved by Sir Huldbrand
Critique:
Essentially a fairy tale, Undine is a
highly imaginative and romantic narrative.
Told simply but well, it is in the
tradition of German folklore, and for that
reason it is interesting and enjoyable even
to grownups.
The Story:
Near a forest in Austria there lived an
old fisherman, his wife, and their foster
daughter, Undine. The nearby wood was
said to be inhabited by spirits who were
enemies of the mortal human beings who
lived outside the forest.
One day a young knight, Sir
Huldbrand of Ringstetten, was traveling
through the forest when a storm broke.
As he rode through the gloomy wood he
was pursued by spirits and tormented by
other manifestations of unearthly folk.
At last he came to the edge of the forest
and took refuge in the fisherman's
cottage, where he was given food and shelter.
Sir Huldbrand was amazed by the
beauty of young Undine, who asked him
to tell the story of his adventures in the
forest. The fisherman forbade the telling,
however, and cautioned that it was
unwise to talk of spirits at nighttime.
Undine, rebellious, mischievous, and
untamed, disappeared into the night when
reproved by her foster father.
The fisherman and the knight cried
for her to return, but their voices were
lost in the noise of the wind and rain.
As the storm increased they became more
worried, and finally they set out in search
of her. It was Sir Huldbrand who found
her, safe and sound in the leafy bowei
where she was hiding. When he returned
with her to the fisherman's cottage, he
told her of his adventures in the forest.
Meanwhile the storm raged so furiously
that the cottage had become isolated and
the four people were cut off by the
encircling floods.
Sir Huldbrand then told how he had
happened to be traveling through the
forest. He had fallen in love with
Bertalda, a haughty lady who insisted that
he prove his love and courage by a journey
through the dreadful wood. At that point
in his tale Undine, jealous of the lady,
bit the knight's hand. A few days later,
a priest, his boat lost in the swirling
stream, took refuge on the island. That
night he married Undine and Sir
Huldbrand. The marriage changed the girl
completely. She became submissive,
considerate, full of affection. She had gained
a soul.
After the flood waters had subsided, the
couple left for the knight's domain, Castle
Ringstetten. On their way they went to
pay homage to the duke of the domain,
and in his hall they met Bertalda. Undine
took Bertalda to her bosom and announced
that she had a surprise for her. Shortly
before, Undine had told her husband
that she really was a water spirit, that
she could live on earth only until he
rejected her love; then Kunleborn, who
ruled the waters, would call her back to
her water home. She had lived with the
fisherman and his wife since she had been
a mere child, for she had appeared at
3970

their cottage on the evening of the day
when their own child had, apparently,
been drowned.
Undine's surprise, arranged with the
help of Kuhleborn, the river spirit, was
revealed. Bertalda was the long-lost child
of the fisherman and his wife. But the
proud lady at first refused to accept them
as her true parents. When she demanded
proof of the story, she was identified by
a birthmark on her body. Bertalda's foster
parents were disgusted with her shameless
behavior, and they cast her off. The next
day Bertalda accosted Undine and Sir
Huldbrand outside the duke's castle.
Dressed as a mean fishing girl, she had
been ordered to sell food to learn humility
and the dignity of toil so that she could
rejoin her real parents. Pitying her,
Undine and Sir Huldbrand insisted that she
live with them at Castle Ringstetten.
Life did not always go smoothly at the
castle. One day Undine, who was loved
by the servants, ordered the well to be
sealed. But Bertalda, who wanted the
water from it to remove her freckles,
ordered the seal removed. Sir Huldbrand
insisted that Undine was mistress of the
castle and the well remained sealed.
Bertalda then decided to go to the
fisherman's cottage. She went through the
Black Valley, where Kuhleborn, who
hated her, put all sorts of difficulties in
her way. At last she was rescued by Sir
Huldbrand and Undine, who had
followed her flight.
Later the three started down the
Danube to visit Vienna. Everything went
wrong, and the sailors thought the boat
was bewitched. Finally, in exasperation,
Sir Huldbrand forgot Undine's advice not
to remonstrate with her whenever they
were close to water. He told her that he
was tired of her and her spirit relatives
and ordered her to return to her watery
home. Although he was sorry as soon as
he had spoken those words, he could not
recall them; Undine had already
disappeared beneath the waves.
At first Sir Huldbrand grieved, but as
time passed he thought less often of
Undine. At length he and Bertalda decided
to be married. But the priest who had
married Sir Huldbrand to Undine refused
to perform the ceremony, and so they
were married by another. Bertalda then
commanded the workmen to remove the
stone from the well which Undine had
ordered sealed. All were terrified when
a white figure emerged from it. It was
Undine. She went into the castle and told
Sir Huldbrand that he must die.
Sir Huldbrand expired while he looked
upon her face, and Undine vanished.
There were some who said that she
reentered the well. At the funeral Undine
joined the mourners kneeling by the
grave, but at the end of the service she
disappeared. Then on the spot where she
had knelt water sprang forth and a stream
appeared to flow about the knight's grave.
It was Undine surrounding her lover in
death.
3971

THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER
Type of work: Novel
Author: Thomas Nash (1567-1601)
Type of plot: Picaresque romance
Time of plot: Reign of King Henry VIII
Locale: England and Europe
First published: 1594
Principal characters:
Jack Wilton, a page for King Henry VIII and a soldier of fortune
Diamante, a rich widow, later Jack's wife
The Earl of Surrey, Jack's friend and benefactor
Hjeraclide de Imola, hostess to Jack and Diamante in Rome
Critique:
The Unfortunate Traveller, Or, The
Life of Jack Wilton was written almost
a hundred and fifty years too early to be
classified as a novel. Not a novel in the
generally accepted sense of that term,
the book is, however, an important
forerunner of the English novel as it was to
develop in the eighteenth century. The
Unfortunate Traveller, along with Sir
Philip Sidney's Arcadia, was one of the
high points of the literature of the last
years of the sixteenth century. Nash's
realism in this work is high, yet he catered
also to the Elizabethan taste for the
romantic and far-fetched, especially in
dealing with Italy and the Italians.
Seldom has a work, even in the twentieth
century, described in such detail the
horrors of public torture and execution,
and the incidents of a rape and a looting.
Throughout life a very witty satirist, Nash
could not, even in this work, resist the
opportunity to find fault; he does so with
the stupidity of professional military men
and with the inability of the universities
to entertain royalty satisfactorily.
The Story:
Jack Wilton was a page serving in the
army of King Henry VIII of England
when his adventures began. While the
English troops were encamped near Tur-
win, in France, Jack, pretending that he
had overheard the king and his council
planning to do away with a certain sutler,
convinced the sutler that he ought to
give away all his supplies to the soldiers
and then throw himself on the king's
mercy. The sutler, completely fooled, did
just that. The king, enjoying the prank,
gave him a pension and forgave Jack.
Shortly after that escapade Jack fell in
with a captain who forced Jack to help
him get rich by throwing dice. Jack, tiring
of his subservience to the captain,
persuaded the officer that the best means of
getting ahead in the army was to turn
spy and seek out information valuable to
the king. The gullible captain, entering
the French lines, was discovered by the
French and almost killed before he was
sent hustling back to the English camp.
The campaign over, Jack found himself
back in England once again. When the
peacetime duties of a page began to pall,
he left the king's household and turned
soldier of fortune. After crossing the
English Channel to find some means of
making a livelihood, he reached the
French king too late to enter that
monarch's service against the Swiss, and so he
traveled on to Miinster, Germany. There
he found John Leiden leading the
Baptists against the Duke of Saxony. He
observed a notorious massacre, in which the
Baptists were annihilated because they
refused to carry the weapons of war into
battle. After the battle Jack met the Earl
of Surrey, who was on the continent at
the time.
Surrey, having been acquainted with
Jack at court, was glad to see the page
and confided to him his love for Ger-
aldine, a lovely Florentine. Surrey
proposed that Jack travel with him to Italy
in search of the woman. Jack, having no
3972

future in sight, readily consented to
accompany the earl.
Jack and Surrey then proceeded
southward out of Germany into Italy. As they
traveled Surrey proposed to Jack that they
exchange identities for a time, so that the
nobleman could behave in a less seemly
fashion. Jack, pleased at the prospect of
being an earl, even temporarily, agreed.
Upon their arrival in Venice, on the
way to Florence, they were taken up by
a courtesan named Tabitha, who tried
to kill the man she thought was the Earl
of Surrey, with the true earl as her
accomplice. Surrey and Jack, turning the
tables on her, caused her and her pander
to be executed for attempting to conspire
against a life. In turning the tables,
however, Jack came into possession of some
counterfeit money. When they used the
coins, Jack and the earl were seized as
counterfeiters and sentenced to death.
While languishing in prison, Jack met
Diamante, the wife of a goldsmith who
had imprisoned her because he suspected
her of infidelity. The page made her his
mistress after assuring her that thereby
she revenged herself on the husband who
thought little of her chastity.
After a few weeks Jack and the earl
were released through an English
gentleman who had heard of their plight and
had secured the efforts of the poet Aretine
to prove to the court that Tabitha and
her procurer had been the real
counterfeiters. Aretine also saw to it that
Diamante was released from prison to become
the mistress of Jack once again. Within
a few weeks Diamante's husband died of
the plague. Jack married Diamante and,
in view of his new fortune, decided to
travel.
He left the Earl of Surrey in Venice,
but the pleasure of bearing the
nobleman's title was so great that Jack kept it.
After some time Surrey heard that there
was another earl by the same name and
went to investigate. Learning that the
double was Jack, Surrey forgave him,
and they started once again on their
interrupted trip to Florence. Upon their
arrival the earl, wishing to do battle to
prove his love for Geraldine, issued a
challenge to all the knights and
gentlemen of the city. The tourney was a great
success, with Surrey carrying ofF all the
honors of the day. After that event Surrey
and Jack parted company. Jack, still
accompanied by Diamante, went on to
Rome.
There they lived with Johannes and
Heraclide de Imola. During the summer
Signor de Imola died of the plague.
Shortly after his death and before his
corpse could be removed from the house,
bandits broke in and raped Heraclide de
Imola and Diamante. Jack, overpowered
by the bandits, was unable to help the
women. Heraclide killed herself after the
attack. When police broke into the house
they blamed Jack for what had happened.
He was unable to clear himself because
the only other witness was Diamante,
whom the bandits had kidnaped.
A banished English earl, appearing in
time to save Jack from the hangman's
noose, produced witnesses to show that
one of the bandits had made a deathbed
confession clearing the page of any part
in the crimes. Released, Jack went in
search of Diamante. While searching for
her he fell through an unbarred cellar
door into the house of a Jew, and there
he found Diamante making love to an
apprentice. The Jew, roused by the noise
of the fall and Jack's anger at Diamante,
came into the cellar and accused them
both of breaking into his house and
corrupting his apprentice. Under the law,
they became the Jew's bond servants.
Jack was turned over to another Jew, the
pope's physician, to be used in a
vivisection.
He was saved from that horrid death
when one of the pope's mistresses fell in
love with him and used her influence to
secure his person for herself. Diamante
also fell into the woman's hands. Jack
and Diamante, keeping their previous
relations a secret, hoped in that way to
be able to escape from the house. One
day, when the woman went to a religious
3973

festival, they escaped, taking with them
as much loot as they could carry.
Traveling northward, Jack went to
Bologna, where he saw a famous criminal
executed. The assassin, Cutwolfe, had
confessed to murdering the bandit who
had led the assault on Heraclide de Imola
and Diamante months before. Moving on
into France, Jack found the English
armies once again in the field and
returned to King Henry's service.
3974

U. S. A.
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Dos Passos (1896- )
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: 1900-1935
Locale: The United States
First published: 1930, 1932, 1936
Principal characters:
Fainy McCreary (Mac), a labor organizer
Janey Williams, a private secretary
Joe Williams, her brother
J. Ward Moorehouse, a public relations executive
Eleanor Stoddard, an interior decorator
Charley Anderson, an airplane manufacturer
Richard Ellsworth Savage, Moorehouse's assistant
Eveline Hutchtns, Eleanor Stoddard's partner
Anne Elizabeth Trent (Daughter), a relief worker
Ben Compton, a radical
Mary French, a labor worker
Margo Dowling, a movie star
Critique:
U. S. A. is a collective novel in the
sense that it deals with a great variety
of characters, each moving upon his own
social level, but all presented within the
limits of a single novel. The result is
a complete cross-section of American life
covering the political, social, and
economic history of the United States from
the beginning of the century to the
depression-ridden, war-threatened thirties.
In addition to the life stories of his
people, Dos Passos employs three
technical devices to make his survey more
complete: the Newsreel, quotations from
newspapers, speeches, popular songs;
the» Camera Eye, brief impressionistic
sketches from the author's own life;
and biographies of public figures, such
as radicals, inventors, and statesmen
typical of their times. No other writer
has attempted a wider panoramic view
of our national life. The separate titles
of Dos Passos* trilogy are The 42nd
Parallel, Nineteen Nineteen, and The
Big Money.
The Story:
The Spanish-American War was over.
Politicians with mustaches said that
America was now ready to lead the
world.
Mac McCreary was a printer for a
fly-by-night publisher in Chicago. Later
he worked his way to the West Coast.
There he got work as a printer in
Sacramento and married Maisie Spencer, who
could never understand his radical views.
They quarreled and he went to Mexico
to work in the revolutionary movement
there.
Janey Williams, growing up in
Washington, D. C, became a stenographer.
She was always ashamed when her sailor
brother, Joe, showed up, and even more
ashamed of him after she became
secretary to J. Ward Moorehouse. Of all
Moorehouse's female acquaintances, she
was the only one who never became his
mistress.
J. Ward Moorehouse's boyish manner
and blue eyes were the secret of his
success. They attracted Annabelle
Strang, the wealthy nymphomaniac he
later divorced. Gertrude Staple, his
second wife, helped to make him a
prominent public relations expert. His
shrewdness made him an ideal man for
government service in France during World
U. S. A. by John Dos Passos. By permission of the author and the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co.
Copyright, 1930, 1932, 1933. 1934. 1935. 1936. 1937. by John Dot Passes,
3975

War I. After the war he became one of
the nation's leading advertising
executives.
Because Eleanor Stoddard hated the
sordid environment of her childhood
her delicate, arty tastes led her naturally
into partnership with Eveline Hutchins
in the decorating business, and eventually
to New York and acquaintanceship with
J. Ward Moorehouse. In Europe with the
Red Cross during the war, she lived
with Moorehouse. Back in New York
in the twenties she used her connections
in shrewd fashion and became engaged
to a member of the Russian nobility.
Charley Anderson had been an aviator
in the war. A successful invention and
astute opportunism made him a wealthy
airplane manufacturer. He married a
wife who had little sympathy for his
interest in mechanics. In Florida, after
a plane crash, he met Margo Dowling,
an actress. Charley Anderson's series
of drunks ended in a grade crossing
accident.
Joe Williams was a sailor who had
been on the beach in Buenos Aires. In
Norfolk he met Delia, who urged him
to give up seafaring and settle down.
Unable to hold a job, he shipped out
again and almost lost his life when the
ship he was on was sunk by a German
submarine. When Joe got his third
mate's license, he and Delia were
married. He was ill in the East Indies,
arrested in New York for not carrying a
draft card, and torpedoed once more
off Spain. Delia was unfaithful to him.
Treated coldly the few times he looked up
his sister Janey, he shipped for Europe
once more. One night in St. Nazaire
he attacked a huge Senegalese who was
dancing with a girl he knew. His skull
was crushed when he was hit over the
head with a bottle.
Teachers encouraged Dick Savage in
his literary talents. During his teens
he worked at a summer hotel and there
he slept with a minister's wife who
shared his taste in poetry. A government
official paid his way through Harvard,
where Dick cultivated his estheticism
and mild snobbery before he joined the
Norton-Harjes ambulance service and
went to Europe. There some of his
letters about the war came to the attention
of censorship officials and he was shipped
back to the United States. His former
sponsor got him an officer's commission
and he returned to France. In Italy he
met a relief worker named Anne
Elizabeth Trent, who was his mistress for a
time. When he returned to the United
States, he became an idea man for
Moorehouse's advertising agency.
Eveline Hutchins, who had a small
artistic talent, became Eleanor
Stoddard's partner in a decorating
establishment in New York. All her life she
tried to escape from boredom through
sensation. Beginning with the Mexican
artist who was her first lover, she had
a succession of affairs. In France, where
she was Eleanor's assistant in the Red
Cross, she married a shy young soldier
named Paul Johnson. Later she had a
brief affair with Charley Anderson.
Dissatisfied, she decided at last that life
was too dull for endurance and died
from an overdose of sleeping pills.
Anne Elizabeth Trent, known as
Daughter, was the child of moderately
wealthy Texans. In New York she met
Webb Cruthers, a young anarchist.
One day, seeing a policeman kick a
woman picketer in the face, Daughter
attacked him with her fists. Her night
in jail disturbed her father so much that
she returned to Texas and worked in
Red Cross canteens. Later she went
overseas. There she met Dick Savage.
Pregnant, she learned he had no intention of
marrying her. In Paris she went on a
drunken spree with a French aviator
and died with him in a plane crash.
Benny Compton was the son of Jewish
immigrants. After six months in jail for
making radical speeches, he worked his
way west through Canada. In Seattle
he and other agitators were beaten by
deputies. Benny returned East. One day
police broke up a meeting where he was
speaking. On his twenty-third birthday
Benny went to Adanta to serve a ten-
3976

year sentence. Released after the war,
he lived for a time with Mary French,
a fellow traveler in the party.
Mary French spent her childhood in
Trinidad, where her father, a physician,
did charity work among the native
miners. Mary, planning to become a
social worker, spent her summers at
Jane Addams' Hull House. She went
to Washington as secretary to a union
official, and later worked as a union
organizer in New York City. There
she took care of Ben Compton after
his release from Atlanta. While
working with the Sacco-Vanzetti Committee
she fell in love with Don Stevens, a
fellow party member. Summoned to
Moscow with a group of party leaders,
Stevens returned to New York with a
wife assigned to him by the party. Mary
went back to her committee work for
laboring men's relief.
Margo Dowling grew up in a rundown
house in Rockaway, Long Island, with
her drunken father and Agnes, hei
father's mistress. At last Agnes left hei
lover and took Margo with her. In New
York Agnes became the common-law wife
of an actor named Frank Mandeville.
One day, while drunk, Mandeville raped
the girl. Margo ran off to Cuba with
Tony, an effeminate Cuban guitar player,
whom she later deserted. She was a
cheerful companion for Charley Anderson,
who gave her a check for five thousand
dollars on his deathbed. In Hollywood
she met Sam Margolies, a successful
producer, who made a star of her.
Jobless and hungry, a young
hitchhiker stood by the roadside. Overhead
droned a plane in which people of the
big money rode the skyways. Below the
hitchhiker with empty belly thumbed
cars speeding by. The haves and the
have-nots—that was America in the
depression thirties.
3977

UTOPIA
Type of work: Humanistic treatise
Author: Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
Time: Reign of Henry VII of England
Locale: Antwerp, England, Utopia
First published: 1516
Principal characters:
Thomas More, the author
Peter Giles, a citizen of Antwerp and a friend of Thomas More
Raphael Hythloday, a traveler and acquaintance of Peter Giles
How to make a better world for men
to live in has fascinated the minds of
thinkers in every age. From Plato to the
Eresent day, a span of almost two and a
alf millenniums, men have been
thinking and writing about what the world
would be like if men could create an
earthly paradise. One of the most famous
pieces of such thought and writing is Sir
Thomas More's Utopia, a work so famous
in Western civilization that its title has
come to be symbolic in our minds for any
idealized state. Originally written in
Latin, the international language of
medieval and Renaissance Europe, the book
was widely read, and as early as 1551 a
translation into English was made by
Ralph Robinson, a London goldsmith.
The book is in two parts, with the
second part, curiously enough, written first,
in 1515, and the introductory half
written in the following year. Tne book
begins with a narrative framework in which
More tells how he traveled to Antwerp on
a royal mission and there met Peter Giles,
a worthy citizen of Antwerp, who in turn
introduced him to Raphael Hythloday,
whose name means literally in Greek "a
talker of nonsense." Hythloday proved to
be more than a mere mariner, for in his
conversation he appeared to More to be a
man of ripe wisdom and rare experience.
The fictional Hythloday was supposedly
a companion of Amerigo Vespucci when
that worthy was supposed to have made
his voyages to America. It was on one of
his voyages with Vespucci that
Hythloday, according to his own account,
discovered the fabled land of Utopia,
somewhere in the oceans near the Western
hemisphere.
Actually, the first part of Utopia does
not deal with the legendary island; in it
Hythloday tells how, during the reign of
King Henry VII, he visited England,
conversed with Cardinal Morton, and
suggested to that Churchman, who was
Henry VIFs chancellor, some reforms
which might benefit England. Among the
reforms the fictional Hythloday suggested
were the abolishment of the death
penalty for theft, the prevention of gambling,
less dependence upon the raising of sheep
for wool, the disuse of mercenary soldiers,
cheaper prices for all commodities, and
an end to the enclosure of the common
lands for the benefit of great and wealthy
landlords. Although Cardinal Morton is
made to listen intently to Hythloday's
suggestions, More introduces a lawyer
who objects that Hythloday's reforms
could not be undertaken and that they
would not be deemed desirable by anyone
who knew the history and customs of
England.
In the first part of his Utopia, More is
obviously pointing out some of the social
and economic evils in sixteenth-century
European life. More than that, he is
suggesting that only an outsider can see the
faults with an objective eye. The
introduction of the lawyer's objections, which
are cut short by Cardinal Morton,
suggest also that More discerned in sixteenth-
century society persons who opposed
reform and who sought reasons for doing
so. Part one of the Utopia is More's way
of preparing the reader for the section in
which his ideal realm is delineated.
In the second part, Hythloday
expounds at length about the culture of the
mythical land of Utopia, which he had
3978

visited during his travels. Hythloday
describes Utopia as an island kingdom which
is crescent shaped and about five hundred
miles in perimeter, separated from other
lands by a man-made channel constructed
by its founder, the fabulous King Uto-
pus, who saw that the Utopian
experiment, if it were to succeed, must be
isolated and protected from the
encroachments of warlike and predatory
neighbors. The island is divided into fifty-four
shires, or counties, each with its own
town, no town more than a day's walking
journey from its neighbors. The central
city, Amaurote, is the capital, the seat of
the prince who is the island's nominal
ruler.
The government of Utopia is relatively
simple and largely vested in older men,
in patriarchal fashion. Each unit of thirty
families is ruled by one man chosen by
election every year. Each ten groups of
families elect a member of the island
council. This council in turn elects the
prince, who serves throughout his
lifetime unless deposed because of tyranny.
The council meets every three days to
take up matters of consequence to the
people, and no decision is made on the
same day the problem is advanced, lest
undue haste cause mistakes.
It is not in government alone that
More introduces suggestions for reform
in his Utopia. In this ideal state every
one works, each man having a trade or
craft, except the unusually talented who
are selected for training and service in
the academy of learning. The work day is
six hours long, with the time divided
equally between the morning and the
afternoon. Each person spends a two-year
period working as a farmer in the shire
outside the city in which he resides. Since
everyone works, there is more than
enough food and all other commodities
for the inhabitants. All goods are
community-owned, with each person
guarding what is given him for the benefit of
the commonwealth. The tastes of the
people are simple; no one, having enough for
himself, desires to have more than his
fellows. Even the prince of Utopia is
designated only by the symbol of a sheaf
of grain, symbol of plenty. Each person
is garbed in durable clothing of leather,
linen, or wool. Jewelry is given to
children to play with, so that everyone
associates such baubles with childishness.
Gold and silver are despised, being used
for chamber pots, chains for slaves, and
the marks of criminal conviction.
In the dialogue Sir Thomas More
interjects some objections to the communal
idea, but this is the only point on which
he seems to have reservations; yet even
on this point Hythloday*s answers to his
objections satisfy him.
Violence, bloodshed, and vice, says
Hythloday, have been done away with in
Utopia. Lest bloodshed of any kind
corrupt the people, slaves are required to
slaughter the cattle. Dicing and gambling
are unknown. The people choose instead
to labor for recreation in their gardens,
improve their homes, attend humanistic
lectures, enjoy music, and converse
profitably with one another. The sick are
provided for in spacious hospitals erected
in each quarter of each city. In the event
of a painful and incurable illness, the
priests consult with the patient and
encourage him to choose death administered
painlessly by the authorities. Although no
one is required to do so, everyone eats in
mess halls where slaves prepare the meals
under the supervision of the wives of the
family group. At mealtime young and old
eat together, except for children under
five; and enlightening, pleasant
conversation is encouraged.
The Utopian criminal is enslaved,
rather than put to death, as he was in
sixteenth-century England. Adultery is
regarded as a crime and punished by
slavery. Marriage for love is encouraged,
but also prudence in selecting a mate.
Males must be twenty-two and women
eighteen before marriage is permitted.
The welfare of the family is a state
matter, since the family is the basic unit of
the Utopian state. The people are anxious
for the commonwealth to be rich, for the
Utopians buy off their enemies and use
their wealth to hire foreign mercenary
3979

soldiers; they hope in this manner to
encourage potential enemies to murder one
another.
The Utopians are described as a
religious people who practice toleration
almost unknown in Catholic Tudor
England. Some are Christians; others
worship God in other ways. Atheism and
militant sectarianism are alike forbidden.
Two points should be made in
connection with Sir Thomas More's work.
One is that his borrowings from Plato
and other earlier authors did not prevent
him from adding much that was his own
in theory and practice. The second point
is that in the four and a half centuries
since the writing of Utopia some of the
author's ideas have been put into effect
—unlikely as they may have appeared to
his contemporaries. We may never in
human society come to the Utopian ideal,
but surely we are closer than men were
in the sixteenth century. Perhaps some
of the credit should go to Sir Thomas
More.
3980

VANESSA
Type of work: Novel
Author: Hugh Walpole (1884-1941)
Type of plot: Historical chronicle
Time of plot: Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: England
First published: 1933
Principal characters:
Vanessa Paris, daughter of Adam Paris
Benjie, her cousin and lover
Tom, Benjie's son
Saixy, daughter of Vanessa and Benjie
Ellis, Vanessa's husband
Critique:
Vanessa, the last novel in the Hemes
chronicle, brings the family to the 1930's.
Like its three predecessors, Vanessa is
concerned with many people and many
years, and the multiplicity of characters
becomes necessarily more marked and
confusing. Although many readers of
the novel are lost in trying to follow the
fortunes of so many descendants of the
earlier Hemes, Walpole does accomplish
very well what appears to be a chief aim
—to show that the strength of the Her-
ries family is a strength of England and
that its weakness is a national defect.
The Story:
Vanessa was fifteen when her
grandmother, Judith Paris, died. At the funeral
Adam, her sincere but unpolished father,
made a speech which was admired only
by Vanessa and her mother, Margaret.
Adam loved his mother well and spoke
with too much sincerity. His numerous
relatives would rather have heard a
eulogy of the proud family of Herries.
At the funeral Vanessa noticed
everyone, and her beauty made even the
most distant relatives notice her. She
had special interest, however, for her
cousin Benjie. Already she knew she
loved him. Benjie was a rascal who could
not fit in well with his haughty family.
He was capable of hard work and
common sense for a while, but he had
sporadic fits of wildness. Some of his
relatives believed that no good could come
from Benjie's heritage. His uncle had
killed his father. One grandfather had
committed suicide. The other one was
living out a mad dotage.
Vanessa also noticed hesitant, stiff Ellis
Herries, her distant cousin. Ellis
managed to remark that it was a nice day. As
soon as Vanessa agreed, she ran out—
to meet Benjie.
Adam did not like to have her go
walking with Benjie, even though Benjie
was personable. Benjie kissed Vanessa,
however, and she promised to marry him
when she grew up. Vanessa was so good
and beautiful that Benjie had qualms
about such a promise. He told her the
truth about his character and his
wildness, and he attacked her faith in God.
But Vanessa resolved to hold fast to her
promise.
In 1880 Vanessa became engaged to
Benjie. Still uneasy about his unworthi-
ness, Benjie agreed that no one should
know of the engagement and that they
should not meet for two years. Then if
they still wanted to do so, they would
be married.
In the meantime Vanessa went to
London to stay with her city cousins.
Dressed in fashionable clothes, lovely
Vanessa soon became an admired belle.
She had many proposals of marriage, the
most insistent from her cousin Ellis.
Ellis was good and sober, already a re-
VANESSA#by Hugh Walpole By permission of the E*ecutor», estate of Sir Hugh Walpole, and the
publishers, Messrs. MacMMan & Co.. London. Copyright, 1933, by DouUeday, Doran k Co., Inc!
3981

spected financier. But Vanessa thought
only of Benjie.
Vanessa returned home to Fell House
to care for her ailing father and wait
for the two years to end. Then, in 1882,
Fell House burned down and Adam
perished in the blaze. Too distraught to
think of marriage at that time, Vanessa
put Benjie off. Several weeks later she
went to The Fortress to stay with
Elizabeth, Benjie's mother, and to await the
return of her fianc6. When he did come
back, Vanessa knew that something had
happened.
She soon learned the story. Sometime
before Benjie had become acquainted
with the Halliday family and had been
attracted to their daughter Marion. After
Adam Paris died, he went to visit the
Hallidays. Following an evening of gaiety,
he went upstairs to bed. In his room
he found Marion, who was waiting for
him at the urging of her mother. Marion
became pregnant, and she and Benjie
were married. Without bitterness
Vanessa wished him a happy marriage and
went back to London.
At the age of twenty-six, honored as
the reigning beauty of London society,
Vanessa finally decided to give in to Ellis
and be kind to him. So Ellis and Vanessa
were married, and Vanessa became the
great lady of highly fashionable Hill
House.
One day, quite by accident, she saw
Benjie and his son Tom at the Jubilee
Celebration. She did not talk with him,
but she did learn that Marion had left
Benjie for another man. After struggling
with her inclinations for some time, she
met Benjie again and visited with him
as an old friend.
Meanwhile it was becoming more and
more impossible for her to live with Ellis.
His mind was weakening rapidly and he
had delusions of persecution. To the
outward eye, however, he still was the
sober financier. One night he locked
himself and Vanessa in their room and
announced that he intended to cut* her
throat and then his own. She talked him
out of the notion, but she was afraid of
him from that time on.
Then Ellis brought in two elderly
cousins to take charge of the house and
to spy on Vanessa. As his next step he
engaged an obliging doctor to interview
his wife. Before Vanessa was quite aware
of what was happening, she learned that
she was to be confined in an asylum for
the insane. In her fear and helplessness
she turned to Benjie for help. At last,
when both were nearing forty and
without benefit of marriage, Vanessa and
Benjie went away to live together.
Tom, Benjie's son, and Vanessa
became great friends, and for a time she
lived a happy life at The Fortress.
Gradually Benjie's absences from home
became less frequent, and sometimes
Vanessa would accompany him on his week-
long rambles. On one occasion they were
caught in a storm. Much upset and
exhausted, he and Vanessa found shelter
in a farmhouse, and there among
strangers their daughter Sally was born.
But the household at The Fortress was
soon broken up. Ellis' mind gave way
:ompletely, and he could amuse himself
only by playing with toys. He cried much
of the time for Vanessa, until it seemed
that he could not live long without her.
At last Vanessa took Sally to London
and vowed she would stay with Ellis
until he died.
Ironically, Ellis became stronger and
better, and for years Benjie could not
jee Vanessa. In fact, Vanessa died before
Ellis. At her deathbed Benjie and Ellis
met without rancor.
The rest of the numerous Herries
family were all stolid, respectable people,
still pillars of Victorian rectitude. Only
Benjie and Sally were free and untram-
meled. Sally expected to marry Arnold
Young, and even became his mistress
for a year. But Arnold's mother objected
to the marriage. Benjie's reputation was
bad, and Sally herself was illegitimate.
At last Arnold married another woman.
Benjie continued his irregular life.
in South Africa he had lost an arm
fighting.the Boers. In World War I, in
spite of being over sixty years old, he
3982

served with the Russians. At the age of
seventy he was still brown of skin and
spare of body. Sally, too, became
respectable and redeemed herself in the
eyes of her relatives. At a social
gathering she met a blind French veteran who
was working for the League of Nations
in Berlin. She married him and went to
Berlin to aid the cause of international
peace. From that time on she rarely saw
her father or any other members of the
Herries family.
Only Benjie, of all the Herries, was
still unconventional. After he was
seventy, he bought a caravan and with
one manservant lived a gipsy life. He
intended to spend his last days going
to fairs and visiting farm folk.
Faithfully he did his setting up exercises and
took cold showers out of doors. The other
Herries always said that he was truly the
great-grandson of that Francis Herries
who married Mirabell Starr, the gipsy—
lusty old Rogue Herries of whom the
family was now half ashamed, half proud.
3983

VANITY FAIR
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Type of 'plot: Social satire
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: England and Europe
First published: 1847-1848
Principal characters:
Becky Sharp, an adventuress
Amelia Seduey, her friend
Joseph Sedley (Jos), Amelia's brother
Rawdon Crawley, Becky's husband
Miss Crawley, Rawdon s wealthy aunt
Old Sir Pitt Crawley, Rawdon's father
Young Sir Pitt Crawley, Rawdon's brother
George Osborne, Amelia's husband
Captain William Dobbin, Amelia's friend
Critique:
Vanity Fair, the best known of
Thackeray's works, has justly joined the
ranks of the classics, for in it Thackeray
has created characters as great as any in
English literature. Most of his people are
not good people, but then they were
not intended to be. Thackeray shows
that goodness often goes hand in hand
with stupidity and folly, that cleverness
is often knavery. A cynical story, this
novel was intended to expose social
hypocrisy and sham. Although
Thackeray was frankly moralistic, his moral
does not in any way overshadow a
magnificent novel or the life-like characters he
created.
The Story:
Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley
became good friends while they were
students at Miss Pinkerton's School for
girls. It was proof of Amelia's good,
gentle nature that she took as kindly as
she did to her friend, who was generally
disliked by all the other girls. Amelia
overlooked as much as she could the
evidences of Becky's selfishness.
After the two girls had finished their
education at the school, Becky
accompanied her friend to her home for a
short visit. There she first met Joseph
Sedley, Amelia's older brother Jos, who
was home on leave from military
service in India. Jos was a shy man, unused
to women, and certainly to women as
designing and flirtatious as Becky. His
blundering and awkward manners did
not appeal to many women, but Becky
was happy to overlook these faults when
she compared them with his wealth and
social position. Amelia innocently
believed that her friend had fallen in love
with her brother, and she discreetly tried
to further the romance.
To this end she arranged a party at
Vauxhall, at which Becky and Jos, along
with Amelia and her admirer, George
Osborne, were present. There was a
fifth member of the group, Captain
Dobbin, a tall, lumbering fellow, also in
service in India. He had long been
in love with Amelia, but he recognized
how much more suitable for her was the
dashing George Osborne. But all the
maneuvering of the flirtatious Becky and
the amiable Amelia was not sufficient
to corner Jos, who drank too much punch
and believed that he had made a silly
figure of himself at the party. A day
or so later a letter delivered to the Sedley
household announced that Jos was ill
and planned to return to India as soon
as possible.
Since there was no longer any reason
for Becky to remain with the Sedleys.
she left Amelia, after many tears and
kisses, to take a position as governess to
two young girls at Queen's Crawley. The
3984

head of the household was Sir Pitt
Crawley, a cantankerous old man
renowned for his miserliness. Lady
Crawley was an apathetic soul who lived in
fear of her husband's unreasonable
outbursts. Deciding that she would have
nothing to fear from her timid mistress,
Becky spent most of her time ingratiating
herself with Sir Pitt and ignoring her
pupils. Becky also showed great interest
in Miss Crawley, a spinster aunt of the
family, who was exceedingly wealthy.
Miss Crawley paid little attention to Sir
Pitt and his children, but she was fond
of Rawdon Crawley, a captain in the
army and a son of Sir Pitt by a previous
marriage. So fond was she of her
dashing young nephew that she supported him
through school and paid all his gambling
debts with hardly a murmur.
During Becky's stay, Miss Crawley
visited Sir Pitt only once, at a time when
Rawdon was also present. The handsome
young dragoon soon fell prey to Becky's
wiles and followed her about devotedly.
Becky also took care to ingratiate herself
with the holder of the purse strings. Miss
Crawley found Becky witty and
charming, and did not attempt to disguise her
opinion that the little governess was
worth all the rest of the Crawley
household put together. And so Becky found
herself in a very enviable position. Sir
Pitt was obviously interested in her, as
was his handsome son. Miss Crawley
insisted that Becky accompany her back
to London.
Becky had been expected to return to
her pupils after only a short stay with
Miss Crawley. But Miss Crawley was
taken ill and she refused to allow anyone
but her dear Becky to nurse her.
Afterward there were numerous other excuses
to prevent the governess from returning
to her duties. Certainly Becky was not
unhappy. Rawdon Crawley was a
constant caller, and a devoted suitor for
Becky's hand. When the news arrived
that Lady Crawley had died, no great
concern was felt by anyone. But a few
days later Sir Pitt himself appeared,
asking to see Miss Sharp. Much to Becky's
surprise, the baronet threw himself at
her feet and asked her to marry him.
Regretfully, she refused his offer. She
was already secretly married to Rawdon
Crawley.
Following this disclosure, Rawdon and
his bride left for a honeymoon at
Brighton. Old Miss Crawley, chagrined and
angry, took to her bed, changed her
will, and cut off her nephew without
a shilling. Sir Pitt raved with anger.
Amelia's marriage had also precipitated
a family crisis. Her romance with George
had proceeded with good wishes on both
sides until Mr. Sedley, through some
unfortunate business deals, lost most of
his money. Then George's snobbish
father ordered his son to break his
engagement to a penniless woman. George,
whose affection for Amelia was never
stable, was inclined to accept this
parental command. But Captain Dobbin, who
saw with distress that Amelia was
breaking her heart over George, finally
prevailed upon the young man to go through
with the marriage, regardless of his
father's wishes. When the couple arrived
in Brighton for their honeymoon, they
found Rawdon and Becky living there
happily in penniless extravagance.
Captain Dobbin also arrived in
Brighton. He had agreed to act as intercessor
with Mr. Osborne. But his hopes of
reconciling father and son were shattered
when Mr. Osborne furiously dismissed
Captain Dobbin and took immediate
steps to disown George. Captain Dobbin
also brought the news that the army
had been ordered to Belgium. Napoleon
had landed from Elba. The Hundred
Days had begun.
In Brussels the two couples met again.
George Osborne was infatuated with
Becky. Jos Sedley, now returned from
India, and Captain Dobbin were also
stationed in that city, Captain Dobbin
in faithful attendance upon neglected
Amelia. Everyone was waiting for the
next move Napoleon would make, but
in the meantime the gaiety of the Duke
of Wellington's forces was widespread.
The Osbornes and Crawleys attended the
3985

numerous balls. Becky, especially, made
an impression upon military society and
her coquetry extended with equal effect
from general to private. The fifteenth
of June, 1815, was a famous night in
Brussels, for on that evening the Duchess
of Richmond gave a tremendous ball.
Amelia left the party early,
brokenhearted at the attentions her husband
was showing Becky. Shortly after she
left, the men were given orders to
march to meet the enemy. Napoleon
had entered Belguim, and a great batde
was impending.
As Napoleon's forces approached, fear
and confusion spread through Brussels,
and many of the civilians fled from the
city. Not so Amelia or Becky. Becky
was not alarmed, and Amelia refused to
leave while George was in danger. She
remained in the city some days before
she heard that her husband had been
killed. Rawdon returned safely from the
batde of Waterloo. He and Becky spent
a gay and triumphant season in Paris,
where Becky's beauty and wit gained her
a host of admirers. Rawdon was very
proud of the son she bore him.
Amelia, too, had a child. She had
returned to London almost out of her mind
with grief, and only after her son was
born did she show any signs of rallying.
When Becky grew bored with the
pleasures of Paris, the Crawleys returned
to London. There they rented a large
home and proceeded to live well on
nothing a year. By this time Becky was a
past master at this art, and so they lived
on a grander scale than Rawdon's small
winnings at cards would warrant. Becky
had become acquainted with the nobility
of England, and had made a particular
impression on rich old Lord Steyne. At
last all society began to talk about young
Mrs. Crawley and her elderly admirer.
Fortunately Rawdon heard nothing of
this ballroom and coffee house gossip.
Eventually, through the efforts of
Lord Steyne, Becky achieved her dearest
wish, presentation at Court. Presented
along with her was the wife of the new
Sir Pitt Crawley. The old man had died,
and young Sir Pitt, his oldest son and
Rawdon's brother, had inherited the
tide. Since then friendly relations had
been established between the two
brothers. If Rawdon realized that his
brother had also fallen in love with
Becky, he gave no sign, and he accepted
the money his brother gave him with
good grace. But more and more he felt
himself shut out from the gay life that
Becky enjoyed. He spent much time
with his son, for he realized that the
child was neglected. Once or twice he
saw young George Osborne, Amelia's son.
Amelia struggled to keep her son with
her, but her pitiful financial status made
it difficult to support him. Her parents
had grown garrulous and morose with
disappointment over their reduced
circumstances. At length Amelia
sorrowfully agreed to let Mr. Osborne take the
child and rear him as his own. Mr. Os-
born still refused to recognize the woman
his son had married against his wishes,
however, and Amelia rarely saw the boy.
Rawdon was now deeply in debt.
When he appealed to Becky for money,
she told him that she had none to spare.
She made no attempt to explain the
jewelry and other trinkets she bought. When
Rawdon was imprisoned for a debt, he
wrote and asked Becky to take care of the
matter. She answered that she could not
get the money until the following day.
But an appeal to Sir Pitt brought about
Rawdon's release, and he returned to his
home to find Becky entertaining Lord
Steyne. Not long afterward Rawdon
accepted a post abroad, never to return
to his unfaithful, designing wife.
Amelia's fortunes had now improved.
When Jos Sedley returned home, he
established his sister and father in a more
pleasant home. Mrs. Sedley having died,
Jos resolved to do as much as he could to
make his father's last days happy. Captain
Dobbin had returned from India and
confessed his love for Amelia. Although
she acknowledged him as a friend, she
was not yet ready to accept his love. It
was Captain Dobbin who went to Mr.
Osborne and gradually succeeded in
3986

reconciling him to his son's wife. When
Mr. Osborne died, he left a good part of
his fortune to his grandson, appointing
Amelia as the boy's guardian.
Amelia, her son, Captain Dobbin, and
Jos Sedley took a short trip to the
continent. This visit was perhaps the happiest
time in Amelia's life. Her son was with
her constantly, and Captain Dobbin was
a devoted attendant. Eventually his
devotion was to overcome her hesitation and
they were to be married.
At a small German resort they
encountered Becky once more. After
Rawdon left her, Becky had been unable to
live down the scandal of their separation.
Leaving her child with Sir Pitt and his
wife, she crossed to the continent. Since
then she had been living with first one
considerate gentleman and then another.
When she saw the prosperous Jos, she
vowed not to let him escape as he had
before. Amelia and Jos greeted her in a
friendly manner, and only Captain
Dobbin seemed to regard her with distrust.
He tried to warn Jos about Becky, but
Jos was a willing victim of her charms.
Becky traveled with Jos wherever he
went. Although she could not get a
divorce from Rawdon, Jos treated her as
his wife, and in spite of Captain Dobbin's
protests he took out a large insurance
policy in her name. A few months later
his family learned that he had died while
staying with Becky at Aix-la-Chapelle.
The full circumstances of his death were
never established, but Becky came into
a large sum of money from his insurance.
She spent the rest of her life on the
continent, where she assumed the role
of the virtuous widow and won a
reputation for benevolence and generosity.
3987

VATHEK
Type of work: Novel
Author: William Beckford (1759-1844)
Type of plot: Romantic allegory
Time of plot: The past
Locale: Arabia
First published: 1786
Principal characters:
Vathek, an Arabian sultan
Giaour, a magician and a prince of darkness
Carathis, Vathek's mother
Emir Fakreddin, a noble prince
Nouronihar, his daugh ter
Gulchenrouz, her betrothed
Critique:
Lovers of fantastic Arabian tales and
Oriental romances will doubtless find
Vathek more than satisfactory as a work
of pure imagination. In addition, the
influences of Voltaire and Chateaubriand
lend deeper levels of meaning to make the
book both an allegory and a work of
social criticism.
The Story:
Vathek was an Arabian caliph whose
reign had been marked by turbulence and
unrest. A sensuous person, he had built
five palaces, one devoted to the
enjoyment of each of the five senses, and his
particular fondness for food and women
consumed much of his time. In addition
to the gratification he found in the life
of the senses, he tried also to master the
sciences and the deep, unfathomable
secrets of the world beyond. To this end
he built a huge tower where he pursued
his studies in astronomy and astrology.
There Carathis, his mother, burnt refuse
and live bodies to appease the dark powers.
One day Vathek got from a hideous,
repulsive stranger some mysterious sabers
bearing letters which the caliph was
unable to decipher. He offered great rewards
to anyone who could read them; but since
the punishment for failure was also great,
few accepted the offer. At last an old man
appeared and read the inscriptions. But
the next morning Vathek discovered that
the inscriptions had changed to words of
different import. From that time on the
letters on the sabers changed daily.
Vathek sank into despair, unable to
enjoy anything whatever. He begged the
stranger to return and to explain the
inscription to him, for he was sure that the
letters were the key to the dark kingdom
and the riches Vathek hoped to find
there. The stranger, Giaour, finally
reappeared. He told Vathek that only a
sacrifice would put the powers in a
receptive mood. On a journey with his
court, Vathek managed to throw fifty
young children into a chasm as victims for
the bloodthirsty Giaour. Angered by his
cruelty, his people began to hurl
execrations at Vathek, but his guards returned
him safely to his palace.
Carathis continued her own sacrifices
in the tower, to the disgust and anger of
the people, who more and more objected
to Vathek's defiance of Mahomet and the
Moslem creed. Commanded by a message
written on a mysterious piece of
parchment, Vathek and his court set out on
a pilgrimage in search of the mountains
of Istakhar where the secrets of the dark
world would be revealed to him.
On the way they met the messengers
of Emir Fakreddin, a deeply religious
prince. For some time Vathek was Fakred-
din's guest. Although he loathed the
prayers and religious ceremonies observed
by his host, he was attracted to Fakred-
din's daughter, the lovely Nouronihar.
She and her cousin, Gulchenrouz, had
been betrothed for a long time and their
3988

love had the approval of the emir and
his people, who were pleased by the
devotion of the young people to one another.
Nouronihar so attracted Vathek that
he plotted to seize her by force. Fakreddin,
already scandalized by Vathek's behavior,
was informed of the plot. He and his court
determined to outwit Vathek by
administering a drug to the young lovers. When
Vathek saw them in their deathlike
trance, he was convinced that they were
dead. Then Nouronihar and Gulchen-
rouz were secretly taken to a safe retreat
and looked after by Fakreddin's servants.
The young people, awaking, believed that
they had really died and that they were
now in Paradise.
One day, however, Vathek discovered
Nouronihar, who had strayed from the
hidden retreat. Yielding at last to his
entreaties, she became the favorite of his
harem. As Vathek and his wives and
followers continued their journey,
Nouronihar came to share her lord's ambition; she
too wished to enjoy the pleasures of that
strange other world. Like Vathek, she was
willing to resort to anything, even to the
most unscrupulous behavior, to reahze
their desires.
At last, after a long journey, the couple
arrived at the mountains of Istakhar and
entered the secret retreat of Eblis, dread
lord of darkness. There they found all the
beautiful and strange wealth they had so
long desired. They were given permission
to roam through the palace and to enjoy
its treasures as much as they wished. In
the vast domed hall of the palace they
saw creatures whose hearts were
continually devoured by fire. A like fate, they
learned, was to be theirs as well, for they
had sought knowledge that no mortal
should know.
In the meantime, Carathis had been
summoned to the abode of Eblis.
Transported upon the back of an evil monster,
she came at once to the mysterious palace
and was overjoyed to view its secrets at
last. Then, before the eyes of Vathek and
Nouronihar, her heart caught fire and a
consuming flame burst forth to punish
her eternally for her crimes. A moment
later flames began to burn in the hearts
of Vathek and Nouronihar.
But Gulchenrouz and the fifty children
whom Vathek had sacrificed were saved
miraculously from death and carried to
an earthly paradise. For them, life was
perpetual happiness. Not having sought
evil, they achieved the good life.
3989

THE VENETIAN GLASS NEPHEW
Type of work: Novel
Author: Elinor Wylie (1885-1928)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: 1782
Locale: Italy and France
First published: 1925
Principal characters:
Peter Innocent Bon, an unworldly cardinal
Virginio, his Venetian glass nephew
Rosalba Berni, called Sappho the Younger, Virginio's bride
Monsieur de Chastelneuf, the Chevalier de Langeist
Angelo Querini, philosopher and scholar
Count Carlo Gozzi, a writer of fairy tales
Critique:
Although Elinor Wylie is best
remembered as a poet, she wrote during
her brief career four fantastic and ironic
novels unlike anything else in the whole
range of American fiction. The
Venetian Glass Nephew is the most
completely realized of her novels, reflecting the
qualities of her poetic imagination and
style. A subtle fable of life and art, it
marches with minuet grace and
precision along its fantastic course. Virginio,
the man of glass, and Rosalba, his flesh-
and-blood bride, are more than figures
in a romance which seems on the surface
as slight and fragile as its spun-glass hero.
Under the brittle brilliance of this novel
there is a darkly personal note of
mocking irony and almost silent grief. What
might have been a slight work of
artifice becomes through its underlying
meaning a work of limited but authentic
art. M. de Chastelneuf, idealist, cynic,
and charlatan, is, of course, the famous
Casanova under thin disguise.
The Story:
The heart of Peter Innocent Bon,
cardinal prefect of the Congregation of
the Propaganda, was filled with
happiness that was almost childlike in its
simplicity. After thirty years he was to see
his native Venice once more, for
brilliant, vain Pius VI, about to visit its
lagoons and golden palaces, had named
the aged cardinal a member of his suite.
Peter Innocent, in 1782, was in the
eighty-first year of his age. A shy, mild
man, he seldom appeared in the rich
vestments of his office, but went
inconspicuously about Rome in the gray-brown
garb of the Franciscan Friars Minor, a
robe suited to the humility of a follower
of St. Francis.
Only one small regret marred Peter
Innocent's pleasure as he viewed again
the city of his youth. Pius was traveling
in state, and he and many of his suite
were accompanied by their nephews.
Peter Innocent had no nephews; his
brother had fathered only daughters and
his sisters were in holy orders. Seeing the
satisfaction other churchmen found in
the company of their young kinsmen, he
wished that he too might have enjoyed
such comfort in his old age. But prayers,
fasting, and pilgrimages to holy shrines
had given him no nephew of his own,
and the thought of parenthood would
have been as foreign to the chastity of
his mind as to that of his body.
During the* Venetian visit Pius treated
Peter Innocent with particular gracious-
ness and asked him to represent the
pontiff at the singing of a new cantata at the
Incurabili. Listening to the music, the
cardinal felt that its subject, the return
of Tobias, was appropriate to his own
situation.
As he left the Incurabili a hand
touched his shoulder. He turned to find
THE VENETIAN GLASS NEPHEW by Elinor Wylie. By permission of the publisher!, Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1925, by George H. Doran Co. Renewed. All rights reserved.
3990

Alvise Luna, the famous glass blower of
Murano, at his elbow. Luna, whom the
cardinal had known in earlier days,
complained that he had fallen upon evil
times. Willing to help his old friend,
and not knowing that the man was under
suspicion as a sorceror, Peter Innocent
went with him to his cellar workshop.
There he met a masked stranger whom
Luna introduced as M. de Chastelneuf,
Chevalier de Langeist. Peter Innocent
was amazed when the men displayed
their miraculous wares, a flying golden
griffin, a glass stag that walked, glass birds
that sang. When they asked if they
might execute a commission for some
bauble he had in mind, Peter Innocent
reached a sudden decision. He asked
modestly if they could make him a
nephew such as he had always desired.
At Luna's warning glance Chastelneuf
repressed the smile and the ribald
comment that rose to his lips. Solemnly he
assured the cardinal that such a work
of art was difficult but not impossible.
If he would return in three days he
could see for himself the result of their
labors.
Peter Innocent went to Luna's cellar
three nights later. In a chamber scented
with spices and incense Chastelneuf
brought to life a figure of Venetian glass
that lay upon a covered bier. The
cardinal's nephew stood revealed as a
handsome young man of nineteen or twenty,
of complexion so fair as to seem
translucent, with yellow hair as fine as spun
glass. He was dressed completely in white
and wore a strange ring of crystal. Peter
Innocent baptized him Virginio.
The cardinal, as much concerned for
his nephew's mind as he was for his
person and his soul, decided to send him
to Altichieri, there to study under the
noble Angelo Querini, who had been
Voltaire's friend. On his arrival Virginio
met Rosalba Berni, Querini's lovely ward.
Some thought her a descendant of
Francesco Berni, the poet; others whispered
the name of Cardinal de Bernis. At
eighteen she was a prodigy of learning
and a poet known officially as Sappho
the Younger. Virginio had never seen
anyone so beautiful, and Rosalba was
not so engrossed in the classics as to fail
to notice how handsome he was.
Scholarly Querini, always indulgent toward
Rosalba, gave them his blessing when they
announced their desire to wed.
Meanwhile Peter Innocent had gone
to consult Count Carlo Gozzi, his
longtime friend and a writer of fairy tales,
on matters connected with Virginio's
future. He found Chastelneuf closeted with
the count; the chevalier had come to
discuss the match between Rosalba and
Virginio. To Peter Innocent and the count
he explained the reason for his interest
in the girl. Years before he had loved
Caterina, Rosalba's mother, but because
of his attachment to another woman he
had callously relinquished his innocent
beloved to Cardinal de Bernis, a notorious
libertine. The cardinal had loved
Caterina faithfully, however, and Rosalba was
the daughter of that affectionate union.
After the mother's death de Bernis had
been summoned to Rome. Rosalba,
already famous for her beauty and
learning, had become the spoiled darling of
French scholars and philosophers. After
Voltaire's death Querini had become her
guardian.
As Chastelneuf finished his story
Rosalba and Virginio appeared, having driven
from Altichieri in the chevalier's carriage.
Seeing their happiness and youthful high
spirits, Peter Innocent and his friends
decided that the wedding should take
place at once.
But the marriage of Virginio and
Rosalba did not end as happily as one of
Count Gozzi's fairy tales. Chastelneuf
had seen to it that Virginio could play
the part of a tender and devoted
husband, but there had been no provision
for the contingencies of daily association
with a hoyden such as Rosalba had
suddenly become. He splintered too easily;
sometimes, after a hearty embrace,
Rosalba found particles of glass in her palms.
Games like hide-and-seek and blind-
man's-buff, in which she sportively
delighted, were impossible for him. Private1
n

ly, she and Virginio were unhappy, and,
realizing their unhappiness, Peter
Innocent, Querini, Chastelneuf, and Count
Gozzi were wretched as well.
At last, after Rosalba had tried to end
her misery by leaping into a bonfire,
Chastelneuf made a desperate suggestion.
If she were willing to endure the agony
of fire, she could be changed into a
woman of the finest Sevres porcelain.
Rosalba agreed for Virginio's sake and
because of her Own love. Through
winter snows she and Chastelneuf and Peter
Innocent traveled to the ancient town of
Sevres, in France. While Peter Innocent,
in an inn at Versailles, read aloud from
the life of St. Francis, she and
Chastelneuf went to the abandoned Dubois
factory and there she was transformed
into a proper bride for a Venetian glass
lover.
So Virginio and Rosalba returned to
Venice in the twilight of a dimming
century, to live happily in a delicate,
beautiful world of porcelain and Murano glass.
There Pietro Longhi painted them in his
old age. With fragile grace the lovers
look out from the miniature he made,
and reflected in the mirrors that surround
them are the faces of Peter Innocent Bon,
Angelo Querini, and Count Carlo Gozzi.
M. de Chastelneuf is not in the antique
miniature; it is believed that he had
retired to Bohemia.
3992

VENICE PRESERVED
Type of work: Drama
Author: Thomas Otway (1652-1685)
y ype of plot: Tragedy of intrigue
Time of plot: The Renaissance
Locale: Venice
First presented: 1682
Principal characters:
Jaffeir, a young Venetian, formerly Priuli's servant
Priuli, Jaffeir's father-in-law, a senator
Belvidera, Priuli's daughter and Jaffeir's wife
Pierre, friend and fellow conspirator of Jaffeir
Renault, another conspirator
Antonio, a senator
Critique:
Venice Preserved, Or, A Plot
Discovered was very popular when it was
written because of the numerous plots and
counterplots that were rife in the 1680's
in England under Charles II. It is reputed
also to have been revived on the stage
more often than any other
non-Shakespearian tragedy, largely because of the
powerful emotional appeal. The reader
cannot help drawing some comparisons
with Shakespeare's Othello, for in both
plays the hero has robbed a rich and
influential Italian father of a daughter. For
minds more finely drawn, the emotional
appeal of Jaffeir, torn as he is between
his loyalty to his friend and his loyalty
to his wife, is even greater than the
touching final scenes between the old senator
and his star-crossed daughter. In
addition to the topical interest and the
emotional appeal, the play has a third source
of interest: the animalistic Antonio, who
symbolizes the decadence of the
Venetian senate.
The Story:
Jaffeir, formerly the servant of Priuli,
a senator of Venice, had secretly wooed
and married Belvidera, Priuli's daughter.
For three years the couple lived
comfortably and blissfully, despite the father's
antagonism. Then Jaffeir lost his
fortune. When he went to ask Priuli for
aid, in the name of Belvidera, the old
senator refused to help in any way, and
he swore that his ungrateful daughter and
her equally ungrateful husband would
have to make their way as best they
could. laffeir, after reminding Priuli that
it was he who had saved Belvidera from
a shipwreck after which she had fallen
in love with him, left the senator's home
in a most unhappy frame of mind.
Soon afterward Jaffeir met Pierre, a
friend who had given long and faithful,
though unrewarded, service to Venice.
Pierre, sympathizing with Jaffeir, offered
him the means of getting revenge on
Priuli and striking, as he put it, a blow for
liberty against the bad government of the
senate. Jaffeir agreed to meet Pierre that
night and to become a member of the
band of conspirators. When he arrived
home, Jaffeir was also comforted by
Belvidera, who claimed that she was rich
as long as she had his love, no matter
how little fortune they possessed.
Meanwhile Pierre had gone to visit
Aquilina, a courtesan whom he loved. He
was extremely incensed with the woman
because she had given herself for money
to old Antonio, a senator. Antonio's theft
of his mistress made Pierre more eagei
than ever for revenge. He made Aquilina,
who loved him, swear to extract all the
information she could from Antonio and
pass it on to the conspirators, who were
meeting that night in Aquilina's house.
When midnight came, Jaffeir was sadly
bewailing his fate on the Rialto. There
3993

Pierre met him and conducted him to the
conspirators' meeting place. Because the
plotters were unwilling to take Jaffeir
into their number, he brought Belvidera
and offered her as hostage for his
honesty. The leader of the plotters, Renault,
and the Spanish ambassador, who also
had a hand in the plot to ruin the
government, accepted her as hostage. She was
to be killed if Jaffeir failed them in any
way.
The next day Jaffeir's hopes for
revenge and his confidence in his fellow
conspirators was shaken when he learned
that Renault had offered violence to
Belvidera and had been driven off only by
her screams. Belvidera swore that she
would bear anything, if only she knew
why she had been offered as a hostage.
Jaffeir, seeing the predicament she was
in, and thinking it only fair that she
know the truth, revealed the plot to
assassinate the senate and take over the
city. Because the mass assassination would
include her father, Belvidera, greatly
shocked, tried to convince her husband
that terrible wrongs would be committed
against innocent people in the mass
slaughter that was planned.
In the evening die conspirators met
to complete plans for the uprising, which
was to take place that same night. At
the meeting Jaffeir was seized with
revulsion for the plot and the conspirators;
he slipped away from the meeting and
went to Belvidera. The two started toward
the chamber where the senate council
was meeting. On the way they were
taken prisoners by the ducal guard and
escorted to the council. To the senators
and the duke Jaffeir admitted his part
in the plot and prevailed on their fear
to gain a general amnesty for his friends
in exchange for information preventing
the overthrow of the government. Within
a matter of minutes, the other
conspirators were brought in as prisoners. They,
including Pierre, were furious with
Jaffeir for revealing the plot. Pierre,
refusing to listen to Jaffeir, much less to
forgive him, slapped Jaffeir's face.
The senators, although they had given
their word that the conspirators would
be permitted to live, broke their promise
and sentenced the prisoners, including
Pierre, to death on the wheel. Jaffeir's
rage knew no bounds when he learned
of that perfidy. He offered to stab
Belvidera, who had been pledged as hostage
for his faithfulness to the plot. When
his love prevented his actually killing
her, he persuaded her to go to her father
and seek his aid in rescuing the
conspirators, lest her own life be forfeit for their
deaths. Priuli, overcome at last by his
love for his daughter, agreed to help
Belvidera. His promise, however, was made
too late.
When Jaffeir arrived at the scene of
execution, he learned that all of the
conspirators except Pierre had already been
killed by the public executioner. Pierre
had been saved until last because he had
been granted a request to speak to
Jaffeir. On the scaffold Pierre apologized
for slapping Jaffeir's face and asked him
a boon. Jaffeir readily assented and Pierre
whispered to him. He asked that Jaffeir
save him from an ignominious death by
stabbing him instead. Jaffeir immediately
complied and then turned his dagger
into his own breast. He died within
seconds of his friend.
Aquilina, hoping to save Pierre's life,
had gone to seek the aid of Antonio.
When the senator refused to help her,
she stabbed him and left him to die. In
the meantime Belvidera, overcome by
her fears, had become distraught in her
father's house. In spite of Priuli's efforts
and those of his servants, she became
steadily worse. She quickly went mad,
even before she knew of her husband's
death by his own hand; he had told her
when she saw him last that they would
never meet again. Before the messenger
arrived to tell of Jaffeir's death, her
husband's ghost appeared before her. Shortly
after the messenger came and left, the
ghosts of Jaffeir and Pierre appeared
briefly. Following their appearance she
went into a frenzy and died. Her father,
3994

sick of the bloodshed, plotting, and
violent death, begged his attendants to take
him away to a lonely place where the
sun never shone, so that he might mourn
in solitude and darkness the loss of his
daughter and her unhappy fate.
3995

VENUS AND ADONIS
Type of work: Poem
Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Type of plot: Mythological romance
Time of plot: Remote antiquity
Locale: Ancient Greece
First published: 1593
Principal characters:
Venus, goddess of love
Adonis, a handsome youth loved by Venus
Critique:
Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis gains
most of its beauty from the magnificent
imagery and figurative language with
which the poet adorned the ancient tale.
The sources for the poem, whether they
were from Ovid or more recent writers,
are unimportant, as the value of
Shakespeare's version lies in his additions and
not in the original story. The discussion
of hunting, the incident of the stallion
and the jennet, and the scenes of the fox
and the hare are among the beauties
which Shakespeare added.
The Story:
In all the world there was no more
beautiful figure, no more perfectly made
creature, than young Adonis. Although
his beauty was a delight to the sun and
to the winds, he had no interest in love.
His only joy was in hunting, in riding
over the hills and fields after the deer
and the fox. When Venus, the goddess
of love, saw the beauty of young Adonis,
she came down to earth because she was
filled with love for him.
Meeting him one morning in the fields
as he rode out to the hunt, she urged
him to dismount, tie his horse to a tree,
and talk with her. Adonis had no desire
to talk to any woman, or even to the
goddess, but she forced him to do as she
wished. Reclining by his side, she looked
at him with caressing glances and talked
passionately of the wonder and glory
of love. The more she talked, the more
she begged him for a kind look, a kiss,
the more anxious he became to leave her
and go on with his hunting. But Venus
was not easily repulsed, and although
Adonis sought to leave she urged him
to stay. She told him how even the god
of war had been a willing prisoner of
her charms, and she numbered all the
pleasures she could offer him if he would
accept her love. Blushing, Adonis finally
broke from her arms and went to get his
horse.
At that moment his stallion heard the
call of a jennet in a field nearby.
Aroused, he broke the leather thong that
held him and ran to her. At first the
jennet pretended to be cold to the
stallion's advances, but when she perceived
that Adonis was about to overtake his
mount, she gave a neigh of affection and
the two horses galloped away to another
field. Adonis was left behind.
Dejected, he stood thinking of the
hunt that he was missing because his
horse had run away. Venus came up to
him again and continued her pleas of
love. For a while he listened to her, but
in disgust he turned finally and gave
her such a look of scorn that the lovesick
goddess fainted and fell to the ground.
Thinking that with an unkind look he
had killed her, Adonis knelt beside her,
rubbed her wrists, and kissed her in
hope of forgiveness.
After a while Adonis rose to his feet.
Venus, recovering from her swoon, asked
him for one last kiss. He grudgingly
consented before he turned to leave. Venus
asked when she could meet him the
next day. Adonis replied that he would
not see her, for he was to go boar
hunting. Struck with a vision, the goddess
3996

warned the youth that he would be
killed by a boar if he hunted the next
day, and she begged him to meet her
instead. When she threw herself on the
boy and carried him to the earth in her
arms in a last attempt to gain his love,
Adonis admonished the goddess on the
difference between heavenly love and
earthly lust. He left her alone and
weeping.
The next morning found Venus
wandering through the woods in search of
Adonis. In die distance she could hear
the cries of the dogs and the voices of
the hunters. Frantic because of her
vision of the dead Adonis, she rushed
through the forest trying to follow the
sounds of the hunt. When she saw a
wounded and bleeding dog, the fear she
felt for Adonis became almost
overpowering. Suddenly she came upon Adonis
lying dead, killed by the fierce wild
boar he had hunted.
The grief of Venus knew no bounds.
If this love were taken from her, then
never again should man love happily.
Where love was, there also would
mistrust, fear, and grief be found.
The body of Adonis lay white and
cold on the ground, his blood coloring
the earth and plants about him. From
this soil there grew a flower, white and
purple like the blood that spotted the
skin of Venus' dead love. With a broken
heart Venus left earth to hide her sorrow
in the dwelling place of the gods.
3997

THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON
Type of work: Novel
Author: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1870
Principal characters:
Frank Fenwick, the Vicar of Bullhampton
Harry Gilmore, Squire of Bullhampton
Janet Fenwick, Frank's wife
Mary Lowther, her friend
Walter Marrable, Mary's cousin
The Marquis of Trowbridge, a wealthy landlord
Jacob Brattle, a mill owner
Sam Brattle, his son
Carry Brattle, his daughter
Critique:
Another novel of clerical life and
society, The Vicar of Bullhampton is
noteworthy for the introduction of a prostitute
as a sympathetic character. Trollope
showed considerable courage in
attempting to portray this type of character during
the Victorian Era. Although he felt
forced to apologize to his readers in his
introduction, he still retained Carry
Brattle as one of the chief characters of the
book. The theme of this novel, as in so
much of Trollope's fiction, centers about
the difficulty of acquiring money and
making a successful marriage.
The Story:
The town of Bullhampton was a typical
English country parish. Although the
Marquis of Trowbridge owned most of
the land, he had no residence within ten
miles of it. The rest of the land was owned
by Squire Harry Gilmore, a good friend
of the Vicar of Bullhampton. The squire
had recently become a daily visitor at the
vicarage, for the vicar's wife had a guest,
Mary Lowther, with whom Squire
Gilmore was much in love. But Mary could
not bring herself to become engaged to
the squire, because, as she told Janet
Fenwick, she simply was not in love with him.
Janet and the vicar tried to persuade her
that her views would change for the
better after marriage. In spite of their well-
meant advice, Mary still would not give
her consent.
One evening, as the squire left the
vicarage, he saw three men loitering in
the orchard. He recognized one of them
as Sam Brattle, son of Jacob Brattle, the
mill owner. Jacob was a crabbed,
hardworking old man who had reared a large
family. Most of the children had turned
out well, except Sam, who consorted with
low companions, and Carry, who had
gone away to the city and there become
a woman of the streets. No one ever spoke
of the wayward daughter at the Brattle
home, for she had broken her father's
heart. The chief desire of Jacob's life was
to have his old mill repaired, and he
finally succeeded in obtaining the
necessary money to finance the project from
Squire Gilmore.
Because Mary could not bring herself
to accept the squire and her presence
disturbed him greatly, she finally left for
home. She lived at Loring with her aunt,
Miss Marrable, an old spinster who was
much interested in Squire Gilmore's
devotion to Mary.
Back in Bullhampton the vicar tried
to find out if Sam Brattle had been in his
orchard with the other men that night, but
the most he could learn was that two men,
one an ex-convict and the other a
complete stranger, had been hanging around
3998

the town and that Sam was well
acquainted with both of them. A few days
later one of the farmers of the community
was found murdered and his secret
strongbox emptied of its contents. The only
person who had known the location of the
strongbox was a servant girl who was a
good friend of Sam Brattle. Sam was
arrested, to be released a short time later
because the magistrate could find no real
evidence against him. Nevertheless, the
Marquis of Trowbridge thought he
should be held in custody, and sharp
words passed between the marquis and
the vicar on the subject. Sam returned
to the mill because the vicar stoutly
defended him.
At Loring, meanwhile, Mary Lowther
had fallen deenlv in love with her cousin,
Walter Marrable. Walter, a soldier
returned from India, was trying to regain an
inheritance from his father, who had
cheated him out of it. If this repossession
were possible, Walter would be a wealthy
man and would not have to return to
India to make his fortune. During their
walks together, Marv was a sympathetic
listener to his troubles. Soon they were
in love with each other. This situation
worried Mary's aunt because Walter's
attempt to regain his money was not
proving successful. Before the end of the
month Walter and Mary were engaged.
In Bullhampton, the head constable
was investigating the home of the ex-
convict in an attempt to secure evidence
concerning the murder. The suspect's
mother and a young woman, supposedly
his wife but in reality Carry Brattle, his
mistress, refused to tell the constable
anything. The vicar, in the meantime, had
another stormy interview with the
marquis, who insisted that Sam was guilty
and should be put in prison. The vicar
proclaimed Sam's innocence, however, for
he had faith in the young man. The
upshot of the matter was that the marquis
threatened to write to the bishop in
complaint of the vicar. At last he did so, but
the bishop merely sent his letter along to
the vicar, with a friendly note advising
him not to cross the marquis too often.
Love was not going smoothly at Loring.
Mary Lowther, happy over her
engagement to Walter, wrote to Janet and also
to Squire Gilmore, telling them her news.
The young squire went into a decline, and
for weeks he stayed at his home and
refused to see anyone. Mary's and Walter's
marriage plans had to be broken off,
however, when it was discovered that Colonel
Marrable, Walter's father, had spent
every cent of the inheritance. Walter, now
penniless, was forced to apply once more
for service in India.
Janet and the vicar, hearing the news,
asked Mary to return for a visit in
Bullhampton; they hoped, during her stay, to
renew her romance with the squire. Also,
the Fenwicks needed diversion at the
time, for they were plagued by the
erection of a new Methodist chapel across the
street from the vicarage. The new chapel
was the work of the Marquis of
Trowbridge and the Methodist minister, both
of whom disliked the vicar intensely. One
of his latest offenses, in their eyes, was
a visit to Carry Brattle, the fallen woman
living at the ex-convict's house. The vicar
had taken her from this wretched place
and found a home for her with a farm
family, since her father would not hear of
her living at the mill.
When Mary arrived again in
Bullhampton, Squire Gilmore's spirits
immediately improved. He continued to woo
Mary, and at last she resignedly became
engaged to him. Never really in love with
him, she merely attempted to play the part
of being happy. But she was a bad actress.
The vicar sought legal advice on the
building of the chapel so close to the
vicarage. When he discovered that the
land was really his, he went to interview
the marquis. Although the vicar could
have insisted that the chapel be torn down
at once, he suggested to the marquis that
it be allowed to stand for the time being,
with the understanding that someday it
would have to be removed. The marquis
was greatly upset by the news, as was the
Methodist minister.
3999

Walter Marrahle, before his departure
for India, went to visit his uncle, a
wealthy baronet. He was in poor health,
as was his only son. When the son died,
the old gentleman made his will in favor
of Walter. He hoped that Walter might
marry his ward, but Mary Lowther was
still in Walter's heart.
Carry Brattle, through the workings of
the vicar, at last returned home. Her
mother and sisters joyfully welcomed her
back, but her father remained stubborn.
Because Carry tried everything in her
power to please him, her father was
finally reconciled to her. At the trial of
the ex-convict for murder, Carry and Sam
were summoned as witnesses. Then it was
revealed that Sam had been trying to
arrange for a marriage between Carry and
the suspected murderer and for that
reason had been with the two men before
the crime was committed. Sam was cleared
entirely.
When Walter's uncle died, the young
man inherited his money. Mary broke her
engagement with Squire Gilmore and
married Walter, her real love. The squire
was crushed, and in their sympathy for
their good friend the vicar and his wife
regretted that Mary had ever come to
Bullhampton.
4000

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD
Type of work: Novel
Author: Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: Eighteenth century
Locale: Rural England
First published: 1766
Principal characters:
Dr. Primrose, the vicar of Wakefield
Deborah, his wife
George, the oldest son
Sophia, the younger daughter
Olivia, the older daughter
Mr. Burchell, in reality Sir William Thornhill
Squire Thornhill, Dr. Primrose's landlord and Olivia's betrayer
Arabella Wilmot, betrothed to George
Critique:
Buried in the rationalism of the
eighteenth century was a strain of
idealism and sentimentality which is
clearly expressed in The Vicar of
Wakefield. In this novel the interplay of the
ideal and the real present a simple,
lovable character in his struggle to
maintain his ideals. Goldsmith's material
cannot be said to be original, but his wit and
gentle candor are his own. For these
qualities he has been loved by many
readers.
The Story:
Dr. Primrose and his wife, Deborah,
were blessed with five fine children, of
whom the two daughters, Olivia and
Sophia, were remarkable for their beauty.
The Primrose family lived in a quiet rural
community, where they enjoyed both
wealth and good reputation. The oldest
son, George, fell in love with Arabella
Wilmot, daughter of a neighbor, and
the two families made mutual
preparations for the wedding. Before the
wedding, however, Dr. Primrose and Miss
Wilmot's father quarreled over the
question of a man's remarrying after the
death of his wife. Dr. Primrose stoutly
upheld the doctrine of monogamy, Mr.
Wilmot, who was about to take his fourth
wife, was insulted. The rift between the
two families widened when news came
that Dr. Primrose's broker had run off
with all his money. Mr. Wilmot broke
off the wedding plans, for the vicar was
now a poor man.
George departed for London to make
his fortune and the rest of the family
prepared to go to another part of the
country, where Dr. Primrose had found
a more modest living. On the way they
met a man who won the admiration of
Dr. Primrose by a deed of charity to a
fellow traveler. The man, Mr Burchell,
rode along with them. Suddenly Sophia
was thrown from her horse into a stream,
from which Mr. Burchell was able to save
her. The gratitude of Deborah assured
Mr. Burchell of a warm welcome
whenever he should choose to call on them.
Their new home was on the estate of
wealthy Squire Thornhill, a young man
known for his attentions to all the
young ladies in the neighborhood.
Deborah thought that either of her
daughters would make a good match for
the young squire. Soon afterward a
fortunate meeting drew the squire's
attention toward Olivia, and her mother's
scheming made Squire Thornhill a steady
caller at the Primrose home, where Olivia
blushingly protested that she thought
him both bold and rude. Mr. Burchell,
too, called frequently, but his interest
seemed to center upon Sophia, who did
not deny her pleasure at his attention.
Dr. Primrose, however, could not
approve of Mr. Burchell, for he had lost
all his fortune and seemed to live in
4001

comparative poverty that revealed
indifference to his fallen condition.
Two noble ladies from the city met
the Primrose family in their rustic
retreat, and Sophia and Olivia became
charmed by talk of city ways. When
the women spoke of their need for
companions in their households, Deborah
immediately suggested that Olivia and
Sophia be selected. The two daughters
were pleased at the thought of going to
the city, despite Mr. BurchelTs vigorous
objections. All was set for the journey,
however, when Deborah received a letter
stating that a secret informant had so
slandered Olivia and Sophia that the
city ladies would not consider them as
fit companions. At first Deborah and her
husband could not imagine who the
slanderer could have been. When they
learned that Mr. Burchell had been the
informant, Dr. Primrose ordered him
from the house. With no signs of
remorse or shame Mr. Burchell left.
Olivia began to insist that Squire
Thornhiirs repeated visits meant only
that he intended to marry her. Dr.
Primrose, not believing that the squire
really would marry Ohvia, suggested to
his daughter that she consider the offer
of a neighboring farmer, Mr. Williams.
When the squire still failed to ask for her
hand, Ohvia agreed to marry the young
farmer and the wedding date was set.
Four days before her wedding Olivia
ran away. Through the help of Squire
Thornhill, Dr. Primrose learned that it
was Mr. Burchell who had carried the
girl away.
Saddened by his daughter's
indiscretion, the resolute father set out to find
her and to help her. On his journey he
became ill and lay in bed in an inn for
three weeks. On his recovery he gave
up all hope of finding Olivia and started
home. On the way there he met Miss
Arabella Wilmot, who inquired about
George. Dr. Primrose assured her that
George had not been heard from since
he had left his family to go to London.
Squire Thornhill, who was courting
Arabella, asked about Olivia, but the
father could give him no news. Fortune
brought George, impoverished and in ill
luck, back to his father at that time.
Pitying the bad fortune of the young boy,
Squire Thornhill gave him a
commission in the army and sent him away.
Arabella promised to wait for her
former sweetheart to make his fortune and
to return to her.
Dr. Primrose started for home once
more. At a roadside inn he found his
dear Olivia, who told him her terrible
story. The villain with whom she had
run away was not Mr. Burchell. It had
been Squire Thornhill, who had seduced
her after a mock ceremony by a false
priest. Growing tired of her, trie squire
had left her. Dr. Primrose took the girl
home with him. But bad luck had not
forsaken the vicar. As he approached his
house he saw it catch fire and burn to
the ground. His family escaped, but
all their belongings were destroyed.
Kindly neighbors helped the penniless
Primroses to set up living quarters in an
outbuilding on the estate. News came
that Squire Thornhill intended to marry
Arabella Wilmot. This report angered
Dr. Primrose; then to add to his
indignation Squire Thornhill came to see
him and offered to find a husband for
Olivia so that she could stay near the
squire. Enraged at this offer, the doctor
ordered him away. The squire then
demanded Dr. Primrose's quarterly rent
payment which, since the disaster of
losing his home, the vicar could not pay.
Squire Thornhill had Dr. Primrose
sent to debtors' prison. Soon after being
lodged in prison, the vicar encountered
his son, George, who, having learned of
the squire's cruelty, had attacked him
and had been sentenced to hang for
attempted murder. Dr. Primrose felt
that the happiness of his life was
completely shattered. Next he learned that
Sophia had been kidnaped.
But virtue and honesty were soon
rewarded. Sophia had been rescued by
Mr. Burchell, who turned out to be the
squire's uncle, Sir William Thornhill.
With the squire's treachery exposed, the
4002

Primrose family was released from its
misery. Arabella and George were
reunited. Even Olivia was saved from
shame, for she learned that the priest
who had married her to the squire had
been a genuine priest. Sophia married
Sir William, and Arabella married
George. Dr. Primrose looked forward to
his old age with happiness and joy in
the good fortune of nis children. Even
he was rewarded for his virtue. The
broker who had run away with his money
was apprehended, and Dr. Primrose was
once again a wealthy man.
4003

THE VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Alexandre Dumas, father (1802-1870)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Seventeenth century
Locale: France and England
First published: 1848-1850
Principal characters:
Louis XIV, King of France
Louise de la Valliere, lady in waiting and mistress of the king
D'Artagnan, an officer of the king's musketeers
Athos, the Comte de la Fere
Porthos, M. du Vallon
Aramis, M. D'Herblay and Bishop of Vannes
Raoul, the Vicomte de Bragelonne, son of Athos
Fouquet, Minister of Finance
Colbert, an ambitious politician
Charles II, King of England
Critique:
The novels of the older Dumas have
an enduring popularity for many readers,
and The Vicomte de Bragelonne, the last
of the D'Artagnan romances, is no
exception. This novel has particular interest
because it deals with the last adventures
of that swashbuckling hero, D'Artagnan.
The story itself is the characteristic
Dumas type, filled with vivid action,
humorous incident, and interesting characters.
In reality this romance contains four
different but related plots—the
restoration of Charles II, the story of Louis
XIV's infatuation for Louise de la
Valliere, the intrigues and downfall of the
ambitious Fouquet, and the perennially
popular tale of the mysterious prisoner
in the iron mask. These stories have,
from time to time, been taken from the
longer romance and printed as novels
complete in themselves. As a result, some
confusion has arisen over the titles and
order of the D'Artagnan series.
The Story:
Louis XIV, the young king of France,
en route to Spain to ask for the hand of
Marie Theresa, the Spanish Infanta,
stopped overnight at the castle of Blois
to visit his uncle, the Due d'Orleans.
There he met for the first time Louise de
la Valliere, the lovely stepdaughter of the
duchess' steward. Louise was betrothed
to Raoul, the Vicomte de Bragelonne,
son of the Comte de la Fere. Another
arrival at Blois during the royal visit
was the Stuart pretender, Charles II,
who came to ask for a loan of a million
livres and French aid in regaining the
English throne. When Cardinal Mazarin,
chief minister of King Louis, refused to
lend the money, Charles then turned for
assistance to the Comte de la Fere, who
had been an old friend of his royal father.
The comte was a former musketeer who
had been known as Athos many years
before, when he had performed many
brave feats with his three friends,
Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan.
Disappointed because Mazarin and
the king refused to help Charles,
D'Artagnan resigned his commission as
lieutenant of the king's musketeers and
joined his old friend, Athos, in an
attempt to place Charles upon the throne
of England. Planning to capture
General Monk, leader of the Parliamentary
army, D'Artagnan visited Planchet, a
former servant who had been successful
in trade. Using funds borrowed from
Planchet, he recruited fourteen resolute
and dependable men and sailed with
them for England. In England, in the
meantime, the troops of Lambert and
4004

General Monk prepared to fight at
Newcastle. While the armies waited, Athos
arrived to see General Monk and get his
aid in recovering a treasure left by the
unfortunate Charles I in a vault in
Newcastle. This treasure was to be General
Monk's bribe for restoring Charles II to
the throne. On the general's return from
Newcastle, D'Artagnan daringly captured
the Parliamentary leader and took him,
concealed in a coffin, to France. Athos,
who had promised General Monk to
remain in England for a time, was
arrested by Monk's soldiers and accused
of complicity in the general's
disappearance.
In France D'Artagnan took Monk to
Charles and after a satisfactory interview
with the pretender Monk was released
and sent back to England. There Monk
on his return secured the release of
Athos. Monk, won over to the Stuart
cause, planned for the return of Charles
to England, while the pretender made
like preparations in France.
When Charles became king, he made
General Monk Duke of Albemarle and
commander of the English armies. To
Athos the grateful king gave the Order
of the Golden Fleece. For his part in the
restoration D'Artagnan requested only
Monk's sword. After he had received
it, he resold it to Charles for three
hundred thousand livres. General Monk
gave D'Artagnan lands in England. After
paying off his men D'Artagnan went to
Calais to see Planchet, whom he
approached with a long face and a sad
tale of failure. When Planchet showed
his true loyalty to his former master,
D'Artagnan had not the heart to tease
the merchant any longer; he
acknowledged the success of the venture and paid
Planchet one hundred thousand livres
in return for the funds he had advanced.
Louis XIV had been completely
dominated by Cardinal Mazarin, his minister,
but the death of the latter eased the
king's unhappy situation. After Mazarin's
death, the ambitious Fouquet, as finance
minister, and Colbert, as intendant,
began a race for power. Suspicious of
Fouquet, the king sent for D'Artagnan, re-
commissioned him as captain of the
king's musketeers, and sent him to
Belle-Isle-en-Mer to secure a report on
Fouquet's mysterious activities there.
At Belle-Isle D'Artagnan found his
old companion in arms, Porthos, now M.
du Vallon, busy with plans for
fortifying the island. The former musketeer
was working under the direction of
Aramis, now Bishop of Vannes and also
known as M. D'Herblay. D'Artagnan
hurried back to Paris to the king to
give him the details of the situation
at Belle-Isle, but he was beaten in the
race to arrive there first by the two
conspirators, who reported to Fouquet the
discovery of the plot to fortify the island.
To prevent trouble, Fouquet at once
rushed to the king and presented to him
the plan for the fortifications on Belle-
Isle. He explained glibly that the
fortifications might be useful against the
Dutch.
Athos, the Comte de la Fere, asked the
king's consent to the marriage of his son
Raoul, the Vicomte de Bragelonne, to
Louise de la Valliere, now a maid of
honor at the court. Louis refused on the
grounds that Louise was not good enough
for Raoul. In reality the King, a
passionate lover of various ladies of the
court, had, in spite of his recent
marriage to Marie Theresa, fallen in love
with Louise. He dispatched Raoul at
once to England to be rid of him as a
rival.
Aramis and Fouquet were plotting to
replace the king with a man of their
choice, and to this end they annually
paid a large sum of money to M. de
Baisemeaux, governor of the Bastille.
These schemers also attached themselves
to Louise de la Valliere after they
realized the power she would have with
the king.
Among the court plotters also were
Mademoiselle de Montalais, a lady in
waiting, and her lover, Malicorne, a
courtier. They were interested in all
court affairs, particularly in the
relationship between Mademoiselle de la Val*
4005

here and the king, and they stole letters
with the idea of blackmail at an
opportune time.
D'Artagnan moved to an estate close
to the court to watch for palace intrigues.
He was particularly interested in the
plans of Aramis, who was trying to
become a cardinal and planning to betray
the king to secure his ends. D'Artagnan,
interested in adventure for the sake of
adventure, was devoted to the king.
As the affair between Louise and the
king continued, Madame, the sister-in-
law of Louis, also in love with him, grew
jealous and determined to send for
Raoul and have him marry Louise at
once. The queen mother and the young
queen disapproved thoroughly of the
flirtation of Madame with the king and
told her so. Madame then decided that
the quickest solution would be to send
Mademoiselle de la Valliere away from
the court. At the same time the king
learned that Louise had at one time
returned Raoul de Bragelonne's
affection, and in a fit of envy and jealousy he
decided to forget her. Madame ordered
Louise to leave at once.
Broken-hearted, the girl resolved to
enter a convent. In her flight, however,
she encountered D'Artagnan, who took
her under his protection and informed
the king of her whereabouts. Louis went
to her immediately. Convinced of her
love, he returned with her to the court.
Plotters in the king's pay had a secret
trapdoor constructed from Louise's rooms
to those of Saint-Aignan, a gentleman
of the king, and Louis and Louise were
able to meet there after Madame had
made other meetings between them im
possible. In London Raoul heard what
was happening and rushed to France.
He arrived at Louise's apartments just
as the king was entering by the secret
door. Realizing that the rumors he
had heard were true, he went away in
despair.
Aramis, who had now become General
of the Jesuits, who visited by an elderly
duchess who wished to sell him certain
letters from Mazarin which would ruin
his friend Fouquet. When he refused
to buy them, she sold them to Colbert,
Fouquet's rival and enemy. Aramis,
learning of the transaction, hurried to
warn Fouquet, who assured Aramis that
the supposed theft of state funds
attributed to him in the letters was credited
by a receipt in his possession. The
receipt, however, had been stolen.
Furthermore, Colbert had arranged for Fouquet
to sell his position of procureur-general.
Aramis, with his immense financial
backing, was able to rescue Fouquet.
Raoul de Bragelonne, grieved and
angry at Louise's faithlessness, challenged
Saint-Aignan to a duel and Porthos
promised to act as his foster son's second.
Saint-Aignan, however, revealed the
matter to the king. Then Athos publicly
denounced Louis over the proposed duel.
When the king ordered D'Artagnan to
arrest Athos, D'Artagnan, by his honest
fearlessness, won a pardon for his old
friend.
Fouquet, backed by Aramis, grandly
and recklessly humiliated Colbert in the
king's presence. He announced a great
f6te at his estate in honor of the king.
Colbert, although temporarily eclipsed,
vowed revenge. Fouquet, as minister of
the king's finances, was tottering under
the growing strength of his enemy
Colbert, and he hoped the f&te would
secure his position.
Aramis, through his influence with
M. de Baisemeaux, the governor of the
Bastille, visited a prisoner there and
revealed to him that he was actually the
twin brother of Louis XIV. The
conspirators planned to put him on the
throne in place of Louis. Aramis then
busied himself to learn the details of the
king's costume for the f&te, for he
planned to substitute the twin brother
Philippe for Louis during the grand ball.
Although both D'Artagnan and Porthos
were suspicious of Aramis, they could
prove nothing.
Aramis freed the young prince from
the Bastille and coached him thoroughly
in the details of the role he was to play.
By means of trapdoors in Fouquet's house,
4006

Aramis overpowered Louis XIV and
hustled him off to the Bastille to replace
the released prince. Philippe, in
gratitude, was to make Aramis as powerful
in the kingdom as Richelieu had been.
But Aramis made a grave error in
revealing his deeds to Fouquet. When
Fouquet heard of the abduction of the
king, the minister, hoping to win the
king's gratitude, rushed to the Bastille
and freed Louis. Aramis and Porthos
fled hastily. D'Artagnan was instructed
to capture Philippe, cover his face with
an iron mask to hide his resemblance
to the king, and imprison him for life
in the He Sainte-Marguerite fortress.
These orders he executed faithfully.
Raoul de Bragelonne, who had never
forgiven the king for stealing Louise de
la Valliere, decided to kill himself as
soon as possible and joined the Due de
Beaufort on a campaign to Africa. When
he went to say goodbye to his father,
Athos realized sadly that he would never
see his son again.
Louis XIV insisted that D'Artagnan
arrest Fouquet, despite Fouquet's efforts
in the king's behalf. After a mad chase
in which both of their horses were raced
to death, D'Artagnan captured Fouquet.
Colbert then rose completely to power.
D'Artagnan was ordered by the king
to go to Belle-Isle-en-Mer and take the
fortress in which Aramis and Porthos
were hiding and shoot the conspirators.
D'Artagnan, too good a friend of each
of the plotters to take their lives, planned
to capture the fortress but to allow the
two to escape. Louis had realized that
this possibility might occur and had
forewarned his officers so that D'Artag-
nan's scheme failed and he was ordered
to return to France. A fierce battle
ensued at Belle-Isle and Porthos was killed
after many deeds of great heroism.
Aramis escaped to Bayonne.
D'Artagnan, out of favor with the
king over his disobedience to orders,
resigned his position as captain of the
musketeers and the king accepted, only
to send for him later and ask him to take
back his resignation. D'Artagnan agreed
and won a pardon from the king for
Aramis, who had settled in Spain.
Athos died of shock upon hearing thai
his son had been killed in Africa; they
were buried in a double funeral. Louise
de la Valliere, who had been replaced
as the king's mistress by a younger
favorite, attended the funeral. There
D'Artagnan reproached her for causing the deaths
of both Athos and Raoul de Bragelonne.
D'Artagnan remained in the service
of Louis XIV and died four years later
while fighting against the Dutch. Hi3
death came only a few moments after
he had received the baton of a marshal
of France.
4007

VICTORY
Type of work: Novel
Author: Joseph Conrad (Teodor J6zef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-1924)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: East Indies
First published: 1915
Principal characters:
Axel Heyst, an idealist
Lena, whom he befriends
Mr. Schomberg, a hotel owner
Mr. Jones, and
Martin Ricardo, gamblers
Pedro, their servant
Davidson, a sea captain
Wang, Heyst's servant
Critique:
Axel Heyst was not looking for material
gain in his world. He had escaped life's
demands by retreating to the East Indies,
and there he found the one true value in
his own life, love of a woman. But the
victory was not Heyst's; it was Lena's.
Every tense moment of the drama enacted
on the island between the three bandits
and the two innocent victims points
tragically to Lena's final triumph. Although
English was not Joseph Conrad's native
tongue, he was able to use the English
language with stylistic force and vigor.
One starding feature of this novelist
is his ability to encompass a mass of
ideas into the force of one cryptic word
or phrase. Victory is a romance between
a man who is sensitive only to truth and
honesty and a woman who had never
known such things from other men.
The Story:
After the Tropical Belt Coal
Company had gone into liquidation, Axel
Heyst continued to live at the No. 1
coaling station on Samburan. Strange
in his manners and desires, he was a
legend among the islanders; they qalled
him a Utopist. The coal company had
come into existence after Heyst had met
Morrison in a Portuguese seaport where
the Englishman was about to lose his
trading ship Capricorn because of an
unpaid debt. Heyst, always sympathetic,
had offered him a loan. Because Heyst
was anxious to keep his generosity a
secret and Morrison eager to conceal
his shaky finances, the two men pledged
secrecy, with the understanding that
Heyst would thereafter have a share of
the Capricorn's shipping business.
Schomberg, the owner of a hotel in
Sourabaya, heard of the partnership and
said that Heyst maintained some kind of
hold over Morrison. Morrison instigated
the coal company and then died in
England. After that Schomberg, who for
some reason hated Heyst, constructed a
mysterious kind of villainy around
Morrison's partner, and he was gleeful when
the coal company liquidated.
After Heyst had retired from the
human society of the islands, Davidson, a
ship's captain, came upon him living
alone on Samburan. Worrying over
Heyst's welfare, Davidson adopted the
habit of sailing ten miles out of his way
around the north side of Samburan in
case Heyst were to need aid. Once
Davidson brought the hermit around
to Sourabaya, where he put up at
Schomberg's hotel. Later, Davidson heard
bits of a story that Heyst had run off
VICTORY by Joseph Conrad. By permission of J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., agents for the trustees of the
estate of Joseph Conrad. Published by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Copyright, 191S, 1921, by Doubleday, Page
& Co. Renewed. 1942, by John Alexander Conrad.
4008

with a girl who was at the hotel with a
troupe of entertainers. He was baffled
that the shy, quiet Heyst would take a
girl back to Samburan with him. Mrs.
Schomberg, pitying the girl, had helped
Heyst spirit the girl away. The affair
had caused quite a hubbub on the island
because it concerned Heyst.
When Heyst had come to the hotel, he
ha ! been unaware of Schomberg's hatred.
The entertainers were not very attractive
to his fastidious mind, but one white-
muslined girl seemed younger than the
others. Noticing her distress at being
ordered to join a guest at a table, Heyst
was prompted by the same instinct which
had led him to help Morrison. He
invited the girl to sit with him. Lena
told Heyst about herself. Her father in
England had taught her to play the
violin. After his death, she had joined the
group of entertainers with whom she
now worked. Schomberg had been
stalking her ever since the troupe came to the
hotel. The contrast between Heyst and
the other men she had met was enough
to cause the girl to be attracted to her
new friend, and she welcomed his
promise of help. After Heyst had taken her
away, Schomberg's hatred was
tremendous.
To Schomberg's hotel came three
strangers, Mr. Jones, Martin Ricardo,
his secretary, and a beast-like, hairy
creature whom they called Pedro. Before
long these men had transformed
Schomberg's hotel into a professional gambling
house. Schomberg's obsession for Lena
was increased by the notion that with her
at his side he could rid his hotel of the
gamblers. One afternoon Ricardo told
Schomberg that he had been employed
on a yacht where he was first attracted
by Jones' polished manners. The two had
stolen the captain's cash box and jumped
the ship. Later Pedro became attached
to them. Schomberg decided that these
thieves might leave his hotel if he could
arouse their greed by the prospect of
richer plunder. He offhandedly
mentioned Heyst's alleged wealth and told
how Heyst lived on a lonely island with
a girl and a hoard of money. Together
Ricardo and Schomberg began to plan
their pillage of the island where Heyst
lived.
On his island Heyst had lived with
only his Chinese servant, Wang, until
Lena joined him. She told him that he
had saved her from more than misery and
despair. Heyst told her the story of his
own background. His father had been
a cynical, domineering man whom he
disliked. After his death Heyst had
drifted, searching for some meaning in
life, a meaning never glimpsed until he
met Lena.
One evening Wang appeared to
announce that he had seen a boat drifting
offshore. Heyst went to investigate. He
discovered Ricardo, Jones, and the
beastlike Pedro perishing of thirst in a boat
moored beside a small jetty. Heyst helped
the men to shore and took them to an
abandoned bungalow for temporary
quarters. That night Heyst found that
his gun was missing from his desk; Wang,
frightened, had taken it. Meanwhile
Ricardo and Jones speculated about
locating Heyst's money.
Early in the morning Ricardo stole
into Heyst's bungalow and saw Lena
combing her hair. He jumped at her
hungrily, but she was able to defend
herself. When the struggle was over and
the repulsed man saw that she raised
no outcry, his admiration for her
increased. She asked him what the men
wanted on the island. Surprised that
they had come for money which she
knew Heyst did not possess, she
determined to protect Heyst from
Schomberg's evil design. Loving Heyst, she
could repay his kindness by leading
Ricardo and his partners on to their
destruction.
Observing Ricardo's attack on Lena,
Wang had decided to withdraw from this
confusion of white men's affairs; he fled
to the forest. When Heyst reported the
loss of his servant to Jones and Ricardo,
they offered him the service of Pedro.
Because their manner made it impossible
for him to refuse, Lena and Heyst knew
4009

then that they were lost. Davidson would
not sail past the island for three more
weeks. Their only weapon having been
stolen, they were left defenseless.
That night Ricardo came to the
bungalow for dinner with Heyst and
Lena. When Heyst had regretted his
helpless position without any weapon or
defense, Lena had recalled that during
their scuffle she had glimpsed the knife
Ricardo wore under his trouser leg.
During the evening Ricardo indicated
that Jones wished Heyst to visit him.
Before he left, Heyst insisted that Pedro
be sent out of the way, and Ricardo
ordered the brute to go down to the
jetty.
After Heyst had gone, Lena allowed
Ricardo to make love to her so that she
could take possession of his knife. Heyst
told Jones about her presence in the
bungalow. Jones, who suffered a
pathological hatred for women, had noi
known of Lena's existence. Heyst
convinced him that Schomberg had lied to
get rid of the gamblers and to inflict upon
Heyst a revenge Schomberg was too
cowardly to inflict himself. Enraged by
what he considered Ricardo's treachery,
Jones suggested that they go to Heyst's
bungalow.
Meanwhile Lena had taken Ricardo's
knife. As the two men entered the
bungalow, Jones fired over Heyst's shoulder,
the bullet piercing Lena's breast. Ricardo
sprang through the doorway. Jones
followed his partner outside and shot him
in the darkness. Heyst carried Lena to
the bed, and as she lay there, deathly
pale in the candlelight, she demanded the
knife, her symbol of victory. She died as
Heyst took her in his arms and for the
first time spoke words that came from th*
depths of his heart.
4010

VILE BODIES
Type of work: Novel
Author: Evelyn Waugh (1903- )
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: A twentieth-century interval between wail
Locale: England
First published: 1930
Principal characters:
Adam Fenwick-Symes, a young writer
Nina Blount, his fiancee
Colonel Blount, her eccentric father
Agatha Runcible, one of the Bright Young People
Miles Malpractice, another of the Bright Young People
Lottie Crump, proprietress of Shepheard's Hotel
Captain Eddy (Ginger) Littlejohn, in love with Nina
Mrs. Melrose Ape, a female evangelist
Father Rothschild, a Jesuit
A Drunken Major
Critique:
Vile Bodies is a witty satire on English
life during the period between wars. It
is also Mr. Waugh's valediction to the
Bright Young People, a generation
running to waste in a manner that is
personal as well as social. As in his earlier
Decline and Fall, the novel contains
many elements which make for grotesque
humor, but the sinister and often tragic
ends that his characters meet provoke
thoughtful reflection as well. No
solution is offered. The writer merely presents
his brief episodes in brilliant
juxtaposition and leaves the reader to draw his
own conclusions. The result is subtle but
effective social criticism. Here is T. S.
Eliot's modern Waste Land, with all of
the poet's insight and bitterness but
without his solemnity.
The Story:
During the rough channel crossing
almost everyone was in some stage of
seasickness. Some became tipsy and took to
their berths. The Bright Young People,
led by Agatha Runcible and effeminate
Miles Malpractice, strapped themselves
with sticking plaster and hoped for the
best. A few hardy souls gathered in the
smoking room where Mrs. Melrose Ape,
a famous female evangelvst traveling with
VILE BODIES by Evelyn Waugh. By permission of the author. Copyright, 1930, »y Evelyn Waugh.
her troupe of singing angels, bullied them
into singing hymns. Father Rothschild,
S.J., contemplated the sufferings of the
saints.
Adam Fenwick-Symes, a young writer,
was hurrying home to marry Nina
Blount. To his dismay, the Dover
customs authorities confiscated and burned
the manuscript of the autobiography he
had written while in Paris. Almost as
bad was the case of Agatha Runcible,
who was stripped and searched after
being mistaken for a notorious jewel
smuggler.
In London, Adam's publisher offered
him a contract to write a novel, but no
advance in royalties. With only ten
shillings to his name Adam wondered how
he was going to get married. Luckily, he
was staying at Shepheard's Hotel. Lottie
Crump, the proprietress, bullied kings
and advised members of Parliament, and
if she liked her guests she was careless
about bills. Most of her guests were
drunk. One young man made a foolish
bet with Adam and lost a thousand
pounds. Adam called Nina and told her
they could get married immediately, but
before he left the hotel a drunken major
persuaded him to put the money on
Indian Runner in the November Handi-
4011

cap. Then the major disappeared and
Adam was forced to call Nina again and
tell her that their marriage would have
to be postponed.
Adam and Nina went to Archie
Schwert's costume party. Finding the
affair dull, some of the Bright Young
People went off to Lottie Crump's for a
drink. Judge Skimp, an American guest,
was entertaining. One young woman
had fallen while swinging on a
chandelier; she died in spite of the champagne
used to bathe her forehead.
The party was about to break up when
a Miss Brown invited the group to her
house, which happened to be No. 10
Downing Street, for her father was Sir
James Brown, the Prime Minister.
Agatha Runcible stayed all night because
she had forgotten the key to her own
house. The next morning, still in her
Hawaiian grass skirt, she found reporters
and photographers waiting when she
went out the front door. Reports of
midnight orgies at No. 10 Downing Street
caused a change of government, and Mr.
Outrage, whose dreams were filled with
visions of nude Japanese ladies, became
the new Prime Minister.
On Nina's advice Adam called on
Colonel Blount to ask if that eccentric
gentleman would not finance his daughter's
wedding. The colonel generously gave
him a check for a thousand pounds.
Jubilant, Adam took Nina to a country
hotel where they stayed overnight. He
was so happy that she waited until the
next morning to tell him that her father,
an absent-minded movie fan, had signed
Charlie Chaplin's name to the worthless
check. The wedding was postponed once
more.
At Lady Metroland's party for Mrs.
Ape, Baron Balcairn, a gossip columnist
known as Mr. Chatterbox, showed up in
disguise after the hostess had refused to
send him an invitation. Suspected of
spying on a secret political conference
between Lord Metroland, Father
Rothschild, and Mr. Outrage, he was exposed.
Deciding to give his paper the scoop of
scoops, he reported a sensational but
false account of indiscreet confessions
made by aristocrats whom the evangelist
had converted. Then he went home, put
his head into the oven, turned on the
gas, and quietly died.
Adam became Mr. Chatterbox. In the
meantime Balcairn's hoax had swamped
the courts with libel suits against the
Daily Excess. Mrs. Ape confirmed the
story in a special interview and then
departed with her angels to pep up religion
at Oberammergau. Forbidden to mention
the names of those suing the paper, Adam
was forced to invent fictitious people for
his column. Among his creations was a
man named Ginger, a model of fashion
and a popular figure in society.
He was rather surprised when he
finally encountered a man whom everyone
called Ginger. He was Captain Eddy
Littlejohn; Adam and Nina met him at
the November Handicap, where Indian
Runner came in first, paying thirty-five
to one. A few minutes after the race
Adam spied the drunken major, but he
disappeared before Adam could push his
way through the crowd to collect his
winnings.
Adam promised Nina that he would
speak to her father again. He found the
colonel making a film based on the life
of John Wesley and too busy to pay any
attention to Adam. During his absence
Nina wrote his column and mentioned
green bowlers, a fashion item tabooed in
the Daily Excess. So Adam lost his job
and Miles Malpractice became Mr.
Chatterbox. Miles took the post because he
needed the money. His brother, Lord
Throbbing, had returned unexpectedly
from Canada and thrown Miles, along
with his disreputable boxing and racing
friends, out of Throbbing House.
Adam, Agatha, Miles, and Archie
Schwert went to the auto races where,
m order to get into the pits, they wore
brassards indicating that they belonged
to the crew of car 13. Between heats
Adam again met the drunken major, who,
after assuring him that his thirty-five
4012

thousand pounds were safe in the bank,
borrowed five pounds to make a bet.
When the driver of car 13 was
disabled by an Italian rival, Agatha, who
wore a brassard designating her as spare
driver, took the wheel. Careening madly,
she established a course record for the
lap before she left the track and drove
across country until she crashed the car
into a monument. Found wandering
about in a dazed condition, she died in
a nursing home, still thinking that she
was driving in a spinning world of speed
and sound.
Adam had no money to pay Lottie
Crump's bill for seventy-eight pounds
sixteen and twopence. Meeting Ginger Lit-
tlejohn, he borrowed that amount and
promised in return that Ginger could
marry Nina.
Shortly after Ginger and Nina
returned from their honeymoon Ginger was
called up for military service. Adam went
with Nina to spend Christmas with
Colonel Blount. The Wesley picture had been
finished, and the colonel, planning to
show it as a Christmas treat, was too
preoccupied to notice that his supposed
son-in-law was a writer he had met
previously as Fenwick-Symes. On Christmas
night they heard that war had been
declared.
Adam met his drunken major again on
a blasted battlefield during a lull in the
fighting. The officer, who insisted that
he was now a general, announced that
he had lost his division. Adam was not
quite so badly off; he had lost only one
platoon. The general offered to pay the
thirty-five thousand pounds on the spot,
but Adam thought the money would be
useless. They did find the general's car
and in it a case of champagne and
Chastity, who had been one of Mrs. Ape's
singing angels. Adam drank some of the
wine and fell asleep, leaving the general
and Chastity to entertain each other.
4013

THE VILLAGE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin (1870-1953)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1910
Principal characters:
Tikhon Ilitch Khasoff, a self-made landowner
Kuzma Ilitch Krasoff, his imaginative brother
The Bride, a peasant woman employed by Tikhon
Rodka, a peasant, husband of the Bride
Critique:
Bunin himself, in an autobiographical
introduction to the American edition of
this novel, stated that it was one of a series
of novels written to portray the character
of the Russian people. In the series, said
Bunin, he attempted to lay bare the
Russian soul in all its complexity and depth,
and in its invariably tragic state. Bunin
also stated that no one who knew the
Russian people as he did could have been
surprised by the beastliness of the Russian
revolution and its effect on Russia. Some
critics have called Bunin cruel in his
portrayal of the Russian people, for he
showed them as vicious, egocentric,
hatred-filled individuals who care little for
anyone but themselves. Buiiin himself has
stated that he is content to have painted a
more realistic picture of the Russian
people than the idealized conception usually
given in the literature of his land, a land
from which he was, of course, an exile
after the revolution. For his truthful
account Bunin has received the Nobel Prize
for Literature.
The Story:
The ancestors of Tikhon and Kuzma
Ilitch Krasoff were nothing to be proud
of: their great-grandfather had been
hunted from Durnovka with wolfhounds;
their grandfather had distinguished
himself by becoming a thief; and their father,
a petty huckster, had died early in life as
a result of overdrinking. The sons, after
serving for a time as clerks in town stores,
took to the road as itinerant peddlers.
After they had traveled together for many
years, the partnership was mutually
dissolved during an argument over the
division of profits. The two parted very
bitterly.
After the partnership was broken,
Tikhon took over a posting-station a few
miles from Durnovka, the little village
where his ancestors had lived for many
generations. Along with the station he
operated a liquor dispensary and general
mercantile establishment. Tikhon,
determined to become a man of some
consequence, began to build up his fortune
when he was already in his forties. His
plan was to follow the tax collectors and
buy land at forced sales, and he paid the
lowest possible prices for what he
purchased.
Tikhon's private life was anything but
rich. He lived with his cook, a dumb
woman, who became the mother of his
child. The child was accidentally
smothered, however, and soon afterward Tikhon
sent the woman away and married a
waiting-woman to a noblewoman, by whom he
tried to have children. His efforts were
fruitless, however, for the children were
always born ahead of their time and dead.
As if to make up, temporarily at least, for
his wife's failure to present him with
children, fate gave Tikhon the opportunity of
finishing off, economically speaking, the
THE VILLAGE by Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin. By permission of the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright, 1923, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed, 1951.
4014

last member of the family that had held
his own ancestors in serfdom through
previous centuries.
Life was not easy for Tikhon. A
government order closed all the dram shops,
including his, and made liquor a state
monopoly. Tikhon also continued to be
disturbed over the fact that he had no
children; he felt that it indicated a failure in
life.
The summer following the government
order closing his liquor business proved to
be a bad one. There was no rain and a
great deal of heat, and so the grain harvest
on his lands was only a fraction of what
it should have been. During that fall
Tikhon went to a fair to do some horse
trading; while he was there, he became
disgusted with himself and with life in
general, for life seemed to him suddenly
ro have no point to it. He began to take to
drink, downing immense quantities of
vodka, although not enough to interfere
with the conduct of his business.
Tikhon's life was little affected by the
war with Japan that broke out soon
afterward; he was more affected by persistent
rumors of an attempt at a socialist
revolution in the Russian legislative body.
When he learned that the great
landowners, those who owned more than a
thousand acres of ground, were likely to have
their estates taken from them for
redistribution, he even began to agitate a little
for the new laws. But he soon changed his
mind when he discovered that the
peasants on his own land were plotting against
him. One Sunday he heard that they were
meeting at Durnovka to rise in rebellion
against him. He immediately drove over
to the village, but the peasants, refusing
to listen to him, drove him away with
force. But the uprising was short-lived,
and within a few days the peasants were
back to deal with him again. He no longer
trusted them, however, and he thought of
them as little better than treacherous
animals.
One of the workers on Tikhon's land
was a young peasant named Rodka,
married to a young girl of some beauty who
was always called the Bride. The girl was
a source of annoyance to Tikhon because
she aroused him sensually. On several
occasions she resisted his unwelcome
attentions, but finally he had his way with her.
The Bride did not complain; she simply
endured, much as she endured the terrible
beatings that her husband administered to
her with a knout. The beatings made
Tikhon afraid of Rodka, and so he plotted
to do away with the man. Such scheming
proved unnecessary, however, for the
Bride herself poisoned her husband.
Tikhon, at least, was sure that she had
poisoned her husband, even though no
one else thought so.
Chance brought to Tikhon's perusal a
volume of poems written by his brother
Kuzma. Stirred by the knowledge that his
brother was still alive and also an author,
Tikhon wrote a letter telling Kuzma that
it was high time they buried past
differences and became friends again. Kuzma
went to Durnovka, and the two became,
at least on the surface, friendly. Tikhon
offered his brother the overseership of the
estate at Durnovka, and Kuzma accepted
because he had no other prospects for
making a living.
Kuzma Krasoff had done nothing with
his life. Following the dissolution of the
partnership with Tikhon years before, he
had worked here and there, as a drover,
a teamster, a general worker. Then he
had fallen in love with a woman at
Voronezh and had lived with her for ten
years, until she died. In that decade he
busied himself by trading in grain and
horses and by writing occasionally for the
local newspaper. All his life he had wanted
to become a writer. He had never been
educated, except for short periods of
instruction at the hands of a shoemaker out
of work and from books he had borrowed
occasionally. He considered his life a
complete waste, for he had never been
able to settle down to writing seriously.
In his maturity Kuzma blamed all his
troubles, and the troubles of Russians in
general, on a lack of education.
Education, he believed, was the answer to every
problem confronting him and his fellow-
men, and he claimed that the Russians,
4015

whom he regarded as little better than
barbarians with a wide streak of hatred
in their makeup, would have been better
folk if they had been educated.
Kuzma's life as bailiff on his brother's
estate was not a happy one. He felt that
the position was a last resort, and he
disliked the people with whom he had to
deal, including Tikhon. He was also per
turbed by the Bride, who had been sent
by Tikhon to cook and keep house for him.
She did not arouse him as she had Tikhon,
but Kuzma was bothered by her presence,
and he felt extremely sorry for her
because, a few years before, a group of men
had raped her. The incident, Kuzma felt,
lingered like a cloud over her existence.
When at last he spoke to Tikhon about
the matter, Tikhon, supposing that Kuzma
had been sampling the same favors that
the owner had enjoyed in the past,
laughed at his brother's scruples. He did
arrange to marry off the woman, however,
and the Bride became the wife of a
peasant on the estate. On the wedding day
only Kuzma realized that the prospect of a
husband was but a makeshift in the
Bride's mind, and that she, like himself,
would never really be happy.
4016

THE VILLAGE
Type of work: Poetry
Author: George Crabbe (1754-1832)
First published: 1783
Although George Crabbe's poem, The
Village, contains two books, the
anthologists have been largely justified in
printing Book I as a separate poem. This book
is in part a bitter answer to Oliver
Goldsmith's sentimental picture of rural life
in The Deserted Village: "I paint the
cot/ As Truth will paint it, and as Bards
will not." Book II continues the theme
of the first book for over a hundred lines,
then turns into a memorial eulogy of
Lord Robert Manners, the brother of
Crabbe's patron, the Duke of Rutland.
Crabbe's long life spanned the periods
of eighteenth-century classicism and
nineteenth-century romanticism, and his work
contains elements of both schools. His
friends included Samuel Johnson among
the earlier poets and Sir Walter Scott
among the later. Johnson "corrected"
some of Crabbe's poetry and, according
to Boswell, revised lines 15-20 of The
Village:
On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's
bounteous reign,
If Tityrus found the Golden Age again,
Must sleepy bards the flattering dream
prolong,
Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song?
From Truth and Nature shall we widely
stray,
Where Virgin, not where Fancy, leads
the way?
These lines do have a Johnsonian flavor;
and although they fit into the structure
of the poem, they are not entirely typical
of Crabbe. Francis Jeffrey, one of
Crabbe's admiring later contemporaries,
wrote: "The scope of the poem is to
show that the villagers of real life have
no resemblance to the villagers of poetry;
that poverty, in sober truth, is very
uncomfortable; and vice by no means
confined to the opulent."
Jeffrey set the tone for much
subsequent criticism of Crabbe: "His
characteristic, certainly, is force and truth of
description, joined for the most part to
great selection and condensation of
expression. . . . With a taste less
disciplined and less fastidious than that of
Goldsmith, he has, in our apprehension,
a keener eye for observation, and a
readier hand for the delineation of what he
has observed." Crabbe has frequently
been compared with the Dutch realistic
painters, and The Village is rich with
vigorous, natural word-painting. A
dismal landscape with infertile soil and
hardy weeds, listed and described by
name, serves as background for group
and individual portraits of a surly, selfish,
unscrupulous, vicious, often miserable
population. Particularlv notable is his
interior scene of the poorhouse:
Theirs is yon house that holds the
parish poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the
broken door;
There, where the putrid vapors,
flagging play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful
through the day-
There children dwell, who know no
parents' care;
Parents, who know no children's love,
dwell there!
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless
bed,
Forsaken wives, and mothers never
wed;
Dejected widows with unheeded tears,
And crippled age with more than
childhood fears;
The lame, the blind, and, far the
happiest they!
The moping idiot and the madman gay.
In this miserable house one of the aged
inmates is dying. In connection with this
death Crabbe introduces two of his most
savage caricatures. First, he presents the
doctor:
Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat,
All pride and business, bustle and
conceit;
4017

With looks unalter'd by these scenes of
woe,
With speed that, entering, speaks his
haste to go,
He bids the gazing throng around him
fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye:
A potent quack, long versed in human
ills,
Who first insults the victim whom he
kills;
Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy Bench
protect,
And whose most tender mercy is
neglect.
After the departure of the doctor, the
dying man asks for the parish priest. This
character is a direct antithesis to the
venerable vicar of Goldsmith's The
Deserted Village or The Vicar of Wakefield.
He is concerned with hunting in the
daytime and whist at night. He not only
fails to answer the summons before the
death, but cannot be troubled with
saying the funeral service until the
following Sunday:
And waiting long, the crowd retire dis-
tress'd,
To think a poor man's bones should lie
unbless'd.
These lines end the first book.
The smugglers and drunkards of Book
I are forerunners of an equally vicious or
more vicious group in the first part of
Book II. In both books death is spoken
of as a deliverer and equalizer. The elegy
on Manners occupies the final hundred
lines of the poem and is really complete
in itself.
Crabbe has had warm admirers ever
since The Village was published. In our
time Edwin Arlington Robinson paid him
tribute in a strong-fibered sonnet; he felt
that changing fashions in literature could
not obscure Crabbe's "hard, human
pulse" or his "plain excellence and
stubborn skill." In his opera Peter Grimes,
based on one of the tales in The
Borough, Benjamin Britten has brought
Crabbe to the attention of many who
knew little about the old poet; but The
Village, which first made Crabbe's poetic
reputation, still best sustains it, and
remains his most familiar and frequently
read poem.
4018

VILLETTE
Type of work: Novel
Author: Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
Type of plot: Psychological romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: France
First published: 1853
Principal characters:
Lucv Snowe, a young teacher
John Graham Bretton, a physician
Mrs. Bretton, his mother
Polly Home, in love with Bretton
Gtnevra Fanshawe, a schoolgirl
Monsieur Paul Emanuel, a teacher of literature
Madame Beck, mistress of a girls' school
Critique:
In spite of its apparent flaws, Villette
remains a superior novel, for the sure
hand of Charlotte Bronte overcame most
of the weaknesses of her story. One of
the most obvious faults is the flat
characterization of Dr. John Bretton, and the
novel itself is broken in construction when
the doctor is replaced in the leading role
by Monsieur Paul Emanuel. Typical of
the period is the repetition of coincidental
meetings between characters who have
had previous relationship. Lucy meets Dr.
John Bretton on the streets of Villette
before she comes to know him as the
physician of Madame Beck's
establishment, and she meets the priest in a church
before she finds him in the Walravens
home. It is enough that John Bretton and
Lucy are brought together again, but that
Pollv Home should also arrive strains at
credibility. The narrative proper shows
that Charlotte Bronte had in this novel
finally mastered her autobiographical
material; there is a quality of artistic
strength here, and more profound
character portrayal, than in the ingenuous but
perennially popular jane Eyre.
The Story:
When Lucy Snowe was a young girl,
she went to visit her godmother, Mrs.
Bretton, about twice each year. It was a
warm, active household, and Lucy loved
Mrs. Bretton.
During one of her visits, a small girl,
whose widowed father was leaving
England for a sojourn on the continent, came
to stay with the Brettons. The girl, Polly
Home, developed a strange and tender
fondness for Mrs. Bretton's son Graham,
who was a kind and compassionate boy.
Mature and worldly for her years, Polly
exhibited an almost maternal attachment
toward Graham. Since Lucy shared a
room with the young visitor, she became
the recipient of the child's confidence.
Although Polly's father had originally
intended to deposit his daughter at Mrs.
Bretton's home for an extended stay, he
became lonely for her and returned to
take his daughter back to Europe with
him.
Lucy's visits with the Brettons came to
an end when they lost their property and
moved away. After that Lucy lost track
of her godmother.
As a grown woman Lucy earned her
living by acting as a companion to elderly
women. Tiring of her humdrum
existence, she went to France. There an
unusual chain of circumstances led her to
the city of Villette and to a boarding
school run by Madame Beck and her
kinsman, Monsieur Paul Emanuel. Lucy's
calm disposition, ready wit, firm
character, and advanced intellect soon led to
her appointment as instructress of
English.
Attending the school was Ginevra
Fanshawe, a pretty but flighty and selfish girl
whose relations with Lucy took the form
of a scornful friendship. Madame Beck
4019

was a clever schoolmistress. She
conducted her pension by a system of spying
which included occasional furtive searches
among the personal possessions of others
and also a constant stealthy watching from
her window. In spite of her behavior,
Lucy felt a firm respect for Madame Beck.
Her system was steady and unflagging.
Monsieur Paul was a voluble and brilliant
instructor. He seemed always to be at
Lucy's elbow admonishing her, tantalizing
her intellect, attempting to lead her. Often
Lucy attributed the peculiar notions of
the pair to their Catholicism, which Lucy
abhorred.
Dr. John was a general favorite at the
institute; he was a handsome, generous
young practitioner who attended the
children of Madame Beck's school. Lucy,
although she did not betray her knowledge,
recognized him as the John Graham
Bretton whom she had known years
before.
In her characteristically scornful and
triumphant manner toward Lucy, Ginevra
Fanshawe confided that she had a pair of
ardent suitors. One, whom she called
Isidore, was madly in love with her; the
other was Colonel de Hamal, whom
Ginevra herself preferred.
One night, in the garden, Lucy found
a letter intended for someone in the
school. Dr. John appeared in time to
assist Lucy in disposing of the missive before
Madame Beck, spying, could interfere.
The young doctor knew, apparently, the
person for whom the letter was intended.
Some time later Lucy learned that Gi-
nevra's Isidore was Dr. John himself.
Thus the mystery of the nocturnal letter
was solved. De Hamal had sent it and
Dr. John was attempting to protect his
beloved. In discussing his hopeless
passion for Ginevra, Dr. John confessed that
he hoped to marry the schoolgirl.
During a vacation Lucy, left alone at
the pension, was overcome by depression.
She had been haunted in the past by the
apparition of a nun, and the reappearance
of this specter so aggravated the already
turbulent emotions of the young teacher
that she fled into the streets of the town.
There she wandered, driven to despair by
her inner conflicts, until she came to a
Catholic church. A strange fascination
drove her to confession, but she later
regretted her action. While trying to find
her way back to the school, she fainted.
When she regained consciousness, she
found herself in a room that contained
familiar furnishings. She was in a Villette
chateau occupied by her godmother, Mrs.
Bretton, and Graham Bretton. Graham,
who was giving Lucy medical attention,
was the Dr. John whom Lucy had
recognized at the pension. For the first time he
recognized her as the young girl who
had so often stayed in his home in
England.
Lucy became a frequent visitor in the
Bretton home, and before long she
realized that she was in love with Dr. John.
The warm friendship between the two
young people was constantly put upon by
the ubiquitous Monsieur Paul and his
sarcastic raillery.
While at a concert one evening with
Dr. John and Mrs. Bretton, Lucy noticed
Ginevra Fanshawe in the audience.
Ginevra, having located the doctor's party,
began to mimic Mrs. Bretton, who was
unaware of the young girl. Dr. John was
not. At once he sensed the weakness and
the selfishness of Ginevra, who could so
irreverently make fun of a woman as good
as his mother. His infatuation for
Ginevra ended in disgust.
Again at a concert with Lucy, Dr. John
rescued a young girl named Paulina from
a rough crowd of people. Bringing Paulina
Bassompierre to his own home, Dr. John
discovered that she was in reality Polly
Home, who had stayed at the old Bretton
house in England. All the old
acquaintances were together again.
Repeated meetings between Polly, now
called Paulina, and Dr. John fostered the
doctor's love for the girl who had loved
him since childhood. Lucy, closing her
eyes and ears to this grief, believed that
Dr. John was lost to her.

Lucy began a new phase in her life at
the school. Madame Beck gave her greater
freedom in her work, and Monsieur Paul
showed a hearty interest in her mind and
in her heart. The only flaw remaining in
Lucy's tranquillity was the reappearance
of the apparition of the nun.
Once Madame Beck sent Lucy on an
errand to the home of Madame Wal-
ravens. There Lucy was told a touching
story about Monsieur Paul. He had loved
a girl, Justine Marie, in his youth, but
cruel relatives refused his suit and she
subsequently died. Filled with remorse,
Monsieur Paul undertook to care for
Justine Marie's relatives. There survived
old Madame Walravens and a priest, the
same man to whom Lucy had confessed.
The priest, Father Silas, had been
Monsieur Paul's tutor; he was anxious to keep
Monsieur Paul from coming under the
influence of Lucy, a heretic.
Lucy's affection for the truculent
professor grew, but suddenly all her hopes
toppled about her. Monsieur Paul was
leaving France for the West Indies.
Madame Beck, always present when
Monsieur Paul and Lucy met, kept the
distraught teacher from talking to him.
Ginevra Fanshawe eloped with de
Hamal. A letter from the runaway girl
explained Lucy's ghostly nun. De Hamal
had thus attired himself when making
nocturnal visits to Ginevra.
But Monsieur Paul refused to abandon
Lucy without an explanation of his
sudden forced departure. On the eve of
his sailing he arranged a meeting with her
and explained his recent silence.
Surrounded by his possessive relatives, he had
occupied his time with secret
arrangements to make Lucy mistress of the school.
To avoid the temptation of telling Lucy
about his plans before they were
consummated, he had remained apart from her.
Upon his return, in three years, he
promised to rid himself of all his encumbrances,
so that he would be free to marry Lucy
Snowe.
4021

A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY
Type of work: Political satire
Author: Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
First published: 1756
Edmund Burke's first important
publication, A Vindication of Natural Society,
subtitled A View of the Miseries and
Evils arising to Mankind from every
Species of Civil Society, in a Letter to
Lord , by a late Noble Writer,
satirically attacked the views of Lord Boling-
broke (the late Noble Writer), whose
philosophical works had been published
posthumously in 1754. Bv adopting
Bolingbroke's manner, Burke hoped to give a
tone of irony and satire to his own
opinions on society. So well did he succeed in
imitating his model's polished style,
however, that A Vindication of Natural
Society was generally received as Boling-
broke's own, even by such critics as
Chesterfield and Warburton.
Burke's central point was to show
that Bolingbroke's arguments in favor of
natural against revealed religion were
equally applicable in favor of natural as
against artificial society. Two years before
A Vindication of Natural Society
appeared, Rousseau had in fact developed
the thesis that a simple society close to
nature was morally superior to the refined
society of Europe. Burke understood the
revolutionary nature of this doctrine and
its threat to the established order, and he
consistently maintained that any society
was preferable to the hypothetical "state
of nature." To prove that he understood
the implications of his opponents'
arguments better than they themselves did, he
assumed their position with massive irony:
"In vain you tell me that artificial
government is good, but that I fall out only
with the abuse. The thing! the thing
itself is the abuse!" His irony is so cleverly
disguised that J.B. Bury commented, "A
Vindication . . . worked out in detail a
historical picture of the evils of
civilization which is far more telling than
Rousseau's generalities."
Burke begins by distinguishing
between a natural society and the political
society which came into being when man,
observing the advantages of the family
union, assumed that larger unions would
be beneficial as well. Because the society
so created was artificial, man was forced
to invent laws. By stating the case so
baldly, Burke hoped to ridicule
Bolingbroke's straightforward rationalism. He
puts a major part of the blame for social
corruption on religious institutions in a
covert attempt to identify Bolingbroke's
deism with an attack on the social order:
"Civil government borrows a strength
from ecclesiastical; and artificial laws
receive a sanction from artificial
revelations. The ideas of religion and
government are closely connected; and whilst
we receive government as a thing
necessary ... we shall in spite of us draw in
... an artificial religion of some kind or
other." Although Burke's Noble Writer
disavows any attack on English society,
the sweeping nature of his generalizations
obviously implicates him.
The state, the Noble Writer goes on,
can be viewed in two different lights, in
its external relationship to other states,
and in its internal relationship to the
governed. He finds that a description of the
honorable conduct between nations would
not fill ten pages, but their record of war
and treachery is beyond human
accounting. With deliberately exaggerated
concern in proving his point, Burke devotes
about one-sixth of his essay to the history
of war. He caps his summary with the
estimate that the number of men
slaughtered in battle was seventy times the five
hundred million then inhabiting the
earth. The Noble Writer concludes that
". . . political society is justly chargeable
with much the greatest part of this
destruction of the species." In this passage
Burke's irony attains a subtle level of
complexity. Thoughtful men could hardly
deny the general truth that Burke
seemingly offered to his opposition. Burke's

irony is perhaps intended to demonstrate
that such righteousness is easy, and that
his own views were based upon principle,
and not upon a justification of the status
quo.
The Noble Writer finds that
governments are no less cruel and unjust to
those they govern. "All writers on the
science of policy are agreed . . . that all
governments must frequently infringe the
rules of justice to support themselves;
that truth must give way to dissimulation;
honesty to convenience; and humanity
itself to the reigning interest." Why, he
wonders, should Machiavelli be so
detested for merely unveiling the
mechanisms of government? The oppression of
rulers can everywhere be seen in the
dungeons, whips, chains, racks, and gibbets
which they need to support themselves.
"What sort of protection is this of the
general right," the Noble Writer asks in
mock triumph, "that is maintained bv
infringing the rights of particulars? What
sort of justice is this, which is enforced
by breaches of its own laws?" Burke
contrives to give the Noble Writer a strong
emotional argument in words that were
even quoted against him. Underlying the
irony, however, is the quiet conviction
that man is not essentially good and that
some kind of government is necessary to
regulate human affairs.
The Noble Writer then divides
governments into three kinds, despotism,
aristocracy, and democracy, and he gives
a historical sketch of each. Despotism is
the simplest and most general kind. In
such a system power is usually given to
the weakest and most foolish. The life
and welfare of all are given over to the
whim of one man, such as Nero, who
had a learned scholar put to death
because he did not like his face. Even the
sincere and virtuous despot is corrupted
by servile ministers who serve their own
selfish ends. Under this system the
greater part of the people are considered
as cattle, and, having lost all pride and
dignity, they soon become no better. Such
a government is actually worse than
anarchy (Burke actually thought that
anarchy was the worst possible civil order),
yet the greater part of mankind
throughout history has groaned under despotism.
Aristocracy has arisen whenever a
society, finding the rule of one man
intolerable, entrusts the public welfare to a
group of leaders. Burke ironically presents
the oversimplified assumptions about
human nature implicit in this view: "They
hoped it would be impossible that such a
number [of aristocrats] could ever join
in any design against the general good;
and they promised themselves a great
deal of security and happiness from the
united counsels of so many able and
experienced persons." The Noble Writer
finds, however, that aristocracy differs
little from despotism in practice. Once in
power, the aristocrats use every means
possible to maintain their position. In
one important respect aristocracy is worse
than despotism: one ruler can be
overthrown and may be succeeded by a
better one, but an aristocracy clings
tenaciously to its body of traditions. In
actuality, Burke valued the force of tradition
as a bulwark against anarchy.
The third type of government,
democracy, imposes the tyranny of the
majority. The ignorance and fickleness of a
popular assembly leads to the same kind
of abuses as those of despotism and
aristocracy. Although Athens has been much
admired for its democracy, it was "a city
of wise men, in which a minister could
not exercise his functions; a warlike
people, amongst whom a general did not
dare either to gain or lose a battle: a
learned nation, in which a philosopher
could not venture on a free inquiry." The
mixed society, the union of regal,
aristocratic, and popular power, is equally
insupportable. At this point Burke has his
Noble Writer come dangerously close to
attacking the foundations of eighteenth-
century English society. The mixed
society is represented as torn with strife
over rights and powers, and as dominated
by factions more interested in partisan
advantage than in the general welfare.
The Noble Writer returns to a
humanitarian appeal in his discussion of the rich
4023

and the poor. To him it is obvious that
the whole function of the poor is to
provide idleness and luxury for the rich. "In
a state of nature," he says, with a
simplicity that Burke intended to be
ridiculous, "it is an invariable law, that a man's
acquisitions are in proportion to his
labors. In a state of artificial society, it is a
law as constant and as invariable, that
those who labor most enjoy the fewest
things; and that those who labor not at
all have the greatest number of
enjoyments." The Noble Writer is eloquent,
however, in describing the horrible life of
the poor. The worker in the mine and
factory is little more than a slave; the
rich, on the other hand, corrupt
themselves with lives of idleness.
Burke's mock indictment of society is
thus complete: it slaughters and enslaves
and corrupts. In answer to these genuine
criticisms, however, Burke attributes to
his Noble Writer only a naive and
dangerous sentimentality, hopelessly out of
touch with man's true nature. The Noble
Writer argues from lofty first principles;
Burke consistently appealed for a
practical, flexible, and conservative wisdom.
A Vindication of Natural Society
prophetically reveals the intellectual and
moral debate in which Burke struggled
all his life.
4024

THE VIOLENT LAND
Type of work: Novel
Author: Jorge Amado (1913- )
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: State of Bahia, Brazil
First published: 1942
Principal characters:
Colonel Horacio da Silveira, a cacao planter
Colonel Sinho Badar6> another planter
Dona Ester da Silveira, Colonel da Silveira's wife
Dona Ana Badar6, Colonel Badar6's daughter
Captain Joao Magalhaes, in love with Dona Ana
Dr. Virgilio Cabral, Dona Ester's lover and da Silveira's lawyer
Margot, a prostitute
Juca Badaro, Colonel Badar6's younger brother
Critique:
This novel, skillfully plotted and
impressive in its evocation of the spirit of
a region, reflects the violence of the
struggle to produce and market the raw
material for chocolate. The action covers
the early years of cacao production in the
State of Bahia, Brazil, a corner of the
world that was a late frontier. Like most
frontiers, it was a lawless area that
attracted people anxious to get rich
quickly, people who did not care whether
others, or they themselves, lived or died,
Bahia was, at the same time, a land
where courageous men carved fortunes
out of the wilderness and the labor of
other men, a place where the strong lived
and the weak succumbed. Its history is
the Brazilian counterpart of an era in
the development of the western United
States. Wherever it is found, the frontier
is always a violent land.
The Story:
In the minds of most Brazilians the
S§o Jorge dos Ilheos was a
semi-barbarous country ruled by a handful of rich
planters who styled themselves colonels.
These men had risen, almost without
exception, from humble origins by means
of courage, bravado, and murder. The
two most important planters were Colonel
Horacio da Silveira and Colonel Sinh6
Badar6. Between their lands lay a large
forest, upon which both men had long
cast covetous eyes. The forest, actually
a jungle, could be cleared to uncover an
almost fabulous cacao-growing soil.
Among the strangers who poured into
the region in search of wealth at the
time were several people who were to
range themselves on one side or the other
in the coming struggle. Dr. Virgilio
Cabral, a cultured and talented lawyer,
was to ally himself with da Silveira. With
the lawyer came Margot, a beautiful
prostitute who had fallen in love with
him and become his mistress while he
was a student. Another arrival was
Captain Joao Magalhaes, a professional
gambler and a courageous opportunist who
called himself a military engineer. Among
his admirers were Juca Badaro, Colonel
Badaro's younger brother, and Dona Ana
Badaro, the coloners daughter, who was
also the heiress to the Badaro fortunes.
Soon after his arrival Cabral fell in
love with Ester, da Silveira's beautiful
wife. The woman, who hated her semi-
barbarous husband, quickly returned the
affection of the more cultured man.
When she became his mistress, both
knew that they would be killed if the
husband found them out. As his ardor
for Ester da Silveira increased, the law-
THE VIOLENT LAND by Jorge Amado. Translated by Samuel Putnam. By permission of the
publishers. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright. 1945, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
4025

yer's affection for his former mistress
waned, and soon Margot found herself
unwanted by her lover. In retaliation,
and because she needed someone to
support her, Margot became the mistress
of Juca Badar6. Out of spite she also
furnished him with scandal about the
opposition, gossip which he turned to
account in the newspaper which favored
the Badaros.
Professionally, as well as amorously,
Cabral was a success, for he found an
old survey of the contested lands and
registered the title in da Silveira's name
after he had bribed the registry officials.
The Badar6 family quickly retaliated by
burning the registry office and all the
records on file. In addition, the Badaros
hired Magalh&es to run a survey for
them. He made the survey, even though
he lacked the proper knowledge to do
so. His presence at the Badaro plantation
earned him the respect of the Badar6
brothers and the love of Dona Ana Ba-
dar6. The self-styled captain, always an
opportunist, permitted himself to fall in
love with the girl and pay court to her.
Because the Badar6 family was the
more powerful of the two factions, da
Silveira went to several small planters
and promised to let them divide half of
the forest land if they, as a group, would
help him hold it against the Badaros.
There was bloody fighting on both sides
of the forest and within it, for both
factions hired many assassins and bodyguards
to back up their interests with bullets.
The Badar6s controlled the local
government, and the state government was in
opposition to the federal government of
Brazil.
Juca Badar6 was assassinated by a hired
gunman after he had insulted Cabral.
Juca had found the lawyer dancing with
Margot, at the girl's request, and had
insulted the lawyer for daring to do so.
On the other side, too, there were
disappointments and deaths. Both Cabral
and da Silveira were deterred in their
plans when the colonel fell ill with a
fever. The planter recovered, but his
wife, the lawyer's mistress, became ill as
a result of nursing her husband. Her
death removed one incentive in the efforts
of both her husband and her lover, but
they stubbornly continued the fight.
As the struggle in the courts and in
the fields continued, the Badar6s spent
more and more money. They not only
sold their current crop of cacao pods, but
also sold their next year's crop in order
to raise funds immediately. Before his
assassination Juca Badar6 had seen to it
that his niece, Dofia Ana, was married
to the gambler, for he saw in Magalh&es
an ambitious man willing to fight for
money and power. So tempting was the
proposal the Badaros made that the
captain agreed to take his wife's name, her
father insisting that he do so in order
to carry on the Badar6 line.
At first, by tacit consent, the
contending parties did no damage to one
another's cacao trees, but as the Badaros
became desperate they instructed their
desperadoes to burn the cacao groves.
Their opponents saw that the matter had
to be settled at once, lest both parties
be irretrievably ruined and become
victims of someone stronger than they.
Colonel da Silveira and his henchman, along
with their paid gunmen, attacked the
Badar6 plantation in force and drove off
the family, after killing all the men
except a handful led by Magalh&es.
Da Silveira and his men thought that
the women of the BadanS household had
been sent away, but the attackers were
greeted by gunfire from Dona Ana
herself as they entered the house. When she
ran out of ammunition, she gave up,
expecting to be killed. The attackers let
her go, however, because she was a
woman.
The Badar6 rout was completed by an
announcement from the Brazilian capital
that the political party favoring da
Silveira had come into power and was
sending troops and government agents to the
district to quiet the violence. The jungle
lands were ceded to the da Silveira
faction by the government's action. Da Sil-
4026

veira was forced to stand trial for the
murder of Juca Badar6> but the trial,
having been staged more to clear the
colonel than to find him guilty, was a
mere formality.
The district quickly settled down after
the great feud had ended and the new
government had started its operations.
But there was to be one more
assassination. While going through his dead wife's
effects, da Silveira discovered the letters
Cabral had written to her. He was
horrified and embarrassed to learn of her
infidelity, which he had not suspected,
and his lawyer's duplicity. After
thinking about the matter for some time, he
sent a gunman to clear his honor by
killing the man who had made him a
cuckold.
To symbolize the new peace that had
come into the frontier district, the Church
made the city of Ilheos the seat of a
newly created diocese and sent a bishop
to officiate as its representative there. As
if to show the value of the former
jungle land, the cacao trees planted there
produced a crop in the fourth year, &
full twelve months earlier than usual.
4027

VIRGIN SOIL
Type of work: Novel
Author: Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time off lot: 1868
Loade: Russia
First published: 1872
Principal characters:
Nezhdanoff, a student
Pahkltn, his friend
Sipyagin, a nobleman
Valenttna, his wife
Markhloff, Valentina's brother
Marianna, Sipyagin's niece
Solomin, a factory superintendent
Critique:
Virgin Soil is in many respects typical
of Turgenev. It is realistic, almost
photographically so, reflecting the dominant
pessimism of the author. Here we have
a sensitive and sympathetic portrayal of
the beginnings of Russian liberalism after
the emancipation of the serfs. We see
also the essential humanitarianism of
the socialists and the frivolity of the
aristocracy as both sides struggle in the
developing industrialization. But in the
conflict the chief liberal protagonists
prove incapable and seal their own
doom.
The Story:
Miss Mashurin and Ostrodumoff, both
socialists, were waiting in NezhddnofFs
room in a poor quarter of St. Petersburg.
A letter from a high leader had made a
conference necessary, for another vague
revolutionary project was under way.
While they waited they were joined by
Pdhklin, a sly hanger-on of the
intelligentsia, who wanted to discuss a critical
matter with Nezhdanoff the student.
Nezhdanoff was late, but when he
came they plunged into a discussion of
their project. They needed money for a
trip to Moscow, and they were all poor.
Nezhdanoff, however, was the
illegitimate son of a nobleman, and in a pinch
he could secure small sums of money
from his father. He promised to have
the required sum the next day.
The conspirators were interrupted by
the arrival of the elegant and noble
Sipyagin, who had sat next to Nezhdanoff
at the theater. A dilettante liberal, he had
been attracted by the opinions and views
of the poor student, and he came to offer
Nezhdanoff a post as tutor to his young
son at a salary of a hundred roubles a
month. Sipyagin was generous, even
offering to pay a month's salary in
advance. So witn the blessing of his
socialist comrades, Nezhdanoff accepted the
offer and went to live on the country
estate of Sipyagin.
The household of Sipydgin was
interesting, and after Nezhdanoff got over
his shyness he made good progress with
nine-year-old Kolya, his student. For a
time, Nezhdanoff was content to live a
leisurely life, for his duties were light.
Although she scarcely spoke to him,
Marianna, the penniless niece, attracted
Nezhdanoff greatly. She was evidently
unhappy, and she was abrupt and
forthright in her attitude toward her rich
relatives.
Valentina, Sipydgin's wife, was a
beautiful woman without much heart.
Although she herself was coldly virtuous,
she enjoyed snaring men to see them
dance at her bidding. She invited Nezh-
ddnoff to her boudoir ostensibly to
discuss her son's education, but in reality
to captivate the young tutor. When he
failed to respond to her attractions, she
was nettled at his indifference. Then it
became apparent that Nezhdanoff was
4028

attracted to Marianna, and Valentina
became jealous.
Markeloff, Valentma's brother, came to
visit the family. He was a savage, intense
man who expressed his liberal opinions
with great emphasis and alienated most
of the company with his boorish ways.
During a walk Nezhdanoff surprised
Marianna and Markeloff in a lonely
wood; he heard Marianna refuse
something vigorously. Later, in an impulsive
outburst, Marianna confided that
Markeloff had proposed marriage.
This confidence strengthened the bond
between Marianna and Nezhddnoff. That
evening the tutor was surprised by an
invitation to MarkelofFs room. There he
learned that Markeloff was a party
member and a vigorous exponent of
immediate action, who had been ordered to
question Nezhddnoff about party
activities on Sipydgin's estate and in his
factory. Nezhdanoff had done nothing to
stir up discontent among the peasants or
workers, for he had been apathetic toward
socialism for some time. Under Markel-
off's urging he resolved to spread
propaganda among the workmen.
Nezhdanoff confided his aims and
problems to Marianna, who became a
ready convert to revolutionary thought,
her zeal surpassing that of Nezhdanoff.
With Markeloff, Nezhdanoff visited some
of the party members in the
neighborhood, among them a man named Sol6min.
Sol6min was a factory manager and a
good one, a calm, taciturn man of great
strength of character. Sipyagin had tried
to hire him to manage Sipydgin's own
factory, but Sol6min had refused. He
was content where he was and he could
scarcely conceal his contempt for the
whole aristocracy. Sipyagin had taken
the refusal with bad grace, and now
began to show suspicion of Nezhdanoff.
From time to time Marianna and
Nezhdanoff met in her room at night to
discuss socialism. Although they were
in love, they did not act as lovers.
Valentina spied on the girl constantly. She
made insinuations about her niece's
character, and the atmosphere in the
household became quite unpleasant. At length
Sipyagin discharged Nezhdanoff. Early
the next morning Nezhdanoff returned
with a cart for Marianna, and the two
fled for shelter to the factory where S0I6-
min was employed. The manager
concealed them in his living quarters, and
Nezhdanoff and Marianna lived together
as brother and sister, waiting for the time
when Nezhdanoff could be sure enough
of his love to marry.
Marianna put on peasant clothes and
tried to learn peasant ways so that she
would be a good worker for the
revolution. Nezhdanoff, roughly clothed, made
many trips among the farmers and mill
hanas to talk to them of liberty and
freedom. He was unsuccessful in his
attempts, however, for he was far too
impetuous and harangued peasant groups
in words they could not understand. On
one occasion Nezhdanoff tried to drink
vodka to ingratiate himself with the
workers, but strong drink only made him
sick. More and more he became
conscious of failure, and felt that he could
not marry Marianna. She, in turn,
became more aware of NezhdanofFs
weakness and Solomin's strength.
When the peasants in MarkelofFs
district rebelled against paying their taxes,
Markeloff rashly urgea complete and
armed rebellion, but his manner was so
abusive that the peasants turned against
him, beat him severely, and delivered
him to the general commanding the
district police. This disquieting news
reached Sol6min*s factory, and the
conspirators there made plans to flee.
Pihklin, misguided in his sympathy,
decided to appeal to Sipyigin to intercede
for his brother-in-law, Markeloff.
Foolishly he babbled the hiding place of
Marianna and Nezhd&noff. Sipvdgin kept
Pahklin under close surveillance and
went to see the general. So great was
Sipy£gin*s influence that the general
consented to release Markeloff if he would
confess his crime and promise to stir up
no more trouble. But Markeloff was
stubborn. He repeated his belief in the
revolution and refused to acknowledge
4029

any errors. The general had no choice
but to imprison him. Then at the
instigation of Sipyagin, the police prepared to
raid Sol6min's factory.
Solomin quietly made plans to
disappear. Nezhdanoff, confronted by his own
weakness and by his inability to love
Marianna enough to marry her, wrote a
last letter and killed himself with a
revolver. In the letter he asked that
Marianna marry Solomin. An obliging priest
performed the ceremony quickly and
Solomin and Marianna departed. When
the police arrived, they discovered only
the suicide of Nezhdanoff.
Markeloff was tried and sentenced to
Siberia. Sol6min reappeared, but was
released because the police had no evidence
against him. He rejoined Marianna, who
had by that time agreed to live with him
as his wife. They were busy with Solo-
min's new factory.
Back in St. Petersburg, Pihklin was
unhappy, for the liberals now called him
a spy. By chance he met Miss Mashurin
in the street. She was now supposedly an
Italian countess. Somewhere she had
secured an Italian passport and funds for
traveling. Pahklin invited her to have tea
with him. Although she despised him,
she accepted, for he had been Nezhdan-
off's friend. From Pahklin Miss
Mashurin got a photograph of Nezhdanoff,
with whom she had always been in love.
4030

THE VIRGINIA COMEDIANS
Type of work: Novel
Author: John Esten Cooke (1830-1886)
Type of plot: Sentimental romance
Time of plot: 1763-1765
Locale: Colonial Virginia
First published: 1854
Principal characters:
Champ Effingham, foppish scion of a wealthy planter
Beatrice Hallam, a young actress with whom Effingham falls in love
Clare Lee, Effingham's cousin and fiancee
Charles Waters, Effingham's rival for Beatrice Hallam
Captain Ralph Waters, Charles Waters' brother
Jack Hamilton, friend of Effingham, his sister's fiance"
Critique:
John Esten Cooke was one of the last
of the historical romanticists who
followed the footsteps of James Fenimore
Cooper. He was also the first of a long
line of authors who continue to idealize
the pre-Civil War South. Unlike some of
the imitators of Cooper, Cooke wrote
books which are well grounded in the
history of Virginia, especially that of the
James River section, in which most of
them are laid. While Cooke's novels
display a keen sense of the dramatic, his
books have too much elegance and too
much sentimentality for most modern
tastes. This novel survives, however, for
its vivid pictures of places and events in
the early history of the state.
The Story:
In the spring of 1763, Williamsburg,
the Colonial capital of Virginia, was
treated to its first professional dramatic
presentation by an English company
called The Virginia Comedians. The
Colony, rich and poor, was highly
excited over the event. The day the
company was to arrive in Williamsburg,
young Champ Effingham, son of a
wealthy planter, rode to town for a
holiday. Young Effingham, educated at
Oxford, had taken up the ways of the
London fops while in England. His dress
was extraordinary; his manners were
artificial.
On the way to Williamsburg he met
a beautiful young woman on horseback
who asked him the way. When
questioned by him, she refused to give her
name, stating only that she was unknown
to him beca'use she was not a lady. The
mystery was solved the next day at
the play, when Effingham discovered that
the girl was an actress with the traveling
company. Despite the fact that he was
engaged to marry one of the most
beautiful and wealthy of the Virginia girls,
Effingham became infatuated with the
actress, whose name was Beatrice
Hallam. She was the daughter of the
manager of the company.
There was scandal in the
neighborhood when it became known that Champ
Effingham was paying court to the
actress. Everyone among the gentry was
perturbed, for actresses were considered
low in the social scale. When word came
to Effingham's father, the old gentleman
ordered his son to desist. The son's
answer was to leave the house and take up
residence at the inn in Williamsburg
where the players were lodging.
Effingham had little success with Beatrice
Hallam, however. She despised him because
of his artificial manners and his
condescending attitude. She was really in love
with a commoner, a young man named
Charles Waters, who had rescued her
from the James River on a stormy day
when she had fallen overboard while
boating.
Beatrice's father, on the other hand,
wanted his daughter to encourage young
4031

Effingham. Mr. Hallam saw in Effingham
a chance for his daughter to marry into
a wealthy family, thus gaining an honest
reputation for herself and a comfortable
life for him.
At the opening of the session of the
House of Burgesses, the governor gave a
ball for the gentry of the colony. When
an invitation was sent to Effingham, he
resolved to take Beatrice to the ball, but
his friends warned him not to do so
because of the scandal* Although Beatrice
did not want to go with him to the ball,
her father finally browbeat her into
agreeing. Effingham, daring his friends to
prevent his appearance with an actress,
vowed to fight duels with all who tried
to hinder him or who insulted the girl.
At the ball everything went smoothly,
for the Virginians, too well-mannered to
make a disturbance over Effingham's
actions, were all coolly polite to the actress.
Their coolness only made the girl
miserable, however, particularly when she
knew how she was hurting Clare Lee, to
whom Effingham had been engaged.
After the ball Effingham resolved to
turn actor and join the company under
the direction of Mr. Hallam. The
manager was happy to have the young
Virginian. In trying to find a costume for
himself, Effingham inadvertently
uncovered a little girl's dress and a letter, both
of which he dropped in Beatrice's room.
The dress and letter proved to her that
she was not Hallam's daughter, and that
her name was really Beatrice Waters.
After some investigation, she learned that
she was the cousin of the Charles Waters
who had rescued her from the river and
death by drowning.
Effingham was furious when he
discovered the relationship between Beatrice
and Charles Waters. Rather than tight a
duel with the girl's cousin, he kidnaped
her and took her away on his boat.
But Charles and a friend followed and
boarded Effinghdm's craft. In the fight to
rescue Beatrice, Effingham wounded his
rival. Thinking he had killed him,
Effingham, in his extremity, went home to his
father, who arranged for his son's escape
to Europe.
After Effingham left for Europe,
Beatrice nursed her cousin and restored him
to health. Before long they were married
and moved to a home in the uplands of
the Piedmont region of Virginia. They
left behind Captain Ralph Waters,
Charles' brother, who had vowed to fight
a duel with Champ Effingham on his
brother's behalf. The planters were glad
to see Charles Waters leave for another
area; he had been heard to speak against
the British government and to advocate
a revolution.
Two years passed before Champ
Effingham returned to Virginia, after learning
that his sword thrust had not killed
Charles Waters. Young Effingham,
thoroughly cured of his infatuation for
Beatrice, had also lost his foppishness of
dress and manner. Although he returned
a changed and acceptable young man, he
was given to periods of moodiness, and
nothing his family could do restored him
to mental health. Then his boyhood
friend, Jack Hamilton, secretly engaged
to Effingham's sisfer, resolved to try to
restore the young man. He encouraged,
even forced Effingham to ride out to
hounds and to visit other houses. He
brought Captain Ralph Waters and
Effingham together and made them friends.
Still young Effingham remained moody
and gloomy.
At last Hamilton resolved to try the
power of jealousy, for he knew that
Effingham was still very much in love with
Clare Lee, whom he had thrown aside in
his infatuation for Beatrice. In addition,
Hamilton knew that Clare still loved
Effingham and would accept him as hei
husband, in spite of all that had hap
pened. Hamilton pretended to be in love
with Clare; he even talked to Effingham
about his suit for her hand. Such talk
was too much for Effingham, who stirred
himself to threaten Hamilton until he
learned that Hamilton was really
engaged to his sister. His sister and Ham-
3ton finally persuaded him to go see
4032

Clare, who readily accepted his suit and
promised to become Mrs. Champ
Effingham.
Happiness reigned in the Colony.
Hamilton and Effingham's sister were
married a few days after the wedding of
Effingham and Clare. Captain Ralph
Waters and Clare's sister were also
married. The marriages seemed to mark the
end of an era, however, for at the time of
their celebration news came to the Colony
of the passage of the Stamp Act, which
everyone hated. Before long many began
to speak of revolt against the British
Crown. A leader of the agitators was
Charles Waters, who returned to
Williamsburg after the death of his wife
Beatrice.
4033

THE VIRGINIAN
Type of work: Novel
Author: Owen Wister (1860-1938)
Type of plot: Regional romance
Time of plot: Late nineteenth century
Locale: Wyoming
First published: 1902
Principal characters:
The Virginian, a cowboy
Judge Henry, the Virginian's employer
Trampas, a cowboy, the Virginian's enemy
Steve, a cowboy friend of the Virginian
Shorty, a cowboy at Judge Henrys ranch
Molly Wood, a young schoolteacher at Bear Creek, Wyoming
Critique:
The Virginian is one of the classic
novels of the American West. Owen
Wister was familiar with Wyoming and
the cowboys who worked there, for he
himself had spent several years in the
Western country. Wister saw that
although the mountains and the plains
would remain, the picturesque cowboy
was rapidly disappearing, along with the
antelope, the buffalo, and the unfenced
grazing lands.
The Story:
The Virginian had been sent by his
employer to meet an Eastern guest at
Medicine Bow and escort him the two
hundred and sixty miles from the town
to Sunk Creek Ranch. While the
Virginian and the guest were awaiting the
arrival of the Easterner's trunk on the
following westbound train, the cowboy
entered into a poker game. One of the
players, a cowboy named Trampas,
accused the Virginian of cheating. The
man backed down, however, before the
gun of the cowboy from Sunk Creek.
It was apparent to everyone that the
Virginian had made an implacable
enemy.
A few months later, in the fall, a
schoolmistress came West from Vermont
to teach in the new school at Bear Creek,
Wyoming. All the single men, and there
were many of them in the territory,
anxiously awaited the arrival of the new
teacher, Molly Wood. The Virginian was
fortunate in his first meeting with her.
A drunken stage driver tried to ford a
creek in high water and marooned his
coach and passenger. The Virginian,
passing by, rode to the stage, lifted out
the young woman, and deposited her
safely on the bank of the stream. After
he had ridden away, Molly missed her
handkerchief and realized the young
cowboy had somehow contrived to take it.
The next time the Virginian saw
Molly, she was a guest at a barbecue.
The cowboy had ridden his horse for two
days for an opportunity to see her, but
she cocjuettishly refused to notice him.
The Virginian and another cowboy,
piqued by her attitude, got drunk and
played a prank on all the people who had
brought their children to the barbecue.
They switched the babies and their
clothing, so that when the barbecue was
over many of the mothers carried off the
wrong babies. Before he left for Sunk
Creek, the Virginian warned Molly that
she was going to love him eventually, no
matter what she thought of him then.
During the next year the Virginian
began to read books for the first time
since he had left school in the sixth
grade. He borrowed the books from
Molly in order to ride to Bear Creek to
see her at intervals. In the meantime
he had risen high in the estimation of
his employer. Judge Henry put him in
THE VIRGINIAN by Owen Wister. By permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1902,
1904, 1911, by The Macmillan Co. Renewed, 1929, by Owen Wister.
4034

charge of a party of men who were
to escort two trainloads of steers to the
Chicago market.
On the trip back to the ranch the
Virginian's men threatened to desert
the train to go prospecting for gold which
had been discovered in the Black Hills.
The ringleader of the insurgents was
Trampas.
The Virginian saw that the best way
to win over the men was to make a fool
of Trampas. His chance came when the
train stopped near a bridge that was
being repaired. Since there was no food
on the train, the Virginian went out
and gathered a sackful of frogs to cook.
Then he began a story about frogs, a
tall story by which Trampas was
completely taken in. As soon as the rest of
the cowboys saw how foolish Trampas
appeared, they were willing to return to
the ranch, much to the discomfiture of
their ringleader.
Back at Sunk Creek, the Virginian
found a pleasant surprise awaiting him.
The foreman of the ranch had been
forced to leave because of an invalid
wife, and the judge had made the
Virginian his foreman.
Trampas had expected to be discharged
from his job as soon as the Virginian
became foreman at the Sunk Creek
Ranch. The Virginian, however, decided
it was better to have his enemy in sight,
and so Trampas stayed on, sullen and
defiant in his behavior.
The following spring the Virginian
made a trip to a neighboring ranch. On
the way back he was attacked by Indians
and severely wounded. He managed to
escape from the Indians and make his
way to a spring. There he was found,
half dead, by Molly Wood. The girl
stayed with him at the risk of her life,
for the Indians were still in the vicinity.
She then bound his wounds and took
him back to her cabin and called a
doctor.
Molly, meanwhile, had packed her
possessions, for she was preparing to leave
for her home in the East. By the time
the Virginian had recovered sufficiently
to go back to work, she had decided not
to leave Wyoming. She was sure by
then that she was in love with the
cowboy foreman. When the Virginian left
her cabin for Sunk Creek, Molly had
promised to marry him.
Upon returning to work, the Virginian
found that his enemy, Trampas, had
disappeared, taking another of the
cowboys, Shorty, with him. About the same
time the ranches in that territory began
to lose cattle to rustlers, and a posse
was formed to track down the cattle
thieves. After several weeks of searching,
two of the thieves were caught. Since
the rustlers had somehow managed to
gain control of the local courts and had
already been freed on one charge, the
posse hanged both of them. It was a
terrible experience for the Virginian,
because one of the men, Steve, had been
a close friend. The Virginian hated to
think he had hanged his friend, and the
hurt was made worse by the fact that
the condemned man had refused to say
a word to his former companion.
On his way back to Sunk Creek, the
Virginian came across the trail of the
other two rustlers. They were Trampas
and Shorty. Because they had only one
horse between them, Trampas murdered
Shorty in order to escape.
When Molly Wood heard of the
lynching and the Virginian's part in it,
she refused to marry him. But after a
conversation with Judge Henry, she
realized that the Virginian had done no
more than his duty. She and the
Virginian were reconciled and a date was
set for their wedding.
On the day before their wedding,
Molly and the Virginian started to ridfe
to Medicine Bow. On the way they met
Trampas, who galloped ahead of them
into the town. Molly questioned the
Virginian about the man and discovered the
enmity between the two. When they
arrived in town, they were warned that
Trampas had said he would shoot the
Virginian if he were not out of town
by sunset. Molly told him that she could
never marry him if he fought with
4035

Trampas and killed him. The Virginian,
knowing that his honor was at stake,
left her in the hotel and went out to
face his enemy. Trampas fired first and
missed. Then the Virginian fired and
killed Trampas.
When the Virginian returned to the
hotel, Molly was too glad to see him
ahve to remember her threat. Hearing
the shots, she had been afraid that the
Virginian had been killed. They were
married the following day, as they had
planned, and spent two months of their
honeymoon high in the Rocky Mountains
where no other humans ever went.
4036